Sons of the Soil

CHAPTER XIII

A TYPE OF THE COUN­TRY USURER

Strate­gi­cal­ly, Rigou's po­si­tion at Blangy was that of a pick­et sen­tinel. He watched Les Aigues, and watched it well. The po­lice have no spies com­pa­ra­ble to those that serve ha­tred.

When the gen­er­al first came to Les Aigues Rigou ap­par­ent­ly formed some plans about him which Mont­cor­net's mar­riage with a Troisville put an end to; he seemed to have wished to pa­tron­ize the new land-​own­er. In fact his in­ten­tions were so patent that Gaubertin thought best to let him in­to the se­crets of the coali­tion against Les Aigues. Be­fore ac­cept­ing any part in the af­fair, Rigou de­ter­mined, as he said, to put the gen­er­al be­tween two stools.

One day, af­ter the count­ess was fair­ly in­stalled, a lit­tle wick­er car­riage paint­ed green en­tered the grand court­yard of the chateau. The may­or, who was flanked by his may­oress, got out and came round to the por­ti­co on the gar­den side. As he did so Rigou saw Madame le comtesse at a win­dow. She, how­ev­er, de­vot­ed to the bish­op and to re­li­gion and to the Abbe Bros­sette, sent word by Fran­cois that “Madame was out.”

This act of in­ci­vil­ity, wor­thy of a wom­an born in Rus­sia, turned the face of the ex-​Bene­dic­tine yel­low. If the count­ess had seen the man whom the abbe told her was “a soul in hell who plunged in­to in­iq­ui­ty as in­to a bath in his ef­forts to cool him­self,” if she had seen his face then she might have re­frained from ex­cit­ing the cold, de­lib­er­ate ha­tred felt by the lib­er­als against the roy­al­ists, in­creased as it was in coun­try-​places by the jeal­ousies of neigh­bor­hood, where the rec­ol­lec­tions of wound­ed van­ity are kept con­stant­ly alive.

A few de­tails about this man and his morals will not on­ly throw light on his share of the plot, called “the great af­fair” by his two as­so­ciates, but it will have the mer­it of pic­tur­ing an ex­treme­ly cu­ri­ous type of man,--one of those ru­ral ex­is­tences which are pe­cu­liar to France, and which no writ­er has hith­er­to sought to de­pict. Noth­ing about this man is with­out sig­nif­icance,--nei­ther his house, nor his man­ner of blow­ing the fire, nor his ways of eat­ing; his habits, morals, and opin­ions will vivid­ly il­lus­trate the his­to­ry of the val­ley. This rene­gade serves to show the util­ity of democ­ra­cy; he is at once its the­ory and its prac­tice, its al­pha and its omega, in short, its “sum­mum.”

Per­haps you will re­mem­ber cer­tain mas­ters of avarice pic­tured in for­mer scenes of this com­edy of hu­man life: in the first place the provin­cial min­is­ter, Pere Grandet of Saumur, miser­ly as a tiger is cru­el; next Gob­seck, the usurer, that Je­suit of gold, de­light­ing on­ly in its pow­er, and rel­ish­ing the tears of the un­for­tu­nate be­cause gold pro­duced them; then Baron Nucin­gen, lift­ing base and fraud­ulent mon­ey trans­ac­tions to the lev­el of State pol­icy. Then, too, you may re­mem­ber that por­trait of do­mes­tic par­si­mo­ny, old Ho­chon of Is­soudun, and that oth­er miser in be­half of fam­ily in­ter­ests, lit­tle la Bau­draye of Sancerre. Well, hu­man emo­tions--above all, those of avarice--take on so many and di­verse shades in the di­verse cen­tres of so­cial ex­is­tence that there still re­mains up­on the stage of our com­edy an­oth­er miser to be stud­ied, name­ly, Rigou,--Rigou, the miser-​ego­ist; full of ten­der­ness for his own grat­ifi­ca­tions, cold and hard to oth­ers; the ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal miser; the monk still a monk so far as he can squeeze the juice of the fruit called good-​liv­ing, and be­com­ing sec­ular on­ly to put a paw up­on the pub­lic mon­ey. In the first place, let us ex­plain the con­tin­ual plea­sure that he took in sleep­ing un­der his own roof.

Blangy--by that we mean the six­ty hous­es de­scribed by Blon­det in his let­ter to Nathan--stands on a rise of land to the left of the Thune. As all the hous­es are sur­round­ed by gar­dens, the vil­lage is a very pret­ty one. Some hous­es are built on the banks of the stream. At the up­per end of the long rise stands the church, for­mer­ly flanked by a par­son­age, its apse sur­round­ed, as in many oth­er vil­lages, by a grave­yard. The sac­ri­le­gious old Rigou had bought the par­son­age, which was orig­inal­ly built by an ex­cel­lent Catholic, Made­moi­selle Choin, on land which she had bought for the pur­pose. A ter­raced gar­den, from which the eye looked down up­on Blangy, Cerneux, and Soulanges stand­ing be­tween the two great seigno­ri­al parks, sep­arat­ed the late par­son­age from the church. On its op­po­site side lay a mead­ow, bought by the last cu­rate of the parish not long be­fore his death, which the dis­trust­ful Rigou had since sur­round­ed with a wall.

The ex-​monk and may­or hav­ing re­fused to sell back the par­son­age for its orig­inal pur­pose, the parish was obliged to buy a house be­long­ing to a peas­ant, which ad­joined the church. It was nec­es­sary to spend five thou­sand francs to re­pair and en­large it and to en­close it in a lit­tle gar­den, one wall of which was that of the sac­risty, so that com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the par­son­age and the church was still as close as it ev­er was.

These two hous­es, built on a line with the church, and seem­ing to be­long to it by their gar­dens, faced a piece of open ground plant­ed by trees, which might be called the square of Blangy,--all the more be­cause the count had late­ly built, di­rect­ly op­po­site to the new par­son­age, a com­mu­nal build­ing in­tend­ed for the may­or's of­fice, the home of the field-​keep­er, and the quar­ters of that school of the Broth­ers of the Chris­tian Doc­trine, for which the Abbe Bros­sette had hith­er­to begged in vain. Thus, not on­ly were the hous­es of the ex-​monk and the young priest con­nect­ed and yet sep­arat­ed by the church, but they were in a po­si­tion to watch each oth­er. In­deed, the whole vil­lage spied up­on the abbe. The main street, which be­gan at the Thune, crept tor­tu­ous­ly up the hill to the church. Vine­yards, the cot­tages of the peas­antry, and a small grove crowned the heights.

Rigou's house, the hand­somest in the vil­lage, was built of the large rub­ble-​stone pe­cu­liar to Bur­gundy, imbed­ded in yel­low mor­tar smoothed by the trow­el, which pro­duced an un­even sur­face, still fur­ther bro­ken here and there by pro­ject­ing points of the stone, which was most­ly black. A band of ce­ment, in which no stones were al­lowed to show, sur­round­ed each win­dow with a sort of frame, where time had made some slight, capri­cious cracks, such as ap­pear on plas­tered ceil­ings. The out­er blinds, of a clum­sy pat­tern, were no­tice­able for their col­or, which was drag­on-​green. A few moss­es grew among the slates of the roof. The type is that of Bur­gun­di­an home­steads; the trav­eller will see thou­sands like it when vis­it­ing this part of France.

A dou­ble door opened up­on a pas­sage, half-​way down which was the well of the stair­case. By the en­trance was the door of a large room with three win­dows look­ing out up­on the square. The kitchen, built be­hind and be­neath the stair­case, was light­ed from the court­yard, which was neat­ly paved with cob­ble-​stones and en­tered by a porte-​cochere. Such was the ground-​floor. The first floor con­tained three bed­rooms, above them a small at­tic cham­ber.

A wood-​shed, a coach-​house, and a sta­ble ad­joined the kitchen, and formed two sides of a square around the court­yard. Above these rather flim­sy build­ings were lofts con­tain­ing hay and grain, a fruit-​room, and one ser­vant's-​cham­ber.

A poul­try-​yard, the sta­ble, and a pigsty faced the house across the court­yard.

The gar­den, about an acre in size and en­closed by walls, was a true priest's gar­den; that is, it was full of wall-​fruit and fruit-​trees, grape-​ar­bors, grav­el-​paths, close­ly trimmed box-​trees, and square veg­etable patch­es, made rich with the ma­nure from the sta­ble.

With­in, the large room, pan­elled in wain­scot, was hung with old tapestry. The wal­nut fur­ni­ture, brown with age and cov­ered with stuffs em­broi­dered in nee­dle-​work, was in keep­ing with the wain­scot and with the ceil­ing, which was al­so pan­elled. The lat­ter had three pro­ject­ing beams, but these were paint­ed, and be­tween them the space was plas­tered. The man­tel, al­so in wal­nut, sur­mount­ed by a mir­ror in the most grotesque frame, had no oth­er or­na­ment than two brass eggs stand­ing on a mar­ble base, each of which opened in the mid­dle; the up­per half when turned over showed a sock­et for a can­dle. These can­dle­sticks for two lights, fes­tooned with chains (an in­ven­tion of the reign of Louis XV.), were be­com­ing rare. On a green and gold brack­et fas­tened to the wall op­po­site to the win­dow was a com­mon but ex­cel­lent clock. The cur­tains, which squeaked up­on their rods, were at least fifty years old; their ma­te­ri­al, of cot­ton in a square pat­tern like that of mat­tress­es, al­ter­nate­ly pink and white, came from the In­dies. A side­board and din­ner-​ta­ble com­plet­ed the equip­ment of the room, which was kept with ex­treme nice­ty.

At the cor­ner of the fire­place was an im­mense so­fa, Rigou's es­pe­cial seat. In the an­gle, above a lit­tle “bon­heur du jour,” which served him as a desk, and hang­ing to a com­mon screw, was a pair of bel­lows, the ori­gin of Rigou's for­tune.

From this suc­cinct de­scrip­tion, in style like that of an auc­tion sale, it will be easy to imag­ine that the bed­rooms of Mon­sieur and Madame Rigou were lim­it­ed to mere nec­es­saries; yet it would be a mis­take to sup­pose that such par­si­mo­ny af­fect­ed the es­sen­tial ex­cel­lence of those nec­es­saries. For in­stance, the most fas­tid­ious of wom­en would have slept well in Rigou's bed, with fine linen sheets, ex­cel­lent mat­tress­es, made lux­uri­ous by a feath­er-​bed (doubt­less bought for some abbe by a pi­ous fe­male parish­ioner) and pro­tect­ed from draughts by thick cur­tains. All the rest of Rigou's be­long­ings were made com­fort­able for his use, as we shall see.

In the first place, he had re­duced his wife, who could nei­ther read, write, nor ci­pher, to ab­so­lute obe­di­ence. Af­ter hav­ing ruled her de­ceased mas­ter, the poor crea­ture was now the ser­vant of her hus­band; she cooked and did the wash­ing, with very lit­tle help from a pret­ty girl named An­nette, who was nine­teen years old and as much a slave to Rigou as her mis­tress, and whose wages were thir­ty francs a year.

Tall, thin, and with­ered, Madame Rigou, a wom­an with a yel­low face red about the cheek-​bones, her head al­ways wrapped in a col­ored hand­ker­chief, and wear­ing the same dress all the year round, did not leave the house for two hours in a month's time, but kept her­self in ex­er­cise by do­ing the hard work of a de­vot­ed ser­vant. The keen­est ob­serv­er could not have found a trace of the fine fig­ure, the Rubens col­or­ing, the splen­did lines, the su­perb teeth, the vir­ginal eyes which first drew the at­ten­tion of the Abbe Nis­eron to the young girl. The birth of her on­ly daugh­ter, Madame Soudry, Jr., had blight­ed her com­plex­ion, de­cayed her teeth, dimmed her eyes, and even caused the drop­ping of their lash­es. It al­most seemed as if the fin­ger of God had fall­en up­on the wife of the priest. Like all well-​to-​do coun­try house-​wives, she liked to see her clos­ets full of silk gowns, made and un­made, and jew­els and laces which did her no good and on­ly ex­cit­ed the sin of en­vy and a de­sire for her death in the minds of all the young wom­en who served Rigou. She was one of those be­ings, half-​wom­an, half-​an­imal, who are born to live by in­stinct. This ex-​beau­ti­ful Ar­sene was dis­in­ter­est­ed; and the be­quest left to her by the late Abbe Nis­eron would be in­ex­pli­ca­ble were it not for the cu­ri­ous cir­cum­stance which prompt­ed it, and which we give here for the ed­ifi­ca­tion of the vast tribe of ex­pec­tant heirs.

Madame Nis­eron, the wife of the old re­pub­li­can sex­ton, al­ways paid the great­est at­ten­tion to her hus­band's un­cle, the priest of Blangy; the forty or fifty thou­sand francs soon to be in­her­it­ed from the old man of sev­en­ty would put the fam­ily of his on­ly nephew in­to a con­di­tion of af­flu­ence which she im­pa­tient­ly await­ed, for be­sides her on­ly son (the fa­ther of La Pechi­na) Madame Nis­eron had a charm­ing lit­tle daugh­ter, live­ly and in­no­cent,--one of those be­ings that seem per­fect­ed on­ly be­cause they are to die, which she did at the age of four­teen from “pale col­or,” the pop­ular name for chloro­sis among the peas­antry. The dar­ling of the par­son­age, where the child flut­tered about her great un­cle the abbe as she did in her home, bring­ing clouds and sun­shine with her, she grew to love Made­moi­selle Ar­sene, the pret­ty ser­vant whom the old abbe en­gaged in 1789. Ar­sene was the niece of his house­keep­er, whose place the girl took by re­quest of the lat­ter on her deathbed.

In 1791, just about the time that the Abbe Nis­eron of­fered his house as an asy­lum to Rigou and his broth­er Jean, the lit­tle girl played one of her mis­chievous but in­no­cent tricks. She was play­ing with Ar­sene and some oth­er chil­dren at a game which con­sists in hid­ing an ob­ject which the rest seek, and cry­ing out, “You burn!” or “You freeze!” ac­cord­ing as the searchers ap­proach or leave the hid­den ar­ti­cle. Lit­tle Genevieve took it in­to her head to hide the bel­lows in Ar­sene's bed. The bel­lows could not be found, and the game came to an end; Genevieve was tak­en home by her moth­er and for­got to put the bel­lows back on the nail. Ar­sene and her aunt searched more than a week for them; then they stopped search­ing and man­aged to do with­out them, the old abbe blow­ing his fire with an air-​cane made in the days when air- canes were the fash­ion,--a fash­ion which was no doubt in­tro­duced by some courtier of the reign of Hen­ri III. At last, about a month be­fore her death, the house­keep­er, af­ter a din­ner at which the Abbe Mou­chon, the Nis­eron fam­ily, and the cu­rate of Soulanges were present, re­turned to her jeremi­ades about the loss of the bel­lows.

“Why! they've been these two weeks in Ar­sene's bed!” cried the lit­tle one, with a peal of laugh­ter. “Great lazy thing! if she had tak­en the trou­ble to make her bed she would have found them.”

As it was 1791 ev­ery­body laughed; but a dead si­lence suc­ceed­ed the laugh.

“There is noth­ing laugh­able in that,” said the house­keep­er; “since I have been ill Ar­sene sleeps in my room.”

In spite of this ex­pla­na­tion the Abbe Nis­eron looked thun­der­bolts at Madame Nis­eron and his nephew, think­ing they were plot­ting mis­chief against him. The house­keep­er died. Rigou con­trived to work up the abbe's re­sent­ment to such a pitch that he made a will dis­in­her­it­ing Jean-​Fran­cois Nis­eron in fa­vor of Ar­sene Pichard.

In 1823 Rigou, per­haps out of a sense of grat­itude, still blew the fire with an air-​cane, and left the bel­lows hang­ing to the screw.

Madame Nis­eron, idol­iz­ing her daugh­ter, did not long sur­vive her. Moth­er and child died in 1794. The old abbe, too, was dead, and cit­izen Rigou took charge of Ar­sene's af­fairs by mar­ry­ing her. A for­mer con­vert in the monastery, at­tached to Rigou as a dog is to his mas­ter, be­came the groom, gar­den­er, herds­man, valet, and stew­ard of the sen­su­al Harpagon. Ar­sene Rigou, the daugh­ter, mar­ried in 1821 with­out dowry to the pros­ecut­ing-​at­tor­ney, in­her­it­ing some­thing of her moth­er's rather vul­gar beau­ty, to­geth­er with the crafty mind of her fa­ther.

Now about six­ty-​sev­en years of age, Rigou had nev­er been ill in his life, and noth­ing seemed able to lessen his ag­gres­sive­ly good health. Tall, lean, with brown cir­cles round his eyes, the lids of which were near­ly black, any one who saw him of a morn­ing, when as he dressed he ex­posed the wrin­kled, red, and gran­ulat­ed skin of his neck, would have com­pared him to a con­dor,--all the more be­cause his long nose, sharp at the tip, in­creased the like­ness by its san­guineous col­or. His head, part­ly bald, would have fright­ened phre­nol­ogists by the shape of its skull, which was like an ass's back­bone, an in­di­ca­tion of despot­ic will. His gray­ish eyes, half-​cov­ered by filmy, red-​veined lids, were pre­des­tined to aid hypocrisy. Two scanty locks of hair of an un­de­cid­ed col­or over­hung the large ears, which were long and with­out rim, a sure sign of cru­el­ty, but cru­el­ty of the moral na­ture on­ly, un­less where it means ac­tu­al in­san­ity. The mouth, very broad, with thin lips, in­di­cat­ed a stur­dy eater and a de­ter­mined drinker by the drop of its cor­ners, which turned down­ward like two com­mas, from which drooled gravy when he ate and sali­va when he talked. He­li­oga­balus must have been like this.

His dress, which nev­er var­ied, con­sist­ed of a long blue surtout with a mil­itary col­lar, a black cra­vat, with waist­coat and trousers of black cloth. His shoes, very thick soled, had iron nails out­side, and in­side woollen lin­ings knit by his wife in the win­ter evenings. An­nette and her mis­tress al­so knit the mas­ter's stock­ings. Rigou's name was Gre­goire.

Though this sketch gives some idea of the man's char­ac­ter, no one can imag­ine the point to which, in his pri­vate and un­thwart­ed life, the ex-​Bene­dic­tine had pushed the sci­ence of self­ish­ness, good liv­ing, and sen­su­al­ity. In the first place, he dined alone, wait­ed up­on by his wife and An­nette, who them­selves dined with Jean in the kitchen, while the mas­ter di­gest­ed his meal and dis­posed of his wine as he read “the news.”

In the coun­try the spe­cial names of jour­nals are nev­er men­tioned; they are all called by the gen­er­al name of “the news.”

Rigou's din­ner, like his break­fast and sup­per, was al­ways of choice del­ica­cies, cooked with the art which dis­tin­guish­es a priest's house­keep­er from all oth­er cooks. Madame Rigou made the but­ter her­self twice a week. Cream was a con­comi­tant of many sauces. The veg­eta­bles came at a jump, as it were, from their frames to the saucepan. Parisians, who are ac­cus­tomed to eat the fruits of the earth af­ter they have had a sec­ond ripen­ing in the sun of a city, in­fect­ed by the air of the streets, fer­ment­ing in close shops, and wa­tered from time to time by the mar­ket-​wom­en to give them a de­ceit­ful fresh­ness, have lit­tle idea of the exquisite fla­vors of re­al­ly fresh pro­duce, to which na­ture has lent fugi­tive but pow­er­ful charms when eat­en as it were alive.

The butch­er of Soulanges brought his best meat un­der fear of los­ing Rigou's cus­tom. The poul­try, raised on the premis­es, was of the finest qual­ity.

This sys­tem of se­cret pam­per­ing em­braced ev­ery­thing in which Rigou was per­son­al­ly con­cerned. Though the slip­pers of the know­ing Thelemist were of stout leather they were lined with lamb's wool. Though his coat was of rough cloth it did not touch his skin, for his shirt, washed and ironed at home, was of the finest Frisian linen. His wife, An­nette, and Jean drank the com­mon wine of the coun­try, the wine he re­served from his own vine­yards; but in his pri­vate cel­lar, as well stocked as the cel­lars of Bel­gium, the finest vin­tages of Bur­gundy rubbed sides with those of Bor­deaux, Cham­pagne, Rous­sil­lon, not to speak of Span­ish and Rhine wines, all bought ten years in ad­vance of use and bot­tled by Broth­er Jean. The liqueurs in that cel­lar were those of the Isles, and came orig­inal­ly from Madame Am­phoux. Rigou had laid in a sup­ply to last him the rest of his days, at the na­tion­al sale of a chateau in Bur­gundy.

The ex-​monk ate and drank like Louis XIV. (one of the great­est con­sumers of food and drink ev­er known), which re­veals the costs of a life that was more than volup­tuous. Care­ful and very shrewd in man­ag­ing his se­cret prodi­gal­ities, he dis­put­ed all pur­chas­es as on­ly church­men can dis­pute. In­stead of tak­ing in­fi­nite pre­cau­tions against be­ing cheat­ed, the sly monk kept pat­terns and sam­ples, had the agree­ments re­duced to writ­ing, and warned those who for­ward­ed his wines or his pro­vi­sions that if they fell short of the mark in any way he should refuse to ac­cept their con­sign­ments.

Jean, who had charge of the fruit-​room, was trained to keep fresh the finest fruits grown in the de­part­ment; so that Rigou ate pears and ap­ples and some­times grapes, at East­er.

No prophet re­gard­ed as a God was ev­er more blind­ly obeyed than was Rigou in his own home. A mere mo­tion of his black eye­lash­es could plunge his wife, An­nette, and Jean in­to the deep­est anx­iety. He held his three slaves by the mul­ti­plic­ity of their many du­ties, which were like a chain in his hands. These poor crea­tures were un­der the per­pet­ual yoke of some or­dered du­ty, with an eye al­ways on them; but they had come to take a sort of plea­sure in ac­com­plish­ing these tasks, and did not suf­fer un­der them. All three had the com­fort and well-​be­ing of that one man be­fore their minds as the sole end and ob­ject of all their thoughts.

An­nette was (since 1795) the tenth pret­ty girl in Rigou's ser­vice, and he ex­pect­ed to go down to his grave with re­lays of such ser­vants. Brought to him at six­teen, she would be sent away at nine­teen. All these girls, care­ful­ly cho­sen at Aux­erre, Clame­cy, or in the Mor­van, were en­ticed by the promise of fu­ture pros­per­ity; but Madame Rigou per­sist­ed in liv­ing. So at the end of ev­ery three years some quar­rel, usu­al­ly brought about by the in­so­lence of the ser­vant to the poor mis­tress, caused their dis­missal.

An­nette, who was a pic­ture of del­icate beau­ty, in­gen­uous and sparkling, de­served to be a duchess. Rigou knew noth­ing of the love af­fair be­tween her and Jean-​Louis Ton­sard, which proves that he had let him­self be fooled by the girl,--the on­ly one of his many ser­vants whose am­bi­tion had taught her to flat­ter the lynx as the on­ly way to blind him.

This un­crowned Louis XV. did not keep him­self whol­ly to his pret­ty An­nette. Be­ing the mort­gagee of lands bought by peas­ants who were un­able to pay for them, he kept a harem in the val­ley, from Soulanges to five miles be­yond Conch­es on the road to La Brie, with­out mak­ing oth­er pay­ments than “ex­ten­sion of time,” for those fugi­tive plea­sures which eat in­to the for­tunes of so many old men.

This lux­uri­ous life, a life like that of Bouret, cost Rigou al­most noth­ing. Thanks to his white slaves, he could cut and mow down and gath­er in his wood, hay, and grain. To the peas­ant man­ual la­bor is a small mat­ter, es­pe­cial­ly if it serves to post­pone the pay­ment of in­ter­est due. And so Rigou, while re­quir­ing lit­tle pre­mi­ums on each month's de­lay, squeezed a great deal of man­ual la­bor out of his debtors,--pos­itive drudgery, to which they sub­mit­ted think­ing they gave lit­tle be­cause noth­ing left their pock­ets. Rigou some­times ob­tained in this way more than the prin­ci­pal of a debt.

Deep as a monk, silent as a Bene­dic­tine in the throes of writ­ing his­to­ry, sly as a priest, de­ceit­ful as all mis­ers, care­ful­ly keep­ing with­in the lim­its of the law, the man might have been Tiberius in Rome, Riche­lieu un­der Louis XI­II., or Fouche, had the am­bi­tion seized him to go to the Con­ven­tion; but, in­stead of all that, Rigou had the com­mon sense to re­main a Lu­cul­lus with­out os­ten­ta­tion, in oth­er words, a par­si­mo­nious volup­tuary. To oc­cu­py his mind he in­dulged a ha­tred man­ufac­tured out of the whole cloth. He ha­rassed the Comte de Mont­cor­net. He worked the peas­ants like pup­pets by hid­den wires, the han­dling of which amused him as though it were a game of chess where the pawns were alive, the knights cara­coled, the bish­ops, like Four­chon, gab­bled, the feu­dal cas­tles shone in the sun, and the queen ma­li­cious­ly check­mat­ed the king. Ev­ery day, when he got out of bed and saw from his win­dow the proud tow­ers of Les Aigues, the chim­neys of the pavil­ions, and the no­ble gates, he said to him­self: “They shall fall! I'll dry up the brooks, I'll chop down the woods.” But he had two vic­tims in mind, a chief one and a less­er one. Though he med­itat­ed the dis­mem­ber­ment of the chateau, the apos­tate al­so in­tend­ed to make an end of the Abbe Bros­sette by pin-​pricks.

To com­plete the por­trait of the ex-​priest it will suf­fice to add that he went to mass re­gret­ting that his wife still lived, and ex­pressed the de­sire to be rec­on­ciled with the Church as soon as he be­came a wid­ow­er. He bowed def­er­en­tial­ly to the Abbe Bros­sette when­ev­er he met him, and spoke to him cour­te­ous­ly and with­out heat. As a gen­er­al thing all men who be­long to the Church, or who have come out of it, have the pa­tience of in­sects; they owe this to the obli­ga­tion they have been un­der, ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal­ly, to pre­serve deco­rum,--a train­ing which has been lack­ing for the last twen­ty years to the vast ma­jor­ity of the French na­tion, even those who think them­selves well-​bred. All the monks which the Rev­olu­tion brought out of their monas­ter­ies and forced in­to busi­ness, pub­lic or pri­vate, showed in their cold­ness and re­serve the great ad­van­tage which ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal dis­ci­pline gives to the sons of the Church, even those who desert her.

Gaubertin had un­der­stood Rigou from the days when the Abbe Nis­eron made his will and the ex-​monk mar­ried the heiress; he fath­omed the craft hid­den be­hind the jaun­diced face of that ac­com­plished hyp­ocrite; and he made him­self the man's fel­low-​wor­ship­per be­fore the al­tar of the Gold­en Calf. When the bank­ing-​house of Lecler­cq was first start­ed he ad­vised Rigou to put fifty thou­sand francs in­to it, guar­an­tee­ing their se­cu­ri­ty him­self. Rigou was all the more de­sir­able as an in­vestor, or sleep­ing part­ner, be­cause he drew no in­ter­est but al­lowed his cap­ital to ac­cu­mu­late. At the pe­ri­od of which we write it amount­ed to over a hun­dred thou­sand francs, al­though in 1816 he had tak­en out one hun­dred and eighty thou­sand for in­vest­ment in the Pub­lic Funds, from which he de­rived an in­come of sev­en­teen thou­sand francs. Lupin the no­tary had cog­nizance of at least one hun­dred thou­sand francs which Rigou had lent on small mort­gages up­on good es­tates. Os­ten­si­bly, Rigou de­rived about four­teen thou­sand francs a year from land­ed prop­er­ty ac­tu­al­ly owned by him. But as to his amassed hoard, it was rep­re­sent­ed by an “x” which no rule of equa­tions could evolve, just as the dev­il alone knew the se­cret schemes he plot­ted with Lan­glume.

This dan­ger­ous usurer, who pro­posed to live a score of years longer, had es­tab­lished fixed rules to work up­on. He lent noth­ing to a peas­ant who bought less than sev­en acres, and who could not pay one-​half of the pur­chase-​mon­ey down. Rigou well un­der­stood the de­fects of the law of dis­pos­ses­sion when ap­plied to small hold­ings, and the dan­ger both to the Pub­lic Trea­sury and to land-​own­ers of the minute par­celling out of the soil. How can you sue a peas­ant for the val­ue of one row of vines when he owns on­ly five? The bird's-​eye view of self-​in­ter­est is al­ways twen­ty-​five years ahead of the per­cep­tions of a leg­isla­tive body. What a les­son for a na­tion! Law will ev­er em­anate from one brain, that of a man of ge­nius, and not from the nine hun­dred leg­isla­tive heads, which, great as they may be in them­selves, are be­lit­tled and lost in a crowd. Rigou's law con­tains the es­sen­tial el­ement which has yet to be found and in­tro­duced in­to pub­lic law to put an end to the ab­surd spec­ta­cle of land­ed prop­er­ty re­duced to halves, quar­ters, tenths, hun­dredths,--as in the dis­trict of Ar­gen­teuil, where there are thir­ty thou­sand plots of land.

Such op­er­ations as those Rigou was con­cerned in re­quire ex­ten­sive col­lu­sion, like those we have seen ex­ist­ing in this ar­rondisse­ment. Lupin, the no­tary, whom Rigou em­ployed to draw at least one third of the deeds an­nu­al­ly en­trust­ed to his no­tar­ial of­fice, was de­vot­ed to him. This shark could thus in­clude in the mort­gage note (signed al­ways in pres­ence of the wife, when the bor­row­er was mar­ried) the amount of the il­le­gal in­ter­est. The peas­ant, de­light­ed to feel he had to pay on­ly his five per cent in­ter­est an­nu­al­ly, al­ways imag­ined he should be able to meet the pay­ment by work­ing dou­bly hard or by im­prov­ing the land and get­ting dou­ble re­turns up­on it.

Hence the de­ceit­ful hopes ex­cit­ed by what im­be­cile economists call “small farm­ing,”--a po­lit­ical blun­der to which we owe such mis­takes as send­ing French mon­ey to Ger­many to buy hors­es which our own land had ceased to breed; a blun­der which be­fore long will re­duce the rais­ing of cat­tle un­til meat will be unattain­able not on­ly by the peo­ple, but by the low­er mid­dle class­es (see “Le Cure de Vil­lage.”)

So, not a lit­tle sweat be­dewed men's brows be­tween Conch­es and Ville-​aux-​Fayes to Rigou's prof­it, all be­ing will­ing to give it; where­as the la­bor dear­ly paid for by the gen­er­al, the on­ly man who did spend mon­ey in the dis­trict, brought him curs­es and ha­tred, which were show­ered up­on him sim­ply be­cause he was rich. How could such facts be un­der­stood un­less we had pre­vi­ous­ly tak­en that rapid glance at the Medioc­ra­cy. Four­chon was right; the mid­dle class­es now held the po­si­tion of the for­mer lords. The small land-​own­ers, of whom Courte­cuisse is a type, were ten­ants in mort­main of a Tiberius in the val­ley of the Avonne, just as, in Paris, traders with­out mon­ey are the peas­antry of the bank­ing sys­tem.

Soudry fol­lowed Rigou's ex­am­ple from Soulanges to a dis­tance of fif­teen miles be­yond Ville-​aux-​Fayes. These two usurers shared the dis­trict be­tween them.

Gaubertin, whose ra­pac­ity was in a high­er sphere, not on­ly did not com­pete against that of his as­so­ciates, but he pre­vent­ed all oth­er cap­ital in Ville-​aux-​Fayes from be­ing em­ployed in the same fruit­ful man­ner. It is easy to imag­ine what im­mense in­flu­ence this tri­umvi­rate --Rigou, Soudry, and Gaubertin--wield­ed in elec­tion pe­ri­ods over elec­tors whose for­tunes de­pend­ed on their good-​will.

Hate, in­tel­li­gence, and means at com­mand, such were the three sides of the ter­ri­ble tri­an­gle which de­scribes the gen­er­al's clos­est en­emy, the spy ev­er watch­ing Les Aigues,--a shark hav­ing con­stant deal­ings with six­ty to eighty small land-​own­ers, re­la­tions or con­nec­tions of the peas­antry, who feared him as such men al­ways fear their cred­itor.

Rigou was in his way an­oth­er Ton­sard. The one throve on thefts from na­ture, the oth­er waxed fat on le­gal plun­der. Both liked to live well. It was the same na­ture in two species,--the one nat­ural, the oth­er whet­ted by his train­ing in a clois­ter.

It was about four o'clock when Vau­doy­er left the tav­ern of the Grand-​I-​Vert to con­sult the for­mer may­or. Rigou was at din­ner. Find­ing the front door locked, Vau­doy­er looked above the win­dow blinds and called out:--

“Mon­sieur Rigou, it is I,--Vau­doy­er.”

Jean came round from the porte-​cochere and said to Vau­doy­er:--

“Come in­to the gar­den; Mon­sieur has com­pa­ny.”

The com­pa­ny was Sibilet, who, un­der pre­text of dis­cussing the ver­dict Brunet had just hand­ed in, was talk­ing to Rigou of quite oth­er mat­ters. He had found the usurer fin­ish­ing his dessert. On a square din­ner-​ta­ble cov­ered with a daz­zling white cloth--for, re­gard­less of his wife and An­nette who did the wash­ing, Rigou ex­act­ed clean ta­ble-​linen ev­ery day--the stew­ard not­ed straw­ber­ries, apri­cots, peach­es, figs, and al­monds, all the fruits of the sea­son in pro­fu­sion, served in white porce­lain dish­es on vine-​leaves as dain­ti­ly as at Les Aigues.

See­ing Sibilet, Rigou told him to run the bolts of the in­side dou­ble-​doors, which were added to the oth­er doors as much to sti­fle sounds as to keep out the cold air, and asked him what press­ing busi­ness brought him there in broad day­light when it was so much safer to con­fer to­geth­er at night.

