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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sons of the Soil, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sons of the Soil
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: August, 1998  [Etext #1417]
+Posting Date: February 24, 2010
+Last Updated: November 23, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONS OF THE SOIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+SONS OF THE SOIL
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+                    To Monsieur P. S. B. Gavault.
+
+  Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote these words at the beginning of his
+  Nouvelle Heloise: “I have seen the morals of my time and I publish
+  these letters.” May I not say to you, in imitation of that great
+  writer, “I have studied the march of my epoch and I publish this
+  work”?
+
+  The object of this particular study--startling in its truth so
+  long as society makes philanthropy a principle instead of
+  regarding it as an accident--is to bring to sight the leading
+  characters of a class too long unheeded by the pens of writers who
+  seek novelty as their chief object. Perhaps this forgetfulness is
+  only prudence in these days when the people are heirs of all the
+  sycophants of royalty. We make criminals poetic, we commiserate
+  the hangman, we have all but deified the proletary. Sects have
+  risen, and cried by every pen, “Arise, working-men!” just as
+  formerly they cried, “Arise!” to the “tiers etat.” None of these
+  Erostrates, however, have dared to face the country solitudes and
+  study the unceasing conspiracy of those whom we term weak against
+  those others who fancy themselves strong,--that of the peasant
+  against the proprietor. It is necessary to enlighten not only the
+  legislator of to-day but him of to-morrow. In the midst of the
+  present democratic ferment, into which so many of our writers
+  blindly rush, it becomes an urgent duty to exhibit the peasant who
+  renders Law inapplicable, and who has made the ownership of land
+  to be a thing that is, and that is not.
+
+  You are now to behold that indefatigable mole, that rodent which
+  undermines and disintegrates the soil, parcels it out and divides
+  an acre into a hundred fragments,--ever spurred on to his banquet
+  by the lower middle classes who make him at once their auxiliary
+  and their prey. This essentially unsocial element, created by the
+  Revolution, will some day absorb the middle classes, just as the
+  middle classes have destroyed the nobility. Lifted above the law
+  by its own insignificance, this Robespierre, with one head and
+  twenty million arms, is at work perpetually; crouching in country
+  districts, intrenched in municipal councils, under arms in the
+  national guard of every canton in France,--one result of the year
+  1830, which failed to remember that Napoleon preferred the chances
+  of defeat to the danger of arming the masses.
+
+  If during the last eight years I have again and again given up the
+  writing of this book (the most important of those I have
+  undertaken to write), and as often returned to it, it was, as you
+  and other friends can well imagine, because my courage shrank from
+  the many difficulties, the many essential details of a drama so
+  doubly dreadful and so cruelly bloody. Among the reasons which
+  render me now almost, it may be thought, foolhardy, I count the
+  desire to finish a work long designed to be to you a proof of my
+  deep and lasting gratitude for a friendship that has ever been
+  among my greatest consolations in misfortune.
+
+                                                      De Balzac.
+
+
+
+
+SONS OF THE SOIL
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+                 Whoso land hath, contention hath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE CHATEAU
+
+
+Les Aigues, August 6, 1823.
+
+To Monsieur Nathan,
+
+My dear Nathan,--You, who provide the public with such delightful dreams
+through the magic of your imagination, are now to follow me while I make
+you dream a dream of truth. You shall then tell me whether the present
+century is likely to bequeath such dreams to the Nathans and the
+Blondets of the year 1923; you shall estimate the distance at which we
+now are from the days when the Florines of the eighteenth century found,
+on awaking, a chateau like Les Aigues in the terms of their bargain.
+
+My dear fellow, if you receive this letter in the morning, let your
+mind travel, as you lie in bed, fifty leagues or thereabouts from Paris,
+along the great mail road which leads to the confines of Burgundy, and
+behold two small lodges built of red brick, joined, or separated, by
+a rail painted green. It was there that the diligence deposited your
+friend and correspondent.
+
+On either side of this double pavilion grows a quick-set hedge, from
+which the brambles straggle like stray locks of hair. Here and there a
+tree shoots boldly up; flowers bloom on the slopes of the wayside ditch,
+bathing their feet in its green and sluggish water. The hedge at both
+ends meets and joins two strips of woodland, and the double meadow thus
+inclosed is doubtless the result of a clearing.
+
+These dusty and deserted lodges give entrance to a magnificent avenue of
+centennial elms, whose umbrageous heads lean toward each other and form
+a long and most majestic arbor. The grass grows in this avenue, and only
+a few wheel-tracks can be seen along its double width of way. The great
+age of the trees, the breadth of the avenue, the venerable construction
+of the lodges, the brown tints of their stone courses, all bespeak an
+approach to some half-regal residence.
+
+Before reaching this enclosure from the height of an eminence such as we
+Frenchmen rather conceitedly call a mountain, at the foot of which lies
+the village of Conches (the last post-house), I had seen the long valley
+of Aigues, at the farther end of which the mail road turns to follow a
+straight line into the little sub-prefecture of La Ville-aux-Fayes, over
+which, as you know, the nephew of our friend des Lupeaulx lords it. Tall
+forests lying on the horizon, along vast slopes which skirt a river,
+command this rich valley, which is framed in the far distance by the
+mountains of a lesser Switzerland, called the Morvan. These forests
+belong to Les Aigues, and to the Marquis de Ronquerolles and the Comte
+de Soulanges, whose castles and parks and villages, seen in the distance
+from these heights, give the scene a strong resemblance to the imaginary
+landscapes of Velvet Breughel.
+
+If these details do not remind you of all the castles in the air you
+have desired to possess in France you are not worthy to receive the
+present narrative of an astounded Parisian. At last I have seen a
+landscape where art is blended with nature in such a way that neither
+of them spoils the other; the art is natural, and the nature artistic.
+I have found the oasis that you and I have dreamed of when reading
+novels,--nature luxuriant and adorned, rolling lines that are not
+confused, something wild withal, unkempt, mysterious, not common. Jump
+that green railing and come on!
+
+When I tried to look up the avenue, which the sun never penetrates
+except when it rises or when it sets, striping the road like a zebra
+with its oblique rays, my view was obstructed by an outline of rising
+ground; after that is passed, the long avenue is obstructed by a copse,
+within which the roads meet at a cross-ways, in the centre of which
+stands a stone obelisk, for all the world like an eternal exclamation
+mark. From the crevices between the foundation stones of this erection,
+which is topped by a spiked ball (what an idea!), hang flowering plants,
+blue or yellow according to the season. Les Aigues must certainly have
+been built by a woman, or for a woman; no man would have had such dainty
+ideas; the architect no doubt had his cue.
+
+Passing through the little wood placed there as sentinel, I came upon
+a charming declivity, at the foot of which foamed and gurgled a little
+brook, which I crossed on a culvert of mossy stones, superb in color,
+the prettiest of all the mosaics which time manufactures. The avenue
+continues by the brookside up a gentle rise. In the distance, the first
+tableau is now seen,--a mill and its dam, a causeway and trees, linen
+laid out to dry, the thatched cottage of the miller, his fishing-nets,
+and the tank where the fish are kept,--not to speak of the miller’s boy,
+who was already watching me. No matter where you are in the country,
+however solitary you may think yourself, you are certain to be the focus
+of the two eyes of a country bumpkin; a laborer rests on his hoe,
+a vine-dresser straightens his bent back, a little goat-girl, or
+shepherdess, or milkmaid climbs a willow to stare at you.
+
+Presently the avenue merges into an alley of acacias, which leads to an
+iron railing made in the days when iron-workers fashioned those slender
+filagrees which are not unlike the copies set us by a writing-master. On
+either side of the railing is a ha-ha, the edges of which bristle with
+angry spikes,--regular porcupines in metal. The railing is closed
+at both ends by two porter’s-lodges, like those of the palace at
+Versailles, and the gateway is surmounted by colossal vases. The gold
+of the arabesques is ruddy, for rust has added its tints, but this
+entrance, called “the gate of the Avenue,” which plainly shows the hand
+of the Great Dauphin (to whom, indeed, Les Aigues owes it), seems to me
+none the less beautiful for that. At the end of each ha-ha the walls
+of the park, built of rough-hewn stone, begin. These stones, set in a
+mortar made of reddish earth, display their variegated colors, the
+warm yellows of the silex, the white of the lime carbonates, the russet
+browns of the sandstone, in many a fantastic shape. As you first enter
+it, the park is gloomy, the walls are hidden by creeping plants and by
+trees that for fifty years have heard no sound of axe. One might think
+it a virgin forest, made primeval again through some phenomenon granted
+exclusively to forests. The trunks of the trees are swathed with lichen
+which hangs from one to another. Mistletoe, with its viscid leaves,
+droops from every fork of the branches where moisture settles. I have
+found gigantic ivies, wild arabesques which flourish only at fifty
+leagues from Paris, here where land does not cost enough to make one
+sparing of it. The landscape on such free lines covers a great deal of
+ground. Nothing is smoothed off; rakes are unknown, ruts and ditches
+are full of water, frogs are tranquilly delivered of their tadpoles, the
+woodland flowers bloom, and the heather is as beautiful as that I have
+seen on your mantle-shelf in January in the elegant beau-pot sent by
+Florine. This mystery is intoxicating, it inspires vague desires. The
+forest odors, beloved of souls that are epicures of poesy, who delight
+in the tiny mosses, the noxious fungi, the moist mould, the willows, the
+balsams, the wild thyme, the green waters of a pond, the golden star
+of the yellow water-lily,--the breath of all such vigorous propagations
+came to my nostrils and filled me with a single thought; was it their
+soul? I seemed to see a rose-tinted gown floating along the winding
+alley.
+
+The path ended abruptly in another copse, where birches and poplars and
+all the quivering trees palpitated,--an intelligent family with graceful
+branches and elegant bearing, the trees of a love as free! It was from
+this point, my dear fellow, that I saw a pond covered with the white
+water-lily and other plants with broad flat leaves and narrow slender
+ones, on which lay a boat painted white and black, as light as a
+nut-shell and dainty as the wherry of a Seine boatman. Beyond rose
+the chateau, built in 1560, of fine red brick, with stone courses and
+copings, and window-frames in which the sashes were of small leaded
+panes (O Versailles!). The stone is hewn in diamond points, but
+hollowed, as in the Ducal Palace at Venice on the facade toward the
+Bridge of Sighs. There are no regular lines about the castle except in
+the centre building, from which projects a stately portico with double
+flights of curving steps, and round balusters slender at their base
+and broadening at the middle. The main building is surrounded by
+clock-towers and sundry modern turrets, with galleries and vases more
+or less Greek. No harmony there, my dear Nathan! These heterogeneous
+erections are wrapped, so to speak, by various evergreen trees whose
+branches shed their brown needles upon the roofs, nourishing the lichen
+and giving tone to the cracks and crevices where the eye delights to
+wander. Here you see the Italian pine, the stone pine, with its red bark
+and its majestic parasol; here a cedar two hundred years old, weeping
+willows, a Norway spruce, and a beech which overtops them all; and
+there, in front of the main tower, some very singular shrubs,--a yew
+trimmed in a way that recalls some long-decayed garden of old France,
+and magnolias with hortensias at their feet. In short, the place is
+the Invalides of the heroes of horticulture, once the fashion and now
+forgotten, like all other heroes.
+
+A chimney, with curious copings, which was sending forth great volumes
+of smoke, assured me that this delightful scene was not an opera
+setting. A kitchen reveals human beings. Now imagine _me_, Blondet, who
+shiver as if in the polar regions at Saint-Cloud, in the midst of this
+glowing Burgundian climate. The sun sends down its warmest rays, the
+king-fisher watches on the shores of the pond, the cricket chirps, the
+grain-pods burst, the poppy drops its morphia in glutinous tears, and
+all are clearly defined on the dark-blue ether. Above the ruddy soil
+of the terraces flames that joyous natural punch which intoxicates the
+insects and the flowers and dazzles our eyes and browns our faces. The
+grape is beading, its tendrils fall in a veil of threads whose
+delicacy puts to shame the lace-makers. Beside the house blue larkspur,
+nasturtium, and sweet-peas are blooming. From a distance orange-trees
+and tuberoses scent the air. After the poetic exhalations of the woods
+(a gradual preparation) came the delectable pastilles of this botanic
+seraglio.
+
+Standing on the portico, like the queen of flowers, behold a woman robed
+in white, with hair unpowdered, holding a parasol lined with white silk,
+but herself whiter than the silk, whiter than the lilies at her feet,
+whiter than the starry jasmine that climbed the balustrade,--a woman, a
+Frenchwoman born in Russia, who said as I approached her, “I had almost
+given you up.” She had seen me as I left the copse. With what perfection
+do all women, even the most guileless, understand the arrangement of
+a scenic effect? The movements of the servants, who were preparing to
+serve breakfast, showed me that the meal had been delayed until after
+the arrival of the diligence. She had not ventured to come to meet me.
+
+Is this not our dream,--the dream of all lovers of the beautiful, under
+whatsoever form it comes; the seraphic beauty that Luini put into his
+Marriage of the Virgin, that noble fresco at Sarono; the beauty that
+Rubens grasped in the tumult of his “Battle of the Thermodon”; the
+beauty that five centuries have elaborated in the cathedrals of Seville
+and Milan; the beauty of the Saracens at Granada, the beauty of Louis
+XIV. at Versailles, the beauty of the Alps, and that of this Limagne in
+which I stand?
+
+Belonging to the estate, about which there is nothing too princely,
+nor yet too financial, where prince and farmer-general have both lived
+(which fact serves to explain it), are four thousand acres of woodland,
+a park of some nine hundred acres, the mill, three leased farms, another
+immense farm at Conches, and vineyards,--the whole producing a revenue
+of about seventy thousand francs a year. Now you know Les Aigues, my
+dear fellow; where I have been expected for the last two weeks, and
+where I am at this moment, in the chintz-lined chamber assigned to
+dearest friends.
+
+Above the park, towards Conches, a dozen little brooks, clear, limpid
+streams coming from the Morvan, fall into the pond, after adorning
+with their silvery ribbons the valleys of the park and the magnificent
+gardens around the chateau. The name of the place, Les Aigues, comes
+from these charming streams of water; the estate was originally called
+in the old title-deeds “Les Aigues-Vives” to distinguish it from
+“Aigues-Mortes”; but the word “Vives” has now been dropped. The pond
+empties into the stream, which follows the course of the avenue, through
+a wide and straight canal bordered on both sides and along its
+whole length by weeping willows. This canal, thus arched, produces a
+delightful effect. Gliding through it, seated on a thwart of the little
+boat, one could fancy one’s self in the nave of some great cathedral,
+the choir being formed of the main building of the house seen at the end
+of it. When the setting sun casts its orange tones mingled with amber
+upon the casements of the chateau, the effect is that of painted
+windows. At the other end of the canal we see Blangy, the county-town,
+containing about sixty houses, and the village church, which is nothing
+more than a tumble-down building with a wooden clock-tower which
+appears to hold up a roof of broken tiles. One comfortable house and the
+parsonage are distinguishable; but the township is a large one,--about
+two hundred scattered houses in all, those of the village forming as
+it were the capital. The roads are lined with fruit-trees, and numerous
+little gardens are strewn here and there,--true country gardens with
+everything in them; flowers, onions, cabbages and grapevines, currants,
+and a great deal of manure. The village has a primitive air; it is
+rustic, and has that decorative simplicity which we artists are forever
+seeking. In the far distance is the little town of Soulanges overhanging
+a vast sheet of water, like the buildings on the lake of Thune.
+
+When you stroll in the park, which has four gates, each superb in style,
+you feel that our mythological Arcadias are flat and stale. Arcadia is
+in Burgundy, not in Greece; Arcadia is at Les Aigues and nowhere else. A
+river, made by scores of brooklets, crosses the park at its lower level
+with a serpentine movement; giving a dewy freshness and tranquillity
+to the scene,--an air of solitude, which reminds one of a convent of
+Carthusians, and all the more because, on an artificial island in the
+river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior elegance of which is worthy
+of the luxurious financier who constructed it. Les Aigues, my dear
+Nathan, once belonged to that Bouret who spent two millions to receive
+Louis XV. on a single occasion under his roof. How many ardent passions,
+how many distinguished minds, how many fortunate circumstances have
+contributed to make this beautiful place what it is! A mistress of Henri
+IV. rebuilt the chateau where it now stands. The favorite of the Great
+Dauphin, Mademoiselle Choin (to whom Les Aigues was given), added
+a number of farms to it. Bouret furnished the house with all the
+elegancies of Parisian homes for an Opera celebrity; and to him Les
+Aigues owes the restoration of its ground floor in the style Louis XV.
+
+I have often stood rapt in admiration at the beauty of the dining-room.
+The eye is first attracted to the ceiling, painted in fresco in the
+Italian manner, where lightsome arabesques are frolicking. Female forms,
+in stucco ending in foliage, support at regular distances corbeils
+of fruit, from which spring the garlands of the ceiling. Charming
+paintings, the work of unknown artists, fill the panels between the
+female figures, representing the luxuries of the table,--boar’s-heads,
+salmon, rare shell-fish, and all edible things,--which fantastically
+suggest men and women and children, and rival the whimsical imagination
+of the Chinese,--the people who best understand, to my thinking
+at least, the art of decoration. The mistress of the house finds a
+bell-wire beneath her feet to summon servants, who enter only when
+required, disturbing no interviews and overhearing no secrets. The
+panels above the doorways represent gay scenes; all the embrasures, both
+of doors and windows, are in marble mosaics. The room is heated from
+below. Every window looks forth on some delightful view.
+
+This room communicates with a bath-room on one side and on the other
+with a boudoir which opens into the salon. The bath-room is lined with
+Sevres tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the bath
+marble. An alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which turns
+on a pivot, contains a couch in gilt wood of the truest Pompadour. The
+ceiling is lapis-lazuli starred with gold. The tiles are painted from
+designs by Boucher. Bath, table and love are therefore closely united.
+
+After the salon, which, I should tell you, my dear fellow, exhibits the
+magnificence of the Louis XIV. manner, you enter a fine billiard-room
+unrivalled so far as I know in Paris itself. The entrance to this suite
+of ground-floor apartments is through a semi-circular antechamber, at
+the lower end of which is a fairy-like staircase, lighted from
+above, which leads to other parts of the house, all built at various
+epochs--and to think that they chopped off the heads of the wealthy in
+1793! Good heavens! why can’t people understand that the marvels of art
+are impossible in a land where there are no great fortunes, no secure,
+luxurious lives? If the Left insists on killing kings why not leave us a
+few little princelings with money in their pockets?
+
+At the present moment these accumulated treasures belong to a charming
+woman with an artistic soul, who is not content with merely restoring
+them magnificently, but who keeps the place up with loving care. Sham
+philosophers, studying themselves while they profess to be studying
+humanity, call these glorious things extravagance. They grovel before
+cotton prints and the tasteless designs of modern industry, as if we
+were greater and happier in these days than in those of Henri IV., Louis
+XIV., and Louis XVI., monarchs who have all left the stamp of their
+reigns upon Les Aigues. What palace, what royal castle, what mansions,
+what noble works of art, what gold brocaded stuffs are sacred now?
+The petticoats of our grandmothers go to cover the chairs in these
+degenerate days. Selfish and thieving interlopers that we are, we pull
+down everything and plant cabbages where marvels once were rife. Only
+yesterday the plough levelled Persan, that magnificent domain which
+gave a title to one of the most opulent families of the old parliament;
+hammers have demolished Montmorency, which cost an Italian follower
+of Napoleon untold sums; Val, the creation of Regnault de Saint-Jean
+d’Angely, Cassan, built by a mistress of the Prince de Conti; in all,
+four royal houses have disappeared in the valley of the Oise alone. We
+are getting a Roman campagna around Paris in advance of the days when a
+tempest shall blow from the north and overturn our plaster palaces and
+our pasteboard decorations.
+
+Now see, my dear fellow, to what the habit of bombasticising in
+newspapers brings you to. Here am I writing a downright article. Does
+the mind have its ruts, like a road? I stop; for I rob the mail, and I
+rob myself, and you may be yawning--to be continued in our next; I hear
+the second bell, which summons me to one of those abundant breakfasts
+the fashion of which has long passed away, in the dining-rooms of Paris,
+be it understood.
+
+Here’s the history of my Arcadia. In 1815, there died at Les Aigues one
+of the famous wantons of the last century,--a singer, forgotten of
+the guillotine and the nobility, after preying upon exchequers, upon
+literature, upon aristocracy, and all but reaching the scaffold;
+forgotten, like so many fascinating old women who expiate their
+golden youth in country solitudes, and replace their lost loves by
+another,--man by Nature. Such women live with the flowers, with the
+woodland scents, with the sky, with the sunshine, with all that sings
+and skips and shines and sprouts,--the birds, the squirrels, the
+flowers, the grass; they know nothing about these things, they cannot
+explain them, but they love them; they love them so well that they
+forget dukes, marshals, rivalries, financiers, follies, luxuries, their
+paste jewels and their real diamonds, their heeled slippers and their
+rouge,--all, for the sweetness of country life.
+
+I have gathered, my dear fellow, much precious information about the old
+age of Mademoiselle Laguerre; for, to tell you the truth, the after life
+of such women as Florine, Mariette, Suzanne de Val Noble, and Tullia has
+made me, every now and then, extremely inquisitive, as though I were a
+child inquiring what had become of the old moons.
+
+In 1790 Mademoiselle Laguerre, alarmed at the turn of public affairs,
+came to settle at Les Aigues, bought and given to her by Bouret, who
+passed several summers with her at the chateau. Terrified at the fate
+of Madame du Barry, she buried her diamonds. At that time she was only
+fifty-three years of age, and according to her lady’s-maid, afterwards
+married to a gendarme named Soudry, “Madame was more beautiful than
+ever.” My dear Nathan, Nature has no doubt her private reasons for
+treating women of this sort like spoiled children; excesses, instead
+of killing them, fatten them, preserve them, renew their youth. Under
+a lymphatic appearance they have nerves which maintain their marvellous
+physique; they actually preserve their beauty for reasons which would
+make a virtuous woman haggard. No, upon my word, Nature is not moral!
+
+Mademoiselle Laguerre lived an irreproachable life at Les Aigues, one
+might even call it a saintly one, after her famous adventure,--you
+remember it? One evening in a paroxysm of despairing love, she fled from
+the opera-house in her stage dress, rushed into the country, and passed
+the night weeping by the wayside. (Ah! how they have calumniated the
+love of Louis XV.’s time!) She was so unused to see the sunrise, that
+she hailed it with one of her finest songs. Her attitude, quite as much
+as her tinsel, drew the peasants about her; amazed at her gestures,
+her voice, her beauty, they took her for an angel, and dropped on their
+knees around her. If Voltaire had not existed we might have thought it
+a new miracle. I don’t know if God gave her much credit for her tardy
+virtue, for love after all must be a sickening thing to a woman as weary
+of it as a wanton of the old Opera. Mademoiselle Laguerre was born in
+1740, and her hey-day was in 1760, when Monsieur (I forget his name) was
+called the “ministre de la guerre,” on account of his liaison with her.
+She abandoned that name, which was quite unknown down here, and called
+herself Madame des Aigues, as if to merge her identity in the estate,
+which she delighted to improve with a taste that was profoundly
+artistic. When Bonaparte became First Consul, she increased her property
+by the purchase of church lands, for which she used the proceeds of
+her diamonds. As an Opera divinity never knows how to take care of
+her money, she intrusted the management of the estate to a steward,
+occupying herself with her flowers and fruits and with the beautifying
+of the park.
+
+After Mademoiselle was dead and buried at Blangy, the notary of
+Soulanges--that little town which lies between Ville-aux-Fayes and
+Blangy, the capital of the township--made an elaborate inventory, and
+sought out the heirs of the singer, who never knew she had any. Eleven
+families of poor laborers living near Amiens, and sleeping in cotton
+sheets, awoke one fine morning in golden ones. The property was sold
+at auction. Les Aigues was bought by Montcornet, who had laid by enough
+during his campaigns in Spain and Pomerania to make the purchase, which
+cost about eleven hundred thousand francs, including the furniture. The
+general, no doubt, felt the influence of these luxurious apartments; and
+I was arguing with the countess only yesterday that her marriage was a
+direct result of the purchase of Les Aigues.
+
+To rightly understand the countess, my dear Nathan, you must know that
+the general is a violent man, red as fire, five feet nine inches tall,
+round as a tower, with a thick neck and the shoulders of a blacksmith,
+which must have amply filled his cuirass. Montcornet commanded
+the cuirassiers at the battle of Essling (called by the Austrians
+Gross-Aspern), and came near perishing when that noble corps was driven
+back on the Danube. He managed to cross the river astride a log of wood.
+The cuirassiers, finding the bridge down, took the glorious resolution,
+at Montcornet’s command, to turn and resist the entire Austrian army,
+which carried off on the morrow over thirty wagon-loads of cuirasses.
+The Germans invented a name for their enemies on this occasion which
+means “men of iron.”[*] Montcornet has the outer man of a hero of
+antiquity. His arms are stout and vigorous, his chest deep and broad;
+his head has a leonine aspect, his voice is of those that can order a
+charge in the thick of battle; but he has nothing more than the courage
+of a daring man; he lacks mind and breadth of view. Like other generals
+to whom military common-sense, the natural boldness of those who spend
+their lives in danger, and the habit of command gives an appearance of
+superiority, Montcornet has an imposing effect when you first meet him;
+he seems a Titan, but he contains a dwarf, like the pasteboard giant
+who saluted Queen Elizabeth at the gates of Kenilworth. Choleric though
+kind, and full of imperial hauteur, he has the caustic tongue of a
+soldier, and is quick at repartee, but quicker still with a blow. He
+may have been superb on a battle-field; in a household he is simply
+intolerable. He knows no love but barrack love,--the love which those
+clever myth-makers, the ancients, placed under the patronage of Eros,
+son of Mars and Venus. Those delightful chroniclers of the old religions
+provided themselves with a dozen different Loves. Study the fathers and
+the attributes of these Loves, and you will discover a complete social
+nomenclature,--and yet we fancy that we originate things! When the world
+turns upside down like an hour-glass, when the seas become continents,
+Frenchmen will find canons, steamboats, newspapers, and maps wrapped up
+in seaweed at the bottom of what is now our ocean.
+
+     [*] I do not, on principle, like foot-notes, and this is the
+     first I have ever allowed myself. Its historical interest
+     must be my excuse; it will prove, moreover, that
+     descriptions of battles should be something more than the
+     dry particulars of technical writers, who for the last three
+     thousand years have told us about left and right wings and
+     centres being broken or driven in, but never a word about
+     the soldier himself, his sufferings, and his heroism. The
+     conscientious care with which I prepared myself to write the
+     “Scenes from Military Life,” led me to many a battle-field
+     once wet with the blood of France and her enemies. Among
+     them I went to Wagram. When I reached the shores of the
+     Danube, opposite Lobau, I noticed on the bank, which is
+     covered with turf, certain undulations that reminded me of
+     the furrows in a field of lucern. I asked the reason of it,
+     thinking I should hear of some new method of agriculture:
+     “There sleep the cavalry of the imperial guard,” said the
+     peasant who served us as a guide; “those are their graves
+     you see there.” The words made me shudder. Prince Frederic
+     Schwartzenburg, who translated them, added that the man had
+     himself driven one of the wagons laden with cuirasses. By
+     one of the strange chances of war our guide had served a
+     breakfast to Napoleon on the morning of the battle of
+     Wagram. Though poor, he had kept the double napoleon which
+     the Emperor gave him for his milk and his eggs. The curate
+     of Gross-Aspern took us to the famous cemetery where French
+     and Austrians struggled together knee-deep in blood, with a
+     courage and obstinacy glorious to each. There, while
+     explaining that a marble tablet (to which our attention had
+     been attracted, and on which were inscribed the names of the
+     owner of Gross-Aspern, who had been killed on the third day)
+     was the sole compensation ever given to the family, he said,
+     in a tone of deep sadness: “It was a time of great misery,
+     and of great hopes; but now are the days of forgetfulness.”
+      The saying seemed to me sublime in its simplicity; but when
+     I came to reflect upon the matter, I felt there was some
+     justification for the apparent ingratitude of the House of
+     Austria. Neither nations nor kings are wealthy enough to
+     reward all the devotions to which these tragic struggles
+     give rise. Let those who serve a cause with a secret
+     expectation of recompense, set a price upon their blood and
+     become mercenaries. Those who wield either sword or pen for
+     their country’s good ought to think of nothing but of _doing
+     their best_, as our fathers used to say, and expect nothing,
+     not even glory, except as a happy accident.
+
+     It was in rushing to retake this famous cemetery for the
+     third time that Massena, wounded and carried in the box of a
+     cabriolet, made this splendid harangue to his soldiers:
+     “What! you rascally curs, who have only five sous a day
+     while I have forty thousand, do you let me go ahead of you?”
+      All the world knows the order which the Emperor sent to his
+     lieutenant by M. de Sainte-Croix, who swam the Danube three
+     times: “Die or retake the village; it is a question of
+     saving the army; the bridges are destroyed.”
+
+     The Author.
+
+
+Now, I must tell you that the Comtesse de Montcornet is a fragile,
+timid, delicate little woman. What do you think of such a marriage
+as that? To those who know society such things are common enough; a
+well-assorted marriage is the exception. Nevertheless, I have come to
+see how it is that this slender little creature handles her bobbins in
+a way to lead this heavy, solid, stolid general precisely as he himself
+used to lead his cuirassiers.
+
+If Montcornet begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a
+finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his cigars
+in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before he
+returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns to her, like a
+bear drunk on grapes, and says, when anything is proposed, “If Madame
+approves.” When he comes to his wife’s room, with that heavy step which
+makes the tiles creak as though they were boards, and she, not wanting
+him, calls out: “Don’t come in!” he performs a military volte-face and
+says humbly: “You will let me know when I can see you?”--in the very
+tones with which he shouted to his cuirassiers on the banks of the
+Danube: “Men, we must die, and die well, since there’s nothing else we
+can do!” I have heard him say, speaking of his wife, “Not only do I love
+her, but I venerate her.” When he flies into a passion which defies all
+restraint and bursts all bonds, the little woman retires into her own
+room and leaves him to shout. But four or five hours later she will say:
+“Don’t get into a passion, my dear, you might break a blood-vessel; and
+besides, you hurt me.” Then the lion of Essling retreats out of sight
+to wipe his eyes. Sometimes he comes into the salon when she and I are
+talking, and if she says: “Don’t disturb us, he is reading to me,” he
+leaves us without a word.
+
+It is only strong men, choleric and powerful, thunder-bolts of war,
+diplomats with olympian heads, or men of genius, who can show this
+utter confidence, this generous devotion to weakness, this constant
+protection, this love without jealousy, this easy good humor with a
+woman. Good heavens! I place the science of the countess’s management
+of her husband as far above the peevish, arid virtues as the satin of a
+causeuse is superior to the Utrecht velvet of a dirty bourgeois sofa.
+
+My dear fellow, I have spent six days in this delightful country-house,
+and I never tire of admiring the beauties of the park, surrounded by
+forests where pretty wood-paths lead beside the brooks. Nature and its
+silence, these tranquil pleasures, this placid life to which she woos
+me,--all attract. Ah! here is true literature; no fault of style among
+the meadows. Happiness forgets all things here,--even the Debats! It has
+rained all the morning; while the countess slept and Montcornet tramped
+over his domain, I have compelled myself to keep my rash, imprudent
+promise to write to you.
+
+Until now, though I was born at Alencon, of an old judge and a prefect,
+so they say, and though I know something of agriculture, I supposed the
+tale of estates bringing in four or five thousand francs a month to be
+a fable. Money, to me, meant a couple of dreadful things,--work and a
+publisher, journalism and politics. When shall we poor fellows come upon
+a land where gold springs up with the grass? That is what I desire for
+you and for me and the rest of us in the name of the theatre, and of the
+press, and of book-making! Amen!
+
+Will Florine be jealous of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre? Our modern
+Bourets have no French nobles now to show them how to live; they hire
+one opera-box among three of them; they subscribe for their pleasures;
+they no longer cut down magnificently bound quartos to match the octavos
+in their library; in fact, they scarcely buy even stitched paper books.
+What is to become of us?
+
+
+                                      Adieu; continue to care for
+                                      Your Blondet.
+
+
+If this letter, dashed off by the idlest pen of the century, had not by
+some lucky chance been preserved, it would have been almost impossible
+to describe Les Aigues; and without this description the history of the
+horrible events that occurred there would certainly be less interesting.
+
+After that remark some persons will expect to see the flashing of the
+cuirass of the former colonel of the guard, and the raging of his anger
+as he falls like a waterspout upon his little wife; so that the end
+of this present history may be like the end of all modern dramas,--a
+tragedy of the bed-chamber. Perhaps the fatal scene will take place
+in that charming room with the blue monochromes, where beautiful ideal
+birds are painted on the ceilings and the shutters, where Chinese
+monsters laugh with open jaws on the mantle-shelf, and dragons, green
+and gold, twist their tails in curious convolutions around rich vases,
+and Japanese fantasy embroiders its designs of many colors; where
+sofas and reclining-chairs and consoles and what-nots invite to that
+contemplative idleness which forbids all action.
+
+No; the drama here to be developed is not one of private life; it
+concerns things higher, or lower. Expect no scenes of passion; the truth
+of this history is only too dramatic. And remember, the historian should
+never forget that his mission is to do justice to all; the poor and the
+prosperous are equals before his pen; to him the peasant appears in
+the grandeur of his misery, and the rich in the pettiness of his folly.
+Moreover, the rich man has passions, the peasant only wants. The peasant
+is therefore doubly poor; and if, politically, his aggressions must be
+pitilessly repressed, to the eyes of humanity and religion he is sacred.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. A BUCOLIC OVERLOOKED BY VIRGIL
+
+
+When a Parisian drops into the country he is cut off from all his usual
+habits, and soon feels the dragging hours, no matter how attentive his
+friends may be to him. Therefore, because it is so impossible to prolong
+in a tete-a-tete conversations that are soon exhausted, the master
+and mistress of a country-house are apt to say, calmly, “You will be
+terribly bored here.” It is true that to understand the delights of
+country life one must have something to do, some interests in it; one
+must know the nature of the work to be done, and the alternating harmony
+of toil and pleasure,--eternal symbol of human life.
+
+When a Parisian has recovered his powers of sleeping, shaken off the
+fatigues of his journey, and accustomed himself to country habits,
+the hardest period of the day (if he wears thin boots and is neither
+a sportsman nor an agriculturalist) is the early morning. Between the
+hours of waking and breakfasting, the women of the family are sleeping
+or dressing, and therefore unapproachable; the master of the house is
+out and about on his own affairs; a Parisian is therefore compelled
+to be alone from eight to eleven o’clock, the hour chosen in all
+country-houses for breakfast. Now, having got what amusement he can
+out of carefully dressing himself, he has soon exhausted that resource.
+Then, perhaps, he has brought with him some work, which he finds it
+impossible to do, and which goes back untouched, after he sees the
+difficulties of doing it, into his valise; a writer is then obliged to
+wander about the park and gape at nothing or count the big trees. The
+easier the life, the more irksome such occupations are,--unless, indeed,
+one belongs to the sect of shaking quakers or to the honorable guild
+of carpenters or taxidermists. If one really had, like the owners of
+estates, to live in the country, it would be well to supply one’s self
+with a geological, mineralogical, entomological, or botanical hobby;
+but a sensible man doesn’t give himself a vice merely to kill time for
+a fortnight. The noblest estate, and the finest chateaux soon pall on
+those who possess nothing but the sight of them. The beauties of nature
+seem rather squalid compared to the representation of them at the
+opera. Paris, by retrospection, shines from all its facets. Unless some
+particular interest attaches us, as it did in Blondet’s case, to scenes
+honored by the steps and lighted by the eyes of a certain person, one
+would envy the birds their wings and long to get back to the endless,
+exciting scenes of Paris and its harrowing strifes.
+
+The long letter of the young journalist must make most intelligent minds
+suppose that he had reached, morally and physically, that particular
+phase of satisfied passions and comfortable happiness which certain
+winged creatures fed in Strasbourg so perfectly represent when, with
+their heads sunk behind their protruding gizzards, they neither see nor
+wish to see the most appetizing food. So, when the formidable letter was
+finished, the writer felt the need of getting away from the gardens of
+Armida and doing something to enliven the deadly void of the morning
+hours; for the hours between breakfast and dinner belonged to the
+mistress of the house, who knew very well how to make them pass quickly.
+To keep, as Madame de Montcornet did, a man of talent in the country
+without ever seeing on his face the false smile of satiety, or detecting
+the yawn of a weariness that cannot be concealed, is a great triumph for
+a woman. The affection which is equal to such a test certainly ought to
+be eternal. It is to be wondered at that women do not oftener employ
+it to judge of their lovers; a fool, an egoist, or a petty nature
+could never stand it. Philip the Second himself, the Alexander of
+dissimulation, would have told his secrets if condemned to a month’s
+tete-a-tete in the country. Perhaps this is why kings seek to live in
+perpetual motion, and allow no one to see them more than fifteen minutes
+at a time.
+
+Notwithstanding that he had received the delicate attentions of one of
+the most charming women in Paris, Emile Blondet was able to feel once
+more the long forgotten delights of a truant schoolboy; and on the
+morning of the day after his letter was written he had himself called
+by Francois, the head valet, who was specially appointed to wait on him,
+for the purpose of exploring the valley of the Avonne.
+
+The Avonne is a little river which, being swollen above Conches
+by numerous rivulets, some of which rise in Les Aigues, falls at
+Ville-aux-Fayes into one of the large affluents of the Seine. The
+geographical position of the Avonne, navigable for over twelve miles,
+had, ever since Jean Bouvet invented rafts, given full money value to
+the forests of Les Aigues, Soulanges, and Ronquerolles, standing on the
+crest of the hills between which this charming river flows. The park
+of Les Aigues covers the greater part of the valley, between the river
+(bordered on both sides by the forest called des Aigues) and the royal
+mail road, defined by a line of old elms in the distance along the
+slopes of the Avonne mountains, which are in fact the foot-hills of that
+magnificent amphitheater called the Morvan.
+
+However vulgar the comparison may be, the park, lying thus at the bottom
+of the valley, is like an enormous fish with its head at Conches and
+its tail in the village of Blangy; for it widens in the middle to nearly
+three hundred acres, while towards Conches it counts less than fifty,
+and sixty at Blangy. The position of this estate, between three
+villages, and only three miles from the little town of Soulanges, from
+which the descent is rapid, may perhaps have led to the strife and
+caused the excesses which are the chief interest attaching to the
+place. If, when seen from the mail road or from the uplands beyond
+Ville-aux-Fayes, the paradise of Les Aigues induces mere passing
+travellers to commit the mortal sin of envy, why should the rich
+burghers of Soulanges and Ville-aux-Fayes who had it before their eyes
+and admired it every day of their lives, have been more virtuous?
+
+This last topographical detail was needed to explain the site, also the
+use of the four gates by which alone the park of Les Aigues was entered;
+for it was completely surrounded by walls, except where nature had
+provided a fine view, and at such points sunk fences or ha-has had been
+placed. The four gates, called the gate of Conches, the gate of Avonne,
+the gate of Blangy, and the gate of the Avenue, showed the styles of
+the different periods at which they were constructed so admirably that a
+brief description, in the interest of archaeologists, will presently be
+given, as brief as the one Blondet has already written about the gate of
+the Avenue.
+
+After eight days of strolling about with the countess, the illustrious
+editor of the “Journal des Debats” knew by heart the Chinese kiosk, the
+bridges, the isles, the hermitage, the dairy, the ruined temple, the
+Babylonian ice-house, and all the other delusions invented by landscape
+architects which some nine hundred acres of land can be made to serve.
+He now wished to find the sources of the Avonne, which the general and
+the countess daily extolled in the evening, making plans to visit them
+which were daily forgotten the next morning. Above Les Aigues the Avonne
+really had the appearance of an alpine torrent. Sometimes it hollowed
+a bed among the rocks, sometimes it went underground; on this side the
+brooks came down in cascades, there they flowed like the Loire on sandy
+shallows where rafts could not pass on account of the shifting channels.
+Blondet took a short cut through the labyrinths of the park to reach the
+gate of Conches. This gate demands a few words, which give, moreover,
+certain historical details about the property.
+
+The original founder of Les Aigues was a younger son of the Soulanges
+family, enriched by marriage, whose chief ambition was to make his
+elder brother jealous,--a sentiment, by the bye, to which we owe the
+fairy-land of Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore. In the middle ages
+the castle of Les Aigues stood on the banks of the Avonne. Of this old
+building nothing remains but the gateway, which has a porch like the
+entrance to a fortified town, flanked by two round towers with conical
+roofs. Above the arch of the porch are heavy stone courses, now draped
+with vegetation, showing three large windows with cross-bar sashes.
+A winding stairway in one of the towers leads to two chambers, and a
+kitchen occupies the other tower. The roof of the porch, of pointed
+shape like all old timber-work, is noticeable for two weathercocks
+perched at each end of a ridge-pole ornamented with fantastic iron-work.
+Many an important place cannot boast of so fine a town hall. On the
+outside of this gateway, the keystone of the arch still bears the arms
+of Soulanges, preserved by the hardness of the stone on which the chisel
+of the artist carved them, as follows: Azure, on a pale, argent, three
+pilgrim’s staff’s sable; a fess bronchant, gules, charged with four
+grosses patee, fitched, or; with the heraldic form of a shield awarded
+to younger sons. Blondet deciphered the motto, “Je soule agir,”--one of
+those puns that crusaders delighted to make upon their names, and which
+brings to mind a fine political maxim, which, as we shall see later, was
+unfortunately forgotten by Montcornet. The gate, which was opened for
+Blondet by a very pretty girl, was of time-worn wood clamped with iron.
+The keeper, wakened by the creaking of the hinges, put his nose out of
+the window and showed himself in his night-shirt.
+
+“So our keepers sleep till this time of day!” thought the Parisian, who
+thought himself very knowing in rural customs.
+
+After a walk of about quarter of an hour, he reached the sources of
+the river above Conches, where his ravished eyes beheld one of those
+landscapes that ought to be described, like the history of France, in a
+thousand volumes or in only one. We must here content ourselves with two
+paragraphs.
+
+A projecting rock, covered with dwarf trees and abraded at its base by
+the Avonne, to which circumstance it owes a slight resemblance to an
+enormous turtle lying across the river, forms an arch through which
+the eye takes in a little sheet of water, clear as a mirror, where
+the stream seems to sleep until it reaches in the distance a series of
+cascades falling among huge rocks, where little weeping willows with
+elastic motion sway back and forth to the flow of waters.
+
+Beyond these cascades is the hillside, rising sheer, like a Rhine rock
+clothed with moss and heather, gullied like it, again, by sharp ridges
+of schist and mica sending down, here and there, white foaming rivulets
+to which a little meadow, always watered and always green, serves as a
+cup; farther on, beyond the picturesque chaos and in contrast to this
+wild, solitary nature, the gardens of Conches are seen, with the village
+roofs and the clock-tower and the outlying fields.
+
+There are the two paragraphs, but the rising sun, the purity of the air,
+the dewy sheen, the melody of woods and waters--imagine them!
+
+“Almost as charming as at the Opera,” thought Blondet, making his way
+along the banks of the unnavigable portion of the Avonne, whose caprices
+contrast with the straight and deep and silent stream of the lower
+river, flowing between the tall trees of the forest of Les Aigues.
+
+Blondet did not proceed far on his morning walk, for he was presently
+brought to a stand-still by the sight of a peasant,--one of those who,
+in this drama, are supernumeraries so essential to its action that it
+may be doubted whether they are not in fact its leading actors.
+
+When the clever journalist reached a group of rocks where the main
+stream is imprisoned, as it were, between two portals, he saw a man
+standing so motionless as to excite his curiosity, while the clothes and
+general air of this living statue greatly puzzled him.
+
+The humble personage before him was a living presentment of the old
+men dear to Charlet’s pencil; resembling the troopers of that Homer of
+soldiery in a strong frame able to endure hardship, and his immortal
+skirmishers in a fiery, crimson, knotted face, showing small capacity
+for submission. A coarse felt hat, the brim of which was held to the
+crown by stitches, protected a nearly bald head from the weather; below
+it fell a quantity of white hair which a painter would gladly have paid
+four francs an hour to copy,--a dazzling mass of snow, worn like that
+in all the classical representations of Deity. It was easy to guess from
+the way in which the cheeks sank in, continuing the lines of the mouth,
+that the toothless old fellow was more given to the bottle than the
+trencher. His thin white beard gave a threatening expression to his
+profile by the stiffness of its short bristles. The eyes, too small for
+his enormous face, and sloping like those of a pig, betrayed cunning and
+also laziness; but at this particular moment they were gleaming with the
+intent look he cast upon the river. The sole garments of this curious
+figure were an old blouse, formerly blue, and trousers of the coarse
+burlap used in Paris to wrap bales. All city people would have shuddered
+at the sight of his broken sabots, without even a wisp of straw to stop
+the cracks; and it is very certain that the blouse and the trousers had
+no money value at all except to a paper-maker.
+
+As Blondet examined this rural Diogenes, he admitted the possibility
+of a type of peasantry he had seen in old tapestries, old pictures, old
+sculptures, and which, up to this time, had seemed to him imaginary. He
+resolved for the future not to utterly condemn the school of ugliness,
+perceiving a possibility that in man beauty may be but the flattering
+exception, a chimera in which the race struggles to believe.
+
+“What can be the ideas, the morals, the habits, of such a being? What
+is he thinking of?” thought Blondet, seized with curiosity. “Is he my
+fellow-creature? We have nothing in common but shape, and even that!--”
+
+He noticed in the old man’s limbs the peculiar rigidity of the tissues
+of persons who live in the open air, accustomed to the inclemencies
+of the weather and to the endurance of heat and cold,--hardened to
+everything, in short,--which makes their leathern skin almost a hide,
+and their nerves an apparatus against physical pain almost as powerful
+as that of the Russians or the Arabs.
+
+“Here’s one of Cooper’s Red-skins,” thought Blondet; “one needn’t go to
+America to study savages.”
+
+Though the Parisian was less than ten paces off, the old man did not
+turn his head, but kept looking at the opposite bank with a fixity which
+the fakirs of India give to their vitrified eyes and their stiffened
+joints. Compelled by the power of a species of magnetism, more
+contagious than people have any idea of, Blondet ended by gazing at the
+water himself.
+
+“Well, my good man, what do you see there?” he asked, after the lapse of
+a quarter of an hour, during which time he saw nothing to justify this
+intent contemplation.
+
+“Hush!” whispered the old man, with a sign to Blondet not to ruffle the
+air with his voice; “You will frighten it--”
+
+“What?”
+
+“An otter, my good gentleman. If it hears us it’ll go quick under water.
+I’m certain it jumped there; see! see! there, where the water bubbles!
+Ha! it sees a fish, it is after that! But my boy will grab it as it
+comes back. The otter, don’t you know, is very rare; it is scientific
+game, and good eating, too. I get ten francs for every one I carry to
+Les Aigues, for the lady fasts Fridays, and to-morrow is Friday. Years
+agone the deceased madame used to pay me twenty francs, and gave me the
+skin to boot! Mouche,” he called, in a low voice, “watch it!”
+
+Blondet now perceived on the other side of the river two bright eyes,
+like those of a cat, beneath a tuft of alders; then he saw the tanned
+forehead and tangled hair of a boy about ten years of age, who was lying
+on his stomach and making signs towards the otter to let his master know
+he kept it well in sight. Blondet, completely mastered by the eagerness
+of the old man and boy, allowed the demon of the chase to get the better
+of him,--that demon with the double claws of hope and curiosity, who
+carries you whithersoever he will.
+
+“The hat-makers buy the skin,” continued the old man; “it’s so soft, so
+handsome! They cover caps with it.”
+
+“Do you really think so, my old man?” said Blondet, smiling.
+
+“Well truly, my good gentleman, you ought to know more than I, though
+I am seventy years old,” replied the old fellow, very humbly and
+respectfully, falling into the attitude of a giver of holy water;
+“perhaps you can tell me why conductors and wine-merchants are so fond
+of it?”
+
+Blondet, a master of irony, already on his guard from the word
+“scientific,” recollected the Marechal de Richelieu and began to suspect
+some jest on the part of the old man; but he was reassured by his
+artless attitude and the perfectly stupid expression of his face.
+
+“In my young days we had lots of otters,” whispered the old fellow; “but
+they’ve hunted ‘em so that if we see the tail of one in seven
+years it is as much as ever we do. And the sub-prefect at
+Ville-aux-Fayes,--doesn’t monsieur know him? though he be a Parisian,
+he’s a fine young man like you, and he loves curiosities,--so, as I was
+saying, hearing of my talent for catching otters, for I know ‘em as you
+know your alphabet, he says to me like this: ‘Pere Fourchon,’ says he,
+‘when you find an otter bring it to me, and I’ll pay you well; and if
+it’s spotted white on the back,’ says he, ‘I’ll give you thirty francs.’
+That’s just what he did say to me as true as I believe in God the
+Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And there’s a learned man at Soulanges,
+Monsieur Gourdon, our doctor, who is making, so they tell me, a
+collection of natural history which hasn’t its mate at Dijon even;
+indeed he is first among the learned men in these parts, and he’ll pay
+me a fine price, too; he stuffs men and beasts. Now my boy there stands
+me out that that otter has got the white spots. ‘If that’s so,’ says I
+to him, ‘then the good God wishes well to us this morning!’ Ha! didn’t
+you see the water bubble? yes, there it is! there it is! Though it lives
+in a kind of a burrow, it sometimes stays whole days under water. Ha,
+there! it heard you, my good gentleman; it’s on its guard now; for
+there’s not a more suspicious animal on earth; it’s worse than a woman.”
+
+“So you call women suspicious, do you?” said Blondet.
+
+“Faith, monsieur, if you come from Paris you ought to know about that
+better than I. But you’d have done better for me if you had stayed
+in your bed and slept all the morning; don’t you see that wake there?
+that’s where she’s gone under. Get up, Mouche! the otter heard monsieur
+talking, and now she’s scary enough to keep us at her heels till
+midnight. Come, let’s be off! and good-bye to our thirty francs!”
+
+Mouche got up reluctantly; he looked at the spot where the water
+bubbled, pointed to it with his finger and seemed unable to give up all
+hope. The child, with curly hair and a brown face, like the angels in
+a fifteenth-century picture, seemed to be in breeches, for his trousers
+ended at the knee in a ragged fringe of brambles and dead leaves. This
+necessary garment was fastened upon him by cords of tarred oakum in
+guise of braces. A shirt of the same burlap which made the old man’s
+trousers, thickened, however, by many darns, open in front showed a
+sun-burnt little breast. In short, the attire of the being called Mouche
+was even more startlingly simple than that of Pere Fourchon.
+
+“What a good-natured set of people they are here,” thought Blondet; “if
+a man frightened away the game of the people of the suburbs of Paris,
+how their tongues would maul him!”
+
+As he had never seen an otter, even in a museum, he was delighted with
+this episode of his early walk. “Come,” said he, quite touched when the
+old man walked away without asking him for a compensation, “you say
+you are a famous otter catcher. If you are sure there is an otter down
+there--”
+
+From the other side of the water Mouche pointed his finger to certain
+air-bubbles coming up from the bottom of the Avonne and bursting on its
+surface.
+
+“It has come back!” said Pere Fourchon; “don’t you see it breathe, the
+beggar? How do you suppose they manage to breathe at the bottom of the
+water? Ah, the creature’s so clever it laughs at science.”
+
+“Well,” said Blondet, who supposed the last word was a jest of the
+peasantry in general rather than of this peasant in particular, “wait
+and catch the otter.”
+
+“And what are we to do about our day’s work, Mouche and I?”
+
+“What is your day worth?”
+
+“For the pair of us, my apprentice and me?--Five francs,” said the old
+man, looking Blondet in the eye with a hesitation which betrayed an
+enormous overcharge.
+
+The journalist took ten francs from his pocket, saying, “There’s ten,
+and I’ll give you ten more for the otter.”
+
+“And it won’t cost you dear if there’s white on its back; for the
+sub-prefect told me there wasn’t one o’ them museums that had the like;
+but he knows everything, our sub-prefect,--no fool he! If I hunt the
+otter, he, M’sieur des Lupeaulx, hunts Mademoiselle Gaubertin, who has a
+fine white ‘dot’ on her back. Come now, my good gentleman, if I may make
+so bold, plunge into the middle of the Avonne and get to that stone down
+there. If we head the otter off, it will come down stream; for just see
+their slyness, the beggars! they always go above their burrow to feed,
+for, once full of fish, they know they can easily drift down, the sly
+things! Ha! if I’d been trained in their school I should be living now
+on an income; but I was a long time finding out that you must go up
+stream very early in the morning if you want to bag the game before
+others. Well, somebody threw a spell over me when I was born. However,
+we three together ought to be slyer than the otter.”
+
+“How so, my old necromancer?”
+
+“Why, bless you! we are as stupid as the beasts, and so we come to
+understand the beasts. Now, see, this is what we’ll do. When the otter
+wants to get home Mouche and I’ll frighten it here, and you’ll frighten
+it over there; frightened by us and frightened by you it will jump on
+the bank, and when it takes to earth, it is lost! It can’t run; it has
+web feet for swimming. Ho, ho! it will make you laugh, such floundering!
+you don’t know whether you are fishing or hunting! The general up at Les
+Aigues, I have known him to stay here three days running, he was so bent
+on getting an otter.”
+
+Blondet, armed with a branch cut for him by the old man, who requested
+him to whip the water with it when he called to him, planted himself in
+the middle of the river by jumping from stone to stone.
+
+“There, that will do, my good gentleman.”
+
+Blondet stood where he was told without remarking the lapse of time, for
+every now and then the old fellow made him a sign as much as to say that
+all was going well; and besides, nothing makes time go so fast as the
+expectation that quick action is to succeed the perfect stillness of
+watching.
+
+“Pere Fourchon,” whispered the boy, finding himself alone with the old
+man, “there’s _really_ an otter!”
+
+“Do you see it?”
+
+“There, see there!”
+
+The old fellow was dumb-founded at beholding under water the
+reddish-brown fur of an actual otter.
+
+“It’s coming my way!” said the child.
+
+“Hit him a sharp blow on the head and jump into the water and hold him
+fast down, but don’t let him go!”
+
+Mouche dove into the water like a frightened frog.
+
+“Come, come, my good gentleman,” cried Pere Fourchon to Blondet, jumping
+into the water and leaving his sabots on the bank, “frighten him!
+frighten him! Don’t you see him? he is swimming fast your way!”
+
+The old man dashed toward Blondet through the water, calling out with
+the gravity that country people retain in the midst of their greatest
+excitements:--
+
+“Don’t you see him, there, along the rocks?”
+
+Blondet, placed by direction of the old fellow in such a way that
+the sun was in his eyes, thrashed the water with much satisfaction to
+himself.
+
+“Go on, go on!” cried Pere Fourchon; “on the rock side; the burrow is
+there, to your left!”
+
+Carried away by excitement and by his long waiting, Blondet slipped from
+the stones into the water.
+
+“Ha! brave you are, my good gentleman! Twenty good Gods! I see him
+between your legs! you’ll have him!--Ah! there! he’s gone--he’s gone!”
+ cried the old man, in despair.
+
+Then, in the fury of the chase, the old fellow plunged into the deepest
+part of the stream in front of Blondet.
+
+“It’s your fault we’ve lost him!” he cried, as Blondet gave him a hand
+to pull him out, dripping like a triton, and a vanquished triton. “The
+rascal, I see him, under those rocks! He has let go his fish,” continued
+Fourchon, pointing to something that floated on the surface. “We’ll have
+that at any rate; it’s a tench, a real tench.”
+
+Just then a groom in livery on horseback and leading another horse by
+the bridle galloped up the road toward Conches.
+
+“See! there’s the chateau people sending after you,” said the old man.
+“If you want to cross back again I’ll give you a hand. I don’t mind
+about getting wet; it saves washing!”
+
+“How about rheumatism?”
+
+“Rheumatism! don’t you see the sun has browned our legs, Mouche and me,
+like tobacco-pipes. Here, lean on me, my good gentleman--you’re from
+Paris; you don’t know, though you _do_ know so much, how to walk on our
+rocks. If you stay here long enough, you’ll learn a deal that’s
+written in the book o’ nature,--you who write, so they tell me, in the
+newspapers.”
+
+Blondet had reached the bank before Charles, the groom, perceived him.
+
+“Ah, monsieur!” he cried; “you don’t know how anxious Madame has been
+since she heard you had gone through the gate of Conches; she was
+afraid you were drowned. They have rung the great bell three times, and
+Monsieur le cure is hunting for you in the park.”
+
+“What time is it, Charles?”
+
+“A quarter to twelve.”
+
+“Help me to mount.”
+
+“Ha!” exclaimed the groom, noticing the water that dripped from
+Blondet’s boots and trousers, “has monsieur been taken in by Pere
+Fourchon’s otter?”
+
+The words enlightened the journalist.
+
+“Don’t say a word about it, Charles,” he cried, “and I’ll make it all
+right with you.”
+
+“Oh, as for that!” answered the man, “Monsieur le comte himself has been
+taken in by that otter. Whenever a visitor comes to Les Aigues, Pere
+Fourchon sets himself on the watch, and if the gentleman goes to see the
+sources of the Avonne he sells him the otter; he plays the trick so well
+that Monsieur le comte has been here three times and paid him for six
+days’ work, just to stare at the water!”
+
+“Heavens!” thought Blondet. “And I imagined I had seen the greatest
+comedians of the present day!--Potier, the younger Baptiste, Michot, and
+Monrose. What are they compared to that old beggar?”
+
+“He is very knowing at the business, Pere Fourchon is,” continued
+Charles; “and he has another string to his bow, besides. He calls
+himself a rope-maker, and has a walk under the park wall by the gate of
+Blangy. If you merely touch his rope he’ll entangle you so cleverly that
+you will want to turn the wheel and make a bit of it yourself; and for
+that you would have to pay a fee for apprenticeship. Madame herself was
+taken in, and gave him twenty francs. Ah! he is the king of tricks, that
+old fellow!”
+
+The groom’s gossip set Blondet thinking of the extreme craftiness and
+wiliness of the French peasant, of which he had heard a great deal
+from his father, a judge at Alencon. Then the satirical meaning hidden
+beneath Pere Fourchon’s apparent guilelessness came back to him, and he
+owned himself “gulled” by the Burgundian beggar.
+
+“You would never believe, monsieur,” said Charles, as they reached the
+portico at Les Aigues, “how much one is forced to distrust everybody and
+everything in the country,--especially here, where the general is not
+much liked--”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“That’s more than I know,” said Charles, with the stupid air servants
+assume to shield themselves when they wish not to answer their
+superiors, which nevertheless gave Blondet a good deal to think of.
+
+“Here you are, truant!” cried the general, coming out on the terrace
+when he heard the horses. “Here he is; don’t be uneasy!” he called back
+to his wife, whose little footfalls were heard behind him. “Now the Abbe
+Brossette is missing. Go and find him, Charles,” he said to the groom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE TAVERN
+
+
+The gate of Blangy, built by Bouret, was formed of two wide pilasters
+of projecting rough-hewn stone; each surmounted by a dog sitting on his
+haunches and holding an escutcheon between his fore paws. The proximity
+of a small house where the steward lived dispensed with the necessity
+for a lodge. Between the two pilasters, a sumptuous iron gate, like
+those made in Buffon’s time for the Jardin des Plantes, opened on a
+short paved way which led to the country road (formerly kept in order
+by Les Aigues and the Soulanges family) which unites Conches, Cerneux,
+Blangy, and Soulanges to Ville-aux-Fayes, like a wreath, for the whole
+road is lined with flowering hedges and little houses covered with roses
+and honey-suckle and other climbing plants.
+
+There, along a pretty wall which extends as far as a terrace from which
+the land of Les Aigues falls rapidly to the valley till it meets that
+of Soulanges, are the rotten posts, the old wheel, and the forked stakes
+which constituted the manufactory of the village rope-maker.
+
+Soon after midday, while Blondet was seating himself at table opposite
+the Abbe Brossette and receiving the tender expostulations of the
+countess, Pere Fourchon and Mouche arrived at this establishment. From
+that vantage-ground Pere Fourchon, under pretence of rope-making, could
+watch Les Aigues and see every one who went in and out. Nothing escaped
+him, the opening of the blinds, tete-a-tete loiterings, or the least
+little incidents of country life, were spied upon by the old fellow,
+who had set up this business within the last three years,--a trifling
+circumstance which neither the masters, nor the servants, nor the
+keepers of Les Aigues had as yet remarked upon.
+
+“Go round to the house by the gate of the Avonne while I put away the
+tackle,” said Pere Fourchon to his attendant, “and when you have blabbed
+about the thing, they’ll no doubt send after me to the Grand-I-Vert,
+where I am going for a drop of drink,--for it makes one thirsty enough
+to wade in the water that way. If you do just as I tell you, you’ll hook
+a good breakfast out of them; try to meet the countess, and give a slap
+at me, and that will put it into her head to come and preach morality or
+something! There’s lots of good wine to get out of it.”
+
+After these last instructions, which the sly look in Mouche’s face
+rendered quite superfluous, the old peasant, hugging the otter under his
+arm, disappeared along the country road.
+
+Half-way between the gate and the village there stood, at the time when
+Emile Blondet stayed at Les Aigues, one of those houses which are never
+seen but in parts of France where stone is scarce. Bits of bricks picked
+up anywhere, cobblestones set like diamonds in the clay mud, formed
+very solid walls, though worn in places; the roof was supported by stout
+branches and covered with rushes and straw, while the clumsy shutters
+and the broken door--in short, everything about the cottage was the
+product of lucky finds, or of gifts obtained by begging.
+
+The peasant has an instinct for his habitation like that of an animal
+for its nest or its burrow, and this instinct was very marked in all
+the arrangements of this cottage. In the first place, the door and the
+window looked to the north. The house, placed on a little rise in the
+stoniest angle of a vineyard, was certainly healthful. It was reached by
+three steps, carefully made with stakes and planks filled in with broken
+stone and gravel, so that the water ran off rapidly; and as the rain
+seldom comes from the northward in Burgundy, no dampness could rot the
+foundations, slight as they were. Below the steps and along the path ran
+a rustic paling, hidden beneath a hedge of hawthorn and sweet-brier.
+An arbor, with a few clumsy tables and wooden benches, filled the space
+between the cottage and the road, and invited the passers-by to rest
+themselves. At the upper end of the bank by the house roses grew, and
+wall-flowers, violets, and other flowers that cost nothing. Jessamine
+and honey-suckle had fastened their tendrils on the roof, mossy already,
+though the building was far from old.
+
+To the right of the house, the owner had built a stable for two cows. In
+front of this erection of old boards, a sunken piece of ground served as
+a yard where, in a corner, was a huge manure-heap. On the other side of
+the house and the arbor stood a thatched shed, supported on trunks of
+trees, under which the various outdoor properties of the peasantry were
+put away,--the utensils of the vine-dressers, their empty casks, logs
+of wood piled about a mound which contained the oven, the mouth of
+which opened, as was usual in the houses of the peasantry, under the
+mantle-piece of the chimney in the kitchen.
+
+About an acre of land adjoined the house, inclosed by an evergreen hedge
+and planted with grape-vines; tended as peasants tend them,--that is to
+say, well-manured, and dug round, and layered so that they usually set
+their fruit before the vines of the large proprietors in a circuit of
+ten miles round. A few trees, almond, plum, and apricot, showed their
+slim heads here and there in this enclosure. Between the rows of vines
+potatoes and beans were planted. In addition to all this, on the side
+towards the village and beyond the yard was a bit of damp low ground,
+favorable for the growth of cabbages and onions (favorite vegetables of
+the working-classes), which was closed by a wooden gate, through which
+the cows were driven, trampling the path into mud and covering it with
+dung.
+
+The house, which had two rooms on the ground-floor, opened upon the
+vineyard. On this side an outer stairway, roofed with thatch and resting
+against the wall of the house, led up to the garret, which was lighted
+by one round window. Under this rustic stairway opened a cellar built of
+Burgundy brick, containing several casks of wine.
+
+Though the kitchen utensils of the peasantry are usually only two,
+namely, a frying-pan and an iron pot, with which they manage to do all
+their cooking, exceptions to this rule, in the shape of two enormous
+saucepans hanging beneath the mantle-shelf and above a small portable
+stove, were to be seen in this cottage. In spite, however, of this
+indication of luxury, the furniture was in keeping with the external
+appearance of the place. A jar held water, the spoons were of wood or
+pewter, the dishes, of red clay without and white within, were scaling
+off and had been mended with pewter rivets; the heavy table and chairs
+were of pine wood, and for flooring there was nothing better than the
+hardened earth. Every fifth year the walls received a coat of white-wash
+and so did the narrow beams of the ceiling, from which hung bacon,
+strings of onions, bundles of tallow candles, and the bags in which
+a peasant keeps his seeds; near the bread-box stood an old-fashioned
+wardrobe in walnut, where the scanty household linen, and the one change
+of garments together with the holiday attire of the entire family were
+kept.
+
+Above the mantel of the chimney gleamed a poacher’s old gun, not worth
+five francs,--the wood scorched, the barrel to all appearances never
+cleaned. An observer might reflect that the protection of a hovel with
+only a latch, and an outer gate that was only a paling and never closed,
+needed no better weapon; but still the wonder was to what use it was
+put. In the first place, though the wood was of the commonest kind, the
+barrel was carefully selected, and came from a valuable gun, given in
+all probability to a game-keeper. Moreover, the owner of this weapon
+never missed his aim; there was between him and his gun the same
+intimate acquaintance that there is between a workman and his tool. If
+the muzzle must be raised or lowered the merest fraction in its aim,
+because it carries just an atom above or below the range, the poacher
+knows it; he obeys the rule and never misses. An officer of artillery
+would have found the essential parts of this weapon in good condition
+notwithstanding its uncleanly appearance. In all that the peasant
+appropriates to his use, in all that serves him, he displays just the
+amount of force that is needed, neither more nor less; he attends to
+the essential and to nothing beyond. External perfection he has no
+conception of. An unerring judge of the necessary in all things, he
+thoroughly understands degrees of strength, and knows very well when
+working for an employer how to give the least possible for the most he
+can get. This contemptible-looking gun will be found to play a serious
+part in the life of the family inhabiting this cottage, and you will
+presently learn how and why.
+
+Have you now taken in all the many details of this hovel, planted about
+five hundred feet away from the pretty gate of Les Aigues? Do you see it
+crouching there, like a beggar beside a palace? Well, its roof covered
+with velvet mosses, its clacking hens, its grunting pig, its straying
+heifer, all its rural graces have a horrible meaning.
+
+Fastened to a pole, which was stuck in the ground beside the entrance
+through the fence, was a withered bunch of three pine branches and some
+old oak-leaves tied together with a rag. Above the door of the house a
+roving artist had painted, probably in return for his breakfast, a huge
+capital “I” in green on a white ground two feet square; and for the
+benefit of those who could read, this witty joke in twelve letters:
+“Au Grand-I-Vert” (hiver). On the left of the door was a vulgar sign
+bearing, in colored letters, “Good March beer,” and the picture of
+a foaming pot of the same, with a woman, in a dress excessively
+low-necked, on one side, and an hussar on the other,--both coarsely
+colored. Consequently, in spite of the blooming flowers and the fresh
+country air, this cottage exhaled the same strong and nauseous odor of
+wine and food which assails you in Paris as you pass the door of the
+cheap cook-shops of the faubourg.
+
+Now you know the surroundings. Behold the inhabitants and hear their
+history, which contains more than one lesson for philanthropists.
+
+The proprietor of the Grand-I-Vert, named Francois Tonsard, commends
+himself to the attention of philosophers by the manner in which he had
+solved the problem of an idle life and a busy life, so as to make the
+idleness profitable, and occupation nil.
+
+A jack-of-all-trades, he knew how to cultivate the ground, but for
+himself only. For others, he dug ditches, gathered fagots, barked the
+trees, or cut them down. In all such work the employer is at the mercy
+of the workman. Tonsard owned his plot of ground to the generosity of
+Mademoiselle Laguerre. In his early youth he had worked by the day for
+the gardener at Les Aigues; and he really had not his equal in
+trimming the shrubbery-trees, the hedges, the horn-beams, and the
+horse-chestnuts. His very name shows hereditary talent. In remote
+country-places privileges exist which are obtained and preserved with
+as much care as the merchants of a city display in getting theirs.
+Mademoiselle Laguerre was one day walking in the garden, when she
+overheard Tonsard, then a strapping fellow, say, “All I need to live on,
+and live happily, is an acre of land.” The kind creature, accustomed
+to make others happy, gave him the acre of vineyard near the gate of
+Blangy, in return for one hundred days’ work (a delicate regard for his
+feelings which was little understood), and allowed him to stay at Les
+Aigues, where he lived with her servants, who thought him one of the
+best fellows in Burgundy.
+
+Poor Tonsard (that is what everybody called him) worked about thirty
+days out of the hundred that he owed; the rest of the time he idled
+about, talking and laughing with Mademoiselle’s women, particularly
+with Mademoiselle Cochet, the lady’s maid, though she was ugly, like
+all confidential maids of handsome actresses. Laughing with Mademoiselle
+Cochet signified so many things that Soudry, the fortunate gendarme
+mentioned in Blondet’s letter, still looked askance at Tonsard after
+the lapse of nearly twenty-five years. The walnut wardrobe, the bedstead
+with the tester and curtains, and the ornaments about the bedroom were
+doubtless the result of the said laughter.
+
+Once in possession of his care, Tonsard replied to the first person
+who happened to mention that Mademoiselle Laguerre had given it to him,
+“I’ve bought it deuced hard, and paid well for it. Do rich folks ever
+give us anything? Are one hundred days’ work nothing? It has cost me
+three hundred francs, and the land is all stones.” But that speech never
+got beyond the regions of his own class.
+
+Tonsard built his house himself, picking up the materials here and
+there as he could,--getting a day’s work out of this one and that one,
+gleaning in the rubbish that was thrown away, often asking for things
+and always obtaining them. A discarded door cut in two for convenience
+in carrying away became the door of the stable; the window was the sash
+of a green-house. In short, the rubbish of the chateau, served to build
+the fatal cottage.
+
+Saved from the draft by Gaubertin, the steward of Les Aigues, whose
+father was prosecuting-attorney of the department, and who, moreover,
+could refuse nothing to Mademoiselle Cochet, Tonsard married as soon
+as his house was finished and his vines had begun to bear. A well-grown
+fellow of twenty-three, in everybody’s good graces at Les Aigues, on
+whom Mademoiselle had bestowed an acre of her land, and who appeared
+to be a good worker, he had the art to ring the praises of his negative
+merits, and so obtained the daughter of a farmer on the Ronquerolles
+estate, which lies beyond the forest of Les Aigues.
+
+This farmer held the lease of half a farm, which was going to ruin in
+his hands for want of a helpmate. A widower, and inconsolable for the
+loss of his wife, he tried to drown his troubles, like the English, in
+wine, and then, when he had put the poor deceased out of his mind, he
+found himself married, so the village maliciously declared, to a woman
+named Boisson. From being a farmer he became once more a laborer, but
+an idle and drunken laborer, quarrelsome and vindictive, capable of any
+ill-deed, like most of his class when they fall from a well-to-do
+state of life into poverty. This man, whose practical information
+and knowledge of reading and writing placed him far above his
+fellow-workmen, while his vices kept him at the level of pauperism, you
+have already seen on the banks of the Avonne, measuring his cleverness
+with that of one of the cleverest men in Paris, in a bucolic overlooked
+by Virgil.
+
+Pere Fourchon, formerly a schoolmaster at Blangy, lost that place
+through misconduct and his singular ideas as to public education.
+He helped the children to make paper boats with their alphabets
+much oftener than he taught them how to spell; he scolded them in so
+remarkable a manner for pilfering fruit that his lectures might really
+have passed for lessons on the best way of scaling the walls. From
+teacher he became a postman. In this capacity, which serves as a refuge
+to many an old soldier, Pere Fourchon was daily reprimanded. Sometimes
+he forgot the letters in a tavern, at other times he kept them in his
+pocket. When he was drunk he left those for one village in another
+village; when he was sober he read them. Consequently, he was soon
+dismissed. No longer able to serve the State, Pere Fourchon ended
+by becoming a manufacturer. In the country a poor man can always get
+something to do, and make at least a pretence of gaining an honest
+livelihood. At sixty-eight years of age the old man started his
+rope-walk, a manufactory which requires the very smallest capital. The
+workshop is, as we have seen, any convenient wall; the machinery costs
+about ten francs. The apprentice slept, like his master, in a hay-loft,
+and lived on whatever he could pick up. The rapacity of the law in the
+matter of doors and windows expires “sub dio.” The tow to make the first
+rope can be borrowed. But the principal revenue of Pere Fourchon and his
+satellite Mouche, the natural son of one of his natural daughters, came
+from the otters; and then there were breakfasts and dinners given them
+by peasants who could neither read nor write, and were glad to use the
+old fellow’s talents when they had a bill to make out, or a letter to
+dispatch. Besides all this, he knew how to play the clarionet, and
+he went about with his friend Vermichel, the miller of Soulanges, to
+village weddings and the grand balls given at the Tivoli of Soulanges.
+
+Vermichel’s name was Michel Vert, but the transposition was so generally
+used that Brunet, the clerk of the municipal court of Soulanges, was
+in the habit of writing Michel-Jean-Jerome Vert, called Vermichel,
+practitioner. Vermichel, a famous violin in the Burgundian regiment of
+former days, had procured for Pere Fourchon, in recognition of certain
+services, a situation as practitioner, which in remote country-places
+usually devolves on those who are able to sign their name. Pere Fourchon
+therefore added to his other avocations that of witness, or practitioner
+of legal papers, whenever the Sieur Brunet came to draw them in the
+districts of Cerneux, Conches, and Blangy. Vermichel and Fourchon,
+allied by a friendship of twenty years’ tippling, might really be
+considered a business firm.
+
+Mouche and Fourchon, bound together by vice as Mentor and Telemachus
+by virtue, travelled like the latter, in search of their father, “panis
+angelorum,”--the only Latin words which the old fellow’s memory had
+retained. They went about scraping up the pickings of the Grand-I-Vert,
+and those of the adjacent chateaux; for between them, in their busiest
+and most prosperous years, they had never contrived to make as much as
+three hundred and sixty fathoms of rope. In the first place, no dealer
+within a radius of fifty miles would have trusted his tow to either
+Mouche or Fourchon. The old man, surpassing the miracles of modern
+chemistry, knew too well how to resolve the tow into the all-benignant
+juice of the grape. Moreover, his triple functions of public writer for
+three townships, legal practitioner for one, and clarionet-player at
+large, hindered, so he said, the development of his business.
+
+Thus it happened that Tonsard was disappointed from the start in
+the hope he had indulged of increasing his comfort by an increase of
+property in marriage. The idle son-in-law had chanced, by a very common
+accident, on an idler father-in-law. Matters went all the worse because
+Tonsard’s wife, gifted with a sort of rustic beauty, being tall and
+well-made, was not fond of work in the open air. Tonsard blamed his wife
+for her father’s short-comings, and ill-treated her, with the customary
+revenge of the common people, whose minds take in only an effect and
+rarely look back to causes.
+
+Finding her fetters heavy, the woman lightened them. She used Tonsard’s
+vices to get the better of him. Loving comfort and good eating herself,
+she encouraged his idleness and gluttony. In the first place, she
+managed to procure the good-will of the servants of the chateau, and
+Tonsard, in view of the results, made no complaint as to the means. He
+cared very little what his wife did, so long as she did all he wanted
+of her. That is the secret agreement of many a household. Madame Tonsard
+established the wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert, her first customers being
+the servants of Les Aigues and the keepers and huntsmen.
+
+Gaubertin, formerly steward to Mademoiselle Laguerre, one of La
+Tonsard’s chief patrons, gave her several puncheons of excellent wine
+to attract custom. The effect of these gifts (continued as long as
+Gaubertin remained a bachelor) and the fame of her rather lawless beauty
+commended this beauty to the Don Juans of the valley, and filled the
+wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert. Being a lover of good eating, La Tonsard
+was naturally an excellent cook; and though her talents were only
+exercised on the common dishes of the country, jugged hare, game sauce,
+stewed fish and omelets, she was considered in all the country round to
+be an admirable cook of the sort of food which is eaten at a counter and
+spiced in a way to excite a desire for drink. By the end of two years,
+she had managed to rule Tonsard, and turn him to evil courses, which,
+indeed, he asked no better than to indulge in.
+
+The rascal was continually poaching, and with nothing to fear from it.
+The intimacies of his wife with Gaubertin and the keepers and the
+rural authorities, together with the laxity of the times, secured
+him impunity. As soon as his children were large enough he made them
+serviceable to his comfort, caring no more for their morality than for
+that of his wife. He had two sons and two daughters. Tonsard, who lived,
+as did his wife, from hand to mouth, might have come to an end of
+this easy life if he had not maintained a sort of martial law over his
+family, which compelled them to work for the preservation of it. When he
+had brought up his children, at the cost of those from whom his wife was
+able to extort gifts, the following charter and budget were the law at
+the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+Tonsard’s old mother and his two daughters, Catherine and Marie, went
+into the woods at certain seasons twice a-day, and came back laden with
+fagots which overhung the crutch of their poles at least two feet beyond
+their heads. Though dried sticks were placed on the outside of the heap,
+the inside was made of live wood cut from young trees. In plain words,
+Tonsard helped himself to his winter’s fuel in the woods of Les Aigues.
+Besides this, father and sons were constantly poaching. From September
+to March, hares, rabbits, partridges, deer, in short, all the game that
+was not eaten at the chateau, was sold at Blangy and at Soulanges, where
+Tonsard’s two daughters peddled milk in the early mornings,--coming back
+with the news of the day, in return for the gossip they carried about
+Les Aigues, and Cerneux, and Conches. In the months when the three
+Tonsards were unable to hunt with a gun, they set traps. If the traps
+caught more game than they could eat, La Tonsard made pies of it and
+sent them to Ville-aux-Fayes. In harvest-time seven Tonsards--the old
+mother, the two sons (until they were seventeen years of age), the two
+daughters, together with old Fourchon and Mouche--gleaned, and generally
+brought in about sixteen bushels a day of all grains, rye, barley,
+wheat, all good to grind.
+
+The two cows, led to the roadside by the youngest girl, always managed
+to stray into the meadows of Les Aigues; but as, if it ever chanced that
+some too flagrant trespass compelled the keepers to take notice of it,
+the children were either whipped or deprived of a coveted dainty, they
+had acquired such extraordinary aptitude in hearing the enemy’s footfall
+that the bailiff or the park-keeper of Les Aigues was very seldom able
+to detect them. Besides, the relations of those estimable functionaries
+with Tonsard and his wife tied a bandage over their eyes. The cows, held
+by long ropes, obeyed a mere twitch or a special low call back to the
+roadside, knowing very well that, the danger once past, they could
+finish their browsing in the next field. Old mother Tonsard, who was
+getting more and more infirm, succeeded Mouche in his duties, after
+Fourchon, under pretence of caring for his natural grandson’s education,
+kept him to himself; while Marie and Catherine made hay in the woods.
+These girls knew the exact spots where the fine forest-grass abounded,
+and there they cut and spread and cocked and garnered it, supplying two
+thirds, at least, of the winter fodder, and leading the cows on all fine
+days to sheltered nooks where they could still find pasture. In certain
+parts of the valley of Les Aigues, as in all places protected by a chain
+of mountains, in Piedmont and in Lombardy for instance, there are spots
+where the grass keeps green all the year. Such fields, called in Italy
+“marciti,” are of great value; though in France they are often in danger
+of being injured by snow and ice. This phenomenon is due, no doubt, to
+some favorable exposure, and to the infiltration of water which keeps
+the ground at a warmer temperature.
+
+The calves were sold for about eighty francs. The milk, deducting the
+time when the cows calved or went dry, brought in about one hundred and
+sixty francs a year besides supplying the wants of the family. Tonsard
+himself managed to earn another hundred and sixty by doing odd jobs of
+one kind or another.
+
+The sale of food and wine in the tavern, after all costs were paid,
+returned a profit of about three hundred francs, for the great
+drinking-bouts happened only at certain times and in certain seasons;
+and as the topers who indulged in them gave Tonsard and his wife due
+notice, the latter bought in the neighboring town the exact quantity of
+provisions needed and no more. The wine produced by Tonsard’s vineyard
+was sold in ordinary years for twenty francs a cask to a wine-dealer at
+Soulanges with whom Tonsard was intimate. In very prolific years he got
+as much as twelve casks from his vines; but eight was the average; and
+Tonsard kept half for his own traffic. In all wine-growing districts the
+gleaning of the large vineyards gives a good perquisite, and out of
+it the Tonsard family usually managed to obtain three casks more. But
+being, as we have seen, sheltered and protected by the keepers, they
+showed no conscience in their proceedings,--entering vineyards
+before the harvesters were out of them, just as they swarmed into the
+wheat-fields before the sheaves were made. So, the seven or eight casks
+of wine, as much gleaned as harvested, were sold for a good price.
+However, out of these various proceeds the Grand-I-Vert was mulcted in
+a good sum for the personal consumption of Tonsard and his wife,
+who wanted the best of everything to eat, and better wine than they
+sold,--which they obtained from their friend at Soulanges in payment for
+their own. In short, the money scraped together by this family amounted
+to about nine hundred francs, for they fattened two pigs a year, one for
+themselves and the other to sell.
+
+The idlers and scapegraces and also the laborers took a fancy to the
+tavern of the Grand-I-Vert, partly because of La Tonsard’s merits, and
+partly on account of the hail-fellow-well-met relation existing between
+this family and the lower classes of the valley. The two daughters, both
+remarkably handsome, followed the example of their mother as to morals.
+Moreover, the long established fame of the Grand-I-Vert, dating from
+1795, made it a venerable spot in the eyes of the common people. From
+Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes, workmen came there to meet and make their
+bargains and hear the news collected by the Tonsard women and by Mouche
+and old Fourchon, or supplied by Vermichel and Brunet, that renowned
+official, when he came to the tavern in search of his practitioner.
+There the price of hay and of wine was settled; also that of a day’s
+work and of piece-work. Tonsard, a sovereign judge in such matters,
+gave his advice and opinion while drinking with his guests. Soulanges,
+according to a saying in these parts, was a town for society and
+amusement only, while Blangy was a business borough; crushed, however,
+by the great commercial centre of Ville-aux-Fayes, which had become in
+the last twenty-five years the capital of this flourishing valley. The
+cattle and grain market was held at Blangy, in the public square,
+and the prices there obtained served as a tariff for the whole
+arrondissement.
+
+By staying in the house and doing no out-door work, La Tonsard continued
+fresh and fair and dimpled, in comparison with the women who worked in
+the fields and faded as rapidly as the flowers, becoming old and haggard
+before they were thirty. She liked to be well-dressed. In point of
+fact, she was only clean, but in a village cleanliness is a luxury. The
+daughters, better dressed than their means warranted, followed their
+mother’s example. Beneath their outer garment, which was relatively
+handsome, they wore linen much finer than that of the richest peasant
+women. On fete-days they appeared in dresses that were really pretty,
+obtained, Heaven knows how! For one thing, the men-servants at Les
+Aigues sold to them, at prices that were easily paid, the cast-off
+clothing of the lady’s-maids, which, after sweeping the streets of Paris
+and being made over to fit Marie and Catherine, appeared triumphantly in
+the precincts of the Grand-I-Vert. These girls, bohemians of the valley,
+received not one penny in money from their parents, who gave them
+food only, and the wretched pallets on which they slept with their
+grandmother in the barn, where their brothers also slept, curled up in
+the hay like animals. Neither father nor mother paid any heed to this
+propinquity.
+
+The iron age and the age of gold are more alike than we think for. In
+the one nothing aroused vigilance; in the other, everything rouses it;
+the result to society is, perhaps, very much the same. The presence of
+old Mother Tonsard, which was more a necessity than a precaution, was
+simply one immorality the more. And thus it was that the Abbe Brossette,
+after studying the morals of his parishioners, made this pregnant remark
+to his bishop:--
+
+“Monseigneur, when I observe the stress that the peasantry lay on
+their poverty, I realize how they fear to lose that excuse for their
+immorality.”
+
+Though everybody knew that the family had no principles and no scruples,
+nothing was ever said against the morals of the Grand-I-Vert. At the
+beginning of this book it is necessary to explain, once for all, to
+persons accustomed to the decencies of middle-class life, that the
+peasants have no decency in their domestic habits and customs. They
+make no appeal to morality when their daughters are seduced, unless the
+seducer is rich and timid. Children, until the State takes possession
+of them, are used either as capital or as instruments of convenience.
+Self-interest has become, specially since 1789, the sole motive of the
+masses; they never ask if an action is legal or immoral, but only if it
+is profitable. Morality, which is not to be confounded with religion,
+begins only at a certain competence,--just as one sees, in a higher
+sphere, how delicacy blossoms in the soul when fortune decorates
+the furniture. A positively moral and upright man is rare among the
+peasantry. Do you ask why? Among the many reasons that may be given for
+this state of things, the principal one is this: Through the nature of
+their social functions, the peasants live a purely material life which
+approximates to that of savages, and their constant union with nature
+tends to foster it. When toil exhausts the body it takes from the mind
+its purifying action, especially among the ignorant. The Abbe Brossette
+was right in saying that the state policy of the peasant is his poverty.
+
+Meddling in everybody’s interests, Tonsard heard everybody’s complaints,
+and often instigated frauds to benefit the needy. His wife, a kindly
+appearing woman, had a good word for evil-doers, and never withheld
+either approval or personal help from her customers in anything they
+undertook against the rich. This inn, a nest of vipers, brisk and
+venomous, seething and active, was a hot-bed for the hatred of the
+peasants and the workingmen against the masters and the wealthy.
+
+The prosperous life of the Tonsards was, therefore, an evil example.
+Others asked themselves why they should not take their wood, as the
+Tonsards did, from the forest; why not pasture their cows and have game
+to eat and to sell as well as they; why not harvest without sowing the
+grapes and the grain. Accordingly, the pilfering thefts which thin the
+woods and tithe the ploughed lands and meadows and vineyards became
+habitual in this valley, and soon existed as a right throughout the
+districts of Blangy, Conches, and Cerneux, all adjacent to the domain
+of Les Aigues. This sore, for certain reasons which will be given in
+due time, did far greater injury to Les Aigues than to the estates of
+Ronquerolles or Soulanges. You must not, however, fancy that Tonsard,
+his wife and children, and his old mother ever deliberately said to
+themselves, “We will live by theft, and commit it as cleverly as we
+can.” Such habits grow slowly. To the dried sticks they added, in the
+first instance, a single bit of good wood; then, emboldened by habit
+and a carefully prepared immunity (necessary to plans which this history
+will unfold), they ended at last in cutting “their wood,” and stealing
+almost their entire livelihood. Pasturage for the cows and the abuses of
+gleaning were established as customs little by little. When the Tonsards
+and the do-nothings of the valley had tasted the sweets of these four
+rights (thus captured by rural paupers, and amounting to actual robbery)
+we can easily imagine they would never give them up unless compelled by
+a power greater than their own audacity.
+
+At the time when this history begins Tonsard, then about fifty years
+of age, tall and strong, rather stout than thin, with curly black hair,
+skin highly colored and marbled like a brick with purple blotches,
+yellow whites to the eyes, large ears with broad flaps, a muscular
+frame, encased, however, in flabby flesh, a retreating forehead, and a
+hanging lip,--Tonsard, such as you see him, hid his real character under
+an external stupidity, lightened at times by a show of experience, which
+seemed all the more intelligent because he had acquired in the company
+of his father-in-law a sort of bantering talk, much affected by old
+Fourchon and Vermichel. His nose, flattened at the end as if the finger
+of God intended to mark him, gave him a voice which came from his
+palate, like that of all persons disfigured by a disease which thickens
+the nasal passages, through which the air then passes with difficulty.
+His upper teeth overlapped each other, and this defect (which Lavater
+calls terrible) was all the more apparent because they were as white as
+those of a dog. But for a certain lawless and slothful good humor, and
+the free-and-easy ways of a rustic tippler, the man would have alarmed
+the least observing of spectators.
+
+If the portraits of Tonsard, his inn, and his father-in-law take a
+prominent place in this history, it is because that place belongs to him
+and to the inn and to the family. In the first place, their existence,
+so minutely described, is the type of a hundred other households in the
+valley of Les Aigues. Secondly, Tonsard, without being other than the
+instrument of deep and active hatreds, had an immense influence on the
+struggle that was about to take place, being the friend and counsellor
+of all the complainants of the lower classes. His inn, as we shall
+presently see, was the rendezvous for the aggressors; in fact, he became
+their chief, partly on account of the fear he inspired throughout the
+valley--less, however, by his actual deeds than by those that were
+constantly expected of him. The threat of this man was as much dreaded
+as the thing threatened, so that he never had occasion to execute it.
+
+Every revolt, open or concealed, has its banner. The banner of the
+marauders, the drunkards, the idlers, the sluggards of the valley des
+Aigues was the terrible tavern of the Grand-I-Vert. Its frequenters
+found amusement there,--as rare and much-desired a thing in the country
+as in a city. Moreover, there was no other inn along the country-road
+for over twelve miles, a distance which conveyances (even when laden)
+could easily do in three hours; so that those who went from Conches to
+Ville-aux-Fayes always stopped at the Grand-I-Vert, if only to refresh
+themselves. The miller of Les Aigues, who was also assistant-mayor, and
+his men came there. The grooms and valets of the general were not averse
+to Tonsard’s wine, rendered attractive by Tonsard’s daughters; so the
+Grand-I-Vert held subterraneous communication with the chateau through
+the servants, and knew immediately everything that they knew. It is
+impossible either by benefits or through their own self-interests, to
+break up the perpetual understanding that exists between the servants of
+a household and the people from whom they come. Domestic service is of
+the masses, and to the masses it will ever remain attached. This fatal
+comradeship explains the reticence of the last words of Charles the
+groom, as he and Blondet reached the portico of the chateau.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. ANOTHER IDYLL
+
+
+“Ha! by my pipe, papa!” exclaimed Tonsard, seeing his father-in-law as
+the old man entered and supposing him in quest of food, “your stomach
+is lively this morning! We haven’t anything to give you. How about that
+rope,--the rope, you know, you were to make for us? It is amazing how
+much you make over night and how little there is made in the morning!
+You ought long ago to have twisted the one that is to twist you out of
+existence; you are getting too costly for us.”
+
+The wit of a peasant or laborer is very Attic; it consists in speaking
+out his mind and giving it a grotesque expression. We find the same
+thing in a drawing-room. Delicacy of wit takes the place of picturesque
+vulgarity, and that is really all the difference there is.
+
+“That’s enough for the father-in-law!” said the old man. “Talk business;
+I want a bottle of the best.”
+
+So saying, Fourchon rapped a five-franc piece that gleamed in his hand
+on the old table at which he was seated,--which, with its coating of
+grease, its scorched black marks, its wine stains, and its gashes, was
+singular to behold. At the sound of coin Marie Tonsard, as trig as a
+sloop about to start on a cruise, glanced at her grandfather with a
+covetous look that shot from her eyes like a spark. La Tonsard came out
+of her bedroom, attracted by the music of metal.
+
+“You are always rough to my poor father,” she said to her husband, “and
+yet he has earned a deal of money this year; God grant he came by
+it honestly. Let me see that,” she added, springing at the coin and
+snatching it from Fourchon’s fingers.
+
+“Marie,” said Tonsard, gravely, “above the board you’ll find some
+bottled wine. Go and get a bottle.”
+
+Wine is of only one quality in the country, but it is sold as of two
+kinds,--cask wine and bottled wine.
+
+“Where did you get this, papa” demanded La Tonsard, slipping the coin
+into her pocket.
+
+“Philippine! you’ll come to a bad end,” said the old man, shaking his
+head but not attempting to recover his money. Doubtless he had long
+realized the futility of a struggle between his daughter, his terrible
+son-in-law, and himself.
+
+“Another bottle of wine for which you get five francs out of me,” he
+added, in a peevish tone. “But it shall be the last. I shall give my
+custom to the Cafe de la Paix.”
+
+“Hold your tongue, papa!” remarked his fair and fat daughter, who bore
+some resemblance to a Roman matron. “You need a shirt, and a pair of
+clean trousers, and a hat; and I want to see you with a waistcoat.
+That’s what I take the money for.”
+
+“I have told you again and again that such things would ruin me,” said
+the old man. “People would think me rich and stop giving me anything.”
+
+The bottle brought by Marie put an end to the loquacity of the old man,
+who was not without that trait, characteristic of those whose tongues
+are ready to tell out everything, and who shrink from no expression of
+their thought, no matter how atrocious it may be.
+
+“Then you don’t want to tell where you filched that money?” said
+Tonsard. “We might go and get more where that came from,--the rest of
+us.”
+
+He was making a snare, and as he finished it the ferocious innkeeper
+happened to glance at his father-in-law’s trousers, and there he spied a
+raised round spot which clearly defined a second five-franc piece.
+
+“Having become a capitalist I drink your health,” said Pere Fourchon.
+
+“If you choose to be a capitalist you can be,” said Tonsard; “you have
+the means, you have! But the devil has bored a hole in the back of your
+head through which everything runs out.”
+
+“Hey! I only played the otter trick on that young fellow they have got
+at Les Aigues. He’s from Paris. That’s all there is to it.”
+
+“If crowds of people would come to see the sources of the Avonne, you’d
+be rich, Grandpa Fourchon,” said Marie.
+
+“Yes,” he said, drinking the last glassful the bottle contained, “and
+I’ve played the sham otter so long, the live otters have got angry, and
+one of them came right between my legs to-day; Mouche caught it, and I
+am to get twenty francs for it.”
+
+“I’ll bet your otter is made of tow,” said Tonsard, looking slyly at his
+father-in-law.
+
+“If you will give me a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, and some list
+braces, so as not to disgrace Vermichel on the music stand at Tivoli
+(for old Socquard is always scolding about my clothes), I’ll let you
+keep that money, my daughter; your idea is a good one. I can squeeze
+that rich young fellow at Les Aigues; may be he’ll take to otters.”
+
+“Go and get another bottle,” said Tonsard to his daughter. “If your
+father really had an otter, he would show it to us,” he added, speaking
+to his wife and trying to touch up Fourchon.
+
+“I’m too afraid it would get into your frying-pan,” said the old man,
+winking one of his little green eyes at his daughter. “Philippine has
+already hooked my five-franc piece; and how many more haven’t you bagged
+under pretence of clothing me and feeding me? and now you say that my
+stomach is too lively, and that I go half-naked.”
+
+“You sold your last clothes to drink boiled wine at the Cafe de la Paix,
+papa,” said his daughter, “though Vermichel tried to prevent it.”
+
+“Vermichel! the man I treated! Vermichel is incapable of betraying my
+friendship. It must have been that lump of old lard on two legs that he
+is not ashamed to call his wife!”
+
+“He or she,” replied Tonsard, “or Bonnebault.”
+
+“If it was Bonnebault,” cried Fourchon, “he who is one of the pillars of
+the place, I’ll--I’ll--Enough!”
+
+“You old sot, what has all that got to do with having sold your clothes?
+You sold them because you did sell them; you’re of age!” said Tonsard,
+slapping the old man’s knee. “Come, do honor to my drink and redden up
+your throat! The father of Mam Tonsard has a right to do so; and isn’t
+that better than spending your silver at Socquard’s?”
+
+“What a shame it is that you have been fifteen years playing for people
+to dance at Tivoli and you have never yet found out how Socquard cooks
+his wine,--you who are so shrewd!” said his daughter; “and yet you
+know very well that if we had the secret we should soon get as rich as
+Rigou.”
+
+Throughout the Morvan, and in that region of Burgundy which lies at its
+feet on the side toward Paris, this boiled wine with which Mam Tonsard
+reproached her father is a rather costly beverage which plays a great
+part in the life of the peasantry, and is made by all grocers and
+wine-dealers, and wherever a drinking-shop exists. This precious liquor,
+made of choice wine, sugar, and cinnamon and other spices, is
+preferable to all those disguises or mixtures of brandy called ratafia,
+one-hundred-and-seven, brave man’s cordial, black currant wine,
+vespetro, spirit-of-sun, etc. Boiled wine is found throughout France and
+Switzerland. Among the Jura, and in the wild districts trodden only by a
+few special tourists, the innkeepers call it, on the word of commercial
+travellers, the wine of Syracuse. Excellent it is, however, and their
+guests, hungry as hounds after ascending the surrounding peaks, very
+gladly pay three and four francs a bottle for it. In the homes of the
+Morvan and in Burgundy the least illness or the slightest agitation of
+the nerves is an excuse for boiled wine. Before and after childbirth the
+women take it with the addition of burnt sugar. Boiled wine has soaked
+up the property of many a peasant, and more than once the seductive
+liquid has been the cause of marital chastisement.
+
+“Ha! there’s no chance of grabbing that secret,” replied Fourchon,
+“Socquard always locks himself in when he boils his wine; he never told
+how he does it to his late wife. He sends to Paris for his materials.”
+
+“Don’t plague your father,” cried Tonsard; “doesn’t he know? well, then,
+he doesn’t know! People can’t know everything!”
+
+Fourchon grew very uneasy on seeing how his son-in-law’s countenance
+softened as well as his words.
+
+“What do you want to rob me of now?” he asked, candidly.
+
+“I?” said Tonsard, “I take none but my legitimate dues; if I get
+anything from you it is in payment of your daughter’s portion, which you
+promised me and never paid.”
+
+Fourchon, reassured by the harshness of this remark, dropped his head on
+his breast as though vanquished and convinced.
+
+“Look at that pretty snare,” resumed Tonsard, coming up to his
+father-in-law and laying the trap upon his knee. “Some of these days
+they’ll want game at Les Aigues, and we shall sell them their own, or
+there will be no good God for the poor folks.”
+
+“A fine piece of work,” said the old man, examining the mischievous
+machine.
+
+“It is very well to pick up the sous now, papa,” said Mam Tonsard, “but
+you know we are to have our share in the cake of Les Aigues.”
+
+“Oh, what chatterers women are!” cried Tonsard. “If I am hanged it won’t
+be for a shot from my gun, but for the gabble of your tongue.”
+
+“And do you really suppose that Les Aigues will be cut up and sold in
+lots for your pitiful benefit?” asked Fourchon. “Pshaw! haven’t you
+discovered in the last thirty years that old Rigou has been sucking the
+marrow out of your bones that the middle-class folks are worse than
+the lords? Mark my words, when that affair happens, my children, the
+Soudrys, the Gaubertins, the Rigous, will make you kick your heels in
+the air. ‘I’ve the good tobacco, it never shall be thine,’ that’s
+the national air of the rich man, hey? The peasant will always be
+the peasant. Don’t you see (but you never did understand anything of
+politics!) that government puts such heavy taxes on wine only to hinder
+our profits and keep us poor? The middle classes and the government,
+they are all one. What would become of them if everybody was rich? Could
+they till their fields? Would they gather the harvest? No, they
+_want_ the poor! I was rich for ten years and I know what I thought of
+paupers.”
+
+“Must hunt with them, though,” replied Tonsard, “because they mean to
+cut up the great estates; after that’s done, we can turn against them.
+If I’d been Courtecuisse, whom that scoundrel Rigou is ruining, I’d have
+long ago paid his bill with other balls than the poor fellow gives him.”
+
+“Right enough, too,” replied Fourchon. “As Pere Niseron says (and he
+stayed republican long after everybody else), ‘The people are tough;
+they don’t die; they have time before them.’”
+
+Fourchon fell into a sort of reverie; Tonsard profited by his
+inattention to take back the trap, and as he took it up he cut a slip
+below the coin in his father-in-law’s pocket at the moment when the old
+man raised his glass to his lips; then he set his foot on the five-franc
+piece as it dropped on the earthen floor just where it was always kept
+damp by the heel-taps which the customers flung from their glasses.
+Though quickly and lightly done, the old man might, perhaps, have felt
+the theft, if Vermichel had not happened to appear at that moment.
+
+“Tonsard, do you know where you father is?” called that functionary from
+the foot of the steps.
+
+Vermichel’s shout, the theft of the money, and the emptying of old
+Fourchon’s glass, were simultaneous.
+
+“Present, captain!” cried Fourchon, holding out a hand to Vermichel to
+help him up the steps.
+
+Of all Burgundian figures, Vermichel would have seemed to you the most
+Burgundian. The practitioner was not red, he was scarlet. His face, like
+certain tropical portions of the globe, was fissured, here and there,
+with small extinct volcanoes, defined by flat and greenish patches which
+Fourchon called, not unpoetically, the “flowers of wine.” This fiery
+face, the features of which were swelled out of shape by continual
+drunkenness, looked cyclopic; for it was lighted on the right side by a
+gleaming eye, and darkened on the other by a yellow patch over the left
+orb. Red hair, always tousled, and a beard like that of Judas, made
+Vermichel as formidable in appearance as he was meek in reality. His
+prominent nose looked like an interrogation-mark, to which the wide-slit
+mouth seemed to be always answering, even when it did not open.
+Vermichel, a short man, wore hob-nail shoes, bottle-green velveteen
+trousers, an old waistcoat patched with diverse stuffs which seemed
+to have been originally made of a counterpane, a jacket of coarse blue
+cloth and a gray hat with a broad brim. All this luxury, required by the
+town of Soulanges where Vermichel fulfilled the combined functions of
+porter at the town-hall, drummer, jailer, musician, and practitioner,
+was taken care of by Madame Vermichel, an alarming antagonist of
+Rabelaisian philosophy. This virago with moustachios, about one yard in
+width and one hundred and twenty kilograms in weight (but very active),
+ruled Vermichel with a rod of iron. Thrashed by her when drunk, he
+allowed her to thrash him still when sober; which caused Pere Fourchon
+to say, with a sniff at Vermichel’s clothes, “It is the livery of a
+slave.”
+
+“Talk of the sun and you’ll see its beams,” cried Fourchon, repeating a
+well-worn allusion to the rutilant face of Vermichel, which really did
+resemble those copper suns painted on tavern signs in the provinces.
+“Has Mam Vermichel spied too much dust on your back, that you’re running
+away from your four-fifths,--for I can’t call her your better half, that
+woman! What brings you here at this hour, drum-major?”
+
+“Politics, always politics,” replied Vermichel, who seemed accustomed to
+such pleasantries.
+
+“Ah! business is bad in Blangy, and there’ll be notes to protest, and
+writs to issue,” remarked Pere Fourchon, filling a glass for his friend.
+
+“That APE of ours is right behind me,” replied Vermichel, with a
+backward gesture.
+
+In workmen’s slang “ape” meant master. The word belonged to the
+dictionary of the worthy pair.
+
+“What’s Monsieur Brunet coming bothering about here?” asked Tonsard.
+
+“Hey, by the powers, you folks!” said Vermichel, “you’ve brought him in
+for the last three years more than you are worth. Ha! that master at Les
+Aigues, he has his eye upon you; he’ll punch you in the ribs; he’s after
+you, the Shopman! Brunet says, if there were three such landlords in the
+valley his fortune would be made.”
+
+“What new harm are they going to do to the poor?” asked Marie.
+
+“A pretty wise thing for themselves,” replied Vermichel. “Faith! you’ll
+have to give in, in the end. How can you help it? They’ve got the
+power. For the last two years haven’t they had three foresters and a
+horse-patrol, all as active as ants, and a field-keeper who is a terror?
+Besides, the gendarmerie is ready to do their dirty work at any time.
+They’ll crush you--”
+
+“Bah!” said Tonsard, “we are too flat. That which can’t be crushed isn’t
+the trees, it’s ground.”
+
+“Don’t you trust to that,” said Fourchon to his son-in-law; “you own
+property.”
+
+“Those rich folks must love you,” continued Vermichel, “for they think
+of nothing else from morning till night! They are saying to themselves
+now like this: ‘Their cattle eat up our pastures; we’ll seize their
+cattle; they can’t eat grass themselves.’ You’ve all been condemned, the
+warrants are out, and they have told our ape to take your cows. We are
+to begin this morning at Conches by seizing old mother Bonnebault’s cow
+and Godin’s cow and Mitant’s cow.”
+
+The moment the name of Bonnebault was mentioned, Marie, who was in love
+with the old woman’s grandson, sprang into the vineyard with a nod to
+her father and mother. She slipped like an eel through a break in the
+hedge, and was off on the way to Conches with the speed of a hunted
+hare.
+
+“They’ll do so much,” remarked Tonsard, tranquilly, “that they’ll get
+their bones broken; and that will be a pity, for their mothers can’t
+make them any new ones.”
+
+“Well, perhaps so,” said old Fourchon, “but see here, Vermichel, I can’t
+go with you for an hour or more, for I have important business at the
+chateau.”
+
+“More important than serving three warrants at five sous each? ‘You
+shouldn’t spit into the vintage,’ as Father Noah says.”
+
+“I tell you, Vermichel, that my business requires me to go to the
+chateau des Aigues,” repeated the old man, with an air of laughable
+self-importance.
+
+“And anyhow,” said Mam Tonsard, “my father had better keep out of the
+way. Do you really mean to find the cows?”
+
+“Monsieur Brunet, who is a very good fellow, would much rather find
+nothing but their dung,” answered Vermichel. “A man who is obliged to be
+out and about day and night had better be careful.”
+
+“If he is, he has good reason to be,” said Tonsard, sententiously.
+
+“So,” continued Vermichel, “he said to Monsieur Michaud, ‘I’ll go as
+soon as the court is up.’ If he had wanted to find the cows he’d have
+gone at seven o’clock in the morning. But that didn’t suit Michaud,
+and Brunet has had to be off. You can’t take in Michaud, he’s a trained
+hound! Ha, the brigand!”
+
+“Ought to have stayed in the army, a swaggerer like that,” said Tonsard;
+“he is only fit to deal with enemies. I wish he would come and ask me my
+name. He may call himself a veteran of the young guard, but I know
+very well that if I measured spurs with him, I’d keep my feathers up
+longest.”
+
+“Look here!” said Mam Tonsard to Vermichel, “when are the notices for
+the ball at Soulanges coming out? Here it is the eighth of August.”
+
+“I took them yesterday to Monsieur Bournier at Ville-aux-Fayes, to be
+printed,” replied Vermichel; “they do talk of fireworks on the lake.”
+
+“What crowds of people we shall have!” cried Fourchon.
+
+“Profits for Socquard!” said Tonsard, spitefully.
+
+“If it doesn’t rain,” said his wife, by way of comfort.
+
+At this moment the trot of a horse coming from the direction of
+Soulanges was heard, and five minutes later the sheriff’s officer
+fastened his horse to a post placed for the purpose near the wicket gate
+through which the cows were driven. Then he showed his head at the door
+of the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+“Come, my boys, let’s lose no time,” he said, pretending to be in a
+hurry.
+
+“Hey!” said Vermichel. “Here’s a refractory, Monsieur Brunet; Pere
+Fourchon wants to drop off.”
+
+“He has had too many drops already,” said the sheriff; “but the law in
+this case does not require that he shall be sober.”
+
+“Please excuse me, Monsieur Brunet,” said Fourchon, “I am expected at
+Les Aigues on business; they are in treaty for an otter.”
+
+Brunet, a withered little man dressed from head to foot in black cloth,
+with a bilious skin, a furtive eye, curly hair, lips tight-drawn,
+pinched nose, anxious expression, and gruff in speech, exhibited the
+phenomenon of a character and bearing in perfect harmony with his
+profession. He was so well-informed as to the law, or, to speak more
+correctly, the quibbles of the law, that he had come to be both the
+terror and the counsellor of the whole canton. He was not without a
+certain popularity among the peasantry, from whom he usually took his
+pay in kind. The compound of his active and negative qualities and his
+knowledge of how to manage matters got him the custom of the canton,
+to the exclusion of his coadjutor Plissoud, about whom we shall have
+something to say later. This chance combination of a sheriff’s officer
+who does everything and a sheriff’s officer who does nothing is not at
+all uncommon in the country justice courts.
+
+“So matters are getting warm, are they?” said Tonsard to little Brunet.
+
+“What can you expect? you pilfer the man too much, and he’s going to
+protect himself,” replied the officer. “It will be a bad business for
+you in the end; government will interfere.”
+
+“Then we, poor unfortunates, must give up the ghost!” said Mam Tonsard,
+offering him a glass of brandy on a saucer.
+
+“The unfortunate may all die, yet they’ll never be lacking in the land,”
+ said Fourchon, sententiously.
+
+“You do great damage to the woods,” retorted the sheriff.
+
+“Now don’t believe that, Monsieur Brunet,” said Mam Tonsard; “they make
+such a fuss about a few miserable fagots!”
+
+“We didn’t crush the rich low enough during the Revolution, that’s
+what’s the trouble,” said Tonsard.
+
+Just then a horrible, and quite incomprehensible noise was heard. It
+seemed to be a rush of hurried feet, accompanied with a rattle of arms,
+half-drowned by the rustling of leaves, the dragging of branches, and
+the sound of still more hasty feet. Two voices, as different as the two
+footsteps, were venting noisy exclamations. Everybody inside the
+inn guessed at once that a man was pursuing a woman; but why? The
+uncertainty did not last long.
+
+“It is mother!” said Tonsard, jumping up; “I know her shriek.”
+
+Then suddenly, rushing up the broken steps of the Grand-I-Vert by a
+last effort that can be made only by the sinews of smugglers, old Mother
+Tonsard fell flat on the floor in the middle of the room. The immense
+mass of wood she carried on her head made a terrible noise as it crashed
+against the top of the door and then upon the ground. Every one had
+jumped out of the way. The table, the bottles, the chairs were knocked
+over and scattered. The noise was as great as if the cottage itself had
+come tumbling down.
+
+“I’m dead! The scoundrel has killed me!”
+
+The words and the flight of the old woman were explained by the
+apparition on the threshold of a keeper, dressed in green livery,
+wearing a hat edged with silver cord, a sabre at his side, a leathern
+shoulder-belt bearing the arms of Montcornet charged with those of the
+Troisvilles, the regulation red waistcoat, and buckskin gaiters which
+came above the knee.
+
+After a moment’s hesitation the keeper said, looking at Brunet and
+Vermichel, “Here are witnesses.”
+
+“Witnesses of what?” said Tonsard.
+
+“That woman has a ten-year-old oak, cut into logs, inside those fagots;
+it is a regular crime!”
+
+The moment the word “witness” was uttered Vermichel thought best to
+breathe the fresh air of the vineyard.
+
+“Of what? witnesses of what?” cried Tonsard, standing in front of the
+keeper while his wife helped up the old woman. “Do you mean to show
+your claws, Vatel? Accuse persons and arrest them on the highway,
+brigand,--that’s your domain; but get out of here! A man’s house is his
+castle.”
+
+“I caught her in the act, and your mother must come with me.”
+
+“Arrest my mother in my house? You have no right to do it. My house is
+inviolable,--all the world knows that, at least. Have you got a warrant
+from Monsieur Guerbet, the magistrate? Ha! you must have the law behind
+you before you come in here. You are not the law, though you have sworn
+an oath to starve us to death, you miserable forest-gauger, you!”
+
+The fury of the keeper waxed so hot that he was on the point of seizing
+hold of the wood, when the old woman, a frightful bit of black parchment
+endowed with motion, the like of which can be seen only in David’s
+picture of “The Sabines,” screamed at him, “Don’t touch it, or I’ll fly
+at your eyes!”
+
+“Well, then, undo that pile in presence of Monsieur Brunet,” said the
+keeper.
+
+Though the sheriff’s officer had assumed the indifference that the
+routine of business does really give to officials of his class, he threw
+a glance at Tonsard and his wife which said plainly, “A bad business!”
+ Old Fourchon looked at his daughter, and slyly pointed at a pile of
+ashes in the chimney. Mam Tonsard, who understood in a moment from that
+significant gesture both the danger of her mother-in-law and the advice
+of her father, seized a handful of ashes and flung them in the keeper’s
+eyes. Vatel roared with pain; Tonsard pushed him roughly upon the broken
+door-steps where the blinded man stumbled and fell, and then rolled
+nearly down to the gate, dropping his gun on the way. In an instant the
+load of sticks was unfastened, and the oak logs pulled out and hidden
+with a rapidity no words can describe. Brunet, anxious not to witness
+this manoeuvre, which he readily foresaw, rushed after the keeper to
+help him up; then he placed him on the bank and wet his handkerchief in
+water to wash the eyes of the poor fellow, who, in spite of his agony,
+was trying to reach the brook.
+
+“You are in the wrong, Vatel,” said Brunet; “you have no right to enter
+houses, don’t you see?”
+
+The old woman, a little hump-backed creature, stood on the sill of the
+door, with her hands on her hips, darting flashes from her eyes and
+curses from her foaming lips shrill enough to be heard at Blangy.
+
+“Ha! the villain, ‘twas well done! May hell get you! To suspect me of
+cutting trees!--_me_, the most honest woman in the village. To hunt me
+like vermin! I’d like to see you lose your cursed eyes, for then we’d
+have peace. You are birds of ill-omen, the whole of you; you invent
+shameful stories to stir up strife between your master and us.”
+
+The keeper allowed the sheriff to bathe his eyes and all the while the
+latter kept telling him that he was legally wrong.
+
+“The old thief! she has tired us out,” said Vatel at last. “She has been
+at work in the woods all night.”
+
+As the whole family had taken an active hand in hiding the live wood and
+putting things straight in the cottage, Tonsard presently appeared at
+the door with an insolent air. “Vatel, my man, if you ever again dare
+to force your way into my domain, my gun shall answer you,” he said.
+“To-day you have had the ashes; the next time you shall have the fire.
+You don’t know your own business. That’s enough. Now if you feel hot
+after this affair take some wine, I offer it to you; and you may come
+in and see that my old mother’s bundle of fagots hadn’t a scrap of live
+wood in it; it is every bit brushwood.”
+
+“Scoundrel!” said the keeper to the sheriff, in a low voice, more
+enraged by this speech than by the smart of his eyes.
+
+Just then Charles, the groom, appeared at the gate of the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+“What is the matter, Vatel?” he said.
+
+“Ah!” said the keeper, wiping his eyes, which he had plunged wide open
+into the rivulet to give them a final cleansing. “I have some debtors in
+there that I’ll cause to rue the day they saw the light.”
+
+“If you take it that way, Monsieur Vatel,” said Tonsard, coldly, “you
+will find we don’t want for courage in Burgundy.”
+
+Vatel departed. Not feeling much curiosity to know what the trouble was,
+Charles went up the steps and looked into the house.
+
+“Come to the chateau, you and your otter,--if you really have one,” he
+said to Pere Fourchon.
+
+The old man rose hurriedly and followed him.
+
+“Well, where is it,--that otter of yours?” said Charles, smiling
+doubtfully.
+
+“This way,” said the old fellow, going toward the Thune.
+
+The name is that of a brook formed by the overflow of the mill-race and
+of certain springs in the park of Les Aigues. It runs by the side of the
+county road as far as the lakelet of Soulanges, which it crosses, and
+then falls into the Avonne, after feeding the mills and ponds on the
+Soulanges estate.
+
+“Here it is; I hid it in the brook, with a stone around its neck.”
+
+As he stooped and rose again the old man missed the coin out of his
+pocket, where metal was so uncommon that he was likely to notice its
+presence or its absence immediately.
+
+“Ah, the sharks!” he cried. “If I hunt otters they hunt fathers-in-law!
+They get out of me all I earn, and tell me it is for my good! If it
+were not for my poor Mouche, who is the comfort of my old age, I’d
+drown myself. Children! they are the ruin of their fathers. You haven’t
+married, have you, Monsieur Charles? Then don’t; never get married,
+and then you can’t reproach yourself for spreading bad blood. I, who
+expected to buy my tow with that money, and there it is filched, stolen!
+That monsieur up at Les Aigues, a fine young fellow, gave me ten francs;
+ha! well! it’ll put up the price of my otter now.”
+
+Charles distrusted the old man so profoundly that he took his grievances
+(this time very sincere) for the preliminary of what he called, in
+servant’s slang, “varnish,” and he made the great mistake of letting
+his opinion appear in a satirical grin, which the spiteful old fellow
+detected.
+
+“Come, come! Pere Fourchon, now behave yourself; you are going to see
+Madame,” said Charles, noticing how the rubies flashed on the nose and
+cheeks of the old drunkard.
+
+“I know how to attend to business, Charles; and the proof is that if you
+will get me out of the kitchen the remains of the breakfast and a bottle
+or two of Spanish wine, I’ll tell you something which will save you from
+a ‘foul.’”
+
+“Tell me, and Francois shall get Monsieur’s own order to give you a
+glass of wine,” said the groom.
+
+“Promise?”
+
+“I promise.”
+
+“Well then, I know you meet my granddaughter Catherine under the bridge
+of the Avonne. Godain is in love with her; he saw you, and he is fool
+enough to be jealous,--I say fool, for a peasant oughtn’t to have
+feelings which belong only to rich folks. If you go to the ball of
+Soulanges at Tivoli and dance with her, you’ll dance higher than you’ll
+like. Godain is rich and dangerous; he is capable of breaking your arm
+without your getting a chance to arrest him.”
+
+“That would be too dear; Catherine is a fine girl, but she is not worth
+all that,” replied Charles. “Why should Godain be so angry? others are
+not.”
+
+“He loves her enough to marry her.”
+
+“If he does, he’ll beat her,” said Charles.
+
+“I don’t know about that,” said the old man. “She takes after her
+mother, against whom Tonsard never raised a finger,--he’s too afraid
+she’ll be off, hot foot. A woman who knows how to hold her own is mighty
+useful. Besides, if it came to fisticuffs with Catherine, Godain, though
+he’s pretty strong, wouldn’t give the last blow.”
+
+“Well, thank you, Pere Fourchon; here’s forty sous to drink my health in
+case I can’t get you the sherry.”
+
+Pere Fourchon turned his head aside as he pocketed the money lest
+Charles should see the expression of amusement and sarcasm which he was
+unable to repress.
+
+“Catherine,” he resumed, “is a proud minx; she likes sherry. You had
+better tell her to go and get it at Les Aigues.”
+
+Charles looked at Pere Fourchon with naive admiration, not suspecting
+the eager interest the general’s enemies took in slipping one more spy
+into the chateau.
+
+“The general ought to feel happy now,” continued Fourchon; “the peasants
+are all quiet. What does he say? Is he satisfied with Sibilet?”
+
+“It is only Monsieur Michaud who finds fault with Sibilet. They say
+he’ll get him sent away.”
+
+“Professional jealousy!” exclaimed Fourchon. “I’ll bet you would like to
+get rid of Francois and take his place.”
+
+“Hang it! he has twelve hundred francs wages,” said Charles; “but they
+can’t send him off,--he knows the general’s secrets.”
+
+“Just as Madame Michaud knows the countess’s,” remarked Fourchon,
+watching the other carefully. “Look here, my boy, do you know whether
+Monsieur and Madame have separate rooms?”
+
+“Of course; if they didn’t, Monsieur wouldn’t be so fond of Madame.”
+
+“Is that all you know?” said Fourchon.
+
+As they were now before the kitchen windows nothing more was said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. ENEMIES FACE TO FACE
+
+
+While breakfast was in progress at the chateau, Francois, the head
+footman, whispered to Blondet, but loud enough for the general to
+overhear him,--
+
+“Monsieur, Pere Fourchon’s boy is here; he says they have caught the
+otter, and wants to know if you would like it, or whether they shall
+take it to the sub-prefect at Ville-aux-Fayes.”
+
+Emile Blondet, though himself a past-master of hoaxing, could not keep
+his cheeks from blushing like those of a virgin who hears an indecorous
+story of which she knows the meaning.
+
+“Ha! ha! so you have hunted the otter this morning with Pere Fourchon?”
+ cried the general, with a roar of laughter.
+
+“What is it?” asked the countess, uneasy at her husband’s laugh.
+
+“When a man of wit and intelligence is taken in by old Fourchon,”
+ continued the general, “a retired cuirassier need not blush for having
+hunted that otter; which bears an enormous resemblance to the third
+posthorse we are made to pay for and never see.” With that he went off
+into further explosions of laughter, in the midst of which he contrived
+to say: “I am not surprised you had to change your boots--and your
+trousers; I have no doubt you have been wading! The joke didn’t go as
+far as that with me,--I stayed on the bank; but then, you know, you are
+so much more intelligent than I--”
+
+“But you forget,” interrupted Madame de Montcornet, “that I do not know
+what you are talking of.”
+
+At these words, said with some pique, the general grew serious, and
+Blondet told the story of his fishing for the otter.
+
+“But if they really have an otter,” said the countess, “those poor
+people are not to blame.”
+
+“Oh, but it is ten years since an otter has been seen about here,” said
+the pitiless general.
+
+“Monsieur le comte,” said Francois, “the boy swears by all that’s sacred
+that he has got one.”
+
+“If they have one I’ll buy it,” said the general.
+
+“I don’t suppose,” remarked the Abbe Brossette, “that God has condemned
+Les Aigues to never have otters.”
+
+“Ah, Monsieur le cure!” cried Blondet, “if you bring the Almighty
+against me--”
+
+“But what is all this? Who is here?” said the countess, hastily.
+
+“Mouche, madame,--the boy who goes about with old Fourchon,” said the
+footman.
+
+“Bring him in--that is, if Madame will allow it?” said the general; “he
+may amuse you.”
+
+Mouche presently appeared, in his usual state of comparative nudity.
+Beholding this personification of poverty in the middle of this
+luxurious dining-room, the cost of one panel of which would have been a
+fortune to the bare-legged, bare-breasted, and bare-headed child, it
+was impossible not to be moved by an impulse of charity. The boy’s eyes,
+like blazing coals, gazed first at the luxuries of the room, and then at
+those on the table.
+
+“Have you no mother?” asked Madame de Montcornet, unable otherwise to
+explain the child’s nakedness.
+
+“No, ma’am; m’ma died of grief for losing p’pa, who went to the army
+in 1812 without marrying her with papers, and got frozen, saving your
+presence. But I’ve my Grandpa Fourchon, who is a good man,--though he
+does beat me bad sometimes.”
+
+“How is it, my dear, that such wretched people can be found on your
+estate?” said the countess, looking at the general.
+
+“Madame la comtesse,” said the abbe, “in this district we have none but
+voluntary paupers. Monsieur le comte does all he can; but we have to do
+with a class of persons who are without religion and who have but one
+idea, that of living at your expense.”
+
+“But, my dear abbe,” said Blondet, “you are here to improve their
+morals.”
+
+“Monsieur,” replied the abbe, “my bishop sent me here as if on a mission
+to savages; but, as I had the honor of telling him, the savages of
+France cannot be reached. They make it a law unto themselves not to
+listen to us; whereas the church does get some hold on the savages of
+America.”
+
+“M’sieur le cure, they do help me a bit now,” remarked Mouche; “but if I
+went to your church they _wouldn’t_, and the other folks would make game
+of my breeches.”
+
+“Religion ought to begin by giving him trousers, my dear abbe,” said
+Blondet. “In your foreign missions don’t you begin by coaxing the
+savages?”
+
+“He would soon sell them,” answered the abbe, in a low tone; “besides,
+my salary does not enable me to begin on that line.”
+
+“Monsieur le cure is right,” said the general, looking at Mouche.
+
+The policy of the little scamp was to appear not to hear what they were
+saying when it was against himself.
+
+“The boy is intelligent enough to know good from evil,” continued the
+count, “and he is old enough to work; yet he thinks of nothing but how
+to commit evil without being found out. All the keepers know him. He is
+very well aware that the master of an estate may witness a trespass
+on his property and yet have no right to arrest the trespasser. I have
+known him keep his cows boldly in my meadows, though he knew I saw him;
+but now, ever since I have been mayor, he runs away fast enough.”
+
+“Oh, that is very wrong,” said the countess; “you should not take other
+people’s things, my little man.”
+
+“Madame, we must eat. My grandpa gives me more slaps than food, and they
+don’t fill my stomach, slaps don’t. When the cows come in I milk ‘em
+just a little and I live on that. Monseigneur isn’t so poor but what
+he’ll let me drink a drop o’ milk the cows get from his grass?”
+
+“Perhaps he hasn’t eaten anything to-day,” said the countess, touched by
+his misery. “Give him some bread and the rest of that chicken; let him
+have his breakfast,” she added, looking at the footman. “Where do you
+sleep, my child?”
+
+“Anywhere, madame; under the stars in summer, and wherever they’ll let
+us in winter.”
+
+“How old are you?”
+
+“Twelve.”
+
+“There is still time to bring him up to better ways,” said the countess
+to her husband.
+
+“He will make a good soldier,” said the general, gruffly; “he is well
+toughened. I went through that kind of thing myself, and here I am.”
+
+“Excuse me, general, I don’t belong to nobody,” said the boy. “I can’t
+be drafted. My poor mother wasn’t married, and I was born in a field.
+I’m a son of the ‘airth,’ as grandpa says. M’ma saved me from the army,
+that she did! My name ain’t no more Mouche than nothing at all. Grandpa
+keeps telling me all my advantages. I’m not on the register, and when
+I’m old enough to be drafted I can go all over France and they can’t
+take me.”
+
+“Are you fond of your grandfather?” said the countess, trying to look
+into the child’s heart.
+
+“My! doesn’t he box my ears when he feels like it! but then, after all,
+he’s such fun; he’s such good company! He says he pays himself that way
+for having taught me to read and write.”
+
+“Can you read?” asked the count.
+
+“Yah, I should think so, Monsieur le comte, and fine writing too--just
+as true as we’ve got that otter.”
+
+“Read that,” said the count, giving him a newspaper.
+
+“The Qu-o-ti-dienne,” read Mouche, hesitating only three times.
+
+Every one, even the abbe, laughed.
+
+“Why do you make me read that newspaper?” cried Mouche, angrily. “My
+grandpa says it is made up to please the rich, and everybody knows later
+just what’s in it.”
+
+“The child is right, general,” said Blondet; “and he makes me long to
+see my hoaxing friend again.”
+
+Mouche understood perfectly that he was posing for the amusement of the
+company; the pupil of Pere Fourchon was worthy of his master, and he
+forthwith began to cry.
+
+“How can you tease a child with bare feet?” said the countess.
+
+“And who thinks it quite natural that his grandfather should recoup
+himself for his education by boxing his ears,” said Blondet.
+
+“Tell me, my poor little fellow, have you really caught an otter?”
+
+“Yes, madame; as true as that you are the prettiest lady I have seen, or
+ever shall see,” said the child, wiping his eyes.
+
+“Then show me the otter,” said the general.
+
+“Oh M’sieur le comte, my grandpa has hidden it; but it was kicking still
+when we were at work at the rope-walk. Send for my grandpa, please; he
+wants to sell it to you himself.”
+
+“Take him into the kitchen,” said the countess to Francois, “and give
+him his breakfast, and send Charles to fetch Pere Fourchon. Find some
+shoes, and a pair of trousers and a waistcoat for the poor child; those
+who come here naked must go away clothed.”
+
+“May God bless you, my beautiful lady,” said Mouche, departing. “M’sieur
+le cure may feel quite sure that I’ll keep the things and wear ‘em
+fete-days, because you give ‘em to me.”
+
+Emile and Madame Montcornet looked at each other with some surprise, and
+seemed to say to the abbe, “The boy is not a fool!”
+
+“It is quite true, madame,” said the abbe after the child had gone,
+“that we cannot reckon with Poverty. I believe it has hidden excuses of
+which God alone can judge,--physical excuses, often congenital; moral
+excuses, born in the character, produced by an order of things that
+are often the result of qualities which, unhappily for society, have no
+vent. Deeds of heroism performed upon the battle-field ought to teach us
+that the worst scoundrels may become heroes. But here in this place you
+are living under exceptional circumstances; and if your benevolence is
+not controlled by reflection and judgment you run the risk of supporting
+your enemies.”
+
+“Our enemies?” exclaimed the countess.
+
+“Cruel enemies,” said the general, gravely.
+
+“Pere Fourchon and his son-in-law Tonsard,” said the abbe, “are the
+strength and the intelligence of the lower classes of this valley,
+who consult them on all occasions. The Machiavelism of these people is
+beyond belief. Ten peasants meeting in a tavern are the small change of
+great political questions.”
+
+Just then Francois announced Monsieur Sibilet.
+
+“He is my minister of finance,” said the general, smiling; “ask him in.
+He will explain to you the gravity of the situation,” he added, looking
+at his wife and Blondet.
+
+“Because he has reasons of his own for not concealing it,” said the
+cure, in a low tone.
+
+Blondet then beheld a personage of whom he had heard much ever since his
+arrival, and whom he desired to know, the land-steward of Les Aigues. He
+saw a man of medium height, about thirty years of age, with a sulky look
+and a discontented face, on which a smile sat ill. Beneath an anxious
+brow a pair of greenish eyes evaded the eyes of others, and so disguised
+their thought. Sibilet was dressed in a brown surtout coat, black
+trousers and waistcoat, and wore his hair long and flat to the head,
+which gave him a clerical look. His trousers barely concealed that he
+was knock-kneed. Though his pallid complexion and flabby flesh gave the
+impression of an unhealthy constitution, Sibilet was really robust.
+The tones of his voice, which were a little thick, harmonized with this
+unflattering exterior.
+
+Blondet gave a hasty look at the abbe, and the glance with which the
+young priest answered it showed the journalist that his own suspicions
+about the steward were certainties to the curate.
+
+“Did you not tell me, my dear Sibilet,” said the general, “that you
+estimate the value of what the peasants steal from us at a quarter of
+the whole revenue?”
+
+“Much more than that, Monsieur le comte,” replied the steward. “The poor
+about here get more from your property than the State exacts in taxes.
+A little scamp like Mouche can glean his two bushels a day. Old women,
+whom you would really think at their last gasp, become at the harvest
+and vintage times as active and healthy as girls. You can witness
+that phenomenon very soon,” said Sibilet, addressing Blondet, “for the
+harvest, which was put back by the rains in July will begin next week,
+when they cut the rye. The gleaners must have a certificate of pauperism
+from the mayor of the district, and no district should allow any one to
+glean except the paupers; but the districts of one canton do glean in
+those of another without certificate. If we have sixty real paupers
+in our district, there are at least forty others who could support
+themselves if they were not so idle. Even persons who have a business
+leave it to glean in the fields and in the vineyards. All these people,
+taken together, gather in this neighborhood something like three hundred
+bushels a day; the harvest lasts two weeks, and that makes four thousand
+five hundred bushels in this district alone. The gleaning takes more
+from an estate than the taxes. As to the abuse of pasturage, it robs
+us of fully one-sixth the produce of the meadows; and as to that of
+the woods, it is incalculable,--they have actually come to cutting down
+six-year-old trees. The loss to you, Monsieur le comte, amounts to fully
+twenty-odd thousand francs a year.”
+
+“Do you hear that, madame?” said the general to his wife.
+
+“Is it not exaggerated?” asked Madame de Montcornet.
+
+“No, madame, unfortunately not,” said the abbe. “Poor Niseron, that old
+fellow with the white head, who combines the functions of bell-ringer,
+beadle, grave-digger, sexton, and clerk, in defiance of his republican
+opinions,--I mean the grandfather of the little Genevieve whom you
+placed with Madame Michaud--”
+
+“La Pechina,” said Sibilet, interrupting the abbe.
+
+“Pechina!” said the countess, “whom do you mean?”
+
+“Madame la comtesse, when you met little Genevieve on the road in a
+miserable condition, you cried out in Italian, ‘Piccina!’ The word
+became a nickname, and is now corrupted all through the district into
+Pechina,” said the abbe. “The poor girl comes to church with Madame
+Michaud and Madame Sibilet.”
+
+“And she is none the better for it,” said Sibilet, “for the others
+ill-treat her on account of her religion.”
+
+“Well, that poor old man of seventy gleans, honestly, about a bushel
+and a half a day,” continued the priest; “but his natural uprightness
+prevents him from selling his gleanings as others do,--he keeps them for
+his own consumption. Monsieur Langlume, your miller, grinds his flour
+gratis at my request, and my servant bakes his bread with mine.”
+
+“I had quite forgotten my little protegee,” said the countess, troubled
+at Sibilet’s remark. “Your arrival,” she added to Blondet, “has quite
+turned my head. But after breakfast I will take you to the gate of the
+Avonne and show you the living image of those women whom the painters of
+the fifteenth century delighted to perpetuate.”
+
+The sound of Pere Fourchon’s broken sabots was now heard; after
+depositing them in the antechamber, he was brought to the door of the
+dining-room by Francois. At a sign from the countess, Francois allowed
+him to pass in, followed by Mouche with his mouth full and carrying the
+otter, hanging by a string tied to its yellow paws, webbed like those of
+a palmiped. He cast upon his four superiors sitting at table, and also
+upon Sibilet, that look of mingled distrust and servility which serves
+as a veil to the thoughts of the peasantry; then he brandished his
+amphibian with a triumphant air.
+
+“Here it is!” he cried, addressing Blondet.
+
+“My otter!” returned the Parisian, “and well paid for.”
+
+“Oh, my dear gentleman,” replied Pere Fourchon, “yours got away; she is
+now in her burrow, and she won’t come out, for she’s a female,--this
+is a male; Mouche saw him coming just as you went away. As true as
+you live, as true as that Monsieur le comte covered himself and his
+cuirassiers with glory at Waterloo, the otter is mine, just as much as
+Les Aigues belongs to Monseigneur the general. But the otter is _yours_
+for twenty francs; if not I’ll take it to the sub-prefect. If Monsieur
+Gourdon thinks it too dear, then I’ll give you the preference; that’s
+only fair, as we hunted together this morning!”
+
+“Twenty francs!” said Blondet. “In good French you can’t call that
+_giving_ the preference.”
+
+“Hey, my dear gentleman,” cried the old fellow. “Perhaps I don’t know
+French, and I’ll ask it in good Burgundian; as long as I get the money,
+I don’t care, I’ll talk Latin: ‘latinus, latina, latinum’! Besides,
+twenty francs is what you promised me this morning. My children
+have already stolen the silver you gave me; I wept about it, coming
+along,--ask Charles if I didn’t. Not that I’d arrest ‘em for the value
+of ten francs and have ‘em up before the judge, no! But just as soon as
+I earn a few pennies, they make me drink and get ‘em out of me. Ah! it
+is hard, hard to be reduced to go and get my wine elsewhere. But just
+see what children are these days! That’s what we got by the Revolution;
+it is all for the children now-a-days, and parents are suppressed.
+I’m bringing up Mouche on another tack; he loves me, the little
+scamp,”--giving his grandson a poke.
+
+“It seems to me you are making him a little thief, like all the rest,”
+ said Sibilet; “he never lies down at night without some sin on his
+conscience.”
+
+“Ha! Monsieur Sibilet, his conscience is as clean as yours any day! Poor
+child! what can he steal? A little grass! that’s better than throttling
+a man! He don’t know mathematics like you, nor subtraction, nor
+addition, nor multiplication,--you are very unjust to us, that you
+are! You call us a nest of brigands, but you are the cause of the
+misunderstandings between our good landlord here, who is a worthy man,
+and the rest of us, who are all worthy men,--there ain’t an honester
+part of the country than this. Come, what do you mean? do I own
+property? don’t I go half-naked, and Mouche too? Fine sheets we slept
+in, washed by the dew every morning! and unless you want the air we
+breathe and the sunshine we drink, I should like to know what we have
+that you can take away from us! The rich folks rob as they sit in their
+chimney-corners,--and more profitably, too, than by picking up a few
+sticks in the woods. I don’t see no game-keepers or patrols after
+Monsieur Gaubertin, who came here as naked as a worm and is now worth
+his millions. It’s easy said, ‘Robbers!’ Here’s fifteen years that old
+Guerbet, the tax-gatherer at Soulanges, carries his money along the
+roads by the dead of night, and nobody ever took a farthing from him; is
+that like a land of robbers? has robbery made us rich? Show me which of
+us two, your class or mine, live the idlest lives and have the most to
+live on without earning it.”
+
+“If you were to work,” said the abbe, “you would have property. God
+blesses labor.”
+
+“I don’t want to contradict you, M’sieur l’abbe, for you are wiser than
+I, and perhaps you’ll know how to explain something that puzzles me. Now
+see, here I am, ain’t I?--that drunken, lazy, idle, good-for-nothing old
+Fourchon, who had an education and was a farmer, and got down in the mud
+and never got up again,--well, what difference is there between me and
+that honest and worthy old Niseron, seventy years old (and that’s my
+age) who has dug the soil for sixty years and got up every day before
+it was light to go to his work, and has made himself an iron body and a
+fine soul? Well, isn’t he as bad off as I am? His little granddaughter,
+Pechina, is at service with Madame Michaud, whereas my little Mouche is
+as free as air. So that poor good man gets rewarded for his virtues in
+exactly the same way that I get punished for my vices. He don’t know
+what a glass of good wine is, he’s as sober as an apostle, he buries the
+dead, and I--I play for the living to dance. He is always in a peck o’
+troubles, while I slip along in a devil-may-care way. We have come along
+about even in life; we’ve got the same snow on our heads, the same funds
+in our pockets, and I supply him with rope to ring his bell. He’s a
+republican and I’m not even a publican,--that’s all the difference as
+far as I can see. A peasant may do good or do evil (according to your
+ideas) and he’ll go out of the world just as he came into it, in rags;
+while you wear the fine clothes.”
+
+No one interrupted Pere Fourchon, who seemed to owe his eloquence to his
+potations. At first Sibilet tried to cut him short, but desisted at
+a sign from Blondet. The abbe, the general, and the countess, all
+understood from the expression of the writer’s eye that he wanted to
+study the question of pauperism from life, and perhaps take his revenge
+on Pere Fourchon.
+
+“What sort of education are you giving Mouche?” asked Blondet. “Do you
+expect to make him any better than your daughters?”
+
+“Does he ever speak to him of God?” said the priest.
+
+“Oh, no, no! Monsieur le cure, I don’t tell him to fear God, but men.
+God is good; he has promised us poor folks, so you say, the kingdom of
+heaven, because the rich people keep the earth to themselves. I tell
+him: ‘Mouche! fear the prison, and keep out of it,--for that’s the way
+to the scaffold. Don’t steal anything, make people give it to you. Theft
+leads to murder, and murder brings down the justice of men. The razor of
+justice,--_that’s_ what you’ve got to fear; it lets the rich sleep easy
+and keeps the poor awake. Learn to read. Education will teach you ways
+to grab money under cover of the law, like that fine Monsieur Gaubertin;
+why, you can even be a land-steward like Monsieur Sibilet here, who gets
+his rations out of Monsieur le comte. The thing to do is to keep well
+with the rich, and pick up the crumbs that fall from their tables.’
+That’s what I call giving him a good, solid education; and you’ll always
+find the little rascal on the side of the law,--he’ll be a good citizen
+and take care of me.”
+
+“What do you mean to make of him?” asked Blondet.
+
+“A servant, to begin with,” returned Fourchon, “because then he’ll see
+his masters close by, and learn something; he’ll complete his education,
+I’ll warrant you. Good example will be a fortune to him, with the law on
+his side like the rest of you. If M’sieur le comte would only take him
+in his stables and let him learn to groom the horses, the boy will be
+mighty pleased, for though I’ve taught him to fear men, he don’t fear
+animals.”
+
+“You are a clever fellow, Pere Fourchon,” said Blondet; “you know what
+you are talking about, and there’s sense in what you say.”
+
+“Oh, sense? no; I left my sense at the Grand-I-Vert when I lost those
+silver pieces.”
+
+“How is it that a man of your capacity should have dropped so low? As
+things are now, a peasant can only blame himself for his poverty; he is
+a free man, and he can become a rich one. It is not as it used to be. If
+a peasant lays by his money, he can always buy a bit of land and become
+his own master.”
+
+“I’ve seen the olden time and I’ve seen the new, my dear wise
+gentleman,” said Fourchon; “the sign over the door has changed, that’s
+true, but the wine is the same,--to-day is the younger brother of
+yesterday, that’s all. Put that in your newspaper! Are we poor folks
+free? We still belong to the same parish, and its lord is always
+there,--I call him Toil. The hoe, our sole property, has never left our
+hands. Let it be the old lords or the present taxes which take the best
+of our earnings, the fact remains that we sweat our lives out in toil.”
+
+“But you could undertake a business, and try to make your fortune,” said
+Blondet.
+
+“Try to make my fortune! And where shall I try? If I wish to leave my
+own province, I must get a passport, and that costs forty sous. Here’s
+forty years that I’ve never had a slut of a forty-sous piece jingling
+against another in my pocket. If you want to travel you need as many
+crowns as there are villages, and there are mighty few Fourchons who
+have enough to get to six of ‘em. It is only the draft that gives us a
+chance to get away. And what good does the army do us? The colonels live
+by the solider, just as the rich folks live by the peasant; and out of
+every hundred of ‘em you won’t find more than one of our breed. It is
+just as it is the world over, one rolling in riches, for a hundred down
+in the mud. Why are we in the mud? Ask God and the usurers. The best we
+can do is to stay in our own parts, where we are penned like sheep
+by the force of circumstances, as our fathers were by the rule of the
+lords. As for me, what do I care what shackles they are that keep me
+here? let it be the law of public necessity or the tyranny of the old
+lords, it is all the same; we are condemned to dig the soil forever.
+There, where we are born, there we dig it, that earth! and spade it,
+and manure it, and delve in it, for you who are born rich just as we are
+born poor. The masses will always be what they are, and stay what they
+are. The number of us who manage to rise is nothing like the number of
+you who topple down! We know that well enough, if we have no education!
+You mustn’t be after us with your sheriff all the time,--not if you’re
+wise. We let you alone, and you must let us alone. If not, and things
+get worse, you’ll have to feed us in your prisons, where we’d be much
+better off than in our homes. You want to remain our masters, and we
+shall always be enemies, just as we were thirty years ago. You have
+everything, we have nothing; you can’t expect we should ever be
+friends.”
+
+“That’s what I call a declaration of war,” said the general.
+
+“Monseigneur,” retorted Fourchon, “when Les Aigues belonged to that poor
+Madame (God keep her soul and forgive her the sins of her youth!) we
+were happy. _She_ let us get our food from the fields and our fuel from
+the forest; and was she any the poorer for it? And you, who are at least
+as rich as she, you hunt us like wild beasts, neither more nor less, and
+drag the poor before the courts. Well, evil will come of it! you’ll be
+the cause of some great calamity. Haven’t I just seen your keeper, that
+shuffling Vatel, half kill a poor old woman for a stick of wood? It is
+such fellows as that who make you an enemy to the poor; and the talk is
+very bitter against you. They curse you every bit as hard as they used
+to bless the late Madame. The curse of the poor, monseigneur, is a seed
+that grows,--grows taller than your tall oaks, and oak-wood builds the
+scaffold. Nobody here tells you the truth; and here it is, yes, the
+truth! I expect to die before long, and I risk very little in telling it
+to you, the _truth_! I, who play for the peasants to dance at the
+great fetes at Soulanges, I heed what the people say. Well, they’re all
+against you; and they’ll make it impossible for you to stay here. If
+that damned Michaud of yours doesn’t change, they’ll force you to change
+him. There! that information _and_ the otter are worth twenty francs,
+and more too.”
+
+As the old fellow uttered the last words a man’s step was heard, and the
+individual just threatened by Fourchon entered unannounced. It was
+easy to see from the glance he threw at the old man that the threat had
+reached his ears, and all Fourchon’s insolence sank in a moment. The
+look produced precisely the same effect upon him that the eye of a
+policeman produces on a thief. Fourchon knew he was wrong, and that
+Michaud might very well accuse him of saying these things merely to
+terrify the inhabitants of Les Aigues.
+
+“This is the minister of war,” said the general to Blondet, nodding at
+Michaud.
+
+“Pardon me, madame, for having entered without asking if you were
+willing to receive me,” said the newcomer to the countess; “but I have
+urgent reasons for speaking to the general at once.”
+
+Michaud, as he said this, took notice of Sibilet, whose expression of
+keen delight in Fourchon’s daring words was not seen by the four persons
+seated at the table, because they were so preoccupied by the old man;
+whereas Michaud, who for secret reasons watched Sibilet constantly, was
+struck with his air and manner.
+
+“He has earned his twenty francs, Monsieur le comte,” said Sibilet; “the
+otter is fully worth it.”
+
+“Give him twenty francs,” said the general to the footman.
+
+“Do you mean to take my otter away from me?” said Blondet to the
+general.
+
+“I shall have it stuffed,” replied the latter.
+
+“Ah! but that good gentleman said I might keep the skin,” cried
+Fourchon.
+
+“Well, then,” exclaimed the countess, hastily, “you shall have five
+francs more for the skin; but go away now.”
+
+The powerful odor emitted by the pair made the dining-room so horribly
+offensive that Madame de Montcornet, whose senses were very delicate,
+would have been forced to leave the room if Fourchon and Mouche
+had remained. To this circumstance the old man was indebted for his
+twenty-five francs. He left the room with a timid glance at Michaud,
+making him an interminable series of bows.
+
+“What I was saying to monseigneur, Monsieur Michaud,” he added, “was
+really for your good.”
+
+“Or for that of those who pay you,” replied Michaud, with a searching
+look.
+
+“When you have served the coffee, leave the room,” said the general to
+the servants, “and see that the doors are shut.”
+
+Blondet, who had not yet seen the bailiff of Les Aigues, was conscious,
+as he now saw him, of a totally different impression from that conveyed
+by Sibilet. Just as the steward inspired distrust and repulsion, so
+Michaud commanded respect and confidence. The first attraction of his
+presence was a happy face, of a fine oval, pure in outline, in which the
+nose bore part,--a regularity which is lacking in the majority of
+French faces. Though the features were correct in drawing, they were not
+without expression, due, perhaps, to the harmonious coloring of the warm
+brown and ochre tints, indicative of physical health and strength. The
+clear brown eyes, which were bright and piercing, kept no reserves in
+the expression of his thought; they looked straight into the eyes of
+others. The broad white forehead was thrown still further into relief by
+his abundant black hair. Honesty, decision, and a saintly serenity were
+the animating points of this noble face, where a few deep lines upon the
+brow were the result of the man’s military career. Doubt and suspicion
+could there be read the moment they had entered his mind. His figure,
+like that of all men selected for the elite of the cavalry service,
+though shapely and elegant, was vigorously built. Michaud, who wore
+moustachios, whiskers, and a chin beard, recalled that martial type of
+face which a deluge of patriotic paintings and engravings came very near
+to making ridiculous. This type had the defect of being common in the
+French army; perhaps the continuance of the same emotions, the same camp
+sufferings from which none were exempt, neither high nor low, and more
+especially the same efforts of officers and men upon the battle-fields,
+may have contributed to produce this uniformity of countenance. Michaud,
+who was dressed in dark blue cloth, still wore the black satin stock
+and high boots of a soldier, which increased the slight stiffness and
+rigidity of his bearing. The shoulders sloped, the chest expanded, as
+though the man were still under arms. The red ribbon of the Legion of
+honor was in his buttonhole. In short, to give a last touch in one word
+about the moral qualities beneath this purely physical presentment, it
+may be said that while the steward, from the time he first entered upon
+his functions, never failed to call his master “Monsieur le comte,”
+ Michaud never addressed him otherwise than as “General.”
+
+Blondet exchanged another look with the Abbe Brossette, which meant,
+“What a contrast!” as he signed to him to observe the two men. Then,
+as if to know whether the character and mind and speech of the bailiff
+harmonized with his form and countenance, he turned to Michaud and
+said:--
+
+“I was out early this morning, and found your under-keepers still
+sleeping.”
+
+“At what hour?” said the late soldier, anxiously.
+
+“Half-past seven.”
+
+Michaud gave a half-roguish glance at the general.
+
+“By what gate did monsieur leave the park?” he asked.
+
+“By the gate of Conches. The keeper, in his night-shirt, looked at me
+through the window,” replied Blondet.
+
+“Gaillard had probably just gone to bed,” answered Michaud. “You said
+you were out early, and I thought you meant day-break. If my man were at
+home at that time, he must have been ill; but at half-past seven he was
+sure to be in bed. We are up all night,” added Michaud, after a slight
+pause, replying to a surprised look on the countess’s face, “but our
+watchfulness is often wasted. You have just given twenty-five francs to
+a man who, not an hour ago, was quietly helping to hide the traces of
+a robbery committed upon you this very morning. I came to speak to you
+about it, general, when you have finished breakfast; for something will
+have to be done.”
+
+“You are always for maintaining the right, my dear Michaud, and ‘summum
+jus, summum injuria.’ If you are not more tolerant, you will get into
+trouble, so Sibilet here tells me. I wish you could have heard Pere
+Fourchon just now; the wine he had been drinking made him speak out.”
+
+“He frightened me,” said the countess.
+
+“He said nothing I did not know long ago,” replied the general.
+
+“Oh! the rascal wasn’t drunk; he was playing a part; for whose benefit
+I leave you to guess. Perhaps you know?” returned Michaud, fixing an eye
+on Sibilet which caused the latter to turn red.
+
+“O rus!” cried Blondet, with another look at the abbe.
+
+“But these poor creatures suffer,” said the countess, “and there is a
+great deal of truth in what old Fourchon has just screamed at us,--for I
+cannot call it speaking.”
+
+“Madame,” replied Michaud, “do you suppose that for fourteen years the
+soldiers of the Emperor slept on a bed of roses? My general is a count,
+he is a grand officer of the Legion of honor, he has had perquisites and
+endowments given to him; am I jealous of him, I who fought as he did? Do
+I wish to cheat him of his glory, to steal his perquisites, to deny him
+the honor due to his rank? The peasant should obey as the soldier
+obeys; he should feel the loyalty of a soldier, his respect for acquired
+rights, and strive to become an officer himself, honorably, by labor and
+not by theft. The sabre and the plough are twins; though the soldier has
+something more than the peasant,--he has death hanging over him at any
+minute.”
+
+“I want to say that from the pulpit,” cried the abbe.
+
+“Tolerant!” continued the keeper, replying to the general’s remark about
+Sibilet, “I would tolerate a loss of ten per cent upon the gross returns
+of Les Aigues; but as things are now thirty per cent is what you lose,
+general; and, if Monsieur Sibilet’s accounts show it, I don’t understand
+his tolerance, for he benevolently gives up a thousand or twelve hundred
+francs a year.”
+
+“My dear Monsieur Michaud,” replied Sibilet, in a snappish tone, “I have
+told Monsieur le comte that I would rather lose twelve hundred francs
+a year than my life. Think of it seriously; I have warned you often
+enough.”
+
+“Life!” exclaimed the countess; “you can’t mean that anybody’s life is
+in danger?”
+
+“Don’t let us argue about state affairs here,” said the general,
+laughing. “All this, my dear, merely means that Sibilet, in his capacity
+of financier, is timid and cowardly, while the minister of war is brave
+and, like his general, fears nothing.”
+
+“Call me prudent, Monsieur le comte,” interposed Sibilet.
+
+“Well, well!” cried Blondet, laughing, “so here we are, like Cooper’s
+heroes in the forests of America, in the midst of sieges and savages.”
+
+“Come, gentlemen, it is your business to govern without letting me hear
+the wheels of the administration,” said Madame de Montcornet.
+
+“Ah! madame,” said the cure, “but it may be right that you should know
+the toil from which those pretty caps you wear are derived.”
+
+“Well, then, I can go without them,” replied the countess, laughing. “I
+will be very respectful to a twenty-franc piece, and grow as miserly
+as the country people themselves. Come, my dear abbe, give me your arm.
+Leave the general with his two ministers, and let us go to the gate
+of the Avonne to see Madame Michaud, for I have not had time since
+my arrival to pay her a visit, and I want to inquire about my little
+protegee.”
+
+And the pretty woman, already forgetting the rags and tatters of Mouche
+and Fourchon, and their eyes full of hatred, and Sibilet’s warnings,
+went to have herself made ready for the walk.
+
+The abbe and Blondet obeyed the behest of the mistress of the house and
+followed her from the dining-room, waiting till she was ready on the
+terrace before the chateau.
+
+“What do you think of all this?” said Blondet to the abbe.
+
+“I am a pariah; they dog me as they would a common enemy. I am forced
+to keep my eyes and ears perpetually open to escape the traps they are
+constantly laying to get me out of the place,” replied the abbe. “I am
+even doubtful, between ourselves, as to whether they will not shoot me.”
+
+“Why do you stay?” said Blondet.
+
+“We can’t desert God’s cause any more than that of an emperor,” replied
+the priest, with a simplicity that affected Blondet. He took the abbe’s
+hand and shook it cordially.
+
+“You see how it is, therefore, that I know very little of the plots that
+are going on,” continued the abbe. “Still, I know enough to feel sure
+that the general is under what in Artois and in Belgium is called an
+‘evil grudge.’”
+
+A few words are here necessary about the curate of Blangy.
+
+This priest, the fourth son of a worthy middle-class family of Autun,
+was an intelligent man carrying his head high in his collar. Small
+and slight, he redeemed his rather puny appearance by the precise and
+carefully dressed air that belongs to Burgundians. He accepted the
+second-rate post of Blangy out of pure devotion, for his religious
+convictions were joined to political opinions that were equally strong.
+There was something of the priest of the olden time about him; he
+held to the Church and to the clergy passionately; saw the bearings
+of things, and no selfishness marred his one ambition, which was _to
+serve_. That was his motto,--to serve the Church and the monarchy
+wherever it was most threatened; to serve in the lowest rank like
+a soldier who feels that he is destined, sooner or later, to attain
+command through courage and the resolve to do his duty. He made no
+compromises with his vows of chastity, and poverty, and obedience; he
+fulfilled them, as he did the other duties of his position, with that
+simplicity and cheerful good-humor which are the sure indications of an
+honest heart, constrained to do right by natural impulses as much as by
+the power and consistency of religious convictions.
+
+The priest had seen at first sight Blondet’s attachment to the countess;
+he saw that between a Troisville and a monarchical journalist he could
+safely show himself to be a man of broad intelligence, because his
+calling was certain to be respected. He usually came to the chateau very
+evening to make the fourth at a game of whist. The journalist, able to
+recognize the abbe’s real merits, showed him so much deference that the
+pair grew into sympathy with each other; as usually happens when men of
+intelligence meet their equals, or, if you prefer it, the ears that are
+able to hear them. Swords are fond of their scabbards.
+
+“But to what do you attribute this state of things, Monsieur l’abbe, you
+who are able, through your disinterestedness, to look over the heads of
+things?”
+
+“I shall not talk platitudes after such a flattering speech as that,”
+ said the abbe, smiling. “What is going on in this valley is spreading
+more or less throughout France; it is the outcome of the hopes which the
+upheaval of 1789 caused to infiltrate, if I may use that expression, the
+minds of the peasantry, the sons of the soil. The Revolution affected
+certain localities more than others. This side of Burgundy, nearest to
+Paris, is one of those places where the revolutionary ideas spread like
+the overrunning of the Franks by the Gauls. Historically, the peasants
+are still on the morrow of the Jacquerie; that defeat is burnt in upon
+their brain. They have long forgotten the facts which have now passed
+into the condition of an instinctive idea. That idea is bred in the
+peasant blood, just as the idea of superiority was once bred in noble
+blood. The revolution of 1789 was the retaliation of the vanquished. The
+peasants then set foot in possession of the soil which the feudal law
+had denied them for over twelve hundred years. Hence their desire for
+land, which they now cut up among themselves until actually they divide
+a furrow into two parts; which, by the bye, often hinders or prevents
+the collection of taxes, for the value of such fractions of property is
+not sufficient to pay the legal costs of recovering them.”
+
+“Very true, for the obstinacy of the small owners--their aggressiveness,
+if you choose--on this point is so great that in at least one thousand
+cantons of the three thousand of French territory, it is impossible
+for a rich man to buy an inch of land from a peasant,” said Blondet,
+interrupting the abbe. “The peasants who are willing to divide up
+their scraps of land among themselves would not sell a fraction on any
+condition or at any price to the middle classes. The more money the
+rich man offers, the more the vague uneasiness of the peasant increases.
+Legal dispossession alone is able to bring the landed property of the
+peasant into the market. Many persons have noticed this fact without
+being able to find a reason for it.”
+
+“This is the reason,” said the abbe, rightly believing that a pause
+with Blondet was equivalent to a question: “twelve centuries have done
+nothing for a caste whom the historic spectacle of civilization has
+never yet diverted from its one predominating thought,--a caste which
+still wears proudly the broad-brimmed hat of its masters, ever since
+an abandoned fashion placed it upon their heads. That all-pervading
+thought, the roots of which are in the bowels of the people, and which
+attached them so vehemently to Napoleon (who was personally less to them
+than he thought he was) and which explains the miracle of his return in
+1815,--that desire for land is the sole motive power of the peasant’s
+being. In the eyes of the masses Napoleon, ever one with them through
+his million of soldiers, is still the king born of the Revolution; the
+man who gave them possession of the soil and sold to them the national
+domains. His anointing was saturated with that idea.”
+
+“An idea to which 1814 dealt a blow, an idea which monarchy should hold
+sacred,” said Blondet, quickly; “for the people may some day find on the
+steps of the throne a prince whose father bequeathed to him the head of
+Louis XVI. as an heirloom.”
+
+“Here is madame; don’t say any more,” said the abbe, in a low voice.
+“Fourchon has frightened her; and it is very desirable to keep her here
+in the interests of religion and of the throne, and, indeed, in those of
+the people themselves.”
+
+Michaud, the bailiff of Les Aigues, had come to the chateau in
+consequence of the assault on Vatel’s eyes. But before we relate the
+consultation which then and there took place, the chain of events
+requires a succinct account of the circumstances under which the general
+purchased Les Aigues, the serious causes which led to the appointment
+of Sibilet as steward of that magnificent property, and the reasons why
+Michaud was made bailiff, with all the other antecedents to which were
+due the tension of the minds of all, and the fears expressed by Sibilet.
+
+This rapid summary will have the merit of introducing some of the
+principal actors in this drama, and of exhibiting their individual
+interests; we shall thus be enabled to show the dangers which surrounded
+the General comte de Montcornet at the moment when this history opens.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. CERTAIN LOST SOCIAL SPECIES
+
+
+The estate of Les Aigues could not do without a steward; for the general
+had no intention of renouncing his winter pleasures in Paris, where he
+owned a fine house in the rue Neuve-des-Mathurines. He therefore looked
+about for a successor to Gaubertin; but it is very certain that his
+search was not as eager as that of Gaubertin himself, who was seeking
+for the right person to put in his way.
+
+Of all confidential positions there is none that requires more trained
+knowledge of its kind, or more activity, than that of land-steward to
+a great estate. The difficulty of finding the right man is only fully
+known to those wealthy landlords whose property lies beyond a certain
+circle around Paris, beginning at a distance of about one hundred and
+fifty miles. At that point agricultural productions for the markets of
+Paris, which warrant rentals on long leases (collected often by other
+tenants who are rich themselves), cease to be cultivated. The farmers
+who raise them drive to the city in their own cabriolets to pay their
+rents in good bank-bills, unless they send the money through their
+agents in the markets. For this reason, the farms of the Seine-et-Oise,
+Seine-et-Marne, the Oise, the Eure-et-Loir, the Lower Seine, and the
+Loiret are so desirable that capital cannot always be invested there at
+one and a half per cent. Compared to the returns on estates in Holland,
+England, and Belgium, this result is enormous. But at one hundred miles
+from Paris an estate requires such variety of working, its products are
+so different in kind, that it becomes a business, with all the risks
+attendant on manufacturing. The wealthy owner is really a merchant,
+forced to look for a market for his products, like the owner of
+ironworks or cotton factories. He does not even escape competition; the
+peasant, the small proprietor, is at his heels with an avidity which
+leads to transactions to which well-bred persons cannot condescend.
+
+A land-steward must understand surveying, the customs of the locality,
+the methods of sale and of labor, together with a little quibbling in
+the interests of those he serves; he must also understand book-keeping
+and commercial matters, and be in perfect health, with a liking for
+active life and horse exercise. His duty being to represent his master
+and to be always in communication with him, the steward ought not to be
+a man of the people. As the salary of his office seldom exceeds three
+thousand francs, the problem seems insoluble. How is it possible to
+obtain so many qualifications for such a very moderate price,--in
+a region, moreover, where the men who are provided with them are
+admissible to all other employments? Bring down a stranger to fill the
+place, and you will pay dear for the experience he must acquire. Train
+a young man on the spot, and you are more than likely to get a thorn
+of ingratitude in your side. It therefore becomes necessary to choose
+between incompetent honesty, which injures your property through its
+blindness and inertia, and the cleverness which looks out for itself.
+Hence the social nomenclature and natural history of land-stewards as
+defined by a great Polish noble.
+
+“There are,” he said, “two kinds of stewards: he who thinks only of
+himself, and he who thinks of himself and of us; happy the land-owner
+who lays his hands on the latter! As for the steward who would think
+only of us, he is not to be met with.”
+
+Elsewhere can be found a steward who thought of this master’s interests
+as well as of his own. (“Un Debut dans la vie,” “Scenes de la vie
+privee.”) Gaubertin is the steward who thinks of himself only. To
+represent the third figure of the problem would be to hold up to public
+admiration a very unlikely personage, yet one that was not unknown to
+the old nobility, though he has, alas! disappeared with them. (See “Le
+Cabinet des Antiques,” “Scenes de la vie de province.”) Through the
+endless subdivision of fortunes aristocratic habits and customs are
+inevitably changed. If there be not now in France twenty great fortunes
+managed by intendants, in fifty years from now there will not be a
+hundred estates in the hands of stewards, unless a great change is made
+in the law. Every land-owner will be brought by that time to look after
+his own interests.
+
+This transformation, already begun, suggested the following answer of a
+clever woman when asked why, since 1830, she stayed in Paris during the
+summer. “Because,” she said, “I do not care to visit chateaux which
+are now turned into farms.” What is to be the future of this question,
+getting daily more and more imperative,--that of man to man, the poor
+man and the rich man? This book is written to throw some light upon that
+terrible social question.
+
+It is easy to understand the perplexities which assailed the general
+after he had dismissed Gaubertin. While saying to himself, vaguely,
+like other persons free to do or not to do a thing, “I’ll dismiss that
+scamp”; he had overlooked the risk and forgotten the explosion of his
+boiling anger,--the anger of a choleric fire-eater at the moment when a
+flagrant imposition forced him to raise the lids of his wilfully blind
+eyes.
+
+Montcornet, a land-owner for the first time and a denizen of Paris, had
+not provided himself with a steward before coming to Les Aigues; but
+after studying the neighborhood carefully he saw it was indispensable to
+a man like himself to have an intermediary to manage so many persons of
+low degree.
+
+Gaubertin, who discovered during the excitement of the scene (which
+lasted more than two hours) the difficulties in which the general would
+soon be involved, jumped on his pony after leaving the room where the
+quarrel took place, and galloped to Soulanges to consult the Soudrys. At
+his first words, “The general and I have parted; whom can we put in my
+place without his suspecting it?” the Soudrys understood their friend’s
+wishes. Do not forget that Soudry, for the last seventeen years chief
+of police of the canton, was doubly shrewd through his wife, an adept in
+the particular wiliness of a waiting-maid of an Opera divinity.
+
+“We may go far,” said Madame Soudry, “before we find any one to suit the
+place as well as our poor Sibilet.”
+
+“Made to order!” exclaimed Gaubertin, still scarlet with mortification.
+“Lupin,” he added, turning to the notary, who was present, “go to
+Ville-aux-Fayes and whisper it to Marechal, in case that big fire-eater
+asks his advice.”
+
+Marechal was the lawyer whom his former patron, when buying Les Aigues
+for the general, had recommended to Monsieur de Montcornet as legal
+adviser.
+
+Sibilet, eldest son of the clerk of the court at Ville-aux-Fayes, a
+notary’s clerk, without a penny of his own, and twenty-five years
+old, had fallen in love with the daughter of the chief-magistrate of
+Soulanges. The latter, named Sarcus, had a salary of fifteen hundred
+francs, and was married to a woman without fortune, the eldest sister of
+Monsieur Vermut, the apothecary of Soulanges. Though an only daughter,
+Mademoiselle Sarcus, whose beauty was her only dowry, could scarcely
+have lived on the salary paid to a notary’s clerk in the provinces.
+Young Sibilet, a relative of Gaubertin, by a connection rather difficult
+to trace through family ramifications which make members of the middle
+classes in all the smaller towns cousins to each other, owed a modest
+position in a government office to the assistance of his father and
+Gaubertin. The unlucky fellow had the terrible happiness of being the
+father of two children in three years. His own father, blessed with
+five, was unable to assist him. His wife’s father owned nothing beside
+his house at Soulanges and an income of two thousand francs. Madame
+Sibilet the younger spent most of her time at her father’s home with her
+two children, where Adolphe Sibilet, whose official duty obliged him to
+travel through the department, came to see her from time to time.
+
+Gaubertin’s exclamation, though easy to understand from this summary of
+young Sibilet’s life, needs a few more explanatory details.
+
+Adolphe Sibilet, supremely unlucky, as we have shown by the foregoing
+sketch of him, was one of those men who cannot reach the heart of a
+woman except by way of the altar and the mayor’s office. Endowed with
+the suppleness of a steel-spring, he yielded to pressure, certain to
+revert to his first thought. This treacherous habit is prompted by
+cowardice; but the business training which Sibilet underwent in the
+office of a provincial notary had taught him the art of concealing
+this defect under a gruff manner which simulated a strength he did not
+possess. Many false natures mask their hollowness in this way; be
+rough with them in return and the effect produced is that of a balloon
+collapsed by a prick. Such was Sibilet. But as most men are not
+observers, and as among observers three fourths observe only after a
+thing has taken place, Adolphe Sibilet’s grumbling manner was considered
+the result of an honest frankness, of a capacity much praised by his
+master, and of a stubborn uprightness which no temptation could shake.
+Some men are as much benefited by their defects as others by their good
+qualities.
+
+Adeline Sarcus, a pretty young woman, brought up by a mother (who died
+three years before her marriage) as well as a mother can educate an only
+daughter in a remote country town, was in love with the handsome son
+of Lupin, the Soulanges notary. At the first signs of this romance, old
+Lupin, who intended to marry his son to Mademoiselle Elise Gaubertin,
+lost no time in sending young Amaury Lupin to Paris, to the care of his
+friend and correspondent Crottat, the notary, where, under pretext of
+drawing deeds and contracts, Amaury committed a variety of foolish acts,
+and made debts, being led thereto by a certain Georges Marest, a clerk
+in the same office, but a rich young man, who revealed to him the
+mysteries of Parisian life. By the time Lupin the elder went to Paris to
+bring back his son, Adeline Sarcus had become Madame Sibilet. In
+fact, when the adoring Adolphe offered himself, her father, the old
+magistrate, prompted by young Lupin’s father, hastened the marriage, to
+which Adeline yielded in sheer despair.
+
+The situation of clerk in a government registration office is not a
+career. It is, like other such places which admit of no rise, one of
+the many holes of the government sieve. Those who start in life in
+these holes (the topographical, the professorial, the highway-and-canal
+departments) are apt to discover, invariably too late, that cleverer men
+then they, seated beside them, are fed, as the Opposition writers say,
+on the sweat of the people, every time the sieve dips down into the
+taxation-pot by means of a machine called the budget. Adolphe, working
+early and late and earning little, soon found out the barren depths
+of his hole; and his thoughts busied themselves, as he trotted from
+township to township, spending his salary in shoe-leather and costs of
+travelling, with how to find a permanent and more profitable place.
+
+No one can imagine, unless he happens to squint and to have two
+legitimate children, what ambitions three years of misery and love had
+developed in this young man, who squinted both in mind and vision,
+and whose happiness halted, as it were, on one leg. The chief cause
+of secret evil deeds and hidden meanness is, perhaps, an incompleted
+happiness. Man can better bear a state of hopeless misery than those
+terrible alternations of love and sunshine with continual rain. If the
+body contracts disease, the mind contracts the leprosy of envy. In petty
+minds that leprosy becomes a base and brutal cupidity, both insolent and
+shrinking; in cultivated minds it fosters anti-social doctrines, which
+serve a man as footholds by which to rise above his superiors. May we
+not dignify with the title of proverb the pregnant saying, “Tell me what
+thou hast, and I will tell thee of what thou art thinking”?
+
+Though Adolphe loved his wife, his hourly thought was: “I have made
+a mistake; I have three balls and chains, but I have only two legs. I
+ought to have made my fortune before I married. I could have found an
+Adeline any day; but Adeline stands in the way of my getting a fortune
+now.”
+
+Adolphe had been to see his relation Gaubertin three times in three
+years. A few words exchanged between them let Gaubertin see the muck of
+a soul ready to ferment under the hot temptations of legal robbery. He
+warily sounded a nature that could be warped to the exigencies of any
+plan, provided it was profitable. At each of the three visits Sibilet
+grumbled at his fate.
+
+“Employ me, cousin,” he said; “take me as a clerk and make me your
+successor. You shall see how I work. I am capable of overthrowing
+mountains to give my Adeline, I won’t say luxury, but a modest
+competence. You made Monsieur Leclercq’s fortune; why won’t you put me
+in a bank in Paris?”
+
+“Some day, later on, I’ll find you a place,” Gaubertin would say;
+“meantime make friends and acquaintance; such things help.”
+
+Under these circumstances the letter which Madame Soudry hastily
+dispatched brought Sibilet to Soulanges through a region of castles in
+the air. His father-in-law, Sarcus, whom the Soudrys advised to take
+steps in the interest of his daughter, had gone in the morning to see
+the general and to propose Adolphe for the vacant post. By advice of
+Madame Soudry, who was the oracle of the little town, the worthy man had
+taken his daughter with him; and the sight of her had had a favorable
+effect upon the Comte de Montcornet.
+
+“I shall not decide,” he answered, “without thoroughly informing
+myself about all applicants; but I will not look elsewhere until I have
+examined whether or not your son-in-law possesses the requirements for
+the place.” Then, turning to Madame Sibilet he added, “The satisfaction
+of settling so charming a person at Les Aigues--”
+
+“The mother of two children, general,” said Adeline, adroitly, to evade
+the gallantry of the old cuirassier.
+
+All the general’s inquiries were cleverly anticipated by the Soudrys,
+Gaubertin, and Lupin, who quietly obtained for their candidate the
+influence of the leading lawyers in the capital of the department, where
+a royal court held sessions,--such as Counsellor Gendrin, a
+distant relative of the judge at Ville-aux-Fayes; Baron Bourlac,
+attorney-general; and another counsellor named Sarcus, a cousin thrice
+removed of the candidate. The verdict of every one to whom the general
+applies was favorable to the poor clerk,--“so interesting,” as they
+called him. His marriage had made Sibilet as irreproachable as a novel
+of Miss Edgeworth’s, and presented him, moreover, in the light of a
+disinterested man.
+
+The time which the dismissed steward remained at Les Aigues until his
+successor could be appointed was employed in creating troubles and
+annoyances for his late master; one of the little scenes which he thus
+played off will give an idea of several others.
+
+The morning of his final departure he contrived to meet, as it were
+accidentally, Courtecuisse, the only keeper then employed at Les Aigues,
+the great extent of which really needed at least three.
+
+“Well, Monsieur Gaubertin,” said Courtecuisse, “so you have had trouble
+with the count?”
+
+“Who told you that?” answered Gaubertin. “Well, yes; the general
+expected to order us about as he did his cavalry; he didn’t know
+Burgundians. The count is not satisfied with my services, and as I am
+not satisfied with his ways, we have dismissed each other, almost
+with fisticuffs, for he raged like a whirlwind. Take care of yourself,
+Courtecuisse! Ah! my dear fellow, I expected to give you a better
+master.”
+
+“I know that,” said the keeper, “and I’d have served you well. Hang it,
+when friends have known each other for twenty years, you know! You put
+me here in the days of the poor dear sainted Madame. Ah, what a good
+woman she was! none like her now! The place has lost a mother.”
+
+“Look here, Courtecuisse, if you are willing, you might help us to a
+fine stroke.”
+
+“Then you are going to stay here? I heard you were off to Paris.”
+
+“No; I shall wait to see how things turn out; meantime I shall do
+business at Ville-aux-Fayes. The general doesn’t know what he is dealing
+with in these parts; he’ll make himself hated, don’t you see? I shall
+wait for what turns up. Do your work here gently; he’ll tell you to
+manage the people with a high hand, for he begins to see where his crops
+and his woods are running to; but you’ll not be such a fool as to
+let the country-folk maul you, and perhaps worse, for the sake of his
+timber.”
+
+“But he would send me away, dear Monsieur Gaubertin, he would get rid of
+me! and you know how happy I am living there at the gate of the Avonne.”
+
+“The general will soon get sick of the whole place,” replied Gaubertin;
+“you wouldn’t be long out even if he did happen to send you away.
+Besides, you know those woods,” he added, waving his hand at the
+landscape; “I am stronger there than the masters.”
+
+This conversation took place in an open field.
+
+“Those ‘Arminac’ Parisian fellows ought to stay in their own mud,” said
+the keeper.
+
+Ever since the quarrels of the fifteenth century the word ‘Arminac’
+(Armagnacs, Parisians, enemies of the Dukes of Burgundy) has continued
+to be an insulting term along the borders of Upper Burgundy, where it is
+differently corrupted according to locality.
+
+“He’ll go back to it when beaten,” said Gaubertin, “and we’ll plough
+up the park; for it is robbing the people to allow a man to keep nine
+hundred acres of the best land in the valley for his own pleasure.”
+
+“Four hundred families could get their living from it,” said
+Courtecuisse.
+
+“If you want two acres for yourself you must help us to drive that cur
+out,” remarked Gaubertin.
+
+At the very moment that Gaubertin was fulminating this sentence of
+excommunication, the worthy Sarcus was presenting his son-in-law Sibilet
+to the Comte de Montcornet. They had come with Adeline and the children
+in a wicker carryall, lent by Sarcus’s clerk, a Monsieur Gourdon,
+brother of the Soulanges doctor, who was richer than the magistrate
+himself. The general, pleased with the candor and dignity of the justice
+of the peace, and with the graceful bearing of Adeline (both giving
+pledges in good faith, for they were totally ignorant of the plans of
+Gaubertin), at once granted all requests and gave such advantages to the
+family of the new land-steward as to make the position equal to that of
+a sub-prefect of the first class.
+
+A lodge, built by Bouret as an object in the landscape and also as a
+home for the steward, an elegant little building, the architecture of
+which was sufficiently shown in the description of the gate of Blangy,
+was promised to the Sibilets for their residence. The general also
+conceded the horse which Mademoiselle Laguerre had provided for
+Gaubertin, in consideration of the size of the estate and the distance
+he had to go to the markets where the business of the property was
+transacted. He allowed two hundred bushels of wheat, three hogsheads
+of wine, wood in sufficient quantity, oats and barley in abundance,
+and three per cent on all receipts of income. Where the latter in
+Mademoiselle Laguerre’s time had amounted to forty thousand francs, the
+general now, in 1818, in view of the purchases of land which Gaubertin
+had made for her, expected to receive at least sixty thousand. The
+new land-steward might therefore receive before long some two thousand
+francs in money. Lodged, fed, warmed, relieved of taxes, the costs of
+a horse and a poultry-yard defrayed for him, and allowed to plant a
+kitchen-garden, with no questions asked as to the day’s work of the
+gardener, certainly such advantages represented much more than another
+two thousand francs; for a man who was earning a miserable salary
+of twelve hundred francs in a government office to step into the
+stewardship of Les Aigues was a change from poverty to opulence.
+
+“Be faithful to my interests,” said the general, “and I shall have more
+to say to you. Doubtless I could get the collection of the rents of
+Conches, Blangy, and Cerneux taken away from the collection of those of
+Soulanges and given to you. In short, when you bring me in a clear sixty
+thousand a year from Les Aigues you shall be still further rewarded.”
+
+Unfortunately, the worthy justice and his daughter, in the flush of
+their joy, told Madame Soudry the promise the general had made about
+these collections, without reflecting that the present collector of
+Soulanges, a man named Guerbet, brother of the postmaster of Conches,
+was closely allied, as we shall see later, with Gaubertin and the
+Gendrins.
+
+“It won’t be so easy to do it, my dear,” said Madame Soudry; “but don’t
+prevent the general from making the attempt; it is wonderful how easily
+difficult things are done in Paris. I have seen the Chevalier Gluck at
+dear Madame’s feet to get her to sing his music, and she did,--she who
+so adored Piccini, one of the finest men of his day; never did _he_ come
+into Madame’s room without catching me round the waist and calling me a
+dear rogue.”
+
+“Ha!” cried Soudry, when his wife reported this news, “does he think he
+is going to lead the notary by the nose, and upset everything to
+please himself and make the whole valley march in line, as he did his
+cuirassiers? These military fellows have a habit of command!--but let’s
+have patience; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles will
+be on our side. Poor Guerbet! he little suspects who is trying to pluck
+the best roses out of his garland!”
+
+Pere Guerbet, the collector of Soulanges, was the wit, that is to say,
+the jovial companion of the little town, and a hero in Madame Soudry’s
+salon. Soudry’s speech gives a fair idea of the opinion which now grew
+up against the master of Les Aigues from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes,
+and wherever else the public mind could be reached and poisoned by
+Gaubertin.
+
+The installation of Sibilet took place in the autumn of 1817. The year
+1818 went by without the general being able to set foot at Les Aigues,
+for his approaching marriage with Mademoiselle de Troisville, which was
+celebrated in January, 1819, kept him the greater part of the summer
+near Alencon, in the country-house of his prospective father-in-law.
+General Montcornet possessed, besides Les Aigues and a magnificent house
+in Paris, some sixty thousand francs a year in the Funds and the salary
+of a retired lieutenant-general. Though Napoleon had made him a count
+of the Empire and given him the following arms, a field quarterly, the
+first, azure, bordure or, three pyramids argent; the second, vert, three
+hunting horns argent; the third, gules, a cannon or on a gun-carriage
+sable, and, in chief, a crescent or; the fourth, or, a crown vert,
+with the motto (eminently of the middle ages!), “Sound the
+charge,”--Montcornet knew very well that he was the son of a
+cabinet-maker in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, though he was quite ready
+to forget it. He was eaten up with the desire to be a peer of France,
+and dreamed of his grand cordon of the Legion of honor, his Saint-Louis
+cross, and his income of one hundred and forty thousand francs. Bitten
+by the demon of aristocracy, the sight of the blue ribbon put him beside
+himself. The gallant cuirassier of Essling would have licked up the
+mud on the Pont-Royal to be invited to the house of a Navarreins, a
+Lenoncourt, a Grandlieu, a Maufrigneuse, a d’Espard, a Vandenesse, a
+Verneuil, a Herouville, or a Chaulieu.
+
+From 1818, when the impossibility of a change in favor of the Bonaparte
+family was made clear to him, Montcornet had himself trumpeted in the
+faubourg Saint-Germain by the wives of some of his friends, who offered
+his hand and heart, his mansion and his fortune in return for an
+alliance with some great family.
+
+After several attempts, the Duchesse de Carigliano found a match for the
+general in one of the three branches of the Troisville family,--that of
+the viscount in the service of Russia ever since 1789, who had returned
+to France in 1815. The viscount, poor as a younger son, had married a
+Princess Scherbellof, worth about a million, but the arrival of two
+sons and three daughters kept him poor. His family, ancient and formerly
+powerful, now consisted of the Marquis de Troisville, peer of France,
+head of the house and scutcheon, and two deputies, with numerous
+offspring, who were busy, for their part, with the budget and the
+ministries and the court, like fishes round bits of bread. Therefore,
+when Montcornet was presented by Madame de Carigliano,--the Napoleonic
+duchess, who was now a most devoted adherent of the Bourbons, he was
+favorably received. The general asked, in return for his fortune and
+tender indulgence to his wife, to be appointed to the Royal Guard,
+with the rank of marquis and peer of France; but the branches of the
+Troisville family would do no more than promise him their support.
+
+“You know what that means,” said the duchess to her old friend, who
+complained of the vagueness of the promise. “They cannot oblige the king
+to do as they wish; they can only influence him.”
+
+Montcornet made Virginie de Troisville his heir in the marriage
+settlements. Completely under the control of his wife, as Blondet’s
+letter has already shown, he was still without children, but Louis
+XVIII. had received him, and given him the cordon of Saint-Louis,
+allowing him to quarter his ridiculous arms with those of the
+Troisvilles, and promising him the title of marquis as soon as he had
+deserved the peerage by his services.
+
+A few days after the audience at which this promise had been given, the
+Duc de Barry was assassinated; the Marsan clique carried the day;
+the Villele ministry came into power, and all the wires laid by the
+Troisvilles were snapped; it became necessary to find new ways of
+fastening them upon the ministry.
+
+“We must bide our time,” said the Troisvilles to Montcornet, who was
+always overwhelmed with politeness in the faubourg Saint-Germain.
+
+This will explain how it was that the general did not return to Les
+Aigues until May, 1820.
+
+The ineffable happiness of the son of a shop-keeper of the faubourg
+Saint-Antoine in possessing a young, elegant, intelligent, and gentle
+wife, a Troisville, who had given him an entrance into all the salons
+of the faubourg Saint-Germain, and the delight of making her enjoy the
+pleasures of Paris, had kept him from Les Aigues and made him forget
+about Gaubertin, even to his very name. In 1820 he took the countess to
+Burgundy to show her the estate, and he accepted Sibilet’s accounts and
+leases without looking closely into them; happiness never cavils. The
+countess, well pleased to find the steward’s wife a charming young
+woman, made presents to her and to the children, with whom she
+occasionally amused herself. She ordered a few changes at Les Aigues,
+having sent to Paris for an architect; proposing, to the general’s great
+delight, to spend six months of every year on this magnificent estate.
+Montcornet’s savings were soon spent on the architectural work and the
+exquisite new furniture sent from Paris. Les Aigues thus received the
+last touch which made it a choice example of all the diverse elegancies
+of four centuries.
+
+In 1821 the general was almost peremptorily urged by Sibilet to be at
+Les Aigues before the month of May. Important matters had to be decided.
+A lease of nine years, to the amount of thirty thousand francs, granted
+by Gaubertin in 1812 to a wood-merchant, fell in on the 15th of May of
+the current year. Sibilet, anxious to prove his rectitude, was unwilling
+to be responsible for the renewal of the lease. “You know, Monsieur le
+comte,” he wrote, “that I do not choose to profit by such matters.”
+ The wood-merchant claimed an indemnity, extorted from Madame Laguerre,
+through her hatred of litigation, and shared by him with Gaubertin. This
+indemnity was based on the injury done to the woods by the peasants,
+who treated the forest of Les Aigues as if they had a right to cut the
+timber. Messrs. Gravelot Brothers, wood-merchants in Paris, refused to
+pay their last quarter dues, offering to prove by an expert that the
+woods were reduced one-fifth in value, through, they said, the injurious
+precedent established by Madame Laguerre.
+
+“I have already,” wrote Sibilet, “sued these men in the courts at
+Ville-aux-Fayes, for they have taken legal residence there, on account
+of this lease, with my old employer, Maitre Corbinet. I fear we shall
+lose the suit.”
+
+“It is a question of income, my dear,” said the general, showing the
+letter to his wife. “Will you go down to Les Aigues a little earlier
+this year than last?”
+
+“Go yourself, and I will follow you when the weather is warmer,” said
+the countess, not sorry to remain in Paris alone.
+
+The general, who knew very well the canker that was eating into his
+revenues, departed without his wife, resolved to take vigorous measures.
+In so doing he reckoned, as we shall see, without his Gaubertin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE GREAT REVOLUTIONS OF A LITTLE VALLEY
+
+
+“Well, Maitre Sibilet,” said the general to his steward, the morning
+after his arrival, giving him a familiar title which showed how much he
+appreciated his services, “so we are, to use a ministerial phrase, at a
+crisis?”
+
+“Yes, Monsieur le comte,” said Sibilet, following the general.
+
+The fortunate possessor of Les Aigues was walking up and down in front
+of the steward’s house, along a little terrace where Madame Sibilet grew
+flowers, at the end of which was a wide stretch of meadow-land watered
+by the canal which Blondet has described. From this point the chateau of
+Les Aigues was seen in the distance, and in like manner the profile, as
+it were, of the steward’s lodge was seen from Les Aigues.
+
+“But,” resumed the general, “what’s the difficulty? If I do lose the
+suit against the Gravelots, a money wound is not mortal, and I’ll
+have the leasing of my forest so well advertised that there will be
+competition, and I shall sell the timber at its true value.”
+
+“Business is not done in that way, Monsieur le comte,” said Sibilet.
+“Suppose you get no lessees, what will you do?”
+
+“Cut the timber myself and sell it--”
+
+“You, a wood merchant?” said Sibilet. “Well, without looking at matters
+here, how would it be in Paris? You would have to hire a wood-yard,
+pay for a license and the taxes, also for the right of navigation, and
+duties, and the costs of unloading; besides the salary of a trustworthy
+agent--”
+
+“Yes, it is impracticable,” said the general hastily, alarmed at the
+prospect. “But why can’t I find persons to lease the right of cutting
+timber as before?”
+
+“Monsieur le comte has enemies.”
+
+“Who are they?”
+
+“Well, in the first place, Monsieur Gaubertin.”
+
+“Do you mean the scoundrel whose place you took?”
+
+“Not so loud, Monsieur le comte,” said Sibilet, showing fear; “I beg of
+you, not so loud,--my cook might hear us.”
+
+“Do you mean to tell me that I am not to speak on my own estate of a
+villain who robbed me?” cried the general.
+
+“For the sake of your own peace and comfort, come further away, Monsieur
+le comte. Monsieur Gaubertin is mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes.”
+
+“Ha! I congratulate Ville-aux-Fayes. Thunder! what a nobly governed
+town!--”
+
+“Do me the honor to listen, Monsieur le comte, and to believe that I
+am talking of serious matters which may affect your future life in this
+place.”
+
+“I am listening; let us sit down on this bench here.”
+
+“Monsieur le comte, when you dismissed Gaubertin, he had to find some
+employment, for he was not rich--”
+
+“Not rich! when he stole twenty thousand francs a year from this
+estate?”
+
+“Monsieur le comte, I don’t pretend to excuse him,” replied Sibilet. “I
+want to see Les Aigues prosperous, if it were only to prove Gaubertin’s
+dishonest; but we ought not to abuse him openly for he is one of the
+most dangerous scoundrels to be found in all Burgundy, and he is now in
+a position to injure you.”
+
+“In what way?” asked the general, sobering down.
+
+“Gaubertin has control of nearly one third of the supplies sent to
+Paris. As general agent of the timber business, he orders all the work
+of the forests,--the felling, chopping, floating, and sending to market.
+Being in close relations with the workmen, he is the arbiter of prices.
+It has taken him three years to create this position, but he holds it
+now like a fortress. He is essential to all dealers, never favoring one
+more than another; he regulates the whole business in their interests,
+and their affairs are better and more cheaply looked after by him
+than they were in the old time by separate agents for each firm. For
+instance, he has so completely put a stop to competition that he has
+absolute control of the auction sales; the crown and the State are
+both dependent on him. Their timber is sold under the hammer and falls
+invariably to Gaubertin’s dealers; in fact, no others attempt now to
+bid against them. Last year Monsieur Mariotte, of Auxerre, urged by
+the commissioner of domains, did attempt to compete with Gaubertin. At
+first, Gaubertin let him buy the standing wood at the usual prices; but
+when it came to cutting it, the Avonnais workmen asked such enormous
+prices that Monsieur Mariotte was obliged to bring laborers from
+Auxerre, whom the Ville-aux-Fayes workmen attacked and drove away. The
+head of the coalition, and the ringleader of the brawl were brought
+before the police court, and the suits cost Monsieur Mariotte a great
+deal of money; for, besides the odium of having convicted and punished
+poor men, he was forced to pay all costs, because the losing side had
+not a farthing to do it with. A suit against laboring men is sure to
+result in hatred to those who live among them. Let me warn you of this;
+for if you follow the course you propose, you will have to fight against
+the poor of this district at least. But that’s not all. Counting it
+over, Monsieur Mariotte, a worthy man, found he was the loser by his
+original lease. Forced to pay ready money, he was nevertheless obliged
+to sell on time; Gaubertin delivered his timber at long credits for the
+purpose of ruining his competitor. He undersold him by at least five per
+cent, and the end of it is that poor Mariotte’s credit is badly shaken.
+Gaubertin is now pressing and harassing the poor man so that he is
+driven, they tell me, to leave not only Auxerre, but even Burgundy
+itself; and he is right. In this way land-owners have long been
+sacrificed to dealers who now set the market-prices, just as the
+furniture-dealers in Paris dictate values to appraisers. But Gaubertin
+saves the owners so much trouble and worry that they are really
+gainers.”
+
+“How so?” asked the general.
+
+“In the first place, because the less complicated a business is, the
+greater the profits to the owners,” answered Sibilet. “Besides which,
+their income is more secure; and in all matters of rural improvement
+and development that is the main thing, as you will find out. Then, too,
+Monsieur Gaubertin is the friend and patron of working-men; he pays them
+well and keeps them always at work; therefore, though their families
+live on the estates, the woods leased to dealers and belonging to the
+land-owners who trust the care of their property to Gaubertin (such as
+MM. de Soulanges and de Ronquerolles) are not devastated. The dead wood
+is gathered up, but that is all--”
+
+“That rascal Gaubertin has lost no time!” cried the general.
+
+“He is a bold man,” said Sibilet. “He really is, as he calls himself,
+the steward of the best half of the department, instead of being merely
+the steward of Les Aigues. He makes a little out of everybody, and
+that little on every two millions brings him in forty to fifty thousand
+francs a year. He says himself, ‘The fires on the Parisian hearths pay
+it all.’ He is your enemy, Monsieur le comte. My advice to you is to
+capitulate and be reconciled with him. He is intimate, as you know, with
+Soudry, the head of the gendarmerie at Soulanges; with Monsieur Rigou,
+our mayor at Blangy; the patrols are under his influence; therefore you
+will find it impossible to repress the pilferings which are eating into
+your estate. During the last two years your woods have been devastated.
+Consequently the Gravelots are more than likely to win their suit. They
+say, very truly: ‘According to the terms of the lease, the care of
+the woods is left to the owner; he does not protect them, and we are
+injured; the owner is bound to pay us damages.’ That’s fair enough; but
+it doesn’t follow that they should win their case.”
+
+“We must be ready to defend this suit at all costs,” said the general,
+“and then we shall have no more of them.”
+
+“You shall gratify Gaubertin,” remarked Sibilet.
+
+“How so?”
+
+“Suing the Gravelots is the same as a hand to hand fight with Gaubertin,
+who is their agent,” answered Sibilet. “He asks nothing better than
+such a suit. He declares, so I hear, that he will bring you if necessary
+before the Court of Appeals.”
+
+“The rascal! the--”
+
+“If you attempt to work your own woods,” continued Sibilet, turning the
+knife in the wound, “you will find yourself at the mercy of workmen who
+will force you to pay rich men’s prices instead of market-prices. In
+short, they’ll put you, as they did that poor Mariotte, in a position
+where you must sell at a loss. If you then try to lease the woods you
+will get no tenants, for you cannot expect that any one should take
+risks for himself which Mariotte only took for the crown and the State.
+Suppose a man talks of his losses to the government! The government is a
+gentleman who is, like your obedient servant when he was in its employ,
+a worthy man with a frayed overcoat, who reads the newspapers at a
+desk. Let his salary be twelve hundred or twelve thousand francs, his
+disposition is the same, it is not a whit softer. Talk of reductions
+and releases from the public treasury represented by the said gentleman!
+He’ll only pooh-pooh you as he mends his pen. No, the law is the wrong
+road for you, Monsieur le comte.”
+
+“Then what’s to be done?” cried the general, his blood boiling as he
+tramped up and down before the bench.
+
+“Monsieur le comte,” said Sibilet, abruptly, “what I say to you is not
+for my own interests, certainly; but I advise you to sell Les Aigues and
+leave the neighborhood.”
+
+On hearing these words the general sprang back as if a cannon-ball had
+struck him; then he looked at Sibilet with a shrewd, diplomatic eye.
+
+“A general of the Imperial Guard running away from the rascals, when
+Madame la comtesse likes Les Aigues!” he said. “No, I’ll sooner box
+Gaubertin’s ears on the market-place of Ville-aux-Fayes, and force him
+to fight me that I may shoot him like a dog.”
+
+“Monsieur le comte, Gaubertin is not such a fool as to let himself be
+brought into collision with you. Besides, you could not openly insult
+the mayor of so important a place as Ville-aux-Fayes.”
+
+“I’ll have him turned out; the Troisvilles can do that for me; it is a
+question of income.”
+
+“You won’t succeed, Monsieur le comte; Gaubertin’s arms are long; you
+will get yourself into difficulties from which you cannot escape.”
+
+“Let us think of the present,” interrupted the general. “About that
+suit?”
+
+“That, Monsieur le comte, I can manage to win for you,” replied Sibilet,
+with a knowing glance.
+
+“Bravo, Sibilet!” said the general, shaking his steward’s hand; “how are
+you going to do it?”
+
+“You will win it on a writ of error,” replied Sibilet. “In my opinion
+the Gravelots have the right of it. But it is not enough to be in the
+right, they must also be in order as to legal forms, and that they have
+neglected. The Gravelots ought to have summoned you to have the woods
+better watched. They can’t ask for indemnity, at the close of a lease,
+for damages which they know have been going on for nine years; there
+is a clause in the lease as to this, on which we can file a bill of
+exceptions. You will lose the suit at Ville-aux-Fayes, possibly in the
+upper court as well, but we will carry it to Paris and you will win at
+the Court of Appeals. The costs will be heavy and the expenses ruinous.
+You will have to spend from twelve to fifteen thousand francs merely to
+win the suit,--but you will win it, if you care to. The suit will only
+increase the enmity of the Gravelots, for the expenses will be even
+heavier on them. You will be their bugbear; you will be called litigious
+and calumniated in every way; still, you can win--”
+
+“Then, what’s to be done?” repeated the general, on whom Sibilet’s
+arguments were beginning to produce the effect of a violent poison.
+
+Just then the remembrance of the blows he had given Gaubertin with
+his cane crossed his mind, and made him wish he had bestowed them on
+himself. His flushed face was enough to show Sibilet the irritation that
+he felt.
+
+“You ask me what can be done, Monsieur le comte? Why, only one thing,
+compromise; but of course you can’t negotiate that yourself. I must be
+thought to cheat you! We, poor devils, whose only fortune and comfort
+is in our good name, it is hard on us to even seem to do a questionable
+thing. We are always judged by appearances. Gaubertin himself saved
+Mademoiselle Laguerre’s life during the Revolution, but it seemed to
+others that he was robbing her. She rewarded him in her will with a
+diamond worth ten thousand francs, which Madame Gaubertin now wears on
+her head.”
+
+The general gave Sibilet another glance still more diplomatic than the
+first; but the steward seemed to take no notice of the challenge it
+expressed.
+
+“If I were to appear dishonest, Monsieur Gaubertin would be so overjoyed
+that I could instantly obtain his help,” continued Sibilet. “He would
+listen with all his ears if I said to him: ‘Suppose I were to extort
+twenty thousand francs from Monsieur le comte for Messrs. Gravelot, on
+condition that they shared them with me?’ If your adversaries consented
+to that, Monsieur le comte, I should return you ten thousand francs; you
+lose only the other ten, you save appearances, and the suit is quashed.”
+
+“You are a fine fellow, Sibilet,” said the general, taking his hand and
+shaking it. “If you can manage the future as well as you do the present,
+I’ll call you the prince of stewards.”
+
+“As to the future,” said Sibilet, “you won’t die of hunger if no timber
+is cut for two or three years. Let us begin by putting proper keepers
+in the woods. Between now and then things will flow as the water does
+in the Avonne. Gaubertin may die, or get rich enough to retire from
+business; at any rate, you will have sufficient time to find him a
+competitor. The cake is too rich not to be shared. Look for another
+Gaubertin to oppose the original.”
+
+“Sibilet,” said the old soldier, delighted with this variety of
+solutions. “I’ll give you three thousand francs if you’ll settle the
+matter as you propose. For the rest, we’ll think about it.”
+
+“Monsieur le comte,” said Sibilet, “first and foremost have the forest
+properly watched. See for yourself the condition in which the peasantry
+have put it during your two years’ absence. What could I do? I am
+steward; I am not a bailiff. To guard Les Aigues properly you need a
+mounted patrol and three keepers.”
+
+“I certainly shall have the estate properly guarded. So it is to be war,
+is it? Very good, then we shall make war. That doesn’t frighten me,”
+ said Montcornet, rubbing his hands.
+
+“A war of francs,” said Sibilet; “and you may find that more difficult
+than the other kind; men can be killed but you can’t kill self-interest.
+You will fight your enemy on the battle-field where all landlords are
+compelled to fight,--I mean cash results. It is not enough to produce,
+you must sell; and in order to sell, you must be on good terms with
+everybody.”
+
+“I shall have the country people on my side.”
+
+“By what means?”
+
+“By doing good among them.”
+
+“Doing good to the valley peasants! to the petty shopkeepers of
+Soulanges!” exclaimed Sibilet, squinting horribly, by reason of the
+irony which flamed brighter in one eye than in the other. “Monsieur le
+comte doesn’t know what he undertakes. Our Lord Jesus Christ would die
+again upon the cross in this valley! If you wish an easy life, follow
+the example of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre; let yourself be robbed,
+or else make people afraid of you. Women, children, and the masses are
+all governed by fear. That was the great secret of the Convention, and
+of the Emperor, too.”
+
+“Good heavens! is this the forest of Bondy?” cried the general.
+
+“My dear,” said Sibilet’s wife, appearing at this moment, “your
+breakfast is ready. Pray excuse him, Monsieur le comte; he has eaten
+nothing since morning for he was obliged to go to Ronquerolles to
+deliver some barley.”
+
+“Go, go, Sibilet,” said the general.
+
+The next morning the count rose early, before daylight, and went to
+the gate of the Avonne, intending to talk with the one forester whom he
+employed and find out what the man’s sentiments really were.
+
+Some seven or eight hundred acres of the forest of Les Aigues lie along
+the banks of the Avonne; and to preserve the majestic beauty of the
+river the large trees that border it have been left untouched for a
+distance of three leagues on both sides in an almost straight line. The
+mistress of Henri IV., to whom Les Aigues formerly belonged, was as fond
+of hunting as the king himself. In 1593 she ordered a bridge to be built
+of a single arch with shelving roadway by which to ride from the lower
+side of the forest to a much larger portion of it, purchased by her,
+which lay upon the slopes of the hills. The gate of the Avonne was built
+as a place of meeting for the huntsmen; and we know the magnificence
+bestowed by the architects of that day upon all buildings intended for
+the delight of the crown and the nobility. Six avenues branched away
+from it, their place of meeting forming a half-moon. In the centre of
+the semi-circular space stood an obelisk surmounted by a round shield,
+formerly gilded, bearing on one side the arms of Navarre and on the
+other those of the Countess de Moret. Another half-moon, on the side
+toward the river, communicated with the first by a straight avenue, at
+the opposite end of which the steep rise of the Venetian-shaped bridge
+could be seen. Between two elegant iron railings of the same character
+as that of the magnificent railing which formerly surrounded the garden
+of the Place Royale in Paris, now so unfortunately destroyed, stood
+a brick pavilion, with stone courses hewn in facets like those of the
+chateau, with a very pointed roof and window-casings of stone cut in
+the same manner. This old style, which gave the building a regal air, is
+suitable only to prisons when used in cities; but standing in the heart
+of forests it derives from its surroundings a splendor of its own.
+A group of trees formed a screen, behind which the kennels, an old
+falconry, a pheasantry, and the quarters of the huntsmen were falling
+into ruins, after being in their day the wonder and admiration of
+Burgundy.
+
+In 1595, the royal hunting-parties set forth from this magnificent
+pavilion, preceded by those fine dogs so dear to Rubens and to Paul
+Veronese; the huntsmen mounted on high-steeping steeds with stout and
+blue-white satiny haunches, seen no longer except in Wouverman’s amazing
+work, followed by footmen in livery; the scene enlivened by whippers-in,
+wearing the high top-boots with facings and the yellow leathern breeches
+which have come down to the present day on the canvas of Van der Meulen.
+The obelisk was erected in commemoration of the visit of the Bearnais,
+and his hunt with the beautiful Comtesse de Moret; the date is given
+below the arms of Navarre. That jealous woman, whose son was afterwards
+legitimatized, would not allow the arms of France to figure on the
+obelisk, regarding them as a rebuke.
+
+At the time of which we write, when the general’s eyes rested on this
+splendid ruin, moss had gathered for centuries on the four faces of
+the roof; the hewn-stone courses, mangled by time, seemed to cry with
+yawning mouths against the profanation; disjointed leaden settings let
+fall their octagonal panes, so that the windows seemed blind of an eye
+here and there. Yellow wallflowers bloomed about the copings; ivy slid
+its white rootlets into every crevice.
+
+All things bespoke a shameful want of care,--the seal set by mere
+life-possessors on the ancient glories that they possess. Two windows
+on the first floor were stuffed with hay. Through another, on the
+ground-floor, was seen a room filled with tools and logs of wood; while
+a cow pushed her muzzle through a fourth, proving that Courtecuisse, to
+avoid having to walk from the pavilion to the pheasantry, had turned the
+large hall of the central building into a stable,--a hall with panelled
+ceiling, and in the centre of each panel the arms of all the various
+possessors of Les Aigues!
+
+Black and dirty palings disgraced the approach to the pavilion, making
+square inclosures with plank roofs for pigs, ducks, and hens, the manure
+of which was taken away every six months. A few ragged garments were
+hung to dry on the brambles which boldly grew unchecked here and
+there. As the general came along the avenue from the bridge, Madame
+Courtecuisse was scouring a saucepan in which she had just made her
+coffee. The forester, sitting on a chair in the sun, considered his
+wife as a savage considers his. When he heard a horse’s hoofs he turned
+round, saw the count, and seemed taken aback.
+
+“Well, Courtecuisse, my man,” said the general, “I’m not surprised that
+the peasants cut my woods before Messrs. Gravelot can do so. So you
+consider your place a sinecure?”
+
+“Indeed, Monsieur le comte, I have watched the woods so many nights that
+I’m ill from it. I’ve got a chill, and I suffer such pain this morning
+that my wife has just made me a poultice in that saucepan.”
+
+“My good fellow,” said the count, “I don’t know of any pain that a
+coffee poultice cures except that of hunger. Listen to me, you rascal! I
+rode through my forest yesterday, and then through those of Monsieur de
+Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles. Theirs are carefully watched and
+preserved, while mine is in a shameful state.”
+
+“Ah, monsieur! but they are the old lords of the neighborhood; everybody
+respects their property. How can you expect me to fight against six
+districts? I care for my life more than for your woods. A man who would
+undertake to watch your woods as they ought to be watched would get a
+ball in his head for wages in some dark corner of the forest--”
+
+“Coward!” cried the general, trying to control the anger the man’s
+insolent reply provoked in him. “Last night was as clear as day, yet it
+cost me three hundred francs in actual robbery and over a thousand in
+future damages. You will leave my service unless you do better. All
+wrong-doing deserves some mercy; therefore these are my conditions: You
+may have the fines, and I will pay you three francs for every indictment
+you bring against these depredators. If I don’t get what I expect, you
+know what you have to expect, and no pension either. Whereas, if you
+serve me faithfully and contrive to stop these depredations, I’ll give
+you an annuity of three hundred francs for life. You can think it over.
+Here are six ways,” continued the count, pointing to the branching
+roads; “there’s only one for you to take,--as for me also, who am not
+afraid of balls; try and find the right one.”
+
+Courtecuisse, a small man about forty-six years of age, with a full-moon
+face, found his greatest happiness in doing nothing. He expected to live
+and die in that pavilion, now considered by him _his_ pavilion. His two
+cows were pastured in the forest, from which he got his wood; and
+he spent his time in looking after his garden instead of after the
+delinquents. Such neglect of duty suited Gaubertin, and Courtecuisse
+knew it did. The keeper chased only those depredators who were the
+objects of his personal dislike,--young women who would not yield to his
+wishes, or persons against whom he held a grudge; though for some time
+past he had really felt no dislikes, for every one yielded to him on
+account of his easy-going ways with them.
+
+Courtecuisse had a place always kept for him at the table of the
+Grand-I-Vert; the wood-pickers feared him no longer; indeed, his wife
+and he received many gifts in kind from them; his wood was brought in;
+his vineyard dug; in short, all delinquents at whom he blinked did him
+service.
+
+Counting on Gaubertin for the future, and feeling sure of two acres
+whenever Les Aigues should be brought to the hammer, he was roughly
+awakened by the curt speech of the general, who, after four quiescent
+years, was now revealing his true character,--that of a bourgeois rich
+man who was determined to be no longer deceived. Courtecuisse took his
+cap, his game-bag, and his gun, put on his gaiters and his belt
+(which bore the very recent arms of Montcornet), and started for
+Ville-aux-Fayes, with the careless, indifferent air and manner under
+which country-people often conceal very deep reflections, while he gazed
+at the woods and whistled to the dogs to follow him.
+
+“What! you complain of the Shopman when he proposes to make your
+fortune?” said Gaubertin. “Doesn’t the fool offer to give you three
+francs for every arrest you make, and the fines to boot? Have an
+understanding with your friends and you can bring as many indictments as
+you please,--hundreds if you like! With one thousand francs you can
+buy La Bachelerie from Rigou, become a property owner, live in your own
+house, and work for yourself, or rather, make others work for you, and
+take your ease. Only--now listen to me--you must manage to arrest only
+such as haven’t a penny in the world. You can’t shear sheep unless
+the wool is on their backs. Take the Shopman’s offer and leave him to
+collect the costs,--if he wants them; tastes differ. Didn’t old Mariotte
+prefer losses to profits, in spite of my advice?”
+
+Courtecuisse, filled with admiration for these words of wisdom, returned
+home burning with the desire to be a land-owner and a bourgeois like the
+rest.
+
+When the general reached Les Aigues he related his expedition to
+Sibilet.
+
+“Monsieur le comte did very right,” said the steward, rubbing his hands;
+“but he must not stop short half-way. The field-keeper of the district
+who allows the country-people to prey upon the meadows and rob the
+harvests ought to be changed. Monsieur le comte should have himself
+chosen mayor, and appoint one of his old soldiers, who would have
+the courage to carry out his orders, in place of Vaudoyer. A great
+land-owner should be master in his own district. Just see what
+difficulties we have with the present mayor!”
+
+The mayor of the district of Blangy, formerly a Benedictine, named
+Rigou, had married, in the first year of the Republic, the servant-woman
+of the late priest of Blangy. In spite of the repugnance which a married
+monk excited at the Prefecture, he had continued to be mayor after 1815,
+for the reason that there was no-one else at Blangy who was capable of
+filling the post. But in 1817, when the bishop sent the Abbe Brossette
+to the parish of Blangy (which had then been vacant over twenty-five
+years), a violent opposition not unnaturally broke out between the old
+apostate and the young ecclesiastic, whose character is already known to
+us. The war which was then and there declared between the mayor’s office
+and the parsonage increased the popularity of the magistrate, who
+had hitherto been more or less despised. Rigou, whom the peasants had
+disliked for usurious dealings, now suddenly represented their political
+and financial interests, supposed to be threatened by the Restoration,
+and more especially by the clergy.
+
+A copy of the “Constitutionnel,” that great organ of liberalism, after
+making the rounds of the Cafe de la Paix, came back to Rigou on the
+seventh day,--the subscription, standing in the name of old Socquard the
+keeper of the coffee-house, being shared by twenty persons. Rigou passed
+the paper on to Langlume the miller, who, in turn, gave it in shreds to
+any one who knew how to read. The “Paris items,” and the anti-religion
+jokes of the liberal sheet formed the public opinion of the valley des
+Aigues. Rigou, like the _venerable_ Abbe Gregoire, became a hero.
