Leave me to catechise her. Hide there, and you will hear
everything. It is a scene that is played quite as often in real life
as on the stage--"
"Well, Mother Bijou," she said to an old woman dressed in tartan
stuff, and who looked like a porter's wife in her Sunday best, "so you
are all very happy? Your daughter is in luck."
"Oh, happy? As for that!--My daughter gives us a hundred francs a
month, while she rides in a carriage and eats off silver plate--she is
a millionary, is my daughter! Olympe might have lifted me above labor.
To have to work at my age? Is that being good to me?"
"She ought not to be ungrateful, for she owes her beauty to you,"
replied Josepha; "but why did she not come to see me? It was I who
placed her in ease by settling her with my uncle."
"Yes, madame, with old Monsieur Thoul, but he is very old and
broken--"
"But what have you done with him? Is he with you? She was very foolish
to leave him; he is worth millions now."
"Heaven above us!" cried the mother. "What did I tell her when she
behaved so badly to him, and he as mild as milk, poor old fellow? Oh!
didn't she just give it him hot?--Olympe was perverted, madame?"
"But how?"
"She got to know a _claqueur_, madame, saving your presence, a man
paid to clap, you know, the grand nephew of an old mattress-picker of
the Faubourg Saint-Marceau.
Pages:
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563