The Marquis of Letoriere
9781465653628
188 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In 1769 there was in the Rue St. Honoré, not far from the Palais Royal, a small tailor's shop, having for its sign an enormous pair of gilt scissors, suspended above the door by an iron triangle. Master Landry, proprietor of The Golden Scissors, a little lean, pale, and apathetic man, offered a striking contrast to his wife Madelaine. She was a woman of thirty-five or forty years, robust and active, with hard features, and a gait like a man's, and her quick and imperious voice told that her dominion over her household was absolute. It was eleven o'clock one dark, rainy day in December. Master Landry, seated on his counter, plied alternately his scissors and needle, in company with Martin Kraft, his apprentice, a big, heavy, phlegmatic German, about twenty years old, whose red and puffed-out cheeks, and long hair, more yellow than blonde, gave him a stupid air. The tailor's wife seemed to be in a very bad humor. Landry and his apprentice maintained a prudent silence, until at length Madeleine snapped out at her husband, scornfully: "I give up; thou hast no blood in thy veins; thou would'st allow thyself to be robbed of thy last customer; imbecile!" Landry exchanged an elbow-touch and a glance with Martin Kraft, but kept quiet, handling his needle with redoubled dexterity. Irritated, no doubt, by the meekness of her victim, the housewife resumed, addressing her husband vehemently: "To whom do I speak, if you please?" The tailor and the apprentice continued mute. The exasperated woman administered a vigorous slap to her husband, saying: "It appears to me that when I speak to a fool, it is thou whom I address, and thou would'st do well to reply—ill-bred as thou art!" "By St. Genevieve!" cried the tailor, putting his hand to his cheek, and turning to his apprentice,—"how's that, Kraft?" The apprentice answered only by a violent stroke of his iron goose, applied to the seams of a coat; but this blow had such an expression of temper, that Dame Landry, with a dexterous hand, inflicted on the phlegmatic German the same correction she had applied to Landry, saying to him: "I'll teach you to censure my conduct, you sluggard!" "How do you find that, Master Landry?" said the apprentice, in his turn, looking towards his master. The latter, hoping to allay his wife's irritation, said, very calmly: "Now, Madelaine, explain yourself tranquilly; we are both sufficiently roused to pay attention to what you would say." "That's lucky; what I have to say will not take long. Idler, good-for-nothing! see now, one of your best customers, the valet-de-chambre of the Member of Parliament, no less a personage, has gone to our neighbor Mathurin." "What, we're losing our custom?" demanded the tailor of his apprentice with an air of indignation, coward-like, designing to turn the wrath of his wife on the unhappy Kraft. "What, Martin, do you give us such customers? Are you not ashamed? 'Tis not mine who treat us thus. Gracious! mine are as faithful to me as the thread to the needle—as the thimble to the finger—as—" "Tut, tut, tut," said Dame Landry, interrupting, "how you chatter, Master Landry! That's the reason why the clerk of M. Buston, the attorney at Châtelet, who has always been your customer, left you more than a month ago—even he—for that cursed Mathurin!"
