Carmen by Prosper Mérimée Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t like people who make you ask them so many times,’ she said. ‘You did me a very great service the first time, without knowing whether you would gain anything by it. Yesterday, you bargained with me. I don’t know why I came, for I don’t love you any more. Here, take this
douro
for your trouble.’
    “I was within an ace of throwing the money at her head, and I was obliged to make a violent effort over myself to keep from striking her. After we had quarrelled for an hour, I left the house in a rage. I wandered about the city a long while, tramping hither and thither like a madman; at last I entered a church, and, seeking out the darkest corner, wept scalding tears. Suddenly I heard a voice:
    “ ‘A dragoon’s tears! I must make a love-philtre of them!’
    “I raised my eyes; Carmen stood in front of me.
    “ ‘Well, my countryman, are you still angry with me?’ she said. ‘It must be that I love you, in spite of what I know of you, for since you left me, I don’t know what is the matter with me. See, I am the one now who asks you to come to Rue de Candilejo.’
    “So we made our peace; but Carmen’s moods were like the weather in our country. Among our mountains a storm is never so near as when the sun shines brightest. She promised to meet me again at Dorothy’s, and she did not come. And Dorothy told me coolly that she had gone to Laloro on business of Egypt.
    “As I knew already from experience what to think on that subject, I sought Carmen wherever I thought that she could possibly be, and I passed through Rue de Candilejo twenty times a day. One evening I was at Dorothy’s having almost tamed her by treating her now and then to a glass of anisette, when Carmen came in, followed by a young officer, a lieutenant in our regiment.
    “ ‘Off with you, quick,’ she said to me in Basque.
    “I sat as if stupefied, with rage in my heart.
    “ ‘What are you doing here?’ the lieutenant asked me. ‘Decamp, leave this house!’
    “I could not take a step; I was like a man who has lost the use of his limbs. The officer, seeing that I did not withdraw, and that I had not even removed my forage cap, lost his temper, seized me by the collar, and shook me roughly. I do not know what I said to him. He drew his sword, and I my sabre. The old woman grasped my arm, and the lieutenant struck me a blow on the forehead, the mark of which I still bear. I stepped back and knocked Dorothy down with a blow of my elbow; then, as the lieutenant followed me, I held the point of my sabre to his breast, and he spitted himself on it. Thereupon Carmen put out the lamp and told Dorothy in her language to fly. I myself rushed out into the street and started to run, I knew not whither. It seemed to me that some one was following me. When I came to my senses, I found that Carmen had not left me.
    “ ‘You great idiot of a canary!’ she exclaimed. ‘You can’t do anything but make a fool of yourself! I told you, you know, that I should bring you bad luck. Well! there’s a cure for everything when one has for one’s friend a Roman Fleming. r First of all, put this handkerchief on your head, and toss me that belt. Wait for me in this passage. I will return in two minutes.’
    “She disappeared, and soon brought me a striped cloak,which she had obtained heaven knows where. She bade me take off my uniform and put on the cloak over my shirt. Thus attired, with the handkerchief with which she had bound up the wound on my head, I looked not unlike a peasant from Valencia, so many of whom came to Seville to sell their
chufas
s orgeat. Then she took me into a house much like Dorothy’s, at the end of a narrow lane. She and another gypsy washed me and dressed my wound better than any surgeon could have done, and gave me something, I don’t know what, to drink; finally, they laid me on a mattress, and I went to sleep.
    “Probably those women had mingled with my drink one of those soporific drugs of which they know the