Guy de Maupassant complete short stories volume 2 - Penn State ...

the size of that which comes from a syringe, which occasionally
made microscopic rainbows at which the guests marvelled.
The feeding of this irrigator was the constant preoccupation
of Monsieur Perdrix, who would sometimes get up at five o’clock
in the morning in order to fill the tank. Then, in his shirt sleeves,
his big stomach almost bursting from his trousers, he would
pump wildly, so that on returning from the office he could have
the satisfaction of letting the fountain play and of imagining
that it was cooling off the garden.
On the night of the official dinner all the guests, one after
the other, went into ecstasies over the surroundings, and each
time they heard a train in the distance, Monsieur Perdrix would
announce to them its destination: Saint-Germain, Le Havre,
Cherbourg, or Dieppe, and they would playfully wave to the
passengers leaning from the windows.
The whole office force was there. First came Monsieur
Capitaine, the assistant chief; Monsieur Patissot, chief clerk;
then Messieurs de Sombreterre and Vallin, elegant young employees
who only came to the office when they had to; lastly
Monsieur Rade, known throughout the ministry for the absurd
doctrines which he upheld, and the copying clerk, Monsieur
Boivin.
Monsieur Rade passed for a character. Some called him a
Sundays of a Bourgeois
178
dreamer or an idealist, others a revolutionary; every one agreed
that he was very clumsy. Old, thin and small, with bright eyes
and long, white hair, he had all his life professed a profound
contempt for administrative work. A book rummager and a great
reader, with a nature continually in revolt against everything,
a seeker of truth and a despiser of popular prejudices, he had a
clear and paradoxical manner of expressing his opinions which
closed the mouths of self-satisfied fools and of those that were
discontented without knowing why. People said: “That old fool
of a Rade,” or else: “That harebrained Rade”; and the slowness,
of his promotion seemed to indicate the reason, according to
commonplace minds. His freedom of speech often made—his
colleagues tremble; they asked themselves with terror how he
had been able to keep his place as long as he had. As soon as
they had seated themselves, Monsieur Perdrix thanked his “collaborators”
in a neat little speech, promising them his protection,
the more valuable as his power grew, and he ended with a
stirring peroration in which he thanked and glorified a government
so liberal and just that it knows how to seek out the worthy
from among the humble.
Monsieur Capitaine, the assistant chief, answered in the name
of the office, congratulated, greeted, exalted, sang the praises
of all; frantic applause greeted these two bits of eloquence. Af-