The Mysteries of Paris. Эжен Сю
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commandant; you said I was to show her up.' 'Then why do you not obey me?' 'Because the lady—' 'Speak out, woman, if you can!' 'The lady has gone again.' 'Something you have said or done, then, to offend her, I am sure!' roared he in a perfect fury. 'Not at all, commandant. The lady did not alight, but when the coach stopped and the driver opened the door, she desired him to take her back to where she came from.' 'The vehicle cannot have got far by this time,' exclaimed the commandant, hastening towards the door. 'It has been gone upwards of an hour,' answered I, enjoying his fury and disappointment. 'An hour! an hour! and what, in the devil's name, hindered you from letting me know this sooner?' 'Because, commandant, Alfred and I thought we would spare you as long as we could the tidings of this third breakdown, which we fancied might be too much for you.' Come, thinks I, there is something to make you remember flinging me out of your arms, as though it made you sick to touch me. 'Begone!' bawled out the commandant. 'You hideous old hag! You can neither say nor do the thing that is right,' and with this he pulled off his dressing-gown and threw his beautiful Greek cap, made of velvet embroidered with gold, on the ground: it was a real shame, for the cap was a downright beauty; and as for the dressing-gown, oh, my! it would set anybody longing. Meanwhile the commandant kept pacing the room, with his eyes glaring like a wild beast and glowing like two glow-worms."
"But were you not afraid of losing his employ?"
"He knew too well what he was about for that; we had him in a fix, we knew where his 'madame' lived, and had he said anything to us, we should have threatened to expose the whole affair. And who do you think for his beggarly twelve francs would have undertaken to attend to his rooms—a stranger? No! That we would have prevented; we would soon have made the place too hot to hold any person he might appoint—poor, shabby fellow that he is! What do you think? He actually had the meanness to examine his wood and put out the quantity he should allow to be burnt while he was away. He is nothing but an upstart, I am sure—a nobody, who has suddenly tumbled into money he does not know how to spend properly—a rich man's head and a beggar's body, who squanders with one hand and nips and pinches with the other. I do not wish him any harm, but it amuses me immensely to think how he has been befooled; and he will go on believing and expecting from day to day, because he is too vain to imagine he is being laughed at. At any rate, if the lady ever comes in reality, I will let my friend the oyster-woman next door know; she enjoys a joke as well as I do, and is quite as curious as myself to find out what sort of person she is, whether fair or dark, pretty or plain. And—who knows?—this woman may be cheating some easygoing simpleton of a husband for the sake of our two-penny-halfpenny of a commandant! Well, that is no concern of mine, but I am sorry, too, for the poor, dear, deceived individual, whoever he may be. Dear me! Dear me! My pot is boiling over—excuse me a minute, I must just look to it. Ah, it is time Alfred was in, for dinner is quite ready, and tripe, you know, should never be kept waiting. This tripe is done to a turn. Do you prefer the thick or thin tripe? Alfred likes it thick. The poor darling has been sadly out of spirits lately, and I got this dainty dish to cheer him up a bit; for, as Alfred says himself, that for a bribe of good thick tripe he would betray France itself—his beloved France. Yes, the dear old pet would change his country for such fine fat tripe as this, he would."
While Madame Pipelet was thus delivering her domestic harangue upon the virtues of tripe and the powerful influence it possessed over even the patriotism of her husband, Rodolph was buried in the deepest and most sombre reflections. The female, whose visits to the house had just been detailed, be she the Marquise d'Harville or any other individual, had evidently long struggled with her imprudence ere she had brought herself to grant a first and second rendezvous, and then, terrified at the probable consequences of her imprudence, a salutary remorse had, in all probability, prevented her from fulfilling her dangerous engagement. It might be that the fine person this M. Charles was described as possessing had captivated the senses of Madame d'Harville, whom Rodolph knew well as a woman of deep feeling, high intellect, and superior taste, of an elevated turn of mind, and a reputation unsullied by the faintest breath of slander. After long and mature consideration, he succeeded in persuading himself that the wife of his friend had nothing to do with the unknown female in the blue fiacre. Madame Pipelet, having completed her culinary arrangements, resumed her conversation with Rodolph.
"And who lives on the second floor?" inquired he of the porteress.
"Why, Mother Burette does—a most wonderful woman at fortune-telling; bless you, she can read in your hand the same as a book, and many quite first-rate people come to her to have the cards consulted when they are anxious about any particular matter. She earns her weight in gold, and that is not a trifle, for she is a rare bundle of an old body. However, telling fortunes is only one of her means of gaining a livelihood."
"Why, what does she do besides?"
"She keeps what you would call a pawnbroker's shop upon a small scale."
"I see; your second-floor lodger lends out again the money she derives from her skill in foretelling events by reading the cards."
"Exactly so; only she is cheaper and more easy to deal with than the regular pawnbrokers: she does not confuse you with a heap of paper tickets and duplicates—nothing of the sort. Now suppose: Some one brings Mother Burette a shirt worth three francs; well, she lends ten sous upon condition of being paid twenty at the end of the week, otherwise she keeps the shirt for ever. That is simple enough, is it not? Always in round figures, you see—a child could understand it. And the odd things she has brought her as pledges you would scarcely believe. You can hardly guess what she sometimes is asked to lend upon. I saw her once advance money upon a gray parrot that swore like a trooper—the blackguard did."
"A parrot? But to what amount did she advance money?"
"I'll tell you; the parrot was well known; it belonged to a Madame Herbelot, the widow of a factor, living close by, and it was also well understood that Madame Herbelot valued the parrot as much as she did her life. Well, Mother Burette said to her, 'I will lend you ten francs on your bird, but if by this day week at twelve o'clock I do not receive twenty francs with interest (it would amount to that in round numbers), if I am not paid my twenty francs, with the expenses of his keep, I shall give your Polly a trifling dose of arsenic mixed with his food.' She knew her customer well, bless you! However, by this threat Mother Burette received her twenty francs at the end of seven days, and Madame Herbelot got back her disagreeable, screaming parrot."
"Mother Burette has no other way of living besides the two you have named, I suppose?"
"Not that I know of. I don't know, however, what to say of some rather sly and secret transactions, carried on in a small room she never allows any one to enter, except M. Bras Rouge and an old one-eyed woman, called La Chouette."
Rodolph opened his eyes with unmixed astonishment as these names sounded on his ear, and the porteress, interpreting the surprise of her future lodger according to her own notions, said:
"That name would make any one stare with astonishment. Certainly La Chouette is uncommonly odd; is it not?"
"It is, indeed. Does the woman who is so styled come here frequently?"
"We saw her the day before yesterday, for the first time these six weeks. She was rather lame, I observed."
"And what do you suppose she wants with the fortune-telling woman?"
"That I do not know; at least, as to what takes place in the little room I was telling you of, where La Chouette alone is admitted with M. Bras Rouge and Mother Burette. I have, however, particularly observed that on those occasions the one-eyed woman always has a large bundle with her in her basket, and that M. Bras Rouge also carries a parcel of some size beneath his cloak, and that they always return empty-handed."
"And what can these packets contain?"
"The Lord above knows, for I don't; only they kick up the devil's own row with them, whatever they are. And then such whiffs of sulphur, charcoal, and melted lead, as you go up the stairs; and blow, blow, blow, like a smith's forge. I verily believe Mother Burette has dealings with the old one, and practises magic in this private apartment; leastways, that is what M. César Bradamanti, our third-floor lodger, said to me. A very clever individual is M. César. When I say an 'individual,' I mean an Italian, though he speaks