Césaire Horlaville shut the door of his coach, climbed on to his box, and cracked his whip.
The three horses seemed to wake up, and, shaking their necks, made audible a vague murmur of tiny bells.
Then the driver, bawling out “Gee up!” from the bottom of his lungs, lashed the animals with a sweep of the arm. They were roused, made an effort, and set off along the road at a slow and halting jog-trot. And behind them the vehicle, jolting its loose panes and all the old iron of its springs, made an astounding jangle of tin and glassware, whilst each row of passengers, tossed and rocked by the jolts, surged up and down with every fall or rise of their uneven progress.
At first silence reigned, out of respect for the parish priest, whose presence put a restraint on their loquacity. He made the first remark, being of a garrulous and friendly disposition.
“Well, Mister Caniveau,” he said, “are you getting on all right?”
The big countryman, whose similarity of build, appearance, and paunch formed a bond between the priest and himself, replied, smiling:
“Much as usual, Father, much as usual, and how’s yourself?”
“Oh, as for me, I can always get along!”
“And you, Mr. Poiret?” asked the reverend gentleman.
“I’d be all right, except for the colzas which have had nothing at all of a crop this year, and in business it is by the crops of colza that we make up our losses, as a rule.”
“Well, well, times are hard!”
“Lord, yes, they’re hard!” declared Mr. Rabot’s hefty wife, in a voice like a policeman.
As she came from a neighbouring village, the priest knew nothing of her but her name.
“Are you the Blondel girl?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s me. I married Rabot.”
Rabot, skinny, nervous, and complacent, saluted the priest with a smile; he saluted him by bowing his head deeply forward, as if to say: “Yes, this is really Rabot, whom the Blondel girl has married.”
Abruptly, Mister Belhomme, who kept his handkerchief over his ear, began to groan in a lamentable manner. He ground his teeth horribly, stamping his feet to express the most frightful suffering.
“Your toothache seems to be very bad?” demanded the priest.
The peasant stopped moaning for an instant to reply:
“Not a bit of it, Father. It’s not my teeth, it’s my ear, right down inside my ear.”
“What’s the matter with your ear then? An abscess?”
“I don’t know whether it’s an abscess, but I know it’s a beast, a filthy beast, which got itself inside me when I was asleep on the hay in the loft.”
“A beast! Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? As sure as heaven, Father, seeing it’s gnawing away the inside of my ear. It’ll eat out my head, for sure, it’ll eat out my head. Oh, ger-ow, ger-ow, ger-ow!” … And he began stamping his feet again.
His audience was roused to the keenest interest. Each of them proffered different advice. Poiret would have it that it was a spider, the schoolmaster that it was a caterpillar. He had seen such a case before at Campemuret, in the Orme county, where he had lived for six years; though in this case the caterpillar had got into the head and come out through the nose. But the man had remained deaf in that ear, because the eardrum was split.
“It must have been a worm,” declared the priest.
Mister Belhomme, his head tilted on one side, and leaning it against the carriage door, for he had been the last to get in, went on groaning:
“Oh, ger-ow, ow, ow, I’m scared to death it’s an ant, a big ant, it’s gnawing so. There, Father, it’s galloping and galloping … oh … ow … ow … ow … it hurts like the devil!”
“Haven’t you seen the doctor?” demanded Caniveau.
“Lord, no!”
“What for haven’t you?”
Fear of doctors seemed to cure Belhomme.
He sat up, without however removing his handkerchief.
“What for haven’t I? You’ve got money to waste on them, have you, for them good-for-nothings? You take yourself to them, once, twice, three times, four times, five times. And for that, a couple of crowns of a hundred sous apiece, two crowns at least. And you tell me what he’d have done for me, the good-for-nothing, you tell me what he’d have done! D’you know that?”
Caniveau laughed.
“Now how would I know? Where are you going anyway?”
“I’m off to Havre to see Chambrelan.”
“What Chambrelan?”
“The healer, of course.”
“What healer?”
“The healer who cured my dad.”
“Your dad.”
“Yes, my dad, in his time.”
“What was the matter with your dad?”
“A great wind in his back, so as he could move nor foot nor leg.”
“And what did your Chambrelan do for him?”
“He kneaded his back as if he was going to make bread of it, with both his hands. And it was all right again in a couple of hours.”
Belhomme was quite sure in his mind that Chambrelan had also pronounced certain words over it, but he dared not say as much before the priest.
Laughing, Caniveau persisted.
“How d’you know it’s not a rabbit you’ve got in your ear? It might have taken that earhole of yours for its burrow, seeing the undergrowth you’ve got growing outside. You wait. I’ll make it run for its life.”
And Caniveau, shaping his hands into a speaking-trumpet, began to imitate the crying of hounds hot on the scent. He yelped, howled, whimpered, and bayed. Everybody in the coach began to laugh, even the schoolmaster who never laughed.
However, as Belhomme appeared irritated at being made fun of, the priest turned the conversation, and speaking to Rabot’s lusty wife, said:
“I dare say you have a big family?”
“Yes, indeed, Father. And how hard it is to rear them!”
Rabot nodded his head, as if to say: “Oh, yes, it’s hard to rear them.”
“How many children have you?”
She stated magisterially, in a harsh deliberate voice:
“Sixteen children, Father. Fifteen of them by my good man.”
And Rabot’s smile broadened, as he knuckled his forehead. He managed fifteen children all by himself, he, Rabot. His wife said so. And there was no doubting her.
