"My blood is
evidently thickening. I must bestir myself, or else I shall be in a bad
way."
However, he woke up when Mathieu had explained the motive of his visit.
At first he could scarcely understand it, for the affair seemed to him so
extraordinary, so idiotic.
"Eh? What do you say? It was my wife who spoke to you about that child?
It is she who has taken it into her head to collect information and start
a search?"
His fat apoplectical face became distorted, his anger was so violent that
he could scarcely stutter. When he heard, however, of the mission with
which his wife had intrusted Mathieu, he at last exploded: "She is mad! I
tell you that she is raving mad! Were such fancies ever seen? Every
morning she invents something fresh to distract me!"
Without heeding this interruption, Mathieu quietly finished his
narrative: "And so I have just come back from the Foundling Hospital,
where I learnt that the boy is alive. I have his address--and now what am
I to do?"
This was the final blow. Beauchene clenched his fists and raised his arms
in exasperation. "Ah! well, here's a nice state of things! But why on
earth does she want to trouble me about that boy? He isn't hers! Why
can't she leave us alone, the boy and me? It's my affair.
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