It's
shameful! A girl for whom I sold my silver forks and spoons! and now I
eat, at my age, with German metal,--and all to pay for her
apprenticeship, and give her a trade, where she could coin money if
she chose. As for that, she's like me, clever as a witch; I must do
her that justice. But, I will say, she might give me her old silk
gowns,--I, who am so fond of wearing silk. But no! Monsieur, she dines
at the Cadran-Bleu at fifty francs a head, and rolls in her carriage
as if she were a princess, and despises her mother for a Colin-Lampon.
Heavens and earth! what heedless young ones we've brought into the
world; we have nothing to boast of there. A mother, monsieur, can't be
anything else but a good mother; and I've concealed that girl's ways,
and kept her in my bosom, to take the bread out of my mouth and cram
everything into her own. Well, well! and now she comes and fondles one
a little, and says, 'How d'ye do, mother?' And that's all the duty she
thinks of paying. But she'll have children one of these days, and then
she'll find out what it is to have such baggage,--which one can't help
loving all the same."
"Do you mean that she does nothing for you?"
"Ah, nothing? No, monsieur, I didn't say that; if she did nothing,
that would be a little too much. She gives me my rent and thirty-six
francs a month. But, monsieur, at my age,--and I'm fifty-two years
old, with eyes that feel the strain at night,--ought I to be working
in this way? Besides, why won't she have me to live with her? I should
shame her, should I? Then let her say so.
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