as her heart was concerned; by those meaning silences when she
seemed to open to her a mother-in-law's arms. And displaying all her
talents in the way of hypocrisy, drawing upon her hidden mines of
sentiment, her good-natured shrewdness, and the consummate, intricate
cunning that fat people possess, the corpulent matron succeeded in
vanquishing Germinie's last resistance by dint of this tacit assurance
and promise of marriage; and she finally allowed the young man's ardor
to extort from her what she believed that she was giving in advance to
the husband.

XIV

As Germinie was going down the servant's staircase one day, she heard
Adele's voice calling her over the banister and telling her to bring her
two sous' worth of butter and ten of absinthe.

"Oh! you can sit down a minute, you know you can," said Adele, when she
brought her the absinthe and the butter. "I never see you now, you'll
never come in. Come! you have plenty of time to be with your old woman.
For my part, I couldn't live with an Antichrist's face like hers! So
stay. This is the house without work to-day. There isn't a sou--madame's
abed. Whenever there's no money, she goes to bed, does madame; she stays
in bed all day, reading novels. Have some of this?"--And she offered her
her glass of absinthe.--"No? oh! no, you don't drink. You're very
foolish. It's a funny thing not to drink. Say, it would be very nice of
you to write me a little line for my dearie. Hard work, you know. I have
told you about it. See, here's madame's pen--and her paper--it smells
good. Are you ready? He's a good fellow, my dear, and no mistake! He's
in the butcher line as I told you. Ah! my word! I mustn't rub him the
wrong way! When he's had a glass of blood after killing his beasts, he's
like a madman--and if you're obstinate with him--Dame! why then he
thumps you! But what would you have? He does that to make him strong. If
you could see him thump himself on the breast--blows that would kill an
ox, and say: 'That's a wall, that is!' Ah! he's a gentleman, I tell you!
Are you thinking about the letter, eh? Make it one of the fetching kind.
Say nice things to him, you know--and a little sad--he adores that. At
the theatre he doesn't like anything that doesn't make him cry. Look
here! Imagine that you're writing to a lover of your own."

Germinie began to write.

"Say, Germinie! Have you heard? Madame's taken a strange idea into her
head. It's a funny thing about women lik