“My house is neither a mas (farm) nor a weaver’s loft,” said she. Nor would she let them wear a chapo either. To wear a bonnet is the distinctive hieratic sign of the ascendancy of the citizen in the provinces. The title of “madame” is one of its attributes, a title refused to any of the baser sort. It is amusing to see the condescension of the wife of a retired officer or municipal employee who earns eight hundred francs a year, doing her own marketing in an enormous bonnet, when she speaks to the wife of an immensely rich farmer from the Crau, in her picturesque headgear trimmed with real old thread lace. In the Portal mansion the ladies had worn bonnets for over a century. This made Mme. Portal very arrogant toward poor people and was the cause of a terrible scene between her and Roumestan a few days after the festival in the amphitheatre.
It was a Friday morning at breakfast, a regular Provençal breakfast, pretty and attractive to the eye although strictly a fast-day meal, for Aunt Portal was very keen about her orders. On the white cloth in picturesque array were big green peppers, alternating with blood-red figs, almonds and carved water-melons, that looked like big rose-colored magnolias, anchovy patties and little white rolls such as are to be found nowhere else—all very light dishes set among decanters of fresh water and bottles of light home-made wine. Outside in the sun the locusts and rays were chirping and glittering, and a broad band of golden light slid through a crevice into the great dining-room, vaulted and resounding like the refectory of a convent.
In the middle of the table on a chafing dish were two large cutlets designed for Numa. Notwithstanding that his name was uttered in all the prayers, perhaps because of it, the great man of Aps, alone of all the family, had obtained a dispensation from fasting from the cardinal. So there he sat feasting and carving his juicy cutlets, while his aunt and his wife and sister-in-law breakfasted on figs and watermelon.
Rosalie was used to it. The two days’ fast every week was but a part of her yearly burden, as much a matter of course as the sunshine, the dust, the hot mistral wind, the mosquitoes, her aunt’s gossip and the Sunday services at the church of St. Perpétue. But the youthful appetite of Hortense revolted against this continual fasting and it took all the gentle authority of the elder sister to prevent an outburst from the spoiled child, which would have shocked all Aunt Portal’s ideas of the conduct becoming to a young person of refinement and education. So Hortense had to content herself with her husks, revenging herself by making the most awful grimaces, rolling up her eyes, snuffing up the smell of the cutlets and murmuring under her breath for Rosalie’s benefit alone:
“It always happens so. I took a long ride this morning. I am as hungry as a tramp!”
She still wore her habit, which was as becoming to her tall, slim figure as was the straight, high collar to her irregular saucy little face, still flushed by her exercise in the open air. Her ride had given her an idea.
“Oh Numa, how about Valmajour? When are we going to see him?”
“Who is Valmajour?” answered Numa, whose fickle brain had already discarded all memory of the taborist. “Té, that’s a fact, Valmajour! I had forgotten all about him. What a genius he is!”
It all came back to him—the arches of the amphitheatre echoing to the farandole with the dull vibration of the tabor; it fired his memory and so excited him that he called out decisively:
“Aunt Portal, do lend us the landau; we will set off directly after breakfast.”