The little one longed to confide in her sisters, but she dared not. When, with nourishing food, her body took on a little flesh, her cheeks a little color and she began to have something of the aspect of a woman, they took great liberties with her and grew bolder. There were attempts at familiarity, significant gestures, advances, which she eluded, and from which she escaped unscathed, but which assailed her purity by breathing upon her innocence. Roughly treated, scolded, reviled by the master of the establishment, who was accustomed to abuse his maidservants and who bore her a grudge because she was not old enough or of the right sort for a mistress, she found no support, no touch of humanity, except in his wife. She began to love that woman with a sort of animal devotion, and to obey her with the docility of a dog. She did all her errands without thought or reflection. She carried her letters to her lovers and was very clever about delivering them. She became very active and agile and ingenuously sly in passing in and out, evading the awakened suspicions of the husband; and without any clear idea of what she was doing or of what she was concealing, she felt a mischievous delight, such as children and monkeys feel, in telling herself vaguely that she was causing some little suffering to that man and that house, which caused her so much. There was among her comrades an old waiter, named Joseph, who defended her, warned her of the cruel plots concocted against her, and, when she was present, put a stop to conversation that was too free, with the authority of his white hairs and his paternal interest in the girl. Meanwhile Germinie's horror of the house increased every day. One week her sisters were compelled to take her back to the café by force.
A few days later, there was a great review on the Champ de Mars, and the waiters had leave of absence for the day. Only Germinie and old Joseph remained in the house. Joseph was at work sorting soiled linen in a small, dark room. He told Germinie to come and help him. She entered the room; she cried out, fell to the floor, wept, implored, struggled, called desperately for help. The empty house was deaf.
When she recovered consciousness, Germinie ran and shut herself up in her chamber. She was not seen again that day. On the following day, when Joseph walked toward her and attempted to speak to her, she recoiled from him in dismay, with the gesture of a woman mad with fear. For a long time, whenever a man approached her, her first involuntary impulse was to draw back suddenly, trembling and nervous, like a terrified, bewildered beast, looking about for means of flight. Joseph, who feared that she would denounce him, allowed her to keep him at a distance, and respected the horrible repugnance she exhibited for him.