I am mad about you, and you are my revenge! That’s as if I were in love twice over. I speak my mind to you, a man with his mind made up. Just as bluntly as you say to me “I will not be yours”, I tell you soberly what I think. I’m putting my cards on the table, as the saying is. Yes, you’ll be mine, when the right moment comes. Oh! even if you were fifty, you should still be my mistress. And you shall, for I don’t expect any difficulty with your husband.…’

Madame Hulot cast a look of such frozen horror at this calculating businessman that he thought she had gone out of her mind, and stopped.

‘You asked for it; you covered me with your contempt; you defied me, and now I have told you!’ he said, feeling some need to justify the brutality of his last words.

‘Oh! my daughter, my daughter!’ cried the Baroness despairingly.

‘Ah! there’s nothing more I can say!’ Crevel went on. ‘The day Josépha was taken from me I was like a tigress robbed of her whelps.… In fact, I was in just the same state as I see you in now. Your daughter! For me, she is the means of getting you. Yes, I wrecked your daughter’s marriage!… and you will not marry her without my help! However beautiful Mademoiselle Hortense may be, she needs a dowry.’

‘Alas! yes,’ said the Baroness, wiping her eyes.

‘Well, try asking the Baron for ten thousand francs,’ returned Crevel, striking his attitude again.

He held it for a moment, like an actor pausing to underline a point.

‘If he had the money, he would give it to the girl who will take Josépha’s place!’ he said, speaking with increasing urgency and vehemence. ‘On the road he has taken, does a man stop? He’s too fond of women, to begin with! (There’s a way of moderation in everything, a juste milieu, as our King has said). And then vanity has a hand in it! He’s a handsome man! He’ ll see you all reduced to beggary for the sake of his pleasure. Indeed you’re on the high road to ruin already. Look, since I first set foot in your house, you haven’t once been able to do up your drawing-room. The words HARD UP shriek from every split in these covers. Show me the son-in-law who will not back out in a fright at sight of such ill-concealed evidence of the cruellest kind of poverty there is, the poverty of families that hold their heads high! I have been a shopkeeper and I know. There’s no eye so keen as a Paris shopkeeper’s for telling real wealth from wealth that’s only a sham.… You haven’t got a penny,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘It shows in everything, down to your servant’s coat. Would you like me to let you into shocking secrets that have been kept from you?’

‘Monsieur,’ said Madame Hulot, who was holding a soaking handkerchief to streaming eyes. ‘That’s enough! No more!’

‘Well, my son-in-law gives money to his father. That’s what I wanted to tell you at the beginning, when I was talking about how your son lives. But I’m watching over my daughter’s interests. Don’t you worry.’

‘Oh! if I could only marry my daughter and die!’ cried the unhappy woman, her self-control breaking.

‘Well, here’s the way to do it!’

Madame Hulot looked at Crevel in sudden hope, with such an instant change of expression that it should have been enough in itself to touch the man, and make him abandon his ridiculous ambition.

‘You will be beautiful for ten years yet,’ went on Crevel, his arms folded, his gaze on infinity. ‘Be kind to me, and Mademoiselle Hortense’s marriage is arranged. Hulot has given me the right, as I told you, to propose the bargain quite bluntly, and he won’t be angry. In the last three years I have been able to make some profitable investments, because my adventures have been restricted. I have three hundred thousand francs to spend, over and above my capital, and the money’s yours –’

‘Go, Monsieur,’ said Madame Hulot;‘go, and never let me see you again. I had to find out what lay behind your base behaviour in the matter of the marriage planned for Hortense. Yes, base,’ she repeated, as Crevel made a gesture. ‘How could you let such private grudges and rancours affect a poor girl, an innocent and lovely creature? If it had not been for the need to know that gave my mother’s heart no peace, you would never have spoken to me again, you would never again have crossed my threshold.