Margot, at sixteen years strong as a man and handsome as a lady, had
the reputation of being a scornful person, very hard on lovers. And from
that, added to the trifle of the two slaps, of the presumptuousness of
Delphin, and of the wrath of Margot, one ought easily to comprehend the
endless gossip of Coqueville.
Notwithstanding, certain persons said that Margot, at bottom, was not so
very furious at sight of Delphin circling around her. This Delphin was
a little blonde, with skin bronzed by the sea-glare, and with a mane of
curly hair that fell over his eyes and in his neck. And very powerful
despite his slight figure; quite capable of thrashing any one three
times his size. They said that at times he ran away and passed the night
in Grandport. That gave him the reputation of a werwolf with the girls,
who accused him, among themselves, of “making a life of it”--a vague
expression in which they included all sorts of unknown pleasures.
Margot, when she spoke of Delphin, betrayed too much feeling. He,
smiling with an artful air, looked at her with eyes half shut and
glittering, without troubling himself the least in the world over her
scorn or her transports of passion. He passed before her door, he
glided along by the bushes watching for her hours at a time, full of the
patience and the cunning of a cat lying in wait for a tomtit; and when
suddenly she discovered him behind her skirts, so close to her at times
that she guessed it by the warmth of his breath, he did not fly, he took
on an air gentle and melancholy which left her abashed, stifled, not
regaining her wrath until he was some distance away. Surely, if her
father saw her he would smite her again. But she boasted in vain that
Delphin would some day get that pair of slaps she had promised him;
she never seized the moment to apply them when he was there; which made
people say that she ought not to talk so much, since in the end she kept
the slaps herself.
No one, however, supposed she could ever be Delphin’s wife. In her case
they saw the weakness of a coquette. As for a marriage between the
most beggardly of the Mahés, a fellow who had not six shirts to set up
housekeeping with, and the daughter of the mayor, the richest heiress of
the Floches, it would seem simply monstrous.
Evil tongues insinuated that she could perfectly go with him all the
same, but that she would certainly not marry him. A rich girl takes her
pleasure as it suits her; only, if she has a head, she does not commit a
folly. Finally all Coqueville interested itself in the matter, curious
to know how things would turn out. Would Delphin get his two slaps? or
else Margot, would she let herself be kissed on both cheeks in some hole
in the cliff? They must see! There were some for the slaps and there
were some for the kisses. Coqueville was in revolution.
In the village two people only, the curé and the _garde champêtre?_
belonged neither to the Mahés nor to the Floches. The _garde champêtre_,
{2} a tall, dried-up fellow, whose name no one knew, but who was called
the Emperor, no doubt because he had served under Charles X, as a matter
of fact exercised no burdensome supervision over the commune which was
all bare rocks and waste lands. A sub-prefect who patronized him had
created for him the sinecure where he devoured in peace his very small
living.