a very homely creature.
About 1830, Father Hucheloup died. With him disappeared the secret of stuffed carps. His inconsolable widow continued to keep the wine-shop. But the cooking deteriorated, and became execrable; the wine, which had always been bad, became fearfully bad. Nevertheless, Courfeyrac and his friends continued to go to Corinthe—out of pity, as Bossuet said.
The Widow Hucheloup was breathless and misshapen and given to rustic recollections. She deprived them of their flatness by her pronunciation. She had a way of her own of saying things, which spiced her reminiscences of the village and of her springtime. It had formerly been her delight, so she affirmed, to hear the loups-de-gorge (rouges-gorges) chanter dans les ogrepines (aubépines)—to hear the redbreasts sing in the hawthorn-trees.
The hall on the first floor, where “the restaurant” was situated, was a large and long apartment encumbered with stools, chairs, benches, and tables, and with a crippled, lame, old billiard-table. It was reached by a spiral staircase which terminated in the corner of the room at a square hole like the hatchway of a ship.
This room, lighted by a single narrow window, and by a lamp that was always burning, had the air of a garret. All the four-footed furniture comported itself as though it had but three legs—the whitewashed walls had for their only ornament the following quatrain in honor of Mame Hucheloup:—
Elle étonne à dix pas, elle épouvente à deux,
Une verrue habite en son nez hasardeux;
On tremble à chaque instant qu’elle ne vous la mouche
Et qu’un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans sa bouche. 79
This was scrawled in charcoal on the wall.
Mame Hucheloup, a good likeness, went and came from morning till night before this quatrain with the most perfect tranquillity. Two serving-maids, named Matelote and Gibelotte, 80 and who had never been known by any other names, helped Mame Hucheloup to set on the tables the jugs of poor wine, and the various broths which were served to the hungry patrons in earthenware bowls. Matelote, large, plump, redhaired, and noisy, the favorite ex-sultana of the defunct Hucheloup, was homelier than any mythological monster, be it what it may; still, as it becomes the servant to always keep in the rear of the mistress, she was less homely than Mame Hucheloup. Gibelotte, tall, delicate, white with a lymphatic pallor, with circles round her eyes, and drooping lids, always languid and weary, afflicted with what may be called chronic lassitude, the first up in the house and the last in bed, waited on everyone, even the other maid, silently and gently, smiling through her fatigue with a vague and sleepy smile.
Before entering the restaurant room, the visitor read on the door the following line written there in chalk by Courfeyrac:—
Régale si tu peux et mange si tu l’oses. 81
II
Preliminary Gayeties
Laigle de Meaux, as the reader knows, lived more with Joly than elsewhere. He had a lodging, as a bird has one on a branch. The two friends lived together, ate together, slept together. They had everything in common, even Musichetta, to some extent. They were, what the subordinate monks who accompany monks are called, bini. On the morning of the 5th of June, they went to Corinthe to breakfast. Joly, who was all stuffed up, had a catarrh which Laigle was beginning to share. Laigle’s coat was threadbare, but Joly was well dressed.
It was about nine o’clock in the morning, when they opened the door of Corinthe.
They ascended to the first floor.
Matelote and Gibelotte received them.
“Oysters, cheese, and ham,” said Laigle.
And they seated themselves at a table.
The wine-shop was empty; there was no one there but themselves.
Gibelotte, knowing Joly and Laigle, set a bottle of wine on the table.
While they were busy with their first oysters, a head appeared at the hatchway of the staircase, and a voice said:—
“I am passing by. I smell from the street a delicious odor of Brie cheese. I enter.” It was Grantaire.
Grantaire took a stool and drew up to the table.
At the sight of Grantaire, Gibelotte placed two bottles of wine on the table.
That made three.
“Are you going to drink those two bottles?” Laigle inquired of Grantaire.
Grantaire replied:—
“All are ingenious, thou alone art ingenuous. Two bottles never yet astonished a man.”
The others had begun by eating, Grantaire began by drinking. Half a bottle was rapidly gulped down.
“So you have a hole in your stomach?” began Laigle again.
“You have one in your elbow,” said Grantaire.
And after having emptied his glass, he added:—
“Ah, by the way, Laigle of the funeral oration, your coat is old.”
“I should hope so,” retorted Laigle. “That’s why we get on well together, my coat and I. It has acquired all my folds, it does not bind me anywhere, it is moulded on my deformities, it falls in with all my movements, I am only conscious of it because it keeps me warm. Old coats are just like old friends.”
“That’s true,” ejaculated Joly, striking into the dialogue, “an old goat is an old abi.” 82
“Especially in the mouth of a man whose head is stuffed up,” said Grantaire.
“Grantaire,” demanded Laigle, “have you just come from the boulevard?”
“No.”
“We have just seen the head of the procession pass, Joly and I.”
“It’s a marvellous sight,” said Joly.
“How quiet this street is!” exclaimed Laigle. “Who would suspect that Paris was turned upside down? How plainly it is to be seen that in former days there were nothing but convents here! In this neighborhood! Du Breul and Sauval give a list of them, and so does the Abbé Lebeuf. They were all round here, they fairly swarmed, booted and barefooted, shaven, bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins, Carmelites, Little Augustines, Great Augustines, old Augustines—there was no end of them.”
“Don’t let’s talk of monks,” interrupted Grantaire, “it makes one want to scratch one’s self.”
Then he exclaimed:—
“Bouh! I’ve just swallowed a bad oyster. Now