IN THE MAIN street of Clochemerle, on the stroke of midday, the crowd was slowly dispersing. Little groups whose faces bore expressions of a dismay they did not really feel, and who in subdued voices proffered comments that were still outwardly cautious, were secretly flooded by feelings of huge delight. For this splendid affair in the church had made Saint Roch’s Day, 1923, the most memorable fête that anyone throughout the countryside could call to mind. Garnished with bloodcurdling details on the subject of the fight, each and all were impatient to regain their own homes, where they would be able to indulge in unrestrained personal comment.
The reader should here be reminded that at Clochemerle the people are apt to suffer from boredom. At ordinary times they are unconscious of this. It is only when an event such as this occurs, an event of a kind that they could hardly have dared to hope for, that they are enabled to make a comparison between a life of monotony and one in which something really does happen. The scandal in the church was an affair appertaining exclusively to Clochemerle, a family affair so to speak. In this type of event, the attention of those interested may be so intensely concentrated upon it that not an atom of its precious inner significance need be lost. This is what was felt by the whole of Clochemerle, and the people’s hearts were bursting with hope and pride.
The time at which it occurred was an immense factor in the blossoming and subsequent developments of the scandal. Had it broken out while the harvesting of the grapes was in full swing it would have been doomed to failure. “The wine comes first,” the people of Clochemerle would have said, and left Toumignon, Nicolas, Justine Putet, the curé, and all the others to disentangle themselves as best they could. But the scandal arrived providentially during an off season, when the whole population was at leisure, at the very moment when they were sitting down to a meal, on a day when they had killed the fatted calf and brought up the oldest wine from the cellars. It was a splendid thing to have happened. And it was not just a trifling discussion which would quickly come to an end, a mere insignificant squabble between families or groups of people. On the contrary, it was a fine well-constructed story with a strong background, one about which every person throughout the countryside had formed some opinion. More, it was a damned fine thundering good story, and the Devil and all his minions couldn’t have produced a better. But everyone felt that there was more to come.
The inhabitants of Clochemerle sat down with a good appetite, assured of ample entertainment for months ahead, and justly proud of being able to give their guests from the neighboring villages the first account of a story which would go the rounds of the whole Department. They regarded it as a happy chance that strangers should be with them. Seeing how jealous people are, it would never have been believed in the surrounding districts that Nicolas and Toumignon had really fought in the church and that Saint Roch had received a fatal blow in the general scuffle. A saint hurled down into a font as the result of the combined efforts of a beadle and a heretic—that is something you don’t see every day. It was lucky that strangers would now be able to testify to this.
No sooner were the inhabitants seated at table in their own homes than the whole of Clochemerle became enwrapped in the overwhelming torpor of the scorching midday heat. Not a breath of air was stirring. The town was pervaded by odors of warm bread, cooked pastry, and savory stews. The brightness of the blue sky was positively dazzling, and the heat would have fallen like a blow from a club on heads congested from excessive eating and drinking. The flies buzzing on the manure heaps had taken possession of the town which, without them, would have appeared destitute of life.
Let us take advantage of this lull, during which the process of digestion is advancing with difficulty, and draw up a balance sheet of the events of this fatal morning, destined to have dramatic consequences.
If we are to take incidents in the order of their importance, we must speak first of the sad adventure of Saint Roch. Saint Roch received his blow (which was merely accidental) in the form of a plaster effigy only, and it was in holy water that his image came to its untimely end, which is at least a consoling end for the image of a saint. But this splendid statue was a gift which had been made by the Baroness Courtebiche in 1917, when she took up permanent residence in the district. The Baroness had ordered this statue at Lyons from some specialists in ecclesiastical statuary, who were the exclusive purveyors to the diocese. She had paid two thousand five hundred and fifty francs for it, an impressive sum to spend as an act of piety. Such expenditure as this conferred on her the right to regard herself as having finally discharged every obligation to the Church and won an assured position in public esteem. This was universally understood.
Since 1917, the cost of living had so much increased that in 1923 a statue of those dimensions would probably cost somewhere about three thousand francs, a sum to make Clochemerle gasp. Further, to pay a mint of money for a saint and then see him massacred by drunken men (some people declared that Nicolas had been imbibing also) is hardly encouraging. So there is this question to consider: is Clochemerle to be deprived of its Saint Roch? If so, it would be the first time for five hundred years. This eventuality has to be borne in mind.
