A Mummer's Tale. Anatole France

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СКАЧАТЬ further to her mother's questions, she began to eat, greedy and charming, like Ceres in the old woman's house. Then she pushed aside her plate, and leaning back in her chair, with half-closed eyes, and parted lips, she smiled a smile that was akin to a kiss.

      Madame Nanteuil, having drunk her glass of mulled wine, rose to her feet.

      "You will excuse me, Monsieur Chevalier, I have my accounts to bring up to date."

      This was the formula which she usually employed to announce that she was going to bed.

      Left alone with Félicie, Chevalier said to her angrily:

      "I know I'm a fool and a groveller; but I'm going mad for love of you. Do you hear, Félicie?"

      "I should think I do hear. You needn't shout like that!"

      "It's ridiculous, isn't it?"

      "No, it's not ridiculous, it's——"

      She did not complete the sentence.

      He drew nearer to her, dragging his chair with him.

      "You came in at twenty-five minutes past one. It was Ligny who saw you home, I know it. He brought you back in a cab, I heard it stop outside the house."

      As she did not reply, he continued:

      "Deny it, if you can!"

      She remained silent, and he repeated, in an urgent, almost appealing tone:

      "Tell me he didn't!"

      Had she been so inclined, she might, with a phrase, with a single word, with a tiny movement of head or shoulders, have rendered him perfectly submissive, and almost happy. But she maintained a malicious silence. With compressed lips and a far-off look in her eyes, she seemed as though lost in a dream.

      He sighed hoarsely.

      "Fool that I was, I didn't think of that! I told myself you would come home, as on other nights, with Madame Doulce, or else alone. If I had only known that you were going to let that fellow see you home!"

      "Well, what would you have done, had you known it?"

      "I should have followed you, by God!"

      She stared at him with hard, unnaturally bright eyes.

      "That I forbid you to do! Understand me! If I learn that you have followed me, even once, I'll never see you again. To begin with, you haven't the right to follow me. I suppose I am free to do as I like."

      Choking with astonishment and anger, he stammered:

      "Haven't the right to? Haven't the right to? You tell me I haven't the right?"

      "No, you haven't the right! Moreover, I won't have it." Her face assumed an expression of disgust. "It's a mean trick to spy on a woman, if you once try to find out where I'm going, I'll send you about your business, and quickly at that."

      "Then," he murmured, thunderstruck, "we are nothing to each other, I am nothing to you. We have never belonged to each other. But see, Félicie, remember——"

      But she was losing patience:

      "Well, what do you want me to remember?"

      "Félicie, remember that you gave yourself to me!"

      "My dear boy, you really can't expect me to think of that all day. It wouldn't be proper."

      He looked at her for a while, more in curiosity than in anger, and said to her, half bitterly, half gently:

      "They may well call you a selfish little jade! Be one, Félicie, be one, as much as you like! What does it matter, since I love you? You are mine; I am going to take you back; I am going to take you back, and keep you. Think! I can't go on suffering for ever, like a poor dumb beast. Listen. I'll start with a clean slate. Let us begin to love one another over again. And this time it will be all right. And you'll be mine for good, mine only. I am an honest man; you know that. You can depend on me. I'll marry you as soon as I've got a position."

      She gazed at him with disdainful surprise. He believed that she had doubts as to his dramatic future, and, in order to banish them, he said, erect on his long legs:

      "Don't you believe in my star, Félicie? You are wrong. I can feel that I am capable of creating great parts. Let them only give me a part, and they'll see. And I have in me not only comedy, but drama, tragedy—yes, tragedy. I can deliver verse properly. And that is a talent which is becoming rare in these days. So don't imagine, Félicie, that I am insulting you when I offer you marriage. Far from it! We will marry later on, as soon as it is possible and suitable. Of course, there is no need for hurry. Meanwhile, we will resume our pleasant habits of the Rue des Martyrs. You remember, Félicie; we were so happy there! The bed wasn't wide, but we used to say: "That doesn't matter." I have now two fine rooms in the Rue de la Montagne-Saint-Geneviève, behind Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. Your portrait hangs on every wall. You will find there the little bed of the Rue des Martyrs. Listen to me, I beg of you: I have suffered too much; I will not suffer any longer. I demand that you shall be mine, mine only."

      While he was speaking, Félicie had taken from the mantelpiece the pack of cards with which her mother played every night, and was spreading them out on the table.

      "Mine only. You hear me, Félicie."

      "Don't disturb me, I am busy with a game of patience."

      "Listen to me, Félicie. I won't have you receiving that fool in your dressing-room."

      Looking at her cards she murmured:

      "All the blacks are at the bottom of the pack."

      "I say that fool. He is a diplomatist, and nowadays the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the refuge of incompetents." Raising his voice, he continued: "Félicie, for your own sake, as well as for mine, listen to me!"

      "Well, don't shout, then. Mama is asleep."

      He continued in muffled tones:

      "Just get it into your head that I don't intend that Ligny shall be your lover."

      She raised her spiteful little face, and replied:

      "And if he is my lover?"

      He moved a step closer to her, raising his chair, gazing at her with the eye of a madman, and laughing a cracked laugh.

      "If he is your lover, he won't be so for long."

      And he dropped the chair.

      Now she was alarmed. She forced herself to smile.

      "You know very well I'm joking!"

      She succeeded without much difficulty in making him believe that she had spoken thus merely to punish him, because he was getting unbearable. He became calmer. She then informed him that she was tired out, that she was dropping with sleep. At last he decided to go home. On the landing he turned, and said:

      "Félicie, СКАЧАТЬ