The servant looked at him with angry and contemptuous pity, and grumbled:  “Oh!  I can see that well enough, you are covered with perspiration, Monsieur.  I suppose you walked quickly and carried the child, and only to have to wait until half past seven, perhaps, for Madame.  I have made up my mind not to have it ready at the time.  Shall get it for eight o’clock, and if you have to wait, I cannot help it; roast meat ought not to be burnt!” Monsieur Parent, however, pretended not to hear, but only said:  “All right! all right.  You must wash George’s hands, for he has been making sand pits.  I will go and change my clothes; tell the maid to give the child a good washing.”

And he went into his own room, and as soon as he got in he locked the door, so as to be alone, quite alone.  He was so used now to being abused and badly treated, that he never thought himself safe, except when he was locked in.  He no longer ventured even to think, reflect and reason with himself, unless he had guarded himself against her looks and insinuations, by locking himself in.  Having thrown himself into a chair, in order to rest for a few minutes before he put on clean linen, he remembered that Julie was beginning to be a fresh danger in the house.  She hated his wife, that was quite plain, but she hated his friend Paul Limousin still more, who had continued to be the familiar and intimate friend of the house, after having been the inseparable companion of his bachelor days, which is very rare.  It was Limousin who acted as a buffer between his wife and himself, and who defended him ardently, and even severely, against her undeserved reproaches, against crying scenes, and against all the daily miseries of his existence.

But now for six months, Julie had constantly been saying things against her mistress, and repeated twenty times a day:  “If I were you, Monsieur, I should not allow myself to be led by the nose like that.  Well, well...  There, ... everyone according to his nature.”  And one day, she had even ventured to be insolent to Henriette, who, however, merely said to her husband, at night:  “You know, the next time she speaks to me like that, I shall turn her out of doors.”  But she, who feared nothing; seemed to be afraid of the old servant, and Parent attributed her mildness to her consideration for the old domestic who had brought him up, and who had closed his mother’s eyes.  Now, however, it was finished, matters could not go on like that much longer, and he was frightened at the idea of what was going to happen.  What could he do?  To get rid of Julie seemed to him to be such a formidable thing to do, that he hardly ventured to think of it, but it was just as impossible to uphold her against his wife, and before another month now, the situation would become unbearable between the two.  He remained sitting there, with his arms hanging down, vaguely trying to discover some means to set matters straight, but without success, and he said to himself:  “It is only lucky that I have George ... without him I should be very miserable.”