Clochemerle

by Gabriel Chevallier

“What’s that, Tine?” answered this gentleman in cyclist’s breeches. “Why, you’re always steering smack into the others! Brake a little, or you’ll be skidding on the bend! Keep something up your sleeve for the winning post, Tine!”

  Such picturesque repartee as this was an unqualified success with an audience of boys who were easily impressed. But it should be recorded that, when subsequently left alone with Léontine, Fadet was distinctly less domineering in his talk, for there were no jokes when Madame Fadet, an orderly and methodical woman, kept her husband reminded of the exact condition of the bill book and of the till. It was she who controlled the finances of the firm of Fadet, and this was on the whole a great advantage to the business, for all Eugène’s spirit and dash would have been useless when the old gentlemen came with their satchels at the end of each month to collect the bills. Happily, the young people of Clochemerle knew nothing of these little details of internal administration. Gullible as they were, they could never have dreamed that the former rival of Ellegard could be regarded in private as “a silly idiot.” That he should have accepted such an estimate of himself would have been beyond their belief. Moreover, Fadet himself took every precaution to prevent his quarrels with his wife from being known.

  “She lets off a little steam when there are people around, all right! But I know a thing or two to keep her in order, when we’re together. . . .”

  A rather villainous way he had of closing his left eye exempted him from having to disclose these mysterious means that he employed in private. It was this that enabled him to hold continued sway over the group of young sportsmen at Clochemerle who invaded his shop every evening. But the freezing glances of Madame Fadet ended by routing the most fearless of them. Taking Fadet with them, they went off in a body and took refuge in the Skylark Café, near the main square (kept by Josette, a woman with a bad reputation), where they made a frightful din. All those who lived in that part of the town would say “There’s Fadet’s gang again!” Later on we shall see them in action.

  At the angle of the big turning, where one comes upon the vista of the valleys stretching away to the Saone, is situated the finest private house in Clochemerle, within walls surmounted by very decorative ironwork. This house has a wrought-iron gate, gravel paths, flower beds, trees of various species, and an English garden in which may be seen an arbor, a pond, a rock garden, comfortable armchairs, a croquet lawn, a hanging ball in which there is a reflection of the town, and lastly, a handsome flight of steps leading up to a veranda with flower stands. Here the pleasures of the eye are a more important consideration than ways and means, which implies a superfluity of the latter. This, in its turn, is the excuse for a luxurious squandering of land which might otherwise be bearing vines.

  It was here that the notary Girodot lived with his wife and his daughter, Hortense, a girl of nineteen. A son was just beginning a second year of “rhetoric” with the Jesuits, after two devastating failures for his bachelor’s degree, a disgrace which was carefully concealed from the rest of Clochemerle. A determined slacker, he was also rapidly becoming a spendthrift, terribly capricious and full of whims, both of which were deplorable propensities in a boy who was to become a notary. It must also be recorded, though no one at that time had any suspicion of it, that young Raoul Girodot had made a double resolution, first never to be a notary, second to live peacefully on the fortune amassed by several generations of cautious and farseeing Girodots. This fortune seemed likely to attain immoral proportions unless some young member of the family appeared in the nick of time, to redress the balance of human inequality by redistributing its capital wealth. The need to work was a feeling which Raoul Girodot had never experienced. Doubtless the great abuse of this faculty by his forbears had resulted in there not being the slightest portion left over for himself. Having devoted to profound and fruitful meditation on life in general the whole of the leisure which, from the age of fifteen, his idleness had procured for him, he had decided upon two objectives which, to his way of thinking, were the only ones worthy of a young gentleman of means. These objectives were the possession of a racing car and a blonde girl friend of ample proportions, his preference for opulence of form being a reaction against the proverbial leanness of the Girodot women, and another symptom of his intention to break with the traditions of his family. This indolent young student had an unexpected strength of character: his reserves of will power were capable of wearing down any opposition he might encounter. He cared nothing for his bachelor’s degree and he never got it; but he always had plenty of money in his pocket. Later on he secured the car and the blonde girlfriend, the one carrying the other, while the two of them together enabled him in a very short space of time—with the aid of poker, it is true—to run up a debt of two hundred and fifty thousand francs. Hortense, the daughter, turned out badly too, and the fault was decidedly hers, for she had received plenty of good advice. But she obeyed the impulses of a dangerously romantic nature, to the extent of reading a great deal, especially poetry. The result was that she fell in love with a penniless youth, the direst retribution than can befall young girls who have ignored parental warnings. This, however, is a digression. We shall return to it later.

