A Sale
The defendants, Brument (Césaire-Isidore) and Cornu (Prosper-Napoléon), appeared at the Seine-Inférieure Assizes, charged with attempting the murder, by drowning, of the woman Brument, lawful wife of the first of the said defendants.
The two accused are seated side by side in the dock. They are two peasants. The first is little and stout, with short arms, short legs and a round head; his red face, all bursting with pimples, squats without the least sign of a neck on top of a body equally round and equally short. He breeds pigs and lives at Cacheville-la-Goupil, in the district of Criquetot.
Cornu (Prosper-Napoléon) is thin, of medium height, with arms of disproportionate length. He has a crooked jaw and he squints. A blue blouse as long as a shirt falls to his knees, and his scant yellow hair, plastered down on his skull, gives his face a worn, dirty and hideously raddled air. He has been nicknamed “the priest” because he can give a perfect imitation of church hymns and even the sound of the church serpent. He keeps a public-house at Criquetot, and this talent of his attracts to the place a great many customers who prefer “Cornu’s Mass” to the good God’s.
Mme. Brument, seated on the witness stand, is a skinny peasant woman whose drowsy placidity is never shaken. She sits unmoving, hands crossed on knees, with an unwinking stare and an air of stupidity.
The president proceeds with the examination.
“Well, then, Mme. Brument, they entered your house and threw you into a barrel full of water. Tell us the facts in detail. Stand up.”
She stands up. She seems as tall as a mast, under the bonnet that covers her head with a white dome. She tells her tale in a drawling voice:
“I was shelling haricots. And then they came in. I thought to myself: ‘What’s up with them? They’re not themselves; they’re up to mischief.’ They kept looking at me out of the corners of their eyes, like this, especially Cornu, owing to his squint. I didn’t like to see them together, because they’re never up to much good when they’re together. I says to them: ‘What d’you want with me?’ They didn’t answer. I had, as you might say, a suspicion …”
The prisoner Brument interrupted her statement vehemently; he declared:
“I was tipsy.”
Whereupon Cornu, turning towards his fellow criminal, pronounced in a voice as deep as the note of an organ:
“Say that I was tipsy as well and you’ll be telling no lies.”
The president, severely: “You wish us to understand that you were drunk?”
Brument: “Yes, I was tipsy all right.”
Cornu: “It might happen to anyone.”
The president, to the victim: “Proceed with your statement, Mme. Brument.”
“Well, then Brument said to me: ‘D’you want to earn five francs?’ ‘Yes,’ said I, seeing you don’t pick five francs up in every gutter. Then he says to me: ‘Keep your eyes open and do as I do,’ and then he goes and fetches the big empty barrel that stands under the spout at the corner; and then he turns it up, and then he carries it into my kitchen, and then he sets it down in the middle of the floor, and then he says to me: ‘Go and fetch enough water to fill it.’
“So then I goes to the pond with two buckets and I fetch water, and still more water for nigh on an hour, seeing that barrel’s as big as a vat, saving your honour, Mr. President.
“While I was doing it, Brument and Cornu were having a drink, and then another drink, and then another drink. They were filling themselves up together, and I said: ‘It’s you that’s full, fuller than the barrel.’ And then that Brument answers: ‘Don’t you worry, get on with your job, your turn’s coming, everyone gets what’s coming to them.’ I takes no notice of his talk, seeing he was tipsy.
“When the barrel was full to the brim, I says: ‘There, I’ve done it.’
“And then Cornu gives me five francs. Not Brument—Cornu; it was Cornu gave me them. And Brument says to me: ‘Do you want to earn another five francs?’
“ ‘Yes,’ says I, seeing I’m not used to such presents.
“Then he says to me:
“ ‘Strip.’
“ ‘You want me to strip?’
“ ‘Yes,’ he says.
“ ‘How far do you want me to strip?’
“He says to me:
“ ‘If you don’t like it, keep your chemise on, we’ve no objection to that.’
“Five francs is five francs, so I strips, but I didn’t like stripping in front of those two good-for-nothings. I takes off my bonnet, and then my bodice, and then my petticoat, and then my sabots. Brument says to me: ‘Keep your stockings on, we’re decent fellows, we are.’
“And that Cornu repeats: ‘We’re decent fellows, we are.’
“And there I am, like our mother Eve, as you might say. And they stands up, but they couldn’t stand straight, they was so drunk, saving your honour, Mr. President.
“I says to them: ‘What mischief are you up to?’
“And Brument says: ‘Are we ready?’
“Cornu says: ‘Ready it is.’
“And then they takes me, Brument by the head and Cornu by the feet, as you might say taking up a bundle of dirty clothes. I bawls, I does. And Brument says: ‘Shut up, you silly wretch.’
“And then they lifts me up in their arms, and sticks me in the barrel full of water, and they put the heart across me, and I was chilled to my very innards.
“And Brument says:
“ ‘Anything else?’
“Cornu says:
“ ‘No, that’s all.’
“Brument says:
“ ‘The head’s not in, and it counts.’
“Cornu says:
“ ‘Put her head in.’
“And then Brument pushes in my head as it might be to drown me, until the water ran up my nose and I thought I was seeing Paradise. And he gives me a push. And I went under.
“And then he must have had a fright. He pulled me out and says to me: ‘Go quick and dry yourself, you skinny wretch.’
