'Can't, indeed! And may I ask why?'
'Because I don't wish that you should.'
The judge's wife felt that her plan was frustrated, and she almost choked with spleen and anger. She was positively frightful to look at as she gasped and stammered:
'I don't know who you are, and I don't know what you are doing here. If I were to call out, I could have you arrested, for you have struck me. There must be some great wickedness going on at the other side of that door for you to have been put there to keep people from entering. I belong to the house, I tell you! Let me pass, or I shall call for help.'
'Call for anyone you like,' replied the old lady, shrugging her shoulders. 'I have told you that you shall not go in, that I won't let you. How am I to know that you belong to the house? But it makes no difference whether you do or you don't. No one can go in. I won't let them.'
Thereupon Madame Paloque lost all control of herself, raised her voice, and shrieked out:
'I have no occasion to go in now! I have learnt quite sufficient! You are Abbé Faujas's mother, are you not? This is a very decent and pretty part for you to be playing! I wouldn't enter the room now; I wouldn't mix myself up with all this wickedness!'
Madame Faujas laid her knitting upon the chair, and, bending slightly forward, gazed with glistening eyes through her spectacles at Madame Paloque, holding her hands the while a little in front of her, as though she were about to spring upon the angry woman and silence her. She was, indeed, going to throw herself forward, when the door suddenly opened and Abbé Faujas appeared on the threshold. He was in his surplice and looked very stern.
'Well, mother,' he asked, 'what is going on here?'
The old lady bent her head, and stepped back like a dog that is taking its place at its master's heels.