And suppose that they were to put back the old statue?
The ancient Saint Roch must surely be still in existence in some lumber room. But this old image was shabby and moth-eaten, and had lost all his former standing and influence over the minds of the faithful; and this long sojourn in damp and dust was hardly calculated to give him back his beautiful coloring. Then what about a cheaper saint? This was a poor solution of the difficulty. Whatever you may say, piety accustoms itself to sumptuous display, and the earnestness of prayer is often in direct proportion to the dimensions of the image. In this remote corner of the French countryside, where money is held in great respect, they cannot feel the same regard for a shoddy little saint costing from five to six hundred francs as for a magnificent one at three thousand. The whole question thus remains in doubt.
Let us now speak of individuals. The prestige of the Curé of Clochemerle has received a setback. There can be no doubt of this. Anselme Lamolire, who is accustomed to think before he speaks and is always inclined to side with curés because curés represent law and order—and that means property, and he is the largest landed proprietor in Clochemerle after Barthélemy Piéchut, his immediate rival—Anselme Lamolire has said, without mincing matters:
“Ponosse had made a fool of himself—that’s a certainty!”
This does not make the Curé of Clochemerle any less efficacious where his professional duties are concerned—absolution, extreme unction, and the rest. But in the economic sphere, it is bound to do him damage; his income is certain to decrease. Had it been ten years earlier, he would have repaired his clumsiness by making more frequent appearances at the Torbayon Inn and hobnobbing freely with the men there. But his liver and his stomach are no longer equal to missionary work in this form. If there were not dying people anxious to make sure of receiving full custom-house facilities at the frontier, the curé would be in a bad way. Happily, there are always people feeling pretty small at such times. So long as humanity is afraid of the next world, the position of a man who hands out passports for the hereafter is really unassailable. The Curé Ponosse may therefore rest assured of continuing to exercise a dictatorship based on sheer fright. Humble and patient, he makes no attempt to restrain the blasphemies of men still in the full vigor of life. But he waits for them at the corner where the great Reaper will appear, with his deep eye sockets and his sneering chuckle freezing the blood, while he stands and rattles his skeleton at the foot of your bed. Ponosse is the servant of a Master who has said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” His influence begins when illness begins, and it is this that is continually bringing him within Dr. Mouraille’s spheres of operation, to the latter’s exasperation:
“Ah, there you are, you old gravedigger! Smelt a corpse, I take it!”
“Dear me, no, Doctor,” the Curé Ponosse modestly replies, having a ready wit when he is not in the pulpit, “I have merely come to finish off the job that you started so well. I give the whole credit to you.”
Dr. Mouraille is furious.
“You’ll go through my hands one day yourself, you old dodderer!”
“I am quite resigned to that, doctor. But you will also go through mine, without a word of protest, that is equally certain,” the Curé Ponosse replies with an air of confidence and sly gentleness.
Dr. Mouraille shows fight.
“Good God, Curé, you’ll never get hold of me as long as I’m alive!”
But Ponosse answers placidly:
“Life is nothing, doctor. The strength of the Church lies in the graveyard, where she makes no distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous. Twenty years after your death no one will know whether you were a good Catholic when you were alive. The Church will have you in her grasp in vitam aeternam, Doctor!”
Let us now consider the two combatants. In addition to the bleeding lobe of his left ear, the beadle has received an injury to the tenderest portion of his anatomy. It was noticed outside the church that he was limping, and Dr. Mouraille will confirm the matter. This proves that Toumignon struck at the only soft bit of Nicolas that he could find. This contradiction between his remarks and his methods of fighting affords a striking proof of his treacherous nature. Otherwise, the more impartial of the inhabitants support Toumignon, saying that he was fully justified in aiming at the spot where Nicolas had struck him first when he called him a cuckold. But the thing which the inhabitants are unanimous in deploring, from feelings of economy, is the destruction of Nicolas’ beautiful uniform, the broken halberd, the two-cornered hat trampled upon, the sword twisted like a child’s toy saber, and his full-dress frock coat torn at the back from collar to waist. The beadle will require a new outfit.
