Clochemerle

by Gabriel Chevallier

  Whatever may be said, these little irregularities had motives which sufficiently excused them. Through living in such close proximity, married people get to know each other too well, and the better they know each other the less there remains to discover, the less does their need of an ideal find satisfaction. Such need has to find another outlet. The men try to find it in their neighbors’ wives, where they discover something lacking in their own. Their imagination gets to work, their minds are full of the other man’s wife, and this puts them into a hopeless sort of condition. They become quite ill, sometimes half-demented. But of course, if their neighbor’s wife were handed over to them in place of their own, it would not be long before exactly the same thing happened, and their eyes would begin roving around all over again. In the same way, the women work themselves up over their neighbor’s husband because he looks at them, from envy or curiosity or both, more than their own who no longer gives them a glance—of course he doesn’t. They will never understand that while their man has stopped looking at them because he knows them all over, every inch, the other fellow, who is now unsettling them with his little attentions, has only got to poke his nose in pretty thoroughly to cease taking further interest in them. Unfortunately this sort of thoughtless indifference is part of human nature, it makes complications, and people are never satisfied.

  So it was that the fête each year provided an opportunity for the realization of dreams in which the people had been indulging for months in advance. Having left their homes behind them and mingled unreservedly with each other, they took full advantage of the occasion, knowing that all this freedom and lack of restraint would last but a short time. These little debauches, moreover, were not without their uses; for there can be no doubt that they acted as a safety valve for an excess of rancor by which certain minds would otherwise have become permanently embittered. In any case it should be emphatically stated that the malcontents were not in a majority. At Clochemerle, the greater number of the men put up with their wives, and the great majority of the women with their husbands. If this hardly amounted to adoration, in the majority of homes at any rate the men and the women found each other very nearly endurable. And that is saying a lot.

  So, as in previous years, the night of August 15th was spent in merrymaking until about three o’clock in the morning, at which hour the people began one after the other to go home. In the main square there remained only the irreclaimables, all of them valorous “Drinkers,” who had already indulged in excessive libations, which gave their sudden shouts and cries a strange resonance in the dawn. This cacophony was so offensive that the birds in their indignation removed themselves and their graceful music to the neighboring villages, leaving Clochemerle to its sounds of drunken revelry.

  On August 16th, at ten o’clock, the bells were rung for High Mass. All the women of Clochemerle made their way to the church in festive attire, as much from pious habit as to make a display of particularly becoming frocks. Details had been secretly thought out with a view to a striking impression when the new creations should appear in public on these ladies’ attractive persons. There were quantities of pink dresses, pale blue dresses, lemon-colored and light green dresses, all of them with short skirts and closely fitting at the back, as they were worn at that time, which gave one a sight of these valiant housewives’ sturdy legs. If one of them should bend down, with her hinder parts raised, in order to tie her bootlaces or button her little boy’s breeches, one had a sudden glimpse of a beautiful white ample thigh; and such spectacles as these were a great attraction for the men of Clochemerle, who had assembled in large numbers in the main street, where they took in every detail of this procession. This enabled them to make exact comparisons of the conjugal pleasures allotted to each one of them respectively.

  At the Torbayon Inn, which was a capital place for a view, there was a great crush of men in a somewhat excited state as the sequel to a variety of drinks, making a frightful noise, with much boasting and jokes of appalling breadth. Among them François Toumignon was especially conspicuous. Having drunk forty-three glasses of wine since the preceding day, he was still seven drinks behind Blazot, who had swallowed not less than fifty. He was telling everyone that he was certain of carrying off the title of Champion Drinker. This certainty was doubtless the result of intoxication.

  At about half-past ten the conversation turned to the subject of the urinal, and this was the signal for an outburst of heated feelings.

  “I’m told that Ponosse is going to preach against it in his sermon,” Torbayon put in.

  “He won’t say anything at all, don’t you worry!” declared Benoît Ploquin, a man who was always inclined to be skeptical.

  “He said he was going to, and that’s been repeated. That’s all I can say,” Torbayon insisted. “With old Putet pulling the strings, I shouldn’t be in the least surprised. . . .”

  “And what about Courtebiche—she’s probably somewhere around too!”

  “And Girodot, he’s never far behind when there’s any sneaking to be done!”

  “That means he may preach about it after all.”

  “Yes, I think he may!”

  “It’s been simmering in their minds for a long time!”

  “The end of it’ll be they’ll have the damned urinal taken away altogether, if the whole lot of ’em are against it. You mark my words.”

  After this last remark, thoughts of desperation and violence took possession of the fuddled brain of François Toumignon. Ever since his set-to with Justine Putet, everything that had to do with the urinal touched him on the raw. He rose from his seat, and, in the presence of this judicious assembly of men of Clochemerle, he uttered these solemn words, which committed him deeply:

  “Putet, Courtebiche, Girodot, Ponosse—they can all go to the devil! It’s against my own wall, the urinal is! I won’t have it taken away. I forbid it to be taken away. Yes, I forbid it!”

