16
After the explosion, Quiquendone had immediately turned back into the peaceful, phlegmatic and Flemish town that it had been before.
After the explosion – which didn’t actually cause that much of a stir – everyone, without knowing why, mechanically took himself off home, the burgomaster leaning on the arm of the councillor, Barrister Schut on the arm of Dr Custos, Frantz Niklausse on the arm of his rival Simon Collaert, each of them tranquilly and quietly, without even being aware of what had happened, having already forgotten Virgamen and vengeance. The general had gone back to making confectionery, and his aide-de-camp to his barley sugar.
Calm had been restored throughout the town, and everything had reverted to its habitual way of life: men and animals, animals and plants, even the Oudenaarde Tower, which the explosion – these explosions can be so surprising – had restored to the vertical!
And ever since then, not one word raised in anger, not a single argument in the town of Quiquendone. No more politics, no more clubs, no more lawsuits, no more policemen! The job of Commissioner Passauf was soon once more a sinecure, and if his salary wasn’t taken away from him, it was because the burgomaster and the councillor couldn’t make up their minds to make up their minds about him. In any case, from time to time, he continued to glide, without even realizing it, through the dreams of the inconsolable Aunty Némance.
As for Frantz’s rival, he nobly abandoned the charming Suzel to her lover, who married her in haste, five or six years after these events.
And as for Mme van Tricasse, she died ten years later, meeting her deadline as expected, and the burgomaster married Mlle Pélagie van Tricasse, her charming cousin, in fortunate circumstances… for the happy mortal who was to succeed him.