Jeanne read it over twice, looked at the Jew, read it over again, then asked:
"I vill tell you," replied the man obsequiously. "Your son wanted a leetle money, and, as I know what a goot mother you are, I lent him joost a leetle to go on vith."
Jeanne was trembling. "But why did he not come to me for it?"
The Jew entered into a long explanation about a gambling debt which had had to be paid on a certain morning before midday, that no one would lend Paul anything as he was not yet of age, and that his "honor would have been compromised," if he, the Jew, had not "rendered this little service" to the young man. Jeanne wanted to send for the baron, but her emotion seemed to have taken all the strength from her limbs, and she could not rise from her seat.
"Would you be kind enough to ring?" she said to the money-lender, at last.
He feared some trick, and hesitated for a moment.
"If I inconvenience you, I vill call again," he stammered.
She answered him by a shake of the head, and when he had rung they waited in silence for the baron. The latter at once understood it all. The bill was for fifteen hundred francs. He paid the Jew a thousand, saying to him:
"Don't let me see you here again," and the man thanked him, bowed, and went away.