Thérèse is the girl who carries drinks. She has dimples and a happy smile. French girls are either very free or super-continent; there is no middle course. Thérèse is of the latter class, but not puritanical. Subalterns have been seen attempting to kiss her in the seclusion of a recess. They have been routed. The only occasion on which Thérèse allowed herself to be kissed was New Year's Day. Then it was general. Everyone was doing it--in the street--the merest acquaintances. That day Thérèse submits as a matter of course. That day, too, the ex-Mayor gallantly embraced that old hag, her aunt, to the diversion of the populace. The aunt brews and dispenses behind the buffet. She objects to Thérèse's loitering when she serves, even though loitering may be good for trade. Thérèse describes her as a very sober-minded woman. The billiard-table attracts a lot of attention--from onlookers as well as from players. There the _directeur_ of the _banque_ plays his chief accountant and drinks champagne and _grenadine_ between the shots--a poisonous combination, that, but a popular. The French like things sweet, and they like them definitely coloured. The _directeur_ is a handsome fellow, with a perfectly balanced head and a curiously pleasing harmony of nose and chin in profile. His accountant is a loose-looking youth. The billiard-table is a favourite resort of officers' batmen. They have nothing else to do, and they can play half a day for almost nothing at all. I always remember an acute-looking Scotch batman in kilts (servant to the Rents-Officer). He was proud of his calves and of his French--and (justly) of his billiards. He could bring discomfiture upon any Frenchman who would play with him. He is the sort of officer's servant (and there are many of them, the voluptuous dogs!) who could carry a commission with ease and credit. But they prefer the whole days of idleness on which they are free to follow their own devices. The _facteurs_ drop in for a drink on their rounds. They hobnob here a great part of the day, seemingly. And there is poor Marcelle at the pork-shop pining for the letter from her _garçon_ in the line which this gossiping dog has in his _serviette_ beside the cognac. All _facteurs_ are discharged soldiers, and should know better. There is, I fear, but a belated delivery of letters in this easy-going old town. On market-day the café is filled with _les paysans_, who have come in to vend their pigs and cattle, rabbits, eggs, butter, and vegetables. The elderly ladies from the farms, with their generous growth of moustache, sit and drink neat cognac with a masculinity that is but fitting. The young girls sip white wine. The old men gossip, between draughts, with their pipes trembling in their toothless gums. There are no young men. CHAPTER V L'HÔTEL DES BONS ENFANTS