still do so with dignity. I find that at bottom the Jews and the Catholics are very much alike. They are equally vicious, have equally vile characters, equally ugly souls. They all belong to the same world, you see, and the difference in religion counts for nothing. Perhaps the Jews make more show, more noise; perhaps they make a greater display of the money that they spend. But, in spite of what you hear about their management and their avarice, I maintain that it is not bad to be in their houses, where there is even more leakage than in Catholic houses.
But Joseph will hear nothing of all this. He reproached me with being a bogus patriot and a bad Frenchwoman, and, with prophecies of massacre on his lips, and with bloody visions of broken heads and gashed bellies before his eyes, he went off to bed.
Straightway Marianne took the bottle of brandy from the sideboard. We needed to recover ourselves, and we talked of something else. Marianne, who every day becomes more confiding, told me of her childhood, of the hard time that she had in her youth, and how, when in the employ, as a servant, of a woman who kept a tobacco-shop at Caen, she was seduced by a hospital-surgeon,—a delicate, slender, blonde young fellow, who had blue eyes and a pointed, short, and silky beard,—oh! how silky! She became pregnant, and the tobacco