“The Shop­man talks of go­ing to Paris to see the Keep­er of the Seals; he is ca­pa­ble of do­ing you a great deal of harm; he may ask for the dis­missal of your son-​in-​law, and the re­moval of the judges at Ville-​aux-​Fayes, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter read­ing the ver­dict just ren­dered in your fa­vor. He has turned at bay; he is shrewd, and he has an ad­vis­er in that abbe, who is quite able to tilt with you and Gaubertin. Priests are pow­er­ful. Mon­seigneur the bish­op thinks a great deal of the Abbe Bros­sette. Madame la comtesse talks of go­ing her­self to her cousin the pre­fect, the Comte de Cast­er­an, about Nico­las. Michaud be­gins to see in­to our game.”

“You are fright­ened,” said Rigou, soft­ly, cast­ing a look on Sibilet which sus­pi­cion made less im­pas­sive than usu­al, and which was there­fore ter­rif­ic. “You are de­bat­ing whether it would not be bet­ter on the whole to side with the Comte de Mont­cor­net.”

“I don't see where I am to get the four thou­sand francs I save hon­est­ly and in­vest ev­ery year, af­ter you have cut up and sold Les Aigues,” said Sibilet, short­ly. “Mon­sieur Gaubertin has made me many fine promis­es; but the cri­sis is com­ing on; there will be fight­ing, sure­ly. Promis­ing be­fore vic­to­ry and keep­ing a promise af­ter it are two very dif­fer­ent things.”

“I will talk to him about it,” replied Rigou, im­per­turbably. “Mean­time this is what I should say to you if I were in his place: 'For the last five years you have tak­en Mon­sieur Rigou four thou­sand francs a year, and that wor­thy man gives you sev­en and a half per cent; which makes your prop­er­ty in his hands at this mo­ment over twen­ty-​sev­en thou­sand francs, as you have not drawn the in­ter­est. But there ex­ists a pri­vate signed agree­ment be­tween you and Rigou, and the Shop­man will dis­miss his stew­ard when­ev­er the Abbe Bros­sette lays that doc­ument be­fore his eyes; the abbe will be able to do so af­ter re­ceiv­ing an anony­mous let­ter which will in­form him of your dou­ble-​deal­ing. You would there­fore do bet­ter for your­self by keep­ing well with us in­stead of clam­or­ing for your pay in ad­vance,--all the more be­cause Mon­sieur Rigou, who is not legal­ly bound to give you sev­en and a half per cent and the in­ter­est on your in­ter­est, will make you in court a le­gal ten­der of your twen­ty thou­sand francs, and you will not be able to touch that mon­ey un­til your suit, pro­longed by le­gal trick­ery, shall be de­cid­ed by the court at Ville-​aux-​Fayes. But if you act wise­ly you will find that when Mon­sieur Rigou gets pos­ses­sion of your pavil­ion at Les Aigues, you will have very near­ly thir­ty thou­sand francs in his hands and thir­ty thou­sand more which the said Rigou may en­trust to you,--which will be all the more ad­van­ta­geous to you then be­cause the peas­antry will have flung them them­selves up­on the es­tate of Les Aigues, di­vid­ed in­to small lots like the pover­ty of the world.' That's what Mon­sieur Gaubertin might say to you. As for me, I have noth­ing to say, for it is none of my busi­ness. Gaubertin and I have our own quar­rel with that son of the peo­ple who is ashamed of his own fa­ther, and we fol­low our own course. If my friend Gaubertin feels the need of us­ing you, I don't; I need no one, for ev­ery­body is at my com­mand. As to the Keep­er of the Seals, that func­tionary is of­ten changed; where­as we--WE are al­ways here, and can bide our time.”

“Well, I've warned you,” re­turned Sibilet, feel­ing like a don­key un­der a pack-​sad­dle.

“Warned me of what?” said Rigou, art­ful­ly.

“Of what the Shop­man is go­ing to do,” an­swered the stew­ard, humbly. “He start­ed for the Pre­fec­ture in a rage.”

“Let him go! If the Mont­cor­nets and their kind didn't use wheels, what would be­come of the car­riage-​mak­ers?”

“I shall bring you three thou­sand francs to-​night,” said Sibilet, “but you ought to make over some of your ma­tur­ing mort­gages to me,--say, one or two that would se­cure to me good lots of land.”

“Well, there's that of Courte­cuisse. I my­self want to be easy on him be­cause he is the best shot in the can­ton; but if I make over his mort­gage to you, you will seem to be ha­rass­ing him on the Shop­man's ac­count, and that will be killing two birds with one stone; when Courte­cuisse finds him­self a beg­gar, like Four­chon, he'll be ca­pa­ble of any­thing. Courte­cuisse has ru­ined him­self on the Bachelerie; he has cul­ti­vat­ed all the land, and trained fruit on the walls. The lit­tle prop­er­ty is now worth four thou­sand francs, and the count will glad­ly pay you that to get pos­ses­sion of the three acres that jut right in­to his land. If Courte­cuisse were not such an idle hound he could have paid his in­ter­est with the game he might have killed there.”

“Well, trans­fer the mort­gage to me, and I'll make my but­ter out of it; the count shall buy the three acres, and I shall get the house and gar­den for noth­ing.”

“What are you go­ing to give me out of it?”

“Good heav­ens! you'd milk an ox!” ex­claimed Sibilet,--“when I have just done you such a ser­vice, too. I have at last got the Shop­man to en­force the laws about glean­ing--”

“Have you, my dear fel­low?” said Rigou, who a few days ear­li­er had sug­gest­ed this means of ex­as­per­at­ing the peas­antry to Sibilet, telling him to ad­vise the gen­er­al to try it. “Then we've got him; he's lost! But it isn't enough to hold him with one string; we must wind it round and round him like a roll of to­bac­co. Slip the bolts of the door, my lad; tell my wife to bring my cof­fee and the liqueurs, and tell Jean to har­ness up. I'm off to Soulanges; will see you to-​night!--Ah! Vau­doy­er, good af­ter­noon,” said the late may­or as his for­mer field-​keep­er en­tered the room. “What's the news?”

Vau­doy­er re­lat­ed the talk which had just tak­en place at the tav­ern, and asked Rigou's opin­ion as to the le­gal­ity of the rules which the gen­er­al thought of en­forc­ing.

“He has the law with him,” said Rigou, curt­ly. “We have a hard land­lord; the Abbe Bros­sette is a ma­lig­nant priest; he ad­vis­es all such mea­sures be­cause you don't go to mass, you mis­er­able un­be­liev­ers. I go; there's a God, I tell you. You peas­ants will have to bear ev­ery­thing, for the Shop­man will al­ways get the bet­ter of you--”

“We shall glean,” said Vau­doy­er, in that de­ter­mined tone which char­ac­ter­izes Bur­gun­di­ans.

“With­out a cer­tifi­cate of pau­perism?” asked the usurer. “They say the Shop­man has gone to the Pre­fec­ture to ask for troops so as to force you to keep the law.”

“We shall glean as we have al­ways gleaned,” re­peat­ed Vau­doy­er.

“Well, glean then! Mon­sieur Sar­cus will de­cide whether you have the right to,” said Rigou, seem­ing to promise the help of the jus­tice of the peace.

“We shall glean, and we shall do it in force, or Bur­gundy won't be Bur­gundy any longer,” said Vau­doy­er. “If the gen­darmes have sabres we have scythes, and we'll see what comes of it!”

At half-​past four o'clock the great green gate of the for­mer par­son­age turned on its hinges, and the bay horse, led by Jean, was brought round to the front door. Madame Rigou and An­nette came out on the steps and looked at the lit­tle wick­er car­riage, paint­ed green, with a leath­ern hood, where their lord and mas­ter was com­fort­ably seat­ed on good cush­ions.

“Don't be late home, mon­sieur,” said An­nette, with a lit­tle pout.

The vil­lage folk, al­ready in­formed of the mea­sures the gen­er­al pro­posed to take, were at their doors or stand­ing in the main street as Rigou drove by, be­liev­ing that he was go­ing to Soulanges in their de­fence.

“Well, Madame Courte­cuisse, so our may­or is on his way to pro­tect us,” re­marked an old wom­an as she knit­ted; the ques­tion of depre­dat­ing in the for­est was of great in­ter­est to her, for her hus­band sold the stolen wood at Soulanges.

“Ah! the good man, his heart bleeds to see the way we are treat­ed; he is as un­hap­py as we are about it,” replied the poor wom­an, who trem­bled at the very name of her hus­band's cred­itor, and praised him out of fear.

“And he him­self, too,--they've shame­ful­ly ill-​used him! Good-​day, Mon­sieur Rigou,” said the old knit­ter to the usurer, who bowed to her and to his debtor's wife.

As Rigou crossed the Thune, ford­able at all sea­sons, Ton­sard came out of the tav­ern and met him on the high-​road.

“Well, Pere Rigou,” he said, “so the Shop­man means to make dogs of us?”

“We'll see about that,” said the usurer, whip­ping up his horse.

“He'll pro­tect us,” said Ton­sard, turn­ing to a group of wom­en and chil­dren who were near him.

“Rigou is think­ing as much about you as a cook thinks of the gud­geons he is fry­ing in his pan,” called out Four­chon.

“Take the clap­per out of your throat when you are drunk,” said Mouche, pulling his grand­fa­ther by the blouse, and tum­bling him down on a bank un­der a poplar tree. “If that hound of a may­or heard you say that, he'd nev­er buy any more of your tales.”

The truth was that Rigou was hur­ry­ing to Soulanges in con­se­quence of the warn­ing giv­en him by the stew­ard of Les Aigues, which, in his heart, he re­gard­ed as threat­en­ing the se­cret coali­tion of the val­ley.

PART II

CHAP­TER I

THE LEAD­ING SO­CI­ETY OF SOULANGES

About six kilo­me­tres (speak­ing legal­ly) from Blangy, and at the same dis­tance from Ville-​aux-​Fayes, on an el­eva­tion ra­di­at­ing from the long hill­side at the foot of which flows the Avonne, stands the lit­tle town of Soulanges, sur­named La Jolie, with, per­haps, more right to that ti­tle than Mantes.

At the foot of the hill, the Thune broad­ens over a clay bot­tom to a space of some sev­en­ty acres, at the end of which the Soulanges mills, placed on nu­mer­ous lit­tle islets, present as grace­ful a group of build­ings as any land­scape ar­chi­tect could de­vise. Af­ter wa­ter­ing the park of Soulanges, where it feeds var­ious oth­er streams and ar­ti­fi­cial lakes, the Thune falls in­to the Avonne through a fine broad chan­nel.

The chateau of Soulanges, re­built un­der Louis XIV. from de­signs of Jules Mansart, and one of the finest in Bur­gundy, stands fac­ing the town; so that Soulanges and its chateau mu­tu­al­ly present to each oth­er a charm­ing and even el­egant vista. The main road winds be­tween the town and the pond, called by the coun­try peo­ple, rather pompous­ly, the lake of Soulanges.

The lit­tle town is one of those nat­ural com­po­si­tions which are ex­treme­ly rare in France, where _pret­ti­ness_ of its own kind is ab­so­lute­ly want­ing. Here you would in­deed find, as Blon­det said in his let­ter, the charm of Switzer­land, the pret­ti­ness of the en­vi­rons of Neuf-​cha­tel; while the bright vine­yards which en­cir­cle Soulanges com­plete the re­sem­blance,--leav­ing out, be it said, the Alps and the Ju­ra. The streets, placed one above an­oth­er on the slope of the hill, have but few hous­es; for each house stands in its own gar­den, which pro­duces a mass of green­ery rarely seen in a town. The roofs, red or blue, ris­ing among flow­er-​gar­dens, trees, and trel­lised ter­races, present an har­mo­nious va­ri­ety of as­pects.

The church, an old Mid­dle-​Age struc­ture, built of stone, thanks to the mu­nif­icence of the lords of Soulanges, who re­served for them­selves first a chapel near the chan­cel, then a crypt as their necrop­olis, has, by way of por­tal, an im­mense ar­cade, like that of the church at Lon­jumeau, and is bor­dered by flow­er-​beds adorned with stat­ues, and flanked on ei­ther side by columns with nich­es, which ter­mi­nate in spires. This por­tal, of­ten seen in church­es of the same pe­ri­od when chance has saved them from the rav­ages of Calvin­ism, is sur­mount­ed by a triglyph, above which stands a stat­ue of the Vir­gin hold­ing the in­fant Je­sus. The sides of the struc­ture are ex­ter­nal­ly of five arch­es, de­fined by stone ribs and light­ed by win­dows with small panes. The apse rests on arched abut­ments that are wor­thy of a cathe­dral. The clock-​tow­er, placed in a transept of the cross, is square and sur­mount­ed by a bel­fry. The church can be seen from a great dis­tance, for it stands at the top of the great square, at the low­er end of which the high-​road pass­es through the town.

This square, large for the size of the town, is sur­round­ed by very orig­inal build­ings, all of dif­fer­ent epochs. Many, half-​wood, half-​brick, with their tim­bers faced with slate, date back to the Mid­dle Ages. Oth­ers, of stone, with bal­conies, show the form of gable so dear to our an­ces­tors, which be­longs to the twelfth cen­tu­ry. Sev­er­al charm the eye with those old pro­ject­ing beams, carved with grotesque faces, which form the roof of a sort of shed, and re­call the days when the mid­dle class­es were ex­clu­sive­ly com­mer­cial. The finest house among them was that of the chief mag­is­trate of for­mer days,--a house with a sculp­tured front on a line with the church, to which it forms a fine ac­com­pa­ni­ment. Sold as na­tion­al prop­er­ty, it was bought in by the com­mune, which turned it in­to a town-​hall and court-​house, where Mon­sieur Sar­cus had presid­ed ev­er since the es­tab­lish­ment of mu­nic­ipal judges.

This slight sketch will give an idea of the square of Soulanges, adorned in the cen­tre with a charm­ing foun­tain brought from Italy in 1520 by the Marechal de Soulanges, which was not un­wor­thy of a great cap­ital. An un­fail­ing jet of wa­ter, com­ing from a spring high­er up the hill, was shed by four Cu­pids in white mar­ble, bear­ing shells in their arms and bas­kets of grapes up­on their heads.

Lit­er­ary trav­ellers who may pass this way (should any such fol­low Emile Blon­det) might imag­ine the spot to have in­spired Moliere and the Span­ish dra­ma, which held its foot­ing so long on French boards, show­ing that com­edy is na­tive to warm coun­tries where so much of life is passed in the pub­lic streets. The square of Soulanges is all the more a re­minder of that clas­sic stage be­cause the two prin­ci­pal streets, open­ing just on a line with the foun­tain, af­ford the ex­it and en­trances so nec­es­sary for the dra­mat­ic mas­ters and valets whose busi­ness it is ei­ther to meet or to avoid each oth­er. At the cor­ner of one of these streets, called the rue de la Fontaine, shone the no­tar­ial es­cutcheon of Maitre Lupin. The hous­es of Messieurs Sar­cus, Guer­bet the col­lec­tor, Brunet, Gour­don, clerk of the court, and that of his broth­er the doc­tor, al­so that of old Mon­sieur Gen­drin-​Vate­bled, the keep­er of the forests and streams,--all these hous­es, kept with ex­treme neat­ness by their own­ers, who held firm­ly to the flat­ter­ing sur­name of their na­tive town, stand in the neigh­bor­hood of the square and form the aris­to­crat­ic quar­ter of Soulanges.

The house of Madame Soudry--for the pow­er­ful in­di­vid­ual­ity of Made­moi­selle La­guerre's for­mer wait­ing-​maid took the lead of her hus­band in the com­mu­ni­ty--was mod­ern, hav­ing been built by a rich wine-​mer­chant, born in Soulanges, who, af­ter mak­ing his mon­ey in Paris, re­turned there in 1793 to buy wheat for his na­tive town. He was slain as an “ac­ca­pareur,” a mo­nop­olist, by the pop­ulace, in­sti­gat­ed by a ma­son, the un­cle of Go­dain, with whom he had had some quar­rel about the build­ing of his am­bi­tious house. The set­tle­ment of his es­tate, sharply con­test­ed by col­lat­er­al heirs, dragged slow­ly along un­til, in 1798, Soudry, who had then re­turned to Soulanges, was able to buy the wine-​mer­chant's palace for three thou­sand francs in specie. He then let it, in the first in­stance, to the gov­ern­ment for the head­quar­ters of the gen­darmerie. In 1811 Made­moi­selle Co­chet, whom Soudry con­sult­ed about all his af­fairs, strong­ly ob­ject­ed to the re­new­al of the lease, mak­ing the house un­in­hab­it­able, she de­clared, with bar­racks. The town of Soulanges, as­sist­ed by the de­part­ment, then erect­ed a build­ing for the gen­darmerie in a street run­ning at right an­gles from the town-​hall. There­upon Soudry cleaned up his house and re­stored its prim­itive lus­tre, not a lit­tle dimmed by the sta­bling of hors­es and the oc­cu­pan­cy of gen­darmes.

The house, on­ly one sto­ry high, with pro­ject­ing win­dows in the roof, has a view on three sides; one to the square, an­oth­er to a lake, the third to a gar­den. The fourth side looks on a court­yard which sep­arates the Soudrys from the ad­join­ing house oc­cu­pied by a gro­cer named Wat­te­bled, a man of the SEC­OND-​CLASS so­ci­ety of Soulanges, fa­ther of the beau­ti­ful Madame Plis­soud, of whom we shall present­ly have oc­ca­sion to speak.

All lit­tle towns have a renowned beau­ty, just as they have a Soc­quard and a Cafe de la Paix.

It will be ap­par­ent to ev­ery one that the frontage of the Soudry man­sion on the lake must have a ter­raced gar­den con­fined by a stone balustrade which over­looks both the lake and the main road. A flight of steps leads down from the ter­race to the road, and on it an or­ange-​tree, a pomegranate, a myr­tle, and oth­er or­na­men­tal shrubs are placed, ne­ces­si­tat­ing a green­house. On the side to­ward the square the house is en­tered from a por­ti­co raised sev­er­al steps above the lev­el of the street. Ac­cord­ing to the cus­tom of small towns the gate of the court­yard, used on­ly for the ser­vice of the house or for any un­usu­al ar­rival, was sel­dom opened. Vis­itors, who most­ly came on foot, en­tered by the por­ti­co.

The style of the Ho­tel Soudry is plain. The cours­es are in­di­cat­ed by pro­ject­ing lines; the win­dows are framed by mould­ings al­ter­nate­ly broad and slen­der, like those of the Gabriel and Per­ronnet pavil­ion in the place Louis XV. These or­na­ments in so small a town give a cer­tain sol­id and mon­umen­tal air to the build­ing which has be­come cel­ebrat­ed.

Op­po­site to this house, in an­oth­er an­gle of the square stands the fa­mous Cafe de la Paix, the char­ac­ter­is­tics of which, to­geth­er with the fas­ci­na­tions of its Tivoli, will re­quire, some­what lat­er, a less suc­cinct de­scrip­tion than that we have giv­en of the Soudry man­sion.

Rigou very sel­dom came to Soulanges; ev­ery­body was in the habit of go­ing to him,--Lupin and Gaubertin, Soudry and Gen­drin,--so much were they afraid of him. But we shall present­ly un­der­stand why any ed­ucat­ed man, such as the ex-​Bene­dic­tine, would have done as Rigou did, and kept away from the lit­tle town, af­ter read­ing the fol­low­ing sketch of the per­son­ages who com­posed what was called in those parts “the lead­ing so­ci­ety of Soulanges.”

Of its prin­ci­pal fig­ures, the most orig­inal, as you have al­ready sus­pect­ed, was that of Madame Soudry, whose per­son­al­ity, to be du­ly ren­dered, needs a minute and care­ful brush.

Madame Soudry, re­spect­ful­ly im­itat­ing Made­moi­selle La­guerre, be­gan by al­low­ing her­self a “mere touch of rouge”; but this del­icate tint had changed through force of habit to those ver­mil­ion patch­es pic­turesque­ly de­scribed by our an­ces­tors as “car­riage-​wheels.” The wrin­kles grow­ing deep­er and deep­er, it oc­curred to the ex-​la­dy's-​maid to fill them up with paint. Her fore­head be­com­ing un­du­ly yel­low, and the tem­ples too shiny, she “laid on” a lit­tle white, and re­newed the veins of her youth with a trac­ery of blue. All this col­or gave an ex­ag­ger­at­ed live­li­ness to her eyes which were al­ready tricksy enough, so that the mask of her face would seem to a stranger even more than fan­tas­tic, though her friends and ac­quain­tances, ac­cus­tomed to this fic­ti­tious bril­lian­cy, ac­tu­al­ly de­clared her hand­some.

This un­gain­ly crea­ture, al­ways decol­letee, showed a bo­som and a pair of shoul­ders that were whitened and pol­ished by the same pro­cess em­ployed up­on her face; hap­pi­ly, for the sake of ex­hibit­ing her mag­nif­icent laces, she par­tial­ly veiled the charms of these chem­ical prod­ucts. She al­ways wore the body of her dress stiff­ened with whale­bone and made in a long point and gar­nished with knots of rib­bon, even on the point! Her pet­ti­coats gave forth a creak­ing noise,--so much did the silk and the furbe­lows abound.

This at­tire, which de­serves the name of ap­par­el (a word that be­fore long will be in­ex­pli­ca­ble), was, on the evening in ques­tion, of cost­ly bro­cade,--for Madame Soudry pos­sessed over a hun­dred dress­es, each rich­er than the oth­ers, the re­mains of Made­moi­selle La­guerre's enor­mous and splen­did wardrobe, made over to fit Madame Soudry in the last fash­ion of the year 1808. Her blond wig, frizzed and pow­dered, sus­tained a su­perb cap with knots of cher­ry satin rib­bon match­ing those on her dress. If you will kind­ly imag­ine be­neath this ul­tra-​co­quet­tish cap the face of a mon­key of ex­treme ug­li­ness, on which a flat nose, flesh­less as that of Death, is sep­arat­ed by a strong hairy line from a mouth filled with false teeth, whence is­sue sounds like the con­fused clack­ing of hunt­ing-​horns, you will have some dif­fi­cul­ty in un­der­stand­ing why the lead­ing so­ci­ety of Soulanges (all the town, in fact) thought this quasi-​queen a beau­ty,--un­less, in­deed, you re­mem­ber the suc­cinct state­ment re­cent­ly made “ex pro­fes­so,” by one of the clever­est wom­en of our time, on the art of mak­ing her sex beau­ti­ful by sur­round­ing ac­ces­sories.

As to ac­ces­sories, in the first place, Madame Soudry was sur­round­ed by the mag­nif­icent gifts ac­cu­mu­lat­ed by her late mis­tress, which the ex-​Bene­dic­tine called “fruc­tus bel­li.” Then she made the most of her ug­li­ness by ex­ag­ger­at­ing it, and by as­sum­ing that in­de­scrib­able air and man­ner which be­longs on­ly to Parisian wom­en, the se­cret of which is known even to the most vul­gar among them,--who are al­ways more or less mim­ics. She laced tight, wore an enor­mous bus­tle, al­so di­amond ear­rings, and her fin­gers were cov­ered with rings. At the top of her cor­sage, be­tween two mounds of flesh well plas­tered with pearl-​white, shone a bee­tle made of topaz with a di­amond head, the gift of dear mis­tress,--a jew­el renowned through­out the de­part­ment. Like the late dear mis­tress, she wore short sleeves and bare arms, and flirt­ed an ivory fan, paint­ed by Bouch­er with two lit­tle rose-​di­amonds in the han­dle.

When she went out Madame Soudry car­ried a para­sol of the true eigh­teenth-​cen­tu­ry style; that is to say, a tall cane at the end of which opened a green sun-​shade with a green fringe. When she walked about the ter­race a stranger on the high-​road, see­ing her from afar, might have thought her one of Wat­teau's dames.

In her sa­lon, hung with red damask, with cur­tains of the same lined with silk, a fire on the hearth, a man­tel-​shelf adorned with bibelots of the good time of Louis XV., and bear­ing can­de­labra in the form of lilies up­held by Cu­pids--in this sa­lon, filled with fur­ni­ture in gild­ed wood of the “pied de biche” pat­tern, it is not im­pos­si­ble to un­der­stand why the peo­ple of Soulanges called the mis­tress of the house, “The beau­ti­ful Madame Soulanges.” The man­sion had ac­tu­al­ly be­come the civic pride of this cap­ital of a can­ton.

If the lead­ing so­ci­ety of the lit­tle town be­lieved in its queen, the queen as sure­ly be­lieved in her­self. By a phe­nomenon not in the least rare, which the van­ity of moth­ers and au­thors car­ries on at all mo­ments un­der our very eyes in be­half of their lit­er­ary works or their mar­riage­able daugh­ters, the late Made­moi­selle Co­chet was, at the end of sev­en years, so com­plete­ly buried un­der Madame Soudry, the may­oress, that she not on­ly did not re­mem­ber her past, but she ac­tu­al­ly be­lieved her­self a well-​bred wom­an. She had stud­ied the airs and graces, the dul­cet tones, the ges­tures, the ways of her mis­tress, so long that when she found her­self in the midst of an op­ulence of her own she was able to prac­tice the nat­ural in­so­lence of it. She knew her eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, and the tales of its great lords and all their be­long­ings, by heart. This back-​stairs eru­di­tion gave to her con­ver­sa­tion a fla­vor of “oeil-​de-​boeuf”; her soubrette gos­sip passed muster for court­ly wit. Moral­ly, the may­oress was, if you wish to say so, tin­sel; but to sav­ages paste di­amonds are as good as re­al ones.

The wom­an found her­self court­ed and wor­shipped by the so­ci­ety in which she lived, just as her mis­tress had been wor­shipped in for­mer days. She gave week­ly din­ners, with cof­fee and liqueurs to those who came in af­ter the dessert. No fe­male head could have re­sist­ed the ex­hil­arat­ing force of such con­tin­ual adu­la­tion. In win­ter the warm sa­lon, al­ways well-​light­ed with wax can­dles, was well-​filled with the rich­est peo­ple of Soulanges, who paid for the good liqueurs and the fine wines which came from dear mis­tress's cel­lars, with flat­ter­ies to their host­ess. These vis­itors and their wives had a life-​in­ter­est, as it were, in this lux­ury; which was to them a sav­ing of lights and fu­el. Thus it came to pass that in a cir­cuit of fif­teen miles and even as far as Ville-​aux-​Fayes, ev­ery voice was ready to de­clare: “Madame Soudry does the hon­ors ad­mirably. She keeps open house; ev­ery one en­joys her sa­lon; she knows how to car­ry her­self and her for­tune; she al­ways says the wit­ty thing, she makes you laugh. And what splen­did sil­ver! There is not an­oth­er house like it short of Paris--”

The sil­ver had been giv­en to Made­moi­selle La­guerre by Bouret. It was a mag­nif­icent ser­vice made by the fa­mous Ger­main, and Madame Soudry had lit­er­al­ly stolen it. At Made­moi­selle La­guerre's death she mere­ly took it in­to her own room, and the heirs, who knew noth­ing of the val­ue of their in­her­itance, nev­er claimed it.

For some time past the twelve or fif­teen per­son­ages who com­posed the lead­ing so­ci­ety of Soulanges spoke of Madame Soudry as the _in­ti­mate friend_ of Made­moi­selle La­guerre, re­coil­ing at the term “wait­ing-​wom­an,” and mak­ing be­lieve that she had sac­ri­ficed her­self to the singer as her friend and com­pan­ion.

Strange yet true! all these il­lu­sions be­came re­al­ities, and spread even to the ac­tu­al re­gions of the heart; Madame Soudry reigned supreme, in a way, over her hus­band.

The gen­darme, re­quired to love a wom­an ten years old­er than him­self who kept the man­age­ment of her for­tune in her own hands, be­haved to her in the spir­it of the ideas she had end­ed by adopt­ing about her beau­ty. But some­times, when per­sons en­vied him or talked to him of his hap­pi­ness, he wished they were in his place, for, to hide his pec­ca­dil­loes, he was forced to take as many pre­cau­tions as the hus­band of a young and ador­ing wife; and it was not un­til very re­cent­ly that he had been able to in­tro­duce in­to the fam­ily a pret­ty ser­vant-​girl.

This por­trait of the Queen of Soulanges may seem a lit­tle grotesque, but many spec­imens of the same kind could be found in the provinces at that pe­ri­od,--some more or less no­ble in blood, oth­ers be­long­ing to the high­er bank­ing-​cir­cles, like the wid­ow of a re­ceiv­er-​gen­er­al in Touraine who still puts slices of veal up­on her cheeks. This por­trait, drawn from na­ture, would be in­com­plete with­out the di­amonds in which it is set; with­out the sur­round­ing courtiers, a sketch of whom is nec­es­sary, if on­ly to ex­plain how formidable such Lil­liputians are, and who are the mak­ers of pub­lic opin­ion in re­mote lit­tle towns. Let no one mis­take me, how­ev­er; there are many lo­cal­ities which, like Soulanges, are nei­ther ham­lets, vil­lages, nor lit­tle towns, which have, nev­er­the­less, the char­ac­ter­is­tics of all. The in­hab­itants are very dif­fer­ent from those of the large and busy and vi­cious provin­cial cities. Coun­try life in­flu­ences the man­ners and morals of the small­er places, and this mix­ture of tints will be found to pro­duce some tru­ly orig­inal char­ac­ters.

The most im­por­tant per­son­age af­ter Madame Soudry was Lupin, the no­tary. Though forty-​five springs had bloomed for Lupin, he was still fresh and rosy, thanks to the plump­ness which fills out the skin of seden­tary per­sons; and he still sang bal­lads. Al­so, he re­tained the el­egant evening dress of so­ci­ety war­blers. He looked al­most Parisian in his care­ful­ly-​var­nished boots, his sul­phur-​yel­low waist­coats, his tight-​fit­ting coats, his hand­some silk cra­vats, his fash­ion­able trousers. His hair was curled by the bar­ber of Soulanges (the gos­sip of the town), and he main­tained the at­ti­tude of a man “a bonne for­tunes” by his li­ai­son with Madame Sar­cus, wife of Sar­cus the rich, who was to his life, with­out too close a com­par­ison, what the cam­paigns of Italy were to Napoleon. He alone of the lead­ing so­ci­ety of Soulanges went to Paris, where he was re­ceived by the Soulanges fam­ily. It was enough to hear him talk to imag­ine the suprema­cy he wield­ed in his ca­pac­ity as dandy and judge of el­egance. He passed judg­ment on all things by the use of three terms: “out of date,” “an­ti­quat­ed,” “su­per­an­nu­at­ed.”[*] A man, a wom­an, or a piece of fur­ni­ture might be “out of date”; next, by a greater de­gree of im­per­fec­tion, “an­ti­quat­ed”; but as to the last term, it was the su­perla­tive of con­tempt. The first might be reme­died, the sec­ond was hope­less, but the third,--oh, bet­ter far nev­er to have left the void of noth­ing­ness! As to praise, a sin­gle word suf­ficed him, dou­bly and tre­bly ut­tered: “Charm­ing!” was the pos­itive of his ad­mi­ra­tion. “Charm­ing, charm­ing!” made you feel you were safe; but af­ter “Charm­ing, charm­ing, charm­ing!” the lad­der might be dis­card­ed, for the heav­en of per­fec­tion was at­tained.

[*] “Croute,” “crou­ton,” and “croute-​au-​pot,” un­trans­lat­able, and with­out equiv­alent in En­glish. A “croute” is the slang term for a man be­hind the age.--Tr.

The tabel­lion,--he called him­self “tabel­lion,” pet­ty no­tary, and keep­er of notes (mak­ing fun of his call­ing in or­der to seem above it), --the tabel­lion was on terms of spo­ken gal­lantry with Madame Soudry, who had a weak­ness for Lupin, though he was blond and wore spec­ta­cles. Hith­er­to the late Co­chet had loved none but dark men, with mous­ta­chios and hairy hands, of the Al­cides type. But she made an ex­cep­tion in fa­vor of Lupin on ac­count of his el­egance, and, more­over, be­cause she thought her glo­ry at Soulanges was not com­plete with­out an ador­er; but, to Soudry's de­spair, the queen's ador­ers nev­er car­ried their ado­ra­tion so far as to threat­en his rights.

Lupin had mar­ried an heiress in wood­en shoes and blue woollen stock­ings, the on­ly daugh­ter of a salt-​deal­er, who made his mon­ey dur­ing the Rev­olu­tion,--a pe­ri­od when con­tra­band salt-​traders made enor­mous prof­its by rea­son of the re­ac­tion that set in against the gabelle. He pru­dent­ly left his wife at home, where Be­belle, as he called her, was sup­port­ed un­der his ab­sence by a pla­ton­ic pas­sion for a hand­some clerk who had no oth­er means than his salary,--a young man named Bonnac, be­long­ing to the sec­ond-​class so­ci­ety, where he played the same role that his mas­ter, the no­tary, played in the first.

Madame Lupin, a wom­an with­out any ed­uca­tion what­ev­er, ap­peared on great oc­ca­sions on­ly, un­der the form of an enor­mous Bur­gun­di­an bar­rel dressed in vel­vet and sur­mount­ed by a lit­tle head sunken in shoul­ders of a ques­tion­able col­or. No ef­forts could re­tain her waist-​belt in its nat­ural place. “Be­belle” can­did­ly ad­mit­ted that pru­dence for­bade her wear­ing corsets. The imag­ina­tion of a po­et or, bet­ter still, that of an in­ven­tor, could not have found on Be­belle's back the slight­est trace of that se­duc­tive sin­uos­ity which the ver­te­brae of all wom­en who are wom­en usu­al­ly pro­duce. Be­belle, round as a tor­toise, be­longed to the genus of in­ver­te­brate fe­males. This alarm­ing de­vel­op­ment of cel­lu­lar tis­sue no doubt re­as­sured Lupin on the sub­ject of the pla­ton­ic pas­sion of his fat wife, whom he bold­ly called Be­belle with­out rais­ing a laugh.

