They kissed the paralysed man on the cheeks, and then went off. Toussaint had looked at them with his keen and still intelligent eyes, as if he longed to participate in the life and activity into which they were returning. And a jealous thought came to his wife, who usually was so placid and good-natured. “Ah! my poor old man!” said she, after propping him up with a pillow, “those two are luckier than we are. Everything succeeds with them since that madman, Salvat, had his head cut off. They’re provided for. They’ve plenty of bread on the shelf.”
Then, turning towards Pierre and Thomas, she continued: “We others are done for, you know, we’re down in the mud, with no hope of getting out of it. But what would you have? My poor husband hasn’t been guillotined, he’s done nothing but work his whole life long; and now, you see, that’s the end of him, he’s like some old animal, no longer good for anything.”
Having made her visitors sit down she next answered their compassionate questions. The doctor had called twice already, and had promised to restore the unhappy man’s power of speech, and perhaps enable him to crawl round the room with the help of a stick. But as for ever being able to resume real work that must not be expected. And so what was the use of living on? Toussaint’s eyes plainly declared that he would much rather die at once. When a workman can no longer work and no longer provide for his wife he is ripe for the grave.
“Savings indeed!” Madame Toussaint resumed. “There are folks who ask if we have any savings.... Well, we had nearly a thousand francs in the Savings Bank when Toussaint had his first attack. And some people don’t know what a lot of prudence one needs to put by such a sum; for, after all, we’re not savages, we have to allow ourselves a little enjoyment now and then, a good dish and a good bottle of wine.... Well, what with five months of enforced idleness, and the medicines, and the underdone meat that was ordered, we got to the end of our thousand francs; and now that it’s all begun again we’re not likely to taste any more bottled wine or roast mutton.”
Fond of good cheer as she had always been, this cry, far more than the tears she was forcing back, revealed how much the future terrified her. She was there erect and brave in spite of everything; but what a downfall if she were no longer able to keep her room tidy, stew a piece of veal on Sundays, and gossip with the neighbours while awaiting her husband’s return from work! Why, they might just as well be thrown into the gutter and carried off in the scavenger’s cart.
However, Thomas intervened: “Isn’t there an Asylum for the Invalids of Labour, and couldn’t your husband get admitted to it?” he asked. “It seems to me that is just the place for him.”
“Oh dear, no,” the woman answered. “People spoke to me of that place before, and I got particulars of it. They don’t take sick people there. When you call they tell you that there are hospitals for those who are ill.”
With a wave of his hand Pierre confirmed her statement: it was useless to apply in that direction. He could again see himself scouring Paris, hurrying from the Lady President, Baroness Duvillard, to Fonsegue, the General Manager, and only securing a bed for Laveuve when the unhappy man was dead.
However, at that moment an infant was heard wailing, and to the amazement of both visitors Madame Toussaint entered the little closet where her son Charles had so long slept, and came out of it carrying a child, who looked scarcely twenty months old. “Well, yes,” she explained, “this is Charles’s boy. He was sleeping there in his father’s old bed, and now you hear him, he’s woke up.... You see, only last Wednesday, the day before Toussaint had his stroke, I went to fetch the little one at the nurse’s at St. Denis, because she had threatened to cast him adrift since Charles had got into bad habits, and no longer paid her. I said to myself at the time that work was looking up, and that my husband and I would always be able to provide for a little mouth like that.... But just afterwards everything collapsed! At the same time, as the child’s here now I can’t go and leave him in the street.”
While speaking in this fashion she walked to and fro, rocking the baby in her arms. And naturally enough she reverted to Charles’s folly with the girl, who had run away, leaving that infant behind her. Things might not have been so very bad if Charles had still worked as steadily as he had done before he went soldiering. In those days he had never lost an hour, and had always brought all his pay home! But he had come back from the army with much less taste for work. He argued, and had ideas of his own. He certainly hadn’t yet come to bomb-throwing like that madman Salvat, but he spent half his time with Socialists and Anarchists, who put his brain in a muddle. It was a real pity to see such a strong, good-hearted young fellow turning out badly like that. But it was said in the neighbourhood that many another was inclined the same way; that the best and most intelligent of the younger men felt tired of want and unremunerative labour, and would end by knocking everything to pieces rather than go on toiling with no certainty of food in their old age.