“Whose fault is that?” said Lheureux, bowing ironically. “While I’m slaving like a nigger, you go gallivanting about.”
“Ah! no lecturing.”
“It never does any harm,” he replied.
She turned coward; she implored him; she even pressed her pretty white and slender hand against the shopkeeper’s knee.
“There, that’ll do! Anyone’d think you wanted to seduce me!”
“You are a wretch!” she cried.
“Oh, oh! go it! go it!”
“I will show you up. I shall tell my husband.”
“All right! I too. I’ll show your husband something.”
And Lheureux drew from his strong box the receipt for eighteen hundred francs that she had given him when Vinçart had discounted the bills.
“Do you think,” he added, “that he’ll not understand your little theft, the poor dear man?”
She collapsed, more overcome than if felled by the blow of a poleaxe. He was walking up and down from the window to the bureau, repeating all the while—
“Ah! I’ll show him! I’ll show him!” Then he approached her, and in a soft voice said—
“It isn’t pleasant, I know; but, after all, no bones are broken, and, since that is the only way that is left for you paying back my money—”