The Mother Superior’s Twenty-Five Francs
He really was comic, old Pavilly, with his great spider legs, his little body, his long arms, and his pointed beard, surmounted by a flame of red hair on the top of his skull.
He was a clown, a peasant clown, a born clown, born to play tricks, to raise laughter, to play parts, simple parts, since he was the son of a peasant, and a peasant himself, hardly able to read. Oh, yes, the good God had created him to amuse other people, the poor devils belonging to the countryside, who had no theatres and no feasts; and he amused them with all his might and main. In the café, they stood him drinks to keep him there, and he went on drinking without turning a hair, laughing and joking, playing tricks on everyone without annoying a single soul, while the onlookers rolled with laughter.
He was so comic that, ugly as he was, the girls themselves did not resist him, they were laughing so heartily. He carried them, with quips and jests, behind a wall, into a ditch, into a stable, then he tickled them and squeezed them, keeping up such an amusing patter, that they held their sides as they repulsed him. Then he leaped about, pretending he was going to hang himself, and they writhed, with tears in their eyes; he chose his moment, and tumbled them over so handily that they surrendered all, even those who had defied him, to amuse themselves.
Well, towards the end of June, he undertook to help with the harvest, at Le Hariveau’s, near Rouville. For three whole weeks he delighted the harvesters, men and women, by his pranks, from morning to night. In the daytime, he appeared in the fields, in the middle of the swaths of corn, he made his appearance in an old straw hat that hid his russet topknot, gathering up the yellow corn with his long skinny arms and binding it into sheaves; then stopping to sketch a comic gesture that evoked shouts of laughter down the length of the field from the workers, whose eyes never left him. At night, he glided like a crouching beast through the straw in the barns where the women slept, and his hands prowled about, rousing shouts and creating loud disturbances. They chased him off, using their sabots as weapons, and he fled on all fours, like a fantastic monkey, amid explosions of mirth from the entire room.
On the last day, as the wagon-load of harvesters, adorned with ribbons and bagpipes, shouting and singing and joyously drunk, were going down the wide white road, drawn at the slow pace of six dappled horses, led by a youngster in a smock, with a cockade in his cap, Pavilly, in the middle of sprawling women, was dancing the dance of a drunken satyr, that kept the young rascals of boys open-mouthed on the banksides of the farms, and the peasants lost in wonder at his incredible anatomy.
All at once, as they reached the fence of Le Hariveau’s farm, he made a bound with upflung arms, but as he fell back he unluckily struck against the side of the long cart, went headlong over, fell on to the wheel, and bounced off on to the road.
His comrades flung themselves out. He moved no more, one eye shut, the other open, ghastly with fright, his great limbs stretched out in the dust.
When they touched his right leg, he began to cry out, and when they tried to stand him up, he fell down.
“I’ll be bound he’s broken his leg,” cried a man.
He had indeed a broken leg.
Farmer Le Hariveau had him laid on a table; and a rider hurried to Rouville to find a doctor, who arrived an hour later.
The farmer was a very generous man, and he announced that he would pay for the man to be treated at the hospital.
So the doctor carried Pavilly off in his carriage, and deposited him in a whitewashed dormitory, where his fracture was set.
As soon as he realised that he would not die of it, and that he was going to be cared for, cured, pampered, and nourished, with nothing to do, lying on his back between two sheets, Pavilly was seized with an overwhelming merriment and he began to laugh a silent perpetual laughter that revealed his decaying teeth.
As soon as a sister approached the bed, he grimaced contentedly at her, winking his eye, twisting his mouth, and moving his nose, which was very long and which he could move as he pleased. His neighbours in the dormitory, very ill as they were, could not refrain from laughing, and the sister in charge often came to his bedside to enjoy a quarter of an hour’s amusement. He invented the most comic tricks for her, and quite new jests, and as he had in him the instinct for every sort of barnstorming, he turned devout to please her and spoke of the good God with the grave air of a man that knows that there are moments to which jests are inappropriate.
One day, he bethought himself of singing songs to her. She was delighted and came oftener; then, to turn his voice to good account, she brought him a book of hymns. Then he might be seen sitting up in his bed, for he was beginning to move himself about again, intoning in a falsetto voice the praises of the Eternal Father, of Mary, and of the Holy Ghost, while the stout good sister, standing at his feet, beat time with one finger as she gave him the key. As soon as he could walk, the Mother Superior offered to keep him a little longer to sing the offices in the chapel, and serve at Mass, performing in this way the functions of a sacristan. He accepted. And for a whole month he could be seen, clad in a white surplice, limping slightly, intoning responses and psalms with such graceful bendings of the head that the number of the faithful grew, and people deserted the parish church to attend Vespers at the hospital.
