Sons of the Soil

CHAPTER VI

A TALE OF THIEVES

When Made­moi­selle La­guerre first vis­it­ed her es­tate, in 1791, she took as stew­ard the son of the ex-​bailiff of Soulanges, named Gaubertin. The lit­tle town of Soulanges, at present noth­ing more than the chief town of a can­ton, was once the cap­ital of a con­sid­er­able coun­ty, in the days when the House of Bur­gundy made war up­on France. Ville-​aux-​Fayes, now the seat of the sub-​pre­fec­ture, then a mere fief, was a de­pen­den­cy of Soulanges, like Les Aigues, Ron­querolles, Cerneux, Conch­es, and a score of oth­er parish­es. The Soulanges have re­mained counts, where­as the Ron­querolles are now mar­quis­es by the will of that pow­er, called the Court, which made the son of Cap­tain du Plessis duke over the heads of the first fam­ilies of the Con­quest. All of which serves to prove that towns, like fam­ilies, are vari­able in their des­tiny.

Gaubertin, a young man with­out prop­er­ty of any kind, suc­ceed­ed a stew­ard en­riched by a man­age­ment of thir­ty years, who pre­ferred to be­come a part­ner in the fa­mous firm of Mi­noret rather than con­tin­ue to ad­min­is­ter Les Aigues. In his own in­ter­ests he in­tro­duced in­to his place as land-​stew­ard Fran­cois Gaubertin, his ac­coun­tant for five years, whom he now re­lied on to cov­er his re­treat, and who, out of grat­itude for his in­struc­tions, promised to ob­tain for him a re­lease in full of all claims from Madame La­guerre, who by this time was ter­ri­fied at the Rev­olu­tion. Gaubertin's fa­ther, the at­tor­ney-​gen­er­al of the de­part­ment, hence­forth pro­tect­ed the timid wom­an. This provin­cial Fouquier-​Tinville raised a false alarm of dan­ger in the mind of the opera-​di­vin­ity on the ground of her for­mer re­la­tions to the aris­toc­ra­cy, so as to give his son the equal­ly false cred­it of sav­ing her life; on the strength of which Gaubertin the younger ob­tained very eas­ily the re­lease of his pre­de­ces­sor. Made­moi­selle La­guerre then made Fran­cois Gaubertin her prime min­is­ter, as much through pol­icy as from grat­itude. The late stew­ard had not spoiled her. He sent her, ev­ery year, about thir­ty thou­sand francs, though Les Aigues brought in at that time at least forty thou­sand. The un­sus­pect­ing opera-​singer was there­fore much de­light­ed when the new stew­ard Gaubertin promised her thir­ty-​six thou­sand.

To ex­plain the present for­tune of the land-​stew­ard of Les Aigues be­fore the judg­ment-​seat of prob­abil­ity, it is nec­es­sary to state its be­gin­nings. Pushed by his fa­ther's in­flu­ence, he be­came may­or of Blangy. Thus he was able, con­trary to law, to make the debtors pay in coin, by “ter­ror­iz­ing” (a phrase of the day) such of them as might, in his opin­ion, be sub­ject­ed to the crush­ing de­mands of the Re­pub­lic. He him­self paid the cit­izens in assig­nats as long as the sys­tem of pa­per mon­ey last­ed,--a sys­tem which, if it did not make the na­tion pros­per­ous, at least made the for­tunes of pri­vate in­di­vid­uals. From 1793 to 1795, that is, for three years, Fran­cois Gaubertin wrung one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand francs out of Les Aigues, with which he spec­ulat­ed on the stock-​mar­ket in Paris. With her purse full of assig­nats Made­moi­selle was ac­tu­al­ly obliged to ob­tain ready mon­ey from her di­amonds, now use­less to her. She gave them to Gaubertin, who sold them, and faith­ful­ly re­turned to her their full price. This proof of hon­esty touched her heart; hence­forth she be­lieved in Gaubertin as she did in Pic­ci­ni.

In 1796, at the time of his mar­riage with the citoyenne Isaure Mou­chon, daugh­ter of an old “con­ven­tion­al,” a friend of his fa­ther, Gaubertin pos­sessed about three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand francs in mon­ey. As the Di­rec­to­ry seemed to him like­ly to last, he de­ter­mined, be­fore mar­ry­ing, to have the ac­counts of his five years' stew­ard­ship rat­ified by Made­moi­selle, un­der pre­text of a new de­par­ture.

“I am to be the head of a fam­ily,” he said to her; “you know the rep­uta­tion of land-​stew­ards; my fa­ther-​in-​law is a re­pub­li­can of Ro­man aus­ter­ity, and a man of in­flu­ence as well; I want to prove to him that I am as up­right as he.”

