"The box covered with sh.e.l.ls."
"But I gave it to her."
The Indian looked at me with stupefaction, then replied: "Well, she declared with the most sacred oaths that you had given it to her, but n.o.body could believe that you could have given a king"s present to a slave, and so the rajah had her punished."
"How was she punished? What was done to her?"
"She was tied up in a sack, and thrown into the lake from this window, from the window of the room in which we are, where she had committed the theft."
I felt the most terrible grief that I ever experienced, and I made a sign to Haribada to go away, so that he might not see my tears; and I spent the night on the gallery that looked on to the lake, on the gallery where I had so often held the poor child on my knees.
I pictured to myself her pretty little body lying decomposed in a sack in the dark waters beneath me, which we had so often looked at together formerly.
The next day I left again, in spite of the rajah"s entreaties and evident vexation; and I now still feel as if I had never loved any woman but Chali.
THE UMBRELLA
Mme. Oreille was a very economical woman; she thoroughly knew the value of a halfpenny, and possessed a whole storehouse of strict principles with regard to the multiplication of money, so that her cook found the greatest difficulty in making what the servants call their _market-penny_, while her husband was hardly allowed any pocket-money at all. They were, however, very comfortably off, and had no children; but it really pained Mme. Oreille to see any money spent; it was like tearing at her heartstrings when she had to take any of those nice crown-pieces out of her pocket; and whenever she had to spend anything, no matter how necessary it was, she slept badly the next night.
Oreille was continually saying to his wife:
"You really might be more liberal, as we have no children, and never spend our income."
"You don"t know what may happen," she used to reply. "It is better to have too much than too little."
She was a little woman of about forty, very active, rather hasty, wrinkled, very neat and tidy, and with a very short temper.
Her husband very often used to complain of all the privations she made him endure; some of them were particularly painful to him, as they touched his vanity.
He was one of the upper clerks in the War Office, and only kept on there in obedience to his wife"s wish, so as to increase their income, which they did not nearly spend.
For two years he had always come to the office with the same old patched umbrella, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of his fellow-clerks. At last he got tired of their jokes, and insisted upon his wife buying him a new one.
She bought one for eight francs and a half, one of those cheap articles which large houses sell as an advertis.e.m.e.nt. When the others in the office saw the article, which was being sold in Paris by the thousands, they began their jokes again, and Oreille had a dreadful time of it with them, and they even made a song about it, which he heard from morning till night all over the immense building.
Oreille was very angry, and peremptorily told his wife to get him a new one, a good silk one, for twenty francs, and to bring him the bill, so that he might see that it was all right.
She bought him one for eighteen francs, and said, getting red with anger as she gave it to her husband:
"This will last you for five years at least."
Oreille felt quite triumphant, and obtained a small ovation at the office with his new acquisition.
When he went home in the evening, his wife said to him, looking at the umbrella uneasily:
"You should not leave it fastened up with the elastic; it will very likely cut the silk. You must take care of it, for I shall not buy you a new one in a hurry."
She took it, unfastened it, and remained dumbfounded with astonishment and rage; in the middle of the silk there was a hole as big as a sixpenny-piece; it had been made with the end of a cigar.
"What is that?" she screamed.
Her husband replied quietly, without looking at it: "What is it? What do you mean?"
She was choking with rage, and could hardly get out a word.
"You--you--have burnt--your umbrella! Why--you must be--mad! Do you wish to ruin us outright?"
He turned round, and felt that he was growing pale.
"What are you talking about?"
"I say that you have burnt your umbrella. Just look here--"
And rushing at him as if she were going to beat him, she violently thrust the little circular burnt hole under his nose.
He was so utterly struck dumb at the sight of it that he could only stammer out:
"What--what is it? How should I know? I have done nothing, I will swear.
I don"t know what is the matter with the umbrella."
"You have been playing tricks with it at the office; you have been playing the fool and opening it, to show it off," she screamed.
"I only opened it once, to let them see what a nice one it was, that is all, I declare."
But she shook with rage, and got up one of those conjugal scenes which make a peaceable man dread the domestic hearth more than a battlefield where bullets are raining.
She mended it with a piece of silk cut out of the old umbrella, which was of a different color, and the next day Oreille went off very humbly with the mended article in his hand. He put it into a cupboard, and thought no more about it than one thinks of some unpleasant recollection.
But he had scarcely got home that evening when his wife took the umbrella from him, opened it, and nearly had a fit when she saw what had befallen it, for the disaster was irreparable. It was covered with small holes, which, evidently, proceeded from burns, just as if someone had emptied the ashes from a lighted pipe on to it. It was done for utterly, irreparably.
She looked at it without a word, in too great a pa.s.sion to be able to say anything. He also, when he saw the damage, remained almost struck stupid, in a state of frightened consternation.
They looked at each other, then he looked on to the floor; and the next moment she threw the useless article at his head, screaming out in a transport of the most violent rage, for she had recovered her voice by that time:
"Oh! you brute! you brute! You did it on purpose, but I will pay you out for it. You shall not have another."
And then the scene began again, and after the storm had raged for an hour, he, at last, was enabled to explain himself. He declared that he could not understand it at all, and that it could only proceed from malice or from vengeance.
A ring at the bell saved him; it was a friend whom they were expecting for dinner.
Mme. Oreille submitted the case to him. As for buying a new umbrella, that was out of the question; her husband should not have another.
The friend very sensibly said that in that case his clothes would be spoilt, and they were certainly worth more than the umbrella. But the little woman, who was still in a rage, replied:
"Very well, then, when it rains he may have the kitchen umbrella, for I will not give him a new silk one."