Bertrand had risen before dawn, always ready to carry out his master’s orders, even when he did not approve of his conduct. The ex-corporal was well pleased with his repast of the preceding night, because the beaune was not spared, and Baptiste and Tony and the tall lackeys, while drinking with him, listened with respectful attention to his stories of his campaigns. He was walking on the terrace, ready to give Monsieur Destival a lesson in the manual, and perfectly reconciled to the life that people lead in the country.
The petite-maîtresse, whose head was as light as her heart, had risen very early, before her husband was awake. She had slept badly; innumerable thoughts crowded into her mind, but the principal one was as always the desire to attract, to make a sensation; that was the fixed point about which her other sentiments revolved by the force of gravitation, without disturbing the course of the planet whose satellites they were.
As for Monsieur de la Thomassinière, he had slept without waking, and in his dreams had imagined himself the seigneur of a department, decorated with three crosses, a broad ribbon and a star, and richer, more conceited and more insolent than ever. Then he had found himself abruptly transported to the wine-shop of the Learned Ass, serving wine to peasants who treated him most cavalierly. That infernal sleep has no respect for anything; it displaces the most powerful men, and effects strange revolutions; it transforms a king into a shepherd, and sometimes raises the plowman to a throne; it confounds the great lord with the humblest plebeian; it makes of a minister of state a poor devil without bread or work or resource, starving in a garret; it transforms the banker into a petty clerk working fourteen hours a day to earn three francs; the poet who sells his pen, into a juggler employed to perform tricks before an audience which pays and despises him. To the kept woman it shows the hospital, to the public harlot, La Salpêtrière, to the young men who frequent roulette tables, the galleys or the nets of Saint-Cloud. It reminds the parvenu of his birth, the public official of the acts of injustice he has committed, the man without sense of honor of the insults he has endured. And all these people do as Monsieur de la Thomassinière did: they awake shrieking that they have a nightmare, and they ascribe those horrid dreams to a bad digestion. They would be very sorry to seek therein a memory of the past and a lesson for the future.
There was no trace of the storm of the preceding evening. The sky was clear, and the country seemed lovelier than ever; the trees glistened with a brilliant green undimmed by dust, the flowers were fresher, the brooks more noisy; everything invited one to enjoy the charms of nature; and that doubtless was the reason that Auguste was already in the garden, standing in the gateway leading into the courtyard, undecided whether he should go for a walk in the fields or remain on the premises. Meanwhile, Athalie had taken a seat under a clump of trees at the end of the garden; she was occupied in arranging some flowers, but her glance constantly wandered to right and left to see if someone was coming to bear her company; while Madame Destival strolled along an adjacent alley ready to join the persons whom she expected to meet in the garden.
Suddenly Auguste heard a voice that was not unknown to him crying:
“Whoa, White Jean! whoa, I say! Have you forgotten that we stop here?”
And at the same instant a milkmaid with her tin cans entered Monsieur Destival’s courtyard. Auguste uttered an exclamation of delight when he recognized Denise, and hurried across the courtyard to meet the pretty milkmaid.
“It is really you, lovely Denise!”
“Yes, monsieur, it’s I. Didn’t I tell you yesterday that I came here every morning to bring milk? I’m very glad to see you again, monsieur.”
“Really, Denise, did you want to see me?”