“And the man you had met was one of the old school, too, Madame Fouache!”
“Yes, Madame Michat, there wasn’t much my Adrien didn’t know about good manners. He wasn’t just anybody, you may be sure of that. But all the same, whatever you may say, it’s the women who make the men, isn’t it!”
“That’s true, that’s true, Madame Fouache!”
“Well, all I can tell you is, no one has ever shown me any want of respect!”
“Nor me, Madame Lagousse, I need hardly say!”
“The women who get that sort of thing, it’s always their own fault!”
“Of course it is!”
“You never said a truer thing, Madame Poipanel!”
“They’re just good-for-nothings.”
“Nasty-minded creatures!”
“Or curious! And you know, really. . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well, you do hear a lot about all those things. But when you get to close quarters . . .”
“It’s a wretched disappointment!”
“There’s simply nothing to it!”
“I don’t know what all of you are like. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s never meant anything to me!”
“Nor me, Madame Michat. If it wasn’t a question of giving pleasure. . . .”
“And Christian duty, too.”
“And keeping your husband to yourself, so that he doesn’t go trotting off somewhere else.”
“You’re right there!”
“And imagine enjoying it!”
“You’d have to be made in a funny sort of way!”
“It’s just drudgery!”
‘Don’t you agree, Madame Fouache?”
‘Most certainly I got on very happily when I had to go without. And I may tell you that my Adrien wasn’t at all persistent.”
“You were lucky. Just think of it, there have been women who’ve died from it!”
“Oh, Madame Lagousse! Died from it?”
“Yes, Madame Poipanel, and I could mention names, too! Mind you, there are men who arc never satisfied! You knew that woman Trogneulon—lower town, she was—who ended up in the hospital, seventeen years ago it was, now. That’s what she died from, Madame Poipanel, they’ll tell you so. Whole nights with a madman, think of it! It sent her clean off her head. After a time she got the hysterics, and was always crying.”
“When it gets as far as that, it’s just an illness!”
“Awful!”
“Worse than animals!”
“Women are helpless creatures. We never know what we shall be up against.”
“By the way, Madame Fouache, do they know who Rose Bivaque went wrong with?”
“I’ll tell you the whole story. But don’t repeat it. It was a young soldier who always smokes made-up cigarettes. Claudius Brodequin.”
“Oh, but he’s with his regiment, Madame Fouache!”
“But he was here in April, for the inauguration. (A soldier who always buys cigarettes in packets, of course I should notice him.) That only shows you it doesn’t take long nowadays for girls to go off the rails. Will you take a little one, ladies? My treat.”
The women to whom we have just been listening were merely gossips, readier for tittle-tattle than for action, and excelling in the utterance of groans, cries of dismay, and lamentations in chorus. But apart from these, the pious women were getting ready for action, recruited and led by Justine Putet, who by this time was swarthier, yellower, more ill-tempered, and more angular than ever. She was going from house to house, from kitchen to kitchen, sowing the good seed.
“What a shocking business! What a horrible thing! A Child of Mary, Madame! With all that filthy behavior in the alley it was bound to happen sooner or later. I said it would! And Heaven alone knows what it has done for the other children! They have all been corrupted. . . .”
Such was her persistency that the mournful procession of women forlorn, of women embittered, of women who had grown stale—of all those women who had never brought forth, had never known the joys of motherhood—rapidly lengthened. Each and all were loud in their denunciations of the scandal, and so vehement were they that the Curé Ponosse, who had now been accused of publicly aiding and abetting concupiscence, was compelled, whether he would or no, to give his patronage to these ladies and their vituperations. A crusade was undertaken from the pulpit against the urinal, the cause of all the evil which, by attracting the boys to a spot where the girls had to pass, had incited the latter to a shameful traffic with the Devil.
This question of the urinal grew to such proportions that it split Clochemerle into opposing factions. Violent divisions sprang up. The Church party, whom we will call the Urinophobes, was headed by the notary Girodot and Justine Putet, under the haughty patronage of Baroness Courtebiche.
