CHAPTER III

      IN WHICH MADAME MERCIER SHOWS HER CLAWS

      MADAME MERCIER was a little round, fat old woman of fifty, who was for ever tearfully complaining about the hardness of the times. Attired in a gown of washed-out printed calico, always with an old straw basket on her arm which served as a safe, she trotted along with short steps and the sly movements of a cat. She was humble and wretched and gave herself poverty-stricken airs to make people pity her. Her fresh complexion, and the wrinkles on her face, resembling rolls of fat, were a standing protest against the tears that inundated it at every moment.

      This female usurer played her part admirably with Armande. She first of all acted the goodnatured woman. She gained absolute control over her with an infernal kind of art, showing herself in turn serviceable and egotistic, embroiling the accounts, allowing the interest to accumulate, making it impossible for her debtor to verify anything.

      Thus, when one of the acceptances fell due and Armande was without funds to meet it, Madame Mercier was greatly distressed, then she promised to borrow the money from someone, vowing she had not got it herself. She advanced the amount of the bill, but made the lorette immediately reimburse her, and thus there was fresh interest to pay.

      In all this coming and going of acceptances, in the constant increase in the rate of discount, Armande had lost all count of how she stood, what she had paid and what she still owed. In the meantime the debt increased without the usurer making any farther advances, and the older it became the more obscure it got. The young woman felt herself lost at the bottom of chaos.

      The female usurer maintained her despairing and coaxing manner. When she supplied money herself in order that Armande might pay her, she made her feel all her devotedness, all the heroism of her conduct.

      “Eh? You have never seen a creditor like me,” she would say. “I even go so far as to borrow the money you want. That is splendid, that is!”

      “But,” answered Armande, “it’s for yourself that you borrow the money, as I give it you.”

      “Not at all,” answered the old woman, “I am only seeking to do you a service.”

      So Madame Mercier in this way introduced herself little by little into the house. Every two or three days, she came and showed her cunning, coaxing face. Armande became her property, her slave. Sometimes she arrived all in a flutter, fell into a chair in despair and accused the young woman of wanting to run away without paying her; it was necessary to take her over the apartment and let her see that the trunks were not packed up. Sometimes she rang violently at the door, said she had been robbed, and reproached the lorette with her expenditure; she compared the one life with the other, accused her debtor of being insolvent, and crippled with debt, and ended by asking for fresh security.

      At other moments she came suddenly and demanded money; then she softened down, pleaded poverty, and on leaving shuffled along in a most lamentable way. She accompanied each of these visits with a deluge of tears. These came at her bidding, and she took advantage of that circumstance to embarrass people.

      Each complaint was followed by a sob. She twisted herself about pitifully on a chair, uttering the least word in a doleful tone of voice.

      Armande, weary and bewildered, generally stood before her without being able to pronounce a syllable. At times she would have sacrificed everything: linen, gowns, furniture, to have been freed from these continual lamentations.

      The usurer invented another kind of persecution. She would come with red eyes, declare she was in want of bread, and was dying. The young woman, aggravated and quite out of patience, would tell her to sit down and eat. Sometimes she would shed streams of tears to get sugar, coffee, or brandy.

      “Alas! My dear lady,” she snivelled, “I am very unhappy. This morning I had to take my coffee without sugar, and tomorrow I shall have neither sugar nor coffee. Be charitable. It is you who have brought me to this; if you were to give me my money, I should not be obliged to come and beg. For pity’s sake let me have a few pounds of coffee and sugar. That will count for all the services I have rendered you.”

      Armande did not dare refuse. She spent her last few sous trembling in the presence of certain savage, bantering looks of her creditor. If she happened to say she had no money the usurer would answer.

      “Very well, I shall present the bill you gave me to your lover — “

      The other would not allow her to proceed any further. She sent and sold something and purchased what her tormentor required. The unfortunate girl closed her eyes in order not to see the chasm gaping before her.

      She belonged to this woman who held such terrible proofs against her in her hands, and she obeyed her, inwardly irritated, inquiring of herself with despair, by what means she could escape from her claws.

      Madame Mercier wept for nearly two years and extracted from Armande all she could. She never went away with empty hands.

      The money she had lent her already brought her in two hundred and fifty per cent. If the capital was compromised, the interest covered it two or three times over. At last the usurer understood that she must change her tactics. Armande could not receive her without a nervous shudder which must inevitably bring about a crisis. Besides, she had no money and she had twice firmly refused to give her sugar.

      From that moment the old woman resolved to weep no more, but to have recourse to strong measures. It only remained to her to play all for all, to exact immediate payment of the arrears, from the lorette, by threatening to lodge a complaint with the crown attorney.

      She had had the prudence not to manifest the least suspicion anent the forged bills in her possession. Her plan was soon formed. She decided she would call on the young woman and put her in a fearful fright. If one of her protectors happened to be there, she would apply to him, she would create a scandal and manage to get back her money somehow. She wanted to devour her prey after having sucked all the blood from her veins.

      An acceptance for a thousand francs which Armande had signed with Sauvaire’s name, and which she had given Madame Mercier in exchange for another bill, had fallen due on the previous day. The old woman having a pretext to be angry resolved