They had halted two-thirds of the way up the slope, at a spot famous for
the view, and to which all tourists drive. They overlooked the long and
broad valley through which the bright river flowed in sweeping curves.
It could be caught sight of in the distance, dotted with numerous
islands, and describing a wide sweep before flowing through Rouen. Then
the town appeared on the right bank, slightly veiled in the morning
mist, but with rays of sunlight falling on its roofs; its thousand squat
or pointed spires, light, fragile-looking, wrought like gigantic jewels;
its round or square towers topped with heraldic crowns; its belfries;
the numerous Gothic summits of its churches, overtopped by the sharp
spire of the cathedral, that surprising spike of bronze--strange, ugly,
and out of all proportion, the tallest in the world. Facing it, on the
other side of the river, rose the factory chimneys of the suburb of
Saint Serves--tall, round, and broadening at their summit. More numerous
than their sister spires, they reared even in the distant country, their
tall brick columns, and vomited into the blue sky their black and coaly
breath. Highest of all, as high as the second of the summits reared by
human labor, the pyramid of Cheops, almost level with its proud
companion the cathedral spire, the great steam-pump of La Foudre seemed
the queen of the busy, smoking factories, as the other was the queen of
the sacred edifices. Further on, beyond the workmen's town, stretched a
forest of pines, and the Seine, having passed between the two divisions
of the city, continued its way, skirting a tall rolling slope, wooded at
the summit, and showing here and there its bare bone of white stone.
Then the river disappeared on the horizon, after again describing a long
sweeping curve. Ships could be seen ascending and descending the stream,
towed by tugs as big as flies and belching forth thick smoke. Islands
were stretched along the water in a line, one close to the other, or
with wide intervals between them, like the unequal beads of a verdant
rosary.
The driver waited until the travelers' ecstasies were over. He knew from
experience the duration of the admiration of all the breed of tourists.
But when he started again Duroy suddenly caught sight of two old people
advancing towards them some hundreds of yards further on, and jumped
out, exclaiming: "There they are. I recognize them."
There were two country-folk, a man and a woman, walking with irregular
steps, rolling in their gait, and sometimes knocking their shoulders
together. The man was short and strongly built, high colored and
inclined to stoutness, but powerful, despite his years. The woman was
tall, spare, bent, careworn, the real hard-working country-woman who has
toiled afield from childhood, and has never had time to amuse herself,
while her husband has been joking and drinking with the customers.
Madeleine had also alighted from the carriage, and she watched these two
poor creatures coming towards them with a pain at her heart, a sadness
she had not anticipated. They had not recognized their son in this fine
gentleman and would never have guessed this handsome lady in the light
dress to be their daughter-in-law. They were walking on quickly and in
silence to meet their long-looked-for boy, without noticing these city
folk followed by their carriage.
They passed by when George, who was laughing, cried out: "Good-day,
Daddy Duroy!"
They both stopped short, amazed at first, then stupefied with surprise.
The old woman recovered herself first, and stammered, without advancing
a step: "Is't thou, boy?"
The young fellow answered: "Yes, it is I, mother," and stepping up to
her, kissed her on both cheeks with a son's hearty smack. Then he rubbed
noses with his father, who had taken off his cap, a very tall, black
silk cap, made Rouen fashion, like those worn by cattle dealers.
Then George said: "This is my wife," and the two country people looked
at Madeleine. They looked at her as one looks at a phenomenon, with an
uneasy fear, united in the father with a species of approving
satisfaction, in the mother with a kind of jealous enmity.
The man, who was of a joyous nature and inspired by a loveliness born of
sweet cider and alcohol, grew bolder, and asked, with a twinkle in the
corner of his eyes: "I may kiss her all the same?"
"Certainly," replied his son, and Madeleine, ill at ease, held out both
cheeks to the sounding smacks of the rustic, who then wiped his lips
with the back of his hand. The old woman, in her turn, kissed her
daughter-in-law with a hostile reserve. No, this was not the
daughter-in-law of her dreams; the plump, fresh housewife, rosy-cheeked
as an apple, and round as a brood mare. She looked like a hussy, the
fine lady with her furbelows and her musk. For the old girl all perfumes
were musk.
They set out again, walking behind the carriage which bore the trunk of
the newly-wedded pair. The old fellow took his son by the arm, and
keeping him a little in the rear of the others, asked with interest:
"Well, how goes business, lad?"
"Pretty fair."
"So much the better. Has thy wife any money?"
"Forty thousand francs," answered George.
His father gave vent to an admiring whistle, and could only murmur,
"Dang it!" so overcome was he by the mention of the sum. Then he added,
in a tone of serious conviction: "Dang it all, she's a fine woman!" For
he found her to his taste, and he had passed for a good judge in his
day.
