And they were taken into the loge and made free of it—welcomed like prodigal sons; a fresh bottle of black-currant brandy was tapped, and did duty for the fatted calf. It was an ovation, and made quite a stir in the quartier.
Le Retour des trois Angliches—cinq ans après!
She told them all the news: about Bouchardy; Papelard; Jules Guinot, who was now in the Ministère de la Guerre; Barizel, who had given up the arts and gone into his father's business (umbrellas); Durien, who had married six months ago, and had a superb atelier in the Rue Taitbout, and was coining money; about her own family—Aglaë, who was going to be married to the son of the charbonnier at the corner of the Rue de la Canicule—"un bon mariage; bien solide!" Niniche, who was studying the piano at the Conservatoire, and had won the silver medal; Isidore, who, alas! had gone to the bad—"perdu par les femmes! un si joli garçon, vous concevez! ça ne lui a pas porté bonheur, par exemple!" And yet she was proud! and said his father would never have had the pluck!
"À dix-huit ans, pensez donc!
"And that good Monsieur Carrel; he is dead, you know! Ah, messieurs savaient ça? Yes, he died at Dieppe, his natal town, during the winter, from the consequences of an indigestion—que voulez-vous! He always had the stomach so feeble!... Ah! the beautiful interment, messieurs! Five thousand people, in spite of the rain! Car il pleuvait averse! And M. le Maire and his adjunct walking behind the hearse, and the gendarmerie and the douaniers, and a bataillon of the douzième chasseurs-à-pied, with their music, and all the sapper-pumpers, en grande tenue with their beautiful brass helmets! All the town was there, following: so there was nobody left to see the procession go by! q'c'était beau! Mon Dieu, q'c'était beau! c'que j'ai pleuré, d'voir ça! n'est-ce-pas, Vinard?"
"Dame, oui, ma biche! j'crois ben! It might have been Monsieur le Maire himself that one was interring in person!"
"Ah, ça! voyons, Vinard; thou'rt not going to compare the Maire of Dieppe to a painter like Monsieur Carrel?"
"Certainly not, ma biche! But still, M. Carrel was a great man all the same, in his way. Besides, I wasn't there—nor thou either, as to that!"
"Mon Dieu! comme il est idiot, ce Vinard—of a stupidity to cut with a knife! Why, thou might'st almost be a Mayor thyself, sacred imbecile that thou art!"
And an animated discussion arose between husband and wife as to the respective merits of a country mayor on one side and a famous painter and member of the Institute on the other, during which les trois Angliches were left out in the cold. When Madame Vinard had sufficiently routed her husband, which did not take very long, she turned to them again, and told them that she had started a magasin de bric-à-brac, "vous verres ça!"