"I don't—I don't know exactly; to-morrow, perhaps; but it is not certain."
I went out, altogether overwhelmed.
My joke turned out very badly for me! My uncle became radically converted, and if that had been all I should not have cared so much. Clerical or freemason, to me it is all the same; six of one and half a dozen of the other; but the worst of it is that he has just made his will—yes, made his will—and has disinherited me in favor of that holy Jesuit!
THE ACCURSED BREAD
I
Old Taille had three daughters: Anna, the eldest, who was scarcely ever mentioned in the family; Rose, the second girl, who was eighteen; and Clara, the youngest, who was a girl of fifteen.
Old Taille was a widower, and a foreman in M. Lebrument's button-factory. He was a very upright man, very well thought of, abstemious; in fact a sort of model workman. He lived at Havre, in the Rue d'Angoulême.
When Anna ran away the old man flew into a fearful rage. He threatened to kill the seducer, who was head of a department in a large draper's establishment in that town. Then when he was told by various people that she was keeping very steady and investing money in government securities, that she was no gadabout, but was kept by a Monsieur Dubois, who was a judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, the father was appeased.
He even showed some anxiety as to how she was faring, asked some of her old friends who had been to see her how she was getting on; and when told that she had her own furniture, and that her mantlepiece was covered with vases and the walls with pictures, that there were clocks and carpets everywhere, he gave a broad, contented smile. He had been working for thirty years to get together a wretched five or six thousand francs. His little girl was evidently no fool.