Part 19 (1/2)
The magistrate was just dreaming that that fellow swinging from the ceiling turned to him, and said ”will you have a cup of coffee?” It did him good starting from his doze, to see his host, not on the chandelier, but sitting in a chair before him, saying: ”Will you have a cup of coffee?”
The magistrate hastened to taste it, with a view to driving the sleepiness from his eyes, and the lawyer poured some out for himself.
Just at that moment Mistress Boris entered with a dish of omelette.
Mistress Boris with a face betraying the last stage of anger, approached the lawyer:--she smiled tenderly.
It is not the pleasantest sight in the world when a lady with a plate of omelette in her hand, smiles tenderly upon a man who is well aware of the fact that only a hair's breadth separates him from the catastrophe of having the whole dish dashed on his head.
”Kindly help yourself.”
The lawyer felt a cold s.h.i.+ver run down his back.
”You will surely like this!--omelette.”
”I see, my dear woman, that it is omelette,” whispered the lawyer; ”but no one of my family could enjoy omelette after black coffee.”
The catastrophe had not yet arrived. The lawyer had his eyes already shut, waiting for the inevitable; but the storm, to his astonishment, pa.s.sed over his head.
There was something else to attract the thunderbolt. The magistrate had again taken his seat at the table, and was putting sugar in his coffee; he could not have any such excuse.
”Kindly help yourself ...”
The magistrate's hair stood on end at her awful look. He saw that this relentless dragon of the apocalypse would devour him, if he did not stuff himself to death with the omelette. Yet it was utterly impossible.
He could not have eaten a morsel even if confronting the stake or the gallows.
”Pardon, a thousand pardons, my dear woman,” he panted, drawing his chair farther away from the threatening horror: ”I feel so unwell that I cannot take dinner.”
Then the storm broke.
Mistress Boris put the dish down on the table, placed her two hands on her thighs, and exploded:
”No, of course not,” she panted, her voice thick with rage. ”Of course you can't dine here, because you were simply crammed over yonder by--the gypsy girl.”
The hot coffee stuck in the throats of the two guests at these words! In the lawyer's from uncontrollable laughter, in the magistrate's from still more uncontrollable consternation.
This woman had indeed wreaked a monstrous vengeance.
The good magistrate felt like a boy thrashed at school, who fears that his folks at home may learn the whole truth.
Luckily the sergeant of gendarmes entered with the news that the unholy pictures had been already erased from the walls, and the carriages were waiting. He too ”got it” outside, for, as he made inquiries after his masters, Mistress Boris told him severely to go to the depths of h.e.l.l: ”he too smelt of wine; of course, that gypsy girl had given him also to drink!”
That gypsy girl!
The magistrate, in spite of his crestfallen dejection, felt an actual sense of pleasure at being rid of this cursed house and district.
Only when they were well on their dusty way along the highroad did he address his companion: