Jules Chicot, the innkeeper, who lived at Épreville, pulled up his
tilbury in front of Mother Magloire's farmhouse. He was a tall man of
about forty, with a red face and a round stomach, and was generally said
to be _a very knowing customer_.
He hitched his horse up to the gatepost and went in. He owned some land
adjoining that of the old woman's, which he had been coveting for a long
while, and had tried in vain to buy a score of times, but she had always
obstinately refused to part with it.
"I was born here, and here I mean to die," was all she said.
He found her peeling potatoes outside the farmhouse door. She was a
woman of about seventy-two, very thin, shriveled and wrinkled, almost
dried up in fact, and much bent, but as active and untiring as a girl.
Chicot patted her on the back in a very friendly fashion, and then sat
down by her on a stool.
"Well, Mother, you are always pretty well and hearty, I am glad to see."
"Nothing to complain of, considering, thank you. And how are you, Mons.
Chicot?"
"Oh! pretty well, thank you, except a few rheumatic pains occasionally;
otherwise, I should have nothing to complain of."
"That's all the better!"
And she said no more, while Chicot watched her going on with her work.
Her crooked, knotty fingers, hard as a lobster's claws, seized the
tubers, which were lying in a pail, as if they had been a pair of
pincers, and she peeled them rapidly, cutting off long strips of skin
with an old knife which she held in the other hand, throwing the
potatoes into the water as they were done. Three daring fowls jumped one
after the other into her lap, seized a bit of peel, and then ran away as
fast as their legs would carry them with it in their beak.
Chicot seemed embarrassed, anxious, with something on the tip of his
tongue which he could not get out. At last he said hurriedly:
"I say, Mother Magloire--"
"Well, what is it?"
"You are quite sure that you do not want to sell your farm?"
"Certainly not; you may make up your mind to that. What I have said, I
have said, so don't refer to it again."
"Very well; only I fancy I have thought of an arrangement that might
suit us both very well."
"What is it?"
"Here you are. You shall sell it to me, and keep it all the same. You
don't understand? Very well, so just follow me in what I am going to
say."
The old woman left off peeling her potatoes, and looked at the innkeeper
attentively from under her bushy eyebrows, and he went on:
"Let me explain myself. Every month I will give you one hundred and
fifty francs. You understand me, I suppose? Every month I will come and
bring you thirty crowns[13] and it will not make the slightest
difference in your life--not the very slightest. You will have your own
home just as you have now, will not trouble yourself about me, and will
owe me nothing; all you will have to do will be to take my money. Will
that arrangement suit you?"
He looked at her good-humoredly, one might almost have said
benevolently, and the old woman returned his looks distrustfully, as if
she suspected a trap, and said:
"It seems all right, as far as I am concerned, but it will not give you
the farm."
"Never mind about that," he said, "you will remain here as long as it
pleases God Almighty to let you live; it will be your home. Only you
will sign a deed before a lawyer making it over to me after your death.
You have no children, only nephews and nieces for whom you don't care a
straw. Will that suit you? You will keep everything during your life,
and I will give you the thirty crowns a month. It is pure gain as far as
you are concerned."
The old woman was surprised, rather uneasy, but nevertheless, very much
tempted to agree, and answered:
"I don't say that I will not agree to it, but I must think about it.
Come back in a week, and we will talk it over again, and I will then
give you my definite answer."
And Chicot went off, as happy as a king who has conquered an empire.
Mother Magloire was thoughtful, and did not sleep at all that night; in
fact, for four days she was in a fever of hesitation. She _smelt_, so to
say, that there was something underneath the offer which was not to her
advantage; but then the thought of thirty crowns a month, of all those
coins chinking in her apron, falling to her, as it were, from the skies,
without her doing anything for it, filled her with covetousness.
She went to the notary, and told him about it. He advised her to accept
Chicot's offer, but said she ought to ask for an annuity of fifty
instead of thirty, as her farm was worth sixty thousand francs at the
lowest calculation.
"If you live for fifteen years longer," he said, "even then he will only
have paid forty-five thousand francs for it."
The old woman trembled with joy at this prospect of getting fifty crowns
a month; but she was still suspicious, fearing some trick, and she
remained a long time with the lawyer, asking questions without being
able to make up her mind to go. At last she gave him instructions to
draw up the deed, and returned home with her head in a whirl, just as if
she had drunk four jugs of new cider.
When Chicot came again to receive her answer she took a lot of
persuading, and declared that she could not make up her mind to agree to
his proposal, though she was all the time on tenter-hooks lest he should
not consent to give the fifty crowns: but at last, when he grew urgent,
she told him what she expected for her farm.
He looked surprised and disappointed, and refused.
Then, in order to convince him, she began to talk about the probable
duration of her life.
