"When he said that, Fortune, my blood boiled; and, to be just, I made him blush with shame at my reproaches: and as this bad woman wished to meddle in our quarrel by asserting that my husband could do with his daughter as he pleased, I treated her so badly, the wretch, that my husband beat me, and since that time I have not seen them."
"Look here, Jeanne, there are folks condemned to ten years' imprisonment, who would not have done like your husband; at least, they only despoil strangers."
"At bottom he is not wicked, look you; it is bad company at the taverns which has ruined him."
"Yes, he would not harm a child; but to a grown person it is different."
"What would you have? One must take life as it comes. At least, my husband gone, I had no longer any fear of being lamed by any blow. I took fresh courage. Not having anything to purchase a mattress with, for before all one must eat and pay rent, and my poor daughter Catherine and myself could hardly earn together forty sous a day, my two other children being too young to work—for want of a mattress we slept upon a straw bed, made with straw that we picked up at the door of a packer in our street."
"And I have squandered my earnings!"
"How could you know my trouble, since I did not tell you? Well, we doubled our work, Catherine and I. Poor child, if you knew how virtuous, and industrious, and good she is! always with her eyes on mine to know what I wish her to do; never a complaint, and yet—she has already seen so much misery, although only fifteen! Ah, it is a great consolation, Fortune to have such a child," said Jeanne, wiping her eyes.
"It is just your own picture, I see; you should have this consolation, at least."
"I assure you that it is more on her account that I complain than on my own; for, do you see, the last two months she has not stopped working for a moment; once every week she goes out to wash at the boats near the Pont-au Change, at three sous the hour, the few clothes my husband left us: all the rest of the time at the stake like a poor dog. True, misfortune came to her too soon; I knew well enough that it must come; but at least their are some who have one or two years of tranquillity. That which has also caused me much sorrow in all this, Fortune, is, that I could give you no assistance in anything; yet I will try."
"Do you think I would accept? On the contrary, I'll ask a sou for each pair of ears that listens to my stories; I will ask two, or they will have to do without Pique-Vinaigre's romances, and that will help you a little in your housekeeping. But why don't you go into lodgings? Then your husband can't sell anything."