Of the opposite party, that of the Urinophiles, the shining lights were Tafardel, Beausoleil, Dr. Mouraille, Babette Manapoux, and her friends. They were under the protection of Barthélemy Piéchut, who took no active part but reserved to himself the right of making important decisions. Conspicuous among the Philes were also the Toumignons and the Torbayons, whose feelings in this affair were based on commercial interests; for the men of the town, on coming out of the urinal, frequently took the opportunity of going into the Torbayon Inn or the Beaujolais Stores, both of which were close at hand, and they spent money there.
By joining the party of the Phobes, a man like Anselme Lamolire was taking up a position hostile to Barthélemy Piéchut. As for the remainder of the population, its attitude was determined chiefly by the position which the women occupied in their own homes. In all instances where it was they who ruled the roost—and this was as often the case at Clochemerle as anywhere else—the Church party was favored. Lastly there came the waverers, the neutrals, and the indifferent. Among the latter was Mile. Voujon, the postmistress, who had no interests on either side. As for Mme. Fouache, she listened attentively to everything she heard and sympathized with both sides alternately, with encouraging exclamations such as, “Yes, to be sure!” and so on; but she did not declare herself officially in favor of anyone. Tobacco, a Government monopoly, had to hold itself superior to party strife. If the Philes were great consumers of scaferlati, the majority of the cigar smokers were recruited from the ranks of the Phobes. The Baroness Courtebiche ordered whole boxes of expensive cigars for her guests. The notary Girodot also bought them.
While angry passions were grouping themselves and awaiting the moment to burst forth, the signs of little Rose Bivaque’s coming maternity were now growing so evident as to constitute an impudent defiance of all good principles. In due course she would give birth to a new little citizen of Clochemerle, and no one could tell whether he would be baptized as a Bivaque or a Brodequin or with the name of a third miscreant who, under cover of the warm spring nights, had also involved himself in this obscure and dubious affair. For evil tongues, as will be readily believed, were given free rein and inordinately exaggerated the poor little thing’s wrongdoing.
But Rose Bivaque, with her simple mind and healthy organism which remained undisturbed by her discomforts, was but little distressed by the loss of her status as a Child of Mary. The blissfully unconscious little creature had, at this stage of her pregnancy, a glitter about her that was truly touching, even enviable, which made it impossible not to smile when one looked at her, and want to encourage her in her coming maternity. That glitter of hers was exactly the thing which the women who were not themselves exposed to criticism found hardest to forgive her. But Rose Bivaque could not understand hatred. She was awaiting her Claudius Brodequin, whose arrival might be expected at any moment.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ARRIVAL OF
Claudius Brodequin
AT ABOUT FOUR o’clock in the afternoon, in the torrid heat of the month of August, a train came to a stop in Clochemerle station. A solitary traveler emerged from it, a soldier in the uniform of the light infantry, wearing a lance corporal’s stripe on his sleeve.
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br /> “Hullo, Claudius, so you’ve turned up?” the ticket collector says to him.
“Yes, it’s me, Jean-Marie!” the soldier replies.
“Just in time for the fête, you scoundrel!”
“Just, Jean-Marie!”
“And a damn fine fête it’ll be at Clochemerle, with weather like this!”
“A damn fine fête—just what I’m thinking, too.”
Between Clochemerle station and the town, the road goes uphill, with a number of sharp bends, for a distance of five kilometers. Nearly an hour’s walk for a soldier who steps out well, like a light-infantryman, with the best military step in the world and the most lively. So Claudius Brodequin takes to the road, and there is a friendly grating sound as he crunches it beneath his solid well-nailed boots, which are easy to his feet.
