The facteurs drop in for a drink on their rounds. They hobnob here a great part of the day, seemingly. And there is poor Marcelle at the pork-shop pining for the letter from her garçon in the line which this gossiping dog has in his serviette beside the cognac. All facteurs are discharged soldiers, and should know better. There is, I fear, but a belated delivery of letters in this easy-going old town.
On market-day the café is filled with les paysans, who have come in to vend their pigs and cattle, rabbits, eggs, butter, and vegetables. The elderly ladies from the farms, with their generous growth of moustache, sit and drink neat cognac with a masculinity that is but fitting. The young girls sip white wine. The old men gossip, between draughts, with their pipes trembling in their toothless gums. There are no young men.
CHAPTER V
L'HÔTEL DES BONS ENFANTS
It stands facing the Place de l'Église, with its back to the Route de ——. There is something medieval in its name; so is there in its surroundings and in its appearance. The gargoyles of the Église frown down upon its southern door. There is an old Flemish house facing it in the Place. It is Flemish and rambling in design itself. Its stables are low and capacious, like those of a Chaucerian inn. The rooms of the hotel are low-roofed, and each is large enough for an assembly ball. There is an air of generosity about the place. You have the feeling, as you enter, that these people enjoy living; they would have a love of life which is Italian in its deliberateness. They would taste life with a relish.
If you see madame you will be confirmed in this. She is rotund and high-coloured. The placidity of her feature is infectious. As soon as you see her (and it is not long before you will) you want to bask about the place. The pleasantness of her smile will tell you that her first concern is not lucre, but life. She must work to live. But neither work nor the money it brings are ends in themselves for her.
In her day she must have been very well featured. She is still. But rotundity is clouding the lines of her beauty in face and figure. She has a daughter of eight playing in the anteroom. She will be as handsome as her mother has been. She is pretty, with a regularity of feature uncommon in a child so young. A placid nurse-girl has the care of her. She is reading at one of the small round drinking-tables. In fact, it is the domesticity of the place which charms you as much as its quaint architecture. English officers in groups and French officers with their lady friends are entering and taking seats. But madame talks audibly and naturally of nursery matters with the nurse, the child herself is engaged upon her leçon de l'école beside the buffet, and her nursemaid is at work upon a garment at the same table as two highly-finished Subalterns are taking their aristocratic ease and their Médoc.
But however homely the hotel may be in France, it is rarely free from the blemish of the upper room. Officers may dine gaily with their lady friends with as little obstruction from the management as is offered to the payment of the bill.