savings bank, the money I borrowed for him, the money I----"

"Money? he owes you money? Oh! yes, what you lent him to begin business
with. Well! what about it? Do you think we're thieves? Does anyone want
to cheat you out of your old money, although there wasn't any paper--I
know it because the other day--it just occurs to me--that honest man of
a child of mine wanted to write it down for fear he might die. But the
next minute we're pickpockets, as glib as you please! Oh! my God, it's
hardly worth while living in such times as these! Ah! I'm well paid for
getting attached to you! But I see through it now. You're a politician,
you are! You wanted to pay yourself with my son, for his whole life!
Excuse me! No, thank you! It costs less to give back your money! A cafe
waiter's leavings! my poor dear boy! God preserve him from it!"

Germinie had snatched her shawl and hat from the hook and was out of
doors.

XXVII

Mademoiselle was sitting in her large armchair at the corner of the
fireplace, where a few live embers were still sleeping under the ashes.
Her black cap was pulled down over her wrinkled forehead almost to her
eyes. Her black dress, cut in the shape of a child's frock, was draped
in scanty folds about her scanty body, showing the location of every
bone, and fell straight from her knees to the floor. She wore a small
black shawl crossed on her breast and tied behind her back, as they are
worn by little girls. Her half-open hands were resting on her hips, with
the palms turned outward--thin, old woman's hands, awkward and stiff,
and swollen with gout at the knuckles and finger joints. Sitting in the
huddled, crouching posture that compels old people to raise their heads
to look at you and speak to you, she seemed to be buried in all that
mass of black, whence nothing emerged but her face, to which
preponderance of bile had imparted the yellow hue of old ivory, and the
flashing glance of her brown eyes. One who saw her thus, her bright,
sparkling eyes, the meagre body, the garb of poverty and the noble air
with which she bore all the burdens of age, might well have fancied
that he was looking at a fairy on the stage of the Petits-Menages.

Germinie was by her side. The old lady began:

"The list is still under the door, eh, Germinie?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"Do you know, my girl," Mademoiselle de Varandeuil resumed, after a
pause, "do you know that when one is born in one of the finest houses on
Ru