"You provoke me, you provoke me! Do you understand? Clear out!"
Monsieur continued to stammer, beginning now to show signs of exasperation.
"My darling! It is not reasonable. Just for a corset! It is out of all proportion. Come, my darling, look at me, smile at me. It is stupid to make such a fuss over a corset."
"Ah! Tu m'emmerdes!" vomited Madame, in the voice of a washerwoman. "Tu m'emmerdes! Clear out!"
I had finished lacing my mistress. I arose at this word, delighted at having surprised their two beautiful souls in all their nakedness, and at the thought of the humiliation that they would feel in my presence afterward. They seemed to have forgotten that I was there. Desiring to see how the scene would end, I kept perfectly still, and made myself as small as possible.
Monsieur, who had been holding in for a long time, now got angry in his turn. He made the fashion journal into a big ball, and flung it with all his might against the dressing-table; and he cried:
"Zut! Flûte! This is really getting too tiresome! It is always the same thing. One cannot say anything or do anything without being received like a dog. And always brutalities and coarse language. I have enough of this life; I have had enough of these fishwife's manners. And shall I tell you the truth? Your corset,—well, your corset is vile. It is a prostitute's corset."
"Wretch!"
With bloodshot eye, foaming mouth, and clenched and threatening fist, she advanced toward Monsieur. And such was her rage that the words came from her mouth in a sort of hoarse belching.
"Wretch!" she roared again. "And it is you who dare to speak to me in this way,—you? Oh! but it is unheard of. When I picked him up in the mud, this poverty-stricken fine gentleman, covered with dirty debts, posted at his club,—when I saved him from the mire, he was not so proud! Your name, I suppose? Your title? Oh! clean they were, indeed, this name and title, on which the usurers were unwilling to advance you another hundred sous. You can take them back, and welcome. And he talks of his nobility, of his ancestors, this Monsieur whom I have bought and whom I support! Well, the nobility will have nothing more from me,—not that! And, as for your ancestors, you scoundrel, you can try to hang them up. You will see whether you can borrow even ten sous on their ugly mugs,—mugs of veterans and valets. Nothing more, do you hear? Never, never! Back to your gaming-tables, trickster! Back to your prostitutes, pimp!"