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Updated: May 28, 2025
"It is declared," said Monsieur Brisson, addressing himself to Madame Jouval, for whom he was in the act of preparing what was spoken of between them as "the tonic," a courteous euphuism, "that that villain Notary, aided by a bandit hired to his assistance, was engaged in administering poison to the cat; and that the brave animal, freeing itself from the bandit's holdings, tore to destruction the whole of his bald head and then triumphantly escaped to its home!"
"A sight to see is that head of his!" replied Madame Jouval. "So swathed is it in bandages, that the turban of the Grand Turk is less!" Madame Jouval spoke in tones of satisfaction that were of reason already she had held conferences with Madame Jolicoeur in regard to the trousseau.
An adequate reply to her discharge of such a volley of home truths would have been difficult to frame. In the Vic bakery, between Madame Vic and Monsieur Fromagin, a discussion was in hand akin to that carried on between Monsieur Brisson and Madame Jouval but marked with a somewhat nearer approach to accuracy in detail.
Admirably restraining herself, Madame Jouval replied in tones of sympathy: "Monsieur receives my commiserations in his misfortunes." Losing a large part of her restraint, she continued, her eyes glittering: "Yet Monsieur's temperament clearly is over-sanguine.
Remembering, as we all do, the affair of the unhappy old woman, it is easy to perceive that to Monsieur, above all others, any one in need of poisonings would come!" The thrust was so keen that for the moment Monsieur Brisson met it only with a savage glare. Then the bottle that he handed to Madame Jouval inspired him with an answer. "Madame is in error," he said with politeness.
Madame Jouval, a milliner of repute delivering herself with the generosity due to a good customer from whom an order for a trousseau was a not unremote possibility, yet with the acumen perfected by her professional experiences summed her views of the situation, in talk with Madame Vic, proprietor of the Vic bakery, in these words: "It is of the convenances, and equally is it of her own melancholy necessities, that this poor Madame retires for a season to sorrow in a suitable seclusion in the company of her sympathetic cat.
"And all," continued Monsieur Brisson, with rancour, "because of his jealousies of the cat's place in Madame Jolicoeur's affections the affections which he so hopelessly hoped, forgetful of his own repulsiveness, to win for himself!" "Ah, she has done well, that dear lady," said Madame Jouval warmly.
Aside from having confected with her own hands the mourning to which Monsieur Brisson referred so disparagingly, Madame Jouval was not one to hear calmly the ascription of the term baggage the word has not lost in its native French, as it has lost in its naturalized English, its original epithetical intensity to a patroness from whom she was in the very article of receiving an order for an exceptionally rich trousseau.
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