Mme. Frantz hastened to add:
"Not to mention that she is the mother of two children, and accustomed to an idle and luxurious life that would not fit in with ours. Do you imagine that with eight hundred a year she can keep up an establishment, when she is used to scattering her money about as she does?"
"Then I am good for nothing, I suppose?" Paul retorted. "Good years and bad, I make not less than eight hundred, and I hope to make more. I shall bring to the support of the household as much as my wife."
The artist could not have used a more unwelcome argument to his sister-in-law. Barbe had the best reason to know what her brother-in-law's resources were, as she had made herself his cashier. It was exactly this money that he threw into the common stock that she regretted, though she would not acknowledge as much. It was therefore a bad move to let her understand that she would not have it to count on in future. Beside herself with rage, she went on coarsely:
"Very likely; but that won't alter the fact that your fine princess is a compromised woman. Do you suppose we don't know of her goings-on with you? She sha'n't set foot in here, that is certain."
"Ah, bah!" exclaimed Paul, provoked. "You will not receive her when she is my wife; but you received her—her and her presents—when she was my mistress. Very well, so be it. We shall each keep to ourselves, that is all."
"Paul!" said Mme. Meyrin, the mother, in a beseeching tone, frightened at the anger of her son, whom she had never seen other than gentle and submissive.
"Well, well, mother," said the painter, in a very different tone, "it is my sister-in-law that irritates me. One would think she was my guardian. Besides, I won't have the woman I love insulted—the woman, who, for my sake, has lost the high position that she had in the world."
"Oh, for your sake," sneered Mme. Frantz.
This was too much for the artist.