"I scoff at them all! Let the gendarmes come as soon as they like! I'm quite certain now that I sha'n't be forced away!"
Then he picked up the severed finger and tossed it into the wood fire. After shaking his bleeding hand, he roughly wrapped his handkerchief round it, fastening it tightly with a piece of string so as to stop the flow of blood.
"Well, this needn't prevent us finishing the bottle before we join the others," said he. "Here's to your health!"
"And here's to yours!"
By this time there was so much noise and so much tobacco-smoke in Lengaigne's public-room that it was impossible to see one another or to hear even one's-self speak. Besides the young fellows who had just returned from balloting, there was a crowd of idlers. Hyacinthe and his friend Canon were there, busily engaged in making old Fouan drunk, the three of them sitting round a bottle of brandy. Bécu, whom his son's bad luck, combined with the large amount of drink he had swallowed, had quite overcome, was snoring noisily, with his head on one of the tables. Delhomme and Clou were there, too, playing a game of piquet, and also sat there Lequeu, with his nose buried in a book which he was pretending to read in spite of all the surrounding uproar.
A fight among the women had served to increase the general excitement. It had occurred in this way: Flore having gone to the fountain to fill her pitcher with water, there met Cœlina who, bursting with hatred and jealousy, threw herself upon her, clawing her furiously with her nails, and accusing her of being bribed by the excise officers to betray her neighbours. Macqueron and Lengaigne, who had rushed up, very nearly came to blows themselves; the former swearing that he would contrive to have the latter caught while he was damping his tobacco, and the latter sarcastically asking the former when they might expect to hear of his resignation. A crowd gathered, everybody mingling in the quarrel for the mere pleasure of shaking their fists and hearing themselves shout; and a general murderous engagement seemed at one time inevitable. This was averted, however, and the incident ended, but not without leaving a feeling of unsatisfied anger, and a longing to come to blows.
A passage between Victor, Lengaigne's son, and the conscripts almost brought about an explosion. The former having served his time in the army was swaggering before all the young fellows, shouting louder than the loudest of them, and goading them on into making all sorts of idiotic wagers; such as emptying a bottle of wine by holding it in the air and pouring its contents down their throats, or sucking the contents of a glass up through their nostrils, without touching it with their mouths. Suddenly, as some reference was made to the Macquerons, and the approaching marriage of their daughter Berthe, young Couillot began to snigger and titter out the old jokes about the girl. They would be able now, he said, to ask the husband all about her, on the day after the wedding. They had heard such a deal about her, that it would really be satisfactory to get at the truth!
Victor thereupon caused intense surprise by a show of angry warmth. Hitherto he had been one of those who most persistently attacked the girl, whereas now he shouted out:
"There, we've heard quite enough about it now. She has everything that the others have. She has!"
This assertion provoked a loud clamour. Victor had seen, then? She had been his mistress, eh? While vigorously denying the truth of this accusation, and striking his breast with his fists, he adhered to his recent statement, whereupon young Couillot, who was very drunk, violently contradicted him, though he knew absolutely nothing about the matter. In point of fact, he was simply actuated by pig-headed perversity. Victor bellowed out that he had once said the same as Couillot, and that, if he now said differently, it certainly wasn't for love of the Macquerons! It was because the truth is the truth! And then he fell upon the conscript, whose friends were obliged to drag him from his grasp.