The Golden Triangle quotes

At that moment the door of one of the houses overlooking the square opened. A man came out, closed the door behind him, crossed the Rue de Chaillot and walked round the open space in front of the museum. It was an officer in khaki.

Under his red forage-cap, with its three lines of gold braid, his head was wrapped in a wide linen bandage, which hid his forehead and neck.

He was tall and very slenderly built. His right leg ended in a wooden stump with a rubber foot to it. He leant on a stick.

“Ah, Little Mother Coralie, now you’re crying!

Little mother, little mother, that’s how you captured all our hearts.

When we were trying our hardest not to call out, on our bed of pain, we used to see your eyes filling with great tears. Little Mother Coralie was weeping over her children. Then we clenched our teeth still firmer.”

Then, because the war has deprived me of a leg, or an arm, or even both legs or both arms, I have no longer the right to love a woman save at the risk of meeting with a rebuff or imagining that she pities me?

Pity! But we don’t want the woman to pity us, nor to make an effort to love us, nor even to think that she is doing a charity because she treats us kindly.

What we demand, from women and from the world at large, from those whom we meet in the street and from those who belong to the same set as ourselves, is absolute equality with the rest, who have been saved from our fate by their …

and perhaps better. What! Shall men who have used their legs to rush upon the enemy be outdistanced in life, because they no longer have those legs, by men who have sat and warmed their toes at an office-fire? What nonsense!

We want our place in the sun as well as the others.

It is our due; and we shall know how to get it and keep it. There is no happiness to which we are not entitled and no work for which we are not capable with a little exercise and training.

“

Right hand and left leg; left hand and right leg: what does it matter which we have saved, if we know how to use it?

In what respect have we fallen off? Whether it’s a question of obtaining a position or perpetuating our race, are we not as good as we were? And perhaps even better.

The officer, however, decided upon that act. He brought his right hand, which held the rosary-bead, and his left, which held the trinket, together. The hands hesitated, felt about and stopped. The contact was made.

The projections and indentations of the broken stones corresponded precisely.

Each protruding part found a space to fit it. The two half amethysts were the two halves of the same amethyst. When joined, they formed one and the same bead.

“

I am capable of hatred. Beware, Coralie.

The very moment when you believe that you have nothing more to fear will perhaps be the moment when I shall call you to account. Take care.”

“

The public will think what we wish it to think. This is wartime.

”

Nevertheless, Patrice was not easy in his mind. The enemy had given him too many proofs of reckless daring to let him imagine that he could take any steps to ensure her perfect protection.

Danger always creeps in where it is least expected; and it was all the more difficult to ward off in that no one knew whence it threatened.

Now that Essarès Bey was dead, who was continuing his work? Who had inherited the task of revenge upon Coralie announced in his last letter?

“Ah,” he said, in a low voice, “I understand what you mean!”

It gave them a thrill of inexpressible excitement to read their two names, which a friendly hand had, so to speak, sown; their two names united in pansy-flowers.

It was inexpressibly exciting too that he and she should always find themselves thus linked together, linked together by events, linked together by their portraits, linked together by an unseen force of will, linked together now by the struggling effort of little flowers that spring …

And now enough of words. Introduce me to Little Mother Coralie and let’s get to work! Make no mystery with her, captain,” he added, laughing. “Tell her my real name. I have nothing to fear:

Arsène Lupin has every woman on his side.

”

“There’s no but about it, captain: how else would you have it happen?

You see, the mistake people always make is to go looking for difficulties where there are none.

”

Does everything fit in so accurately? Benjamin Franklin, the uninterrupted conduit for the gold, the series of clues that reveal themselves of their own accord, the man and the bags meeting at Mantes, the Belle Hélène: no, it all worried me.

The cat was being choked with cream!

And then the gold escaping in a barge! All very well in times of peace, but not in wartime, in the face of the regulations: passes, patrol-boats, inspections and I don’t know what.

“Ready for what?” said Don Luis, replying to his unspoken question. “Why, for the great journey, of course! Your passport is in order. Your ticket’s taken:

Paris to Hell, single. Nonstop hearse. Sleeping-coffin. Step in, sir!

”

No, not such a fool! No, Patrice, you will never find her. The gold is stifling her. She’s dead! Coralie is dead! Oh, the delight of throwing that in your face! The anguish you must be feeling! Coralie is dead! Coralie is dead!”

“Don’t shout so, you’ll wake her,” said Don Luis, calmly.

The brief sentence was followed by a sort of stupor which paralyzed the two adversaries. Patrice’s arms dropped to his sides. Siméon turned giddy and sank into a chair. Both of them, knowing the things of which Don Luis was capable, knew what he meant.

“Well, of course!” said Don Luis. “When you shout too loud, you wake people up.”

“You can’t wake the dead, whatever people may say. You can only wake the living.”

“Coralie is alive! Coralie is alive!” Patrice repeated, in a sort of rapture that transfigured his features. “Can it be possible? But then she must be here! Oh, I beg of you, say you’re in earnest, give me your word!

Who would dream of digging a hole in it to see what is going on inside? The dogs sniff at it, the children play beside it and make mudpies, an occasional tramp lies down against it and takes a snooze.

The rain softens it, the sun hardens it, the snow whitens it all over; but all this happens on the surface, in the part that shows.

Inside reigns impenetrable mystery, darkness unexplored. There is not a hiding-place in the world to equal the inside of a sand heap exposed to view in a public place.

The rain softens it, the sun hardens it, the snow whitens it all over; but all this happens on the surface, in the part that shows.

Inside reigns impenetrable mystery, darkness unexplored.

There is not a hiding-place in the world to equal the inside of a sand heap exposed to view in a public place. The man who thought of using it to hide three hundred millions of gold, monsieur le président, knew what he was about.”

The rain softens it, the sun hardens it, the snow whitens it all over; but all this happens on the surface, in the part that shows. Inside reigns impenetrable mystery, darkness unexplored.

There is not a hiding-place in the world to equal the inside of a sand heap exposed to view in a public place.

The man who thought of using it to hide three hundred millions of gold, monsieur le président, knew what he was about.”

“For what? For saving your life and saving Coralie’s? Don’t thank me.

It’s a hobby of mine, saving people.

”

“And yet the truth is so obvious!” cried Don Luis. “

The most complex truths are always so simple!

Look here, don’t you understand anything? Just think of the way in which the problem is set. For sixteen or eighteen years, Siméon Diodokis behaves like a perfect friend, devoted to the pitch of self-denial, in short, like a father.