Money!

“I will return her all!  It is usury.  Her pledge is here!”

With brazen front, Kayser’s niece struck her bosom, looking at the same time at the reflection of her fine bust and pale face in the mirror.

The next day she went straight to the former danseuse’s.

Claire Dujarrier lived in that long Rue La Fontaine at Auteuil which partook of the characteristics of a suburban main street and a provincial faubourg, with its summer villas, its little cottages enclosed within gloomy little gardens, railed-off flower-beds, boarding-schools for young people, and elbowing each other as in some village passage, the butcher’s store, the pharmacy, the wine-dealer’s shop, the baker’s establishment,—­a kind of little summer resort with a forlorn look in February, the kiosks and cottages half decayed, the gardens full of faded, dreary-looking leaves.  Marianne looked about, seeking the little Claire house.  She had visited it formerly.  A policeman wandered along sadly,—­as if to remind one of the town,—­and on one side, a gardener passed scuffling his wooden shoes, as if to recall the village.

However, here it was that the formerly celebrated girl, who awoke storms of applause when she danced beside Cerrito at the Opera, now lived buried in silence,—­a cab going to the Villa Montmorency seemed an event in her eyes,—­forgotten, her windows shut, and as a diversion looking through the shutters at the high chimneys of some factory in the neighboring Rue Gras that belched forth their ruddy or bluish fumes, or yellow like sulphuric acid, or again red like the reflection of fire.

Marianne rang several times when she arrived at the garden railing of the little house.  The bells sounded as if they were coated with rust.  An ancient maid-servant, astonished and morose, came to open the door.

She conducted the young woman into the salon where Claire Dujarrier sat alone, eating cakes, with her terrier on her lap.

The dog almost leaped at Marianne’s throat while Claire, rising, threw herself on her neck.

“Ah! dear little one!—­How pleased I am!  What chance brings you?”

Marianne looked at the Dujarrier.  She might still be called almost lovely, although she was a little painted and her eyes were swollen, and her cheeks withered; but she knew so perfectly well all the secrets for rejuvenating, the eyebrow preparation, the labial wash, that she was a walking pharmaceutical painting done on finely sculptured features.  The statue, although burdened with fat, was still superb.

She listened to Marianne, smiled, frowned and, love-broker and advisory courtesan that she was, ended by saying to the “little one” that she had a devilish good chance and that she had arrived like March in Lent.

“It is true, it has purposely happened.  Vanda, you know her well?”

“No!” answered Marianne.

“What!  Vanda, whom that big viper Guy called the Walking Rain?”