Short Stories, vol 9 | Page 4

OF A BOURGEOIS A RECOLLECTION
OUR LETTERS THE LOVE OF LONG AGO FRIEND JOSEPH THE
EFFEMINATES OLD AMABLE

TOINE

He was known for thirty miles round was father Toine--fat Toine,
Toine- my-extra, Antoine Macheble, nicknamed Burnt-Brandy--the
innkeeper of Tournevent.
It was he who had made famous this hamlet buried in a niche in the
valley that led down to the sea, a poor little peasants' hamlet consisting
of ten Norman cottages surrounded by ditches and trees.
The houses were hidden behind a curve which had given the place the
name of Tournevent. It seemed to have sought shelter in this ravine
overgrown with grass and rushes, from the keen, salt sea wind--the
ocean wind that devours and burns like fire, that drys up and withers
like the sharpest frost of winter, just as birds seek shelter in the furrows
of the fields in time of storm.
But the whole hamlet seemed to be the property of Antoine Macheble,
nicknamed Burnt-Brandy, who was called also Toine, or
Toine-My-Extra- Special, the latter in consequence of a phrase current
in his mouth:
"My Extra-Special is the best in France:"
His "Extra-Special" was, of course, his cognac.
For the last twenty years he had served the whole countryside with his
Extra-Special and his "Burnt-Brandy," for whenever he was asked:
"What shall I drink, Toine?" he invariably answered: "A burnt-brandy,
my son- in-law; that warms the inside and clears the head--there's
nothing better for your body."
He called everyone his son-in-law, though he had no daughter, either
married or to be married.
Well known indeed was Toine Burnt-Brandy, the stoutest man in all
Normandy. His little house seemed ridiculously small, far too small and
too low to hold him; and when people saw him standing at his door, as
he did all day long, they asked one another how he could possibly get
through the door. But he went in whenever a customer appeared, for it
was only right that Toine should be invited to take his thimbleful of
whatever was drunk in his wine shop.
His inn bore the sign: "The Friends' Meeting-Place"--and old Toine was,
indeed, the friend of all. His customers came from Fecamp and
Montvilliers, just for the fun of seeing him and hearing him talk; for fat
Toine would have made a tombstone laugh. He had a way of chaffing
people without offending them, or of winking to express what he didn't

say, of slapping his thighs when he was merry in such a way as to make
you hold your sides, laughing. And then, merely to see him drink was a
curiosity. He drank everything that was offered him, his roguish eyes
twinkling, both with the enjoyment of drinking and at the thought of
the money he was taking in. His was a double pleasure: first, that of
drinking; and second, that of piling up the cash.
You should have heard him quarrelling with his wife! It was worth
paying for to see them together. They had wrangled all the thirty years
they had been married; but Toine was good-humored, while his
better-half grew angry. She was a tall peasant woman, who walked with
long steps like a stork, and had a head resembling that of an angry
screech-owl. She spent her time rearing chickens in a little poultry-yard
behind the inn, and she was noted for her success in fattening them for
the table.
Whenever the gentry of Fecamp gave a dinner they always had at least
one of Madame Toine's chickens to be in the fashion.
But she was born ill-tempered, and she went through life in a mood of
perpetual discontent. Annoyed at everyone, she seemed to be
particularly annoyed at her husband. She disliked his gaiety, his
reputation, his rude health, his embonpoint. She treated him as a
good-for-nothing creature because he earned his money without
working, and as a glutton because he ate and drank as much as ten
ordinary men; and not a day went by without her declaring spitefully:
"You'd be better in the stye along with the pigs! You're so fat it makes
me sick to look at you!"
And she would shout in his face:
"Wait! Wait a bit! We'll see! You'll burst one of these fine days like a
sack of corn-you old bloat, you!"
Toine would laugh heartily, patting his corpulent person, and replying:
"Well, well, old hen, why don't you fatten up your chickens like that?
just try!"
And, rolling his sleeves back from his enormous arm, he said:
"That would make a fine wing now, wouldn't it?"
And the customers, doubled up with laughter, would thump the table
with their fists and stamp their feet on the floor.
The old woman, mad with rage, would repeat:
"Wait a bit! Wait a bit! You'll see what'll happen. He'll