It is always a pleasure to return to the place where one was born, especially when there is a good time in prospect. Claudius is in a happy frame of mind, because he is proud of his uniform, his dark uniform with its lance corporal’s stripe, and because he is to be promoted corporal before his service ends, and corporal of light infantry, the best kind of corporal there is. A good soldier, a good light-infantryman, well thought of by his company officer, a quick and resourceful fellow—such is Claudius Brodequin, with his beret, his smart light-infantryman’s tunic, and his light-infantryman’s calves, which are the finest calves in the army, the finest calves in all the armies in the whole world, the most ample, the best shaped, the best curved in the right place. Cloth calves, admittedly, but still. . . . Not to everyone is it given to have well-rolled puttees, and twice as much cloth on your calves as the ordinary footslogger, who rolls his puttees flat without crossing them, which makes his ankles bunchy and his legs straight all the way up—calfless legs you might call them.
Any self-confidence that Claudius Brodequin may possess, he derives from his calves. To be a good walker, a good climber, you must have good calves, big ones: this is a well-known fact, and it is equally well known, that the value of an infantry soldier depends on his capacity for marching for long periods at a steady pace. And Claudius Brodequin can march like that, Claudius Brodequin, lance corporal in the light infantry, who never gets tired, who can march with the light-infantryman’s step, the most alert step there is, and the smartest of all for a parade.
When he is with his regiment, he is light-infantryman Brodequin, number 1103, a good light-infantryman as has been stated, but out of his element in spite of himself, deprived as he is there of all his usual points of contact. But now, finding himself again in touch with the old surroundings, he has the sensation, though he has only just arrived, of having become Claudius once more, a real Clochemerle lad, with the sole difference that he is more dissolute than he was before he left, having become somewhat of a breaker of hearts as the result of his life in barracks.
Rejoicing at the sight of slopes covered with flourishing vines, he congratulates himself at the thought that he will shortly be reaching the town. He looks forward to a round of excitement and pleasure, especially in connection with the anniversary; and he has a foretaste of hot buns, cool wine, feminine perspiration, and cigars with their bands of paper. He thinks, too, of the pleasure in store for him with Rose Bivaque, with her warm young breast over which his hands love to wander, while she makes a show of self-defense for form’s sake, saying but little, because she has but little to say and the pressure of hot hands has a stupefying effect; to such an extent that, when his conquest has proceeded so far, all else follows of itself. A good girl she is, with sweet gentle ways, and a real pleasure to hold in close embrace. Claudius Brodequin thinks of her. It is chiefly on her account that he has asked for leave.
When he is with his regiment, it is seldom that Claudius Brodequin does not pay his weekly visits to certain ladies. Such visits set a man up, and a good light-infantryman should always keep himself in good form. In this matter Claudius Brodequin is no idler, he does his full share. There can be no doubt of that. He is a light-infantryman with esprit de corps, and does all he can for the prestige of the regiment. Among the ladies he and his comrades have a wide reputation for the promptness and vigor of their exploits. Of these exploits Claudius Brodequin is at other times not a little proud. But now that he is once more under the genial sway of the atmosphere of his native countryside, if he gives a single thought of these garrison ladies, he mutters to himself: “They’re a nasty low lot, when all’s said and done!”
This observation is confirmed by the sight of the gentle hills of Beaujolais. Here, on the old familiar road on which he has so often come spinning down on his bicycle with the other lads, he thinks of the women of Clochemerle, who are not good-for-nothing pox-spreading prostitutes. No, the women of Clochemerle are quite a different story; they know how to be serious; they’re well-behaved; good for use as well as for pleasure, for cooking as well as for love (and there’s plenty of time for both); and lastly, they are women you don’t run risks with. Another difference is, all these good women are barred to strangers: the women of Clochemerle are only for Clochemerle men. True enough, it sometimes happens that they are for several men with only short intervals between, and that they’re not above repeating their little games; but with Clochemerle men only; it’s just a family affair, so to speak; good honest vinegrowers are the only ones who can give them work to do.
