CHAPTER III

THE CAFE DE LA PAIX

It was about seven o’clock when Rigou drove by the Cafe de la Paix.  The setting sun, slanting its beams across the little town, was diffusing its ruddy tints, and the clear mirror of the lake contrasted with the flashing of the resplendent window-panes, which originated the strangest and most improbable colors.

The deep schemer, who had grown pensive as he revolved his plots, let his horse proceed so slowly that in passing the Cafe de la Paix he heard his own name banded about in one of those noisy disputes which, according to the Abbe Taupin, made the name of the establishment a gain-saying of its customary condition.

For a clear understanding of the following scene we must explain the topography of this region of plenty and of misrule, which began with the cafe on the square, and ended on the country road with the famous Tivoli where the conspirators proposed to entrap the general.  The ground-floor of the cafe, which stood at the angle of the square and the road, and was built in the style of Rigou’s house, had three windows on the road and two on the square, the latter being separated by a glass door through which the house was entered.  The cafe had, moreover, a double door which opened on a side alley that separated it from the neighboring house (that of Vallet the Soulanges mercer), which led to an inside courtyard.

The house, which was painted wholly in yellow, except the blinds, which were green, is one of the few houses in the little town which has two stories and an attic.  And this is why:  Before the astonishing rise in the prosperity of Ville-aux-Fayes the first floor of this house, which had four chambers, each containing a bed and the meagre furniture thought necessary to justify the term “furnished lodgings,” was let to strangers who were obliged to come to Soulanges on matters connected with the courts, or to visitors who did not sleep at the chateau; but for the last twenty-five years these rooms had had no other occupants than the mountebanks, the merchants, the vendors of quack medicines who came to the fair, or else commercial travellers.  During the fair-time they were let for four francs a day; and brought Socquard about two hundred and fifty francs, not to speak of the profits on the consumption of food which the guests took in his cafe.

The front of the house on the square was adorned with painted signs; on the spaces that separated the windows from the glass door billiard-cues were represented, lovingly tied together with ribbons, and above these bows were depicted smoking bowls of punch, the bowls being in the form of Greek vases.  The words “Cafe de la Paix” were over the door, brilliantly painted in yellow on a green ground, at each end of which rose pyramids of tricolored billiard-balls.  The window-sashes, painted green, had small panes of the commonest glass.