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Updated: June 8, 2025
"Well, gentlemen, does the fair amuse you?" he asked, urbanely. Navailles turned to his doll for inspiration, made it give its metallic squeak, and then, as if repeating what Pulcinello had whispered to him, replied: "Enormously." Oriol trumpeted his approval loudly, and the expressions of the others bore ample testimony to their enjoyment.
Æsop, looking at the key with satisfaction, murmured to himself: "The best." As he moved slowly away from the king's tent a little crowd of Gonzague's friends Chavernay, Oriol, Navailles, Nocé, Gironne, Choisy, Albret, and Montaubert all laughing and talking loudly, crossed his path and perceived the hunchback, who seemed to them, naturally enough, a somewhat singular figure in such a scene.
The name of Lagardere meant little or nothing to them. Nocé spoke a short funeral oration: "The scamp has cheated the gallows." When the applause had died down, Gonzague spoke again: "Also I have good sport for you. To-night you shall witness a wedding." Again the applause broke forth. Oriol, his round eyes growing rounder, echoed the last words as a question: "A wedding?" Gonzague nodded.
Fat Oriol, staring in amazement at the controversy, questioned: "What does the fellow mean?" Chavernay burst into a fit of laughing, and patted Oriol on the back. "I'm afraid he means that you are a rogue, Oriol."
"It is Mademoiselle de Clermont, who is looking for me." Taranne pooh-poohed him. "Nonsense. It is Madame de Tessy, who is looking for me." "It might be Mademoiselle Nivelle, looking for me," Oriol suggested, fatuously. Choisy, Gironne, Albret, Montaubert each in turn offered a possible name for the unknown. Chavernay would have none of their suggestions. "No, no. That is not any one we know.
Men and women, the guests of Gonzague, flooded from the supper-room into the great hall, and under the gaze of the Three Louis, Oriol with his fancy, Navailles with Cidalise, Taranne, Nocé, and the others, each with his raddled Egeria of the opera-house and the ballet.
Its members had ransacked the toy-shops of the fair, and every man was carrying some plaything and making the most of it, and extolling its greater virtues than the playthings of his fellows. Taranne carried a pea-shooter, and peppered his companion's legs persistently, grinning with delight if any of his victims showed irritation. Oriol had got a large trumpet, and was blowing it lustily.
The purport of the story is clear to those who recognize the ideas that governed Maupassant's work, and even the hasty reader or critic, on reading "Mont Oriol," which was published two years later and is based on a combination of the motifs which inspired "Une Vie" and "Bel-Ami," will reconsider former hasty judgments, and feel, too, that beneath the triumph of evil which calls forth Maupassant's satiric anger there lies the substratum on which all his work is founded, viz: the persistent, ceaseless questioning of a soul unable to reconcile or explain the contradiction between love in life and inevitable death.
The hunchback made an appeal to Gonzague. "Highness, humor my jest to the end. I have kept my real name a secret long enough; let me keep it secret a little longer. Will you and your friends honor me by signing as witnesses? Then I will fill in the blanks and set down my own name a name that will make you laugh." Oriol gave a grin. "Æsop is comic enough." Lagardere nodded to him.
Now the hunchback walked slowly in a circle round the chair on which Gabrielle was seated, making as he did so fantastic gestures with his hands over her head gestures which suggested to the amazed spectators some wizard busy with his horrid incantations. Taranne nudged Oriol. "She listens." "She seems pleased," Oriol answered. Chavernay muttered, angrily: "This must be witch-craft."
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