Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/41

Rh and was to take him back again. Acrid, grumbling, crafty, flattering the pride of her masters by copying their faults, she had immediately divined the footing upon which the child was to be treated by the household. Cousin Lydia had shifted to this wretched servant the maintenance and supervision of the intruder.

The imprudent child had just provided Felicité with a magnificent debut in her rôle of guardian. The harpy took good care not to neglect this windfall. She gave free play to her amiable sentiments.

Gina, still shaking with laughter, abandoned her companion to the taunts and scolding of the servant, and entered the drawing-room at top speed, so anxious was she to describe the farce to her parents and their guests.

Laurent made a movement to rejoin the little rogue, but Felicité did not let him escape. She pushed him toward the stairs, giving him, as she did so, such a description of the dispositions of Monsieur and Madame Dobouziez toward little pigs like himself that, wholly terrified, he hastened to gain the garret in which he had been lodged, and hid himself beneath the sheets.

Felicité had pinched and cuffed him. He had been stoic, not uttering a sound, controlling himself as far as possible before the shrew.

The stormy ending of the day diverted his mind from his grief. Emotion, fatigue, and the open air produced a heavy sleep disturbed by dreams in which contradictory images blended in a fantastic sarabande. Armed with the faery ring, the radiantly laughing Gina conducted the dance, and alternately sacrificed him to and saved him from the dark plots of an old scorceress incarnated in Felicité. In the background the pale and sweet shades of his father and Siska, the dead and