Mister Belhomme’s Beast
The Havre stagecoach was just leaving Criquetot and all the passengers were waiting in the yard of the Commercial Hotel, kept by young Malandain, for their names to be called out.
The coach was yellow, on wheels that once were yellow too, but now almost turned grey with accumulated layers of mud. The front wheels were quite small: those at the back, large and rickety, bore the well of the coach, which was unshapely and distended like the paunch of an animal.
Three white hacks harnessed in tandem, whose huge heads and large round knees were the most noticeable things about them, had to pull this conveyance, which had something monstrous in its build and appearance. Already the horses in front of this strange vehicle seemed to be asleep.
The driver, Césaire Horlaville, a corpulent little man but agile enough nevertheless, by virtue of continually mounting the wheels and climbing on to the roof of his coach, with a face reddened by the open air of the countryside, by rain and storm and many brandies, and eyes always blinking as if still under the lash of wind and hail, appeared at the door of the hotel, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Large round hampers, full of scared poultry, stood in front of the solid countrywomen. Césaire Horlaville took these one by one and put them up on the roof of his vehicle; then, more carefully, he put up those which were filled with eggs: finally he tossed up from below a few little sacks of seed and small parcels wrapped in handkerchiefs, bits of cloth or paper. Then he opened the door at the back and, taking a list from his pocket, he called out from it:
“The reverend Father from Gorgeville.”
The priest came forward, a tall powerful man, broad, stout, purple in the face, and kindly. He lifted up his cassock to free his foot for stepping up, just as women lift up their skirts, and climbed into the rickety old coach.
“The schoolmaster from Rollebosc-les-Grinets.”
The schoolmaster hurried forward, a tall and hesitating fellow, with a frock-coat down to his knees; and disappeared in his turn through the open door.
“Mister Poiret, two seats.”
Poiret takes his place, tall and stooping, bent with drudgery, grown thin through lack of food, bony, and with a skin all withered from neglected ablutions. His wife followed him, small and wizened, looking very like a tired jade, and clutching in both hands a huge green umbrella.
“Mister Rabot, two seats.”
Rabot, by nature irresolute, hesitated. He asked:
“Was it me you were calling?”
The driver, who had been nicknamed “Foxy,” was going to make a joking reply, when Rabot took a header towards the door of the coach, thrust forward by a shove from his wife, a tall buxom wench with a belly as big and round as a barrel, and hands as large as a washerwoman’s beetle.
And Rabot slipped into the coach like a rat into his hole.
“Mister Caniveau.”
A huge peasant, more beefy than a bull, summoned all his energy and was, in his turn, swallowed up inside the yellow well of the coach.
“Mister Belhomme.”
Belhomme, a tall skeleton of a man, drew near, his neck awry, his aspect dolorous, a handkerchief applied to his ear as if he suffered from very severe toothache.
All of them wore blue smocks over antique and peculiar jackets of black or green cloth, garments, worn on special occasions, which they would uncover in the streets of Havre; and their heads were covered with caps