+For him, as for certain Parisian bankers, politics spread a mantle of
+popularity over his shameful dishonesty.
+
+At this particular time the perjured monk, like Francois Keller the
+great orator, was looked upon as a defender of the rights of the
+people,--he who, not so very long before, dared not walk in the fields
+after dark, lest he should stumble into pitfalls where he would seem to
+have been killed by accident! Persecute a man politically and you not
+only magnify him, but you redeem his past and make it innocent. The
+liberal party was a great worker of miracles in this respect. Its
+dangerous journal, which had the wit to make itself as commonplace, as
+calumniating, as credulous, and as sillily perfidious as every audience
+made up the general masses, did in all probability as much injury to
+private interests as it did to those of the Church.
+
+Rigou flattered himself that he should find in a Bonapartist general
+now laid on the shelf, in a son of the people raised from nothing by
+the Revolution, a sound enemy to the Bourbons and the priests. But the
+general, bearing in mind his private ambitions, so arranged matters as
+to evade the visit of Monsieur and Madame Rigou when he first came to
+Les Aigues.
+
+When you have become better acquainted with the terrible character of
+Rigou, the lynx of the valley, you will understand the full extent of
+the second capital blunder which the general’s aristocratic ambitions
+led him to commit, and which the countess made all the greater by an
+offence which will be described in the further history of Rigou.
+
+If Montcornet had courted the mayor’s good-will, if he had sought his
+friendship, perhaps the influence of the renegade might have neutralized
+that of Gaubertin. Far from that, three suits were now pending in the
+courts of Ville-aux-Fayes between the general and the ex-monk. Until the
+present time the general had been so absorbed in his personal interests
+and in his marriage that he had never remembered Rigou, but when
+Sibilet advised him to get himself made mayor in Rigou’s place, he took
+post-horses and went to see the prefect.
+
+The prefect, Comte Martial de la Roche-Hugon, had been a friend of the
+general since 1804; and it was a word from him said to Montcornet in a
+conversation in Paris, which brought about the purchase of Les Aigues.
+Comte Martial, a prefect under Napoleon, remained a prefect under the
+Bourbons, and courted the bishop to retain his place. Now it happened
+that Monseigneur had several times requested him to get rid of Rigou.
+Martial, to whom the condition of the district was perfectly well known,
+was delighted with the general’s request; so that in less than a month
+the Comte de Montcornet was mayor of Blangy.
+
+By one of those accidents which come about naturally, the general met,
+while at the prefecture where his friend put him up, a non-commissioned
+officer of the ex-Imperial guard, who had been cheated out of his
+retiring pension. The general had already, under other circumstances,
+done a service to the brave cavalryman, whose name was Groison; the
+man, remembering it, now told him his troubles, admitting that he was
+penniless. The general promised to get him his pension, and proposed
+that he should take the place of field-keeper to the district of Blangy,
+as a way of paying off his score of gratitude by devotion to the
+new mayor’s interests. The appointments of master and man were made
+simultaneously, and the general gave, as may be supposed, very firm
+instructions to his subordinate.
+
+Vaudoyer, the displaced keeper, a peasant on the Ronquerolles estate,
+was only fit, like most field-keepers, to stalk about, and gossip, and
+let himself be petted by the poor of the district, who asked nothing
+better than to corrupt at subaltern authority,--the advanced guard, as
+it were, of the land-owners. He knew Soudry, the brigadier at
+Soulanges, for brigadiers of gendarmerie, performing functions that are
+semi-judicial in drawing up criminal indictments, have much to do with
+the rural keepers, who are, in fact, their natural spies. Soudry,
+being appealed to, sent Vaudoyer to Gaubertin, who received his old
+acquaintance very cordially, and invited him to drink while listening to
+the recital of his troubles.
+
+“My dear friend,” said the mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, who could talk to
+every man in his own language, “what has happened to you is likely
+to happen to us all. The nobles are back upon us. The men to whom the
+Emperor gave titles make common cause with the old nobility. They all
+want to crush the people, re-establish their former rights and take
+our property from us. But we are Burgundians; we must resist, and drive
+those Arminacs back to Paris. Return to Blangy; you shall be agent for
+Monsieur Polissard, the wood-merchant, who is contractor for the forest
+of Ronquerolles. Don’t be uneasy, my lad; I’ll find you enough to do for
+the whole of the coming year. But remember one thing; the wood is for
+ourselves! Not a single depredation, or the thing is at an end. Send
+all interlopers to Les Aigues. If there’s brush or fagots to sell make
+people buy ours; don’t let them buy of Les Aigues. You’ll get back
+to your place as field-keeper before long; this thing can’t last. The
+general will get sick of living among thieves. Did you know that
+that Shopman called me a thief, me!--son of the stanchest and most
+incorruptible of republicans; me!--the son in law of Mouchon, that
+famous representative of the people, who died without leaving me enough
+to bury him?”
+
+The general raised the salary of the new field-keeper to three hundred
+francs; and built a town-hall, in which he gave him a residence. Then he
+married him to a daughter of one of his tenant-farmers, who had lately
+died, leaving her an orphan with three acres of vineyard. Groison
+attached himself to the general as a dog to his master. This legitimate
+fidelity was admitted by the whole community. The keeper was feared and
+respected, but like the captain of a vessel whose ship’s company hate
+him; the peasantry shunned him as they would a leper. Met either in
+silence or with sarcasms veiled under a show of good-humor, the new
+keeper was a sentinel watched by other sentinels. He could do nothing
+against such numbers. The delinquents took delight in plotting
+depredations which it was impossible for him to prove, and the old
+soldier grew furious at his helplessness. Groison found the excitement
+of a war of factions in his duties, and all the pleasures of the
+chase,--a chase after petty delinquents. Trained in real war to a
+loyalty which consists in part of playing a fair game, this enemy of
+traitors came at last to hate these people, so treacherous in their
+conspiracies, and so clever in their thefts that they mortified his
+self-esteem. He soon observed that the depredations were committed
+only at Les Aigues; all the other estates were respected. At first
+he despised a peasantry ungrateful enough to pillage a general of the
+Empire, an essentially kind and generous man; presently, however, he
+added hatred to contempt. But multiply himself as he would, he could
+not be everywhere, and the enemy pillaged everywhere that he was not.
+Groison made the general understand that it was necessary to organize
+the defence on a war footing, and proved to him the insufficiency of his
+own devoted efforts and the evil disposition of the inhabitants of the
+valley.
+
+“There is something behind it all, general,” he said; “these people are
+so bold they fear nothing; they seem to rely on the favor of the good
+God.”
+
+“We shall see,” replied the count.
+
+Fatal word! The verb “to see” has no future tense for politicians.
+
+At the moment, Montcornet was considering another difficulty, which
+seemed to him more pressing. He needed an alter ego to do his work in
+the mayor’s office during the months he lived in Paris. Obliged to find
+some man who knew how to read and write for the position of assistant
+mayor, he knew of none and could hear of none throughout the district
+but Langlume, the tenant of his own flour-mill. The choice was
+disastrous. Not only were the interests of mayor and miller
+diametrically opposed, but Langlume had long hatched swindling projects
+with Rigou, who lent him money to carry on his business, or to acquire
+property. The miller had bought the right to the hay of certain fields
+for his horses, and Sibilet could not sell it except to him. The hay of
+all the fields in the district was sold at better prices than that of
+Les Aigues, though the yield of the latter was the best.
+
+Langlume, then, became the provisional mayor; but in France the
+provisional is eternal,--though Frenchmen are suspected of loving
+change. Acting by Rigou’s advice, he played a part of great devotion to
+the general; and he was still assistant-mayor at the moment when, by the
+omnipotence of the historian, this drama begins.
+
+In the absence of the mayor, Rigou, necessarily a member of the
+district council, reigned supreme, and brought forward resolutions all
+injuriously affecting the general. At one time he caused money to be
+spent for purposes that were profitable to the peasants only,--the
+greater part of the expenses falling upon Les Aigues, which, by reason
+of its great extent, paid two thirds of the taxes; at other times the
+council refused, under his influence, certain useful and necessary
+allowances, such as an increase in salary for the abbe, repairs or
+improvements to the parsonage, or “wages” to the school-master.
+
+“If the peasants once know how to read and write, what will become of
+us?” said Langlume, naively, to the general, to excuse this anti-liberal
+action taken against a brother of the Christian Doctrine whom the Abbe
+Brossette wished to establish as a public school-master in Blangy.
+
+The general, delighted with his old Groison, returned to Paris and
+immediately looked about him for other old soldiers of the late imperial
+guard, with whom to organize the defence of Les Aigues on a formidable
+footing. By dint of searching out and questioning his friends and many
+officers on half-pay, he unearthed Michaud, a former quartermaster at
+headquarters of the cuirassiers of the guard; one of those men whom
+troopers call “hard-to-cook,” a nickname derived from the mess kitchen
+where refractory beans are not uncommon. Michaud picked out from among
+his friends and acquaintances, three other men fit to be his helpers,
+and able to guard the estate without fear and without reproach.
+
+The first, named Steingel, a pure-blooded Alsacian, was a natural son of
+the general of that name, who fell in one of Bonaparte’s first victories
+with the army of Italy. Tall and strong, he belonged to the class
+of soldiers accustomed, like the Russians, to obey, passively and
+absolutely. Nothing hindered him in the performance of his duty; he
+would have collared an emperor or a pope if such were his orders. He
+ignored danger. Perfectly fearless, he had never received the smallest
+scratch during his sixteen years’ campaigning. He slept in the open
+air or in his bed with stoical indifference. At any increased labor or
+discomfort, he merely remarked, “It seems to be the order of the day.”
+
+The second man, Vatel, son of the regiment, corporal of voltigeurs,
+gay as a lark, rather free and easy with the fair sex, brave to
+foolhardiness, was capable of shooting a comrade with a laugh if ordered
+to execute him. With no future before him and not knowing how to employ
+himself, the prospect of finding an amusing little war in the functions
+of keeper, attracted him; and as the grand army and the Emperor had
+hitherto stood him in place of a religion, so now he swore to serve the
+brave Montcornet against and through all and everything. His nature was
+of that essentially wrangling quality to which a life without enemies
+seems dull and objectless,--the nature, in short, of a litigant, or a
+policeman. If it had not been for the presence of the sheriff’s officer,
+he would have seized Tonsard and the bundle of wood at the Grand-I-Vert,
+snapping his fingers at the law on the inviolability of a man’s
+domicile.
+
+The third man, Gaillard, also an old soldier, risen to the rank of
+sub-lieutenant, and covered with wounds, belonged to the class of
+mechanical soldiers. The fate of the Emperor never left his mind and
+he became indifferent to everything else. With the care of a natural
+daughter on his hands, he accepted the place that was now offered to him
+as a means of subsistence, taking it as he would have taken service in a
+regiment.
+
+When the general reached Les Aigues, whither he had gone in advance
+of his troopers, intending to send away Courtecuisse, he was amazed at
+discovering the impudent audacity with which the keeper had fulfilled
+his commands. There is a method of obeying which makes the obedience of
+the servant a cutting sarcasm on the master’s order. But all things
+in this world can be reduced to absurdity, and Courtecuisse in this
+instance went beyond its limits.
+
+One hundred and twenty-six indictments against depredators (most of whom
+were in collusion with Courtecuisse) and sworn to before the justice
+court of Soulanges, had resulted in sixty-nine commitments for trial,
+in virtue of which Brunet, the sheriff’s officer, delighted at such a
+windfall of fees, had rigorously enforced the warrants in such a way
+as to bring about what is called, in legal language, a declaration of
+insolvency; a condition of pauperism where the law becomes of course
+powerless. By this declaration the sheriff proves that the defendant
+possesses no property of any kind, and is therefore a pauper. Where
+there is absolutely nothing, the creditor, like the king, loses
+his right to sue. The paupers in this case, carefully selected by
+Courtecuisse, were scattered through five neighboring districts, whither
+Brunet betook himself duly attended by his satellites, Vermichel and
+Fourchon, to serve the writs. Later he transmitted the papers to Sibilet
+with a bill of costs for five thousand francs, requesting him to obtain
+the further orders of Monsieur le comte de Montcornet.
+
+Just as Sibilet, armed with these papers, was calmly explaining to the
+count the result of the rash orders he had given to Courtecuisse, and
+witnessing, as calmly, a burst of the most violent anger a general of
+the French cavalry was ever known to indulge in, Courtecuisse entered
+to pay his respects to his master and to bring his own account of eleven
+hundred francs, the sum to which his promised commission now amounted.
+The natural man took the bit in his teeth and ran off with the general,
+who totally forgot his coronet and his field rank; he was a trooper once
+more, vomiting curses of which he probably was ashamed when he thought
+of them later.
+
+“Ha! eleven hundred francs!” he shouted, “eleven hundred slaps in your
+face! eleven hundred kicks!--Do you think I can’t see straight through
+your lies? Out of my sight, or I’ll strike you flat!”
+
+At the mere look of the general’s purple face and before that warrior
+could get out the last words, Courtecuisse was off like a swallow.
+
+“Monsieur le comte,” said Sibilet, gently, “you are wrong.”
+
+“Wrong! I, wrong?”
+
+“Yes, Monsieur le comte, take care, you will have trouble with that
+rascal; he will sue you.”
+
+“What do I care for that? Tell the scoundrel to leave the place
+instantly! See that he takes nothing of mine, and pay him his wages.”
+
+Four hours later the whole country-side was gossiping about this scene.
+The general, they said, had assaulted the unfortunate Courtecuisse, and
+refused to pay his wages and two thousand francs besides, which he owed
+him. Extraordinary stories went the rounds, and the master of Les
+Aigues was declared insane. The next day Brunet, who had served all the
+warrants for the general, now brought him on behalf of Courtecuisse a
+summon to appear before the police court. The lion was stung by gnats;
+but his misery was only just beginning.
+
+The installation of a keeper is not done without a few formalities; he
+must, for instance, file an oath in the civil court. Some days therefore
+elapsed before the three keepers really entered upon their functions.
+Though the general had written to Michaud to bring his wife without
+waiting until the lodge at the gate of the Avonne was ready for them,
+the future head-keeper, or rather bailiff, was detained in Paris by his
+marriage and his wife’s family, and did not reach Les Aigues until
+a fortnight later. During those two weeks, and during the time still
+further required for certain formalities which were carried out with
+very ill grace by the authorities at Ville-aux-Fayes, the forest of Les
+Aigues was shamefully devastated by the peasantry, who took advantage of
+the fact that there was practically no watch over it.
+
+The appearance of three keepers handsomely dressed in green cloth,
+the Emperor’s color, with faces denoting firmness, and each of them
+well-made, active, and capable of spending their nights in the woods,
+was a great event in the valley, from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes.
+
+Throughout the district Groison was the only man who welcomed these
+veterans. Delighted to be thus reinforced, he let fall a few threats
+against thieves, who before long, he said, would be watched so closely
+that they could do no damage. Thus the usual proclamation of all great
+commanders was not lacking to the present war; in this case it was said
+aloud and also whispered in secret.
+
+Sibilet called the general’s attention to the fact that the gendarmerie
+of Soulanges, and especially its brigadier, Soudry, were thoroughly and
+hypocritically hostile to Les Aigues. He made him see the importance of
+substituting another brigade, which might show a better spirit.
+
+“With a good brigadier and a company of gendarmes devoted to your
+interests, you could manage the country,” he said to him.
+
+The general went to the Prefecture and obtained from the general in
+command of the division the retirement of Soudry and the substitution of
+a man named Viallet, an excellent gendarme at headquarters, who was
+much praised by his general and the prefect. The company of gendarmes
+at Soulanges were dispersed to other places in the department by the
+colonel of the gendarmerie, an old friend of Montcornet, and chosen
+men were put in their places with secret orders to keep watch over the
+estate of the Comte de Montcornet, and prevent all future attempts to
+injure it; they were also particularly enjoined not to allow themselves
+to be gained over by the inhabitants of Soulanges.
+
+This last revolutionary measure, carried out with such rapidity that
+there was no possibility of countermining it created much astonishment
+in Soulanges and in Ville-aux-Fayes. Soudry, who felt himself dismissed,
+complained bitterly, and Gaubertin managed to get him appointed mayor,
+which put the gendarmerie under his orders. An outcry was made about
+tyranny. Montcornet became an object of general hatred. Not only were
+five or six lives radically changed by him, but many personal vanities
+were wounded. The peasants, taking their cue from words dropped by
+the small tradesmen of Ville-aux-Fayes and Soulanges, and by Rigou,
+Langlume, Guerbet, and the postmaster at Conches, thought they were on
+the eve of losing what they called their rights.
+
+The general stopped the suit brought by Courtecuisse by paying him all
+he demanded. The man then purchased, nominally for two thousand francs,
+a little property surrounded on all sides but one by the estate of Les
+Aigues,--a sort of cover into which the game escaped. Rigou, the owner,
+had never been willing to part with La Bachelerie, as it was called,
+to the possessors of the estate, but he now took malicious pleasure in
+selling it, at fifty per cent discount, to Courtecuisse; which made the
+ex-keeper one of Rigou’s numerous henchmen, for all he actually paid for
+the property was one thousand francs.
+
+The three keepers, with Michaud the bailiff, and Groison the
+field-keeper of Blangy, led henceforth the life of guerrillas. Living
+night and day in the forest, they soon acquired that deep knowledge of
+woodland things which becomes a science among foresters, saving them
+much loss of time; they studied the tracks of animals, the species of
+the trees, and their habits of growth, training their ears to every
+sound and to every murmur of the woods. Still further, they observed
+faces, watched and understood the different families in the various
+villages of the district, and knew the individuals in each family, their
+habits, characters, and means of living,--a far more difficult matter
+than most persons suppose. When the peasants who obtained their living
+from Les Aigues saw these well-planned measures of defence, they met
+them with dumb resistance or sneering submission.
+
+From the first, Michaud and Sibilet mutually disliked each other. The
+frank and loyal soldier, with the sense of honor of a subaltern of the
+young “garde,” hated the servile brutality and the discontented spirit
+of the steward. He soon took note of the objections with which Sibilet
+opposed all measures that were really judicious, and the reasons he
+gave for those that were questionable. Instead of calming the general,
+Sibilet, as the reader has already seen, constantly excited him and
+drove him to harsh measures, all the while trying to daunt him by
+drawing his attention to countless annoyances, petty vexations, and
+ever-recurring and unconquerable difficulties. Without suspecting the
+role of spy and exasperator undertaken by Sibilet (who secretly intended
+to eventually make choice in his own interests between Gaubertin and the
+general) Michaud felt that the steward’s nature was bad and grasping,
+and he was unable to explain to himself its apparent honesty. The enmity
+which separated the two functionaries was satisfactory to the general.
+Michaud’s hatred led him to watch the steward, though he would not have
+condescended to play the part of spy if the general had not required it.
+Sibilet fawned upon the bailiff and flattered him, without being able
+to get anything from him beyond an extreme politeness which the loyal
+soldier established between them as a barrier.
+
+Now, all preliminary details having been made known, the reader will
+understand the conduct of the general’s enemies and the meaning of the
+conversation which he had with what he called his two ministers, after
+Madame de Montcornet, the abbe, and Blondet left the breakfast-table.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. CONCERNING THE MEDIOCRACY
+
+
+“Well, Michaud, what’s the news?” asked the general as soon as his wife
+had left the room.
+
+“General, if you will permit me to say so, it would be better not to
+talk over matters in this room. Walls have ears, and I should like to be
+certain that what we say reaches none but our own.”
+
+“Very good,” said the general, “then let us walk towards the steward’s
+lodge by the path through the fields; no one can overhear us there.”
+
+A few moments later the general, with Michaud and Sibilet, was crossing
+the meadows, while Madame de Montcornet, with the abbe and Blondet, was
+on her way to the gate of the Avonne.
+
+Michaud related the scene that had just taken place at the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+“Vatel did wrong,” said Sibilet.
+
+“They made that plain to him at once,” replied Michaud, “by blinding
+him; but that’s nothing. General, you remember the plan we agreed
+upon,--to seize the cattle of those depredators against whom judgment
+was given? Well, we can’t do it. Brunet, like his colleague Plissoud, is
+not loyal in his support. They both warn the delinquents when they are
+about to make a seizure. Vermichel, Brunet’s assistant, went to the
+Grand-I-Vert this morning, ostensibly after Pere Fourchon; and Marie
+Tonsard, who is intimate with Bonnebault, ran off at once to give the
+alarm at Conches. The depredations have begun again.”
+
+“A strong show of authority is becoming daily more and more necessary,”
+ said Sibilet.
+
+“What did I tell you?” cried the general. “We must demand the
+enforcement of the judgment of the court, which carried with it
+imprisonment; we must arrest for debt all those who do not pay the
+damages I have won and the costs of the suits.”
+
+“These fellows imagine the law is powerless, and tell each other that
+you dare not arrest them,” said Sibilet. “They think they frighten you!
+They have confederates at Ville-aux-Fayes; for even the prosecuting
+attorney seems to have ignored the verdicts against them.”
+
+“I think,” said Michaud, seeing that the general looked thoughtful,
+“that if you are willing to spend a good deal of money you can still
+protect the property.”
+
+“It is better to spend money than to act harshly,” remarked Sibilet.
+
+“What is your plan?” asked the general of his bailiff.
+
+“It is very simple,” said Michaud. “Inclose the whole forest with walls,
+like those of the park, and you will be safe; the slightest depredation
+then becomes a criminal offence and is taken to the assizes.”
+
+“At a franc and a half the square foot for the material only, Monsieur
+le comte would find his wall would cost him a third of the whole value
+of Les Aigues,” said Sibilet, with a laugh.
+
+“Well, well,” said Montcornet, “I shall go and see the attorney-general
+at once.”
+
+“The attorney-general,” remarked Sibilet, gently, “may perhaps share the
+opinion of his subordinate; for the negligence shown by the latter is
+probably the result of an agreement between them.”
+
+“Then I wish to know it!” cried Montcornet. “If I have to get the whole
+of them turned out, judges, civil authorities, and the attorney-general
+to boot, I’ll do it; I’ll go the Keeper of the Seals, or to the king
+himself.”
+
+At a vehement sign made by Michaud the general stopped short and said
+to Sibilet, as he turned to retrace his steps, “Good day, my dear
+fellow,”--words which the steward understood.
+
+“Does Monsieur le comte intend, as mayor, to enforce the necessary
+measures to repress the abuse of gleaning?” he said, respectfully.
+“The harvest is coming on, and if we are to publish the statutes about
+certificates of pauperism and the prevention of paupers from other
+districts gleaning our land, there is no time to be lost.”
+
+“Do it at once, and arrange with Groison,” said the count. “With such a
+class of people,” he added, “we must follow out the law.”
+
+So, without a moment’s reflection, Montcornet gave in to a measure that
+Sibilet had been proposing to him for more than a fortnight, to which
+he had hitherto refused to consent; but now, in the violence of anger
+caused by Vatel’s mishap, he instantly adopted it as the right thing to
+do.
+
+When Sibilet was at some distance the general said in a low voice to his
+bailiff:--
+
+“Well, my dear Michaud, what is it; why did you make me that sign?”
+
+“You have an enemy within the walls, general, yet you tell him plans
+which you ought not to confide even to the secret police.”
+
+“I share your suspicions, my dear friend,” replied Montcornet, “but I
+don’t intend to commit the same fault twice over. I shall not part with
+another steward till I’m sure of a better. I am waiting to get rid of
+Sibilet, till you understand the business of steward well enough to
+take his place, and till Vatel is fit to succeed you. And yet, I have
+no ground of complaint against Sibilet. He is honest and punctual in
+all his dealings; he hasn’t kept back a hundred francs in all these five
+years. He has a perfectly detestable nature, and that’s all one can say
+against him. If it were otherwise, what would be his plan in acting as
+he does?”
+
+“General,” said Michaud, gravely, “I will find out, for undoubtedly
+he has one; and if you would only allow it, a good bribe to that old
+scoundrel Fourchon will enable me to get at the truth; though after what
+he said just now I suspect the old fellow of having more secrets than
+one in his pouch. That swindling old cordwainer told me himself they
+want to drive you from Les Aigues. And let me tell you, for you ought to
+know it, that from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes there is not a peasant, a
+petty tradesman, a farmer, a tavern-keeper who isn’t laying by his money
+to buy a bit of the estate. Fourchon confided to me that Tonsard has
+already put in his claim. The idea that you can be forced to sell Les
+Aigues has gone from end to end of the valley like an infection in the
+air. It may be that the steward’s present house, with some adjoining
+land, will be the price paid for Sibilet’s spying. Nothing is ever said
+among us that is not immediately known at Ville-aux-Fayes. Sibilet is
+a relative of your enemy Gaubertin. What you have just said about the
+attorney-general and the others will probably be reported before you
+have reached the Prefecture. You don’t know what the inhabitants of this
+district are.”
+
+“Don’t I know them? I know they are the scum of the earth! Do you
+suppose I am going to yield to such blackguards?” cried the general.
+“Good heavens, I’d rather burn Les Aigues myself!”
+
+“No need to burn it; let us adopt a line of conduct which will baffle
+the schemes of these Lilliputians. Judging by threats, general, they
+are resolved on war to the knife against you; and therefore since you
+mention incendiarism, let me beg of you to insure all your buildings,
+and all your farmhouses.”
+
+“Michaud, do you know whom they mean by ‘Shopman’? Yesterday, as I was
+riding along by the Thune, I heard some little rascals cry out, ‘The
+Shopman! here’s the Shopman!’ and then they ran away.”
+
+“Ask Sibilet; the answer is in his line, he likes to make you
+angry,” said Michaud, with a pained look. “But--if you will have an
+answer--well, that’s a nickname these brigands have given you, general.”
+
+“What does it mean?”
+
+“It means, general--well, it refers to your father.”
+
+“Ha! the curs!” cried the count, turning livid. “Yes, Michaud, my father
+was a shopkeeper, an upholsterer; the countess doesn’t know it. Oh!
+that I should ever--well! after all, I have waltzed with queens and
+empresses. I’ll tell her this very night,” he cried, after a pause.
+
+“They also call you a coward,” continued Michaud.
+
+“Ha!”
+
+“They ask how you managed to save yourself at Essling when nearly all
+your comrades perished.”
+
+The accusation brought a smile to the general’s lips. “Michaud, I shall
+go at once to the Prefecture!” he cried, with a sort of fury, “if it
+is only to get the policies of insurance you ask for. Let Madame la
+comtesse know that I have gone. Ha, ha! they want war, do they? Well,
+they shall have it; I’ll take my pleasure in thwarting them,--every one
+of them, those bourgeois of Soulanges, and their peasantry! We are in
+the enemy’s country, therefore prudence! Tell the foresters to keep
+within the limits of the law. Poor Vatel, take care of him. The countess
+is inclined to be timid; she must know nothing of all this; otherwise I
+could never get her to come back here.”
+
+Neither the general nor Michaud understood their real peril. Michaud had
+been too short a time in this Burgundian valley to realize the enemy’s
+power, though he saw its action. The general, for his part, believed in
+the supremacy of the law.
+
+The law, such as the legislature of these days manufactures it, has not
+the virtue we attribute to it. It strikes unequally; it is so modified
+in many of its modes of application that it virtually refutes its own
+principles. This fact may be noted more or less distinctly throughout
+all ages. Is there any historian ignorant enough to assert that the
+decrees of the most vigilant of powers were ever enforced throughout
+France?--for instance, that the requisitions of the Convention for
+men, commodities, and money were obeyed in Provence, in the depths of
+Normandy, on the borders of Brittany, as they were at the great centres
+of social life? What philosopher dares deny that a head falls to-day in
+such or such department, while in a neighboring department another head
+stays on its shoulders though guilty of a crime identically the same,
+and often more horrible? We ask for equality in life, and inequality
+reigns in law and in the death penalty!
+
+When the population of a town falls below a certain figure the
+administrative system is no longer the same. There are perhaps a hundred
+cities in France where the laws are vigorously enforced, and there the
+intelligence of the citizens rises to the conception of the problem of
+public welfare and future security which the law seeks to solve; but
+throughout the rest of France nothing is comprehended beyond immediate
+gratification; people rebel against all that lessens it. Therefore in
+nearly one half of France we find a power of inertia which defeats all
+legal action, both municipal and governmental. This resistance, be it
+understood, does not affect the essential things of public polity.
+The collection of taxes, recruiting, punishment of great crimes, as a
+general thing do systematically go on; but outside of such recognized
+necessities, all legislative decrees which affect customs, morals,
+private interests, and certain abuses, are a dead letter, owing to the
+sullen opposition of the people. At the very moment when this book
+is going to press, this dumb resistance, which opposed Louis XIV. in
+Brittany, may still be seen and felt. See the unfortunate results of
+the game-laws, to which we are now sacrificing yearly the lives of some
+twenty or thirty men for the sake of preserving a few animals.
+
+In France the law is, to at least twenty million of inhabitants, nothing
+more than a bit of white paper posted on the doors of the church and the
+town-hall. That gives rise to the term “papers,” which Mouche used to
+express legality. Many mayors of cantons (not to speak of the district
+mayors) put up their bundles of seeds and herbs with the printed
+statutes. As for the district mayors, the number of those who do not
+know how to read and write is really alarming, and the manner in which
+the civil records are kept is even more so. The danger of this state of
+things, well-known to the governing powers, is doubtless diminishing;
+but what centralization (against which every one declaims, as it is
+the fashion in France to declaim against all things good and useful and
+strong),--what centralization cannot touch, the Power against which it
+will forever fling itself in vain, is that which the general was now
+about to attack, and which we shall take leave to call the Mediocracy.
+
+A great outcry was made against the tyranny of the nobles; in these days
+the cry is against that of capitalists, against abuses of power, which
+may be merely the inevitable galling of the social yoke, called Compact
+by Rousseau, Constitution by some, Charter by others; Czar here,
+King there, Parliament in Great Britain; while in France the general
+levelling begun in 1789 and continued in 1830 has paved the way for the
+juggling dominion of the middle classes, and delivered the nation
+into their hands without escape. The portrayal of one fact alone,
+unfortunately only too common in these days, namely, the subjection of
+a canton, a little town, a sub-prefecture, to the will of a family
+clique,--in short, the power acquired by Gaubertin,--will show this
+social danger better than all dogmatic statements put together. Many
+oppressed communities will recognize the truth of this picture; many
+persons secretly and silently crushed by this tyranny will find in these
+words an obituary, as it were, which may half console them for their
+hidden woes.
+
+At the very moment when the general imagined himself to be renewing a
+warfare in which there had really been no truce, his former steward had
+just completed the last meshes of the net-work in which he now held the
+whole arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. To avoid too many explanations
+it is necessary to state, once for all, succinctly, the genealogical
+ramifications by means of which Gaubertin wound himself about the
+country, as a boa-constrictor winds around a tree,--with such art that a
+passing traveller thinks he beholds some natural effect of the tropical
+vegetation.
+
+In 1793 there were three brothers of the name of Mouchon in the valley
+of the Avonne. After 1793 they changed the name of the valley to that of
+the Valley des Aigues, out of hatred to the old nobility.
+
+The eldest brother, steward of the property of the Ronquerolles family,
+was elected deputy of the department to the Convention. Like his
+friend, Gaubertin’s father, the prosecutor of those days, who saved
+the Soulanges family, he saved the property and the lives of the
+Ronquerolles. He had two daughters; one married to Gendrin, the lawyer,
+the other to Gaubertin. He died in 1804.
+
+The second, through the influence of his elder brother, was made
+postmaster at Conches. His only child was a daughter, married to a rich
+farmer named Guerbet. He died in 1817.
+
+The last of the Mouchons, who was a priest, and the curate of
+Ville-aux-Fayes before the Revolution, was again a priest after the
+re-establishment of Catholic worship, and again the curate of the same
+little town. He was not willing to take the oath, and was hidden for a
+long time in the hermitage of Les Aigues, under the protection of the
+Gaubertins, father and son. Now about sixty-seven years of age, he was
+treated with universal respect and affection, owing to the harmony of
+his nature with that of the inhabitants. Parsimonious to the verge of
+avarice, he was thought to be rich, and the credit of being so increased
+the respect that was shown to him. Monseigneur the bishop paid the
+greatest attention to the Abbe Mouchon, who was always spoken of as the
+venerable curate of Ville-aux-Fayes; and the fact that he had several
+times refused to go and live in a splendid parsonage attached to the
+Prefecture, where Monseigneur wished to settle him, made him dearer
+still to his people.
+
+Gaubertin, now mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, received steady support from
+his brother-in-law Gendrin, who was judge of the municipal court.
+Gaubertin the younger, the solicitor who had the most practice before
+this court and much repute in the arrondissement, was already thinking
+of selling his practice after five years’ exercise of it. He wanted
+to succeed his Uncle Gendrin as counsellor whenever the latter should
+retire from the profession. Gendrin’s only son was commissioner of
+mortgages.
+
+Soudry’s son, who for the last two years had been prosecuting-attorney
+at the prefecture, was Gaubertin’s henchman. The clever Madame Soudry
+had secured the future of her husband’s son by marrying him to Rigou’s
+only daughter. The united fortunes of the Soudrys and the ex-monk, which
+would come eventually to the attorney, made that young man one of the
+most important personages of the department.
+
+The sub-prefect of Ville-aux-Fayes, Monsieur des Lupeaulx, nephew of the
+general-secretary of one of the most important ministries in Paris, was
+the prospective husband of Mademoiselle Elise Gaubertin, the mayor’s
+youngest daughter, whose dowry, like that of her elder sister, was
+two hundred thousand francs, not to speak of “expectations.” This
+functionary showed much sense, though not aware of it, in falling in
+love with Mademoiselle Elise when he first arrived at Ville-aux-Fayes,
+in 1819. If it had not been for his social position, which made him
+“eligible,” he would long ago have been forced to ask for his exchange.
+But Gaubertin in marrying him to his daughter thought much more of the
+uncle, the general-secretary, than of the nephew; and in return, the
+uncle, for the sake of his nephew, gave all his influence to Gaubertin.
+
+Thus the Church, the magistracy both removable and irremovable, the
+municipality, and the prefecture, the four feet of power, walked as the
+mayor pleased. Let us now see how that functionary strengthened himself
+in the spheres above and below that in which he worked.
+
+The department to which Ville-aux-Fayes belongs is one the number of
+whose population gives it the right to elect six deputies. Ever since
+the creation of the Left Centre of the Chamber, the arrondissement of
+Ville-aux-Fayes had sent a deputy named Leclercq, formerly banking agent
+of the wine department of the custom-house, a son-in-law of Gaubertin,
+and now a governor of the Bank of France. The number of electors which
+this rich valley sent to the electoral college was sufficient to insure,
+if only through private dealing, the constant appointment of Monsieur
+de Ronquerolles, the patron of the Mouchon family. The voters of
+Ville-aux-Fayes lent their support to the prefect, on condition that the
+Marquis de Ronquerolles was maintained in the college. Thus Gaubertin,
+who was the first to broach the idea of this arrangement, was favorably
+received at the Prefecture, which he often, in return, saved from petty
+annoyances. The prefect always selected three firm ministerialists,
+and two deputies of the Left Centre. The latter, one of them being the
+Marquis de Ronquerolles, brother-in-law of the Comte de Serisy, and the
+other a governor of the Bank of France, gave little or no alarm to the
+cabinet, and the elections in this department were rated excellent at
+the ministry of the interior.
+
+The Comte de Soulanges, peer of France, selected to be the next marshal,
+and faithful to the Bourbons, knew that his forests and other property
+were all well-managed by the notary Lupin, and well-watched by Soudry.
+He was a patron of Gendrin’s, having obtained his appointment as judge
+partly by the help of Monsieur de Ronquerolles.
+
+Messieurs Leclercq and de Ronquerolles sat in the Left Centre, but
+nearer to the left than to the centre,--a political position which
+offers great advantages to those who regard their political conscience
+as a garment.
+
+The brother of Monsieur Leclercq had obtained the situation of collector
+at Ville-aux-Fayes, and Leclercq himself, Gaubertin’s son-in-law, had
+lately bought a fine estate beyond the valley of the Avonne, which
+brought him in a rental of thirty thousand francs, with park and chateau
+and a controlling influence in its own canton.
+
+Thus, in the upper regions of the State, in both Chambers, and in the
+chief ministerial department, Gaubertin could rely on an influence that
+was powerful and also active, and which he was careful not to weary with
+unimportant requests.
+
+The counsellor Gendrin, appointed judge by the Chamber, was the leading
+spirit of the Supreme Court; for the chief justice, one of the three
+ministerial deputies, left the management of it to Gendrin during half
+the year. The counsel for the Prefecture, a cousin of Sarcus, called
+“Sarcus the rich,” was the right-hand man of the prefect, himself a
+deputy. Even without the family reasons which allied Gaubertin and young
+des Lupeaulx, a brother of Madame Sarcus would still have been desirable
+as sub-prefect to the arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. Madame Sarcus,
+the counsellor’s wife, was a Vallat of Soulanges, a family connected
+with the Gaubertins, and she was said to have “distinguished” the notary
+Lupin in her youth. Though she was now forty-five years old, with a son
+in the school of engineers, Lupin never went to the Prefecture without
+paying his respects and dining with her.
+
+The nephew of Guerbet, the postmaster, whose father was, as we have
+seen, collector of Soulanges, held the important situation of examining
+judge in the municipal court of Ville-aux-Fayes. The third judge, son of
+Corbinet, the notary, belonged body and soul to the all-powerful mayor;
+and, finally, young Vigor, son of the lieutenant of the gendarmerie, was
+the substitute judge.
+
+Sibilet’s father, sheriff of the court, had married his sister to
+Monsieur Vigor the lieutenant, and that individual, father of six
+children, was cousin of the father of Gaubertin through his wife, a
+Gaubertin-Vallat. Eighteen months previously the united efforts of the
+two deputies, Monsieur de Soulanges and Gaubertin, had created the place
+of commissary of police for the sheriff’s second son.
+
+Sibilet’s eldest daughter married Monsieur Herve, a school-master, whose
+school was transformed into a college as a result of this marriage,
+so that for the past year Soulanges had rejoiced in the presence of a
+professor.
+
+The sheriff’s youngest son was employed on the government domains, with
+the promise of succeeding the clerk of registrations so soon as that
+officer had completed the term of service which enabled him to retire on
+a pension.
+
+The youngest Sibilet girl, now sixteen years old, was betrothed
+to Corbinet, brother of the notary. And an old maid, Mademoiselle
+Gaubertin-Vallat, sister of Madame Sibilet, the sheriff’s wife, held the
+office for the sale of stamped paper.
+
+Thus, wherever we turn in Ville-aux-Fayes we meet some member of the
+invisible coalition, whose avowed chief, recognized as such by every
+one, great and small, was the mayor of the town, the general agent for
+the entire timber business, Gaubertin!
+
+If we turn to the other end of the valley of the Avonne we shall see
+that Gaubertin ruled at Soulanges through the Soudrys, through Lupin the
+assistant mayor and steward of the Soulanges estate, who was necessarily
+in constant communication with the Comte de Soulanges, through Sarcus,
+justice of the peace, through Guerbet, the collector, through Gourdon,
+the doctor, who had married a Gendrin-Vatebled. He governed Blangy
+through Rigou, Conches through the post-master, the despotic ruler of
+his own district.
+
+Gaubertin’s influence was so great and powerful that even the
+investments and the savings of Rigou, Soudry, Gendrin, Guerbet, Lupin,
+even Sarcus the rich himself, were managed by his advice. The town of
+Ville-aux-Fayes believed implicitly in its mayor. Gaubertin’s ability
+was not less extolled than his honesty and his kindness; he was the
+servant of his relatives and constituents (always with an eye to a
+return of benefits), and the whole municipality adored him. The town
+never ceased to blame Monsieur Mariotte, of Auxerre, for having opposed
+and thwarted that worthy Monsieur Gaubertin.
+
+Not aware of their strength, no occasion for displaying it having
+arisen, the bourgeoisie of Ville-aux-Fayes contented themselves with
+boasting that no strangers intermeddled in their affairs and they
+believed themselves excellent citizens and faithful public servants.
+Nothing, however, escaped their despotic rule, which in itself was not
+perceived, the result being considered a triumph of the locality.
+
+The only stranger in this family community was the government engineer
+in the highway department; and his dismissal in favor of the son of
+Sarcus the rich was now being pressed, with a fair chance that this one
+weak thread in the net would soon be strengthened. And yet this powerful
+league, which monopolized all duties both public and private, sucked the
+resources of the region, and fastened on power like limpets to a
+ship, escaped all notice so completely that General Montcornet had
+no suspicion of it. The prefect boasted of the prosperity of
+Ville-aux-Fayes and its arrondissement; even the minister of the
+interior was heard to remark: “There’s a model sub-prefecture, which
+runs on wheels; we should be lucky indeed if all were like it.” Family
+designs were so involved with local interests that here, as in many
+other little towns and even prefectures, a functionary who did not
+belong to the place would have been forced to resign within a year.
+
+When this despotic middle-class cousinry seizes a victim, he is so
+carefully gagged and bound that complaint is impossible; he is
+smeared with slime and wax like a snail in a beehive. This invisible,
+imperceptible tyranny is upheld by powerful reasons,--such as the wish
+to be surrounded by their own family, to keep property in their own
+hands, the mutual help they ought to lend each other, the guarantees
+given to the administration by the fact that their agent is under the
+eyes of his fellow-citizens and neighbors. What does all this lead
+to? To the fact that local interests supersede all questions of public
+interest; the centralized will of Paris is frequently overthrown in the
+provinces, the truth of things is disguised, and country communities
+snap their fingers at government. In short, after the main public
+necessities have been attended to, it will be seen that the laws,
+instead of acting upon the masses, receive their impulse from them; the
+populations adapt the law to themselves and not themselves to the law.
+
+Whoever has travelled in the south or west of France, or in Alsace, in
+any other way than from inn to inn to see buildings and landscapes, will
+surely admit the truth of these remarks. The results of middle-class
+nepotism may be, at present, merely isolated evils; but the tendency of
+existing laws is to increase them. This low-level despotism can and will
+cause great disasters, and the events of the drama about to be played in
+the valley of Les Aigues will prove it.
+
+The monarchical and imperial systems, more rashly overthrown than people
+realize, remedied these abuses by means of certain consecrated lives,
+by classifications and categories and by those particular counterpoises
+since so absurdly defined as “privileges.” There are no privileges now,
+when every human being is free to climb the greased pole of power. But
+surely it would be safer to allow open and avowed privileges than those
+which are underhand, based on trickery, subversive of what should be
+public spirit, and continuing the work of despotism to a lower and baser
+level than heretofore. May we not have overthrown noble tyrants devoted
+to their country’s good, to create the tyranny of selfish interests?
+Shall power lurk in secret places, instead of radiating from its natural
+source? This is worth thinking about. The spirit of local sectionalism,
+such as we have now depicted, will soon be seen to invade the Chamber.
+
+Montcornet’s friend, the late prefect, Comte de la Roche-Hugon, had lost
+his position just before the last arrival of the general at Les Aigues.
+This dismissal drove him into the ranks of the Liberal opposition,
+where he became one of the chorus of the Left, a position he soon after
+abandoned for an embassy. His successor, luckily for Montcornet, was
+a son-in-law of the Marquis de Troisville, uncle of the countess, the
+Comte de Casteran. He welcomed Montcornet as a relation and begged
+him to continue his intimacy at the Prefecture. After listening to
+the general’s complaints the Comte de Casteran invited the bishop, the
+attorney-general, the colonel of the gendarmerie, counsellor Sarcus,
+and the general commanding the division to meet him the next day at
+breakfast.
+
+The attorney-general, Baron Bourlac (so famous in the Chanterie and
+Rifael suits), was one of those men well-known to all governments, who
+attach themselves to power, no matter in whose hands it is, and who make
+themselves invaluable by such devotion. Having owed his elevation in the
+first place to his fanaticism for the Emperor, he now owed the
+retention of his official rank to his inflexible character and the
+conscientiousness with which he fulfilled his duties. He who once
+implacably prosecuted the remnant of the Chouans now prosecuted the
+Bonapartists as implacably. But years and turmoils had somewhat subdued
+his energy and he had now become, like other old devils incarnate,
+perfectly charming in manner and ways.
+
+The general explained his position and the fears of his bailiff, and
+spoke of the necessity of making an example and enforcing the rights of
+property.
+
+The high functionaries listened gravely, making, however, no reply
+beyond mere platitudes, such as, “Undoubtedly, the laws must be upheld”;
+“Your cause is that of all land-owners”; “We will consider it; but,
+situated as we are, prudence is very necessary”; “A monarchy could
+certainly do more for the people than the people would do for itself,
+even if it were, as in 1793, the sovereign people”; “The masses suffer,
+and we are bound to do as much for them as for ourselves.”
+
+The relentless attorney-general expressed such kindly and benevolent
+views respecting the condition of the lower classes that our future
+Utopians, had they heard him, might have thought that the higher grade
+of government officials were already aware of the difficulties of that
+problem which modern society will be forced to solve.
+
+It may be well to say here that at this period of the Restoration,
+various bloody encounters had taken place in remote parts of the
+kingdom, caused by this very question of the pillage of woods, and
+the marauding rights which the peasants were everywhere arrogating to
+themselves. Neither the government nor the court liked these outbreaks,
+nor the shedding of blood which resulted from repression. Though they
+felt the necessity of rigorous measures, they nevertheless treated
+as blunderers the officials who were compelled to employ them, and
+dismissed them on the first pretence. The prefects were therefore
+anxious to shuffle out of such difficulties whenever possible.
+
+At the very beginning of the conversation Sarcus (the rich) had made a
+sign to the prefect and the attorney-general which Montcornet did not
+see, but which set the tone of the discussion. The attorney-general was
+well aware of the state of mind of the inhabitants of the valley des
+Aigues through his subordinate, Soudry the young attorney.
+
+“I foresee a terrible struggle,” the latter had said to him. “They mean
+to kill the gendarmes; my spies tell me so. It will be very hard to
+convict them for it. The instant the jury feel they are incurring the
+hatred of the friends of the twenty or thirty prisoners, they will not
+sustain us,--we could not get them to convict for death, nor even for
+the galleys. Possibly by prosecuting in person you might get a few
+years’ imprisonment for the actual murderers. Better shut our eyes
+than open them, if by opening them we bring on a collision which costs
+bloodshed and several thousand francs to the State,--not to speak of the
+cost of keeping the guilty in prison. It is too high a price to pay for
+a victory which will only reveal our judicial weakness to the eyes of
+all.”
+
+Montcornet, who was wholly without suspicion of the strength and
+influence of the Mediocracy in his happy valley, did not even mention
+Gaubertin, whose hand kept these embers of opposition always alive,
+though smouldering. After breakfast the attorney-general took Montcornet
+by the arm and led him to the Prefect’s study. When the general left
+that room after their conference, he wrote to his wife that he was
+starting for Paris and should be absent a week. We shall see, after
+the execution of certain measures suggested by Baron Bourlac, the
+attorney-general, whether the secret advice he gave to Montcornet was
+wise, and whether in conforming to it the count and Les Aigues were
+enabled to escape the “Evil grudge.”
+
+Some minds, eager for mere amusement, will complain that these various
+explanations are far too long; but we once more call attention to the
+fact that the historian of the manners, customs, and morals of his time
+must obey a law far more stringent than that imposed on the historian of
+mere facts. He must show the probability of everything, even the truth;
+whereas, in the domain of history, properly so-called, the impossible
+must be accepted for the sole reason that it did happen. The
+vicissitudes of social or private life are brought about by a crowd of
+little causes derived from a thousand conditions. The man of science
+is forced to clear away the avalanche under which whole villages lie
+buried, to show you the pebbles brought down from the summit which alone
+can determine the formation of the mountain. If the historian of human
+life were simply telling you of a suicide, five hundred of which occur
+yearly in Paris, the melodrama is so commonplace that brief reasons and
+explanations are all that need be given; but how shall he make you see
+that the self-destruction of an estate could happen in these days when
+property is reckoned of more value than life? “De re vestra agitur,”
+ said a maker of fables; this tale concerns the affairs and interests of
+all those, no matter who they be, who possess anything.
+
+Remember that this coalition of a whole canton and of a little town
+against a general, who, in spite of his rash courage, had escaped the
+dangers of actual war, is going on in other districts against other men
+who seek only to do what is right by those districts. It is a coalition
+which to-day threatens every man, the man of genius, the statesman, the
+modern agriculturalist,--in short, all innovators.
+
+This last explanation not only gives a true presentation of the
+personages of this drama, and a serious meaning even to its petty
+details, but it also throws a vivid light upon the scene where so many
+social interests are now marshalling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE SADNESS OF A HAPPY WOMAN
+
+
+At the moment when the general was getting into his caleche to go to the
+Prefecture, the countess and the two gentlemen reached the gate of the
+Avonne, where, for the last eighteen months, Michaud and his wife Olympe
+had made their home.
+
+Whose remembered the pavilion in the state in which we lately described
+it would have supposed it had been rebuilt. The bricks fallen or broken
+by time, and the cement lacking to their edges, were replaced; the slate
+roof had been cleaned, and the effect of the white balustrade against
+its bluish background restored the gay character of the architecture.
+The approaches to the building, formerly choked up and sandy, were now
+cared for by the man whose duty it was to keep the park roadways
+in order. The poultry-yard, stables, and cow-shed, relegated to the
+buildings near the pheasantry and hidden by clumps of trees, instead
+of afflicting the eye with their foul details, now blended those soft
+murmurs and cooings and the sound of flapping wings, which are among
+the most delightful accompaniments of Nature’s eternal harmony, with the
+peculiar rustling sounds of the forest. The whole scene possessed the
+double charm of a natural, untouched forest and the elegance of an
+English park. The surroundings of the pavilion, in keeping with its
+own exterior, presented a certain noble, dignified, and cordial effect;
+while the hand of a young and happy woman gave to its interior a
+very different look from what it wore under the coarse neglect of
+Courtecuisse.
+
+Just now the rich season of the year was putting forth its natural
+splendors. The perfume of the flowerbeds blended with the wild odor of
+the woods; and the meadows near by, where the grass had been lately cut,
+sent up the fragrance of new-mown hay.
+
+When the countess and her guests reached the end of one of the winding
+paths which led to the pavilion, they saw Madame Michaud, sitting in the
+open air before the door, employed in making a baby’s garment. The young
+woman thus placed, thus employed, added the human charm that was needed
+to complete the scene,--a charm so touching in its actuality that
+painters have committed the error of endeavoring to convey it in their
+pictures. Such artists forget that the SOUL of a landscape, if they
+represent it truly, is so grand that the human element is crushed by it;
+whereas such a scene added to Nature limits her to the proportions
+of the personality, like a frame to which the mind of the spectator
+confines it. When Poussin, the Raffaelle of France, made a landscape
+accessory to his Shepherds of Arcadia he perceived plainly enough that
+man becomes diminutive and abject when Nature is made the principal
+feature on a canvas. In that picture August is in its glory, the harvest
+is ready, all simple and strong human interests are represented. There
+we find realized in nature the dream of many men whose uncertain life of
+mingled good and evil harshly mixed makes them long for peace and rest.
+
+Let us now relate, in few words, the romance of this home. Justin
+Michaud did not reply very cordially to the advances made to him by the
+illustrious colonel of cuirassiers when first offered the situation of
+bailiff at Les Aigues. He was then thinking of re-entering the service.
+But while the negotiations, which naturally took him to the Hotel
+Montcornet, were going on, he met the countess’s head waiting-maid. This
+young girl, who was entrusted to Madame de Montcornet by her parents,
+worthy farmers in the neighborhood of Alencon, had hopes of a little
+fortune, some twenty or thirty thousand francs, when the heirs were all
+of age. Like other farmers who marry young, and whose own parents are
+still living, the father and mother of the girl, being pinched
+for immediate means, placed her with the young countess. Madame de
+Montcornet had her taught to sew and to make dresses, arranged that she
+should take her meals alone, and was rewarded for the care she bestowed
+on Olympe Charel by one of those unconditional attachments which are so
+precious to Parisians.
+
+Olympe Charel, a pretty Norman girl, rather stout, with fair hair of
+a golden tint, an animated face lighted by intelligent eyes, and
+distinguished by a finely curved thoroughbred nose, with a maidenly
+air in spite of a certain swaying Spanish manner of carrying herself,
+possessed all the points that a young girl born just above the level
+of the masses is likely to acquire from whatever close companionship a
+mistress is willing to allow her. Always suitably dressed, with modest
+bearing and manner, and able to express herself well, Michaud was soon
+in love with her,--all the more when he found that his sweetheart’s
+dowry would one day be considerable. The obstacles came from the
+countess, who could not bear to part with so invaluable a maid; but when
+Montcornet explained to her the affairs at Les Aigues, she gave way, and
+the marriage was no longer delayed, except to obtain the consent of the
+parents, which, of course, was quickly given.
+
+Michaud, like his general, looked upon his wife as a superior being, to
+whom he owed military obedience without a single reservation. He found
+in the peace of his home and his busy life out-of-doors the elements
+of a happiness soldiers long for when they give up their
+profession,--enough work to keep his body healthy, enough fatigue to
+let him know the charms of rest. In spite of his well-known intrepidity,
+Michaud had never been seriously wounded, and he had none of those
+physical pains which often sour the temper of veterans. Like all really
+strong men, his temper was even; his wife, therefore, loved him utterly.
+From the time they took up their abode in the pavilion, this happy home
+was the scene of a long honey-moon in harmony with Nature and with the
+art whose creations surrounded them,--a circumstance rare indeed! The
+things about us are seldom in keeping with the condition of our souls!
+
+The picture was so pretty that the countess stopped short and pointed
+it out to Blondet and the abbe; for they could see Madame Michaud from
+where they stood, without her seeing them.
+
+“I always come this way when I walk in the park,” said the countess,
+softly. “I delight in looking at the pavilion and its two turtle-doves,
+as much as I delight in a fine view.”
+
+She leaned significantly on Blondet’s arm, as if to make him share
+sentiments too delicate for words but which all women feel.
+
+“I wish I were a gate-keeper at Les Aigues,” said Blondet, smiling.
+“Why! what troubles you?” he added, noticing an expression of sadness on
+the countess’s face.
+
+“Nothing,” she replied.
+
+Women are always hiding some important thought when they say,
+hypocritically, “It is nothing.”
+
+“A woman may be the victim of ideas which would seem very flimsy to
+you,” she added, “but which, to us, are terrible. As for me, I envy
+Olympe’s lot.”
+
+“God hears you,” said the abbe, smiling as though to soften the
+sternness of his remark.
+
+Madame de Montcornet grew seriously uneasy when she noticed an
+expression of fear and anxiety in Olympe’s face and attitude. By the
+way a woman draws out her needle or sets her stitches another woman
+understands her thoughts. In fact, though wearing a rose-colored dress,
+with her hair carefully braided about her head, the bailiff’s wife was
+thinking of matters that were out of keeping with her pretty dress,
+the glorious day, and the work her hands were engaged on. Her beautiful
+brow, and the glance she turned sometimes on the ground at her feet,
+sometimes on the foliage around, evidently seeing nothing, betrayed some
+deep anxiety,--all the more unconsciously because she supposed herself
+alone.
+
+“Just as I was envying her! What can have saddened her?” whispered the
+countess to the abbe.
+
+“Madame,” he replied in the same tone, “tell me why man is often seized
+with vague and unaccountable presentiments of evil in the very midst of
+some perfect happiness?”
+
+“Abbe!” said Blondet, smiling, “you talk like a bishop. Napoleon said,
+‘Nothing is stolen, all is bought!’”
+
+“Such a maxim, uttered by those imperial lips, takes the proportions of
+society itself,” replied the priest.
+
+“Well, Olympe, my dear girl, what is the matter?” said the countess
+going up to her former maid. “You seem sad and thoughtful; is it a
+lover’s quarrel?”
+
+Madame Michaud’s face, as she rose, changed completely.
+
+“My dear,” said Emile Blondet, in a fatherly tone, “I should like to
+know what clouds that brow of yours, in this pavilion where you are
+almost as well lodged as the Comte d’Artois at the Tuileries. It is
+like a nest of nightingales in a grove! And what a husband we have!--the
+bravest fellow of the young garde, and a handsome one, who loves us to
+distraction! If I had known the advantages Montcornet has given you here
+I should have left my diatribing business and made myself a bailiff.”
+
+“It is not the place for a man of your talent, monsieur,” replied
+Olympe, smiling at Blondet as an old acquaintance.
+
+“But what troubles you, dear?” said the countess.
+
+“Madame, I’m afraid--”
+
+“Afraid! of what?” said the countess, eagerly; for the word reminded her
+of Mouche and Fourchon.
+
+“Afraid of the wolves, is that it?” said Emile, making Madame Michaud a
+sign, which she did not understand.
+
+“No, monsieur,--afraid of the peasants. I was born in Le Perche, where
+of course there are some bad people, but I had no idea how wicked people
+could be until I came here. I try not to meddle in Michaud’s affairs,
+but I do know that he distrusts the peasants so much that he goes armed,
+even in broad daylight, when he enters the forest. He warns his men to
+be always on the alert. Every now and then things happen about here
+that bode no good. The other day I was walking along the wall, near
+the source of that little sandy rivulet which comes from the forest
+and enters the park through a culvert about five hundred feet from
+here,--you know it, madame? it is called Silver Spring, because of the
+star-flowers Bouret is said to have sown there. Well, I overheard the
+talk of two women who were washing their linen just where the path to
+Conches crosses the brook; they did not know I was there. Our house can
+be seen from that point, and one old woman pointed it out to the other,
+saying: ‘See what a lot of money they have spent on the man who turned
+out Courtecuisse.’ ‘They ought to pay a man well when they set him to
+harass poor people as that man does,’ answered the other. ‘Well, it
+won’t be for long,’ said the first one; ‘the thing is going to end soon.
+We have a right to our wood. The late Madame allowed us to take it.
+That’s thirty years ago, so the right is ours.’ ‘We’ll see what we shall
+see next winter,’ replied the second. ‘My man has sworn the great oath
+that all the gendarmerie in the world sha’n’t keep us from getting our
+wood; he says he means to get it himself, and if the worst happens so
+much the worse for them!’ ‘Good God!’ cried the other; ‘we can’t die
+of cold, and we must bake bread to eat! They want for nothing, _those
+others_! the wife of that scoundrel of a Michaud will be taken care of,
+I warrant you!’ And then, Madame, they said such horrible things of me
+and of you and of Monsieur le comte; and they finally declared that the
+farms would all be burned, and then the chateau.”
+
+“Bah!” said Emile, “idle talk! They have been robbing the general,
+and they will not be allowed to rob him any longer. These people are
+furious, that’s the whole of it. You must remember that the law and the
+government are always strongest everywhere, even in Burgundy. In case
+of an outbreak the general could bring a regiment of cavalry here, if
+necessary.”
+
+The abbe made a sign to Madame Michaud from behind the countess, telling
+her to say no more about her fears, which were doubtless the effect
+of that second sight which true passion bestows. The soul, dwelling
+exclusively on one only being, grasps in the end the moral elements that
+surround it, and sees in them the makings of the future. The woman who
+loves feels the same presentiments that later illuminate her motherhood.
+Hence a certain melancholy, a certain inexplicable sadness which
+surprises men, who are one and all distracted from any such
+concentration of their souls by the cares of life and the continual
+necessity for action. All true love becomes to a woman an active
+contemplation, which is more or less lucid, more or less profound,
+according to her nature.
+
+“Come, my dear, show your home to Monsieur Emile,” said the countess,
+whose mind was so pre-occupied that she forgot La Pechina, who was the
+ostensible object of her visit.
+
+The interior of the restored pavilion was in keeping with its exterior.
+On the ground-floor the old divisions had been replaced, and the
+architect, sent from Paris with his own workmen (a cause of bitter
+complaint in the neighborhood against the master of Les Aigues), had
+made four rooms out of the space. First, an ante-chamber, at the farther
+end of which was a winding wooden staircase, behind which came the
+kitchen; on either side of the antechamber was a dining-room and a
+parlor panelled in oak now nearly black, with armorial bearings in the
+divisions of the ceilings. The architect chosen by Madame de Montcornet
+for the restoration of Les Aigues had taken care to put the furniture of
+this room in keeping with its original decoration.
+
+At the time of which we write fashion had not yet given an exaggerated
+value to the relics of past ages. The carved settee, the high-backed
+chairs covered with tapestry, the consoles, the clocks, the tall
+embroidery frames, the tables, the lustres, hidden away in the
+second-hand shops of Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes were fifty per-cent
+cheaper than the modern, ready-made furniture of the faubourg Saint
+Antoine. The architect had therefore bought two or three cartloads of
+well-chosen old things, which, added to a few others discarded at the
+chateau, made the little salon of the gate of the Avonne an artistic
+creation. As to the dining-room, he painted it in browns and hung it
+with what was called a Scotch paper, and Madame Michaud added white
+cambric curtains with green borders at the windows, mahogany chairs
+covered with green cloth, two large buffets and a table, also in
+mahogany. This room, ornamented with engravings of military scenes, was
+heated by a porcelain stove, on each side of which were sporting-guns
+suspended on the walls. These adornments, which cost but little, were
+talked of throughout the whole valley as the last extreme of oriental
+luxury. Singular to say, they, more than anything else, excited the
+envy of Gaubertin, and whenever he thought of his fixed determination
+to bring Les Aigues to the hammer and cut it in pieces, he reserved for
+himself, “in petto,” this beautiful pavilion.
+
+On the next floor three chambers sufficed for the household. At the
+windows were muslin curtains which reminded a Parisian of the particular
+taste and fancy of bourgeois requirements. Left to herself in the
+decoration of these rooms, Madame Michaud had chosen satin papers; on
+the mantel-shelf of her bedroom--which was furnished in that vulgar
+style of mahogany and Utrecht velvet which is seen everywhere, with
+its high-backed bed and canopy to which embroidered muslin curtains are
+fastened--stood an alabaster clock between two candelabra covered with
+gauze and flanked by two vases filled with artificial flowers protected
+by glass shades, a conjugal gift of the former cavalry sergeant. Above,
+under the roof, the bedrooms of the cook, the man-of-all-work, and La
+Pechina had benefited by the recent restoration.
+
+“Olympe, my dear, you did not tell me all,” said the countess, entering
+Madame Michaud’s bedroom, and leaving Emile and the abbe on the
+stairway, whence they descended when they heard her shut the door.
+
+Madame Michaud, to whom the abbe had contrived to whisper a word, was
+now anxious to say no more about her fears, which were really greater
+than she had intimated, and she therefore began to talk of a matter
+which reminded the countess of the object of her visit.
+
+“I love Michaud, madame, as you know. Well, how would you like to have,
+in your own house, a rival always beside you?”
+
+“A rival?”
+
+“Yes, madame; that swarthy girl you gave me to take care of loves
+Michaud without knowing it, poor thing! The child’s conduct, long a
+mystery to me, has been cleared up in my mind for some days.”
+
+“Why, she is only thirteen years old!”
+
+“I know that, madame. But you will admit that a woman who is three
+months pregnant and means to nurse her child herself may have some
+fears; but as I did not want to speak of this before those gentlemen,
+I talked a great deal of nonsense when you questioned me,” said the
+generous creature, adroitly.
+
+Madame Michaud was not really afraid of Genevieve Niseron, but for
+the last three days she was in mortal terror of some disaster from the
+peasantry.
+
+“How did you discover this?” said the countess.
+
+“From everything and from nothing,” replied Olympe. “The poor little
+thing moves with the slowness of a tortoise when she is obliged to
+obey me, but she runs like a lizard when Justin asks for anything, she
+trembles like a leaf at the sound of his voice; and her face is that of
+a saint ascending to heaven when she looks at him. But she knows nothing
+about love; she has no idea that she loves him.”
+
+“Poor child!” said the countess with a smile and tone that were full of
+naivete.
+
+“And so,” continued Madame Michaud, answering with a smile the smile of
+her late mistress, “Genevieve is gloomy when Justin is out of the house;
+if I ask her what she is thinking of she replies that she is afraid
+of Monsieur Rigou, or some such nonsense. She thinks people envy her,
+though she is as black as the inside of a chimney. When Justin is
+patrolling the woods at night the child is as anxious as I am. If I
+open my window to listen for the trot of his horse, I see a light in her
+room, which shows me that La Pechina (as they call here) is watching and
+waiting too. She never goes to bed, any more than I do, till he comes
+in.”
+
+“Thirteen!” exclaimed the countess; “unfortunate child!”
+
+“Unfortunate? no. This passion will save her.”
+
+“From what?” asked Madame de Montcornet.
+
+“From the fate which overtakes nearly all the girls of her age in these
+parts. Since I have taught her cleanliness she is much less ugly than
+she was; in fact, there is something odd and wild about her which
+attracts men. She is so changed that you would hardly recognize her. The
+son of that infamous innkeeper of the Grand-I-Vert, Nicolas, the worst
+fellow in the whole district, wants her; he hunts her like game. Though
+I can’t believe that Monsieur Rigou, who changes his servant-girls every
+year or two is persecuting such a little fright, it is quite certain
+that Nicolas Tonsard is. Justin told me so. It would be a dreadful fate,
+for the people of this valley actually live like beasts; but Justin and
+our two servants and I watch her carefully. Therefore don’t be uneasy,
+madame; she never goes out alone except in broad daylight, and then only
+as far as the gate of Conches. If by chance she fell into an ambush, her
+feeling for Justin would give her strength and wit to escape; for all
+women who have a preference in their hearts can resist a man they hate.”
+
+“It was about her that I came,” said the countess, “and I little thought
+my visit could be so useful to you. That child, you know, can’t remain
+thirteen; and she will probably grow better-looking.”
+
+“Oh, madame,” replied Olympe, smiling, “I am quite sure of Justin. What
+a man! what a heart!--If you only knew what a depth of gratitude he
+feels for his general, to whom, he says, he owes his happiness. He is
+only too devoted; he would risk his life for him here, as he would on
+the field of battle, and he forgets sometimes that he will one day be
+father of a family.”
+
+“Ah! I once regretted losing you,” said the countess, with a glance that
+made Olympe blush; “but I regret it no longer, for I see you happy. What
+a sublime and noble thing is married love!” she added, speaking out the
+thought she had not dared express before the abbe.
+
+Virginie de Troisville dropped into a revery, and Madame Michaud kept
+silence.
+
+“Well, at least the girl is honest, is she not?” said the countess, as
+if waking from a dream.
+
+“As honest as I am myself, madame.”
+
+“Discreet?”
+
+“As the grave.”
+
+“Grateful?”
+
+“Ah! madame; she has moments of humility and gentleness towards me which
+seem to show an angelic nature. She will kiss my hands and say the most
+upsetting things. ‘Can we die of love?’ she asked me yesterday. ‘Why do
+you ask me that?’ I said. ‘I want to know if love is a disease.’”
+
+“Did she really say that?”
+
+“If I could remember her exact words I would tell you a great deal
+more,” replied Olympe; “she appears to know much more than I do.”
+
+“Do you think, my dear, that she could take your place in my service. I
+can’t do without an Olympe,” said the countess, smiling in a rather sad
+way.
+
+“Not yet, madame,--she is too young; but in two years’ time, yes. If it
+becomes necessary that she should go away from here I will let you
+know. She ought to be educated, and she knows nothing of the world.
+Her grandfather, Pere Niseron, is a man who would let his throat be cut
+sooner than tell a lie; he would die of hunger in a baker’s shop; he has
+the strength of his opinions, and the girl was brought up to all such
+principles. La Pechina would consider herself your equal; for the old
+man has made her, as he says, a republican,--just as Pere Fourchon has
+made Mouche a bohemian. As for me, I laugh at such ideas, but you might
+be displeased. She would revere you as her benefactress, but never
+as her superior. It can’t be otherwise; she is wild and free like the
+swallows--her mother’s blood counts for a good deal in what she is.”
+
+“Who was her mother?”
+
+“Doesn’t madame know the story?” said Olympe. “Well, the son of the old
+sexton at Blangy, a splendid fellow, so the people about here tell me,
+was drafted at the great conscription. In 1809 young Niseron was still
+only an artilleryman, in a corps d’armee stationed in Illyria and
+Dalmatia when it received sudden orders to advance through Hungary and
+cut off the retreat of the Austrian army in case the Emperor won the
+battle of Wagram. Michaud told me all about Dalmatia, for he was there.
+Niseron, being so handsome a man, captivated a Montenegrin girl of
+Zahara among the mountains, who was not averse to the French garrison.
+This lost her the good-will of her compatriots, and life in her own
+town became impossible after the departure of the French. Zena Kropoli,
+called in derision the Frenchwoman, followed the artillery, and came to
+France after the peace. Auguste Niseron asked permission to marry her;
+but the poor woman died at Vincennes in January, 1810, after giving
+birth to a daughter, our Genevieve. The papers necessary to make the
+marriage legal arrived a few days later. Auguste Niseron then wrote to
+his father to come and take the child, with a wetnurse he had got from
+its own country; and it was lucky he did, for he was killed soon after
+by the bursting of a shell at Montereau. Registered by the name of
+Genevieve and baptized at Soulanges, the little Dalmatian was taken
+under the protection of Mademoiselle Laguerre, who was touched by her
+story. It seems as if it were the destiny of the child to be taken care
+of by the owners of Les Aigues! Pere Niseron obtained its clothes, and
+now and then some help in money from Mademoiselle.”
+
+The countess and Olympe were just then standing before a window from
+which they could see Michaud approaching the abbe and Blondet, who
+were walking up and down the wide, semi-circular gravelled space which
+repeated on the park side of the pavilion the exterior half-moon; they
+were conversing earnestly.
+
+“Where is she?” said the countess; “you make me anxious to see her.”
+
+“She is gone to carry milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard at the gate of
+Conches; she will soon be back, for it is more than an hour since she
+started.”
+
+“Well, I’ll go and meet her with those gentlemen,” said Madame de
+Montcornet, going downstairs.
+
+Just as the countess opened her parasol, Michaud came up and told her
+that the general had left her a widow for probably two days.
+
+“Monsieur Michaud,” said the countess, eagerly, “don’t deceive me, there
+is something serious going on. Your wife is frightened, and if there
+are many persons like Pere Fourchon, this part of the country will be
+uninhabitable--”
+
+“If it were so, madame,” answered Michaud, laughing, “we should not be
+in the land of the living, for nothing would be easier than to make
+away with us. The peasant’s grumble, that is all. But as to passing from
+growls to blows, from pilfering to crime, they care too much for life
+and the free air of the fields. Olympe has been saying something
+that frightened you, but you know she is in state to be frightened at
+nothing,” he added, drawing his wife’s hand under his arm and pressing
+it to warn her to say no more.
+
+“Cornevin! Juliette!” cried Madame Michaud, who soon saw the head of her
+old cook at the window. “I am going for a little walk; take care of the
+premises.”
+
+Two enormous dogs, who began to bark, proved that the effectiveness of
+the garrison at the gate of the Avonne was not to be despised. Hearing
+the dogs, Cornevin, an old Percheron, Olympe’s foster-father, came from
+behind the trees, showing a head such as no other region than La Perche
+can manufacture. Cornevin was undoubtedly a Chouan in 1794 and 1799.
+
+The whole party accompanied the countess along that one of the six
+forest avenues which led directly to the gate of Conches, crossing
+the Silver-spring rivulet. Madame de Montcornet walked in front with
+Blondet. The abbe and Michaud and his wife talked in a low voice of the
+revelation that had just been made to the countess of the state of the
+country.
+
+“Perhaps it is providential,” said the abbe; “for if madame is willing,
+we might, perhaps, by dint of benefits and constant consideration of
+their wants, change the hearts of these people.”
+
+At about six hundred feet from the pavilion and below the brooke, the
+countess caught sight of a broken red jug and some spilt milk.
+
+“Something has happened to the poor child!” she cried, calling to
+Michaud and his wife, who were returning to the pavilion.
+
+“A misfortune like Perrette’s,” said Blondet, laughing.
+
+“No; the poor child has been surprised and pursued, for the jug was
+thrown outside the path,” said the abbe, examining the ground.
+
+“Yes, that is certainly La Pechina’s step,” said Michaud; “the print of
+the feet, which have turned, you see, quickly, shows sudden terror. The
+child must have darted in the direction of the pavilion, trying to get
+back there.”
+
+Every one followed the traces which the bailiff pointed out as he walked
+along examining them. Presently he stopped in the middle of the path
+about a hundred feet from the broken jug, where the girl’s foot-prints
+ceased.
+
+“Here,” he said, “she turned towards the Avonne; perhaps she was headed
+off from the direction of the pavilion.”
+
+“But she has been gone more than an hour,” cried Madame Michaud.
+
+Alarm was in all faces. The abbe ran towards the pavilion, examining the
+state of the road, while Michaud, impelled by the same thought, went up
+the path towards Conches.
+
+“Good God! she fell here,” said Michaud, returning from a place where
+the footsteps stopped near the brook, to that where they had turned in
+the road, and pointing to the ground, he added, “See!”
+
+The marks were plainly seen of a body lying at full length on the sandy
+path.
+
+“The footprints which have entered the wood are those of some one who
+wore knitted soles,” said the abbe.
+
+“A woman, then,” said the countess.
+
+“Down there, by the broken pitcher, are the footsteps of a man,” added
+Michaud.
+
+“I don’t see traces of any other foot,” said the abbe, who was tracking
+into the wood the prints of the woman’s feet.
+
+“She must have been lifted and carried into the wood,” cried Michaud.
+
+“That can’t be, if it is really a woman’s foot,” said Blondet.
+
+“It must be some trick of that wretch, Nicolas,” said Michaud. “He has
+been watching La Pechina for some time. Only this morning I stood two
+hours under the bridge of the Avonne to see what he was about. A woman
+may have helped him.”
+
+“It is dreadful!” said the countess.
+
+“They call it amusing themselves,” added the priest, in a sad and
+grieved tone.
+
+“Oh! La Pechina would never let them keep her,” said the bailiff; “she
+is quite able to swim across the river. I shall look along the banks. Go
+home, my dear Olympe; and you gentlemen and madame, please to follow the
+avenue towards Conches.”
+
+“What a country!” exclaimed the countess.
+
+“There are scoundrels everywhere,” replied Blondet.
+
+“Is it true, Monsieur l’abbe,” asked Madame de Montcornet, “that I saved
+the poor child from the clutches of Rigou?”
+
+“Every young girl over fiften years of age whom you may protect at the
+chateau is saved from that monster,” said the abbe. “In trying to get
+possession of La Pechina from her earliest years, the apostate sought
+to satisfy both his lust and his vengeance. When I took Pere Niseron
+as sexton I told him what Rigou’s intentions were. That is one of the
+causes of the late mayor’s rancor against me; his hatred grew out of
+it. Pere Niseron said to him solemnly that he would kill him if any harm
+came to Genevieve, and he made him responsible for all attempts upon the
+poor child’s honor. I can’t help thinking that this pursuit of Nicolas
+is the result of some infernal collusion with Rigou, who thinks he can
+do as he likes with these people.”
+
+“Doesn’t he fear the law?”
+
+“In the first place, he is father-in-law of the prosecuting-attorney,”
+ said the abbe, pausing to listen. “And then,” he resumed, “you have no
+conception of the utter indifference of the rural police to what is done
+around them. So long as the peasants do not burn the farm-houses and
+buildings, commit no murders, poison no one, and pay their taxes, they
+let them do as they like; and as these people are not restrained by any
+religious principle, horrible things happen every day. On the other side
+of the Avonne helpless old men are afraid to stay in their own homes,
+for they are allowed nothing to eat; they wander out into the fields
+as far as their tottering legs can bear them, knowing well that if they
+take to their beds they will die for want of food. Monsieur Sarcus, the
+magistrate, tells me that if they arrested and tried all criminals, the
+costs would ruin the municipality.”
+
+“Then he at least sees how things are?” said Blondet.
+
+“Monseigneur thoroughly understands the condition of the valley, and
+especially the state of this district,” continued the abbe. “Religion
+alone can cure such evils; the law seems to me powerless, modified as it
+is now--”
+
+The words were interrupted by loud cries from the woods, and the
+countess, preceded by Emile and the abbe, sprang bravely into the
+brushwood in the direction of the sounds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. THE OARISTYS, EIGHTEENTH ECLOGUE OF THEOCRITUS
+
+LITTLE ADMIRED ON THE POLICE CALENDAR
+
+The sagacity of a savage, which Michaud’s new occupation had developed
+among his faculties, joined to an acquaintance with the passions and
+interests of Blangy, enabled him partially to understand a third idyll
+in the Greek style, which poor villagers like Tonsard, and middle-aged
+rich men like Rigou, translate _freely_--to use the classic word--in the
+depths of their country solitudes.
+
+Nicolas, Tonsard’s second son, had drawn an unlucky number at a recent
+conscription. Two years earlier his elder brother had been pronounced,
+through the influence of Soudry, Gaubertin, and Sarcus the rich, unfit
+for military service, on account of a pretended weakness in the muscles
+of the right arm; but as Jean-Louis had since wielded instruments of
+husbandry with remarkable force and skill, a good deal of talk on the
+subject had gone through the district. Soudry, Rigou, and Gaubertin, who
+were the special protectors of the family, had warned Tonsard that he
+must not expect to save Nicolas, who was tall and vigorous, from being
+recruited if he drew a fatal number. Nevertheless Gaubertin and Rigou
+were so well aware of the importance of conciliating bold men able and
+willing to do mischief, if properly directed against Les Aigues, that
+Rigou held out certain hopes of safety to Tonsard and his son. The late
+monk was occasionally visited by Catherine Tonsard who was very devoted
+to her brother Nicolas; on one such occasion Rigou advised her to appeal
+to the general and the countess.
+
+“They may be glad to do you this service to cajole you; in that case,
+it is just so much gained from the enemy,” he said. “If the Shopman
+refuses, then we shall see what we shall see.”
+
+Rigou foresaw that the general’s refusal would pass as one wrong the
+more done by the land-owner to the peasantry, and would bind Tonsard by
+an additional motive of gratitude to the coalition, in case the crafty
+mind of the innkeeper could suggest to him some plausible way of
+liberating Nicolas.
+
+Nicolas, who was soon to appear before the examining board, had little
+hope of the general’s intervention because of the harm done to Les
+Aigues by all the members of the Tonsard family. His passion, or to
+speak more correctly, his caprice and obstinate pursuit of La Pechina,
+were so aggravated by the prospect of his immediate departure, which
+left him no time to seduce her, that he resolved on attempting violence.
+The child’s contempt for her prosecutor, plainly shown, excited the
+Lovelace of the Grand-I-Vert to a hatred whose fury was equalled only
+by his desires. For the last three days he had been watching La Pechina,
+and the poor child knew she was watched. Between Nicolas and his prey
+the same sort of understanding existed which there is between the
+hunter and the game. When the girl was at some little distance from the
+pavilion she saw Nicolas in one of the paths which ran parallel to the
+walls of the park, leading to the bridge of the Avonne. She could easily
+have escaped the man’s pursuit had she appealed to her grandfather; but
+all young girls, even the most unsophisticated, have a strange fear,
+possibly instinctive, of trusting to their natural protectors under the
+like circumstances.
+
+Genevieve had heard Pere Niseron take an oath to kill any man, no
+matter who he was, who should dare to _touch_ (that was his word) his
+granddaughter. The old man thought the child amply protected by the halo
+of white hair and honor which a spotless life of three-score years and
+ten had laid upon his brow. The vision of bloody scenes terrifies the
+imagination of young girls so that they need not dive to the bottom of
+their hearts for other numerous and inquisitive reasons which seal their
+lips.
+
+When La Pechina started with the milk which Madame Michaud had sent to
+the daughter of Gaillard, the keeper of the gate of Conches, whose cow
+had just calved, she looked about her cautiously, like a cat when it
+ventures out onto the street. She saw no signs of Nicolas; she listened
+to the silence, as the poet says, and hearing nothing, she concluded
+that the rascal had gone to his day’s work. The peasants were just
+beginning to cut the rye; for they were in the habit of getting in their
+own harvests first, so as to benefit by the best strength of the mowers.
+But Nicolas was not a man to mind losing a day’s work,--especially now
+that he expected to leave the country after the fair at Soulanges and
+begin, as the country people say, the new life of a soldier.
+
+When La Pechina, with the jug on her head, was about half-way, Nicolas
+slid like a wild-cat down the trunk of an elm, among the branches of
+which he was hiding, and fell like a thunderbolt in front of the girl,
+who flung away her pitcher and trusted to her fleet legs to regain the
+pavilion. But a hundred feet farther on, Catherine Tonsard, who was on
+the watch, rushed out of the wood and knocked so violently against the
+flying girl that she was thrown down. The violence of the fall made her
+unconscious. Catherine picked her up and carried her into the woods to
+the middle of a tiny meadow where the Silver-spring brook bubbled up.
+
+Catherine Tonsard was tall and strong, and in every respect the type of
+woman whom painters and sculptors take, as the Republic did in former
+days, for their figures of Liberty. She charmed the young men of the
+valley of the Avonne with her voluminous bosom, her muscular legs, and
+a waist as robust as it was flexible; with her plump arms, her eyes that
+could flash and sparkle, and her jaunty air; with the masses of hair
+twisted in coils around her head, her masculine forehead and her red
+lips curling with that same ferocious smile which Eugene Delacroix and
+David (of Angers) caught and represented so admirably. True image of the
+People, this fiery and swarthy creature seemed to emit revolt through
+her piercing yellow eyes, blazing with the insolence of a soldier. She
+inherited from her father so violent a nature that the whole family,
+except Tonsard, and all who frequented the tavern feared her.
+
+“Well, how are you now?” she said to La Pechina as the latter recovered
+consciousness.
+
+Catherine had placed her victim on a little mound beside the brook and
+was bringing her to her senses with dashes of cold water. “Where am I?”
+ said the child, opening her beautiful black eyes through which a sun-ray
+seemed to glide.
+
+“Ah!” said Catherine, “if it hadn’t been for me you’d have been killed.”
+
+“Thank you,” said the girl, still bewildered; “what happened to me?”
+
+“You stumbled over a root and fell flat in the road over there, as if
+shot. Ha! how you did run!”
+
+“It was your brother who made me,” said La Pechina, remembering Nicolas.
+
+“My brother? I did not see him,” said Catherine. “What did he do to you,
+poor fellow, that should make you fly as if he were a wolf? Isn’t he
+handsomer than your Monsieur Michaud?”
+
+“Oh!” said the girl, contemptuously.
+
+“See here, little one; you are laying up a crop of evils for yourself by
+loving those who persecute us. Why don’t you keep to our side?”
+
+“Why don’t you come to church; and why do you steal things night and
+day?” asked the child.
+
+“So you let those people talk you over!” sneered Catherine. “They love
+us, don’t they?--just as they love their food which they get out of us,
+and they want new dishes every day. Did you ever know one of them to
+marry a peasant-girl? Not they! Does Sarcus the rich let his son marry
+that handsome Gatienne Giboulard? Not he, though she is the daughter of
+a rich upholsterer. You have never been at the Tivoli ball at Soulanges
+in Socquard’s tavern; you had better come. You’ll see ‘em all there,
+these bourgeois fellows, and you’ll find they are not worth the money we
+shall get out of them when we’ve pulled them down. Come to the fair this
+year!”
+
+“They say it’s fine, that Soulanges fair!” cried La Pechina, artlessly.
+
+“I’ll tell you what it is in two words,” said Catherine. “If you are
+handsome, you are well ogled. What is the good of being as pretty as you
+are if you are not admired by the men? Ha! when I heard one of them say
+for the first time, ‘What a fine sprig of a girl!’ all my blood was on
+fire. It was at Socquard’s, in the middle of a dance; my grandfather,
+Fourchon, who was playing the clarionet, heard it and laughed. Tivoli
+seemed to me as grand and fine as heaven itself. It’s lighted up, my
+dear, with glass lamps, and you’ll think you are in paradise. All the
+gentlemen of Soulanges and Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes will be there.
+Ever since that first night I’ve loved the place where those words rang
+in my ears like military music. It’s worthy giving your eternity to hear
+such words said of you by a man you love.”
+
+“Yes, perhaps,” replied La Pechina, thoughtfully.
+
+“Then come, and get the praise of men; you’re sure of it!” cried
+Catherine. “Ha! you’ll have a fine chance, handsome as you are, to pick
+up good luck. There’s the son of Monsieur Lupin, Amaury, he might marry
+you. But that’s not all; if you only knew what comforts you can find
+there against vexation and worry. Why, Socquard’s boiled wine will make
+you forget every trouble you ever had. Fancy! it can make you dream,
+and feel as light as a bird. Didn’t you ever drink boiled wine? Then you
+don’t know what life is.”
+
+The privilege enjoyed by older persons to wet their throats with boiled
+wine excites the curiosity of the children of the peasantry over twelve
+years of age to such a degree that Genevieve had once put her lips to a
+glass of boiled wine ordered by the doctor for her grandfather when ill.
+The taste had left a sort of magic influence in the memory of the poor
+child, which may explain the interest with which she listened, and on
+which the evil-minded Catherine counted to carry out a plan already
+half-successful. No doubt she was trying to bring her victim, giddy from
+the fall, to the moral intoxication so dangerous to young women
+living in the wilds of nature, whose imagination, deprived of other
+nourishment, is all the more ardent when the occasion comes to exercise
+it. Boiled wine, which Catherine had held in reserve, was to end the
+matter by intoxicating the victim.
+
+“What do they put into it?” asked La Pechina.
+
+“All sorts of things,” replied Catherine, glancing back to see if her
+brother were coming; “in the first place, those what d’ ye call ‘ems
+that come from India, cinnamon, and herbs that change you by magic,--you
+fancy you have everything you wish for; boiled wine makes you happy! you
+can snap your fingers at all your troubles!”
+
+“I should be afraid to drink boiled wine at a dance,” said La Pechina.
+
+“Afraid of what?” asked Catherine. “There’s not the slightest danger.
+Think what lots of people there will be. All the bourgeois will be
+looking at us! Ah! it is one of those days that make up for all our
+misery. See it and die,--for it’s enough to satisfy any one.”
+
+“If Monsieur and Madame Michaud would only take me!” cried La Pechina,
+her eyes blazing.
+
+“Ask your grandfather Niseron; you have not given him up, poor dear man,
+and he’d be pleased to see you admired like a little queen. Why do you
+like those Arminacs the Michauds better than your grandfather and the
+Burgundians. It’s bad to neglect your own people. Besides, why should
+the Michauds object if your grandfather takes you to the fair? Oh! if
+you knew what it is to reign over a man and put him beside himself, and
+say to him, as I say to Godain, ‘Go there!’ and he goes, ‘Do that!’
+and he does it! You’ve got it in you, little one, to turn the head of a
+bourgeois like that son of Monsieur Lupin. Monsieur Amaury took a fancy
+to my sister Marie because she is fair and because he is half-afraid of
+me; but he’d adore you, for ever since those people at the pavilion have
+spruced you up a bit you’ve got the airs of an empress.”
+
+Adroitly leading the innocent heart to forget Nicolas and so put it off
+its guard, Catherine distilled into the girl the insidious nectar of
+compliments. Unawares, she touched a secret wound. La Pechina, without
+being other than a poor peasant girl, was a specimen of alarming
+precocity, like many another creature doomed to die as prematurely as it
+blooms. Strange product of Burgundian and Montenegrin blood, conceived
+and born amid the toils of war, the girl was doubtless in many ways
+the result of her congenital circumstances. Thin, slender, brown as
+a tobacco leaf, and short in stature, she nevertheless possessed
+extraordinary strength,--a strength unseen by the eyes of peasants, to
+whom the mysteries of the nervous system are unknown. Nerves are not
+admitted into the medical rural mind.
+
+At thirteen years of age Genevieve had completed her growth, though she
+was hardly as tall as an ordinary girl of her age. Did her face owe its
+topaz skin, so dark and yet so brilliant, dark in tone and brilliant in
+the quality of its tissue, giving a look of age to the childish face,
+to her Montenegrin origin, or to the ardent sun of Burgundy? Medical
+science may dismiss the inquiry. The premature old age on the surface of
+the face was counterbalanced by the glow, the fire, the wealth of light
+which made the eyes two stars. Like all eyes which fill with sunlight
+and need, perhaps, some sheltering screen, the eyelids were fringed with
+lashes of extraordinary length. The hair, of a bluish black, long and
+fine and abundant, crowned a brow moulded like that of the Farnese
+Juno. That magnificent diadem of hair, those grand Armenian eyes, that
+celestial brow eclipsed the rest of the face. The nose, though pure in
+form as it left the brow, and graceful in curve, ended in flattened and
+flaring nostrils. Anger increased this effect at times, and then the
+face wore an absolutely furious expression. All the lower part of the
+face, like the lower part of the nose, seemed unfinished, as if the clay
+in the hands of the divine sculptor had proved insufficient. Between
+the lower lip and the chin the space was so short that any one taking La
+Pechina by the chin would have rubbed the lip; but the teeth prevented
+all notice of this defect. One might almost believe those little bones
+had souls, so brilliant were they, so polished, so transparent, so
+exquisitely shaped, disclosed as they were by too wide a mouth, curved
+in lines that bore resemblance to the fantastic shapes of coral. The
+shells of the ears were so transparent to the light that in the sunshine
+they were rose-colored. The complexion, though sun-burned, showed a
+marvellous delicacy in the texture of the skin. If, as Buffon declared,
+love lies in touch, the softness of the girl’s skin must have had the
+penetrating and inciting influence of the fragrance of daturas. The
+chest and indeed the whole body was alarmingly thin; but the feet and
+hands, of alluring delicacy, showed remarkable nervous power, and a
+vigorous organism.
+
+This mixture of diabolical imperfections and divine beauties, harmonious
+in spite of discords, for they blended in a species of savage dignity,
+also this triumph of a powerful soul over a feeble body, as written in
+those eyes, made the child, when once seen, unforgettable. Nature had
+wished to make that frail young being a woman; the circumstances of her
+conception moulded her with the face and body of a boy. A poet observing
+the strange creature would have declared her native clime to be Arabia
+the Blest; she belonged to the Afrite and Genii of Arabian tales.
+Her face told no lies. She had the soul of that glance of fire, the
+intellect of those lips made brilliant by the bewitching teeth, the
+thought enshrined within that glorious brow, the passion of those
+nostrils ready at all moments to snort flame. Therefore love, such as
+we imagine it on burning sands, in lonely deserts, filled that heart
+of twenty in the breast of a child, doomed, like the snowy heights of
+Montenegro, to wear no flowers of the spring.
+
+Observers ought now to understand how it was that La Pechina, from whom
+passion issued by every pore, awakened in perverted natures the feelings
+deadened by abuse; just as water fills the mouth at sight of those
+twisted, blotched, and speckled fruits which gourmands know by
+experience, and beneath whose skin nature has put the rarest flavors and
+perfumes. Why did Nicolas, that vulgar laborer, pursue this being who
+was worthy of a poet, while the eyes of the country-folk pitied her as
+a sickly deformity? Why did Rigou, the old man, feel the passion of a
+young one for this girl? Which of the two men was young, and which was
+old? Was the young peasant as blase as the old usurer? Why did these two
+extremes of life meet in one common and devilish caprice? Does the vigor
+that draws to its close resemble the vigor that is only dawning? The
+moral perversities of men are gulfs guarded by sphinxes; they begin and
+end in questions to which there is no answer.
+
+The exclamation, formerly quoted, of the countess, “Piccina!” when
+she first saw Genevieve by the roadside, open-mouthed at sight of the
+carriage and the elegantly dressed woman within it, will be understood.
+This girl, almost a dwarf, of Montenegrin vigor, loved the handsome,
+noble bailiff, as children of her age love, when they do love, that is
+to say, with childlike passion, with the strength of youth, with the
+devotion which in truly virgin souls gives birth to divinest poesy.
+Catherine had just swept her coarse hands across the sensitive strings
+of that choice harp, strung to the breaking-point. To dance before
+Michaud, to shine at the Soulanges ball and inscribe herself on the
+memory of that adored master! What glorious thoughts! To fling them into
+that volcanic head was like casting live coals upon straw dried in the
+August sun.
+
+“No, Catherine,” replied La Pechina, “I am ugly and puny; my lot is to
+sit in a corner and never to be married, but live alone in the world.”
+
+“Men like weaklings,” said Catherine. “You see me, don’t you?” she
+added, showing her handsome, strong arms. “I please Godain, who is a
+poor stick; I please that little Charles, the count’s groom; but Lupin’s
+son is afraid of me. I tell you it is the small kind of men who love me,
+and who say when they see me go by at Ville-aux-Fayes and at Soulanges,
+‘Ha! what a fine girl!’ Now YOU, that’s another thing; you’ll please the
+fine men.”
+
+“Ah! Catherine, if it were true--that!” cried the bewitched child.
+
+“It is true, it is so true that Nicolas, the handsomest man in the
+canton, is mad about you; he dreams of you, he is losing his mind;
+and yet all the other girls are in love with him. He is a fine lad! If
+you’ll put on a white dress and yellow ribbons, and come to Socquard’s
+for the midsummer ball, you’ll be the handsomest girl there, and all
+the fine people from Ville-aux-Fayes will see you. Come, won’t you?--See
+here, I’ve been cutting grass for the cows, and I brought some boiled
+wine in my gourd; Socquard gave it me this morning,” she added quickly,
+seeing the half-delirious expression in La Pechina’s eyes which women
+understand so well. “We’ll share it together, and you’ll fancy the men
+are in love with you.”
+
+During this conversation Nicolas, choosing the grassy spots to step on,
+had noiselessly slipped behind the trunk of an old oak near which his
+sister had seated La Pechina. Catherine, who had now and then cast her
+eyes behind her, saw her brother as she turned to get the boiled wine.
+
+“Here, take some,” she said, offering it.
+
+“It burns me!” cried Genevieve, giving back the gourd, after taking two
+or three swallows from it.
+
+“Silly child!” replied Catherine; “see here!” and she emptied the rustic
+bottle without taking breath. “See how it slips down; it goes like a
+sunbeam into the stomach.”
+
+“But I ought to be carrying the milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard,” cried
+Genevieve; “and it is all spilt! Nicolas frightened me so!”
+
+“Don’t you like Nicolas?”
+
+“No,” answered Genevieve. “Why does he persecute me? He can get plenty
+other girls, who are willing.”
+
+“But if he likes you better than all the other girls in the valley--”
+
+“So much the worse for him.”
+
+“I see you don’t know him,” answered Catherine, as she seized the girl
+rapidly by the waist and flung her on the grass, holding her down in
+that position with her strong arms. At this moment Nicolas appeared.
+Seeing her odious persecutor, the child screamed with all her might, and
+drove him five feet away with a violent kick in the stomach; then she
+twisted herself like an acrobat, with a dexterity for which Catherine
+was not prepared, and rose to run away. Catherine, still on the
+ground, caught her by one foot and threw her headlong on her face. This
+frightful fall stopped the brave child’s cries for a moment. Nicolas
+attempted, furiously, to seize his victim, but she, though giddy from
+the wine and the fall, caught him by the throat in a grip of iron.
+
+“Help! she’s strangling me, Catherine,” cried Nicolas, in a stifled
+voice.
+
+La Pechina uttered piercing screams, which Catherine tried to choke
+by putting her hands over the girl’s mouth, but she bit them and drew
+blood. It was at this moment that Blondet, the countess, and the abbe
+appeared at the edge of the wood.
+
+“Here are those Aigues people!” exclaimed Catherine, helping Genevieve
+to rise.
+
+“Do you want to live?” hissed Nicolas in the child’s ear.
+
+“What then?” she asked.
+
+“Tell them we were all playing, and I’ll forgive you,” said Nicolas, in
+a threatening voice.
+
+“Little wretch, mind you say it!” repeated Catherine, whose glance was
+more terrifying than her brother’s murderous threat.
+
+“Yes, I will, if you let me alone,” replied the child. “But anyhow I
+will never go out again without my scissors.”
+
+“You are to hold your tongue, or I’ll drown you in the Avonne,” said
+Catherine, ferociously.
+
+“You are monsters,” cried the abbe, coming up; “you ought to be arrested
+and taken to the assizes.”
+
+“Ha! and pray what do you do in your drawing-rooms?” said Nicolas,
+looking full at the countess and Blondet. “You play and amuse
+yourselves, don’t you? Well, so do we, in the fields which are ours.
+We can’t always work; we must play sometimes,--ask my sister and La
+Pechina.”
+
+“How do you fight if you call that playing?” cried Blondet.
+
+Nicolas gave him a murderous look.
+
+“Speak!” said Catherine, gripping La Pechina by the forearm and leaving
+a blue bracelet on the flesh. “Were not we amusing ourselves?”
+
+“Yes, madame, we were amusing ourselves,” said the child, exhausted by
+her display of strength, and now breaking down as though she were about
+to faint.
+
+“You hear what she says, madame,” said Catherine, boldly, giving the
+countess one of those looks which women give each other like dagger
+thrusts.
+
+She took her brother’s arm, and the pair walked off, not mistaking the
+opinion they left behind them in the minds of the three persons who had
+interrupted the scene. Nicolas twice looked back, and twice encountered
+Blondet’s gaze. The journalist continued to watch the tall scoundrel,
+who was broad in the shoulders, healthy and vigorous in complexion, with
+black hair curling tightly, and whose rather soft face showed upon
+its lips and around the mouth certain lines which reveal the peculiar
+cruelty that characterizes sluggards and voluptuaries. Catherine swung
+her petticoat, striped blue and white, with an air of insolent coquetry.
+
+“Cain and his wife!” said Blondet to the abbe.
+
+“You are nearer the truth than you know,” replied the priest.
+
+“Ah! Monsieur le cure, what will they do to me?” said La Pechina, when
+the brother and sister were out of sight.
+
+The countess, as white as her handkerchief, was so overcome that she
+heard neither Blondet nor the abbe nor La Pechina.
+
+“It is enough to drive one from this terrestrial paradise,” she said
+at last. “But the first thing of all is to save that child from their
+claws.”
+
+“You are right,” said Blondet in a low voice. “That child is a poem, a
+living poem.”
+
+Just then the Montenegrin girl was in a state where soul and body smoke,
+as it were, after the conflagration of an anger which has driven all
+forces, physical and intellectual, to their utmost tension. It is an
+unspeakable and supreme splendor, which reveals itself only under the
+pressure of some frenzy, be it resistance or victory, love or martyrdom.
+She had left home in a dress with alternate lines of brown and yellow,
+and a collarette which she pleated herself by rising before daylight;
+and she had not yet noticed the condition of her gown soiled by her
+struggle on the grass, and her collar torn in Catherine’s grasp. Feeling
+her hair hanging loose, she looked about her for a comb. At this moment
+Michaud, also attracted by the screams, came upon the scene. Seeing her
+god, La Pechina recovered her full strength. “Monsieur Michaud,” she
+cried, “he did not even touch me!”
+
+The cry, the look, the action of the girl were an eloquent commentary,
+and told more to Blondet and the abbe than Madame Michaud had told the
+countess about the passion of that strange nature for the bailiff, who
+was utterly unconscious of it.
+
+“The scoundrel!” cried Michaud.
+
+Then, with an involuntary and impotent gesture, such as mad men and wise
+men can both be forced into giving, he shook his fist in the direction
+in which he had caught sight of Nicolas disappearing with his sister.
+
+“Then you were not playing?” said the abbe with a searching look at La
+Pechina.
+
+“Don’t fret her,” interposed the countess; “let us return to the
+pavilion.”
+
+Genevieve, though quite exhausted, found strength under Michaud’s eyes
+to walk. The countess followed the bailiff through one of the by-paths
+known to keepers and poachers where only two can go abreast, and which
+led to the gate of the Avonne.
+
+“Michaud,” said the countess when they reached the depth of the wood,
+“We must find some way of ridding the neighborhood of such vile people;
+that child is actually in danger of death.”
+
+“In the first place,” replied Michaud, “Genevieve shall not leave the
+pavilion. My wife will be glad to take the nephew of Vatel, who has the
+care of the park roads, into the house. With Gounod (that is his name)
+and old Cornevin, my wife’s foster-father, always at hand, La Pechina
+need never go out without a protector.”
+
+“I will tell Monsieur to make up this extra expense to you,” said the
+countess. “But this does not rid us of that Nicolas. How can we manage
+that?”
+
+“The means are easy and right at hand,” answered Michaud. “Nicolas is to
+appear very soon before the court of appeals on the draft. The general,
+instead of asking for his release, as the Tonsards expect, has only to
+advise his being sent to the army--”
+
+“If necessary, I will go myself,” said the countess, “and see my cousin,
+de Casteran, the prefect. But until then, I tremble for that child--”
+
+The words were said at the end of the path close to the open space by
+the bridge. As they reached the edge of the bank the countess gave a
+cry; Michaud advanced to help her, thinking she had struck her foot
+against a stone; but he shuddered at the sight that met his eyes.
+
+Marie Tonsard and Bonnebault, seated below the bank, seemed to be
+conversing, but were no doubt hiding there to hear what passed.
+Evidently they had left the wood as the party advanced towards them.
+
+Bonnebault, a tall, wiry fellow, had lately returned to Conches after
+six years’ service in the cavalry, with a permanent discharge due to
+his evil conduct,--his example being likely to ruin better men. He wore
+moustachios and a small chin-tuft; a peculiarity which, joined to his
+military carriage, made him the reigning fancy of all the girls in the
+valley. His hair, in common with that of other soldiers, was cut very
+short behind, but he frizzed it on the top of his head, brushing up the
+ends with a dandy air; on it his foraging cap was jauntily tilted to one
+side. Compared to the peasants, who were mostly in rags, like Mouche
+and Fourchon, he seemed gorgeous in his linen trousers, boots, and short
+waistcoat. These articles, bought at the time of his liberation, were,
+it is true, somewhat the worse for a life in the fields; but this
+village cock-of-the-walk had others in reserve for balls and holidays.
+He lived, it must be said, on the gifts of his female friends,
+which, liberal as they were, hardly sufficed for the libations, the
+dissipations, and the squanderings of all kinds which resulted from his
+intimacy with the Cafe de la Paix.
+
+Cowardice is like courage; of both there are various kinds. Bonnebault
+would have fought like a brave soldier, but he was weak in presence of
+his vices and his desires. Lazy as a lizard, that is to say, active only
+when it suited him, without the slightest decency, arrogant and base,
+able for much but neglectful of all, the sole pleasure of this “breaker
+of hearts and plates,” to use a barrack term, was to do evil or inflict
+damage. Such a nature does as much harm in rural communities as it does
+in a regiment. Bonnebault, like Tonsard and like Fourchon, desired to
+live well and do nothing; and he had his plans laid. Making the most of
+his gallant appearance with increasing success, and of his talents for
+billiards with alternate loss and gain, he flattered himself that the
+day would come when he could marry Mademoiselle Aglae Socquard, only
+daughter of the proprietor of the Cafe de la Paix, a resort which was
+to Soulanges what, relatively speaking, Ranelagh is to the Bois de
+Boulogne. To get into the business of tavern-keeping, to manage
+the public balls, what a fine career for the marshal’s baton of a
+ne’er-do-well! These morals, this life, this nature, were so plainly
+stamped upon the face of the low-lived profligate that the countess was
+betrayed into an exclamation when she beheld the pair, for they gave her
+the sensation of beholding snakes.
+
+Marie, desperately in love with Bonnebault, would have robbed for
+his benefit. Those moustachios, the swaggering gait of a trooper, the
+fellow’s smart clothes, all went to her heart as the manners and charms
+of a de Marsay touch that of a pretty Parisian. Each social sphere
+has its own standard of distinction. The jealous Marie rebuffed Amaury
+Lupin, the other dandy of the little town, her mind being made up to
+become Madame Bonnebault.
+
+“Hey! you there, hi! come on!” cried Nicolas and Catherine from afar,
+catching sight of Marie and Bonnebault.
+
+The sharp call echoed through the woods like the cry of savages.
+
+Seeing the pair at his feet, Michaud shuddered and deeply repented
+having spoken. If Bonnebault and Marie Tonsard had overheard
+the conversation, nothing but harm could come of it. This event,
+insignificant as it seems, was destined, in the irritated state of
+feeling then existing between Les Aigues and the peasantry, to have a
+decisive influence on the fate of all,--just as victory or defeat in
+battle sometimes depends upon a brook which shepherds jump while cannon
+are unable to pass it.
+
+Gallantly bowing to the countess, Bonnebault passed Marie’s arm through
+his own with a conquering air and took himself off triumphantly.
+
+“The King of Hearts of the valley,” muttered Michaud to the countess. “A
+dangerous man. When he loses twenty francs at billiards he would murder
+Rigou to get them back. He loves a crime as he does a pleasure.”
+
+“I have seen enough for to-day; take me home, gentlemen,” murmured the
+countess, putting her hand on Emile’s arm.
+
+She bowed sadly to Madame Michaud, after watching La Pechina safely back
+to the pavilion. Olympe’s depression was transferred to her mistress.
+
+“Ah, madame,” said the abbe, as they continued their way, “can it be
+that the difficulty of doing good is about to deter you? For the
+last five years I have slept on a pallet in a parsonage which has no
+furniture; I say mass in a church without believers; I preach to no
+hearers; I minister without fees or salary; I live on the six hundred
+francs the law allows me, asking nothing of my bishop, and I give the
+third of that in charity. Still, I am not hopeless. If you knew what
+my winters are in this place you would understand the strength of those
+words,--I am not hopeless. I keep myself warm with the belief that we
+can save this valley and bring it back to God. No matter for ourselves,
+madame; think of the future! If it is our duty to say to the poor,
+‘Learn how to be poor; that is, how to work, to endure, to strive,’ it
+is equally our duty to say to the rich, ‘Learn your duty as prosperous
+men,’--that is to say, ‘Be wise, be intelligent in your benevolence;
+pious and virtuous in the place to which God has called you.’ Ah!
+madame, you are only the steward of Him who grants you wealth; if you
+do not obey His behests you will never transmit to your children the
+prosperity He gives you. You will rob your posterity. If you follow in
+the steps of that poor singer’s selfishness, which caused the evils that
+now terrify us, you will bring back the scaffolds on which your fathers
+died for the faults of their fathers. To do good humbly, in obscurity,
+in country solitudes, as Rigou now does evil,--ah! that indeed is prayer
+in action and dear to God. If in every district three souls only would
+work for good, France, our country, might be saved from the abyss
+that yawns; into which we are rushing headlong, through spiritual
+indifference to all that is not our own self-interest. Change! you must
+change your morals, change your ethics, and that will change your laws.”
+
+Though deeply moved as she listened to this grand utterance of true
+catholic charity, the countess answered in the fatal words, “We will
+consider it,”--words of the rich, which contain that promise to the ear
+which saves their purses and enables them to stand with arms crossed in
+presence of all disaster, under pretext that they were powerless.
+
+Hearing those words, the abbe bowed to Madame de Montcornet and turned
+off into a path which led him direct to the gate of Blangy.
+
+“Belshazzar’s feast is the everlasting symbol of the dying days of a
+caste, of an oligarchy, of a power!” he thought as he walked away.
+“My God! if it be Thy will to loose the poor like a torrent to reform
+society, I know, I comprehend, why it is that Thou hast abandoned the
+wealthy to their blindness!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. SHOWETH HOW THE TAVERN IS THE PEOPLE’S PARLIAMENT
+
+
+Old Mother Tonsard’s screams brought a number of people from Blangy
+to know what was happening at the Grand-I-Vert, the distance from the
+village to the inn not being greater than that from the inn to the gate
+of Blangy. One of these inquiring visitors was old Niseron, La Pechina’s
+grandfather, who was on his way, after ringing the second Angelus, to
+dig the vine-rows in his last little bit of ground.
+
+Bent by toil, with pallid face and silvery hair, the old vinedresser,
+now the sole representative of civic virtue in the community, had been,
+during the Revolution, president of the Jacobin club at Ville-aux-Fayes,
+and a juror in the revolutionary tribunal of the district. Jean-Francois
+Niseron, carved out of the wood that the apostles were made of, was
+of the type of Saint Peter; whom painters and sculptors have united in
+representing with the square brow of the people, the thick, naturally
+curling hair of the laborer, the muscles of the man of toil, the
+complexion of a fisherman; with the large nose, the shrewd, half-mocking
+lips that scoff at fate, the neck and shoulders of the strong man who
+cuts his wood to cook his dinner while the doctrinaires of his opinions
+talk.
+
+Such, at forty years of age on the breaking out of the Revolution,
+was this man, strong as iron, pure as gold. Advocate of the people,
+he believed in a republic through the very roll of that name, more
+formidable in sound perhaps than in reality. He believed in the republic
+of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the brotherhood of man, in the exchange of
+noble sentiments, in the proclamation of virtue, in the choice of
+merit without intrigue,--in short, in all that the narrow limits of one
+arrondissement like Sparta made possible, and which the vast proportions
+of an empire make chimerical. He signed his beliefs with his blood,--his
+only son went to war; he did more, he signed them with the prosperity of
+his life,--last sacrifice of self. Nephew and sole heir of the curate of
+Blangy, the then all-powerful tribune might have enforced his rights and
+recovered the property left by the priest to his pretty servant-girl,
+Arsene; but he respected his uncle’s wishes and accepted poverty, which
+came upon him as rapidly as the fall of his cherished republic came upon
+France.
+
+Never a farthing’s worth, never so much as the branch of a tree
+belonging to another passed into the hands of this notable republican,
+who would have made the republic acceptable to the world if he and such
+as he could have guided it. He refused to buy the national domains; he
+denied the right of the Republic to confiscate property. In reply to all
+demands of the committee of public safety he asserted that the virtue of
+citizens would do for their sacred country what low political intriguers
+did for money. This patriot of antiquity publicly reproved Gaubertin’s
+father for his secret treachery, his underhand bargaining, his
+malversations. He reprimanded the virtuous Mouchon, that representative
+of the people whose virtue was nothing more nor less than
+incapacity,--as it is with so many other legislators who, gorged with
+the greatest political resources that any nation ever gave, armed with
+the whole force of a people, are still unable to bring forth from them
+the grandeur which Richelieu wrung for France out of the weakness of
+a king. Consequently, citizen Niseron became a living reproach to the
+people about him. They endeavored to put him out of sight and mind with
+the reproachful remark, “Nothing satisfies that man.”
+
+The patriot peasant returned to his cot at Blangy and watched the
+destruction, one by one, of his illusions; he saw his republic come
+to an end at the heels of an emperor, while he himself fell into utter
+poverty, to which Rigou stealthily managed to reduce him. And why?
+Because Niseron had never been willing to accept anything from him.
+Reiterated refusals showed the ex-priest in what profound contempt the
+nephew of the curate held him; and now that icy scorn was revenged by
+the terrible threat as to his little granddaughter, about which the Abbe
+Brossette spoke to the countess.
+
+The old man had composed in his own mind a history of the French
+republic, filled with the glorious features which gave immortality to
+that heroic period to the exclusion of all else. The infamous deeds, the
+massacres, the spoliations, his virtuous soul ignored; he admired, with
+a single mind, the devotedness of the people, the “Vengeur,” the gifts
+to the nation, the uprising of the country to defend its frontier; and
+he still pursued his dream that he might sleep in peace.
+
+The Revolution produced many poets like old Niseron, who sang their
+poems in the country solitudes, in the army, openly or secretly, by
+deeds buried beneath the whirlwind of that storm, just as the wounded
+left behind to die in the great wars of the empire cried out, “Long live
+the Emperor!” This sublimity of soul belongs especially to France. The
+Abbe Brossette respected the convictions of the old man, who became
+simply but deeply attached to the priest from hearing him say, “The true
+republic is in the Gospel.” The stanch republican carried the cross,
+and wore the sexton’s robe, half-red, half-black, and was grave and
+dignified in church,--supporting himself by the triple functions with
+which he was invested by the abbe, who was able to give the fine old
+man, not, to be sure, enough to live on, but enough to keep him from
+dying of hunger.
+
+Niseron, the Aristides of Blangy, spoke little, like all noble dupes who
+wrap themselves in the mantle of resignation; but he was never silent
+against evil, and the peasants feared him as thieves fear the police.
+He seldom came more than six times a year to the Grand-I-Vert, though he
+was always warmly welcomed there. The old man cursed the want of charity
+of the rich,--their selfishness disgusted him; and through this fiber of
+his mind he seemed to the peasants to belong to them; they were in the
+habit of saying, “Pere Niseron doesn’t like the rich; he’s one of us.”
+
+The civic crown won by this noble life throughout the valley lay in
+these words: “That good old Niseron! there’s not a more honest man.”
+ Often taken as umpire in certain kinds of disputes, he embodied the
+meaning of that archaic term,--the village elder. Always extremely
+clean, though threadbare, he wore breeches, coarse woollen stockings,
+hob-nailed shoes, the distinctively French coat with large buttons and
+the broad-brimmed felt hat to which all old peasants cling; but for
+daily wear he kept a blue jacket so patched and darned that it looked
+like a bit of tapestry. The pride of a man who feels he is free, and
+knows he is worthy of freedom, gave to his countenance and his whole
+bearing a _something_ that was inexpressibly noble; you would have felt
+he wore a robe, not rags.
+
+“Hey! what’s happening so unusual?” he said, “I heard the noise down
+here from the belfry.”
+
+They told him of Vatel’s attack on the old woman, talking all at once
+after the fashion of country-people.
+
+“If she didn’t cut the tree, Vatel was wrong; but if she did cut it, you
+have done two bad actions,” said Pere Niseron.
+
+“Take some wine,” said Tonsard, offering a full glass to the old man.
+
+“Shall we start?” said Vermichel to the sheriff’s officer.
+
+“Yes,” replied Brunet, “we must do without Pere Fourchon and take the
+assistant at Conches. Go on before me; I have a paper to carry to the
+chateau. Rigou has gained his second suit, and I’ve got to deliver the
+verdict.”
+
+So saying, Monsieur Brunet, all the livelier for a couple of glasses of
+brandy, mounted his gray mare after saying good-bye to Pere Niseron; for
+the whole valley were desirous in their hearts of the good man’s esteem.
+
+No science, not even that of statistics, can explain the rapidity with
+which news flies in the country, nor how it spreads over those ignorant
+and untaught regions which are, in France, a standing reproach to the
+government and to capitalists. Contemporaneous history can show that a
+famous banker, after driving post-horses to death between Waterloo
+and Paris (everybody knows why--he gained what the Emperor had lost,
+a commission!) carried the fatal news only three hours in advance of
+rumor. So, not an hour after the encounter between old mother Tonsard
+and Vatel, a number of the customers of the Grand-I-Vert assembled there
+to hear the tale.
+
+The first to come was Courtecuisse, in whom you would scarcely have
+recognized the once jovial forester, the rubicund do-nothing, whose
+wife made his morning coffee as we have before seen. Aged, and thin,
+and haggard, he presented to all eyes a lesson that no one learned. “He
+tried to climb higher than the ladder,” was what his neighbors said
+when others pitied him and blamed Rigou. “He wanted to be a bourgeois
+himself.”
+
+In fact, Courtecuisse did intend to pass for a bourgeois in buying the
+Bachelerie, and he even boasted of it; though his wife went about the
+roads gathering up the horse-droppings. She and Courtecuisse got
+up before daylight, dug their garden, which was richly manured, and
+obtained several yearly crops from it, without being able to do more
+than pay the interest due to Rigou for the rest of the purchase-money.
+Their daughter, who was living at service in Auxerre, sent them her
+wages; but in spite of all their efforts, in spite of this help, the
+last day for the final payment was approaching, and not a penny in
+hand with which to meet it. Madame Courtecuisse, who in former times
+occasionally allowed herself a bottle of boiled wine or a bit of roast
+meat, now drank nothing but water. Courtecuisse was afraid to go to
+the Grand-I-Vert lest he should have to leave three sous behind him.
+Deprived of power, he had lost his privilege of free drinks, and he
+bitterly complained, like all other fools, of man’s ingratitude. In
+short, he found, according to the experience of all peasants bitten with
+the demon of proprietorship, that toil had increased and food decreased.
+
+“Courtecuisse has done too much to the property,” the people said,
+secretly envying his position. “He ought to have waited till he had paid
+the money down and was master before he put up those fruit palings.”
+
+With the help of his wife he had managed to manure and cultivate the
+three acres of land sold to him by Rigou, together with the garden
+adjoining the house, which was beginning to be productive; and he was
+in danger of being turned out of it all. Clothed in rags like Fourchon,
+poor Courtecuisse, who lately wore the boots and gaiters of a huntsman,
+now thrust his feet into sabots and accused “the rich” of Les Aigues of
+having caused his destitution. These wearing anxieties had given to the
+fat little man and his once smiling and rosy face a gloomy and dazed
+expression, as though he were ill from the effects of poison or with
+some chronic malady.
+
+“What’s the matter with you, Monsieur Courtecuisse; is your tongue
+tied?” asked Tonsard, as the man continued silent after he had told him
+about the battle which had just taken place.
+
+“No, no!” cried Madame Tonsard; “he needn’t complain of the midwife who
+cut his string,--she made a good job of it.”
+
+“It is enough to make a man dumb, thinking from morning till night of
+some way to escape Rigou,” said the premature old man, gloomily.
+
+“Bah!” said old Mother Tonsard, “you’ve got a pretty daughter, seventeen
+years old. If she’s a good girl you can easily manage matters with that
+old jail bird--”
+
+“We sent her to Auxerre two years ago to Madame Mariotte the elder, to
+keep her out of harm’s way; I’d rather die than--”
+
+“What a fool you are!” said Tonsard, “look at my girls,--are they any
+the worse? He who dares to say they are not as virtuous as marble images
+will have to do with my gun.”
+
+“It’ll be hard to have to come to that,” said Courtecuisse, shaking his
+head. “I’d rather earn the money by shooting one of those Arminacs.”
+
+“Well, I call it better for a girl to save a father than to wrap up her
+virtue and let it mildew,” retorted the innkeeper.
+
+Tonsard felt a sharp tap on his shoulder, delivered by Pere Niseron.
+
+“That is not a right thing to say!” cried the old man. “A father is the
+guardian of the honor of his family. It is by behaving as you do that
+scorn and contempt are brought upon us; it is because of such conduct
+that the People are accused of being unfit for liberty. The People
+should set an example of civic virtue and honor to the rich. You all
+sell yourselves to Rigou for gold; and if you don’t sell him your
+daughters, at any rate you sell him your honor,--and it’s wrong.”
+
+“Just see what a position Courtecuisse is in,” said Tonsard.
+
+“See what a position I am in,” replied Pere Niseron; “but I sleep in
+peace; there are no thorns in my pillow.”
+
+“Let him talk, Tonsard,” whispered his wife, “you know they’re just _his
+notions_, poor dear man.”
+
+Bonnebault and Marie, Catherine and her brother came in at this moment
+in a state of exasperation, which had begun with Nicolas’s failure,
+and was raised to the highest pitch by Michaud’s advice to the countess
+about Bonnebault. As Nicolas entered the tavern he was uttering
+frightful threats against the Michaud family and Les Aigues.
+
+“The harvest’s coming; well, I vow I’ll not go before I’ve lighted my
+pipe at their wheat-stacks,” he cried, striking his fist on the table as
+he sat down.
+
+“Mustn’t yelp like that before people,” said Godain, showing him Pere
+Niseron.
+
+“If the old fellow tells, I’ll wring his neck,” said Catherine.
+“He’s had his day, that old peddler of foolish reasons! They call him
+virtuous; it’s his temperament that keeps him so, that’s all.”
+
+Strange and noteworthy sight!--that of those lifted heads, that group
+of persons gathered in the reeking hovel, while old Mother Tonsard stood
+sentinel at the door as security for the secret words of the drinkers.
+
+Of all those faces, that of Godain, Catherine’s suitor, was perhaps the
+most alarming, though the least pronounced. Godain,--a miser without
+money,--the cruelest of misers, for he who seeks money surely takes
+precedence of him who hoards it, one turning his eagerness within
+himself, the other looking outside with terrible intentness,--Godain
+represented the type of the majority of peasant faces.
+
+He was a journeyman, small in frame, and saved from the draft by not
+attaining the required military height; naturally lean and made more
+so by hard work and the enforced sobriety under which reluctant workers
+like Courtecuisse succumb. His face was no bigger than a man’s fist,
+and was lighted by a pair of yellow eyes with greenish strips and brown
+spots, in which a thirst for the possession of property was mingled
+with a concupiscence which had no heat,--for desire, once at the
+boiling-point, had now stiffened like lava. His skin, brown as that of
+a mummy, was glued to his temples. His scanty beard bristled among
+his wrinkles like stubble in the furrows. Godain never perspired, he
+reabsorbed his substance. His hairy hands, formed like claws, nervous,
+never still, seemed to be made of old wood. Though scarcely twenty-seven
+years of age, white lines were beginning to show in his rusty black
+hair. He wore a blouse, through the breast opening of which could be
+seen a shirt of coarse linen, so black that he must have worn it a month
+and washed it himself in the Thune. His sabots were mended with old
+iron. The original stuff of his trousers was unrecognizable from the
+darns and the infinite number of patches. On his head was a horrible
+cap, evidently cast off and picked up in the doorway of some bourgeois
+house in Ville-aux-Fayes.
+
+Clear-sighted enough to estimate the elements of good fortune that
+centred in Catherine Tonsard, his ambition was to succeed her father at
+the Grand-I-Vert. He made use of all his craftiness and all his actual
+powers to capture her; he promised her wealth, he also promised her the
+license her mother had enjoyed; besides this, he offered his prospective
+father-in-law an enormous rental, five hundred francs a year, for his
+inn, until he could buy him out, trusting to an agreement he had made
+with Monsieur Brunet to pay these costs by notes on stamped paper. By
+trade a journeyman tool-maker, this gnome worked for the wheelwrights
+when work was plentiful, but he also hired himself out for any extra
+labor which was well paid. Though he possessed, unknown to the whole
+neighborhood, eighteen hundred francs now in Gaubertin’s hands, he lived
+like a beggar, slept in a barn, and gleaned at the harvests. He wore
+Gaubertin’s receipt for his money sewn into the waist-belt of his
+trousers,--having it renewed every year with its own added interest and
+the amount of his savings.
+
+“Hey! what do I care,” cried Nicolas, replying to Godain’s prudent
+advice not to talk before Niseron. “If I’m doomed to be a soldier
+I’d rather the sawdust of the basket sucked up my blood than have it
+dribbled out drop by drop in the battles. I’ll deliver this country of
+at least one of those Arminacs that the devil has launched upon us.”
+
+And he related what he called Michaud’s plot against him, which Marie
+and Bonnebault had overheard.
+
+“Where do you expect France to find soldiers?” said the white-haired
+old man, rising and standing before Nicolas during the silence which
+followed the utterance of this threat.
+
+“We serve our time and come home again,” remarked Bonnebault, twirling
+his moustache.
+
+Observing that all the worst characters of the neighborhood were
+collecting, Pere Niseron shook his head and left the tavern, after
+offering a farthing to Madame Tonsard in payment for his glass of wine.
+When the worthy man had gone down the steps a movement of relief and
+satisfaction passed through the assembled drinkers which would have told
+whoever watched them that each man in that company felt he was rid of
+the living image of his own conscience.
+
+“Well, what do you say to all that, hey, Courtecuisse?” asked Vaudoyer,
+who had just come in, and to whom Tonsard had related Vatel’s attempt.
+
+Courtecuisse clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and set
+his glass on the table.
+
+“Vatel put himself in the wrong,” he said. “If I were Mother Tonsard,
+I’d give myself a few wounds and go to bed and say I was ill, and have
+that Shopman and his keeper up before the assizes and get twenty crowns
+damages. Monsieur Sarcus would give them.”
+
+“In any case the Shopman would give them to stop the talk it would
+make,” said Godain.
+
+Vaudoyer, the former field-keeper, a man five feet six inches tall, with
+a face pitted with the small-pox and furrowed like a nut-cracker, kept
+silence with a hesitating air.
+
+“Well, you old ninny, does that ruffle you?” asked Tonsard, attracted
+by the idea of damages. “If they had broken twenty crowns’ worth of my
+mother’s bones we could turn it into good account; we might make a fine
+fuss for three hundred francs; Monsieur Gourdon would go to Les Aigues
+and tell them that the mother had got a broken hip--”
+
+“And break it, too,” interrupted Madame Tonsard; “they do that in
+Paris.”
+
+“It would cost too much,” remarked Godain.
+
+“I have been too long among the people who rule us to believe that
+matters will go as you want them,” said Vaudoyer at last, remembering
+his past official intercourse with the courts and the gendarmerie. “If
+it were at Soulanges, now, it might be done; Monsieur Soudry represents
+the government there, and he doesn’t wish well to the Shopman; but if
+you attack the Shopman and Vatel they’ll defend themselves viciously;
+they’ll say, ‘The woman was to blame; she had a tree, otherwise she
+would have let her bundle be examined on the highroad; she wouldn’t have
+run away; if an accident happened to her it was through her own fault.’
+No, you can’t trust to that plan.”
+
+“The Shopman didn’t resist when I sued him,” said Courtecuisse; “he paid
+me at once.”
+
+“I’ll go to Soulanges, if you like,” said Bonnebault, “and consult
+Monsieur Gourdon, the clerk of the court, and you shall know to-night if
+_there’s money in it_.”
+
+“You are only making an excuse to be after that big goose of a girl,
+Socquard’s daughter,” said Marie Tonsard, giving Bonnebault a slap on
+the shoulder that made his lungs hum.
+
+Just then a verse of an old Burgundian Christmas carol was heard:--
+
+  “One fine moment of his life
+  Was at the wedding feast;
+  He changed the water into wine,--
+  Madeira of the best.”
+
+Every one recognized the vinous voice of old Fourchon, to whom the verse
+must have been peculiarly agreeable; Mouche accompanied in his treble
+tones.
+
+“Ha! they’re full!” cried old Mother Tonsard to her daughter-in-law;
+“your father is as red as a grid-iron, and that chip o’ the block as
+pink as vine-shoot.”
+
+“Your healths!” cried the old man, “and a fine lot of scoundrels you
+are! All hail!” he said to his granddaughter, whom he spied kissing
+Bonnebault, “hail, Marie, full of vice! Satan is with three; cursed art
+thou among women, etcetera. All hail, the company present! you are done
+for, every one of you! you may just say good-bye to your sheaves. I
+being news. I always told you the rich would crush us; well now, the
+Shopman is going to have the law of you! Ha! see what it is to struggle
+against those bourgeois fellows, who have made so many laws since they
+got into power that they’ve a law to enforce every trick they play--”
+
+A violent hiccough gave a sudden turn to the ideas of the distinguished
+orator.
+
+“If Vermichel were only here I’d blow in his gullet, and he’d get an
+idea of sherry wine. Hey! what a wine it is! If I wasn’t a Burgundian
+I’d be a Spaniard! It’s God’s own wine! the pope says mass with it--Hey!
+I’m young again! Say, Courtecuisse! if your wife were only here we’d be
+young together. Don’t tell me! Spanish wine is worth a dozen of boiled
+wine. Let’s have a revolution if it’s only to empty the cellars!”
+
+“But what’s your news, papa?” said Tonsard.
+
+“There’ll be no harvest for you; the Shopman has given orders to stop
+the gleaning.”
+
+“Stop the gleaning!” cried the whole tavern, with one voice, in which
+the shrill tones of the four women predominated.
+
+“Yes,” said Mouche, “he is going to issue an order, and Groison is to
+take it round, and post it up all over the canton. No one is to glean
+except those who have pauper certificates.”
+
+“And what’s more,” said Fourchon, “the folks from the other districts
+won’t be allowed here at all.”
+
+“What’s that?” cried Bonnebault, “do you mean to tell me that neither
+my grandmother nor I, nor your mother, Godain, can come here and glean?
+Here’s tomfoolery for you; a pretty show of authority! Why, the fellow
+is a devil let loose from hell,--that scoundrel of a mayor!”
+
+“Shall you glean whether or no, Godain?” said Tonsard to the journeyman
+wheelwright, who was saying a few words to Catherine.
+
+“I? I’ve no property; I’m a pauper,” he replied; “I shall ask for a
+certificate.”
+
+“What did they give my father for his otter, bibi?” said Madame Tonsard
+to Mouche.
+
+Though nearly at his last gasp from an over-taxed digestion and two
+bottles of wine, Mouche, sitting on Madame Tonsard’s lap, laid his head
+on his aunt’s neck and whispered slyly in her ear:--
+
+“I don’t know, but he has got gold. If you’ll feed me high for a month,
+perhaps I can find out his hiding-place; he has one, I know that.”
+
+“Father’s got gold!” whispered La Tonsard to her husband, whose voice
+was loudest in the uproar of the excited discussion, in which all
+present took part.
+
+“Hush! here’s Groison,” cried the old sentinel.
+
+Perfect silence reigned in the tavern. When Groison had got to a safe
+distance, Mother Tonsard made a sign, and the discussion began again on
+the question as to whether they should persist in gleaning, as before,
+without a certificate.
+
+“You’ll have to give in,” said Pere Fourchon; “for the Shopman has gone
+to see the prefect and get troops to enforce the order. They’ll shoot
+you like dogs,--and that’s what we are!” cried the old man, trying
+to conquer the thickening of his speech produced by his potations of
+sherry.
+
+This fresh announcement, absurd as it was, made all the drinkers
+thoughtful; they really believed the government capable of slaughtering
+them without pity.
+
+“I remember just such troubles near Toulouse, when I was stationed
+there,” said Bonnebault. “We were marched out, and the peasants were cut
+and slashed and arrested. Everybody laughed to see them try to resist
+cavalry. Ten were sent to the galleys, and eleven put in prison; the
+whole thing was crushed. Hey! what? why, soldiers are soldiers, and you
+are nothing but civilian beggars; they’ve a right, they think, to sabre
+peasants, the devil take you!”
+
+“Well, well,” said Tonsard, “what is there in all that to frighten you
+like kids? What can they get out of my mother and daughters? Put ‘em in
+prison? well, then they must feed them; and the Shopman can’t imprison
+the whole country. Besides, prisoners are better fed at the king’s
+expense than they are at their own; and they’re kept warmer, too.”
+
+“You are a pack of fools!” roared Fourchon. “Better gnaw at the
+bourgeois than attack him in front; otherwise, you’ll get your backs
+broke. If you like the galleys, so be it,--that’s another thing! You
+don’t work as hard there as you do in the fields, true enough; but you
+don’t have your liberty.”
+
+“Perhaps it would be well,” said Vaudoyer, who was among the more
+valiant in counsel, “if some of us risked our skins to deliver the
+neighborhood of that Languedoc fellow who has planted himself at the
+gate of the Avonne.”
+
+“Do Michaud’s business for him?” said Nicolas; “I’m good for that.”
+
+“Things are not ripe for it,” said old Fourchon. “We should risk too
+much, my children. The best way is to make ourselves look miserable
+and cry famine; then the Shopman and his wife will want to help us, and
+you’ll get more out of them that way than you will by gleaning.”
+
+“You are all blind moles,” shouted Tonsard, “let ‘em pick a quarrel with
+their law and their troops, they can’t put the whole country in irons,
+and we’ve plenty of friends at Ville-aux-Fayes and among the old lords
+who’ll sustain us.”
+
+“That’s true,” said Courtecuisse; “none of the other land-owners
+complain, it is only the Shopman; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de
+Ronquerolles and others, they are satisfied. When I think that if that
+cuirassier had only had the courage to let himself be killed like the
+rest I should still be happy at the gate of the Avonne, and that it was
+he that turned my life topsy-turvy, it just puts me beside myself.”
+
+“They won’t call out the troops for a Shopman who has set every one in
+the district against him,” said Godain. “The fault’s his own; he tried
+to ride over everybody here, and upset everything; and the government
+will just say to him, ‘Hush up.’”
+
+“The government never says anything else; it can’t, poor government!”
+ said Fourchon, seized with a sudden tenderness for the government. “Yes,
+I pity it, that good government; it is very unlucky,--it hasn’t a penny,
+like us; but that’s very stupid of a government that makes the money
+itself, very stupid! Ah! if I were the government--”
+
+“But,” cried Courtecuisse, “they tell me in Ville-aux-Fayes that
+Monsieur de Ronquerolles talked about our rights in the Assembly.”
+
+“That’s in Monsieur Rigou’s newspaper,” said Vaudoyer, who in his
+capacity of ex-field-keeper knew how to read and write; “I read it--”
+
+In spite of his vinous tenderness, old Fourchon, like many of the lower
+classes whose faculties are stimulated by drunkenness, was following,
+with an intelligent eye and a keen ear, this curious discussion which a
+variety of asides rendered still more curious. Suddenly, he stood up in
+the middle of the room.
+
+“Listen to the old one, he’s drunk!” said Tonsard, “and when he is, he
+is twice as full of deviltry; he has his own and that of the wine--”
+
+“Spanish wine, and that trebles it!” cried Fourchon, laughing like a
+satyr. “My sons, don’t butt your head straight at the thing,--you’re too
+weak; go at it sideways. Lay low, play dead; the little woman is scared.
+I tell you, the thing’ll come to an end before long; she’ll leave
+the place, and if she does the Shopman will follow her, for she’s his
+passion. That’s your plan. Only, to make ‘em go faster, my advice is to
+get rid of their counsellor, their support, our spy, our ape--”
+
+“Who’s that?”
+
+“The damned abbe, of course,” said Tonsard; “that hunter after sins, who
+thinks the host is food enough for us.”
+
+“That’s true,” cried Vaudoyer; “we were happy enough till he came. We
+ought to get rid of that eater of the good God,--he’s the real enemy.”
+
+“Finikin,” added Fourchon, using a nickname which the abbe owed to his
+prim and rather puny appearance, “might be led into temptation and fall
+into the power of some sly girl, for he fasts so much. Then if we could
+catch him in the act and drum him up with a good charivari, the bishop
+would be obliged to send him elsewhere. It would please old Rigou
+devilish well. Now if your daughter, Courtecuisse, would leave
+Auxerre--she’s a pretty girl, and if she’d take to piety, she might save
+us all. Hey! ran tan plan!--”
+
+“Why don’t _you_ do it?” said Godain to Catherine, in a low voice;
+“there’d be scuttles full of money to hush up the talk; and for the time
+being you’d be mistress here--”
+
+“Shall we glean, or shall we not glean? that’s the point,” said
+Bonnebault. “I don’t care two straws for your abbe, not I; I belong to
+Conches, where we haven’t a black-coat to poke up our consciences.”
+
+“Look here,” said Vaudoyer, “we had better go and ask Rigou, who knows
+the law, whether the Shopman can forbid gleaning, and he’ll tell us if
+we’ve got the right of it. If the Shopman has the law on his side, well,
+then we must do as the old one says,--see about taking things sideways.”
+
+“Blood will be spilt,” said Nicolas, darkly, as he rose after drinking a
+whole bottle of wine, which Catherine drew for him in order to keep
+him silent. “If you’d only listen to me you’d down Michaud; but you are
+miserable weaklings,--nothing but poor trash!”
+
+“I’m not,” said Bonnebault. “If you are all safe friends who’ll keep
+your tongues between your teeth, I’ll aim at the Shopman--Hey! how I’d
+like to put a plum through his bottle; wouldn’t it avenge me on those
+cursed officers?”
+
+“Tut! tut!” cried Jean-Louis Tonsard, who was supposed to be, more or
+less, Gaubertin’s son, and who had just entered the tavern. This fellow,
+who was courting Rigou’s pretty servant-girl, had succeeded his nominal
+father as clipper of hedges and shrubberies and other Tonsardial
+occupations. Going about among the well-to-do houses, he talked with
+masters and servants and picked up ideas which made him the man of the
+world of the family, the shrewd head. We shall presently see that in
+making love to Rigou’s servant-girl, Jean-Louis deserved his reputation
+for shrewdness.
+
+“Well, what have you to say, prophet?” said the innkeeper to his son.
+
+“I say that you are playing into the hands of the rich folk,” replied
+Jean-Louis. “Frighten the Aigues people to maintain your rights if you
+choose; but if you drive them out of the place and make them sell the
+estate, you are doing just what the bourgeois of the valley want, and
+it’s against your own interest. If you help the bourgeois to divide the
+great estates among them, where’s the national domain to be bought for
+nothing at the next Revolution? Wait till then, and you’ll get your land
+without paying for it, as Rigou got his; whereas if you go and thrust
+this estate into the jaws of the rich folk of the valley, the rich folk
+will dribble it back to you impoverished and at twice the price they
+paid for it. You are working for their interests, I tell you; so does
+everybody who works for Rigou,--look at Courtecuisse.”
+
+The policy contained in this allocution was too deep for the drunken
+heads of those present, who were all, except Courtecuisse, laying by
+their money to buy a slice of the Aigues cake. So they let Jean-Louis
+harangue, and continued, as in the Chamber of Deputies, their private
+confabs with one another.
+
+“Yes, that’s so; you’ll be Rigou’s cats-paw!” cried Fourchon, who alone
+understood his grandson.
+
+Just then Langlume, the miller of Les Aigues, passed the tavern. Madame
+Tonsard hailed him.
+
+“Is it true,” she said, “that gleaning is to be forbidden?”
+
+Langlume, a jovial white man, white with flour and dressed in
+grayish-white clothes, came up the steps and looked in. Instantly all
+the peasants became as sober as judges.
+
+“Well, my children, I am forced to answer yes, and no. None but the poor
+are to glean; but the measures they are going to take will turn out to
+your advantage.”
+
+“How so?” asked Godain.
+
+“Why, they can prevent any but paupers from gleaning here,” said the
+miller, winking in true Norman fashion; “but that doesn’t prevent you
+from gleaning elsewhere,--unless all the mayors do as the Blangy mayor
+is doing.”
+
+“Then it is true,” said Tonsard, in a threatening voice.
+
+“As for me,” said Bonnebault, putting his foraging-cap over one ear and
+making his hazel stick whiz in the air, “I’m off to Conches to warn the
+friends.”
+
+And the Lovelace of the valley departed, whistling the tune of the
+martial song,--
+
+  “You who know the hussars of the Guard,
+  Don’t you know the trombone of the regiment?”
+
+“I say, Marie! he’s going a queer way to get to Conches, that friend of
+yours,” cried old Mother Tonsard to her granddaughter.
+
+“He’s after Aglae!” said Marie, who made one bound to the door. “I’ll
+have to thrash her once for all, that baggage!” she cried, viciously.
+
+“Come, Vaudoyer,” said Tonsard, “go and see Rigou, and then we
+shall know what to do; he’s our oracle, and his spittle doesn’t cost
+anything.”
+
+“Another folly!” said Jean-Louis, in a low voice, “Rigou betrays
+everybody; Annette tells me so; she says he’s more dangerous when he
+listens to you than other folks are when they bluster.”
+
+“I advise you to be cautious,” said Langlume. “The general has gone to
+the prefecture about your misdeeds, and Sibilet tells me he has sworn
+an oath to go to Paris and see the Chancellor of France and the King
+himself, and the whole pack of them if necessary, to get the better of
+his peasantry.”
+
+“His peasantry!” shouted every one.
+
+“Ha, ha! so we don’t belong to ourselves any longer?”
+
+As Tonsard asked the question, Vaudoyer left the house to see Rigou.
+
+Langlume, who had already gone out, turned on the door-step, and
+answered:--
+
+“Crowd of do-nothings! are you so rich that you think you are your own
+masters?”
+
+Though said with a laugh, the meaning contained in those words was
+understood by all present, as horses understand the cut of a whip.
+
+“Ran tan plan! masters indeed!” shouted old Fourchon. “I say, my lad,”
+ he added to Nicolas, “after your performance this morning it’s not my
+clarionet that you’ll get between your thumb and four fingers!”
+
+“Don’t plague him, or he’ll make you throw up your wine by a punch in
+the stomach,” said Catherine, roughly.
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sons of the Soil, by Honore de Balzac
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Sons of the Soil, by Honore de Balzac
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sons of the Soil, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sons of the Soil
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2010 [EBook #1417]
+Last Updated: November 23, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONS OF THE SOIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      SONS OF THE SOIL
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Honore De Balzac
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> DEDICATION </a><br /><br /> <a
+      href="#link2H_4_0002"> <b>SONS OF THE SOIL</b> </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_PART1"> <b>PART I</b> </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+    </h3>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE CHATEAU
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A BUCOLIC OVERLOOKED BY VIRGIL
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE TAVERN
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          ANOTHER IDYLL
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          ENEMIES FACE TO FACE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A TALE OF THIEVES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          CERTAIN LOST SOCIAL SPECIES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE GREAT REVOLUTIONS OF A LITTLE VALLEY
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          CONCERNING THE MEDIOCRACY
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE SADNESS OF A HAPPY WOMAN
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE OARISTYS, EIGHTEENTH ECLOGUE OF THEOCRITUS
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          SHOWETH HOW THE TAVERN IS THE PEOPLE&rsquo;S PARLIAMENT
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          A TYPE OF THE COUNTRY USURER
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_PART2"> <b>PART II</b> </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+    </h3>
+    <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER I. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE LEADING SOCIETY OF SOULANGES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER II. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE CONSPIRATORS IN THE QUEEN&rsquo;S SALON
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE CAFE DE LA PAIX
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE TRIUMVIRATE OF VILLE-AUX-FAYES
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          VICTORY WITHOUT A FIGHT
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE FOREST AND THE HARVEST
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER VII. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE GREYHOUND
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER VIII. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          RURAL VIRTUE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER IX. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE CATASTROPHE
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER X. </a>
+        </td>
+        <td>
+          THE TRIUMPH OF THE VANQUISHED
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> ADDENDUM </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      DEDICATION
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                    To Monsieur P. S. B. Gavault.
+
+  Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote these words at the beginning of his
+  Nouvelle Heloise: &ldquo;I have seen the morals of my time and I publish
+  these letters.&rdquo; May I not say to you, in imitation of that great
+  writer, &ldquo;I have studied the march of my epoch and I publish this
+  work&rdquo;?
+
+  The object of this particular study&mdash;startling in its truth so
+  long as society makes philanthropy a principle instead of
+  regarding it as an accident&mdash;is to bring to sight the leading
+  characters of a class too long unheeded by the pens of writers who
+  seek novelty as their chief object. Perhaps this forgetfulness is
+  only prudence in these days when the people are heirs of all the
+  sycophants of royalty. We make criminals poetic, we commiserate
+  the hangman, we have all but deified the proletary. Sects have
+  risen, and cried by every pen, &ldquo;Arise, working-men!&rdquo; just as
+  formerly they cried, &ldquo;Arise!&rdquo; to the &ldquo;tiers etat.&rdquo; None of these
+  Erostrates, however, have dared to face the country solitudes and
+  study the unceasing conspiracy of those whom we term weak against
+  those others who fancy themselves strong,&mdash;that of the peasant
+  against the proprietor. It is necessary to enlighten not only the
+  legislator of to-day but him of to-morrow. In the midst of the
+  present democratic ferment, into which so many of our writers
+  blindly rush, it becomes an urgent duty to exhibit the peasant who
+  renders Law inapplicable, and who has made the ownership of land
+  to be a thing that is, and that is not.
+
+  You are now to behold that indefatigable mole, that rodent which
+  undermines and disintegrates the soil, parcels it out and divides
+  an acre into a hundred fragments,&mdash;ever spurred on to his banquet
+  by the lower middle classes who make him at once their auxiliary
+  and their prey. This essentially unsocial element, created by the
+  Revolution, will some day absorb the middle classes, just as the
+  middle classes have destroyed the nobility. Lifted above the law
+  by its own insignificance, this Robespierre, with one head and
+  twenty million arms, is at work perpetually; crouching in country
+  districts, intrenched in municipal councils, under arms in the
+  national guard of every canton in France,&mdash;one result of the year
+  1830, which failed to remember that Napoleon preferred the chances
+  of defeat to the danger of arming the masses.
+
+  If during the last eight years I have again and again given up the
+  writing of this book (the most important of those I have
+  undertaken to write), and as often returned to it, it was, as you
+  and other friends can well imagine, because my courage shrank from
+  the many difficulties, the many essential details of a drama so
+  doubly dreadful and so cruelly bloody. Among the reasons which
+  render me now almost, it may be thought, foolhardy, I count the
+  desire to finish a work long designed to be to you a proof of my
+  deep and lasting gratitude for a friendship that has ever been
+  among my greatest consolations in misfortune.
+
+                                                      De Balzac.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      SONS OF THE SOIL
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART1" id="link2H_PART1">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART I
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                 Whoso land hath, contention hath.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. THE CHATEAU
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Les Aigues, August 6, 1823.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Monsieur Nathan,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dear Nathan,&mdash;You, who provide the public with such delightful
+      dreams through the magic of your imagination, are now to follow me while I
+      make you dream a dream of truth. You shall then tell me whether the
+      present century is likely to bequeath such dreams to the Nathans and the
+      Blondets of the year 1923; you shall estimate the distance at which we now
+      are from the days when the Florines of the eighteenth century found, on
+      awaking, a chateau like Les Aigues in the terms of their bargain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dear fellow, if you receive this letter in the morning, let your mind
+      travel, as you lie in bed, fifty leagues or thereabouts from Paris, along
+      the great mail road which leads to the confines of Burgundy, and behold
+      two small lodges built of red brick, joined, or separated, by a rail
+      painted green. It was there that the diligence deposited your friend and
+      correspondent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On either side of this double pavilion grows a quick-set hedge, from which
+      the brambles straggle like stray locks of hair. Here and there a tree
+      shoots boldly up; flowers bloom on the slopes of the wayside ditch,
+      bathing their feet in its green and sluggish water. The hedge at both ends
+      meets and joins two strips of woodland, and the double meadow thus
+      inclosed is doubtless the result of a clearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These dusty and deserted lodges give entrance to a magnificent avenue of
+      centennial elms, whose umbrageous heads lean toward each other and form a
+      long and most majestic arbor. The grass grows in this avenue, and only a
+      few wheel-tracks can be seen along its double width of way. The great age
+      of the trees, the breadth of the avenue, the venerable construction of the
+      lodges, the brown tints of their stone courses, all bespeak an approach to
+      some half-regal residence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before reaching this enclosure from the height of an eminence such as we
+      Frenchmen rather conceitedly call a mountain, at the foot of which lies
+      the village of Conches (the last post-house), I had seen the long valley
+      of Aigues, at the farther end of which the mail road turns to follow a
+      straight line into the little sub-prefecture of La Ville-aux-Fayes, over
+      which, as you know, the nephew of our friend des Lupeaulx lords it. Tall
+      forests lying on the horizon, along vast slopes which skirt a river,
+      command this rich valley, which is framed in the far distance by the
+      mountains of a lesser Switzerland, called the Morvan. These forests belong
+      to Les Aigues, and to the Marquis de Ronquerolles and the Comte de
+      Soulanges, whose castles and parks and villages, seen in the distance from
+      these heights, give the scene a strong resemblance to the imaginary
+      landscapes of Velvet Breughel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If these details do not remind you of all the castles in the air you have
+      desired to possess in France you are not worthy to receive the present
+      narrative of an astounded Parisian. At last I have seen a landscape where
+      art is blended with nature in such a way that neither of them spoils the
+      other; the art is natural, and the nature artistic. I have found the oasis
+      that you and I have dreamed of when reading novels,&mdash;nature luxuriant
+      and adorned, rolling lines that are not confused, something wild withal,
+      unkempt, mysterious, not common. Jump that green railing and come on!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I tried to look up the avenue, which the sun never penetrates except
+      when it rises or when it sets, striping the road like a zebra with its
+      oblique rays, my view was obstructed by an outline of rising ground; after
+      that is passed, the long avenue is obstructed by a copse, within which the
+      roads meet at a cross-ways, in the centre of which stands a stone obelisk,
+      for all the world like an eternal exclamation mark. From the crevices
+      between the foundation stones of this erection, which is topped by a
+      spiked ball (what an idea!), hang flowering plants, blue or yellow
+      according to the season. Les Aigues must certainly have been built by a
+      woman, or for a woman; no man would have had such dainty ideas; the
+      architect no doubt had his cue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Passing through the little wood placed there as sentinel, I came upon a
+      charming declivity, at the foot of which foamed and gurgled a little
+      brook, which I crossed on a culvert of mossy stones, superb in color, the
+      prettiest of all the mosaics which time manufactures. The avenue continues
+      by the brookside up a gentle rise. In the distance, the first tableau is
+      now seen,&mdash;a mill and its dam, a causeway and trees, linen laid out
+      to dry, the thatched cottage of the miller, his fishing-nets, and the tank
+      where the fish are kept,&mdash;not to speak of the miller&rsquo;s boy, who was
+      already watching me. No matter where you are in the country, however
+      solitary you may think yourself, you are certain to be the focus of the
+      two eyes of a country bumpkin; a laborer rests on his hoe, a vine-dresser
+      straightens his bent back, a little goat-girl, or shepherdess, or milkmaid
+      climbs a willow to stare at you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the avenue merges into an alley of acacias, which leads to an
+      iron railing made in the days when iron-workers fashioned those slender
+      filagrees which are not unlike the copies set us by a writing-master. On
+      either side of the railing is a ha-ha, the edges of which bristle with
+      angry spikes,&mdash;regular porcupines in metal. The railing is closed at
+      both ends by two porter&rsquo;s-lodges, like those of the palace at Versailles,
+      and the gateway is surmounted by colossal vases. The gold of the
+      arabesques is ruddy, for rust has added its tints, but this entrance,
+      called &ldquo;the gate of the Avenue,&rdquo; which plainly shows the hand of the Great
+      Dauphin (to whom, indeed, Les Aigues owes it), seems to me none the less
+      beautiful for that. At the end of each ha-ha the walls of the park, built
+      of rough-hewn stone, begin. These stones, set in a mortar made of reddish
+      earth, display their variegated colors, the warm yellows of the silex, the
+      white of the lime carbonates, the russet browns of the sandstone, in many
+      a fantastic shape. As you first enter it, the park is gloomy, the walls
+      are hidden by creeping plants and by trees that for fifty years have heard
+      no sound of axe. One might think it a virgin forest, made primeval again
+      through some phenomenon granted exclusively to forests. The trunks of the
+      trees are swathed with lichen which hangs from one to another. Mistletoe,
+      with its viscid leaves, droops from every fork of the branches where
+      moisture settles. I have found gigantic ivies, wild arabesques which
+      flourish only at fifty leagues from Paris, here where land does not cost
+      enough to make one sparing of it. The landscape on such free lines covers
+      a great deal of ground. Nothing is smoothed off; rakes are unknown, ruts
+      and ditches are full of water, frogs are tranquilly delivered of their
+      tadpoles, the woodland flowers bloom, and the heather is as beautiful as
+      that I have seen on your mantle-shelf in January in the elegant beau-pot
+      sent by Florine. This mystery is intoxicating, it inspires vague desires.
+      The forest odors, beloved of souls that are epicures of poesy, who delight
+      in the tiny mosses, the noxious fungi, the moist mould, the willows, the
+      balsams, the wild thyme, the green waters of a pond, the golden star of
+      the yellow water-lily,&mdash;the breath of all such vigorous propagations
+      came to my nostrils and filled me with a single thought; was it their
+      soul? I seemed to see a rose-tinted gown floating along the winding alley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The path ended abruptly in another copse, where birches and poplars and
+      all the quivering trees palpitated,&mdash;an intelligent family with
+      graceful branches and elegant bearing, the trees of a love as free! It was
+      from this point, my dear fellow, that I saw a pond covered with the white
+      water-lily and other plants with broad flat leaves and narrow slender
+      ones, on which lay a boat painted white and black, as light as a nut-shell
+      and dainty as the wherry of a Seine boatman. Beyond rose the chateau,
+      built in 1560, of fine red brick, with stone courses and copings, and
+      window-frames in which the sashes were of small leaded panes (O
+      Versailles!). The stone is hewn in diamond points, but hollowed, as in the
+      Ducal Palace at Venice on the facade toward the Bridge of Sighs. There are
+      no regular lines about the castle except in the centre building, from
+      which projects a stately portico with double flights of curving steps, and
+      round balusters slender at their base and broadening at the middle. The
+      main building is surrounded by clock-towers and sundry modern turrets,
+      with galleries and vases more or less Greek. No harmony there, my dear
+      Nathan! These heterogeneous erections are wrapped, so to speak, by various
+      evergreen trees whose branches shed their brown needles upon the roofs,
+      nourishing the lichen and giving tone to the cracks and crevices where the
+      eye delights to wander. Here you see the Italian pine, the stone pine,
+      with its red bark and its majestic parasol; here a cedar two hundred years
+      old, weeping willows, a Norway spruce, and a beech which overtops them
+      all; and there, in front of the main tower, some very singular shrubs,&mdash;a
+      yew trimmed in a way that recalls some long-decayed garden of old France,
+      and magnolias with hortensias at their feet. In short, the place is the
+      Invalides of the heroes of horticulture, once the fashion and now
+      forgotten, like all other heroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A chimney, with curious copings, which was sending forth great volumes of
+      smoke, assured me that this delightful scene was not an opera setting. A
+      kitchen reveals human beings. Now imagine <i>me</i>, Blondet, who shiver
+      as if in the polar regions at Saint-Cloud, in the midst of this glowing
+      Burgundian climate. The sun sends down its warmest rays, the king-fisher
+      watches on the shores of the pond, the cricket chirps, the grain-pods
+      burst, the poppy drops its morphia in glutinous tears, and all are clearly
+      defined on the dark-blue ether. Above the ruddy soil of the terraces
+      flames that joyous natural punch which intoxicates the insects and the
+      flowers and dazzles our eyes and browns our faces. The grape is beading,
+      its tendrils fall in a veil of threads whose delicacy puts to shame the
+      lace-makers. Beside the house blue larkspur, nasturtium, and sweet-peas
+      are blooming. From a distance orange-trees and tuberoses scent the air.
+      After the poetic exhalations of the woods (a gradual preparation) came the
+      delectable pastilles of this botanic seraglio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Standing on the portico, like the queen of flowers, behold a woman robed
+      in white, with hair unpowdered, holding a parasol lined with white silk,
+      but herself whiter than the silk, whiter than the lilies at her feet,
+      whiter than the starry jasmine that climbed the balustrade,&mdash;a woman,
+      a Frenchwoman born in Russia, who said as I approached her, &ldquo;I had almost
+      given you up.&rdquo; She had seen me as I left the copse. With what perfection
+      do all women, even the most guileless, understand the arrangement of a
+      scenic effect? The movements of the servants, who were preparing to serve
+      breakfast, showed me that the meal had been delayed until after the
+      arrival of the diligence. She had not ventured to come to meet me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is this not our dream,&mdash;the dream of all lovers of the beautiful,
+      under whatsoever form it comes; the seraphic beauty that Luini put into
+      his Marriage of the Virgin, that noble fresco at Sarono; the beauty that
+      Rubens grasped in the tumult of his &ldquo;Battle of the Thermodon&rdquo;; the beauty
+      that five centuries have elaborated in the cathedrals of Seville and
+      Milan; the beauty of the Saracens at Granada, the beauty of Louis XIV. at
+      Versailles, the beauty of the Alps, and that of this Limagne in which I
+      stand?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Belonging to the estate, about which there is nothing too princely, nor
+      yet too financial, where prince and farmer-general have both lived (which
+      fact serves to explain it), are four thousand acres of woodland, a park of
+      some nine hundred acres, the mill, three leased farms, another immense
+      farm at Conches, and vineyards,&mdash;the whole producing a revenue of
+      about seventy thousand francs a year. Now you know Les Aigues, my dear
+      fellow; where I have been expected for the last two weeks, and where I am
+      at this moment, in the chintz-lined chamber assigned to dearest friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Above the park, towards Conches, a dozen little brooks, clear, limpid
+      streams coming from the Morvan, fall into the pond, after adorning with
+      their silvery ribbons the valleys of the park and the magnificent gardens
+      around the chateau. The name of the place, Les Aigues, comes from these
+      charming streams of water; the estate was originally called in the old
+      title-deeds &ldquo;Les Aigues-Vives&rdquo; to distinguish it from &ldquo;Aigues-Mortes&rdquo;; but
+      the word &ldquo;Vives&rdquo; has now been dropped. The pond empties into the stream,
+      which follows the course of the avenue, through a wide and straight canal
+      bordered on both sides and along its whole length by weeping willows. This
+      canal, thus arched, produces a delightful effect. Gliding through it,
+      seated on a thwart of the little boat, one could fancy one&rsquo;s self in the
+      nave of some great cathedral, the choir being formed of the main building
+      of the house seen at the end of it. When the setting sun casts its orange
+      tones mingled with amber upon the casements of the chateau, the effect is
+      that of painted windows. At the other end of the canal we see Blangy, the
+      county-town, containing about sixty houses, and the village church, which
+      is nothing more than a tumble-down building with a wooden clock-tower
+      which appears to hold up a roof of broken tiles. One comfortable house and
+      the parsonage are distinguishable; but the township is a large one,&mdash;about
+      two hundred scattered houses in all, those of the village forming as it
+      were the capital. The roads are lined with fruit-trees, and numerous
+      little gardens are strewn here and there,&mdash;true country gardens with
+      everything in them; flowers, onions, cabbages and grapevines, currants,
+      and a great deal of manure. The village has a primitive air; it is rustic,
+      and has that decorative simplicity which we artists are forever seeking.
+      In the far distance is the little town of Soulanges overhanging a vast
+      sheet of water, like the buildings on the lake of Thune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When you stroll in the park, which has four gates, each superb in style,
+      you feel that our mythological Arcadias are flat and stale. Arcadia is in
+      Burgundy, not in Greece; Arcadia is at Les Aigues and nowhere else. A
+      river, made by scores of brooklets, crosses the park at its lower level
+      with a serpentine movement; giving a dewy freshness and tranquillity to
+      the scene,&mdash;an air of solitude, which reminds one of a convent of
+      Carthusians, and all the more because, on an artificial island in the
+      river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior elegance of which is worthy
+      of the luxurious financier who constructed it. Les Aigues, my dear Nathan,
+      once belonged to that Bouret who spent two millions to receive Louis XV.
+      on a single occasion under his roof. How many ardent passions, how many
+      distinguished minds, how many fortunate circumstances have contributed to
+      make this beautiful place what it is! A mistress of Henri IV. rebuilt the
+      chateau where it now stands. The favorite of the Great Dauphin,
+      Mademoiselle Choin (to whom Les Aigues was given), added a number of farms
+      to it. Bouret furnished the house with all the elegancies of Parisian
+      homes for an Opera celebrity; and to him Les Aigues owes the restoration
+      of its ground floor in the style Louis XV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have often stood rapt in admiration at the beauty of the dining-room.
+      The eye is first attracted to the ceiling, painted in fresco in the
+      Italian manner, where lightsome arabesques are frolicking. Female forms,
+      in stucco ending in foliage, support at regular distances corbeils of
+      fruit, from which spring the garlands of the ceiling. Charming paintings,
+      the work of unknown artists, fill the panels between the female figures,
+      representing the luxuries of the table,&mdash;boar&rsquo;s-heads, salmon, rare
+      shell-fish, and all edible things,&mdash;which fantastically suggest men
+      and women and children, and rival the whimsical imagination of the
+      Chinese,&mdash;the people who best understand, to my thinking at least,
+      the art of decoration. The mistress of the house finds a bell-wire beneath
+      her feet to summon servants, who enter only when required, disturbing no
+      interviews and overhearing no secrets. The panels above the doorways
+      represent gay scenes; all the embrasures, both of doors and windows, are
+      in marble mosaics. The room is heated from below. Every window looks forth
+      on some delightful view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This room communicates with a bath-room on one side and on the other with
+      a boudoir which opens into the salon. The bath-room is lined with Sevres
+      tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the bath marble. An
+      alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which turns on a pivot,
+      contains a couch in gilt wood of the truest Pompadour. The ceiling is
+      lapis-lazuli starred with gold. The tiles are painted from designs by
+      Boucher. Bath, table and love are therefore closely united.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the salon, which, I should tell you, my dear fellow, exhibits the
+      magnificence of the Louis XIV. manner, you enter a fine billiard-room
+      unrivalled so far as I know in Paris itself. The entrance to this suite of
+      ground-floor apartments is through a semi-circular antechamber, at the
+      lower end of which is a fairy-like staircase, lighted from above, which
+      leads to other parts of the house, all built at various epochs&mdash;and
+      to think that they chopped off the heads of the wealthy in 1793! Good
+      heavens! why can&rsquo;t people understand that the marvels of art are
+      impossible in a land where there are no great fortunes, no secure,
+      luxurious lives? If the Left insists on killing kings why not leave us a
+      few little princelings with money in their pockets?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the present moment these accumulated treasures belong to a charming
+      woman with an artistic soul, who is not content with merely restoring them
+      magnificently, but who keeps the place up with loving care. Sham
+      philosophers, studying themselves while they profess to be studying
+      humanity, call these glorious things extravagance. They grovel before
+      cotton prints and the tasteless designs of modern industry, as if we were
+      greater and happier in these days than in those of Henri IV., Louis XIV.,
+      and Louis XVI., monarchs who have all left the stamp of their reigns upon
+      Les Aigues. What palace, what royal castle, what mansions, what noble
+      works of art, what gold brocaded stuffs are sacred now? The petticoats of
+      our grandmothers go to cover the chairs in these degenerate days. Selfish
+      and thieving interlopers that we are, we pull down everything and plant
+      cabbages where marvels once were rife. Only yesterday the plough levelled
+      Persan, that magnificent domain which gave a title to one of the most
+      opulent families of the old parliament; hammers have demolished
+      Montmorency, which cost an Italian follower of Napoleon untold sums; Val,
+      the creation of Regnault de Saint-Jean d&rsquo;Angely, Cassan, built by a
+      mistress of the Prince de Conti; in all, four royal houses have
+      disappeared in the valley of the Oise alone. We are getting a Roman
+      campagna around Paris in advance of the days when a tempest shall blow
+      from the north and overturn our plaster palaces and our pasteboard
+      decorations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now see, my dear fellow, to what the habit of bombasticising in newspapers
+      brings you to. Here am I writing a downright article. Does the mind have
+      its ruts, like a road? I stop; for I rob the mail, and I rob myself, and
+      you may be yawning&mdash;to be continued in our next; I hear the second
+      bell, which summons me to one of those abundant breakfasts the fashion of
+      which has long passed away, in the dining-rooms of Paris, be it
+      understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here&rsquo;s the history of my Arcadia. In 1815, there died at Les Aigues one of
+      the famous wantons of the last century,&mdash;a singer, forgotten of the
+      guillotine and the nobility, after preying upon exchequers, upon
+      literature, upon aristocracy, and all but reaching the scaffold;
+      forgotten, like so many fascinating old women who expiate their golden
+      youth in country solitudes, and replace their lost loves by another,&mdash;man
+      by Nature. Such women live with the flowers, with the woodland scents,
+      with the sky, with the sunshine, with all that sings and skips and shines
+      and sprouts,&mdash;the birds, the squirrels, the flowers, the grass; they
+      know nothing about these things, they cannot explain them, but they love
+      them; they love them so well that they forget dukes, marshals, rivalries,
+      financiers, follies, luxuries, their paste jewels and their real diamonds,
+      their heeled slippers and their rouge,&mdash;all, for the sweetness of
+      country life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have gathered, my dear fellow, much precious information about the old
+      age of Mademoiselle Laguerre; for, to tell you the truth, the after life
+      of such women as Florine, Mariette, Suzanne de Val Noble, and Tullia has
+      made me, every now and then, extremely inquisitive, as though I were a
+      child inquiring what had become of the old moons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1790 Mademoiselle Laguerre, alarmed at the turn of public affairs, came
+      to settle at Les Aigues, bought and given to her by Bouret, who passed
+      several summers with her at the chateau. Terrified at the fate of Madame
+      du Barry, she buried her diamonds. At that time she was only fifty-three
+      years of age, and according to her lady&rsquo;s-maid, afterwards married to a
+      gendarme named Soudry, &ldquo;Madame was more beautiful than ever.&rdquo; My dear
+      Nathan, Nature has no doubt her private reasons for treating women of this
+      sort like spoiled children; excesses, instead of killing them, fatten
+      them, preserve them, renew their youth. Under a lymphatic appearance they
+      have nerves which maintain their marvellous physique; they actually
+      preserve their beauty for reasons which would make a virtuous woman
+      haggard. No, upon my word, Nature is not moral!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle Laguerre lived an irreproachable life at Les Aigues, one
+      might even call it a saintly one, after her famous adventure,&mdash;you
+      remember it? One evening in a paroxysm of despairing love, she fled from
+      the opera-house in her stage dress, rushed into the country, and passed
+      the night weeping by the wayside. (Ah! how they have calumniated the love
+      of Louis XV.&lsquo;s time!) She was so unused to see the sunrise, that she
+      hailed it with one of her finest songs. Her attitude, quite as much as her
+      tinsel, drew the peasants about her; amazed at her gestures, her voice,
+      her beauty, they took her for an angel, and dropped on their knees around
+      her. If Voltaire had not existed we might have thought it a new miracle. I
+      don&rsquo;t know if God gave her much credit for her tardy virtue, for love
+      after all must be a sickening thing to a woman as weary of it as a wanton
+      of the old Opera. Mademoiselle Laguerre was born in 1740, and her hey-day
+      was in 1760, when Monsieur (I forget his name) was called the &ldquo;ministre de
+      la guerre,&rdquo; on account of his liaison with her. She abandoned that name,
+      which was quite unknown down here, and called herself Madame des Aigues,
+      as if to merge her identity in the estate, which she delighted to improve
+      with a taste that was profoundly artistic. When Bonaparte became First
+      Consul, she increased her property by the purchase of church lands, for
+      which she used the proceeds of her diamonds. As an Opera divinity never
+      knows how to take care of her money, she intrusted the management of the
+      estate to a steward, occupying herself with her flowers and fruits and
+      with the beautifying of the park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After Mademoiselle was dead and buried at Blangy, the notary of Soulanges&mdash;that
+      little town which lies between Ville-aux-Fayes and Blangy, the capital of
+      the township&mdash;made an elaborate inventory, and sought out the heirs
+      of the singer, who never knew she had any. Eleven families of poor
+      laborers living near Amiens, and sleeping in cotton sheets, awoke one fine
+      morning in golden ones. The property was sold at auction. Les Aigues was
+      bought by Montcornet, who had laid by enough during his campaigns in Spain
+      and Pomerania to make the purchase, which cost about eleven hundred
+      thousand francs, including the furniture. The general, no doubt, felt the
+      influence of these luxurious apartments; and I was arguing with the
+      countess only yesterday that her marriage was a direct result of the
+      purchase of Les Aigues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To rightly understand the countess, my dear Nathan, you must know that the
+      general is a violent man, red as fire, five feet nine inches tall, round
+      as a tower, with a thick neck and the shoulders of a blacksmith, which
+      must have amply filled his cuirass. Montcornet commanded the cuirassiers
+      at the battle of Essling (called by the Austrians Gross-Aspern), and came
+      near perishing when that noble corps was driven back on the Danube. He
+      managed to cross the river astride a log of wood. The cuirassiers, finding
+      the bridge down, took the glorious resolution, at Montcornet&rsquo;s command, to
+      turn and resist the entire Austrian army, which carried off on the morrow
+      over thirty wagon-loads of cuirasses. The Germans invented a name for
+      their enemies on this occasion which means &ldquo;men of iron.&rdquo;[*] Montcornet
+      has the outer man of a hero of antiquity. His arms are stout and vigorous,
+      his chest deep and broad; his head has a leonine aspect, his voice is of
+      those that can order a charge in the thick of battle; but he has nothing
+      more than the courage of a daring man; he lacks mind and breadth of view.
+      Like other generals to whom military common-sense, the natural boldness of
+      those who spend their lives in danger, and the habit of command gives an
+      appearance of superiority, Montcornet has an imposing effect when you
+      first meet him; he seems a Titan, but he contains a dwarf, like the
+      pasteboard giant who saluted Queen Elizabeth at the gates of Kenilworth.
+      Choleric though kind, and full of imperial hauteur, he has the caustic
+      tongue of a soldier, and is quick at repartee, but quicker still with a
+      blow. He may have been superb on a battle-field; in a household he is
+      simply intolerable. He knows no love but barrack love,&mdash;the love
+      which those clever myth-makers, the ancients, placed under the patronage
+      of Eros, son of Mars and Venus. Those delightful chroniclers of the old
+      religions provided themselves with a dozen different Loves. Study the
+      fathers and the attributes of these Loves, and you will discover a
+      complete social nomenclature,&mdash;and yet we fancy that we originate
+      things! When the world turns upside down like an hour-glass, when the seas
+      become continents, Frenchmen will find canons, steamboats, newspapers, and
+      maps wrapped up in seaweed at the bottom of what is now our ocean.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     [*] I do not, on principle, like foot-notes, and this is the
+     first I have ever allowed myself. Its historical interest
+     must be my excuse; it will prove, moreover, that
+     descriptions of battles should be something more than the
+     dry particulars of technical writers, who for the last three
+     thousand years have told us about left and right wings and
+     centres being broken or driven in, but never a word about
+     the soldier himself, his sufferings, and his heroism. The
+     conscientious care with which I prepared myself to write the
+     &ldquo;Scenes from Military Life,&rdquo; led me to many a battle-field
+     once wet with the blood of France and her enemies. Among
+     them I went to Wagram. When I reached the shores of the
+     Danube, opposite Lobau, I noticed on the bank, which is
+     covered with turf, certain undulations that reminded me of
+     the furrows in a field of lucern. I asked the reason of it,
+     thinking I should hear of some new method of agriculture:
+     &ldquo;There sleep the cavalry of the imperial guard,&rdquo; said the
+     peasant who served us as a guide; &ldquo;those are their graves
+     you see there.&rdquo; The words made me shudder. Prince Frederic
+     Schwartzenburg, who translated them, added that the man had
+     himself driven one of the wagons laden with cuirasses. By
+     one of the strange chances of war our guide had served a
+     breakfast to Napoleon on the morning of the battle of
+     Wagram. Though poor, he had kept the double napoleon which
+     the Emperor gave him for his milk and his eggs. The curate
+     of Gross-Aspern took us to the famous cemetery where French
+     and Austrians struggled together knee-deep in blood, with a
+     courage and obstinacy glorious to each. There, while
+     explaining that a marble tablet (to which our attention had
+     been attracted, and on which were inscribed the names of the
+     owner of Gross-Aspern, who had been killed on the third day)
+     was the sole compensation ever given to the family, he said,
+     in a tone of deep sadness: &ldquo;It was a time of great misery,
+     and of great hopes; but now are the days of forgetfulness.&rdquo;
+      The saying seemed to me sublime in its simplicity; but when
+     I came to reflect upon the matter, I felt there was some
+     justification for the apparent ingratitude of the House of
+     Austria. Neither nations nor kings are wealthy enough to
+     reward all the devotions to which these tragic struggles
+     give rise. Let those who serve a cause with a secret
+     expectation of recompense, set a price upon their blood and
+     become mercenaries. Those who wield either sword or pen for
+     their country&rsquo;s good ought to think of nothing but of <i>doing
+     their best</i>, as our fathers used to say, and expect nothing,
+     not even glory, except as a happy accident.
+
+     It was in rushing to retake this famous cemetery for the
+     third time that Massena, wounded and carried in the box of a
+     cabriolet, made this splendid harangue to his soldiers:
+     &ldquo;What! you rascally curs, who have only five sous a day
+     while I have forty thousand, do you let me go ahead of you?&rdquo;
+      All the world knows the order which the Emperor sent to his
+     lieutenant by M. de Sainte-Croix, who swam the Danube three
+     times: &ldquo;Die or retake the village; it is a question of
+     saving the army; the bridges are destroyed.&rdquo;
+ 
+     The Author.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Now, I must tell you that the Comtesse de Montcornet is a fragile, timid,
+      delicate little woman. What do you think of such a marriage as that? To
+      those who know society such things are common enough; a well-assorted
+      marriage is the exception. Nevertheless, I have come to see how it is that
+      this slender little creature handles her bobbins in a way to lead this
+      heavy, solid, stolid general precisely as he himself used to lead his
+      cuirassiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Montcornet begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a finger
+      on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his cigars in a
+      kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before he returns to
+      the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns to her, like a bear drunk on
+      grapes, and says, when anything is proposed, &ldquo;If Madame approves.&rdquo; When he
+      comes to his wife&rsquo;s room, with that heavy step which makes the tiles creak
+      as though they were boards, and she, not wanting him, calls out: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+      come in!&rdquo; he performs a military volte-face and says humbly: &ldquo;You will let
+      me know when I can see you?&rdquo;&mdash;in the very tones with which he shouted
+      to his cuirassiers on the banks of the Danube: &ldquo;Men, we must die, and die
+      well, since there&rsquo;s nothing else we can do!&rdquo; I have heard him say,
+      speaking of his wife, &ldquo;Not only do I love her, but I venerate her.&rdquo; When
+      he flies into a passion which defies all restraint and bursts all bonds,
+      the little woman retires into her own room and leaves him to shout. But
+      four or five hours later she will say: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t get into a passion, my dear,
+      you might break a blood-vessel; and besides, you hurt me.&rdquo; Then the lion
+      of Essling retreats out of sight to wipe his eyes. Sometimes he comes into
+      the salon when she and I are talking, and if she says: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t disturb us,
+      he is reading to me,&rdquo; he leaves us without a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is only strong men, choleric and powerful, thunder-bolts of war,
+      diplomats with olympian heads, or men of genius, who can show this utter
+      confidence, this generous devotion to weakness, this constant protection,
+      this love without jealousy, this easy good humor with a woman. Good
+      heavens! I place the science of the countess&rsquo;s management of her husband
+      as far above the peevish, arid virtues as the satin of a causeuse is
+      superior to the Utrecht velvet of a dirty bourgeois sofa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My dear fellow, I have spent six days in this delightful country-house,
+      and I never tire of admiring the beauties of the park, surrounded by
+      forests where pretty wood-paths lead beside the brooks. Nature and its
+      silence, these tranquil pleasures, this placid life to which she woos me,&mdash;all
+      attract. Ah! here is true literature; no fault of style among the meadows.
+      Happiness forgets all things here,&mdash;even the Debats! It has rained
+      all the morning; while the countess slept and Montcornet tramped over his
+      domain, I have compelled myself to keep my rash, imprudent promise to
+      write to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until now, though I was born at Alencon, of an old judge and a prefect, so
+      they say, and though I know something of agriculture, I supposed the tale
+      of estates bringing in four or five thousand francs a month to be a fable.
+      Money, to me, meant a couple of dreadful things,&mdash;work and a
+      publisher, journalism and politics. When shall we poor fellows come upon a
+      land where gold springs up with the grass? That is what I desire for you
+      and for me and the rest of us in the name of the theatre, and of the
+      press, and of book-making! Amen!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Will Florine be jealous of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre? Our modern
+      Bourets have no French nobles now to show them how to live; they hire one
+      opera-box among three of them; they subscribe for their pleasures; they no
+      longer cut down magnificently bound quartos to match the octavos in their
+      library; in fact, they scarcely buy even stitched paper books. What is to
+      become of us?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                      Adieu; continue to care for
+                                      Your Blondet.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      If this letter, dashed off by the idlest pen of the century, had not by
+      some lucky chance been preserved, it would have been almost impossible to
+      describe Les Aigues; and without this description the history of the
+      horrible events that occurred there would certainly be less interesting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After that remark some persons will expect to see the flashing of the
+      cuirass of the former colonel of the guard, and the raging of his anger as
+      he falls like a waterspout upon his little wife; so that the end of this
+      present history may be like the end of all modern dramas,&mdash;a tragedy
+      of the bed-chamber. Perhaps the fatal scene will take place in that
+      charming room with the blue monochromes, where beautiful ideal birds are
+      painted on the ceilings and the shutters, where Chinese monsters laugh
+      with open jaws on the mantle-shelf, and dragons, green and gold, twist
+      their tails in curious convolutions around rich vases, and Japanese
+      fantasy embroiders its designs of many colors; where sofas and
+      reclining-chairs and consoles and what-nots invite to that contemplative
+      idleness which forbids all action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No; the drama here to be developed is not one of private life; it concerns
+      things higher, or lower. Expect no scenes of passion; the truth of this
+      history is only too dramatic. And remember, the historian should never
+      forget that his mission is to do justice to all; the poor and the
+      prosperous are equals before his pen; to him the peasant appears in the
+      grandeur of his misery, and the rich in the pettiness of his folly.
+      Moreover, the rich man has passions, the peasant only wants. The peasant
+      is therefore doubly poor; and if, politically, his aggressions must be
+      pitilessly repressed, to the eyes of humanity and religion he is sacred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. A BUCOLIC OVERLOOKED BY VIRGIL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When a Parisian drops into the country he is cut off from all his usual
+      habits, and soon feels the dragging hours, no matter how attentive his
+      friends may be to him. Therefore, because it is so impossible to prolong
+      in a tete-a-tete conversations that are soon exhausted, the master and
+      mistress of a country-house are apt to say, calmly, &ldquo;You will be terribly
+      bored here.&rdquo; It is true that to understand the delights of country life
+      one must have something to do, some interests in it; one must know the
+      nature of the work to be done, and the alternating harmony of toil and
+      pleasure,&mdash;eternal symbol of human life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a Parisian has recovered his powers of sleeping, shaken off the
+      fatigues of his journey, and accustomed himself to country habits, the
+      hardest period of the day (if he wears thin boots and is neither a
+      sportsman nor an agriculturalist) is the early morning. Between the hours
+      of waking and breakfasting, the women of the family are sleeping or
+      dressing, and therefore unapproachable; the master of the house is out and
+      about on his own affairs; a Parisian is therefore compelled to be alone
+      from eight to eleven o&rsquo;clock, the hour chosen in all country-houses for
+      breakfast. Now, having got what amusement he can out of carefully dressing
+      himself, he has soon exhausted that resource. Then, perhaps, he has
+      brought with him some work, which he finds it impossible to do, and which
+      goes back untouched, after he sees the difficulties of doing it, into his
+      valise; a writer is then obliged to wander about the park and gape at
+      nothing or count the big trees. The easier the life, the more irksome such
+      occupations are,&mdash;unless, indeed, one belongs to the sect of shaking
+      quakers or to the honorable guild of carpenters or taxidermists. If one
+      really had, like the owners of estates, to live in the country, it would
+      be well to supply one&rsquo;s self with a geological, mineralogical,
+      entomological, or botanical hobby; but a sensible man doesn&rsquo;t give himself
+      a vice merely to kill time for a fortnight. The noblest estate, and the
+      finest chateaux soon pall on those who possess nothing but the sight of
+      them. The beauties of nature seem rather squalid compared to the
+      representation of them at the opera. Paris, by retrospection, shines from
+      all its facets. Unless some particular interest attaches us, as it did in
+      Blondet&rsquo;s case, to scenes honored by the steps and lighted by the eyes of
+      a certain person, one would envy the birds their wings and long to get
+      back to the endless, exciting scenes of Paris and its harrowing strifes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long letter of the young journalist must make most intelligent minds
+      suppose that he had reached, morally and physically, that particular phase
+      of satisfied passions and comfortable happiness which certain winged
+      creatures fed in Strasbourg so perfectly represent when, with their heads
+      sunk behind their protruding gizzards, they neither see nor wish to see
+      the most appetizing food. So, when the formidable letter was finished, the
+      writer felt the need of getting away from the gardens of Armida and doing
+      something to enliven the deadly void of the morning hours; for the hours
+      between breakfast and dinner belonged to the mistress of the house, who
+      knew very well how to make them pass quickly. To keep, as Madame de
+      Montcornet did, a man of talent in the country without ever seeing on his
+      face the false smile of satiety, or detecting the yawn of a weariness that
+      cannot be concealed, is a great triumph for a woman. The affection which
+      is equal to such a test certainly ought to be eternal. It is to be
+      wondered at that women do not oftener employ it to judge of their lovers;
+      a fool, an egoist, or a petty nature could never stand it. Philip the
+      Second himself, the Alexander of dissimulation, would have told his
+      secrets if condemned to a month&rsquo;s tete-a-tete in the country. Perhaps this
+      is why kings seek to live in perpetual motion, and allow no one to see
+      them more than fifteen minutes at a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding that he had received the delicate attentions of one of the
+      most charming women in Paris, Emile Blondet was able to feel once more the
+      long forgotten delights of a truant schoolboy; and on the morning of the
+      day after his letter was written he had himself called by Francois, the
+      head valet, who was specially appointed to wait on him, for the purpose of
+      exploring the valley of the Avonne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Avonne is a little river which, being swollen above Conches by
+      numerous rivulets, some of which rise in Les Aigues, falls at
+      Ville-aux-Fayes into one of the large affluents of the Seine. The
+      geographical position of the Avonne, navigable for over twelve miles, had,
+      ever since Jean Bouvet invented rafts, given full money value to the
+      forests of Les Aigues, Soulanges, and Ronquerolles, standing on the crest
+      of the hills between which this charming river flows. The park of Les
+      Aigues covers the greater part of the valley, between the river (bordered
+      on both sides by the forest called des Aigues) and the royal mail road,
+      defined by a line of old elms in the distance along the slopes of the
+      Avonne mountains, which are in fact the foot-hills of that magnificent
+      amphitheater called the Morvan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However vulgar the comparison may be, the park, lying thus at the bottom
+      of the valley, is like an enormous fish with its head at Conches and its
+      tail in the village of Blangy; for it widens in the middle to nearly three
+      hundred acres, while towards Conches it counts less than fifty, and sixty
+      at Blangy. The position of this estate, between three villages, and only
+      three miles from the little town of Soulanges, from which the descent is
+      rapid, may perhaps have led to the strife and caused the excesses which
+      are the chief interest attaching to the place. If, when seen from the mail
+      road or from the uplands beyond Ville-aux-Fayes, the paradise of Les
+      Aigues induces mere passing travellers to commit the mortal sin of envy,
+      why should the rich burghers of Soulanges and Ville-aux-Fayes who had it
+      before their eyes and admired it every day of their lives, have been more
+      virtuous?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last topographical detail was needed to explain the site, also the
+      use of the four gates by which alone the park of Les Aigues was entered;
+      for it was completely surrounded by walls, except where nature had
+      provided a fine view, and at such points sunk fences or ha-has had been
+      placed. The four gates, called the gate of Conches, the gate of Avonne,
+      the gate of Blangy, and the gate of the Avenue, showed the styles of the
+      different periods at which they were constructed so admirably that a brief
+      description, in the interest of archaeologists, will presently be given,
+      as brief as the one Blondet has already written about the gate of the
+      Avenue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After eight days of strolling about with the countess, the illustrious
+      editor of the &ldquo;Journal des Debats&rdquo; knew by heart the Chinese kiosk, the
+      bridges, the isles, the hermitage, the dairy, the ruined temple, the
+      Babylonian ice-house, and all the other delusions invented by landscape
+      architects which some nine hundred acres of land can be made to serve. He
+      now wished to find the sources of the Avonne, which the general and the
+      countess daily extolled in the evening, making plans to visit them which
+      were daily forgotten the next morning. Above Les Aigues the Avonne really
+      had the appearance of an alpine torrent. Sometimes it hollowed a bed among
+      the rocks, sometimes it went underground; on this side the brooks came
+      down in cascades, there they flowed like the Loire on sandy shallows where
+      rafts could not pass on account of the shifting channels. Blondet took a
+      short cut through the labyrinths of the park to reach the gate of Conches.
+      This gate demands a few words, which give, moreover, certain historical
+      details about the property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The original founder of Les Aigues was a younger son of the Soulanges
+      family, enriched by marriage, whose chief ambition was to make his elder
+      brother jealous,&mdash;a sentiment, by the bye, to which we owe the
+      fairy-land of Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore. In the middle ages the
+      castle of Les Aigues stood on the banks of the Avonne. Of this old
+      building nothing remains but the gateway, which has a porch like the
+      entrance to a fortified town, flanked by two round towers with conical
+      roofs. Above the arch of the porch are heavy stone courses, now draped
+      with vegetation, showing three large windows with cross-bar sashes. A
+      winding stairway in one of the towers leads to two chambers, and a kitchen
+      occupies the other tower. The roof of the porch, of pointed shape like all
+      old timber-work, is noticeable for two weathercocks perched at each end of
+      a ridge-pole ornamented with fantastic iron-work. Many an important place
+      cannot boast of so fine a town hall. On the outside of this gateway, the
+      keystone of the arch still bears the arms of Soulanges, preserved by the
+      hardness of the stone on which the chisel of the artist carved them, as
+      follows: Azure, on a pale, argent, three pilgrim&rsquo;s staff&rsquo;s sable; a fess
+      bronchant, gules, charged with four grosses patee, fitched, or; with the
+      heraldic form of a shield awarded to younger sons. Blondet deciphered the
+      motto, &ldquo;Je soule agir,&rdquo;&mdash;one of those puns that crusaders delighted
+      to make upon their names, and which brings to mind a fine political maxim,
+      which, as we shall see later, was unfortunately forgotten by Montcornet.
+      The gate, which was opened for Blondet by a very pretty girl, was of
+      time-worn wood clamped with iron. The keeper, wakened by the creaking of
+      the hinges, put his nose out of the window and showed himself in his
+      night-shirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So our keepers sleep till this time of day!&rdquo; thought the Parisian, who
+      thought himself very knowing in rural customs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a walk of about quarter of an hour, he reached the sources of the
+      river above Conches, where his ravished eyes beheld one of those
+      landscapes that ought to be described, like the history of France, in a
+      thousand volumes or in only one. We must here content ourselves with two
+      paragraphs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A projecting rock, covered with dwarf trees and abraded at its base by the
+      Avonne, to which circumstance it owes a slight resemblance to an enormous
+      turtle lying across the river, forms an arch through which the eye takes
+      in a little sheet of water, clear as a mirror, where the stream seems to
+      sleep until it reaches in the distance a series of cascades falling among
+      huge rocks, where little weeping willows with elastic motion sway back and
+      forth to the flow of waters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond these cascades is the hillside, rising sheer, like a Rhine rock
+      clothed with moss and heather, gullied like it, again, by sharp ridges of
+      schist and mica sending down, here and there, white foaming rivulets to
+      which a little meadow, always watered and always green, serves as a cup;
+      farther on, beyond the picturesque chaos and in contrast to this wild,
+      solitary nature, the gardens of Conches are seen, with the village roofs
+      and the clock-tower and the outlying fields.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are the two paragraphs, but the rising sun, the purity of the air,
+      the dewy sheen, the melody of woods and waters&mdash;imagine them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almost as charming as at the Opera,&rdquo; thought Blondet, making his way
+      along the banks of the unnavigable portion of the Avonne, whose caprices
+      contrast with the straight and deep and silent stream of the lower river,
+      flowing between the tall trees of the forest of Les Aigues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blondet did not proceed far on his morning walk, for he was presently
+      brought to a stand-still by the sight of a peasant,&mdash;one of those
+      who, in this drama, are supernumeraries so essential to its action that it
+      may be doubted whether they are not in fact its leading actors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the clever journalist reached a group of rocks where the main stream
+      is imprisoned, as it were, between two portals, he saw a man standing so
+      motionless as to excite his curiosity, while the clothes and general air
+      of this living statue greatly puzzled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The humble personage before him was a living presentment of the old men
+      dear to Charlet&rsquo;s pencil; resembling the troopers of that Homer of
+      soldiery in a strong frame able to endure hardship, and his immortal
+      skirmishers in a fiery, crimson, knotted face, showing small capacity for
+      submission. A coarse felt hat, the brim of which was held to the crown by
+      stitches, protected a nearly bald head from the weather; below it fell a
+      quantity of white hair which a painter would gladly have paid four francs
+      an hour to copy,&mdash;a dazzling mass of snow, worn like that in all the
+      classical representations of Deity. It was easy to guess from the way in
+      which the cheeks sank in, continuing the lines of the mouth, that the
+      toothless old fellow was more given to the bottle than the trencher. His
+      thin white beard gave a threatening expression to his profile by the
+      stiffness of its short bristles. The eyes, too small for his enormous
+      face, and sloping like those of a pig, betrayed cunning and also laziness;
+      but at this particular moment they were gleaming with the intent look he
+      cast upon the river. The sole garments of this curious figure were an old
+      blouse, formerly blue, and trousers of the coarse burlap used in Paris to
+      wrap bales. All city people would have shuddered at the sight of his
+      broken sabots, without even a wisp of straw to stop the cracks; and it is
+      very certain that the blouse and the trousers had no money value at all
+      except to a paper-maker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Blondet examined this rural Diogenes, he admitted the possibility of a
+      type of peasantry he had seen in old tapestries, old pictures, old
+      sculptures, and which, up to this time, had seemed to him imaginary. He
+      resolved for the future not to utterly condemn the school of ugliness,
+      perceiving a possibility that in man beauty may be but the flattering
+      exception, a chimera in which the race struggles to believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can be the ideas, the morals, the habits, of such a being? What is
+      he thinking of?&rdquo; thought Blondet, seized with curiosity. &ldquo;Is he my
+      fellow-creature? We have nothing in common but shape, and even that!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He noticed in the old man&rsquo;s limbs the peculiar rigidity of the tissues of
+      persons who live in the open air, accustomed to the inclemencies of the
+      weather and to the endurance of heat and cold,&mdash;hardened to
+      everything, in short,&mdash;which makes their leathern skin almost a hide,
+      and their nerves an apparatus against physical pain almost as powerful as
+      that of the Russians or the Arabs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s one of Cooper&rsquo;s Red-skins,&rdquo; thought Blondet; &ldquo;one needn&rsquo;t go to
+      America to study savages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the Parisian was less than ten paces off, the old man did not turn
+      his head, but kept looking at the opposite bank with a fixity which the
+      fakirs of India give to their vitrified eyes and their stiffened joints.
+      Compelled by the power of a species of magnetism, more contagious than
+      people have any idea of, Blondet ended by gazing at the water himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my good man, what do you see there?&rdquo; he asked, after the lapse of a
+      quarter of an hour, during which time he saw nothing to justify this
+      intent contemplation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; whispered the old man, with a sign to Blondet not to ruffle the
+      air with his voice; &ldquo;You will frighten it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An otter, my good gentleman. If it hears us it&rsquo;ll go quick under water.
+      I&rsquo;m certain it jumped there; see! see! there, where the water bubbles! Ha!
+      it sees a fish, it is after that! But my boy will grab it as it comes
+      back. The otter, don&rsquo;t you know, is very rare; it is scientific game, and
+      good eating, too. I get ten francs for every one I carry to Les Aigues,
+      for the lady fasts Fridays, and to-morrow is Friday. Years agone the
+      deceased madame used to pay me twenty francs, and gave me the skin to
+      boot! Mouche,&rdquo; he called, in a low voice, &ldquo;watch it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Blondet now perceived on the other side of the river two bright eyes, like
+      those of a cat, beneath a tuft of alders; then he saw the tanned forehead
+      and tangled hair of a boy about ten years of age, who was lying on his
+      stomach and making signs towards the otter to let his master know he kept
+      it well in sight. Blondet, completely mastered by the eagerness of the old
+      man and boy, allowed the demon of the chase to get the better of him,&mdash;that
+      demon with the double claws of hope and curiosity, who carries you
+      whithersoever he will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hat-makers buy the skin,&rdquo; continued the old man; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s so soft, so
+      handsome! They cover caps with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you really think so, my old man?&rdquo; said Blondet, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well truly, my good gentleman, you ought to know more than I, though I am
+      seventy years old,&rdquo; replied the old fellow, very humbly and respectfully,
+      falling into the attitude of a giver of holy water; &ldquo;perhaps you can tell
+      me why conductors and wine-merchants are so fond of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Blondet, a master of irony, already on his guard from the word
+      &ldquo;scientific,&rdquo; recollected the Marechal de Richelieu and began to suspect
+      some jest on the part of the old man; but he was reassured by his artless
+      attitude and the perfectly stupid expression of his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In my young days we had lots of otters,&rdquo; whispered the old fellow; &ldquo;but
+      they&rsquo;ve hunted &lsquo;em so that if we see the tail of one in seven years it is
+      as much as ever we do. And the sub-prefect at Ville-aux-Fayes,&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t
+      monsieur know him? though he be a Parisian, he&rsquo;s a fine young man like
+      you, and he loves curiosities,&mdash;so, as I was saying, hearing of my
+      talent for catching otters, for I know &lsquo;em as you know your alphabet, he
+      says to me like this: &lsquo;Pere Fourchon,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;when you find an otter
+      bring it to me, and I&rsquo;ll pay you well; and if it&rsquo;s spotted white on the
+      back,&rsquo; says he, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll give you thirty francs.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s just what he did say
+      to me as true as I believe in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And
+      there&rsquo;s a learned man at Soulanges, Monsieur Gourdon, our doctor, who is
+      making, so they tell me, a collection of natural history which hasn&rsquo;t its
+      mate at Dijon even; indeed he is first among the learned men in these
+      parts, and he&rsquo;ll pay me a fine price, too; he stuffs men and beasts. Now
+      my boy there stands me out that that otter has got the white spots. &lsquo;If
+      that&rsquo;s so,&rsquo; says I to him, &lsquo;then the good God wishes well to us this
+      morning!&rsquo; Ha! didn&rsquo;t you see the water bubble? yes, there it is! there it
+      is! Though it lives in a kind of a burrow, it sometimes stays whole days
+      under water. Ha, there! it heard you, my good gentleman; it&rsquo;s on its guard
+      now; for there&rsquo;s not a more suspicious animal on earth; it&rsquo;s worse than a
+      woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you call women suspicious, do you?&rdquo; said Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Faith, monsieur, if you come from Paris you ought to know about that
+      better than I. But you&rsquo;d have done better for me if you had stayed in your
+      bed and slept all the morning; don&rsquo;t you see that wake there? that&rsquo;s where
+      she&rsquo;s gone under. Get up, Mouche! the otter heard monsieur talking, and
+      now she&rsquo;s scary enough to keep us at her heels till midnight. Come, let&rsquo;s
+      be off! and good-bye to our thirty francs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mouche got up reluctantly; he looked at the spot where the water bubbled,
+      pointed to it with his finger and seemed unable to give up all hope. The
+      child, with curly hair and a brown face, like the angels in a
+      fifteenth-century picture, seemed to be in breeches, for his trousers
+      ended at the knee in a ragged fringe of brambles and dead leaves. This
+      necessary garment was fastened upon him by cords of tarred oakum in guise
+      of braces. A shirt of the same burlap which made the old man&rsquo;s trousers,
+      thickened, however, by many darns, open in front showed a sun-burnt little
+      breast. In short, the attire of the being called Mouche was even more
+      startlingly simple than that of Pere Fourchon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a good-natured set of people they are here,&rdquo; thought Blondet; &ldquo;if a
+      man frightened away the game of the people of the suburbs of Paris, how
+      their tongues would maul him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he had never seen an otter, even in a museum, he was delighted with
+      this episode of his early walk. &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said he, quite touched when the
+      old man walked away without asking him for a compensation, &ldquo;you say you
+      are a famous otter catcher. If you are sure there is an otter down there&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From the other side of the water Mouche pointed his finger to certain
+      air-bubbles coming up from the bottom of the Avonne and bursting on its
+      surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has come back!&rdquo; said Pere Fourchon; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you see it breathe, the
+      beggar? How do you suppose they manage to breathe at the bottom of the
+      water? Ah, the creature&rsquo;s so clever it laughs at science.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Blondet, who supposed the last word was a jest of the
+      peasantry in general rather than of this peasant in particular, &ldquo;wait and
+      catch the otter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what are we to do about our day&rsquo;s work, Mouche and I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your day worth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the pair of us, my apprentice and me?&mdash;Five francs,&rdquo; said the
+      old man, looking Blondet in the eye with a hesitation which betrayed an
+      enormous overcharge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The journalist took ten francs from his pocket, saying, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s ten, and
+      I&rsquo;ll give you ten more for the otter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it won&rsquo;t cost you dear if there&rsquo;s white on its back; for the
+      sub-prefect told me there wasn&rsquo;t one o&rsquo; them museums that had the like;
+      but he knows everything, our sub-prefect,&mdash;no fool he! If I hunt the
+      otter, he, M&rsquo;sieur des Lupeaulx, hunts Mademoiselle Gaubertin, who has a
+      fine white &lsquo;dot&rsquo; on her back. Come now, my good gentleman, if I may make
+      so bold, plunge into the middle of the Avonne and get to that stone down
+      there. If we head the otter off, it will come down stream; for just see
+      their slyness, the beggars! they always go above their burrow to feed,
+      for, once full of fish, they know they can easily drift down, the sly
+      things! Ha! if I&rsquo;d been trained in their school I should be living now on
+      an income; but I was a long time finding out that you must go up stream
+      very early in the morning if you want to bag the game before others. Well,
+      somebody threw a spell over me when I was born. However, we three together
+      ought to be slyer than the otter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How so, my old necromancer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, bless you! we are as stupid as the beasts, and so we come to
+      understand the beasts. Now, see, this is what we&rsquo;ll do. When the otter
+      wants to get home Mouche and I&rsquo;ll frighten it here, and you&rsquo;ll frighten it
+      over there; frightened by us and frightened by you it will jump on the
+      bank, and when it takes to earth, it is lost! It can&rsquo;t run; it has web
+      feet for swimming. Ho, ho! it will make you laugh, such floundering! you
+      don&rsquo;t know whether you are fishing or hunting! The general up at Les
+      Aigues, I have known him to stay here three days running, he was so bent
+      on getting an otter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Blondet, armed with a branch cut for him by the old man, who requested him
+      to whip the water with it when he called to him, planted himself in the
+      middle of the river by jumping from stone to stone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, that will do, my good gentleman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Blondet stood where he was told without remarking the lapse of time, for
+      every now and then the old fellow made him a sign as much as to say that
+      all was going well; and besides, nothing makes time go so fast as the
+      expectation that quick action is to succeed the perfect stillness of
+      watching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pere Fourchon,&rdquo; whispered the boy, finding himself alone with the old
+      man, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s <i>really</i> an otter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, see there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old fellow was dumb-founded at beholding under water the reddish-brown
+      fur of an actual otter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s coming my way!&rdquo; said the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hit him a sharp blow on the head and jump into the water and hold him
+      fast down, but don&rsquo;t let him go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mouche dove into the water like a frightened frog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, my good gentleman,&rdquo; cried Pere Fourchon to Blondet, jumping
+      into the water and leaving his sabots on the bank, &ldquo;frighten him! frighten
+      him! Don&rsquo;t you see him? he is swimming fast your way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man dashed toward Blondet through the water, calling out with the
+      gravity that country people retain in the midst of their greatest
+      excitements:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see him, there, along the rocks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Blondet, placed by direction of the old fellow in such a way that the sun
+      was in his eyes, thrashed the water with much satisfaction to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on, go on!&rdquo; cried Pere Fourchon; &ldquo;on the rock side; the burrow is
+      there, to your left!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carried away by excitement and by his long waiting, Blondet slipped from
+      the stones into the water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! brave you are, my good gentleman! Twenty good Gods! I see him between
+      your legs! you&rsquo;ll have him!&mdash;Ah! there! he&rsquo;s gone&mdash;he&rsquo;s gone!&rdquo;
+       cried the old man, in despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, in the fury of the chase, the old fellow plunged into the deepest
+      part of the stream in front of Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s your fault we&rsquo;ve lost him!&rdquo; he cried, as Blondet gave him a hand to
+      pull him out, dripping like a triton, and a vanquished triton. &ldquo;The
+      rascal, I see him, under those rocks! He has let go his fish,&rdquo; continued
+      Fourchon, pointing to something that floated on the surface. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have
+      that at any rate; it&rsquo;s a tench, a real tench.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then a groom in livery on horseback and leading another horse by the
+      bridle galloped up the road toward Conches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See! there&rsquo;s the chateau people sending after you,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;If
+      you want to cross back again I&rsquo;ll give you a hand. I don&rsquo;t mind about
+      getting wet; it saves washing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How about rheumatism?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rheumatism! don&rsquo;t you see the sun has browned our legs, Mouche and me,
+      like tobacco-pipes. Here, lean on me, my good gentleman&mdash;you&rsquo;re from
+      Paris; you don&rsquo;t know, though you <i>do</i> know so much, how to walk on
+      our rocks. If you stay here long enough, you&rsquo;ll learn a deal that&rsquo;s
+      written in the book o&rsquo; nature,&mdash;you who write, so they tell me, in
+      the newspapers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Blondet had reached the bank before Charles, the groom, perceived him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, monsieur!&rdquo; he cried; &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t know how anxious Madame has been
+      since she heard you had gone through the gate of Conches; she was afraid
+      you were drowned. They have rung the great bell three times, and Monsieur
+      le cure is hunting for you in the park.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What time is it, Charles?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A quarter to twelve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help me to mount.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; exclaimed the groom, noticing the water that dripped from Blondet&rsquo;s
+      boots and trousers, &ldquo;has monsieur been taken in by Pere Fourchon&rsquo;s otter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words enlightened the journalist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say a word about it, Charles,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ll make it all
+      right with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, as for that!&rdquo; answered the man, &ldquo;Monsieur le comte himself has been
+      taken in by that otter. Whenever a visitor comes to Les Aigues, Pere
+      Fourchon sets himself on the watch, and if the gentleman goes to see the
+      sources of the Avonne he sells him the otter; he plays the trick so well
+      that Monsieur le comte has been here three times and paid him for six
+      days&rsquo; work, just to stare at the water!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavens!&rdquo; thought Blondet. &ldquo;And I imagined I had seen the greatest
+      comedians of the present day!&mdash;Potier, the younger Baptiste, Michot,
+      and Monrose. What are they compared to that old beggar?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is very knowing at the business, Pere Fourchon is,&rdquo; continued Charles;
+      &ldquo;and he has another string to his bow, besides. He calls himself a
+      rope-maker, and has a walk under the park wall by the gate of Blangy. If
+      you merely touch his rope he&rsquo;ll entangle you so cleverly that you will
+      want to turn the wheel and make a bit of it yourself; and for that you
+      would have to pay a fee for apprenticeship. Madame herself was taken in,
+      and gave him twenty francs. Ah! he is the king of tricks, that old
+      fellow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The groom&rsquo;s gossip set Blondet thinking of the extreme craftiness and
+      wiliness of the French peasant, of which he had heard a great deal from
+      his father, a judge at Alencon. Then the satirical meaning hidden beneath
+      Pere Fourchon&rsquo;s apparent guilelessness came back to him, and he owned
+      himself &ldquo;gulled&rdquo; by the Burgundian beggar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would never believe, monsieur,&rdquo; said Charles, as they reached the
+      portico at Les Aigues, &ldquo;how much one is forced to distrust everybody and
+      everything in the country,&mdash;especially here, where the general is not
+      much liked&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s more than I know,&rdquo; said Charles, with the stupid air servants
+      assume to shield themselves when they wish not to answer their superiors,
+      which nevertheless gave Blondet a good deal to think of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here you are, truant!&rdquo; cried the general, coming out on the terrace when
+      he heard the horses. &ldquo;Here he is; don&rsquo;t be uneasy!&rdquo; he called back to his
+      wife, whose little footfalls were heard behind him. &ldquo;Now the Abbe
+      Brossette is missing. Go and find him, Charles,&rdquo; he said to the groom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. THE TAVERN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The gate of Blangy, built by Bouret, was formed of two wide pilasters of
+      projecting rough-hewn stone; each surmounted by a dog sitting on his
+      haunches and holding an escutcheon between his fore paws. The proximity of
+      a small house where the steward lived dispensed with the necessity for a
+      lodge. Between the two pilasters, a sumptuous iron gate, like those made
+      in Buffon&rsquo;s time for the Jardin des Plantes, opened on a short paved way
+      which led to the country road (formerly kept in order by Les Aigues and
+      the Soulanges family) which unites Conches, Cerneux, Blangy, and Soulanges
+      to Ville-aux-Fayes, like a wreath, for the whole road is lined with
+      flowering hedges and little houses covered with roses and honey-suckle and
+      other climbing plants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There, along a pretty wall which extends as far as a terrace from which
+      the land of Les Aigues falls rapidly to the valley till it meets that of
+      Soulanges, are the rotten posts, the old wheel, and the forked stakes
+      which constituted the manufactory of the village rope-maker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soon after midday, while Blondet was seating himself at table opposite the
+      Abbe Brossette and receiving the tender expostulations of the countess,
+      Pere Fourchon and Mouche arrived at this establishment. From that
+      vantage-ground Pere Fourchon, under pretence of rope-making, could watch
+      Les Aigues and see every one who went in and out. Nothing escaped him, the
+      opening of the blinds, tete-a-tete loiterings, or the least little
+      incidents of country life, were spied upon by the old fellow, who had set
+      up this business within the last three years,&mdash;a trifling
+      circumstance which neither the masters, nor the servants, nor the keepers
+      of Les Aigues had as yet remarked upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go round to the house by the gate of the Avonne while I put away the
+      tackle,&rdquo; said Pere Fourchon to his attendant, &ldquo;and when you have blabbed
+      about the thing, they&rsquo;ll no doubt send after me to the Grand-I-Vert, where
+      I am going for a drop of drink,&mdash;for it makes one thirsty enough to
+      wade in the water that way. If you do just as I tell you, you&rsquo;ll hook a
+      good breakfast out of them; try to meet the countess, and give a slap at
+      me, and that will put it into her head to come and preach morality or
+      something! There&rsquo;s lots of good wine to get out of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After these last instructions, which the sly look in Mouche&rsquo;s face
+      rendered quite superfluous, the old peasant, hugging the otter under his
+      arm, disappeared along the country road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half-way between the gate and the village there stood, at the time when
+      Emile Blondet stayed at Les Aigues, one of those houses which are never
+      seen but in parts of France where stone is scarce. Bits of bricks picked
+      up anywhere, cobblestones set like diamonds in the clay mud, formed very
+      solid walls, though worn in places; the roof was supported by stout
+      branches and covered with rushes and straw, while the clumsy shutters and
+      the broken door&mdash;in short, everything about the cottage was the
+      product of lucky finds, or of gifts obtained by begging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasant has an instinct for his habitation like that of an animal for
+      its nest or its burrow, and this instinct was very marked in all the
+      arrangements of this cottage. In the first place, the door and the window
+      looked to the north. The house, placed on a little rise in the stoniest
+      angle of a vineyard, was certainly healthful. It was reached by three
+      steps, carefully made with stakes and planks filled in with broken stone
+      and gravel, so that the water ran off rapidly; and as the rain seldom
+      comes from the northward in Burgundy, no dampness could rot the
+      foundations, slight as they were. Below the steps and along the path ran a
+      rustic paling, hidden beneath a hedge of hawthorn and sweet-brier. An
+      arbor, with a few clumsy tables and wooden benches, filled the space
+      between the cottage and the road, and invited the passers-by to rest
+      themselves. At the upper end of the bank by the house roses grew, and
+      wall-flowers, violets, and other flowers that cost nothing. Jessamine and
+      honey-suckle had fastened their tendrils on the roof, mossy already,
+      though the building was far from old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the right of the house, the owner had built a stable for two cows. In
+      front of this erection of old boards, a sunken piece of ground served as a
+      yard where, in a corner, was a huge manure-heap. On the other side of the
+      house and the arbor stood a thatched shed, supported on trunks of trees,
+      under which the various outdoor properties of the peasantry were put away,&mdash;the
+      utensils of the vine-dressers, their empty casks, logs of wood piled about
+      a mound which contained the oven, the mouth of which opened, as was usual
+      in the houses of the peasantry, under the mantle-piece of the chimney in
+      the kitchen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About an acre of land adjoined the house, inclosed by an evergreen hedge
+      and planted with grape-vines; tended as peasants tend them,&mdash;that is
+      to say, well-manured, and dug round, and layered so that they usually set
+      their fruit before the vines of the large proprietors in a circuit of ten
+      miles round. A few trees, almond, plum, and apricot, showed their slim
+      heads here and there in this enclosure. Between the rows of vines potatoes
+      and beans were planted. In addition to all this, on the side towards the
+      village and beyond the yard was a bit of damp low ground, favorable for
+      the growth of cabbages and onions (favorite vegetables of the
+      working-classes), which was closed by a wooden gate, through which the
+      cows were driven, trampling the path into mud and covering it with dung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house, which had two rooms on the ground-floor, opened upon the
+      vineyard. On this side an outer stairway, roofed with thatch and resting
+      against the wall of the house, led up to the garret, which was lighted by
+      one round window. Under this rustic stairway opened a cellar built of
+      Burgundy brick, containing several casks of wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the kitchen utensils of the peasantry are usually only two, namely,
+      a frying-pan and an iron pot, with which they manage to do all their
+      cooking, exceptions to this rule, in the shape of two enormous saucepans
+      hanging beneath the mantle-shelf and above a small portable stove, were to
+      be seen in this cottage. In spite, however, of this indication of luxury,
+      the furniture was in keeping with the external appearance of the place. A
+      jar held water, the spoons were of wood or pewter, the dishes, of red clay
+      without and white within, were scaling off and had been mended with pewter
+      rivets; the heavy table and chairs were of pine wood, and for flooring
+      there was nothing better than the hardened earth. Every fifth year the
+      walls received a coat of white-wash and so did the narrow beams of the
+      ceiling, from which hung bacon, strings of onions, bundles of tallow
+      candles, and the bags in which a peasant keeps his seeds; near the
+      bread-box stood an old-fashioned wardrobe in walnut, where the scanty
+      household linen, and the one change of garments together with the holiday
+      attire of the entire family were kept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Above the mantel of the chimney gleamed a poacher&rsquo;s old gun, not worth
+      five francs,&mdash;the wood scorched, the barrel to all appearances never
+      cleaned. An observer might reflect that the protection of a hovel with
+      only a latch, and an outer gate that was only a paling and never closed,
+      needed no better weapon; but still the wonder was to what use it was put.
