Then he recalled his return home at night time, the three hundred francs,
a month's salary, which he had carried in his pocket, the calculations
which he had made, the cowardly anxiety which he had felt, disturbed as
he was by the poisonous egotism which he had encountered in Paris. There
were the Beauchenes, with their factory, and their only son, Maurice,
whom they were bringing up to be a future prince, the Beauchenes, who had
prophesied to him that he and his wife and their troop of children could
only expect a life of black misery, and death in a garret. There were
also the Seguins, then his landlords, who had shown him their millions,
and their magnificent mansion, full of treasures, crushing him the while,
treating him with derisive pity because he did not behave sensibly like
themselves, who were content with having but two children, a boy and a
girl. And even those poor Moranges had talked to him of giving a royal
dowry to their one daughter Reine, dreaming at that time of an
appointment that would bring in twelve thousand francs a year, and full
of contempt for the misery which a numerous family entails. And then the
very Lepailleurs, the people of the mill, had evinced distrust because
there were twelve francs owing to them for milk and eggs; for it had
seemed to them doubtful whether a bourgeois, insane enough to have so
many children, could possibly pay his debts.
Pages:
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754