The Wolf-Leader

He hid so many bottles in the lining of his waistcoat, and once on the table, he emptied them so rapidly, that little by little his head sank lower and lower on to his chest, and it was evidently high time to put an end to the bout, if he was to be saved from falling under the table.

Thibault decided to profit by this condition of things, and to declare his love to the Bailiff’s wife without delay, judging it a good opportunity to speak while the husband was heavy with drink; he therefore expressed a wish to retire for the night. Whereupon they rose from table, and Perrine was called and bidden to show the guest to his room. As he followed her along the corridor, he made enquiries of her concerning the different rooms.

Number one was Maître Magloire’s, number two that of his wife, and number three was his. The Bailiff’s room, and his wife’s, communicated with one another by an inner door; Thibault’s room had access to the corridor only.

He also noticed that Madame Suzanne was in her husband’s room; no doubt some pious sense of conjugal duty had taken her there. The good man was in a condition approaching to that of Noah when his sons took occasion to insult him, and Madame Suzanne’s assistance would seem to have been needed to get him into his room.

Thibault left his own room on tiptoe, carefully shut his door behind him, listened for a moment at the door of Madame Suzanne’s room, heard no sound within, felt for the key, found it in the lock, paused a second, and then turned it.

The door opened; the room was in total darkness. But having for so long consorted with wolves, Thibault had acquired some of their characteristics, and, among others, that of being able to see in the dark.

He cast a rapid glance round the room; to the right was the fireplace; facing it a couch with a large mirror above it; behind him, on the side of the fire-place, a large bed, hung with figured silk; in front of him, near the couch, a dressing-table covered with a profusion of lace, and, last of all, two large draped windows. He hid himself behind the curtains of one of these, instinctively choosing the window that was farthest removed from the husband’s room. After waiting a quarter of an hour, during which time Thibault’s heart beat so violently that the sound of it, fatal omen! reminded him of the click-clack of the mill-wheel at Croyolles, Madame Suzanne entered the room.

Thibault’s original plan had been to leave his hiding place as soon as Madame Suzanne came in and the door was safely shut behind her, and there and then to make avowal of his love. But on consideration, fearing that in her surprise, and before she recognised who it was, she might not be able to suppress a cry which would betray them, he decided that it would be better to wait until Monsieur Magloire was asleep beyond all power of being awakened.

Perhaps, also, this procrastination may have been partly due to that feeling which all men have, however resolute of purpose they may be, of wishing to put off the critical moment, when on this moment depend such chances as hung on the one which was to decide for or against the happiness of the shoe-maker. For Thibault, by dint of telling himself that he was madly in love with Madame Magloire, had ended by believing that he really was so, and, in spite of being under the protection of the black wolf, he experienced all the timidity of the genuine lover. So he kept himself concealed behind the curtains.

The Bailiff’s wife, however, had taken up her position before the mirror of her Pompadour table, and was decking herself out as if she were going to a festival or preparing to make one of a procession.

She tried on ten veils before making choice of one.

She arranged the folds of her dress.

She fastened a triple row of pearls round her neck.

Then she loaded her arms with all the bracelets she possessed.

Finally she dressed her hair with the minutest care.

Thibault was lost in conjectures as to the meaning of all this coquetry, when all of a sudden a dry, grating noise, as if some hard body coming in contact with a pane of glass, made him start. Madame Suzanne started too, and immediately put out the lights. The shoe-maker then heard her step softly to the window, and cautiously open it; whereupon there followed some whisperings, of which Thibault could not catch the words, but, by drawing the curtain a little aside, he was able to distinguish in the darkness the figure of a man of gigantic stature, who appeared to be climbing through the window.

Thibault instantly recalled his adventure with the unknown combatant, whose mantle he had clung to, and whom he had so triumphantly disposed of by hitting him on the forehead with a stone. As far as he could make out, this would be the same window from which the giant had descended when he made use of Thibault’s two shoulders as a ladder. The surmise of identity was, undoubtedly, founded on a logical conclusion. As a man was now climbing in at the window, a man could very well have been climbing down from it; and if a man did climb down from it – unless, of course, Madam Magloire’s acquaintances were many in number, and she had a great variety of tastes – if a man did climb down from it, in all probability, it was the same man who, at this moment was climbing in.

