The Man with the broken Ear by Edmond About (phonics books .TXT) 📕

real estate. The fool preferred to hang himself in his shop. Everyone to his taste!"

"Did he hang himself very high?"

"I don't know anything about that. Why?"

"Because one might get a piece of rope cheap, and we're greatly in want of some, my poor Catharine! That Colonel Fougas has given me a shiver."

"Some more of your notions! Come to supper, my love."

"Come on!"

The angular Baucis conducted her Philemon into a large and beautiful dining-room, where Berbel served a repast worthy of the gods. Soup with little balls of aniseeded bread, fish-balls with black sauce, mutton-balls stuffed, game balls, sour-krout cooked in lard and garnished with fried potatoes, roast hare with currant jelly, deviled crabs, salmon from the Vistula, jellies, and fruit tarts. Six bottles of Rhine-wine selected from the best vintages were awaiting, in their silver caps, the master's kiss. But the lord of all these good things was neither hungry nor thirsty. He ate by nibbles and drank by sips, all the time expecting a grand consummation, which he did not have to expect along. A formidable rap of the knocker soon resounded through the house.

Nicholas Meiser trembled. His wife tried to reassure him. "It's nothing," said she. "The president of the bank told me that he was coming to see you. He offers to pay us the exchange, if we'll take paper instead of specie."

"It is about money, sure as Fate!" cried the good man. "Hell itself is coming to see us!"

At the same instant, the servant rushed into the room, crying, "Oh, Sir! Oh, Madame! It's the Frenchman of the three coffins! Jesus! Mary, Mother of God!"

Fougas saluted them, and said, "Don't disturb yourselves, good people, I beg of you. We've a little matter to discuss together, and I'm ready to explain it to you in two words. You're in a hurry, so am I; you've not had supper, neither have I!"

Frau Meiser, more rigid and more emaciated than a thirteenth-century statue, opened wide her toothless mouth. Terror paralyzed her. The man, better prepared for the visit of the phantom, cocked his revolver under the table and took aim at the Colonel, crying " Vade retro, Satanas! " The exorcism and the pistol missed fire together.

Meiser was not at all discouraged: he snapped the six barrels one after the other at the demon, who stood watching him do it. Not one went off.

"What devilish game is that you're playing?" said the Colonel, seating himself astride a chair. "People are not in the habit of receiving an honest man's visit with that ceremony!"

Meiser flung down his revolver, and grovelled like a beast at Fougas' feet. His wife, who was not one whit more tranquil, followed him. They joined hands, and the fat man exclaimed:

"Spirit! I confess my misdeeds, and I am ready to make reparation for them. I have sinned against you; I have violated my uncle's commands. What do you wish? What do you command? A tomb? A magnificent monument? Prayers? Endless prayers?"

"Idiot!" said Fougas, spurning him with his foot; "I am no spirit, and I want nothing but the money you've robbed me of!"

Meiser kept rolling on the floor; but his scrawny wife was already on her feet, her fists on her hips, and facing Fougas.

"Money!" cried she, "But we don't owe you any! Have you any documents? Just show us our signature! Where would one be, Just God! if we had to give money to all the adventurers who present themselves? And in the first place, by what right did you thrust yourself into our dwelling, if you're not a spirit? Ah! you're a man just the same as other people! Ha! ha! So you're not a ghost! Very well, sir; there are judges in Berlin; there are some in the country, too, and we'll soon see whether you're going to finger our money! Get up there, you great booby; it's only a man! And do you, Mister Ghost, get out of here! Off with you!"

The Colonel did not budge more than a rock.

"The devil's in women's tongues! Sit down, old lady, and take your hands away from my eyes--they bother me. And as for you, swell-head, get on to your chair, and listen to me. There will be time enough to go to law if we can't come to an understanding. But stamped paper stinks in my nostrils; and therefore I'd rather settle peaceably."

Herr and Frau Meiser repressed their first emotion. They distrusted magistrates, as do all people without clean consciences. If the Colonel was a poor devil who could be put off with a few thalers, it would be better to avoid legal proceedings.

Fougas stated the case to them with entire military bluntness. He proved the existence of his right, said that he had had his identity substantiated at Fontainebleau, Paris, and Berlin; cited from memory two or three passages of the will, and finished by declaring that the Prussian Government, in conjunction with that of France, would support his just claims if necessary.

"You understand clearly," said he, taking Meiser by the button of his coat, "that I am no fox, depending on cunning. If you had a wrist vigorous enough to swing a good sabre, we'd take the field against each other, and I'd play you for the amount, first two cuts out of three, as surely as that's soup before you!"

"Fortunately, monsieur," said Meiser, "my age shields me from all brutality. You would not wish to trample under foot the corpse of an old man!"

"Venerable scoundrel! But you would have killed me like a dog, if your pistol had not missed fire!"

