flourished it triumphantly as Germaine gave an anguished cry: “Father! That’s for my dress! My dress!” She burst into sobs.
With a sanctimonious smile on his lips, Tit-Blanc was about to put the money in his pocket when there came a hoarse growl. The drunkard’s arm being within reach of Gaston’s mouth, the invalid had sunk his sharp teeth into it. As his victim screamed, Gaston seized the banknote and, pantingly, handed it back to Germaine. He stood there at her side, the wraith of a man, trembling all over and scarcely knowing what he did; for this impulse to which he had yielded represented for him a week’s store of energy. “Don’t cry, Germaine, don’t cry.” And he ran his emaciated hand through the girl’s hair, lavishing upon her his invalid’s caresses, as feeble and faltering as his body. He was awkward at expressing his sympathy, for he had never forgiven himself his own sufferings.
Tit-Blanc, meanwhile, was sucking his bleeding wrist. Catching hold of Gaston’s collar, he jerked the lad violently toward him. “Damned hunchback! You’re going to pay for this!” But he had no sooner made a move in Gaston’s direction than Denis was upon him hammering him with both fists.
The elder Colin was a strong, stockily built man, and the two of them now rolled over on the floor as Grandfather Pitou, who had come up to see what the noise was about, shouted: “Give it to him Tit-Blanc! Let him have it in the belly — in the belly!”
Féda Colin, her hair standing up, dashed out of the kitchen, crying: “He’s drunk again! He’s spent all his pay once more!”
Bent over the fighting pair, Gaston anxiously followed the course of the struggle, indicating with wraithlike gestures what his brother should do to overcome his adversary.
“You bastard, I’ll kill you!” Tit-Blanc roared. Suddenly Denis got a firm hold under the older man’s head and began pounding his nose, and then Jean leaped on his friend’s back.
The fight was becoming a free-for-all when the door to the entryway opened and a grave voice rose above the din: “Is that the way you love one another?”
Abashed by the presence of the Abbé Charton, the participants in the fray fell apart. The priest, who rarely took sides in the rows of his parishioners, strode forward majestically, his eyes full of solemn dignity, his mouth quivering with sorrow.
“He struck Jamaine, he did,” said Gaston, pointing a finger at Tit-Blanc.
The Abbé laid a chubby hand on the drunkard’s hairy arm, and the elder Colin with religious unction suffered him to do so. The atmosphere was a ceremonious one, as at high mass. As for the lads, they were tired and were trying to find an excuse to leave. In the victoria, Charton and old man Pitou had begun a checker game.
Having examined Tit-Blanc’s wound, the Abbé Charton produced from the depths of his capacious pocket a box of adhesive tape, which formed a part of the worthy vicar’s ministerial equipment. Every morning, after mass and the reading of his breviary, he would stroll through the streets in search of minor injuries. He sought them out with a tranquil devotion, and the Mulots were good patients; he never missed one of their brawls, and his mouth would water at the sight of deep gashes. He felt that he was gradually becoming a physician of the poor in a cassock, a sort of Curé of Ars — but with an added distinction, that went without saying.
Each evening, at the hour when every good Christian was engaged in meditation, Oscar Charton would indulge his heart in dreams of heroism, yielding to grandiose reflections that had to do with the courage he displayed — a man of his station in life — in fulfilling the duties of his ministry. It was at such times that he felt himself lulled by a symphony of charitable thoughts to the languid accompaniment of aristocratic sighs. Between himself and reality he interposed these sentimental barricades behind which he entrenched himself in a beribboned virtue. This man, so self-satisfied, brooded upon his tastes and did not like to discuss them; any objection raised would have wearied him, and so he cherished them in silence. He was, then, in turn a solitary intellectual, an unknown musician, and a voluntary hermit among men and saints. He loved the countryside and by way of procuring rides cultivated the friendship of those among the Soyeux who had automobiles. The drama of his life occurred when he mounted the pulpit; for the Abbé Charton had a deep and solemn voice and Monsieur le Curé always assigned to him those sermons that called for a bit of pathos.
When the good priest who was also a poet felt the first murmurous titillations of an intellectual ecstasy coming on, he would flee to the silence of his room and devote himself avidly to science, literature, and music. In a fever of inspiration, he would rumple his hair, undo his collar, cast a befuddled eye over the volumes in his library, run a hand over his dusty phonograph records, snatch up his pen and bite it spasmodically, and pace the floor impatiently with a hammering tread. But all this would suddenly cease as the grating voice of Abbé Trinchu cut short his poetic fit.
“Not so much noise, Charton!” the other priest would call from the floor below.
His arms would fall to his side, and it was then that he would go out into the street, armed with his adhesive tape. Thus his life was spent between the parish house and the public thoroughfare, between the convulsions of a sterile beauty and the injured children of fecund mothers.
The Abbé Charton who was studying the Langevins and wondering what they could have been doing at Lise’s house a short while ago, now became aware of Gaston’s presence and told him to stay. The invalid, however, was anxious to leave. The priest for some time had been bothering him about taking the measure of his deformity; for the Abbé had in mind inventing a brace that would enable him to walk upright, and the poor fellow did not wish to show the holes in his back. His brother provided a distraction.
“Come along, Gaston,” said Denis, who did not care to be bandaged. He darted Tit-Blanc a contemptuous look: “Mulot! You have milk in your veins.”
Once outside, Gaston was jubilant: “You gave the swine a thrashing, eh?” Then he made a face: “Ugh! That’s some father Germaine has!”
Denis shrugged his shoulders. He was gazing absent-mindedly at the sheet-iron plaques that stood out front from the houses like ears that had come loose. There were inscriptions in black on white or vice versa, all of them the same but displaying every mistake in spelling which the French language permitted: “vers de paiche,” “vairs de pêches,” “verres de peiche,” et cetera, all of them signifying angleworms. To a schoolmaster’s eyes Jean was an educated lad, for the spelling on his sign was correct. He sold them at twenty-five cents a hundred, and although he was a city dweller he would wait for a rain with as much anxiety as any farmer. But what competition he had! It came from the small Mulots exploited by Chaton, who was bent upon monopolizing the business — the Abbé Bongrain did not hesitate to call him the “worm magnate,” which flattered his self-esteem. Chaton bought the little animals at five cents a hundred and sold them at a profit of ten cents. But he was no-good and a natural-born ignoramus, whereas Jean knew how to fatten them up. How red they were, those that he had, and how cleverly they could slip through the fingers of the clumsy fisherman!
There was a small group of vendors who were in the habit of gathering the worms of an evening in the Parc des Braves, after a rain; and the lovers upon the benches, between kisses, would rail at these imbeciles, whom they at first mistook for members of the morals squad.
Denis disdained this vulgar traffic, but he was none the less keenly aware of the constant lack of small change in his pocket. An anxiety clutched his heart: “Shall I have money one day without becoming like them?” He listened to his mother singing in a loud voice, “La Légende des Flots Bleus” and then went back to his reverie. At bottom he was glad that his friends did not have his powers of resistance where women were concerned. He thought of the entertainment
