A Dilemma by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2021-10-26T06:57:30+00:00

IV

Perched behind the counter of her shop, Madame Champagne loved to hear the sound of her own voice. She was asthmatic and obese, pallid and puffy, with overcooked red hair. Within her flowing fabrics, wrinkles crisscrossed in every direction, striping her forehead, cracking her eyes, lacerating her cheeks; these wrinkles were etched upon her face darkly, as if the dust of time had seeped under her skin and imbued her dermis with indelible marks.

She was loquacious and rambled, convinced of her own importance, and revered by the neighborhood, which deemed her a woman of justice with considerable pull. Indeed, she was the salvation of the poor, writing up petitions which she sent to France’s most illustrious names, who often responded to them, without anyone knowing why.

In contrast, her own business affairs were less than stellar; on Rue du Vieux-Colombier, near the Croix-Rouge, she ran a poorly stocked stationery shop and newsstand, earning just enough to avoid bankruptcy; but she considered herself happy all the same, for the dearest of her wishes had come true, her love for gossiping had finally been satisfied inside that store, which formed its own neighborhood Intelligence Bureau, a sort of little police headquarters where, if not sentences and crimes, at least cuckoldry and quarrels, loans made and unpaid household debts were recorded on spoken judicial registers.

There figured prominently, among the poor women whom she defended and recommended to the charity of the society ladies, one Madame Dauriatte, sixty-eight years old, skinny and stooped, her eyes glazed over, her mouth empty and sunken, with an unctuous demeanor. She bore the classic characteristics of a leech, but even more of one of those mendicants who beg for alms in church porches, and indeed that was where she spent much of her time, being on good terms with the priests of Saint-Sulpice, and living in a state of devotion allocated equally between Madame Champagne and the Virgin.

That day, Madame Dauriatte, seated on a chair in the stationery shop, was moaning about her legs which refused to support her, and about her feet, overgrown by a small garden of bunions, those large, cultivated feet of hers which required her to wear boots filled out with pouches.

Madame Champagne was nodding her head by way of sympathy when suddenly she cried out: “Look, it’s Sophie! Oh my, just look at her eyes!”

“Where?” asked Madame Dauriatte, craning her neck.

The stationer didn’t have time to reply; the door opened with the tinkle of a bell, and Sophie Mouveau, her eyes puffy from crying, came in and burst into tears in front of the two women.

“Come, come, what’s the matter?” asked Madame Champagne.

“Don’t just keep crying like that!” said Madame Dau-riatte at the same time.

They bustled about her, pushed her onto a chair, forced her to drink some vulnerary diluted with water to lift her mood, and also took the opportunity to pour themselves a small glass. “Now we can hear everything,” declared Madame Dauriatte, wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve.

And

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.