Short Stories, vol 9 | Page 5

burst like a sack

of grain!"
And off she would go, amid the jeers and laughter of the drinkers.
Toine was, in fact, an astonishing sight, he was so fat, so heavy, so red.
He was one of those enormous beings with whom Death seems to be
amusing himself--playing perfidious tricks and pranks, investing with
an irresistibly comic air his slow work of destruction. Instead of
manifesting his approach, as with others, in white hairs, in emaciation,
in wrinkles, in the gradual collapse which makes the onlookers say:
"Gad! how he has changed!" he took a malicious pleasure in fattening
Toine, in making him monstrous and absurd, in tingeing his face with a
deep crimson, in giving him the appearance of superhuman health, and
the changes he inflicts on all were in the case of Toine laughable,
comic, amusing, instead of being painful and distressing to witness.
"Wait a bit! Wait a bit!" said his wife. "You'll see."
At last Toine had an apoplectic fit, and was paralyzed in consequence.
The giant was put to bed in the little room behind the partition of the
drinking-room that he might hear what was said and talk to his friends,
for his head was quite clear although his enormous body was helplessly
inert. It was hoped at first that his immense legs would regain some
degree of power; but this hope soon disappeared, and Toine spent his
days and nights in the bed, which was only made up once a week, with
the help of four neighbors who lifted the innkeeper, each holding a
limb, while his mattress was turned.
He kept his spirits, nevertheless; but his gaiety was of a different
kind--more timid, more humble; and he lived in a constant, childlike
fear of his wife, who grumbled from morning till night:
"Look at him there--the great glutton! the good-for-nothing creature,
the old boozer! Serve him right, serve him right!"
He no longer answered her. He contented himself with winking behind
the old woman's back, and turning over on his other side--the only
movement of which he was now capable. He called this exercise a
"tack to the north" or a "tack to the south."
His great distraction nowadays was to listen to the conversations in the
bar, and to shout through the wall when he recognized a friend's voice:
"Hallo, my son-in-law! Is that you, Celestin?"
And Celestin Maloisel answered:
"Yes, it's me, Toine. Are you getting about again yet, old fellow?"

"Not exactly getting about," answered Toine. "But I haven't grown thin;
my carcass is still good."
Soon he got into the way of asking his intimates into his room to keep
him company, although it grieved him to see that they had to drink
without him. It pained him to the quick that his customers should be
drinking without him.
"That's what hurts worst of all," he would say: "that I cannot drink my
Extra-Special any more. I can put up with everything else, but going
without drink is the very deuce."
Then his wife's screech-owl face would appear at the window, and she
would break in with the words:
"Look at him! Look at him now, the good-for-nothing wretch! I've got
to feed him and wash him just as if he were a pig!"
And when the old woman had gone, a cock with red feathers would
sometimes fly up to the window sill and looking into the room with his
round inquisitive eye, would begin to crow loudly. Occasionally, too, a
few hens would flutter as far as the foot of the bed, seeking crumbs on
the floor. Toine's friends soon deserted the drinking room to come and
chat every afternoon beside the invalid's bed. Helpless though he was,
the jovial Toine still provided them with amusement. He would have
made the devil himself laugh. Three men were regular in their
attendance at the bedside: Celestin Maloisel, a tall, thin fellow,
somewhat gnarled, like the trunk of an apple-tree; Prosper Horslaville,
a withered little man with a ferret nose, cunning as a fox; and Cesaire
Paumelle, who never spoke, but who enjoyed Toine's society all the
same.
They brought a plank from the yard, propped it upon the edge of the
bed, and played dominoes from two till six.
But Toine's wife soon became insufferable. She could not endure that
her fat, lazy husband should amuse himself at games while lying in his
bed; and whenever she caught him beginning a game she pounced
furiously on the dominoes, overturned the plank, and carried all away
into the bar, declaring that it was quite enough to have to feed that fat,
lazy pig without seeing him amusing himself, as if to annoy poor
people who had to work hard all day long.
Celestin Maloisel and Cesaire Paumelle bent their