THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя
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Название: THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA
Автор: Эмиль Золя
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788027233410
isbn:
At that word Armande rose. It seemed to her that she had just received a cut with a whip across the face. Her self-possession returned to her, and showing Madame Mercier the door, she exclaimed in a loud voice:
“Walk out at once!”
“No, I’ll not go out,” answered the old woman, sitting back in an armchair. “I want my money. If you touch me I’ll shout murder, and the persons who are in your drawingroom will come to my assistance. I told you I was not a fool. Pay me at once and I’ll leave you alone.”
“I have no money,” answered Armande coldly.
This reply exasperated the old woman. For more than a year it had been given her regularly at each of her visits. She had ended by taking it for mockery.
“You have no money! You always say that,” she exclaimed. “Give me your furniture and gowns. But no, I prefer sending you to prison. I will go and lodge a complaint, I will accuse you of forgery. We shall see, my beautiful lady, if you find lovers among your gaolers, who will treat you to silk gowns and tasty meals.”
Armande staggered, losing all her assurance, fearing the cries of the old woman might be heard by Marius and Sauvaire. Her creditor saw her fright, and began shouting still louder.
“Yes,” she said, “I can send you to the assizes tomorrow. You know that, don’t you? I have over ten false acceptances in my possession on which you have imitated your lovers’ signatures. That’s nice work. I shall go and find each of these gentlemen; I will tell them what you are, and they will cast you into the street. You will die in the gutter.”
She took breath, while the young woman, all of a tremble, thought of strangling her to make her silent.
“But that reminds me,” she continued, “you have visitors. Perhaps in your drawingroom there is one of those gentlemen whose name you have stolen to make money out of. I’ll go and see. It is necessary I should find out. Let me pass.”
She moved towards the door. Armande placed herself in front of her, with extended arms, ready to strike her if she advanced.
“You want to strike me, I who have fed you, who have lent you my money,” stammered the female usurer suffocating with rage.
And she stepped backward shouting:
“Help! Help!”
Armande faced sharply round to turn the key in the lock. But it was too late. The door had just opened and she found herself face to face with Marius and Sauvaire, who were gazing into the boudoir in an anxious and curious manner.
CHAPTER IV
WHICH SHOWS THAT THE POSITION OF A LORETTE IS NOT WITHOUT ITS TROUBLES
SAUVAIRE and Marius had been about half-an-hour alone in the drawingroom. The young man would willingly have withdrawn, but he considered it uncivil to do so without first of all taking leave of the mistress of the house. He therefore feigned to be listening to the stevedore’s stories.
The sound of loud voices soon reached them. Little by little the noise increased to such a pitch that both of them lent the ear, being unable to appear discreet any longer.
Just then the shout: “Help! Help!” made them start up and open the door communicating with the boudoir.
A strange sight awaited them. As soon as they made their appearance Armande stepped back staggering, and let herself fall into an armchair. With her head between her hands she burst out sobbing, quite broken down, without raising her face or uttering a word.
The old woman, in a rage, with inflamed countenance, approached the two men and began speaking to them with passionate verbosity. From time to time she broke off to turn round and shake her fist at Armande, who was so upset by despair, which made her tremble all over her body, that she did not hear her.
“You saw it, did you not?” repeated the old woman. “She wanted to beat me. She had her arm in the air. Ah! the wretch! Just fancy, my good gentlemen, I have given that woman all my money. I like to be of service. Besides, I thought she was honest. She has made me discount acceptances signed by honourable persons; I thought I had good security. Now I learn that the bills are false and that I have been shamefully robbed. What would you have done in my place? I reproached her with her abominable conduct and then she threatened to strike me.”
Sauvaire opened his eyes in astonishment, gazing first of all at Armande’s dejection and then at Madame Mercier’s anger. He approached the young woman and exclaimed:
“Come, my dear, defend yourself. This women lies, doesn’t she? You have not done anything so stupid. Come, speak!”
Armande did not move, but continued sobbing.
“Oh! She’ll not speak, she’ll not defend herself,” continued the woman usurer, in triumph. “She knows very well that I am in possession of the proofs. I shall write tomorrow morning to the crown attorney.”
Marius, painfully surprised, cast a look of pity on Armande. Chance had brought him face to face with another shame, another human misery. He remembered the sad scene when Charles Blétry was arrested in his presence and a feeling of mercy overcame him in face of this woman whom vice had brought to infamy. He half guessed the circumstances that had urged her on to crime, he understood how necessity, from fall to fall, had brought her to the gutter. He would have liked to have saved her, to have brought her back to a life of honesty, to have given her the means of extricating herself from the sewer.
“Why do you wish to ruin her?” he quietly inquired of the old woman. “You will not be paid any the quicker. Don’t overwhelm her. On the contrary, give her a chance to recover herself and pay you back.”
“No, no!” mercilessly answered the old woman, “I want her to go to prison. I have waited too long already. Yesterday, again, she failed to meet a bill of a thousand francs which she had made payable here. She signed that bill ‘Sauvaire,’ the name of one of her admirers, no doubt.”
The master-stevedore, on hearing himself referred to, started. The sum of a thousand alarmed him.
“You say you have an acceptance of a thousand francs signed ‘Sauvaire’?” he inquired, with an appearance of something very much like terror.
“Yes, sir,” answered the old woman. “I brought it with me, it is in my basket.”
“Show it me, if you please.”
Sauvaire turned the bill over in his fingers, studying the handwriting very closely, and was confounded.
“By Jupiter,” he exclaimed, “it’s perfectly imitated!”
He leant over towards Armande, who was doubled up with grief, and continued in a dry tone of voice:
“Look here, my dear, no nonsense! I will never pay that, you know. The deuce! I’d willingly give you a hundred francs; but a thousand! It’s too much.”
He no longer spoke familiarly to her, he even began to regret his excursion into the demimonde of СКАЧАТЬ