Page:The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant.djvu/114

92 at all surprised, even. But—but—I can hardly use any other word."

"But you pronounce them, as if I had been out all night."

"Oh! no; oh! no!"

She saw that he would yield on every point, and she was going into her own room, when at last she noticed that George was screaming, and then she asked, with some feeling: "Whatever is the matter with the child?"

"I told you, that Julie had been rather unkind to him."

"What has the wretch been doing to him?"

"Oh! Nothing much. She gave him a push, and he fell down."

She wanted to see her child, and ran into the dining-room, but stopped short at the sight of the table covered with spilt wine, with broken decanters and glasses and overturned saltcellars. "Who did all that mischief?" she asked.

"It was Julie who—"

But she interrupted him furiously: "That is too much, really; Julie speaks of me as if I were a shameless woman, beats my child, breaks my plates and dishes, turns my house upside down, and it appears that you think it all quite natural."

"Certainly not, as I have got rid of her."

"Really!—you have got rid of her! But you ought to have given her in charge. In such cases, one ought to call in the Commissary of Police!"

"But, my dear—I really could not—there was no reason. It would have been very difficult."

She shrugged her shoulders, disdainfully: "There, you will never be anything but a poor, wretched fellow, a man without a will, without any firmness or energy. Ah! she must have said some nice things to you, your Julie, to make you turn her off like that. I should like to have been here for a minute, only for a minute." Then she opened the drawing-room door and ran to George, took him into her arms and kissed him, and said: "Georgie, what is it, my darling, my pretty one, my treasure?" But as she was fondling him he did not speak, and she repeated: "What is the matter with you?" And he, having seen with his child's eyes that something was wrong, replied "Julie beat papa."

Henriette turned toward her husband, in stupefaction at first, but then an irresistible desire to laugh shone in her eyes, passed like a slight shiver over her delicate cheeks, made her upper lip curl and her nostrils dilate, and at last a clear, bright burst of mirth came from her lips, a torrent of gaiety which was lively and sonorous as the song of a bird. With little mischievous exclamations which issued from between her white teeth, and hurt Parent as much as a bite would have done she laughed: "Ha!—ha!—ha!—ha! she beat—she beat—my husband—ha!—ha!—ha! How funny! Do you hear, Limousin? Julie has beaten—has beaten—my—husband. Oh! dear—oh! dear—how very funny!"

But Parent protested: "No—no—it is not true, it is not true. It was I, on the contrary, who threw her into the dining-room so violently that she knocked the table over. The child did not see clearly, I beat her!"

"Here, my darling," Henriette said to her boy; "did Julie beat papa?"

"Yes. it was Julie," he replied. But