This year he had succeeded better than ever in the capitalist circle. It was known that he was opposed to the income tax, which in private conversation he had felicitously described as inquisitorial. At Valcombe, therefore, he was the recipient of the congratulations of a grateful society, and Madame Delion smiled on him, softening for him her steel-blue eyes and her majestic forehead crowned with bandeaux of iron-grey.
On leaving his room, where he had been dressing for dinner, he saw the lissom figure of Madame de Gromance gliding along the dark corridor, with a rustle of clothes and jewels. In the dusk her bare212 shoulders seemed barer than ever. He frisked forward to overtake her, seized her by the waist and kissed her on the neck. When she freed herself hurriedly, he said to her in reproachful accents:
“Why so cruel to me, Countess?”
Then she gave him a box on the ears which surprised him greatly.
On the ground-floor landing he came upon Noémi, who, very seemly in her dress of black satin covered with black tulle, was slowly drawing her long gloves over her arms. He made a friendly little sign to her with his eye. He was a good husband, and regarded his wife with a good deal of esteem and some admiration.
She deserved it, for she had need of rare tact not to ruffle the anti-Jewish society of Valcombe. And she was not unpopular there. She had even won their sympathy. And what was most astonishing, she did not seem an outsider.
In that great cold provincial salon she assumed an awe-stricken face and a placid demeanour which produced a doubt of her intelligence, but proclaimed her honest, sweet, and good. With Madame Delion and the other women, she admired, approved, and held her tongue. And if a man of some intelligence and experience entered into a tête-à-tête with her, she made herself still more demure, modest, and timid, with downcast eyes; then suddenly she hurled some213 broad jest at him, which tickled him by its unexpectedness, and which he regarded as a special favour, coming from so prim a mouth and so reserved a mind. She captivated the hearts of the old sparks. Without a gesture, without a movement, without the flutter of a fan, with an imperceptible quiver of her eyelashes and a swift pursing of the lips, she insinuated ideas that flattered them. She made a conquest of M. Mauricet himself, who, great connoisseur as he was, said of her:
“She has always been plain, she is no longer even attractive, but she is a woman.”
M. Worms-Clavelin was placed at table between Madame Delion and Madame Laprat-Teulet, wife of the senator of?… Madame Laprat-Teulet was a sallow little woman, whom one always seemed to be looking at through gauze, so soft were her features. As a young girl, she had been steeped in religion as if it had been oil. Now, the wife of a clever man who had married her for her fortune, she wallowed in unctuous piety, while her husband devoted his energies to the anti-clerical and secular parties. She gave herself up to endless petty tasks. And deeply attached as she was to her wedded condition, when a demand was lodged before the Senate for the authorisation of judicial proceedings against Laprat-Teulet and several other senators, she offered two candles in the Church of Saint-Exupère, before the painted statue214 of Saint Anthony, in order that by his good offices her husband’s opponents might be non-suited. And it was in that way that the affair ended. A pupil of Gambetta, M. Laprat-Teulet had in his possession certain small documents, a photographic reproduction of which he had sent at a timely moment to the Keeper of the Seals. Madame Laprat-Teulet, in the zeal of her gratitude, had a marble slab put up, as a votive-offering, on the wall of the chapel, with this inscription drawn up by the venerable M. Laprune himself: To Saint Anthony from a Christian wife, in gratitude for an unexpected blessing. Since then M. Laprat-Teulet had retrieved his position. He had given serious pledges to the Conservatives, who hoped to utilise his great financial talents in the struggle against socialism. His political position had become satisfactory again, provided he affronted no one and did not seize the reins of power for himself.
And with her waxen fingers Madame Laprat-Teulet embroidered altar-frontals.
“Well, madame,” said the préfet to her, after the soup, “are your good works prospering? Do you know that, after Madame Cartier de Chalmot, you are the lady in the department who presides over the largest number of charities?”
She made no answer. He recollected that she was deaf, and, turning towards Madame Delion:
215 “Tell me, I beg you, madame, about Saint Anthony’s charity. It was this poor Madame Laprat-Teulet who made me think of it. My wife tells me it is a new cult that is becoming the rage in the department.”
“Madame Worms-Clavelin is right, my dear sir. We are all devoted to Saint Anthony.”
Then they heard M. Mauricet, in reply to a sentence lost in the noise, say to M. Delion:
“You flatter me, my dear sir. The Puits-du-Roi, very much neglected since Louis XIV.’s time, is not to be compared with Valcombe for its sport. There is very little game there. Still, a poacher of rare skill, named Rivoire, who honours the Puits-du-Roi with his nocturnal visits, kills plenty of pheasants there. And you’ve no idea what an extraordinary old blunderbuss he shoots them with. It’s a specimen for a museum! I owe him thanks for having one day allowed me to examine it at leisure. Imagine a?…”
“I am told, madame,” said the préfet, “that the worshippers address their requests to Saint Anthony in a sealed paper, and that they make no payment until after the blessing demanded has been received.”
“Don’t jest,” replied Madame Delion; “Saint Anthony grants many favours.”
“It is,” continued M. Mauricet, “the barrel of an old musket which has been cut through and mounted216 on a kind of hinge, so that it rocks up and down, and?…”
“I thought,” replied the préfet, “that Saint Anthony’s speciality was finding lost articles.”
“That is why,” answered Madame Delion, “so many requests are made to him.”
And she added, with a sigh:
“Who, in this world, has not lost a precious possession? Peace of heart, a conscience at rest, a friendship formed in childhood or?… a husband’s love? It is then that one prays to Saint Anthony.”
“Or to his comrade,” added the préfet, whom the ironmaster’s wines had elated, and who in his innocence was confusing Saint Anthony of Padua with Saint Anthony the hermit.
“But,” asked M. de Terremondre, “this Rivoire is known as the poacher to the prefecture, is he not?”
“You are mistaken, Monsieur de Terremondre,” replied the préfet. “He has a still more honourable appointment as poacher to the Archbishopric. He supplies Monseigneur’s table.”
“He also consents to put his skill at the service of the court,” said President Peloux.
M. Delion and Madame Cartier de Chalmot were conversing together in low tones:
“My son Gustave, dear lady, is going to serve his military term this year. I should so much217 like him to be placed under General Cartier de Chalmot.”
“Do not set your heart on that, monsieur. My husband hates favouritism, and he is chary of granting leave; he expects lads of good family to show an example of work. And he has imbued all his colonels with his principles.”
“… And the barrel of this musket,” continued M. Mauricet, “corresponds with no recognised bore, so that Rivoire can only make use of undersized cartridges. You can easily imagine?…”
The préfet was unfolding certain arguments calculated to bring Madame Delion completely over to the government, and he concluded with this noble thought:
“At the moment when the Czar is coming on a visit to France, it is necessary that the Republic should identify itself with the upper classes of the nation in order to put them in touch with our great ally, Russia.”
Meanwhile, with the calm of a Madonna, Noémi was kissing feet with M. le président Peloux, who had been feeling about for hers under the table.
Young Gustave Delion was saying in a low voice to Madame de Gromance:
“I hope that this time you will not keep me hanging about as you did on the day when you were playing the fool with that dotard of a Mauricet, whilst218 I had no other amusement in your yellow drawing-room than to potter with the works of the clock.”
“What an excellent woman Madame Laprat-Teulet is!” exclaimed Madame Delion in a sudden outburst of affection.
“Excellent,” said the préfet, swallowing a quarter of a pear. “It is a pity that she is as deaf as a post. Her husband also is an excellent man, and very intelligent. I am glad to see that people are beginning to readjust their views of him. He has gone through a difficult time. The enemies of the Republic wanted to compromise him in order to discredit the government. He has been the victim of schemes that aimed at excluding from Parliament the leading men belonging to the business world. Such an exclusion would lower the level of national representation and would be in all respects deplorable.”
For a moment he remained thoughtful; then he said sadly:
“Besides, no further scandals can be hatched; no more charges are being trumped up. And there we have one of the most grievous results of this campaign of calumny, carried on with unheard-of audacity.”
“Perhaps it is as well!” sighed Madame Delion, thoughtfully and meaningly.
Then suddenly, with a burst of fervour:
219 “Monsieur le préfet, give us back our dear religious orders, let our Sisters of Charity return to the hospitals and our God to the schools whence you have expelled Him. No longer prevent our rearing our sons as Christians and?… we shall be very near to a mutual understanding.”
Hearing these words, M. Worms-Clavelin flung up his hands, as well as his knife, on which was a morsel of cheese, and exclaimed with heartfelt sincerity: “Good God! madame, don’t you see that the streets of the county town are black with curés, and that there are monks behind all the gratings? And as for your young Gustave, damn it! it isn’t I who prevent him from going to mass all day instead of running after the girls!”
M. Mauricet was finishing his description of the marvellous blunderbuss, amid the clatter of voices, the echo of laughter, and the little tinkling taps of silver upon china.
M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin, who was in a hurry to smoke, passed out first into the billiard-room. He was soon joined there by President Peloux, to whom he held out a cigar:
“Have one, do! They are capital.”
