THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
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was quite troubled when she met her in the antechamber. She dragged her to the farthest corner of a small boudoir which was only separated from the drawingroom by a thin door. She offered her a seat with the timid and beseeching look of an insolvent person to her creditor.
“What do you mean,” shouted the usurer, refusing the chair, “you are making fun of me, my good lady! Another bill returned unpaid! I am tired of it all.”
She had crossed her arms and spoke in a loud insolent voice. Her little fat, red face shone with anger. Armande would have preferred to have seen her crying and lamenting in her customary drawling tone of voice.
“For mercy’s sake,” she exclaimed frightened, “speak lower. I have visitors. You know in what an embarrassed position I find myself. Grant me a few days’ grace.”
Madame Mercier made a movement of impatience. She stood on tip-toe and spoke right in the lorette’s face.
“What care I, if you have visitors?” she continued, without lowering her voice. “I mean to be paid, and immediately! Madame wears hats and bonnets, Madame goes to the Châteaudes-Fleurs, Madame has lovers who provide all sorts of amusement for her! Have I any lovers? I deprive myself, I eat dry bread and drink water, whereas you stuff yourself with good things. That can’t last, I must have my money, or I will take you somewhere. You know where, don’t you?”
She accompanied these words with a threatening look and Armande turned quite pale.
“Ah! That ruffles you,” continued the old woman, sneering. “You must have taken me for a donkey! If I have acted like one, it was no doubt because it was to my interest to do so.”
She began laughing and shrugging her shoulders. Then she added violently:
“If you don’t pay me tonight, I will write tomorrow to the crown attorney.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” stammered Armande.
The old woman sat down. She felt she was mistress of the situation, and she wanted to enjoy the pleasure of playing for a moment with her prey.
“Ah! You don’t know what I mean, when I speak to you of the crown attorney,” she said, making a frightful grimace as if overcome with sudden merriment. “But you lie, my good lady! Look at yourself in that glass: you are pallid, own that you’re a hussy.”
At that word Armande rose. It seemed to her that she had just received a cut with a whip across the face. Her self-possession returned to her, and showing Madame Mercier the door, she exclaimed in a loud voice:
“Walk out at once!”
“No, I’ll not go out,” answered the old woman, sitting back in an armchair. “I want my money. If you touch me I’ll shout murder, and the persons who are in your drawingroom will come to my assistance. I told you I was not a fool. Pay me at once and I’ll leave you alone.”
“I have no money,” answered Armande coldly.
This reply exasperated the old woman. For more than a year it had been given her regularly at each of her visits. She had ended by taking it for mockery.
“You have no money! You always say that,” she exclaimed. “Give me your furniture and gowns. But no, I prefer sending you to prison. I will go and lodge a complaint, I will accuse you of forgery. We shall see, my beautiful lady, if you find lovers among your gaolers, who will treat you to silk gowns and tasty meals.”
Armande staggered, losing all her assurance, fearing the cries of the old woman might be heard by Marius and Sauvaire. Her creditor saw her fright, and began shouting still louder.
“Yes,” she said, “I can send you to the assizes tomorrow. You know that, don’t you? I have over ten false acceptances in my possession on which you have imitated your lovers’ signatures. That’s nice work. I shall go and find each of these gentlemen; I will tell them what you are, and they will cast you into the street. You will die in the gutter.”
She took breath, while the young woman, all of a tremble, thought of strangling her to make her silent.
“But that reminds me,” she continued, “you have visitors. Perhaps in your drawingroom there is one of those gentlemen whose name you have stolen to make money out of. I’ll go and see. It is necessary I should find out. Let me pass.”
She moved towards the door. Armande placed herself in front of her, with extended arms, ready to strike her if she advanced.
“You want to strike me, I who have fed you, who have lent you my money,” stammered the female usurer suffocating with rage.
And she stepped backward shouting:
“Help! Help!”
Armande faced sharply round to turn the key in the lock. But it was too late. The door had just opened and she found herself face to face with Marius and Sauvaire, who were gazing into the boudoir in an anxious and curious manner.
CHAPTER IV
WHICH SHOWS THAT THE POSITION OF A LORETTE IS NOT WITHOUT ITS TROUBLES
SAUVAIRE and Marius had been about half-an-hour alone in the drawingroom. The young man would willingly have withdrawn, but he considered it uncivil to do so without first of all taking leave of the mistress of the house. He therefore feigned to be listening to the stevedore’s stories.
The sound of loud voices soon reached them. Little by little the noise increased to such a pitch that both of them lent the ear, being unable to appear discreet any longer.
Just then the shout: “Help! Help!” made them start up and open the door communicating with the boudoir.
A strange sight awaited them. As soon as they made their appearance Armande stepped back staggering, and let herself fall into an armchair. With her head between her hands she burst out sobbing, quite broken down, without raising her face or uttering a word.
The old woman, in a rage, with inflamed countenance, approached the two men and began speaking to them with passionate verbosity. From time to time she broke off to turn round and shake her fist at Armande, who was so upset by despair, which made her tremble all over her body, that she did not hear her.
“You saw it, did you not?” repeated the old woman. “She wanted to beat me. She had her arm in the air. Ah! the wretch! Just fancy, my good gentlemen, I have given that woman all my money. I like to be of service. Besides, I thought she was honest. She has made me discount acceptances signed by honourable persons; I thought I had good security. Now I learn that the bills are false and that I have been shamefully robbed. What would you have done in my place? I reproached her with her abominable conduct and then she threatened to strike me.”
Sauvaire opened his eyes in astonishment, gazing first of all at Armande’s dejection and then at Madame Mercier’s anger. He approached the young woman and exclaimed:
“Come, my dear, defend yourself. This women lies, doesn’t she? You have not done anything so stupid. Come, speak!”
Armande did not move, but continued sobbing.
“Oh! She’ll not speak, she’ll not defend herself,” continued the woman usurer, in triumph. “She knows very well that I am in possession of the proofs. I shall write tomorrow morning to the crown attorney.”
Marius, painfully surprised, cast a look of pity on Armande. Chance had brought him face to face with another shame, another human misery. He remembered the sad scene when Charles Blétry was arrested in his presence and a feeling of mercy overcame him in face of this woman whom vice had brought to infamy. He half guessed the circumstances that had urged her on to crime, he understood how necessity, from fall to fall, had brought her to the gutter. He would have liked to have saved her, to have brought her back to a life of honesty, to have given her the means of extricating herself from the sewer.
“Why do you wish to ruin her?” he quietly inquired of the old woman. “You