The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard [77]
came out of its body at last, and it gave up the ghost. And when Cyprien, our servant, sawed up its mutilated members for fire-wood, everybody redoubled their cries of admiration. Oh! what an excellent--what a marvellous chair! It was the chair of Pierre Sylvestre Bonnard, the cloth merchant--of Epimenide Bonnard, his son--of Jean-Baptiste Bonnard, the Pyrrhonian philosopher and Chief of the Third Maritime Division. Oh! what a robust and venerable chair!' In reality it was a dead chair. Well, doctor, I am that chair. You think I am solid because I have been able to resist an attack which would have killed many people, and which only three- fourths killed me. Much obliged! I feel none the less that I am something which has been irremediably damaged."
The doctor tries to prove to me, with the help of enormous Greek and Latin words, that I am really in a very good condition. It would, of course, be useless to attempt any demonstration of this kind in so lucid a language as French. However, I allow him to persuade me at last; and I see him to the door.
"Good! good!" exclaimed Therese; "that is the way to put the doctor out of the house! Just do the same thing once or twice again, and he will not come to see you any more--and so much the better?"
"Well, Therese, now that I have become such a hearty man again, do not refuse to give me my letters. I am sure there must be quite a big bundle of letters, and it would be very wicked to keep me any longer from reading them."
Therese, after some little grumbling, gave me my letters. But what did it matter?--I looked at all the envelopes, and saw that no one of them had been addressed by the little hand which I so much wish I could see here now, turning over the pages of the Vecellio. I pushed the whole bundle of letters away: they had no more interest for me.
April-June
It was a hotly contested engagement.
"Wait, Monsieur, until I have put on my clean things," exclaimed Therese, "and I will go out with you this time also; I will carry your folding-stool as I have been doing these last few days, and we will go and sit down somewhere in the sun."
Therese actually thinks me infirm. I have been sick, it is true, but there is an end to all things! Madame Malady has taken her departure quite awhile ago, and it is now more than three months since her pale and gracious-visaged handmaid, Dame Convalescence, politely bade me farewell. If I were to listen to my housekeeper, I should become a veritable Monsieur Argant, and I should wear a nightcap with ribbons for the rest of my life.... No more of this!-- I propose to go out by myself! Therese will not hear of it. She takes my folding-stool, and wants to follow me.
"Therese, to-morrow, if you like, we will take our seats on the sunny side of the wall of La Petite Provence and stay there just as long as you please. But to-day I have some very important affairs to attend to."
"So much the better! But your affairs are not the only affairs in this world."
I beg; I scold; I make my escape.
It is quite a pleasant day. With the aid of a cab and the help of almighty God, I trust to be able to fulfil my purpose.
There is the wall on which is painted in great blue letters the words "Pensionnat de Demoiselles tenu par Mademoiselle Virginie Prefere." There is the iron gate which would give free entrance into the court-yard if it were ever opened. But the lock is rusty, and sheets of zinc put up behind the bars protect the indiscreet observation those dear little souls to whom Mademoiselle Prefere doubtless teaches modesty, sincerity, justice, and disinterestedness. There is a window, with iron bars before it, and panes daubed over with white paint--the window of the domestic offices, like a glazed eye--the only aperture of the building opening upon the exterior world. As for the house-door, through which I entered so often, but which is now closed against me for ever, it is just as I saw it the last time, with its little iron-grated wicket. The single stone step in front of it is deeply
The doctor tries to prove to me, with the help of enormous Greek and Latin words, that I am really in a very good condition. It would, of course, be useless to attempt any demonstration of this kind in so lucid a language as French. However, I allow him to persuade me at last; and I see him to the door.
"Good! good!" exclaimed Therese; "that is the way to put the doctor out of the house! Just do the same thing once or twice again, and he will not come to see you any more--and so much the better?"
"Well, Therese, now that I have become such a hearty man again, do not refuse to give me my letters. I am sure there must be quite a big bundle of letters, and it would be very wicked to keep me any longer from reading them."
Therese, after some little grumbling, gave me my letters. But what did it matter?--I looked at all the envelopes, and saw that no one of them had been addressed by the little hand which I so much wish I could see here now, turning over the pages of the Vecellio. I pushed the whole bundle of letters away: they had no more interest for me.
April-June
It was a hotly contested engagement.
"Wait, Monsieur, until I have put on my clean things," exclaimed Therese, "and I will go out with you this time also; I will carry your folding-stool as I have been doing these last few days, and we will go and sit down somewhere in the sun."
Therese actually thinks me infirm. I have been sick, it is true, but there is an end to all things! Madame Malady has taken her departure quite awhile ago, and it is now more than three months since her pale and gracious-visaged handmaid, Dame Convalescence, politely bade me farewell. If I were to listen to my housekeeper, I should become a veritable Monsieur Argant, and I should wear a nightcap with ribbons for the rest of my life.... No more of this!-- I propose to go out by myself! Therese will not hear of it. She takes my folding-stool, and wants to follow me.
"Therese, to-morrow, if you like, we will take our seats on the sunny side of the wall of La Petite Provence and stay there just as long as you please. But to-day I have some very important affairs to attend to."
"So much the better! But your affairs are not the only affairs in this world."
I beg; I scold; I make my escape.
It is quite a pleasant day. With the aid of a cab and the help of almighty God, I trust to be able to fulfil my purpose.
There is the wall on which is painted in great blue letters the words "Pensionnat de Demoiselles tenu par Mademoiselle Virginie Prefere." There is the iron gate which would give free entrance into the court-yard if it were ever opened. But the lock is rusty, and sheets of zinc put up behind the bars protect the indiscreet observation those dear little souls to whom Mademoiselle Prefere doubtless teaches modesty, sincerity, justice, and disinterestedness. There is a window, with iron bars before it, and panes daubed over with white paint--the window of the domestic offices, like a glazed eye--the only aperture of the building opening upon the exterior world. As for the house-door, through which I entered so often, but which is now closed against me for ever, it is just as I saw it the last time, with its little iron-grated wicket. The single stone step in front of it is deeply