Whenever the gentry of Fecamp gave a dinner they always had at least one of Madame Toine"s chickens to be in the fashion.
But she was born ill-tempered, and she went through life in a mood of perpetual discontent. Annoyed at everyone, she seemed to be particularly annoyed at her husband. She disliked his gaiety, his reputation, his rude health, his embonpoint. She treated him as a good-for-nothing creature because he earned his money without working, and as a glutton because he ate and drank as much as ten ordinary men; and not a day went by without her declaring spitefully:
"You"d be better in the stye along with the pigs! You"re so fat it makes me sick to look at you!"
And she would shout in his face:
"Wait! Wait a bit! We"ll see! You"ll burst one of these fine days like a sack of corn-you old bloat, you!"
Toine would laugh heartily, patting his corpulent person, and replying:
"Well, well, old hen, why don"t you fatten up your chickens like that? just try!"
And, rolling his sleeves back from his enormous arm, he said:
"That would make a fine wing now, wouldn"t it?"
And the customers, doubled up with laughter, would thump the table with their fists and stamp their feet on the floor.
The old woman, mad with rage, would repeat:
"Wait a bit! Wait a bit! You"ll see what"ll happen. He"ll burst like a sack of grain!"
And off she would go, amid the jeers and laughter of the drinkers.
Toine was, in fact, an astonishing sight, he was so fat, so heavy, so red. He was one of those enormous beings with whom Death seems to be amusing himself-playing perfidious tricks and pranks, investing with an irresistibly comic air his slow work of destruction. Instead of manifesting his approach, as with others, in white hairs, in emaciation, in wrinkles, in the gradual collapse which makes the onlookers say: "Gad! how he has changed!" he took a malicious pleasure in fattening Toine, in making him monstrous and absurd, in tingeing his face with a deep crimson, in giving him the appearance of superhuman health, and the changes he inflicts on all were in the case of Toine laughable, comic, amusing, instead of being painful and distressing to witness.
"Wait a bit! Wait a bit!" said his wife. "You"ll see."
At last Toine had an apoplectic fit, and was paralyzed in consequence. The giant was put to bed in the little room behind the part.i.tion of the drinking-room that he might hear what was said and talk to his friends, for his head was quite clear although his enormous body was helplessly inert. It was hoped at first that his immense legs would regain some degree of power; but this hope soon disappeared, and Toine spent his days and nights in the bed, which was only made up once a week, with the help of four neighbors who lifted the innkeeper, each holding a limb, while his mattress was turned.
He kept his spirits, nevertheless; but his gaiety was of a different kind-more timid, more humble; and he lived in a constant, childlike fear of his wife, who grumbled from morning till night:
"Look at him there-the great glutton! the good-for-nothing creature, the old boozer! Serve him right, serve him right!"
He no longer answered her. He contented himself with winking behind the old woman"s back, and turning over on his other side-the only movement of which he was now capable. He called this exercise a "tack to the north" or a "tack to the south."
His great distraction nowadays was to listen to the conversations in the bar, and to shout through the wall when he recognized a friend"s voice:
"Hallo, my son-in-law! Is that you, Celestin?"
And Celestin Maloisel answered:
"Yes, it"s me, Toine. Are you getting about again yet, old fellow?"
"Not exactly getting about," answered Toine. "But I haven"t grown thin; my carca.s.s is still good."
Soon he got into the way of asking his intimates into his room to keep him company, although it grieved him to see that they had to drink without him. It pained him to the quick that his customers should be drinking without him.
"That"s what hurts worst of all," he would say: "that I cannot drink my Extra-Special any more. I can put up with everything else, but going without drink is the very deuce."
Then his wife"s screech-owl face would appear at the window, and she would break in with the words:
"Look at him! Look at him now, the good-for-nothing wretch! I"ve got to feed him and wash him just as if he were a pig!"
And when the old woman had gone, a c.o.c.k with red feathers would sometimes fly up to the window sill and looking into the room with his round inquisitive eye, would begin to crow loudly. Occasionally, too, a few hens would flutter as far as the foot of the bed, seeking crumbs on the floor. Toine"s friends soon deserted the drinking room to come and chat every afternoon beside the invalid"s bed. Helpless though he was, the jovial Toine still provided them with amus.e.m.e.nt. He would have made the devil himself laugh. Three men were regular in their attendance at the bedside: Celestin Maloisel, a tall, thin fellow, somewhat gnarled, like the trunk of an apple-tree; Prosper Horslaville, a withered little man with a ferret nose, cunning as a fox; and Cesaire Paumelle, who never spoke, but who enjoyed Toine"s society all the same.
They brought a plank from the yard, propped it upon the edge of the bed, and played dominoes from two till six.
But Toine"s wife soon became insufferable. She could not endure that her fat, lazy husband should amuse himself at games while lying in his bed; and whenever she caught him beginning a game she pounced furiously on the dominoes, overturned the plank, and carried all away into the bar, declaring that it was quite enough to have to feed that fat, lazy pig without seeing him amusing himself, as if to annoy poor people who had to work hard all day long.
Celestin Maloisel and Cesaire Paumelle bent their heads to the storm, but Prosper Horslaville egged on the old woman, and was only amused at her wrath.
One day, when she was more angry than usual, he said:
"Do you know what I"d do if I were you?"
She fixed her owl"s eyes on him, and waited for his next words.
Prosper went on:
"Your man is as hot as an oven, and he never leaves his bed-well, I"d make him hatch some eggs."
She was struck dumb at the suggestion, thinking that Prosper could not possibly be in earnest. But he continued:
"I"d put five under one arm, and five under the other, the same day that I set a hen. They"d all come out at the same time; then I"d take your husband"s chickens to the hen to bring up with her own. You"d rear a fine lot that way."
"Could it be done?" asked the astonished old woman.
"Could it be done?" echoed the man. "Why not? Since eggs can be hatched in a warm box why shouldn"t they be hatched in a warm bed?"
She was struck by this reasoning, and went away soothed and reflective.
A week later she entered Toine"s room with her ap.r.o.n full of eggs, and said:
"I"ve just put the yellow hen on ten eggs. Here are ten for you; try not to break them."
"What do you want?" asked the amazed Toine.
"I want you to hatch them, you lazy creature!" she answered.
He laughed at first; then, finding she was serious, he got angry, and refused absolutely to have the eggs put under his great arms, that the warmth of his body might hatch them.
But the old woman declared wrathfully:
"You"ll get no dinner as long as you won"t have them. You"ll see what"ll happen."
Tome was uneasy, but answered nothing.