Made­moi­selle La­guerre ac­cept­ed his ac­counts at once in very flat­ter­ing terms.

In those ear­li­er days the stew­ard had en­deav­ored, in or­der to win the con­fi­dence of Madame des Aigues (as Made­moi­selle was then called) to re­press the depre­da­tions of the peas­antry; fear­ing, and not with­out rea­son, that the rev­enues would suf­fer too severe­ly, and that his pri­vate bonus from the buy­ers of the tim­ber would sen­si­bly di­min­ish. But in those days the sovereign peo­ple felt the soil was their own ev­ery­where; Madame was afraid of the sur­round­ing kings and told her Riche­lieu that the first de­sire of her soul was to die in peace. The rev­enues of the late singer were so far in ex­cess of her ex­pens­es that she al­lowed all the worst, and, as it proved, fa­tal prece­dents to be es­tab­lished. To avoid a law­suit, she al­lowed the neigh­bors to en­croach up­on her land. Know­ing that the park walls were suf­fi­cient pro­tec­tion, she did not fear any in­ter­rup­tion of her per­son­al com­fort, and cared for noth­ing but her peace­ful ex­is­tence, true philoso­pher that she was! A few thou­sand a year more or less, the in­dem­ni­ties ex­act­ed by the wood-​mer­chants for the dam­ages com­mit­ted by the peas­ants,--what were they to a care­less and ex­trav­agant Opera-​girl, who had gained her hun­dred thou­sand francs a year at the cost of plea­sure on­ly, and who had just sub­mit­ted, with­out a word of re­mon­strance, to a re­duc­tion of two thirds of an in­come of six­ty thou­sand francs?

“Dear me!” she said, in the easy tone of the wan­tons of the old time, “peo­ple must live, even if they are re­pub­li­cans.”

The ter­ri­ble Made­moi­selle Co­chet, her maid and fe­male vizier, had tried to en­light­en her mis­tress when she saw the as­cen­den­cy Gaubertin was ob­tain­ing over one whom he be­gan by call­ing “Madame” in de­fi­ance of the rev­olu­tion­ary laws about equal­ity; but Gaubertin, in his turn, en­light­ened Made­moi­selle Co­chet by show­ing her a so-​called de­nun­ci­ation sent to his fa­ther, the pros­ecut­ing at­tor­ney, in which she was ve­he­ment­ly ac­cused of cor­re­spond­ing with Pitt and Coburg. From that time for­ward the two pow­ers went on shares--shares a la Mont­gomery. Co­chet praised Gaubertin to Madame, and Gaubertin praised Co­chet. The wait­ing-​maid had al­ready made her own bed, and knew she was down for six­ty thou­sand francs in the will. Madame could not do with­out Co­chet, to whom she was ac­cus­tomed. The wom­an knew the se­crets of dear mis­tress's toi­let; she alone could put dear mis­tress to sleep at night with her gos­sip, and get her up in the morn­ing with her flat­tery; to the day of dear mis­tress's death the maid nev­er could see the slight­est change in her, and when dear mis­tress lay in her cof­fin, she doubt­less thought she had nev­er seen her look­ing so well.

The an­nu­al pick­ings of Gaubertin and Made­moi­selle Co­chet, their wages and perquisites, be­came so large that the most af­fec­tion­ate rel­ative could not pos­si­bly have been more de­vot­ed than they to their kind­ly mis­tress. There is re­al­ly no de­scrib­ing how a swindler cos­sets his dupe. A moth­er is not so ten­der nor so so­lic­itous for a beloved daugh­ter as the prac­ti­tion­er of tartuferie for his milch cow. What bril­liant suc­cess at­tends the per­for­mance of Tartufe be­hind the closed doors of a home! It is worth more than friend­ship. Moliere died too soon; he would oth­er­wise have shown us the mis­ery of Or­gon, wea­ried by his fam­ily, ha­rassed by his chil­dren, re­gret­ting the blan­dish­ments of Tartufe, and think­ing to him­self, “Ah, those were the good times!”

Dur­ing the last eight years of her life the mis­tress of Les Aigues re­ceived on­ly thir­ty thou­sand francs of the fifty thou­sand re­al­ly yield­ed by the es­tate. Gaubertin had reached the same ad­min­is­tra­tive re­sults as his pre­de­ces­sor, though farm rents and ter­ri­to­ri­al prod­ucts were no­tably in­creased be­tween 1791 and 1815,--not to speak of Madame's con­tin­ual pur­chas­es. But Gaubertin's fixed idea of ac­quir­ing Les Aigues at the old la­dy's death led him to de­pre­ci­ate the val­ue of the mag­nif­icent es­tate in the mat­ter of its os­ten­si­ble rev­enues. Made­moi­selle Co­chet, a shar­er in the scheme, was al­so to share the prof­its. As the ex-​di­vin­ity in her de­clin­ing years re­ceived an in­come of twen­ty thou­sand francs from the Funds called con­sol­idat­ed (how read­ily the tongue of pol­itics can jest!), and with dif­fi­cul­ty spent the said sum year­ly, she was much sur­prised at the an­nu­al pur­chas­es made by her stew­ard to use up the ac­cu­mu­lat­ing rev­enues, re­mem­ber­ing how in for­mer times she had al­ways drawn them in ad­vance. The re­sult of hav­ing few wants in her old age seemed, to her mind, a proof of the hon­esty and up­right­ness of Gaubertin and Made­moi­selle Co­chet.

“Two pearls!” she said to the per­sons who came to see her.

Gaubertin kept his ac­counts with ap­par­ent hon­esty. He en­tered all rentals du­ly. Ev­ery­thing that could strike the fee­ble mind of the late singer, so far as arith­metic went, was clear and pre­cise. The stew­ard took his com­mis­sion on all dis­burse­ments,--on the costs of work­ing the es­tate, on rentals made, on suits brought, on work done, on re­pairs of ev­ery kind,--de­tails which Madame nev­er dreamed of ver­ify­ing, and for which he some­times charged twice over by col­lu­sion with the con­trac­tors, whose si­lence was bought by per­mis­sion to charge the high­est prices. These meth­ods of deal­ing con­cil­iat­ed pub­lic opin­ion in fa­vor of Gaubertin, while Madame's praise was on ev­ery lip; for be­sides the pay­ments she dis­bursed for work, she gave away large sums of mon­ey in alms.

“May God pre­serve her, the dear la­dy!” was heard on all sides.

The truth was, ev­ery­body got some­thing out of her, ei­ther in­di­rect­ly or as a down­right gift. In reprisals, as it were, of her youth the old ac­tress was pil­laged; so dis­creet­ly pil­laged, how­ev­er, that those who throve up­on her kept their depre­da­tions with­in cer­tain lim­its lest even her eyes might be opened and she should sell Les Aigues and re­turn to Paris.

This sys­tem of “pick­ings” was, alas! the cause of Paul-​Louis Carter's as­sas­si­na­tion; he com­mit­ted the mis­take of ad­ver­tis­ing the sale of his es­tate and al­low­ing it to be known that he should take away his wife, on whom a num­ber of the Ton­sards of Lor­raine were bat­ten­ing. Fear­ing to lose Madame des Aigues, the ma­raud­ers on the es­tate for­bore to cut the young trees, un­less pushed to ex­trem­ities by find­ing no branch­es with­in reach of shears fas­tened to long poles. In the in­ter­ests of rob­bery, they did as lit­tle harm as they could; al­though, dur­ing the last years of Madame's life, the habit of cut­ting wood be­came more and more barefaced. On cer­tain clear nights not less than two hun­dred bun­dles were tak­en. As to the glean­ing of fields and vine­yards, Les Aigues lost, as Sibilet had point­ed out, not less than one quar­ter of its prod­ucts.

Madame des Aigues had for­bid­den Co­chet to mar­ry dur­ing her life­time, with the self­ish­ness of­ten shown in all coun­tries by a mis­tress to a maid; which is not more ir­ra­tional than the ma­nia for keep­ing pos­ses­sion, un­til our last gasp, of prop­er­ty that is ut­ter­ly use­less to our ma­te­ri­al com­fort, at the risk of be­ing poi­soned by im­pa­tient heirs. Twen­ty days af­ter the old la­dy's buri­al Made­moi­selle Co­chet mar­ried the brigadier of the gen­darmerie of Soulanges, named Soudry, a hand­some man, forty-​two years of age, who, ev­er since 1800 (in which year the gen­darmerie was formed) had come ev­ery day to Les Aigues to see the wait­ing-​maid, and dined with her at least three times a week at the Gaubertins'.

Dur­ing Madame's life­time din­ner was served to her and to her com­pa­ny by them­selves. Nei­ther Co­chet nor Gaubertin, in spite of their great fa­mil­iar­ity with the mis­tress, was ev­er ad­mit­ted to her ta­ble; the lead­ing la­dy of the Academie Royale re­tained, to her last hour, her sense of eti­quette, her style of dress, her rouge and her heeled slip­pers, her car­riage, her ser­vants, and the majesty of her de­port­ment. A di­vin­ity at the Opera, a di­vin­ity with­in her range of Parisian so­cial life, she con­tin­ued a di­vin­ity in the coun­try soli­tudes, where her mem­ory is still wor­shipped, and still holds its own against that of the old monar­chy in the minds of the “best so­ci­ety” of Soulanges.

