He was talking about the Emperor.
The policeman did not raise his eyes, but curtly answered:
“If you were the Government you wouldn’t be so fat.”
“Oh, my dear fellow, if I were the Government,” rejoined the hatter, suddenly affecting an air of gravity, “things would go on rather better, I give you my word for it. Thus, their foreign policy — why, for some time past it has been enough to make a fellow sweat.
If I — I who speak to you — only knew a journalist to inspire him with my ideas.”
He was growing animated, and as he had finished crunching his barley-sugar, he opened a drawer from which he took a number of jujubes, which he swallowed while gesticulating.
“It’s quite simple. Before anything else, I should give Poland her independence again, and I should establish a great Scandinavian state to keep the Giant of the North at bay. Then I should make a republic out of all the little German states. As for England, she’s scarcely to be feared; if she budged ever so little I should send a hundred thousand men to India. Add to that I should send the Sultan back to Mecca and the Pope to Jerusalem, belaboring their backs with the butt end of a rifle. Eh?
Europe would soon be clean.
Come, Badingue, just look here.”
He paused to take five or six jujubes in his hand.
“Why, it wouldn’t take longer than to swallow these.”
And he threw one jujube after another into his open mouth.
“The Emperor has another plan,” said the policeman, after reflecting for a couple of minutes.
“Oh, forget it,” rejoined the hatter.
“We know what his plan is.
All Europe is laughing at us. Every day the Tuileries footmen find your boss under the table between a couple of high society floozies.”
Poisson rose to his feet.
He came forward and placed his hand on his heart, saying:
“You hurt me, Auguste.
Discuss, but don’t involve personalities.”
Thereupon Virginie intervened, bidding them stop their row.
She didn’t care a fig for Europe.
How could two men, who shared everything else, always be disputing about politics?
For a minute they mumbled some indistinct words. Then the policeman, in view of showing that he harbored no spite, produced the cover of his little box, which he had just finished; it bore the inscription in marquetry:
“To Auguste, a token of friendship.”
Lantier, feeling exceedingly flattered, lounged back and spread himself out so that he almost sat upon Virginie.
And the husband viewed the scene with his face the color of an old wall and his bleared eyes fairly expressionless; but all the same, at moments the red hairs of his moustaches stood up on end of their own accord in a very singular fashion, which would have alarmed any man who was less sure of his business than the hatter.
This beast of a Lantier had the quiet cheek which pleases ladies.
As Poisson turned his back he was seized with the idea of printing a kiss on Madame Poisson’s left eye.
As a rule he was stealthily prudent, but when he had been disputing about politics he risked everything, so as to show the wife his superiority.
These gloating caresses, cheekily stolen behind the policeman’s back, revenged him on the Empire which had turned France into a house of quarrels.
Only on this occasion he had forgotten Gervaise’s presence.
She had just finished rinsing and wiping the shop, and she stood near the counter waiting for her thirty sous.
However, the kiss on Virginie’s eye left her perfectly calm, as being quite natural, and as part of a business she had no right to mix herself up in.
Virginie seemed rather vexed.
She threw the thirty sous on to the counter in front of Gervaise.
The latter did not budge but stood there waiting, still palpitating with the effort she had made in scrubbing, and looking as soaked and as ugly as a dog fished out of the sewer.
“Then she didn’t tell you anything?” she asked the hatter at last.
“Who?” he cried.
“Ah, yes; you mean Nana.
No, nothing else.
What a tempting mouth she has, the little hussy!
Real strawberry jam!”
Gervaise went off with her thirty sous in her hand.
The holes in her shoes spat water forth like pumps; they were real musical shoes, and played a tune as they left moist traces of their broad soles along the pavement.
In the neighborhood the feminine tipplers of her own class now related that she drank to console herself for her daughter’s misconduct.
She herself, when she gulped down her dram of spirits on the counter, assumed a dramatic air, and tossed the liquor into her mouth, wishing it would “do” for her.
And on the days when she came home boozed she stammered that it was all through grief.
But honest folks shrugged their shoulders. They knew what that meant: ascribing the effects of the peppery fire of l’Assommoir to grief, indeed! At all events, she ought to have called it bottled grief.
No doubt at the beginning she couldn’t digest Nana’s flight.