But as everything comes to an end in this world, it became necessary to dismiss him when he was quite cured. The Mother Superior, by way of thanking him, made him a present of twenty-five francs.
As soon as Pavilly found himself in the street with this money in his pocket, he began to think what he should do. Return to the village? Certainly not before he had a drink, which had not happened to him for a long time, and he entered a café. He did not come to town more than once or twice a year, and he cherished, of one of those visits in particular, the confused and intoxicating remembrance of a debauch.
So he ordered a glass of cognac, which he swallowed at a gulp to lubricate his throat, then he poured down another to enjoy the taste of it.
As soon as the brandy, strong and fiery, had touched his palate and his tongue, reawakening the more sharply because of his long abstinence the well-loved and desired sensation of alcohol, caressing, stinging, spicing and burning his mouth, he realised that he would drink the whole bottle, and he asked at once what it would cost, in order to save money on the separate glasses. They charged it to him at three francs, which he paid, then he set himself to get drunk with a contented mind.
He set about it with a certain method, however, being desirous of retaining enough sensibility to enjoy other pleasures. So as soon as he felt himself on the point of seeing the chimneypieces nod, he got up and went away, with faltering steps, his bottle under his arm, in search of a brothel.
He found it, not without difficulty, after having inquired of a wagoner who did not know it, a postman who directed him wrongly, a baker who began to curse and treated him as a filthy fellow, and, at last, a soldier who obligingly conducted him there, impressing on him to choose the Queen.
Pavilly, although it was hardly noon, walked into this house of delights, where he was received by a servant who tried to turn him out. But he made her laugh by grimacing at her, showed her three francs, the ordinary price for the special entertainments of the place, and followed her with some difficulty up a very dark staircase which led to the first floor.
When he found himself in a room, he called for the Queen, and awaited her, swallowing another drink from the bottle itself.
The door opened, a girl appeared. She was tall, plump, red-faced, enormous. With an unerring glance, the glance of a connoisseur, she took the measure of the drunkard sprawling on a chair, and said to him:
“Aren’t you ashamed to come at this time?”
He stammered:
“Why, princess?”
“Disturbing a lady before she’s even had her meal.”
He tried to laugh.
“There’s no time to a brave man.”
“There’s no time for getting tipsy, neither, you old mug.”
Pavilly lost his temper.
“I’m not a mug, to begin with, and I’m not tipsy neither.”
“Not tipsy.”
“No, I’m not tipsy.”
“Not tipsy, you couldn’t stand on your feet even.”
She regarded him with the savage anger of a woman whose companions are all dining.
He got himself up.
“Look at me, I’ll dance a polka, I will.”
And to prove his stability, he climbed on a chair, made a pirouette, and jumped on the bed, where his great muddy shoes plastered two frightful stains.
“Oh, you dirty beast,” cried the girl.
Rushing at him, she drove her fist in his stomach, giving him such a blow that Pavilly lost his balance, seesawed over the foot of the couch, turned a complete caper and fell back on the chest of drawers, dragging with him basin and water-jug; then he rolled on the ground, uttering wild shouts.
The noise was so violent and his cries so piercing that the whole house came running, Monsieur, Madame, the servants, and all the members of the establishment.
Monsieur tried at first to pick the man up, but as soon as he had got him on his feet, the peasant lost his balance again, then began yelling that he had broken his leg, the other leg, the good one, the good one!
It was true. They ran to fetch a doctor. It was the very doctor who had attended Pavilly at Farmer Le Hariveau’s.
“What, is it you again?” said he. “What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s the other leg that’s got broken, too, doctor.”
“How did it happen, my man?”
“A wench.”
Everyone was listening. The girls in their loose wrappers, their mouths still greasy from their interrupted meal, Madame furious, Monsieur uneasy.
“This is going to look bad,” said the doctor. “You know that the town council regards you with small favour. You’ll have to contrive to keep this business from getting about.
“What’s to be done?” asked Monsieur.
“Well, the best thing to do would be to send this man to the hospital, which he’s just left, by the way, and pay for his treatment.”
Monsieur answered:
“I’d much rather pay than have a scandal.”
So, half an hour later, Pavilly returned, drunk and moaning, to the dormitory he had left an hour earlier.
The Mother Superior flung up her arms, grieved because she was very fond of him, and smiling because she was not displeased to see him again.
“Well, my good man, what’s the matter with you?”
“The other leg broken, sister dear.”
“Oh, so you’ve been climbing on loads of straw again, have you, you old mountebank?”
And Pavilly, confused and shy, stammered:
“No … no … Not this time … not this time. … No … no. … It’s not my fault … not my fault. … It was a straw mattress did it.”
She could not get any other explanation of the affair, and she never knew that her twenty-five francs was responsible for this relapse.