“Oh, Josepha!——” cried the Baron.
“Now, can anything be more absurd than explanations?” she broke in with a smile. “Look here; can you stand six hundred thousand francs which this house and furniture cost? Can you give me a bond to the tune of thirty thousand francs a year, which is what the Duke has just given me in a packet of common sugared almonds from the grocer’s?—a pretty notion that——”
“What an atrocity!” cried Hulot, who in his fury would have given his wife’s diamonds to stand in the Duc d’Herouville’s shoes for twenty-four hours.
“Atrocity is my trade,” said she. “So that is how you take it? Well, why don’t you float a company? Goodness me! my poor dyed Tom, you ought to be grateful to me; I have thrown you over just when you would have spent on me your widow’s fortune, your daughter’s portion.—What, tears! The Empire is a thing of the past—I hail the coming Empire!”
She struck a tragic attitude, and exclaimed:
“They call you Hulot! Nay, I know you not—”
And she went into the other room.
Through the door, left ajar, there came, like a lightning-flash, a streak of light with an accompaniment of the crescendo of the orgy and the fragrance of a banquet of the choicest description.
The singer peeped through the partly open door, and seeing Hulot transfixed as if he had been a bronze image, she came one step forward into the room.
“Monsieur,” said she, “I have handed over the rubbish in the Rue Chauchat to Bixiou’s little Heloise Brisetout. If you wish to claim your cotton nightcap, your bootjack, your belt, and your wax dye, I have stipulated for their return.”