“Your wife, what is she?” said Sar­cus the rich, one day, when un­able to di­gest the fa­tal word “su­per­an­nu­at­ed,” ap­plied to a piece of fur­ni­ture he had just bought at a bar­gain.

“My wife is not like yours,” replied Lupin; “she is not de­fined as yet.”

Be­neath his rosy ex­te­ri­or the no­tary pos­sessed a sub­tle mind, and he had the sense to say noth­ing about his prop­er­ty, which was ful­ly as large as that of Rigou.

Mon­sieur Lupin's son, Amau­ry, was a great trou­ble to his fa­ther. An on­ly son, and one of the Don Juans of the val­ley, he ut­ter­ly re­fused to fol­low the pa­ter­nal pro­fes­sion. He took ad­van­tage of his po­si­tion as on­ly son to bleed the strong-​box cru­el­ly, with­out, how­ev­er, ex­haust­ing the pa­tience of his fa­ther, who would say af­ter ev­ery es­capade, “Well, I was like that in my young days.” Amau­ry nev­er came to Madame Soudry's; he said she bored him; for, with a rec­ol­lec­tion of her ear­ly days, she at­tempt­ed to “ed­ucate” him, as she called it, where­as he much pre­ferred the plea­sures and bil­liards of the Cafe de la Paix. He fre­quent­ed the worst com­pa­ny of Soulanges, even down to Bon­nebault. He con­tin­ued sow­ing his wild oats, as Madame Soudry re­marked, and replied to all his fa­ther's re­mon­strances with one per­pet­ual re­quest: “Send me back to Paris, for I am bored to death here.”

Lupin end­ed, alas! like oth­er gal­lants, by an at­tach­ment that was se­mi-​con­ju­gal. His known pas­sion, in spite of his for­mer li­ai­son with Madame Sar­cus, was for the wife of the un­der-​sher­iff of the mu­nic­ipal court,--Madame Eu­phemie Plis­soud, daugh­ter of Wat­te­bled the gro­cer, who reigned in the sec­ond-​class so­ci­ety as Madame Soudry did in the first. Mon­sieur Plis­soud, a com­peti­tor of Brunet, be­longed to the un­der-​world of Soulanges on ac­count of his wife's con­duct, which it was said he au­tho­rized,--a re­port that drew up­on him the con­tempt of the lead­ing so­ci­ety.

If Lupin was the mu­si­cian of the lead­ing so­ci­ety, Mon­sieur Gour­don, the doc­tor, was its man of sci­ence. The town said of him, “We have here in our midst a sci­en­tif­ic man of the first or­der.” Madame Soudry (who be­lieved she un­der­stood mu­sic be­cause she had ush­ered in Pic­ci­ni and Gluck and had dressed Made­moi­selle La­guerre for the Opera) per­suad­ed so­ci­ety, and even Lupin him­self, that he might have made his for­tune by his voice, and, in like man­ner, she was al­ways re­gret­ting that the doc­tor did not pub­lish his sci­en­tif­ic ideas.

Mon­sieur Gour­don mere­ly re­peat­ed the ideas of Cu­vi­er and Buf­fon, which might not have en­abled him to pose as a sci­en­tist be­fore the Soulanges world; but be­sides this he was mak­ing a col­lec­tion of shells, and he pos­sessed an herbar­ium, and he knew how to stuff birds. He lived up­on the glo­ry of hav­ing be­queathed his cab­inet of nat­ural his­to­ry to the town of Soulanges. Af­ter this was known he was con­sid­ered through­out the de­part­ment as a great nat­ural­ist and the suc­ces­sor of Buf­fon. Like a cer­tain Gen­evese banker, whose pedantry, cold­ness, and pu­ri­tan pro­pri­ety he copied, with­out pos­sess­ing ei­ther his mon­ey or his shrewd­ness, Mon­sieur Gour­don ex­hib­it­ed with great com­pla­cen­cy the fa­mous col­lec­tion, con­sist­ing of a bear and a mon­key (both of which had died on their way to Soulanges), all the ro­dents of the de­part­ment, mice and field-​mice and dormice, rats, muskrats, and moles, etc.; all the in­ter­est­ing birds ev­er shot in Bur­gundy, and an Alpine ea­gle caught in the Ju­ra. Gour­don al­so pos­sessed a col­lec­tion of lep­idoptera,--a word which led so­ci­ety to hope for mon­strosi­ties, and to say, when it saw them, “Why, they are on­ly but­ter­flies!” Be­sides these things he had a fine ar­ray of fos­sil shells, most­ly the col­lec­tions of his friends which they be­queathed to him, and all the min­er­als of Bur­gundy and the Ju­ra.

These trea­sures, laid out on shelves with glass doors (the draw­ers be­neath con­tain­ing the in­sects), oc­cu­pied the whole of the first floor of the doc­tor's house, and pro­duced a cer­tain ef­fect through the odd­ity of the names on the tick­ets, the mag­ic ef­fect of the col­ors, and the gath­er­ing to­geth­er of so many things which no one pays the slight­est at­ten­tion to when seen in na­ture, though much ad­mired un­der glass. So­ci­ety took a reg­ular day to go and look at Mon­sieur Gour­don's col­lec­tion.

“I have,” he said to all in­quir­ers, “five hun­dred or­nitho­log­ical ob­jects, two hun­dred mam­mifers, five thou­sand in­sects, three thou­sand shells, and sev­en thou­sand spec­imens of min­er­als.”

“What pa­tience you have had!” said the ladies.

“One must do some­thing for one's coun­try,” replied the col­lec­tor.

He drew an enor­mous prof­it from his car­cass­es by the mere rep­eti­tion of the words, “I have be­queathed ev­ery­thing to the town by my will.” Vis­itors laud­ed his phi­lan­thropy; the au­thor­ities talked of de­vot­ing the sec­ond floor of the town hall to the “Gour­don Mu­se­um,” af­ter the col­lec­tor's death.

“I re­ly up­on the grat­itude of my fel­low-​cit­izens to at­tach my name to the gift,” he replied; “for I dare not hope they would place a mar­ble bust of me--”

“It would be the very least we could do for you,” they re­joined; “are you not the glo­ry of our town?”

Thus the man ac­tu­al­ly came to con­sid­er him­self one of the celebri­ties of Bur­gundy. The surest in­comes are not from con­sols af­ter all; those our van­ity ob­tains for us have bet­ter se­cu­ri­ty. This man of sci­ence was, to em­ploy Lupin's su­perla­tives, hap­py! hap­py!! hap­py!!!

Gour­don, the clerk of the court, broth­er of the doc­tor, was a piti­ful lit­tle crea­ture, whose fea­tures all gath­ered about his nose, so that the nose seemed the point of de­par­ture for the fore­head, the cheeks, and the mouth, all of which were con­nect­ed with it just as the ravines of a moun­tain be­gin at the sum­mit. This pinched lit­tle man was thought to be one of the great­est po­ets in Bur­gundy,--a Piron, it was the fash­ion to say. The du­al mer­its of the two broth­ers gave rise to the re­mark: “We have the broth­ers Gour­don at Soulanges--two very dis­tin­guished men; men who could hold their own in Paris.”

De­vot­ed to the game of cup-​and-​ball, the clerk of the court be­came pos­sessed by an­oth­er ma­nia,--that of com­pos­ing an ode in hon­or of an amuse­ment which amount­ed to a pas­sion in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry. Ma­nias among mediocrats of­ten run in cou­ples. Gour­don ju­nior gave birth to his po­em dur­ing the reign of Napoleon. That fact is suf­fi­cient to show the sound and healthy school of poesy to which he be­longed; Luce de Lan­ci­val, Parny, Saint-​Lam­bert, Rouche, Vigee, An­drieux, Berchoux were his heroes. Delille was his god, un­til the day when the lead­ing so­ci­ety of Soulanges raised the ques­tion as to whether Gour­don were not su­pe­ri­or to Delille; af­ter which the clerk of the court al­ways called his com­peti­tor “Mon­sieur l'Abbe Delille,” with ex­ag­ger­at­ed po­lite­ness.

The po­ems man­ufac­tured be­tween 1780 and 1814 were all of one pat­tern, and the one which Gour­don com­posed up­on the Cup-​and-​Ball will give an idea of them. They re­quired a cer­tain knack or pro­fi­cien­cy in the art. “The Cho­ris­ter” is the Sat­urn of this abortive gen­er­ation of joc­ular po­ems, all in four can­tos or there­abouts, for it was gen­er­al­ly ad­mit­ted that six would wear the sub­ject thread­bare.

Gour­don's po­em en­ti­tled “Ode to the Cup-​and-​Ball” obeyed the po­et­ic rules which gov­erned these works, rules that were in­vari­able in their ap­pli­ca­tion. Each po­em con­tained in the first can­to a de­scrip­tion of the “ob­ject sung,” pre­ced­ed (as in the case of Gour­don) by a species of in­vo­ca­tion, of which the fol­low­ing is a mod­el:--

I sing the good game that be­longeth to all, The game, be it known, of the Cup and the Ball; Dear to lit­tle and great, to the fools and the wise; Charm­ing game! where the cure of all te­di­um lies; When we toss up the ball on the point of a stick Palame­dus him­self might have en­vied the trick; O Muse of the Loves and the Laughs and the Games, Come down and as­sist me, for, true to your aims, I have ruled off this pa­per in syl­la­ble squares. Come, help me--

Af­ter ex­plain­ing the game and de­scrib­ing the hand­somest cup-​and-​balls record­ed in his­to­ry, af­ter re­lat­ing what fab­ulous cus­tom it had for­mer­ly brought to the Singe-​Vert and to all deal­ers in toys and turned ivories, and fi­nal­ly, af­ter prov­ing that the game at­tained to the dig­ni­ty of stat­ics, Gour­don end­ed the first can­to with the fol­low­ing con­clu­sion, which will re­mind the eru­dite read­er of all the con­clu­sions of the first can­tos of all these po­ems:--

'Tis thus that the arts and the sci­ences, too, Find wis­dom in things that seemed sil­ly to you.

The sec­ond can­to, in­vari­ably em­ployed to de­pict the man­ner of us­ing “the ob­ject,” ex­plain­ing how to ex­hib­it it in so­ci­ety and be­fore wom­en, and the ben­efit to be de­rived there­from, will be read­ily con­ceived by the friends of this vir­tu­ous lit­er­ature from the fol­low­ing quo­ta­tion, which de­picts the play­er go­ing through his per­for­mance un­der the eyes of his cho­sen la­dy:--

Now look at the play­er who sits in your midst, On that ivory ball how his sharp eye is fixt; He waits and he watch­es with keen­est at­ten­tion, Its least lit­tle move­ment in all its pre­ci­sion; The ball its parabo­la thrice has gone round, At the end of the string to which it is bound. Up it goes! but the play­er his tri­umph has missed, For the disc has come down on his mal­adroit wrist; But lit­tle he cares for the sting of the ball, A smile from his mis­tress con­soles for it all.

It was this de­lin­eation, wor­thy of Vir­gil, which first raised a doubt as to Delille's su­pe­ri­or­ity over Gour­don. The word “disc,” con­test­ed by the opin­ion­at­ed Brunet, gave mat­ter for dis­cus­sions which last­ed eleven months; in fact, un­til Gour­don the sci­en­tist, one evening when all present were on the point of get­ting se­ri­ous­ly an­gry, an­ni­hi­lat­ed the an­ti-​dis­cers by ob­serv­ing:--

“The moon, called a _disc_ by po­ets, is un­doubt­ed­ly a ball.”

“How do you know that?” re­tort­ed Brunet. “We have nev­er seen but one side.”

The third can­to told the reg­ula­tion sto­ry,--in this in­stance, the fa­mous anec­dote of the cup-​and-​ball which all the world knows by heart, con­cern­ing a cel­ebrat­ed min­is­ter of Louis XVI. Ac­cord­ing to the sa­cred for­mu­la de­liv­ered by the “De­bats” from 1810 to 1814, in praise of these glo­ri­ous words, Gour­don's ode “bor­rowed fresh charms from poesy to em­bel­lish the tale.”

The fourth can­to summed up the whole, and con­clud­ed with these dar­ing words,--not pub­lished, be it re­marked, from 1810 to 1814; in fact, they did not see the light till 1824, af­ter Napoleon's death.

'Twas thus that I sang in the time of alarms. Oh, if kings would con­sent to bear no oth­er arms, And peo­ple en­joyed what was best for them all, The sweet lit­tle game of the Cup and the Ball, Our Bur­gundy then might be free of all fear, And re­turn to the good days of Sat­urn and Rhea.

These fine vers­es were pub­lished in a first and on­ly edi­tion from the press of Bournier, print­er of Ville-​aux-​Fayes. One hun­dred sub­scribers, in the sum of three francs, guar­an­teed the dan­ger­ous prece­dent of im­mor­tal­ity to the po­em,--a lib­er­al­ity that was all the greater be­cause these hun­dred per­sons had heard the po­em from be­gin­ning to end a hun­dred times over.

Madame Soudry had late­ly sup­pressed the cup-​and-​ball, which usu­al­ly lay on a pier-​ta­ble in the sa­lon and for the last sev­en years had giv­en rise to end­less quo­ta­tions, for she fi­nal­ly dis­cov­ered in the toy a ri­val to her own at­trac­tions.

As to the au­thor, who boast­ed of fu­ture po­ems in his desk, it is enough to quote the terms in which he men­tioned to the lead­ing so­ci­ety of Soulanges a ri­val can­di­date for lit­er­ary hon­ors.

“Have you heard a cu­ri­ous piece of news?” he had said, two years ear­li­er. “There is an­oth­er po­et in Bur­gundy! Yes,” he added, re­mark­ing the as­ton­ish­ment on all faces, “he comes from Ma­con. But you could nev­er imag­ine the sub­jects he takes up,--a per­fect jum­ble, ab­so­lute­ly un­in­tel­li­gi­ble,--lakes, stars, waves, bil­lows! not a sin­gle philo­soph­ical im­age, not even a di­dac­tic ef­fort! he is ig­no­rant of the very mean­ing of po­et­ry. He calls the sky by its name. He says 'moon,' blunt­ly, in­stead of nam­ing it 'the plan­et of night.' That's what the de­sire to be thought orig­inal brings men to,” added Gour­don, mourn­ful­ly. “Poor young man! A Bur­gun­di­an, and sing such stuff as that!--the pity of it! If he had on­ly con­sult­ed me, I would have point­ed out to him the no­blest of all themes, wine,--a po­em to be called the Bac­chei­de; for which, alas! I now feel my­self too old.”

This great po­et is still ig­no­rant of his finest tri­umph (though he owes it to the fact of be­ing a Bur­gun­di­an), name­ly, that of liv­ing in the town of Soulanges, so round­ed and per­fect­ed with­in it­self that it knows noth­ing of the mod­ern Pleiades, not even their names.

A hun­dred Gour­dons made po­et­ry un­der the Em­pire, and yet they tell us it was a pe­ri­od that ne­glect­ed lit­er­ature! Ex­am­ine the “Jour­nal de la Li­braire” and you will find po­ems on the game of draughts, on backgam­mon, on tricks with cards, on ge­og­ra­phy, ty­pog­ra­phy, com­edy, etc.,--not to men­tion the vaunt­ed mas­ter­pieces of Delille on Piety, Imag­ina­tion, Con­ver­sa­tion; and those of Berchoux on Gas­tro­ma­nia and Dan­so­ma­nia, etc. Who can fore­see the chances and changes of taste, the caprices of fash­ion, the trans­for­ma­tions of the hu­man mind? The gen­er­ations as they pass along sweep out of sight the last frag­ments of the idols they found on their path and set up oth­er gods,--to be over­thrown like the rest.

Sar­cus, a hand­some lit­tle man with a dap­ple-​gray head, de­vot­ed him­self in turn to Themis and to Flo­ra,--in oth­er words, to leg­is­la­tion and a green­house. For the last twelve years he had been med­itat­ing a book on the His­to­ry of the In­sti­tu­tion of Jus­tices of the Peace, “whose po­lit­ical and ju­di­cia­ry role,” he said, “had al­ready passed through sev­er­al phas­es, all de­rived from the Code of Bru­maire, year IV.; and to-​day that in­sti­tu­tion, so pre­cious to the na­tion, had lost its pow­er be­cause the salaries were not in keep­ing with the im­por­tance of its func­tions, which ought to be per­formed by ir­re­mov­able of­fi­cials.” Rat­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty as an able man, Sar­cus was the ac­cept­ed states­man of Madame Soudry's sa­lon; you can read­ily imag­ine that he was the lead­ing bore. They said he talked like a book. Gaubertin proph­esied he would re­ceive the cross of the Le­gion of hon­or, but not un­til the day when, as Lecler­cq's suc­ces­sor, he should take his seat on the bench­es of the Left Cen­tre.

Guer­bet, the col­lec­tor, a man of parts, a heavy, fat, in­di­vid­ual with a but­tery face, a toupet on his bald spot, gold ear­rings, which were al­ways in dif­fi­cul­ty with his shirt-​col­lar, had the hob­by of po­mol­ogy. Proud of pos­sess­ing the finest fruit-​gar­den in the ar­rondisse­ment, he gath­ered his first crops a month lat­er than those of Paris; his hot-​beds sup­plied him with pine-​ap­ples, nec­tarines, and peas, out of sea­son. He brought bunch­es of straw­ber­ries to Madame Soudry with pride when the fruit could be bought for ten sous a bas­ket in Paris.

Soulanges pos­sessed a phar­ma­ceutist named Ver­mut, a chemist, who was more of a chemist than Sar­cus was a states­man, or Lupin a singer, or Gour­don the el­der a sci­en­tist, or his broth­er a po­et. Nev­er­the­less, the lead­ing so­ci­ety of Soulanges did not take much no­tice of Ver­mut, and the sec­ond-​class so­ci­ety took none at all. The in­stinct of the first may have led them to per­ceive the re­al su­pe­ri­or­ity of this thinker, who said lit­tle but smiled at their ab­sur­di­ties so satir­ical­ly that they first doubt­ed his ca­pac­ity and then whis­pered tales against it; as for the oth­er class they took no no­tice of him one way or the oth­er.

Ver­mut was the butt of Madame Soudry's sa­lon. No so­ci­ety is com­plete with­out a vic­tim,--with­out an ob­ject to pity, ridicule, de­spise, and pro­tect. Ver­mut, full of his sci­en­tif­ic prob­lems, of­ten came with his cra­vat un­tied, his waist­coat un­but­toned, and his lit­tle green surtout spot­ted.

The lit­tle man, gift­ed with the pa­tience of a chemist, could not en­joy (that is the term em­ployed in the provinces to ex­press the abo­li­tion of do­mes­tic rule) Madame Ver­mut,--a charm­ing wom­an, a live­ly wom­an, cap­ital com­pa­ny (for she could lose forty sous at cards and say noth­ing), a wom­an who railed at her hus­band, an­noyed him with epi­grams, and de­clared him to be an im­be­cile un­able to dis­til any­thing but dul­ness. Madame Ver­mut was one of those wom­en who in the so­ci­ety of a small town are the life and soul of amuse­ment and who set things go­ing. She sup­plied the salt of her lit­tle world, kitchen-​salt, it is true; her jokes were some­what broad, but so­ci­ety for­gave them; though she was ca­pa­ble of say­ing to the cure Taupin, a man of sev­en­ty years of age, with white hair, “Hold your tongue, my lad.”

The miller of Soulanges, pos­sess­ing an in­come of fifty thou­sand francs, had an on­ly daugh­ter whom Lupin de­sired for his son Amau­ry, since he had lost the hope of mar­ry­ing him to Gaubertin's daugh­ter. This miller, a Sar­cus-​Taupin, was the Nucin­gen of the lit­tle town. He was sup­posed to be thrice a mil­lion­aire; but he nev­er trans­act­ed busi­ness with oth­ers, and thought on­ly of grind­ing his wheat and keep­ing a monopoly of it; his most no­tice­able point was a to­tal ab­sence of po­lite­ness and good man­ners.

The el­der Guer­bet, broth­er of the post-​mas­ter at Conch­es, pos­sessed an in­come of ten thou­sand francs, be­sides his salary as col­lec­tor. The Gour­dons were rich; the doc­tor had mar­ried the on­ly daugh­ter of old Mon­sieur Gen­drin-​Vate­bled, keep­er of the forests and streams, whom the fam­ily were now _ex­pect­ing to die_, while the po­et had mar­ried the niece and sole heiress of the Abbe Taupin, the cu­rate of Soulanges, a stout priest who lived in his cure like a rat in his cheese.

This clever ec­cle­si­as­tic, de­vot­ed to the lead­ing so­ci­ety, kind and oblig­ing to the sec­ond, apos­tolic to the poor and un­for­tu­nate, made him­self beloved by the whole town. He was cousin of the miller and cousin of the Sar­cus­es, and be­longed there­fore to the neigh­bor­hood and to its medioc­ra­cy. He al­ways dined out and saved ex­pens­es; he went to wed­dings but came away be­fore the ball; he paid the costs of pub­lic wor­ship, say­ing, “It is my busi­ness.” And the parish let him do it, with the re­mark, “We have an ex­cel­lent priest.” The bish­op, who knew the Soulanges peo­ple and was not at all mis­led as to the true val­ue of the abbe, was glad enough to keep in such a town a man who made re­li­gion ac­cept­able, and who knew how to fill his church and preach to sleepy heads.

It is un­nec­es­sary to re­mark that not on­ly each of these wor­thy burghers pos­sessed some one of the spe­cial qual­ifi­ca­tions which are nec­es­sary to ex­is­tence in the provinces, but al­so that each cul­ti­vat­ed his field in the do­main of van­ity with­out a ri­val. Pere Guer­bet un­der­stood fi­nance, Soudry might have been min­is­ter of war; if Cu­vi­er had passed that way incog­ni­to, the lead­ing so­ci­ety of Soulanges would have proved to him that he knew noth­ing in com­par­ison with Mon­sieur Gour­don the doc­tor. “Adolphe Nour­rit with his thread of a voice,” re­marked the no­tary with pa­tron­iz­ing in­dul­gence, “was scarce­ly wor­thy to ac­com­pa­ny the nightin­gale of Soulanges.” As to the au­thor of the “Cup-​and-​Ball” (which was then be­ing print­ed at Bournier's), so­ci­ety was sat­is­fied that a po­et of his force could not be met with in Paris, for Delille was now dead.

This provin­cial bour­geoisie, so com­fort­ably sat­is­fied with it­self, took the lead through the var­ious su­pe­ri­or­ities of its mem­bers. There­fore the imag­ina­tion of those who ev­er resid­ed, even for a short time, in a lit­tle town of this kind can con­ceive the air of pro­found sat­is­fac­tion up­on the faces of these peo­ple, who be­lieved them­selves the so­lar plexus of France, all of them armed with in­cred­ible dex­ter­ity and shrewd­ness to do mis­chief,--all, in their wis­dom, declar­ing that the hero of Essling was a cow­ard, Madame de Mont­cor­net a ma­noeu­vring Parisian, and the Abbe Bros­sette an am­bi­tious lit­tle priest.

If Rigou, Soudry, and Gaubertin had lived at Ville-​aux-​Fayes, they would have quar­relled; their var­ious pre­ten­sions would have clashed; but fate or­dained that the Lu­cul­lus of Blangy felt too strong­ly the need of soli­tude, in which to wal­low at his ease in usury and sen­su­al­ity, to live any­where but at Blangy; that Madame Soudry had sense enough to see that she could reign nowhere else ex­cept at Soulanges; and that Ville-​aux-​Fayes was Gaubertin's place of busi­ness. Those who en­joy study­ing so­cial na­ture will ad­mit that Gen­er­al Mont­cor­net was pur­sued by spe­cial ill-​luck in this ac­ci­den­tal sep­ara­tion of his dan­ger­ous en­emies, who thus ac­com­plished the evo­lu­tions of their in­di­vid­ual pow­er and van­ity at such dis­tances from each oth­er that nei­ther star in­ter­fered with the or­bit of the oth­er, --a fact which dou­bled and tre­bled their pow­ers of mis­chief.

Nev­er­the­less, though all these wor­thy bour­geois, proud of their ac­com­plish­ments, con­sid­ered their so­ci­ety as far su­pe­ri­or in at­trac­tions to that of Ville-​aux-​Fayes, and re­peat­ed with com­ic pom­pos­ity the lo­cal dic­tum, “Soulanges is a town of so­ci­ety and so­cial plea­sures,” it must not be sup­posed that Ville-​aux-​Fayes ac­cept­ed this suprema­cy. The Gaubertin sa­lon ridiculed (“in pet­to”) the sa­lon Soudry. By the man­ner in which Gaubertin re­marked, “We are a fi­nan­cial com­mu­ni­ty, en­gaged in ac­tu­al busi­ness; we have the fol­ly to fa­tigue our­selves in mak­ing for­tunes,” it was easy to per­ceive a la­tent an­tag­onism be­tween the earth and the moon. The moon be­lieved her­self use­ful to the earth, and the earth gov­erned the moon. Earth and moon, how­ev­er, lived in the clos­est in­ti­ma­cy. At the car­ni­val the lead­ing so­ci­ety of Soulanges went in a body to four balls giv­en by Gaubertin, Gen­drin, Lecler­cq, and Soudry, ju­nior. Ev­ery Sun­day the lat­ter, his wife, Mon­sieur, Madame, and Made­moi­selle Elise Gaubertin dined with the Soudrys at Soulanges. When the sub-​pre­fect was in­vit­ed, and when the post­mas­ter of Conch­es ar­rived to take pot-​luck, Soulanges en­joyed the sight of four of­fi­cial equipages drawn up at the door of the Soudry man­sion.

CHAP­TER II

THE CON­SPIR­ATORS IN THE QUEEN'S SA­LON

Reach­ing Soulanges about half-​past five o'clock, Rigou was sure of find­ing the usu­al par­ty as­sem­bled at the Soudrys'. There, as ev­ery­where else in town, the din­ner-​hour was three o'clock, ac­cord­ing to the cus­tom of the last cen­tu­ry. From five to nine the no­ta­bles of Soulanges met in Madame Soudry's sa­lon to ex­change the news, make their po­lit­ical speech­es, com­ment up­on the pri­vate lives of ev­ery one in the val­ley, and talk about Les Aigues, which lat­ter top­ic kept the con­ver­sa­tion go­ing for at least an hour ev­ery day. It was ev­ery­body's busi­ness to learn at least some­thing of what was go­ing on, and al­so to pay their court to the mis­tress of the house.

Af­ter this pre­lim­inary talk they played at boston, the on­ly game the queen un­der­stood. When the fat old Guer­bet had mim­icked Madame Isaure, Gaubertin's wife, laughed at her lan­guish­ing airs, im­itat­ed her thin voice, her pinched mouth, and her ju­ve­nile ways; when the Abbe Taupin had re­lat­ed one of the tales of his reper­to­ry; when Lupin had told of some event at Ville-​aux-​Fayes, and Madame Soudry had been del­uged with com­pli­ments ad nau­se­um, the com­pa­ny would say: “We have had a charm­ing game of boston.”

Too self-​in­dul­gent to be at the trou­ble of driv­ing over to the Soudrys' mere­ly to hear the va­pid talk of its vis­itors and to see a Parisian mon­key in the guise of an old wom­an, Rigou, far su­pe­ri­or in in­tel­li­gence and ed­uca­tion to this pet­ty so­ci­ety, nev­er made his ap­pear­ance un­less busi­ness brought him over to meet the no­tary. He ex­cused him­self from vis­it­ing on the ground of his oc­cu­pa­tions, his habits, and his health, which lat­ter did not al­low him, he said, to re­turn at night along a road which led by the fog­gy banks of the Thune.

The tall, stiff usurer al­ways had an im­pos­ing ef­fect up­on Madame Soudry's com­pa­ny, who in­stinc­tive­ly rec­og­nized in his na­ture the cru­el­ty of the tiger with steel claws, the craft of a sav­age, the wis­dom of one born in a clois­ter and ripened by the sun of gold,--a man to whom Gaubertin had nev­er yet been will­ing to ful­ly com­mit him­self.

The mo­ment the lit­tle green car­riole and the bay horse passed the Cafe de la Paix, Ur­bain, Soudry's man-​ser­vant, who was seat­ed on a bench un­der the din­ing-​room win­dows, and was gos­sip­ping with the tav­ern-​keep­er, shades his eyes with his hand to see who was com­ing.

“It's Pere Rigou,” he said. “I must go round and open the door. Take his horse, Soc­quard.” And Ur­bain, a for­mer troop­er, who could not get in­to the gen­darmerie and had there­fore tak­en ser­vice with Soudry, went round the house to open the gates of the court­yard.

Soc­quard, a fa­mous per­son­age through­out the val­ley, was treat­ed, as you see, with very lit­tle cer­emo­ny by the valet. But so it is with many il­lus­tri­ous peo­ple who are so kind as to walk and to sneeze and to sleep and to eat pre­cise­ly like com­mon mor­tals.

Soc­quard, born a Her­cules, could car­ry a weight of eleven hun­dred pounds; a blow of his fist ap­plied on a man's back would break the ver­te­bral col­umn in two; he could bend an iron bar, or hold back a car­riage drawn by one horse. A Mi­lo of Cro­tona in the val­ley, his fame had spread through­out the de­part­ment, where all sorts of fool­ish sto­ries were cur­rent about him, as about all celebri­ties. It was told how he had once car­ried a poor wom­an and her don­key and her bas­ket on his back to mar­ket; how he had been known to eat a whole ox and drink the fourth of a hogshead of wine in one day, etc. Gen­tle as a mar­riage­able girl, Soc­quard, who was a stout, short man, with a placid face, broad shoul­ders, and a deep chest, where his lungs played like the bel­lows of a forge, pos­sessed a flute-​like voice, the limpid tones of which sur­prised all those who heard them for the first time.

Like Ton­sard, whose renown re­leased him from the ne­ces­si­ty of giv­ing proofs of his fe­roc­ity, in fact, like all oth­er men who are backed by pub­lic opin­ion of one kind or an­oth­er, Soc­quard nev­er dis­played his ex­traor­di­nary mus­cu­lar force un­less asked to do so by friends. He now took the horse as the usurer drew up at the steps of the por­ti­co.

“Are you all well at home, Mon­sieur Rigou?” said the il­lus­tri­ous innkeep­er.

“Pret­ty well, my good friend,” replied Rigou. “Do Plis­soud and Bon­nebault and Vi­ol­let and Amau­ry still con­tin­ue good cus­tomers?”

This ques­tion, ut­tered in a tone of good-​na­tured in­ter­est, was by no means one of those emp­ty speech­es which su­pe­ri­ors are apt to be­stow up­on in­fe­ri­ors. In his leisure mo­ments Rigou thought over the small­est de­tails of “the af­fair,” and Four­chon had al­ready warned him that there was some­thing sus­pi­cious in the in­ti­ma­cy be­tween Plis­soud, Bon­nebault, and the brigadier, Vi­ol­let.

Bon­nebault, in pay­ment of a few francs lost at cards, might very like­ly tell the se­crets he heard at Ton­sard's to Vi­ol­let; or he might let them out over his punch with­out re­al­iz­ing the im­por­tance of such gos­sip. But as the in­for­ma­tion of the old ot­ter man might be in­sti­gat­ed by thirst, Rigou paid no at­ten­tion ex­cept so far as it con­cerned Plis­soud, whose sit­ua­tion was like­ly to in­spire him with a de­sire to coun­ter­act the coali­tion against Les Aigues, if on­ly to get his paws greased by one or the oth­er of the two par­ties.

Plis­soud com­bined with his du­ties of un­der-​sher­iff oth­er oc­cu­pa­tions which were poor­ly re­mu­ner­at­ed, that of agent of in­sur­ance (a new form of en­ter­prise just be­gin­ning to show it­self in France), agent, al­so, of a so­ci­ety pro­vid­ing against the chances of re­cruit­ment. His in­suf­fi­cient pay and a love of bil­liards and boiled wine made his fu­ture doubt­ful. Like Four­chon, he cul­ti­vat­ed the art of do­ing noth­ing, and ex­pect­ed his for­tune through some lucky but prob­lem­at­ic chance. He hat­ed the lead­ing so­ci­ety, but he had mea­sured its pow­er. He alone knew the mid­dle-​class coali­tion or­ga­nized by Gaubertin to its depths; and he con­tin­ued to sneer at the rich men of Soulanges and Ville-​aux-​Fayes, as if he alone rep­re­sent­ed the op­po­si­tion. With­out mon­ey and not re­spect­ed, he did not seem a per­son to be feared pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and so Brunet, glad to have a de­spised com­peti­tor, pro­tect­ed him and helped him along, to pre­vent him sell­ing his busi­ness to some ea­ger young man, like Bonnac for in­stance, who might force him, Brunet, to di­vide the pa­tron­age of the can­ton be­tween them.

“Thanks to those fel­lows, we keep the ball a-​rolling,” said Soc­quard. “But folks are try­ing to im­itate my boiled wine.”

“Sue them,” said Rigou, sen­ten­tious­ly.

“That would lead too far,” replied the innkeep­er.

“Do your clients get on well to­geth­er?”

“Tol­er­ably, yes; some­times they'll have a row, but that's on­ly nat­ural for play­ers.”

All heads were at the win­dow of the Soudry sa­lon which looked to the square. Rec­og­niz­ing the fa­ther of his daugh­ter-​in-​law, Soudry came to the por­ti­co to re­ceive him.

“Well, com­rade,” said the may­or of Soulanges, “is An­nette ill, that you give us your com­pa­ny of an evening?”

Through an old habit ac­quired in the gen­darmerie Soudry al­ways went di­rect to the point.

“No,-- There's trou­ble brew­ing,” replied Rigou, touch­ing his right fore-​fin­ger to the hand which Soudry held out to him. “I came to talk about it, for it con­cerns our chil­dren in a way--”

Soudry, a hand­some man dressed in blue, as though he were still a gen­darme, with a black col­lar, and spurs at his heels, took Rigou by the arm and led him up to his im­pos­ing bet­ter-​half. The glass door to the ter­race was open, and the guests were walk­ing about en­joy­ing the sum­mer evening, which brought out the full beau­ty of the glo­ri­ous land­scape which we have al­ready de­scribed.

