[Footnote 20: The Cocu Imaginaire (The
Imaginary Cuckold), in Moliere’s play of that
name.]
Furious at having been duped, he set a whole private
inquiry agency to work, continually acted a part,
and one evening appeared unexpectedly with a commissary
of police in the snug little bachelor’s quarters
which concealed his wife’s escapades.
Therese, who was terribly frightened, and at her wits’
end at being thus surprised in all the disorder of
her lover’s apartments, and pale with shame
and terror, hid herself behind the bed curtains, while
he, who was an officer of dragoons, very much vexed
at being mixed up in such a pinchbeck scandal, and
at being caught in a silk shirt by these men who were
so correctly dressed in frock coats, frowned angrily,
and had to restrain himself so as not to fling his
victim out of a window.
The police commissary, who was calmly looking at this
little scene with the coolness of an amateur, prepared
to verify the fact that they were caught flagrante
delicto, and in an ironical voice said to her
husband, who had claimed his services:
“I must ask for your name in full, Monsieur?”
“Charles Joseph Edward Dupontel,” was
the answer. And as the commissary was writing
it down from his dictation, he added suddenly:
“Du Pontel in two words, if you please, Monsieur
le Commissionaire!”
The driver, who had jumped from his box, and was now
walking slowly by the side of his thin horses, waking
them up every moment by a cut of the whip, or a coarse
oath, pointed to the top of the hill, where the windows
of a solitary house, in which the inhabitants were
still up, although it was very late and quite dark,
were shining like yellow lamps, and said to me:
“One gets a good drop there, Monsieur, and well
served, by George.”
And his eyes flashed in his thin, sunburnt face, which
was of a deep brickdust color, while he smacked his
lips like a drunkard, who remembers a bottle of good
liquor that he has lately drunk, and drawing himself
up in a blouse like a vulgar swell, he shivered like
the back of an ox, when it is sharply pricked with
the goad.
“Yes, and well served by a wench who will turn
your head for you before you have tilted your elbow
and drank a glass!”
The moon was rising behind the snow-covered mountain
peaks, which looked almost like blood under its rays,
and which were crowned by dark, broken clouds, which
whirled about and floated, and reminded the passenger
of some terrible Medusa’s head. The gloomy
plains of Capsir, which were traversed by torrents,
extensive meadows in which undefined forms were moving
about, fields of rye, like huge golden table-covers,
and here and there wretched villagers, and broad sheets
of water, into which the stars seemed to look in a
melancholy manner, opened out to the view. Damp
gusts of winds swept along the road, bringing a strong
smell of hay, of resin of unknown flowers, with them,
and erratic pieces of rock, which were scattered on
the surface like huge boundary stones, had spectral
outlines.
