“She has been a minx. But on my side, I have just made an ass of myself. I see that now; and now that it’s too late, I also see that my smile, which said ‘You are the joy of all the town,’ must have seemed an impertinence. This delicious being is no philosopher emancipated from common prejudices. Of course, she would not understand me: it would be impossible for her to see that I consider her beauty one of the prime forces of the world, and regard the use she makes of it only as a splendid sovereignty. I have been tactless and I am ashamed of it. Like all honourable people, I have sometimes transgressed a human law and yet have felt no repentance for it whatever. But certain other acts of my life, which were merely opposed to those subtle and lofty niceties that we call the conventions, have often filled me with sharp regret and even with a kind of remorse. At this moment I want to hide myself for very shame. Henceforth I shall flee whenever I see the charming vision of this lady of the supple figure, crispum ... docta movere latus. I have, indeed, begun the year badly!”
“A happy New Year to you,” said a voice that emerged from a beard beneath a straw hat.
It belonged to M. Mazure, the archivist to the department. Ever since the Ministry had refused him academic honours on the ground that he had no claim, and since all classes in the town steadily refused to return Madame Mazure’s calls, because she had been both cook and mistress to the two officials previously in charge of the archives, M. Mazure had been seized with a horror of all government and become disgusted with society. He lived now the life of a gloomy misanthrope.
This being a day when friendly or, at any rate, courteous visits are customary, he had put on a shabby knitted scarf, the bluish wool of which showed under his overcoat decorated with torn buttonholes: this he did to show his scorn of the human race. He had also donned a broken straw hat that his good wife, Marguerite, used to stick on a cherry tree in the garden when the cherries were ripe. He cast a pitying glance at M. Bergeret’s white tie.
“You have just bowed,” said he, “to a pretty hussy.”
It pained M. Bergeret to have to listen to such harsh and unphilosophic language. But as he could forgive a good deal to a nature warped by misanthropy, it was with gentleness that he set about reproving M. Mazure for the coarseness of his speech.
“My dear Mazure,” said he, “I expected from your wide experience a juster estimate of a lady who harms no one.”
M. Mazure answered drily that he objected to light women. From him it was by no means a sincere expression of opinion, for, strictly speaking, M. Mazure had no moral code. But he persisted in his bad temper.
“Come now,” said M. Bergeret with a smile, “I’ll tell you what is wrong with Madame de Gromance. She was born just a hundred and fifty years too late. In eighteenth-century society no man of brains would have disapproved of her.”
M. Mazure began to relent under this flattery. He was no sullen Puritan, but he respected the civil marriage, to which the statesmen of the Revolution had imparted fresh dignity. For all that, he did not deny the claim of the heart and the senses. He acknowledged that the mistress has her place in society as well as the wife.