“It is a long time since we have seen you, my dear Rigou,” said Madame Soudry, tak­ing the arm of the ex-​Bene­dic­tine and lead­ing him out up­on the ter­race.

“My di­ges­tion is so trou­ble­some!” he replied; “see! my col­or is al­most as high as yours.”

Rigou's ap­pear­ance on the ter­race was the sign for an ex­plo­sion of jovial greet­ings on the part of the as­sem­bled com­pa­ny.

“And how may the lord of Blangy be?” said lit­tle Sar­cus, jus­tice of the peace.

“Lord!” replied Rigou, bit­ter­ly, “I am not even cock of my own vil­lage now.”

“The hens don't say so, scamp!” ex­claimed Madame Soudry, tap­ping her fan on his arm.

“All well, my dear mas­ter?” said the no­tary, bow­ing to his chief client.

“Pret­ty well,” replied Rigou, again putting his fore-​fin­ger in­to his in­ter­locu­tor's hand.

This ges­ture, by which Rigou kept down the pro­cess of hand-​shak­ing to the cold­est and stiffest of demon­stra­tions would have re­vealed the whole man to any ob­serv­er who did not al­ready know him.

“Let us find a cor­ner where we can talk qui­et­ly,” said the ex-​monk, look­ing at Lupin and at Madame Soudry.

“Let us re­turn to the sa­lon,” replied the queen.

“What has the Shop­man done now?” asked Soudry, sit­ting down be­side his wife and putting his arm about her waist.

Madame Soudry, like oth­er old wom­en, for­gave a great deal in re­turn for such pub­lic marks of ten­der­ness.

“Why,” said Rigou, in a low voice, to set an ex­am­ple of cau­tion, “he has gone to the Pre­fec­ture to de­mand the en­force­ment of the penal­ties; he wants the help of the au­thor­ities.”

“Then he's lost,” said Lupin, rub­bing his hands; “the peas­ants will fight.”

“Fight!” cried Soudry, “that de­pends. If the pre­fect and the gen­er­al, who are friends, send a squadron of cav­al­ry the peas­ants can't fight. They might at a pinch get the bet­ter of the gen­darmes, but as for re­sist­ing a charge of cav­al­ry!--”

“Sibilet heard him say some­thing much more dan­ger­ous than that,” said Rigou; “and that's what brings me here.”

“Oh, my poor So­phie!” cried Madame Soudry, sen­ti­men­tal­ly, al­lud­ing to her _friend_, Made­moi­selle La­guerre, “in­to what hands Les Aigues has fall­en! This is what we have gained by the Rev­olu­tion!--a par­cel of swag­ger­ing epaulets! We might have fore­seen that when­ev­er the bot­tle was turned up­side down the dregs would spoil the wine!”

“He means to go to Paris and ca­bal with the Keep­er of the Seals and oth­ers to get the whole ju­di­cia­ry changed down here,” said Rigou.

“Ha!” cried Lupin, “then he sees his dan­ger.”

“If they ap­point my son-​in-​law at­tor­ney-​gen­er­al we can't help our­selves; the gen­er­al will get him re­placed by some Parisian de­vot­ed to his in­ter­ests,” con­tin­ued Rigou. “If he gets a place in Paris for Gen­drin and makes Guer­bet chief-​jus­tice of the court at Aux­erre, he'll knock down our skit­tles! The gen­darmerie is on his side now, and if he gets the courts as well, and keeps such ad­vis­ers as the abbe and Michaud we sha'n't dance at the wed­ding; he'll play us some scurvy trick or oth­er.”

“How is it that in all these five years you have nev­er man­aged to get rid of that abbe?” said Lupin.

“You don't know him; he's as sus­pi­cious as a black­bird,” replied Rigou. “He is not a man at all, that priest; he doesn't care for wom­en; I can't find out that he has any pas­sion; there's no point at which one can at­tack him. The gen­er­al lays him­self open by his tem­per. A man with a vice is the ser­vant of his en­emies if they know how to pull its string. There are no strong men but those who lead their vices in­stead of be­ing led by them. The peas­ants are all right; their ha­tred against the abbe keeps up; but we can do noth­ing as yet. He's like Michaud, in his way; such men are too good for this world,--God ought to call them to him­self.”

“It would be a good plan to find some pret­ty ser­vant-​girl to scrub his stair­case,” re­marked Madame Soudry. The words caused Rigou to give the lit­tle jump with which crafty na­tures rec­og­nize the craft of oth­ers.

“The Shop­man has an­oth­er vice,” he said; “he loves his wife; we might get hold of him that way.”

“We ought to find out how far she re­al­ly in­flu­ences him,” said Madame Soudry.

“There's the rub!” said Lupin.

“As for you, Lupin,” said Rigou, in a tone of au­thor­ity, “be off to the Pre­fec­ture and see the beau­ti­ful Madame Sar­cus at once! You must get her to tell you all the Shop­man says and does at the Pre­fec­ture.”

“Then I shall have to stay all night,” replied Lupin.

“So much the bet­ter for Sar­cus the rich; he'll be the gain­er,” said Rigou. “She is not yet out of date, Madame Sar­cus--”

“Oh! Mon­sieur Rigou,” said Madame Soudry, in a minc­ing tone, “are wom­en ev­er out of date?”

“You may be right about Madame Sar­cus; she doesn't paint be­fore the glass,” re­tort­ed Rigou, who was al­ways dis­gust­ed by the ex­hi­bi­tion of the Co­chet's an­cient charms.

Madame Soudry, who thought she used on­ly a “sus­pi­cion” of rouge, did not per­ceive the sar­casm and has­tened to say:--

“Is it pos­si­ble that wom­en paint?”

“Now, Lupin,” said Rigou, with­out re­ply­ing to this naivete, “go over to Gaubertin's to-​mor­row morn­ing. Tell him that my fel­low-​may­or and I” (strik­ing Soudry on the thigh) “will break bread with him at break­fast some­where about mid­day. Tell him ev­ery­thing, so that we may all have thought it over be­fore we meet, for now's the time to make an end of that damned Shop­man. As I drove over here I came to the con­clu­sion it would be best to get up a quar­rel be­tween the courts and him, so that the Keep­er of the Seals would be wary of mak­ing the changes he may ask in their mem­bers.”

“Bra­vo for the son of the Church!” cried Lupin, slap­ping Rigou on the shoul­der.

Madame Soudry was here struck by an idea which could come on­ly to a for­mer wait­ing-​maid of an Opera di­vin­ity.

“If,” she said, “one could on­ly get the Shop­man to the fete at Soulanges, and throw some fine girl in his way who would turn his head, we could eas­ily set his wife against him by let­ting her know that the son of an up­hol­ster­er has gone back to the style of his ear­ly loves.”

“Ah, my beau­ty!” said Soudry, “you have more sense in your head than the Pre­fec­ture of po­lice in Paris.”

“That's an idea which proves that Madame reigns by mind as well as by beau­ty,” said Lupin, who was re­ward­ed by a gri­mace which the lead­ing so­ci­ety of Soulanges were in the habit of ac­cept­ing with­out protest for a smile.

“One might do bet­ter still,” said Rigou, af­ter some thought; “if we could on­ly turn it in­to a down­right scan­dal.”

“Com­plaint and in­dict­ment! af­fair in the po­lice court!” cried Lupin. “Oh! that would be grand!”

“Glo­ri­ous!” said Soudry, can­did­ly. “What hap­pi­ness to see the Comte de Mont­cor­net, grand cross of the Le­gion of hon­or, com­man­der of the Or­der of Saint Louis, and lieu­tenant-​gen­er­al, ac­cused of hav­ing at­tempt­ed, in a pub­lic re­sort, the virtue--just think of it!”

“He loves his wife too well,” said Lupin, re­flec­tive­ly. “He couldn't be got to that.”

“That's no ob­sta­cle,” re­marked Rigou; “but I don't know a sin­gle girl in the whole ar­rondisse­ment who is ca­pa­ble of mak­ing a sin­ner of a saint. I have been look­ing out for one for the abbe.”

“What do you say to that hand­some Ga­ti­enne Gi­boulard, of Aux­erre, whom Sar­cus, ju­nior, is mad af­ter?” asked Lupin.

“That's the on­ly one,” an­swered Rigou, “but she is not suit­able; she thinks she has on­ly to be seen to be ad­mired; she's not com­ply­ing enough; we want a witch and a sly-​boots, too. Nev­er mind, the right one will turn up soon­er or lat­er.”

“Yes,” said Lupin, “the more pret­ty girls he sees the greater the chances are.”

“But per­haps you can't get the Shop­man to the fair,” said the ex-​gen­darme. “And if he does come, will he go to the Tivoli ball?”

“The rea­son that has al­ways kept him away from the fair doesn't ex­ist this year, my love,” said Madame Soudry.

“What rea­son, dear­est?” asked Soudry.

“The Shop­man want­ed to mar­ry Made­moi­selle de Soulanges,” said the no­tary. “The fam­ily replied that she was too young, and that mor­ti­fied him. That is why Mon­sieur de Soulanges and Mon­sieur de Mont­cor­net, two old friends who both served in the Im­pe­ri­al Guard, are so cool to each oth­er that they nev­er speak. The Shop­man doesn't want to meet the Soulanges at the fair; but this year the fam­ily are not com­ing.”

Usu­al­ly the Soulanges par­ty stayed at the chateau from Ju­ly to Oc­to­ber, but the gen­er­al was then in com­mand of the ar­tillery in Spain, un­der the Duc d'An­gouleme, and the count­ess had ac­com­pa­nied him. At the siege of Cadiz the Comte de Soulanges ob­tained, as ev­ery one knows, the mar­shal's ba­ton, which he kept till 1826.

“Very true,” cried Lupin. “Well, it is for you, pa­pa,” he added, ad­dress­ing Rigou, “to ma­noeu­vre the mat­ter so that we can get him to the fair; once there, we ought to be able to en­trap him.”

The fair of Soulanges, which takes place on the 15th of Au­gust, is one of the fea­tures of the town, and car­ries the palm over all oth­er fairs in a cir­cuit of six­ty miles, even those of the cap­ital of the de­part­ment. Ville-​aux-​Fayes has no fair, for its fete-​day, the Saint-​Sylvestre, hap­pens in win­ter.

From the 12th to the 15th of Au­gust all sorts of mer­chants abound­ed at Soulanges, and set up their booths in two par­al­lel lines, two rows of the well-​known gray linen huts, which gave a live­ly ap­pear­ance to the usu­al­ly de­sert­ed streets. The two weeks of the fair brought in a sort of har­vest to the lit­tle town, for the fes­ti­val has the au­thor­ity and pres­tige of tra­di­tion. The peas­ants, as old Four­chon said, flocked in from the dis­tricts to which la­bor bound them for the rest of the year. The won­der­ful show on the coun­ters of the im­pro­vised shops, the col­lec­tion of all sorts of mer­chan­dise, the cov­et­ed ob­jects of the wants or the van­ities of these sons of the soil, who have no oth­er shows or ex­hi­bi­tions to en­joy ex­er­cise a pe­ri­od­ical se­duc­tion over the minds of all, es­pe­cial­ly the wom­en and chil­dren. So, af­ter the first of Au­gust the au­thor­ities post­ed ad­ver­tise­ments signed by Soudry, through­out the whole ar­rondisse­ment, of­fer­ing pro­tec­tion to mer­chants, jug­glers, moun­te­banks, prodi­gies of all kinds, and stat­ing how long the fair would last, and what would be its prin­ci­pal at­trac­tions.

On these posters, about which it will be re­mem­bered Madame Ton­sard in­quired of Ver­michel, there was al­ways, on the last line, the fol­low­ing an­nounce­ment:

“Tivoli will be il­lu­mi­nat­ed with col­ored-​glass lamps.”

The town had adopt­ed as the place for pub­lic a dance-​ground cre­at­ed by Soc­quard out of a stony gar­den (stony, like the rest of the hill on which Soulanges is built, where the gar­dens are of made land), and called by him a Tivoli. This char­ac­ter of the soil ex­plains the pe­cu­liar fla­vor of the Soulanges wine,--a white wine, dry and spir­itu­ous, very like Madeira or the Vou­vray wine, or Jo­han­nis­berg­er, --three vin­tages which re­sem­ble one an­oth­er.

The pow­er­ful ef­fect pro­duced by the Soc­quard ball up­on the imag­ina­tions of the whole coun­try-​side made the in­hab­itants there­of very proud of their Tivoli. Such as had ven­tured as far as Paris de­clared that the Parisian Tivoli was su­pe­ri­or to that of Soulanges on­ly in size. Gaubertin bold­ly de­clared that, for his part, he pre­ferred the Soc­quard ball to the Parisian ball.

“Well, we'll think it all over,” con­tin­ued Rigou. “That Parisian fel­low, the ed­itor of a news­pa­per, will soon get tired of his present amuse­ment and be glad of a change; per­haps we could through the ser­vants give him the idea of com­ing to the fair, and he'd bring the oth­ers; I'll con­sid­er it. Sibilet might--al­though, to be sure, his in­flu­ence is dev­il­ish­ly de­creased of late--but he might get the gen­er­al to think he could cur­ry pop­ular­ity by com­ing.”

“Find out if the beau­ti­ful count­ess keeps the gen­er­al at arm's length,” said Lupin; “that's the point if you want him to fall in­to the farce at Tivoli.”

“That lit­tle wom­an,” cried Madame Soudry, “is too much of a Parisian not to know how to run with the hare and hold with the hounds.”

“Four­chon has got his grand­daugh­ter Cather­ine on good terms, he tells me, with Charles, the Shop­man's groom. That gives us one ear more in Les Aigues--Are you sure of the Abbe Taupin,” he added, as the priest en­tered the room from the ter­race.

“We hold him and the Abbe Mou­chon, too, just as I hold Soudry,” said the queen, stroking her hus­band's chin; “you are not un­hap­py, dear­est, are you?” she said to Soudry.

“If I can plan a scan­dal against that Tartufe of a Bros­sette we can win,” said Rigou, in a low voice. “But I am not sure if the lo­cal spir­it can suc­ceed against the Church spir­it. You don't re­al­ize what that is. I, my­self, who am no fool, I can't say what I'll do when I fall ill. I be­lieve I shall try to be rec­on­ciled with the Church.”

“Suf­fer me to hope it,” said the Abbe Taupin, for whose ben­efit Rigou had raised his voice on the last words.

“Alas! the wrong I did in mar­ry­ing pre­vents it,” replied Rigou. “I can­not kill off Madame Rigou.”

“Mean­time, let us think of Les Aigues,” said Madame Soudry.

“Yes,” said the ex-​monk. “Do you know, I be­gin to think that our as­so­ciate at Ville-​aux-​Fayes may be clev­er­er than the rest of us. I fan­cy that Gaubertin wants Les Aigues for him­self, and that he means to trick us in the end.”

“But Les Aigues will not be­long to any one of us; it will have to come down, from roof to cel­lar,” said Soudry.

“I shouldn't be sur­prised if there were trea­sure buried in those cel­lars,” ob­served Rigou, clev­er­ly.

“Non­sense!”

“Well, in the wars of the old­en time the great lords, who were of­ten be­sieged and sur­prised, did bury their gold un­til they should be able to re­cov­er it; and you know that the Mar­quis de Soulanges-​Haute­mer (in whom the younger branch came to an end) was one of the vic­tims of the Biron con­spir­acy. The Comtesse de Moret re­ceived the prop­er­ty from Hen­ri IV. when it was con­fis­cat­ed.”

“See what it is to know the his­to­ry of France!” said Soudry. “You are right. It is time to come to an un­der­stand­ing with Gaubertin.”

“If he shirks,” said Rigou, “we must smoke him out.”

“He is rich enough now,” said Lupin, “to be an hon­est man.”

“I'll an­swer for him as I would for my­self,” said Madame Soudry; “he's the most loy­al man in the king­dom.”

“We all be­lieve in his loy­al­ty,” said Rigou, “but nev­er­the­less noth­ing should be ne­glect­ed, even among friends-- By the bye, I think there is some one in Soulanges who is hin­der­ing mat­ters.”

“Who's that?” asked Soudry.

“Plis­soud,” replied Rigou.

“Plis­soud!” ex­claimed Soudry. “Poor fool! Brunet holds him by the hal­ter, and his wife by the gul­let; ask Lupin.”

“What can he do?” said Lupin.

“He means to warn Mont­cor­net,” replied Rigou, “and get his in­flu­ence and a place--”

“It wouldn't bring him more than his wife earns for him at Soulanges,” said Madame Soudry.

“He tells ev­ery­thing to his wife when he is drunk,” re­marked Lupin. “We shall know it all in good time.”

“The beau­ti­ful Madame Plis­soud has no se­crets from you,” said Rigou; “we may be easy about that.”

“Be­sides, she's as stupid as she is beau­ti­ful,” said Madame Soudry. “I wouldn't change with her; for if I were a man I'd pre­fer an ug­ly wom­an who has some mind, to a beau­ty who can't say two words.”

“Ah!” said the no­tary, bit­ing his lips, “but she can make oth­ers say three.”

“Pup­py!” cried Rigou, as he made for the door.

“Well, then,” said Soudry, fol­low­ing him to the por­ti­co, “to-​mor­row, ear­ly.”

“I'll come and fetch you-- Ha! Lupin,” he said to the no­tary, who came out with him to or­der his horse, “try to make sure that Madame Sar­cus hears all the Shop­man says and does against us at the Pre­fec­ture.”

“If she doesn't hear it, who will?” replied Lupin.

“Ex­cuse me,” said Rigou, smil­ing bland­ly, “but there are such a lot of nin­nies in there that I for­got there was one clever man.”

“The won­der is that I don't grow rusty among them,” replied Lupin, naive­ly.

“Is it true that Soudry has hired a pret­ty ser­vant?”

“Yes,” replied Lupin; “for the last week our wor­thy may­or has set the charms of his wife in full re­lief by com­par­ing her with a lit­tle peas­ant-​girl about the age of an old ox; and we can't yet imag­ine how he set­tles it with Madame Soudry, for, would you be­lieve it, he has the au­dac­ity to go to bed ear­ly.”

“I'll find out to-​mor­row,” said the vil­lage Sar­dana­palus, try­ing to smile.

The two plot­ters shook hands as they part­ed.

Rigou, who did not like to be on the road af­ter dark for, notwith­stand­ing his present pop­ular­ity, he was cau­tious, called to his horse, “Get up, Cit­izen,”--a joke this son of 1793 was fond of let­ting fly at the Rev­olu­tion. Pop­ular rev­olu­tions have no more bit­ter en­emies than those they have trained them­selves.

“Pere Rigou's vis­its are pret­ty short,” said Gour­don the po­et to Madame Soudry.

“They are pleas­ant, if they are short,” she an­swered.

“Like his own life,” said the doc­tor; “his abuse of plea­sures will cut that short.”

“So much the bet­ter,” re­marked Soudry, “my son will step in­to the prop­er­ty.”

“Did he bring you any news about Les Aigues?” asked the Abbe Taupin.

“Yes, my dear abbe,” said Madame Soudry. “Those peo­ple are the scourge of the neigh­bor­hood. I can't com­pre­hend how it is that Madame de Mont­cor­net, who is cer­tain­ly a well-​bred wom­an, doesn't un­der­stand their in­ter­ests bet­ter.”

“And yet she has a mod­el be­fore her eyes,” said the abbe.

“Who is that?” asked Madame Soudry, smirk­ing.

“The Soulanges.”

“Ah, yes!” replied the queen af­ter a pause.

“Here I am!” cried Madame Ver­mut, com­ing in­to the room; “and with­out my re-​ac­tive,--for Ver­mut is so in­ac­tive in all that con­cerns me that I can't call him an ac­tive of any kind.”

“What the dev­il is that cursed old Rigou do­ing there?” said Soudry to Guer­bet, as they saw the green chaise stop be­fore the gate of the Tivoli. “He is one of those tiger-​cats whose ev­ery step has an ob­ject.”

“You may well say cursed,” replied the fat lit­tle col­lec­tor.

“He has gone in­to the Cafe de la Paix,” re­marked Gour­don, the doc­tor.

“And there's some trou­ble there,” added Gour­don the po­et; “I can hear them yelp­ing from here.”

“That cafe,” said the abbe, “is like the tem­ple of Janus; it was called the Cafe de la Guerre un­der the Em­pire, and then it was peace it­self; the most re­spectable of the bour­geoisie met there for con­ver­sa­tion--”

“Con­ver­sa­tion!” in­ter­rupt­ed the jus­tice of the peace. “What kind of con­ver­sa­tion was it which pro­duced all the lit­tle Bourniers?”

“--but ev­er since it has been called, in hon­or of the Bour­bons, the Cafe de la Paix, fights take place there ev­ery day,” said Abbe Taupin, fin­ish­ing the sen­tence which the mag­is­trate had tak­en the lib­er­ty of in­ter­rupt­ing.

This idea of the abbe was, like the quo­ta­tions from “The Cup-​and-​Ball,” of fre­quent re­cur­rence.

“Do you mean that Bur­gundy will al­ways be the land of fisticuffs?” asked Pere Guer­bet.

“That's not ill said,” re­marked the abbe; “not at all; in fact it's al­most an ex­act his­to­ry of our coun­try.”

“I don't know any­thing about the his­to­ry of France,” blurt­ed Soudry; “and be­fore I try to learn it, it is more im­por­tant to me to know why old Rigou has gone in­to the Cafe de la Paix with Soc­quard.”

“Oh!” re­turned the abbe, “wher­ev­er he goes and wher­ev­er he stays, you may be quite cer­tain it is for no char­ita­ble pur­pose.”

“That man gives me goose-​flesh when­ev­er I see him,” said Madame Ver­mut.

“He is so much to be feared,” re­marked the doc­tor, “that if he had a spite against me I should have no peace till he was dead and buried; he would get out of his cof­fin to do you an ill-​turn.”

“If any one can force the Shop­man to come to the fair, and man­age to catch him in a trap, it'll be Rigou,” said Soudry to his wife, in a low tone.

“Es­pe­cial­ly,” she replied, in a loud one, “if Gaubertin and you, my love, help him.”

“There! didn't I tell you so?” cried Guer­bet, pok­ing the jus­tice of the peace. “I knew he would find some pret­ty girl at Soc­quard's, --there he is, putting her in­to his car­riage.”

“You are quite wrong, gen­tle­men,” said Madame Soudry; “Mon­sieur Rigou is think­ing of noth­ing but the great af­fair; and if I'm not mis­tak­en, that girl is on­ly Ton­sard's daugh­ter.”

“He is like the chemist who lays in a stock of vipers,” said old Guer­bet.

“One would think you were in­ti­mate with Mon­sieur Ver­mut to hear you talk,” said the doc­tor, point­ing to the lit­tle apothe­cary, who was then cross­ing the square.

“Poor fel­low!” said the po­et, who was sus­pect­ed of oc­ca­sion­al­ly sharp­en­ing his wit with Madame Ver­mut; “just look at that wad­dle of his! and they say he is learned!”

“With­out him,” said the jus­tice of the peace, “we should be hard put to it about post-​mortems; he found poi­son in poor Pigeron's stom­ach so clev­er­ly that the chemists of Paris tes­ti­fied in the court at Aux­erre that they couldn't have done bet­ter--”

“He didn't find any­thing at all,” said Soudry; “but, as Pres­ident Gen­drin says, it is a good thing to let peo­ple sup­pose that poi­son will al­ways be found--”

“Madame Pigeron was very wise to leave Aux­erre,” said Madame Ver­mut; “she was sil­ly and wicked both. As if it were nec­es­sary to have re­course to drugs to an­nul a hus­band! Are not there oth­er ways quite as sure, but in­no­cent, to rid our­selves of that in­cum­brance? I would like to have a man dare to ques­tion my con­duct! The wor­thy Mon­sieur Ver­mut doesn't ham­per me in the least,--but he has nev­er been ill yet. As for Madame de Mont­cor­net, just see how she walks about the woods and the her­mitage with that jour­nal­ist whom she brought from Paris at her own ex­pense, and how she pets him un­der the very eyes of the gen­er­al!”

“At her own ex­pense!” cried Madame Soudry. “Are you sure? If we could on­ly get proof of it, what a fine sub­ject for an anony­mous let­ter to the gen­er­al!”

“The gen­er­al!” cried Madame Ver­mut, “he won't in­ter­fere with things; he plays his part.”

“What part, my dear?” asked Madame Soudry.

“Oh! the pa­ter­nal part.”

“If poor lit­tle Pigeron had had the wis­dom to play it, in­stead of ha­rass­ing his wife, he'd be alive now,” said the po­et.

Madame Soudry leaned over to her neigh­bor, Mon­sieur Guer­bet, and made one of those apish gri­maces which she had in­her­it­ed from dear mis­tress, to­geth­er with her sil­ver, by right of con­quest, and twist­ing her face in­to a se­ries of them she made him look at Madame Ver­mut, who was co­quet­ting with the au­thor of “The Cup-​and-​Ball.”

“What shock­ing style that wom­an has! what talk, what man­ners!” she said. “I re­al­ly don't think I can ad­mit her any longer in­to _our so­ci­ety_,--es­pe­cial­ly,” she added, “when Mon­sieur Gour­don, the po­et, is present.”

“There's so­cial moral­ity!” said the abbe, who had heard and ob­served all with­out say­ing a word.

Af­ter this epi­gram, or rather, this satire on the com­pa­ny, so true and so con­cise that it hit ev­ery one, the usu­al game of boston was pro­posed.

Is not this a pic­ture of life as it is at all stages of what we agree to call so­ci­ety? Change the style, and you will find that noth­ing more and noth­ing less is said in the gild­ed sa­lons of Paris.

CHAP­TER III

THE CAFE DE LA PAIX

It was about sev­en o'clock when Rigou drove by the Cafe de la Paix. The set­ting sun, slant­ing its beams across the lit­tle town, was dif­fus­ing its rud­dy tints, and the clear mir­ror of the lake con­trast­ed with the flash­ing of the re­splen­dent win­dow-​panes, which orig­inat­ed the strangest and most im­prob­able col­ors.

The deep schemer, who had grown pen­sive as he re­volved his plots, let his horse pro­ceed so slow­ly that in pass­ing the Cafe de la Paix he heard his own name band­ed about in one of those noisy dis­putes which, ac­cord­ing to the Abbe Taupin, made the name of the es­tab­lish­ment a gain-​say­ing of its cus­tom­ary con­di­tion.

For a clear un­der­stand­ing of the fol­low­ing scene we must ex­plain the to­pog­ra­phy of this re­gion of plen­ty and of mis­rule, which be­gan with the cafe on the square, and end­ed on the coun­try road with the fa­mous Tivoli where the con­spir­ators pro­posed to en­trap the gen­er­al. The ground-​floor of the cafe, which stood at the an­gle of the square and the road, and was built in the style of Rigou's house, had three win­dows on the road and two on the square, the lat­ter be­ing sep­arat­ed by a glass door through which the house was en­tered. The cafe had, more­over, a dou­ble door which opened on a side al­ley that sep­arat­ed it from the neigh­bor­ing house (that of Val­let the Soulanges mer­cer), which led to an in­side court­yard.

The house, which was paint­ed whol­ly in yel­low, ex­cept the blinds, which were green, is one of the few hous­es in the lit­tle town which has two sto­ries and an at­tic. And this is why: Be­fore the as­ton­ish­ing rise in the pros­per­ity of Ville-​aux-​Fayes the first floor of this house, which had four cham­bers, each con­tain­ing a bed and the mea­gre fur­ni­ture thought nec­es­sary to jus­ti­fy the term “fur­nished lodg­ings,” was let to strangers who were obliged to come to Soulanges on mat­ters con­nect­ed with the courts, or to vis­itors who did not sleep at the chateau; but for the last twen­ty-​five years these rooms had had no oth­er oc­cu­pants than the moun­te­banks, the mer­chants, the ven­dors of quack medicines who came to the fair, or else com­mer­cial trav­ellers. Dur­ing the fair-​time they were let for four francs a day; and brought Soc­quard about two hun­dred and fifty francs, not to speak of the prof­its on the con­sump­tion of food which the guests took in his cafe.

The front of the house on the square was adorned with paint­ed signs; on the spaces that sep­arat­ed the win­dows from the glass door bil­liard-​cues were rep­re­sent­ed, lov­ing­ly tied to­geth­er with rib­bons, and above these bows were de­pict­ed smok­ing bowls of punch, the bowls be­ing in the form of Greek vas­es. The words “Cafe de la Paix” were over the door, bril­liant­ly paint­ed in yel­low on a green ground, at each end of which rose pyra­mids of tri­col­ored bil­liard-​balls. The win­dow-​sash­es, paint­ed green, had small panes of the com­mon­est glass.

A dozen ar­bor-​vi­tae, which ought to be called cafe-​trees, stood to the left and right in pots, and pre­sent­ed their usu­al pre­ten­sions and sick­ly ap­pear­ance. Awnings, with which shop­keep­ers of the large cities pro­tect their win­dows from the head of the sun, were as yet an un­known lux­ury in Soulanges. The benef­icent liq­uids in the bot­tles which stood on boards just be­hind the win­dow-​panes went through a pe­ri­od­ic cook­ing. When the sun con­cen­trat­ed its rays through the lentic­ular knobs in the glass it boiled the Madeira, the syrups, the liqueurs, the pre­served plums, and the cher­ry-​brandy set out for show; for the heat was so great that Aglae, her fa­ther, and the wait­er were forced to sit out­side on bench­es poor­ly shad­ed by the wilt­ed shrubs,--which Made­moi­selle kept alive with wa­ter that was al­most hot. All three, fa­ther, daugh­ter, and ser­vant, might be seen at cer­tain hours of the day stretched out there, fast asleep, like do­mes­tic an­imals.

In 1804, the pe­ri­od when “Paul and Vir­ginia” was the rage, the in­side of the cafe was hung with a pa­per which rep­re­sent­ed the chief scenes of that ro­mance. There could be seen Ne­groes gath­er­ing the cof­fee-​crop, though cof­fee was sel­dom seen in the es­tab­lish­ment, not twen­ty cups of that bev­er­age be­ing served in the month. Colo­nial prod­ucts were of so lit­tle ac­count in the con­sump­tion of the place that if a stranger had asked for a cup of choco­late Soc­quard would have been hard put to it to serve him. Still, he would have done so with a nau­seous brown broth made from tablets in which there were more flour, crushed al­monds, and brown sug­ar than pure sug­ar and ca­cao, con­coc­tions which were sold at two sous a cake by vil­lage gro­cers, and man­ufac­tured for the pur­pose of ru­in­ing the sale of the Span­ish com­mod­ity.

As for cof­fee, Pere Soc­quard sim­ply boiled it in a uten­sil known to all such house­holds as the “big brown pot”; he let the dregs (that were half chico­ry) set­tle, and served the de­coc­tion, with a cool­ness wor­thy of a Parisian wait­er, in a chi­na cup which, if flung to the ground, would not have cracked.

At this pe­ri­od the sa­cred re­spect felt for sug­ar un­der the Em­per­or was not yet dis­pelled in the town of Soulanges, and Aglae Soc­quard bold­ly served three bits of it of the size of hazel-​nuts to a for­eign mer­chant who had rash­ly asked for the lit­er­ary bev­er­age.

The wall dec­ora­tion of the cafe, re­lieved by mir­rors in gilt frames and brack­ets on which the hats were hung, had not been changed since the days when all Soulanges came to ad­mire the ro­man­tic pa­per, al­so a counter paint­ed like ma­hogany with a Saint-​Anne mar­ble top, on which shone ves­sels of plat­ed met­al and lamps with dou­ble-​burn­ers, which were, ru­mor said, giv­en to the beau­ti­ful Madame Soc­quard by Gaubertin. A sticky coat­ing of dirt cov­ered ev­ery­thing, like that found on old pic­tures put away and long for­got­ten in a gar­ret. The ta­bles paint­ed to re­sem­ble mar­ble, the bench­es cov­ered in red Utrecht vel­vet, the hang­ing glass lamp full of oil, which fed two lights, fas­tened by a chain to the ceil­ing and adorned with glass pen­dants, were the be­gin­ning of the celebri­ty of the then Cafe de la Guerre.

There, from 1802 to 1804, all the bour­geois of Soulanges played at domi­noes and a game of cards called “bre­lan,” drank tiny glass­es of liqueur or boiled wine, and ate brandied fruits and bis­cuits; for the dear­ness of colo­nial prod­ucts had ban­ished cof­fee, sug­ar, and choco­late. Punch was a great lux­ury; so was “bavaroise.” These in­fu­sions were made with a sug­ary sub­stance re­sem­bling mo­lasses, the name of which is now lost, but which, at the time, made the for­tune of its in­ven­tor.

These suc­cinct de­tails will re­call to the mem­ory of all trav­ellers many oth­ers that are anal­ogous; and those per­sons who have nev­er left Paris can imag­ine the ceil­ing black­ened with smoke and the mir­rors specked with mil­lions of spots, show­ing in what free­dom and in­de­pen­dence the whole or­der of diptera lived in the Cafe de la Paix.

The beau­ti­ful Madame Soc­quard, whose gal­lant ad­ven­tures sur­passed those of the mis­tress of the Grand-​I-​Vert, sat there, en­throned, dressed in the last fash­ion. She af­fect­ed the style of a sul­tana, and wore a tur­ban. Sul­tanas, un­der the Em­pire, en­joyed a vogue equal to that of the “an­gel” of to-​day. The whole val­ley took pat­tern from the tur­bans, the poke-​bon­nets, the fur caps, the Chi­nese head-​gear of the hand­some Soc­quard, to whose lux­ury the big-​wigs of Soulanges con­tribut­ed. With a waist be­neath her arm-​pits, af­ter the fash­ion of our moth­ers, who were proud of their im­pe­ri­al graces, Ju­nie (she was named Ju­nie!) made the for­tune of the house of Soc­quard. Her hus­band owed to her the own­er­ship of a vine­yard, of the house they lived in, and al­so the Tivoli. The fa­ther of Mon­sieur Lupin was said to have com­mit­ted some fol­lies for the hand­some Madame Soc­quard; and Gaubertin, who had tak­en her from him, cer­tain­ly owed him the lit­tle Bournier.

