38.
Outside the gate of Versailles, under the trees of one of the grand avenues that radiate from the capital of the great king, you can see, drawn up in a long row, automobiles with the sad appearance of scrap iron. It's the depot of the RALEPEUPPST. The offices are to be found in a building bordering the avenue. Above the door is the abbreviation that has already proved to be such a headache to everyone who encountered it. The letters attract the attention of passersby, who discuss their significance at length.
Having arrived first thing the day of her debut at her new job, our heroine found herself a few minutes early, and to pass the time, inspected one after another the autos designated lightly damaged. After the fourth wreck she made a face and concluded, "What a collection of old nails."
"You ought to say, 'Rusty nails,'" said a voice behind her. "Or 'angnails." (He left off the H.) Bécassine turned and saw a big man of tall stature with lively eyes in a calm face. He introduced himself: "Maubec, secretary to the head of the Ralep. We say Ralep to abbreviate the abbreviation, it's more convenient. And you are most likely the appointee Bécassine. As you come from the trams, the boss is sure you'll be able to get these rusty nails moving. You'll be a shrewd one if you can get that done. The rest of us gave up long ago." Maubec spoke in a leisurely but inexhaustible manner. Without leaving Bécassine a place to insert a word, he continued, looking skyward, "Lovely morning, today. We're in for some frightful good weather." He discoursed at length on the sun and rain, with liberal use of the word frightful which he loved to apply indiscriminately to anything, good or bad, that deviated from the mean. During this monologue the two of them entered the adminstration building.
Bécassine took advantage of a moment's pause by Maubec to speak up. "The chief" she asked, "is he an officer?" "No, he's not an officer. He wears a suit jacket." "Then he's a civilian?" "No, not a civilian. He wears a military cap." "Then what is he?" "He's the chief, that's all." Bécassine looked the place over. It contained nothing remarkable beyond a blackboard covered in geometric figures, and an incredible accumulation of books and papers. They were piled in stacks on the tables, the chairs, in the middle of the floor and along the walls.
"I'll take a duster and broom to all this," said Bécassine, automatically reaching for a book. "Don't touch anything," cried Maubec. "Oh my! He would make some music if he saw you moving his books. It would be frightful!"
39.
This came as a wound to Bécassine's housekeeping sensibilities. She stood frozen, the book in her hand, and asked, "So he's mean, the chief?" Maubec appeared to give it great thought, and said, "You never can tell. One minute he's so polite it's frightful, and the next he's so miserable it's also frightful. It depends on whether the colonel is around." He was not able to explain further, as the door opened. Maubec said, "Good morning, chief." And Bécassine echoed, "Good morning, chief." The chief entered. He replied in a very soft accent and the most affable tone, "Good morning, my children," and he gave the newcomer some kindly words of welcome: "I've received good reports about you and I'm certain we'll get on very well."
However, the door opened again. "The colonel!" whispered Maubec. "This will be frightful." The colonel -- none other than the chief's wife -- made her entrance. Thin, sallow, dark-haired, dressed in loud colours, sprinkled with baroque jewels, she took a long look through her lorgnette at the taken-aback Bécassine. Then, addressing the chief in a lisping voice full of rolled Rs, she said, "Agénor, you're speaking like a civilian again. Use a military tone. I like a military tone. I'm accustomed to a military tone from my first husband, the brave colonel Gonzalès Ippo of the Patagonian light cavalry."
"You are right, Carmencita," said the chief, who looked very troubled. He turned on Bécassine. "I told you, then," he repeated, "that we will get on very well." Then, rolling his eyes ferociously, raising his voice to strike terror, he concluded, "And don't forget that at the slightest transgression I am perfectly able to have you shot!"
"That's better," said the colonel, deigning approval. "Agénor, you remind me of Gonzalès." She made an exit as majestic as her entrance. Drained by his discharge of energy, Agénor sagged into an armchair and remained there, without strength or speech, half-asleep. "He'll be like that for the next fifteen minutes," whispered Maubec to Bécassine. He led her toward the window and showed her a photograph he pulled from a heap of papers. "Take a look," he said. "The brave Colonel Gonzalès. Frightful. To think how quiet it would be around here if his widow had stayed behind to mourn him in Patagonia. But she's here, so ... it's fightful."
