They had to wait. Every one tried to think of something to say.
Jeanne, involuntarily shivering with cold, inquired what their hosts
did to occupy themselves all the year round. The Brisevilles were much
astonished; for they were always busy, either writing letters to their
aristocratic relations, of whom they had a number scattered all over
France, or attending to microscopic duties, as ceremonious to one
another as though they were strangers, and talking grandiloquently of
the most insignificant matters.
At last the carriage passed the windows with its ill-matched team. But
Marius had disappeared. Thinking he was off duty until evening, he had
doubtless gone for a walk.
Julien, perfectly furious, begged them to send him home on foot, and
after a great many farewells on both sides, they set out for the
"Poplars."
As soon as they were inside the carriage, Jeanne and her father, in
spite of Julien's brutal behavior of the morning which still weighed
on their minds, began to laugh at the gestures and intonations of the
Brisevilles. The baron imitated the husband, and Jeanne the wife. But
the baroness, a little touchy in these particulars, said: "You are
wrong to ridicule them thus; they are people of excellent family."
They were silent out of respect for little mother, but nevertheless,
from time to time, Jeanne and her father began again. The baroness
could not forbear smiling in her turn, but she repeated: "It is not
nice to laugh at people who belong to our class."
Suddenly the carriage stopped, and Julien called out to someone behind
it. Then Jeanne and the baron, leaning out, saw a singular creature
that appeared to be rolling along toward them. His legs entangled in
his flowing coattails, and blinded by his hat which kept falling over
his face, shaking his sleeves like the sails of a windmill, and
splashing into puddles of water, and stumbling against stones in the
road, running and bounding, Marius was following the carriage as fast
as his legs could carry him.
As soon as he caught up with it, Julien, leaning over, seized him by
the collar of his coat, sat him down beside him, and letting go the
reins, began to shower blows on the boy's hat, which sank down to his
shoulders with the reverberations of a drum. The boy screamed, tried
to get away, to jump from the carriage, while his master, holding him
with one hand, continued beating him with the other.
Jeanne, dumfounded, stammered: "Father--oh, father!" And the baroness,
wild with indignation, squeezed her husband's arm. "Stop him, Jack!"
she exclaimed. The baron quickly lowered the front window, and seizing
hold of his son-in-law's sleeve, he sputtered out in a voice trembling
with rage: "Have you almost finished beating that child?"
Julien turned round in astonishment: "Don't you see what a condition
his livery is in?"
But the baron, placing his head between them, said: "Well, what do I
care? There is no need to be brutal like that!"
Julien got angry again: "Let me alone, please; this is not your
affair!" And he was raising his hand again when his father-in-law
caught hold of it and dragged it down so roughly that he knocked it
against the wood of the seat, and he roared at him so loud: "If you do
not stop, I shall get out, and I will see that you stop it, myself,"
that Julien calmed down at once, and shrugging his shoulders without
replying, he whipped up the horses, who set out at a quick trot.