Part 52 (2/2)
”No.”
”They have raised the price of the house?”
”No.”
”You fancy that you are not the father of our little Crevel?”
”What nonsense!” replied he, sure of his paternity.
”On my honor, I give it up!” said Madame Marneffe. ”If I am expected to extract my friend's woes as you pull the cork out of a bottle of Bordeaux, I let it alone.--Go away, you bore me.”
”It is nothing,” said Crevel. ”I must find two hundred thousand francs in two hours.”
”Oh, you can easily get them.--I have not spent the fifty thousand francs we got out of Hulot for that report, and I can ask Henri for fifty thousand--”
”Henri--it is always Henri!” exclaimed Crevel.
”And do you suppose, you great baby of a Machiavelli, that I will cast off Henri? Would France disarm her fleet?--Henri! why, he is a dagger in a sheath hanging on a nail. That boy serves as a weather-gla.s.s to show me if you love me--and you don't love me this morning.”
”I don't love you, Valerie?” cried Crevel. ”I love you as much as a million.”
”That is not nearly enough!” cried she, jumping on to Crevel's knee, and throwing both arms round his neck as if it were a peg to hang on by. ”I want to be loved as much as ten millions, as much as all the gold in the world, and more to that. Henri would never wait a minute before telling me all he had on his mind. What is it, my great pet? Have it out. Make a clean breast of it to your own little duck!”
And she swept her hair over Crevel's face, while she jestingly pulled his nose.
”Can a man with a nose like that,” she went on, ”have any secrets from his _Vava--lele--ririe_?”
And at the _Vava_ she tweaked his nose to the right; at _lele_ it went to the left; at _ririe_ she nipped it straight again.
”Well, I have just seen--” Crevel stopped and looked at Madame Marneffe.
”Valerie, my treasure, promise me on your honor--ours, you know?--not to repeat a single word of what I tell you.”
”Of course, Mayor, we know all about that. One hand up--so--and one foot--so!” And she put herself in an att.i.tude which, to use Rabelais'
phrase, stripped Crevel bare from his brain to his heels, so quaint and delicious was the nudity revealed through the light film of lawn.
”I have just seen virtue in despair.”
”Can despair possess virtue?” said she, nodding gravely and crossing her arms like Napoleon.
”It is poor Madame Hulot. She wants two hundred thousand francs, or else Marshal Hulot and old Johann Fischer will blow their brains out; and as you, my little d.u.c.h.ess, are partly at the bottom of the mischief, I am going to patch matters up. She is a saintly creature, I know her well; she will repay you every penny.”
At the name of Hulot, at the words two hundred thousand francs, a gleam from Valerie's eyes flashed from between her long eyelids like the flame of a cannon through the smoke.
”What did the old thing do to move you to compa.s.sion? Did she show you--what?--her--her religion?”
”Do not make game of her, sweetheart; she is a very saintly, a very n.o.ble and pious woman, worthy of all respect.”
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