7.34 Maupassant — Boule de suif II — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the second part of Maupassant's Boule de suif : the night at the inn of Tôtes and the Prussian officer's demand. Follow a story told largely through dialogue, including the officer's French written with a German accent. Notice how Maupassant gives the wisest words about the war to the humblest characters: an innkeeper's wife and a church beadle. Recognise the turn of the plot, which the story reveals only at the end of this part. Sentences from this text, before the notes. Read the French aloud; all of them come back below. French English Elles éclairaient d’une lueur vive un nuage de buée au-dessus de la croupe en sueur des timoniers, They lit up with a bright glow a cloud of vapour above the sweating rumps of the wheel horses, Ils se creusaient la cervelle pour découvrir des mensonges acceptables, dissimuler leurs richesses, They racked their brains to find acceptable lies, to hide their wealth, leur demander une rançon considérable ? demand a large ransom from them? On voulait peut-être les garder comme otages Perhaps they wanted to keep them as hostages Cette pudeur patriotique de catin qui ne se laissait point caresser près de l’ennemi, dut réveiller en son cœur sa dignité défaillante, This patriotic modesty of a harlot who would not let herself be caressed near the enemy must have roused his failing dignity in his heart, Personne ne se choqua du mot, tant l’indignation fut vive. No one was shocked by the word, so intense was the indignation. Prerequisites : 7.33 — this reading continues 7.33 Reading , where the coach left Rouen and the passengers shared Boule de suif's food. About this text Note: this text contains sexual coercion and insults. This is the second third of Boule de suif , about 3,600 words, taken whole without omissions, from nightfall on the first day to the evening of the second. The text is that of the first edition, Les Soirées de Médan , published in Paris by Charpentier in 1880, as transcribed in French Wikisource. The coach reaches Tôtes , a village on the road to Dieppe, after fourteen hours. A young Prussian officer checks the passengers' papers and then sends for Boule de suif, whose real name, we learn, is Élisabeth Rousset . She refuses at first, goes when the others insist, and returns furious, refusing to say why. The next morning the coach does not leave: the officer has forbidden it. Only at the end of this part does she reveal what he wants. Reading Maupassant's dialogue The officer's French. Maupassant writes the officer's words as they sound in a German mouth: Foulez-fous tescentre for Voulez-vous descendre , Che ne feux pas for Je ne veux pas . The voiced consonants become voiceless: v becomes f , d becomes t , j becomes ch . Read these lines aloud and the original French appears. The voices of the people. Mme Follenvie , the innkeeper's wife, speaks in a long breathless paragraph of popular French: ça ne fait que manger , ces militaires ça n'est profitable à personne , with the subject taken up again by ça , ils ordurent partout . The beadle in the square says c'est pas des Prussiens , without ne . Yet they say what the educated passengers cannot: that war is made by the great and suffered by the poor. A comic counterpoint. The night scene, in which Loiseau spies through the keyhole and sees Boule de suif refuse Cornudet, is comedy; but her reason, that she will not make love with Prussians in the house, prepares the tragedy to come. Reading it a second time, part by part Arrival at Tôtes . At nightfall the women share their foot-warmers. The coach stops at the Hôtel du Commerce , and a Prussian officer orders the passengers out and checks their pass. The summons. The innkeeper, Follenvie, calls for Élisabeth Rousset . She refuses, then goes for the sake of the others, and comes back crying Oh la canaille ! Supper. Mme Follenvie condemns all war; Cornudet answers with a republican maxim; Carré-Lamadon dreams of soldiers turned into factory workers; Loiseau sells wine to the innkeeper. The night. Loiseau, at the keyhole, sees Cornudet follow Boule de suif and be sent away: not with the Prussians in the house. The second day. The coach has no horses: the officer has forbidden the departure. In the square, German soldiers help the village women with their work. The officer receives the count, Carré-Lamadon and Loiseau with insolence and refuses to explain. The revelation. At dinner the officer asks again if Mlle Rousset has changed her mind. She explodes, and tells everyone what he wants. The whole company is indignant on her behalf. Full translation An English translation of the whole text, made for this course and kept close to the original. The numbers are the paragraph numbers of the original text, so you can move between the two. Boule de suif Night was falling; little by little the darkness grew deep, and the cold, felt more keenly during digestion, made Boule de suif shiver in spite of her fat. Then Mme de Bréville offered her her foot-warmer, whose charcoal had been renewed several times since morning, and the other accepted at once, for her feet felt frozen. Mmes Carré-Lamadon and Loiseau gave theirs to the nuns. The coachman had lit his lanterns. They lit up with a bright glow a cloud of vapour above the sweating rumps of the wheel horses, and, on both sides of the road, the snow, which seemed to unroll beneath the moving reflection of the lights. Nothing could be made out any longer inside the coach; but suddenly there was a movement between Boule de suif and Cornudet; and Loiseau, whose eye was searching the darkness, thought he saw the man with the big beard draw sharply away, as if he had received some good blow dealt without a sound. Little points of fire appeared ahead on the road. It was Tôtes . They had travelled eleven hours, which, with the two hours of rest given to the horses in four stops to eat their oats and get their breath, made fourteen. They entered the little town and stopped in front of