Short Fiction

penny.”

He stammered, for he was as drunk as Silenus:

“But I have saved five thousand francs.”

She cried out in triumph:

“Then we could set up together?”

He became uneasy:

“Set up what?”

“How should I know? We’ll see. You can do a lot of things with five thousand francs. You don’t want me to come and live in your boarding-school, do you?”

He had not looked so far ahead, and stammered perplexedly:

“Set up what? It’s not so easy! I don’t know anything but Latin!”

She reflected in her turn, passing in review all the professions which she had dreamed of.

“Couldn’t you be a doctor?”

“No, I have no diploma!”

“Nor a chemist?”

“Not that either!”

She uttered a cry of joy. She had found the solution.

“Then we will buy a grocer’s shop. Oh! what luck! We will buy a grocery. Not a big one, of course: you can’t go very far on a thousand francs.”

The idea revolted him.

“No, I can’t be a grocer. I am⁠ ⁠… I am⁠ ⁠… I am too well known. All I know⁠ ⁠… all I know⁠ ⁠… is Latin⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠…”

But she answered by putting a full glass of champagne between his lips. He drank and was silent.

We got into the boat again. The night was dark, very dark. I could see, however, that they were sitting with their arms round each other’s waists, and that they kissed each other now and then.

It was a frightful castastrophe. The discovery of our escapade led to the dismissal of Daddy Piquedent. My father, justly offended, sent me to finish my course in the Ribaudet boarding-school.

I passed my entrance examination six weeks later. Then I went to Paris to study law at the university, and only came back to my native city two years later.

Turning into the Rue du Serpent, a shop caught my eye. On it appeared: Colonial Products Piquedent, and below, for the benefit of the more ignorant: Grocery.

I cried out:

“Quantum mutatus ab illo!”

He raised his head, left his customer, and rushed at me with his hands outstretched.

“Ah, my young friend, here you are at last! Splendid! Splendid!”

A fine plump woman suddenly jumped from behind the desk and threw herself round my neck. I could hardly recognise her, she had grown so stout.

I asked:

“So you’re doing well?”

Piquedent had returned to his weighing:

“Oh! very well, very well, very well. I made three thousand francs net this year!”

“And the Latin, M. Piquedent?”

“Oh! good heavens, Latin, Latin, Latin! I tell you there’s no nourishment in it for a man.”

The Hole

Inflicting blows and wounds sufficient to cause death. Such was the charge upon which master Léopold Renard, upholsterer, made his appearance at the Assizes.

Present also were the chief witnesses, the woman, Flamèche, widow of the victim, and Louis Ladureau, cabinetmaker, and Jean Durdent, plumber, who had both been called.

Near the criminal sat his wife, dressed in black, a little ugly creature looking like a monkey in woman’s clothes.

And this is how Renard (Léopold) unfolded the drama:

“I tell you, it is an unfortunate accident of which I was all along the chief victim and which I didn’t plan at all. The facts speak for themselves, your Worship. I am a decent man, a workingman: I’ve carried on business as an upholsterer in the same street for sixteen years, known, liked, respected, esteemed by all, as the neighbours have deposed, even the janitress, who isn’t altogether a fool. I like work, I like thrift, I like decent people and decent amusements. That has been my ruin, so much the worse for me: since it was not my fault, I still respect myself.

“Well, every Sunday for five years my wife here and I have been in the habit of spending the day at Poissy. It gets us out into the fresh air, not to speak of pleasing our taste for river fishing⁠—which we love as much as much as⁠—as much as spring onions. It was Mélie who gave me the taste for it, the wretch, and she’s crazier about it than I am, the little beast, so that she’s responsible for all the mischief in this affair, as you’ll see in a minute.

“I’m strong and gentle, I am, without an ounce of wickedness in me. But as for her, oh, Lord, she looks as mild as milk, she’s a little thin thing; and, well, she’s nastier-tempered than a polecat. I don’t say that she hasn’t some good points: she has, and useful ones in trade. But her disposition! Ask the next-floor people, and even the janitress who gave me notice the other day⁠—she can tell you things.

“Every day she kept abusing me for my quiet ways. ‘I wouldn’t stand for this! I wouldn’t stand for that.’ If I listened to her, your Worship, I’d have been in three fights a month.”

Mme. Renard interrupted him: “Go on talking: he laughs longest who laughs last.”

He turned towards her defiantly.

“Oh, well, I can give you away since you’re not up for trial, you’re not.”

Then, turning to the president again:

“I’ll go on, then. So we went to Poissy every Saturday evening to be able to start fishing the next morning at daybreak. It’s a habit of ours that’s become second nature, as they say. Three years ago this summer I discovered a place, such a place! You should see it, shady, eight feet of water at least, maybe ten, a hole, look you, with hollows under the bank, a regular lurking-place for fish, a paradise for the fisher. This here hole, Mr. President, I could consider as mine, since I was its Christopher Columbus. Everyone in the district knew that, no one disputed it. They said: ‘That’s Renard’s place,’ and no one would come there, not even M. Plumeau, and it’s well known, and no offence meant to say it, that he pinches other people’s places.

“So, sure of my rights, I used to go back there as a proprietor. On Saturday, the moment I arrived, I went aboard the Dalila with my old woman. Dalila is my Norwegian boat, a boat I had built for me