It was from that moment, that Mme. Favoral had noticed in her son the change that had surprised her so much.
Under the inspiration, under the impulsion, of Mlle. Lucienne, Maxence had been suddenly taken with a zeal for work, and a desire to earn money, of which he could not have been suspected.
He was no longer late at his office, and had not, at the end of each month, ten or fifteen francs' fines to pay.
Every morning, as soon as she was up, Mlle. Lucienne came to knock at his door. "Come, get up!" she cried to him.
And quick he jumped out of bed and dressed, so that he might bid her good-morning before she left.
In the evening, the last mouthful of his dinner was hardly swallowed, before he began copying the documents which he procured from M.
Chapelain's successor.
And often he worked quite late in the night whilst by his side Mlle.
Lucienne applied herself to some work of embroidery.
The girl was the cashier of the association; and she administered the common capital with such skillful and such scrupulous economy, that Maxence soon succeeded in paying off his creditors.
"Do you know," she was saying at the end of December, "that, between us, we have earned over six hundred francs this month?"
On Sundays only, after a week of which not a minute had been lost, they indulged in some little recreation.
If the weather was not too bad, they went out together, dined in some modest restaurant, and finished the day at the theatre.
Having thus a common existence, both young, free, and having their rooms divided only by a narrow passage it was difficult that people should believe in the innocence of their intercourse. The proprietors of the Hotel des Folies believed nothing of the kind; and they were not alone in that opinion.
Mlle. Lucienne having continued to show herself in the Bois on the afternoons when the weather was fine, the number of fools who annoyed her with their attentions had greatly increased. Among the most obstinate could be numbered M. Costeclar, who was pleased to declare, upon his word of honor, that he had lost his sleep, and his taste for business, since the day when, together with M. Saint Pavin, he had first seen Mlle. Lucienne.
The efforts of his valet, and the letters which he had written, having proved useless, M. Costeclar had made up his mind to act in person; and gallantly he had come to put himself on guard in front of the Hotel des Folies.
Great was his surprise, when he saw Mlle. Lucienne coming out arm in arm with Maxence; and greater still was his spite.
"That girl is a fool," he thought, "to prefer to me a fellow who has not two hundred francs a month to spend. But never mind! He laughs best who laughs last."
And, as he was a man fertile in expedients, he went the next day to take a walk in the neighborhood of the Mutual Credit; and, having met M. Favoral by chance, he told him how his son Maxence was ruining himself for a young lady whose toilets were a scandal, insinuating delicately that it was his duty, as the head of the family, to put a stop to such a thing.
This was precisely the time when Maxence was endeavoring to obtain a situation in the office of the Mutual Credit.
It is true that the idea was not original with him, and that he had even vehemently rejected it, when, for the first time, Mlle.
Lucienne had suggested it.
"What!" had he exclaimed, "be employed in the same establishment as my father? Suffer at the office the same intolerable despotism as at home? I'd rather break stones on the roads."
But Mlle. Lucienne was not the girl to give up so easily a project conceived and carefully matured by herself.
She returned to the charge with that infinite art of women, who understand so marvelously well how to turn a position which they cannot carry in front. She kept the matter so well before him, she spoke of it so often and so much, on every occasion, and under all pretexts, that he ended by persuading himself that it was the only reasonable and practical thing he could do, the only way in which he had any chance of making his fortune; and so, one evening overcoming his last hesitations, "I am going to speak about it to my father," he said to Mlle.
Lucienne.
But whether he had been influenced by M. Costeclar's insinuations, or for some other reason, M. Favoral had rejected indignantly his son's request, saying that it was impossible to trust a young man who was ruining himself for the sake of a miserable creature.
Maxence had become crimson with rage on hearing the woman spoken of thus, whom he loved to madness, and who, far from ruining him, was making him.
He returned to the Hotel des Folies in an indescribable state of exasperation.
"There's the result," he said to Mlle. Lucienne, "of the step which you have urged me so strongly to take."
She seemed neither surprised nor irritated.
"Very well," she replied simply.