THE MAYOR OF Clochemerle had been expecting this visit for a fortnight. And the fact that he had been expecting it had given him time to rehearse a great show of astonishment.
“Dear me,” he said, “Mademoiselle Putet! Well, I suppose it’s for some good work or other that you have come? I will send my wife to you.”
“It is to you I wish to speak, Monsieur le Maire,” the old maid replied with much emphasis.
“To me—you really mean it? Come in, then.”
He led her to his desk and invited her to sit down.
“You know what is going on, Monsieur le Maire?” Justine Putet asked.
“What are you referring to?”
“In Monks’ Alley.”
“No, indeed I don’t, Mademoiselle Putet! Anything unusual happening? It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
Before sitting down himself, he asked:
“You’ll take something? A liqueur? It’s not often I have this opportunity. My wife makes black currant liqueur. You can tell me what you think of it.”
He returned with a bottle, and glasses which he filled.
“Your very good health, Mademoiselle Putet! What do you think of that?”
“It’s excellent, Monsieur le Maire, excellent!”
“Isn’t it? It’s very old stuff. There’s no better made. Well, you were saying—about Monks’ Alley?”
“Don’t you ever hear about anything, Monsieur le Maire?”
Barthélemy Piéchut threw up his hands.
“My dear lady, I can’t be everywhere at the same time and look after everything! There’s the town hall and all my papers to attend to, and this person and that coming to ask me for advice, and the people with disputes to be settled. Then there are the vines, and the weather, and meetings, and journeys to be taken. I simply can’t be everywhere! I know less about this matter than any single person in Clochemerle with only his own affairs to look after. Tell me the whole story, that will be the best way.”
Bashful and shy, shifting about on her chair, and staring at the tile flooring at her feet, the old maid replied:
“It is hard to explain . . .”
“Well, what’s it all about?”
“It is about the urinal, Monsieur le Maire.”
“The urinal? Yes, what then?” asked Piéchut, who was beginning to enjoy himself.
Justine Putet collected her courage.
“There arc men who . . . do it at the side.”
“Oh, do they?” Piéchut said. “It would certainly be better elsewhere. But I’ll tell you something. When there was no urinal, all the men went outside. Now, most of them do it in there. That means progress.”
Justine Putet, however, still kept her eyes lowered, and seemed as though she were sitting on sharp spikes. But she pulled herself together.
“But that is not the worst. There are men who show—”
“Who show, you say, Mademoiselle Putet?”
“Yes, Monsieur le Maire, who show—” the old maid answered with relief, thinking that she had been understood.
But Piéchut took pleasure in prolonging the torture which her modesty had been enduring. He scratched his head.
“I don’t quite understand, Mademoiselle Putet. . . . What is it that they show?”
Justine Putet had to drain to the dregs her bitter cup of shame.
“The whole caboodle!” she said in an undertone, and with deep disgust.
The mayor burst into a roar of hearty honest laughter.
“Well, those are funny things you’re telling me!” he said, by way of excuse.
Resuming his gravity he continued:
“And what else happened?”
“What else?” muttered the old maid. “That was all!”
“Oh, that was all! Good! Well, Mademoiselle Putet?” Piéchut said, coldly.
“What do you mean? I have come here to make a complaint, Monsieur le Maire. It’s a scandal. There are outrages being committed here in Clochemerle.”
“Please, please, Mademoiselle! Let us be quite clear about this, if you don’t mind,” the mayor said seriously. “You don’t imply that all the men in Clochemerle behave improperly? It’s only a matter of involuntary, accidental gestures.”
“On the contrary, they are done on purpose.”
“Are you quite certain about this? Who are they? Old men—young men?”
“Young ones, Monsieur le Maire. It’s that gang of Fadet’s, those young scoundrels at the Skylark. I know them. They ought to be in prison.”
“How you rush at things, Mademoiselle! To arrest people you must have proofs of misdemeanor. I am quite willing to take drastic steps, mark you. But you must give me proofs. Have you any witnesses?”
“There are plenty of them. But people seem to enjoy it. . . .”
At this point the mayor took an opportunity for a piece of revenge. Anticipating that his words would be repeated, he said:
“I am afraid there is nothing I can do, Mademoiselle. Now the Curé Ponosse is only too glad to describe me as ‘a thoroughly worthy man,’ and ready to do anything he is asked. Will you tell him from me that I am extremely sorry—”
“Then this filthy behavior is to go on?” Justine Putet asked, aggressively.
By way of closing the interview, Piéchut gave her a piece of advice. “Listen, Mademoiselle,” he said. “When you leave here, go to the police station. Tell Cudoine about your trouble. He will see whether he can have an eye kept on the place.”
“The only thing to be done,” the old maid suddenly exclaimed with violence, “is to remove the urinal altogether. It’s a scandal to have put it where it is.”
Piéchut put on his hard expression. This, in his case, was habitually accompanied by a tone of voice of the utmost gentleness, of persistent inexorable gentleness.
“Remove the urinal? That would not be impossible. I will even tell you the best course to pursue. Get up a petition. If you have a majority here in Clochemerle, you may rest assured that the town council will fall in with it. You won’t have another liqueur, Mademoiselle Putet?”
In spite of Cudoine’s promises, the situation remained entirely unchanged. From time to time a gendarme appeared at Monks’ Alley, but the personnel of the constabulary was too limited to allow of any duty lasting for more than a short period. The result was that the gendarme, attracted by the pleasant sound of rippling water, made use of the urinal and then took his departure elsewhere. Thanks to advice given by Mme. Cudoine, who detested Justine Putet and was offended by her exaggerated displays of virtue, Cudoine’s orders had not been at all stringent. This lady could not bear the idea of an ordinary person with no official status competing in good works and civic zeal with the wife of a noncommissioned officer of the constabulary, a kind of military commandant of the town of Clochemerle. So everything went on as before, and the Fadet gang’s persecution of the old maid proceeded merrily, with the tacit approval of the greater portion of the inhabitants of Clochemerle.
Nevertheless, the hour of Justine Putet’s triumph was about to strike. On August 2nd, 1923, there was a report which set Clochemerle in an uproar. One of the Children of Mary, Rose Bivaque, who would not be eighteen until the following December, became pregnant. She was a thick-set, healthy-looking girl, with a robust figure, precociously developed, whose physical advantages in general were such as to compare very favorably with those of a grown woman of twenty-five. A cool, fresh-looking girl, this Rose Bivaque, with an air of serenity about her; big, wide-open eyes which seemed to bespeak an artless innocence; and an agreeable if slightly fatuous smile—well-adapted for inspiring confidence—on her tempting lips. No wanton was she, this little Rose Bivaque; on the contrary, she was very reserved, spoke little, was never impertinent or rude; she was all docility and submissiveness, with a pretty polite way of dealing with old grandmothers and their driveling talk as well as with old unmarried ladies and their prim affected sermonizing; regular at confession, well-behaved in church, where she sang near the harmonium in a bright clear voice, and charmingly dainty in her white dress on Corpus Christi day; diligent at home in sewing, ironing, and cooking. Indeed, she was everything, a pearl of great price, and pretty withal, a girl of whom her family was justly proud, and the last in Clochemerle whom one would ever have thought capable of immoral behavior. And it was she and none other, little Rose Bivaque, whose name was on everyone’s lips.
“Now that this has happened—” Words such as these were being murmured in terror by the mothers of girls about fifteen years old.
At the tobacconist’s shop, whither a number of women bent on the discussion of an important event were diligently hastening, Mme. Fouache, with an air of sadness that did credit to her moral standards, was comparing the manners and customs of two epochs, to the entire advantage of former times:
“In the old days,” she was saying, “such things would never have been even thought of. Yet I was brought up in a large town, where there are many, many more opportunities, and everything is much smarter, and necessarily so. And when I was twenty, you can’t imagine how striking I was! People turned around in the street to look at me, I don’t mind saying that now. . . . But never, never, my dear friends, would I let any man touch me with the tip of his little finger, or speak to me, as I need hardly tell you! As my poor Adrien used to say—and he was a man with taste and judgment, seeing the high position he had, as you may imagine! ‘When I first knew you, Eugénie, I couldn’t look straight at you. Like the sun you were, Eugénie!’ A lovely talker and a fascinating man, my Adrien, but there he was, all of a tremble whenever he saw me, when I was a young girl. Later on he used to say to me: ‘I could never help feeling that I had to be careful whatever I said, so as not to hurt your innocent mind. I never knew anyone such a model of virtue as you were, Eugénie!’ You see, I’d had the same bringing up as if I’d been in the highest society at that time.”
“And the man you had met was one of the old school, too, Madame Fouache!”
“Yes, Madame Michat, there wasn’t much my Adrien didn’t know about good manners. He wasn’t just anybody, you may be sure of that. But all the same, whatever you may say, it’s the women who make the men, isn’t it!”
“That’s true, that’s true, Madame Fouache!”
“Well, all I can tell you is, no one has ever shown me any want of respect!”
“Nor me, Madame Lagousse, I need hardly say!”
“The women who get that sort of thing, it’s always their own fault!”
“Of course it is!”
“You never said a truer thing, Madame Poipanel!”
“They’re just good-for-nothings.”
“Nasty-minded creatures!”
“Or curious! And you know, really. . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well, you do hear a lot about all those things. But when you get to close quarters . . .”
“It’s a wretched disappointment!”
“There’s simply nothing to it!”
“I don’t know what all of you are like. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s never meant anything to me!”
“Nor me, Madame Michat. If it wasn’t a question of giving pleasure. . . .”
“And Christian duty, too.”
“And keeping your husband to yourself, so that he doesn’t go trotting off somewhere else.”
“You’re right there!”
“And imagine enjoying it!”
“You’d have to be made in a funny sort of way!”
“It’s just drudgery!”
‘Don’t you agree, Madame Fouache?”
‘Most certainly I got on very happily when I had to go without. And I may tell you that my Adrien wasn’t at all persistent.”
“You were lucky. Just think of it, there have been women who’ve died from it!”
“Oh, Madame Lagousse! Died from it?”
“Yes, Madame Poipanel, and I could mention names, too! Mind you, there are men who arc never satisfied! You knew that woman Trogneulon—lower town, she was—who ended up in the hospital, seventeen years ago it was, now. That’s what she died from, Madame Poipanel, they’ll tell you so. Whole nights with a madman, think of it! It sent her clean off her head. After a time she got the hysterics, and was always crying.”
“When it gets as far as that, it’s just an illness!”
“Awful!”
“Worse than animals!”
“Women are helpless creatures. We never know what we shall be up against.”
“By the way, Madame Fouache, do they know who Rose Bivaque went wrong with?”
“I’ll tell you the whole story. But don’t repeat it. It was a young soldier who always smokes made-up cigarettes. Claudius Brodequin.”
“Oh, but he’s with his regiment, Madame Fouache!”
“But he was here in April, for the inauguration. (A soldier who always buys cigarettes in packets, of course I should notice him.) That only shows you it doesn’t take long nowadays for girls to go off the rails. Will you take a little one, ladies? My treat.”
The women to whom we have just been listening were merely gossips, readier for tittle-tattle than for action, and excelling in the utterance of groans, cries of dismay, and lamentations in chorus. But apart from these, the pious women were getting ready for action, recruited and led by Justine Putet, who by this time was swarthier, yellower, more ill-tempered, and more angular than ever. She was going from house to house, from kitchen to kitchen, sowing the good seed.
“What a shocking business! What a horrible thing! A Child of Mary, Madame! With all that filthy behavior in the alley it was bound to happen sooner or later. I said it would! And Heaven alone knows what it has done for the other children! They have all been corrupted. . . .”
Such was her persistency that the mournful procession of women forlorn, of women embittered, of women who had grown stale—of all those women who had never brought forth, had never known the joys of motherhood—rapidly lengthened. Each and all were loud in their denunciations of the scandal, and so vehement were they that the Curé Ponosse, who had now been accused of publicly aiding and abetting concupiscence, was compelled, whether he would or no, to give his patronage to these ladies and their vituperations. A crusade was undertaken from the pulpit against the urinal, the cause of all the evil which, by attracting the boys to a spot where the girls had to pass, had incited the latter to a shameful traffic with the Devil.
This question of the urinal grew to such proportions that it split Clochemerle into opposing factions. Violent divisions sprang up. The Church party, whom we will call the Urinophobes, was headed by the notary Girodot and Justine Putet, under the haughty patronage of Baroness Courtebiche.
Of the opposite party, that of the Urinophiles, the shining lights were Tafardel, Beausoleil, Dr. Mouraille, Babette Manapoux, and her friends. They were under the protection of Barthélemy Piéchut, who took no active part but reserved to himself the right of making important decisions. Conspicuous among the Philes were also the Toumignons and the Torbayons, whose feelings in this affair were based on commercial interests; for the men of the town, on coming out of the urinal, frequently took the opportunity of going into the Torbayon Inn or the Beaujolais Stores, both of which were close at hand, and they spent money there.
By joining the party of the Phobes, a man like Anselme Lamolire was taking up a position hostile to Barthélemy Piéchut. As for the remainder of the population, its attitude was determined chiefly by the position which the women occupied in their own homes. In all instances where it was they who ruled the roost—and this was as often the case at Clochemerle as anywhere else—the Church party was favored. Lastly there came the waverers, the neutrals, and the indifferent. Among the latter was Mile. Voujon, the postmistress, who had no interests on either side. As for Mme. Fouache, she listened attentively to everything she heard and sympathized with both sides alternately, with encouraging exclamations such as, “Yes, to be sure!” and so on; but she did not declare herself officially in favor of anyone. Tobacco, a Government monopoly, had to hold itself superior to party strife. If the Philes were great consumers of scaferlati, the majority of the cigar smokers were recruited from the ranks of the Phobes. The Baroness Courtebiche ordered whole boxes of expensive cigars for her guests. The notary Girodot also bought them.
While angry passions were grouping themselves and awaiting the moment to burst forth, the signs of little Rose Bivaque’s coming maternity were now growing so evident as to constitute an impudent defiance of all good principles. In due course she would give birth to a new little citizen of Clochemerle, and no one could tell whether he would be baptized as a Bivaque or a Brodequin or with the name of a third miscreant who, under cover of the warm spring nights, had also involved himself in this obscure and dubious affair. For evil tongues, as will be readily believed, were given free rein and inordinately exaggerated the poor little thing’s wrongdoing.
But Rose Bivaque, with her simple mind and healthy organism which remained undisturbed by her discomforts, was but little distressed by the loss of her status as a Child of Mary. The blissfully unconscious little creature had, at this stage of her pregnancy, a glitter about her that was truly touching, even enviable, which made it impossible not to smile when one looked at her, and want to encourage her in her coming maternity. That glitter of hers was exactly the thing which the women who were not themselves exposed to criticism found hardest to forgive her. But Rose Bivaque could not understand hatred. She was awaiting her Claudius Brodequin, whose arrival might be expected at any moment.