Soudry, who had paid his ad­dress­es to Made­moi­selle Co­chet from the time he first came in­to the neigh­bor­hood, owned the finest house in Soulanges, an in­come of six thou­sand francs, and the prospect of a re­tir­ing pen­sion when­ev­er he should quit the ser­vice. As soon as Co­chet be­came Madame Soudry she was treat­ed with great con­sid­er­ation in the town. Though she kept the strictest se­cre­cy as to the amount of her sav­ings,--which were in­trust­ed, like those of Gaubertin, to the com­mis­sary of wine-​mer­chants of the de­part­ment in Paris, a cer­tain Lecler­cq, a na­tive of Soulanges, to whom Gaubertin sup­plied funds as sleep­ing part­ner in his busi­ness,--pub­lic opin­ion cred­it­ed the for­mer wait­ing-​maid with one of the largest for­tunes in the lit­tle town of twelve hun­dred in­hab­itants.

To the great as­ton­ish­ment of ev­ery one, Mon­sieur and Madame Soudry ac­knowl­edged as le­git­imate, in their mar­riage con­tract, a nat­ural son of the gen­darme, to whom, in fu­ture, Madame Soudry's for­tune was to de­scend. At the time when this son was legal­ly sup­plied with a moth­er, he had just end­ed his law stud­ies in Paris and was about to en­ter in­to prac­tice, with the in­ten­tion of fit­ting him­self for the mag­is­tra­cy.

It is scarce­ly nec­es­sary to re­mark that a mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing of twen­ty years had pro­duced the clos­est in­ti­ma­cy be­tween the fam­ilies of Gaubertin and Soudry. Both re­cip­ro­cal­ly de­clared them­selves, to the end of their days, “ur­bi et or­bi,” to be the most up­right and hon­or­able per­sons in all France. Such com­mu­ni­ty of in­ter­ests, based on the mu­tu­al knowl­edge of the se­cret spots on the white gar­ment of con­science, is one of the ties least rec­og­nized and hard­est to un­tie in this low world. You who read this so­cial dra­ma, have you nev­er felt a con­vic­tion as to two per­sons which has led you to say to your­self, in or­der to ex­plain the con­tin­uance of a faith­ful de­vo­tion which made your own ego­tism blush, “They must sure­ly have com­mit­ted some crime to­geth­er”?

Af­ter an ad­min­is­tra­tion of twen­ty-​five years, Gaubertin, the land-​stew­ard, found him­self in pos­ses­sion of six hun­dred thou­sand francs in mon­ey, and Co­chet had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed near­ly two hun­dred and fifty thou­sand. The rapid and con­stant turn­ing over and over of their funds in the hands of Lecler­cq and Com­pa­ny (on the quai Bethume, Ile Saint Louis, ri­vals of the fa­mous house of Grandet) was a great as­sis­tance to the for­tunes of all par­ties. On the death of Made­moi­selle La­guerre, Jen­ny, the stew­ard's el­dest daugh­ter was asked in mar­riage by Lecler­cq. Gaubertin ex­pect­ed at that time to be­come own­er of Les Aigues by means of a plot laid in the pri­vate of­fice of Lupin, the no­tary, whom the stew­ard had set up and main­tained in busi­ness with­in the last twelve years.

Lupin, a son of the for­mer stew­ard of the es­tate of Soulanges, had lent him­self to var­ious slight pec­ula­tions,--in­vest­ments at fifty per cent be­low par, no­tices pub­lished sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, and all the oth­er ma­noeu­vres, un­hap­pi­ly com­mon in the provinces, to wrap a man­tle, as the say­ing is, over the clan­des­tine ma­nip­ula­tions of prop­er­ty. Late­ly a com­pa­ny has been formed in Paris, so they say, to levy con­tri­bu­tions up­on such plot­ters un­der a threat of out­bid­ding them. But in 1816 France was not, as it is now, light­ed by a flam­ing pub­lic­ity; the ac­com­plices might safe­ly count on di­vid­ing Les Aigues among them, that is, be­tween Co­chet, the no­tary, and Gaubertin, the lat­ter of whom re­served to him­self, “in pet­to,” the in­ten­tion of buy­ing the oth­ers out for a sum down, as soon as the prop­er­ty fair­ly stood in his own name. The lawyer em­ployed by the no­tary to man­age the sale of the es­tate was un­der per­son­al obli­ga­tions to Gaubertin, so that he fa­vored the spo­li­ation of the heirs, un­less any of the eleven farm­ers of Pi­cardy should take it in­to their heads to think they were cheat­ed, and in­quire in­to the re­al val­ue of the prop­er­ty.

