This they will say with bulging eyes and so much earnestness as to leave no room for doubt—say it with that imposing rolling of the “r” thus: pétrrri le ferrr!
They are a proud race, these good people of Aps, and kindly withal, but vivid in their impressions and most exaggerated in their language, of which Aunt Portal, a true type of the local citizenry, gave a very fair idea.
Immensely fat, apoplectic, her blood rushing to her pendulous cheeks purple like the lees of wine in fine contrast with her pale complexion, the skin of a former blonde. So far as one saw it the throat was very white, and her neat handsome iron-gray curls showed from beneath a cap decorated with lilac ribbon. Her bodice was hooked awry, but she was imposing nevertheless, having a majestic air and a pleasant smile and manner. It was thus that she appeared in the half-light of her drawing-room, always kept hermetically sealed after the Southern custom. You would say she looked like an old family portrait, or one of Mirabeau’s old marquises, and very appropriate to her old house, built a hundred years ago by Gonzague Portal, chief councillor of the Parliament of Aix.
It is not uncommon to find people and houses in Provence that seem as if they belong to olden times, as if the last century, while passing out through those high panelled doors, had let a bit of her gown full of furbelows stick in the crack of the door.
But if in conversing with Aunt Portal you should be so unlucky as to hint that Protestants are as good as Catholics, or that Henry V may not ascend the throne at any moment, the old portrait will spring headlong out of its frame, and with the veins on its neck swelling and the hands tearing at the neatly hanging curls, will fly into an ungovernable passion, swear, threaten and curse! These outbursts have passed into tradition in the town and many wonderful tales are told upon the subject. At an evening party in her house a servant let fall a tray of wineglasses; Aunt Portal fell into one of her fits of rage, shouting and exciting herself with cries, reproaches and lamentations; finally her voice failed, and almost choking in her frenzy, unable to beat the unlucky servant, who had promptly fled, she raised the skirt of her dress and wrapped it about her head and face to conceal her groans and her visage disfigured by rage, quite regardless of the voluminous display of a portly, white-fleshed lady to which she was treating her guests.
In any other part of the country she would have been considered mad, but in Aps, the land of hot brains and explosive natures, they were satisfied to say that she “rode a high horse.” It is true that passers-by on the quiet square before her doors on restful afternoons, when the cloistral stillness of the town is only broken by the chirping of the locusts or a few notes on a piano, are wont to hear such words as “monster,” “thief,” “assassin,” “stealers of priests’ property,” “I’ll cut your arm off,” “I’ll rip the skin off your stomach!” Then doors would slam and stairways tremble beneath the vaults of whitewashed stone; windows would open noisily, as though the mutilated bodies of the unhappy servants were to be thrown from them! But nothing happens; the servants placidly continue their work, accustomed to these tempests, knowing perfectly that they are mere habits of speech.
An excellent person, all things considered, ardent, generous, with a great desire to please and to sacrifice herself—a noble trait in these impulsive people, and one by which Numa had profited. Since he had been chosen deputy the house on the Place Cavalerie belonged to him, his aunt only reserving the right to remain there the rest of her life. And then, what a delight it was to her when the party from Paris arrived, with the receptions, the visits, the morning music and the serenades which the presence of the great man brought into that lonely life of hers, eager for excitement! Besides, she adored her niece Rosalie, partly because they were so entirely the opposite of each other and also because of the respect she felt for the daughter of the chief magistrate of France.
It really needed a world of patience on Rosalie’s part and all the love of family inculcated in her by her parents to endure for two whole months the whims and tiresome caprices of this disordered imagination, always over-excited and as restless in mind as she was indolent in her big body. Seated in the large vestibule, as cool as a Moorish court, but yet close and musty from the exclusion of air and sunshine, Rosalie, holding a bit of embroidery in her hands—for like a true Parisian she never could be idle—was obliged to listen for hours at a time to her surprising confidences. The enormous lady sat before her in an arm-chair, with her hands free in order to gesticulate, and recapitulated breathlessly the chronicles of the whole town. She sometimes depicted her maid-servants and coachman as monsters, sometimes as angels, according to the caprice of the moment. She would select some one against whom she apparently had some grudge, and cover the detested one with the foulest, bloodiest, most venomous abuse, relating stories like those in the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith. Rosalie, who had lived with Numa, had luckily become accustomed to these frantic objurgations. She listened abstractedly; for the most part they passed in at one ear and out at the other; hardly did she stop to wonder how it came about that she, so reserved and discreet, could ever have entered such a family of theatrical persons who draped themselves with phrases and overflowed with gestures. It had to be a very strong bit of gossip to make her hold up Aunt Portal with an “Oh, my dear aunt!” thrown out with a far-away air.
“Perhaps you are right, my dear, perhaps I do exaggerate a little.”
But Aunt Portal’s tumultuous imagination was soon off again, recounting some comic or tragic tale with so much mimicry and dramatic effect that she gave one the impression of wearing alternately the two masks borne by ancient actors of tragedy and of comedy. She only calmed down when she described her one visit to Paris and related the wonders of the arrival in the “Passage Somon,” where she had stopped at a small hotel patronized by all the travelling salesmen of her native province, where they “took the air” in a glass-covered passage as stuffy and hot as a melon-frame. Of all her remarkable stories of Paris this place was the central point from which everything else evolved—it was the elegant, fashionable spot beyond all others.