But the idiot laughed with delight. Then, with his embarrassed speech, he related what took place in his home. He seemed to come each time for the sake of thus relieving his memory.
“Papa worked all night again. Mamma slapped Berthe. I say, when people get married, does it hurt?”
And, as Marie did not reply, becoming excited, he continued: “I won’t go to the country; I won’t. If they only touch her, I’ll strangle them; it’s easy to do in the night, when they’re asleep. The palm of her hand is as soft as note-paper. But, you know, the other is a beast of a girl—”
He recommenced, got more muddled still, and did not succeed in expressing what he had come to say. Marie, at length, made him return to his parents, without his even having noticed Octave’s presence.
Then the latter, through fear of being again disturbed, wanted to take the young woman into his own room. But she refused, her cheeks suddenly becoming scarlet He, not understanding this bashfulness, said that they would be sure to hear Jules coming up, and that she would have time to slip into her room; and as he drew her along, she became quite angry, with the indignation of a woman to whom violence is being offered.
“No, not in your room, never! It would be too wrong. Let us remain here.”
And she ran to the farthest end of her room. Octave was still on the landing, surprised at this unexpected resistance, when the sounds of a violent altercation ascended from the courtyard. Really, everything seemed to be against him, he would have done better to have gone off to bed. Such an uproar was so unusual at that late hour, that he ended by opening a window, to hear what was going on. Monsieur Gourd, down below, was shouting out:
“I tell you, you shall not pass! The landlord has been sent for. He will come and turn you out himself.”
“What! turn me out!” replied a thick voice. “Don’t I pay my rent? Pass, Amélie, and if the gentleman touches you, we’ll have something to laugh at!”
It was the workman from upstairs, who had returned with the woman sent away in the morning. Octave leant out; but, in the black hole of the courtyard, he could only distinguish some big moving shadows in a ray of gaslight from the vestibule.