+      In the first place, though the wood was of the commonest kind, the barrel
+      was carefully selected, and came from a valuable gun, given in all
+      probability to a game-keeper. Moreover, the owner of this weapon never
+      missed his aim; there was between him and his gun the same intimate
+      acquaintance that there is between a workman and his tool. If the muzzle
+      must be raised or lowered the merest fraction in its aim, because it
+      carries just an atom above or below the range, the poacher knows it; he
+      obeys the rule and never misses. An officer of artillery would have found
+      the essential parts of this weapon in good condition notwithstanding its
+      uncleanly appearance. In all that the peasant appropriates to his use, in
+      all that serves him, he displays just the amount of force that is needed,
+      neither more nor less; he attends to the essential and to nothing beyond.
+      External perfection he has no conception of. An unerring judge of the
+      necessary in all things, he thoroughly understands degrees of strength,
+      and knows very well when working for an employer how to give the least
+      possible for the most he can get. This contemptible-looking gun will be
+      found to play a serious part in the life of the family inhabiting this
+      cottage, and you will presently learn how and why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Have you now taken in all the many details of this hovel, planted about
+      five hundred feet away from the pretty gate of Les Aigues? Do you see it
+      crouching there, like a beggar beside a palace? Well, its roof covered
+      with velvet mosses, its clacking hens, its grunting pig, its straying
+      heifer, all its rural graces have a horrible meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fastened to a pole, which was stuck in the ground beside the entrance
+      through the fence, was a withered bunch of three pine branches and some
+      old oak-leaves tied together with a rag. Above the door of the house a
+      roving artist had painted, probably in return for his breakfast, a huge
+      capital &ldquo;I&rdquo; in green on a white ground two feet square; and for the
+      benefit of those who could read, this witty joke in twelve letters: &ldquo;Au
+      Grand-I-Vert&rdquo; (hiver). On the left of the door was a vulgar sign bearing,
+      in colored letters, &ldquo;Good March beer,&rdquo; and the picture of a foaming pot of
+      the same, with a woman, in a dress excessively low-necked, on one side,
+      and an hussar on the other,&mdash;both coarsely colored. Consequently, in
+      spite of the blooming flowers and the fresh country air, this cottage
+      exhaled the same strong and nauseous odor of wine and food which assails
+      you in Paris as you pass the door of the cheap cook-shops of the faubourg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now you know the surroundings. Behold the inhabitants and hear their
+      history, which contains more than one lesson for philanthropists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The proprietor of the Grand-I-Vert, named Francois Tonsard, commends
+      himself to the attention of philosophers by the manner in which he had
+      solved the problem of an idle life and a busy life, so as to make the
+      idleness profitable, and occupation nil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A jack-of-all-trades, he knew how to cultivate the ground, but for himself
+      only. For others, he dug ditches, gathered fagots, barked the trees, or
+      cut them down. In all such work the employer is at the mercy of the
+      workman. Tonsard owned his plot of ground to the generosity of
+      Mademoiselle Laguerre. In his early youth he had worked by the day for the
+      gardener at Les Aigues; and he really had not his equal in trimming the
+      shrubbery-trees, the hedges, the horn-beams, and the horse-chestnuts. His
+      very name shows hereditary talent. In remote country-places privileges
+      exist which are obtained and preserved with as much care as the merchants
+      of a city display in getting theirs. Mademoiselle Laguerre was one day
+      walking in the garden, when she overheard Tonsard, then a strapping
+      fellow, say, &ldquo;All I need to live on, and live happily, is an acre of
+      land.&rdquo; The kind creature, accustomed to make others happy, gave him the
+      acre of vineyard near the gate of Blangy, in return for one hundred days&rsquo; 
+      work (a delicate regard for his feelings which was little understood), and
+      allowed him to stay at Les Aigues, where he lived with her servants, who
+      thought him one of the best fellows in Burgundy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Tonsard (that is what everybody called him) worked about thirty days
+      out of the hundred that he owed; the rest of the time he idled about,
+      talking and laughing with Mademoiselle&rsquo;s women, particularly with
+      Mademoiselle Cochet, the lady&rsquo;s maid, though she was ugly, like all
+      confidential maids of handsome actresses. Laughing with Mademoiselle
+      Cochet signified so many things that Soudry, the fortunate gendarme
+      mentioned in Blondet&rsquo;s letter, still looked askance at Tonsard after the
+      lapse of nearly twenty-five years. The walnut wardrobe, the bedstead with
+      the tester and curtains, and the ornaments about the bedroom were
+      doubtless the result of the said laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once in possession of his care, Tonsard replied to the first person who
+      happened to mention that Mademoiselle Laguerre had given it to him, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+      bought it deuced hard, and paid well for it. Do rich folks ever give us
+      anything? Are one hundred days&rsquo; work nothing? It has cost me three hundred
+      francs, and the land is all stones.&rdquo; But that speech never got beyond the
+      regions of his own class.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tonsard built his house himself, picking up the materials here and there
+      as he could,&mdash;getting a day&rsquo;s work out of this one and that one,
+      gleaning in the rubbish that was thrown away, often asking for things and
+      always obtaining them. A discarded door cut in two for convenience in
+      carrying away became the door of the stable; the window was the sash of a
+      green-house. In short, the rubbish of the chateau, served to build the
+      fatal cottage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Saved from the draft by Gaubertin, the steward of Les Aigues, whose father
+      was prosecuting-attorney of the department, and who, moreover, could
+      refuse nothing to Mademoiselle Cochet, Tonsard married as soon as his
+      house was finished and his vines had begun to bear. A well-grown fellow of
+      twenty-three, in everybody&rsquo;s good graces at Les Aigues, on whom
+      Mademoiselle had bestowed an acre of her land, and who appeared to be a
+      good worker, he had the art to ring the praises of his negative merits,
+      and so obtained the daughter of a farmer on the Ronquerolles estate, which
+      lies beyond the forest of Les Aigues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This farmer held the lease of half a farm, which was going to ruin in his
+      hands for want of a helpmate. A widower, and inconsolable for the loss of
+      his wife, he tried to drown his troubles, like the English, in wine, and
+      then, when he had put the poor deceased out of his mind, he found himself
+      married, so the village maliciously declared, to a woman named Boisson.
+      From being a farmer he became once more a laborer, but an idle and drunken
+      laborer, quarrelsome and vindictive, capable of any ill-deed, like most of
+      his class when they fall from a well-to-do state of life into poverty.
+      This man, whose practical information and knowledge of reading and writing
+      placed him far above his fellow-workmen, while his vices kept him at the
+      level of pauperism, you have already seen on the banks of the Avonne,
+      measuring his cleverness with that of one of the cleverest men in Paris,
+      in a bucolic overlooked by Virgil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pere Fourchon, formerly a schoolmaster at Blangy, lost that place through
+      misconduct and his singular ideas as to public education. He helped the
+      children to make paper boats with their alphabets much oftener than he
+      taught them how to spell; he scolded them in so remarkable a manner for
+      pilfering fruit that his lectures might really have passed for lessons on
+      the best way of scaling the walls. From teacher he became a postman. In
+      this capacity, which serves as a refuge to many an old soldier, Pere
+      Fourchon was daily reprimanded. Sometimes he forgot the letters in a
+      tavern, at other times he kept them in his pocket. When he was drunk he
+      left those for one village in another village; when he was sober he read
+      them. Consequently, he was soon dismissed. No longer able to serve the
+      State, Pere Fourchon ended by becoming a manufacturer. In the country a
+      poor man can always get something to do, and make at least a pretence of
+      gaining an honest livelihood. At sixty-eight years of age the old man
+      started his rope-walk, a manufactory which requires the very smallest
+      capital. The workshop is, as we have seen, any convenient wall; the
+      machinery costs about ten francs. The apprentice slept, like his master,
+      in a hay-loft, and lived on whatever he could pick up. The rapacity of the
+      law in the matter of doors and windows expires &ldquo;sub dio.&rdquo; The tow to make
+      the first rope can be borrowed. But the principal revenue of Pere Fourchon
+      and his satellite Mouche, the natural son of one of his natural daughters,
+      came from the otters; and then there were breakfasts and dinners given
+      them by peasants who could neither read nor write, and were glad to use
+      the old fellow&rsquo;s talents when they had a bill to make out, or a letter to
+      dispatch. Besides all this, he knew how to play the clarionet, and he went
+      about with his friend Vermichel, the miller of Soulanges, to village
+      weddings and the grand balls given at the Tivoli of Soulanges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vermichel&rsquo;s name was Michel Vert, but the transposition was so generally
+      used that Brunet, the clerk of the municipal court of Soulanges, was in
+      the habit of writing Michel-Jean-Jerome Vert, called Vermichel,
+      practitioner. Vermichel, a famous violin in the Burgundian regiment of
+      former days, had procured for Pere Fourchon, in recognition of certain
+      services, a situation as practitioner, which in remote country-places
+      usually devolves on those who are able to sign their name. Pere Fourchon
+      therefore added to his other avocations that of witness, or practitioner
+      of legal papers, whenever the Sieur Brunet came to draw them in the
+      districts of Cerneux, Conches, and Blangy. Vermichel and Fourchon, allied
+      by a friendship of twenty years&rsquo; tippling, might really be considered a
+      business firm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mouche and Fourchon, bound together by vice as Mentor and Telemachus by
+      virtue, travelled like the latter, in search of their father, &ldquo;panis
+      angelorum,&rdquo;&mdash;the only Latin words which the old fellow&rsquo;s memory had
+      retained. They went about scraping up the pickings of the Grand-I-Vert,
+      and those of the adjacent chateaux; for between them, in their busiest and
+      most prosperous years, they had never contrived to make as much as three
+      hundred and sixty fathoms of rope. In the first place, no dealer within a
+      radius of fifty miles would have trusted his tow to either Mouche or
+      Fourchon. The old man, surpassing the miracles of modern chemistry, knew
+      too well how to resolve the tow into the all-benignant juice of the grape.
+      Moreover, his triple functions of public writer for three townships, legal
+      practitioner for one, and clarionet-player at large, hindered, so he said,
+      the development of his business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus it happened that Tonsard was disappointed from the start in the hope
+      he had indulged of increasing his comfort by an increase of property in
+      marriage. The idle son-in-law had chanced, by a very common accident, on
+      an idler father-in-law. Matters went all the worse because Tonsard&rsquo;s wife,
+      gifted with a sort of rustic beauty, being tall and well-made, was not
+      fond of work in the open air. Tonsard blamed his wife for her father&rsquo;s
+      short-comings, and ill-treated her, with the customary revenge of the
+      common people, whose minds take in only an effect and rarely look back to
+      causes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finding her fetters heavy, the woman lightened them. She used Tonsard&rsquo;s
+      vices to get the better of him. Loving comfort and good eating herself,
+      she encouraged his idleness and gluttony. In the first place, she managed
+      to procure the good-will of the servants of the chateau, and Tonsard, in
+      view of the results, made no complaint as to the means. He cared very
+      little what his wife did, so long as she did all he wanted of her. That is
+      the secret agreement of many a household. Madame Tonsard established the
+      wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert, her first customers being the servants of
+      Les Aigues and the keepers and huntsmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gaubertin, formerly steward to Mademoiselle Laguerre, one of La Tonsard&rsquo;s
+      chief patrons, gave her several puncheons of excellent wine to attract
+      custom. The effect of these gifts (continued as long as Gaubertin remained
+      a bachelor) and the fame of her rather lawless beauty commended this
+      beauty to the Don Juans of the valley, and filled the wine-shop of the
+      Grand-I-Vert. Being a lover of good eating, La Tonsard was naturally an
+      excellent cook; and though her talents were only exercised on the common
+      dishes of the country, jugged hare, game sauce, stewed fish and omelets,
+      she was considered in all the country round to be an admirable cook of the
+      sort of food which is eaten at a counter and spiced in a way to excite a
+      desire for drink. By the end of two years, she had managed to rule
+      Tonsard, and turn him to evil courses, which, indeed, he asked no better
+      than to indulge in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rascal was continually poaching, and with nothing to fear from it. The
+      intimacies of his wife with Gaubertin and the keepers and the rural
+      authorities, together with the laxity of the times, secured him impunity.
+      As soon as his children were large enough he made them serviceable to his
+      comfort, caring no more for their morality than for that of his wife. He
+      had two sons and two daughters. Tonsard, who lived, as did his wife, from
+      hand to mouth, might have come to an end of this easy life if he had not
+      maintained a sort of martial law over his family, which compelled them to
+      work for the preservation of it. When he had brought up his children, at
+      the cost of those from whom his wife was able to extort gifts, the
+      following charter and budget were the law at the Grand-I-Vert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tonsard&rsquo;s old mother and his two daughters, Catherine and Marie, went into
+      the woods at certain seasons twice a-day, and came back laden with fagots
+      which overhung the crutch of their poles at least two feet beyond their
+      heads. Though dried sticks were placed on the outside of the heap, the
+      inside was made of live wood cut from young trees. In plain words, Tonsard
+      helped himself to his winter&rsquo;s fuel in the woods of Les Aigues. Besides
+      this, father and sons were constantly poaching. From September to March,
+      hares, rabbits, partridges, deer, in short, all the game that was not
+      eaten at the chateau, was sold at Blangy and at Soulanges, where Tonsard&rsquo;s
+      two daughters peddled milk in the early mornings,&mdash;coming back with
+      the news of the day, in return for the gossip they carried about Les
+      Aigues, and Cerneux, and Conches. In the months when the three Tonsards
+      were unable to hunt with a gun, they set traps. If the traps caught more
+      game than they could eat, La Tonsard made pies of it and sent them to
+      Ville-aux-Fayes. In harvest-time seven Tonsards&mdash;the old mother, the
+      two sons (until they were seventeen years of age), the two daughters,
+      together with old Fourchon and Mouche&mdash;gleaned, and generally brought
+      in about sixteen bushels a day of all grains, rye, barley, wheat, all good
+      to grind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two cows, led to the roadside by the youngest girl, always managed to
+      stray into the meadows of Les Aigues; but as, if it ever chanced that some
+      too flagrant trespass compelled the keepers to take notice of it, the
+      children were either whipped or deprived of a coveted dainty, they had
+      acquired such extraordinary aptitude in hearing the enemy&rsquo;s footfall that
+      the bailiff or the park-keeper of Les Aigues was very seldom able to
+      detect them. Besides, the relations of those estimable functionaries with
+      Tonsard and his wife tied a bandage over their eyes. The cows, held by
+      long ropes, obeyed a mere twitch or a special low call back to the
+      roadside, knowing very well that, the danger once past, they could finish
+      their browsing in the next field. Old mother Tonsard, who was getting more
+      and more infirm, succeeded Mouche in his duties, after Fourchon, under
+      pretence of caring for his natural grandson&rsquo;s education, kept him to
+      himself; while Marie and Catherine made hay in the woods. These girls knew
+      the exact spots where the fine forest-grass abounded, and there they cut
+      and spread and cocked and garnered it, supplying two thirds, at least, of
+      the winter fodder, and leading the cows on all fine days to sheltered
+      nooks where they could still find pasture. In certain parts of the valley
+      of Les Aigues, as in all places protected by a chain of mountains, in
+      Piedmont and in Lombardy for instance, there are spots where the grass
+      keeps green all the year. Such fields, called in Italy &ldquo;marciti,&rdquo; are of
+      great value; though in France they are often in danger of being injured by
+      snow and ice. This phenomenon is due, no doubt, to some favorable
+      exposure, and to the infiltration of water which keeps the ground at a
+      warmer temperature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The calves were sold for about eighty francs. The milk, deducting the time
+      when the cows calved or went dry, brought in about one hundred and sixty
+      francs a year besides supplying the wants of the family. Tonsard himself
+      managed to earn another hundred and sixty by doing odd jobs of one kind or
+      another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sale of food and wine in the tavern, after all costs were paid,
+      returned a profit of about three hundred francs, for the great
+      drinking-bouts happened only at certain times and in certain seasons; and
+      as the topers who indulged in them gave Tonsard and his wife due notice,
+      the latter bought in the neighboring town the exact quantity of provisions
+      needed and no more. The wine produced by Tonsard&rsquo;s vineyard was sold in
+      ordinary years for twenty francs a cask to a wine-dealer at Soulanges with
+      whom Tonsard was intimate. In very prolific years he got as much as twelve
+      casks from his vines; but eight was the average; and Tonsard kept half for
+      his own traffic. In all wine-growing districts the gleaning of the large
+      vineyards gives a good perquisite, and out of it the Tonsard family
+      usually managed to obtain three casks more. But being, as we have seen,
+      sheltered and protected by the keepers, they showed no conscience in their
+      proceedings,&mdash;entering vineyards before the harvesters were out of
+      them, just as they swarmed into the wheat-fields before the sheaves were
+      made. So, the seven or eight casks of wine, as much gleaned as harvested,
+      were sold for a good price. However, out of these various proceeds the
+      Grand-I-Vert was mulcted in a good sum for the personal consumption of
+      Tonsard and his wife, who wanted the best of everything to eat, and better
+      wine than they sold,&mdash;which they obtained from their friend at
+      Soulanges in payment for their own. In short, the money scraped together
+      by this family amounted to about nine hundred francs, for they fattened
+      two pigs a year, one for themselves and the other to sell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idlers and scapegraces and also the laborers took a fancy to the
+      tavern of the Grand-I-Vert, partly because of La Tonsard&rsquo;s merits, and
+      partly on account of the hail-fellow-well-met relation existing between
+      this family and the lower classes of the valley. The two daughters, both
+      remarkably handsome, followed the example of their mother as to morals.
+      Moreover, the long established fame of the Grand-I-Vert, dating from 1795,
+      made it a venerable spot in the eyes of the common people. From Conches to
+      Ville-aux-Fayes, workmen came there to meet and make their bargains and
+      hear the news collected by the Tonsard women and by Mouche and old
+      Fourchon, or supplied by Vermichel and Brunet, that renowned official,
+      when he came to the tavern in search of his practitioner. There the price
+      of hay and of wine was settled; also that of a day&rsquo;s work and of
+      piece-work. Tonsard, a sovereign judge in such matters, gave his advice
+      and opinion while drinking with his guests. Soulanges, according to a
+      saying in these parts, was a town for society and amusement only, while
+      Blangy was a business borough; crushed, however, by the great commercial
+      centre of Ville-aux-Fayes, which had become in the last twenty-five years
+      the capital of this flourishing valley. The cattle and grain market was
+      held at Blangy, in the public square, and the prices there obtained served
+      as a tariff for the whole arrondissement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By staying in the house and doing no out-door work, La Tonsard continued
+      fresh and fair and dimpled, in comparison with the women who worked in the
+      fields and faded as rapidly as the flowers, becoming old and haggard
+      before they were thirty. She liked to be well-dressed. In point of fact,
+      she was only clean, but in a village cleanliness is a luxury. The
+      daughters, better dressed than their means warranted, followed their
+      mother&rsquo;s example. Beneath their outer garment, which was relatively
+      handsome, they wore linen much finer than that of the richest peasant
+      women. On fete-days they appeared in dresses that were really pretty,
+      obtained, Heaven knows how! For one thing, the men-servants at Les Aigues
+      sold to them, at prices that were easily paid, the cast-off clothing of
+      the lady&rsquo;s-maids, which, after sweeping the streets of Paris and being
+      made over to fit Marie and Catherine, appeared triumphantly in the
+      precincts of the Grand-I-Vert. These girls, bohemians of the valley,
+      received not one penny in money from their parents, who gave them food
+      only, and the wretched pallets on which they slept with their grandmother
+      in the barn, where their brothers also slept, curled up in the hay like
+      animals. Neither father nor mother paid any heed to this propinquity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The iron age and the age of gold are more alike than we think for. In the
+      one nothing aroused vigilance; in the other, everything rouses it; the
+      result to society is, perhaps, very much the same. The presence of old
+      Mother Tonsard, which was more a necessity than a precaution, was simply
+      one immorality the more. And thus it was that the Abbe Brossette, after
+      studying the morals of his parishioners, made this pregnant remark to his
+      bishop:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monseigneur, when I observe the stress that the peasantry lay on their
+      poverty, I realize how they fear to lose that excuse for their
+      immorality.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though everybody knew that the family had no principles and no scruples,
+      nothing was ever said against the morals of the Grand-I-Vert. At the
+      beginning of this book it is necessary to explain, once for all, to
+      persons accustomed to the decencies of middle-class life, that the
+      peasants have no decency in their domestic habits and customs. They make
+      no appeal to morality when their daughters are seduced, unless the seducer
+      is rich and timid. Children, until the State takes possession of them, are
+      used either as capital or as instruments of convenience. Self-interest has
+      become, specially since 1789, the sole motive of the masses; they never
+      ask if an action is legal or immoral, but only if it is profitable.
+      Morality, which is not to be confounded with religion, begins only at a
+      certain competence,&mdash;just as one sees, in a higher sphere, how
+      delicacy blossoms in the soul when fortune decorates the furniture. A
+      positively moral and upright man is rare among the peasantry. Do you ask
+      why? Among the many reasons that may be given for this state of things,
+      the principal one is this: Through the nature of their social functions,
+      the peasants live a purely material life which approximates to that of
+      savages, and their constant union with nature tends to foster it. When
+      toil exhausts the body it takes from the mind its purifying action,
+      especially among the ignorant. The Abbe Brossette was right in saying that
+      the state policy of the peasant is his poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meddling in everybody&rsquo;s interests, Tonsard heard everybody&rsquo;s complaints,
+      and often instigated frauds to benefit the needy. His wife, a kindly
+      appearing woman, had a good word for evil-doers, and never withheld either
+      approval or personal help from her customers in anything they undertook
+      against the rich. This inn, a nest of vipers, brisk and venomous, seething
+      and active, was a hot-bed for the hatred of the peasants and the
+      workingmen against the masters and the wealthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prosperous life of the Tonsards was, therefore, an evil example.
+      Others asked themselves why they should not take their wood, as the
+      Tonsards did, from the forest; why not pasture their cows and have game to
+      eat and to sell as well as they; why not harvest without sowing the grapes
+      and the grain. Accordingly, the pilfering thefts which thin the woods and
+      tithe the ploughed lands and meadows and vineyards became habitual in this
+      valley, and soon existed as a right throughout the districts of Blangy,
+      Conches, and Cerneux, all adjacent to the domain of Les Aigues. This sore,
+      for certain reasons which will be given in due time, did far greater
+      injury to Les Aigues than to the estates of Ronquerolles or Soulanges. You
+      must not, however, fancy that Tonsard, his wife and children, and his old
+      mother ever deliberately said to themselves, &ldquo;We will live by theft, and
+      commit it as cleverly as we can.&rdquo; Such habits grow slowly. To the dried
+      sticks they added, in the first instance, a single bit of good wood; then,
+      emboldened by habit and a carefully prepared immunity (necessary to plans
+      which this history will unfold), they ended at last in cutting &ldquo;their
+      wood,&rdquo; and stealing almost their entire livelihood. Pasturage for the cows
+      and the abuses of gleaning were established as customs little by little.
+      When the Tonsards and the do-nothings of the valley had tasted the sweets
+      of these four rights (thus captured by rural paupers, and amounting to
+      actual robbery) we can easily imagine they would never give them up unless
+      compelled by a power greater than their own audacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time when this history begins Tonsard, then about fifty years of
+      age, tall and strong, rather stout than thin, with curly black hair, skin
+      highly colored and marbled like a brick with purple blotches, yellow
+      whites to the eyes, large ears with broad flaps, a muscular frame,
+      encased, however, in flabby flesh, a retreating forehead, and a hanging
+      lip,&mdash;Tonsard, such as you see him, hid his real character under an
+      external stupidity, lightened at times by a show of experience, which
+      seemed all the more intelligent because he had acquired in the company of
+      his father-in-law a sort of bantering talk, much affected by old Fourchon
+      and Vermichel. His nose, flattened at the end as if the finger of God
+      intended to mark him, gave him a voice which came from his palate, like
+      that of all persons disfigured by a disease which thickens the nasal
+      passages, through which the air then passes with difficulty. His upper
+      teeth overlapped each other, and this defect (which Lavater calls
+      terrible) was all the more apparent because they were as white as those of
+      a dog. But for a certain lawless and slothful good humor, and the
+      free-and-easy ways of a rustic tippler, the man would have alarmed the
+      least observing of spectators.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the portraits of Tonsard, his inn, and his father-in-law take a
+      prominent place in this history, it is because that place belongs to him
+      and to the inn and to the family. In the first place, their existence, so
+      minutely described, is the type of a hundred other households in the
+      valley of Les Aigues. Secondly, Tonsard, without being other than the
+      instrument of deep and active hatreds, had an immense influence on the
+      struggle that was about to take place, being the friend and counsellor of
+      all the complainants of the lower classes. His inn, as we shall presently
+      see, was the rendezvous for the aggressors; in fact, he became their
+      chief, partly on account of the fear he inspired throughout the valley&mdash;less,
+      however, by his actual deeds than by those that were constantly expected
+      of him. The threat of this man was as much dreaded as the thing
+      threatened, so that he never had occasion to execute it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every revolt, open or concealed, has its banner. The banner of the
+      marauders, the drunkards, the idlers, the sluggards of the valley des
+      Aigues was the terrible tavern of the Grand-I-Vert. Its frequenters found
+      amusement there,&mdash;as rare and much-desired a thing in the country as
+      in a city. Moreover, there was no other inn along the country-road for
+      over twelve miles, a distance which conveyances (even when laden) could
+      easily do in three hours; so that those who went from Conches to
+      Ville-aux-Fayes always stopped at the Grand-I-Vert, if only to refresh
+      themselves. The miller of Les Aigues, who was also assistant-mayor, and
+      his men came there. The grooms and valets of the general were not averse
+      to Tonsard&rsquo;s wine, rendered attractive by Tonsard&rsquo;s daughters; so the
+      Grand-I-Vert held subterraneous communication with the chateau through the
+      servants, and knew immediately everything that they knew. It is impossible
+      either by benefits or through their own self-interests, to break up the
+      perpetual understanding that exists between the servants of a household
+      and the people from whom they come. Domestic service is of the masses, and
+      to the masses it will ever remain attached. This fatal comradeship
+      explains the reticence of the last words of Charles the groom, as he and
+      Blondet reached the portico of the chateau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. ANOTHER IDYLL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! by my pipe, papa!&rdquo; exclaimed Tonsard, seeing his father-in-law as the
+      old man entered and supposing him in quest of food, &ldquo;your stomach is
+      lively this morning! We haven&rsquo;t anything to give you. How about that rope,&mdash;the
+      rope, you know, you were to make for us? It is amazing how much you make
+      over night and how little there is made in the morning! You ought long ago
+      to have twisted the one that is to twist you out of existence; you are
+      getting too costly for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wit of a peasant or laborer is very Attic; it consists in speaking out
+      his mind and giving it a grotesque expression. We find the same thing in a
+      drawing-room. Delicacy of wit takes the place of picturesque vulgarity,
+      and that is really all the difference there is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s enough for the father-in-law!&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;Talk business; I
+      want a bottle of the best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, Fourchon rapped a five-franc piece that gleamed in his hand on
+      the old table at which he was seated,&mdash;which, with its coating of
+      grease, its scorched black marks, its wine stains, and its gashes, was
+      singular to behold. At the sound of coin Marie Tonsard, as trig as a sloop
+      about to start on a cruise, glanced at her grandfather with a covetous
+      look that shot from her eyes like a spark. La Tonsard came out of her
+      bedroom, attracted by the music of metal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are always rough to my poor father,&rdquo; she said to her husband, &ldquo;and
+      yet he has earned a deal of money this year; God grant he came by it
+      honestly. Let me see that,&rdquo; she added, springing at the coin and snatching
+      it from Fourchon&rsquo;s fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marie,&rdquo; said Tonsard, gravely, &ldquo;above the board you&rsquo;ll find some bottled
+      wine. Go and get a bottle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wine is of only one quality in the country, but it is sold as of two
+      kinds,&mdash;cask wine and bottled wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you get this, papa&rdquo; demanded La Tonsard, slipping the coin into
+      her pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Philippine! you&rsquo;ll come to a bad end,&rdquo; said the old man, shaking his head
+      but not attempting to recover his money. Doubtless he had long realized
+      the futility of a struggle between his daughter, his terrible son-in-law,
+      and himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another bottle of wine for which you get five francs out of me,&rdquo; he
+      added, in a peevish tone. &ldquo;But it shall be the last. I shall give my
+      custom to the Cafe de la Paix.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold your tongue, papa!&rdquo; remarked his fair and fat daughter, who bore
+      some resemblance to a Roman matron. &ldquo;You need a shirt, and a pair of clean
+      trousers, and a hat; and I want to see you with a waistcoat. That&rsquo;s what I
+      take the money for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have told you again and again that such things would ruin me,&rdquo; said the
+      old man. &ldquo;People would think me rich and stop giving me anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bottle brought by Marie put an end to the loquacity of the old man,
+      who was not without that trait, characteristic of those whose tongues are
+      ready to tell out everything, and who shrink from no expression of their
+      thought, no matter how atrocious it may be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t want to tell where you filched that money?&rdquo; said Tonsard.
+      &ldquo;We might go and get more where that came from,&mdash;the rest of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was making a snare, and as he finished it the ferocious innkeeper
+      happened to glance at his father-in-law&rsquo;s trousers, and there he spied a
+      raised round spot which clearly defined a second five-franc piece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Having become a capitalist I drink your health,&rdquo; said Pere Fourchon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you choose to be a capitalist you can be,&rdquo; said Tonsard; &ldquo;you have the
+      means, you have! But the devil has bored a hole in the back of your head
+      through which everything runs out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey! I only played the otter trick on that young fellow they have got at
+      Les Aigues. He&rsquo;s from Paris. That&rsquo;s all there is to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If crowds of people would come to see the sources of the Avonne, you&rsquo;d be
+      rich, Grandpa Fourchon,&rdquo; said Marie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, drinking the last glassful the bottle contained, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ve
+      played the sham otter so long, the live otters have got angry, and one of
+      them came right between my legs to-day; Mouche caught it, and I am to get
+      twenty francs for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll bet your otter is made of tow,&rdquo; said Tonsard, looking slyly at his
+      father-in-law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you will give me a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, and some list
+      braces, so as not to disgrace Vermichel on the music stand at Tivoli (for
+      old Socquard is always scolding about my clothes), I&rsquo;ll let you keep that
+      money, my daughter; your idea is a good one. I can squeeze that rich young
+      fellow at Les Aigues; may be he&rsquo;ll take to otters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and get another bottle,&rdquo; said Tonsard to his daughter. &ldquo;If your father
+      really had an otter, he would show it to us,&rdquo; he added, speaking to his
+      wife and trying to touch up Fourchon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m too afraid it would get into your frying-pan,&rdquo; said the old man,
+      winking one of his little green eyes at his daughter. &ldquo;Philippine has
+      already hooked my five-franc piece; and how many more haven&rsquo;t you bagged
+      under pretence of clothing me and feeding me? and now you say that my
+      stomach is too lively, and that I go half-naked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sold your last clothes to drink boiled wine at the Cafe de la Paix,
+      papa,&rdquo; said his daughter, &ldquo;though Vermichel tried to prevent it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vermichel! the man I treated! Vermichel is incapable of betraying my
+      friendship. It must have been that lump of old lard on two legs that he is
+      not ashamed to call his wife!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He or she,&rdquo; replied Tonsard, &ldquo;or Bonnebault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it was Bonnebault,&rdquo; cried Fourchon, &ldquo;he who is one of the pillars of
+      the place, I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I&rsquo;ll&mdash;Enough!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You old sot, what has all that got to do with having sold your clothes?
+      You sold them because you did sell them; you&rsquo;re of age!&rdquo; said Tonsard,
+      slapping the old man&rsquo;s knee. &ldquo;Come, do honor to my drink and redden up
+      your throat! The father of Mam Tonsard has a right to do so; and isn&rsquo;t
+      that better than spending your silver at Socquard&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a shame it is that you have been fifteen years playing for people to
+      dance at Tivoli and you have never yet found out how Socquard cooks his
+      wine,&mdash;you who are so shrewd!&rdquo; said his daughter; &ldquo;and yet you know
+      very well that if we had the secret we should soon get as rich as Rigou.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout the Morvan, and in that region of Burgundy which lies at its
+      feet on the side toward Paris, this boiled wine with which Mam Tonsard
+      reproached her father is a rather costly beverage which plays a great part
+      in the life of the peasantry, and is made by all grocers and wine-dealers,
+      and wherever a drinking-shop exists. This precious liquor, made of choice
+      wine, sugar, and cinnamon and other spices, is preferable to all those
+      disguises or mixtures of brandy called ratafia, one-hundred-and-seven,
+      brave man&rsquo;s cordial, black currant wine, vespetro, spirit-of-sun, etc.
+      Boiled wine is found throughout France and Switzerland. Among the Jura,
+      and in the wild districts trodden only by a few special tourists, the
+      innkeepers call it, on the word of commercial travellers, the wine of
+      Syracuse. Excellent it is, however, and their guests, hungry as hounds
+      after ascending the surrounding peaks, very gladly pay three and four
+      francs a bottle for it. In the homes of the Morvan and in Burgundy the
+      least illness or the slightest agitation of the nerves is an excuse for
+      boiled wine. Before and after childbirth the women take it with the
+      addition of burnt sugar. Boiled wine has soaked up the property of many a
+      peasant, and more than once the seductive liquid has been the cause of
+      marital chastisement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! there&rsquo;s no chance of grabbing that secret,&rdquo; replied Fourchon,
+      &ldquo;Socquard always locks himself in when he boils his wine; he never told
+      how he does it to his late wife. He sends to Paris for his materials.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t plague your father,&rdquo; cried Tonsard; &ldquo;doesn&rsquo;t he know? well, then,
+      he doesn&rsquo;t know! People can&rsquo;t know everything!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fourchon grew very uneasy on seeing how his son-in-law&rsquo;s countenance
+      softened as well as his words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want to rob me of now?&rdquo; he asked, candidly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I?&rdquo; said Tonsard, &ldquo;I take none but my legitimate dues; if I get anything
+      from you it is in payment of your daughter&rsquo;s portion, which you promised
+      me and never paid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fourchon, reassured by the harshness of this remark, dropped his head on
+      his breast as though vanquished and convinced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at that pretty snare,&rdquo; resumed Tonsard, coming up to his
+      father-in-law and laying the trap upon his knee. &ldquo;Some of these days
+      they&rsquo;ll want game at Les Aigues, and we shall sell them their own, or
+      there will be no good God for the poor folks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A fine piece of work,&rdquo; said the old man, examining the mischievous
+      machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very well to pick up the sous now, papa,&rdquo; said Mam Tonsard, &ldquo;but
+      you know we are to have our share in the cake of Les Aigues.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what chatterers women are!&rdquo; cried Tonsard. &ldquo;If I am hanged it won&rsquo;t
+      be for a shot from my gun, but for the gabble of your tongue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you really suppose that Les Aigues will be cut up and sold in lots
+      for your pitiful benefit?&rdquo; asked Fourchon. &ldquo;Pshaw! haven&rsquo;t you discovered
+      in the last thirty years that old Rigou has been sucking the marrow out of
+      your bones that the middle-class folks are worse than the lords? Mark my
+      words, when that affair happens, my children, the Soudrys, the Gaubertins,
+      the Rigous, will make you kick your heels in the air. &lsquo;I&rsquo;ve the good
+      tobacco, it never shall be thine,&rsquo; that&rsquo;s the national air of the rich
+      man, hey? The peasant will always be the peasant. Don&rsquo;t you see (but you
+      never did understand anything of politics!) that government puts such
+      heavy taxes on wine only to hinder our profits and keep us poor? The
+      middle classes and the government, they are all one. What would become of
+      them if everybody was rich? Could they till their fields? Would they
+      gather the harvest? No, they <i>want</i> the poor! I was rich for ten
+      years and I know what I thought of paupers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must hunt with them, though,&rdquo; replied Tonsard, &ldquo;because they mean to cut
+      up the great estates; after that&rsquo;s done, we can turn against them. If I&rsquo;d
+      been Courtecuisse, whom that scoundrel Rigou is ruining, I&rsquo;d have long ago
+      paid his bill with other balls than the poor fellow gives him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right enough, too,&rdquo; replied Fourchon. &ldquo;As Pere Niseron says (and he
+      stayed republican long after everybody else), &lsquo;The people are tough; they
+      don&rsquo;t die; they have time before them.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fourchon fell into a sort of reverie; Tonsard profited by his inattention
+      to take back the trap, and as he took it up he cut a slip below the coin
+      in his father-in-law&rsquo;s pocket at the moment when the old man raised his
+      glass to his lips; then he set his foot on the five-franc piece as it
+      dropped on the earthen floor just where it was always kept damp by the
+      heel-taps which the customers flung from their glasses. Though quickly and
+      lightly done, the old man might, perhaps, have felt the theft, if
+      Vermichel had not happened to appear at that moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tonsard, do you know where you father is?&rdquo; called that functionary from
+      the foot of the steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vermichel&rsquo;s shout, the theft of the money, and the emptying of old
+      Fourchon&rsquo;s glass, were simultaneous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Present, captain!&rdquo; cried Fourchon, holding out a hand to Vermichel to
+      help him up the steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all Burgundian figures, Vermichel would have seemed to you the most
+      Burgundian. The practitioner was not red, he was scarlet. His face, like
+      certain tropical portions of the globe, was fissured, here and there, with
+      small extinct volcanoes, defined by flat and greenish patches which
+      Fourchon called, not unpoetically, the &ldquo;flowers of wine.&rdquo; This fiery face,
+      the features of which were swelled out of shape by continual drunkenness,
+      looked cyclopic; for it was lighted on the right side by a gleaming eye,
+      and darkened on the other by a yellow patch over the left orb. Red hair,
+      always tousled, and a beard like that of Judas, made Vermichel as
+      formidable in appearance as he was meek in reality. His prominent nose
+      looked like an interrogation-mark, to which the wide-slit mouth seemed to
+      be always answering, even when it did not open. Vermichel, a short man,
+      wore hob-nail shoes, bottle-green velveteen trousers, an old waistcoat
+      patched with diverse stuffs which seemed to have been originally made of a
+      counterpane, a jacket of coarse blue cloth and a gray hat with a broad
+      brim. All this luxury, required by the town of Soulanges where Vermichel
+      fulfilled the combined functions of porter at the town-hall, drummer,
+      jailer, musician, and practitioner, was taken care of by Madame Vermichel,
+      an alarming antagonist of Rabelaisian philosophy. This virago with
+      moustachios, about one yard in width and one hundred and twenty kilograms
+      in weight (but very active), ruled Vermichel with a rod of iron. Thrashed
+      by her when drunk, he allowed her to thrash him still when sober; which
+      caused Pere Fourchon to say, with a sniff at Vermichel&rsquo;s clothes, &ldquo;It is
+      the livery of a slave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Talk of the sun and you&rsquo;ll see its beams,&rdquo; cried Fourchon, repeating a
+      well-worn allusion to the rutilant face of Vermichel, which really did
+      resemble those copper suns painted on tavern signs in the provinces. &ldquo;Has
+      Mam Vermichel spied too much dust on your back, that you&rsquo;re running away
+      from your four-fifths,&mdash;for I can&rsquo;t call her your better half, that
+      woman! What brings you here at this hour, drum-major?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Politics, always politics,&rdquo; replied Vermichel, who seemed accustomed to
+      such pleasantries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! business is bad in Blangy, and there&rsquo;ll be notes to protest, and
+      writs to issue,&rdquo; remarked Pere Fourchon, filling a glass for his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That APE of ours is right behind me,&rdquo; replied Vermichel, with a backward
+      gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In workmen&rsquo;s slang &ldquo;ape&rdquo; meant master. The word belonged to the dictionary
+      of the worthy pair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s Monsieur Brunet coming bothering about here?&rdquo; asked Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey, by the powers, you folks!&rdquo; said Vermichel, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve brought him in
+      for the last three years more than you are worth. Ha! that master at Les
+      Aigues, he has his eye upon you; he&rsquo;ll punch you in the ribs; he&rsquo;s after
+      you, the Shopman! Brunet says, if there were three such landlords in the
+      valley his fortune would be made.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What new harm are they going to do to the poor?&rdquo; asked Marie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A pretty wise thing for themselves,&rdquo; replied Vermichel. &ldquo;Faith! you&rsquo;ll
+      have to give in, in the end. How can you help it? They&rsquo;ve got the power.
+      For the last two years haven&rsquo;t they had three foresters and a
+      horse-patrol, all as active as ants, and a field-keeper who is a terror?
+      Besides, the gendarmerie is ready to do their dirty work at any time.
+      They&rsquo;ll crush you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; said Tonsard, &ldquo;we are too flat. That which can&rsquo;t be crushed isn&rsquo;t
+      the trees, it&rsquo;s ground.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you trust to that,&rdquo; said Fourchon to his son-in-law; &ldquo;you own
+      property.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those rich folks must love you,&rdquo; continued Vermichel, &ldquo;for they think of
+      nothing else from morning till night! They are saying to themselves now
+      like this: &lsquo;Their cattle eat up our pastures; we&rsquo;ll seize their cattle;
+      they can&rsquo;t eat grass themselves.&rsquo; You&rsquo;ve all been condemned, the warrants
+      are out, and they have told our ape to take your cows. We are to begin
+      this morning at Conches by seizing old mother Bonnebault&rsquo;s cow and Godin&rsquo;s
+      cow and Mitant&rsquo;s cow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment the name of Bonnebault was mentioned, Marie, who was in love
+      with the old woman&rsquo;s grandson, sprang into the vineyard with a nod to her
+      father and mother. She slipped like an eel through a break in the hedge,
+      and was off on the way to Conches with the speed of a hunted hare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They&rsquo;ll do so much,&rdquo; remarked Tonsard, tranquilly, &ldquo;that they&rsquo;ll get
+      their bones broken; and that will be a pity, for their mothers can&rsquo;t make
+      them any new ones.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, perhaps so,&rdquo; said old Fourchon, &ldquo;but see here, Vermichel, I can&rsquo;t
+      go with you for an hour or more, for I have important business at the
+      chateau.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;More important than serving three warrants at five sous each? &lsquo;You
+      shouldn&rsquo;t spit into the vintage,&rsquo; as Father Noah says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you, Vermichel, that my business requires me to go to the chateau
+      des Aigues,&rdquo; repeated the old man, with an air of laughable
+      self-importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And anyhow,&rdquo; said Mam Tonsard, &ldquo;my father had better keep out of the way.
+      Do you really mean to find the cows?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Brunet, who is a very good fellow, would much rather find
+      nothing but their dung,&rdquo; answered Vermichel. &ldquo;A man who is obliged to be
+      out and about day and night had better be careful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he is, he has good reason to be,&rdquo; said Tonsard, sententiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So,&rdquo; continued Vermichel, &ldquo;he said to Monsieur Michaud, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll go as soon
+      as the court is up.&rsquo; If he had wanted to find the cows he&rsquo;d have gone at
+      seven o&rsquo;clock in the morning. But that didn&rsquo;t suit Michaud, and Brunet has
+      had to be off. You can&rsquo;t take in Michaud, he&rsquo;s a trained hound! Ha, the
+      brigand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ought to have stayed in the army, a swaggerer like that,&rdquo; said Tonsard;
+      &ldquo;he is only fit to deal with enemies. I wish he would come and ask me my
+      name. He may call himself a veteran of the young guard, but I know very
+      well that if I measured spurs with him, I&rsquo;d keep my feathers up longest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here!&rdquo; said Mam Tonsard to Vermichel, &ldquo;when are the notices for the
+      ball at Soulanges coming out? Here it is the eighth of August.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I took them yesterday to Monsieur Bournier at Ville-aux-Fayes, to be
+      printed,&rdquo; replied Vermichel; &ldquo;they do talk of fireworks on the lake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What crowds of people we shall have!&rdquo; cried Fourchon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Profits for Socquard!&rdquo; said Tonsard, spitefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it doesn&rsquo;t rain,&rdquo; said his wife, by way of comfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment the trot of a horse coming from the direction of Soulanges
+      was heard, and five minutes later the sheriff&rsquo;s officer fastened his horse
+      to a post placed for the purpose near the wicket gate through which the
+      cows were driven. Then he showed his head at the door of the Grand-I-Vert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, my boys, let&rsquo;s lose no time,&rdquo; he said, pretending to be in a hurry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey!&rdquo; said Vermichel. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s a refractory, Monsieur Brunet; Pere
+      Fourchon wants to drop off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has had too many drops already,&rdquo; said the sheriff; &ldquo;but the law in
+      this case does not require that he shall be sober.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please excuse me, Monsieur Brunet,&rdquo; said Fourchon, &ldquo;I am expected at Les
+      Aigues on business; they are in treaty for an otter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Brunet, a withered little man dressed from head to foot in black cloth,
+      with a bilious skin, a furtive eye, curly hair, lips tight-drawn, pinched
+      nose, anxious expression, and gruff in speech, exhibited the phenomenon of
+      a character and bearing in perfect harmony with his profession. He was so
+      well-informed as to the law, or, to speak more correctly, the quibbles of
+      the law, that he had come to be both the terror and the counsellor of the
+      whole canton. He was not without a certain popularity among the peasantry,
+      from whom he usually took his pay in kind. The compound of his active and
+      negative qualities and his knowledge of how to manage matters got him the
+      custom of the canton, to the exclusion of his coadjutor Plissoud, about
+      whom we shall have something to say later. This chance combination of a
+      sheriff&rsquo;s officer who does everything and a sheriff&rsquo;s officer who does
+      nothing is not at all uncommon in the country justice courts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So matters are getting warm, are they?&rdquo; said Tonsard to little Brunet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can you expect? you pilfer the man too much, and he&rsquo;s going to
+      protect himself,&rdquo; replied the officer. &ldquo;It will be a bad business for you
+      in the end; government will interfere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then we, poor unfortunates, must give up the ghost!&rdquo; said Mam Tonsard,
+      offering him a glass of brandy on a saucer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The unfortunate may all die, yet they&rsquo;ll never be lacking in the land,&rdquo;
+       said Fourchon, sententiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do great damage to the woods,&rdquo; retorted the sheriff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t believe that, Monsieur Brunet,&rdquo; said Mam Tonsard; &ldquo;they make
+      such a fuss about a few miserable fagots!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t crush the rich low enough during the Revolution, that&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s
+      the trouble,&rdquo; said Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then a horrible, and quite incomprehensible noise was heard. It
+      seemed to be a rush of hurried feet, accompanied with a rattle of arms,
+      half-drowned by the rustling of leaves, the dragging of branches, and the
+      sound of still more hasty feet. Two voices, as different as the two
+      footsteps, were venting noisy exclamations. Everybody inside the inn
+      guessed at once that a man was pursuing a woman; but why? The uncertainty
+      did not last long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is mother!&rdquo; said Tonsard, jumping up; &ldquo;I know her shriek.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then suddenly, rushing up the broken steps of the Grand-I-Vert by a last
+      effort that can be made only by the sinews of smugglers, old Mother
+      Tonsard fell flat on the floor in the middle of the room. The immense mass
+      of wood she carried on her head made a terrible noise as it crashed
+      against the top of the door and then upon the ground. Every one had jumped
+      out of the way. The table, the bottles, the chairs were knocked over and
+      scattered. The noise was as great as if the cottage itself had come
+      tumbling down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m dead! The scoundrel has killed me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words and the flight of the old woman were explained by the apparition
+      on the threshold of a keeper, dressed in green livery, wearing a hat edged
+      with silver cord, a sabre at his side, a leathern shoulder-belt bearing
+      the arms of Montcornet charged with those of the Troisvilles, the
+      regulation red waistcoat, and buckskin gaiters which came above the knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a moment&rsquo;s hesitation the keeper said, looking at Brunet and
+      Vermichel, &ldquo;Here are witnesses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Witnesses of what?&rdquo; said Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That woman has a ten-year-old oak, cut into logs, inside those fagots; it
+      is a regular crime!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment the word &ldquo;witness&rdquo; was uttered Vermichel thought best to
+      breathe the fresh air of the vineyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what? witnesses of what?&rdquo; cried Tonsard, standing in front of the
+      keeper while his wife helped up the old woman. &ldquo;Do you mean to show your
+      claws, Vatel? Accuse persons and arrest them on the highway, brigand,&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+      your domain; but get out of here! A man&rsquo;s house is his castle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I caught her in the act, and your mother must come with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arrest my mother in my house? You have no right to do it. My house is
+      inviolable,&mdash;all the world knows that, at least. Have you got a
+      warrant from Monsieur Guerbet, the magistrate? Ha! you must have the law
+      behind you before you come in here. You are not the law, though you have
+      sworn an oath to starve us to death, you miserable forest-gauger, you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fury of the keeper waxed so hot that he was on the point of seizing
+      hold of the wood, when the old woman, a frightful bit of black parchment
+      endowed with motion, the like of which can be seen only in David&rsquo;s picture
+      of &ldquo;The Sabines,&rdquo; screamed at him, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t touch it, or I&rsquo;ll fly at your
+      eyes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, undo that pile in presence of Monsieur Brunet,&rdquo; said the
+      keeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though the sheriff&rsquo;s officer had assumed the indifference that the routine
+      of business does really give to officials of his class, he threw a glance
+      at Tonsard and his wife which said plainly, &ldquo;A bad business!&rdquo; Old Fourchon
+      looked at his daughter, and slyly pointed at a pile of ashes in the
+      chimney. Mam Tonsard, who understood in a moment from that significant
+      gesture both the danger of her mother-in-law and the advice of her father,
+      seized a handful of ashes and flung them in the keeper&rsquo;s eyes. Vatel
+      roared with pain; Tonsard pushed him roughly upon the broken door-steps
+      where the blinded man stumbled and fell, and then rolled nearly down to
+      the gate, dropping his gun on the way. In an instant the load of sticks
+      was unfastened, and the oak logs pulled out and hidden with a rapidity no
+      words can describe. Brunet, anxious not to witness this manoeuvre, which
+      he readily foresaw, rushed after the keeper to help him up; then he placed
+      him on the bank and wet his handkerchief in water to wash the eyes of the
+      poor fellow, who, in spite of his agony, was trying to reach the brook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are in the wrong, Vatel,&rdquo; said Brunet; &ldquo;you have no right to enter
+      houses, don&rsquo;t you see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old woman, a little hump-backed creature, stood on the sill of the
+      door, with her hands on her hips, darting flashes from her eyes and curses
+      from her foaming lips shrill enough to be heard at Blangy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! the villain, &lsquo;twas well done! May hell get you! To suspect me of
+      cutting trees!&mdash;<i>me</i>, the most honest woman in the village. To
+      hunt me like vermin! I&rsquo;d like to see you lose your cursed eyes, for then
+      we&rsquo;d have peace. You are birds of ill-omen, the whole of you; you invent
+      shameful stories to stir up strife between your master and us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The keeper allowed the sheriff to bathe his eyes and all the while the
+      latter kept telling him that he was legally wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The old thief! she has tired us out,&rdquo; said Vatel at last. &ldquo;She has been
+      at work in the woods all night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As the whole family had taken an active hand in hiding the live wood and
+      putting things straight in the cottage, Tonsard presently appeared at the
+      door with an insolent air. &ldquo;Vatel, my man, if you ever again dare to force
+      your way into my domain, my gun shall answer you,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;To-day you
+      have had the ashes; the next time you shall have the fire. You don&rsquo;t know
+      your own business. That&rsquo;s enough. Now if you feel hot after this affair
+      take some wine, I offer it to you; and you may come in and see that my old
+      mother&rsquo;s bundle of fagots hadn&rsquo;t a scrap of live wood in it; it is every
+      bit brushwood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scoundrel!&rdquo; said the keeper to the sheriff, in a low voice, more enraged
+      by this speech than by the smart of his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then Charles, the groom, appeared at the gate of the Grand-I-Vert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter, Vatel?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the keeper, wiping his eyes, which he had plunged wide open
+      into the rivulet to give them a final cleansing. &ldquo;I have some debtors in
+      there that I&rsquo;ll cause to rue the day they saw the light.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you take it that way, Monsieur Vatel,&rdquo; said Tonsard, coldly, &ldquo;you will
+      find we don&rsquo;t want for courage in Burgundy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Vatel departed. Not feeling much curiosity to know what the trouble was,
+      Charles went up the steps and looked into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come to the chateau, you and your otter,&mdash;if you really have one,&rdquo;
+       he said to Pere Fourchon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man rose hurriedly and followed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, where is it,&mdash;that otter of yours?&rdquo; said Charles, smiling
+      doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This way,&rdquo; said the old fellow, going toward the Thune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The name is that of a brook formed by the overflow of the mill-race and of
+      certain springs in the park of Les Aigues. It runs by the side of the
+      county road as far as the lakelet of Soulanges, which it crosses, and then
+      falls into the Avonne, after feeding the mills and ponds on the Soulanges
+      estate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here it is; I hid it in the brook, with a stone around its neck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he stooped and rose again the old man missed the coin out of his
+      pocket, where metal was so uncommon that he was likely to notice its
+      presence or its absence immediately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the sharks!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;If I hunt otters they hunt fathers-in-law!
+      They get out of me all I earn, and tell me it is for my good! If it were
+      not for my poor Mouche, who is the comfort of my old age, I&rsquo;d drown
+      myself. Children! they are the ruin of their fathers. You haven&rsquo;t married,
+      have you, Monsieur Charles? Then don&rsquo;t; never get married, and then you
+      can&rsquo;t reproach yourself for spreading bad blood. I, who expected to buy my
+      tow with that money, and there it is filched, stolen! That monsieur up at
+      Les Aigues, a fine young fellow, gave me ten francs; ha! well! it&rsquo;ll put
+      up the price of my otter now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles distrusted the old man so profoundly that he took his grievances
+      (this time very sincere) for the preliminary of what he called, in
+      servant&rsquo;s slang, &ldquo;varnish,&rdquo; and he made the great mistake of letting his
+      opinion appear in a satirical grin, which the spiteful old fellow
+      detected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come! Pere Fourchon, now behave yourself; you are going to see
+      Madame,&rdquo; said Charles, noticing how the rubies flashed on the nose and
+      cheeks of the old drunkard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know how to attend to business, Charles; and the proof is that if you
+      will get me out of the kitchen the remains of the breakfast and a bottle
+      or two of Spanish wine, I&rsquo;ll tell you something which will save you from a
+      &lsquo;foul.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, and Francois shall get Monsieur&rsquo;s own order to give you a glass
+      of wine,&rdquo; said the groom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Promise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then, I know you meet my granddaughter Catherine under the bridge of
+      the Avonne. Godain is in love with her; he saw you, and he is fool enough
+      to be jealous,&mdash;I say fool, for a peasant oughtn&rsquo;t to have feelings
+      which belong only to rich folks. If you go to the ball of Soulanges at
+      Tivoli and dance with her, you&rsquo;ll dance higher than you&rsquo;ll like. Godain is
+      rich and dangerous; he is capable of breaking your arm without your
+      getting a chance to arrest him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be too dear; Catherine is a fine girl, but she is not worth
+      all that,&rdquo; replied Charles. &ldquo;Why should Godain be so angry? others are
+      not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He loves her enough to marry her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he does, he&rsquo;ll beat her,&rdquo; said Charles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know about that,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;She takes after her mother,
+      against whom Tonsard never raised a finger,&mdash;he&rsquo;s too afraid she&rsquo;ll
+      be off, hot foot. A woman who knows how to hold her own is mighty useful.
+      Besides, if it came to fisticuffs with Catherine, Godain, though he&rsquo;s
+      pretty strong, wouldn&rsquo;t give the last blow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, thank you, Pere Fourchon; here&rsquo;s forty sous to drink my health in
+      case I can&rsquo;t get you the sherry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pere Fourchon turned his head aside as he pocketed the money lest Charles
+      should see the expression of amusement and sarcasm which he was unable to
+      repress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Catherine,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;is a proud minx; she likes sherry. You had
+      better tell her to go and get it at Les Aigues.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Charles looked at Pere Fourchon with naive admiration, not suspecting the
+      eager interest the general&rsquo;s enemies took in slipping one more spy into
+      the chateau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The general ought to feel happy now,&rdquo; continued Fourchon; &ldquo;the peasants
+      are all quiet. What does he say? Is he satisfied with Sibilet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is only Monsieur Michaud who finds fault with Sibilet. They say he&rsquo;ll
+      get him sent away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Professional jealousy!&rdquo; exclaimed Fourchon. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll bet you would like to
+      get rid of Francois and take his place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang it! he has twelve hundred francs wages,&rdquo; said Charles; &ldquo;but they
+      can&rsquo;t send him off,&mdash;he knows the general&rsquo;s secrets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as Madame Michaud knows the countess&rsquo;s,&rdquo; remarked Fourchon, watching
+      the other carefully. &ldquo;Look here, my boy, do you know whether Monsieur and
+      Madame have separate rooms?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course; if they didn&rsquo;t, Monsieur wouldn&rsquo;t be so fond of Madame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all you know?&rdquo; said Fourchon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they were now before the kitchen windows nothing more was said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. ENEMIES FACE TO FACE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      While breakfast was in progress at the chateau, Francois, the head
+      footman, whispered to Blondet, but loud enough for the general to overhear
+      him,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur, Pere Fourchon&rsquo;s boy is here; he says they have caught the
+      otter, and wants to know if you would like it, or whether they shall take
+      it to the sub-prefect at Ville-aux-Fayes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emile Blondet, though himself a past-master of hoaxing, could not keep his
+      cheeks from blushing like those of a virgin who hears an indecorous story
+      of which she knows the meaning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! ha! so you have hunted the otter this morning with Pere Fourchon?&rdquo;
+       cried the general, with a roar of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked the countess, uneasy at her husband&rsquo;s laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When a man of wit and intelligence is taken in by old Fourchon,&rdquo;
+       continued the general, &ldquo;a retired cuirassier need not blush for having
+      hunted that otter; which bears an enormous resemblance to the third
+      posthorse we are made to pay for and never see.&rdquo; With that he went off
+      into further explosions of laughter, in the midst of which he contrived to
+      say: &ldquo;I am not surprised you had to change your boots&mdash;and your
+      trousers; I have no doubt you have been wading! The joke didn&rsquo;t go as far
+      as that with me,&mdash;I stayed on the bank; but then, you know, you are
+      so much more intelligent than I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you forget,&rdquo; interrupted Madame de Montcornet, &ldquo;that I do not know
+      what you are talking of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At these words, said with some pique, the general grew serious, and
+      Blondet told the story of his fishing for the otter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if they really have an otter,&rdquo; said the countess, &ldquo;those poor people
+      are not to blame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, but it is ten years since an otter has been seen about here,&rdquo; said
+      the pitiless general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; said Francois, &ldquo;the boy swears by all that&rsquo;s sacred
+      that he has got one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they have one I&rsquo;ll buy it,&rdquo; said the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t suppose,&rdquo; remarked the Abbe Brossette, &ldquo;that God has condemned
+      Les Aigues to never have otters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Monsieur le cure!&rdquo; cried Blondet, &ldquo;if you bring the Almighty against
+      me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what is all this? Who is here?&rdquo; said the countess, hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mouche, madame,&mdash;the boy who goes about with old Fourchon,&rdquo; said the
+      footman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring him in&mdash;that is, if Madame will allow it?&rdquo; said the general;
+      &ldquo;he may amuse you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mouche presently appeared, in his usual state of comparative nudity.
+      Beholding this personification of poverty in the middle of this luxurious
+      dining-room, the cost of one panel of which would have been a fortune to
+      the bare-legged, bare-breasted, and bare-headed child, it was impossible
+      not to be moved by an impulse of charity. The boy&rsquo;s eyes, like blazing
+      coals, gazed first at the luxuries of the room, and then at those on the
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you no mother?&rdquo; asked Madame de Montcornet, unable otherwise to
+      explain the child&rsquo;s nakedness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, ma&rsquo;am; m&rsquo;ma died of grief for losing p&rsquo;pa, who went to the army in
+      1812 without marrying her with papers, and got frozen, saving your
+      presence. But I&rsquo;ve my Grandpa Fourchon, who is a good man,&mdash;though he
+      does beat me bad sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is it, my dear, that such wretched people can be found on your
+      estate?&rdquo; said the countess, looking at the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame la comtesse,&rdquo; said the abbe, &ldquo;in this district we have none but
+      voluntary paupers. Monsieur le comte does all he can; but we have to do
+      with a class of persons who are without religion and who have but one
+      idea, that of living at your expense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear abbe,&rdquo; said Blondet, &ldquo;you are here to improve their morals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur,&rdquo; replied the abbe, &ldquo;my bishop sent me here as if on a mission
+      to savages; but, as I had the honor of telling him, the savages of France
+      cannot be reached. They make it a law unto themselves not to listen to us;
+      whereas the church does get some hold on the savages of America.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;M&rsquo;sieur le cure, they do help me a bit now,&rdquo; remarked Mouche; &ldquo;but if I
+      went to your church they <i>wouldn&rsquo;t</i>, and the other folks would make
+      game of my breeches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Religion ought to begin by giving him trousers, my dear abbe,&rdquo; said
+      Blondet. &ldquo;In your foreign missions don&rsquo;t you begin by coaxing the
+      savages?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would soon sell them,&rdquo; answered the abbe, in a low tone; &ldquo;besides, my
+      salary does not enable me to begin on that line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le cure is right,&rdquo; said the general, looking at Mouche.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The policy of the little scamp was to appear not to hear what they were
+      saying when it was against himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The boy is intelligent enough to know good from evil,&rdquo; continued the
+      count, &ldquo;and he is old enough to work; yet he thinks of nothing but how to
+      commit evil without being found out. All the keepers know him. He is very
+      well aware that the master of an estate may witness a trespass on his
+      property and yet have no right to arrest the trespasser. I have known him
+      keep his cows boldly in my meadows, though he knew I saw him; but now,
+      ever since I have been mayor, he runs away fast enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that is very wrong,&rdquo; said the countess; &ldquo;you should not take other
+      people&rsquo;s things, my little man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, we must eat. My grandpa gives me more slaps than food, and they
+      don&rsquo;t fill my stomach, slaps don&rsquo;t. When the cows come in I milk &lsquo;em just
+      a little and I live on that. Monseigneur isn&rsquo;t so poor but what he&rsquo;ll let
+      me drink a drop o&rsquo; milk the cows get from his grass?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he hasn&rsquo;t eaten anything to-day,&rdquo; said the countess, touched by
+      his misery. &ldquo;Give him some bread and the rest of that chicken; let him
+      have his breakfast,&rdquo; she added, looking at the footman. &ldquo;Where do you
+      sleep, my child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anywhere, madame; under the stars in summer, and wherever they&rsquo;ll let us
+      in winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twelve.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is still time to bring him up to better ways,&rdquo; said the countess to
+      her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will make a good soldier,&rdquo; said the general, gruffly; &ldquo;he is well
+      toughened. I went through that kind of thing myself, and here I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me, general, I don&rsquo;t belong to nobody,&rdquo; said the boy. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t be
+      drafted. My poor mother wasn&rsquo;t married, and I was born in a field. I&rsquo;m a
+      son of the &lsquo;airth,&rsquo; as grandpa says. M&rsquo;ma saved me from the army, that she
+      did! My name ain&rsquo;t no more Mouche than nothing at all. Grandpa keeps
+      telling me all my advantages. I&rsquo;m not on the register, and when I&rsquo;m old
+      enough to be drafted I can go all over France and they can&rsquo;t take me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you fond of your grandfather?&rdquo; said the countess, trying to look into
+      the child&rsquo;s heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My! doesn&rsquo;t he box my ears when he feels like it! but then, after all,
+      he&rsquo;s such fun; he&rsquo;s such good company! He says he pays himself that way
+      for having taught me to read and write.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you read?&rdquo; asked the count.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yah, I should think so, Monsieur le comte, and fine writing too&mdash;just
+      as true as we&rsquo;ve got that otter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read that,&rdquo; said the count, giving him a newspaper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Qu-o-ti-dienne,&rdquo; read Mouche, hesitating only three times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one, even the abbe, laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you make me read that newspaper?&rdquo; cried Mouche, angrily. &ldquo;My
+      grandpa says it is made up to please the rich, and everybody knows later
+      just what&rsquo;s in it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The child is right, general,&rdquo; said Blondet; &ldquo;and he makes me long to see
+      my hoaxing friend again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mouche understood perfectly that he was posing for the amusement of the
+      company; the pupil of Pere Fourchon was worthy of his master, and he
+      forthwith began to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can you tease a child with bare feet?&rdquo; said the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who thinks it quite natural that his grandfather should recoup
+      himself for his education by boxing his ears,&rdquo; said Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, my poor little fellow, have you really caught an otter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, madame; as true as that you are the prettiest lady I have seen, or
+      ever shall see,&rdquo; said the child, wiping his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then show me the otter,&rdquo; said the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh M&rsquo;sieur le comte, my grandpa has hidden it; but it was kicking still
+      when we were at work at the rope-walk. Send for my grandpa, please; he
+      wants to sell it to you himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take him into the kitchen,&rdquo; said the countess to Francois, &ldquo;and give him
+      his breakfast, and send Charles to fetch Pere Fourchon. Find some shoes,
+      and a pair of trousers and a waistcoat for the poor child; those who come
+      here naked must go away clothed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May God bless you, my beautiful lady,&rdquo; said Mouche, departing. &ldquo;M&rsquo;sieur
+      le cure may feel quite sure that I&rsquo;ll keep the things and wear &lsquo;em
+      fete-days, because you give &lsquo;em to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Emile and Madame Montcornet looked at each other with some surprise, and
+      seemed to say to the abbe, &ldquo;The boy is not a fool!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is quite true, madame,&rdquo; said the abbe after the child had gone, &ldquo;that
+      we cannot reckon with Poverty. I believe it has hidden excuses of which
+      God alone can judge,&mdash;physical excuses, often congenital; moral
+      excuses, born in the character, produced by an order of things that are
+      often the result of qualities which, unhappily for society, have no vent.
+      Deeds of heroism performed upon the battle-field ought to teach us that
+      the worst scoundrels may become heroes. But here in this place you are
+      living under exceptional circumstances; and if your benevolence is not
+      controlled by reflection and judgment you run the risk of supporting your
+      enemies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our enemies?&rdquo; exclaimed the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cruel enemies,&rdquo; said the general, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pere Fourchon and his son-in-law Tonsard,&rdquo; said the abbe, &ldquo;are the
+      strength and the intelligence of the lower classes of this valley, who
+      consult them on all occasions. The Machiavelism of these people is beyond
+      belief. Ten peasants meeting in a tavern are the small change of great
+      political questions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then Francois announced Monsieur Sibilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is my minister of finance,&rdquo; said the general, smiling; &ldquo;ask him in. He
+      will explain to you the gravity of the situation,&rdquo; he added, looking at
+      his wife and Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because he has reasons of his own for not concealing it,&rdquo; said the cure,
+      in a low tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blondet then beheld a personage of whom he had heard much ever since his
+      arrival, and whom he desired to know, the land-steward of Les Aigues. He
+      saw a man of medium height, about thirty years of age, with a sulky look
+      and a discontented face, on which a smile sat ill. Beneath an anxious brow
+      a pair of greenish eyes evaded the eyes of others, and so disguised their
+      thought. Sibilet was dressed in a brown surtout coat, black trousers and
+      waistcoat, and wore his hair long and flat to the head, which gave him a
+      clerical look. His trousers barely concealed that he was knock-kneed.
+      Though his pallid complexion and flabby flesh gave the impression of an
+      unhealthy constitution, Sibilet was really robust. The tones of his voice,
+      which were a little thick, harmonized with this unflattering exterior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blondet gave a hasty look at the abbe, and the glance with which the young
+      priest answered it showed the journalist that his own suspicions about the
+      steward were certainties to the curate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you not tell me, my dear Sibilet,&rdquo; said the general, &ldquo;that you
+      estimate the value of what the peasants steal from us at a quarter of the
+      whole revenue?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Much more than that, Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; replied the steward. &ldquo;The poor
+      about here get more from your property than the State exacts in taxes. A
+      little scamp like Mouche can glean his two bushels a day. Old women, whom
+      you would really think at their last gasp, become at the harvest and
+      vintage times as active and healthy as girls. You can witness that
+      phenomenon very soon,&rdquo; said Sibilet, addressing Blondet, &ldquo;for the harvest,
+      which was put back by the rains in July will begin next week, when they
+      cut the rye. The gleaners must have a certificate of pauperism from the
+      mayor of the district, and no district should allow any one to glean
+      except the paupers; but the districts of one canton do glean in those of
+      another without certificate. If we have sixty real paupers in our
+      district, there are at least forty others who could support themselves if
+      they were not so idle. Even persons who have a business leave it to glean
+      in the fields and in the vineyards. All these people, taken together,
+      gather in this neighborhood something like three hundred bushels a day;
+      the harvest lasts two weeks, and that makes four thousand five hundred
+      bushels in this district alone. The gleaning takes more from an estate
+      than the taxes. As to the abuse of pasturage, it robs us of fully
+      one-sixth the produce of the meadows; and as to that of the woods, it is
+      incalculable,&mdash;they have actually come to cutting down six-year-old
+      trees. The loss to you, Monsieur le comte, amounts to fully twenty-odd
+      thousand francs a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you hear that, madame?&rdquo; said the general to his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it not exaggerated?&rdquo; asked Madame de Montcornet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, madame, unfortunately not,&rdquo; said the abbe. &ldquo;Poor Niseron, that old
+      fellow with the white head, who combines the functions of bell-ringer,
+      beadle, grave-digger, sexton, and clerk, in defiance of his republican
+      opinions,&mdash;I mean the grandfather of the little Genevieve whom you
+      placed with Madame Michaud&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;La Pechina,&rdquo; said Sibilet, interrupting the abbe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pechina!&rdquo; said the countess, &ldquo;whom do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame la comtesse, when you met little Genevieve on the road in a
+      miserable condition, you cried out in Italian, &lsquo;Piccina!&rsquo; The word became
+      a nickname, and is now corrupted all through the district into Pechina,&rdquo;
+       said the abbe. &ldquo;The poor girl comes to church with Madame Michaud and
+      Madame Sibilet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And she is none the better for it,&rdquo; said Sibilet, &ldquo;for the others
+      ill-treat her on account of her religion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that poor old man of seventy gleans, honestly, about a bushel and a
+      half a day,&rdquo; continued the priest; &ldquo;but his natural uprightness prevents
+      him from selling his gleanings as others do,&mdash;he keeps them for his
+      own consumption. Monsieur Langlume, your miller, grinds his flour gratis
+      at my request, and my servant bakes his bread with mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had quite forgotten my little protegee,&rdquo; said the countess, troubled at
+      Sibilet&rsquo;s remark. &ldquo;Your arrival,&rdquo; she added to Blondet, &ldquo;has quite turned
+      my head. But after breakfast I will take you to the gate of the Avonne and
+      show you the living image of those women whom the painters of the
+      fifteenth century delighted to perpetuate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of Pere Fourchon&rsquo;s broken sabots was now heard; after depositing
+      them in the antechamber, he was brought to the door of the dining-room by
+      Francois. At a sign from the countess, Francois allowed him to pass in,
+      followed by Mouche with his mouth full and carrying the otter, hanging by
+      a string tied to its yellow paws, webbed like those of a palmiped. He cast
+      upon his four superiors sitting at table, and also upon Sibilet, that look
+      of mingled distrust and servility which serves as a veil to the thoughts
+      of the peasantry; then he brandished his amphibian with a triumphant air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here it is!&rdquo; he cried, addressing Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My otter!&rdquo; returned the Parisian, &ldquo;and well paid for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear gentleman,&rdquo; replied Pere Fourchon, &ldquo;yours got away; she is
+      now in her burrow, and she won&rsquo;t come out, for she&rsquo;s a female,&mdash;this
+      is a male; Mouche saw him coming just as you went away. As true as you
+      live, as true as that Monsieur le comte covered himself and his
+      cuirassiers with glory at Waterloo, the otter is mine, just as much as Les
+      Aigues belongs to Monseigneur the general. But the otter is <i>yours</i>
+      for twenty francs; if not I&rsquo;ll take it to the sub-prefect. If Monsieur
+      Gourdon thinks it too dear, then I&rsquo;ll give you the preference; that&rsquo;s only
+      fair, as we hunted together this morning!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty francs!&rdquo; said Blondet. &ldquo;In good French you can&rsquo;t call that <i>giving</i>
+      the preference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey, my dear gentleman,&rdquo; cried the old fellow. &ldquo;Perhaps I don&rsquo;t know
+      French, and I&rsquo;ll ask it in good Burgundian; as long as I get the money, I
+      don&rsquo;t care, I&rsquo;ll talk Latin: &lsquo;latinus, latina, latinum&rsquo;! Besides, twenty
+      francs is what you promised me this morning. My children have already
+      stolen the silver you gave me; I wept about it, coming along,&mdash;ask
+      Charles if I didn&rsquo;t. Not that I&rsquo;d arrest &lsquo;em for the value of ten francs
+      and have &lsquo;em up before the judge, no! But just as soon as I earn a few
+      pennies, they make me drink and get &lsquo;em out of me. Ah! it is hard, hard to
+      be reduced to go and get my wine elsewhere. But just see what children are
+      these days! That&rsquo;s what we got by the Revolution; it is all for the
+      children now-a-days, and parents are suppressed. I&rsquo;m bringing up Mouche on
+      another tack; he loves me, the little scamp,&rdquo;&mdash;giving his grandson a
+      poke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems to me you are making him a little thief, like all the rest,&rdquo;
+       said Sibilet; &ldquo;he never lies down at night without some sin on his
+      conscience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! Monsieur Sibilet, his conscience is as clean as yours any day! Poor
+      child! what can he steal? A little grass! that&rsquo;s better than throttling a
+      man! He don&rsquo;t know mathematics like you, nor subtraction, nor addition,
+      nor multiplication,&mdash;you are very unjust to us, that you are! You
+      call us a nest of brigands, but you are the cause of the misunderstandings
+      between our good landlord here, who is a worthy man, and the rest of us,
+      who are all worthy men,&mdash;there ain&rsquo;t an honester part of the country
+      than this. Come, what do you mean? do I own property? don&rsquo;t I go
+      half-naked, and Mouche too? Fine sheets we slept in, washed by the dew
+      every morning! and unless you want the air we breathe and the sunshine we
+      drink, I should like to know what we have that you can take away from us!
+      The rich folks rob as they sit in their chimney-corners,&mdash;and more
+      profitably, too, than by picking up a few sticks in the woods. I don&rsquo;t see
+      no game-keepers or patrols after Monsieur Gaubertin, who came here as
+      naked as a worm and is now worth his millions. It&rsquo;s easy said, &lsquo;Robbers!&rsquo; 
+      Here&rsquo;s fifteen years that old Guerbet, the tax-gatherer at Soulanges,
+      carries his money along the roads by the dead of night, and nobody ever
+      took a farthing from him; is that like a land of robbers? has robbery made
+      us rich? Show me which of us two, your class or mine, live the idlest
+      lives and have the most to live on without earning it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you were to work,&rdquo; said the abbe, &ldquo;you would have property. God
+      blesses labor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to contradict you, M&rsquo;sieur l&rsquo;abbe, for you are wiser than I,
+      and perhaps you&rsquo;ll know how to explain something that puzzles me. Now see,
+      here I am, ain&rsquo;t I?&mdash;that drunken, lazy, idle, good-for-nothing old
+      Fourchon, who had an education and was a farmer, and got down in the mud
+      and never got up again,&mdash;well, what difference is there between me
+      and that honest and worthy old Niseron, seventy years old (and that&rsquo;s my
+      age) who has dug the soil for sixty years and got up every day before it
+      was light to go to his work, and has made himself an iron body and a fine
+      soul? Well, isn&rsquo;t he as bad off as I am? His little granddaughter,
+      Pechina, is at service with Madame Michaud, whereas my little Mouche is as
+      free as air. So that poor good man gets rewarded for his virtues in
+      exactly the same way that I get punished for my vices. He don&rsquo;t know what
+      a glass of good wine is, he&rsquo;s as sober as an apostle, he buries the dead,
+      and I&mdash;I play for the living to dance. He is always in a peck o&rsquo; 
+      troubles, while I slip along in a devil-may-care way. We have come along
+      about even in life; we&rsquo;ve got the same snow on our heads, the same funds
+      in our pockets, and I supply him with rope to ring his bell. He&rsquo;s a
+      republican and I&rsquo;m not even a publican,&mdash;that&rsquo;s all the difference as
+      far as I can see. A peasant may do good or do evil (according to your
+      ideas) and he&rsquo;ll go out of the world just as he came into it, in rags;
+      while you wear the fine clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No one interrupted Pere Fourchon, who seemed to owe his eloquence to his
+      potations. At first Sibilet tried to cut him short, but desisted at a sign
+      from Blondet. The abbe, the general, and the countess, all understood from
+      the expression of the writer&rsquo;s eye that he wanted to study the question of
+      pauperism from life, and perhaps take his revenge on Pere Fourchon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of education are you giving Mouche?&rdquo; asked Blondet. &ldquo;Do you
+      expect to make him any better than your daughters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he ever speak to him of God?&rdquo; said the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, no! Monsieur le cure, I don&rsquo;t tell him to fear God, but men. God
+      is good; he has promised us poor folks, so you say, the kingdom of heaven,
+      because the rich people keep the earth to themselves. I tell him: &lsquo;Mouche!
+      fear the prison, and keep out of it,&mdash;for that&rsquo;s the way to the
+      scaffold. Don&rsquo;t steal anything, make people give it to you. Theft leads to
+      murder, and murder brings down the justice of men. The razor of justice,&mdash;<i>that&rsquo;s</i>
+      what you&rsquo;ve got to fear; it lets the rich sleep easy and keeps the poor
+      awake. Learn to read. Education will teach you ways to grab money under
+      cover of the law, like that fine Monsieur Gaubertin; why, you can even be
+      a land-steward like Monsieur Sibilet here, who gets his rations out of
+      Monsieur le comte. The thing to do is to keep well with the rich, and pick
+      up the crumbs that fall from their tables.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s what I call giving him
+      a good, solid education; and you&rsquo;ll always find the little rascal on the
+      side of the law,&mdash;he&rsquo;ll be a good citizen and take care of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean to make of him?&rdquo; asked Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A servant, to begin with,&rdquo; returned Fourchon, &ldquo;because then he&rsquo;ll see his
+      masters close by, and learn something; he&rsquo;ll complete his education, I&rsquo;ll
+      warrant you. Good example will be a fortune to him, with the law on his
+      side like the rest of you. If M&rsquo;sieur le comte would only take him in his
+      stables and let him learn to groom the horses, the boy will be mighty
+      pleased, for though I&rsquo;ve taught him to fear men, he don&rsquo;t fear animals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a clever fellow, Pere Fourchon,&rdquo; said Blondet; &ldquo;you know what you
+      are talking about, and there&rsquo;s sense in what you say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, sense? no; I left my sense at the Grand-I-Vert when I lost those
+      silver pieces.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is it that a man of your capacity should have dropped so low? As
+      things are now, a peasant can only blame himself for his poverty; he is a
+      free man, and he can become a rich one. It is not as it used to be. If a
+      peasant lays by his money, he can always buy a bit of land and become his
+      own master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen the olden time and I&rsquo;ve seen the new, my dear wise gentleman,&rdquo;
+       said Fourchon; &ldquo;the sign over the door has changed, that&rsquo;s true, but the
+      wine is the same,&mdash;to-day is the younger brother of yesterday, that&rsquo;s
+      all. Put that in your newspaper! Are we poor folks free? We still belong
+      to the same parish, and its lord is always there,&mdash;I call him Toil.
+      The hoe, our sole property, has never left our hands. Let it be the old
+      lords or the present taxes which take the best of our earnings, the fact
+      remains that we sweat our lives out in toil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you could undertake a business, and try to make your fortune,&rdquo; said
+      Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try to make my fortune! And where shall I try? If I wish to leave my own
+      province, I must get a passport, and that costs forty sous. Here&rsquo;s forty
+      years that I&rsquo;ve never had a slut of a forty-sous piece jingling against
+      another in my pocket. If you want to travel you need as many crowns as
+      there are villages, and there are mighty few Fourchons who have enough to
+      get to six of &lsquo;em. It is only the draft that gives us a chance to get
+      away. And what good does the army do us? The colonels live by the solider,
+      just as the rich folks live by the peasant; and out of every hundred of
+      &lsquo;em you won&rsquo;t find more than one of our breed. It is just as it is the
+      world over, one rolling in riches, for a hundred down in the mud. Why are
+      we in the mud? Ask God and the usurers. The best we can do is to stay in
+      our own parts, where we are penned like sheep by the force of
+      circumstances, as our fathers were by the rule of the lords. As for me,
+      what do I care what shackles they are that keep me here? let it be the law
+      of public necessity or the tyranny of the old lords, it is all the same;
+      we are condemned to dig the soil forever. There, where we are born, there
+      we dig it, that earth! and spade it, and manure it, and delve in it, for
+      you who are born rich just as we are born poor. The masses will always be
+      what they are, and stay what they are. The number of us who manage to rise
+      is nothing like the number of you who topple down! We know that well
+      enough, if we have no education! You mustn&rsquo;t be after us with your sheriff
+      all the time,&mdash;not if you&rsquo;re wise. We let you alone, and you must let
+      us alone. If not, and things get worse, you&rsquo;ll have to feed us in your
+      prisons, where we&rsquo;d be much better off than in our homes. You want to
+      remain our masters, and we shall always be enemies, just as we were thirty
+      years ago. You have everything, we have nothing; you can&rsquo;t expect we
+      should ever be friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I call a declaration of war,&rdquo; said the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monseigneur,&rdquo; retorted Fourchon, &ldquo;when Les Aigues belonged to that poor
+      Madame (God keep her soul and forgive her the sins of her youth!) we were
+      happy. <i>She</i> let us get our food from the fields and our fuel from
+      the forest; and was she any the poorer for it? And you, who are at least
+      as rich as she, you hunt us like wild beasts, neither more nor less, and
+      drag the poor before the courts. Well, evil will come of it! you&rsquo;ll be the
+      cause of some great calamity. Haven&rsquo;t I just seen your keeper, that
+      shuffling Vatel, half kill a poor old woman for a stick of wood? It is
+      such fellows as that who make you an enemy to the poor; and the talk is
+      very bitter against you. They curse you every bit as hard as they used to
+      bless the late Madame. The curse of the poor, monseigneur, is a seed that
+      grows,&mdash;grows taller than your tall oaks, and oak-wood builds the
+      scaffold. Nobody here tells you the truth; and here it is, yes, the truth!
+      I expect to die before long, and I risk very little in telling it to you,
+      the <i>truth</i>! I, who play for the peasants to dance at the great fetes
+      at Soulanges, I heed what the people say. Well, they&rsquo;re all against you;
+      and they&rsquo;ll make it impossible for you to stay here. If that damned
+      Michaud of yours doesn&rsquo;t change, they&rsquo;ll force you to change him. There!
+      that information <i>and</i> the otter are worth twenty francs, and more
+      too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As the old fellow uttered the last words a man&rsquo;s step was heard, and the
+      individual just threatened by Fourchon entered unannounced. It was easy to
+      see from the glance he threw at the old man that the threat had reached
+      his ears, and all Fourchon&rsquo;s insolence sank in a moment. The look produced
+      precisely the same effect upon him that the eye of a policeman produces on
+      a thief. Fourchon knew he was wrong, and that Michaud might very well
+      accuse him of saying these things merely to terrify the inhabitants of Les
+      Aigues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the minister of war,&rdquo; said the general to Blondet, nodding at
+      Michaud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, madame, for having entered without asking if you were willing
+      to receive me,&rdquo; said the newcomer to the countess; &ldquo;but I have urgent
+      reasons for speaking to the general at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michaud, as he said this, took notice of Sibilet, whose expression of keen
+      delight in Fourchon&rsquo;s daring words was not seen by the four persons seated
+      at the table, because they were so preoccupied by the old man; whereas
+      Michaud, who for secret reasons watched Sibilet constantly, was struck
+      with his air and manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has earned his twenty francs, Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; said Sibilet; &ldquo;the
+      otter is fully worth it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give him twenty francs,&rdquo; said the general to the footman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to take my otter away from me?&rdquo; said Blondet to the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have it stuffed,&rdquo; replied the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! but that good gentleman said I might keep the skin,&rdquo; cried Fourchon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; exclaimed the countess, hastily, &ldquo;you shall have five francs
+      more for the skin; but go away now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The powerful odor emitted by the pair made the dining-room so horribly
+      offensive that Madame de Montcornet, whose senses were very delicate,
+      would have been forced to leave the room if Fourchon and Mouche had
+      remained. To this circumstance the old man was indebted for his
+      twenty-five francs. He left the room with a timid glance at Michaud,
+      making him an interminable series of bows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I was saying to monseigneur, Monsieur Michaud,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;was
+      really for your good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or for that of those who pay you,&rdquo; replied Michaud, with a searching
+      look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you have served the coffee, leave the room,&rdquo; said the general to the
+      servants, &ldquo;and see that the doors are shut.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Blondet, who had not yet seen the bailiff of Les Aigues, was conscious, as
+      he now saw him, of a totally different impression from that conveyed by
+      Sibilet. Just as the steward inspired distrust and repulsion, so Michaud
+      commanded respect and confidence. The first attraction of his presence was
+      a happy face, of a fine oval, pure in outline, in which the nose bore
+      part,&mdash;a regularity which is lacking in the majority of French faces.
+      Though the features were correct in drawing, they were not without
+      expression, due, perhaps, to the harmonious coloring of the warm brown and
+      ochre tints, indicative of physical health and strength. The clear brown
+      eyes, which were bright and piercing, kept no reserves in the expression
+      of his thought; they looked straight into the eyes of others. The broad
+      white forehead was thrown still further into relief by his abundant black
+      hair. Honesty, decision, and a saintly serenity were the animating points
+      of this noble face, where a few deep lines upon the brow were the result
+      of the man&rsquo;s military career. Doubt and suspicion could there be read the
+      moment they had entered his mind. His figure, like that of all men
+      selected for the elite of the cavalry service, though shapely and elegant,
+      was vigorously built. Michaud, who wore moustachios, whiskers, and a chin
+      beard, recalled that martial type of face which a deluge of patriotic
+      paintings and engravings came very near to making ridiculous. This type
+      had the defect of being common in the French army; perhaps the continuance
+      of the same emotions, the same camp sufferings from which none were
+      exempt, neither high nor low, and more especially the same efforts of
+      officers and men upon the battle-fields, may have contributed to produce
+      this uniformity of countenance. Michaud, who was dressed in dark blue
+      cloth, still wore the black satin stock and high boots of a soldier, which
+      increased the slight stiffness and rigidity of his bearing. The shoulders
+      sloped, the chest expanded, as though the man were still under arms. The
+      red ribbon of the Legion of honor was in his buttonhole. In short, to give
+      a last touch in one word about the moral qualities beneath this purely
+      physical presentment, it may be said that while the steward, from the time
+      he first entered upon his functions, never failed to call his master
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; Michaud never addressed him otherwise than as
+      &ldquo;General.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Blondet exchanged another look with the Abbe Brossette, which meant, &ldquo;What
+      a contrast!&rdquo; as he signed to him to observe the two men. Then, as if to
+      know whether the character and mind and speech of the bailiff harmonized
+      with his form and countenance, he turned to Michaud and said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was out early this morning, and found your under-keepers still
+      sleeping.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At what hour?&rdquo; said the late soldier, anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half-past seven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michaud gave a half-roguish glance at the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By what gate did monsieur leave the park?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the gate of Conches. The keeper, in his night-shirt, looked at me
+      through the window,&rdquo; replied Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gaillard had probably just gone to bed,&rdquo; answered Michaud. &ldquo;You said you
+      were out early, and I thought you meant day-break. If my man were at home
+      at that time, he must have been ill; but at half-past seven he was sure to
+      be in bed. We are up all night,&rdquo; added Michaud, after a slight pause,
+      replying to a surprised look on the countess&rsquo;s face, &ldquo;but our watchfulness
+      is often wasted. You have just given twenty-five francs to a man who, not
+      an hour ago, was quietly helping to hide the traces of a robbery committed
+      upon you this very morning. I came to speak to you about it, general, when
+      you have finished breakfast; for something will have to be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are always for maintaining the right, my dear Michaud, and &lsquo;summum
+      jus, summum injuria.&rsquo; If you are not more tolerant, you will get into
+      trouble, so Sibilet here tells me. I wish you could have heard Pere
+      Fourchon just now; the wine he had been drinking made him speak out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He frightened me,&rdquo; said the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said nothing I did not know long ago,&rdquo; replied the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! the rascal wasn&rsquo;t drunk; he was playing a part; for whose benefit I
+      leave you to guess. Perhaps you know?&rdquo; returned Michaud, fixing an eye on
+      Sibilet which caused the latter to turn red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O rus!&rdquo; cried Blondet, with another look at the abbe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But these poor creatures suffer,&rdquo; said the countess, &ldquo;and there is a
+      great deal of truth in what old Fourchon has just screamed at us,&mdash;for
+      I cannot call it speaking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; replied Michaud, &ldquo;do you suppose that for fourteen years the
+      soldiers of the Emperor slept on a bed of roses? My general is a count, he
+      is a grand officer of the Legion of honor, he has had perquisites and
+      endowments given to him; am I jealous of him, I who fought as he did? Do I
+      wish to cheat him of his glory, to steal his perquisites, to deny him the
+      honor due to his rank? The peasant should obey as the soldier obeys; he
+      should feel the loyalty of a soldier, his respect for acquired rights, and
+      strive to become an officer himself, honorably, by labor and not by theft.
+      The sabre and the plough are twins; though the soldier has something more
+      than the peasant,&mdash;he has death hanging over him at any minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to say that from the pulpit,&rdquo; cried the abbe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tolerant!&rdquo; continued the keeper, replying to the general&rsquo;s remark about
+      Sibilet, &ldquo;I would tolerate a loss of ten per cent upon the gross returns
+      of Les Aigues; but as things are now thirty per cent is what you lose,
+      general; and, if Monsieur Sibilet&rsquo;s accounts show it, I don&rsquo;t understand
+      his tolerance, for he benevolently gives up a thousand or twelve hundred
+      francs a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Monsieur Michaud,&rdquo; replied Sibilet, in a snappish tone, &ldquo;I have
+      told Monsieur le comte that I would rather lose twelve hundred francs a
+      year than my life. Think of it seriously; I have warned you often enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Life!&rdquo; exclaimed the countess; &ldquo;you can&rsquo;t mean that anybody&rsquo;s life is in
+      danger?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t let us argue about state affairs here,&rdquo; said the general, laughing.
+      &ldquo;All this, my dear, merely means that Sibilet, in his capacity of
+      financier, is timid and cowardly, while the minister of war is brave and,
+      like his general, fears nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call me prudent, Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; interposed Sibilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; cried Blondet, laughing, &ldquo;so here we are, like Cooper&rsquo;s
+      heroes in the forests of America, in the midst of sieges and savages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, gentlemen, it is your business to govern without letting me hear
+      the wheels of the administration,&rdquo; said Madame de Montcornet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! madame,&rdquo; said the cure, &ldquo;but it may be right that you should know the
+      toil from which those pretty caps you wear are derived.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, I can go without them,&rdquo; replied the countess, laughing. &ldquo;I
+      will be very respectful to a twenty-franc piece, and grow as miserly as
+      the country people themselves. Come, my dear abbe, give me your arm. Leave
+      the general with his two ministers, and let us go to the gate of the
+      Avonne to see Madame Michaud, for I have not had time since my arrival to
+      pay her a visit, and I want to inquire about my little protegee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the pretty woman, already forgetting the rags and tatters of Mouche
+      and Fourchon, and their eyes full of hatred, and Sibilet&rsquo;s warnings, went
+      to have herself made ready for the walk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The abbe and Blondet obeyed the behest of the mistress of the house and
+      followed her from the dining-room, waiting till she was ready on the
+      terrace before the chateau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you think of all this?&rdquo; said Blondet to the abbe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a pariah; they dog me as they would a common enemy. I am forced to
+      keep my eyes and ears perpetually open to escape the traps they are
+      constantly laying to get me out of the place,&rdquo; replied the abbe. &ldquo;I am
+      even doubtful, between ourselves, as to whether they will not shoot me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you stay?&rdquo; said Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t desert God&rsquo;s cause any more than that of an emperor,&rdquo; replied
+      the priest, with a simplicity that affected Blondet. He took the abbe&rsquo;s
+      hand and shook it cordially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see how it is, therefore, that I know very little of the plots that
+      are going on,&rdquo; continued the abbe. &ldquo;Still, I know enough to feel sure that
+      the general is under what in Artois and in Belgium is called an &lsquo;evil
+      grudge.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few words are here necessary about the curate of Blangy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This priest, the fourth son of a worthy middle-class family of Autun, was
+      an intelligent man carrying his head high in his collar. Small and slight,
+      he redeemed his rather puny appearance by the precise and carefully
+      dressed air that belongs to Burgundians. He accepted the second-rate post
+      of Blangy out of pure devotion, for his religious convictions were joined
+      to political opinions that were equally strong. There was something of the
+      priest of the olden time about him; he held to the Church and to the
+      clergy passionately; saw the bearings of things, and no selfishness marred
+      his one ambition, which was <i>to serve</i>. That was his motto,&mdash;to
+      serve the Church and the monarchy wherever it was most threatened; to
+      serve in the lowest rank like a soldier who feels that he is destined,
+      sooner or later, to attain command through courage and the resolve to do
+      his duty. He made no compromises with his vows of chastity, and poverty,
+      and obedience; he fulfilled them, as he did the other duties of his
+      position, with that simplicity and cheerful good-humor which are the sure
+      indications of an honest heart, constrained to do right by natural
+      impulses as much as by the power and consistency of religious convictions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest had seen at first sight Blondet&rsquo;s attachment to the countess;
+      he saw that between a Troisville and a monarchical journalist he could
+      safely show himself to be a man of broad intelligence, because his calling
+      was certain to be respected. He usually came to the chateau very evening
+      to make the fourth at a game of whist. The journalist, able to recognize
+      the abbe&rsquo;s real merits, showed him so much deference that the pair grew
+      into sympathy with each other; as usually happens when men of intelligence
+      meet their equals, or, if you prefer it, the ears that are able to hear
+      them. Swords are fond of their scabbards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But to what do you attribute this state of things, Monsieur l&rsquo;abbe, you
+      who are able, through your disinterestedness, to look over the heads of
+      things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not talk platitudes after such a flattering speech as that,&rdquo; said
+      the abbe, smiling. &ldquo;What is going on in this valley is spreading more or
+      less throughout France; it is the outcome of the hopes which the upheaval
+      of 1789 caused to infiltrate, if I may use that expression, the minds of
+      the peasantry, the sons of the soil. The Revolution affected certain
+      localities more than others. This side of Burgundy, nearest to Paris, is
+      one of those places where the revolutionary ideas spread like the
+      overrunning of the Franks by the Gauls. Historically, the peasants are
+      still on the morrow of the Jacquerie; that defeat is burnt in upon their
+      brain. They have long forgotten the facts which have now passed into the
+      condition of an instinctive idea. That idea is bred in the peasant blood,
+      just as the idea of superiority was once bred in noble blood. The
+      revolution of 1789 was the retaliation of the vanquished. The peasants
+      then set foot in possession of the soil which the feudal law had denied
+      them for over twelve hundred years. Hence their desire for land, which
+      they now cut up among themselves until actually they divide a furrow into
+      two parts; which, by the bye, often hinders or prevents the collection of
+      taxes, for the value of such fractions of property is not sufficient to
+      pay the legal costs of recovering them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true, for the obstinacy of the small owners&mdash;their
+      aggressiveness, if you choose&mdash;on this point is so great that in at
+      least one thousand cantons of the three thousand of French territory, it
+      is impossible for a rich man to buy an inch of land from a peasant,&rdquo; said
+      Blondet, interrupting the abbe. &ldquo;The peasants who are willing to divide up
+      their scraps of land among themselves would not sell a fraction on any
+      condition or at any price to the middle classes. The more money the rich
+      man offers, the more the vague uneasiness of the peasant increases. Legal
+      dispossession alone is able to bring the landed property of the peasant
+      into the market. Many persons have noticed this fact without being able to
+      find a reason for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the reason,&rdquo; said the abbe, rightly believing that a pause with
+      Blondet was equivalent to a question: &ldquo;twelve centuries have done nothing
+      for a caste whom the historic spectacle of civilization has never yet
+      diverted from its one predominating thought,&mdash;a caste which still
+      wears proudly the broad-brimmed hat of its masters, ever since an
+      abandoned fashion placed it upon their heads. That all-pervading thought,
+      the roots of which are in the bowels of the people, and which attached
+      them so vehemently to Napoleon (who was personally less to them than he
+      thought he was) and which explains the miracle of his return in 1815,&mdash;that
+      desire for land is the sole motive power of the peasant&rsquo;s being. In the
+      eyes of the masses Napoleon, ever one with them through his million of
+      soldiers, is still the king born of the Revolution; the man who gave them
+      possession of the soil and sold to them the national domains. His
+      anointing was saturated with that idea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An idea to which 1814 dealt a blow, an idea which monarchy should hold
+      sacred,&rdquo; said Blondet, quickly; &ldquo;for the people may some day find on the
+      steps of the throne a prince whose father bequeathed to him the head of
+      Louis XVI. as an heirloom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is madame; don&rsquo;t say any more,&rdquo; said the abbe, in a low voice.
+      &ldquo;Fourchon has frightened her; and it is very desirable to keep her here in
+      the interests of religion and of the throne, and, indeed, in those of the
+      people themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michaud, the bailiff of Les Aigues, had come to the chateau in consequence
+      of the assault on Vatel&rsquo;s eyes. But before we relate the consultation
+      which then and there took place, the chain of events requires a succinct
+      account of the circumstances under which the general purchased Les Aigues,
+      the serious causes which led to the appointment of Sibilet as steward of
+      that magnificent property, and the reasons why Michaud was made bailiff,
+      with all the other antecedents to which were due the tension of the minds
+      of all, and the fears expressed by Sibilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This rapid summary will have the merit of introducing some of the
+      principal actors in this drama, and of exhibiting their individual
+      interests; we shall thus be enabled to show the dangers which surrounded
+      the General comte de Montcornet at the moment when this history opens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. A TALE OF THIEVES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s influence, he became mayor of Blangy. Thus he was
+      able, contrary to law, to make the debtors pay in coin, by &ldquo;terrorizing&rdquo;
+       (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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1796, at the time of his marriage with the citoyenne Isaure Mouchon,
+      daughter of an old &ldquo;conventional,&rdquo; 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&rsquo; stewardship ratified by Mademoiselle,
+      under pretext of a new departure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am to be the head of a family,&rdquo; he said to her; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mademoiselle Laguerre accepted his accounts at once in very flattering
+      terms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; she said, in the easy tone of the wantons of the old time,
+      &ldquo;people must live, even if they are republicans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Madame&rdquo; 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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Ah,
+      those were the good times!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;not to speak of Madame&rsquo;s continual
+      purchases. But Gaubertin&rsquo;s fixed idea of acquiring Les Aigues at the old
+      lady&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two pearls!&rdquo; she said to the persons who came to see her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;on the costs of working the estate,
+      on rentals made, on suits brought, on work done, on repairs of every kind,&mdash;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&rsquo;s
+      praise was on every lip; for besides the payments she disbursed for work,
+      she gave away large sums of money in alms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May God preserve her, the dear lady!&rdquo; was heard on all sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This system of &ldquo;pickings&rdquo; was, alas! the cause of Paul-Louis Carter&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During Madame&rsquo;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 &ldquo;best society&rdquo; of Soulanges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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,&mdash;public opinion credited the former waiting-maid with one
+      of the largest fortunes in the little town of twelve hundred inhabitants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;urbi et orbi,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;They must surely
+      have committed some crime together&rdquo;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lupin, a son of the former steward of the estate of Soulanges, had lent
+      himself to various slight peculations,&mdash;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, &ldquo;in
+      petto,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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, &ldquo;We must howl with the
+      wolves,&rdquo; a meaning which underlies the character of Phillinte.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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,&mdash;hoping
+      still to be able to carry out his defeated plan in his own interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;corps d&rsquo;armee&rdquo; 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,&mdash;a swindler, such as the
+      dukes and marshals of the Empire, those mushrooms bred from the common
+      earth, were well acquainted with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wily general, soon aware of Gaubertin&rsquo;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,&mdash;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 &ldquo;civilians,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s anger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are living off my land,&rdquo; said the general, with jesting severity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I can live off the sky?&rdquo; returned Gaubertin, with a sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out of my sight, blackguard! I dismiss you!&rdquo; cried the general, striking
+      him with his whip,&mdash;blows which the steward always denied having
+      received, for they were given behind closed doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not go without my release in full,&rdquo; said Gaubertin, coldly,
+      keeping at a distance from the enraged soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will see what is thought of you in a police court,&rdquo; replied
+      Montcornet, shrugging his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing the threat, Gaubertin looked at the general and smiled. The smile
+      had the effect of relaxing Montcornet&rsquo;s arms as though the sinews had been
+      cut. We must explain that smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the last two years, Gaubertin&rsquo;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,&mdash;the attorney-general and the sub-prefect being
+      removable at will. Young Soudry, a companion of Gaubertin&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s self. An injury done to a person&rsquo;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, &ldquo;You are a swindler,&rdquo; 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?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The general was deceived by appearances; for Gaubertin&rsquo;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&rsquo;s sponsor) two thousand
+      francs a year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gaubertin&mdash;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&mdash;considered himself a perfectly honest man.
+      In the first place, he had so long had possession of the money extorted
+      from Mademoiselle Laguerre&rsquo;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. &ldquo;Legally&rdquo; 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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If my mistress,&rdquo; says the cook, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Mademoiselle,&rdquo; thought Gaubertin, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;every man for himself and for
+      his own,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. CERTAIN LOST SOCIAL SPECIES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The estate of Les Aigues could not do without a steward; for the general
+      had no intention of renouncing his winter pleasures in Paris, where he
+      owned a fine house in the rue Neuve-des-Mathurines. He therefore looked
+      about for a successor to Gaubertin; but it is very certain that his search
+      was not as eager as that of Gaubertin himself, who was seeking for the
+      right person to put in his way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all confidential positions there is none that requires more trained
+      knowledge of its kind, or more activity, than that of land-steward to a
+      great estate. The difficulty of finding the right man is only fully known
+      to those wealthy landlords whose property lies beyond a certain circle
+      around Paris, beginning at a distance of about one hundred and fifty
+      miles. At that point agricultural productions for the markets of Paris,
+      which warrant rentals on long leases (collected often by other tenants who
+      are rich themselves), cease to be cultivated. The farmers who raise them
+      drive to the city in their own cabriolets to pay their rents in good
+      bank-bills, unless they send the money through their agents in the
+      markets. For this reason, the farms of the Seine-et-Oise, Seine-et-Marne,
+      the Oise, the Eure-et-Loir, the Lower Seine, and the Loiret are so
+      desirable that capital cannot always be invested there at one and a half
+      per cent. Compared to the returns on estates in Holland, England, and
+      Belgium, this result is enormous. But at one hundred miles from Paris an
+      estate requires such variety of working, its products are so different in
+      kind, that it becomes a business, with all the risks attendant on
+      manufacturing. The wealthy owner is really a merchant, forced to look for
+      a market for his products, like the owner of ironworks or cotton
+      factories. He does not even escape competition; the peasant, the small
+      proprietor, is at his heels with an avidity which leads to transactions to
+      which well-bred persons cannot condescend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A land-steward must understand surveying, the customs of the locality, the
+      methods of sale and of labor, together with a little quibbling in the
+      interests of those he serves; he must also understand book-keeping and
+      commercial matters, and be in perfect health, with a liking for active
+      life and horse exercise. His duty being to represent his master and to be
+      always in communication with him, the steward ought not to be a man of the
+      people. As the salary of his office seldom exceeds three thousand francs,
+      the problem seems insoluble. How is it possible to obtain so many
+      qualifications for such a very moderate price,&mdash;in a region,
+      moreover, where the men who are provided with them are admissible to all
+      other employments? Bring down a stranger to fill the place, and you will
+      pay dear for the experience he must acquire. Train a young man on the
+      spot, and you are more than likely to get a thorn of ingratitude in your
+      side. It therefore becomes necessary to choose between incompetent
+      honesty, which injures your property through its blindness and inertia,
+      and the cleverness which looks out for itself. Hence the social
+      nomenclature and natural history of land-stewards as defined by a great
+      Polish noble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;two kinds of stewards: he who thinks only of
+      himself, and he who thinks of himself and of us; happy the land-owner who
+      lays his hands on the latter! As for the steward who would think only of
+      us, he is not to be met with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Elsewhere can be found a steward who thought of this master&rsquo;s interests as
+      well as of his own. (&ldquo;Un Debut dans la vie,&rdquo; &ldquo;Scenes de la vie privee.&rdquo;)
+      Gaubertin is the steward who thinks of himself only. To represent the
+      third figure of the problem would be to hold up to public admiration a
+      very unlikely personage, yet one that was not unknown to the old nobility,
+      though he has, alas! disappeared with them. (See &ldquo;Le Cabinet des
+      Antiques,&rdquo; &ldquo;Scenes de la vie de province.&rdquo;) Through the endless
+      subdivision of fortunes aristocratic habits and customs are inevitably
+      changed. If there be not now in France twenty great fortunes managed by
+      intendants, in fifty years from now there will not be a hundred estates in
+      the hands of stewards, unless a great change is made in the law. Every
+      land-owner will be brought by that time to look after his own interests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This transformation, already begun, suggested the following answer of a
+      clever woman when asked why, since 1830, she stayed in Paris during the
+      summer. &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I do not care to visit chateaux which are
+      now turned into farms.&rdquo; What is to be the future of this question, getting
+      daily more and more imperative,&mdash;that of man to man, the poor man and
+      the rich man? This book is written to throw some light upon that terrible
+      social question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is easy to understand the perplexities which assailed the general after
+      he had dismissed Gaubertin. While saying to himself, vaguely, like other
+      persons free to do or not to do a thing, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll dismiss that scamp&rdquo;; he had
+      overlooked the risk and forgotten the explosion of his boiling anger,&mdash;the
+      anger of a choleric fire-eater at the moment when a flagrant imposition
+      forced him to raise the lids of his wilfully blind eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montcornet, a land-owner for the first time and a denizen of Paris, had
+      not provided himself with a steward before coming to Les Aigues; but after
+      studying the neighborhood carefully he saw it was indispensable to a man
+      like himself to have an intermediary to manage so many persons of low
+      degree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gaubertin, who discovered during the excitement of the scene (which lasted
+      more than two hours) the difficulties in which the general would soon be
+      involved, jumped on his pony after leaving the room where the quarrel took
+      place, and galloped to Soulanges to consult the Soudrys. At his first
+      words, &ldquo;The general and I have parted; whom can we put in my place without
+      his suspecting it?&rdquo; the Soudrys understood their friend&rsquo;s wishes. Do not
+      forget that Soudry, for the last seventeen years chief of police of the
+      canton, was doubly shrewd through his wife, an adept in the particular
+      wiliness of a waiting-maid of an Opera divinity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We may go far,&rdquo; said Madame Soudry, &ldquo;before we find any one to suit the
+      place as well as our poor Sibilet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Made to order!&rdquo; exclaimed Gaubertin, still scarlet with mortification.
+      &ldquo;Lupin,&rdquo; he added, turning to the notary, who was present, &ldquo;go to
+      Ville-aux-Fayes and whisper it to Marechal, in case that big fire-eater
+      asks his advice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marechal was the lawyer whom his former patron, when buying Les Aigues for
+      the general, had recommended to Monsieur de Montcornet as legal adviser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibilet, eldest son of the clerk of the court at Ville-aux-Fayes, a
+      notary&rsquo;s clerk, without a penny of his own, and twenty-five years old, had
+      fallen in love with the daughter of the chief-magistrate of Soulanges. The
+      latter, named Sarcus, had a salary of fifteen hundred francs, and was
+      married to a woman without fortune, the eldest sister of Monsieur Vermut,
+      the apothecary of Soulanges. Though an only daughter, Mademoiselle Sarcus,
+      whose beauty was her only dowry, could scarcely have lived on the salary
+      paid to a notary&rsquo;s clerk in the provinces. Young Sibilet, a relative of
+      Gaubertin, by a connection rather difficult to trace through family
+      ramifications which make members of the middle classes in all the smaller
+      towns cousins to each other, owed a modest position in a government office
+      to the assistance of his father and Gaubertin. The unlucky fellow had the
+      terrible happiness of being the father of two children in three years. His
+      own father, blessed with five, was unable to assist him. His wife&rsquo;s father
+      owned nothing beside his house at Soulanges and an income of two thousand
+      francs. Madame Sibilet the younger spent most of her time at her father&rsquo;s
+      home with her two children, where Adolphe Sibilet, whose official duty
+      obliged him to travel through the department, came to see her from time to
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gaubertin&rsquo;s exclamation, though easy to understand from this summary of
+      young Sibilet&rsquo;s life, needs a few more explanatory details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adolphe Sibilet, supremely unlucky, as we have shown by the foregoing
+      sketch of him, was one of those men who cannot reach the heart of a woman
+      except by way of the altar and the mayor&rsquo;s office. Endowed with the
+      suppleness of a steel-spring, he yielded to pressure, certain to revert to
+      his first thought. This treacherous habit is prompted by cowardice; but
+      the business training which Sibilet underwent in the office of a
+      provincial notary had taught him the art of concealing this defect under a
+      gruff manner which simulated a strength he did not possess. Many false
+      natures mask their hollowness in this way; be rough with them in return
+      and the effect produced is that of a balloon collapsed by a prick. Such
+      was Sibilet. But as most men are not observers, and as among observers
+      three fourths observe only after a thing has taken place, Adolphe
+      Sibilet&rsquo;s grumbling manner was considered the result of an honest
+      frankness, of a capacity much praised by his master, and of a stubborn
+      uprightness which no temptation could shake. Some men are as much
+      benefited by their defects as others by their good qualities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Adeline Sarcus, a pretty young woman, brought up by a mother (who died
+      three years before her marriage) as well as a mother can educate an only
+      daughter in a remote country town, was in love with the handsome son of
+      Lupin, the Soulanges notary. At the first signs of this romance, old
+      Lupin, who intended to marry his son to Mademoiselle Elise Gaubertin, lost
+      no time in sending young Amaury Lupin to Paris, to the care of his friend
+      and correspondent Crottat, the notary, where, under pretext of drawing
+      deeds and contracts, Amaury committed a variety of foolish acts, and made
+      debts, being led thereto by a certain Georges Marest, a clerk in the same
+      office, but a rich young man, who revealed to him the mysteries of
+      Parisian life. By the time Lupin the elder went to Paris to bring back his
+      son, Adeline Sarcus had become Madame Sibilet. In fact, when the adoring
+      Adolphe offered himself, her father, the old magistrate, prompted by young
+      Lupin&rsquo;s father, hastened the marriage, to which Adeline yielded in sheer
+      despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The situation of clerk in a government registration office is not a
+      career. It is, like other such places which admit of no rise, one of the
+      many holes of the government sieve. Those who start in life in these holes
+      (the topographical, the professorial, the highway-and-canal departments)
+      are apt to discover, invariably too late, that cleverer men then they,
+      seated beside them, are fed, as the Opposition writers say, on the sweat
+      of the people, every time the sieve dips down into the taxation-pot by
+      means of a machine called the budget. Adolphe, working early and late and
+      earning little, soon found out the barren depths of his hole; and his
+      thoughts busied themselves, as he trotted from township to township,
+      spending his salary in shoe-leather and costs of travelling, with how to
+      find a permanent and more profitable place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one can imagine, unless he happens to squint and to have two legitimate
+      children, what ambitions three years of misery and love had developed in
+      this young man, who squinted both in mind and vision, and whose happiness
+      halted, as it were, on one leg. The chief cause of secret evil deeds and
+      hidden meanness is, perhaps, an incompleted happiness. Man can better bear
+      a state of hopeless misery than those terrible alternations of love and
+      sunshine with continual rain. If the body contracts disease, the mind
+      contracts the leprosy of envy. In petty minds that leprosy becomes a base
+      and brutal cupidity, both insolent and shrinking; in cultivated minds it
+      fosters anti-social doctrines, which serve a man as footholds by which to
+      rise above his superiors. May we not dignify with the title of proverb the
+      pregnant saying, &ldquo;Tell me what thou hast, and I will tell thee of what
+      thou art thinking&rdquo;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Adolphe loved his wife, his hourly thought was: &ldquo;I have made a
+      mistake; I have three balls and chains, but I have only two legs. I ought
+      to have made my fortune before I married. I could have found an Adeline
+      any day; but Adeline stands in the way of my getting a fortune now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adolphe had been to see his relation Gaubertin three times in three years.
+      A few words exchanged between them let Gaubertin see the muck of a soul
+      ready to ferment under the hot temptations of legal robbery. He warily
+      sounded a nature that could be warped to the exigencies of any plan,
+      provided it was profitable. At each of the three visits Sibilet grumbled
+      at his fate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Employ me, cousin,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;take me as a clerk and make me your
+      successor. You shall see how I work. I am capable of overthrowing
+      mountains to give my Adeline, I won&rsquo;t say luxury, but a modest competence.
+      You made Monsieur Leclercq&rsquo;s fortune; why won&rsquo;t you put me in a bank in
+      Paris?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some day, later on, I&rsquo;ll find you a place,&rdquo; Gaubertin would say;
+      &ldquo;meantime make friends and acquaintance; such things help.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Under these circumstances the letter which Madame Soudry hastily
+      dispatched brought Sibilet to Soulanges through a region of castles in the
+      air. His father-in-law, Sarcus, whom the Soudrys advised to take steps in
+      the interest of his daughter, had gone in the morning to see the general
+      and to propose Adolphe for the vacant post. By advice of Madame Soudry,
+      who was the oracle of the little town, the worthy man had taken his
+      daughter with him; and the sight of her had had a favorable effect upon
+      the Comte de Montcornet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not decide,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;without thoroughly informing myself
+      about all applicants; but I will not look elsewhere until I have examined
+      whether or not your son-in-law possesses the requirements for the place.&rdquo;
+       Then, turning to Madame Sibilet he added, &ldquo;The satisfaction of settling so
+      charming a person at Les Aigues&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mother of two children, general,&rdquo; said Adeline, adroitly, to evade
+      the gallantry of the old cuirassier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the general&rsquo;s inquiries were cleverly anticipated by the Soudrys,
+      Gaubertin, and Lupin, who quietly obtained for their candidate the
+      influence of the leading lawyers in the capital of the department, where a
+      royal court held sessions,&mdash;such as Counsellor Gendrin, a distant
+      relative of the judge at Ville-aux-Fayes; Baron Bourlac, attorney-general;
+      and another counsellor named Sarcus, a cousin thrice removed of the
+      candidate. The verdict of every one to whom the general applies was
+      favorable to the poor clerk,&mdash;&ldquo;so interesting,&rdquo; as they called him.
+      His marriage had made Sibilet as irreproachable as a novel of Miss
+      Edgeworth&rsquo;s, and presented him, moreover, in the light of a disinterested
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The time which the dismissed steward remained at Les Aigues until his
+      successor could be appointed was employed in creating troubles and
+      annoyances for his late master; one of the little scenes which he thus
+      played off will give an idea of several others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning of his final departure he contrived to meet, as it were
+      accidentally, Courtecuisse, the only keeper then employed at Les Aigues,
+      the great extent of which really needed at least three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Monsieur Gaubertin,&rdquo; said Courtecuisse, &ldquo;so you have had trouble
+      with the count?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who told you that?&rdquo; answered Gaubertin. &ldquo;Well, yes; the general expected
+      to order us about as he did his cavalry; he didn&rsquo;t know Burgundians. The
+      count is not satisfied with my services, and as I am not satisfied with
+      his ways, we have dismissed each other, almost with fisticuffs, for he
+      raged like a whirlwind. Take care of yourself, Courtecuisse! Ah! my dear
+      fellow, I expected to give you a better master.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that,&rdquo; said the keeper, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;d have served you well. Hang it,
+      when friends have known each other for twenty years, you know! You put me
+      here in the days of the poor dear sainted Madame. Ah, what a good woman
+      she was! none like her now! The place has lost a mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Courtecuisse, if you are willing, you might help us to a fine
+      stroke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you are going to stay here? I heard you were off to Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I shall wait to see how things turn out; meantime I shall do business
+      at Ville-aux-Fayes. The general doesn&rsquo;t know what he is dealing with in
+      these parts; he&rsquo;ll make himself hated, don&rsquo;t you see? I shall wait for
+      what turns up. Do your work here gently; he&rsquo;ll tell you to manage the
+      people with a high hand, for he begins to see where his crops and his
+      woods are running to; but you&rsquo;ll not be such a fool as to let the
+      country-folk maul you, and perhaps worse, for the sake of his timber.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he would send me away, dear Monsieur Gaubertin, he would get rid of
+      me! and you know how happy I am living there at the gate of the Avonne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The general will soon get sick of the whole place,&rdquo; replied Gaubertin;
+      &ldquo;you wouldn&rsquo;t be long out even if he did happen to send you away. Besides,
+      you know those woods,&rdquo; he added, waving his hand at the landscape; &ldquo;I am
+      stronger there than the masters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This conversation took place in an open field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those &lsquo;Arminac&rsquo; Parisian fellows ought to stay in their own mud,&rdquo; said
+      the keeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever since the quarrels of the fifteenth century the word &lsquo;Arminac&rsquo; 
+      (Armagnacs, Parisians, enemies of the Dukes of Burgundy) has continued to
+      be an insulting term along the borders of Upper Burgundy, where it is
+      differently corrupted according to locality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll go back to it when beaten,&rdquo; said Gaubertin, &ldquo;and we&rsquo;ll plough up
+      the park; for it is robbing the people to allow a man to keep nine hundred
+      acres of the best land in the valley for his own pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four hundred families could get their living from it,&rdquo; said Courtecuisse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you want two acres for yourself you must help us to drive that cur
+      out,&rdquo; remarked Gaubertin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very moment that Gaubertin was fulminating this sentence of
+      excommunication, the worthy Sarcus was presenting his son-in-law Sibilet
+      to the Comte de Montcornet. They had come with Adeline and the children in
+      a wicker carryall, lent by Sarcus&rsquo;s clerk, a Monsieur Gourdon, brother of
+      the Soulanges doctor, who was richer than the magistrate himself. The
+      general, pleased with the candor and dignity of the justice of the peace,
+      and with the graceful bearing of Adeline (both giving pledges in good
+      faith, for they were totally ignorant of the plans of Gaubertin), at once
+      granted all requests and gave such advantages to the family of the new
+      land-steward as to make the position equal to that of a sub-prefect of the
+      first class.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A lodge, built by Bouret as an object in the landscape and also as a home
+      for the steward, an elegant little building, the architecture of which was
+      sufficiently shown in the description of the gate of Blangy, was promised
+      to the Sibilets for their residence. The general also conceded the horse
+      which Mademoiselle Laguerre had provided for Gaubertin, in consideration
+      of the size of the estate and the distance he had to go to the markets
+      where the business of the property was transacted. He allowed two hundred
+      bushels of wheat, three hogsheads of wine, wood in sufficient quantity,
+      oats and barley in abundance, and three per cent on all receipts of
+      income. Where the latter in Mademoiselle Laguerre&rsquo;s time had amounted to
+      forty thousand francs, the general now, in 1818, in view of the purchases
+      of land which Gaubertin had made for her, expected to receive at least
+      sixty thousand. The new land-steward might therefore receive before long
+      some two thousand francs in money. Lodged, fed, warmed, relieved of taxes,
+      the costs of a horse and a poultry-yard defrayed for him, and allowed to
+      plant a kitchen-garden, with no questions asked as to the day&rsquo;s work of
+      the gardener, certainly such advantages represented much more than another
+      two thousand francs; for a man who was earning a miserable salary of
+      twelve hundred francs in a government office to step into the stewardship
+      of Les Aigues was a change from poverty to opulence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be faithful to my interests,&rdquo; said the general, &ldquo;and I shall have more to
+      say to you. Doubtless I could get the collection of the rents of Conches,
+      Blangy, and Cerneux taken away from the collection of those of Soulanges
+      and given to you. In short, when you bring me in a clear sixty thousand a
+      year from Les Aigues you shall be still further rewarded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Unfortunately, the worthy justice and his daughter, in the flush of their
+      joy, told Madame Soudry the promise the general had made about these
+      collections, without reflecting that the present collector of Soulanges, a
+      man named Guerbet, brother of the postmaster of Conches, was closely
+      allied, as we shall see later, with Gaubertin and the Gendrins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won&rsquo;t be so easy to do it, my dear,&rdquo; said Madame Soudry; &ldquo;but don&rsquo;t
+      prevent the general from making the attempt; it is wonderful how easily
+      difficult things are done in Paris. I have seen the Chevalier Gluck at
+      dear Madame&rsquo;s feet to get her to sing his music, and she did,&mdash;she
+      who so adored Piccini, one of the finest men of his day; never did <i>he</i>
+      come into Madame&rsquo;s room without catching me round the waist and calling me
+      a dear rogue.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; cried Soudry, when his wife reported this news, &ldquo;does he think he is
+      going to lead the notary by the nose, and upset everything to please
+      himself and make the whole valley march in line, as he did his
+      cuirassiers? These military fellows have a habit of command!&mdash;but
+      let&rsquo;s have patience; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles
+      will be on our side. Poor Guerbet! he little suspects who is trying to
+      pluck the best roses out of his garland!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pere Guerbet, the collector of Soulanges, was the wit, that is to say, the
+      jovial companion of the little town, and a hero in Madame Soudry&rsquo;s salon.
+      Soudry&rsquo;s speech gives a fair idea of the opinion which now grew up against
+      the master of Les Aigues from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes, and wherever
+      else the public mind could be reached and poisoned by Gaubertin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The installation of Sibilet took place in the autumn of 1817. The year
+      1818 went by without the general being able to set foot at Les Aigues, for
+      his approaching marriage with Mademoiselle de Troisville, which was
+      celebrated in January, 1819, kept him the greater part of the summer near
+      Alencon, in the country-house of his prospective father-in-law. General
+      Montcornet possessed, besides Les Aigues and a magnificent house in Paris,
+      some sixty thousand francs a year in the Funds and the salary of a retired
+      lieutenant-general. Though Napoleon had made him a count of the Empire and
+      given him the following arms, a field quarterly, the first, azure, bordure
+      or, three pyramids argent; the second, vert, three hunting horns argent;
+      the third, gules, a cannon or on a gun-carriage sable, and, in chief, a
+      crescent or; the fourth, or, a crown vert, with the motto (eminently of
+      the middle ages!), &ldquo;Sound the charge,&rdquo;&mdash;Montcornet knew very well
+      that he was the son of a cabinet-maker in the faubourg Saint-Antoine,
+      though he was quite ready to forget it. He was eaten up with the desire to
+      be a peer of France, and dreamed of his grand cordon of the Legion of
+      honor, his Saint-Louis cross, and his income of one hundred and forty
+      thousand francs. Bitten by the demon of aristocracy, the sight of the blue
+      ribbon put him beside himself. The gallant cuirassier of Essling would
+      have licked up the mud on the Pont-Royal to be invited to the house of a
+      Navarreins, a Lenoncourt, a Grandlieu, a Maufrigneuse, a d&rsquo;Espard, a
+      Vandenesse, a Verneuil, a Herouville, or a Chaulieu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From 1818, when the impossibility of a change in favor of the Bonaparte
+      family was made clear to him, Montcornet had himself trumpeted in the
+      faubourg Saint-Germain by the wives of some of his friends, who offered
+      his hand and heart, his mansion and his fortune in return for an alliance
+      with some great family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After several attempts, the Duchesse de Carigliano found a match for the
+      general in one of the three branches of the Troisville family,&mdash;that
+      of the viscount in the service of Russia ever since 1789, who had returned
+      to France in 1815. The viscount, poor as a younger son, had married a
+      Princess Scherbellof, worth about a million, but the arrival of two sons
+      and three daughters kept him poor. His family, ancient and formerly
+      powerful, now consisted of the Marquis de Troisville, peer of France, head
+      of the house and scutcheon, and two deputies, with numerous offspring, who
+      were busy, for their part, with the budget and the ministries and the
+      court, like fishes round bits of bread. Therefore, when Montcornet was
+      presented by Madame de Carigliano,&mdash;the Napoleonic duchess, who was
+      now a most devoted adherent of the Bourbons, he was favorably received.
+      The general asked, in return for his fortune and tender indulgence to his
+      wife, to be appointed to the Royal Guard, with the rank of marquis and
+      peer of France; but the branches of the Troisville family would do no more
+      than promise him their support.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what that means,&rdquo; said the duchess to her old friend, who
+      complained of the vagueness of the promise. &ldquo;They cannot oblige the king
+      to do as they wish; they can only influence him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Montcornet made Virginie de Troisville his heir in the marriage
+      settlements. Completely under the control of his wife, as Blondet&rsquo;s letter
+      has already shown, he was still without children, but Louis XVIII. had
+      received him, and given him the cordon of Saint-Louis, allowing him to
+      quarter his ridiculous arms with those of the Troisvilles, and promising
+      him the title of marquis as soon as he had deserved the peerage by his
+      services.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few days after the audience at which this promise had been given, the
+      Duc de Barry was assassinated; the Marsan clique carried the day; the
+      Villele ministry came into power, and all the wires laid by the
+      Troisvilles were snapped; it became necessary to find new ways of
+      fastening them upon the ministry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must bide our time,&rdquo; said the Troisvilles to Montcornet, who was
+      always overwhelmed with politeness in the faubourg Saint-Germain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This will explain how it was that the general did not return to Les Aigues
+      until May, 1820.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ineffable happiness of the son of a shop-keeper of the faubourg
+      Saint-Antoine in possessing a young, elegant, intelligent, and gentle
+      wife, a Troisville, who had given him an entrance into all the salons of
+      the faubourg Saint-Germain, and the delight of making her enjoy the
+      pleasures of Paris, had kept him from Les Aigues and made him forget about
+      Gaubertin, even to his very name. In 1820 he took the countess to Burgundy
+      to show her the estate, and he accepted Sibilet&rsquo;s accounts and leases
+      without looking closely into them; happiness never cavils. The countess,
+      well pleased to find the steward&rsquo;s wife a charming young woman, made
+      presents to her and to the children, with whom she occasionally amused
+      herself. She ordered a few changes at Les Aigues, having sent to Paris for
+      an architect; proposing, to the general&rsquo;s great delight, to spend six
+      months of every year on this magnificent estate. Montcornet&rsquo;s savings were
+      soon spent on the architectural work and the exquisite new furniture sent
+      from Paris. Les Aigues thus received the last touch which made it a choice
+      example of all the diverse elegancies of four centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1821 the general was almost peremptorily urged by Sibilet to be at Les
+      Aigues before the month of May. Important matters had to be decided. A
+      lease of nine years, to the amount of thirty thousand francs, granted by
+      Gaubertin in 1812 to a wood-merchant, fell in on the 15th of May of the
+      current year. Sibilet, anxious to prove his rectitude, was unwilling to be
+      responsible for the renewal of the lease. &ldquo;You know, Monsieur le comte,&rdquo;
+       he wrote, &ldquo;that I do not choose to profit by such matters.&rdquo; The
+      wood-merchant claimed an indemnity, extorted from Madame Laguerre, through
+      her hatred of litigation, and shared by him with Gaubertin. This indemnity
+      was based on the injury done to the woods by the peasants, who treated the
+      forest of Les Aigues as if they had a right to cut the timber. Messrs.
+      Gravelot Brothers, wood-merchants in Paris, refused to pay their last
+      quarter dues, offering to prove by an expert that the woods were reduced
+      one-fifth in value, through, they said, the injurious precedent
+      established by Madame Laguerre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have already,&rdquo; wrote Sibilet, &ldquo;sued these men in the courts at
+      Ville-aux-Fayes, for they have taken legal residence there, on account of
+      this lease, with my old employer, Maitre Corbinet. I fear we shall lose
+      the suit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a question of income, my dear,&rdquo; said the general, showing the
+      letter to his wife. &ldquo;Will you go down to Les Aigues a little earlier this
+      year than last?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go yourself, and I will follow you when the weather is warmer,&rdquo; said the
+      countess, not sorry to remain in Paris alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The general, who knew very well the canker that was eating into his
+      revenues, departed without his wife, resolved to take vigorous measures.
+      In so doing he reckoned, as we shall see, without his Gaubertin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. THE GREAT REVOLUTIONS OF A LITTLE VALLEY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Maitre Sibilet,&rdquo; said the general to his steward, the morning after
+      his arrival, giving him a familiar title which showed how much he
+      appreciated his services, &ldquo;so we are, to use a ministerial phrase, at a
+      crisis?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; said Sibilet, following the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fortunate possessor of Les Aigues was walking up and down in front of
+      the steward&rsquo;s house, along a little terrace where Madame Sibilet grew
+      flowers, at the end of which was a wide stretch of meadow-land watered by
+      the canal which Blondet has described. From this point the chateau of Les
+      Aigues was seen in the distance, and in like manner the profile, as it
+      were, of the steward&rsquo;s lodge was seen from Les Aigues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; resumed the general, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s the difficulty? If I do lose the suit
+      against the Gravelots, a money wound is not mortal, and I&rsquo;ll have the
+      leasing of my forest so well advertised that there will be competition,
+      and I shall sell the timber at its true value.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Business is not done in that way, Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; said Sibilet.
+      &ldquo;Suppose you get no lessees, what will you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cut the timber myself and sell it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, a wood merchant?&rdquo; said Sibilet. &ldquo;Well, without looking at matters
+      here, how would it be in Paris? You would have to hire a wood-yard, pay
+      for a license and the taxes, also for the right of navigation, and duties,
+      and the costs of unloading; besides the salary of a trustworthy agent&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it is impracticable,&rdquo; said the general hastily, alarmed at the
+      prospect. &ldquo;But why can&rsquo;t I find persons to lease the right of cutting
+      timber as before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte has enemies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, in the first place, Monsieur Gaubertin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean the scoundrel whose place you took?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not so loud, Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; said Sibilet, showing fear; &ldquo;I beg of
+      you, not so loud,&mdash;my cook might hear us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to tell me that I am not to speak on my own estate of a
+      villain who robbed me?&rdquo; cried the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For the sake of your own peace and comfort, come further away, Monsieur
+      le comte. Monsieur Gaubertin is mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! I congratulate Ville-aux-Fayes. Thunder! what a nobly governed town!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do me the honor to listen, Monsieur le comte, and to believe that I am
+      talking of serious matters which may affect your future life in this
+      place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am listening; let us sit down on this bench here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte, when you dismissed Gaubertin, he had to find some
+      employment, for he was not rich&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not rich! when he stole twenty thousand francs a year from this estate?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte, I don&rsquo;t pretend to excuse him,&rdquo; replied Sibilet. &ldquo;I
+      want to see Les Aigues prosperous, if it were only to prove Gaubertin&rsquo;s
+      dishonest; but we ought not to abuse him openly for he is one of the most
+      dangerous scoundrels to be found in all Burgundy, and he is now in a
+      position to injure you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In what way?&rdquo; asked the general, sobering down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gaubertin has control of nearly one third of the supplies sent to Paris.
+      As general agent of the timber business, he orders all the work of the
+      forests,&mdash;the felling, chopping, floating, and sending to market.
+      Being in close relations with the workmen, he is the arbiter of prices. It
+      has taken him three years to create this position, but he holds it now
+      like a fortress. He is essential to all dealers, never favoring one more
+      than another; he regulates the whole business in their interests, and
+      their affairs are better and more cheaply looked after by him than they
+      were in the old time by separate agents for each firm. For instance, he
+      has so completely put a stop to competition that he has absolute control
+      of the auction sales; the crown and the State are both dependent on him.
+      Their timber is sold under the hammer and falls invariably to Gaubertin&rsquo;s
+      dealers; in fact, no others attempt now to bid against them. Last year
+      Monsieur Mariotte, of Auxerre, urged by the commissioner of domains, did
+      attempt to compete with Gaubertin. At first, Gaubertin let him buy the
+      standing wood at the usual prices; but when it came to cutting it, the
+      Avonnais workmen asked such enormous prices that Monsieur Mariotte was
+      obliged to bring laborers from Auxerre, whom the Ville-aux-Fayes workmen
+      attacked and drove away. The head of the coalition, and the ringleader of
+      the brawl were brought before the police court, and the suits cost
+      Monsieur Mariotte a great deal of money; for, besides the odium of having
+      convicted and punished poor men, he was forced to pay all costs, because
+      the losing side had not a farthing to do it with. A suit against laboring
+      men is sure to result in hatred to those who live among them. Let me warn
+      you of this; for if you follow the course you propose, you will have to
+      fight against the poor of this district at least. But that&rsquo;s not all.
+      Counting it over, Monsieur Mariotte, a worthy man, found he was the loser
+      by his original lease. Forced to pay ready money, he was nevertheless
+      obliged to sell on time; Gaubertin delivered his timber at long credits
+      for the purpose of ruining his competitor. He undersold him by at least
+      five per cent, and the end of it is that poor Mariotte&rsquo;s credit is badly
+      shaken. Gaubertin is now pressing and harassing the poor man so that he is
+      driven, they tell me, to leave not only Auxerre, but even Burgundy itself;
+      and he is right. In this way land-owners have long been sacrificed to
+      dealers who now set the market-prices, just as the furniture-dealers in
+      Paris dictate values to appraisers. But Gaubertin saves the owners so much
+      trouble and worry that they are really gainers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How so?&rdquo; asked the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place, because the less complicated a business is, the
+      greater the profits to the owners,&rdquo; answered Sibilet. &ldquo;Besides which,
+      their income is more secure; and in all matters of rural improvement and
+      development that is the main thing, as you will find out. Then, too,
+      Monsieur Gaubertin is the friend and patron of working-men; he pays them
+      well and keeps them always at work; therefore, though their families live
+      on the estates, the woods leased to dealers and belonging to the
+      land-owners who trust the care of their property to Gaubertin (such as MM.
+      de Soulanges and de Ronquerolles) are not devastated. The dead wood is
+      gathered up, but that is all&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That rascal Gaubertin has lost no time!&rdquo; cried the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a bold man,&rdquo; said Sibilet. &ldquo;He really is, as he calls himself, the
+      steward of the best half of the department, instead of being merely the
+      steward of Les Aigues. He makes a little out of everybody, and that little
+      on every two millions brings him in forty to fifty thousand francs a year.
+      He says himself, &lsquo;The fires on the Parisian hearths pay it all.&rsquo; He is
+      your enemy, Monsieur le comte. My advice to you is to capitulate and be
+      reconciled with him. He is intimate, as you know, with Soudry, the head of
+      the gendarmerie at Soulanges; with Monsieur Rigou, our mayor at Blangy;
+      the patrols are under his influence; therefore you will find it impossible
+      to repress the pilferings which are eating into your estate. During the
+      last two years your woods have been devastated. Consequently the Gravelots
+      are more than likely to win their suit. They say, very truly: &lsquo;According
+      to the terms of the lease, the care of the woods is left to the owner; he
+      does not protect them, and we are injured; the owner is bound to pay us
+      damages.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s fair enough; but it doesn&rsquo;t follow that they should win
+      their case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must be ready to defend this suit at all costs,&rdquo; said the general,
+      &ldquo;and then we shall have no more of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall gratify Gaubertin,&rdquo; remarked Sibilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suing the Gravelots is the same as a hand to hand fight with Gaubertin,
+      who is their agent,&rdquo; answered Sibilet. &ldquo;He asks nothing better than such a
+      suit. He declares, so I hear, that he will bring you if necessary before
+      the Court of Appeals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The rascal! the&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you attempt to work your own woods,&rdquo; continued Sibilet, turning the
+      knife in the wound, &ldquo;you will find yourself at the mercy of workmen who
+      will force you to pay rich men&rsquo;s prices instead of market-prices. In
+      short, they&rsquo;ll put you, as they did that poor Mariotte, in a position
+      where you must sell at a loss. If you then try to lease the woods you will
+      get no tenants, for you cannot expect that any one should take risks for
+      himself which Mariotte only took for the crown and the State. Suppose a
+      man talks of his losses to the government! The government is a gentleman
+      who is, like your obedient servant when he was in its employ, a worthy man
+      with a frayed overcoat, who reads the newspapers at a desk. Let his salary
+      be twelve hundred or twelve thousand francs, his disposition is the same,
+      it is not a whit softer. Talk of reductions and releases from the public
+      treasury represented by the said gentleman! He&rsquo;ll only pooh-pooh you as he
+      mends his pen. No, the law is the wrong road for you, Monsieur le comte.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what&rsquo;s to be done?&rdquo; cried the general, his blood boiling as he
+      tramped up and down before the bench.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; said Sibilet, abruptly, &ldquo;what I say to you is not for
+      my own interests, certainly; but I advise you to sell Les Aigues and leave
+      the neighborhood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On hearing these words the general sprang back as if a cannon-ball had
+      struck him; then he looked at Sibilet with a shrewd, diplomatic eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A general of the Imperial Guard running away from the rascals, when
+      Madame la comtesse likes Les Aigues!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;No, I&rsquo;ll sooner box
+      Gaubertin&rsquo;s ears on the market-place of Ville-aux-Fayes, and force him to
+      fight me that I may shoot him like a dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte, Gaubertin is not such a fool as to let himself be
+      brought into collision with you. Besides, you could not openly insult the
+      mayor of so important a place as Ville-aux-Fayes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have him turned out; the Troisvilles can do that for me; it is a
+      question of income.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t succeed, Monsieur le comte; Gaubertin&rsquo;s arms are long; you will
+      get yourself into difficulties from which you cannot escape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us think of the present,&rdquo; interrupted the general. &ldquo;About that suit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That, Monsieur le comte, I can manage to win for you,&rdquo; replied Sibilet,
+      with a knowing glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo, Sibilet!&rdquo; said the general, shaking his steward&rsquo;s hand; &ldquo;how are
+      you going to do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will win it on a writ of error,&rdquo; replied Sibilet. &ldquo;In my opinion the
+      Gravelots have the right of it. But it is not enough to be in the right,
+      they must also be in order as to legal forms, and that they have
+      neglected. The Gravelots ought to have summoned you to have the woods
+      better watched. They can&rsquo;t ask for indemnity, at the close of a lease, for
+      damages which they know have been going on for nine years; there is a
+      clause in the lease as to this, on which we can file a bill of exceptions.
+      You will lose the suit at Ville-aux-Fayes, possibly in the upper court as
+      well, but we will carry it to Paris and you will win at the Court of
+      Appeals. The costs will be heavy and the expenses ruinous. You will have
+      to spend from twelve to fifteen thousand francs merely to win the suit,&mdash;but
+      you will win it, if you care to. The suit will only increase the enmity of
+      the Gravelots, for the expenses will be even heavier on them. You will be
+      their bugbear; you will be called litigious and calumniated in every way;
+      still, you can win&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, what&rsquo;s to be done?&rdquo; repeated the general, on whom Sibilet&rsquo;s
+      arguments were beginning to produce the effect of a violent poison.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the remembrance of the blows he had given Gaubertin with his
+      cane crossed his mind, and made him wish he had bestowed them on himself.
+      His flushed face was enough to show Sibilet the irritation that he felt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask me what can be done, Monsieur le comte? Why, only one thing,
+      compromise; but of course you can&rsquo;t negotiate that yourself. I must be
+      thought to cheat you! We, poor devils, whose only fortune and comfort is
+      in our good name, it is hard on us to even seem to do a questionable
+      thing. We are always judged by appearances. Gaubertin himself saved
+      Mademoiselle Laguerre&rsquo;s life during the Revolution, but it seemed to
+      others that he was robbing her. She rewarded him in her will with a
+      diamond worth ten thousand francs, which Madame Gaubertin now wears on her
+      head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The general gave Sibilet another glance still more diplomatic than the
+      first; but the steward seemed to take no notice of the challenge it
+      expressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were to appear dishonest, Monsieur Gaubertin would be so overjoyed
+      that I could instantly obtain his help,&rdquo; continued Sibilet. &ldquo;He would
+      listen with all his ears if I said to him: &lsquo;Suppose I were to extort
+      twenty thousand francs from Monsieur le comte for Messrs. Gravelot, on
+      condition that they shared them with me?&rsquo; If your adversaries consented to
+      that, Monsieur le comte, I should return you ten thousand francs; you lose
+      only the other ten, you save appearances, and the suit is quashed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a fine fellow, Sibilet,&rdquo; said the general, taking his hand and
+      shaking it. &ldquo;If you can manage the future as well as you do the present,
+      I&rsquo;ll call you the prince of stewards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As to the future,&rdquo; said Sibilet, &ldquo;you won&rsquo;t die of hunger if no timber is
+      cut for two or three years. Let us begin by putting proper keepers in the
+      woods. Between now and then things will flow as the water does in the
+      Avonne. Gaubertin may die, or get rich enough to retire from business; at
+      any rate, you will have sufficient time to find him a competitor. The cake
+      is too rich not to be shared. Look for another Gaubertin to oppose the
+      original.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sibilet,&rdquo; said the old soldier, delighted with this variety of solutions.
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll give you three thousand francs if you&rsquo;ll settle the matter as you
+      propose. For the rest, we&rsquo;ll think about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; said Sibilet, &ldquo;first and foremost have the forest
+      properly watched. See for yourself the condition in which the peasantry
+      have put it during your two years&rsquo; absence. What could I do? I am steward;
+      I am not a bailiff. To guard Les Aigues properly you need a mounted patrol
+      and three keepers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I certainly shall have the estate properly guarded. So it is to be war,
+      is it? Very good, then we shall make war. That doesn&rsquo;t frighten me,&rdquo; said
+      Montcornet, rubbing his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A war of francs,&rdquo; said Sibilet; &ldquo;and you may find that more difficult
+      than the other kind; men can be killed but you can&rsquo;t kill self-interest.
+      You will fight your enemy on the battle-field where all landlords are
+      compelled to fight,&mdash;I mean cash results. It is not enough to
+      produce, you must sell; and in order to sell, you must be on good terms
+      with everybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall have the country people on my side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By what means?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By doing good among them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doing good to the valley peasants! to the petty shopkeepers of
+      Soulanges!&rdquo; exclaimed Sibilet, squinting horribly, by reason of the irony
+      which flamed brighter in one eye than in the other. &ldquo;Monsieur le comte
+      doesn&rsquo;t know what he undertakes. Our Lord Jesus Christ would die again
+      upon the cross in this valley! If you wish an easy life, follow the
+      example of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre; let yourself be robbed, or else
+      make people afraid of you. Women, children, and the masses are all
+      governed by fear. That was the great secret of the Convention, and of the
+      Emperor, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens! is this the forest of Bondy?&rdquo; cried the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said Sibilet&rsquo;s wife, appearing at this moment, &ldquo;your breakfast
+      is ready. Pray excuse him, Monsieur le comte; he has eaten nothing since
+      morning for he was obliged to go to Ronquerolles to deliver some barley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go, go, Sibilet,&rdquo; said the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning the count rose early, before daylight, and went to the
+      gate of the Avonne, intending to talk with the one forester whom he
+      employed and find out what the man&rsquo;s sentiments really were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some seven or eight hundred acres of the forest of Les Aigues lie along
+      the banks of the Avonne; and to preserve the majestic beauty of the river
+      the large trees that border it have been left untouched for a distance of
+      three leagues on both sides in an almost straight line. The mistress of
+      Henri IV., to whom Les Aigues formerly belonged, was as fond of hunting as
+      the king himself. In 1593 she ordered a bridge to be built of a single
+      arch with shelving roadway by which to ride from the lower side of the
+      forest to a much larger portion of it, purchased by her, which lay upon
+      the slopes of the hills. The gate of the Avonne was built as a place of
+      meeting for the huntsmen; and we know the magnificence bestowed by the
+      architects of that day upon all buildings intended for the delight of the
+      crown and the nobility. Six avenues branched away from it, their place of
+      meeting forming a half-moon. In the centre of the semi-circular space
+      stood an obelisk surmounted by a round shield, formerly gilded, bearing on
+      one side the arms of Navarre and on the other those of the Countess de
+      Moret. Another half-moon, on the side toward the river, communicated with
+      the first by a straight avenue, at the opposite end of which the steep
+      rise of the Venetian-shaped bridge could be seen. Between two elegant iron
+      railings of the same character as that of the magnificent railing which
+      formerly surrounded the garden of the Place Royale in Paris, now so
+      unfortunately destroyed, stood a brick pavilion, with stone courses hewn
+      in facets like those of the chateau, with a very pointed roof and
+      window-casings of stone cut in the same manner. This old style, which gave
+      the building a regal air, is suitable only to prisons when used in cities;
+      but standing in the heart of forests it derives from its surroundings a
+      splendor of its own. A group of trees formed a screen, behind which the
+      kennels, an old falconry, a pheasantry, and the quarters of the huntsmen
+      were falling into ruins, after being in their day the wonder and
+      admiration of Burgundy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1595, the royal hunting-parties set forth from this magnificent
+      pavilion, preceded by those fine dogs so dear to Rubens and to Paul
+      Veronese; the huntsmen mounted on high-steeping steeds with stout and
+      blue-white satiny haunches, seen no longer except in Wouverman&rsquo;s amazing
+      work, followed by footmen in livery; the scene enlivened by whippers-in,
+      wearing the high top-boots with facings and the yellow leathern breeches
+      which have come down to the present day on the canvas of Van der Meulen.
+      The obelisk was erected in commemoration of the visit of the Bearnais, and
+      his hunt with the beautiful Comtesse de Moret; the date is given below the
+      arms of Navarre. That jealous woman, whose son was afterwards
+      legitimatized, would not allow the arms of France to figure on the
+      obelisk, regarding them as a rebuke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time of which we write, when the general&rsquo;s eyes rested on this
+      splendid ruin, moss had gathered for centuries on the four faces of the
+      roof; the hewn-stone courses, mangled by time, seemed to cry with yawning
+      mouths against the profanation; disjointed leaden settings let fall their
+      octagonal panes, so that the windows seemed blind of an eye here and
+      there. Yellow wallflowers bloomed about the copings; ivy slid its white
+      rootlets into every crevice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All things bespoke a shameful want of care,&mdash;the seal set by mere
+      life-possessors on the ancient glories that they possess. Two windows on
+      the first floor were stuffed with hay. Through another, on the
+      ground-floor, was seen a room filled with tools and logs of wood; while a
+      cow pushed her muzzle through a fourth, proving that Courtecuisse, to
+      avoid having to walk from the pavilion to the pheasantry, had turned the
+      large hall of the central building into a stable,&mdash;a hall with
+      panelled ceiling, and in the centre of each panel the arms of all the
+      various possessors of Les Aigues!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Black and dirty palings disgraced the approach to the pavilion, making
+      square inclosures with plank roofs for pigs, ducks, and hens, the manure
+      of which was taken away every six months. A few ragged garments were hung
+      to dry on the brambles which boldly grew unchecked here and there. As the
+      general came along the avenue from the bridge, Madame Courtecuisse was
+      scouring a saucepan in which she had just made her coffee. The forester,
+      sitting on a chair in the sun, considered his wife as a savage considers
+      his. When he heard a horse&rsquo;s hoofs he turned round, saw the count, and
+      seemed taken aback.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Courtecuisse, my man,&rdquo; said the general, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not surprised that
+      the peasants cut my woods before Messrs. Gravelot can do so. So you
+      consider your place a sinecure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, Monsieur le comte, I have watched the woods so many nights that
+      I&rsquo;m ill from it. I&rsquo;ve got a chill, and I suffer such pain this morning
+      that my wife has just made me a poultice in that saucepan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good fellow,&rdquo; said the count, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know of any pain that a coffee
+      poultice cures except that of hunger. Listen to me, you rascal! I rode
+      through my forest yesterday, and then through those of Monsieur de
+      Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles. Theirs are carefully watched and
+      preserved, while mine is in a shameful state.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, monsieur! but they are the old lords of the neighborhood; everybody
+      respects their property. How can you expect me to fight against six
+      districts? I care for my life more than for your woods. A man who would
+      undertake to watch your woods as they ought to be watched would get a ball
+      in his head for wages in some dark corner of the forest&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Coward!&rdquo; cried the general, trying to control the anger the man&rsquo;s
+      insolent reply provoked in him. &ldquo;Last night was as clear as day, yet it
+      cost me three hundred francs in actual robbery and over a thousand in
+      future damages. You will leave my service unless you do better. All
+      wrong-doing deserves some mercy; therefore these are my conditions: You
+      may have the fines, and I will pay you three francs for every indictment
+      you bring against these depredators. If I don&rsquo;t get what I expect, you
+      know what you have to expect, and no pension either. Whereas, if you serve
+      me faithfully and contrive to stop these depredations, I&rsquo;ll give you an
+      annuity of three hundred francs for life. You can think it over. Here are
+      six ways,&rdquo; continued the count, pointing to the branching roads; &ldquo;there&rsquo;s
+      only one for you to take,&mdash;as for me also, who am not afraid of
+      balls; try and find the right one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Courtecuisse, a small man about forty-six years of age, with a full-moon
+      face, found his greatest happiness in doing nothing. He expected to live
+      and die in that pavilion, now considered by him <i>his</i> pavilion. His
+      two cows were pastured in the forest, from which he got his wood; and he
+      spent his time in looking after his garden instead of after the
+      delinquents. Such neglect of duty suited Gaubertin, and Courtecuisse knew
+      it did. The keeper chased only those depredators who were the objects of
+      his personal dislike,&mdash;young women who would not yield to his wishes,
+      or persons against whom he held a grudge; though for some time past he had
+      really felt no dislikes, for every one yielded to him on account of his
+      easy-going ways with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Courtecuisse had a place always kept for him at the table of the
+      Grand-I-Vert; the wood-pickers feared him no longer; indeed, his wife and
+      he received many gifts in kind from them; his wood was brought in; his
+      vineyard dug; in short, all delinquents at whom he blinked did him
+      service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Counting on Gaubertin for the future, and feeling sure of two acres
+      whenever Les Aigues should be brought to the hammer, he was roughly
+      awakened by the curt speech of the general, who, after four quiescent
+      years, was now revealing his true character,&mdash;that of a bourgeois
+      rich man who was determined to be no longer deceived. Courtecuisse took
+      his cap, his game-bag, and his gun, put on his gaiters and his belt (which
+      bore the very recent arms of Montcornet), and started for Ville-aux-Fayes,
+      with the careless, indifferent air and manner under which country-people
+      often conceal very deep reflections, while he gazed at the woods and
+      whistled to the dogs to follow him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! you complain of the Shopman when he proposes to make your fortune?&rdquo;
+       said Gaubertin. &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t the fool offer to give you three francs for every
+      arrest you make, and the fines to boot? Have an understanding with your
+      friends and you can bring as many indictments as you please,&mdash;hundreds
+      if you like! With one thousand francs you can buy La Bachelerie from
+      Rigou, become a property owner, live in your own house, and work for
+      yourself, or rather, make others work for you, and take your ease. Only&mdash;now
+      listen to me&mdash;you must manage to arrest only such as haven&rsquo;t a penny
+      in the world. You can&rsquo;t shear sheep unless the wool is on their backs.
+      Take the Shopman&rsquo;s offer and leave him to collect the costs,&mdash;if he
+      wants them; tastes differ. Didn&rsquo;t old Mariotte prefer losses to profits,
+      in spite of my advice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Courtecuisse, filled with admiration for these words of wisdom, returned
+      home burning with the desire to be a land-owner and a bourgeois like the
+      rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the general reached Les Aigues he related his expedition to Sibilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte did very right,&rdquo; said the steward, rubbing his hands;
+      &ldquo;but he must not stop short half-way. The field-keeper of the district who
+      allows the country-people to prey upon the meadows and rob the harvests
+      ought to be changed. Monsieur le comte should have himself chosen mayor,
+      and appoint one of his old soldiers, who would have the courage to carry
+      out his orders, in place of Vaudoyer. A great land-owner should be master
+      in his own district. Just see what difficulties we have with the present
+      mayor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mayor of the district of Blangy, formerly a Benedictine, named Rigou,
+      had married, in the first year of the Republic, the servant-woman of the
+      late priest of Blangy. In spite of the repugnance which a married monk
+      excited at the Prefecture, he had continued to be mayor after 1815, for
+      the reason that there was no-one else at Blangy who was capable of filling
+      the post. But in 1817, when the bishop sent the Abbe Brossette to the
+      parish of Blangy (which had then been vacant over twenty-five years), a
+      violent opposition not unnaturally broke out between the old apostate and
+      the young ecclesiastic, whose character is already known to us. The war
+      which was then and there declared between the mayor&rsquo;s office and the
+      parsonage increased the popularity of the magistrate, who had hitherto
+      been more or less despised. Rigou, whom the peasants had disliked for
+      usurious dealings, now suddenly represented their political and financial
+      interests, supposed to be threatened by the Restoration, and more
+      especially by the clergy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A copy of the &ldquo;Constitutionnel,&rdquo; that great organ of liberalism, after
+      making the rounds of the Cafe de la Paix, came back to Rigou on the
+      seventh day,&mdash;the subscription, standing in the name of old Socquard
+      the keeper of the coffee-house, being shared by twenty persons. Rigou
+      passed the paper on to Langlume the miller, who, in turn, gave it in
+      shreds to any one who knew how to read. The &ldquo;Paris items,&rdquo; and the
+      anti-religion jokes of the liberal sheet formed the public opinion of the
+      valley des Aigues. Rigou, like the <i>venerable</i> Abbe Gregoire, became
+      a hero. For him, as for certain Parisian bankers, politics spread a mantle
+      of popularity over his shameful dishonesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this particular time the perjured monk, like Francois Keller the great
+      orator, was looked upon as a defender of the rights of the people,&mdash;he
+      who, not so very long before, dared not walk in the fields after dark,
+      lest he should stumble into pitfalls where he would seem to have been
+      killed by accident! Persecute a man politically and you not only magnify
+      him, but you redeem his past and make it innocent. The liberal party was a
+      great worker of miracles in this respect. Its dangerous journal, which had
+      the wit to make itself as commonplace, as calumniating, as credulous, and
+      as sillily perfidious as every audience made up the general masses, did in
+      all probability as much injury to private interests as it did to those of
+      the Church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rigou flattered himself that he should find in a Bonapartist general now
+      laid on the shelf, in a son of the people raised from nothing by the
+      Revolution, a sound enemy to the Bourbons and the priests. But the
+      general, bearing in mind his private ambitions, so arranged matters as to
+      evade the visit of Monsieur and Madame Rigou when he first came to Les
+      Aigues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When you have become better acquainted with the terrible character of
+      Rigou, the lynx of the valley, you will understand the full extent of the
+      second capital blunder which the general&rsquo;s aristocratic ambitions led him
+      to commit, and which the countess made all the greater by an offence which
+      will be described in the further history of Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Montcornet had courted the mayor&rsquo;s good-will, if he had sought his
+      friendship, perhaps the influence of the renegade might have neutralized
+      that of Gaubertin. Far from that, three suits were now pending in the
+      courts of Ville-aux-Fayes between the general and the ex-monk. Until the
+      present time the general had been so absorbed in his personal interests
+      and in his marriage that he had never remembered Rigou, but when Sibilet
+      advised him to get himself made mayor in Rigou&rsquo;s place, he took
+      post-horses and went to see the prefect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The prefect, Comte Martial de la Roche-Hugon, had been a friend of the
+      general since 1804; and it was a word from him said to Montcornet in a
+      conversation in Paris, which brought about the purchase of Les Aigues.
+      Comte Martial, a prefect under Napoleon, remained a prefect under the
+      Bourbons, and courted the bishop to retain his place. Now it happened that
+      Monseigneur had several times requested him to get rid of Rigou. Martial,
+      to whom the condition of the district was perfectly well known, was
+      delighted with the general&rsquo;s request; so that in less than a month the
+      Comte de Montcornet was mayor of Blangy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By one of those accidents which come about naturally, the general met,
+      while at the prefecture where his friend put him up, a non-commissioned
+      officer of the ex-Imperial guard, who had been cheated out of his retiring
+      pension. The general had already, under other circumstances, done a
+      service to the brave cavalryman, whose name was Groison; the man,
+      remembering it, now told him his troubles, admitting that he was
+      penniless. The general promised to get him his pension, and proposed that
+      he should take the place of field-keeper to the district of Blangy, as a
+      way of paying off his score of gratitude by devotion to the new mayor&rsquo;s
+      interests. The appointments of master and man were made simultaneously,
+      and the general gave, as may be supposed, very firm instructions to his
+      subordinate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vaudoyer, the displaced keeper, a peasant on the Ronquerolles estate, was
+      only fit, like most field-keepers, to stalk about, and gossip, and let
+      himself be petted by the poor of the district, who asked nothing better
+      than to corrupt at subaltern authority,&mdash;the advanced guard, as it
+      were, of the land-owners. He knew Soudry, the brigadier at Soulanges, for
+      brigadiers of gendarmerie, performing functions that are semi-judicial in
+      drawing up criminal indictments, have much to do with the rural keepers,
+      who are, in fact, their natural spies. Soudry, being appealed to, sent
+      Vaudoyer to Gaubertin, who received his old acquaintance very cordially,
+      and invited him to drink while listening to the recital of his troubles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear friend,&rdquo; said the mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, who could talk to
+      every man in his own language, &ldquo;what has happened to you is likely to
+      happen to us all. The nobles are back upon us. The men to whom the Emperor
+      gave titles make common cause with the old nobility. They all want to
+      crush the people, re-establish their former rights and take our property
+      from us. But we are Burgundians; we must resist, and drive those Arminacs
+      back to Paris. Return to Blangy; you shall be agent for Monsieur
+      Polissard, the wood-merchant, who is contractor for the forest of
+      Ronquerolles. Don&rsquo;t be uneasy, my lad; I&rsquo;ll find you enough to do for the
+      whole of the coming year. But remember one thing; the wood is for
+      ourselves! Not a single depredation, or the thing is at an end. Send all
+      interlopers to Les Aigues. If there&rsquo;s brush or fagots to sell make people
+      buy ours; don&rsquo;t let them buy of Les Aigues. You&rsquo;ll get back to your place
+      as field-keeper before long; this thing can&rsquo;t last. The general will get
+      sick of living among thieves. Did you know that that Shopman called me a
+      thief, me!&mdash;son of the stanchest and most incorruptible of
+      republicans; me!&mdash;the son in law of Mouchon, that famous
+      representative of the people, who died without leaving me enough to bury
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The general raised the salary of the new field-keeper to three hundred
+      francs; and built a town-hall, in which he gave him a residence. Then he
+      married him to a daughter of one of his tenant-farmers, who had lately
+      died, leaving her an orphan with three acres of vineyard. Groison attached
+      himself to the general as a dog to his master. This legitimate fidelity
+      was admitted by the whole community. The keeper was feared and respected,
+      but like the captain of a vessel whose ship&rsquo;s company hate him; the
+      peasantry shunned him as they would a leper. Met either in silence or with
+      sarcasms veiled under a show of good-humor, the new keeper was a sentinel
+      watched by other sentinels. He could do nothing against such numbers. The
+      delinquents took delight in plotting depredations which it was impossible
+      for him to prove, and the old soldier grew furious at his helplessness.
+      Groison found the excitement of a war of factions in his duties, and all
+      the pleasures of the chase,&mdash;a chase after petty delinquents. Trained
+      in real war to a loyalty which consists in part of playing a fair game,
+      this enemy of traitors came at last to hate these people, so treacherous
+      in their conspiracies, and so clever in their thefts that they mortified
+      his self-esteem. He soon observed that the depredations were committed
+      only at Les Aigues; all the other estates were respected. At first he
+      despised a peasantry ungrateful enough to pillage a general of the Empire,
+      an essentially kind and generous man; presently, however, he added hatred
+      to contempt. But multiply himself as he would, he could not be everywhere,
+      and the enemy pillaged everywhere that he was not. Groison made the
+      general understand that it was necessary to organize the defence on a war
+      footing, and proved to him the insufficiency of his own devoted efforts
+      and the evil disposition of the inhabitants of the valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is something behind it all, general,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;these people are so
+      bold they fear nothing; they seem to rely on the favor of the good God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall see,&rdquo; replied the count.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatal word! The verb &ldquo;to see&rdquo; has no future tense for politicians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the moment, Montcornet was considering another difficulty, which seemed
+      to him more pressing. He needed an alter ego to do his work in the mayor&rsquo;s
+      office during the months he lived in Paris. Obliged to find some man who
+      knew how to read and write for the position of assistant mayor, he knew of
+      none and could hear of none throughout the district but Langlume, the
+      tenant of his own flour-mill. The choice was disastrous. Not only were the
+      interests of mayor and miller diametrically opposed, but Langlume had long
+      hatched swindling projects with Rigou, who lent him money to carry on his
+      business, or to acquire property. The miller had bought the right to the
+      hay of certain fields for his horses, and Sibilet could not sell it except
+      to him. The hay of all the fields in the district was sold at better
+      prices than that of Les Aigues, though the yield of the latter was the
+      best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langlume, then, became the provisional mayor; but in France the
+      provisional is eternal,&mdash;though Frenchmen are suspected of loving
+      change. Acting by Rigou&rsquo;s advice, he played a part of great devotion to
+      the general; and he was still assistant-mayor at the moment when, by the
+      omnipotence of the historian, this drama begins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the absence of the mayor, Rigou, necessarily a member of the district
+      council, reigned supreme, and brought forward resolutions all injuriously
+      affecting the general. At one time he caused money to be spent for
+      purposes that were profitable to the peasants only,&mdash;the greater part
+      of the expenses falling upon Les Aigues, which, by reason of its great
+      extent, paid two thirds of the taxes; at other times the council refused,
+      under his influence, certain useful and necessary allowances, such as an
+      increase in salary for the abbe, repairs or improvements to the parsonage,
+      or &ldquo;wages&rdquo; to the school-master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the peasants once know how to read and write, what will become of us?&rdquo;
+       said Langlume, naively, to the general, to excuse this anti-liberal action
+      taken against a brother of the Christian Doctrine whom the Abbe Brossette
+      wished to establish as a public school-master in Blangy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The general, delighted with his old Groison, returned to Paris and
+      immediately looked about him for other old soldiers of the late imperial
+      guard, with whom to organize the defence of Les Aigues on a formidable
+      footing. By dint of searching out and questioning his friends and many
+      officers on half-pay, he unearthed Michaud, a former quartermaster at
+      headquarters of the cuirassiers of the guard; one of those men whom
+      troopers call &ldquo;hard-to-cook,&rdquo; a nickname derived from the mess kitchen
+      where refractory beans are not uncommon. Michaud picked out from among his
+      friends and acquaintances, three other men fit to be his helpers, and able
+      to guard the estate without fear and without reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first, named Steingel, a pure-blooded Alsacian, was a natural son of
+      the general of that name, who fell in one of Bonaparte&rsquo;s first victories
+      with the army of Italy. Tall and strong, he belonged to the class of
+      soldiers accustomed, like the Russians, to obey, passively and absolutely.
+      Nothing hindered him in the performance of his duty; he would have
+      collared an emperor or a pope if such were his orders. He ignored danger.
+      Perfectly fearless, he had never received the smallest scratch during his
+      sixteen years&rsquo; campaigning. He slept in the open air or in his bed with
+      stoical indifference. At any increased labor or discomfort, he merely
+      remarked, &ldquo;It seems to be the order of the day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The second man, Vatel, son of the regiment, corporal of voltigeurs, gay as
+      a lark, rather free and easy with the fair sex, brave to foolhardiness,
+      was capable of shooting a comrade with a laugh if ordered to execute him.
+      With no future before him and not knowing how to employ himself, the
+      prospect of finding an amusing little war in the functions of keeper,
+      attracted him; and as the grand army and the Emperor had hitherto stood
+      him in place of a religion, so now he swore to serve the brave Montcornet
+      against and through all and everything. His nature was of that essentially
+      wrangling quality to which a life without enemies seems dull and
+      objectless,&mdash;the nature, in short, of a litigant, or a policeman. If
+      it had not been for the presence of the sheriff&rsquo;s officer, he would have
+      seized Tonsard and the bundle of wood at the Grand-I-Vert, snapping his
+      fingers at the law on the inviolability of a man&rsquo;s domicile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The third man, Gaillard, also an old soldier, risen to the rank of
+      sub-lieutenant, and covered with wounds, belonged to the class of
+      mechanical soldiers. The fate of the Emperor never left his mind and he
+      became indifferent to everything else. With the care of a natural daughter
+      on his hands, he accepted the place that was now offered to him as a means
+      of subsistence, taking it as he would have taken service in a regiment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the general reached Les Aigues, whither he had gone in advance of his
+      troopers, intending to send away Courtecuisse, he was amazed at
+      discovering the impudent audacity with which the keeper had fulfilled his
+      commands. There is a method of obeying which makes the obedience of the
+      servant a cutting sarcasm on the master&rsquo;s order. But all things in this
+      world can be reduced to absurdity, and Courtecuisse in this instance went
+      beyond its limits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One hundred and twenty-six indictments against depredators (most of whom
+      were in collusion with Courtecuisse) and sworn to before the justice court
+      of Soulanges, had resulted in sixty-nine commitments for trial, in virtue
+      of which Brunet, the sheriff&rsquo;s officer, delighted at such a windfall of
+      fees, had rigorously enforced the warrants in such a way as to bring about
+      what is called, in legal language, a declaration of insolvency; a
+      condition of pauperism where the law becomes of course powerless. By this
+      declaration the sheriff proves that the defendant possesses no property of
+      any kind, and is therefore a pauper. Where there is absolutely nothing,
+      the creditor, like the king, loses his right to sue. The paupers in this
+      case, carefully selected by Courtecuisse, were scattered through five
+      neighboring districts, whither Brunet betook himself duly attended by his
+      satellites, Vermichel and Fourchon, to serve the writs. Later he
+      transmitted the papers to Sibilet with a bill of costs for five thousand
+      francs, requesting him to obtain the further orders of Monsieur le comte
+      de Montcornet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as Sibilet, armed with these papers, was calmly explaining to the
+      count the result of the rash orders he had given to Courtecuisse, and
+      witnessing, as calmly, a burst of the most violent anger a general of the
+      French cavalry was ever known to indulge in, Courtecuisse entered to pay
+      his respects to his master and to bring his own account of eleven hundred
+      francs, the sum to which his promised commission now amounted. The natural
+      man took the bit in his teeth and ran off with the general, who totally
+      forgot his coronet and his field rank; he was a trooper once more,
+      vomiting curses of which he probably was ashamed when he thought of them
+      later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! eleven hundred francs!&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;eleven hundred slaps in your
+      face! eleven hundred kicks!&mdash;Do you think I can&rsquo;t see straight
+      through your lies? Out of my sight, or I&rsquo;ll strike you flat!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the mere look of the general&rsquo;s purple face and before that warrior
+      could get out the last words, Courtecuisse was off like a swallow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; said Sibilet, gently, &ldquo;you are wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wrong! I, wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Monsieur le comte, take care, you will have trouble with that
+      rascal; he will sue you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do I care for that? Tell the scoundrel to leave the place instantly!
+      See that he takes nothing of mine, and pay him his wages.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Four hours later the whole country-side was gossiping about this scene.
+      The general, they said, had assaulted the unfortunate Courtecuisse, and
+      refused to pay his wages and two thousand francs besides, which he owed
+      him. Extraordinary stories went the rounds, and the master of Les Aigues
+      was declared insane. The next day Brunet, who had served all the warrants
+      for the general, now brought him on behalf of Courtecuisse a summon to
+      appear before the police court. The lion was stung by gnats; but his
+      misery was only just beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The installation of a keeper is not done without a few formalities; he
+      must, for instance, file an oath in the civil court. Some days therefore
+      elapsed before the three keepers really entered upon their functions.
+      Though the general had written to Michaud to bring his wife without
+      waiting until the lodge at the gate of the Avonne was ready for them, the
+      future head-keeper, or rather bailiff, was detained in Paris by his
+      marriage and his wife&rsquo;s family, and did not reach Les Aigues until a
+      fortnight later. During those two weeks, and during the time still further
+      required for certain formalities which were carried out with very ill
+      grace by the authorities at Ville-aux-Fayes, the forest of Les Aigues was
+      shamefully devastated by the peasantry, who took advantage of the fact
+      that there was practically no watch over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The appearance of three keepers handsomely dressed in green cloth, the
+      Emperor&rsquo;s color, with faces denoting firmness, and each of them well-made,
+      active, and capable of spending their nights in the woods, was a great
+      event in the valley, from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout the district Groison was the only man who welcomed these
+      veterans. Delighted to be thus reinforced, he let fall a few threats
+      against thieves, who before long, he said, would be watched so closely
+      that they could do no damage. Thus the usual proclamation of all great
+      commanders was not lacking to the present war; in this case it was said
+      aloud and also whispered in secret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibilet called the general&rsquo;s attention to the fact that the gendarmerie of
+      Soulanges, and especially its brigadier, Soudry, were thoroughly and
+      hypocritically hostile to Les Aigues. He made him see the importance of
+      substituting another brigade, which might show a better spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With a good brigadier and a company of gendarmes devoted to your
+      interests, you could manage the country,&rdquo; he said to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The general went to the Prefecture and obtained from the general in
+      command of the division the retirement of Soudry and the substitution of a
+      man named Viallet, an excellent gendarme at headquarters, who was much
+      praised by his general and the prefect. The company of gendarmes at
+      Soulanges were dispersed to other places in the department by the colonel
+      of the gendarmerie, an old friend of Montcornet, and chosen men were put
+      in their places with secret orders to keep watch over the estate of the
+      Comte de Montcornet, and prevent all future attempts to injure it; they
+      were also particularly enjoined not to allow themselves to be gained over
+      by the inhabitants of Soulanges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last revolutionary measure, carried out with such rapidity that there
+      was no possibility of countermining it created much astonishment in
+      Soulanges and in Ville-aux-Fayes. Soudry, who felt himself dismissed,
+      complained bitterly, and Gaubertin managed to get him appointed mayor,
+      which put the gendarmerie under his orders. An outcry was made about
+      tyranny. Montcornet became an object of general hatred. Not only were five
+      or six lives radically changed by him, but many personal vanities were
+      wounded. The peasants, taking their cue from words dropped by the small
+      tradesmen of Ville-aux-Fayes and Soulanges, and by Rigou, Langlume,
+      Guerbet, and the postmaster at Conches, thought they were on the eve of
+      losing what they called their rights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The general stopped the suit brought by Courtecuisse by paying him all he
+      demanded. The man then purchased, nominally for two thousand francs, a
+      little property surrounded on all sides but one by the estate of Les
+      Aigues,&mdash;a sort of cover into which the game escaped. Rigou, the
+      owner, had never been willing to part with La Bachelerie, as it was
+      called, to the possessors of the estate, but he now took malicious
+      pleasure in selling it, at fifty per cent discount, to Courtecuisse; which
+      made the ex-keeper one of Rigou&rsquo;s numerous henchmen, for all he actually
+      paid for the property was one thousand francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three keepers, with Michaud the bailiff, and Groison the field-keeper
+      of Blangy, led henceforth the life of guerrillas. Living night and day in
+      the forest, they soon acquired that deep knowledge of woodland things
+      which becomes a science among foresters, saving them much loss of time;
+      they studied the tracks of animals, the species of the trees, and their
+      habits of growth, training their ears to every sound and to every murmur
+      of the woods. Still further, they observed faces, watched and understood
+      the different families in the various villages of the district, and knew
+      the individuals in each family, their habits, characters, and means of
+      living,&mdash;a far more difficult matter than most persons suppose. When
+      the peasants who obtained their living from Les Aigues saw these
+      well-planned measures of defence, they met them with dumb resistance or
+      sneering submission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the first, Michaud and Sibilet mutually disliked each other. The
+      frank and loyal soldier, with the sense of honor of a subaltern of the
+      young &ldquo;garde,&rdquo; hated the servile brutality and the discontented spirit of
+      the steward. He soon took note of the objections with which Sibilet
+      opposed all measures that were really judicious, and the reasons he gave
+      for those that were questionable. Instead of calming the general, Sibilet,
+      as the reader has already seen, constantly excited him and drove him to
+      harsh measures, all the while trying to daunt him by drawing his attention
+      to countless annoyances, petty vexations, and ever-recurring and
+      unconquerable difficulties. Without suspecting the role of spy and
+      exasperator undertaken by Sibilet (who secretly intended to eventually
+      make choice in his own interests between Gaubertin and the general)
+      Michaud felt that the steward&rsquo;s nature was bad and grasping, and he was
+      unable to explain to himself its apparent honesty. The enmity which
+      separated the two functionaries was satisfactory to the general. Michaud&rsquo;s
+      hatred led him to watch the steward, though he would not have condescended
+      to play the part of spy if the general had not required it. Sibilet fawned
+      upon the bailiff and flattered him, without being able to get anything
+      from him beyond an extreme politeness which the loyal soldier established
+      between them as a barrier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, all preliminary details having been made known, the reader will
+      understand the conduct of the general&rsquo;s enemies and the meaning of the
+      conversation which he had with what he called his two ministers, after
+      Madame de Montcornet, the abbe, and Blondet left the breakfast-table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX. CONCERNING THE MEDIOCRACY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Michaud, what&rsquo;s the news?&rdquo; asked the general as soon as his wife
+      had left the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General, if you will permit me to say so, it would be better not to talk
+      over matters in this room. Walls have ears, and I should like to be
+      certain that what we say reaches none but our own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; said the general, &ldquo;then let us walk towards the steward&rsquo;s
+      lodge by the path through the fields; no one can overhear us there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few moments later the general, with Michaud and Sibilet, was crossing
+      the meadows, while Madame de Montcornet, with the abbe and Blondet, was on
+      her way to the gate of the Avonne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michaud related the scene that had just taken place at the Grand-I-Vert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vatel did wrong,&rdquo; said Sibilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They made that plain to him at once,&rdquo; replied Michaud, &ldquo;by blinding him;
+      but that&rsquo;s nothing. General, you remember the plan we agreed upon,&mdash;to
+      seize the cattle of those depredators against whom judgment was given?
+      Well, we can&rsquo;t do it. Brunet, like his colleague Plissoud, is not loyal in
+      his support. They both warn the delinquents when they are about to make a
+      seizure. Vermichel, Brunet&rsquo;s assistant, went to the Grand-I-Vert this
+      morning, ostensibly after Pere Fourchon; and Marie Tonsard, who is
+      intimate with Bonnebault, ran off at once to give the alarm at Conches.
+      The depredations have begun again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A strong show of authority is becoming daily more and more necessary,&rdquo;
+       said Sibilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo; cried the general. &ldquo;We must demand the enforcement
+      of the judgment of the court, which carried with it imprisonment; we must
+      arrest for debt all those who do not pay the damages I have won and the
+      costs of the suits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These fellows imagine the law is powerless, and tell each other that you
+      dare not arrest them,&rdquo; said Sibilet. &ldquo;They think they frighten you! They
+      have confederates at Ville-aux-Fayes; for even the prosecuting attorney
+      seems to have ignored the verdicts against them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said Michaud, seeing that the general looked thoughtful, &ldquo;that
+      if you are willing to spend a good deal of money you can still protect the
+      property.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is better to spend money than to act harshly,&rdquo; remarked Sibilet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is your plan?&rdquo; asked the general of his bailiff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is very simple,&rdquo; said Michaud. &ldquo;Inclose the whole forest with walls,
+      like those of the park, and you will be safe; the slightest depredation
+      then becomes a criminal offence and is taken to the assizes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At a franc and a half the square foot for the material only, Monsieur le
+      comte would find his wall would cost him a third of the whole value of Les
+      Aigues,&rdquo; said Sibilet, with a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; said Montcornet, &ldquo;I shall go and see the attorney-general at
+      once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The attorney-general,&rdquo; remarked Sibilet, gently, &ldquo;may perhaps share the
+      opinion of his subordinate; for the negligence shown by the latter is
+      probably the result of an agreement between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I wish to know it!&rdquo; cried Montcornet. &ldquo;If I have to get the whole of
+      them turned out, judges, civil authorities, and the attorney-general to
+      boot, I&rsquo;ll do it; I&rsquo;ll go the Keeper of the Seals, or to the king
+      himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At a vehement sign made by Michaud the general stopped short and said to
+      Sibilet, as he turned to retrace his steps, &ldquo;Good day, my dear fellow,&rdquo;&mdash;words
+      which the steward understood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does Monsieur le comte intend, as mayor, to enforce the necessary
+      measures to repress the abuse of gleaning?&rdquo; he said, respectfully. &ldquo;The
+      harvest is coming on, and if we are to publish the statutes about
+      certificates of pauperism and the prevention of paupers from other
+      districts gleaning our land, there is no time to be lost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do it at once, and arrange with Groison,&rdquo; said the count. &ldquo;With such a
+      class of people,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;we must follow out the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, without a moment&rsquo;s reflection, Montcornet gave in to a measure that
+      Sibilet had been proposing to him for more than a fortnight, to which he
+      had hitherto refused to consent; but now, in the violence of anger caused
+      by Vatel&rsquo;s mishap, he instantly adopted it as the right thing to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Sibilet was at some distance the general said in a low voice to his
+      bailiff:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear Michaud, what is it; why did you make me that sign?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have an enemy within the walls, general, yet you tell him plans which
+      you ought not to confide even to the secret police.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I share your suspicions, my dear friend,&rdquo; replied Montcornet, &ldquo;but I
+      don&rsquo;t intend to commit the same fault twice over. I shall not part with
+      another steward till I&rsquo;m sure of a better. I am waiting to get rid of
+      Sibilet, till you understand the business of steward well enough to take
+      his place, and till Vatel is fit to succeed you. And yet, I have no ground
+      of complaint against Sibilet. He is honest and punctual in all his
+      dealings; he hasn&rsquo;t kept back a hundred francs in all these five years. He
+      has a perfectly detestable nature, and that&rsquo;s all one can say against him.
+      If it were otherwise, what would be his plan in acting as he does?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General,&rdquo; said Michaud, gravely, &ldquo;I will find out, for undoubtedly he has
+      one; and if you would only allow it, a good bribe to that old scoundrel
+      Fourchon will enable me to get at the truth; though after what he said
+      just now I suspect the old fellow of having more secrets than one in his
+      pouch. That swindling old cordwainer told me himself they want to drive
+      you from Les Aigues. And let me tell you, for you ought to know it, that
+      from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes there is not a peasant, a petty tradesman,
+      a farmer, a tavern-keeper who isn&rsquo;t laying by his money to buy a bit of
+      the estate. Fourchon confided to me that Tonsard has already put in his
+      claim. The idea that you can be forced to sell Les Aigues has gone from
+      end to end of the valley like an infection in the air. It may be that the
+      steward&rsquo;s present house, with some adjoining land, will be the price paid
+      for Sibilet&rsquo;s spying. Nothing is ever said among us that is not
+      immediately known at Ville-aux-Fayes. Sibilet is a relative of your enemy
+      Gaubertin. What you have just said about the attorney-general and the
+      others will probably be reported before you have reached the Prefecture.
+      You don&rsquo;t know what the inhabitants of this district are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t I know them? I know they are the scum of the earth! Do you suppose
+      I am going to yield to such blackguards?&rdquo; cried the general. &ldquo;Good
+      heavens, I&rsquo;d rather burn Les Aigues myself!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No need to burn it; let us adopt a line of conduct which will baffle the
+      schemes of these Lilliputians. Judging by threats, general, they are
+      resolved on war to the knife against you; and therefore since you mention
+      incendiarism, let me beg of you to insure all your buildings, and all your
+      farmhouses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michaud, do you know whom they mean by &lsquo;Shopman&rsquo;? Yesterday, as I was
+      riding along by the Thune, I heard some little rascals cry out, &lsquo;The
+      Shopman! here&rsquo;s the Shopman!&rsquo; and then they ran away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask Sibilet; the answer is in his line, he likes to make you angry,&rdquo; said
+      Michaud, with a pained look. &ldquo;But&mdash;if you will have an answer&mdash;well,
+      that&rsquo;s a nickname these brigands have given you, general.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It means, general&mdash;well, it refers to your father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! the curs!&rdquo; cried the count, turning livid. &ldquo;Yes, Michaud, my father
+      was a shopkeeper, an upholsterer; the countess doesn&rsquo;t know it. Oh! that I
+      should ever&mdash;well! after all, I have waltzed with queens and
+      empresses. I&rsquo;ll tell her this very night,&rdquo; he cried, after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They also call you a coward,&rdquo; continued Michaud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They ask how you managed to save yourself at Essling when nearly all your
+      comrades perished.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The accusation brought a smile to the general&rsquo;s lips. &ldquo;Michaud, I shall go
+      at once to the Prefecture!&rdquo; he cried, with a sort of fury, &ldquo;if it is only
+      to get the policies of insurance you ask for. Let Madame la comtesse know
+      that I have gone. Ha, ha! they want war, do they? Well, they shall have
+      it; I&rsquo;ll take my pleasure in thwarting them,&mdash;every one of them,
+      those bourgeois of Soulanges, and their peasantry! We are in the enemy&rsquo;s
+      country, therefore prudence! Tell the foresters to keep within the limits
+      of the law. Poor Vatel, take care of him. The countess is inclined to be
+      timid; she must know nothing of all this; otherwise I could never get her
+      to come back here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither the general nor Michaud understood their real peril. Michaud had
+      been too short a time in this Burgundian valley to realize the enemy&rsquo;s
+      power, though he saw its action. The general, for his part, believed in
+      the supremacy of the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The law, such as the legislature of these days manufactures it, has not
+      the virtue we attribute to it. It strikes unequally; it is so modified in
+      many of its modes of application that it virtually refutes its own
+      principles. This fact may be noted more or less distinctly throughout all
+      ages. Is there any historian ignorant enough to assert that the decrees of
+      the most vigilant of powers were ever enforced throughout France?&mdash;for
+      instance, that the requisitions of the Convention for men, commodities,
+      and money were obeyed in Provence, in the depths of Normandy, on the
+      borders of Brittany, as they were at the great centres of social life?
+      What philosopher dares deny that a head falls to-day in such or such
+      department, while in a neighboring department another head stays on its
+      shoulders though guilty of a crime identically the same, and often more
+      horrible? We ask for equality in life, and inequality reigns in law and in
+      the death penalty!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the population of a town falls below a certain figure the
+      administrative system is no longer the same. There are perhaps a hundred
+      cities in France where the laws are vigorously enforced, and there the
+      intelligence of the citizens rises to the conception of the problem of
+      public welfare and future security which the law seeks to solve; but
+      throughout the rest of France nothing is comprehended beyond immediate
+      gratification; people rebel against all that lessens it. Therefore in
+      nearly one half of France we find a power of inertia which defeats all
+      legal action, both municipal and governmental. This resistance, be it
+      understood, does not affect the essential things of public polity. The
+      collection of taxes, recruiting, punishment of great crimes, as a general
+      thing do systematically go on; but outside of such recognized necessities,
+      all legislative decrees which affect customs, morals, private interests,
+      and certain abuses, are a dead letter, owing to the sullen opposition of
+      the people. At the very moment when this book is going to press, this dumb
+      resistance, which opposed Louis XIV. in Brittany, may still be seen and
+      felt. See the unfortunate results of the game-laws, to which we are now
+      sacrificing yearly the lives of some twenty or thirty men for the sake of
+      preserving a few animals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In France the law is, to at least twenty million of inhabitants, nothing
+      more than a bit of white paper posted on the doors of the church and the
+      town-hall. That gives rise to the term &ldquo;papers,&rdquo; which Mouche used to
+      express legality. Many mayors of cantons (not to speak of the district
+      mayors) put up their bundles of seeds and herbs with the printed statutes.
+      As for the district mayors, the number of those who do not know how to
+      read and write is really alarming, and the manner in which the civil
+      records are kept is even more so. The danger of this state of things,
+      well-known to the governing powers, is doubtless diminishing; but what
+      centralization (against which every one declaims, as it is the fashion in
+      France to declaim against all things good and useful and strong),&mdash;what
+      centralization cannot touch, the Power against which it will forever fling
+      itself in vain, is that which the general was now about to attack, and
+      which we shall take leave to call the Mediocracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great outcry was made against the tyranny of the nobles; in these days
+      the cry is against that of capitalists, against abuses of power, which may
+      be merely the inevitable galling of the social yoke, called Compact by
+      Rousseau, Constitution by some, Charter by others; Czar here, King there,
+      Parliament in Great Britain; while in France the general levelling begun
+      in 1789 and continued in 1830 has paved the way for the juggling dominion
+      of the middle classes, and delivered the nation into their hands without
+      escape. The portrayal of one fact alone, unfortunately only too common in
+      these days, namely, the subjection of a canton, a little town, a
+      sub-prefecture, to the will of a family clique,&mdash;in short, the power
+      acquired by Gaubertin,&mdash;will show this social danger better than all
+      dogmatic statements put together. Many oppressed communities will
+      recognize the truth of this picture; many persons secretly and silently
+      crushed by this tyranny will find in these words an obituary, as it were,
+      which may half console them for their hidden woes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very moment when the general imagined himself to be renewing a
+      warfare in which there had really been no truce, his former steward had
+      just completed the last meshes of the net-work in which he now held the
+      whole arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. To avoid too many explanations it
+      is necessary to state, once for all, succinctly, the genealogical
+      ramifications by means of which Gaubertin wound himself about the country,
+      as a boa-constrictor winds around a tree,&mdash;with such art that a
+      passing traveller thinks he beholds some natural effect of the tropical
+      vegetation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1793 there were three brothers of the name of Mouchon in the valley of
+      the Avonne. After 1793 they changed the name of the valley to that of the
+      Valley des Aigues, out of hatred to the old nobility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eldest brother, steward of the property of the Ronquerolles family,
+      was elected deputy of the department to the Convention. Like his friend,
+      Gaubertin&rsquo;s father, the prosecutor of those days, who saved the Soulanges
+      family, he saved the property and the lives of the Ronquerolles. He had
+      two daughters; one married to Gendrin, the lawyer, the other to Gaubertin.
+      He died in 1804.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second, through the influence of his elder brother, was made
+      postmaster at Conches. His only child was a daughter, married to a rich
+      farmer named Guerbet. He died in 1817.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last of the Mouchons, who was a priest, and the curate of
+      Ville-aux-Fayes before the Revolution, was again a priest after the
+      re-establishment of Catholic worship, and again the curate of the same
+      little town. He was not willing to take the oath, and was hidden for a
+      long time in the hermitage of Les Aigues, under the protection of the
+      Gaubertins, father and son. Now about sixty-seven years of age, he was
+      treated with universal respect and affection, owing to the harmony of his
+      nature with that of the inhabitants. Parsimonious to the verge of avarice,
+      he was thought to be rich, and the credit of being so increased the
+      respect that was shown to him. Monseigneur the bishop paid the greatest
+      attention to the Abbe Mouchon, who was always spoken of as the venerable
+      curate of Ville-aux-Fayes; and the fact that he had several times refused
+      to go and live in a splendid parsonage attached to the Prefecture, where
+      Monseigneur wished to settle him, made him dearer still to his people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gaubertin, now mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, received steady support from his
+      brother-in-law Gendrin, who was judge of the municipal court. Gaubertin
+      the younger, the solicitor who had the most practice before this court and
+      much repute in the arrondissement, was already thinking of selling his
+      practice after five years&rsquo; exercise of it. He wanted to succeed his Uncle
+      Gendrin as counsellor whenever the latter should retire from the
+      profession. Gendrin&rsquo;s only son was commissioner of mortgages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soudry&rsquo;s son, who for the last two years had been prosecuting-attorney at
+      the prefecture, was Gaubertin&rsquo;s henchman. The clever Madame Soudry had
+      secured the future of her husband&rsquo;s son by marrying him to Rigou&rsquo;s only
+      daughter. The united fortunes of the Soudrys and the ex-monk, which would
+      come eventually to the attorney, made that young man one of the most
+      important personages of the department.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sub-prefect of Ville-aux-Fayes, Monsieur des Lupeaulx, nephew of the
+      general-secretary of one of the most important ministries in Paris, was
+      the prospective husband of Mademoiselle Elise Gaubertin, the mayor&rsquo;s
+      youngest daughter, whose dowry, like that of her elder sister, was two
+      hundred thousand francs, not to speak of &ldquo;expectations.&rdquo; This functionary
+      showed much sense, though not aware of it, in falling in love with
+      Mademoiselle Elise when he first arrived at Ville-aux-Fayes, in 1819. If
+      it had not been for his social position, which made him &ldquo;eligible,&rdquo; he
+      would long ago have been forced to ask for his exchange. But Gaubertin in
+      marrying him to his daughter thought much more of the uncle, the
+      general-secretary, than of the nephew; and in return, the uncle, for the
+      sake of his nephew, gave all his influence to Gaubertin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus the Church, the magistracy both removable and irremovable, the
+      municipality, and the prefecture, the four feet of power, walked as the
+      mayor pleased. Let us now see how that functionary strengthened himself in
+      the spheres above and below that in which he worked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The department to which Ville-aux-Fayes belongs is one the number of whose
+      population gives it the right to elect six deputies. Ever since the
+      creation of the Left Centre of the Chamber, the arrondissement of
+      Ville-aux-Fayes had sent a deputy named Leclercq, formerly banking agent
+      of the wine department of the custom-house, a son-in-law of Gaubertin, and
+      now a governor of the Bank of France. The number of electors which this
+      rich valley sent to the electoral college was sufficient to insure, if
+      only through private dealing, the constant appointment of Monsieur de
+      Ronquerolles, the patron of the Mouchon family. The voters of
+      Ville-aux-Fayes lent their support to the prefect, on condition that the
+      Marquis de Ronquerolles was maintained in the college. Thus Gaubertin, who
+      was the first to broach the idea of this arrangement, was favorably
+      received at the Prefecture, which he often, in return, saved from petty
+      annoyances. The prefect always selected three firm ministerialists, and
+      two deputies of the Left Centre. The latter, one of them being the Marquis
+      de Ronquerolles, brother-in-law of the Comte de Serisy, and the other a
+      governor of the Bank of France, gave little or no alarm to the cabinet,
+      and the elections in this department were rated excellent at the ministry
+      of the interior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Comte de Soulanges, peer of France, selected to be the next marshal,
+      and faithful to the Bourbons, knew that his forests and other property
+      were all well-managed by the notary Lupin, and well-watched by Soudry. He
+      was a patron of Gendrin&rsquo;s, having obtained his appointment as judge partly
+      by the help of Monsieur de Ronquerolles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Messieurs Leclercq and de Ronquerolles sat in the Left Centre, but nearer
+      to the left than to the centre,&mdash;a political position which offers
+      great advantages to those who regard their political conscience as a
+      garment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brother of Monsieur Leclercq had obtained the situation of collector
+      at Ville-aux-Fayes, and Leclercq himself, Gaubertin&rsquo;s son-in-law, had
+      lately bought a fine estate beyond the valley of the Avonne, which brought
+      him in a rental of thirty thousand francs, with park and chateau and a
+      controlling influence in its own canton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, in the upper regions of the State, in both Chambers, and in the
+      chief ministerial department, Gaubertin could rely on an influence that
+      was powerful and also active, and which he was careful not to weary with
+      unimportant requests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The counsellor Gendrin, appointed judge by the Chamber, was the leading
+      spirit of the Supreme Court; for the chief justice, one of the three
+      ministerial deputies, left the management of it to Gendrin during half the
+      year. The counsel for the Prefecture, a cousin of Sarcus, called &ldquo;Sarcus
+      the rich,&rdquo; was the right-hand man of the prefect, himself a deputy. Even
+      without the family reasons which allied Gaubertin and young des Lupeaulx,
+      a brother of Madame Sarcus would still have been desirable as sub-prefect
+      to the arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. Madame Sarcus, the counsellor&rsquo;s
+      wife, was a Vallat of Soulanges, a family connected with the Gaubertins,
+      and she was said to have &ldquo;distinguished&rdquo; the notary Lupin in her youth.
+      Though she was now forty-five years old, with a son in the school of
+      engineers, Lupin never went to the Prefecture without paying his respects
+      and dining with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nephew of Guerbet, the postmaster, whose father was, as we have seen,
+      collector of Soulanges, held the important situation of examining judge in
+      the municipal court of Ville-aux-Fayes. The third judge, son of Corbinet,
+      the notary, belonged body and soul to the all-powerful mayor; and,
+      finally, young Vigor, son of the lieutenant of the gendarmerie, was the
+      substitute judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibilet&rsquo;s father, sheriff of the court, had married his sister to Monsieur
+      Vigor the lieutenant, and that individual, father of six children, was
+      cousin of the father of Gaubertin through his wife, a Gaubertin-Vallat.
+      Eighteen months previously the united efforts of the two deputies,
+      Monsieur de Soulanges and Gaubertin, had created the place of commissary
+      of police for the sheriff&rsquo;s second son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibilet&rsquo;s eldest daughter married Monsieur Herve, a school-master, whose
+      school was transformed into a college as a result of this marriage, so
+      that for the past year Soulanges had rejoiced in the presence of a
+      professor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheriff&rsquo;s youngest son was employed on the government domains, with
+      the promise of succeeding the clerk of registrations so soon as that
+      officer had completed the term of service which enabled him to retire on a
+      pension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The youngest Sibilet girl, now sixteen years old, was betrothed to
+      Corbinet, brother of the notary. And an old maid, Mademoiselle
+      Gaubertin-Vallat, sister of Madame Sibilet, the sheriff&rsquo;s wife, held the
+      office for the sale of stamped paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, wherever we turn in Ville-aux-Fayes we meet some member of the
+      invisible coalition, whose avowed chief, recognized as such by every one,
+      great and small, was the mayor of the town, the general agent for the
+      entire timber business, Gaubertin!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we turn to the other end of the valley of the Avonne we shall see that
+      Gaubertin ruled at Soulanges through the Soudrys, through Lupin the
+      assistant mayor and steward of the Soulanges estate, who was necessarily
+      in constant communication with the Comte de Soulanges, through Sarcus,
+      justice of the peace, through Guerbet, the collector, through Gourdon, the
+      doctor, who had married a Gendrin-Vatebled. He governed Blangy through
+      Rigou, Conches through the post-master, the despotic ruler of his own
+      district.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gaubertin&rsquo;s influence was so great and powerful that even the investments
+      and the savings of Rigou, Soudry, Gendrin, Guerbet, Lupin, even Sarcus the
+      rich himself, were managed by his advice. The town of Ville-aux-Fayes
+      believed implicitly in its mayor. Gaubertin&rsquo;s ability was not less
+      extolled than his honesty and his kindness; he was the servant of his
+      relatives and constituents (always with an eye to a return of benefits),
+      and the whole municipality adored him. The town never ceased to blame
+      Monsieur Mariotte, of Auxerre, for having opposed and thwarted that worthy
+      Monsieur Gaubertin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not aware of their strength, no occasion for displaying it having arisen,
+      the bourgeoisie of Ville-aux-Fayes contented themselves with boasting that
+      no strangers intermeddled in their affairs and they believed themselves
+      excellent citizens and faithful public servants. Nothing, however, escaped
+      their despotic rule, which in itself was not perceived, the result being
+      considered a triumph of the locality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only stranger in this family community was the government engineer in
+      the highway department; and his dismissal in favor of the son of Sarcus
+      the rich was now being pressed, with a fair chance that this one weak
+      thread in the net would soon be strengthened. And yet this powerful
+      league, which monopolized all duties both public and private, sucked the
+      resources of the region, and fastened on power like limpets to a ship,
+      escaped all notice so completely that General Montcornet had no suspicion
+      of it. The prefect boasted of the prosperity of Ville-aux-Fayes and its
+      arrondissement; even the minister of the interior was heard to remark:
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a model sub-prefecture, which runs on wheels; we should be lucky
+      indeed if all were like it.&rdquo; Family designs were so involved with local
+      interests that here, as in many other little towns and even prefectures, a
+      functionary who did not belong to the place would have been forced to
+      resign within a year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this despotic middle-class cousinry seizes a victim, he is so
+      carefully gagged and bound that complaint is impossible; he is smeared
+      with slime and wax like a snail in a beehive. This invisible,
+      imperceptible tyranny is upheld by powerful reasons,&mdash;such as the
+      wish to be surrounded by their own family, to keep property in their own
+      hands, the mutual help they ought to lend each other, the guarantees given
+      to the administration by the fact that their agent is under the eyes of
+      his fellow-citizens and neighbors. What does all this lead to? To the fact
+      that local interests supersede all questions of public interest; the
+      centralized will of Paris is frequently overthrown in the provinces, the
+      truth of things is disguised, and country communities snap their fingers
+      at government. In short, after the main public necessities have been
+      attended to, it will be seen that the laws, instead of acting upon the
+      masses, receive their impulse from them; the populations adapt the law to
+      themselves and not themselves to the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whoever has travelled in the south or west of France, or in Alsace, in any
+      other way than from inn to inn to see buildings and landscapes, will
+      surely admit the truth of these remarks. The results of middle-class
+      nepotism may be, at present, merely isolated evils; but the tendency of
+      existing laws is to increase them. This low-level despotism can and will
+      cause great disasters, and the events of the drama about to be played in
+      the valley of Les Aigues will prove it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The monarchical and imperial systems, more rashly overthrown than people
+      realize, remedied these abuses by means of certain consecrated lives, by
+      classifications and categories and by those particular counterpoises since
+      so absurdly defined as &ldquo;privileges.&rdquo; There are no privileges now, when
+      every human being is free to climb the greased pole of power. But surely
+      it would be safer to allow open and avowed privileges than those which are
+      underhand, based on trickery, subversive of what should be public spirit,
+      and continuing the work of despotism to a lower and baser level than
+      heretofore. May we not have overthrown noble tyrants devoted to their
+      country&rsquo;s good, to create the tyranny of selfish interests? Shall power
+      lurk in secret places, instead of radiating from its natural source? This
+      is worth thinking about. The spirit of local sectionalism, such as we have
+      now depicted, will soon be seen to invade the Chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Montcornet&rsquo;s friend, the late prefect, Comte de la Roche-Hugon, had lost
+      his position just before the last arrival of the general at Les Aigues.
+      This dismissal drove him into the ranks of the Liberal opposition, where
+      he became one of the chorus of the Left, a position he soon after
+      abandoned for an embassy. His successor, luckily for Montcornet, was a
+      son-in-law of the Marquis de Troisville, uncle of the countess, the Comte
+      de Casteran. He welcomed Montcornet as a relation and begged him to
+      continue his intimacy at the Prefecture. After listening to the general&rsquo;s
+      complaints the Comte de Casteran invited the bishop, the attorney-general,
+      the colonel of the gendarmerie, counsellor Sarcus, and the general
+      commanding the division to meet him the next day at breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The attorney-general, Baron Bourlac (so famous in the Chanterie and Rifael
+      suits), was one of those men well-known to all governments, who attach
+      themselves to power, no matter in whose hands it is, and who make
+      themselves invaluable by such devotion. Having owed his elevation in the
+      first place to his fanaticism for the Emperor, he now owed the retention
+      of his official rank to his inflexible character and the conscientiousness
+      with which he fulfilled his duties. He who once implacably prosecuted the
+      remnant of the Chouans now prosecuted the Bonapartists as implacably. But
+      years and turmoils had somewhat subdued his energy and he had now become,
+      like other old devils incarnate, perfectly charming in manner and ways.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The general explained his position and the fears of his bailiff, and spoke
+      of the necessity of making an example and enforcing the rights of
+      property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The high functionaries listened gravely, making, however, no reply beyond
+      mere platitudes, such as, &ldquo;Undoubtedly, the laws must be upheld&rdquo;; &ldquo;Your
+      cause is that of all land-owners&rdquo;; &ldquo;We will consider it; but, situated as
+      we are, prudence is very necessary&rdquo;; &ldquo;A monarchy could certainly do more
+      for the people than the people would do for itself, even if it were, as in
+      1793, the sovereign people&rdquo;; &ldquo;The masses suffer, and we are bound to do as
+      much for them as for ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The relentless attorney-general expressed such kindly and benevolent views
+      respecting the condition of the lower classes that our future Utopians,
+      had they heard him, might have thought that the higher grade of government
+      officials were already aware of the difficulties of that problem which
+      modern society will be forced to solve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be well to say here that at this period of the Restoration, various
+      bloody encounters had taken place in remote parts of the kingdom, caused
+      by this very question of the pillage of woods, and the marauding rights
+      which the peasants were everywhere arrogating to themselves. Neither the
+      government nor the court liked these outbreaks, nor the shedding of blood
+      which resulted from repression. Though they felt the necessity of rigorous
+      measures, they nevertheless treated as blunderers the officials who were
+      compelled to employ them, and dismissed them on the first pretence. The
+      prefects were therefore anxious to shuffle out of such difficulties
+      whenever possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the very beginning of the conversation Sarcus (the rich) had made a
+      sign to the prefect and the attorney-general which Montcornet did not see,
+      but which set the tone of the discussion. The attorney-general was well
+      aware of the state of mind of the inhabitants of the valley des Aigues
+      through his subordinate, Soudry the young attorney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I foresee a terrible struggle,&rdquo; the latter had said to him. &ldquo;They mean to
+      kill the gendarmes; my spies tell me so. It will be very hard to convict
+      them for it. The instant the jury feel they are incurring the hatred of
+      the friends of the twenty or thirty prisoners, they will not sustain us,&mdash;we
+      could not get them to convict for death, nor even for the galleys.
+      Possibly by prosecuting in person you might get a few years&rsquo; imprisonment
+      for the actual murderers. Better shut our eyes than open them, if by
+      opening them we bring on a collision which costs bloodshed and several
+      thousand francs to the State,&mdash;not to speak of the cost of keeping
+      the guilty in prison. It is too high a price to pay for a victory which
+      will only reveal our judicial weakness to the eyes of all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Montcornet, who was wholly without suspicion of the strength and influence
+      of the Mediocracy in his happy valley, did not even mention Gaubertin,
+      whose hand kept these embers of opposition always alive, though
+      smouldering. After breakfast the attorney-general took Montcornet by the
+      arm and led him to the Prefect&rsquo;s study. When the general left that room
+      after their conference, he wrote to his wife that he was starting for
+      Paris and should be absent a week. We shall see, after the execution of
+      certain measures suggested by Baron Bourlac, the attorney-general, whether
+      the secret advice he gave to Montcornet was wise, and whether in
+      conforming to it the count and Les Aigues were enabled to escape the &ldquo;Evil
+      grudge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Some minds, eager for mere amusement, will complain that these various
+      explanations are far too long; but we once more call attention to the fact
+      that the historian of the manners, customs, and morals of his time must
+      obey a law far more stringent than that imposed on the historian of mere
+      facts. He must show the probability of everything, even the truth;
+      whereas, in the domain of history, properly so-called, the impossible must
+      be accepted for the sole reason that it did happen. The vicissitudes of
+      social or private life are brought about by a crowd of little causes
+      derived from a thousand conditions. The man of science is forced to clear
+      away the avalanche under which whole villages lie buried, to show you the
+      pebbles brought down from the summit which alone can determine the
+      formation of the mountain. If the historian of human life were simply
+      telling you of a suicide, five hundred of which occur yearly in Paris, the
+      melodrama is so commonplace that brief reasons and explanations are all
+      that need be given; but how shall he make you see that the
+      self-destruction of an estate could happen in these days when property is
+      reckoned of more value than life? &ldquo;De re vestra agitur,&rdquo; said a maker of
+      fables; this tale concerns the affairs and interests of all those, no
+      matter who they be, who possess anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Remember that this coalition of a whole canton and of a little town
+      against a general, who, in spite of his rash courage, had escaped the
+      dangers of actual war, is going on in other districts against other men
+      who seek only to do what is right by those districts. It is a coalition
+      which to-day threatens every man, the man of genius, the statesman, the
+      modern agriculturalist,&mdash;in short, all innovators.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last explanation not only gives a true presentation of the personages
+      of this drama, and a serious meaning even to its petty details, but it
+      also throws a vivid light upon the scene where so many social interests
+      are now marshalling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. THE SADNESS OF A HAPPY WOMAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At the moment when the general was getting into his caleche to go to the
+      Prefecture, the countess and the two gentlemen reached the gate of the
+      Avonne, where, for the last eighteen months, Michaud and his wife Olympe
+      had made their home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whose remembered the pavilion in the state in which we lately described it
+      would have supposed it had been rebuilt. The bricks fallen or broken by
+      time, and the cement lacking to their edges, were replaced; the slate roof
+      had been cleaned, and the effect of the white balustrade against its
+      bluish background restored the gay character of the architecture. The
+      approaches to the building, formerly choked up and sandy, were now cared
+      for by the man whose duty it was to keep the park roadways in order. The
+      poultry-yard, stables, and cow-shed, relegated to the buildings near the
+      pheasantry and hidden by clumps of trees, instead of afflicting the eye
+      with their foul details, now blended those soft murmurs and cooings and
+      the sound of flapping wings, which are among the most delightful
+      accompaniments of Nature&rsquo;s eternal harmony, with the peculiar rustling
+      sounds of the forest. The whole scene possessed the double charm of a
+      natural, untouched forest and the elegance of an English park. The
+      surroundings of the pavilion, in keeping with its own exterior, presented
+      a certain noble, dignified, and cordial effect; while the hand of a young
+      and happy woman gave to its interior a very different look from what it
+      wore under the coarse neglect of Courtecuisse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just now the rich season of the year was putting forth its natural
+      splendors. The perfume of the flowerbeds blended with the wild odor of the
+      woods; and the meadows near by, where the grass had been lately cut, sent
+      up the fragrance of new-mown hay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the countess and her guests reached the end of one of the winding
+      paths which led to the pavilion, they saw Madame Michaud, sitting in the
+      open air before the door, employed in making a baby&rsquo;s garment. The young
+      woman thus placed, thus employed, added the human charm that was needed to
+      complete the scene,&mdash;a charm so touching in its actuality that
+      painters have committed the error of endeavoring to convey it in their
+      pictures. Such artists forget that the SOUL of a landscape, if they
+      represent it truly, is so grand that the human element is crushed by it;
+      whereas such a scene added to Nature limits her to the proportions of the
+      personality, like a frame to which the mind of the spectator confines it.
