Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/56

 "He has had an attack—"

"Let him defend himself."

"Some money has been paid us," continued the old woman, "an instalment on the house sold to the camondeur Doutrup, of the Rue Messaglière. If you do not come, my granddaughter will no longer have a father, my daughter-in-law a husband, myself a son."

It was piteous and terrible to hear the old woman's voice—to know that the wind was freezing the blood in her veins, that the rain was soaking her very bones beneath her thin flesh.

"A fit! why, that would be two hundred fretzers!" replied the heartless Trifulgas.

"We have only hundred and twenty."

"Good-night," and the window was again closed. But, after reflection, it appeared that a hundred and twenty fretzers for an hour and a half on the road, plus half an hour of visit, made a fretzer a minute. A small profit, but still, not to be despised.

Instead of going to bed again, the doctor slipped into his coat of valveter, went down in his wading boots, stowed himself away in his great coat of lurtaine, with his sourouët on his head, and his mufflers on his hands. He left his lamp lighted close to his pharmacopœia, open at page 197. Then, pulling the door of Sixty-four, he paused on the threshold. The old woman was there, leaning on her stick, bowed down by her eighty years of misery.

"The hundred and twenty fretzers."

"Here is the money; and may God multiply it for you a hundredfold!"

"God! Who ever saw the colour of His money?"

The doctor whistled for Hurzof, gave him a small lantern to carry, and took the road towards the sea. The old woman followed.

Swishy-swashy weather! The bells of St. Philfilena are all swinging by reason of the gale. A bad sign! But Dr. Trifulgas is not superstitious. He believes in nothing—not even in his own science, except for what it brings him in. What weather, and also what a road! Pebbles and ashes; the pebbles slippery with seaweed, the ashes crackling with iron refuse. No other light than that from Hurzof's lantern, vague and uncertain. At times jets of flame from Vauglor uprear themselves, and in the midst of them appear great comical silhouettes. In truth no one knows what is in the depths of those unfathomable craters. Perhaps spirits of the other world, which volatilise themselves as they come forth.

The doctor and the old woman follow the curves of the little bays of the littoral. The sea is white with a livid whiteness—a mourning white. It sparkles as it throws off the crests of the surf, which seem like outpourings of glow-worms.

These two persons go on thus as far as the turn in the road between sandhills, where the brooms and the reeds clash together with a shock like that of bayonets.

The dog had drawn near to his master, and seemed to say to him, "Come, come! a hundred and twenty fretzers for the strong box! That is the way to make a fortune. Another rood added to the vineyard; another dish added to our supper; another meat pie for the faithful Hurzof.