Chapter X: A Domestic Interior

In a very handsome salon of an apartment on Boulevard Beaumarchais, in one of those fine houses recently built, which make that quarter one of the most attractive in Paris, three persons were assembled: Monsieur Glumeau, his wife and his daughter.

We know the ladies. Monsieur Glumeau, formerly a commission merchant, was a man of fifty years, of medium height, who had never been handsome, but who might have possessed some attractions when he was young, thanks to his light hair, his china-blue eyes--there are people who like china-blue eyes--and above all, to his slender figure, his shapely leg and his small and well-arched foot. As he grew older, Monsieur Glumeau had not taken on flesh like his excellent wife, but had retained a youthful appearance, especially when seen from behind; as to his face, that had become considerably wrinkled, but his eyes were still china-blue, and although he no longer possessed his fair hair, he had replaced it by a wig of the same color.

It is probable that Monsieur Glumeau’s features would not have undergone so sudden a revolution, except for the mania that he had contracted of drugging himself, of putting himself on strict diet for the slightest indisposition. The dread of being ill constantly tormented the ex-commission merchant, and by dint of taking care of his health, he had succeeded in ruining it. His ordinary reading was the fourth page of the large newspapers; he took note of all the infallible remedies announced and extolled by their inventors; he often bought them although he had not the disease which they were supposed to cure; but he would take them all as a matter of precaution, saying to himself: “If I should have this disease, I shall have the remedy at hand.”

To this weakness of mind, far from agreeable in a family, Monsieur Glumeau added the pretension of shining in conversation. He constantly sought to make sharp or clever remarks; but as he was never able to think of any, he often halted on the way, which fact imparted much incoherency to his speech. Lastly, having formerly been what is called a fine dancer, he had retained much liking for that exercise, wherein he could at his pleasure exhibit his foot, of which he was very proud, and upon which he kept his eyes fixed as he danced.

After retiring from business with a very considerable fortune, which had recently been added to by an inheritance, Monsieur Glumeau had purchased a country house at Nogent-sur-Marne; there he had had built in his garden a small theatre, where in the summer his family and friends indulged in the pleasure of theatrical performances, being actors and spectators in turn. Monsieur Glumeau liked to receive company; the presence of guests made him forget his imaginary diseases; as his wife and his children were also fond of pleasure, the ex-commission merchant’s house was one of those where one was always certain to pass one’s time agreeably; ceremony and etiquette were banished from it, and everyone was at liberty to do what he pleased; the company was sometimes a little mixed but it made up in quantity what it lacked in quality.

At the moment of which we write, the head of the family was in the act of drinking a cup of tea into which he had squeezed the juice of a lemon, because when he woke that morning he had a bitter taste in his mouth.

“I think that this will do me good,” said Monsieur Glumeau, as he drank his tea in little sips; “lemon juice in tea clears up the bile.”

“But why will you have it that you’re bilious, my dear? Your complexion is very clear, you are not yellow.”

“You say I am not yellow, my dear love; that’s a question! I am a little yellow--on one side of my nose; and I don’t propose to wait until I am as yellow as a pumpkin before I take a purgative.”

“Do you mean to say that you propose to purge yourself again? That would be the last straw. You took Sedlitz water a fortnight ago.”

“What does that prove, if I need it again?”

Madame Glumeau shrugged her shoulders, exclaiming:

“You make yourself sick by dosing yourself, Edouard!”

“Why no, my dear love, one doesn’t make oneself sick by taking care of oneself; on the contrary, it prevents one from being sick.”

“You know that we have company to dinner to-day. I trust that you don’t propose to select this moment to take medicine.”

“I am not talking about medicine to-day; but listen: just now I was reading in my paper the announcement of a most valuable discovery.”

“Something to prevent potatoes from being sick?”

“Oh! I am not talking about potatoes!”

“But, my dear, they are so useful, so nourishing, so valuable, so----”

“Let me alone with your potatoes; I don’t like them. What I am talking about is an infallible remedy for the gravel.”

“But you haven’t that, monsieur!”

“No, but I might have it!”

“What a misfortune it is to be afraid of all diseases!”

“I am not afraid of them, madame, but I simply am on my guard against them; it isn’t from fear, it’s from prudence, from common sense.”

“Bless my soul! if all men resembled you, it would be amusing.”

“What do you mean by that, Lolotte?”

“I mean that by dint of thinking about diseases, you think that you have them all, and it doesn’t tend to make you a lively companion in society.”

“Madame, _si vis pacem, para bellum_.”

“What does that mean, monsieur?”

“If you wish for peace, prepare for war.”

“What connection has that with your lemon juice in tea?”

“It also means: If you want to be well, look after yourself as if you were ill.”

“Oh! as to that, I don’t believe a word of it; do I dose myself, monsieur? and you see how well I am!”

“It is a fact that you are getting too stout, my dear love; but if you would have consented to take a little white mustard seed, you would have lost flesh.”

“No, thanks, monsieur; I should probably have become like a lath, and I prefer to remain as I am. To hear you talk, one would say that I was enormous.”

“Not exactly, but you haven’t any waist.”

“I haven’t any waist! I haven’t any waist! Upon my word, I guess that it’s your eyes that are diseased; you see crooked.”

“What! why do you say that my eyes are diseased? Is it because they are red? Don’t joke, Lolotte, are my eyes swollen?”

“Ah! so I haven’t any waist! All men don’t think as you do, monsieur, and in spite of my stoutness, if I chose to listen to all the pleasant things that are said to me----”

“Madame! you forget that your daughter is here.--Eolinde, come and look at my eyes; it seems to me that they sting.”

Mademoiselle Eolinde was looking over a volume of plays; instead of answering her father, she cried:

“We must play _La Forêt Périlleuse_, papa, and I will be the fair Ca--Ca--Camille!”

“Yes, my child, yes, we have already decided to give that play,” said Madame Glumeau; “and we are going to have here to-day all the people who are to take part in the first piece to be given at our country house, in order to distribute the rôles. But the other piece is what hasn’t yet been chosen. We must have a very lively vaudeville.”

“Oh, mamma! let’s give _Estelle, ou Le Père et La Fille!_”

“I should like to know if you call that a lively vaudeville! My dear girl, when we have theatricals in our house, for our amusement, we mustn’t undertake to make people weep, for the only result is to make them laugh. As a general rule, you are all very bad, but that is what is wanted; the worse actors you are, the more laughter you cause; if you acted well, it would be very dull, I fancy.”

“Oh, mamma! how you ta--ta--talk, just because you--you--do--do--don’t act yourself!”

“If I did, I should try to be funny, that’s all; but I should know my lines, I tell you that; and you never know yours.”

During this conversation between the mother and the daughter, Monsieur Glumeau had risen, had stationed himself in front of a mirror, and was looking at his eyes with a persistent scrutiny which finally ended in making his sight blurred; whereupon he paced the salon, muttering:

“I must get some eye salve; I ought to have a recipe somewhere.”

“But there’s nothing the matter with your eyes, monsieur!” cried Madame Glumeau impatiently; “you apparently propose to make yourself blind now! Why don’t you take the elixir of long life, and have done with it?”

“That wouldn’t be such a bad idea, madame!”

“Oh, yes! do as your friend Boutelet did. Do you remember what happened to him, because he drank heaven knows how many bottles of the elixir of long life in six months? He died of it!”

“Perhaps he would have died six months earlier if he hadn’t drunk it!”

“After three o’clock and Astianax has not come home,” said tall Eolinde; “it isn’t very kind of my brother, for he was to bring us a collection of plays to choose from!”

“Wasn’t it his neighbor, Monsieur Jéricourt, that young author who lives on the fourth floor, who was to lend your brother the plays?”

“Yes, mamma.”

“He has a very attractive look, has that young man, we must invite him to come to our play in the country; eh, Edouard?”

“I have no objection; isn’t he a newspaper man too?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m sorry for that; we must try to have a few newspaper men; they go everywhere in society, they write articles about everything they see, and perhaps they would speak of me in the paper, and I should see myself in print; that would be very nice!--Whom have we to dinner to-day?”

“Why, you must know as well as I do, my dear.”

“Ah! _bigre!_ I really believe that I have a pain in my stomach.”

“Oh dear! that would be the last straw.”

“No, it’s nothing, it’s going away; I was in a constrained position.”

“We expect to dinner Monsieur and Madame Dufournelle; Madame Dufournelle wants to act; she will be terribly awkward on the stage, I fancy, but that’s her business!”

“She is graceful and pretty, and I believe that she will make a success of it.”

“Oh! that’s just like a man! to call that woman pretty, just because she is always laughing, and because she is a great flirt; indeed she carries it so far sometimes as to be almost indecent in her behavior with men!”

“Upon my word, Lolotte! where did you see that?”

“I have seen it more than once; and in our own house, in the country, with you, when she asked you to run after her and defied you to catch her! Monsieur ran like a deer, and then you both disappeared behind a hedge.--You had no pain in your stomach that day!”

“Madame! really, you should not say such things; your daughter can hear you.”

“My daughter will be married some day, monsieur, and there’s no harm in her being warned beforehand of the perfidy of the male sex. Besides, Madame Dufournelle’s coquetry is evident to everybody. Her husband sees nothing in all that! Poor fellow! so long as he has somebody to play billiards with him, he doesn’t care about anything else.”

“He isn’t jealous, madame, and he is very wise; that proves that he has some intelligence.”

“Ah! you think that, do you? I have known husbands of much intelligence who were as jealous as tigers! Say rather that that fat Dufournelle is not in love with his wife. Indeed, he’s too fat to be amorous.”

“Mon Dieu! what spiteful creatures women are! If a man is not jealous, it’s because he doesn’t love them.--I suppose you’d like me to be jealous, madame?”

“You, Edouard! Merciful heaven! that’s all you need,--to have that disease, with all those which you think you have! that would be the climax!”

“Say! suppose we play _Les B--b--bains à Do--do--domicile_?” cried Eolinde, who was still looking over the plays. “I would be Ninie.”

“My dear girl, do you intend to take all the parts in the plays we give?” said Monsieur Glumeau, admiring his feet. “It seems to me that if you take one part, that will be quite enough; with your defective speech, you know very well that you make plays last an hour longer than they should, and you have a perfect mania for choosing long parts! The last time we gave _Andromache_ everybody thought that your scene with Orestes would never end!”

“Because it was in ve--verse, papa, which is harder for me to pro--pronounce. But when it is p--p--prose, it goes all by itself.”

“So I see! But why in the deuce did you insist on giving a tragedy, then?”

“Oh! my dear, they were quite right!” said Madame Glumeau; “for I assure you that they were enough to make you die of laughter, and you yourself in Pylades,--bless my soul! how fine you were!”

“Madame, you always take everything wrong. I played Pylades very nicely, and if it hadn’t been for my helmet, that kept falling down over my eyes and prevented me from seeing the audience, I should have made a very good impression.”

“Why, you did make a splendid impression, my friend! you looked like a blind man, and that was much more amusing!”

“You are very satirical, my dear love; it is very easy to see that you don’t act!”

“If I acted in private theatricals, I should never lose my temper if people laughed at me.”

“What will you do with Monsieur Dufournelle?”

“He will prompt, that’s his forte! he puffs[B] all the time like an ox!--We also expect little Kingerie; he’s a very good fellow; he does whatever anyone wants him to; he takes whatever parts you give him.”

[B] The same word--_souffler_--means to prompt, and to blow or puff.

“Mamma, have you noticed that Monsieur Kingerie has an entirely different voice when he sings, from the one he has when he talks?”

“That’s true, but it’s very lucky for him; when he talks, he always sounds as if he were hoarse; whereas, when he sings, he has a little clear, flutelike voice, so shrill that it is hard to believe that it is he who is singing.--Then we shall have Monsieur Camuzard and his daughter, Mademoiselle Polymnie, who also wants to act.”

“You must give her a part; she’s a very handsome woman, tall and well-built and stylish!”

“She did her little s--s--soubrette part very badly the l--l--last time, although she had only a few words to say: ‘M--m--madame, the company is below in the salon’; and she said: ‘Madame, the s--s--salon is below in the c--c--company!’”

“That was because her tongue slipped! But it doesn’t make it any the less true that Mademoiselle Polymnie looks very well on the stage.”

“Her nose is too big!”

“Big noses do very well on the stage. Besides, I tell you again, daughter, that I desire to be polite to Monsieur Camuzard, and I know that it gives him great pleasure when his daughter acts.” And Monsieur Glumeau added, with a glance at his wife: “We must try to make Astianax act a lover’s part, and let Mademoiselle Polymnie be the sweetheart. You understand my ideas and my plans, don’t you, Lolotte?”