And in reply to M. Peloux’s thanks, showing the box of regalias, he answered:
“Don’t thank me; it is one of our host’s cigars.”
This joke was one of his stock ones.
220 At last M. Delion appeared, leading the bulk of the guests, who with greater gallantry had been chatting for a few minutes with the ladies. He was listening approvingly to M. de Gromance, who was explaining to him how necessary it was in shooting to calculate distances accurately.
“For instance,” he said, “on uneven ground a hare seems relatively distant, whilst, on level ground, it seems nearer by more than fifty metres. It is on this account that?…”
“Come,” said M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin, taking down a cue from the rack, “come, Peloux, shall we play a game?”
M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin was a pretty fair stroke at billiards; but M. le président Peloux gave him points. A little Norman attorney who, at the close of a disastrous estate case, had been forced to sell his practice, he had been appointed a judge at the time when the Republic was purging the magistracy. Sent from one end of France to the other, in courts where the knowledge of the law had almost disappeared, his skill in sharp practice made him useful, and his ministerial relations secured him advancement. Yet everywhere a vague rumour of his past pursued him, and people refused to treat him with respect. But luckily he was wise enough to know how to endure persistent rebuffs. He bore affronts placidly. M. Lerond, deputy attorney-general,221 now a barrister at the bar at?…, said of him in the Salle des Pas-Perdus: “He is a man of intelligence who knows the distance between his seat and the prisoner’s dock.” Yet that public approval which he had not sought, and which evaded him, had at length, by a sudden recoil, come of its own accord. For the last two years the whole society of the district had looked upon President Peloux as an upright magistrate. They admired his courage when, smiling placidly between his two pale assessors, he had condemned to five years’ imprisonment three confederate anarchists, guilty of having distributed in the barracks bills exhorting the nations to fraternise.
“Twelve—four,” announced M. le président Peloux.
Having practised for a long time in the sleepy restaurant of a county town in a rural canton, he had learnt a close professional game. He raked his balls into a little corner of the billiard-table and brought off a series of cannons. M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin played in the broad, splendid, reckless style of the artist-cafés of Montmartre and Clichy. And laying the failure of his rash strokes to the charge of the table, he complained of the hardness of the cushions.
“At la Tuilière,” said M. de Terremondre, “in my cousin Jacques’ house, there is a billiard-table222 with pockets, which dates from Louis XV.’s time, in a very low vaulted hall, of soft, whitewashed stone, where this inscription is still to be read: ‘Gentlemen are requested not to rub their cues on the walls.’ It is a request to which no one has paid any attention, for the vaulting is pitted with a number of little round holes, whose origin is accurately explained by this inscription.”
M. le président Peloux was asked in several directions at once for details as to the affair in Queen Marguerite’s house. The murder of Madame Houssieu, which had excited all the district, was still arousing interest. Every one knew that a crushing weight of evidence hung over a butcher’s boy of nineteen, named Lec?ur, whom folks used to see twice a week entering the old lady’s house with his basket on his head. It was also known that the prosecution was detaining two upholsterers’ apprentices of fourteen and sixteen years of age as accomplices, and it was said that the crime had been committed in circumstances which made the story of it a particularly delicate one.
Being questioned on this point, M. le président Peloux lifted his round, ruddy head from the billiard-table and winked.
“The case is being tried in camera. The scene of the murder has been reconstructed in its entirety. I don’t believe that there is a doubt left as to the acts223 of debauchery which preceded the crime and facilitated the perpetration of it.”
He took up his liqueur glass, swallowed a mouthful of armagnac, smacked his lips, and said:
“Heavens! what velvet!”
And, when a circle of inquirers crowded round him asking for details, the magistrate, in a low voice, disclosed certain circumstances which provoked murmurs of surprise and grunts of disgust.
“Is it possible?” was the comment. “A woman of eighty!”
“The case,” answered M. le président Peloux, “is not unique. You may take my word for it after my experience as a magistrate. And the young scamps of the faubourgs know much more on this subject than we do. The crime in Queen Marguerite’s house is of a well-known, classified sort; I might call it a classic type. I immediately scented it out as senile debauchery, and I saw quite clearly that Roquincourt, the prosecuting counsel, was following a wrong track. He had naturally ordered the arrest of all the vagabonds and tramps found wandering within a wide circumference. Every one of them aroused suspicions; and what put the crowning touch to his mistake was that one of them, Sieurin, nicknamed Pied-d’Alouette, a regular old gaol-bird, made a confession.”
“How was that?”