40.
Agénor slept in his armchair. Maubec and Bécassine didn't dare speak for fear of waking him. Let's take advantage of the silence to sketch the history of the chief of the Ralep.
Monsieur Ténuse -- that's his name -- was, before the war, an instructor of sciences at the school in Piton-le-Causse. He spent his days on the pupils, young hillbillies to whom he had to explain his geometric theorems and algebraic equations more than once. He devoted his free time to long walks in the countryside, very scenic in that mountainous district, but he hardly looked at it because, absorbed in his next lecture, he forever had a book for a companion and he rarely took his eyes off it. It earned him a great esteem. Townspeople and country folk referred to him as 'the savant.'
He might have lived that blissful existence for many peaceful years if, at the start of his vacation in 1913, he had not felt the onset of some slight digestive trouble. He consulted a doctor, who prescribed a cure at Vichy, and off he went to that celebrated spring. At the hotel where he was registered, Carmencita Ippo held court. A mutual friend introduced them. A widow of ten years, and wishing to make a second marriage, was Carmencita at Vichy for her health or to get a husband? We lean to the second hypothesis. She dazzled the dinner crowd with her apparel and her tales of Colonel Ippo and the other great personnages she had known. Agénor was more starstruck than anyone. Timid and modest, he was flattered that a grand lady bestowed her smiles on him. One morning, he confided to the friend who had introduced them that his heart had been taken. Not long after, they were pouring champagne for the fiancées. The marriage was celebrated at the end of vacation.
And since then the house of the instructor of sciences has been a chamber of hell. Carmencita removed her mask of amiability to reveal her true self: cantankerous, violent and haughty. She heaped scorn on the terrorized schoolteacher. Without cease and with what disdain did she compare him to her first husband. The name of Gonzalès forever sprang to her lips. His picture hung in every room. Gonzalès was the true master in that house. Constantly the widow paraded the fine fit of his uniform, his distinction, his drive. "He," she declared, "was a man born to command. You ..."
41.
"You are man born to obey." And Agénor agreed to his wife's most ridiculour ideas. He even had his name joined to that of the terrible colonel and became Monsieur Ippo-Ténuse. "Truly a name for a geometer," laughed his collegues at the school.
The war broke out. A good patriot, but neither young enough nor healthy enough to bear arms, Agénor decided that his role should be to continue to instruct his pupils to the best of his ability. Carmencita decided otherwise. "I want you in a uniform," she declared. "A husband without a uniform is a disgrace to his wife." With a tragic motion, she addressed the portrait of Gonzalès, saying, "You shall be satisfied, Colonel; he will put on the uniform!" What could poor Ippo-Ténuse do against their combined will?
She composed and dispatched a request for employment. Unwilling to wait for the response, she left for Paris. With her usual ardour, she laid seige to the ministry. The most inflexible gatekeepers were powerless before her ringing voice and flashing smiles. In this way she found herself in the presence of our old acquaintance, the Minister for the Utilization of Aptitudes. "Charming lady," he said to his secretary at the end of the interview. "Let's make her happy. An instructor of sciences must have an aptitude for the mechanical. Let's put Monsieur Ippo-Ténuse in charge of the RALEPEUPPST, that great innovation of my ministry." Two days later the instructor received his nomination and that same evening the couple boarded a train.
Except that the new chief of the automobile reserve had hardly laid eyes on an auto before. Piton-le-Causse is the most backward and mountainous sub-prefecture in France. The most reckless driver would stay clear of its rocky and cliffhanging roads. And, besides, Agénor, conversant though he was in scientific theory, was incapable of understanding their practical application. He neither knew nor loved anything beyond the figures and calculations on his blackboard. He lapsed into despair when he saw that he was responsible for restoring and restarting the dismantled scrap iron of the Ralep. And Carmencita, too, despaired, but for another reason. She learned that the Ralep came with no uniform. "No uniform!" she mourned. "I am dishonoured." As consolation she forced her poor husband to adopt a blue military cap.
In the moments that followed the scenes with his wife, Agénor relived all that history, as he does time and again. At last he came out of his fugue, and lifted himself with the air of a condemned man. "Poor monsieur!" whispered Maubec into Bécassine's ear. "It's frightful. But I'll get back at Gonzalès and his missus for him."
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