At the time when Madame Bridau returned to Issoudun to save — as Maitre Desroches expressed it — an inheritance that was seriously threatened, Jean–Jacques Rouget had reached by degrees a condition that was semi-vegetative. In the first place, after Max’s instalment, Flore put the table on an episcopal footing. Rouget, thrown in the way of good living, ate more and still more, enticed by the Vedie’s excellent dishes. He grew no fatter, however, in spite of this abundant and luxurious nourishment. From day to day he weakened like a worn-out man — fatigued, perhaps, with the effort of digestion — and his eyes had dark circles around them. Still, when his friends and neighbors met him in his walks and questioned him about his health, he always answered that he was never better in his life. As he had always been thought extremely deficient in mind, people did not notice the constant lowering of his faculties. His love for Flore was the one thing that kept him alive; in fact, he existed only for her, and his weakness in her presence was unbounded; he obeyed the creature’s mere look, and watched her movements as a dog watches every gesture of his master. In short, as Madame Hochon remarked, at fifty-seven years of age he seemed older than Monsieur Hochon, an octogenarian.
Every one will suppose, and with reason, that Max’s appartement was worthy of so charming a fellow. In fact, in the course of six years our captain had by degrees perfected the comfort of his abode and adorned every detail of it, as much for his own pleasure as for Flore’s. But it was, after all, only the comfort and luxury of Issoudun — colored tiles, rather elegant wallpapers, mahogany furniture, mirrors in gilt frames, muslin curtains with red borders, a bed with a canopy, and draperies arranged as the provincial upholsterers arrange them for a rich bride; which in the eyes of Issoudun seemed the height of luxury, but are so common in vulgar fashion-plates that even the petty shopkeepers in Paris have discarded them at their weddings. One very unusual thing appeared, which caused much talk in Issoudun, namely, a rush-matting on the stairs, no doubt to muffle the sound of feet. In fact, though Max was in the habit of coming in at daybreak, he never woke any one, and Rouget was far from suspecting that his guest was an accomplice in the nocturnal performances of the Knights of Idleness.
About eight o’clock the next morning, Flore, wearing a dressing-gown of some pretty cotton stuff with narrow pink stripes, a lace cap on her head, and her feet in furred slippers, softly opened the door of Max’s chamber; seeing that he slept, she remained standing beside the bed.
“He came in so late!” she said to herself. “It was half-past three. He must have a good constitution to stand such amusements. Isn’t he strong, the dear love! I wonder what they did last night.”
“Oh, there you are, my little Flore!” said Max, waking like a soldier trained by the necessities of war to have his wits and his self-possession about him the instant that he waked, however suddenly it might happen.
“You are sleepy; I’ll go away.”
“No, stay; there’s something serious going on.”
“Were you up to some mischief last night?”
“Ah, bah! It concerns you and me and that old fool. You never told me he had a family! Well, his family are coming — coming here — no doubt to turn us out, neck and crop.”
“Ah! I’ll shake him well,” said Flore.
“Mademoiselle Brazier,” said Max gravely, “things are too serious for giddiness. Send me my coffee; I’ll take it in bed, where I’ll think over what we had better do. Come back at nine o’clock, and we’ll talk about it. Meanwhile, behave as if you had heard nothing.”
Frightened at the news, Flore left Max and went to make his coffee; but a quarter of an hour later, Baruch burst into Max’s bedroom, crying out to the grand master —
“Fario is hunting for his barrow!”
In five minutes Max was dressed and in the street, and though he sauntered along with apparent indifference, he soon reached the foot of the tower embankment, where he found quite a collection of people.
“What is it?” asked Max, making his way through the crowd and reaching the Spaniard.
Fario was a withered little man, as ugly as though he were a blue-blooded grandee. His fiery eyes, placed very close to his nose and piercing as a gimlet, would have won him the name of a sorcerer in Naples. He seemed gentle because he was calm, quiet, and slow in his movements; and for this reason people commonly called him “goodman Fario.” But his skin — the color of gingerbread — and his softness of manner only hid from stupid eyes, and disclosed to observing ones, the half-Moorish nature of a peasant of Granada, which nothing had as yet roused from its phlegmatic indolence.
“Are you sure,” Max said to him, after listening to his grievance, “that you brought your cart to this place? for, thank God, there are no thieves in Issoudun.”
“I left it just there —”
“If the horse was harnessed to it, hasn’t he drawn it somewhere.”
“Here’s the horse,” said Fario, pointing to the animal, which stood harnessed thirty feet away.
Max went gravely up to the place where the horse stood, because from there the bottom of the tower at the top of the embankment could be seen — the crowd being at the foot of the mound. Everybody followed Max, and that was what the scoundrel wanted.
“Has anybody thoughtlessly put a cart in his pocket?” cried Francois.
