At last they all began to talk, with the exception of Chaine, who went on painting with the determined expression of an ox at the plough.  Jory had at once gone into ecstasies over the roughly indicated figure of the vintaging girl.  He worshipped a massive style of beauty.  His first writings in his native town had been some Parnassian sonnets celebrating the copious charms of a handsome pork-butcheress.  In Paris—­where he had fallen in with the whole band of Plassans—­he had taken to art criticism, and, for a livelihood, he wrote articles for twenty francs apiece in a small, slashing paper called ‘The Drummer.’  Indeed, one of these articles, a study on a picture by Claude exhibited at Papa Malgras’s, had just caused a tremendous scandal; for Jory had therein run down all the painters whom the public appreciated to extol his friend, whom he set up as the leader of a new school, the school of the ‘open air.’  Very practical at heart, he did not care in reality a rap about anything that did not conduce to his own pleasures; he simply repeated the theories he heard enunciated by his friends.  ‘I say, Mahoudeau,’ he now exclaimed, ’you shall have an article; I’ll launch that woman of yours.  What limbs, my boys!  She’s magnificent!’

Then suddenly changing the conversation:  ‘By the way,’ he said, ’my miserly father has apologised.  He is afraid I shall drag his name through the mud, so he sends me a hundred francs a month now.  I am paying my debts.’

‘Debts! you are too careful to have any,’ muttered Sandoz, with a smile.

In fact, Jory displayed a hereditary tightness of fist which much amused his friends.  He managed to lead a profligate life without money and without incurring debts; and with the skill he thus displayed was allied constant duplicity, a habit of incessantly lying, which he had contracted in the devout sphere of his family, where his anxiety to hide his vices had made him lie about everything at all hours, and even without occasion.  But he now gave a superb reply, the cry of a sage of deep experience.

‘Oh, you fellows, you don’t know the worth of money!’

This time he was hooted.  What a philistine!  And the invectives continued, when some light taps on one of the window-panes suddenly made the din cease.

‘She is really becoming a nuisance,’ said Mahoudeau, with a gesture of annoyance.

‘Eh?  Who is it?  The herbalist woman?’ asked Jory.  ’Let her come in; it will be great fun.’

The door indeed had already been opened, and Mahoudeau’s neighbour, Madame Jabouille, or Mathilde, as she was familiarly called, appeared on the threshold.  She was about thirty, with a flat face horribly emaciated, and passionate eyes, the lids of which had a bluish tinge as if they were bruised.  It was said that some members of the clergy had brought about her marriage with little Jabouille, at a time when the latter’s business was still flourishing, thanks to the custom