the house, she did not tremble at her father’s voice. The studied despotism which had subdued Mme. Favoral had revolted her, and her energy had become tempered under the same system of oppression which had unnerved Maxence.
Whilst her mother and her brother lied with that quiet impudence of the slave, whose sole weapon is duplicity, Gilberte preserved a sullen silence. And if complicity was imposed upon her by circumstances, if she had to maintain a falsehood, each word cost her such a painful effort, that her features became visibly altered.
Never, when her own interests were alone at stake, had she stooped to an untruth. Fearlessly, and whatever might be the result,
“That is the fact,” she would say.
Accordingly, M. Favoral could not help respecting her to a degree; and, when he was in fine humor, he called her the Empress Gilberte. For her alone he had some deference and some attentions. He moderated, when she looked at him, the brutality of his language. He brought her a few flowers every Saturday.
He had even allowed her a professor of music; though he was wont to declare that a woman needs but two accomplishments—to cook and to sew. But she had insisted so much, that he had at last discovered for her, in an attic of the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule, an old Italian master, the Signor Gismondo Pulei, a sort of unknown genius, for whom thirty francs a month were a fortune, and who conceived a sort of religious fanaticism for his pupil.
Though he had always refused to write a note, he consented, for her sake, to fix the melodies that buzzed in his cracked brain; and some of them proved to be admirable. He dreamed to compose for her an opera that would transmit to the most remote generations the name of Gismondo Pulei.
“The Signora Gilberte is the very goddess of music,” he said to M. Favoral, with transports of enthusiasm, which intensified still his frightful accent.
The cashier of the Mutual Credit Society shrugged his shoulders, answering that there is no harmony for a man who spends his days listening to the exciting music of golden coins. In spite of which his vanity seemed highly gratified, when on Saturday evenings, after dinner, Mlle. Gilberte sat at the piano, and Mme. Desclavettes, suppressing a yawn, would exclaim,
“What remarkable talent the dear child has!”
The young girl had, then, a positive influence; and it was to her entreaties alone, and not to those of his wife, that he had several times forgiven Maxence. He would have done much more for her, had she wished it; but she would have been compelled to ask, to insist, to beg.
“And it’s humiliating,” she used to say.
Sometimes Mme. Favoral scolded her gently, saying that her father would certainly not refuse her one of those pretty toilets which are the ambition and the joy of young girls.
But she:
“It is much less mortification to me to wear these rags than to meet with a refusal,” she replied. “I am satisfied with my dresses.”
With such a character, surrounded, however, by a meek resignation, and an unalterable sang-froid, she inspired a certain respect to both her mother and her brother, who admired in her an energy of which they felt themselves incapable.
And when she appeared, and commenced reproaching him in an indignant tone of voice, with the baseness of his conduct, and his insatiate demands, Maxence was almost stunned.
“I did not know,” he commenced, turning as red as fire.
She crushed him with a look of mingled contempt and pity; and, in an accent of haughty irony:
“Indeed,” she said, “you do not know whence the money comes that you extort from our mother!”
And holding up her hand, still remarkably handsome, though slightly deformed by the constant handling of the needle; the fourth finger of the right hand bent by the thread, and the fore-finger of the left tattooed and lacerated by the needle:
“Indeed,” she repeated, “you do not know that my mother and myself, we spend all our days, and the greater part of our nights, working?”
Hanging his head, he said nothing.
“If it were for myself alone,” she continued, “I would not speak to you thus. But look at our mother! See her poor eyes, red and weak from her ceaseless labor! If I have said nothing until now, it is because I did not as yet despair of your heart; because I hoped that you would recover some feeling of decency. But no, nothing. With time, your last scruples seem to have vanished. Once you begged humbly; now you demand rudely. How soon will you resort to blows?”
“Gilberte!” stammered the poor fellow, “Gilberte!”
She interrupted him:
“Money!” she went on, “always, and without time, you must have money; no matter whence it comes, nor what it costs. If, at least, you had to justify your expenses, the excuse of some great passion, or of some object, were it absurd, ardently pursued! But I defy you to confess upon what degrading pleasures you lavish our humble economies. I defy you to tell us what you mean to do with the sum that you demand to-night—that sum for which you would have our mother stoop to beg the assistance of a shop-keeper, to whom we would be compelled to reveal the secret of our shame.”
Touched by the frightful humiliation of her son:
“He is so unhappy!” stammered Mme. Favoral.
“He unhappy!” she exclaimed. “What, then, shall we say of us? and, above all, what shall you say of yourself, mother? Unhappy!—he, a man, who has liberty and strength, who may undertake every thing, attempt any thing, dare any thing. Ah, I wish I were a man! I! I would be a man as there are some, as I know some; and I would have avenged you, O beloved mother! long, long ago, from father; and I would have begun to repay you all the good you have done me.”
Mme. Favoral was sobbing.
“I beg of you,” she murmured, “spare him.”
“Be it so,” said the young girl. “But you must allow me to tell him that it is not for his sake that I devote my youth to a mercenary labor. It is for you, adored mother, that you may have the joy to give him what he asks, since it is your only joy.”
Maxence shuddered under the breath of that superb indignation. That frightful humiliation, he felt that he deserved it only too much. He understood the justice of these cruel reproaches. And, as his heart had not yet spoiled with the contact of his boon companions, as he was weak, rather than wicked, as the sentiments which are the honor and pride of a man were not dead within him.
“Ah! you are a brave sister, Gilberte,” he exclaimed; “and what you have just done is well. You have been harsh, but not as much as I deserve. Thanks for your courage, which will give me back mine. Yes, it is a shame for me to have thus cowardly abused you both.”
And, raising his mother’s hand to his lips: “Forgive, mother,” he continued, his eyes overflowing with tears; “forgive him who swears to you to redeem his past, and to become your support, instead of being a crushing burden—”
He was interrupted by the noise of steps on the stairs, and the shrill sound of a whistle.
“My husband!” exclaimed Mme. Favoral—“your father, my children!”