+      When Poussin, the Raffaelle of France, made a landscape accessory to his
+      Shepherds of Arcadia he perceived plainly enough that man becomes
+      diminutive and abject when Nature is made the principal feature on a
+      canvas. In that picture August is in its glory, the harvest is ready, all
+      simple and strong human interests are represented. There we find realized
+      in nature the dream of many men whose uncertain life of mingled good and
+      evil harshly mixed makes them long for peace and rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us now relate, in few words, the romance of this home. Justin Michaud
+      did not reply very cordially to the advances made to him by the
+      illustrious colonel of cuirassiers when first offered the situation of
+      bailiff at Les Aigues. He was then thinking of re-entering the service.
+      But while the negotiations, which naturally took him to the Hotel
+      Montcornet, were going on, he met the countess&rsquo;s head waiting-maid. This
+      young girl, who was entrusted to Madame de Montcornet by her parents,
+      worthy farmers in the neighborhood of Alencon, had hopes of a little
+      fortune, some twenty or thirty thousand francs, when the heirs were all of
+      age. Like other farmers who marry young, and whose own parents are still
+      living, the father and mother of the girl, being pinched for immediate
+      means, placed her with the young countess. Madame de Montcornet had her
+      taught to sew and to make dresses, arranged that she should take her meals
+      alone, and was rewarded for the care she bestowed on Olympe Charel by one
+      of those unconditional attachments which are so precious to Parisians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Olympe Charel, a pretty Norman girl, rather stout, with fair hair of a
+      golden tint, an animated face lighted by intelligent eyes, and
+      distinguished by a finely curved thoroughbred nose, with a maidenly air in
+      spite of a certain swaying Spanish manner of carrying herself, possessed
+      all the points that a young girl born just above the level of the masses
+      is likely to acquire from whatever close companionship a mistress is
+      willing to allow her. Always suitably dressed, with modest bearing and
+      manner, and able to express herself well, Michaud was soon in love with
+      her,&mdash;all the more when he found that his sweetheart&rsquo;s dowry would
+      one day be considerable. The obstacles came from the countess, who could
+      not bear to part with so invaluable a maid; but when Montcornet explained
+      to her the affairs at Les Aigues, she gave way, and the marriage was no
+      longer delayed, except to obtain the consent of the parents, which, of
+      course, was quickly given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michaud, like his general, looked upon his wife as a superior being, to
+      whom he owed military obedience without a single reservation. He found in
+      the peace of his home and his busy life out-of-doors the elements of a
+      happiness soldiers long for when they give up their profession,&mdash;enough
+      work to keep his body healthy, enough fatigue to let him know the charms
+      of rest. In spite of his well-known intrepidity, Michaud had never been
+      seriously wounded, and he had none of those physical pains which often
+      sour the temper of veterans. Like all really strong men, his temper was
+      even; his wife, therefore, loved him utterly. From the time they took up
+      their abode in the pavilion, this happy home was the scene of a long
+      honey-moon in harmony with Nature and with the art whose creations
+      surrounded them,&mdash;a circumstance rare indeed! The things about us are
+      seldom in keeping with the condition of our souls!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The picture was so pretty that the countess stopped short and pointed it
+      out to Blondet and the abbe; for they could see Madame Michaud from where
+      they stood, without her seeing them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always come this way when I walk in the park,&rdquo; said the countess,
+      softly. &ldquo;I delight in looking at the pavilion and its two turtle-doves, as
+      much as I delight in a fine view.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned significantly on Blondet&rsquo;s arm, as if to make him share
+      sentiments too delicate for words but which all women feel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I were a gate-keeper at Les Aigues,&rdquo; said Blondet, smiling. &ldquo;Why!
+      what troubles you?&rdquo; he added, noticing an expression of sadness on the
+      countess&rsquo;s face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; she replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Women are always hiding some important thought when they say,
+      hypocritically, &ldquo;It is nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman may be the victim of ideas which would seem very flimsy to you,&rdquo;
+       she added, &ldquo;but which, to us, are terrible. As for me, I envy Olympe&rsquo;s
+      lot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God hears you,&rdquo; said the abbe, smiling as though to soften the sternness
+      of his remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame de Montcornet grew seriously uneasy when she noticed an expression
+      of fear and anxiety in Olympe&rsquo;s face and attitude. By the way a woman
+      draws out her needle or sets her stitches another woman understands her
+      thoughts. In fact, though wearing a rose-colored dress, with her hair
+      carefully braided about her head, the bailiff&rsquo;s wife was thinking of
+      matters that were out of keeping with her pretty dress, the glorious day,
+      and the work her hands were engaged on. Her beautiful brow, and the glance
+      she turned sometimes on the ground at her feet, sometimes on the foliage
+      around, evidently seeing nothing, betrayed some deep anxiety,&mdash;all
+      the more unconsciously because she supposed herself alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as I was envying her! What can have saddened her?&rdquo; whispered the
+      countess to the abbe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he replied in the same tone, &ldquo;tell me why man is often seized
+      with vague and unaccountable presentiments of evil in the very midst of
+      some perfect happiness?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Abbe!&rdquo; said Blondet, smiling, &ldquo;you talk like a bishop. Napoleon said,
+      &lsquo;Nothing is stolen, all is bought!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such a maxim, uttered by those imperial lips, takes the proportions of
+      society itself,&rdquo; replied the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Olympe, my dear girl, what is the matter?&rdquo; said the countess going
+      up to her former maid. &ldquo;You seem sad and thoughtful; is it a lover&rsquo;s
+      quarrel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Michaud&rsquo;s face, as she rose, changed completely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said Emile Blondet, in a fatherly tone, &ldquo;I should like to know
+      what clouds that brow of yours, in this pavilion where you are almost as
+      well lodged as the Comte d&rsquo;Artois at the Tuileries. It is like a nest of
+      nightingales in a grove! And what a husband we have!&mdash;the bravest
+      fellow of the young garde, and a handsome one, who loves us to
+      distraction! If I had known the advantages Montcornet has given you here I
+      should have left my diatribing business and made myself a bailiff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not the place for a man of your talent, monsieur,&rdquo; replied Olympe,
+      smiling at Blondet as an old acquaintance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what troubles you, dear?&rdquo; said the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, I&rsquo;m afraid&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid! of what?&rdquo; said the countess, eagerly; for the word reminded her
+      of Mouche and Fourchon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid of the wolves, is that it?&rdquo; said Emile, making Madame Michaud a
+      sign, which she did not understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, monsieur,&mdash;afraid of the peasants. I was born in Le Perche,
+      where of course there are some bad people, but I had no idea how wicked
+      people could be until I came here. I try not to meddle in Michaud&rsquo;s
+      affairs, but I do know that he distrusts the peasants so much that he goes
+      armed, even in broad daylight, when he enters the forest. He warns his men
+      to be always on the alert. Every now and then things happen about here
+      that bode no good. The other day I was walking along the wall, near the
+      source of that little sandy rivulet which comes from the forest and enters
+      the park through a culvert about five hundred feet from here,&mdash;you
+      know it, madame? it is called Silver Spring, because of the star-flowers
+      Bouret is said to have sown there. Well, I overheard the talk of two women
+      who were washing their linen just where the path to Conches crosses the
+      brook; they did not know I was there. Our house can be seen from that
+      point, and one old woman pointed it out to the other, saying: &lsquo;See what a
+      lot of money they have spent on the man who turned out Courtecuisse.&rsquo; 
+      &lsquo;They ought to pay a man well when they set him to harass poor people as
+      that man does,&rsquo; answered the other. &lsquo;Well, it won&rsquo;t be for long,&rsquo; said the
+      first one; &lsquo;the thing is going to end soon. We have a right to our wood.
+      The late Madame allowed us to take it. That&rsquo;s thirty years ago, so the
+      right is ours.&rsquo; &lsquo;We&rsquo;ll see what we shall see next winter,&rsquo; replied the
+      second. &lsquo;My man has sworn the great oath that all the gendarmerie in the
+      world sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t keep us from getting our wood; he says he means to get it
+      himself, and if the worst happens so much the worse for them!&rsquo; &lsquo;Good God!&rsquo; 
+      cried the other; &lsquo;we can&rsquo;t die of cold, and we must bake bread to eat!
+      They want for nothing, <i>those others</i>! the wife of that scoundrel of
+      a Michaud will be taken care of, I warrant you!&rsquo; And then, Madame, they
+      said such horrible things of me and of you and of Monsieur le comte; and
+      they finally declared that the farms would all be burned, and then the
+      chateau.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; said Emile, &ldquo;idle talk! They have been robbing the general, and
+      they will not be allowed to rob him any longer. These people are furious,
+      that&rsquo;s the whole of it. You must remember that the law and the government
+      are always strongest everywhere, even in Burgundy. In case of an outbreak
+      the general could bring a regiment of cavalry here, if necessary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The abbe made a sign to Madame Michaud from behind the countess, telling
+      her to say no more about her fears, which were doubtless the effect of
+      that second sight which true passion bestows. The soul, dwelling
+      exclusively on one only being, grasps in the end the moral elements that
+      surround it, and sees in them the makings of the future. The woman who
+      loves feels the same presentiments that later illuminate her motherhood.
+      Hence a certain melancholy, a certain inexplicable sadness which surprises
+      men, who are one and all distracted from any such concentration of their
+      souls by the cares of life and the continual necessity for action. All
+      true love becomes to a woman an active contemplation, which is more or
+      less lucid, more or less profound, according to her nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, my dear, show your home to Monsieur Emile,&rdquo; said the countess,
+      whose mind was so pre-occupied that she forgot La Pechina, who was the
+      ostensible object of her visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interior of the restored pavilion was in keeping with its exterior. On
+      the ground-floor the old divisions had been replaced, and the architect,
+      sent from Paris with his own workmen (a cause of bitter complaint in the
+      neighborhood against the master of Les Aigues), had made four rooms out of
+      the space. First, an ante-chamber, at the farther end of which was a
+      winding wooden staircase, behind which came the kitchen; on either side of
+      the antechamber was a dining-room and a parlor panelled in oak now nearly
+      black, with armorial bearings in the divisions of the ceilings. The
+      architect chosen by Madame de Montcornet for the restoration of Les Aigues
+      had taken care to put the furniture of this room in keeping with its
+      original decoration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time of which we write fashion had not yet given an exaggerated
+      value to the relics of past ages. The carved settee, the high-backed
+      chairs covered with tapestry, the consoles, the clocks, the tall
+      embroidery frames, the tables, the lustres, hidden away in the second-hand
+      shops of Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes were fifty per-cent cheaper than the
+      modern, ready-made furniture of the faubourg Saint Antoine. The architect
+      had therefore bought two or three cartloads of well-chosen old things,
+      which, added to a few others discarded at the chateau, made the little
+      salon of the gate of the Avonne an artistic creation. As to the
+      dining-room, he painted it in browns and hung it with what was called a
+      Scotch paper, and Madame Michaud added white cambric curtains with green
+      borders at the windows, mahogany chairs covered with green cloth, two
+      large buffets and a table, also in mahogany. This room, ornamented with
+      engravings of military scenes, was heated by a porcelain stove, on each
+      side of which were sporting-guns suspended on the walls. These adornments,
+      which cost but little, were talked of throughout the whole valley as the
+      last extreme of oriental luxury. Singular to say, they, more than anything
+      else, excited the envy of Gaubertin, and whenever he thought of his fixed
+      determination to bring Les Aigues to the hammer and cut it in pieces, he
+      reserved for himself, &ldquo;in petto,&rdquo; this beautiful pavilion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the next floor three chambers sufficed for the household. At the
+      windows were muslin curtains which reminded a Parisian of the particular
+      taste and fancy of bourgeois requirements. Left to herself in the
+      decoration of these rooms, Madame Michaud had chosen satin papers; on the
+      mantel-shelf of her bedroom&mdash;which was furnished in that vulgar style
+      of mahogany and Utrecht velvet which is seen everywhere, with its
+      high-backed bed and canopy to which embroidered muslin curtains are
+      fastened&mdash;stood an alabaster clock between two candelabra covered
+      with gauze and flanked by two vases filled with artificial flowers
+      protected by glass shades, a conjugal gift of the former cavalry sergeant.
+      Above, under the roof, the bedrooms of the cook, the man-of-all-work, and
+      La Pechina had benefited by the recent restoration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Olympe, my dear, you did not tell me all,&rdquo; said the countess, entering
+      Madame Michaud&rsquo;s bedroom, and leaving Emile and the abbe on the stairway,
+      whence they descended when they heard her shut the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Michaud, to whom the abbe had contrived to whisper a word, was now
+      anxious to say no more about her fears, which were really greater than she
+      had intimated, and she therefore began to talk of a matter which reminded
+      the countess of the object of her visit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I love Michaud, madame, as you know. Well, how would you like to have, in
+      your own house, a rival always beside you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A rival?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, madame; that swarthy girl you gave me to take care of loves Michaud
+      without knowing it, poor thing! The child&rsquo;s conduct, long a mystery to me,
+      has been cleared up in my mind for some days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, she is only thirteen years old!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that, madame. But you will admit that a woman who is three months
+      pregnant and means to nurse her child herself may have some fears; but as
+      I did not want to speak of this before those gentlemen, I talked a great
+      deal of nonsense when you questioned me,&rdquo; said the generous creature,
+      adroitly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Michaud was not really afraid of Genevieve Niseron, but for the
+      last three days she was in mortal terror of some disaster from the
+      peasantry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you discover this?&rdquo; said the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From everything and from nothing,&rdquo; replied Olympe. &ldquo;The poor little thing
+      moves with the slowness of a tortoise when she is obliged to obey me, but
+      she runs like a lizard when Justin asks for anything, she trembles like a
+      leaf at the sound of his voice; and her face is that of a saint ascending
+      to heaven when she looks at him. But she knows nothing about love; she has
+      no idea that she loves him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor child!&rdquo; said the countess with a smile and tone that were full of
+      naivete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so,&rdquo; continued Madame Michaud, answering with a smile the smile of
+      her late mistress, &ldquo;Genevieve is gloomy when Justin is out of the house;
+      if I ask her what she is thinking of she replies that she is afraid of
+      Monsieur Rigou, or some such nonsense. She thinks people envy her, though
+      she is as black as the inside of a chimney. When Justin is patrolling the
+      woods at night the child is as anxious as I am. If I open my window to
+      listen for the trot of his horse, I see a light in her room, which shows
+      me that La Pechina (as they call here) is watching and waiting too. She
+      never goes to bed, any more than I do, till he comes in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirteen!&rdquo; exclaimed the countess; &ldquo;unfortunate child!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unfortunate? no. This passion will save her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From what?&rdquo; asked Madame de Montcornet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the fate which overtakes nearly all the girls of her age in these
+      parts. Since I have taught her cleanliness she is much less ugly than she
+      was; in fact, there is something odd and wild about her which attracts
+      men. She is so changed that you would hardly recognize her. The son of
+      that infamous innkeeper of the Grand-I-Vert, Nicolas, the worst fellow in
+      the whole district, wants her; he hunts her like game. Though I can&rsquo;t
+      believe that Monsieur Rigou, who changes his servant-girls every year or
+      two is persecuting such a little fright, it is quite certain that Nicolas
+      Tonsard is. Justin told me so. It would be a dreadful fate, for the people
+      of this valley actually live like beasts; but Justin and our two servants
+      and I watch her carefully. Therefore don&rsquo;t be uneasy, madame; she never
+      goes out alone except in broad daylight, and then only as far as the gate
+      of Conches. If by chance she fell into an ambush, her feeling for Justin
+      would give her strength and wit to escape; for all women who have a
+      preference in their hearts can resist a man they hate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was about her that I came,&rdquo; said the countess, &ldquo;and I little thought
+      my visit could be so useful to you. That child, you know, can&rsquo;t remain
+      thirteen; and she will probably grow better-looking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, madame,&rdquo; replied Olympe, smiling, &ldquo;I am quite sure of Justin. What a
+      man! what a heart!&mdash;If you only knew what a depth of gratitude he
+      feels for his general, to whom, he says, he owes his happiness. He is only
+      too devoted; he would risk his life for him here, as he would on the field
+      of battle, and he forgets sometimes that he will one day be father of a
+      family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I once regretted losing you,&rdquo; said the countess, with a glance that
+      made Olympe blush; &ldquo;but I regret it no longer, for I see you happy. What a
+      sublime and noble thing is married love!&rdquo; she added, speaking out the
+      thought she had not dared express before the abbe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Virginie de Troisville dropped into a revery, and Madame Michaud kept
+      silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, at least the girl is honest, is she not?&rdquo; said the countess, as if
+      waking from a dream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As honest as I am myself, madame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Discreet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As the grave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grateful?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! madame; she has moments of humility and gentleness towards me which
+      seem to show an angelic nature. She will kiss my hands and say the most
+      upsetting things. &lsquo;Can we die of love?&rsquo; she asked me yesterday. &lsquo;Why do
+      you ask me that?&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;I want to know if love is a disease.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she really say that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I could remember her exact words I would tell you a great deal more,&rdquo;
+       replied Olympe; &ldquo;she appears to know much more than I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think, my dear, that she could take your place in my service. I
+      can&rsquo;t do without an Olympe,&rdquo; said the countess, smiling in a rather sad
+      way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet, madame,&mdash;she is too young; but in two years&rsquo; time, yes. If
+      it becomes necessary that she should go away from here I will let you
+      know. She ought to be educated, and she knows nothing of the world. Her
+      grandfather, Pere Niseron, is a man who would let his throat be cut sooner
+      than tell a lie; he would die of hunger in a baker&rsquo;s shop; he has the
+      strength of his opinions, and the girl was brought up to all such
+      principles. La Pechina would consider herself your equal; for the old man
+      has made her, as he says, a republican,&mdash;just as Pere Fourchon has
+      made Mouche a bohemian. As for me, I laugh at such ideas, but you might be
+      displeased. She would revere you as her benefactress, but never as her
+      superior. It can&rsquo;t be otherwise; she is wild and free like the swallows&mdash;her
+      mother&rsquo;s blood counts for a good deal in what she is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was her mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t madame know the story?&rdquo; said Olympe. &ldquo;Well, the son of the old
+      sexton at Blangy, a splendid fellow, so the people about here tell me, was
+      drafted at the great conscription. In 1809 young Niseron was still only an
+      artilleryman, in a corps d&rsquo;armee stationed in Illyria and Dalmatia when it
+      received sudden orders to advance through Hungary and cut off the retreat
+      of the Austrian army in case the Emperor won the battle of Wagram. Michaud
+      told me all about Dalmatia, for he was there. Niseron, being so handsome a
+      man, captivated a Montenegrin girl of Zahara among the mountains, who was
+      not averse to the French garrison. This lost her the good-will of her
+      compatriots, and life in her own town became impossible after the
+      departure of the French. Zena Kropoli, called in derision the Frenchwoman,
+      followed the artillery, and came to France after the peace. Auguste
+      Niseron asked permission to marry her; but the poor woman died at
+      Vincennes in January, 1810, after giving birth to a daughter, our
+      Genevieve. The papers necessary to make the marriage legal arrived a few
+      days later. Auguste Niseron then wrote to his father to come and take the
+      child, with a wetnurse he had got from its own country; and it was lucky
+      he did, for he was killed soon after by the bursting of a shell at
+      Montereau. Registered by the name of Genevieve and baptized at Soulanges,
+      the little Dalmatian was taken under the protection of Mademoiselle
+      Laguerre, who was touched by her story. It seems as if it were the destiny
+      of the child to be taken care of by the owners of Les Aigues! Pere Niseron
+      obtained its clothes, and now and then some help in money from
+      Mademoiselle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The countess and Olympe were just then standing before a window from which
+      they could see Michaud approaching the abbe and Blondet, who were walking
+      up and down the wide, semi-circular gravelled space which repeated on the
+      park side of the pavilion the exterior half-moon; they were conversing
+      earnestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; said the countess; &ldquo;you make me anxious to see her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is gone to carry milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard at the gate of
+      Conches; she will soon be back, for it is more than an hour since she
+      started.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll go and meet her with those gentlemen,&rdquo; said Madame de
+      Montcornet, going downstairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as the countess opened her parasol, Michaud came up and told her that
+      the general had left her a widow for probably two days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Michaud,&rdquo; said the countess, eagerly, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t deceive me, there
+      is something serious going on. Your wife is frightened, and if there are
+      many persons like Pere Fourchon, this part of the country will be
+      uninhabitable&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it were so, madame,&rdquo; answered Michaud, laughing, &ldquo;we should not be in
+      the land of the living, for nothing would be easier than to make away with
+      us. The peasant&rsquo;s grumble, that is all. But as to passing from growls to
+      blows, from pilfering to crime, they care too much for life and the free
+      air of the fields. Olympe has been saying something that frightened you,
+      but you know she is in state to be frightened at nothing,&rdquo; he added,
+      drawing his wife&rsquo;s hand under his arm and pressing it to warn her to say
+      no more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cornevin! Juliette!&rdquo; cried Madame Michaud, who soon saw the head of her
+      old cook at the window. &ldquo;I am going for a little walk; take care of the
+      premises.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two enormous dogs, who began to bark, proved that the effectiveness of the
+      garrison at the gate of the Avonne was not to be despised. Hearing the
+      dogs, Cornevin, an old Percheron, Olympe&rsquo;s foster-father, came from behind
+      the trees, showing a head such as no other region than La Perche can
+      manufacture. Cornevin was undoubtedly a Chouan in 1794 and 1799.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole party accompanied the countess along that one of the six forest
+      avenues which led directly to the gate of Conches, crossing the
+      Silver-spring rivulet. Madame de Montcornet walked in front with Blondet.
+      The abbe and Michaud and his wife talked in a low voice of the revelation
+      that had just been made to the countess of the state of the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps it is providential,&rdquo; said the abbe; &ldquo;for if madame is willing, we
+      might, perhaps, by dint of benefits and constant consideration of their
+      wants, change the hearts of these people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At about six hundred feet from the pavilion and below the brooke, the
+      countess caught sight of a broken red jug and some spilt milk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something has happened to the poor child!&rdquo; she cried, calling to Michaud
+      and his wife, who were returning to the pavilion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A misfortune like Perrette&rsquo;s,&rdquo; said Blondet, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; the poor child has been surprised and pursued, for the jug was thrown
+      outside the path,&rdquo; said the abbe, examining the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that is certainly La Pechina&rsquo;s step,&rdquo; said Michaud; &ldquo;the print of
+      the feet, which have turned, you see, quickly, shows sudden terror. The
+      child must have darted in the direction of the pavilion, trying to get
+      back there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Every one followed the traces which the bailiff pointed out as he walked
+      along examining them. Presently he stopped in the middle of the path about
+      a hundred feet from the broken jug, where the girl&rsquo;s foot-prints ceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;she turned towards the Avonne; perhaps she was headed
+      off from the direction of the pavilion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she has been gone more than an hour,&rdquo; cried Madame Michaud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alarm was in all faces. The abbe ran towards the pavilion, examining the
+      state of the road, while Michaud, impelled by the same thought, went up
+      the path towards Conches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God! she fell here,&rdquo; said Michaud, returning from a place where the
+      footsteps stopped near the brook, to that where they had turned in the
+      road, and pointing to the ground, he added, &ldquo;See!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The marks were plainly seen of a body lying at full length on the sandy
+      path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The footprints which have entered the wood are those of some one who wore
+      knitted soles,&rdquo; said the abbe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A woman, then,&rdquo; said the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Down there, by the broken pitcher, are the footsteps of a man,&rdquo; added
+      Michaud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see traces of any other foot,&rdquo; said the abbe, who was tracking
+      into the wood the prints of the woman&rsquo;s feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She must have been lifted and carried into the wood,&rdquo; cried Michaud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That can&rsquo;t be, if it is really a woman&rsquo;s foot,&rdquo; said Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be some trick of that wretch, Nicolas,&rdquo; said Michaud. &ldquo;He has
+      been watching La Pechina for some time. Only this morning I stood two
+      hours under the bridge of the Avonne to see what he was about. A woman may
+      have helped him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is dreadful!&rdquo; said the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They call it amusing themselves,&rdquo; added the priest, in a sad and grieved
+      tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! La Pechina would never let them keep her,&rdquo; said the bailiff; &ldquo;she is
+      quite able to swim across the river. I shall look along the banks. Go
+      home, my dear Olympe; and you gentlemen and madame, please to follow the
+      avenue towards Conches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a country!&rdquo; exclaimed the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are scoundrels everywhere,&rdquo; replied Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true, Monsieur l&rsquo;abbe,&rdquo; asked Madame de Montcornet, &ldquo;that I saved
+      the poor child from the clutches of Rigou?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every young girl over fiften years of age whom you may protect at the
+      chateau is saved from that monster,&rdquo; said the abbe. &ldquo;In trying to get
+      possession of La Pechina from her earliest years, the apostate sought to
+      satisfy both his lust and his vengeance. When I took Pere Niseron as
+      sexton I told him what Rigou&rsquo;s intentions were. That is one of the causes
+      of the late mayor&rsquo;s rancor against me; his hatred grew out of it. Pere
+      Niseron said to him solemnly that he would kill him if any harm came to
+      Genevieve, and he made him responsible for all attempts upon the poor
+      child&rsquo;s honor. I can&rsquo;t help thinking that this pursuit of Nicolas is the
+      result of some infernal collusion with Rigou, who thinks he can do as he
+      likes with these people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t he fear the law?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place, he is father-in-law of the prosecuting-attorney,&rdquo;
+       said the abbe, pausing to listen. &ldquo;And then,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;you have no
+      conception of the utter indifference of the rural police to what is done
+      around them. So long as the peasants do not burn the farm-houses and
+      buildings, commit no murders, poison no one, and pay their taxes, they let
+      them do as they like; and as these people are not restrained by any
+      religious principle, horrible things happen every day. On the other side
+      of the Avonne helpless old men are afraid to stay in their own homes, for
+      they are allowed nothing to eat; they wander out into the fields as far as
+      their tottering legs can bear them, knowing well that if they take to
+      their beds they will die for want of food. Monsieur Sarcus, the
+      magistrate, tells me that if they arrested and tried all criminals, the
+      costs would ruin the municipality.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he at least sees how things are?&rdquo; said Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monseigneur thoroughly understands the condition of the valley, and
+      especially the state of this district,&rdquo; continued the abbe. &ldquo;Religion
+      alone can cure such evils; the law seems to me powerless, modified as it
+      is now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were interrupted by loud cries from the woods, and the countess,
+      preceded by Emile and the abbe, sprang bravely into the brushwood in the
+      direction of the sounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI. THE OARISTYS, EIGHTEENTH ECLOGUE OF THEOCRITUS
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      LITTLE ADMIRED ON THE POLICE CALENDAR
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The sagacity of a savage, which Michaud&rsquo;s new occupation had developed
+      among his faculties, joined to an acquaintance with the passions and
+      interests of Blangy, enabled him partially to understand a third idyll in
+      the Greek style, which poor villagers like Tonsard, and middle-aged rich
+      men like Rigou, translate <i>freely</i>&mdash;to use the classic word&mdash;in
+      the depths of their country solitudes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicolas, Tonsard&rsquo;s second son, had drawn an unlucky number at a recent
+      conscription. Two years earlier his elder brother had been pronounced,
+      through the influence of Soudry, Gaubertin, and Sarcus the rich, unfit for
+      military service, on account of a pretended weakness in the muscles of the
+      right arm; but as Jean-Louis had since wielded instruments of husbandry
+      with remarkable force and skill, a good deal of talk on the subject had
+      gone through the district. Soudry, Rigou, and Gaubertin, who were the
+      special protectors of the family, had warned Tonsard that he must not
+      expect to save Nicolas, who was tall and vigorous, from being recruited if
+      he drew a fatal number. Nevertheless Gaubertin and Rigou were so well
+      aware of the importance of conciliating bold men able and willing to do
+      mischief, if properly directed against Les Aigues, that Rigou held out
+      certain hopes of safety to Tonsard and his son. The late monk was
+      occasionally visited by Catherine Tonsard who was very devoted to her
+      brother Nicolas; on one such occasion Rigou advised her to appeal to the
+      general and the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They may be glad to do you this service to cajole you; in that case, it
+      is just so much gained from the enemy,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If the Shopman refuses,
+      then we shall see what we shall see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rigou foresaw that the general&rsquo;s refusal would pass as one wrong the more
+      done by the land-owner to the peasantry, and would bind Tonsard by an
+      additional motive of gratitude to the coalition, in case the crafty mind
+      of the innkeeper could suggest to him some plausible way of liberating
+      Nicolas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicolas, who was soon to appear before the examining board, had little
+      hope of the general&rsquo;s intervention because of the harm done to Les Aigues
+      by all the members of the Tonsard family. His passion, or to speak more
+      correctly, his caprice and obstinate pursuit of La Pechina, were so
+      aggravated by the prospect of his immediate departure, which left him no
+      time to seduce her, that he resolved on attempting violence. The child&rsquo;s
+      contempt for her prosecutor, plainly shown, excited the Lovelace of the
+      Grand-I-Vert to a hatred whose fury was equalled only by his desires. For
+      the last three days he had been watching La Pechina, and the poor child
+      knew she was watched. Between Nicolas and his prey the same sort of
+      understanding existed which there is between the hunter and the game. When
+      the girl was at some little distance from the pavilion she saw Nicolas in
+      one of the paths which ran parallel to the walls of the park, leading to
+      the bridge of the Avonne. She could easily have escaped the man&rsquo;s pursuit
+      had she appealed to her grandfather; but all young girls, even the most
+      unsophisticated, have a strange fear, possibly instinctive, of trusting to
+      their natural protectors under the like circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Genevieve had heard Pere Niseron take an oath to kill any man, no matter
+      who he was, who should dare to <i>touch</i> (that was his word) his
+      granddaughter. The old man thought the child amply protected by the halo
+      of white hair and honor which a spotless life of three-score years and ten
+      had laid upon his brow. The vision of bloody scenes terrifies the
+      imagination of young girls so that they need not dive to the bottom of
+      their hearts for other numerous and inquisitive reasons which seal their
+      lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When La Pechina started with the milk which Madame Michaud had sent to the
+      daughter of Gaillard, the keeper of the gate of Conches, whose cow had
+      just calved, she looked about her cautiously, like a cat when it ventures
+      out onto the street. She saw no signs of Nicolas; she listened to the
+      silence, as the poet says, and hearing nothing, she concluded that the
+      rascal had gone to his day&rsquo;s work. The peasants were just beginning to cut
+      the rye; for they were in the habit of getting in their own harvests
+      first, so as to benefit by the best strength of the mowers. But Nicolas
+      was not a man to mind losing a day&rsquo;s work,&mdash;especially now that he
+      expected to leave the country after the fair at Soulanges and begin, as
+      the country people say, the new life of a soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When La Pechina, with the jug on her head, was about half-way, Nicolas
+      slid like a wild-cat down the trunk of an elm, among the branches of which
+      he was hiding, and fell like a thunderbolt in front of the girl, who flung
+      away her pitcher and trusted to her fleet legs to regain the pavilion. But
+      a hundred feet farther on, Catherine Tonsard, who was on the watch, rushed
+      out of the wood and knocked so violently against the flying girl that she
+      was thrown down. The violence of the fall made her unconscious. Catherine
+      picked her up and carried her into the woods to the middle of a tiny
+      meadow where the Silver-spring brook bubbled up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Catherine Tonsard was tall and strong, and in every respect the type of
+      woman whom painters and sculptors take, as the Republic did in former
+      days, for their figures of Liberty. She charmed the young men of the
+      valley of the Avonne with her voluminous bosom, her muscular legs, and a
+      waist as robust as it was flexible; with her plump arms, her eyes that
+      could flash and sparkle, and her jaunty air; with the masses of hair
+      twisted in coils around her head, her masculine forehead and her red lips
+      curling with that same ferocious smile which Eugene Delacroix and David
+      (of Angers) caught and represented so admirably. True image of the People,
+      this fiery and swarthy creature seemed to emit revolt through her piercing
+      yellow eyes, blazing with the insolence of a soldier. She inherited from
+      her father so violent a nature that the whole family, except Tonsard, and
+      all who frequented the tavern feared her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, how are you now?&rdquo; she said to La Pechina as the latter recovered
+      consciousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Catherine had placed her victim on a little mound beside the brook and was
+      bringing her to her senses with dashes of cold water. &ldquo;Where am I?&rdquo; said
+      the child, opening her beautiful black eyes through which a sun-ray seemed
+      to glide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Catherine, &ldquo;if it hadn&rsquo;t been for me you&rsquo;d have been killed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said the girl, still bewildered; &ldquo;what happened to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You stumbled over a root and fell flat in the road over there, as if
+      shot. Ha! how you did run!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was your brother who made me,&rdquo; said La Pechina, remembering Nicolas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My brother? I did not see him,&rdquo; said Catherine. &ldquo;What did he do to you,
+      poor fellow, that should make you fly as if he were a wolf? Isn&rsquo;t he
+      handsomer than your Monsieur Michaud?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said the girl, contemptuously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See here, little one; you are laying up a crop of evils for yourself by
+      loving those who persecute us. Why don&rsquo;t you keep to our side?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you come to church; and why do you steal things night and day?&rdquo;
+       asked the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you let those people talk you over!&rdquo; sneered Catherine. &ldquo;They love us,
+      don&rsquo;t they?&mdash;just as they love their food which they get out of us,
+      and they want new dishes every day. Did you ever know one of them to marry
+      a peasant-girl? Not they! Does Sarcus the rich let his son marry that
+      handsome Gatienne Giboulard? Not he, though she is the daughter of a rich
+      upholsterer. You have never been at the Tivoli ball at Soulanges in
+      Socquard&rsquo;s tavern; you had better come. You&rsquo;ll see &lsquo;em all there, these
+      bourgeois fellows, and you&rsquo;ll find they are not worth the money we shall
+      get out of them when we&rsquo;ve pulled them down. Come to the fair this year!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say it&rsquo;s fine, that Soulanges fair!&rdquo; cried La Pechina, artlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you what it is in two words,&rdquo; said Catherine. &ldquo;If you are
+      handsome, you are well ogled. What is the good of being as pretty as you
+      are if you are not admired by the men? Ha! when I heard one of them say
+      for the first time, &lsquo;What a fine sprig of a girl!&rsquo; all my blood was on
+      fire. It was at Socquard&rsquo;s, in the middle of a dance; my grandfather,
+      Fourchon, who was playing the clarionet, heard it and laughed. Tivoli
+      seemed to me as grand and fine as heaven itself. It&rsquo;s lighted up, my dear,
+      with glass lamps, and you&rsquo;ll think you are in paradise. All the gentlemen
+      of Soulanges and Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes will be there. Ever since
+      that first night I&rsquo;ve loved the place where those words rang in my ears
+      like military music. It&rsquo;s worthy giving your eternity to hear such words
+      said of you by a man you love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, perhaps,&rdquo; replied La Pechina, thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then come, and get the praise of men; you&rsquo;re sure of it!&rdquo; cried
+      Catherine. &ldquo;Ha! you&rsquo;ll have a fine chance, handsome as you are, to pick up
+      good luck. There&rsquo;s the son of Monsieur Lupin, Amaury, he might marry you.
+      But that&rsquo;s not all; if you only knew what comforts you can find there
+      against vexation and worry. Why, Socquard&rsquo;s boiled wine will make you
+      forget every trouble you ever had. Fancy! it can make you dream, and feel
+      as light as a bird. Didn&rsquo;t you ever drink boiled wine? Then you don&rsquo;t know
+      what life is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The privilege enjoyed by older persons to wet their throats with boiled
+      wine excites the curiosity of the children of the peasantry over twelve
+      years of age to such a degree that Genevieve had once put her lips to a
+      glass of boiled wine ordered by the doctor for her grandfather when ill.
+      The taste had left a sort of magic influence in the memory of the poor
+      child, which may explain the interest with which she listened, and on
+      which the evil-minded Catherine counted to carry out a plan already
+      half-successful. No doubt she was trying to bring her victim, giddy from
+      the fall, to the moral intoxication so dangerous to young women living in
+      the wilds of nature, whose imagination, deprived of other nourishment, is
+      all the more ardent when the occasion comes to exercise it. Boiled wine,
+      which Catherine had held in reserve, was to end the matter by intoxicating
+      the victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do they put into it?&rdquo; asked La Pechina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All sorts of things,&rdquo; replied Catherine, glancing back to see if her
+      brother were coming; &ldquo;in the first place, those what d&rsquo; ye call &lsquo;ems that
+      come from India, cinnamon, and herbs that change you by magic,&mdash;you
+      fancy you have everything you wish for; boiled wine makes you happy! you
+      can snap your fingers at all your troubles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should be afraid to drink boiled wine at a dance,&rdquo; said La Pechina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Afraid of what?&rdquo; asked Catherine. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s not the slightest danger.
+      Think what lots of people there will be. All the bourgeois will be looking
+      at us! Ah! it is one of those days that make up for all our misery. See it
+      and die,&mdash;for it&rsquo;s enough to satisfy any one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Monsieur and Madame Michaud would only take me!&rdquo; cried La Pechina, her
+      eyes blazing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask your grandfather Niseron; you have not given him up, poor dear man,
+      and he&rsquo;d be pleased to see you admired like a little queen. Why do you
+      like those Arminacs the Michauds better than your grandfather and the
+      Burgundians. It&rsquo;s bad to neglect your own people. Besides, why should the
+      Michauds object if your grandfather takes you to the fair? Oh! if you knew
+      what it is to reign over a man and put him beside himself, and say to him,
+      as I say to Godain, &lsquo;Go there!&rsquo; and he goes, &lsquo;Do that!&rsquo; and he does it!
+      You&rsquo;ve got it in you, little one, to turn the head of a bourgeois like
+      that son of Monsieur Lupin. Monsieur Amaury took a fancy to my sister
+      Marie because she is fair and because he is half-afraid of me; but he&rsquo;d
+      adore you, for ever since those people at the pavilion have spruced you up
+      a bit you&rsquo;ve got the airs of an empress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Adroitly leading the innocent heart to forget Nicolas and so put it off
+      its guard, Catherine distilled into the girl the insidious nectar of
+      compliments. Unawares, she touched a secret wound. La Pechina, without
+      being other than a poor peasant girl, was a specimen of alarming
+      precocity, like many another creature doomed to die as prematurely as it
+      blooms. Strange product of Burgundian and Montenegrin blood, conceived and
+      born amid the toils of war, the girl was doubtless in many ways the result
+      of her congenital circumstances. Thin, slender, brown as a tobacco leaf,
+      and short in stature, she nevertheless possessed extraordinary strength,&mdash;a
+      strength unseen by the eyes of peasants, to whom the mysteries of the
+      nervous system are unknown. Nerves are not admitted into the medical rural
+      mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At thirteen years of age Genevieve had completed her growth, though she
+      was hardly as tall as an ordinary girl of her age. Did her face owe its
+      topaz skin, so dark and yet so brilliant, dark in tone and brilliant in
+      the quality of its tissue, giving a look of age to the childish face, to
+      her Montenegrin origin, or to the ardent sun of Burgundy? Medical science
+      may dismiss the inquiry. The premature old age on the surface of the face
+      was counterbalanced by the glow, the fire, the wealth of light which made
+      the eyes two stars. Like all eyes which fill with sunlight and need,
+      perhaps, some sheltering screen, the eyelids were fringed with lashes of
+      extraordinary length. The hair, of a bluish black, long and fine and
+      abundant, crowned a brow moulded like that of the Farnese Juno. That
+      magnificent diadem of hair, those grand Armenian eyes, that celestial brow
+      eclipsed the rest of the face. The nose, though pure in form as it left
+      the brow, and graceful in curve, ended in flattened and flaring nostrils.
+      Anger increased this effect at times, and then the face wore an absolutely
+      furious expression. All the lower part of the face, like the lower part of
+      the nose, seemed unfinished, as if the clay in the hands of the divine
+      sculptor had proved insufficient. Between the lower lip and the chin the
+      space was so short that any one taking La Pechina by the chin would have
+      rubbed the lip; but the teeth prevented all notice of this defect. One
+      might almost believe those little bones had souls, so brilliant were they,
+      so polished, so transparent, so exquisitely shaped, disclosed as they were
+      by too wide a mouth, curved in lines that bore resemblance to the
+      fantastic shapes of coral. The shells of the ears were so transparent to
+      the light that in the sunshine they were rose-colored. The complexion,
+      though sun-burned, showed a marvellous delicacy in the texture of the
+      skin. If, as Buffon declared, love lies in touch, the softness of the
+      girl&rsquo;s skin must have had the penetrating and inciting influence of the
+      fragrance of daturas. The chest and indeed the whole body was alarmingly
+      thin; but the feet and hands, of alluring delicacy, showed remarkable
+      nervous power, and a vigorous organism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This mixture of diabolical imperfections and divine beauties, harmonious
+      in spite of discords, for they blended in a species of savage dignity,
+      also this triumph of a powerful soul over a feeble body, as written in
+      those eyes, made the child, when once seen, unforgettable. Nature had
+      wished to make that frail young being a woman; the circumstances of her
+      conception moulded her with the face and body of a boy. A poet observing
+      the strange creature would have declared her native clime to be Arabia the
+      Blest; she belonged to the Afrite and Genii of Arabian tales. Her face
+      told no lies. She had the soul of that glance of fire, the intellect of
+      those lips made brilliant by the bewitching teeth, the thought enshrined
+      within that glorious brow, the passion of those nostrils ready at all
+      moments to snort flame. Therefore love, such as we imagine it on burning
+      sands, in lonely deserts, filled that heart of twenty in the breast of a
+      child, doomed, like the snowy heights of Montenegro, to wear no flowers of
+      the spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observers ought now to understand how it was that La Pechina, from whom
+      passion issued by every pore, awakened in perverted natures the feelings
+      deadened by abuse; just as water fills the mouth at sight of those
+      twisted, blotched, and speckled fruits which gourmands know by experience,
+      and beneath whose skin nature has put the rarest flavors and perfumes. Why
+      did Nicolas, that vulgar laborer, pursue this being who was worthy of a
+      poet, while the eyes of the country-folk pitied her as a sickly deformity?
+      Why did Rigou, the old man, feel the passion of a young one for this girl?
+      Which of the two men was young, and which was old? Was the young peasant
+      as blase as the old usurer? Why did these two extremes of life meet in one
+      common and devilish caprice? Does the vigor that draws to its close
+      resemble the vigor that is only dawning? The moral perversities of men are
+      gulfs guarded by sphinxes; they begin and end in questions to which there
+      is no answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The exclamation, formerly quoted, of the countess, &ldquo;Piccina!&rdquo; when she
+      first saw Genevieve by the roadside, open-mouthed at sight of the carriage
+      and the elegantly dressed woman within it, will be understood. This girl,
+      almost a dwarf, of Montenegrin vigor, loved the handsome, noble bailiff,
+      as children of her age love, when they do love, that is to say, with
+      childlike passion, with the strength of youth, with the devotion which in
+      truly virgin souls gives birth to divinest poesy. Catherine had just swept
+      her coarse hands across the sensitive strings of that choice harp, strung
+      to the breaking-point. To dance before Michaud, to shine at the Soulanges
+      ball and inscribe herself on the memory of that adored master! What
+      glorious thoughts! To fling them into that volcanic head was like casting
+      live coals upon straw dried in the August sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Catherine,&rdquo; replied La Pechina, &ldquo;I am ugly and puny; my lot is to sit
+      in a corner and never to be married, but live alone in the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Men like weaklings,&rdquo; said Catherine. &ldquo;You see me, don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; she added,
+      showing her handsome, strong arms. &ldquo;I please Godain, who is a poor stick;
+      I please that little Charles, the count&rsquo;s groom; but Lupin&rsquo;s son is afraid
+      of me. I tell you it is the small kind of men who love me, and who say
+      when they see me go by at Ville-aux-Fayes and at Soulanges, &lsquo;Ha! what a
+      fine girl!&rsquo; Now YOU, that&rsquo;s another thing; you&rsquo;ll please the fine men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Catherine, if it were true&mdash;that!&rdquo; cried the bewitched child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is true, it is so true that Nicolas, the handsomest man in the canton,
+      is mad about you; he dreams of you, he is losing his mind; and yet all the
+      other girls are in love with him. He is a fine lad! If you&rsquo;ll put on a
+      white dress and yellow ribbons, and come to Socquard&rsquo;s for the midsummer
+      ball, you&rsquo;ll be the handsomest girl there, and all the fine people from
+      Ville-aux-Fayes will see you. Come, won&rsquo;t you?&mdash;See here, I&rsquo;ve been
+      cutting grass for the cows, and I brought some boiled wine in my gourd;
+      Socquard gave it me this morning,&rdquo; she added quickly, seeing the
+      half-delirious expression in La Pechina&rsquo;s eyes which women understand so
+      well. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll share it together, and you&rsquo;ll fancy the men are in love with
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      During this conversation Nicolas, choosing the grassy spots to step on,
+      had noiselessly slipped behind the trunk of an old oak near which his
+      sister had seated La Pechina. Catherine, who had now and then cast her
+      eyes behind her, saw her brother as she turned to get the boiled wine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, take some,&rdquo; she said, offering it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It burns me!&rdquo; cried Genevieve, giving back the gourd, after taking two or
+      three swallows from it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Silly child!&rdquo; replied Catherine; &ldquo;see here!&rdquo; and she emptied the rustic
+      bottle without taking breath. &ldquo;See how it slips down; it goes like a
+      sunbeam into the stomach.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I ought to be carrying the milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard,&rdquo; cried
+      Genevieve; &ldquo;and it is all spilt! Nicolas frightened me so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you like Nicolas?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered Genevieve. &ldquo;Why does he persecute me? He can get plenty
+      other girls, who are willing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if he likes you better than all the other girls in the valley&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the worse for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see you don&rsquo;t know him,&rdquo; answered Catherine, as she seized the girl
+      rapidly by the waist and flung her on the grass, holding her down in that
+      position with her strong arms. At this moment Nicolas appeared. Seeing her
+      odious persecutor, the child screamed with all her might, and drove him
+      five feet away with a violent kick in the stomach; then she twisted
+      herself like an acrobat, with a dexterity for which Catherine was not
+      prepared, and rose to run away. Catherine, still on the ground, caught her
+      by one foot and threw her headlong on her face. This frightful fall
+      stopped the brave child&rsquo;s cries for a moment. Nicolas attempted,
+      furiously, to seize his victim, but she, though giddy from the wine and
+      the fall, caught him by the throat in a grip of iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help! she&rsquo;s strangling me, Catherine,&rdquo; cried Nicolas, in a stifled voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La Pechina uttered piercing screams, which Catherine tried to choke by
+      putting her hands over the girl&rsquo;s mouth, but she bit them and drew blood.
+      It was at this moment that Blondet, the countess, and the abbe appeared at
+      the edge of the wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here are those Aigues people!&rdquo; exclaimed Catherine, helping Genevieve to
+      rise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to live?&rdquo; hissed Nicolas in the child&rsquo;s ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What then?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell them we were all playing, and I&rsquo;ll forgive you,&rdquo; said Nicolas, in a
+      threatening voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little wretch, mind you say it!&rdquo; repeated Catherine, whose glance was
+      more terrifying than her brother&rsquo;s murderous threat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I will, if you let me alone,&rdquo; replied the child. &ldquo;But anyhow I will
+      never go out again without my scissors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are to hold your tongue, or I&rsquo;ll drown you in the Avonne,&rdquo; said
+      Catherine, ferociously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are monsters,&rdquo; cried the abbe, coming up; &ldquo;you ought to be arrested
+      and taken to the assizes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! and pray what do you do in your drawing-rooms?&rdquo; said Nicolas, looking
+      full at the countess and Blondet. &ldquo;You play and amuse yourselves, don&rsquo;t
+      you? Well, so do we, in the fields which are ours. We can&rsquo;t always work;
+      we must play sometimes,&mdash;ask my sister and La Pechina.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you fight if you call that playing?&rdquo; cried Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nicolas gave him a murderous look.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak!&rdquo; said Catherine, gripping La Pechina by the forearm and leaving a
+      blue bracelet on the flesh. &ldquo;Were not we amusing ourselves?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, madame, we were amusing ourselves,&rdquo; said the child, exhausted by her
+      display of strength, and now breaking down as though she were about to
+      faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear what she says, madame,&rdquo; said Catherine, boldly, giving the
+      countess one of those looks which women give each other like dagger
+      thrusts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took her brother&rsquo;s arm, and the pair walked off, not mistaking the
+      opinion they left behind them in the minds of the three persons who had
+      interrupted the scene. Nicolas twice looked back, and twice encountered
+      Blondet&rsquo;s gaze. The journalist continued to watch the tall scoundrel, who
+      was broad in the shoulders, healthy and vigorous in complexion, with black
+      hair curling tightly, and whose rather soft face showed upon its lips and
+      around the mouth certain lines which reveal the peculiar cruelty that
+      characterizes sluggards and voluptuaries. Catherine swung her petticoat,
+      striped blue and white, with an air of insolent coquetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cain and his wife!&rdquo; said Blondet to the abbe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are nearer the truth than you know,&rdquo; replied the priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Monsieur le cure, what will they do to me?&rdquo; said La Pechina, when the
+      brother and sister were out of sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The countess, as white as her handkerchief, was so overcome that she heard
+      neither Blondet nor the abbe nor La Pechina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is enough to drive one from this terrestrial paradise,&rdquo; she said at
+      last. &ldquo;But the first thing of all is to save that child from their claws.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; said Blondet in a low voice. &ldquo;That child is a poem, a
+      living poem.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the Montenegrin girl was in a state where soul and body smoke,
+      as it were, after the conflagration of an anger which has driven all
+      forces, physical and intellectual, to their utmost tension. It is an
+      unspeakable and supreme splendor, which reveals itself only under the
+      pressure of some frenzy, be it resistance or victory, love or martyrdom.
+      She had left home in a dress with alternate lines of brown and yellow, and
+      a collarette which she pleated herself by rising before daylight; and she
+      had not yet noticed the condition of her gown soiled by her struggle on
+      the grass, and her collar torn in Catherine&rsquo;s grasp. Feeling her hair
+      hanging loose, she looked about her for a comb. At this moment Michaud,
+      also attracted by the screams, came upon the scene. Seeing her god, La
+      Pechina recovered her full strength. &ldquo;Monsieur Michaud,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;he
+      did not even touch me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cry, the look, the action of the girl were an eloquent commentary, and
+      told more to Blondet and the abbe than Madame Michaud had told the
+      countess about the passion of that strange nature for the bailiff, who was
+      utterly unconscious of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The scoundrel!&rdquo; cried Michaud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, with an involuntary and impotent gesture, such as mad men and wise
+      men can both be forced into giving, he shook his fist in the direction in
+      which he had caught sight of Nicolas disappearing with his sister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you were not playing?&rdquo; said the abbe with a searching look at La
+      Pechina.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t fret her,&rdquo; interposed the countess; &ldquo;let us return to the
+      pavilion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Genevieve, though quite exhausted, found strength under Michaud&rsquo;s eyes to
+      walk. The countess followed the bailiff through one of the by-paths known
+      to keepers and poachers where only two can go abreast, and which led to
+      the gate of the Avonne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michaud,&rdquo; said the countess when they reached the depth of the wood, &ldquo;We
+      must find some way of ridding the neighborhood of such vile people; that
+      child is actually in danger of death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the first place,&rdquo; replied Michaud, &ldquo;Genevieve shall not leave the
+      pavilion. My wife will be glad to take the nephew of Vatel, who has the
+      care of the park roads, into the house. With Gounod (that is his name) and
+      old Cornevin, my wife&rsquo;s foster-father, always at hand, La Pechina need
+      never go out without a protector.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will tell Monsieur to make up this extra expense to you,&rdquo; said the
+      countess. &ldquo;But this does not rid us of that Nicolas. How can we manage
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The means are easy and right at hand,&rdquo; answered Michaud. &ldquo;Nicolas is to
+      appear very soon before the court of appeals on the draft. The general,
+      instead of asking for his release, as the Tonsards expect, has only to
+      advise his being sent to the army&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If necessary, I will go myself,&rdquo; said the countess, &ldquo;and see my cousin,
+      de Casteran, the prefect. But until then, I tremble for that child&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words were said at the end of the path close to the open space by the
+      bridge. As they reached the edge of the bank the countess gave a cry;
+      Michaud advanced to help her, thinking she had struck her foot against a
+      stone; but he shuddered at the sight that met his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marie Tonsard and Bonnebault, seated below the bank, seemed to be
+      conversing, but were no doubt hiding there to hear what passed. Evidently
+      they had left the wood as the party advanced towards them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bonnebault, a tall, wiry fellow, had lately returned to Conches after six
+      years&rsquo; service in the cavalry, with a permanent discharge due to his evil
+      conduct,&mdash;his example being likely to ruin better men. He wore
+      moustachios and a small chin-tuft; a peculiarity which, joined to his
+      military carriage, made him the reigning fancy of all the girls in the
+      valley. His hair, in common with that of other soldiers, was cut very
+      short behind, but he frizzed it on the top of his head, brushing up the
+      ends with a dandy air; on it his foraging cap was jauntily tilted to one
+      side. Compared to the peasants, who were mostly in rags, like Mouche and
+      Fourchon, he seemed gorgeous in his linen trousers, boots, and short
+      waistcoat. These articles, bought at the time of his liberation, were, it
+      is true, somewhat the worse for a life in the fields; but this village
+      cock-of-the-walk had others in reserve for balls and holidays. He lived,
+      it must be said, on the gifts of his female friends, which, liberal as
+      they were, hardly sufficed for the libations, the dissipations, and the
+      squanderings of all kinds which resulted from his intimacy with the Cafe
+      de la Paix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cowardice is like courage; of both there are various kinds. Bonnebault
+      would have fought like a brave soldier, but he was weak in presence of his
+      vices and his desires. Lazy as a lizard, that is to say, active only when
+      it suited him, without the slightest decency, arrogant and base, able for
+      much but neglectful of all, the sole pleasure of this &ldquo;breaker of hearts
+      and plates,&rdquo; to use a barrack term, was to do evil or inflict damage. Such
+      a nature does as much harm in rural communities as it does in a regiment.
+      Bonnebault, like Tonsard and like Fourchon, desired to live well and do
+      nothing; and he had his plans laid. Making the most of his gallant
+      appearance with increasing success, and of his talents for billiards with
+      alternate loss and gain, he flattered himself that the day would come when
+      he could marry Mademoiselle Aglae Socquard, only daughter of the
+      proprietor of the Cafe de la Paix, a resort which was to Soulanges what,
+      relatively speaking, Ranelagh is to the Bois de Boulogne. To get into the
+      business of tavern-keeping, to manage the public balls, what a fine career
+      for the marshal&rsquo;s baton of a ne&rsquo;er-do-well! These morals, this life, this
+      nature, were so plainly stamped upon the face of the low-lived profligate
+      that the countess was betrayed into an exclamation when she beheld the
+      pair, for they gave her the sensation of beholding snakes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marie, desperately in love with Bonnebault, would have robbed for his
+      benefit. Those moustachios, the swaggering gait of a trooper, the fellow&rsquo;s
+      smart clothes, all went to her heart as the manners and charms of a de
+      Marsay touch that of a pretty Parisian. Each social sphere has its own
+      standard of distinction. The jealous Marie rebuffed Amaury Lupin, the
+      other dandy of the little town, her mind being made up to become Madame
+      Bonnebault.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey! you there, hi! come on!&rdquo; cried Nicolas and Catherine from afar,
+      catching sight of Marie and Bonnebault.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sharp call echoed through the woods like the cry of savages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seeing the pair at his feet, Michaud shuddered and deeply repented having
+      spoken. If Bonnebault and Marie Tonsard had overheard the conversation,
+      nothing but harm could come of it. This event, insignificant as it seems,
+      was destined, in the irritated state of feeling then existing between Les
+      Aigues and the peasantry, to have a decisive influence on the fate of all,&mdash;just
+      as victory or defeat in battle sometimes depends upon a brook which
+      shepherds jump while cannon are unable to pass it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gallantly bowing to the countess, Bonnebault passed Marie&rsquo;s arm through
+      his own with a conquering air and took himself off triumphantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The King of Hearts of the valley,&rdquo; muttered Michaud to the countess. &ldquo;A
+      dangerous man. When he loses twenty francs at billiards he would murder
+      Rigou to get them back. He loves a crime as he does a pleasure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have seen enough for to-day; take me home, gentlemen,&rdquo; murmured the
+      countess, putting her hand on Emile&rsquo;s arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She bowed sadly to Madame Michaud, after watching La Pechina safely back
+      to the pavilion. Olympe&rsquo;s depression was transferred to her mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, madame,&rdquo; said the abbe, as they continued their way, &ldquo;can it be that
+      the difficulty of doing good is about to deter you? For the last five
+      years I have slept on a pallet in a parsonage which has no furniture; I
+      say mass in a church without believers; I preach to no hearers; I minister
+      without fees or salary; I live on the six hundred francs the law allows
+      me, asking nothing of my bishop, and I give the third of that in charity.
+      Still, I am not hopeless. If you knew what my winters are in this place
+      you would understand the strength of those words,&mdash;I am not hopeless.
+      I keep myself warm with the belief that we can save this valley and bring
+      it back to God. No matter for ourselves, madame; think of the future! If
+      it is our duty to say to the poor, &lsquo;Learn how to be poor; that is, how to
+      work, to endure, to strive,&rsquo; it is equally our duty to say to the rich,
+      &lsquo;Learn your duty as prosperous men,&rsquo;&mdash;that is to say, &lsquo;Be wise, be
+      intelligent in your benevolence; pious and virtuous in the place to which
+      God has called you.&rsquo; Ah! madame, you are only the steward of Him who
+      grants you wealth; if you do not obey His behests you will never transmit
+      to your children the prosperity He gives you. You will rob your posterity.
+      If you follow in the steps of that poor singer&rsquo;s selfishness, which caused
+      the evils that now terrify us, you will bring back the scaffolds on which
+      your fathers died for the faults of their fathers. To do good humbly, in
+      obscurity, in country solitudes, as Rigou now does evil,&mdash;ah! that
+      indeed is prayer in action and dear to God. If in every district three
+      souls only would work for good, France, our country, might be saved from
+      the abyss that yawns; into which we are rushing headlong, through
+      spiritual indifference to all that is not our own self-interest. Change!
+      you must change your morals, change your ethics, and that will change your
+      laws.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though deeply moved as she listened to this grand utterance of true
+      catholic charity, the countess answered in the fatal words, &ldquo;We will
+      consider it,&rdquo;&mdash;words of the rich, which contain that promise to the
+      ear which saves their purses and enables them to stand with arms crossed
+      in presence of all disaster, under pretext that they were powerless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hearing those words, the abbe bowed to Madame de Montcornet and turned off
+      into a path which led him direct to the gate of Blangy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Belshazzar&rsquo;s feast is the everlasting symbol of the dying days of a
+      caste, of an oligarchy, of a power!&rdquo; he thought as he walked away. &ldquo;My
+      God! if it be Thy will to loose the poor like a torrent to reform society,
+      I know, I comprehend, why it is that Thou hast abandoned the wealthy to
+      their blindness!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII. SHOWETH HOW THE TAVERN IS THE PEOPLE&rsquo;S PARLIAMENT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Old Mother Tonsard&rsquo;s screams brought a number of people from Blangy to
+      know what was happening at the Grand-I-Vert, the distance from the village
+      to the inn not being greater than that from the inn to the gate of Blangy.
+      One of these inquiring visitors was old Niseron, La Pechina&rsquo;s grandfather,
+      who was on his way, after ringing the second Angelus, to dig the vine-rows
+      in his last little bit of ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bent by toil, with pallid face and silvery hair, the old vinedresser, now
+      the sole representative of civic virtue in the community, had been, during
+      the Revolution, president of the Jacobin club at Ville-aux-Fayes, and a
+      juror in the revolutionary tribunal of the district. Jean-Francois
+      Niseron, carved out of the wood that the apostles were made of, was of the
+      type of Saint Peter; whom painters and sculptors have united in
+      representing with the square brow of the people, the thick, naturally
+      curling hair of the laborer, the muscles of the man of toil, the
+      complexion of a fisherman; with the large nose, the shrewd, half-mocking
+      lips that scoff at fate, the neck and shoulders of the strong man who cuts
+      his wood to cook his dinner while the doctrinaires of his opinions talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such, at forty years of age on the breaking out of the Revolution, was
+      this man, strong as iron, pure as gold. Advocate of the people, he
+      believed in a republic through the very roll of that name, more formidable
+      in sound perhaps than in reality. He believed in the republic of
+      Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the brotherhood of man, in the exchange of noble
+      sentiments, in the proclamation of virtue, in the choice of merit without
+      intrigue,&mdash;in short, in all that the narrow limits of one
+      arrondissement like Sparta made possible, and which the vast proportions
+      of an empire make chimerical. He signed his beliefs with his blood,&mdash;his
+      only son went to war; he did more, he signed them with the prosperity of
+      his life,&mdash;last sacrifice of self. Nephew and sole heir of the curate
+      of Blangy, the then all-powerful tribune might have enforced his rights
+      and recovered the property left by the priest to his pretty servant-girl,
+      Arsene; but he respected his uncle&rsquo;s wishes and accepted poverty, which
+      came upon him as rapidly as the fall of his cherished republic came upon
+      France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never a farthing&rsquo;s worth, never so much as the branch of a tree belonging
+      to another passed into the hands of this notable republican, who would
+      have made the republic acceptable to the world if he and such as he could
+      have guided it. He refused to buy the national domains; he denied the
+      right of the Republic to confiscate property. In reply to all demands of
+      the committee of public safety he asserted that the virtue of citizens
+      would do for their sacred country what low political intriguers did for
+      money. This patriot of antiquity publicly reproved Gaubertin&rsquo;s father for
+      his secret treachery, his underhand bargaining, his malversations. He
+      reprimanded the virtuous Mouchon, that representative of the people whose
+      virtue was nothing more nor less than incapacity,&mdash;as it is with so
+      many other legislators who, gorged with the greatest political resources
+      that any nation ever gave, armed with the whole force of a people, are
+      still unable to bring forth from them the grandeur which Richelieu wrung
+      for France out of the weakness of a king. Consequently, citizen Niseron
+      became a living reproach to the people about him. They endeavored to put
+      him out of sight and mind with the reproachful remark, &ldquo;Nothing satisfies
+      that man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The patriot peasant returned to his cot at Blangy and watched the
+      destruction, one by one, of his illusions; he saw his republic come to an
+      end at the heels of an emperor, while he himself fell into utter poverty,
+      to which Rigou stealthily managed to reduce him. And why? Because Niseron
+      had never been willing to accept anything from him. Reiterated refusals
+      showed the ex-priest in what profound contempt the nephew of the curate
+      held him; and now that icy scorn was revenged by the terrible threat as to
+      his little granddaughter, about which the Abbe Brossette spoke to the
+      countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The old man had composed in his own mind a history of the French republic,
+      filled with the glorious features which gave immortality to that heroic
+      period to the exclusion of all else. The infamous deeds, the massacres,
+      the spoliations, his virtuous soul ignored; he admired, with a single
+      mind, the devotedness of the people, the &ldquo;Vengeur,&rdquo; the gifts to the
+      nation, the uprising of the country to defend its frontier; and he still
+      pursued his dream that he might sleep in peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Revolution produced many poets like old Niseron, who sang their poems
+      in the country solitudes, in the army, openly or secretly, by deeds buried
+      beneath the whirlwind of that storm, just as the wounded left behind to
+      die in the great wars of the empire cried out, &ldquo;Long live the Emperor!&rdquo;
+       This sublimity of soul belongs especially to France. The Abbe Brossette
+      respected the convictions of the old man, who became simply but deeply
+      attached to the priest from hearing him say, &ldquo;The true republic is in the
+      Gospel.&rdquo; The stanch republican carried the cross, and wore the sexton&rsquo;s
+      robe, half-red, half-black, and was grave and dignified in church,&mdash;supporting
+      himself by the triple functions with which he was invested by the abbe,
+      who was able to give the fine old man, not, to be sure, enough to live on,
+      but enough to keep him from dying of hunger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Niseron, the Aristides of Blangy, spoke little, like all noble dupes who
+      wrap themselves in the mantle of resignation; but he was never silent
+      against evil, and the peasants feared him as thieves fear the police. He
+      seldom came more than six times a year to the Grand-I-Vert, though he was
+      always warmly welcomed there. The old man cursed the want of charity of
+      the rich,&mdash;their selfishness disgusted him; and through this fiber of
+      his mind he seemed to the peasants to belong to them; they were in the
+      habit of saying, &ldquo;Pere Niseron doesn&rsquo;t like the rich; he&rsquo;s one of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The civic crown won by this noble life throughout the valley lay in these
+      words: &ldquo;That good old Niseron! there&rsquo;s not a more honest man.&rdquo; Often taken
+      as umpire in certain kinds of disputes, he embodied the meaning of that
+      archaic term,&mdash;the village elder. Always extremely clean, though
+      threadbare, he wore breeches, coarse woollen stockings, hob-nailed shoes,
+      the distinctively French coat with large buttons and the broad-brimmed
+      felt hat to which all old peasants cling; but for daily wear he kept a
+      blue jacket so patched and darned that it looked like a bit of tapestry.
+      The pride of a man who feels he is free, and knows he is worthy of
+      freedom, gave to his countenance and his whole bearing a <i>something</i>
+      that was inexpressibly noble; you would have felt he wore a robe, not
+      rags.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey! what&rsquo;s happening so unusual?&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I heard the noise down here
+      from the belfry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They told him of Vatel&rsquo;s attack on the old woman, talking all at once
+      after the fashion of country-people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she didn&rsquo;t cut the tree, Vatel was wrong; but if she did cut it, you
+      have done two bad actions,&rdquo; said Pere Niseron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take some wine,&rdquo; said Tonsard, offering a full glass to the old man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we start?&rdquo; said Vermichel to the sheriff&rsquo;s officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Brunet, &ldquo;we must do without Pere Fourchon and take the
+      assistant at Conches. Go on before me; I have a paper to carry to the
+      chateau. Rigou has gained his second suit, and I&rsquo;ve got to deliver the
+      verdict.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, Monsieur Brunet, all the livelier for a couple of glasses of
+      brandy, mounted his gray mare after saying good-bye to Pere Niseron; for
+      the whole valley were desirous in their hearts of the good man&rsquo;s esteem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No science, not even that of statistics, can explain the rapidity with
+      which news flies in the country, nor how it spreads over those ignorant
+      and untaught regions which are, in France, a standing reproach to the
+      government and to capitalists. Contemporaneous history can show that a
+      famous banker, after driving post-horses to death between Waterloo and
+      Paris (everybody knows why&mdash;he gained what the Emperor had lost, a
+      commission!) carried the fatal news only three hours in advance of rumor.
+      So, not an hour after the encounter between old mother Tonsard and Vatel,
+      a number of the customers of the Grand-I-Vert assembled there to hear the
+      tale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first to come was Courtecuisse, in whom you would scarcely have
+      recognized the once jovial forester, the rubicund do-nothing, whose wife
+      made his morning coffee as we have before seen. Aged, and thin, and
+      haggard, he presented to all eyes a lesson that no one learned. &ldquo;He tried
+      to climb higher than the ladder,&rdquo; was what his neighbors said when others
+      pitied him and blamed Rigou. &ldquo;He wanted to be a bourgeois himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact, Courtecuisse did intend to pass for a bourgeois in buying the
+      Bachelerie, and he even boasted of it; though his wife went about the
+      roads gathering up the horse-droppings. She and Courtecuisse got up before
+      daylight, dug their garden, which was richly manured, and obtained several
+      yearly crops from it, without being able to do more than pay the interest
+      due to Rigou for the rest of the purchase-money. Their daughter, who was
+      living at service in Auxerre, sent them her wages; but in spite of all
+      their efforts, in spite of this help, the last day for the final payment
+      was approaching, and not a penny in hand with which to meet it. Madame
+      Courtecuisse, who in former times occasionally allowed herself a bottle of
+      boiled wine or a bit of roast meat, now drank nothing but water.
+      Courtecuisse was afraid to go to the Grand-I-Vert lest he should have to
+      leave three sous behind him. Deprived of power, he had lost his privilege
+      of free drinks, and he bitterly complained, like all other fools, of man&rsquo;s
+      ingratitude. In short, he found, according to the experience of all
+      peasants bitten with the demon of proprietorship, that toil had increased
+      and food decreased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Courtecuisse has done too much to the property,&rdquo; the people said,
+      secretly envying his position. &ldquo;He ought to have waited till he had paid
+      the money down and was master before he put up those fruit palings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With the help of his wife he had managed to manure and cultivate the three
+      acres of land sold to him by Rigou, together with the garden adjoining the
+      house, which was beginning to be productive; and he was in danger of being
+      turned out of it all. Clothed in rags like Fourchon, poor Courtecuisse,
+      who lately wore the boots and gaiters of a huntsman, now thrust his feet
+      into sabots and accused &ldquo;the rich&rdquo; of Les Aigues of having caused his
+      destitution. These wearing anxieties had given to the fat little man and
+      his once smiling and rosy face a gloomy and dazed expression, as though he
+      were ill from the effects of poison or with some chronic malady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter with you, Monsieur Courtecuisse; is your tongue tied?&rdquo;
+       asked Tonsard, as the man continued silent after he had told him about the
+      battle which had just taken place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; cried Madame Tonsard; &ldquo;he needn&rsquo;t complain of the midwife who
+      cut his string,&mdash;she made a good job of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is enough to make a man dumb, thinking from morning till night of some
+      way to escape Rigou,&rdquo; said the premature old man, gloomily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; said old Mother Tonsard, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve got a pretty daughter, seventeen
+      years old. If she&rsquo;s a good girl you can easily manage matters with that
+      old jail bird&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We sent her to Auxerre two years ago to Madame Mariotte the elder, to
+      keep her out of harm&rsquo;s way; I&rsquo;d rather die than&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a fool you are!&rdquo; said Tonsard, &ldquo;look at my girls,&mdash;are they any
+      the worse? He who dares to say they are not as virtuous as marble images
+      will have to do with my gun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;ll be hard to have to come to that,&rdquo; said Courtecuisse, shaking his
+      head. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather earn the money by shooting one of those Arminacs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I call it better for a girl to save a father than to wrap up her
+      virtue and let it mildew,&rdquo; retorted the innkeeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tonsard felt a sharp tap on his shoulder, delivered by Pere Niseron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is not a right thing to say!&rdquo; cried the old man. &ldquo;A father is the
+      guardian of the honor of his family. It is by behaving as you do that
+      scorn and contempt are brought upon us; it is because of such conduct that
+      the People are accused of being unfit for liberty. The People should set
+      an example of civic virtue and honor to the rich. You all sell yourselves
+      to Rigou for gold; and if you don&rsquo;t sell him your daughters, at any rate
+      you sell him your honor,&mdash;and it&rsquo;s wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just see what a position Courtecuisse is in,&rdquo; said Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See what a position I am in,&rdquo; replied Pere Niseron; &ldquo;but I sleep in
+      peace; there are no thorns in my pillow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him talk, Tonsard,&rdquo; whispered his wife, &ldquo;you know they&rsquo;re just <i>his
+      notions</i>, poor dear man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Bonnebault and Marie, Catherine and her brother came in at this moment in
+      a state of exasperation, which had begun with Nicolas&rsquo;s failure, and was
+      raised to the highest pitch by Michaud&rsquo;s advice to the countess about
+      Bonnebault. As Nicolas entered the tavern he was uttering frightful
+      threats against the Michaud family and Les Aigues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The harvest&rsquo;s coming; well, I vow I&rsquo;ll not go before I&rsquo;ve lighted my pipe
+      at their wheat-stacks,&rdquo; he cried, striking his fist on the table as he sat
+      down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mustn&rsquo;t yelp like that before people,&rdquo; said Godain, showing him Pere
+      Niseron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the old fellow tells, I&rsquo;ll wring his neck,&rdquo; said Catherine. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s had
+      his day, that old peddler of foolish reasons! They call him virtuous; it&rsquo;s
+      his temperament that keeps him so, that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strange and noteworthy sight!&mdash;that of those lifted heads, that group
+      of persons gathered in the reeking hovel, while old Mother Tonsard stood
+      sentinel at the door as security for the secret words of the drinkers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all those faces, that of Godain, Catherine&rsquo;s suitor, was perhaps the
+      most alarming, though the least pronounced. Godain,&mdash;a miser without
+      money,&mdash;the cruelest of misers, for he who seeks money surely takes
+      precedence of him who hoards it, one turning his eagerness within himself,
+      the other looking outside with terrible intentness,&mdash;Godain
+      represented the type of the majority of peasant faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a journeyman, small in frame, and saved from the draft by not
+      attaining the required military height; naturally lean and made more so by
+      hard work and the enforced sobriety under which reluctant workers like
+      Courtecuisse succumb. His face was no bigger than a man&rsquo;s fist, and was
+      lighted by a pair of yellow eyes with greenish strips and brown spots, in
+      which a thirst for the possession of property was mingled with a
+      concupiscence which had no heat,&mdash;for desire, once at the
+      boiling-point, had now stiffened like lava. His skin, brown as that of a
+      mummy, was glued to his temples. His scanty beard bristled among his
+      wrinkles like stubble in the furrows. Godain never perspired, he
+      reabsorbed his substance. His hairy hands, formed like claws, nervous,
+      never still, seemed to be made of old wood. Though scarcely twenty-seven
+      years of age, white lines were beginning to show in his rusty black hair.
+      He wore a blouse, through the breast opening of which could be seen a
+      shirt of coarse linen, so black that he must have worn it a month and
+      washed it himself in the Thune. His sabots were mended with old iron. The
+      original stuff of his trousers was unrecognizable from the darns and the
+      infinite number of patches. On his head was a horrible cap, evidently cast
+      off and picked up in the doorway of some bourgeois house in
+      Ville-aux-Fayes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Clear-sighted enough to estimate the elements of good fortune that centred
+      in Catherine Tonsard, his ambition was to succeed her father at the
+      Grand-I-Vert. He made use of all his craftiness and all his actual powers
+      to capture her; he promised her wealth, he also promised her the license
+      her mother had enjoyed; besides this, he offered his prospective
+      father-in-law an enormous rental, five hundred francs a year, for his inn,
+      until he could buy him out, trusting to an agreement he had made with
+      Monsieur Brunet to pay these costs by notes on stamped paper. By trade a
+      journeyman tool-maker, this gnome worked for the wheelwrights when work
+      was plentiful, but he also hired himself out for any extra labor which was
+      well paid. Though he possessed, unknown to the whole neighborhood,
+      eighteen hundred francs now in Gaubertin&rsquo;s hands, he lived like a beggar,
+      slept in a barn, and gleaned at the harvests. He wore Gaubertin&rsquo;s receipt
+      for his money sewn into the waist-belt of his trousers,&mdash;having it
+      renewed every year with its own added interest and the amount of his
+      savings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey! what do I care,&rdquo; cried Nicolas, replying to Godain&rsquo;s prudent advice
+      not to talk before Niseron. &ldquo;If I&rsquo;m doomed to be a soldier I&rsquo;d rather the
+      sawdust of the basket sucked up my blood than have it dribbled out drop by
+      drop in the battles. I&rsquo;ll deliver this country of at least one of those
+      Arminacs that the devil has launched upon us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And he related what he called Michaud&rsquo;s plot against him, which Marie and
+      Bonnebault had overheard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you expect France to find soldiers?&rdquo; said the white-haired old
+      man, rising and standing before Nicolas during the silence which followed
+      the utterance of this threat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We serve our time and come home again,&rdquo; remarked Bonnebault, twirling his
+      moustache.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Observing that all the worst characters of the neighborhood were
+      collecting, Pere Niseron shook his head and left the tavern, after
+      offering a farthing to Madame Tonsard in payment for his glass of wine.
+      When the worthy man had gone down the steps a movement of relief and
+      satisfaction passed through the assembled drinkers which would have told
+      whoever watched them that each man in that company felt he was rid of the
+      living image of his own conscience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what do you say to all that, hey, Courtecuisse?&rdquo; asked Vaudoyer,
+      who had just come in, and to whom Tonsard had related Vatel&rsquo;s attempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Courtecuisse clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and set his
+      glass on the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Vatel put himself in the wrong,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If I were Mother Tonsard, I&rsquo;d
+      give myself a few wounds and go to bed and say I was ill, and have that
+      Shopman and his keeper up before the assizes and get twenty crowns
+      damages. Monsieur Sarcus would give them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In any case the Shopman would give them to stop the talk it would make,&rdquo;
+       said Godain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vaudoyer, the former field-keeper, a man five feet six inches tall, with a
+      face pitted with the small-pox and furrowed like a nut-cracker, kept
+      silence with a hesitating air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you old ninny, does that ruffle you?&rdquo; asked Tonsard, attracted by
+      the idea of damages. &ldquo;If they had broken twenty crowns&rsquo; worth of my
+      mother&rsquo;s bones we could turn it into good account; we might make a fine
+      fuss for three hundred francs; Monsieur Gourdon would go to Les Aigues and
+      tell them that the mother had got a broken hip&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And break it, too,&rdquo; interrupted Madame Tonsard; &ldquo;they do that in Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would cost too much,&rdquo; remarked Godain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been too long among the people who rule us to believe that matters
+      will go as you want them,&rdquo; said Vaudoyer at last, remembering his past
+      official intercourse with the courts and the gendarmerie. &ldquo;If it were at
+      Soulanges, now, it might be done; Monsieur Soudry represents the
+      government there, and he doesn&rsquo;t wish well to the Shopman; but if you
+      attack the Shopman and Vatel they&rsquo;ll defend themselves viciously; they&rsquo;ll
+      say, &lsquo;The woman was to blame; she had a tree, otherwise she would have let
+      her bundle be examined on the highroad; she wouldn&rsquo;t have run away; if an
+      accident happened to her it was through her own fault.&rsquo; No, you can&rsquo;t
+      trust to that plan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Shopman didn&rsquo;t resist when I sued him,&rdquo; said Courtecuisse; &ldquo;he paid
+      me at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to Soulanges, if you like,&rdquo; said Bonnebault, &ldquo;and consult
+      Monsieur Gourdon, the clerk of the court, and you shall know to-night if
+      <i>there&rsquo;s money in it</i>.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are only making an excuse to be after that big goose of a girl,
+      Socquard&rsquo;s daughter,&rdquo; said Marie Tonsard, giving Bonnebault a slap on the
+      shoulder that made his lungs hum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then a verse of an old Burgundian Christmas carol was heard:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;One fine moment of his life
+  Was at the wedding feast;
+  He changed the water into wine,&mdash;
+  Madeira of the best.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Every one recognized the vinous voice of old Fourchon, to whom the verse
+      must have been peculiarly agreeable; Mouche accompanied in his treble
+      tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! they&rsquo;re full!&rdquo; cried old Mother Tonsard to her daughter-in-law; &ldquo;your
+      father is as red as a grid-iron, and that chip o&rsquo; the block as pink as
+      vine-shoot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your healths!&rdquo; cried the old man, &ldquo;and a fine lot of scoundrels you are!
+      All hail!&rdquo; he said to his granddaughter, whom he spied kissing Bonnebault,
+      &ldquo;hail, Marie, full of vice! Satan is with three; cursed art thou among
+      women, etcetera. All hail, the company present! you are done for, every
+      one of you! you may just say good-bye to your sheaves. I being news. I
+      always told you the rich would crush us; well now, the Shopman is going to
+      have the law of you! Ha! see what it is to struggle against those
+      bourgeois fellows, who have made so many laws since they got into power
+      that they&rsquo;ve a law to enforce every trick they play&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A violent hiccough gave a sudden turn to the ideas of the distinguished
+      orator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Vermichel were only here I&rsquo;d blow in his gullet, and he&rsquo;d get an idea
+      of sherry wine. Hey! what a wine it is! If I wasn&rsquo;t a Burgundian I&rsquo;d be a
+      Spaniard! It&rsquo;s God&rsquo;s own wine! the pope says mass with it&mdash;Hey! I&rsquo;m
+      young again! Say, Courtecuisse! if your wife were only here we&rsquo;d be young
+      together. Don&rsquo;t tell me! Spanish wine is worth a dozen of boiled wine.
+      Let&rsquo;s have a revolution if it&rsquo;s only to empty the cellars!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what&rsquo;s your news, papa?&rdquo; said Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;ll be no harvest for you; the Shopman has given orders to stop the
+      gleaning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop the gleaning!&rdquo; cried the whole tavern, with one voice, in which the
+      shrill tones of the four women predominated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mouche, &ldquo;he is going to issue an order, and Groison is to take
+      it round, and post it up all over the canton. No one is to glean except
+      those who have pauper certificates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what&rsquo;s more,&rdquo; said Fourchon, &ldquo;the folks from the other districts
+      won&rsquo;t be allowed here at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; cried Bonnebault, &ldquo;do you mean to tell me that neither my
+      grandmother nor I, nor your mother, Godain, can come here and glean?
+      Here&rsquo;s tomfoolery for you; a pretty show of authority! Why, the fellow is
+      a devil let loose from hell,&mdash;that scoundrel of a mayor!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall you glean whether or no, Godain?&rdquo; said Tonsard to the journeyman
+      wheelwright, who was saying a few words to Catherine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I? I&rsquo;ve no property; I&rsquo;m a pauper,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;I shall ask for a
+      certificate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did they give my father for his otter, bibi?&rdquo; said Madame Tonsard to
+      Mouche.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though nearly at his last gasp from an over-taxed digestion and two
+      bottles of wine, Mouche, sitting on Madame Tonsard&rsquo;s lap, laid his head on
+      his aunt&rsquo;s neck and whispered slyly in her ear:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, but he has got gold. If you&rsquo;ll feed me high for a month,
+      perhaps I can find out his hiding-place; he has one, I know that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father&rsquo;s got gold!&rdquo; whispered La Tonsard to her husband, whose voice was
+      loudest in the uproar of the excited discussion, in which all present took
+      part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! here&rsquo;s Groison,&rdquo; cried the old sentinel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perfect silence reigned in the tavern. When Groison had got to a safe
+      distance, Mother Tonsard made a sign, and the discussion began again on
+      the question as to whether they should persist in gleaning, as before,
+      without a certificate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have to give in,&rdquo; said Pere Fourchon; &ldquo;for the Shopman has gone to
+      see the prefect and get troops to enforce the order. They&rsquo;ll shoot you
+      like dogs,&mdash;and that&rsquo;s what we are!&rdquo; cried the old man, trying to
+      conquer the thickening of his speech produced by his potations of sherry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This fresh announcement, absurd as it was, made all the drinkers
+      thoughtful; they really believed the government capable of slaughtering
+      them without pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember just such troubles near Toulouse, when I was stationed there,&rdquo;
+       said Bonnebault. &ldquo;We were marched out, and the peasants were cut and
+      slashed and arrested. Everybody laughed to see them try to resist cavalry.
+      Ten were sent to the galleys, and eleven put in prison; the whole thing
+      was crushed. Hey! what? why, soldiers are soldiers, and you are nothing
+      but civilian beggars; they&rsquo;ve a right, they think, to sabre peasants, the
+      devil take you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; said Tonsard, &ldquo;what is there in all that to frighten you
+      like kids? What can they get out of my mother and daughters? Put &lsquo;em in
+      prison? well, then they must feed them; and the Shopman can&rsquo;t imprison the
+      whole country. Besides, prisoners are better fed at the king&rsquo;s expense
+      than they are at their own; and they&rsquo;re kept warmer, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are a pack of fools!&rdquo; roared Fourchon. &ldquo;Better gnaw at the bourgeois
+      than attack him in front; otherwise, you&rsquo;ll get your backs broke. If you
+      like the galleys, so be it,&mdash;that&rsquo;s another thing! You don&rsquo;t work as
+      hard there as you do in the fields, true enough; but you don&rsquo;t have your
+      liberty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps it would be well,&rdquo; said Vaudoyer, who was among the more valiant
+      in counsel, &ldquo;if some of us risked our skins to deliver the neighborhood of
+      that Languedoc fellow who has planted himself at the gate of the Avonne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do Michaud&rsquo;s business for him?&rdquo; said Nicolas; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m good for that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things are not ripe for it,&rdquo; said old Fourchon. &ldquo;We should risk too much,
+      my children. The best way is to make ourselves look miserable and cry
+      famine; then the Shopman and his wife will want to help us, and you&rsquo;ll get
+      more out of them that way than you will by gleaning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are all blind moles,&rdquo; shouted Tonsard, &ldquo;let &lsquo;em pick a quarrel with
+      their law and their troops, they can&rsquo;t put the whole country in irons, and
+      we&rsquo;ve plenty of friends at Ville-aux-Fayes and among the old lords who&rsquo;ll
+      sustain us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said Courtecuisse; &ldquo;none of the other land-owners complain,
+      it is only the Shopman; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles
+      and others, they are satisfied. When I think that if that cuirassier had
+      only had the courage to let himself be killed like the rest I should still
+      be happy at the gate of the Avonne, and that it was he that turned my life
+      topsy-turvy, it just puts me beside myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won&rsquo;t call out the troops for a Shopman who has set every one in the
+      district against him,&rdquo; said Godain. &ldquo;The fault&rsquo;s his own; he tried to ride
+      over everybody here, and upset everything; and the government will just
+      say to him, &lsquo;Hush up.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The government never says anything else; it can&rsquo;t, poor government!&rdquo; said
+      Fourchon, seized with a sudden tenderness for the government. &ldquo;Yes, I pity
+      it, that good government; it is very unlucky,&mdash;it hasn&rsquo;t a penny,
+      like us; but that&rsquo;s very stupid of a government that makes the money
+      itself, very stupid! Ah! if I were the government&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; cried Courtecuisse, &ldquo;they tell me in Ville-aux-Fayes that Monsieur
+      de Ronquerolles talked about our rights in the Assembly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s in Monsieur Rigou&rsquo;s newspaper,&rdquo; said Vaudoyer, who in his capacity
+      of ex-field-keeper knew how to read and write; &ldquo;I read it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of his vinous tenderness, old Fourchon, like many of the lower
+      classes whose faculties are stimulated by drunkenness, was following, with
+      an intelligent eye and a keen ear, this curious discussion which a variety
+      of asides rendered still more curious. Suddenly, he stood up in the middle
+      of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to the old one, he&rsquo;s drunk!&rdquo; said Tonsard, &ldquo;and when he is, he is
+      twice as full of deviltry; he has his own and that of the wine&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spanish wine, and that trebles it!&rdquo; cried Fourchon, laughing like a
+      satyr. &ldquo;My sons, don&rsquo;t butt your head straight at the thing,&mdash;you&rsquo;re
+      too weak; go at it sideways. Lay low, play dead; the little woman is
+      scared. I tell you, the thing&rsquo;ll come to an end before long; she&rsquo;ll leave
+      the place, and if she does the Shopman will follow her, for she&rsquo;s his
+      passion. That&rsquo;s your plan. Only, to make &lsquo;em go faster, my advice is to
+      get rid of their counsellor, their support, our spy, our ape&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The damned abbe, of course,&rdquo; said Tonsard; &ldquo;that hunter after sins, who
+      thinks the host is food enough for us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; cried Vaudoyer; &ldquo;we were happy enough till he came. We
+      ought to get rid of that eater of the good God,&mdash;he&rsquo;s the real
+      enemy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Finikin,&rdquo; added Fourchon, using a nickname which the abbe owed to his
+      prim and rather puny appearance, &ldquo;might be led into temptation and fall
+      into the power of some sly girl, for he fasts so much. Then if we could
+      catch him in the act and drum him up with a good charivari, the bishop
+      would be obliged to send him elsewhere. It would please old Rigou devilish
+      well. Now if your daughter, Courtecuisse, would leave Auxerre&mdash;she&rsquo;s
+      a pretty girl, and if she&rsquo;d take to piety, she might save us all. Hey! ran
+      tan plan!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t <i>you</i> do it?&rdquo; said Godain to Catherine, in a low voice;
+      &ldquo;there&rsquo;d be scuttles full of money to hush up the talk; and for the time
+      being you&rsquo;d be mistress here&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we glean, or shall we not glean? that&rsquo;s the point,&rdquo; said
+      Bonnebault. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care two straws for your abbe, not I; I belong to
+      Conches, where we haven&rsquo;t a black-coat to poke up our consciences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; said Vaudoyer, &ldquo;we had better go and ask Rigou, who knows the
+      law, whether the Shopman can forbid gleaning, and he&rsquo;ll tell us if we&rsquo;ve
+      got the right of it. If the Shopman has the law on his side, well, then we
+      must do as the old one says,&mdash;see about taking things sideways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blood will be spilt,&rdquo; said Nicolas, darkly, as he rose after drinking a
+      whole bottle of wine, which Catherine drew for him in order to keep him
+      silent. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;d only listen to me you&rsquo;d down Michaud; but you are
+      miserable weaklings,&mdash;nothing but poor trash!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not,&rdquo; said Bonnebault. &ldquo;If you are all safe friends who&rsquo;ll keep your
+      tongues between your teeth, I&rsquo;ll aim at the Shopman&mdash;Hey! how I&rsquo;d
+      like to put a plum through his bottle; wouldn&rsquo;t it avenge me on those
+      cursed officers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut! tut!&rdquo; cried Jean-Louis Tonsard, who was supposed to be, more or
+      less, Gaubertin&rsquo;s son, and who had just entered the tavern. This fellow,
+      who was courting Rigou&rsquo;s pretty servant-girl, had succeeded his nominal
+      father as clipper of hedges and shrubberies and other Tonsardial
+      occupations. Going about among the well-to-do houses, he talked with
+      masters and servants and picked up ideas which made him the man of the
+      world of the family, the shrewd head. We shall presently see that in
+      making love to Rigou&rsquo;s servant-girl, Jean-Louis deserved his reputation
+      for shrewdness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what have you to say, prophet?&rdquo; said the innkeeper to his son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say that you are playing into the hands of the rich folk,&rdquo; replied
+      Jean-Louis. &ldquo;Frighten the Aigues people to maintain your rights if you
+      choose; but if you drive them out of the place and make them sell the
+      estate, you are doing just what the bourgeois of the valley want, and it&rsquo;s
+      against your own interest. If you help the bourgeois to divide the great
+      estates among them, where&rsquo;s the national domain to be bought for nothing
+      at the next Revolution? Wait till then, and you&rsquo;ll get your land without
+      paying for it, as Rigou got his; whereas if you go and thrust this estate
+      into the jaws of the rich folk of the valley, the rich folk will dribble
+      it back to you impoverished and at twice the price they paid for it. You
+      are working for their interests, I tell you; so does everybody who works
+      for Rigou,&mdash;look at Courtecuisse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The policy contained in this allocution was too deep for the drunken heads
+      of those present, who were all, except Courtecuisse, laying by their money
+      to buy a slice of the Aigues cake. So they let Jean-Louis harangue, and
+      continued, as in the Chamber of Deputies, their private confabs with one
+      another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that&rsquo;s so; you&rsquo;ll be Rigou&rsquo;s cats-paw!&rdquo; cried Fourchon, who alone
+      understood his grandson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then Langlume, the miller of Les Aigues, passed the tavern. Madame
+      Tonsard hailed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that gleaning is to be forbidden?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langlume, a jovial white man, white with flour and dressed in
+      grayish-white clothes, came up the steps and looked in. Instantly all the
+      peasants became as sober as judges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my children, I am forced to answer yes, and no. None but the poor
+      are to glean; but the measures they are going to take will turn out to
+      your advantage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How so?&rdquo; asked Godain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, they can prevent any but paupers from gleaning here,&rdquo; said the
+      miller, winking in true Norman fashion; &ldquo;but that doesn&rsquo;t prevent you from
+      gleaning elsewhere,&mdash;unless all the mayors do as the Blangy mayor is
+      doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then it is true,&rdquo; said Tonsard, in a threatening voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As for me,&rdquo; said Bonnebault, putting his foraging-cap over one ear and
+      making his hazel stick whiz in the air, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m off to Conches to warn the
+      friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Lovelace of the valley departed, whistling the tune of the martial
+      song,&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &ldquo;You who know the hussars of the Guard,
+  Don&rsquo;t you know the trombone of the regiment?&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Marie! he&rsquo;s going a queer way to get to Conches, that friend of
+      yours,&rdquo; cried old Mother Tonsard to her granddaughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s after Aglae!&rdquo; said Marie, who made one bound to the door. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have
+      to thrash her once for all, that baggage!&rdquo; she cried, viciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Vaudoyer,&rdquo; said Tonsard, &ldquo;go and see Rigou, and then we shall know
+      what to do; he&rsquo;s our oracle, and his spittle doesn&rsquo;t cost anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another folly!&rdquo; said Jean-Louis, in a low voice, &ldquo;Rigou betrays
+      everybody; Annette tells me so; she says he&rsquo;s more dangerous when he
+      listens to you than other folks are when they bluster.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I advise you to be cautious,&rdquo; said Langlume. &ldquo;The general has gone to the
+      prefecture about your misdeeds, and Sibilet tells me he has sworn an oath
+      to go to Paris and see the Chancellor of France and the King himself, and
+      the whole pack of them if necessary, to get the better of his peasantry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His peasantry!&rdquo; shouted every one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha, ha! so we don&rsquo;t belong to ourselves any longer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Tonsard asked the question, Vaudoyer left the house to see Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langlume, who had already gone out, turned on the door-step, and answered:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crowd of do-nothings! are you so rich that you think you are your own
+      masters?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though said with a laugh, the meaning contained in those words was
+      understood by all present, as horses understand the cut of a whip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ran tan plan! masters indeed!&rdquo; shouted old Fourchon. &ldquo;I say, my lad,&rdquo; he
+      added to Nicolas, &ldquo;after your performance this morning it&rsquo;s not my
+      clarionet that you&rsquo;ll get between your thumb and four fingers!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t plague him, or he&rsquo;ll make you throw up your wine by a punch in the
+      stomach,&rdquo; said Catherine, roughly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII. A TYPE OF THE COUNTRY USURER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Strategically, Rigou&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the general first came to Les Aigues Rigou apparently formed some
+      plans about him which Montcornet&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Madame was out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;a soul in hell who plunged into iniquity as into a bath
+      in his efforts to cool himself,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few details about this man and his morals will not only throw light on
+      his share of the plot, called &ldquo;the great affair&rdquo; by his two associates,
+      but it will have the merit of picturing an extremely curious type of man,&mdash;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,&mdash;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 &ldquo;summum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;above
+      all, those of avarice&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blangy&mdash;by that we mean the sixty houses described by Blondet in his
+      letter to Nathan&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;all the more because the
+      count had lately built, directly opposite to the new parsonage, a communal
+      building intended for the mayor&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rigou&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s-chamber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A poultry-yard, the stable, and a pigsty faced the house across the
+      courtyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The garden, about an acre in size and enclosed by walls, was a true
+      priest&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the corner of the fireplace was an immense sofa, Rigou&rsquo;s especial seat.
+      In the angle, above a little &ldquo;bonheur du jour,&rdquo; which served him as a
+      desk, and hanging to a common screw, was a pair of bellows, the origin of
+      Rigou&rsquo;s fortune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s belongings were made comfortable for his use, as we shall
+      see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Niseron, the wife of the old republican sexton, always paid the
+      greatest attention to her husband&rsquo;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,&mdash;one of those beings that seem perfected only because they
+      are to die, which she did at the age of fourteen from &ldquo;pale color,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;You burn!&rdquo; or &ldquo;You freeze!&rdquo; according as the
+      searchers approach or leave the hidden article. Little Genevieve took it
+      into her head to hide the bellows in Arsene&rsquo;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why! they&rsquo;ve been these two weeks in Arsene&rsquo;s bed!&rdquo; cried the little one,
+      with a peal of laughter. &ldquo;Great lazy thing! if she had taken the trouble
+      to make her bed she would have found them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As it was 1791 everybody laughed; but a dead silence succeeded the laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is nothing laughable in that,&rdquo; said the housekeeper; &ldquo;since I have
+      been ill Arsene sleeps in my room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s
+      resentment to such a pitch that he made a will disinheriting Jean-Francois
+      Niseron in favor of Arsene Pichard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s rather vulgar
+      beauty, together with the crafty mind of her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s stockings. Rigou&rsquo;s name was Gregoire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though this sketch gives some idea of the man&rsquo;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 &ldquo;the news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the country the special names of journals are never mentioned; they are
+      all called by the general name of &ldquo;the news.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rigou&rsquo;s dinner, like his breakfast and supper, was always of choice
+      delicacies, cooked with the art which distinguishes a priest&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The butcher of Soulanges brought his best meat under fear of losing
+      Rigou&rsquo;s custom. The poultry, raised on the premises, was of the finest
+      quality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Annette was (since 1795) the tenth pretty girl in Rigou&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;the only one of his many servants whose ambition had
+      taught her to flatter the lynx as the only way to blind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;extension of time,&rdquo; for those fugitive pleasures which eat into the
+      fortunes of so many old men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s delay,
+      squeezed a great deal of manual labor out of his debtors,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;They
+      shall fall! I&rsquo;ll dry up the brooks, I&rsquo;ll chop down the woods.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;x&rdquo; which no rule of equations could evolve, just
+      as the devil alone knew the secret schemes he plotted with Langlume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;as in the district of
+      Argenteuil, where there are thirty thousand plots of land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence the deceitful hopes excited by what imbecile economists call &ldquo;small
+      farming,&rdquo;&mdash;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 &ldquo;Le Cure de Village.&rdquo;)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, not a little sweat bedewed men&rsquo;s brows between Conches and
+      Ville-aux-Fayes to Rigou&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soudry followed Rigou&rsquo;s example from Soulanges to a distance of fifteen
+      miles beyond Ville-aux-Fayes. These two usurers shared the district
+      between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;Rigou,
+      Soudry, and Gaubertin&mdash;wielded in election periods over electors
+      whose fortunes depended on their good-will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hate, intelligence, and means at command, such were the three sides of the
+      terrible triangle which describes the general&rsquo;s closest enemy, the spy
+      ever watching Les Aigues,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;the one natural, the other
+      whetted by his training in a cloister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was about four o&rsquo;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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Rigou, it is I,&mdash;Vaudoyer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean came round from the porte-cochere and said to Vaudoyer:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come into the garden; Monsieur has company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;for, regardless of his wife and
+      Annette who did the washing, Rigou exacted clean table-linen every day&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are frightened,&rdquo; said Rigou, softly, casting a look on Sibilet which
+      suspicion made less impassive than usual, and which was therefore
+      terrific. &ldquo;You are debating whether it would not be better on the whole to
+      side with the Comte de Montcornet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;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,&rdquo; said
+      Sibilet, shortly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will talk to him about it,&rdquo; replied Rigou, imperturbably. &ldquo;Meantime
+      this is what I should say to you if I were in his place: &lsquo;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.&rsquo; That&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;WE are always here, and can bide our time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve warned you,&rdquo; returned Sibilet, feeling like a donkey under a
+      pack-saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Warned me of what?&rdquo; said Rigou, artfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what the Shopman is going to do,&rdquo; answered the steward, humbly. &ldquo;He
+      started for the Prefecture in a rage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him go! If the Montcornets and their kind didn&rsquo;t use wheels, what
+      would become of the carriage-makers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall bring you three thousand francs to-night,&rdquo; said Sibilet, &ldquo;but you
+      ought to make over some of your maturing mortgages to me,&mdash;say, one
+      or two that would secure to me good lots of land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;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&rsquo;s account, and
+      that will be killing two birds with one stone; when Courtecuisse finds
+      himself a beggar, like Fourchon, he&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, transfer the mortgage to me, and I&rsquo;ll make my butter out of it; the
+      count shall buy the three acres, and I shall get the house and garden for
+      nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you going to give me out of it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good heavens! you&rsquo;d milk an ox!&rdquo; exclaimed Sibilet,&mdash;&ldquo;when I have
+      just done you such a service, too. I have at last got the Shopman to
+      enforce the laws about gleaning&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you, my dear fellow?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Then we&rsquo;ve got him; he&rsquo;s lost! But it
+      isn&rsquo;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&rsquo;m
+      off to Soulanges; will see you to-night!&mdash;Ah! Vaudoyer, good
+      afternoon,&rdquo; said the late mayor as his former field-keeper entered the
+      room. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the news?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Vaudoyer related the talk which had just taken place at the tavern, and
+      asked Rigou&rsquo;s opinion as to the legality of the rules which the general
+      thought of enforcing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has the law with him,&rdquo; said Rigou, curtly. &ldquo;We have a hard landlord;
+      the Abbe Brossette is a malignant priest; he advises all such measures
+      because you don&rsquo;t go to mass, you miserable unbelievers. I go; there&rsquo;s a
+      God, I tell you. You peasants will have to bear everything, for the
+      Shopman will always get the better of you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall glean,&rdquo; said Vaudoyer, in that determined tone which
+      characterizes Burgundians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without a certificate of pauperism?&rdquo; asked the usurer. &ldquo;They say the
+      Shopman has gone to the Prefecture to ask for troops so as to force you to
+      keep the law.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall glean as we have always gleaned,&rdquo; repeated Vaudoyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, glean then! Monsieur Sarcus will decide whether you have the right
+      to,&rdquo; said Rigou, seeming to promise the help of the justice of the peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall glean, and we shall do it in force, or Burgundy won&rsquo;t be
+      Burgundy any longer,&rdquo; said Vaudoyer. &ldquo;If the gendarmes have sabres we have
+      scythes, and we&rsquo;ll see what comes of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At half-past four o&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be late home, monsieur,&rdquo; said Annette, with a little pout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Madame Courtecuisse, so our mayor is on his way to protect us,&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! the good man, his heart bleeds to see the way we are treated; he is
+      as unhappy as we are about it,&rdquo; replied the poor woman, who trembled at
+      the very name of her husband&rsquo;s creditor, and praised him out of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he himself, too,&mdash;they&rsquo;ve shamefully ill-used him! Good-day,
+      Monsieur Rigou,&rdquo; said the old knitter to the usurer, who bowed to her and
+      to his debtor&rsquo;s wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Rigou crossed the Thune, fordable at all seasons, Tonsard came out of
+      the tavern and met him on the high-road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Pere Rigou,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;so the Shopman means to make dogs of us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll see about that,&rdquo; said the usurer, whipping up his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll protect us,&rdquo; said Tonsard, turning to a group of women and children
+      who were near him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rigou is thinking as much about you as a cook thinks of the gudgeons he
+      is frying in his pan,&rdquo; called out Fourchon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take the clapper out of your throat when you are drunk,&rdquo; said Mouche,
+      pulling his grandfather by the blouse, and tumbling him down on a bank
+      under a poplar tree. &ldquo;If that hound of a mayor heard you say that, he&rsquo;d
+      never buy any more of your tales.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART2" id="link2H_PART2">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      PART II
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I. THE LEADING SOCIETY OF SOULANGES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little town is one of those natural compositions which are extremely
+      rare in France, where <i>prettiness</i> 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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The house of Madame Soudry&mdash;for the powerful individuality of
+      Mademoiselle Laguerre&rsquo;s former waiting-maid took the lead of her husband
+      in the community&mdash;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 &ldquo;accapareur,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All little towns have a renowned beauty, just as they have a Socquard and
+      a Cafe de la Paix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rigou very seldom came to Soulanges; everybody was in the habit of going
+      to him,&mdash;Lupin and Gaubertin, Soudry and Gendrin,&mdash;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 &ldquo;the leading
+      society of Soulanges.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Soudry, respectfully imitating Mademoiselle Laguerre, began by
+      allowing herself a &ldquo;mere touch of rouge&rdquo;; but this delicate tint had
+      changed through force of habit to those vermilion patches picturesquely
+      described by our ancestors as &ldquo;carriage-wheels.&rdquo; The wrinkles growing
+      deeper and deeper, it occurred to the ex-lady&rsquo;s-maid to fill them up with
+      paint. Her forehead becoming unduly yellow, and the temples too shiny, she
+      &ldquo;laid on&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;so much did the silk and the
+      furbelows abound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;for
+      Madame Soudry possessed over a hundred dresses, each richer than the
+      others, the remains of Mademoiselle Laguerre&rsquo;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,&mdash;unless,
+      indeed, you remember the succinct statement recently made &ldquo;ex professo,&rdquo;
+       by one of the cleverest women of our time, on the art of making her sex
+      beautiful by surrounding accessories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;fructus belli.&rdquo; 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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s dames.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;in this salon, filled with furniture in gilded wood
+      of the &ldquo;pied de biche&rdquo; pattern, it is not impossible to understand why the
+      people of Soulanges called the mistress of the house, &ldquo;The beautiful
+      Madame Soulanges.&rdquo; The mansion had actually become the civic pride of this
+      capital of a canton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;oeil-de-boeuf&rdquo;; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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: &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some time past the twelve or fifteen personages who composed the
+      leading society of Soulanges spoke of Madame Soudry as the <i>intimate
+      friend</i> of Mademoiselle Laguerre, recoiling at the term
+      &ldquo;waiting-woman,&rdquo; and making believe that she had sacrificed herself to the
+      singer as her friend and companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;a bonne fortunes&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;out
+      of date,&rdquo; &ldquo;antiquated,&rdquo; &ldquo;superannuated.&rdquo;[*] A man, a woman, or a piece of
+      furniture might be &ldquo;out of date&rdquo;; next, by a greater degree of
+      imperfection, &ldquo;antiquated&rdquo;; but as to the last term, it was the
+      superlative of contempt. The first might be remedied, the second was
+      hopeless, but the third,&mdash;oh, better far never to have left the void
+      of nothingness! As to praise, a single word sufficed him, doubly and
+      trebly uttered: &ldquo;Charming!&rdquo; was the positive of his admiration. &ldquo;Charming,
+      charming!&rdquo; made you feel you were safe; but after &ldquo;Charming, charming,
+      charming!&rdquo; the ladder might be discarded, for the heaven of perfection was
+      attained.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     [*] &ldquo;Croute,&rdquo; &ldquo;crouton,&rdquo; and &ldquo;croute-au-pot,&rdquo;
+      untranslatable, and without equivalent in English. A
+     &ldquo;croute&rdquo; is the slang term for a man behind the age.&mdash;Tr.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The tabellion,&mdash;he called himself &ldquo;tabellion,&rdquo; petty notary, and
+      keeper of notes (making fun of his calling in order to seem above it),&mdash;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&rsquo;s despair,
+      the queen&rsquo;s adorers never carried their adoration so far as to threaten
+      his rights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Bebelle&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your wife, what is she?&rdquo; said Sarcus the rich, one day, when unable to
+      digest the fatal word &ldquo;superannuated,&rdquo; applied to a piece of furniture he
+      had just bought at a bargain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife is not like yours,&rdquo; replied Lupin; &ldquo;she is not defined as yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Monsieur Lupin&rsquo;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, &ldquo;Well, I was like that in
+      my young days.&rdquo; Amaury never came to Madame Soudry&rsquo;s; he said she bored
+      him; for, with a recollection of her early days, she attempted to
+      &ldquo;educate&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s remonstrances with
+      one perpetual request: &ldquo;Send me back to Paris, for I am bored to death
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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&rsquo;s conduct, which it was said he
+      authorized,&mdash;a report that drew upon him the contempt of the leading
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Lupin was the musician of the leading society, Monsieur Gourdon, the
+      doctor, was its man of science. The town said of him, &ldquo;We have here in our
+      midst a scientific man of the first order.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;a word which led society to hope for
+      monstrosities, and to say, when it saw them, &ldquo;Why, they are only
+      butterflies!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s collection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have,&rdquo; he said to all inquirers, &ldquo;five hundred ornithological objects,
+      two hundred mammifers, five thousand insects, three thousand shells, and
+      seven thousand specimens of minerals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What patience you have had!&rdquo; said the ladies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One must do something for one&rsquo;s country,&rdquo; replied the collector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew an enormous profit from his carcasses by the mere repetition of
+      the words, &ldquo;I have bequeathed everything to the town by my will.&rdquo; Visitors
+      lauded his philanthropy; the authorities talked of devoting the second
+      floor of the town hall to the &ldquo;Gourdon Museum,&rdquo; after the collector&rsquo;s
+      death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I rely upon the gratitude of my fellow-citizens to attach my name to the
+      gift,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;for I dare not hope they would place a marble bust of
+      me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be the very least we could do for you,&rdquo; they rejoined; &ldquo;are you
+      not the glory of our town?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s superlatives, happy! happy!! happy!!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;a Piron, it was the fashion
+      to say. The dual merits of the two brothers gave rise to the remark: &ldquo;We
+      have the brothers Gourdon at Soulanges&mdash;two very distinguished men;
+      men who could hold their own in Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Devoted to the game of cup-and-ball, the clerk of the court became
+      possessed by another mania,&mdash;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 &ldquo;Monsieur
+      l&rsquo;Abbe Delille,&rdquo; with exaggerated politeness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;The
+      Chorister&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gourdon&rsquo;s poem entitled &ldquo;Ode to the Cup-and-Ball&rdquo; 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
+      &ldquo;object sung,&rdquo; preceded (as in the case of Gourdon) by a species of
+      invocation, of which the following is a model:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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&mdash;
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;Tis thus that the arts and the sciences, too,
+  Find wisdom in things that seemed silly to you.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The second canto, invariably employed to depict the manner of using &ldquo;the
+      object,&rdquo; 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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It was this delineation, worthy of Virgil, which first raised a doubt as
+      to Delille&rsquo;s superiority over Gourdon. The word &ldquo;disc,&rdquo; 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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The moon, called a <i>disc</i> by poets, is undoubtedly a ball.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know that?&rdquo; retorted Brunet. &ldquo;We have never seen but one
+      side.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The third canto told the regulation story,&mdash;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 &ldquo;Debats&rdquo; from 1810 to 1814, in praise of these
+      glorious words, Gourdon&rsquo;s ode &ldquo;borrowed fresh charms from poesy to
+      embellish the tale.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The fourth canto summed up the whole, and concluded with these daring
+      words,&mdash;not published, be it remarked, from 1810 to 1814; in fact,
+      they did not see the light till 1824, after Napoleon&rsquo;s death.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+  &lsquo;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.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;a liberality that was all the greater because these
+      hundred persons had heard the poem from beginning to end a hundred times
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you heard a curious piece of news?&rdquo; he had said, two years earlier.
+      &ldquo;There is another poet in Burgundy! Yes,&rdquo; he added, remarking the
+      astonishment on all faces, &ldquo;he comes from Macon. But you could never
+      imagine the subjects he takes up,&mdash;a perfect jumble, absolutely
+      unintelligible,&mdash;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 &lsquo;moon,&rsquo; 
+      bluntly, instead of naming it &lsquo;the planet of night.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s what the
+      desire to be thought original brings men to,&rdquo; added Gourdon, mournfully.
+      &ldquo;Poor young man! A Burgundian, and sing such stuff as that!&mdash;the pity
+      of it! If he had only consulted me, I would have pointed out to him the
+      noblest of all themes, wine,&mdash;a poem to be called the Baccheide; for
+      which, alas! I now feel myself too old.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hundred Gourdons made poetry under the Empire, and yet they tell us it
+      was a period that neglected literature! Examine the &ldquo;Journal de la
+      Libraire&rdquo; and you will find poems on the game of draughts, on backgammon,
+      on tricks with cards, on geography, typography, comedy, etc.,&mdash;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,&mdash;to be overthrown like the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sarcus, a handsome little man with a dapple-gray head, devoted himself in
+      turn to Themis and to Flora,&mdash;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, &ldquo;whose political and
+      judiciary role,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo; Rated in the community as an able
+      man, Sarcus was the accepted statesman of Madame Soudry&rsquo;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&rsquo;s successor, he should take
+      his seat on the benches of the Left Centre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vermut was the butt of Madame Soudry&rsquo;s salon. No society is complete
+      without a victim,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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, &ldquo;Hold your tongue, my
+      lad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 <i>expecting to die</i>, 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;It is my business.&rdquo; And the parish let him do it, with the
+      remark, &ldquo;We have an excellent priest.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;Adolphe Nourrit
+      with his thread of a voice,&rdquo; remarked the notary with patronizing
+      indulgence, &ldquo;was scarcely worthy to accompany the nightingale of
+      Soulanges.&rdquo; As to the author of the &ldquo;Cup-and-Ball&rdquo; (which was then being
+      printed at Bournier&rsquo;s), society was satisfied that a poet of his force
+      could not be met with in Paris, for Delille was now dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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,&mdash;a
+      fact which doubled and trebled their powers of mischief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;Soulanges is a town of society and social pleasures,&rdquo; it must not
+      be supposed that Ville-aux-Fayes accepted this supremacy. The Gaubertin
+      salon ridiculed (&ldquo;in petto&rdquo;) the salon Soudry. By the manner in which
+      Gaubertin remarked, &ldquo;We are a financial community, engaged in actual
+      business; we have the folly to fatigue ourselves in making fortunes,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II. THE CONSPIRATORS IN THE QUEEN&rsquo;S SALON
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Reaching Soulanges about half-past five o&rsquo;clock, Rigou was sure of finding
+      the usual party assembled at the Soudrys&rsquo;. There, as everywhere else in
+      town, the dinner-hour was three o&rsquo;clock, according to the custom of the
+      last century. From five to nine the notables of Soulanges met in Madame
+      Soudry&rsquo;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&rsquo;s business to learn at least something of
+      what was going on, and also to pay their court to the mistress of the
+      house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this preliminary talk they played at boston, the only game the queen
+      understood. When the fat old Guerbet had mimicked Madame Isaure,
+      Gaubertin&rsquo;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: &ldquo;We have had a charming
+      game of boston.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Too self-indulgent to be at the trouble of driving over to the Soudrys&rsquo; 
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The tall, stiff usurer always had an imposing effect upon Madame Soudry&rsquo;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,&mdash;a man to whom Gaubertin had
+      never yet been willing to fully commit himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment the little green carriole and the bay horse passed the Cafe de
+      la Paix, Urbain, Soudry&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s Pere Rigou,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I must go round and open the door. Take his
+      horse, Socquard.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Socquard, born a Hercules, could carry a weight of eleven hundred pounds;
+      a blow of his fist applied on a man&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you all well at home, Monsieur Rigou?&rdquo; said the illustrious
+      innkeeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty well, my good friend,&rdquo; replied Rigou. &ldquo;Do Plissoud and Bonnebault
+      and Viollet and Amaury still continue good customers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;the affair,&rdquo; and Fourchon had already warned him that there was
+      something suspicious in the intimacy between Plissoud, Bonnebault, and the
+      brigadier, Viollet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bonnebault, in payment of a few francs lost at cards, might very likely
+      tell the secrets he heard at Tonsard&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks to those fellows, we keep the ball a-rolling,&rdquo; said Socquard. &ldquo;But
+      folks are trying to imitate my boiled wine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sue them,&rdquo; said Rigou, sententiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would lead too far,&rdquo; replied the innkeeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do your clients get on well together?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tolerably, yes; sometimes they&rsquo;ll have a row, but that&rsquo;s only natural for
+      players.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, comrade,&rdquo; said the mayor of Soulanges, &ldquo;is Annette ill, that you
+      give us your company of an evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through an old habit acquired in the gendarmerie Soudry always went direct
+      to the point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&mdash;There&rsquo;s trouble brewing,&rdquo; replied Rigou, touching his right
+      fore-finger to the hand which Soudry held out to him. &ldquo;I came to talk
+      about it, for it concerns our children in a way&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a long time since we have seen you, my dear Rigou,&rdquo; said Madame
+      Soudry, taking the arm of the ex-Benedictine and leading him out upon the
+      terrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My digestion is so troublesome!&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;see! my color is almost as
+      high as yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rigou&rsquo;s appearance on the terrace was the sign for an explosion of jovial
+      greetings on the part of the assembled company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how may the lord of Blangy be?&rdquo; said little Sarcus, justice of the
+      peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord!&rdquo; replied Rigou, bitterly, &ldquo;I am not even cock of my own village
+      now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hens don&rsquo;t say so, scamp!&rdquo; exclaimed Madame Soudry, tapping her fan
+      on his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All well, my dear master?&rdquo; said the notary, bowing to his chief client.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty well,&rdquo; replied Rigou, again putting his fore-finger into his
+      interlocutor&rsquo;s hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us find a corner where we can talk quietly,&rdquo; said the ex-monk,
+      looking at Lupin and at Madame Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us return to the salon,&rdquo; replied the queen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has the Shopman done now?&rdquo; asked Soudry, sitting down beside his
+      wife and putting his arm about her waist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Soudry, like other old women, forgave a great deal in return for
+      such public marks of tenderness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said Rigou, in a low voice, to set an example of caution, &ldquo;he has
+      gone to the Prefecture to demand the enforcement of the penalties; he
+      wants the help of the authorities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he&rsquo;s lost,&rdquo; said Lupin, rubbing his hands; &ldquo;the peasants will
+      fight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fight!&rdquo; cried Soudry, &ldquo;that depends. If the prefect and the general, who
+      are friends, send a squadron of cavalry the peasants can&rsquo;t fight. They
+      might at a pinch get the better of the gendarmes, but as for resisting a
+      charge of cavalry!&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sibilet heard him say something much more dangerous than that,&rdquo; said
+      Rigou; &ldquo;and that&rsquo;s what brings me here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my poor Sophie!&rdquo; cried Madame Soudry, sentimentally, alluding to her
+      <i>friend</i>, Mademoiselle Laguerre, &ldquo;into what hands Les Aigues has
+      fallen! This is what we have gained by the Revolution!&mdash;a parcel of
+      swaggering epaulets! We might have foreseen that whenever the bottle was
+      turned upside down the dregs would spoil the wine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He means to go to Paris and cabal with the Keeper of the Seals and others
+      to get the whole judiciary changed down here,&rdquo; said Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; cried Lupin, &ldquo;then he sees his danger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If they appoint my son-in-law attorney-general we can&rsquo;t help ourselves;
+      the general will get him replaced by some Parisian devoted to his
+      interests,&rdquo; continued Rigou. &ldquo;If he gets a place in Paris for Gendrin and
+      makes Guerbet chief-justice of the court at Auxerre, he&rsquo;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&rsquo;n&rsquo;t dance at
+      the wedding; he&rsquo;ll play us some scurvy trick or other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is it that in all these five years you have never managed to get rid
+      of that abbe?&rdquo; said Lupin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know him; he&rsquo;s as suspicious as a blackbird,&rdquo; replied Rigou.
+      &ldquo;He is not a man at all, that priest; he doesn&rsquo;t care for women; I can&rsquo;t
+      find out that he has any passion; there&rsquo;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&rsquo;s like Michaud, in his way; such men are too
+      good for this world,&mdash;God ought to call them to himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be a good plan to find some pretty servant-girl to scrub his
+      staircase,&rdquo; remarked Madame Soudry. The words caused Rigou to give the
+      little jump with which crafty natures recognize the craft of others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Shopman has another vice,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;he loves his wife; we might get
+      hold of him that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We ought to find out how far she really influences him,&rdquo; said Madame
+      Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s the rub!&rdquo; said Lupin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As for you, Lupin,&rdquo; said Rigou, in a tone of authority, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I shall have to stay all night,&rdquo; replied Lupin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the better for Sarcus the rich; he&rsquo;ll be the gainer,&rdquo; said Rigou.
+      &ldquo;She is not yet out of date, Madame Sarcus&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Monsieur Rigou,&rdquo; said Madame Soudry, in a mincing tone, &ldquo;are women
+      ever out of date?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may be right about Madame Sarcus; she doesn&rsquo;t paint before the
+      glass,&rdquo; retorted Rigou, who was always disgusted by the exhibition of the
+      Cochet&rsquo;s ancient charms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Soudry, who thought she used only a &ldquo;suspicion&rdquo; of rouge, did not
+      perceive the sarcasm and hastened to say:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible that women paint?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Lupin,&rdquo; said Rigou, without replying to this naivete, &ldquo;go over to
+      Gaubertin&rsquo;s to-morrow morning. Tell him that my fellow-mayor and I&rdquo;
+       (striking Soudry on the thigh) &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bravo for the son of the Church!&rdquo; cried Lupin, slapping Rigou on the
+      shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame Soudry was here struck by an idea which could come only to a former
+      waiting-maid of an Opera divinity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my beauty!&rdquo; said Soudry, &ldquo;you have more sense in your head than the
+      Prefecture of police in Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s an idea which proves that Madame reigns by mind as well as by
+      beauty,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One might do better still,&rdquo; said Rigou, after some thought; &ldquo;if we could
+      only turn it into a downright scandal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Complaint and indictment! affair in the police court!&rdquo; cried Lupin. &ldquo;Oh!
+      that would be grand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glorious!&rdquo; said Soudry, candidly. &ldquo;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&mdash;just think of it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He loves his wife too well,&rdquo; said Lupin, reflectively. &ldquo;He couldn&rsquo;t be
+      got to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s no obstacle,&rdquo; remarked Rigou; &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you say to that handsome Gatienne Giboulard, of Auxerre, whom
+      Sarcus, junior, is mad after?&rdquo; asked Lupin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the only one,&rdquo; answered Rigou, &ldquo;but she is not suitable; she
+      thinks she has only to be seen to be admired; she&rsquo;s not complying enough;
+      we want a witch and a sly-boots, too. Never mind, the right one will turn
+      up sooner or later.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Lupin, &ldquo;the more pretty girls he sees the greater the chances
+      are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But perhaps you can&rsquo;t get the Shopman to the fair,&rdquo; said the ex-gendarme.
+      &ldquo;And if he does come, will he go to the Tivoli ball?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The reason that has always kept him away from the fair doesn&rsquo;t exist this
+      year, my love,&rdquo; said Madame Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What reason, dearest?&rdquo; asked Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Shopman wanted to marry Mademoiselle de Soulanges,&rdquo; said the notary.
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;t want to meet the Soulanges at the fair;
+      but this year the family are not coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;Angouleme, and the countess had accompanied him. At the siege of
+      Cadiz the Comte de Soulanges obtained, as every one knows, the marshal&rsquo;s
+      baton, which he kept till 1826.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very true,&rdquo; cried Lupin. &ldquo;Well, it is for you, papa,&rdquo; he added,
+      addressing Rigou, &ldquo;to manoeuvre the matter so that we can get him to the
+      fair; once there, we ought to be able to entrap him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On these posters, about which it will be remembered Madame Tonsard
+      inquired of Vermichel, there was always, on the last line, the following
+      announcement:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tivoli will be illuminated with colored-glass lamps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;a white wine, dry and spirituous, very like Madeira
+      or the Vouvray wine, or Johannisberger,&mdash;three vintages which
+      resemble one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;ll think it all over,&rdquo; continued Rigou. &ldquo;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&rsquo;d bring the others; I&rsquo;ll consider
+      it. Sibilet might&mdash;although, to be sure, his influence is devilishly
+      decreased of late&mdash;but he might get the general to think he could
+      curry popularity by coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Find out if the beautiful countess keeps the general at arm&rsquo;s length,&rdquo;
+       said Lupin; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s the point if you want him to fall into the farce at
+      Tivoli.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That little woman,&rdquo; cried Madame Soudry, &ldquo;is too much of a Parisian not
+      to know how to run with the hare and hold with the hounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fourchon has got his granddaughter Catherine on good terms, he tells me,
+      with Charles, the Shopman&rsquo;s groom. That gives us one ear more in Les
+      Aigues&mdash;Are you sure of the Abbe Taupin,&rdquo; he added, as the priest
+      entered the room from the terrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We hold him and the Abbe Mouchon, too, just as I hold Soudry,&rdquo; said the
+      queen, stroking her husband&rsquo;s chin; &ldquo;you are not unhappy, dearest, are
+      you?&rdquo; she said to Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I can plan a scandal against that Tartufe of a Brossette we can win,&rdquo;
+       said Rigou, in a low voice. &ldquo;But I am not sure if the local spirit can
+      succeed against the Church spirit. You don&rsquo;t realize what that is. I,
+      myself, who am no fool, I can&rsquo;t say what I&rsquo;ll do when I fall ill. I
+      believe I shall try to be reconciled with the Church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suffer me to hope it,&rdquo; said the Abbe Taupin, for whose benefit Rigou had
+      raised his voice on the last words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! the wrong I did in marrying prevents it,&rdquo; replied Rigou. &ldquo;I cannot
+      kill off Madame Rigou.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Meantime, let us think of Les Aigues,&rdquo; said Madame Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the ex-monk. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Les Aigues will not belong to any one of us; it will have to come
+      down, from roof to cellar,&rdquo; said Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t be surprised if there were treasure buried in those cellars,&rdquo;
+       observed Rigou, cleverly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See what it is to know the history of France!&rdquo; said Soudry. &ldquo;You are
+      right. It is time to come to an understanding with Gaubertin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he shirks,&rdquo; said Rigou, &ldquo;we must smoke him out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is rich enough now,&rdquo; said Lupin, &ldquo;to be an honest man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll answer for him as I would for myself,&rdquo; said Madame Soudry; &ldquo;he&rsquo;s the
+      most loyal man in the kingdom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We all believe in his loyalty,&rdquo; said Rigou, &ldquo;but nevertheless nothing
+      should be neglected, even among friends&mdash;By the bye, I think there is
+      some one in Soulanges who is hindering matters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; asked Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plissoud,&rdquo; replied Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plissoud!&rdquo; exclaimed Soudry. &ldquo;Poor fool! Brunet holds him by the halter,
+      and his wife by the gullet; ask Lupin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can he do?&rdquo; said Lupin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He means to warn Montcornet,&rdquo; replied Rigou, &ldquo;and get his influence and a
+      place&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn&rsquo;t bring him more than his wife earns for him at Soulanges,&rdquo;
+       said Madame Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He tells everything to his wife when he is drunk,&rdquo; remarked Lupin. &ldquo;We
+      shall know it all in good time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The beautiful Madame Plissoud has no secrets from you,&rdquo; said Rigou; &ldquo;we
+      may be easy about that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides, she&rsquo;s as stupid as she is beautiful,&rdquo; said Madame Soudry. &ldquo;I
+      wouldn&rsquo;t change with her; for if I were a man I&rsquo;d prefer an ugly woman who
+      has some mind, to a beauty who can&rsquo;t say two words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the notary, biting his lips, &ldquo;but she can make others say
+      three.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Puppy!&rdquo; cried Rigou, as he made for the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; said Soudry, following him to the portico, &ldquo;to-morrow,
+      early.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come and fetch you&mdash;Ha! Lupin,&rdquo; he said to the notary, who came
+      out with him to order his horse, &ldquo;try to make sure that Madame Sarcus
+      hears all the Shopman says and does against us at the Prefecture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she doesn&rsquo;t hear it, who will?&rdquo; replied Lupin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; said Rigou, smiling blandly, &ldquo;but there are such a lot of
+      ninnies in there that I forgot there was one clever man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The wonder is that I don&rsquo;t grow rusty among them,&rdquo; replied Lupin,
+      naively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it true that Soudry has hired a pretty servant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Lupin; &ldquo;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&rsquo;t yet imagine how he
+      settles it with Madame Soudry, for, would you believe it, he has the
+      audacity to go to bed early.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll find out to-morrow,&rdquo; said the village Sardanapalus, trying to smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two plotters shook hands as they parted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rigou, who did not like to be on the road after dark for, notwithstanding
+      his present popularity, he was cautious, called to his horse, &ldquo;Get up,
+      Citizen,&rdquo;&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pere Rigou&rsquo;s visits are pretty short,&rdquo; said Gourdon the poet to Madame
+      Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are pleasant, if they are short,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like his own life,&rdquo; said the doctor; &ldquo;his abuse of pleasures will cut
+      that short.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the better,&rdquo; remarked Soudry, &ldquo;my son will step into the
+      property.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he bring you any news about Les Aigues?&rdquo; asked the Abbe Taupin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my dear abbe,&rdquo; said Madame Soudry. &ldquo;Those people are the scourge of
+      the neighborhood. I can&rsquo;t comprehend how it is that Madame de Montcornet,
+      who is certainly a well-bred woman, doesn&rsquo;t understand their interests
+      better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet she has a model before her eyes,&rdquo; said the abbe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that?&rdquo; asked Madame Soudry, smirking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Soulanges.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes!&rdquo; replied the queen after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here I am!&rdquo; cried Madame Vermut, coming into the room; &ldquo;and without my
+      re-active,&mdash;for Vermut is so inactive in all that concerns me that I
+      can&rsquo;t call him an active of any kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the devil is that cursed old Rigou doing there?&rdquo; said Soudry to
+      Guerbet, as they saw the green chaise stop before the gate of the Tivoli.
+      &ldquo;He is one of those tiger-cats whose every step has an object.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may well say cursed,&rdquo; replied the fat little collector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has gone into the Cafe de la Paix,&rdquo; remarked Gourdon, the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there&rsquo;s some trouble there,&rdquo; added Gourdon the poet; &ldquo;I can hear them
+      yelping from here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That cafe,&rdquo; said the abbe, &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Conversation!&rdquo; interrupted the justice of the peace. &ldquo;What kind of
+      conversation was it which produced all the little Bourniers?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;but ever since it has been called, in honor of the Bourbons, the
+      Cafe de la Paix, fights take place there every day,&rdquo; said Abbe Taupin,
+      finishing the sentence which the magistrate had taken the liberty of
+      interrupting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This idea of the abbe was, like the quotations from &ldquo;The Cup-and-Ball,&rdquo; of
+      frequent recurrence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that Burgundy will always be the land of fisticuffs?&rdquo; asked
+      Pere Guerbet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not ill said,&rdquo; remarked the abbe; &ldquo;not at all; in fact it&rsquo;s almost
+      an exact history of our country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know anything about the history of France,&rdquo; blurted Soudry; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; returned the abbe, &ldquo;wherever he goes and wherever he stays, you may
+      be quite certain it is for no charitable purpose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That man gives me goose-flesh whenever I see him,&rdquo; said Madame Vermut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is so much to be feared,&rdquo; remarked the doctor, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If any one can force the Shopman to come to the fair, and manage to catch
+      him in a trap, it&rsquo;ll be Rigou,&rdquo; said Soudry to his wife, in a low tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Especially,&rdquo; she replied, in a loud one, &ldquo;if Gaubertin and you, my love,
+      help him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There! didn&rsquo;t I tell you so?&rdquo; cried Guerbet, poking the justice of the
+      peace. &ldquo;I knew he would find some pretty girl at Socquard&rsquo;s,&mdash;there
+      he is, putting her into his carriage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quite wrong, gentlemen,&rdquo; said Madame Soudry; &ldquo;Monsieur Rigou is
+      thinking of nothing but the great affair; and if I&rsquo;m not mistaken, that
+      girl is only Tonsard&rsquo;s daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is like the chemist who lays in a stock of vipers,&rdquo; said old Guerbet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One would think you were intimate with Monsieur Vermut to hear you talk,&rdquo;
+       said the doctor, pointing to the little apothecary, who was then crossing
+      the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor fellow!&rdquo; said the poet, who was suspected of occasionally sharpening
+      his wit with Madame Vermut; &ldquo;just look at that waddle of his! and they say
+      he is learned!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Without him,&rdquo; said the justice of the peace, &ldquo;we should be hard put to it
+      about post-mortems; he found poison in poor Pigeron&rsquo;s stomach so cleverly
+      that the chemists of Paris testified in the court at Auxerre that they
+      couldn&rsquo;t have done better&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn&rsquo;t find anything at all,&rdquo; said Soudry; &ldquo;but, as President Gendrin
+      says, it is a good thing to let people suppose that poison will always be
+      found&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame Pigeron was very wise to leave Auxerre,&rdquo; said Madame Vermut; &ldquo;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&rsquo;t hamper me
+      in the least,&mdash;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At her own expense!&rdquo; cried Madame Soudry. &ldquo;Are you sure? If we could only
+      get proof of it, what a fine subject for an anonymous letter to the
+      general!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The general!&rdquo; cried Madame Vermut, &ldquo;he won&rsquo;t interfere with things; he
+      plays his part.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What part, my dear?&rdquo; asked Madame Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! the paternal part.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If poor little Pigeron had had the wisdom to play it, instead of
+      harassing his wife, he&rsquo;d be alive now,&rdquo; said the poet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;The Cup-and-Ball.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What shocking style that woman has! what talk, what manners!&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t think I can admit her any longer into <i>our society</i>,&mdash;especially,&rdquo;
+       she added, &ldquo;when Monsieur Gourdon, the poet, is present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s social morality!&rdquo; said the abbe, who had heard and observed all
+      without saying a word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III. THE CAFE DE LA PAIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was about seven o&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;furnished lodgings,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;Cafe de la Paix&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1804, the period when &ldquo;Paul and Virginia&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As for coffee, Pere Socquard simply boiled it in a utensil known to all
+      such households as the &ldquo;big brown pot&rdquo;; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There, from 1802 to 1804, all the bourgeois of Soulanges played at
+      dominoes and a game of cards called &ldquo;brelan,&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;bavaroise.&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;angel&rdquo;
+       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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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,&mdash;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&rsquo;s two
+      daughters were in daily communication between the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Socquard&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were to tell old Rigou that your brother Nicolas is after La
+      Pechina,&rdquo; cried an angry voice, &ldquo;and that he waylays her, he&rsquo;d rip the
+      entrails out of every one of you,&mdash;pack of scoundrels that you are at
+      the Grand-I-Vert!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you play me such a trick as that, Aglae,&rdquo; said the shrill voice of
+      Marie Tonsard, &ldquo;you sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t tell anything more except to the worms in your
+      coffin. Don&rsquo;t meddle with my brother&rsquo;s business or with mine and
+      Bonnebault&rsquo;s either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, Pere Rigou, what are you doing here?&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have any fresh lemons, I&rsquo;d like a glass of lemonade,&rdquo; said Rigou;
+      &ldquo;it is a warm evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is making that racket?&rdquo; said Socquard, looking through the window and
+      seeing his daughter and Marie Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are quarrelling for Bonnebault,&rdquo; said Rigou, sardonically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What devil is it that gets into girls?&rdquo; said Socquard to Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; replied the ex-Benedictine, &ldquo;of all the devils, that&rsquo;s the one the
+      Church has most to do with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then Bonnebault came out of the billiard-room with a cue in his hand,
+      and struck Marie sharply, saying:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve made me miss my stroke; but I&rsquo;ll not miss you, and I&rsquo;ll give it to
+      you till you muffle that clapper of yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get a fresh lemon, Aglae,&rdquo; said Pere Socquard, &ldquo;and go and rinse that
+      glass yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did right to send her away,&rdquo; whispered Rigou, &ldquo;or she might have been
+      hurt&rdquo;; and he glanced significantly at the hand with which Marie grasped a
+      stool she had caught up to throw at Aglae&rsquo;s head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Marie,&rdquo; said Socquard, standing before her, &ldquo;people don&rsquo;t come here
+      to fling stools; if you were to break one of my mirrors, the milk of your
+      cows wouldn&rsquo;t pay for the damage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pere Socquard, your daughter is a reptile; I&rsquo;m worth a dozen of her, I&rsquo;d
+      have you know. If you don&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
+      losing a hundred sous every minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t end so!&rdquo; cried Marie Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Begone!&rdquo; shouted Bonnebault, whom Viollet held back round the body lest
+      he should do the girl some hurt. &ldquo;Go to the devil, or I will never speak
+      to you or look at you again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; said Marie, flinging him a furious glance. &ldquo;Give me back my money,
+      and I&rsquo;ll leave you to Mademoiselle Socquard if she is rich enough to keep
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, hussar, it&rsquo;s your turn to play,&rdquo; said Amaury, a small, fair young
+      man, with a dull eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Besides, she&rsquo;s taken herself off,&rdquo; said Viollet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Adieu, Pere Socquard,&rdquo; said Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll get your carriage,&rdquo; said the innkeeper; &ldquo;take your time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How shall I find out what those fellows have been saying over their
+      pool?&rdquo; Rigou was asking himself, when he happened to see the waiter&rsquo;s face
+      in the mirror beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The waiter was a jack at all trades; he cultivated Socquard&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s your name?&rdquo; said Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michel, at your service,&rdquo; replied the waiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t old Fourchon come here sometimes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two or three times a week, with Monsieur Vermichel, who gives me a couple
+      of sous to warn him if his wife&rsquo;s after them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a fine old fellow, Pere Fourchon; knows a great deal and is full of
+      good sense,&rdquo; said Rigou, paying for his lemonade and leaving the
+      evil-smelling place when he saw Pere Socquard leading his horse round.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as he was about to get into the carriage, Rigou noticed the chemist
+      crossing the square and hailed him with a &ldquo;Ho, there, Monsieur Vermut!&rdquo;
+       Recognizing the rich man, Vermut hurried up. Rigou joined him, and said in
+      a low voice:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Monsieur Gourdon would help, yes,&rdquo; answered the little chemist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, leaving the little man thoroughly bewildered, Rigou got into the
+      carriole beside Marie Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you little viper,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Marie could not help smiling as she answered:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, how bad you are! you are the master of us all in wickedness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to me, Marie; I like the peasants, but it won&rsquo;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: &lsquo;If you let La Pechina alone, Pere
+      Rigou will save Nicolas from the conscription.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the devil incarnate!&rdquo; cried Marie. &ldquo;They do say you&rsquo;ve signed a
+      compact with him. Is that true?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Rigou, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard it, but I didn&rsquo;t believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if that&rsquo;s so,&rdquo; said Marie, &ldquo;it must be <i>devilishly</i> easy for
+      you to save my brother from the conscription&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he chooses, that&rsquo;s to say. He&rsquo;ll have to lose a finger,&rdquo; returned
+      Rigou. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell him how.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look out, you are taking the upper road!&rdquo; exclaimed Marie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never go by the lower at night,&rdquo; said the ex-monk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On account of the cross?&rdquo; said Marie, naively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s it, sly-boots,&rdquo; replied her diabolical companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;to
+      Les Aigues, Ville-aux-Fayes, Ronquerolles, and Cerneux,&mdash;a murderer
+      could choose his line of retreat and leave his pursuers in uncertainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall drop you at the entrance of the village,&rdquo; said Rigou when they
+      neared the first houses of Blangy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you are afraid of Annette, old coward!&rdquo; cried Marie. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV. THE TRIUMVIRATE OF VILLE-AUX-FAYES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Rigou,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you told me to wake you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; replied Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I wake Annette?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, let her sleep; she has been up half the night,&rdquo; he replied, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ten minutes later Rigou, dressed with more care than usual, came
+      downstairs and greeted his wife with a &ldquo;Good-morning, my old woman,&rdquo; which
+      made her happier than if counts had knelt at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jean,&rdquo; he said to the ex-lay-brother, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t leave the house; if any one
+      robs me it will be worse for you than for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By thus mingling mildness and severity, hopes and rebuffs, the clever
+      egoist kept his three slaves faithful and close at his heels, like dogs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taking the upper-road, so-called, to avoid the Close of the Cross, Rigou
+      reached the square of Soulanges about eight o&rsquo;clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s begin by taking a crust here before we start,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;we sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t
+      get breakfast at Ville-aux-Fayes before one o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! it cost too much,&rdquo; thought Rigou for the hundredth time. &ldquo;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?&rdquo; he
+      asked, as the mayor returned armed with a venerable bottle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Asleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you no longer disturb her slumbers?&rdquo; said Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ex-gendarme winked with a knowing air, and pointed to the ham which
+      Jeannette, the pretty maid, was just bringing in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will pick you up, a pretty bit like that,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It was cured in
+      the house; we cut into it only yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where did you find her?&rdquo; said the ex-Benedictine in Soudry&rsquo;s ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is like the ham,&rdquo; replied the ex-gendarme, winking again; &ldquo;I have had
+      her only a week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On my honor, Jeannette is as good as the ham,&rdquo; said Rigou. &ldquo;If I hadn&rsquo;t
+      an Annette I should want a Jeannette.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One is as good as the other,&rdquo; said the ex-gendarme, &ldquo;for your Annette is
+      fair and delicate. How is Madame Rigou,&mdash;is she asleep?&rdquo; added
+      Soudry, roughly, to let Rigou see he understood his joke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She wakes with the cock, but she goes to roost with the hens,&rdquo; replied
+      Rigou. &ldquo;As for me, I sit up and read the &lsquo;Constitutionnel.&rsquo; My wife lets
+      me sleep at night and in the morning too; she wouldn&rsquo;t come into my room
+      for all the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just the other way here,&rdquo; replied Jeanette. &ldquo;Madame sits up with the
+      company playing cards; sometimes there are sixteen of them in the salon;
+      Monsieur goes to bed at eight o&rsquo;clock, and we get up at daylight&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think that&rsquo;s different,&rdquo; said Rigou, &ldquo;but it comes to the same thing
+      in the end. Well, my dear, you come to me and I&rsquo;ll send Annette here, and
+      that will be the same thing and different too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old scamp, you&rsquo;ll make her ashamed,&rdquo; said Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha! gendarme; you want your field to yourself! Well, we all get our
+      happiness where we can find it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeanette, by her master&rsquo;s order, disappeared to lay out his clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have promised to marry her when your wife dies,&rdquo; said Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At your age and mine,&rdquo; replied Soudry, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s no other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With girls of any ambition it would be one way to become a widower,&rdquo;
+       added Rigou; &ldquo;especially if Madame Soudry found fault with Jeannette for
+      her way of scrubbing the staircase.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The remark made the two husbands pensive. When Jeannette returned and
+      announced that all was ready, Soudry said to her, &ldquo;Come and help me!&rdquo;&mdash;a
+      precaution which made the ex-monk smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a difference, indeed!&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;As for me, I&rsquo;d leave you alone
+      with Annette, my good friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at it!&rdquo; said Rigou, as they reached an eminence from which the
+      chateau of Soulanges could be seen in profile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but I hope it will never be destroyed as long as I live,&rdquo; said
+      Soudry. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but the Comte de Soulanges has three children, who, at his death,
+      may not agree,&rdquo; replied Rigou. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The chateau just then showed up in profile, as if to defy the ex-monk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! look at it; in those days they built well,&rdquo; cried Soudry. &ldquo;But just
+      now Monsieur le Comte is economizing, so as to make Soulanges the entailed
+      estate of his peerage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear friend,&rdquo; said Rigou, &ldquo;entailed estates won&rsquo;t exist much longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s mind to justify a short digression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The name of Ville-aux-Fayes, singular as it is, is explained as the
+      corruption of the words (in low Latin) &ldquo;Villa in Fago,&rdquo;&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interior of Gaubertin&rsquo;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We ask those who really know France, if these houses&mdash;those of Rigou,
+      Soudry, and Gaubertin&mdash;are not a perfect presentation of the village,
+      the little town, and the seat of a sub-prefecture?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;qui vive,&rdquo; there was
+      something of the hunting-dog about him. His brown face, very round and
+      sunburned, from which the tanned ears stood out predominantly,&mdash;for
+      he always wore a cap,&mdash;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;an
+      honest man, whom men of Gaubertin&rsquo;s stamp always seek to get hold of, and
+      whom they make, in their own selfish interests, their first dupe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Rigou&rsquo;s little green chaise appeared, towards twelve o&rsquo;clock, in the
+      broad avenue which skirts the river, Gaubertin, in cap, boots, and jacket,
+      was returning from the wharves. He hastened his steps,&mdash;feeling very
+      sure that Rigou&rsquo;s object in coming over could only be &ldquo;the great affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, gendarme; good morning, paunch of gall and wisdom,&rdquo; he
+      said, giving a little slap to the stomachs of his two visitors. &ldquo;We have
+      business to talk over, and, faith! we&rsquo;ll do it glass in hand; that&rsquo;s the
+      true way to take things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you do your business that way, you ought to be fatter than you are,&rdquo;
+       said Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I work too hard; I&rsquo;m not like you two, confined to the house and
+      bewitched there, like old dotards. Well, well, after all that&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gaubertin left his guests to walk about the garden for a moment, while he
+      went to give his orders and arrange about the breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my wolves,&rdquo; he said, as he returned, rubbing his hands, &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he
+      added, looking at his watch, &ldquo;those fellows may have been arrested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Probably,&rdquo; said Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what do you all say over there? Has anything been decided?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is there to decide?&rdquo; asked Rigou. &ldquo;We have no part in it,&rdquo; he added,
+      looking at Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;t the first idea about the value of money; no, I must have
+      associates. Here&rsquo;s the gendarme, he has plenty of funds all ready. I know
+      he doesn&rsquo;t hold a single mortgage that isn&rsquo;t ready to mature; he only
+      lends now on notes at sight of which I endorse. I&rsquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the rest,&rdquo; replied Rigou, stiffly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil! well, I wish I had my hand where your heart is!&rdquo; exclaimed
+      Gaubertin. &ldquo;Now what are you going to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whatever you do; tell your plan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My plan,&rdquo; said Gaubertin, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s not the difficulty. The thing
+      is, how are we going to arrange among ourselves? How shall we divide up
+      the great lots?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing easier,&rdquo; said Rigou. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll each take what we like best. I, for
+      one, shall stand in nobody&rsquo;s way; I&rsquo;ll take the woods in common with
+      Soudry and my son-in-law; the timber has been so injured that you won&rsquo;t
+      care for it now, and you may have all the rest. Faith, it is worth the
+      money you&rsquo;ll put into it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you sign that agreement?&rdquo; said Soudry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A written agreement is worth nothing,&rdquo; replied Gaubertin. &ldquo;Besides, you
+      know I am playing above board; I have perfect confidence in Rigou, and he
+      shall be the purchaser.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will satisfy me,&rdquo; said Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will make only one condition,&rdquo; added Gaubertin. &ldquo;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&mdash;Madame Isaure, for that&rsquo;s what she
+      wants people to call her&mdash;says she shall make it her villa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;m willing,&rdquo; said Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now, between ourselves,&rdquo; continued Gaubertin, after looking about
+      him on all sides and making sure that no one could overhear him, &ldquo;do you
+      think they are capable of striking a blow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such as?&rdquo; asked Rigou, who never allowed himself to understand a hint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if the worst of the band, the best shot, sent a ball whistling
+      round the ears of the count&mdash;just to frighten him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a man to rush at an assailant and collar him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michaud, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michaud would do nothing at the moment, but he&rsquo;d watch and spy till he
+      found out the man and those who instigated him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; said Gaubertin; &ldquo;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&rsquo;ve done the work. There are those blackguards, the Tonsards and
+      Bonnebault&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tonsard is ready for mischief,&rdquo; said Soudry, &ldquo;I know that; and we&rsquo;ll work
+      him up by Vaudoyer and Courtecuisse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll answer for Courtecuisse,&rdquo; said Rigou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I hold Vaudoyer in the hollow of my hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be cautious!&rdquo; said Rigou; &ldquo;before everything else be cautious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, papa skull-cap, do you mean to tell me that there&rsquo;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&rsquo;s about and
+      leases the woods to the receiver-general it is all up with our schemes,&mdash;&lsquo;Farewell
+      baskets, the vintage is o&rsquo;er&rsquo;; in that case you will lose more than I.
+      What we say here is between ourselves and for ourselves; for I certainly
+      wouldn&rsquo;t say a word to Vaudoyer that I couldn&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
+      exactions, his severity, Michaud&rsquo;s persecutions, and those of his keepers
+      have exasperated them; to-day things have come to a crisis and I&rsquo;ll bet
+      there&rsquo;s a rumpus going on now with the gendarmerie. And so, let&rsquo;s go and
+      breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, gentlemen,&rdquo; she said, bowing, &ldquo;I have some strange news for you.
+      The gendarmerie have returned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did they make any prisoners?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;s
+      restoration to France.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The three associates looked at each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is cleverer than I thought for, that big cuirassier!&rdquo; said Gaubertin.
+      &ldquo;Well, come to breakfast. After all, the game is not lost, only postponed;
+      it is your affair now, Rigou.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.&lsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;a successfully
+      evil issue,&mdash;unless by three such men as these, steeped in hatred and
+      self-interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V. VICTORY WITHOUT A FIGHT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Madame Michaud&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About five o&rsquo;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&rsquo;s den had no need of
+      that &ldquo;august cause&rdquo; (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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s mother. Laroche, an old laborer, possessed
+      absolutely nothing; he was not, like Tonsard, hot-blooded and vicious,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will they be allowed to put us in prison?&rdquo; he was saying. &ldquo;After Conches
+      they&rsquo;ll come to Blangy. I&rsquo;m an old offender, and I shall get three
+      months.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can we do against the gendarmerie, old drunkard?&rdquo; said Vaudoyer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why! cut the legs of their horses with our scythes. That&rsquo;ll bring them
+      down; their muskets are not loaded, and when they find us ten to one
+      against them they&rsquo;ll decamp. If the three villages all rose and killed two
+      or three gendarmes, they couldn&rsquo;t guillotine the whole of us. They&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If we kill,&rdquo; said Vaudoyer; &ldquo;it is better to kill one man; the question
+      is, how to do it without danger and frighten those Arminacs so that
+      they&rsquo;ll be driven out of the place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which one shall we kill?&rdquo; asked Laroche.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michaud,&rdquo; said Courtecuisse. &ldquo;Vaudoyer is right, he&rsquo;s perfectly right.
+      You&rsquo;ll see that when a keeper is sent to the shades there won&rsquo;t be one of
+      them willing to stay even in broad daylight to watch us. Now they&rsquo;re there
+      night and day,&mdash;demons!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wherever one goes,&rdquo; said old Mother Tonsard,&mdash;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,&mdash;&ldquo;wherever one goes,
+      there they are! they stop us, they open our bundles, and if there&rsquo;s a
+      single branch, a single twig of a miserable hazel, they seize the whole
+      bundle, and they say they&rsquo;ll arrest us. Ha, the villains! there&rsquo;s no
+      deceiving them; if they suspect you, you&rsquo;ve got to undo the bundle. Dogs!
+      all three are not worth a farthing! Yes, kill &lsquo;em, and it won&rsquo;t ruin
+      France, I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little Vatel is not so bad,&rdquo; said Madame Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He!&rdquo; said Laroche, &ldquo;he does his business, like the others; when there&rsquo;s a
+      joke going he&rsquo;ll joke with you, but you are none the better with him for
+      that. He&rsquo;s worse than the rest,&mdash;heartless to poor folks, like
+      Michaud himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Michaud has got a pretty wife, though,&rdquo; said Nicolas Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She&rsquo;s with young,&rdquo; said the old woman; &ldquo;and if this thing goes on
+      there&rsquo;ll be a queer kind of baptism for the little one when she calves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! those Arminacs!&rdquo; cried Marie Tonsard; &ldquo;there&rsquo;s no laughing with them;
+      and if you did, they&rsquo;d threaten to arrest you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve tried your hand at cajoling them, have you?&rdquo; said Courtecuisse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may bet on that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Tonsard with a determined air, &ldquo;they are men like other men,
+      and they can be got rid of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I tell you,&rdquo; said Marie, continuing her topic, &ldquo;they won&rsquo;t be
+      cajoled; I don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s the matter with them; that bully at the
+      pavilion, he&rsquo;s married, but Vatel, Gaillard, and Steingel are not; they&rsquo;ve
+      not a woman belonging to them; indeed, there&rsquo;s not a woman in the place
+      who would marry them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we shall see how things go at the harvest and the vintage,&rdquo; said
+      Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can&rsquo;t stop the gleaning,&rdquo; said the old woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that,&rdquo; remarked Madame Tonsard. &ldquo;Groison said that the mayor
+      was going to publish a notice that no one should glean without a
+      certificate of pauperism; and who&rsquo;s to give that certificate? Himself, of
+      course. He won&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, the fellow&rsquo;s a pestilence!&rdquo; cried Tonsard, beside himself with rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard that only yesterday,&rdquo; said Madame Tonsard. &ldquo;I offered Groison a
+      glass of brandy to get something out of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Groison! there&rsquo;s another lucky fellow!&rdquo; said Vaudoyer, &ldquo;they&rsquo;ve built him
+      a house and given him a good wife, and he&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he&rsquo;s very lucky,&rdquo; said Godain, &ldquo;he owns property&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And we go without, like the fools that we are,&rdquo; said Vaudoyer. &ldquo;Come,
+      let&rsquo;s be off and find out what&rsquo;s going on at Conches; they are not so
+      patient over there as we are.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on,&rdquo; said Laroche, who was none too steady on his legs. &ldquo;If I don&rsquo;t
+      exterminate one of two of those fellows may I lose my name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; said Tonsard, &ldquo;you&rsquo;d let them put the whole district in prison; but
+      I&mdash;if they dare to touch my old mother, there&rsquo;s my gun and it never
+      misses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Laroche to Vaudoyer, &ldquo;I tell you that if they make a single
+      prisoner at Conches one gendarme shall fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has said it, old Laroche!&rdquo; cried Courtecuisse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has said it,&rdquo; remarked Vaudoyer, &ldquo;but he hasn&rsquo;t done it, and he won&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have chosen their time, those hussars of the guillotine,&rdquo; said one
+      old woman; &ldquo;they are making a fete of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going to let &lsquo;em carry of your man like that? How shall you
+      manage to live for three months?&mdash;the best of the year, too, when he
+      could earn so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s they who rob us,&rdquo; replied the woman, looking at the gendarmes with a
+      threatening air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean by that, old woman?&rdquo; said the sergeant. &ldquo;If you insult
+      us it won&rsquo;t take long to settle you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I meant nothing,&rdquo; said the old woman, in a humble and piteous tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you say something just now you may have cause to repent of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, be calm, all of you,&rdquo; said the mayor of Conches, who was also
+      the postmaster. &ldquo;What the devil is the use of talking? These men, as you
+      know very well, are under orders and must obey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true; it&rsquo;s the owner of Les Aigues who persecutes us&mdash;But
+      patience!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;Release your prisoners; the
+      general has obtained their pardon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      General Montcornet was then speaking to the mayor; after a few moments&rsquo; 
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The peasants shouted &ldquo;Long live the King!&rdquo; with enthusiasm, to avoid
+      shouting, &ldquo;Hurrah for the Comte de Montcornet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;the word &ldquo;wedding&rdquo; being applied
+      indiscriminately in Burgundy to all such rejoicings. To drink, quarrel,
+      fight, eat and go home drunk and sick,&mdash;that is a wedding to these
+      peasants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s luxury had left the delightful traces already
+      described by Blondet in his letter to Nathan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be a terrible pity to abandon this beautiful home,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We intend to defend it to the death,&rdquo; said Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I say that,&rdquo; continued the lieutenant, looking at his sergeant as if
+      to enjoin silence, &ldquo;it is because the general&rsquo;s enemies are not only among
+      the peasantry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s clever talk excited him as much as the champagne he had
+      imbibed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enemies! have I enemies?&rdquo; said the general, surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He, so kind!&rdquo; added the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are on bad terms with our mayor, Monsieur Gaubertin,&rdquo; said the
+      lieutenant. &ldquo;It would be wise, for the sake of the future, to be
+      reconciled with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With him!&rdquo; cried the count. &ldquo;Then you don&rsquo;t know that he was my former
+      steward, and a swindler!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A swindler no longer,&rdquo; said the lieutenant, &ldquo;for he is mayor of
+      Ville-aux-Fayes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha, ha!&rdquo; laughed Blondet, &ldquo;the lieutenant&rsquo;s wit is keen; evidently a
+      mayor is essentially an honest man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lieutenant, convinced by the count&rsquo;s words that it was useless to
+      attempt to enlighten him, said no more on that subject, and the
+      conversation changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI. THE FOREST AND THE HARVEST
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The scene at Conches had, apparently, a good effect on the peasantry; on
+      the other hand, the count&rsquo;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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;paper-louse,&rdquo; 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,&mdash;truly
+      a little fish of another element.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who conveyed the secret information by which this was done? No one.
+      Courtecuisse happened to complain in Tonsard&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great land-owners of the department applauded General de Montcornet&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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
+      &ldquo;situation&rdquo; 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 <i>knew
+      all</i>, 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&rsquo;s
+      thousand francs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame la comtesse has done wonders,&rdquo; said the abbe, full of hope as to
+      the moral progress of his savages. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;the affair&rdquo; in view, blew the embers of hatred and
+      crime in the hearts of the peasantry of the valley des Aigues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo; 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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gloomy scene was harrowing to the old soldier, whose heart was kind,
+      and he said to Michaud: &ldquo;It pains me to see it. One must know the
+      importance of these measures to be able to insist upon them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;t
+      say no poor, for they are always with us, but no poor man who could not
+      live by his labor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mayors of Conches, Cerneux, and Soulanges have sent us all their
+      paupers,&rdquo; said Groison, who had now looked at the certificates; &ldquo;they had
+      no right to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but our people will go to their districts,&rdquo; said the general. &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he added, turning
+      to leave the field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear him?&rdquo; said Mother Tonsard to the old Bonnebault woman, for
+      the general&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes! we haven&rsquo;t got to the end yet,&mdash;a tooth to-day and
+      to-morrow an ear; if they could find a sauce for our livers they&rsquo;d eat &lsquo;em
+      as they do a calf&rsquo;s!&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you are gleaning, are you, though my wife helps you to earn so much
+      money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey! my dear gentleman, may God preserve you in good health! but, don&rsquo;t
+      you see, my grandson squanders all I earn, and I&rsquo;m forced to scratch up a
+      little wheat to get bread in the winter,&mdash;yes, yes, I glean just a
+      bit; it all helps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accustomed to get a good proportion of wheat in their gleaning, the false
+      as well as the true poor, forgetting the count&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;the
+      main line of conveyance which supplied the timber of the Paris market.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII. THE GREYHOUND
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s soul
+      reappeared in the used-up journalist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a fine soul!&rdquo; was the comment of the count and the countess when
+      they spoke of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is such a good young fellow that I miss him terribly when he is not
+      here,&rdquo; said the general. &ldquo;I do wish he could make a fortune and not lead
+      that Paris life of his.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s gown as she bids adieu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond the park, between the village and the walls, lay the cultivated
+      parts of Blangy,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! are you there?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you looking at?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What an idea! You know I have a horror of walking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will only walk a little way; I&rsquo;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&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll dress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you do, we can&rsquo;t get off for two hours. Take a shawl, put on a
+      bonnet, and boots; that&rsquo;s all you want. I shall tell them to harness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You always make me do what you want; I&rsquo;ll be ready in a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General,&rdquo; said Blondet, waking the count, who grumbled and turned over,
+      like a man who wants his morning sleep. &ldquo;We are going for a drive; won&rsquo;t
+      you come?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A quarter of an hour later the tilbury was slowly rolling along the park
+      avenue, followed by a liveried groom on horseback.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such weather inspires everybody,&rdquo; said Blondet, turning his horse at
+      hazard into one of the six avenues of the forest; &ldquo;Joseph, you know the
+      woods, don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, monsieur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;those cool depths,
+      where the verdure is moist and dark, where the light softens as it fades;
+      those white-birch glades o&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, let us walk; Joseph can take care of the tilbury; we shall
+      easily find it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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 &ldquo;parterre&rdquo; 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,&mdash;a song welcome to love, and heard by every organ
+      of the being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What silence!&rdquo; said the countess, with emotion and in a whisper, as if
+      not to trouble this deep peace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They looked at the green patches on the water,&mdash;worlds where life was
+      organizing; they pointed to the lizard playing in the sun and escaping at
+      their approach,&mdash;behavior which has won him the title of &ldquo;the friend
+      of man.&rdquo; &ldquo;Proving, too, how well he knows him,&rdquo; 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,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A curious noise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The countess was seized with panic, and she darted back through the wild
+      flower-garden, seeking the path by which to leave the forest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; cried Blondet, rushing after her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I saw eyes,&rdquo; she said, when they regained the path through
+      which they had reached the charcoal-burner&rsquo;s open.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;-the-wisp,
+      and did not listen to Blondet who called to her, &ldquo;You are mistaken.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s
+      terror; then the bailiff showed the two wanderers the way to find the
+      tilbury. When they reached the gate Madame Michaud called, &ldquo;Prince!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prince! Prince!&rdquo; called the bailiff; then he whistled,&mdash;but no
+      greyhound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emile mentioned the curious noise that began their adventure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife heard that noise,&rdquo; said Michaud, &ldquo;and I laughed at her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have killed Prince!&rdquo; exclaimed the countess. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil!&rdquo; cried Michaud; &ldquo;the matter must be cleared up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a fine elm,&rdquo; said Michaud, &ldquo;but there&rsquo;s a worm in it,&mdash;a worm
+      which gnaws round the bark close to the roots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped and took up a bit of the bark, saying: &ldquo;See how they work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have a great many worms in this forest,&rdquo; said Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then Michaud noticed a red spot; a moment more and he saw the head of
+      his greyhound. He sighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The scoundrels!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Madame was right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Michaud and Blondet examined the body and found, just as the countess had
+      said, that some one had cut the greyhound&rsquo;s throat. To prevent his barking
+      he had been decoyed with a bit of meat, which was still between his tongue
+      and his palate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor brute; he died of self-indulgence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like all princes,&rdquo; said Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some one, whoever it is, has just gone, fearing that we might catch him
+      or her,&rdquo; said Michaud. &ldquo;A serious offence has been committed. But for all
+      that, I see no branches about and no lopped trees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s head, antennae, and the
+      two vigorous hooks or shears with which the creature cuts into the wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear fellow,&rdquo; said Blondet, &ldquo;now I understand the enormous number of
+      <i>dead</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go and tell the general at once, before he breakfasts,&rdquo; cried the
+      countess; &ldquo;he might die of anger.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll prepare him,&rdquo; said Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They have killed the dog,&rdquo; said Olympe, in tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You loved the poor greyhound, dear, enough to weep for him?&rdquo; said the
+      countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think of Prince as a warning; I fear some danger to my husband.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How they have ruined this beautiful morning for us,&rdquo; said the countess,
+      with an adorable little pout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How they have ruined the country,&rdquo; said Olympe, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They met the general near the chateau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where have you been?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall know in a minute,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have plenty of moral strength, general; you won&rsquo;t put yourself in a
+      passion, will you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the general; &ldquo;but come to the point or I shall think you are
+      making fun of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see those trees with dead leaves?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you see those others that are wilting?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, every one of them has been killed by the peasants you think you
+      have won over by your benefits.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Blondet related the events of the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The general was so pale that Blondet was frightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, curse, swear, be furious! your self-control may hurt you more than
+      anger!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go and smoke,&rdquo; said the general, turning toward the kiosk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During breakfast Michaud came in; he had found no one. Sibilet, whom the
+      count had sent for, came also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur Sibilet, and you, Monsieur Michaud, are to make it known,
+      cautiously, that I will pay a thousand francs to whoever will arrest <i>in
+      the act</i> 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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those people never betray one another,&rdquo; said Sibilet, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but a thousand francs means a couple of acres of land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can try,&rdquo; said Sibilet; &ldquo;fifteen hundred francs might buy you a
+      traitor, especially if you promise secrecy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the enemy is here,&rdquo; said Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sibilet threw him the furtive glance of a man who understood the meaning
+      of the words, and then he withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like your Sibilet,&rdquo; said Blondet, when he had seen the steward
+      leave the house. &ldquo;That man is playing false.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up to this time he has done nothing I could complain of,&rdquo; said the
+      general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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, &ldquo;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,&mdash;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&rsquo;ll share their danger, and if I
+      can&rsquo;t save them I&rsquo;ll suffer with them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII. RURAL VIRTUE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that you, Bonnebault?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, my girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I owe twenty-five francs, and they may wring my neck twenty-five times
+      before I can pay them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I know how you can get five hundred,&rdquo; she said in his ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! by killing a man; but I prefer to live.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold your tongue. Vaudoyer will give us five hundred francs if you will
+      let him catch your mother at a tree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather kill a man than sell my mother. There&rsquo;s your old grandmother;
+      why don&rsquo;t you sell her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I tried to, my father would get angry and stop the trick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true. Well, anyhow, my mother sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t go to prison, poor old
+      thing! She cooks my food and keeps me in clothes, I&rsquo;m sure I don&rsquo;t know
+      how. Go to prison,&mdash;and through me! I shouldn&rsquo;t have any bowels
+      within me; no, no! And for fear any one else should sell her, I&rsquo;ll tell
+      her this very night not to kill any more trees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;ll ask my grandmother if
+      she&rsquo;ll earn them. They&rsquo;ll never put an old woman seventy-eight years of
+      age in prison,&mdash;though, to be sure, she&rsquo;d be better off there than in
+      her garret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five hundred francs! well, yes; I&rsquo;ll speak to my mother,&rdquo; said
+      Bonnebault, &ldquo;and if it suits her to give &lsquo;em to me, I&rsquo;ll let her have part
+      to take to prison. She could knit, and amuse herself; and she&rsquo;d be well
+      fed and lodged, and have less trouble than she has at Conches. Well,
+      to-morrow, my girl, I&rsquo;ll see you about it; I haven&rsquo;t time to stop now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Marie!&rdquo; called Bonnebault, &ldquo;that matter is settled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean about the trees?&rdquo; said Mother Tonsard; &ldquo;yes, it is all settled;
+      I&rsquo;ve taken it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; cried Mother Bonnebault, &ldquo;my son has got the promise of an
+      acre of land from Monsieur Rigou&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pull straws,&rdquo; suggested Tonsard&rsquo;s wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The short straw gave it in favor of the tavern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three days later, in the forest of Ville-aux-Fayes at daybreak, the
+      gendarmes arrested old Mother Tonsard caught &ldquo;in flagrante delicto&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Michaud could not refrain from saying when he discovered Mother Tonsard at
+      the foot of the tree: &ldquo;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&rsquo;t give that dowry to the Tonsard girl, who is
+      more worthless than her grandmother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte is perfectly right,&rdquo; said Sibilet. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a community!&rdquo; said Blondet; &ldquo;the scoundrels of Paris are saints by
+      comparison.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, monsieur,&rdquo; said Sibilet, &ldquo;self-interest makes people guilty of
+      horrors everywhere. Do you know who betrayed the old woman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her granddaughter Marie; she was jealous of her sister&rsquo;s marriage, and to
+      get the money for her own&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is awful!&rdquo; said the count. &ldquo;Why! they&rsquo;d murder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Sibilet, &ldquo;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,&mdash;but you will never believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us be kind and benevolent,&rdquo; said the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening after the arrest Bonnebault came to the tavern of the
+      Grand-I-Vert, where all the Tonsard family were in great jubilation. &ldquo;Oh
+      yes, yes!&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;make the most of your rejoicing; but I&rsquo;ve just heard
+      from Vaudoyer that the countess, to punish you, withdraws the thousand
+      francs promised to Godain; her husband won&rsquo;t let her give them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s that villain of a Michaud who has put him up to it,&rdquo; said Tonsard.
+      &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;d like to know? let him keep to the woods! It&rsquo;s
+      he who is at the bottom of all this trouble&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The general, the general!&rdquo; sneered Courtecuisse; &ldquo;they can do what they
+      like with him. But it&rsquo;s Michaud who stirs him up, the mischief-maker! a
+      fellow who don&rsquo;t know his business; in my day, things went differently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Tonsard, &ldquo;those were the good days for all of us&mdash;weren&rsquo;t
+      they, Vaudoyer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the latter, &ldquo;and the fact is that if Michaud were got rid of
+      we should be left in peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough said,&rdquo; replied Tonsard. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll talk of this later&mdash;by
+      moonlight&mdash;in the open field.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s mother was sentenced to five years&rsquo; 
+      imprisonment, and the lawyer said to her son:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was Michaud&rsquo;s testimony which got her that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX THE CATASTROPHE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she is going to lie-in,&rdquo; she whispered in Tonsard&rsquo;s ear. &ldquo;<i>He</i>
+      has saddled his horse and is going for the doctor at Soulanges.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; said Tonsard, giving her his place at the table, and going
+      himself to lie on a bench.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows what he&rsquo;s about,&rdquo; said Courtecuisse; &ldquo;he came down by the
+      terrace and he means to go by Blangy and the road,&mdash;it&rsquo;s the safest
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Tonsard, &ldquo;but he will bring the doctor back with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t find him,&rdquo; said Courtecuisse, &ldquo;the doctor has been sent for to
+      Conches for the postmistress.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he&rsquo;ll go from Soulanges to Conches by the mail-road; that&rsquo;s
+      shortest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And safest too, for us,&rdquo; said Courtecuisse, &ldquo;there&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be half-past eleven before he comes past there,&rdquo; said Tonsard,
+      &ldquo;it will take him half an hour to go to Soulanges and as much more to get
+      back,&mdash;but look here! suppose Monsieur Gourdon were on the road?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t trouble about that,&rdquo; said Courtecuisse, &ldquo;I&rsquo;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&rsquo;ll fire a shot into the
+      ground,&mdash;a muffled sound, you&rsquo;ll know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But suppose I miss him?&rdquo; said Tonsard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s right,&rdquo; said Courtecuisse, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m the best shot; Vaudoyer, I&rsquo;ll go
+      with you; Bonnebault may watch in my place; he can give a cry; that&rsquo;s
+      easier heard and less suspicious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All three returned to the tavern and the wedding festivities went on; but
+      about eleven o&rsquo;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&rsquo;clock. Tonsard&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While this orgy was going on Michaud&rsquo;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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;Nothing! nothing!&rdquo; she said. Then she went up again in
+      despair. About a quarter past twelve, she cried out: &ldquo;Here he is! I hear
+      the horse!&rdquo; Again she went down, followed by the man who went to open the
+      iron gate of the courtyard. &ldquo;It is strange,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that he should
+      return by the Conches woods!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;s windows
+      crying out: &ldquo;Monsieur, they have murdered him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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: &ldquo;They have murdered him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joseph!&rdquo; cried the count to his valet, &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he said to the gardener, &ldquo;go and find out what has
+      happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can tell you,&rdquo; said the pavilion servant, coming up, &ldquo;Monsieur
+      Michaud&rsquo;s horse has come back alone, the reins broke, his legs bloody; and
+      there&rsquo;s a spot of blood on the saddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can be done at this time of night?&rdquo; cried the count. &ldquo;Call up
+      Groison, send for the keepers, saddle the horses; we&rsquo;ll beat the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By daybreak, eight persons&mdash;the count, Groison, the three keepers,
+      and two gendarmes sent from Soulanges with their sergeant&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is impossible that it can be anything but a planned attack on the part
+      of the peasants,&rdquo; said the sergeant; &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;clock; they had spoken of the moon and the weather, and
+      heard nothing. At two o&rsquo;clock the whole party had taken the bride and
+      bridegroom to their own house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I have to spend twenty thousand francs I&rsquo;ll discover the murderer of
+      my poor Michaud,&rdquo; the general was never weary of saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&mdash;early in February&mdash;the general
+      rejoined his wife in Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X. THE TRIUMPH OF THE VANQUISHED
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      One evening in the month of May, when the fine weather had come and the
+      Parisians had returned to Les Aigues, Monsieur de Troisville,&mdash;who
+      had been persuaded to accompany his daughter,&mdash;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&rsquo;clock when Joseph entered and told his master
+      that the worthless poaching workman who had been dismissed wanted to see
+      him,&mdash;something about a bill which he said the general still owed
+      him. &ldquo;He is very drunk,&rdquo; added Joseph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good, I&rsquo;ll go and speak to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The general went out upon the lawn to some distance from the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le comte,&rdquo; said the detective, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear wife,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to frighten you, and yet it is right
+      you should know that Michaud&rsquo;s death was intended as a warning for us to
+      leave this part of the country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were in your place,&rdquo; said Monsieur de Troisville, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Monsieur le marquis,&rdquo; said the sub-prefect, &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, retreat before the peasantry when I did not recoil before the Danube!&rdquo;
+       cried the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but what became of your cuirassiers?&rdquo; asked Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Such a fine estate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will sell to-day for over two millions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The chateau alone must have cost that,&rdquo; remarked Monsieur de Troisville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of the best properties in a circumference of sixty miles,&rdquo; said the
+      sub-prefect; &ldquo;but you can find a better near Paris.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much income does one get from two millions?&rdquo; asked the countess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now-a-days, about eighty thousand francs,&rdquo; replied Blondet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Les Aigues does not bring in, all told, more than thirty thousand,&rdquo; said
+      the countess; &ldquo;and lately you have been at such immense expenses,&mdash;you
+      have surrounded the woods this year with ditches.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could get,&rdquo; added Blondet, &ldquo;a royal chateau for four hundred thousand
+      francs near Paris. In these days people buy the follies of others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you cared for Les Aigues!&rdquo; said the count to his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you feel that I care a thousand times more for your life?&rdquo; she
+      replied. &ldquo;Besides, ever since the death of my poor Olympe and Michaud&rsquo;s
+      murder the country is odious to me; all the faces I meet seem to wear a
+      treacherous or threatening expression.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Monsieur des Lupeaulx, so you have returned from Les Aigues?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered the sub-prefect with a little air of triumph and a look of
+      tender regard at Mademoiselle Elise, &ldquo;and I am very much afraid to say we
+      may lose the general; he talks of selling his property&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;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,&rdquo; 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray be prudent, madame!&rdquo; said her husband in a low voice; &ldquo;your
+      indiscretions will not help me to buy the pavilion.&rdquo; Then, turning to the
+      sub-prefect, he added, &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t they yet discovered the men who were
+      concerned in the murder of the bailiff?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems not,&rdquo; replied the sub-prefect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will injure the sale of Les Aigues,&rdquo; said Gaubertin to the company
+      generally, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;General,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you want to kill me, Bonnebault?&rdquo; said the general, without
+      showing the least emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Faith, if I don&rsquo;t, somebody else will; but I, you see, I like the men who
+      served the Emperor, and I can&rsquo;t make up my mind to shoot you like a
+      partridge. Don&rsquo;t question me, for I&rsquo;ll tell you nothing; but you&rsquo;ve got
+      enemies, powerful enemies, cleverer than you, and they&rsquo;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&rsquo;ll keep on saying, as I have done, that I&rsquo;ve found no
+      chances. That will give you time to sell your property and get away; but
+      make haste. I&rsquo;m an honest lad still, scamp as I am; but another fellow
+      won&rsquo;t spare you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I give you what you ask, will you tell me who offered you those three
+      thousand francs?&rdquo; said the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don&rsquo;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&rsquo;t help you; Marie Tonsard would be as silent as
+      that wall, and I should deny every word I&rsquo;ve said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and see me to-morrow,&rdquo; said the general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough,&rdquo; replied Bonnebault; &ldquo;and if they begin to say I&rsquo;m too dilatory,
+      I&rsquo;ll let you know in time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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,&mdash;excepting the pavilion,
+      its dependencies, and fifty surrounding acres, which Monsieur Gaubertin
+      retained as a gift to his poetic and sentimental spouse.
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      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&rsquo;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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is progress!&rdquo; cried Emile. &ldquo;It is a page out of Jean-Jacques&rsquo; 
+      &lsquo;Social Compact&rsquo;! and I&mdash;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?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you love me; you are beside me. I think the present delightful. What
+      do I care for such a distant future?&rdquo; said his wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh yes! by your side, hurrah for the present!&rdquo; cried the lover, gayly,
+      &ldquo;and the devil take the future.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      1845.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      ADDENDUM
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Note: Sons of the Soil is also known as The Peasantry and is referred to
+      by that title when mentioned in other addendums.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Blondet, Emile
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
+       Scenes from a Courtesan&rsquo;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&rsquo;s Life
+       A Man of Business
+       Cousin Betty
+
+     Navarreins, Duc de
+       A Bachelor&rsquo;s Establishment
+       Colonel Chabert
+       The Muse of the Department
+       The Thirteen
+       Jealousies of a Country Town
+       Scenes from a Courtesan&rsquo;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
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sons of the Soil, by Honore de Balzac
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/1417.txt b/old/1417.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1417.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12978 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sons of the Soil, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Sons of the Soil
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: August, 1998  [Etext #1417]
+Posting Date: February 24, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONS OF THE SOIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+SONS OF THE SOIL
+
+
+By Honore De Balzac
+
+
+Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+                    To Monsieur P. S. B. Gavault.
+
+  Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote these words at the beginning of his
+  Nouvelle Heloise: "I have seen the morals of my time and I publish
+  these letters." May I not say to you, in imitation of that great
+  writer, "I have studied the march of my epoch and I publish this
+  work"?
+
+  The object of this particular study--startling in its truth so
+  long as society makes philanthropy a principle instead of
+  regarding it as an accident--is to bring to sight the leading
+  characters of a class too long unheeded by the pens of writers who
+  seek novelty as their chief object. Perhaps this forgetfulness is
+  only prudence in these days when the people are heirs of all the
+  sycophants of royalty. We make criminals poetic, we commiserate
+  the hangman, we have all but deified the proletary. Sects have
+  risen, and cried by every pen, "Arise, working-men!" just as
+  formerly they cried, "Arise!" to the "tiers etat." None of these
+  Erostrates, however, have dared to face the country solitudes and
+  study the unceasing conspiracy of those whom we term weak against
+  those others who fancy themselves strong,--that of the peasant
+  against the proprietor. It is necessary to enlighten not only the
+  legislator of to-day but him of to-morrow. In the midst of the
+  present democratic ferment, into which so many of our writers
+  blindly rush, it becomes an urgent duty to exhibit the peasant who
+  renders Law inapplicable, and who has made the ownership of land
+  to be a thing that is, and that is not.
+
+  You are now to behold that indefatigable mole, that rodent which
+  undermines and disintegrates the soil, parcels it out and divides
+  an acre into a hundred fragments,--ever spurred on to his banquet
+  by the lower middle classes who make him at once their auxiliary
+  and their prey. This essentially unsocial element, created by the
+  Revolution, will some day absorb the middle classes, just as the
+  middle classes have destroyed the nobility. Lifted above the law
+  by its own insignificance, this Robespierre, with one head and
+  twenty million arms, is at work perpetually; crouching in country
+  districts, intrenched in municipal councils, under arms in the
+  national guard of every canton in France,--one result of the year
+  1830, which failed to remember that Napoleon preferred the chances
+  of defeat to the danger of arming the masses.
+
+  If during the last eight years I have again and again given up the
+  writing of this book (the most important of those I have
+  undertaken to write), and as often returned to it, it was, as you
+  and other friends can well imagine, because my courage shrank from
+  the many difficulties, the many essential details of a drama so
+  doubly dreadful and so cruelly bloody. Among the reasons which
+  render me now almost, it may be thought, foolhardy, I count the
+  desire to finish a work long designed to be to you a proof of my
+  deep and lasting gratitude for a friendship that has ever been
+  among my greatest consolations in misfortune.
+
+                                                      De Balzac.
+
+
+
+
+SONS OF THE SOIL
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+                 Whoso land hath, contention hath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE CHATEAU
+
+
+Les Aigues, August 6, 1823.
+
+To Monsieur Nathan,
+
+My dear Nathan,--You, who provide the public with such delightful dreams
+through the magic of your imagination, are now to follow me while I make
+you dream a dream of truth. You shall then tell me whether the present
+century is likely to bequeath such dreams to the Nathans and the
+Blondets of the year 1923; you shall estimate the distance at which we
+now are from the days when the Florines of the eighteenth century found,
+on awaking, a chateau like Les Aigues in the terms of their bargain.
+
+My dear fellow, if you receive this letter in the morning, let your
+mind travel, as you lie in bed, fifty leagues or thereabouts from Paris,
+along the great mail road which leads to the confines of Burgundy, and
+behold two small lodges built of red brick, joined, or separated, by
+a rail painted green. It was there that the diligence deposited your
+friend and correspondent.
+
+On either side of this double pavilion grows a quick-set hedge, from
+which the brambles straggle like stray locks of hair. Here and there a
+tree shoots boldly up; flowers bloom on the slopes of the wayside ditch,
+bathing their feet in its green and sluggish water. The hedge at both
+ends meets and joins two strips of woodland, and the double meadow thus
+inclosed is doubtless the result of a clearing.
+
+These dusty and deserted lodges give entrance to a magnificent avenue of
+centennial elms, whose umbrageous heads lean toward each other and form
+a long and most majestic arbor. The grass grows in this avenue, and only
+a few wheel-tracks can be seen along its double width of way. The great
+age of the trees, the breadth of the avenue, the venerable construction
+of the lodges, the brown tints of their stone courses, all bespeak an
+approach to some half-regal residence.
+
+Before reaching this enclosure from the height of an eminence such as we
+Frenchmen rather conceitedly call a mountain, at the foot of which lies
+the village of Conches (the last post-house), I had seen the long valley
+of Aigues, at the farther end of which the mail road turns to follow a
+straight line into the little sub-prefecture of La Ville-aux-Fayes, over
+which, as you know, the nephew of our friend des Lupeaulx lords it. Tall
+forests lying on the horizon, along vast slopes which skirt a river,
+command this rich valley, which is framed in the far distance by the
+mountains of a lesser Switzerland, called the Morvan. These forests
+belong to Les Aigues, and to the Marquis de Ronquerolles and the Comte
+de Soulanges, whose castles and parks and villages, seen in the distance
+from these heights, give the scene a strong resemblance to the imaginary
+landscapes of Velvet Breughel.
+
+If these details do not remind you of all the castles in the air you
+have desired to possess in France you are not worthy to receive the
+present narrative of an astounded Parisian. At last I have seen a
+landscape where art is blended with nature in such a way that neither
+of them spoils the other; the art is natural, and the nature artistic.
+I have found the oasis that you and I have dreamed of when reading
+novels,--nature luxuriant and adorned, rolling lines that are not
+confused, something wild withal, unkempt, mysterious, not common. Jump
+that green railing and come on!
+
+When I tried to look up the avenue, which the sun never penetrates
+except when it rises or when it sets, striping the road like a zebra
+with its oblique rays, my view was obstructed by an outline of rising
+ground; after that is passed, the long avenue is obstructed by a copse,
+within which the roads meet at a cross-ways, in the centre of which
+stands a stone obelisk, for all the world like an eternal exclamation
+mark. From the crevices between the foundation stones of this erection,
+which is topped by a spiked ball (what an idea!), hang flowering plants,
+blue or yellow according to the season. Les Aigues must certainly have
+been built by a woman, or for a woman; no man would have had such dainty
+ideas; the architect no doubt had his cue.
+
+Passing through the little wood placed there as sentinel, I came upon
+a charming declivity, at the foot of which foamed and gurgled a little
+brook, which I crossed on a culvert of mossy stones, superb in color,
+the prettiest of all the mosaics which time manufactures. The avenue
+continues by the brookside up a gentle rise. In the distance, the first
+tableau is now seen,--a mill and its dam, a causeway and trees, linen
+laid out to dry, the thatched cottage of the miller, his fishing-nets,
+and the tank where the fish are kept,--not to speak of the miller's boy,
+who was already watching me. No matter where you are in the country,
+however solitary you may think yourself, you are certain to be the focus
+of the two eyes of a country bumpkin; a laborer rests on his hoe,
+a vine-dresser straightens his bent back, a little goat-girl, or
+shepherdess, or milkmaid climbs a willow to stare at you.
+
+Presently the avenue merges into an alley of acacias, which leads to an
+iron railing made in the days when iron-workers fashioned those slender
+filagrees which are not unlike the copies set us by a writing-master. On
+either side of the railing is a ha-ha, the edges of which bristle with
+angry spikes,--regular porcupines in metal. The railing is closed
+at both ends by two porter's-lodges, like those of the palace at
+Versailles, and the gateway is surmounted by colossal vases. The gold
+of the arabesques is ruddy, for rust has added its tints, but this
+entrance, called "the gate of the Avenue," which plainly shows the hand
+of the Great Dauphin (to whom, indeed, Les Aigues owes it), seems to me
+none the less beautiful for that. At the end of each ha-ha the walls
+of the park, built of rough-hewn stone, begin. These stones, set in a
+mortar made of reddish earth, display their variegated colors, the
+warm yellows of the silex, the white of the lime carbonates, the russet
+browns of the sandstone, in many a fantastic shape. As you first enter
+it, the park is gloomy, the walls are hidden by creeping plants and by
+trees that for fifty years have heard no sound of axe. One might think
+it a virgin forest, made primeval again through some phenomenon granted
+exclusively to forests. The trunks of the trees are swathed with lichen
+which hangs from one to another. Mistletoe, with its viscid leaves,
+droops from every fork of the branches where moisture settles. I have
+found gigantic ivies, wild arabesques which flourish only at fifty
+leagues from Paris, here where land does not cost enough to make one
+sparing of it. The landscape on such free lines covers a great deal of
+ground. Nothing is smoothed off; rakes are unknown, ruts and ditches
+are full of water, frogs are tranquilly delivered of their tadpoles, the
+woodland flowers bloom, and the heather is as beautiful as that I have
+seen on your mantle-shelf in January in the elegant beau-pot sent by
+Florine. This mystery is intoxicating, it inspires vague desires. The
+forest odors, beloved of souls that are epicures of poesy, who delight
+in the tiny mosses, the noxious fungi, the moist mould, the willows, the
+balsams, the wild thyme, the green waters of a pond, the golden star
+of the yellow water-lily,--the breath of all such vigorous propagations
+came to my nostrils and filled me with a single thought; was it their
+soul? I seemed to see a rose-tinted gown floating along the winding
+alley.
+
+The path ended abruptly in another copse, where birches and poplars and
+all the quivering trees palpitated,--an intelligent family with graceful
+branches and elegant bearing, the trees of a love as free! It was from
+this point, my dear fellow, that I saw a pond covered with the white
+water-lily and other plants with broad flat leaves and narrow slender
+ones, on which lay a boat painted white and black, as light as a
+nut-shell and dainty as the wherry of a Seine boatman. Beyond rose
+the chateau, built in 1560, of fine red brick, with stone courses and
+copings, and window-frames in which the sashes were of small leaded
+panes (O Versailles!). The stone is hewn in diamond points, but
+hollowed, as in the Ducal Palace at Venice on the facade toward the
+Bridge of Sighs. There are no regular lines about the castle except in
+the centre building, from which projects a stately portico with double
+flights of curving steps, and round balusters slender at their base
+and broadening at the middle. The main building is surrounded by
+clock-towers and sundry modern turrets, with galleries and vases more
+or less Greek. No harmony there, my dear Nathan! These heterogeneous
+erections are wrapped, so to speak, by various evergreen trees whose
+branches shed their brown needles upon the roofs, nourishing the lichen
+and giving tone to the cracks and crevices where the eye delights to
+wander. Here you see the Italian pine, the stone pine, with its red bark
+and its majestic parasol; here a cedar two hundred years old, weeping
+willows, a Norway spruce, and a beech which overtops them all; and
+there, in front of the main tower, some very singular shrubs,--a yew
+trimmed in a way that recalls some long-decayed garden of old France,
+and magnolias with hortensias at their feet. In short, the place is
+the Invalides of the heroes of horticulture, once the fashion and now
+forgotten, like all other heroes.
+
+A chimney, with curious copings, which was sending forth great volumes
+of smoke, assured me that this delightful scene was not an opera
+setting. A kitchen reveals human beings. Now imagine _me_, Blondet, who
+shiver as if in the polar regions at Saint-Cloud, in the midst of this
+glowing Burgundian climate. The sun sends down its warmest rays, the
+king-fisher watches on the shores of the pond, the cricket chirps, the
+grain-pods burst, the poppy drops its morphia in glutinous tears, and
+all are clearly defined on the dark-blue ether. Above the ruddy soil
+of the terraces flames that joyous natural punch which intoxicates the
+insects and the flowers and dazzles our eyes and browns our faces. The
+grape is beading, its tendrils fall in a veil of threads whose
+delicacy puts to shame the lace-makers. Beside the house blue larkspur,
+nasturtium, and sweet-peas are blooming. From a distance orange-trees
+and tuberoses scent the air. After the poetic exhalations of the woods
+(a gradual preparation) came the delectable pastilles of this botanic
+seraglio.
+
+Standing on the portico, like the queen of flowers, behold a woman robed
+in white, with hair unpowdered, holding a parasol lined with white silk,
+but herself whiter than the silk, whiter than the lilies at her feet,
+whiter than the starry jasmine that climbed the balustrade,--a woman, a
+Frenchwoman born in Russia, who said as I approached her, "I had almost
+given you up." She had seen me as I left the copse. With what perfection
+do all women, even the most guileless, understand the arrangement of
+a scenic effect? The movements of the servants, who were preparing to
+serve breakfast, showed me that the meal had been delayed until after
+the arrival of the diligence. She had not ventured to come to meet me.
+
+Is this not our dream,--the dream of all lovers of the beautiful, under
+whatsoever form it comes; the seraphic beauty that Luini put into his
+Marriage of the Virgin, that noble fresco at Sarono; the beauty that
+Rubens grasped in the tumult of his "Battle of the Thermodon"; the
+beauty that five centuries have elaborated in the cathedrals of Seville
+and Milan; the beauty of the Saracens at Granada, the beauty of Louis
+XIV. at Versailles, the beauty of the Alps, and that of this Limagne in
+which I stand?
+
+Belonging to the estate, about which there is nothing too princely,
+nor yet too financial, where prince and farmer-general have both lived
+(which fact serves to explain it), are four thousand acres of woodland,
+a park of some nine hundred acres, the mill, three leased farms, another
+immense farm at Conches, and vineyards,--the whole producing a revenue
+of about seventy thousand francs a year. Now you know Les Aigues, my
+dear fellow; where I have been expected for the last two weeks, and
+where I am at this moment, in the chintz-lined chamber assigned to
+dearest friends.
+
+Above the park, towards Conches, a dozen little brooks, clear, limpid
+streams coming from the Morvan, fall into the pond, after adorning
+with their silvery ribbons the valleys of the park and the magnificent
+gardens around the chateau. The name of the place, Les Aigues, comes
+from these charming streams of water; the estate was originally called
+in the old title-deeds "Les Aigues-Vives" to distinguish it from
+"Aigues-Mortes"; but the word "Vives" has now been dropped. The pond
+empties into the stream, which follows the course of the avenue, through
+a wide and straight canal bordered on both sides and along its
+whole length by weeping willows. This canal, thus arched, produces a
+delightful effect. Gliding through it, seated on a thwart of the little
+boat, one could fancy one's self in the nave of some great cathedral,
+the choir being formed of the main building of the house seen at the end
+of it. When the setting sun casts its orange tones mingled with amber
+upon the casements of the chateau, the effect is that of painted
+windows. At the other end of the canal we see Blangy, the county-town,
+containing about sixty houses, and the village church, which is nothing
+more than a tumble-down building with a wooden clock-tower which
+appears to hold up a roof of broken tiles. One comfortable house and the
+parsonage are distinguishable; but the township is a large one,--about
+two hundred scattered houses in all, those of the village forming as
+it were the capital. The roads are lined with fruit-trees, and numerous
+little gardens are strewn here and there,--true country gardens with
+everything in them; flowers, onions, cabbages and grapevines, currants,
+and a great deal of manure. The village has a primitive air; it is
+rustic, and has that decorative simplicity which we artists are forever
+seeking. In the far distance is the little town of Soulanges overhanging
+a vast sheet of water, like the buildings on the lake of Thune.
+
+When you stroll in the park, which has four gates, each superb in style,
+you feel that our mythological Arcadias are flat and stale. Arcadia is
+in Burgundy, not in Greece; Arcadia is at Les Aigues and nowhere else. A
+river, made by scores of brooklets, crosses the park at its lower level
+with a serpentine movement; giving a dewy freshness and tranquillity
+to the scene,--an air of solitude, which reminds one of a convent of
+Carthusians, and all the more because, on an artificial island in the
+river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior elegance of which is worthy
+of the luxurious financier who constructed it. Les Aigues, my dear
+Nathan, once belonged to that Bouret who spent two millions to receive
+Louis XV. on a single occasion under his roof. How many ardent passions,
+how many distinguished minds, how many fortunate circumstances have
+contributed to make this beautiful place what it is! A mistress of Henri
+IV. rebuilt the chateau where it now stands. The favorite of the Great
+Dauphin, Mademoiselle Choin (to whom Les Aigues was given), added
+a number of farms to it. Bouret furnished the house with all the
+elegancies of Parisian homes for an Opera celebrity; and to him Les
+Aigues owes the restoration of its ground floor in the style Louis XV.
+
+I have often stood rapt in admiration at the beauty of the dining-room.
+The eye is first attracted to the ceiling, painted in fresco in the
+Italian manner, where lightsome arabesques are frolicking. Female forms,
+in stucco ending in foliage, support at regular distances corbeils
+of fruit, from which spring the garlands of the ceiling. Charming
+paintings, the work of unknown artists, fill the panels between the
+female figures, representing the luxuries of the table,--boar's-heads,
+salmon, rare shell-fish, and all edible things,--which fantastically
+suggest men and women and children, and rival the whimsical imagination
+of the Chinese,--the people who best understand, to my thinking
+at least, the art of decoration. The mistress of the house finds a
+bell-wire beneath her feet to summon servants, who enter only when
+required, disturbing no interviews and overhearing no secrets. The
+panels above the doorways represent gay scenes; all the embrasures, both
+of doors and windows, are in marble mosaics. The room is heated from
+below. Every window looks forth on some delightful view.
+
+This room communicates with a bath-room on one side and on the other
+with a boudoir which opens into the salon. The bath-room is lined with
+Sevres tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the bath
+marble. An alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which turns
+on a pivot, contains a couch in gilt wood of the truest Pompadour. The
+ceiling is lapis-lazuli starred with gold. The tiles are painted from
+designs by Boucher. Bath, table and love are therefore closely united.
+
+After the salon, which, I should tell you, my dear fellow, exhibits the
+magnificence of the Louis XIV. manner, you enter a fine billiard-room
+unrivalled so far as I know in Paris itself. The entrance to this suite
+of ground-floor apartments is through a semi-circular antechamber, at
+the lower end of which is a fairy-like staircase, lighted from
+above, which leads to other parts of the house, all built at various
+epochs--and to think that they chopped off the heads of the wealthy in
+1793! Good heavens! why can't people understand that the marvels of art
+are impossible in a land where there are no great fortunes, no secure,
+luxurious lives? If the Left insists on killing kings why not leave us a
+few little princelings with money in their pockets?
+
+At the present moment these accumulated treasures belong to a charming
+woman with an artistic soul, who is not content with merely restoring
+them magnificently, but who keeps the place up with loving care. Sham
+philosophers, studying themselves while they profess to be studying
+humanity, call these glorious things extravagance. They grovel before
+cotton prints and the tasteless designs of modern industry, as if we
+were greater and happier in these days than in those of Henri IV., Louis
+XIV., and Louis XVI., monarchs who have all left the stamp of their
+reigns upon Les Aigues. What palace, what royal castle, what mansions,
+what noble works of art, what gold brocaded stuffs are sacred now?
+The petticoats of our grandmothers go to cover the chairs in these
+degenerate days. Selfish and thieving interlopers that we are, we pull
+down everything and plant cabbages where marvels once were rife. Only
+yesterday the plough levelled Persan, that magnificent domain which
+gave a title to one of the most opulent families of the old parliament;
+hammers have demolished Montmorency, which cost an Italian follower
+of Napoleon untold sums; Val, the creation of Regnault de Saint-Jean
+d'Angely, Cassan, built by a mistress of the Prince de Conti; in all,
+four royal houses have disappeared in the valley of the Oise alone. We
+are getting a Roman campagna around Paris in advance of the days when a
+tempest shall blow from the north and overturn our plaster palaces and
+our pasteboard decorations.
+
+Now see, my dear fellow, to what the habit of bombasticising in
+newspapers brings you to. Here am I writing a downright article. Does
+the mind have its ruts, like a road? I stop; for I rob the mail, and I
+rob myself, and you may be yawning--to be continued in our next; I hear
+the second bell, which summons me to one of those abundant breakfasts
+the fashion of which has long passed away, in the dining-rooms of Paris,
+be it understood.
+
+Here's the history of my Arcadia. In 1815, there died at Les Aigues one
+of the famous wantons of the last century,--a singer, forgotten of
+the guillotine and the nobility, after preying upon exchequers, upon
+literature, upon aristocracy, and all but reaching the scaffold;
+forgotten, like so many fascinating old women who expiate their
+golden youth in country solitudes, and replace their lost loves by
+another,--man by Nature. Such women live with the flowers, with the
+woodland scents, with the sky, with the sunshine, with all that sings
+and skips and shines and sprouts,--the birds, the squirrels, the
+flowers, the grass; they know nothing about these things, they cannot
+explain them, but they love them; they love them so well that they
+forget dukes, marshals, rivalries, financiers, follies, luxuries, their
+paste jewels and their real diamonds, their heeled slippers and their
+rouge,--all, for the sweetness of country life.
+
+I have gathered, my dear fellow, much precious information about the old
+age of Mademoiselle Laguerre; for, to tell you the truth, the after life
+of such women as Florine, Mariette, Suzanne de Val Noble, and Tullia has
+made me, every now and then, extremely inquisitive, as though I were a
+child inquiring what had become of the old moons.
+
+In 1790 Mademoiselle Laguerre, alarmed at the turn of public affairs,
+came to settle at Les Aigues, bought and given to her by Bouret, who
+passed several summers with her at the chateau. Terrified at the fate
+of Madame du Barry, she buried her diamonds. At that time she was only
+fifty-three years of age, and according to her lady's-maid, afterwards
+married to a gendarme named Soudry, "Madame was more beautiful than
+ever." My dear Nathan, Nature has no doubt her private reasons for
+treating women of this sort like spoiled children; excesses, instead
+of killing them, fatten them, preserve them, renew their youth. Under
+a lymphatic appearance they have nerves which maintain their marvellous
+physique; they actually preserve their beauty for reasons which would
+make a virtuous woman haggard. No, upon my word, Nature is not moral!
+
+Mademoiselle Laguerre lived an irreproachable life at Les Aigues, one
+might even call it a saintly one, after her famous adventure,--you
+remember it? One evening in a paroxysm of despairing love, she fled from
+the opera-house in her stage dress, rushed into the country, and passed
+the night weeping by the wayside. (Ah! how they have calumniated the
+love of Louis XV.'s time!) She was so unused to see the sunrise, that
+she hailed it with one of her finest songs. Her attitude, quite as much
+as her tinsel, drew the peasants about her; amazed at her gestures,
+her voice, her beauty, they took her for an angel, and dropped on their
+knees around her. If Voltaire had not existed we might have thought it
+a new miracle. I don't know if God gave her much credit for her tardy
+virtue, for love after all must be a sickening thing to a woman as weary
+of it as a wanton of the old Opera. Mademoiselle Laguerre was born in
+1740, and her hey-day was in 1760, when Monsieur (I forget his name) was
+called the "ministre de la guerre," on account of his liaison with her.
+She abandoned that name, which was quite unknown down here, and called
+herself Madame des Aigues, as if to merge her identity in the estate,
+which she delighted to improve with a taste that was profoundly
+artistic. When Bonaparte became First Consul, she increased her property
+by the purchase of church lands, for which she used the proceeds of
+her diamonds. As an Opera divinity never knows how to take care of
+her money, she intrusted the management of the estate to a steward,
+occupying herself with her flowers and fruits and with the beautifying
+of the park.
+
+After Mademoiselle was dead and buried at Blangy, the notary of
+Soulanges--that little town which lies between Ville-aux-Fayes and
+Blangy, the capital of the township--made an elaborate inventory, and
+sought out the heirs of the singer, who never knew she had any. Eleven
+families of poor laborers living near Amiens, and sleeping in cotton
+sheets, awoke one fine morning in golden ones. The property was sold
+at auction. Les Aigues was bought by Montcornet, who had laid by enough
+during his campaigns in Spain and Pomerania to make the purchase, which
+cost about eleven hundred thousand francs, including the furniture. The
+general, no doubt, felt the influence of these luxurious apartments; and
+I was arguing with the countess only yesterday that her marriage was a
+direct result of the purchase of Les Aigues.
+
+To rightly understand the countess, my dear Nathan, you must know that
+the general is a violent man, red as fire, five feet nine inches tall,
+round as a tower, with a thick neck and the shoulders of a blacksmith,
+which must have amply filled his cuirass. Montcornet commanded
+the cuirassiers at the battle of Essling (called by the Austrians
+Gross-Aspern), and came near perishing when that noble corps was driven
+back on the Danube. He managed to cross the river astride a log of wood.
+The cuirassiers, finding the bridge down, took the glorious resolution,
+at Montcornet's command, to turn and resist the entire Austrian army,
+which carried off on the morrow over thirty wagon-loads of cuirasses.
+The Germans invented a name for their enemies on this occasion which
+means "men of iron."[*] Montcornet has the outer man of a hero of
+antiquity. His arms are stout and vigorous, his chest deep and broad;
+his head has a leonine aspect, his voice is of those that can order a
+charge in the thick of battle; but he has nothing more than the courage
+of a daring man; he lacks mind and breadth of view. Like other generals
+to whom military common-sense, the natural boldness of those who spend
+their lives in danger, and the habit of command gives an appearance of
+superiority, Montcornet has an imposing effect when you first meet him;
+he seems a Titan, but he contains a dwarf, like the pasteboard giant
+who saluted Queen Elizabeth at the gates of Kenilworth. Choleric though
+kind, and full of imperial hauteur, he has the caustic tongue of a
+soldier, and is quick at repartee, but quicker still with a blow. He
+may have been superb on a battle-field; in a household he is simply
+intolerable. He knows no love but barrack love,--the love which those
+clever myth-makers, the ancients, placed under the patronage of Eros,
+son of Mars and Venus. Those delightful chroniclers of the old religions
+provided themselves with a dozen different Loves. Study the fathers and
+the attributes of these Loves, and you will discover a complete social
+nomenclature,--and yet we fancy that we originate things! When the world
+turns upside down like an hour-glass, when the seas become continents,
+Frenchmen will find canons, steamboats, newspapers, and maps wrapped up
+in seaweed at the bottom of what is now our ocean.
+
+     [*] I do not, on principle, like foot-notes, and this is the
+     first I have ever allowed myself. Its historical interest
+     must be my excuse; it will prove, moreover, that
+     descriptions of battles should be something more than the
+     dry particulars of technical writers, who for the last three
+     thousand years have told us about left and right wings and
+     centres being broken or driven in, but never a word about
+     the soldier himself, his sufferings, and his heroism. The
+     conscientious care with which I prepared myself to write the
+     "Scenes from Military Life," led me to many a battle-field
+     once wet with the blood of France and her enemies. Among
+     them I went to Wagram. When I reached the shores of the
+     Danube, opposite Lobau, I noticed on the bank, which is
+     covered with turf, certain undulations that reminded me of
+     the furrows in a field of lucern. I asked the reason of it,
+     thinking I should hear of some new method of agriculture:
+     "There sleep the cavalry of the imperial guard," said the
+     peasant who served us as a guide; "those are their graves
+     you see there." The words made me shudder. Prince Frederic
+     Schwartzenburg, who translated them, added that the man had
+     himself driven one of the wagons laden with cuirasses. By
+     one of the strange chances of war our guide had served a
+     breakfast to Napoleon on the morning of the battle of
+     Wagram. Though poor, he had kept the double napoleon which
+     the Emperor gave him for his milk and his eggs. The curate
+     of Gross-Aspern took us to the famous cemetery where French
+     and Austrians struggled together knee-deep in blood, with a
+     courage and obstinacy glorious to each. There, while
+     explaining that a marble tablet (to which our attention had
+     been attracted, and on which were inscribed the names of the
+     owner of Gross-Aspern, who had been killed on the third day)
+     was the sole compensation ever given to the family, he said,
+     in a tone of deep sadness: "It was a time of great misery,
+     and of great hopes; but now are the days of forgetfulness."
+     The saying seemed to me sublime in its simplicity; but when
+     I came to reflect upon the matter, I felt there was some
+     justification for the apparent ingratitude of the House of
+     Austria. Neither nations nor kings are wealthy enough to
+     reward all the devotions to which these tragic struggles
+     give rise. Let those who serve a cause with a secret
+     expectation of recompense, set a price upon their blood and
+     become mercenaries. Those who wield either sword or pen for
+     their country's good ought to think of nothing but of _doing
+     their best_, as our fathers used to say, and expect nothing,
+     not even glory, except as a happy accident.
+
+     It was in rushing to retake this famous cemetery for the
+     third time that Massena, wounded and carried in the box of a
+     cabriolet, made this splendid harangue to his soldiers:
+     "What! you rascally curs, who have only five sous a day
+     while I have forty thousand, do you let me go ahead of you?"
+     All the world knows the order which the Emperor sent to his
+     lieutenant by M. de Sainte-Croix, who swam the Danube three
+     times: "Die or retake the village; it is a question of
+     saving the army; the bridges are destroyed."
+
+     The Author.
+
+
+Now, I must tell you that the Comtesse de Montcornet is a fragile,
+timid, delicate little woman. What do you think of such a marriage
+as that? To those who know society such things are common enough; a
+well-assorted marriage is the exception. Nevertheless, I have come to
+see how it is that this slender little creature handles her bobbins in
+a way to lead this heavy, solid, stolid general precisely as he himself
+used to lead his cuirassiers.
+
+If Montcornet begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a
+finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his cigars
+in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before he
+returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns to her, like a
+bear drunk on grapes, and says, when anything is proposed, "If Madame
+approves." When he comes to his wife's room, with that heavy step which
+makes the tiles creak as though they were boards, and she, not wanting
+him, calls out: "Don't come in!" he performs a military volte-face and
+says humbly: "You will let me know when I can see you?"--in the very
+tones with which he shouted to his cuirassiers on the banks of the
+Danube: "Men, we must die, and die well, since there's nothing else we
+can do!" I have heard him say, speaking of his wife, "Not only do I love
+her, but I venerate her." When he flies into a passion which defies all
+restraint and bursts all bonds, the little woman retires into her own
+room and leaves him to shout. But four or five hours later she will say:
+"Don't get into a passion, my dear, you might break a blood-vessel; and
+besides, you hurt me." Then the lion of Essling retreats out of sight
+to wipe his eyes. Sometimes he comes into the salon when she and I are
+talking, and if she says: "Don't disturb us, he is reading to me," he
+leaves us without a word.
+
+It is only strong men, choleric and powerful, thunder-bolts of war,
+diplomats with olympian heads, or men of genius, who can show this
+utter confidence, this generous devotion to weakness, this constant
+protection, this love without jealousy, this easy good humor with a
+woman. Good heavens! I place the science of the countess's management
+of her husband as far above the peevish, arid virtues as the satin of a
+causeuse is superior to the Utrecht velvet of a dirty bourgeois sofa.
+
+My dear fellow, I have spent six days in this delightful country-house,
+and I never tire of admiring the beauties of the park, surrounded by
+forests where pretty wood-paths lead beside the brooks. Nature and its
+silence, these tranquil pleasures, this placid life to which she woos
+me,--all attract. Ah! here is true literature; no fault of style among
+the meadows. Happiness forgets all things here,--even the Debats! It has
+rained all the morning; while the countess slept and Montcornet tramped
+over his domain, I have compelled myself to keep my rash, imprudent
+promise to write to you.
+
+Until now, though I was born at Alencon, of an old judge and a prefect,
+so they say, and though I know something of agriculture, I supposed the
+tale of estates bringing in four or five thousand francs a month to be
+a fable. Money, to me, meant a couple of dreadful things,--work and a
+publisher, journalism and politics. When shall we poor fellows come upon
+a land where gold springs up with the grass? That is what I desire for
+you and for me and the rest of us in the name of the theatre, and of the
+press, and of book-making! Amen!
+
+Will Florine be jealous of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre? Our modern
+Bourets have no French nobles now to show them how to live; they hire
+one opera-box among three of them; they subscribe for their pleasures;
+they no longer cut down magnificently bound quartos to match the octavos
+in their library; in fact, they scarcely buy even stitched paper books.
+What is to become of us?
+
+
+                                      Adieu; continue to care for
+                                      Your Blondet.
+
+
+If this letter, dashed off by the idlest pen of the century, had not by
+some lucky chance been preserved, it would have been almost impossible
+to describe Les Aigues; and without this description the history of the
+horrible events that occurred there would certainly be less interesting.
+
+After that remark some persons will expect to see the flashing of the
+cuirass of the former colonel of the guard, and the raging of his anger
+as he falls like a waterspout upon his little wife; so that the end
+of this present history may be like the end of all modern dramas,--a
+tragedy of the bed-chamber. Perhaps the fatal scene will take place
+in that charming room with the blue monochromes, where beautiful ideal
+birds are painted on the ceilings and the shutters, where Chinese
+monsters laugh with open jaws on the mantle-shelf, and dragons, green
+and gold, twist their tails in curious convolutions around rich vases,
+and Japanese fantasy embroiders its designs of many colors; where
+sofas and reclining-chairs and consoles and what-nots invite to that
+contemplative idleness which forbids all action.
