Juliette and Lataille lived together without anything to color a drab existence. Notwithstanding his connection with the theater, Lataille had no bohemian tastes; once when his wife suggested, after a visit from her father, that there seemed no reason why she should not apply for an engagement to act, he unhesitatingly refused his permission; when she attempted to argue, he reminded her that he had given his name to Elène and Henriette, and she was silent. Henceforth she devoted herself to sewing, and brought into the world four girls in successive years--Françoise, Marie, Marguerite, and Valentine. The last was born in 1875, soon after the Latailles had moved to Lille, where Gustave had secured the post of conductor at the principal theater. Juliette welcomed the change, for it gave her the small house of her own which she had long wanted; moreover, nobody in Lille knew at first hand of the circumstances in which Gustave had married her, so that Elène and Henrietta could go to school without being teased about their mother's early lapse from the standards of conduct which she fervently desired they would adopt.
Unfortunately, the conductor had only enjoyed his advancement a year when he was struck down by a paralytic stroke. With six small children and a palsied husband upon her hands, Juliette had to find work. Partly from compassion for her ill-fortune, but chiefly because by now she was a most capable seamstress, the management of the theater engaged her as wardrobe mistress; and for five years Juliette sustained her husband, her children, and her house. They were years that would have rubbed the bloom from most women; but Juliette's beauty seemed to grow rather than diminish. Her personality became proverbial in the town of Lille, and though as wardroom mistress she was denied the public triumph of the footlights, she had nevertheless a fame of her own that was considered unique in the history of her profession. Her pride flourished on the deference that was shown her even by the management; between her beauty and her sharp tongue she achieved an authority that reached its height in the way she brought up her children. Their snowy pinafores, their trim stockings, their manners, and their looks were the admiration of the _quartier_; and when in the year 1881 Gustave Lataille died, the neatness of their new black dresses surprised even the most confirmed admirers of Madame Lataille's industry and taste. At no time could Juliette have seemed so beautiful as when, after the funeral, she raised her widow's veil and showed the attendant sympathizers a countenance unmarked by one tear of respectable emotion. She was far too proud to weep for a husband whom she had never loved and whose death was a relief; when the neighbors expressed astonishment at the absence of any outward sorrow, she flung out a challenge to fate: