The Fat and the Thin

The others protested that it surely wasn’t possible. Why, Madame Verlaque was positively hideous!

“What! do you think me a liar?” cried Mademoiselle Saget, with angry indignation. “Why, her letters to him have been found, a whole pile of letters, in which she asks for money, ten and twenty francs at a time. There’s no doubt at all about it. I’m quite certain in my own mind that they killed the husband between them.”

La Sarriette and Madame Lecoeur were convinced; but they were beginning to get very impatient. They had been waiting on the footway for more than an hour, and feared that somebody might be robbing their stalls during their long absence. So Mademoiselle Saget began to give them some further interesting information to keep them from going off. Florent could not have taken to flight, said she; he was certain to return, and it would be very interesting to see him arrested. Then she went on to describe the trap that had been laid for him, while Madame Lecoeur and La Sarriette continued scrutinising the house from top to bottom, keeping watch upon every opening, and at each moment expecting to see the hats of the detectives appear at one of the doors or windows.

“Who would ever imagine, now, that the place was full of police?” observed the butter dealer.

“Oh! they’re in the garret at the top,” said the old maid. “They’ve left the window open, you see, just as they found it. Look! I think I can see one of them hiding behind the pomegranate on the balcony.”

The others excitedly craned out their necks, but could see nothing.

“Ah, no, it’s only a shadow,” continued Mademoiselle Saget. “The little curtains even are perfectly still. The detectives must be sitting down in the room, and keeping quiet.”

Just at that moment the women caught sight of Gavard coming out of the fish market with a thoughtful air. They looked at him with glistening eyes, without speaking. They had drawn close to one another, and stood there rigid in their drooping skirts. The poultry dealer came up to them.

“Have you seen Florent go by?” he asked.

They replied that they had not.

“I want to speak to him at once,” continued Gavard. “He isn’t in the fish market. He must have gone up to his room. But you would have seen him, though, if he had.”

The women had turned rather pale. They still kept looking at each other with a knowing expression, their lips twitching slightly every now and then. “We have only been here some five minutes, said Madame Lecoeur unblushingly, as her brother-in-law still stood hesitating.

“Well, then, I’ll go upstairs and see. I’ll risk the five flights,” rejoined Gavard with a laugh.

La Sarriette stepped forward as though she wished to detain him, but her aunt took hold of her arm and drew her back.

“Let him alone, you big simpleton!” she whispered. “It’s the best thing that can happen to him. It’ll teach him to treat us with respect in future.”

“He won’t say again that I ate tainted meat,” muttered Mademoiselle Saget in a low tone.

They said nothing more. La Sarriette was very red; but the two others still remained quite yellow. But they now averted their heads, feeling confused by each other’s looks, and at a loss what to do with their hands, which they buried beneath their aprons. Presently their eyes instinctively came back to the house, penetrating the walls, as it were, following Gavard in his progress up the stairs. When they imagined that he had entered Florent’s room they again exchanged furtive glances. La Sarriette laughed nervously. All at once they fancied they could see the window curtains moving, and this led them to believe that a struggle was taking place. But the house-front remained as tranquil as ever in the sunshine; and another quarter of an hour of unbroken quietness passed away, during which the three women’s nervous excitement became more and more intense. They were beginning to feel quite faint when a man hurriedly came out of the passage and ran off to get a cab. Five minutes later Gavard appeared, followed by two police officers. Lisa, who had stepped out on to the footway on observing the cab, hastily hurried back into the shop.

Gavard was very pale. The police had searched him upstairs, and had discovered the revolver and cartridge case in his possession. Judging by the commissary’s stern expression on hearing his name, the poultry dealer deemed himself lost. This was a terrible ending to his plotting that had never entered into his calculations. The Tuileries would never forgive him! His legs gave way beneath him as though the firing party was already awaiting him outside. When he got into the street, however, his vanity lent him sufficient strength to walk erect; and he even managed to force a smile, as he knew the market people were looking at him. They should see him die bravely, he resolved.

However, La Sarriette and Madame Lecoeur rushed up to him and anxiously inquired what was the matter; and the butter dealer began to cry, while La Sarriette embraced her uncle, manifesting the deepest emotion. As Gavard held her clasped in his arms, he slipped a key into her hand, and whispered in her ear: “Take everything, and burn the papers.”

Then he got into the cab with the same mien as he would have ascended the scaffold. As the vehicle disappeared round the corner of the Rue Pierre Lescot, Madame Lecoeur observed La Sarriette trying to hide the key in her pocket.

“It’s of no use you trying that little game on me, my dear,” she exclaimed, clenching her teeth; “I saw him slip it into your hand. As true as there’s a God in Heaven, I’ll go to the gaol and tell him everything, if you don’t treat me properly.”

“Of course I shall treat you properly, aunt, dear,” replied La Sarriette, with an embarrassed smile.

“Very well, then, let us go to his rooms at once. It’s of no use to give the police time to poke their dirty hands in the cupboards.”

Mademoiselle Saget, who had been listening with gleaming eyes, followed them, running along in the rear as quickly as her short legs could carry her. She had no thought, now, of waiting for Florent. From the Rue Rambuteau to the Rue de la Cossonnerie she manifested the most humble obsequiousness, and volunteered to explain matters to Madame Leonce, the doorkeeper.

“We’ll see, we’ll see,” the butter dealer curtly replied.

However, on reaching the house a preliminary parley – as Mademoiselle Saget had opined – proved to be necessary. Madame Leonce refused to allow the women to go up to her tenant’s room. She put on an expression of severe austerity, and seemed greatly shocked by the sight of La Sarriette’s loosely fastened fichu. However, after the old maid had whispered a few words to her and she was shown the key, she gave way. When they got upstairs she surrendered the rooms and furniture to the others article by article, apparently as heartbroken as if she had been compelled to show a party of burglars the place where her own money was secreted.

“There, take everything and have done with it!” she cried at last, throwing herself into an arm-chair.

La Sarriette was already eagerly trying the key in the locks of different closets. Madame Lecoeur, all suspicion, pressed her so closely that she exclaimed: “Really, aunt, you get in my way. Do leave my arms free, at any rate.”

At last they succeeded in opening a wardrobe opposite the window, between the fireplace and the bed. And then all four women broke into exclamations. On the middle shelf lay some ten thousand francs in gold, methodically arranged in little piles. Gavard, who had prudently deposited the bulk of his fortune in the hands of a notary, had kept this sum by him for the purposes of the coming outbreak. He had been wont to say with great solemnity that his contribution to the revolution was quite ready. The fact was that he had sold out certain stock, and every night took an intense delight in contemplating those ten thousand francs, gloating over them, and finding something quite roysterous and insurrectional in their appearance. Sometimes when he was in bed he dreamed that a fight was going on in the wardrobe; he could hear guns being fired there, paving-stones being torn up and piled into barricades, and voices shouting in clamorous triumph; and he said to himself that it was his money fighting against the Government.

La Sarriette, however, had stretched out her hands with a cry of delight.

“Paws off, little one!” exclaimed Madame Lecoeur in a hoarse voice.

As she stood there in the reflection of the gold, she looked yellower than ever – her face discoloured by biliousness, her eyes glowing feverishly from the liver complaint which was secretly undermining her. Behind her Mademoiselle Saget on tip-toe was gazing ecstatically into the wardrobe, and Madame Leonce had now risen from her seat, and was growling sulkily.

“My uncle said I was to take everything,” declared the girl.

“And am I to have nothing, then; I who have done so much for him?” cried the doorkeeper.

Madame Lecoeur was almost choking with excitement. She pushed the others away, and clung hold of the wardrobe, screaming: “It all belongs to me! I am his nearest relative. You are a pack of thieves, you are! I’d rather throw it all out of the window than see you have it!”

Then silence fell, and they all four stood glowering at each other. The kerchief that La Sarriette wore over her breast was now altogether unfastened, and she displayed her bosom heaving with warm life, her moist red lips, her rosy nostrils. Madame Lecoeur grew still more sour as she saw how lovely the girl looked in the excitement of her longing desire.

“Well,” she said in a lower tone, “we won’t fight about it. You are his niece, and I’ll divide the money with you. We will each take a pile in turn.”

