isfortune.

That same evening, the younger of Germinie's sisters took her to the Rue
Saint-Martin, to the house of a repairer of cashmere shawls, with whom
she lodged, and who, being almost daft on the subject of religion, was
banner-bearer in a sisterhood of the Virgin. She made her lie beside her
on a mattress on the floor, and having her there under her hand all
night, she vented upon her all her long-standing, venomous jealousy, her
bitter resentment at the preference, the caresses given Germinie by her
father and mother. It was a long succession of petty tortures, brutal or
hypocritical exhibitions of spite, kicks that bruised her legs, and
progressive movements of the body by which she gradually forced her
companion out of bed--it was a cold winter's night--to the floor of the
fireless room. During the day, the seamstress took Germinie in hand,
catechized her, preached at her, and by detailing the tortures of the
other life, inspired in her mind a horrible fear of the hell whose
flames she caused her to feel.

She lived there four months, in close confinement, and was never allowed
to leave the house. At the end of four months she gave birth to a dead
child. When her health was restored, she entered the service of a
depilator on Rue Laffitte, and for the first few days she had the joyful
feeling of having been released from prison. Two or three times, in her
walks, she met old Joseph who ran after her and wanted to marry her; but
she escaped him and the old man never knew that he had been a father.

But soon Germinie began to pine away in her new place. The house where
she had taken service as a maid of all work was what servants call "a
barrack." A spendthrift and glutton, devoid of order as of money, as is
often the case with women engaged in the occupations that depend upon
chance, and in the problematical methods of gaining a livelihood in
vogue in Paris, the depilator, who was almost always involved in a
lawsuit of some sort, paid but little heed to her small servant's
nourishment. She often went away for the whole day without leaving her
any dinner. The little one would satisfy her appetite as well as she
could with some kind of uncooked food, salads, vinegary things that
deceive a young woman's appetite, even charcoal, which she would nibble
with the depraved taste and capricious stomach of her age and sex. This
diet, just after recovering from her confinement, her health being but
partially restored and