At this time Clapart, who was ill, was being nursed by his wife,--a painful task, a duty without reward. The sick man tormented the poor creature, who was now doomed to learn what venomous and spiteful teasing a half-imbecile man, whom poverty had rendered craftily savage, could be capable of in the weary tete-a-tete of each endless day. Delighted to turn a sharpened arrow in the sensitive heart of the mother, he had, in a measure, studied the fears that Oscar’s behavior and defects inspired in the poor woman. When a mother receives from her child a shock like that of the affair at Presles, she continues in a state of constant fear, and, by the manner in which his wife boasted of Oscar every time he obtained the slightest success, Clapart knew the extent of her secret uneasiness, and he took pains to rouse it on every occasion. “Well, Madame,” Clapart would say, “Oscar is doing better than I even hoped. That journey to Presles was only a heedlessness of youth. Where can you find young lads who do not commit just such faults? Poor child! he bears his privations heroically! If his father had lived, he would never have had any. God grant he may know how to control his passions!” etc., etc. While all these catastrophes were happening in the rue de Vendome and the rue de Bethisy, Clapart, sitting in the chimney corner, wrapped in an old dressing-gown, watched his wife, who was engaged over the fire in their bedroom in simultaneously making the family broth, Clapart’s “tisane,” and her own breakfast. “Mon Dieu! I wish I knew how the affair of yesterday ended. Oscar was to breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale and spend the evening with a marquise--” “Don’t trouble yourself! Sooner or later you’ll find out about your swan,” said her husband. “Do you really believe in that marquise? Pooh! A young man who has senses and a taste for extravagance like Oscar can find such ladies as that on every bush--if he pays for them. Some fine morning you’ll find yourself with a load of debt on your back.” “You are always trying to put me in despair!” cried Madame Clapart. “You complained that my son lived on your salary, and never has he cost you a penny. For two years you haven’t had the slightest cause of complaint against him; here he is second clerk, his uncle and Monsieur Moreau pay all expenses, and he earns, himself, a salary of eight hundred francs. If we have bread to eat in our old age we may owe it all to that dear boy. You are really too unjust--” “You call my foresight unjust, do you?” replied the invalid, crossly. Just then the bell rang loudly. Madame Clapart ran to open the door, and remained in the outer room with Moreau, who had come to soften the blow which Oscar’s new folly would deal to the heart of his poor mother. “What! he gambled with the money of the office?” she cried, bursting into tears. “Didn’t I tell you so, hey?” said Clapart, appearing like a spectre at the door of the salon whither his curiosity had brought him.