And so these quarrels went on; we exchanged the worst insults and the lowest threats; we descended to the vocabulary of the street-walkers and the prisons. And then, suddenly, everything quieted down. M. Xavier had only to show signs of a reviving interest in me,--fleeting, alas!--when straightway began again the suspicious familiarity, the shameful complicities, the gifts of garments, the promises of doubled wages, the washing with Simon cream,--it is more suitable,--and the initiations into the mysteries of refined perfumes. M. Xavier's conduct toward me was the thermometer by which Madame regulated her own. The latter's kindness immediately followed the former's caresses. Abandonment by the son was accompanied by insults from the mother. I was the victim, continually tossed back and forth, of the enervating fluctuations to which the intermittent love of this capricious and heartless boy was subject. One would have thought that Madame must have played the spy with us, must have listened at the door, must have kept tabs for herself on the different phases of our relations. But no. She simply had the instinct of vice, that's all. She scented it through walls and souls, as a dog inhales in the breeze the far-away odor of game. As for Monsieur, he continued to dance about among all these events, among all the hidden dramas of this house, alert, busy, cynical, and comical. In the morning he disappeared, with his face of a little pink and shaven faun, with his documents, with his bag stuffed with pious pamphlets and obscene newspapers. In the evening he reappeared, cravated with respectability, armored with Christian Socialism, his gait a little slower, his gestures a little more oily, his back slightly bent, doubtless under the weight of the good works done during the day. Regularly every Friday he gave me the week's issues of indecent journals, awaiting just the right occasion for making his declaration, and contenting himself with smiling at me with the air of an accomplice, caressing my chin, and saying to me, as he passed his tongue over his lips: "Ho, ho, she is a very queer little one, indeed!" As it amused me to watch Monsieur's game, I did not discourage him, but I promised myself to seize the first exceptionally favorable opportunity to sharply put him where he belonged. One afternoon I was greatly surprised to see him enter the linen-room, where I sat alone, musing sadly over my work. In the morning I had had a painful scene with M. Xavier, and was still under the influence of the impression it had left on me. Monsieur closed the door softly, placed his bag on the large table near a pile of cloth, and, coming to me, took my hands and patted them. Under his blinking eyelid his eye turned, like that of an old hen dazzled by the sunlight. It was enough to make one die of laughter. "Célestine," said he, "for my part, I prefer to call you Célestine. That does not offend you, does it?" I could hardly keep from bursting.