As the mayor
was about to sit down to breakfast, word was brought to him that the rural
policeman, with two prisoners, was awaiting him at the Hotel de Ville. He
went there at once and found old Hochedur standing guard before a
middle-class couple whom he was regarding with a severe expression on his
face.
The man, a
fat old fellow with a red nose and white hair, seemed utterly dejected; while
the woman, a little roundabout individual with shining cheeks, looked at the
official who had arrested them, with defiant eyes.
"What is
it? What is it, Hochedur?"
The rural
policeman made his deposition: He had gone out that morning at his usual
time, in order to patrol his beat from the forest of Champioux as far as the
boundaries of Argenteuil. He had not noticed anything unusual in the country
except that it was a fine day, and that the wheat was doing well, when the
son of old Bredel, who was going over his vines, called out to him:
"Here, Daddy Hochedur, go and have a look at the outskirts of the wood.
In the first thicket you will find a pair of pigeons who must be a hundred
and thirty years old between them!"
He went in
the direction indicated, entered the thicket, and there he heard words which
made him suspect a flagrant breach of morality. Advancing, therefore, on his
hands and knees as if to surprise a poacher, he had arrested the couple whom
he found there.
The mayor
looked at the culprits in astonishment, for the man was certainly sixty, and
the woman fifty-five at least, and he began to question them, beginning with
the man, who replied in such a weak voice that he could scarcely be heard.
"What is
your name?"
"Nicholas
Beaurain."
"Your
occupation?"
"Haberdasher,
in the Rue des Martyrs, in Paris."
"What
were you doing in the wood?"
The
haberdasher remained silent, with his eyes on his fat paunch, and his hands
hanging at his sides, and the mayor continued:
"Do you
deny what the officer of the municipal authorities states?"
"No,
monsieur."
"So you
confess it?"
"Yes,
monsieur."
"What
have you to say in your defence?"
"Nothing,
monsieur."
"Where
did you meet the partner in your misdemeanor?"
"She is
my wife, monsieur."
"Your
wife?"
"Yes,
monsieur."
"Then--then--you
do not live together-in Paris?"
"I beg
your pardon, monsieur, but we are living together!"
"But in
that case--you must be mad, altogether mad, my dear sir, to get caught
playing lovers in the country at ten o'clock in the
morning."
The
haberdasher seemed ready to cry with shame, and he muttered: "It was she
who enticed me! I told her it was very stupid, but when a woman once gets a
thing into her head--you know--you cannot get it out."
The mayor,
who liked a joke, smiled and replied: "In your case, the contrary ought
to have happened. You would not be here, if she had had the idea only in her
head."
Then Monsieur
Beauain was seized with rage and turning to his wife, he said: "Do you
see to what you have brought us with your poetry? And now we shall have to go
before the courts at our age, for a breach of morals! And we shall have to
shut up the shop, sell our good will, and go to some other neighborhood!
That's what it has come to."
Madame
Beaurain got up, and without looking at her husband, she explained herself
without embarrassment, without useless modesty, and almost without
hesitation.
"Of
course, monsieur, I know that we have made ourselves ridiculous. Will you
allow me to plead my cause like an advocate, or rather like a poor woman? And
I hope that you will be kind enough to send us home, and to spare us the
disgrace of a prosecution.
"Years
ago, when I was young, I made Monsieur Beaurain's acquaintance one Sunday in
this neighborhood. He was employed in a draper's shop, and I was a saleswoman
in a ready-made clothing establishment. I remember it as if it were
yesterday. I used to come and spend Sundays here occasionally with a friend
of mine, Rose Leveque, with whom I lived in the Rue Pigalle, and Rose had a
sweetheart, while I had none. He used to bring us here, and one Saturday he
told me laughing that he should bring a friend with him the next day. I quite
understood what he meant, but I replied that it would be no good; for I was
virtuous, monsieur.
"The
next day we met Monsieur Beaurain at the railway station, and in those days
he was good-looking, but I had made up my mind not to encourage him, and I
did not. Well, we arrived at Bezons. It was a lovely day, the sort of day
that touches your heart. When it is fine even now, just as it used to be
formerly, I grow quite foolish, and when I am in the country I utterly lose
my head. The green grass, the swallows flying so swiftly, the smell of the
grass, the scarlet poppies, the daisies, all that makes me crazy. It is like
champagne when one is not accustomed to it!
