Green Mare

One

Once upon a time there was born in the village of Claque-bue a green mare, not of that rancid green which accompanies decrepitude in white-coated horseflesh but of a pretty jade green. Upon seeing it Jules Haudouin believed neither his own eyes nor those of his wife.

“It’s not possible,” he said. “I could never be so lucky.”

A farmer and horse-coper, Haudouin had never reaped the rewards due to cunning, lies and avarice. His cows died two at a time, his pigs by the half-dozen, and his corn sprouted in the sack. He was scarcely more fortunate with his children, having had to beget six in order to keep three. But children were less important. He wept copiously at the funeral, and when he got home wrung out his handkerchief and hung it on the line, being assured that in the natural course of events he would not be long in getting his wife with another. That is what is so convenient about children, and in this matter Haudouin did not greatly complain. He had three robust living sons and three daughters in the cemetery, which was pretty much what suited him.

A green mare was something entirely without precedent, and the fact that it should have been born in Claquebue was the more remarkable since Claquebue was a place where nothing ever happened. Even the village gossip was tedious. It was said, for example, that Maloret deflowered his own daughters; but since the tale had been current for a hundred years, and it was generally understood that this was the way the Malorets always treated their daughters, the matter was no longer one of interest. And then again the

Republicans, of whom there were not more than half a dozen all told, would sometimes take advantage of a moonless night to sing La Carmagnole under the cure's windows, and to bellow, “Down with the Empire!” But in fact nothing happened. So everyone was bored. And since time did not pass the old men did not die. There were twenty-eight centenarians in the commune, to say nothing of the old men between seventy and a hundred who comprised half the population. From time to time one of these would be quietly knocked on the head or otherwise disposed of, but since it would have been ill-mannered to inquire into such domestic adjustments, no notice could be taken, and the village, half-comatose, paralysed, benumbed, remained as dismal as a Sunday in Heaven.

The news of the Green Mare sped out of the stable, reechoed between the river and the woods, encircled Claquebue three times and span round and round the Place de la Mairie. Everyone set out at once for Jules Haudouin’s house, some trotting or running, others limping or hobbling on crutches. There was fierce competition to be the first to arrive, and the old men, scarcely more rational than the women, mingled their whinnyings with the clamour that spread over the countryside.

“Something has happened! Something has happened!”

The tumult reached its height in Haudouin’s farmyard, where the people of Claquebue recovered all the vigorous malice of former days. While the oldest of them besought the cure to exorcise the green mare, the six Republicans shouted “Down with the Empire!” in his very face. A riof started and the Mayor received a kick in the rump which caused a speech to rise instantly to his lips. The younger women complained of being pinched, the older ones of not being pinched, and the children bawded beneath repeated cuffs. At length Jules Haudouin appeared in the doorway of the stable. Laughing, his hands covered with blood, he confirmed:

“She’s as green as an apple!”

A great gust of laughter swept over his audience, and then an old man was seen to beat the air with his hands and fall dead in his hundred-and-eighth year. At this the mirth became prodigious, so that men gasped, holding their sides.

Helped by a few well-placed kicks the centenarians began to die like flies.

“There goes another! It’s old Rousselier! And look at that one over there!”

In less than half an hour seven centenarians, three nonagenarians and one octogenarian had passed away, and a good many others were feeling indisposed. Still standing in the doorway of the stable Haudouin thought of his aged father, who ate enough for two, and he remarked to his wife that the ones to be pitied were not those who were taken but those who were left behind.

The cure was having his work cut out to minister to the dying. Being exhausted, he finally climbed onto a barrel to make himself heard above the merriment and said that they had had enough fun for one day and it was time for everyone to go home. The fortunate owner displayed his green mare both full face and in profile and the audience withdrew, deeply content to think that at last something had happened. His passage eased by the last rites, Hau-douin’s father died towards the end of the evening and was interred two days later in company with fifteen fellow-citizens no less venerable. The funeral was an impressive one, and the cure profited by the occasion to remind his congregation that all flesh is as grass.

Meanwhile the renown of the Green Mare was spreading. From as far off as Saint-Margelon, the chief town of the region, people bestirred themselves to come and marvel. Sundays saw an unbroken procession pass through the stables. Haudouin became a celebrity, his horse-trading business greatly improved, and to be on the safe side he took to going regularly to Mass. Claquebue preened itself in the possession of an exhibit which brought so many visitors, and its two cafes experienced a sudden rise in prosperity. As a result of this Haudouin decided to become a candidate at the municipal elections, and upon his threatening to sell his Green Mare the two cafe proprietors thought it judicious to accord him a support which just turned the scale.

Not long after this a teacher at the Imperial College of Saint-Margelon, who was also a correspondent of the Academie des Sciences, came to see the Green Mare. He was dumbfounded and wrote a report to the Academie which caused one of its most illustrious members, his chest blazoned with decorations, to declare that the thing must be a fraud. “I am seventy-six years old,” he said, “and 1 have never read of the existence of a green mare: therefore a green mare cannot exist.” Another savant, scarcely less illustrious, replied that green mares had undoubtedly existed in the past, and that his learned colleague might find references to them in many of the most respected authors of antiquity if he would merely take the trouble to read between the lines. The dispute was a resounding one. Its echoes reached as far as the Court, causing the Emperor himself to inquire into the matter.

“A green mare?” he said. “That must be as unusual as an honest minister!”

This was a joke. The ladies of the Court slapped their thighs and everyone praised the Sovereign’s wit. The bon mot was repeated all over Paris, and when the Emperor paid a visit to the region of Saint-Margelon a newspaper referred in a sub-title to “The Land of the Green Mare.”

The Emperor arrived at Saint-Margelon during the morning and by three o’clock had listened to fourteen speeches. Being somewhat drowsy by the time the official banquet was ended, he signed to the Prefect to join him in the conveniences and there proposed:

“How would it be if we went to have a look at this green mare? I should like, while I am here, to see how the harvest promises.”

Accordingly they bustled through the inauguration of a monument to a certain Captain Pont, who had lost his head at Sebastopol, and the Imperial coach set out upon the road to Claquebue. A fine warm spring lay over the countrvside, which had a reviving effect upon the Emperor. He was much taken with the mistress of the house, who had a pastoral charm and a period bosom. The people of Claquebue, massed along the village street, murmured in ecstasy that things never stopped happening. Another half-dozen of the old men died and were hidden in the ditch for the sake of appearances.

After an exchange of courtesies Haudouin brought the Green Mare out into the yard. The Emperor expressed his admiration, and being moved by the colour green to bucolic reverie he added a few phrases regarding the simplicity of country customs, at the same time eyeing Mme. Haudouin’s corsage. In that farmyard heavy with the scent of dung she appeared to him a picture of robust grace, enriched with a hint of ready fecundity which quickened his pulses. And indeed she was still a good-looking farmer’s wife who scarcely showed her forty years. The Prefect was a man of ambition, and since he was also served by a penetrating intelligence he readily perceived what was passing through his Sovereign’s mind. Pretending to be fascinated by Haudouin’s conversation, he drew him a little to one side, and in order to gain further time promised him a seat on the Regional Council at the next election. The Emperor in the meantime was addressing himself to Mme. Haudouin, who in response to a suggestion thrown out so to speak at random, replied with the artlessness and modesty of the pure in heart:

“Sire, the moon is at the full.”

Baffled but nevertheless charmed by this evidence of her closeness to Nature, the Emperor resolved to reward her for having caught his fancy and accordingly endorsed the promise made by the Prefect to her husband. When he returned to his coach the people of Claquebue accorded him a magnificent ovation, subsequently lighting a large bonfire to which they consigned the rest of the old men. The site of this notable holocaust came to be known as the Champ-Brule, and the corn grew there exceptionally well.

Thenceforward Claquebue led a more healthy and vigorous life. The men ploughed deeper furrows, the women spiced their cookery with a nicer judgment, the youths chased the girls and each man prayed for the downfall of his neighbour. The Haudouin family set an example in all this which inspired widespread admiration. With a thrust of his shoulder, Haudouin drove the wall of his house as far as the road and installed a dining-room, equipped with a dinner-service and an extending table, which had the whole village gaping in astonishment. Since the Emperor’s gaze had rested on her bosom his wife no longer milked cows but kept a maidservant and did lace-work instead.

Haudouin, the official candidate, became a regional councillor and had no difficulty in also becoming Mayor of Claquebue. His business prospered greatly, and in consequence of the Imperial visit, the tale of which had spread throughout the region, he came to be regarded at the horse and cattle fairs as in some sort the official horse-coper. In matters under dispute he was appealed to as an arbitrator.

Alphonse, the eldest of the three Haudouin sons, derived no benefit from these changes since he had been conscripted for seven years military service. He was in a cavalry regiment, and little news was heard of him. The family looked to him to become a sergeant, but he had to re-enlist in order to do so. He said that the cavalry were not like the infantry, where anyone can win promotion.

Honore, the second son, fell in love with Adelaide Mouchet, a thin girl with dark eyes who came of a family notorious for its poverty. Although Haudouin strongly opposed the match, Honore stood firm, and the thunder of their disputes rattled the windows of Claquebue for two years. When he came of age Honore married his Adelaide and went to live with her in a neighbouring village where he hired himself out as a day-labourer. He refused to return to his father’s house until due apology had been made, and the good man was obliged to submit to this ignominy in order to spare himself the humiliation of seeing his son lead a life of squalor within half a league of Claquebue. Honore then resumed his proper calling of farmer and horse-trader under the paternal roof. He was an honest and lighthearted youth who knew his business but was as lacking in ambition as he was in guile: one might see at a glance that he would never become one of those horse-copers who breed green mares. His father was grieved by this but had nevertheless a weakness for the young man, who genuinely loved their trade. Mme. Haudouin, on the other hand, preferred Alphonse, the sergeant, because of his uniform and his free-and-easy manners. She sent him five francs every Easter and at the Feast of Saint-Martin, concealing the fact from her husband.

Despite their personal predilections, Haudouin and his wife lavished an especial care upon their youngest son,

Ferdinand. His father had sent him to the Imperial College at Saint-Alargelon. Not wishing him to enter his own business, he hoped to make him a veterinary surgeon. Ferdinand in his sixteenth year was a taciturn, pertinacious youth with a long, bony face and a narrow, sugar-loaf skull. FIis instructors thought well of him, but he was not loved by his schoolfellows, and it fell to him to be nicknamed “rubber-bum,” a chance which may suffice to cause a man for the rest of his life to hanker after public recognition, honours and money.

On a certain spring morning there occurred at the Hau-douins’ house a notable event of which at the time no one appreciated the true significance. Mme. Haudouin, while seated with her lace-work at the dining-room window, saw a young man enter the yard. He wore a floppy hat and he carried a painter’s paraphernalia on his back.

“I happened to be passing,” he said, “and so I thought I wmuld ask permission to have a look at your green mare. I should like to see what I can make of her.”

The maidservant showed him the way to the stable. He chucked her under the chin, as was still customary in those days, and she giggled, reminding him that he had come to see the mare.

“It really is green,” said the painter, studying it.

Being exceptionally endowed with imaginative sensibility, he thought at first of painting it red, but Haudouin came along while he was still considering the matter.

“If you want to paint my mare,” he said with his customary good sense, “paint her green. Otherwise no one will recognise her.”

The mare was led out into the pasture and the painter set to work. But in the course of the afternoon Mme. Haudouin, passing that way, espied a deserted easel. Investigating the matter further, she was shocked to find the painter helping the maidservant to her feet in the middle of a field of barley which was already grown high. She was justly incensed: the wretched girl ran risk enough of being put in the family way by the master of the house, without going to outsiders. The painter was sent about his business, his canvas was confiscated, and Mme. Haudouin resolved to keep a close eye on the servant’s figure. The picture which was destined to perpetuate the memory of the Green Alare was hung above the chimney-piece in the dining-room, between the portrait of the Emperor and that^- of Canrobert.

Two years later the mare fell ill, wasted away for a month and then died. Haudouin’s youngest son was not yet sufficiently instructed in the veterinary science to be able to name the malady that had carried it off. Haudouin scarcely regretted the loss, since the animal had become a nuisance to him. Sightseers had continued to invade his stable, and when one is in politics one cannot refuse to exhibit one’s green mare even to persons of the most trifling consequence.

While his youngest son pursued his studies Haudouin methodically added to his fortune. He lent money on mortgage to the local farmersfas though he were'doing them a service, in a bluff and hearty‘manner which caused them to overlook the usurious rates'the charged. Asnhe grew older he felt a desire to enjoy his riches, but laboriously, as he had acquired them. He wanted his pleasures to have a specific money value, and in the name of self-indulgence he added the sum of thirty-five francs to his monthly budget. In spite of himself he so economised on this supplementary allowance that in the end he was obliged to devote the unexpended balance to the purchase of Government bonds. He was mortified by this but nothing could prevent it: each time he furnished himself with the modest sum needed to enable him to go to Valbuisson and pay his respects to a lady known as La Satinee, he ended by rewarding her with the improvisation of some small business transaction which profited them both. His real happiness lay in being rich and being known to be rich; and his greatest pleasure was to sit in front of his house and contemplate the thatched roof of the Malorets, which he could see five hundred yards away emerging from a cluster of trees. Between the two families there existed a hatred that was almost flawless, owing nothing to jealousy or to any difference of opinion. Never had a cross word been exchanged between them, or even a sharp one. The Haudouins had never sought to exploit the rumours current in Claquebue concerning the incestuous habits of the Maloret family. They uttered courteous salutations when they met, and did not even try to avoid speaking to one another. It was a very pure hatred which seemed to achieve its fulfilment in the mere fact of existing. All that happened was that now and then at mealtimes Haudouin would be plunged into meditation and would be heard to murmur to himself: “Those swine. .” All the family knew that he was referring to the Malorets.

During the war of 1870 Haudouin went through a difficult time. The Prussians entered Claquebue, and since he was mayor he suffered greatly. More than once, so it was said, enemy soldiers came within an ace of cooking and eating him, and on one occasion they even inserted a skewer into his body. Fortunately a higher officer arrived in the nick of time and declared that this did not count. But they robbed him of fodder, horses, potatoes and a mattress that was almost new. Ferdinand, who by then was set up as a vet in Saint-Margelon, lost all his customers and was at one moment even in danger of being mobilised. Haudouin and his wife went in constant fear for their son Honore, who had joined the sharpshooters in the woods. And finally Sergeant Alphonse, in one of the early advance-guard skirmishes, received a wound in the knee which caused him to limp for the rest of his life. When he returned to Claquebue he was treated at first with distinction, but gradually people fell into the habit of calling him “the cripple,” with an undertone of disdain.

Haudouin took down the portraits of the Emperor and Canrobert without waiting for the war to end; soon afterwards he replaced them with those of Thiers and Mac-Mahon; then with those of Jules Grevy and Gambetta, and so on. But the picture of the Green Mare remained in its accustomed place. Sometimes on a Sunday, when the family was seated over the stew or grilled pork in the diningroom, Haudouin would raise his eyes to look at it, and contemplating it with his head a little on one side would murmur with a sigh:

“You’d almost think it could talk!”

The others round the table would gulp their wine to conceal their emotion.

The artist who painted me was none other than the celebrated Murdoire. In addition to his genius as a painter he was the possessor of a stupendous secret which I shall refrain from making known to the painters of the present day. It is not that I fear to diminish Murdoire’s reputation by doing so: the portraits he left behind, so disturbingly endowed with life, the very landscapes of which it has been been said that the shadow of the god Pan may be seen to stir amid their foliage — all these bear witness to the fact that without the genius of the painter mere technical acquirements are as nothing. But artistic snobbishness in these days has in some cases gone so far that I am reluctant to run the risk of starting a vogue for a process than can only be carried out at considerable personal expense.

Suffice it to say, then, that the humours of the spring, the warmth of the earth, the sap of youth, the favours of the servant-girl, all these magical distillations were in a fashion which must remain for ever unrevealed blended in the paint with which Murdoire’s inspired brush depicted the speaking curve of my neck, the eloquence of my lips, the sensitive awareness of my nostrils and above all the halfhuman light in my eyes, that mysterious glow of life which lovers, misers and neurotics have sought ever since to interpret as they peer into the troubled waters of my gaze. He was driven from the farm, poor Murdoire, leaving behind him a masterpiece, and exhausted by his manifold labours he died soon afterwards.

As the Haudouins hung me in the dining-room the artist’s spirit trembled in my milky eyes and ran quivering the length of my green flanks. I was born to the consciousness of a harsh and desiring world in which my animal nature was enriched by the generous and lofty eroticism of Alurdoire. This simulacrum of my flesh was endowed with all the painful yearnings of humanity: the call of pleasure stirred my imagination with heavy and burning dreams, with priapic turmoil. Alas, I was not slow to discover the wretchedness of existing merely as a two-dimensional appearance, or to perceive the vanity of desires lacking all means of fulfilment.

In order to find an outlet for these impulses I obliged myself to divert them along other paths, where they might do service to the contemplative tendency favoured by my immobile state. I concerned myself with the study of my hosts and with reflections upon the spectacle afforded me by the observation of their intimate life. The liveliness of my imagination, the regrets which I could not prevent myself from feeling, and the dual nature, half man and half horse, with which the artist had endowed me — all this made it almost inevitable that my particular interest should dwell upon the love-life of the Haudouins. Whereas the mobile observer is obliged in his contemplation of the world to discover the harmonies of numbers and the secrets of series and permutations, the stationary witness may discern the very habits of life itself. I was, moreover, assisted in my purpose by the subtle powers of intuition which I owe to the brush of Murdoire: however, I shall offer no conclusions that are not based upon what I have seen or heard or deduced at first hand.

I have known four generations of Haudouins, the first at a ripe age, the last in its infancy. For seventy years I have watched the Haudouins engaged upon the commerce of love, each bringing to it the resources of an individual temperament, but the greater number (I might well say all, to some extent) remaining constant, both in the quest and the fulfilment, to a sort of family catechism which seemed to impose on them, not merely a certain ritual, but misgivings, scruples and predilections. If I had seen in this no more than a manifestation of heredity I should not refer to it, since that is a matter beyond my mare’s under-

standing. But I have observed that well-knit families have erotic traditions which are handed on from one generation to the next like the rules of daily behaviour or cooking recipes. These traditions are not restricted to habits of prudence and hygiene, but concern themselves also with the ways of making love, of speaking of it and of not speaking of it. To say this is to say little that everyone does not already know. The erotic side of life is so closely bound up with domestic habits, with shared beliefs and common interests, that it is always conditioned, even when it leads to rivalry between individuals, by the mode of existence of which it is a part, and which may be peculiarly that of a family. It is for this reason impossible to portray in any detail the mechanism by which it is transmitted. In one way or another the parents teach their children how to make love, for the most part inadvertently, in talking about the weather or politics or the price of eggs. There are also more direct means of transmission, since children have an astonishing faculty for catching words spoken in an undertone, for noting furtive gestures which later they will imitate, and for correctly interpreting conversations having a double meaning.

The Haudouin family possessed a good many traditions of this sort which they shared with all the peasants of Claquebue, some of a mystical nature and others based on economic considerations. Thus, Jules Haudouin had a superstitious aversion for feminine nudity. His hand was bolder than his gaze, and he passed his entire life without knowing that his wife had a large beauty-spot high up on one thigh. The greater freedom which darkness conferred upon him was in no sense due to any regard for his wife’s modesty. He was far removed from such refinements of feeling, and whether in pleasure or in toil did not put his wife upon the same plane as himself. Moreover, he found the nakedness of other women equally insufferable. One evening when the maidservant was putting away the dishes in the dining-room by the light of a candle, Haudouin, chancing to enter the room, was overtaken by a master’s whim. As he made himself ready the girl dutifully raised her skirts, uncovering the requisite amount of bare skin. At the sight he blushed red, and overcome by weak-

ness averted his eyes to contemplate the portrait of the President of the Republic. The austere countenance of Jules Grew, his fixed, suspicious gaze, completed Hau-douin's undoing. Filled with a sense of religious awe at the presence of this illustrious spectator, he blew out the candle. For a moment he remained motionless and silent, as though recoiling in the face of peril, but then the darkness restored his equanimity: I heard his heavy breathing mingled with the gratified murmurs of the girl. This mystical aversion from the satisfaction of the eves, the obscurely tangled belief that the sight of sin was a greater abomination than sin itself, was sufficiently common in Claquebue, where the cure encouraged his flock in the view that the wrath of God resided in the bodies of women more than anywhere else, so that it became an article of faith that it was safer to approach them with eves closed. The cure knew that one mystery leads to another and protects both. Among the most recent of the Haudouins I know a voung man who professes to be a Marxist, a nudist and an enlightened Freudian: it is not without a smile that I hear him claim to be an atheist as well, since I know that he never takes his pleasure without first putting out the light or drawing the curtain, and that except in nudist camps, where it is miraculously veiled with innocence, feminine nakedness inspires in him the same spiritual recoiling as in his great-grandfather. The bodies of prostitutes alone do not trouble him, no doubt because these represent something outside reality: nevertheless, he never asks one to take off her chemise.

