“Not at all.... But the Venus.... She has closed her finger.”
He stared at me with a haggard face, supporting himself by the window-fastening to keep himself from falling.
“A pretty tale!” I said to him. “You have pushed the ring too far on. You’ll get it off to-morrow with pincers. But take care not to spoil the statue.”
“I tell you no! The Venus’s finger is turned in, crooked in; she has her hand clenched, do you understand?... She is my wife, it seems, since I have given her my ring.... She won’t give it back now.”
I felt a sudden shiver, and for an instant my flesh crept. Then a great sigh that he gave sent a reek of wine over to me, and all my emotion disappeared.
“The silly fool,” thought I, “is quite drunk.”
“You are an antiquary, sir,” the bridegroom added in a lamentable tone; “you know about those statues ... perhaps there is some spring, some devilment, that I don’t know about.... Would you go and see?”
“Willingly,” I said. “Come along with me.”
“No, I’d rather you went alone.”
I went out of the drawing-room. The weather had changed during supper, and the rain was beginning to fall heavily. I was about to ask for an umbrella, when a thought arrested me. I should be a great fool, I said to myself, to go and verify what a drunk man had told me! Besides, he perhaps wished to play some ill-natured joke on me to make me a laughing-stock for those good provincials; and the least that would result to me from it would be to get soaked to the skin and catch a bad cold.