Claudius Brodequin is thinking of Rose Bivaque, that good Clochemerle girl, who later on will make a good Clochemerle woman; quiet, never noisy; have children, be able to make cabbage soup and a good stew, and keep the house clean; while he himself, Claudius, will be working in old Brodequin’s vines, his old dad, who’s still good for a day’s work, but who’ll end up in time by making a pair with the old woman, the two of ’em all knotted and twisted like the roots of an old tree, like you see so often. All that—Rose, the vines, a little house—it’s something fine to look forward to. And all he has to do, has Claudius Brodequin, is to wait for his promotion to corporal, yes, that’s all! After that, he’ll come back home quite a swell, and get on with the selling of good Clochemerle wine, and that gets a good price in good years.
On leaving the station, after a distance of three kilometers has been covered a turning is reached at which the traveler comes upon a view of Clochemerle, which lies above him. It seems almost as though one could touch the houses, but the wide bends and curves in the road have to be taken into account. As he gazes at his native town, Claudius Brodequin is thinking how he will soon be entering the main street, with his smart uniform and the shrewd knowing look of a man who has quitted his own little corner of the world and met with life in the big towns.
He knows that he will not be able to meet Rose Bivaque until nightfall—there are the girl’s parents, and the people who are always ready to gossip as soon as they see a boy and girl together. No need, therefore, to hurry as far as Rose is concerned. And the old Brodequins, his parents, live in one of the isolated houses which lie right at the farther end of Clochemerle about two hundred yards from the town hall. In these circumstances it would be a pity to go from one end of the town to the other without calling a halt. Claudius Brodequin has walked fast, and his uniform is heavy. He has unbuttoned his tunic and taken off his tie, but he is perspiring nevertheless. And that confounded sun is making him thirsty. He decides to go in and see Torbayon, the innkeeper, on his way, and have a drink. He will meet Adèle there. Suddenly he thinks of Adèle.
This reminds him of the time before his military service. Adèle has played a secret rôle in his life, a rôle which a youth of eighteen may assign to a woman who has passed her thirtieth birthday, and whose abundant physical attractions are landmarks which safeguard the imagination against barren or unfruitful flights. Some kind of excitement deep down within him leads Claudius Brodequin (though now he has his Rose) to think of Adèle. For the habits of one’s boyhood are not easily shed; and, among all the mental pictures he can conjure up, it is with that of Adèle that he feels most at ease in the conception
of certain erotic enterprises—which, in actual fact, he has never undertaken.
A mental picture can be controlled to a marvelous extent, far more so than a material body; it can be molded and transformed in every possible way at one’s leisure. In Claudius’ mind Rose stands for the safe and the durable, while the ripe opulence of Adèle Torbayon provides him with the material for fantasy and flights of the imagination. In a word, Adèle Torbayon is the kindly favorite of the little imaginary harem which Claudius Brodequin has collected in the course of various encounters, ever since the age of puberty has opened his eyes to certain aspects of the physical world. Thus it is that, while he steps out bravely for Clochemerle, Claudius Brodequin thinks once more with much pleasure of Adèle, a pleasure which may be readily understood.
Among the women who produce a certain effect upon the men, immediately after Judith Toumignon and a good second to her (for it is she, unquestionably, who bears away the palm) comes Adèle Torbayon. Opinion on that score is unanimous. Less beautiful than Judith, less dazzling to behold, but easier of approach (seeing that she runs a café), Adèle is a dark-haired, sturdy woman, a highly pleasing specimen of her type. Her ample bosom is a little uncontrolled, but this helps to send your mind wandering in her direction. When Adèle bends over to put the glasses on the tables, her bodice falls slightly away in an agreeable manner, and this posture, so suitable for a good hostess, gives her hinder parts, beneath the tightly stretched sateen, a prominence which makes an excellent effect—and is a great inducement to order another bottle. Another feature of Adèle’s great charm is this, that she sometimes allows one to touch her. It should be made clear, however, that this permission is not really a permission, that is to say, she appears to be inattentive and absent-minded, exactly what is required for the thing to be done in a decent sort of way.
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