a
word could be said, her confidential relations with mademoiselle, which
caused her mistress's honorable character to be reflected upon her, led
the shopkeeper to treat her on a different footing from the other maids.
They addressed her, cap in hand; they always called her _Mademoiselle
Germinie_. They hurried to wait upon her; they offered her the only
chair in the shop when she had to wait. Even when she contended over
prices they were still polite with her and never called her _haggler_.
Jests that were somewhat too broad were cut short when she appeared. She
was invited to the great banquets, to family parties, and consulted upon
business matters.

Everything changed as soon as her relations with Jupillon and her
assiduous attendance at the _Boule-Noire_ were known. The quarter took
its revenge for having respected her. The brazen-faced maids in the
house accosted her as one of their own kind. One, whose lover was at
Mazas, called her: "My dear." The men accosted her familiarly, and with
all the intimacy of thee and thou in glance and gesture and tone and
touch. The very children on the sidewalk, who were formerly trained to
courtesy politely to her, ran away from her as from a person of whom
they had been told to be afraid. She felt that she was being maligned
behind her back, handed over to the devil. She could not take a step
without walking through scorn and receiving a blow from her shame upon
the cheek.

It was a horrible affliction to her. She suffered as if her honor were
being torn from her, shred by shred, and dragged in the gutter. But the
more she suffered, the closer she pressed her love to her heart and
clung to him. She bore him no ill-will, she uttered no word of reproach
to him. She attached herself to him by all the tears he caused her pride
to shed. And now, in the street through which she passed but a short
time ago, proudly and with head erect, she could be seen, bent double as
if crouching over her fault, hurrying furtively along, with oblique
glances, dreading to be recognized, quickening her pace in front of the
shops that swept their slanders out upon her heels.

XVIII

Jupillon was constantly complaining that he was tired of working for
others, that he could not set up for himself, that he could not find
fifteen or eighteen hundred francs in his mother's purse. He needed no
more than that, he said, to hire a couple of rooms on the ground floor
and set up as a glover in a smal