Dare to produce witnesses," screams the captain.
"Witnesses?" rejoins Monsieur; "there are the stones, and all the dirty things with which you have been continually covering my land. There are the old hats, and the old slippers, that I pick up every day, and that everybody recognizes as having belonged to you."
"You lie."
"You are a scoundrel, a drunken rake."
But, it being impossible for Monsieur to bring admissible and conclusive testimony, the justice of the peace, who, moreover, is the captain's friend, invites Monsieur to withdraw his complaint.
"And for that matter, permit me to say to you," concluded the magistrate, "it is highly improbable, it is quite inadmissible, that a valiant soldier, an intrepid officer, who has won all his stripes on fields of battle, amuses himself in throwing stones and old hats upon your land, like a small boy."
"Egad!" vociferates the captain, "this man is an infamous Dreyfusard. He insults the army."
"I?"
"Yes, you!
What you are trying to do, you dirty Jew, is to disgrace the army. Long live the army!"
They came near taking each other by the hair, and the justice had much difficulty in separating them.
Since then Monsieur has stationed permanently in the garden two invisible witnesses, behind a sort of board shelter, in which are pierced, at the height of a man, four round holes, for the eyes.
But the captain, being warned, is lying low, and Monsieur is out the cost of his watchers. _____
I have seen the captain two or three times, over the hedge.
In spite of the frost, he stays in his garden all day long, working furiously at all sorts of things.
For the moment he is putting oil-paper caps on his rose-bushes.
He tells me of his misfortunes. Rose is suffering from an attack of influenza, and then—with her asthma!... Bourbaki is dead. He died of a congestion of the lungs, from drinking too much cognac.
Really, the captain has no luck. And surely that bandit of a Lanlaire has cast a spell over him.
He wishes to get the upper hand of him, to rid the country of him, and he submits to me an astonishing plan of campaign.
"Here is what you ought to do, Mademoiselle Celestine.
You ought to lodge with the prosecuting attorney at Louviers a complaint against Lanlaire for outrages on morals and an assault on modesty.
Ah! that's an idea!"
"But, captain, Monsieur has never outraged my morals or assaulted my modesty."
"Well, what difference does that make?"
"I cannot."
"What! you cannot?
But there is nothing simpler. Lodge your complaint, and summon Rose and me.
We will come to declare, to certify in a court of justice, that we have seen everything, everything, everything. A soldier's word amounts to something, especially just now, thunder of God!
And remember that, after that, it will be easy to rake up the case of little Claire, and involve Lanlaire in it. Ah! that's an idea! Think it over, Mademoiselle Celestine; think it over." _____
Ah! I have many things, much too many things, to think over just now. Joseph is pressing me for a decision; the matter cannot be postponed. He has heard from Cherbourg that the little cafe is to be sold next week. But I am anxious, troubled.
I want to, and I don't want to. One day the idea pleases me, and the next it doesn't. I really believe that I am afraid that Joseph wants to drag me into terrible things. I cannot come to a decision.
He is not brutal in his method of persuasion; he advances arguments, and tempts me with promises of liberty, of handsome costumes, of secure, happy, triumphant life.
"But I must buy the little cafe," he says to me. "I cannot let such an opportunity go by. And if the Revolution comes?
Think of it, Celestine; that means fortune right away. And who knows?
The Revolution—ah! bear that in mind—is the best thing possible for the cafes."
"Buy it, at any rate.
If it is not I, it will be somebody else."
"No, no, it must be you. Nobody else will do. I am crazy over you. But you distrust me."
"No, Joseph, I assure you."
"Yes, yes; you have bad ideas about me."
I do not know, no, really, I do not know, where, at that moment, I found the courage to ask him:
"Well, Joseph, tell me that it was you who outraged the little Claire in the woods."
Joseph received the shock with extraordinary tranquillity.
He simply shrugged his shoulders, swayed back and forth a few seconds, and then, giving a hitch to his pantaloons, which had slipped a little, he answered, simply:
"You see? Did I not tell you so? I know your thoughts; I know everything that goes on in your mind."
His voice was softer, but his look had become so terrifying that it was impossible for me to articulate a word.
"It is not a question of the little Claire; it is a question of you."
He took me in his arms, as he did the other evening.
"Will you come with me to the little cafe?"
Shuddering and trembling, I found strength to answer: