20 лучших повестей на английском / 20 Best Short Novels

�Good heavens!’ she exclaimed. �Who is that in the next room?’

�A mad Englishman.’

�An Englishman?’

�Compose yourself, my angel. I will quiet him.’

The lamentable voice called out on me again, �Rigobert! Rigobert!’

My fair friend caught me by the arm. �Who is he?’ she cried. �What is his name?’

Something in her face struck me as she put that question. A spasm of jealousy shook me to the soul. �You know him?’ I said.

�His name!’ she vehemently repeated; �his name!’

�Francis,’ I answered.

�Francis – what?’

I shrugged my shoulders. I could neither remember nor pronounce the barbarous English surname. I could only tell her it began with an �R.’

She dropped back into the chair. Was she going to faint? No: she recovered, and more than recovered, her lost color. Her eyes flashed superbly. What did it mean? Profoundly as I understand women in general, I was puzzled by this woman!

�You know him?’ I repeated.

She laughed at me. �What nonsense! How should I know him? Go and quiet the wretch.’

My looking-glass was near. One glance at it satisfied me that no woman in her senses could prefer the Englishman to Me. I recovered my self-respect. I hastened to the Englishman’s bedside.

The moment I appeared he pointed eagerly toward my room. He overwhelmed me with a torrent of words in his own language. I made out, from his gestures and his looks, that he had, in some incomprehensible manner, discovered the presence of my guest; and, stranger still, that he was scared by the idea of a person in my room.

I endeavored to compose him on the system which I have already mentioned – that is to say, I swore at him in my language. The result not proving satisfactory, I own I shook my fist in his face, and left the bedchamber.

Returning to my fair friend, I found her walking backward and forward in a state of excitement wonderful to behold. She had not waited for me to fill her glass – she had begun the generous Moselle in my absence.

I prevailed on her with difficulty to place herself at the table. Nothing would induce her to eat. �My appetite is gone,’ she said. �Give me wine.’

The generous Moselle deserves its name – delicate on the palate, with prodigious �body.’ The strength of this fine wine produced no stupefying effect on my remarkable guest. It appeared to strengthen and exhilarate her – nothing more.