I
They went there every evening about eleven o'clock, just as they would
go to the club. Six or eight of them; always the same set, not fast men,
but respectable tradesmen, and young men in government or some other
employ, and they would drink their Chartreuse, and laugh with the girls,
or else talk seriously with Madame Tellier, whom everybody respected,
and then they would go home at twelve o'clock! The younger men would
sometimes stay later.
It was a small, comfortable house painted yellow, at the corner of a
street behind Saint Etienne's Church, and from the windows one could see
the docks full of ships being unloaded, the big salt marsh, and, rising
beyond it, the Virgin's Hill with its old gray chapel.
Madame Tellier, who came of a respectable family of peasant proprietors
in the Department of the Eure, had taken up her profession, just as she
would have become a milliner or dressmaker. The prejudice which is so
violent and deeply rooted in large towns, does not exist in the country
places in Normandy. The peasant says:
“It is a paying-business,” and he sends his daughter to keep an
establishment of this character just as he would send her to keep a
girls' school.
She had inherited the house from an old uncle, to whom it had belonged.
Monsieur and Madame Tellier, who had formerly been innkeepers near
Yvetot, had immediately sold their house, as they thought that the
business at Fecamp was more profitable, and they arrived one fine
morning to assume the direction of the enterprise, which was declining
on account of the absence of the proprietors. They were good people
enough in their way, and soon made themselves liked by their staff and
their neighbors.
Monsieur died of apoplexy two years later, for as the new place kept him
in idleness and without any exercise, he had grown excessively stout,
and his health had suffered. Since she had been a widow, all the
frequenters of the establishment made much of her; but people said that,
personally, she was quite virtuous, and even the girls in the house
could not discover anything against her. She was tall, stout and
affable, and her complexion, which had become pale in the dimness of her
house, the shutters of which were scarcely ever opened, shone as if it
had been varnished. She had a fringe of curly false hair, which gave
her a juvenile look, that contrasted strongly with the ripeness of her
figure. She was always smiling and cheerful, and was fond of a joke,
but there was a shade of reserve about her, which her occupation had not
quite made her lose. Coarse words always shocked her, and when any young
fellow who had been badly brought up called her establishment a hard
name, she was angry and disgusted.
In a word, she had a refined mind, and although she treated her women as
friends, yet she very frequently used to say that “she and they were not
made of the same stuff.”
Sometimes during the week she would hire a carriage and take some of her
girls into the country, where they used to enjoy themselves on the grass
by the side of the little river. They were like a lot of girls let out
from school, and would run races and play childish games. They had a
cold dinner on the grass, and drank cider, and went home at night with
a delicious feeling of fatigue, and in the carriage they kissed Madame'
Tellier as their kind mother, who was full of goodness and complaisance.
The house had two entrances. At the corner there was a sort of tap-room,
which sailors and the lower orders frequented at night, and she had two
girls whose special duty it was to wait on them with the assistance of
Frederic, a short, light-haired, beardless fellow, as strong as a horse.
They set the half bottles of wine and the jugs of beer on the shaky
marble tables before the customers, and then urged the men to drink.
The three other girls--there were only five of them--formed a kind of
aristocracy, and they remained with the company on the first floor,
unless they were wanted downstairs and there was nobody on the first
floor. The salon de Jupiter, where the tradesmen used to meet, was
papered in blue, and embellished with a large drawing representing Leda
and the swan. The room was reached by a winding staircase, through
a narrow door opening on the street, and above this door a lantern
inclosed in wire, such as one still sees in some towns, at the foot of
the shrine of some saint, burned all night long.
The house, which was old and damp, smelled slightly of mildew. At times
there was an odor of eau de Cologne in the passages, or sometimes from a
half-open door downstairs the noisy mirth of the common men sitting and
drinking rose to the first floor, much to the disgust of the gentlemen
who were there. Madame Tellier, who was on friendly terms with her
customers, did not leave the room, and took much interest in what was
going on in the town, and they regularly told her all the news. Her
serious conversation was a change from the ceaseless chatter of the
three women; it was a rest from the obscene jokes of those stout
individuals who every evening indulged in the commonplace debauchery of
drinking a glass of liqueur in company with common women.
The names of the girls on the first floor were Fernande, Raphaele, and
Rosa, the Jade. As the staff was limited, madame had endeavored that
each member of it should be a pattern, an epitome of the feminine type,
so that every customer might find as nearly as possible the realization
of his ideal. Fernande represented the handsome blonde; she was very
tall, rather fat, and lazy; a country girl, who could not get rid of her
freckles, and whose short, light, almost colorless, tow-like hair, like
combed-out hemp, barely covered her head.
Raphaele, who came from Marseilles, played the indispensable part of the
handsome Jewess, and was thin, with high cheekbones, which were covered
with rouge, and black hair covered with pomatum, which curled on her
forehead. Her eyes would have been handsome, if the right one had not
had a speck in it. Her Roman nose came down over a square jaw, where two
false upper teeth contrasted strangely with the bad color of the rest.
Rosa was a little roll of fat, nearly all body, with very short legs,
and from morning till night she sang songs, which were alternately
risque or sentimental, in a harsh voice; told silly, interminable tales,
and only stopped talking in order to eat, and left off eating in order
to talk; she was never still, and was active as a squirrel, in spite
of her embonpoint and her short legs; her laugh, which was a torrent of
shrill cries, resounded here and there, ceaselessly, in a bedroom, in
the loft, in the cafe, everywhere, and all about nothing.
