effect her purpose, both anger and banter,
as well as affectionate tenderness. She also cherished another design.
When she had succeeded in marrying Florent, she would go and administer
a sound cuffing to beautiful Lisa, if the latter did not yield up the
money. As she lay awake in her bed at night she pictured every detail of
the scene. She saw herself sitting down in the middle of the pork shop
in the busiest part of the day, and making a terrible fuss. She brooded
over this idea to such an extent, it obtained such a hold upon her, that
she would have been willing to marry Florent simply in order to be able
to go and demand old Gradelle's forty-two thousand five hundred francs.

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. Her versions of Florent's biography
were the most horrible of all that were circulated in the neighbourhood.
At home she kept a moderately quiet tongue in her head, and restricted
herself to muttered indignation, and a show of locking up the drawer
where the silver was kept whenever Florent arrived. One day, however,
after a quarrel with her elder daughter, she exclaimed:

"Things can't go on much longer like this! It is that vile man who is
setting you against me. Take care that you don't try me too far, or I'll
go and denounce him to the police. I will, as true as I stand here!"

"You'll denounce him!" echoed La Normande, trembling violently,
and clenching her fists. "You'd better not! Ah, if you weren't my
mother----"

At this, Claire, who was a spectator of the quarrel, began to laugh,
with a nervous laughter that seemed to rasp her throat. For some time
past she had been gloomier and more erratic than ever, invariably
showing red eyes and a pale face.

"Well, what would you do?" she asked. "Would you give her a cuffing?
Perhaps you'd like to give me, your sister, one as well? I dare say it
will end in that. But I'll clear the house of him. I'll go to the police
to save mother the trouble."

Then, as La Normande almost choked with the angry threats that rose
to her throat, the younger girl added: "I'll spare you the exertion of
beating me. I'll throw