Old Madame Mehudin, exasperated by La Normande’s dismissal of Monsieur Lebigre, proclaimed everywhere that her daughter was mad, and that the “long spindle-shanks” must have administered some insidious drug to her.  When she learned the Cayenne story, her anger was terrible.  She called Florent a convict and murderer, and said it was no wonder that his villainy had kept him lank and flat.  Her versions of Florent’s biography were the most horrible of all that were circulated in the neighbourhood.  At home she kept a moderately quiet tongue in her head, and restricted herself to muttered indignation, and a show of locking up the drawer where the silver was kept whenever Florent arrived.  One day, however, after a quarrel with her elder daughter, she exclaimed: 

“Things can’t go on much longer like this!  It is that vile man who is setting you against me.  Take care that you don’t try me too far, or I’ll go and denounce him to the police.  I will, as true as I stand here!”

“You’ll denounce him!” echoed La Normande, trembling violently, and clenching her fists.  “You’d better not!  Ah, if you weren’t my mother——­”

At this, Claire, who was a spectator of the quarrel, began to laugh, with a nervous laughter that seemed to rasp her throat.  For some time past she had been gloomier and more erratic than ever, invariably showing red eyes and a pale face.

“Well, what would you do?” she asked.  “Would you give her a cuffing?  Perhaps you’d like to give me, your sister, one as well?  I dare say it will end in that.  But I’ll clear the house of him.  I’ll go to the police to save mother the trouble.”

Then, as La Normande almost choked with the angry threats that rose to her throat, the younger girl added:  “I’ll spare you the exertion of beating me.  I’ll throw myself into the river as I come back over the bridge.”

Big tears were streaming from her eyes; and she rushed off to her bedroom, banging the doors violently behind her.  Old Madame Mehudin said nothing more about denouncing Florent.  Muche, however, told La Normande that he met his grandma talking with Monsieur Lebigre in every corner of the neighbourhood.

The rivalry between the beautiful Norman and the beautiful Lisa now assumed a less aggressive but more disturbing character.  In the afternoon, when the red-striped canvas awning was drawn down in front of the pork shop, the fish-girl would remark that the big fat thing felt afraid, and was concealing herself.  She was also much exasperated by the occasional lowering of the window-blind, on which was pictured a hunting-breakfast in a forest glade, with ladies and gentlemen in evening dress partaking of a red pasty, as big as themselves, on the yellow grass.