Just as those in­ter­est­ed ex­pect­ed to find their for­tunes made, a lawyer came from Paris on the evening be­fore the fi­nal set­tle­ment, and em­ployed a no­tary at Ville-​aux-​Fayes, who hap­pened to be one of his for­mer clerks, to buy the es­tate of Les Aigues, which he did for eleven hun­dred thou­sand francs. None of the con­spir­ators dared out­bid an of­fer of eleven hun­dred thou­sand francs. Gaubertin sus­pect­ed some treach­ery on Soudry's part, and Soudry and Lupin thought they were tricked by Gaubertin. But a state­ment on the part of the pur­chas­ing agent, the no­tary of Ville-​aux-​Fayes, dis­abused them of these sus­pi­cions. The lat­ter, though sus­pect­ing the plan formed by Gaubertin, Lupin, and Soudry, re­frained from in­form­ing the lawyer in Paris, for the rea­son that if the new own­ers in­dis­creet­ly re­peat­ed his words, he would have too many en­emies at his heels to be able to stay where he was. This ret­icence, pe­cu­liar to provin­cials, was in this par­tic­ular case am­ply jus­ti­fied by suc­ceed­ing events. If the dwellers in the provinces are dis­sem­blers, they are forced to be so; their ex­cuse lies in the dan­ger ex­pressed in the old proverb, “We must howl with the wolves,” a mean­ing which un­der­lies the char­ac­ter of Phillinte.

When Gen­er­al Mont­cor­net took pos­ses­sion of Les Aigues, Gaubertin was no longer rich enough to give up his place. In or­der to mar­ry his daugh­ter to a rich banker he was obliged to give her a dowry of two hun­dred thou­sand francs; he had to pay thir­ty thou­sand for his son's prac­tice; and all that re­mained of his ac­cu­mu­la­tions was three hun­dred and sev­en­ty thou­sand, out of which he would be forced, soon­er or lat­er, to pay the dowry of his re­main­ing daugh­ter, Elise, for whom he hoped to ar­range a mar­riage at least as good as that of her sis­ter. The stew­ard de­ter­mined to study the gen­er­al, in or­der to find out if he could dis­gust him with the place,--hop­ing still to be able to car­ry out his de­feat­ed plan in his own in­ter­ests.

With the pe­cu­liar in­stinct which char­ac­ter­izes those who make their for­tunes by craft, Gaubertin be­lieved in a re­sem­blance of na­ture (which was not im­prob­able) be­tween an old sol­dier and an Opera-​singer. An ac­tress, and a gen­er­al of the Em­pire,--sure­ly they would have the same ex­trav­agant habits, the same care­less prodi­gal­ity? To the one as to the oth­er, rich­es came capri­cious­ly and by lucky chances. If some sol­diers are wily and as­tute and clever politi­cians, they are ex­cep­tions; a sol­dier is, usu­al­ly, es­pe­cial­ly an ac­com­plished cav­al­ry of­fi­cer like Mont­cor­net, guile­less, con­fi­dent, a novice in busi­ness, and lit­tle fit­ted to un­der­stand de­tails in the man­age­ment of an es­tate. Gaubertin flat­tered him­self that he could catch and hold the gen­er­al with the same net in which Made­moi­selle La­guerre had fin­ished her days. But it so hap­pened that the Em­per­or had once, in­ten­tion­al­ly, al­lowed Mont­cor­net to play the same game in Pomera­nia that Gaubertin was play­ing at Les Aigues; con­se­quent­ly, the gen­er­al ful­ly un­der­stood a sys­tem of plun­der­ing.

In plant­ing cab­bages, to use the ex­pres­sion of the first Duc de Biron, the old cuirassier sought to di­vert his mind, by oc­cu­pa­tion, from dwelling on his fall. Though he had yield­ed his “corps d'armee” to the Bour­bons, that du­ty (per­formed by oth­er gen­er­als and termed the dis­band­ing of the army of the Loire) could not atone for the crime of hav­ing fol­lowed the man of the Hun­dred-​Days to his last bat­tle-​field. In pres­ence of the al­lied army it was im­pos­si­ble for the peer of 1815 to re­main in the ser­vice, still less at the Lux­em­bourg. Ac­cord­ing­ly, Mont­cor­net be­took him­self to the coun­try by ad­vice of a dis­missed mar­shal, to plun­der Na­ture her­self. The gen­er­al was not de­fi­cient in the spe­cial cun­ning of an old mil­itary fox; and af­ter he had spent a few days in ex­am­in­ing his new prop­er­ty, he saw that Gaubertin was a stew­ard of the old sys­tem,--a swindler, such as the dukes and mar­shals of the Em­pire, those mush­rooms bred from the com­mon earth, were well ac­quaint­ed with.

