“We are not boobies, and that fellow Roquetton
is the most knowing of the lot of us.... Ah!
Monsieur Rulhiere, without any exaggeration, you are
the cream of good fellows.”
And with a flushed face, and expanding his chest,
he said sonorously:
“They certainly turn them out very pretty in
your part of the country, my little lady!”
Madame Rulhiere, who did not know what to say, had
gone up to her husband for protection; but she felt
much inclined to go to her own room under some pretext
or other, in order to escape from her intolerable
task. She kept her ground, however, during the
whole of dinner, which was a noisy, jovial meal, during
which the five electors, with their elbows on the
table, and their waistcoats unbuttoned, and half drunk,
told coarse stories, and swore like troopers.
But as the coffee and the liquors were served in the
smoking room, she took leave of her guests in an impatient
voice, and went to her own room with the hasty step
of an escaped prisoner, who is afraid of being retaken.
The electors sat staring after her with gaping mouths,
and Mouredus lit a cigar, and said:
“Just listen to me, Monsieur Rulhiere; it was
very kind of you to invite us here, to your little
quiet establishment, but to speak to you frankly,
I should not, in your place, wrong my lawful wife for
such a stuck-up piece of goods as this one is.”
“The captain is quite right,” Roquetton
the notary opined; “Madame Rulhiere, the lawful
Madame Rulhiere, is much more amiable, and altogether
nicer. You are a scoundrel to deceive her; but
when may we hope to see her?”
And with a paternal grimace, he added:
“But do not be uneasy; we will all hold our
tongue; it would be too sad if she were to find it
out.”
You know good-natured, stout Dupontel, who looks like
the type of a happy man, with his fat cheeks that
are the color of ripe apples, his small, reddish moustache,
turned up over his thick lips, with his prominent
eyes, which never know any emotion or sorrow, which
remind one of the calm eyes of cows and oxen, and
his long back fixed onto two little wriggling, crooked
legs, which obtained for him the nickname of corkscrew
from some nymph of the ballet.
Dupontel, who had taken the trouble to be born, but
not like the grand seigneurs whom Beaumarchais made
fun of once upon a time, was ballasted with a respectable
number of millions, as is becoming in the sole heir
of a house that had sold household utensils and appliances
for over a century.
Naturally, like every other upstart who respects himself,
he wished to appear something, to play at being a
clubman, and also to play to the gallery, because
he had been educated at Vangirard and knew a little
English; because he had gone through his voluntary
service in the army for twelve months[19] at Rouen;
because he was a tolerable singer, could drive four-in-hands,
and play lawn-tennis.
