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Updated: June 21, 2025
Then, after a pause, she continued in calmer ones: "Oh, the unhappy man! He had everything here that he could wish for. He might have redeemed his character; he had nothing but good examples before him. But no, it is in his blood! He will come to a violent end with his politics! I insist upon there being an end to all this! You hear me, Quenu? I gave you due warning long ago!"
Lisa kept her eyes on the bony shoulders of her brother-in-law as he made his way into the pungent smells of the market, stooping beneath the sickening sensation which they brought him; and the glance with which she followed his steps was that of a woman bent on combat and resolved to be victorious. When she turned round again, Quenu was getting up.
Lisa resumed her sewing, bending over her work. Quenu had not listened. He had been cutting some little rounds of onion over a pot placed on the fire; and almost at once the onions began to crackle, raising a clear shrill chirrup like that of grasshoppers basking in the heat.
The old maid seemed bent on arousing Lisa's alarm, and thus driving her to some extreme step. She began by trying to obtain her confidence. "What a lot of mischievous folks there are about!" she exclaimed; "folks who would be much better employed in minding their own business. If you only knew, my dear Madame Quenu but no, really, I should never dare to repeat such things to you."
"No, indeed," she said after a pause, again assuming her look of severity; "the streets of Paris are not at all healthy places." In the evening they went to the Gaite to see the performance of "La Grace de Dieu." Quenu, in a frock-coat and drab gloves, with his hair carefully pomatumed and combed, was occupied most of the time in hunting for the names of the performers in the programme.
Quenu, much astonished, followed her into her bedroom without saying a word. It was the first time she had ever invited him to enter it. She closed the door, and letting go the corners of her apron, which her stiffened fingers could no longer hold up, she allowed a stream of gold and silver coins to flow gently upon her bed.
Moreover, said he, he did not intend to refuse their help; he would, no doubt, be unable to find employment all at once; and then, too, he would need a complete outfit, for he was scarcely presentable. "Of course," cried Quenu, "you will board and lodge with us, and we will buy you all that you want. That's understood. You know very well that we are not likely to leave you in the streets, I hope!"
He awoke from his sermon on universal brotherhood to find himself starving on the cold stones of a casemate at Bicetre. Quenu, when two and twenty, was distressed with anguish when his brother did not return home.
Quenu, who had not yet said a word, was very much put out by his wife's sudden appeal. "It's a good berth," he replied, without compromising himself. Then, amidst another interval of awkward silence, Florent resumed: "I beg you, let us drop the subject. My mind is quite made up. I shall wait." "You will wait!" cried Lisa, losing patience. Two rosy fires had risen to her cheeks.
On his nameday Quenu would take him a bunch of flowers, and receive a half-franc piece in return for it. Florent's proud and sensitive nature suffered keenly when Gradelle scrutinised his shabby clothes with the anxious, suspicious glance of a miser apprehending a request for a dinner, or the loan of a five-franc piece.
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