BOITELLE
ere Boitelle (Antoine) had the reputation through the whole county of a specialist in dirty jobs. Every time a pit, a dunghill, or a cesspool required to be cleared away, or a dirt-hole to be cleansed out he was the person employed to do it.
He would come there with his nightman's tools and his wooden shoes covered with muck, and would set to work, whining incessantly about the nature of his occupation. When people asked him, then, why he did this loathsome work, he would reply resignedly:
"Faith, 'tis for my children whom I must support. This brings me in more than anything else."
He had, indeed, fourteen children. If anyone asked him what had become of them, he would say with an air of indifference:
"There are only eight of them left in the house. One is out at service, and five are married."
When the questioner wanted to know whether they were well married, he replied vivaciously:
"I did not cross them. I crossed them in nothing. They married just as they pleased. We shouldn't go against people's likings, it turns out badly. I am a night-cart-man because my parents went against my likings. But for that I would have become a workman like the others."
Here is the way his parents had thwarted him in his likings: