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Updated: June 2, 2025
But in the course of the month she frequently wrote to Florent, calling him their saviour. Her handwriting was small and fine, yet she would contrive to fill three pages of letter paper with humble, flowing sentences entreating the loan of ten francs; and this she at last did so regularly that wellnigh the whole of Florent's hundred and fifty francs found its way to the Verlaques.
Sometimes a chaffinch which he had picked up one snowy day in the market would mistake the lamplight for the day, and break the silence, which only the scratching of Florent's pen on his paper disturbed, by a cry. Florent was fated to revert to politics. He had suffered too much through them not to make them the dearest occupation of his life.
To talk with the Countess was always to dissipate them. That was because Madame Steno, apart from her amorous immorality, was of a frank and truthful nature. It was indeed a customary and known weakness of Florent's to repeat those witticisms which abound in national epigrams, as mediocre as they are iniquitous.
The commissaires of police at Havre, Rouen, and Vernon notified Florent's arrival within their respective jurisdictions. Then came a report which announced that he had taken up his residence with the Quenu-Gradelles. Next followed his appointment at the markets, an account of his mode of life, the spending of his evenings at Monsieur Lebigre's; not a detail was deficient.
But at the same time she was a prey, as had been her husband several days before, to that maddening appetite to know the truth, which becomes, in certain forms of doubt, a physical need, as imperious as hunger and thirst, and she listened to Florent's sister, who continued: "Will it be a proof when you have seen the affair written in her own hand?
But they now averted their heads, feeling confused by each other's looks, and at a loss what to do with their hands, which they buried beneath their aprons. Presently their eyes instinctively came back to the house, penetrating the walls, as it were, following Gavard in his progress up the stairs. When they imagined that he had entered Florent's room they again exchanged furtive glances.
Her thoughts finally reverted to Florent's adversary, to Boleslas Gorka, whose wife was her friend and whom she had always found so courteous. What if she should ask him to spare her brother? It was not Florent against whom the discarded lover bore a grudge. Would he not be touched by her tears?
However, Florent's attention was diverted by the yelping of the crier, who was just offering a magnificent turbot for sale. "I've a bid of thirty francs! Thirty francs, now; thirty francs!" He repeated these words in all sorts of keys, running up and down a strange scale of notes full of sudden changes.
She would say that there was no evil in him; that he was indeed a little bit stupid, but as strong as a horse, and particularly interesting from the fact that nobody knew anything of his parentage. It was she who had got Gavard to employ him. Lisa was sitting behind the counter, feeling annoyed by the sight of Florent's muddy boots which were soiling the pink and white tiles of the flooring.
On several subsequent occasions Charvet plied him and Lebigre with similar arguments, as though he wished to detach them from Florent's project by frightening them; and he was much surprised at the calmness and confidence which they both continued to manifest. For his own part, he still came pretty regularly in the evening with Clemence.
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