  The Girodots were a strange family. They were very rich, and had been notaries from father to son for four generations. The great-grandfather had been a man of fine appearance, sound in judgment and habitually outspoken. But the succeeding generations, by marrying fortunes rather than women, had debased their own stock. A saying of Cyprien Beausoleil’s gives a good explanation of this development: “The Girodots are a breed that do their love-making in the slits of money boxes.” Money can procure everything except a fine and noble physique. By the system referred to, the Girodots became increasingly yellow-complexioned, shriveled, and dried-up, till they resembled the old parchments in their own archives. Of this physical decadence Hyacinthe Girodot was a striking example, with his unhealthy complexion, thin legs, and narrow shoulders.

  If we are to take Tony Byard’s word for it, Girodot was nothing but “a wretched skinflint and moneygrubber, a talebearing sneak with some extremely nasty habits,” a man who could never give disinterested advice, and who made muddles of his clients’ affairs with considerable profit to himself. Certainly Tony Byard, who had come out of the war badly mutilated and been discharged on the highest scale of pension, was in a good position to know Girodot thoroughly, having been an articled clerk in his office for ten years before 1914. The two men had, however, been on bad terms for some years past, and Tony Byard’s assertions should therefore be accepted with reserve. The disabled man thought that he had cause for grievance against his former employer, and this attitude of mind doubtless involves some lack of balance in his judgments. As a conscientious chronicler should, we will now indicate the origin of these alleged grievances.

  When a crippled Tony Byard reappeared at Clochemerle in 1918, he paid a visit to Girodot. The notary welcomed him effusively, spoke of his magnificent courage, called him a hero, and assured him of the whole country’s gratitude and the lasting glory which his wounds would bring him. He even offered to take him back into his office, at a salary fixed, of course, on a basis of the diminished value of service which Tony’s disabilities would entail. But the latter replied that he had a pension. Finally, after a cordial conversation lasting for half an hour, Girodot said to his former clerk: “Well, on the whole you have not come out of it badly”; and as he showed him out with these consoling words, he slipped a ten-franc note into his hand as he bade him good-by. That remark of Girodot’s, the ten-franc note, and the offer of employment at a reduced rate constituted Tony Byard’s grievances.

  Was Tony Byard justified in taking offense? Girodot’s mind, while he was talking to him, was centered as usual on money. But Tony Byard in listening to him was thinking of anything but that. It could not be said that, from his customary point of view, Girodot was wrong. To be earning one hundred and forty-five francs a month when war was declared, with no better prospect tha
n that of reaching two hundred and twenty-five francs at the age of fifty, and then to return home four years later with a yearly income of eighteen thousand—well, from a financial point of view that may be described as a good stroke of business. Girodot’s conclusions were, in fact, arrived at on purely financial grounds. But Tony Byard—egotistically, no doubt—had no thought in his mind but this, that he had gone to the war in full possession of four limbs and had returned, at the age of thirty-three, with only two, after the amputation of his left forearm, and his right leg at the knee. He felt that his usefulness as an individual had undoubtedly diminished. On the other hand, he refused to consider that eighteen thousand francs a year for the leg and forearm of a humble clerk in a country office was a good, even an excessive, price to pay. He did not take into account what it would have cost the country if he had been blinded, and it was precisely that which Girodot (who thought more lucidly because he himself was intact and had never ceased to apply his intelligence to economic problems) had in mind.

