This portrait of the Queen of Soulanges may seem a little grotesque, but many specimens of the same kind could be found in the provinces at that period,--some more or less noble in blood, others belonging to the higher banking-circles, like the widow of a receiver-general in Touraine who still puts slices of veal upon her cheeks.This portrait, drawn from nature, would be incomplete without the diamonds in which it is set; without the surrounding courtiers, a sketch of whom is necessary, if only to explain how formidable such Lilliputians are, and who are the makers of public opinion in remote little towns.Let no one mistake me, however; there are many localities which, like Soulanges, are neither hamlets, villages, nor little towns, which have, nevertheless, the characteristics of all.The inhabitants are very different from those of the large and busy and vicious provincial cities.Country life influences the manners and morals of the smaller places, and this mixture of tints will be found to produce some truly original characters.
The most important personage after Madame Soudry was Lupin, the notary.Though forty-five springs had bloomed for Lupin, he was still fresh and rosy, thanks to the plumpness which fills out the skin of sedentary persons; and he still sang ballads.Also, he retained the elegant evening dress of society warblers.He looked almost Parisian in his carefully-varnished boots, his sulphur-yellow waistcoats, his tight-fitting coats, his handsome silk cravats, his fashionable trousers.His hair was curled by the barber of Soulanges (the gossip of the town), and he maintained the attitude of a man "a bonne fortunes" by his liaison with Madame Sarcus, wife of Sarcus the rich, who was to his life, without too close a comparison, what the campaigns of Italy were to Napoleon.He alone of the leading society of Soulanges went to Paris, where he was received by the Soulanges family.It was enough to hear him talk to imagine the supremacy he wielded in his capacity as dandy and judge of elegance.He passed judgment on all things by the use of three terms: "out of date,"
"antiquated," "superannuated."[*] A man, a woman, or a piece of furniture might be "out of date"; next, by a greater degree of imperfection, "antiquated"; but as to the last term, it was the superlative of contempt.The first might be remedied, the second was hopeless, but the third,--oh, better far never to have left the void of nothingness! As to praise, a single word sufficed him, doubly and trebly uttered: "Charming!" was the positive of his admiration.
"Charming, charming!" made you feel you were safe; but after "Charming, charming, charming!" the ladder might be discarded, for the heaven of perfection was attained.
[*] "Croute," "crouton," and "croute-au-pot," untranslatable, and without equivalent in English.A "croute" is the slang term for a man behind the age.--Tr.
The tabellion,--he called himself "tabellion," petty notary, and keeper of notes (making fun of his calling in order to seem above it), --the tabellion was on terms of spoken gallantry with Madame Soudry, who had a weakness for Lupin, though he was blond and wore spectacles.
Hitherto the late Cochet had loved none but dark men, with moustachios and hairy hands, of the Alcides type.But she made an exception in favor of Lupin on account of his elegance, and, moreover, because she thought her glory at Soulanges was not complete without an adorer;
but, to Soudry's despair, the queen's adorers never carried their adoration so far as to threaten his rights.
Lupin had married an heiress in wooden shoes and blue woollen stockings, the only daughter of a salt-dealer, who made his money during the Revolution,--a period when contraband salt-traders made enormous profits by reason of the reaction that set in against the gabelle.He prudently left his wife at home, where Bebelle, as he called her, was supported under his absence by a platonic passion for a handsome clerk who had no other means than his salary,--a young man named Bonnac, belonging to the second-class society, where he played the same role that his master, the notary, played in the first.
Madame Lupin, a woman without any education whatever, appeared on great occasions only, under the form of an enormous Burgundian barrel dressed in velvet and surmounted by a little head sunken in shoulders of a questionable color.No efforts could retain her waist-belt in its natural place."Bebelle" candidly admitted that prudence forbade her wearing corsets.The imagination of a poet or, better still, that of an inventor, could not have found on Bebelle's back the slightest trace of that seductive sinuosity which the vertebrae of all women who are women usually produce.Bebelle, round as a tortoise, belonged to the genus of invertebrate females.This alarming development of cellular tissue no doubt reassured Lupin on the subject of the platonic passion of his fat wife, whom he boldly called Bebelle without raising a laugh.
"Your wife, what is she?" said Sarcus the rich, one day, when unable to digest the fatal word "superannuated," applied to a piece of furniture he had just bought at a bargain.
"My wife is not like yours," replied Lupin; "she is not defined as yet."
Beneath his rosy exterior the notary possessed a subtle mind, and he had the sense to say nothing about his property, which was fully as large as that of Rigou.
