“AT THE PRODUCTS OF THE SOUTH.”
“Mlle. Hortense is very ill. Madame will receive nobody.”
For the tenth time during the ten days that had passed Audiberte had
received the same answer, motionless before that heavy-timbered door
with its knocker, the like of which can scarcely be found except
beneath the arcades of the Place Royale, a door which once shut seemed
to her to refuse forever an entrance to the old house of the Le
Quesnoys.
“Very well,” said she, “I am not coming back; it must be they now who
shall call me back.”
In great agitation she set out again through the lively turmoil of
that commercial quarter, where drays laden with cases and barrels and
iron bars, noisy and flexible, were forever passing the pushcarts that
rolled under the porches and back into the courtyards where the coopers
were nailing up the cases for export. But the peasant girl was not
aware of this infernal row and of the rumbling of labor which shook
the high houses to their very topmost floors; in her venomous head a
very different kind of row was going on, a clashing of brutal thoughts
and a terrible clangor of foiled wishes. So she set forth, feeling no
fatigue, and in order to economize the ’bus fare crossed on foot the
entire distance from the Marais to Abbaye-Montmartre Street.
After a fierce and lively peregrination from one lodging to the other,
hotels and furnished apartments of all kinds, from which they were
expelled each time on account of the tabor-playing, they had just
recently made shipwreck in that quarter. It was a new house which had
allured, at the cheap prices for housewarmers, a temporary horde of
girls, Bohemians and business agents, and those families of adventurers
such as one sees at the seaports, a floating population which shows
its lack of work on the balconies, watching arrivals and departures in
hopes that there may be something to be gained for them in the flood.
Fortune is here the flood on which they cast their watchful eyes.
The rent was very high for them to pay, especially now that the
skating-rink had failed and it was necessary to sue upon government
stamped paper for the price of Valmajour’s few appearances. But the
tabor did not bother anybody in that freshly-painted barrack whose
door was open at every hour of the night for the different crooked
businesses of the tenants--not to speak of all the quarrels and rows
that were going on. On the contrary, it was the tabor-player who was
bothered. The advertising on placards, the many-colored tights and
his fine moustaches had aroused perilous interest among the ladies
of the skating-rink less coy than that prude of a girl down there
in the Marais. He was acquainted with actors at the Batignolles, all
that sweet-scented crowd which met in a pot-house on the Boulevard
Rochechouart called the Straw-Lair. This same Straw-Lair, where people
passed their time in loafing fatly, playing cards, drinking lager beer
and passing from one to the other the scandal of the little theatres
and the lowest class of gallantry, was the enemy and the horror of
Audiberte. It was the cause of savage rages, under the stormy blows
of which the two Southerners bent their backs as under a tempest in
the tropics, merely revenging themselves by cursing their tyrant in a
green skirt and talking about her in that mysterious and hateful tone
which schoolboys and servants use: “What did she say? how much did she
give you?” and playing into each other’s hands in order to slip away
behind her back. Audiberte knew this well and watched them; she did her
business outside quickly, impatient to get home; and particularly was
it so that day, because she had left them early in the morning. As she
ascended the stairs she stopped a moment, hearing neither tabor nor
shepherd’s pipe.
“Oh, the beggarly wretch, he’s off again to his Straw-Lair!”
But as she came in at the door her father ran up to her and headed the
explosion off.
“Now don’t squeal, somebody’s come to visit you; a gentleman from the
_Munistry!_”
The gentleman was waiting in the drawing-room; for, as it always
happens in these buildings, cheaply built and made by machinery, with
every room on each floor exactly the same, one above the other, they
too had a drawing-room hung with a cheap paper, creamy and waffled into
patterns till it looked like a dish of beaten eggs, a drawing-room
which made the peasant girl a very proud woman. Méjean was passing in
review most compassionately the Provençal furniture scattered about
this dentist’s waiting-room, full of the crude light from two windows
guiltless of curtains--the _coco_ and the _moco_ (tumbler-holder and
lamp-holder), the kneading-trough, the bread-basket much banged about
by house-movings and by travel--these showed their rural rustiness
alongside of the cheap gilding and wall paintings. The haughty profile
of Audiberte, very pure in its lines, surmounted by her Sunday
head-dress, which seemed just as out-of-place in the fifth story of a
Parisian apartment house, completed the feeling of pity which he had
concerning these victims of Roumestan; and so he introduced very gently
the cause of his visit.
The Minister, wishing to spare the Valmajours new misfortunes, for
which up to a certain point he felt himself responsible, sent them five
thousand francs to pay for their losses in having changed their home
and to carry them back again to their own place. He took the bills from
his purse and laid them on the old dark kneading-trough of nutwood.
“So, then, we’ll have to leave?” asked the peasant girl without
budging an inch and pondering a while.
“The Minister desires that you should go as soon as possible; he is
anxious to know that you have returned to your home as happy as you
were before.”
Old Valmajour cast his eye around at the bank-notes:
“As for me, that seems reasonable enough--_de qué n’en disés?_”
But she would not say anything and waited for the sequel, which Méjean
introduced by twisting and turning his purse:
“And to those five thousand francs we will add five thousand more which
are here, in order to get back again--to get back again--”
His emotion choked him. Cruel was the commission which Rosalie
had given him. Ah, how often it costs a lot to be considered a
quiet-loving, strong man; much more is demanded of such a one than of
other people! Then he added very rapidly--“the photograph of Mlle. Le
Quesnoy.”
“At last! now we have got to it. The photograph--didn’t I know it,
by heavens?” At every word she bounded up like a goat. “And so you
really believe that you can make us come from the other end of France,
that you can promise everything to us--to us who never asked for
anything--and then that you can put us out of doors like so many dogs
who have done their worst and left their dirt everywhere? Take back
your money, gentleman! You can be dead sure that we sha’n’t leave, and
you can say so there, and also that the photograph won’t be returned to
them! That’s a paper and a proof, that is. I keep it safe in my little
bag; it never leaves me and I shall show it about through Paris and
what is written upon it, so that all the world may know that all those
Roumestans are no better than a family of liars--of liars--”
She was foaming with rage.
“Mlle. Le Quesnoy is very, very ill,” said Méjean, with great solemnity.
“_Avaï!_”
“She is leaving Paris, and in all probability will never return--alive!”
Audiberte said not a word, but the silent laugh of her eyes, the
implacable _no_ which was written upon her classic brow, on which the
hair grew low beneath the little lace head-dress, were sufficient to
warrant the firmness of her refusal. Then a temptation seized Méjean
to throw himself upon her, tear the little Indian bag from her girdle
and fly with it; still, he restrained himself, attempted a few useless
expostulations, and then, quivering with rage likewise, he said, “You
will repent of this,” and to the great regret of Father Valmajour, left
the house.
“Look out, little girl, you are going to bring us into some misfortune!”
“Not much! It’s them that we’ll give trouble to; I am going to ask the
advice of Guilloche.”
GUILLOCHE, CONTENTIEUX.
Behind the yellow card bearing those two words, fastened on the door
which was opposite their own, was one of those terrible business men
whose entire instalment consists of an enormous leather portfolio
containing the minutes and notes of rancid lawsuits, sheets of white
paper for secret denunciations and begging letters, bits of pie-crust,
a false beard and sometimes even a hammer with which to strike
milkwomen dead, as was seen recently in a famous lawsuit. This type
of man, of whom many exist in Paris, would not be worthy of a single
line if said Guilloche, a name which was as good as a signboard when
one considered his countenance divided up into a thousand little
symmetrical wrinkles, had not added to his profession an entirely new
and characteristic department.
Guilloche did the business of penalties for schoolboys and collegians.
A poor devil of an usher, when the classes came out from recitation,
went about collecting the penalties in the way of copies to be turned
in. He stayed awake far into the night copying lines of the Æneid or
the various forms of the Greek verb _luo_. When there was lack of
regular business Guilloche, who was a graduate of college, harnessed
himself up for this original work, which he found fairly profitable.