  Words full of exaggeration, and taken as such by the men whose minds were still clear and unfuddled. The more prudent among them grinned, and said:

  “I’m afraid you won’t be able to stop it, my poor François!”

  “You say I shan’t, Arthur? And what do you know about it? Well, I shall stop them!”

  “You’re not in your right mind, François, when you talk like that. Stop and think a moment. If the Curé Ponosse gets up and says things in the pulpit, at a High Mass too, and on a day like today, that’ll get the women and you’ll be helpless.”

  These words, spoken calmly, put the finishing touch to Toumignon’s irritation. He cried out:

  “I’ll be helpless, will I? Don’t you be too sure. . . . Well, I’m not a coward like some people, damned if I am! I can deal with old Ponosse, any time I like.”

  The more serious-minded men shrugged their shoulders in a momentary feeling of compassion. A voice was heard, giving him advice:

  “You’d better go and sleep it off, François! You’re blind to the world!”

  “Who dares to say I’m tight? He’s lying low, is he? And he’s wise, too! I’ll shut his mouth for him too, same as Ponosse’s!”

  “You’re telling us you’re going to shut Ponosse’s mouth, are you? And where’ll you do it?”

  “Slap in the middle of the church I’ll do it, by God I will!”

  At this point the husband of Judith was accorded a few moments of real attention. There was a dead silence. It was pretty desperate, what Toumignon was saying! Nevertheless it raised a hope as foolish as it was irresistible. Suppose something terrific were just about to happen? Why not? . . . just for once. . . . Assuredly none of those men believed all this boasting; still it awoke that desire which is always lying dormant in men’s hearts, that they may be witnesses of some scandalous upheaval, provided that they themselves are not the sufferers. This may be taken as the situation at that moment—a state of uncertainty, its sequel dependent on such words as might follow. Toumignon was standing upright, swelling with pride at the effect he had produced, this dumbf
ounded silence which was his own achievement; intoxicated by the feeling that he gripped his whole audience; prepared to go to any extremity if so he might retain this momentary prestige; but very ready also to sit down and say no more, to content himself with this easy triumph if it should be granted to him. There followed one of those rare and delicious moments of indecision when fate hangs in the balance.

  The fond hope cherished by the assembled company was on the point of vanishing into thin air. By ill chance their number included a treacherous fellow, Jules Laroudelle, one of those individuals with a greenish complexion, a countenance seared with dents and hollows, and a crooked crafty smile, one of those people who excel in driving a man to extremities by committing outrages on his vanity, and this with an air of sweet reasonableness and of seeming restraint. His thin unpleasant voice fell suddenly like salt upon the open wound of Toumignon’s pride and self-esteem:

  “There you go, there you go, François, like a bull in a china shop! You talk and talk, but you won’t do anything. If you’re shutting any mouths, you’d better start with your own!”

  “You think I’ll do nothing?”

  “You’re just a fool! You can blather away with the best of ’em, provided it’s at a distance. But when it comes to talking straight to a man, face to face with him, you’re no better than anyone else! Ponosse’ll say anything he darned well chooses in his own church without being afraid that you’ll interfere with him!”

  “D’you think I’m afraid of Ponosse?”

  “You’d eat out of his hand, my good friend! When the time comes for you to get into your coffin, you’ll send for Ponosse all right, prayers and all. You’d better go home to bed, talking nonsense like that. And if Judith catches you going out of here in that sort of state, you’re in for a bad time, my boy!”

  Laroudelle had shown great cunning. Such pacifying words could only have the worst possible effect on a conceited man. François Toumignon seized a bottle by the neck and brought it down on the table with such force as to make the glasses dance.

  “Damn it all!” he cried, “what d’you bet I don’t go straight off to the church?”

  “I’m ashamed of you, François!” his instigator replied, with a hypocritical pretense of disappointment. “Go home to bed, I tell you!”

  This was a fresh challenge to the touchy self-esteem of a drunken man. Toumignon banged down his bottle for the second time. He was raging.

  “What d’you bet I don’t go and speak straight out to Ponosse?”

  “What’ll you say to him?”

  “Tell him to go to hell!”

  A contemptuous silence was Jules Laroudelle’s only answer. It was accompanied, however, by a sad smile and a wink—designedly made obvious—by means of which this dangerous schemer invited all honest men to take note of the raving excesses of a madman. The insulting nature of these wordless signs drove François Toumignon into a towering rage:

  “Good God!” he shouted, “what d’you take me for—a lousy coward? He dares to tell me I won’t go, the little stinker! You’ll see whether I’ll go or not! You’ll see whether I’m afraid of speaking to Ponosse! You pudding-faces! You tell me I shan’t go? Well, I’m going now, this instant, off to the church! This instant, I say, I’m going off to tell the old devil-dodger what I think! Are you coming with me, you people?”

