But it was not so with her sister, Madame Lebègue, who was three or four years younger, prettier, and far more of a flirt than she was. Her flirtations were innocent enough, I have no doubt, but they were as a rule looked upon maliciously by the gossips of the little town—a matter to which Madame Lebègue in her innocence paid little heed; concerning which, in her indifference to such calumnies, she simply teased her husband. He was a stout, rotund fellow, pockmarked, rather ugly, with a somewhat common-looking face, but a good fellow at heart—although I have been told since that he ruined himself, not from having lent at too low interest, but from an entirely opposite reason. I am wholly ignorant as to the truth of this accusation: I take it to be a calumny similar to the more pleasing and certainly more human accusation levelled against the wife.
It was this man who had just come in, who sat down by M. Mennesson and who was at that moment holding a whispered conversation with him, interspersed with guffaws of laughter. Thanks to the extremely delicate hearing with which I was gifted by nature, and which I had cultivated during hunting, I thought I could distinguish my own name; but I supposed I had not heard correctly, not flattering myself that two such grave personages could be doing me the honour of talking about me. Unluckily for my pride,—and I have indicated to what a pitch this feeling was developed in me, a height that would have been absurd if it had not been painful,—unluckily for my pride, then, I was not kept long in doubt that the discussion was about me.
I have said that M. Mennesson was very fond of a joke and very witty; wherever he could find a joke he would fasten upon it, no matter whether it happened to concern a woman's virtue or a man's reputation. When the frenzy of joking seized him he gave himself up to it unreservedly, heart and soul. Finding nothing, probably, on this day, better to chew, he set upon me; the pasture was poor, but it was far better to crack my sorry bones than to chew at nothing or gulp only the air. After several of those whispered remarks, then, and bursts of stifled laughter, which had disturbed my equanimity, M. Mennesson raised his voice.
"My dear friend," he said, "it is a chapter out of the Diable boiteux re-discovered and still unpublished, which I mean to have printed the next time I go to Paris, to complete Lesage's work."
"Ah! tell it me," Lebègue replied; "I will tell it to my wife, who will pass it on to her sisters, who will tell it to everybody; then our publication will be disposed of in advance."
M. Mennesson began:—
"There was once upon a time at Salamanca a scholar who was descended from a race of Arabs and who was called Samud.[1] He was still so young that if anyone had pulled his nose, milk would most certainly have come out: this did not prevent him from being absurd enough to fancy himself a man; perhaps also—for, to be fair, we must say all there is to say—this ridiculous fancy would not have entered his head had not that happened which we are about to relate."
It may be imagined that I was listening attentively. I had recognised from the very first words that I was undoubtedly the person in question, and I wondered uneasily where the story was going to lead after this beginning—a beginning which, so far as I was concerned, I found more impertinent than graphic.
M. Mennesson went on, and I listened with my ears open, my pen idle in my hand.
"On the day of the feast of Whitsuntide in the year ... I cannot say the exact date of the year, but, any way, it was on the day of the feast of Whitsuntide, which is also the town's feast-time, two beautiful senoras arrived from Madrid and put up at the house of a worthy canon who was the uncle of one of these ladies. It chanced that this canon was the same with whom Samud had learnt the bit of Latin he knew, and as the two lovely Madrid ladies wanted a cavalier who would not put their virtue to the blush, the canon cast his eyes on his pupil, and requested him to place both his arms at the disposal of the new arrivals, to show them the park of Salamanca, which is very wide, very beautiful, and belongs to the Duke of Rodelnas.[2] I will not dwell on the adventures of the first day, beyond just briefly touching upon two events: the first was the meeting between our scholar and an elegant senor from Madrid, who was noticed at once by the Sefiora Lorenza, with whom our scholar was walking arm in arm, dressed, as people of the provinces often are, about a decade behind the fashions of the capital. This young gallant was called Audim. The second was a most serious accident, which happened to the scholar's breeches, just when, in order to give the fair Lorenza a proof of his agility, he had leaped across a ditch fourteen feet wide."