But whoever this nocturnal visitor might be, Madame Suzanne held out her hand to the intruder, who took a heavy jump into the room, which made the floor tremble and set all the furniture shaking. The apparition was certainly not a spirit, but a corporeal body, and moreover one that came under the category of heavy bodies.

“Oh! take care, my lord,” Madame Suzanne’s voice was heard to say, “heavily as my husband sleeps, if you make such a noise as that, you will wake him up.”

“By the devil and his horns! my fair friend,” replied the stranger. “I cannot alight like a bird!” and Thibault recognised the voice as that of the man with whom he had had the altercation a night or two before. “Although while I was waiting under your window for the happy moment, my heart was so sick with longing that I felt as if wings must grow ere long, to bear me up into this dear wished-for little room.”

“And I too, my lord,” replied Madame Magloire with a simper, “I too was troubled to leave you outside to freeze in the cold wind, but the guest who was with us this evening only left us half an hour ago.”

“And what have you been doing, my dear one, during this last half hour?”

“I was obliged to help Monsieur Magloire, my lord, and to make sure that he would not come and interrupt us.”

“You were right as you always are, my heart’s love.”

“My lord is too kind,” replied Suzanne – or, more correctly, tried to reply, for her last words were interrupted as if by some foreign body being placed upon her lips, which prevented her from finishing the sentence; and at the same moment, Thibault heard a sound which was remarkably like that of a kiss. The wretched man was beginning to understand the extent of the disappointment of which he was again the victim. His reflections were interrupted by the voice of the new-comer, who coughed two or three times.

“Suppose we shut the window, my love,” said the voice, after this preliminary coughing.

“Oh! my lord, forgive me,” said Madame Magloire, “it ought to have been closed before.” And so saying she went to the window, which she first shut close, and then closed even more hermetically by drawing the curtains across it. The stranger meanwhile, who made himself thoroughly at home, had drawn an easy chair up to the fire, and sat with his legs stretched out, warming his feet in the most luxurious fashion. Reflecting no doubt, that for a man half frozen, the most immediate necessity is to thaw himself, Madame Suzanne seemed to find no cause of offence in this behaviour on the part of her aristocratic lover, but came up to his chair and leant her pretty arms over the back in the most fascinating posture. Thibault had a good view of the group from behind, well thrown up by the light of the fire, and he was overcome with inward rage. The stranger appeared for a while to have no thought beyond that of warming himself; but at last the fire having performed its appointed task, he asked:

“And this stranger, this guest of yours, who was he?”

“Ah! my lord!” answered Madame Magloire, “you already know him I think only too well.”

“What!” said the favoured lover, “do you mean to say it was that drunken lout of the other night, again?”

“The very same, my lord.”

“Well, all I can say is, – if ever I get him into my grip again!..”

“My lord,” responded Suzanne, in a voice as soft as music, “you must not harbour evil designs against your enemies; on the contrary, you must forgive them as we are taught to do by our Holy Religion.”

“There is also another religion which teaches that, my dearest love, one of which you are the all-supreme goddess, and I but a humble neophyte… And I am wrong in wishing evil to the scoundrel, for it was owing to the treacherous and cowardly way in which he attacked and did for me, that I had the opportunity I had so long wished for, of being introduced into this house. The lucky blow on my forehead with his stone, made me faint; and because you saw I had fainted, you called your husband; it was on account of your husband finding me without consciousness beneath your window, and believing I had been set upon by thieves, that he had me carried indoors; and lastly, because you were so moved by pity at the thought of what I had suffered for you, that you were willing to let me in here. And so, this good-for-nothing fellow, this contemptible scamp, is after all the source of all good, for all the good of life for me is in your love; nevertheless if ever he comes within reach of my whip, he will not have a very pleasant time of it.”

“It seems then,” muttered Thibault, swearing to himself, “that my wish has again turned to the advantage of someone else! Ah! my friend, black wolf, I have still something to learn, but, confound it all! I will in future think so well over my wishes before expressing them that the pupil will become master … but to whom does that voice, that I seem to know, belong?” Thibault continued, trying to recall it, “for the voice is familiar to me, of that I am certain!”

“You would be even more incensed against him, poor wretch, if I were to tell you something.”

“And what is that, my love?”

“Well, that good-for-nothing fellow, as you call him, is making love to me.”

“Phew!”

“That is so, my lord,” said Madame Suzanne, laughing.

“What! that boor, that low rascal! Where is he? Where does he hide himself? By Beelzebub! I’ll throw him to my dogs to eat!”

