The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard. Anatole France

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ felt—must I confess it?—a thorough sympathy with these intrepid collectors. No doubt I would rather have found Monsieur and Madame Trepof engaged in collecting antique marbles or painted vases in Sicily. I should have like to have found them interested in the ruins of Syracuse, or the poetical traditions of the Eryx. But at all events, they were making some sort of a collection—they belonged to the great confraternity—and I could not possibly make fun of them without making fun of myself. Besides, Madame Trepof had spoken of her collection with such an odd mingling of irony and enthusiasm that I could not help finding the idea a very good one.

      We were getting ready to leave the tavern, when we noticed some people coming downstairs from the upper room, carrying carbines under their dark cloaks, to me they had the look of thorough bandits; and after they were gone I told Monsieur Trepof my opinion of them. He answered me, very quietly, that he also thought they were regular bandits; and the guides begged us to apply for an escort of gendarmes, but Madame Trepof besought us not to do anything of the kind. She declared that we must not “spoil her journey.”

      Then, turning her persuasive eyes upon me, she asked,

      “Do you not believe, Monsieur Bonnard, that there is nothing in life worth having except sensations?”

      “Why, certainly, Madame,” I answered; “but then we must take into consideration the nature of the sensations themselves. Those which a noble memory or a grand spectacle creates within us certainly represent what is best in human life; but those merely resulting from the menace of danger seem to me sensations which one should be very careful to avoid as much as possible. For example, would you think it a very pleasant thing, Madame, while travelling over the mountains at midnight, to find the muzzle of a carbine suddenly pressed against your forehead?”

      “Oh, no!” she replied; “the comic-operas have made carbines absolutely ridiculous, and it would be a great misfortune to any young woman to find herself in danger from an absurd weapon. But it would be quite different with a knife—a very cold and very bright knife blade, which makes a cold shudder go right through one’s heart.”

      She shuddered even as she spoke; closed her eyes, and threw her head back. Then she resumed:

      “People like you are so happy! You can interest yourselves in all sorts of things!”

      She gave a sidelong look at her husband, who was talking with the innkeeper. Then she leaned towards me, and murmured very low:

      “You see, Dimitri and I, we are both suffering from ennui! We have still the match-boxes. But at last one gets tired even of match-boxes. Besides, our collection will soon be complete. And then what are we going to do?”

      “Oh, Madame!” I exclaimed, touched by the moral unhappiness of this pretty person, “if you only had a son, then you would know what to do. You would then learn the purpose of your life, and your thoughts would become at once more serious and yet more cheerful.”

      “But I have a son,” she replied. “He is a big boy; he is eleven years old, and he suffers from ennui like the rest of us. Yes, my George has ennui, too; he is tired of everything. It is very wretched.”

      She glanced again towards her husband, who was superintending the harnessing of the mules on the road outside—testing the condition of girths and straps. Then she asked me whether there had been many changes on the Quai Malaquais during the past ten years. She declared she never visited that neighbourhood because it was too far way.

      “Too far from Monte Allegro?” I queried.

      “Why, no!” she replied. “Too far from the Avenue des Champs Elysees, where we live.”

      And she murmured over again, as if talking to herself, “Too far!—too far!” in a tone of reverie which I could not possibly account for. All at once she smiled again, and said to me,

      “I like you, Monsieur Bonnard!—I like you very, very much!”

      The mules had been harnessed. The young woman hastily picked up a few oranges which had rolled off her lap; rose up; looked at me, and burst out laughing.

      “Oh!” she exclaimed, “how I should like to see you grappling with the brigands! You would say such extraordinary things to them! … Please take my hat, and hold my umbrella for me, Monsieur Bonnard.”

      “What a strange little mind!” I thought to myself, as I followed her. “It could only have been in a moment of inexcusable thoughtlessness that Nature gave a child to such a giddy little woman!”

Girgenti. Same day.

       Table of Contents

      Her manners had shocked me. I left her to arrange herself in her lettica, and I made myself as comfortable as I could in my own. These vehicles, which have no wheels, are carried by two mules—one before and one behind. This kind of litter, or chaise, is of ancient origin. I had often seen representations of similar ones in the French MSS. of the fourteenth century. I had no idea then that one of those vehicles would be at a future day placed at my own disposal. We must never be too sure of anything.

      For three hours the mules sounded their little bells, and thumped the calcined ground with their hoofs. On either hand there slowly defiled by us the barren monstrous shapes of a nature totally African.

      Half-way we made a halt to allow our animals to recover breath.

      Madame Trepof came to me on the road, took my arm, and drew me a little away from the party. Then, very suddenly, she said to me in a tone of voice I had never heard before:

      “Do not think that I am a wicked woman. My George knows that I am a good mother.”

      We walked side by side for a moment in silence. She looked up, and I saw that she was crying.

      “Madame,” I said to her, “look at this soil which has been burned and cracked by five long months of fiery heat. A little white lily has sprung up from it.”

      And I pointed with my cane to the frail stalk, tipped by a double blossom.

      “Your heart,” I said, “however arid it be, bears also its white lily; and that is reason enough why I do not believe that you are what you say—a wicked woman.”

      “Yes, yes, yes!” she cried, with the obstinacy of a child—“I am a wicked woman. But I am ashamed to appear so before you who are so good—so very, very good.”

      “You do not know anything at all about it,” I said to her.

      “I know it! I know all about you, Monsieur Bonnard!” she declared, with a smile.

      And she jumped back into her lettica.

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

      Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

      Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив СКАЧАТЬ