Volume I Part 43 (1/2)
what can I do?”
The little Marchioness sat up in bed to reflect, and then she suddenly said: ”Have him arrested!”
The little Baroness looked stupefied, and sta of? Have him arrested? Under what pretext?”
”That is very sientle you about for three o up to your apartments yesterday; that he has threatened you with another visit to-morrow, and that you deive you two police officers, ill arrest him”
”But, my dear, suppose he tells” ”They will not believe hi, if you have told your tale cleverly to the commissary, but they will believe you, who are an irreproachable woman, and in society” ”Oh! I shall never dare to do it” ”You must dare, my dear, or you are lost” ”But think that he willhe will insult me if he is arrested” ”Very well, you will have witnesses, and he will be sentenced” ”Sentenced to what?” ”To pay da of da that worries me very muchvery much indeed He left me tenty franc pieces on the mantelpiece” ”Tenty franc pieces?” ”Yes” ”No more?” ”No” ”That is very little It would have humiliated me Well?”
”Well! What am I to do with that money?”
The little Marchioness hesitated for a few seconds, and then she replied in a serious voice:
”My dearyou must makeyou must make your husband a little present with it That will be only fair!”
THE DEVIL
The peasant was standing opposite the doctor, by the bedside of the dying old woned and quite lucid, looked at the to die, and she did not rebel at it, for her time was over, as she was ninety-two
The July sun streamed in at theand the open door and cast its hot flames onto the uneven brown clay floor, which had been staenerations of clod-hoppers The smell of the fields came in also, driven by the sharp wind, and parched by the noontide heat The grasshoppers chirped themselves hoarse, and filled the country with their shrill noise, which was like that of the wooden crickets which are sold to children at fair time
The doctor raised his voice and said: ”Honore, you cannot leave your mother in this state; she reat distress replied: ”But I round a long tiht for it; what do you say about it,old woman, still tormented by her Norman avariciousness, replied _yes_ with her eyes and her forehead, and so urged her son to get in his wheat, and to leave her to die alone, but the doctor got angry, and sta his foot, he said: ”You are no better than a brute, do you hear, and I will not allow you to do it, do you understand? And if you o and fetch Rapet's wife and make her look after your mother I will have it, do you understand , when you are ill in your turn; do you hear me?”
The peasant, a tall, thin felloith slow movements, as tormented by indecision, by his fear of the doctor and his fierce love of saving, hesitated, calculated and sta sick people?” ”How should I know?” the doctor cried ”That depends upon how long she is wanted for Settle it with her, by Jove!
But I want her to be here within an hour, do you hear?”
So the o for her,” he replied; ”don't get angry, doctor” And the latter left, calling out as he went: ”Take care, you know, for I do not joke when I ary!” And as soon as they were alone, the peasant turned to his o and fetch la Rapet, as the o off while I am away”
And he went out in his turn
La Rapet, as an old washerwohborhood, and then, as soon as she had sown her custoe no more, she went and took up her iron to s Wrinkled like a last year's apple, spiteful, envious, avaricious with a phenomenal avarice, bent double, as if she had been broken in half across the loins, by the constant ht have said that she had a kind of le
She never spoke of anything but of the people she had seen die, of the various kinds of deaths at which she had been present, and she related with the greatest minuteness, details which were always the same, just like a sportsman recounts his shots
When Honore Bonte the starch for the collars of the village wo; I hope you are pretty well, Mother Rapet?”
She turned her head round to look at him, and said: ”Fairly well, fairly well, and you?” ”Oh! as for me, I am as well as I could wish, but my mother is very poorly” ”Your mother?” ”Yes,to turn up her toes, that's what's the matter with her!”
The old woman took her hands out of the water and asked with sudden sympathy: ”Is she as bad as all that?” ”The doctor says she will not last till ” ”Then she certainly is very bad!” Honore hesitated, for he wanted toto his proposal, but as he could hit upon nothing, heto ask to stop with her till the end? You know that I airl It is just that which has brought ue! She used to work for ten, in spite of her ninety-two years You don't find any ravely: ”There are two prices: Forty sous by day and three francs by night for the rich, and twenty sous by day, and forty by night for the others You shall pay me the twenty and forty” But the peasant reflected, for he knew his orous and unyielding she was, and she ht last another week, in spite of the doctor's opinion, and so he said resolutely: ”No, I would rather you would fix a price until the end I will take my chance, one way or the other The doctor says she will die very soon If that happens so much the better for you, and so much the worse for er, so much the better for me and so much the worse for you!”