Louis Lambert — Honoré de Balzac, trans. Katharine Prescott Wormeley

One evening in April in the year 1808, Tirechair came home in a remarkably bad temper. For three days past everything had been in good order on the King’s highway. Now, as an officer of the peace, nothing annoyed him so much as to feel himself useless. He flung downp. 818 ee his halberd in a rage, muttered inarticulate words as he pulled off his doublet, half red and half blue, and slipped on a shabby camlet jerkin. After helping himself -from the bread-box to a hunch of bread and spreading it with butter, he seated himself on a bench, looked round at his four whitewashed walls, counted the beams of the ceiling, made a mental inventory of the household goods hanging from the nails, scowled at the neatness which left him nothing to complain of, and looked at his wife, who said not a word as she ironed the albs and surplices from the sacristy.

‘‘By my halidom,’’ he said, to open the conversation, *T cannot think, Jacqueline, where you go to catch your apprenticed maids. Now, here is one,’’ he went on, pointing to a girl who was folding an altar-cloth, clumsily enough, it must be owned, ‘‘who looks to me more like a damsel rather free of her person than-a sturdy, country wench. Her hands are as white as a fine lady’s! By the Mass! and her hair smells of essences, I verily believe, and her hose are as fine as a queen’s. By the two horns of Old Nick, matters please me but ill as I find them here.”’

The girl colored, and stole a look at Jacqueline, full of alarm not unmixed with pride. The mistress answered her glance with a smile, laid down her work, and turned to her husband.

‘‘Come now,”’

said she, in a sharp tone, ‘‘you need not harry me. Are you going to accuse me next of some underhand tricks? Patrol your roads as much as you please, but do not meddle here with anything but what concerns your sleeping in peace, drinking your wine, and eating what I set before you, or else, I warn you, I will have no more to do with keeping you healthy and happy. Let any one find me a happier man in all the town,’’ she went on, with a scoldTHE EXILES 819 ing grimace. ‘‘He has silver in his purse, a gable over the Seine, a stout halberd on one hand, an honest wife on the other, a house as clean and smart as a new pin! And he growls like a pilgrim smarting from Saint Anthony’s fire!’’

‘‘Hey day!’’ exclaimed the sergeant of the watch, ‘‘do you fancy, Jacqueline, that I have any wish to see my house razed down, my halberd given to another, and my wife standing in the pillory?”’

Jacqueline and the dainty journeywoman turned pale.

“Just tell me what you are driving at,’’ said the washerwoman sharply, ‘“‘and make a clean breast of it. For some days, my man, I have observed that you have some maggot twisting. in your poor brain. Come up, then, and have it all out. You must be a pretty coward indeed if you fear any harm when you have only to guard the common council and live under the protection of the Chapter! Their Reverences the Canons would lay the whole bishopric under an interdict if Jacqueline brought a complaint of the smallest damage.’’

As she spoke, she went straight up to her husband and took him by the arm.

’

‘‘Come with me,’’ she added, pulling him up and out on to the steps.

When they were down by the water in their little garden, Jacqueline looked saucily in her husband’s face.

‘‘T would have you to know, you old gaby, that when my lady fair goes out, a piece of gold comes into our savings-box.”’

‘‘Oh, ho!’’ said the constable, who stood silent and meditative before his wife. But he presently said, ‘‘ Any way, we are done for.—What brings the dame to our house ?”’

‘She comes to see the well-favored young clerk whop. 820 lives overhead,’’ replied Jacqueline, looking up at the window that opened on to the vast landscape of the Seine Valley.