frère et soeur / emily brontë / wuthering heights


- I'Il tell you what I did yesterday! I got the sexton, who was digging Linton's grave, to remove the earth off her coffin-lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there : when I saw her face again--it is hers yet!--he had ~ hard work to stir me; but he said it would change if the air blew on it, and so I struck one side of the coffin loose, and covered it up: not Linton's side, damn him! I wish he'd been soldered in lead. And I bribed the sexton to pull it away when I'm laid there, and slide mine out too; I'll have it made so: and then, by the time Linton gets to us he'll not know which is which!'

`You were very wicked, Mr Heathcliff!' I exclaimed, `were you not ashamed to disturb the dead?'

`I disturbed nobody, Nelly,' he replied; `and I gave some ease to myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you'll have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years--incessantly--remorselessly--till yesternight; and yesternight I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.'

`And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then?' I said.

`Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still!' he answered.

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emily brontë, wuthering heights
chapitre 29
éditions penguin books ltd

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