+
+No; the drama here to be developed is not one of private life; it
+concerns things higher, or lower. Expect no scenes of passion; the truth
+of this history is only too dramatic. And remember, the historian should
+never forget that his mission is to do justice to all; the poor and the
+prosperous are equals before his pen; to him the peasant appears in
+the grandeur of his misery, and the rich in the pettiness of his folly.
+Moreover, the rich man has passions, the peasant only wants. The peasant
+is therefore doubly poor; and if, politically, his aggressions must be
+pitilessly repressed, to the eyes of humanity and religion he is sacred.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. A BUCOLIC OVERLOOKED BY VIRGIL
+
+
+When a Parisian drops into the country he is cut off from all his usual
+habits, and soon feels the dragging hours, no matter how attentive his
+friends may be to him. Therefore, because it is so impossible to prolong
+in a tete-a-tete conversations that are soon exhausted, the master
+and mistress of a country-house are apt to say, calmly, "You will be
+terribly bored here." It is true that to understand the delights of
+country life one must have something to do, some interests in it; one
+must know the nature of the work to be done, and the alternating harmony
+of toil and pleasure,--eternal symbol of human life.
+
+When a Parisian has recovered his powers of sleeping, shaken off the
+fatigues of his journey, and accustomed himself to country habits,
+the hardest period of the day (if he wears thin boots and is neither
+a sportsman nor an agriculturalist) is the early morning. Between the
+hours of waking and breakfasting, the women of the family are sleeping
+or dressing, and therefore unapproachable; the master of the house is
+out and about on his own affairs; a Parisian is therefore compelled
+to be alone from eight to eleven o'clock, the hour chosen in all
+country-houses for breakfast. Now, having got what amusement he can
+out of carefully dressing himself, he has soon exhausted that resource.
+Then, perhaps, he has brought with him some work, which he finds it
+impossible to do, and which goes back untouched, after he sees the
+difficulties of doing it, into his valise; a writer is then obliged to
+wander about the park and gape at nothing or count the big trees. The
+easier the life, the more irksome such occupations are,--unless, indeed,
+one belongs to the sect of shaking quakers or to the honorable guild
+of carpenters or taxidermists. If one really had, like the owners of
+estates, to live in the country, it would be well to supply one's self
+with a geological, mineralogical, entomological, or botanical hobby;
+but a sensible man doesn't give himself a vice merely to kill time for
+a fortnight. The noblest estate, and the finest chateaux soon pall on
+those who possess nothing but the sight of them. The beauties of nature
+seem rather squalid compared to the representation of them at the
+opera. Paris, by retrospection, shines from all its facets. Unless some
+particular interest attaches us, as it did in Blondet's case, to scenes
+honored by the steps and lighted by the eyes of a certain person, one
+would envy the birds their wings and long to get back to the endless,
+exciting scenes of Paris and its harrowing strifes.
+
+The long letter of the young journalist must make most intelligent minds
+suppose that he had reached, morally and physically, that particular
+phase of satisfied passions and comfortable happiness which certain
+winged creatures fed in Strasbourg so perfectly represent when, with
+their heads sunk behind their protruding gizzards, they neither see nor
+wish to see the most appetizing food. So, when the formidable letter was
+finished, the writer felt the need of getting away from the gardens of
+Armida and doing something to enliven the deadly void of the morning
+hours; for the hours between breakfast and dinner belonged to the
+mistress of the house, who knew very well how to make them pass quickly.
+To keep, as Madame de Montcornet did, a man of talent in the country
+without ever seeing on his face the false smile of satiety, or detecting
+the yawn of a weariness that cannot be concealed, is a great triumph for
+a woman. The affection which is equal to such a test certainly ought to
+be eternal. It is to be wondered at that women do not oftener employ
+it to judge of their lovers; a fool, an egoist, or a petty nature
+could never stand it. Philip the Second himself, the Alexander of
+dissimulation, would have told his secrets if condemned to a month's
+tete-a-tete in the country. Perhaps this is why kings seek to live in
+perpetual motion, and allow no one to see them more than fifteen minutes
+at a time.
+
+Notwithstanding that he had received the delicate attentions of one of
+the most charming women in Paris, Emile Blondet was able to feel once
+more the long forgotten delights of a truant schoolboy; and on the
+morning of the day after his letter was written he had himself called
+by Francois, the head valet, who was specially appointed to wait on him,
+for the purpose of exploring the valley of the Avonne.
+
+The Avonne is a little river which, being swollen above Conches
+by numerous rivulets, some of which rise in Les Aigues, falls at
+Ville-aux-Fayes into one of the large affluents of the Seine. The
+geographical position of the Avonne, navigable for over twelve miles,
+had, ever since Jean Bouvet invented rafts, given full money value to
+the forests of Les Aigues, Soulanges, and Ronquerolles, standing on the
+crest of the hills between which this charming river flows. The park
+of Les Aigues covers the greater part of the valley, between the river
+(bordered on both sides by the forest called des Aigues) and the royal
+mail road, defined by a line of old elms in the distance along the
+slopes of the Avonne mountains, which are in fact the foot-hills of that
+magnificent amphitheater called the Morvan.
+
+However vulgar the comparison may be, the park, lying thus at the bottom
+of the valley, is like an enormous fish with its head at Conches and
+its tail in the village of Blangy; for it widens in the middle to nearly
+three hundred acres, while towards Conches it counts less than fifty,
+and sixty at Blangy. The position of this estate, between three
+villages, and only three miles from the little town of Soulanges, from
+which the descent is rapid, may perhaps have led to the strife and
+caused the excesses which are the chief interest attaching to the
+place. If, when seen from the mail road or from the uplands beyond
+Ville-aux-Fayes, the paradise of Les Aigues induces mere passing
+travellers to commit the mortal sin of envy, why should the rich
+burghers of Soulanges and Ville-aux-Fayes who had it before their eyes
+and admired it every day of their lives, have been more virtuous?
+
+This last topographical detail was needed to explain the site, also the
+use of the four gates by which alone the park of Les Aigues was entered;
+for it was completely surrounded by walls, except where nature had
+provided a fine view, and at such points sunk fences or ha-has had been
+placed. The four gates, called the gate of Conches, the gate of Avonne,
+the gate of Blangy, and the gate of the Avenue, showed the styles of
+the different periods at which they were constructed so admirably that a
+brief description, in the interest of archaeologists, will presently be
+given, as brief as the one Blondet has already written about the gate of
+the Avenue.
+
+After eight days of strolling about with the countess, the illustrious
+editor of the "Journal des Debats" knew by heart the Chinese kiosk, the
+bridges, the isles, the hermitage, the dairy, the ruined temple, the
+Babylonian ice-house, and all the other delusions invented by landscape
+architects which some nine hundred acres of land can be made to serve.
+He now wished to find the sources of the Avonne, which the general and
+the countess daily extolled in the evening, making plans to visit them
+which were daily forgotten the next morning. Above Les Aigues the Avonne
+really had the appearance of an alpine torrent. Sometimes it hollowed
+a bed among the rocks, sometimes it went underground; on this side the
+brooks came down in cascades, there they flowed like the Loire on sandy
+shallows where rafts could not pass on account of the shifting channels.
+Blondet took a short cut through the labyrinths of the park to reach the
+gate of Conches. This gate demands a few words, which give, moreover,
+certain historical details about the property.
+
+The original founder of Les Aigues was a younger son of the Soulanges
+family, enriched by marriage, whose chief ambition was to make his
+elder brother jealous,--a sentiment, by the bye, to which we owe the
+fairy-land of Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore. In the middle ages
+the castle of Les Aigues stood on the banks of the Avonne. Of this old
+building nothing remains but the gateway, which has a porch like the
+entrance to a fortified town, flanked by two round towers with conical
+roofs. Above the arch of the porch are heavy stone courses, now draped
+with vegetation, showing three large windows with cross-bar sashes.
+A winding stairway in one of the towers leads to two chambers, and a
+kitchen occupies the other tower. The roof of the porch, of pointed
+shape like all old timber-work, is noticeable for two weathercocks
+perched at each end of a ridge-pole ornamented with fantastic iron-work.
+Many an important place cannot boast of so fine a town hall. On the
+outside of this gateway, the keystone of the arch still bears the arms
+of Soulanges, preserved by the hardness of the stone on which the chisel
+of the artist carved them, as follows: Azure, on a pale, argent, three
+pilgrim's staff's sable; a fess bronchant, gules, charged with four
+grosses patee, fitched, or; with the heraldic form of a shield awarded
+to younger sons. Blondet deciphered the motto, "Je soule agir,"--one of
+those puns that crusaders delighted to make upon their names, and which
+brings to mind a fine political maxim, which, as we shall see later, was
+unfortunately forgotten by Montcornet. The gate, which was opened for
+Blondet by a very pretty girl, was of time-worn wood clamped with iron.
+The keeper, wakened by the creaking of the hinges, put his nose out of
+the window and showed himself in his night-shirt.
+
+"So our keepers sleep till this time of day!" thought the Parisian, who
+thought himself very knowing in rural customs.
+
+After a walk of about quarter of an hour, he reached the sources of
+the river above Conches, where his ravished eyes beheld one of those
+landscapes that ought to be described, like the history of France, in a
+thousand volumes or in only one. We must here content ourselves with two
+paragraphs.
+
+A projecting rock, covered with dwarf trees and abraded at its base by
+the Avonne, to which circumstance it owes a slight resemblance to an
+enormous turtle lying across the river, forms an arch through which
+the eye takes in a little sheet of water, clear as a mirror, where
+the stream seems to sleep until it reaches in the distance a series of
+cascades falling among huge rocks, where little weeping willows with
+elastic motion sway back and forth to the flow of waters.
+
+Beyond these cascades is the hillside, rising sheer, like a Rhine rock
+clothed with moss and heather, gullied like it, again, by sharp ridges
+of schist and mica sending down, here and there, white foaming rivulets
+to which a little meadow, always watered and always green, serves as a
+cup; farther on, beyond the picturesque chaos and in contrast to this
+wild, solitary nature, the gardens of Conches are seen, with the village
+roofs and the clock-tower and the outlying fields.
+
+There are the two paragraphs, but the rising sun, the purity of the air,
+the dewy sheen, the melody of woods and waters--imagine them!
+
+"Almost as charming as at the Opera," thought Blondet, making his way
+along the banks of the unnavigable portion of the Avonne, whose caprices
+contrast with the straight and deep and silent stream of the lower
+river, flowing between the tall trees of the forest of Les Aigues.
+
+Blondet did not proceed far on his morning walk, for he was presently
+brought to a stand-still by the sight of a peasant,--one of those who,
+in this drama, are supernumeraries so essential to its action that it
+may be doubted whether they are not in fact its leading actors.
+
+When the clever journalist reached a group of rocks where the main
+stream is imprisoned, as it were, between two portals, he saw a man
+standing so motionless as to excite his curiosity, while the clothes and
+general air of this living statue greatly puzzled him.
+
+The humble personage before him was a living presentment of the old
+men dear to Charlet's pencil; resembling the troopers of that Homer of
+soldiery in a strong frame able to endure hardship, and his immortal
+skirmishers in a fiery, crimson, knotted face, showing small capacity
+for submission. A coarse felt hat, the brim of which was held to the
+crown by stitches, protected a nearly bald head from the weather; below
+it fell a quantity of white hair which a painter would gladly have paid
+four francs an hour to copy,--a dazzling mass of snow, worn like that
+in all the classical representations of Deity. It was easy to guess from
+the way in which the cheeks sank in, continuing the lines of the mouth,
+that the toothless old fellow was more given to the bottle than the
+trencher. His thin white beard gave a threatening expression to his
+profile by the stiffness of its short bristles. The eyes, too small for
+his enormous face, and sloping like those of a pig, betrayed cunning and
+also laziness; but at this particular moment they were gleaming with the
+intent look he cast upon the river. The sole garments of this curious
+figure were an old blouse, formerly blue, and trousers of the coarse
+burlap used in Paris to wrap bales. All city people would have shuddered
+at the sight of his broken sabots, without even a wisp of straw to stop
+the cracks; and it is very certain that the blouse and the trousers had
+no money value at all except to a paper-maker.
+
+As Blondet examined this rural Diogenes, he admitted the possibility
+of a type of peasantry he had seen in old tapestries, old pictures, old
+sculptures, and which, up to this time, had seemed to him imaginary. He
+resolved for the future not to utterly condemn the school of ugliness,
+perceiving a possibility that in man beauty may be but the flattering
+exception, a chimera in which the race struggles to believe.
+
+"What can be the ideas, the morals, the habits, of such a being? What
+is he thinking of?" thought Blondet, seized with curiosity. "Is he my
+fellow-creature? We have nothing in common but shape, and even that!--"
+
+He noticed in the old man's limbs the peculiar rigidity of the tissues
+of persons who live in the open air, accustomed to the inclemencies
+of the weather and to the endurance of heat and cold,--hardened to
+everything, in short,--which makes their leathern skin almost a hide,
+and their nerves an apparatus against physical pain almost as powerful
+as that of the Russians or the Arabs.
+
+"Here's one of Cooper's Red-skins," thought Blondet; "one needn't go to
+America to study savages."
+
+Though the Parisian was less than ten paces off, the old man did not
+turn his head, but kept looking at the opposite bank with a fixity which
+the fakirs of India give to their vitrified eyes and their stiffened
+joints. Compelled by the power of a species of magnetism, more
+contagious than people have any idea of, Blondet ended by gazing at the
+water himself.
+
+"Well, my good man, what do you see there?" he asked, after the lapse of
+a quarter of an hour, during which time he saw nothing to justify this
+intent contemplation.
+
+"Hush!" whispered the old man, with a sign to Blondet not to ruffle the
+air with his voice; "You will frighten it--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"An otter, my good gentleman. If it hears us it'll go quick under water.
+I'm certain it jumped there; see! see! there, where the water bubbles!
+Ha! it sees a fish, it is after that! But my boy will grab it as it
+comes back. The otter, don't you know, is very rare; it is scientific
+game, and good eating, too. I get ten francs for every one I carry to
+Les Aigues, for the lady fasts Fridays, and to-morrow is Friday. Years
+agone the deceased madame used to pay me twenty francs, and gave me the
+skin to boot! Mouche," he called, in a low voice, "watch it!"
+
+Blondet now perceived on the other side of the river two bright eyes,
+like those of a cat, beneath a tuft of alders; then he saw the tanned
+forehead and tangled hair of a boy about ten years of age, who was lying
+on his stomach and making signs towards the otter to let his master know
+he kept it well in sight. Blondet, completely mastered by the eagerness
+of the old man and boy, allowed the demon of the chase to get the better
+of him,--that demon with the double claws of hope and curiosity, who
+carries you whithersoever he will.
+
+"The hat-makers buy the skin," continued the old man; "it's so soft, so
+handsome! They cover caps with it."
+
+"Do you really think so, my old man?" said Blondet, smiling.
+
+"Well truly, my good gentleman, you ought to know more than I, though
+I am seventy years old," replied the old fellow, very humbly and
+respectfully, falling into the attitude of a giver of holy water;
+"perhaps you can tell me why conductors and wine-merchants are so fond
+of it?"
+
+Blondet, a master of irony, already on his guard from the word
+"scientific," recollected the Marechal de Richelieu and began to suspect
+some jest on the part of the old man; but he was reassured by his
+artless attitude and the perfectly stupid expression of his face.
+
+"In my young days we had lots of otters," whispered the old fellow; "but
+they've hunted 'em so that if we see the tail of one in seven
+years it is as much as ever we do. And the sub-prefect at
+Ville-aux-Fayes,--doesn't monsieur know him? though he be a Parisian,
+he's a fine young man like you, and he loves curiosities,--so, as I was
+saying, hearing of my talent for catching otters, for I know 'em as you
+know your alphabet, he says to me like this: 'Pere Fourchon,' says he,
+'when you find an otter bring it to me, and I'll pay you well; and if
+it's spotted white on the back,' says he, 'I'll give you thirty francs.'
+That's just what he did say to me as true as I believe in God the
+Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And there's a learned man at Soulanges,
+Monsieur Gourdon, our doctor, who is making, so they tell me, a
+collection of natural history which hasn't its mate at Dijon even;
+indeed he is first among the learned men in these parts, and he'll pay
+me a fine price, too; he stuffs men and beasts. Now my boy there stands
+me out that that otter has got the white spots. 'If that's so,' says I
+to him, 'then the good God wishes well to us this morning!' Ha! didn't
+you see the water bubble? yes, there it is! there it is! Though it lives
+in a kind of a burrow, it sometimes stays whole days under water. Ha,
+there! it heard you, my good gentleman; it's on its guard now; for
+there's not a more suspicious animal on earth; it's worse than a woman."
+
+"So you call women suspicious, do you?" said Blondet.
+
+"Faith, monsieur, if you come from Paris you ought to know about that
+better than I. But you'd have done better for me if you had stayed
+in your bed and slept all the morning; don't you see that wake there?
+that's where she's gone under. Get up, Mouche! the otter heard monsieur
+talking, and now she's scary enough to keep us at her heels till
+midnight. Come, let's be off! and good-bye to our thirty francs!"
+
+Mouche got up reluctantly; he looked at the spot where the water
+bubbled, pointed to it with his finger and seemed unable to give up all
+hope. The child, with curly hair and a brown face, like the angels in
+a fifteenth-century picture, seemed to be in breeches, for his trousers
+ended at the knee in a ragged fringe of brambles and dead leaves. This
+necessary garment was fastened upon him by cords of tarred oakum in
+guise of braces. A shirt of the same burlap which made the old man's
+trousers, thickened, however, by many darns, open in front showed a
+sun-burnt little breast. In short, the attire of the being called Mouche
+was even more startlingly simple than that of Pere Fourchon.
+
+"What a good-natured set of people they are here," thought Blondet; "if
+a man frightened away the game of the people of the suburbs of Paris,
+how their tongues would maul him!"
+
+As he had never seen an otter, even in a museum, he was delighted with
+this episode of his early walk. "Come," said he, quite touched when the
+old man walked away without asking him for a compensation, "you say
+you are a famous otter catcher. If you are sure there is an otter down
+there--"
+
+From the other side of the water Mouche pointed his finger to certain
+air-bubbles coming up from the bottom of the Avonne and bursting on its
+surface.
+
+"It has come back!" said Pere Fourchon; "don't you see it breathe, the
+beggar? How do you suppose they manage to breathe at the bottom of the
+water? Ah, the creature's so clever it laughs at science."
+
+"Well," said Blondet, who supposed the last word was a jest of the
+peasantry in general rather than of this peasant in particular, "wait
+and catch the otter."
+
+"And what are we to do about our day's work, Mouche and I?"
+
+"What is your day worth?"
+
+"For the pair of us, my apprentice and me?--Five francs," said the old
+man, looking Blondet in the eye with a hesitation which betrayed an
+enormous overcharge.
+
+The journalist took ten francs from his pocket, saying, "There's ten,
+and I'll give you ten more for the otter."
+
+"And it won't cost you dear if there's white on its back; for the
+sub-prefect told me there wasn't one o' them museums that had the like;
+but he knows everything, our sub-prefect,--no fool he! If I hunt the
+otter, he, M'sieur des Lupeaulx, hunts Mademoiselle Gaubertin, who has a
+fine white 'dot' on her back. Come now, my good gentleman, if I may make
+so bold, plunge into the middle of the Avonne and get to that stone down
+there. If we head the otter off, it will come down stream; for just see
+their slyness, the beggars! they always go above their burrow to feed,
+for, once full of fish, they know they can easily drift down, the sly
+things! Ha! if I'd been trained in their school I should be living now
+on an income; but I was a long time finding out that you must go up
+stream very early in the morning if you want to bag the game before
+others. Well, somebody threw a spell over me when I was born. However,
+we three together ought to be slyer than the otter."
+
+"How so, my old necromancer?"
+
+"Why, bless you! we are as stupid as the beasts, and so we come to
+understand the beasts. Now, see, this is what we'll do. When the otter
+wants to get home Mouche and I'll frighten it here, and you'll frighten
+it over there; frightened by us and frightened by you it will jump on
+the bank, and when it takes to earth, it is lost! It can't run; it has
+web feet for swimming. Ho, ho! it will make you laugh, such floundering!
+you don't know whether you are fishing or hunting! The general up at Les
+Aigues, I have known him to stay here three days running, he was so bent
+on getting an otter."
+
+Blondet, armed with a branch cut for him by the old man, who requested
+him to whip the water with it when he called to him, planted himself in
+the middle of the river by jumping from stone to stone.
+
+"There, that will do, my good gentleman."
+
+Blondet stood where he was told without remarking the lapse of time, for
+every now and then the old fellow made him a sign as much as to say that
+all was going well; and besides, nothing makes time go so fast as the
+expectation that quick action is to succeed the perfect stillness of
+watching.
+
+"Pere Fourchon," whispered the boy, finding himself alone with the old
+man, "there's _really_ an otter!"
+
+"Do you see it?"
+
+"There, see there!"
+
+The old fellow was dumb-founded at beholding under water the
+reddish-brown fur of an actual otter.
+
+"It's coming my way!" said the child.
+
+"Hit him a sharp blow on the head and jump into the water and hold him
+fast down, but don't let him go!"
+
+Mouche dove into the water like a frightened frog.
+
+"Come, come, my good gentleman," cried Pere Fourchon to Blondet, jumping
+into the water and leaving his sabots on the bank, "frighten him!
+frighten him! Don't you see him? he is swimming fast your way!"
+
+The old man dashed toward Blondet through the water, calling out with
+the gravity that country people retain in the midst of their greatest
+excitements:--
+
+"Don't you see him, there, along the rocks?"
+
+Blondet, placed by direction of the old fellow in such a way that
+the sun was in his eyes, thrashed the water with much satisfaction to
+himself.
+
+"Go on, go on!" cried Pere Fourchon; "on the rock side; the burrow is
+there, to your left!"
+
+Carried away by excitement and by his long waiting, Blondet slipped from
+the stones into the water.
+
+"Ha! brave you are, my good gentleman! Twenty good Gods! I see him
+between your legs! you'll have him!--Ah! there! he's gone--he's gone!"
+cried the old man, in despair.
+
+Then, in the fury of the chase, the old fellow plunged into the deepest
+part of the stream in front of Blondet.
+
+"It's your fault we've lost him!" he cried, as Blondet gave him a hand
+to pull him out, dripping like a triton, and a vanquished triton. "The
+rascal, I see him, under those rocks! He has let go his fish," continued
+Fourchon, pointing to something that floated on the surface. "We'll have
+that at any rate; it's a tench, a real tench."
+
+Just then a groom in livery on horseback and leading another horse by
+the bridle galloped up the road toward Conches.
+
+"See! there's the chateau people sending after you," said the old man.
+"If you want to cross back again I'll give you a hand. I don't mind
+about getting wet; it saves washing!"
+
+"How about rheumatism?"
+
+"Rheumatism! don't you see the sun has browned our legs, Mouche and me,
+like tobacco-pipes. Here, lean on me, my good gentleman--you're from
+Paris; you don't know, though you _do_ know so much, how to walk on our
+rocks. If you stay here long enough, you'll learn a deal that's
+written in the book o' nature,--you who write, so they tell me, in the
+newspapers."
+
+Blondet had reached the bank before Charles, the groom, perceived him.
+
+"Ah, monsieur!" he cried; "you don't know how anxious Madame has been
+since she heard you had gone through the gate of Conches; she was
+afraid you were drowned. They have rung the great bell three times, and
+Monsieur le cure is hunting for you in the park."
+
+"What time is it, Charles?"
+
+"A quarter to twelve."
+
+"Help me to mount."
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed the groom, noticing the water that dripped from
+Blondet's boots and trousers, "has monsieur been taken in by Pere
+Fourchon's otter?"
+
+The words enlightened the journalist.
+
+"Don't say a word about it, Charles," he cried, "and I'll make it all
+right with you."
+
+"Oh, as for that!" answered the man, "Monsieur le comte himself has been
+taken in by that otter. Whenever a visitor comes to Les Aigues, Pere
+Fourchon sets himself on the watch, and if the gentleman goes to see the
+sources of the Avonne he sells him the otter; he plays the trick so well
+that Monsieur le comte has been here three times and paid him for six
+days' work, just to stare at the water!"
+
+"Heavens!" thought Blondet. "And I imagined I had seen the greatest
+comedians of the present day!--Potier, the younger Baptiste, Michot, and
+Monrose. What are they compared to that old beggar?"
+
+"He is very knowing at the business, Pere Fourchon is," continued
+Charles; "and he has another string to his bow, besides. He calls
+himself a rope-maker, and has a walk under the park wall by the gate of
+Blangy. If you merely touch his rope he'll entangle you so cleverly that
+you will want to turn the wheel and make a bit of it yourself; and for
+that you would have to pay a fee for apprenticeship. Madame herself was
+taken in, and gave him twenty francs. Ah! he is the king of tricks, that
+old fellow!"
+
+The groom's gossip set Blondet thinking of the extreme craftiness and
+wiliness of the French peasant, of which he had heard a great deal
+from his father, a judge at Alencon. Then the satirical meaning hidden
+beneath Pere Fourchon's apparent guilelessness came back to him, and he
+owned himself "gulled" by the Burgundian beggar.
+
+"You would never believe, monsieur," said Charles, as they reached the
+portico at Les Aigues, "how much one is forced to distrust everybody and
+everything in the country,--especially here, where the general is not
+much liked--"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"That's more than I know," said Charles, with the stupid air servants
+assume to shield themselves when they wish not to answer their
+superiors, which nevertheless gave Blondet a good deal to think of.
+
+"Here you are, truant!" cried the general, coming out on the terrace
+when he heard the horses. "Here he is; don't be uneasy!" he called back
+to his wife, whose little footfalls were heard behind him. "Now the Abbe
+Brossette is missing. Go and find him, Charles," he said to the groom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE TAVERN
+
+
+The gate of Blangy, built by Bouret, was formed of two wide pilasters
+of projecting rough-hewn stone; each surmounted by a dog sitting on his
+haunches and holding an escutcheon between his fore paws. The proximity
+of a small house where the steward lived dispensed with the necessity
+for a lodge. Between the two pilasters, a sumptuous iron gate, like
+those made in Buffon's time for the Jardin des Plantes, opened on a
+short paved way which led to the country road (formerly kept in order
+by Les Aigues and the Soulanges family) which unites Conches, Cerneux,
+Blangy, and Soulanges to Ville-aux-Fayes, like a wreath, for the whole
+road is lined with flowering hedges and little houses covered with roses
+and honey-suckle and other climbing plants.
+
+There, along a pretty wall which extends as far as a terrace from which
+the land of Les Aigues falls rapidly to the valley till it meets that
+of Soulanges, are the rotten posts, the old wheel, and the forked stakes
+which constituted the manufactory of the village rope-maker.
+
+Soon after midday, while Blondet was seating himself at table opposite
+the Abbe Brossette and receiving the tender expostulations of the
+countess, Pere Fourchon and Mouche arrived at this establishment. From
+that vantage-ground Pere Fourchon, under pretence of rope-making, could
+watch Les Aigues and see every one who went in and out. Nothing escaped
+him, the opening of the blinds, tete-a-tete loiterings, or the least
+little incidents of country life, were spied upon by the old fellow,
+who had set up this business within the last three years,--a trifling
+circumstance which neither the masters, nor the servants, nor the
+keepers of Les Aigues had as yet remarked upon.
+
+"Go round to the house by the gate of the Avonne while I put away the
+tackle," said Pere Fourchon to his attendant, "and when you have blabbed
+about the thing, they'll no doubt send after me to the Grand-I-Vert,
+where I am going for a drop of drink,--for it makes one thirsty enough
+to wade in the water that way. If you do just as I tell you, you'll hook
+a good breakfast out of them; try to meet the countess, and give a slap
+at me, and that will put it into her head to come and preach morality or
+something! There's lots of good wine to get out of it."
+
+After these last instructions, which the sly look in Mouche's face
+rendered quite superfluous, the old peasant, hugging the otter under his
+arm, disappeared along the country road.
+
+Half-way between the gate and the village there stood, at the time when
+Emile Blondet stayed at Les Aigues, one of those houses which are never
+seen but in parts of France where stone is scarce. Bits of bricks picked
+up anywhere, cobblestones set like diamonds in the clay mud, formed
+very solid walls, though worn in places; the roof was supported by stout
+branches and covered with rushes and straw, while the clumsy shutters
+and the broken door--in short, everything about the cottage was the
+product of lucky finds, or of gifts obtained by begging.
+
+The peasant has an instinct for his habitation like that of an animal
+for its nest or its burrow, and this instinct was very marked in all
+the arrangements of this cottage. In the first place, the door and the
+window looked to the north. The house, placed on a little rise in the
+stoniest angle of a vineyard, was certainly healthful. It was reached by
+three steps, carefully made with stakes and planks filled in with broken
+stone and gravel, so that the water ran off rapidly; and as the rain
+seldom comes from the northward in Burgundy, no dampness could rot the
+foundations, slight as they were. Below the steps and along the path ran
+a rustic paling, hidden beneath a hedge of hawthorn and sweet-brier.
+An arbor, with a few clumsy tables and wooden benches, filled the space
+between the cottage and the road, and invited the passers-by to rest
+themselves. At the upper end of the bank by the house roses grew, and
+wall-flowers, violets, and other flowers that cost nothing. Jessamine
+and honey-suckle had fastened their tendrils on the roof, mossy already,
+though the building was far from old.
+
+To the right of the house, the owner had built a stable for two cows. In
+front of this erection of old boards, a sunken piece of ground served as
+a yard where, in a corner, was a huge manure-heap. On the other side of
+the house and the arbor stood a thatched shed, supported on trunks of
+trees, under which the various outdoor properties of the peasantry were
+put away,--the utensils of the vine-dressers, their empty casks, logs
+of wood piled about a mound which contained the oven, the mouth of
+which opened, as was usual in the houses of the peasantry, under the
+mantle-piece of the chimney in the kitchen.
+
+About an acre of land adjoined the house, inclosed by an evergreen hedge
+and planted with grape-vines; tended as peasants tend them,--that is to
+say, well-manured, and dug round, and layered so that they usually set
+their fruit before the vines of the large proprietors in a circuit of
+ten miles round. A few trees, almond, plum, and apricot, showed their
+slim heads here and there in this enclosure. Between the rows of vines
+potatoes and beans were planted. In addition to all this, on the side
+towards the village and beyond the yard was a bit of damp low ground,
+favorable for the growth of cabbages and onions (favorite vegetables of
+the working-classes), which was closed by a wooden gate, through which
+the cows were driven, trampling the path into mud and covering it with
+dung.
+
+The house, which had two rooms on the ground-floor, opened upon the
+vineyard. On this side an outer stairway, roofed with thatch and resting
+against the wall of the house, led up to the garret, which was lighted
+by one round window. Under this rustic stairway opened a cellar built of
+Burgundy brick, containing several casks of wine.
+
+Though the kitchen utensils of the peasantry are usually only two,
+namely, a frying-pan and an iron pot, with which they manage to do all
+their cooking, exceptions to this rule, in the shape of two enormous
+saucepans hanging beneath the mantle-shelf and above a small portable
+stove, were to be seen in this cottage. In spite, however, of this
+indication of luxury, the furniture was in keeping with the external
+appearance of the place. A jar held water, the spoons were of wood or
+pewter, the dishes, of red clay without and white within, were scaling
+off and had been mended with pewter rivets; the heavy table and chairs
+were of pine wood, and for flooring there was nothing better than the
+hardened earth. Every fifth year the walls received a coat of white-wash
+and so did the narrow beams of the ceiling, from which hung bacon,
+strings of onions, bundles of tallow candles, and the bags in which
+a peasant keeps his seeds; near the bread-box stood an old-fashioned
+wardrobe in walnut, where the scanty household linen, and the one change
+of garments together with the holiday attire of the entire family were
+kept.
+
+Above the mantel of the chimney gleamed a poacher's old gun, not worth
+five francs,--the wood scorched, the barrel to all appearances never
+cleaned. An observer might reflect that the protection of a hovel with
+only a latch, and an outer gate that was only a paling and never closed,
+needed no better weapon; but still the wonder was to what use it was
+put. In the first place, though the wood was of the commonest kind, the
+barrel was carefully selected, and came from a valuable gun, given in
+all probability to a game-keeper. Moreover, the owner of this weapon
+never missed his aim; there was between him and his gun the same
+intimate acquaintance that there is between a workman and his tool. If
+the muzzle must be raised or lowered the merest fraction in its aim,
+because it carries just an atom above or below the range, the poacher
+knows it; he obeys the rule and never misses. An officer of artillery
+would have found the essential parts of this weapon in good condition
+notwithstanding its uncleanly appearance. In all that the peasant
+appropriates to his use, in all that serves him, he displays just the
+amount of force that is needed, neither more nor less; he attends to
+the essential and to nothing beyond. External perfection he has no
+conception of. An unerring judge of the necessary in all things, he
+thoroughly understands degrees of strength, and knows very well when
+working for an employer how to give the least possible for the most he
+can get. This contemptible-looking gun will be found to play a serious
+part in the life of the family inhabiting this cottage, and you will
+presently learn how and why.
+
+Have you now taken in all the many details of this hovel, planted about
+five hundred feet away from the pretty gate of Les Aigues? Do you see it
+crouching there, like a beggar beside a palace? Well, its roof covered
+with velvet mosses, its clacking hens, its grunting pig, its straying
+heifer, all its rural graces have a horrible meaning.
+
+Fastened to a pole, which was stuck in the ground beside the entrance
+through the fence, was a withered bunch of three pine branches and some
+old oak-leaves tied together with a rag. Above the door of the house a
+roving artist had painted, probably in return for his breakfast, a huge
+capital "I" in green on a white ground two feet square; and for the
+benefit of those who could read, this witty joke in twelve letters:
+"Au Grand-I-Vert" (hiver). On the left of the door was a vulgar sign
+bearing, in colored letters, "Good March beer," and the picture of
+a foaming pot of the same, with a woman, in a dress excessively
+low-necked, on one side, and an hussar on the other,--both coarsely
+colored. Consequently, in spite of the blooming flowers and the fresh
+country air, this cottage exhaled the same strong and nauseous odor of
+wine and food which assails you in Paris as you pass the door of the
+cheap cook-shops of the faubourg.
+
+Now you know the surroundings. Behold the inhabitants and hear their
+history, which contains more than one lesson for philanthropists.
+
+The proprietor of the Grand-I-Vert, named Francois Tonsard, commends
+himself to the attention of philosophers by the manner in which he had
+solved the problem of an idle life and a busy life, so as to make the
+idleness profitable, and occupation nil.
+
+A jack-of-all-trades, he knew how to cultivate the ground, but for
+himself only. For others, he dug ditches, gathered fagots, barked the
+trees, or cut them down. In all such work the employer is at the mercy
+of the workman. Tonsard owned his plot of ground to the generosity of
+Mademoiselle Laguerre. In his early youth he had worked by the day for
+the gardener at Les Aigues; and he really had not his equal in
+trimming the shrubbery-trees, the hedges, the horn-beams, and the
+horse-chestnuts. His very name shows hereditary talent. In remote
+country-places privileges exist which are obtained and preserved with
+as much care as the merchants of a city display in getting theirs.
+Mademoiselle Laguerre was one day walking in the garden, when she
+overheard Tonsard, then a strapping fellow, say, "All I need to live on,
+and live happily, is an acre of land." The kind creature, accustomed
+to make others happy, gave him the acre of vineyard near the gate of
+Blangy, in return for one hundred days' work (a delicate regard for his
+feelings which was little understood), and allowed him to stay at Les
+Aigues, where he lived with her servants, who thought him one of the
+best fellows in Burgundy.
+
+Poor Tonsard (that is what everybody called him) worked about thirty
+days out of the hundred that he owed; the rest of the time he idled
+about, talking and laughing with Mademoiselle's women, particularly
+with Mademoiselle Cochet, the lady's maid, though she was ugly, like
+all confidential maids of handsome actresses. Laughing with Mademoiselle
+Cochet signified so many things that Soudry, the fortunate gendarme
+mentioned in Blondet's letter, still looked askance at Tonsard after
+the lapse of nearly twenty-five years. The walnut wardrobe, the bedstead
+with the tester and curtains, and the ornaments about the bedroom were
+doubtless the result of the said laughter.
+
+Once in possession of his care, Tonsard replied to the first person
+who happened to mention that Mademoiselle Laguerre had given it to him,
+"I've bought it deuced hard, and paid well for it. Do rich folks ever
+give us anything? Are one hundred days' work nothing? It has cost me
+three hundred francs, and the land is all stones." But that speech never
+got beyond the regions of his own class.
+
+Tonsard built his house himself, picking up the materials here and
+there as he could,--getting a day's work out of this one and that one,
+gleaning in the rubbish that was thrown away, often asking for things
+and always obtaining them. A discarded door cut in two for convenience
+in carrying away became the door of the stable; the window was the sash
+of a green-house. In short, the rubbish of the chateau, served to build
+the fatal cottage.
+
+Saved from the draft by Gaubertin, the steward of Les Aigues, whose
+father was prosecuting-attorney of the department, and who, moreover,
+could refuse nothing to Mademoiselle Cochet, Tonsard married as soon
+as his house was finished and his vines had begun to bear. A well-grown
+fellow of twenty-three, in everybody's good graces at Les Aigues, on
+whom Mademoiselle had bestowed an acre of her land, and who appeared
+to be a good worker, he had the art to ring the praises of his negative
+merits, and so obtained the daughter of a farmer on the Ronquerolles
+estate, which lies beyond the forest of Les Aigues.
+
+This farmer held the lease of half a farm, which was going to ruin in
+his hands for want of a helpmate. A widower, and inconsolable for the
+loss of his wife, he tried to drown his troubles, like the English, in
+wine, and then, when he had put the poor deceased out of his mind, he
+found himself married, so the village maliciously declared, to a woman
+named Boisson. From being a farmer he became once more a laborer, but
+an idle and drunken laborer, quarrelsome and vindictive, capable of any
+ill-deed, like most of his class when they fall from a well-to-do
+state of life into poverty. This man, whose practical information
+and knowledge of reading and writing placed him far above his
+fellow-workmen, while his vices kept him at the level of pauperism, you
+have already seen on the banks of the Avonne, measuring his cleverness
+with that of one of the cleverest men in Paris, in a bucolic overlooked
+by Virgil.
+
+Pere Fourchon, formerly a schoolmaster at Blangy, lost that place
+through misconduct and his singular ideas as to public education.
+He helped the children to make paper boats with their alphabets
+much oftener than he taught them how to spell; he scolded them in so
+remarkable a manner for pilfering fruit that his lectures might really
+have passed for lessons on the best way of scaling the walls. From
+teacher he became a postman. In this capacity, which serves as a refuge
+to many an old soldier, Pere Fourchon was daily reprimanded. Sometimes
+he forgot the letters in a tavern, at other times he kept them in his
+pocket. When he was drunk he left those for one village in another
+village; when he was sober he read them. Consequently, he was soon
+dismissed. No longer able to serve the State, Pere Fourchon ended
+by becoming a manufacturer. In the country a poor man can always get
+something to do, and make at least a pretence of gaining an honest
+livelihood. At sixty-eight years of age the old man started his
+rope-walk, a manufactory which requires the very smallest capital. The
+workshop is, as we have seen, any convenient wall; the machinery costs
+about ten francs. The apprentice slept, like his master, in a hay-loft,
+and lived on whatever he could pick up. The rapacity of the law in the
+matter of doors and windows expires "sub dio." The tow to make the first
+rope can be borrowed. But the principal revenue of Pere Fourchon and his
+satellite Mouche, the natural son of one of his natural daughters, came
+from the otters; and then there were breakfasts and dinners given them
+by peasants who could neither read nor write, and were glad to use the
+old fellow's talents when they had a bill to make out, or a letter to
+dispatch. Besides all this, he knew how to play the clarionet, and
+he went about with his friend Vermichel, the miller of Soulanges, to
+village weddings and the grand balls given at the Tivoli of Soulanges.
+
+Vermichel's name was Michel Vert, but the transposition was so generally
+used that Brunet, the clerk of the municipal court of Soulanges, was
+in the habit of writing Michel-Jean-Jerome Vert, called Vermichel,
+practitioner. Vermichel, a famous violin in the Burgundian regiment of
+former days, had procured for Pere Fourchon, in recognition of certain
+services, a situation as practitioner, which in remote country-places
+usually devolves on those who are able to sign their name. Pere Fourchon
+therefore added to his other avocations that of witness, or practitioner
+of legal papers, whenever the Sieur Brunet came to draw them in the
+districts of Cerneux, Conches, and Blangy. Vermichel and Fourchon,
+allied by a friendship of twenty years' tippling, might really be
+considered a business firm.
+
+Mouche and Fourchon, bound together by vice as Mentor and Telemachus
+by virtue, travelled like the latter, in search of their father, "panis
+angelorum,"--the only Latin words which the old fellow's memory had
+retained. They went about scraping up the pickings of the Grand-I-Vert,
+and those of the adjacent chateaux; for between them, in their busiest
+and most prosperous years, they had never contrived to make as much as
+three hundred and sixty fathoms of rope. In the first place, no dealer
+within a radius of fifty miles would have trusted his tow to either
+Mouche or Fourchon. The old man, surpassing the miracles of modern
+chemistry, knew too well how to resolve the tow into the all-benignant
+juice of the grape. Moreover, his triple functions of public writer for
+three townships, legal practitioner for one, and clarionet-player at
+large, hindered, so he said, the development of his business.
+
+Thus it happened that Tonsard was disappointed from the start in
+the hope he had indulged of increasing his comfort by an increase of
+property in marriage. The idle son-in-law had chanced, by a very common
+accident, on an idler father-in-law. Matters went all the worse because
+Tonsard's wife, gifted with a sort of rustic beauty, being tall and
+well-made, was not fond of work in the open air. Tonsard blamed his wife
+for her father's short-comings, and ill-treated her, with the customary
+revenge of the common people, whose minds take in only an effect and
+rarely look back to causes.
+
+Finding her fetters heavy, the woman lightened them. She used Tonsard's
+vices to get the better of him. Loving comfort and good eating herself,
+she encouraged his idleness and gluttony. In the first place, she
+managed to procure the good-will of the servants of the chateau, and
+Tonsard, in view of the results, made no complaint as to the means. He
+cared very little what his wife did, so long as she did all he wanted
+of her. That is the secret agreement of many a household. Madame Tonsard
+established the wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert, her first customers being
+the servants of Les Aigues and the keepers and huntsmen.
+
+Gaubertin, formerly steward to Mademoiselle Laguerre, one of La
+Tonsard's chief patrons, gave her several puncheons of excellent wine
+to attract custom. The effect of these gifts (continued as long as
+Gaubertin remained a bachelor) and the fame of her rather lawless beauty
+commended this beauty to the Don Juans of the valley, and filled the
+wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert. Being a lover of good eating, La Tonsard
+was naturally an excellent cook; and though her talents were only
+exercised on the common dishes of the country, jugged hare, game sauce,
+stewed fish and omelets, she was considered in all the country round to
+be an admirable cook of the sort of food which is eaten at a counter and
+spiced in a way to excite a desire for drink. By the end of two years,
+she had managed to rule Tonsard, and turn him to evil courses, which,
+indeed, he asked no better than to indulge in.
+
+The rascal was continually poaching, and with nothing to fear from it.
+The intimacies of his wife with Gaubertin and the keepers and the
+rural authorities, together with the laxity of the times, secured
+him impunity. As soon as his children were large enough he made them
+serviceable to his comfort, caring no more for their morality than for
+that of his wife. He had two sons and two daughters. Tonsard, who lived,
+as did his wife, from hand to mouth, might have come to an end of
+this easy life if he had not maintained a sort of martial law over his
+family, which compelled them to work for the preservation of it. When he
+had brought up his children, at the cost of those from whom his wife was
+able to extort gifts, the following charter and budget were the law at
+the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+Tonsard's old mother and his two daughters, Catherine and Marie, went
+into the woods at certain seasons twice a-day, and came back laden with
+fagots which overhung the crutch of their poles at least two feet beyond
+their heads. Though dried sticks were placed on the outside of the heap,
+the inside was made of live wood cut from young trees. In plain words,
+Tonsard helped himself to his winter's fuel in the woods of Les Aigues.
+Besides this, father and sons were constantly poaching. From September
+to March, hares, rabbits, partridges, deer, in short, all the game that
+was not eaten at the chateau, was sold at Blangy and at Soulanges, where
+Tonsard's two daughters peddled milk in the early mornings,--coming back
+with the news of the day, in return for the gossip they carried about
+Les Aigues, and Cerneux, and Conches. In the months when the three
+Tonsards were unable to hunt with a gun, they set traps. If the traps
+caught more game than they could eat, La Tonsard made pies of it and
+sent them to Ville-aux-Fayes. In harvest-time seven Tonsards--the old
+mother, the two sons (until they were seventeen years of age), the two
+daughters, together with old Fourchon and Mouche--gleaned, and generally
+brought in about sixteen bushels a day of all grains, rye, barley,
+wheat, all good to grind.
+
+The two cows, led to the roadside by the youngest girl, always managed
+to stray into the meadows of Les Aigues; but as, if it ever chanced that
+some too flagrant trespass compelled the keepers to take notice of it,
+the children were either whipped or deprived of a coveted dainty, they
+had acquired such extraordinary aptitude in hearing the enemy's footfall
+that the bailiff or the park-keeper of Les Aigues was very seldom able
+to detect them. Besides, the relations of those estimable functionaries
+with Tonsard and his wife tied a bandage over their eyes. The cows, held
+by long ropes, obeyed a mere twitch or a special low call back to the
+roadside, knowing very well that, the danger once past, they could
+finish their browsing in the next field. Old mother Tonsard, who was
+getting more and more infirm, succeeded Mouche in his duties, after
+Fourchon, under pretence of caring for his natural grandson's education,
+kept him to himself; while Marie and Catherine made hay in the woods.
+These girls knew the exact spots where the fine forest-grass abounded,
+and there they cut and spread and cocked and garnered it, supplying two
+thirds, at least, of the winter fodder, and leading the cows on all fine
+days to sheltered nooks where they could still find pasture. In certain
+parts of the valley of Les Aigues, as in all places protected by a chain
+of mountains, in Piedmont and in Lombardy for instance, there are spots
+where the grass keeps green all the year. Such fields, called in Italy
+"marciti," are of great value; though in France they are often in danger
+of being injured by snow and ice. This phenomenon is due, no doubt, to
+some favorable exposure, and to the infiltration of water which keeps
+the ground at a warmer temperature.
+
+The calves were sold for about eighty francs. The milk, deducting the
+time when the cows calved or went dry, brought in about one hundred and
+sixty francs a year besides supplying the wants of the family. Tonsard
+himself managed to earn another hundred and sixty by doing odd jobs of
+one kind or another.
+
+The sale of food and wine in the tavern, after all costs were paid,
+returned a profit of about three hundred francs, for the great
+drinking-bouts happened only at certain times and in certain seasons;
+and as the topers who indulged in them gave Tonsard and his wife due
+notice, the latter bought in the neighboring town the exact quantity of
+provisions needed and no more. The wine produced by Tonsard's vineyard
+was sold in ordinary years for twenty francs a cask to a wine-dealer at
+Soulanges with whom Tonsard was intimate. In very prolific years he got
+as much as twelve casks from his vines; but eight was the average; and
+Tonsard kept half for his own traffic. In all wine-growing districts the
+gleaning of the large vineyards gives a good perquisite, and out of
+it the Tonsard family usually managed to obtain three casks more. But
+being, as we have seen, sheltered and protected by the keepers, they
+showed no conscience in their proceedings,--entering vineyards
+before the harvesters were out of them, just as they swarmed into the
+wheat-fields before the sheaves were made. So, the seven or eight casks
+of wine, as much gleaned as harvested, were sold for a good price.
+However, out of these various proceeds the Grand-I-Vert was mulcted in
+a good sum for the personal consumption of Tonsard and his wife,
+who wanted the best of everything to eat, and better wine than they
+sold,--which they obtained from their friend at Soulanges in payment for
+their own. In short, the money scraped together by this family amounted
+to about nine hundred francs, for they fattened two pigs a year, one for
+themselves and the other to sell.
+
+The idlers and scapegraces and also the laborers took a fancy to the
+tavern of the Grand-I-Vert, partly because of La Tonsard's merits, and
+partly on account of the hail-fellow-well-met relation existing between
+this family and the lower classes of the valley. The two daughters, both
+remarkably handsome, followed the example of their mother as to morals.
+Moreover, the long established fame of the Grand-I-Vert, dating from
+1795, made it a venerable spot in the eyes of the common people. From
+Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes, workmen came there to meet and make their
+bargains and hear the news collected by the Tonsard women and by Mouche
+and old Fourchon, or supplied by Vermichel and Brunet, that renowned
+official, when he came to the tavern in search of his practitioner.
+There the price of hay and of wine was settled; also that of a day's
+work and of piece-work. Tonsard, a sovereign judge in such matters,
+gave his advice and opinion while drinking with his guests. Soulanges,
+according to a saying in these parts, was a town for society and
+amusement only, while Blangy was a business borough; crushed, however,
+by the great commercial centre of Ville-aux-Fayes, which had become in
+the last twenty-five years the capital of this flourishing valley. The
+cattle and grain market was held at Blangy, in the public square,
+and the prices there obtained served as a tariff for the whole
+arrondissement.
+
+By staying in the house and doing no out-door work, La Tonsard continued
+fresh and fair and dimpled, in comparison with the women who worked in
+the fields and faded as rapidly as the flowers, becoming old and haggard
+before they were thirty. She liked to be well-dressed. In point of
+fact, she was only clean, but in a village cleanliness is a luxury. The
+daughters, better dressed than their means warranted, followed their
+mother's example. Beneath their outer garment, which was relatively
+handsome, they wore linen much finer than that of the richest peasant
+women. On fete-days they appeared in dresses that were really pretty,
+obtained, Heaven knows how! For one thing, the men-servants at Les
+Aigues sold to them, at prices that were easily paid, the cast-off
+clothing of the lady's-maids, which, after sweeping the streets of Paris
+and being made over to fit Marie and Catherine, appeared triumphantly in
+the precincts of the Grand-I-Vert. These girls, bohemians of the valley,
+received not one penny in money from their parents, who gave them
+food only, and the wretched pallets on which they slept with their
+grandmother in the barn, where their brothers also slept, curled up in
+the hay like animals. Neither father nor mother paid any heed to this
+propinquity.
+
+The iron age and the age of gold are more alike than we think for. In
+the one nothing aroused vigilance; in the other, everything rouses it;
+the result to society is, perhaps, very much the same. The presence of
+old Mother Tonsard, which was more a necessity than a precaution, was
+simply one immorality the more. And thus it was that the Abbe Brossette,
+after studying the morals of his parishioners, made this pregnant remark
+to his bishop:--
+
+"Monseigneur, when I observe the stress that the peasantry lay on
+their poverty, I realize how they fear to lose that excuse for their
+immorality."
+
+Though everybody knew that the family had no principles and no scruples,
+nothing was ever said against the morals of the Grand-I-Vert. At the
+beginning of this book it is necessary to explain, once for all, to
+persons accustomed to the decencies of middle-class life, that the
+peasants have no decency in their domestic habits and customs. They
+make no appeal to morality when their daughters are seduced, unless the
+seducer is rich and timid. Children, until the State takes possession
+of them, are used either as capital or as instruments of convenience.
+Self-interest has become, specially since 1789, the sole motive of the
+masses; they never ask if an action is legal or immoral, but only if it
+is profitable. Morality, which is not to be confounded with religion,
+begins only at a certain competence,--just as one sees, in a higher
+sphere, how delicacy blossoms in the soul when fortune decorates
+the furniture. A positively moral and upright man is rare among the
+peasantry. Do you ask why? Among the many reasons that may be given for
+this state of things, the principal one is this: Through the nature of
+their social functions, the peasants live a purely material life which
+approximates to that of savages, and their constant union with nature
+tends to foster it. When toil exhausts the body it takes from the mind
+its purifying action, especially among the ignorant. The Abbe Brossette
+was right in saying that the state policy of the peasant is his poverty.
+
+Meddling in everybody's interests, Tonsard heard everybody's complaints,
+and often instigated frauds to benefit the needy. His wife, a kindly
+appearing woman, had a good word for evil-doers, and never withheld
+either approval or personal help from her customers in anything they
+undertook against the rich. This inn, a nest of vipers, brisk and
+venomous, seething and active, was a hot-bed for the hatred of the
+peasants and the workingmen against the masters and the wealthy.
+
+The prosperous life of the Tonsards was, therefore, an evil example.
+Others asked themselves why they should not take their wood, as the
+Tonsards did, from the forest; why not pasture their cows and have game
+to eat and to sell as well as they; why not harvest without sowing the
+grapes and the grain. Accordingly, the pilfering thefts which thin the
+woods and tithe the ploughed lands and meadows and vineyards became
+habitual in this valley, and soon existed as a right throughout the
+districts of Blangy, Conches, and Cerneux, all adjacent to the domain
+of Les Aigues. This sore, for certain reasons which will be given in
+due time, did far greater injury to Les Aigues than to the estates of
+Ronquerolles or Soulanges. You must not, however, fancy that Tonsard,
+his wife and children, and his old mother ever deliberately said to
+themselves, "We will live by theft, and commit it as cleverly as we
+can." Such habits grow slowly. To the dried sticks they added, in the
+first instance, a single bit of good wood; then, emboldened by habit
+and a carefully prepared immunity (necessary to plans which this history
+will unfold), they ended at last in cutting "their wood," and stealing
+almost their entire livelihood. Pasturage for the cows and the abuses of
+gleaning were established as customs little by little. When the Tonsards
+and the do-nothings of the valley had tasted the sweets of these four
+rights (thus captured by rural paupers, and amounting to actual robbery)
+we can easily imagine they would never give them up unless compelled by
+a power greater than their own audacity.
+
+At the time when this history begins Tonsard, then about fifty years
+of age, tall and strong, rather stout than thin, with curly black hair,
+skin highly colored and marbled like a brick with purple blotches,
+yellow whites to the eyes, large ears with broad flaps, a muscular
+frame, encased, however, in flabby flesh, a retreating forehead, and a
+hanging lip,--Tonsard, such as you see him, hid his real character under
+an external stupidity, lightened at times by a show of experience, which
+seemed all the more intelligent because he had acquired in the company
+of his father-in-law a sort of bantering talk, much affected by old
+Fourchon and Vermichel. His nose, flattened at the end as if the finger
+of God intended to mark him, gave him a voice which came from his
+palate, like that of all persons disfigured by a disease which thickens
+the nasal passages, through which the air then passes with difficulty.
+His upper teeth overlapped each other, and this defect (which Lavater
+calls terrible) was all the more apparent because they were as white as
+those of a dog. But for a certain lawless and slothful good humor, and
+the free-and-easy ways of a rustic tippler, the man would have alarmed
+the least observing of spectators.
+
+If the portraits of Tonsard, his inn, and his father-in-law take a
+prominent place in this history, it is because that place belongs to him
+and to the inn and to the family. In the first place, their existence,
+so minutely described, is the type of a hundred other households in the
+valley of Les Aigues. Secondly, Tonsard, without being other than the
+instrument of deep and active hatreds, had an immense influence on the
+struggle that was about to take place, being the friend and counsellor
+of all the complainants of the lower classes. His inn, as we shall
+presently see, was the rendezvous for the aggressors; in fact, he became
+their chief, partly on account of the fear he inspired throughout the
+valley--less, however, by his actual deeds than by those that were
+constantly expected of him. The threat of this man was as much dreaded
+as the thing threatened, so that he never had occasion to execute it.
+
+Every revolt, open or concealed, has its banner. The banner of the
+marauders, the drunkards, the idlers, the sluggards of the valley des
+Aigues was the terrible tavern of the Grand-I-Vert. Its frequenters
+found amusement there,--as rare and much-desired a thing in the country
+as in a city. Moreover, there was no other inn along the country-road
+for over twelve miles, a distance which conveyances (even when laden)
+could easily do in three hours; so that those who went from Conches to
+Ville-aux-Fayes always stopped at the Grand-I-Vert, if only to refresh
+themselves. The miller of Les Aigues, who was also assistant-mayor, and
+his men came there. The grooms and valets of the general were not averse
+to Tonsard's wine, rendered attractive by Tonsard's daughters; so the
+Grand-I-Vert held subterraneous communication with the chateau through
+the servants, and knew immediately everything that they knew. It is
+impossible either by benefits or through their own self-interests, to
+break up the perpetual understanding that exists between the servants of
+a household and the people from whom they come. Domestic service is of
+the masses, and to the masses it will ever remain attached. This fatal
+comradeship explains the reticence of the last words of Charles the
+groom, as he and Blondet reached the portico of the chateau.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. ANOTHER IDYLL
+
+
+"Ha! by my pipe, papa!" exclaimed Tonsard, seeing his father-in-law as
+the old man entered and supposing him in quest of food, "your stomach
+is lively this morning! We haven't anything to give you. How about that
+rope,--the rope, you know, you were to make for us? It is amazing how
+much you make over night and how little there is made in the morning!
+You ought long ago to have twisted the one that is to twist you out of
+existence; you are getting too costly for us."
+
+The wit of a peasant or laborer is very Attic; it consists in speaking
+out his mind and giving it a grotesque expression. We find the same
+thing in a drawing-room. Delicacy of wit takes the place of picturesque
+vulgarity, and that is really all the difference there is.
+
+"That's enough for the father-in-law!" said the old man. "Talk business;
+I want a bottle of the best."
+
+So saying, Fourchon rapped a five-franc piece that gleamed in his hand
+on the old table at which he was seated,--which, with its coating of
+grease, its scorched black marks, its wine stains, and its gashes, was
+singular to behold. At the sound of coin Marie Tonsard, as trig as a
+sloop about to start on a cruise, glanced at her grandfather with a
+covetous look that shot from her eyes like a spark. La Tonsard came out
+of her bedroom, attracted by the music of metal.
+
+"You are always rough to my poor father," she said to her husband, "and
+yet he has earned a deal of money this year; God grant he came by
+it honestly. Let me see that," she added, springing at the coin and
+snatching it from Fourchon's fingers.
+
+"Marie," said Tonsard, gravely, "above the board you'll find some
+bottled wine. Go and get a bottle."
+
+Wine is of only one quality in the country, but it is sold as of two
+kinds,--cask wine and bottled wine.
+
+"Where did you get this, papa" demanded La Tonsard, slipping the coin
+into her pocket.
+
+"Philippine! you'll come to a bad end," said the old man, shaking his
+head but not attempting to recover his money. Doubtless he had long
+realized the futility of a struggle between his daughter, his terrible
+son-in-law, and himself.
+
+"Another bottle of wine for which you get five francs out of me," he
+added, in a peevish tone. "But it shall be the last. I shall give my
+custom to the Cafe de la Paix."
+
+"Hold your tongue, papa!" remarked his fair and fat daughter, who bore
+some resemblance to a Roman matron. "You need a shirt, and a pair of
+clean trousers, and a hat; and I want to see you with a waistcoat.
+That's what I take the money for."
+
+"I have told you again and again that such things would ruin me," said
+the old man. "People would think me rich and stop giving me anything."
+
+The bottle brought by Marie put an end to the loquacity of the old man,
+who was not without that trait, characteristic of those whose tongues
+are ready to tell out everything, and who shrink from no expression of
+their thought, no matter how atrocious it may be.
+
+"Then you don't want to tell where you filched that money?" said
+Tonsard. "We might go and get more where that came from,--the rest of
+us."
+
+He was making a snare, and as he finished it the ferocious innkeeper
+happened to glance at his father-in-law's trousers, and there he spied a
+raised round spot which clearly defined a second five-franc piece.
+
+"Having become a capitalist I drink your health," said Pere Fourchon.
+
+"If you choose to be a capitalist you can be," said Tonsard; "you have
+the means, you have! But the devil has bored a hole in the back of your
+head through which everything runs out."
+
+"Hey! I only played the otter trick on that young fellow they have got
+at Les Aigues. He's from Paris. That's all there is to it."
+
+"If crowds of people would come to see the sources of the Avonne, you'd
+be rich, Grandpa Fourchon," said Marie.
+
+"Yes," he said, drinking the last glassful the bottle contained, "and
+I've played the sham otter so long, the live otters have got angry, and
+one of them came right between my legs to-day; Mouche caught it, and I
+am to get twenty francs for it."
+
+"I'll bet your otter is made of tow," said Tonsard, looking slyly at his
+father-in-law.
+
+"If you will give me a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, and some list
+braces, so as not to disgrace Vermichel on the music stand at Tivoli
+(for old Socquard is always scolding about my clothes), I'll let you
+keep that money, my daughter; your idea is a good one. I can squeeze
+that rich young fellow at Les Aigues; may be he'll take to otters."
+
+"Go and get another bottle," said Tonsard to his daughter. "If your
+father really had an otter, he would show it to us," he added, speaking
+to his wife and trying to touch up Fourchon.
+
+"I'm too afraid it would get into your frying-pan," said the old man,
+winking one of his little green eyes at his daughter. "Philippine has
+already hooked my five-franc piece; and how many more haven't you bagged
+under pretence of clothing me and feeding me? and now you say that my
+stomach is too lively, and that I go half-naked."
+
+"You sold your last clothes to drink boiled wine at the Cafe de la Paix,
+papa," said his daughter, "though Vermichel tried to prevent it."
+
+"Vermichel! the man I treated! Vermichel is incapable of betraying my
+friendship. It must have been that lump of old lard on two legs that he
+is not ashamed to call his wife!"
+
+"He or she," replied Tonsard, "or Bonnebault."
+
+"If it was Bonnebault," cried Fourchon, "he who is one of the pillars of
+the place, I'll--I'll--Enough!"
+
+"You old sot, what has all that got to do with having sold your clothes?
+You sold them because you did sell them; you're of age!" said Tonsard,
+slapping the old man's knee. "Come, do honor to my drink and redden up
+your throat! The father of Mam Tonsard has a right to do so; and isn't
+that better than spending your silver at Socquard's?"
+
+"What a shame it is that you have been fifteen years playing for people
+to dance at Tivoli and you have never yet found out how Socquard cooks
+his wine,--you who are so shrewd!" said his daughter; "and yet you
+know very well that if we had the secret we should soon get as rich as
+Rigou."
+
+Throughout the Morvan, and in that region of Burgundy which lies at its
+feet on the side toward Paris, this boiled wine with which Mam Tonsard
+reproached her father is a rather costly beverage which plays a great
+part in the life of the peasantry, and is made by all grocers and
+wine-dealers, and wherever a drinking-shop exists. This precious liquor,
+made of choice wine, sugar, and cinnamon and other spices, is
+preferable to all those disguises or mixtures of brandy called ratafia,
+one-hundred-and-seven, brave man's cordial, black currant wine,
+vespetro, spirit-of-sun, etc. Boiled wine is found throughout France and
+Switzerland. Among the Jura, and in the wild districts trodden only by a
+few special tourists, the innkeepers call it, on the word of commercial
+travellers, the wine of Syracuse. Excellent it is, however, and their
+guests, hungry as hounds after ascending the surrounding peaks, very
+gladly pay three and four francs a bottle for it. In the homes of the
+Morvan and in Burgundy the least illness or the slightest agitation of
+the nerves is an excuse for boiled wine. Before and after childbirth the
+women take it with the addition of burnt sugar. Boiled wine has soaked
+up the property of many a peasant, and more than once the seductive
+liquid has been the cause of marital chastisement.
+
+"Ha! there's no chance of grabbing that secret," replied Fourchon,
+"Socquard always locks himself in when he boils his wine; he never told
+how he does it to his late wife. He sends to Paris for his materials."
+
+"Don't plague your father," cried Tonsard; "doesn't he know? well, then,
+he doesn't know! People can't know everything!"
+
+Fourchon grew very uneasy on seeing how his son-in-law's countenance
+softened as well as his words.
+
+"What do you want to rob me of now?" he asked, candidly.
+
+"I?" said Tonsard, "I take none but my legitimate dues; if I get
+anything from you it is in payment of your daughter's portion, which you
+promised me and never paid."
+
+Fourchon, reassured by the harshness of this remark, dropped his head on
+his breast as though vanquished and convinced.
+
+"Look at that pretty snare," resumed Tonsard, coming up to his
+father-in-law and laying the trap upon his knee. "Some of these days
+they'll want game at Les Aigues, and we shall sell them their own, or
+there will be no good God for the poor folks."
+
+"A fine piece of work," said the old man, examining the mischievous
+machine.
+
+"It is very well to pick up the sous now, papa," said Mam Tonsard, "but
+you know we are to have our share in the cake of Les Aigues."
+
+"Oh, what chatterers women are!" cried Tonsard. "If I am hanged it won't
+be for a shot from my gun, but for the gabble of your tongue."
+
+"And do you really suppose that Les Aigues will be cut up and sold in
+lots for your pitiful benefit?" asked Fourchon. "Pshaw! haven't you
+discovered in the last thirty years that old Rigou has been sucking the
+marrow out of your bones that the middle-class folks are worse than
+the lords? Mark my words, when that affair happens, my children, the
+Soudrys, the Gaubertins, the Rigous, will make you kick your heels in
+the air. 'I've the good tobacco, it never shall be thine,' that's
+the national air of the rich man, hey? The peasant will always be
+the peasant. Don't you see (but you never did understand anything of
+politics!) that government puts such heavy taxes on wine only to hinder
+our profits and keep us poor? The middle classes and the government,
+they are all one. What would become of them if everybody was rich? Could
+they till their fields? Would they gather the harvest? No, they
+_want_ the poor! I was rich for ten years and I know what I thought of
+paupers."
+
+"Must hunt with them, though," replied Tonsard, "because they mean to
+cut up the great estates; after that's done, we can turn against them.
+If I'd been Courtecuisse, whom that scoundrel Rigou is ruining, I'd have
+long ago paid his bill with other balls than the poor fellow gives him."
+
+"Right enough, too," replied Fourchon. "As Pere Niseron says (and he
+stayed republican long after everybody else), 'The people are tough;
+they don't die; they have time before them.'"
+
+Fourchon fell into a sort of reverie; Tonsard profited by his
+inattention to take back the trap, and as he took it up he cut a slip
+below the coin in his father-in-law's pocket at the moment when the old
+man raised his glass to his lips; then he set his foot on the five-franc
+piece as it dropped on the earthen floor just where it was always kept
+damp by the heel-taps which the customers flung from their glasses.
+Though quickly and lightly done, the old man might, perhaps, have felt
+the theft, if Vermichel had not happened to appear at that moment.
+
+"Tonsard, do you know where you father is?" called that functionary from
+the foot of the steps.
+
+Vermichel's shout, the theft of the money, and the emptying of old
+Fourchon's glass, were simultaneous.
+
+"Present, captain!" cried Fourchon, holding out a hand to Vermichel to
+help him up the steps.
+
+Of all Burgundian figures, Vermichel would have seemed to you the most
+Burgundian. The practitioner was not red, he was scarlet. His face, like
+certain tropical portions of the globe, was fissured, here and there,
+with small extinct volcanoes, defined by flat and greenish patches which
+Fourchon called, not unpoetically, the "flowers of wine." This fiery
+face, the features of which were swelled out of shape by continual
+drunkenness, looked cyclopic; for it was lighted on the right side by a
+gleaming eye, and darkened on the other by a yellow patch over the left
+orb. Red hair, always tousled, and a beard like that of Judas, made
+Vermichel as formidable in appearance as he was meek in reality. His
+prominent nose looked like an interrogation-mark, to which the wide-slit
+mouth seemed to be always answering, even when it did not open.
+Vermichel, a short man, wore hob-nail shoes, bottle-green velveteen
+trousers, an old waistcoat patched with diverse stuffs which seemed
+to have been originally made of a counterpane, a jacket of coarse blue
+cloth and a gray hat with a broad brim. All this luxury, required by the
+town of Soulanges where Vermichel fulfilled the combined functions of
+porter at the town-hall, drummer, jailer, musician, and practitioner,
+was taken care of by Madame Vermichel, an alarming antagonist of
+Rabelaisian philosophy. This virago with moustachios, about one yard in
+width and one hundred and twenty kilograms in weight (but very active),
+ruled Vermichel with a rod of iron. Thrashed by her when drunk, he
+allowed her to thrash him still when sober; which caused Pere Fourchon
+to say, with a sniff at Vermichel's clothes, "It is the livery of a
+slave."
+
+"Talk of the sun and you'll see its beams," cried Fourchon, repeating a
+well-worn allusion to the rutilant face of Vermichel, which really did
+resemble those copper suns painted on tavern signs in the provinces.
+"Has Mam Vermichel spied too much dust on your back, that you're running
+away from your four-fifths,--for I can't call her your better half, that
+woman! What brings you here at this hour, drum-major?"
+
+"Politics, always politics," replied Vermichel, who seemed accustomed to
+such pleasantries.
+
+"Ah! business is bad in Blangy, and there'll be notes to protest, and
+writs to issue," remarked Pere Fourchon, filling a glass for his friend.
+
+"That APE of ours is right behind me," replied Vermichel, with a
+backward gesture.
+
+In workmen's slang "ape" meant master. The word belonged to the
+dictionary of the worthy pair.
+
+"What's Monsieur Brunet coming bothering about here?" asked Tonsard.
+
+"Hey, by the powers, you folks!" said Vermichel, "you've brought him in
+for the last three years more than you are worth. Ha! that master at Les
+Aigues, he has his eye upon you; he'll punch you in the ribs; he's after
+you, the Shopman! Brunet says, if there were three such landlords in the
+valley his fortune would be made."
+
+"What new harm are they going to do to the poor?" asked Marie.
+
+"A pretty wise thing for themselves," replied Vermichel. "Faith! you'll
+have to give in, in the end. How can you help it? They've got the
+power. For the last two years haven't they had three foresters and a
+horse-patrol, all as active as ants, and a field-keeper who is a terror?
+Besides, the gendarmerie is ready to do their dirty work at any time.
+They'll crush you--"
+
+"Bah!" said Tonsard, "we are too flat. That which can't be crushed isn't
+the trees, it's ground."
+
+"Don't you trust to that," said Fourchon to his son-in-law; "you own
+property."
+
+"Those rich folks must love you," continued Vermichel, "for they think
+of nothing else from morning till night! They are saying to themselves
+now like this: 'Their cattle eat up our pastures; we'll seize their
+cattle; they can't eat grass themselves.' You've all been condemned, the
+warrants are out, and they have told our ape to take your cows. We are
+to begin this morning at Conches by seizing old mother Bonnebault's cow
+and Godin's cow and Mitant's cow."
+
+The moment the name of Bonnebault was mentioned, Marie, who was in love
+with the old woman's grandson, sprang into the vineyard with a nod to
+her father and mother. She slipped like an eel through a break in the
+hedge, and was off on the way to Conches with the speed of a hunted
+hare.
+
+"They'll do so much," remarked Tonsard, tranquilly, "that they'll get
+their bones broken; and that will be a pity, for their mothers can't
+make them any new ones."
+
+"Well, perhaps so," said old Fourchon, "but see here, Vermichel, I can't
+go with you for an hour or more, for I have important business at the
+chateau."
+
+"More important than serving three warrants at five sous each? 'You
+shouldn't spit into the vintage,' as Father Noah says."
+
+"I tell you, Vermichel, that my business requires me to go to the
+chateau des Aigues," repeated the old man, with an air of laughable
+self-importance.
+
+"And anyhow," said Mam Tonsard, "my father had better keep out of the
+way. Do you really mean to find the cows?"
+
+"Monsieur Brunet, who is a very good fellow, would much rather find
+nothing but their dung," answered Vermichel. "A man who is obliged to be
+out and about day and night had better be careful."
+
+"If he is, he has good reason to be," said Tonsard, sententiously.
+
+"So," continued Vermichel, "he said to Monsieur Michaud, 'I'll go as
+soon as the court is up.' If he had wanted to find the cows he'd have
+gone at seven o'clock in the morning. But that didn't suit Michaud,
+and Brunet has had to be off. You can't take in Michaud, he's a trained
+hound! Ha, the brigand!"
+
+"Ought to have stayed in the army, a swaggerer like that," said Tonsard;
+"he is only fit to deal with enemies. I wish he would come and ask me my
+name. He may call himself a veteran of the young guard, but I know
+very well that if I measured spurs with him, I'd keep my feathers up
+longest."
+
+"Look here!" said Mam Tonsard to Vermichel, "when are the notices for
+the ball at Soulanges coming out? Here it is the eighth of August."
+
+"I took them yesterday to Monsieur Bournier at Ville-aux-Fayes, to be
+printed," replied Vermichel; "they do talk of fireworks on the lake."
+
+"What crowds of people we shall have!" cried Fourchon.
+
+"Profits for Socquard!" said Tonsard, spitefully.
+
+"If it doesn't rain," said his wife, by way of comfort.
+
+At this moment the trot of a horse coming from the direction of
+Soulanges was heard, and five minutes later the sheriff's officer
+fastened his horse to a post placed for the purpose near the wicket gate
+through which the cows were driven. Then he showed his head at the door
+of the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+"Come, my boys, let's lose no time," he said, pretending to be in a
+hurry.
+
+"Hey!" said Vermichel. "Here's a refractory, Monsieur Brunet; Pere
+Fourchon wants to drop off."
+
+"He has had too many drops already," said the sheriff; "but the law in
+this case does not require that he shall be sober."
+
+"Please excuse me, Monsieur Brunet," said Fourchon, "I am expected at
+Les Aigues on business; they are in treaty for an otter."
+
+Brunet, a withered little man dressed from head to foot in black cloth,
+with a bilious skin, a furtive eye, curly hair, lips tight-drawn,
+pinched nose, anxious expression, and gruff in speech, exhibited the
+phenomenon of a character and bearing in perfect harmony with his
+profession. He was so well-informed as to the law, or, to speak more
+correctly, the quibbles of the law, that he had come to be both the
+terror and the counsellor of the whole canton. He was not without a
+certain popularity among the peasantry, from whom he usually took his
+pay in kind. The compound of his active and negative qualities and his
+knowledge of how to manage matters got him the custom of the canton,
+to the exclusion of his coadjutor Plissoud, about whom we shall have
+something to say later. This chance combination of a sheriff's officer
+who does everything and a sheriff's officer who does nothing is not at
+all uncommon in the country justice courts.
+
+"So matters are getting warm, are they?" said Tonsard to little Brunet.
+
+"What can you expect? you pilfer the man too much, and he's going to
+protect himself," replied the officer. "It will be a bad business for
+you in the end; government will interfere."
+
+"Then we, poor unfortunates, must give up the ghost!" said Mam Tonsard,
+offering him a glass of brandy on a saucer.
+
+"The unfortunate may all die, yet they'll never be lacking in the land,"
+said Fourchon, sententiously.
+
+"You do great damage to the woods," retorted the sheriff.
+
+"Now don't believe that, Monsieur Brunet," said Mam Tonsard; "they make
+such a fuss about a few miserable fagots!"
+
+"We didn't crush the rich low enough during the Revolution, that's
+what's the trouble," said Tonsard.
+
+Just then a horrible, and quite incomprehensible noise was heard. It
+seemed to be a rush of hurried feet, accompanied with a rattle of arms,
+half-drowned by the rustling of leaves, the dragging of branches, and
+the sound of still more hasty feet. Two voices, as different as the two
+footsteps, were venting noisy exclamations. Everybody inside the
+inn guessed at once that a man was pursuing a woman; but why? The
+uncertainty did not last long.
+
+"It is mother!" said Tonsard, jumping up; "I know her shriek."
+
+Then suddenly, rushing up the broken steps of the Grand-I-Vert by a
+last effort that can be made only by the sinews of smugglers, old Mother
+Tonsard fell flat on the floor in the middle of the room. The immense
+mass of wood she carried on her head made a terrible noise as it crashed
+against the top of the door and then upon the ground. Every one had
+jumped out of the way. The table, the bottles, the chairs were knocked
+over and scattered. The noise was as great as if the cottage itself had
+come tumbling down.
+
+"I'm dead! The scoundrel has killed me!"
+
+The words and the flight of the old woman were explained by the
+apparition on the threshold of a keeper, dressed in green livery,
+wearing a hat edged with silver cord, a sabre at his side, a leathern
+shoulder-belt bearing the arms of Montcornet charged with those of the
+Troisvilles, the regulation red waistcoat, and buckskin gaiters which
+came above the knee.
+
+After a moment's hesitation the keeper said, looking at Brunet and
+Vermichel, "Here are witnesses."
+
+"Witnesses of what?" said Tonsard.
+
+"That woman has a ten-year-old oak, cut into logs, inside those fagots;
+it is a regular crime!"
+
+The moment the word "witness" was uttered Vermichel thought best to
+breathe the fresh air of the vineyard.
+
+"Of what? witnesses of what?" cried Tonsard, standing in front of the
+keeper while his wife helped up the old woman. "Do you mean to show
+your claws, Vatel? Accuse persons and arrest them on the highway,
+brigand,--that's your domain; but get out of here! A man's house is his
+castle."
+
+"I caught her in the act, and your mother must come with me."
+
+"Arrest my mother in my house? You have no right to do it. My house is
+inviolable,--all the world knows that, at least. Have you got a warrant
+from Monsieur Guerbet, the magistrate? Ha! you must have the law behind
+you before you come in here. You are not the law, though you have sworn
+an oath to starve us to death, you miserable forest-gauger, you!"
+
+The fury of the keeper waxed so hot that he was on the point of seizing
+hold of the wood, when the old woman, a frightful bit of black parchment
+endowed with motion, the like of which can be seen only in David's
+picture of "The Sabines," screamed at him, "Don't touch it, or I'll fly
+at your eyes!"
+
+"Well, then, undo that pile in presence of Monsieur Brunet," said the
+keeper.
+
+Though the sheriff's officer had assumed the indifference that the
+routine of business does really give to officials of his class, he threw
+a glance at Tonsard and his wife which said plainly, "A bad business!"
+Old Fourchon looked at his daughter, and slyly pointed at a pile of
+ashes in the chimney. Mam Tonsard, who understood in a moment from that
+significant gesture both the danger of her mother-in-law and the advice
+of her father, seized a handful of ashes and flung them in the keeper's
+eyes. Vatel roared with pain; Tonsard pushed him roughly upon the broken
+door-steps where the blinded man stumbled and fell, and then rolled
+nearly down to the gate, dropping his gun on the way. In an instant the
+load of sticks was unfastened, and the oak logs pulled out and hidden
+with a rapidity no words can describe. Brunet, anxious not to witness
+this manoeuvre, which he readily foresaw, rushed after the keeper to
+help him up; then he placed him on the bank and wet his handkerchief in
+water to wash the eyes of the poor fellow, who, in spite of his agony,
+was trying to reach the brook.
+
+"You are in the wrong, Vatel," said Brunet; "you have no right to enter
+houses, don't you see?"
+
+The old woman, a little hump-backed creature, stood on the sill of the
+door, with her hands on her hips, darting flashes from her eyes and
+curses from her foaming lips shrill enough to be heard at Blangy.
+
+"Ha! the villain, 'twas well done! May hell get you! To suspect me of
+cutting trees!--_me_, the most honest woman in the village. To hunt me
+like vermin! I'd like to see you lose your cursed eyes, for then we'd
+have peace. You are birds of ill-omen, the whole of you; you invent
+shameful stories to stir up strife between your master and us."
+
+The keeper allowed the sheriff to bathe his eyes and all the while the
+latter kept telling him that he was legally wrong.
+
+"The old thief! she has tired us out," said Vatel at last. "She has been
+at work in the woods all night."
+
+As the whole family had taken an active hand in hiding the live wood and
+putting things straight in the cottage, Tonsard presently appeared at
+the door with an insolent air. "Vatel, my man, if you ever again dare
+to force your way into my domain, my gun shall answer you," he said.
+"To-day you have had the ashes; the next time you shall have the fire.
+You don't know your own business. That's enough. Now if you feel hot
+after this affair take some wine, I offer it to you; and you may come
+in and see that my old mother's bundle of fagots hadn't a scrap of live
+wood in it; it is every bit brushwood."
+
+"Scoundrel!" said the keeper to the sheriff, in a low voice, more
+enraged by this speech than by the smart of his eyes.
+
+Just then Charles, the groom, appeared at the gate of the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+"What is the matter, Vatel?" he said.
+
+"Ah!" said the keeper, wiping his eyes, which he had plunged wide open
+into the rivulet to give them a final cleansing. "I have some debtors in
+there that I'll cause to rue the day they saw the light."
+
+"If you take it that way, Monsieur Vatel," said Tonsard, coldly, "you
+will find we don't want for courage in Burgundy."
+
+Vatel departed. Not feeling much curiosity to know what the trouble was,
+Charles went up the steps and looked into the house.
+
+"Come to the chateau, you and your otter,--if you really have one," he
+said to Pere Fourchon.
+
+The old man rose hurriedly and followed him.
+
+"Well, where is it,--that otter of yours?" said Charles, smiling
+doubtfully.
+
+"This way," said the old fellow, going toward the Thune.
+
+The name is that of a brook formed by the overflow of the mill-race and
+of certain springs in the park of Les Aigues. It runs by the side of the
+county road as far as the lakelet of Soulanges, which it crosses, and
+then falls into the Avonne, after feeding the mills and ponds on the
+Soulanges estate.
+
+"Here it is; I hid it in the brook, with a stone around its neck."
+
+As he stooped and rose again the old man missed the coin out of his
+pocket, where metal was so uncommon that he was likely to notice its
+presence or its absence immediately.
+
+"Ah, the sharks!" he cried. "If I hunt otters they hunt fathers-in-law!
+They get out of me all I earn, and tell me it is for my good! If it
+were not for my poor Mouche, who is the comfort of my old age, I'd
+drown myself. Children! they are the ruin of their fathers. You haven't
+married, have you, Monsieur Charles? Then don't; never get married,
+and then you can't reproach yourself for spreading bad blood. I, who
+expected to buy my tow with that money, and there it is filched, stolen!
+That monsieur up at Les Aigues, a fine young fellow, gave me ten francs;
+ha! well! it'll put up the price of my otter now."
+
+Charles distrusted the old man so profoundly that he took his grievances
+(this time very sincere) for the preliminary of what he called, in
+servant's slang, "varnish," and he made the great mistake of letting
+his opinion appear in a satirical grin, which the spiteful old fellow
+detected.
+
+"Come, come! Pere Fourchon, now behave yourself; you are going to see
+Madame," said Charles, noticing how the rubies flashed on the nose and
+cheeks of the old drunkard.
+
+"I know how to attend to business, Charles; and the proof is that if you
+will get me out of the kitchen the remains of the breakfast and a bottle
+or two of Spanish wine, I'll tell you something which will save you from
+a 'foul.'"
+
+"Tell me, and Francois shall get Monsieur's own order to give you a
+glass of wine," said the groom.
+
+"Promise?"
+
+"I promise."
+
+"Well then, I know you meet my granddaughter Catherine under the bridge
+of the Avonne. Godain is in love with her; he saw you, and he is fool
+enough to be jealous,--I say fool, for a peasant oughtn't to have
+feelings which belong only to rich folks. If you go to the ball of
+Soulanges at Tivoli and dance with her, you'll dance higher than you'll
+like. Godain is rich and dangerous; he is capable of breaking your arm
+without your getting a chance to arrest him."
+
+"That would be too dear; Catherine is a fine girl, but she is not worth
+all that," replied Charles. "Why should Godain be so angry? others are
+not."
+
+"He loves her enough to marry her."
+
+"If he does, he'll beat her," said Charles.
+
+"I don't know about that," said the old man. "She takes after her
+mother, against whom Tonsard never raised a finger,--he's too afraid
+she'll be off, hot foot. A woman who knows how to hold her own is mighty
+useful. Besides, if it came to fisticuffs with Catherine, Godain, though
+he's pretty strong, wouldn't give the last blow."
+
+"Well, thank you, Pere Fourchon; here's forty sous to drink my health in
+case I can't get you the sherry."
+
+Pere Fourchon turned his head aside as he pocketed the money lest
+Charles should see the expression of amusement and sarcasm which he was
+unable to repress.
+
+"Catherine," he resumed, "is a proud minx; she likes sherry. You had
+better tell her to go and get it at Les Aigues."
+
+Charles looked at Pere Fourchon with naive admiration, not suspecting
+the eager interest the general's enemies took in slipping one more spy
+into the chateau.
+
+"The general ought to feel happy now," continued Fourchon; "the peasants
+are all quiet. What does he say? Is he satisfied with Sibilet?"
+
+"It is only Monsieur Michaud who finds fault with Sibilet. They say
+he'll get him sent away."
+
+"Professional jealousy!" exclaimed Fourchon. "I'll bet you would like to
+get rid of Francois and take his place."
+
+"Hang it! he has twelve hundred francs wages," said Charles; "but they
+can't send him off,--he knows the general's secrets."
+
+"Just as Madame Michaud knows the countess's," remarked Fourchon,
+watching the other carefully. "Look here, my boy, do you know whether
+Monsieur and Madame have separate rooms?"
+
+"Of course; if they didn't, Monsieur wouldn't be so fond of Madame."
+
+"Is that all you know?" said Fourchon.
+
+As they were now before the kitchen windows nothing more was said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. ENEMIES FACE TO FACE
+
+
+While breakfast was in progress at the chateau, Francois, the head
+footman, whispered to Blondet, but loud enough for the general to
+overhear him,--
+
+"Monsieur, Pere Fourchon's boy is here; he says they have caught the
+otter, and wants to know if you would like it, or whether they shall
+take it to the sub-prefect at Ville-aux-Fayes."
+
+Emile Blondet, though himself a past-master of hoaxing, could not keep
+his cheeks from blushing like those of a virgin who hears an indecorous
+story of which she knows the meaning.
+
+"Ha! ha! so you have hunted the otter this morning with Pere Fourchon?"
+cried the general, with a roar of laughter.
+
+"What is it?" asked the countess, uneasy at her husband's laugh.
+
+"When a man of wit and intelligence is taken in by old Fourchon,"
+continued the general, "a retired cuirassier need not blush for having
+hunted that otter; which bears an enormous resemblance to the third
+posthorse we are made to pay for and never see." With that he went off
+into further explosions of laughter, in the midst of which he contrived
+to say: "I am not surprised you had to change your boots--and your
+trousers; I have no doubt you have been wading! The joke didn't go as
+far as that with me,--I stayed on the bank; but then, you know, you are
+so much more intelligent than I--"
+
+"But you forget," interrupted Madame de Montcornet, "that I do not know
+what you are talking of."
+
+At these words, said with some pique, the general grew serious, and
+Blondet told the story of his fishing for the otter.
+
+"But if they really have an otter," said the countess, "those poor
+people are not to blame."
+
+"Oh, but it is ten years since an otter has been seen about here," said
+the pitiless general.
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Francois, "the boy swears by all that's sacred
+that he has got one."
+
+"If they have one I'll buy it," said the general.
+
+"I don't suppose," remarked the Abbe Brossette, "that God has condemned
+Les Aigues to never have otters."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur le cure!" cried Blondet, "if you bring the Almighty
+against me--"
+
+"But what is all this? Who is here?" said the countess, hastily.
+
+"Mouche, madame,--the boy who goes about with old Fourchon," said the
+footman.
+
+"Bring him in--that is, if Madame will allow it?" said the general; "he
+may amuse you."
+
+Mouche presently appeared, in his usual state of comparative nudity.
+Beholding this personification of poverty in the middle of this
+luxurious dining-room, the cost of one panel of which would have been a
+fortune to the bare-legged, bare-breasted, and bare-headed child, it
+was impossible not to be moved by an impulse of charity. The boy's eyes,
+like blazing coals, gazed first at the luxuries of the room, and then at
+those on the table.
+
+"Have you no mother?" asked Madame de Montcornet, unable otherwise to
+explain the child's nakedness.
+
+"No, ma'am; m'ma died of grief for losing p'pa, who went to the army
+in 1812 without marrying her with papers, and got frozen, saving your
+presence. But I've my Grandpa Fourchon, who is a good man,--though he
+does beat me bad sometimes."
+
+"How is it, my dear, that such wretched people can be found on your
+estate?" said the countess, looking at the general.
+
+"Madame la comtesse," said the abbe, "in this district we have none but
+voluntary paupers. Monsieur le comte does all he can; but we have to do
+with a class of persons who are without religion and who have but one
+idea, that of living at your expense."
+
+"But, my dear abbe," said Blondet, "you are here to improve their
+morals."
+
+"Monsieur," replied the abbe, "my bishop sent me here as if on a mission
+to savages; but, as I had the honor of telling him, the savages of
+France cannot be reached. They make it a law unto themselves not to
+listen to us; whereas the church does get some hold on the savages of
+America."
+
+"M'sieur le cure, they do help me a bit now," remarked Mouche; "but if I
+went to your church they _wouldn't_, and the other folks would make game
+of my breeches."
+
+"Religion ought to begin by giving him trousers, my dear abbe," said
+Blondet. "In your foreign missions don't you begin by coaxing the
+savages?"
+
+"He would soon sell them," answered the abbe, in a low tone; "besides,
+my salary does not enable me to begin on that line."
+
+"Monsieur le cure is right," said the general, looking at Mouche.
+
+The policy of the little scamp was to appear not to hear what they were
+saying when it was against himself.
+
+"The boy is intelligent enough to know good from evil," continued the
+count, "and he is old enough to work; yet he thinks of nothing but how
+to commit evil without being found out. All the keepers know him. He is
+very well aware that the master of an estate may witness a trespass
+on his property and yet have no right to arrest the trespasser. I have
+known him keep his cows boldly in my meadows, though he knew I saw him;
+but now, ever since I have been mayor, he runs away fast enough."
+
+"Oh, that is very wrong," said the countess; "you should not take other
+people's things, my little man."
+
+"Madame, we must eat. My grandpa gives me more slaps than food, and they
+don't fill my stomach, slaps don't. When the cows come in I milk 'em
+just a little and I live on that. Monseigneur isn't so poor but what
+he'll let me drink a drop o' milk the cows get from his grass?"
+
+"Perhaps he hasn't eaten anything to-day," said the countess, touched by
+his misery. "Give him some bread and the rest of that chicken; let him
+have his breakfast," she added, looking at the footman. "Where do you
+sleep, my child?"
+
+"Anywhere, madame; under the stars in summer, and wherever they'll let
+us in winter."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Twelve."
+
+"There is still time to bring him up to better ways," said the countess
+to her husband.
+
+"He will make a good soldier," said the general, gruffly; "he is well
+toughened. I went through that kind of thing myself, and here I am."
+
+"Excuse me, general, I don't belong to nobody," said the boy. "I can't
+be drafted. My poor mother wasn't married, and I was born in a field.
+I'm a son of the 'airth,' as grandpa says. M'ma saved me from the army,
+that she did! My name ain't no more Mouche than nothing at all. Grandpa
+keeps telling me all my advantages. I'm not on the register, and when
+I'm old enough to be drafted I can go all over France and they can't
+take me."
+
+"Are you fond of your grandfather?" said the countess, trying to look
+into the child's heart.
+
+"My! doesn't he box my ears when he feels like it! but then, after all,
+he's such fun; he's such good company! He says he pays himself that way
+for having taught me to read and write."
+
+"Can you read?" asked the count.
+
+"Yah, I should think so, Monsieur le comte, and fine writing too--just
+as true as we've got that otter."
+
+"Read that," said the count, giving him a newspaper.
+
+"The Qu-o-ti-dienne," read Mouche, hesitating only three times.
+
+Every one, even the abbe, laughed.
+
+"Why do you make me read that newspaper?" cried Mouche, angrily. "My
+grandpa says it is made up to please the rich, and everybody knows later
+just what's in it."
+
+"The child is right, general," said Blondet; "and he makes me long to
+see my hoaxing friend again."
+
+Mouche understood perfectly that he was posing for the amusement of the
+company; the pupil of Pere Fourchon was worthy of his master, and he
+forthwith began to cry.
+
+"How can you tease a child with bare feet?" said the countess.
+
+"And who thinks it quite natural that his grandfather should recoup
+himself for his education by boxing his ears," said Blondet.
+
+"Tell me, my poor little fellow, have you really caught an otter?"
+
+"Yes, madame; as true as that you are the prettiest lady I have seen, or
+ever shall see," said the child, wiping his eyes.
+
+"Then show me the otter," said the general.
+
+"Oh M'sieur le comte, my grandpa has hidden it; but it was kicking still
+when we were at work at the rope-walk. Send for my grandpa, please; he
+wants to sell it to you himself."
+
+"Take him into the kitchen," said the countess to Francois, "and give
+him his breakfast, and send Charles to fetch Pere Fourchon. Find some
+shoes, and a pair of trousers and a waistcoat for the poor child; those
+who come here naked must go away clothed."
+
+"May God bless you, my beautiful lady," said Mouche, departing. "M'sieur
+le cure may feel quite sure that I'll keep the things and wear 'em
+fete-days, because you give 'em to me."
+
+Emile and Madame Montcornet looked at each other with some surprise, and
+seemed to say to the abbe, "The boy is not a fool!"
+
+"It is quite true, madame," said the abbe after the child had gone,
+"that we cannot reckon with Poverty. I believe it has hidden excuses of
+which God alone can judge,--physical excuses, often congenital; moral
+excuses, born in the character, produced by an order of things that
+are often the result of qualities which, unhappily for society, have no
+vent. Deeds of heroism performed upon the battle-field ought to teach us
+that the worst scoundrels may become heroes. But here in this place you
+are living under exceptional circumstances; and if your benevolence is
+not controlled by reflection and judgment you run the risk of supporting
+your enemies."
+
+"Our enemies?" exclaimed the countess.
+
+"Cruel enemies," said the general, gravely.
+
+"Pere Fourchon and his son-in-law Tonsard," said the abbe, "are the
+strength and the intelligence of the lower classes of this valley,
+who consult them on all occasions. The Machiavelism of these people is
+beyond belief. Ten peasants meeting in a tavern are the small change of
+great political questions."
+
+Just then Francois announced Monsieur Sibilet.
+
+"He is my minister of finance," said the general, smiling; "ask him in.
+He will explain to you the gravity of the situation," he added, looking
+at his wife and Blondet.
+
+"Because he has reasons of his own for not concealing it," said the
+cure, in a low tone.
+
+Blondet then beheld a personage of whom he had heard much ever since his
+arrival, and whom he desired to know, the land-steward of Les Aigues. He
+saw a man of medium height, about thirty years of age, with a sulky look
+and a discontented face, on which a smile sat ill. Beneath an anxious
+brow a pair of greenish eyes evaded the eyes of others, and so disguised
+their thought. Sibilet was dressed in a brown surtout coat, black
+trousers and waistcoat, and wore his hair long and flat to the head,
+which gave him a clerical look. His trousers barely concealed that he
+was knock-kneed. Though his pallid complexion and flabby flesh gave the
+impression of an unhealthy constitution, Sibilet was really robust.
+The tones of his voice, which were a little thick, harmonized with this
+unflattering exterior.
+
+Blondet gave a hasty look at the abbe, and the glance with which the
+young priest answered it showed the journalist that his own suspicions
+about the steward were certainties to the curate.
+
+"Did you not tell me, my dear Sibilet," said the general, "that you
+estimate the value of what the peasants steal from us at a quarter of
+the whole revenue?"
+
+"Much more than that, Monsieur le comte," replied the steward. "The poor
+about here get more from your property than the State exacts in taxes.
+A little scamp like Mouche can glean his two bushels a day. Old women,
+whom you would really think at their last gasp, become at the harvest
+and vintage times as active and healthy as girls. You can witness
+that phenomenon very soon," said Sibilet, addressing Blondet, "for the
+harvest, which was put back by the rains in July will begin next week,
+when they cut the rye. The gleaners must have a certificate of pauperism
+from the mayor of the district, and no district should allow any one to
+glean except the paupers; but the districts of one canton do glean in
+those of another without certificate. If we have sixty real paupers
+in our district, there are at least forty others who could support
+themselves if they were not so idle. Even persons who have a business
+leave it to glean in the fields and in the vineyards. All these people,
+taken together, gather in this neighborhood something like three hundred
+bushels a day; the harvest lasts two weeks, and that makes four thousand
+five hundred bushels in this district alone. The gleaning takes more
+from an estate than the taxes. As to the abuse of pasturage, it robs
+us of fully one-sixth the produce of the meadows; and as to that of
+the woods, it is incalculable,--they have actually come to cutting down
+six-year-old trees. The loss to you, Monsieur le comte, amounts to fully
+twenty-odd thousand francs a year."
+
+"Do you hear that, madame?" said the general to his wife.
+
+"Is it not exaggerated?" asked Madame de Montcornet.
+
+"No, madame, unfortunately not," said the abbe. "Poor Niseron, that old
+fellow with the white head, who combines the functions of bell-ringer,
+beadle, grave-digger, sexton, and clerk, in defiance of his republican
+opinions,--I mean the grandfather of the little Genevieve whom you
+placed with Madame Michaud--"
+
+"La Pechina," said Sibilet, interrupting the abbe.
+
+"Pechina!" said the countess, "whom do you mean?"
+
+"Madame la comtesse, when you met little Genevieve on the road in a
+miserable condition, you cried out in Italian, 'Piccina!' The word
+became a nickname, and is now corrupted all through the district into
+Pechina," said the abbe. "The poor girl comes to church with Madame
+Michaud and Madame Sibilet."
+
+"And she is none the better for it," said Sibilet, "for the others
+ill-treat her on account of her religion."
+
+"Well, that poor old man of seventy gleans, honestly, about a bushel
+and a half a day," continued the priest; "but his natural uprightness
+prevents him from selling his gleanings as others do,--he keeps them for
+his own consumption. Monsieur Langlume, your miller, grinds his flour
+gratis at my request, and my servant bakes his bread with mine."
+
+"I had quite forgotten my little protegee," said the countess, troubled
+at Sibilet's remark. "Your arrival," she added to Blondet, "has quite
+turned my head. But after breakfast I will take you to the gate of the
+Avonne and show you the living image of those women whom the painters of
+the fifteenth century delighted to perpetuate."
+
+The sound of Pere Fourchon's broken sabots was now heard; after
+depositing them in the antechamber, he was brought to the door of the
+dining-room by Francois. At a sign from the countess, Francois allowed
+him to pass in, followed by Mouche with his mouth full and carrying the
+otter, hanging by a string tied to its yellow paws, webbed like those of
+a palmiped. He cast upon his four superiors sitting at table, and also
+upon Sibilet, that look of mingled distrust and servility which serves
+as a veil to the thoughts of the peasantry; then he brandished his
+amphibian with a triumphant air.
+
+"Here it is!" he cried, addressing Blondet.
+
+"My otter!" returned the Parisian, "and well paid for."
+
+"Oh, my dear gentleman," replied Pere Fourchon, "yours got away; she is
+now in her burrow, and she won't come out, for she's a female,--this
+is a male; Mouche saw him coming just as you went away. As true as
+you live, as true as that Monsieur le comte covered himself and his
+cuirassiers with glory at Waterloo, the otter is mine, just as much as
+Les Aigues belongs to Monseigneur the general. But the otter is _yours_
+for twenty francs; if not I'll take it to the sub-prefect. If Monsieur
+Gourdon thinks it too dear, then I'll give you the preference; that's
+only fair, as we hunted together this morning!"
+
+"Twenty francs!" said Blondet. "In good French you can't call that
+_giving_ the preference."
+
+"Hey, my dear gentleman," cried the old fellow. "Perhaps I don't know
+French, and I'll ask it in good Burgundian; as long as I get the money,
+I don't care, I'll talk Latin: 'latinus, latina, latinum'! Besides,
+twenty francs is what you promised me this morning. My children
+have already stolen the silver you gave me; I wept about it, coming
+along,--ask Charles if I didn't. Not that I'd arrest 'em for the value
+of ten francs and have 'em up before the judge, no! But just as soon as
+I earn a few pennies, they make me drink and get 'em out of me. Ah! it
+is hard, hard to be reduced to go and get my wine elsewhere. But just
+see what children are these days! That's what we got by the Revolution;
+it is all for the children now-a-days, and parents are suppressed.
+I'm bringing up Mouche on another tack; he loves me, the little
+scamp,"--giving his grandson a poke.
+
+"It seems to me you are making him a little thief, like all the rest,"
+said Sibilet; "he never lies down at night without some sin on his
+conscience."
+
+"Ha! Monsieur Sibilet, his conscience is as clean as yours any day! Poor
+child! what can he steal? A little grass! that's better than throttling
+a man! He don't know mathematics like you, nor subtraction, nor
+addition, nor multiplication,--you are very unjust to us, that you
+are! You call us a nest of brigands, but you are the cause of the
+misunderstandings between our good landlord here, who is a worthy man,
+and the rest of us, who are all worthy men,--there ain't an honester
+part of the country than this. Come, what do you mean? do I own
+property? don't I go half-naked, and Mouche too? Fine sheets we slept
+in, washed by the dew every morning! and unless you want the air we
+breathe and the sunshine we drink, I should like to know what we have
+that you can take away from us! The rich folks rob as they sit in their
+chimney-corners,--and more profitably, too, than by picking up a few
+sticks in the woods. I don't see no game-keepers or patrols after
+Monsieur Gaubertin, who came here as naked as a worm and is now worth
+his millions. It's easy said, 'Robbers!' Here's fifteen years that old
+Guerbet, the tax-gatherer at Soulanges, carries his money along the
+roads by the dead of night, and nobody ever took a farthing from him; is
+that like a land of robbers? has robbery made us rich? Show me which of
+us two, your class or mine, live the idlest lives and have the most to
+live on without earning it."
+
+"If you were to work," said the abbe, "you would have property. God
+blesses labor."
+
+"I don't want to contradict you, M'sieur l'abbe, for you are wiser than
+I, and perhaps you'll know how to explain something that puzzles me. Now
+see, here I am, ain't I?--that drunken, lazy, idle, good-for-nothing old
+Fourchon, who had an education and was a farmer, and got down in the mud
+and never got up again,--well, what difference is there between me and
+that honest and worthy old Niseron, seventy years old (and that's my
+age) who has dug the soil for sixty years and got up every day before
+it was light to go to his work, and has made himself an iron body and a
+fine soul? Well, isn't he as bad off as I am? His little granddaughter,
+Pechina, is at service with Madame Michaud, whereas my little Mouche is
+as free as air. So that poor good man gets rewarded for his virtues in
+exactly the same way that I get punished for my vices. He don't know
+what a glass of good wine is, he's as sober as an apostle, he buries the
+dead, and I--I play for the living to dance. He is always in a peck o'
+troubles, while I slip along in a devil-may-care way. We have come along
+about even in life; we've got the same snow on our heads, the same funds
+in our pockets, and I supply him with rope to ring his bell. He's a
+republican and I'm not even a publican,--that's all the difference as
+far as I can see. A peasant may do good or do evil (according to your
+ideas) and he'll go out of the world just as he came into it, in rags;
+while you wear the fine clothes."
+
+No one interrupted Pere Fourchon, who seemed to owe his eloquence to his
+potations. At first Sibilet tried to cut him short, but desisted at
+a sign from Blondet. The abbe, the general, and the countess, all
+understood from the expression of the writer's eye that he wanted to
+study the question of pauperism from life, and perhaps take his revenge
+on Pere Fourchon.
+
+"What sort of education are you giving Mouche?" asked Blondet. "Do you
+expect to make him any better than your daughters?"
+
+"Does he ever speak to him of God?" said the priest.
+
+"Oh, no, no! Monsieur le cure, I don't tell him to fear God, but men.
+God is good; he has promised us poor folks, so you say, the kingdom of
+heaven, because the rich people keep the earth to themselves. I tell
+him: 'Mouche! fear the prison, and keep out of it,--for that's the way
+to the scaffold. Don't steal anything, make people give it to you. Theft
+leads to murder, and murder brings down the justice of men. The razor of
+justice,--_that's_ what you've got to fear; it lets the rich sleep easy
+and keeps the poor awake. Learn to read. Education will teach you ways
+to grab money under cover of the law, like that fine Monsieur Gaubertin;
+why, you can even be a land-steward like Monsieur Sibilet here, who gets
+his rations out of Monsieur le comte. The thing to do is to keep well
+with the rich, and pick up the crumbs that fall from their tables.'
+That's what I call giving him a good, solid education; and you'll always
+find the little rascal on the side of the law,--he'll be a good citizen
+and take care of me."
+
+"What do you mean to make of him?" asked Blondet.
+
+"A servant, to begin with," returned Fourchon, "because then he'll see
+his masters close by, and learn something; he'll complete his education,
+I'll warrant you. Good example will be a fortune to him, with the law on
+his side like the rest of you. If M'sieur le comte would only take him
+in his stables and let him learn to groom the horses, the boy will be
+mighty pleased, for though I've taught him to fear men, he don't fear
+animals."
+
+"You are a clever fellow, Pere Fourchon," said Blondet; "you know what
+you are talking about, and there's sense in what you say."
+
+"Oh, sense? no; I left my sense at the Grand-I-Vert when I lost those
+silver pieces."
+
+"How is it that a man of your capacity should have dropped so low? As
+things are now, a peasant can only blame himself for his poverty; he is
+a free man, and he can become a rich one. It is not as it used to be. If
+a peasant lays by his money, he can always buy a bit of land and become
+his own master."
+
+"I've seen the olden time and I've seen the new, my dear wise
+gentleman," said Fourchon; "the sign over the door has changed, that's
+true, but the wine is the same,--to-day is the younger brother of
+yesterday, that's all. Put that in your newspaper! Are we poor folks
+free? We still belong to the same parish, and its lord is always
+there,--I call him Toil. The hoe, our sole property, has never left our
+hands. Let it be the old lords or the present taxes which take the best
+of our earnings, the fact remains that we sweat our lives out in toil."
+
+"But you could undertake a business, and try to make your fortune," said
+Blondet.
+
+"Try to make my fortune! And where shall I try? If I wish to leave my
+own province, I must get a passport, and that costs forty sous. Here's
+forty years that I've never had a slut of a forty-sous piece jingling
+against another in my pocket. If you want to travel you need as many
+crowns as there are villages, and there are mighty few Fourchons who
+have enough to get to six of 'em. It is only the draft that gives us a
+chance to get away. And what good does the army do us? The colonels live
+by the solider, just as the rich folks live by the peasant; and out of
+every hundred of 'em you won't find more than one of our breed. It is
+just as it is the world over, one rolling in riches, for a hundred down
+in the mud. Why are we in the mud? Ask God and the usurers. The best we
+can do is to stay in our own parts, where we are penned like sheep
+by the force of circumstances, as our fathers were by the rule of the
+lords. As for me, what do I care what shackles they are that keep me
+here? let it be the law of public necessity or the tyranny of the old
+lords, it is all the same; we are condemned to dig the soil forever.
+There, where we are born, there we dig it, that earth! and spade it,
+and manure it, and delve in it, for you who are born rich just as we are
+born poor. The masses will always be what they are, and stay what they
+are. The number of us who manage to rise is nothing like the number of
+you who topple down! We know that well enough, if we have no education!
+You mustn't be after us with your sheriff all the time,--not if you're
+wise. We let you alone, and you must let us alone. If not, and things
+get worse, you'll have to feed us in your prisons, where we'd be much
+better off than in our homes. You want to remain our masters, and we
+shall always be enemies, just as we were thirty years ago. You have
+everything, we have nothing; you can't expect we should ever be
+friends."
+
+"That's what I call a declaration of war," said the general.
+
+"Monseigneur," retorted Fourchon, "when Les Aigues belonged to that poor
+Madame (God keep her soul and forgive her the sins of her youth!) we
+were happy. _She_ let us get our food from the fields and our fuel from
+the forest; and was she any the poorer for it? And you, who are at least
+as rich as she, you hunt us like wild beasts, neither more nor less, and
+drag the poor before the courts. Well, evil will come of it! you'll be
+the cause of some great calamity. Haven't I just seen your keeper, that
+shuffling Vatel, half kill a poor old woman for a stick of wood? It is
+such fellows as that who make you an enemy to the poor; and the talk is
+very bitter against you. They curse you every bit as hard as they used
+to bless the late Madame. The curse of the poor, monseigneur, is a seed
+that grows,--grows taller than your tall oaks, and oak-wood builds the
+scaffold. Nobody here tells you the truth; and here it is, yes, the
+truth! I expect to die before long, and I risk very little in telling it
+to you, the _truth_! I, who play for the peasants to dance at the
+great fetes at Soulanges, I heed what the people say. Well, they're all
+against you; and they'll make it impossible for you to stay here. If
+that damned Michaud of yours doesn't change, they'll force you to change
+him. There! that information _and_ the otter are worth twenty francs,
+and more too."
+
+As the old fellow uttered the last words a man's step was heard, and the
+individual just threatened by Fourchon entered unannounced. It was
+easy to see from the glance he threw at the old man that the threat had
+reached his ears, and all Fourchon's insolence sank in a moment. The
+look produced precisely the same effect upon him that the eye of a
+policeman produces on a thief. Fourchon knew he was wrong, and that
+Michaud might very well accuse him of saying these things merely to
+terrify the inhabitants of Les Aigues.
+
+"This is the minister of war," said the general to Blondet, nodding at
+Michaud.
+
+"Pardon me, madame, for having entered without asking if you were
+willing to receive me," said the newcomer to the countess; "but I have
+urgent reasons for speaking to the general at once."
+
+Michaud, as he said this, took notice of Sibilet, whose expression of
+keen delight in Fourchon's daring words was not seen by the four persons
+seated at the table, because they were so preoccupied by the old man;
+whereas Michaud, who for secret reasons watched Sibilet constantly, was
+struck with his air and manner.
+
+"He has earned his twenty francs, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet; "the
+otter is fully worth it."
+
+"Give him twenty francs," said the general to the footman.
+
+"Do you mean to take my otter away from me?" said Blondet to the
+general.
+
+"I shall have it stuffed," replied the latter.
+
+"Ah! but that good gentleman said I might keep the skin," cried
+Fourchon.
+
+"Well, then," exclaimed the countess, hastily, "you shall have five
+francs more for the skin; but go away now."
+
+The powerful odor emitted by the pair made the dining-room so horribly
+offensive that Madame de Montcornet, whose senses were very delicate,
+would have been forced to leave the room if Fourchon and Mouche
+had remained. To this circumstance the old man was indebted for his
+twenty-five francs. He left the room with a timid glance at Michaud,
+making him an interminable series of bows.
+
+"What I was saying to monseigneur, Monsieur Michaud," he added, "was
+really for your good."
+
+"Or for that of those who pay you," replied Michaud, with a searching
+look.
+
+"When you have served the coffee, leave the room," said the general to
+the servants, "and see that the doors are shut."
+
+Blondet, who had not yet seen the bailiff of Les Aigues, was conscious,
+as he now saw him, of a totally different impression from that conveyed
+by Sibilet. Just as the steward inspired distrust and repulsion, so
+Michaud commanded respect and confidence. The first attraction of his
+presence was a happy face, of a fine oval, pure in outline, in which the
+nose bore part,--a regularity which is lacking in the majority of
+French faces. Though the features were correct in drawing, they were not
+without expression, due, perhaps, to the harmonious coloring of the warm
+brown and ochre tints, indicative of physical health and strength. The
+clear brown eyes, which were bright and piercing, kept no reserves in
+the expression of his thought; they looked straight into the eyes of
+others. The broad white forehead was thrown still further into relief by
+his abundant black hair. Honesty, decision, and a saintly serenity were
+the animating points of this noble face, where a few deep lines upon the
+brow were the result of the man's military career. Doubt and suspicion
+could there be read the moment they had entered his mind. His figure,
+like that of all men selected for the elite of the cavalry service,
+though shapely and elegant, was vigorously built. Michaud, who wore
+moustachios, whiskers, and a chin beard, recalled that martial type of
+face which a deluge of patriotic paintings and engravings came very near
+to making ridiculous. This type had the defect of being common in the
+French army; perhaps the continuance of the same emotions, the same camp
+sufferings from which none were exempt, neither high nor low, and more
+especially the same efforts of officers and men upon the battle-fields,
+may have contributed to produce this uniformity of countenance. Michaud,
+who was dressed in dark blue cloth, still wore the black satin stock
+and high boots of a soldier, which increased the slight stiffness and
+rigidity of his bearing. The shoulders sloped, the chest expanded, as
+though the man were still under arms. The red ribbon of the Legion of
+honor was in his buttonhole. In short, to give a last touch in one word
+about the moral qualities beneath this purely physical presentment, it
+may be said that while the steward, from the time he first entered upon
+his functions, never failed to call his master "Monsieur le comte,"
+Michaud never addressed him otherwise than as "General."
+
+Blondet exchanged another look with the Abbe Brossette, which meant,
+"What a contrast!" as he signed to him to observe the two men. Then,
+as if to know whether the character and mind and speech of the bailiff
+harmonized with his form and countenance, he turned to Michaud and
+said:--
+
+"I was out early this morning, and found your under-keepers still
+sleeping."
+
+"At what hour?" said the late soldier, anxiously.
+
+"Half-past seven."
+
+Michaud gave a half-roguish glance at the general.
+
+"By what gate did monsieur leave the park?" he asked.
+
+"By the gate of Conches. The keeper, in his night-shirt, looked at me
+through the window," replied Blondet.
+
+"Gaillard had probably just gone to bed," answered Michaud. "You said
+you were out early, and I thought you meant day-break. If my man were at
+home at that time, he must have been ill; but at half-past seven he was
+sure to be in bed. We are up all night," added Michaud, after a slight
+pause, replying to a surprised look on the countess's face, "but our
+watchfulness is often wasted. You have just given twenty-five francs to
+a man who, not an hour ago, was quietly helping to hide the traces of
+a robbery committed upon you this very morning. I came to speak to you
+about it, general, when you have finished breakfast; for something will
+have to be done."
+
+"You are always for maintaining the right, my dear Michaud, and 'summum
+jus, summum injuria.' If you are not more tolerant, you will get into
+trouble, so Sibilet here tells me. I wish you could have heard Pere
+Fourchon just now; the wine he had been drinking made him speak out."
+
+"He frightened me," said the countess.
+
+"He said nothing I did not know long ago," replied the general.
+
+"Oh! the rascal wasn't drunk; he was playing a part; for whose benefit
+I leave you to guess. Perhaps you know?" returned Michaud, fixing an eye
+on Sibilet which caused the latter to turn red.
+
+"O rus!" cried Blondet, with another look at the abbe.
+
+"But these poor creatures suffer," said the countess, "and there is a
+great deal of truth in what old Fourchon has just screamed at us,--for I
+cannot call it speaking."
+
+"Madame," replied Michaud, "do you suppose that for fourteen years the
+soldiers of the Emperor slept on a bed of roses? My general is a count,
+he is a grand officer of the Legion of honor, he has had perquisites and
+endowments given to him; am I jealous of him, I who fought as he did? Do
+I wish to cheat him of his glory, to steal his perquisites, to deny him
+the honor due to his rank? The peasant should obey as the soldier
+obeys; he should feel the loyalty of a soldier, his respect for acquired
+rights, and strive to become an officer himself, honorably, by labor and
+not by theft. The sabre and the plough are twins; though the soldier has
+something more than the peasant,--he has death hanging over him at any
+minute."
+
+"I want to say that from the pulpit," cried the abbe.
+
+"Tolerant!" continued the keeper, replying to the general's remark about
+Sibilet, "I would tolerate a loss of ten per cent upon the gross returns
+of Les Aigues; but as things are now thirty per cent is what you lose,
+general; and, if Monsieur Sibilet's accounts show it, I don't understand
+his tolerance, for he benevolently gives up a thousand or twelve hundred
+francs a year."
+
+"My dear Monsieur Michaud," replied Sibilet, in a snappish tone, "I have
+told Monsieur le comte that I would rather lose twelve hundred francs
+a year than my life. Think of it seriously; I have warned you often
+enough."
+
+"Life!" exclaimed the countess; "you can't mean that anybody's life is
+in danger?"
+
+"Don't let us argue about state affairs here," said the general,
+laughing. "All this, my dear, merely means that Sibilet, in his capacity
+of financier, is timid and cowardly, while the minister of war is brave
+and, like his general, fears nothing."
+
+"Call me prudent, Monsieur le comte," interposed Sibilet.
+
+"Well, well!" cried Blondet, laughing, "so here we are, like Cooper's
+heroes in the forests of America, in the midst of sieges and savages."
+
+"Come, gentlemen, it is your business to govern without letting me hear
+the wheels of the administration," said Madame de Montcornet.
+
+"Ah! madame," said the cure, "but it may be right that you should know
+the toil from which those pretty caps you wear are derived."
+
+"Well, then, I can go without them," replied the countess, laughing. "I
+will be very respectful to a twenty-franc piece, and grow as miserly
+as the country people themselves. Come, my dear abbe, give me your arm.
+Leave the general with his two ministers, and let us go to the gate
+of the Avonne to see Madame Michaud, for I have not had time since
+my arrival to pay her a visit, and I want to inquire about my little
+protegee."
+
+And the pretty woman, already forgetting the rags and tatters of Mouche
+and Fourchon, and their eyes full of hatred, and Sibilet's warnings,
+went to have herself made ready for the walk.
+
+The abbe and Blondet obeyed the behest of the mistress of the house and
+followed her from the dining-room, waiting till she was ready on the
+terrace before the chateau.
+
+"What do you think of all this?" said Blondet to the abbe.
+
+"I am a pariah; they dog me as they would a common enemy. I am forced
+to keep my eyes and ears perpetually open to escape the traps they are
+constantly laying to get me out of the place," replied the abbe. "I am
+even doubtful, between ourselves, as to whether they will not shoot me."
+
+"Why do you stay?" said Blondet.
+
+"We can't desert God's cause any more than that of an emperor," replied
+the priest, with a simplicity that affected Blondet. He took the abbe's
+hand and shook it cordially.
+
+"You see how it is, therefore, that I know very little of the plots that
+are going on," continued the abbe. "Still, I know enough to feel sure
+that the general is under what in Artois and in Belgium is called an
+'evil grudge.'"
+
+A few words are here necessary about the curate of Blangy.
+
+This priest, the fourth son of a worthy middle-class family of Autun,
+was an intelligent man carrying his head high in his collar. Small
+and slight, he redeemed his rather puny appearance by the precise and
+carefully dressed air that belongs to Burgundians. He accepted the
+second-rate post of Blangy out of pure devotion, for his religious
+convictions were joined to political opinions that were equally strong.
+There was something of the priest of the olden time about him; he
+held to the Church and to the clergy passionately; saw the bearings
+of things, and no selfishness marred his one ambition, which was _to
+serve_. That was his motto,--to serve the Church and the monarchy
+wherever it was most threatened; to serve in the lowest rank like
+a soldier who feels that he is destined, sooner or later, to attain
+command through courage and the resolve to do his duty. He made no
+compromises with his vows of chastity, and poverty, and obedience; he
+fulfilled them, as he did the other duties of his position, with that
+simplicity and cheerful good-humor which are the sure indications of an
+honest heart, constrained to do right by natural impulses as much as by
+the power and consistency of religious convictions.
+
+The priest had seen at first sight Blondet's attachment to the countess;
+he saw that between a Troisville and a monarchical journalist he could
+safely show himself to be a man of broad intelligence, because his
+calling was certain to be respected. He usually came to the chateau very
+evening to make the fourth at a game of whist. The journalist, able to
+recognize the abbe's real merits, showed him so much deference that the
+pair grew into sympathy with each other; as usually happens when men of
+intelligence meet their equals, or, if you prefer it, the ears that are
+able to hear them. Swords are fond of their scabbards.
+
+"But to what do you attribute this state of things, Monsieur l'abbe, you
+who are able, through your disinterestedness, to look over the heads of
+things?"
+
+"I shall not talk platitudes after such a flattering speech as that,"
+said the abbe, smiling. "What is going on in this valley is spreading
+more or less throughout France; it is the outcome of the hopes which the
+upheaval of 1789 caused to infiltrate, if I may use that expression, the
+minds of the peasantry, the sons of the soil. The Revolution affected
+certain localities more than others. This side of Burgundy, nearest to
+Paris, is one of those places where the revolutionary ideas spread like
+the overrunning of the Franks by the Gauls. Historically, the peasants
+are still on the morrow of the Jacquerie; that defeat is burnt in upon
+their brain. They have long forgotten the facts which have now passed
+into the condition of an instinctive idea. That idea is bred in the
+peasant blood, just as the idea of superiority was once bred in noble
+blood. The revolution of 1789 was the retaliation of the vanquished. The
+peasants then set foot in possession of the soil which the feudal law
+had denied them for over twelve hundred years. Hence their desire for
+land, which they now cut up among themselves until actually they divide
+a furrow into two parts; which, by the bye, often hinders or prevents
+the collection of taxes, for the value of such fractions of property is
+not sufficient to pay the legal costs of recovering them."
+
+"Very true, for the obstinacy of the small owners--their aggressiveness,
+if you choose--on this point is so great that in at least one thousand
+cantons of the three thousand of French territory, it is impossible
+for a rich man to buy an inch of land from a peasant," said Blondet,
+interrupting the abbe. "The peasants who are willing to divide up
+their scraps of land among themselves would not sell a fraction on any
+condition or at any price to the middle classes. The more money the
+rich man offers, the more the vague uneasiness of the peasant increases.
+Legal dispossession alone is able to bring the landed property of the
+peasant into the market. Many persons have noticed this fact without
+being able to find a reason for it."
+
+"This is the reason," said the abbe, rightly believing that a pause
+with Blondet was equivalent to a question: "twelve centuries have done
+nothing for a caste whom the historic spectacle of civilization has
+never yet diverted from its one predominating thought,--a caste which
+still wears proudly the broad-brimmed hat of its masters, ever since
+an abandoned fashion placed it upon their heads. That all-pervading
+thought, the roots of which are in the bowels of the people, and which
+attached them so vehemently to Napoleon (who was personally less to them
+than he thought he was) and which explains the miracle of his return in
+1815,--that desire for land is the sole motive power of the peasant's
+being. In the eyes of the masses Napoleon, ever one with them through
+his million of soldiers, is still the king born of the Revolution; the
+man who gave them possession of the soil and sold to them the national
+domains. His anointing was saturated with that idea."
+
+"An idea to which 1814 dealt a blow, an idea which monarchy should hold
+sacred," said Blondet, quickly; "for the people may some day find on the
+steps of the throne a prince whose father bequeathed to him the head of
+Louis XVI. as an heirloom."
+
+"Here is madame; don't say any more," said the abbe, in a low voice.
+"Fourchon has frightened her; and it is very desirable to keep her here
+in the interests of religion and of the throne, and, indeed, in those of
+the people themselves."
+
+Michaud, the bailiff of Les Aigues, had come to the chateau in
+consequence of the assault on Vatel's eyes. But before we relate the
+consultation which then and there took place, the chain of events
+requires a succinct account of the circumstances under which the general
+purchased Les Aigues, the serious causes which led to the appointment
+of Sibilet as steward of that magnificent property, and the reasons why
+Michaud was made bailiff, with all the other antecedents to which were
+due the tension of the minds of all, and the fears expressed by Sibilet.
+
+This rapid summary will have the merit of introducing some of the
+principal actors in this drama, and of exhibiting their individual
+interests; we shall thus be enabled to show the dangers which surrounded
+the General comte de Montcornet at the moment when this history opens.
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. CERTAIN LOST SOCIAL SPECIES
+
+
+The estate of Les Aigues could not do without a steward; for the general
+had no intention of renouncing his winter pleasures in Paris, where he
+owned a fine house in the rue Neuve-des-Mathurines. He therefore looked
+about for a successor to Gaubertin; but it is very certain that his
+search was not as eager as that of Gaubertin himself, who was seeking
+for the right person to put in his way.
+
+Of all confidential positions there is none that requires more trained
+knowledge of its kind, or more activity, than that of land-steward to
+a great estate. The difficulty of finding the right man is only fully
+known to those wealthy landlords whose property lies beyond a certain
+circle around Paris, beginning at a distance of about one hundred and
+fifty miles. At that point agricultural productions for the markets of
+Paris, which warrant rentals on long leases (collected often by other
+tenants who are rich themselves), cease to be cultivated. The farmers
+who raise them drive to the city in their own cabriolets to pay their
+rents in good bank-bills, unless they send the money through their
+agents in the markets. For this reason, the farms of the Seine-et-Oise,
+Seine-et-Marne, the Oise, the Eure-et-Loir, the Lower Seine, and the
+Loiret are so desirable that capital cannot always be invested there at
+one and a half per cent. Compared to the returns on estates in Holland,
+England, and Belgium, this result is enormous. But at one hundred miles
+from Paris an estate requires such variety of working, its products are
+so different in kind, that it becomes a business, with all the risks
+attendant on manufacturing. The wealthy owner is really a merchant,
+forced to look for a market for his products, like the owner of
+ironworks or cotton factories. He does not even escape competition; the
+peasant, the small proprietor, is at his heels with an avidity which
+leads to transactions to which well-bred persons cannot condescend.
+
+A land-steward must understand surveying, the customs of the locality,
+the methods of sale and of labor, together with a little quibbling in
+the interests of those he serves; he must also understand book-keeping
+and commercial matters, and be in perfect health, with a liking for
+active life and horse exercise. His duty being to represent his master
+and to be always in communication with him, the steward ought not to be
+a man of the people. As the salary of his office seldom exceeds three
+thousand francs, the problem seems insoluble. How is it possible to
+obtain so many qualifications for such a very moderate price,--in
+a region, moreover, where the men who are provided with them are
+admissible to all other employments? Bring down a stranger to fill the
+place, and you will pay dear for the experience he must acquire. Train
+a young man on the spot, and you are more than likely to get a thorn
+of ingratitude in your side. It therefore becomes necessary to choose
+between incompetent honesty, which injures your property through its
+blindness and inertia, and the cleverness which looks out for itself.
+Hence the social nomenclature and natural history of land-stewards as
+defined by a great Polish noble.
+
+"There are," he said, "two kinds of stewards: he who thinks only of
+himself, and he who thinks of himself and of us; happy the land-owner
+who lays his hands on the latter! As for the steward who would think
+only of us, he is not to be met with."
+
+Elsewhere can be found a steward who thought of this master's interests
+as well as of his own. ("Un Debut dans la vie," "Scenes de la vie
+privee.") Gaubertin is the steward who thinks of himself only. To
+represent the third figure of the problem would be to hold up to public
+admiration a very unlikely personage, yet one that was not unknown to
+the old nobility, though he has, alas! disappeared with them. (See "Le
+Cabinet des Antiques," "Scenes de la vie de province.") Through the
+endless subdivision of fortunes aristocratic habits and customs are
+inevitably changed. If there be not now in France twenty great fortunes
+managed by intendants, in fifty years from now there will not be a
+hundred estates in the hands of stewards, unless a great change is made
+in the law. Every land-owner will be brought by that time to look after
+his own interests.
+
+This transformation, already begun, suggested the following answer of a
+clever woman when asked why, since 1830, she stayed in Paris during the
+summer. "Because," she said, "I do not care to visit chateaux which
+are now turned into farms." What is to be the future of this question,
+getting daily more and more imperative,--that of man to man, the poor
+man and the rich man? This book is written to throw some light upon that
+terrible social question.
+
+It is easy to understand the perplexities which assailed the general
+after he had dismissed Gaubertin. While saying to himself, vaguely,
+like other persons free to do or not to do a thing, "I'll dismiss that
+scamp"; he had overlooked the risk and forgotten the explosion of his
+boiling anger,--the anger of a choleric fire-eater at the moment when a
+flagrant imposition forced him to raise the lids of his wilfully blind
+eyes.
+
+Montcornet, a land-owner for the first time and a denizen of Paris, had
+not provided himself with a steward before coming to Les Aigues; but
+after studying the neighborhood carefully he saw it was indispensable to
+a man like himself to have an intermediary to manage so many persons of
+low degree.
+
+Gaubertin, who discovered during the excitement of the scene (which
+lasted more than two hours) the difficulties in which the general would
+soon be involved, jumped on his pony after leaving the room where the
+quarrel took place, and galloped to Soulanges to consult the Soudrys. At
+his first words, "The general and I have parted; whom can we put in my
+place without his suspecting it?" the Soudrys understood their friend's
+wishes. Do not forget that Soudry, for the last seventeen years chief
+of police of the canton, was doubly shrewd through his wife, an adept in
+the particular wiliness of a waiting-maid of an Opera divinity.
+
+"We may go far," said Madame Soudry, "before we find any one to suit the
+place as well as our poor Sibilet."
+
+"Made to order!" exclaimed Gaubertin, still scarlet with mortification.
+"Lupin," he added, turning to the notary, who was present, "go to
+Ville-aux-Fayes and whisper it to Marechal, in case that big fire-eater
+asks his advice."
+
+Marechal was the lawyer whom his former patron, when buying Les Aigues
+for the general, had recommended to Monsieur de Montcornet as legal
+adviser.
+
+Sibilet, eldest son of the clerk of the court at Ville-aux-Fayes, a
+notary's clerk, without a penny of his own, and twenty-five years
+old, had fallen in love with the daughter of the chief-magistrate of
+Soulanges. The latter, named Sarcus, had a salary of fifteen hundred
+francs, and was married to a woman without fortune, the eldest sister of
+Monsieur Vermut, the apothecary of Soulanges. Though an only daughter,
+Mademoiselle Sarcus, whose beauty was her only dowry, could scarcely
+have lived on the salary paid to a notary's clerk in the provinces.
+Young Sibilet, a relative of Gaubertin, by a connection rather difficult
+to trace through family ramifications which make members of the middle
+classes in all the smaller towns cousins to each other, owed a modest
+position in a government office to the assistance of his father and
+Gaubertin. The unlucky fellow had the terrible happiness of being the
+father of two children in three years. His own father, blessed with
+five, was unable to assist him. His wife's father owned nothing beside
+his house at Soulanges and an income of two thousand francs. Madame
+Sibilet the younger spent most of her time at her father's home with her
+two children, where Adolphe Sibilet, whose official duty obliged him to
+travel through the department, came to see her from time to time.
+
+Gaubertin's exclamation, though easy to understand from this summary of
+young Sibilet's life, needs a few more explanatory details.
+
+Adolphe Sibilet, supremely unlucky, as we have shown by the foregoing
+sketch of him, was one of those men who cannot reach the heart of a
+woman except by way of the altar and the mayor's office. Endowed with
+the suppleness of a steel-spring, he yielded to pressure, certain to
+revert to his first thought. This treacherous habit is prompted by
+cowardice; but the business training which Sibilet underwent in the
+office of a provincial notary had taught him the art of concealing
+this defect under a gruff manner which simulated a strength he did not
+possess. Many false natures mask their hollowness in this way; be
+rough with them in return and the effect produced is that of a balloon
+collapsed by a prick. Such was Sibilet. But as most men are not
+observers, and as among observers three fourths observe only after a
+thing has taken place, Adolphe Sibilet's grumbling manner was considered
+the result of an honest frankness, of a capacity much praised by his
+master, and of a stubborn uprightness which no temptation could shake.
+Some men are as much benefited by their defects as others by their good
+qualities.
+
+Adeline Sarcus, a pretty young woman, brought up by a mother (who died
+three years before her marriage) as well as a mother can educate an only
+daughter in a remote country town, was in love with the handsome son
+of Lupin, the Soulanges notary. At the first signs of this romance, old
+Lupin, who intended to marry his son to Mademoiselle Elise Gaubertin,
+lost no time in sending young Amaury Lupin to Paris, to the care of his
+friend and correspondent Crottat, the notary, where, under pretext of
+drawing deeds and contracts, Amaury committed a variety of foolish acts,
+and made debts, being led thereto by a certain Georges Marest, a clerk
+in the same office, but a rich young man, who revealed to him the
+mysteries of Parisian life. By the time Lupin the elder went to Paris to
+bring back his son, Adeline Sarcus had become Madame Sibilet. In
+fact, when the adoring Adolphe offered himself, her father, the old
+magistrate, prompted by young Lupin's father, hastened the marriage, to
+which Adeline yielded in sheer despair.
+
+The situation of clerk in a government registration office is not a
+career. It is, like other such places which admit of no rise, one of
+the many holes of the government sieve. Those who start in life in
+these holes (the topographical, the professorial, the highway-and-canal
+departments) are apt to discover, invariably too late, that cleverer men
+then they, seated beside them, are fed, as the Opposition writers say,
+on the sweat of the people, every time the sieve dips down into the
+taxation-pot by means of a machine called the budget. Adolphe, working
+early and late and earning little, soon found out the barren depths
+of his hole; and his thoughts busied themselves, as he trotted from
+township to township, spending his salary in shoe-leather and costs of
+travelling, with how to find a permanent and more profitable place.
+
+No one can imagine, unless he happens to squint and to have two
+legitimate children, what ambitions three years of misery and love had
+developed in this young man, who squinted both in mind and vision,
+and whose happiness halted, as it were, on one leg. The chief cause
+of secret evil deeds and hidden meanness is, perhaps, an incompleted
+happiness. Man can better bear a state of hopeless misery than those
+terrible alternations of love and sunshine with continual rain. If the
+body contracts disease, the mind contracts the leprosy of envy. In petty
+minds that leprosy becomes a base and brutal cupidity, both insolent and
+shrinking; in cultivated minds it fosters anti-social doctrines, which
+serve a man as footholds by which to rise above his superiors. May we
+not dignify with the title of proverb the pregnant saying, "Tell me what
+thou hast, and I will tell thee of what thou art thinking"?
+
+Though Adolphe loved his wife, his hourly thought was: "I have made
+a mistake; I have three balls and chains, but I have only two legs. I
+ought to have made my fortune before I married. I could have found an
+Adeline any day; but Adeline stands in the way of my getting a fortune
+now."
+
+Adolphe had been to see his relation Gaubertin three times in three
+years. A few words exchanged between them let Gaubertin see the muck of
+a soul ready to ferment under the hot temptations of legal robbery. He
+warily sounded a nature that could be warped to the exigencies of any
+plan, provided it was profitable. At each of the three visits Sibilet
+grumbled at his fate.
+
+"Employ me, cousin," he said; "take me as a clerk and make me your
+successor. You shall see how I work. I am capable of overthrowing
+mountains to give my Adeline, I won't say luxury, but a modest
+competence. You made Monsieur Leclercq's fortune; why won't you put me
+in a bank in Paris?"
+
+"Some day, later on, I'll find you a place," Gaubertin would say;
+"meantime make friends and acquaintance; such things help."
+
+Under these circumstances the letter which Madame Soudry hastily
+dispatched brought Sibilet to Soulanges through a region of castles in
+the air. His father-in-law, Sarcus, whom the Soudrys advised to take
+steps in the interest of his daughter, had gone in the morning to see
+the general and to propose Adolphe for the vacant post. By advice of
+Madame Soudry, who was the oracle of the little town, the worthy man had
+taken his daughter with him; and the sight of her had had a favorable
+effect upon the Comte de Montcornet.
+
+"I shall not decide," he answered, "without thoroughly informing
+myself about all applicants; but I will not look elsewhere until I have
+examined whether or not your son-in-law possesses the requirements for
+the place." Then, turning to Madame Sibilet he added, "The satisfaction
+of settling so charming a person at Les Aigues--"
+
+"The mother of two children, general," said Adeline, adroitly, to evade
+the gallantry of the old cuirassier.
+
+All the general's inquiries were cleverly anticipated by the Soudrys,
+Gaubertin, and Lupin, who quietly obtained for their candidate the
+influence of the leading lawyers in the capital of the department, where
+a royal court held sessions,--such as Counsellor Gendrin, a
+distant relative of the judge at Ville-aux-Fayes; Baron Bourlac,
+attorney-general; and another counsellor named Sarcus, a cousin thrice
+removed of the candidate. The verdict of every one to whom the general
+applies was favorable to the poor clerk,--"so interesting," as they
+called him. His marriage had made Sibilet as irreproachable as a novel
+of Miss Edgeworth's, and presented him, moreover, in the light of a
+disinterested man.
+
+The time which the dismissed steward remained at Les Aigues until his
+successor could be appointed was employed in creating troubles and
+annoyances for his late master; one of the little scenes which he thus
+played off will give an idea of several others.
+
+The morning of his final departure he contrived to meet, as it were
+accidentally, Courtecuisse, the only keeper then employed at Les Aigues,
+the great extent of which really needed at least three.
+
+"Well, Monsieur Gaubertin," said Courtecuisse, "so you have had trouble
+with the count?"
+
+"Who told you that?" answered Gaubertin. "Well, yes; the general
+expected to order us about as he did his cavalry; he didn't know
+Burgundians. The count is not satisfied with my services, and as I am
+not satisfied with his ways, we have dismissed each other, almost
+with fisticuffs, for he raged like a whirlwind. Take care of yourself,
+Courtecuisse! Ah! my dear fellow, I expected to give you a better
+master."
+
+"I know that," said the keeper, "and I'd have served you well. Hang it,
+when friends have known each other for twenty years, you know! You put
+me here in the days of the poor dear sainted Madame. Ah, what a good
+woman she was! none like her now! The place has lost a mother."
+
+"Look here, Courtecuisse, if you are willing, you might help us to a
+fine stroke."
+
+"Then you are going to stay here? I heard you were off to Paris."
+
+"No; I shall wait to see how things turn out; meantime I shall do
+business at Ville-aux-Fayes. The general doesn't know what he is dealing
+with in these parts; he'll make himself hated, don't you see? I shall
+wait for what turns up. Do your work here gently; he'll tell you to
+manage the people with a high hand, for he begins to see where his crops
+and his woods are running to; but you'll not be such a fool as to
+let the country-folk maul you, and perhaps worse, for the sake of his
+timber."
+
+"But he would send me away, dear Monsieur Gaubertin, he would get rid of
+me! and you know how happy I am living there at the gate of the Avonne."
+
+"The general will soon get sick of the whole place," replied Gaubertin;
+"you wouldn't be long out even if he did happen to send you away.
+Besides, you know those woods," he added, waving his hand at the
+landscape; "I am stronger there than the masters."
+
+This conversation took place in an open field.
+
+"Those 'Arminac' Parisian fellows ought to stay in their own mud," said
+the keeper.
+
+Ever since the quarrels of the fifteenth century the word 'Arminac'
+(Armagnacs, Parisians, enemies of the Dukes of Burgundy) has continued
+to be an insulting term along the borders of Upper Burgundy, where it is
+differently corrupted according to locality.
+
+"He'll go back to it when beaten," said Gaubertin, "and we'll plough
+up the park; for it is robbing the people to allow a man to keep nine
+hundred acres of the best land in the valley for his own pleasure."
+
+"Four hundred families could get their living from it," said
+Courtecuisse.
+
+"If you want two acres for yourself you must help us to drive that cur
+out," remarked Gaubertin.
+
+At the very moment that Gaubertin was fulminating this sentence of
+excommunication, the worthy Sarcus was presenting his son-in-law Sibilet
+to the Comte de Montcornet. They had come with Adeline and the children
+in a wicker carryall, lent by Sarcus's clerk, a Monsieur Gourdon,
+brother of the Soulanges doctor, who was richer than the magistrate
+himself. The general, pleased with the candor and dignity of the justice
+of the peace, and with the graceful bearing of Adeline (both giving
+pledges in good faith, for they were totally ignorant of the plans of
+Gaubertin), at once granted all requests and gave such advantages to the
+family of the new land-steward as to make the position equal to that of
+a sub-prefect of the first class.
+
+A lodge, built by Bouret as an object in the landscape and also as a
+home for the steward, an elegant little building, the architecture of
+which was sufficiently shown in the description of the gate of Blangy,
+was promised to the Sibilets for their residence. The general also
+conceded the horse which Mademoiselle Laguerre had provided for
+Gaubertin, in consideration of the size of the estate and the distance
+he had to go to the markets where the business of the property was
+transacted. He allowed two hundred bushels of wheat, three hogsheads
+of wine, wood in sufficient quantity, oats and barley in abundance,
+and three per cent on all receipts of income. Where the latter in
+Mademoiselle Laguerre's time had amounted to forty thousand francs, the
+general now, in 1818, in view of the purchases of land which Gaubertin
+had made for her, expected to receive at least sixty thousand. The
+new land-steward might therefore receive before long some two thousand
+francs in money. Lodged, fed, warmed, relieved of taxes, the costs of
+a horse and a poultry-yard defrayed for him, and allowed to plant a
+kitchen-garden, with no questions asked as to the day's work of the
+gardener, certainly such advantages represented much more than another
+two thousand francs; for a man who was earning a miserable salary
+of twelve hundred francs in a government office to step into the
+stewardship of Les Aigues was a change from poverty to opulence.
+
+"Be faithful to my interests," said the general, "and I shall have more
+to say to you. Doubtless I could get the collection of the rents of
+Conches, Blangy, and Cerneux taken away from the collection of those of
+Soulanges and given to you. In short, when you bring me in a clear sixty
+thousand a year from Les Aigues you shall be still further rewarded."
+
+Unfortunately, the worthy justice and his daughter, in the flush of
+their joy, told Madame Soudry the promise the general had made about
+these collections, without reflecting that the present collector of
+Soulanges, a man named Guerbet, brother of the postmaster of Conches,
+was closely allied, as we shall see later, with Gaubertin and the
+Gendrins.
+
+"It won't be so easy to do it, my dear," said Madame Soudry; "but don't
+prevent the general from making the attempt; it is wonderful how easily
+difficult things are done in Paris. I have seen the Chevalier Gluck at
+dear Madame's feet to get her to sing his music, and she did,--she who
+so adored Piccini, one of the finest men of his day; never did _he_ come
+into Madame's room without catching me round the waist and calling me a
+dear rogue."
+
+"Ha!" cried Soudry, when his wife reported this news, "does he think he
+is going to lead the notary by the nose, and upset everything to
+please himself and make the whole valley march in line, as he did his
+cuirassiers? These military fellows have a habit of command!--but let's
+have patience; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles will
+be on our side. Poor Guerbet! he little suspects who is trying to pluck
+the best roses out of his garland!"
+
+Pere Guerbet, the collector of Soulanges, was the wit, that is to say,
+the jovial companion of the little town, and a hero in Madame Soudry's
+salon. Soudry's speech gives a fair idea of the opinion which now grew
+up against the master of Les Aigues from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes,
+and wherever else the public mind could be reached and poisoned by
+Gaubertin.
+
+The installation of Sibilet took place in the autumn of 1817. The year
+1818 went by without the general being able to set foot at Les Aigues,
+for his approaching marriage with Mademoiselle de Troisville, which was
+celebrated in January, 1819, kept him the greater part of the summer
+near Alencon, in the country-house of his prospective father-in-law.
+General Montcornet possessed, besides Les Aigues and a magnificent house
+in Paris, some sixty thousand francs a year in the Funds and the salary
+of a retired lieutenant-general. Though Napoleon had made him a count
+of the Empire and given him the following arms, a field quarterly, the
+first, azure, bordure or, three pyramids argent; the second, vert, three
+hunting horns argent; the third, gules, a cannon or on a gun-carriage
+sable, and, in chief, a crescent or; the fourth, or, a crown vert,
+with the motto (eminently of the middle ages!), "Sound the
+charge,"--Montcornet knew very well that he was the son of a
+cabinet-maker in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, though he was quite ready
+to forget it. He was eaten up with the desire to be a peer of France,
+and dreamed of his grand cordon of the Legion of honor, his Saint-Louis
+cross, and his income of one hundred and forty thousand francs. Bitten
+by the demon of aristocracy, the sight of the blue ribbon put him beside
+himself. The gallant cuirassier of Essling would have licked up the
+mud on the Pont-Royal to be invited to the house of a Navarreins, a
+Lenoncourt, a Grandlieu, a Maufrigneuse, a d'Espard, a Vandenesse, a
+Verneuil, a Herouville, or a Chaulieu.
+
+From 1818, when the impossibility of a change in favor of the Bonaparte
+family was made clear to him, Montcornet had himself trumpeted in the
+faubourg Saint-Germain by the wives of some of his friends, who offered
+his hand and heart, his mansion and his fortune in return for an
+alliance with some great family.
+
+After several attempts, the Duchesse de Carigliano found a match for the
+general in one of the three branches of the Troisville family,--that of
+the viscount in the service of Russia ever since 1789, who had returned
+to France in 1815. The viscount, poor as a younger son, had married a
+Princess Scherbellof, worth about a million, but the arrival of two
+sons and three daughters kept him poor. His family, ancient and formerly
+powerful, now consisted of the Marquis de Troisville, peer of France,
+head of the house and scutcheon, and two deputies, with numerous
+offspring, who were busy, for their part, with the budget and the
+ministries and the court, like fishes round bits of bread. Therefore,
+when Montcornet was presented by Madame de Carigliano,--the Napoleonic
+duchess, who was now a most devoted adherent of the Bourbons, he was
+favorably received. The general asked, in return for his fortune and
+tender indulgence to his wife, to be appointed to the Royal Guard,
+with the rank of marquis and peer of France; but the branches of the
+Troisville family would do no more than promise him their support.
+
+"You know what that means," said the duchess to her old friend, who
+complained of the vagueness of the promise. "They cannot oblige the king
+to do as they wish; they can only influence him."
+
+Montcornet made Virginie de Troisville his heir in the marriage
+settlements. Completely under the control of his wife, as Blondet's
+letter has already shown, he was still without children, but Louis
+XVIII. had received him, and given him the cordon of Saint-Louis,
+allowing him to quarter his ridiculous arms with those of the
+Troisvilles, and promising him the title of marquis as soon as he had
+deserved the peerage by his services.
+
+A few days after the audience at which this promise had been given, the
+Duc de Barry was assassinated; the Marsan clique carried the day;
+the Villele ministry came into power, and all the wires laid by the
+Troisvilles were snapped; it became necessary to find new ways of
+fastening them upon the ministry.
+
+"We must bide our time," said the Troisvilles to Montcornet, who was
+always overwhelmed with politeness in the faubourg Saint-Germain.
+
+This will explain how it was that the general did not return to Les
+Aigues until May, 1820.
+
+The ineffable happiness of the son of a shop-keeper of the faubourg
+Saint-Antoine in possessing a young, elegant, intelligent, and gentle
+wife, a Troisville, who had given him an entrance into all the salons
+of the faubourg Saint-Germain, and the delight of making her enjoy the
+pleasures of Paris, had kept him from Les Aigues and made him forget
+about Gaubertin, even to his very name. In 1820 he took the countess to
+Burgundy to show her the estate, and he accepted Sibilet's accounts and
+leases without looking closely into them; happiness never cavils. The
+countess, well pleased to find the steward's wife a charming young
+woman, made presents to her and to the children, with whom she
+occasionally amused herself. She ordered a few changes at Les Aigues,
+having sent to Paris for an architect; proposing, to the general's great
+delight, to spend six months of every year on this magnificent estate.
+Montcornet's savings were soon spent on the architectural work and the
+exquisite new furniture sent from Paris. Les Aigues thus received the
+last touch which made it a choice example of all the diverse elegancies
+of four centuries.
+
+In 1821 the general was almost peremptorily urged by Sibilet to be at
+Les Aigues before the month of May. Important matters had to be decided.
+A lease of nine years, to the amount of thirty thousand francs, granted
+by Gaubertin in 1812 to a wood-merchant, fell in on the 15th of May of
+the current year. Sibilet, anxious to prove his rectitude, was unwilling
+to be responsible for the renewal of the lease. "You know, Monsieur le
+comte," he wrote, "that I do not choose to profit by such matters."
+The wood-merchant claimed an indemnity, extorted from Madame Laguerre,
+through her hatred of litigation, and shared by him with Gaubertin. This
+indemnity was based on the injury done to the woods by the peasants,
+who treated the forest of Les Aigues as if they had a right to cut the
+timber. Messrs. Gravelot Brothers, wood-merchants in Paris, refused to
+pay their last quarter dues, offering to prove by an expert that the
+woods were reduced one-fifth in value, through, they said, the injurious
+precedent established by Madame Laguerre.
+
+"I have already," wrote Sibilet, "sued these men in the courts at
+Ville-aux-Fayes, for they have taken legal residence there, on account
+of this lease, with my old employer, Maitre Corbinet. I fear we shall
+lose the suit."
+
+"It is a question of income, my dear," said the general, showing the
+letter to his wife. "Will you go down to Les Aigues a little earlier
+this year than last?"
+
+"Go yourself, and I will follow you when the weather is warmer," said
+the countess, not sorry to remain in Paris alone.
+
+The general, who knew very well the canker that was eating into his
+revenues, departed without his wife, resolved to take vigorous measures.
+In so doing he reckoned, as we shall see, without his Gaubertin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE GREAT REVOLUTIONS OF A LITTLE VALLEY
+
+
+"Well, Maitre Sibilet," said the general to his steward, the morning
+after his arrival, giving him a familiar title which showed how much he
+appreciated his services, "so we are, to use a ministerial phrase, at a
+crisis?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, following the general.
+
+The fortunate possessor of Les Aigues was walking up and down in front
+of the steward's house, along a little terrace where Madame Sibilet grew
+flowers, at the end of which was a wide stretch of meadow-land watered
+by the canal which Blondet has described. From this point the chateau of
+Les Aigues was seen in the distance, and in like manner the profile, as
+it were, of the steward's lodge was seen from Les Aigues.
+
+"But," resumed the general, "what's the difficulty? If I do lose the
+suit against the Gravelots, a money wound is not mortal, and I'll
+have the leasing of my forest so well advertised that there will be
+competition, and I shall sell the timber at its true value."
+
+"Business is not done in that way, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet.
+"Suppose you get no lessees, what will you do?"
+
+"Cut the timber myself and sell it--"
+
+"You, a wood merchant?" said Sibilet. "Well, without looking at matters
+here, how would it be in Paris? You would have to hire a wood-yard,
+pay for a license and the taxes, also for the right of navigation, and
+duties, and the costs of unloading; besides the salary of a trustworthy
+agent--"
+
+"Yes, it is impracticable," said the general hastily, alarmed at the
+prospect. "But why can't I find persons to lease the right of cutting
+timber as before?"
+
+"Monsieur le comte has enemies."
+
+"Who are they?"
+
+"Well, in the first place, Monsieur Gaubertin."
+
+"Do you mean the scoundrel whose place you took?"
+
+"Not so loud, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, showing fear; "I beg of
+you, not so loud,--my cook might hear us."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that I am not to speak on my own estate of a
+villain who robbed me?" cried the general.
+
+"For the sake of your own peace and comfort, come further away, Monsieur
+le comte. Monsieur Gaubertin is mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes."
+
+"Ha! I congratulate Ville-aux-Fayes. Thunder! what a nobly governed
+town!--"
+
+"Do me the honor to listen, Monsieur le comte, and to believe that I
+am talking of serious matters which may affect your future life in this
+place."
+
+"I am listening; let us sit down on this bench here."
+
+"Monsieur le comte, when you dismissed Gaubertin, he had to find some
+employment, for he was not rich--"
+
+"Not rich! when he stole twenty thousand francs a year from this
+estate?"
+
+"Monsieur le comte, I don't pretend to excuse him," replied Sibilet. "I
+want to see Les Aigues prosperous, if it were only to prove Gaubertin's
+dishonest; but we ought not to abuse him openly for he is one of the
+most dangerous scoundrels to be found in all Burgundy, and he is now in
+a position to injure you."
+
+"In what way?" asked the general, sobering down.
+
+"Gaubertin has control of nearly one third of the supplies sent to
+Paris. As general agent of the timber business, he orders all the work
+of the forests,--the felling, chopping, floating, and sending to market.
+Being in close relations with the workmen, he is the arbiter of prices.
+It has taken him three years to create this position, but he holds it
+now like a fortress. He is essential to all dealers, never favoring one
+more than another; he regulates the whole business in their interests,
+and their affairs are better and more cheaply looked after by him
+than they were in the old time by separate agents for each firm. For
+instance, he has so completely put a stop to competition that he has
+absolute control of the auction sales; the crown and the State are
+both dependent on him. Their timber is sold under the hammer and falls
+invariably to Gaubertin's dealers; in fact, no others attempt now to
+bid against them. Last year Monsieur Mariotte, of Auxerre, urged by
+the commissioner of domains, did attempt to compete with Gaubertin. At
+first, Gaubertin let him buy the standing wood at the usual prices; but
+when it came to cutting it, the Avonnais workmen asked such enormous
+prices that Monsieur Mariotte was obliged to bring laborers from
+Auxerre, whom the Ville-aux-Fayes workmen attacked and drove away. The
+head of the coalition, and the ringleader of the brawl were brought
+before the police court, and the suits cost Monsieur Mariotte a great
+deal of money; for, besides the odium of having convicted and punished
+poor men, he was forced to pay all costs, because the losing side had
+not a farthing to do it with. A suit against laboring men is sure to
+result in hatred to those who live among them. Let me warn you of this;
+for if you follow the course you propose, you will have to fight against
+the poor of this district at least. But that's not all. Counting it
+over, Monsieur Mariotte, a worthy man, found he was the loser by his
+original lease. Forced to pay ready money, he was nevertheless obliged
+to sell on time; Gaubertin delivered his timber at long credits for the
+purpose of ruining his competitor. He undersold him by at least five per
+cent, and the end of it is that poor Mariotte's credit is badly shaken.
+Gaubertin is now pressing and harassing the poor man so that he is
+driven, they tell me, to leave not only Auxerre, but even Burgundy
+itself; and he is right. In this way land-owners have long been
+sacrificed to dealers who now set the market-prices, just as the
+furniture-dealers in Paris dictate values to appraisers. But Gaubertin
+saves the owners so much trouble and worry that they are really
+gainers."
+
+"How so?" asked the general.
+
+"In the first place, because the less complicated a business is, the
+greater the profits to the owners," answered Sibilet. "Besides which,
+their income is more secure; and in all matters of rural improvement
+and development that is the main thing, as you will find out. Then, too,
+Monsieur Gaubertin is the friend and patron of working-men; he pays them
+well and keeps them always at work; therefore, though their families
+live on the estates, the woods leased to dealers and belonging to the
+land-owners who trust the care of their property to Gaubertin (such as
+MM. de Soulanges and de Ronquerolles) are not devastated. The dead wood
+is gathered up, but that is all--"
+
+"That rascal Gaubertin has lost no time!" cried the general.
+
+"He is a bold man," said Sibilet. "He really is, as he calls himself,
+the steward of the best half of the department, instead of being merely
+the steward of Les Aigues. He makes a little out of everybody, and
+that little on every two millions brings him in forty to fifty thousand
+francs a year. He says himself, 'The fires on the Parisian hearths pay
+it all.' He is your enemy, Monsieur le comte. My advice to you is to
+capitulate and be reconciled with him. He is intimate, as you know, with
+Soudry, the head of the gendarmerie at Soulanges; with Monsieur Rigou,
+our mayor at Blangy; the patrols are under his influence; therefore you
+will find it impossible to repress the pilferings which are eating into
+your estate. During the last two years your woods have been devastated.
+Consequently the Gravelots are more than likely to win their suit. They
+say, very truly: 'According to the terms of the lease, the care of
+the woods is left to the owner; he does not protect them, and we are
+injured; the owner is bound to pay us damages.' That's fair enough; but
+it doesn't follow that they should win their case."
+
+"We must be ready to defend this suit at all costs," said the general,
+"and then we shall have no more of them."
+
+"You shall gratify Gaubertin," remarked Sibilet.
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Suing the Gravelots is the same as a hand to hand fight with Gaubertin,
+who is their agent," answered Sibilet. "He asks nothing better than
+such a suit. He declares, so I hear, that he will bring you if necessary
+before the Court of Appeals."
+
+"The rascal! the--"
+
+"If you attempt to work your own woods," continued Sibilet, turning the
+knife in the wound, "you will find yourself at the mercy of workmen who
+will force you to pay rich men's prices instead of market-prices. In
+short, they'll put you, as they did that poor Mariotte, in a position
+where you must sell at a loss. If you then try to lease the woods you
+will get no tenants, for you cannot expect that any one should take
+risks for himself which Mariotte only took for the crown and the State.
+Suppose a man talks of his losses to the government! The government is a
+gentleman who is, like your obedient servant when he was in its employ,
+a worthy man with a frayed overcoat, who reads the newspapers at a
+desk. Let his salary be twelve hundred or twelve thousand francs, his
+disposition is the same, it is not a whit softer. Talk of reductions
+and releases from the public treasury represented by the said gentleman!
+He'll only pooh-pooh you as he mends his pen. No, the law is the wrong
+road for you, Monsieur le comte."
+
+"Then what's to be done?" cried the general, his blood boiling as he
+tramped up and down before the bench.
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, abruptly, "what I say to you is not
+for my own interests, certainly; but I advise you to sell Les Aigues and
+leave the neighborhood."
+
+On hearing these words the general sprang back as if a cannon-ball had
+struck him; then he looked at Sibilet with a shrewd, diplomatic eye.
+
+"A general of the Imperial Guard running away from the rascals, when
+Madame la comtesse likes Les Aigues!" he said. "No, I'll sooner box
+Gaubertin's ears on the market-place of Ville-aux-Fayes, and force him
+to fight me that I may shoot him like a dog."
+
+"Monsieur le comte, Gaubertin is not such a fool as to let himself be
+brought into collision with you. Besides, you could not openly insult
+the mayor of so important a place as Ville-aux-Fayes."
+
+"I'll have him turned out; the Troisvilles can do that for me; it is a
+question of income."
+
+"You won't succeed, Monsieur le comte; Gaubertin's arms are long; you
+will get yourself into difficulties from which you cannot escape."
+
+"Let us think of the present," interrupted the general. "About that
+suit?"
+
+"That, Monsieur le comte, I can manage to win for you," replied Sibilet,
+with a knowing glance.
+
+"Bravo, Sibilet!" said the general, shaking his steward's hand; "how are
+you going to do it?"
+
+"You will win it on a writ of error," replied Sibilet. "In my opinion
+the Gravelots have the right of it. But it is not enough to be in the
+right, they must also be in order as to legal forms, and that they have
+neglected. The Gravelots ought to have summoned you to have the woods
+better watched. They can't ask for indemnity, at the close of a lease,
+for damages which they know have been going on for nine years; there
+is a clause in the lease as to this, on which we can file a bill of
+exceptions. You will lose the suit at Ville-aux-Fayes, possibly in the
+upper court as well, but we will carry it to Paris and you will win at
+the Court of Appeals. The costs will be heavy and the expenses ruinous.
+You will have to spend from twelve to fifteen thousand francs merely to
+win the suit,--but you will win it, if you care to. The suit will only
+increase the enmity of the Gravelots, for the expenses will be even
+heavier on them. You will be their bugbear; you will be called litigious
+and calumniated in every way; still, you can win--"
+
+"Then, what's to be done?" repeated the general, on whom Sibilet's
+arguments were beginning to produce the effect of a violent poison.
+
+Just then the remembrance of the blows he had given Gaubertin with
+his cane crossed his mind, and made him wish he had bestowed them on
+himself. His flushed face was enough to show Sibilet the irritation that
+he felt.
+
+"You ask me what can be done, Monsieur le comte? Why, only one thing,
+compromise; but of course you can't negotiate that yourself. I must be
+thought to cheat you! We, poor devils, whose only fortune and comfort
+is in our good name, it is hard on us to even seem to do a questionable
+thing. We are always judged by appearances. Gaubertin himself saved
+Mademoiselle Laguerre's life during the Revolution, but it seemed to
+others that he was robbing her. She rewarded him in her will with a
+diamond worth ten thousand francs, which Madame Gaubertin now wears on
+her head."
+
+The general gave Sibilet another glance still more diplomatic than the
+first; but the steward seemed to take no notice of the challenge it
+expressed.
+
+"If I were to appear dishonest, Monsieur Gaubertin would be so overjoyed
+that I could instantly obtain his help," continued Sibilet. "He would
+listen with all his ears if I said to him: 'Suppose I were to extort
+twenty thousand francs from Monsieur le comte for Messrs. Gravelot, on
+condition that they shared them with me?' If your adversaries consented
+to that, Monsieur le comte, I should return you ten thousand francs; you
+lose only the other ten, you save appearances, and the suit is quashed."
+
+"You are a fine fellow, Sibilet," said the general, taking his hand and
+shaking it. "If you can manage the future as well as you do the present,
+I'll call you the prince of stewards."
+
+"As to the future," said Sibilet, "you won't die of hunger if no timber
+is cut for two or three years. Let us begin by putting proper keepers
+in the woods. Between now and then things will flow as the water does
+in the Avonne. Gaubertin may die, or get rich enough to retire from
+business; at any rate, you will have sufficient time to find him a
+competitor. The cake is too rich not to be shared. Look for another
+Gaubertin to oppose the original."
+
+"Sibilet," said the old soldier, delighted with this variety of
+solutions. "I'll give you three thousand francs if you'll settle the
+matter as you propose. For the rest, we'll think about it."
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, "first and foremost have the forest
+properly watched. See for yourself the condition in which the peasantry
+have put it during your two years' absence. What could I do? I am
+steward; I am not a bailiff. To guard Les Aigues properly you need a
+mounted patrol and three keepers."
+
+"I certainly shall have the estate properly guarded. So it is to be war,
+is it? Very good, then we shall make war. That doesn't frighten me,"
+said Montcornet, rubbing his hands.
+
+"A war of francs," said Sibilet; "and you may find that more difficult
+than the other kind; men can be killed but you can't kill self-interest.
+You will fight your enemy on the battle-field where all landlords are
+compelled to fight,--I mean cash results. It is not enough to produce,
+you must sell; and in order to sell, you must be on good terms with
+everybody."
+
+"I shall have the country people on my side."
+
+"By what means?"
+
+"By doing good among them."
+
+"Doing good to the valley peasants! to the petty shopkeepers of
+Soulanges!" exclaimed Sibilet, squinting horribly, by reason of the
+irony which flamed brighter in one eye than in the other. "Monsieur le
+comte doesn't know what he undertakes. Our Lord Jesus Christ would die
+again upon the cross in this valley! If you wish an easy life, follow
+the example of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre; let yourself be robbed,
+or else make people afraid of you. Women, children, and the masses are
+all governed by fear. That was the great secret of the Convention, and
+of the Emperor, too."
+
+"Good heavens! is this the forest of Bondy?" cried the general.
+
+"My dear," said Sibilet's wife, appearing at this moment, "your
+breakfast is ready. Pray excuse him, Monsieur le comte; he has eaten
+nothing since morning for he was obliged to go to Ronquerolles to
+deliver some barley."
+
+"Go, go, Sibilet," said the general.
+
+The next morning the count rose early, before daylight, and went to
+the gate of the Avonne, intending to talk with the one forester whom he
+employed and find out what the man's sentiments really were.
+
+Some seven or eight hundred acres of the forest of Les Aigues lie along
+the banks of the Avonne; and to preserve the majestic beauty of the
+river the large trees that border it have been left untouched for a
+distance of three leagues on both sides in an almost straight line. The
+mistress of Henri IV., to whom Les Aigues formerly belonged, was as fond
+of hunting as the king himself. In 1593 she ordered a bridge to be built
+of a single arch with shelving roadway by which to ride from the lower
+side of the forest to a much larger portion of it, purchased by her,
+which lay upon the slopes of the hills. The gate of the Avonne was built
+as a place of meeting for the huntsmen; and we know the magnificence
+bestowed by the architects of that day upon all buildings intended for
+the delight of the crown and the nobility. Six avenues branched away
+from it, their place of meeting forming a half-moon. In the centre of
+the semi-circular space stood an obelisk surmounted by a round shield,
+formerly gilded, bearing on one side the arms of Navarre and on the
+other those of the Countess de Moret. Another half-moon, on the side
+toward the river, communicated with the first by a straight avenue, at
+the opposite end of which the steep rise of the Venetian-shaped bridge
+could be seen. Between two elegant iron railings of the same character
+as that of the magnificent railing which formerly surrounded the garden
+of the Place Royale in Paris, now so unfortunately destroyed, stood
+a brick pavilion, with stone courses hewn in facets like those of the
+chateau, with a very pointed roof and window-casings of stone cut in
+the same manner. This old style, which gave the building a regal air, is
+suitable only to prisons when used in cities; but standing in the heart
+of forests it derives from its surroundings a splendor of its own.
+A group of trees formed a screen, behind which the kennels, an old
+falconry, a pheasantry, and the quarters of the huntsmen were falling
+into ruins, after being in their day the wonder and admiration of
+Burgundy.
+
+In 1595, the royal hunting-parties set forth from this magnificent
+pavilion, preceded by those fine dogs so dear to Rubens and to Paul
+Veronese; the huntsmen mounted on high-steeping steeds with stout and
+blue-white satiny haunches, seen no longer except in Wouverman's amazing
+work, followed by footmen in livery; the scene enlivened by whippers-in,
+wearing the high top-boots with facings and the yellow leathern breeches
+which have come down to the present day on the canvas of Van der Meulen.
+The obelisk was erected in commemoration of the visit of the Bearnais,
+and his hunt with the beautiful Comtesse de Moret; the date is given
+below the arms of Navarre. That jealous woman, whose son was afterwards
+legitimatized, would not allow the arms of France to figure on the
+obelisk, regarding them as a rebuke.
+
+At the time of which we write, when the general's eyes rested on this
+splendid ruin, moss had gathered for centuries on the four faces of
+the roof; the hewn-stone courses, mangled by time, seemed to cry with
+yawning mouths against the profanation; disjointed leaden settings let
+fall their octagonal panes, so that the windows seemed blind of an eye
+here and there. Yellow wallflowers bloomed about the copings; ivy slid
+its white rootlets into every crevice.
+
+All things bespoke a shameful want of care,--the seal set by mere
+life-possessors on the ancient glories that they possess. Two windows
+on the first floor were stuffed with hay. Through another, on the
+ground-floor, was seen a room filled with tools and logs of wood; while
+a cow pushed her muzzle through a fourth, proving that Courtecuisse, to
+avoid having to walk from the pavilion to the pheasantry, had turned the
+large hall of the central building into a stable,--a hall with panelled
+ceiling, and in the centre of each panel the arms of all the various
+possessors of Les Aigues!
+
+Black and dirty palings disgraced the approach to the pavilion, making
+square inclosures with plank roofs for pigs, ducks, and hens, the manure
+of which was taken away every six months. A few ragged garments were
+hung to dry on the brambles which boldly grew unchecked here and
+there. As the general came along the avenue from the bridge, Madame
+Courtecuisse was scouring a saucepan in which she had just made her
+coffee. The forester, sitting on a chair in the sun, considered his
+wife as a savage considers his. When he heard a horse's hoofs he turned
+round, saw the count, and seemed taken aback.
+
+"Well, Courtecuisse, my man," said the general, "I'm not surprised that
+the peasants cut my woods before Messrs. Gravelot can do so. So you
+consider your place a sinecure?"
+
+"Indeed, Monsieur le comte, I have watched the woods so many nights that
+I'm ill from it. I've got a chill, and I suffer such pain this morning
+that my wife has just made me a poultice in that saucepan."
+
+"My good fellow," said the count, "I don't know of any pain that a
+coffee poultice cures except that of hunger. Listen to me, you rascal! I
+rode through my forest yesterday, and then through those of Monsieur de
+Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles. Theirs are carefully watched and
+preserved, while mine is in a shameful state."
+
+"Ah, monsieur! but they are the old lords of the neighborhood; everybody
+respects their property. How can you expect me to fight against six
+districts? I care for my life more than for your woods. A man who would
+undertake to watch your woods as they ought to be watched would get a
+ball in his head for wages in some dark corner of the forest--"
+
+"Coward!" cried the general, trying to control the anger the man's
+insolent reply provoked in him. "Last night was as clear as day, yet it
+cost me three hundred francs in actual robbery and over a thousand in
+future damages. You will leave my service unless you do better. All
+wrong-doing deserves some mercy; therefore these are my conditions: You
+may have the fines, and I will pay you three francs for every indictment
+you bring against these depredators. If I don't get what I expect, you
+know what you have to expect, and no pension either. Whereas, if you
+serve me faithfully and contrive to stop these depredations, I'll give
+you an annuity of three hundred francs for life. You can think it over.
+Here are six ways," continued the count, pointing to the branching
+roads; "there's only one for you to take,--as for me also, who am not
+afraid of balls; try and find the right one."
+
+Courtecuisse, a small man about forty-six years of age, with a full-moon
+face, found his greatest happiness in doing nothing. He expected to live
+and die in that pavilion, now considered by him _his_ pavilion. His two
+cows were pastured in the forest, from which he got his wood; and
+he spent his time in looking after his garden instead of after the
+delinquents. Such neglect of duty suited Gaubertin, and Courtecuisse
+knew it did. The keeper chased only those depredators who were the
+objects of his personal dislike,--young women who would not yield to his
+wishes, or persons against whom he held a grudge; though for some time
+past he had really felt no dislikes, for every one yielded to him on
+account of his easy-going ways with them.
+
+Courtecuisse had a place always kept for him at the table of the
+Grand-I-Vert; the wood-pickers feared him no longer; indeed, his wife
+and he received many gifts in kind from them; his wood was brought in;
+his vineyard dug; in short, all delinquents at whom he blinked did him
+service.
+
+Counting on Gaubertin for the future, and feeling sure of two acres
+whenever Les Aigues should be brought to the hammer, he was roughly
+awakened by the curt speech of the general, who, after four quiescent
+years, was now revealing his true character,--that of a bourgeois rich
+man who was determined to be no longer deceived. Courtecuisse took his
+cap, his game-bag, and his gun, put on his gaiters and his belt
+(which bore the very recent arms of Montcornet), and started for
+Ville-aux-Fayes, with the careless, indifferent air and manner under
+which country-people often conceal very deep reflections, while he gazed
+at the woods and whistled to the dogs to follow him.
+
+"What! you complain of the Shopman when he proposes to make your
+fortune?" said Gaubertin. "Doesn't the fool offer to give you three
+francs for every arrest you make, and the fines to boot? Have an
+understanding with your friends and you can bring as many indictments as
+you please,--hundreds if you like! With one thousand francs you can
+buy La Bachelerie from Rigou, become a property owner, live in your own
+house, and work for yourself, or rather, make others work for you, and
+take your ease. Only--now listen to me--you must manage to arrest only
+such as haven't a penny in the world. You can't shear sheep unless
+the wool is on their backs. Take the Shopman's offer and leave him to
+collect the costs,--if he wants them; tastes differ. Didn't old Mariotte
+prefer losses to profits, in spite of my advice?"
+
+Courtecuisse, filled with admiration for these words of wisdom, returned
+home burning with the desire to be a land-owner and a bourgeois like the
+rest.
+
+When the general reached Les Aigues he related his expedition to
+Sibilet.
+
+"Monsieur le comte did very right," said the steward, rubbing his hands;
+"but he must not stop short half-way. The field-keeper of the district
+who allows the country-people to prey upon the meadows and rob the
+harvests ought to be changed. Monsieur le comte should have himself
+chosen mayor, and appoint one of his old soldiers, who would have
+the courage to carry out his orders, in place of Vaudoyer. A great
+land-owner should be master in his own district. Just see what
+difficulties we have with the present mayor!"
+
+The mayor of the district of Blangy, formerly a Benedictine, named
+Rigou, had married, in the first year of the Republic, the servant-woman
+of the late priest of Blangy. In spite of the repugnance which a married
+monk excited at the Prefecture, he had continued to be mayor after 1815,
+for the reason that there was no-one else at Blangy who was capable of
+filling the post. But in 1817, when the bishop sent the Abbe Brossette
+to the parish of Blangy (which had then been vacant over twenty-five
+years), a violent opposition not unnaturally broke out between the old
+apostate and the young ecclesiastic, whose character is already known to
+us. The war which was then and there declared between the mayor's office
+and the parsonage increased the popularity of the magistrate, who
+had hitherto been more or less despised. Rigou, whom the peasants had
+disliked for usurious dealings, now suddenly represented their political
+and financial interests, supposed to be threatened by the Restoration,
+and more especially by the clergy.
+
+A copy of the "Constitutionnel," that great organ of liberalism, after
+making the rounds of the Cafe de la Paix, came back to Rigou on the
+seventh day,--the subscription, standing in the name of old Socquard the
+keeper of the coffee-house, being shared by twenty persons. Rigou passed
+the paper on to Langlume the miller, who, in turn, gave it in shreds to
+any one who knew how to read. The "Paris items," and the anti-religion
+jokes of the liberal sheet formed the public opinion of the valley des
+Aigues. Rigou, like the _venerable_ Abbe Gregoire, became a hero.
+For him, as for certain Parisian bankers, politics spread a mantle of
+popularity over his shameful dishonesty.
+
+At this particular time the perjured monk, like Francois Keller the
+great orator, was looked upon as a defender of the rights of the
+people,--he who, not so very long before, dared not walk in the fields
+after dark, lest he should stumble into pitfalls where he would seem to
+have been killed by accident! Persecute a man politically and you not
+only magnify him, but you redeem his past and make it innocent. The
+liberal party was a great worker of miracles in this respect. Its
+dangerous journal, which had the wit to make itself as commonplace, as
+calumniating, as credulous, and as sillily perfidious as every audience
+made up the general masses, did in all probability as much injury to
+private interests as it did to those of the Church.
+
+Rigou flattered himself that he should find in a Bonapartist general
+now laid on the shelf, in a son of the people raised from nothing by
+the Revolution, a sound enemy to the Bourbons and the priests. But the
+general, bearing in mind his private ambitions, so arranged matters as
+to evade the visit of Monsieur and Madame Rigou when he first came to
+Les Aigues.
+
+When you have become better acquainted with the terrible character of
+Rigou, the lynx of the valley, you will understand the full extent of
+the second capital blunder which the general's aristocratic ambitions
+led him to commit, and which the countess made all the greater by an
+offence which will be described in the further history of Rigou.
+
+If Montcornet had courted the mayor's good-will, if he had sought his
+friendship, perhaps the influence of the renegade might have neutralized
+that of Gaubertin. Far from that, three suits were now pending in the
+courts of Ville-aux-Fayes between the general and the ex-monk. Until the
+present time the general had been so absorbed in his personal interests
+and in his marriage that he had never remembered Rigou, but when
+Sibilet advised him to get himself made mayor in Rigou's place, he took
+post-horses and went to see the prefect.
+
+The prefect, Comte Martial de la Roche-Hugon, had been a friend of the
+general since 1804; and it was a word from him said to Montcornet in a
+conversation in Paris, which brought about the purchase of Les Aigues.
+Comte Martial, a prefect under Napoleon, remained a prefect under the
+Bourbons, and courted the bishop to retain his place. Now it happened
+that Monseigneur had several times requested him to get rid of Rigou.
+Martial, to whom the condition of the district was perfectly well known,
+was delighted with the general's request; so that in less than a month
+the Comte de Montcornet was mayor of Blangy.
+
+By one of those accidents which come about naturally, the general met,
+while at the prefecture where his friend put him up, a non-commissioned
+officer of the ex-Imperial guard, who had been cheated out of his
+retiring pension. The general had already, under other circumstances,
+done a service to the brave cavalryman, whose name was Groison; the
+man, remembering it, now told him his troubles, admitting that he was
+penniless. The general promised to get him his pension, and proposed
+that he should take the place of field-keeper to the district of Blangy,
+as a way of paying off his score of gratitude by devotion to the
+new mayor's interests. The appointments of master and man were made
+simultaneously, and the general gave, as may be supposed, very firm
+instructions to his subordinate.
+
+Vaudoyer, the displaced keeper, a peasant on the Ronquerolles estate,
+was only fit, like most field-keepers, to stalk about, and gossip, and
+let himself be petted by the poor of the district, who asked nothing
+better than to corrupt at subaltern authority,--the advanced guard, as
+it were, of the land-owners. He knew Soudry, the brigadier at
+Soulanges, for brigadiers of gendarmerie, performing functions that are
+semi-judicial in drawing up criminal indictments, have much to do with
+the rural keepers, who are, in fact, their natural spies. Soudry,
+being appealed to, sent Vaudoyer to Gaubertin, who received his old
+acquaintance very cordially, and invited him to drink while listening to
+the recital of his troubles.
+
+"My dear friend," said the mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, who could talk to
+every man in his own language, "what has happened to you is likely
+to happen to us all. The nobles are back upon us. The men to whom the
+Emperor gave titles make common cause with the old nobility. They all
+want to crush the people, re-establish their former rights and take
+our property from us. But we are Burgundians; we must resist, and drive
+those Arminacs back to Paris. Return to Blangy; you shall be agent for
+Monsieur Polissard, the wood-merchant, who is contractor for the forest
+of Ronquerolles. Don't be uneasy, my lad; I'll find you enough to do for
+the whole of the coming year. But remember one thing; the wood is for
+ourselves! Not a single depredation, or the thing is at an end. Send
+all interlopers to Les Aigues. If there's brush or fagots to sell make
+people buy ours; don't let them buy of Les Aigues. You'll get back
+to your place as field-keeper before long; this thing can't last. The
+general will get sick of living among thieves. Did you know that
+that Shopman called me a thief, me!--son of the stanchest and most
+incorruptible of republicans; me!--the son in law of Mouchon, that
+famous representative of the people, who died without leaving me enough
+to bury him?"
+
+The general raised the salary of the new field-keeper to three hundred
+francs; and built a town-hall, in which he gave him a residence. Then he
+married him to a daughter of one of his tenant-farmers, who had lately
+died, leaving her an orphan with three acres of vineyard. Groison
+attached himself to the general as a dog to his master. This legitimate
+fidelity was admitted by the whole community. The keeper was feared and
+respected, but like the captain of a vessel whose ship's company hate
+him; the peasantry shunned him as they would a leper. Met either in
+silence or with sarcasms veiled under a show of good-humor, the new
+keeper was a sentinel watched by other sentinels. He could do nothing
+against such numbers. The delinquents took delight in plotting
+depredations which it was impossible for him to prove, and the old
+soldier grew furious at his helplessness. Groison found the excitement
+of a war of factions in his duties, and all the pleasures of the
+chase,--a chase after petty delinquents. Trained in real war to a
+loyalty which consists in part of playing a fair game, this enemy of
+traitors came at last to hate these people, so treacherous in their
+conspiracies, and so clever in their thefts that they mortified his
+self-esteem. He soon observed that the depredations were committed
+only at Les Aigues; all the other estates were respected. At first
+he despised a peasantry ungrateful enough to pillage a general of the
+Empire, an essentially kind and generous man; presently, however, he
+added hatred to contempt. But multiply himself as he would, he could
+not be everywhere, and the enemy pillaged everywhere that he was not.
+Groison made the general understand that it was necessary to organize
+the defence on a war footing, and proved to him the insufficiency of his
+own devoted efforts and the evil disposition of the inhabitants of the
+valley.
+
+"There is something behind it all, general," he said; "these people are
+so bold they fear nothing; they seem to rely on the favor of the good
+God."
+
+"We shall see," replied the count.
+
+Fatal word! The verb "to see" has no future tense for politicians.
+
+At the moment, Montcornet was considering another difficulty, which
+seemed to him more pressing. He needed an alter ego to do his work in
+the mayor's office during the months he lived in Paris. Obliged to find
+some man who knew how to read and write for the position of assistant
+mayor, he knew of none and could hear of none throughout the district
+but Langlume, the tenant of his own flour-mill. The choice was
+disastrous. Not only were the interests of mayor and miller
+diametrically opposed, but Langlume had long hatched swindling projects
+with Rigou, who lent him money to carry on his business, or to acquire
+property. The miller had bought the right to the hay of certain fields
+for his horses, and Sibilet could not sell it except to him. The hay of
+all the fields in the district was sold at better prices than that of
+Les Aigues, though the yield of the latter was the best.
+
+Langlume, then, became the provisional mayor; but in France the
+provisional is eternal,--though Frenchmen are suspected of loving
+change. Acting by Rigou's advice, he played a part of great devotion to
+the general; and he was still assistant-mayor at the moment when, by the
+omnipotence of the historian, this drama begins.
+
+In the absence of the mayor, Rigou, necessarily a member of the
+district council, reigned supreme, and brought forward resolutions all
+injuriously affecting the general. At one time he caused money to be
+spent for purposes that were profitable to the peasants only,--the
+greater part of the expenses falling upon Les Aigues, which, by reason
+of its great extent, paid two thirds of the taxes; at other times the
+council refused, under his influence, certain useful and necessary
+allowances, such as an increase in salary for the abbe, repairs or
+improvements to the parsonage, or "wages" to the school-master.
+
+"If the peasants once know how to read and write, what will become of
+us?" said Langlume, naively, to the general, to excuse this anti-liberal
+action taken against a brother of the Christian Doctrine whom the Abbe
+Brossette wished to establish as a public school-master in Blangy.
+
+The general, delighted with his old Groison, returned to Paris and
+immediately looked about him for other old soldiers of the late imperial
+guard, with whom to organize the defence of Les Aigues on a formidable
+footing. By dint of searching out and questioning his friends and many
+officers on half-pay, he unearthed Michaud, a former quartermaster at
+headquarters of the cuirassiers of the guard; one of those men whom
+troopers call "hard-to-cook," a nickname derived from the mess kitchen
+where refractory beans are not uncommon. Michaud picked out from among
+his friends and acquaintances, three other men fit to be his helpers,
+and able to guard the estate without fear and without reproach.
+
+The first, named Steingel, a pure-blooded Alsacian, was a natural son of
+the general of that name, who fell in one of Bonaparte's first victories
+with the army of Italy. Tall and strong, he belonged to the class
+of soldiers accustomed, like the Russians, to obey, passively and
+absolutely. Nothing hindered him in the performance of his duty; he
+would have collared an emperor or a pope if such were his orders. He
+ignored danger. Perfectly fearless, he had never received the smallest
+scratch during his sixteen years' campaigning. He slept in the open
+air or in his bed with stoical indifference. At any increased labor or
+discomfort, he merely remarked, "It seems to be the order of the day."
+
+The second man, Vatel, son of the regiment, corporal of voltigeurs,
+gay as a lark, rather free and easy with the fair sex, brave to
+foolhardiness, was capable of shooting a comrade with a laugh if ordered
+to execute him. With no future before him and not knowing how to employ
+himself, the prospect of finding an amusing little war in the functions
+of keeper, attracted him; and as the grand army and the Emperor had
+hitherto stood him in place of a religion, so now he swore to serve the
+brave Montcornet against and through all and everything. His nature was
+of that essentially wrangling quality to which a life without enemies
+seems dull and objectless,--the nature, in short, of a litigant, or a
+policeman. If it had not been for the presence of the sheriff's officer,
+he would have seized Tonsard and the bundle of wood at the Grand-I-Vert,
+snapping his fingers at the law on the inviolability of a man's
+domicile.
+
+The third man, Gaillard, also an old soldier, risen to the rank of
+sub-lieutenant, and covered with wounds, belonged to the class of
+mechanical soldiers. The fate of the Emperor never left his mind and
+he became indifferent to everything else. With the care of a natural
+daughter on his hands, he accepted the place that was now offered to him
+as a means of subsistence, taking it as he would have taken service in a
+regiment.
+
+When the general reached Les Aigues, whither he had gone in advance
+of his troopers, intending to send away Courtecuisse, he was amazed at
+discovering the impudent audacity with which the keeper had fulfilled
+his commands. There is a method of obeying which makes the obedience of
+the servant a cutting sarcasm on the master's order. But all things
+in this world can be reduced to absurdity, and Courtecuisse in this
+instance went beyond its limits.
+
+One hundred and twenty-six indictments against depredators (most of whom
+were in collusion with Courtecuisse) and sworn to before the justice
+court of Soulanges, had resulted in sixty-nine commitments for trial,
+in virtue of which Brunet, the sheriff's officer, delighted at such a
+windfall of fees, had rigorously enforced the warrants in such a way
+as to bring about what is called, in legal language, a declaration of
+insolvency; a condition of pauperism where the law becomes of course
+powerless. By this declaration the sheriff proves that the defendant
+possesses no property of any kind, and is therefore a pauper. Where
+there is absolutely nothing, the creditor, like the king, loses
+his right to sue. The paupers in this case, carefully selected by
+Courtecuisse, were scattered through five neighboring districts, whither
+Brunet betook himself duly attended by his satellites, Vermichel and
+Fourchon, to serve the writs. Later he transmitted the papers to Sibilet
+with a bill of costs for five thousand francs, requesting him to obtain
+the further orders of Monsieur le comte de Montcornet.
+
+Just as Sibilet, armed with these papers, was calmly explaining to the
+count the result of the rash orders he had given to Courtecuisse, and
+witnessing, as calmly, a burst of the most violent anger a general of
+the French cavalry was ever known to indulge in, Courtecuisse entered
+to pay his respects to his master and to bring his own account of eleven
+hundred francs, the sum to which his promised commission now amounted.
+The natural man took the bit in his teeth and ran off with the general,
+who totally forgot his coronet and his field rank; he was a trooper once
+more, vomiting curses of which he probably was ashamed when he thought
+of them later.
+
+"Ha! eleven hundred francs!" he shouted, "eleven hundred slaps in your
+face! eleven hundred kicks!--Do you think I can't see straight through
+your lies? Out of my sight, or I'll strike you flat!"
+
+At the mere look of the general's purple face and before that warrior
+could get out the last words, Courtecuisse was off like a swallow.
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, gently, "you are wrong."
+
+"Wrong! I, wrong?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le comte, take care, you will have trouble with that
+rascal; he will sue you."
+
+"What do I care for that? Tell the scoundrel to leave the place
+instantly! See that he takes nothing of mine, and pay him his wages."
+
+Four hours later the whole country-side was gossiping about this scene.
+The general, they said, had assaulted the unfortunate Courtecuisse, and
+refused to pay his wages and two thousand francs besides, which he owed
+him. Extraordinary stories went the rounds, and the master of Les
+Aigues was declared insane. The next day Brunet, who had served all the
+warrants for the general, now brought him on behalf of Courtecuisse a
+summon to appear before the police court. The lion was stung by gnats;
+but his misery was only just beginning.
+
+The installation of a keeper is not done without a few formalities; he
+must, for instance, file an oath in the civil court. Some days therefore
+elapsed before the three keepers really entered upon their functions.
+Though the general had written to Michaud to bring his wife without
+waiting until the lodge at the gate of the Avonne was ready for them,
+the future head-keeper, or rather bailiff, was detained in Paris by his
+marriage and his wife's family, and did not reach Les Aigues until
+a fortnight later. During those two weeks, and during the time still
+further required for certain formalities which were carried out with
+very ill grace by the authorities at Ville-aux-Fayes, the forest of Les
+Aigues was shamefully devastated by the peasantry, who took advantage of
+the fact that there was practically no watch over it.
+
+The appearance of three keepers handsomely dressed in green cloth,
+the Emperor's color, with faces denoting firmness, and each of them
+well-made, active, and capable of spending their nights in the woods,
+was a great event in the valley, from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes.
+
+Throughout the district Groison was the only man who welcomed these
+veterans. Delighted to be thus reinforced, he let fall a few threats
+against thieves, who before long, he said, would be watched so closely
+that they could do no damage. Thus the usual proclamation of all great
+commanders was not lacking to the present war; in this case it was said
+aloud and also whispered in secret.
+
+Sibilet called the general's attention to the fact that the gendarmerie
+of Soulanges, and especially its brigadier, Soudry, were thoroughly and
+hypocritically hostile to Les Aigues. He made him see the importance of
+substituting another brigade, which might show a better spirit.
+
+"With a good brigadier and a company of gendarmes devoted to your
+interests, you could manage the country," he said to him.
+
+The general went to the Prefecture and obtained from the general in
+command of the division the retirement of Soudry and the substitution of
+a man named Viallet, an excellent gendarme at headquarters, who was
+much praised by his general and the prefect. The company of gendarmes
+at Soulanges were dispersed to other places in the department by the
+colonel of the gendarmerie, an old friend of Montcornet, and chosen
+men were put in their places with secret orders to keep watch over the
+estate of the Comte de Montcornet, and prevent all future attempts to
+injure it; they were also particularly enjoined not to allow themselves
+to be gained over by the inhabitants of Soulanges.
+
+This last revolutionary measure, carried out with such rapidity that
+there was no possibility of countermining it created much astonishment
+in Soulanges and in Ville-aux-Fayes. Soudry, who felt himself dismissed,
+complained bitterly, and Gaubertin managed to get him appointed mayor,
+which put the gendarmerie under his orders. An outcry was made about
+tyranny. Montcornet became an object of general hatred. Not only were
+five or six lives radically changed by him, but many personal vanities
+were wounded. The peasants, taking their cue from words dropped by
+the small tradesmen of Ville-aux-Fayes and Soulanges, and by Rigou,
+Langlume, Guerbet, and the postmaster at Conches, thought they were on
+the eve of losing what they called their rights.
+
+The general stopped the suit brought by Courtecuisse by paying him all
+he demanded. The man then purchased, nominally for two thousand francs,
+a little property surrounded on all sides but one by the estate of Les
+Aigues,--a sort of cover into which the game escaped. Rigou, the owner,
+had never been willing to part with La Bachelerie, as it was called,
+to the possessors of the estate, but he now took malicious pleasure in
+selling it, at fifty per cent discount, to Courtecuisse; which made the
+ex-keeper one of Rigou's numerous henchmen, for all he actually paid for
+the property was one thousand francs.
+
+The three keepers, with Michaud the bailiff, and Groison the
+field-keeper of Blangy, led henceforth the life of guerrillas. Living
+night and day in the forest, they soon acquired that deep knowledge of
+woodland things which becomes a science among foresters, saving them
+much loss of time; they studied the tracks of animals, the species of
+the trees, and their habits of growth, training their ears to every
+sound and to every murmur of the woods. Still further, they observed
+faces, watched and understood the different families in the various
+villages of the district, and knew the individuals in each family, their
+habits, characters, and means of living,--a far more difficult matter
+than most persons suppose. When the peasants who obtained their living
+from Les Aigues saw these well-planned measures of defence, they met
+them with dumb resistance or sneering submission.
+
+From the first, Michaud and Sibilet mutually disliked each other. The
+frank and loyal soldier, with the sense of honor of a subaltern of the
+young "garde," hated the servile brutality and the discontented spirit
+of the steward. He soon took note of the objections with which Sibilet
+opposed all measures that were really judicious, and the reasons he
+gave for those that were questionable. Instead of calming the general,
+Sibilet, as the reader has already seen, constantly excited him and
+drove him to harsh measures, all the while trying to daunt him by
+drawing his attention to countless annoyances, petty vexations, and
+ever-recurring and unconquerable difficulties. Without suspecting the
+role of spy and exasperator undertaken by Sibilet (who secretly intended
+to eventually make choice in his own interests between Gaubertin and the
+general) Michaud felt that the steward's nature was bad and grasping,
+and he was unable to explain to himself its apparent honesty. The enmity
+which separated the two functionaries was satisfactory to the general.
+Michaud's hatred led him to watch the steward, though he would not have
+condescended to play the part of spy if the general had not required it.
+Sibilet fawned upon the bailiff and flattered him, without being able
+to get anything from him beyond an extreme politeness which the loyal
+soldier established between them as a barrier.
+
+Now, all preliminary details having been made known, the reader will
+understand the conduct of the general's enemies and the meaning of the
+conversation which he had with what he called his two ministers, after
+Madame de Montcornet, the abbe, and Blondet left the breakfast-table.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. CONCERNING THE MEDIOCRACY
+
+
+"Well, Michaud, what's the news?" asked the general as soon as his wife
+had left the room.
+
+"General, if you will permit me to say so, it would be better not to
+talk over matters in this room. Walls have ears, and I should like to be
+certain that what we say reaches none but our own."
+
+"Very good," said the general, "then let us walk towards the steward's
+lodge by the path through the fields; no one can overhear us there."
+
+A few moments later the general, with Michaud and Sibilet, was crossing
+the meadows, while Madame de Montcornet, with the abbe and Blondet, was
+on her way to the gate of the Avonne.
+
+Michaud related the scene that had just taken place at the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+"Vatel did wrong," said Sibilet.
+
+"They made that plain to him at once," replied Michaud, "by blinding
+him; but that's nothing. General, you remember the plan we agreed
+upon,--to seize the cattle of those depredators against whom judgment
+was given? Well, we can't do it. Brunet, like his colleague Plissoud, is
+not loyal in his support. They both warn the delinquents when they are
+about to make a seizure. Vermichel, Brunet's assistant, went to the
+Grand-I-Vert this morning, ostensibly after Pere Fourchon; and Marie
+Tonsard, who is intimate with Bonnebault, ran off at once to give the
+alarm at Conches. The depredations have begun again."
+
+"A strong show of authority is becoming daily more and more necessary,"
+said Sibilet.
+
+"What did I tell you?" cried the general. "We must demand the
+enforcement of the judgment of the court, which carried with it
+imprisonment; we must arrest for debt all those who do not pay the
+damages I have won and the costs of the suits."
+
+"These fellows imagine the law is powerless, and tell each other that
+you dare not arrest them," said Sibilet. "They think they frighten you!
+They have confederates at Ville-aux-Fayes; for even the prosecuting
+attorney seems to have ignored the verdicts against them."
+
+"I think," said Michaud, seeing that the general looked thoughtful,
+"that if you are willing to spend a good deal of money you can still
+protect the property."
+
+"It is better to spend money than to act harshly," remarked Sibilet.
+
+"What is your plan?" asked the general of his bailiff.
+
+"It is very simple," said Michaud. "Inclose the whole forest with walls,
+like those of the park, and you will be safe; the slightest depredation
+then becomes a criminal offence and is taken to the assizes."
+
+"At a franc and a half the square foot for the material only, Monsieur
+le comte would find his wall would cost him a third of the whole value
+of Les Aigues," said Sibilet, with a laugh.
+
+"Well, well," said Montcornet, "I shall go and see the attorney-general
+at once."
+
+"The attorney-general," remarked Sibilet, gently, "may perhaps share the
+opinion of his subordinate; for the negligence shown by the latter is
+probably the result of an agreement between them."
+
+"Then I wish to know it!" cried Montcornet. "If I have to get the whole
+of them turned out, judges, civil authorities, and the attorney-general
+to boot, I'll do it; I'll go the Keeper of the Seals, or to the king
+himself."
+
+At a vehement sign made by Michaud the general stopped short and said
+to Sibilet, as he turned to retrace his steps, "Good day, my dear
+fellow,"--words which the steward understood.
+
+"Does Monsieur le comte intend, as mayor, to enforce the necessary
+measures to repress the abuse of gleaning?" he said, respectfully.
+"The harvest is coming on, and if we are to publish the statutes about
+certificates of pauperism and the prevention of paupers from other
+districts gleaning our land, there is no time to be lost."
+
+"Do it at once, and arrange with Groison," said the count. "With such a
+class of people," he added, "we must follow out the law."
+
+So, without a moment's reflection, Montcornet gave in to a measure that
+Sibilet had been proposing to him for more than a fortnight, to which
+he had hitherto refused to consent; but now, in the violence of anger
+caused by Vatel's mishap, he instantly adopted it as the right thing to
+do.
+
+When Sibilet was at some distance the general said in a low voice to his
+bailiff:--
+
+"Well, my dear Michaud, what is it; why did you make me that sign?"
+
+"You have an enemy within the walls, general, yet you tell him plans
+which you ought not to confide even to the secret police."
+
+"I share your suspicions, my dear friend," replied Montcornet, "but I
+don't intend to commit the same fault twice over. I shall not part with
+another steward till I'm sure of a better. I am waiting to get rid of
+Sibilet, till you understand the business of steward well enough to
+take his place, and till Vatel is fit to succeed you. And yet, I have
+no ground of complaint against Sibilet. He is honest and punctual in
+all his dealings; he hasn't kept back a hundred francs in all these five
+years. He has a perfectly detestable nature, and that's all one can say
+against him. If it were otherwise, what would be his plan in acting as
+he does?"
+
+"General," said Michaud, gravely, "I will find out, for undoubtedly
+he has one; and if you would only allow it, a good bribe to that old
+scoundrel Fourchon will enable me to get at the truth; though after what
+he said just now I suspect the old fellow of having more secrets than
+one in his pouch. That swindling old cordwainer told me himself they
+want to drive you from Les Aigues. And let me tell you, for you ought to
+know it, that from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes there is not a peasant, a
+petty tradesman, a farmer, a tavern-keeper who isn't laying by his money
+to buy a bit of the estate. Fourchon confided to me that Tonsard has
+already put in his claim. The idea that you can be forced to sell Les
+Aigues has gone from end to end of the valley like an infection in the
+air. It may be that the steward's present house, with some adjoining
+land, will be the price paid for Sibilet's spying. Nothing is ever said
+among us that is not immediately known at Ville-aux-Fayes. Sibilet is
+a relative of your enemy Gaubertin. What you have just said about the
+attorney-general and the others will probably be reported before you
+have reached the Prefecture. You don't know what the inhabitants of this
+district are."
+
+"Don't I know them? I know they are the scum of the earth! Do you
+suppose I am going to yield to such blackguards?" cried the general.
+"Good heavens, I'd rather burn Les Aigues myself!"
+
+"No need to burn it; let us adopt a line of conduct which will baffle
+the schemes of these Lilliputians. Judging by threats, general, they
+are resolved on war to the knife against you; and therefore since you
+mention incendiarism, let me beg of you to insure all your buildings,
+and all your farmhouses."
+
+"Michaud, do you know whom they mean by 'Shopman'? Yesterday, as I was
+riding along by the Thune, I heard some little rascals cry out, 'The
+Shopman! here's the Shopman!' and then they ran away."
+
+"Ask Sibilet; the answer is in his line, he likes to make you
+angry," said Michaud, with a pained look. "But--if you will have an
+answer--well, that's a nickname these brigands have given you, general."
+
+"What does it mean?"
+
+"It means, general--well, it refers to your father."
+
+"Ha! the curs!" cried the count, turning livid. "Yes, Michaud, my father
+was a shopkeeper, an upholsterer; the countess doesn't know it. Oh!
+that I should ever--well! after all, I have waltzed with queens and
+empresses. I'll tell her this very night," he cried, after a pause.
+
+"They also call you a coward," continued Michaud.
+
+"Ha!"
+
+"They ask how you managed to save yourself at Essling when nearly all
+your comrades perished."
+
+The accusation brought a smile to the general's lips. "Michaud, I shall
+go at once to the Prefecture!" he cried, with a sort of fury, "if it
+is only to get the policies of insurance you ask for. Let Madame la
+comtesse know that I have gone. Ha, ha! they want war, do they? Well,
+they shall have it; I'll take my pleasure in thwarting them,--every one
+of them, those bourgeois of Soulanges, and their peasantry! We are in
+the enemy's country, therefore prudence! Tell the foresters to keep
+within the limits of the law. Poor Vatel, take care of him. The countess
+is inclined to be timid; she must know nothing of all this; otherwise I
+could never get her to come back here."
+
+Neither the general nor Michaud understood their real peril. Michaud had
+been too short a time in this Burgundian valley to realize the enemy's
+power, though he saw its action. The general, for his part, believed in
+the supremacy of the law.
+
+The law, such as the legislature of these days manufactures it, has not
+the virtue we attribute to it. It strikes unequally; it is so modified
+in many of its modes of application that it virtually refutes its own
+principles. This fact may be noted more or less distinctly throughout
+all ages. Is there any historian ignorant enough to assert that the
+decrees of the most vigilant of powers were ever enforced throughout
+France?--for instance, that the requisitions of the Convention for
+men, commodities, and money were obeyed in Provence, in the depths of
+Normandy, on the borders of Brittany, as they were at the great centres
+of social life? What philosopher dares deny that a head falls to-day in
+such or such department, while in a neighboring department another head
+stays on its shoulders though guilty of a crime identically the same,
+and often more horrible? We ask for equality in life, and inequality
+reigns in law and in the death penalty!
+
+When the population of a town falls below a certain figure the
+administrative system is no longer the same. There are perhaps a hundred
+cities in France where the laws are vigorously enforced, and there the
+intelligence of the citizens rises to the conception of the problem of
+public welfare and future security which the law seeks to solve; but
+throughout the rest of France nothing is comprehended beyond immediate
+gratification; people rebel against all that lessens it. Therefore in
+nearly one half of France we find a power of inertia which defeats all
+legal action, both municipal and governmental. This resistance, be it
+understood, does not affect the essential things of public polity.
+The collection of taxes, recruiting, punishment of great crimes, as a
+general thing do systematically go on; but outside of such recognized
+necessities, all legislative decrees which affect customs, morals,
+private interests, and certain abuses, are a dead letter, owing to the
+sullen opposition of the people. At the very moment when this book
+is going to press, this dumb resistance, which opposed Louis XIV. in
+Brittany, may still be seen and felt. See the unfortunate results of
+the game-laws, to which we are now sacrificing yearly the lives of some
+twenty or thirty men for the sake of preserving a few animals.
+
+In France the law is, to at least twenty million of inhabitants, nothing
+more than a bit of white paper posted on the doors of the church and the
+town-hall. That gives rise to the term "papers," which Mouche used to
+express legality. Many mayors of cantons (not to speak of the district
+mayors) put up their bundles of seeds and herbs with the printed
+statutes. As for the district mayors, the number of those who do not
+know how to read and write is really alarming, and the manner in which
+the civil records are kept is even more so. The danger of this state of
+things, well-known to the governing powers, is doubtless diminishing;
+but what centralization (against which every one declaims, as it is
+the fashion in France to declaim against all things good and useful and
+strong),--what centralization cannot touch, the Power against which it
+will forever fling itself in vain, is that which the general was now
+about to attack, and which we shall take leave to call the Mediocracy.
+
+A great outcry was made against the tyranny of the nobles; in these days
+the cry is against that of capitalists, against abuses of power, which
+may be merely the inevitable galling of the social yoke, called Compact
+by Rousseau, Constitution by some, Charter by others; Czar here,
+King there, Parliament in Great Britain; while in France the general
+levelling begun in 1789 and continued in 1830 has paved the way for the
+juggling dominion of the middle classes, and delivered the nation
+into their hands without escape. The portrayal of one fact alone,
+unfortunately only too common in these days, namely, the subjection of
+a canton, a little town, a sub-prefecture, to the will of a family
+clique,--in short, the power acquired by Gaubertin,--will show this
+social danger better than all dogmatic statements put together. Many
+oppressed communities will recognize the truth of this picture; many
+persons secretly and silently crushed by this tyranny will find in these
+words an obituary, as it were, which may half console them for their
+hidden woes.
+
+At the very moment when the general imagined himself to be renewing a
+warfare in which there had really been no truce, his former steward had
+just completed the last meshes of the net-work in which he now held the
+whole arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. To avoid too many explanations
+it is necessary to state, once for all, succinctly, the genealogical
+ramifications by means of which Gaubertin wound himself about the
+country, as a boa-constrictor winds around a tree,--with such art that a
+passing traveller thinks he beholds some natural effect of the tropical
+vegetation.
+
+In 1793 there were three brothers of the name of Mouchon in the valley
+of the Avonne. After 1793 they changed the name of the valley to that of
+the Valley des Aigues, out of hatred to the old nobility.
+
+The eldest brother, steward of the property of the Ronquerolles family,
+was elected deputy of the department to the Convention. Like his
+friend, Gaubertin's father, the prosecutor of those days, who saved
+the Soulanges family, he saved the property and the lives of the
+Ronquerolles. He had two daughters; one married to Gendrin, the lawyer,
+the other to Gaubertin. He died in 1804.
+
+The second, through the influence of his elder brother, was made
+postmaster at Conches. His only child was a daughter, married to a rich
+farmer named Guerbet. He died in 1817.
+
+The last of the Mouchons, who was a priest, and the curate of
+Ville-aux-Fayes before the Revolution, was again a priest after the
+re-establishment of Catholic worship, and again the curate of the same
+little town. He was not willing to take the oath, and was hidden for a
+long time in the hermitage of Les Aigues, under the protection of the
+Gaubertins, father and son. Now about sixty-seven years of age, he was
+treated with universal respect and affection, owing to the harmony of
+his nature with that of the inhabitants. Parsimonious to the verge of
+avarice, he was thought to be rich, and the credit of being so increased
+the respect that was shown to him. Monseigneur the bishop paid the
+greatest attention to the Abbe Mouchon, who was always spoken of as the
+venerable curate of Ville-aux-Fayes; and the fact that he had several
+times refused to go and live in a splendid parsonage attached to the
+Prefecture, where Monseigneur wished to settle him, made him dearer
+still to his people.
+
+Gaubertin, now mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, received steady support from
+his brother-in-law Gendrin, who was judge of the municipal court.
+Gaubertin the younger, the solicitor who had the most practice before
+this court and much repute in the arrondissement, was already thinking
+of selling his practice after five years' exercise of it. He wanted
+to succeed his Uncle Gendrin as counsellor whenever the latter should
+retire from the profession. Gendrin's only son was commissioner of
+mortgages.
+
+Soudry's son, who for the last two years had been prosecuting-attorney
+at the prefecture, was Gaubertin's henchman. The clever Madame Soudry
+had secured the future of her husband's son by marrying him to Rigou's
+only daughter. The united fortunes of the Soudrys and the ex-monk, which
+would come eventually to the attorney, made that young man one of the
+most important personages of the department.
+
+The sub-prefect of Ville-aux-Fayes, Monsieur des Lupeaulx, nephew of the
+general-secretary of one of the most important ministries in Paris, was
+the prospective husband of Mademoiselle Elise Gaubertin, the mayor's
+youngest daughter, whose dowry, like that of her elder sister, was
+two hundred thousand francs, not to speak of "expectations." This
+functionary showed much sense, though not aware of it, in falling in
+love with Mademoiselle Elise when he first arrived at Ville-aux-Fayes,
+in 1819. If it had not been for his social position, which made him
+"eligible," he would long ago have been forced to ask for his exchange.
+But Gaubertin in marrying him to his daughter thought much more of the
+uncle, the general-secretary, than of the nephew; and in return, the
+uncle, for the sake of his nephew, gave all his influence to Gaubertin.
+
+Thus the Church, the magistracy both removable and irremovable, the
+municipality, and the prefecture, the four feet of power, walked as the
+mayor pleased. Let us now see how that functionary strengthened himself
+in the spheres above and below that in which he worked.
+
+The department to which Ville-aux-Fayes belongs is one the number of
+whose population gives it the right to elect six deputies. Ever since
+the creation of the Left Centre of the Chamber, the arrondissement of
+Ville-aux-Fayes had sent a deputy named Leclercq, formerly banking agent
+of the wine department of the custom-house, a son-in-law of Gaubertin,
+and now a governor of the Bank of France. The number of electors which
+this rich valley sent to the electoral college was sufficient to insure,
+if only through private dealing, the constant appointment of Monsieur
+de Ronquerolles, the patron of the Mouchon family. The voters of
+Ville-aux-Fayes lent their support to the prefect, on condition that the
+Marquis de Ronquerolles was maintained in the college. Thus Gaubertin,
+who was the first to broach the idea of this arrangement, was favorably
+received at the Prefecture, which he often, in return, saved from petty
+annoyances. The prefect always selected three firm ministerialists,
+and two deputies of the Left Centre. The latter, one of them being the
+Marquis de Ronquerolles, brother-in-law of the Comte de Serisy, and the
+other a governor of the Bank of France, gave little or no alarm to the
+cabinet, and the elections in this department were rated excellent at
+the ministry of the interior.
+
+The Comte de Soulanges, peer of France, selected to be the next marshal,
+and faithful to the Bourbons, knew that his forests and other property
+were all well-managed by the notary Lupin, and well-watched by Soudry.
+He was a patron of Gendrin's, having obtained his appointment as judge
+partly by the help of Monsieur de Ronquerolles.
+
+Messieurs Leclercq and de Ronquerolles sat in the Left Centre, but
+nearer to the left than to the centre,--a political position which
+offers great advantages to those who regard their political conscience
+as a garment.
+
+The brother of Monsieur Leclercq had obtained the situation of collector
+at Ville-aux-Fayes, and Leclercq himself, Gaubertin's son-in-law, had
+lately bought a fine estate beyond the valley of the Avonne, which
+brought him in a rental of thirty thousand francs, with park and chateau
+and a controlling influence in its own canton.
