Page:Calvary mirbeau.djvu/29

Rh "I tell you there must be something!" she cried. "Call Felix. Let him come with tools . . . a hammer, quick, quick! Tell Monsieur also!"

"It seems strange all the same," assented Marie who, with gaping mouth and eyes wide open, was looking at the mysterious slab. "He must be a sorcerer then!"

Felix lifted one stone, examined it carefully, dug into the mortar below.

"Dig up another one!" my mother commanded. "And that one also . . . another one . . . all of them . . . dig them all up! I want to find out. . . . And Monsieur is not coming!"

In the excitement of her gestures, forgetting that there was a man around, she uncovered herself and revealed her nude body. Kneeling on the blocks, Felix continued digging them up. He took each one out with his brawny hands and shook his head.

"If Madame wants me to tell her. . . . For the rest, Monsieur is way out in the park, busy sharpening the pick-axe. . . . And besides, there is nothing to it . . . the stone blocks are like stone blocks, seemingly of the pavement. That's all! . . . Madame may be sure. . . . Only it might be that that was only in Master Jean's imagination. . . . Madame knows that children are like grown-up folks and that they see things! But as to these slabs, they are just slabs, neither more nor less."

My mother became pale, haggard.

"Shut up!" she ordered, "and get out of here, all of you!"

And without waiting for the execution of her order she carried me out of the room. Her cries, interrupted by the slamming of the door, resounded on the stairway and in the hall.

She never thought, however, poor dear creature that she was, of giving to the bathroom incident a natural