Argosy, September 1955 — page 65: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BRANDY FOR THE COLONEL 63 advertise any brand but Aurac soon felt the displeasure of the Marquis who, naturally, was the biggest property-owner and landlord in the village. However, there was no tendency to double-deal. The stomachs of the villagers and Colonel Bobet, weaned on the stuff, were one-hundred-per-cent-loyal to Aurac. The Colonel would as soon sell out his regiment as permit another brand to cross his lips. Yet this was all regrettably a thing of the past as far as the Colonel was concerned, for in her effort to shut off every source in order to amass the money needed to pay for the much-needed repainting job on the exterior of the big villa, which was her inheritance from her father, Héloise had initiated a stormy visit to shopkeepers in Aurance-sur-Cher and warned them that if she caught them advancing so much as a sou to Colonel Bobet on any household articles, or even his medals or personal possessions, i steps would be taken. tat It appeared, alas, as though the poor Colonel was routed on all ql fronts. ‘There was no question of being stood a drink, for even 2 had the honest villagers forsaken their usual habits of caution and 2 thrift and donated Colonel Bobet’s so greatly needed post- prandial tot of Aurac, his fierce pride would not have permitted ‘ him to accept ie or hospitality that he was not able to | return. There were many who held that, in view of the inestimable services Colonel Bobet had rendered the district and the country as Mystere in the Resistance, 1t would not have hurt the Marquis d’Aurac to have sent the old fellow a bottle or two from his cellars or distillery occasionally. However, since the Marquis was known to be close-fisted and mean-spirited—indeed, even « more than that was sometimes whispered against him—this was hs not likely to happen. ee And, to conclude this portrait of a man better than most of us; Ds if Colonel Bobet had any complaints about the character of his ra wife, he kept them to himself. He had chosen her when she was young, beautiful, kind, and good-tempered. If age and disap- pointment in what life had brought her had now curdled these attributes, it was not her fault, he reasoned. Even a life in which much can be arranged can play shabby tricks, such as the old wound that cost him his brigade and perhaps the marshal’s baton. And besides, every man was born to bear trials, and she was his. One thing is certain; at the moment that this narrative in- trudes itself into the quiet community of Aurance-sur-Cher, things were genuinely in a state of crisis in the household of Colonel Bobet. comiclbooks.conn