“Most men are lazy,” said Barbe, “it is the women and the children who matter. An empty stomach is man’s master.”
But if Bibi despised Ledoux and Crapaud and the crowd who listened to them, he saw that it might be possible for him to make use of their passions. These men were firebrands, wolves. They talked internationalism, worshipped Lenin, yet hated the Germans. Ledoux was more venomous than usual when he spoke of the German Socialists. He had not forgotten what he had suffered in the trenches—for Ledoux was a physical coward and sordid fear does not breed love. He was ready to scream at his brethren across the Rhine: “Yes, you behaved like swine. You were ready to help the shopkeepers when you thought you were going to plunder our shops. And you let your honest men be put in prison.”
If Bibi had the civic morals of a house-agent, he was almost as successful as the house-agent in trading on the good nature and the carelessness of the average man and woman. He could create an atmosphere, spin a web, and wait for the flies to arrive. He set himself to create an atmosphere about the Café de la Victoire. When Ledoux raged against the capitalists and the shopkeepers, Bibi would say, “You are quite right, monsieur; we have them here. I keep a shop and sell wine; but what can a blind man do?”
He would tap the ribbon of the Croix de Guerre that he wore on his coat.
“Anyhow, I would work if I could, and I picked up this in the war.”
They fell upon Bibi’s neck and reassured him. He was “bon enfant”; he could tell a good tale, and he sold them wine. He did not give himself airs. Even Ledoux liked the swaggering frankness of the man who called the peasants “the muck of the land.”
Bibi spun one thread at a time.
“Of course, the shopkeepers will do anything. Now look at these people in the café over there. Do you know how they got their material?”
The buvette asked, “How?”
“Stole it. They came back to the village before any of the others. There were some army huts in a field. They pulled two of them to pieces and used the stuff.”