Toumignon bears traces of the fight that are no less conspicuous. Nicolas’ fist has given his right eye a monstrous appearance. It sticks out like the eye of a toad, but it is shut and there is a violet circle about it. Three of the teeth in his lower jaw are missing. To this we must add a broken kneecap, and traces on Toumignon’s neck of the beginnings of strangulation. His new suit of clothes is also much damaged. He will have to wear it out on weekdays after it has been repaired. But at the Beaujolais Stores there is a department for ready-made clothes where Toumignon buys them cheap at wholesale prices. So he will not feel his loss so much.
At Clochemerle, opinions are divided, some people throwing all the blame on Toumignon, others on Nicolas. Generally speaking, however, the former is admired for having made such a good job of an unequal contest, with his ten stone pitted against Nicolas’ thirteen. People are surprised at such strength in his small frame. But their judgment is superficial, as it always is in such cases; they leave the moral factor out of account. In the fight Nicolas had nothing to defend except his own vanity, Mme. Nicolas never having been a great topic of conversation on the score of her beauty. She was one of those women who are usually referred to in the past tense, of whom one says: “She had a certain freshness and bloom about her,” and whose freshness and bloom passed unnoticed even when she still had them. When they disappeared, Mme. Nicolas was irrevocably placed in the category of the plain Janes, those good women whose blameless life is never held in doubt and who, being themselves beyond the reach of criticism, spend the greater part of their time in keeping an eye on those who have incurred it, and in denouncing their lapses, sometimes prematurely.
Toumignon, on the other hand, had powerful inducements to make every effort in the contest, which enormously increased his fighting power, for the otherwise enviable possession of a woman like Judith was a constant source of uneasiness to him, and frequently exposed him to insults inspired by jealousy. He was fighting for the honor of the most beautiful creature in Clochemerle, and the one who in consequence was regarded with the most suspicion. It was this that gave him the genuine courage which he displayed in this affair, a courage, be it said, reinforced by frequent libations both matutinal and nocturnal. Easily frightened on most occasions on account of his poor physique, François Toumignon may be put down as one of those fiery little men who are capable of sheer heroism when they have a few drinks inside them.
There is another fact which should be recorded. An active search failed to discover six of the two-franc pieces deposited in the collection plate as a hint to the faithful of Clochemerle. This made a dead loss of twelve francs affecting the savings of the Curé Ponosse, a loss which he felt, for his income was small. The inhabitants of Clochemerle, the good Catholics especially, were inclined to be closefisted where money was concerned (the only generous ones were the spendthrifts who went constantly to Adèle’s and never to church). However, if this had been the only consideration, the disappearance of these coins would not have been a very serious matter. But a sad and disquieting feature of the occurrence was that it created a germ of suspicion in the midst of that edifying, and apparently very united, group of pious women. Some of their number accused each other in veiled terms of misappropriation, and a new impetus was given to these slanderous insinuations. Clémentine Chavaigne, Justine Putet’s rival in godliness (on this account they were enemies, adopting an oily hypocritical manner towards each other), took it upon herself to suggest to the Curé Ponosse that he should start a subscription towards the purchase of a new Saint Roch, putting her own name at the head of the list for a sum of eight francs. Beaten for once in the sphere of pious enterprise, Justine Putet sneered sarcastically in defiance of her rival. The relations between these two excellent ladies rapidly became so strained that Clémentine remarked:
“Well, Mademoiselle, I don’t get up on a prie-dieu in the middle of the church and make an exhibition of myself. I content myself with giving my money, and stint myself to do it, Mademoiselle.”
Justine Putet, whose reactions were sometimes of a formidable nature, made a venomous retort:
“Perhaps, Mademoiselle, all you had to do to obtain this money was just to stoop down and pick it up?”
“And pray what do you mean by that?”
“That you need a very clear conscience before you can presume to dictate to other people, Miss Thief.”
These ladies might then have been seen a few moments later, hastening to the presbytery to give vent to their rancor and bitterness, and unbosom themselves to the Curé Ponosse, a proceeding which greatly upset the Curé of Clochemerle, plagued as he already was both by the Church and the Republic, the Conservatives and the party of the Left (who, by the way, were also conservative in their outlook, all the inhabitants being more or less landowners, while those who were not landowners had no interest whatever in any form of institution). With his head splitting, the Curé Ponosse had no other means of reconciling the two enemies than a threat to deprive them of absolution. They drew nearer to each other with words thought out in advance, which belied their mutual insults; but their looks of fury only emphasized these the more. The day of the scandal had brought to full flower the seeds of hatred they already bore within them. Justine Putet declared that Clémentine Chavaigne smelled like a dead rat. And she speaks truth; her skin was actually affected by this highly unpleasant odor at the mere sight of a detested rival whose subscription had been a successful move on her part. Charitably informed of the reputation she had acquired, Clémentine Chavaigne declared, under the seal of secrecy, that she had overheard an interview of a highly equivocal nature in the vestry between the Sexton Coiffenave and Justine Putet. According to her account, Justine had taken advantage of Coiffenave’s extreme deafness to make a series of lewd remarks to him (gazing passionately at him the while), sufficient to make one’s hair stand on end, thereby giving free rein to those sadist instincts which she, Clémentine, had unmasked long ago. This perspicacious lady, having glanced heavenwards with a look of righteous horror, whispered to her confidante:
“If Putet had designs on Monsieur le Curé—well, I shouldn’t be in the least surprised. . . .”
“My dear lady, whatever are you saying to me?” the other answers, deliciously thrilled.
“Haven’t you noticed how she is always on the watch for him, and that look of hers when she speaks to him? She’s a tyrant, that Putet, and hell’s behind her. She’s a hypocrite who uses piety to cover up her loathsome behavior. I’m positively frightened of her.”
“Fortunately Monsieur le Curé is a saintly man. . . .”
“A very saintly man, as you may well say. But the fact is, he doesn’t see any harm in that Putet woman’s affected ways. Do you know how long she stayed shut up with him in the confessional the other day? Thirty-eight minutes, Mademoiselle! Has a respectable woman got enough sins to take up thirty-eight minutes? Then what can she be talking to him about? I’ll tell you, my dear. She’s stirring him up against us. Now listen to me. I much prefer creatures like that good-for-nothing Toumignon woman! She’s possessed by the devil, you’ll tell me, a nasty low creature who gets all the men in the town running after her. But at least you know where you are with women like that. They’re not double-faced. . . .”
The reader will now be able to judge how matters stand. No one had yet had time to form a definite opinion. True, there were partisans on either side who blindly took their stand with the Church or with the municipal authority. But the floating mass of the population made its decisions for reasons peculiar to each individual. In this instance personal bias was the outcome of motives which in many cases were by no means clear or were of a kind that it would be impossible to acknowledge. Jealous feelings were vigilantly awaiting their opportunities. Even among the group of pious women their disintegrating effects were working unseen.
Who won the fight, Nicolas or Toumignon? No one could say as yet. This cannot be decided until later—by the dimensions of the dressings of their wounds, by the length of time for which each man was disabled.
But there was one question which overtopped all others, a profoundly stirring question. Who was to pay for the breakage? Toumignon, without a shadow of doubt, said the Church party, which steadily maintained that Saint Roch received his deathblow at the hands of Judith’s husband. This imputation Toumignon resisted with the utmost violence. And suppose that were actually the case, what then? It was reserved for Tafardel to throw light on the controversy. He obtained a minutely detailed account of the whole incident, with special reference to the insults given and received.
“Cuckold, you say? Nicolas called Toumignon a cuckold?”
“Yes, he did, several times over!” Laroudelle, Torbayon, and others declared.
Tafardel was thereupon seen to remove his famous panama in great glee, make a deep bow to the empty church, and issue a challenge to the last surviving representatives of obscurantism:
“Ye faithful followers of Loyola, I warn you, we are going to have some fun!”
In the opinion of Clochemerle’s learned man, the term cuckold, thus bestowed in public, constituted a case of libel in which grave harm might be done to the recipient of the insult, both in the matter of his reputation and of his conjugal relations. Toumignon and his wife were consequently entitled to claim damages from Nicolas. If, therefore, the Church party showed any inclination to prosecute for the breakage of the saint, Toumignon had only to put in a counter-claim.
“You will find me ready for you, Monsieur Ponosse,” Tafardel said, by way of farewell.
Thereupon he climbed the hill to the town hall and immediately set to work again. This incident in the church will provide material for two sensational columns in the Vintners’ Gazette of Belleville-sur-Saone. The inhabitants of the surrounding districts will read this excellent paper only to learn with indignation how a couple of honest Clochemerle tradespeople were placed in a position where divorce, and possibly even murder, is inevitable, thanks entirely to the myrmidons of the Church. This is a new departure indeed!
While the whole of Clochemerle was in a state of agitation, there was one person only who remained completely invisible, Barthélemy Piéchut, the mayor. This crafty individual, this consummate schemer—who, with his urinal, was the origin of the whole catastrophe—was well aware of the value of silence, the value of absence. He left all the impulsive people, all the silly simple people, to go ahead and get themselves into a mess. He let the gossips have their say, waiting till he discovered on the ocean of empty words some useful flotsam and jetsam of truth. He himself remained silent, observed, meditated, weighed the pros and cons. But these were only preliminaries. Later he will handle the inhabitants like pawns on the chessboard of his ambition.
Barthélemy Piéchut was farsighted. He had a fixed aim in life, unknown to all save Noémie, his wife. But she was as secret as the tomb and a steel safe into the bargain, the most avaricious woman in Clochemerle and the most insincere in her conversation, which made her the most useful wife that destiny could possibly have allotted to the mayor of a town in which the people were turbulent and difficult to manage. Always wise in her advice was Noémie, an inveterate hoarder, tireless in acquisition, indeed overstepping the mark in that respect, so that it became necessary at times to restrain her; for her minute calculations were often so minute as to be actually wrong. She would never shrink from stirring up trouble between two families if a few francs were to be gained thereby; to spy upon a servant she would leave her bed at break of day. Relentless in the matter of giving trouble to others, she regarded it as her right that others should expend their last ounce of effort for her benefit. To snatch at every opportunity for gain was an obsession with her. It was her only defect—a defect, by the way, which would be a godsend to those unfortunates who have been ruined by spendthrift wives. Thus freed from the necessity of constant attention to his work in the town, if Barthélemy Piéchut had to leave home to deal with important business elsewhere, he could do so with entire confidence in Noémie’s management during his absence. This management was of such an uncompromising kind that people often complained to him of his wife’s hardheartedness. They invariably found the mayor, who was not afraid of losing by it, disposed to give way a little. These concessions earned him the reputation of being an obliging man, easy to approach, and not an ogre where humble people were concerned—an excellent reputation, due to his way of saying, with a shrug of his shoulders: “Oh, it’s only my wife! You know what women are. . . .” She was very useful to him in managing his affairs, exercising a shrewd control over public opinion.
Noémie had another good point: she was devoid of jealousy. She was a woman who was completely disinterested in the question of cohabitation, which is often such an important one for married couples. She had never really enjoyed herself in bed. In the early days of her marriage she naturally wished for enlightenment. This was at first a question of curiosity, then of vanity, and finally of avarice, as always in her case. A rich girl when she married Barthélemy Piéchut, whose only assets were his tall handsome appearance and his reputation as a man of good abilities, she did not wish unfair advantage to be taken of her wealth. But she had to admit that Barthélemy was punctilious in money matters. It was probable that he had married her for her money, but he made as much return for it as he could, especially in the earlier years; and this was to his credit, for Noémie, taking no pleasure in married love, conferred none herself. However, for a period of several years she felt herself under an obligation to draw every penny of the income derived from her dowry, until the day when her two children Gustave and Francine had been born, and she obtained an undertaking from Barthélemy to leave her henceforth in peace. She proclaimed to him that she had quite enough to do in running his house—with the children, the servants, the cooking, the washing, and the accounts—without being deprived of her sleep by silly nonsense which she already knew by heart. She gave Barthélemy Piéchut to understand that, if he came across creatures “who like that sort of thing,” she would not interfere. “It will be all the less work for me to do.” She made an end of her constant visits to the church, and her avarice increased still more. It was, indeed, her only source of thorough enjoyment.
This suited Barthélemy admirably. His wife had always been a gawky angular unattractive woman, whom he could have left to lie on the floor beside their bed with barely a twinge of conscience. Since the birth of the children, Noémie’s total lack of physical charm was a discouraging business; even a hard-working man like Barthélemy ended by jibbing at the task he was called upon to undertake.
He appreciated nights of complete idleness which left him reserves of energy. Women had always taken an interest in him. As he advanced in years, public distinctions afforded him compensation for advantages of which age was depriving him. If by chance, in a heedless moment, he made demands on Noémie, she would say to him: “Will you never learn decent manners!” with such coldness that it would have needed all the blind impetuosity of a young man to persist. At the period of which we are writing, moreover, he had long been inclined to beware of anything in the nature of an impromptu, bringing to bear even on his marital relations that same spirit of caution and foresight which was the secret of his power.
For a long time past Barthélemy Piéchut had regarded his wife as his manager, and in certain respects his partner. But Noémie continued to insist on their sharing a bed, this being a wife’s privilege, setting her apart from the women whom her husband might meet in casual encounters. Furthermore, she found it a convenient arrangement for discussing plans in the wintertime when the nights were long.
It is now time to disclose Barthélemy Piéchut’s grand project: no less than to become a Senator in three years’ time, in place of M. Prosper Louèche, at present in office but known in well-informed circles to be notably decrepit. This decay of his intellectual faculties would be no serious obstacle to his re-election, if he had not weakened his prospects by a renewed outbreak of a highly scandalous form of activity. The old man interested himself in little girls in a very benevolent way, but one which would hardly, for all that, come under the heading of philanthropy. Prosper Louèche had urfortunately made himself conspicuous in his youth by advanced ideas of a distinctly radical tinge.
Although he subsequently gave reassuring proofs of his conversion, first by aspiring to bourgeois honors, then by an ardent display of patriotism at Bordeaux in 1914, and finally by a speech in the Senate in which he appealed for a vigorous prosecution of the war to its bitter end, he still had numerous enemies. As his integrity could not be brought in question, or at least not sufficiently, it was determined to get him on the score of his morals. Thanks to M. de Vilepouille, a distinguished gentleman of the Right who was perfectly safe from retribution, and who spoke without any intention of harming his old friend, the party of the Right learned of his exploits. “It is a strange thing,” the Senator said, in his high-pitched aristocratic voice, “Louèche’s ideas and mine differ, but our tastes are the same: we like our fruit a little unripe, my dear fellow. At our age, it’s most enlivening! But I must tell you that Louèche has ideas of his own that are really curious. . . . Some amusing tricks, my boy! This colleague of ours has always been an innovator, he’s like that in everything!” In short, it was high time for M. Prosper Louèche to be shifted altogether if a scandal were to be avoided.
Barthélemy Piéchut knew all this. He was pulling strings. Already he had influence behind him, and was counting on Bourdillat and Focart, who were likely to be seen at Clochemerle again, this time separately.
Piéchut intended, when he became a Senator, to get his daughter Francine married. She was now sixteen, and was already a very good-looking girl, well educated, with manners which would go down in any drawing room (those manners had cost him a pretty penny!). As regards her marriage, he was thinking of Gonfalon de Bec, of Blacé, an ancient noble family whose finances were in an even worse condition than the frontage of their château, which nevertheless looked very impressive as it stood up on a small hill at the farther end of a splendid park in the French style, with its trees more than two hundred years old. . . . A proud family, the Gonfalon de Becs, but they needed re-gilding. Their son Gaétan, who was now twenty years old, was said to be just the right age for Francine in three or four years’ time. This Gaétan was reputed to be rather a fool and not likely to achieve much. This was an additional reason. Francine would keep him well in hand, for she showed signs of growing into a strong-willed, energetic woman like her mother, and very careful in money matters, with the additional advantage of a better education. Married to this Gaétan, with a title and a fortune at her disposal, Francine would be on the same footing as the Courtebiche and Saint-Choul families, and far superior to the Girodots. While so far as he himself was concerned, his political position would be strengthened by his connection with the noble families of the district.
With his hat on the back of his head and his elbows on the table, the Mayor of Clochemerle was thinking of all these things, eating slowly the while. The urinal and the battle in the church, he said to himself, must play their part in the realization of his schemes. Seated around him were the members of his family, controlling their curiosity, respecting his silence. However, when the meal was over, Noémie asked:
“What is going to happen about this business in the church?”
“Wait and see!” Piéchut replied, and rising he went off to shut himself up in the room where he liked to smoke his pipe and meditate.
Noémie said to her children: “He has thought out everything already!”