Audiberte’s matter having been explained to him, he declared that
it was excellent. The Minister might be legally held up and the
newspapers might be made to come down; the photograph alone was worth
a mine of gold; only it was necessary to use time to go hither and
thither and he must have advances of money which must be paid down in
good coin; as for the Puyfourcat inheritance, that seemed to him a pure
Fata Morgana, a dictum which mortified terribly the peasant girl’s love
of lucre already so terribly tried, all the more because Valmajour, who
had been much asked to swell drawing-rooms during the first winter, no
longer set foot in a single house of the Faubourg St. _Germoyne_.
“So much the worse! I will work the harder, I will economize--_zou!_”
That energetic little Arlesian head-dress flew about in the great new
building, ran up and down stairs, carrying from story to story her tale
of adventure _wid_ the Menister. She excited herself, squealed, pounced
about, and then in a mysterious voice would say: “And _thin_ there’s
the photograph,” and with a furtive and sidelong glance, such as the
sellers of photographs in the arcades employ when old libertines call
for tights, she would show the picture:
“A pretty girl, at any rate! And you have read what is written there
underneath?”
This kind of thing happened in the bosom of the temporary families and
with the roller-skating ladies of the rink or at the Straw-Lair--ladies
whom she pompously called Mme. Malvina or Mme. Éloïse, being deeply
impressed by their velvet skirts, their chemises edged with holes for
ribbons and all the implements of their business, without bothering
herself otherwise as to what that business might be. And thus the
picture of this lovely creature, so distinguished and delicate,
passed through these critical and curious defilements; they picked
her to pieces; they read laughing the silly avowal of love, until the
Provençal girl took her treasure back again and thrust it into the
mouth of her money-bag with a furious gesture and in a strangled voice
exclaimed:
“Well, I guess we have got them with that!”
_Zou!_ off she flew to the bailiff--the bailiff for the affair of the
skating-rink, the bailiff used to hunt Cadaillac, the bailiff for
Roumestan. And as if that were not sufficient for her quarrelsome
disposition, she had a host of troubles with janitors, the unending
fight about the tabor-playing, which ended this time in the exile of
Valmajour to one of those basements leased by a wine merchant where
the sounding of hunting-horns alternate with lessons in kicking and
boxing. From that time forth it was in this cellar, by the light of a
gas jet which cost them so much per hour, and while looking about at
the vests and fencing-gloves and copper horns hung on the wall, that
the tabor-player passed his hours of exercise, pale and lonely like a
captive, sending forth from below the pavement all kinds of variations
on the shepherd’s pipe, not at all unlike the mournful and piercing
notes of a baker’s cricket.
One day Audiberte received an invitation to call upon the Commissary
of Police in her quarter. She ran thither quickly, quite certain that
it referred to her cousin Puyfourcat, and entered smiling with her
head-dress tossing; but after a quarter of an hour she crept out,
overwhelmed by a very peasant-like horror of the policeman, who, at his
very first word, had forced her to deliver up the photograph and sign a
receipt for ten thousand francs in which she absolutely renounced all
and any suits at law. All the same she obstinately refused to leave,
insisted upon believing in the genius of her brother and kept always
alive in the depths of her memory the delicious astonishment caused
one winter evening by that long file of carriages passing through the
courtyard of the Ministry, where all the windows were alight.
When she came back she notified her two men, who were much more
frightened than she was, that not another word was to be spoken about
that business; but she never piped a word about the money. Guilloche,
who suspected that there was some money, employed every means in his
power to get a portion of it, and having obtained only the slenderest
commission, felt a frightful rancor in regard to the Valmajours.
“Well,” said he one morning to Audiberte while she was brushing on the
staircase the finest clothes belonging to the musician, who was still
in bed, “well, I hope you are satisfied at last. He is dead!”
“Who is dead?”
“Why, Puyfourcat, your cousin; it is in the paper.”
She gave a screech, rushed into the apartment, calling aloud and almost
in tears:
“Father! Brother! Hurry quick, the inheritance!”
As all of them clustered terribly moved and panting in a circle about
that infernal fellow Guilloche, the latter slowly unfolded the _Journal
Officiel_ and in a very leisurely manner read to them as follows:
“‘On this first day of October 1876, the Court at Mostaganem has
ordered the publication and advertisement of the following inheritances
at the order of the Ministry of the Interior.--Popelino (Louis),
day-laborer--’ No, it isn’t that one--‘Puyfourcat (Dosithée)--’”
“Yes, that’s him,” said Audiberte.
