And so she had one sentence always in her mouth, a sentence that was the refrain of her thought: "What can you expect? I am unlucky. I have had no chance. From the beginning nothing ever succeeded with me!" She said it in the tone of a woman who has abandoned hope. With the persuasion, every day more firm, that she was born under an unlucky star, that she was in the power of hatred and vengeance that were more powerful than she, Germinie had come to be afraid of everything that happens in ordinary life. She lived in that state of cowardly unrest wherein the unexpected is dreaded as a possible calamity, wherein a ring at the bell causes alarm, wherein one turns a letter over and over, weighing the mystery it contains, not daring to open it, wherein the news you are about to hear, the mouth that opens to speak to you, cause the perspiration to start upon your temples. She was in that state of suspicion, of shuddering fear, of trembling awe in face of destiny, wherein misfortune sees naught but misfortune, and wherein one would like to check the current of his life so that it should not go forward whither all the endeavors and the attacks of others are forcing it. At last, by virtue of the tears she shed, she arrived at that supreme disdain, that climax of suffering, where the excess of pain seems a satire, where chagrin, exceeding the utmost limits of human strength, exceeds its sensibility as well, and the stricken heart, which no longer feels the blows, says to the Heaven it defies: "Go on!" XLVIII "Where are you going in that rig?" said Germinie one Sunday morning to Adele, as she passed in grand array along the corridor on the sixth floor, in front of her open door. "Ah! there you are! I'm going to a swell wedding, my dear! There's a crowd of us--big Marie, the _great bully_, you know--Elisa, from 41, the two Badiniers, big and little--and men, too! In the first place, there's my _dealer in sudden death_. Yes, and--Oh! didn't you know--my new flame, the master-at-arms of the 24th--and a friend of his, a painter, a real Father Joy. We're going to Vincennes. Everyone carries something. We shall dine on the grass--the men will pay for the wine. And there'll be plenty of it, I promise you!" "I'll go, too," said Germinie. "You? nonsense! you don't go to parties any more." "But I tell you I'll go," said Germinie, in a sharp, decided tone. "Just give me time to tell mademoiselle and put on a dress. If you'll wait I'll go and get half a lobster."