These de­tails, to­geth­er with the deep mys­tery with which Soc­quard man­ufac­tured his boiled wine, are suf­fi­cient to ex­plain why his name and that of the Cafe de la Paix were pop­ular; but there were oth­er rea­sons for their renown. Noth­ing bet­ter than wine could be got at Ton­sard's and the oth­er tav­erns in the val­ley; from Conch­es to Ville-​aux-​Fayes, in a cir­cum­fer­ence of twen­ty miles, the Cafe Soc­quard was the on­ly place where the guests could play bil­liards and drink the punch so ad­mirably con­coct­ed by the pro­pri­etor. There alone could be found a dis­play of for­eign wines, fine liqueurs, and brandied fruits. Its name re­sound­ed dai­ly through­out the val­ley, ac­com­pa­nied by ideas of su­perfine sen­su­al plea­sures such as men whose stom­achs are more sen­si­tive than their hearts dream about. To all these caus­es of pop­ular­ity was added that of be­ing an in­te­gral part of the great fes­ti­val of Soulanges. The Cafe de la Paix was to the town, in a su­pe­ri­or de­gree, what the tav­ern of the Grand-​I-​Vert was to the peas­antry,--a cen­tre of ven­om; it was the point of con­tact and trans­mis­sion be­tween the gos­sip of Ville-​aux-​Fayes and that of the val­ley. The Grand-​I-​Vert sup­plied the milk and the Cafe de la Paix the cream, and Ton­sard's two daugh­ters were in dai­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the two.

To Soc­quard's mind the square of Soulanges was mere­ly an ap­pendage to his cafe. Her­cules went from door to door, talk­ing with this one and that one, and wear­ing in sum­mer no oth­er gar­ment than a pair of trousers and a half-​but­toned waist­coat. If any one en­tered the tav­ern, the peo­ple with whom he gos­siped warned him, and he slow­ly and re­luc­tant­ly re­turned.

Rigou stopped his horse, and get­ting out of the chaise, fas­tened the bri­dle to one of the posts near the gate of the Tivoli. Then he made a pre­text to lis­ten to what was go­ing on with­out be­ing no­ticed, and placed him­self be­tween two win­dows through one of which he could, by ad­vanc­ing his head, see the per­sons in the room, watch their ges­tures, and catch the loud­er tones which came through the glass of the win­dows and which the qui­et of the street en­abled him to hear.

“If I were to tell old Rigou that your broth­er Nico­las is af­ter La Pechi­na,” cried an an­gry voice, “and that he way­lays her, he'd rip the en­trails out of ev­ery one of you,--pack of scoundrels that you are at the Grand-​I-​Vert!”

“If you play me such a trick as that, Aglae,” said the shrill voice of Marie Ton­sard, “you sha'n't tell any­thing more ex­cept to the worms in your cof­fin. Don't med­dle with my broth­er's busi­ness or with mine and Bon­nebault's ei­ther.”

Marie, in­sti­gat­ed by her grand­moth­er, had, as we see, fol­lowed Bon­nebault; she had watched him through the very win­dow where Rigou was now stand­ing, and had seen him dis­play­ing his graces and pay­ing com­pli­ments so agree­able to Made­moi­selle Soc­quard that she was forced to smile up­on him. That smile had brought about the scene in the midst of which the rev­ela­tion that in­ter­est­ed Rigou came out.

“Well, well, Pere Rigou, what are you do­ing here?” said Soc­quard, slap­ping the usurer on the shoul­der; he was com­ing from a barn at the end of the gar­den, where he kept var­ious con­trivances for the pub­lic games, such as weigh­ing-​ma­chines, mer­ry-​go-​rounds, see-​saws, all in readi­ness for the Tivoli when opened. Soc­quard stepped noise­less­ly, for he was wear­ing a pair of those yel­low leather-​slip­pers which cost so lit­tle by the gross that they have an enor­mous sale in the provinces.

“If you have any fresh lemons, I'd like a glass of lemon­ade,” said Rigou; “it is a warm evening.”

“Who is mak­ing that rack­et?” said Soc­quard, look­ing through the win­dow and see­ing his daugh­ter and Marie Ton­sard.

“They are quar­relling for Bon­nebault,” said Rigou, sar­don­ical­ly.

The anger of the fa­ther was at once con­trolled by the in­ter­est of the tav­ern-​keep­er. The tav­ern-​keep­er judged it pru­dent to lis­ten out­side, as Rigou was do­ing; the fa­ther was in­clined to en­ter and de­clare that Bon­nebault, pos­sessed of ad­mirable qual­ities in the eyes of a tav­ern-​keep­er, had none at all as son-​in-​law to one of the no­ta­bles of Soulanges. And yet Pere Soc­quard had re­ceived but few of­fers for his daugh­ter. At twen­ty-​two Aglae al­ready ri­valled in size and weight Madame Ver­michel, whose agili­ty seemed phe­nom­enal. Sit­ting be­hind a counter in­creased the adi­pose ten­den­cy which she de­rived from her fa­ther.

“What dev­il is it that gets in­to girls?” said Soc­quard to Rigou.

“Ha!” replied the ex-​Bene­dic­tine, “of all the dev­ils, that's the one the Church has most to do with.”

Just then Bon­nebault came out of the bil­liard-​room with a cue in his hand, and struck Marie sharply, say­ing:--

“You've made me miss my stroke; but I'll not miss you, and I'll give it to you till you muf­fle that clap­per of yours.”

Soc­quard and Rigou, who now thought it wise to in­ter­fere, en­tered the cafe by the front door, rais­ing such a crowd of flies that the light from the win­dows was ob­scured; the sound was like that of the dis­tant prac­tis­ing of a drum-​corps. Af­ter their first ex­cite­ment was over, the big flies with the bluish bel­lies, ac­com­pa­nied by the sting­ing lit­tle ones, re­turned to their quar­ters in the win­dows, where on three tiers of planks, the paint of which was in­dis­tin­guish­able un­der the fly-​specks, were rows of vis­cous bot­tles ranged like sol­diers.

Marie was cry­ing. To be struck be­fore a ri­val by the man she loves is one of those hu­mil­ia­tions that no wom­an can en­dure, no mat­ter what her place on the so­cial lad­der may be; and the low­er that place is, the more vi­olent is the ex­pres­sion of her wrath. The Ton­sard girl took no no­tice of Rigou or of Soc­quard; she flung her­self on a bench, in gloomy and sullen si­lence, which the ex-​monk care­ful­ly watched.

“Get a fresh lemon, Aglae,” said Pere Soc­quard, “and go and rinse that glass your­self.”

“You did right to send her away,” whis­pered Rigou, “or she might have been hurt”; and he glanced sig­nif­icant­ly at the hand with which Marie grasped a stool she had caught up to throw at Aglae's head.

“Now, Marie,” said Soc­quard, stand­ing be­fore her, “peo­ple don't come here to fling stools; if you were to break one of my mir­rors, the milk of your cows wouldn't pay for the dam­age.”

“Pere Soc­quard, your daugh­ter is a rep­tile; I'm worth a dozen of her, I'd have you know. If you don't want Bon­nebault for a son-​in-​law, it is high time for you to tell him to go and play bil­liards some­where else; he's los­ing a hun­dred sous ev­ery minute.”

In the mid­dle of this flux of words, screamed rather than said, Soc­quard took Marie round the waist and flung her out of the door, in spite of her cries and re­sis­tance. It was none too soon; for Bon­nebault rushed out of the bil­liard-​room, his eyes blaz­ing.

“It sha'n't end so!” cried Marie Ton­sard.

“Be­gone!” shout­ed Bon­nebault, whom Vi­ol­let held back round the body lest he should do the girl some hurt. “Go to the dev­il, or I will nev­er speak to you or look at you again!”

“You!” said Marie, fling­ing him a fu­ri­ous glance. “Give me back my mon­ey, and I'll leave you to Made­moi­selle Soc­quard if she is rich enough to keep you.”

There­upon Marie, fright­ened when she saw that even Soc­quard-​Al­cides could scarce­ly hold Bon­nebault, who sprang af­ter her like a tiger, took to flight along the road.

Rigou fol­lowed, and told her to get in­to his car­riole to es­cape Bon­nebault, whose shouts reached the ho­tel Soudry; then, af­ter hid­ing Marie un­der the leather cur­tains, he came back to the cafe to drink his lemon­ade and ex­am­ine the group it now con­tained, com­posed of Plis­soud, Amau­ry, Vi­ol­let, and the wait­er, who were all try­ing to paci­fy Bon­nebault.

“Come, hus­sar, it's your turn to play,” said Amau­ry, a small, fair young man, with a dull eye.

“Be­sides, she's tak­en her­self off,” said Vi­ol­let.

If any one ev­er be­trayed as­ton­ish­ment it was Plis­soud when he be­held the usurer of Blangy sit­ting at one of the ta­bles, and more oc­cu­pied in watch­ing him, Plis­soud, than in notic­ing the quar­rel that was go­ing on. In spite of him­self, the sher­iff al­lowed his face to show the species of be­wil­der­ment which a man feels at an un­ex­pect­ed meet­ing with a per­son whom he hates and is plot­ting against, and he speed­ily with­drew in­to the bil­liard-​room.

“Adieu, Pere Soc­quard,” said Rigou.

“I'll get your car­riage,” said the innkeep­er; “take your time.”

“How shall I find out what those fel­lows have been say­ing over their pool?” Rigou was ask­ing him­self, when he hap­pened to see the wait­er's face in the mir­ror be­side him.

The wait­er was a jack at all trades; he cul­ti­vat­ed Soc­quard's vines, swept out the cafe and the bil­liard-​room, kept the gar­den in or­der, and wa­tered the Tivoli, all for fifty francs a year. He was al­ways with­out a jack­et, ex­cept on grand oc­ca­sions; usu­al­ly his sole gar­ments were a pair of blue linen trousers, heavy shoes, and a striped vel­vet waist­coat, over which he wore an apron of home­spun linen when at work in the cafe or bil­liard-​room. This apron, with strings, was the badge of his func­tions. The fel­low had been hired by Soc­quard at the last an­nu­al fair; for in this val­ley, as through­out Bur­gundy, ser­vants are hired in the mar­ket-​place by the year, ex­act­ly as one buys hors­es.

“What's your name?” said Rigou.

“Michel, at your ser­vice,” replied the wait­er.

“Doesn't old Four­chon come here some­times?”

“Two or three times a week, with Mon­sieur Ver­michel, who gives me a cou­ple of sous to warn him if his wife's af­ter them.”

“He's a fine old fel­low, Pere Four­chon; knows a great deal and is full of good sense,” said Rigou, pay­ing for his lemon­ade and leav­ing the evil-​smelling place when he saw Pere Soc­quard lead­ing his horse round.

Just as he was about to get in­to the car­riage, Rigou no­ticed the chemist cross­ing the square and hailed him with a “Ho, there, Mon­sieur Ver­mut!” Rec­og­niz­ing the rich man, Ver­mut hur­ried up. Rigou joined him, and said in a low voice:--

“Are there any drugs that can eat in­to the tis­sue of the skin so as to pro­duce a re­al dis­ease, like a whit­low on the fin­ger, for in­stance?”

“If Mon­sieur Gour­don would help, yes,” an­swered the lit­tle chemist.

“Ver­mut, not a word of all this, or you and I will quar­rel; but speak of the mat­ter to Mon­sieur Gour­don, and tell him to come and see me the day af­ter to-​mor­row. I may be able to pro­cure him the del­icate op­er­ation of cut­ting off a fore­fin­ger.”

Then, leav­ing the lit­tle man thor­ough­ly be­wil­dered, Rigou got in­to the car­riole be­side Marie Ton­sard.

“Well, you lit­tle viper,” he said, tak­ing her by the arm when he had fas­tened the reins to a hook in front of the leath­ern apron which closed the car­riole and the horse had start­ed on a trot, “do you think you can keep Bon­nebault by giv­ing way to such vi­olence? If you were a wise girl you would pro­mote his mar­riage with that hogshead of stu­pid­ity and take your re­venge af­ter­wards.”

Marie could not help smil­ing as she an­swered:--

“Ah, how bad you are! you are the mas­ter of us all in wicked­ness.”

“Lis­ten to me, Marie; I like the peas­ants, but it won't do for any one of you to come be­tween my teeth and a mouth­ful of game. Your broth­er Nico­las, as Aglae said, is af­ter La Pechi­na. That must not be; I pro­tect her, that girl. She is to be my heiress for thir­ty thou­sand francs, and I in­tend to mar­ry her well. I know that Nico­las, helped by your sis­ter Cather­ine, came near killing the lit­tle thing this morn­ing. You are to see your broth­er and sis­ter at once, and say to them: 'If you let La Pechi­na alone, Pere Rigou will save Nico­las from the con­scrip­tion.'”

“You are the dev­il in­car­nate!” cried Marie. “They do say you've signed a com­pact with him. Is that true?”

“Yes,” replied Rigou, grave­ly.

“I heard it, but I didn't be­lieve it.”

“He has guar­an­teed that no at­tacks aimed at me shall hurt me; that I shall nev­er be robbed; that I shall live a hun­dred years and suc­ceed in ev­ery­thing I un­der­take, and be as young to the day of my death as a two-​year old cock­er­el--”

“Well, if that's so,” said Marie, “it must be _dev­il­ish­ly_ easy for you to save my broth­er from the con­scrip­tion--”

“If he choos­es, that's to say. He'll have to lose a fin­ger,” re­turned Rigou. “I'll tell him how.”

“Look out, you are tak­ing the up­per road!” ex­claimed Marie.

“I nev­er go by the low­er at night,” said the ex-​monk.

“On ac­count of the cross?” said Marie, naive­ly.

“That's it, sly-​boots,” replied her di­abol­ical com­pan­ion.

They had reached a spot where the high-​road cuts through a slight el­eva­tion of ground, mak­ing on each side of it a rather steep slope, such as we of­ten see on the mail-​roads of France. At the end of this lit­tle gorge, which is about a hun­dred feet long, the roads to Ron­querolles and to Cerneux meet and form an open space, in the cen­tre of which stands a cross. From ei­ther slope a man could aim at a vic­tim and kill him at close quar­ters, with all the more ease be­cause the lit­tle hill is cov­ered with vines, and the evil-​do­er could lie in am­bush among the briers and bram­bles that over­grow them. We can read­ily imag­ine why the usurer did not take that road af­ter dark. The Thune flows round the lit­tle hill; and the place is called the Close of the Cross. No spot was ev­er more adapt­ed for re­venge or mur­der, for the road to Ron­querolles con­tin­ues to the bridge over the Avonne in front of the pavil­ion of the Ren­dezvous, while that to Cerneux leads off above the mail-​road; so that be­tween the four roads,--to Les Aigues, Ville-​aux-​Fayes, Ron­querolles, and Cerneux,--a mur­der­er could choose his line of re­treat and leave his pur­suers in un­cer­tain­ty.

“I shall drop you at the en­trance of the vil­lage,” said Rigou when they neared the first hous­es of Blangy.

“Be­cause you are afraid of An­nette, old cow­ard!” cried Marie. “When are you go­ing to send her away? you have had her now three years. What amus­es me is that your old wom­an still lives; the good God knows how to re­venge him­self.”

CHAP­TER IV

THE TRI­UMVI­RATE OF VILLE-​AUX-​FAYES

The cau­tious usurer com­pelled his wife and Jean to go to bed and to rise by day­light; as­sur­ing them that the house would nev­er be at­tacked if he sat up till mid­night, and he nev­er him­self rose till late. Not on­ly had he thus se­cured him­self from in­ter­rup­tion be­tween sev­en at night and five the next morn­ing but he had ac­cus­tomed his wife and Jean to re­spect his morn­ing sleep and that of Ha­gar, whose room was di­rect­ly be­hind his.

So, on the fol­low­ing morn­ing, about half past six, Madame Rigou, who her­self took care of the poul­try-​yard with some as­sis­tance from Jean, knocked timid­ly at her hus­band's door.

“Mon­sieur Rigou,” she said, “you told me to wake you.”

The tones of that voice, the at­ti­tude of the wom­an, her fright­ened air as she obeyed an or­der the ex­ecu­tion of which might be ill-​re­ceived, showed the ut­ter self-​ab­ne­ga­tion in which the poor crea­ture lived, and the af­fec­tion she still bore to her pet­ty tyrant.

“Very good,” replied Rigou.

“Shall I wake An­nette?” she asked.

“No, let her sleep; she has been up half the night,” he replied, grave­ly.

The man was al­ways grave, even when he al­lowed him­self to jest. An­nette had in fact opened the door se­cret­ly to Sibilet, Four­chon, and Cather­ine Ton­sard, who all came at dif­fer­ent hours be­tween eleven and two o'clock.

Ten min­utes lat­er Rigou, dressed with more care than usu­al, came down­stairs and greet­ed his wife with a “Good-​morn­ing, my old wom­an,” which made her hap­pi­er than if counts had knelt at her feet.

“Jean,” he said to the ex-​lay-​broth­er, “don't leave the house; if any one robs me it will be worse for you than for me.”

By thus min­gling mild­ness and sever­ity, hopes and re­buffs, the clever ego­ist kept his three slaves faith­ful and close at his heels, like dogs.

Tak­ing the up­per-​road, so-​called, to avoid the Close of the Cross, Rigou reached the square of Soulanges about eight o'clock.

Just as he was fas­ten­ing his rein to the post near­est the lit­tle door with three steps, a blind opened and Soudry showed his face, pit­ted with the small-​pox, which the ex­pres­sion of his small black eyes ren­dered crafty.

“Let's be­gin by tak­ing a crust here be­fore we start,” he said; “we sha'n't get break­fast at Ville-​aux-​Fayes be­fore one o'clock.”

Then he soft­ly called a ser­vant-​girl, as young and pret­ty as An­nette, who came down noise­less­ly, and re­ceived his or­der for ham and bread; af­ter which he went him­self to the cel­lar and fetched some wine.

Rigou con­tem­plat­ed for the hun­dredth time the well-​known din­ing-​room, floored in oak, with stuc­coed ceil­ing and cor­nice, its high wain­scot and hand­some cup­boards fine­ly paint­ed, its porce­lain stone and mag­nif­icent tall clock,--all the prop­er­ty of Made­moi­selle La­guerre. The chair-​backs were in the form of lyres, paint­ed white and high­ly var­nished; the seats were of green mo­roc­co with gilt nails. A mas­sive ma­hogany ta­ble was cov­ered with green oil­cloth, with large squares of a deep­er shade of green, and a plain bor­der of the lighter. The floor, laid in Hun­gar­ian point, was care­ful­ly waxed by Ur­bain and showed the care which ex-​wait­ing-​wom­en know how to ex­act out of their ser­vants.

“Bah! it cost too much,” thought Rigou for the hun­dredth time. “I can eat as good a din­ner in my room as here, and I have the in­come of the mon­ey this use­less splen­dor would have wast­ed. Where is Madame Soudry?” he asked, as the may­or re­turned armed with a ven­er­able bot­tle.

“Asleep.”

“And you no longer dis­turb her slum­bers?” said Rigou.

The ex-​gen­darme winked with a know­ing air, and point­ed to the ham which Jean­nette, the pret­ty maid, was just bring­ing in.

“That will pick you up, a pret­ty bit like that,” he said. “It was cured in the house; we cut in­to it on­ly yes­ter­day.”

“Where did you find her?” said the ex-​Bene­dic­tine in Soudry's ear.

“She is like the ham,” replied the ex-​gen­darme, wink­ing again; “I have had her on­ly a week.”

Jean­nette, still in her night-​cap, with a short pet­ti­coat and her bare feet in slip­pers, had slipped on a bodice made with straps over the arms in true peas­ant fash­ion, over which she had crossed a neck­er­chief which did not en­tire­ly hide her fresh and youth­ful at­trac­tions, which were at least as ap­pe­tiz­ing as the ham she car­ried. Short and plump, with bare arms mot­tled red, end­ing in large, dim­pled hands with short but well-​made fin­gers, she was a pic­ture of health. The face was that of a true Bur­gun­di­an,--rud­dy, but white about the tem­ples, throat, and ears; the hair was chest­nut; the cor­ners of the eyes turned up to­wards the top of the ears; the nos­trils were wide, the mouth sen­su­al, and a lit­tle down lay along the cheeks; all this, to­geth­er with a jaun­ty ex­pres­sion, tem­pered how­ev­er by a de­ceit­ful­ly mod­est at­ti­tude, made her the mod­el of a rogu­ish ser­vant-​girl.

“On my hon­or, Jean­nette is as good as the ham,” said Rigou. “If I hadn't an An­nette I should want a Jean­nette.”

“One is as good as the oth­er,” said the ex-​gen­darme, “for your An­nette is fair and del­icate. How is Madame Rigou,--is she asleep?” added Soudry, rough­ly, to let Rigou see he un­der­stood his joke.

“She wakes with the cock, but she goes to roost with the hens,” replied Rigou. “As for me, I sit up and read the 'Con­sti­tu­tion­nel.' My wife lets me sleep at night and in the morn­ing too; she wouldn't come in­to my room for all the world.”

“It's just the oth­er way here,” replied Jeanette. “Madame sits up with the com­pa­ny play­ing cards; some­times there are six­teen of them in the sa­lon; Mon­sieur goes to bed at eight o'clock, and we get up at day­light--”

“You think that's dif­fer­ent,” said Rigou, “but it comes to the same thing in the end. Well, my dear, you come to me and I'll send An­nette here, and that will be the same thing and dif­fer­ent too.”

“Old scamp, you'll make her ashamed,” said Soudry.

“Ha! gen­darme; you want your field to your­self! Well, we all get our hap­pi­ness where we can find it.”

Jeanette, by her mas­ter's or­der, dis­ap­peared to lay out his clothes.

“You must have promised to mar­ry her when your wife dies,” said Rigou.

“At your age and mine,” replied Soudry, “there's no oth­er way.”

“With girls of any am­bi­tion it would be one way to be­come a wid­ow­er,” added Rigou; “es­pe­cial­ly if Madame Soudry found fault with Jean­nette for her way of scrub­bing the stair­case.”

The re­mark made the two hus­bands pen­sive. When Jean­nette re­turned and an­nounced that all was ready, Soudry said to her, “Come and help me!” --a pre­cau­tion which made the ex-​monk smile.

“There's a dif­fer­ence, in­deed!” said he. “As for me, I'd leave you alone with An­nette, my good friend.”

A quar­ter of an hour lat­er Soudry, in his best clothes, got in­to the wick­er car­riage, and the two friends drove round the lake of Soulanges to Ville-​aux-​Fayes.

“Look at it!” said Rigou, as they reached an em­inence from which the chateau of Soulanges could be seen in pro­file.

The old rev­olu­tion­ary put in­to the tone of his words all the ha­tred which the ru­ral mid­dle class­es feel to the great chateaux and the great es­tates.

“Yes, but I hope it will nev­er be de­stroyed as long as I live,” said Soudry. “The Comte de Soulanges was my gen­er­al; he did me kind­ness; he got my pen­sion, and he al­lows Lupin to man­age the es­tate. Af­ter Lupin some of us will have it, and as long as the Soulanges fam­ily ex­ists they and their prop­er­ty will be re­spect­ed. Such folks are large-​mind­ed; they let ev­ery one make his prof­it, and they find it pays.”

“Yes, but the Comte de Soulanges has three chil­dren, who, at his death, may not agree,” replied Rigou. “The hus­band of his daugh­ter and his sons may go to law, and end by sell­ing the lead and iron mines to man­ufac­tur­ers, from whom we shall man­age to get them back.”

The chateau just then showed up in pro­file, as if to de­fy the ex-​monk.

“Ah! look at it; in those days they built well,” cried Soudry. “But just now Mon­sieur le Comte is econ­omiz­ing, so as to make Soulanges the en­tailed es­tate of his peer­age.”

“My dear friend,” said Rigou, “en­tailed es­tates won't ex­ist much longer.”

When the top­ic of pub­lic mat­ters was ex­haust­ed, the wor­thy pair be­gan to dis­cuss the mer­its of their pret­ty maids in terms too Bur­gun­di­an to be print­ed here. That in­ex­haustible sub­ject car­ried them so far that be­fore they knew it they saw the cap­ital of the ar­rondisse­ment over which Gaubertin reigned, and which we hope ex­cites enough cu­rios­ity in the read­er's mind to jus­ti­fy a short di­gres­sion.

The name of Ville-​aux-​Fayes, sin­gu­lar as it is, is ex­plained as the cor­rup­tion of the words (in low Latin) “Vil­la in Fa­go,”--the manor of the woods. This name in­di­cates that a for­est once cov­ered the delta formed by the Avonne be­fore it joins its con­flu­ent the Yonne. Some Frank doubt­less built a fortress on the hill which slopes gen­tly to the long plain. The sav­age con­queror sep­arat­ed his van­tage-​ground from the delta by a wide and deep moat and made the po­si­tion a formidable one, es­sen­tial­ly seigno­ri­al, con­ve­nient for en­forc­ing tolls across the bridges and for pro­tect­ing his rights of prof­it on all grains ground in the mills.

That is the his­to­ry of the be­gin­ning of Ville-​aux-​Fayes. Wher­ev­er feu­dal or ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal do­min­ion es­tab­lished there we find gath­ered to­geth­er in­ter­ests, in­hab­itants, and, lat­er, towns when the lo­cal­ities were in a po­si­tion to main­tain them and to found and de­vel­op great in­dus­tries. The method of float­ing tim­ber dis­cov­ered by Jean Rou­vet in 1549, which re­quired cer­tain con­ve­nient sta­tions to in­ter­cept it, was the mak­ing of Ville-​aux-​Fayes, which, up to that time, had been, com­pared to Soulanges, a mere vil­lage. Ville-​aux-​Fayes be­came a stor­age place for tim­ber, which cov­ered the shores of the two rivers for a dis­tance of over thir­ty miles. The work of tak­ing out of the wa­ter, com­put­ing the lost logs, and mak­ing the rafts which the Yonne car­ried down to the Seine, brought to­geth­er a large con­course of work­men. Such a pop­ula­tion in­creased con­sump­tion and en­cour­aged trade. Thus Ville-​aux-​Fayes, which had but six hun­dred in­hab­itants at the end of the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, had two thou­sand in 1790, and Gaubertin had now raised the num­ber to four thou­sand, by the fol­low­ing means.

When the leg­isla­tive as­sem­bly de­creed the new lay­ing out of ter­ri­to­ry, Ville-​aux-​Fayes, which was sit­uat­ed where, ge­ograph­ical­ly, a sub-​pre­fec­ture was need­ed, was cho­sen in­stead of Soulanges as chief town or cap­ital of the ar­rondisse­ment. The in­creased pop­ula­tion of Paris, by in­creas­ing the de­mand for and the val­ue of wood as fu­el, nec­es­sar­ily in­creased the com­merce of Ville-​aux-​Fayes. Gaubertin had found­ed his for­tune, af­ter los­ing his stew­ard­ship, on this grow­ing busi­ness, es­ti­mat­ing the ef­fect of peace on the pop­ula­tion of Paris, which did ac­tu­al­ly in­crease by over one-​third be­tween 1815 and 1825.

The shape of Ville-​aux-​Fayes fol­lowed the con­for­ma­tion of the ground. Each side of the promon­to­ry was lined with wharves. The dam to stop the tim­ber from float­ing fur­ther down was just be­low a hill cov­ered by the for­est of Soulanges. Be­tween the dam and the town lay a sub­urb. The low­er town, cov­er­ing the greater part of the delta, came down to the shores of the lake of the Avonne.

Above the low­er town some five hun­dred hous­es with gar­dens, stand­ing on the heights, were grouped round three sides of the promon­to­ry, and en­joyed the var­ied scene of the di­amond wa­ters of the lake, the rafts in con­struc­tion along its edge, and the piles of wood up­on the shores. The wa­ters, laden with tim­ber from the riv­er and the rapids which fed the mill-​races and the sluices of a few man­ufac­to­ries, pre­sent­ed an an­imat­ed scene, all the more charm­ing be­cause in­closed in the green­ery of forests, while the long val­ley of Les Aigues of­fered a glo­ri­ous con­trast to the dark foil of the heights above the town it­self.

Gaubertin had built him­self a house on the lev­el of the delta, in­tend­ing to make a place which should im­prove the lo­cal­ity and ren­der the low­er town as de­sir­able as the up­per. It was a mod­ern house built of stone, with a bal­cony of iron rail­ings, out­side blinds, paint­ed win­dows, and no or­na­ment but a line of fret-​work un­der the eaves, a slate roof, one sto­ry in height with a gar­ret, a fine court­yard, and be­hind it an En­glish gar­den bathed by the wa­ters of the Avonne. The el­egance of the place com­pelled the de­part­ment to build a fine ed­ifice near­ly op­po­site to it for the sub-​pre­fec­ture, pro­vi­sion­al­ly lodged in a mere ken­nel. The town it­self al­so built a town-​hall. The law-​courts had late­ly been in­stalled in a new ed­ifice; so that Ville-​aux-​Fayes owed to the ac­tive in­flu­ence of its present may­or a num­ber of re­al­ly im­pos­ing pub­lic build­ings. The gen­darmerie had al­so built bar­racks which com­plet­ed the square formed by the mar­ket­place.

These changes, on which the in­hab­itants prid­ed them­selves, were due to the im­pe­tus giv­en by Gaubertin, who with­in a day or two had re­ceived the cross of the Le­gion of hon­or, in an­tic­ipa­tion of the com­ing birth­day of the king. In a town so sit­uat­ed and so mod­ern there was of course, nei­ther aris­toc­ra­cy nor no­bil­ity. Con­se­quent­ly, the rich mer­chants of Ville-​aux-​Fayes, proud of their own in­de­pen­dence, will­ing­ly es­poused the cause of the peas­antry against a count of the Em­pire who had tak­en sides with the Restora­tion. To them the op­pres­sors were the op­pressed. The spir­it of this com­mer­cial town was so well known to the gov­ern­ment that they send there as sub-​pre­fect a man with a con­cil­ia­to­ry tem­per, a pupil of his un­cle, the well-​known des Lu­peaulx, one of those men, ac­cus­tomed to com­pro­mise, who are fa­mil­iar with the dif­fi­cul­ties and ne­ces­si­ties of ad­min­is­tra­tion, but whom pu­ri­tan politi­cians, do­ing in­finite­ly worse things, call cor­rupt.

The in­te­ri­or of Gaubertin's house was dec­orat­ed with the un­mean­ing com­mon­places of mod­ern lux­ury. Rich pa­pers with gold bor­ders, bronze chan­de­liers, ma­hogany fur­ni­ture of a new pat­tern, as­tral lamps, round ta­bles with mar­ble tops, white chi­na with gilt lines for dessert, red mo­roc­co chairs and mez­zo-​tint en­grav­ings in the din­ing-​room, and blue cash­mere fur­ni­ture in the sa­lon,--all de­tails of a chill­ing and per­fect­ly un­mean­ing char­ac­ter, but which to the eyes of Ville-​aux-​Fayes seemed the last ef­forts of Sar­dana­palian lux­ury. Madame Gaubertin played the role of el­egance with great ef­fect; she as­sumed lit­tle airs and was lack­adaisi­cal at forty-​five years of age, as though cer­tain of the homage of her court.

We ask those who re­al­ly know France, if these hous­es--those of Rigou, Soudry, and Gaubertin--are not a per­fect pre­sen­ta­tion of the vil­lage, the lit­tle town, and the seat of a sub-​pre­fec­ture?

With­out be­ing a man of mind, or a man of tal­ent, Gaubertin had the ap­pear­ance of be­ing both. He owed the ac­cu­ra­cy of his per­cep­tion and his con­sum­mate art to an ex­treme keen­ness af­ter gain. He de­sired wealth, not for his wife, not for his chil­dren, not for him­self, not for his fam­ily, not for the rep­uta­tion that mon­ey gives; af­ter the grat­ifi­ca­tion of his re­venge (the hope of which kept him alive) he loved the touch of mon­ey, like Nucin­gen, who, it was said, kept fin­ger­ing the gold in his pock­ets. The rush of busi­ness was Gaubertin's wine; and though he had his bel­ly full of it, he had all the ea­ger­ness of one who was emp­ty. As with valets of the dra­ma, in­trigues, tricks to play, mis­chief to or­ga­nize, de­cep­tions, com­mer­cial over-​reach­ings, ac­counts to ren­der and re­ceive, dis­putes, and quar­rels of self-​in­ter­est, ex­hil­arat­ed him, kept his blood in cir­cu­la­tion, and his bile flow­ing. He went and came on foot, on horse­back, in a car­riage, by wa­ter; he was at all auc­tions and tim­ber sales in Paris, think­ing of ev­ery­thing, keep­ing hun­dreds of wires in his hands and nev­er get­ting them tan­gled.

Quick, de­cid­ed in his move­ments as in his ideas, short and squat in fig­ure, with a thin nose, a fiery eye, an ear on the “qui vive,” there was some­thing of the hunt­ing-​dog about him. His brown face, very round and sun­burned, from which the tanned ears stood out pre­dom­inant­ly, --for he al­ways wore a cap,--was in keep­ing with that char­ac­ter. His nose turned up; his tight­ly-​closed lips could nev­er have opened to say a kind­ly thing. His bushy whiskers formed a pair of black and shiny tufts be­neath the high­ly-​col­ored cheek-​bones, and were lost in his cra­vat. Hair that was pep­per-​and-​salt in col­or and friz­zled nat­ural­ly in stages like those of a judge's wig, seem­ing scorched by the fury of the fire which heat­ed his brown skull and gleamed in his gray eyes sur­round­ed by cir­cu­lar wrin­kles (no doubt from a habit of al­ways blink­ing when he looked across the coun­try in full sun­light), com­plet­ed the char­ac­ter­is­tics of his phys­iog­no­my. His lean and vig­or­ous hands were hairy, knobbed, and claw-​like, like those of men who do their share of la­bor. His per­son­al­ity was agree­able to those with whom he had to do, for he wrapped it in a mis­lead­ing gayety; he knew how to talk a great deal with­out say­ing a word of what he meant to keep un­said. He wrote lit­tle, so as to de­ny any­thing that es­caped him which might prove un­fa­vor­able in its af­ter ef­fects up­on his in­ter­ests. His books and pa­pers were kept by a cashier,--an hon­est man, whom men of Gaubertin's stamp al­ways seek to get hold of, and whom they make, in their own self­ish in­ter­ests, their first dupe.

