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Updated: May 10, 2025
Well, this is my errand: either the clerk forgot to ask her for her receipt, or else he lost it. He can't find it anywhere. I came to ask your wife if she hadn't kept it. When she returns, please deliver my message; and if she has the receipt, pray send it to me through the post." The ruse was not particularly clever, but it was sufficiently so to deceive Vantrasson.
M. Fortunat was as motionless as if he had been turned to stone. After the information he had obtained respecting the count's past, and after the story told him by Madame Vantrasson, he could scarcely doubt. "This letter," he thought, "can only be from Mademoiselle Hermine de Chalusse."
So, having no credit at the butcher's or the baker's, Madame Vantrasson was sometimes reduced to living for days together upon the contents of the shop mouldy figs or dry raisins which she washed down with torrents of ratafia, her only consolation here below.
Over the frontage appeared the shop-keeper's name, Vantrasson, while on either side, in smaller letters, were the words: "Groceries and Provisions Foreign and French Wines." Everything about this den denoted abject poverty and low debauchery. M. Fortunat certainly did not recoil, but before entering the shop he was not sorry to have an opportunity to reconnoitre.
At the farther end of the store Fortunat could vaguely discern the figure of a man seated on a stool. He seemed to be asleep, for his crossed arms rested on a table, with his head leaning on them. "Good luck!" whispered Chupin in his employer's ear; "there is not a customer in the place. Vantrasson and his wife are alone."
Vantrasson drank worse than ever; he demanded money when he knew that I had none to give him, and he treated me even more cruelly than before. I lost courage and yet one must live! Oh, you wouldn't believe it if I told you how we have lived for the past four years."
Madame Vantrasson was not in her accustomed place, behind the counter, between her black cat her latest idol and the bottles from which she prepared her ratafia, now her supreme consolation here below. There was no one in the shop but the landlord. Seated at a table, with a lighted candle near him, he was engaged in an occupation which would have set Chupin's mind working if he had noticed it.
But now that danger had passed and Madame Vantrasson, fearing he might tire of waiting, was prodigal in her attentions. She brought him the only unbroken chair in the establishment, and insisted that he should partake of some refreshment a glass of wine at the very least.
He drank and carried away all the wine from the cellar he took all the money he remained away for weeks together; and if I complained more blows!" Her voice trembled, and a tear gathered in her eye; but, wiping it away with the back of her hand, she resumed: "Vantrasson was always drunk, and I spent my time in crying my very eyes out. Business became very bad, and soon everybody left the house.
On entering the little parlor with his mother, Pascal found himself in the presence of a portly, pale-faced woman, with thin lips and restless eyes, who bowed obsequiously. It was indeed Madame Vantrasson, the landlady of the model lodging-house, who was seeking employment for the three or four hours which were at her disposal in the morning, she said.
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