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Page 13
"So I see, monsieur," returned Madame Nourrisson.
"We have several things to sell," said the illustrious caricaturist.
"I live close by, rue de Richelieu, 112, sixth floor. If you will come
round there for a moment, you may perhaps make some good bargains."
Ten minutes later Madame Nourrisson did in fact present herself at
Bixiou's lodgings, where by that time he had taken Leon and Gazonal.
Madame Nourrisson found them all three as serious as authors whose
collaboration does not meet with the success it deserves.
"Madame," said the intrepid hoaxer, showing her a pair of women's
slippers, "these belonged formerly to the Empress Josephine."
He felt it incumbent on him to return change for the Prince de
Lamballe.
"Those!" she exclaimed; "they were made this year; look at the mark."
"Don't you perceive that the slippers are only by way of preface?"
said Leon; "though, to be sure, they are usually the conclusion of a
tale."
"My friend here," said Bixiou, motioning to Gazonal, "has an immense
family interest in ascertaining whether a young lady of a good and
wealthy house, whom he wishes to marry, has ever gone wrong."
"How much will monsieur give for the information," she asked, looking
at Gazonal, who was no longer surprised by anything.
"One hundred francs," he said.
"No, thank you!" she said with a grimace of refusal worthy of a macaw.
"Then say how much you want, my little Madame Nourrisson," cried
Bixiou catching her round the waist.
"In the first place, my dear gentlemen, I have never, since I've been
in the business, found man or woman to haggle over happiness.
Besides," she said, letting a cold smile flicker on her lips, and
enforcing it by an icy glance full of catlike distrust, "if it doesn't
concern your happiness, it concerns your fortune; and at the height
where I find you lodging no man haggles over a 'dot'-- Come," she
said, "out with it! What is it you want to know, my lambs?"
"About the Beunier family," replied Bixiou, very glad to find out
something in this indirect manner about persons in whom he was
interested.
"Oh! as for that," she said, "one louis is quite enough."
"Why?"
"Because I hold all the mother's jewels and she's on tenter-hooks
every three months, I can tell you! It is hard work for her to pay the
interest on what I've lent her. Do you want to marry there,
simpleton?" she added, addressing Gazonal; "then pay me forty francs
and I'll talk four hundred worth."
Gazonal produced a forty-franc gold-piece, and Madame Nourrisson gave
him startling details as to the secret penury of certain so-called
fashionable women. This dealer in cast-off clothes, getting lively as
she talked, pictured herself unconsciously while telling of others.
Without betraying a single name or any secret, she made the three men
shudder by proving to them how little so-called happiness existed in
Paris that did not rest on the vacillating foundation of borrowed
money. She possessed, laid away in her drawers, the secrets of
departed grandmothers, living children, deceased husbands, dead
granddaughters,--memories set in gold and diamonds. She learned
appalling stories by making her clients talk of one another; tearing
their secrets from them in moments of passion, of quarrels, of anger,
and during those cooler negotiations which need a loan to settle
difficulties.
"Why were you ever induced to take up such a business?" asked Gazonal.
"For my son's sake," she said naively.
Such women almost invariably justify their trade by alleging noble
motives. Madame Nourrisson posed as having lost several opportunities
for marriage, also three daughters who had gone to the bad, and all
her illusions. She showed the pawn-tickets of the Mont-de-Piete to
prove the risks her business ran; declared that she did not know how
to meet the "end of the month"; she was robbed, she said,--ROBBED.
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