"It was not loaded, Monsieur Colonel! It was not----anywhere near loaded! But I am an accommodating man, and we can come to terms very easily. I don't owe you anything, and, moreover, there's prescription; but after all----how much do you want?"

"He has had his say: now it's my turn!"

The old rascal's mate softened the tone of her voice. Imagine to yourself a saw licking a tree before biting in.

"Listen, Claus, my dear--listen to what Monsieur Colonel Fougas has to say. You'll see that he is reasonable! It's not in him to think of ruining poor people like us. Oh, Heavens! he is not capable of it. He has such a noble heart! Such a disinterested man! An officer worthy of the great Napoleon (God receive his soul!)."

"That's enough, old lady!" said Fougas, with a curt gesture which cut the speech off in the middle. "I had an estimate made at Berlin of what is due me--principal and interest."

"Interest!" cried Meiser. "But in what country, in what latitude, do people pay interest on money? Perhaps it may sometimes happen in business, but between friends--never, no never, my good Monsieur Colonel! What would my good uncle, who is now gazing upon us from heaven, say, if he knew that you were claiming interest on his bequest?"

"Now shut up, Nickle!" interrupted his wife. "Monsieur Colonel is just about telling you, himself, that he did not intend to be understood as speaking of the interest."

"Why in the name of great guns don't you both shut up, you confounded magpies? Here I am dying of hunger, and I didn't bring my nightcap to go to bed here, either!---- Now here's the upshot of the matter: You owe me a great deal; but it's not an even sum--there are fractions in it, and I go in for clean transactions. Moreover, my tastes are modest. I've enough for my wife and myself; nothing more is needed than to provide for my son!"

"Very well," cried Meiser; "I'll charge myself with the education of the little fellow!"

"Now, during the dozen days since I again became a citizen of the world, there is one word that I've heard spoken everywhere. At Paris, as well as at Berlin, people no longer speak of anything but millions; there is no longer any talk of anything else, and everybody's mouth is full of millions. From hearing so much said about it, I've acquired a curiosity to know what it is. Go, fetch me out a million, and I'll give you quittance!"

If you want to reach an approximate idea of the piercing cries which answered him, go to the Jardin des Plantes at the breakfast hour of the birds of prey, and try to pull the meat out of their beaks. Fougas stopped his ears and remained inexorable. Prayers, arguments, misrepresentations, flatteries, cringings, glanced off from him like rain from a zinc roof. But at ten o'clock at night, when he had concluded that all concurrence was impossible, he took his hat:

"Good evening!" said he. "It's no longer a million that I must have, but two millions, and all over. We'll go to law. I'm going to supper."

He was on the staircase, when Frau Meiser said to her husband:

"Call him back, and give him his million!"

"Are you a fool?"

"Don't be afraid."

"I can never do it!"

"Father in heaven! what blockheads men are! Monsieur! Monsieur Fougas! Monsieur Colonel Fougas! Come up again, I pray you! We consent to all that you require!"

"Damnation!" said he, on reëntering; "you ought to have made up your minds sooner. But after all, let's see the money!"

Frau Meiser explained to him with her tenderest voice, that poor capitalists like themselves, were not in the habit of keeping millions under their own lock and key.

"But you shall lose nothing by waiting, my sweet sir! To-morrow you shall handle the amount in nice white silver; my husband will sign you a check on the Royal Bank of Dantzic."

"But----," said the unfortunate Meiser. He signed, nevertheless, for he had boundless confidence in the practical ingenuity of Catharine. The old lady begged Fougas to sit down at the end of the table, and dictated to him a receipt for two millions, in payment of all demands. You may depend that she did not forgot a word of the legal formulas, and that she arranged the affair in due form according to the Prussian code. The receipt, written throughout in the Colonel's hand, filled three large pages.

He signed the instrument with a flourish, and received in exchange the signature of Nicholas, which he knew well.

"Well," said he to the old gentleman, "you're certainly not such an Arab as they said you were at Berlin. Shake hands, old scamp! I don't usually shake hands with any but honest people; but on an occasion like this, one can do a little something extra."

"Do it double, Monsieur Fougas," said Frau Meiser, humbly. "Will you not join us in this modest supper?"

"Gad! old lady, it's not a thing to be refused. My supper must be cold at the inn of the 'Clock'; and your viands, smoking on their chafing dishes, have already caused me more than one fit of distraction. Besides, here are some yellow glass flutes, on which Fougas will not be at all reluctant to play an air."

The respectable Catharine had an extra plate laid, and ordered Berbel to go to bed. The Colonel folded up Father Meiser's million, rolled it carefully among a pile of bank-bills, and put the whole into the little pocket-book which his dear Clementine had sent him.

The clock struck eleven.

At half-past eleven Fougas began to see everything in a rosy cloud. He praised the Rhine wine highly, and thanked the Meisers for their hospitality. At midnight, he assured them of his highest