The Works of Guy de Maupassant Volume VIII Part 62

"Madame, I--"

Then he remembered.... What was he to do? He asked:

"Did Monsieur Romantin come back?"

The door-keeper shouted:

"Will you take your dirty carca.s.s out of this so that he at any rate may not catch you here?"

M. Saval said, in a state of confusion:

"I haven't got my clothes; they have been taken away from me."

He had to wait, to explain his situation, give notice to his friends, and borrow some money to buy clothes. He did not leave Paris till evening.

And, when people talk about music to him in his beautiful drawing-room in Vernon, he declares with an air of authority that painting is a very inferior art.

BOITELLE

Pere Boitelle (Antoine) had the reputation through the whole county of a specialist in dirty jobs. Every time a pit, a dunghill, or a cesspool required to be cleared away, or a dirt-hole to be cleansed out he was the person employed to do it.

He would come there with his nightman's tools and his wooden shoes covered with muck, and would set to work, whining incessantly about the nature of his occupation. When people asked him, then, why he did this loathsome work, he would reply resignedly:

"Faith, 'tis for my children whom I must support. This brings me in more than anything else."

He had, indeed, fourteen children. If anyone asked him what had become of them, he would say with an air of indifference:

"There are only eight of them left in the house. One is out at service, and five are married."

When the questioner wanted to know whether they were well married, he replied vivaciously:

"I did not cross them. I crossed them in nothing. They married just as they pleased. We shouldn't go against people's likings, it turns out badly. I am a night-cart-man because my parents went against my likings. But for that I would have become a workman like the others."

Here is the way his parents had thwarted him in his likings:

He was at the time a soldier stationed at Havre, not more stupid than another, or sharper either, a rather simple fellow, in truth. During his hours of freedom his greatest pleasure was to walk along the quay, where the bird-dealers congregate. Sometimes alone, sometimes with a soldier from his own part of the country, he would slowly saunter along by cages where the parrots with green backs and yellow heads from the banks of the Amazon, the parrots with gray backs and red heads from Senegal, enormous macaws, which look like birds brought up in conservatories, with their flower-like feathers, their plumes and their tufts, the paroquets of every shape, who seem painted with minute care by that excellent miniaturist, G.o.d Almighty, and the little ones, all the little young birds, hopping about, yellow, blue, and variegated, mingling their cries with the noise of the quay, add to the din caused by the unloading of the vessels, as well as by pa.s.sengers and vehicles, a violent clamor, loud, shrill, and deafening, as if from some distant, monstrous forest.

Boitelle would stop with stained eyes, wide-open mouth, laughing and enraptured, showing his teeth to the captive c.o.c.katoos, who kept nodding their white or yellow top-knots towards the glaring red of his breeches and the copper buckle of his belt. When he found a bird that could talk, he put questions to it, and if it happened at the time to be disposed to reply and to hold a conversation with him, he would remain there till nightfall, filled with gayety and contentment. He also found heaps of fun in looking at the monkeys, and could conceive no greater luxury for a rich man than to possess these animals, just like cats and dogs. This kind of taste for the exotic he had in his blood, as people have a taste for the chase, or for medicine, or for the priesthood. He could not keep himself, every time the gates of the barracks opened, from going back to the quay, as if he felt himself drawn towards it by an irresistible longing.

Now, on one occasion, having stopped almost in ecstacy before an enormous araruna, which was swelling out its plumes, bending forward, and bridling up again as if making the court-curtseys of parrot-land, he saw the door of a little tavern adjoining the bird-dealer's shop opening, and his attention was attracted by a young negress, with a silk kerchief tied round her head, sweeping into the street the rubbish and the sand of the establishment.

Boitelle's attention was soon divided between the bird and the woman, and he really could not tell which of these two beings he contemplated with the greater astonishment and delight.

The negress, having got rid of the sweepings of the tavern, raised her eyes, and, in her turn, was dazzled by the soldier's uniform. There she stood facing him with her broom in her hands as if she were carrying arms for him, while the araruna continued making curtseys.

Now at the end of a few seconds the soldier began to get embarra.s.sed by this attention, and he walked away gingerly so as not to present the appearance of beating a retreat.

But he came back. Almost every day he pa.s.sed in front of the Colonial tavern, and often he could distinguish through the window-panes the figure of the little black-skinned maid filling out "bocks" or gla.s.ses of brandy for the sailors of the port. Frequently, too, she would come out to the door on seeing him; soon, without even having exchanged a word they smiled at one another like acquaintances; and Boitelle felt his heart moved when he saw suddenly glittering between the dark lips of the girl her s.h.i.+ning row of white teeth. At length he ventured one day to enter and was quite surprised to find that she could speak French like everyone else. The bottle of lemonade, of which she was good enough to accept a gla.s.sful, remained in the soldier's recollection, memorably delicious; and it grew into custom with him to come and absorb in this little tavern on the quay all the agreeable drinks which he could afford.

For him it was a treat, a happiness, on which his thoughts were constantly dwelling, to watch the black hand of the little maid pouring out something into his gla.s.s whilst her teeth, brighter than her eyes, showed themselves as she laughed. When they had kept company in this way for two months they became fast friends, and Boitelle, after his first astonishment at discovering that this negress was in her excellent principles as good as the best girls in the country, that she exhibited a regard for economy, industry, religion, and good conduct, loved her more on that account, and became so much smitten with her that he wanted to marry her.

He told her about his intentions, which made her dance with joy.

Besides, she had a little money, left her by a female oyster-dealer, who had picked her up when she had been left on the quay at Havre by an American captain. This captain had found her, when she was only about six years old, lying on bales of cotton in the hold of his s.h.i.+p, some hours after his departure from New York. On his arrival in Havre, he there abandoned to the care of this compa.s.sionate oyster-dealer the little black creature, who had been hidden on board his vessel, he could not tell how or why.

The oyster-woman having died, the young negress became a servant at the Colonial tavern.

Antoine Boitelle added: "This will be all right if the parents don't go against it. I will never go against them, you understand never! I'm going to say a word or two to them the first time I go back to the country."

On the following week, in fact, having obtained twenty-four hours'

leave, he went to see his family, who cultivate a little farm at Tourteville near Yvetot.

He waited till the meal was finished, the hour when the coffee baptized with brandy makes people more open-hearted, before informing his parents that he had found a girl answering so well to his likings in every way that there could not exist any other in all the world so perfectly suited to him.

The old people, at this observation, immediately a.s.sumed a circ.u.mspect air, and wanted explanations. Besides he had concealed nothing from them except the color of her skin.

She was a servant, without much means, but strong, thrifty, clean, well-conducted, and sensible. All these things were better than money would be in the hands of a bad housewife. Moreover, she had a few sous, left her by a woman who had reared her, a good number of sous, almost a little dowry, fifteen hundred francs in the savings' bank.

The old people, overcome by his talk, and relying, too, on their own judgment, were gradually giving way, when he came to the delicate point. Laughing in rather a constrained fas.h.i.+on, he said:

"There is only one thing you may not like. She is not a white slip."

They did not understand, and he had to explain at some length and very cautiously, to avoid shocking them, that she belonged to the dusky race of which they had only seen samples amongst figures exhibited at Epinal. Then, they became restless, perplexed, alarmed, as if he had proposed a union with the Devil.

The mother said. "Black? How much of her is black? Is the whole of her?"

He replied, "Certainly. Everywhere, just as you are white everywhere."

The father interposed, "Black? Is it as black as the pot?"

The son answered "Perhaps a little less than that. She is black, but not disgustingly black. The Cure's ca.s.sock is black; but it is not uglier than a surplice, which is white."

The father said, "Are there more black people besides her in her country?"

And the son, with an air of conviction, exclaimed, "Certainly!"

But the old man shook his head.

"This must be disagreeable?"

And the son:

"It isn't more disagreeable than anything else, seeing that you get used to it in no time."

The mother asked:

"It doesn't soil linen more than other skins, this black skin?"