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"The general!" cried Madame Vermut, "he won't interfere with things; he plays his part." "What part, my dear?" asked Madame Soudry. "Oh! the paternal part." "If poor little Pigeron had had the wisdom to play it, instead of harassing his wife, he'd be alive now," said the poet.
Just as he was about to get into the carriage, Rigou noticed the chemist crossing the square and hailed him with a "Ho, there, Monsieur Vermut!" Recognizing the rich man, Vermut hurried up. Rigou joined him, and said in a low voice: "Are there any drugs that can eat into the tissue of the skin so as to produce a real disease, like a whitlow on the finger, for instance?"
"Oh!" returned the abbe, "wherever he goes and wherever he stays, you may be quite certain it is for no charitable purpose." "That man gives me goose-flesh whenever I see him," said Madame Vermut. "He is so much to be feared," remarked the doctor, "that if he had a spite against me I should have no peace till he was dead and buried; he would get out of his coffin to do you an ill-turn."
Madame Soudry leaned over to her neighbor, Monsieur Guerbet, and made one of those apish grimaces which she had inherited from dear mistress, together with her silver, by right of conquest, and twisting her face into a series of them she made him look at Madame Vermut, who was coquetting with the author of "The Cup-and-Ball."
No society is complete without a victim, without an object to pity, ridicule, despise, and protect. Vermut, full of his scientific problems, often came with his cravat untied, his waistcoat unbuttoned, and his little green surtout spotted. Madame Vermut was one of those women who in the society of a small town are the life and soul of amusement and who set things going.
The latter, named Sarcus, had a salary of fifteen hundred francs, and was married to a woman without fortune, the eldest sister of Monsieur Vermut, the apothecary of Soulanges. Though an only daughter, Mademoiselle Sarcus, whose beauty was her only dowry, could scarcely have lived on the salary paid to a notary's clerk in the provinces.
"One would think you were intimate with Monsieur Vermut to hear you talk," said the doctor, pointing to the little apothecary, who was then crossing the square. "Poor fellow!" said the poet, who was suspected of occasionally sharpening his wit with Madame Vermut; "just look at that waddle of his! and they say he is learned!"
Soulanges possessed a pharmaceutist named Vermut, a chemist, who was more of a chemist than Sarcus was a statesman, or Lupin a singer, or Gourdon the elder a scientist, or his brother a poet. Nevertheless, the leading society of Soulanges did not take much notice of Vermut, and the second-class society took none at all.
"If Monsieur Gourdon would help, yes," answered the little chemist. "Vermut, not a word of all this, or you and I will quarrel; but speak of the matter to Monsieur Gourdon, and tell him to come and see me the day after to-morrow. I may be able to procure him the delicate operation of cutting off a forefinger."
Are not there other ways quite as sure, but innocent, to rid ourselves of that incumbrance? I would like to have a man dare to question my conduct! The worthy Monsieur Vermut doesn't hamper me in the least, but he has never been ill yet.
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