When Rigou's lit­tle green chaise ap­peared, to­wards twelve o'clock, in the broad av­enue which skirts the riv­er, Gaubertin, in cap, boots, and jack­et, was re­turn­ing from the wharves. He has­tened his steps, --feel­ing very sure that Rigou's ob­ject in com­ing over could on­ly be “the great af­fair.”

“Good morn­ing, gen­darme; good morn­ing, paunch of gall and wis­dom,” he said, giv­ing a lit­tle slap to the stom­achs of his two vis­itors. “We have busi­ness to talk over, and, faith! we'll do it glass in hand; that's the true way to take things.”

“If you do your busi­ness that way, you ought to be fat­ter than you are,” said Rigou.

“I work too hard; I'm not like you two, con­fined to the house and be­witched there, like old dotards. Well, well, af­ter all that's the best way; you can do your busi­ness com­fort­ably in an arm-​chair, with your back to the fire and your bel­ly at ta­ble; cus­tom goes to you, I have to go af­ter it. But now, come in, come in! the house is yours for the time you stay.”

A ser­vant, in blue liv­ery edged with scar­let, took the horse by the bri­dle and led him in­to the court­yard, where were the of­fices and the sta­ble.

Gaubertin left his guests to walk about the gar­den for a mo­ment, while he went to give his or­ders and ar­range about the break­fast.

“Well, my wolves,” he said, as he re­turned, rub­bing his hands, “the gen­darmerie of Soulanges were seen this morn­ing at day­break, march­ing to­wards Conch­es; no doubt they mean to ar­rest the peas­ants for depre­da­tions; ha, ha! things are get­ting warm, warm! By this time,” he added, look­ing at his watch, “those fel­lows may have been ar­rest­ed.”

“Prob­ably,” said Rigou.

“Well, what do you all say over there? Has any­thing been de­cid­ed?”

“What is there to de­cide?” asked Rigou. “We have no part in it,” he added, look­ing at Soudry.

“How do you mean noth­ing to de­cide? If Les Aigues is sold as the re­sult of our coali­tion, who is to gain five or six hun­dred thou­sand francs out of it? Do you ex­pect me to, all alone? No, my in­side is not strong enough to split up two mil­lions, with three chil­dren to es­tab­lish, and a wife who hasn't the first idea about the val­ue of mon­ey; no, I must have as­so­ciates. Here's the gen­darme, he has plen­ty of funds all ready. I know he doesn't hold a sin­gle mort­gage that isn't ready to ma­ture; he on­ly lends now on notes at sight of which I en­dorse. I'll go in­to this thing by the amount of eight hun­dred thou­sand francs; my son, the judge, two hun­dred thou­sand; and I count on the gen­darme for two hun­dred thou­sand more; now, how much will you put in, skull-​cap?”

“All the rest,” replied Rigou, stiffly.

“The dev­il! well, I wish I had my hand where your heart is!” ex­claimed Gaubertin. “Now what are you go­ing to do?”

“What­ev­er you do; tell your plan.”

“My plan,” said Gaubertin, “is to take dou­ble, and sell half to the Conch­es, and Cerneux, and Blangy folks who want to buy. Soudry has his clients, and you yours, and I, mine. That's not the dif­fi­cul­ty. The thing is, how are we go­ing to ar­range among our­selves? How shall we di­vide up the great lots?”

“Noth­ing eas­ier,” said Rigou. “We'll each take what we like best. I, for one, shall stand in no­body's way; I'll take the woods in com­mon with Soudry and my son-​in-​law; the tim­ber has been so in­jured that you won't care for it now, and you may have all the rest. Faith, it is worth the mon­ey you'll put in­to it!”

“Will you sign that agree­ment?” said Soudry.

“A writ­ten agree­ment is worth noth­ing,” replied Gaubertin. “Be­sides, you know I am play­ing above board; I have per­fect con­fi­dence in Rigou, and he shall be the pur­chas­er.”

“That will sat­is­fy me,” said Rigou.

“I will make on­ly one con­di­tion,” added Gaubertin. “I must have the pavil­ion of the Ren­dezvous, with all its ap­pur­te­nances, and fifty acres of the sur­round­ing land. I shall make it my coun­try-​house, and it shall be near my woods. Madame Gaubertin--Madame Isaure, for that's what she wants peo­ple to call her--says she shall make it her vil­la.”

“I'm will­ing,” said Rigou.

“Well, now, be­tween our­selves,” con­tin­ued Gaubertin, af­ter look­ing about him on all sides and mak­ing sure that no one could over­hear him, “do you think they are ca­pa­ble of strik­ing a blow?”

“Such as?” asked Rigou, who nev­er al­lowed him­self to un­der­stand a hint.

“Well, if the worst of the band, the best shot, sent a ball whistling round the ears of the count--just to fright­en him?”

“He's a man to rush at an as­sailant and col­lar him.”

“Michaud, then.”

“Michaud would do noth­ing at the mo­ment, but he'd watch and spy till he found out the man and those who in­sti­gat­ed him.”

“You are right,” said Gaubertin; “those peas­ants must make a ri­ot and a few must be sent to the gal­leys. Well, so much the bet­ter for us; the au­thor­ities will catch the worst, whom we shall want to get rid of af­ter they've done the work. There are those black­guards, the Ton­sards and Bon­nebault--”

“Ton­sard is ready for mis­chief,” said Soudry, “I know that; and we'll work him up by Vau­doy­er and Courte­cuisse.”

“I'll an­swer for Courte­cuisse,” said Rigou.

“And I hold Vau­doy­er in the hol­low of my hand.”

“Be cau­tious!” said Rigou; “be­fore ev­ery­thing else be cau­tious.”

“Now, pa­pa skull-​cap, do you mean to tell me that there's any harm in speak­ing of things as they are? Is it we who are in­dict­ing and ar­rest­ing, or glean­ing or depre­dat­ing? If Mon­sieur le comte knows what he's about and leas­es the woods to the re­ceiv­er-​gen­er­al it is all up with our schemes,--'Farewell bas­kets, the vin­tage is o'er'; in that case you will lose more than I. What we say here is be­tween our­selves and for our­selves; for I cer­tain­ly wouldn't say a word to Vau­doy­er that I couldn't re­peat to God and man. But it is not for­bid­den, I sup­pose, to prof­it by any events that may take place. The peas­antry of this can­ton are hot-​head­ed; the gen­er­al's ex­ac­tions, his sever­ity, Michaud's per­se­cu­tions, and those of his keep­ers have ex­as­per­at­ed them; to-​day things have come to a cri­sis and I'll bet there's a rum­pus go­ing on now with the gen­darmerie. And so, let's go and break­fast.”

Madame Gaubertin came in­to the gar­den just then. She was a rather fair wom­an with long curls, called En­glish, hang­ing down her cheeks, who played the style of sen­ti­men­tal virtue, pre­tend­ed nev­er to have known love, talked pla­ton­ics to all the men about her, and kept the pros­ecut­ing-​at­tor­ney at her beck and call. She was giv­en to caps with large bows, but pre­ferred to wear on­ly her hair. She danced, and at forty-​five years of age had the minc­ing man­ner of a girl; her feet, how­ev­er, were large and her hands fright­ful. She wished to be called Isaure, be­cause among her oth­er odd­ities and ab­sur­di­ties she had the taste to re­pu­di­ate the name of Gaubertin as vul­gar. Her eyes were light and her hair of an un­de­cid­ed col­or, some­thing like dirty nan­keen. Such as she was, she was tak­en as a mod­el by a num­ber of young ladies, who stabbed the skies with their glances, and posed as an­gels.

“Well, gen­tle­men,” she said, bow­ing, “I have some strange news for you. The gen­darmerie have re­turned.”

“Did they make any pris­on­ers?”

“None; the gen­er­al, it seems, had pre­vi­ous­ly ob­tained the par­don of the depreda­tors. It was giv­en in hon­or of this hap­py an­niver­sary of the king's restora­tion to France.”

The three as­so­ciates looked at each oth­er.

“He is clev­er­er than I thought for, that big cuirassier!” said Gaubertin. “Well, come to break­fast. Af­ter all, the game is not lost, on­ly post­poned; it is your af­fair now, Rigou.”

Soudry and Rigou drove back dis­ap­point­ed, not be­ing able as yet to plan any oth­er catas­tro­phe to serve their ends and re­ly­ing, as Gaubertin ad­vised, on what might turn up. Like cer­tain Ja­cobins at the out­set of the Rev­olu­tion who were fu­ri­ous with Louis XVI.'s con­cil­ia­tions, and who pro­voked se­vere mea­sures at court in the hope of pro­duc­ing an­ar­chy, which to them meant for­tune and pow­er, the formidable en­emies of Gen­er­al Mont­cor­net staked their present hopes on the sever­ity which Michaud and his keep­ers were like­ly to em­ploy against fu­ture depreda­tors. Gaubertin promised them his as­sis­tance, with­out ex­plain­ing who were his co-​op­er­ators, for he did not wish them to know about his re­la­tions with Sibilet. Noth­ing can equal the pru­dence of a man of Gaubertin's stamp, un­less it be that of an ex-​gen­darme or an un­frocked priest. This plot could not have been brought to a suc­cess­ful is­sue,--a suc­cess­ful­ly evil is­sue,--un­less by three such men as these, steeped in ha­tred and self-​in­ter­est.

CHAP­TER V

VIC­TO­RY WITH­OUT A FIGHT

Madame Michaud's fears were the ef­fect of that sec­ond sight which comes of true pas­sion. Ex­clu­sive­ly ab­sorbed by one on­ly be­ing, the soul fi­nal­ly grasps the whole moral world which sur­rounds that be­ing; it sees clear­ly. A wom­an when she loves feels the same pre­sen­ti­ments which dis­qui­et her lat­er when a moth­er.

While the poor young wom­an lis­tened to the con­fused voic­es com­ing from afar across an un­known space, a scene was re­al­ly hap­pen­ing in the tav­ern of the Grand-​I-​Vert which threat­ened her hus­band's life.

About five o'clock that morn­ing ear­ly ris­ers had seen the gen­darmerie of Soulanges on its way to Conch­es. The news cir­cu­lat­ed rapid­ly; and those whom it chiefly in­ter­est­ed were much sur­prised to learn from oth­ers, who lived on high ground, that a de­tach­ment com­mand­ed by the lieu­tenant of Ville-​aux-​Fayes had marched through the for­est of Les Aigues. As it was a Mon­day, there were al­ready good rea­sons why the peas­ants should be at the tav­ern; but it was al­so the eve of the an­niver­sary of the restora­tion of the Bour­bons, and though the fre­quenters of Ton­sard's den had no need of that “au­gust cause” (as they said in those days) to ex­plain their pres­ence at the Grand-​I-​Vert, they did not fail to make the most of it if the mere shad­ow of an of­fi­cial func­tionary ap­peared.

Vau­doy­er, Courte­cuisse, Ton­sard and his fam­ily, Go­dain, and an old vine-​dress­er named Laroche, were there ear­ly in the morn­ing. The lat­ter was a man who scratched a liv­ing from day to day; he was one of the delin­quents col­lect­ed in Blangy un­der the sort of sub­scrip­tion in­vent­ed by Sibilet and Courte­cuisse to dis­gust the gen­er­al by the re­sults of his in­dict­ments. Blangy had sup­plied three men, twelve wom­en, al­so eight girls and five boys for whom par­ent were an­swer­able, all of whom were in a con­di­tion of pau­perism; but they were the on­ly ones who could be found that were so. The year 1823 had been a very prof­itable one to the peas­antry, and 1826 as like­ly, through the enor­mous quan­ti­ty of wine yield­ed, to bring them in a good deal of mon­ey; add to this the works at Les Aigues, un­der­tak­en by the gen­er­al, which had put a great deal more in cir­cu­la­tion through­out the three dis­tricts which bor­dered on the es­tate. It had there­fore been quite dif­fi­cult to find in Blangy, Conch­es, and Cerneux, one hun­dred and twen­ty in­di­gent per­sons against whom to bring the suits; and in or­der to do so, they had tak­en old wom­en, moth­ers, and grand­moth­ers of those who owned prop­er­ty but who pos­sessed noth­ing of their own, like Ton­sard's moth­er. Laroche, an old la­bor­er, pos­sessed ab­so­lute­ly noth­ing; he was not, like Ton­sard, hot-​blood­ed and vi­cious,--his mo­tive pow­er was a cold, dull ha­tred; he toiled in si­lence with a sullen face; work was in­tol­er­able to him, but he had to work to live; his fea­tures were hard and their ex­pres­sion re­pul­sive. Though six­ty years old, he was still strong, ex­cept that his back was bent; he saw no fu­ture be­fore him, no spot that he could call his own, and he en­vied those who pos­sessed the land; for this rea­son he had no pity on the forests of Les Aigues, and took plea­sure in de­spoil­ing them use­less­ly.

“Will they be al­lowed to put us in prison?” he was say­ing. “Af­ter Conch­es they'll come to Blangy. I'm an old of­fend­er, and I shall get three months.”

“What can we do against the gen­darmerie, old drunk­ard?” said Vau­doy­er.

“Why! cut the legs of their hors­es with our scythes. That'll bring them down; their mus­kets are not load­ed, and when they find us ten to one against them they'll de­camp. If the three vil­lages all rose and killed two or three gen­darmes, they couldn't guil­lo­tine the whole of us. They'd have to give way, as they did on the oth­er side of Bur­gundy, where they sent a reg­iment. Bah! that reg­iment came back again, and the peas­ants cut the woods just as much as they ev­er did.”

“If we kill,” said Vau­doy­er; “it is bet­ter to kill one man; the ques­tion is, how to do it with­out dan­ger and fright­en those Armi­nacs so that they'll be driv­en out of the place.”

“Which one shall we kill?” asked Laroche.

“Michaud,” said Courte­cuisse. “Vau­doy­er is right, he's per­fect­ly right. You'll see that when a keep­er is sent to the shades there won't be one of them will­ing to stay even in broad day­light to watch us. Now they're there night and day,--demons!”

“Wher­ev­er one goes,” said old Moth­er Ton­sard,--who was sev­en­ty-​eight years old, and pre­sent­ed a parch­ment face hon­ey-​combed with the small-​pox, light­ed by a pair of green eyes, and framed with dirty-​white hair, which es­caped in strands from a red hand­ker­chief,--“wher­ev­er one goes, there they are! they stop us, they open our bun­dles, and if there's a sin­gle branch, a sin­gle twig of a mis­er­able hazel, they seize the whole bun­dle, and they say they'll ar­rest us. Ha, the vil­lains! there's no de­ceiv­ing them; if they sus­pect you, you've got to un­do the bun­dle. Dogs! all three are not worth a far­thing! Yes, kill 'em, and it won't ru­in France, I tell you.”

“Lit­tle Va­tel is not so bad,” said Madame Ton­sard.

“He!” said Laroche, “he does his busi­ness, like the oth­ers; when there's a joke go­ing he'll joke with you, but you are none the bet­ter with him for that. He's worse than the rest,--heart­less to poor folks, like Michaud him­self.”

“Michaud has got a pret­ty wife, though,” said Nico­las Ton­sard.

“She's with young,” said the old wom­an; “and if this thing goes on there'll be a queer kind of bap­tism for the lit­tle one when she calves.”

“Oh! those Armi­nacs!” cried Marie Ton­sard; “there's no laugh­ing with them; and if you did, they'd threat­en to ar­rest you.”

“You've tried your hand at ca­jol­ing them, have you?” said Courte­cuisse.

“You may bet on that.”

“Well,” said Ton­sard with a de­ter­mined air, “they are men like oth­er men, and they can be got rid of.”

“But I tell you,” said Marie, con­tin­uing her top­ic, “they won't be ca­joled; I don't know what's the mat­ter with them; that bul­ly at the pavil­ion, he's mar­ried, but Va­tel, Gail­lard, and Stein­gel are not; they've not a wom­an be­long­ing to them; in­deed, there's not a wom­an in the place who would mar­ry them.”

“Well, we shall see how things go at the har­vest and the vin­tage,” said Ton­sard.

“They can't stop the glean­ing,” said the old wom­an.

“I don't know that,” re­marked Madame Ton­sard. “Groi­son said that the may­or was go­ing to pub­lish a no­tice that no one should glean with­out a cer­tifi­cate of pau­perism; and who's to give that cer­tifi­cate? Him­self, of course. He won't give many, I tell you! And they say he is go­ing to is­sue an or­der that no one shall en­ter the fields till the carts are all load­ed.”

“Why, the fel­low's a pesti­lence!” cried Ton­sard, be­side him­self with rage.

“I heard that on­ly yes­ter­day,” said Madame Ton­sard. “I of­fered Groi­son a glass of brandy to get some­thing out of him.”

“Groi­son! there's an­oth­er lucky fel­low!” said Vau­doy­er, “they've built him a house and giv­en him a good wife, and he's got an in­come and clothes fit for a king. There was I, field-​keep­er for twen­ty years, and all I got was the rheuma­tism.”

“Yes, he's very lucky,” said Go­dain, “he owns prop­er­ty--”

“And we go with­out, like the fools that we are,” said Vau­doy­er. “Come, let's be off and find out what's go­ing on at Conch­es; they are not so pa­tient over there as we are.”

“Come on,” said Laroche, who was none too steady on his legs. “If I don't ex­ter­mi­nate one of two of those fel­lows may I lose my name.”

“You!” said Ton­sard, “you'd let them put the whole dis­trict in prison; but I--if they dare to touch my old moth­er, there's my gun and it nev­er miss­es.”

“Well,” said Laroche to Vau­doy­er, “I tell you that if they make a sin­gle pris­on­er at Conch­es one gen­darme shall fall.”

“He has said it, old Laroche!” cried Courte­cuisse.

“He has said it,” re­marked Vau­doy­er, “but he hasn't done it, and he won't do it. What good would it do to get your­self guil­lotined for some gen­darme or oth­er? No, if you kill, I say, kill Michaud.”

Dur­ing this scene Cather­ine Ton­sard stood sen­tinel at the door to warn the drinkers to keep silent if any one passed. In spite of their half-​drunk­en legs they sprang rather than walked out of the tav­ern, and their bel­li­cose tem­per start­ed them at a good pace on the road to Conch­es, which led for over a mile along the park wall of Les Aigues.

Conch­es was a true Bur­gun­di­an vil­lage, with one street, which was crossed by the main road. The hous­es were built ei­ther of brick or of cob­ble­stones, and were squalid in as­pect. Fol­low­ing the mail-​road from Ville-​aux-​Fayes, the vil­lage was seen from the rear and there it pre­sent­ed rather a pic­turesque ef­fect. Be­tween the road and the Ron­querolles woods, which con­tin­ued those of Les Aigues and crowned the heights, flowed a lit­tle riv­er, and sev­er­al hous­es, rather pret­ti­ly grouped, en­livened the scene. The church and the par­son­age stood alone and were seen from the park of Les Aigues, which came near­ly up to them. In front of the church was a square bor­dered by trees, where the con­spir­ators of the Grand-​I-​Vert saw the gen­darmerie and has­tened their al­ready hasty steps. Just then three men on horse­back rode rapid­ly out of the park of Les Aigues and the peas­ants at once rec­og­nized the gen­er­al, his groom, and Michaud the bailiff, who came at a gal­lop in­to the square. Ton­sard and his par­ty ar­rived a minute or two af­ter them. The delin­quents, men and wom­en, had made no re­sis­tance, and were stand­ing be­tween five of the Soulanges gen­darmes and fif­teen of those from Ville-​aux-​Fayes. The whole vil­lage had as­sem­bled. The fa­thers, moth­ers, and chil­dren of the pris­on­ers were go­ing and com­ing and bring­ing them what they might want in prison. It was a cu­ri­ous scene, that of a pop­ula­tion one and all ex­as­per­at­ed, but near­ly all silent, as though they had made up their minds to a course of ac­tion. The old wom­en and the young ones alone spoke. The chil­dren, boys and girls, were perched on piles of wood and heaps of stones to get a bet­ter sight of what was hap­pen­ing.

“They have cho­sen their time, those hus­sars of the guil­lo­tine,” said one old wom­an; “they are mak­ing a fete of it.”

“Are you go­ing to let 'em car­ry of your man like that? How shall you man­age to live for three months?--the best of the year, too, when he could earn so much.”

“It's they who rob us,” replied the wom­an, look­ing at the gen­darmes with a threat­en­ing air.

“What do you mean by that, old wom­an?” said the sergeant. “If you in­sult us it won't take long to set­tle you.”

“I meant noth­ing,” said the old wom­an, in a hum­ble and piteous tone.

“I heard you say some­thing just now you may have cause to re­pent of.”

“Come, come, be calm, all of you,” said the may­or of Conch­es, who was al­so the post­mas­ter. “What the dev­il is the use of talk­ing? These men, as you know very well, are un­der or­ders and must obey.”

“That's true; it's the own­er of Les Aigues who per­se­cutes us-- But pa­tience!”

Just then the gen­er­al rode in­to the square and his ar­rival caused a few groans which did not trou­ble him in the least. He rode straight up to the lieu­tenant in com­mand, and af­ter say­ing a few words gave him a pa­per; the of­fi­cer then turned to his men and said: “Re­lease your pris­on­ers; the gen­er­al has ob­tained their par­don.”

Gen­er­al Mont­cor­net was then speak­ing to the may­or; af­ter a few mo­ments' con­ver­sa­tion in a low tone, the lat­ter, ad­dress­ing the delin­quents, who ex­pect­ed to sleep in prison and were a good deal sur­prised to find them­selves free, said to them:--

“My friends, thank Mon­sieur le comte. You owe your re­lease to him. He went to Paris and ob­tained your par­don in hon­or of the an­niver­sary of the king's restora­tion. I hope that in fu­ture you will con­duct your­self prop­er­ly to a man who has be­haved so well to you, and that you will in fu­ture re­spect his prop­er­ty. Long live the King!”

The peas­ants shout­ed “Long live the King!” with en­thu­si­asm, to avoid shout­ing, “Hur­rah for the Comte de Mont­cor­net!”

The scene was a bit of pol­icy ar­ranged be­tween the gen­er­al, the pre­fect, and the at­tor­ney-​gen­er­al; for they were all anx­ious, while show­ing enough firm­ness to keep the lo­cal au­thor­ities up to their du­ty and awe the coun­try-​peo­ple, to be as gen­tle as pos­si­ble, ful­ly re­al­iz­ing as they did the dif­fi­cul­ties of the ques­tion. In fact, if re­sis­tance had oc­curred, the gov­ern­ment would have been in a tight place. As Laroche tru­ly said, they could not guil­lo­tine or even con­vict a whole com­mu­ni­ty.

The gen­er­al in­vit­ed the may­or of Conch­es, the lieu­tenant, and the sergeant to break­fast. The con­spir­ators of the Grand-​I-​Vert ad­journed to the tav­ern of Conch­es, where the delin­quents spent in drink the mon­ey their re­la­tions had giv­en them to take to prison, shar­ing it with the Blangy peo­ple, who were nat­ural­ly part of the wed­ding,--the word “wed­ding” be­ing ap­plied in­dis­crim­inate­ly in Bur­gundy to all such re­joic­ings. To drink, quar­rel, fight, eat and go home drunk and sick, --that is a wed­ding to these peas­ants.

The gen­er­al, who had come by the park, took his guests back through the for­est that they might see for them­selves the in­jury done to the tim­ber, and so judge of the im­por­tance of the ques­tion.

Just as Rigou and Soudry were on their way back to Blangy, the count and count­ess, Emile Blon­det, the lieu­tenant of gen­darmerie, the sergeant, and the may­or of Conch­es were fin­ish­ing their break­fast in the splen­did din­ing-​room where Bouret's lux­ury had left the de­light­ful traces al­ready de­scribed by Blon­det in his let­ter to Nathan.

“It would be a ter­ri­ble pity to aban­don this beau­ti­ful home,” said the lieu­tenant, who had nev­er be­fore been at Les Aigues, and who was glanc­ing over a glass of cham­pagne at the cir­cling nymphs that sup­port­ed the ceil­ing.

“We in­tend to de­fend it to the death,” said Blon­det.

“If I say that,” con­tin­ued the lieu­tenant, look­ing at his sergeant as if to en­join si­lence, “it is be­cause the gen­er­al's en­emies are not on­ly among the peas­antry--”

The wor­thy man was quite moved by the ex­cel­lence of the break­fast, the mag­nif­icence of the sil­ver ser­vice, the im­pe­ri­al lux­ury that sur­round­ed him, and Blon­det's clever talk ex­cit­ed him as much as the cham­pagne he had im­bibed.

“En­emies! have I en­emies?” said the gen­er­al, sur­prised.

“He, so kind!” added the count­ess.

“But you are on bad terms with our may­or, Mon­sieur Gaubertin,” said the lieu­tenant. “It would be wise, for the sake of the fu­ture, to be rec­on­ciled with him.”

“With him!” cried the count. “Then you don't know that he was my for­mer stew­ard, and a swindler!”

“A swindler no longer,” said the lieu­tenant, “for he is may­or of Ville-​aux-​Fayes.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed Blon­det, “the lieu­tenant's wit is keen; ev­ident­ly a may­or is es­sen­tial­ly an hon­est man.”

The lieu­tenant, con­vinced by the count's words that it was use­less to at­tempt to en­light­en him, said no more on that sub­ject, and the con­ver­sa­tion changed.

CHAP­TER VI

THE FOR­EST AND THE HAR­VEST

The scene at Conch­es had, ap­par­ent­ly, a good ef­fect on the peas­antry; on the oth­er hand, the count's faith­ful keep­ers were more than ev­er watch­ful that on­ly dead wood should be gath­ered in the for­est of Les Aigues. But for the last twen­ty years the woods had been so thor­ough­ly cleared out that very lit­tle else than live wood was now there; and this the peas­antry set about killing, in prepa­ra­tion for win­ter, by a sim­ple pro­cess, the re­sults of which could on­ly be dis­cov­ered in the course of time. Ton­sard's moth­er went dai­ly in­to the for­est; the keep­ers saw her en­ter; knew where she would come out; watched for her and made her open her bun­dle, where, to be sure, were on­ly fall­en branch­es, dried chips, and bro­ken and with­ered twigs. The old wom­an would whine and com­plain at the dis­tance she had to go at her age to gath­er such a mis­er­able bunch of fagots. But she did not tell that she had been in the thick­est part of the wood and had re­moved the earth at the base of cer­tain young trees, round which she had then cut off a ring of bark, re­plac­ing the earth, moss, and dead leaves just as they were be­fore she touched them. It was im­pos­si­ble that any one could dis­cov­er this an­nu­lar in­ci­sion, made, not like a cut, but more like the rip­ping or gnaw­ing of an­imals or those de­struc­tive in­sects called in dif­fer­ent re­gions bor­ers, or turks, or white worms, which are the first stage of cockchafers. These de­struc­tive pests are fond of the bark of trees; they get be­tween the bark and the sap-​wood and eat their way round. If the tree is large enough for the in­sect to pass in­to its sec­ond state (of lar­vae, in which it re­mains dor­mant un­til its sec­ond meta­mor­phose) be­fore it has gone round the trunk, the tree lives, be­cause so long as even a small bit of the sap-​wood re­mains cov­ered by the bark, the tree will still grow and re­cov­er it­self. To re­al­ize to what a de­gree en­to­mol­ogy af­fects agri­cul­ture, hor­ti­cul­ture, and all earth prod­ucts, we must know that nat­ural­ists like La­treille, the Comte De­jean, Klugg of Berlin, Gene of Turin, etc., find that the vast ma­jor­ity of all known in­sects live at the sac­ri­fice of veg­eta­tion; that the coleoptera (a cat­alogue of which has late­ly been pub­lished by Mon­sieur De­jean) have twen­ty-​sev­en thou­sand species, and that, in spite of the most earnest re­search on the part of en­to­mol­ogists of all coun­tries, there is an enor­mous num­ber of species of whom they can­not trace the triple trans­for­ma­tions which be­long to all in­sects; that there is, in short, not on­ly a spe­cial in­sect to ev­ery plant, but that all ter­res­tri­al prod­ucts, how­ev­er much they may be ma­nip­ulat­ed by hu­man in­dus­try, have their par­tic­ular par­asite. Thus flax, af­ter cov­er­ing the hu­man body and hang­ing the hu­man be­ing, af­ter roam­ing the world on the back of an army, be­comes writ­ing-​pa­per; and those who write or who read are fa­mil­iar with the habits and morals of an in­sect called the “pa­per-​louse,” an in­sect of re­al­ly mar­vel­lous celer­ity and be­hav­ior; it un­der­goes its mys­te­ri­ous trans­for­ma­tions in a ream of white pa­per which you have care­ful­ly put away; you see it glid­ing and frisk­ing along in its shin­ing robe, that looks like isin­glass or mi­ca,--tru­ly a lit­tle fish of an­oth­er el­ement.

The bor­er is the de­spair of the land-​own­er; he works un­der­ground; no Si­cil­ian ves­pers for him un­til he be­comes a cockchafer! If the pop­ula­tions on­ly re­al­ized with what un­told dis­as­ters they are threat­ened in case they let the cockchafers and the cater­pil­lars get the up­per hand, they would pay more at­ten­tion than they do to mu­nic­ipal reg­ula­tions.

Hol­land came near per­ish­ing; its dikes were un­der­mined by the tere­do, and sci­ence is un­able to dis­cov­er the in­sect from which that mol­lusk de­rives, just as sci­ence still re­mains ig­no­rant of the meta­mor­phoses of the cochineal. The er­got, or spur, of rye is ap­par­ent­ly a pop­ula­tion of in­sects where the ge­nius of sci­ence has been able, so far, to dis­cov­er on­ly one slight move­ment. Thus, while await­ing the har­vest and glean­ing, fifty old wom­en im­itat­ed the bor­er at the feet of five or six hun­dred trees which were fat­ed to be­come skele­tons and to put forth no more leaves in the spring. They were care­ful­ly cho­sen in the least ac­ces­si­ble places, so that the sur­round­ing branch­es con­cealed them.

Who con­veyed the se­cret in­for­ma­tion by which this was done? No one. Courte­cuisse hap­pened to com­plain in Ton­sard's tav­ern of hav­ing found a tree wilt­ing in his gar­den; it seemed he said, to have a dis­ease, and he sus­pect­ed a bor­er; for he, Courte­cuisse, knew what bor­ers were, and if they once cir­cled a tree just be­low the ground, the tree died. There­upon he ex­plained the pro­cess. The old wom­en at once set to work at the same de­struc­tion, with the mys­tery and clev­er­ness of gnomes; and their ef­forts were dou­bled by the rules now en­forced by the may­or of Blangy and nec­es­sar­ily fol­lowed by the may­ors of the ad­join­ing dis­tricts.

The great land-​own­ers of the de­part­ment ap­plaud­ed Gen­er­al de Mont­cor­net's course; and the pre­fect in his pri­vate draw­ing-​room de­clared that if, in­stead of liv­ing in Paris, oth­er land-​own­ers would come and live on their es­tates and fol­low such a course to­geth­er, a so­lu­tion of the dif­fi­cul­ty could be ob­tained; for cer­tain mea­sures, added the pre­fect, ought to be tak­en, and tak­en in con­cert, mod­ified by bene­fac­tions and by an en­light­ened phi­lan­thropy, such as ev­ery one could see ac­tu­at­ed in Gen­er­al Mont­cor­net.

The gen­er­al and his wife, as­sist­ed by the abbe, tried the ef­fects of such benev­olence. They stud­ied the sub­ject, and en­deav­ored to show by in­con­testable re­sults to those who pil­laged them that more mon­ey could be made by le­git­imate toil. They sup­plied flax and paid for the spin­ning; the count­ess had the thread wo­ven in­to linen suit­able for tow­els, aprons, and coarse nap­kins for kitchen use, and for un­der­cloth­ing for the very poor. The gen­er­al be­gan im­prove­ments which need­ed many la­bor­ers, and he em­ployed none but those in the ad­join­ing dis­tricts. Sibilet was in charge of the works and the Abbe Bros­sette gave the count­ess lists of the most needy, and of­ten brought them to her him­self. Madame de Mont­cor­net at­tend­ed to these mat­ters per­son­al­ly in the great an­techam­ber which opened up­on the por­ti­co. It was a beau­ti­ful wait­ing-​room, floored with squares of white and red mar­ble, warmed by a porce­lain stove, and fur­nished with bench­es cov­ered with red plush.

It was there that one morn­ing, just be­fore har­vest, old Moth­er Ton­sard brought her grand­daugh­ter Cather­ine, who had to make, she said, a dread­ful con­fes­sion,--dread­ful for the hon­or of a poor but hon­est fam­ily. While the old wom­an ad­dressed the count­ess Cather­ine stood in an at­ti­tude of con­scious guilt. Then she re­lat­ed on her own ac­count the un­for­tu­nate “sit­ua­tion” in which she was placed, which she had con­fid­ed to none but her grand­moth­er; for her moth­er, she knew, would turn her out, and her fa­ther, an hon­or­able man, might kill her. If she on­ly had a thou­sand francs she could be mar­ried to a poor la­bor­er named Go­dain, who _knew all_, and who loved her like a broth­er; he could buy a poor bit of ground and build a cot­tage if she had that sum. It was very touch­ing. The count­ess promised the mon­ey; re­solv­ing to de­vote the price of some fan­cy to this mar­riage. The hap­py mar­riages of Michaud and Groi­son en­cour­aged her. Be­sides, such a wed­ding would be a good ex­am­ple to the peo­ple of the neigh­bor­hood and stim­ulate to vir­tu­ous con­duct. The mar­riage of Cather­ine Ton­sard and Go­dain was ac­cord­ing­ly ar­ranged by means of the count­ess's thou­sand francs.

