Nicette wept. I thought that it was time for me to intervene in the quarrel.
“Madame,” I called through the door, in a voice which I tried to make imposing, “your daughter has done no wrong; you are scolding her most unjustly; and if you leave her in the street, you will expose her to the risk of doing what you will regret.”
I waited for a reply; none was forthcoming, but I heard someone removing the iron bars, as if to open the shop. I went up to Nicette.
“You see,” said I, “my voice and my remonstrance have produced some effect. I was certain that I could pacify your mother. Come, dry your tears; she is coming, and I promise you that I will make her listen to reason, and that she won’t leave you to sleep in the street.”
Nicette listened, but she still doubted my ability to obtain her pardon. Meanwhile, the noise continued, and the door did, in fact, open. Madame Jérôme appeared on the threshold, wearing a dressing jacket and a nightcap. I stepped forward to intercede for the girl, who dared not stir; I was about to begin a sentence which I thought well adapted to touch a mother’s heart, but Madame Jérôme did not give me time.
“So you’re the man,” she cried, “who brings this boldface home, and undertakes to preach to me and to teach me how to manage my daughters! Take that to pay you for your trouble!”
As she spoke, the fruit seller dealt me a buffet that sent me reeling toward the other side of the street; then she drew back into her shop and slammed the door in our faces.
IV
MY NEIGHBOR RAYMOND
For five minutes I did not say a word to Nicette. Madame Jérôme’s blow had cooled my zeal in the girl’s cause very materially. I could not forbear reflecting upon the various events of the evening, and I seemed to detect therein a fatality which made me pay dearly for all my attempts at seduction.
For following a working girl, the tip of whose finger I had not been allowed to squeeze, I had been spattered with filth on Rue des Rosiers; for playing the gallant and making myself agreeable to a petite-maîtresse who bestowed divers exceedingly soft glances upon me, I had fallen in with an infernal cab driver, who had driven me to a strange quarter of the city, a long way from my own home; and lastly, for consenting to act as the protector of a young flower girl, whom I undertook to reconcile with her mother, I had received a well-aimed blow on the head. This last catastrophe seemed to me rank injustice on the part of Providence; for to take Nicette home to Madame Jérôme was a very kind action. What nonsense it is to talk about a benefaction never being wasted! But my cheek began to burn less hotly, and my ill humor became less pronounced. It was not Nicette’s fault that I had received that blow. I determined to make the best of my predicament and to console the poor child, whose distress was much augmented by this last accident.