“Turn out your pockets, all of you!” said Baruch.
Shouts of laughter resounded on all sides. Fario swore. Oaths, with a Spaniard, denote the highest pitch of anger.
“Was your cart light?” asked Max.
“Light!” cried Fario. “If those who laugh at me had it on their feet, their corns would never hurt them again.”
“Well, it must be devilishly light,” answered Max, “for look there!” pointing to the foot of the tower; “it has flown up the embankment.”
At these words all eyes were lifted to the spot, and for a moment there was a perfect uproar in the market-place. Each man pointed at the barrow bewitched, and all their tongues wagged.
“The devil makes common cause with the inn-keepers,” said Goddet to the astonished Spaniard. “He means to teach you not to leave your cart about in the streets, but to put it in the tavern stables.”
At this speech the crowd hooted, for Fario was thought to be a miser.
“Come, my good fellow,” said Max, “don’t lose heart. We’ll go up to the tower and see how your barrow got there. Thunder and cannon! we’ll lend you a hand! Come along, Baruch.”
“As for you,” he whispered to Francois, “get the people to stand back, and make sure there is nobody at the foot of the embankment when you see us at the top.”
Fario, Max, Baruch, and three other knights climbed to the foot of the tower. During the rather perilous ascent Max and Fario noticed that no damage to the embankment, nor even trace of the passage of the barrow, could be seen. Fario began to imagine witchcraft, and lost his head. When they reached the top and examined into the matter, it really seemed a thing impossible that the cart had got there.
“How shall I ever get it down?” said the Spaniard, whose little eyes began for the first time to show fear; while his swarthy yellow face, which seemed as it if could never change color, whitened.
“How?” said Max. “Why, that’s not difficult.”
And taking advantage of the Spaniard’s stupefaction, he raised the barrow by the shafts with his robust arms and prepared to fling it down, calling in thundering tones as it left his grasp, “Look out there, below!”
No accident happened, for the crowd, persuaded by Francois and eaten up with curiosity, had retired to a distance from which they could see more clearly what went on at the top of the embankment. The cart was dashed to an infinite number of pieces in a very picturesque manner.
“There! you have got it down,” said Baruch.
“Ah, brigands! ah, scoundrels!” cried Fario; “perhaps it was you who brought it up here!”
Max, Baruch, and their three comrades began to laugh at the Spaniard’s rage.
“I wanted to do you a service,” said Max coolly, “and in handling the damned thing I came very near flinging myself after it; and this is how you thank me, is it? What country do you come from?”
“I come from a country where they never forgive,” replied Fario, trembling with rage. “My cart will be the cab in which you shall drive to the devil! — unless,” he said, suddenly becoming as meek as a lamb, “you will give me a new one.”
“We will talk about that,” said Max, beginning to descend.
When they reached the bottom and met the first hilarious group, Max took Fario by the button of his jacket and said to him —
“Yes, my good Fario, I’ll give you a magnificent cart, if you will give me two hundred and fifty francs; but I won’t warrant it to go, like this one, up a tower.”
At this last jest Fario became as cool as though he were making a bargain.
“Damn it!” he said, “give me the wherewithal to replace my barrow, and it will be the best use you ever made of old Rouget’s money.”
Max turned livid; he raised his formidable fist to strike Fario; but Baruch, who knew that the blow would descend on others besides the Spaniard, plucked the latter away like a feather and whispered to Max —
“Don’t commit such a folly!”
The grand master, thus called to order, began to laugh and said to Fario —
“If I, by accident, broke your barrow, and you in return try to slander me, we are quits.”
“Not yet,” muttered Fario. “But I am glad to know what my barrow was worth.”
“Ah, Max, you’ve found your match!” said a spectator of the scene, who did not belong to the Order of Idleness.
“Adieu, Monsieur Gilet. I haven’t thanked you yet for lending me a hand,” cried the Spaniard, as he kicked the sides of his horse and disappeared amid loud hurrahs.
“We will keep the tires of the wheels for you,” shouted a wheelwright, who had come to inspect the damage done to the cart.
One of the shafts was sticking upright in the ground, as straight as a tree. Max stood by, pale and thoughtful, and deeply annoyed by Fario’s speech. For five days after this, nothing was talked of in Issoudun but the tale of the Spaniard’s barrow; it was even fated to travel abroad, as Goddet remarked — for it went the round of Berry, where the speeches of Fario and Max were repeated, and at the end of a week the affair, greatly to the Spaniard’s satisfaction, was still the talk of the three departments and the subject of endless gossip. In consequence of the vindictive Spaniard’s terrible speech, Max and the Rabouilleuse became the object of certain comments which were merely whispered in Issoudun, though they were spoken aloud in Bourges, Vatan, Vierzon, and Chateauroux. Maxence Gilet knew enough of that region of the country to guess how envenomed such comments would become.
