in
Gil-Blas. I always make
Mme. Renard angry by pretending that I know Colombine. It’s not true, I don’t know her, I’ve never seen her, but never mind, she knows how to write; and then she has a very pointed way of putting things, for a woman. She pleases me, she does: there aren’t many can write like her.
“Well, I began to chip my old woman, but she got angry right away and was soon angrier. So I held my tongue.
“It was at this moment that our two witnesses here, M. Ladureau and M. Durdent, arrived from the other side of the river. We know them by sight.
“The little man had begun fishing again. He had so many bites that I fairly shook with it, I did. And his wife was saying: ‘This is a mighty good spot, we’ll always come here, Désiré.’
“I felt a cold shiver down my spine. And Mme. Renard kept on saying: ‘You’re not a man, you’re not a man. You haven’t the spirit of a chicken.’
“ ‘Look here,’ I said suddenly; ‘I’d rather get away from here, I shall do something silly.’
“Then she whispered, as if she was holding a red-hot iron under my nose: ‘You’re not a man. You’re going to run away now, are you, you’re going to surrender the place? Run away, then, you bloody quitter.’
“She’d got me there. However, I didn’t make a false move.
“But the other fellow got a bream, oh, I’ve never seen such a fish. Never!
“And then my wife began to talk aloud, as if she was just thinking. You can see how clever that is. She said: ‘You might say they were stolen fish, since we baited the place ourselves. They ought at least to hand over a little of the money we spent on bait.’
“Then the little cotton-back’s fat wife began to talk too. ‘Are you referring to us, madame?’
“ ‘I’m referring to stealers of fish who profit by the money spent by other people.’
“ ‘Are you calling us stealers of fish?’
“And so they began to explain themselves, and then they came to words. Lord, they’d plenty, the sluts, and rare shrewd ones. They screamed so savagely that our two witnesses, who were over on the other bank, began shouting for fun: ‘Hi, you over there, a little silence. You’ll spoil your men’s chances of fish.’
“The fact is that the little cotton-back and I were as still as two stocks. We sat there, our noses down to the water, as if we didn’t hear them.
“But, God bless us, we could hear all right. ‘You’re no better than a liar.’—‘You’re no better than a trollop.’—‘You’re no better than a drab.’—‘You’re no better than a slut.’ And so on, and so forth. A sailor couldn’t have taught them anything.
“All at once I heard a noise behind me. I turned round. It was the other woman, that fat creature, falling on my wife with her parasol. Bang! bang! Mélie got two whacks. But she was in a rage, was Mélie, and when she’s in a rage, she hits out. She grabs the fat woman by the hair, and then, smack, smack, smack, slaps rained down like bullets.
“I’d have left them to it, I would. Let women deal with women, and men with men. There’s no need to mix your quarrels. But the little cotton-back came on like a devil and tried to jump on my wife. But no, no, that’s too much, my friend. I caught the little fellow one with my fist. And thwack, thwack. One to the nose, one in the wind. He threw up his arms, he threw up his legs and fell on his back right into the river, in the middle of the hole.
“I would certainly have fished him out, Mr. President, if I had had time right then. But to cap all, the fat woman was getting the better of it, and she was handling Mélie pretty roughly. I know I ought not to have rescued her while the fellow was getting his belly full of water. But I didn’t think he would be drowned. I said to myself: ‘That’ll cool him.’
“So I ran to separate the women. I got thumped and scratched and bitten. Lord, what a pair of devils!
“To cut a long story short, it took me five minutes, perhaps ten, to separate those two diehards.
“I turned round. There was nothing there. The water was as smooth as a lake. And the men on the other side were shouting: ‘Fish him out, fish him out.’
“Easily said, but I can’t swim, I can’t, let alone dive!
“At last, after a good quarter of an hour of it, the lockkeeper came, and two gentlemen with boathooks. They found him at the bottom of the hole under eight feet of water, as I said, but there he was, the little cotton-back.
“I swear those are the facts. On my word of honour, I am innocent.”
The witnesses having sworn to the same effect, the accused was acquitted.
The Marquis of Fumerol
Roger de Tourneville was talking, straddling a chair in the middle of a circle of his friends; he held a cigar in his hand and now and then took a pull at it and blew out a little cloud of smoke.
… We were sitting at the table when a letter was brought in. Papa opened it. You all know that papa considers himself regent of France. I call him Don Quixote because he has tilted for twelve years against the Republican windmill without ever being really sure whether he did it in the name of the Bourbons or of the Orléans. Today, he breaks his lance only for the Orléans because they alone are left. In any event, papa considers himself the first gentleman of France, the best-known, the most influential, the head of his party; and as he is senator for life he considers neighbouring kings to occupy less secure thrones than his.
As for mamma, she is papa’s soul, the soul of religion and
