LITMIR.BIZ

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way that Lisa shrugged her shoulders, quite unable to understand him. At last, however, he extricated himself from his difficulties by declaring that the Empire was the reign of licentiousness, swindling finance, and highway robbery. And, recalling an expression of Logre’s he added: “We are the prey of a band of adventurers, who are pillaging, violating, and assassinating France. We’ll have no more of them.”

      Lisa, however, still shrugged her shoulders.

      “Well, and is that all you have got to say?” she asked with perfect coolness. “What has all that got to do with me? Even supposing it were true, what then? Have I ever advised you to practise dishonest courses? Have I ever prompted you to dishonour your acceptances, or cheat your customers, or pile up money by fraudulent practices? Really, you’ll end by making me quite angry! We are honest folks, and we don’t pillage or assassinate anybody. That’s quite sufficient. What other folks do is no concern of ours. If they choose to be rogues it’s their affair.”

      She looked quite majestic and triumphant; and again pacing the room, drawing herself up to her full height, she resumed: “A pretty notion it is that people are to let their business go to rack and ruin just to please those who are penniless. For my part, I’m in favour of making hay while the sun shines, and supporting a Government which promotes trade. If it does do dishonourable things, I prefer to know nothing about them. I know that I myself commit none, and that no one in the neighbourhood can point a finger at me. It’s only fools who go tilting at windmills. At the time of the last elections, you remember, Gavard said that the Emperor’s candidate had been bankrupt, and was mixed up in all sorts of scandalous matters. Well, perhaps that was true, I don’t deny it; but all the same, you acted wisely in voting for him, for all that was not in question; you were not asked to lend the man any money or to transact any business with him, but merely to show the Government that you were pleased with the prosperity of the pork trade.”

      At this moment Quenu called to mind a sentence of Charvet’s, asserting that “the bloated bourgeois, the sleek shopkeepers, who backed up that Government of universal gormandising, ought to be hurled into the sewers before all others, for it was owing to them and their gluttonous egotism that tyranny had succeeded in mastering and preying upon the nation.” He was trying to complete this piece of eloquence when Lisa, carried off by her indignation, cut him short.

      “Don’t talk such stuff! My conscience doesn’t reproach me with anything. I don’t owe a copper to anybody; I’m not mixed up in any dishonest business; I buy and sell good sound stuff; and I charge no more than others do. What you say may perhaps apply to people like our cousins, the Saccards. They pretend to be even ignorant that I am in Paris; but I am prouder than they are, and I don’t care a rap for their millions. It’s said that Saccard speculates in condemned buildings, and cheats and robs everybody. I’m not surprised to hear it, for he was always that way inclined. He loves money just for the sake of wallowing in it, and then tossing it out of his windows, like the imbecile he is. I can understand people attacking men of his stamp, who pile up excessive fortunes. For my part, if you care to know it, I have but a bad opinion of Saccard. But we — we who live so quietly and peaceably, who will need at least fifteen years to put by sufficient money to make ourselves comfortably independent, we who have no reason to meddle in politics, and whose only aim is to bring up our daughter respectably, and to see that our business prospers — why you must be joking to talk such stuff about us. We are honest folks!”

      She came and sat down on the edge of the bed. Quenu was already much shaken in his opinions.

      “Listen to me, now,” she resumed in a more serious voice. “You surely don’t want to see your own shop pillaged, your cellar emptied, and your money taken from you? If these men who meet at Monsieur Lebigre’s should prove triumphant, do you think that you would then lie as comfortably in your bed as you do now? And on going down into the kitchen, do you imagine that you would set about making your galantines as peacefully as you will presently? No, no, indeed! So why do you talk about overthrowing a Government which protects you, and enables you to put money by? You have a wife and a daughter, and your first duty is towards them. You would be in fault if you imperilled their happiness. It is only those who have neither home nor hearth, who have nothing to lose, who want to be shooting people. Surely you don’t want to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them! So stay quietly at home, you foolish fellow, sleep comfortably, eat well, make money, keep an easy conscience, and leave France to free herself of the Empire if the Empire annoys her. France can get on very well without you.”

      She laughed her bright melodious laugh as she finished; and Quenu was now altogether convinced. Yes, she was right, after all; and she looked so charming, he thought, as she sat there on the edge of the bed, so trim, although it was so early, so bright, and so fresh in the dazzling whiteness of her linen. As he listened to her his eyes fell on their portraits hanging on either side of the fireplace. Yes, they were certainly honest folks; they had such a respectable, well-to-do air in their black clothes and their gilded frames! The bedroom, too, looked as though it belonged to people of some account in the world. The lace squares seemed to give a dignified appearance to the chairs; and the carpet, the curtains, and the vases decorated with painted landscapes — all spoke of their exertions to get on in the world and their taste for comfort. Thereupon he plunged yet further beneath the eider-down quilt, which kept him in a state of pleasant warmth. He began to feel that he had risked losing all these things at Monsieur Lebigre’s — his huge bed, his cosy room, and his business, on which his thoughts now dwelt with tender remorse. And from Lisa, from the furniture, from all his cosy surroundings, he derived a sense of comfort which thrilled him with a delightful, overpowering charm.

      “You foolish fellow!” said his wife, seeing that he was now quite conquered. “A pretty business it was that you’d embarked upon; but you’d have had to reckon with Pauline and me, I can tell you! And now don’t bother your head any more about the Government. To begin with, all Governments are alike, and if we didn’t have this one, we should have another. A Government is necessary. But the one thing is to be able to live on, to spend one’s savings in peace and comfort when one grows old, and to know that one has gained one’s means honestly.”

      Quenu nodded his head in acquiescence, and tried to commence a justification of his conduct.

      “It was Gavard — ,” he began.

      But Lisa’s face again assumed a serious expression, and she interrupted him sharply.

      “No, it was not Gavard. I know very well who it was; and it would be a great deal better if he would look after his own safety before compromising that of others.”

      “Is it Florent you mean?” Quenu timidly inquired after a pause.

      Lisa did not immediately reply. She got up and went back to the secretaire, as if trying to restrain herself.

      “Yes, it is Florent,” she said presently, in incisive tones. “You know how patient I am. I would bear almost anything rather than come between you and your brother. The tie of relationship is a sacred thing. But the cup is filled to overflowing now. Since your brother came here things have been constantly getting worse and worse. But now, I won’t say anything more; it is better that I shouldn’t.”

      There was another pause. Then, as her husband gazed up at the ceiling with an air of embarrassment, she continued, with increased violence:

      “Really, he seems to ignore all that we have done for him. We have put ourselves to great inconvenience for his sake; we have given him Augustine’s bedroom, and the poor girl sleeps without a murmur in a stuffy little closet where she can scarcely breathe. We board and lodge him and give him every attention — but no, he takes it all quite as a matter of course. He is earning money, but what he does with it nobody knows; or, rather, one knows only too well.”

      “But there’s his share of the inheritance, you know,” Quenu ventured to say, pained at hearing his brother attacked.

      Lisa suddenly stiffened herself as though she were stunned, and her anger vanished.

      “Yes, you are right; there is his share of the inheritance. Here is the statement of it, in this drawer. But he refused to take it; you remember, you were present, and heard

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