Thus now and then he forced himself to forget the swarm of little miseries closing down upon him—forgot even his aches and pains, due largely to the dampness of the vine-smothered garçonnière whose old-fashioned interior smelt of cellar damp, for there was hardly a room in it whose wall paper had escaped the mould.
It was not until March that the long-gathering storm broke—as quick as a crackling lizard of lightning strikes. Le Gros had foreclosed the mortgage.
The Château of Hirondelette was up for sale.
When de Savignac came out to open the gate for me late that evening his face was as white as the palings in the moonlight.
"Come in," said he, forcing a faint laugh—-he stopped for a moment as he closed and locked the gate—labouring painfully for his breath. Then he slipped his arm under my own. "Come along," he whispered, struggling for his voice. "I have found another bottle of Musigny."
A funeral, like a wedding or an accident, is quickly over. The sale of de Savignac's château consumed three days of agony.
As I passed the "garçonnière" by the lane beyond the courtyard on my way to the last day's sale, I looked over the hedge and saw that the shutters were closed—farther on, a doctor's gig was standing by the gate. From a bent old peasant woman in sabots and a white cap, who passed, I learned which of the two was ill. It was as I had feared—his wife. And so I continued on my way to the sale.
As I passed through the gates of the château, the rasping voice of the lean-jawed auctioneer reached my ears as he harangued in the drizzling rain before the steps of the château the group of peasants gathered before him—widows in rusty crêpe veils, shrewd old Norman farmers in blue blouses looking for bargains, their carts wheeled up on the mud-smeared lawn. And a few second-hand dealers from afar, in black derbys, lifting a dirty finger to close a bid for mahogany.
Close to this sordid crowd on the mud-smeared lawn sat Le Gros, his heavy body sunk in a carved and gilded arm-chair that had once graced the boudoir of Madame de Savignac. As I passed him, I saw that his face was purple with drink. He sat there the picture of insolent ignorance, this pig of a peasant.
At times the auctioneer rallied the undecided with coarse jokes, and the crowd roared, for they are not burdened with delicacy, these Norman farmers.