At last, at dessert, she ventured to speak out. She and her husband were in need of five hundred francs, they were on the point of being sold up, and surely her parents would not abandon them in such disaster. Her father at once lowered his head and darted a glance of embarrassment at her mother. But the latter was already refusing the request in a firm voice. Five hundred francs, indeed! where did she expect them to find them? All their capital was invested in their operations; and besides, she reverted to her old-time diatribes. When a girl has married a pauper, a man who writes books and articles, she must put up with the consequence of her folly, and not fall back for support upon her parents. No! she--the mother--had not a copper for idlers, who with their pretended contempt for money only dreamed of living on that of other people. And thereupon she allowed her daughter to depart; and Marcelle went off in despair, her heart bleeding at the great change that had taken place in her mother, formerly so reasonable and so kind. Once in the street Marcelle had walked along in an almost unconscious state, her eyes fixed on the ground as though she hoped to find the money there. Then the idea of applying to Uncle Chave suddenly occurred to her, and she immediately betook herself to his little lodging in the Rue Nollet, so as to catch him before he went off to the Bourse. She found him smoking his pipe all alone; and on hearing of her trouble he became greatly distressed and even angry with himself, exclaiming that he never had a hundred francs before him, for he no sooner won a trifle at the Bourse than like a dirty pig he went and spent it. Then, on hearing of the Maugendres' refusal, he began to thunder against them, horrid beasts that they were! He no longer associated with them, said he, since the rise of their shares had driven them crazy. Hadn't his sister contemptuously called him a higgler by way of ridiculing his prudent system of operations, and this simply because he had advised her in a friendly spirit to sell and realise? Ah! well, she would get no pity from him when the fall came and she found herself in a pickle! Once more in the street, with her pocket still empty, Marcelle had to resign herself to the unpleasant course of calling at the newspaper office to acquaint her husband with what had occurred that morning. It was absolutely necessary that Busch should be paid. Having heard her story, Jordan, whose book had not yet been accepted by any publisher, had started off to hunt for money, through the streets of muddy Paris in that rainy weather--not knowing where to apply--at friends' houses or at the offices of the newspapers he wrote for, but vaguely relying upon some chance meeting. Although he had begged her to go home again, she was so anxious that she had preferred to remain waiting for him on that bench.