Madeleine and her mother-in-law were walking side by side without
exchanging a word. The two men rejoined them. They reached the village,
a little roadside village formed of half-a-score houses on each side of
the highway, cottages and farm buildings, the former of brick and the
latter of clay, these covered with thatch and those with slates. Father
Duroy's tavern, "The Bellevue," a bit of a house consisting of a ground
floor and a garret, stood at the beginning of the village to the left. A
pine branch above the door indicated, in ancient fashion, that thirsty
folk could enter.
The things were laid for lunch, in the common room of the tavern, on two
tables placed together and covered with two napkins. A neighbor, come in
to help to serve the lunch, bowed low on seeing such a fine lady appear;
and then, recognizing George, exclaimed: "Good Lord! is that the
youngster?"
He replied gayly: "Yes, it is I, Mother Brulin," and kissed her as he
had kissed his father and mother. Then turning to his wife, he said:
"Come into our room and take your hat off."
He ushered her through a door to the right into a cold-looking room with
tiled floor, white-washed walls, and a bed with white cotton curtains. A
crucifix above a holy-water stoup, and two colored pictures, one
representing Paul and Virginia under a blue palm tree, and the other
Napoleon the First on a yellow horse, were the only ornaments of this
clean and dispiriting apartment.
As soon as they were alone he kissed Madeleine, saying: "Thanks, Made. I
am glad to see the old folks again. When one is in Paris one does not
think about it; but when one meets again, it gives one pleasure all the
same."
But his father, thumbing the partition with his fist, cried out: "Come
along, come along, the soup is ready," and they had to sit down to
table.
It was a long, countrified repast, with a succession of ill-assorted
dishes, a sausage after a leg of mutton, and an omelette after a
sausage. Father Duroy, excited by cider and some glasses of wine, turned
on the tap of his choicest jokes--those he reserved for great occasions
of festivity, smutty adventures that had happened, as he maintained, to
friends of his. George, who knew all these stories, laughed,
nevertheless, intoxicated by his native air, seized on by the innate
love of one's birthplace and of spots familiar from childhood, by all
the sensations and recollections once more renewed, by all the objects
of yore seen again once more; by trifles, such as the mark of a knife on
a door, a broken chair recalling some pretty event, the smell of the
soil, the breath of the neighboring forest, the odors of the dwelling,
the gutter, the dunghill.
Mother Duroy did not speak, but remained sad and grim, watching her
daughter-in-law out of the corner of her eye, with hatred awakened in
her heart--the hatred of an old toiler, an old rustic with fingers worn
and limbs bent by hard work--for the city madame, who inspired her with
the repulsion of an accursed creature, an impure being, created for
idleness and sin. She kept getting up every moment to fetch the dishes
or fill the glasses with cider, sharp and yellow from the decanter, or
sweet, red, and frothing from the bottles, the corks of which popped
like those of ginger beer.
Madeleine scarcely ate or spoke. She wore her wonted smile upon her
lips, but it was a sad and resigned one. She was downcast. Why? She had
wanted to come. She had not been unaware that she was going among
country folk--poor country folk. What had she fancied them to be--she,
who did not usually dream? Did she know herself? Do not women always
hope for something that is not? Had she fancied them more poetical? No;
but perhaps better informed, more noble, more affectionate, more
ornamental. Yet she did not want them high-bred, like those in novels.
Whence came it, then, that they shocked her by a thousand trifling,
imperceptible details, by a thousand indefinable coarsenesses, by their
very nature as rustics, by their words, their gestures, and their mirth?
She recalled her own mother, of whom she never spoke to anyone--a
governess, brought up at Saint Denis--seduced, and died from poverty and
grief when she, Madeleine, was twelve years old. An unknown hand had had
her brought up. Her father, no doubt. Who was he? She did not exactly
know, although she had vague suspicions.
The lunch still dragged on. Customers were now coming in and shaking
hands with the father, uttering exclamations of wonderment on seeing his
son, and slyly winking as they scanned the young wife out of the corner
of their eye, which was as much as to say: "Hang it all, she's not a
duffer, George Duroy's wife." Others, less intimate, sat down at the
wooden tables, calling for "A pot," "A jugful," "Two brandies," "A
raspail," and began to play at dominoes, noisily rattling the little
bits of black and white bone. Mother Duroy kept passing to and fro,
serving the customers, with her melancholy air, taking money, and wiping
the tables with the corner of her blue apron.
The smoke of clay pipes and sou cigars filled the room. Madeleine began
to cough, and said: "Suppose we go out; I cannot stand it."
They had not quite finished, and old Duroy was annoyed at this. Then she
got up and went and sat on a chair outside the door, while her
father-in-law and her husband were finishing their coffee and their nip
of brandy.
George soon rejoined her. "Shall we stroll down as far as the Seine?"
said he.