confine myself to muttering a little.
"What's that you say?"
"I say nothing."
"It is lucky. And furthermore, I forbid you to walk with M. Mauger's servant. She is very bad company for you. See, everything is late this morning, because of you."
I say to myself:
"Zut! zut! and zut! You make me tired. I will speak to whom I like. I will see anyone that it pleases me to see. You shall lay down no law for me, camel!"
I need only to see once more her wicked eyes, and hear her shrill voice and her tyrannical orders, in order to lose at once the bad impression, the impression of disgust, that I brought back from the mass, from the grocer, and from Rose. Rose and the grocer are right; the haberdasher also is right; all of them are right. And I promise myself that I will see Rose; that I will see her often; that I will return to the grocer's; that I will make this dirty haberdasher my best friend,—since Madame forbids me to do so. And I repeat internally, with savage energy:
"Camel! Camel! Camel!"
But I would have been much more relieved if I had had the courage to hurl and shout this insult full in her face.
During the day, after lunch, Monsieur and
