her so utterly that
they did not even notice her presence.

The time arrived, when, having endured all she could endure and being
sickened by the humiliation she was forced to swallow, she conceived
the idea of dancing herself. She saw no other way to avoid leaving her
lover to others, to keep him by her all the evening, and perhaps to bind
him more closely to her by her success, if she had any chance of
succeeding. Throughout a whole month she worked, in secret, to learn to
dance. She rehearsed the figures and the steps. She forced her body into
unnatural attitudes, she wore herself out trying to master the
contortions and the manipulations of the skirt that she saw were
applauded. At the end of the month she made the venture; but everything
tended to disconcert her and added to her awkwardness; the hostility
that she could feel in the atmosphere, the smiles of astonishment and
pity that played about the lips of the spectators when she took her
place in the dancers' enclosure. She was so absurd and so laughed at,
that she had not the courage to make a second attempt. She buried
herself gloomily in her dark corner, only leaving it to hunt up Jupillon
and carry him off, with the mute violence of a wife dragging her husband
out of the wineshop and leading him home by the arm.

It was soon rumored in the street that Germinie went to these balls,
that she never missed one of them. The fruit woman, at whose shop Adele
had already held forth, sent her son "to see;" he returned with a
confirmation of the rumor, and told of all the petty annoyances to which
Germinie was subjected, but which did not keep her from returning.
Thereafter there was no more doubt in the quarter as to the relations
between mademoiselle's servant and Jupillon--relations which some
charitable souls had hitherto persisted in denying. The scandal burst
out, and in a week the poor girl, berated by all the slanderous tongues
in the quarter, baptized and saluted by the vilest names in the language
of the streets, fell at a blow from the most emphatically expressed
esteem to the most brutally advertised contempt.

Thus far her pride--and it was very great--had procured for her the
respect and consideration which is bestowed, in the lorette quarters,
upon a servant who honestly serves a virtuous mistress. She had become
accustomed to respect and deference and attention. She stood apart from
her comrades. Her unassailable probity, her conduct, as to which not