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Florian And Crescence
by
” Juste,” said Florian: “all right: I’ll find the gentleman somewhere else in good time. You hear, you lobsided lout over there? If I catch you within half a mile of Crescence again, I’ll knock your crooked legs into a cocked hat, and then you may toddle on your tripod.”
“You ragamuffin!” roared Steinhaeuser, before whom Caspar had posted himself. Florian made for him with a “Comapulation smash! foudre de Dieu! ” but Caspar hauled him back, and Constantine was shrewd enough to interfere as a peacemaker.
The three left the house, followed by Josey. On the road they vowed never to patronize the Eagle again. Florian made an effort to go back, however: he hadn’t given the landlord all his change.
“Thunder an’ ouns!” said Constantine, “stay here, I tell you. You’re the best man for flying off the handle in Wurtemberg. Be quiet, now: we’ll manage to lay the geometer out some time, and make him forget the resurrection of the legs.”
This counsel prevailed; and, to compensate themselves for their enforced inaction, they travelled through the village, the College Chap howling like a whipped dog, and making, as he expressed it, all the dogs in the houses rebellious.
3.
WEEKDAY LIFE ON SUNDAY.
Next day Crescence did not dress in her Sunday clothes to go to church, but complained of being unwell, and remained at home.
The tailor, when he came home from church and saw his daughter in dishabille, said,–
“What’s that? Be quiet, I tell you, once and for all,” he continued, seeing Crescence about to speak. “You don’t feel very well, because Florian’s come back, and you don’t want to be seen in the street. I’ve heard all about the fuss he had with the geometer last night. Now, just for spite, you must go to the Horb Garden to-day with the geometer. That’s what I tell you: and one word’s as good as a thousand.”
“I’m sick.”
“No use. Go up-stairs and dress yourself, or I’ll measure your clothes with this yardstick.”
“Let him talk,” said the tailor’s wife, who had entered by this time: “what he says is for the mice to dance by. Crescence, if you don’t feel well, stay at home. If it depended on him, you wouldn’t have a shred of clothes to put on, good or bad: all he can do is to put his feet under the table three times a day and get himself fed like a billet of soldiers.”
The tailor advanced upon Crescence; but his wife posted herself in front of her, clenched her fists, and scared her liege-lord into a corner.
These people were fresh from church, where they had prayed and sung of love, peace, and happiness. Their hymn-books were still in their hands, and already had Discord resumed its reign.
Indeed, we have stumbled upon a peculiar household. The mother had been the parson’s cook, and had married the tailor rather suddenly. Crescence was her oldest child, and she had, besides, a son and a daughter. She still wore citizen’s dress, with the sole exception of the black cap of the peasant-woman, which, from its superiority in cheapness to the lace caps of the votaries of Paris, seems destined to survive all other traces of the peculiar costume of the peasantry.
During the early part of their wedded life they lived together very harmoniously; for where there is plenty of all things needful none but the most quarrelsome contract habits of dispute. Such a state of things is entitled, among the refined as well as among the vulgar, a happy match!
The tailor worked at his trade, and his wife kept a little shop for the sale of groceries and odds and ends.
But what is more subject to the fashions than those kings of fashion, the tailors? Balt only worked for the gentlefolks and for the Jews, who also wore citizens’ dress: make peasants’ clothes he could not,–and would not, for he had been to Berlin. New competitors established themselves in the village and in the neighborhood, and Balt would run about for days without finding work.