Her husband reddened, and to excuse himself roundly declared that it was due to over-work; whereupon their son Nénesse laughed from ear to ear, amid the burst of shouts and the thigh-slapping provoked by this conjugal revelation. However, the lad had eaten so much that he seemed to be bursting. Soon he vanished, and he was not seen again till the party broke up, when he was found slumbering in company with the two cows.
La Grande was the one who held out the longest. At midnight she was hard at work on the tartlets, in mute despair at being unable to finish them. The bowls of cream had been cleaned out, the crumbs of the cake swept up; with the freedom of increasing tipsiness, with bodices unhooked and trouser buttons undone, they split up into little knots, and chatted round the table, which was greasy with sauce, and stained with spilt wine. Songs had been started, but had come to nothing; except that old Rose, with a maudlin expression of countenance, went on humming some past century ribaldry, a reminiscence of her young days, to which she kept time by nodding her head. They were also too few to dance. Besides the men preferred to tipple brandy and smoke their pipes, the ashes of which they shook out over the table-cloth. In a corner, Fanny and Delhomme, with Jean and Tron before them, were reckoning up, within a halfpenny, the pecuniary position and expectations of the bride and bridegroom. This went on interminably. Every square inch was appraised. They knew every fortune in Rognes, even to the value of the linen possessed by each household. At the other end of the table, Jacqueline had buttonholed Monsieur Charles, whom she was contemplating with a winning smile, her pretty, wicked eyes aflame with curiosity. She questioned him.
"So Chartres is a queer place, eh? There's a gay life to be led there?"
He answered her by praising the town circuit: a line of promenades planted with old trees, which encompass Chartres with shade. In the lower part especially, along the banks of the Eure, the boulevards were very cool in summer. Then there was the cathedral. He expatiated on this edifice, being a well-informed man with great respect for religion. Yes, it was one of the finest buildings; but it had become too vast for the present times of weak Christianity, and was almost always empty, in the midst of its deserted square, which the devout alone crossed on week-days. He had realised the desolation of the place one Sunday when he had gone in casually while the vesper service was taking place. You shivered with the cold inside, and you could hardly see on account of the stained glass; so that all he could eventually descry were two little girls' schools, lost in the space like a handful of ants, and singing under the vaulted roof in shrill, fife-like voices. It was truly heartrending that the churches should be thus abandoned for the drinking-shops.
Jacqueline, who was astonished to hear him say all this, continued to stare at him steadily, with the same smile. At last to attain her object, she had to murmur:
"But tell me now, the Chartres women——"
He understood, and grew very grave, but he unbosomed himself, under the expansive influence of the general intoxication. She, flushed and tittering, rubbed up against him as if to penetrate that mystery of a rush of men, night after night. But it was not what she imagined. He told her about the hard work of it, for, in his cups, he was wont to be melancholy and paternal. Then he grew more animated, when she told him that she had amused herself one day by taking a look at the front of the Châteaudun night-house, at the corner of the Rue Dairgnon and the Rue Loiseau: a little dilapidated house it was, with its shutters closed and rotting. Behind, in a neglected garden, there was a large silvered globe of glass reflecting the house; while, in front of the dormer-window of the topmost floor, turned into a pigeon-house, some pigeons were flying and cooing in the sunshine. On that day, too, some children were playing on the door-step, and she had heard the words of command resounding over the wall of the adjacent cavalry barracks. He, interrupting her, grew angry. Yes, yes! He knew the place: two disgusting used-up women, and not even any mirrors downstairs. It was these dens that brought disgrace on the profession.
"But what can you expect in a sub-prefecture?" he added at length, calming down, with the philosophical tolerance of a superior person.
It was now one in the morning, and it was suggested that they should go to bed. When people had had a baby, there wasn't much use (was there?) in making a fuss about getting under the blankets together. It was the same with the old practical jokes—unpinning the bedstead, and popping scratching hair, or toys that squeaked when they were squeezed, between the sheets, and so on. All that, in this case, would have come the day after the fair. The best thing to do was to drink a parting cup, and then say good-night.