Part 8 (1/2)
Cartaret raised his hand to silence these contentions.
”Do you understand me?” he urged.
The wide head-dress flapped a vehement a.s.sent.
”But you can't answer?”
The head-dress fluttered a negative, and the mouth mumbled a negative in a French so thick, hesitant and broken as to be infinitely less expressive than the shake of the head.
Cartaret remembered what the concierge Refrogne had told him. To the circle of curious people he explained:
”She can understand a little French, but she cannot speak it.”
Madame snorted. ”Why then does she come to this place so respectable if she cannot talk like a Christian?”
”Because,” said Cartaret, ”she evidently thought she would be intelligently treated.”
It was clear to him that she would not have come had her need not been desperate. He made another effort to discover her nationality.
”Who of you speaks something besides French?” he asked of the company.
Not Madame; not Seraphin or Houdon: they were ardent Parisians and of course knew no language but their own. As for Garnier, as a French poet and a native of the pure-tongued Tours, he would not have soiled his lips with any other speech had he known another. Varachon, it turned out, was from the Jura, and had picked up a little Swiss-German during a youthful _liaison_ at Pontarlier. He tried it now, but the stranger only shook her head-dress at him.
”She knows no German,” said Varachon.
”Such German!” sniffed Houdon.
”Chut! This proves rather that she knows it too well,” grumbled Madame. ”She but wishes to conceal it; probably she is a German spy.”
Devignes said he knew Italian, and he did seem to know a sort of Opera-Italian, but it, too, was useless.
Cartaret had an inspiration.
”Spanis.h.!.+” he suggested. ”Does any one know any Spanish?”
Pasbeaucoup did; he knew two or three phrases--chiefly relating to prices on the menu of the Deux Colombes--but to him also the awful woman only shook her head in ignorance.
Cartaret took up the French again.
”Can you not tell me what you want here?” he pleaded.
”Kar-kar-tay,” said the stranger.
”Ah!” cried Seraphin, clapping his hands. ”Does not Houdon say that she makes her abode in the same house that you make yours? She seeks you, monsieur. 'Kar-kar-tay,' it is her manner of endeavoring to say Cartar_ette_.”
At the sound of that name, the stranger nodded hard.
”_Oui, oui!_” she cried.
She understood that her chief inquisitor was Cartaret, and it was indeed Cartaret that she sought. She flung herself on her knees to him. When he hurriedly raised her, she caught at the skirt of his coat and nearly pulled it from him in an attempt to drag him to the stairs.