FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   903   904   905   906   907   908   909   910   911   912   913   914   915   916   917   918   919   920   921   922   923   924   925   926   927  
928   929   930   931   932   933   934   935   936   937   938   939   940   941   942   943   944   945   946   947   948   949   950   951   952   >>   >|  
self from laughing as he said: 'Yes, we have managed it, thanks to Labarbe: And we went to Morin's. "He was sitting in an easy-chair with mustard plasters on his legs and cold bandages on his head, nearly dead with misery. He was coughing with the short cough of a dying man, without any one knowing how he had caught it, and his wife looked at him like a tigress ready to eat him, and as soon as he saw us he trembled so violently as to make his hands and knees shake, so I said to him immediately: 'It is all settled, you dirty scamp, but don't do such a thing again.' "He got up, choking, took my hands and kissed them as if they had belonged to a prince, cried, nearly fainted, embraced Rivet and even kissed Madame Morin, who gave him such a push as to send him staggering back into his chair; but he never got over the blow; his mind had been too much upset. In all the country round, moreover, he was called nothing but 'that pig of a Morin,' and that epithet went through him like a sword-thrust every time he heard it. When a street boy called after him 'Pig!' he turned his head instinctively. His friends also overwhelmed him with horrible jokes and used to ask him, whenever they were eating ham, 'Is it a bit of yourself?' He died two years later. "As for myself, when I was a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies in 1875, I called on the new notary at Fousserre, Monsieur Belloncle, to solicit his vote, and a tall, handsome and evidently wealthy lady received me. 'You do not know me again?' she said. And I stammered out: 'Why--no--madame.' 'Henriette Bonnel.' 'Ah!' And I felt myself turning pale, while she seemed perfectly at her ease and looked at me with a smile. "As soon as she had left me alone with her husband he took both my hands, and, squeezing them as if he meant to crush them, he said: 'I have been intending to go and see you for a long time, my dear sir, for my wife has very often talked to me about you. I know--yes, I know under what painful circumstances you made her acquaintance, and I know also how perfectly you behaved, how full of delicacy, tact and devotion you showed yourself in the affair--' He hesitated and then said in a lower tone, as if he had been saying something low and coarse, 'in the affair of that pig of a Morin.'" SAINT ANTHONY They called him Saint Anthony, because his name was Anthony, and also, perhaps, because he was a good fellow, jovial, a lover of practical jokes, a treme
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   903   904   905   906   907   908   909   910   911   912   913   914   915   916   917   918   919   920   921   922   923   924   925   926   927  
928   929   930   931   932   933   934   935   936   937   938   939   940   941   942   943   944   945   946   947   948   949   950   951   952   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

called

 
looked
 

kissed

 

Anthony

 

perfectly

 

affair

 

madame

 

Henriette

 

turning

 

Bonnel


handsome

 

Deputies

 

Chamber

 

notary

 

candidate

 

Fousserre

 

Monsieur

 

received

 

stammered

 

wealthy


evidently

 

Belloncle

 

solicit

 

hesitated

 

delicacy

 

devotion

 

showed

 

coarse

 
jovial
 

fellow


practical

 

ANTHONY

 
behaved
 

acquaintance

 

intending

 

squeezing

 

husband

 

painful

 

circumstances

 

talked


epithet

 

trembled

 
violently
 

knowing

 

caught

 
tigress
 

choking

 

immediately

 

settled

 
Labarbe