For somewhat similar reasons Mme. Haudouin was less thorough in her toilet than she might have been. Nothing less than the occasion of a lving-in was needed to bring her to soap herself above the knees. This lack of hygiene, which was common to all the women of Claquebue, in no way arose from anv dislike of soap and water, for Mme. Haudouin quite frequently washed her feet, and always with satisfaction; it was simplv the outcome of a Christian modestv. fostered bv influences which set up pertinent restrictions in that domain. Needless to say, the cure did not expressly forbid women to wash themselves wherever they pleased, but he adroitly skirted the question with con-

stant praises of feminine pudicity, and he was careful to avoid commenting upon any passage in the Scriptures which might seem to approve of washing. He did this as much in the interest of his parishioners as in the cause of religion. Wholly devoted to his flock, the cure of Claque-bue was an honest and a forthright man, indiscreet at times to the point of being insufferable. Careless of pleasing, capable of injustice and even of acting with malice where he considered this was called for in order to bring some recalcitrant spirit back upon the narrow path, he performed his ministrations with the rigour and prudence of a peasant who sows where he may reap and does not waste his seed on barren soil. Knowing that modern methods of hygiene may in their effect upon morality be even more subversive than an anticlerical dinner held on a Good Friday, he did his utmost to protect his sheep against them.

There was, however, one part of his wife’s anatomy which afforded Haudouin untroubled pleasure and hilarity. This was her rump. For him it had no especial femininity, and he regarded it rather as a neutral zone. It was the only part of the feminine anatomy which he found both amusing and agreeable. But then, the cure himself did not object to jokes on the subject, and was even known to smile at them. He saw no serious peril in this, and in general shared the view of the Church, which has always conceded to French humour that in those fleshy hillocks the Devil has no dwelling-place.

The sports of love had but a small place in the preoccupations of the Haudouins. Husband and wife never spoke of them. If, by some extraordinary lapse, Haudouin chanced to caress his wife during the day, they were both somewhat put out by the event, as though they had been guilty of a misdemeanour. Not only did they reproach themselves with the waste of time, but they had a feeling that what they had done was as lacking in sense as to go to church on a week-day. They took far more interest in the love-concerns of other people than in their own, and they talked readily of these, with the utmost freedom of language. This lack of restraint arose out of the fact that in doing so they saw themselves in the role of censors. The conscious pillar of morality, Haudouin denounced sin with vigour, calling things by their proper names.

Their embraces were infrequent and quickly over, all initiative being denied to the wife, at least in practice. A man of regular habits in all other matters, Haudouin had never thought of precisely regulating their occurrence. He would sometimes indulge himself every night for a week and then abstain for several weeks on end. He was not, however, actuated solely by caprice. He adjusted his pleasure according to the work he had on hand. When he was engaged in difficult and arduous tasks he abstained, or was less assiduous. It was not fatigue or mental strain which caused this falling off, but rather the conviction that in business matters continence is one of the secrets of success. That is why he was never so much given to caressing the maidservant as during his latter years when, with his wordly situation solidly established, he might permit himself diversions which, considering their trifling importance, could yield no other grounds for self-reproach. But even at this stage of tardy roistering he did not forget the value of moderation, and I often heard him say to his son Ferdinand, “Until you’ve got all your certificates and a solid connection, don’t go overdoing you-know-what.” The veterinary surgeon took heed of this advice, and if he lacked his father’s flexibility and judgment in economising his energies, he did at least know how to preserve them by keeping to strict rules. His sons were a good deal more lax, and as for the latest of the Haudouins, one may say that they expend themselves solely upon impulse, deliberately separating their pleasure from their work. Thus I have observed the dissipation of that capital of continence which their forebears bequeathed to them as an essential ingredient of worldly prosperity. It is a long time now since any of the later generations bought Government bonds. Instead of saving their money, they foolishly squander it on women. This is what happens when impulse is no longer curbed to fit the necessities of daily toil.

For an observer condemned to immobility and inaction, nothing is more consoling than to witness the contradictions which human nature affords. I was able to watch Jules Haudouin at the end of his life, a Radical and an anti-Clerical, instruct his son in a secret which, perhaps unwittingly, he had derived from the cure of Claquebue. For scarcely a Sunday went by on which that worthy man did not proclaim from the pulpit the direct relationship between incontinence and poverty, letting it be inferred that God favoured the material fortunes of all men who were niggardly in caressing their wives.