The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de Maupassant
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him making up his accounts with great difficulty, assisted by Colosse, who was adding figures together with his fingers.
Seating himself: “I would like to drink of your excellent wine,” said he.
When big Colosse had returned with the glasses and the jug brimming over, he asked whether Mademoiselle Louise had come home; then he begged of them to send for her. When she stood facing him, he rose, and, making her a low bow:
“Mademoiselle, will you regard me at this moment as a friend to whom one may say everything? Is it not so? Well, I am charged with a very delicate mission with reference to you. My brother-in-law, Comte Raoul-Olivier-Gontran de Ravenel, is smitten with you — a thing for which I commend him — and he has commissioned me to ask you, in the presence of your family, whether you will consent to become his wife.”
Taken by surprise in this way, she turned toward her father her eyes, which betrayed her confusion. And Père Oriol, scared, looked at his son, his usual counselor, while Colosse looked at Andermatt, who went on, with a certain amount of pomposity:
“You understand, Mademoiselle, that I am only intrusted with this mission on the terms of an immediate reply being given to my brother-in-law. He is quite conscious of the fact that you may not care for him, and in that case he will quit this neighborhood tomorrow, never to come back to it again. I am aware, besides, that you know him sufficiently to say to me, a simple intermediary, ‘I consent,’ or ‘I do not consent.’”
She hung down her head, and, blushing, but resolute, she faltered: “I consent, Monsieur.”
Then she fled so quickly that she knocked herself against the door as she went out.
Thereupon, Andermatt sat down, and, pouring out a glass of wine after the fashion of peasants:
“Now we are going to talk about business,” said he. And, without admitting the possibility even of hesitation, he attacked the question of the dowry, relying on the declarations made to him by the vinedresser three months before. He estimated at three hundred thousand francs, in addition to expectations, the actual fortune of Gontran, and he let it be understood that if a man like the Comte de Ravenel consented to ask for the hand of Oriol’s daughter, a very charming young lady in other respects, it was unquestionable that the girl’s family were bound to show their appreciation of this honor by a sacrifice of money.
Then the countryman, much disconcerted, but flattered — almost disarmed, tried to make a fight for his property. The discussion was a long one. An admission on Andermatt’s part had, however, rendered it easy from the start:
“We don’t ask for ready money nor for bills — nothing but the lands, those which you have already indicated as forming Mademoiselle Louise’s dowry, in addition to some others which I am going to point you.”
The prospect of not having to pay money, that money slowly heaped together, brought into the house franc after franc, sou after sou, that good money, white or yellow, worn by the hands, the purses, the pockets, the tables of cafés, the deep drawers of old presses, that money in whose ring was told the history of so many troubles, cares, fatigues, labors, so sweet to the heart, to the eyes, to the fingers of the peasant, dearer than the cow, than the vine, than the field, than the house, that money harder to part with sometimes than life itself — the prospect of not seeing it go v/ith the girl brought on immediately a great calm, a desire to conciliate, a secret but restrained joy, in the souls of the father and the son.
They continued the discussion, however, in order to keep a few more acres of soil. On the table was spread out a minute plan of Mont Oriol; and they marked one by one with a cross the portions assigned to Louise. It took an hour for Andermatt to secure the last two pieces. Then, in order that there might not be any deceit on one side or the other, they went over all the places on the plan. After that, they identified carefully all the slices designated by crosses, and marked them afresh.
But Andermatt got uneasy, suspecting that the two Oriols were capable of denying, at their next interview, a part of the grants to which they had consented and would seek to take back ends of vinefields, corners useful for his project; and he thought of a practical and certain means of giving definiteness to the agreement.
An idea crossed his mind, made him smile at first, then appeared to him excellent, although singular.
“If you like,” said he, “we’ll write it all out so as not to forget it later on.”
And as they were entering the village, he stopped before a tobacconist’s shop to buy two stamped sheets of paper. He knew that the list of lands drawn up on these leaves with their legal aspect would take an almost inviolable character in the peasant’s eyes, for these leaves would represent the law, always invisible and menacing, vindicated by gendarmes, fines, and imprisonment.
Then he wrote on one sheet and copied on the other:
“In pursuance of the promise of marriage exchanged between Comte Gontran de Ravenel and Mademoiselle Louise Oriol, M. Oriol, Senior, surrenders as a dowry to his daughter the lands designated below— “
And he enumerated them minutely, with the figures attached to them in the register of lands for the district.
Then, having dated and signed the document, he made Père Oriol affix his signature, after the latter had exacted in turn a written statement of the intended husband’s fortune, and he went back to the hotel with the document in his pocket.
Everyone laughed at his narrative and Gontran most of all. Then the Marquis said to his son with a lofty air of dignity: “We shall both go this evening to pay a visit to this family, and I shall myself renew the application previously made by my son-in-law in order that it may be more regular.”
French
XIII
GONTRAN made an admirable fiance, as I courteous as he was assiduous. With the aid of Andermatt’s purse, he made presents to everyone; and he constantly visited the young girl, either at her own house, or that of Madame Honorat. Paul nearly always accompanied him now, in order to have the opportunity of meeting Charlotte, saying to himself, after each visit, that he would see her no more. She had bravely resigned herself to her sister’s marriage, and she referred to it with apparent unconcern, as if it did not cause her the slightest anxiety. Her character alone seemed a little altered, more sedate, less open. While Gontran was talking soft nothings to Louise in a half-whisper in a corner, Bretigny conversed with her in a serious fashion, and allowed himself to be slowly vanquished, allowed this fresh love to inundate his soul like a flowing tide. He knew what was happening to him, and gave himself up to it, thinking: “Bah! when the moment arrives. I will make my escape — that’s all.”
When he left her, he would go up to see Christiane, who now lay from morning till night stretched on a long chair. At the door, he could not help feeling nervous and irritated, prepared beforehand for those light quarrels to which weariness gives birth. All that she said, all that she was thinking of, annoyed him, even ere she had opened her lips. Her appearance of suffering, her resigned attitude, her looks of reproach and of supplication, made words of anger rise to his lips, which he repressed through good-breeding; and, even when by her side, he kept before his mind the constant memory, the fixed image, of the young girl whom he had just quitted.
As Christiane, tormented with seeing so little of him, overwhelmed him with questions as to how he spent his days, he invented stories, to which she listened attentively, seeking to find out whether he was thinking of some other woman. The powerlessness which she felt in herself to keep a hold on this man, the powerlessness to pour into him a little of that love with which she was tortured, the physical powerlessness to fascinate him still, to give herself to him, to win him back by caresses, since she could not regain him by the tender intimacies of love, made her suspect the worst, without knowing on what to fix her fears.
She