+
+Thus, in the upper regions of the State, in both Chambers, and in the
+chief ministerial department, Gaubertin could rely on an influence that
+was powerful and also active, and which he was careful not to weary with
+unimportant requests.
+
+The counsellor Gendrin, appointed judge by the Chamber, was the leading
+spirit of the Supreme Court; for the chief justice, one of the three
+ministerial deputies, left the management of it to Gendrin during half
+the year. The counsel for the Prefecture, a cousin of Sarcus, called
+"Sarcus the rich," was the right-hand man of the prefect, himself a
+deputy. Even without the family reasons which allied Gaubertin and young
+des Lupeaulx, a brother of Madame Sarcus would still have been desirable
+as sub-prefect to the arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. Madame Sarcus,
+the counsellor's wife, was a Vallat of Soulanges, a family connected
+with the Gaubertins, and she was said to have "distinguished" the notary
+Lupin in her youth. Though she was now forty-five years old, with a son
+in the school of engineers, Lupin never went to the Prefecture without
+paying his respects and dining with her.
+
+The nephew of Guerbet, the postmaster, whose father was, as we have
+seen, collector of Soulanges, held the important situation of examining
+judge in the municipal court of Ville-aux-Fayes. The third judge, son of
+Corbinet, the notary, belonged body and soul to the all-powerful mayor;
+and, finally, young Vigor, son of the lieutenant of the gendarmerie, was
+the substitute judge.
+
+Sibilet's father, sheriff of the court, had married his sister to
+Monsieur Vigor the lieutenant, and that individual, father of six
+children, was cousin of the father of Gaubertin through his wife, a
+Gaubertin-Vallat. Eighteen months previously the united efforts of the
+two deputies, Monsieur de Soulanges and Gaubertin, had created the place
+of commissary of police for the sheriff's second son.
+
+Sibilet's eldest daughter married Monsieur Herve, a school-master, whose
+school was transformed into a college as a result of this marriage,
+so that for the past year Soulanges had rejoiced in the presence of a
+professor.
+
+The sheriff's youngest son was employed on the government domains, with
+the promise of succeeding the clerk of registrations so soon as that
+officer had completed the term of service which enabled him to retire on
+a pension.
+
+The youngest Sibilet girl, now sixteen years old, was betrothed
+to Corbinet, brother of the notary. And an old maid, Mademoiselle
+Gaubertin-Vallat, sister of Madame Sibilet, the sheriff's wife, held the
+office for the sale of stamped paper.
+
+Thus, wherever we turn in Ville-aux-Fayes we meet some member of the
+invisible coalition, whose avowed chief, recognized as such by every
+one, great and small, was the mayor of the town, the general agent for
+the entire timber business, Gaubertin!
+
+If we turn to the other end of the valley of the Avonne we shall see
+that Gaubertin ruled at Soulanges through the Soudrys, through Lupin the
+assistant mayor and steward of the Soulanges estate, who was necessarily
+in constant communication with the Comte de Soulanges, through Sarcus,
+justice of the peace, through Guerbet, the collector, through Gourdon,
+the doctor, who had married a Gendrin-Vatebled. He governed Blangy
+through Rigou, Conches through the post-master, the despotic ruler of
+his own district.
+
+Gaubertin's influence was so great and powerful that even the
+investments and the savings of Rigou, Soudry, Gendrin, Guerbet, Lupin,
+even Sarcus the rich himself, were managed by his advice. The town of
+Ville-aux-Fayes believed implicitly in its mayor. Gaubertin's ability
+was not less extolled than his honesty and his kindness; he was the
+servant of his relatives and constituents (always with an eye to a
+return of benefits), and the whole municipality adored him. The town
+never ceased to blame Monsieur Mariotte, of Auxerre, for having opposed
+and thwarted that worthy Monsieur Gaubertin.
+
+Not aware of their strength, no occasion for displaying it having
+arisen, the bourgeoisie of Ville-aux-Fayes contented themselves with
+boasting that no strangers intermeddled in their affairs and they
+believed themselves excellent citizens and faithful public servants.
+Nothing, however, escaped their despotic rule, which in itself was not
+perceived, the result being considered a triumph of the locality.
+
+The only stranger in this family community was the government engineer
+in the highway department; and his dismissal in favor of the son of
+Sarcus the rich was now being pressed, with a fair chance that this one
+weak thread in the net would soon be strengthened. And yet this powerful
+league, which monopolized all duties both public and private, sucked the
+resources of the region, and fastened on power like limpets to a
+ship, escaped all notice so completely that General Montcornet had
+no suspicion of it. The prefect boasted of the prosperity of
+Ville-aux-Fayes and its arrondissement; even the minister of the
+interior was heard to remark: "There's a model sub-prefecture, which
+runs on wheels; we should be lucky indeed if all were like it." Family
+designs were so involved with local interests that here, as in many
+other little towns and even prefectures, a functionary who did not
+belong to the place would have been forced to resign within a year.
+
+When this despotic middle-class cousinry seizes a victim, he is so
+carefully gagged and bound that complaint is impossible; he is
+smeared with slime and wax like a snail in a beehive. This invisible,
+imperceptible tyranny is upheld by powerful reasons,--such as the wish
+to be surrounded by their own family, to keep property in their own
+hands, the mutual help they ought to lend each other, the guarantees
+given to the administration by the fact that their agent is under the
+eyes of his fellow-citizens and neighbors. What does all this lead
+to? To the fact that local interests supersede all questions of public
+interest; the centralized will of Paris is frequently overthrown in the
+provinces, the truth of things is disguised, and country communities
+snap their fingers at government. In short, after the main public
+necessities have been attended to, it will be seen that the laws,
+instead of acting upon the masses, receive their impulse from them; the
+populations adapt the law to themselves and not themselves to the law.
+
+Whoever has travelled in the south or west of France, or in Alsace, in
+any other way than from inn to inn to see buildings and landscapes, will
+surely admit the truth of these remarks. The results of middle-class
+nepotism may be, at present, merely isolated evils; but the tendency of
+existing laws is to increase them. This low-level despotism can and will
+cause great disasters, and the events of the drama about to be played in
+the valley of Les Aigues will prove it.
+
+The monarchical and imperial systems, more rashly overthrown than people
+realize, remedied these abuses by means of certain consecrated lives,
+by classifications and categories and by those particular counterpoises
+since so absurdly defined as "privileges." There are no privileges now,
+when every human being is free to climb the greased pole of power. But
+surely it would be safer to allow open and avowed privileges than those
+which are underhand, based on trickery, subversive of what should be
+public spirit, and continuing the work of despotism to a lower and baser
+level than heretofore. May we not have overthrown noble tyrants devoted
+to their country's good, to create the tyranny of selfish interests?
+Shall power lurk in secret places, instead of radiating from its natural
+source? This is worth thinking about. The spirit of local sectionalism,
+such as we have now depicted, will soon be seen to invade the Chamber.
+
+Montcornet's friend, the late prefect, Comte de la Roche-Hugon, had lost
+his position just before the last arrival of the general at Les Aigues.
+This dismissal drove him into the ranks of the Liberal opposition,
+where he became one of the chorus of the Left, a position he soon after
+abandoned for an embassy. His successor, luckily for Montcornet, was
+a son-in-law of the Marquis de Troisville, uncle of the countess, the
+Comte de Casteran. He welcomed Montcornet as a relation and begged
+him to continue his intimacy at the Prefecture. After listening to
+the general's complaints the Comte de Casteran invited the bishop, the
+attorney-general, the colonel of the gendarmerie, counsellor Sarcus,
+and the general commanding the division to meet him the next day at
+breakfast.
+
+The attorney-general, Baron Bourlac (so famous in the Chanterie and
+Rifael suits), was one of those men well-known to all governments, who
+attach themselves to power, no matter in whose hands it is, and who make
+themselves invaluable by such devotion. Having owed his elevation in the
+first place to his fanaticism for the Emperor, he now owed the
+retention of his official rank to his inflexible character and the
+conscientiousness with which he fulfilled his duties. He who once
+implacably prosecuted the remnant of the Chouans now prosecuted the
+Bonapartists as implacably. But years and turmoils had somewhat subdued
+his energy and he had now become, like other old devils incarnate,
+perfectly charming in manner and ways.
+
+The general explained his position and the fears of his bailiff, and
+spoke of the necessity of making an example and enforcing the rights of
+property.
+
+The high functionaries listened gravely, making, however, no reply
+beyond mere platitudes, such as, "Undoubtedly, the laws must be upheld";
+"Your cause is that of all land-owners"; "We will consider it; but,
+situated as we are, prudence is very necessary"; "A monarchy could
+certainly do more for the people than the people would do for itself,
+even if it were, as in 1793, the sovereign people"; "The masses suffer,
+and we are bound to do as much for them as for ourselves."
+
+The relentless attorney-general expressed such kindly and benevolent
+views respecting the condition of the lower classes that our future
+Utopians, had they heard him, might have thought that the higher grade
+of government officials were already aware of the difficulties of that
+problem which modern society will be forced to solve.
+
+It may be well to say here that at this period of the Restoration,
+various bloody encounters had taken place in remote parts of the
+kingdom, caused by this very question of the pillage of woods, and
+the marauding rights which the peasants were everywhere arrogating to
+themselves. Neither the government nor the court liked these outbreaks,
+nor the shedding of blood which resulted from repression. Though they
+felt the necessity of rigorous measures, they nevertheless treated
+as blunderers the officials who were compelled to employ them, and
+dismissed them on the first pretence. The prefects were therefore
+anxious to shuffle out of such difficulties whenever possible.
+
+At the very beginning of the conversation Sarcus (the rich) had made a
+sign to the prefect and the attorney-general which Montcornet did not
+see, but which set the tone of the discussion. The attorney-general was
+well aware of the state of mind of the inhabitants of the valley des
+Aigues through his subordinate, Soudry the young attorney.
+
+"I foresee a terrible struggle," the latter had said to him. "They mean
+to kill the gendarmes; my spies tell me so. It will be very hard to
+convict them for it. The instant the jury feel they are incurring the
+hatred of the friends of the twenty or thirty prisoners, they will not
+sustain us,--we could not get them to convict for death, nor even for
+the galleys. Possibly by prosecuting in person you might get a few
+years' imprisonment for the actual murderers. Better shut our eyes
+than open them, if by opening them we bring on a collision which costs
+bloodshed and several thousand francs to the State,--not to speak of the
+cost of keeping the guilty in prison. It is too high a price to pay for
+a victory which will only reveal our judicial weakness to the eyes of
+all."
+
+Montcornet, who was wholly without suspicion of the strength and
+influence of the Mediocracy in his happy valley, did not even mention
+Gaubertin, whose hand kept these embers of opposition always alive,
+though smouldering. After breakfast the attorney-general took Montcornet
+by the arm and led him to the Prefect's study. When the general left
+that room after their conference, he wrote to his wife that he was
+starting for Paris and should be absent a week. We shall see, after
+the execution of certain measures suggested by Baron Bourlac, the
+attorney-general, whether the secret advice he gave to Montcornet was
+wise, and whether in conforming to it the count and Les Aigues were
+enabled to escape the "Evil grudge."
+
+Some minds, eager for mere amusement, will complain that these various
+explanations are far too long; but we once more call attention to the
+fact that the historian of the manners, customs, and morals of his time
+must obey a law far more stringent than that imposed on the historian of
+mere facts. He must show the probability of everything, even the truth;
+whereas, in the domain of history, properly so-called, the impossible
+must be accepted for the sole reason that it did happen. The
+vicissitudes of social or private life are brought about by a crowd of
+little causes derived from a thousand conditions. The man of science
+is forced to clear away the avalanche under which whole villages lie
+buried, to show you the pebbles brought down from the summit which alone
+can determine the formation of the mountain. If the historian of human
+life were simply telling you of a suicide, five hundred of which occur
+yearly in Paris, the melodrama is so commonplace that brief reasons and
+explanations are all that need be given; but how shall he make you see
+that the self-destruction of an estate could happen in these days when
+property is reckoned of more value than life? "De re vestra agitur,"
+said a maker of fables; this tale concerns the affairs and interests of
+all those, no matter who they be, who possess anything.
+
+Remember that this coalition of a whole canton and of a little town
+against a general, who, in spite of his rash courage, had escaped the
+dangers of actual war, is going on in other districts against other men
+who seek only to do what is right by those districts. It is a coalition
+which to-day threatens every man, the man of genius, the statesman, the
+modern agriculturalist,--in short, all innovators.
+
+This last explanation not only gives a true presentation of the
+personages of this drama, and a serious meaning even to its petty
+details, but it also throws a vivid light upon the scene where so many
+social interests are now marshalling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE SADNESS OF A HAPPY WOMAN
+
+
+At the moment when the general was getting into his caleche to go to the
+Prefecture, the countess and the two gentlemen reached the gate of the
+Avonne, where, for the last eighteen months, Michaud and his wife Olympe
+had made their home.
+
+Whose remembered the pavilion in the state in which we lately described
+it would have supposed it had been rebuilt. The bricks fallen or broken
+by time, and the cement lacking to their edges, were replaced; the slate
+roof had been cleaned, and the effect of the white balustrade against
+its bluish background restored the gay character of the architecture.
+The approaches to the building, formerly choked up and sandy, were now
+cared for by the man whose duty it was to keep the park roadways
+in order. The poultry-yard, stables, and cow-shed, relegated to the
+buildings near the pheasantry and hidden by clumps of trees, instead
+of afflicting the eye with their foul details, now blended those soft
+murmurs and cooings and the sound of flapping wings, which are among
+the most delightful accompaniments of Nature's eternal harmony, with the
+peculiar rustling sounds of the forest. The whole scene possessed the
+double charm of a natural, untouched forest and the elegance of an
+English park. The surroundings of the pavilion, in keeping with its
+own exterior, presented a certain noble, dignified, and cordial effect;
+while the hand of a young and happy woman gave to its interior a
+very different look from what it wore under the coarse neglect of
+Courtecuisse.
+
+Just now the rich season of the year was putting forth its natural
+splendors. The perfume of the flowerbeds blended with the wild odor of
+the woods; and the meadows near by, where the grass had been lately cut,
+sent up the fragrance of new-mown hay.
+
+When the countess and her guests reached the end of one of the winding
+paths which led to the pavilion, they saw Madame Michaud, sitting in the
+open air before the door, employed in making a baby's garment. The young
+woman thus placed, thus employed, added the human charm that was needed
+to complete the scene,--a charm so touching in its actuality that
+painters have committed the error of endeavoring to convey it in their
+pictures. Such artists forget that the SOUL of a landscape, if they
+represent it truly, is so grand that the human element is crushed by it;
+whereas such a scene added to Nature limits her to the proportions
+of the personality, like a frame to which the mind of the spectator
+confines it. When Poussin, the Raffaelle of France, made a landscape
+accessory to his Shepherds of Arcadia he perceived plainly enough that
+man becomes diminutive and abject when Nature is made the principal
+feature on a canvas. In that picture August is in its glory, the harvest
+is ready, all simple and strong human interests are represented. There
+we find realized in nature the dream of many men whose uncertain life of
+mingled good and evil harshly mixed makes them long for peace and rest.
+
+Let us now relate, in few words, the romance of this home. Justin
+Michaud did not reply very cordially to the advances made to him by the
+illustrious colonel of cuirassiers when first offered the situation of
+bailiff at Les Aigues. He was then thinking of re-entering the service.
+But while the negotiations, which naturally took him to the Hotel
+Montcornet, were going on, he met the countess's head waiting-maid. This
+young girl, who was entrusted to Madame de Montcornet by her parents,
+worthy farmers in the neighborhood of Alencon, had hopes of a little
+fortune, some twenty or thirty thousand francs, when the heirs were all
+of age. Like other farmers who marry young, and whose own parents are
+still living, the father and mother of the girl, being pinched
+for immediate means, placed her with the young countess. Madame de
+Montcornet had her taught to sew and to make dresses, arranged that she
+should take her meals alone, and was rewarded for the care she bestowed
+on Olympe Charel by one of those unconditional attachments which are so
+precious to Parisians.
+
+Olympe Charel, a pretty Norman girl, rather stout, with fair hair of
+a golden tint, an animated face lighted by intelligent eyes, and
+distinguished by a finely curved thoroughbred nose, with a maidenly
+air in spite of a certain swaying Spanish manner of carrying herself,
+possessed all the points that a young girl born just above the level
+of the masses is likely to acquire from whatever close companionship a
+mistress is willing to allow her. Always suitably dressed, with modest
+bearing and manner, and able to express herself well, Michaud was soon
+in love with her,--all the more when he found that his sweetheart's
+dowry would one day be considerable. The obstacles came from the
+countess, who could not bear to part with so invaluable a maid; but when
+Montcornet explained to her the affairs at Les Aigues, she gave way, and
+the marriage was no longer delayed, except to obtain the consent of the
+parents, which, of course, was quickly given.
+
+Michaud, like his general, looked upon his wife as a superior being, to
+whom he owed military obedience without a single reservation. He found
+in the peace of his home and his busy life out-of-doors the elements
+of a happiness soldiers long for when they give up their
+profession,--enough work to keep his body healthy, enough fatigue to
+let him know the charms of rest. In spite of his well-known intrepidity,
+Michaud had never been seriously wounded, and he had none of those
+physical pains which often sour the temper of veterans. Like all really
+strong men, his temper was even; his wife, therefore, loved him utterly.
+From the time they took up their abode in the pavilion, this happy home
+was the scene of a long honey-moon in harmony with Nature and with the
+art whose creations surrounded them,--a circumstance rare indeed! The
+things about us are seldom in keeping with the condition of our souls!
+
+The picture was so pretty that the countess stopped short and pointed
+it out to Blondet and the abbe; for they could see Madame Michaud from
+where they stood, without her seeing them.
+
+"I always come this way when I walk in the park," said the countess,
+softly. "I delight in looking at the pavilion and its two turtle-doves,
+as much as I delight in a fine view."
+
+She leaned significantly on Blondet's arm, as if to make him share
+sentiments too delicate for words but which all women feel.
+
+"I wish I were a gate-keeper at Les Aigues," said Blondet, smiling.
+"Why! what troubles you?" he added, noticing an expression of sadness on
+the countess's face.
+
+"Nothing," she replied.
+
+Women are always hiding some important thought when they say,
+hypocritically, "It is nothing."
+
+"A woman may be the victim of ideas which would seem very flimsy to
+you," she added, "but which, to us, are terrible. As for me, I envy
+Olympe's lot."
+
+"God hears you," said the abbe, smiling as though to soften the
+sternness of his remark.
+
+Madame de Montcornet grew seriously uneasy when she noticed an
+expression of fear and anxiety in Olympe's face and attitude. By the
+way a woman draws out her needle or sets her stitches another woman
+understands her thoughts. In fact, though wearing a rose-colored dress,
+with her hair carefully braided about her head, the bailiff's wife was
+thinking of matters that were out of keeping with her pretty dress,
+the glorious day, and the work her hands were engaged on. Her beautiful
+brow, and the glance she turned sometimes on the ground at her feet,
+sometimes on the foliage around, evidently seeing nothing, betrayed some
+deep anxiety,--all the more unconsciously because she supposed herself
+alone.
+
+"Just as I was envying her! What can have saddened her?" whispered the
+countess to the abbe.
+
+"Madame," he replied in the same tone, "tell me why man is often seized
+with vague and unaccountable presentiments of evil in the very midst of
+some perfect happiness?"
+
+"Abbe!" said Blondet, smiling, "you talk like a bishop. Napoleon said,
+'Nothing is stolen, all is bought!'"
+
+"Such a maxim, uttered by those imperial lips, takes the proportions of
+society itself," replied the priest.
+
+"Well, Olympe, my dear girl, what is the matter?" said the countess
+going up to her former maid. "You seem sad and thoughtful; is it a
+lover's quarrel?"
+
+Madame Michaud's face, as she rose, changed completely.
+
+"My dear," said Emile Blondet, in a fatherly tone, "I should like to
+know what clouds that brow of yours, in this pavilion where you are
+almost as well lodged as the Comte d'Artois at the Tuileries. It is
+like a nest of nightingales in a grove! And what a husband we have!--the
+bravest fellow of the young garde, and a handsome one, who loves us to
+distraction! If I had known the advantages Montcornet has given you here
+I should have left my diatribing business and made myself a bailiff."
+
+"It is not the place for a man of your talent, monsieur," replied
+Olympe, smiling at Blondet as an old acquaintance.
+
+"But what troubles you, dear?" said the countess.
+
+"Madame, I'm afraid--"
+
+"Afraid! of what?" said the countess, eagerly; for the word reminded her
+of Mouche and Fourchon.
+
+"Afraid of the wolves, is that it?" said Emile, making Madame Michaud a
+sign, which she did not understand.
+
+"No, monsieur,--afraid of the peasants. I was born in Le Perche, where
+of course there are some bad people, but I had no idea how wicked people
+could be until I came here. I try not to meddle in Michaud's affairs,
+but I do know that he distrusts the peasants so much that he goes armed,
+even in broad daylight, when he enters the forest. He warns his men to
+be always on the alert. Every now and then things happen about here
+that bode no good. The other day I was walking along the wall, near
+the source of that little sandy rivulet which comes from the forest
+and enters the park through a culvert about five hundred feet from
+here,--you know it, madame? it is called Silver Spring, because of the
+star-flowers Bouret is said to have sown there. Well, I overheard the
+talk of two women who were washing their linen just where the path to
+Conches crosses the brook; they did not know I was there. Our house can
+be seen from that point, and one old woman pointed it out to the other,
+saying: 'See what a lot of money they have spent on the man who turned
+out Courtecuisse.' 'They ought to pay a man well when they set him to
+harass poor people as that man does,' answered the other. 'Well, it
+won't be for long,' said the first one; 'the thing is going to end soon.
+We have a right to our wood. The late Madame allowed us to take it.
+That's thirty years ago, so the right is ours.' 'We'll see what we shall
+see next winter,' replied the second. 'My man has sworn the great oath
+that all the gendarmerie in the world sha'n't keep us from getting our
+wood; he says he means to get it himself, and if the worst happens so
+much the worse for them!' 'Good God!' cried the other; 'we can't die
+of cold, and we must bake bread to eat! They want for nothing, _those
+others_! the wife of that scoundrel of a Michaud will be taken care of,
+I warrant you!' And then, Madame, they said such horrible things of me
+and of you and of Monsieur le comte; and they finally declared that the
+farms would all be burned, and then the chateau."
+
+"Bah!" said Emile, "idle talk! They have been robbing the general,
+and they will not be allowed to rob him any longer. These people are
+furious, that's the whole of it. You must remember that the law and the
+government are always strongest everywhere, even in Burgundy. In case
+of an outbreak the general could bring a regiment of cavalry here, if
+necessary."
+
+The abbe made a sign to Madame Michaud from behind the countess, telling
+her to say no more about her fears, which were doubtless the effect
+of that second sight which true passion bestows. The soul, dwelling
+exclusively on one only being, grasps in the end the moral elements that
+surround it, and sees in them the makings of the future. The woman who
+loves feels the same presentiments that later illuminate her motherhood.
+Hence a certain melancholy, a certain inexplicable sadness which
+surprises men, who are one and all distracted from any such
+concentration of their souls by the cares of life and the continual
+necessity for action. All true love becomes to a woman an active
+contemplation, which is more or less lucid, more or less profound,
+according to her nature.
+
+"Come, my dear, show your home to Monsieur Emile," said the countess,
+whose mind was so pre-occupied that she forgot La Pechina, who was the
+ostensible object of her visit.
+
+The interior of the restored pavilion was in keeping with its exterior.
+On the ground-floor the old divisions had been replaced, and the
+architect, sent from Paris with his own workmen (a cause of bitter
+complaint in the neighborhood against the master of Les Aigues), had
+made four rooms out of the space. First, an ante-chamber, at the farther
+end of which was a winding wooden staircase, behind which came the
+kitchen; on either side of the antechamber was a dining-room and a
+parlor panelled in oak now nearly black, with armorial bearings in the
+divisions of the ceilings. The architect chosen by Madame de Montcornet
+for the restoration of Les Aigues had taken care to put the furniture of
+this room in keeping with its original decoration.
+
+At the time of which we write fashion had not yet given an exaggerated
+value to the relics of past ages. The carved settee, the high-backed
+chairs covered with tapestry, the consoles, the clocks, the tall
+embroidery frames, the tables, the lustres, hidden away in the
+second-hand shops of Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes were fifty per-cent
+cheaper than the modern, ready-made furniture of the faubourg Saint
+Antoine. The architect had therefore bought two or three cartloads of
+well-chosen old things, which, added to a few others discarded at the
+chateau, made the little salon of the gate of the Avonne an artistic
+creation. As to the dining-room, he painted it in browns and hung it
+with what was called a Scotch paper, and Madame Michaud added white
+cambric curtains with green borders at the windows, mahogany chairs
+covered with green cloth, two large buffets and a table, also in
+mahogany. This room, ornamented with engravings of military scenes, was
+heated by a porcelain stove, on each side of which were sporting-guns
+suspended on the walls. These adornments, which cost but little, were
+talked of throughout the whole valley as the last extreme of oriental
+luxury. Singular to say, they, more than anything else, excited the
+envy of Gaubertin, and whenever he thought of his fixed determination
+to bring Les Aigues to the hammer and cut it in pieces, he reserved for
+himself, "in petto," this beautiful pavilion.
+
+On the next floor three chambers sufficed for the household. At the
+windows were muslin curtains which reminded a Parisian of the particular
+taste and fancy of bourgeois requirements. Left to herself in the
+decoration of these rooms, Madame Michaud had chosen satin papers; on
+the mantel-shelf of her bedroom--which was furnished in that vulgar
+style of mahogany and Utrecht velvet which is seen everywhere, with
+its high-backed bed and canopy to which embroidered muslin curtains are
+fastened--stood an alabaster clock between two candelabra covered with
+gauze and flanked by two vases filled with artificial flowers protected
+by glass shades, a conjugal gift of the former cavalry sergeant. Above,
+under the roof, the bedrooms of the cook, the man-of-all-work, and La
+Pechina had benefited by the recent restoration.
+
+"Olympe, my dear, you did not tell me all," said the countess, entering
+Madame Michaud's bedroom, and leaving Emile and the abbe on the
+stairway, whence they descended when they heard her shut the door.
+
+Madame Michaud, to whom the abbe had contrived to whisper a word, was
+now anxious to say no more about her fears, which were really greater
+than she had intimated, and she therefore began to talk of a matter
+which reminded the countess of the object of her visit.
+
+"I love Michaud, madame, as you know. Well, how would you like to have,
+in your own house, a rival always beside you?"
+
+"A rival?"
+
+"Yes, madame; that swarthy girl you gave me to take care of loves
+Michaud without knowing it, poor thing! The child's conduct, long a
+mystery to me, has been cleared up in my mind for some days."
+
+"Why, she is only thirteen years old!"
+
+"I know that, madame. But you will admit that a woman who is three
+months pregnant and means to nurse her child herself may have some
+fears; but as I did not want to speak of this before those gentlemen,
+I talked a great deal of nonsense when you questioned me," said the
+generous creature, adroitly.
+
+Madame Michaud was not really afraid of Genevieve Niseron, but for
+the last three days she was in mortal terror of some disaster from the
+peasantry.
+
+"How did you discover this?" said the countess.
+
+"From everything and from nothing," replied Olympe. "The poor little
+thing moves with the slowness of a tortoise when she is obliged to
+obey me, but she runs like a lizard when Justin asks for anything, she
+trembles like a leaf at the sound of his voice; and her face is that of
+a saint ascending to heaven when she looks at him. But she knows nothing
+about love; she has no idea that she loves him."
+
+"Poor child!" said the countess with a smile and tone that were full of
+naivete.
+
+"And so," continued Madame Michaud, answering with a smile the smile of
+her late mistress, "Genevieve is gloomy when Justin is out of the house;
+if I ask her what she is thinking of she replies that she is afraid
+of Monsieur Rigou, or some such nonsense. She thinks people envy her,
+though she is as black as the inside of a chimney. When Justin is
+patrolling the woods at night the child is as anxious as I am. If I
+open my window to listen for the trot of his horse, I see a light in her
+room, which shows me that La Pechina (as they call here) is watching and
+waiting too. She never goes to bed, any more than I do, till he comes
+in."
+
+"Thirteen!" exclaimed the countess; "unfortunate child!"
+
+"Unfortunate? no. This passion will save her."
+
+"From what?" asked Madame de Montcornet.
+
+"From the fate which overtakes nearly all the girls of her age in these
+parts. Since I have taught her cleanliness she is much less ugly than
+she was; in fact, there is something odd and wild about her which
+attracts men. She is so changed that you would hardly recognize her. The
+son of that infamous innkeeper of the Grand-I-Vert, Nicolas, the worst
+fellow in the whole district, wants her; he hunts her like game. Though
+I can't believe that Monsieur Rigou, who changes his servant-girls every
+year or two is persecuting such a little fright, it is quite certain
+that Nicolas Tonsard is. Justin told me so. It would be a dreadful fate,
+for the people of this valley actually live like beasts; but Justin and
+our two servants and I watch her carefully. Therefore don't be uneasy,
+madame; she never goes out alone except in broad daylight, and then only
+as far as the gate of Conches. If by chance she fell into an ambush, her
+feeling for Justin would give her strength and wit to escape; for all
+women who have a preference in their hearts can resist a man they hate."
+
+"It was about her that I came," said the countess, "and I little thought
+my visit could be so useful to you. That child, you know, can't remain
+thirteen; and she will probably grow better-looking."
+
+"Oh, madame," replied Olympe, smiling, "I am quite sure of Justin. What
+a man! what a heart!--If you only knew what a depth of gratitude he
+feels for his general, to whom, he says, he owes his happiness. He is
+only too devoted; he would risk his life for him here, as he would on
+the field of battle, and he forgets sometimes that he will one day be
+father of a family."
+
+"Ah! I once regretted losing you," said the countess, with a glance that
+made Olympe blush; "but I regret it no longer, for I see you happy. What
+a sublime and noble thing is married love!" she added, speaking out the
+thought she had not dared express before the abbe.
+
+Virginie de Troisville dropped into a revery, and Madame Michaud kept
+silence.
+
+"Well, at least the girl is honest, is she not?" said the countess, as
+if waking from a dream.
+
+"As honest as I am myself, madame."
+
+"Discreet?"
+
+"As the grave."
+
+"Grateful?"
+
+"Ah! madame; she has moments of humility and gentleness towards me which
+seem to show an angelic nature. She will kiss my hands and say the most
+upsetting things. 'Can we die of love?' she asked me yesterday. 'Why do
+you ask me that?' I said. 'I want to know if love is a disease.'"
+
+"Did she really say that?"
+
+"If I could remember her exact words I would tell you a great deal
+more," replied Olympe; "she appears to know much more than I do."
+
+"Do you think, my dear, that she could take your place in my service. I
+can't do without an Olympe," said the countess, smiling in a rather sad
+way.
+
+"Not yet, madame,--she is too young; but in two years' time, yes. If it
+becomes necessary that she should go away from here I will let you
+know. She ought to be educated, and she knows nothing of the world.
+Her grandfather, Pere Niseron, is a man who would let his throat be cut
+sooner than tell a lie; he would die of hunger in a baker's shop; he has
+the strength of his opinions, and the girl was brought up to all such
+principles. La Pechina would consider herself your equal; for the old
+man has made her, as he says, a republican,--just as Pere Fourchon has
+made Mouche a bohemian. As for me, I laugh at such ideas, but you might
+be displeased. She would revere you as her benefactress, but never
+as her superior. It can't be otherwise; she is wild and free like the
+swallows--her mother's blood counts for a good deal in what she is."
+
+"Who was her mother?"
+
+"Doesn't madame know the story?" said Olympe. "Well, the son of the old
+sexton at Blangy, a splendid fellow, so the people about here tell me,
+was drafted at the great conscription. In 1809 young Niseron was still
+only an artilleryman, in a corps d'armee stationed in Illyria and
+Dalmatia when it received sudden orders to advance through Hungary and
+cut off the retreat of the Austrian army in case the Emperor won the
+battle of Wagram. Michaud told me all about Dalmatia, for he was there.
+Niseron, being so handsome a man, captivated a Montenegrin girl of
+Zahara among the mountains, who was not averse to the French garrison.
+This lost her the good-will of her compatriots, and life in her own
+town became impossible after the departure of the French. Zena Kropoli,
+called in derision the Frenchwoman, followed the artillery, and came to
+France after the peace. Auguste Niseron asked permission to marry her;
+but the poor woman died at Vincennes in January, 1810, after giving
+birth to a daughter, our Genevieve. The papers necessary to make the
+marriage legal arrived a few days later. Auguste Niseron then wrote to
+his father to come and take the child, with a wetnurse he had got from
+its own country; and it was lucky he did, for he was killed soon after
+by the bursting of a shell at Montereau. Registered by the name of
+Genevieve and baptized at Soulanges, the little Dalmatian was taken
+under the protection of Mademoiselle Laguerre, who was touched by her
+story. It seems as if it were the destiny of the child to be taken care
+of by the owners of Les Aigues! Pere Niseron obtained its clothes, and
+now and then some help in money from Mademoiselle."
+
+The countess and Olympe were just then standing before a window from
+which they could see Michaud approaching the abbe and Blondet, who
+were walking up and down the wide, semi-circular gravelled space which
+repeated on the park side of the pavilion the exterior half-moon; they
+were conversing earnestly.
+
+"Where is she?" said the countess; "you make me anxious to see her."
+
+"She is gone to carry milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard at the gate of
+Conches; she will soon be back, for it is more than an hour since she
+started."
+
+"Well, I'll go and meet her with those gentlemen," said Madame de
+Montcornet, going downstairs.
+
+Just as the countess opened her parasol, Michaud came up and told her
+that the general had left her a widow for probably two days.
+
+"Monsieur Michaud," said the countess, eagerly, "don't deceive me, there
+is something serious going on. Your wife is frightened, and if there
+are many persons like Pere Fourchon, this part of the country will be
+uninhabitable--"
+
+"If it were so, madame," answered Michaud, laughing, "we should not be
+in the land of the living, for nothing would be easier than to make
+away with us. The peasant's grumble, that is all. But as to passing from
+growls to blows, from pilfering to crime, they care too much for life
+and the free air of the fields. Olympe has been saying something
+that frightened you, but you know she is in state to be frightened at
+nothing," he added, drawing his wife's hand under his arm and pressing
+it to warn her to say no more.
+
+"Cornevin! Juliette!" cried Madame Michaud, who soon saw the head of her
+old cook at the window. "I am going for a little walk; take care of the
+premises."
+
+Two enormous dogs, who began to bark, proved that the effectiveness of
+the garrison at the gate of the Avonne was not to be despised. Hearing
+the dogs, Cornevin, an old Percheron, Olympe's foster-father, came from
+behind the trees, showing a head such as no other region than La Perche
+can manufacture. Cornevin was undoubtedly a Chouan in 1794 and 1799.
+
+The whole party accompanied the countess along that one of the six
+forest avenues which led directly to the gate of Conches, crossing
+the Silver-spring rivulet. Madame de Montcornet walked in front with
+Blondet. The abbe and Michaud and his wife talked in a low voice of the
+revelation that had just been made to the countess of the state of the
+country.
+
+"Perhaps it is providential," said the abbe; "for if madame is willing,
+we might, perhaps, by dint of benefits and constant consideration of
+their wants, change the hearts of these people."
+
+At about six hundred feet from the pavilion and below the brooke, the
+countess caught sight of a broken red jug and some spilt milk.
+
+"Something has happened to the poor child!" she cried, calling to
+Michaud and his wife, who were returning to the pavilion.
+
+"A misfortune like Perrette's," said Blondet, laughing.
+
+"No; the poor child has been surprised and pursued, for the jug was
+thrown outside the path," said the abbe, examining the ground.
+
+"Yes, that is certainly La Pechina's step," said Michaud; "the print of
+the feet, which have turned, you see, quickly, shows sudden terror. The
+child must have darted in the direction of the pavilion, trying to get
+back there."
+
+Every one followed the traces which the bailiff pointed out as he walked
+along examining them. Presently he stopped in the middle of the path
+about a hundred feet from the broken jug, where the girl's foot-prints
+ceased.
+
+"Here," he said, "she turned towards the Avonne; perhaps she was headed
+off from the direction of the pavilion."
+
+"But she has been gone more than an hour," cried Madame Michaud.
+
+Alarm was in all faces. The abbe ran towards the pavilion, examining the
+state of the road, while Michaud, impelled by the same thought, went up
+the path towards Conches.
+
+"Good God! she fell here," said Michaud, returning from a place where
+the footsteps stopped near the brook, to that where they had turned in
+the road, and pointing to the ground, he added, "See!"
+
+The marks were plainly seen of a body lying at full length on the sandy
+path.
+
+"The footprints which have entered the wood are those of some one who
+wore knitted soles," said the abbe.
+
+"A woman, then," said the countess.
+
+"Down there, by the broken pitcher, are the footsteps of a man," added
+Michaud.
+
+"I don't see traces of any other foot," said the abbe, who was tracking
+into the wood the prints of the woman's feet.
+
+"She must have been lifted and carried into the wood," cried Michaud.
+
+"That can't be, if it is really a woman's foot," said Blondet.
+
+"It must be some trick of that wretch, Nicolas," said Michaud. "He has
+been watching La Pechina for some time. Only this morning I stood two
+hours under the bridge of the Avonne to see what he was about. A woman
+may have helped him."
+
+"It is dreadful!" said the countess.
+
+"They call it amusing themselves," added the priest, in a sad and
+grieved tone.
+
+"Oh! La Pechina would never let them keep her," said the bailiff; "she
+is quite able to swim across the river. I shall look along the banks. Go
+home, my dear Olympe; and you gentlemen and madame, please to follow the
+avenue towards Conches."
+
+"What a country!" exclaimed the countess.
+
+"There are scoundrels everywhere," replied Blondet.
+
+"Is it true, Monsieur l'abbe," asked Madame de Montcornet, "that I saved
+the poor child from the clutches of Rigou?"
+
+"Every young girl over fiften years of age whom you may protect at the
+chateau is saved from that monster," said the abbe. "In trying to get
+possession of La Pechina from her earliest years, the apostate sought
+to satisfy both his lust and his vengeance. When I took Pere Niseron
+as sexton I told him what Rigou's intentions were. That is one of the
+causes of the late mayor's rancor against me; his hatred grew out of
+it. Pere Niseron said to him solemnly that he would kill him if any harm
+came to Genevieve, and he made him responsible for all attempts upon the
+poor child's honor. I can't help thinking that this pursuit of Nicolas
+is the result of some infernal collusion with Rigou, who thinks he can
+do as he likes with these people."
+
+"Doesn't he fear the law?"
+
+"In the first place, he is father-in-law of the prosecuting-attorney,"
+said the abbe, pausing to listen. "And then," he resumed, "you have no
+conception of the utter indifference of the rural police to what is done
+around them. So long as the peasants do not burn the farm-houses and
+buildings, commit no murders, poison no one, and pay their taxes, they
+let them do as they like; and as these people are not restrained by any
+religious principle, horrible things happen every day. On the other side
+of the Avonne helpless old men are afraid to stay in their own homes,
+for they are allowed nothing to eat; they wander out into the fields
+as far as their tottering legs can bear them, knowing well that if they
+take to their beds they will die for want of food. Monsieur Sarcus, the
+magistrate, tells me that if they arrested and tried all criminals, the
+costs would ruin the municipality."
+
+"Then he at least sees how things are?" said Blondet.
+
+"Monseigneur thoroughly understands the condition of the valley, and
+especially the state of this district," continued the abbe. "Religion
+alone can cure such evils; the law seems to me powerless, modified as it
+is now--"
+
+The words were interrupted by loud cries from the woods, and the
+countess, preceded by Emile and the abbe, sprang bravely into the
+brushwood in the direction of the sounds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. THE OARISTYS, EIGHTEENTH ECLOGUE OF THEOCRITUS
+
+LITTLE ADMIRED ON THE POLICE CALENDAR
+
+The sagacity of a savage, which Michaud's new occupation had developed
+among his faculties, joined to an acquaintance with the passions and
+interests of Blangy, enabled him partially to understand a third idyll
+in the Greek style, which poor villagers like Tonsard, and middle-aged
+rich men like Rigou, translate _freely_--to use the classic word--in the
+depths of their country solitudes.
+
+Nicolas, Tonsard's second son, had drawn an unlucky number at a recent
+conscription. Two years earlier his elder brother had been pronounced,
+through the influence of Soudry, Gaubertin, and Sarcus the rich, unfit
+for military service, on account of a pretended weakness in the muscles
+of the right arm; but as Jean-Louis had since wielded instruments of
+husbandry with remarkable force and skill, a good deal of talk on the
+subject had gone through the district. Soudry, Rigou, and Gaubertin, who
+were the special protectors of the family, had warned Tonsard that he
+must not expect to save Nicolas, who was tall and vigorous, from being
+recruited if he drew a fatal number. Nevertheless Gaubertin and Rigou
+were so well aware of the importance of conciliating bold men able and
+willing to do mischief, if properly directed against Les Aigues, that
+Rigou held out certain hopes of safety to Tonsard and his son. The late
+monk was occasionally visited by Catherine Tonsard who was very devoted
+to her brother Nicolas; on one such occasion Rigou advised her to appeal
+to the general and the countess.
+
+"They may be glad to do you this service to cajole you; in that case,
+it is just so much gained from the enemy," he said. "If the Shopman
+refuses, then we shall see what we shall see."
+
+Rigou foresaw that the general's refusal would pass as one wrong the
+more done by the land-owner to the peasantry, and would bind Tonsard by
+an additional motive of gratitude to the coalition, in case the crafty
+mind of the innkeeper could suggest to him some plausible way of
+liberating Nicolas.
+
+Nicolas, who was soon to appear before the examining board, had little
+hope of the general's intervention because of the harm done to Les
+Aigues by all the members of the Tonsard family. His passion, or to
+speak more correctly, his caprice and obstinate pursuit of La Pechina,
+were so aggravated by the prospect of his immediate departure, which
+left him no time to seduce her, that he resolved on attempting violence.
+The child's contempt for her prosecutor, plainly shown, excited the
+Lovelace of the Grand-I-Vert to a hatred whose fury was equalled only
+by his desires. For the last three days he had been watching La Pechina,
+and the poor child knew she was watched. Between Nicolas and his prey
+the same sort of understanding existed which there is between the
+hunter and the game. When the girl was at some little distance from the
+pavilion she saw Nicolas in one of the paths which ran parallel to the
+walls of the park, leading to the bridge of the Avonne. She could easily
+have escaped the man's pursuit had she appealed to her grandfather; but
+all young girls, even the most unsophisticated, have a strange fear,
+possibly instinctive, of trusting to their natural protectors under the
+like circumstances.
+
+Genevieve had heard Pere Niseron take an oath to kill any man, no
+matter who he was, who should dare to _touch_ (that was his word) his
+granddaughter. The old man thought the child amply protected by the halo
+of white hair and honor which a spotless life of three-score years and
+ten had laid upon his brow. The vision of bloody scenes terrifies the
+imagination of young girls so that they need not dive to the bottom of
+their hearts for other numerous and inquisitive reasons which seal their
+lips.
+
+When La Pechina started with the milk which Madame Michaud had sent to
+the daughter of Gaillard, the keeper of the gate of Conches, whose cow
+had just calved, she looked about her cautiously, like a cat when it
+ventures out onto the street. She saw no signs of Nicolas; she listened
+to the silence, as the poet says, and hearing nothing, she concluded
+that the rascal had gone to his day's work. The peasants were just
+beginning to cut the rye; for they were in the habit of getting in their
+own harvests first, so as to benefit by the best strength of the mowers.
+But Nicolas was not a man to mind losing a day's work,--especially now
+that he expected to leave the country after the fair at Soulanges and
+begin, as the country people say, the new life of a soldier.
+
+When La Pechina, with the jug on her head, was about half-way, Nicolas
+slid like a wild-cat down the trunk of an elm, among the branches of
+which he was hiding, and fell like a thunderbolt in front of the girl,
+who flung away her pitcher and trusted to her fleet legs to regain the
+pavilion. But a hundred feet farther on, Catherine Tonsard, who was on
+the watch, rushed out of the wood and knocked so violently against the
+flying girl that she was thrown down. The violence of the fall made her
+unconscious. Catherine picked her up and carried her into the woods to
+the middle of a tiny meadow where the Silver-spring brook bubbled up.
+
+Catherine Tonsard was tall and strong, and in every respect the type of
+woman whom painters and sculptors take, as the Republic did in former
+days, for their figures of Liberty. She charmed the young men of the
+valley of the Avonne with her voluminous bosom, her muscular legs, and
+a waist as robust as it was flexible; with her plump arms, her eyes that
+could flash and sparkle, and her jaunty air; with the masses of hair
+twisted in coils around her head, her masculine forehead and her red
+lips curling with that same ferocious smile which Eugene Delacroix and
+David (of Angers) caught and represented so admirably. True image of the
+People, this fiery and swarthy creature seemed to emit revolt through
+her piercing yellow eyes, blazing with the insolence of a soldier. She
+inherited from her father so violent a nature that the whole family,
+except Tonsard, and all who frequented the tavern feared her.
+
+"Well, how are you now?" she said to La Pechina as the latter recovered
+consciousness.
+
+Catherine had placed her victim on a little mound beside the brook and
+was bringing her to her senses with dashes of cold water. "Where am I?"
+said the child, opening her beautiful black eyes through which a sun-ray
+seemed to glide.
+
+"Ah!" said Catherine, "if it hadn't been for me you'd have been killed."
+
+"Thank you," said the girl, still bewildered; "what happened to me?"
+
+"You stumbled over a root and fell flat in the road over there, as if
+shot. Ha! how you did run!"
+
+"It was your brother who made me," said La Pechina, remembering Nicolas.
+
+"My brother? I did not see him," said Catherine. "What did he do to you,
+poor fellow, that should make you fly as if he were a wolf? Isn't he
+handsomer than your Monsieur Michaud?"
+
+"Oh!" said the girl, contemptuously.
+
+"See here, little one; you are laying up a crop of evils for yourself by
+loving those who persecute us. Why don't you keep to our side?"
+
+"Why don't you come to church; and why do you steal things night and
+day?" asked the child.
+
+"So you let those people talk you over!" sneered Catherine. "They love
+us, don't they?--just as they love their food which they get out of us,
+and they want new dishes every day. Did you ever know one of them to
+marry a peasant-girl? Not they! Does Sarcus the rich let his son marry
+that handsome Gatienne Giboulard? Not he, though she is the daughter of
+a rich upholsterer. You have never been at the Tivoli ball at Soulanges
+in Socquard's tavern; you had better come. You'll see 'em all there,
+these bourgeois fellows, and you'll find they are not worth the money we
+shall get out of them when we've pulled them down. Come to the fair this
+year!"
+
+"They say it's fine, that Soulanges fair!" cried La Pechina, artlessly.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is in two words," said Catherine. "If you are
+handsome, you are well ogled. What is the good of being as pretty as you
+are if you are not admired by the men? Ha! when I heard one of them say
+for the first time, 'What a fine sprig of a girl!' all my blood was on
+fire. It was at Socquard's, in the middle of a dance; my grandfather,
+Fourchon, who was playing the clarionet, heard it and laughed. Tivoli
+seemed to me as grand and fine as heaven itself. It's lighted up, my
+dear, with glass lamps, and you'll think you are in paradise. All the
+gentlemen of Soulanges and Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes will be there.
+Ever since that first night I've loved the place where those words rang
+in my ears like military music. It's worthy giving your eternity to hear
+such words said of you by a man you love."
+
+"Yes, perhaps," replied La Pechina, thoughtfully.
+
+"Then come, and get the praise of men; you're sure of it!" cried
+Catherine. "Ha! you'll have a fine chance, handsome as you are, to pick
+up good luck. There's the son of Monsieur Lupin, Amaury, he might marry
+you. But that's not all; if you only knew what comforts you can find
+there against vexation and worry. Why, Socquard's boiled wine will make
+you forget every trouble you ever had. Fancy! it can make you dream,
+and feel as light as a bird. Didn't you ever drink boiled wine? Then you
+don't know what life is."
+
+The privilege enjoyed by older persons to wet their throats with boiled
+wine excites the curiosity of the children of the peasantry over twelve
+years of age to such a degree that Genevieve had once put her lips to a
+glass of boiled wine ordered by the doctor for her grandfather when ill.
+The taste had left a sort of magic influence in the memory of the poor
+child, which may explain the interest with which she listened, and on
+which the evil-minded Catherine counted to carry out a plan already
+half-successful. No doubt she was trying to bring her victim, giddy from
+the fall, to the moral intoxication so dangerous to young women
+living in the wilds of nature, whose imagination, deprived of other
+nourishment, is all the more ardent when the occasion comes to exercise
+it. Boiled wine, which Catherine had held in reserve, was to end the
+matter by intoxicating the victim.
+
+"What do they put into it?" asked La Pechina.
+
+"All sorts of things," replied Catherine, glancing back to see if her
+brother were coming; "in the first place, those what d' ye call 'ems
+that come from India, cinnamon, and herbs that change you by magic,--you
+fancy you have everything you wish for; boiled wine makes you happy! you
+can snap your fingers at all your troubles!"
+
+"I should be afraid to drink boiled wine at a dance," said La Pechina.
+
+"Afraid of what?" asked Catherine. "There's not the slightest danger.
+Think what lots of people there will be. All the bourgeois will be
+looking at us! Ah! it is one of those days that make up for all our
+misery. See it and die,--for it's enough to satisfy any one."
+
+"If Monsieur and Madame Michaud would only take me!" cried La Pechina,
+her eyes blazing.
+
+"Ask your grandfather Niseron; you have not given him up, poor dear man,
+and he'd be pleased to see you admired like a little queen. Why do you
+like those Arminacs the Michauds better than your grandfather and the
+Burgundians. It's bad to neglect your own people. Besides, why should
+the Michauds object if your grandfather takes you to the fair? Oh! if
+you knew what it is to reign over a man and put him beside himself, and
+say to him, as I say to Godain, 'Go there!' and he goes, 'Do that!'
+and he does it! You've got it in you, little one, to turn the head of a
+bourgeois like that son of Monsieur Lupin. Monsieur Amaury took a fancy
+to my sister Marie because she is fair and because he is half-afraid of
+me; but he'd adore you, for ever since those people at the pavilion have
+spruced you up a bit you've got the airs of an empress."
+
+Adroitly leading the innocent heart to forget Nicolas and so put it off
+its guard, Catherine distilled into the girl the insidious nectar of
+compliments. Unawares, she touched a secret wound. La Pechina, without
+being other than a poor peasant girl, was a specimen of alarming
+precocity, like many another creature doomed to die as prematurely as it
+blooms. Strange product of Burgundian and Montenegrin blood, conceived
+and born amid the toils of war, the girl was doubtless in many ways
+the result of her congenital circumstances. Thin, slender, brown as
+a tobacco leaf, and short in stature, she nevertheless possessed
+extraordinary strength,--a strength unseen by the eyes of peasants, to
+whom the mysteries of the nervous system are unknown. Nerves are not
+admitted into the medical rural mind.
+
+At thirteen years of age Genevieve had completed her growth, though she
+was hardly as tall as an ordinary girl of her age. Did her face owe its
+topaz skin, so dark and yet so brilliant, dark in tone and brilliant in
+the quality of its tissue, giving a look of age to the childish face,
+to her Montenegrin origin, or to the ardent sun of Burgundy? Medical
+science may dismiss the inquiry. The premature old age on the surface of
+the face was counterbalanced by the glow, the fire, the wealth of light
+which made the eyes two stars. Like all eyes which fill with sunlight
+and need, perhaps, some sheltering screen, the eyelids were fringed with
+lashes of extraordinary length. The hair, of a bluish black, long and
+fine and abundant, crowned a brow moulded like that of the Farnese
+Juno. That magnificent diadem of hair, those grand Armenian eyes, that
+celestial brow eclipsed the rest of the face. The nose, though pure in
+form as it left the brow, and graceful in curve, ended in flattened and
+flaring nostrils. Anger increased this effect at times, and then the
+face wore an absolutely furious expression. All the lower part of the
+face, like the lower part of the nose, seemed unfinished, as if the clay
+in the hands of the divine sculptor had proved insufficient. Between
+the lower lip and the chin the space was so short that any one taking La
+Pechina by the chin would have rubbed the lip; but the teeth prevented
+all notice of this defect. One might almost believe those little bones
+had souls, so brilliant were they, so polished, so transparent, so
+exquisitely shaped, disclosed as they were by too wide a mouth, curved
+in lines that bore resemblance to the fantastic shapes of coral. The
+shells of the ears were so transparent to the light that in the sunshine
+they were rose-colored. The complexion, though sun-burned, showed a
+marvellous delicacy in the texture of the skin. If, as Buffon declared,
+love lies in touch, the softness of the girl's skin must have had the
+penetrating and inciting influence of the fragrance of daturas. The
+chest and indeed the whole body was alarmingly thin; but the feet and
+hands, of alluring delicacy, showed remarkable nervous power, and a
+vigorous organism.
+
+This mixture of diabolical imperfections and divine beauties, harmonious
+in spite of discords, for they blended in a species of savage dignity,
+also this triumph of a powerful soul over a feeble body, as written in
+those eyes, made the child, when once seen, unforgettable. Nature had
+wished to make that frail young being a woman; the circumstances of her
+conception moulded her with the face and body of a boy. A poet observing
+the strange creature would have declared her native clime to be Arabia
+the Blest; she belonged to the Afrite and Genii of Arabian tales.
+Her face told no lies. She had the soul of that glance of fire, the
+intellect of those lips made brilliant by the bewitching teeth, the
+thought enshrined within that glorious brow, the passion of those
+nostrils ready at all moments to snort flame. Therefore love, such as
+we imagine it on burning sands, in lonely deserts, filled that heart
+of twenty in the breast of a child, doomed, like the snowy heights of
+Montenegro, to wear no flowers of the spring.
+
+Observers ought now to understand how it was that La Pechina, from whom
+passion issued by every pore, awakened in perverted natures the feelings
+deadened by abuse; just as water fills the mouth at sight of those
+twisted, blotched, and speckled fruits which gourmands know by
+experience, and beneath whose skin nature has put the rarest flavors and
+perfumes. Why did Nicolas, that vulgar laborer, pursue this being who
+was worthy of a poet, while the eyes of the country-folk pitied her as
+a sickly deformity? Why did Rigou, the old man, feel the passion of a
+young one for this girl? Which of the two men was young, and which was
+old? Was the young peasant as blase as the old usurer? Why did these two
+extremes of life meet in one common and devilish caprice? Does the vigor
+that draws to its close resemble the vigor that is only dawning? The
+moral perversities of men are gulfs guarded by sphinxes; they begin and
+end in questions to which there is no answer.
+
+The exclamation, formerly quoted, of the countess, "Piccina!" when
+she first saw Genevieve by the roadside, open-mouthed at sight of the
+carriage and the elegantly dressed woman within it, will be understood.
+This girl, almost a dwarf, of Montenegrin vigor, loved the handsome,
+noble bailiff, as children of her age love, when they do love, that is
+to say, with childlike passion, with the strength of youth, with the
+devotion which in truly virgin souls gives birth to divinest poesy.
+Catherine had just swept her coarse hands across the sensitive strings
+of that choice harp, strung to the breaking-point. To dance before
+Michaud, to shine at the Soulanges ball and inscribe herself on the
+memory of that adored master! What glorious thoughts! To fling them into
+that volcanic head was like casting live coals upon straw dried in the
+August sun.
+
+"No, Catherine," replied La Pechina, "I am ugly and puny; my lot is to
+sit in a corner and never to be married, but live alone in the world."
+
+"Men like weaklings," said Catherine. "You see me, don't you?" she
+added, showing her handsome, strong arms. "I please Godain, who is a
+poor stick; I please that little Charles, the count's groom; but Lupin's
+son is afraid of me. I tell you it is the small kind of men who love me,
+and who say when they see me go by at Ville-aux-Fayes and at Soulanges,
+'Ha! what a fine girl!' Now YOU, that's another thing; you'll please the
+fine men."
+
+"Ah! Catherine, if it were true--that!" cried the bewitched child.
+
+"It is true, it is so true that Nicolas, the handsomest man in the
+canton, is mad about you; he dreams of you, he is losing his mind;
+and yet all the other girls are in love with him. He is a fine lad! If
+you'll put on a white dress and yellow ribbons, and come to Socquard's
+for the midsummer ball, you'll be the handsomest girl there, and all
+the fine people from Ville-aux-Fayes will see you. Come, won't you?--See
+here, I've been cutting grass for the cows, and I brought some boiled
+wine in my gourd; Socquard gave it me this morning," she added quickly,
+seeing the half-delirious expression in La Pechina's eyes which women
+understand so well. "We'll share it together, and you'll fancy the men
+are in love with you."
+
+During this conversation Nicolas, choosing the grassy spots to step on,
+had noiselessly slipped behind the trunk of an old oak near which his
+sister had seated La Pechina. Catherine, who had now and then cast her
+eyes behind her, saw her brother as she turned to get the boiled wine.
+
+"Here, take some," she said, offering it.
+
+"It burns me!" cried Genevieve, giving back the gourd, after taking two
+or three swallows from it.
+
+"Silly child!" replied Catherine; "see here!" and she emptied the rustic
+bottle without taking breath. "See how it slips down; it goes like a
+sunbeam into the stomach."
+
+"But I ought to be carrying the milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard," cried
+Genevieve; "and it is all spilt! Nicolas frightened me so!"
+
+"Don't you like Nicolas?"
+
+"No," answered Genevieve. "Why does he persecute me? He can get plenty
+other girls, who are willing."
+
+"But if he likes you better than all the other girls in the valley--"
+
+"So much the worse for him."
+
+"I see you don't know him," answered Catherine, as she seized the girl
+rapidly by the waist and flung her on the grass, holding her down in
+that position with her strong arms. At this moment Nicolas appeared.
+Seeing her odious persecutor, the child screamed with all her might, and
+drove him five feet away with a violent kick in the stomach; then she
+twisted herself like an acrobat, with a dexterity for which Catherine
+was not prepared, and rose to run away. Catherine, still on the
+ground, caught her by one foot and threw her headlong on her face. This
+frightful fall stopped the brave child's cries for a moment. Nicolas
+attempted, furiously, to seize his victim, but she, though giddy from
+the wine and the fall, caught him by the throat in a grip of iron.
+
+"Help! she's strangling me, Catherine," cried Nicolas, in a stifled
+voice.
+
+La Pechina uttered piercing screams, which Catherine tried to choke
+by putting her hands over the girl's mouth, but she bit them and drew
+blood. It was at this moment that Blondet, the countess, and the abbe
+appeared at the edge of the wood.
+
+"Here are those Aigues people!" exclaimed Catherine, helping Genevieve
+to rise.
+
+"Do you want to live?" hissed Nicolas in the child's ear.
+
+"What then?" she asked.
+
+"Tell them we were all playing, and I'll forgive you," said Nicolas, in
+a threatening voice.
+
+"Little wretch, mind you say it!" repeated Catherine, whose glance was
+more terrifying than her brother's murderous threat.
+
+"Yes, I will, if you let me alone," replied the child. "But anyhow I
+will never go out again without my scissors."
+
+"You are to hold your tongue, or I'll drown you in the Avonne," said
+Catherine, ferociously.
+
+"You are monsters," cried the abbe, coming up; "you ought to be arrested
+and taken to the assizes."
+
+"Ha! and pray what do you do in your drawing-rooms?" said Nicolas,
+looking full at the countess and Blondet. "You play and amuse
+yourselves, don't you? Well, so do we, in the fields which are ours.
+We can't always work; we must play sometimes,--ask my sister and La
+Pechina."
+
+"How do you fight if you call that playing?" cried Blondet.
+
+Nicolas gave him a murderous look.
+
+"Speak!" said Catherine, gripping La Pechina by the forearm and leaving
+a blue bracelet on the flesh. "Were not we amusing ourselves?"
+
+"Yes, madame, we were amusing ourselves," said the child, exhausted by
+her display of strength, and now breaking down as though she were about
+to faint.
+
+"You hear what she says, madame," said Catherine, boldly, giving the
+countess one of those looks which women give each other like dagger
+thrusts.
+
+She took her brother's arm, and the pair walked off, not mistaking the
+opinion they left behind them in the minds of the three persons who had
+interrupted the scene. Nicolas twice looked back, and twice encountered
+Blondet's gaze. The journalist continued to watch the tall scoundrel,
+who was broad in the shoulders, healthy and vigorous in complexion, with
+black hair curling tightly, and whose rather soft face showed upon
+its lips and around the mouth certain lines which reveal the peculiar
+cruelty that characterizes sluggards and voluptuaries. Catherine swung
+her petticoat, striped blue and white, with an air of insolent coquetry.
+
+"Cain and his wife!" said Blondet to the abbe.
+
+"You are nearer the truth than you know," replied the priest.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur le cure, what will they do to me?" said La Pechina, when
+the brother and sister were out of sight.
+
+The countess, as white as her handkerchief, was so overcome that she
+heard neither Blondet nor the abbe nor La Pechina.
+
+"It is enough to drive one from this terrestrial paradise," she said
+at last. "But the first thing of all is to save that child from their
+claws."
+
+"You are right," said Blondet in a low voice. "That child is a poem, a
+living poem."
+
+Just then the Montenegrin girl was in a state where soul and body smoke,
+as it were, after the conflagration of an anger which has driven all
+forces, physical and intellectual, to their utmost tension. It is an
+unspeakable and supreme splendor, which reveals itself only under the
+pressure of some frenzy, be it resistance or victory, love or martyrdom.
+She had left home in a dress with alternate lines of brown and yellow,
+and a collarette which she pleated herself by rising before daylight;
+and she had not yet noticed the condition of her gown soiled by her
+struggle on the grass, and her collar torn in Catherine's grasp. Feeling
+her hair hanging loose, she looked about her for a comb. At this moment
+Michaud, also attracted by the screams, came upon the scene. Seeing her
+god, La Pechina recovered her full strength. "Monsieur Michaud," she
+cried, "he did not even touch me!"
+
+The cry, the look, the action of the girl were an eloquent commentary,
+and told more to Blondet and the abbe than Madame Michaud had told the
+countess about the passion of that strange nature for the bailiff, who
+was utterly unconscious of it.
+
+"The scoundrel!" cried Michaud.
+
+Then, with an involuntary and impotent gesture, such as mad men and wise
+men can both be forced into giving, he shook his fist in the direction
+in which he had caught sight of Nicolas disappearing with his sister.
+
+"Then you were not playing?" said the abbe with a searching look at La
+Pechina.
+
+"Don't fret her," interposed the countess; "let us return to the
+pavilion."
+
+Genevieve, though quite exhausted, found strength under Michaud's eyes
+to walk. The countess followed the bailiff through one of the by-paths
+known to keepers and poachers where only two can go abreast, and which
+led to the gate of the Avonne.
+
+"Michaud," said the countess when they reached the depth of the wood,
+"We must find some way of ridding the neighborhood of such vile people;
+that child is actually in danger of death."
+
+"In the first place," replied Michaud, "Genevieve shall not leave the
+pavilion. My wife will be glad to take the nephew of Vatel, who has the
+care of the park roads, into the house. With Gounod (that is his name)
+and old Cornevin, my wife's foster-father, always at hand, La Pechina
+need never go out without a protector."
+
+"I will tell Monsieur to make up this extra expense to you," said the
+countess. "But this does not rid us of that Nicolas. How can we manage
+that?"
+
+"The means are easy and right at hand," answered Michaud. "Nicolas is to
+appear very soon before the court of appeals on the draft. The general,
+instead of asking for his release, as the Tonsards expect, has only to
+advise his being sent to the army--"
+
+"If necessary, I will go myself," said the countess, "and see my cousin,
+de Casteran, the prefect. But until then, I tremble for that child--"
+
+The words were said at the end of the path close to the open space by
+the bridge. As they reached the edge of the bank the countess gave a
+cry; Michaud advanced to help her, thinking she had struck her foot
+against a stone; but he shuddered at the sight that met his eyes.
+
+Marie Tonsard and Bonnebault, seated below the bank, seemed to be
+conversing, but were no doubt hiding there to hear what passed.
+Evidently they had left the wood as the party advanced towards them.
+
+Bonnebault, a tall, wiry fellow, had lately returned to Conches after
+six years' service in the cavalry, with a permanent discharge due to
+his evil conduct,--his example being likely to ruin better men. He wore
+moustachios and a small chin-tuft; a peculiarity which, joined to his
+military carriage, made him the reigning fancy of all the girls in the
+valley. His hair, in common with that of other soldiers, was cut very
+short behind, but he frizzed it on the top of his head, brushing up the
+ends with a dandy air; on it his foraging cap was jauntily tilted to one
+side. Compared to the peasants, who were mostly in rags, like Mouche
+and Fourchon, he seemed gorgeous in his linen trousers, boots, and short
+waistcoat. These articles, bought at the time of his liberation, were,
+it is true, somewhat the worse for a life in the fields; but this
+village cock-of-the-walk had others in reserve for balls and holidays.
+He lived, it must be said, on the gifts of his female friends,
+which, liberal as they were, hardly sufficed for the libations, the
+dissipations, and the squanderings of all kinds which resulted from his
+intimacy with the Cafe de la Paix.
+
+Cowardice is like courage; of both there are various kinds. Bonnebault
+would have fought like a brave soldier, but he was weak in presence of
+his vices and his desires. Lazy as a lizard, that is to say, active only
+when it suited him, without the slightest decency, arrogant and base,
+able for much but neglectful of all, the sole pleasure of this "breaker
+of hearts and plates," to use a barrack term, was to do evil or inflict
+damage. Such a nature does as much harm in rural communities as it does
+in a regiment. Bonnebault, like Tonsard and like Fourchon, desired to
+live well and do nothing; and he had his plans laid. Making the most of
+his gallant appearance with increasing success, and of his talents for
+billiards with alternate loss and gain, he flattered himself that the
+day would come when he could marry Mademoiselle Aglae Socquard, only
+daughter of the proprietor of the Cafe de la Paix, a resort which was
+to Soulanges what, relatively speaking, Ranelagh is to the Bois de
+Boulogne. To get into the business of tavern-keeping, to manage
+the public balls, what a fine career for the marshal's baton of a
+ne'er-do-well! These morals, this life, this nature, were so plainly
+stamped upon the face of the low-lived profligate that the countess was
+betrayed into an exclamation when she beheld the pair, for they gave her
+the sensation of beholding snakes.
+
+Marie, desperately in love with Bonnebault, would have robbed for
+his benefit. Those moustachios, the swaggering gait of a trooper, the
+fellow's smart clothes, all went to her heart as the manners and charms
+of a de Marsay touch that of a pretty Parisian. Each social sphere
+has its own standard of distinction. The jealous Marie rebuffed Amaury
+Lupin, the other dandy of the little town, her mind being made up to
+become Madame Bonnebault.
+
+"Hey! you there, hi! come on!" cried Nicolas and Catherine from afar,
+catching sight of Marie and Bonnebault.
+
+The sharp call echoed through the woods like the cry of savages.
+
+Seeing the pair at his feet, Michaud shuddered and deeply repented
+having spoken. If Bonnebault and Marie Tonsard had overheard
+the conversation, nothing but harm could come of it. This event,
+insignificant as it seems, was destined, in the irritated state of
+feeling then existing between Les Aigues and the peasantry, to have a
+decisive influence on the fate of all,--just as victory or defeat in
+battle sometimes depends upon a brook which shepherds jump while cannon
+are unable to pass it.
+
+Gallantly bowing to the countess, Bonnebault passed Marie's arm through
+his own with a conquering air and took himself off triumphantly.
+
+"The King of Hearts of the valley," muttered Michaud to the countess. "A
+dangerous man. When he loses twenty francs at billiards he would murder
+Rigou to get them back. He loves a crime as he does a pleasure."
+
+"I have seen enough for to-day; take me home, gentlemen," murmured the
+countess, putting her hand on Emile's arm.
+
+She bowed sadly to Madame Michaud, after watching La Pechina safely back
+to the pavilion. Olympe's depression was transferred to her mistress.
+
+"Ah, madame," said the abbe, as they continued their way, "can it be
+that the difficulty of doing good is about to deter you? For the
+last five years I have slept on a pallet in a parsonage which has no
+furniture; I say mass in a church without believers; I preach to no
+hearers; I minister without fees or salary; I live on the six hundred
+francs the law allows me, asking nothing of my bishop, and I give the
+third of that in charity. Still, I am not hopeless. If you knew what
+my winters are in this place you would understand the strength of those
+words,--I am not hopeless. I keep myself warm with the belief that we
+can save this valley and bring it back to God. No matter for ourselves,
+madame; think of the future! If it is our duty to say to the poor,
+'Learn how to be poor; that is, how to work, to endure, to strive,' it
+is equally our duty to say to the rich, 'Learn your duty as prosperous
+men,'--that is to say, 'Be wise, be intelligent in your benevolence;
+pious and virtuous in the place to which God has called you.' Ah!
+madame, you are only the steward of Him who grants you wealth; if you
+do not obey His behests you will never transmit to your children the
+prosperity He gives you. You will rob your posterity. If you follow in
+the steps of that poor singer's selfishness, which caused the evils that
+now terrify us, you will bring back the scaffolds on which your fathers
+died for the faults of their fathers. To do good humbly, in obscurity,
+in country solitudes, as Rigou now does evil,--ah! that indeed is prayer
+in action and dear to God. If in every district three souls only would
+work for good, France, our country, might be saved from the abyss
+that yawns; into which we are rushing headlong, through spiritual
+indifference to all that is not our own self-interest. Change! you must
+change your morals, change your ethics, and that will change your laws."
+
+Though deeply moved as she listened to this grand utterance of true
+catholic charity, the countess answered in the fatal words, "We will
+consider it,"--words of the rich, which contain that promise to the ear
+which saves their purses and enables them to stand with arms crossed in
+presence of all disaster, under pretext that they were powerless.
+
+Hearing those words, the abbe bowed to Madame de Montcornet and turned
+off into a path which led him direct to the gate of Blangy.
+
+"Belshazzar's feast is the everlasting symbol of the dying days of a
+caste, of an oligarchy, of a power!" he thought as he walked away.
+"My God! if it be Thy will to loose the poor like a torrent to reform
+society, I know, I comprehend, why it is that Thou hast abandoned the
+wealthy to their blindness!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. SHOWETH HOW THE TAVERN IS THE PEOPLE'S PARLIAMENT
+
+
+Old Mother Tonsard's screams brought a number of people from Blangy
+to know what was happening at the Grand-I-Vert, the distance from the
+village to the inn not being greater than that from the inn to the gate
+of Blangy. One of these inquiring visitors was old Niseron, La Pechina's
+grandfather, who was on his way, after ringing the second Angelus, to
+dig the vine-rows in his last little bit of ground.
+
+Bent by toil, with pallid face and silvery hair, the old vinedresser,
+now the sole representative of civic virtue in the community, had been,
+during the Revolution, president of the Jacobin club at Ville-aux-Fayes,
+and a juror in the revolutionary tribunal of the district. Jean-Francois
+Niseron, carved out of the wood that the apostles were made of, was
+of the type of Saint Peter; whom painters and sculptors have united in
+representing with the square brow of the people, the thick, naturally
+curling hair of the laborer, the muscles of the man of toil, the
+complexion of a fisherman; with the large nose, the shrewd, half-mocking
+lips that scoff at fate, the neck and shoulders of the strong man who
+cuts his wood to cook his dinner while the doctrinaires of his opinions
+talk.
+
+Such, at forty years of age on the breaking out of the Revolution,
+was this man, strong as iron, pure as gold. Advocate of the people,
+he believed in a republic through the very roll of that name, more
+formidable in sound perhaps than in reality. He believed in the republic
+of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the brotherhood of man, in the exchange of
+noble sentiments, in the proclamation of virtue, in the choice of
+merit without intrigue,--in short, in all that the narrow limits of one
+arrondissement like Sparta made possible, and which the vast proportions
+of an empire make chimerical. He signed his beliefs with his blood,--his
+only son went to war; he did more, he signed them with the prosperity of
+his life,--last sacrifice of self. Nephew and sole heir of the curate of
+Blangy, the then all-powerful tribune might have enforced his rights and
+recovered the property left by the priest to his pretty servant-girl,
+Arsene; but he respected his uncle's wishes and accepted poverty, which
+came upon him as rapidly as the fall of his cherished republic came upon
+France.
+
+Never a farthing's worth, never so much as the branch of a tree
+belonging to another passed into the hands of this notable republican,
+who would have made the republic acceptable to the world if he and such
+as he could have guided it. He refused to buy the national domains; he
+denied the right of the Republic to confiscate property. In reply to all
+demands of the committee of public safety he asserted that the virtue of
+citizens would do for their sacred country what low political intriguers
+did for money. This patriot of antiquity publicly reproved Gaubertin's
+father for his secret treachery, his underhand bargaining, his
+malversations. He reprimanded the virtuous Mouchon, that representative
+of the people whose virtue was nothing more nor less than
+incapacity,--as it is with so many other legislators who, gorged with
+the greatest political resources that any nation ever gave, armed with
+the whole force of a people, are still unable to bring forth from them
+the grandeur which Richelieu wrung for France out of the weakness of
+a king. Consequently, citizen Niseron became a living reproach to the
+people about him. They endeavored to put him out of sight and mind with
+the reproachful remark, "Nothing satisfies that man."
+
+The patriot peasant returned to his cot at Blangy and watched the
+destruction, one by one, of his illusions; he saw his republic come
+to an end at the heels of an emperor, while he himself fell into utter
+poverty, to which Rigou stealthily managed to reduce him. And why?
+Because Niseron had never been willing to accept anything from him.
+Reiterated refusals showed the ex-priest in what profound contempt the
+nephew of the curate held him; and now that icy scorn was revenged by
+the terrible threat as to his little granddaughter, about which the Abbe
+Brossette spoke to the countess.
+
+The old man had composed in his own mind a history of the French
+republic, filled with the glorious features which gave immortality to
+that heroic period to the exclusion of all else. The infamous deeds, the
+massacres, the spoliations, his virtuous soul ignored; he admired, with
+a single mind, the devotedness of the people, the "Vengeur," the gifts
+to the nation, the uprising of the country to defend its frontier; and
+he still pursued his dream that he might sleep in peace.
+
+The Revolution produced many poets like old Niseron, who sang their
+poems in the country solitudes, in the army, openly or secretly, by
+deeds buried beneath the whirlwind of that storm, just as the wounded
+left behind to die in the great wars of the empire cried out, "Long live
+the Emperor!" This sublimity of soul belongs especially to France. The
+Abbe Brossette respected the convictions of the old man, who became
+simply but deeply attached to the priest from hearing him say, "The true
+republic is in the Gospel." The stanch republican carried the cross,
+and wore the sexton's robe, half-red, half-black, and was grave and
+dignified in church,--supporting himself by the triple functions with
+which he was invested by the abbe, who was able to give the fine old
+man, not, to be sure, enough to live on, but enough to keep him from
+dying of hunger.
+
+Niseron, the Aristides of Blangy, spoke little, like all noble dupes who
+wrap themselves in the mantle of resignation; but he was never silent
+against evil, and the peasants feared him as thieves fear the police.
+He seldom came more than six times a year to the Grand-I-Vert, though he
+was always warmly welcomed there. The old man cursed the want of charity
+of the rich,--their selfishness disgusted him; and through this fiber of
+his mind he seemed to the peasants to belong to them; they were in the
+habit of saying, "Pere Niseron doesn't like the rich; he's one of us."
+
+The civic crown won by this noble life throughout the valley lay in
+these words: "That good old Niseron! there's not a more honest man."
+Often taken as umpire in certain kinds of disputes, he embodied the
+meaning of that archaic term,--the village elder. Always extremely
+clean, though threadbare, he wore breeches, coarse woollen stockings,
+hob-nailed shoes, the distinctively French coat with large buttons and
+the broad-brimmed felt hat to which all old peasants cling; but for
+daily wear he kept a blue jacket so patched and darned that it looked
+like a bit of tapestry. The pride of a man who feels he is free, and
+knows he is worthy of freedom, gave to his countenance and his whole
+bearing a _something_ that was inexpressibly noble; you would have felt
+he wore a robe, not rags.
+
+"Hey! what's happening so unusual?" he said, "I heard the noise down
+here from the belfry."
+
+They told him of Vatel's attack on the old woman, talking all at once
+after the fashion of country-people.
+
+"If she didn't cut the tree, Vatel was wrong; but if she did cut it, you
+have done two bad actions," said Pere Niseron.
+
+"Take some wine," said Tonsard, offering a full glass to the old man.
+
+"Shall we start?" said Vermichel to the sheriff's officer.
+
+"Yes," replied Brunet, "we must do without Pere Fourchon and take the
+assistant at Conches. Go on before me; I have a paper to carry to the
+chateau. Rigou has gained his second suit, and I've got to deliver the
+verdict."
+
+So saying, Monsieur Brunet, all the livelier for a couple of glasses of
+brandy, mounted his gray mare after saying good-bye to Pere Niseron; for
+the whole valley were desirous in their hearts of the good man's esteem.
+
+No science, not even that of statistics, can explain the rapidity with
+which news flies in the country, nor how it spreads over those ignorant
+and untaught regions which are, in France, a standing reproach to the
+government and to capitalists. Contemporaneous history can show that a
+famous banker, after driving post-horses to death between Waterloo
+and Paris (everybody knows why--he gained what the Emperor had lost,
+a commission!) carried the fatal news only three hours in advance of
+rumor. So, not an hour after the encounter between old mother Tonsard
+and Vatel, a number of the customers of the Grand-I-Vert assembled there
+to hear the tale.
+
+The first to come was Courtecuisse, in whom you would scarcely have
+recognized the once jovial forester, the rubicund do-nothing, whose
+wife made his morning coffee as we have before seen. Aged, and thin,
+and haggard, he presented to all eyes a lesson that no one learned. "He
+tried to climb higher than the ladder," was what his neighbors said
+when others pitied him and blamed Rigou. "He wanted to be a bourgeois
+himself."
+
+In fact, Courtecuisse did intend to pass for a bourgeois in buying the
+Bachelerie, and he even boasted of it; though his wife went about the
+roads gathering up the horse-droppings. She and Courtecuisse got
+up before daylight, dug their garden, which was richly manured, and
+obtained several yearly crops from it, without being able to do more
+than pay the interest due to Rigou for the rest of the purchase-money.
+Their daughter, who was living at service in Auxerre, sent them her
+wages; but in spite of all their efforts, in spite of this help, the
+last day for the final payment was approaching, and not a penny in
+hand with which to meet it. Madame Courtecuisse, who in former times
+occasionally allowed herself a bottle of boiled wine or a bit of roast
+meat, now drank nothing but water. Courtecuisse was afraid to go to
+the Grand-I-Vert lest he should have to leave three sous behind him.
+Deprived of power, he had lost his privilege of free drinks, and he
+bitterly complained, like all other fools, of man's ingratitude. In
+short, he found, according to the experience of all peasants bitten with
+the demon of proprietorship, that toil had increased and food decreased.
+
+"Courtecuisse has done too much to the property," the people said,
+secretly envying his position. "He ought to have waited till he had paid
+the money down and was master before he put up those fruit palings."
+
+With the help of his wife he had managed to manure and cultivate the
+three acres of land sold to him by Rigou, together with the garden
+adjoining the house, which was beginning to be productive; and he was
+in danger of being turned out of it all. Clothed in rags like Fourchon,
+poor Courtecuisse, who lately wore the boots and gaiters of a huntsman,
+now thrust his feet into sabots and accused "the rich" of Les Aigues of
+having caused his destitution. These wearing anxieties had given to the
+fat little man and his once smiling and rosy face a gloomy and dazed
+expression, as though he were ill from the effects of poison or with
+some chronic malady.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Monsieur Courtecuisse; is your tongue
+tied?" asked Tonsard, as the man continued silent after he had told him
+about the battle which had just taken place.
+
+"No, no!" cried Madame Tonsard; "he needn't complain of the midwife who
+cut his string,--she made a good job of it."
+
+"It is enough to make a man dumb, thinking from morning till night of
+some way to escape Rigou," said the premature old man, gloomily.
+
+"Bah!" said old Mother Tonsard, "you've got a pretty daughter, seventeen
+years old. If she's a good girl you can easily manage matters with that
+old jail bird--"
+
+"We sent her to Auxerre two years ago to Madame Mariotte the elder, to
+keep her out of harm's way; I'd rather die than--"
+
+"What a fool you are!" said Tonsard, "look at my girls,--are they any
+the worse? He who dares to say they are not as virtuous as marble images
+will have to do with my gun."
+
+"It'll be hard to have to come to that," said Courtecuisse, shaking his
+head. "I'd rather earn the money by shooting one of those Arminacs."
+
+"Well, I call it better for a girl to save a father than to wrap up her
+virtue and let it mildew," retorted the innkeeper.
+
+Tonsard felt a sharp tap on his shoulder, delivered by Pere Niseron.
+
+"That is not a right thing to say!" cried the old man. "A father is the
+guardian of the honor of his family. It is by behaving as you do that
+scorn and contempt are brought upon us; it is because of such conduct
+that the People are accused of being unfit for liberty. The People
+should set an example of civic virtue and honor to the rich. You all
+sell yourselves to Rigou for gold; and if you don't sell him your
+daughters, at any rate you sell him your honor,--and it's wrong."
+
+"Just see what a position Courtecuisse is in," said Tonsard.
+
+"See what a position I am in," replied Pere Niseron; "but I sleep in
+peace; there are no thorns in my pillow."
+
+"Let him talk, Tonsard," whispered his wife, "you know they're just _his
+notions_, poor dear man."
+
+Bonnebault and Marie, Catherine and her brother came in at this moment
+in a state of exasperation, which had begun with Nicolas's failure,
+and was raised to the highest pitch by Michaud's advice to the countess
+about Bonnebault. As Nicolas entered the tavern he was uttering
+frightful threats against the Michaud family and Les Aigues.
+
+"The harvest's coming; well, I vow I'll not go before I've lighted my
+pipe at their wheat-stacks," he cried, striking his fist on the table as
+he sat down.
+
+"Mustn't yelp like that before people," said Godain, showing him Pere
+Niseron.
+
+"If the old fellow tells, I'll wring his neck," said Catherine.
+"He's had his day, that old peddler of foolish reasons! They call him
+virtuous; it's his temperament that keeps him so, that's all."
+
+Strange and noteworthy sight!--that of those lifted heads, that group
+of persons gathered in the reeking hovel, while old Mother Tonsard stood
+sentinel at the door as security for the secret words of the drinkers.
+
+Of all those faces, that of Godain, Catherine's suitor, was perhaps the
+most alarming, though the least pronounced. Godain,--a miser without
+money,--the cruelest of misers, for he who seeks money surely takes
+precedence of him who hoards it, one turning his eagerness within
+himself, the other looking outside with terrible intentness,--Godain
+represented the type of the majority of peasant faces.
+
+He was a journeyman, small in frame, and saved from the draft by not
+attaining the required military height; naturally lean and made more
+so by hard work and the enforced sobriety under which reluctant workers
+like Courtecuisse succumb. His face was no bigger than a man's fist,
+and was lighted by a pair of yellow eyes with greenish strips and brown
+spots, in which a thirst for the possession of property was mingled
+with a concupiscence which had no heat,--for desire, once at the
+boiling-point, had now stiffened like lava. His skin, brown as that of
+a mummy, was glued to his temples. His scanty beard bristled among
+his wrinkles like stubble in the furrows. Godain never perspired, he
+reabsorbed his substance. His hairy hands, formed like claws, nervous,
+never still, seemed to be made of old wood. Though scarcely twenty-seven
+years of age, white lines were beginning to show in his rusty black
+hair. He wore a blouse, through the breast opening of which could be
+seen a shirt of coarse linen, so black that he must have worn it a month
+and washed it himself in the Thune. His sabots were mended with old
+iron. The original stuff of his trousers was unrecognizable from the
+darns and the infinite number of patches. On his head was a horrible
+cap, evidently cast off and picked up in the doorway of some bourgeois
+house in Ville-aux-Fayes.
+
+Clear-sighted enough to estimate the elements of good fortune that
+centred in Catherine Tonsard, his ambition was to succeed her father at
+the Grand-I-Vert. He made use of all his craftiness and all his actual
+powers to capture her; he promised her wealth, he also promised her the
+license her mother had enjoyed; besides this, he offered his prospective
+father-in-law an enormous rental, five hundred francs a year, for his
+inn, until he could buy him out, trusting to an agreement he had made
+with Monsieur Brunet to pay these costs by notes on stamped paper. By
+trade a journeyman tool-maker, this gnome worked for the wheelwrights
+when work was plentiful, but he also hired himself out for any extra
+labor which was well paid. Though he possessed, unknown to the whole
+neighborhood, eighteen hundred francs now in Gaubertin's hands, he lived
+like a beggar, slept in a barn, and gleaned at the harvests. He wore
+Gaubertin's receipt for his money sewn into the waist-belt of his
+trousers,--having it renewed every year with its own added interest and
+the amount of his savings.
+
+"Hey! what do I care," cried Nicolas, replying to Godain's prudent
+advice not to talk before Niseron. "If I'm doomed to be a soldier
+I'd rather the sawdust of the basket sucked up my blood than have it
+dribbled out drop by drop in the battles. I'll deliver this country of
+at least one of those Arminacs that the devil has launched upon us."
+
+And he related what he called Michaud's plot against him, which Marie
+and Bonnebault had overheard.
+
+"Where do you expect France to find soldiers?" said the white-haired
+old man, rising and standing before Nicolas during the silence which
+followed the utterance of this threat.
+
+"We serve our time and come home again," remarked Bonnebault, twirling
+his moustache.
+
+Observing that all the worst characters of the neighborhood were
+collecting, Pere Niseron shook his head and left the tavern, after
+offering a farthing to Madame Tonsard in payment for his glass of wine.
+When the worthy man had gone down the steps a movement of relief and
+satisfaction passed through the assembled drinkers which would have told
+whoever watched them that each man in that company felt he was rid of
+the living image of his own conscience.
+
+"Well, what do you say to all that, hey, Courtecuisse?" asked Vaudoyer,
+who had just come in, and to whom Tonsard had related Vatel's attempt.
+
+Courtecuisse clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and set
+his glass on the table.
+
+"Vatel put himself in the wrong," he said. "If I were Mother Tonsard,
+I'd give myself a few wounds and go to bed and say I was ill, and have
+that Shopman and his keeper up before the assizes and get twenty crowns
+damages. Monsieur Sarcus would give them."
+
+"In any case the Shopman would give them to stop the talk it would
+make," said Godain.
+
+Vaudoyer, the former field-keeper, a man five feet six inches tall, with
+a face pitted with the small-pox and furrowed like a nut-cracker, kept
+silence with a hesitating air.
+
+"Well, you old ninny, does that ruffle you?" asked Tonsard, attracted
+by the idea of damages. "If they had broken twenty crowns' worth of my
+mother's bones we could turn it into good account; we might make a fine
+fuss for three hundred francs; Monsieur Gourdon would go to Les Aigues
+and tell them that the mother had got a broken hip--"
+
+"And break it, too," interrupted Madame Tonsard; "they do that in
+Paris."
+
+"It would cost too much," remarked Godain.
+
+"I have been too long among the people who rule us to believe that
+matters will go as you want them," said Vaudoyer at last, remembering
+his past official intercourse with the courts and the gendarmerie. "If
+it were at Soulanges, now, it might be done; Monsieur Soudry represents
+the government there, and he doesn't wish well to the Shopman; but if
+you attack the Shopman and Vatel they'll defend themselves viciously;
+they'll say, 'The woman was to blame; she had a tree, otherwise she
+would have let her bundle be examined on the highroad; she wouldn't have
+run away; if an accident happened to her it was through her own fault.'
+No, you can't trust to that plan."
+
+"The Shopman didn't resist when I sued him," said Courtecuisse; "he paid
+me at once."
+
+"I'll go to Soulanges, if you like," said Bonnebault, "and consult
+Monsieur Gourdon, the clerk of the court, and you shall know to-night if
+_there's money in it_."
+
+"You are only making an excuse to be after that big goose of a girl,
+Socquard's daughter," said Marie Tonsard, giving Bonnebault a slap on
+the shoulder that made his lungs hum.
+
+Just then a verse of an old Burgundian Christmas carol was heard:--
+
+  "One fine moment of his life
+  Was at the wedding feast;
+  He changed the water into wine,--
+  Madeira of the best."
+
+Every one recognized the vinous voice of old Fourchon, to whom the verse
+must have been peculiarly agreeable; Mouche accompanied in his treble
+tones.
+
+"Ha! they're full!" cried old Mother Tonsard to her daughter-in-law;
+"your father is as red as a grid-iron, and that chip o' the block as
+pink as vine-shoot."
+
+"Your healths!" cried the old man, "and a fine lot of scoundrels you
+are! All hail!" he said to his granddaughter, whom he spied kissing
+Bonnebault, "hail, Marie, full of vice! Satan is with three; cursed art
+thou among women, etcetera. All hail, the company present! you are done
+for, every one of you! you may just say good-bye to your sheaves. I
+being news. I always told you the rich would crush us; well now, the
+Shopman is going to have the law of you! Ha! see what it is to struggle
+against those bourgeois fellows, who have made so many laws since they
+got into power that they've a law to enforce every trick they play--"
+
+A violent hiccough gave a sudden turn to the ideas of the distinguished
+orator.
+
+"If Vermichel were only here I'd blow in his gullet, and he'd get an
+idea of sherry wine. Hey! what a wine it is! If I wasn't a Burgundian
+I'd be a Spaniard! It's God's own wine! the pope says mass with it--Hey!
+I'm young again! Say, Courtecuisse! if your wife were only here we'd be
+young together. Don't tell me! Spanish wine is worth a dozen of boiled
+wine. Let's have a revolution if it's only to empty the cellars!"
+
+"But what's your news, papa?" said Tonsard.
+
+"There'll be no harvest for you; the Shopman has given orders to stop
+the gleaning."
+
+"Stop the gleaning!" cried the whole tavern, with one voice, in which
+the shrill tones of the four women predominated.
+
+"Yes," said Mouche, "he is going to issue an order, and Groison is to
+take it round, and post it up all over the canton. No one is to glean
+except those who have pauper certificates."
+
+"And what's more," said Fourchon, "the folks from the other districts
+won't be allowed here at all."
+
+"What's that?" cried Bonnebault, "do you mean to tell me that neither
+my grandmother nor I, nor your mother, Godain, can come here and glean?
+Here's tomfoolery for you; a pretty show of authority! Why, the fellow
+is a devil let loose from hell,--that scoundrel of a mayor!"
+
+"Shall you glean whether or no, Godain?" said Tonsard to the journeyman
+wheelwright, who was saying a few words to Catherine.
+
+"I? I've no property; I'm a pauper," he replied; "I shall ask for a
+certificate."
+
+"What did they give my father for his otter, bibi?" said Madame Tonsard
+to Mouche.
+
+Though nearly at his last gasp from an over-taxed digestion and two
+bottles of wine, Mouche, sitting on Madame Tonsard's lap, laid his head
+on his aunt's neck and whispered slyly in her ear:--
+
+"I don't know, but he has got gold. If you'll feed me high for a month,
+perhaps I can find out his hiding-place; he has one, I know that."
+
+"Father's got gold!" whispered La Tonsard to her husband, whose voice
+was loudest in the uproar of the excited discussion, in which all
+present took part.
+
+"Hush! here's Groison," cried the old sentinel.
+
+Perfect silence reigned in the tavern. When Groison had got to a safe
+distance, Mother Tonsard made a sign, and the discussion began again on
+the question as to whether they should persist in gleaning, as before,
+without a certificate.
+
+"You'll have to give in," said Pere Fourchon; "for the Shopman has gone
+to see the prefect and get troops to enforce the order. They'll shoot
+you like dogs,--and that's what we are!" cried the old man, trying
+to conquer the thickening of his speech produced by his potations of
+sherry.
+
+This fresh announcement, absurd as it was, made all the drinkers
+thoughtful; they really believed the government capable of slaughtering
+them without pity.
+
+"I remember just such troubles near Toulouse, when I was stationed
+there," said Bonnebault. "We were marched out, and the peasants were cut
+and slashed and arrested. Everybody laughed to see them try to resist
+cavalry. Ten were sent to the galleys, and eleven put in prison; the
+whole thing was crushed. Hey! what? why, soldiers are soldiers, and you
+are nothing but civilian beggars; they've a right, they think, to sabre
+peasants, the devil take you!"
+
+"Well, well," said Tonsard, "what is there in all that to frighten you
+like kids? What can they get out of my mother and daughters? Put 'em in
+prison? well, then they must feed them; and the Shopman can't imprison
+the whole country. Besides, prisoners are better fed at the king's
+expense than they are at their own; and they're kept warmer, too."
+
+"You are a pack of fools!" roared Fourchon. "Better gnaw at the
+bourgeois than attack him in front; otherwise, you'll get your backs
+broke. If you like the galleys, so be it,--that's another thing! You
+don't work as hard there as you do in the fields, true enough; but you
+don't have your liberty."
+
+"Perhaps it would be well," said Vaudoyer, who was among the more
+valiant in counsel, "if some of us risked our skins to deliver the
+neighborhood of that Languedoc fellow who has planted himself at the
+gate of the Avonne."
+
+"Do Michaud's business for him?" said Nicolas; "I'm good for that."
+
+"Things are not ripe for it," said old Fourchon. "We should risk too
+much, my children. The best way is to make ourselves look miserable
+and cry famine; then the Shopman and his wife will want to help us, and
+you'll get more out of them that way than you will by gleaning."
+
+"You are all blind moles," shouted Tonsard, "let 'em pick a quarrel with
+their law and their troops, they can't put the whole country in irons,
+and we've plenty of friends at Ville-aux-Fayes and among the old lords
+who'll sustain us."
+
+"That's true," said Courtecuisse; "none of the other land-owners
+complain, it is only the Shopman; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de
+Ronquerolles and others, they are satisfied. When I think that if that
+cuirassier had only had the courage to let himself be killed like the
+rest I should still be happy at the gate of the Avonne, and that it was
+he that turned my life topsy-turvy, it just puts me beside myself."
+
+"They won't call out the troops for a Shopman who has set every one in
+the district against him," said Godain. "The fault's his own; he tried
+to ride over everybody here, and upset everything; and the government
+will just say to him, 'Hush up.'"
+
+"The government never says anything else; it can't, poor government!"
+said Fourchon, seized with a sudden tenderness for the government. "Yes,
+I pity it, that good government; it is very unlucky,--it hasn't a penny,
+like us; but that's very stupid of a government that makes the money
+itself, very stupid! Ah! if I were the government--"
+
+"But," cried Courtecuisse, "they tell me in Ville-aux-Fayes that
+Monsieur de Ronquerolles talked about our rights in the Assembly."
+
+"That's in Monsieur Rigou's newspaper," said Vaudoyer, who in his
+capacity of ex-field-keeper knew how to read and write; "I read it--"
+
+In spite of his vinous tenderness, old Fourchon, like many of the lower
+classes whose faculties are stimulated by drunkenness, was following,
+with an intelligent eye and a keen ear, this curious discussion which a
+variety of asides rendered still more curious. Suddenly, he stood up in
+the middle of the room.
+
+"Listen to the old one, he's drunk!" said Tonsard, "and when he is, he
+is twice as full of deviltry; he has his own and that of the wine--"
+
+"Spanish wine, and that trebles it!" cried Fourchon, laughing like a
+satyr. "My sons, don't butt your head straight at the thing,--you're too
+weak; go at it sideways. Lay low, play dead; the little woman is scared.
+I tell you, the thing'll come to an end before long; she'll leave
+the place, and if she does the Shopman will follow her, for she's his
+passion. That's your plan. Only, to make 'em go faster, my advice is to
+get rid of their counsellor, their support, our spy, our ape--"
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"The damned abbe, of course," said Tonsard; "that hunter after sins, who
+thinks the host is food enough for us."
+
+"That's true," cried Vaudoyer; "we were happy enough till he came. We
+ought to get rid of that eater of the good God,--he's the real enemy."
+
+"Finikin," added Fourchon, using a nickname which the abbe owed to his
+prim and rather puny appearance, "might be led into temptation and fall
+into the power of some sly girl, for he fasts so much. Then if we could
+catch him in the act and drum him up with a good charivari, the bishop
+would be obliged to send him elsewhere. It would please old Rigou
+devilish well. Now if your daughter, Courtecuisse, would leave
+Auxerre--she's a pretty girl, and if she'd take to piety, she might save
+us all. Hey! ran tan plan!--"
+
+"Why don't _you_ do it?" said Godain to Catherine, in a low voice;
+"there'd be scuttles full of money to hush up the talk; and for the time
+being you'd be mistress here--"
+
+"Shall we glean, or shall we not glean? that's the point," said
+Bonnebault. "I don't care two straws for your abbe, not I; I belong to
+Conches, where we haven't a black-coat to poke up our consciences."
+
+"Look here," said Vaudoyer, "we had better go and ask Rigou, who knows
+the law, whether the Shopman can forbid gleaning, and he'll tell us if
+we've got the right of it. If the Shopman has the law on his side, well,
+then we must do as the old one says,--see about taking things sideways."
+
+"Blood will be spilt," said Nicolas, darkly, as he rose after drinking a
+whole bottle of wine, which Catherine drew for him in order to keep
+him silent. "If you'd only listen to me you'd down Michaud; but you are
+miserable weaklings,--nothing but poor trash!"
+
+"I'm not," said Bonnebault. "If you are all safe friends who'll keep
+your tongues between your teeth, I'll aim at the Shopman--Hey! how I'd
+like to put a plum through his bottle; wouldn't it avenge me on those
+cursed officers?"
+
+"Tut! tut!" cried Jean-Louis Tonsard, who was supposed to be, more or
+less, Gaubertin's son, and who had just entered the tavern. This fellow,
+who was courting Rigou's pretty servant-girl, had succeeded his nominal
+father as clipper of hedges and shrubberies and other Tonsardial
+occupations. Going about among the well-to-do houses, he talked with
+masters and servants and picked up ideas which made him the man of the
+world of the family, the shrewd head. We shall presently see that in
+making love to Rigou's servant-girl, Jean-Louis deserved his reputation
+for shrewdness.
+
+"Well, what have you to say, prophet?" said the innkeeper to his son.
+
+"I say that you are playing into the hands of the rich folk," replied
+Jean-Louis. "Frighten the Aigues people to maintain your rights if you
+choose; but if you drive them out of the place and make them sell the
+estate, you are doing just what the bourgeois of the valley want, and
+it's against your own interest. If you help the bourgeois to divide the
+great estates among them, where's the national domain to be bought for
+nothing at the next Revolution? Wait till then, and you'll get your land
+without paying for it, as Rigou got his; whereas if you go and thrust
+this estate into the jaws of the rich folk of the valley, the rich folk
+will dribble it back to you impoverished and at twice the price they
+paid for it. You are working for their interests, I tell you; so does
+everybody who works for Rigou,--look at Courtecuisse."
+
+The policy contained in this allocution was too deep for the drunken
+heads of those present, who were all, except Courtecuisse, laying by
+their money to buy a slice of the Aigues cake. So they let Jean-Louis
+harangue, and continued, as in the Chamber of Deputies, their private
+confabs with one another.
+
+"Yes, that's so; you'll be Rigou's cats-paw!" cried Fourchon, who alone
+understood his grandson.
+
+Just then Langlume, the miller of Les Aigues, passed the tavern. Madame
+Tonsard hailed him.
+
+"Is it true," she said, "that gleaning is to be forbidden?"
+
+Langlume, a jovial white man, white with flour and dressed in
+grayish-white clothes, came up the steps and looked in. Instantly all
+the peasants became as sober as judges.
+
+"Well, my children, I am forced to answer yes, and no. None but the poor
+are to glean; but the measures they are going to take will turn out to
+your advantage."
+
+"How so?" asked Godain.
+
+"Why, they can prevent any but paupers from gleaning here," said the
+miller, winking in true Norman fashion; "but that doesn't prevent you
+from gleaning elsewhere,--unless all the mayors do as the Blangy mayor
+is doing."
+
+"Then it is true," said Tonsard, in a threatening voice.
+
+"As for me," said Bonnebault, putting his foraging-cap over one ear and
+making his hazel stick whiz in the air, "I'm off to Conches to warn the
+friends."
+
+And the Lovelace of the valley departed, whistling the tune of the
+martial song,--
+
+  "You who know the hussars of the Guard,
+  Don't you know the trombone of the regiment?"
+
+"I say, Marie! he's going a queer way to get to Conches, that friend of
+yours," cried old Mother Tonsard to her granddaughter.
+
+"He's after Aglae!" said Marie, who made one bound to the door. "I'll
+have to thrash her once for all, that baggage!" she cried, viciously.
+
+"Come, Vaudoyer," said Tonsard, "go and see Rigou, and then we
+shall know what to do; he's our oracle, and his spittle doesn't cost
+anything."
+
+"Another folly!" said Jean-Louis, in a low voice, "Rigou betrays
+everybody; Annette tells me so; she says he's more dangerous when he
+listens to you than other folks are when they bluster."
+
+"I advise you to be cautious," said Langlume. "The general has gone to
+the prefecture about your misdeeds, and Sibilet tells me he has sworn
+an oath to go to Paris and see the Chancellor of France and the King
+himself, and the whole pack of them if necessary, to get the better of
+his peasantry."
+
+"His peasantry!" shouted every one.
+
+"Ha, ha! so we don't belong to ourselves any longer?"
+
+As Tonsard asked the question, Vaudoyer left the house to see Rigou.
+
+Langlume, who had already gone out, turned on the door-step, and
+answered:--
+
+"Crowd of do-nothings! are you so rich that you think you are your own
+masters?"
+
+Though said with a laugh, the meaning contained in those words was
+understood by all present, as horses understand the cut of a whip.
+
+"Ran tan plan! masters indeed!" shouted old Fourchon. "I say, my lad,"
+he added to Nicolas, "after your performance this morning it's not my
+clarionet that you'll get between your thumb and four fingers!"
+
+"Don't plague him, or he'll make you throw up your wine by a punch in
+the stomach," said Catherine, roughly.
+
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sons of the Soil, by Honore de Balzac
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONS OF THE SOIL ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sons of the Soil, by Honore de Balzac
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Sons of the Soil
+
+Author: Honore de Balzac
+
+Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+Release Date: October 4, 2005 [EBook #1417]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SONS OF THE SOIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by John Bickers; and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+                          SONS OF THE SOIL
+
+                                 BY
+
+                          HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+                           Translated by
+                    Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+                             DEDICATION
+
+                    To Monsieur P. S. B. Gavault.
+
+  Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote these words at the beginning of his
+  Nouvelle Heloise: "I have seen the morals of my time and I publish
+  these letters." May I not say to you, in imitation of that great
+  writer, "I have studied the march of my epoch and I publish this
+  work"?
+
+  The object of this particular study--startling in its truth so
+  long as society makes philanthropy a principle instead of
+  regarding it as an accident--is to bring to sight the leading
+  characters of a class too long unheeded by the pens of writers who
+  seek novelty as their chief object. Perhaps this forgetfulness is
+  only prudence in these days when the people are heirs of all the
+  sycophants of royalty. We make criminals poetic, we commiserate
+  the hangman, we have all but deified the proletary. Sects have
+  risen, and cried by every pen, "Arise, working-men!" just as
+  formerly they cried, "Arise!" to the "tiers etat." None of these
+  Erostrates, however, have dared to face the country solitudes and
+  study the unceasing conspiracy of those whom we term weak against
+  those others who fancy themselves strong,--that of the peasant
+  against the proprietor. It is necessary to enlighten not only the
+  legislator of to-day but him of to-morrow. In the midst of the
+  present democratic ferment, into which so many of our writers
+  blindly rush, it becomes an urgent duty to exhibit the peasant who
+  renders Law inapplicable, and who has made the ownership of land
+  to be a thing that is, and that is not.
+
+  You are now to behold that indefatigable mole, that rodent which
+  undermines and disintegrates the soil, parcels it out and divides
+  an acre into a hundred fragments,--ever spurred on to his banquet
+  by the lower middle classes who make him at once their auxiliary
+  and their prey. This essentially unsocial element, created by the
+  Revolution, will some day absorb the middle classes, just as the
+  middle classes have destroyed the nobility. Lifted above the law
+  by its own insignificance, this Robespierre, with one head and
+  twenty million arms, is at work perpetually; crouching in country
+  districts, intrenched in municipal councils, under arms in the
+  national guard of every canton in France,--one result of the year
+  1830, which failed to remember that Napoleon preferred the chances
+  of defeat to the danger of arming the masses.
+
+  If during the last eight years I have again and again given up the
+  writing of this book (the most important of those I have
+  undertaken to write), and as often returned to it, it was, as you
+  and other friends can well imagine, because my courage shrank from
+  the many difficulties, the many essential details of a drama so
+  doubly dreadful and so cruelly bloody. Among the reasons which
+  render me now almost, it may be thought, foolhardy, I count the
+  desire to finish a work long designed to be to you a proof of my
+  deep and lasting gratitude for a friendship that has ever been
+  among my greatest consolations in misfortune.
+
+                                                      De Balzac.
+
+
+
+
+                          SONS OF THE SOIL
+
+
+
+
+                               PART I
+
+                 Whoso land hath, contention hath.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER I
+
+                            THE CHATEAU
+
+Les Aigues, August 6, 1823.
+
+To Monsieur Nathan,
+
+My dear Nathan,--You, who provide the public with such delightful
+dreams through the magic of your imagination, are now to follow me
+while I make you dream a dream of truth. You shall then tell me
+whether the present century is likely to bequeath such dreams to the
+Nathans and the Blondets of the year 1923; you shall estimate the
+distance at which we now are from the days when the Florines of the
+eighteenth century found, on awaking, a chateau like Les Aigues in the
+terms of their bargain.
+
+My dear fellow, if you receive this letter in the morning, let your
+mind travel, as you lie in bed, fifty leagues or thereabouts from
+Paris, along the great mail road which leads to the confines of
+Burgundy, and behold two small lodges built of red brick, joined, or
+separated, by a rail painted green. It was there that the diligence
+deposited your friend and correspondent.
+
+On either side of this double pavilion grows a quick-set hedge, from
+which the brambles straggle like stray locks of hair. Here and there a
+tree shoots boldly up; flowers bloom on the slopes of the wayside
+ditch, bathing their feet in its green and sluggish water. The hedge
+at both ends meets and joins two strips of woodland, and the double
+meadow thus inclosed is doubtless the result of a clearing.
+
+These dusty and deserted lodges give entrance to a magnificent avenue
+of centennial elms, whose umbrageous heads lean toward each other and
+form a long and most majestic arbor. The grass grows in this avenue,
+and only a few wheel-tracks can be seen along its double width of way.
+The great age of the trees, the breadth of the avenue, the venerable
+construction of the lodges, the brown tints of their stone courses,
+all bespeak an approach to some half-regal residence.
+
+Before reaching this enclosure from the height of an eminence such as
+we Frenchmen rather conceitedly call a mountain, at the foot of which
+lies the village of Conches (the last post-house), I had seen the long
+valley of Aigues, at the farther end of which the mail road turns to
+follow a straight line into the little sub-prefecture of La
+Ville-aux-Fayes, over which, as you know, the nephew of our friend des
+Lupeaulx lords it. Tall forests lying on the horizon, along vast slopes
+which skirt a river, command this rich valley, which is framed in the
+far distance by the mountains of a lesser Switzerland, called the Morvan.
+These forests belong to Les Aigues, and to the Marquis de Ronquerolles
+and the Comte de Soulanges, whose castles and parks and villages, seen
+in the distance from these heights, give the scene a strong
+resemblance to the imaginary landscapes of Velvet Breughel.
+
+If these details do not remind you of all the castles in the air you
+have desired to possess in France you are not worthy to receive the
+present narrative of an astounded Parisian. At last I have seen a
+landscape where art is blended with nature in such a way that neither
+of them spoils the other; the art is natural, and the nature artistic.
+I have found the oasis that you and I have dreamed of when reading
+novels,--nature luxuriant and adorned, rolling lines that are not
+confused, something wild withal, unkempt, mysterious, not common. Jump
+that green railing and come on!
+
+When I tried to look up the avenue, which the sun never penetrates
+except when it rises or when it sets, striping the road like a zebra
+with its oblique rays, my view was obstructed by an outline of rising
+ground; after that is passed, the long avenue is obstructed by a
+copse, within which the roads meet at a cross-ways, in the centre of
+which stands a stone obelisk, for all the world like an eternal
+exclamation mark. From the crevices between the foundation stones of
+this erection, which is topped by a spiked ball (what an idea!), hang
+flowering plants, blue or yellow according to the season. Les Aigues
+must certainly have been built by a woman, or for a woman; no man
+would have had such dainty ideas; the architect no doubt had his cue.
+
+Passing through the little wood placed there as sentinel, I came upon
+a charming declivity, at the foot of which foamed and gurgled a little
+brook, which I crossed on a culvert of mossy stones, superb in color,
+the prettiest of all the mosaics which time manufactures. The avenue
+continues by the brookside up a gentle rise. In the distance, the
+first tableau is now seen,--a mill and its dam, a causeway and trees,
+linen laid out to dry, the thatched cottage of the miller, his
+fishing-nets, and the tank where the fish are kept,--not to speak of
+the miller's boy, who was already watching me. No matter where you are
+in the country, however solitary you may think yourself, you are
+certain to be the focus of the two eyes of a country bumpkin; a
+laborer rests on his hoe, a vine-dresser straightens his bent back, a
+little goat-girl, or shepherdess, or milkmaid climbs a willow to stare
+at you.
+
+Presently the avenue merges into an alley of acacias, which leads to
+an iron railing made in the days when iron-workers fashioned those
+slender filagrees which are not unlike the copies set us by a
+writing-master. On either side of the railing is a ha-ha, the edges
+of which bristle with angry spikes,--regular porcupines in metal. The
+railing is closed at both ends by two porter's-lodges, like those of
+the palace at Versailles, and the gateway is surmounted by colossal
+vases. The gold of the arabesques is ruddy, for rust has added its
+tints, but this entrance, called "the gate of the Avenue," which
+plainly shows the hand of the Great Dauphin (to whom, indeed, Les
+Aigues owes it), seems to me none the less beautiful for that. At the
+end of each ha-ha the walls of the park, built of rough-hewn stone,
+begin. These stones, set in a mortar made of reddish earth, display
+their variegated colors, the warm yellows of the silex, the white of
+the lime carbonates, the russet browns of the sandstone, in many a
+fantastic shape. As you first enter it, the park is gloomy, the walls
+are hidden by creeping plants and by trees that for fifty years have
+heard no sound of axe. One might think it a virgin forest, made primeval
+again through some phenomenon granted exclusively to forests. The trunks
+of the trees are swathed with lichen which hangs from one to another.
+Mistletoe, with its viscid leaves, droops from every fork of the
+branches where moisture settles. I have found gigantic ivies, wild
+arabesques which flourish only at fifty leagues from Paris, here where
+land does not cost enough to make one sparing of it. The landscape on
+such free lines covers a great deal of ground. Nothing is smoothed
+off; rakes are unknown, ruts and ditches are full of water, frogs are
+tranquilly delivered of their tadpoles, the woodland flowers bloom,
+and the heather is as beautiful as that I have seen on your mantle-shelf
+in January in the elegant beau-pot sent by Florine. This mystery is
+intoxicating, it inspires vague desires. The forest odors, beloved
+of souls that are epicures of poesy, who delight in the tiny mosses,
+the noxious fungi, the moist mould, the willows, the balsams, the wild
+thyme, the green waters of a pond, the golden star of the yellow
+water-lily,--the breath of all such vigorous propagations came to my
+nostrils and filled me with a single thought; was it their soul? I
+seemed to see a rose-tinted gown floating along the winding alley.
+
+The path ended abruptly in another copse, where birches and poplars
+and all the quivering trees palpitated,--an intelligent family with
+graceful branches and elegant bearing, the trees of a love as free! It
+was from this point, my dear fellow, that I saw a pond covered with
+the white water-lily and other plants with broad flat leaves and
+narrow slender ones, on which lay a boat painted white and black, as
+light as a nut-shell and dainty as the wherry of a Seine boatman.
+Beyond rose the chateau, built in 1560, of fine red brick, with stone
+courses and copings, and window-frames in which the sashes were of
+small leaded panes (O Versailles!). The stone is hewn in diamond
+points, but hollowed, as in the Ducal Palace at Venice on the facade
+toward the Bridge of Sighs. There are no regular lines about the
+castle except in the centre building, from which projects a stately
+portico with double flights of curving steps, and round balusters
+slender at their base and broadening at the middle. The main building
+is surrounded by clock-towers and sundry modern turrets, with
+galleries and vases more or less Greek. No harmony there, my dear
+Nathan! These heterogeneous erections are wrapped, so to speak, by
+various evergreen trees whose branches shed their brown needles upon
+the roofs, nourishing the lichen and giving tone to the cracks and
+crevices where the eye delights to wander. Here you see the Italian
+pine, the stone pine, with its red bark and its majestic parasol; here
+a cedar two hundred years old, weeping willows, a Norway spruce, and a
+beech which overtops them all; and there, in front of the main tower,
+some very singular shrubs,--a yew trimmed in a way that recalls some
+long-decayed garden of old France, and magnolias with hortensias at
+their feet. In short, the place is the Invalides of the heroes of
+horticulture, once the fashion and now forgotten, like all other
+heroes.
+
+A chimney, with curious copings, which was sending forth great volumes
+of smoke, assured me that this delightful scene was not an opera
+setting. A kitchen reveals human beings. Now imagine _me_, Blondet, who
+shiver as if in the polar regions at Saint-Cloud, in the midst of this
+glowing Burgundian climate. The sun sends down its warmest rays, the
+king-fisher watches on the shores of the pond, the cricket chirps, the
+grain-pods burst, the poppy drops its morphia in glutinous tears, and
+all are clearly defined on the dark-blue ether. Above the ruddy soil
+of the terraces flames that joyous natural punch which intoxicates the
+insects and the flowers and dazzles our eyes and browns our faces. The
+grape is beading, its tendrils fall in a veil of threads whose
+delicacy puts to shame the lace-makers. Beside the house blue
+larkspur, nasturtium, and sweet-peas are blooming. From a distance
+orange-trees and tuberoses scent the air. After the poetic exhalations
+of the woods (a gradual preparation) came the delectable pastilles of
+this botanic seraglio.
+
+Standing on the portico, like the queen of flowers, behold a woman
+robed in white, with hair unpowdered, holding a parasol lined with
+white silk, but herself whiter than the silk, whiter than the lilies
+at her feet, whiter than the starry jasmine that climbed the
+balustrade,--a woman, a Frenchwoman born in Russia, who said as I
+approached her, "I had almost given you up." She had seen me as I left
+the copse. With what perfection do all women, even the most guileless,
+understand the arrangement of a scenic effect? The movements of the
+servants, who were preparing to serve breakfast, showed me that the
+meal had been delayed until after the arrival of the diligence. She
+had not ventured to come to meet me.
+
+Is this not our dream,--the dream of all lovers of the beautiful,
+under whatsoever form it comes; the seraphic beauty that Luini put
+into his Marriage of the Virgin, that noble fresco at Sarono; the
+beauty that Rubens grasped in the tumult of his "Battle of the
+Thermodon"; the beauty that five centuries have elaborated in the
+cathedrals of Seville and Milan; the beauty of the Saracens at
+Granada, the beauty of Louis XIV. at Versailles, the beauty of the
+Alps, and that of this Limagne in which I stand?
+
+Belonging to the estate, about which there is nothing too princely,
+nor yet too financial, where prince and farmer-general have both lived
+(which fact serves to explain it), are four thousand acres of
+woodland, a park of some nine hundred acres, the mill, three leased
+farms, another immense farm at Conches, and vineyards,--the whole
+producing a revenue of about seventy thousand francs a year. Now you
+know Les Aigues, my dear fellow; where I have been expected for the
+last two weeks, and where I am at this moment, in the chintz-lined
+chamber assigned to dearest friends.
+
+Above the park, towards Conches, a dozen little brooks, clear, limpid
+streams coming from the Morvan, fall into the pond, after adorning
+with their silvery ribbons the valleys of the park and the magnificent
+gardens around the chateau. The name of the place, Les Aigues, comes
+from these charming streams of water; the estate was originally called
+in the old title-deeds "Les Aigues-Vives" to distinguish it from
+"Aigues-Mortes"; but the word "Vives" has now been dropped. The pond
+empties into the stream, which follows the course of the avenue,
+through a wide and straight canal bordered on both sides and along its
+whole length by weeping willows. This canal, thus arched, produces a
+delightful effect. Gliding through it, seated on a thwart of the
+little boat, one could fancy one's self in the nave of some great
+cathedral, the choir being formed of the main building of the house
+seen at the end of it. When the setting sun casts its orange tones
+mingled with amber upon the casements of the chateau, the effect is
+that of painted windows. At the other end of the canal we see Blangy,
+the county-town, containing about sixty houses, and the village
+church, which is nothing more than a tumble-down building with a
+wooden clock-tower which appears to hold up a roof of broken tiles.
+One comfortable house and the parsonage are distinguishable; but the
+township is a large one,--about two hundred scattered houses in all,
+those of the village forming as it were the capital. The roads are
+lined with fruit-trees, and numerous little gardens are strewn here
+and there,--true country gardens with everything in them; flowers,
+onions, cabbages and grapevines, currants, and a great deal of manure.
+The village has a primitive air; it is rustic, and has that decorative
+simplicity which we artists are forever seeking. In the far distance
+is the little town of Soulanges overhanging a vast sheet of water,
+like the buildings on the lake of Thune.
+
+When you stroll in the park, which has four gates, each superb in
+style, you feel that our mythological Arcadias are flat and stale.
+Arcadia is in Burgundy, not in Greece; Arcadia is at Les Aigues and
+nowhere else. A river, made by scores of brooklets, crosses the park
+at its lower level with a serpentine movement; giving a dewy freshness
+and tranquillity to the scene,--an air of solitude, which reminds one
+of a convent of Carthusians, and all the more because, on an
+artificial island in the river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior
+elegance of which is worthy of the luxurious financier who constructed
+it. Les Aigues, my dear Nathan, once belonged to that Bouret who spent
+two millions to receive Louis XV. on a single occasion under his roof.
+How many ardent passions, how many distinguished minds, how many
+fortunate circumstances have contributed to make this beautiful place
+what it is! A mistress of Henri IV. rebuilt the chateau where it now
+stands. The favorite of the Great Dauphin, Mademoiselle Choin (to whom
+Les Aigues was given), added a number of farms to it. Bouret furnished
+the house with all the elegancies of Parisian homes for an Opera
+celebrity; and to him Les Aigues owes the restoration of its ground
+floor in the style Louis XV.
+
+I have often stood rapt in admiration at the beauty of the
+dining-room. The eye is first attracted to the ceiling, painted in fresco
+in the Italian manner, where lightsome arabesques are frolicking. Female
+forms, in stucco ending in foliage, support at regular distances
+corbeils of fruit, from which spring the garlands of the ceiling.
+Charming paintings, the work of unknown artists, fill the panels
+between the female figures, representing the luxuries of the table,
+--boar's-heads, salmon, rare shell-fish, and all edible things,--which
+fantastically suggest men and women and children, and rival the
+whimsical imagination of the Chinese,--the people who best understand,
+to my thinking at least, the art of decoration. The mistress of the
+house finds a bell-wire beneath her feet to summon servants, who enter
+only when required, disturbing no interviews and overhearing no
+secrets. The panels above the doorways represent gay scenes; all the
+embrasures, both of doors and windows, are in marble mosaics. The room
+is heated from below. Every window looks forth on some delightful
+view.
+
+This room communicates with a bath-room on one side and on the other
+with a boudoir which opens into the salon. The bath-room is lined with
+Sevres tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the bath
+marble. An alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which turns
+on a pivot, contains a couch in gilt wood of the truest Pompadour. The
+ceiling is lapis-lazuli starred with gold. The tiles are painted from
+designs by Boucher. Bath, table and love are therefore closely united.
+
+After the salon, which, I should tell you, my dear fellow, exhibits
+the magnificence of the Louis XIV. manner, you enter a fine billiard-room
+unrivalled so far as I know in Paris itself. The entrance to this
+suite of ground-floor apartments is through a semi-circular
+antechamber, at the lower end of which is a fairy-like staircase,
+lighted from above, which leads to other parts of the house, all built
+at various epochs--and to think that they chopped off the heads of the
+wealthy in 1793! Good heavens! why can't people understand that the
+marvels of art are impossible in a land where there are no great
+fortunes, no secure, luxurious lives? If the Left insists on killing
+kings why not leave us a few little princelings with money in their
+pockets?
+
+At the present moment these accumulated treasures belong to a charming
+woman with an artistic soul, who is not content with merely restoring
+them magnificently, but who keeps the place up with loving care. Sham
+philosophers, studying themselves while they profess to be studying
+humanity, call these glorious things extravagance. They grovel before
+cotton prints and the tasteless designs of modern industry, as if we
+were greater and happier in these days than in those of Henri IV.,
+Louis XIV., and Louis XVI., monarchs who have all left the stamp of
+their reigns upon Les Aigues. What palace, what royal castle, what
+mansions, what noble works of art, what gold brocaded stuffs are
+sacred now? The petticoats of our grandmothers go to cover the chairs
+in these degenerate days. Selfish and thieving interlopers that we
+are, we pull down everything and plant cabbages where marvels once
+were rife. Only yesterday the plough levelled Persan, that magnificent
+domain which gave a title to one of the most opulent families of the
+old parliament; hammers have demolished Montmorency, which cost an
+Italian follower of Napoleon untold sums; Val, the creation of
+Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angely, Cassan, built by a mistress of the
+Prince de Conti; in all, four royal houses have disappeared in the
+valley of the Oise alone. We are getting a Roman campagna around Paris
+in advance of the days when a tempest shall blow from the north and
+overturn our plaster palaces and our pasteboard decorations.
+
+Now see, my dear fellow, to what the habit of bombasticising in
+newspapers brings you to. Here am I writing a downright article. Does
+the mind have its ruts, like a road? I stop; for I rob the mail, and I
+rob myself, and you may be yawning--to be continued in our next; I
+hear the second bell, which summons me to one of those abundant
+breakfasts the fashion of which has long passed away, in the dining-rooms
+of Paris, be it understood.
+
+Here's the history of my Arcadia. In 1815, there died at Les Aigues
+one of the famous wantons of the last century,--a singer, forgotten of
+the guillotine and the nobility, after preying upon exchequers, upon
+literature, upon aristocracy, and all but reaching the scaffold;
+forgotten, like so many fascinating old women who expiate their golden
+youth in country solitudes, and replace their lost loves by another,
+--man by Nature. Such women live with the flowers, with the woodland
+scents, with the sky, with the sunshine, with all that sings and skips
+and shines and sprouts,--the birds, the squirrels, the flowers, the
+grass; they know nothing about these things, they cannot explain them,
+but they love them; they love them so well that they forget dukes,
+marshals, rivalries, financiers, follies, luxuries, their paste jewels
+and their real diamonds, their heeled slippers and their rouge,--all,
+for the sweetness of country life.
+
+I have gathered, my dear fellow, much precious information about the
+old age of Mademoiselle Laguerre; for, to tell you the truth, the
+after life of such women as Florine, Mariette, Suzanne de Val Noble,
+and Tullia has made me, every now and then, extremely inquisitive, as
+though I were a child inquiring what had become of the old moons.
+
+In 1790 Mademoiselle Laguerre, alarmed at the turn of public affairs,
+came to settle at Les Aigues, bought and given to her by Bouret, who
+passed several summers with her at the chateau. Terrified at the fate
+of Madame du Barry, she buried her diamonds. At that time she was only
+fifty-three years of age, and according to her lady's-maid, afterwards
+married to a gendarme named Soudry, "Madame was more beautiful than
+ever." My dear Nathan, Nature has no doubt her private reasons for
+treating women of this sort like spoiled children; excesses, instead
+of killing them, fatten them, preserve them, renew their youth. Under
+a lymphatic appearance they have nerves which maintain their
+marvellous physique; they actually preserve their beauty for reasons
+which would make a virtuous woman haggard. No, upon my word, Nature is
+not moral!
+
+Mademoiselle Laguerre lived an irreproachable life at Les Aigues, one
+might even call it a saintly one, after her famous adventure,--you
+remember it? One evening in a paroxysm of despairing love, she fled
+from the opera-house in her stage dress, rushed into the country, and
+passed the night weeping by the wayside. (Ah! how they have
+calumniated the love of Louis XV.'s time!) She was so unused to see
+the sunrise, that she hailed it with one of her finest songs. Her
+attitude, quite as much as her tinsel, drew the peasants about her;
+amazed at her gestures, her voice, her beauty, they took her for an
+angel, and dropped on their knees around her. If Voltaire had not
+existed we might have thought it a new miracle. I don't know if God
+gave her much credit for her tardy virtue, for love after all must be
+a sickening thing to a woman as weary of it as a wanton of the old
+Opera. Mademoiselle Laguerre was born in 1740, and her hey-day was in
+1760, when Monsieur (I forget his name) was called the "ministre de la
+guerre," on account of his liaison with her. She abandoned that name,
+which was quite unknown down here, and called herself Madame des
+Aigues, as if to merge her identity in the estate, which she delighted
+to improve with a taste that was profoundly artistic. When Bonaparte
+became First Consul, she increased her property by the purchase of
+church lands, for which she used the proceeds of her diamonds. As an
+Opera divinity never knows how to take care of her money, she
+intrusted the management of the estate to a steward, occupying herself
+with her flowers and fruits and with the beautifying of the park.
+
+After Mademoiselle was dead and buried at Blangy, the notary of
+Soulanges--that little town which lies between Ville-aux-Fayes and
+Blangy, the capital of the township--made an elaborate inventory, and
+sought out the heirs of the singer, who never knew she had any. Eleven
+families of poor laborers living near Amiens, and sleeping in cotton
+sheets, awoke one fine morning in golden ones. The property was sold
+at auction. Les Aigues was bought by Montcornet, who had laid by
+enough during his campaigns in Spain and Pomerania to make the
+purchase, which cost about eleven hundred thousand francs, including
+the furniture. The general, no doubt, felt the influence of these
+luxurious apartments; and I was arguing with the countess only
+yesterday that her marriage was a direct result of the purchase of Les
+Aigues.
+
+To rightly understand the countess, my dear Nathan, you must know that
+the general is a violent man, red as fire, five feet nine inches tall,
+round as a tower, with a thick neck and the shoulders of a blacksmith,
+which must have amply filled his cuirass. Montcornet commanded the
+cuirassiers at the battle of Essling (called by the Austrians
+Gross-Aspern), and came near perishing when that noble corps was driven
+back on the Danube. He managed to cross the river astride a log of wood.
+The cuirassiers, finding the bridge down, took the glorious
+resolution, at Montcornet's command, to turn and resist the entire
+Austrian army, which carried off on the morrow over thirty wagon-loads
+of cuirasses. The Germans invented a name for their enemies on this
+occasion which means "men of iron."[*] Montcornet has the outer man of
+a hero of antiquity. His arms are stout and vigorous, his chest deep
+and broad; his head has a leonine aspect, his voice is of those that
+can order a charge in the thick of battle; but he has nothing more
+than the courage of a daring man; he lacks mind and breadth of view.
+Like other generals to whom military common-sense, the natural
+boldness of those who spend their lives in danger, and the habit of
+command gives an appearance of superiority, Montcornet has an imposing
+effect when you first meet him; he seems a Titan, but he contains a
+dwarf, like the pasteboard giant who saluted Queen Elizabeth at the
+gates of Kenilworth. Choleric though kind, and full of imperial
+hauteur, he has the caustic tongue of a soldier, and is quick at
+repartee, but quicker still with a blow. He may have been superb on a
+battle-field; in a household he is simply intolerable. He knows no
+love but barrack love,--the love which those clever myth-makers, the
+ancients, placed under the patronage of Eros, son of Mars and Venus.
+Those delightful chroniclers of the old religions provided themselves
+with a dozen different Loves. Study the fathers and the attributes of
+these Loves, and you will discover a complete social nomenclature,
+--and yet we fancy that we originate things! When the world turns
+upside down like an hour-glass, when the seas become continents,
+Frenchmen will find canons, steamboats, newspapers, and maps wrapped
+up in seaweed at the bottom of what is now our ocean.
+
+[*] I do not, on principle, like foot-notes, and this is the first I
+have ever allowed myself. Its historical interest must be my
+excuse; it will prove, moreover, that descriptions of battles
+should be something more than the dry particulars of technical
+writers, who for the last three thousand years have told us about
+left and right wings and centres being broken or driven in, but
+never a word about the soldier himself, his sufferings, and his
+heroism. The conscientious care with which I prepared myself to
+write the "Scenes from Military Life," led me to many a battle-field
+once wet with the blood of France and her enemies. Among them I
+went to Wagram. When I reached the shores of the Danube, opposite
+Lobau, I noticed on the bank, which is covered with turf, certain
+undulations that reminded me of the furrows in a field of
+lucern. I asked the reason of it, thinking I should hear of some
+new method of agriculture: "There sleep the cavalry of the
+imperial guard," said the peasant who served us as a guide; "those
+are their graves you see there." The words made me shudder. Prince
+Frederic Schwartzenburg, who translated them, added that the man
+had himself driven one of the wagons laden with cuirasses. By one
+of the strange chances of war our guide had served a breakfast to
+Napoleon on the morning of the battle of Wagram. Though poor, he
+had kept the double napoleon which the Emperor gave him for his
+milk and his eggs. The curate of Gross-Aspern took us to the
+famous cemetery where French and Austrians struggled together
+knee-deep in blood, with a courage and obstinacy glorious to each.
+There, while explaining that a marble tablet (to which our
+attention had been attracted, and on which were inscribed the
+names of the owner of Gross-Aspern, who had been killed on the
+third day) was the sole compensation ever given to the family, he
+said, in a tone of deep sadness: "It was a time of great misery,
+and of great hopes; but now are the days of forgetfulness." The
+saying seemed to me sublime in its simplicity; but when I came to
+reflect upon the matter, I felt there was some justification for
+the apparent ingratitude of the House of Austria. Neither nations
+nor kings are wealthy enough to reward all the devotions to which
+these tragic struggles give rise. Let those who serve a cause with
+a secret expectation of recompense, set a price upon their blood
+and become mercenaries. Those who wield either sword or pen for
+their country's good ought to think of nothing but of _doing their
+best_, as our fathers used to say, and expect nothing, not even
+glory, except as a happy accident.
+
+It was in rushing to retake this famous cemetery for the third
+time that Massena, wounded and carried in the box of a cabriolet,
+made this splendid harangue to his soldiers: "What! you rascally
+curs, who have only five sous a day while I have forty thousand,
+do you let me go ahead of you?" All the world knows the order
+which the Emperor sent to his lieutenant by M. de Sainte-Croix,
+who swam the Danube three times: "Die or retake the village; it is
+a question of saving the army; the bridges are destroyed."
+
+The Author.
+
+
+Now, I must tell you that the Comtesse de Montcornet is a fragile,
+timid, delicate little woman. What do you think of such a marriage as
+that? To those who know society such things are common enough; a
+well-assorted marriage is the exception. Nevertheless, I have come to
+see how it is that this slender little creature handles her bobbins
+in a way to lead this heavy, solid, stolid general precisely as he
+himself used to lead his cuirassiers.
+
+If Montcornet begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a
+finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his
+cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before
+he returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns to her,
+like a bear drunk on grapes, and says, when anything is proposed, "If
+Madame approves." When he comes to his wife's room, with that heavy
+step which makes the tiles creak as though they were boards, and she,
+not wanting him, calls out: "Don't come in!" he performs a military
+volte-face and says humbly: "You will let me know when I can see you?"
+--in the very tones with which he shouted to his cuirassiers on the
+banks of the Danube: "Men, we must die, and die well, since there's
+nothing else we can do!" I have heard him say, speaking of his wife,
+"Not only do I love her, but I venerate her." When he flies into a
+passion which defies all restraint and bursts all bonds, the little
+woman retires into her own room and leaves him to shout. But four or
+five hours later she will say: "Don't get into a passion, my dear, you
+might break a blood-vessel; and besides, you hurt me." Then the lion
+of Essling retreats out of sight to wipe his eyes. Sometimes he comes
+into the salon when she and I are talking, and if she says: "Don't
+disturb us, he is reading to me," he leaves us without a word.
+
+It is only strong men, choleric and powerful, thunder-bolts of war,
+diplomats with olympian heads, or men of genius, who can show this
+utter confidence, this generous devotion to weakness, this constant
+protection, this love without jealousy, this easy good humor with a
+woman. Good heavens! I place the science of the countess's management
+of her husband as far above the peevish, arid virtues as the satin of
+a causeuse is superior to the Utrecht velvet of a dirty bourgeois
+sofa.
+
+My dear fellow, I have spent six days in this delightful
+country-house, and I never tire of admiring the beauties of the park,
+surrounded by forests where pretty wood-paths lead beside the brooks.
+Nature and its silence, these tranquil pleasures, this placid life to
+which she woos me,--all attract. Ah! here is true literature; no fault
+of style among the meadows. Happiness forgets all things here,--even
+the Debats! It has rained all the morning; while the countess slept
+and Montcornet tramped over his domain, I have compelled myself to
+keep my rash, imprudent promise to write to you.
+
+Until now, though I was born at Alencon, of an old judge and a
+prefect, so they say, and though I know something of agriculture, I
+supposed the tale of estates bringing in four or five thousand francs
+a month to be a fable. Money, to me, meant a couple of dreadful
+things,--work and a publisher, journalism and politics. When shall we
+poor fellows come upon a land where gold springs up with the grass?
+That is what I desire for you and for me and the rest of us in the
+name of the theatre, and of the press, and of book-making! Amen!
+
+Will Florine be jealous of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre? Our modern
+Bourets have no French nobles now to show them how to live; they hire
+one opera-box among three of them; they subscribe for their pleasures;
+they no longer cut down magnificently bound quartos to match the
+octavos in their library; in fact, they scarcely buy even stitched
+paper books. What is to become of us?
+
+
+                                      Adieu; continue to care for
+                                      Your Blondet.
+
+
+If this letter, dashed off by the idlest pen of the century, had not
+by some lucky chance been preserved, it would have been almost
+impossible to describe Les Aigues; and without this description the
+history of the horrible events that occurred there would certainly be
+less interesting.
+
+After that remark some persons will expect to see the flashing of the
+cuirass of the former colonel of the guard, and the raging of his
+anger as he falls like a waterspout upon his little wife; so that the
+end of this present history may be like the end of all modern dramas,
+--a tragedy of the bed-chamber. Perhaps the fatal scene will take
+place in that charming room with the blue monochromes, where beautiful
+ideal birds are painted on the ceilings and the shutters, where
+Chinese monsters laugh with open jaws on the mantle-shelf, and
+dragons, green and gold, twist their tails in curious convolutions
+around rich vases, and Japanese fantasy embroiders its designs of many
+colors; where sofas and reclining-chairs and consoles and what-nots
+invite to that contemplative idleness which forbids all action.
+
+No; the drama here to be developed is not one of private life; it
+concerns things higher, or lower. Expect no scenes of passion; the
+truth of this history is only too dramatic. And remember, the
+historian should never forget that his mission is to do justice to
+all; the poor and the prosperous are equals before his pen; to him the
+peasant appears in the grandeur of his misery, and the rich in the
+pettiness of his folly. Moreover, the rich man has passions, the
+peasant only wants. The peasant is therefore doubly poor; and if,
+politically, his aggressions must be pitilessly repressed, to the eyes
+of humanity and religion he is sacred.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER II
+
+                   A BUCOLIC OVERLOOKED BY VIRGIL
+
+When a Parisian drops into the country he is cut off from all his
+usual habits, and soon feels the dragging hours, no matter how
+attentive his friends may be to him. Therefore, because it is so
+impossible to prolong in a tete-a-tete conversations that are soon
+exhausted, the master and mistress of a country-house are apt to say,
+calmly, "You will be terribly bored here." It is true that to
+understand the delights of country life one must have something to do,
+some interests in it; one must know the nature of the work to be done,
+and the alternating harmony of toil and pleasure,--eternal symbol of
+human life.
+
+When a Parisian has recovered his powers of sleeping, shaken off the
+fatigues of his journey, and accustomed himself to country habits, the
+hardest period of the day (if he wears thin boots and is neither a
+sportsman nor an agriculturalist) is the early morning. Between the
+hours of waking and breakfasting, the women of the family are sleeping
+or dressing, and therefore unapproachable; the master of the house is
+out and about on his own affairs; a Parisian is therefore compelled to
+be alone from eight to eleven o'clock, the hour chosen in all
+country-houses for breakfast. Now, having got what amusement he can out
+of carefully dressing himself, he has soon exhausted that resource.
+Then, perhaps, he has brought with him some work, which he finds it
+impossible to do, and which goes back untouched, after he sees the
+difficulties of doing it, into his valise; a writer is then obliged to
+wander about the park and gape at nothing or count the big trees. The
+easier the life, the more irksome such occupations are,--unless,
+indeed, one belongs to the sect of shaking quakers or to the honorable
+guild of carpenters or taxidermists. If one really had, like the
+owners of estates, to live in the country, it would be well to supply
+one's self with a geological, mineralogical, entomological, or
+botanical hobby; but a sensible man doesn't give himself a vice merely
+to kill time for a fortnight. The noblest estate, and the finest
+chateaux soon pall on those who possess nothing but the sight of them.
+The beauties of nature seem rather squalid compared to the
+representation of them at the opera. Paris, by retrospection, shines
+from all its facets. Unless some particular interest attaches us, as
+it did in Blondet's case, to scenes honored by the steps and lighted
+by the eyes of a certain person, one would envy the birds their wings
+and long to get back to the endless, exciting scenes of Paris and its
+harrowing strifes.
+
+The long letter of the young journalist must make most intelligent
+minds suppose that he had reached, morally and physically, that
+particular phase of satisfied passions and comfortable happiness which
+certain winged creatures fed in Strasbourg so perfectly represent
+when, with their heads sunk behind their protruding gizzards, they
+neither see nor wish to see the most appetizing food. So, when the
+formidable letter was finished, the writer felt the need of getting
+away from the gardens of Armida and doing something to enliven the
+deadly void of the morning hours; for the hours between breakfast and
+dinner belonged to the mistress of the house, who knew very well how
+to make them pass quickly. To keep, as Madame de Montcornet did, a man
+of talent in the country without ever seeing on his face the false
+smile of satiety, or detecting the yawn of a weariness that cannot be
+concealed, is a great triumph for a woman. The affection which is
+equal to such a test certainly ought to be eternal. It is to be
+wondered at that women do not oftener employ it to judge of their
+lovers; a fool, an egoist, or a petty nature could never stand it.
+Philip the Second himself, the Alexander of dissimulation, would have
+told his secrets if condemned to a month's tete-a-tete in the country.
+Perhaps this is why kings seek to live in perpetual motion, and allow
+no one to see them more than fifteen minutes at a time.
+
+Notwithstanding that he had received the delicate attentions of one of
+the most charming women in Paris, Emile Blondet was able to feel once
+more the long forgotten delights of a truant schoolboy; and on the
+morning of the day after his letter was written he had himself called
+by Francois, the head valet, who was specially appointed to wait on
+him, for the purpose of exploring the valley of the Avonne.
+
+The Avonne is a little river which, being swollen above Conches by
+numerous rivulets, some of which rise in Les Aigues, falls at
+Ville-aux-Fayes into one of the large affluents of the Seine. The
+geographical position of the Avonne, navigable for over twelve miles,
+had, ever since Jean Bouvet invented rafts, given full money value to
+the forests of Les Aigues, Soulanges, and Ronquerolles, standing on
+the crest of the hills between which this charming river flows. The
+park of Les Aigues covers the greater part of the valley, between the
+river (bordered on both sides by the forest called des Aigues) and the
+royal mail road, defined by a line of old elms in the distance along
+the slopes of the Avonne mountains, which are in fact the foot-hills
+of that magnificent ampitheatre called the Morvan.
+
+However vulgar the comparison may be, the park, lying thus at the
+bottom of the valley, is like an enormous fish with its head at
+Conches and its tail in the village of Blangy; for it widens in the
+middle to nearly three hundred acres, while towards Conches it counts
+less than fifty, and sixty at Blangy. The position of this estate,
+between three villages, and only three miles from the little town of
+Soulanges, from which the descent is rapid, may perhaps have led to
+the strife and caused the excesses which are the chief interest
+attaching to the place. If, when seen from the mail road or from the
+uplands beyond Ville-aux-Fayes, the paradise of Les Aigues induces
+mere passing travellers to commit the mortal sin of envy, why should
+the rich burghers of Soulanges and Ville-aux-Fayes who had it before
+their eyes and admired it every day of their lives, have been more
+virtuous?
+
+This last topographical detail was needed to explain the site, also
+the use of the four gates by which alone the park of Les Aigues was
+entered; for it was completely surrounded by walls, except where
+nature had provided a fine view, and at such points sunk fences or
+ha-has had been placed. The four gates, called the gate of Conches, the
+gate of Avonne, the gate of Blangy, and the gate of the Avenue, showed
+the styles of the different periods at which they were constructed so
+admirably that a brief description, in the interest of archaeologists,
+will presently be given, as brief as the one Blondet has already
+written about the gate of the Avenue.
+
+After eight days of strolling about with the countess, the illustrious
+editor of the "Journal des Debats" knew by heart the Chinese kiosk,
+the bridges, the isles, the hermitage, the dairy, the ruined temple,
+the Babylonian ice-house, and all the other delusions invented by
+landscape architects which some nine hundred acres of land can be made
+to serve. He now wished to find the sources of the Avonne, which the
+general and the countess daily extolled in the evening, making plans
+to visit them which were daily forgotten the next morning. Above Les
+Aigues the Avonne really had the appearance of an alpine torrent.
+Sometimes it hollowed a bed among the rocks, sometimes it went
+underground; on this side the brooks came down in cascades, there they
+flowed like the Loire on sandy shallows where rafts could not pass on
+account of the shifting channels. Blondet took a short cut through the
+labyrinths of the park to reach the gate of Conches. This gate demands
+a few words, which give, moreover, certain historical details about
+the property.
+
+The original founder of Les Aigues was a younger son of the Soulanges
+family, enriched by marriage, whose chief ambition was to make his
+elder brother jealous,--a sentiment, by the bye, to which we owe the
+fairy-land of Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore. In the middle ages the
+castle of Les Aigues stood on the banks of the Avonne. Of this old
+building nothing remains but the gateway, which has a porch like the
+entrance to a fortified town, flanked by two round towers with conical
+roofs. Above the arch of the porch are heavy stone courses, now draped
+with vegetation, showing three large windows with cross-bar sashes. A
+winding stairway in one of the towers leads to two chambers, and a
+kitchen occupies the other tower. The roof of the porch, of pointed
+shape like all old timber-work, is noticeable for two weathercocks
+perched at each end of a ridge-pole ornamented with fantastic iron-work.
+Many an important place cannot boast of so fine a town hall. On the
+outside of this gateway, the keystone of the arch still bears the
+arms of Soulanges, preserved by the hardness of the stone on which the
+chisel of the artist carved them, as follows: Azure, on a pale,
+argent, three pilgrim's staff's sable; a fess bronchant, gules,
+charged with four grosses patee, fitched, or; with the heraldic form
+of a shield awarded to younger sons. Blondet deciphered the motto, "Je
+soule agir,"--one of those puns that crusaders delighted to make upon
+their names, and which brings to mind a fine political maxim, which,
+as we shall see later, was unfortunately forgotten by Montcornet. The
+gate, which was opened for Blondet by a very pretty girl, was of
+time-worn wood clamped with iron. The keeper, wakened by the creaking
+of the hinges, put his nose out of the window and showed himself in his
+night-shirt.
+
+"So our keepers sleep till this time of day!" thought the Parisian,
+who thought himself very knowing in rural customs.
+
+After a walk of about quarter of an hour, he reached the sources of
+the river above Conches, where his ravished eyes beheld one of those
+landscapes that ought to be described, like the history of France, in
+a thousand volumes or in only one. We must here content ourselves with
+two paragraphs.
+
+A projecting rock, covered with dwarf trees and abraded at its base by
+the Avonne, to which circumstance it owes a slight resemblance to an
+enormous turtle lying across the river, forms an arch through which
+the eye takes in a little sheet of water, clear as a mirror, where the
+stream seems to sleep until it reaches in the distance a series of
+cascades falling among huge rocks, where little weeping willows with
+elastic motion sway back and forth to the flow of waters.
+
+Beyond these cascades is the hillside, rising sheer, like a Rhine rock
+clothed with moss and heather, gullied like it, again, by sharp ridges
+of schist and mica sending down, here and there, white foaming
+rivulets to which a little meadow, always watered and always green,
+serves as a cup; farther on, beyond the picturesque chaos and in
+contrast to this wild, solitary nature, the gardens of Conches are
+seen, with the village roofs and the clock-tower and the outlying
+fields.
+
+There are the two paragraphs, but the rising sun, the purity of the
+air, the dewy sheen, the melody of woods and waters--imagine them!
+
+"Almost as charming as at the Opera," thought Blondet, making his way
+along the banks of the unnavigable portion of the Avonne, whose
+caprices contrast with the straight and deep and silent stream of the
+lower river, flowing between the tall trees of the forest of Les
+Aigues.
+
+Blondet did not proceed far on his morning walk, for he was presently
+brought to a stand-still by the sight of a peasant,--one of those who,
+in this drama, are supernumeraries so essential to its action that it
+may be doubted whether they are not in fact its leading actors.
+
+When the clever journalist reached a group of rocks where the main
+stream is imprisoned, as it were, between two portals, he saw a man
+standing so motionless as to excite his curiosity, while the clothes
+and general air of this living statue greatly puzzled him.
+
+The humble personage before him was a living presentment of the old
+men dear to Charlet's pencil; resembling the troopers of that Homer of
+soldiery in a strong frame able to endure hardship, and his immortal
+skirmishers in a fiery, crimson, knotted face, showing small capacity
+for submission. A coarse felt hat, the brim of which was held to the
+crown by stitches, protected a nearly bald head from the weather;
+below it fell a quantity of white hair which a painter would gladly
+have paid four francs an hour to copy,--a dazzling mass of snow, worn
+like that in all the classical representations of Deity. It was easy
+to guess from the way in which the cheeks sank in, continuing the
+lines of the mouth, that the toothless old fellow was more given to
+the bottle than the trencher. His thin white beard gave a threatening
+expression to his profile by the stiffness of its short bristles. The
+eyes, too small for his enormous face, and sloping like those of a
+pig, betrayed cunning and also laziness; but at this particular moment
+they were gleaming with the intent look he cast upon the river. The
+sole garments of this curious figure were an old blouse, formerly
+blue, and trousers of the coarse burlap used in Paris to wrap bales.
+All city people would have shuddered at the sight of his broken
+sabots, without even a wisp of straw to stop the cracks; and it is
+very certain that the blouse and the trousers had no money value at
+all except to a paper-maker.
+
+As Blondet examined this rural Diogenes, he admitted the possibility
+of a type of peasantry he had seen in old tapestries, old pictures,
+old sculptures, and which, up to this time, had seemed to him
+imaginary. He resolved for the future not to utterly condemn the
+school of ugliness, perceiving a possibility that in man beauty may be
+but the flattering exception, a chimera in which the race struggles to
+believe.
+
+"What can be the ideas, the morals, the habits, of such a being? What
+is he thinking of?" thought Blondet, seized with curiosity. "Is he my
+fellow-creature? We have nothing in common but shape, and even
+that!--"
+
+He noticed in the old man's limbs the peculiar rigidity of the tissues
+of persons who live in the open air, accustomed to the inclemencies of
+the weather and to the endurance of heat and cold,--hardened to
+everything, in short,--which makes their leathern skin almost a hide,
+and their nerves an apparatus against physical pain almost as powerful
+as that of the Russians or the Arabs.
+
+"Here's one of Cooper's Red-skins," thought Blondet; "one needn't go
+to America to study savages."
+
+Though the Parisian was less than ten paces off, the old man did not
+turn his head, but kept looking at the opposite bank with a fixity
+which the fakirs of India give to their vitrified eyes and their
+stiffened joints. Compelled by the power of a species of magnetism,
+more contagious than people have any idea of, Blondet ended by gazing
+at the water himself.
+
+"Well, my good man, what do you see there?" he asked, after the lapse
+of a quarter of an hour, during which time he saw nothing to justify
+this intent contemplation.
+
+"Hush!" whispered the old man, with a sign to Blondet not to ruffle
+the air with his voice; "You will frighten it--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"An otter, my good gentleman. If it hears us it'll go quick under
+water. I'm certain it jumped there; see! see! there, where the water
+bubbles! Ha! it sees a fish, it is after that! But my boy will grab it
+as it comes back. The otter, don't you know, is very rare; it is
+scientific game, and good eating, too. I get ten francs for every one
+I carry to Les Aigues, for the lady fasts Fridays, and to-morrow is
+Friday. Years agone the deceased madame used to pay me twenty francs,
+and gave me the skin to boot! Mouche," he called, in a low voice,
+"watch it!"
+
+Blondet now perceived on the other side of the river two bright eyes,
+like those of a cat, beneath a tuft of alders; then he saw the tanned
+forehead and tangled hair of a boy about ten years of age, who was
+lying on his stomach and making signs towards the otter to let his
+master know he kept it well in sight. Blondet, completely mastered by
+the eagerness of the old man and boy, allowed the demon of the chase
+to get the better of him,--that demon with the double claws of hope
+and curiosity, who carries you whithersoever he will.
+
+"The hat-makers buy the skin," continued the old man; "it's so soft,
+so handsome! They cover caps with it."
+
+"Do you really think so, my old man?" said Blondet, smiling.
+
+"Well truly, my good gentleman, you ought to know more than I, though
+I am seventy years old," replied the old fellow, very humbly and
+respectfully, falling into the attitude of a giver of holy water;
+"perhaps you can tell me why conductors and wine-merchants are so fond
+of it?"
+
+Blondet, a master of irony, already on his guard from the word
+"scientific," recollected the Marechal de Richelieu and began to
+suspect some jest on the part of the old man; but he was reassured by
+his artless attitude and the perfectly stupid expression of his face.
+
+"In my young days we had lots of otters," whispered the old fellow;
+"but they've hunted 'em so that if we see the tail of one in seven
+years it is as much as ever we do. And the sub-prefect at
+Ville-aux-Fayes,--doesn't monsieur know him? though he be a Parisian,
+he's a fine young man like you, and he loves curiosities,--so, as I was
+saying, hearing of my talent for catching otters, for I know 'em as
+you know your alphabet, he says to me like this: 'Pere Fourchon,' says
+he, 'when you find an otter bring it to me, and I'll pay you well; and
+if it's spotted white on the back,' says he, 'I'll give you thirty
+francs.' That's just what he did say to me as true as I believe in God
+the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And there's a learned man at
+Soulanges, Monsieur Gourdon, our doctor, who is making, so they tell
+me, a collection of natural history which hasn't its mate at Dijon
+even; indeed he is first among the learned men in these parts, and
+he'll pay me a fine price, too; he stuffs men and beasts. Now my boy
+there stands me out that that otter has got the white spots. 'If
+that's so,' says I to him, 'then the good God wishes well to us this
+morning!' Ha! didn't you see the water bubble? yes, there it is! there
+it is! Though it lives in a kind of a burrow, it sometimes stays whole
+days under water. Ha, there! it heard you, my good gentleman; it's on
+its guard now; for there's not a more suspicious animal on earth; it's
+worse than a woman."
+
+"So you call women suspicious, do you?" said Blondet.
+
+"Faith, monsieur, if you come from Paris you ought to know about that
+better than I. But you'd have done better for me if you had stayed in
+your bed and slept all the morning; don't you see that wake there?
+that's where she's gone under. Get up, Mouche! the otter heard
+monsieur talking, and now she's scary enough to keep us at her heels
+till midnight. Come, let's be off! and good-bye to our thirty francs!"
+
+Mouche got up reluctantly; he looked at the spot where the water
+bubbled, pointed to it with his finger and seemed unable to give up
+all hope. The child, with curly hair and a brown face, like the angels
+in a fifteenth-century picture, seemed to be in breeches, for his
+trousers ended at the knee in a ragged fringe of brambles and dead
+leaves. This necessary garment was fastened upon him by cords of
+tarred oakum in guise of braces. A shirt of the same burlap which made
+the old man's trousers, thickened, however, by many darns, open in
+front showed a sun-burnt little breast. In short, the attire of the
+being called Mouche was even more startlingly simple than that of Pere
+Fourchon.
+
+"What a good-natured set of people they are here," thought Blondet;
+"if a man frightened away the game of the people of the suburbs of
+Paris, how their tongues would maul him!"
+
+As he had never seen an otter, even in a museum, he was delighted with
+this episode of his early walk. "Come," said he, quite touched when
+the old man walked away without asking him for a compensation, "you
+say you are a famous otter catcher. If you are sure there is an otter
+down there--"
+
+From the other side of the water Mouche pointed his finger to certain
+air-bubbles coming up from the bottom of the Avonne and bursting on
+its surface.
+
+"It has come back!" said Pere Fourchon; "don't you see it breathe, the
+beggar? How do you suppose they manage to breathe at the bottom of the
+water? Ah, the creature's so clever it laughs at science."
+
+"Well," said Blondet, who supposed the last word was a jest of the
+peasantry in general rather than of this peasant in particular, "wait
+and catch the otter."
+
+"And what are we to do about our day's work, Mouche and I?"
+
+"What is your day worth?"
+
+"For the pair of us, my apprentice and me?--Five francs," said the old
+man, looking Blondet in the eye with a hesitation which betrayed an
+enormous overcharge.
+
+The journalist took ten francs from his pocket, saying, "There's ten,
+and I'll give you ten more for the otter."
+
+"And it won't cost you dear if there's white on its back; for the
+sub-prefect told me there wasn't one o' them museums that had the like;
+but he knows everything, our sub-prefect,--no fool he! If I hunt the
+otter, he, M'sieur des Lupeaulx, hunts Mademoiselle Gaubertin, who has
+a fine white 'dot' on her back. Come now, my good gentleman, if I may
+make so bold, plunge into the middle of the Avonne and get to that
+stone down there. If we head the otter off, it will come down stream;
+for just see their slyness, the beggars! they always go above their
+burrow to feed, for, once full of fish, they know they can easily
+drift down, the sly things! Ha! if I'd been trained in their school I
+should be living now on an income; but I was a long time finding out
+that you must go up stream very early in the morning if you want to
+bag the game before others. Well, somebody threw a spell over me when
+I was born. However, we three together ought to be slyer than the
+otter."
+
+"How so, my old necromancer?"
+
+"Why, bless you! we are as stupid as the beasts, and so we come to
+understand the beasts. Now, see, this is what we'll do. When the otter
+wants to get home Mouche and I'll frighten it here, and you'll
+frighten it over there; frightened by us and frightened by you it will
+jump on the bank, and when it takes to earth, it is lost! It can't
+run; it has web feet for swimming. Ho, ho! it will make you laugh,
+such floundering! you don't know whether you are fishing or hunting!
+The general up at Les Aigues, I have known him to stay here three days
+running, he was so bent on getting an otter."
+
+Blondet, armed with a branch cut for him by the old man, who requested
+him to whip the water with it when he called to him, planted himself
+in the middle of the river by jumping from stone to stone.
+
+"There, that will do, my good gentleman."
+
+Blondet stood where he was told without remarking the lapse of time,
+for every now and then the old fellow made him a sign as much as to
+say that all was going well; and besides, nothing makes time go so
+fast as the expectation that quick action is to succeed the perfect
+stillness of watching.
+
+"Pere Fourchon," whispered the boy, finding himself alone with the old
+man, "there's _really_ an otter!"
+
+"Do you see it?"
+
+"There, see there!"
+
+The old fellow was dumb-founded at beholding under water the
+reddish-brown fur of an actual otter.
+
+"It's coming my way!" said the child.
+
+"Hit him a sharp blow on the head and jump into the water and hold him
+fast down, but don't let him go!"
+
+Mouche dove into the water like a frightened frog.
+
+"Come, come, my good gentleman," cried Pere Fourchon to Blondet,
+jumping into the water and leaving his sabots on the bank, "frighten
+him! frighten him! Don't you see him? he is swimming fast your way!"
+
+The old man dashed toward Blondet through the water, calling out with
+the gravity that country people retain in the midst of their greatest
+excitements:--
+
+"Don't you see him, there, along the rocks?"
+
+Blondet, placed by direction of the old fellow in such a way that the
+sun was in his eyes, thrashed the water with much satisfaction to
+himself.
+
+"Go on, go on!" cried Pere Fourchon; "on the rock side; the burrow is
+there, to your left!"
+
+Carried away by excitement and by his long waiting, Blondet slipped
+from the stones into the water.
+
+"Ha! brave you are, my good gentleman! Twenty good Gods! I see him
+between your legs! you'll have him!-- Ah! there! he's gone--he's
+gone!" cried the old man, in despair.
+
+Then, in the fury of the chase, the old fellow plunged into the
+deepest part of the stream in front of Blondet.
+
+"It's your fault we've lost him!" he cried, as Blondet gave him a hand
+to pull him out, dripping like a triton, and a vanquished triton. "The
+rascal, I see him, under those rocks! He has let go his fish,"
+continued Fourchon, pointing to something that floated on the surface.
+"We'll have that at any rate; it's a tench, a real tench."
+
+Just then a groom in livery on horseback and leading another horse by
+the bridle galloped up the road toward Conches.
+
+"See! there's the chateau people sending after you," said the old man.
+"If you want to cross back again I'll give you a hand. I don't mind
+about getting wet; it saves washing!"
+
+"How about rheumatism?"
+
+"Rheumatism! don't you see the sun has browned our legs, Mouche and
+me, like tobacco-pipes. Here, lean on me, my good gentleman--you're
+from Paris; you don't know, though you _do_ know so much, how to walk on
+our rocks. If you stay here long enough, you'll learn a deal that's
+written in the book o' nature,--you who write, so they tell me, in the
+newspapers."
+
+Blondet had reached the bank before Charles, the groom, perceived him.
+
+"Ah, monsieur!" he cried; "you don't know how anxious Madame has been
+since she heard you had gone through the gate of Conches; she was
+afraid you were drowned. They have rung the great bell three times,
+and Monsieur le cure is hunting for you in the park."
+
+"What time is it, Charles?"
+
+"A quarter to twelve."
+
+"Help me to mount."
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed the groom, noticing the water that dripped from
+Blondet's boots and trousers, "has monsieur been taken in by Pere
+Fourchon's otter?"
+
+The words enlightened the journalist.
+
+"Don't say a word about it, Charles," he cried, "and I'll make it all
+right with you."
+
+"Oh, as for that!" answered the man, "Monsieur le comte himself has
+been taken in by that otter. Whenever a visitor comes to Les Aigues,
+Pere Fourchon sets himself on the watch, and if the gentleman goes to
+see the sources of the Avonne he sells him the otter; he plays the
+trick so well that Monsieur le comte has been here three times and
+paid him for six days' work, just to stare at the water!"
+
+"Heavens!" thought Blondet. "And I imagined I had seen the greatest
+comedians of the present day!--Potier, the younger Baptiste, Michot,
+and Monrose. What are they compared to that old beggar?"
+
+"He is very knowing at the business, Pere Fourchon is," continued
+Charles; "and he has another string to his bow, besides. He calls
+himself a rope-maker, and has a walk under the park wall by the gate
+of Blangy. If you merely touch his rope he'll entangle you so cleverly
+that you will want to turn the wheel and make a bit of it yourself;
+and for that you would have to pay a fee for apprenticeship. Madame
+herself was taken in, and gave him twenty francs. Ah! he is the king
+of tricks, that old fellow!"
+
+The groom's gossip set Blondet thinking of the extreme craftiness and
+wiliness of the French peasant, of which he had heard a great deal
+from his father, a judge at Alencon. Then the satirical meaning hidden
+beneath Pere Fourchon's apparent guilelessness came back to him, and
+he owned himself "gulled" by the Burgundian beggar.
+
+"You would never believe, monsieur," said Charles, as they reached the
+portico at Les Aigues, "how much one is forced to distrust everybody
+and everything in the country,--especially here, where the general is
+not much liked--"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"That's more than I know," said Charles, with the stupid air servants
+assume to shield themselves when they wish not to answer their
+superiors, which nevertheless gave Blondet a good deal to think of.
+
+"Here you are, truant!" cried the general, coming out on the terrace
+when he heard the horses. "Here he is; don't be uneasy!" he called
+back to his wife, whose little footfalls were heard behind him. "Now
+the Abbe Brossette is missing. Go and find him, Charles," he said to
+the groom.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER III
+
+                            THE TAVERN
+
+The gate of Blangy, built by Bouret, was formed of two wide pilasters
+of projecting rough-hewn stone; each surmounted by a dog sitting on
+his haunches and holding an escutcheon between his fore paws. The
+proximity of a small house where the steward lived dispensed with the
+necessity for a lodge. Between the two pilasters, a sumptuous iron
+gate, like those made in Buffon's time for the Jardin des Plantes,
+opened on a short paved way which led to the country road (formerly
+kept in order by Les Aigues and the Soulanges family) which unites
+Conches, Cerneux, Blangy, and Soulanges to Ville-aux-Fayes, like a
+wreath, for the whole road is lined with flowering hedges and little
+houses covered with roses and honey-suckle and other climbing plants.
+
+There, along a pretty wall which extends as far as a terrace from
+which the land of Les Aigues falls rapidly to the valley till it meets
+that of Soulanges, are the rotten posts, the old wheel, and the forked
+stakes which constituted the manufactory of the village rope-maker.
+
+Soon after midday, while Blondet was seating himself at table opposite
+the Abbe Brossette and receiving the tender expostulations of the
+countess, Pere Fourchon and Mouche arrived at this establishment. From
+that vantage-ground Pere Fourchon, under pretence of rope-making,
+could watch Les Aigues and see every one who went in and out. Nothing
+escaped him, the opening of the blinds, tete-a-tete loiterings, or the
+least little incidents of country life, were spied upon by the old
+fellow, who had set up this business within the last three years,--a
+trifling circumstance which neither the masters, nor the servants, nor
+the keepers of Les Aigues had as yet remarked upon.
+
+"Go round to the house by the gate of the Avonne while I put away the
+tackle," said Pere Fourchon to his attendant, "and when you have
+blabbed about the thing, they'll no doubt send after me to the
+Grand-I-Vert, where I am going for a drop of drink,--for it makes one
+thirsty enough to wade in the water that way. If you do just as I tell
+you, you'll hook a good breakfast out of them; try to meet the
+countess, and give a slap at me, and that will put it into her head to
+come and preach morality or something! There's lots of good wine to
+get out of it."
+
+After these last instructions, which the sly look in Mouche's face
+rendered quite superfluous, the old peasant, hugging the otter under
+his arm, disappeared along the country road.
+
+Half-way between the gate and the village there stood, at the time
+when Emile Blondet stayed at Les Aigues, one of those houses which are
+never seen but in parts of France where stone is scarce. Bits of
+bricks picked up anywhere, cobblestones set like diamonds in the clay
+mud, formed very solid walls, though worn in places; the roof was
+supported by stout branches and covered with rushes and straw, while
+the clumsy shutters and the broken door--in short, everything about
+the cottage was the product of lucky finds, or of gifts obtained by
+begging.
+
+The peasant has an instinct for his habitation like that of an animal
+for its nest or its burrow, and this instinct was very marked in all
+the arrangements of this cottage. In the first place, the door and the
+window looked to the north. The house, placed on a little rise in the
+stoniest angle of a vineyard, was certainly healthful. It was reached
+by three steps, carefully made with stakes and planks filled in with
+broken stone and gravel, so that the water ran off rapidly; and as the
+rain seldom comes from the northward in Burgundy, no dampness could
+rot the foundations, slight as they were. Below the steps and along
+the path ran a rustic paling, hidden beneath a hedge of hawthorn and
+sweet-brier. An arbor, with a few clumsy tables and wooden benches,
+filled the space between the cottage and the road, and invited the
+passers-by to rest themselves. At the upper end of the bank by the
+house roses grew, and wall-flowers, violets, and other flowers that
+cost nothing. Jessamine and honey-suckle had fastened their tendrils
+on the roof, mossy already, though the building was far from old.
+
+To the right of the house, the owner had built a stable for two cows.
+In front of this erection of old boards, a sunken piece of ground
+served as a yard where, in a corner, was a huge manure-heap. On the
+other side of the house and the arbor stood a thatched shed, supported
+on trunks of trees, under which the various outdoor properties of the
+peasantry were put away,--the utensils of the vine-dressers, their
+empty casks, logs of wood piled about a mound which contained the
+oven, the mouth of which opened, as was usual in the houses of the
+peasantry, under the mantle-piece of the chimney in the kitchen.
+
+About an acre of land adjoined the house, inclosed by an evergreen
+hedge and planted with grape-vines; tended as peasants tend them,
+--that is to say, well-manured, and dug round, and layered so that they
+usually set their fruit before the vines of the large proprietors in a
+circuit of ten miles round. A few trees, almond, plum, and apricot,
+showed their slim heads here and there in this enclosure. Between the
+rows of vines potatoes and beans were planted. In addition to all
+this, on the side towards the village and beyond the yard was a bit of
+damp low ground, favorable for the growth of cabbages and onions
+(favorite vegetables of the working-classes), which was closed by a
+wooden gate, through which the cows were driven, trampling the path
+into mud and covering it with dung.
+
+The house, which had two rooms on the ground-floor, opened upon the
+vineyard. On this side an outer stairway, roofed with thatch and
+resting against the wall of the house, led up to the garret, which was
+lighted by one round window. Under this rustic stairway opened a
+cellar built of Burgundy brick, containing several casks of wine.
+
+Though the kitchen utensils of the peasantry are usually only two,
+namely, a frying-pan and an iron pot, with which they manage to do all
+their cooking, exceptions to this rule, in the shape of two enormous
+saucepans hanging beneath the mantle-shelf and above a small portable
+stove, were to be seen in this cottage. In spite, however, of this
+indication of luxury, the furniture was in keeping with the external
+appearance of the place. A jar held water, the spoons were of wood or
+pewter, the dishes, of red clay without and white within, were scaling
+off and had been mended with pewter rivets; the heavy table and chairs
+were of pine wood, and for flooring there was nothing better than the
+hardened earth. Every fifth year the walls received a coat of
+white-wash and so did the narrow beams of the ceiling, from which hung
+bacon, strings of onions, bundles of tallow candles, and the bags in
+which a peasant keeps his seeds; near the bread-box stood an
+old-fashioned wardrobe in walnut, where the scanty household linen,
+and the one change of garments together with the holiday attire of the
+entire family were kept.
+
+Above the mantel of the chimney gleamed a poacher's old gun, not worth
+five francs,--the wood scorched, the barrel to all appearances never
+cleaned. An observer might reflect that the protection of a hovel with
+only a latch, and an outer gate that was only a paling and never
+closed, needed no better weapon; but still the wonder was to what use
+it was put. In the first place, though the wood was of the commonest
+kind, the barrel was carefully selected, and came from a valuable gun,
+given in all probability to a game-keeper. Moreover, the owner of this
+weapon never missed his aim; there was between him and his gun the
+same intimate acquaintance that there is between a workman and his
+tool. If the muzzle must be raised or lowered the merest fraction in
+its aim, because it carries just an atom above or below the range, the
+poacher knows it; he obeys the rule and never misses. An officer of
+artillery would have found the essential parts of this weapon in good
+condition notwithstanding its uncleanly appearance. In all that the
+peasant appropriates to his use, in all that serves him, he displays
+just the amount of force that is needed, neither more nor less; he
+attends to the essential and to nothing beyond. External perfection he
+has no conception of. An unerring judge of the necessary in all
+things, he thoroughly understands degrees of strength, and knows very
+well when working for an employer how to give the least possible for
+the most he can get. This contemptible-looking gun will be found to
+play a serious part in the life of the family inhabiting this cottage,
+and you will presently learn how and why.
+
+Have you now taken in all the many details of this hovel, planted
+about five hundred feet away from the pretty gate of Les Aigues? Do
+you see it crouching there, like a beggar beside a palace? Well, its
+roof covered with velvet mosses, its clacking hens, its grunting pig,
+its straying heifer, all its rural graces have a horrible meaning.
+
+Fastened to a pole, which was stuck in the ground beside the entrance
+through the fence, was a withered bunch of three pine branches and
+some old oak-leaves tied together with a rag. Above the door of the
+house a roving artist had painted, probably in return for his
+breakfast, a huge capital "I" in green on a white ground two feet
+square; and for the benefit of those who could read, this witty joke
+in twelve letters: "Au Grand-I-Vert" (hiver). On the left of the door
+was a vulgar sign bearing, in colored letters, "Good March beer," and
+the picture of a foaming pot of the same, with a woman, in a dress
+excessively low-necked, on one side, and an hussar on the other,--both
+coarsely colored. Consequently, in spite of the blooming flowers and
+the fresh country air, this cottage exhaled the same strong and
+nauseous odor of wine and food which assails you in Paris as you pass
+the door of the cheap cook-shops of the faubourg.
+
+Now you know the surroundings. Behold the inhabitants and hear their
+history, which contains more than one lesson for philanthropists.
+
+The proprietor of the Grand-I-Vert, named Francois Tonsard, commends
+himself to the attention of philosophers by the manner in which he had
+solved the problem of an idle life and a busy life, so as to make the
+idleness profitable, and occupation nil.
+
+A jack-of-all-trades, he knew how to cultivate the ground, but for
+himself only. For others, he dug ditches, gathered fagots, barked the
+trees, or cut them down. In all such work the employer is at the mercy
+of the workman. Tonsard owned his plot of ground to the generosity of
+Mademoiselle Laguerre. In his early youth he had worked by the day for
+the gardener at Les Aigues; and he really had not his equal in
+trimming the shrubbery-trees, the hedges, the horn-beams, and the
+horse-chestnuts. His very name shows hereditary talent. In remote
+country-places privileges exist which are obtained and preserved with
+as much care as the merchants of a city display in getting theirs.
+Mademoiselle Laguerre was one day walking in the garden, when she
+overheard Tonsard, then a strapping fellow, say, "All I need to live
+on, and live happily, is an acre of land." The kind creature,
+accustomed to make others happy, gave him the acre of vineyard near
+the gate of Blangy, in return for one hundred days' work (a delicate
+regard for his feelings which was little understood), and allowed him
+to stay at Les Aigues, where he lived with her servants, who thought
+him one of the best fellows in Burgundy.
+
+Poor Tonsard (that is what everybody called him) worked about thirty
+days out of the hundred that he owed; the rest of the time he idled
+about, talking and laughing with Mademoiselle's women, particularly
+with Mademoiselle Cochet, the lady's maid, though she was ugly, like
+all confidential maids of handsome actresses. Laughing with
+Mademoiselle Cochet signified so many things that Soudry, the
+fortunate gendarme mentioned in Blondet's letter, still looked askance
+at Tonsard after the lapse of nearly twenty-five years. The walnut
+wardrobe, the bedstead with the tester and curtains, and the ornaments
+about the bedroom were doubtless the result of the said laughter.
+
+Once in possession of his care, Tonsard replied to the first person
+who happened to mention that Mademoiselle Laguerre had given it to
+him, "I've bought it deuced hard, and paid well for it. Do rich folks
+ever give us anything? Are one hundred days' work nothing? It has cost
+me three hundred francs, and the land is all stones." But that speech
+never got beyond the regions of his own class.
+
+Tonsard built his house himself, picking up the materials here and
+there as he could,--getting a day's work out of this one and that one,
+gleaning in the rubbish that was thrown away, often asking for things
+and always obtaining them. A discarded door cut in two for convenience
+in carrying away became the door of the stable; the window was the
+sash of a green-house. In short, the rubbish of the chateau, served to
+build the fatal cottage.
+
+Saved from the draft by Gaubertin, the steward of Les Aigues, whose
+father was prosecuting-attorney of the department, and who, moreover,
+could refuse nothing to Mademoiselle Cochet, Tonsard married as soon
+as his house was finished and his vines had begun to bear. A
+well-grown fellow of twenty-three, in everybody's good graces at Les
+Aigues, on whom Mademoiselle had bestowed an acre of her land, and who
+appeared to be a good worker, he had the art to ring the praises of
+his negative merits, and so obtained the daughter of a farmer on the
+Ronquerolles estate, which lies beyond the forest of Les Aigues.
+
+This farmer held the lease of half a farm, which was going to ruin in
+his hands for want of a helpmate. A widower, and inconsolable for the
+loss of his wife, he tried to drown his troubles, like the English, in
+wine, and then, when he had put the poor deceased out of his mind, he
+found himself married, so the village maliciously declared, to a woman
+named Boisson. From being a farmer he became once more a laborer, but
+an idle and drunken laborer, quarrelsome and vindictive, capable of
+any ill-deed, like most of his class when they fall from a well-to-do
+state of life into poverty. This man, whose practical information and
+knowledge of reading and writing placed him far above his fellow-workmen,
+while his vices kept him at the level of pauperism, you have already
+seen on the banks of the Avonne, measuring his cleverness with that of
+one of the cleverest men in Paris, in a bucolic overlooked by Virgil.
+
+Pere Fourchon, formerly a schoolmaster at Blangy, lost that place
+through misconduct and his singular ideas as to public education. He
+helped the children to make paper boats with their alphabets much
+oftener than he taught them how to spell; he scolded them in so
+remarkable a manner for pilfering fruit that his lectures might really
+have passed for lessons on the best way of scaling the walls. From
+teacher he became a postman. In this capacity, which serves as a
+refuge to many an old soldier, Pere Fourchon was daily reprimanded.
+Sometimes he forgot the letters in a tavern, at other times he kept
+them in his pocket. When he was drunk he left those for one village in
+another village; when he was sober he read them. Consequently, he was
+soon dismissed. No longer able to serve the State, Pere Fourchon ended
+by becoming a manufacturer. In the country a poor man can always get
+something to do, and make at least a pretence of gaining an honest
+livelihood. At sixty-eight years of age the old man started his
+rope-walk, a manufactory which requires the very smallest capital. The
+workshop is, as we have seen, any convenient wall; the machinery costs
+about ten francs. The apprentice slept, like his master, in a hay-loft,
+and lived on whatever he could pick up. The rapacity of the law in
+the matter of doors and windows expires "sub dio." The tow to make
+the first rope can be borrowed. But the principal revenue of Pere
+Fourchon and his satellite Mouche, the natural son of one of his
+natural daughters, came from the otters; and then there were
+breakfasts and dinners given them by peasants who could neither read
+nor write, and were glad to use the old fellow's talents when they had
+a bill to make out, or a letter to dispatch. Besides all this, he knew
+how to play the clarionet, and he went about with his friend
+Vermichel, the miller of Soulanges, to village weddings and the grand
+balls given at the Tivoli of Soulanges.
+
+Vermichel's name was Michel Vert, but the transposition was so
+generally used that Brunet, the clerk of the municipal court of
+Soulanges, was in the habit of writing Michel-Jean-Jerome Vert, called
+Vermichel, practitioner. Vermichel, a famous violin in the Burgundian
+regiment of former days, had procured for Pere Fourchon, in
+recognition of certain services, a situation as practitioner, which in
+remote country-places usually devolves on those who are able to sign
+their name. Pere Fourchon therefore added to his other avocations that
+of witness, or practitioner of legal papers, whenever the Sieur Brunet
+came to draw them in the districts of Cerneux, Conches, and Blangy.
+Vermichel and Fourchon, allied by a friendship of twenty years'
+tippling, might really be considered a business firm.
+
+Mouche and Fourchon, bound together by vice as Mentor and Telemachus
+by virtue, travelled like the latter, in search of their father,
+"panis angelorum,"--the only Latin words which the old fellow's memory
+had retained. They went about scraping up the pickings of the
+Grand-I-Vert, and those of the adjacent chateaux; for between them, in
+their busiest and most prosperous years, they had never contrived to
+make as much as three hundred and sixty fathoms of rope. In the first
+place, no dealer within a radius of fifty miles would have trusted his
+tow to either Mouche or Fourchon. The old man, surpassing the miracles
+of modern chemistry, knew too well how to resolve the tow into the
+all-benignant juice of the grape. Moreover, his triple functions of
+public writer for three townships, legal practitioner for one, and
+clarionet-player at large, hindered, so he said, the development of his
+business.
+
+Thus it happened that Tonsard was disappointed from the start in the
+hope he had indulged of increasing his comfort by an increase of
+property in marriage. The idle son-in-law had chanced, by a very
+common accident, on an idler father-in-law. Matters went all the worse
+because Tonsard's wife, gifted with a sort of rustic beauty, being
+tall and well-made, was not fond of work in the open air. Tonsard
+blamed his wife for her father's short-comings, and ill-treated her,
+with the customary revenge of the common people, whose minds take in
+only an effect and rarely look back to causes.
+
+Finding her fetters heavy, the woman lightened them. She used
+Tonsard's vices to get the better of him. Loving comfort and good
+eating herself, she encouraged his idleness and gluttony. In the first
+place, she managed to procure the good-will of the servants of the
+chateau, and Tonsard, in view of the results, made no complaint as to
+the means. He cared very little what his wife did, so long as she did
+all he wanted of her. That is the secret agreement of many a
+household. Madame Tonsard established the wine-shop of the
+Grand-I-Vert, her first customers being the servants of Les Aigues and
+the keepers and huntsmen.
+
+Gaubertin, formerly steward to Mademoiselle Laguerre, one of La
+Tonsard's chief patrons, gave her several puncheons of excellent wine
+to attract custom. The effect of these gifts (continued as long as
+Gaubertin remained a bachelor) and the fame of her rather lawless
+beauty commended this beauty to the Don Juans of the valley, and
+filled the wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert. Being a lover of good
+eating, La Tonsard was naturally an excellent cook; and though her
+talents were only exercised on the common dishes of the country,
+jugged hare, game sauce, stewed fish and omelets, she was considered
+in all the country round to be an admirable cook of the sort of food
+which is eaten at a counter and spiced in a way to excite a desire for
+drink. By the end of two years, she had managed to rule Tonsard, and
+turn him to evil courses, which, indeed, he asked no better than to
+indulge in.
+
+The rascal was continually poaching, and with nothing to fear from it.
+The intimacies of his wife with Gaubertin and the keepers and the
+rural authorities, together with the laxity of the times, secured him
+impunity. As soon as his children were large enough he made them
+serviceable to his comfort, caring no more for their morality than for
+that of his wife. He had two sons and two daughters. Tonsard, who
+lived, as did his wife, from hand to mouth, might have come to an end
+of this easy life if he had not maintained a sort of martial law over
+his family, which compelled them to work for the preservation of it.
+When he had brought up his children, at the cost of those from whom
+his wife was able to extort gifts, the following charter and budget
+were the law at the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+Tonsard's old mother and his two daughters, Catherine and Marie, went
+into the woods at certain seasons twice a-day, and came back laden
+with fagots which overhung the crutch of their poles at least two feet
+beyond their heads. Though dried sticks were placed on the outside of
+the heap, the inside was made of live wood cut from young trees. In
+plain words, Tonsard helped himself to his winter's fuel in the woods
+of Les Aigues. Besides this, father and sons were constantly poaching.
+From September to March, hares, rabbits, partridges, deer, in short,
+all the game that was not eaten at the chateau, was sold at Blangy and
+at Soulanges, where Tonsard's two daughters peddled milk in the early
+mornings,--coming back with the news of the day, in return for the
+gossip they carried about Les Aigues, and Cerneux, and Conches. In the
+months when the three Tonsards were unable to hunt with a gun, they
+set traps. If the traps caught more game than they could eat, La
+Tonsard made pies of it and sent them to Ville-aux-Fayes. In
+harvest-time seven Tonsards--the old mother, the two sons (until they
+were seventeen years of age), the two daughters, together with old
+Fourchon and Mouche--gleaned, and generally brought in about sixteen
+bushels a day of all grains, rye, barley, wheat, all good to grind.
+
+The two cows, led to the roadside by the youngest girl, always managed
+to stray into the meadows of Les Aigues; but as, if it ever chanced
+that some too flagrant trespass compelled the keepers to take notice
+of it, the children were either whipped or deprived of a coveted
+dainty, they had acquired such extraordinary aptitude in hearing the
+enemy's footfall that the bailiff or the park-keeper of Les Aigues was
+very seldom able to detect them. Besides, the relations of those
+estimable functionaries with Tonsard and his wife tied a bandage over
+their eyes. The cows, held by long ropes, obeyed a mere twitch or a
+special low call back to the roadside, knowing very well that, the
+danger once past, they could finish their browsing in the next field.
+Old mother Tonsard, who was getting more and more infirm, succeeded
+Mouche in his duties, after Fourchon, under pretence of caring for his
+natural grandson's education, kept him to himself; while Marie and
+Catherine made hay in the woods. These girls knew the exact spots
+where the fine forest-grass abounded, and there they cut and spread
+and cocked and garnered it, supplying two thirds, at least, of the
+winter fodder, and leading the cows on all fine days to sheltered
+nooks where they could still find pasture. In certain parts of the
+valley of Les Aigues, as in all places protected by a chain of
+mountains, in Piedmont and in Lombardy for instance, there are spots
+where the grass keeps green all the year. Such fields, called in Italy
+"marciti," are of great value; though in France they are often in
+danger of being injured by snow and ice. This phenomenon is due, no
+doubt, to some favorable exposure, and to the infiltration of water
+which keeps the ground at a warmer temperature.
+
+The calves were sold for about eighty francs. The milk, deducting the
+time when the cows calved or went dry, brought in about one hundred
+and sixty francs a year besides supplying the wants of the family.
+Tonsard himself managed to earn another hundred and sixty by doing odd
+jobs of one kind or another.
+
+The sale of food and wine in the tavern, after all costs were paid,
+returned a profit of about three hundred francs, for the great
+drinking-bouts happened only at certain times and in certain seasons;
+and as the topers who indulged in them gave Tonsard and his wife due
+notice, the latter bought in the neighboring town the exact quantity
+of provisions needed and no more. The wine produced by Tonsard's
+vineyard was sold in ordinary years for twenty francs a cask to a
+wine-dealer at Soulanges with whom Tonsard was intimate. In very
+prolific years he got as much as twelve casks from his vines; but
+eight was the average; and Tonsard kept half for his own traffic. In
+all wine-growing districts the gleaning of the large vineyards gives a
+good perquisite, and out of it the Tonsard family usually managed to
+obtain three casks more. But being, as we have seen, sheltered and
+protected by the keepers, they showed no conscience in their
+proceedings,--entering vineyards before the harvesters were out of
+them, just as they swarmed into the wheat-fields before the sheaves
+were made. So, the seven or eight casks of wine, as much gleaned as
+harvested, were sold for a good price. However, out of these various
+proceeds the Grand-I-Vert was mulcted in a good sum for the personal
+consumption of Tonsard and his wife, who wanted the best of everything
+to eat, and better wine than they sold,--which they obtained from
+their friend at Soulanges in payment for their own. In short, the
+money scraped together by this family amounted to about nine hundred
+francs, for they fattened two pigs a year, one for themselves and the
+other to sell.
+
+The idlers and scapegraces and also the laborers took a fancy to the
+tavern of the Grand-I-Vert, partly because of La Tonsard's merits, and
+partly on account of the hail-fellow-well-met relation existing
+between this family and the lower classes of the valley. The two
+daughters, both remarkably handsome, followed the example of their
+mother as to morals. Moreover, the long established fame of the
+Grand-I-Vert, dating from 1795, made it a venerable spot in the eyes of
+the common people. From Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes, workmen came there
+to meet and make their bargains and hear the news collected by the
+Tonsard women and by Mouche and old Fourchon, or supplied by Vermichel
+and Brunet, that renowned official, when he came to the tavern in
+search of his practitioner. There the price of hay and of wine was
+settled; also that of a day's work and of piece-work. Tonsard, a
+sovereign judge in such matters, gave his advice and opinion while
+drinking with his guests. Soulanges, according to a saying in these
+parts, was a town for society and amusement only, while Blangy was a
+business borough; crushed, however, by the great commercial centre of
+Ville-aux-Fayes, which had become in the last twenty-five years the
+capital of this flourishing valley. The cattle and grain market was
+held at Blangy, in the public square, and the prices there obtained
+served as a tariff for the whole arrondissement.
+
+By staying in the house and doing no out-door work, La Tonsard
+continued fresh and fair and dimpled, in comparison with the women who
+worked in the fields and faded as rapidly as the flowers, becoming old
+and haggard before they were thirty. She liked to be well-dressed. In
+point of fact, she was only clean, but in a village cleanliness is a
+luxury. The daughters, better dressed than their means warranted,
+followed their mother's example. Beneath their outer garment, which
+was relatively handsome, they wore linen much finer than that of the
+richest peasant women. On fete-days they appeared in dresses that were
+really pretty, obtained, Heaven knows how! For one thing, the
+men-servants at Les Aigues sold to them, at prices that were easily
+paid, the cast-off clothing of the lady's-maids, which, after sweeping
+the streets of Paris and being made over to fit Marie and Catherine,
+appeared triumphantly in the precincts of the Grand-I-Vert. These
+girls, bohemians of the valley, received not one penny in money from
+their parents, who gave them food only, and the wretched pallets on
+which they slept with their grandmother in the barn, where their
+brothers also slept, curled up in the hay like animals. Neither father
+nor mother paid any heed to this propinquity.
+
+The iron age and the age of gold are more alike than we think for. In
+the one nothing aroused vigilance; in the other, everything rouses it;
+the result to society is, perhaps, very much the same. The presence of
+old Mother Tonsard, which was more a necessity than a precaution, was
+simply one immorality the more. And thus it was that the Abbe
+Brossette, after studying the morals of his parishioners, made this
+pregnant remark to his bishop:--
+
+"Monseigneur, when I observe the stress that the peasantry lay on
+their poverty, I realize how they fear to lose that excuse for their
+immorality."
+
+Though everybody knew that the family had no principles and no
+scruples, nothing was ever said against the morals of the
+Grand-I-Vert. At the beginning of this book it is necessary to
+explain, once for all, to persons accustomed to the decencies of
+middle-class life, that the peasants have no decency in their
+domestic habits and customs. They make no appeal to morality when
+their daughters are seduced, unless the seducer is rich and timid.
+Children, until the State takes possession of them, are used either
+as capital or as instruments of convenience. Self-interest has become,
+specially since 1789, the sole motive of the masses; they never ask if
+an action is legal or immoral, but only if it is profitable. Morality,
+which is not to be confounded with religion, begins only at a certain
+competence,--just as one sees, in a higher sphere, how delicacy blossoms
+in the soul when fortune decorates the furniture. A positively moral and
+upright man is rare among the peasantry. Do you ask why? Among the
+many reasons that may be given for this state of things, the principal
+one is this: Through the nature of their social functions, the
+peasants live a purely material life which approximates to that of
+savages, and their constant union with nature tends to foster it. When
+toil exhausts the body it takes from the mind its purifying action,
+especially among the ignorant. The Abbe Brossette was right in saying
+that the state policy of the peasant is his poverty.
+
+Meddling in everybody's interests, Tonsard heard everybody's
+complaints, and often instigated frauds to benefit the needy. His
+wife, a kindly appearing woman, had a good word for evil-doers, and
+never withheld either approval or personal help from her customers in
+anything they undertook against the rich. This inn, a nest of vipers,
+brisk and venomous, seething and active, was a hot-bed for the hatred
+of the peasants and the workingmen against the masters and the
+wealthy.
+
+The prosperous life of the Tonsards was, therefore, an evil example.
+Others asked themselves why they should not take their wood, as the
+Tonsards did, from the forest; why not pasture their cows and have
+game to eat and to sell as well as they; why not harvest without
+sowing the grapes and the grain. Accordingly, the pilfering thefts
+which thin the woods and tithe the ploughed lands and meadows and
+vineyards became habitual in this valley, and soon existed as a right
+throughout the districts of Blangy, Conches, and Cerneux, all adjacent
+to the domain of Les Aigues. This sore, for certain reasons which will
+be given in due time, did far greater injury to Les Aigues than to the
+estates of Ronquerolles or Soulanges. You must not, however, fancy
+that Tonsard, his wife and children, and his old mother ever
+deliberately said to themselves, "We will live by theft, and commit it
+as cleverly as we can." Such habits grow slowly. To the dried sticks
+they added, in the first instance, a single bit of good wood; then,
+emboldened by habit and a carefully prepared immunity (necessary to
+plans which this history will unfold), they ended at last in cutting
+"their wood," and stealing almost their entire livelihood. Pasturage
+for the cows and the abuses of gleaning were established as customs
+little by little. When the Tonsards and the do-nothings of the valley
+had tasted the sweets of these four rights (thus captured by rural
+paupers, and amounting to actual robbery) we can easily imagine they
+would never give them up unless compelled by a power greater than
+their own audacity.
+
+At the time when this history begins Tonsard, then about fifty years
+of age, tall and strong, rather stout than thin, with curly black
+hair, skin highly colored and marbled like a brick with purple
+blotches, yellow whites to the eyes, large ears with broad flaps, a
+muscular frame, encased, however, in flabby flesh, a retreating
+forehead, and a hanging lip,--Tonsard, such as you see him, hid his
+real character under an external stupidity, lightened at times by a
+show of experience, which seemed all the more intelligent because he
+had acquired in the company of his father-in-law a sort of bantering
+talk, much affected by old Fourchon and Vermichel. His nose, flattened
+at the end as if the finger of God intended to mark him, gave him a
+voice which came from his palate, like that of all persons disfigured
+by a disease which thickens the nasal passages, through which the air
+then passes with difficulty. His upper teeth overlapped each other,
+and this defect (which Lavater calls terrible) was all the more
+apparent because they were as white as those of a dog. But for a
+certain lawless and slothful good humor, and the free-and-easy ways of
+a rustic tippler, the man would have alarmed the least observing of
+spectators.
+
+If the portraits of Tonsard, his inn, and his father-in-law take a
+prominent place in this history, it is because that place belongs to
+him and to the inn and to the family. In the first place, their
+existence, so minutely described, is the type of a hundred other
+households in the valley of Les Aigues. Secondly, Tonsard, without
+being other than the instrument of deep and active hatreds, had an
+immense influence on the struggle that was about to take place, being
+the friend and counsellor of all the complainants of the lower
+classes. His inn, as we shall presently see, was the rendezvous for
+the aggressors; in fact, he became their chief, partly on account of
+the fear he inspired throughout the valley--less, however, by his
+actual deeds than by those that were constantly expected of him. The
+threat of this man was as much dreaded as the thing threatened, so
+that he never had occasion to execute it.
+
+Every revolt, open or concealed, has its banner. The banner of the
+marauders, the drunkards, the idlers, the sluggards of the valley des
+Aigues was the terrible tavern of the Grand-I-Vert. Its frequenters
+found amusement there,--as rare and much-desired a thing in the
+country as in a city. Moreover, there was no other inn along the
+country-road for over twelve miles, a distance which conveyances (even
+when laden) could easily do in three hours; so that those who went
+from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes always stopped at the Grand-I-Vert, if
+only to refresh themselves. The miller of Les Aigues, who was also
+assistant-mayor, and his men came there. The grooms and valets of the
+general were not averse to Tonsard's wine, rendered attractive by
+Tonsard's daughters; so the Grand-I-Vert held subterraneous
+communication with the chateau through the servants, and knew
+immediately everything that they knew. It is impossible either by
+benefits or through their own self-interests, to break up the
+perpetual understanding that exists between the servants of a
+household and the people from whom they come. Domestic service is of
+the masses, and to the masses it will ever remain attached. This fatal
+comradeship explains the reticence of the last words of Charles the
+groom, as he and Blondet reached the portico of the chateau.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IV
+
+                           ANOTHER IDYLL
+
+"Ha! by my pipe, papa!" exclaimed Tonsard, seeing his father-in-law as
+the old man entered and supposing him in quest of food, "your stomach
+is lively this morning! We haven't anything to give you. How about
+that rope,--the rope, you know, you were to make for us? It is amazing
+how much you make over night and how little there is made in the
+morning! You ought long ago to have twisted the one that is to twist
+you out of existence; you are getting too costly for us."
+
+The wit of a peasant or laborer is very Attic; it consists in speaking
+out his mind and giving it a grotesque expression. We find the same
+thing in a drawing-room. Delicacy of wit takes the place of
+picturesque vulgarity, and that is really all the difference there is.
+
+"That's enough for the father-in-law!" said the old man. "Talk
+business; I want a bottle of the best."
+
+So saying, Fourchon rapped a five-franc piece that gleamed in his hand
+on the old table at which he was seated,--which, with its coating of
+grease, its scorched black marks, its wine stains, and its gashes, was
+singular to behold. At the sound of coin Marie Tonsard, as trig as a
+sloop about to start on a cruise, glanced at her grandfather with a
+covetous look that shot from her eyes like a spark. La Tonsard came
+out of her bedroom, attracted by the music of metal.
+
+"You are always rough to my poor father," she said to her husband,
+"and yet he has earned a deal of money this year; God grant he came by
+it honestly. Let me see that," she added, springing at the coin and
+snatching it from Fourchon's fingers.
+
+"Marie," said Tonsard, gravely, "above the board you'll find some
+bottled wine. Go and get a bottle."
+
+Wine is of only one quality in the country, but it is sold as of two
+kinds,--cask wine and bottled wine.
+
+"Where did you get this, papa" demanded La Tonsard, slipping the coin
+into her pocket.
+
+"Philippine! you'll come to a bad end," said the old man, shaking his
+head but not attempting to recover his money. Doubtless he had long
+realized the futility of a struggle between his daughter, his terrible
+son-in-law, and himself.
+
+"Another bottle of wine for which you get five francs out of me," he
+added, in a peevish tone. "But it shall be the last. I shall give my
+custom to the Cafe de la Paix."
+
+"Hold your tongue, papa!" remarked his fair and fat daughter, who bore
+some resemblance to a Roman matron. "You need a shirt, and a pair of
+clean trousers, and a hat; and I want to see you with a waistcoat.
+That's what I take the money for."
+
+"I have told you again and again that such things would ruin me," said
+the old man. "People would think me rich and stop giving me anything."
+
+The bottle brought by Marie put an end to the loquacity of the old
+man, who was not without that trait, characteristic of those whose
+tongues are ready to tell out everything, and who shrink from no
+expression of their thought, no matter how atrocious it may be.
+
+"Then you don't want to tell where you filched that money?" said
+Tonsard. "We might go and get more where that came from,--the rest of
+us."
+
+He was making a snare, and as he finished it the ferocious innkeeper
+happened to glance at his father-in-law's trousers, and there he spied
+a raised round spot which clearly defined a second five-franc piece.
+
+"Having become a capitalist I drink your health," said Pere Fourchon.
+
+"If you choose to be a capitalist you can be," said Tonsard; "you have
+the means, you have! But the devil has bored a hole in the back of
+your head through which everything runs out."
+
+"Hey! I only played the otter trick on that young fellow they have got
+at Les Aigues. He's from Paris. That's all there is to it."
+
+"If crowds of people would come to see the sources of the Avonne,
+you'd be rich, Grandpa Fourchon," said Marie.
+
+"Yes," he said, drinking the last glassful the bottle contained, "and
+I've played the sham otter so long, the live otters have got angry,
+and one of them came right between my legs to-day; Mouche caught it,
+and I am to get twenty francs for it."
+
+"I'll bet your otter is made of tow," said Tonsard, looking slyly at
+his father-in-law.
+
+"If you will give me a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, and some list
+braces, so as not to disgrace Vermichel on the music stand at Tivoli
+(for old Socquard is always scolding about my clothes), I'll let you
+keep that money, my daughter; your idea is a good one. I can squeeze
+that rich young fellow at Les Aigues; may be he'll take to otters."
+
+"Go and get another bottle," said Tonsard to his daughter. "If your
+father really had an otter, he would show it to us," he added,
+speaking to his wife and trying to touch up Fourchon.
+
+"I'm too afraid it would get into your frying-pan," said the old man,
+winking one of his little green eyes at his daughter. "Philippine has
+already hooked my five-franc piece; and how many more haven't you
+bagged under pretence of clothing me and feeding me? and now you say
+that my stomach is too lively, and that I go half-naked."
+
+"You sold your last clothes to drink boiled wine at the Cafe de la
+Paix, papa," said his daughter, "though Vermichel tried to prevent
+it."
+
+"Vermichel! the man I treated! Vermichel is incapable of betraying my
+friendship. It must have been that lump of old lard on two legs that
+he is not ashamed to call his wife!"
+
+"He or she," replied Tonsard, "or Bonnebault."
+
+"If it was Bonnebault," cried Fourchon, "he who is one of the pillars
+of the place, I'll--I'll--Enough!"
+
+"You old sot, what has all that got to do with having sold your
+clothes? You sold them because you did sell them; you're of age!" said
+Tonsard, slapping the old man's knee. "Come, do honor to my drink and
+redden up your throat! The father of Mam Tonsard has a right to do so;
+and isn't that better than spending your silver at Socquard's?"
+
+"What a shame it is that you have been fifteen years playing for
+people to dance at Tivoli and you have never yet found out how
+Socquard cooks his wine,--you who are so shrewd!" said his daughter;
+"and yet you know very well that if we had the secret we should soon
+get as rich as Rigou."
+
+Throughout the Morvan, and in that region of Burgundy which lies at
+its feet on the side toward Paris, this boiled wine with which Mam
+Tonsard reproached her father is a rather costly beverage which plays
+a great part in the life of the peasantry, and is made by all grocers
+and wine-dealers, and wherever a drinking-shop exists. This precious
+liquor, made of choice wine, sugar, and cinnamon and other spices, is
+preferable to all those disguises or mixtures of brandy called
+ratafia, one-hundred-and-seven, brave man's cordial, black currant
+wine, vespetro, spirit-of-sun, etc. Boiled wine is found throughout
+France and Switzerland. Among the Jura, and in the wild districts
+trodden only by a few special tourists, the innkeepers call it, on the
+word of commercial travellers, the wine of Syracuse. Excellent it is,
+however, and their guests, hungry as hounds after ascending the
+surrounding peaks, very gladly pay three and four francs a bottle for
+it. In the homes of the Morvan and in Burgundy the least illness or
+the slightest agitation of the nerves is an excuse for boiled wine.
+Before and after childbirth the women take it with the addition of
+burnt sugar. Boiled wine has soaked up the property of many a peasant,
+and more than once the seductive liquid has been the cause of marital
+chastisement.
+
+"Ha! there's no chance of grabbing that secret," replied Fourchon,
+"Socquard always locks himself in when he boils his wine; he never
+told how he does it to his late wife. He sends to Paris for his
+materials."
+
+"Don't plague your father," cried Tonsard; "doesn't he know? well,
+then, he doesn't know! People can't know everything!"
+
+Fourchon grew very uneasy on seeing how his son-in-law's countenance
+softened as well as his words.
+
+"What do you want to rob me of now?" he asked, candidly.
+
+"I?" said Tonsard, "I take none but my legitimate dues; if I get
+anything from you it is in payment of your daughter's portion, which
+you promised me and never paid."
+
+Fourchon, reassured by the harshness of this remark, dropped his head
+on his breast as though vanquished and convinced.
+
+"Look at that pretty snare," resumed Tonsard, coming up to his
+father-in-law and laying the trap upon his knee. "Some of these days
+they'll want game at Les Aigues, and we shall sell them their own,
+or there will be no good God for the poor folks."
+
+"A fine piece of work," said the old man, examining the mischievous
+machine.
+
+"It is very well to pick up the sous now, papa," said Mam Tonsard,
+"but you know we are to have our share in the cake of Les Aigues."
+
+"Oh, what chatterers women are!" cried Tonsard. "If I am hanged it
+won't be for a shot from my gun, but for the gabble of your tongue."
+
+"And do you really suppose that Les Aigues will be cut up and sold in
+lots for your pitiful benefit?" asked Fourchon. "Pshaw! haven't you
+discovered in the last thirty years that old Rigou has been sucking
+the marrow out of your bones that the middle-class folks are worse
+than the lords? Mark my words, when that affair happens, my children,
+the Soudrys, the Gaubertins, the Rigous, will make you kick your heels
+in the air. 'I've the good tobacco, it never shall be thine,' that's
+the national air of the rich man, hey? The peasant will always be the
+peasant. Don't you see (but you never did understand anything of
+politics!) that government puts such heavy taxes on wine only to
+hinder our profits and keep us poor? The middle classes and the
+government, they are all one. What would become of them if everybody
+was rich? Could they till their fields? Would they gather the harvest?
+No, they _want_ the poor! I was rich for ten years and I know what I
+thought of paupers."
+
+"Must hunt with them, though," replied Tonsard, "because they mean to
+cut up the great estates; after that's done, we can turn against them.
+If I'd been Courtecuisse, whom that scoundrel Rigou is ruining, I'd
+have long ago paid his bill with other balls than the poor fellow
+gives him."
+
+"Right enough, too," replied Fourchon. "As Pere Niseron says (and he
+stayed republican long after everybody else), 'The people are tough;
+they don't die; they have time before them.'"
+
+Fourchon fell into a sort of reverie; Tonsard profited by his
+inattention to take back the trap, and as he took it up he cut a slip
+below the coin in his father-in-law's pocket at the moment when the
+old man raised his glass to his lips; then he set his foot on the
+five-franc piece as it dropped on the earthen floor just where it was
+always kept damp by the heel-taps which the customers flung from their
+glasses. Though quickly and lightly done, the old man might, perhaps,
+have felt the theft, if Vermichel had not happened to appear at that
+moment.
+
+"Tonsard, do you know where you father is?" called that functionary
+from the foot of the steps.
+
+Vermichel's shout, the theft of the money, and the emptying of old
+Fourchon's glass, were simultaneous.
+
+"Present, captain!" cried Fourchon, holding out a hand to Vermichel to
+help him up the steps.
+
+Of all Burgundian figures, Vermichel would have seemed to you the most
+Burgundian. The practitioner was not red, he was scarlet. His face,
+like certain tropical portions of the globe, was fissured, here and
+there, with small extinct volcanoes, defined by flat and greenish
+patches which Fourchon called, not unpoetically, the "flowers of
+wine." This fiery face, the features of which were swelled out of
+shape by continual drunkenness, looked cyclopic; for it was lighted on
+the right side by a gleaming eye, and darkened on the other by a
+yellow patch over the left orb. Red hair, always tousled, and a beard
+like that of Judas, made Vermichel as formidable in appearance as he
+was meek in reality. His prominent nose looked like an
+interrogation-mark, to which the wide-slit mouth seemed to be always
+answering, even when it did not open. Vermichel, a short man, wore
+hob-nail shoes, bottle-green velveteen trousers, an old waistcoat
+patched with diverse stuffs which seemed to have been originally made
+of a counterpane, a jacket of coarse blue cloth and a gray hat with a
+broad brim. All this luxury, required by the town of Soulanges where
+Vermichel fulfilled the combined functions of porter at the town-hall,
+drummer, jailer, musician, and practitioner, was taken care of by
+Madame Vermichel, an alarming antagonist of Rabelaisian philosophy.
+This virago with moustachios, about one yard in width and one hundred
+and twenty kilograms in weight (but very active), ruled Vermichel with
+a rod of iron. Thrashed by her when drunk, he allowed her to thrash
+him still when sober; which caused Pere Fourchon to say, with a sniff
+at Vermichel's clothes, "It is the livery of a slave."
+
+"Talk of the sun and you'll see its beams," cried Fourchon, repeating
+a well-worn allusion to the rutilant face of Vermichel, which really
+did resemble those copper suns painted on tavern signs in the
+provinces. "Has Mam Vermichel spied too much dust on your back, that
+you're running away from your four-fifths,--for I can't call her your
+better half, that woman! What brings you here at this hour,
+drum-major?"
+
+"Politics, always politics," replied Vermichel, who seemed accustomed
+to such pleasantries.
+
+"Ah! business is bad in Blangy, and there'll be notes to protest, and
+writs to issue," remarked Pere Fourchon, filling a glass for his
+friend.
+
+"That APE of ours is right behind me," replied Vermichel, with a
+backward gesture.
+
+In workmen's slang "ape" meant master. The word belonged to the
+dictionary of the worthy pair.
+
+"What's Monsieur Brunet coming bothering about here?" asked Tonsard.
+
+"Hey, by the powers, you folks!" said Vermichel, "you've brought him
+in for the last three years more than you are worth. Ha! that master
+at Les Aigues, he has his eye upon you; he'll punch you in the ribs;
+he's after you, the Shopman! Brunet says, if there were three such
+landlords in the valley his fortune would be made."
+
+"What new harm are they going to do to the poor?" asked Marie.
+
+"A pretty wise thing for themselves," replied Vermichel. "Faith!
+you'll have to give in, in the end. How can you help it? They've got
+the power. For the last two years haven't they had three foresters and
+a horse-patrol, all as active as ants, and a field-keeper who is a
+terror? Besides, the gendarmerie is ready to do their dirty work at
+any time. They'll crush you--"
+
+"Bah!" said Tonsard, "we are too flat. That which can't be crushed
+isn't the trees, it's ground."
+
+"Don't you trust to that," said Fourchon to his son-in-law; "you own
+property."
+
+"Those rich folks must love you," continued Vermichel, "for they think
+of nothing else from morning till night! They are saying to themselves
+now like this: 'Their cattle eat up our pastures; we'll seize their
+cattle; they can't eat grass themselves.' You've all been condemned,
+the warrants are out, and they have told our ape to take your cows. We
+are to begin this morning at Conches by seizing old mother
+Bonnebault's cow and Godin's cow and Mitant's cow."
+
+The moment the name of Bonnebault was mentioned, Marie, who was in
+love with the old woman's grandson, sprang into the vineyard with a
+nod to her father and mother. She slipped like an eel through a break
+in the hedge, and was off on the way to Conches with the speed of a
+hunted hare.
+
+"They'll do so much," remarked Tonsard, tranquilly, "that they'll get
+their bones broken; and that will be a pity, for their mothers can't
+make them any new ones."
+
+"Well, perhaps so," said old Fourchon, "but see here, Vermichel, I
+can't go with you for an hour or more, for I have important business
+at the chateau."
+
+"More important than serving three warrants at five sous each? 'You
+shouldn't spit into the vintage,' as Father Noah says."
+
+"I tell you, Vermichel, that my business requires me to go to the
+chateau des Aigues," repeated the old man, with an air of laughable
+self-importance.
+
+"And anyhow," said Mam Tonsard, "my father had better keep out of the
+way. Do you really mean to find the cows?"
+
+"Monsieur Brunet, who is a very good fellow, would much rather find
+nothing but their dung," answered Vermichel. "A man who is obliged to
+be out and about day and night had better be careful."
+
+"If he is, he has good reason to be," said Tonsard, sententiously.
+
+"So," continued Vermichel, "he said to Monsieur Michaud, 'I'll go as
+soon as the court is up.' If he had wanted to find the cows he'd have
+gone at seven o'clock in the morning. But that didn't suit Michaud,
+and Brunet has had to be off. You can't take in Michaud, he's a
+trained hound! Ha, the brigand!"
+
+"Ought to have stayed in the army, a swaggerer like that," said
+Tonsard; "he is only fit to deal with enemies. I wish he would come
+and ask me my name. He may call himself a veteran of the young guard,
+but I know very well that if I measured spurs with him, I'd keep my
+feathers up longest."
+
+"Look here!" said Mam Tonsard to Vermichel, "when are the notices for
+the ball at Soulanges coming out? Here it is the eighth of August."
+
+"I took them yesterday to Monsieur Bournier at Ville-aux-Fayes, to be
+printed," replied Vermichel; "they do talk of fireworks on the lake."