  In 1921 Girodot, who was a methodical man and kept entries of all transactions, had the curiosity to make a reckoning of all his expenditures occasioned by the war. By this is meant gifts to individuals and subscriptions to charitable objects. He made a minute examination of his old notebooks, and thereby reached a total, between the month of August 1914 and the end of 1918, of nine hundred and twenty-three francs fifteen centimes which he would not have disbursed except for the war (though he had made no reductions in his customary almsgiving or his contributions to church expenses). It should at the same time be mentioned that this generosity found compensation in the increased value of all his property. In conjunction with these calculations, he made a computation of his total assets. By an estimate, at their current value, of his Clochemerle vineyards, his house, his notary’s practice, his property at Dombes, his Charollais estates, his woods, and his investments, he calculated that his fortune amounted to four million six hundred and fifty thousand francs (as against an estimate of about two million two hundred thousand francs in 1914), in spite of a loss of sixty thousand francs in Russian securities. As his mind that day was preoccupied with statistics, he took from a drawer in his writing table a small notebook bearing the inscription SECRET CHARITIES. The total under this heading amounted, during the war years, to thirty-three thousand francs. It must be explained that these charities of Girodot’s coincided with the dates of his journeys to Lyons, and had been bestowed, chiefly in the red-light quarter, on certain persons deserving of special interest on account of the alacrity they brought to bear on the act of disrobing, and the thoroughgoing freedom and familiarity of their behavior towards gentlemen of importance.

  As he reflected on these figures, Girodot said to himself, apropos of the nine hundred and twenty-three francs fifteen: “My impression was that I had given more”; and apropos of the thirty-three thousand francs: “I did not think I had gone so far.” Under the latter heading, he discovered that the preliminaries, with the meals, the champagne, the drives, and the occasional presents, had cost him more than the private interviews. But he knew that all these preparations were indispensable to the attainment of a suitable frame of mind. “After all,” he concluded, “I don’t get so many distractions, shut up here as I always am!” Then again he murmured smiling: “The charming rogues!” Then, as he compared the three totals—four million six hundred and fifty thousand francs, thirty-three thousand francs, and nine hundred and twenty-three francs fifteen, he remarked to himself: “I might have done a little more. . . . I certainly had a margin.”

  It will be seen, from the account we have just given, that the notary Girodot was a man above reproach. It is glaringly evident that Tony Byard’s insinuations were slanderous and inspired by feelings of resentment. Happily, the estimates formed at Clochemerle of Girodot’s character were not based upon Tony Byard’s accounts of him. He was the most prominent of the “right-thinking men.” The term is not at all easily definable and has shades of meaning which vary with the locality. Generally speaking, one may say that it presupposes wealth (it would never occur to anybody to apply it to a poor man, so naturally do our minds refuse to admit any connection between the terms “thought” and “poverty”), but a wealth used with kindliness and generosity tempered by moderation and prudence, the actions of its possessor springing naturally and harmoniously from his convictions.

  Girodot was regarded at Clochemerle as the leading representative of the professional or middle class, for several generations of rich Girodots had preceded him in that dignified situation. Apart from the notary, this class was hardly represented in the town, all the inhabitants being owner vinegrowers or merely cultivators who had made money. Girodot thus occupied a special position, midway between the aristocracy, as represented by the Courtebiche family, and the rest of the population. Following the example of the château, he entertained the Curé Ponosse at his table, and his ambition would have been to see the Baroness herself there. But that noble personage refused to come. Although she had transferred a portion of her interests from her notaries in Paris and Lyons to Girodot, she declined to treat the latter other than as a mere manager of her property. She invited him occasionally to the château—in the manner of a reception at Court in olden days—but would no more have visited him than she would have the curé.

  The Baroness had certain fixed principles of proved efficacy in the matter of upholding her rank. It is beyond question that when the different classes of society associate too much with each other, the distinctions between them begin to fade, and the whole hierarchy becomes undermined. The Baroness’ commanding position was founded on the infrequency of any manifestation of sympathy on her part. In her relations with the notary, whose fortune was continually increasing while her own was growing less, she would make no concessions whatever. “Upon my word!” she would say, “if I started dining with him I should soon find myself being patronized by that provincial quill driver.” These refusals on the Baroness’ part were a source of real grief to Girodot. He even went so far as to forego a proportion of his fees for transactions carried out on his client’s behalf, in the hope that these reductions would induce her to abandon her scornful treatment of him. But this matter only served to show the difference in their origin. The haughty Baroness could not endure a man who spent his time in conducting bargains.

