“Present, captain!” cried Fourchon, holding out a hand to Vermichel to help him up the steps.
Of all Burgundian figures, Vermichel would have seemed to you the most Burgundian. The practitioner was not red, he was scarlet. His face, like certain tropical portions of the globe, was fissured, here and there, with small extinct volcanoes, defined by flat and greenish patches which Fourchon called, not unpoetically, the “flowers of wine.” This fiery face, the features of which were swelled out of shape by continual drunkenness, looked cyclopic; for it was lighted on the right side by a gleaming eye, and darkened on the other by a yellow patch over the left orb. Red hair, always tousled, and a beard like that of Judas, made Vermichel as formidable in appearance as he was meek in reality. His prominent nose looked like an interrogation-mark, to which the wide-slit mouth seemed to be always answering, even when it did not open. Vermichel, a short man, wore hob-nail shoes, bottle-green velveteen trousers, an old waistcoat patched with diverse stuffs which seemed to have been originally made of a counterpane, a jacket of coarse blue cloth and a gray hat with a broad brim. All this luxury, required by the town of Soulanges where Vermichel fulfilled the combined functions of porter at the town-hall, drummer, jailer, musician, and practitioner, was taken care of by Madame Vermichel, an alarming antagonist of Rabelaisian philosophy. This virago with moustachios, about one yard in width and one hundred and twenty kilograms in weight (but very active), ruled Vermichel with a rod of iron. Thrashed by her when drunk, he allowed her to thrash him still when sober; which caused Pere Fourchon to say, with a sniff at Vermichel’s clothes, “It is the livery of a slave.”
“Talk of the sun and you’ll see its beams,” cried Fourchon, repeating a well-worn allusion to the rutilant face of Vermichel, which really did resemble those copper suns painted on tavern signs in the provinces. “Has Mam Vermichel spied too much dust on your back, that you’re running away from your four-fifths,—for I can’t call her your better half, that woman! What brings you here at this hour, drum-major?”
“Politics, always politics,” replied Vermichel, who seemed accustomed to such pleasantries.
“Ah! business is bad in Blangy, and there’ll be notes to protest, and writs to issue,” remarked Pere Fourchon, filling a glass for his friend.
“That APE of ours is right behind me,” replied Vermichel, with a backward gesture.
In workmen’s slang “ape” meant master. The word belonged to the dictionary of the worthy pair.
“What’s Monsieur Brunet coming bothering about here?” asked Tonsard.
“Hey, by the powers, you folks!” said Vermichel, “you’ve brought him in for the last three years more than you are worth. Ha! that master at Les Aigues, he has his eye upon you; he’ll punch you in the ribs; he’s after you, the Shopman! Brunet says, if there were three such landlords in the valley his fortune would be made.”
“What new harm are they going to do to the poor?” asked Marie.