The wily gen­er­al, soon aware of Gaubertin's great ex­pe­ri­ence in ru­ral ad­min­is­tra­tion, felt it was politic to keep well with him un­til he had him­self learned the se­crets of it; ac­cord­ing­ly, he passed him­self off as an­oth­er Made­moi­selle La­guerre, a course which lulled the stew­ard in­to false se­cu­ri­ty. This ap­par­ent sim­ple-​mind­ed­ness last­ed all the time it took the gen­er­al to learn the strength and weak­ness of Les Aigues, to mas­ter the de­tails of its rev­enues and the man­ner of col­lect­ing them, and to as­cer­tain how and where the rob­beries oc­curred, to­geth­er with the bet­ter­ments and economies which ought to be un­der­tak­en. Then, one fine morn­ing, hav­ing caught Gaubertin with his hand in the bag, as the say­ing is, the gen­er­al flew in­to one of those rages pe­cu­liar to the im­pe­ri­al con­querors of many lands. In do­ing so he com­mit­ted a cap­ital blun­der,--one that would have ru­ined the whole life of a man of less wealth and less con­sis­ten­cy than him­self, and from which came the evils, both small and great, with which the present his­to­ry teems. Brought up in the im­pe­ri­al school, ac­cus­tomed to deal with men as a dic­ta­tor, and full of con­tempt for “civil­ians,” Mont­cor­net did not trou­ble him­self to wear gloves when it came to putting a ras­cal of a land-​stew­ard out of doors. Civ­il life and its pre­cau­tions were things un­known to the sol­dier al­ready em­bit­tered by his loss of rank. He hu­mil­iat­ed Gaubertin ruth­less­ly, though the lat­ter drew the harsh treat­ment up­on him­self by a cyn­ical re­ply which roused Mont­cor­net's anger.

“You are liv­ing off my land,” said the gen­er­al, with jest­ing sever­ity.

“Do you think I can live off the sky?” re­turned Gaubertin, with a sneer.

“Out of my sight, black­guard! I dis­miss you!” cried the gen­er­al, strik­ing him with his whip,--blows which the stew­ard al­ways de­nied hav­ing re­ceived, for they were giv­en be­hind closed doors.

“I shall not go with­out my re­lease in full,” said Gaubertin, cold­ly, keep­ing at a dis­tance from the en­raged sol­dier.

“We will see what is thought of you in a po­lice court,” replied Mont­cor­net, shrug­ging his shoul­ders.

Hear­ing the threat, Gaubertin looked at the gen­er­al and smiled. The smile had the ef­fect of re­lax­ing Mont­cor­net's arms as though the sinews had been cut. We must ex­plain that smile.

For the last two years, Gaubertin's broth­er-​in-​law, a man named Gen­drin, long a jus­tice of the mu­nic­ipal court of Ville-​aux-​Fayes, had be­come the pres­ident of that court through the in­flu­ence of the Comte de Soulanges. The lat­ter was made peer of France in 1814, and re­mained faith­ful to the Bour­bons dur­ing the Hun­dred-​Days, there­fore the Keep­er of the Seals read­ily grant­ed an ap­point­ment at his re­quest. This re­la­tion­ship gave Gaubertin a cer­tain im­por­tance in the coun­try. The pres­ident of the court of a lit­tle town is, rel­ative­ly, a greater per­son­age than the pres­ident of one of the roy­al courts of a great city, who has var­ious equals, such as gen­er­als, bish­ops, and pre­fects; where­as the judge of the court of a small town has none,--the at­tor­ney-​gen­er­al and the sub-​pre­fect be­ing re­mov­able at will. Young Soudry, a com­pan­ion of Gaubertin's son in Paris as well as at Les Aigues, had just been ap­point­ed as­sis­tant at­tor­ney in the cap­ital of the de­part­ment. Be­fore the el­der Soudry, a quar­ter­mas­ter in the ar­tillery, be­came a brigadier of gen­darmes, he had been wound­ed in a skir­mish while de­fend­ing Mon­sieur de Soulanges, then ad­ju­tant-​gen­er­al. At the time of the cre­ation of the gen­darmerie, the Comte de Soulanges, who by that time had be­come a colonel, asked for a brigade for his for­mer pro­tec­tor, and lat­er still he so­licit­ed the post we have named for the younger Soudry. Be­sides all these in­flu­ences, the mar­riage of Made­moi­selle Gaubertin with a wealthy banker of the quai Bethume made the un­just stew­ard feel that he was far stronger in the com­mu­ni­ty than a lieu­tenant-​gen­er­al driv­en in­to re­tire­ment.

