At this absolute assertion the woman raised her large red and white face and looked at the ceiling with a hideous expression. At this moment she appeared to Marius even more formidable than her husband, for she was a sow with the glance of a tigress.
"What!" she continued, "that horrible young lady who looked at my daughters with an air of pity is that vagabond! Oh! I should like to jump on her stomach with wooden shoes."
She leaped off the bed, and stood for a moment unkempt, with swollen nostrils, parted lips, and clenched fists; then she fell back again on the bed. The husband walked up and down and paid no attention to his wife. After a short silence he went up to her and stood in front of her with folded arms, as he had done a few moments previously.
"And shall I tell you something else?"
"What?" she asked.
He replied in a low, guttural voice, "That my fortune is made."
The wife looked at him in the way which means, "Can the man who is talking to me have suddenly gone mad?" He continued,—
"Thunder! I have been a long time a parishioner of the parish of die-of-hunger-if-you-are-cold, and die-of-cold-if-you-have-bread! I have had enough of that misery! I am not jesting, for I no longer consider this comical. I have had enough jokes, good God! and want no more farces, by the Eternal Father! I wish to eat when I am hungry, and drink when I am thirsty: to gorge, sleep, and do nothing. I want to have my turn now, and mean to be a bit of a millionnaire before I rot!" He walked up and down the room and added, "like the rest!"
"What do you mean?" his wife asked.
He shook his head, winked, and raised his voice like a street quack who is going to furnish a proof.