  On the other hand the notary Girodot was happy in being particularly esteemed by the inhabitants of Clochemerle. He inspired them with feelings of respect not unmixed with fear, as did also Ponosse, the dispenser of heavenly privileges, and Mouraille, the protector of lives. But the question of life and death is one that seldom arises, while that of eternity presents itself only once in the course of our existence, at the very end of it, when our earthly career has come to a full close. The question of money, on the other hand, confronts us unceasingly from morning till night, from childhood to old age. In the brains of Clochemerle’s inhabitants, the idea of profit hammered away with the rhythmical insistence of the blood in their arteries, with the result that the ministrations of Girodot outweighed in importance those of both Ponosse and Mouraille; and this priority gave the notary prestige. His soundings of the hearts and minds of Clochemerle were doubtless those that went deepest. For there may have been people in the town who were never ill, and others who cared nothing for eternity, but not a single person would you find there who was free from care where money was concerned or who needed no advice for the investment of his little hoard.

  Girodot went to Mass, received the sacrament at Easter, and read only good newspapers. He was constantly saying: “In our profession one must inspire confidence.” As regards his health, Hyacinthe Girodot was subject to caries, boils, tumors, and, generally speaking, to those ills which bring suppuration. Further, since the age of forty-three, he was liable to attacks of rheumatism attributed to a microbe. The microbe had asserted itself in Girodot’s organism four days after one of his “secret charities.” It was suppressed but not entirely destroyed,
finding in the notary’s arthritic tissues a highly favorable lurking place. These repeated and most uncomfortable attacks, which necessitated a diagnosis compatible with the moral tranquillity of Madame Girodot and the notary’s own good reputation, placed the latter entirely at the mercy of Dr. Mouraille, whose discretion he recognized by reserving for him the best mortgages in his practice.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A TRIUMPHAL

  Inauguration

  ONE FINE MORNING, like a charming troubadour luring the ladies of olden times to their windows in eager curiosity, springtime made its first appearance, a full fortnight before the time appointed for the rise of the curtain by those whose task it is to stage the seasons. Springtime, in the guise of a page with the tender softness and pert arrogance of boyhood, offered the women nosegays of violets; and, as he did so, painted their cheeks with peach-bloom and gave them sweet provocation, leaving them abashed and shy, with sighs half suppressed, but deeply stirred by gladness and fond anticipation; while on their lips there lingered still a taste of fruit, of flowers, and of love.

  It began with a rise in the temperature. During the night of the 5th April, 1923, a northerly breeze, which arrived laden with the perfume of Burgundy, had a vast washing day in the heavens, scattering far and wide the dark snowflakes. These had traveled eastwards on the previous day, and saddened the dwellers in Clochemerle, as they drifted towards the Azergues mountains, barely visible amid the damp haze of dark clouds and intermittent rain. In a single night the sweepers of the sky had made a grand clearance, had spread out the banners and prepared the pageant of spring. And the sun, in the empyrean that stretched away to infinity, reveled in it to his heart’s content and glittered and shone without restraint. He shed his genial influence on the little twigs and flowering buds, brought boldness to the young men and softness to the girls, made the old people less cross-grained and faultfinding, the parents more understanding, the policemen a little less stupid, the righteous people and pious women a little more tolerant, the thrifty less careful of their money; in a word, opened all hearts. Willy-nilly, one had to wink at the rascal, who was almost shattering the Chemist Poilphard’s green and scarlet bowls in his joy. Mme. Fouache was selling more tobacco, the Torbayon Inn was crammed to overflowing every evening, the Curé Ponosse was getting more at his collections, Dr. Mouraille was curing every patient, Girodot was drawing up marriage contracts, Tafardel was making better citizens and his breath was smelling of mignonette, Piéchut was secretly rubbing his hands, while on the half-bare breast of the lovely Judith it seemed that the goddess of morning, in overwhelming languor, had fallen asleep.