all the base deeds to which Jupillon had induced her to
stoop, she could not believe that it was really she who had submitted to
it. Had she, violent and impulsive as she knew herself to be, boiling
over with fiery passions, rebellious and hotheaded, exhibited such
docility and resignation? She had repressed her wrath, forced back the
murderous thoughts that had crowded to her brain so many times! She had
always obeyed, always possessed her soul in patience, always hung her
head! She had forced her nature, her instincts, her pride, her vanity,
and more than all else, her jealousy, the fierce passions of her heart,
to crawl at that man's feet! For the sake of keeping him she had stooped
to share him, to allow him to have mistresses, to receive him from the
hands of others, to seek a part of his cheek on which his cousin had not
kissed him! And now, after all these sacrifices, with which she had
wearied him, she retained her hold upon him by a still more distasteful
sacrifice: she drew him to her by gifts, she opened her purse to him to
induce him to keep appointments with her, she purchased his good-humor
by gratifying his whims and his caprices; she paid this brute, who
haggled over the price of his kisses and demanded _pourboires_ of love!
And she lived from day to day in constant dread of what the miserable
villain would demand of her on the morrow.

XXXVIII

"He must have twenty francs," Germinie mechanically repeated the
sentence to herself several times, but her thoughts did not go beyond
the words she uttered. The walk and the climb up five flights of stairs
had made her dizzy. She fell in a sitting posture on the greasy couch in
the kitchen, hung her head, and laid her arms on the table. Her ears
were ringing. Her ideas went and came in a disorderly throng, stifling
one another in her brain, and of them all but one remained, more and
more distinct and persistent: "He must have twenty francs! twenty
francs! twenty francs!" And she looked as if she expected to find them
somewhere there, in the fireplace, in the waste-basket, under the stove.
Then she thought of the people who owed her, of a German maid who had
promised to repay her more than a year before. She rose and tied her
capstrings. She no longer said: "He must have twenty francs;" she said:
"I will get them."

She went down to Adele: "You haven't twenty francs for a note that just
came, have you? Mademoiselle has gone out."

"Nothing here," sai