If this his­to­ry pro­vid­ed no oth­er in­struc­tion that that of­fered by the quar­rel be­tween the gen­er­al and his stew­ard, it would still be use­ful to many per­sons as a les­son for their con­duct in life. He who reads Machi­avel­li prof­itably, knows that hu­man pru­dence con­sists in nev­er threat­en­ing; in do­ing but not say­ing; in pro­mot­ing the re­treat of an en­emy and nev­er step­ping, as the say­ing is, on the tail of the ser­pent; and in avoid­ing, as one would mur­der, the in­flic­tion of a blow to the self-​love of any one low­er than one's self. An in­jury done to a per­son's in­ter­est, no mat­ter how great it may be at the time, is for­giv­en or ex­plained in the long run; but self-​love, van­ity, nev­er ceas­es to bleed from a wound giv­en, and nev­er for­gives it. The moral be­ing is ac­tu­al­ly more sen­si­tive, more liv­ing as it were, than the phys­ical be­ing. The heart and the blood are less im­press­ible than the nerves. In short, our in­ward be­ing rules us, no mat­ter what we do. You may rec­on­cile two fam­ilies who have half-​killed each oth­er, as in Brit­tany and in La Vendee dur­ing the civ­il wars, but you can no more rec­on­cile the ca­lum­ni­ators and the ca­lum­ni­at­ed than you can the spoil­ers and the de­spoiled. It is on­ly in epic po­ems that men curse each oth­er be­fore they kill. The sav­age, and the peas­ant who is much like a sav­age, sel­dom speak un­less to de­ceive an en­emy. Ev­er since 1789 France has been try­ing to make man be­lieve, against all ev­idence, that they are equal. To say to a man, “You are a swindler,” may be tak­en as a joke; but to catch him in the act and prove it to him with a cane on his back, to threat­en him with a po­lice-​court and not fol­low up the threat, is to re­mind him of the in­equal­ity of con­di­tions. If the mass­es will not brook any species of su­pe­ri­or­ity, is it like­ly that a swindler will for­give that of an hon­est man?

Mont­cor­net might have dis­missed his stew­ard un­der pre­text of pay­ing off a mil­itary obli­ga­tion by putting some old sol­dier in his place; Gaubertin and the gen­er­al would have un­der­stood the mat­ter, and the lat­ter, by spar­ing the stew­ard's self-​love would have giv­en him a chance to with­draw qui­et­ly. Gaubertin, in that case, would have left his late em­ploy­er in peace, and pos­si­bly he might have tak­en him­self and his sav­ings to Paris for in­vest­ment. But be­ing, as he was, ig­no­min­ious­ly dis­missed, the man con­ceived against his late mas­ter one of those bit­ter ha­treds which are lit­er­al­ly a part of ex­is­tence in provin­cial life, the per­sis­ten­cy, du­ra­tion, and plots of which would as­ton­ish diplo­ma­tists who are trained to let noth­ing as­ton­ish them. A burn­ing de­sire for vengeance led him to set­tle at Ville-​aux-​Fayes, and to take a po­si­tion where he could in­jure Mont­cor­net and stir up suf­fi­cient en­mi­ty against to force him to sell Les Aigues.

The gen­er­al was de­ceived by ap­pear­ances; for Gaubertin's ex­ter­nal be­hav­ior was not of a na­ture to warn or to alarm him. The late stew­ard fol­lowed his old cus­tom of pre­tend­ing, not ex­act­ly pover­ty, but lim­it­ed means. For years he had talked of his wife and three chil­dren, and the heavy ex­pens­es of a large fam­ily. Made­moi­selle La­guerre, to whom he had de­clared him­self too poor to ed­ucate his son in Paris, paid the costs her­self, and al­lowed her dear god­son (for she was Claude Gaubertin's spon­sor) two thou­sand francs a year.

The day af­ter the quar­rel, Gaubertin came, with a keep­er named Courte­cuisse, and de­mand­ed with much in­so­lence his re­lease in full of all claims, show­ing the gen­er­al the one he had ob­tained from his late mis­tress in such flat­ter­ing terms, and ask­ing, iron­ical­ly, that a search should be made for the prop­er­ty, re­al and oth­er­wise, which he was sup­posed to have stolen. If he had re­ceived fees from the wood-​mer­chants on their pur­chas­es and from the farm­ers on their leas­es, Made­moi­selle La­guerre, he said, had al­ways al­lowed it; not on­ly did she gain by the bar­gains he made, but ev­ery­thing went on smooth­ly with­out trou­bling her. The coun­try-​peo­ple would have died, he re­marked, for Made­moi­selle, where­as the gen­er­al was lay­ing up for him­self a store of dif­fi­cul­ties.

Gaubertin--and this trait is fre­quent­ly to be seen in the ma­jor­ity of those pro­fes­sions in which the prop­er­ty of oth­ers can be tak­en by means not fore­seen by the Code--con­sid­ered him­self a per­fect­ly hon­est man. In the first place, he had so long had pos­ses­sion of the mon­ey ex­tort­ed from Made­moi­selle La­guerre's farm­ers through fear, and paid in assig­nats, that he re­gard­ed it as le­git­imate­ly ac­quired. It was a mere mat­ter of ex­change. He thought that in the end he should have quite as much risk with coin as with pa­per. Be­sides, legal­ly, Made­moi­selle had no right to re­ceive any pay­ment ex­cept in assig­nats. “Legal­ly” is a fine, ro­bust ad­verb, which bol­sters up many a for­tune! More­over, he re­flect­ed that ev­er since great es­tates and land-​agents had ex­ist­ed, that is, ev­er since the ori­gin of so­ci­ety, the said agents had set up, for their own use, an ar­gu­ment such as we find our cooks us­ing in this present day. Here it is, in its sim­plic­ity:--

“If my mis­tress,” says the cook, “went to mar­ket her­self, she would have to pay more for her pro­vi­sions than I charge her; she is the gain­er, and the prof­its I make do more good in my hands than in those of the deal­ers.”

“If Made­moi­selle,” thought Gaubertin, “were to man­age Les Aigues her­self, she would nev­er get thir­ty thou­sand francs a year out of it; the peas­ants, the deal­ers, the work­men would rob her of the rest. It is much bet­ter that I should have it, and so en­able her to live in peace.”

The Catholic re­li­gion, and it alone, is able to pre­vent these ca­pit­ula­tions of con­science. But, ev­er since 1789 re­li­gion has no in­flu­ence on two thirds of the French peo­ple. The peas­ants, whose minds are keen and whose pover­ty drives them to im­ita­tion, had reached, spe­cial­ly in the val­ley of Les Aigues, a fright­ful state of de­mor­al­iza­tion. They went to mass on Sun­days, but on­ly at the out­side of the church, where it was their cus­tom to meet and trans­act busi­ness and make their week­ly bar­gains.

We can now es­ti­mate the ex­tent of the evil done by the care­less in­dif­fer­ence of the great singer to the man­age­ment of her prop­er­ty. Made­moi­selle La­guerre be­trayed, through mere self­ish­ness, the in­ter­ests of those who owned prop­er­ty, who are held in per­pet­ual ha­tred by those who own none. Since 1792 the land-​own­ers of Paris have be­come of ne­ces­si­ty a com­bined body. If, alas, the feu­dal fam­ilies, less nu­mer­ous than the mid­dle-​class fam­ilies, did not per­ceive the ne­ces­si­ty of com­bin­ing in 1400 un­der Louis XI., nor in 1600 un­der Riche­lieu, can we ex­pect that in this nine­teenth cen­tu­ry of progress the mid­dle class­es will prove to be more per­ma­nent­ly and solid­ly com­bined that the old no­bil­ity? An oli­garchy of a hun­dred thou­sand rich men presents all the dan­gers of a democ­ra­cy with none of its ad­van­tages. The prin­ci­ple of “ev­ery man for him­self and for his own,” the self­ish­ness of in­di­vid­ual in­ter­ests, will kill the oli­garchi­cal self­ish­ness so nec­es­sary to the ex­is­tence of mod­ern so­ci­ety, and which Eng­land has prac­tised with such suc­cess for the last three cen­turies. What­ev­er may be said or done, land-​own­ers will nev­er un­der­stand the ne­ces­si­ty of the sort of in­ter­nal dis­ci­pline which made the Church such an ad­mirable mod­el of gov­ern­ment, un­til, too late, they find them­selves in dan­ger from one an­oth­er. The au­dac­ity with which com­mu­nism, that liv­ing and act­ing log­ic of democ­ra­cy, at­tacks so­ci­ety from the moral side, shows plain­ly that the Sam­son of to-​day, grown pru­dent, is un­der­min­ing the foun­da­tions of the cel­lar, in­stead of shak­ing the pil­lars of the hall.