"Well,
it was lovely weather, warm and bright, and it seemed to penetrate your body
through your eyes when you looked and through your mouth when you breathed.
Rose and Simon hugged and kissed each other every minute, and that gave me a
queer feeling! Monsieur Beaurain and I walked behind them, without speaking
much, for when people do not know each other, they do not find anything to
talk about. He looked timid, and I liked to see his embarrassment. At last we
got to the little wood; it was as cool as in a bath there, and we four sat
down. Rose and her lover teased me because I looked rather stern, but you
will understand that I could not be otherwise. And then they began to kiss
and hug again, without putting any more restraint upon themselves than if we
had not been there; and then they whispered together, and got up and went off
among the trees, without saying a word. You may fancy what I looked like,
alone with this young fellow whom I saw for the first time. I felt so
confused at seeing them go that it gave me courage, and I began to talk. I
asked him what his business was, and he said he was a linen draper's
assistant, as I told you just now. We talked for a few minutes, and that made
him bold, and he wanted to take liberties with me, but I told him sharply to
keep his place. Is not that true, Monsieur Beaurain?"
Monsieur Beaurain,
who was looking at his feet in confusion, did not reply, and she continued:
"Then he saw that I was virtuous, and he began to make love to me
nicely, like an honorable man, and from that time he came every Sunday, for
he was very much in love with me. I was very fond of him also, very fond of
him! He was a good-looking fellow, formerly, and in short he married me the
next September, and we started in business in the Rue des
Martyrs.
"It was a hard struggle for some years, monsieur. Business did not
prosper, and we could not afford many country excursions, and, besides, we
had got out of the way of them. One has other things in one's head, and
thinks more of the cash box than of pretty speeches, when one is in business.
We were growing old by degrees without perceiving it, like quiet people who
do not think much about love. One does not regret anything as long as one
does not notice what one has lost.
"And
then, monsieur, business became better, and we were tranquil as to the
future! Then, you see, I do not exactly know what went on in my mind, no, I
really do not know, but I began to dream like a little boarding-school girl.
The sight of the little carts full of flowers which are drawn about the
streets made me cry; the smell of violets sought me out in my easy-chair,
behind my cash box, and made my heart beat! Then I would get up and go out on
the doorstep to look at the blue sky between the roofs. When one looks up at
the sky from the street, it looks like a river which is descending on Paris, winding
as it flows, and the swallows pass to and fro in it like fish. These ideas
are very stupid at my age! But how can one help it, monsieur, when one has
worked all one's life? A moment comes in which one perceives that one could
have done something else, and that one regrets, oh! yes, one feels intense
regret! Just think, for twenty years I might have gone and had kisses in the
woods, like other women. I used to think how delightful it would be to lie
under the trees and be in love with some one! And I thought of it every day
and every night! I dreamed of the moonlight on the water, until I felt
inclined to drown myself.
"I did
not venture to speak to Monsieur Beaurain about this at first. I knew that he
would make fun of me, and send me back to sell my needles and cotton! And
then, to speak the truth, Monsieur Beaurain never said much to me, but when I
looked in the glass, I also understood quite well that I no longer appealed
to any one!
"Well, I
made up my mind, and I proposed to him an excursion into the country, to the
place where we had first become acquainted. He agreed without mistrusting
anything, and we arrived here this morning, about nine o'clock.
"I felt
quite young again when I got among the wheat, for a woman's heart never grows
old! And really, I no longer saw my husband as he is at present, but just as
he was formerly! That I will swear to you, monsieur. As true as I am standing
here I was crazy. I began to kiss him, and he was more surprised than if I
had tried to murder him. He kept saying to me: 'Why, you must be mad! You are
mad this morning! What is the matter with you?' I did not listen to him, I
only listened to my own heart, and I made him come into the wood with me.
That is all. I have spoken the truth, Monsieur le Maire, the whole
truth."
The mayor was
a sensible man. He rose from his chair, smiled, and said: "Go in peace,
madame, and when you again visit our forests, be more discreet."
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