, and he
refused point-blank.

Mere Jupillon, in despair, was complaining tearfully. She repeated the
number drawn by her son: "Twenty-two! twenty-two!" And she said: "And
yet I sewed a black spider into your _paletot_ with his web; a _velvety_
fellow he was! Oh, dear! I ought to have done as they told me and made
you wear the cap you were baptized in. Ah! the good God ain't fair!
There's the fruit woman's son drew a lucky number! That comes of being
honest! And those two sluts at number eighteen must go and hook it with
my money! I might have known they meant something by the way they shook
hands. They did me out of more than seven hundred francs, did you know
it? And the black creature opposite--and that infernal girl as had the
face to eat pots of strawberries at twenty francs! they might as well
have taken me too, the hussies! But you haven't gone yet all the same.
I'd rather sell the creamery--I'll go out to work again, do cooking or
housekeeping,--anything! Why, I'd draw money from a stone for you!"

Jupillon smoked and let his mother do the talking. When she had
finished, he said: "That'll do for talk, mamma!--all that's nothing but
words. You'll spoil your digestion and it ain't worth while. You needn't
sell anything--you needn't strain yourself at all--I'll buy my
substitute and it sha'n't cost you a sou;--do you want to bet on it?"

"Jesus!" ejaculated Madame Jupillon.

"I have an idea."

After a pause, Jupillon continued: "I didn't want to make trouble with
you on account of Germinie--you know, at the time the stories about us
were going round; you thought it was time for me to break with her--that
she would be in our way--and you kicked her out of the house, stiff.
That wasn't my idea--I didn't think she was so bad as all that for the
family butter. But, however, you thought best to do it. And perhaps,
after all, you did the best thing; instead of cooling her off, you
warmed her up for me--yes, warmed her up--I've met her once or
twice--and she's changed, I tell you. Gad! how she's drying up!"

"But you know very well she hasn't got a sou."

"I don't say she has, of her own. But what's that got to do with it?
She'll find it somewhere. She's good for twenty-three hundred shiners
yet!"

"But suppose you get mixed up in it?"

"Oh! she won't steal 'em----"

"The deuce she won't!"

"Well! if she does, it won't be from anyone but her mistress. Do you
suppose her mademoiselle would have her pinched fo