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Padoie said to her husband: "Are you going to the judge's house this evening?" "Yes, dear." "Do not stay late. You always get so tired when you go out. You are not made for society, with your poor health." She then talked about society in Vannes, of the excellent social circle in which the Padoies moved, thanks to their religious sentiments.
Padoie, a little moralist, a devotee, and always cross; but he needed money, needed it very badly, and he remembered that, of all his relations, the Padoies were the only ones whom he had never approached on the subject. Pere Varajou, formerly a horticulturist at Angers, but now retired from business, had closed his purse strings to his scapegrace son and had hardly seen him for two years.
Padoie must have been almost fifty. He was tall, thin, bony, slow, hairy, with heavy arched eyebrows. He wore a velvet skull cap with a gold cord vandyke design round it. His look was gentle, like his actions. His speech, his gestures, his thoughts, all were soft. Varajou said to himself, "What a fool!"
His daughter had married Padoie, a former treasury clerk, who had just been appointed tax collector at Vannes. Varajou, on leaving the train, had some one direct him to the house of his brother-in-law, whom he found in his office arguing with the Breton peasants of the neighborhood. Padoie rose from his seat, held out his hand across the table littered with papers, murmured, "Take a chair.
In the damp dining-room with the paper peeling from the walls near the floor, he saw a soup tureen on a round table without any table cloth, on which were also three melancholy soup-plates. M. and Mme. Padoie entered the room at the same time as Varajou.
When he said: "Nom d'un chien, what a spree!" he expressed the highest degree of admiration of which his mind was capable. Having finally got rid of his peasants, Padoie inquired: "How are you?" "Pretty well, as you see. And how are you?" "Quite well, thank you. It is very kind of you to have thought of coming to see us."
In the damp dining-room with the paper peeling from the walls near the floor, he saw a soup tureen on a round table without any table cloth, on which were also three melancholy soup-plates. M. and Mme. Padoie entered the room at the same time as Varajou.
The door opened and Mme. Padoie appeared. She went over to her brother without any eagerness, held her cheek for him to kiss, and asked: "Have you been here long?" "No, hardly half an hour." "Oh, I thought the train would be late. Will you come into the parlor?" They went into the adjoining room, leaving Padoie to his accounts and his taxpayers.
They all sat down to table, and the husband and wife crossed themselves over the pit of their stomachs, after which Padoie helped the soup, a meat soup. It was the day for pot-roast. After the soup, they had the beef, which was done to rags, melted, greasy, like pap. The officer ate slowly, with disgust, weariness and rage. Mme.
And then two gentlemen appeared in evening dress, and wearing the ribbon of an order. Padoie rushed up to them. "Oh, judge he is crazy, he is crazy. He was sent to us as a convalescent. You can see that he is crazy." Varajou was sitting up now, and not being able to understand it all, he guessed that he had committed some monstrous folly.
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