with a malicious smile:
“She’s getting on a bit better.”
Then he went out.
Old Rapet suddenly felt uneasy. She went up to the sufferer, who was lying in the same state, breathing painfully and imperceptibly, her eyes open and her clenched hands on the counterpane.
The nurse saw that this state might continue two days, four days or even eight days and fear gripped her miserly heart; then she was shaken by a furious anger against this trickster who had cheated her and against this old woman who would not die.
She set to work, however, and waited, her eyes fixed on the wrinkled face of Mother Bontemps.
Honoré came back to breakfast; he seemed happy, almost cheerful; then he went out again. He was certainly getting in his corn under excellent conditions.
Old Rapet was getting irritated: each minute that went by now was stolen time, stolen money. She wanted, wanted madly, to take this mulish old woman, this obstinate and pigheaded old woman by the neck and with a little shaking make an end of the little short breath that was stealing her time and her money.
Then she thought of the danger of doing that, and other ideas came into her head. She came up close to the bed and asked:
“Have you seen the devil yet?”
Mother Bontemps murmured:
“No.”
Then the nurse began to talk, telling her tales that would terrify the feeble soul of this dying woman.
Some minutes before one breathed one’s last, the devil appeared, she said, to all sick people. He had a broom in one hand, and a saucepan on his head. He made strange noises.
If you saw him, it was all over, you had only a few seconds to live. She enumerated all those in her charge to whom the devil had appeared that year: Joséphine Loisel, Eulalie Ratier, Sophie Padagnan, Séraphine Grospied.
Mother Bontemps, disturbed at last, shook in her bed, waved her hands, trying to turn her head so that she could see to the farthest corner of the room.
Suddenly old Rapet disappeared from the foot of the bed. She took a sheet from the cupboard and wrapped herself in it; then she set a stewpan on her head so that the three short curved legs stood on end like three horns. She grabbed a broom in her right hand and in her left a metal water-jug which she threw sharply in the air so that it fell down with a great noise.
It struck the floor with a terrible clatter. Then, clambering on to a chair, the nurse lifted the curtain that hung at the end of the bed and there appeared, waving her arms, uttering hoarse shrieks from the bottom of the iron pot that hid her face, and with her broom threatening the old dying peasant woman, like the devil in a Punch and Judy show.
Mad with fear, her eyes wild, the dying woman made a superhuman effort to get up and get away from it. She managed to get her shoulders and chest out of bed, then she fell back with a great sigh. It was all over.
Old Rapet placidly put everything back: the broom in the corner of the cupboard, the sheet inside, the stewpan on the stove, the water-jug on the shelf and the chair against the wall. Then with a professional gesture she closed the wide-staring eyes of the dead, placed on the bed a dish, poured into it a little of the water from the holy-water vessel, dipped in it the sprig of yew nailed on to the cupboard door and, kneeling down, began to recite fervently the prayers for the dead which she knew by heart, and which were part of her trade.
When Honoré returned, at nightfall, he found her there praying, and his first thought was that she had cheated him of twenty sous, for she had only spent three days and one night, which only came to five francs instead of the six which he owed her.
A Divorce Case
Mme. Chassel’s counsel began his speech: My Lord, gentlemen of the jury, the case which I am called on to defend before you would more suitably be treated by medicine than by justice and constitutes much more a pathological case than an ordinary case of law. At first sight the facts seem simple.
A young man, of considerable wealth, of a high-minded and ardent nature, a generous heart, falls in love with a supremely beautiful young girl, more than beautiful, adorable, as gracious, as charming, as good, and as tender as she is pretty, and he marries her.
For some time, he conducts himself towards her as a solicitous and affectionate husband; then he neglects her, bullies her, seems to feel for her an insurmountable aversion, an unconquerable dislike. One day even, he strikes her, not only without any right, but even without any excuse.
I will not labour to represent to you, gentlemen, his strange behaviour, incomprehensible to everyone. I will not paint for you the unspeakable life of these two creatures and the frightful grief of this young woman.
To convince you I have only to read to you some fragments from a diary written each day by this poor man, this poor madman. For it is with a madman that we have to do, gentlemen, and the case is all the more curious, all the more interesting in that it recalls in many particulars the mania of the unfortunate prince who died recently, the fantastic king who reigned platonically in Bavaria. I will recall that case: the madness of a romantic.
You will remember all the tales told of that strange prince. He had built in the heart of the most magnificent scenery in his kingdom veritable fairy castles. Even the reality of the beauty of things and places were not enough for him, he imagined and created in these fantastic dwellings artificial horizons produced by means of theatrical devices, changes of scene, painted forests, fabled demesnes where the leaves of the trees were of precious stones. He had
