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.”