Two
When Haudouin had set up his son, Ferdinand, in Saint-Margelon, he urged him to look out for a wife, hoping that he would find one with city manners, ambition and a dowry. Ferdinand was anything but handsome. With his harsh profile, bright pink skin and long, jutting chin he aroused the disgust of his brother, Sergeant Alphonse, who referred to him as “the weasel.” But the youthful veterinary surgeon possessed more solid merits. He was hardworking, well-conducted, economical and a good Catholic. He came out exceedingly well at funerals, exciting general admiration for his irreproachable demeanour. When he marched behind the procession with a pound of wax candle in his hand, more than one mother gazed fondly after him. He was, moreover, good at his job. The first time Haudouin saw him, arms bare and blood-stained, assist a calf into the world after a difficult labour, he was moved almost to tears.
“Now I have seen it for myself my mind is at rest,” he said, “and I am ready to depart.”
To these many virtues Ferdinand added that of a shrewd business sense; he quickly built up a large practice. Those were the days when it was not uncommon for virtue to be rewarded. Ferdinand was singled out as a prospective son-in-law by the parents of an only child. The Brochards, a retired man of business and his wife, had been looking round for a good match for their daughter. Helene. Mme. Brochard was at first unenthusiastic, having flattered herself that her daughter might marry an advocate, a notary or even a cavalry officer, for her education had been conducted by the Demoiselles Hermeline, who kept an admirable and renowned establishment for young ladies. The young vet, however, contrived to let it be known that his studies had been as costly as those of any other professional man, in which he was stoutly upheld by M. Bro-chard. Helene was a good-looking grrl, robust, earnest and warm-hearted, her young body too eager for her to hesitate long over her parents’ choice. During the early years of their marriage the pair had three children, Frederic, Antoine and Lucienne. Ferdinand considered this sufficient, and saw to it that there were no more.
Methodical in all things, Ferdinand extended his connection while at the same time building up his reputation as a solid citizen. He gave fifteen francs a year to the orphanage and fifteen to the hospital. His household was conducted in a strictly orderly manner, and with no more open-handedness than was decent. Throughout the year he wore a morning-coat and a black hat which was a compromise between a top-hat and a bowler. He became a man of substance in the town, and was elected without fuss to the Municipal Council. He was not without political ambitions. By natural inclination he was a monarchist, and he continued to espouse this cause for two years after the war. But the state of opposition did not suit him, and he wanted in any case to profit by the influence his father had acquired in the constituency. With profound inward disquiet he allowed his attendances at Mass to grow less frequent, and by degrees became accepted as a Republican of extreme moderation. After becoming a municipal councillor he carried the process a stage farther by linking his political fortunes with those of Valtier, the Deputy for Saint-Margelon and the surrounding district. Together they became supporters of Gambetta: but when later a large factory was established in the town, holding that the interests of the population had changed but were still not unworthy of their solicitude, they both became radicals. In doing so Ferdinand incurred the execration of all good church families, and his name was spoken with abhorrence by the cure of Saint-Margelon. He never real!}7 got over it, and when he attended electoral meetings or banquets at which the perfidy of priests was denounced, although he applauded bravely his heart shrank pitiably within him. However, he contrived to adjust matters in his mind so that his political activities were endorsed by his conscience. It was, so he reasoned, the part of a man of wisdom and enlightenment such as himself to keep abreast of the times; and in order to allay in some degree the remorse that tormented him, he told himself that regardless of his private sympathies he had followed the path of duty. He was, moreover, rewarded with valuable municipal appointments and the palmes academiques.
Old Jules Haudouin came to feel an admiring deference for this son who did him so much credit, and whose Catholic ardour had at one stage disquieted him. No member of the Maloret family could claim to have scaled such heights, not even the two natural sons of Tine Maloret, a shrewd and scandalous old body who, after living for pleasure until she was fifty and more, had managed to retire on the leavings of a former process-server. Whenever he encountered the elder Maloret, Haudouin would say to him in a tone of mock sympathy:
“I was so sorry to hear that your nephew has again failed to get a job with the Post Office. Your sister had so much trouble bringing those boys up, the wretched life she led…”
He would speak the last words with an air of such innocent commiseration that Maloret would have liked to black his eye. And then he would go on to talk about Ferdinand:
“He now has a most excellent position. I must say, he’s a boy who has turned out remarkably well. . ”
Haudouin was, however, less inclined to discuss his other two sons. It is true that there was no particular reason why he should talk about them, since Alphonse and Honore were both in Claquebue; but the fact is that he did not get on with either of them. When he found occasion to reprove Alphonse, the sergeant was apt to reply in an unseemly fashion that he had not had his skin punctured in battle in order to be told off like a schoolboy. The old man considered that the stiff leg had nothing to do with his justified reprimands. It was, no doubt, a glorious wound, and well-deserving of mention in a speech at a political banquet; but it did not excuse Alphonse’s laziness or his fondness for the bottle.
As for Honore, his father reviled him at least once a week, and never without loud-voiced altercation. Yet Honore was not lazy or sulky or rebellious: on the contrary, he was a good son, just as he was a good husband and father. The fact was that his very presence in Claque-bue represented a standing threat to the interests of the family, and for the simple reason that calmly, and as though without thinking, he disregarded all the delicate touches, the courtesies, the smooth, unconsidered trifles by means of which his father had built up his influence in the village. He was capable, for example, on the very morning of an election of referring to one of his father’s principal supporters as a dirty dog, simply because he was a dirty dog. Or again, being asked in the family circle to give his views upon some project, he had been known to call it dishonest, when in reason and decency he might have applauded its artfulness, family decisions being always respectable.
“I insist,” said Haudouin, “upon your being civil to Rousselier. He’s a Republican and one of us.”
“And a scoundrel into the bargain.”
“Scoundrel or not, he has a vote.”
Other arguments failing, Haudouin was wont to accuse his daughter-in-law of having turned his son against him. He had never forgiven Adelaide for having entered the family penniless, and moreover, thin, bony woman that she was, for lacking the full bosom and wide posterior which do honour to a family. When the dispute reached this point the paternal malediction was never far behind, and Honore would swear that he would leave the house to-morrow. He would have done so, what was more, if the old man had not made the first move towards reconciliation, being terrified by the vision of Honore and Adelaide toiling across the countryside between the shafts of an old-clothes barrow, driving their three or four children in front of them. During her lifetime Mme. Haudouin exer-