I will give you some occasionally, because … because … I wish you to be happy."
The sincerity and ardor of his desire, his awkwardness, his clumsy gestures, his bewildered words, and also his masculine power, all had a softening effect upon me. I relaxed my face a little, veiled the severity of my look with a sort of smile, and, half ironically, half coaxingly, I said to him:
"Oh! Monsieur, if Madame were to see you?"
Again he became troubled, but, as we were separated from the house by a thick curtain of chestnut trees, he quickly recovered himself, and, growing more defiant as I became less severe, he exclaimed, with easy gestures:
"Well, what? Madame? And what of her? I care nothing for Madame. I do not intend that she shall annoy me. I have enough of her. I am over my head in Madame."
I declared gravely:
"Monsieur is wrong. Monsieur is not just. Madame is a very amiable woman."
He gave a start.
"Very amiable? She? Ah! Great God! But you do not know, then, what she has done? She has spoiled my life. I am no longer a man; I am nothing at all. I am the laughing-stock of the neighborhood. And all on account of my wife. My wife? She … she … she is a hussy—yes, Célestine, a hussy … a hussy … a hussy."
I gave him a moral lecture. I talked to him gently, hypocritically boasting of Madame's energy and order and all her domestic virtues. At each of my phrases he became more exasperated.
"No, no. A hussy! A hussy!"
However, I succeeded in calming him a little. Poor Monsieur! I played with him with marvelous ease. With a simple look I made him pass from anger to emotion. Then he stammered:
"Oh! you are so gentle, you are! You are so pretty! You must be so good! Whereas that hussy" …
"Oh! come, Monsieur! come! come!"
He continued:
"You are so gentle! And yet, what? … you are only a chambermaid."
For a moment he drew nearer to me, and in a low voice said:
"If you would, Célestine?"
"If I would what?"
"If you would … you know very well; yes, you know very well."
"Monsieur wishes me perhaps to betray Madame with Monsieur?"
He misunderstood the expression of my face; and, with eyes standing out of his head, the veins in his neck swollen, his lips moist and frothy, he answered, in a smothered voice:
"Yes; yes, indeed."
"Monsieur doesn't think of such a thing?"
"I think of nothing else, Célestine."
He was very red, his face congested.
"Ah! Monsieur is going to begin again?"
He tried to grasp my hand, to draw me to him.
"Well, yes," he stammered, "I am going to begin again; I am going to begin again, because … because … I am mad over you, Célestine; because I think of nothing else; because I cannot sleep; because I feel really sick. And don't be afraid of me; have no fears! I am not a brute. No, indeed; I swear it. I … I. … "
"Another word, Monsieur, and this time I tell everything to Madame. Suppose some one were to see you in the garden in this condition?"
He stopped short. Distressed, ashamed, thoroughly stupid, he knew not what to do with his hands, with his eyes, with his whole person. And he looked, without seeing them, at the ground beneath his feet, at the old pear tree, at the garden. Conquered at last, he untied the bits of string at the top of the prop, bent again over the fallen dahlias, and sad, infinitely so, and supplicating, he groaned:
"Just now, Célestine, I said to you … I said that to you … as I would have said anything else to you—as I would have said no matter what. I am an old fool. You must not be angry with me. And, above all, you must not say anything to Madame. You are right, though; suppose some one had seen us in the garden?"
I ran away, to keep from laughing.
Yes, I wanted to laugh. And, nevertheless, there was an emotion singing in my heart, something—what shall I call it?—something maternal. And, besides, it would have been amusing, because of Madame. We shall see, later.
Monsieur did not go away all day. He straightened his dahlias, and during the afternoon he did not leave the wood-house, where he split wood furiously for more than four hours. From the linen-room I listened, with a sort of pride, to the blows of the axe.
Yesterday Monsieur and Madame spent the entire afternoon at Louviers. Monsieur had an appointment with his lawyer, Madame with her dressmaker. Her dressmaker!
I took advantage of this moment of rest to pay a visit to Rose, whom I had not seen since that famous Sunday. And I was not averse to making the acquaintance of Captain Mauger.
A true type of an old sea-dog, this man, and such as you seldom see, I assure you. Fancy a carp's head, with a moustache and a long gray tuft of beard. Very dry, very nervous, very restless, he cannot stay in one place for any length of time, and is always at work, either in his garden, or in a little room where he does carpentering, humming military airs or imitating the bugle of the regiment.
The garden is very pretty—an old garden divided into square beds in which old-fashioned flowers are cultivated—those very old flowers that are found now only in very old fields and in the gardens of very old priests.
When I arrived, Rose, comfortably seated in the shade of an acacia, beside a rustic table, on which lay her work-basket, was mending stockings, and the captain, squatting on the grass, and wearing an old foraging-cap on his head, was stopping the leaks in a garden-hose which had burst the night before.
They welcomed me enthusiastically, and Rose ordered the little servant, who was weeding a bed of marguerites, to go for the bottle of peach brandy and some glasses.
The first courtesies exchanged, the captain asked:
"Well, he has not yet croaked, then, your Lanlaire? Oh! you can boast of serving in a famous den! I really pity you, my dear young woman."
He explained to me that formerly Monsieur and he had lived as good neighbors, as inseparable friends. A discussion apropos of Rose had brought on a deadly quarrel. Monsieur, it seems, reproached the captain with not maintaining his dignity with his servant—with admitting her to his table.
Interrupting his story, the captain forced my testimony:
"To my table! Well, have I not the right? Is it any of his business?"
"Certainly not, captain."
Rose, in a modest voice, sighed:
"A man living all alone; it is very natural isn't it?"
Since this famous discussion, which had come near ending in blows, the two old friends had passed their time in lawsuits and tricks. They hated each other savagely.
"As for me," declared the captain, "when I find any stones in my garden, I throw them over the hedge into Lanlaire's. So much the worse if they fall on his bell-glasses and on his garden-frames! Or, rather, so much the better! Oh! the pig! Wait now, let me show you."
Having noticed a stone in the path, he rushed to pick it up, approached the hedge cautiously, creeping like a trapper, and threw the stone into our garden with all his might. We heard a noise of breaking glass. Then, returning to us triumphantly, shaking, stifled, twisted with laughter, he exclaimed:
"Another square broken! The glazier will have to come again."
Rose looked at him with a sort of maternal admiration, and said:
"Is he not droll? What a child! And how young, for his age!"
After we had