  Every man of them went. Arthur Torbayon, Jules Laroudelle, Benoît Ploquin, Philibert Daubard, Delphin Lagache, Honoré Brodequin, Tonin Machavoine, Reboulade, Poipanel, and others—a round twenty of them.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Scandal Breaks Out

  THE CURÉ HAD taken off his chasuble and wearing only his surplice over his cassock, he had just mounted to the pulpit with much difficulty and labor. His first words were “Dear brethren, let us pray.” He began with prayers for the dead and for the benefactors of the parish, and this allowed him to recover his breath. He made special intercession for all the inhabitants of Clochemerle who had died since the famous epidemic of 1431. When the prayers were ended the Curé Ponosse read out the announcements for the week and the banns of marriage. Finally, he read the Gospel for the Sunday, which he was to take as the theme of his address. His address that day had to be of a very special character, and so designed as to make a profound impression; it caused him a certain amount of anxiety. He read out the following passage:

  “And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”

  Then, after a moment of silent prayer, the Curé Ponosse made the sign of the Cross, with a wide gesture, slowly and majestically, in a manner intended to convey an unaccustomed solemnity, together with a suggestion of menace; for it was indeed a tiresome and worrying task that he had undertaken. So keenly did he feel this that the odd stateliness of his sign of the Cross, which he himself believed to be impressive, merely gave him an appearance of being slightly indisposed. He began somewhat as follows:

  “You have just heard, my dear brethren, the words spoken by Jesus when He beheld Jerusalem: ‘If thou hadst known, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!’ My dear brethren, let us meditate within ourselves, let us ponder a moment. Would not Jesus, had He wandered in our lovely, fertile Beaujolais and perceived from afar, from the summit of some lofty hill, our splendid town of Clochemerle—would not Jesus have had occasion to speak the same words which the spectacle of a disunited Jerusalem constrained Him to utter? My dear brethren, does peace reign in our midst? Does charity—that love for one’s neighbor which the Son of God had so supremely that He died for us on the Cross?”

  It is unnecessary to quote in full Ponosse’s development of his theme. It was not a brilliant performance. Alas, for the space of fully twenty minutes the worthy man was in somewhat of a tangle. This was due to the fact that he was making a new departure. Thirty years previously, with the help of his friend the Abbé Jouffe, he had composed some fifty sermons which should have met all the requirements of a ministry exercised in an atmosphere of calm and peace. Ever since that time, the Curé of Clochemerle had remained content with this pious repertory, which amply fulfilled the spiritual needs of the inhabitants, who would doubtless have been disconcerted by too varied expositions of doctrine. And now suddenly, in 1923, the Curé Ponosse found himself obliged to resort to improvisation in order to slip in some allusions in his sermon to the fateful urinal. These allusions, given out with the authority of the pulpit behind them, and on the very day of the annual festival of the countryside, would rally all the Christian elements in the town to the Church’s defense, and by their sheer unexpectedness would spread confusion and dismay in the ranks of the opposite party, which included people largely indifferent to religion, and others who never went to church, but very few genuine atheists.

  Twice already the curé had taken out his watch. His eloquence was becoming more and more entangled in a labyrinth of phrases from which there appeared to be no way out. He had continually to make fresh starts, with many a h’m . . . and an er . . . er . . . and an increasing accumulation of “My dear brethren’s in order to gain time for thought. He must get through with it at all costs. The Curé of Clochemerle offered up a prayer of entreaty to Heaven: “O Lord, grant me courage, give me inspiration!” He flung himself boldly into the breach:

  “And Jesus said, as He drove out those who were thronging the temple: ‘My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves.’ Yes, my dear brethren, we will take Jesus’ firmness as an example for ourselves to follow. We also, we Christians of Clochemerle, shall not shrink from the task of driving out all those who have brought impurity
to the very doors of our beloved church! On this monument of infamy, on this accursed slate, let us wield the pickax of deliverance! My brethren, my dear brethren, our watchword shall be—demolition!”

  This declaration, so little in the usual manner of the Curé of Clochemerle, was followed by a silence that was almost startling. Then, in the midst of this silence, from the back of the church a drunken voice rang out:

  “All right, you just try and knock it down! You’ll see what’ll happen to you! Has God ever told a man he mustn’t piss?”

  François Toumignon had won his bet.

  These incredible words, which left all who heard them in a state of. helpless amazement, had hardly died away when Nicolas the beadle was seen approaching with great strides. A sudden hastiness was observed in his footsteps that was quite incompatible with the dignified gait associated with his office, ordinarily accompanied by the discreet but firm tap-tap of his halberd on the flagstones. This reassuring sound gave the faithful a comfortable feeling, that they could say their prayers in peace under the protection of this tower of strength which watched over them, with its fine mustaches and its solid foundations, a pair of calves whose muscular equipment and elegant contours would have been an ornament to the main aisle of a cathedral.