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Updated: June 8, 2025
"Margari," cried he, "go to the carriage, look for my fiddle and bring it hither!" At this command poor Margari had a veritable ague fit of terror. All this time he had remained ducking down in the carriage firmly persuaded that the robbers in this lonely place would cut down every mother's son of them at nightfall.
I know not whether Monte Cristo, the first volume of which honest Margari happened to be reading just then, was the cause of this, or whether it was due to the old man's nervousness about the terrible things John was likely to do, but the fact remains that poor Margari on this occasion got no respite from his labours. At other times Margari did manage to get a little relief.
"If I had a lot of money I might, begging your honour's pardon, but a poor devil like me is only too glad to live at any price," replied Margari, whose answer naturally had no relation whatever to the text, not a word of which he understood. "You are a simple fellow, Margari; but go on, go on!"
"If you hold his honour so completely in the palm of your hand," said she, "why don't you provide better for yourself and me? It is all very well for his honour to fork out now when you press him, but money goes and more is wanted. One of these days something will happen to him and he will die, and you can't follow him to the moon." This was indeed a hard nut for Margari to crack.
If old Lapussa did not choose to pay a price for it, and a liberal price too, he should be told nothing at all and Margari would show the old miser that he had a man of character to deal with. For after all poor Margari had to live, and this was worth as much as a thousand florins to him or its equivalent anyhow.
Margari instantly stood up in the middle of a sentence, marked the passage with his thumb-nail so as to know at what word to begin again on the following evening, turned down the leaf and closed the book. "Well! is that the end of it?" enquired Mr. Demetrius in angry amazement.
Margari was so frightened that he bawled out: "No, I am not!" so of course he was obliged to open the door, but he concealed the packet of letters in his pocket first. It was the lacquey who came to ask whether Mr. Margari was aware that it was past seven o'clock; he must come and read to the old gentleman. Margari could not endure to hear the domestics speaking to him familiarly. "Seven o'clock!
But suppose Margari were to make a clean breast of it? Well he could repudiate the whole thing of course. But then that wretched royal mandate? He must either swear or pay the court fine every day. It would be best perhaps to fly, to leave the capital of the magistrate behind him and set out on his travels. Perhaps then they would forget all about it. But then there was the law-suit!
Margari used only to laugh when his wife began nagging at him. "Alios jam vidi ego ventos, aliasque procellas," he would say. He was only too glad to have a home of his own at all. "Don't worry, woman!" he would say with reference to the furniture, "when that's worn out, I'll buy some more. John Lapussa, Esq., will give me whatever I want."
"He'll never say that, or if he does, I shall say something to somebody and then it will be he who will be sorry and not I. Oh, he'll take jolly good care not to make Margari angry. His honour has much more need of Margari's friendship than Margari has of his honour's." And we shall very soon see under what auspices Margari hoped to get the little country estate from Mr.
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