An­oth­er time a hor­ri­ble old wom­an, Moth­er Bon­nebault, who lived in a hut be­tween the gate of Conch­es and the vil­lage, brought back a great bun­dle of skeins of linen thread.

“Madame la comtesse has done won­ders,” said the abbe, full of hope as to the moral progress of his sav­ages. “That old wom­an did im­mense dam­age to your woods, but now she has no time for it; she stays at home and spins from morn­ing till night; her time is all tak­en up and well paid for.”

Peace reigned ev­ery­where. Groi­son made very sat­is­fac­to­ry re­ports; depre­da­tions seemed to have ceased, and it is even pos­si­ble that the state of the neigh­bor­hood and the feel­ing of the in­hab­itants might re­al­ly have changed if it had not been for the re­venge­ful ea­ger­ness of Gaubertin, the ca­bals of the lead­ing so­ci­ety of Soulanges, and the in­trigues of Rigou, who one and all, with “the af­fair” in view, blew the em­bers of ha­tred and crime in the hearts of the peas­antry of the val­ley des Aigues.

The keep­ers still com­plained of find­ing a great many branch­es cut with shears in the deep­er parts of the wood and left to dry, ev­ident­ly as a pro­vi­sion for win­ter. They watched for the delin­quents with­out ev­er be­ing able to catch them. The count, as­sist­ed by Groi­son, had giv­en cer­tifi­cates of pau­perism to on­ly thir­ty or forty of the re­al poor of the dis­trict; but the oth­er two may­ors had been less strict. The more clement the count showed him­self in the af­fair at Conch­es the more de­ter­mined he was to en­force the laws about glean­ing, which had now de­gen­er­at­ed in­to theft. He did not in­ter­fere with the man­age­ment of three of his farms which were leased to ten­ants, nor with those whose ten­ants worked for his prof­it, of which he had a num­ber; but he man­aged six farms him­self, each of about two hun­dred acres, and he now pub­lished a no­tice that it was for­bid­den, un­der pain of be­ing ar­rest­ed and made to pay the fine im­posed by the courts, to en­ter those fields be­fore the crop was car­ried away. The or­der con­cerned on­ly his own im­me­di­ate prop­er­ty. Rigou, who knew the coun­try well, had let his farm-​lands in por­tions and on short leas­es to men who knew how to get in their own crops, and who paid him in grain; there­fore glean­ing did not af­fect him. The oth­er pro­pri­etors were peas­ants, and no ne­far­ious glean­ing was at­tempt­ed on their land.

When the har­vest be­gan the count went him­self to Michaud to see how things were go­ing on. Groi­son, who ad­vised him to do this, was to be present him­self at the glean­ing of each par­tic­ular field. The in­hab­itants of cities can have no idea what glean­ing is to the in­hab­itants of the coun­try; the pas­sion of these sons of the soil for it seems in­ex­pli­ca­ble; there are wom­en who will give up well-​paid em­ploy­ments to glean. The wheat they pick up seems to them sweet­er than any oth­er; and the pro­vi­sion they thus make for their chief and most sub­stan­tial food has to them an ex­traor­di­nary at­trac­tion. Moth­ers take their babes and their lit­tle girls and boys; the fee­blest old men drag them­selves in­to the wheat-​fields; and even those who own prop­er­ty are pau­pers for the nonce. All glean­ers ap­pear in rags.

The count and Michaud were present on horse­back when the first tat­tered batch en­tered the first fields from which the wheat had been car­ried. It was ten o'clock in the morn­ing. Au­gust had been a hot month, the sky was cloud­less, blue as a peri­win­kle; the earth was baked, the wheat flamed, the har­vest­men worked with their faces scorched by the re­flec­tion of the sun-​rays on the hard and arid earth. All were silent, their shirts wet with per­spi­ra­tion; while from time to time, they slaked their thirst with wa­ter from round, earth­en­ware jugs, fur­nished with two han­dles and a mouth-​piece stop­pered with a wil­low stick.

At the fa­ther end of the stub­ble-​field stood the carts which con­tained the sheaves, and near them a group of at least a hun­dred be­ings who far ex­ceed­ed the hideous con­cep­tions of Muril­lo and Te­niers, the bold­est painters of such scenes, or of Cal­lot, that po­et of the fan­tas­tic in pover­ty. The pic­tured bronze legs, the bare heads, the ragged gar­ments so cu­ri­ous­ly fad­ed, so damp with grease, so darned and spot­ted and dis­col­ored, in short, the painters' ide­al of the ma­te­ri­al of ab­ject pover­ty was far sur­passed by this scene; while the ex­pres­sion on those faces, greedy, anx­ious, doltish, id­iot­ic, sav­age, showed the ev­er­last­ing ad­van­tage which na­ture pos­sess­es over art by its com­par­ison with the im­mor­tal com­po­si­tions of those princes of col­or. There were old wom­en with necks like turkeys, and hair­less, scar­let eye­lids, who stretched their heads for­ward like set­ters be­fore a par­tridge; there were chil­dren, silent as sol­diers un­der arms, lit­tle girls who stamped like an­imals wait­ing for their food; the na­tures of child­hood and old age were crushed be­neath the fierce­ness of a sav­age greed,--greed for the prop­er­ty of oth­ers now their own by long abuse. All eyes were sav­age, all ges­tures men­ac­ing; but ev­ery one kept si­lence in pres­ence of the count, the field-​keep­er, and the bailiff. At this mo­ment all class­es were rep­re­sent­ed,--the great land-​own­ers, the farm­ers, the work­ing men, the pau­pers; the so­cial ques­tion was de­fined to the eye; hunger had con­voked the ac­tors in the scene. The sun threw in­to re­lief the hard and hol­low fea­tures of those faces; it burned the bare feet dusty with the soil; chil­dren were present with no cloth­ing but a torn blouse, their blond hair tan­gled with straw and chips; some wom­en brought their babes just able to walk, and left them rolling in the fur­rows.

The gloomy scene was har­row­ing to the old sol­dier, whose heart was kind, and he said to Michaud: “It pains me to see it. One must know the im­por­tance of these mea­sures to be able to in­sist up­on them.”

“If ev­ery land-​own­er fol­lowed your ex­am­ple, lived on his prop­er­ty, and did the good that you and yours are do­ing, gen­er­al, there would be, I won't say no poor, for they are al­ways with us, but no poor man who could not live by his la­bor.”

“The may­ors of Conch­es, Cerneux, and Soulanges have sent us all their pau­pers,” said Groi­son, who had now looked at the cer­tifi­cates; “they had no right to do so.”

“No, but our peo­ple will go to their dis­tricts,” said the gen­er­al. “For the time be­ing we have done enough by pre­vent­ing the glean­ing be­fore the sheaves were tak­en away; we had bet­ter go step by step,” he added, turn­ing to leave the field.

“Did you hear him?” said Moth­er Ton­sard to the old Bon­nebault wom­an, for the gen­er­al's last words were said in a rather loud­er tone than the rest, and reached the ears of the two old wom­en who were post­ed in the road which led be­side the field.

“Yes, yes! we haven't got to the end yet,--a tooth to-​day and to-​mor­row an ear; if they could find a sauce for our liv­ers they'd eat 'em as they do a calf's!” said old Bon­nebault, whose threat­en­ing face was turned in pro­file to the gen­er­al as he passed her, though in the twin­kling of an eye she changed its ex­pres­sion to one of hyp­ocrit­ical soft­ness and sub­mis­sion as she has­tened to make him a pro­found curt­sey.

“So you are glean­ing, are you, though my wife helps you to earn so much mon­ey?”

“Hey! my dear gen­tle­man, may God pre­serve you in good health! but, don't you see, my grand­son squan­ders all I earn, and I'm forced to scratch up a lit­tle wheat to get bread in the win­ter,--yes, yes, I glean just a bit; it all helps.”

The glean­ing proved of lit­tle prof­it to the glean­ers. The farm­ers and ten­ant-​farm­ers, find­ing them­selves backed up, took care that their wheat was well reaped, and su­per­in­tend­ed the mak­ing of the sheaves and their safe re­moval, so that lit­tle or none of the pil­lage of for­mer years could take place.

Ac­cus­tomed to get a good pro­por­tion of wheat in their glean­ing, the false as well as the true poor, for­get­ting the count's par­don at Conch­es, now felt a deep but silent anger against him, which was ag­gra­vat­ed by the Ton­sards, Courte­cuisse, Bon­nebault, Laroche, Vau­doy­er, Go­dain, and their ad­her­ents. Mat­ters went worse still af­ter the vin­tage; for the gath­er­ing of the refuse grape was not al­lowed un­til Sibilet had ex­am­ined the vines with ex­treme care. This last re­stric­tion ex­as­per­at­ed these sons of the soil to the high­est pitch; but when so great a so­cial dis­tance sep­arates the an­gered class from the threat­ened class, words and threats are lost; noth­ing comes to the sur­face or is per­ceived but facts; mean­time the mal­con­tents work un­der­ground like moles.

The fair of Soulanges took place as usu­al quite peace­ful­ly, ex­cept for cer­tain jar­rings be­tween the lead­ing so­ci­ety and the sec­ond-​class so­ci­ety of Soulanges, brought about by the despo­tism of the queen, who could not tol­er­ate the em­pire found­ed and es­tab­lished over the heart of the bril­liant Lupin by the beau­ti­ful Eu­phemie Plis­soud, for she her­self laid per­ma­nent claim to his fick­le fer­vors.

The count and count­ess did not ap­pear at the fair nor at the Tivoli fete; and that, again, was count­ed a wrong by the Soudrys, the Gaubertins, and their ad­her­ents; it was pride, it was dis­dain, said the Soudry sa­lon. Dur­ing this time the count­ess was fill­ing the void caused by Emile's re­turn to Paris with the im­mense in­ter­est and plea­sure all fine souls take in the good they are do­ing, or think they do; and the count, for his part, ap­plied him­self no less zeal­ous­ly to changes and ame­lio­ra­tions in the man­age­ment of his es­tate, which he ex­pect­ed and be­lieved would mod­ify and ben­efit the con­di­tion of the peo­ple and hence their char­ac­ters. Madame de Mont­cor­net, as­sist­ed by the ad­vice and ex­pe­ri­ence of the Abbe Bros­sette, came, lit­tle by lit­tle, to have a thor­ough and sta­tis­ti­cal knowl­edge of all the poor fam­ilies of the dis­trict, their re­spec­tive con­di­tion, their wants, their means of sub­sis­tence, and the sort of help she must give to each to ob­tain work so as not to make them lazy or idle.

The count­ess had placed Genevieve Nis­eron, La Pechi­na, in a con­vent at Aux­erre, un­der pre­text of hav­ing her taught to sew that she might em­ploy her in her own house, but re­al­ly to save her from the shame­ful at­tempts of Nico­las Ton­sard, whom Rigou had man­aged to save from the con­scrip­tion. The count­ess al­so be­lieved that a re­li­gious ed­uca­tion, the clois­ter, and monas­tic su­per­vi­sion, would sub­due the ar­dent pas­sions of the pre­co­cious lit­tle girl, whose Mon­tene­grin blood seemed to her like a threat­en­ing flame which might one day set fire to the do­mes­tic hap­pi­ness of her faith­ful Olympe.

So all was at peace at the chateau des Aigues. The count, mis­led by Sibilet, re­as­sured by Michaud, con­grat­ulat­ed him­self on his firm­ness, and thanked his wife for hav­ing con­tribut­ed by her benev­olence to the im­mense com­fort of their tran­quil­li­ty. The ques­tion of the sale of his tim­ber was laid aside till he should go to Paris and ar­range with the deal­ers. He had not the slight­est no­tion of how to do busi­ness, and he was in to­tal ig­no­rance of the pow­er wield­ed by Gaubertin over the cur­rent of the Yonne,--the main line of con­veyance which sup­plied the tim­ber of the Paris mar­ket.

CHAP­TER VII

THE GREY­HOUND

To­wards the mid­dle of Septem­ber Emile Blon­det, who had gone to Paris to pub­lish a book, re­turned to re­fresh him­self at Les Aigues and to think over the work he was plan­ning for the win­ter. At Les Aigues, the lov­ing and sin­cere qual­ities which suc­ceed ado­les­cence in a young man's soul reap­peared in the used-​up jour­nal­ist.

“What a fine soul!” was the com­ment of the count and the count­ess when they spoke of him.

Men who are ac­cus­tomed to move among the abysses of so­cial na­ture, to un­der­stand all and to re­press noth­ing, make them­selves an oa­sis in the heart, where they for­get their per­ver­si­ties and those of oth­ers; they be­come with­in that nar­row and sa­cred cir­cle,--saints; there, they pos­sess the del­ica­cy of wom­en, they give them­selves up to a mo­men­tary re­al­iza­tion of their ide­al, they be­come an­gel­ic for some one be­ing who adores them, and they are not play­ing com­edy; they join their soul to in­no­cence, so to speak; they feel the need to brush off the mud, to heal their sores, to bathe their wounds. At Les Aigues Emile Blon­det was with­out bit­ter­ness, with­out sar­casm, al­most with­out wit; he made no epi­grams, he was gen­tle as a lamb, and pla­ton­ical­ly ten­der.

“He is such a good young fel­low that I miss him ter­ri­bly when he is not here,” said the gen­er­al. “I do wish he could make a for­tune and not lead that Paris life of his.”

Nev­er did the glo­ri­ous land­scape and park of Les Aigues seem as lux­uri­ant­ly beau­ti­ful as it did just then. The first au­tumn days were be­gin­ning, when the earth, lan­guid from her pro­cre­ations and de­liv­ered of her prod­ucts, ex­hales the de­light­ful odors of veg­eta­tion. At this time the woods, es­pe­cial­ly, are de­li­cious; they be­gin to take the rus­set warmth of Si­en­na earth, and the green-​bronze tones which form the love­ly tapestry be­neath which they hide from the cold of win­ter.

Na­ture, hav­ing shown her­self in spring­time jaun­ty and joy­ous as a brunette glow­ing with hope, be­comes in au­tumn sad and gen­tle as a blonde full of pen­sive mem­ories; the turf yel­lows, the last flow­ers un­fold their pale corol­las, the white-​eyed daisies are few­er in the grass, on­ly their crim­son cal­ices are seen. Yel­lows abound; the shady places are lighter for lack of leafage, but dark­er in tone; the sun, al­ready oblique, slides its furtive or­ange rays athwart them, leav­ing long lu­mi­nous traces which rapid­ly dis­ap­pear, like the train of a wom­an's gown as she bids adieu.

On the morn­ing of the sec­ond day af­ter his ar­rival, Emile was at a win­dow of his bed­room, which opened up­on a ter­race with a balustrade from which a no­ble view could be seen. This bal­cony ran the whole length of the apart­ments of the count­ess, on the side of the chateau to­wards the forests and the Blangy land­scape. The pond, which would have been called a lake were Les Aigues near­er Paris, was part­ly in view, so was the long canal; the Sil­ver-​spring, com­ing from across the pavil­ion of the Ren­dezvous, crossed the lawn with its shee­ny rib­bon, re­flect­ing the yel­low sand.

Be­yond the park, be­tween the vil­lage and the walls, lay the cul­ti­vat­ed parts of Blangy,--mead­ows where the cows were graz­ing, small prop­er­ties sur­round­ed by hedges, filled with fruit of all kinds, nut and ap­ple trees. By way of frame, the heights on which the no­ble for­est-​trees were ranged, tier above tier, closed in the scene. The count­ess had come out in her slip­pers to look at the flow­ers in her bal­cony, which were send­ing up their morn­ing fra­grance; she wore a cam­bric dress­ing-​gown, be­neath which the rosy tints of her white shoul­ders could be seen; a co­quet­tish lit­tle cap was placed in a be­witch­ing man­ner on her hair, which es­caped it reck­less­ly; her lit­tle feet showed their warm flesh col­or through the trans­par­ent stock­ings; the cam­bric gown, un­con­fined at the waist, float­ed open as the breeze took it, and showed an em­broi­dered pet­ti­coat.

“Oh! are you there?” she said.

“Yes.”

“What are you look­ing at?”

“A pret­ty ques­tion! You have torn me from the con­tem­pla­tion of Na­ture. Tell me, count­ess, will you go for a walk in the woods this morn­ing be­fore break­fast?”

“What an idea! You know I have a hor­ror of walk­ing.”

“We will on­ly walk a lit­tle way; I'll drive you in the tilbury and take Joseph to hold the hors­es. You have nev­er once set foot in your for­est; and I have just no­ticed some­thing very cu­ri­ous, a phe­nomenon; there are spots where the tree-​tops are the col­or of Flo­ren­tine bronze, the leaves are dried--”

“Well, I'll dress.”

“Oh, if you do, we can't get off for two hours. Take a shawl, put on a bon­net, and boots; that's all you want. I shall tell them to har­ness.”

“You al­ways make me do what you want; I'll be ready in a minute.”

“Gen­er­al,” said Blon­det, wak­ing the count, who grum­bled and turned over, like a man who wants his morn­ing sleep. “We are go­ing for a drive; won't you come?”

A quar­ter of an hour lat­er the tilbury was slow­ly rolling along the park av­enue, fol­lowed by a liv­er­ied groom on horse­back.

The morn­ing was a Septem­ber morn­ing. The dark blue of the sky burst forth here and there from the gray of the clouds, which seemed the sky it­self, the ether seem­ing to be the ac­ces­so­ry; long lines of ul­tra­ma­rine lay up­on the hori­zon, but in stra­ta, which al­ter­nat­ed with oth­er lines like sand-​bars; these tones changed and grew green at the lev­el of the forests. The earth be­neath this over­hang­ing man­tle was moistly warm, like a wom­an when she ris­es; it ex­haled sweet, lus­cious odors, which yet were wild, not civ­ilized,--the scent of cul­ti­va­tion was added to the scents of the woods. Just then the An­gelus was ring­ing at Blangy, and the sounds of the bell, min­gling with the wild con­cert of the for­est, gave har­mo­ny to the si­lence. Here and there were ris­ing va­pors, white, di­aphanous.

See­ing these love­ly prepa­ra­tions of Na­ture, the fan­cy had seized Olympe Michaud to ac­com­pa­ny her hus­band, who had to give an or­der to a keep­er whose house was not far off. The Soulanges doc­tor ad­vised her to walk as long as she could do so with­out fa­tigue; she was afraid of the mid­day heat and went out on­ly in the ear­ly morn­ing or evening. Michaud now took her with him, and they were fol­lowed by the dog he loved best,--a hand­some grey­hound, mouse-​col­ored with white spots, greedy, like all grey­hounds, and as full of vices as most an­imals who know they are loved and pet­ted.

So, then the tilbury reached the pavil­ion of the Ren­dezvous, the count­ess, who stopped to ask how Madame Michaud felt, was told she had gone in­to the for­est with her hus­band.

“Such weath­er in­spires ev­ery­body,” said Blon­det, turn­ing his horse at haz­ard in­to one of the six av­enues of the for­est; “Joseph, you know the woods, don't you?”

“Yes, mon­sieur.”

And away they went. The av­enue they took hap­pened to be one of the most de­light­ful in the for­est; it soon turned and grew nar­row­er, and present­ly be­came a wind­ing way, on which the sun­shine flick­ered through rifts in the leafy roof, and where the breeze brought odors of laven­der, and thyme, and the wild mint, and that of falling leaves, which sighed as they fell. Dew-​drops on the trees and on the grass were scat­tered like seeds by the pass­ing of the light car­riage; the oc­cu­pants as they rolled along caught glimpses of the mys­te­ri­ous vi­sions of the woods,--those cool depths, where the ver­dure is moist and dark, where the light soft­ens as it fades; those white-​birch glades o'er­topped by some cen­ten­ni­al tree, the Her­cules of the for­est; those glo­ri­ous as­sem­blages of knot­ted, mossy trunks, whitened and fur­rowed, and the banks of del­icate wild plants and frag­ile flow­ers which grow be­tween a wood­land road and the for­est. The brooks sang. Tru­ly there is a name­less plea­sure in driv­ing a wom­an along the ups and downs of a slip­pery way car­pet­ed with moss, where she pre­tends to be afraid or re­al­ly is so, and you are con­scious that she is draw­ing clos­er to you, let­ting you feel, vol­un­tar­ily or in­vol­un­tar­ily, the cool mois­ture of her arm, the weight of her round, white shoul­der, though she mere­ly smiles when told that she hin­ders you in driv­ing. The horse seems to know the se­cret of these in­ter­rup­tions, and he looks about him from right to left.

It was a new sight to the count­ess; this na­ture so vig­or­ous in its ef­fects, so lit­tle seen and yet so grand, threw her in­to a lan­guid revery; she leaned back in the tilbury and yield­ed her­self up to the plea­sure of be­ing there with Emile; her eyes were charmed, her heart spoke, she an­swered to the in­ward voice that har­mo­nized with hers. He, too, glanced at her furtive­ly; he en­joyed that dreamy med­ita­tion, while the rib­bons of the bon­net float­ed on the morn­ing breeze with the silky curls of the gold­en hair. In con­se­quence of go­ing they knew not where, they present­ly came to a locked gate, of which they had not the key. Joseph was called up, but nei­ther had he a key.

“Nev­er mind, let us walk; Joseph can take care of the tilbury; we shall eas­ily find it again.”

Emile and the count­ess plunged in­to the for­est, and soon reached a small in­te­ri­or cleared space, such as is of­ten met with in the woods. Twen­ty years ear­li­er the char­coal-​burn­ers had made it their kiln, and the place still re­mained open, quite a large cir­cum­fer­ence hav­ing been burned over. But dur­ing those twen­ty years Na­ture had made her­self a gar­den of flow­ers, a bloom­ing “parterre” for her own en­joy­ment, just as an artist gives him­self the de­light of paint­ing a pic­ture for his own hap­pi­ness. The en­chant­ing spot was sur­round­ed by fine trees, whose tops hung over like vast fringes and made a dais above this flow­ery couch where slept the god­dess. The char­coal-​burn­ers had fol­lowed a path to a pond, al­ways full of wa­ter. The path is there still; it in­vites you to step in­to it by a turn full of mys­tery; then sud­den­ly it stops short and you come up­on a bank where a thou­sand roots run down to the wa­ter and make a sort of can­vas in the air. This hid­den pond has a nar­row grassy edge, where a few wil­lows and poplars lend their fick­le shade to a bank of turf which some lazy or pen­sive char­coal-​burn­er must have made for his en­joy­ment. The frogs hop about, the teal bathe in the pond, the wa­ter-​fowl come and go, a hare starts; you are the mas­ter of this de­li­cious bath, dec­orat­ed with iris and bul­rush­es. Above your head the trees take many at­ti­tudes; here the trunks twine down like boa-​con­stric­tors, there the beech­es stand erect as a Greek col­umn. The snails and the slugs move peace­ful­ly about. A tench shows its gills, a squir­rel looks at you; and at last, af­ter Emile and the count­ess, tired with her walk, were seat­ed, a bird, but I know not what bird it was, sang its au­tumn song, its farewell song, to which the oth­er song­sters lis­tened,--a song wel­come to love, and heard by ev­ery or­gan of the be­ing.

“What si­lence!” said the count­ess, with emo­tion and in a whis­per, as if not to trou­ble this deep peace.

They looked at the green patch­es on the wa­ter,--worlds where life was or­ga­niz­ing; they point­ed to the lizard play­ing in the sun and es­cap­ing at their ap­proach,--be­hav­ior which has won him the ti­tle of “the friend of man.” “Prov­ing, too, how well he knows him,” said Emile. They watched the frogs, who, less dis­trust­ful, re­turned to the sur­face of the pond, wink­ing their car­bun­cle eyes as they sat up­on the wa­ter-​cress­es. The sweet and sim­ple po­et­ry of Na­ture per­me­at­ed these two souls sur­feit­ed with the con­ven­tion­al things of life, and filled them with con­tem­pla­tive emo­tion. Sud­den­ly Blon­det shud­dered. Turn­ing to the count­ess he said,--

“Did you hear that?”

“What?” she asked.

“A cu­ri­ous noise.”

“Ah, you lit­er­ary men who live in your stud­ies and know noth­ing of the coun­try! that is on­ly a wood­peck­er tap­ping a tree. I dare say you don't even know the most cu­ri­ous fact in the his­to­ry of that bird. As soon as he has giv­en his tap, and he gives mil­lions to pierce an oak, he flies be­hind the tree to see if he is yet through it; and he does this ev­ery in­stant.”

“The noise I heard, dear in­struc­tress of nat­ural his­to­ry, was not a noise made by an an­imal; there was ev­idence of mind in it, and that pro­claims a man.”

The count­ess was seized with pan­ic, and she dart­ed back through the wild flow­er-​gar­den, seek­ing the path by which to leave the for­est.

“What is the mat­ter?” cried Blon­det, rush­ing af­ter her.

“I thought I saw eyes,” she said, when they re­gained the path through which they had reached the char­coal-​burn­er's open.

Just then they heard the low death-​rat­tle of a crea­ture whose throat was sud­den­ly cut, and the count­ess, with her fears re­dou­bled, fled so quick­ly that Blon­det could scarce­ly fol­low her. She ran like a will-​o'-the-​wisp, and did not lis­ten to Blon­det who called to her, “You are mis­tak­en.” On she ran, and Emile with her, till they sud­den­ly came up­on Michaud and his wife, who were walk­ing along arm-​in-​arm. Emile was pant­ing and the count­ess out of breath, and it was some time be­fore they could speak; then they ex­plained. Michaud joined Blon­det in laugh­ing at the count­ess's ter­ror; then the bailiff showed the two wan­der­ers the way to find the tilbury. When they reached the gate Madame Michaud called, “Prince!”

“Prince! Prince!” called the bailiff; then he whis­tled,--but no grey­hound.

Emile men­tioned the cu­ri­ous noise that be­gan their ad­ven­ture.

“My wife heard that noise,” said Michaud, “and I laughed at her.”

“They have killed Prince!” ex­claimed the count­ess. “I am sure of it; they killed him by cut­ting his throat at one blow. What I heard was the groan of a dy­ing an­imal.”

“The dev­il!” cried Michaud; “the mat­ter must be cleared up.”

Emile and the bailiff left the two ladies with Joseph and the hors­es, and re­turned to the wild gar­den of the open. They went down the bank to the pond; looked ev­ery­where along the slope, but found no clue. Blon­det jumped back first, and as he did so he saw, in a thick­et which stood on high­er ground, one of those trees he had no­ticed in the morn­ing with with­ered heads. He showed it to Michaud, and pro­posed to go to it. The two sprang for­ward in a straight line across the for­est, avoid­ing the trunks and go­ing round the mat­ted tan­gles of brier and hol­ly un­til they found the tree.

“It is a fine elm,” said Michaud, “but there's a worm in it,--a worm which gnaws round the bark close to the roots.”

He stopped and took up a bit of the bark, say­ing: “See how they work.”

“You have a great many worms in this for­est,” said Blon­det.

Just then Michaud no­ticed a red spot; a mo­ment more and he saw the head of his grey­hound. He sighed.

“The scoundrels!” he said. “Madame was right.”

Michaud and Blon­det ex­am­ined the body and found, just as the count­ess had said, that some one had cut the grey­hound's throat. To pre­vent his bark­ing he had been de­coyed with a bit of meat, which was still be­tween his tongue and his palate.

“Poor brute; he died of self-​in­dul­gence.”

“Like all princes,” said Blon­det.

“Some one, who­ev­er it is, has just gone, fear­ing that we might catch him or her,” said Michaud. “A se­ri­ous of­fence has been com­mit­ted. But for all that, I see no branch­es about and no lopped trees.”

Blon­det and the bailiff be­gan a cau­tious search, look­ing at each spot where they set their feet be­fore set­ting them. Present­ly Blon­det point­ed to a tree be­neath which the grass was flat­tened down and two hol­lows made.

“Some one knelt there, and it must have been a wom­an, for a man would not have left such a quan­ti­ty of flat­tened grass around the im­pres­sion of his two knees; yes, see! that is the out­line of a pet­ti­coat.”

The bailiff, af­ter ex­am­in­ing the base of the tree, found the be­gin­ning of a hole be­neath the bark; but he did not find the worm with the tough skin, shiny and squa­mous, cov­ered with brown specks, end­ing in a tail not un­like that of a cockchafer, and hav­ing al­so the lat­ter's head, an­ten­nae, and the two vig­or­ous hooks or shears with which the crea­ture cuts in­to the wood.

“My dear fel­low,” said Blon­det, “now I un­der­stand the enor­mous num­ber of _dead_ trees that I no­ticed this morn­ing from the ter­race of the chateau, and which brought me here to find out the cause of the phe­nomenon. Worms are at work; but they are no oth­er than your peas­ants.”

The bailiff gave vent to an oath and rushed off, fol­lowed by Blon­det, to re­join the count­ess, whom he re­quest­ed to take his wife home with her. Then he jumped on Joseph's horse, leav­ing the man to re­turn on foot, and dis­ap­peared with great ra­pid­ity to cut off the re­treat of the wom­an who had killed his dog, hop­ing to catch her with the bloody bill-​hook in her hand and the tool used to make the in­ci­sions in the bark of the tree.

“Let us go and tell the gen­er­al at once, be­fore he break­fasts,” cried the count­ess; “he might die of anger.”

“I'll pre­pare him,” said Blon­det.

“They have killed the dog,” said Olympe, in tears.

“You loved the poor grey­hound, dear, enough to weep for him?” said the count­ess.

“I think of Prince as a warn­ing; I fear some dan­ger to my hus­band.”

“How they have ru­ined this beau­ti­ful morn­ing for us,” said the count­ess, with an adorable lit­tle pout.

“How they have ru­ined the coun­try,” said Olympe, grave­ly.

They met the gen­er­al near the chateau.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“You shall know in a minute,” said Blon­det, mys­te­ri­ous­ly, as he helped the count­ess and Madame Michaud to alight. A mo­ment more and the two gen­tle­men were alone on the ter­race of the apart­ments.

“You have plen­ty of moral strength, gen­er­al; you won't put your­self in a pas­sion, will you?”

“No,” said the gen­er­al; “but come to the point or I shall think you are mak­ing fun of me.”

“Do you see those trees with dead leaves?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see those oth­ers that are wilt­ing?”

“Yes.”

“Well, ev­ery one of them has been killed by the peas­ants you think you have won over by your ben­efits.”

And Blon­det re­lat­ed the events of the morn­ing.

The gen­er­al was so pale that Blon­det was fright­ened.

“Come, curse, swear, be fu­ri­ous! your self-​con­trol may hurt you more than anger!”

“I'll go and smoke,” said the gen­er­al, turn­ing to­ward the kiosk.

Dur­ing break­fast Michaud came in; he had found no one. Sibilet, whom the count had sent for, came al­so.

“Mon­sieur Sibilet, and you, Mon­sieur Michaud, are to make it known, cau­tious­ly, that I will pay a thou­sand francs to who­ev­er will ar­rest _in the act_ the per­son or per­sons who are killing my trees; they must al­so dis­cov­er the in­stru­ment with which the work is done, and where it was bought. I have set­tled up­on a plan.”

“Those peo­ple nev­er be­tray one an­oth­er,” said Sibilet, “if the crime done is for their ben­efit and pre­med­itat­ed. There is no deny­ing that this di­abol­ical busi­ness has been planned, care­ful­ly planned and con­trived.”

“Yes, but a thou­sand francs means a cou­ple of acres of land.”

“We can try,” said Sibilet; “fif­teen hun­dred francs might buy you a traitor, es­pe­cial­ly if you promise se­cre­cy.”

“Very good; but let us act as if we sus­pect­ed noth­ing, I es­pe­cial­ly; if not, we shall be the vic­tims of some col­lu­sion; one has to be as wary with these brig­ands as with the en­emy in war.”

“But the en­emy is here,” said Blon­det.

Sibilet threw him the furtive glance of a man who un­der­stood the mean­ing of the words, and then he with­drew.

“I don't like your Sibilet,” said Blon­det, when he had seen the stew­ard leave the house. “That man is play­ing false.”

“Up to this time he has done noth­ing I could com­plain of,” said the gen­er­al.

Blon­det went off to write let­ters. He had lost the care­less gayety of his first ar­rival, and was now un­easy and pre­oc­cu­pied; but he had no vague pre­sen­ti­ments like those of Madame Michaud; he was, rather, in full ex­pec­ta­tion of cer­tain fore­seen mis­for­tunes. He said to him­self, “This af­fair will come to some bad end; and if the gen­er­al does not take de­ci­sive ac­tion and will not aban­don a bat­tle-​field where he is over­whelmed by num­bers there must be a catas­tro­phe; and who knows who will come out safe and sound,--per­haps nei­ther he nor his wife. Good God! that adorable lit­tle crea­ture! so de­vot­ed, so per­fect! how can he ex­pose her thus! He thinks he loves her! Well, I'll share their dan­ger, and if I can't save them I'll suf­fer with them.”

CHAP­TER VI­II

RU­RAL VIRTUE

That night Marie Ton­sard was sta­tioned on the road to Soulanges, sit­ting on the rail of a cul­vert wait­ing for Bon­nebault, who had spent the day, as usu­al, at the Cafe de la Paix. She heard him com­ing at some dis­tance, and his step told her that he was drunk, and she knew al­so that he had lost mon­ey, for he al­ways sang if he won.

“Is that you, Bon­nebault?”

“Yes, my girl.”

“What's the mat­ter?”

“I owe twen­ty-​five francs, and they may wring my neck twen­ty-​five times be­fore I can pay them.”

“Well, I know how you can get five hun­dred,” she said in his ear.

“Oh! by killing a man; but I pre­fer to live.”

“Hold your tongue. Vau­doy­er will give us five hun­dred francs if you will let him catch your moth­er at a tree.”

“I'd rather kill a man than sell my moth­er. There's your old grand­moth­er; why don't you sell her?”