"I am certainly not likely to live for more than five or six years
longer. I am nearly seventy-three, and far from strong, even considering
my age. The other evening I thought I was going to die, and could
hardly manage to crawl into bed."
But Chicot was not going to be taken in.
"Come, come, old lady, you are as strong as the church tower, and will
live till you are a hundred at least; you will be sure to see me put
underground first."
The whole day was spent in discussing the money, and as the old woman
would not give way, the landlord consented to give the fifty crowns, and
she insisted upon having ten crowns over and above to strike the
bargain.
* * * * *
Three years passed by, and the old dame did not seem to have grown a day
older. Chicot was in despair, and it seemed to him as if he had been
paying that annuity for fifty years, that he had been taken in, done,
that he was ruined. From time to time he went to see his annuitant, just
as one goes in July to see when the harvest is likely to begin. She
always met him with a cunning look, and one would have felt inclined to
think that she was congratulating herself on the trick she had played
him. Seeing how well and hearty she seemed, he very soon got into his
tilbury again, growling to himself:
"Will you never die, you old brute?"
He did not know what to do, and he felt inclined to strangle her when he
saw her. He hated her with a ferocious, cunning hatred, the hatred of a
peasant who has been robbed, and began to cast about for means of
getting rid of her.
One day he came to see her again, rubbing his hands like he did the
first time when he proposed the bargain, and, after having chatted for a
few minutes, he said:
"Why do you never come and have a bit of dinner at my place when you are
in Épreville? The people are talking about it, and saying that we are
not on friendly terms, and that pains me. You know it will cost you
nothing if you come, for I don't look at the price of a dinner. Come
whenever you feel inclined; I shall be very glad to see you."
Old Mother Magloire did not need to be told twice, and the next day but
one, as she was going to town in any case, it being market-day, in her
gig, driven by her man, she, without any demur, put her trap up in
Chicot's stable, and went in search of her promised dinner.
The publican was delighted, and treated her like a lady, giving her
roast fowl, blackpudding, leg of mutton, and bacon and cabbage. But she
ate next to nothing. She had always been a small eater, and had
generally lived on a little soup and a crust of bread and butter.
Chicot was disappointed, and pressed her to eat more, but she refused,
and she would drink next to nothing either, and declined any coffee, so
he asked her:
"But surely, you will take a little drop of brandy or liqueur?"
"Well, as to that, I don't know that I will refuse." Whereupon he
shouted out:
"Rosalie, bring the superfine brandy,--_the special_,--you know."
The servant appeared, carrying a long bottle ornamented with a paper
vine-leaf, and he filled two liqueur glasses.
"Just try that; you will find it first-rate."
The good woman drank it slowly in sips, so as to make the pleasure last
all the longer, and when she had finished her glass, draining the last
drops so as to make the pleasure last all the longer, she said:
"Yes, that is first-rate!"
Almost before she had said it, Chicot had poured her out another
glassful. She wished to refuse, but it was too late, and she drank it
very slowly, like she had done the first, and he asked her to have a
third. She objected, but he persisted.
"It is as mild as milk, you know; I can drink ten or a dozen without any
ill effects; it goes down like sugar, and leaves no signs in the head,
one would think that it evaporated on the tongue. It is the most
wholesome thing you can drink."
She took it, for she really wished to have it, but she left half the
glass.
Then Chicot, in an excess of generosity, said:
"Look here, as it is so much to your taste, I will give you a small keg
of it, just to show that you and I are still excellent friends." So she
took one away with her, feeling slightly overcome by the effects of what
she had drunk.
The next day the innkeeper drove into her yard, and took a little
iron-hooped keg out of his gig. He insisted on her tasting the contents,
to make sure it was the same delicious article, and, when they had each
of them drunk three more glasses, he said, as he was going away:
"Well, you know, when it is all gone, there is more left; don't be
modest, for I shall not mind. The sooner it is finished, the better
pleased I shall be."
Four days later he came again. The old woman was outside her door
cutting up the bread for her soup.
He went up to her, and put his face close to hers, so that he might
smell her breath; and when he smelt the alcohol he felt pleased.
"I suppose you will give me a glass of _the special_?" he said. And they
had three glasses each.
Soon, however, it began to be whispered abroad that Mother Magloire was
in the habit of getting drunk all by herself. She was picked up in her
kitchen, then in her yard, then in the roads in the neighborhood, and
she was often brought home like a log.
Chicot did not go near her any more, and, when people spoke to him about
her, he used to say, putting on a distressed look:
"It is a great pity that she should have taken to drink at her age; but
when people get old there is no remedy. It will be the death of her in
the long run."
And it certainly was the death of her. She died the next winter. About
Christmas-time she fell down, unconscious, in the snow, and was found
dead the next morning.
And when Chicot came in for the farm he said:
"It was very stupid of her; if she had not taken to drink she might very
well have lived for ten years longer."