And then, all at once, Thibault recognised his man. “Ah! my lord Baron,” he muttered, “it’s you, is it?”

“Pray do not trouble yourself about it, my lord,” said Madame Suzanne, laying her two hands on her lover’s shoulders, and obliging him to sit down again, “your lordship is the only person whom I love, and even were it not so, a man with a lock of red hair right in the middle of his forehead is not the one to whom I should give away my heart.” And as the recollection of this lock of hair, which had made her laugh so at dinner, came back to her, she again gave way to her amusement.

A violent feeling of anger towards the Bailiff’s wife took possession of Thibault.

“Ah! traitress!” he exclaimed to himself, “what would I not give for your husband, your good, upright husband, to walk in at this moment and surprise you.”

Scarcely was the wish uttered, when the door of communication between Suzanne’s room and that of Monsieur Magloire was thrown wide open, and in walked her husband with an enormous night-cap on his head, which made him look nearly five feet high, and holding a lighted candle in his hand.

“Ah! ah!” muttered Thibault. “Well done! It’s my turn to laugh now, Madame Magloire.”

CHAPTER XIII

Where it is demonstrated that a woman never speaks more eloquently than when she holds her tongue

AS Thibault was talking to himself he did not catch the few hurried words which Suzanne whispered to the Baron; and all he saw was that she appeared to totter, and then fell back into her lover’s arms, as if in a dead faint.

The Bailiff stopped short as he caught sight of this curious group, lit up by his candle. He was facing Thibault, and the latter endeavoured to read in Monsieur Magloire’s face what was passing in his mind.

But the Bailiff’s jovial physiognomy was not made by nature to express any strong emotion, and Thibault could detect nothing in it but a benevolent astonishment on the part of the amiable husband.

The Baron, also, evidently detected nothing more, for with a coolness and ease of manner, which produced on Thibault a surprise beyond expression, he turned to the Bailiff, and asked:

“Well, friend Magloire, and how do you carry your wine this evening?”

“Why, is it you, my lord?” replied the Bailiff opening his fat little eyes.

“Ah! pray excuse me, and believe me, had I known I was to have the honour of seeing you here, I should not have allowed myself to appear in such an unsuitable costume.”

“Pooh-pooh! nonsense!”

“Yes, indeed, my lord; you must permit me to go and make a little toilette.”

“No ceremony, I pray!” rejoined the Baron. “After curfew, one is at least free to receive one’s friends in what costume one likes. Besides, my dear friend, there is something which requires more immediate attention.”

“What is that, my lord?”

“To restore Madame Magloire to her senses, who, you see, has fainted in my arms.”

“Fainted! Suzanne fainted! Ah! my God!” cried the little man, putting down his candle on the chimney-piece, “how ever did such a misfortune happen?”

“Wait, wait, Monsieur Magloire!” said my lord, “we must first get your wife into a more comfortable position in an armchair; nothing annoys women so much as not to be at their ease when they are unfortunate enough to faint.”

“You are right, my lord; let us first put her in the armchair… Oh Suzanne! poor Suzanne! How can such a thing as this have happened?”

“I pray you at least, my dear fellow, not to think any ill of me at finding me in your house at such a time of night!”

“Far from it, my lord,” replied the Bailiff, “the friendship with which you honour us, and the virtue of Madame Magloire are sufficient guarantees for me to be glad at any hour to have my house honoured by your presence.”

“Triple dyed idiot!” murmured the shoe-maker, “unless I ought rather to call him a doubly clever dissembler… No matter which, however! we have yet to see how my lord is going to get out of it.”

“Nevertheless,” continued Maître Magloire, dipping a handkerchief into some aromatic water, and bathing his wife’s temples with it, “nevertheless, I am curious to know how my poor wife can have received such a shock.”

“It’s a simple affair enough, as I will explain, my dear fellow. I was returning from dining with my friend, de Vivières, and passing through Erneville on my way to Vez, I caught sight of an open window, and a woman inside making signals of distress.”

“Ah! my God!”

“That is what I exclaimed, when I realised that the window belonged to your house; and can it be my friend the Bailiff’s wife, I thought, who is in danger and in need of help?”

“You are good indeed, my lord,” said the Bailiff quite overcome. “I trust it was nothing of the sort.”

“On the contrary, my dear man.”

“How! on the contrary?”

“Yes, as you will see.”

“You make me shudder, my lord! And do you mean that my wife was in need of help and did not call me?”

“It had been her first thought to call you, but she abstained from doing so, for, and here you see her delicacy of feeling, she was afraid that if you came, your precious life might be endangered.”

The Bailiff turned pale and gave an exclamation.

“My precious life, as you are good enough to call it, is in danger?”

“Not now, since I am here.”

“But tell me, I pray, my lord, what had happened? I would question my wife, but as you see she is not yet able to answer.”

“And am I not here to answer in her stead?”

“Answer then, my lord, as you are kind enough to offer to do so; I am listening.”

The Baron made a gesture of assent, and went on:

“So I ran to her, and seeing her all trembling and alarmed, I asked, ‘What is the matter, Madame Magloire, and what is causing you so much alarm?’ ‘Ah! my lord,’ she replied, ‘just think what I feel, when I tell you that yesterday and to-day, my husband has been entertaining a man about whom I have the worst suspicions. Ugh! A man who has introduced himself under the pretence of friendship to my dear Magloire, and actually makes love to me, to me…’ ”

“She told you that?”

“Word for word, my dear fellow! She cannot hear what we are saying, I hope?”

“How can she, when she is insensible?”

“Well, ask her yourself when she comes to, and if she does not tell you exactly to the letter what I have been telling you, call me a Turk, an infidel and a heretic.”

“Ah! these men! these men!” murmured the Bailiff.

“Yes, race of vipers!” continued my lord of Vez, “do you wish me to go on?”

“Yes, indeed!” said the little man, forgetting the scantiness of his attire in the interest excited in him by the Baron’s tale.

“ ‘But Madame,’ I said to my friend Madame Magloire, ‘How could you tell that he had the audacity to love you?’ ”

“Yes,” put in the Bailiff, “how did she find it out? I never noticed anything myself.”

“You would have been aware of it, my dear friend, if only you had looked under the table; but, fond of your dinner as you are, you were not likely to be looking at the dishes on the table and underneath it at the same time.”

“The truth is, my lord, we had the most perfect little supper! just you think now – cutlets of young wild-boar…”

“Very well,” said the Baron, “now you are going to tell me about your supper, instead of listening to the end of my tale, a tale which concerns the life and honour of your wife!”

“True, true, my poor Suzanne! My lord, help me to open her hands, that I may slap them on the palms.”

The Lord of Vez gave all the assistance in his power to Monsieur Magloire, and by dint of their united efforts they forced open Madame Magloire’s hands.

The good man, now easier in his mind, began slapping his wife’s palms with his chubby little hands, all the while giving his attention to the remainder of the Baron’s interesting and veracious story.

“Where had I got to?” he asked.

“You had got just to where my poor Suzanne, whom one may indeed call ‘the chaste Suzanna…’ ”

“Yes, you may well say that!” interrupted the lord of Vez.

“Indeed, I do! You had just got to where my poor Suzanne began to be aware…”

“Ah, yes – that your guest like Paris of old was wishing to make another Menelaus of you; well, then she rose from table… You remember that she did so?”

“No… I was perhaps a little – just a little – overcome.”

“Quite so! Well then she rose from table, and said it was time to retire.”

“The truth is, that the last hour I heard strike was eleven,” said the jovial Bailiff.

“Then the party broke up.”

“I don’t think I left the table,” said the Bailiff.

“No, but Madame Magloire and your guest did. She told him which was his room, and Perrine showed him to it; after which, kind and faithful wife as she is, Madame Magloire tucked you into bed, and went into her own room.”

“Dear little Suzanne!” said the bailiff in a voice of emotion.

“And it was then, when she found herself in her room, and all alone, that she got frightened; she went to the window and opened it; the wind, blowing into the room, put out her candle. You know what it is to have a sudden panic come over you, do you not?”

“Oh! yes,” replied the Bailiff naïvely, “I am very timid myself.”

“After that she was seized with panic, and not daring to wake you, for fear any harm should come to you, she called to the first horseman she saw go by – and luckily, that horseman was myself.”

“It was indeed fortunate, my lord.”

“Was it not?.. I ran, I made myself known.”

“ ‘Come up, my lord, come up,’ she cried. ‘Come up quickly – I am sure there is a man in my room.’ ”

“Dear! dear!..” said the bailiff, “you must indeed have felt terribly frightened.”

