In the Land of Pain by Alphonse Daudet

Author:Alphonse Daudet
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

II

In the Land of Pain

This year at Néris*1 either my eyes are less sharp or the company is less interesting. A few characters, however. Mme M–––, magistrate’s wife, organizer of parties and outings, a fat matron living it up with a bunch of junior prosecutors. ‘Let’s have some champagne and be jolly! You’re not jolly!’ The receptions at Châteaudun…Two daughters, one tall and horse-faced, with pretensions to elegance and a pile of dresses in her trunk; the younger one, twelve, a strange child with dark expressionless eyes and clownish movements, who has fainting-fits and is brought out of them by the mother passing in front of her eyes her golden ‘lucky charm’. The physical stance of a monkey and a sleepwalker. What the wife tells us about her husband – his quirks and fads, his hypochondria and addiction to every kind of illness. The unnecessary operation on his eyes. When he takes the waters with his wife and children, he always stays at a different hotel. On their honeymoon, the bedroom divided into two: ‘This is your side…This is mine…Those are your chairs…These are mine.’ And he’s a judge, this headcase! Memory of a picnic lunch – the wife lying flat on her back, feet higher than her head, with her false plait removed and lying coiled beside her like a grass snake.

The Women On Their Own. Mme T–––. ‘As clever as a man’ (?), ‘a pupil of D–––’, Jewish head, long, glistening, grooved eyes, Parisian chatter, an affair with the Casino cellist who was discovered doing up his cravat in the little sitting room at five in the morning. Mme L–––, a short woman with an affected smile, the corners of her mouth always turned up, faded, mysterious, timid, lacking social graces, arriving at the dinner table with twigs and bunches of flowers threaded through her belt, then becoming ashamed and embarrassed, and shiftily ripping away this ceremonial garland.

The other type of Woman On Her Own. Nice Mme S––– and her friend Mlle de X–––. Both have the look of soeurs tourières,*2 and scoot off to church as soon as the meal is over. Mlle de X––– is gushy, plump, kind-hearted, naïve, full of convent gossip, proud of her two sisters who married money, and of her family, penniless minor Breton nobility who breed as fast as a fishing village when the boats come in. Taken up by Mme S–––. She displays widowhood, virtue, religion, has kindly eyes, and is a bit cracked. Her husband was killed by her father in a hunting accident; deep into charitable works; no children.

Mme C–––, still young, widow of a naval officer, ugly, eyes too black, red blotches on her nose, which she constantly examines with the aid of a little hand-mirror. Wherever she looks she sees scorpions, spiders, bloodstained hands. She’s always alone, walking through the orchard with tiny steps, then sitting motionless on a bench for hours, hand on cheek, sunk in thought. She makes the hotel feel like a madhouse.

And then there’s Mme P–––, the General’s wife.

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