Thereupon they pushed the other two aside. The butter dealer took the first pile, which at once disappeared within her skirts. Then La Sarriette took a pile. They kept a close watch upon one another, ready to fight at the slightest attempt at cheating. Their fingers were thrust forward in turn, the hideous knotted fingers of the aunt and the white fingers of the niece, soft and supple as silk. Slowly they filled their pockets. When there was only one pile left, La Sarriette objected to her aunt taking it, as she had commenced; and she suddenly divided it between Mademoiselle Saget and Madame Leonce, who had watched them pocket the gold with feverish impatience.

“Much obliged to you!” snarled the doorkeeper. “Fifty francs for having coddled him up with tisane and broth! The old deceiver told me he had no relatives!”

Before locking the wardrobe up again, Madame Lecoeur searched it thoroughly from top to bottom. It contained all the political works which were forbidden admission into the country, the pamphlets printed at Brussels, the scandalous histories of the Bonapartes, and the foreign caricatures ridiculing the Emperor. One of Gavard’s greatest delights was to shut himself up with a friend, and show him all these compromising things.

“He told me that I was to burn all the papers,” said La Sarriette.

“Oh, nonsense! we’ve no fire, and it would take up too long. The police will soon be here! We must get out of this!”

They all four hastened off; but they had not reached the bottom of the stairs before the police met them, and made Madame Leonce return with them upstairs. The three others, making themselves as small as possible, hurriedly escaped into the street. They walked away in single file at a brisk pace; the aunt and niece considerably incommoded by the weight of their drooping pockets. Mademoiselle Saget had kept her fifty francs in her closed fist, and remained deep in thought, brooding over a plan for extracting something more from the heavy pockets in front of her.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, as they reached the corner of the fish market, “we’ve got here at a lucky moment. There’s Florent yonder, just going to walk into the trap.”

Florent, indeed, was just then returning to the markets after his prolonged perambulation. He went into his office to change his coat, and then set about his daily duties, seeing that the marble slabs were properly washed, and slowly strolling along the alleys. He fancied that the fish-wives looked at him in a somewhat strange manner; they chuckled too, and smiled significantly as he passed them. Some new vexation, he thought, was in store for him. For some time past those huge, terrible women had not allowed him a day’s peace. However, as he passed the Mehudins’ stall he was very much surprised to hear the old woman address him in a honeyed tone: “There’s just been a gentleman inquiring for you, Monsieur Florent; a middle-aged gentleman. He’s gone to wait for you in your room.”

As the old fish-wife, who was squatting, all of a heap, on her chair, spoke these words, she felt such a delicious thrill of satisfied vengeance that her huge body fairly quivered. Florent, still doubtful, glanced at the beautiful Norman; but the young woman, now completely reconciled with her mother, turned on her tap and slapped her fish, pretending not to hear what was being said.

“You are quite sure?” said Florent to Mother Mehudin.

“Oh, yes, indeed. Isn’t that so, Louise?” said the old woman in a shriller voice.

Florent concluded that it must be some one who wanted to see him about the great business, and he resolved to go up to his room. He was just about to leave the pavilion, when, happening to turn round, he observed the beautiful Norman watching him with a grave expression on her face. Then he passed in front of the three gossips.

“Do you notice that there’s no one in the pork shop?” remarked Mademoiselle Saget. “Beautiful Lisa’s not the woman to compromise herself.”

The shop was, indeed, quite empty. The front of the house was still bright with sunshine; the building looked like some honest, prosperous pile guilelessly warming itself in the morning rays. Up above, the pomegranate on the balcony was in full bloom. As Florent crossed the roadway he gave a friendly nod to Logre and Monsieur Lebigre, who appeared to be enjoying the fresh air on the doorstep of the latter’s establishment. They returned his greeting with a smile. Florent was then about to enter the side-passage, when he fancied he saw Auguste’s pale face hastily vanishing from its dark and narrow depths. Thereupon he turned back and glanced into the shop to make sure that the middle-aged gentleman was not waiting for him there. But he saw no one but Mouton, who sat on a block displaying his double chin and bristling whiskers, and gazed at him defiantly with his great yellow eyes. And when he had at last made up his mind to enter the passage, Lisa’s face appeared behind the little curtain of a glazed door at the back of the shop.

