It was just at the new moon. Coqueville, thinking it had blown out its
candle, had abandoned itself to the darkness. Then the day dawned;
and now the sun was flaming, a sun which fell perpendicularly on the
sleepers, powerless to make them open their eyelids. They slept rudely,
all their faces beaming with the fine innocence of drunkards. The hens
at early morning must have strayed down to peck at the casks, for they
were drunk; they, too, sleeping on the sands. There were also five cats
and five dogs, their paws in the air, drunk from licking the glasses
glistening with sugar.
For a moment M. Mouchel walked about among the sleepers, taking care not
to step on any of them. He understood, for at Grandport they, too, had
received casks from the wreck of the English ship. All his wrath left
him. What a touching and moral spectacle! Coqueville reconciled,
the Mahés and the Floches sleeping together! With the last glass the
deadliest enemies had embraced. Tupain and Fouasse lay there snoring,
hand in hand, like brothers, incapable of coming to dispute a legacy. As
to the Rouget household, it offered a still more amiable picture, Marie
slept between Rouget and Brisemotte, as much as to say that henceforth
they were to live thus, happy, all the three.
But one group especially exhibited a scene of family tenderness. It was
Delphin and Margot; one on the neck of the other, they slept cheek to
cheek, their lips still opened for a kiss. At their feet the Emperor,
sleeping crosswise, guarded them. Above them La Queue snored like
a father satisfied at having settled his daughter, while the Abbé
Radiguet, fallen there like the others, with arms outspread, seemed to
bless them. In her sleep Margot still extended her rosy muzzle like an
amorous cat who loves to have one scratch her under the chin.
The fête ended with a marriage. And M. Mouchel himself later married the
Widow Dufeu, whom he beat to a jelly. Speak of that in Lower Normandy,
they will tell you with a laugh, “Ah! yes, the fête at Coqueville!”