The two women on the ground floor, Lodise, who was nicknamed La Cocotte,
and Flora, whom they called Balancoise, because she limped a little,
the former always dressed as the Goddess of Liberty, with a tri-colored
sash, and the other as a Spanish woman, with a string of copper coins in
her carroty hair, which jingled at every uneven step, looked like cooks
dressed up for the carnival. They were like all other women of the lower
orders, neither uglier nor better looking than they usually are.
They looked just like servants at an inn, and were generally called “the
two pumps.”
A jealous peace, which was, however, very rarely disturbed, reigned
among these five women, thanks to Madame Tellier's conciliatory wisdom,
and to her constant good humor, and the establishment, which was the
only one of the kind in the little town, was very much frequented.
Madame Tellier had succeeded in giving it such a respectable appearance,
she was so amiable and obliging to everybody, her good heart was so well
known, that she was treated with a certain amount of consideration. The
regular customers spent money on her, and were delighted when she was
especially friendly toward them, and when they met during the day, they
would say: “Until this evening, you know where,” just as men say: “At
the club, after dinner.” In a word, Madame Tellier's house was somewhere
to go to, and they very rarely missed their daily meetings there.
One evening toward the end of May, the first arrival, Monsieur Poulin,
who was a timber merchant, and had been mayor, found the door shut. The
lantern behind the grating was not alight; there was not a sound in the
house; everything seemed dead. He knocked, gently at first, but then
more loudly, but nobody answered the door. Then he went slowly up the
street, and when he got to the market place he met Monsieur Duvert, the
gunmaker, who was going to the same place, so they went back together,
but did not meet with any better success. But suddenly they heard a loud
noise, close to them, and on going round the house, they saw a number of
English and French sailors, who were hammering at the closed shutters of
the taproom with their fists.
The two tradesmen immediately made their escape, but a low “Pst!”
stopped them; it was Monsieur Tournevau, the fish curer, who had
recognized them, and was trying to attract their attention. They told
him what had happened, and he was all the more annoyed, as he was a
married man and father of a family, and only went on Saturdays. That was
his regular evening, and now he should be deprived of this dissipation
for the whole week.
The three men went as far as the quay together, and on the way they
met young Monsieur Philippe, the banker's son, who frequented the place
regularly, and Monsieur Pinipesse, the collector, and they all
returned to the Rue aux Juifs together, to make a last attempt. But the
exasperated sailors were besieging the house, throwing stones at the
shutters, and shouting, and the five first-floor customers went away as
quickly as possible, and walked aimlessly about the streets.
Presently they met Monsieur Dupuis, the insurance agent, and then
Monsieur Vasse, the Judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, and they took a
long walk, going to the pier first of all, where they sat down in a
row on the granite parapet and watched the rising tide, and when the
promenaders had sat there for some time, Monsieur Tournevau said:
“This is not very amusing!”
“Decidedly not,” Monsieur Pinipesse replied, and they started off to
walk again.
After going through the street alongside the hill, they returned
over the wooden bridge which crosses the Retenue, passed close to the
railway, and came out again on the market place, when, suddenly, a
quarrel arose between Monsieur Pinipesse, the collector, and Monsieur
Tournevau about an edible mushroom which one of them declared he had
found in the neighborhood.
As they were out of temper already from having nothing to do, they would
very probably have come to blows, if the others had not interfered.
Monsieur Pinipesse went off furious, and soon another altercation
arose between the ex-mayor, Monsieur Poulin, and Monsieur Dupuis, the
insurance agent, on the subject of the tax collector's salary and the
profits which he might make. Insulting remarks were freely passing
between them, when a torrent of formidable cries was heard, and the body
of sailors, who were tired of waiting so long outside a closed house,
came into the square. They were walking arm in arm, two and two, and
formed a long procession, and were shouting furiously. The townsmen
hid themselves in a doorway, and the yelling crew disappeared in the
direction of the abbey. For a long time they still heard the noise,
which diminished like a storm in the distance, and then silence was
restored. Monsieur Poulin and Monsieur Dupuis, who were angry with each
other, went in different directions, without wishing each other good-by.
The other four set off again, and instinctively went in the direction
of Madame Tellier's establishment, which was still closed, silent,
impenetrable. A quiet, but obstinate drunken man was knocking at the
door of the lower room, and then stopped and called Frederic, in a low
voice, but finding that he got no answer, he sat down on the doorstep,
and waited the course of events.
The others were just going to retire, when the noisy band of sailors
reappeared at the end of the street. The French sailors were shouting
the “Marseillaise,” and the Englishmen “Rule Britannia.” There was a
general lurching against the wall, and then the drunken fellows went
on their way toward the quay, where a fight broke out between the two
nations, in the course of which an Englishman had his arm broken and a
Frenchman his nose split.
The drunken man who had waited outside the door, was crying by that
time, as drunken men and children cry when they are vexed, and the
others went away. By degrees, calm was restored in the noisy town; here
and there, at moments, the distant sound of voices could be heard, and
then died away in the distance.
One man only was still wandering about, Monsieur Tournevau, the fish
curer, who was annoyed at having to wait until the following Saturday,
and he hoped something would turn up, he did not know what; but he was
exasperated at the police for thus allowing an establishment of such
public utility, which they had under their control, to be closed.
He went back to it and examined the walls, trying to find out some
reason, and on the shutter he saw a notice stuck up. He struck a wax
match and read the following, in a large, uneven hand: “Closed on
account of the Confirmation.”
Then he went away, as he saw it was useless to remain, and left the
drunken man lying on the pavement fast asleep, outside that inhospitable
door.
The next day, all the regular customers, one after the other, found some
reason for going through the street, with a bundle of papers under their
arm to keep them in countenance, and with a furtive glance they all read
that mysterious notice:
“Closed on account of the Confirmation.”