Kitabı oku: «A Street of Paris and Its Inhabitant», sayfa 3

III
MADAME ADOLPHE

When the old man – the professor counted then sixty-two summers – had walked three steps, he turned his head at this question, hurled in an acute tone by a voice that he recognized:

"Have you a handkerchief?"

A woman stood on the step of the garden door and was watching her master with solicitude.

She seemed to be fifty years of age, and her dress indicated that she was one of those servants who are invested with full authority in household affairs.

She was darning stockings.

The man of science came back and said naively:

"Yes, Madame Adolphe, I have my handkerchief."

"Have you your spectacles?" she asked.

The man of science felt the side pocket of his waistcoat.

"I have them," he replied.

"Show them to me," she said. "Often you have only the case."

The professor took the case out of his pocket and showed the spectacles with a triumphant air.

"You would do well to keep them on your nose," she said.

M. de Saint-Leu put on his spectacles, after rubbing the glasses with his handkerchief.

Naturally, he thrust the handkerchief under his left arm while he set his spectacles on his nose. Then he walked a few steps towards the Rue de Fleurus and relaxed his hold on the handkerchief, which fell.

"I was sure of it," said Madame Adolphe to herself. She picked up the handkerchief and cried:

"Monsieur! Monsieur!"

"Well!" exclaimed the professor, made indignant by her watchfulness.

"I beg your pardon," he said, receiving the handkerchief.

"Have you any money?" asked Madame Adolphe with maternal solicitude.

"I need none," he replied naively, explaining thus the lives of all men of science.

"It depends," Madame Adolphe said. "If you go by way of the Pont des Arts you need one sou."

"You are right," replied the man of science, as if he were retracing instructions for a voyage to the North Pole. "I will go through the Luxembourg, the Rue de Seine, the Pont des Arts, the Louvre, the Rue du Coq, the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, the Rue des Fosses- Montmartre. It is the shortest route to the Faubourg Poissonniere."

"It is three o'clock," Madame Adolphe said. "Your sister-in-law dines at six. You have three hours before you – Yes – you'll be there, but you'll be late." She searched her apron pocket for two sous, which she handed to the professor.

"Very well, then," she said to him. "Do not eat too much. You are not a glutton, but you think of other things. You are frugal, but you eat when you are absent-minded as if you had no bread at home. Take care not to make Madame Vernet, your sister-in-law, wait. If you make her wait, you will never be permitted again to go there alone, and it will be shameful for you."

Madame Adolphe returned to the threshold of the little door and from there watched her master. She had to cry to him, "To the right! To the right!" for he was turning toward the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.

"And yet he is a man of science, people say," she muttered to herself. "How did he ever manage to get married? I'll ask Madame when I dress her hair."