Madame Husson's May King

Madame Husson's May King by Guy De Maupassant

A relief-train delay outside Gisors sends the narrator, Raoul Aubertin, back into the town, where he recalls an old college friend, Dr. Albert Marambot, now a stout, contented country physician. Marambot insists Aubertin stay for lunch, serving trout and jellied eggs while expounding at length on the pleasures of good food, provincial life, and local pride, playfully calling Gisors natives "the arrogant men of Gisors" against neighboring Gournay's "guzzlers." After lunch he leads Aubertin through the town, pointing out its fortress, its many local histories, and its improbable roster of "glories," including the statue of General Blanmont. As they walk, a reeling drunk staggers past, trailed by a barking dog. Marambot names him "Madame Husson's May King" and explains the origin of the phrase as a true local legend. Years earlier, the town's Madame Husson, a wealthy, virtuous widow devoted to good works and close to the Abbé Malou, decided to establish a local prize for virtue, modeled on the May Queen crownings held near Paris. She had the Abbé draw up a list of candidate girls, then sent her servant Francoise to investigate each one's reputation. Francoise's inquiries, jotted amid household accounts, turned up some scandal attached to every girl in Gisors and the surrounding villages, leaving no candidate above suspicion despite widening the search and consulting the Mayor and Dr. Barbesol. Francoise then proposed Isidore, the shy, timid adult son of the greengrocer Virginie, whose extreme modesty around women had long made him a town joke and earned him the nickname "the thermometer of modesty" from Dr. Barbesol. Consulting the Abbé Malou, Madame Husson was told virtue has no sex, and the Mayor enthusiastically approved crowning a "May King" instead of a queen, calling it a model for other towns. Isidore, told of the honor, blushed and accepted. The ceremony was set for August 15th, feast of the Virgin and of the Emperor. The Rue Dauphine (itself named for a princess's visit) was decorated, and the National Guard under Commandant Desbarres, a veteran of the Grande Armée famed for grenadiers admired even by King Louis-Philippe, escorted Isidore, dressed in white with orange blossom, alongside Madame Husson and the Mayor to church for Mass and an address by the Abbé, then to a banquet tent on the Couronneaux. The Mayor delivered a formal speech praising Isidore as the first name in a new roll of virtue and urging him to live up to it, then presented him with a purse of five hundred francs in gold and a savings-book. A long, wine-soaked feast followed, with toasts lasting until evening, after which Madame Husson escorted an unsteady Isidore home and left him alone in his mother's shop. Alone among the vegetables and fruit, flushed with wine and pride, Isidore rediscovered the gold in his purse, counted it obsessively, then took his hat and vanished out the back lane into the night. His mother, returning, found him gone; a search turned up nothing but his bunch of orange blossom on the Pontoise road. The next evening word came that he had boarded the Paris coach and paid with a gold coin, vanishing into the city. Despite letters between the Mayor and the Paris police, he was not found for over a week, until Dr. Barbesol discovered him asleep and unwakeable on a doorstep, filthy and ruined, an empty brandy bottle hidden beneath him. He was nursed back to consciousness utterly debauched; his money, savings-book, and even his father's heirloom watch were gone. Cleaned up and confined for days, Isidore seemed ashamed, but on venturing out again he was soon found reeling drunk once more, and nothing thereafter could cure him. Forced by his mother to work, he became a coal-cart driver, and his fame as a drunkard spread so far that even in Evreux people invoked "Madame Husson's May King" as a byword, a nickname taken up by the district's drunkards ever since. Marambot adds that he personally attended Isidore in his final illness, closing his eyes after he died of delirium tremens, and closes the tale with the wry moral, "A good action is never wasted." The two then continue touring Gisors's fortress and history, with Marambot recounting the town's sieges and famous residents, before the narrative ends.

By Guy De Maupassant · First published 1869 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Satire, Comedy · 7,339 words

First lines

We had just passed through Gisors, where I had been awakened by hearing the name of the place shouted by the porters, and I was falling off to sleep again, when a frightful jerk threw me on top of the fat lady in the opposite seat.

A wheel had come off the engine, which was lying across the line. The tender and the luggage van, also derailed, lay beside this wreck which panted, shuddered, whistled, snorted and spat like horses that have fallen in the street; their flanks throb, their chests quiver, their nostrils smoke, they shudder through their whole bodies but do not seem able to make the slightest effort to get up and go on again.

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French Literature · Realism · Psychological Fiction · Short Story · Social Commentary · Class Struggle · Marriage · Infidelity · Deception · Moral Decay · Societal Critique · Victorian Era

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