Tropisms Read Online Free Page A

well-bred, having been well trained, during the many years when they were still hunting with their mothers, to figure out how to “dress on nothing,” “because a young girl needs so many things, in any case, and you have to know how to manage.”
    .
    XIV
    Although she always remained silent and apart, her head bowed modestly, counting her stitches under her breath, “one knit, purl three, now then an entire row knit,” so feminine, so unobtrusive (“don’t mind me, I’m quite all right like this, I don’t want anything for myself”), they constantly sensed, as though in a tender spot on their own flesh, her presence.
    Invariably concentrated on her, as though fascinated, they observed with terror every word, the slightest intonation, the subtlest shading, every gesture, every look; they walked on their toes, turning round at the slightest noise, for they knew that there were mysterious places everywhere, dangerous places that they should not bump into, not graze, otherwise, at the slightest contact, as in one of Hoffmann’s tales, little bells, thousands of little bells with a clear tinkle, like her maiden’s voice—would start ringing.
    But at times, in spite of all these precautions, all this effort, when they saw her sitting silent in the lamplight, looking like some frail, gentle underseas plant, entirely lined with mobile suckers, they felt themselves slip and fall with all their weight, crushing everything beneath them: then there issued from them stupid jokes, sneers, frightful stories of cannibals, all this issued from them and burst out without their being able to check it. And she coiled up gently—oh! it was too awful!—dreaming of her little room, of her beloved refuge to which she would soon go and kneel down on her bedside rug, in her batiste gown gathered at the neck, so childlike, so pure, a little Thérèse de Lisieux, Saint Catherine, Saint Blandina . . . and holding tightly the little gold chain about her neck, she would pray for their sins.
    Sometimes, too, when everything went very well, when she curled up all excited, sensing that they were about to embark on one of those questions she so loved, when they were sincerely, seriously discussed, they would slip away, pirouetting like clowns, their faces stretched in idiotic, horrible grins.
    .
    XV
    She so loved old gentlemen like him, with whom you could talk, they understood so many things, they knew all about life, they had associated with interesting people (she knew that he had been a friend of Félix Faure and that he had once kissed Empress Eugénie’s hand).
    When he came to dine with her parents, very much the child, deference itself (he was so learned), slightly awed, but all of a twitter (it would be so instructive to hear his views), she preceded the others to the salon, to keep him company.
    He rose laboriously: “Well, well! So there you are! And how are you? And how is everything going? And what are you doing? What are you doing that’s nice this year? Ah! So you’re going back to England? Indeed?”
    She was going back. Really, she loved the country so much. The English, when you knew them . . .
    But he interrupted her: “England . . . Ah, yes, England . . . Shakespeare, eh? Eh? Shakespeare. Dickens. I remember, by the way, when I was young, I amused myself translating Dickens. Thackeray. Have you read Thackeray? Th . . . Th . . . Is that how they pronounce it? Eh? Thackeray? Is that it? Is that the way they say it? . . .”
    He had grabbed her and was holding her entirely in his fist. He watched her as she flung herself about a bit, as she struggled awkwardly, childishly kicking her little feet in the air, while maintaining a pleasant smile: “Why yes, I think it’s like that. Yes. You pronounce well. Indeed, the t-h . . . Tha . . . Thackeray . . . Yes, that’s it. Why of