The old bird thought it was necessary to wipe his eyes a bit.
“_Pécaïré!_ Poor Dosithée--!”
“----died at Mostaganem the 14th of January, 1874, born at Valmajour in
the commune of Aps--”
In her eagerness and impatience the peasant girl asked:
“How much is it?”
“Three francs, thirty-five _cintimes!_” cried Guilloche in the voice
of a fruit-peddler; and leaving in their hands the paper, in order
that they might thoroughly verify the disappointment which had come to
them, he flew off with a roar of laughter which seemed infectious,
for it rang from story to story down into the street and delighted
all that great big village called Montmartre, where the legend of the
Valmajours’ inheritance had been widely circulated.
The inheritance from Puyfourcat, only three francs thirty-five!
Audiberte pretended to laugh at it harder than the others, but the
frightful desire for vengeance upon the Roumestans, who were in her
eyes responsible for all their troubles, burned within her and now only
increased in fury and looked about for some pretext or means, for the
first weapon that lay to hand.
Most singular was the countenance of papa during this disaster. The
while his daughter pined away with weariness and fury, and the captive
musician became paler with every day passed in his cellar, papa,
expanding like a rose, careless of what happened, did not even show his
old professional envy and jealousy; he seemed to have arranged some
quiet existence for himself outside and away from his family. Hardly
had he stowed away the last mouthful of breakfast than off he went;
and sometimes in the morning, when she was brushing his clothes, she
noticed that a dried fig or a prune or some preserve or other would
fall out of his pockets, and when she asked how they came there, the
old fellow had one story or another for an explanation.
He had met a peasant woman from their country in the street, or he had
run across a man from down there who was coming to see them.
Audiberte tossed her head: “_Avaï!_ Wait till I follow you once!”
The truth was that while strolling about Paris the old man had
discovered in the St. Denis quarter a big shop of food-stuffs, where
he had entered, lured by the sign and by the temptations of the exotic
shop-front, which was full of colored fruits and of silver and painted
papers; it made a brilliant bit of color in the foggy, populous street.
This shop, where he had ended by becoming a crony and friend of the
family, was well known to Southerners quartered in Paris and had for
its sign:
AUX PRODUITS DU MIDI.
“At the products of the South”--never was a sign more truthful.
Everything in that shop was the product of the South, from the
shopkeepers, M. and Mme. Mèfre, who were two products of the Fat South,
having the prominent nose of Roumestan, the flaring eyes, the accent,
the phrases and demonstrative welcome of Provence, down to their
shop-boys, who were familiar and called people by their first names
and did not hesitate in their guttural voices to call out to the desk:
“I say, Mèfre, where did youse put the sausages?”--yes, down to the
little Mèfre children, whining and dirty, who passed their lives amid
a constant menace of being disembowelled or scalped or made into soup,
but who nevertheless kept right on sticking their little dirty fingers
into all the open barrels; nay, even to the buyers, gesticulating and
gossiping by the hour together in order at last to buy a _barquette_
(boat shaped cake) for two cents, or taking their seats on chairs in a
circle in order to discuss the merits of garlic sausage or of pepper
sausage. Here one might listen to the “none the less, at least, come
now, other ways”--the whole vocabulary, in fact, belonging to Aunt
Portal, exchanged in the most noisy voices, whilst the “dear brother”
in a dyed-over black coat, a friend of the family, haggled over some
salt fish, and the flies, the vast horde of flies, drawn hither by
all the sugar of these fruits and the candies and the almost Oriental
pastries, buzzed and boomed right in the middle of the winter, kept
alive by that steady heat. And when some busy Parisian grew impatient
at the attendants all down at heel and the sublime indifference these
shop people showed, continuing their gossip from one counter to the
other whilst weighing and doing up things all wrong, it was a sight to
see how that Parisian was put in his place by some remark uttered in
the strongest country accent:
“_Té! vé!_ if you are in a hurry the door is always open, you know, and
the tram-cars are passing in front of the shop.”
