Short Fiction

At last, after at least half an hour, one of the men announced:

“I have got him.”

And he pulled up his long pole very gently, very gently. Then something large appeared upon the surface. The other boatman left his oars, and by uniting their strength and hauling upon the inert weight, they succeeded in getting it into their boat.

Then they made for land, seeking a place well lighted and low. At the moment they landed, the women also arrived. The moment she saw him, Madeleine fell back with horror. In the moonlight he already appeared green, with his mouth, his eyes, his nose, his clothes full of slime. His fingers, closed and stiff, were hideous. A kind of black and liquid plaster covered his whole body. The face appeared swollen, and from his hair, plastered down by the ooze, there ran a stream of dirty water.

The two men examined him.

“Do you know him?” asked one.

The other, the Croissy ferryman, hesitated:

“Yes, it certainly seems to me that I have seen that head; but you know when a body is in that state one cannot recognize it easily.” And then, suddenly:

“Why, it’s Mr. Paul!”

“Who is Mr. Paul?” inquired his comrade.

The first answered:

“Why, Mr. Paul Baron, the son of the senator, the little chap who was so much in love.”

The other added, philosophically:

“Well, his fun is ended now; it is a pity, all the same, when one is rich!”

Madeleine had fallen on the ground sobbing. Pauline approached the body and asked:

“Is he really quite dead?”

The men shrugged their shoulders.

“Oh! after that length of time, certainly.”

Then one of them asked:

“Was it not at Grillon’s that he lodged?”

“Yes,” answered the other; “we had better take him back there, there will be something to be made out of it.”

They embarked again in their boat and set out, moving off slowly on account of the rapid current. For a long time after they were out of sight of the place where the women remained, the regular splash of the oars in the water could be heard.

Then Pauline took the poor weeping Madeleine in her arms, petted her, embraced her for a long while, and consoled her.

“How can you help it? it is not your fault, is it? It is impossible to prevent men from doing silly things. He did it of his own free will; so much the worse for him, after all!”

And then lifting her up:

“Come, my dear, come and sleep at the house; it is impossible for you to go back to Grillon’s tonight.”

And she embraced her again, saying: “Come, we will cure you.”

Madeleine arose, and weeping all the while but with fainter sobs, laid her head upon Pauline’s shoulder, as though she had found a refuge in a closer and more certain affection, more familiar and more confiding, and she went off slowly.

Madame Tellier’s Establishment

Part I

They used to go there every evening at about eleven o’clock, just as they went to the café. Six or eight of them used to meet there; they were always the same set, not fast men, but respectable citizens, and young men of the town, and they used to drink their Chartreuse, and tease the girls, or else they would talk seriously with Madame, whom everybody respected, and then they used to go home before twelve o’clock. The younger men would sometimes stay the night.

It was a small, homely kind of house, painted yellow, at the corner of a street behind Saint Étienne’s church, and from the windows one could see the docks, full of ships which were being unloaded, the great salt marsh, called “La Retenue,” and behind, the old, gray chapel, dedicated to the Virgin, on the hill.

Madame, who came of a respectable family of peasant proprietors in the department of the Eure, had taken up that profession, just as she would have become a milliner or dressmaker. The prejudice against prostitution, which is so violent and deeply rooted in large towns, does not exist in the country places in Normandy. The peasant says:

“It is a paying business,” and he sends his daughter to keep a harem of fast girls, just as he would send her to keep a girls’ school.

She had inherited the house from an old uncle, to whom it had belonged. Monsieur and Madame, who had formerly been innkeepers near Yvetot, had immediately sold their house, as they thought that the business at Fécamp was more profitable, and they arrived one fine morning to assume the direction of the enterprise, which was declining on account of the absence of the owners. They were good people enough in their way, and soon made themselves liked by their staff and their neighbours.

Monsieur died of apoplexy two years later, for as his new profession kept him in idleness and without any exercise, he had grown excessively stout, and his health had suffered. Since she had been a widow, all the frequenters of the establishment had wanted her; but people said that personally she was quite virtuous, and even the girls in the house could not discover anything against her. She was tall, stout and affable, and her complexion, which had become pale in the dimness of her house, the shutters of which were scarcely ever opened, shone as if it had been varnished. She had a fringe of curly, false hair, which gave her a juvenile look, that contrasted strongly with the ripeness of her figure. She was always smiling and cheerful, and was fond of a joke, but there was a shade of reserve about her, which her new occupation had not quite made her lose. Coarse words always shocked her, and when any young fellow who had been badly brought up called her establishment by its right name, she was angry and disgusted.

In a word, she had a refined mind, and although she treated her women as friends, yet she very frequently used to say that “she and they were not made of the same stuff.”

Sometimes during