+
+"What crowds of people we shall have!" cried Fourchon.
+
+"Profits for Socquard!" said Tonsard, spitefully.
+
+"If it doesn't rain," said his wife, by way of comfort.
+
+At this moment the trot of a horse coming from the direction of
+Soulanges was heard, and five minutes later the sheriff's officer
+fastened his horse to a post placed for the purpose near the wicket
+gate through which the cows were driven. Then he showed his head at
+the door of the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+"Come, my boys, let's lose no time," he said, pretending to be in a
+hurry.
+
+"Hey!" said Vermichel. "Here's a refractory, Monsieur Brunet; Pere
+Fourchon wants to drop off."
+
+"He has had too many drops already," said the sheriff; "but the law in
+this case does not require that he shall be sober."
+
+"Please excuse me, Monsieur Brunet," said Fourchon, "I am expected at
+Les Aigues on business; they are in treaty for an otter."
+
+Brunet, a withered little man dressed from head to foot in black
+cloth, with a bilious skin, a furtive eye, curly hair, lips
+tight-drawn, pinched nose, anxious expression, and gruff in speech,
+exhibited the phenomenon of a character and bearing in perfect harmony
+with his profession. He was so well-informed as to the law, or, to
+speak more correctly, the quibbles of the law, that he had come to be
+both the terror and the counsellor of the whole canton. He was not
+without a certain popularity among the peasantry, from whom he usually
+took his pay in kind. The compound of his active and negative
+qualities and his knowledge of how to manage matters got him the
+custom of the canton, to the exclusion of his coadjutor Plissoud,
+about whom we shall have something to say later. This chance
+combination of a sheriff's officer who does everything and a sheriff's
+officer who does nothing is not at all uncommon in the country justice
+courts.
+
+"So matters are getting warm, are they?" said Tonsard to little
+Brunet.
+
+"What can you expect? you pilfer the man too much, and he's going to
+protect himself," replied the officer. "It will be a bad business for
+you in the end; government will interfere."
+
+"Then we, poor unfortunates, must give up the ghost!" said Mam
+Tonsard, offering him a glass of brandy on a saucer.
+
+"The unfortunate may all die, yet they'll never be lacking in the
+land," said Fourchon, sententiously.
+
+"You do great damage to the woods," retorted the sheriff.
+
+"Now don't believe that, Monsieur Brunet," said Mam Tonsard; "they
+make such a fuss about a few miserable fagots!"
+
+"We didn't crush the rich low enough during the Revolution, that's
+what's the trouble," said Tonsard.
+
+Just then a horrible, and quite incomprehensible noise was heard. It
+seemed to be a rush of hurried feet, accompanied with a rattle of
+arms, half-drowned by the rustling of leaves, the dragging of
+branches, and the sound of still more hasty feet. Two voices, as
+different as the two footsteps, were venting noisy exclamations.
+Everybody inside the inn guessed at once that a man was pursuing a
+woman; but why? The uncertainty did not last long.
+
+"It is mother!" said Tonsard, jumping up; "I know her shriek."
+
+Then suddenly, rushing up the broken steps of the Grand-I-Vert by a
+last effort that can be made only by the sinews of smugglers, old
+Mother Tonsard fell flat on the floor in the middle of the room. The
+immense mass of wood she carried on her head made a terrible noise as
+it crashed against the top of the door and then upon the ground. Every
+one had jumped out of the way. The table, the bottles, the chairs were
+knocked over and scattered. The noise was as great as if the cottage
+itself had come tumbling down.
+
+"I'm dead! The scoundrel has killed me!"
+
+The words and the flight of the old woman were explained by the
+apparition on the threshold of a keeper, dressed in green livery,
+wearing a hat edged with silver cord, a sabre at his side, a leathern
+shoulder-belt bearing the arms of Montcornet charged with those of the
+Troisvilles, the regulation red waistcoat, and buckskin gaiters which
+came above the knee.
+
+After a moment's hesitation the keeper said, looking at Brunet and
+Vermichel, "Here are witnesses."
+
+"Witnesses of what?" said Tonsard.
+
+"That woman has a ten-year-old oak, cut into logs, inside those
+fagots; it is a regular crime!"
+
+The moment the word "witness" was uttered Vermichel thought best to
+breathe the fresh air of the vineyard.
+
+"Of what? witnesses of what?" cried Tonsard, standing in front of the
+keeper while his wife helped up the old woman. "Do you mean to show
+your claws, Vatel? Accuse persons and arrest them on the highway,
+brigand,--that's your domain; but get out of here! A man's house is
+his castle."
+
+"I caught her in the act, and your mother must come with me."
+
+"Arrest my mother in my house? You have no right to do it. My house is
+inviolable,--all the world knows that, at least. Have you got a
+warrant from Monsieur Guerbet, the magistrate? Ha! you must have the
+law behind you before you come in here. You are not the law, though
+you have sworn an oath to starve us to death, you miserable
+forest-gauger, you!"
+
+The fury of the keeper waxed so hot that he was on the point of
+seizing hold of the wood, when the old woman, a frightful bit of black
+parchment endowed with motion, the like of which can be seen only in
+David's picture of "The Sabines," screamed at him, "Don't touch it, or
+I'll fly at your eyes!"
+
+"Well, then, undo that pile in presence of Monsieur Brunet," said the
+keeper.
+
+Though the sheriff's officer had assumed the indifference that the
+routine of business does really give to officials of his class, he
+threw a glance at Tonsard and his wife which said plainly, "A bad
+business!" Old Fourchon looked at his daughter, and slyly pointed at a
+pile of ashes in the chimney. Mam Tonsard, who understood in a moment
+from that significant gesture both the danger of her mother-in-law and
+the advice of her father, seized a handful of ashes and flung them in
+the keeper's eyes. Vatel roared with pain; Tonsard pushed him roughly
+upon the broken door-steps where the blinded man stumbled and fell,
+and then rolled nearly down to the gate, dropping his gun on the way.
+In an instant the load of sticks was unfastened, and the oak logs
+pulled out and hidden with a rapidity no words can describe. Brunet,
+anxious not to witness this manoeuvre, which he readily foresaw,
+rushed after the keeper to help him up; then he placed him on the bank
+and wet his handkerchief in water to wash the eyes of the poor fellow,
+who, in spite of his agony, was trying to reach the brook.
+
+"You are in the wrong, Vatel," said Brunet; "you have no right to
+enter houses, don't you see?"
+
+The old woman, a little hump-backed creature, stood on the sill of the
+door, with her hands on her hips, darting flashes from her eyes and
+curses from her foaming lips shrill enough to be heard at Blangy.
+
+"Ha! the villain, 'twas well done! May hell get you! To suspect me of
+cutting trees!--_me_, the most honest woman in the village. To hunt me
+like vermin! I'd like to see you lose your cursed eyes, for then we'd
+have peace. You are birds of ill-omen, the whole of you; you invent
+shameful stories to stir up strife between your master and us."
+
+The keeper allowed the sheriff to bathe his eyes and all the while the
+latter kept telling him that he was legally wrong.
+
+"The old thief! she has tired us out," said Vatel at last. "She has
+been at work in the woods all night."
+
+As the whole family had taken an active hand in hiding the live wood
+and putting things straight in the cottage, Tonsard presently appeared
+at the door with an insolent air. "Vatel, my man, if you ever again
+dare to force your way into my domain, my gun shall answer you," he
+said. "To-day you have had the ashes; the next time you shall have the
+fire. You don't know your own business. That's enough. Now if you feel
+hot after this affair take some wine, I offer it to you; and you may
+come in and see that my old mother's bundle of fagots hadn't a scrap
+of live wood in it; it is every bit brushwood."
+
+"Scoundrel!" said the keeper to the sheriff, in a low voice, more
+enraged by this speech than by the smart of his eyes.
+
+Just then Charles, the groom, appeared at the gate of the
+Grand-I-Vert.
+
+"What is the matter, Vatel?" he said.
+
+"Ah!" said the keeper, wiping his eyes, which he had plunged wide open
+into the rivulet to give them a final cleansing. "I have some debtors
+in there that I'll cause to rue the day they saw the light."
+
+"If you take it that way, Monsieur Vatel," said Tonsard, coldly, "you
+will find we don't want for courage in Burgundy."
+
+Vatel departed. Not feeling much curiosity to know what the trouble
+was, Charles went up the steps and looked into the house.
+
+"Come to the chateau, you and your otter,--if you really have one," he
+said to Pere Fourchon.
+
+The old man rose hurriedly and followed him.
+
+"Well, where is it,--that otter of yours?" said Charles, smiling
+doubtfully.
+
+"This way," said the old fellow, going toward the Thune.
+
+The name is that of a brook formed by the overflow of the mill-race
+and of certain springs in the park of Les Aigues. It runs by the side
+of the county road as far as the lakelet of Soulanges, which it
+crosses, and then falls into the Avonne, after feeding the mills and
+ponds on the Soulanges estate.
+
+"Here it is; I hid it in the brook, with a stone around its neck."
+
+As he stooped and rose again the old man missed the coin out of his
+pocket, where metal was so uncommon that he was likely to notice its
+presence or its absence immediately.
+
+"Ah, the sharks!" he cried. "If I hunt otters they hunt fathers-in-law!
+They get out of me all I earn, and tell me it is for my good! If it
+were not for my poor Mouche, who is the comfort of my old age, I'd
+drown myself. Children! they are the ruin of their fathers. You
+haven't married, have you, Monsieur Charles? Then don't; never get
+married, and then you can't reproach yourself for spreading bad blood.
+I, who expected to buy my tow with that money, and there it is
+filched, stolen! That monsieur up at Les Aigues, a fine young fellow,
+gave me ten francs; ha! well! it'll put up the price of my otter now."
+
+Charles distrusted the old man so profoundly that he took his
+grievances (this time very sincere) for the preliminary of what he
+called, in servant's slang, "varnish," and he made the great mistake
+of letting his opinion appear in a satirical grin, which the spiteful
+old fellow detected.
+
+"Come, come! Pere Fourchon, now behave yourself; you are going to see
+Madame," said Charles, noticing how the rubies flashed on the nose and
+cheeks of the old drunkard.
+
+"I know how to attend to business, Charles; and the proof is that if
+you will get me out of the kitchen the remains of the breakfast and a
+bottle or two of Spanish wine, I'll tell you something which will save
+you from a 'foul.'"
+
+"Tell me, and Francois shall get Monsieur's own order to give you a
+glass of wine," said the groom.
+
+"Promise?"
+
+"I promise."
+
+"Well then, I know you meet my granddaughter Catherine under the
+bridge of the Avonne. Godain is in love with her; he saw you, and he
+is fool enough to be jealous,--I say fool, for a peasant oughtn't to
+have feelings which belong only to rich folks. If you go to the ball
+of Soulanges at Tivoli and dance with her, you'll dance higher than
+you'll like. Godain is rich and dangerous; he is capable of breaking
+your arm without your getting a chance to arrest him."
+
+"That would be too dear; Catherine is a fine girl, but she is not
+worth all that," replied Charles. "Why should Godain be so angry?
+others are not."
+
+"He loves her enough to marry her."
+
+"If he does, he'll beat her," said Charles.
+
+"I don't know about that," said the old man. "She takes after her
+mother, against whom Tonsard never raised a finger,--he's too afraid
+she'll be off, hot foot. A woman who knows how to hold her own is
+mighty useful. Besides, if it came to fisticuffs with Catherine,
+Godain, though he's pretty strong, wouldn't give the last blow."
+
+"Well, thank you, Pere Fourchon; here's forty sous to drink my health
+in case I can't get you the sherry."
+
+Pere Fourchon turned his head aside as he pocketed the money lest
+Charles should see the expression of amusement and sarcasm which he
+was unable to repress.
+
+"Catherine," he resumed, "is a proud minx; she likes sherry. You had
+better tell her to go and get it at Les Aigues."
+
+Charles looked at Pere Fourchon with naive admiration, not suspecting
+the eager interest the general's enemies took in slipping one more spy
+into the chateau.
+
+"The general ought to feel happy now," continued Fourchon; "the
+peasants are all quiet. What does he say? Is he satisfied with
+Sibilet?"
+
+"It is only Monsieur Michaud who finds fault with Sibilet. They say
+he'll get him sent away."
+
+"Professional jealousy!" exclaimed Fourchon. "I'll bet you would like
+to get rid of Francois and take his place."
+
+"Hang it! he has twelve hundred francs wages," said Charles; "but they
+can't send him off,--he knows the general's secrets."
+
+"Just as Madame Michaud knows the countess's," remarked Fourchon,
+watching the other carefully. "Look here, my boy, do you know whether
+Monsieur and Madame have separate rooms?"
+
+"Of course; if they didn't, Monsieur wouldn't be so fond of Madame."
+
+"Is that all you know?" said Fourchon.
+
+As they were now before the kitchen windows nothing more was said.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER V
+
+                       ENEMIES FACE TO FACE
+
+While breakfast was in progress at the chateau, Francois, the head
+footman, whispered to Blondet, but loud enough for the general to
+overhear him,--
+
+"Monsieur, Pere Fourchon's boy is here; he says they have caught the
+otter, and wants to know if you would like it, or whether they shall
+take it to the sub-prefect at Ville-aux-Fayes."
+
+Emile Blondet, though himself a past-master of hoaxing, could not keep
+his cheeks from blushing like those of a virgin who hears an
+indecorous story of which she knows the meaning.
+
+"Ha! ha! so you have hunted the otter this morning with Pere
+Fourchon?" cried the general, with a roar of laughter.
+
+"What is it?" asked the countess, uneasy at her husband's laugh.
+
+"When a man of wit and intelligence is taken in by old Fourchon,"
+continued the general, "a retired cuirassier need not blush for having
+hunted that otter; which bears an enormous resemblance to the third
+posthorse we are made to pay for and never see." With that he went off
+into further explosions of laughter, in the midst of which he
+contrived to say: "I am not surprised you had to change your boots
+--and your trousers; I have no doubt you have been wading! The joke
+didn't go as far as that with me,--I stayed on the bank; but then, you
+know, you are so much more intelligent than I--"
+
+"But you forget," interrupted Madame de Montcornet, "that I do not
+know what you are talking of."
+
+At these words, said with some pique, the general grew serious, and
+Blondet told the story of his fishing for the otter.
+
+"But if they really have an otter," said the countess, "those poor
+people are not to blame."
+
+"Oh, but it is ten years since an otter has been seen about here,"
+said the pitiless general.
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Francois, "the boy swears by all that's
+sacred that he has got one."
+
+"If they have one I'll buy it," said the general.
+
+"I don't suppose," remarked the Abbe Brossette, "that God has
+condemned Les Aigues to never have otters."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur le cure!" cried Blondet, "if you bring the Almighty
+against me--"
+
+"But what is all this? Who is here?" said the countess, hastily.
+
+"Mouche, madame,--the boy who goes about with old Fourchon," said the
+footman.
+
+"Bring him in--that is, if Madame will allow it?" said the general;
+"he may amuse you."
+
+Mouche presently appeared, in his usual state of comparative nudity.
+Beholding this personification of poverty in the middle of this
+luxurious dining-room, the cost of one panel of which would have been
+a fortune to the bare-legged, bare-breasted, and bare-headed child, it
+was impossible not to be moved by an impulse of charity. The boy's
+eyes, like blazing coals, gazed first at the luxuries of the room, and
+then at those on the table.
+
+"Have you no mother?" asked Madame de Montcornet, unable otherwise to
+explain the child's nakedness.
+
+"No, ma'am; m'ma died of grief for losing p'pa, who went to the army
+in 1812 without marrying her with papers, and got frozen, saving your
+presence. But I've my Grandpa Fourchon, who is a good man,--though he
+does beat me bad sometimes."
+
+"How is it, my dear, that such wretched people can be found on your
+estate?" said the countess, looking at the general.
+
+"Madame la comtesse," said the abbe, "in this district we have none
+but voluntary paupers. Monsieur le comte does all he can; but we have
+to do with a class of persons who are without religion and who have
+but one idea, that of living at your expense."
+
+"But, my dear abbe," said Blondet, "you are here to improve their
+morals."
+
+"Monsieur," replied the abbe, "my bishop sent me here as if on a
+mission to savages; but, as I had the honor of telling him, the
+savages of France cannot be reached. They make it a law unto
+themselves not to listen to us; whereas the church does get some hold
+on the savages of America."
+
+"M'sieur le cure, they do help me a bit now," remarked Mouche; "but if
+I went to your church they _wouldn't_, and the other folks would make
+game of my breeches."
+
+"Religion ought to begin by giving him trousers, my dear abbe," said
+Blondet. "In your foreign missions don't you begin by coaxing the
+savages?"
+
+"He would soon sell them," answered the abbe, in a low tone; "besides,
+my salary does not enable me to begin on that line."
+
+"Monsieur le cure is right," said the general, looking at Mouche.
+
+The policy of the little scamp was to appear not to hear what they
+were saying when it was against himself.
+
+"The boy is intelligent enough to know good from evil," continued the
+count, "and he is old enough to work; yet he thinks of nothing but how
+to commit evil without being found out. All the keepers know him. He
+is very well aware that the master of an estate may witness a trespass
+on his property and yet have no right to arrest the trespasser. I have
+known him keep his cows boldly in my meadows, though he knew I saw
+him; but now, ever since I have been mayor, he runs away fast enough."
+
+"Oh, that is very wrong," said the countess; "you should not take
+other people's things, my little man."
+
+"Madame, we must eat. My grandpa gives me more slaps than food, and
+they don't fill my stomach, slaps don't. When the cows come in I milk
+'em just a little and I live on that. Monseigneur isn't so poor but
+what he'll let me drink a drop o' milk the cows get from his grass?"
+
+"Perhaps he hasn't eaten anything to-day," said the countess, touched
+by his misery. "Give him some bread and the rest of that chicken; let
+him have his breakfast," she added, looking at the footman. "Where do
+you sleep, my child?"
+
+"Anywhere, madame; under the stars in summer, and wherever they'll let
+us in winter."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Twelve."
+
+"There is still time to bring him up to better ways," said the
+countess to her husband.
+
+"He will make a good soldier," said the general, gruffly; "he is well
+toughened. I went through that kind of thing myself, and here I am."
+
+"Excuse me, general, I don't belong to nobody," said the boy. "I can't
+be drafted. My poor mother wasn't married, and I was born in a field.
+I'm a son of the 'airth,' as grandpa says. M'ma saved me from the
+army, that she did! My name ain't no more Mouche than nothing at all.
+Grandpa keeps telling me all my advantages. I'm not on the register,
+and when I'm old enough to be drafted I can go all over France and
+they can't take me."
+
+"Are you fond of your grandfather?" said the countess, trying to look
+into the child's heart.
+
+"My! doesn't he box my ears when he feels like it! but then, after
+all, he's such fun; he's such good company! He says he pays himself
+that way for having taught me to read and write."
+
+"Can you read?" asked the count.
+
+"Yah, I should think so, Monsieur le comte, and fine writing too--just
+as true as we've got that otter."
+
+"Read that," said the count, giving him a newspaper.
+
+"The Qu-o-ti-dienne," read Mouche, hesitating only three times.
+
+Every one, even the abbe, laughed.
+
+"Why do you make me read that newspaper?" cried Mouche, angrily. "My
+grandpa says it is made up to please the rich, and everybody knows
+later just what's in it."
+
+"The child is right, general," said Blondet; "and he makes me long to
+see my hoaxing friend again."
+
+Mouche understood perfectly that he was posing for the amusement of
+the company; the pupil of Pere Fourchon was worthy of his master, and
+he forthwith began to cry.
+
+"How can you tease a child with bare feet?" said the countess.
+
+"And who thinks it quite natural that his grandfather should recoup
+himself for his education by boxing his ears," said Blondet.
+
+"Tell me, my poor little fellow, have you really caught an otter?"
+
+"Yes, madame; as true as that you are the prettiest lady I have seen,
+or ever shall see," said the child, wiping his eyes.
+
+"Then show me the otter," said the general.
+
+"Oh M'sieur le comte, my grandpa has hidden it; but it was kicking
+still when we were at work at the rope-walk. Send for my grandpa,
+please; he wants to sell it to you himself."
+
+"Take him into the kitchen," said the countess to Francois, "and give
+him his breakfast, and send Charles to fetch Pere Fourchon. Find some
+shoes, and a pair of trousers and a waistcoat for the poor child;
+those who come here naked must go away clothed."
+
+"May God bless you, my beautiful lady," said Mouche, departing.
+"M'sieur le cure may feel quite sure that I'll keep the things and
+wear 'em fete-days, because you give 'em to me."
+
+Emile and Madame Montcornet looked at each other with some surprise,
+and seemed to say to the abbe, "The boy is not a fool!"
+
+"It is quite true, madame," said the abbe after the child had gone,
+"that we cannot reckon with Poverty. I believe it has hidden excuses
+of which God alone can judge,--physical excuses, often congenital;
+moral excuses, born in the character, produced by an order of things
+that are often the result of qualities which, unhappily for society,
+have no vent. Deeds of heroism performed upon the battle-field ought
+to teach us that the worst scoundrels may become heroes. But here in
+this place you are living under exceptional circumstances; and if your
+benevolence is not controlled by reflection and judgment you run the
+risk of supporting your enemies."
+
+"Our enemies?" exclaimed the countess.
+
+"Cruel enemies," said the general, gravely.
+
+"Pere Fourchon and his son-in-law Tonsard," said the abbe, "are the
+strength and the intelligence of the lower classes of this valley, who
+consult them on all occasions. The Machiavelism of these people is
+beyond belief. Ten peasants meeting in a tavern are the small change
+of great political questions."
+
+Just then Francois announced Monsieur Sibilet.
+
+"He is my minister of finance," said the general, smiling; "ask him
+in. He will explain to you the gravity of the situation," he added,
+looking at his wife and Blondet.
+
+"Because he has reasons of his own for not concealing it," said the
+cure, in a low tone.
+
+Blondet then beheld a personage of whom he had heard much ever since
+his arrival, and whom he desired to know, the land-steward of Les
+Aigues. He saw a man of medium height, about thirty years of age, with
+a sulky look and a discontented face, on which a smile sat ill.
+Beneath an anxious brow a pair of greenish eyes evaded the eyes of
+others, and so disguised their thought. Sibilet was dressed in a brown
+surtout coat, black trousers and waistcoat, and wore his hair long and
+flat to the head, which gave him a clerical look. His trousers barely
+concealed that he was knock-kneed. Though his pallid complexion and
+flabby flesh gave the impression of an unhealthy constitution, Sibilet
+was really robust. The tones of his voice, which were a little thick,
+harmonized with this unflattering exterior.
+
+Blondet gave a hasty look at the abbe, and the glance with which the
+young priest answered it showed the journalist that his own suspicions
+about the steward were certainties to the curate.
+
+"Did you not tell me, my dear Sibilet," said the general, "that you
+estimate the value of what the peasants steal from us at a quarter of
+the whole revenue?"
+
+"Much more than that, Monsieur le comte," replied the steward. "The
+poor about here get more from your property than the State exacts in
+taxes. A little scamp like Mouche can glean his two bushels a day. Old
+women, whom you would really think at their last gasp, become at the
+harvest and vintage times as active and healthy as girls. You can
+witness that phenomenon very soon," said Sibilet, addressing Blondet,
+"for the harvest, which was put back by the rains in July will begin
+next week, when they cut the rye. The gleaners must have a certificate
+of pauperism from the mayor of the district, and no district should
+allow any one to glean except the paupers; but the districts of one
+canton do glean in those of another without certificate. If we have
+sixty real paupers in our district, there are at least forty others
+who could support themselves if they were not so idle. Even persons
+who have a business leave it to glean in the fields and in the
+vineyards. All these people, taken together, gather in this
+neighborhood something like three hundred bushels a day; the harvest
+lasts two weeks, and that makes four thousand five hundred bushels in
+this district alone. The gleaning takes more from an estate than the
+taxes. As to the abuse of pasturage, it robs us of fully one-sixth the
+produce of the meadows; and as to that of the woods, it is
+incalculable,--they have actually come to cutting down six-year-old
+trees. The loss to you, Monsieur le comte, amounts to fully twenty-odd
+thousand francs a year."
+
+"Do you hear that, madame?" said the general to his wife.
+
+"Is it not exaggerated?" asked Madame de Montcornet.
+
+"No, madame, unfortunately not," said the abbe. "Poor Niseron, that
+old fellow with the white head, who combines the functions of
+bell-ringer, beadle, grave-digger, sexton, and clerk, in defiance of
+his republican opinions,--I mean the grandfather of the little
+Genevieve whom you placed with Madame Michaud--"
+
+"La Pechina," said Sibilet, interrupting the abbe.
+
+"Pechina!" said the countess, "whom do you mean?"
+
+"Madame la comtesse, when you met little Genevieve on the road in a
+miserable condition, you cried out in Italian, 'Piccina!' The word
+became a nickname, and is now corrupted all through the district into
+Pechina," said the abbe. "The poor girl comes to church with Madame
+Michaud and Madame Sibilet."
+
+"And she is none the better for it," said Sibilet, "for the others
+ill-treat her on account of her religion."
+
+"Well, that poor old man of seventy gleans, honestly, about a bushel
+and a half a day," continued the priest; "but his natural uprightness
+prevents him from selling his gleanings as others do,--he keeps them
+for his own consumption. Monsieur Langlume, your miller, grinds his
+flour gratis at my request, and my servant bakes his bread with mine."
+
+"I had quite forgotten my little protegee," said the countess,
+troubled at Sibilet's remark. "Your arrival," she added to Blondet,
+"has quite turned my head. But after breakfast I will take you to the
+gate of the Avonne and show you the living image of those women whom
+the painters of the fifteenth century delighted to perpetuate."
+
+The sound of Pere Fourchon's broken sabots was now heard; after
+depositing them in the antechamber, he was brought to the door of the
+dining-room by Francois. At a sign from the countess, Francois allowed
+him to pass in, followed by Mouche with his mouth full and carrying
+the otter, hanging by a string tied to its yellow paws, webbed like
+those of a palmiped. He cast upon his four superiors sitting at table,
+and also upon Sibilet, that look of mingled distrust and servility
+which serves as a veil to the thoughts of the peasantry; then he
+brandished his amphibian with a triumphant air.
+
+"Here it is!" he cried, addressing Blondet.
+
+"My otter!" returned the Parisian, "and well paid for."
+
+"Oh, my dear gentleman," replied Pere Fourchon, "yours got away; she
+is now in her burrow, and she won't come out, for she's a female,
+--this is a male; Mouche saw him coming just as you went away. As true
+as you live, as true as that Monsieur le comte covered himself and his
+cuirassiers with glory at Waterloo, the otter is mine, just as much as
+Les Aigues belongs to Monseigneur the general. But the otter is _yours_
+for twenty francs; if not I'll take it to the sub-prefect. If Monsieur
+Gourdon thinks it too dear, then I'll give you the preference; that's
+only fair, as we hunted together this morning!"
+
+"Twenty francs!" said Blondet. "In good French you can't call that
+_giving_ the preference."
+
+"Hey, my dear gentleman," cried the old fellow. "Perhaps I don't know
+French, and I'll ask it in good Burgundian; as long as I get the
+money, I don't care, I'll talk Latin: 'latinus, latina, latinum'!
+Besides, twenty francs is what you promised me this morning. My
+children have already stolen the silver you gave me; I wept about it,
+coming along,--ask Charles if I didn't. Not that I'd arrest 'em for
+the value of ten francs and have 'em up before the judge, no! But just
+as soon as I earn a few pennies, they make me drink and get 'em out of
+me. Ah! it is hard, hard to be reduced to go and get my wine
+elsewhere. But just see what children are these days! That's what we
+got by the Revolution; it is all for the children now-a-days, and
+parents are suppressed. I'm bringing up Mouche on another tack; he
+loves me, the little scamp,"--giving his grandson a poke.
+
+"It seems to me you are making him a little thief, like all the rest,"
+said Sibilet; "he never lies down at night without some sin on his
+conscience."
+
+"Ha! Monsieur Sibilet, his conscience is as clean as yours any day!
+Poor child! what can he steal? A little grass! that's better than
+throttling a man! He don't know mathematics like you, nor subtraction,
+nor addition, nor multiplication,--you are very unjust to us, that you
+are! You call us a nest of brigands, but you are the cause of the
+misunderstandings between our good landlord here, who is a worthy man,
+and the rest of us, who are all worthy men,--there ain't an honester
+part of the country than this. Come, what do you mean? do I own
+property? don't I go half-naked, and Mouche too? Fine sheets we slept
+in, washed by the dew every morning! and unless you want the air we
+breathe and the sunshine we drink, I should like to know what we have
+that you can take away from us! The rich folks rob as they sit in
+their chimney-corners,--and more profitably, too, than by picking up a
+few sticks in the woods. I don't see no game-keepers or patrols after
+Monsieur Gaubertin, who came here as naked as a worm and is now worth
+his millions. It's easy said, 'Robbers!' Here's fifteen years that old
+Guerbet, the tax-gatherer at Soulanges, carries his money along the
+roads by the dead of night, and nobody ever took a farthing from him;
+is that like a land of robbers? has robbery made us rich? Show me
+which of us two, your class or mine, live the idlest lives and have
+the most to live on without earning it."
+
+"If you were to work," said the abbe, "you would have property. God
+blesses labor."
+
+"I don't want to contradict you, M'sieur l'abbe, for you are wiser
+than I, and perhaps you'll know how to explain something that puzzles
+me. Now see, here I am, ain't I?--that drunken, lazy, idle,
+good-for-nothing old Fourchon, who had an education and was a farmer,
+and got down in the mud and never got up again,--well, what difference
+is there between me and that honest and worthy old Niseron, seventy
+years old (and that's my age) who has dug the soil for sixty years and
+got up every day before it was light to go to his work, and has made
+himself an iron body and a fine soul? Well, isn't he as bad off as I
+am? His little granddaughter, Pechina, is at service with Madame
+Michaud, whereas my little Mouche is as free as air. So that poor good
+man gets rewarded for his virtues in exactly the same way that I get
+punished for my vices. He don't know what a glass of good wine is,
+he's as sober as an apostle, he buries the dead, and I--I play for the
+living to dance. He is always in a peck o' troubles, while I slip
+along in a devil-may-care way. We have come along about even in life;
+we've got the same snow on our heads, the same funds in our pockets,
+and I supply him with rope to ring his bell. He's a republican and I'm
+not even a publican,--that's all the difference as far as I can see. A
+peasant may do good or do evil (according to your ideas) and he'll go
+out of the world just as he came into it, in rags; while you wear the
+fine clothes."
+
+No one interrupted Pere Fourchon, who seemed to owe his eloquence to
+his potations. At first Sibilet tried to cut him short, but desisted
+at a sign from Blondet. The abbe, the general, and the countess, all
+understood from the expression of the writer's eye that he wanted to
+study the question of pauperism from life, and perhaps take his
+revenge on Pere Fourchon.
+
+"What sort of education are you giving Mouche?" asked Blondet. "Do you
+expect to make him any better than your daughters?"
+
+"Does he ever speak to him of God?" said the priest.
+
+"Oh, no, no! Monsieur le cure, I don't tell him to fear God, but men.
+God is good; he has promised us poor folks, so you say, the kingdom of
+heaven, because the rich people keep the earth to themselves. I tell
+him: 'Mouche! fear the prison, and keep out of it,--for that's the way
+to the scaffold. Don't steal anything, make people give it to you.
+Theft leads to murder, and murder brings down the justice of men. The
+razor of justice,--_that's_ what you've got to fear; it lets the rich
+sleep easy and keeps the poor awake. Learn to read. Education will
+teach you ways to grab money under cover of the law, like that fine
+Monsieur Gaubertin; why, you can even be a land-steward like Monsieur
+Sibilet here, who gets his rations out of Monsieur le comte. The thing
+to do is to keep well with the rich, and pick up the crumbs that fall
+from their tables.' That's what I call giving him a good, solid
+education; and you'll always find the little rascal on the side of the
+law,--he'll be a good citizen and take care of me."
+
+"What do you mean to make of him?" asked Blondet.
+
+"A servant, to begin with," returned Fourchon, "because then he'll see
+his masters close by, and learn something; he'll complete his
+education, I'll warrant you. Good example will be a fortune to him,
+with the law on his side like the rest of you. If M'sieur le comte
+would only take him in his stables and let him learn to groom the
+horses, the boy will be mighty pleased, for though I've taught him to
+fear men, he don't fear animals."
+
+"You are a clever fellow, Pere Fourchon," said Blondet; "you know what
+you are talking about, and there's sense in what you say."
+
+"Oh, sense? no; I left my sense at the Grand-I-Vert when I lost those
+silver pieces."
+
+"How is it that a man of your capacity should have dropped so low? As
+things are now, a peasant can only blame himself for his poverty; he
+is a free man, and he can become a rich one. It is not as it used to
+be. If a peasant lays by his money, he can always buy a bit of land
+and become his own master."
+
+"I've seen the olden time and I've seen the new, my dear wise
+gentleman," said Fourchon; "the sign over the door has changed, that's
+true, but the wine is the same,--to-day is the younger brother of
+yesterday, that's all. Put that in your newspaper! Are we poor folks
+free? We still belong to the same parish, and its lord is always
+there,--I call him Toil. The hoe, our sole property, has never left
+our hands. Let it be the old lords or the present taxes which take the
+best of our earnings, the fact remains that we sweat our lives out in
+toil."
+
+"But you could undertake a business, and try to make your fortune,"
+said Blondet.
+
+"Try to make my fortune! And where shall I try? If I wish to leave my
+own province, I must get a passport, and that costs forty sous. Here's
+forty years that I've never had a slut of a forty-sous piece jingling
+against another in my pocket. If you want to travel you need as many
+crowns as there are villages, and there are mighty few Fourchons who
+have enough to get to six of 'em. It is only the draft that gives us a
+chance to get away. And what good does the army do us? The colonels
+live by the solider, just as the rich folks live by the peasant; and
+out of every hundred of 'em you won't find more than one of our breed.
+It is just as it is the world over, one rolling in riches, for a
+hundred down in the mud. Why are we in the mud? Ask God and the
+usurers. The best we can do is to stay in our own parts, where we are
+penned like sheep by the force of circumstances, as our fathers were
+by the rule of the lords. As for me, what do I care what shackles they
+are that keep me here? let it be the law of public necessity or the
+tyranny of the old lords, it is all the same; we are condemned to dig
+the soil forever. There, where we are born, there we dig it, that
+earth! and spade it, and manure it, and delve in it, for you who are
+born rich just as we are born poor. The masses will always be what
+they are, and stay what they are. The number of us who manage to rise
+is nothing like the number of you who topple down! We know that well
+enough, if we have no education! You mustn't be after us with your
+sheriff all the time,--not if you're wise. We let you alone, and you
+must let us alone. If not, and things get worse, you'll have to feed
+us in your prisons, where we'd be much better off than in our homes.
+You want to remain our masters, and we shall always be enemies, just
+as we were thirty years ago. You have everything, we have nothing; you
+can't expect we should ever be friends."
+
+"That's what I call a declaration of war," said the general.
+
+"Monseigneur," retorted Fourchon, "when Les Aigues belonged to that
+poor Madame (God keep her soul and forgive her the sins of her youth!)
+we were happy. _She_ let us get our food from the fields and our fuel
+from the forest; and was she any the poorer for it? And you, who are
+at least as rich as she, you hunt us like wild beasts, neither more
+nor less, and drag the poor before the courts. Well, evil will come of
+it! you'll be the cause of some great calamity. Haven't I just seen
+your keeper, that shuffling Vatel, half kill a poor old woman for a
+stick of wood? It is such fellows as that who make you an enemy to the
+poor; and the talk is very bitter against you. They curse you every
+bit as hard as they used to bless the late Madame. The curse of the
+poor, monseigneur, is a seed that grows,--grows taller than your tall
+oaks, and oak-wood builds the scaffold. Nobody here tells you the
+truth; and here it is, yes, the truth! I expect to die before long,
+and I risk very little in telling it to you, the _truth_! I, who play
+for the peasants to dance at the great fetes at Soulanges, I heed what
+the people say. Well, they're all against you; and they'll make it
+impossible for you to stay here. If that damned Michaud of yours
+doesn't change, they'll force you to change him. There! that
+information _and_ the otter are worth twenty francs, and more too."
+
+As the old fellow uttered the last words a man's step was heard, and
+the individual just threatened by Fourchon entered unannounced. It was
+easy to see from the glance he threw at the old man that the threat
+had reached his ears, and all Fourchon's insolence sank in a moment.
+The look produced precisely the same effect upon him that the eye of a
+policeman produces on a thief. Fourchon knew he was wrong, and that
+Michaud might very well accuse him of saying these things merely to
+terrify the inhabitants of Les Aigues.
+
+"This is the minister of war," said the general to Blondet, nodding at
+Michaud.
+
+"Pardon me, madame, for having entered without asking if you were
+willing to receive me," said the newcomer to the countess; "but I have
+urgent reasons for speaking to the general at once."
+
+Michaud, as he said this, took notice of Sibilet, whose expression of
+keen delight in Fourchon's daring words was not seen by the four
+persons seated at the table, because they were so preoccupied by the
+old man; whereas Michaud, who for secret reasons watched Sibilet
+constantly, was struck with his air and manner.
+
+"He has earned his twenty francs, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet;
+"the otter is fully worth it."
+
+"Give him twenty francs," said the general to the footman.
+
+"Do you mean to take my otter away from me?" said Blondet to the
+general.
+
+"I shall have it stuffed," replied the latter.
+
+"Ah! but that good gentleman said I might keep the skin," cried
+Fourchon.
+
+"Well, then," exclaimed the countess, hastily, "you shall have five
+francs more for the skin; but go away now."
+
+The powerful odor emitted by the pair made the dining-room so horribly
+offensive that Madame de Montcornet, whose senses were very delicate,
+would have been forced to leave the room if Fourchon and Mouche had
+remained. To this circumstance the old man was indebted for his
+twenty-five francs. He left the room with a timid glance at Michaud,
+making him an interminable series of bows.
+
+"What I was saying to monseigneur, Monsieur Michaud," he added, "was
+really for your good."
+
+"Or for that of those who pay you," replied Michaud, with a searching
+look.
+
+"When you have served the coffee, leave the room," said the general to
+the servants, "and see that the doors are shut."
+
+Blondet, who had not yet seen the bailiff of Les Aigues, was
+conscious, as he now saw him, of a totally different impression from
+that conveyed by Sibilet. Just as the steward inspired distrust and
+repulsion, so Michaud commanded respect and confidence. The first
+attraction of his presence was a happy face, of a fine oval, pure in
+outline, in which the nose bore part,--a regularity which is lacking
+in the majority of French faces. Though the features were correct in
+drawing, they were not without expression, due, perhaps, to the
+harmonious coloring of the warm brown and ochre tints, indicative of
+physical health and strength. The clear brown eyes, which were bright
+and piercing, kept no reserves in the expression of his thought; they
+looked straight into the eyes of others. The broad white forehead was
+thrown still further into relief by his abundant black hair. Honesty,
+decision, and a saintly serenity were the animating points of this
+noble face, where a few deep lines upon the brow were the result of
+the man's military career. Doubt and suspicion could there be read the
+moment they had entered his mind. His figure, like that of all men
+selected for the elite of the cavalry service, though shapely and
+elegant, was vigorously built. Michaud, who wore moustachios,
+whiskers, and a chin beard, recalled that martial type of face which a
+deluge of patriotic paintings and engravings came very near to making
+ridiculous. This type had the defect of being common in the French
+army; perhaps the continuance of the same emotions, the same camp
+sufferings from which none were exempt, neither high nor low, and more
+especially the same efforts of officers and men upon the battle-fields,
+may have contributed to produce this uniformity of countenance.
+Michaud, who was dressed in dark blue cloth, still wore the black satin
+stock and high boots of a soldier, which increased the slight stiffness
+and rigidity of his bearing. The shoulders sloped, the chest expanded,
+as though the man were still under arms. The red ribbon of the Legion
+of honor was in his buttonhole. In short, to give a last touch in one
+word about the moral qualities beneath this purely physical presentment,
+it may be said that while the steward, from the time he first entered
+upon his functions, never failed to call his master "Monsieur le
+comte," Michaud never addressed him otherwise than as "General."
+
+Blondet exchanged another look with the Abbe Brossette, which meant,
+"What a contrast!" as he signed to him to observe the two men. Then,
+as if to know whether the character and mind and speech of the bailiff
+harmonized with his form and countenance, he turned to Michaud and
+said:--
+
+"I was out early this morning, and found your under-keepers still
+sleeping."
+
+"At what hour?" said the late soldier, anxiously.
+
+"Half-past seven."
+
+Michaud gave a half-roguish glance at the general.
+
+"By what gate did monsieur leave the park?" he asked.
+
+"By the gate of Conches. The keeper, in his night-shirt, looked at me
+through the window," replied Blondet.
+
+"Gaillard had probably just gone to bed," answered Michaud. "You said
+you were out early, and I thought you meant day-break. If my man were
+at home at that time, he must have been ill; but at half-past seven he
+was sure to be in bed. We are up all night," added Michaud, after a
+slight pause, replying to a surprised look on the countess's face,
+"but our watchfulness is often wasted. You have just given twenty-five
+francs to a man who, not an hour ago, was quietly helping to hide the
+traces of a robbery committed upon you this very morning. I came to
+speak to you about it, general, when you have finished breakfast; for
+something will have to be done."
+
+"You are always for maintaining the right, my dear Michaud, and
+'summum jus, summum injuria.' If you are not more tolerant, you will
+get into trouble, so Sibilet here tells me. I wish you could have
+heard Pere Fourchon just now; the wine he had been drinking made him
+speak out."
+
+"He frightened me," said the countess.
+
+"He said nothing I did not know long ago," replied the general.
+
+"Oh! the rascal wasn't drunk; he was playing a part; for whose benefit
+I leave you to guess. Perhaps you know?" returned Michaud, fixing an
+eye on Sibilet which caused the latter to turn red.
+
+"O rus!" cried Blondet, with another look at the abbe.
+
+"But these poor creatures suffer," said the countess, "and there is a
+great deal of truth in what old Fourchon has just screamed at us,--for
+I cannot call it speaking."
+
+"Madame," replied Michaud, "do you suppose that for fourteen years the
+soldiers of the Emperor slept on a bed of roses? My general is a
+count, he is a grand officer of the Legion of honor, he has had
+perquisites and endowments given to him; am I jealous of him, I who
+fought as he did? Do I wish to cheat him of his glory, to steal his
+perquisites, to deny him the honor due to his rank? The peasant should
+obey as the soldier obeys; he should feel the loyalty of a soldier,
+his respect for acquired rights, and strive to become an officer
+himself, honorably, by labor and not by theft. The sabre and the
+plough are twins; though the soldier has something more than the
+peasant,--he has death hanging over him at any minute."
+
+"I want to say that from the pulpit," cried the abbe.
+
+"Tolerant!" continued the keeper, replying to the general's remark
+about Sibilet, "I would tolerate a loss of ten per cent upon the gross
+returns of Les Aigues; but as things are now thirty per cent is what
+you lose, general; and, if Monsieur Sibilet's accounts show it, I
+don't understand his tolerance, for he benevolently gives up a
+thousand or twelve hundred francs a year."
+
+"My dear Monsieur Michaud," replied Sibilet, in a snappish tone, "I
+have told Monsieur le comte that I would rather lose twelve hundred
+francs a year than my life. Think of it seriously; I have warned you
+often enough."
+
+"Life!" exclaimed the countess; "you can't mean that anybody's life is
+in danger?"
+
+"Don't let us argue about state affairs here," said the general,
+laughing. "All this, my dear, merely means that Sibilet, in his
+capacity of financier, is timid and cowardly, while the minister of
+war is brave and, like his general, fears nothing."
+
+"Call me prudent, Monsieur le comte," interposed Sibilet.
+
+"Well, well!" cried Blondet, laughing, "so here we are, like Cooper's
+heroes in the forests of America, in the midst of sieges and savages."
+
+"Come, gentlemen, it is your business to govern without letting me
+hear the wheels of the administration," said Madame de Montcornet.
+
+"Ah! madame," said the cure, "but it may be right that you should know
+the toil from which those pretty caps you wear are derived."
+
+"Well, then, I can go without them," replied the countess, laughing.
+"I will be very respectful to a twenty-franc piece, and grow as
+miserly as the country people themselves. Come, my dear abbe, give me
+your arm. Leave the general with his two ministers, and let us go to
+the gate of the Avonne to see Madame Michaud, for I have not had time
+since my arrival to pay her a visit, and I want to inquire about my
+little protegee."
+
+And the pretty woman, already forgetting the rags and tatters of
+Mouche and Fourchon, and their eyes full of hatred, and Sibilet's
+warnings, went to have herself made ready for the walk.
+
+The abbe and Blondet obeyed the behest of the mistress of the house
+and followed her from the dining-room, waiting till she was ready on
+the terrace before the chateau.
+
+"What do you think of all this?" said Blondet to the abbe.
+
+"I am a pariah; they dog me as they would a common enemy. I am forced
+to keep my eyes and ears perpetually open to escape the traps they are
+constantly laying to get me out of the place," replied the abbe. "I am
+even doubtful, between ourselves, as to whether they will not shoot
+me."
+
+"Why do you stay?" said Blondet.
+
+"We can't desert God's cause any more than that of an emperor,"
+replied the priest, with a simplicity that affected Blondet. He took
+the abbe's hand and shook it cordially.
+
+"You see how it is, therefore, that I know very little of the plots
+that are going on," continued the abbe. "Still, I know enough to feel
+sure that the general is under what in Artois and in Belgium is called
+an 'evil grudge.'"
+
+A few words are here necessary about the curate of Blangy.
+
+This priest, the fourth son of a worthy middle-class family of Autun,
+was an intelligent man carrying his head high in his collar. Small and
+slight, he redeemed his rather puny appearance by the precise and
+carefully dressed air that belongs to Burgundians. He accepted the
+second-rate post of Blangy out of pure devotion, for his religious
+convictions were joined to political opinions that were equally
+strong. There was something of the priest of the olden time about him;
+he held to the Church and to the clergy passionately; saw the bearings
+of things, and no selfishness marred his one ambition, which was _to
+serve_. That was his motto,--to serve the Church and the monarchy
+wherever it was most threatened; to serve in the lowest rank like a
+soldier who feels that he is destined, sooner or later, to attain
+command through courage and the resolve to do his duty. He made no
+compromises with his vows of chastity, and poverty, and obedience; he
+fulfilled them, as he did the other duties of his position, with that
+simplicity and cheerful good-humor which are the sure indications of
+an honest heart, constrained to do right by natural impulses as much
+as by the power and consistency of religious convictions.
+
+The priest had seen at first sight Blondet's attachment to the
+countess; he saw that between a Troisville and a monarchical
+journalist he could safely show himself to be a man of broad
+intelligence, because his calling was certain to be respected. He
+usually came to the chateau very evening to make the fourth at a game
+of whist. The journalist, able to recognize the abbe's real merits,
+showed him so much deference that the pair grew into sympathy with
+each other; as usually happens when men of intelligence meet their
+equals, or, if you prefer it, the ears that are able to hear them.
+Swords are fond of their scabbards.
+
+"But to what do you attribute this state of things, Monsieur l'abbe,
+you who are able, through your disinterestedness, to look over the
+heads of things?"
+
+"I shall not talk platitudes after such a flattering speech as that,"
+said the abbe, smiling. "What is going on in this valley is spreading
+more or less throughout France; it is the outcome of the hopes which
+the upheaval of 1789 caused to infiltrate, if I may use that
+expression, the minds of the peasantry, the sons of the soil. The
+Revolution affected certain localities more than others. This side of
+Burgundy, nearest to Paris, is one of those places where the
+revolutionary ideas spread like the overrunning of the Franks by the
+Gauls. Historically, the peasants are still on the morrow of the
+Jacquerie; that defeat is burnt in upon their brain. They have long
+forgotten the facts which have now passed into the condition of an
+instinctive idea. That idea is bred in the peasant blood, just as the
+idea of superiority was once bred in noble blood. The revolution of
+1789 was the retaliation of the vanquished. The peasants then set foot
+in possession of the soil which the feudal law had denied them for
+over twelve hundred years. Hence their desire for land, which they now
+cut up among themselves until actually they divide a furrow into two
+parts; which, by the bye, often hinders or prevents the collection of
+taxes, for the value of such fractions of property is not sufficient
+to pay the legal costs of recovering them."
+
+"Very true, for the obstinacy of the small owners--their
+aggressiveness, if you choose--on this point is so great that in at
+least one thousand cantons of the three thousand of French territory,
+it is impossible for a rich man to buy an inch of land from a
+peasant," said Blondet, interrupting the abbe. "The peasants who are
+willing to divide up their scraps of land among themselves would not
+sell a fraction on any condition or at any price to the middle
+classes. The more money the rich man offers, the more the vague
+uneasiness of the peasant increases. Legal dispossession alone is able
+to bring the landed property of the peasant into the market. Many
+persons have noticed this fact without being able to find a reason for
+it."
+
+"This is the reason," said the abbe, rightly believing that a pause
+with Blondet was equivalent to a question: "twelve centuries have done
+nothing for a caste whom the historic spectacle of civilization has
+never yet diverted from its one predominating thought,--a caste which
+still wears proudly the broad-brimmed hat of its masters, ever since
+an abandoned fashion placed it upon their heads. That all-pervading
+thought, the roots of which are in the bowels of the people, and which
+attached them so vehemently to Napoleon (who was personally less to
+them than he thought he was) and which explains the miracle of his
+return in 1815,--that desire for land is the sole motive power of the
+peasant's being. In the eyes of the masses Napoleon, ever one with
+them through his million of soldiers, is still the king born of the
+Revolution; the man who gave them possession of the soil and sold to
+them the national domains. His anointing was saturated with that
+idea."
+
+"An idea to which 1814 dealt a blow, an idea which monarchy should
+hold sacred," said Blondet, quickly; "for the people may some day find
+on the steps of the throne a prince whose father bequeathed to him the
+head of Louis XVI. as an heirloom."
+
+"Here is madame; don't say any more," said the abbe, in a low voice.
+"Fourchon has frightened her; and it is very desirable to keep her
+here in the interests of religion and of the throne, and, indeed, in
+those of the people themselves."
+
+Michaud, the bailiff of Les Aigues, had come to the chateau in
+consequence of the assault on Vatel's eyes. But before we relate the
+consultation which then and there took place, the chain of events
+requires a succinct account of the circumstances under which the
+general purchased Les Aigues, the serious causes which led to the
+appointment of Sibilet as steward of that magnificent property, and
+the reasons why Michaud was made bailiff, with all the other
+antecedents to which were due the tension of the minds of all, and the
+fears expressed by Sibilet.
+
+This rapid summary will have the merit of introducing some of the
+principal actors in this drama, and of exhibiting their individual
+interests; we shall thus be enabled to show the dangers which
+surrounded the General comte de Montcornet at the moment when this
+history opens.
+
+
+
+                             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.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII
+
+                    CERTAIN LOST SOCIAL SPECIES
+
+The estate of Les Aigues could not do without a steward; for the
+general had no intention of renouncing his winter pleasures in Paris,
+where he owned a fine house in the rue Neuve-des-Mathurines. He
+therefore looked about for a successor to Gaubertin; but it is very
+certain that his search was not as eager as that of Gaubertin himself,
+who was seeking for the right person to put in his way.
+
+Of all confidential positions there is none that requires more trained
+knowledge of its kind, or more activity, than that of land-steward to
+a great estate. The difficulty of finding the right man is only fully
+known to those wealthy landlords whose property lies beyond a certain
+circle around Paris, beginning at a distance of about one hundred and
+fifty miles. At that point agricultural productions for the markets of
+Paris, which warrant rentals on long leases (collected often by other
+tenants who are rich themselves), cease to be cultivated. The farmers
+who raise them drive to the city in their own cabriolets to pay their
+rents in good bank-bills, unless they send the money through their
+agents in the markets. For this reason, the farms of the Seine-et-Oise,
+Seine-et-Marne, the Oise, the Eure-et-Loir, the Lower Seine, and
+the Loiret are so desirable that capital cannot always be invested
+there at one and a half per cent. Compared to the returns on estates
+in Holland, England, and Belgium, this result is enormous. But at one
+hundred miles from Paris an estate requires such variety of working,
+its products are so different in kind, that it becomes a business,
+with all the risks attendant on manufacturing. The wealthy owner is
+really a merchant, forced to look for a market for his products, like
+the owner of ironworks or cotton factories. He does not even escape
+competition; the peasant, the small proprietor, is at his heels with
+an avidity which leads to transactions to which well-bred persons
+cannot condescend.
+
+A land-steward must understand surveying, the customs of the locality,
+the methods of sale and of labor, together with a little quibbling in
+the interests of those he serves; he must also understand book-keeping
+and commercial matters, and be in perfect health, with a liking for
+active life and horse exercise. His duty being to represent his master
+and to be always in communication with him, the steward ought not to
+be a man of the people. As the salary of his office seldom exceeds
+three thousand francs, the problem seems insoluble. How is it possible
+to obtain so many qualifications for such a very moderate price,--in a
+region, moreover, where the men who are provided with them are
+admissible to all other employments? Bring down a stranger to fill the
+place, and you will pay dear for the experience he must acquire. Train
+a young man on the spot, and you are more than likely to get a thorn
+of ingratitude in your side. It therefore becomes necessary to choose
+between incompetent honesty, which injures your property through its
+blindness and inertia, and the cleverness which looks out for itself.
+Hence the social nomenclature and natural history of land-stewards as
+defined by a great Polish noble.
+
+"There are," he said, "two kinds of stewards: he who thinks only of
+himself, and he who thinks of himself and of us; happy the land-owner
+who lays his hands on the latter! As for the steward who would think
+only of us, he is not to be met with."
+
+Elsewhere can be found a steward who thought of this master's
+interests as well as of his own. ("Un Debut dans la vie," "Scenes de
+la vie privee.") Gaubertin is the steward who thinks of himself only.
+To represent the third figure of the problem would be to hold up to
+public admiration a very unlikely personage, yet one that was not
+unknown to the old nobility, though he has, alas! disappeared with
+them. (See "Le Cabinet des Antiques," "Scenes de la vie de province.")
+Through the endless subdivision of fortunes aristocratic habits and
+customs are inevitably changed. If there be not now in France twenty
+great fortunes managed by intendants, in fifty years from now there
+will not be a hundred estates in the hands of stewards, unless a great
+change is made in the law. Every land-owner will be brought by that
+time to look after his own interests.
+
+This transformation, already begun, suggested the following answer of
+a clever woman when asked why, since 1830, she stayed in Paris during
+the summer. "Because," she said, "I do not care to visit chateaux
+which are now turned into farms." What is to be the future of this
+question, getting daily more and more imperative,--that of man to man,
+the poor man and the rich man? This book is written to throw some
+light upon that terrible social question.
+
+It is easy to understand the perplexities which assailed the general
+after he had dismissed Gaubertin. While saying to himself, vaguely,
+like other persons free to do or not to do a thing, "I'll dismiss that
+scamp"; he had overlooked the risk and forgotten the explosion of his
+boiling anger,--the anger of a choleric fire-eater at the moment when
+a flagrant imposition forced him to raise the lids of his wilfully
+blind eyes.
+
+Montcornet, a land-owner for the first time and a denizen of Paris,
+had not provided himself with a steward before coming to Les Aigues;
+but after studying the neighborhood carefully he saw it was
+indispensable to a man like himself to have an intermediary to manage
+so many persons of low degree.
+
+Gaubertin, who discovered during the excitement of the scene (which
+lasted more than two hours) the difficulties in which the general
+would soon be involved, jumped on his pony after leaving the room
+where the quarrel took place, and galloped to Soulanges to consult the
+Soudrys. At his first words, "The general and I have parted; whom can
+we put in my place without his suspecting it?" the Soudrys understood
+their friend's wishes. Do not forget that Soudry, for the last
+seventeen years chief of police of the canton, was doubly shrewd
+through his wife, an adept in the particular wiliness of a
+waiting-maid of an Opera divinity.
+
+"We may go far," said Madame Soudry, "before we find any one to suit
+the place as well as our poor Sibilet."
+
+"Made to order!" exclaimed Gaubertin, still scarlet with
+mortification. "Lupin," he added, turning to the notary, who was
+present, "go to Ville-aux-Fayes and whisper it to Marechal, in case
+that big fire-eater asks his advice."
+
+Marechal was the lawyer whom his former patron, when buying Les Aigues
+for the general, had recommended to Monsieur de Montcornet as legal
+adviser.
+
+Sibilet, eldest son of the clerk of the court at Ville-aux-Fayes, a
+notary's clerk, without a penny of his own, and twenty-five years old,
+had fallen in love with the daughter of the chief-magistrate of
+Soulanges. The latter, named Sarcus, had a salary of fifteen hundred
+francs, and was married to a woman without fortune, the eldest sister
+of Monsieur Vermut, the apothecary of Soulanges. Though an only
+daughter, Mademoiselle Sarcus, whose beauty was her only dowry, could
+scarcely have lived on the salary paid to a notary's clerk in the
+provinces. Young Sibilet, a relative of Gaubertin, by a connection
+rather difficult to trace through family ramifications which make
+members of the middle classes in all the smaller towns cousins to each
+other, owed a modest position in a government office to the assistance
+of his father and Gaubertin. The unlucky fellow had the terrible
+happiness of being the father of two children in three years. His own
+father, blessed with five, was unable to assist him. His wife's father
+owned nothing beside his house at Soulanges and an income of two
+thousand francs. Madame Sibilet the younger spent most of her time at
+her father's home with her two children, where Adolphe Sibilet, whose
+official duty obliged him to travel through the department, came to
+see her from time to time.
+
+Gaubertin's exclamation, though easy to understand from this summary
+of young Sibilet's life, needs a few more explanatory details.
+
+Adolphe Sibilet, supremely unlucky, as we have shown by the foregoing
+sketch of him, was one of those men who cannot reach the heart of a
+woman except by way of the altar and the mayor's office. Endowed with
+the suppleness of a steel-spring, he yielded to pressure, certain to
+revert to his first thought. This treacherous habit is prompted by
+cowardice; but the business training which Sibilet underwent in the
+office of a provincial notary had taught him the art of concealing
+this defect under a gruff manner which simulated a strength he did not
+possess. Many false natures mask their hollowness in this way; be
+rough with them in return and the effect produced is that of a balloon
+collapsed by a prick. Such was Sibilet. But as most men are not
+observers, and as among observers three fourths observe only after a
+thing has taken place, Adolphe Sibilet's grumbling manner was
+considered the result of an honest frankness, of a capacity much
+praised by his master, and of a stubborn uprightness which no
+temptation could shake. Some men are as much benefited by their
+defects as others by their good qualities.
+
+Adeline Sarcus, a pretty young woman, brought up by a mother (who died
+three years before her marriage) as well as a mother can educate an
+only daughter in a remote country town, was in love with the handsome
+son of Lupin, the Soulanges notary. At the first signs of this
+romance, old Lupin, who intended to marry his son to Mademoiselle
+Elise Gaubertin, lost no time in sending young Amaury Lupin to Paris,
+to the care of his friend and correspondent Crottat, the notary,
+where, under pretext of drawing deeds and contracts, Amaury committed
+a variety of foolish acts, and made debts, being led thereto by a
+certain Georges Marest, a clerk in the same office, but a rich young
+man, who revealed to him the mysteries of Parisian life. By the time
+Lupin the elder went to Paris to bring back his son, Adeline Sarcus
+had become Madame Sibilet. In fact, when the adoring Adolphe offered
+himself, her father, the old magistrate, prompted by young Lupin's
+father, hastened the marriage, to which Adeline yielded in sheer
+despair.
+
+The situation of clerk in a government registration office is not a
+career. It is, like other such places which admit of no rise, one of
+the many holes of the government sieve. Those who start in life in
+these holes (the topographical, the professorial, the highway-and-canal
+departments) are apt to discover, invariably too late, that cleverer
+men then they, seated beside them, are fed, as the Opposition writers
+say, on the sweat of the people, every time the sieve dips down into
+the taxation-pot by means of a machine called the budget. Adolphe,
+working early and late and earning little, soon found out the barren
+depths of his hole; and his thoughts busied themselves, as he trotted
+from township to township, spending his salary in shoe-leather and
+costs of travelling, with how to find a permanent and more profitable
+place.
+
+No one can imagine, unless he happens to squint and to have two
+legitimate children, what ambitions three years of misery and love had
+developed in this young man, who squinted both in mind and vision, and
+whose happiness halted, as it were, on one leg. The chief cause of
+secret evil deeds and hidden meanness is, perhaps, an incompleted
+happiness. Man can better bear a state of hopeless misery than those
+terrible alternations of love and sunshine with continual rain. If the
+body contracts disease, the mind contracts the leprosy of envy. In
+petty minds that leprosy becomes a base and brutal cupidity, both
+insolent and shrinking; in cultivated minds it fosters anti-social
+doctrines, which serve a man as footholds by which to rise above his
+superiors. May we not dignify with the title of proverb the pregnant
+saying, "Tell me what thou hast, and I will tell thee of what thou art
+thinking"?
+
+Though Adolphe loved his wife, his hourly thought was: "I have made a
+mistake; I have three balls and chains, but I have only two legs. I
+ought to have made my fortune before I married. I could have found an
+Adeline any day; but Adeline stands in the way of my getting a fortune
+now."
+
+Adolphe had been to see his relation Gaubertin three times in three
+years. A few words exchanged between them let Gaubertin see the muck
+of a soul ready to ferment under the hot temptations of legal robbery.
+He warily sounded a nature that could be warped to the exigencies of
+any plan, provided it was profitable. At each of the three visits
+Sibilet grumbled at his fate.
+
+"Employ me, cousin," he said; "take me as a clerk and make me your
+successor. You shall see how I work. I am capable of overthrowing
+mountains to give my Adeline, I won't say luxury, but a modest
+competence. You made Monsieur Leclercq's fortune; why won't you put me
+in a bank in Paris?"
+
+"Some day, later on, I'll find you a place," Gaubertin would say;
+"meantime make friends and acquaintance; such things help."
+
+Under these circumstances the letter which Madame Soudry hastily
+dispatched brought Sibilet to Soulanges through a region of castles in
+the air. His father-in-law, Sarcus, whom the Soudrys advised to take
+steps in the interest of his daughter, had gone in the morning to see
+the general and to propose Adolphe for the vacant post. By advice of
+Madame Soudry, who was the oracle of the little town, the worthy man
+had taken his daughter with him; and the sight of her had had a
+favorable effect upon the Comte de Montcornet.
+
+"I shall not decide," he answered, "without thoroughly informing
+myself about all applicants; but I will not look elsewhere until I
+have examined whether or not your son-in-law possesses the
+requirements for the place." Then, turning to Madame Sibilet he added,
+"The satisfaction of settling so charming a person at Les Aigues--"
+
+"The mother of two children, general," said Adeline, adroitly, to
+evade the gallantry of the old cuirassier.
+
+All the general's inquiries were cleverly anticipated by the Soudrys,
+Gaubertin, and Lupin, who quietly obtained for their candidate the
+influence of the leading lawyers in the capital of the department,
+where a royal court held sessions,--such as Counsellor Gendrin, a
+distant relative of the judge at Ville-aux-Fayes; Baron Bourlac,
+attorney-general; and another counsellor named Sarcus, a cousin thrice
+removed of the candidate. The verdict of every one to whom the general
+applies was favorable to the poor clerk,--"so interesting," as they
+called him. His marriage had made Sibilet as irreproachable as a novel
+of Miss Edgeworth's, and presented him, moreover, in the light of a
+disinterested man.
+
+The time which the dismissed steward remained at Les Aigues until his
+successor could be appointed was employed in creating troubles and
+annoyances for his late master; one of the little scenes which he thus
+played off will give an idea of several others.
+
+The morning of his final departure he contrived to meet, as it were
+accidentally, Courtecuisse, the only keeper then employed at Les
+Aigues, the great extent of which really needed at least three.
+
+"Well, Monsieur Gaubertin," said Courtecuisse, "so you have had
+trouble with the count?"
+
+"Who told you that?" answered Gaubertin. "Well, yes; the general
+expected to order us about as he did his cavalry; he didn't know
+Burgundians. The count is not satisfied with my services, and as I am
+not satisfied with his ways, we have dismissed each other, almost with
+fisticuffs, for he raged like a whirlwind. Take care of yourself,
+Courtecuisse! Ah! my dear fellow, I expected to give you a better
+master."
+
+"I know that," said the keeper, "and I'd have served you well. Hang
+it, when friends have known each other for twenty years, you know! You
+put me here in the days of the poor dear sainted Madame. Ah, what a
+good woman she was! none like her now! The place has lost a mother."
+
+"Look here, Courtecuisse, if you are willing, you might help us to a
+fine stroke."
+
+"Then you are going to stay here? I heard you were off to Paris."
+
+"No; I shall wait to see how things turn out; meantime I shall do
+business at Ville-aux-Fayes. The general doesn't know what he is
+dealing with in these parts; he'll make himself hated, don't you see?
+I shall wait for what turns up. Do your work here gently; he'll tell
+you to manage the people with a high hand, for he begins to see where
+his crops and his woods are running to; but you'll not be such a fool
+as to let the country-folk maul you, and perhaps worse, for the sake
+of his timber."
+
+"But he would send me away, dear Monsieur Gaubertin, he would get rid
+of me! and you know how happy I am living there at the gate of the
+Avonne."
+
+"The general will soon get sick of the whole place," replied
+Gaubertin; "you wouldn't be long out even if he did happen to send you
+away. Besides, you know those woods," he added, waving his hand at the
+landscape; "I am stronger there than the masters."
+
+This conversation took place in an open field.
+
+"Those 'Arminac' Parisian fellows ought to stay in their own mud,"
+said the keeper.
+
+Ever since the quarrels of the fifteenth century the word 'Arminac'
+(Armagnacs, Parisians, enemies of the Dukes of Burgundy) has continued
+to be an insulting term along the borders of Upper Burgundy, where it
+is differently corrupted according to locality.
+
+"He'll go back to it when beaten," said Gaubertin, "and we'll plough
+up the park; for it is robbing the people to allow a man to keep nine
+hundred acres of the best land in the valley for his own pleasure."
+
+"Four hundred families could get their living from it," said
+Courtecuisse.
+
+"If you want two acres for yourself you must help us to drive that cur
+out," remarked Gaubertin.
+
+At the very moment that Gaubertin was fulminating this sentence of
+excommunication, the worthy Sarcus was presenting his son-in-law
+Sibilet to the Comte de Montcornet. They had come with Adeline and the
+children in a wicker carryall, lent by Sarcus's clerk, a Monsieur
+Gourdon, brother of the Soulanges doctor, who was richer than the
+magistrate himself. The general, pleased with the candor and dignity
+of the justice of the peace, and with the graceful bearing of Adeline
+(both giving pledges in good faith, for they were totally ignorant of
+the plans of Gaubertin), at once granted all requests and gave such
+advantages to the family of the new land-steward as to make the
+position equal to that of a sub-prefect of the first class.
+
+A lodge, built by Bouret as an object in the landscape and also as a
+home for the steward, an elegant little building, the architecture of
+which was sufficiently shown in the description of the gate of Blangy,
+was promised to the Sibilets for their residence. The general also
+conceded the horse which Mademoiselle Laguerre had provided for
+Gaubertin, in consideration of the size of the estate and the distance
+he had to go to the markets where the business of the property was
+transacted. He allowed two hundred bushels of wheat, three hogsheads
+of wine, wood in sufficient quantity, oats and barley in abundance,
+and three per cent on all receipts of income. Where the latter in
+Mademoiselle Laguerre's time had amounted to forty thousand francs,
+the general now, in 1818, in view of the purchases of land which
+Gaubertin had made for her, expected to receive at least sixty
+thousand. The new land-steward might therefore receive before long
+some two thousand francs in money. Lodged, fed, warmed, relieved of
+taxes, the costs of a horse and a poultry-yard defrayed for him, and
+allowed to plant a kitchen-garden, with no questions asked as to the
+day's work of the gardener, certainly such advantages represented much
+more than another two thousand francs; for a man who was earning a
+miserable salary of twelve hundred francs in a government office to
+step into the stewardship of Les Aigues was a change from poverty to
+opulence.
+
+"Be faithful to my interests," said the general, "and I shall have
+more to say to you. Doubtless I could get the collection of the rents
+of Conches, Blangy, and Cerneux taken away from the collection of
+those of Soulanges and given to you. In short, when you bring me in a
+clear sixty thousand a year from Les Aigues you shall be still further
+rewarded."
+
+Unfortunately, the worthy justice and his daughter, in the flush of
+their joy, told Madame Soudry the promise the general had made about
+these collections, without reflecting that the present collector of
+Soulanges, a man named Guerbet, brother of the postmaster of Conches,
+was closely allied, as we shall see later, with Gaubertin and the
+Gendrins.
+
+"It won't be so easy to do it, my dear," said Madame Soudry; "but
+don't prevent the general from making the attempt; it is wonderful how
+easily difficult things are done in Paris. I have seen the Chevalier
+Gluck at dear Madame's feet to get her to sing his music, and she did,
+--she who so adored Piccini, one of the finest men of his day; never
+did _he_ come into Madame's room without catching me round the waist and
+calling me a dear rogue."
+
+"Ha!" cried Soudry, when his wife reported this news, "does he think
+he is going to lead the notary by the nose, and upset everything to
+please himself and make the whole valley march in line, as he did his
+cuirassiers? These military fellows have a habit of command!--but
+let's have patience; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de
+Ronquerolles will be on our side. Poor Guerbet! he little suspects who
+is trying to pluck the best roses out of his garland!"
+
+Pere Guerbet, the collector of Soulanges, was the wit, that is to say,
+the jovial companion of the little town, and a hero in Madame Soudry's
+salon. Soudry's speech gives a fair idea of the opinion which now grew
+up against the master of Les Aigues from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes,
+and wherever else the public mind could be reached and poisoned by
+Gaubertin.
+
+The installation of Sibilet took place in the autumn of 1817. The year
+1818 went by without the general being able to set foot at Les Aigues,
+for his approaching marriage with Mademoiselle de Troisville, which
+was celebrated in January, 1819, kept him the greater part of the
+summer near Alencon, in the country-house of his prospective
+father-in-law. General Montcornet possessed, besides Les Aigues and a
+magnificent house in Paris, some sixty thousand francs a year in the
+Funds and the salary of a retired lieutenant-general. Though Napoleon
+had made him a count of the Empire and given him the following arms, a
+field quarterly, the first, azure, bordure or, three pyramids argent;
+the second, vert, three hunting horns argent; the third, gules, a
+cannon or on a gun-carriage sable, and, in chief, a crescent or; the
+fourth, or, a crown vert, with the motto (eminently of the middle
+ages!), "Sound the charge,"--Montcornet knew very well that he was the
+son of a cabinet-maker in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, though he was
+quite ready to forget it. He was eaten up with the desire to be a peer
+of France, and dreamed of his grand cordon of the Legion of honor, his
+Saint-Louis cross, and his income of one hundred and forty thousand
+francs. Bitten by the demon of aristocracy, the sight of the blue
+ribbon put him beside himself. The gallant cuirassier of Essling would
+have licked up the mud on the Pont-Royal to be invited to the house of
+a Navarreins, a Lenoncourt, a Grandlieu, a Maufrigneuse, a d'Espard, a
+Vandenesse, a Verneuil, a Herouville, or a Chaulieu.
+
+From 1818, when the impossibility of a change in favor of the
+Bonaparte family was made clear to him, Montcornet had himself
+trumpeted in the faubourg Saint-Germain by the wives of some of his
+friends, who offered his hand and heart, his mansion and his fortune
+in return for an alliance with some great family.
+
+After several attempts, the Duchesse de Carigliano found a match for
+the general in one of the three branches of the Troisville family,
+--that of the viscount in the service of Russia ever since 1789, who had
+returned to France in 1815. The viscount, poor as a younger son, had
+married a Princess Scherbellof, worth about a million, but the arrival
+of two sons and three daughters kept him poor. His family, ancient and
+formerly powerful, now consisted of the Marquis de Troisville, peer of
+France, head of the house and scutcheon, and two deputies, with
+numerous offspring, who were busy, for their part, with the budget and
+the ministries and the court, like fishes round bits of bread.
+Therefore, when Montcornet was presented by Madame de Carigliano,--the
+Napoleonic duchess, who was now a most devoted adherent of the
+Bourbons, he was favorably received. The general asked, in return for
+his fortune and tender indulgence to his wife, to be appointed to the
+Royal Guard, with the rank of marquis and peer of France; but the
+branches of the Troisville family would do no more than promise him
+their support.
+
+"You know what that means," said the duchess to her old friend, who
+complained of the vagueness of the promise. "They cannot oblige the
+king to do as they wish; they can only influence him."
+
+Montcornet made Virginie de Troisville his heir in the marriage
+settlements. Completely under the control of his wife, as Blondet's
+letter has already shown, he was still without children, but Louis
+XVIII. had received him, and given him the cordon of Saint-Louis,
+allowing him to quarter his ridiculous arms with those of the
+Troisvilles, and promising him the title of marquis as soon as he had
+deserved the peerage by his services.
+
+A few days after the audience at which this promise had been given,
+the Duc de Barry was assassinated; the Marsan clique carried the day;
+the Villele ministry came into power, and all the wires laid by the
+Troisvilles were snapped; it became necessary to find new ways of
+fastening them upon the ministry.
+
+"We must bide our time," said the Troisvilles to Montcornet, who was
+always overwhelmed with politeness in the faubourg Saint-Germain.
+
+This will explain how it was that the general did not return to Les
+Aigues until May, 1820.
+
+The ineffable happiness of the son of a shop-keeper of the faubourg
+Saint-Antoine in possessing a young, elegant, intelligent, and gentle
+wife, a Troisville, who had given him an entrance into all the salons
+of the faubourg Saint-Germain, and the delight of making her enjoy the
+pleasures of Paris, had kept him from Les Aigues and made him forget
+about Gaubertin, even to his very name. In 1820 he took the countess
+to Burgundy to show her the estate, and he accepted Sibilet's accounts
+and leases without looking closely into them; happiness never cavils.
+The countess, well pleased to find the steward's wife a charming young
+woman, made presents to her and to the children, with whom she
+occasionally amused herself. She ordered a few changes at Les Aigues,
+having sent to Paris for an architect; proposing, to the general's
+great delight, to spend six months of every year on this magnificent
+estate. Montcornet's savings were soon spent on the architectural work
+and the exquisite new furniture sent from Paris. Les Aigues thus
+received the last touch which made it a choice example of all the
+diverse elegancies of four centuries.
+
+In 1821 the general was almost peremptorily urged by Sibilet to be at
+Les Aigues before the month of May. Important matters had to be
+decided. A lease of nine years, to the amount of thirty thousand
+francs, granted by Gaubertin in 1812 to a wood-merchant, fell in on
+the 15th of May of the current year. Sibilet, anxious to prove his
+rectitude, was unwilling to be responsible for the renewal of the
+lease. "You know, Monsieur le comte," he wrote, "that I do not choose
+to profit by such matters." The wood-merchant claimed an indemnity,
+extorted from Madame Laguerre, through her hatred of litigation, and
+shared by him with Gaubertin. This indemnity was based on the injury
+done to the woods by the peasants, who treated the forest of Les
+Aigues as if they had a right to cut the timber. Messrs. Gravelot
+Brothers, wood-merchants in Paris, refused to pay their last quarter
+dues, offering to prove by an expert that the woods were reduced
+one-fifth in value, through, they said, the injurious precedent
+established by Madame Laguerre.
+
+"I have already," wrote Sibilet, "sued these men in the courts at
+Ville-aux-Fayes, for they have taken legal residence there, on account
+of this lease, with my old employer, Maitre Corbinet. I fear we shall
+lose the suit."
+
+"It is a question of income, my dear," said the general, showing the
+letter to his wife. "Will you go down to Les Aigues a little earlier
+this year than last?"
+
+"Go yourself, and I will follow you when the weather is warmer," said
+the countess, not sorry to remain in Paris alone.
+
+The general, who knew very well the canker that was eating into his
+revenues, departed without his wife, resolved to take vigorous
+measures. In so doing he reckoned, as we shall see, without his
+Gaubertin.
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER VIII
+
+              THE GREAT REVOLUTIONS OF A LITTLE VALLEY
+
+"Well, Maitre Sibilet," said the general to his steward, the morning
+after his arrival, giving him a familiar title which showed how much
+he appreciated his services, "so we are, to use a ministerial phrase,
+at a crisis?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, following the general.
+
+The fortunate possessor of Les Aigues was walking up and down in front
+of the steward's house, along a little terrace where Madame Sibilet
+grew flowers, at the end of which was a wide stretch of meadow-land
+watered by the canal which Blondet has described. From this point the
+chateau of Les Aigues was seen in the distance, and in like manner the
+profile, as it were, of the steward's lodge was seen from Les Aigues.
+
+"But," resumed the general, "what's the difficulty? If I do lose the
+suit against the Gravelots, a money wound is not mortal, and I'll have
+the leasing of my forest so well advertised that there will be
+competition, and I shall sell the timber at its true value."
+
+"Business is not done in that way, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet.
+"Suppose you get no lessees, what will you do?"
+
+"Cut the timber myself and sell it--"
+
+"You, a wood merchant?" said Sibilet. "Well, without looking at
+matters here, how would it be in Paris? You would have to hire a
+wood-yard, pay for a license and the taxes, also for the right of
+navigation, and duties, and the costs of unloading; besides the salary
+of a trustworthy agent--"
+
+"Yes, it is impracticable," said the general hastily, alarmed at the
+prospect. "But why can't I find persons to lease the right of cutting
+timber as before?"
+
+"Monsieur le comte has enemies."
+
+"Who are they?"
+
+"Well, in the first place, Monsieur Gaubertin."
+
+"Do you mean the scoundrel whose place you took?"
+
+"Not so loud, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, showing fear; "I beg
+of you, not so loud,--my cook might hear us."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that I am not to speak on my own estate of a
+villain who robbed me?" cried the general.
+
+"For the sake of your own peace and comfort, come further away,
+Monsieur le comte. Monsieur Gaubertin is mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes."
+
+"Ha! I congratulate Ville-aux-Fayes. Thunder! what a nobly governed
+town!--"
+
+"Do me the honor to listen, Monsieur le comte, and to believe that I
+am talking of serious matters which may affect your future life in
+this place."
+
+"I am listening; let us sit down on this bench here."
+
+"Monsieur le comte, when you dismissed Gaubertin, he had to find some
+employment, for he was not rich--"
+
+"Not rich! when he stole twenty thousand francs a year from this
+estate?"
+
+"Monsieur le comte, I don't pretend to excuse him," replied Sibilet.
+"I want to see Les Aigues prosperous, if it were only to prove
+Gaubertin's dishonest; but we ought not to abuse him openly for he is
+one of the most dangerous scoundrels to be found in all Burgundy, and
+he is now in a position to injure you."
+
+"In what way?" asked the general, sobering down.
+
+"Gaubertin has control of nearly one third of the supplies sent to
+Paris. As general agent of the timber business, he orders all the work
+of the forests,--the felling, chopping, floating, and sending to
+market. Being in close relations with the workmen, he is the arbiter
+of prices. It has taken him three years to create this position, but
+he holds it now like a fortress. He is essential to all dealers, never
+favoring one more than another; he regulates the whole business in
+their interests, and their affairs are better and more cheaply looked
+after by him than they were in the old time by separate agents for
+each firm. For instance, he has so completely put a stop to
+competition that he has absolute control of the auction sales; the
+crown and the State are both dependent on him. Their timber is sold
+under the hammer and falls invariably to Gaubertin's dealers; in fact,
+no others attempt now to bid against them. Last year Monsieur
+Mariotte, of Auxerre, urged by the commissioner of domains, did
+attempt to compete with Gaubertin. At first, Gaubertin let him buy the
+standing wood at the usual prices; but when it came to cutting it, the
+Avonnais workmen asked such enormous prices that Monsieur Mariotte was
+obliged to bring laborers from Auxerre, whom the Ville-aux-Fayes
+workmen attacked and drove away. The head of the coalition, and the
+ringleader of the brawl were brought before the police court, and the
+suits cost Monsieur Mariotte a great deal of money; for, besides the
+odium of having convicted and punished poor men, he was forced to pay
+all costs, because the losing side had not a farthing to do it with. A
+suit against laboring men is sure to result in hatred to those who
+live among them. Let me warn you of this; for if you follow the course
+you propose, you will have to fight against the poor of this district
+at least. But that's not all. Counting it over, Monsieur Mariotte, a
+worthy man, found he was the loser by his original lease. Forced to
+pay ready money, he was nevertheless obliged to sell on time;
+Gaubertin delivered his timber at long credits for the purpose of
+ruining his competitor. He undersold him by at least five per cent,
+and the end of it is that poor Mariotte's credit is badly shaken.
+Gaubertin is now pressing and harassing the poor man so that he is
+driven, they tell me, to leave not only Auxerre, but even Burgundy
+itself; and he is right. In this way land-owners have long been
+sacrificed to dealers who now set the market-prices, just as the
+furniture-dealers in Paris dictate values to appraisers. But Gaubertin
+saves the owners so much trouble and worry that they are really
+gainers."
+
+"How so?" asked the general.
+
+"In the first place, because the less complicated a business is, the
+greater the profits to the owners," answered Sibilet. "Besides which,
+their income is more secure; and in all matters of rural improvement
+and development that is the main thing, as you will find out. Then,
+too, Monsieur Gaubertin is the friend and patron of working-men; he
+pays them well and keeps them always at work; therefore, though their
+families live on the estates, the woods leased to dealers and
+belonging to the land-owners who trust the care of their property to
+Gaubertin (such as MM. de Soulanges and de Ronquerolles) are not
+devastated. The dead wood is gathered up, but that is all--"
+
+"That rascal Gaubertin has lost no time!" cried the general.
+
+"He is a bold man," said Sibilet. "He really is, as he calls himself,
+the steward of the best half of the department, instead of being
+merely the steward of Les Aigues. He makes a little out of everybody,
+and that little on every two millions brings him in forty to fifty
+thousand francs a year. He says himself, 'The fires on the Parisian
+hearths pay it all.' He is your enemy, Monsieur le comte. My advice to
+you is to capitulate and be reconciled with him. He is intimate, as
+you know, with Soudry, the head of the gendarmerie at Soulanges; with
+Monsieur Rigou, our mayor at Blangy; the patrols are under his
+influence; therefore you will find it impossible to repress the
+pilferings which are eating into your estate. During the last two
+years your woods have been devastated. Consequently the Gravelots are
+more than likely to win their suit. They say, very truly: 'According
+to the terms of the lease, the care of the woods is left to the owner;
+he does not protect them, and we are injured; the owner is bound to
+pay us damages.' That's fair enough; but it doesn't follow that they
+should win their case."
+
+"We must be ready to defend this suit at all costs," said the general,
+"and then we shall have no more of them."
+
+"You shall gratify Gaubertin," remarked Sibilet.
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Suing the Gravelots is the same as a hand to hand fight with
+Gaubertin, who is their agent," answered Sibilet. "He asks nothing
+better than such a suit. He declares, so I hear, that he will bring
+you if necessary before the Court of Appeals."
+
+"The rascal! the--"
+
+"If you attempt to work your own woods," continued Sibilet, turning
+the knife in the wound, "you will find yourself at the mercy of
+workmen who will force you to pay rich men's prices instead of
+market-prices. In short, they'll put you, as they did that poor Mariotte,
+in a position where you must sell at a loss. If you then try to lease
+the woods you will get no tenants, for you cannot expect that any one
+should take risks for himself which Mariotte only took for the crown
+and the State. Suppose a man talks of his losses to the government!
+The government is a gentleman who is, like your obedient servant when
+he was in its employ, a worthy man with a frayed overcoat, who reads
+the newspapers at a desk. Let his salary be twelve hundred or twelve
+thousand francs, his disposition is the same, it is not a whit softer.
+Talk of reductions and releases from the public treasury represented
+by the said gentleman! He'll only pooh-pooh you as he mends his pen.
+No, the law is the wrong road for you, Monsieur le comte."
+
+"Then what's to be done?" cried the general, his blood boiling as he
+tramped up and down before the bench.
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, abruptly, "what I say to you is not
+for my own interests, certainly; but I advise you to sell Les Aigues
+and leave the neighborhood."
+
+On hearing these words the general sprang back as if a cannon-ball had
+struck him; then he looked at Sibilet with a shrewd, diplomatic eye.
+
+"A general of the Imperial Guard running away from the rascals, when
+Madame la comtesse likes Les Aigues!" he said. "No, I'll sooner box
+Gaubertin's ears on the market-place of Ville-aux-Fayes, and force him
+to fight me that I may shoot him like a dog."
+
+"Monsieur le comte, Gaubertin is not such a fool as to let himself be
+brought into collision with you. Besides, you could not openly insult
+the mayor of so important a place as Ville-aux-Fayes."
+
+"I'll have him turned out; the Troisvilles can do that for me; it is a
+question of income."
+
+"You won't succeed, Monsieur le comte; Gaubertin's arms are long; you
+will get yourself into difficulties from which you cannot escape."
+
+"Let us think of the present," interrupted the general. "About that
+suit?"
+
+"That, Monsieur le comte, I can manage to win for you," replied
+Sibilet, with a knowing glance.
+
+"Bravo, Sibilet!" said the general, shaking his steward's hand; "how
+are you going to do it?"
+
+"You will win it on a writ of error," replied Sibilet. "In my opinion
+the Gravelots have the right of it. But it is not enough to be in the
+right, they must also be in order as to legal forms, and that they
+have neglected. The Gravelots ought to have summoned you to have the
+woods better watched. They can't ask for indemnity, at the close of a
+lease, for damages which they know have been going on for nine years;
+there is a clause in the lease as to this, on which we can file a bill
+of exceptions. You will lose the suit at Ville-aux-Fayes, possibly in
+the upper court as well, but we will carry it to Paris and you will
+win at the Court of Appeals. The costs will be heavy and the expenses
+ruinous. You will have to spend from twelve to fifteen thousand francs
+merely to win the suit,--but you will win it, if you care to. The suit
+will only increase the enmity of the Gravelots, for the expenses will
+be even heavier on them. You will be their bugbear; you will be called
+litigious and calumniated in every way; still, you can win--"
+
+"Then, what's to be done?" repeated the general, on whom Sibilet's
+arguments were beginning to produce the effect of a violent poison.
+
+Just then the remembrance of the blows he had given Gaubertin with his
+cane crossed his mind, and made him wish he had bestowed them on
+himself. His flushed face was enough to show Sibilet the irritation
+that he felt.
+
+"You ask me what can be done, Monsieur le comte? Why, only one thing,
+compromise; but of course you can't negotiate that yourself. I must be
+thought to cheat you! We, poor devils, whose only fortune and comfort
+is in our good name, it is hard on us to even seem to do a
+questionable thing. We are always judged by appearances. Gaubertin
+himself saved Mademoiselle Laguerre's life during the Revolution, but
+it seemed to others that he was robbing her. She rewarded him in her
+will with a diamond worth ten thousand francs, which Madame Gaubertin
+now wears on her head."
+
+The general gave Sibilet another glance still more diplomatic than the
+first; but the steward seemed to take no notice of the challenge it
+expressed.
+
+"If I were to appear dishonest, Monsieur Gaubertin would be so
+overjoyed that I could instantly obtain his help," continued Sibilet.
+"He would listen with all his ears if I said to him: 'Suppose I were
+to extort twenty thousand francs from Monsieur le comte for Messrs.
+Gravelot, on condition that they shared them with me?' If your
+adversaries consented to that, Monsieur le comte, I should return you
+ten thousand francs; you lose only the other ten, you save
+appearances, and the suit is quashed."
+
+"You are a fine fellow, Sibilet," said the general, taking his hand
+and shaking it. "If you can manage the future as well as you do the
+present, I'll call you the prince of stewards."
+
+"As to the future," said Sibilet, "you won't die of hunger if no
+timber is cut for two or three years. Let us begin by putting proper
+keepers in the woods. Between now and then things will flow as the
+water does in the Avonne. Gaubertin may die, or get rich enough to
+retire from business; at any rate, you will have sufficient time to
+find him a competitor. The cake is too rich not to be shared. Look for
+another Gaubertin to oppose the original."
+
+"Sibilet," said the old soldier, delighted with this variety of
+solutions. "I'll give you three thousand francs if you'll settle the
+matter as you propose. For the rest, we'll think about it."
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, "first and foremost have the forest
+properly watched. See for yourself the condition in which the
+peasantry have put it during your two years' absence. What could I do?
+I am steward; I am not a bailiff. To guard Les Aigues properly you
+need a mounted patrol and three keepers."
+
+"I certainly shall have the estate properly guarded. So it is to be
+war, is it? Very good, then we shall make war. That doesn't frighten
+me," said Montcornet, rubbing his hands.
+
+"A war of francs," said Sibilet; "and you may find that more difficult
+than the other kind; men can be killed but you can't kill self-interest.
+You will fight your enemy on the battle-field where all landlords are
+compelled to fight,--I mean cash results. It is not enough to produce,
+you must sell; and in order to sell, you must be on good terms with
+everybody."
+
+"I shall have the country people on my side."
+
+"By what means?"
+
+"By doing good among them."
+
+"Doing good to the valley peasants! to the petty shopkeepers of
+Soulanges!" exclaimed Sibilet, squinting horribly, by reason of the
+irony which flamed brighter in one eye than in the other. "Monsieur le
+comte doesn't know what he undertakes. Our Lord Jesus Christ would die
+again upon the cross in this valley! If you wish an easy life, follow
+the example of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre; let yourself be robbed,
+or else make people afraid of you. Women, children, and the masses are
+all governed by fear. That was the great secret of the Convention, and
+of the Emperor, too."
+
+"Good heavens! is this the forest of Bondy?" cried the general.
+
+"My dear," said Sibilet's wife, appearing at this moment, "your
+breakfast is ready. Pray excuse him, Monsieur le comte; he has eaten
+nothing since morning for he was obliged to go to Ronquerolles to
+deliver some barley."
+
+"Go, go, Sibilet," said the general.
+
+The next morning the count rose early, before daylight, and went to
+the gate of the Avonne, intending to talk with the one forester whom
+he employed and find out what the man's sentiments really were.
+
+Some seven or eight hundred acres of the forest of Les Aigues lie
+along the banks of the Avonne; and to preserve the majestic beauty of
+the river the large trees that border it have been left untouched for
+a distance of three leagues on both sides in an almost straight line.
+The mistress of Henri IV., to whom Les Aigues formerly belonged, was
+as fond of hunting as the king himself. In 1593 she ordered a bridge
+to be built of a single arch with shelving roadway by which to ride
+from the lower side of the forest to a much larger portion of it,
+purchased by her, which lay upon the slopes of the hills. The gate of
+the Avonne was built as a place of meeting for the huntsmen; and we
+know the magnificence bestowed by the architects of that day upon all
+buildings intended for the delight of the crown and the nobility. Six
+avenues branched away from it, their place of meeting forming a
+half-moon. In the centre of the semi-circular space stood an obelisk
+surmounted by a round shield, formerly gilded, bearing on one side the
+arms of Navarre and on the other those of the Countess de Moret.
+Another half-moon, on the side toward the river, communicated with the
+first by a straight avenue, at the opposite end of which the steep
+rise of the Venetian-shaped bridge could be seen. Between two elegant
+iron railings of the same character as that of the magnificent railing
+which formerly surrounded the garden of the Place Royale in Paris, now
+so unfortunately destroyed, stood a brick pavilion, with stone courses
+hewn in facets like those of the chateau, with a very pointed roof and
+window-casings of stone cut in the same manner. This old style, which
+gave the building a regal air, is suitable only to prisons when used
+in cities; but standing in the heart of forests it derives from its
+surroundings a splendor of its own. A group of trees formed a screen,
+behind which the kennels, an old falconry, a pheasantry, and the
+quarters of the huntsmen were falling into ruins, after being in their
+day the wonder and admiration of Burgundy.
+
+In 1595, the royal hunting-parties set forth from this magnificent
+pavilion, preceded by those fine dogs so dear to Rubens and to Paul
+Veronese; the huntsmen mounted on high-steeping steeds with stout and
+blue-white satiny haunches, seen no longer except in Wouverman's
+amazing work, followed by footmen in livery; the scene enlivened by
+whippers-in, wearing the high top-boots with facings and the yellow
+leathern breeches which have come down to the present day on the
+canvas of Van der Meulen. The obelisk was erected in commemoration of
+the visit of the Bearnais, and his hunt with the beautiful Comtesse de
+Moret; the date is given below the arms of Navarre. That jealous
+woman, whose son was afterwards legitimatized, would not allow the
+arms of France to figure on the obelisk, regarding them as a rebuke.
+
+At the time of which we write, when the general's eyes rested on this
+splendid ruin, moss had gathered for centuries on the four faces of
+the roof; the hewn-stone courses, mangled by time, seemed to cry with
+yawning mouths against the profanation; disjointed leaden settings let
+fall their octagonal panes, so that the windows seemed blind of an eye
+here and there. Yellow wallflowers bloomed about the copings; ivy slid
+its white rootlets into every crevice.
+
+All things bespoke a shameful want of care,--the seal set by mere
+life-possessors on the ancient glories that they possess. Two windows
+on the first floor were stuffed with hay. Through another, on the
+ground-floor, was seen a room filled with tools and logs of wood;
+while a cow pushed her muzzle through a fourth, proving that
+Courtecuisse, to avoid having to walk from the pavilion to the
+pheasantry, had turned the large hall of the central building into a
+stable,--a hall with panelled ceiling, and in the centre of each panel
+the arms of all the various possessors of Les Aigues!
+
+Black and dirty palings disgraced the approach to the pavilion, making
+square inclosures with plank roofs for pigs, ducks, and hens, the
+manure of which was taken away every six months. A few ragged garments
+were hung to dry on the brambles which boldly grew unchecked here and
+there. As the general came along the avenue from the bridge, Madame
+Courtecuisse was scouring a saucepan in which she had just made her
+coffee. The forester, sitting on a chair in the sun, considered his
+wife as a savage considers his. When he heard a horse's hoofs he
+turned round, saw the count, and seemed taken aback.
+
+"Well, Courtecuisse, my man," said the general, "I'm not surprised
+that the peasants cut my woods before Messrs. Gravelot can do so. So
+you consider your place a sinecure?"
+
+"Indeed, Monsieur le comte, I have watched the woods so many nights
+that I'm ill from it. I've got a chill, and I suffer such pain this
+morning that my wife has just made me a poultice in that saucepan."
+
+"My good fellow," said the count, "I don't know of any pain that a
+coffee poultice cures except that of hunger. Listen to me, you rascal!
+I rode through my forest yesterday, and then through those of Monsieur
+de Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles. Theirs are carefully
+watched and preserved, while mine is in a shameful state."
+
+"Ah, monsieur! but they are the old lords of the neighborhood;
+everybody respects their property. How can you expect me to fight
+against six districts? I care for my life more than for your woods. A
+man who would undertake to watch your woods as they ought to be
+watched would get a ball in his head for wages in some dark corner of
+the forest--"
+
+"Coward!" cried the general, trying to control the anger the man's
+insolent reply provoked in him. "Last night was as clear as day, yet
+it cost me three hundred francs in actual robbery and over a thousand
+in future damages. You will leave my service unless you do better. All
+wrong-doing deserves some mercy; therefore these are my conditions:
+You may have the fines, and I will pay you three francs for every
+indictment you bring against these depredators. If I don't get what I
+expect, you know what you have to expect, and no pension either.
+Whereas, if you serve me faithfully and contrive to stop these
+depredations, I'll give you an annuity of three hundred francs for
+life. You can think it over. Here are six ways," continued the count,
+pointing to the branching roads; "there's only one for you to take,
+--as for me also, who am not afraid of balls; try and find the right
+one."
+
+Courtecuisse, a small man about forty-six years of age, with a
+full-moon face, found his greatest happiness in doing nothing. He
+expected to live and die in that pavilion, now considered by him _his_
+pavilion. His two cows were pastured in the forest, from which he got
+his wood; and he spent his time in looking after his garden instead of
+after the delinquents. Such neglect of duty suited Gaubertin, and
+Courtecuisse knew it did. The keeper chased only those depredators who
+were the objects of his personal dislike,--young women who would not
+yield to his wishes, or persons against whom he held a grudge; though
+for some time past he had really felt no dislikes, for every one yielded
+to him on account of his easy-going ways with them.
+
+Courtecuisse had a place always kept for him at the table of the
+Grand-I-Vert; the wood-pickers feared him no longer; indeed, his wife
+and he received many gifts in kind from them; his wood was brought in;
+his vineyard dug; in short, all delinquents at whom he blinked did him
+service.
+
+Counting on Gaubertin for the future, and feeling sure of two acres
+whenever Les Aigues should be brought to the hammer, he was roughly
+awakened by the curt speech of the general, who, after four quiescent
+years, was now revealing his true character,--that of a bourgeois rich
+man who was determined to be no longer deceived. Courtecuisse took his
+cap, his game-bag, and his gun, put on his gaiters and his belt (which
+bore the very recent arms of Montcornet), and started for Ville-aux-Fayes,
+with the careless, indifferent air and manner under which country-people
+often conceal very deep reflections, while he gazed at the woods and
+whistled to the dogs to follow him.
+
+"What! you complain of the Shopman when he proposes to make your
+fortune?" said Gaubertin. "Doesn't the fool offer to give you three
+francs for every arrest you make, and the fines to boot? Have an
+understanding with your friends and you can bring as many indictments
+as you please,--hundreds if you like! With one thousand francs you can
+buy La Bachelerie from Rigou, become a property owner, live in your
+own house, and work for yourself, or rather, make others work for you,
+and take your ease. Only--now listen to me--you must manage to arrest
+only such as haven't a penny in the world. You can't shear sheep
+unless the wool is on their backs. Take the Shopman's offer and leave
+him to collect the costs,--if he wants them; tastes differ. Didn't old
+Mariotte prefer losses to profits, in spite of my advice?"
+
+Courtecuisse, filled with admiration for these words of wisdom,
+returned home burning with the desire to be a land-owner and a
+bourgeois like the rest.
+
+When the general reached Les Aigues he related his expedition to
+Sibilet.
+
+"Monsieur le comte did very right," said the steward, rubbing his
+hands; "but he must not stop short half-way. The field-keeper of the
+district who allows the country-people to prey upon the meadows and
+rob the harvests ought to be changed. Monsieur le comte should have
+himself chosen mayor, and appoint one of his old soldiers, who would
+have the courage to carry out his orders, in place of Vaudoyer. A
+great land-owner should be master in his own district. Just see what
+difficulties we have with the present mayor!"
+
+The mayor of the district of Blangy, formerly a Benedictine, named
+Rigou, had married, in the first year of the Republic, the servant-woman
+of the late priest of Blangy. In spite of the repugnance which a
+married monk excited at the Prefecture, he had continued to be mayor
+after 1815, for the reason that there was no-one else at Blangy who
+was capable of filling the post. But in 1817, when the bishop sent the
+Abbe Brossette to the parish of Blangy (which had then been vacant
+over twenty-five years), a violent opposition not unnaturally broke
+out between the old apostate and the young ecclesiastic, whose
+character is already known to us. The war which was then and there
+declared between the mayor's office and the parsonage increased the
+popularity of the magistrate, who had hitherto been more or less
+despised. Rigou, whom the peasants had disliked for usurious dealings,
+now suddenly represented their political and financial interests,
+supposed to be threatened by the Restoration, and more especially by
+the clergy.
+
+A copy of the "Constitutionnel," that great organ of liberalism, after
+making the rounds of the Cafe de la Paix, came back to Rigou on the
+seventh day,--the subscription, standing in the name of old Socquard
+the keeper of the coffee-house, being shared by twenty persons. Rigou
+passed the paper on to Langlume the miller, who, in turn, gave it in
+shreds to any one who knew how to read. The "Paris items," and the
+anti-religion jokes of the liberal sheet formed the public opinion of
+the valley des Aigues. Rigou, like the _venerable_ Abbe Gregoire, became
+a hero. For him, as for certain Parisian bankers, politics spread a
+mantle of popularity over his shameful dishonesty.
+
+At this particular time the perjured monk, like Francois Keller the
+great orator, was looked upon as a defender of the rights of the
+people,--he who, not so very long before, dared not walk in the fields
+after dark, lest he should stumble into pitfalls where he would seem
+to have been killed by accident! Persecute a man politically and you
+not only magnify him, but you redeem his past and make it innocent.
+The liberal party was a great worker of miracles in this respect. Its
+dangerous journal, which had the wit to make itself as commonplace, as
+calumniating, as credulous, and as sillily perfidious as every
+audience made up the general masses, did in all probability as much
+injury to private interests as it did to those of the Church.
+
+Rigou flattered himself that he should find in a Bonapartist general
+now laid on the shelf, in a son of the people raised from nothing by
+the Revolution, a sound enemy to the Bourbons and the priests. But the
+general, bearing in mind his private ambitions, so arranged matters as
+to evade the visit of Monsieur and Madame Rigou when he first came to
+Les Aigues.
+
+When you have become better acquainted with the terrible character of
+Rigou, the lynx of the valley, you will understand the full extent of
+the second capital blunder which the general's aristocratic ambitions
+led him to commit, and which the countess made all the greater by an
+offence which will be described in the further history of Rigou.
+
+If Montcornet had courted the mayor's good-will, if he had sought his
+friendship, perhaps the influence of the renegade might have
+neutralized that of Gaubertin. Far from that, three suits were now
+pending in the courts of Ville-aux-Fayes between the general and the
+ex-monk. Until the present time the general had been so absorbed in
+his personal interests and in his marriage that he had never
+remembered Rigou, but when Sibilet advised him to get himself made
+mayor in Rigou's place, he took post-horses and went to see the
+prefect.
+
+The prefect, Comte Martial de la Roche-Hugon, had been a friend of the
+general since 1804; and it was a word from him said to Montcornet in a
+conversation in Paris, which brought about the purchase of Les Aigues.
+Comte Martial, a prefect under Napoleon, remained a prefect under the
+Bourbons, and courted the bishop to retain his place. Now it happened
+that Monseigneur had several times requested him to get rid of Rigou.
+Martial, to whom the condition of the district was perfectly well
+known, was delighted with the general's request; so that in less than
+a month the Comte de Montcornet was mayor of Blangy.
+
+By one of those accidents which come about naturally, the general met,
+while at the prefecture where his friend put him up, a non-commissioned
+officer of the ex-Imperial guard, who had been cheated out of his
+retiring pension. The general had already, under other circumstances,
+done a service to the brave cavalryman, whose name was Groison; the
+man, remembering it, now told him his troubles, admitting that he was
+penniless. The general promised to get him his pension, and proposed
+that he should take the place of field-keeper to the district of Blangy,
+as a way of paying off his score of gratitude by devotion to the new
+mayor's interests. The appointments of master and man were made
+simultaneously, and the general gave, as may be supposed, very firm
+instructions to his subordinate.
+
+Vaudoyer, the displaced keeper, a peasant on the Ronquerolles estate,
+was only fit, like most field-keepers, to stalk about, and gossip, and
+let himself be petted by the poor of the district, who asked nothing
+better than to corrupt at subaltern authority,--the advanced guard, as
+it were, of the land-owners. He knew Soudry, the brigadier at
+Soulanges, for brigadiers of gendarmerie, performing functions that
+are semi-judicial in drawing up criminal indictments, have much to do
+with the rural keepers, who are, in fact, their natural spies. Soudry,
+being appealed to, sent Vaudoyer to Gaubertin, who received his old
+acquaintance very cordially, and invited him to drink while listening
+to the recital of his troubles.
+
+"My dear friend," said the mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, who could talk to
+every man in his own language, "what has happened to you is likely to
+happen to us all. The nobles are back upon us. The men to whom the
+Emperor gave titles make common cause with the old nobility. They all
+want to crush the people, re-establish their former rights and take
+our property from us. But we are Burgundians; we must resist, and
+drive those Arminacs back to Paris. Return to Blangy; you shall be
+agent for Monsieur Polissard, the wood-merchant, who is contractor for
+the forest of Ronquerolles. Don't be uneasy, my lad; I'll find you
+enough to do for the whole of the coming year. But remember one thing;
+the wood is for ourselves! Not a single depredation, or the thing is
+at an end. Send all interlopers to Les Aigues. If there's brush or
+fagots to sell make people buy ours; don't let them buy of Les Aigues.
+You'll get back to your place as field-keeper before long; this thing
+can't last. The general will get sick of living among thieves. Did you
+know that that Shopman called me a thief, me!--son of the stanchest
+and most incorruptible of republicans; me!--the son in law of Mouchon,
+that famous representative of the people, who died without leaving me
+enough to bury him?"
+
+The general raised the salary of the new field-keeper to three hundred
+francs; and built a town-hall, in which he gave him a residence. Then
+he married him to a daughter of one of his tenant-farmers, who had
+lately died, leaving her an orphan with three acres of vineyard.
+Groison attached himself to the general as a dog to his master. This
+legitimate fidelity was admitted by the whole community. The keeper
+was feared and respected, but like the captain of a vessel whose
+ship's company hate him; the peasantry shunned him as they would a
+leper. Met either in silence or with sarcasms veiled under a show of
+good-humor, the new keeper was a sentinel watched by other sentinels.
+He could do nothing against such numbers. The delinquents took delight
+in plotting depredations which it was impossible for him to prove, and
+the old soldier grew furious at his helplessness. Groison found the
+excitement of a war of factions in his duties, and all the pleasures
+of the chase,--a chase after petty delinquents. Trained in real war to
+a loyalty which consists in part of playing a fair game, this enemy of
+traitors came at last to hate these people, so treacherous in their
+conspiracies, and so clever in their thefts that they mortified his
+self-esteem. He soon observed that the depredations were committed
+only at Les Aigues; all the other estates were respected. At first he
+despised a peasantry ungrateful enough to pillage a general of the
+Empire, an essentially kind and generous man; presently, however, he
+added hatred to contempt. But multiply himself as he would, he could
+not be everywhere, and the enemy pillaged everywhere that he was not.
+Groison made the general understand that it was necessary to organize
+the defence on a war footing, and proved to him the insufficiency of
+his own devoted efforts and the evil disposition of the inhabitants of
+the valley.
+
+"There is something behind it all, general," he said; "these people
+are so bold they fear nothing; they seem to rely on the favor of the
+good God."
+
+"We shall see," replied the count.
+
+Fatal word! The verb "to see" has no future tense for politicians.
+
+At the moment, Montcornet was considering another difficulty, which
+seemed to him more pressing. He needed an alter ego to do his work in
+the mayor's office during the months he lived in Paris. Obliged to
+find some man who knew how to read and write for the position of
+assistant mayor, he knew of none and could hear of none throughout the
+district but Langlume, the tenant of his own flour-mill. The choice
+was disastrous. Not only were the interests of mayor and miller
+diametrically opposed, but Langlume had long hatched swindling
+projects with Rigou, who lent him money to carry on his business, or
+to acquire property. The miller had bought the right to the hay of
+certain fields for his horses, and Sibilet could not sell it except to
+him. The hay of all the fields in the district was sold at better
+prices than that of Les Aigues, though the yield of the latter was the
+best.
+
+Langlume, then, became the provisional mayor; but in France the
+provisional is eternal,--though Frenchmen are suspected of loving
+change. Acting by Rigou's advice, he played a part of great devotion
+to the general; and he was still assistant-mayor at the moment when,
+by the omnipotence of the historian, this drama begins.
+
+In the absence of the mayor, Rigou, necessarily a member of the
+district council, reigned supreme, and brought forward resolutions all
+injuriously affecting the general. At one time he caused money to be
+spent for purposes that were profitable to the peasants only,--the
+greater part of the expenses falling upon Les Aigues, which, by reason
+of its great extent, paid two thirds of the taxes; at other times the
+council refused, under his influence, certain useful and necessary
+allowances, such as an increase in salary for the abbe, repairs or
+improvements to the parsonage, or "wages" to the school-master.
+
+"If the peasants once know how to read and write, what will become of
+us?" said Langlume, naively, to the general, to excuse this anti-liberal
+action taken against a brother of the Christian Doctrine whom the Abbe
+Brossette wished to establish as a public school-master in Blangy.
+
+The general, delighted with his old Groison, returned to Paris and
+immediately looked about him for other old soldiers of the late
+imperial guard, with whom to organize the defence of Les Aigues on a
+formidable footing. By dint of searching out and questioning his
+friends and many officers on half-pay, he unearthed Michaud, a former
+quartermaster at headquarters of the cuirassiers of the guard; one of
+those men whom troopers call "hard-to-cook," a nickname derived from
+the mess kitchen where refractory beans are not uncommon. Michaud
+picked out from among his friends and acquaintances, three other men
+fit to be his helpers, and able to guard the estate without fear and
+without reproach.
+
+The first, named Steingel, a pure-blooded Alsacian, was a natural son
+of the general of that name, who fell in one of Bonaparte's first
+victories with the army of Italy. Tall and strong, he belonged to the
+class of soldiers accustomed, like the Russians, to obey, passively
+and absolutely. Nothing hindered him in the performance of his duty;
+he would have collared an emperor or a pope if such were his orders.
+He ignored danger. Perfectly fearless, he had never received the
+smallest scratch during his sixteen years' campaigning. He slept in
+the open air or in his bed with stoical indifference. At any increased
+labor or discomfort, he merely remarked, "It seems to be the order of
+the day."
+
+The second man, Vatel, son of the regiment, corporal of voltigeurs,
+gay as a lark, rather free and easy with the fair sex, brave to
+foolhardiness, was capable of shooting a comrade with a laugh if
+ordered to execute him. With no future before him and not knowing how
+to employ himself, the prospect of finding an amusing little war in
+the functions of keeper, attracted him; and as the grand army and the
+Emperor had hitherto stood him in place of a religion, so now he swore
+to serve the brave Montcornet against and through all and everything.
+His nature was of that essentially wrangling quality to which a life
+without enemies seems dull and objectless,--the nature, in short, of a
+litigant, or a policeman. If it had not been for the presence of the
+sheriff's officer, he would have seized Tonsard and the bundle of wood
+at the Grand-I-Vert, snapping his fingers at the law on the
+inviolability of a man's domicile.
+
+The third man, Gaillard, also an old soldier, risen to the rank of
+sub-lieutenant, and covered with wounds, belonged to the class of
+mechanical soldiers. The fate of the Emperor never left his mind and
+he became indifferent to everything else. With the care of a natural
+daughter on his hands, he accepted the place that was now offered to
+him as a means of subsistence, taking it as he would have taken
+service in a regiment.
+
+When the general reached Les Aigues, whither he had gone in advance of
+his troopers, intending to send away Courtecuisse, he was amazed at
+discovering the impudent audacity with which the keeper had fulfilled
+his commands. There is a method of obeying which makes the obedience
+of the servant a cutting sarcasm on the master's order. But all things
+in this world can be reduced to absurdity, and Courtecuisse in this
+instance went beyond its limits.
+
+One hundred and twenty-six indictments against depredators (most of
+whom were in collusion with Courtecuisse) and sworn to before the
+justice court of Soulanges, had resulted in sixty-nine commitments for
+trial, in virtue of which Brunet, the sheriff's officer, delighted at
+such a windfall of fees, had rigorously enforced the warrants in such
+a way as to bring about what is called, in legal language, a
+declaration of insolvency; a condition of pauperism where the law
+becomes of course powerless. By this declaration the sheriff proves
+that the defendant possesses no property of any kind, and is therefore
+a pauper. Where there is absolutely nothing, the creditor, like the
+king, loses his right to sue. The paupers in this case, carefully
+selected by Courtecuisse, were scattered through five neighboring
+districts, whither Brunet betook himself duly attended by his
+satellites, Vermichel and Fourchon, to serve the writs. Later he
+transmitted the papers to Sibilet with a bill of costs for five
+thousand francs, requesting him to obtain the further orders of
+Monsieur le comte de Montcornet.
+
+Just as Sibilet, armed with these papers, was calmly explaining to the
+count the result of the rash orders he had given to Courtecuisse, and
+witnessing, as calmly, a burst of the most violent anger a general of
+the French cavalry was ever known to indulge in, Courtecuisse entered
+to pay his respects to his master and to bring his own account of
+eleven hundred francs, the sum to which his promised commission now
+amounted. The natural man took the bit in his teeth and ran off with
+the general, who totally forgot his coronet and his field rank; he was
+a trooper once more, vomiting curses of which he probably was ashamed
+when he thought of them later.
+
+"Ha! eleven hundred francs!" he shouted, "eleven hundred slaps in your
+face! eleven hundred kicks!--Do you think I can't see straight through
+your lies? Out of my sight, or I'll strike you flat!"
+
+At the mere look of the general's purple face and before that warrior
+could get out the last words, Courtecuisse was off like a swallow.
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, gently, "you are wrong."
+
+"Wrong! I, wrong?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le comte, take care, you will have trouble with that
+rascal; he will sue you."
+
+"What do I care for that? Tell the scoundrel to leave the place
+instantly! See that he takes nothing of mine, and pay him his wages."
+
+Four hours later the whole country-side was gossiping about this
+scene. The general, they said, had assaulted the unfortunate
+Courtecuisse, and refused to pay his wages and two thousand francs
+besides, which he owed him. Extraordinary stories went the rounds, and
+the master of Les Aigues was declared insane. The next day Brunet, who
+had served all the warrants for the general, now brought him on behalf
+of Courtecuisse a summon to appear before the police court. The lion
+was stung by gnats; but his misery was only just beginning.
+
+The installation of a keeper is not done without a few formalities; he
+must, for instance, file an oath in the civil court. Some days
+therefore elapsed before the three keepers really entered upon their
+functions. Though the general had written to Michaud to bring his wife
+without waiting until the lodge at the gate of the Avonne was ready
+for them, the future head-keeper, or rather bailiff, was detained in
+Paris by his marriage and his wife's family, and did not reach Les
+Aigues until a fortnight later. During those two weeks, and during the
+time still further required for certain formalities which were carried
+out with very ill grace by the authorities at Ville-aux-Fayes, the
+forest of Les Aigues was shamefully devastated by the peasantry, who
+took advantage of the fact that there was practically no watch over
+it.
+
+The appearance of three keepers handsomely dressed in green cloth, the
+Emperor's color, with faces denoting firmness, and each of them
+well-made, active, and capable of spending their nights in the woods,
+was a great event in the valley, from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes.
+
+Throughout the district Groison was the only man who welcomed these
+veterans. Delighted to be thus reinforced, he let fall a few threats
+against thieves, who before long, he said, would be watched so closely
+that they could do no damage. Thus the usual proclamation of all great
+commanders was not lacking to the present war; in this case it was
+said aloud and also whispered in secret.
+
+Sibilet called the general's attention to the fact that the
+gendarmerie of Soulanges, and especially its brigadier, Soudry, were
+thoroughly and hypocritically hostile to Les Aigues. He made him see
+the importance of substituting another brigade, which might show a
+better spirit.
+
+"With a good brigadier and a company of gendarmes devoted to your
+interests, you could manage the country," he said to him.
+
+The general went to the Prefecture and obtained from the general in
+command of the division the retirement of Soudry and the substitution
+of a man named Viallet, an excellent gendarme at headquarters, who was
+much praised by his general and the prefect. The company of gendarmes
+at Soulanges were dispersed to other places in the department by the
+colonel of the gendarmerie, an old friend of Montcornet, and chosen
+men were put in their places with secret orders to keep watch over the
+estate of the Comte de Montcornet, and prevent all future attempts to
+injure it; they were also particularly enjoined not to allow
+themselves to be gained over by the inhabitants of Soulanges.
+
+This last revolutionary measure, carried out with such rapidity that
+there was no possibility of countermining it created much astonishment
+in Soulanges and in Ville-aux-Fayes. Soudry, who felt himself
+dismissed, complained bitterly, and Gaubertin managed to get him
+appointed mayor, which put the gendarmerie under his orders. An outcry
+was made about tyranny. Montcornet became an object of general hatred.
+Not only were five or six lives radically changed by him, but many
+personal vanities were wounded. The peasants, taking their cue from
+words dropped by the small tradesmen of Ville-aux-Fayes and Soulanges,
+and by Rigou, Langlume, Guerbet, and the postmaster at Conches,
+thought they were on the eve of losing what they called their rights.
+
+The general stopped the suit brought by Courtecuisse by paying him all
+he demanded. The man then purchased, nominally for two thousand
+francs, a little property surrounded on all sides but one by the
+estate of Les Aigues,--a sort of cover into which the game escaped.
+Rigou, the owner, had never been willing to part with La Bachelerie,
+as it was called, to the possessors of the estate, but he now took
+malicious pleasure in selling it, at fifty per cent discount, to
+Courtecuisse; which made the ex-keeper one of Rigou's numerous
+henchmen, for all he actually paid for the property was one thousand
+francs.
+
+The three keepers, with Michaud the bailiff, and Groison the
+field-keeper of Blangy, led henceforth the life of guerrillas. Living
+night and day in the forest, they soon acquired that deep knowledge of
+woodland things which becomes a science among foresters, saving them
+much loss of time; they studied the tracks of animals, the species of
+the trees, and their habits of growth, training their ears to every
+sound and to every murmur of the woods. Still further, they observed
+faces, watched and understood the different families in the various
+villages of the district, and knew the individuals in each family,
+their habits, characters, and means of living,--a far more difficult
+matter than most persons suppose. When the peasants who obtained their
+living from Les Aigues saw these well-planned measures of defence,
+they met them with dumb resistance or sneering submission.
+
+From the first, Michaud and Sibilet mutually disliked each other. The
+frank and loyal soldier, with the sense of honor of a subaltern of the
+young "garde," hated the servile brutality and the discontented spirit
+of the steward. He soon took note of the objections with which Sibilet
+opposed all measures that were really judicious, and the reasons he
+gave for those that were questionable. Instead of calming the general,
+Sibilet, as the reader has already seen, constantly excited him and
+drove him to harsh measures, all the while trying to daunt him by
+drawing his attention to countless annoyances, petty vexations, and
+ever-recurring and unconquerable difficulties. Without suspecting the
+role of spy and exasperator undertaken by Sibilet (who secretly
+intended to eventually make choice in his own interests between
+Gaubertin and the general) Michaud felt that the steward's nature was
+bad and grasping, and he was unable to explain to himself its apparent
+honesty. The enmity which separated the two functionaries was
+satisfactory to the general. Michaud's hatred led him to watch the
+steward, though he would not have condescended to play the part of spy
+if the general had not required it. Sibilet fawned upon the bailiff
+and flattered him, without being able to get anything from him beyond
+an extreme politeness which the loyal soldier established between them
+as a barrier.
+
+Now, all preliminary details having been made known, the reader will
+understand the conduct of the general's enemies and the meaning of the
+conversation which he had with what he called his two ministers, after
+Madame de Montcornet, the abbe, and Blondet left the breakfast-table.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER IX
+
+                     CONCERNING THE MEDIOCRACY
+
+"Well, Michaud, what's the news?" asked the general as soon as his
+wife had left the room.
+
+"General, if you will permit me to say so, it would be better not to
+talk over matters in this room. Walls have ears, and I should like to
+be certain that what we say reaches none but our own."
+
+"Very good," said the general, "then let us walk towards the steward's
+lodge by the path through the fields; no one can overhear us there."
+
+A few moments later the general, with Michaud and Sibilet, was
+crossing the meadows, while Madame de Montcornet, with the abbe and
+Blondet, was on her way to the gate of the Avonne.
+
+Michaud related the scene that had just taken place at the
+Grand-I-Vert.
+
+"Vatel did wrong," said Sibilet.
+
+"They made that plain to him at once," replied Michaud, "by blinding
+him; but that's nothing. General, you remember the plan we agreed
+upon,--to seize the cattle of those depredators against whom judgment
+was given? Well, we can't do it. Brunet, like his colleague Plissoud,
+is not loyal in his support. They both warn the delinquents when they
+are about to make a seizure. Vermichel, Brunet's assistant, went to
+the Grand-I-Vert this morning, ostensibly after Pere Fourchon; and
+Marie Tonsard, who is intimate with Bonnebault, ran off at once to
+give the alarm at Conches. The depredations have begun again."
+
+"A strong show of authority is becoming daily more and more
+necessary," said Sibilet.
+
+"What did I tell you?" cried the general. "We must demand the
+enforcement of the judgment of the court, which carried with it
+imprisonment; we must arrest for debt all those who do not pay the
+damages I have won and the costs of the suits."
+
+"These fellows imagine the law is powerless, and tell each other that
+you dare not arrest them," said Sibilet. "They think they frighten
+you! They have confederates at Ville-aux-Fayes; for even the
+prosecuting attorney seems to have ignored the verdicts against them."
+
+"I think," said Michaud, seeing that the general looked thoughtful,
+"that if you are willing to spend a good deal of money you can still
+protect the property."
+
+"It is better to spend money than to act harshly," remarked Sibilet.
+
+"What is your plan?" asked the general of his bailiff.
+
+"It is very simple," said Michaud. "Inclose the whole forest with
+walls, like those of the park, and you will be safe; the slightest
+depredation then becomes a criminal offence and is taken to the
+assizes."
+
+"At a franc and a half the square foot for the material only, Monsieur
+le comte would find his wall would cost him a third of the whole value
+of Les Aigues," said Sibilet, with a laugh.
+
+"Well, well," said Montcornet, "I shall go and see the
+attorney-general at once."
+
+"The attorney-general," remarked Sibilet, gently, "may perhaps share
+the opinion of his subordinate; for the negligence shown by the latter
+is probably the result of an agreement between them."
+
+"Then I wish to know it!" cried Montcornet. "If I have to get the
+whole of them turned out, judges, civil authorities, and the
+attorney-general to boot, I'll do it; I'll go the Keeper of the Seals,
+or to the king himself."
+
+At a vehement sign made by Michaud the general stopped short and said
+to Sibilet, as he turned to retrace his steps, "Good day, my dear
+fellow,"--words which the steward understood.
+
+"Does Monsieur le comte intend, as mayor, to enforce the necessary
+measures to repress the abuse of gleaning?" he said, respectfully.
+"The harvest is coming on, and if we are to publish the statutes about
+certificates of pauperism and the prevention of paupers from other
+districts gleaning our land, there is no time to be lost."
+
+"Do it at once, and arrange with Groison," said the count. "With such
+a class of people," he added, "we must follow out the law."
+
+So, without a moment's reflection, Montcornet gave in to a measure
+that Sibilet had been proposing to him for more than a fortnight, to
+which he had hitherto refused to consent; but now, in the violence of
+anger caused by Vatel's mishap, he instantly adopted it as the right
+thing to do.
+
+When Sibilet was at some distance the general said in a low voice to
+his bailiff:--
+
+"Well, my dear Michaud, what is it; why did you make me that sign?"
+
+"You have an enemy within the walls, general, yet you tell him plans
+which you ought not to confide even to the secret police."
+
+"I share your suspicions, my dear friend," replied Montcornet, "but I
+don't intend to commit the same fault twice over. I shall not part
+with another steward till I'm sure of a better. I am waiting to get
+rid of Sibilet, till you understand the business of steward well
+enough to take his place, and till Vatel is fit to succeed you. And
+yet, I have no ground of complaint against Sibilet. He is honest and
+punctual in all his dealings; he hasn't kept back a hundred francs in
+all these five years. He has a perfectly detestable nature, and that's
+all one can say against him. If it were otherwise, what would be his
+plan in acting as he does?"
+
+"General," said Michaud, gravely, "I will find out, for undoubtedly he
+has one; and if you would only allow it, a good bribe to that old
+scoundrel Fourchon will enable me to get at the truth; though after
+what he said just now I suspect the old fellow of having more secrets
+than one in his pouch. That swindling old cordwainer told me himself
+they want to drive you from Les Aigues. And let me tell you, for you
+ought to know it, that from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes there is not a
+peasant, a petty tradesman, a farmer, a tavern-keeper who isn't laying
+by his money to buy a bit of the estate. Fourchon confided to me that
+Tonsard has already put in his claim. The idea that you can be forced
+to sell Les Aigues has gone from end to end of the valley like an
+infection in the air. It may be that the steward's present house, with
+some adjoining land, will be the price paid for Sibilet's spying.
+Nothing is ever said among us that is not immediately known at
+Ville-aux-Fayes. Sibilet is a relative of your enemy Gaubertin. What you
+have just said about the attorney-general and the others will probably
+be reported before you have reached the Prefecture. You don't know
+what the inhabitants of this district are."
+
+"Don't I know them? I know they are the scum of the earth! Do you
+suppose I am going to yield to such blackguards?" cried the general.
+"Good heavens, I'd rather burn Les Aigues myself!"
+
+"No need to burn it; let us adopt a line of conduct which will baffle
+the schemes of these Lilliputians. Judging by threats, general, they
+are resolved on war to the knife against you; and therefore since you
+mention incendiarism, let me beg of you to insure all your buildings,
+and all your farmhouses."
+
+"Michaud, do you know whom they mean by 'Shopman'? Yesterday, as I was
+riding along by the Thune, I heard some little rascals cry out, 'The
+Shopman! here's the Shopman!' and then they ran away."
+
+"Ask Sibilet; the answer is in his line, he likes to make you angry,"
+said Michaud, with a pained look. "But--if you will have an answer
+--well, that's a nickname these brigands have given you, general."
+
+"What does it mean?"
+
+"It means, general--well, it refers to your father."
+
+"Ha! the curs!" cried the count, turning livid. "Yes, Michaud, my
+father was a shopkeeper, an upholsterer; the countess doesn't know it.
+Oh! that I should ever--well! after all, I have waltzed with queens
+and empresses. I'll tell her this very night," he cried, after a
+pause.
+
+"They also call you a coward," continued Michaud.
+
+"Ha!"
+
+"They ask how you managed to save yourself at Essling when nearly all
+your comrades perished."
+
+The accusation brought a smile to the general's lips. "Michaud, I
+shall go at once to the Prefecture!" he cried, with a sort of fury,
+"if it is only to get the policies of insurance you ask for. Let
+Madame la comtesse know that I have gone. Ha, ha! they want war, do
+they? Well, they shall have it; I'll take my pleasure in thwarting
+them,--every one of them, those bourgeois of Soulanges, and their
+peasantry! We are in the enemy's country, therefore prudence! Tell the
+foresters to keep within the limits of the law. Poor Vatel, take care
+of him. The countess is inclined to be timid; she must know nothing of
+all this; otherwise I could never get her to come back here."
+
+Neither the general nor Michaud understood their real peril. Michaud
+had been too short a time in this Burgundian valley to realize the
+enemy's power, though he saw its action. The general, for his part,
+believed in the supremacy of the law.
+
+The law, such as the legislature of these days manufactures it, has
+not the virtue we attribute to it. It strikes unequally; it is so
+modified in many of its modes of application that it virtually refutes
+its own principles. This fact may be noted more or less distinctly
+throughout all ages. Is there any historian ignorant enough to assert
+that the decrees of the most vigilant of powers were ever enforced
+throughout France?--for instance, that the requisitions of the
+Convention for men, commodities, and money were obeyed in Provence, in
+the depths of Normandy, on the borders of Brittany, as they were at
+the great centres of social life? What philosopher dares deny that a
+head falls to-day in such or such department, while in a neighboring
+department another head stays on its shoulders though guilty of a
+crime identically the same, and often more horrible? We ask for
+equality in life, and inequality reigns in law and in the death
+penalty!
+
+When the population of a town falls below a certain figure the
+administrative system is no longer the same. There are perhaps a
+hundred cities in France where the laws are vigorously enforced, and
+there the intelligence of the citizens rises to the conception of the
+problem of public welfare and future security which the law seeks to
+solve; but throughout the rest of France nothing is comprehended
+beyond immediate gratification; people rebel against all that lessens
+it. Therefore in nearly one half of France we find a power of inertia
+which defeats all legal action, both municipal and governmental. This
+resistance, be it understood, does not affect the essential things of
+public polity. The collection of taxes, recruiting, punishment of
+great crimes, as a general thing do systematically go on; but outside
+of such recognized necessities, all legislative decrees which affect
+customs, morals, private interests, and certain abuses, are a dead
+letter, owing to the sullen opposition of the people. At the very
+moment when this book is going to press, this dumb resistance, which
+opposed Louis XIV. in Brittany, may still be seen and felt. See the
+unfortunate results of the game-laws, to which we are now sacrificing
+yearly the lives of some twenty or thirty men for the sake of
+preserving a few animals.
+
+In France the law is, to at least twenty million of inhabitants,
+nothing more than a bit of white paper posted on the doors of the
+church and the town-hall. That gives rise to the term "papers," which
+Mouche used to express legality. Many mayors of cantons (not to speak
+of the district mayors) put up their bundles of seeds and herbs with
+the printed statutes. As for the district mayors, the number of those
+who do not know how to read and write is really alarming, and the
+manner in which the civil records are kept is even more so. The danger
+of this state of things, well-known to the governing powers, is
+doubtless diminishing; but what centralization (against which every
+one declaims, as it is the fashion in France to declaim against all
+things good and useful and strong),--what centralization cannot touch,
+the Power against which it will forever fling itself in vain, is that
+which the general was now about to attack, and which we shall take
+leave to call the Mediocracy.
+
+A great outcry was made against the tyranny of the nobles; in these
+days the cry is against that of capitalists, against abuses of power,
+which may be merely the inevitable galling of the social yoke, called
+Compact by Rousseau, Constitution by some, Charter by others; Czar
+here, King there, Parliament in Great Britain; while in France the
+general levelling begun in 1789 and continued in 1830 has paved the
+way for the juggling dominion of the middle classes, and delivered the
+nation into their hands without escape. The portrayal of one fact
+alone, unfortunately only too common in these days, namely, the
+subjection of a canton, a little town, a sub-prefecture, to the will
+of a family clique,--in short, the power acquired by Gaubertin,--will
+show this social danger better than all dogmatic statements put
+together. Many oppressed communities will recognize the truth of this
+picture; many persons secretly and silently crushed by this tyranny
+will find in these words an obituary, as it were, which may half
+console them for their hidden woes.
+
+At the very moment when the general imagined himself to be renewing a
+warfare in which there had really been no truce, his former steward
+had just completed the last meshes of the net-work in which he now
+held the whole arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. To avoid too many
+explanations it is necessary to state, once for all, succinctly, the
+genealogical ramifications by means of which Gaubertin wound himself
+about the country, as a boa-constrictor winds around a tree,--with
+such art that a passing traveller thinks he beholds some natural
+effect of the tropical vegetation.
+
+In 1793 there were three brothers of the name of Mouchon in the valley
+of the Avonne. After 1793 they changed the name of the valley to that
+of the Valley des Aigues, out of hatred to the old nobility.
+
+The eldest brother, steward of the property of the Ronquerolles
+family, was elected deputy of the department to the Convention. Like
+his friend, Gaubertin's father, the prosecutor of those days, who
+saved the Soulanges family, he saved the property and the lives of the
+Ronquerolles. He had two daughters; one married to Gendrin, the
+lawyer, the other to Gaubertin. He died in 1804.
+
+The second, through the influence of his elder brother, was made
+postmaster at Conches. His only child was a daughter, married to a
+rich farmer named Guerbet. He died in 1817.
+
+The last of the Mouchons, who was a priest, and the curate of
+Ville-aux-Fayes before the Revolution, was again a priest after the
+re-establishment of Catholic worship, and again the curate of the same
+little town. He was not willing to take the oath, and was hidden for a
+long time in the hermitage of Les Aigues, under the protection of the
+Gaubertins, father and son. Now about sixty-seven years of age, he was
+treated with universal respect and affection, owing to the harmony of
+his nature with that of the inhabitants. Parsimonious to the verge of
+avarice, he was thought to be rich, and the credit of being so
+increased the respect that was shown to him. Monseigneur the bishop
+paid the greatest attention to the Abbe Mouchon, who was always spoken
+of as the venerable curate of Ville-aux-Fayes; and the fact that he
+had several times refused to go and live in a splendid parsonage
+attached to the Prefecture, where Monseigneur wished to settle him,
+made him dearer still to his people.
+
+Gaubertin, now mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, received steady support from
+his brother-in-law Gendrin, who was judge of the municipal court.
+Gaubertin the younger, the solicitor who had the most practice before
+this court and much repute in the arrondissement, was already thinking
+of selling his practice after five years' exercise of it. He wanted to
+succeed his Uncle Gendrin as counsellor whenever the latter should
+retire from the profession. Gendrin's only son was commissioner of
+mortgages.
+
+Soudry's son, who for the last two years had been prosecuting-attorney
+at the prefecture, was Gaubertin's henchman. The clever Madame Soudry
+had secured the future of her husband's son by marrying him to Rigou's
+only daughter. The united fortunes of the Soudrys and the ex-monk,
+which would come eventually to the attorney, made that young man one
+of the most important personages of the department.
+
+The sub-prefect of Ville-aux-Fayes, Monsieur des Lupeaulx, nephew of
+the general-secretary of one of the most important ministries in
+Paris, was the prospective husband of Mademoiselle Elise Gaubertin,
+the mayor's youngest daughter, whose dowry, like that of her elder
+sister, was two hundred thousand francs, not to speak of
+"expectations." This functionary showed much sense, though not aware
+of it, in falling in love with Mademoiselle Elise when he first
+arrived at Ville-aux-Fayes, in 1819. If it had not been for his social
+position, which made him "eligible," he would long ago have been
+forced to ask for his exchange. But Gaubertin in marrying him to his
+daughter thought much more of the uncle, the general-secretary, than
+of the nephew; and in return, the uncle, for the sake of his nephew,
+gave all his influence to Gaubertin.
+
+Thus the Church, the magistracy both removable and irremovable, the
+municipality, and the prefecture, the four feet of power, walked as
+the mayor pleased. Let us now see how that functionary strengthened
+himself in the spheres above and below that in which he worked.
+
+The department to which Ville-aux-Fayes belongs is one the number of
+whose population gives it the right to elect six deputies. Ever since
+the creation of the Left Centre of the Chamber, the arrondissement of
+Ville-aux-Fayes had sent a deputy named Leclercq, formerly banking
+agent of the wine department of the custom-house, a son-in-law of
+Gaubertin, and now a governor of the Bank of France. The number of
+electors which this rich valley sent to the electoral college was
+sufficient to insure, if only through private dealing, the constant
+appointment of Monsieur de Ronquerolles, the patron of the Mouchon
+family. The voters of Ville-aux-Fayes lent their support to the
+prefect, on condition that the Marquis de Ronquerolles was maintained
+in the college. Thus Gaubertin, who was the first to broach the idea
+of this arrangement, was favorably received at the Prefecture, which
+he often, in return, saved from petty annoyances. The prefect always
+selected three firm ministerialists, and two deputies of the Left
+Centre. The latter, one of them being the Marquis de Ronquerolles,
+brother-in-law of the Comte de Serisy, and the other a governor of the
+Bank of France, gave little or no alarm to the cabinet, and the
+elections in this department were rated excellent at the ministry of
+the interior.
+
+The Comte de Soulanges, peer of France, selected to be the next
+marshal, and faithful to the Bourbons, knew that his forests and other
+property were all well-managed by the notary Lupin, and well-watched
+by Soudry. He was a patron of Gendrin's, having obtained his
+appointment as judge partly by the help of Monsieur de Ronquerolles.
+
+Messieurs Leclercq and de Ronquerolles sat in the Left Centre, but
+nearer to the left than to the centre,--a political position which
+offers great advantages to those who regard their political conscience
+as a garment.
+
+The brother of Monsieur Leclercq had obtained the situation of
+collector at Ville-aux-Fayes, and Leclercq himself, Gaubertin's
+son-in-law, had lately bought a fine estate beyond the valley of the
+Avonne, which brought him in a rental of thirty thousand francs, with
+park and chateau and a controlling influence in its own canton.
+
+Thus, in the upper regions of the State, in both Chambers, and in the
+chief ministerial department, Gaubertin could rely on an influence
+that was powerful and also active, and which he was careful not to
+weary with unimportant requests.
+
+The counsellor Gendrin, appointed judge by the Chamber, was the
+leading spirit of the Supreme Court; for the chief justice, one of the
+three ministerial deputies, left the management of it to Gendrin
+during half the year. The counsel for the Prefecture, a cousin of
+Sarcus, called "Sarcus the rich," was the right-hand man of the
+prefect, himself a deputy. Even without the family reasons which
+allied Gaubertin and young des Lupeaulx, a brother of Madame Sarcus
+would still have been desirable as sub-prefect to the arrondissement
+of Ville-aux-Fayes. Madame Sarcus, the counsellor's wife, was a Vallat
+of Soulanges, a family connected with the Gaubertins, and she was said
+to have "distinguished" the notary Lupin in her youth. Though she was
+now forty-five years old, with a son in the school of engineers, Lupin
+never went to the Prefecture without paying his respects and dining
+with her.
+
+The nephew of Guerbet, the postmaster, whose father was, as we have
+seen, collector of Soulanges, held the important situation of
+examining judge in the municipal court of Ville-aux-Fayes. The third
+judge, son of Corbinet, the notary, belonged body and soul to the
+all-powerful mayor; and, finally, young Vigor, son of the lieutenant
+of the gendarmerie, was the substitute judge.
+
+Sibilet's father, sheriff of the court, had married his sister to
+Monsieur Vigor the lieutenant, and that individual, father of six
+children, was cousin of the father of Gaubertin through his wife, a
+Gaubertin-Vallat. Eighteen months previously the united efforts of the
+two deputies, Monsieur de Soulanges and Gaubertin, had created the
+place of commissary of police for the sheriff's second son.
+
+Sibilet's eldest daughter married Monsieur Herve, a school-master,
+whose school was transformed into a college as a result of this
+marriage, so that for the past year Soulanges had rejoiced in the
+presence of a professor.
+
+The sheriff's youngest son was employed on the government domains,
+with the promise of succeeding the clerk of registrations so soon as
+that officer had completed the term of service which enabled him to
+retire on a pension.
+
+The youngest Sibilet girl, now sixteen years old, was betrothed to
+Corbinet, brother of the notary. And an old maid, Mademoiselle
+Gaubertin-Vallat, sister of Madame Sibilet, the sheriff's wife, held
+the office for the sale of stamped paper.
+
+Thus, wherever we turn in Ville-aux-Fayes we meet some member of the
+invisible coalition, whose avowed chief, recognized as such by every
+one, great and small, was the mayor of the town, the general agent for
+the entire timber business, Gaubertin!
+
+If we turn to the other end of the valley of the Avonne we shall see
+that Gaubertin ruled at Soulanges through the Soudrys, through Lupin
+the assistant mayor and steward of the Soulanges estate, who was
+necessarily in constant communication with the Comte de Soulanges,
+through Sarcus, justice of the peace, through Guerbet, the collector,
+through Gourdon, the doctor, who had married a Gendrin-Vatebled. He
+governed Blangy through Rigou, Conches through the post-master, the
+despotic ruler of his own district.
+
+Gaubertin's influence was so great and powerful that even the
+investments and the savings of Rigou, Soudry, Gendrin, Guerbet, Lupin,
+even Sarcus the rich himself, were managed by his advice. The town of
+Ville-aux-Fayes believed implicitly in its mayor. Gaubertin's ability
+was not less extolled than his honesty and his kindness; he was the
+servant of his relatives and constituents (always with an eye to a
+return of benefits), and the whole municipality adored him. The town
+never ceased to blame Monsieur Mariotte, of Auxerre, for having
+opposed and thwarted that worthy Monsieur Gaubertin.
+
+Not aware of their strength, no occasion for displaying it having
+arisen, the bourgeoisie of Ville-aux-Fayes contented themselves with
+boasting that no strangers intermeddled in their affairs and they
+believed themselves excellent citizens and faithful public servants.
+Nothing, however, escaped their despotic rule, which in itself was not
+perceived, the result being considered a triumph of the locality.
+
+The only stranger in this family community was the government engineer
+in the highway department; and his dismissal in favor of the son of
+Sarcus the rich was now being pressed, with a fair chance that this
+one weak thread in the net would soon be strengthened. And yet this
+powerful league, which monopolized all duties both public and private,
+sucked the resources of the region, and fastened on power like limpets
+to a ship, escaped all notice so completely that General Montcornet
+had no suspicion of it. The prefect boasted of the prosperity of
+Ville-aux-Fayes and its arrondissement; even the minister of the
+interior was heard to remark: "There's a model sub-prefecture, which
+runs on wheels; we should be lucky indeed if all were like it." Family
+designs were so involved with local interests that here, as in many
+other little towns and even prefectures, a functionary who did not
+belong to the place would have been forced to resign within a year.
+
+When this despotic middle-class cousinry seizes a victim, he is so
+carefully gagged and bound that complaint is impossible; he is smeared
+with slime and wax like a snail in a beehive. This invisible,
+imperceptible tyranny is upheld by powerful reasons,--such as the wish
+to be surrounded by their own family, to keep property in their own
+hands, the mutual help they ought to lend each other, the guarantees
+given to the administration by the fact that their agent is under the
+eyes of his fellow-citizens and neighbors. What does all this lead to?
+To the fact that local interests supersede all questions of public
+interest; the centralized will of Paris is frequently overthrown in
+the provinces, the truth of things is disguised, and country
+communities snap their fingers at government. In short, after the main
+public necessities have been attended to, it will be seen that the
+laws, instead of acting upon the masses, receive their impulse from
+them; the populations adapt the law to themselves and not themselves
+to the law.
+
+Whoever has travelled in the south or west of France, or in Alsace, in
+any other way than from inn to inn to see buildings and landscapes,
+will surely admit the truth of these remarks. The results of
+middle-class nepotism may be, at present, merely isolated evils; but
+the tendency of existing laws is to increase them. This low-level
+despotism can and will cause great disasters, and the events of the
+drama about to be played in the valley of Les Aigues will prove it.
+
+The monarchical and imperial systems, more rashly overthrown than
+people realize, remedied these abuses by means of certain consecrated
+lives, by classifications and categories and by those particular
+counterpoises since so absurdly defined as "privileges." There are no
+privileges now, when every human being is free to climb the greased
+pole of power. But surely it would be safer to allow open and avowed
+privileges than those which are underhand, based on trickery,
+subversive of what should be public spirit, and continuing the work of
+despotism to a lower and baser level than heretofore. May we not have
+overthrown noble tyrants devoted to their country's good, to create
+the tyranny of selfish interests? Shall power lurk in secret places,
+instead of radiating from its natural source? This is worth thinking
+about. The spirit of local sectionalism, such as we have now depicted,
+will soon be seen to invade the Chamber.
+
+Montcornet's friend, the late prefect, Comte de la Roche-Hugon, had
+lost his position just before the last arrival of the general at Les
+Aigues. This dismissal drove him into the ranks of the Liberal
+opposition, where he became one of the chorus of the Left, a position
+he soon after abandoned for an embassy. His successor, luckily for
+Montcornet, was a son-in-law of the Marquis de Troisville, uncle of
+the countess, the Comte de Casteran. He welcomed Montcornet as a
+relation and begged him to continue his intimacy at the Prefecture.
+After listening to the general's complaints the Comte de Casteran
+invited the bishop, the attorney-general, the colonel of the
+gendarmerie, counsellor Sarcus, and the general commanding the
+division to meet him the next day at breakfast.
+
+The attorney-general, Baron Bourlac (so famous in the Chanterie and
+Rifael suits), was one of those men well-known to all governments, who
+attach themselves to power, no matter in whose hands it is, and who
+make themselves invaluable by such devotion. Having owed his elevation
+in the first place to his fanaticism for the Emperor, he now owed the
+retention of his official rank to his inflexible character and the
+conscientiousness with which he fulfilled his duties. He who once
+implacably prosecuted the remnant of the Chouans now prosecuted the
+Bonapartists as implacably. But years and turmoils had somewhat
+subdued his energy and he had now become, like other old devils
+incarnate, perfectly charming in manner and ways.
+
+The general explained his position and the fears of his bailiff, and
+spoke of the necessity of making an example and enforcing the rights
+of property.
+
+The high functionaries listened gravely, making, however, no reply
+beyond mere platitudes, such as, "Undoubtedly, the laws must be
+upheld"; "Your cause is that of all land-owners"; "We will consider
+it; but, situated as we are, prudence is very necessary"; "A monarchy
+could certainly do more for the people than the people would do for
+itself, even if it were, as in 1793, the sovereign people"; "The
+masses suffer, and we are bound to do as much for them as for
+ourselves."
+
+The relentless attorney-general expressed such kindly and benevolent
+views respecting the condition of the lower classes that our future
+Utopians, had they heard him, might have thought that the higher grade
+of government officials were already aware of the difficulties of that
+problem which modern society will be forced to solve.
+
+It may be well to say here that at this period of the Restoration,
+various bloody encounters had taken place in remote parts of the
+kingdom, caused by this very question of the pillage of woods, and the
+marauding rights which the peasants were everywhere arrogating to
+themselves. Neither the government nor the court liked these
+outbreaks, nor the shedding of blood which resulted from repression.
+Though they felt the necessity of rigorous measures, they nevertheless
+treated as blunderers the officials who were compelled to employ them,
+and dismissed them on the first pretence. The prefects were therefore
+anxious to shuffle out of such difficulties whenever possible.
+
+At the very beginning of the conversation Sarcus (the rich) had made a
+sign to the prefect and the attorney-general which Montcornet did not
+see, but which set the tone of the discussion. The attorney-general
+was well aware of the state of mind of the inhabitants of the valley
+des Aigues through his subordinate, Soudry the young attorney.
+
+"I foresee a terrible struggle," the latter had said to him. "They
+mean to kill the gendarmes; my spies tell me so. It will be very hard
+to convict them for it. The instant the jury feel they are incurring
+the hatred of the friends of the twenty or thirty prisoners, they will
+not sustain us,--we could not get them to convict for death, nor even
+for the galleys. Possibly by prosecuting in person you might get a few
+years' imprisonment for the actual murderers. Better shut our eyes
+than open them, if by opening them we bring on a collision which costs
+bloodshed and several thousand francs to the State,--not to speak of
+the cost of keeping the guilty in prison. It is too high a price to
+pay for a victory which will only reveal our judicial weakness to the
+eyes of all."
+
+Montcornet, who was wholly without suspicion of the strength and
+influence of the Mediocracy in his happy valley, did not even mention
+Gaubertin, whose hand kept these embers of opposition always alive,
+though smouldering. After breakfast the attorney-general took
+Montcornet by the arm and led him to the Prefect's study. When the
+general left that room after their conference, he wrote to his wife
+that he was starting for Paris and should be absent a week. We shall
+see, after the execution of certain measures suggested by Baron
+Bourlac, the attorney-general, whether the secret advice he gave to
+Montcornet was wise, and whether in conforming to it the count and Les
+Aigues were enabled to escape the "Evil grudge."
+
+Some minds, eager for mere amusement, will complain that these various
+explanations are far too long; but we once more call attention to the
+fact that the historian of the manners, customs, and morals of his
+time must obey a law far more stringent than that imposed on the
+historian of mere facts. He must show the probability of everything,
+even the truth; whereas, in the domain of history, properly so-called,
+the impossible must be accepted for the sole reason that it did
+happen. The vicissitudes of social or private life are brought about
+by a crowd of little causes derived from a thousand conditions. The
+man of science is forced to clear away the avalanche under which whole
+villages lie buried, to show you the pebbles brought down from the
+summit which alone can determine the formation of the mountain. If the
+historian of human life were simply telling you of a suicide, five
+hundred of which occur yearly in Paris, the melodrama is so
+commonplace that brief reasons and explanations are all that need be
+given; but how shall he make you see that the self-destruction of an
+estate could happen in these days when property is reckoned of more
+value than life? "De re vestra agitur," said a maker of fables; this
+tale concerns the affairs and interests of all those, no matter who
+they be, who possess anything.
+
+Remember that this coalition of a whole canton and of a little town
+against a general, who, in spite of his rash courage, had escaped the
+dangers of actual war, is going on in other districts against other
+men who seek only to do what is right by those districts. It is a
+coalition which to-day threatens every man, the man of genius, the
+statesman, the modern agriculturalist,--in short, all innovators.
+
+This last explanation not only gives a true presentation of the
+personages of this drama, and a serious meaning even to its petty
+details, but it also throws a vivid light upon the scene where so many
+social interests are now marshalling.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER X
+
+                   THE SADNESS OF A HAPPY WOMAN
+
+At the moment when the general was getting into his caleche to go to
+the Prefecture, the countess and the two gentlemen reached the gate of
+the Avonne, where, for the last eighteen months, Michaud and his wife
+Olympe had made their home.
+
+Whose remembered the pavilion in the state in which we lately
+described it would have supposed it had been rebuilt. The bricks
+fallen or broken by time, and the cement lacking to their edges, were
+replaced; the slate roof had been cleaned, and the effect of the white
+balustrade against its bluish background restored the gay character of
+the architecture. The approaches to the building, formerly choked up
+and sandy, were now cared for by the man whose duty it was to keep the
+park roadways in order. The poultry-yard, stables, and cow-shed,
+relegated to the buildings near the pheasantry and hidden by clumps of
+trees, instead of afflicting the eye with their foul details, now
+blended those soft murmurs and cooings and the sound of flapping
+wings, which are among the most delightful accompaniments of Nature's
+eternal harmony, with the peculiar rustling sounds of the forest. The
+whole scene possessed the double charm of a natural, untouched forest
+and the elegance of an English park. The surroundings of the pavilion,
+in keeping with its own exterior, presented a certain noble,
+dignified, and cordial effect; while the hand of a young and happy
+woman gave to its interior a very different look from what it wore
+under the coarse neglect of Courtecuisse.
+
+Just now the rich season of the year was putting forth its natural
+splendors. The perfume of the flowerbeds blended with the wild odor of
+the woods; and the meadows near by, where the grass had been lately
+cut, sent up the fragrance of new-mown hay.
+
+When the countess and her guests reached the end of one of the winding
+paths which led to the pavilion, they saw Madame Michaud, sitting in
+the open air before the door, employed in making a baby's garment. The
+young woman thus placed, thus employed, added the human charm that was
+needed to complete the scene,--a charm so touching in its actuality
+that painters have committed the error of endeavoring to convey it in
+their pictures. Such artists forget that the SOUL of a landscape, if
+they represent it truly, is so grand that the human element is crushed
+by it; whereas such a scene added to Nature limits her to the
+proportions of the personality, like a frame to which the mind of the
+spectator confines it. When Poussin, the Raffaelle of France, made a
+landscape accessory to his Shepherds of Arcadia he perceived plainly
+enough that man becomes diminutive and abject when Nature is made the
+principal feature on a canvas. In that picture August is in its glory,
+the harvest is ready, all simple and strong human interests are
+represented. There we find realized in nature the dream of many men
+whose uncertain life of mingled good and evil harshly mixed makes them
+long for peace and rest.
+
+Let us now relate, in few words, the romance of this home. Justin
+Michaud did not reply very cordially to the advances made to him by
+the illustrious colonel of cuirassiers when first offered the
+situation of bailiff at Les Aigues. He was then thinking of
+re-entering the service. But while the negotiations, which naturally
+took him to the Hotel Montcornet, were going on, he met the countess's
+head waiting-maid. This young girl, who was entrusted to Madame de
+Montcornet by her parents, worthy farmers in the neighborhood of
+Alencon, had hopes of a little fortune, some twenty or thirty thousand
+francs, when the heirs were all of age. Like other farmers who marry
+young, and whose own parents are still living, the father and mother
+of the girl, being pinched for immediate means, placed her with the
+young countess. Madame de Montcornet had her taught to sew and to make
+dresses, arranged that she should take her meals alone, and was
+rewarded for the care she bestowed on Olympe Charel by one of those
+unconditional attachments which are so precious to Parisians.
+
+Olympe Charel, a pretty Norman girl, rather stout, with fair hair of a
+golden tint, an animated face lighted by intelligent eyes, and
+distinguished by a finely curved thoroughbred nose, with a maidenly
+air in spite of a certain swaying Spanish manner of carrying herself,
+possessed all the points that a young girl born just above the level
+of the masses is likely to acquire from whatever close companionship a
+mistress is willing to allow her. Always suitably dressed, with modest
+bearing and manner, and able to express herself well, Michaud was soon
+in love with her,--all the more when he found that his sweetheart's
+dowry would one day be considerable. The obstacles came from the
+countess, who could not bear to part with so invaluable a maid; but
+when Montcornet explained to her the affairs at Les Aigues, she gave
+way, and the marriage was no longer delayed, except to obtain the
+consent of the parents, which, of course, was quickly given.
+
+Michaud, like his general, looked upon his wife as a superior being,
+to whom he owed military obedience without a single reservation. He
+found in the peace of his home and his busy life out-of-doors the
+elements of a happiness soldiers long for when they give up their
+profession,--enough work to keep his body healthy, enough fatigue to
+let him know the charms of rest. In spite of his well-known
+intrepidity, Michaud had never been seriously wounded, and he had none
+of those physical pains which often sour the temper of veterans. Like
+all really strong men, his temper was even; his wife, therefore, loved
+him utterly. From the time they took up their abode in the pavilion,
+this happy home was the scene of a long honey-moon in harmony with
+Nature and with the art whose creations surrounded them,--a
+circumstance rare indeed! The things about us are seldom in keeping
+with the condition of our souls!
+
+The picture was so pretty that the countess stopped short and pointed
+it out to Blondet and the abbe; for they could see Madame Michaud from
+where they stood, without her seeing them.
+
+"I always come this way when I walk in the park," said the countess,
+softly. "I delight in looking at the pavilion and its two
+turtle-doves, as much as I delight in a fine view."
+
+She leaned significantly on Blondet's arm, as if to make him share
+sentiments too delicate for words but which all women feel.
+
+"I wish I were a gate-keeper at Les Aigues," said Blondet, smiling.
+"Why! what troubles you?" he added, noticing an expression of sadness
+on the countess's face.
+
+"Nothing," she replied.
+
+Women are always hiding some important thought when they say,
+hypocritically, "It is nothing."
+
+"A woman may be the victim of ideas which would seem very flimsy to
+you," she added, "but which, to us, are terrible. As for me, I envy
+Olympe's lot."
+
+"God hears you," said the abbe, smiling as though to soften the
+sternness of his remark.
+
+Madame de Montcornet grew seriously uneasy when she noticed an
+expression of fear and anxiety in Olympe's face and attitude. By the
+way a woman draws out her needle or sets her stitches another woman
+understands her thoughts. In fact, though wearing a rose-colored
+dress, with her hair carefully braided about her head, the bailiff's
+wife was thinking of matters that were out of keeping with her pretty
+dress, the glorious day, and the work her hands were engaged on. Her
+beautiful brow, and the glance she turned sometimes on the ground at
+her feet, sometimes on the foliage around, evidently seeing nothing,
+betrayed some deep anxiety,--all the more unconsciously because she
+supposed herself alone.
+
+"Just as I was envying her! What can have saddened her?" whispered the
+countess to the abbe.
+
+"Madame," he replied in the same tone, "tell me why man is often
+seized with vague and unaccountable presentiments of evil in the very
+midst of some perfect happiness?"
+
+"Abbe!" said Blondet, smiling, "you talk like a bishop. Napoleon said,
+'Nothing is stolen, all is bought!'"
+
+"Such a maxim, uttered by those imperial lips, takes the proportions
+of society itself," replied the priest.
+
+"Well, Olympe, my dear girl, what is the matter?" said the countess
+going up to her former maid. "You seem sad and thoughtful; is it a
+lover's quarrel?"
+
+Madame Michaud's face, as she rose, changed completely.
+
+"My dear," said Emile Blondet, in a fatherly tone, "I should like to
+know what clouds that brow of yours, in this pavilion where you are
+almost as well lodged as the Comte d'Artois at the Tuileries. It is
+like a nest of nightingales in a grove! And what a husband we have!
+--the bravest fellow of the young garde, and a handsome one, who loves
+us to distraction! If I had known the advantages Montcornet has given
+you here I should have left my diatribing business and made myself a
+bailiff."
+
+"It is not the place for a man of your talent, monsieur," replied
+Olympe, smiling at Blondet as an old acquaintance.
+
+"But what troubles you, dear?" said the countess.
+
+"Madame, I'm afraid--"
+
+"Afraid! of what?" said the countess, eagerly; for the word reminded
+her of Mouche and Fourchon.
+
+"Afraid of the wolves, is that it?" said Emile, making Madame Michaud
+a sign, which she did not understand.
+
+"No, monsieur,--afraid of the peasants. I was born in Le Perche, where
+of course there are some bad people, but I had no idea how wicked
+people could be until I came here. I try not to meddle in Michaud's
+affairs, but I do know that he distrusts the peasants so much that he
+goes armed, even in broad daylight, when he enters the forest. He
+warns his men to be always on the alert. Every now and then things
+happen about here that bode no good. The other day I was walking along
+the wall, near the source of that little sandy rivulet which comes
+from the forest and enters the park through a culvert about five
+hundred feet from here,--you know it, madame? it is called Silver
+Spring, because of the star-flowers Bouret is said to have sown there.
+Well, I overheard the talk of two women who were washing their linen
+just where the path to Conches crosses the brook; they did not know I
+was there. Our house can be seen from that point, and one old woman
+pointed it out to the other, saying: 'See what a lot of money they
+have spent on the man who turned out Courtecuisse.' 'They ought to pay
+a man well when they set him to harass poor people as that man does,'
+answered the other. 'Well, it won't be for long,' said the first one;
+'the thing is going to end soon. We have a right to our wood. The late
+Madame allowed us to take it. That's thirty years ago, so the right is
+ours.' 'We'll see what we shall see next winter,' replied the second.
+'My man has sworn the great oath that all the gendarmerie in the world
+sha'n't keep us from getting our wood; he says he means to get it
+himself, and if the worst happens so much the worse for them!' 'Good
+God!' cried the other; 'we can't die of cold, and we must bake bread
+to eat! They want for nothing, _those others_! the wife of that
+scoundrel of a Michaud will be taken care of, I warrant you!' And
+then, Madame, they said such horrible things of me and of you and of
+Monsieur le comte; and they finally declared that the farms would all
+be burned, and then the chateau."
+
+"Bah!" said Emile, "idle talk! They have been robbing the general, and
+they will not be allowed to rob him any longer. These people are
+furious, that's the whole of it. You must remember that the law and
+the government are always strongest everywhere, even in Burgundy. In
+case of an outbreak the general could bring a regiment of cavalry
+here, if necessary."
+
+The abbe made a sign to Madame Michaud from behind the countess,
+telling her to say no more about her fears, which were doubtless the
+effect of that second sight which true passion bestows. The soul,
+dwelling exclusively on one only being, grasps in the end the moral
+elements that surround it, and sees in them the makings of the future.
+The woman who loves feels the same presentiments that later illuminate
+her motherhood. Hence a certain melancholy, a certain inexplicable
+sadness which surprises men, who are one and all distracted from any
+such concentration of their souls by the cares of life and the
+continual necessity for action. All true love becomes to a woman an
+active contemplation, which is more or less lucid, more or less
+profound, according to her nature.
+
+"Come, my dear, show your home to Monsieur Emile," said the countess,
+whose mind was so pre-occupied that she forgot La Pechina, who was the
+ostensible object of her visit.
+
+The interior of the restored pavilion was in keeping with its
+exterior. On the ground-floor the old divisions had been replaced, and
+the architect, sent from Paris with his own workmen (a cause of bitter
+complaint in the neighborhood against the master of Les Aigues), had
+made four rooms out of the space. First, an ante-chamber, at the
+farther end of which was a winding wooden staircase, behind which came
+the kitchen; on either side of the antechamber was a dining-room and a
+parlor panelled in oak now nearly black, with armorial bearings in the
+divisions of the ceilings. The architect chosen by Madame de
+Montcornet for the restoration of Les Aigues had taken care to put the
+furniture of this room in keeping with its original decoration.
+
+At the time of which we write fashion had not yet given an exaggerated
+value to the relics of past ages. The carved settee, the high-backed
+chairs covered with tapestry, the consoles, the clocks, the tall
+embroidery frames, the tables, the lustres, hidden away in the
+second-hand shops of Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes were fifty per-cent
+cheaper than the modern, ready-made furniture of the faubourg Saint
+Antoine. The architect had therefore bought two or three cartloads of
+well-chosen old things, which, added to a few others discarded at the
+chateau, made the little salon of the gate of the Avonne an artistic
+creation. As to the dining-room, he painted it in browns and hung it
+with what was called a Scotch paper, and Madame Michaud added white
+cambric curtains with green borders at the windows, mahogany chairs
+covered with green cloth, two large buffets and a table, also in
+mahogany. This room, ornamented with engravings of military scenes,
+was heated by a porcelain stove, on each side of which were
+sporting-guns suspended on the walls. These adornments, which cost but
+little, were talked of throughout the whole valley as the last extreme
+of oriental luxury. Singular to say, they, more than anything else,
+excited the envy of Gaubertin, and whenever he thought of his fixed
+determination to bring Les Aigues to the hammer and cut it in pieces,
+he reserved for himself, "in petto," this beautiful pavilion.
+
+On the next floor three chambers sufficed for the household. At the
+windows were muslin curtains which reminded a Parisian of the
+particular taste and fancy of bourgeois requirements. Left to herself
+in the decoration of these rooms, Madame Michaud had chosen satin
+papers; on the mantel-shelf of her bedroom--which was furnished in
+that vulgar style of mahogany and Utrecht velvet which is seen
+everywhere, with its high-backed bed and canopy to which embroidered
+muslin curtains are fastened--stood an alabaster clock between two
+candelabra covered with gauze and flanked by two vases filled with
+artificial flowers protected by glass shades, a conjugal gift of the
+former cavalry sergeant. Above, under the roof, the bedrooms of the
+cook, the man-of-all-work, and La Pechina had benefited by the recent
+restoration.
+
+"Olympe, my dear, you did not tell me all," said the countess,
+entering Madame Michaud's bedroom, and leaving Emile and the abbe on
+the stairway, whence they descended when they heard her shut the door.
+
+Madame Michaud, to whom the abbe had contrived to whisper a word, was
+now anxious to say no more about her fears, which were really greater
+than she had intimated, and she therefore began to talk of a matter
+which reminded the countess of the object of her visit.
+
+"I love Michaud, madame, as you know. Well, how would you like to
+have, in your own house, a rival always beside you?"
+
+"A rival?"
+
+"Yes, madame; that swarthy girl you gave me to take care of loves
+Michaud without knowing it, poor thing! The child's conduct, long a
+mystery to me, has been cleared up in my mind for some days."
+
+"Why, she is only thirteen years old!"
+
+"I know that, madame. But you will admit that a woman who is three
+months pregnant and means to nurse her child herself may have some
+fears; but as I did not want to speak of this before those gentlemen,
+I talked a great deal of nonsense when you questioned me," said the
+generous creature, adroitly.
+
+Madame Michaud was not really afraid of Genevieve Niseron, but for the
+last three days she was in mortal terror of some disaster from the
+peasantry.
+
+"How did you discover this?" said the countess.
+
+"From everything and from nothing," replied Olympe. "The poor little
+thing moves with the slowness of a tortoise when she is obliged to
+obey me, but she runs like a lizard when Justin asks for anything, she
+trembles like a leaf at the sound of his voice; and her face is that
+of a saint ascending to heaven when she looks at him. But she knows
+nothing about love; she has no idea that she loves him."
+
+"Poor child!" said the countess with a smile and tone that were full
+of naivete.
+
+"And so," continued Madame Michaud, answering with a smile the smile
+of her late mistress, "Genevieve is gloomy when Justin is out of the
+house; if I ask her what she is thinking of she replies that she is
+afraid of Monsieur Rigou, or some such nonsense. She thinks people
+envy her, though she is as black as the inside of a chimney. When
+Justin is patrolling the woods at night the child is as anxious as I
+am. If I open my window to listen for the trot of his horse, I see a
+light in her room, which shows me that La Pechina (as they call here)
+is watching and waiting too. She never goes to bed, any more than I
+do, till he comes in."
+
+"Thirteen!" exclaimed the countess; "unfortunate child!"
+
+"Unfortunate? no. This passion will save her."
+
+"From what?" asked Madame de Montcornet.
+
+"From the fate which overtakes nearly all the girls of her age in
+these parts. Since I have taught her cleanliness she is much less ugly
+than she was; in fact, there is something odd and wild about her which
+attracts men. She is so changed that you would hardly recognize her.
+The son of that infamous innkeeper of the Grand-I-Vert, Nicolas, the
+worst fellow in the whole district, wants her; he hunts her like game.
+Though I can't believe that Monsieur Rigou, who changes his
+servant-girls every year or two is persecuting such a little fright, it
+is quite certain that Nicolas Tonsard is. Justin told me so. It would be
+a dreadful fate, for the people of this valley actually live like
+beasts; but Justin and our two servants and I watch her carefully.
+Therefore don't be uneasy, madame; she never goes out alone except in
+broad daylight, and then only as far as the gate of Conches. If by
+chance she fell into an ambush, her feeling for Justin would give her
+strength and wit to escape; for all women who have a preference in
+their hearts can resist a man they hate."
+
+"It was about her that I came," said the countess, "and I little
+thought my visit could be so useful to you. That child, you know,
+can't remain thirteen; and she will probably grow better-looking."
+
+"Oh, madame," replied Olympe, smiling, "I am quite sure of Justin.
+What a man! what a heart!-- If you only knew what a depth of gratitude
+he feels for his general, to whom, he says, he owes his happiness. He
+is only too devoted; he would risk his life for him here, as he would
+on the field of battle, and he forgets sometimes that he will one day
+be father of a family."
+
+"Ah! I once regretted losing you," said the countess, with a glance
+that made Olympe blush; "but I regret it no longer, for I see you
+happy. What a sublime and noble thing is married love!" she added,
+speaking out the thought she had not dared express before the abbe.
+
+Virginie de Troisville dropped into a revery, and Madame Michaud kept
+silence.
+
+"Well, at least the girl is honest, is she not?" said the countess, as
+if waking from a dream.
+
+"As honest as I am myself, madame."
+
+"Discreet?"
+
+"As the grave."
+
+"Grateful?"
+
+"Ah! madame; she has moments of humility and gentleness towards me
+which seem to show an angelic nature. She will kiss my hands and say
+the most upsetting things. 'Can we die of love?' she asked me
+yesterday. 'Why do you ask me that?' I said. 'I want to know if love
+is a disease.'"
+
+"Did she really say that?"
+
+"If I could remember her exact words I would tell you a great deal
+more," replied Olympe; "she appears to know much more than I do."
+
+"Do you think, my dear, that she could take your place in my service.
+I can't do without an Olympe," said the countess, smiling in a rather
+sad way.
+
+"Not yet, madame,--she is too young; but in two years' time, yes. If
+it becomes necessary that she should go away from here I will let you
+know. She ought to be educated, and she knows nothing of the world.
+Her grandfather, Pere Niseron, is a man who would let his throat be
+cut sooner than tell a lie; he would die of hunger in a baker's shop;
+he has the strength of his opinions, and the girl was brought up to
+all such principles. La Pechina would consider herself your equal; for
+the old man has made her, as he says, a republican,--just as Pere
+Fourchon has made Mouche a bohemian. As for me, I laugh at such ideas,
+but you might be displeased. She would revere you as her benefactress,
+but never as her superior. It can't be otherwise; she is wild and free
+like the swallows--her mother's blood counts for a good deal in what
+she is."
+
+"Who was her mother?"
+
+"Doesn't madame know the story?" said Olympe. "Well, the son of the
+old sexton at Blangy, a splendid fellow, so the people about here tell
+me, was drafted at the great conscription. In 1809 young Niseron was
+still only an artilleryman, in a corps d'armee stationed in Illyria
+and Dalmatia when it received sudden orders to advance through Hungary
+and cut off the retreat of the Austrian army in case the Emperor won
+the battle of Wagram. Michaud told me all about Dalmatia, for he was
+there. Niseron, being so handsome a man, captivated a Montenegrin girl
+of Zahara among the mountains, who was not averse to the French
+garrison. This lost her the good-will of her compatriots, and life in
+her own town became impossible after the departure of the French. Zena
+Kropoli, called in derision the Frenchwoman, followed the artillery,
+and came to France after the peace. Auguste Niseron asked permission
+to marry her; but the poor woman died at Vincennes in January, 1810,
+after giving birth to a daughter, our Genevieve. The papers necessary
+to make the marriage legal arrived a few days later. Auguste Niseron
+then wrote to his father to come and take the child, with a wetnurse
+he had got from its own country; and it was lucky he did, for he was
+killed soon after by the bursting of a shell at Montereau. Registered
+by the name of Genevieve and baptized at Soulanges, the little
+Dalmatian was taken under the protection of Mademoiselle Laguerre, who
+was touched by her story. It seems as if it were the destiny of the
+child to be taken care of by the owners of Les Aigues! Pere Niseron
+obtained its clothes, and now and then some help in money from
+Mademoiselle."
+
+The countess and Olympe were just then standing before a window from
+which they could see Michaud approaching the abbe and Blondet, who
+were walking up and down the wide, semi-circular gravelled space which
+repeated on the park side of the pavilion the exterior half-moon; they
+were conversing earnestly.
+
+"Where is she?" said the countess; "you make me anxious to see her."
+
+"She is gone to carry milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard at the gate of
+Conches; she will soon be back, for it is more than an hour since she
+started."
+
+"Well, I'll go and meet her with those gentlemen," said Madame de
+Montcornet, going downstairs.
+
+Just as the countess opened her parasol, Michaud came up and told her
+that the general had left her a widow for probably two days.
+
+"Monsieur Michaud," said the countess, eagerly, "don't deceive me,
+there is something serious going on. Your wife is frightened, and if
+there are many persons like Pere Fourchon, this part of the country
+will be uninhabitable--"
+
+"If it were so, madame," answered Michaud, laughing, "we should not be
+in the land of the living, for nothing would be easier than to make
+away with us. The peasant's grumble, that is all. But as to passing
+from growls to blows, from pilfering to crime, they care too much for
+life and the free air of the fields. Olympe has been saying something
+that frightened you, but you know she is in state to be frightened at
+nothing," he added, drawing his wife's hand under his arm and pressing
+it to warn her to say no more.
+
+"Cornevin! Juliette!" cried Madame Michaud, who soon saw the head of
+her old cook at the window. "I am going for a little walk; take care
+of the premises."
+
+Two enormous dogs, who began to bark, proved that the effectiveness of
+the garrison at the gate of the Avonne was not to be despised. Hearing
+the dogs, Cornevin, an old Percheron, Olympe's foster-father, came
+from behind the trees, showing a head such as no other region than La
+Perche can manufacture. Cornevin was undoubtedly a Chouan in 1794 and
+1799.
+
+The whole party accompanied the countess along that one of the six
+forest avenues which led directly to the gate of Conches, crossing the
+Silver-spring rivulet. Madame de Montcornet walked in front with
+Blondet. The abbe and Michaud and his wife talked in a low voice of
+the revelation that had just been made to the countess of the state of
+the country.
+
+"Perhaps it is providential," said the abbe; "for if madame is
+willing, we might, perhaps, by dint of benefits and constant
+consideration of their wants, change the hearts of these people."
+
+At about six hundred feet from the pavilion and below the brooke, the
+countess caught sight of a broken red jug and some spilt milk.
+
+"Something has happened to the poor child!" she cried, calling to
+Michaud and his wife, who were returning to the pavilion.
+
+"A misfortune like Perrette's," said Blondet, laughing.
+
+"No; the poor child has been surprised and pursued, for the jug was
+thrown outside the path," said the abbe, examining the ground.
+
+"Yes, that is certainly La Pechina's step," said Michaud; "the print
+of the feet, which have turned, you see, quickly, shows sudden terror.
+The child must have darted in the direction of the pavilion, trying to
+get back there."
+
+Every one followed the traces which the bailiff pointed out as he
+walked along examining them. Presently he stopped in the middle of the
+path about a hundred feet from the broken jug, where the girl's
+foot-prints ceased.
+
+"Here," he said, "she turned towards the Avonne; perhaps she was
+headed off from the direction of the pavilion."
+
+"But she has been gone more than an hour," cried Madame Michaud.
+
+Alarm was in all faces. The abbe ran towards the pavilion, examining
+the state of the road, while Michaud, impelled by the same thought,
+went up the path towards Conches.
+
+"Good God! she fell here," said Michaud, returning from a place where
+the footsteps stopped near the brook, to that where they had turned in
+the road, and pointing to the ground, he added, "See!"
+
+The marks were plainly seen of a body lying at full length on the
+sandy path.
+
+"The footprints which have entered the wood are those of some one who
+wore knitted soles," said the abbe.
+
+"A woman, then," said the countess.
+
+"Down there, by the broken pitcher, are the footsteps of a man," added
+Michaud.
+
+"I don't see traces of any other foot," said the abbe, who was
+tracking into the wood the prints of the woman's feet.
+
+"She must have been lifted and carried into the wood," cried Michaud.
+
+"That can't be, if it is really a woman's foot," said Blondet.
+
+"It must be some trick of that wretch, Nicolas," said Michaud. "He has
+been watching La Pechina for some time. Only this morning I stood two
+hours under the bridge of the Avonne to see what he was about. A woman
+may have helped him."
+
+"It is dreadful!" said the countess.
+
+"They call it amusing themselves," added the priest, in a sad and
+grieved tone.
+
+"Oh! La Pechina would never let them keep her," said the bailiff; "she
+is quite able to swim across the river. I shall look along the banks.
+Go home, my dear Olympe; and you gentlemen and madame, please to
+follow the avenue towards Conches."
+
+"What a country!" exclaimed the countess.
+
+"There are scoundrels everywhere," replied Blondet.
+
+"Is it true, Monsieur l'abbe," asked Madame de Montcornet, "that I
+saved the poor child from the clutches of Rigou?"
+
+"Every young girl over fiften years of age whom you may protect at the
+chateau is saved from that monster," said the abbe. "In trying to get
+possession of La Pechina from her earliest years, the apostate sought
+to satisfy both his lust and his vengeance. When I took Pere Niseron
+as sexton I told him what Rigou's intentions were. That is one of the
+causes of the late mayor's rancor against me; his hatred grew out of
+it. Pere Niseron said to him solemnly that he would kill him if any
+harm came to Genevieve, and he made him responsible for all attempts
+upon the poor child's honor. I can't help thinking that this pursuit
+of Nicolas is the result of some infernal collusion with Rigou, who
+thinks he can do as he likes with these people."
+
+"Doesn't he fear the law?"
+
+"In the first place, he is father-in-law of the prosecuting-attorney,"
+said the abbe, pausing to listen. "And then," he resumed, "you have no
+conception of the utter indifference of the rural police to what is
+done around them. So long as the peasants do not burn the farm-houses
+and buildings, commit no murders, poison no one, and pay their taxes,
+they let them do as they like; and as these people are not restrained
+by any religious principle, horrible things happen every day. On the
+other side of the Avonne helpless old men are afraid to stay in their
+own homes, for they are allowed nothing to eat; they wander out into
+the fields as far as their tottering legs can bear them, knowing well
+that if they take to their beds they will die for want of food.
+Monsieur Sarcus, the magistrate, tells me that if they arrested and
+tried all criminals, the costs would ruin the municipality."
+
+"Then he at least sees how things are?" said Blondet.
+
+"Monseigneur thoroughly understands the condition of the valley, and
+especially the state of this district," continued the abbe. "Religion
+alone can cure such evils; the law seems to me powerless, modified as
+it is now--"
+
+The words were interrupted by loud cries from the woods, and the
+countess, preceded by Emile and the abbe, sprang bravely into the
+brushwood in the direction of the sounds.
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XI
+
+          THE OARISTYS, EIGHTEENTH ECLOGUE OF THEOCRITUS;
+               LITTLE ADMIRED ON THE POLICE CALENDAR
+
+The sagacity of a savage, which Michaud's new occupation had developed
+among his faculties, joined to an acquaintance with the passions and
+interests of Blangy, enabled him partially to understand a third idyll
+in the Greek style, which poor villagers like Tonsard, and middle-aged
+rich men like Rigou, translate _freely_--to use the classic word--in the
+depths of their country solitudes.
+
+Nicolas, Tonsard's second son, had drawn an unlucky number at a recent
+conscription. Two years earlier his elder brother had been pronounced,
+through the influence of Soudry, Gaubertin, and Sarcus the rich, unfit
+for military service, on account of a pretended weakness in the
+muscles of the right arm; but as Jean-Louis had since wielded
+instruments of husbandry with remarkable force and skill, a good deal
+of talk on the subject had gone through the district. Soudry, Rigou,
+and Gaubertin, who were the special protectors of the family, had
+warned Tonsard that he must not expect to save Nicolas, who was tall
+and vigorous, from being recruited if he drew a fatal number.
+Nevertheless Gaubertin and Rigou were so well aware of the importance
+of conciliating bold men able and willing to do mischief, if properly
+directed against Les Aigues, that Rigou held out certain hopes of
+safety to Tonsard and his son. The late monk was occasionally visited
+by Catherine Tonsard who was very devoted to her brother Nicolas; on
+one such occasion Rigou advised her to appeal to the general and the
+countess.
+
+"They may be glad to do you this service to cajole you; in that case,
+it is just so much gained from the enemy," he said. "If the Shopman
+refuses, then we shall see what we shall see."
+
+Rigou foresaw that the general's refusal would pass as one wrong the
+more done by the land-owner to the peasantry, and would bind Tonsard
+by an additional motive of gratitude to the coalition, in case the
+crafty mind of the innkeeper could suggest to him some plausible way
+of liberating Nicolas.
+
+Nicolas, who was soon to appear before the examining board, had little
+hope of the general's intervention because of the harm done to Les
+Aigues by all the members of the Tonsard family. His passion, or to
+speak more correctly, his caprice and obstinate pursuit of La Pechina,
+were so aggravated by the prospect of his immediate departure, which
+left him no time to seduce her, that he resolved on attempting
+violence. The child's contempt for her prosecutor, plainly shown,
+excited the Lovelace of the Grand-I-Vert to a hatred whose fury was
+equalled only by his desires. For the last three days he had been
+watching La Pechina, and the poor child knew she was watched. Between
+Nicolas and his prey the same sort of understanding existed which
+there is between the hunter and the game. When the girl was at some
+little distance from the pavilion she saw Nicolas in one of the paths
+which ran parallel to the walls of the park, leading to the bridge of
+the Avonne. She could easily have escaped the man's pursuit had she
+appealed to her grandfather; but all young girls, even the most
+unsophisticated, have a strange fear, possibly instinctive, of
+trusting to their natural protectors under the like circumstances.
+
+Genevieve had heard Pere Niseron take an oath to kill any man, no
+matter who he was, who should dare to _touch_ (that was his word) his
+granddaughter. The old man thought the child amply protected by the
+halo of white hair and honor which a spotless life of three-score
+years and ten had laid upon his brow. The vision of bloody scenes
+terrifies the imagination of young girls so that they need not dive to
+the bottom of their hearts for other numerous and inquisitive reasons
+which seal their lips.
+
+When La Pechina started with the milk which Madame Michaud had sent to
+the daughter of Gaillard, the keeper of the gate of Conches, whose cow
+had just calved, she looked about her cautiously, like a cat when it
+ventures out onto the street. She saw no signs of Nicolas; she
+listened to the silence, as the poet says, and hearing nothing, she
+concluded that the rascal had gone to his day's work. The peasants
+were just beginning to cut the rye; for they were in the habit of
+getting in their own harvests first, so as to benefit by the best
+strength of the mowers. But Nicolas was not a man to mind losing a
+day's work,--especially now that he expected to leave the country
+after the fair at Soulanges and begin, as the country people say, the
+new life of a soldier.
+
+When La Pechina, with the jug on her head, was about half-way, Nicolas
+slid like a wild-cat down the trunk of an elm, among the branches of
+which he was hiding, and fell like a thunderbolt in front of the girl,
+who flung away her pitcher and trusted to her fleet legs to regain the
+pavilion. But a hundred feet farther on, Catherine Tonsard, who was on
+the watch, rushed out of the wood and knocked so violently against the
+flying girl that she was thrown down. The violence of the fall made
+her unconscious. Catherine picked her up and carried her into the
+woods to the middle of a tiny meadow where the Silver-spring brook
+bubbled up.
+
+Catherine Tonsard was tall and strong, and in every respect the type
+of woman whom painters and sculptors take, as the Republic did in
+former days, for their figures of Liberty. She charmed the young men
+of the valley of the Avonne with her voluminous bosom, her muscular
+legs, and a waist as robust as it was flexible; with her plump arms,
+her eyes that could flash and sparkle, and her jaunty air; with the
+masses of hair twisted in coils around her head, her masculine
+forehead and her red lips curling with that same ferocious smile which
+Eugene Delacroix and David (of Angers) caught and represented so
+admirably. True image of the People, this fiery and swarthy creature
+seemed to emit revolt through her piercing yellow eyes, blazing with
+the insolence of a soldier. She inherited from her father so violent a
+nature that the whole family, except Tonsard, and all who frequented
+the tavern feared her.
+
+"Well, how are you now?" she said to La Pechina as the latter
+recovered consciousness.
+
+Catherine had placed her victim on a little mound beside the brook and
+was bringing her to her senses with dashes of cold water. "Where am
+I?" said the child, opening her beautiful black eyes through which a
+sun-ray seemed to glide.
+
+"Ah!" said Catherine, "if it hadn't been for me you'd have been
+killed."
+
+"Thank you," said the girl, still bewildered; "what happened to me?"
+
+"You stumbled over a root and fell flat in the road over there, as if
+shot. Ha! how you did run!"
+
+"It was your brother who made me," said La Pechina, remembering
+Nicolas.
+
+"My brother? I did not see him," said Catherine. "What did he do to
+you, poor fellow, that should make you fly as if he were a wolf? Isn't
+he handsomer than your Monsieur Michaud?"
+
+"Oh!" said the girl, contemptuously.
+
+"See here, little one; you are laying up a crop of evils for yourself
+by loving those who persecute us. Why don't you keep to our side?"
+
+"Why don't you come to church; and why do you steal things night and
+day?" asked the child.
+
+"So you let those people talk you over!" sneered Catherine. "They love
+us, don't they?--just as they love their food which they get out of
+us, and they want new dishes every day. Did you ever know one of them
+to marry a peasant-girl? Not they! Does Sarcus the rich let his son
+marry that handsome Gatienne Giboulard? Not he, though she is the
+daughter of a rich upholsterer. You have never been at the Tivoli ball
+at Soulanges in Socquard's tavern; you had better come. You'll see 'em
+all there, these bourgeois fellows, and you'll find they are not worth
+the money we shall get out of them when we've pulled them down. Come
+to the fair this year!"
+
+"They say it's fine, that Soulanges fair!" cried La Pechina,
+artlessly.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is in two words," said Catherine. "If you are
+handsome, you are well ogled. What is the good of being as pretty as
+you are if you are not admired by the men? Ha! when I heard one of
+them say for the first time, 'What a fine sprig of a girl!' all my
+blood was on fire. It was at Socquard's, in the middle of a dance; my
+grandfather, Fourchon, who was playing the clarionet, heard it and
+laughed. Tivoli seemed to me as grand and fine as heaven itself. It's
+lighted up, my dear, with glass lamps, and you'll think you are in
+paradise. All the gentlemen of Soulanges and Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes
+will be there. Ever since that first night I've loved the place
+where those words rang in my ears like military music. It's worthy
+giving your eternity to hear such words said of you by a man you
+love."
+
+"Yes, perhaps," replied La Pechina, thoughtfully.
+
+"Then come, and get the praise of men; you're sure of it!" cried
+Catherine. "Ha! you'll have a fine chance, handsome as you are, to
+pick up good luck. There's the son of Monsieur Lupin, Amaury, he might
+marry you. But that's not all; if you only knew what comforts you can
+find there against vexation and worry. Why, Socquard's boiled wine
+will make you forget every trouble you ever had. Fancy! it can make
+you dream, and feel as light as a bird. Didn't you ever drink boiled
+wine? Then you don't know what life is."
+
+The privilege enjoyed by older persons to wet their throats with
+boiled wine excites the curiosity of the children of the peasantry
+over twelve years of age to such a degree that Genevieve had once put
+her lips to a glass of boiled wine ordered by the doctor for her
+grandfather when ill. The taste had left a sort of magic influence in
+the memory of the poor child, which may explain the interest with
+which she listened, and on which the evil-minded Catherine counted to
+carry out a plan already half-successful. No doubt she was trying to
+bring her victim, giddy from the fall, to the moral intoxication so
+dangerous to young women living in the wilds of nature, whose
+imagination, deprived of other nourishment, is all the more ardent
+when the occasion comes to exercise it. Boiled wine, which Catherine
+had held in reserve, was to end the matter by intoxicating the victim.
+
+"What do they put into it?" asked La Pechina.
+
+"All sorts of things," replied Catherine, glancing back to see if her
+brother were coming; "in the first place, those what d' ye call 'ems
+that come from India, cinnamon, and herbs that change you by magic,
+--you fancy you have everything you wish for; boiled wine makes you
+happy! you can snap your fingers at all your troubles!"
+
+"I should be afraid to drink boiled wine at a dance," said La Pechina.
+
+"Afraid of what?" asked Catherine. "There's not the slightest danger.
+Think what lots of people there will be. All the bourgeois will be
+looking at us! Ah! it is one of those days that make up for all our
+misery. See it and die,--for it's enough to satisfy any one."
+
+"If Monsieur and Madame Michaud would only take me!" cried La Pechina,
+her eyes blazing.
+
+"Ask your grandfather Niseron; you have not given him up, poor dear
+man, and he'd be pleased to see you admired like a little queen. Why
+do you like those Arminacs the Michauds better than your grandfather
+and the Burgundians. It's bad to neglect your own people. Besides, why
+should the Michauds object if your grandfather takes you to the fair?
+Oh! if you knew what it is to reign over a man and put him beside
+himself, and say to him, as I say to Godain, 'Go there!' and he goes,
+'Do that!' and he does it! You've got it in you, little one, to turn
+the head of a bourgeois like that son of Monsieur Lupin. Monsieur
+Amaury took a fancy to my sister Marie because she is fair and because
+he is half-afraid of me; but he'd adore you, for ever since those
+people at the pavilion have spruced you up a bit you've got the airs
+of an empress."
+
+Adroitly leading the innocent heart to forget Nicolas and so put it
+off its guard, Catherine distilled into the girl the insidious nectar
+of compliments. Unawares, she touched a secret wound. La Pechina,
+without being other than a poor peasant girl, was a specimen of
+alarming precocity, like many another creature doomed to die as
+prematurely as it blooms. Strange product of Burgundian and
+Montenegrin blood, conceived and born amid the toils of war, the girl
+was doubtless in many ways the result of her congenital circumstances.
+Thin, slender, brown as a tobacco leaf, and short in stature, she
+nevertheless possessed extraordinary strength,--a strength unseen by
+the eyes of peasants, to whom the mysteries of the nervous system are
+unknown. Nerves are not admitted into the medical rural mind.
+
+At thirteen years of age Genevieve had completed her growth, though
+she was hardly as tall as an ordinary girl of her age. Did her face
+owe its topaz skin, so dark and yet so brilliant, dark in tone and
+brilliant in the quality of its tissue, giving a look of age to the
+childish face, to her Montenegrin origin, or to the ardent sun of
+Burgundy? Medical science may dismiss the inquiry. The premature old
+age on the surface of the face was counterbalanced by the glow, the
+fire, the wealth of light which made the eyes two stars. Like all eyes
+which fill with sunlight and need, perhaps, some sheltering screen,
+the eyelids were fringed with lashes of extraordinary length. The
+hair, of a bluish black, long and fine and abundant, crowned a brow
+moulded like that of the Farnese Juno. That magnificent diadem of
+hair, those grand Armenian eyes, that celestial brow eclipsed the rest
+of the face. The nose, though pure in form as it left the brow, and
+graceful in curve, ended in flattened and flaring nostrils. Anger
+increased this effect at times, and then the face wore an absolutely
+furious expression. All the lower part of the face, like the lower
+part of the nose, seemed unfinished, as if the clay in the hands of
+the divine sculptor had proved insufficient. Between the lower lip and
+the chin the space was so short that any one taking La Pechina by the
+chin would have rubbed the lip; but the teeth prevented all notice of
+this defect. One might almost believe those little bones had souls, so
+brilliant were they, so polished, so transparent, so exquisitely
+shaped, disclosed as they were by too wide a mouth, curved in lines
+that bore resemblance to the fantastic shapes of coral. The shells of
+the ears were so transparent to the light that in the sunshine they
+were rose-colored. The complexion, though sun-burned, showed a
+marvellous delicacy in the texture of the skin. If, as Buffon
+declared, love lies in touch, the softness of the girl's skin must
+have had the penetrating and inciting influence of the fragrance of
+daturas. The chest and indeed the whole body was alarmingly thin; but
+the feet and hands, of alluring delicacy, showed remarkable nervous
+power, and a vigorous organism.
+
+This mixture of diabolical imperfections and divine beauties,
+harmonious in spite of discords, for they blended in a species of
+savage dignity, also this triumph of a powerful soul over a feeble
+body, as written in those eyes, made the child, when once seen,
+unforgettable. Nature had wished to make that frail young being a
+woman; the circumstances of her conception moulded her with the face
+and body of a boy. A poet observing the strange creature would have
+declared her native clime to be Arabia the Blest; she belonged to the
+Afrite and Genii of Arabian tales. Her face told no lies. She had the
+soul of that glance of fire, the intellect of those lips made
+brilliant by the bewitching teeth, the thought enshrined within that
+glorious brow, the passion of those nostrils ready at all moments to
+snort flame. Therefore love, such as we imagine it on burning sands,
+in lonely deserts, filled that heart of twenty in the breast of a
+child, doomed, like the snowy heights of Montenegro, to wear no
+flowers of the spring.
+
+Observers ought now to understand how it was that La Pechina, from
+whom passion issued by every pore, awakened in perverted natures the
+feelings deadened by abuse; just as water fills the mouth at sight of
+those twisted, blotched, and speckled fruits which gourmands know by
+experience, and beneath whose skin nature has put the rarest flavors
+and perfumes. Why did Nicolas, that vulgar laborer, pursue this being
+who was worthy of a poet, while the eyes of the country-folk pitied
+her as a sickly deformity? Why did Rigou, the old man, feel the
+passion of a young one for this girl? Which of the two men was young,
+and which was old? Was the young peasant as blase as the old usurer?
+Why did these two extremes of life meet in one common and devilish
+caprice? Does the vigor that draws to its close resemble the vigor
+that is only dawning? The moral perversities of men are gulfs guarded
+by sphinxes; they begin and end in questions to which there is no
+answer.
+
+The exclamation, formerly quoted, of the countess, "Piccina!" when she
+first saw Genevieve by the roadside, open-mouthed at sight of the
+carriage and the elegantly dressed woman within it, will be
+understood. This girl, almost a dwarf, of Montenegrin vigor, loved the
+handsome, noble bailiff, as children of her age love, when they do
+love, that is to say, with childlike passion, with the strength of
+youth, with the devotion which in truly virgin souls gives birth to
+divinest poesy. Catherine had just swept her coarse hands across the
+sensitive strings of that choice harp, strung to the breaking-point.
+To dance before Michaud, to shine at the Soulanges ball and inscribe
+herself on the memory of that adored master! What glorious thoughts!
+To fling them into that volcanic head was like casting live coals upon
+straw dried in the August sun.
+
+"No, Catherine," replied La Pechina, "I am ugly and puny; my lot is to
+sit in a corner and never to be married, but live alone in the world."
+
+"Men like weaklings," said Catherine. "You see me, don't you?" she
+added, showing her handsome, strong arms. "I please Godain, who is a
+poor stick; I please that little Charles, the count's groom; but
+Lupin's son is afraid of me. I tell you it is the small kind of men
+who love me, and who say when they see me go by at Ville-aux-Fayes and
+at Soulanges, 'Ha! what a fine girl!' Now YOU, that's another thing;
+you'll please the fine men."
+
+"Ah! Catherine, if it were true--that!" cried the bewitched child.
+
+"It is true, it is so true that Nicolas, the handsomest man in the
+canton, is mad about you; he dreams of you, he is losing his mind; and
+yet all the other girls are in love with him. He is a fine lad! If
+you'll put on a white dress and yellow ribbons, and come to Socquard's
+for the midsummer ball, you'll be the handsomest girl there, and all
+the fine people from Ville-aux-Fayes will see you. Come, won't you?
+--See here, I've been cutting grass for the cows, and I brought some
+boiled wine in my gourd; Socquard gave it me this morning," she added
+quickly, seeing the half-delirious expression in La Pechina's eyes
+which women understand so well. "We'll share it together, and you'll
+fancy the men are in love with you."
+
+During this conversation Nicolas, choosing the grassy spots to step
+on, had noiselessly slipped behind the trunk of an old oak near which
+his sister had seated La Pechina. Catherine, who had now and then cast
+her eyes behind her, saw her brother as she turned to get the boiled
+wine.
+
+"Here, take some," she said, offering it.
+
+"It burns me!" cried Genevieve, giving back the gourd, after taking
+two or three swallows from it.
+
+"Silly child!" replied Catherine; "see here!" and she emptied the
+rustic bottle without taking breath. "See how it slips down; it goes
+like a sunbeam into the stomach."
+
+"But I ought to be carrying the milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard," cried
+Genevieve; "and it is all spilt! Nicolas frightened me so!"
+
+"Don't you like Nicolas?"
+
+"No," answered Genevieve. "Why does he persecute me? He can get plenty
+other girls, who are willing."
+
+"But if he likes you better than all the other girls in the valley--"
+
+"So much the worse for him."
+
+"I see you don't know him," answered Catherine, as she seized the girl
+rapidly by the waist and flung her on the grass, holding her down in
+that position with her strong arms. At this moment Nicolas appeared.
+Seeing her odious persecutor, the child screamed with all her might,
+and drove him five feet away with a violent kick in the stomach; then
+she twisted herself like an acrobat, with a dexterity for which
+Catherine was not prepared, and rose to run away. Catherine, still on
+the ground, caught her by one foot and threw her headlong on her face.
+This frightful fall stopped the brave child's cries for a moment.
+Nicolas attempted, furiously, to seize his victim, but she, though
+giddy from the wine and the fall, caught him by the throat in a grip
+of iron.
+
+"Help! she's strangling me, Catherine," cried Nicolas, in a stifled
+voice.
+
+La Pechina uttered piercing screams, which Catherine tried to choke by
+putting her hands over the girl's mouth, but she bit them and drew
+blood. It was at this moment that Blondet, the countess, and the abbe
+appeared at the edge of the wood.
+
+"Here are those Aigues people!" exclaimed Catherine, helping Genevieve
+to rise.
+
+"Do you want to live?" hissed Nicolas in the child's ear.
+
+"What then?" she asked.
+
+"Tell them we were all playing, and I'll forgive you," said Nicolas,
+in a threatening voice.
+
+"Little wretch, mind you say it!" repeated Catherine, whose glance was
+more terrifying than her brother's murderous threat.
+
+"Yes, I will, if you let me alone," replied the child. "But anyhow I
+will never go out again without my scissors."
+
+"You are to hold your tongue, or I'll drown you in the Avonne," said
+Catherine, ferociously.
+
+"You are monsters," cried the abbe, coming up; "you ought to be
+arrested and taken to the assizes."
+
+"Ha! and pray what do you do in your drawing-rooms?" said Nicolas,
+looking full at the countess and Blondet. "You play and amuse
+yourselves, don't you? Well, so do we, in the fields which are ours.
+We can't always work; we must play sometimes,--ask my sister and La
+Pechina."
+
+"How do you fight if you call that playing?" cried Blondet.
+
+Nicolas gave him a murderous look.
+
+"Speak!" said Catherine, gripping La Pechina by the forearm and
+leaving a blue bracelet on the flesh. "Were not we amusing ourselves?"
+
+"Yes, madame, we were amusing ourselves," said the child, exhausted by
+her display of strength, and now breaking down as though she were
+about to faint.
+
+"You hear what she says, madame," said Catherine, boldly, giving the
+countess one of those looks which women give each other like dagger
+thrusts.
+
+She took her brother's arm, and the pair walked off, not mistaking the
+opinion they left behind them in the minds of the three persons who
+had interrupted the scene. Nicolas twice looked back, and twice
+encountered Blondet's gaze. The journalist continued to watch the tall
+scoundrel, who was broad in the shoulders, healthy and vigorous in
+complexion, with black hair curling tightly, and whose rather soft
+face showed upon its lips and around the mouth certain lines which
+reveal the peculiar cruelty that characterizes sluggards and
+voluptaries. Catherine swung her petticoat, striped blue and white,
+with an air of insolent coquetry.
+
+"Cain and his wife!" said Blondet to the abbe.
+
+"You are nearer the truth than you know," replied the priest.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur le cure, what will they do to me?" said La Pechina, when
+the brother and sister were out of sight.
+
+The countess, as white as her handkerchief, was so overcome that she
+heard neither Blondet nor the abbe nor La Pechina.
+
+"It is enough to drive one from this terrestrial paradise," she said
+at last. "But the first thing of all is to save that child from their
+claws."
+
+"You are right," said Blondet in a low voice. "That child is a poem, a
+living poem."
+
+Just then the Montenegrin girl was in a state where soul and body
+smoke, as it were, after the conflagration of an anger which has
+driven all forces, physical and intellectual, to their utmost tension.
+It is an unspeakable and supreme splendor, which reveals itself only
+under the pressure of some frenzy, be it resistance or victory, love
+or martyrdom. She had left home in a dress with alternate lines of
+brown and yellow, and a collarette which she pleated herself by rising
+before daylight; and she had not yet noticed the condition of her gown
+soiled by her struggle on the grass, and her collar torn in
+Catherine's grasp. Feeling her hair hanging loose, she looked about
+her for a comb. At this moment Michaud, also attracted by the screams,
+came upon the scene. Seeing her god, La Pechina recovered her full
+strength. "Monsieur Michaud," she cried, "he did not even touch me!"
+
+The cry, the look, the action of the girl were an eloquent commentary,
+and told more to Blondet and the abbe than Madame Michaud had told the
+countess about the passion of that strange nature for the bailiff, who
+was utterly unconscious of it.
+
+"The scoundrel!" cried Michaud.
+
+Then, with an involuntary and impotent gesture, such as mad men and
+wise men can both be forced into giving, he shook his fist in the
+direction in which he had caught sight of Nicolas disappearing with
+his sister.
+
+"Then you were not playing?" said the abbe with a searching look at La
+Pechina.
+
+"Don't fret her," interposed the countess; "let us return to the
+pavilion."
+
+Genevieve, though quite exhausted, found strength under Michaud's eyes
+to walk. The countess followed the bailiff through one of the by-paths
+known to keepers and poachers where only two can go abreast, and which
+led to the gate of the Avonne.
+
+"Michaud," said the countess when they reached the depth of the wood,
+"We must find some way of ridding the neighborhood of such vile
+people; that child is actually in danger of death."
+
+"In the first place," replied Michaud, "Genevieve shall not leave the
+pavilion. My wife will be glad to take the nephew of Vatel, who has
+the care of the park roads, into the house. With Gounod (that is his
+name) and old Cornevin, my wife's foster-father, always at hand, La
+Pechina need never go out without a protector."
+
+"I will tell Monsieur to make up this extra expense to you," said the
+countess. "But this does not rid us of that Nicolas. How can we manage
+that?"
+
+"The means are easy and right at hand," answered Michaud. "Nicolas is
+to appear very soon before the court of appeals on the draft. The
+general, instead of asking for his release, as the Tonsards expect,
+has only to advise his being sent to the army--"
+
+"If necessary, I will go myself," said the countess, "and see my
+cousin, de Casteran, the prefect. But until then, I tremble for that
+child--"
+
+The words were said at the end of the path close to the open space by
+the bridge. As they reached the edge of the bank the countess gave a
+cry; Michaud advanced to help her, thinking she had struck her foot
+against a stone; but he shuddered at the sight that met his eyes.
+
+Marie Tonsard and Bonnebault, seated below the bank, seemed to be
+conversing, but were no doubt hiding there to hear what passed.
+Evidently they had left the wood as the party advanced towards them.
+
+Bonnebault, a tall, wiry fellow, had lately returned to Conches after
+six years' service in the cavalry, with a permanent discharge due to
+his evil conduct,--his example being likely to ruin better men. He
+wore moustachios and a small chin-tuft; a peculiarity which, joined to
+his military carriage, made him the reigning fancy of all the girls in
+the valley. His hair, in common with that of other soldiers, was cut
+very short behind, but he frizzed it on the top of his head, brushing
+up the ends with a dandy air; on it his foraging cap was jauntily
+tilted to one side. Compared to the peasants, who were mostly in rags,
+like Mouche and Fourchon, he seemed gorgeous in his linen trousers,
+boots, and short waistcoat. These articles, bought at the time of his
+liberation, were, it is true, somewhat the worse for a life in the
+fields; but this village cock-of-the-walk had others in reserve for
+balls and holidays. He lived, it must be said, on the gifts of his
+female friends, which, liberal as they were, hardly sufficed for the
+libations, the dissipations, and the squanderings of all kinds which
+resulted from his intimacy with the Cafe de la Paix.
+
+Cowardice is like courage; of both there are various kinds. Bonnebault
+would have fought like a brave soldier, but he was weak in presence of
+his vices and his desires. Lazy as a lizard, that is to say, active
+only when it suited him, without the slightest decency, arrogant and
+base, able for much but neglectful of all, the sole pleasure of this
+"breaker of hearts and plates," to use a barrack term, was to do evil
+or inflict damage. Such a nature does as much harm in rural
+communities as it does in a regiment. Bonnebault, like Tonsard and
+like Fourchon, desired to live well and do nothing; and he had his
+plans laid. Making the most of his gallant appearance with increasing
+success, and of his talents for billiards with alternate loss and
+gain, he flattered himself that the day would come when he could marry
+Mademoiselle Aglae Socquard, only daughter of the proprietor of the
+Cafe de la Paix, a resort which was to Soulanges what, relatively
+speaking, Ranelagh is to the Bois de Boulogne. To get into the
+business of tavern-keeping, to manage the public balls, what a fine
+career for the marshal's baton of a ne'er-do-well! These morals, this
+life, this nature, were so plainly stamped upon the face of the
+low-lived profligate that the countess was betrayed into an exclamation
+when she beheld the pair, for they gave her the sensation of beholding
+snakes.
+
+Marie, desperately in love with Bonnebault, would have robbed for his
+benefit. Those moustachios, the swaggering gait of a trooper, the
+fellow's smart clothes, all went to her heart as the manners and
+charms of a de Marsay touch that of a pretty Parisian. Each social
+sphere has its own standard of distinction. The jealous Marie rebuffed
+Amaury Lupin, the other dandy of the little town, her mind being made
+up to become Madame Bonnebault.
+
+"Hey! you there, hi! come on!" cried Nicolas and Catherine from afar,
+catching sight of Marie and Bonnebault.
+
+The sharp call echoed through the woods like the cry of savages.
+
+Seeing the pair at his feet, Michaud shuddered and deeply repented
+having spoken. If Bonnebault and Marie Tonsard had overheard the
+conversation, nothing but harm could come of it. This event,
+insignificant as it seems, was destined, in the irritated state of
+feeling then existing between Les Aigues and the peasantry, to have a
+decisive influence on the fate of all,--just as victory or defeat in
+battle sometimes depends upon a brook which shepherds jump while
+cannon are unable to pass it.
+
+Gallantly bowing to the countess, Bonnebault passed Marie's arm
+through his own with a conquering air and took himself off
+triumphantly.
+
+"The King of Hearts of the valley," muttered Michaud to the countess.
+"A dangerous man. When he loses twenty francs at billiards he would
+murder Rigou to get them back. He loves a crime as he does a
+pleasure."
+
+"I have seen enough for to-day; take me home, gentlemen," murmured the
+countess, putting her hand on Emile's arm.
+
+She bowed sadly to Madame Michaud, after watching La Pechina safely
+back to the pavilion. Olympe's depression was transferred to her
+mistress.
+
+"Ah, madame," said the abbe, as they continued their way, "can it be
+that the difficulty of doing good is about to deter you? For the last
+five years I have slept on a pallet in a parsonage which has no
+furniture; I say mass in a church without believers; I preach to no
+hearers; I minister without fees or salary; I live on the six hundred
+francs the law allows me, asking nothing of my bishop, and I give the
+third of that in charity. Still, I am not hopeless. If you knew what
+my winters are in this place you would understand the strength of
+those words,--I am not hopeless. I keep myself warm with the belief
+that we can save this valley and bring it back to God. No matter for
+ourselves, madame; think of the future! If it is our duty to say to
+the poor, 'Learn how to be poor; that is, how to work, to endure, to
+strive,' it is equally our duty to say to the rich, 'Learn your duty
+as prosperous men,'--that is to say, 'Be wise, be intelligent in your
+benevolence; pious and virtuous in the place to which God has called
+you.' Ah! madame, you are only the steward of Him who grants you
+wealth; if you do not obey His behests you will never transmit to your
+children the prosperity He gives you. You will rob your posterity. If
+you follow in the steps of that poor singer's selfishness, which
+caused the evils that now terrify us, you will bring back the
+scaffolds on which your fathers died for the faults of their fathers.
+To do good humbly, in obscurity, in country solitudes, as Rigou now
+does evil,--ah! that indeed is prayer in action and dear to God. If in
+every district three souls only would work for good, France, our
+country, might be saved from the abyss that yawns; into which we are
+rushing headlong, through spiritual indifference to all that is not
+our own self-interest. Change! you must change your morals, change
+your ethics, and that will change your laws."
+
+Though deeply moved as she listened to this grand utterance of true
+catholic charity, the countess answered in the fatal words, "We will
+consider it,"--words of the rich, which contain that promise to the
+ear which saves their purses and enables them to stand with arms
+crossed in presence of all disaster, under pretext that they were
+powerless.
+
+Hearing those words, the abbe bowed to Madame de Montcornet and turned
+off into a path which led him direct to the gate of Blangy.
+
+"Belshazzar's feast is the everlasting symbol of the dying days of a
+caste, of an oligarchy, of a power!" he thought as he walked away. "My
+God! if it be Thy will to loose the poor like a torrent to reform
+society, I know, I comprehend, why it is that Thou hast abandoned the
+wealthy to their blindness!"
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XII
+
+         SHOWETH HOW THE TAVERN IS THE PEOPLE'S PARLIAMENT
+
+Old Mother Tonsard's screams brought a number of people from Blangy to
+know what was happening at the Grand-I-Vert, the distance from the
+village to the inn not being greater than that from the inn to the
+gate of Blangy. One of these inquiring visitors was old Niseron, La
+Pechina's grandfather, who was on his way, after ringing the second
+Angelus, to dig the vine-rows in his last little bit of ground.
+
+Bent by toil, with pallid face and silvery hair, the old vinedresser,
+now the sole representative of civic virtue in the community, had
+been, during the Revolution, president of the Jacobin club at
+Ville-aux-Fayes, and a juror in the revolutionary tribunal of the
+district. Jean-Francois Niseron, carved out of the wood that the
+apostles were made of, was of the type of Saint Peter; whom painters
+and sculptors have united in representing with the square brow of the
+people, the thick, naturally curling hair of the laborer, the muscles
+of the man of toil, the complexion of a fisherman; with the large nose,
+the shrewd, half-mocking lips that scoff at fate, the neck and
+shoulders of the strong man who cuts his wood to cook his dinner while
+the doctrinaires of his opinions talk.
+
+Such, at forty years of age on the breaking out of the Revolution, was
+this man, strong as iron, pure as gold. Advocate of the people, he
+believed in a republic through the very roll of that name, more
+formidable in sound perhaps than in reality. He believed in the
+republic of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the brotherhood of man, in the
+exchange of noble sentiments, in the proclamation of virtue, in the
+choice of merit without intrigue,--in short, in all that the narrow
+limits of one arrondissement like Sparta made possible, and which the
+vast proportions of an empire make chimerical. He signed his beliefs
+with his blood,--his only son went to war; he did more, he signed them
+with the prosperity of his life,--last sacrifice of self. Nephew and
+sole heir of the curate of Blangy, the then all-powerful tribune might
+have enforced his rights and recovered the property left by the priest
+to his pretty servant-girl, Arsene; but he respected his uncle's
+wishes and accepted poverty, which came upon him as rapidly as the
+fall of his cherished republic came upon France.
