“Do you believe that?” said she.  “Do you believe that Hector troubles himself about his future?  I see you don’t know his character.  He dream of a home, or a family?  He never has and never will think of anything but himself.  If he had any heart, would he have gone to live with you as he has?  He had two arms to gain his bread and mine.  I was ashamed to ask money of him, knowing that what he gave me came from you.”

“But he is my friend, my dear child.”

“Would you do as he has done?”

Sauvresy did not know what to say; he was embarrassed by the logic of this daughter of the people, judging her lover rudely, but justly.

“Ah, I know him, I do,” continued Jenny, growing more excited as her mind reverted to the past.  “He has only deceived me once—­the morning he came and told me he was going to kill himself.  I was stupid enough to think him dead, and to cry about it.  He, kill himself?  Why, he’s too much of a coward to hurt himself!  Yes, I love him, but I don’t esteem him.  That’s our fate, you see, only to love the men we despise.”

Jenny talked loud, gesticulating, and every now and then thumping the table with her fist so that the bottles and glasses jingled.  Sauvresy was somewhat fearful lest the hotel people should hear her; they knew him, and had seen him come in.  He began to be sorry that he had come, and tried to calm the girl.

“But Hector is not deserting you,” repeated he.  “He will assure you a good position.”

“Humph!  I should laugh at such a thing!  Have I any need of him?  As long as I have ten fingers and good eyes, I shall not be at the mercy of any man.  He made me change my name, and wanted to accustom me to luxury!  And now there is neither a Miss Jenny, nor riches, but there is a Pelagie, who proposes to get her fifty sous a day, without much trouble.”

“No,” said Sauvresy, “you will not need—­”

“What?  To work?  But I like work; I am not a do-nothing.  I will go back to my old life.  I used to breakfast on a sou’s worth of biscuit and a sou’s worth of potatoes, and was well and happy.  On Sundays, I dined at the Turk for thirty sous.  I laughed more then in one afternoon, than in all the years I have known Tremorel.”

She no longer cried, nor was she angry; she was laughing.  She was thinking of her old breakfasts, and her feasts at the Turk.

Sauvresy was stupefied.  He had no idea of this Parisian nature, detestable and excellent, emotional to excess, nervous, full of transitions, which laughs and cries, caresses and strikes in the same minute, which a passing idea whirls a hundred leagues from the present moment.

“So,” said Jenny, more calmly, “I snap my fingers at Hector,”—­ she had just said exactly the contrary, and had forgotten it—­ “I don’t care for him, but I will not let him leave me in this way.  It sha’n’t be said that he left me for another.  I won’t have it.”