“Thou didst not give it to me, dear Marietta?” asked he, and inward rage made him deadly pale.
Marietta was ashamed of the falsehood, drooped her eyelids, and said after a while: “Well, I did give it thee, yet thou shouldst not have worn it. Give it back.”
Slowly he untied it; his anger was so great that he could not prevent the tears from filling his eyes, nor the sighs from escaping his breast.—“Dear Marietta, leave thy ribbon with me,” said he softly.
“No,” answered she.
Then his suppressed passion changed into desperation. Sighing, he looked toward heaven, then sadly on Marietta, who, silent and abashed, stood by the spring with downcast eyes.
He wound the violet-colored ribbon around the stalks of the flowers, and said: “There, take them all,” and threw the flowers so spitefully against the magnificent cup upon the rock that it was thrown down and dashed to pieces. Maliciously he fled away.
Mother Manon, lurking behind the window, had seen and heard all. When the cup broke, hearing and sight left her. She was scarcely able to speak for very horror. And as she pushed with all her strength against the narrow window, to shout after the guilty one, it gave way, and with one crash fell to earth and was shattered in pieces.
So much ill-luck would have discomposed any other woman. But Manon soon recovered herself. “How lucky that I was a witness to this roguery!” exclaimed she; “he must to the justice—he shall replace both cup and window-sash with his gold. It will give a rich dowry to Marietta.” But when Marietta brought in the fragments of the shattered cup, when Manon saw the Paradise lost, the good man Adam without a head, and of Eve not a solitary limb remaining, the serpent unhurt, triumphing, the tiger safe, but the little lamb gone even to the very tail, as if the tiger had swallowed it, then Mother Manon screamed forth curses against Colin, and said: “One can easily see that this fall came from the hand of the devil.”
She took the cup in one hand, Marietta in the other, and went, about nine o’clock, to where Monsieur Hautmartin was wont to sit in judgment. She there made a great outcry, and showed the broken cup and the Paradise lost. Marietta wept bitterly.