IN WHICH THE BURGOMASTER VAN TRICASSE AND THE COUNSELLOR NIKLAUSSE
CONSULT ABOUT THE AFFAIRS OF THE TOWN.
“You think so?” asked the burgomaster.
“I—think so,” replied the counsellor, after some minutes of silence.
“You see, we must not act hastily,” resumed the burgomaster.
“We have been talking over this grave matter for ten years,” replied
the Counsellor Niklausse, “and I confess to you, my worthy Van
Tricasse, that I cannot yet take it upon myself to come to a decision.”
“I quite understand your hesitation,” said the burgomaster, who did not
speak until after a good quarter of an hour of reflection, “I quite
understand it, and I fully share it. We shall do wisely to decide upon
nothing without a more careful examination of the question.”
“It is certain,” replied Niklausse, “that this post of civil commissary
is useless in so peaceful a town as Quiquendone.”
“Our predecessor,” said Van Tricasse gravely, “our predecessor never
said, never would have dared to say, that anything is certain. Every
affirmation is subject to awkward qualifications.”
The counsellor nodded his head slowly in token of assent; then he
remained silent for nearly half an hour. After this lapse of time,
during which neither the counsellor nor the burgomaster moved so much
as a finger, Niklausse asked Van Tricasse whether his predecessor—of
some twenty years before—had not thought of suppressing this office of
civil commissary, which each year cost the town of Quiquendone the sum
of thirteen hundred and seventy-five francs and some centimes.
“I believe he did,” replied the burgomaster, carrying his hand with
majestic deliberation to his ample brow; “but the worthy man died
without having dared to make up his mind, either as to this or any
other administrative measure. He was a sage. Why should I not do as he
did?”
Counsellor Niklausse was incapable of originating any objection to the
burgomaster’s opinion.
“The man who dies,” added Van Tricasse solemnly, “without ever having
decided upon anything during his life, has very nearly attained to
perfection.”
This said, the burgomaster pressed a bell with the end of his little
finger, which gave forth a muffled sound, which seemed less a sound
than a sigh. Presently some light steps glided softly across the tile
floor. A mouse would not have made less noise, running over a thick
carpet. The door of the room opened, turning on its well-oiled hinges.
A young girl, with long blonde tresses, made her appearance. It was
Suzel Van Tricasse, the burgomaster’s only daughter. She handed her
father a pipe, filled to the brim, and a small copper brazier, spoke
not a word, and disappeared at once, making no more noise at her exit
than at her entrance.
[Illustration: She handed her father a pipe]
The worthy burgomaster lighted his pipe, and was soon hidden in a cloud
of bluish smoke, leaving Counsellor Niklausse plunged in the most
absorbing thought.
The room in which these two notable personages, charged with the
government of Quiquendone, were talking, was a parlour richly adorned
with carvings in dark wood. A lofty fireplace, in which an oak might
have been burned or an ox roasted, occupied the whole of one of the
sides of the room; opposite to it was a trellised window, the painted
glass of which toned down the brightness of the sunbeams. In an antique
frame above the chimney-piece appeared the portrait of some worthy man,
attributed to Memling, which no doubt represented an ancestor of the
Van Tricasses, whose authentic genealogy dates back to the fourteenth
century, the period when the Flemings and Guy de Dampierre were engaged
in wars with the Emperor Rudolph of Hapsburgh.
This parlour was the principal apartment of the burgomaster’s house,
which was one of the pleasantest in Quiquendone. Built in the Flemish
style, with all the abruptness, quaintness, and picturesqueness of
Pointed architecture, it was considered one of the most curious
monuments of the town. A Carthusian convent, or a deaf and dumb asylum,
was not more silent than this mansion. Noise had no existence there;
people did not walk, but glided about in it; they did not speak, they
murmured. There was not, however, any lack of women in the house,
which, in addition to the burgomaster Van Tricasse himself, sheltered
his wife, Madame Brigitte Van Tricasse, his daughter, Suzel Van
Tricasse, and his domestic, Lotchè Janshéu. We may also mention the
burgomaster’s sister, Aunt Hermance, an elderly maiden who still bore
the nickname of Tatanémance, which her niece Suzel had given her when a
child. But in spite of all these elements of discord and noise, the
burgomaster’s house was as calm as a desert.
The burgomaster was some fifty years old, neither fat nor lean, neither
short nor tall, neither rubicund nor pale, neither gay nor sad, neither
contented nor discontented, neither energetic nor dull, neither proud
nor humble, neither good nor bad, neither generous nor miserly, neither
courageous nor cowardly, neither too much nor too little of anything—a
man notably moderate in all respects, whose invariable slowness of
motion, slightly hanging lower jaw, prominent eyebrows, massive
forehead, smooth as a copper plate and without a wrinkle, would at once
have betrayed to a physiognomist that the burgomaster Van Tricasse was
phlegm personified. Never, either from anger or passion, had any
emotion whatever hastened the beating of this man’s heart, or flushed
his face; never had his pupils contracted under the influence of any
irritation, however ephemeral. He invariably wore good clothes, neither
too large nor too small, which he never seemed to wear out. He was shod
with large square shoes with triple soles and silver buckles, which
lasted so long that his shoemaker was in despair. Upon his head he wore
a large hat which dated from the period when Flanders was separated
from Holland, so that this venerable masterpiece was at least forty
years old. But what would you have? It is the passions which wear out
body as well as soul, the clothes as well as the body; and our worthy
burgomaster, apathetic, indolent, indifferent, was passionate in
nothing. He wore nothing out, not even himself, and he considered
himself the very man to administer the affairs of Quiquendone and its
tranquil population.
The town, indeed, was not less calm than the Van Tricasse mansion. It
was in this peaceful dwelling that the burgomaster reckoned on
attaining the utmost limit of human existence, after having, however,
seen the good Madame Brigitte Van Tricasse, his wife, precede him to
the tomb, where, surely, she would not find a more profound repose than
that she had enjoyed on earth for sixty years.
This demands explanation.
The Van Tricasse family might well call itself the “Jeannot family.”
This is why:—
Every one knows that the knife of this typical personage is as
celebrated as its proprietor, and not less incapable of wearing out,
thanks to the double operation, incessantly repeated, of replacing the
handle when it is worn out, and the blade when it becomes worthless. A
precisely similar operation had been going on from time immemorial in
the Van Tricasse family, to which Nature had lent herself with more
than usual complacency. From 1340 it had invariably happened that a Van
Tricasse, when left a widower, had remarried a Van Tricasse younger
than himself; who, becoming in turn a widow, had married again a Van
Tricasse younger than herself; and so on, without a break in the
continuity, from generation to generation. Each died in his or her turn
with mechanical regularity. Thus the worthy Madame Brigitte Van
Tricasse had now her second husband; and, unless she violated her every
duty, would precede her spouse—he being ten years younger than
herself—to the other world, to make room for a new Madame Van Tricasse.
Upon this the burgomaster calmly counted, that the family tradition
might not be broken. Such was this mansion, peaceful and silent, of
which the doors never creaked, the windows never rattled, the floors
never groaned, the chimneys never roared, the weathercocks never
grated, the furniture never squeaked, the locks never clanked, and the
occupants never made more noise than their shadows. The god Harpocrates
would certainly have chosen it for the Temple of Silence.
[Illustration: the worthy Madame Brigitte Van Tricasse had now her
second husband]