Quickly, and as if he had been in
his own house, he hastened to the door of the little sitting-room
and listened. At that moment rage was imparting a truly frightful
intonation to M. Wilkie's voice. The baron really felt alarmed.
He stooped, applied his eye to the keyhole, and seeing M. Wilkie
with his hand uplifted, he burst open the door and went in. He
arrived only just in time to fell Wilkie to the floor, and save
Madame d'Argeles from that most terrible of humiliations: the
degradation of being struck by her own son. "Ah, you rascal!"
cried the worthy baron, transported with indignation, "you
beggarly rascal! you brigand! Is this the way you treat an
unfortunate woman who has sacrificed herself for you--your mother?
You try to strike your mother, when you ought to kiss her very
footprints!"
As livid as if his blood had been suddenly turned to gall--with
quivering lips and eyes starting from their sockets--M. Wilkie
rose, with difficulty, to his feet, at the same time rubbing his
left elbow which had struck against the corner of a piece of
furniture, in his fall. "Scoundrel! You brutal scoundrel!" he
growled, ferociously. And then, retreating a step: "Who gave you
permission to come in here?" he added. "Who are you? By what
right do you meddle with my affairs?"
"By the right that every honest man possesses to chastise a
cowardly rascal.
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