"Because you won't work and we'll starve. That's
your nature! Did you work at Ploch. Are you working now? Why, you have never worked!"
"How can I? Don't you know that the thought of you never leaves me for a moment? It is the uncertainty of your life, it is the cruel anguish of everything I feel, of everything I suspect about you that gnaws at my heart, devours me, sucks my brains! When you are not here, I don't know where you are! And still I am always with you wherever you are! Ah! if you only wished! To know that you are near me, loving and tranquil, far from everything that besmirches, from everything that torments. Why, I could then have the strength of a God in me! Money! Money! Why, I'll make it for you by the shovelful, by the cartful! Ah! Juliette if you only wished. . . ."
She looked at me, excited by the great noise of gold which my words caused to ring in her ears.
"Well! Make it right away, dearie. Yes, make a lot of it, piles of it! And don't think about those vile things which make you suffer! Men are so funny! They don't want to understand anything!"
Tenderly, she sat down on my lap.
"Why, I adore you, my dear little thing! Why, I detest the others and I give them nothing of myself, do you hear, nothing. I am very unhappy!"
With tear-filled eyes, she tried to nestle near me, repeating: "Yes very, very unhappy!"
I was seized with fear and pity.
"Ah! He thinks it is a pleasure!" she cried sobbing, "he thinks so! But if I did not have my Jean to console me, my Jean to lull me to sleep, my Jean to give me courage, I could not stand it any longer. I could not stand it any longer. . . . I would rather die."
Suddenly, changing the subject, and with a voice in which I seeemd to hear a plaint of regret:
