in regard to the trousseau.
“And all,” continued Monsieur Brisson, with rancor, “because of his jealousies of the cat’s place in Madame Jolicœur’s affections—the affections which he so hopelessly hoped, forgetful of his own repulsiveness, to win for himself!”
“Ah, she has done well, that dear lady,” said Madame Jouval warmly. “As between the Notary—repulsive, as Monsieur justly terms him—and the charming Major, her instincts rightly have directed her. To her worthy cat, who aided in her choosing, she has reason to be grateful. Now her cruelly wounded heart will find solace. That she should wed again, and happily, was Heaven’s will.”
“It was the will of the baggage herself!” declared Monsieur Brisson with bitterness. “Hardly had she put on her travesty of a mourning than she began her oglings of whole armies of men!”
Aside from having confected with her own hands the mourning to which Monsieur Brisson referred so disparagingly, Madame Jouval was not one to hear calmly the ascription of the term baggage—the word has not lost in its native French, as it has lost in its naturalized English, its original epithetical intensity—to a patroness from whom she was in the very article of receiving an order for an exceptionally rich trousseau. Naturally, she bristled. “Monsieur must admit at least,” she said sharply, “that her oglings did not come in his direction;” and with an irritatingly smooth sweetness added: “As to the dealings of Monsieur Peloux with the cat, Monsieur doubtless speaks with an assured knowledge. Remembering, as we all do, the affair of the unhappy old woman, it is easy to perceive that to Monsieur, above all others, anyone in need of poisonings would come!”
The thrust was so keen that for the moment Monsieur Brisson met it only with a savage glare. Then the bottle that he handed to Madame Jouval inspired him with an answer. “Madame is in error,” he said with politeness. “For poisons it is possible to go variously elsewhere—as, for example, to Madame’s tongue.” Had he stopped with that retort courteous, but also searching, he would have done well. He did ill by adding to it the retort brutal: “But that old women of necessity come to me for their hair-dyes is another matter. That much I grant to Madame with all good will.”
Admirably restraining herself, Madame Jouval replied in tones of sympathy: “Monsieur receives my commiserations in his misfortunes.” Losing a large part of her restraint, she continued, her eyes glittering: “Yet Monsieur’s temperament clearly is over-sanguine. It is not less than a miracle of absurdity that he imagined: that he, weighted down with his infamous murderings of scores of innocent old women, had even a chance the most meager of realizing his ridiculous aspirations of Madame Jolicœur’s hand!” Snatching up her bottle and making for the door, without any restraint whatever she added: “Monsieur and his aspirations are a tragedy of stupidity—and equally are abounding in all the materials for a farce at the Palais de Cristal!”
Monsieur Brisson was cut off from opportunity to reply to this outburst by Madame Jouval’s abrupt departure. His loss of opportunity had its advantages. An adequate reply to her discharge of such a volley of home truths would have been difficult to frame.
* * * *
In the Vic bakery, between Madame Vic and Monsieur Fromagin, a discussion was in hand akin to that carried on between Monsieur Brisson and Madame Jouval—but marked with a somewhat nearer approach to accuracy in detail. Being sequent to the settlement of Monsieur Fromagin’s monthly bill—always a matter of nettling dispute—it naturally tended to develop its own asperities.
“They say,” observed Monsieur Fromagin, “that the cat—it was among his many tricks—had the habitude to jump on Madame Jolicœur’s head when, for that purpose, she covered it with a night-cap. The use of the cat’s claws on such a covering, and, also, her hair being very abundant—”
“Very abundant!” interjected Madame Vic; and added: “She, she is of a richness to buy wigs by the scores!”
“It was his custom, I say,” continued Monsieur Fromagin with insistence, “to steady himself after his leap by using lightly his claws. His illusion in regard to the bald head of the Notary, it would seem, led to the catastrophe. Using his claws at first lightly, according to his habit, he went on to use them with a truly savage energy—when he found himself as on ice on that slippery eminence and verging to a fall.”
“They say that his scalp was peeled away in strips and strings!” said Madame Vic. “And all the while that woman and that reprobate of a Major standing by in shrieks and roars of laughter—never raising a hand to save him from the beast’s ferocities! The poor man has my sympathies. He, at least, in all his doings—I do not for a moment believe the story that he caused the cat to be stolen—observed rigidly the convenances: so recklessly shattered by Madame Jolicœur in her most compromising dinner with the Major alone!”
“But Madame forgets that their dinner was in celebration of their betrothal—following Madame Jolicœur’s glad yielding, in just gratitude, when the Major heroically had rescued her deserving cat from the midst of its enemies and triumphantly had restored it to her arms.”
“It is the man’s part,” responded Madame Vic, “to make the best of such matters. In the eyes of all right-minded women her conduct has been of a shamelessness from first to last: tossing and balancing the two of them for months upon months; luring them, and countless others with them, to her feet; declaring always that for her disgusting cat’s sake she will have none of them; and ending by pretending brazenly that for her cat’s sake she bestows herself—second-hand remnant that she is—on the handsomest man for his age, concerning his character it is well to be silent; that she could find for herself in all Marseille! On such actions, on such a woman, Monsieur, the saints in heaven look down with an agonized scorn!”
“Only those of the saints, Madame,” said Monsieur Fromagin, warmly taking up the cudgels for his best customer, “as in the matter of second marriages, prior to their arrival in heaven, have had regrettable experiences. Equally, I venture to assert, a like qualification applies to a like attitude on earth. That Madame has her prejudices, incident to her misfortunes, is known.”
“That Monsieur has his brutalities, incident to his regrettable bad breeding, also is known. His present offensiveness, however, passes all limits. I request him to remove himself from my sight.” Madame Vic spoke with dignity.
Speaking with less dignity, but with conviction—as Monsieur Fromagin left the bakery—she added: “Monsieur, effectively, is a camel! I bestow upon him my disdain!”
THE CAT THAT WALKED BY HIMSELF, by Rudyard Kipling
Hear and attend and listen: for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild—as wild as wild could be—and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.
Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn’t even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail-down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, “Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we’ll keep house.”
That night, Best Beloved, they ate wild sheep roasted on the hot stones, and flavored with wild garlic and wild pepper; and wild duck stuffed with wild rice and wild fenugreek and wild coriander; and marrow-bones of wild oxen; and wild cherries, and wild grenadillas.
