Thus were opinions voiced and thus were they somewhat allayed — until a day during the harvest. The death and the burial together created less consternation than what then occurred.
“Did I not tell you, Alphonse — a hundred times, no?”
The widow Aubertin had married Hennezal, maker of goblets, candlesticks and ornaments of glass. Whereupon the whispers grew to murmurs, and what was voiced as mere suspicion and gossip, became established in the minds of the villagers as a fact. Aubertin had been dealt with foully.
Whether these suspicions reached the ears of the law, the history of this case does not show.
At any rate, they were not acted upon at the time.
It is only apparent that the police authorities would not take up the stray, possibly malicious, gossip of a community, nor would it order a disinterment on the strength of such gossip unless expressly desired by the near kin of the deceased.
Thus the matter rested for a time until further circumstances, coupled with the suspicions already known, took form in a chain of evidence that made Madame Aubertin’s case exceedingly more fascinating.
Some little time passed. The Madame, seeing that her daughter was fair to look upon (indeed Yvette was being “looked upon” to some small notoriety), began to cast her eyes about her upon the eligibles of her vicinity. With characteristic suddenness, Mine. Aubertin — now Mme. Hennezal — made a choice, namely, Bourlette, a prospering butcher in a village not far away.
A meeting was arranged, and when Bourlette beheld the vivacious beauty of Madame’s daughter, he decided that his prosperity would adorn her admirably. The news of the forthcoming marriage of these two was an occasion for much cynicism in the village.
“She is young, and she has a charming face,” Bourlette heard himself congratulated. And truer, sterner friends he would not heed.
“She is cunning, like her mother. You have heard the rumor, I suppose, of the late M. Aubertin?”
Bourlette grunted, annoyed. “I look upon the litter, and you show me the sow! What have the mother’s affairs to do with the character of my Yvette? Answer me that!”
“But, my dear Bourlette, isn’t it a fact that the woman poisoned her husband?”
“My friend, your venerable beard ought to restrain such witless gossip. It is not a fact, and if it were, you could not prove it. You are positively out of your senses to repeat such gossip even to a friend.”
“Bourlette,” said the other, irritably, “I open my mouth wide to tell you are a fool. She is young and you are old, and there you have my opinion!”
“And you,” came the answer, “are altogether a confirmed cynic. You are well aware that I love the wench, and she is also, if I may say it, fond enough of me.”
“Of you,” scoffed the friend with a grimace. “Bourlette, I would save you from this misstep even at the cost of our friendship. You are certainly not what you might call a cavalier. You are certainly not young. As a matter of fact you are old. Besides that you are fat, you have three teeth missing and the others will soon drop out.
“You may be rich after a fashion, but by all the saints you haven’t a hair on your smooth, flat, empty pate. And there you have my opinion, and the opinion of every one else, if that matters to you!”
That year, 1884, Yvette came into possession of the butcher as his lawfully wedded wife.
II
Bourlette chose a spacious house, in which the couple went to live. Perhaps he looked forward some day to making a hostelry of it, for the rooms were numerous. In the meantime, he did not let them go to waste. Within a short time after his marriage the butcher let it become known that he would let some of his rooms to a few “select, genteel” boarders.
Soon the house was filled with a convivial spirit. Merchants from the cities, gentlemen from the south, and foreigners from over the German border came and found rest there, and Yvette smiled on them all.
One whispered: “How does it happen so pretty a girl should be the wife of this eye-sore of a butcher? His naked skull is the color of a skinned ox, and there is more lard in him than in a full tub of his hog-fat.”
A gentleman from Paris shrugged with such expressiveness that his eyes shut.
“She has a lover,” he stated positively, though he had arrived only the day before. Bourlette, himself, became aware that this was the actual state of affairs.
But he did not fly into a rage. Discreetly he took one of his younger “genteel” boarders aside and admonished him in a respectable manner.
“Sir,” he said, “I beg of you to leave this house. And if you prove swine enough to linger three blinks of an eye, by the sacred name of a rabid dog—”
Bourlette had come out of his shop, and a cleaver was in his hand. The young boarder left.
Later, when the couple were alone, the butcher had no other cudgel than his large right hand, which, without a single word of explanation, he used vigorously across the mouth of his wife.
Bourlette had distinct cause to remember the day that followed. When evening came he relished his onion soup with customary keenness, and after supper sat down to read.
It was not long before he forsook his chair for the floor. Ten thousand demons began to torment his mid-regions. His face was screwed up in pain; he gasped, he retched, and called for water.
“Name of a name! I am dying!” he choked. “Curse you and your mother, together with the mother that begot her. Yvette, you have poisoned me, I swear!”
Pale faced, Yvette protested that he lied. She brought the water he craved. Bourlette gulped great draughts which only for the moment quenched the terrible fires that burned within him.
“By all the saints!” the butcher went on when he was at last able to gasp the words. “I have married into a family of poisoners. What my friend warned me against has come true, and may you be struck by a thousand thunders!”
“You lie! It is not true!”
Spasm after spasm seized the unfortunate Bourlette, while his wife merely looked on with staring malevolent eyes.
Strange as it may seem, the fit passed, and Bourlette did not die. Yvette it was who suffered then, for in the next few days her husband watched her like a hawk. He would not let her prepare his food; he spied upon her wherever she went; peeped suspiciously into every pot and pan, until, furious, she packed her things and left hint without so much as a good-by. Where she went he did not know.
Bourlette, now at peace, relaxed his vigilance. But only to his cost. A week later a similar malady, though not as violent as the first, brought him low. During the days that followed he became well and ill by turns. One day he lay gasping, and the next he was up and fuming at the base treachery that pursued him in his own household.
He discharged his servants one after another. He got rid of a cook, a gardener, a stable boy, and finally every last boarder. But even these expedients did not seem to help. The fearful attacks came nevertheless. Despairing at last, he wrote to his wife’s mother, the Madame Aubertin:
If you know where Yvette is, tell her to come to her Bourlette. I am suffering from some malady of the stomach, terrible. And there is no one in the house to help me. I accused her, but now I know it could not be her fault, because she has been gone for the past two weeks now. Tell her to forgive me for my unjust treatment of her, and to come to me, for God’s sake.
Yvette came, and her mother with her. Tears, protestations, and forgiveness poured like rainfall, after which mother and daughter settled down to nurse their invalid back to health.
“For a week you must eat nothing but gruel,” Madame laid down the law. “Too much meat and strong seasoning have caused your sickness. At the end of a week’s time — behold, what a difference!”