The curtain that hid the life of the peasant-farmer had indeed been lifted.
CHAPTER X.
ERNESTINE.
"Ah, mesdames, what will you have? The French peasant is like that. When he is in a rage nothing stops him—he beats anything, everything; whatever his hand encounters must suffer when he is angry; his wife, his child, his servant, his horse, they are all alike to him when he sees red."
Monsieur Fouchet was tying up his rose-trees; we were watching him from our seat on the green bench. Here in the garden, beneath the blue vault, the roses were drooping from very heaviness of glory; they gave forth a scent that made the head swim. It was a healthy, virile intoxication, however, the salt in the air steadying one's nerves.
Nature, not being mortal and cursed with a conscience, had risen that morning in a mood for carousal; at this hour of noon she had reached the point of ecstatic stupor. No state of trance was ever so exquisite. The air was swooning, but how delicate its gasps, as if it fell away into calm! How adorably blue the sky in its debauch of sun-lit ether! The sea, too, although it reeled slightly, unsteadily rising only to fall away, what a radiance of color it maintained! Here in the garden the drowsy air would lift a flower petal, as some dreamer sunk in hasheesh slumber might touch a loved hand, only to let it slip away in nerveless impotence. Never had the charm of this Normandy sea-coast been as compelling; never had the divine softness of this air, this harmonious marriage of earth-scents and sea-smells seemed as perfect; never before had the delicacy of the foliage and color-gradations of the sky as triumphantly proved that nowhere else, save in France, can nature be at once sensuous and poetic.
We looked for something other than pure enjoyment from this golden moment; we hoped its beauty would help us to soften our landlord. This was the moment we had chosen to excite his sympathies, also to gain counsel from him concerning the tragedy we had witnessed the day before. He listened to our tale with evident interest, but there was a disappointing coolness in his eye. As the narrative proceeded, the brutality of the situation failed to sting him to even a mild form of indignation. He went on tying his rose-trees, his ardor expending itself in choice snippings of the stray stalks and rebellious tendrils.
"This Guichon," he said, after a brief moment, in the tone that goes with the pursuance of an occupation that has become a passion. "This Guichon—I know him. He is a hard man, but no harder than many others, and he has had his losses, which don't always soften a man. 'Qui terre a guerre a,' Molière says, and Guichon has had many lawsuits, losing them all. He has been twice married; that was his daughter by his first wife he was touching up like that. He married only the other day Madame Tier, a rich woman, a neighbor, their lands join. It was a great match for him, and she, the wife, and his daughter don't hit it off, it appears. There was some talk of a marriage for the girl lately; a good match presented itself, but the girl will have none of it; perhaps that accounts for the beating."
A rose, overblown with its fulness of splendor, dropped in a shower at
Fouchet's feet just then.
"Tiens, elle est finie, celle-là" he cried, with an accent of regret, and he stooped over the fallen petals as if they had been the remains of a friend. Then he sighed as he swept the mass into his broad palm.