“Yes,” said Mulot, “he is proud. It embarrasses him to speak to anyone who knows what his father does. Yet it isn’t because he looks down on me.… Well, when it comes to your children, you can’t always do what you want with them. At least the others give me only pleasure.”
Mulot lived with them all in an old mill, below the pond which, formerly, fed the waterfall. The paddle-wheel that could still be seen at the side of the house, had been out of use for a long time. The house was clean and neat. A young woman kept house. Her age would not let you take her for the mother of Mulot’s children. There was a real Madame Mulot some place all right; nobody knew where; how long since she had left.… After many proceedings and much trouble, Mulot had just obtained the divorce.
“I never had any luck,” he said to me. “But the worst that ever happened to me I owe to that woman. Listen, Monsieur Gide, she knew how much I loved my children. When she left, she took them all with her. On purpose to hurt me; for she cared practically nothing for them. She lived several months not far from here with a country bumpkin who had just come into money and could offer the little ones more comfort than they could find here. I was going to appeal to the law to get them back. And then, one evening, on returning from work, there were the five kiddies waiting for me at home. I could only think that the other one had had enough of them.… They had come back on foot, the oldest boy carrying the baby girl. They said they had been sent away. And in such a state, Monsieur Gide! They had almost nothing on their bodies, but their heads full of lice, and thin, and filthy!.. I could have cried for sorrow as much as for joy at seeing them.… Look! You see those roots? I have a notion it’s horse-tail.”
And he handed me a matted wad he had just taken out of the drain. Then he went on:
“Monsieur knows I am going to get married again?”
“No, Mulot, nobody told me anything about it.”
“I was waiting to get the divorce. Oh! it is someone that the children know very well. She is like a big sister to them; and gentle and neat.…”
“Well, Mulot, I am not mayor for nothing. Whenever you wish.”
Some time after, I assumed my sash of honor for the first time for the purpose of uniting the new couple. The ceremony took place exactly on the anniversary date of my own marriage; in addition to my attachment for Mulot, that did not fail to move me, and I was preparing to make a discreet allusion to it, but Robidet said:
“Above all, Monsieur must not make a speech. They are people who don’t deserve it. You must marry them quickly without saying anything to them.”
The commune is so small that it did not have, properly speaking, a city-hall. The general living-room of one of the farms, at the edge of the road, near the little church, was used instead. On occasion, the farmer served as restaurant keeper, and each meeting of the council was followed by a copious repast from which everybody went out flushed and not too steady on his legs. The farmer’s wife was a wonderful cook. Paul Fort and Ghéon whom I invited to one of those reunions, at a time when they were my guests at La Roque1, doubtless remember a certain creamed veal.… They remember, too, the passing of little glasses, filled turn about with rum, fine champagne and apple-brandy, preceded moreover by libations of thick, dark cider, more heady than the most generous of wines. And suddenly one of the members of the council got up, rolled on the floor, and writhed in the atrocious pains of an ulcerated stomach.…
I return to Mulot. Not being able to content myself with seeing him kept down to such inferior tasks, I had gotten it into my head to appoint him keeper, replacing Cherhomme, a perfect rogue who fleeced me, trading on his hunting and that of the poachers with whom he stood in well. I opened my heart to Robidet.
“You have to be sworn in to be keeper. Mulot can not, due to his police record.”
“Mulot has been sentenced?”
“Monsieur did not know it?”
“But sentenced for what?”
“Monsieur has only to ask him if he wishes to know.”
The same evening I went to find Mulot who was working near the lime kiln. He was at the bottom of a big hole that he was digging still deeper with a pick and shovel. I drew near the edge and leaned over like Hamlet in his dialogue with the grave-digger.
“Ah, they told you,” he said, somewhat embarrassed at first, raising his faithful, dog-like eyes to me.
“No, Mulot, I don’t know anything. Only one thing, that you were sentenced to prison. But why?…”
He seemed to hesitate; shrugged his shoulders, then:
“You want me to tell you the story, sir?”
(Of all the people in my commune, Mulot was the only one who did not speak to me in the third person.)
“I came to listen to you,” I said to him.
But he didn’t begin his story at once. First he said:
“Oh! I was cut out for better things.… I am educated, Monsieur Gide.”
And all this in such a tone of voice that the tears came to my eyes.
“What do you expect! That filthy affair has always prevented me from going higher. I hoped to become factor in the Orne where I lived before coming here. Yes, factor. That suited me fine. The property was considerable. To make it pay, they needed a manager. I presented myself at the chateau. It was a lady who lived in it. You perhaps know.… (And he told me a name that I heard for the first time.) Naturally I showed her my papers; I had very good references from my employers. Madame X told me that I pleased her. The affair was practically concluded and I had only to come back. If you only knew how happy I was! When I arrived on the appointed day, Madame could not receive me. She had looked me up, of course!.. No, Monsieur, you see, with a police record, you can expect nothing. Since then, I haven’t tried any more. I came here. Now you see my work. Oh! I don’t tell you all this to complain. But … I would like something else for my children.”
He began to dig again, dropping his head and wanting also, it seemed to me, to hide his tears.
“So, Mulot, you don’t want to tell me why you were sentenced?”
“Oh! Monsieur Gide, don’t think that. It’s true I don’t like to talk about it. But I can very well tell you the story. I was still young. I was returning from my military service. My parents didn’t have much money and I had to earn my living. I accepted work with an older brother, as digger for the Western Railroad Company. They took us on with several others to raise an embankment that was collapsing on the Paris-Havre line. It was not exactly an embankment but a steep incline with grass and bushes.… All that went on during the hunting season. You could hear the gun-shots. The hunters couldn’t be far away. But the land along the road belongs to the Company. You know, sir, there are wire fences all along to keep people out. So when we saw a hare coming, we said to each other that he knew that, too, and that he was coming to protect himself. But the hunters who were chasing him brought him down all the same. And then they passed over the wires to come pick him up. Naturally, we wouldn’t have said anything. But on the opposite bank there were two policemen who ran after them to make out their report. What do you expect? They were doing their duty, those men.… The hunters began to get mad and, as they were already far away from the bank with their hare, they defied the police to prove that the hare had been shot on the track. Then the police, who knew we had seen everything, had me, my brother, and also three others summoned as witnesses. The affair became complicated because those gentlemen had jeered at the police and refused to pay the fine. That made quite a case which could have turned out badly for them. But out of those four hunters, there was one who was a deputy’s son, another, nephew of one of the members of the Company. So the witnesses got scared. Perhaps they got something else too, to keep quiet, something that I refused.… I can’t prove anything.… All that I know is that, when they were summoned, they all backed down. They said they hadn’t seen anything. But I couldn’t say I hadn’t seen anything when the hare came to die at my feet.”