The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de MaupassantЧитать онлайн книгу.
but that is nothing to the purpose. We would require to know its other qualities.”
The peasant observed: “Coloche and myself first drank a glass of it yesterday evening, and it has already made our bodies feel fresh. Isn’t that true, son?”
The big youth replied in a tone of conviction: “Sure enough, it was very refreshing.”
Andermatt remained motionless, his feet on the edge of the hole. He turned toward the physician: “We would want nearly six times this volume of water for what I would wish to do, would we not?”
“Yes, nearly.”
“Do you think that we’ll be able to get it?”
“Oh! as for me, I know nothing about it.”
“See here! The purchase of the grounds can only be definitely effected after the soundings. It would be necessary, first of all, to have a promise of sale drawn up by a notary, once the analysis is known, but not to take effect unless the consecutive soundings give the results hoped for.”
Père Oriol became restless. He did not understand. Andermatt thereupon explained to him the insufficiency of only one spring, and demonstrated to him that he could not purchase unless he found others. But he could not search for these other springs till after the signature of a promise of sale.
The two peasants appeared forthwith to be convinced that their fields contained as many springs as vine-stalks. It would be sufficient to dig for them — they would see, they would see.
Andermatt said simply: “Yes, we shall see.”
But Père Oriol dipped his fingers in the water, and remarked: “Why, ’tis hot enough to boil an egg, much hotter than the Bonnefille one!”
Latonne in his turn steeped his fingers in it, and realized that this was possible.
The peasant went on: “And then it has more taste and a better taste; it hasn’t a false taste, like the other. Oh! this one, I’ll answer for it, is good!
I know the waters of the country for the fifty years that I’ve seen them flowing. I never seen a finer one than this, never, never!”
He remained silent for a few seconds, and then continued: “It is not in order to puff the water that I say this! — certainly not. I would like to make a trial of it before you, a fair trial, not what your chemists make, but a trial of it on a person who has a disease. I’ll bet that it will cure a paralytic, this one, so hot is it and so good to taste — I’ll make a bet on it!”
He appeared to be searching his brain, then cast a look at the tops of the neighboring mountains to see whether he could discover the paralytic that he required. Not having made the discovery, he lowered his eyes to the road.
Two hundred meters away from it, at the side of the road could be distinguished the two inert legs of the vagabond, whose body was hidden by the trunk of a willow tree.
Oriol placed his hand on his forehead as a shade, and said questioningly to his son: “That isn’t Père Clovis over there still?”
Colosse laughingly replied: “Yes, yes. ’Tis he — he doesn’t go as quick as a hare.”
Then Oriol stepped over to Andermatt’s side, and with an air of serious and deep conviction: “Look here, Monchieu! Listen to me. There’s a paralytic over yonder, who is well known to the doctor, a genuine one, who hasn’t been seen to make a single step for the last ten years. Isn’t that so, doctor?”
Latonne returned: “Oh! if you cure that fellow, I would pay a franc a glass for your water!”
Then, turning toward Andermatt: “Tis an old fellow suffering from rheumatic gout with a sort of spasmodic contraction of the left leg and a complete paralysis of the right; in fact, I believe, an incurable.”
Oriol had allowed him to talk; he resumed in a deliberate fashion: “Well, doctor, would you like to make a trial of it on him for a month? I don’t say that it will succeed, — I say nothing on the matter, — I only ask to have a trial made. Hold on! Coloche and myself are going to dig a hole for the stones — well, we’ll make a hole for Cloviche; he’ll remain an hour there every morning, and then we’ll see — there!
—— we’ll see.”
The physician murmured: “You may try. I answer confidently that you will not succeed.”
But Andermatt, beguiled by the prospect of an almost miraculous cure, gladly fell in with the peasant’s suggestion; and the entire four directed their steps toward the vagabond, who, all this time, had been lying motionless in the sun. The old poacher, understanding the dodge, pretended to refuse, resisted for a long time, then allowed himself to be persuaded, on the condition that Andermatt would give him two francs a day for the hour which he would spend in the water.
So the matter was settled. It was even decided that, as soon as the hole was dug, Père Clovis should take his bath that very day. Andermatt would supply him with clothes to dress himself afterward, and the two Oriols would bring him a disused shepherd’s hut, which was lying in their yard, so that the invalid might shut himself in there, and change his apparel.
Then the banker and the physician returned to the village. When they reached it, they parted, the doctor going to his own house for his consultations, and Andermatt hurrying to attend on his wife, who had to come to the establishment at half past nine o’clock.
She appeared almost immediately, dressed from head to foot in pink — with a pink hat, a pink parasol, and a pink complexion, she looked like an aurora, and she descended the steps of the hotel to avoid the turn of the road with the hopping movements of a bird, as it goes from stone to stone, without opening its wing. As soon as she saw her husband, she exclaimed:
“Oh! what a pretty country it is! I am quite delighted with it.”
A few bathers wandering sadly through the little park in silence turned round as she passed by, and Petrus Martel, who was smoking his pipe in his shirtsleeves at the window of the billiard-room, called to his chum, Lapalme, sitting in a corner before a glass of white wine, and said, smacking the roof of his mouth with his tongue:
“Deuce take it, there’s something sweet!” Christiane made her way into the establishment, bowed smilingly toward the cashier, who sat at the left of the entrance-door, and saluted the ex-jailer seated at the right with a “Good morning”; then, holding out a ticket to a bath-attendant dressed like the girl in the refreshment-room, followed her into a corridor facing the doors of the bathrooms. The lady was shown into one of them, rather large, with bare walls, furnished with a chair, a glass, and a shoe-horn, while a large oval orifice, coated, like the floor, with yellow cement, served the purposes of a bath.
The woman turned a cock like those used for making the street-gutters flow, and the water gushed through a little round grated aperture at the bottom of the bath so that it was soon full to the brim, and its overflow was diverted through a furrow sunk into the wall.
Christiane, having left her chambermaid at the hotel, declined the attendant’s services in undressing, and remained there alone, saying that if she required anything, she would ring, and would do the same when she wanted her linen.
She slowly disrobed, watching as she did so the almost invisible movement of the wave gently stirring on the clear surface of the basin. When she had divested herself of all her clothing she dipped her foot in, and the pleasant warm sensation mounted to her throat; then she plunged into the tepid water first one leg, and after it the other, and sat down in the midst of this caressing heat, in this transparent bath, in this spring, which flowed over her, around her, covering her body with tiny globules all along her legs, all along her arms, and also all over her breasts. She noticed with surprise those particles of air innumerable and minute which clothed her from head to foot with an entire mail-suit of little pearls. And these pearls, so minute, flew off incessantly from her white flesh, and evaporated on the surface of the bath, driven on by others that sprung to life over her form. They sprung up over her skin,