XXVI
What Was Said at Madame Labotte’s, the Fruiterer’s, 26, Rue de la Maraicherie
Mdlle. Victoire, cook to the Dean of the Faculty of Balançon, Mademoiselle Gertrude, servant of the Warden of the said Faculty, and Mademoiselle Anastasie, housekeeper to the Abbé Beaufleury, Curé of St. Eulalie—such was the respectable coterie which happened meet at the counter of Madame Labotte, fruiterer, 26 Rue de la Maraicherie, one Thursday morning.
These ladies, with their shopping baskets on their left arms and little white goffered caps posed coquettishly on their heads so that the ribbons hung down their backs, were listening with interest to Mademoiselle Anastasie who was telling them how the Abbé Beaufleurry had that very morning exorcised a poor woman possessed of five devils.
Suddenly Mademoiselle Honorine, Doctor Heraclius’ housekeeper, rushed in like a whirlwind and sank into a chair, overcome by emotion. Then, when she saw that they were all thoroughly intrigued, she burst out:
“No, it’s too much! Whatever happens I’ll not stop any longer in that house.” And then she hid her face in her hands and began to sob. A moment or two later, when she was a little calmer, she went on:
“After all, it’s not the poor man’s fault if he’s mad.”
“Who?” asked Mademoiselle Labotte.
“Why, her master, Doctor Heraclius,” put in Mademoiselle Victoire. “So what the Dean said is true then—your master has gone queer in the head?”
“I should just think so!” exclaimed Mademoiselle Anastasie. “The Curé, talking to the Abbé Rosencroix the other day, declared that Doctor Heraclius was a proper reprobate, that he worshipped animals, after the style of a man called Pythagoras who, so it seems, was a heretic as wicked as Luther.”
“What’s happened now?” interrupted Mademoiselle Gertrude. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Well, just think,” said Honorine, drying her eyes on the corner of her apron, “for nearly six months now my poor master has been mad about animals. He believes that he has been created and placed in the world to serve them, he speaks to them as though they were sensible human beings, and one would almost believe that he gets an answer from inside them somehow. Anyway, yesterday evening I saw that mice were eating my provisions and I put a mousetrap in the larder. This morning I found I’d caught one. I called the cat and was just going to give the little beast to him when the master rushed in like a madman. He snatched the trap out of my hands and let the brute loose in the middle of my pickles. And when I got angry he turned on me and treated me as one wouldn’t treat a rag and bone man.”
There was a tense silence for some minutes and then Mademoiselle Honorine added:
“After all, I don’t blame the poor man. He’s mad.”
Two hours later the story of the Doctor and the mouse had gone the round of every kitchen in Balançon. At lunchtime all the bourgeois were telling it to each other, and at eight o’clock M. le Premier repeated it, as he drank his coffee, to six magistrates who had been dining with him. These gentlemen, seated in solemn attitudes, listened dreamily, without smiling, but with grave nods of their heads. At eleven o’clock the Prefect, who was giving a party, was worried with it in front of six minor officials and when he asked the Warden for his opinion, the latter, who was parading his white tie and his propensity for mischief before group after group of guests, answered thus:
“After all, what does this prove, Prefect? Why, that if La Fontaine were still living, he could write a new fable entitled ‘The Philosopher’s Mouse,’ which would end up—‘The more foolish of the two is not the one one thinks.’ ”