A hush had fallen over the fish market. All the huge paunches and bosoms held their breath, waiting till Florent should disappear from sight. Then there was an uproarious outbreak; and the bosoms heaved wildly and the paunches nearly burst with malicious delight. The joke had succeeded. Nothing could be more comical. As old Mother Mehudin vented her merriment she shook and quivered like a wine-skin that is being emptied. Her story of the middle-aged gentleman went the round of the market, and the fish-wives found it extremely amusing. At last the long spindle-shanks was collared, and they would no longer always have his miserable face and gaol-bird’s expression before their eyes. They all wished him a pleasant journey, and trusted that they might get a handsome fellow for their next inspector. And in their delight they rushed about from one stall to another, and felt inclined to dance round their marble slabs like a lot of holiday-making schoolgirls. The beautiful Norman, however, watched this outbreak of joy in a rigid attitude, not daring to move for fear she should burst into tears; and she kept her hands pressed upon a big skate to cool her feverish excitement.

“You see how those Mehudins turn their backs upon him now that he’s come to grief,” said Madame Lecoeur.

“Well, and they’re quite right too,” replied Mademoiselle Saget. “Besides, matters are settled now, my dear, and we’re to have no more disputes. You’ve every reason to be satisfied; leave the others to act as they please.”

“It’s only the old woman who is laughing,” La Sarriette remarked; “La Normande looks anything but happy.”

Meantime, upstairs in his bedroom, Florent allowed himself to be taken as unresistingly as a sheep. The police officers sprang roughly upon him, expecting, no doubt, that they would meet with a desperate resistance. He quietly begged them to leave go of him; and then sat down on a chair while they packed up his papers, and the red scarves, armlets, and banners. He did not seem at all surprised at this ending; indeed, it was something of a relief to him, though he would not frankly confess it. But he suffered acutely at thought of the bitter hatred which had sent him into that room; he recalled Auguste’s pale face and the sniggering looks of the fish-wives; he bethought himself of old Madame Mehudin’s words, La Normande’s silence, and the empty shop downstairs. The markets were leagued against him, he reflected; the whole neighbourhood had conspired to hand him over to the police. The mud of those greasy streets had risen up all around to overwhelm him!

And amidst all the round faces which flitted before his mind’s eye there suddenly appeared that of Quenu, and a spasm of mortal agony contracted his heart.

“Come, get along downstairs!” exclaimed one of the officers, roughly.

Florent rose and proceeded to go downstairs. When he reached the second floor he asked to be allowed to return; he had forgotten something, he said. But the officers refused to let him go back, and began to hustle him forward. Then he besought them to let him return to his room again, and even offered them the money he had in his pocket. Two of them at last consented to return with him, threatening to blow his brains out should he attempt to play them any trick; and they drew their revolvers out of their pockets as they spoke. However, on reaching his room once more Florent simply went straight to the chaffinch’s cage, took the bird out of it, kissed it between its wings, and set it at liberty. He watched it fly away through the open window, into the sunshine, and alight, as though giddy, on the roof of the fish market. Then it flew off again and disappeared over the markets in the direction of the Square des Innocents. For a moment longer Florent remained face to face with the sky, the free and open sky; and he thought of the wood-pigeons cooing in the garden of the Tuileries, and of those other pigeons down in the market cellars with their throats slit by Marjolin’s knife. Then he felt quite broken, and turned and followed the officers, who were putting their revolvers back into their pockets as they shrugged their shoulders.

On reaching the bottom of the stairs, Florent stopped before the door which led into the kitchen. The commissary, who was waiting for him there, seemed almost touched by his gentle submissiveness, and asked him: “Would you like to say good-bye to your brother?”

For a moment Florent hesitated. He looked at the door. A tremendous noise of cleavers and pans came from the kitchen. Lisa, with the design of keeping her husband occupied, had persuaded him to make the black-puddings in the morning instead of in the evening, as was his wont. The onions were simmering on the fire, and over all the noisy uproar Florent could hear Quenu’s joyous voice exclaiming, “Ah, dash it all, the pudding will be excellent, that it will! Auguste, hand me the fat!”