“Yes, monsieur, they are not hard to understand. Mademoiselle Camuzard would be an excellent match, I know; but Astianax is still so young!”

“I married very young myself, madame, and I have never repented it.”

“Ah! that’s the nicest thing you have said to-day!”

“It seems to me that I say nice things very often; but you don’t notice them because you are used to them.--This tea has done me good; I feel as light as a bird; I would like to dance a mazurka.--Speaking of dancing, Eolinde, have you practised on your piano the new quadrilles that I brought you?”

“Oh! they are too hard.”

“No, mademoiselle, it’s because you don’t choose to take the pains to study; and you are all the more wrong in that, because everybody plays the piano now; young men and young girls, everybody knows how to play for dancing; the young woman who did not know how to play a quadrille in company would be looked upon as a savage, as a Hottentot!”

“I know very well that everybody pl--plays the piano now. The c--c--concierge’s daughter plays it; and the other day the l--l--locksmith who c--c--came to fix a lock which wouldn’t l--l--lock, said when he heard me pl--playing: ‘I play the piano myself Sundays, when I have time.’--Isn’t that so, mamma?”

“It’s the truth; indeed I was tempted to say to the locksmith that he ought to put over his shop door: ‘Bells hung with piano accompaniment!’”

“In fact, papa, the p--p--piano has become such a common inst--st--strument, that I would rather play something else.”

“What, I should like to know?”

“Why, the little flute, for example.”

“You are mad, Eolinde; it would be very pretty to see a young lady playing on the flute! Wind instruments are exclusively for men.”

“Why is that, papa?”

“Why, because, as Apollo played the flute when he kept flocks, and as that god was the god of melody, the pipes and the flute--By the way, Lolotte, I hope you told Chambourdin to come; he’s a very pleasant fellow, a leader in all sorts of fun, always merry and a true sport. He will act, and I’ll wager that he’ll be most amusing!”

“Don’t you know, monsieur, that we can’t rely on your Chambourdin? You know very well that he never keeps his word; when he promises to come, that’s the end of it. If we relied on him to take a part, he would spoil the whole performance. But we shall have Monsieur Mangeot and his sister; they are obliging and agreeable. Monsieur Mangeot takes the part of clowns and mimics very well; he plays carefully and always knows his part, and so does his sister.”

“True, but as his sister is extremely hard of hearing, she always has to stand within two steps of the prompter, which is a great nuisance for the action of the play; and sometimes too she talks at the same time that her opposite is talking.--_Bigre!_ here comes that pain in the stomach again. What can it be? Did we have mushrooms yesterday, Lolotte?”

“Mushrooms? there were some in the vol-au-vent we had; but everybody ate some of it, and it didn’t make anybody sick.”

“That doesn’t prove anything; sometimes it doesn’t show itself until late; Eolinde, you haven’t a pain in your stomach, have you?”

“On the contrary, papa.”

“What do you mean by on the contrary; you either have a pain, or----”

“No, s--s--since I--I say on the c--c--contrary!”

“My child, your answers are very foolish.--If this doesn’t go away, I will tell the maid to prepare me an enema of marshmallow.”

“Please remember that the maid is getting her dinner ready; she is looking after her kitchen fire, and how do you suppose that she can leave that to make you an enema?”

“I don’t care for that; if I am ill, it seems to me that it is more important to take care of me than to get the dinner.”

“But, monsieur, we have ten people to dinner, and it’s after four o’clock.”

“Then, madame, go and prepare it for me yourself.”

“Mon Dieu! just for a paltry pain in the stomach! Often it doesn’t amount to anything; go--somewhere, monsieur, and it will pass away.”

“I shall not go anywhere, madame, because I have no desire to.”

“Papa, suppose we should play _Pourceaugnac_?”

“Hold your tongue, my child; you tire me!”

“Dear me, Eolinde!” said Madame Glumeau with a sigh, “why should we play _Pourceaugnac_ on our little stage; we play it often enough in our family, as well as _Le Malade Imaginaire_!”

Monsieur Glumeau was about to reply to his wife when the bell rang.

“Company! company already!” cried stout Lolotte, “and I haven’t finished dressing!”

“And my enema, madame! I must have it!” said her husband in an altered voice.

“No doubt it’s my brother,” replied tall Eolinde in her turn; “it isn’t worth while to put ourselves in such a flurry for him!”