“And he has attended to all his little wants?”
“Don’t be disturbed. He doesn’t want anything.”
Reassured on this point, important to canine hygiene, the good dame drank her coffee, between her son and her dog, who each regarded her with an inexpressible tenderness.
It was assuredly unnecessary to see or hear more. I had already descried what a peaceful family life—upright, pure, and devoted—my friend Meurtrier hid under his chimerical gasconades. But the spectacle with which chance had favored me was at once so droll and so touching that I could not resist the temptation to watch for some moments longer. That indiscretion sufficed to show me the whole truth.
Yes, this type of roisterers, who seemed to have stepped from one of the romances of Paul de Kock—this athlete, this despot of bar-rooms and public-houses—performed simply and courageously, in these lowly rooms in the suburbs, the sublime duties of a sister of charity. This intrepid oarsman had never made a longer voyage than to conduct his mother to mass or vespers every Sunday. This billiard expert knew only how to play bézique. This trainer of bull-dogs was the submissive slave of a poodle. This Mauvaise-Philibert was an Antigone.
III.
The next morning, on arriving at the office, I asked Meurtrier how he had employed the previous evening, and he instantly improvised, without a moment’s hesitation, an account of a sharp encounter on the boulevard at two in the morning, when he had knocked down with a single blow of his fist, having passed his thumb through the ring of his keys, a terrible street rough. I listened, smiling ironically, and thinking to confound him; but remembering how respectable a virtue is which is hidden even under an absurdity, I struck him amicably on the shoulder, and said, with conviction:
“Meurtrier, you are a hero!”