Florent thanked the commissary, but refused his offer. He was afraid to return any more into that warm kitchen, reeking with the odour of boiling onions, and so he went on past the door, happy in the thought that his brother knew nothing of what had happened to him, and hastening his steps as if to spare the establishment all further worry. However, on emerging into the open sunshine of the street he felt a touch of shame, and got into the cab with bent back and ashen face. He was conscious that the fish market was gazing at him in triumph; it seemed to him, indeed, as though the whole neighbourhood had gathered there to rejoice at his fall.

“What a villainous expression he’s got!” said Mademoiselle Saget.

“Yes, indeed, he looks just like a thief caught with his hand in somebody’s till,” added Madame Lecoeur.

“I once saw a man guillotined who looked exactly like he does,” asserted La Sarriette, showing her white teeth.

They stepped forward, lengthened their necks, and tried to see into the cab. Just as it was starting, however, the old maid tugged sharply at the skirts of her companions, and pointed to Claire, who was coming round the corner of the Rue Pirouette, looking like a mad creature, with her hair loose and her nails bleeding. She had at last succeeded in opening her door. When she discovered that she was too late, and that Florent was being taken off, she darted after the cab, but checked herself almost immediately with a gesture of impotent rage, and shook her fists at the receding wheels. Then, with her face quite crimson beneath the fine plaster dust with which she was covered, she ran back again towards the Rue Pirouette.

“Had he promised to marry her, eh?” exclaimed La Sarriette, laughing. “The silly fool must be quite cracked.”

Little by little the neighbourhood calmed down, though throughout the day groups of people constantly assembled and discussed the events of the morning. The pork shop was the object of much inquisitive curiosity. Lisa avoided appearing there, and left the counter in charge of Augustine. In the afternoon she felt bound to tell Quenu of what had happened, for fear the news might cause him too great a shock should he hear it from some gossiping neighbour. She waited till she was alone with him in the kitchen, knowing that there he was always most cheerful, and would weep less than if he were anywhere else. Moreover, she communicated her tidings with all sorts of motherly precautions. Nevertheless, as soon as he knew the truth he fell on the chopping-block, and began to cry like a calf.

“Now, now, my poor dear, don’t give way like that; you’ll make yourself quite ill,” exclaimed Lisa, taking him in her arms.

His tears were inundating his white apron, the whole of his massive, torpid form quivered with grief. He seemed to be sinking, melting away. When he was at last able to speak, he stammered: “Oh, you don’t know how good he was to me when we lived together in the Rue Royer-Collard! He did everything. He swept the room and cooked the meals. He loved me as though I were his own child; and after his day’s work he used to come back splashed with mud, and so tired that he could scarcely move, while I stayed warm and comfortable in the house, and had nothing to do but eat. And now they’re going to shoot him!”

At this Lisa protested, saying that he would certainly not be shot. But Quenu only shook his head.

“I haven’t loved him half as much as I ought to have done,” he continued. “I can see that very well now. I had a wicked heart, and I hesitated about giving him his half of the money.”

“Why, I offered it to him a dozen times and more!” Lisa interrupted. “I’m sure we’ve nothing to reproach ourselves with.”

“Oh, yes, I know that you are everything that is good, and that you would have given him every copper. But I hesitated, I didn’t like to part with it; and now it will be a sorrow to me for the rest of my life. I shall always think that if I’d shared the fortune with him he wouldn’t have gone wrong a second time. Oh, yes; it’s my fault! It is I who have driven him to this.”

Then Lisa, expostulating still more gently, assured him that he had nothing to blame himself for, and even expressed some pity for Florent. But he was really very culpable, she said, and if he had had more money he would probably have perpetrated greater follies. Gradually she gave her husband to understand that it was impossible matters could have had any other termination, and that now everything would go on much better. Quenu was still weeping, wiping his cheeks with his apron, trying to suppress his sobs to listen to her, and then breaking into a wilder fit of tears than before. His fingers had mechanically sought a heap of sausage-meat lying on the block, and he was digging holes in it, and roughly kneading it together.

“And how unwell you were feeling, you know,” Lisa continued. “It was all because our life had got so shifted out of its usual course. I was very anxious, though I didn’t tell you so, at seeing you getting so low.”