It is not easy for the community
of a country town to disentangle the truth from the mass of conjecture
and contradictory reports to which a single fact gives rise. The
provinces insist--as in former days the politicians of the little
Provence at the Tuileries insisted--on full explanations, and they
usually end by knowing everything. But each person clings to the
version of the event which he, or she, likes best; proclaims it,
argues it, and considers it the only true one. In spite of the strong
light cast upon people's lives by the constant spying of a little
town, truth is thus often obscured; and to be recognized, it needs the
impartiality which historians or superior minds acquire by looking at
the subject from a higher point of view.
"What do you suppose that old gorilla wants at his age with a little
girl only fifteen years old?" society was still saying two years after
the arrival of the Rabouilleuse.
"Ah! that's true," they answered, "his days of merry-making are long
past."
"My dear fellow, the doctor is disgusted at the stupidity of his son,
and he persists in hating his daughter Agathe; it may be that he has
been living a decent life for the last two years, intending to marry
little Flore; suppose she were to give him a fine, active, strapping
boy, full of life like Max?" said one of the wise heads of the town.
"Bah! don't talk nonsense! After such a life as Rouget and Lousteau
led from 1770 to 1787, is it likely that either of them would have
children at sixty-five years of age? The old villain has read the
Scriptures, if only as a doctor, and he is doing as David did in his
old age; that's all.
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