Volume I Part 28 (1/2)
They were getting to Marseilles, and the train whistled and slackened speed The Baroness got up, carefully rolled up her wraps, and then turning to her husband, she said:
”My dear Raymond, do not make a bad use of the _tete-a-tete_ which I had carefully prepared I wished to take precautions, according to your advice, so that Ito fear frooing to Nice, are you not?”
”I shall go wherever you go”
”Not at all; just listen to me, and I am sure that you will leave et to the station, you will see the Princess de Raynes and Countess Her for me with their husbands I wished theether in the railway-carriage Don't be alar fact
”I told you just now that I had most carefully followed your advice and saved appearances Anything else does not matter, does it? Well, in order to do so, I wished to be seen with you You toldit, for, I am afraid--I am afraid--”
She waited till the train had quite stopped, and as her friends ran up to open the carriage-door, she said:
”I am afraid that I am in the family-way”
The Princess stretched out her ar to the Baron, as duet at the truth:
”You do not recognize Rayreed to coht not travel alone We take little trips like this, occasionally, like good friends who cannot live together We are going to separate here; he has had enough of me already”
She put out her hand, which he tookher friends, aiting for her
The Baron hastily shut the carriage-door, for he was too much disturbed to say a word or come to any deterhter as they went away
He never saw her again, nor did he ever discover whether she had told hi the truth
THE LITTLE CASK
Jules Chicot, the innkeeper, who lived at epreville, pulled up his tilbury in front of Mother Magloire's farmhouse He was a tall man of about forty, with a red face and a round sto custoatepost and went in He owned so that of the old wo while, and had tried in vain to buy a score of times, but she had always obstinately refused to part with it
”I was born here, and here Ipotatoes outside the farmhouse door She was a woman of about seventy-two, very thin, shriveled and wrinkled, almost dried up in fact, and irl
Chicot patted her on the back in a very friendly fashi+on, and then sat down by her on a stool
”Well, Mother, you are always pretty well and hearty, I a, thank you And how are you, Mons
Chicot?”
”Oh! pretty well, thank you, except a few rheu to complain of”
”That's all the better!”
And she said noon with her work
Her crooked, knotty fingers, hard as a lobster's claws, seized the tubers, which were lying in a pail, as if they had been a pair of pincers, and she peeled the strips of skin with an old knife which she held in the other hand, throwing the potatoes into the water as they were done Three daring fowls jumped one after the other into her lap, seized a bit of peel, and then ran away as fast as their legs would carry them with it in their beak
Chicot see on the tip of his tongue which he could not get out At last he said hurriedly: