Everybody respects him, the waitress admires everything he says, and is,
I am sure, in love with him. The high opinion he has of himself shows in
his smile, his speech, his gestures, his silence, and in his way of
wearing his hair; it emanates from his entire obnoxious personality.
Opposite to us sat a grey-haired, plump man with red hands and thick,
moist lips, who looked at us so persistently and annoyingly, while he
masticated his food, that we felt like throwing the carafes at him. The
other guests were insignificant and only contributed to the picture.
One evening the conversation fell upon a woman of the environs who had
left her husband and gone to America with her lover, and who, the
previous week, and passed through Saint-Pol on her way home, and had
stopped at the inn. Everybody wondered at her audacity, and her name was
accompanied by all sorts of unflattering epithets. Her whole life was
passed in review by these people, and they all laughed contemptuously
and insulted her and grew quite hot over the argument. They would have
liked to have her there to tell her what they thought of her and see
what she would say. Tirades against luxury, virtuous horror, moral
maxims, hatred of wealth, words with a double meaning, shrugs,
everything, in fact, was used to crush this woman, who, judging by the
ferocity these ruffians displayed in their attacks, must have been
pretty, refined, and charming.
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