“We can’t stop their tongues,” he said at last. “Ah! I did a foolish thing!”
“Max!” said Francois, taking his arm. “They are coming to-night.”
“They! Who!”
“The Bridaus. My grandmother has just had a letter from her goddaughter.”
“Listen, my boy,” said Max in a low voice. “I have been thinking deeply of this matter. Neither Flore nor I ought to seem opposed to the Bridaus. If these heirs are to be got rid of, it is for you Hochons to drive them out of Issoudun. Find out what sort of people they are. To-morrow at Mere Cognette’s, after I’ve taken their measure, we can decide what is to be done, and how we can set your grandfather against them.”
“The Spaniard found the flaw in Max’s armor,” said Baruch to his cousin Francois, as they turned into Monsieur Hochon’s house and watched their comrade entering his own door.
While Max was thus employed, Flore, in spite of her friend’s advice, was unable to restrain her wrath; and without knowing whether she would help or hinder Max’s plans, she burst forth upon the poor bachelor. When Jean–Jacques incurred the anger of his mistress, the little attentions and vulgar fondlings which were all his joy were suddenly suppressed. Flore sent her master, as the children say, into disgrace. No more tender glances, no more of the caressing little words in various tones with which she decked her conversation — “my kitten,” “my old darling,” “my bibi,” “my rat,” etc. A “you,” cold and sharp and ironically respectful, cut like the blade of a knife through the heart of the miserable old bachelor. The “you” was a declaration of war. Instead of helping the poor man with his toilet, handing him what he wanted, forestalling his wishes, looking at him with the sort of admiration which all women know how to express, and which, in some cases, the coarser it is the better it pleases — saying, for instance, “You look as fresh as a rose!” or, “What health you have!” “How handsome you are, my old Jean!”— in short, instead of entertaining him with the lively chatter and broad jokes in which he delighted, Flore left him to dress alone. If he called her, she answered from the foot of the staircase, “I can’t do everything at once; how can I look after your breakfast and wait upon you up there? Are not you big enough to dress your own self?”
“Oh, dear! what have I done to displease her?” the old man asked himself that morning, as he got one of these rebuffs after calling for his shaving-water.
“Vedie, take up the hot water,” cried Flore.
“Vedie!” exclaimed the poor man, stupefied with fear of the anger that was crushing him. “Vedie, what is the matter with Madame this morning?”
Flore Brazier required her master and Vedie and Kouski and Max to call her Madame.
“She seems to have heard something about you which isn’t to your credit,” answered Vedie, assuming an air of deep concern. “You are doing wrong, monsieur. I’m only a poor servant-woman, and you may say I have no right to poke my nose into your affairs; but I do say you may search through all the women in the world, like that king in holy Scripture, and you won’t find the equal of Madame. You ought to kiss the ground she steps on. Goodness! if you make her unhappy, you’ll only spoil your own life. There she is, poor thing, with her eyes full of tears.”
Vedie left the poor man utterly cast down; he dropped into an armchair and gazed into vacancy like the melancholy imbecile that he was, and forgot to shave. These alternations of tenderness and severity worked upon this feeble creature whose only life was through his amorous fibre, the same morbid effect which great changes from tropical heat to arctic cold produce upon the human body. It was a moral pleurisy, which wore him out like a physical disease. Flore alone could thus affect him; for to her, and to her alone, he was as good as he was foolish.
“Well, haven’t you shaved yet?” she said, appearing at his door.
Her sudden presence made the old man start violently; and from being pale and cast down he grew red for an instant, without, however, daring to complain of her treatment.
“Your breakfast is waiting,” she added. “You can come down as you are, in dressing-gown and slippers; for you’ll breakfast alone, I can tell you.”
Without waiting for an answer, she disappeared. To make him breakfast alone was the punishment he dreaded most; he loved to talk to her as he ate his meals. When he got to the foot of the staircase he was taken with a fit of coughing; for emotion excited his catarrh.
“Cough away!” said Flore in the kitchen, without caring whether he heard her or not. “Confound the old wretch! he is able enough to get over it without bothering others. If he coughs up his soul, it will only be after —”
Such were the amenities the Rabouilleuse addressed to Rouget when she was angry. The poor man sat down in deep distress at a corner of the table in the middle of the room, and looked at his old furniture and the old pictures with a disconsolate air.
“You might at least have put on a cravat,” said Flore. “Do you think it is pleasant for people to see such a neck as yours, which is redder and more wrinkled than a turkey’s?”
“But what have I done?” he asked, lifting his big light-green eyes, full of tears, to his tormentor, and trying to face her hard countenance.
“What have you done?” she exclaimed. “As if you didn’t know? Oh, what a hypocrite! Your sister Agathe — who is as much your sister as I ............