The Jealousies of a Country Town

Porte de Séez and the Rue du Bercail to the Rue du Cygne, where du Bousquier, five years ago, had bought a small countrified house built of the gray stone of the district, which is used like granite in Normandy, or Breton schist in the West. The sometime forage-contractor had established himself there in more comfort than any other house in the town could boast, for he had brought with him some relics of past days of splendor; but provincial manners and customs were slowly darkening the glory of the fallen Sardanapalus. The vestiges of past luxury looked about as much out of place in the house as a chandelier in a barn. Harmony, which links the works of man or of God together, was lacking in all things large or small. A ewer with a metal lid, such as you only see on the outskirts of Brittany, stood on a handsome chest of drawers; and while the bedroom floor was covered with a fine carpet, the window-curtains displayed a flower pattern only known to cheap printed cottons. The stone mantelpiece, daubed over with paint, was out of all keeping with a handsome clock disgraced by a shabby pair of candlesticks. Local talent had made an unsuccessful attempt to paint the doors in vivid contrasts of startling colors; while the staircase, ascended by all and sundry in muddy boots, had not been painted at all. In short, du Bousquier’s house, like the time which he represented, was a confused mixture of grandeur and squalor.

Du Bousquier was regarded as well-to-do, but he led the parasitical life of the Chevalier de Valois, and he is always rich enough that spends less than his income. His one servant was a country bumpkin, a dull-witted youth enough; but he had been trained, by slow degrees, to suit du Bousquier’s requirements, until he had learned, much as an orangutan might learn, to scour floors, black boots, brush clothes, and to come for his master of an evening with a lantern if it was dark, and a pair of sabots if it rained. On great occasions, du Bousquier made him discard the blue-checked cotton blouse with loose sagging pockets behind, which always bulged with a handkerchief, a clasp knife, apples, or “stickjaw.” Arrayed in a regulation suit of clothes, he accompanied his master to wait at table, and over-ate himself afterwards with the other servants. Like many other mortals, René had only stuff enough in him for one vice, and his was gluttony. Du Bousquier made a reward of this service, and in return his Breton factotum was absolutely discreet.

“What, have you come our way, miss?” René asked when he saw Suzanne in the doorway. “It is not your day; we have not got any linen for Mme. Lardot.”

“Big stupid!” laughed the fair Suzanne, as she went up the stairs, leaving René to finish a porringer full of buckwheat bannocks boiled in milk.

Du Bousquier was still in bed, ruminating his plans for fortune. To him, as to all who have squeezed the orange of pleasure, there was nothing left but ambition. Ambition, like gambling, is inexhaustible. And, moreover, given a good constitution, the passions of the brain will always outlive the heart’s passions.

“Here I am!” said Suzanne, sitting down on the bed; the curtain-rings grated along the rods as she swept them sharply back with an imperious gesture.

“Quésaco, my charmer?” asked du Bousquier, sitting upright.

“Monsieur,” Suzanne began, with much gravity, “you must be surprised to see me come in this way; but, under the circumstances, it is no use my minding what people will say.”

“What is all this about?” asked du Bousquier, folding his arms.

“Why, do you not understand?” returned Suzanne. “I know” (with an engaging little pout), “I know how ridiculous it is when a poor girl comes to bother a man about things that you think mere trifles. But if you really know me, monsieur, if you only knew all that I would do for a man, if he cared about me as I could care about you, you would never repent of marrying me. It is not that I could be of so much use to you here, by the way; but if we went to Paris, you should see how far I could bring a man of spirit with such brains as yours, and especially just now, when they are remaking the Government from top to bottom, and the foreigners are the masters. Between ourselves, does this thing in question really matter after all? Is it not a piece of good fortune for which you would be glad to pay a good deal one of these days? For whom are you going to think and work?”

“For myself, to be sure!” du Bousquier answered brutally.

“Old monster! you shall never be a father!” said Suzanne, with a ring in her voice which turned the words to a prophecy and a curse.

“Come, Suzanne, no nonsense; I am dreaming still, I think.”

“What more do you want in the way of reality?” cried Suzanne, rising to her feet. Du Bousquier scrubbed his head with his cotton nightcap, which he twisted round and round with a fidgety energy that told plainly of prodigious mental ferment.

“He actually believes it!” Suzanne said within herself. “And his vanity is tickled. Good Lord, how easy it is to take them in!”

“Suzanne! What the deuce do you want me to do? It is so extraordinary⁠ ⁠… I that thought⁠—The fact is.⁠ ⁠… But no, no, it can’t be⁠—”

“Do you mean that you cannot marry me?”

“Oh, as to that, no. I am not free.”

“Is it Mlle. Armande or Mlle. Cormon, who have both refused you already? Look here, M. du Bousquier, it is not as if I was obliged to get gendarmes to drag you to the registrar’s office to save my character. There are plenty that would marry me, but I have no intention whatever of taking a man that does not know my value. You may be sorry some of these days