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Updated: May 27, 2025
The advantage at present was on Lisa's side, for as the time for striking the decisive blow approached she manifested the calmest serenity of bearing, whereas her rival, in spite of all her efforts to attain the same air of distinction, always lapsed into some piece of gross vulgarity, which she afterwards regretted. La Normande's ambition was to look "like a lady."
Then they all promised to keep one another thoroughly informed of whatever might take place in the Quenu-Gradelle establishment. The butter dealer pretended that she wished to open her brother-in-law's eyes as to the sort of places he frequented. However, La Normande's anger had by this time toned down, and, a good sort of girl at heart, she went off, weary of having talked so much on the matter.
He had bethought himself of Uncle Gradelle's treasure, and recalled La Normande's advice. So he made repeated calls upon Lisa's secretaire, being merely kept in check by the vague fear with which his sister-in-law's grave face inspired him. Never, thought he, could he have spent his money in a holier cause.
But he suffered acutely at thought of the bitter hatred which had sent him into that room; he recalled Auguste's pale face and the sniggering looks of the fish-wives; he bethought himself of old Madame Mehudin's words, La Normande's silence, and the empty shop downstairs. The markets were leagued against him, he reflected; the whole neighbourhood had conspired to hand him over to the police.
"You can never be sure about those smug, sleek hypocrites." Mademoiselle Saget nodded her head as if to say that she was not very far from sharing La Normande's opinion. And she softly added: "Especially as this cousin has sprung from no one knows where; for it's a very doubtful sort of account that the Quenus give of him."
And he added, with stammering incoherence, that the latter had gone out, and that he must have done so with the intention of escaping. Lisa, careless of appearances, at once hurried up to her brother-in-law's room in her dressing-wrapper, and took possession of La Normande's photograph, after glancing round to see if there was anything lying about that might compromise herself and Quenu.
Old Madame Mehudin, exasperated by La Normande's dismissal of Monsieur Lebigre, proclaimed everywhere that her daughter was mad, and that the "long spindle-shanks" must have administered some insidious drug to her. When she learned the Cayenne story, her anger was terrible. She called Florent a convict and murderer, and said it was no wonder that his villainy had kept him lank and flat.
He could not forgive La Normande's savage cruelty, which henceforth made him see the grinning jaws and hollow eyes of a skeleton within that lovely pink bonnet. Whenever the fish-girl tried to joke with him on the subject he turned quite angry, and silenced her with almost coarse language.
And when he passed in front of her, slowly examining the slabs, she feigned hilarious merriment, slapped her fish with her hand, and turned her jets of water on at full stream, flooding the pathway. Nevertheless Florent remained perfectly calm. At last, one morning as was bound to happen, war broke out. As Florent reached La Normande's stall that day an unbearable stench assailed his nostrils.
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