surprise me, seeing I was as tipsy as he was, and I’m used to cubic metres in my business. That’s a thousand litres, and I was agreeable to that. Only the price was still to be settled. Everything depends on quality. I says to him: ‘How much the cubic metre?’
“He answers:
“ ‘Two thousand francs.’
“I gives a jump like a rabbit, and then I think to myself that a woman can’t weigh more than three hundred litres. All the same, I says: ‘That’s too dear.’
“He answers:
“ ‘I can’t take less. I should lose on it.’
“A man isn’t a pig dealer for nothing, you understand. He knows his job. But set a thief to catch a thief, and I’m a sharp man, too. Ah! ah! ah! So I say to him: ‘If she was new, I wouldn’t say it was too dear, but as you’ve used her—haven’t you?—she’s secondhand. I give you fifteen hundred francs the cubic metre, not a ha’penny more. Is it a bargain?’
“He answers:
“ ‘It’s a bargain. Shake on it.’
“I shakes and we sets off, arm in arm. Folks ought to help each other along in this life.
“But I had a sudden fear: ‘How are you going to measure her in litres unless you melt her down?’
“Then he explains his idea, none too easily, seeing he was tipsy. He says: ‘I take a barrel, I fill it with water to the brim. I put her inside. All the water that pours over I’ll measure out, and that’ll be the total.’
“I says:
“ ‘Right, it’s agreed. But the water that pours over will run away: what are you going to do to gather it up again?’
“Then he thinks I’m a booby, and he explains that he’ll only have to pour back what’s run out of the barrel as soon as his wife has got out of it. The amount of water we had to add, would be the total. I reckon ten buckets: that’s a cubic metre. He’s not so stupid when he’s tipsy, the rascal, all the same!
“To cut it short, we go off to his house, and I examine the goods specified. As pretty women go, she’s not a pretty woman. Everyone can see that for themselves, seeing she’s sitting there. I says to myself: ‘I’ve been done; never mind, it’s all one: pretty or ugly, a woman’s just as much use, isn’t she now, Mr. President? And then I see for certain that she’s as thin as a match. I says to myself: ‘There’s not four hundred litres there!’ I know what I’m talking about, being used to dealing in liquids.
“She’s told you the way we arranged it. I even let her keep her chemise and her stockings on, a clear loss to me.
“When it was over, what d’you think? She runs off. I says: ‘Here! Brument, she’s getting away.’
“He replies: ‘Don’t you be afraid, I’ll always get her back again. She’ll have to come home to go to bed. I’m going to reckon the deficit.’
“We measured it. Not four buckets. Ah, ah, ah, ah!”
The prisoner began to laugh, and continued to laugh until a gendarme was obliged to thump him on the back. Quiet again, he adds:
“To cut it short, Brument declares: ‘Nothing doing, it’s not enough.’ I bawl, he bawls. I bawl louder, he stamps, I thump. That would have gone on till doomsday, seeing I was tipsy.
“Then in come the gendarmes. They curse me, and they play us a dirty trick. Sent to prison. I demand damages.”
He sits down.
Brument swears that his fellow criminal’s confession is true in every respect. The jury, overwhelmed, retired to consider their verdict.
They returned an hour later and acquitted the accused with severe strictures bearing on the sanctity of marriage, and setting forth in precise terms the limits set to commercial transactions.
Brument, accompanied by his spouse, made his way towards the conjugal hearth.
Cornu returned to his business.
Mother Savage
I
I had not returned to Virelogne for fifteen years. I went back there to hunt in the autumn, staying with my friend Serval, who had finally rebuilt his château, which had been destroyed by the Prussians.
I was infinitely fond of that country. There are delicious corners in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We folk whom nature attracts, keep certain tender recollections, often keen, for certain springs, certain woods, certain ponds, certain hills, which have touched us like happy events. Sometimes even memory returns toward a forest nook, or a bit of a river bank, or a blossoming orchard, seen only once, on some happy day, which has remained in our heart like those pictures of women seen in the street, on a spring morning, with a white, transparent costume, and which leave in our soul and flesh an unappeased, unforgetable desire, the sensation of having just missed happiness.
At Virelogne, I loved the whole region, sowed with little woods, and traversed by brooks which ran through the soil like veins bringing blood to the earth.
We fished in them for crayfish, trout, and eels! Divine happiness! We could bathe in certain places and often found woodcock in the tall grass which grew on the banks of those little narrow streams.
I went, light as a goat, watching my two dogs forage in front of me. Serval, a hundred yards away, on my right, was beating up a field of lucerne. I went around the thickets which formed the boundaries of the Sandres forest, and I perceived a hut in ruins.
Suddenly I recollected that I had seen it for the last time in 1869, neat, vine-clad, with chickens before the door. What is sadder than a dead house with its skeleton standing, dilapidated and sinister?
I recalled also that a woman had given me a glass of wine there, on a day when I was very tired, and that Serval had then told me the story of the inhabitants. The father, an old poacher, had been killed by the gendarmes. The
