Madame d'Heurteleure did not scream. Should she waken the wretched somnambulist, whose frenzied sleep had drawn him to this tragic dungeon? Was she capable of inflicting this degrading shock upon his pride? No. The vengeance of the outrage was just. She felt pity for those wild eyes, which stared at her without seeing her, for the tortured visage, for the hair blanched by such poignant anguish, and it seemed to her best to protect the secret of this nocturnal adventure that he might never discover his self-betrayal. He must, she deemed, be allowed to satisfy his terrible craving in the eternal silence of the tomb, without ever knowing whose unseen hand walled him in face to face with his sacrilege.
Monsieur d'Heurteleure still gazed blankly at her. Very calmly she knelt and clasped the greenish palm which stretched its fleshless fingers over the tiles, and then from the outside she closed the door. Walking away on tiptoe, she slid the bolt of the vault which closed the passage. She ascended the spiral stairs, the subterranean steps, the stairways of the upper house, and on the rusty nail of her chamber wall she suspended the tragic key, which balanced itself an instant, then hung motionless to mark an eternal hour.
The doves passed to and fro as they flew below the arches of the little cloister. The hour rang out simultaneously from all the belfries in the city. The miserable woman sobbed and offered Monsieur d'Amercœur the great key, letting it fall at his feet. He picked it up; it was heavy and the patches of rust were red like blood. He walked away. Madame d'Heurteleure, still kneeling, supplicated wildly with her hands joined convulsively. He descended toward the little garden, which embalmed the centre of the cloister with its fragrant flowers which grew in beds equally divided by boxwood. Great roses engarlanded the well with its stone circle; their thorns clung to the monkish frock as he bent over to drink; the water spurted out. A tall, golden sunflower mirrored its honey-laden monstrance. A dove cooed faintly, and Monsieur d'Amercœur, returning to his still prostrate penitent, murmured in her ear the words of an absolution which, if it lost nothing in heaven, gave at least on earth peace to a tortured soul.
THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR
BY ALPHONSE ALLAIS
Alphonse Allais, who has left an original successor in Georges Courteline, was the great joker of Paris who died in 1905, at fifty years of age. He clothes his ideas in jaunty, rakish, crisp, up-to-date style, in the language of the reporter and of the boulevards. Like most of the modern French literary aspirants, Allais made his début in the Paris journals. He wrote humorous, fantastic monologues full of life, and what the French call "verve," which is a kind of sprightly enthusiasm tempered by an original personality. He has written, besides the three-act vaudeville called "L'Innocent," in collaboration with Alfred Capus, several other plays and vaudevilles which are immensely popular with the Parisians.
THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR
BY ALPHONSE ALLAIS