224 “He was bored with solitary confinement. He had been promised a pipe of canteen tobacco if he confessed. He did confess. He told them all they wanted. This Sieurin, who has been sentenced thirty-seven times for vagabondage, is incapable of killing a fly. He has never committed robbery. He is a simpleton, an inoffensive creature. At the time of the crime, the gendarmes saw him on Duroc hill making straw fountains and cork boats for the school children.”
M. le président resumed his game.
“Ninety—forty.?… During this time, Lec?ur was telling all the girls in the Quartier des Carreaux that he had done the deed, and the keepers of disorderly houses were bringing to the police-inspector Madame Houssieu’s earrings, chain, and rings that the butcher-boy had distributed among their inmates. This Lec?ur, like so many other murderers, gave himself up. But Roquincourt, in a rage, left Sieurin, or Pied-d’Alouette, in solitary confinement. He is still there. Ninety-nine?… and one hundred.”
“Splendid!” said M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin.
“So,” murmured M. Delion, “this woman of eighty-three had still?… It is incredible!”
But Dr. Fornerol, agreeing with President Peloux’s opinion, declared that the case was not as unusual as they fancied, and he supplied the physiological explanation, which was listened to with interest. Then225 he went on to quote different cases of sexual aberrations and wound up in these words:
“If the devil on two sticks, lifting us up in the air, were to raise the roofs of the town before our eyes, we should see appalling sights, and we should be staggered at the discovery among our fellow-citizens of so many maniacs, degenerates, mad men and mad women.”
“Bah!” said M. Worms-Clavelin, the préfet, “one must not look too closely into that. All these people, taken one by one, are perhaps what you say; but together they form a superb mass of constituents and a splendid county-town population for the department.”
Now, on the raised divan which overlooked the billiard-table, Senator Laprat-Teulet sat caressing his long white beard. He had the majesty of a river.
“For my part,” said he, “I can only believe in goodness. Wherever I cast my eyes, I see virtue and honesty. I have been able to prove by numerous instances that the morals of the French women since the Revolution leave nothing to be desired, especially in the middle classes.”
“I am not so optimistic,” replied M. de Terremondre, “but I certainly did not suspect that Queen Marguerite’s house hid such shameful mysteries behind its walls of crumbling woodwork and beneath226 the cobweb-curtains of its mullioned windows. I went to see Madame Houssieu several times; she seemed to me a miserly and mistrustful old woman, a little mad, yet like so many others. But, as they used to say in the time of Queen Marguerite:
“She is under the sod.
Her soul be with God![M]
She will no longer, by her lewdness, blot the scutcheon of good Philippe Tricouillard.”
[M] “Elle est sous lame.
Dieu ait son ame!”
At that name a shout of merry laughter burst from their knowing faces. It was the secret joy and inward pride of the town, that emblematic shield, with its witness to the triple virtue and power that put this bourgeois ancestor of theirs on a level with the great condottiere of Bergamo. The people of?… loved him, their lusty forebear, the contemporary of the king in the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, their ancient alderman Philippe Tricouillard, about whom, to tell the truth, they knew nothing save the gift of nature to which he owed his illustrious surname.
The turn taken by the conversation led Dr. Fornerol to say that several instances had been cited of a similar anomaly, and that certain writers declare that at times this honourable monstrosity is transmitted hereditarily and becomes persistent in a family.227 Unluckily the line of the worthy Philippe had been extinct for more than two hundred years.
After this remark, M. de Terremondre, who was president of the Arch?ological Society, related a true anecdote.
“Our departmental archivist,” said he, “the learned M. Mazure, has recently discovered in the garrets of the prefecture some documents relating to a charge of adultery, brought, at the very period when Philippe Tricouillard was flourishing, towards the end of the fifteenth century, by Jehan Tabouret against Sidoine Cloche, his wife, for the reason that the aforesaid Sidoine, having had three children at a birth, Sieur Jehan Tabouret only acknowledged two of them as his, and maintained that the third was by another man, for he averred that he was constitutionally incapable of begetting more than two at a time. And he gave a reason for this, founded on an error then common among matrons, barber-surgeons, and apothecaries, who each as eagerly as the others professed to believe that the normal frame of a man was physiologically incapable of begetting more than twins, and that all over the number of pledges which the father can produce should be disowned. For this reason, poor Sidoine was convicted by the judge of having played the harlot, and for this put naked on an ass, with her head towards the tail, and thus led through the228 town to the pond at Les Evés, where she was ducked three times. She would scarcely have suffered thus if her wicked husband had been as generously gifted by Dame Nature as good Philippe Tricouillard.”