"Have you got ten francs?" he stammered. "Give me ten francs, or I'm a lost man."
With his flowing locks and handsome girlish face the young rascal looked so comical, whilst launching out this melodramatic phrase, that she could have smiled had it not been for the anguish which his application for money caused her.
"What! ten francs?" she murmured. "Whatever's the matter?"
Thereupon he blushed, and explained that he had met a friend's sister. Denise stopped him, feeling embarrassed and not wishing to know any more about it. Twice already had he rushed in to obtain similar loans, but on the first occasion it had only been a matter of twenty-five sous, and on the next of thirty. He was, however, always getting into bad company.
"I can't give you ten francs," she resumed. "Pépé's board isn't paid yet, and I've only just the money for it. I shall have hardly enough to buy a pair of boots, which I want very badly. You are really not reasonable, Jean. It's too bad of you."
"Well, I'm lost," he repeated, with a tragical gesture. "Just listen, little sister; she's a tall, dark girl; we went to the café with her brother. I never thought the drinks would——"
She had to interrupt him again, and as tears were coming into his eyes, she took out her purse and slipped a ten-franc piece into his hand. He at once set up a laugh.
"I was sure of it!—But on my honour! never again! A fellow would have to be a regular scamp."
And thereupon he ran off, after kissing his sister, like a madman. The assistants in the shop seemed quite astonished.
That night Denise did not sleep much. Since her entry into The Ladies' Paradise, money had been her cruel anxiety. She was still a probationer, without a salary; the other girls in her department frequently prevented her from selling, and she only just managed to pay Pépé's board and lodging, thanks to the unimportant customers they were good enough to leave her. It was a time of black misery—misery in a silk dress. She was often obliged to spend the night in repairing her small stock of clothes, darning her linen, mending her chemises as if they had been lace; without mentioning the patches that she put on her shoes, as cleverly as any bootmaker could have done. She even risked washing things in her hand basin. But her old woollen dress was an especial source of anxiety to her; she had no other, and was forced to put it on every evening when she quitted the uniform silk, and this wore it terribly; a stain on it gave her quite a fever, the least rent was a catastrophe. And she had nothing, not a sou, not even enough to buy the trifling articles which a woman always wants; she had even been obliged to wait a fortnight to renew her stock of needles and cotton. Thus it was a real disaster when Jean, with his love affairs, suddenly swooped down and pillaged her purse. A franc-piece taken out of it left an abyss which she did not know how to fill up. As for finding ten francs on the morrow it was not to be thought of for a moment. All that night she was haunted by nightmare in which she saw Pépé thrown into the street, whilst she turned the paving stones over with her bruised fingers to see if there might not be some money underneath them.