Still, he drank, ate, and walked out like any man in perfect health; and by degrees everyone was accustomed to pay him no more respect or attention than if he had been a clumsy piece of furniture.
Of all his eccentricities, there was one to which no one had ever been able to discover a clue; for the wise heads of the district had in the course of time accounted for, or explained, most of the poor lunatic’s maddest acts. He insisted on always having a sack of flour in the house, and on keeping two casks of wine from the vintage, never allowing anyone to touch either the flour or the wine. But when the month of June came round, he began to be anxious to sell the sack and the wine-barrels with all the fretfulness of a madman. Madame Margaritis generally told him that she had sold the two puncheons at an exorbitant price, and gave him the money, which he then hid without his wife or his servant ever having succeeded, even by watching, in discovering the hiding-place.
The day before Gaudissart’s visit to Vouvray, Madame Margaritis had had more difficulty than ever in managing her husband, who had an attack of lucid reason.
“I declare I do not know how I shall get through tomorrow,” said she to Madame Vernier. “Only fancy, my old man insisted on seeing his two casks of wine. And he gave me no peace all day till I showed him two full puncheons. Our neighbor, Pierre Champlain, luckily had two casks he had not been able to sell, and at my request he rolled them into our cellar. And then what must he want, after seeing the casks, but nothing will content him but selling them himself.”
Madame Vernier had just been telling her husband of this difficult state of things when Gaudissart walked in. At the commercial traveler’s very first words Vernier determined to let him loose on old Margaritis.
“Monsieur,” replied the dyer, when Gaudissart the Great had exhausted his first broadside, “I will not conceal from you that your undertaking will meet with great obstacles in this district. In our part of the world the good folks go on, bodily, in a way of their own; it is a country where no new idea can ever take root. We live as our fathers did, amusing ourselves by eating four meals a day, occupying ourselves by looking after our vineyards, and selling our wine at a good price. Our notion of business is, very honestly, to sell things for more than they cost. We shall go on in that rut, and neither God nor the devil can get us out of it. But I will give you some good advice, and good advice is worth an eye. We have in this neighborhood a retired banker, in whose judgment I myself have the utmost confidence, and if you win his support you shall have mine. If your proposals offer any substantial prospects, and we are convinced of it, Monsieur Margaritis’ vote carries mine with it, and there are twenty well-to-do houses in Vouvray where purses will be opened and your panacea will be tried.”
As she heard him mention the madman, Madame Vernier looked up at her husband.
“By the way, I believe my wife was just going to call on Madame Margaritis with a neighbor of ours. Wait a minute, and the ladies will show you the way.—You can go round and pick up Madame Fontanier,” said the old dyer with a wink at his wife.
This suggestion that she should take with her the merriest, the most voluble, the most facetious of all the merry wives of Vouvray, was as much as to tell Madame Vernier to secure a witness to report the scene which would certainly take place between the bagman and the lunatic, so as to amuse the country with it for a month to come. Monsieur and Madame Vernier played their parts so well that Gaudissart had no suspicions, and rushed headlong into the snare. He politely offered his arm to Madame Vernier, and fancied he had quite made a conquest of both ladies on the way, being dazzlingly witty, and pelting them with waggery and puns which they did not understand.
The so-called banker lived in the first house at the opening into the Vallée coquette. It was called La Fuye, and was not particularly remarkable. On the ground floor was a large paneled sitting-room, with a bedroom on each side for the master and mistress. The entrance was through a hall, where they dined, opening into the kitchen. This ground floor, quite lacking the external elegance for which even the humblest dwellings in Touraine are noted, was crowned by attics, to which an outside stair led up, built against one of the gable ends, and covered by a lean-to roof. A small garden, full of marigolds, seringa, and elder, divided the house from the vineyard. Round the courtyard were the buildings for the winepresses and storage.
Margaritis, seated in a yellow Utrecht velvet chair by the window in the drawing-room, did not rise as the ladies came in with Gaudissart; he was thinking of the sale of his butts of wine. He was a lean man, with a pear-shaped head, bald above the forehead, and furnished with a few hairs at the back. His deep-set eyes, shaded by thick black brows, and with dark rings round them, his nose as thin as the blade of a knife, his high cheekbones and hollow cheeks, his generally oblong outline—everything, down to his absurdly long flat chin, contributed to give a strange look to his countenance, suggesting that of a professor of rhetoric—or of a ragpicker.
“Monsieur Margaritis,” said Madame Vernier, “come, wake up! Here is a gentleman sent to you by my husband, and you are to hear him with attention. Put aside your mathematical calculations and talk to him.”
At this speech the madman rose, looked at Gaudissart, waved
