Ten Tales | Page 5

intoxication of rum-punch.

[Illustration]
Human weakness! He was by no means sorry, on his part, to be
something of an oracle; he from whom the sub-lieutenants, new-comers
at Saint-Cyr, fled dismayed, fearing his long stories.
[Illustration]
His usual auditors were the keeper of the café, a stupid and silent
beer-cask, always in his sleeved vest, and remarkable only for his
carved pipe; the bailiff, a scoffer, dressed invariably in black, scorned
for his inelegant habit of carrying off what remained of his sugar; the
town-clerk, the gentleman of acrostics, a person of much amiability and
a feeble constitution, who sent to the illustrated journals solutions of
enigmas and rebuses; and, lastly, the veterinary surgeon of the place,
the only one who, from his position of atheist and democrat, was
allowed to contradict the Captain. This practitioner, a man with tufted
whiskers and eye-glasses, presided over the radical committee of
electors, and when the curé took up a little collection among his
devotees for the purpose of adorning his church with some frightful red
and gilded statues, denounced, in a letter to the Siècle, the cupidity of
the Jesuits.
The Captain having gone out one evening for some cigars after an
animated political discussion, the aforesaid veterinary grumbled to
himself certain phrases of heavy irritation concerning "coming to the
point," and "a mere fencing-master," and "cutting a figure." But as the
object of these vague menaces suddenly returned, whistling a march
and beating time with his cane, the incident was without result.
In short, the group lived harmoniously together, and willingly
permitted themselves to be presided over by the new-comer, whose
white beard and martial bearing were quite impressive. And the small
city, proud of so many things, was also proud of its retired Captain.
III.
Perfect happiness exists nowhere, and Captain Mercadier, who believed

that he had found it at the Café Prosper, soon recovered from his
illusion.
For one thing, on Mondays, the market-day, the Café Prosper was
untenantable.
From early morning it was overrun with truck-peddlers, farmers, and
poultrymen. Heavy men with coarse voices, red necks, and great whips
in their hands, wearing blue blouses and otter-skin caps, bargaining
over their cups, stamping their feet, striking their fists, familiar with the
servant, and bungling at billiards.
When the Captain came, at eleven o'clock, for his first glass of absinthe,
he found this crowd gathered, and already half-drunk, ordering a
quantity of lunches. His usual place was taken, and he was served
slowly and badly. The bell was continually sounding, and the proprietor
and the waiter, with napkins under their arms, were running
distractedly hither and thither. In short, it was an ill-omened day, which
upset his entire existence.
[Illustration]
Now, one Monday morning, when he was resting quietly at home,
being sure that the café would be much too full and busy, the mild
radiance of the autumn sun persuaded him to go down and sit upon the
stone seat by the side of the house. He was sitting there, depressed and
smoking a damp cigar, when he saw coming down the end of the
street--it was a badly paved lane leading out into the country--a little
girl of eight or ten, driving before her a half-dozen geese.
As the Captain looked carelessly at the child he saw that she had a
wooden leg.
There was nothing paternal in the heart of the soldier. It was that of a
hardened bachelor. In former days, in the streets of Algiers, when the
little begging Arabs pursued him with their importunate prayers, the
Captain had often chased them away with blows from his whip; and on
those rare occasions when he had penetrated the nomadic household of

some comrade who was married and the father of a family, he had gone
away cursing the crying babies and awkward children who had touched
with their greasy hands the gilding on his uniform.
But the sight of that particular infirmity, which recalled to him the sad
spectacle of wounds and amputations, touched, on that account, the old
soldier. He felt almost a constriction of the heart at the sight of that
sorry creature, half-clothed in her tattered petticoats and old chemise,
bravely running along behind her geese, her bare foot in the dust, and
limping on her ill-made wooden stump.
The geese, recognizing their home, turned into the poultry-yard, and the
little one was about to follow them when the Captain stopped her with
this question:
"Eh! little girl, what's your name?"
"Pierette, monsieur, at your service," she answered, looking at him with
her great black eyes, and pushing her disordered locks from her
forehead.
"You live in this house, then? I haven't seen you before."
"Yes, I know you pretty well, though, for I sleep under the stairs, and
you wake me up every