" And then,
as if he felt it necessary to explain and excuse his vindictive
exclamation, he added: "My father, Polyte Chupin, is a good-for-
nothing scamp. And yet he's had his opportunities. First, he was
fortunate enough to find a wife like my mother, who is honesty
itself--so much so that she was called Toinon the Virtuous when
she was young. She idolized him, and nearly killed herself by
working to earn money for him. And yet he abused her so much, and
made her weep so much, that she has become blind. But that's not
all. One morning there came to him--I don't know whence or how--
enough money for him to have lived like a gentleman. I believe it
was a munificent reward for some service he had rendered a great
nobleman at the time when my grandmother, who is now dead, kept a
dramshop called the Poivriere. Any other man would have treasured
that money, but not he. What he did was to carouse day and night,
and all the while my poor mother was working her fingers to the
bone to earn food for me. She never saw a penny of all his money;
and, indeed, once when she asked him to pay the rent, he beat her
so cruelly that she was laid up in bed for a week. However,
monsieur, you can very readily understand that when a man leads
that kind of life, he speedily comes to the end of his banking
account. So my father was soon without a penny in his purse, and
then he was obliged to work in order to get something to eat, and
this didn't suit him at all.
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