  For a whole week Germinie did not set foot in the The Jupillons, when she did not return, began to despair. At last, one evening about half past ten, she pushed the door open, entered the shop without a word of greeting, walked up to the little table where the mother and son were sitting half asleep, and placed upon it, beneath her hand which was closed like a claw, an old piece of cloth that gave forth a ringing sound. "There it is!" said she. And, letting go the corners of the cloth, she emptied its contents on the table: forth came greasy bank-notes, patched on the back, fastened together with pins, old tarnished louis d'or, black hundred-sou pieces, forty-sou pieces, ten-sou pieces, the money of the poor, the money of toil, money from Christmas-boxes, money soiled by dirty hands, worn out in leather purses, rubbed smooth in the cash drawer filled with sous—money with a flavor of perspiration. For a moment she gazed at the display as if to assure her own eyes; then she said to Madame Jupillon in a sad voice, the voice of her sacrifice: "There it is—There's the two thousand three hundred francs for him to buy a substitute." "Oh! my dear Germinie!" said the stout woman, almost suffocated by emotion; and she threw herself upon Germinie's neck, who submitted to be embraced. "Oh! you must take something with us—a cup of coffee—" "No, thank you," said Germinie; "I am done up. Dame! I've had to fly around, you know, to get them. I'm going to bed now. Some other time." And she went away. She had had to "fly around," as she said, to scrape together such a sum, to accomplish that impossibility: to raise two thousand three hundred francs—two thousand three hundred francs, of which she had not the first five! She had collected them, begged them, extorted them piece by piece, almost sou by sou. She had picked them up, scraped them together here and there, from this one and from that one, by loans of two hundred, one hundred, fifty, twenty francs, or whatever sum anyone would lend. She had borrowed from her concierge, her grocer, her fruit woman, her poulterer, her laundress; she had borrowed from all the dealers in the quarter, and from the dealers in the quarters where she had previously lived with mademoiselle. She had made up the amount with money drawn from every source, even from her poor miserable water-carrier. She had gone a-begging everywhere, importuned humbly, prayed, At last, one evening about half past ten, she pushed the door open, entered the shop without a word of greeting, walked up to the little table where the mother and son were sitting half asleep, and placed upon it, beneath her hand which was closed like a claw, an old piece of cloth that gave forth a ringing sound. "There it is!" said she. At last she had succeeded in collecting the money; but it was her master and had possession of her forever. Her life thenceforth belonged to the obligations she had entered into with all these people, to the service her dealers had rendered her, knowing very well what they were doing. She belonged to her debt, to the sum she would have to pay every year. She knew it; she knew that all her wages would go in that way; that with the rates of interest, which she had left entirely at the discretion of her creditors, and the written obligations demanded by them, mademoiselle's three hundred francs would hardly suffice to pay the interest on the twenty-three hundred she had borrowed. She knew that she was in debt, that she should be in debt forever, that she was doomed forever to privation and embarrassment, to the strictest economy in her manner of living and her dress. She had hardly any more illusions as to the |
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