The Fête At Coqueville | Page 5

just amusing themselves. Quite certain they were not
fishing for seals! All the Floches made merry over that joke; while the
Mahés, vexed, declared that Rouget was a fine fellow all the same, and
that he was risking his skin while others at the least puff of wind
preferred terra firma. The Abbé Radiguet was forced to interpose again
for there were slaps in the air.
"What ails them?" said Margot abruptly. "They are off again!" They
ceased menacing one another, and every eye searched the horizon, The
"Baleine" was once more hidden behind the point. This time La Queue
himself became uneasy. He could not account for such maneuvres. The
fear that Rouget was really in a fair way to catch some fish threw him
off his mental balance. No one left the beach, although there was
nothing strange to be seen. They stayed there nearly two hours, they
watched incessantly for the bark, which appeared from time to time,
then disappeared. It finished by not showing itself at all any more. La
Queue, enraged, breathing in his heart the abominable wish, declared
that she must have sunk; and, as just at that moment Rouget's wife
appeared with Brisemotte, he looked at them both, sneering, while he
patted Tupain on the shoulder to console him already for the death of
his brother, Fouasse. But he stopped laughing when he caught sight of
his daughter Margot, silent and looming, her eyes on the distance; it
was quite possibly for Delphin.
"What are you up to over there?" he scolded. "Be off home with you!
Mind, Margot!"
She did not stir. Then all at once: "Ah! there they are!"
He gave a cry of surprise. Margot, with her good eyes, swore that she
no longer saw a soul in the bark; neither Rouget, nor Fouasse, nor any
one! The "Baleine," as if abandoned, ran before the wind, tacking about

every minute, rocking herself with a lazy air.
A west wind had fortunately risen and was driving her toward the land,
but with strange caprices which tossed her to right and to left. Then all
Coqueville ran down to the shore. One half shouted to the other half,
there remained not a girl in the houses to look after the soup. It was a
catastrophe; something inexplicable, the strangeness of which
completely turned their heads. Marie, the wife of Rouget, after a
moment's reflection, thought it her duty to burst into tears. Tupain
succeeded in merely carrying an air of affliction. All the Mahés were in
great distress, while the Floches tried to appear conventional. Margot
collapsed as if she had her legs broken.
"What are you up to again!" cried La Queue, who stumbled upon her.
"I am tired," she answered simply.
And she turned her face toward the sea, her cheeks between her hands,
shading her eyes with the ends of her fingers, gazing fixedly at the bark
rocking itself idly on the waves with the air of a good fellow who has
drunk too much.
In the meanwhile suppositions were rife. Perhaps the three men had
fallen into the water? Only, all three at a time, that seemed absurd.
La Queue would have liked well to persuade them that the "Baleine"
had gone to pieces like a rotten egg; but the boat still held the sea; they
shrugged their shoulders. Then, as if the three men had actually
perished, he remembered that he was Mayor and spoke of formalities.
"Leave off!" cried the Emperor, "Does one die in such a silly way?" "If
they had fallen overboard, little Delphin would have been here by this!"
All Coqueville had to agree, Delphin swam like a herring. But where
then could the three men be? They shouted: "I tell you, yes!"--"I tell
you, no!"--"Too stupid!"--"Stupid yourself!" And matters came to the
point of exchanging blows. The Abbé Radiguet was obliged to make an
appeal for reconciliation, while the Emperor hustled the crowd about to

establish order. Meanwhile, the bark, without haste, continued to dance
before the world. It waltzed, seeming to mock at the people; the sea
carried her in, making her salute the land in long rhythmic reverences.
Surely it was a bark in a crazy fit. Margot, her cheeks between her
hands, kept always gazing. A yawl had just put out of the harbor to go
to meet the "Baleine." It was Brisemotte, who had exhibited that
impatience, as if he had been delayed in giving certainty to Rouget's
wife. From that moment all Coqueville interested itself in the yawl. The
voices rose higher: "Well, does he see anything?"
The "Baleine" advanced with her mysterious and mocking air. At last
they saw him draw himself up and look into the bark that he had
succeeded in taking in tow. All held