And
you'll leave your old lady this time, won't you, for your dear old
Gautruche?"

Germinie, who had listened to him with her head thrust forward and her
chin resting on the palm of her hand, threw herself back with a burst of
strident laughter.

"Ha! ha! ha! You thought--and you have the face to tell me so!--you
thought I'd leave her! Mademoiselle? Did you really think so? You're a
fool, you know! Why, you might have thousands and hundred thousands, you
might be stuffed with gold, do you hear? all stuffed with it. You're
joking, aren't you? Mademoiselle? Why, don't you know? haven't I ever
told you? I would like to see her die and these hands not be there to
close her eyes! I'd like to see it! Come now, really, did you think so?"

"Damnation! I imagined, from the way you acted with me, I thought you
cared more for me than that--that you loved me, in fact!" exclaimed the
painter, disconcerted by the terrible, stinging irony of Germinie's
words.

"Ah! you thought that, too--that I loved you!" And, as if she were
suddenly uprooting from the depths of her heart the remorse and
suffering of her passions, she continued: "Well, yes! I do love you--I
love you as you love me! just as much! and that's all! I love you as one
loves something that is close at hand--that one makes use of because it
is there! I am used to you as one gets used to an old dress and wears it
again and again. That's how I love you! How do you suppose I should care
for you? I'd like you to tell me what difference it can make to me
whether it's you or another? For, after all, what have you been to me
more than any other man would be? In the first place, you took me. Well?
Is that enough to make me love you? What have you done, then, to attach
me to you, will you be kind enough to tell me? Have you ever sacrificed
a glass of wine to me? Have you even so much as taken pity on me when I
was tramping about in the mud and snow at the risk of my life? Oh! yes!
And what did people say to me and spit out in my face so that my blood
boiled from one end of my body to the other! You never troubled your
head about all the insults I've swallowed waiting for you! Look you!
I've been wanting to tell you all this for a long time--it's been
choking me. Tell me," she continued, with a ghastly smile, "do you
flatter yourself you've driven me wild with your physical beauty, with
your hair, which you've lost, with that head of yours? Hardly! I took
you--I'd have taken an