“I rushes off and I runs to the priest’s, and he lends me a petticoat of his servant’s, seeing I’m in my skin, and he goes to fetch Mister Chicot, the village policeman, who goes to Cliquetot to fetch the gendarmes, and they come with me to the house.
“And there we find Brument and Cornu going for each other like two rams.
“Brument was bawling: ‘It’s not true, I tell you, it’s at least a cubic metre. It’s the measure that’s wrong.’
“Cornu was bawling: ‘Four buckets, that doesn’t make as much as you could call half a cubic metre. You needn’t say anything more, that’s what it is.’
“The sergeant puts his hands on their heads. That’s all I have to say.”
She sat down. There was laughter in the court. The astonished jurymen stared at each other. The president said solemnly:
“Prisoner Cornu, you appear to be the instigator of this infamous plot. Have you anything to say?”
And Cornu stood up in his turn.
“Your Worship, I was tipsy.”
The president replied gravely:
“I know you were. Go on.”
“I am going on. Well, Brument came to my place about nine o’clock, and he orders two brandies and says: ‘Have one with me, Cornu.’ And I sits down with him and drinks and I offers him another, out of politeness. Then he called for two more, and I did the same, and we went on, drinking brandy after brandy, until about twelve we were blind.
“Then Brument begins to cry. I feels very sorry for him. I asks him what’s the matter. He says: ‘I must have a thousand francs by Thursday.’ When I heard that, it turns me cold, you understand. And all of a sudden he comes out with the proposal: ‘I’ll sell you my wife.’
“I was tipsy and I’m a widower. It fairly got me, understand. I didn’t know his wife, but a wife’s a wife, isn’t she? I asks him: ‘How much will you sell her for?’
“He thinks it over, or rather he pretends to think it over. When a man’s tipsy, he’s not in his right wits, and he answers: ‘I’ll sell her by the cubic metre.’
“That doesn’t surprise me, seeing I was as tipsy as he was, and I’m used to cubic metres in my business. That’s a thousand litres, and I was agreeable to that. Only the price was still to be settled. Everything depends on quality. I says to him: ‘How much the cubic metre?’
“He answers:
“ ‘Two thousand francs.’
“I gives a jump like a rabbit, and then I think to myself that a woman can’t weigh more than three hundred litres. All the same, I says: ‘That’s too dear.’
“He answers:
“ ‘I can’t take less. I should lose on it.’
“A man isn’t a pig dealer for nothing, you understand. He knows his job. But set a thief to catch a thief, and I’m a sharp man, too. Ah! ah! ah! So I say to him: ‘If she was new, I wouldn’t say it was too dear, but as you’ve used her—haven’t you?—she’s secondhand. I give you fifteen hundred francs the cubic metre, not a ha’penny more. Is it a bargain?’
“He answers:
“ ‘It’s a bargain. Shake on it.’
“I shakes and we sets off, arm in arm. Folks ought to help each other along in this life.
“But I had a sudden fear: ‘How are you going to measure her in litres unless you melt her down?’
“Then he explains his idea, none too easily, seeing he was tipsy. He says: ‘I take a barrel, I fill it with water to the brim. I put her inside. All the water that pours over I’ll measure out, and that’ll be the total.’
“I says:
“ ‘Right, it’s agreed. But the water that pours over will run away: what are you going to do to gather it up again?’
“Then he thinks I’m a booby, and he explains that he’ll only have to pour back what’s run out of the barrel as soon as his wife has got out of it. The amount of water we had to add, would be the total. I reckon ten buckets: that’s a cubic metre. He’s not so stupid when he’s tipsy, the rascal, all the same!
“To cut it short, we go off to his house, and I examine the goods specified. As pretty women go, she’s not a pretty woman. Everyone can see that for themselves, seeing she’s sitting there. I says to myself: ‘I’ve been done; never mind, it’s all one: pretty or ugly, a woman’s just as much use, isn’t she now, Mr. President? And then I see for certain that she’s as thin as a match. I says to myself: ‘There’s not four hundred litres there!’ I know what I’m talking about, being used to dealing in liquids.
“She’s told you the way we arranged it. I even let her keep her chemise and her stockings on, a clear loss to me.
“When it was over, what d’you think? She runs off. I says: ‘Here! Brument, she’s getting away.’
“He replies: ‘Don’t you be afraid, I’ll always get her back again. She’ll have to come home to go to bed. I’m going to reckon the deficit.’
“We measured it. Not four buckets. Ah, ah, ah, ah!”
The prisoner began to laugh, and continued to laugh until a gendarme was obliged to thump him on the back. Quiet again, he adds:
“To cut it short, Brument declares: ‘Nothing doing, it’s not enough.’ I bawl, he bawls. I bawl louder, he stamps, I thump. That would have gone on till doomsday, seeing I was tipsy.
“Then in come the gendarmes. They curse me, and they play us a dirty trick. Sent to prison. I demand damages.”
He sits down.
Brument swears that his fellow criminal’s confession is true in every respect. The jury, overwhelmed, retired to consider their verdict.
They returned an hour later and acquitted the accused with severe strictures bearing on the sanctity of marriage, and setting forth in precise terms the limits set to commercial transactions.
Brument, accompanied by his spouse, made his way towards the conjugal hearth.
Cornu returned to his business.