“If I tried to, my fa­ther would get an­gry and stop the trick.”

“That's true. Well, any­how, my moth­er sha'n't go to prison, poor old thing! She cooks my food and keeps me in clothes, I'm sure I don't know how. Go to prison,--and through me! I shouldn't have any bow­els with­in me; no, no! And for fear any one else should sell her, I'll tell her this very night not to kill any more trees.”

“Well, my fa­ther may say and do what he likes, but I shall tell him there are five hun­dred francs to be had, and per­haps he'll ask my grand­moth­er if she'll earn them. They'll nev­er put an old wom­an sev­en­ty-​eight years of age in prison,--though, to be sure, she'd be bet­ter off there than in her gar­ret.”

“Five hun­dred francs! well, yes; I'll speak to my moth­er,” said Bon­nebault, “and if it suits her to give 'em to me, I'll let her have part to take to prison. She could knit, and amuse her­self; and she'd be well fed and lodged, and have less trou­ble than she has at Conch­es. Well, to-​mor­row, my girl, I'll see you about it; I haven't time to stop now.”

The next morn­ing at day­break Bon­nebault and his old moth­er knocked at the door of the Grand-​I-​Vert. Moth­er Ton­sard was the on­ly per­son up.

“Marie!” called Bon­nebault, “that mat­ter is set­tled.”

“You mean about the trees?” said Moth­er Ton­sard; “yes, it is all set­tled; I've tak­en it.”

“Non­sense!” cried Moth­er Bon­nebault, “my son has got the promise of an acre of land from Mon­sieur Rigou--”

The two old wom­en squab­bled as to which of them should be sold by her chil­dren. The noise of the quar­rel woke up the house­hold. Ton­sard and Bon­nebault took sides for their re­spec­tive moth­ers.

“Pull straws,” sug­gest­ed Ton­sard's wife.

The short straw gave it in fa­vor of the tav­ern.

Three days lat­er, in the for­est of Ville-​aux-​Fayes at day­break, the gen­darmes ar­rest­ed old Moth­er Ton­sard caught “in fla­grante delic­to” by the bailiff, his as­sis­tants, and the field-​keep­er, with a rusty file which served to tear the tree, and a chis­el, used by the delin­quent to scoop round the bark just as the in­sect bores its way. The in­dict­ment stat­ed that six­ty trees thus de­stroyed were found with­in a ra­dius of five hun­dred feet. The old wom­an was sent to Aux­erre, the case com­ing un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the as­size-​court.

Michaud could not re­frain from say­ing when he dis­cov­ered Moth­er Ton­sard at the foot of the tree: “These are the per­sons on whom the gen­er­al and Madame la comtesse have show­ered ben­efits! Faith, if Madame would on­ly lis­ten to me, she wouldn't give that dowry to the Ton­sard girl, who is more worth­less than her grand­moth­er.”

The old wom­an raised her gray eyes and dart­ed a ven­omous look at Michaud. When the count learned who the guilty per­son was, he for­bade his wife to give the mon­ey to Cather­ine Ton­sard.

“Mon­sieur le comte is per­fect­ly right,” said Sibilet. “I know that Go­dain bought that land three days be­fore Cather­ine came to speak to Madame. She is quite ca­pa­ble, that girl, of pre­tend­ing she is with child, to get the mon­ey; very like­ly Go­dain has had noth­ing to do with it.”

“What a com­mu­ni­ty!” said Blon­det; “the scoundrels of Paris are saints by com­par­ison.”

“Ah, mon­sieur,” said Sibilet, “self-​in­ter­est makes peo­ple guilty of hor­rors ev­ery­where. Do you know who be­trayed the old wom­an?”

“No.”

“Her grand­daugh­ter Marie; she was jeal­ous of her sis­ter's mar­riage, and to get the mon­ey for her own--”

“It is aw­ful!” said the count. “Why! they'd mur­der!”

“Oh yes,” said Sibilet, “for a very small sum. They care so lit­tle for life, those peo­ple; they hate to have to work all their lives. Ah mon­sieur, queer things hap­pen in coun­try places, as queer as those of Paris,--but you will nev­er be­lieve it.”

“Let us be kind and benev­olent,” said the count­ess.

The evening af­ter the ar­rest Bon­nebault came to the tav­ern of the Grand-​I-​Vert, where all the Ton­sard fam­ily were in great ju­bi­la­tion. “Oh yes, yes!” said he, “make the most of your re­joic­ing; but I've just heard from Vau­doy­er that the count­ess, to pun­ish you, with­draws the thou­sand francs promised to Go­dain; her hus­band won't let her give them.”

“It's that vil­lain of a Michaud who has put him up to it,” said Ton­sard. “My moth­er heard him say he would; she told me at Ville-​aux-​Fayes where I went to car­ry her some mon­ey and her clothes. Well; let that count­ess keep her mon­ey! our five hun­dred francs shall help Go­dain buy the land; and we'll re­venge our­selves for this thing. Ha! Michaud med­dles with our pri­vate mat­ters, does he? it will bring him more harm than good. What busi­ness is it of his, I'd like to know? let him keep to the woods! It's he who is at the bot­tom of all this trou­ble--he found the clue that day my moth­er cut the throat of his dog. Sup­pose I were to med­dle in the af­fairs of the chateau? Sup­pose I were to tell the gen­er­al that his wife is off walk­ing in the woods be­fore he is up in the morn­ing, with a young man.”

“The gen­er­al, the gen­er­al!” sneered Courte­cuisse; “they can do what they like with him. But it's Michaud who stirs him up, the mis­chief-​mak­er! a fel­low who don't know his busi­ness; in my day, things went dif­fer­ent­ly.”

“Ah!” said Ton­sard, “those were the good days for all of us--weren't they, Vau­doy­er?”

“Yes,” said the lat­ter, “and the fact is that if Michaud were got rid of we should be left in peace.”

“Enough said,” replied Ton­sard. “We'll talk of this lat­er--by moon­light--in the open field.”

To­wards the end of Oc­to­ber the count­ess re­turned to Paris, leav­ing the gen­er­al at Les Aigues. He was not to re­join her till some time lat­er, but she did not wish to lose the first night of the Ital­ian Opera, and more­over she was lone­ly and bored; she missed Emile, who was re­called by his av­oca­tions, for he had helped her to pass the hours when the gen­er­al was scour­ing the coun­try or at­tend­ing to busi­ness.

Novem­ber was a true win­ter month, gray and gloomy, a mix­ture of snow and rain, frost and thaw. The tri­al of Moth­er Ton­sard had re­quired wit­ness­es at Aux­erre, and Michaud had giv­en his tes­ti­mo­ny. Mon­sieur Rigou had in­ter­est­ed him­self for the old wom­an, and em­ployed a lawyer on her be­half who re­lied in his de­fence on the ab­sence of dis­in­ter­est­ed wit­ness­es; but the tes­ti­mo­ny of Michaud and his as­sis­tants and the field-​keep­er was found to out­weigh this ob­jec­tion. Ton­sard's moth­er was sen­tenced to five years' im­pris­on­ment, and the lawyer said to her son:--

“It was Michaud's tes­ti­mo­ny which got her that.”

CHAP­TER IX

THE CATAS­TRO­PHE

One Sat­ur­day evening, Courte­cuisse, Bon­nebault, Go­dain, Ton­sard, his daugh­ters, wife, and Pere Four­chon, al­so Vau­doy­er and sev­er­al me­chan­ics were sup­ping at the tav­ern. The moon was at half-​full, the first snow had melt­ed, and frost had just stiff­ened the ground so that a man's step left no traces. They were eat­ing a stew of hare caught in a trap; all were drink­ing and laugh­ing. It was the day af­ter the wed­ding of Cather­ine and Go­dain, and the wed­ded pair were to be con­duct­ed to their new home, which was not far from that of Courte­cuisse; for when Rigou sold an acre of land it was sure to be iso­lat­ed and close to the woods. Courte­cuisse and Vau­doy­er had brought their guns to ac­com­pa­ny the bride. The neigh­bor­hood was oth­er­wise fast asleep; not a light was to be seen; none but the wed­ding par­ty were awake, but they made noise enough. In the midst of it the old Bon­nebault wom­an en­tered, and ev­ery one looked at her.

“I think she is go­ing to lie-​in,” she whis­pered in Ton­sard's ear. “_He_ has sad­dled his horse and is go­ing for the doc­tor at Soulanges.”

“Sit down,” said Ton­sard, giv­ing her his place at the ta­ble, and go­ing him­self to lie on a bench.

Just then the gal­lop of a horse pass­ing rapid­ly along the road was heard. Ton­sard, Courte­cuisse, and Vau­doy­er went out hur­ried­ly, and saw Michaud on his way to the vil­lage.

“He knows what he's about,” said Courte­cuisse; “he came down by the ter­race and he means to go by Blangy and the road,--it's the safest way.”

“Yes,” said Ton­sard, “but he will bring the doc­tor back with him.”

“He won't find him,” said Courte­cuisse, “the doc­tor has been sent for to Conch­es for the post­mistress.”

“Then he'll go from Soulanges to Conch­es by the mail-​road; that's short­est.”

“And safest too, for us,” said Courte­cuisse, “there's a fine moon, and there are no keep­ers on the roads as there are in the woods; one can hear much far­ther; and down there, by the pavil­ions, be­hind the hedges, just where they join the lit­tle wood, one can aim at a man from be­hind, like a rab­bit, at five hun­dred feet.”

“It will be half-​past eleven be­fore he comes past there,” said Ton­sard, “it will take him half an hour to go to Soulanges and as much more to get back,--but look here! sup­pose Mon­sieur Gour­don were on the road?”

“Don't trou­ble about that,” said Courte­cuisse, “I'll stand ten min­utes away from you to the right on the road to­wards Blangy, and Vau­doy­er will be ten min­utes away on your left to­wards Conch­es; if any­thing comes along, the mail, or the gen­darmes, or what­ev­er it is, we'll fire a shot in­to the ground,--a muf­fled sound, you'll know it.”

“But sup­pose I miss him?” said Ton­sard.

“He's right,” said Courte­cuisse, “I'm the best shot; Vau­doy­er, I'll go with you; Bon­nebault may watch in my place; he can give a cry; that's eas­ier heard and less sus­pi­cious.”

All three re­turned to the tav­ern and the wed­ding fes­tiv­ities went on; but about eleven o'clock Vau­doy­er, Courte­cuisse, Ton­sard, and Bon­nebault went out, car­ry­ing their guns, though none of the wom­en took any no­tice of them. They came back in about three-​quar­ters of an hour, and sat drink­ing till past one o'clock. Ton­sard's girls and their moth­er and the old Bon­nebault wom­an had plied the miller, the me­chan­ics, and the two peas­ants, as well as Four­chon, with so much drink that they were all on the ground and snor­ing when the four men left the tav­ern; on their re­turn, the sleep­ers were shak­en and roused, and ev­ery one seemed to them, as be­fore, in his place.

While this or­gy was go­ing on Michaud's house­hold was in a scene of mor­tal anx­iety. Olympe had felt false pains, and her hus­band, think­ing she was about to be de­liv­ered, rode off in­stant­ly in haste for the doc­tor. But the poor wom­an's pains ceased as soon as she re­al­ized that Michaud was gone; for her mind was so pre­oc­cu­pied by the dan­ger her hus­band ran at that hour of the night, in a law­less re­gion filled with de­ter­mined foes, that the an­guish of her soul was pow­er­ful enough to dead­en and mo­men­tar­ily sub­due those of the body. In vain her ser­vant-​wom­an de­clared her fears were imag­inary; she seemed not to com­pre­hend a word that was said to her, and sat by the fire in her bed-​cham­ber lis­ten­ing to ev­ery sound. In her ter­ror, which in­creased ev­ery mo­ment, she had the man wak­ened, mean­ing to give him some or­der which still she did not give. At last, the poor wom­an wan­dered up and down, com­ing and go­ing in fever­ish ag­ita­tion; she looked out of all the win­dows and opened them in spite of the cold; then she went down­stairs and opened the door in­to the court­yard, look­ing out and lis­ten­ing. “Noth­ing! noth­ing!” she said. Then she went up again in de­spair. About a quar­ter past twelve, she cried out: “Here he is! I hear the horse!” Again she went down, fol­lowed by the man who went to open the iron gate of the court­yard. “It is strange,” she said, “that he should re­turn by the Conch­es woods!”

As she spoke she stood still, hor­rorstruck, mo­tion­less, voice­less. The man shared her ter­ror, for, in the fu­ri­ous gal­lop of the horse, the clang of the emp­ty stir­rups, the neigh of the fright­ened an­imal, there was some­thing, they scarce­ly knew what, of un­speak­able warn­ing. Soon, too soon for the un­hap­py wife, the horse reached the gate, pant­ing and sweat­ing, but alone; he had bro­ken the bri­dle, no doubt by en­tan­gling it. Olympe gazed with hag­gard eyes at the ser­vant as he opened the gate; she saw the horse, and then, with­out a word, she ran to the chateau like a mad­wom­an; when she reached it she fell to the ground be­neath the gen­er­al's win­dows cry­ing out: “Mon­sieur, they have mur­dered him!”

The cry was so ter­ri­ble it awoke the count; he rang vi­olent­ly, bring­ing the whole house­hold to their feet; and the groans of Madame Michaud, who as she lay on the ground, gave birth to a child that died in be­ing born, brought the gen­er­al and all the ser­vants about her. They raised the poor dy­ing wom­an, who ex­pired, say­ing to the gen­er­al: “They have mur­dered him!”

“Joseph!” cried the count to his valet, “go for the doc­tor; there may yet be time to save her. No, bet­ter bring the cu­rate; the poor wom­an is dead, and her child too. My God! my God! how thank­ful I am that my wife is not here. And you,” he said to the gar­den­er, “go and find out what has hap­pened.”

“I can tell you,” said the pavil­ion ser­vant, com­ing up, “Mon­sieur Michaud's horse has come back alone, the reins broke, his legs bloody; and there's a spot of blood on the sad­dle.”

“What can be done at this time of night?” cried the count. “Call up Groi­son, send for the keep­ers, sad­dle the hors­es; we'll beat the coun­try.”

By day­break, eight per­sons--the count, Groi­son, the three keep­ers, and two gen­darmes sent from Soulanges with their sergeant--searched the coun­try. It was not till the mid­dle of the morn­ing that they found the body of the bailiff in a copse be­tween the mail-​road and the small­er road lead­ing to Ville-​aux-​Fayes, at the end of the park of Les Aigues, not far from Conch­es. Two gen­darmes start­ed, one to Ville-​aux-​Fayes for the pros­ecut­ing at­tor­ney, the oth­er to Soulanges for the jus­tice of the peace. Mean­time the gen­er­al, as­sist­ed by the sergeant, not­ed down the facts. They found on the road, just above the two pavil­ions, the print of the stamp­ing of the horse's feet as he roared, and the traces of his fright­ened gal­lop from there to the first open­ing in the woods above the hedge. The horse, no longer guid­ed, turned in­to the wood-​path. Michaud's hat was found there. The an­imal ev­ident­ly took the near­est way to reach his sta­ble. The bailiff had a ball though his back which broke the spine.

Groi­son and the sergeant stud­ied the ground around the spot where the horse reared (which might be called, in ju­di­cial lan­guage, the the­atre of the crime) with re­mark­able sagac­ity, but with­out ob­tain­ing any clue. The earth was too frozen to show the foot­prints of the mur­der­er, and all they found was the pa­per of a car­tridge. When the at­tor­ney and the judge and Mon­sieur Gour­don, the doc­tor, ar­rived and raised the body to make the au­top­sy, it was found that the ball, which cor­re­spond­ed with the frag­ments of the wad, was an am­mu­ni­tion ball, ev­ident­ly from a mil­itary mus­ket; and no such mus­ket ex­ist­ed in the dis­trict of Blangy. The judge and Mon­sieur Soudry the at­tor­ney, who came that evening to the chateau, thought it best to col­lect all the facts and await events. The same opin­ion was ex­pressed by the sergeant and the lieu­tenant of the gen­darmerie.

“It is im­pos­si­ble that it can be any­thing but a planned at­tack on the part of the peas­ants,” said the sergeant; “but there are two dis­tricts, Conch­es and Blangy, in each of which there are five or six per­sons ca­pa­ble of be­ing con­cerned in the mur­der. The one that I sus­pect most, Ton­sard, passed the night carous­ing in the Grand-​I-​Vert; but your as­sis­tant, gen­er­al, the miller Lan­glume, was there, and he says that Ton­sard did not leave the tav­ern. They were all so drunk they could not stand; they took the bride home at half-​past one; and the re­turn of the horse proves that Michaud was mur­dered be­tween eleven o'clock and mid­night. At a quar­ter past ten Groi­son saw the whole com­pa­ny as­sem­bled at ta­ble, and Mon­sieur Michaud passed there on his way to Soulanges, which he reached at eleven. His horse reared be­tween the two pavil­ions on the mail-​road; but he may have been shot be­fore reach­ing Blangy and yet have stayed in the sad­dle for some lit­tle time. We should have to is­sue war­rants for at least twen­ty per­sons and ar­rest them; but I know these peas­ants, and so do these gen­tle­men; you might keep them a year in prison and you would get noth­ing out of them but de­nials. What could you do with all those who were at Ton­sard's?”

They sent for Lan­glume, the miller, and the as­sis­tant of Gen­er­al Mont­cor­net as may­or; he re­lat­ed what had tak­en place in the tav­ern, and gave the names of all present; none had gone out ex­cept for a minute or two in­to the court­yard. He had left the room for a mo­ment with Ton­sard about eleven o'clock; they had spo­ken of the moon and the weath­er, and heard noth­ing. At two o'clock the whole par­ty had tak­en the bride and bride­groom to their own house.

The gen­er­al ar­ranged with the sergeant, the lieu­tenant, and the civ­il au­thor­ities to send to Paris for the clever­est de­tec­tive in the ser­vice of the po­lice, who should come to the chateau as a work­man, and be­have so ill as to be dis­missed; he should then take to drink­ing and fre­quent the Grand-​I-​Vert and re­main in the neigh­bor­hood in the char­ac­ter of an ill-​wish­er to the gen­er­al. The best plan they could fol­low was to watch and wait for a mo­men­tary rev­ela­tion, and then make the most of it.

“If I have to spend twen­ty thou­sand francs I'll dis­cov­er the mur­der­er of my poor Michaud,” the gen­er­al was nev­er weary of say­ing.

He went off with that idea in his head, and re­turned from Paris in the month of Jan­uary with one of the shrewdest satel­lites of the chief of the de­tec­tive po­lice, who was brought down os­ten­si­bly to do some work to the in­te­ri­or of the chateau. The man was dis­cov­ered poach­ing. He was ar­rest­ed, and turned off, and soon af­ter--ear­ly in Febru­ary--the gen­er­al re­joined his wife in Paris.

CHAP­TER X

THE TRI­UMPH OF THE VAN­QUISHED

One evening in the month of May, when the fine weath­er had come and the Parisians had re­turned to Les Aigues, Mon­sieur de Troisville,--who had been per­suad­ed to ac­com­pa­ny his daugh­ter,--Blon­det, the Abbe Bros­sette, the gen­er­al, and the sub-​pre­fect of Ville-​aux-​Fayes, who was on a vis­it to the chateau, were all play­ing ei­ther whist or chess. It was about half-​past eleven o'clock when Joseph en­tered and told his mas­ter that the worth­less poach­ing work­man who had been dis­missed want­ed to see him,--some­thing about a bill which he said the gen­er­al still owed him. “He is very drunk,” added Joseph.

“Very good, I'll go and speak to him.”

The gen­er­al went out up­on the lawn to some dis­tance from the house.

“Mon­sieur le comte,” said the de­tec­tive, “noth­ing will ev­er be got out of these peo­ple. All that I have been able to gath­er is that if you con­tin­ue to stay in this place and try to make the peas­ants re­nounce the pil­fer­ing habits which Made­moi­selle La­guerre al­lowed them to ac­quire, they will shoot you as well as your bailiff. There is no use in my stay­ing here; for they dis­trust me even more than they do the keep­ers.”

The count paid his spy, who left the place the next day, and his de­par­ture jus­ti­fied the sus­pi­cions en­ter­tained about him by the ac­com­plices in the death of Michaud.

When the gen­er­al re­turned to the sa­lon there were such signs of emo­tion up­on his face that his wife asked him, anx­ious­ly, what news he had just heard.

“Dear wife,” he said, “I don't want to fright­en you, and yet it is right you should know that Michaud's death was in­tend­ed as a warn­ing for us to leave this part of the coun­try.”

“If I were in your place,” said Mon­sieur de Troisville, “I would not leave it. I my­self have had just such dif­fi­cul­ties in Nor­mandy, on­ly un­der an­oth­er form; I per­sist­ed in my course, and now ev­ery­thing goes well.”

“Mon­sieur le mar­quis,” said the sub-​pre­fect, “Nor­mandy and Bur­gundy are two very dif­fer­ent re­gions. The grape heats the blood far more than the ap­ple. We know much less of law and le­gal pro­ceed­ings; we live among the woods; the large in­dus­tries are un­known among us; we are still sav­ages. If I might give my ad­vice to Mon­sieur le comte it would be to sell this es­tate and put the mon­ey in the Funds; he would dou­ble his in­come and have no anx­ieties. If he likes liv­ing in the coun­try he could buy a chateau near Paris with a park as beau­ti­ful as that of Les Aigues, sur­round­ed by walls, where no one can an­noy him, and where he can let all his farms and re­ceive the mon­ey in good bank-​bills, and have no law suits from one year's end to an­oth­er. He could come and go in three or four hours, and Mon­sieur Blon­det and Mon­sieur le mar­quis would not be so of­ten away from you, Madame la comtesse.”

“I, re­treat be­fore the peas­antry when I did not re­coil be­fore the Danube!” cried the gen­er­al.

“Yes, but what be­came of your cuirassiers?” asked Blon­det.

“Such a fine es­tate!”

“It will sell to-​day for over two mil­lions.”

“The chateau alone must have cost that,” re­marked Mon­sieur de Troisville.

“One of the best prop­er­ties in a cir­cum­fer­ence of six­ty miles,” said the sub-​pre­fect; “but you can find a bet­ter near Paris.”

“How much in­come does one get from two mil­lions?” asked the count­ess.

“Now-​a-​days, about eighty thou­sand francs,” replied Blon­det.

“Les Aigues does not bring in, all told, more than thir­ty thou­sand,” said the count­ess; “and late­ly you have been at such im­mense ex­pens­es, --you have sur­round­ed the woods this year with ditch­es.”

“You could get,” added Blon­det, “a roy­al chateau for four hun­dred thou­sand francs near Paris. In these days peo­ple buy the fol­lies of oth­ers.”

“I thought you cared for Les Aigues!” said the count to his wife.

“Don't you feel that I care a thou­sand times more for your life?” she replied. “Be­sides, ev­er since the death of my poor Olympe and Michaud's mur­der the coun­try is odi­ous to me; all the faces I meet seem to wear a treach­er­ous or threat­en­ing ex­pres­sion.”

The next evening the sub-​pre­fect, hav­ing end­ed his vis­it at the chateau, was wel­comed in the sa­lon of Mon­sieur Gaubertin at Ville-​aux-​Fayes in these words:--

“Well, Mon­sieur des Lu­peaulx, so you have re­turned from Les Aigues?”

“Yes,” an­swered the sub-​pre­fect with a lit­tle air of tri­umph and a look of ten­der re­gard at Made­moi­selle Elise, “and I am very much afraid to say we may lose the gen­er­al; he talks of sell­ing his prop­er­ty--”

“Mon­sieur Gaubertin, I speak for my pavil­ion. I can on longer en­dure the noise, the dust of Ville-​aux-​Fayes; like a poor im­pris­oned bird I gasp for the air of the fields, the wood­land breezes,” said Madame Isaure, in a lack­adaisi­cal voice, with her eyes half-​closed and her head bend­ing to her left shoul­der as she played care­less­ly with the long curls of her blond hair.

“Pray be pru­dent, madame!” said her hus­band in a low voice; “your in­dis­cre­tions will not help me to buy the pavil­ion.” Then, turn­ing to the sub-​pre­fect, he added, “Haven't they yet dis­cov­ered the men who were con­cerned in the mur­der of the bailiff?”

“It seems not,” replied the sub-​pre­fect.

“That will in­jure the sale of Les Aigues,” said Gaubertin to the com­pa­ny gen­er­al­ly, “I know very well that I would not buy the place. The peas­antry over there are such a bad set of peo­ple; even in the days of Made­moi­selle La­guerre I had trou­ble with them, and God knows she let them do as they liked.”

At the end of the month of May the gen­er­al still gave no sign that he in­tend­ed to sell Les Aigues; in fact, he was un­de­cid­ed. One night, about ten o'clock, he was re­turn­ing from the for­est through one of the six av­enues that led to the pavil­ion of the Ren­dezvous. He dis­missed the keep­er who ac­com­pa­nied him, as he was then so near the chateau. At a turn of the road a man armed with a gun came from be­hind a bush.

“Gen­er­al,” he said, “this is the third time I have had you at the end of my bar­rel, and the third time that I give you your life.”

“Why do you want to kill me, Bon­nebault?” said the gen­er­al, with­out show­ing the least emo­tion.

“Faith, if I don't, some­body else will; but I, you see, I like the men who served the Em­per­or, and I can't make up my mind to shoot you like a par­tridge. Don't ques­tion me, for I'll tell you noth­ing; but you've got en­emies, pow­er­ful en­emies, clev­er­er than you, and they'll end by crush­ing you. I am to have a thou­sand crowns if I kill you, and then I can mar­ry Marie Ton­sard. Well, give me enough to buy a few acres of land and a bit of a cot­tage, and I'll keep on say­ing, as I have done, that I've found no chances. That will give you time to sell your prop­er­ty and get away; but make haste. I'm an hon­est lad still, scamp as I am; but an­oth­er fel­low won't spare you.”

“If I give you what you ask, will you tell me who of­fered you those three thou­sand francs?” said the gen­er­al.

“I don't know my­self; and the per­son who is urg­ing me to do the thing is some one I love too well to tell of. Be­sides, even if you did know it was Marie Ton­sard, that wouldn't help you; Marie Ton­sard would be as silent as that wall, and I should de­ny ev­ery word I've said.”

“Come and see me to-​mor­row,” said the gen­er­al.

“Enough,” replied Bon­nebault; “and if they be­gin to say I'm too dila­to­ry, I'll let you know in time.”

A week af­ter that sin­gu­lar con­ver­sa­tion the whole ar­rondisse­ment, in­deed the whole de­part­ment, was cov­ered with posters, ad­ver­tis­ing the sale of Les Aigues at the of­fice of Maitre Cor­bineau, the no­tary of Soulanges. All the lots were knocked down to Rigou, and the price paid amount­ed to two mil­lions five hun­dred thou­sand francs. The next day Rigou had the names changed; Mon­sieur Gaubertin took the woods, Rigou and Soudry the vine­yards and the farms. The chateau and the park were sold over again in small lots among the sons of the soil, the peas­antry,--ex­cept­ing the pavil­ion, its de­pen­den­cies, and fifty sur­round­ing acres, which Mon­sieur Gaubertin re­tained as a gift to his po­et­ic and sen­ti­men­tal spouse.

* * * * *

Many years af­ter these events, dur­ing the year 1837, one of the most re­mark­able po­lit­ical writ­ers of the day, Emile Blon­det, reached the last stages of a pover­ty which he had so far hid­den be­neath an out­ward ap­pear­ance of ease and el­egance. He was think­ing of tak­ing some des­per­ate step, re­al­iz­ing, as he did, that his writ­ings, his mind, his knowl­edge, his abil­ity for the di­rec­tion of af­fairs, had made him noth­ing bet­ter than a mere func­tionary, me­chan­ical­ly serv­ing the ends of oth­ers; see­ing that ev­ery av­enue was closed to him and all places tak­en; feel­ing that he had reached mid­dle-​life with­out fame and with­out for­tune; that fools and mid­dle-​class men of no train­ing had tak­en the places of the courtiers and in­ca­pables of the Restora­tion, and that the gov­ern­ment was re­con­sti­tut­ed such as it was be­fore 1830. One evening, when he had come very near com­mit­ting sui­cide (a fol­ly he had so of­ten laughed at), while his mind trav­elled back over his mis­er­able ex­is­tence ca­lum­ni­at­ed and worn down with toil far more than with the dis­si­pa­tions charged against him, the no­ble and beau­ti­ful face of a wom­an rose be­fore his eyes, like a stat­ue ris­ing pure and un­bro­ken amid the sad­dest ru­ins. Just then the porter brought him a let­ter sealed with black from the Comtesse de Mont­cor­net, telling him of the death of her hus­band, who had again tak­en ser­vice in the army and com­mand­ed a di­vi­sion. The count had left her his prop­er­ty, and she had no chil­dren. The let­ter, though dig­ni­fied, showed Blon­det very plain­ly that the wom­an of forty whom he had loved in his youth of­fered him a friend­ly hand and a large for­tune.

A few days ago the mar­riage of the Comtesse de Mont­cor­net with Mon­sieur Blon­det, ap­point­ed pre­fect in one of the de­part­ments, was cel­ebrat­ed in Paris. On their way to take pos­ses­sion of the pre­fec­ture, they fol­lowed the road which led past what had for­mer­ly been Les Aigues. They stopped the car­riage near the spot where the two pavil­ions had once stood, wish­ing to see the places so full of ten­der mem­ories for each. The coun­try was no longer rec­og­niz­able. The mys­te­ri­ous woods, the park av­enues, all were cleared away; the land­scape looked like a tai­lor's pat­tern-​card. The sons of the soil had tak­en pos­ses­sion of the earth as vic­tors and con­querors. It was cut up in­to a thou­sand lit­tle lots, and the pop­ula­tion had tripled be­tween Conch­es and Blangy. The lev­el­ling and cul­ti­va­tion of the no­ble park, once so care­ful­ly tend­ed, so de­light­ful in its beau­ty, threw in­to iso­lat­ed re­lief the pavil­ion of the Ren­dezvous, now the Vil­la Buen-​Re­tiro of Madame Isaure Gaubertin; it was the on­ly build­ing left stand­ing, and it com­mand­ed the whole land­scape, or as we might bet­ter call it, the stretch of corn­fields which now con­sti­tut­ed the land­scape. The build­ing seemed mag­ni­fied in­to a chateau, so mis­er­able were the lit­tle hous­es which the peas­ants had built around it.

“This is progress!” cried Emile. “It is a page out of Jean-​Jacques' 'So­cial Com­pact'! and I--I am har­nessed to the so­cial ma­chine that works it! Good God! what will the kings be soon? More than that, what will the na­tions them­selves be fifty years hence un­der this state of things?”

“But you love me; you are be­side me. I think the present de­light­ful. What do I care for such a dis­tant fu­ture?” said his wife.

“Oh yes! by your side, hur­rah for the present!” cried the lover, gay­ly, “and the dev­il take the fu­ture.”

Then he signed to the coach­man, and as the hors­es sprang for­ward along the road, the wed­ded pair re­turned to the en­joy­ment of their hon­ey­moon.

1845.

AD­DEN­DUM

The fol­low­ing per­son­ages ap­pear in oth­er sto­ries of the Hu­man Com­edy.

Note: Sons of the Soil is al­so known as The Peas­antry and is re­ferred to by that ti­tle when men­tioned in oth­er ad­den­dums.

Blon­det, Emile Jeal­ousies of a Coun­try Town A Dis­tin­guished Provin­cial at Paris Scenes from a Cour­te­san's Life Mod­este Mignon An­oth­er Study of Wom­an The Se­crets of a Princess A Daugh­ter of Eve The Firm of Nucin­gen

Blon­det, Vir­ginie Jeal­ousies of a Coun­try Town The Se­crets of a Princess A Dis­tin­guished Provin­cial at Paris An­oth­er Study of Wom­an The Mem­ber for Ar­cis A Daugh­ter of Eve

Bourlac, Bernard-​Jean-​Bap­tiste-​Macloud, Baron de The Seamy Side of His­to­ry

Bros­sette, Abbe Beat­rix

Carigliano, Duchesse de At the Sign of the Cat and Rack­et A Dis­tin­guished Provin­cial at Paris The Mem­ber for Ar­cis

Cast­er­an, De The Chouans The Seamy Side of His­to­ry Jeal­ousies of a Coun­try Town Beat­rix

La­guerre, Made­moi­selle A Prince of Bo­hemia

La Roche-​Hugon, Mar­tial de Do­mes­tic Peace A Daugh­ter of Eve The Mem­ber for Ar­cis The Mid­dle Class­es Cousin Bet­ty

Lupin, Amau­ry A Start in Life

Marest, Georges A Start in Life

Mi­norets, The The Gov­ern­ment Clerks

Mont­cor­net, Marechal, Comte de Do­mes­tic Peace Lost Il­lu­sions A Dis­tin­guished Provin­cial at Paris Scenes from a Cour­te­san's Life A Man of Busi­ness Cousin Bet­ty

Navar­reins, Duc de A Bach­elor's Es­tab­lish­ment Colonel Chabert The Muse of the De­part­ment The Thir­teen Jeal­ousies of a Coun­try Town Scenes from a Cour­te­san's Life The Coun­try Par­son The Mag­ic Skin The Gondre­ville Mys­tery The Se­crets of a Princess Cousin Bet­ty

Ron­querolles, Mar­quis de The Imag­inary Mis­tress Ur­sule Mirou­et A Wom­an of Thir­ty An­oth­er Study of Wom­an The Thir­teen The Mem­ber for Ar­cis

Scher­belloff, Princesse (or Scher­bellof or Sher­belloff) Jeal­ousies of a Coun­try Town

Soulanges, Comte Leon de Do­mes­tic Peace

Soulanges, Comtesse Hort­ense de Do­mes­tic Peace The Thir­teen

Stein­gel The Gondre­ville Mys­tery

Troisville, Guibelin, Vi­comte de The Seamy Side of His­to­ry The Chouans Jeal­ousies of a Coun­try Town

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