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Updated: June 16, 2025
I would rather favor you, on the whole, than suffer you. It will be easier." "I am thankful for any terms," said Newman. "But, for the present, you have suffered me long enough. Good night!" And he took his leave. Newman, on his return to Paris, had not resumed the study of French conversation with M. Nioche; he found that he had too many other uses for his time.
"A little, my daughter, a little?" said M. Nioche perplexed. "How much?" "Two thousand!" said Mademoiselle Noemie. "Don't make a fuss or he'll take back his word." "Two thousand!" cried the old man, and he began to fumble for his snuff-box. He looked at Newman from head to foot; he looked at his daughter and then at the picture. "Take care you don't spoil it!" he cried almost sublimely.
I am sorry to say," he added in a moment, shaking his head with a world of harmless bitterness, "that she comes honestly by it. Her mother was one before her!" "You were not happy with your wife?" Newman asked. M. Nioche gave half a dozen little backward jerks of his head. "She was my purgatory, monsieur!" "She deceived you?" "Under my nose, year after year.
M. Nioche meditated: there was an inconsistency in his position; it made him chronically uncomfortable. Though he had no desire to destroy the goose with the golden eggs Newman's benevolent confidence he felt a tremulous impulse to speak out all his trouble. "Ah, she is an artist, my dear sir, most assuredly," he declared. "But, to tell you the truth, she is also a franche coquette.
You were not galant; you were not what you might have been." Newman flushed a trifle fiercely. "Come!" he exclaimed "that's rather strong. I had no idea I had been so shabby." Mademoiselle Nioche smiled as she took up her muff. "It is something, at any rate, to have made you angry."
"Oh, sir!" and M. Nioche looked over his spectacles with tearful eyes and nodded several times with a world of sadness. "She has had an education tres-superieure! Nothing was spared. Lessons in pastel at ten francs the lesson, lessons in oil at twelve francs. I didn't look at the francs then. She's an artiste, ah!" "Do I understand you to say that you have had reverses?" asked Newman. "Reverses?
I was delighted to believe it, and when I went into society I used to carry her pictures with me in a portfolio and hand them round to the company. I remember, once, a lady thought I was offering them for sale, and I took it very ill. We don't know what we may come to! Then came my dark days, and my explosion with Madame Nioche.
M. Nioche stealthily put out his hand and laid it very gently upon Newman's arm. "Stopped, yes," he whispered. "That's it. Stopped short. She is running away she must be stopped." Then he paused a moment and looked round him. "I mean to stop her," he went on. "I am only waiting for my chance." "I see," said Newman, laughing briefly again. "She is running away and you are running after her.
"But you have cheerfulness and happiness for two!" "Oh no," said Newman more seriously. "You must be bright and lively; that's part of the bargain." M. Nioche bowed, with his hand on his heart. "Very well, sir; you have already made me lively." "Come and bring me my picture then; I will pay you for it, and we will talk about that. That will be a cheerful subject!"
The curtain rose again; M. de Bellegarde returned, and Newman went back to his seat. He observed that Valentin de Bellegarde had taken his place in the baignoire of Mademoiselle Nioche, behind this young lady and her companion, where he was visible only if one carefully looked for him. In the next act Newman met him in the lobby and asked him if he had reflected upon possible emigration.
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