Volume III Part 67 (1/2)
”Ay! mother, it is frightful; but I warned you of it, alas!--I told you.”
The widow bit her pale lips with rage; her son did not comprehend her; she resumed: ”They are going to kill us, as they killed your father.”
”Alas! I can do nothing--it is finished. Now, what would you have me do?
Why did you not listen to me--you and sister? You would not have been here.”
”Oh! it is so,” answered the widow, with her habitual and savage irony; ”you find it all right, do you?”
”Mother!”
”Now you are satisfied; you can say, without a lie, that your mother is dead; you shall no longer blush for her.”
”If I were a bad son,” answered Martial, quickly, shocked at the unjust harshness of his mother, ”I should not be here.”
”You came from curiosity.”
”I come to obey you.”
”Oh! if I had listened to you, Martial, instead of listening to my mother, I should not be here,” cried Calabash, in a heart-rending voice, and yielding at length to her anguish and terror, which, until now (through the influence of her mother), she had restrained. ”It is your fault: I curse you, my mother!”
”She repents--she curses me! you must be delighted now!” said the widow to her son, with a burst of diabolical laughter.
Without replying to her, Martial approached Calabash, whose agony continued, and said to her, with compa.s.sion, ”Poor sister! it is too late now.”
”Never too late to be a coward!” cried the mother, with fury. ”Oh! what a race! what a race! Happily Nicholas has escaped; happily Francois and Amandine will escape you. They have already the seeds of vice: poverty will cause them to grow!”
”Oh, Martial! watch well over them, or they will end like my mother and myself. They will also lose their heads,” cried Calabash, uttering a hollow groan.
”He will do well to watch over them,” cried the widow, vehemently; ”vice and misery will be stronger than he, and some day they will avenge father, mother, and sister.”
”Your horrible hope will not be realized, mother!” answered Martial, indignantly. ”Neither they nor I shall ever more have misery to fear. La Louve saved the young girl whom Nicholas wished to drown, the relations of this girl have proposed to give us plenty of money, or less money and some lands in Algiers. We have preferred the land. There is some danger, but that suits us. To-morrow we leave with the children, and never return.”
”Is what you say true?” asked the widow, in a tone of irritated surprise.
”I never told a falsehood.”
”You do now, to drive me mad.”
”Why? because the welfare of your children is secured?”
”Yes; of the wolfs cubs you would make lambs. The blood of your father, your sister, mine, will not be avenged.”
”At this moment, do not talk thus.”
”I have killed--they kill me. We are even.”
”Mother, repentance.”
The widow shouted with laughter.
”For thirty years I have lived in crime, and to repent for thirty years they give me three days, and death at the end of them. Do you think I have time? No, no; when my head falls, it will gnash its teeth with rage and hatred.”