XLII
Sunday came as a day of great heat, sultry and oppressive. There was thunder in the air, and Beaucourt did not go out to work in the fields, but remained at home sitting in the shade, or lazily busy in its gardens. At noon there was hardly a soul to be seen in the streets, and for an hour no one passed down the Rue de Bonnière save old Prosper Cordonnier, loping long-legged and guiltily to Bibi’s buvette. The hut among the apple trees above the factory was the one live, noisy spot in Beaucourt. The hut itself was like a baker’s oven, and the men lay about on the grass under the orchard trees and under an awning that Bibi had put up. Barbe was kept busy serving them with drink, for it was a thirsty and quarrelsome day, a day when men’s tempers feel the great heat.
As Anatole Durand said, after the event had happened, “What a confession—that so much trouble should be caused by a bottle of cognac, a drunken ‘sheep’s head’—and a few lies!” Yet Bibi’s plan was so simple and so dangerously human because it appealed to the baser passions. Given sufficient cognac, a fuddled and persuadable fool like old Cordonnier, and one stark audacious lie, and the machine would move. It happened that there was ample cognac; Cordonnier became valiant and obstinate in his silliness; and Bibi’s lie had all the assurance and the completeness of the truth. The Café de la Victoire was a bonfire to which these rowdies were to put a match.
Bibi handled the affair very cleverly. He sat on a stool, under the awning, and twitted Pompom Crapaud and Ledoux with the repulse that they had suffered at the hands of Paul and Manon. He was playful and sardonic, and as potent for evil as the cognac with which Barbe had drugged the wine.
“Those capitalist swine,” snarled Ledoux, with eyes that looked inflamed.
“Well, you funked it, old man,” said Crapaud; “the fellow put me out all right, and you stood by and watched.”
Ledoux was lying close to Bibi’s stool, and Louis Blanc bent over him with ironical playfulness.
“Did you ever bayonet a Boche, Lazare?”
“Plenty of them.”
“So did I. I was rather good with the toasting-fork. But I never ran away from a Boche.”