Father Valmajour was received with open arms by this gang of
compatriots. M. and Mme. Mèfre remembered that they had seen him in the
old time at the Fair of Beaucaire in a competition of tabor-players.
Between old people from the South that Fair at Beaucaire, now no more
and existing merely as a name, has remained like a Masonic bond of
brotherhood. In our Southern provinces it was the fairy-tale for the
whole year, the one distraction for all those narrow lives; people got
ready for it a long time in advance, and for a long time after they
talked about it. It formed a reward which could be promised to wife
and children, and if it was not possible to take them along, one might
bring them a bit of Spanish lace or a toy, which took little place in
one’s bag. The Beaucaire Fair, moreover, under pretext of business,
meant a whole month or a fortnight at least of the free, exuberant and
unexpected life of a camp of gypsies. One got a bed here or there from
the citizens or in the shops or on top of desks, or else in the open
street under the canvas hood of wagons or even below the warm light of
the July stars.
O, for the business without the boredom of the shop, matters treated
while one dines, or at the door in shirt sleeves, or at the booths
ranged along the _Pré_, on the banks of the Rhône! The river itself
was nothing but a moving fair-ground, supporting its boats of all
shapes, its _lahuts_, lute shaped boats with lateen sails which came
from Arles, Marseilles, Barcelona, the Balearic Islands, filled
with wines, anchovies, oranges and cork, decorated with banners and
standards and streamers which sounded in the fresh wind and reflected
their colors in the swiftly flowing water. And what a clamor there
was in that variegated crowd of Spaniards, Sardinians, Greeks in
long tunics and embroidered slippers, Armenians with their furred
hats and Turks with their befrogged jackets, their fans and wide
trousers of gray linen! All these were jammed together in the open-air
restaurants, the booths for children’s toys and canes and umbrellas,
for jewelry and Oriental pastils and caps. And then to think of what
was called the “fine Sunday,” that is to say, the first Sunday after
the opening of the fair--the orgies on the quays and the boats and in
the famous restaurants, such as La Vignasse or the Grand Jardin or the
Café Thibaut! Those who have once seen that fair have always felt a
home-sickness for it to the end of their days.
One felt free and easy at the shop of the Mèfre couple, somewhat as
at the Beaucaire Fair. And as a matter of fact, in its picturesque
disorder the shop did resemble an improvised grand fair for the sale
of foreign and southern products. Here all full and bending were sacks
of meal in a golden powder, dried peas as big and hard as buck-shot
and big chestnuts all wrinkled and dusty looking, like little faces
of old female charcoal-burners; there stood jars of black and green
olives preserved in the Picholini manner, tin cans of red oil with the
taste of fruit, barrels of preserves from Apt made of melon rinds, of
figs, of quinces and of apricots--all the remains of fruit from a fair
dropped into molasses. Up there on the shelves among the salted goods
and preserves, in a thousand bottles and a thousand tin boxes, were
the special relishes belonging to each city--the shells and little
ships of Nîmes, the nougat of Montélimar, the ducklings and biscuits of
Aix--all in gilded envelopes ticketed and signed.
Then there were the early vegetables, an outpouring of Southern
gardens without shadows, in which the fruits hanging in slender green
foliage have a factitious look of jewels--firm looking jujubes with a
fine sheen of newly lacquered walnut side by side with pale azeroles,
figs of every sort, sweet lemons, green or scarlet peppers, great big
swelling melons, enormous onions with flowerlike hearts, muscat grapes
with long berries so transparent that the flesh of them trembles like
wine in a flask, rows of bananas striped black and yellow, regular
landslides of oranges and pomegranates with their red gold tones, like
little bombs made of red copper with their fuses issuing from a small
crenelated crown. And finally, everywhere, on the walls and ceilings,
on both sides of the door, in the tangle of burnt palms, chaplets of
leeks and onions and dried carobs, packages of sausages, bunches of
corn on the cob, there was a constant stream of warm hues, there was
the entire summer, there was the Southern sunshine fastened up in
boxes, sacks and jars radiating color out to the very sidewalk through
the muddiness of the windows.
Old Valmajour would enter this shop with his nostrils dilated,
quivering and most excited. This man, who refused the slightest work in
the presence of his children and would wipe his brow for hours over a
single button that he had to sew on his waistcoat, boasting of having
accomplished a labor like one of “Caesar’s,” in this shop was always
ready to lend a helping hand, throw off his coat to nail up or open
cases, picking up here and there an olive or a bit of berlingot candy
and lightening the labor with his monkey tricks and stories. On one day
in the week, indeed, the day of the arrival of codfish _à la brandade_,
he stayed very late at the store in order to aid them in sending out
the orders.
Among them all this particular Southern dish, codfish _à la brandade_,
could hardly be found elsewhere in Paris except at the _Produits du
Midi_; but it was the true article, white, carded fine, creamy, with
just a touch of garlic, the way it is done at Nîmes, from which city
indeed the Mèfres had it forwarded. On Thursday evening it reaches
Paris at seven o’clock by the lightning express and Friday morning it
is distributed throughout the city to all the good customers whose
names are on the big book of the store. Nay, it is on that very
commercial ledger with its tumbled leaves, smelling of spices and
soiled with oil, that is inscribed the history of the conquest of
Paris by the Southerners; there appear one after the other all the big
fortunes, political and industrial posts, names of celebrated lawyers,
deputies, ministers, and among them all especially that of Numa
Roumestan, the Vendean of the South, the pillar of the altar and the
throne.
For the sake of that single line on which Roumestan’s name is written
the Mèfres would toss the whole book into the fire. He it is who
represents best their ideas in religion, politics and everything. It is
just as Mme. Mèfre says, and she is more enthusiastic than her husband:
“For that man, I tell you, anybody would imperil their eternal soul.”
They are very fond of recalling the period when Numa, already on
the road to fame, did not disdain to come there himself to buy his
stores. And how he did understand the way of choosing by the touch
a pasty! or a sausage that sweats nicely under the knife! Then such
kind-heartedness! and that imposing, handsome face! and always a
compliment for Madame, a pleasant word for his “dear brother,” a
caressing touch for the little Mèfres who accompanied him as far as
the carriage bearing his parcels. Since his elevation to the Ministry,
since those scoundrels of Reds had given him so much bother in the two
Chambers, they did not see anything more of him, _pécaïré!_ but he
always remained faithful to the _Produits_, and it was always he who
got the first distribution.
One Thursday evening about ten o’clock, when all the pots of codfish _à
la brandade_ had been wrapped and tied and placed in fine alignment on
the counter, the whole Mèfre family, the shop boys, old Valmajour and
all the products of the South were in full number on hand, perspiring
and blowing. They were taking a rest with the peculiar air of people
who have accomplished a difficult task and were “dipping a bit” with
ladyfingers and biscuits steeped in thick wine or orgeat syrup--“Come
now, just something mild”--for as to anything strong, Southerners do
not care for that at all. Among the townspeople as in the country
parts drunkenness from alcohol is almost unknown. Instinctively this
race has a fear and horror of it; it feels itself intoxicated from its
birth--drunk without drinking.
For it is most certainly true that the wind and the sun distil for
them a terrible kind of natural alcohol whose effect is felt more or
less by all those born down there. Some of them have only that little
drop too much which loosens the tongue and gestures and causes one
to see life rosy in color and discover sympathetic souls everywhere,
which brightens the eye, widens the streets, sweeps away obstacles,
doubles audacity and strengthens the timid; others who are violently
affected, like the little Valmajour girl or Aunt Portal, reach at any
minute the limits of a stuttering, stammering and blind delirium. To
understand it one must have seen our festivals in Provence with the
peasants standing up on the tables yelling and pounding with their
big yellow shoes, screaming: “Waiter, _dé gazeuse!_” (lemon soda)--an
entire village raving drunk over a few bottles of lemonade. And where
is the Southerner who has not experienced those sudden prostrations of
the intoxicated, those breakings-down of the whole being, right on the
heels of wrath or of enthusiasm--changes as sudden as a sunburst or a
shadow across a March sky?
Without possessing the delirious Southern quality of his daughter,
Father Valmajour was born with a pretty lively case of it. And that
evening his ladyfingers dipped in orgeat affected him with a crazy
jollity which made him reel off, standing with his glass in his hand
and his mouth all twisted in the middle of the shop, all the farcical
performances of an old sponge who pays his scot without money. The
Mèfres and their shopmen were rolling around on the flour sacks with
delight:
“_Oh! de ce Valmajour, pas moins!_” (O! that Valmajour, what a fellow
he is!)
Suddenly the liveliness of the old fellow stopped short and his
gesture, like that of a jumping-jack, was brought to a dead pause by
the apparition before him of a Provençal head-dress trembling with rage.
“What are you doing here, father?”
Madame Mèfre raised her arms toward the sausages suspended from the
ceiling:
“What! this is your young lady? And you have never told us about her!
Well, how teeny-weeny she is! but a good girl, I’ll be bound. Take a
seat Miss, do!”
Owing as much to his habit of lying as to a desire to keep himself
free, the old man had never spoken about his children, but had given
himself out as an old bachelor who lived on his income; but among
Southern people nobody is at a loss for one invention or another; if
an entire caravan of little Valmajours had marched in on the heels of
Audiberte the welcome would have been just the same, just as warm and
demonstrative; they rushed forward and made a place for her.
“_Différemment_, you must eat some dipped ladyfingers with us, too.”
The Provençal girl stood embarrassed. She had just come from outside,
from the cold and blackness of the night, a hard night of December,
where the feverish life of Paris continued to pulsate in spite of
the late hour and could be felt through the heavy fog torn in every
direction by swiftly moving shadows, the colored lanterns of the
omnibuses and the hoarse horns of the street cars; she arrived from
the North, she arrived from winter, and then all of a sudden, without
transition, she found herself in the midst of Italian Provence, in this
shop of the Mèfres glowing just previous to Christmas with all kinds
of toothsome and sun-filled articles, in the midst of the well-known
accents and fragrances of home! It was her own country suddenly found
again, a return to the motherland after a year of exile, of struggles
and trials far away among the barbarians. A warmth gradually invaded
her and slackened her nerves, the while she broke her _barquette_ cake
in a thimbleful of Carthagène and answered the questions of all this
kindly set of people, as much at ease and familiar with her as if
everybody had known each other for twenty years or more. She felt a
return to her life and usual habits; tears rose to her eyes--those hard
eyes with veins of fire which never wept.
The name “Roumestan” uttered at her side dried up this emotion
suddenly. It came from Mme. Mèfre, who was looking over the addresses
of her clients and was warning her shop-boys not to make any mistake
and especially not to take the codfish _à la brandade_ for Numa to
Grenelle Street, but to the Rue de Londres.
“Seems as if codfish is not in the odor of sanctity in the Rue de
Grenelle,” remarked one of the cronies at the Products.
“Yes, indeed,” said M. Mèfre. “The lady belongs up North--just as
northerly as possible--uses nothing but butter in her kitchen,
eh?--while in the Rue de Londres there’s the nicest kind of South,
jollity, singing and everything cooked in oil--I understand why Numa
enjoys himself most there.”
So they were talking in the lightest of tones of this second household
established by the Minister in a very convenient little house quite
close to the railway station where he could repose after the fatigues
of the Chamber, free from visitors and the greater botherations. You
may be sure that the excitable Mme. Mèfre would have uttered fine
screeches if just the same sort of thing had occurred in her family;
but for Numa there was something very attractive and natural in it.
He loved the tender passion; but didn’t all our kings, Charles X and
Henry IV, play the gay Lothario? _Té! pardi!_ He got that from his
Bourbon nose.
And mixed in with this light tone, this air of delight in spicy talk
with which the South treats all affairs of the heart, there was a race
hatred, the antipathy they felt against the woman of the North, the
strange woman and her food cooked with butter. They grew excited, they
went into a variety of _anédotes_, the charms of little Alice and her
successes in grand opera.
“Why, I knew Mother Bachellery in the old time of the Fair at
Beaucaire,” said old Valmajour. “She used to sing ballads at the Café
Thibaut.”
Audiberte listened without breathing, never losing a single word and
engraving in her mind names and addresses; her little eyes glittered
with a diabolical intoxication in which the Carthagène wine had no
part.