“Not at all! I thought it was only losing time to stop and ring; I gave my horse to l’Eveillé, I stood up on the saddle, climbed from that to the balcony, and, so that the man who was in the room might not escape, I shut the window. It was just at that moment that Madame Magloire, hearing the sound of your door opening, and overcome by such a succession of painful feelings, fell fainting into my arms.”

“Ah! my lord!” said the Bailiff, “how frightful all this is that you tell me.”

“And be sure, my dear friend, that I have rather softened than added to its terror; anyhow, you will hear what Madame Magloire has to tell you when she comes to…”

“See, my lord, she is beginning to move.”

“That’s right! burn a feather under her nose.”

“A feather?”

“Yes, it is a sovereign anti-spasmodic; burn a feather under her nose, and she will revive instantly.”

“But where shall I find a feather?” asked the bailiff.

“Here! take this, the feather round my hat.” And the lord of Vez broke off a bit of the ostrich feather which ornamented his hat, gave it to Monsieur Magloire, who lighted it at the candle and held it smoking under his wife’s nose.

The remedy was a sovereign one, as the Baron had said; the effect of it was instantaneous; Madame Magloire sneezed.

“Ah!” cried the bailiff delightedly, “now she is coming to! my wife! my dear wife! my dear little wife!”

Madame Magloire gave a sigh.

“My lord! my lord!” cried the bailiff, “she is saved! saved!”

Madame Magloire opened her eyes, looked first at the Bailiff and then at the Baron, with a bewildered gaze, and then finally fixing them on the Bailiff:

“Magloire! dear Magloire!” she said, “is it really you? Oh! how glad I am to see you again after the bad dream I have had!”

“Well!” muttered Thibault, “she is a brazen-faced huzzy, if you like! if I do not get all that I want from the ladies I run after, they, at least, afford me some valuable object lessons by the way!”

“Alas! my beautiful Suzanne,” said the Bailiff, “it is no bad dream you have had, but, as it seems, a hideous reality.”

“Ah! I remember now,” responded Madame Magloire. Then, as if noticing for the first time that the lord of Vez was there:

“Ah! my lord,” she continued, “I hope you have repeated nothing to my husband of all those foolish things I told you?”

“And why not, dear lady?” asked the Baron.

“Because an honest woman knows how to protect herself, and has no need to keep on telling her husband a lot of nonsense like that.”

“On the contrary, Madame,” replied the Baron, “I have told my friend everything.”

“Do you mean that you have told him that during the whole of supper time that man was fondling my knee under the table?”

“I told him that, certainly.”

“Oh! the wretch!” exclaimed the Bailiff.

“And that when I stooped to pick up my table napkin, it was not that, but his hand, that I came across.”

“I have hidden nothing from my friend Magloire.”

“Oh! the ruffian!” cried the Bailiff.

“And that Monsieur Magloire having a passing giddiness which made him shut his eyes while at table, his guest took the opportunity to kiss me against my will?”

“I thought it was right for a husband to know everything.”

“Oh! the knave!” cried the Bailiff.

“And did you even go so far as to tell him that having come into my room, and the wind having blown out the candle, I fancied I saw the window curtains move, which made me call to you for help, believing that he was hidden behind them?”

“No, I did not tell him that! I was going to when you sneezed.”

“Oh! the vile rascal!” roared the Bailiff, taking hold of the Baron’s sword which the latter had laid on a chair, and drawing it out of the scabbard, then, running toward the window which his wife had indicated, “He had better not be behind these curtains, or I will spit him like a woodcock,” and with this he gave one or two lunges with the sword against the window hangings.

But all at once the Bailiff stayed his hand, and stood as if arrested like a school-boy caught trespassing out of bounds; his hair rose on end beneath his cotton night-cap, and this conjugal head-dress became agitated as by some convulsive movement. The sword dropped from his trembling hand, and fell with a clatter on the floor. He had caught sight of Thibault behind the curtains, and as Hamlet kills Polonius, thinking to slay his father’s murderer, so he, believing that he was thrusting at nothing, had nearly killed his crony of the night before, who had already had time enough to prove himself a false friend. Moreover as he had lifted the curtain with the point of the sword, the Bailiff was not the only one who had seen Thibault. His wife and the Lord of Vez had both been participators in the unexpected vision, and both uttered a cry of surprise. In telling their tale so well, they had had no idea that they were so near the truth. The Baron, too, had not only seen that there was a man, but had also recognised that the man was Thibault.