Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De MaupassantMaupassant, Guy de
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Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant
Maupassant, Guy de
French fiction -- Translations into English; Short stories, French -- Translations into English
Caravan jumped up, threw his table-napkin down, and rushed upstairs,
while his wife, who thought it was some trick of her mother-in-law's,
followed more slowly, shrugging her shoulders, as if to express her
doubt. When they got upstairs, however, they found the old woman lying
at full length in the middle of the room; and when they turned her over,
they saw that she was insensible and motionless, while her skin looked
more wrinkled and yellow than usual, her eyes were closed, her teeth
clenched, and her thin body was stiff.
Caravan knelt down by her, and began to moan.
“My poor mother! my poor mother!” he said. But the other Madame Caravan
said:
“Bah! She has only fainted again, that is all, and she has done it to
prevent us from dining comfortably, you may be sure of that.”
They put her on the bed, undressed her completely, and Caravan, his
wife, and the servant began to rub her; but, in spite of their efforts,
she did not recover consciousness, so they sent Rosalie, the servant, to
fetch Doctor Chenet. He lived a long way off, on the quay, going towards
Suresnes, and so it was a considerable time before he arrived. He came
at last, however, and, after having looked at the old woman, felt her
pulse, and listened for a heart beat, he said: “It is all over.”
Caravan threw himself on the body, sobbing violently; he kissed his
mother's rigid face, and wept so that great tears fell on the dead
woman's face like drops of water, and, naturally, Madame Caravan,
junior, showed a decorous amount of grief, and uttered feeble moans as
she stood behind her husband, while she rubbed her eyes vigorously.
But, suddenly, Caravan raised himself up, with his thin hair in
disorder, and, looking very ugly in his grief, said:
“But—are you sure, doctor? Are you quite sure?”
The doctor stooped over the body, and, handling it with professional
dexterity, as a shopkeeper might do, when showing off his goods, he
said:
“See, my dear friend, look at her eye.”
He raised the eyelid, and the old woman's eye appeared altogether
unaltered, unless, perhaps, the pupil was rather larger, and Caravan
felt a severe shock at the sight. Then Monsieur Chenet took her thin
arm, forced the fingers open, and said, angrily, as if he had been
contradicted:
“Just look at her hand; I never make a mistake, you may be quite sure of
that.”
Caravan fell on the bed, and almost bellowed, while his wife, still
whimpering, did what was necessary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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