Adèle, not being one of those young women who are only chosen when there is scarcity, early became the blessing of her family. The fish in her basket seemed to leap of its own accord into the frying pan, although the pretty wheedler took pride in selling it at a high price. Any chance meeting on the road furnished occasion for selling her wares. Often a kiss was added as a premium. Occasionally something more. What she lost or what she won at this game would to-day be hard to reckon. On Sunday, at the fair, she exhibited herself in fine attire and ornaments: these were her profit. Her name ran from mouth to mouth accompanied by tales to which public malice did not always need to add lies: this was her loss. But far from being disturbed by the "chronique scandaleuse" she insolently gloried in it, declaring that the hard-favoured meddlers would have been altogether too happy had she found a chance to talk scandal about them.
"When they are done tattling, they will stop," she used to say.
Which proved true. So that one day, when there was nothing else that Adèle could do to astonish people, the report spread that she was about to become the legitimate wife of Hippolyte Morin, the shoemaker. I must add that the event was accepted by all as a decent ending to a tempestuous youth.
"He will certainly beat her," thought the women, when they saw Morin's infatuation.
"He will not make a troublesome husband," said the men, as they looked at the sallow and weakly though choleric shoemaker.
Public approval was therefore unanimous. The circumstances of the marriage were simple. Girard owed Morin 500 francs, and could not even manage to pay the interest on them. Seeing his creditor prowling with smouldering eyes about the stalwart Adèle, he had proposed to him to marry the girl and give a receipted bill, and the shoemaker, overjoyed at the thought of possessing such a marvel all to himself, had gladly closed the bargain. As for Adèle, she had said yes without difficulty, as she had to so many others. Hippolyte owned land. He was a good match.
They had a fine wedding, and for a full half year happiness appeared to reign in the new establishment. Six months of fidelity were surely, for Adèle, a sufficient concession to Monsieur le Maire's injunctions. Presently lovers reappeared, to Morin's lively displeasure. Adèle was thrashed, as the public had foreseen. The muscular young swains none the less made game of the husband, at best a puny adversary, as public opinion had equally foretold. The worst of it was that the unaccommodating shoemaker had a way of watching his rivals with a vicious eye, while drawing the sharp blade of his knife across the whetstone. No one in a village is afraid of kicks and blows. But no one likes the thought of steel coming into play. And so, when the belief was established that Morin would some day "do something desperate," the ardour of the followers began to abate. They gradually dropped away, and it was Adèle's turn to experience the fiercest resentment against her sullen lord.
Three years passed in quarrels, in hourly battles. There were no children. Grass does not grow on the high road, as Michelet observes. One morning the news ran that Morin was seriously ill, then that he was dead. On the day before, he had been playing bowls without any sign of ill health. The doctor who had been sent for, shook his head gravely, and asked to speak to Adèle in private. At the end of the interview the bystanders noticed that Adèle kept out of sight, while the doctor, without a word, poured the contents of the soup tureen into a jug, and carried it away in his gig. That evening, two gendarmes came to arrest "Hippolyte Morin's wife," accused of poisoning her husband. Conversations in the village were not dull that evening.
The inquiry was brief. Bits of the blue shards of cantharides floating among the bread and potatoes in the soup permitted no denial. Adèle confessed that passing under an ash tree, and seeing some of those insects lying dead in the grass, she picked them up, "to play a joke on her husband." Later on, after she had been instructed by her lawyer, she said that the aphrodisiacal properties attributed to the beetle gave the obvious reason for the matrimonial "joke." But it being proved that her extra-*conjugal resources in that line were rather calculated to foster a desire to rid herself of an inconvenient husband, the story gained small credence. Morin, who had not consented to die, was the only witness for the defence.
"Of course it was a joke," he repeated, stupidly. "The proof of it is that she had told me."