"And there ought to be no time for getting drunk, either, old guzzler."
At this he got angry:
"I am not a guzzler, and I am not drunk."
"Not drunk?"
"No, I am not."
"Not drunk? Why, you could not even stand straight;" and she looked at him angrily, thinking that all this time her companions were having their dinner.
"I ... I could dance a polka," he replied, getting up, and to prove his stability he got onto the chair, made a pirouette and jumped onto the bed, where his thick, muddy shoes made two great marks.
"Oh! you dirty brute!" the girl cried, and rushing at him, she struck him a blow with her fist in the stomach, such a blow that Pavilly lost his balance, fell and struck the foot of the bed, and making a complete somersault tumbled onto the night-table, dragging the jug and basin with him, and then rolled onto the ground, roaring.
The noise was so loud, and his cries so piercing, that everybody in the house rushed in, the master, mistress, servant, and the staff.
The master picked him up, but as soon as he had put him on his legs, the peasant lost his balance again, and then began to call out that his leg was broken, the other leg, the sound one.
It was true, so they sent for a doctor, and it happened to be the same one who had attended him at Le Harivan"s.
"What! Is it you again?" he said.
"Yes, M"sieu."
"What is the matter with you?"
"Somebody has broken my other leg for me, M"sieu."
"Who did it, old fellow?"
"Why, a female."
Everybody was listening. The girls in their dressing gowns, with their mouths still greasy from their interrupted dinner, the mistress of the house furious, the master nervous.
"This will be a bad job," the doctor said. "You know that the munic.i.p.al authorities look upon you with very unfavorable eyes, so we must try and hush the matter up."
"How can it be managed?" the master of the place asked.
"Why the best way would be to send him back to the hospital, from which he has just come out, and to pay for him there."
"I would rather do that," the master of the house replied, "than have any fuss made about the matter."
So half an hour later, Pavilly returned drunk and groaning to the ward which he had left an hour before. The Superior lifted up her hands in sorrow, for she liked him, and with a smile, for she was glad to have him back.
"Well, my good fellow, what is the matter with you now?"
"The other leg is broken, Madame."
"So you have been getting onto another load of straw, you old joker?"
And Pavilly, in great confusion, but still sly, said, with hesitation:
"No... no.... Not this time, no ... not this time. No ... no.... It was not my fault, not my fault ...A mattress caused this."
She could get no other explanation out of him, and never knew that his relapse was due to her twenty-five francs.
THE VENUS OF BRANIZA
Some years ago there lived in Braniza, a celebrated Talmadist, who was renowned no less on account of his beautiful wife, than of his wisdom, his learning, and his fear of G.o.d. The Venus of Braniza deserved that name thoroughly, for she deserved it for herself, on account of her singular beauty, and even more as the wife of a man who was deeply versed in the Talmud; for the wives of the Jewish philosophers are, as a rule, ugly, or even possess some bodily defect.
The Talmud explains this, in the following manner. It is well known that marriages are made in heaven, and at the birth of a boy a divine voice calls out the name of his future wife, and _vice versa_. But just as a good father tries to get rid of his good wares out of doors, and only uses the damaged stuff at home for his children, so G.o.d bestows those women whom other men would not care to have, on the Talmudists.
Well, G.o.d made an exception in the case of our Talmudist, and had bestowed a Venus on him, perhaps only in order to confirm the rule by means of this exception, and to make it appear less hard. His wife was a woman who would have done honor to any king"s throne, or to the pedestal in any sculpture gallery. Tall, and with a wonderful, voluptuous figure, she carried a strikingly beautiful head, surmounted by thick, black plaits, on her proud shoulders, while two large, dark eyes languished and glowed beneath her long lashes, and her beautiful hands looked as if they were carved out of ivory.
This beautiful woman, who seemed to have been designed by nature to rule, to see slaves at her feet, to provide occupation for the painter"s brush, the sculptor"s chisel and the poet"s pen, lived the life of a rare and beautiful flower, which is shut up in a hot house, for she sat the whole day long wrapped up in her costly fur jacket and looked down dreamily into the street.
She had no children; her husband, the philosopher, studied, and prayed, and studied again from early morning until late at night; his mistress was _the Veiled Beauty_, as the Talmudists call the Kabbalah. She paid no attention to her house, for she was rich and everything went of its own accord, just like a clock, which has only to be wound up once a week; n.o.body came to see her, and she never went out of the house; she sat and dreamed and brooded and--yawned.
One day when a terrible storm of thunder and lightning had spent all its fury over the town, and all windows had been opened in order to let the Messiah in, the Jewish Venus was sitting as usual in her comfortable easy chair, shivering in spite of her fur jacket, and was thinking, when suddenly she fixed her glowing eyes on the man who was sitting before the Talmud, swaying his body backwards and forwards, and said suddenly:
"Just tell me, when will Messias, the Son of David, come?"
"He will come," the philosopher replied, "when all the Jews have become either altogether virtuous or altogether vicious, says the Talmud."
"Do you believe that all the Jews will ever become virtuous," the Venus continued.
"How am I to believe that!"
"So Messias will come, when all the Jews have become vicious?"
The philosopher shrugged his shoulders and lost himself again in the labyrinth of the Talmud, out of which, so it is said, only one man returned unscathed, and the beautiful woman at the window again looked dreamily out onto the heavy rain, while her white fingers played unconsciously with the dark fur of her splendid jacket.
One day the Jewish philosopher had gone to a neighboring town, where an important question of ritual was to be decided. Thanks to his learning, the question was settled sooner than he had expected, and instead of returning the next morning, as he had intended, he came back the same evening with a friend, who was no less learned than himself. He got out of the carriage at his friend"s house, and went home on foot, and was not a little surprised when he saw his windows brilliantly illuminated, and found an officer"s servant comfortably smoking his pipe in front of his house.
"What are you doing here?" he asked in a friendly manner, but with some curiosity, nevertheless.
"I am looking out, in case the husband of the beautiful Jewess should come home unexpectedly."
"Indeed? Well, mind and keep a good look out."