The Fête At Coqueville | Page 2

do much better to mend them.
So Coqueville finds itself a prey to two fierce factions--something like
one hundred and thirty inhabitants bent upon devouring the other fifty
for the simple reason that they are the stronger.
The struggle between two great empires has no other history.
Among the quarrels which have lately upset Coqueville, they cite the
famous enmity of the brothers, Fouasse and Tupain, and the ringing

battles of the Rouget ménage. You must know that every inhabitant in
former days received a surname, which has become to-day the regular
name of the family; for it was difficult to distinguish one's self among
the cross-breedings of the Mahés and the Floches. Rouget assuredly
had an ancestor of fiery blood. As for Fouasse and Tupain, they were
called thus without knowing why, many surnames having lost all
rational meaning in course of time. Well, old Françoise, a wanton of
eighty years who lived forever, had had Fouasse by a Mahé, then
becoming a widow, she remarried with a Floche and brought forth
Tupain. Hence the hatred of the two brothers, made specially lively by
the question of inheritance. At the Rouget's they beat each other to a
jelly because Rouget accused his wife, Marie, of being unfaithful to
him for a Floche, the tall Brisemotte, a strong, dark man, on whom he
had already twice thrown himself with a knife, yelling that he would rip
open his belly. Rouget, a small, nervous man, was a great spitfire.
But that which interested Coqueville most deeply was neither the
tantrums of Rouget nor the differences between Tupain and Fouasse. A
great rumor circulated: Delphin, a Mahé, a rascal of twenty years, dared
to love the beautiful Margot, the daughter of La Queue, the richest of
the Floches and chief man of the country. This La Queue was, in truth,
a considerable personage. They called him La Queue because his father,
in the days of Louis Philippe, had been the last to tie up his hair, with
the obstinacy of old age that clings to the fashions of its youth. Well,
then, La Queue owned one of the two large fishing smacks of
Coqueville, the "Zephir," by far the best, still quite new and seaworthy.
The other big boat, the "Baleine," a rotten old patache, {1} belonged to
Rouget, whose sailors were Delphin and Fouasse, while La Queue took
with him Tupain and Brisemotte. These last had grown weary of
laughing contemptuously at the "Baleine"; a sabot, they said, which
would disappear some fine day under the billows like a handful of mud.
So when La Queue learned that that ragamuffin of a Delphin, the froth
of the "Baleine," allowed himself to go prowling around his daughter,
he delivered two sound whacks at Margot, a trifle merely to warn her
that she should never be the wife of a Mahé. As a result, Margot,
furious, declared that she would pass that pair of slaps on to Delphin if
he ever ventured to rub against her skirts. It was vexing to be boxed on

the ears for a boy whom she had never looked in the face!
1 Naval term signifying a rickety old concern.
Margot, at sixteen years strong as a man and handsome as a lady, had
the reputation of being a scornful person, very hard on lovers. And
from that, added to the trifle of the two slaps, of the presumptuousness
of Delphin, and of the wrath of Margot, one ought easily to
comprehend the endless gossip of Coqueville.
Notwithstanding, certain persons said that Margot, at bottom, was not
so very furious at sight of Delphin circling around her. This Delphin
was a little blonde, with skin bronzed by the sea-glare, and with a mane
of curly hair that fell over his eyes and in his neck. And very powerful
despite his slight figure; quite capable of thrashing any one three times
his size. They said that at times he ran away and passed the night in
Grandport. That gave him the reputation of a werwolf with the girls,
who accused him, among themselves, of "making a life of it"--a vague
expression in which they included all sorts of unknown pleasures.
Margot, when she spoke of Delphin, betrayed too much feeling. He,
smiling with an artful air, looked at her with eyes half shut and
glittering, without troubling himself the least in the world over her
scorn or her transports of passion. He passed before her door, he glided
along by the bushes watching for her hours at a time, full of the
patience and the I cunning of a cat lying in wait for a tomtit; and when
suddenly she discovered him behind her skirts, so close to her at times
that she guessed it by the warmth of his breath,