He plays
cards but seldom now--only an occasional game of piquet with
Madame Ferailleur, and he amuses himself by making her start when
she is too long in discarding, by ejaculating, in a stentorian
voice: "We are wasting precious time!" Sometimes they go out
together, to the great astonishment of such as chance to meet the
puritanical old lady leaning on the baron's arm. She often goes
to visit and console the widow Gordon, formerly known as Lia
d'Argeles, who now keeps an establishment near Montrouge, where
she provides poor, betrayed and forsaken girls with a home and
employment. She has yet to receive any token of remembrance from
her son. As for her husband, she supposes he is dead or
incarcerated in some prison.
It is to Madame Gordon that the Fondeges are often indebted for
bread. Obliged to disgorge their plunder, and left with no
resources save the fifty francs a month allowed them by their son,
who has been promoted to the rank of captain, their poverty is
necessarily extreme. Oh! those Fondeges! M. Fortunat only speaks
of them with horror. But he is loud in his praises of Madame
Marguerite, who repaid him the forty thousand francs he had
advanced to M. de Valorsay. He speaks in the highest terms of
Chupin also; but in this, he is scarcely sincere, for Victor, who
has been set up in business by Pascal, told him very plainly that
he was determined not to put his hand to any more dirty work, and
that expression, "dirty work," rankles in M.
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