+
+Never a farthing's worth, never so much as the branch of a tree
+belonging to another passed into the hands of this notable republican,
+who would have made the republic acceptable to the world if he and
+such as he could have guided it. He refused to buy the national
+domains; he denied the right of the Republic to confiscate property.
+In reply to all demands of the committee of public safety he asserted
+that the virtue of citizens would do for their sacred country what low
+political intriguers did for money. This patriot of antiquity publicly
+reproved Gaubertin's father for his secret treachery, his underhand
+bargaining, his malversations. He reprimanded the virtuous Mouchon,
+that representative of the people whose virtue was nothing more nor
+less than incapacity,--as it is with so many other legislators who,
+gorged with the greatest political resources that any nation ever
+gave, armed with the whole force of a people, are still unable to
+bring forth from them the grandeur which Richelieu wrung for France
+out of the weakness of a king. Consequently, citizen Niseron became a
+living reproach to the people about him. They endeavored to put him
+out of sight and mind with the reproachful remark, "Nothing satisfies
+that man."
+
+The patriot peasant returned to his cot at Blangy and watched the
+destruction, one by one, of his illusions; he saw his republic come to
+an end at the heels of an emperor, while he himself fell into utter
+poverty, to which Rigou stealthily managed to reduce him. And why?
+Because Niseron had never been willing to accept anything from him.
+Reiterated refusals showed the ex-priest in what profound contempt the
+nephew of the curate held him; and now that icy scorn was revenged by
+the terrible threat as to his little granddaughter, about which the
+Abbe Brossette spoke to the countess.
+
+The old man had composed in his own mind a history of the French
+republic, filled with the glorious features which gave immortality to
+that heroic period to the exclusion of all else. The infamous deeds,
+the massacres, the spoliations, his virtuous soul ignored; he admired,
+with a single mind, the devotedness of the people, the "Vengeur," the
+gifts to the nation, the uprising of the country to defend its
+frontier; and he still pursued his dream that he might sleep in peace.
+
+The Revolution produced many poets like old Niseron, who sang their
+poems in the country solitudes, in the army, openly or secretly, by
+deeds buried beneath the whirlwind of that storm, just as the wounded
+left behind to die in the great wars of the empire cried out, "Long
+live the Emperor!" This sublimity of soul belongs especially to
+France. The Abbe Brossette respected the convictions of the old man,
+who became simply but deeply attached to the priest from hearing him
+say, "The true republic is in the Gospel." The stanch republican
+carried the cross, and wore the sexton's robe, half-red, half-black,
+and was grave and dignified in church,--supporting himself by the
+triple functions with which he was invested by the abbe, who was able
+to give the fine old man, not, to be sure, enough to live on, but
+enough to keep him from dying of hunger.
+
+Niseron, the Aristides of Blangy, spoke little, like all noble dupes
+who wrap themselves in the mantle of resignation; but he was never
+silent against evil, and the peasants feared him as thieves fear the
+police. He seldom came more than six times a year to the Grand-I-Vert,
+though he was always warmly welcomed there. The old man cursed the
+want of charity of the rich,--their selfishness disgusted him; and
+through this fiber of his mind he seemed to the peasants to belong to
+them; they were in the habit of saying, "Pere Niseron doesn't like the
+rich; he's one of us."
+
+The civic crown won by this noble life throughout the valley lay in
+these words: "That good old Niseron! there's not a more honest man."
+Often taken as umpire in certain kinds of disputes, he embodied the
+meaning of that archaic term,--the village elder. Always extremely
+clean, though threadbare, he wore breeches, coarse woollen stockings,
+hob-nailed shoes, the distinctively French coat with large buttons and
+the broad-brimmed felt hat to which all old peasants cling; but for
+daily wear he kept a blue jacket so patched and darned that it looked
+like a bit of tapestry. The pride of a man who feels he is free, and
+knows he is worthy of freedom, gave to his countenance and his whole
+bearing a _something_ that was inexpressibly noble; you would have felt
+he wore a robe, not rags.
+
+"Hey! what's happening so unusual?" he said, "I heard the noise down
+here from the belfry."
+
+They told him of Vatel's attack on the old woman, talking all at once
+after the fashion of country-people.
+
+"If she didn't cut the tree, Vatel was wrong; but if she did cut it,
+you have done two bad actions," said Pere Niseron.
+
+"Take some wine," said Tonsard, offering a full glass to the old man.
+
+"Shall we start?" said Vermichel to the sheriff's officer.
+
+"Yes," replied Brunet, "we must do without Pere Fourchon and take the
+assistant at Conches. Go on before me; I have a paper to carry to the
+chateau. Rigou has gained his second suit, and I've got to deliver the
+verdict."
+
+So saying, Monsieur Brunet, all the livelier for a couple of glasses
+of brandy, mounted his gray mare after saying good-bye to Pere
+Niseron; for the whole valley were desirous in their hearts of the
+good man's esteem.
+
+No science, not even that of statistics, can explain the rapidity with
+which news flies in the country, nor how it spreads over those
+ignorant and untaught regions which are, in France, a standing
+reproach to the government and to capitalists. Contemporaneous history
+can show that a famous banker, after driving post-horses to death
+between Waterloo and Paris (everybody knows why--he gained what the
+Emperor had lost, a commission!) carried the fatal news only three
+hours in advance of rumor. So, not an hour after the encounter between
+old mother Tonsard and Vatel, a number of the customers of the
+Grand-I-Vert assembled there to hear the tale.
+
+The first to come was Courtecuisse, in whom you would scarcely have
+recognized the once jovial forester, the rubicund do-nothing, whose
+wife made his morning coffee as we have before seen. Aged, and thin,
+and haggard, he presented to all eyes a lesson that no one learned.
+"He tried to climb higher than the ladder," was what his neighbors
+said when others pitied him and blamed Rigou. "He wanted to be a
+bourgeois himself."
+
+In fact, Courtecuisse did intend to pass for a bourgeois in buying the
+Bachelerie, and he even boasted of it; though his wife went about the
+roads gathering up the horse-droppings. She and Courtecuisse got up
+before daylight, dug their garden, which was richly manured, and
+obtained several yearly crops from it, without being able to do more
+than pay the interest due to Rigou for the rest of the purchase-money.
+Their daughter, who was living at service in Auxerre, sent them her
+wages; but in spite of all their efforts, in spite of this help, the
+last day for the final payment was approaching, and not a penny in
+hand with which to meet it. Madame Courtecuisse, who in former times
+occasionally allowed herself a bottle of boiled wine or a bit of roast
+meat, now drank nothing but water. Courtecuisse was afraid to go to
+the Grand-I-Vert lest he should have to leave three sous behind him.
+Deprived of power, he had lost his privilege of free drinks, and he
+bitterly complained, like all other fools, of man's ingratitude. In
+short, he found, according to the experience of all peasants bitten
+with the demon of proprietorship, that toil had increased and food
+decreased.
+
+"Courtecuisse has done too much to the property," the people said,
+secretly envying his position. "He ought to have waited till he had
+paid the money down and was master before he put up those fruit
+palings."
+
+With the help of his wife he had managed to manure and cultivate the
+three acres of land sold to him by Rigou, together with the garden
+adjoining the house, which was beginning to be productive; and he was
+in danger of being turned out of it all. Clothed in rags like
+Fourchon, poor Courtecuisse, who lately wore the boots and gaiters of
+a huntsman, now thrust his feet into sabots and accused "the rich" of
+Les Aigues of having caused his destitution. These wearing anxieties
+had given to the fat little man and his once smiling and rosy face a
+gloomy and dazed expression, as though he were ill from the effects of
+poison or with some chronic malady.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Monsieur Courtecuisse; is your tongue
+tied?" asked Tonsard, as the man continued silent after he had told
+him about the battle which had just taken place.
+
+"No, no!" cried Madame Tonsard; "he needn't complain of the midwife
+who cut his string,--she made a good job of it."
+
+"It is enough to make a man dumb, thinking from morning till night of
+some way to escape Rigou," said the premature old man, gloomily.
+
+"Bah!" said old Mother Tonsard, "you've got a pretty daughter,
+seventeen years old. If she's a good girl you can easily manage
+matters with that old jail bird--"
+
+"We sent her to Auxerre two years ago to Madame Mariotte the elder, to
+keep her out of harm's way; I'd rather die than--"
+
+"What a fool you are!" said Tonsard, "look at my girls,--are they any
+the worse? He who dares to say they are not as virtuous as marble
+images will have to do with my gun."
+
+"It'll be hard to have to come to that," said Courtecuisse, shaking
+his head. "I'd rather earn the money by shooting one of those
+Arminacs."
+
+"Well, I call it better for a girl to save a father than to wrap up
+her virtue and let it mildew," retorted the innkeeper.
+
+Tonsard felt a sharp tap on his shoulder, delivered by Pere Niseron.
+
+"That is not a right thing to say!" cried the old man. "A father is
+the guardian of the honor of his family. It is by behaving as you do
+that scorn and contempt are brought upon us; it is because of such
+conduct that the People are accused of being unfit for liberty. The
+People should set an example of civic virtue and honor to the rich.
+You all sell yourselves to Rigou for gold; and if you don't sell him
+your daughters, at any rate you sell him your honor,--and it's wrong."
+
+"Just see what a position Courtecuisse is in," said Tonsard.
+
+"See what a position I am in," replied Pere Niseron; "but I sleep in
+peace; there are no thorns in my pillow."
+
+"Let him talk, Tonsard," whispered his wife, "you know they're just
+_his notions_, poor dear man."
+
+Bonnebault and Marie, Catherine and her brother came in at this moment
+in a state of exasperation, which had begun with Nicolas's failure,
+and was raised to the highest pitch by Michaud's advice to the
+countess about Bonnebault. As Nicolas entered the tavern he was
+uttering frightful threats against the Michaud family and Les Aigues.
+
+"The harvest's coming; well, I vow I'll not go before I've lighted my
+pipe at their wheat-stacks," he cried, striking his fist on the table
+as he sat down.
+
+"Mustn't yelp like that before people," said Godain, showing him Pere
+Niseron.
+
+"If the old fellow tells, I'll wring his neck," said Catherine. "He's
+had his day, that old peddler of foolish reasons! They call him
+virtuous; it's his temperament that keeps him so, that's all."
+
+Strange and noteworthy sight!--that of those lifted heads, that group
+of persons gathered in the reeking hovel, while old Mother Tonsard
+stood sentinel at the door as security for the secret words of the
+drinkers.
+
+Of all those faces, that of Godain, Catherine's suitor, was perhaps
+the most alarming, though the least pronounced. Godain,--a miser
+without money,--the cruelest of misers, for he who seeks money surely
+takes precedence of him who hoards it, one turning his eagerness
+within himself, the other looking outside with terrible intentness,
+--Godain represented the type of the majority of peasant faces.
+
+He was a journeyman, small in frame, and saved from the draft by not
+attaining the required military height; naturally lean and made more
+so by hard work and the enforced sobriety under which reluctant
+workers like Courtecuisse succumb. His face was no bigger than a man's
+fist, and was lighted by a pair of yellow eyes with greenish strips
+and brown spots, in which a thirst for the possession of property was
+mingled with a concupiscence which had no heat,--for desire, once at
+the boiling-point, had now stiffened like lava. His skin, brown as
+that of a mummy, was glued to his temples. His scanty beard bristled
+among his wrinkles like stubble in the furrows. Godain never
+perspired, he reabsorbed his substance. His hairy hands, formed like
+claws, nervous, never still, seemed to be made of old wood. Though
+scarcely twenty-seven years of age, white lines were beginning to show
+in his rusty black hair. He wore a blouse, through the breast opening
+of which could be seen a shirt of coarse linen, so black that he must
+have worn it a month and washed it himself in the Thune. His sabots
+were mended with old iron. The original stuff of his trousers was
+unrecognizable from the darns and the infinite number of patches. On
+his head was a horrible cap, evidently cast off and picked up in the
+doorway of some bourgeois house in Ville-aux-Fayes.
+
+Clear-sighted enough to estimate the elements of good fortune that
+centred in Catherine Tonsard, his ambition was to succeed her father
+at the Grand-I-Vert. He made use of all his craftiness and all his
+actual powers to capture her; he promised her wealth, he also promised
+her the license her mother had enjoyed; besides this, he offered his
+prospective father-in-law an enormous rental, five hundred francs a
+year, for his inn, until he could buy him out, trusting to an
+agreement he had made with Monsieur Brunet to pay these costs by notes
+on stamped paper. By trade a journeyman tool-maker, this gnome worked
+for the wheelwrights when work was plentiful, but he also hired
+himself out for any extra labor which was well paid. Though he
+possessed, unknown to the whole neighborhood, eighteen hundred francs
+now in Gaubertin's hands, he lived like a beggar, slept in a barn, and
+gleaned at the harvests. He wore Gaubertin's receipt for his money
+sewn into the waist-belt of his trousers,--having it renewed every
+year with its own added interest and the amount of his savings.
+
+"Hey! what do I care," cried Nicolas, replying to Godain's prudent
+advice not to talk before Niseron. "If I'm doomed to be a soldier I'd
+rather the sawdust of the basket sucked up my blood than have it
+dribbled out drop by drop in the battles. I'll deliver this country of
+at least one of those Arminacs that the devil has launched upon us."
+
+And he related what he called Michaud's plot against him, which Marie
+and Bonnebault had overheard.
+
+"Where do you expect France to find soldiers?" said the white-haired
+old man, rising and standing before Nicolas during the silence which
+followed the utterance of this threat.
+
+"We serve our time and come home again," remarked Bonnebault, twirling
+his moustache.
+
+Observing that all the worst characters of the neighborhood were
+collecting, Pere Niseron shook his head and left the tavern, after
+offering a farthing to Madame Tonsard in payment for his glass of
+wine. When the worthy man had gone down the steps a movement of relief
+and satisfaction passed through the assembled drinkers which would
+have told whoever watched them that each man in that company felt he
+was rid of the living image of his own conscience.
+
+"Well, what do you say to all that, hey, Courtecuisse?" asked
+Vaudoyer, who had just come in, and to whom Tonsard had related
+Vatel's attempt.
+
+Courtecuisse clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and set
+his glass on the table.
+
+"Vatel put himself in the wrong," he said. "If I were Mother Tonsard,
+I'd give myself a few wounds and go to bed and say I was ill, and have
+that Shopman and his keeper up before the assizes and get twenty
+crowns damages. Monsieur Sarcus would give them."
+
+"In any case the Shopman would give them to stop the talk it would
+make," said Godain.
+
+Vaudoyer, the former field-keeper, a man five feet six inches tall,
+with a face pitted with the small-pox and furrowed like a nut-cracker,
+kept silence with a hesitating air.
+
+"Well, you old ninny, does that ruffle you?" asked Tonsard, attracted
+by the idea of damages. "If they had broken twenty crowns' worth of my
+mother's bones we could turn it into good account; we might make a
+fine fuss for three hundred francs; Monsieur Gourdon would go to Les
+Aigues and tell them that the mother had got a broken hip--"
+
+"And break it, too," interrupted Madame Tonsard; "they do that in
+Paris."
+
+"It would cost too much," remarked Godain.
+
+"I have been too long among the people who rule us to believe that
+matters will go as you want them," said Vaudoyer at last, remembering
+his past official intercourse with the courts and the gendarmerie. "If
+it were at Soulanges, now, it might be done; Monsieur Soudry
+represents the government there, and he doesn't wish well to the
+Shopman; but if you attack the Shopman and Vatel they'll defend
+themselves viciously; they'll say, 'The woman was to blame; she had a
+tree, otherwise she would have let her bundle be examined on the
+highroad; she wouldn't have run away; if an accident happened to her
+it was through her own fault.' No, you can't trust to that plan."
+
+"The Shopman didn't resist when I sued him," said Courtecuisse; "he
+paid me at once."
+
+"I'll go to Soulanges, if you like," said Bonnebault, "and consult
+Monsieur Gourdon, the clerk of the court, and you shall know to-night
+if _there's money in it_."
+
+"You are only making an excuse to be after that big goose of a girl,
+Socquard's daughter," said Marie Tonsard, giving Bonnebault a slap on
+the shoulder that made his lungs hum.
+
+Just then a verse of an old Burgundian Christmas carol was heard:--
+
+  "One fine moment of his life
+  Was at the wedding feast;
+  He changed the water into wine,--
+  Madeira of the best."
+
+Every one recognized the vinous voice of old Fourchon, to whom the
+verse must have been peculiarly agreeable; Mouche accompanied in his
+treble tones.
+
+"Ha! they're full!" cried old Mother Tonsard to her daughter-in-law;
+"your father is as red as a grid-iron, and that chip o' the block as
+pink as vine-shoot."
+
+"Your healths!" cried the old man, "and a fine lot of scoundrels you
+are! All hail!" he said to his granddaughter, whom he spied kissing
+Bonnebault, "hail, Marie, full of vice! Satan is with three; cursed
+art thou among women, etcetera. All hail, the company present! you are
+done for, every one of you! you may just say good-bye to your sheaves.
+I being news. I always told you the rich would crush us; well now, the
+Shopman is going to have the law of you! Ha! see what it is to
+struggle against those bourgeois fellows, who have made so many laws
+since they got into power that they've a law to enforce every trick
+they play--"
+
+A violent hiccough gave a sudden turn to the ideas of the
+distinguished orator.
+
+"If Vermichel were only here I'd blow in his gullet, and he'd get an
+idea of sherry wine. Hey! what a wine it is! If I wasn't a Burgundian
+I'd be a Spaniard! It's God's own wine! the pope says mass with it
+-- Hey! I'm young again! Say, Courtecuisse! if your wife were only here
+we'd be young together. Don't tell me! Spanish wine is worth a dozen
+of boiled wine. Let's have a revolution if it's only to empty the
+cellars!"
+
+"But what's your news, papa?" said Tonsard.
+
+"There'll be no harvest for you; the Shopman has given orders to stop
+the gleaning."
+
+"Stop the gleaning!" cried the whole tavern, with one voice, in which
+the shrill tones of the four women predominated.
+
+"Yes," said Mouche, "he is going to issue an order, and Groison is to
+take it round, and post it up all over the canton. No one is to glean
+except those who have pauper certificates."
+
+"And what's more," said Fourchon, "the folks from the other districts
+won't be allowed here at all."
+
+"What's that?" cried Bonnebault, "do you mean to tell me that neither
+my grandmother nor I, nor your mother, Godain, can come here and
+glean? Here's tomfoolery for you; a pretty show of authority! Why, the
+fellow is a devil let loose from hell,--that scoundrel of a mayor!"
+
+"Shall you glean whether or no, Godain?" said Tonsard to the
+journeyman wheelwright, who was saying a few words to Catherine.
+
+"I? I've no property; I'm a pauper," he replied; "I shall ask for a
+certificate."
+
+"What did they give my father for his otter, bibi?" said Madame
+Tonsard to Mouche.
+
+Though nearly at his last gasp from an over-taxed digestion and two
+bottles of wine, Mouche, sitting on Madame Tonsard's lap, laid his
+head on his aunt's neck and whispered slyly in her ear:--
+
+"I don't know, but he has got gold. If you'll feed me high for a
+month, perhaps I can find out his hiding-place; he has one, I know
+that."
+
+"Father's got gold!" whispered La Tonsard to her husband, whose voice
+was loudest in the uproar of the excited discussion, in which all
+present took part.
+
+"Hush! here's Groison," cried the old sentinel.
+
+Perfect silence reigned in the tavern. When Groison had got to a safe
+distance, Mother Tonsard made a sign, and the discussion began again
+on the question as to whether they should persist in gleaning, as
+before, without a certificate.
+
+"You'll have to give in," said Pere Fourchon; "for the Shopman has
+gone to see the prefect and get troops to enforce the order. They'll
+shoot you like dogs,--and that's what we are!" cried the old man,
+trying to conquer the thickening of his speech produced by his
+potations of sherry.
+
+This fresh announcement, absurd as it was, made all the drinkers
+thoughtful; they really believed the government capable of
+slaughtering them without pity.
+
+"I remember just such troubles near Toulouse, when I was stationed
+there," said Bonnebault. "We were marched out, and the peasants were
+cut and slashed and arrested. Everybody laughed to see them try to
+resist cavalry. Ten were sent to the galleys, and eleven put in
+prison; the whole thing was crushed. Hey! what? why, soldiers are
+soldiers, and you are nothing but civilian beggars; they've a right,
+they think, to sabre peasants, the devil take you!"
+
+"Well, well," said Tonsard, "what is there in all that to frighten you
+like kids? What can they get out of my mother and daughters? Put 'em
+in prison? well, then they must feed them; and the Shopman can't
+imprison the whole country. Besides, prisoners are better fed at the
+king's expense than they are at their own; and they're kept warmer,
+too."
+
+"You are a pack of fools!" roared Fourchon. "Better gnaw at the
+bourgeois than attack him in front; otherwise, you'll get your backs
+broke. If you like the galleys, so be it,--that's another thing! You
+don't work as hard there as you do in the fields, true enough; but you
+don't have your liberty."
+
+"Perhaps it would be well," said Vaudoyer, who was among the more
+valiant in counsel, "if some of us risked our skins to deliver the
+neighborhood of that Languedoc fellow who has planted himself at the
+gate of the Avonne."
+
+"Do Michaud's business for him?" said Nicolas; "I'm good for that."
+
+"Things are not ripe for it," said old Fourchon. "We should risk too
+much, my children. The best way is to make ourselves look miserable
+and cry famine; then the Shopman and his wife will want to help us,
+and you'll get more out of them that way than you will by gleaning."
+
+"You are all blind moles," shouted Tonsard, "let 'em pick a quarrel
+with their law and their troops, they can't put the whole country in
+irons, and we've plenty of friends at Ville-aux-Fayes and among the
+old lords who'll sustain us."
+
+"That's true," said Courtecuisse; "none of the other land-owners
+complain, it is only the Shopman; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur
+de Ronquerolles and others, they are satisfied. When I think that if
+that cuirassier had only had the courage to let himself be killed like
+the rest I should still be happy at the gate of the Avonne, and that
+it was he that turned my life topsy-turvy, it just puts me beside
+myself."
+
+"They won't call out the troops for a Shopman who has set every one in
+the district against him," said Godain. "The fault's his own; he tried
+to ride over everybody here, and upset everything; and the government
+will just say to him, 'Hush up.'"
+
+"The government never says anything else; it can't, poor government!"
+said Fourchon, seized with a sudden tenderness for the government.
+"Yes, I pity it, that good government; it is very unlucky,--it hasn't
+a penny, like us; but that's very stupid of a government that makes
+the money itself, very stupid! Ah! if I were the government--"
+
+"But," cried Courtecuisse, "they tell me in Ville-aux-Fayes that
+Monsieur de Ronquerolles talked about our rights in the Assembly."
+
+"That's in Monsieur Rigou's newspaper," said Vaudoyer, who in his
+capacity of ex-field-keeper knew how to read and write; "I read it--"
+
+In spite of his vinous tenderness, old Fourchon, like many of the
+lower classes whose faculties are stimulated by drunkenness, was
+following, with an intelligent eye and a keen ear, this curious
+discussion which a variety of asides rendered still more curious.
+Suddenly, he stood up in the middle of the room.
+
+"Listen to the old one, he's drunk!" said Tonsard, "and when he is, he
+is twice as full of deviltry; he has his own and that of the wine--"
+
+"Spanish wine, and that trebles it!" cried Fourchon, laughing like a
+satyr. "My sons, don't butt your head straight at the thing,--you're
+too weak; go at it sideways. Lay low, play dead; the little woman is
+scared. I tell you, the thing'll come to an end before long; she'll
+leave the place, and if she does the Shopman will follow her, for
+she's his passion. That's your plan. Only, to make 'em go faster, my
+advice is to get rid of their counsellor, their support, our spy, our
+ape--"
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"The damned abbe, of course," said Tonsard; "that hunter after sins,
+who thinks the host is food enough for us."
+
+"That's true," cried Vaudoyer; "we were happy enough till he came. We
+ought to get rid of that eater of the good God,--he's the real enemy."
+
+"Finikin," added Fourchon, using a nickname which the abbe owed to his
+prim and rather puny appearance, "might be led into temptation and
+fall into the power of some sly girl, for he fasts so much. Then if we
+could catch him in the act and drum him up with a good charivari, the
+bishop would be obliged to send him elsewhere. It would please old
+Rigou devilish well. Now if your daughter, Courtecuisse, would leave
+Auxerre--she's a pretty girl, and if she'd take to piety, she might
+save us all. Hey! ran tan plan!--"
+
+"Why don't _you_ do it?" said Godain to Catherine, in a low voice;
+"there'd be scuttles full of money to hush up the talk; and for the
+time being you'd be mistress here--"
+
+"Shall we glean, or shall we not glean? that's the point," said
+Bonnebault. "I don't care two straws for your abbe, not I; I belong to
+Conches, where we haven't a black-coat to poke up our consciences."
+
+"Look here," said Vaudoyer, "we had better go and ask Rigou, who knows
+the law, whether the Shopman can forbid gleaning, and he'll tell us if
+we've got the right of it. If the Shopman has the law on his side,
+well, then we must do as the old one says,--see about taking things
+sideways."
+
+"Blood will be spilt," said Nicolas, darkly, as he rose after drinking
+a whole bottle of wine, which Catherine drew for him in order to keep
+him silent. "If you'd only listen to me you'd down Michaud; but you
+are miserable weaklings,--nothing but poor trash!"
+
+"I'm not," said Bonnebault. "If you are all safe friends who'll keep
+your tongues between your teeth, I'll aim at the Shopman-- Hey! how
+I'd like to put a plum through his bottle; wouldn't it avenge me on
+those cursed officers?"
+
+"Tut! tut!" cried Jean-Louis Tonsard, who was supposed to be, more or
+less, Gaubertin's son, and who had just entered the tavern. This
+fellow, who was courting Rigou's pretty servant-girl, had succeeded
+his nominal father as clipper of hedges and shrubberies and other
+Tonsardial occupations. Going about among the well-to-do houses, he
+talked with masters and servants and picked up ideas which made him
+the man of the world of the family, the shrewd head. We shall
+presently see that in making love to Rigou's servant-girl, Jean-Louis
+deserved his reputation for shrewdness.
+
+"Well, what have you to say, prophet?" said the innkeeper to his son.
+
+"I say that you are playing into the hands of the rich folk," replied
+Jean-Louis. "Frighten the Aigues people to maintain your rights if you
+choose; but if you drive them out of the place and make them sell the
+estate, you are doing just what the bourgeois of the valley want, and
+it's against your own interest. If you help the bourgeois to divide
+the great estates among them, where's the national domain to be bought
+for nothing at the next Revolution? Wait till then, and you'll get
+your land without paying for it, as Rigou got his; whereas if you go
+and thrust this estate into the jaws of the rich folk of the valley,
+the rich folk will dribble it back to you impoverished and at twice
+the price they paid for it. You are working for their interests, I
+tell you; so does everybody who works for Rigou,--look at
+Courtecuisse."
+
+The policy contained in this allocution was too deep for the drunken
+heads of those present, who were all, except Courtecuisse, laying by
+their money to buy a slice of the Aigues cake. So they let Jean-Louis
+harangue, and continued, as in the Chamber of Deputies, their private
+confabs with one another.
+
+"Yes, that's so; you'll be Rigou's cats-paw!" cried Fourchon, who
+alone understood his grandson.
+
+Just then Langlume, the miller of Les Aigues, passed the tavern.
+Madame Tonsard hailed him.
+
+"Is it true," she said, "that gleaning is to be forbidden?"
+
+Langlume, a jovial white man, white with flour and dressed in
+grayish-white clothes, came up the steps and looked in. Instantly
+all the peasants became as sober as judges.
+
+"Well, my children, I am forced to answer yes, and no. None but the
+poor are to glean; but the measures they are going to take will turn
+out to your advantage."
+
+"How so?" asked Godain.
+
+"Why, they can prevent any but paupers from gleaning here," said the
+miller, winking in true Norman fashion; "but that doesn't prevent you
+from gleaning elsewhere,--unless all the mayors do as the Blangy mayor
+is doing."
+
+"Then it is true," said Tonsard, in a threatening voice.
+
+"As for me," said Bonnebault, putting his foraging-cap over one ear
+and making his hazel stick whiz in the air, "I'm off to Conches to
+warn the friends."
+
+And the Lovelace of the valley departed, whistling the tune of the
+martial song,--
+
+  "You who know the hussars of the Guard,
+  Don't you know the trombone of the regiment?"
+
+"I say, Marie! he's going a queer way to get to Conches, that friend
+of yours," cried old Mother Tonsard to her granddaughter.
+
+"He's after Aglae!" said Marie, who made one bound to the door. "I'll
+have to thrash her once for all, that baggage!" she cried, viciously.
+
+"Come, Vaudoyer," said Tonsard, "go and see Rigou, and then we shall
+know what to do; he's our oracle, and his spittle doesn't cost
+anything."
+
+"Another folly!" said Jean-Louis, in a low voice, "Rigou betrays
+everybody; Annette tells me so; she says he's more dangerous when he
+listens to you than other folks are when they bluster."
+
+"I advise you to be cautious," said Langlume. "The general has gone to
+the prefecture about your misdeeds, and Sibilet tells me he has sworn
+an oath to go to Paris and see the Chancellor of France and the King
+himself, and the whole pack of them if necessary, to get the better of
+his peasantry."
+
+"His peasantry!" shouted every one.
+
+"Ha, ha! so we don't belong to ourselves any longer?"
+
+As Tonsard asked the question, Vaudoyer left the house to see Rigou.
+
+Langlume, who had already gone out, turned on the door-step, and
+answered:--
+
+"Crowd of do-nothings! are you so rich that you think you are your own
+masters?"
+
+Though said with a laugh, the meaning contained in those words was
+understood by all present, as horses understand the cut of a whip.
+
+"Ran tan plan! masters indeed!" shouted old Fourchon. "I say, my lad,"
+he added to Nicolas, "after your performance this morning it's not my
+clarionet that you'll get between your thumb and four fingers!"
+
+"Don't plague him, or he'll make you throw up your wine by a punch in
+the stomach," said Catherine, roughly.
+
+
+
+                            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
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sons of the Soil, by Honore de Balzac
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diff --git a/old/old/200510041417.zip b/old/old/200510041417.zip
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac
+#29 in our series
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+Sons of the Soil
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+by Honore de Balzac
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
+and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+
+
+
+
+
+SONS OF THE SOIL
+
+BY
+
+HONORE DE BALZAC
+
+
+
+Translated By
+Katharine Prescott Wormeley
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+  To Monsieur P. S. B. Gavault.
+
+  Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote these words at the beginning of his
+  Nouvelle Heloise: "I have seen the morals of my time and I publish
+  these letters." May I not say to you, in imitation of that great
+  writer, "I have studied the march of my epoch and I publish this
+  work"?
+
+  The object of this particular study--startling in its truth so
+  long as society makes philanthropy a principle instead of
+  regarding it as an accident--is to bring to sight the leading
+  characters of a class too long unheeded by the pens of writers who
+  seek novelty as their chief object. Perhaps this forgetfulness is
+  only prudence in these days when the people are heirs of all the
+  sycophants of royalty. We make criminals poetic, we commiserate
+  the hangman, we have all but deified the proletary. Sects have
+  risen, and cried by every pen, "Arise, working-men!" just as
+  formerly they cried, "Arise!" to the "tiers etat." None of these
+  Erostrates, however, have dared to face the country solitudes and
+  study the unceasing conspiracy of those whom we term weak against
+  those others who fancy themselves strong,--that of the peasant
+  against the proprietor. It is necessary to enlighten not only the
+  legislator of to-day but him of to-morrow. In the midst of the
+  present democratic ferment, into which so many of our writers
+  blindly rush, it becomes an urgent duty to exhibit the peasant who
+  renders Law inapplicable, and who has made the ownership of land
+  to be a thing that is, and that is not.
+
+  You are now to behold that indefatigable mole, that rodent which
+  undermines and disintegrates the soil, parcels it out and divides
+  an acre into a hundred fragments,--ever spurred on to his banquet
+  by the lower middle classes who make him at once their auxiliary
+  and their prey. This essentially unsocial element, created by the
+  Revolution, will some day absorb the middle classes, just as the
+  middle classes have destroyed the nobility. Lifted above the law
+  by its own insignificance, this Robespierre, with one head and
+  twenty million arms, is at work perpetually; crouching in country
+  districts, intrenched in municipal councils, under arms in the
+  national guard of every canton in France,--one result of the year
+  1830, which failed to remember that Napoleon preferred the chances
+  of defeat to the danger of arming the masses.
+
+  If during the last eight years I have again and again given up the
+  writing of this book (the most important of those I have
+  undertaken to write), and as often returned to it, it was, as you
+  and other friends can well imagine, because my courage shrank from
+  the many difficulties, the many essential details of a drama so
+  doubly dreadful and so cruelly bloody. Among the reasons which
+  render me now almost, it may be thought, foolhardy, I count the
+  desire to finish a work long designed to be to you a proof of my
+  deep and lasting gratitude for a friendship that has ever been
+  among my greatest consolations in misfortune.
+
+De Balzac.
+
+
+
+
+SONS OF THE SOIL
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+Whoso land hath, contention hath.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CHATEAU
+
+Les Aigues, August 6, 1823.
+
+To Monsieur Nathan,
+
+My dear Nathan,--You, who provide the public with such delightful
+dreams through the magic of your imagination, are now to follow me
+while I make you dream a dream of truth. You shall then tell me
+whether the present century is likely to bequeath such dreams to the
+Nathans and the Blondets of the year 1923; you shall estimate the
+distance at which we now are from the days when the Florines of the
+eighteenth century found, on awaking, a chateau like Les Aigues in the
+terms of their bargain.
+
+My dear fellow, if you receive this letter in the morning, let your
+mind travel, as you lie in bed, fifty leagues or thereabouts from
+Paris, along the great mail road which leads to the confines of
+Burgundy, and behold two small lodges built of red brick, joined, or
+separated, by a rail painted green. It was there that the diligence
+deposited your friend and correspondent.
+
+On either side of this double pavilion grows a quick-set hedge, from
+which the brambles straggle like stray locks of hair. Here and there a
+tree shoots boldly up; flowers bloom on the slopes of the wayside
+ditch, bathing their feet in its green and sluggish water. The hedge
+at both ends meets and joins two strips of woodland, and the double
+meadow thus inclosed is doubtless the result of a clearing.
+
+These dusty and deserted lodges give entrance to a magnificent avenue
+of centennial elms, whose umbrageous heads lean toward each other and
+form a long and most majestic arbor. The grass grows in this avenue,
+and only a few wheel-tracks can be seen along its double width of way.
+The great age of the trees, the breadth of the avenue, the venerable
+construction of the lodges, the brown tints of their stone courses,
+all bespeak an approach to some half-regal residence.
+
+Before reaching this enclosure from the height of an eminence such as
+we Frenchmen rather conceitedly call a mountain, at the foot of which
+lies the village of Conches (the last post-house), I had seen the long
+valley of Aigues, at the farther end of which the mail road turns to
+follow a straight line into the little sub-prefecture of La Ville-aux-
+Fayes, over which, as you know, the nephew of our friend des Lupeaulx
+lords it. Tall forests lying on the horizon, along vast slopes which
+skirt a river, command this rich valley, which is framed in the far
+distance by the mountains of a lesser Switzerland, called the Morvan.
+These forests belong to Les Aigues, and to the Marquis de Ronquerolles
+and the Comte de Soulanges, whose castles and parks and villages, seen
+in the distance from these heights, give the scene a strong
+resemblance to the imaginary landscapes of Velvet Breughel.
+
+If these details do not remind you of all the castles in the air you
+have desired to possess in France you are not worthy to receive the
+present narrative of an astounded Parisian. At last I have seen a
+landscape where art is blended with nature in such a way that neither
+of them spoils the other; the art is natural, and the nature artistic.
+I have found the oasis that you and I have dreamed of when reading
+novels,--nature luxuriant and adorned, rolling lines that are not
+confused, something wild withal, unkempt, mysterious, not common. Jump
+that green railing and come on!
+
+When I tried to look up the avenue, which the sun never penetrates
+except when it rises or when it sets, striping the road like a zebra
+with its oblique rays, my view was obstructed by an outline of rising
+ground; after that is passed, the long avenue is obstructed by a
+copse, within which the roads meet at a cross-ways, in the centre of
+which stands a stone obelisk, for all the world like an eternal
+exclamation mark. From the crevices between the foundation stones of
+this erection, which is topped by a spiked ball (what an idea!), hang
+flowering plants, blue or yellow according to the season. Les Aigues
+must certainly have been built by a woman, or for a woman; no man
+would have had such dainty ideas; the architect no doubt had his cue.
+
+Passing through the little wood placed there as sentinel, I came upon
+a charming declivity, at the foot of which foamed and gurgled a little
+brook, which I crossed on a culvert of mossy stones, superb in color,
+the prettiest of all the mosaics which time manufactures. The avenue
+continues by the brookside up a gentle rise. In the distance, the
+first tableau is now seen,--a mill and its dam, a causeway and trees,
+linen laid out to dry, the thatched cottage of the miller, his
+fishing-nets, and the tank where the fish are kept,--not to speak of
+the miller's boy, who was already watching me. No matter where you are
+in the country, however solitary you may think yourself, you are
+certain to be the focus of the two eyes of a country bumpkin; a
+laborer rests on his hoe, a vine-dresser straightens his bent back, a
+little goat-girl, or shepherdess, or milkmaid climbs a willow to stare
+at you.
+
+Presently the avenue merges into an alley of acacias, which leads to
+an iron railing made in the days when iron-workers fashioned those
+slender filagrees which are not unlike the copies set us by a writing-
+master. On either side of the railing is a ha-ha, the edges of which
+bristle with angry spikes,--regular porcupines in metal. The railing
+is closed at both ends by two porter's-lodges, like those of the
+palace at Versailles, and the gateway is surmounted by colossal vases.
+The gold of the arabesques is ruddy, for rust has added its tints, but
+this entrance, called "the gate of the Avenue," which plainly shows
+the hand of the Great Dauphin (to whom, indeed, Les Aigues owes it),
+seems to me none the less beautiful for that. At the end of each ha-ha
+the walls of the park, built of rough-hewn stone, begin. These stones,
+set in a mortar made of reddish earth, display their variegated
+colors, the warm yellows of the silex, the white of the lime
+carbonates, the russet browns of the sandstone, in many a fantastic
+shape. As you first enter it, the park is gloomy, the walls are hidden
+by creeping plants and by trees that for fifty years have heard no
+sound of axe. One might think it a virgin forest, made primeval again
+through some phenomenon granted exclusively to forests. The trunks of
+the trees are swathed with lichen which hangs from one to another.
+Mistletoe, with its viscid leaves, droops from every fork of the
+branches where moisture settles. I have found gigantic ivies, wild
+arabesques which flourish only at fifty leagues from Paris, here where
+land does not cost enough to make one sparing of it. The landscape on
+such free lines covers a great deal of ground. Nothing is smoothed
+off; rakes are unknown, ruts and ditches are full of water, frogs are
+tranquilly delivered of their tadpoles, the woodland flowers bloom,
+and the heather is as beautiful as that I have seen on your mantle-
+shelf in January in the elegant beau-pot sent by Florine. This mystery
+is intoxicating, it inspires vague desires. The forest odors, beloved
+of souls that are epicures of poesy, who delight in the tiny mosses,
+the noxious fungi, the moist mould, the willows, the balsams, the wild
+thyme, the green waters of a pond, the golden star of the yellow
+water-lily,--the breath of all such vigorous propagations came to my
+nostrils and filled me with a single thought; was it their soul? I
+seemed to see a rose-tinted gown floating along the winding alley.
+
+The path ended abruptly in another copse, where birches and poplars
+and all the quivering trees palpitated,--an intelligent family with
+graceful branches and elegant bearing, the trees of a love as free! It
+was from this point, my dear fellow, that I saw a pond covered with
+the white water-lily and other plants with broad flat leaves and
+narrow slender ones, on which lay a boat painted white and black, as
+light as a nut-shell and dainty as the wherry of a Seine boatman.
+Beyond rose the chateau, built in 1560, of fine red brick, with stone
+courses and copings, and window-frames in which the sashes were of
+small leaded panes (O Versailles!). The stone is hewn in diamond
+points, but hollowed, as in the Ducal Palace at Venice on the facade
+toward the Bridge of Sighs. There are no regular lines about the
+castle except in the centre building, from which projects a stately
+portico with double flights of curving steps, and round balusters
+slender at their base and broadening at the middle. The main building
+is surrounded by clock-towers and sundry modern turrets, with
+galleries and vases more or less Greek. No harmony there, my dear
+Nathan! These heterogeneous erections are wrapped, so to speak, by
+various evergreen trees whose branches shed their brown needles upon
+the roofs, nourishing the lichen and giving tone to the cracks and
+crevices where the eye delights to wander. Here you see the Italian
+pine, the stone pine, with its red bark and its majestic parasol; here
+a cedar two hundred years old, weeping willows, a Norway spruce, and a
+beech which overtops them all; and there, in front of the main tower,
+some very singular shrubs,--a yew trimmed in a way that recalls some
+long-decayed garden of old France, and magnolias with hortensias at
+their feet. In short, the place is the Invalides of the heroes of
+horticulture, once the fashion and now forgotten, like all other
+heroes.
+
+A chimney, with curious copings, which was sending forth great volumes
+of smoke, assured me that this delightful scene was not an opera
+setting. A kitchen reveals human beings. Now imagine ME, Blondet, who
+shiver as if in the polar regions at Saint-Cloud, in the midst of this
+glowing Burgundian climate. The sun sends down its warmest rays, the
+king-fisher watches on the shores of the pond, the cricket chirps, the
+grain-pods burst, the poppy drops its morphia in glutinous tears, and
+all are clearly defined on the dark-blue ether. Above the ruddy soil
+of the terraces flames that joyous natural punch which intoxicates the
+insects and the flowers and dazzles our eyes and browns our faces. The
+grape is beading, its tendrils fall in a veil of threads whose
+delicacy puts to shame the lace-makers. Beside the house blue
+larkspur, nasturtium, and sweet-peas are blooming. From a distance
+orange-trees and tuberoses scent the air. After the poetic exhalations
+of the woods (a gradual preparation) came the delectable pastilles of
+this botanic seraglio.
+
+Standing on the portico, like the queen of flowers, behold a woman
+robed in white, with hair unpowdered, holding a parasol lined with
+white silk, but herself whiter than the silk, whiter than the lilies
+at her feet, whiter than the starry jasmine that climbed the
+balustrade,--a woman, a Frenchwoman born in Russia, who said as I
+approached her, "I had almost given you up." She had seen me as I left
+the copse. With what perfection do all women, even the most guileless,
+understand the arrangement of a scenic effect? The movements of the
+servants, who were preparing to serve breakfast, showed me that the
+meal had been delayed until after the arrival of the diligence. She
+had not ventured to come to meet me.
+
+Is this not our dream,--the dream of all lovers of the beautiful,
+under whatsoever form it comes; the seraphic beauty that Luini put
+into his Marriage of the Virgin, that noble fresco at Sarono; the
+beauty that Rubens grasped in the tumult of his "Battle of the
+Thermodon"; the beauty that five centuries have elaborated in the
+cathedrals of Seville and Milan; the beauty of the Saracens at
+Granada, the beauty of Louis XIV. at Versailles, the beauty of the
+Alps, and that of this Limagne in which I stand?
+
+Belonging to the estate, about which there is nothing too princely,
+nor yet too financial, where prince and farmer-general have both lived
+(which fact serves to explain it), are four thousand acres of
+woodland, a park of some nine hundred acres, the mill, three leased
+farms, another immense farm at Conches, and vineyards,--the whole
+producing a revenue of about seventy thousand francs a year. Now you
+know Les Aigues, my dear fellow; where I have been expected for the
+last two weeks, and where I am at this moment, in the chintz-lined
+chamber assigned to dearest friends.
+
+Above the park, towards Conches, a dozen little brooks, clear, limpid
+streams coming from the Morvan, fall into the pond, after adorning
+with their silvery ribbons the valleys of the park and the magnificent
+gardens around the chateau. The name of the place, Les Aigues, comes
+from these charming streams of water; the estate was originally called
+in the old title-deeds "Les Aigues-Vives" to distinguish it from
+"Aigues-Mortes"; but the word "Vives" has now been dropped. The pond
+empties into the stream, which follows the course of the avenue,
+through a wide and straight canal bordered on both sides and along its
+whole length by weeping willows. This canal, thus arched, produces a
+delightful effect. Gliding through it, seated on a thwart of the
+little boat, one could fancy one's self in the nave of some great
+cathedral, the choir being formed of the main building of the house
+seen at the end of it. When the setting sun casts its orange tones
+mingled with amber upon the casements of the chateau, the effect is
+that of painted windows. At the other end of the canal we see Blangy,
+the county-town, containing about sixty houses, and the village
+church, which is nothing more than a tumble-down building with a
+wooden clock-tower which appears to hold up a roof of broken tiles.
+One comfortable house and the parsonage are distinguishable; but the
+township is a large one,--about two hundred scattered houses in all,
+those of the village forming as it were the capital. The roads are
+lined with fruit-trees, and numerous little gardens are strewn here
+and there,--true country gardens with everything in them; flowers,
+onions, cabbages and grapevines, currants, and a great deal of manure.
+The village has a primitive air; it is rustic, and has that decorative
+simplicity which we artists are forever seeking. In the far distance
+is the little town of Soulanges overhanging a vast sheet of water,
+like the buildings on the lake of Thune.
+
+When you stroll in the park, which has four gates, each superb in
+style, you feel that our mythological Arcadias are flat and stale.
+Arcadia is in Burgundy, not in Greece; Arcadia is at Les Aigues and
+nowhere else. A river, made by scores of brooklets, crosses the park
+at its lower level with a serpentine movement; giving a dewy freshness
+and tranquillity to the scene,--an air of solitude, which reminds one
+of a convent of Carthusians, and all the more because, on an
+artificial island in the river, is a hermitage in ruins, the interior
+elegance of which is worthy of the luxurious financier who constructed
+it. Les Aigues, my dear Nathan, once belonged to that Bouret who spent
+two millions to receive Louis XV. on a single occasion under his roof.
+How many ardent passions, how many distinguished minds, how many
+fortunate circumstances have contributed to make this beautiful place
+what it is! A mistress of Henri IV. rebuilt the chateau where it now
+stands. The favorite of the Great Dauphin, Mademoiselle Choin (to whom
+Les Aigues was given), added a number of farms to it. Bouret furnished
+the house with all the elegancies of Parisian homes for an Opera
+celebrity; and to him Les Aigues owes the restoration of its ground
+floor in the style Louis XV.
+
+I have often stood rapt in admiration at the beauty of the dining-
+room. The eye is first attracted to the ceiling, painted in fresco in
+the Italian manner, where lightsome arabesques are frolicking. Female
+forms, in stucco ending in foliage, support at regular distances
+corbeils of fruit, from which spring the garlands of the ceiling.
+Charming paintings, the work of unknown artists, fill the panels
+between the female figures, representing the luxuries of the table,--
+boar's-heads, salmon, rare shell-fish, and all edible things,--which
+fantastically suggest men and women and children, and rival the
+whimsical imagination of the Chinese,--the people who best understand,
+to my thinking at least, the art of decoration. The mistress of the
+house finds a bell-wire beneath her feet to summon servants, who enter
+only when required, disturbing no interviews and overhearing no
+secrets. The panels above the doorways represent gay scenes; all the
+embrasures, both of doors and windows, are in marble mosaics. The room
+is heated from below. Every window looks forth on some delightful
+view.
+
+This room communicates with a bath-room on one side and on the other
+with a boudoir which opens into the salon. The bath-room is lined with
+Sevres tiles, painted in monochrome, the floor is mosaic, and the bath
+marble. An alcove, hidden by a picture painted on copper, which turns
+on a pivot, contains a couch in gilt wood of the truest Pompadour. The
+ceiling is lapis-lazuli starred with gold. The tiles are painted from
+designs by Boucher. Bath, table and love are therefore closely united.
+
+After the salon, which, I should tell you, my dear fellow, exhibits
+the magnificence of the Louis XIV. manner, you enter a fine billiard-
+room unrivalled so far as I know in Paris itself. The entrance to this
+suite of ground-floor apartments is through a semi-circular
+antechamber, at the lower end of which is a fairy-like staircase,
+lighted from above, which leads to other parts of the house, all built
+at various epochs--and to think that they chopped off the heads of the
+wealthy in 1793! Good heavens! why can't people understand that the
+marvels of art are impossible in a land where there are no great
+fortunes, no secure, luxurious lives? If the Left insists on killing
+kings why not leave us a few little princelings with money in their
+pockets?
+
+At the present moment these accumulated treasures belong to a charming
+woman with an artistic soul, who is not content with merely restoring
+them magnificently, but who keeps the place up with loving care. Sham
+philosophers, studying themselves while they profess to be studying
+humanity, call these glorious things extravagance. They grovel before
+cotton prints and the tasteless designs of modern industry, as if we
+were greater and happier in these days than in those of Henri IV.,
+Louis XIV., and Louis XVI., monarchs who have all left the stamp of
+their reigns upon Les Aigues. What palace, what royal castle, what
+mansions, what noble works of art, what gold brocaded stuffs are
+sacred now? The petticoats of our grandmothers go to cover the chairs
+in these degenerate days. Selfish and thieving interlopers that we
+are, we pull down everything and plant cabbages where marvels once
+were rife. Only yesterday the plough levelled Persan, that magnificent
+domain which gave a title to one of the most opulent families of the
+old parliament; hammers have demolished Montmorency, which cost an
+Italian follower of Napoleon untold sums; Val, the creation of
+Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angely, Cassan, built by a mistress of the
+Prince de Conti; in all, four royal houses have disappeared in the
+valley of the Oise alone. We are getting a Roman campagna around Paris
+in advance of the days when a tempest shall blow from the north and
+overturn our plaster palaces and our pasteboard decorations.
+
+Now see, my dear fellow, to what the habit of bombasticising in
+newspapers brings you to. Here am I writing a downright article. Does
+the mind have its ruts, like a road? I stop; for I rob the mail, and I
+rob myself, and you may be yawning--to be continued in our next; I
+hear the second bell, which summons me to one of those abundant
+breakfasts the fashion of which has long passed away, in the dining-
+rooms of Paris, be it understood.
+
+Here's the history of my Arcadia. In 1815, there died at Les Aigues
+one of the famous wantons of the last century,--a singer, forgotten of
+the guillotine and the nobility, after preying upon exchequers, upon
+literature, upon aristocracy, and all but reaching the scaffold;
+forgotten, like so many fascinating old women who expiate their golden
+youth in country solitudes, and replace their lost loves by another,--
+man by Nature. Such women live with the flowers, with the woodland
+scents, with the sky, with the sunshine, with all that sings and skips
+and shines and sprouts,--the birds, the squirrels, the flowers, the
+grass; they know nothing about these things, they cannot explain them,
+but they love them; they love them so well that they forget dukes,
+marshals, rivalries, financiers, follies, luxuries, their paste jewels
+and their real diamonds, their heeled slippers and their rouge,--all,
+for the sweetness of country life.
+
+I have gathered, my dear fellow, much precious information about the
+old age of Mademoiselle Laguerre; for, to tell you the truth, the
+after life of such women as Florine, Mariette, Suzanne de Val Noble,
+and Tullia has made me, every now and then, extremely inquisitive, as
+though I were a child inquiring what had become of the old moons.
+
+In 1790 Mademoiselle Laguerre, alarmed at the turn of public affairs,
+came to settle at Les Aigues, bought and given to her by Bouret, who
+passed several summers with her at the chateau. Terrified at the fate
+of Madame du Barry, she buried her diamonds. At that time she was only
+fifty-three years of age, and according to her lady's-maid, afterwards
+married to a gendarme named Soudry, "Madame was more beautiful than
+ever." My dear Nathan, Nature has no doubt her private reasons for
+treating women of this sort like spoiled children; excesses, instead
+of killing them, fatten them, preserve them, renew their youth. Under
+a lymphatic appearance they have nerves which maintain their
+marvellous physique; they actually preserve their beauty for reasons
+which would make a virtuous woman haggard. No, upon my word, Nature is
+not moral!
+
+Mademoiselle Laguerre lived an irreproachable life at Les Aigues, one
+might even call it a saintly one, after her famous adventure,--you
+remember it? One evening in a paroxysm of despairing love, she fled
+from the opera-house in her stage dress, rushed into the country, and
+passed the night weeping by the wayside. (Ah! how they have
+calumniated the love of Louis XV.'s time!) She was so unused to see
+the sunrise, that she hailed it with one of her finest songs. Her
+attitude, quite as much as her tinsel, drew the peasants about her;
+amazed at her gestures, her voice, her beauty, they took her for an
+angel, and dropped on their knees around her. If Voltaire had not
+existed we might have thought it a new miracle. I don't know if God
+gave her much credit for her tardy virtue, for love after all must be
+a sickening thing to a woman as weary of it as a wanton of the old
+Opera. Mademoiselle Laguerre was born in 1740, and her hey-day was in
+1760, when Monsieur (I forget his name) was called the "ministre de la
+guerre," on account of his liaison with her. She abandoned that name,
+which was quite unknown down here, and called herself Madame des
+Aigues, as if to merge her identity in the estate, which she delighted
+to improve with a taste that was profoundly artistic. When Bonaparte
+became First Consul, she increased her property by the purchase of
+church lands, for which she used the proceeds of her diamonds. As an
+Opera divinity never knows how to take care of her money, she
+intrusted the management of the estate to a steward, occupying herself
+with her flowers and fruits and with the beautifying of the park.
+
+After Mademoiselle was dead and buried at Blangy, the notary of
+Soulanges--that little town which lies between Ville-aux-Fayes and
+Blangy, the capital of the township--made an elaborate inventory, and
+sought out the heirs of the singer, who never knew she had any. Eleven
+families of poor laborers living near Amiens, and sleeping in cotton
+sheets, awoke one fine morning in golden ones. The property was sold
+at auction. Les Aigues was bought by Montcornet, who had laid by
+enough during his campaigns in Spain and Pomerania to make the
+purchase, which cost about eleven hundred thousand francs, including
+the furniture. The general, no doubt, felt the influence of these
+luxurious apartments; and I was arguing with the countess only
+yesterday that her marriage was a direct result of the purchase of Les
+Aigues.
+
+To rightly understand the countess, my dear Nathan, you must know that
+the general is a violent man, red as fire, five feet nine inches tall,
+round as a tower, with a thick neck and the shoulders of a blacksmith,
+which must have amply filled his cuirass. Montcornet commanded the
+cuirassiers at the battle of Essling (called by the Austrians Gross-
+Aspern), and came near perishing when that noble corps was driven back
+on the Danube. He managed to cross the river astride a log of wood.
+The cuirassiers, finding the bridge down, took the glorious
+resolution, at Montcornet's command, to turn and resist the entire
+Austrian army, which carried off on the morrow over thirty wagon-loads
+of cuirasses. The Germans invented a name for their enemies on this
+occasion which means "men of iron."[*] Montcornet has the outer man of
+a hero of antiquity. His arms are stout and vigorous, his chest deep
+and broad; his head has a leonine aspect, his voice is of those that
+can order a charge in the thick of battle; but he has nothing more
+than the courage of a daring man; he lacks mind and breadth of view.
+Like other generals to whom military common-sense, the natural
+boldness of those who spend their lives in danger, and the habit of
+command gives an appearance of superiority, Montcornet has an imposing
+effect when you first meet him; he seems a Titan, but he contains a
+dwarf, like the pasteboard giant who saluted Queen Elizabeth at the
+gates of Kenilworth. Choleric though kind, and full of imperial
+hauteur, he has the caustic tongue of a soldier, and is quick at
+repartee, but quicker still with a blow. He may have been superb on a
+battle-field; in a household he is simply intolerable. He knows no
+love but barrack love,--the love which those clever myth-makers, the
+ancients, placed under the patronage of Eros, son of Mars and Venus.
+Those delightful chroniclers of the old religions provided themselves
+with a dozen different Loves. Study the fathers and the attributes of
+these Loves, and you will discover a complete social nomenclature,--
+and yet we fancy that we originate things! When the world turns upside
+down like an hour-glass, when the seas become continents, Frenchmen
+will find canons, steamboats, newspapers, and maps wrapped up in
+seaweed at the bottom of what is now our ocean.
+
+[*] I do not, on principle, like foot-notes, and this is the first I
+have ever allowed myself. Its historical interest must be my
+excuse; it will prove, moreover, that descriptions of battles
+should be something more than the dry particulars of technical
+writers, who for the last three thousand years have told us about
+left and right wings and centres being broken or driven in, but
+never a word about the soldier himself, his sufferings, and his
+heroism. The conscientious care with which I prepared myself to
+write the "Scenes from Military Life," led me to many a battle-
+field once wet with the blood of France and her enemies. Among
+them I went to Wagram. When I reached the shores of the Danube,
+opposite Lobau, I noticed on the bank, which is covered with turf,
+certain undulations that reminded me of the furrows in a field of
+lucern. I asked the reason of it, thinking I should hear of some
+new method of agriculture: "There sleep the cavalry of the
+imperial guard," said the peasant who served us as a guide; "those
+are their graves you see there." The words made me shudder. Prince
+Frederic Schwartzenburg, who translated them, added that the man
+had himself driven one of the wagons laden with cuirasses. By one
+of the strange chances of war our guide had served a breakfast to
+Napoleon on the morning of the battle of Wagram. Though poor, he
+had kept the double napoleon which the Emperor gave him for his
+milk and his eggs. The curate of Gross-Aspern took us to the
+famous cemetery where French and Austrians struggled together
+knee-deep in blood, with a courage and obstinacy glorious to each.
+There, while explaining that a marble tablet (to which our
+attention had been attracted, and on which were inscribed the
+names of the owner of Gross-Aspern, who had been killed on the
+third day) was the sole compensation ever given to the family, he
+said, in a tone of deep sadness: "It was a time of great misery,
+and of great hopes; but now are the days of forgetfulness." The
+saying seemed to me sublime in its simplicity; but when I came to
+reflect upon the matter, I felt there was some justification for
+the apparent ingratitude of the House of Austria. Neither nations
+nor kings are wealthy enough to reward all the devotions to which
+these tragic struggles give rise. Let those who serve a cause with
+a secret expectation of recompense, set a price upon their blood
+and become mercenaries. Those who wield either sword or pen for
+their country's good ought to think of nothing but of DOING THEIR
+BEST, as our fathers used to say, and expect nothing, not even
+glory, except as a happy accident.
+
+It was in rushing to retake this famous cemetery for the third
+time that Massena, wounded and carried in the box of a cabriolet,
+made this splendid harangue to his soldiers: "What! you rascally
+curs, who have only five sous a day while I have forty thousand,
+do you let me go ahead of you?" All the world knows the order
+which the Emperor sent to his lieutenant by M. de Sainte-Croix,
+who swam the Danube three times: "Die or retake the village; it is
+a question of saving the army; the bridges are destroyed."
+
+The Author.
+
+
+Now, I must tell you that the Comtesse de Montcornet is a fragile,
+timid, delicate little woman. What do you think of such a marriage as
+that? To those who know society such things are common enough; a well-
+assorted marriage is the exception. Nevertheless, I have come to see
+how it is that this slender little creature handles her bobbins in a
+way to lead this heavy, solid, stolid general precisely as he himself
+used to lead his cuirassiers.
+
+If Montcornet begins to bluster before his Virginie, Madame lays a
+finger on her lips and he is silent. He smokes his pipes and his
+cigars in a kiosk fifty feet from the chateau, and airs himself before
+he returns to the house. Proud of his subjection, he turns to her,
+like a bear drunk on grapes, and says, when anything is proposed, "If
+Madame approves." When he comes to his wife's room, with that heavy
+step which makes the tiles creak as though they were boards, and she,
+not wanting him, calls out: "Don't come in!" he performs a military
+volte-face and says humbly: "You will let me know when I can see you?"
+--in the very tones with which he shouted to his cuirassiers on the
+banks of the Danube: "Men, we must die, and die well, since there's
+nothing else we can do!" I have heard him say, speaking of his wife,
+"Not only do I love her, but I venerate her." When he flies into a
+passion which defies all restraint and bursts all bonds, the little
+woman retires into her own room and leaves him to shout. But four or
+five hours later she will say: "Don't get into a passion, my dear, you
+might break a blood-vessel; and besides, you hurt me." Then the lion
+of Essling retreats out of sight to wipe his eyes. Sometimes he comes
+into the salon when she and I are talking, and if she says: "Don't
+disturb us, he is reading to me," he leaves us without a word.
+
+It is only strong men, choleric and powerful, thunder-bolts of war,
+diplomats with olympian heads, or men of genius, who can show this
+utter confidence, this generous devotion to weakness, this constant
+protection, this love without jealousy, this easy good humor with a
+woman. Good heavens! I place the science of the countess's management
+of her husband as far above the peevish, arid virtues as the satin of
+a causeuse is superior to the Utrecht velvet of a dirty bourgeois
+sofa.
+
+My dear fellow, I have spent six days in this delightful country-
+house, and I never tire of admiring the beauties of the park,
+surrounded by forests where pretty wood-paths lead beside the brooks.
+Nature and its silence, these tranquil pleasures, this placid life to
+which she woos me,--all attract. Ah! here is true literature; no fault
+of style among the meadows. Happiness forgets all things here,--even
+the Debats! It has rained all the morning; while the countess slept
+and Montcornet tramped over his domain, I have compelled myself to
+keep my rash, imprudent promise to write to you.
+
+Until now, though I was born at Alencon, of an old judge and a
+prefect, so they say, and though I know something of agriculture, I
+supposed the tale of estates bringing in four or five thousand francs
+a month to be a fable. Money, to me, meant a couple of dreadful
+things,--work and a publisher, journalism and politics. When shall we
+poor fellows come upon a land where gold springs up with the grass?
+That is what I desire for you and for me and the rest of us in the
+name of the theatre, and of the press, and of book-making! Amen!
+
+Will Florine be jealous of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre? Our modern
+Bourets have no French nobles now to show them how to live; they hire
+one opera-box among three of them; they subscribe for their pleasures;
+they no longer cut down magnificently bound quartos to match the
+octavos in their library; in fact, they scarcely buy even stitched
+paper books. What is to become of us?
+
+
+Adieu; continue to care for
+Your Blondet.
+
+
+If this letter, dashed off by the idlest pen of the century, had not
+by some lucky chance been preserved, it would have been almost
+impossible to describe Les Aigues; and without this description the
+history of the horrible events that occurred there would certainly be
+less interesting.
+
+After that remark some persons will expect to see the flashing of the
+cuirass of the former colonel of the guard, and the raging of his
+anger as he falls like a waterspout upon his little wife; so that the
+end of this present history may be like the end of all modern dramas,
+--a tragedy of the bed-chamber. Perhaps the fatal scene will take
+place in that charming room with the blue monochromes, where beautiful
+ideal birds are painted on the ceilings and the shutters, where
+Chinese monsters laugh with open jaws on the mantle-shelf, and
+dragons, green and gold, twist their tails in curious convolutions
+around rich vases, and Japanese fantasy embroiders its designs of many
+colors; where sofas and reclining-chairs and consoles and what-nots
+invite to that contemplative idleness which forbids all action.
+
+No; the drama here to be developed is not one of private life; it
+concerns things higher, or lower. Expect no scenes of passion; the
+truth of this history is only too dramatic. And remember, the
+historian should never forget that his mission is to do justice to
+all; the poor and the prosperous are equals before his pen; to him the
+peasant appears in the grandeur of his misery, and the rich in the
+pettiness of his folly. Moreover, the rich man has passions, the
+peasant only wants. The peasant is therefore doubly poor; and if,
+politically, his aggressions must be pitilessly repressed, to the eyes
+of humanity and religion he is sacred.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A BUCOLIC OVERLOOKED BY VIRGIL
+
+When a Parisian drops into the country he is cut off from all his
+usual habits, and soon feels the dragging hours, no matter how
+attentive his friends may be to him. Therefore, because it is so
+impossible to prolong in a tete-a-tete conversations that are soon
+exhausted, the master and mistress of a country-house are apt to say,
+calmly, "You will be terribly bored here." It is true that to
+understand the delights of country life one must have something to do,
+some interests in it; one must know the nature of the work to be done,
+and the alternating harmony of toil and pleasure,--eternal symbol of
+human life.
+
+When a Parisian has recovered his powers of sleeping, shaken off the
+fatigues of his journey, and accustomed himself to country habits, the
+hardest period of the day (if he wears thin boots and is neither a
+sportsman nor an agriculturalist) is the early morning. Between the
+hours of waking and breakfasting, the women of the family are sleeping
+or dressing, and therefore unapproachable; the master of the house is
+out and about on his own affairs; a Parisian is therefore compelled to
+be alone from eight to eleven o'clock, the hour chosen in all country-
+houses for breakfast. Now, having got what amusement he can out of
+carefully dressing himself, he has soon exhausted that resource. Then,
+perhaps, he has brought with him some work, which he finds it
+impossible to do, and which goes back untouched, after he sees the
+difficulties of doing it, into his valise; a writer is then obliged to
+wander about the park and gape at nothing or count the big trees. The
+easier the life, the more irksome such occupations are,--unless,
+indeed, one belongs to the sect of shaking quakers or to the honorable
+guild of carpenters or taxidermists. If one really had, like the
+owners of estates, to live in the country, it would be well to supply
+one's self with a geological, mineralogical, entomological, or
+botanical hobby; but a sensible man doesn't give himself a vice merely
+to kill time for a fortnight. The noblest estate, and the finest
+chateaux soon pall on those who possess nothing but the sight of them.
+The beauties of nature seem rather squalid compared to the
+representation of them at the opera. Paris, by retrospection, shines
+from all its facets. Unless some particular interest attaches us, as
+it did in Blondet's case, to scenes honored by the steps and lighted
+by the eyes of a certain person, one would envy the birds their wings
+and long to get back to the endless, exciting scenes of Paris and its
+harrowing strifes.
+
+The long letter of the young journalist must make most intelligent
+minds suppose that he had reached, morally and physically, that
+particular phase of satisfied passions and comfortable happiness which
+certain winged creatures fed in Strasbourg so perfectly represent
+when, with their heads sunk behind their protruding gizzards, they
+neither see nor wish to see the most appetizing food. So, when the
+formidable letter was finished, the writer felt the need of getting
+away from the gardens of Armida and doing something to enliven the
+deadly void of the morning hours; for the hours between breakfast and
+dinner belonged to the mistress of the house, who knew very well how
+to make them pass quickly. To keep, as Madame de Montcornet did, a man
+of talent in the country without ever seeing on his face the false
+smile of satiety, or detecting the yawn of a weariness that cannot be
+concealed, is a great triumph for a woman. The affection which is
+equal to such a test certainly ought to be eternal. It is to be
+wondered at that women do not oftener employ it to judge of their
+lovers; a fool, an egoist, or a petty nature could never stand it.
+Philip the Second himself, the Alexander of dissimulation, would have
+told his secrets if condemned to a month's tete-a-tete in the country.
+Perhaps this is why kings seek to live in perpetual motion, and allow
+no one to see them more than fifteen minutes at a time.
+
+Notwithstanding that he had received the delicate attentions of one of
+the most charming women in Paris, Emile Blondet was able to feel once
+more the long forgotten delights of a truant schoolboy; and on the
+morning of the day after his letter was written he had himself called
+by Francois, the head valet, who was specially appointed to wait on
+him, for the purpose of exploring the valley of the Avonne.
+
+The Avonne is a little river which, being swollen above Conches by
+numerous rivulets, some of which rise in Les Aigues, falls at Ville-
+aux-Fayes into one of the large affluents of the Seine. The
+geographical position of the Avonne, navigable for over twelve miles,
+had, ever since Jean Bouvet invented rafts, given full money value to
+the forests of Les Aigues, Soulanges, and Ronquerolles, standing on
+the crest of the hills between which this charming river flows. The
+park of Les Aigues covers the greater part of the valley, between the
+river (bordered on both sides by the forest called des Aigues) and the
+royal mail road, defined by a line of old elms in the distance along
+the slopes of the Avonne mountains, which are in fact the foot-hills
+of that magnificent ampitheatre called the Morvan.
+
+However vulgar the comparison may be, the park, lying thus at the
+bottom of the valley, is like an enormous fish with its head at
+Conches and its tail in the village of Blangy; for it widens in the
+middle to nearly three hundred acres, while towards Conches it counts
+less than fifty, and sixty at Blangy. The position of this estate,
+between three villages, and only three miles from the little town of
+Soulanges, from which the descent is rapid, may perhaps have led to
+the strife and caused the excesses which are the chief interest
+attaching to the place. If, when seen from the mail road or from the
+uplands beyond Ville-aux-Fayes, the paradise of Les Aigues induces
+mere passing travellers to commit the mortal sin of envy, why should
+the rich burghers of Soulanges and Ville-aux-Fayes who had it before
+their eyes and admired it every day of their lives, have been more
+virtuous?
+
+This last topographical detail was needed to explain the site, also
+the use of the four gates by which alone the park of Les Aigues was
+entered; for it was completely surrounded by walls, except where
+nature had provided a fine view, and at such points sunk fences or ha-
+has had been placed. The four gates, called the gate of Conches, the
+gate of Avonne, the gate of Blangy, and the gate of the Avenue, showed
+the styles of the different periods at which they were constructed so
+admirably that a brief description, in the interest of archaeologists,
+will presently be given, as brief as the one Blondet has already
+written about the gate of the Avenue.
+
+After eight days of strolling about with the countess, the illustrious
+editor of the "Journal des Debats" knew by heart the Chinese kiosk,
+the bridges, the isles, the hermitage, the dairy, the ruined temple,
+the Babylonian ice-house, and all the other delusions invented by
+landscape architects which some nine hundred acres of land can be made
+to serve. He now wished to find the sources of the Avonne, which the
+general and the countess daily extolled in the evening, making plans
+to visit them which were daily forgotten the next morning. Above Les
+Aigues the Avonne really had the appearance of an alpine torrent.
+Sometimes it hollowed a bed among the rocks, sometimes it went
+underground; on this side the brooks came down in cascades, there they
+flowed like the Loire on sandy shallows where rafts could not pass on
+account of the shifting channels. Blondet took a short cut through the
+labyrinths of the park to reach the gate of Conches. This gate demands
+a few words, which give, moreover, certain historical details about
+the property.
+
+The original founder of Les Aigues was a younger son of the Soulanges
+family, enriched by marriage, whose chief ambition was to make his
+elder brother jealous,--a sentiment, by the bye, to which we owe the
+fairy-land of Isola Bella in the Lago Maggiore. In the middle ages the
+castle of Les Aigues stood on the banks of the Avonne. Of this old
+building nothing remains but the gateway, which has a porch like the
+entrance to a fortified town, flanked by two round towers with conical
+roofs. Above the arch of the porch are heavy stone courses, now draped
+with vegetation, showing three large windows with cross-bar sashes. A
+winding stairway in one of the towers leads to two chambers, and a
+kitchen occupies the other tower. The roof of the porch, of pointed
+shape like all old timber-work, is noticeable for two weathercocks
+perched at each end of a ridge-pole ornamented with fantastic iron-
+work. Many an important place cannot boast of so fine a town hall. On
+the outside of this gateway, the keystone of the arch still bears the
+arms of Soulanges, preserved by the hardness of the stone on which the
+chisel of the artist carved them, as follows: Azure, on a pale,
+argent, three pilgrim's staff's sable; a fess bronchant, gules,
+charged with four grosses patee, fitched, or; with the heraldic form
+of a shield awarded to younger sons. Blondet deciphered the motto, "Je
+soule agir,"--one of those puns that crusaders delighted to make upon
+their names, and which brings to mind a fine political maxim, which,
+as we shall see later, was unfortunately forgotten by Montcornet. The
+gate, which was opened for Blondet by a very pretty girl, was of time-
+worn wood clamped with iron. The keeper, wakened by the creaking of
+the hinges, put his nose out of the window and showed himself in his
+night-shirt.
+
+"So our keepers sleep till this time of day!" thought the Parisian,
+who thought himself very knowing in rural customs.
+
+After a walk of about quarter of an hour, he reached the sources of
+the river above Conches, where his ravished eyes beheld one of those
+landscapes that ought to be described, like the history of France, in
+a thousand volumes or in only one. We must here content ourselves with
+two paragraphs.
+
+A projecting rock, covered with dwarf trees and abraded at its base by
+the Avonne, to which circumstance it owes a slight resemblance to an
+enormous turtle lying across the river, forms an arch through which
+the eye takes in a little sheet of water, clear as a mirror, where the
+stream seems to sleep until it reaches in the distance a series of
+cascades falling among huge rocks, where little weeping willows with
+elastic motion sway back and forth to the flow of waters.
+
+Beyond these cascades is the hillside, rising sheer, like a Rhine rock
+clothed with moss and heather, gullied like it, again, by sharp ridges
+of schist and mica sending down, here and there, white foaming
+rivulets to which a little meadow, always watered and always green,
+serves as a cup; farther on, beyond the picturesque chaos and in
+contrast to this wild, solitary nature, the gardens of Conches are
+seen, with the village roofs and the clock-tower and the outlying
+fields.
+
+There are the two paragraphs, but the rising sun, the purity of the
+air, the dewy sheen, the melody of woods and waters--imagine them!
+
+"Almost as charming as at the Opera," thought Blondet, making his way
+along the banks of the unnavigable portion of the Avonne, whose
+caprices contrast with the straight and deep and silent stream of the
+lower river, flowing between the tall trees of the forest of Les
+Aigues.
+
+Blondet did not proceed far on his morning walk, for he was presently
+brought to a stand-still by the sight of a peasant,--one of those who,
+in this drama, are supernumeraries so essential to its action that it
+may be doubted whether they are not in fact its leading actors.
+
+When the clever journalist reached a group of rocks where the main
+stream is imprisoned, as it were, between two portals, he saw a man
+standing so motionless as to excite his curiosity, while the clothes
+and general air of this living statue greatly puzzled him.
+
+The humble personage before him was a living presentment of the old
+men dear to Charlet's pencil; resembling the troopers of that Homer of
+soldiery in a strong frame able to endure hardship, and his immortal
+skirmishers in a fiery, crimson, knotted face, showing small capacity
+for submission. A coarse felt hat, the brim of which was held to the
+crown by stitches, protected a nearly bald head from the weather;
+below it fell a quantity of white hair which a painter would gladly
+have paid four francs an hour to copy,--a dazzling mass of snow, worn
+like that in all the classical representations of Deity. It was easy
+to guess from the way in which the cheeks sank in, continuing the
+lines of the mouth, that the toothless old fellow was more given to
+the bottle than the trencher. His thin white beard gave a threatening
+expression to his profile by the stiffness of its short bristles. The
+eyes, too small for his enormous face, and sloping like those of a
+pig, betrayed cunning and also laziness; but at this particular moment
+they were gleaming with the intent look he cast upon the river. The
+sole garments of this curious figure were an old blouse, formerly
+blue, and trousers of the coarse burlap used in Paris to wrap bales.
+All city people would have shuddered at the sight of his broken
+sabots, without even a wisp of straw to stop the cracks; and it is
+very certain that the blouse and the trousers had no money value at
+all except to a paper-maker.
+
+As Blondet examined this rural Diogenes, he admitted the possibility
+of a type of peasantry he had seen in old tapestries, old pictures,
+old sculptures, and which, up to this time, had seemed to him
+imaginary. He resolved for the future not to utterly condemn the
+school of ugliness, perceiving a possibility that in man beauty may be
+but the flattering exception, a chimera in which the race struggles to
+believe.
+
+"What can be the ideas, the morals, the habits, of such a being? What
+is he thinking of?" thought Blondet, seized with curiosity. "Is he my
+fellow-creature? We have nothing in common but shape, and even
+that!--"
+
+He noticed in the old man's limbs the peculiar rigidity of the tissues
+of persons who live in the open air, accustomed to the inclemencies of
+the weather and to the endurance of heat and cold,--hardened to
+everything, in short,--which makes their leathern skin almost a hide,
+and their nerves an apparatus against physical pain almost as powerful
+as that of the Russians or the Arabs.
+
+"Here's one of Cooper's Red-skins," thought Blondet; "one needn't go
+to America to study savages."
+
+Though the Parisian was less than ten paces off, the old man did not
+turn his head, but kept looking at the opposite bank with a fixity
+which the fakirs of India give to their vitrified eyes and their
+stiffened joints. Compelled by the power of a species of magnetism,
+more contagious than people have any idea of, Blondet ended by gazing
+at the water himself.
+
+"Well, my good man, what do you see there?" he asked, after the lapse
+of a quarter of an hour, during which time he saw nothing to justify
+this intent contemplation.
+
+"Hush!" whispered the old man, with a sign to Blondet not to ruffle
+the air with his voice; "You will frighten it--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"An otter, my good gentleman. If it hears us it'll go quick under
+water. I'm certain it jumped there; see! see! there, where the water
+bubbles! Ha! it sees a fish, it is after that! But my boy will grab it
+as it comes back. The otter, don't you know, is very rare; it is
+scientific game, and good eating, too. I get ten francs for every one
+I carry to Les Aigues, for the lady fasts Fridays, and to-morrow is
+Friday. Years agone the deceased madame used to pay me twenty francs,
+and gave me the skin to boot! Mouche," he called, in a low voice,
+"watch it!"
+
+Blondet now perceived on the other side of the river two bright eyes,
+like those of a cat, beneath a tuft of alders; then he saw the tanned
+forehead and tangled hair of a boy about ten years of age, who was
+lying on his stomach and making signs towards the otter to let his
+master know he kept it well in sight. Blondet, completely mastered by
+the eagerness of the old man and boy, allowed the demon of the chase
+to get the better of him,--that demon with the double claws of hope
+and curiosity, who carries you whithersoever he will.
+
+"The hat-makers buy the skin," continued the old man; "it's so soft,
+so handsome! They cover caps with it."
+
+"Do you really think so, my old man?" said Blondet, smiling.
+
+"Well truly, my good gentleman, you ought to know more than I, though
+I am seventy years old," replied the old fellow, very humbly and
+respectfully, falling into the attitude of a giver of holy water;
+"perhaps you can tell me why conductors and wine-merchants are so fond
+of it?"
+
+Blondet, a master of irony, already on his guard from the word
+"scientific," recollected the Marechal de Richelieu and began to
+suspect some jest on the part of the old man; but he was reassured by
+his artless attitude and the perfectly stupid expression of his face.
+
+"In my young days we had lots of otters," whispered the old fellow;
+"but they've hunted 'em so that if we see the tail of one in seven
+years it is as much as ever we do. And the sub-prefect at Ville-aux-
+Fayes,--doesn't monsieur know him? though he be a Parisian, he's a
+fine young man like you, and he loves curiosities,--so, as I was
+saying, hearing of my talent for catching otters, for I know 'em as
+you know your alphabet, he says to me like this: 'Pere Fourchon,' says
+he, "when you find an otter bring it to me, and I'll pay you well; and
+if it's spotted white on the back,' says he, 'I'll give you thirty
+francs.' That's just what he did say to me as true as I believe in God
+the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And there's a learned man at
+Soulanges, Monsieur Gourdon, our doctor, who is making, so they tell
+me, a collection of natural history which hasn't its mate at Dijon
+even; indeed he is first among the learned men in these parts, and
+he'll pay me a fine price, too; he stuffs men and beasts. Now my boy
+there stands me out that that otter has got the white spots. 'If
+that's so,' says I to him, 'then the good God wishes well to us this
+morning!' Ha! didn't you see the water bubble? yes, there it is! there
+it is! Though it lives in a kind of a burrow, it sometimes stays whole
+days under water. Ha, there! it heard you, my good gentleman; it's on
+its guard now; for there's not a more suspicious animal on earth; it's
+worse than a woman."
+
+"So you call women suspicious, do you?" said Blondet.
+
+"Faith, monsieur, if you come from Paris you ought to know about that
+better than I. But you'd have done better for me if you had stayed in
+your bed and slept all the morning; don't you see that wake there?
+that's where she's gone under. Get up, Mouche! the otter heard
+monsieur talking, and now she's scary enough to keep us at her heels
+till midnight. Come, let's be off! and good-bye to our thirty francs!"
+
+Mouche got up reluctantly; he looked at the spot where the water
+bubbled, pointed to it with his finger and seemed unable to give up
+all hope. The child, with curly hair and a brown face, like the angels
+in a fifteenth-century picture, seemed to be in breeches, for his
+trousers ended at the knee in a ragged fringe of brambles and dead
+leaves. This necessary garment was fastened upon him by cords of
+tarred oakum in guise of braces. A shirt of the same burlap which made
+the old man's trousers, thickened, however, by many darns, open in
+front showed a sun-burnt little breast. In short, the attire of the
+being called Mouche was even more startlingly simple than that of Pere
+Fourchon.
+
+"What a good-natured set of people they are here," thought Blondet;
+"if a man frightened away the game of the people of the suburbs of
+Paris, how their tongues would maul him!"
+
+As he had never seen an otter, even in a museum, he was delighted with
+this episode of his early walk. "Come," said he, quite touched when
+the old man walked away without asking him for a compensation, "you
+say you are a famous otter catcher. If you are sure there is an otter
+down there--"
+
+From the other side of the water Mouche pointed his finger to certain
+air-bubbles coming up from the bottom of the Avonne and bursting on
+its surface.
+
+"It has come back!" said Pere Fourchon; "don't you see it breathe, the
+beggar? How do you suppose they manage to breathe at the bottom of the
+water? Ah, the creature's so clever it laughs at science."
+
+"Well," said Blondet, who supposed the last word was a jest of the
+peasantry in general rather than of this peasant in particular, "wait
+and catch the otter."
+
+"And what are we to do about our day's work, Mouche and I?"
+
+"What is your day worth?"
+
+"For the pair of us, my apprentice and me?--Five francs," said the old
+man, looking Blondet in the eye with a hesitation which betrayed an
+enormous overcharge.
+
+The journalist took ten francs from his pocket, saying, "There's ten,
+and I'll give you ten more for the otter."
+
+"And it won't cost you dear if there's white on its back; for the sub-
+prefect told me there wasn't one o' them museums that had the like;
+but he knows everything, our sub-prefect,--no fool he! If I hunt the
+otter, he, M'sieur des Lupeaulx, hunts Mademoiselle Gaubertin, who has
+a fine white "dot" on her back. Come now, my good gentleman, if I may
+make so bold, plunge into the middle of the Avonne and get to that
+stone down there. If we head the otter off, it will come down stream;
+for just see their slyness, the beggars! they always go above their
+burrow to feed, for, once full of fish, they know they can easily
+drift down, the sly things! Ha! if I'd been trained in their school I
+should be living now on an income; but I was a long time finding out
+that you must go up stream very early in the morning if you want to
+bag the game before others. Well, somebody threw a spell over me when
+I was born. However, we three together ought to be slyer than the
+otter."
+
+"How so, my old necromancer?"
+
+"Why, bless you! we are as stupid as the beasts, and so we come to
+understand the beasts. Now, see, this is what we'll do. When the otter
+wants to get home Mouche and I'll frighten it here, and you'll
+frighten it over there; frightened by us and frightened by you it will
+jump on the bank, and when it takes to earth, it is lost! It can't
+run; it has web feet for swimming. Ho, ho! it will make you laugh,
+such floundering! you don't know whether you are fishing or hunting!
+The general up at Les Aigues, I have known him to stay here three days
+running, he was so bent on getting an otter."
+
+Blondet, armed with a branch cut for him by the old man, who requested
+him to whip the water with it when he called to him, planted himself
+in the middle of the river by jumping from stone to stone.
+
+"There, that will do, my good gentleman."
+
+Blondet stood where he was told without remarking the lapse of time,
+for every now and then the old fellow made him a sign as much as to
+say that all was going well; and besides, nothing makes time go so
+fast as the expectation that quick action is to succeed the perfect
+stillness of watching.
+
+"Pere Fourchon," whispered the boy, finding himself alone with the old
+man, "there's REALLY an otter!"
+
+"Do you see it?"
+
+"There, see there!"
+
+The old fellow was dumb-founded at beholding under water the reddish-
+brown fur of an actual otter.
+
+"It's coming my way!" said the child.
+
+"Hit him a sharp blow on the head and jump into the water and hold him
+fast down, but don't let him go!"
+
+Mouche dove into the water like a frightened frog.
+
+"Come, come, my good gentleman," cried Pere Fourchon to Blondet,
+jumping into the water and leaving his sabots on the bank, "frighten
+him! frighten him! Don't you see him? he is swimming fast your way!"
+
+The old man dashed toward Blondet through the water, calling out with
+the gravity that country people retain in the midst of their greatest
+excitements:--
+
+"Don't you see him, there, along the rocks?"
+
+Blondet, placed by direction of the old fellow in such a way that the
+sun was in his eyes, thrashed the water with much satisfaction to
+himself.
+
+"Go on, go on!" cried Pere Fourchon; "on the rock side; the burrow is
+there, to your left!"
+
+Carried away by excitement and by his long waiting, Blondet slipped
+from the stones into the water.
+
+"Ha! brave you are, my good gentleman! Twenty good Gods! I see him
+between your legs! you'll have him!-- Ah! there! he's gone--he's
+gone!" cried the old man, in despair.
+
+Then, in the fury of the chase, the old fellow plunged into the
+deepest part of the stream in front of Blondet.
+
+"It's your fault we've lost him!" he cried, as Blondet gave him a hand
+to pull him out, dripping like a triton, and a vanquished triton. "The
+rascal, I see him, under those rocks! He has let go his fish,"
+continued Fourchon, pointing to something that floated on the surface.
+"We'll have that at any rate; it's a tench, a real tench."
+
+Just then a groom in livery on horseback and leading another horse by
+the bridle galloped up the road toward Conches.
+
+"See! there's the chateau people sending after you," said the old man.
+"If you want to cross back again I'll give you a hand. I don't mind
+about getting wet; it saves washing!"
+
+"How about rheumatism?"
+
+"Rheumatism! don't you see the sun has browned our legs, Mouche and
+me, like tobacco-pipes. Here, lean on me, my good gentleman--you're
+from Paris; you don't know, though you DO know so much, how to walk on
+our rocks. If you stay here long enough, you'll learn a deal that's
+written in the book o' nature,--you who write, so they tell me, in the
+newspapers."
+
+Blondet had reached the bank before Charles, the groom, perceived him.
+
+"Ah, monsieur!" he cried; "you don't know how anxious Madame has been
+since she heard you had gone through the gate of Conches; she was
+afraid you were drowned. They have rung the great bell three times,
+and Monsieur le cure is hunting for you in the park."
+
+"What time is it, Charles?"
+
+"A quarter to twelve."
+
+"Help me to mount."
+
+"Ha!" exclaimed the groom, noticing the water that dripped from
+Blondet's boots and trousers, "has monsieur been taken in by Pere
+Fourchon's otter?"
+
+The words enlightened the journalist.
+
+"Don't say a word about it, Charles," he cried, "and I'll make it all
+right with you."
+
+"Oh, as for that!" answered the man, "Monsieur le comte himself has
+been taken in by that otter. Whenever a visitor comes to Les Aigues,
+Pere Fourchon sets himself on the watch, and if the gentleman goes to
+see the sources of the Avonne he sells him the otter; he plays the
+trick so well that Monsieur le comte has been here three times and
+paid him for six days' work, just to stare at the water!"
+
+"Heavens!" thought Blondet. "And I imagined I had seen the greatest
+comedians of the present day!--Potier, the younger Baptiste, Michot,
+and Monrose. What are they compared to that old beggar?"
+
+"He is very knowing at the business, Pere Fourchon is," continued
+Charles; "and he has another string to his bow, besides. He calls
+himself a rope-maker, and has a walk under the park wall by the gate
+of Blangy. If you merely touch his rope he'll entangle you so cleverly
+that you will want to turn the wheel and make a bit of it yourself;
+and for that you would have to pay a fee for apprenticeship. Madame
+herself was taken in, and gave him twenty francs. Ah! he is the king
+of tricks, that old fellow!"
+
+The groom's gossip set Blondet thinking of the extreme craftiness and
+wiliness of the French peasant, of which he had heard a great deal
+from his father, a judge at Alencon. Then the satirical meaning hidden
+beneath Pere Fourchon's apparent guilelessness came back to him, and
+he owned himself "gulled" by the Burgundian beggar.
+
+"You would never believe, monsieur," said Charles, as they reached the
+portico at Les Aigues, "how much one is forced to distrust everybody
+and everything in the country,--especially here, where the general is
+not much liked--"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"That's more than I know," said Charles, with the stupid air servants
+assume to shield themselves when they wish not to answer their
+superiors, which nevertheless gave Blondet a good deal to think of.
+
+"Here you are, truant!" cried the general, coming out on the terrace
+when he heard the horses. "Here he is; don't be uneasy!" he called
+back to his wife, whose little footfalls were heard behind him. "Now
+the Abbe Brossette is missing. Go and find him, Charles," he said to
+the groom.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE TAVERN
+
+The gate of Blangy, built by Bouret, was formed of two wide pilasters
+of projecting rough-hewn stone; each surmounted by a dog sitting on
+his haunches and holding an escutcheon between his fore paws. The
+proximity of a small house where the steward lived dispensed with the
+necessity for a lodge. Between the two pilasters, a sumptuous iron
+gate, like those made in Buffon's time for the Jardin des Plantes,
+opened on a short paved way which led to the country road (formerly
+kept in order by Les Aigues and the Soulanges family) which unites
+Conches, Cerneux, Blangy, and Soulanges to Ville-aux-Fayes, like a
+wreath, for the whole road is lined with flowering hedges and little
+houses covered with roses and honey-suckle and other climbing plants.
+
+There, along a pretty wall which extends as far as a terrace from
+which the land of Les Aigues falls rapidly to the valley till it meets
+that of Soulanges, are the rotten posts, the old wheel, and the forked
+stakes which constituted the manufactory of the village rope-maker.
+
+Soon after midday, while Blondet was seating himself at table opposite
+the Abbe Brossette and receiving the tender expostulations of the
+countess, Pere Fourchon and Mouche arrived at this establishment. From
+that vantage-ground Pere Fourchon, under pretence of rope-making,
+could watch Les Aigues and see every one who went in and out. Nothing
+escaped him, the opening of the blinds, tete-a-tete loiterings, or the
+least little incidents of country life, were spied upon by the old
+fellow, who had set up this business within the last three years,--a
+trifling circumstance which neither the masters, nor the servants, nor
+the keepers of Les Aigues had as yet remarked upon.
+
+"Go round to the house by the gate of the Avonne while I put away the
+tackle," said Pere Fourchon to his attendant, "and when you have
+blabbed about the thing, they'll no doubt send after me to the Grand-
+I-Vert, where I am going for a drop of drink,--for it makes one
+thirsty enough to wade in the water that way. If you do just as I tell
+you, you'll hook a good breakfast out of them; try to meet the
+countess, and give a slap at me, and that will put it into her head to
+come and preach morality or something! There's lots of good wine to
+get out of it."
+
+After these last instructions, which the sly look in Mouche's face
+rendered quite superfluous, the old peasant, hugging the otter under
+his arm, disappeared along the country road.
+
+Half-way between the gate and the village there stood, at the time
+when Emile Blondet stayed at Les Aigues, one of those houses which are
+never seen but in parts of France where stone is scarce. Bits of
+bricks picked up anywhere, cobblestones set like diamonds in the clay
+mud, formed very solid walls, though worn in places; the roof was
+supported by stout branches and covered with rushes and straw, while
+the clumsy shutters and the broken door--in short, everything about
+the cottage was the product of lucky finds, or of gifts obtained by
+begging.
+
+The peasant has an instinct for his habitation like that of an animal
+for its nest or its burrow, and this instinct was very marked in all
+the arrangements of this cottage. In the first place, the door and the
+window looked to the north. The house, placed on a little rise in the
+stoniest angle of a vineyard, was certainly healthful. It was reached
+by three steps, carefully made with stakes and planks filled in with
+broken stone and gravel, so that the water ran off rapidly; and as the
+rain seldom comes from the northward in Burgundy, no dampness could
+rot the foundations, slight as they were. Below the steps and along
+the path ran a rustic paling, hidden beneath a hedge of hawthorn and
+sweet-brier. An arbor, with a few clumsy tables and wooden benches,
+filled the space between the cottage and the road, and invited the
+passers-by to rest themselves. At the upper end of the bank by the
+house roses grew, and wall-flowers, violets, and other flowers that
+cost nothing. Jessamine and honey-suckle had fastened their tendrils
+on the roof, mossy already, though the building was far from old.
+
+To the right of the house, the owner had built a stable for two cows.
+In front of this erection of old boards, a sunken piece of ground
+served as a yard where, in a corner, was a huge manure-heap. On the
+other side of the house and the arbor stood a thatched shed, supported
+on trunks of trees, under which the various outdoor properties of the
+peasantry were put away,--the utensils of the vine-dressers, their
+empty casks, logs of wood piled about a mound which contained the
+oven, the mouth of which opened, as was usual in the houses of the
+peasantry, under the mantle-piece of the chimney in the kitchen.
+
+About an acre of land adjoined the house, inclosed by an evergreen
+hedge and planted with grape-vines; tended as peasants tend them,--
+that is to say, well-manured, and dug round, and layered so that they
+usually set their fruit before the vines of the large proprietors in a
+circuit of ten miles round. A few trees, almond, plum, and apricot,
+showed their slim heads here and there in this enclosure. Between the
+rows of vines potatoes and beans were planted. In addition to all
+this, on the side towards the village and beyond the yard was a bit of
+damp low ground, favorable for the growth of cabbages and onions
+(favorite vegetables of the working-classes), which was closed by a
+wooden gate, through which the cows were driven, trampling the path
+into mud and covering it with dung.
+
+The house, which had two rooms on the ground-floor, opened upon the
+vineyard. On this side an outer stairway, roofed with thatch and
+resting against the wall of the house, led up to the garret, which was
+lighted by one round window. Under this rustic stairway opened a
+cellar built of Burgundy brick, containing several casks of wine.
+
+Though the kitchen utensils of the peasantry are usually only two,
+namely, a frying-pan and an iron pot, with which they manage to do all
+their cooking, exceptions to this rule, in the shape of two enormous
+saucepans hanging beneath the mantle-shelf and above a small portable
+stove, were to be seen in this cottage. In spite, however, of this
+indication of luxury, the furniture was in keeping with the external
+appearance of the place. A jar held water, the spoons were of wood or
+pewter, the dishes, of red clay without and white within, were scaling
+off and had been mended with pewter rivets; the heavy table and chairs
+were of pine wood, and for flooring there was nothing better than the
+hardened earth. Every fifth year the walls received a coat of white-
+wash and so did the narrow beams of the ceiling, from which hung
+bacon, strings of onions, bundles of tallow candles, and the bags in
+which a peasant keeps his seeds; near the bread-box stood an old-
+fashioned wardrobe in walnut, where the scanty household linen, and
+the one change of garments together with the holiday attire of the
+entire family were kept.
+
+Above the mantel of the chimney gleamed a poacher's old gun, not worth
+five francs,--the wood scorched, the barrel to all appearances never
+cleaned. An observer might reflect that the protection of a hovel with
+only a latch, and an outer gate that was only a paling and never
+closed, needed no better weapon; but still the wonder was to what use
+it was put. In the first place, though the wood was of the commonest
+kind, the barrel was carefully selected, and came from a valuable gun,
+given in all probability to a game-keeper. Moreover, the owner of this
+weapon never missed his aim; there was between him and his gun the
+same intimate acquaintance that there is between a workman and his
+tool. If the muzzle must be raised or lowered the merest fraction in
+its aim, because it carries just an atom above or below the range, the
+poacher knows it; he obeys the rule and never misses. An officer of
+artillery would have found the essential parts of this weapon in good
+condition notwithstanding its uncleanly appearance. In all that the
+peasant appropriates to his use, in all that serves him, he displays
+just the amount of force that is needed, neither more nor less; he
+attends to the essential and to nothing beyond. External perfection he
+has no conception of. An unerring judge of the necessary in all
+things, he thoroughly understands degrees of strength, and knows very
+well when working for an employer how to give the least possible for
+the most he can get. This contemptible-looking gun will be found to
+play a serious part in the life of the family inhabiting this cottage,
+and you will presently learn how and why.
+
+Have you now taken in all the many details of this hovel, planted
+about five hundred feet away from the pretty gate of Les Aigues? Do
+you see it crouching there, like a beggar beside a palace? Well, its
+roof covered with velvet mosses, its clacking hens, its grunting pig,
+its straying heifer, all its rural graces have a horrible meaning.
+
+Fastened to a pole, which was stuck in the ground beside the entrance
+through the fence, was a withered bunch of three pine branches and
+some old oak-leaves tied together with a rag. Above the door of the
+house a roving artist had painted, probably in return for his
+breakfast, a huge capital "I" in green on a white ground two feet
+square; and for the benefit of those who could read, this witty joke
+in twelve letters: "Au Grand-I-Vert" (hiver). On the left of the door
+was a vulgar sign bearing, in colored letters, "Good March beer," and
+the picture of a foaming pot of the same, with a woman, in a dress
+excessively low-necked, on one side, and an hussar on the other,--both
+coarsely colored. Consequently, in spite of the blooming flowers and
+the fresh country air, this cottage exhaled the same strong and
+nauseous odor of wine and food which assails you in Paris as you pass
+the door of the cheap cook-shops of the faubourg.
+
+Now you know the surroundings. Behold the inhabitants and hear their
+history, which contains more than one lesson for philanthropists.
+
+The proprietor of the Grand-I-Vert, named Francois Tonsard, commends
+himself to the attention of philosophers by the manner in which he had
+solved the problem of an idle life and a busy life, so as to make the
+idleness profitable, and occupation nil.
+
+A jack-of-all-trades, he knew how to cultivate the ground, but for
+himself only. For others, he dug ditches, gathered fagots, barked the
+trees, or cut them down. In all such work the employer is at the mercy
+of the workman. Tonsard owned his plot of ground to the generosity of
+Mademoiselle Laguerre. In his early youth he had worked by the day for
+the gardener at Les Aigues; and he really had not his equal in
+trimming the shrubbery-trees, the hedges, the horn-beams, and the
+horse-chestnuts. His very name shows hereditary talent. In remote
+country-places privileges exist which are obtained and preserved with
+as much care as the merchants of a city display in getting theirs.
+Mademoiselle Laguerre was one day walking in the garden, when she
+overheard Tonsard, then a strapping fellow, say, "All I need to live
+on, and live happily, is an acre of land." The kind creature,
+accustomed to make others happy, gave him the acre of vineyard near
+the gate of Blangy, in return for one hundred days' work (a delicate
+regard for his feelings which was little understood), and allowed him
+to stay at Les Aigues, where he lived with her servants, who thought
+him one of the best fellows in Burgundy.
+
+Poor Tonsard (that is what everybody called him) worked about thirty
+days out of the hundred that he owed; the rest of the time he idled
+about, talking and laughing with Mademoiselle's women, particularly
+with Mademoiselle Cochet, the lady's maid, though she was ugly, like
+all confidential maids of handsome actresses. Laughing with
+Mademoiselle Cochet signified so many things that Soudry, the
+fortunate gendarme mentioned in Blondet's letter, still looked askance
+at Tonsard after the lapse of nearly twenty-five years. The walnut
+wardrobe, the bedstead with the tester and curtains, and the ornaments
+about the bedroom were doubtless the result of the said laughter.
+
+Once in possession of his care, Tonsard replied to the first person
+who happened to mention that Mademoiselle Laguerre had given it to
+him, "I've bought it deuced hard, and paid well for it. Do rich folks
+ever give us anything? Are one hundred days' work nothing? It has cost
+me three hundred francs, and the land is all stones." But that speech
+never got beyond the regions of his own class.
+
+Tonsard built his house himself, picking up the materials here and
+there as he could,--getting a day's work out of this one and that one,
+gleaning in the rubbish that was thrown away, often asking for things
+and always obtaining them. A discarded door cut in two for convenience
+in carrying away became the door of the stable; the window was the
+sash of a green-house. In short, the rubbish of the chateau, served to
+build the fatal cottage.
+
+Saved from the draft by Gaubertin, the steward of Les Aigues, whose
+father was prosecuting-attorney of the department, and who, moreover,
+could refuse nothing to Mademoiselle Cochet, Tonsard married as soon
+as his house was finished and his vines had begun to bear. A well-
+grown fellow of twenty-three, in everybody's good graces at Les
+Aigues, on whom Mademoiselle had bestowed an acre of her land, and who
+appeared to be a good worker, he had the art to ring the praises of
+his negative merits, and so obtained the daughter of a farmer on the
+Ronquerolles estate, which lies beyond the forest of Les Aigues.
+
+This farmer held the lease of half a farm, which was going to ruin in
+his hands for want of a helpmate. A widower, and inconsolable for the
+loss of his wife, he tried to drown his troubles, like the English, in
+wine, and then, when he had put the poor deceased out of his mind, he
+found himself married, so the village maliciously declared, to a woman
+named Boisson. From being a farmer he became once more a laborer, but
+an idle and drunken laborer, quarrelsome and vindictive, capable of
+any ill-deed, like most of his class when they fall from a well-to-do
+state of life into poverty. This man, whose practical information and
+knowledge of reading and writing placed him far above his fellow-
+workmen, while his vices kept him at the level of pauperism, you have
+already seen on the banks of the Avonne, measuring his cleverness with
+that of one of the cleverest men in Paris, in a bucolic overlooked by
+Virgil.
+
+Pere Fourchon, formerly a schoolmaster at Blangy, lost that place
+through misconduct and his singular ideas as to public education. He
+helped the children to make paper boats with their alphabets much
+oftener than he taught them how to spell; he scolded them in so
+remarkable a manner for pilfering fruit that his lectures might really
+have passed for lessons on the best way of scaling the walls. From
+teacher he became a postman. In this capacity, which serves as a
+refuge to many an old soldier, Pere Fourchon was daily reprimanded.
+Sometimes he forgot the letters in a tavern, at other times he kept
+them in his pocket. When he was drunk he left those for one village in
+another village; when he was sober he read them. Consequently, he was
+soon dismissed. No longer able to serve the State, Pere Fourchon ended
+by becoming a manufacturer. In the country a poor man can always get
+something to do, and make at least a pretence of gaining an honest
+livelihood. At sixty-eight years of age the old man started his rope-
+walk, a manufactory which requires the very smallest capital. The
+workshop is, as we have seen, any convenient wall; the machinery costs
+about ten francs. The apprentice slept, like his master, in a hay-
+loft, and lived on whatever he could pick up. The rapacity of the law
+in the matter of doors and windows expires "sub dio." The tow to make
+the first rope can be borrowed. But the principal revenue of Pere
+Fourchon and his satellite Mouche, the natural son of one of his
+natural daughters, came from the otters; and then there were
+breakfasts and dinners given them by peasants who could neither read
+nor write, and were glad to use the old fellow's talents when they had
+a bill to make out, or a letter to dispatch. Besides all this, he knew
+how to play the clarionet, and he went about with his friend
+Vermichel, the miller of Soulanges, to village weddings and the grand
+balls given at the Tivoli of Soulanges.
+
+Vermichel's name was Michel Vert, but the transposition was so
+generally used that Brunet, the clerk of the municipal court of
+Soulanges, was in the habit of writing Michel-Jean-Jerome Vert, called
+Vermichel, practitioner. Vermichel, a famous violin in the Burgundian
+regiment of former days, had procured for Pere Fourchon, in
+recognition of certain services, a situation as practitioner, which in
+remote country-places usually devolves on those who are able to sign
+their name. Pere Fourchon therefore added to his other avocations that
+of witness, or practitioner of legal papers, whenever the Sieur Brunet
+came to draw them in the districts of Cerneux, Conches, and Blangy.
+Vermichel and Fourchon, allied by a friendship of twenty years'
+tippling, might really be considered a business firm.
+
+Mouche and Fourchon, bound together by vice as Mentor and Telemachus
+by virtue, travelled like the latter, in search of their father,
+"panis angelorum,"--the only Latin words which the old fellow's memory
+had retained. They went about scraping up the pickings of the Grand-I-
+Vert, and those of the adjacent chateaux; for between them, in their
+busiest and most prosperous years, they had never contrived to make as
+much as three hundred and sixty fathoms of rope. In the first place,
+no dealer within a radius of fifty miles would have trusted his tow to
+either Mouche or Fourchon. The old man, surpassing the miracles of
+modern chemistry, knew too well how to resolve the tow into the all-
+benignant juice of the grape. Moreover, his triple functions of public
+writer for three townships, legal practitioner for one, and clarionet-
+player at large, hindered, so he said, the development of his
+business.
+
+Thus it happened that Tonsard was disappointed from the start in the
+hope he had indulged of increasing his comfort by an increase of
+property in marriage. The idle son-in-law had chanced, by a very
+common accident, on an idler father-in-law. Matters went all the worse
+because Tonsard's wife, gifted with a sort of rustic beauty, being
+tall and well-made, was not fond of work in the open air. Tonsard
+blamed his wife for her father's short-comings, and ill-treated her,
+with the customary revenge of the common people, whose minds take in
+only an effect and rarely look back to causes.
+
+Finding her fetters heavy, the woman lightened them. She used
+Tonsard's vices to get the better of him. Loving comfort and good
+eating herself, she encouraged his idleness and gluttony. In the first
+place, she managed to procure the good-will of the servants of the
+chateau, and Tonsard, in view of the results, made no complaint as to
+the means. He cared very little what his wife did, so long as she did
+all he wanted of her. That is the secret agreement of many a
+household. Madame Tonsard established the wine-shop of the Grand-I-
+Vert, her first customers being the servants of Les Aigues and the
+keepers and huntsmen.
+
+Gaubertin, formerly steward to Mademoiselle Laguerre, one of La
+Tonsard's chief patrons, gave her several puncheons of excellent wine
+to attract custom. The effect of these gifts (continued as long as
+Gaubertin remained a bachelor) and the fame of her rather lawless
+beauty commended this beauty to the Don Juans of the valley, and
+filled the wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert. Being a lover of good
+eating, La Tonsard was naturally an excellent cook; and though her
+talents were only exercised on the common dishes of the country,
+jugged hare, game sauce, stewed fish and omelets, she was considered
+in all the country round to be an admirable cook of the sort of food
+which is eaten at a counter and spiced in a way to excite a desire for
+drink. By the end of two years, she had managed to rule Tonsard, and
+turn him to evil courses, which, indeed, he asked no better than to
+indulge in.
+
+The rascal was continually poaching, and with nothing to fear from it.
+The intimacies of his wife with Gaubertin and the keepers and the
+rural authorities, together with the laxity of the times, secured him
+impunity. As soon as his children were large enough he made them
+serviceable to his comfort, caring no more for their morality than for
+that of his wife. He had two sons and two daughters. Tonsard, who
+lived, as did his wife, from hand to mouth, might have come to an end
+of this easy life if he had not maintained a sort of martial law over
+his family, which compelled them to work for the preservation of it.
+When he had brought up his children, at the cost of those from whom
+his wife was able to extort gifts, the following charter and budget
+were the law at the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+Tonsard's old mother and his two daughters, Catherine and Marie, went
+into the woods at certain seasons twice a-day, and came back laden
+with fagots which overhung the crutch of their poles at least two feet
+beyond their heads. Though dried sticks were placed on the outside of
+the heap, the inside was made of live wood cut from young trees. In
+plain words, Tonsard helped himself to his winter's fuel in the woods
+of Les Aigues. Besides this, father and sons were constantly poaching.
+From September to March, hares, rabbits, partridges, deer, in short,
+all the game that was not eaten at the chateau, was sold at Blangy and
+at Soulanges, where Tonsard's two daughters peddled milk in the early
+mornings,--coming back with the news of the day, in return for the
+gossip they carried about Les Aigues, and Cerneux, and Conches. In the
+months when the three Tonsards were unable to hunt with a gun, they
+set traps. If the traps caught more game than they could eat, La
+Tonsard made pies of it and sent them to Ville-aux-Fayes. In harvest-
+time seven Tonsards--the old mother, the two sons (until they were
+seventeen years of age), the two daughters, together with old Fourchon
+and Mouche--gleaned, and generally brought in about sixteen bushels a
+day of all grains, rye, barley, wheat, all good to grind.
+
+The two cows, led to the roadside by the youngest girl, always managed
+to stray into the meadows of Les Aigues; but as, if it ever chanced
+that some too flagrant trespass compelled the keepers to take notice
+of it, the children were either whipped or deprived of a coveted
+dainty, they had acquired such extraordinary aptitude in hearing the
+enemy's footfall that the bailiff or the park-keeper of Les Aigues was
+very seldom able to detect them. Besides, the relations of those
+estimable functionaries with Tonsard and his wife tied a bandage over
+their eyes. The cows, held by long ropes, obeyed a mere twitch or a
+special low call back to the roadside, knowing very well that, the
+danger once past, they could finish their browsing in the next field.
+Old mother Tonsard, who was getting more and more infirm, succeeded
+Mouche in his duties, after Fourchon, under pretence of caring for his
+natural grandson's education, kept him to himself; while Marie and
+Catherine made hay in the woods. These girls knew the exact spots
+where the fine forest-grass abounded, and there they cut and spread
+and cocked and garnered it, supplying two thirds, at least, of the
+winter fodder, and leading the cows on all fine days to sheltered
+nooks where they could still find pasture. In certain parts of the
+valley of Les Aigues, as in all places protected by a chain of
+mountains, in Piedmont and in Lombardy for instance, there are spots
+where the grass keeps green all the year. Such fields, called in Italy
+"marciti," are of great value; though in France they are often in
+danger of being injured by snow and ice. This phenomenon is due, no
+doubt, to some favorable exposure, and to the infiltration of water
+which keeps the ground at a warmer temperature.
+
+The calves were sold for about eighty francs. The milk, deducting the
+time when the cows calved or went dry, brought in about one hundred
+and sixty francs a year besides supplying the wants of the family.
+Tonsard himself managed to earn another hundred and sixty by doing odd
+jobs of one kind or another.
+
+The sale of food and wine in the tavern, after all costs were paid,
+returned a profit of about three hundred francs, for the great
+drinking-bouts happened only at certain times and in certain seasons;
+and as the topers who indulged in them gave Tonsard and his wife due
+notice, the latter bought in the neighboring town the exact quantity
+of provisions needed and no more. The wine produced by Tonsard's
+vineyard was sold in ordinary years for twenty francs a cask to a
+wine-dealer at Soulanges with whom Tonsard was intimate. In very
+prolific years he got as much as twelve casks from his vines; but
+eight was the average; and Tonsard kept half for his own traffic. In
+all wine-growing districts the gleaning of the large vineyards gives a
+good perquisite, and out of it the Tonsard family usually managed to
+obtain three casks more. But being, as we have seen, sheltered and
+protected by the keepers, they showed no conscience in their
+proceedings,--entering vineyards before the harvesters were out of
+them, just as they swarmed into the wheat-fields before the sheaves
+were made. So, the seven or eight casks of wine, as much gleaned as
+harvested, were sold for a good price. However, out of these various
+proceeds the Grand-I-Vert was mulcted in a good sum for the personal
+consumption of Tonsard and his wife, who wanted the best of everything
+to eat, and better wine than they sold,--which they obtained from
+their friend at Soulanges in payment for their own. In short, the
+money scraped together by this family amounted to about nine hundred
+francs, for they fattened two pigs a year, one for themselves and the
+other to sell.
+
+The idlers and scapegraces and also the laborers took a fancy to the
+tavern of the Grand-I-Vert, partly because of La Tonsard's merits, and
+partly on account of the hail-fellow-well-met relation existing
+between this family and the lower classes of the valley. The two
+daughters, both remarkably handsome, followed the example of their
+mother as to morals. Moreover, the long established fame of the Grand-
+I-Vert, dating from 1795, made it a venerable spot in the eyes of the
+common people. From Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes, workmen came there to
+meet and make their bargains and hear the news collected by the
+Tonsard women and by Mouche and old Fourchon, or supplied by Vermichel
+and Brunet, that renowned official, when he came to the tavern in
+search of his practitioner. There the price of hay and of wine was
+settled; also that of a day's work and of piece-work. Tonsard, a
+sovereign judge in such matters, gave his advice and opinion while
+drinking with his guests. Soulanges, according to a saying in these
+parts, was a town for society and amusement only, while Blangy was a
+business borough; crushed, however, by the great commercial centre of
+Ville-aux-Fayes, which had become in the last twenty-five years the
+capital of this flourishing valley. The cattle and grain market was
+held at Blangy, in the public square, and the prices there obtained
+served as a tariff for the whole arrondissement.
+
+By staying in the house and doing no out-door work, La Tonsard
+continued fresh and fair and dimpled, in comparison with the women who
+worked in the fields and faded as rapidly as the flowers, becoming old
+and haggard before they were thirty. She liked to be well-dressed. In
+point of fact, she was only clean, but in a village cleanliness is a
+luxury. The daughters, better dressed than their means warranted,
+followed their mother's example. Beneath their outer garment, which
+was relatively handsome, they wore linen much finer than that of the
+richest peasant women. On fete-days they appeared in dresses that were
+really pretty, obtained, Heaven knows how! For one thing, the men-
+servants at Les Aigues sold to them, at prices that were easily paid,
+the cast-off clothing of the lady's-maids, which, after sweeping the
+streets of Paris and being made over to fit Marie and Catherine,
+appeared triumphantly in the precincts of the Grand-I-Vert. These
+girls, bohemians of the valley, received not one penny in money from
+their parents, who gave them food only, and the wretched pallets on
+which they slept with their grandmother in the barn, where their
+brothers also slept, curled up in the hay like animals. Neither father
+nor mother paid any heed to this propinquity.
+
+The iron age and the age of gold are more alike than we think for. In
+the one nothing aroused vigilance; in the other, everything rouses it;
+the result to society is, perhaps, very much the same. The presence of
+old Mother Tonsard, which was more a necessity than a precaution, was
+simply one immorality the more. And thus it was that the Abbe
+Brossette, after studying the morals of his parishioners, made this
+pregnant remark to his bishop:--
+
+"Monseigneur, when I observe the stress that the peasantry lay on
+their poverty, I realize how they fear to lose that excuse for their
+immorality."
+
+Though everybody knew that the family had no principles and no
+scruples, nothing was ever said against the morals of the Grand-I-
+Vert. At the beginning of this book it is necessary to explain, once
+for all, to persons accustomed to the decencies of middle-class life,
+that the peasants have no decency in their domestic habits and
+customs. They make no appeal to morality when their daughters are
+seduced, unless the seducer is rich and timid. Children, until the
+State takes possession of them, are used either as capital or as
+instruments of convenience. Self-interest has become, specially since
+1789, the sole motive of the masses; they never ask if an action is
+legal or immoral, but only if it is profitable. Morality, which is not
+to be confounded with religion, begins only at a certain competence,--
+just as one sees, in a higher sphere, how delicacy blossoms in the
+soul when fortune decorates the furniture. A positively moral and
+upright man is rare among the peasantry. Do you ask why? Among the
+many reasons that may be given for this state of things, the principal
+one is this: Through the nature of their social functions, the
+peasants live a purely material life which approximates to that of
+savages, and their constant union with nature tends to foster it. When
+toil exhausts the body it takes from the mind its purifying action,
+especially among the ignorant. The Abbe Brossette was right in saying
+that the state policy of the peasant is his poverty.
+
+Meddling in everybody's interests, Tonsard heard everybody's
+complaints, and often instigated frauds to benefit the needy. His
+wife, a kindly appearing woman, had a good word for evil-doers, and
+never withheld either approval or personal help from her customers in
+anything they undertook against the rich. This inn, a nest of vipers,
+brisk and venomous, seething and active, was a hot-bed for the hatred
+of the peasants and the workingmen against the masters and the
+wealthy.
+
+The prosperous life of the Tonsards was, therefore, an evil example.
+Others asked themselves why they should not take their wood, as the
+Tonsards did, from the forest; why not pasture their cows and have
+game to eat and to sell as well as they; why not harvest without
+sowing the grapes and the grain. Accordingly, the pilfering thefts
+which thin the woods and tithe the ploughed lands and meadows and
+vineyards became habitual in this valley, and soon existed as a right
+throughout the districts of Blangy, Conches, and Cerneux, all adjacent
+to the domain of Les Aigues. This sore, for certain reasons which will
+be given in due time, did far greater injury to Les Aigues than to the
+estates of Ronquerolles or Soulanges. You must not, however, fancy
+that Tonsard, his wife and children, and his old mother ever
+deliberately said to themselves, "We will live by theft, and commit it
+as cleverly as we can." Such habits grow slowly. To the dried sticks
+they added, in the first instance, a single bit of good wood; then,
+emboldened by habit and a carefully prepared immunity (necessary to
+plans which this history will unfold), they ended at last in cutting
+"their wood," and stealing almost their entire livelihood. Pasturage
+for the cows and the abuses of gleaning were established as customs
+little by little. When the Tonsards and the do-nothings of the valley
+had tasted the sweets of these four rights (thus captured by rural
+paupers, and amounting to actual robbery) we can easily imagine they
+would never give them up unless compelled by a power greater than
+their own audacity.
+
+At the time when this history begins Tonsard, then about fifty years
+of age, tall and strong, rather stout than thin, with curly black
+hair, skin highly colored and marbled like a brick with purple
+blotches, yellow whites to the eyes, large ears with broad flaps, a
+muscular frame, encased, however, in flabby flesh, a retreating
+forehead, and a hanging lip,--Tonsard, such as you see him, hid his
+real character under an external stupidity, lightened at times by a
+show of experience, which seemed all the more intelligent because he
+had acquired in the company of his father-in-law a sort of bantering
+talk, much affected by old Fourchon and Vermichel. His nose, flattened
+at the end as if the finger of God intended to mark him, gave him a
+voice which came from his palate, like that of all persons disfigured
+by a disease which thickens the nasal passages, through which the air
+then passes with difficulty. His upper teeth overlapped each other,
+and this defect (which Lavater calls terrible) was all the more
+apparent because they were as white as those of a dog. But for a
+certain lawless and slothful good humor, and the free-and-easy ways of
+a rustic tippler, the man would have alarmed the least observing of
+spectators.
+
+If the portraits of Tonsard, his inn, and his father-in-law take a
+prominent place in this history, it is because that place belongs to
+him and to the inn and to the family. In the first place, their
+existence, so minutely described, is the type of a hundred other
+households in the valley of Les Aigues. Secondly, Tonsard, without
+being other than the instrument of deep and active hatreds, had an
+immense influence on the struggle that was about to take place, being
+the friend and counsellor of all the complainants of the lower
+classes. His inn, as we shall presently see, was the rendezvous for
+the aggressors; in fact, he became their chief, partly on account of
+the fear he inspired throughout the valley--less, however, by his
+actual deeds than by those that were constantly expected of him. The
+threat of this man was as much dreaded as the thing threatened, so
+that he never had occasion to execute it.
+
+Every revolt, open or concealed, has its banner. The banner of the
+marauders, the drunkards, the idlers, the sluggards of the valley des
+Aigues was the terrible tavern of the Grand-I-Vert. Its frequenters
+found amusement there,--as rare and much-desired a thing in the
+country as in a city. Moreover, there was no other inn along the
+country-road for over twelve miles, a distance which conveyances (even
+when laden) could easily do in three hours; so that those who went
+from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes always stopped at the Grand-I-Vert, if
+only to refresh themselves. The miller of Les Aigues, who was also
+assistant-mayor, and his men came there. The grooms and valets of the
+general were not averse to Tonsard's wine, rendered attractive by
+Tonsard's daughters; so the Grand-I-Vert held subterraneous
+communication with the chateau through the servants, and knew
+immediately everything that they knew. It is impossible either by
+benefits or through their own self-interests, to break up the
+perpetual understanding that exists between the servants of a
+household and the people from whom they come. Domestic service is of
+the masses, and to the masses it will ever remain attached. This fatal
+comradeship explains the reticence of the last words of Charles the
+groom, as he and Blondet reached the portico of the chateau.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+ANOTHER IDYLL
+
+"Ha! by my pipe, papa!" exclaimed Tonsard, seeing his father-in-law as
+the old man entered and supposing him in quest of food, "your stomach
+is lively this morning! We haven't anything to give you. How about
+that rope,--the rope, you know, you were to make for us? It is amazing
+how much you make over night and how little there is made in the
+morning! You ought long ago to have twisted the one that is to twist
+you out of existence; you are getting too costly for us."
+
+The wit of a peasant or laborer is very Attic; it consists in speaking
+out his mind and giving it a grotesque expression. We find the same
+thing in a drawing-room. Delicacy of wit takes the place of
+picturesque vulgarity, and that is really all the difference there is.
+
+"That's enough for the father-in-law!" said the old man. "Talk
+business; I want a bottle of the best."
+
+So saying, Fourchon rapped a five-franc piece that gleamed in his hand
+on the old table at which he was seated,--which, with its coating of
+grease, its scorched black marks, its wine stains, and its gashes, was
+singular to behold. At the sound of coin Marie Tonsard, as trig as a
+sloop about to start on a cruise, glanced at her grandfather with a
+covetous look that shot from her eyes like a spark. La Tonsard came
+out of her bedroom, attracted by the music of metal.
+
+"You are always rough to my poor father," she said to her husband,
+"and yet he has earned a deal of money this year; God grant he came by
+it honestly. Let me see that," she added, springing at the coin and
+snatching it from Fourchon's fingers.
+
+"Marie," said Tonsard, gravely, "above the board you'll find some
+bottled wine. Go and get a bottle."
+
+Wine is of only one quality in the country, but it is sold as of two
+kinds,--cask wine and bottled wine.
+
+"Where did you get this, papa" demanded La Tonsard, slipping the coin
+into her pocket.
+
+"Philippine! you'll come to a bad end," said the old man, shaking his
+head but not attempting to recover his money. Doubtless he had long
+realized the futility of a struggle between his daughter, his terrible
+son-in-law, and himself.
+
+"Another bottle of wine for which you get five francs out of me," he
+added, in a peevish tone. "But it shall be the last. I shall give my
+custom to the Cafe de la Paix."
+
+"Hold your tongue, papa!" remarked his fair and fat daughter, who bore
+some resemblance to a Roman matron. "You need a shirt, and a pair of
+clean trousers, and a hat; and I want to see you with a waistcoat.
+That's what I take the money for."
+
+"I have told you again and again that such things would ruin me," said
+the old man. "People would think me rich and stop giving me anything."
+
+The bottle brought by Marie put an end to the loquacity of the old
+man, who was not without that trait, characteristic of those whose
+tongues are ready to tell out everything, and who shrink from no
+expression of their thought, no matter how atrocious it may be.
+
+"Then you don't want to tell where you filched that money?" said
+Tonsard. "We might go and get more where that came from,--the rest of
+us."
+
+He was making a snare, and as he finished it the ferocious innkeeper
+happened to glance at his father-in-law's trousers, and there he spied
+a raised round spot which clearly defined a second five-franc piece.
+
+"Having become a capitalist I drink your health," said Pere Fourchon.
+
+"If you choose to be a capitalist you can be," said Tonsard; "you have
+the means, you have! But the devil has bored a hole in the back of
+your head through which everything runs out."
+
+"Hey! I only played the otter trick on that young fellow they have got
+at Les Aigues. He's from Paris. That's all there is to it."
+
+"If crowds of people would come to see the sources of the Avonne,
+you'd be rich, Grandpa Fourchon," said Marie.
+
+"Yes," he said, drinking the last glassful the bottle contained, "and
+I've played the sham otter so long, the live otters have got angry,
+and one of them came right between my legs to-day; Mouche caught it,
+and I am to get twenty francs for it."
+
+"I'll bet your otter is made of tow," said Tonsard, looking slyly at
+his father-in-law.
+
+"If you will give me a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, and some list
+braces, so as not to disgrace Vermichel on the music stand at Tivoli
+(for old Socquard is always scolding about my clothes), I'll let you
+keep that money, my daughter; your idea is a good one. I can squeeze
+that rich young fellow at Les Aigues; may be he'll take to otters."
+
+"Go and get another bottle," said Tonsard to his daughter. "If your
+father really had an otter, he would show it to us," he added,
+speaking to his wife and trying to touch up Fourchon.
+
+"I'm too afraid it would get into your frying-pan," said the old man,
+winking one of his little green eyes at his daughter. "Philippine has
+already hooked my five-franc piece; and how many more haven't you
+bagged under pretence of clothing me and feeding me? and now you say
+that my stomach is too lively, and that I go half-naked."
+
+"You sold your last clothes to drink boiled wine at the Cafe de la
+Paix, papa," said his daughter, "though Vermichel tried to prevent
+it."
+
+"Vermichel! the man I treated! Vermichel is incapable of betraying my
+friendship. It must have been that lump of old lard on two legs that
+he is not ashamed to call his wife!"
+
+"He or she," replied Tonsard, "or Bonnebault."
+
+"If it was Bonnebault," cried Fourchon, "he who is one of the pillars
+of the place, I'll--I'll--Enough!"
+
+"You old sot, what has all that got to do with having sold your
+clothes? You sold them because you did sell them; you're of age!" said
+Tonsard, slapping the old man's knee. "Come, do honor to my drink and
+redden up your throat! The father of Mam Tonsard has a right to do so;
+and isn't that better than spending your silver at Socquard's?"
+
+"What a shame it is that you have been fifteen years playing for
+people to dance at Tivoli and you have never yet found out how
+Socquard cooks his wine,--you who are so shrewd!" said his daughter;
+"and yet you know very well that if we had the secret we should soon
+get as rich as Rigou."
+
+Throughout the Morvan, and in that region of Burgundy which lies at
+its feet on the side toward Paris, this boiled wine with which Mam
+Tonsard reproached her father is a rather costly beverage which plays
+a great part in the life of the peasantry, and is made by all grocers
+and wine-dealers, and wherever a drinking-shop exists. This precious
+liquor, made of choice wine, sugar, and cinnamon and other spices, is
+preferable to all those disguises or mixtures of brandy called
+ratafia, one-hundred-and-seven, brave man's cordial, black currant
+wine, vespetro, spirit-of-sun, etc. Boiled wine is found throughout
+France and Switzerland. Among the Jura, and in the wild districts
+trodden only by a few special tourists, the innkeepers call it, on the
+word of commercial travellers, the wine of Syracuse. Excellent it is,
+however, and their guests, hungry as hounds after ascending the
+surrounding peaks, very gladly pay three and four francs a bottle for
+it. In the homes of the Morvan and in Burgundy the least illness or
+the slightest agitation of the nerves is an excuse for boiled wine.
+Before and after childbirth the women take it with the addition of
+burnt sugar. Boiled wine has soaked up the property of many a peasant,
+and more than once the seductive liquid has been the cause of marital
+chastisement.
+
+"Ha! there's no chance of grabbing that secret," replied Fourchon,
+"Socquard always locks himself in when he boils his wine; he never
+told how he does it to his late wife. He sends to Paris for his
+materials."
+
+"Don't plague your father," cried Tonsard; "doesn't he know? well,
+then, he doesn't know! People can't know everything!"
+
+Fourchon grew very uneasy on seeing how his son-in-law's countenance
+softened as well as his words.
+
+"What do you want to rob me of now?" he asked, candidly.
+
+"I?" said Tonsard, "I take none but my legitimate dues; if I get
+anything from you it is in payment of your daughter's portion, which
+you promised me and never paid."
+
+Fourchon, reassured by the harshness of this remark, dropped his head
+on his breast as though vanquished and convinced.
+
+"Look at that pretty snare," resumed Tonsard, coming up to his father-
+in-law and laying the trap upon his knee. "Some of these days they'll
+want game at Les Aigues, and we shall sell them their own, or there
+will be no good God for the poor folks."
+
+"A fine piece of work," said the old man, examining the mischievous
+machine.
+
+"It is very well to pick up the sous now, papa," said Mam Tonsard,
+"but you know we are to have our share in the cake of Les Aigues."
+
+"Oh, what chatterers women are!" cried Tonsard. "If I am hanged it
+won't be for a shot from my gun, but for the gabble of your tongue."
+
+"And do you really suppose that Les Aigues will be cut up and sold in
+lots for your pitiful benefit?" asked Fourchon. "Pshaw! haven't you
+discovered in the last thirty years that old Rigou has been sucking
+the marrow out of your bones that the middle-class folks are worse
+than the lords? Mark my words, when that affair happens, my children,
+the Soudrys, the Gaubertins, the Rigous, will make you kick your heels
+in the air. 'I've the good tobacco, it never shall be thine,' that's
+the national air of the rich man, hey? The peasant will always be the
+peasant. Don't you see (but you never did understand anything of
+politics!) that government puts such heavy taxes on wine only to
+hinder our profits and keep us poor? The middle classes and the
+government, they are all one. What would become of them if everybody
+was rich? Could they till their fields? Would they gather the harvest?
+No, they WANT the poor! I was rich for ten years and I know what I
+thought of paupers."
+
+"Must hunt with them, though," replied Tonsard, "because they mean to
+cut up the great estates; after that's done, we can turn against them.
+If I'd been Courtecuisse, whom that scoundrel Rigou is ruining, I'd
+have long ago paid his bill with other balls than the poor fellow
+gives him."
+
+"Right enough, too," replied Fourchon. "As Pere Niseron says (and he
+stayed republican long after everybody else), 'The people are tough;
+they don't die; they have time before them.'"
+
+Fourchon fell into a sort of reverie; Tonsard profited by his
+inattention to take back the trap, and as he took it up he cut a slip
+below the coin in his father-in-law's pocket at the moment when the
+old man raised his glass to his lips; then he set his foot on the
+five-franc piece as it dropped on the earthen floor just where it was
+always kept damp by the heel-taps which the customers flung from their
+glasses. Though quickly and lightly done, the old man might, perhaps,
+have felt the theft, if Vermichel had not happened to appear at that
+moment.
+
+"Tonsard, do you know where you father is?" called that functionary
+from the foot of the steps.
+
+Vermichel's shout, the theft of the money, and the emptying of old
+Fourchon's glass, were simultaneous.
+
+"Present, captain!" cried Fourchon, holding out a hand to Vermichel to
+help him up the steps.
+
+Of all Burgundian figures, Vermichel would have seemed to you the most
+Burgundian. The practitioner was not red, he was scarlet. His face,
+like certain tropical portions of the globe, was fissured, here and
+there, with small extinct volcanoes, defined by flat and greenish
+patches which Fourchon called, not unpoetically, the "flowers of
+wine." This fiery face, the features of which were swelled out of
+shape by continual drunkenness, looked cyclopic; for it was lighted on
+the right side by a gleaming eye, and darkened on the other by a
+yellow patch over the left orb. Red hair, always tousled, and a beard
+like that of Judas, made Vermichel as formidable in appearance as he
+was meek in reality. His prominent nose looked like an interrogation-
+mark, to which the wide-slit mouth seemed to be always answering, even
+when it did not open. Vermichel, a short man, wore hob-nail shoes,
+bottle-green velveteen trousers, an old waistcoat patched with diverse
+stuffs which seemed to have been originally made of a counterpane, a
+jacket of coarse blue cloth and a gray hat with a broad brim. All this
+luxury, required by the town of Soulanges where Vermichel fulfilled
+the combined functions of porter at the town-hall, drummer, jailer,
+musician, and practitioner, was taken care of by Madame Vermichel, an
+alarming antagonist of Rabelaisian philosophy. This virago with
+moustachios, about one yard in width and one hundred and twenty
+kilograms in weight (but very active), ruled Vermichel with a rod of
+iron. Thrashed by her when drunk, he allowed her to thrash him still
+when sober; which caused Pere Fourchon to say, with a sniff at
+Vermichel's clothes, "It is the livery of a slave."
+
+"Talk of the sun and you'll see its beams," cried Fourchon, repeating
+a well-worn allusion to the rutilant face of Vermichel, which really
+did resemble those copper suns painted on tavern signs in the
+provinces. "Has Mam Vermichel spied too much dust on your back, that
+you're running away from your four-fifths,--for I can't call her your
+better half, that woman! What brings you here at this hour, drum-
+major?"
+
+"Politics, always politics," replied Vermichel, who seemed accustomed
+to such pleasantries.
+
+"Ah! business is bad in Blangy, and there'll be notes to protest, and
+writs to issue," remarked Pere Fourchon, filling a glass for his
+friend.
+
+"That APE of ours is right behind me," replied Vermichel, with a
+backward gesture.
+
+In workmen's slang "ape" meant master. The word belonged to the
+dictionary of the worthy pair.
+
+"What's Monsieur Brunet coming bothering about here?" asked Tonsard.
+
+"Hey, by the powers, you folks!" said Vermichel, "you've brought him
+in for the last three years more than you are worth. Ha! that master
+at Les Aigues, he has his eye upon you; he'll punch you in the ribs;
+he's after you, the Shopman! Brunet says, if there were three such
+landlords in the valley his fortune would be made."
+
+"What new harm are they going to do to the poor?" asked Marie.
+
+"A pretty wise thing for themselves," replied Vermichel. "Faith!
+you'll have to give in, in the end. How can you help it? They've got
+the power. For the last two years haven't they had three foresters and
+a horse-patrol, all as active as ants, and a field-keeper who is a
+terror? Besides, the gendarmerie is ready to do their dirty work at
+any time. They'll crush you--"
+
+"Bah!" said Tonsard, "we are too flat. That which can't be crushed
+isn't the trees, it's ground."
+
+"Don't you trust to that," said Fourchon to his son-in-law; "you own
+property."
+
+"Those rich folks must love you," continued Vermichel, "for they think
+of nothing else from morning till night! They are saying to themselves
+now like this: 'Their cattle eat up our pastures; we'll seize their
+cattle; they can't eat grass themselves.' You've all been condemned,
+the warrants are out, and they have told our ape to take your cows. We
+are to begin this morning at Conches by seizing old mother
+Bonnebault's cow and Godin's cow and Mitant's cow."
+
+The moment the name of Bonnebault was mentioned, Marie, who was in
+love with the old woman's grandson, sprang into the vineyard with a
+nod to her father and mother. She slipped like an eel through a break
+in the hedge, and was off on the way to Conches with the speed of a
+hunted hare.
+
+"They'll do so much," remarked Tonsard, tranquilly, "that they'll get
+their bones broken; and that will be a pity, for their mothers can't
+make them any new ones."
+
+"Well, perhaps so," said old Fourchon, "but see here, Vermichel, I
+can't go with you for an hour or more, for I have important business
+at the chateau."
+
+"More important than serving three warrants at five sous each? 'You
+shouldn't spit into the vintage,' as Father Noah says."
+
+"I tell you, Vermichel, that my business requires me to go to the
+chateau des Aigues," repeated the old man, with an air of laughable
+self-importance.
+
+"And anyhow," said Mam Tonsard, "my father had better keep out of the
+way. Do you really mean to find the cows?"
+
+"Monsieur Brunet, who is a very good fellow, would much rather find
+nothing but their dung," answered Vermichel. "A man who is obliged to
+be out and about day and night had better be careful."
+
+"If he is, he has good reason to be," said Tonsard, sententiously.
+
+"So," continued Vermichel, "he said to Monsieur Michaud, 'I'll go as
+soon as the court is up.' If he had wanted to find the cows he'd have
+gone at seven o'clock in the morning. But that didn't suit Michaud,
+and Brunet has had to be off. You can't take in Michaud, he's a
+trained hound! Ha, the brigand!"
+
+"Ought to have stayed in the army, a swaggerer like that," said
+Tonsard; "he is only fit to deal with enemies. I wish he would come
+and ask me my name. He may call himself a veteran of the young guard,
+but I know very well that if I measured spurs with him, I'd keep my
+feathers up longest."
+
+"Look here!" said Mam Tonsard to Vermichel, "when are the notices for
+the ball at Soulanges coming out? Here it is the eighth of August."
+
+"I took them yesterday to Monsieur Bournier at Ville-aux-Fayes, to be
+printed," replied Vermichel; "they do talk of fireworks on the lake."
+
+"What crowds of people we shall have!" cried Fourchon.
+
+"Profits for Socquard!" said Tonsard, spitefully.
+
+"If it doesn't rain," said his wife, by way of comfort.
+
+At this moment the trot of a horse coming from the direction of
+Soulanges was heard, and five minutes later the sheriff's officer
+fastened his horse to a post placed for the purpose near the wicket
+gate through which the cows were driven. Then he showed his head at
+the door of the Grand-I-Vert.
+
+"Come, my boys, let's lose no time," he said, pretending to be in a
+hurry.
+
+"Hey!" said Vermichel. "Here's a refractory, Monsieur Brunet; Pere
+Fourchon wants to drop off."
+
+"He has had too many drops already," said the sheriff; "but the law in
+this case does not require that he shall be sober."
+
+"Please excuse me, Monsieur Brunet," said Fourchon, "I am expected at
+Les Aigues on business; they are in treaty for an otter."
+
+Brunet, a withered little man dressed from head to foot in black
+cloth, with a bilious skin, a furtive eye, curly hair, lips tight-
+drawn, pinched nose, anxious expression, and gruff in speech,
+exhibited the phenomenon of a character and bearing in perfect harmony
+with his profession. He was so well-informed as to the law, or, to
+speak more correctly, the quibbles of the law, that he had come to be
+both the terror and the counsellor of the whole canton. He was not
+without a certain popularity among the peasantry, from whom he usually
+took his pay in kind. The compound of his active and negative
+qualities and his knowledge of how to manage matters got him the
+custom of the canton, to the exclusion of his coadjutor Plissoud,
+about whom we shall have something to say later. This chance
+combination of a sheriff's officer who does everything and a sheriff's
+officer who does nothing is not at all uncommon in the country justice
+courts.
+
+"So matters are getting warm, are they?" said Tonsard to little
+Brunet.
+
+"What can you expect? you pilfer the man too much, and he's going to
+protect himself," replied the officer. "It will be a bad business for
+you in the end; government will interfere."
+
+"Then we, poor unfortunates, must give up the ghost!" said Mam
+Tonsard, offering him a glass of brandy on a saucer.
+
+"The unfortunate may all die, yet they'll never be lacking in the
+land," said Fourchon, sententiously.
+
+"You do great damage to the woods," retorted the sheriff.
+
+"Now don't believe that, Monsieur Brunet," said Mam Tonsard; "they
+make such a fuss about a few miserable fagots!"
+
+"We didn't crush the rich low enough during the Revolution, that's
+what's the trouble," said Tonsard.
+
+Just then a horrible, and quite incomprehensible noise was heard. It
+seemed to be a rush of hurried feet, accompanied with a rattle of
+arms, half-drowned by the rustling of leaves, the dragging of
+branches, and the sound of still more hasty feet. Two voices, as
+different as the two footsteps, were venting noisy exclamations.
+Everybody inside the inn guessed at once that a man was pursuing a
+woman; but why? The uncertainty did not last long.
+
+"It is mother!" said Tonsard, jumping up; "I know her shriek."
+
+Then suddenly, rushing up the broken steps of the Grand-I-Vert by a
+last effort that can be made only by the sinews of smugglers, old
+Mother Tonsard fell flat on the floor in the middle of the room. The
+immense mass of wood she carried on her head made a terrible noise as
+it crashed against the top of the door and then upon the ground. Every
+one had jumped out of the way. The table, the bottles, the chairs were
+knocked over and scattered. The noise was as great as if the cottage
+itself had come tumbling down.
+
+"I'm dead! The scoundrel has killed me!"
+
+The words and the flight of the old woman were explained by the
+apparition on the threshold of a keeper, dressed in green livery,
+wearing a hat edged with silver cord, a sabre at his side, a leathern
+shoulder-belt bearing the arms of Montcornet charged with those of the
+Troisvilles, the regulation red waistcoat, and buckskin gaiters which
+came above the knee.
+
+After a moment's hesitation the keeper said, looking at Brunet and
+Vermichel, "Here are witnesses."
+
+"Witnesses of what?" said Tonsard.
+
+"That woman has a ten-year-old oak, cut into logs, inside those
+fagots; it is a regular crime!"
+
+The moment the word "witness" was uttered Vermichel thought best to
+breathe the fresh air of the vineyard.
+
+"Of what? witnesses of what?" cried Tonsard, standing in front of the
+keeper while his wife helped up the old woman. "Do you mean to show
+your claws, Vatel? Accuse persons and arrest them on the highway,
+brigand,--that's your domain; but get out of here! A man's house is
+his castle."
+
+"I caught her in the act, and your mother must come with me."
+
+"Arrest my mother in my house? You have no right to do it. My house is
+inviolable,--all the world knows that, at least. Have you got a
+warrant from Monsieur Guerbet, the magistrate? Ha! you must have the
+law behind you before you come in here. You are not the law, though
+you have sworn an oath to starve us to death, you miserable forest-
+gauger, you!"
+
+The fury of the keeper waxed so hot that he was on the point of
+seizing hold of the wood, when the old woman, a frightful bit of black
+parchment endowed with motion, the like of which can be seen only in
+David's picture of "The Sabines," screamed at him, "Don't touch it, or
+I'll fly at your eyes!"
+
+"Well, then, undo that pile in presence of Monsieur Brunet," said the
+keeper.
+
+Though the sheriff's officer had assumed the indifference that the
+routine of business does really give to officials of his class, he
+threw a glance at Tonsard and his wife which said plainly, "A bad
+business!" Old Fourchon looked at his daughter, and slyly pointed at a
+pile of ashes in the chimney. Mam Tonsard, who understood in a moment
+from that significant gesture both the danger of her mother-in-law and
+the advice of her father, seized a handful of ashes and flung them in
+the keeper's eyes. Vatel roared with pain; Tonsard pushed him roughly
+upon the broken door-steps where the blinded man stumbled and fell,
+and then rolled nearly down to the gate, dropping his gun on the way.
+In an instant the load of sticks was unfastened, and the oak logs
+pulled out and hidden with a rapidity no words can describe. Brunet,
+anxious not to witness this manoeuvre, which he readily foresaw,
+rushed after the keeper to help him up; then he placed him on the bank
+and wet his handkerchief in water to wash the eyes of the poor fellow,
+who, in spite of his agony, was trying to reach the brook.
+
+"You are in the wrong, Vatel," said Brunet; "you have no right to
+enter houses, don't you see?"
+
+The old woman, a little hump-backed creature, stood on the sill of the
+door, with her hands on her hips, darting flashes from her eyes and
+curses from her foaming lips shrill enough to be heard at Blangy.
+
+"Ha! the villain, 'twas well done! May hell get you! To suspect me of
+cutting trees!--ME, the most honest woman in the village. To hunt me
+like vermin! I'd like to see you lose your cursed eyes, for then we'd
+have peace. You are birds of ill-omen, the whole of you; you invent
+shameful stories to stir up strife between your master and us."
+
+The keeper allowed the sheriff to bathe his eyes and all the while the
+latter kept telling him that he was legally wrong.
+
+"The old thief! she has tired us out," said Vatel at last. "She has
+been at work in the woods all night."
+
+As the whole family had taken an active hand in hiding the live wood
+and putting things straight in the cottage, Tonsard presently appeared
+at the door with an insolent air. "Vatel, my man, if you ever again
+dare to force your way into my domain, my gun shall answer you," he
+said. "To-day you have had the ashes; the next time you shall have the
+fire. You don't know your own business. That's enough. Now if you feel
+hot after this affair take some wine, I offer it to you; and you may
+come in and see that my old mother's bundle of fagots hadn't a scrap
+of live wood in it; it is every bit brushwood."
+
+"Scoundrel!" said the keeper to the sheriff, in a low voice, more
+enraged by this speech than by the smart of his eyes.
+
+Just then Charles, the groom, appeared at the gate of the Grand-I-
+Vert.
+
+"What is the matter, Vatel?" he said.
+
+"Ah!" said the keeper, wiping his eyes, which he had plunged wide open
+into the rivulet to give them a final cleansing. "I have some debtors
+in there that I'll cause to rue the day they saw the light."
+
+"If you take it that way, Monsieur Vatel," said Tonsard, coldly, "you
+will find we don't want for courage in Burgundy."
+
+Vatel departed. Not feeling much curiosity to know what the trouble
+was, Charles went up the steps and looked into the house.
+
+"Come to the chateau, you and your otter,--if you really have one," he
+said to Pere Fourchon.
+
+The old man rose hurriedly and followed him.
+
+"Well, where is it,--that otter of yours?" said Charles, smiling
+doubtfully.
+
+"This way," said the old fellow, going toward the Thune.
+
+The name is that of a brook formed by the overflow of the mill-race
+and of certain springs in the park of Les Aigues. It runs by the side
+of the county road as far as the lakelet of Soulanges, which it
+crosses, and then falls into the Avonne, after feeding the mills and
+ponds on the Soulanges estate.
+
+"Here it is; I hid it in the brook, with a stone around its neck."
+
+As he stooped and rose again the old man missed the coin out of his
+pocket, where metal was so uncommon that he was likely to notice its
+presence or its absence immediately.
+
+"Ah, the sharks!" he cried. "If I hunt otters they hunt fathers-in-
+law! They get out of me all I earn, and tell me it is for my good! If
+it were not for my poor Mouche, who is the comfort of my old age, I'd
+drown myself. Children! they are the ruin of their fathers. You
+haven't married, have you, Monsieur Charles? Then don't; never get
+married, and then you can't reproach yourself for spreading bad blood.
+I, who expected to buy my tow with that money, and there it is
+filched, stolen! That monsieur up at Les Aigues, a fine young fellow,
+gave me ten francs; ha! well! it'll put up the price of my otter now."
+
+Charles distrusted the old man so profoundly that he took his
+grievances (this time very sincere) for the preliminary of what he
+called, in servant's slang, "varnish," and he made the great mistake
+of letting his opinion appear in a satirical grin, which the spiteful
+old fellow detected.
+
+"Come, come! Pere Fourchon, now behave yourself; you are going to see
+Madame," said Charles, noticing how the rubies flashed on the nose and
+cheeks of the old drunkard.
+
+"I know how to attend to business, Charles; and the proof is that if
+you will get me out of the kitchen the remains of the breakfast and a
+bottle or two of Spanish wine, I'll tell you something which will save
+you from a 'foul.'"
+
+"Tell me, and Francois shall get Monsieur's own order to give you a
+glass of wine," said the groom.
+
+"Promise?"
+
+"I promise."
+
+"Well then, I know you meet my granddaughter Catherine under the
+bridge of the Avonne. Godain is in love with her; he saw you, and he
+is fool enough to be jealous,--I say fool, for a peasant oughtn't to
+have feelings which belong only to rich folks. If you go to the ball
+of Soulanges at Tivoli and dance with her, you'll dance higher than
+you'll like. Godain is rich and dangerous; he is capable of breaking
+your arm without your getting a chance to arrest him."
+
+"That would be too dear; Catherine is a fine girl, but she is not
+worth all that," replied Charles. "Why should Godain be so angry?
+others are not."
+
+"He loves her enough to marry her."
+
+"If he does, he'll beat her," said Charles.
+
+"I don't know about that," said the old man. "She takes after her
+mother, against whom Tonsard never raised a finger,--he's too afraid
+she'll be off, hot foot. A woman who knows how to hold her own is
+mighty useful. Besides, if it came to fisticuffs with Catherine,
+Godain, though he's pretty strong, wouldn't give the last blow."
+
+"Well, thank you, Pere Fourchon; here's forty sous to drink my health
+in case I can't get you the sherry."
+
+Pere Fourchon turned his head aside as he pocketed the money lest
+Charles should see the expression of amusement and sarcasm which he
+was unable to repress.
+
+"Catherine," he resumed, "is a proud minx; she likes sherry. You had
+better tell her to go and get it at Les Aigues."
+
+Charles looked at Pere Fourchon with naive admiration, not suspecting
+the eager interest the general's enemies took in slipping one more spy
+into the chateau.
+
+"The general ought to feel happy now," continued Fourchon; "the
+peasants are all quiet. What does he say? Is he satisfied with
+Sibilet?"
+
+"It is only Monsieur Michaud who finds fault with Sibilet. They say
+he'll get him sent away."
+
+"Professional jealousy!" exclaimed Fourchon. "I'll bet you would like
+to get rid of Francois and take his place."
+
+"Hang it! he has twelve hundred francs wages," said Charles; "but they
+can't send him off,--he knows the general's secrets."
+
+"Just as Madame Michaud knows the countess's," remarked Fourchon,
+watching the other carefully. "Look here, my boy, do you know whether
+Monsieur and Madame have separate rooms?"
+
+"Of course; if they didn't, Monsieur wouldn't be so fond of Madame."
+
+"Is that all you know?" said Fourchon.
+
+As they were now before the kitchen windows nothing more was said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ENEMIES FACE TO FACE
+
+While breakfast was in progress at the chateau, Francois, the head
+footman, whispered to Blondet, but loud enough for the general to
+overhear him,--
+
+"Monsieur, Pere Fourchon's boy is here; he says they have caught the
+otter, and wants to know if you would like it, or whether they shall
+take it to the sub-prefect at Ville-aux-Fayes."
+
+Emile Blondet, though himself a past-master of hoaxing, could not keep
+his cheeks from blushing like those of a virgin who hears an
+indecorous story of which she knows the meaning.
+
+"Ha! ha! so you have hunted the otter this morning with Pere
+Fourchon?" cried the general, with a roar of laughter.
+
+"What is it?" asked the countess, uneasy at her husband's laugh.
+
+"When a man of wit and intelligence is taken in by old Fourchon,"
+continued the general, "a retired cuirassier need not blush for having
+hunted that otter; which bears an enormous resemblance to the third
+posthorse we are made to pay for and never see." With that he went off
+into further explosions of laughter, in the midst of which he
+contrived to say: "I am not surprised you had to change your boots--
+and your trousers; I have no doubt you have been wading! The joke
+didn't go as far as that with me,--I stayed on the bank; but then, you
+know, you are so much more intelligent than I--"
+
+"But you forget," interrupted Madame de Montcornet, "that I do not
+know what you are talking of."
+
+At these words, said with some pique, the general grew serious, and
+Blondet told the story of his fishing for the otter.
+
+"But if they really have an otter," said the countess, "those poor
+people are not to blame."
+
+"Oh, but it is ten years since an otter has been seen about here,"
+said the pitiless general.
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Francois, "the boy swears by all that's
+sacred that he has got one."
+
+"If they have one I'll buy it," said the general.
+
+"I don't suppose," remarked the Abbe Brossette, "that God has
+condemned Les Aigues to never have otters."
+
+"Ah, Monsieur le cure!" cried Blondet, "if you bring the Almighty
+against me--"
+
+"But what is all this? Who is here?" said the countess, hastily.
+
+"Mouche, madame,--the boy who goes about with old Fourchon," said the
+footman.
+
+"Bring him in--that is, if Madame will allow it?" said the general;
+"he may amuse you."
+
+Mouche presently appeared, in his usual state of comparative nudity.
+Beholding this personification of poverty in the middle of this
+luxurious dining-room, the cost of one panel of which would have been
+a fortune to the bare-legged, bare-breasted, and bare-headed child, it
+was impossible not to be moved by an impulse of charity. The boy's
+eyes, like blazing coals, gazed first at the luxuries of the room, and
+then at those on the table.
+
+"Have you no mother?" asked Madame de Montcornet, unable otherwise to
+explain the child's nakedness.
+
+"No, ma'am; m'ma died of grief for losing p'pa, who went to the army
+in 1812 without marrying her with papers, and got frozen, saving your
+presence. But I've my Grandpa Fourchon, who is a good man,--though he
+does beat me bad sometimes."
+
+"How is it, my dear, that such wretched people can be found on your
+estate?" said the countess, looking at the general.
+
+"Madame la comtesse," said the abbe, "in this district we have none
+but voluntary paupers. Monsieur le comte does all he can; but we have
+to do with a class of persons who are without religion and who have
+but one idea, that of living at your expense."
+
+"But, my dear abbe," said Blondet, "you are here to improve their
+morals."
+
+"Monsieur," replied the abbe, "my bishop sent me here as if on a
+mission to savages; but, as I had the honor of telling him, the
+savages of France cannot be reached. They make it a law unto
+themselves not to listen to us; whereas the church does get some hold
+on the savages of America."
+
+"M'sieur le cure, they do help me a bit now," remarked Mouche; "but if
+I went to your church they WOULDN'T, and the other folks would make
+game of my breeches."
+
+"Religion ought to begin by giving him trousers, my dear abbe," said
+Blondet. "In your foreign missions don't you begin by coaxing the
+savages?"
+
+"He would soon sell them," answered the abbe, in a low tone; "besides,
+my salary does not enable me to begin on that line."
+
+"Monsieur le cure is right," said the general, looking at Mouche.
+
+The policy of the little scamp was to appear not to hear what they
+were saying when it was against himself.
+
+"The boy is intelligent enough to know good from evil," continued the
+count, "and he is old enough to work; yet he thinks of nothing but how
+to commit evil without being found out. All the keepers know him. He
+is very well aware that the master of an estate may witness a trespass
+on his property and yet have no right to arrest the trespasser. I have
+known him keep his cows boldly in my meadows, though he knew I saw
+him; but now, ever since I have been mayor, he runs away fast enough."
+
+"Oh, that is very wrong," said the countess; "you should not take
+other people's things, my little man."
+
+"Madame, we must eat. My grandpa gives me more slaps than food, and
+they don't fill my stomach, slaps don't. When the cows come in I milk
+'em just a little and I live on that. Monseigneur isn't so poor but
+what he'll let me drink a drop o' milk the cows get from his grass?"
+
+"Perhaps he hasn't eaten anything to-day," said the countess, touched
+by his misery. "Give him some bread and the rest of that chicken; let
+him have his breakfast," she added, looking at the footman. "Where do
+you sleep, my child?"
+
+"Anywhere, madame; under the stars in summer, and wherever they'll let
+us in winter."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Twelve."
+
+"There is still time to bring him up to better ways," said the
+countess to her husband.
+
+"He will make a good soldier," said the general, gruffly; "he is well
+toughened. I went through that kind of thing myself, and here I am."
+
+"Excuse me, general, I don't belong to nobody," said the boy. "I can't
+be drafted. My poor mother wasn't married, and I was born in a field.
+I'm a son of the 'airth,' as grandpa says. M'ma saved me from the
+army, that she did! My name ain't no more Mouche than nothing at all.
+Grandpa keeps telling me all my advantages. I'm not on the register,
+and when I'm old enough to be drafted I can go all over France and
+they can't take me."
+
+"Are you fond of your grandfather?" said the countess, trying to look
+into the child's heart.
+
+"My! doesn't he box my ears when he feels like it! but then, after
+all, he's such fun; he's such good company! He says he pays himself
+that way for having taught me to read and write."
+
+"Can you read?" asked the count.
+
+"Yah, I should think so, Monsieur le comte, and fine writing too--just
+as true as we've got that otter."
+
+"Read that," said the count, giving him a newspaper.
+
+"The Qu-o-ti-dienne," read Mouche, hesitating only three times.
+
+Every one, even the abbe, laughed.
+
+"Why do you make me read that newspaper?" cried Mouche, angrily. "My
+grandpa says it is made up to please the rich, and everybody knows
+later just what's in it."
+
+"The child is right, general," said Blondet; "and he makes me long to
+see my hoaxing friend again."
+
+Mouche understood perfectly that he was posing for the amusement of
+the company; the pupil of Pere Fourchon was worthy of his master, and
+he forthwith began to cry.
+
+"How can you tease a child with bare feet?" said the countess.
+
+"And who thinks it quite natural that his grandfather should recoup
+himself for his education by boxing his ears," said Blondet.
+
+"Tell me, my poor little fellow, have you really caught an otter?"
+
+"Yes, madame; as true as that you are the prettiest lady I have seen,
+or ever shall see," said the child, wiping his eyes.
+
+"Then show me the otter," said the general.
+
+"Oh M'sieur le comte, my grandpa has hidden it; but it was kicking
+still when we were at work at the rope-walk. Send for my grandpa,
+please; he wants to sell it to you himself."
+
+"Take him into the kitchen," said the countess to Francois, "and give
+him his breakfast, and send Charles to fetch Pere Fourchon. Find some
+shoes, and a pair of trousers and a waistcoat for the poor child;
+those who come here naked must go away clothed."
+
+"May God bless you, my beautiful lady," said Mouche, departing.
+"M'sieur le cure may feel quite sure that I'll keep the things and
+wear 'em fete-days, because you give 'em to me."
+
+Emile and Madame Montcornet looked at each other with some surprise,
+and seemed to say to the abbe, "The boy is not a fool!"
+
+"It is quite true, madame," said the abbe after the child had gone,
+"that we cannot reckon with Poverty. I believe it has hidden excuses
+of which God alone can judge,--physical excuses, often congenital;
+moral excuses, born in the character, produced by an order of things
+that are often the result of qualities which, unhappily for society,
+have no vent. Deeds of heroism performed upon the battle-field ought
+to teach us that the worst scoundrels may become heroes. But here in
+this place you are living under exceptional circumstances; and if your
+benevolence is not controlled by reflection and judgment you run the
+risk of supporting your enemies."
+
+"Our enemies?" exclaimed the countess.
+
+"Cruel enemies," said the general, gravely.
+
+"Pere Fourchon and his son-in-law Tonsard," said the abbe, "are the
+strength and the intelligence of the lower classes of this valley, who
+consult them on all occasions. The Machiavelism of these people is
+beyond belief. Ten peasants meeting in a tavern are the small change
+of great political questions."
+
+Just then Francois announced Monsieur Sibilet.
+
+"He is my minister of finance," said the general, smiling; "ask him
+in. He will explain to you the gravity of the situation," he added,
+looking at his wife and Blondet.
+
+"Because he has reasons of his own for not concealing it," said the
+cure, in a low tone.
+
+Blondet then beheld a personage of whom he had heard much ever since
+his arrival, and whom he desired to know, the land-steward of Les
+Aigues. He saw a man of medium height, about thirty years of age, with
+a sulky look and a discontented face, on which a smile sat ill.
+Beneath an anxious brow a pair of greenish eyes evaded the eyes of
+others, and so disguised their thought. Sibilet was dressed in a brown
+surtout coat, black trousers and waistcoat, and wore his hair long and
+flat to the head, which gave him a clerical look. His trousers barely
+concealed that he was knock-kneed. Though his pallid complexion and
+flabby flesh gave the impression of an unhealthy constitution, Sibilet
+was really robust. The tones of his voice, which were a little thick,
+harmonized with this unflattering exterior.
+
+Blondet gave a hasty look at the abbe, and the glance with which the
+young priest answered it showed the journalist that his own suspicions
+about the steward were certainties to the curate.
+
+"Did you not tell me, my dear Sibilet," said the general, "that you
+estimate the value of what the peasants steal from us at a quarter of
+the whole revenue?"
+
+"Much more than that, Monsieur le comte," replied the steward. "The
+poor about here get more from your property than the State exacts in
+taxes. A little scamp like Mouche can glean his two bushels a day. Old
+women, whom you would really think at their last gasp, become at the
+harvest and vintage times as active and healthy as girls. You can
+witness that phenomenon very soon," said Sibilet, addressing Blondet,
+"for the harvest, which was put back by the rains in July will begin
+next week, when they cut the rye. The gleaners must have a certificate
+of pauperism from the mayor of the district, and no district should
+allow any one to glean except the paupers; but the districts of one
+canton do glean in those of another without certificate. If we have
+sixty real paupers in our district, there are at least forty others
+who could support themselves if they were not so idle. Even persons
+who have a business leave it to glean in the fields and in the
+vineyards. All these people, taken together, gather in this
+neighborhood something like three hundred bushels a day; the harvest
+lasts two weeks, and that makes four thousand five hundred bushels in
+this district alone. The gleaning takes more from an estate than the
+taxes. As to the abuse of pasturage, it robs us of fully one-sixth the
+produce of the meadows; and as to that of the woods, it is
+incalculable,--they have actually come to cutting down six-year-old
+trees. The loss to you, Monsieur le comte, amounts to fully twenty-odd
+thousand francs a year."
+
+"Do you hear that, madame?" said the general to his wife.
+
+"Is it not exaggerated?" asked Madame de Montcornet.
+
+"No, madame, unfortunately not," said the abbe. "Poor Niseron, that
+old fellow with the white head, who combines the functions of bell-
+ringer, beadle, grave-digger, sexton, and clerk, in defiance of his
+republican opinions,--I mean the grandfather of the little Genevieve
+whom you placed with Madame Michaud--"
+
+"La Pechina," said Sibilet, interrupting the abbe.
+
+"Pechina!" said the countess, "whom do you mean?"
+
+"Madame la comtesse, when you met little Genevieve on the road in a
+miserable condition, you cried out in Italian, 'Piccina!' The word
+became a nickname, and is now corrupted all through the district into
+Pechina," said the abbe. "The poor girl comes to church with Madame
+Michaud and Madame Sibilet."
+
+"And she is none the better for it," said Sibilet, "for the others
+ill-treat her on account of her religion."
+
+"Well, that poor old man of seventy gleans, honestly, about a bushel
+and a half a day," continued the priest; "but his natural uprightness
+prevents him from selling his gleanings as others do,--he keeps them
+for his own consumption. Monsieur Langlume, your miller, grinds his
+flour gratis at my request, and my servant bakes his bread with mine."
+
+"I had quite forgotten my little protegee," said the countess,
+troubled at Sibilet's remark. "Your arrival," she added to Blondet,
+"has quite turned my head. But after breakfast I will take you to the
+gate of the Avonne and show you the living image of those women whom
+the painters of the fifteenth century delighted to perpetuate."
+
+The sound of Pere Fourchon's broken sabots was now heard; after
+depositing them in the antechamber, he was brought to the door of the
+dining-room by Francois. At a sign from the countess, Francois allowed
+him to pass in, followed by Mouche with his mouth full and carrying
+the otter, hanging by a string tied to its yellow paws, webbed like
+those of a palmiped. He cast upon his four superiors sitting at table,
+and also upon Sibilet, that look of mingled distrust and servility
+which serves as a veil to the thoughts of the peasantry; then he
+brandished his amphibian with a triumphant air.
+
+"Here it is!" he cried, addressing Blondet.
+
+"My otter!" returned the Parisian, "and well paid for."
+
+"Oh, my dear gentleman," replied Pere Fourchon, "yours got away; she
+is now in her burrow, and she won't come out, for she's a female,--
+this is a male; Mouche saw him coming just as you went away. As true
+as you live, as true as that Monsieur le comte covered himself and his
+cuirassiers with glory at Waterloo, the otter is mine, just as much as
+Les Aigues belongs to Monseigneur the general. But the otter is YOURS
+for twenty francs; if not I'll take it to the sub-prefect. If Monsieur
+Gourdon thinks it too dear, then I'll give you the preference; that's
+only fair, as we hunted together this morning!"
+
+"Twenty francs!" said Blondet. "In good French you can't call that
+GIVING the preference."
+
+"Hey, my dear gentleman," cried the old fellow. "Perhaps I don't know
+French, and I'll ask it in good Burgundian; as long as I get the
+money, I don't care, I'll talk Latin: 'latinus, latina, latinum'!
+Besides, twenty francs is what you promised me this morning. My
+children have already stolen the silver you gave me; I wept about it,
+coming along,--ask Charles if I didn't. Not that I'd arrest 'em for
+the value of ten francs and have 'em up before the judge, no! But just
+as soon as I earn a few pennies, they make me drink and get 'em out of
+me. Ah! it is hard, hard to be reduced to go and get my wine
+elsewhere. But just see what children are these days! That's what we
+got by the Revolution; it is all for the children now-a-days, and
+parents are suppressed. I'm bringing up Mouche on another tack; he
+loves me, the little scamp,"--giving his grandson a poke.
+
+"It seems to me you are making him a little thief, like all the rest,"
+said Sibilet; "he never lies down at night without some sin on his
+conscience."
+
+"Ha! Monsieur Sibilet, his conscience is as clean as yours any day!
+Poor child! what can he steal? A little grass! that's better than
+throttling a man! He don't know mathematics like you, nor subtraction,
+nor addition, nor multiplication,--you are very unjust to us, that you
+are! You call us a nest of brigands, but you are the cause of the
+misunderstandings between our good landlord here, who is a worthy man,
+and the rest of us, who are all worthy men,--there ain't an honester
+part of the country than this. Come, what do you mean? do I own
+property? don't I go half-naked, and Mouche too? Fine sheets we slept
+in, washed by the dew every morning! and unless you want the air we
+breathe and the sunshine we drink, I should like to know what we have
+that you can take away from us! The rich folks rob as they sit in
+their chimney-corners,--and more profitably, too, than by picking up a
+few sticks in the woods. I don't see no game-keepers or patrols after
+Monsieur Gaubertin, who came here as naked as a worm and is now worth
+his millions. It's easy said, 'Robbers!' Here's fifteen years that old
+Guerbet, the tax-gatherer at Soulanges, carries his money along the
+roads by the dead of night, and nobody ever took a farthing from him;
+is that like a land of robbers? has robbery made us rich? Show me
+which of us two, your class or mine, live the idlest lives and have
+the most to live on without earning it."
+
+"If you were to work," said the abbe, "you would have property. God
+blesses labor."
+
+"I don't want to contradict you, M'sieur l'abbe, for you are wiser
+than I, and perhaps you'll know how to explain something that puzzles
+me. Now see, here I am, ain't I?--that drunken, lazy, idle, good-for-
+nothing old Fourchon, who had an education and was a farmer, and got
+down in the mud and never got up again,--well, what difference is
+there between me and that honest and worthy old Niseron, seventy years
+old (and that's my age) who has dug the soil for sixty years and got
+up every day before it was light to go to his work, and has made
+himself an iron body and a fine soul? Well, isn't he as bad off as I
+am? His little granddaughter, Pechina, is at service with Madame
+Michaud, whereas my little Mouche is as free as air. So that poor good
+man gets rewarded for his virtues in exactly the same way that I get
+punished for my vices. He don't know what a glass of good wine is,
+he's as sober as an apostle, he buries the dead, and I--I play for the
+living to dance. He is always in a peck o' troubles, while I slip
+along in a devil-may-care way. We have come along about even in life;
+we've got the same snow on our heads, the same funds in our pockets,
+and I supply him with rope to ring his bell. He's a republican and I'm
+not even a publican,--that's all the difference as far as I can see. A
+peasant may do good or do evil (according to your ideas) and he'll go
+out of the world just as he came into it, in rags; while you wear the
+fine clothes."
+
+No one interrupted Pere Fourchon, who seemed to owe his eloquence to
+his potations. At first Sibilet tried to cut him short, but desisted
+at a sign from Blondet. The abbe, the general, and the countess, all
+understood from the expression of the writer's eye that he wanted to
+study the question of pauperism from life, and perhaps take his
+revenge on Pere Fourchon.
+
+"What sort of education are you giving Mouche?" asked Blondet. "Do you
+expect to make him any better than your daughters?"
+
+"Does he ever speak to him of God?" said the priest.
+
+"Oh, no, no! Monsieur le cure, I don't tell him to fear God, but men.
+God is good; he has promised us poor folks, so you say, the kingdom of
+heaven, because the rich people keep the earth to themselves. I tell
+him: 'Mouche! fear the prison, and keep out of it,--for that's the way
+to the scaffold. Don't steal anything, make people give it to you.
+Theft leads to murder, and murder brings down the justice of men. The
+razor of justice,--THAT'S what you've got to fear; it lets the rich
+sleep easy and keeps the poor awake. Learn to read. Education will
+teach you ways to grab money under cover of the law, like that fine
+Monsieur Gaubertin; why, you can even be a land-steward like Monsieur
+Sibilet here, who gets his rations out of Monsieur le comte. The thing
+to do is to keep well with the rich, and pick up the crumbs that fall
+from their tables.' That's what I call giving him a good, solid
+education; and you'll always find the little rascal on the side of the
+law,--he'll be a good citizen and take care of me."
+
+"What do you mean to make of him?" asked Blondet.
+
+"A servant, to begin with," returned Fourchon, "because then he'll see
+his masters close by, and learn something; he'll complete his
+education, I'll warrant you. Good example will be a fortune to him,
+with the law on his side like the rest of you. If M'sieur le comte
+would only take him in his stables and let him learn to groom the
+horses, the boy will be mighty pleased, for though I've taught him to
+fear men, he don't fear animals."
+
+"You are a clever fellow, Pere Fourchon," said Blondet; "you know what
+you are talking about, and there's sense in what you say."
+
+"Oh, sense? no; I left my sense at the Grand-I-Vert when I lost those
+silver pieces."
+
+"How is it that a man of your capacity should have dropped so low? As
+things are now, a peasant can only blame himself for his poverty; he
+is a free man, and he can become a rich one. It is not as it used to
+be. If a peasant lays by his money, he can always buy a bit of land
+and become his own master."
+
+"I've seen the olden time and I've seen the new, my dear wise
+gentleman," said Fourchon; "the sign over the door has changed, that's
+true, but the wine is the same,--to-day is the younger brother of
+yesterday, that's all. Put that in your newspaper! Are we poor folks
+free? We still belong to the same parish, and its lord is always
+there,--I call him Toil. The hoe, our sole property, has never left
+our hands. Let it be the old lords or the present taxes which take the
+best of our earnings, the fact remains that we sweat our lives out in
+toil."
+
+"But you could undertake a business, and try to make your fortune,"
+said Blondet.
+
+"Try to make my fortune! And where shall I try? If I wish to leave my
+own province, I must get a passport, and that costs forty sous. Here's
+forty years that I've never had a slut of a forty-sous piece jingling
+against another in my pocket. If you want to travel you need as many
+crowns as there are villages, and there are mighty few Fourchons who
+have enough to get to six of 'em. It is only the draft that gives us a
+chance to get away. And what good does the army do us? The colonels
+live by the solider, just as the rich folks live by the peasant; and
+out of every hundred of 'em you won't find more than one of our breed.
+It is just as it is the world over, one rolling in riches, for a
+hundred down in the mud. Why are we in the mud? Ask God and the
+usurers. The best we can do is to stay in our own parts, where we are
+penned like sheep by the force of circumstances, as our fathers were
+by the rule of the lords. As for me, what do I care what shackles they
+are that keep me here? let it be the law of public necessity or the
+tyranny of the old lords, it is all the same; we are condemned to dig
+the soil forever. There, where we are born, there we dig it, that
+earth! and spade it, and manure it, and delve in it, for you who are
+born rich just as we are born poor. The masses will always be what
+they are, and stay what they are. The number of us who manage to rise
+is nothing like the number of you who topple down! We know that well
+enough, if we have no education! You mustn't be after us with your
+sheriff all the time,--not if you're wise. We let you alone, and you
+must let us alone. If not, and things get worse, you'll have to feed
+us in your prisons, where we'd be much better off than in our homes.
+You want to remain our masters, and we shall always be enemies, just
+as we were thirty years ago. You have everything, we have nothing; you
+can't expect we should ever be friends."
+
+"That's what I call a declaration of war," said the general.
+
+"Monseigneur," retorted Fourchon, "when Les Aigues belonged to that
+poor Madame (God keep her soul and forgive her the sins of her youth!)
+we were happy. SHE let us get our food from the fields and our fuel
+from the forest; and was she any the poorer for it? And you, who are
+at least as rich as she, you hunt us like wild beasts, neither more
+nor less, and drag the poor before the courts. Well, evil will come of
+it! you'll be the cause of some great calamity. Haven't I just seen
+your keeper, that shuffling Vatel, half kill a poor old woman for a
+stick of wood? It is such fellows as that who make you an enemy to the
+poor; and the talk is very bitter against you. They curse you every
+bit as hard as they used to bless the late Madame. The curse of the
+poor, monseigneur, is a seed that grows,--grows taller than your tall
+oaks, and oak-wood builds the scaffold. Nobody here tells you the
+truth; and here it is, yes, the truth! I expect to die before long,
+and I risk very little in telling it to you, the TRUTH! I, who play
+for the peasants to dance at the great fetes at Soulanges, I heed what
+the people say. Well, they're all against you; and they'll make it
+impossible for you to stay here. If that damned Michaud of yours
+doesn't change, they'll force you to change him. There! that
+information AND the otter are worth twenty francs, and more too."
+
+As the old fellow uttered the last words a man's step was heard, and
+the individual just threatened by Fourchon entered unannounced. It was
+easy to see from the glance he threw at the old man that the threat
+had reached his ears, and all Fourchon's insolence sank in a moment.
+The look produced precisely the same effect upon him that the eye of a
+policeman produces on a thief. Fourchon knew he was wrong, and that
+Michaud might very well accuse him of saying these things merely to
+terrify the inhabitants of Les Aigues.
+
+"This is the minister of war," said the general to Blondet, nodding at
+Michaud.
+
+"Pardon me, madame, for having entered without asking if you were
+willing to receive me," said the newcomer to the countess; "but I have
+urgent reasons for speaking to the general at once."
+
+Michaud, as he said this, took notice of Sibilet, whose expression of
+keen delight in Fourchon's daring words was not seen by the four
+persons seated at the table, because they were so preoccupied by the
+old man; whereas Michaud, who for secret reasons watched Sibilet
+constantly, was struck with his air and manner.
+
+"He has earned his twenty francs, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet;
+"the otter is fully worth it."
+
+"Give him twenty francs," said the general to the footman.
+
+"Do you mean to take my otter away from me?" said Blondet to the
+general.
+
+"I shall have it stuffed," replied the latter.
+
+"Ah! but that good gentleman said I might keep the skin," cried
+Fourchon.
+
+"Well, then," exclaimed the countess, hastily, "you shall have five
+francs more for the skin; but go away now."
+
+The powerful odor emitted by the pair made the dining-room so horribly
+offensive that Madame de Montcornet, whose senses were very delicate,
+would have been forced to leave the room if Fourchon and Mouche had
+remained. To this circumstance the old man was indebted for his
+twenty-five francs. He left the room with a timid glance at Michaud,
+making him an interminable series of bows.
+
+"What I was saying to monseigneur, Monsieur Michaud," he added, "was
+really for your good."
+
+"Or for that of those who pay you," replied Michaud, with a searching
+look.
+
+"When you have served the coffee, leave the room," said the general to
+the servants, "and see that the doors are shut."
+
+Blondet, who had not yet seen the bailiff of Les Aigues, was
+conscious, as he now saw him, of a totally different impression from
+that conveyed by Sibilet. Just as the steward inspired distrust and
+repulsion, so Michaud commanded respect and confidence. The first
+attraction of his presence was a happy face, of a fine oval, pure in
+outline, in which the nose bore part,--a regularity which is lacking
+in the majority of French faces. Though the features were correct in
+drawing, they were not without expression, due, perhaps, to the
+harmonious coloring of the warm brown and ochre tints, indicative of
+physical health and strength. The clear brown eyes, which were bright
+and piercing, kept no reserves in the expression of his thought; they
+looked straight into the eyes of others. The broad white forehead was
+thrown still further into relief by his abundant black hair. Honesty,
+decision, and a saintly serenity were the animating points of this
+noble face, where a few deep lines upon the brow were the result of
+the man's military career. Doubt and suspicion could there be read the
+moment they had entered his mind. His figure, like that of all men
+selected for the elite of the cavalry service, though shapely and
+elegant, was vigorously built. Michaud, who wore moustachios,
+whiskers, and a chin beard, recalled that martial type of face which a
+deluge of patriotic paintings and engravings came very near to making
+ridiculous. This type had the defect of being common in the French
+army; perhaps the continuance of the same emotions, the same camp
+sufferings from which none were exempt, neither high nor low, and more
+especially the same efforts of officers and men upon the battle-
+fields, may have contributed to produce this uniformity of
+countenance. Michaud, who was dressed in dark blue cloth, still wore
+the black satin stock and high boots of a soldier, which increased the
+slight stiffness and rigidity of his bearing. The shoulders sloped,
+the chest expanded, as though the man were still under arms. The red
+ribbon of the Legion of honor was in his buttonhole. In short, to give
+a last touch in one word about the moral qualities beneath this purely
+physical presentment, it may be said that while the steward, from the
+time he first entered upon his functions, never failed to call his
+master "Monsieur le comte," Michaud never addressed him otherwise than
+as "General."
+
+Blondet exchanged another look with the Abbe Brossette, which meant,
+"What a contrast!" as he signed to him to observe the two men. Then,
+as if to know whether the character and mind and speech of the bailiff
+harmonized with his form and countenance, he turned to Michaud and
+said:--
+
+"I was out early this morning, and found your under-keepers still
+sleeping."
+
+"At what hour?" said the late soldier, anxiously.
+
+"Half-past seven."
+
+Michaud gave a half-roguish glance at the general.
+
+"By what gate did monsieur leave the park?" he asked.
+
+"By the gate of Conches. The keeper, in his night-shirt, looked at me
+through the window," replied Blondet.
+
+"Gaillard had probably just gone to bed," answered Michaud. "You said
+you were out early, and I thought you meant day-break. If my man were
+at home at that time, he must have been ill; but at half-past seven he
+was sure to be in bed. We are up all night," added Michaud, after a
+slight pause, replying to a surprised look on the countess's face,
+"but our watchfulness is often wasted. You have just given twenty-five
+francs to a man who, not an hour ago, was quietly helping to hide the
+traces of a robbery committed upon you this very morning. I came to
+speak to you about it, general, when you have finished breakfast; for
+something will have to be done."
+
+"You are always for maintaining the right, my dear Michaud, and
+'summum jus, summum injuria.' If you are not more tolerant, you will
+get into trouble, so Sibilet here tells me. I wish you could have
+heard Pere Fourchon just now; the wine he had been drinking made him
+speak out."
+
+"He frightened me," said the countess.
+
+"He said nothing I did not know long ago," replied the general.
+
+"Oh! the rascal wasn't drunk; he was playing a part; for whose benefit
+I leave you to guess. Perhaps you know?" returned Michaud, fixing an
+eye on Sibilet which caused the latter to turn red.
+
+"O rus!" cried Blondet, with another look at the abbe.
+
+"But these poor creatures suffer," said the countess, "and there is a
+great deal of truth in what old Fourchon has just screamed at us,--for
+I cannot call it speaking."
+
+"Madame," replied Michaud, "do you suppose that for fourteen years the
+soldiers of the Emperor slept on a bed of roses? My general is a
+count, he is a grand officer of the Legion of honor, he has had
+perquisites and endowments given to him; am I jealous of him, I who
+fought as he did? Do I wish to cheat him of his glory, to steal his
+perquisites, to deny him the honor due to his rank? The peasant should
+obey as the soldier obeys; he should feel the loyalty of a soldier,
+his respect for acquired rights, and strive to become an officer
+himself, honorably, by labor and not by theft. The sabre and the
+plough are twins; though the soldier has something more than the
+peasant,--he has death hanging over him at any minute."
+
+"I want to say that from the pulpit," cried the abbe.
+
+"Tolerant!" continued the keeper, replying to the general's remark
+about Sibilet, "I would tolerate a loss of ten per cent upon the gross
+returns of Les Aigues; but as things are now thirty per cent is what
+you lose, general; and, if Monsieur Sibilet's accounts show it, I
+don't understand his tolerance, for he benevolently gives up a
+thousand or twelve hundred francs a year."
+
+"My dear Monsieur Michaud," replied Sibilet, in a snappish tone, "I
+have told Monsieur le comte that I would rather lose twelve hundred
+francs a year than my life. Think of it seriously; I have warned you
+often enough."
+
+"Life!" exclaimed the countess; "you can't mean that anybody's life is
+in danger?"
+
+"Don't let us argue about state affairs here," said the general,
+laughing. "All this, my dear, merely means that Sibilet, in his
+capacity of financier, is timid and cowardly, while the minister of
+war is brave and, like his general, fears nothing."
+
+"Call me prudent, Monsieur le comte," interposed Sibilet.
+
+"Well, well!" cried Blondet, laughing, "so here we are, like Cooper's
+heroes in the forests of America, in the midst of sieges and savages."
+
+"Come, gentlemen, it is your business to govern without letting me
+hear the wheels of the administration," said Madame de Montcornet.
+
+"Ah! madame," said the cure, "but it may be right that you should know
+the toil from which those pretty caps you wear are derived."
+
+"Well, then, I can go without them," replied the countess, laughing.
+"I will be very respectful to a twenty-franc piece, and grow as
+miserly as the country people themselves. Come, my dear abbe, give me
+your arm. Leave the general with his two ministers, and let us go to
+the gate of the Avonne to see Madame Michaud, for I have not had time
+since my arrival to pay her a visit, and I want to inquire about my
+little protegee."
+
+And the pretty woman, already forgetting the rags and tatters of
+Mouche and Fourchon, and their eyes full of hatred, and Sibilet's
+warnings, went to have herself made ready for the walk.
+
+The abbe and Blondet obeyed the behest of the mistress of the house
+and followed her from the dining-room, waiting till she was ready on
+the terrace before the chateau.
+
+"What do you think of all this?" said Blondet to the abbe.
+
+"I am a pariah; they dog me as they would a common enemy. I am forced
+to keep my eyes and ears perpetually open to escape the traps they are
+constantly laying to get me out of the place," replied the abbe. "I am
+even doubtful, between ourselves, as to whether they will not shoot
+me."
+
+"Why do you stay?" said Blondet.
+
+"We can't desert God's cause any more than that of an emperor,"
+replied the priest, with a simplicity that affected Blondet. He took
+the abbe's hand and shook it cordially.
+
+"You see how it is, therefore, that I know very little of the plots
+that are going on," continued the abbe. "Still, I know enough to feel
+sure that the general is under what in Artois and in Belgium is called
+an 'evil grudge.'"
+
+A few words are here necessary about the curate of Blangy.
+
+This priest, the fourth son of a worthy middle-class family of Autun,
+was an intelligent man carrying his head high in his collar. Small and
+slight, he redeemed his rather puny appearance by the precise and
+carefully dressed air that belongs to Burgundians. He accepted the
+second-rate post of Blangy out of pure devotion, for his religious
+convictions were joined to political opinions that were equally
+strong. There was something of the priest of the olden time about him;
+he held to the Church and to the clergy passionately; saw the bearings
+of things, and no selfishness marred his one ambition, which was TO
+SERVE. That was his motto,--to serve the Church and the monarchy
+wherever it was most threatened; to serve in the lowest rank like a
+soldier who feels that he is destined, sooner or later, to attain
+command through courage and the resolve to do his duty. He made no
+compromises with his vows of chastity, and poverty, and obedience; he
+fulfilled them, as he did the other duties of his position, with that
+simplicity and cheerful good-humor which are the sure indications of
+an honest heart, constrained to do right by natural impulses as much
+as by the power and consistency of religious convictions.
+
+The priest had seen at first sight Blondet's attachment to the
+countess; he saw that between a Troisville and a monarchical
+journalist he could safely show himself to be a man of broad
+intelligence, because his calling was certain to be respected. He
+usually came to the chateau very evening to make the fourth at a game
+of whist. The journalist, able to recognize the abbe's real merits,
+showed him so much deference that the pair grew into sympathy with
+each other; as usually happens when men of intelligence meet their
+equals, or, if you prefer it, the ears that are able to hear them.
+Swords are fond of their scabbards.
+
+"But to what do you attribute this state of things, Monsieur l'abbe,
+you who are able, through your disinterestedness, to look over the
+heads of things?"
+
+"I shall not talk platitudes after such a flattering speech as that,"
+said the abbe, smiling. "What is going on in this valley is spreading
+more or less throughout France; it is the outcome of the hopes which
+the upheaval of 1789 caused to infiltrate, if I may use that
+expression, the minds of the peasantry, the sons of the soil. The
+Revolution affected certain localities more than others. This side of
+Burgundy, nearest to Paris, is one of those places where the
+revolutionary ideas spread like the overrunning of the Franks by the
+Gauls. Historically, the peasants are still on the morrow of the
+Jacquerie; that defeat is burnt in upon their brain. They have long
+forgotten the facts which have now passed into the condition of an
+instinctive idea. That idea is bred in the peasant blood, just as the
+idea of superiority was once bred in noble blood. The revolution of
+1789 was the retaliation of the vanquished. The peasants then set foot
+in possession of the soil which the feudal law had denied them for
+over twelve hundred years. Hence their desire for land, which they now
+cut up among themselves until actually they divide a furrow into two
+parts; which, by the bye, often hinders or prevents the collection of
+taxes, for the value of such fractions of property is not sufficient
+to pay the legal costs of recovering them."
+
+"Very true, for the obstinacy of the small owners--their
+aggressiveness, if you choose--on this point is so great that in at
+least one thousand cantons of the three thousand of French territory,
+it is impossible for a rich man to buy an inch of land from a
+peasant," said Blondet, interrupting the abbe. "The peasants who are
+willing to divide up their scraps of land among themselves would not
+sell a fraction on any condition or at any price to the middle
+classes. The more money the rich man offers, the more the vague
+uneasiness of the peasant increases. Legal dispossession alone is able
+to bring the landed property of the peasant into the market. Many
+persons have noticed this fact without being able to find a reason for
+it."
+
+"This is the reason," said the abbe, rightly believing that a pause
+with Blondet was equivalent to a question: "twelve centuries have done
+nothing for a caste whom the historic spectacle of civilization has
+never yet diverted from its one predominating thought,--a caste which
+still wears proudly the broad-brimmed hat of its masters, ever since
+an abandoned fashion placed it upon their heads. That all-pervading
+thought, the roots of which are in the bowels of the people, and which
+attached them so vehemently to Napoleon (who was personally less to
+them than he thought he was) and which explains the miracle of his
+return in 1815,--that desire for land is the sole motive power of the
+peasant's being. In the eyes of the masses Napoleon, ever one with
+them through his million of soldiers, is still the king born of the
+Revolution; the man who gave them possession of the soil and sold to
+them the national domains. His anointing was saturated with that
+idea."
+
+"An idea to which 1814 dealt a blow, an idea which monarchy should
+hold sacred," said Blondet, quickly; "for the people may some day find
+on the steps of the throne a prince whose father bequeathed to him the
+head of Louis XVI. as an heirloom."
+
+"Here is madame; don't say any more," said the abbe, in a low voice.
+"Fourchon has frightened her; and it is very desirable to keep her
+here in the interests of religion and of the throne, and, indeed, in
+those of the people themselves."
+
+Michaud, the bailiff of Les Aigues, had come to the chateau in
+consequence of the assault on Vatel's eyes. But before we relate the
+consultation which then and there took place, the chain of events
+requires a succinct account of the circumstances under which the
+general purchased Les Aigues, the serious causes which led to the
+appointment of Sibilet as steward of that magnificent property, and
+the reasons why Michaud was made bailiff, with all the other
+antecedents to which were due the tension of the minds of all, and the
+fears expressed by Sibilet.
+
+This rapid summary will have the merit of introducing some of the
+principal actors in this drama, and of exhibiting their individual
+interests; we shall thus be enabled to show the dangers which
+surrounded the General comte de Montcornet at the moment when this
+history opens.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CERTAIN LOST SOCIAL SPECIES
+
+The estate of Les Aigues could not do without a steward; for the
+general had no intention of renouncing his winter pleasures in Paris,
+where he owned a fine house in the rue Neuve-des-Mathurines. He
+therefore looked about for a successor to Gaubertin; but it is very
+certain that his search was not as eager as that of Gaubertin himself,
+who was seeking for the right person to put in his way.
+
+Of all confidential positions there is none that requires more trained
+knowledge of its kind, or more activity, than that of land-steward to
+a great estate. The difficulty of finding the right man is only fully
+known to those wealthy landlords whose property lies beyond a certain
+circle around Paris, beginning at a distance of about one hundred and
+fifty miles. At that point agricultural productions for the markets of
+Paris, which warrant rentals on long leases (collected often by other
+tenants who are rich themselves), cease to be cultivated. The farmers
+who raise them drive to the city in their own cabriolets to pay their
+rents in good bank-bills, unless they send the money through their
+agents in the markets. For this reason, the farms of the Seine-et-
+Oise, Seine-et-Marne, the Oise, the Eure-et-Loir, the Lower Seine, and
+the Loiret are so desirable that capital cannot always be invested
+there at one and a half per cent. Compared to the returns on estates
+in Holland, England, and Belgium, this result is enormous. But at one
+hundred miles from Paris an estate requires such variety of working,
+its products are so different in kind, that it becomes a business,
+with all the risks attendant on manufacturing. The wealthy owner is
+really a merchant, forced to look for a market for his products, like
+the owner of ironworks or cotton factories. He does not even escape
+competition; the peasant, the small proprietor, is at his heels with
+an avidity which leads to transactions to which well-bred persons
+cannot condescend.
+
+A land-steward must understand surveying, the customs of the locality,
+the methods of sale and of labor, together with a little quibbling in
+the interests of those he serves; he must also understand book-keeping
+and commercial matters, and be in perfect health, with a liking for
+active life and horse exercise. His duty being to represent his master
+and to be always in communication with him, the steward ought not to
+be a man of the people. As the salary of his office seldom exceeds
+three thousand francs, the problem seems insoluble. How is it possible
+to obtain so many qualifications for such a very moderate price,--in a
+region, moreover, where the men who are provided with them are
+admissible to all other employments? Bring down a stranger to fill the
+place, and you will pay dear for the experience he must acquire. Train
+a young man on the spot, and you are more than likely to get a thorn
+of ingratitude in your side. It therefore becomes necessary to choose
+between incompetent honesty, which injures your property through its
+blindness and inertia, and the cleverness which looks out for itself.
+Hence the social nomenclature and natural history of land-stewards as
+defined by a great Polish noble.
+
+"There are," he said, "two kinds of stewards: he who thinks only of
+himself, and he who thinks of himself and of us; happy the land-owner
+who lays his hands on the latter! As for the steward who would think
+only of us, he is not to be met with."
+
+Elsewhere can be found a steward who thought of this master's
+interests as well as of his own. ("Un Debut dans la vie," "Scenes de
+la vie privee.") Gaubertin is the steward who thinks of himself only.
+To represent the third figure of the problem would be to hold up to
+public admiration a very unlikely personage, yet one that was not
+unknown to the old nobility, though he has, alas! disappeared with
+them. (See "Le Cabinet des Antiques," "Scenes de la vie de province.")
+Through the endless subdivision of fortunes aristocratic habits and
+customs are inevitably changed. If there be not now in France twenty
+great fortunes managed by intendants, in fifty years from now there
+will not be a hundred estates in the hands of stewards, unless a great
+change is made in the law. Every land-owner will be brought by that
+time to look after his own interests.
+
+This transformation, already begun, suggested the following answer of
+a clever woman when asked why, since 1830, she stayed in Paris during
+the summer. "Because," she said, "I do not care to visit chateaux
+which are now turned into farms." What is to be the future of this
+question, getting daily more and more imperative,--that of man to man,
+the poor man and the rich man? This book is written to throw some
+light upon that terrible social question.
+
+It is easy to understand the perplexities which assailed the general
+after he had dismissed Gaubertin. While saying to himself, vaguely,
+like other persons free to do or not to do a thing, "I'll dismiss that
+scamp"; he had overlooked the risk and forgotten the explosion of his
+boiling anger,--the anger of a choleric fire-eater at the moment when
+a flagrant imposition forced him to raise the lids of his wilfully
+blind eyes.
+
+Montcornet, a land-owner for the first time and a denizen of Paris,
+had not provided himself with a steward before coming to Les Aigues;
+but after studying the neighborhood carefully he saw it was
+indispensable to a man like himself to have an intermediary to manage
+so many persons of low degree.
+
+Gaubertin, who discovered during the excitement of the scene (which
+lasted more than two hours) the difficulties in which the general
+would soon be involved, jumped on his pony after leaving the room
+where the quarrel took place, and galloped to Soulanges to consult the
+Soudrys. At his first words, "The general and I have parted; whom can
+we put in my place without his suspecting it?" the Soudrys understood
+their friend's wishes. Do not forget that Soudry, for the last
+seventeen years chief of police of the canton, was doubly shrewd
+through his wife, an adept in the particular wiliness of a waiting-
+maid of an Opera divinity.
+
+"We may go far," said Madame Soudry, "before we find any one to suit
+the place as well as our poor Sibilet."
+
+"Made to order!" exclaimed Gaubertin, still scarlet with
+mortification. "Lupin," he added, turning to the notary, who was
+present, "go to Ville-aux-Fayes and whisper it to Marechal, in case
+that big fire-eater asks his advice."
+
+Marechal was the lawyer whom his former patron, when buying Les Aigues
+for the general, had recommended to Monsieur de Montcornet as legal
+adviser.
+
+Sibilet, eldest son of the clerk of the court at Ville-aux-Fayes, a
+notary's clerk, without a penny of his own, and twenty-five years old,
+had fallen in love with the daughter of the chief-magistrate of
+Soulanges. The latter, named Sarcus, had a salary of fifteen hundred
+francs, and was married to a woman without fortune, the eldest sister
+of Monsieur Vermut, the apothecary of Soulanges. Though an only
+daughter, Mademoiselle Sarcus, whose beauty was her only dowry, could
+scarcely have lived on the salary paid to a notary's clerk in the
+provinces. Young Sibilet, a relative of Gaubertin, by a connection
+rather difficult to trace through family ramifications which make
+members of the middle classes in all the smaller towns cousins to each
+other, owed a modest position in a government office to the assistance
+of his father and Gaubertin. The unlucky fellow had the terrible
+happiness of being the father of two children in three years. His own
+father, blessed with five, was unable to assist him. His wife's father
+owned nothing beside his house at Soulanges and an income of two
+thousand francs. Madame Sibilet the younger spent most of her time at
+her father's home with her two children, where Adolphe Sibilet, whose
+official duty obliged him to travel through the department, came to
+see her from time to time.
+
+Gaubertin's exclamation, though easy to understand from this summary
+of young Sibilet's life, needs a few more explanatory details.
+
+Adolphe Sibilet, supremely unlucky, as we have shown by the foregoing
+sketch of him, was one of those men who cannot reach the heart of a
+woman except by way of the altar and the mayor's office. Endowed with
+the suppleness of a steel-spring, he yielded to pressure, certain to
+revert to his first thought. This treacherous habit is prompted by
+cowardice; but the business training which Sibilet underwent in the
+office of a provincial notary had taught him the art of concealing
+this defect under a gruff manner which simulated a strength he did not
+possess. Many false natures mask their hollowness in this way; be
+rough with them in return and the effect produced is that of a balloon
+collapsed by a prick. Such was Sibilet. But as most men are not
+observers, and as among observers three fourths observe only after a
+thing has taken place, Adolphe Sibilet's grumbling manner was
+considered the result of an honest frankness, of a capacity much
+praised by his master, and of a stubborn uprightness which no
+temptation could shake. Some men are as much benefited by their
+defects as others by their good qualities.
+
+Adeline Sarcus, a pretty young woman, brought up by a mother (who died
+three years before her marriage) as well as a mother can educate an
+only daughter in a remote country town, was in love with the handsome
+son of Lupin, the Soulanges notary. At the first signs of this
+romance, old Lupin, who intended to marry his son to Mademoiselle
+Elise Gaubertin, lost no time in sending young Amaury Lupin to Paris,
+to the care of his friend and correspondent Crottat, the notary,
+where, under pretext of drawing deeds and contracts, Amaury committed
+a variety of foolish acts, and made debts, being led thereto by a
+certain Georges Marest, a clerk in the same office, but a rich young
+man, who revealed to him the mysteries of Parisian life. By the time
+Lupin the elder went to Paris to bring back his son, Adeline Sarcus
+had become Madame Sibilet. In fact, when the adoring Adolphe offered
+himself, her father, the old magistrate, prompted by young Lupin's
+father, hastened the marriage, to which Adeline yielded in sheer
+despair.
+
+The situation of clerk in a government registration office is not a
+career. It is, like other such places which admit of no rise, one of
+the many holes of the government sieve. Those who start in life in
+these holes (the topographical, the professorial, the highway-and-
+canal departments) are apt to discover, invariably too late, that
+cleverer men then they, seated beside them, are fed, as the Opposition
+writers say, on the sweat of the people, every time the sieve dips
+down into the taxation-pot by means of a machine called the budget.
+Adolphe, working early and late and earning little, soon found out the
+barren depths of his hole; and his thoughts busied themselves, as he
+trotted from township to township, spending his salary in shoe-leather
+and costs of travelling, with how to find a permanent and more
+profitable place.
+
+No one can imagine, unless he happens to squint and to have two
+legitimate children, what ambitions three years of misery and love had
+developed in this young man, who squinted both in mind and vision, and
+whose happiness halted, as it were, on one leg. The chief cause of
+secret evil deeds and hidden meanness is, perhaps, an incompleted
+happiness. Man can better bear a state of hopeless misery than those
+terrible alternations of love and sunshine with continual rain. If the
+body contracts disease, the mind contracts the leprosy of envy. In
+petty minds that leprosy becomes a base and brutal cupidity, both
+insolent and shrinking; in cultivated minds it fosters anti-social
+doctrines, which serve a man as footholds by which to rise above his
+superiors. May we not dignify with the title of proverb the pregnant
+saying, "Tell me what thou hast, and I will tell thee of what thou art
+thinking"?
+
+Though Adolphe loved his wife, his hourly thought was: "I have made a
+mistake; I have three balls and chains, but I have only two legs. I
+ought to have made my fortune before I married. I could have found an
+Adeline any day; but Adeline stands in the way of my getting a fortune
+now."
+
+Adolphe had been to see his relation Gaubertin three times in three
+years. A few words exchanged between them let Gaubertin see the muck
+of a soul ready to ferment under the hot temptations of legal robbery.
+He warily sounded a nature that could be warped to the exigencies of
+any plan, provided it was profitable. At each of the three visits
+Sibilet grumbled at his fate.
+
+"Employ me, cousin," he said; "take me as a clerk and make me your
+successor. You shall see how I work. I am capable of overthrowing
+mountains to give my Adeline, I won't say luxury, but a modest
+competence. You made Monsieur Leclercq's fortune; why won't you put me
+in a bank in Paris?"
+
+"Some day, later on, I'll find you a place," Gaubertin would say;
+"meantime make friends and acquaintance; such things help."
+
+Under these circumstances the letter which Madame Soudry hastily
+dispatched brought Sibilet to Soulanges through a region of castles in
+the air. His father-in-law, Sarcus, whom the Soudrys advised to take
+steps in the interest of his daughter, had gone in the morning to see
+the general and to propose Adolphe for the vacant post. By advice of
+Madame Soudry, who was the oracle of the little town, the worthy man
+had taken his daughter with him; and the sight of her had had a
+favorable effect upon the Comte de Montcornet.
+
+"I shall not decide," he answered, "without thoroughly informing
+myself about all applicants; but I will not look elsewhere until I
+have examined whether or not your son-in-law possesses the
+requirements for the place." Then, turning to Madame Sibilet he added,
+"The satisfaction of settling so charming a person at Les Aigues--"
+
+"The mother of two children, general," said Adeline, adroitly, to
+evade the gallantry of the old cuirassier.
+
+All the general's inquiries were cleverly anticipated by the Soudrys,
+Gaubertin, and Lupin, who quietly obtained for their candidate the
+influence of the leading lawyers in the capital of the department,
+where a royal court held sessions,--such as Counsellor Gendrin, a
+distant relative of the judge at Ville-aux-Fayes; Baron Bourlac,
+attorney-general; and another counsellor named Sarcus, a cousin thrice
+removed of the candidate. The verdict of every one to whom the general
+applies was favorable to the poor clerk,--"so interesting," as they
+called him. His marriage had made Sibilet as irreproachable as a novel
+of Miss Edgeworth's, and presented him, moreover, in the light of a
+disinterested man.
+
+The time which the dismissed steward remained at Les Aigues until his
+successor could be appointed was employed in creating troubles and
+annoyances for his late master; one of the little scenes which he thus
+played off will give an idea of several others.
+
+The morning of his final departure he contrived to meet, as it were
+accidentally, Courtecuisse, the only keeper then employed at Les
+Aigues, the great extent of which really needed at least three.
+
+"Well, Monsieur Gaubertin," said Courtecuisse, "so you have had
+trouble with the count?"
+
+"Who told you that?" answered Gaubertin. "Well, yes; the general
+expected to order us about as he did his cavalry; he didn't know
+Burgundians. The count is not satisfied with my services, and as I am
+not satisfied with his ways, we have dismissed each other, almost with
+fisticuffs, for he raged like a whirlwind. Take care of yourself,
+Courtecuisse! Ah! my dear fellow, I expected to give you a better
+master."
+
+"I know that," said the keeper, "and I'd have served you well. Hang
+it, when friends have known each other for twenty years, you know! You
+put me here in the days of the poor dear sainted Madame. Ah, what a
+good woman she was! none like her now! The place has lost a mother."
+
+"Look here, Courtecuisse, if you are willing, you might help us to a
+fine stroke."
+
+"Then you are going to stay here? I heard you were off to Paris."
+
+"No; I shall wait to see how things turn out; meantime I shall do
+business at Ville-aux-Fayes. The general doesn't know what he is
+dealing with in these parts; he'll make himself hated, don't you see?
+I shall wait for what turns up. Do your work here gently; he'll tell
+you to manage the people with a high hand, for he begins to see where
+his crops and his woods are running to; but you'll not be such a fool
+as to let the country-folk maul you, and perhaps worse, for the sake
+of his timber."
+
+"But he would send me away, dear Monsieur Gaubertin, he would get rid
+of me! and you know how happy I am living there at the gate of the
+Avonne."
+
+"The general will soon get sick of the whole place," replied
+Gaubertin; "you wouldn't be long out even if he did happen to send you
+away. Besides, you know those woods," he added, waving his hand at the
+landscape; "I am stronger there than the masters."
+
+This conversation took place in an open field.
+
+"Those 'Arminac' Parisian fellows ought to stay in their own mud,"
+said the keeper.
+
+Ever since the quarrels of the fifteenth century the word 'Arminac'
+(Armagnacs, Parisians, enemies of the Dukes of Burgundy) has continued
+to be an insulting term along the borders of Upper Burgundy, where it
+is differently corrupted according to locality.
+
+"He'll go back to it when beaten," said Gaubertin, "and we'll plough
+up the park; for it is robbing the people to allow a man to keep nine
+hundred acres of the best land in the valley for his own pleasure."
+
+"Four hundred families could get their living from it," said
+Courtecuisse.
+
+"If you want two acres for yourself you must help us to drive that cur
+out," remarked Gaubertin.
+
+At the very moment that Gaubertin was fulminating this sentence of
+excommunication, the worthy Sarcus was presenting his son-in-law
+Sibilet to the Comte de Montcornet. They had come with Adeline and the
+children in a wicker carryall, lent by Sarcus's clerk, a Monsieur
+Gourdon, brother of the Soulanges doctor, who was richer than the
+magistrate himself. The general, pleased with the candor and dignity
+of the justice of the peace, and with the graceful bearing of Adeline
+(both giving pledges in good faith, for they were totally ignorant of
+the plans of Gaubertin), at once granted all requests and gave such
+advantages to the family of the new land-steward as to make the
+position equal to that of a sub-prefect of the first class.
+
+A lodge, built by Bouret as an object in the landscape and also as a
+home for the steward, an elegant little building, the architecture of
+which was sufficiently shown in the description of the gate of Blangy,
+was promised to the Sibilets for their residence. The general also
+conceded the horse which Mademoiselle Laguerre had provided for
+Gaubertin, in consideration of the size of the estate and the distance
+he had to go to the markets where the business of the property was
+transacted. He allowed two hundred bushels of wheat, three hogsheads
+of wine, wood in sufficient quantity, oats and barley in abundance,
+and three per cent on all receipts of income. Where the latter in
+Mademoiselle Laguerre's time had amounted to forty thousand francs,
+the general now, in 1818, in view of the purchases of land which
+Gaubertin had made for her, expected to receive at least sixty
+thousand. The new land-steward might therefore receive before long
+some two thousand francs in money. Lodged, fed, warmed, relieved of
+taxes, the costs of a horse and a poultry-yard defrayed for him, and
+allowed to plant a kitchen-garden, with no questions asked as to the
+day's work of the gardener, certainly such advantages represented much
+more than another two thousand francs; for a man who was earning a
+miserable salary of twelve hundred francs in a government office to
+step into the stewardship of Les Aigues was a change from poverty to
+opulence.
+
+"Be faithful to my interests," said the general, "and I shall have
+more to say to you. Doubtless I could get the collection of the rents
+of Conches, Blangy, and Cerneux taken away from the collection of
+those of Soulanges and given to you. In short, when you bring me in a
+clear sixty thousand a year from Les Aigues you shall be still further
+rewarded."
+
+Unfortunately, the worthy justice and his daughter, in the flush of
+their joy, told Madame Soudry the promise the general had made about
+these collections, without reflecting that the present collector of
+Soulanges, a man named Guerbet, brother of the postmaster of Conches,
+was closely allied, as we shall see later, with Gaubertin and the
+Gendrins.
+
+"It won't be so easy to do it, my dear," said Madame Soudry; "but
+don't prevent the general from making the attempt; it is wonderful how
+easily difficult things are done in Paris. I have seen the Chevalier
+Gluck at dear Madame's feet to get her to sing his music, and she did,
+--she who so adored Piccini, one of the finest men of his day; never
+did HE come into Madame's room without catching me round the waist and
+calling me a dear rogue."
+
+"Ha!" cried Soudry, when his wife reported this news, "does he think
+he is going to lead the notary by the nose, and upset everything to
+please himself and make the whole valley march in line, as he did his
+cuirassiers? These military fellows have a habit of command!--but
+let's have patience; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de
+Ronquerolles will be on our side. Poor Guerbet! he little suspects who
+is trying to pluck the best roses out of his garland!"
+
+Pere Guerbet, the collector of Soulanges, was the wit, that is to say,
+the jovial companion of the little town, and a hero in Madame Soudry's
+salon. Soudry's speech gives a fair idea of the opinion which now grew
+up against the master of Les Aigues from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes,
+and wherever else the public mind could be reached and poisoned by
+Gaubertin.
+
+The installation of Sibilet took place in the autumn of 1817. The year
+1818 went by without the general being able to set foot at Les Aigues,
+for his approaching marriage with Mademoiselle de Troisville, which
+was celebrated in January, 1819, kept him the greater part of the
+summer near Alencon, in the country-house of his prospective father-
+in-law. General Montcornet possessed, besides Les Aigues and a
+magnificent house in Paris, some sixty thousand francs a year in the
+Funds and the salary of a retired lieutenant-general. Though Napoleon
+had made him a count of the Empire and given him the following arms, a
+field quarterly, the first, azure, bordure or, three pyramids argent;
+the second, vert, three hunting horns argent; the third, gules, a
+cannon or on a gun-carriage sable, and, in chief, a crescent or; the
+fourth, or, a crown vert, with the motto (eminently of the middle
+ages!), "Sound the charge,"--Montcornet knew very well that he was the
+son of a cabinet-maker in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, though he was
+quite ready to forget it. He was eaten up with the desire to be a peer
+of France, and dreamed of his grand cordon of the Legion of honor, his
+Saint-Louis cross, and his income of one hundred and forty thousand
+francs. Bitten by the demon of aristocracy, the sight of the blue
+ribbon put him beside himself. The gallant cuirassier of Essling would
+have licked up the mud on the Pont-Royal to be invited to the house of
+a Navarreins, a Lenoncourt, a Grandlieu, a Maufrigneuse, a d'Espard, a
+Vandenesse, a Verneuil, a Herouville, or a Chaulieu.
+
+From 1818, when the impossibility of a change in favor of the
+Bonaparte family was made clear to him, Montcornet had himself
+trumpeted in the faubourg Saint-Germain by the wives of some of his
+friends, who offered his hand and heart, his mansion and his fortune
+in return for an alliance with some great family.
+
+After several attempts, the Duchesse de Carigliano found a match for
+the general in one of the three branches of the Troisville family,--
+that of the viscount in the service of Russia ever since 1789, who had
+returned to France in 1815. The viscount, poor as a younger son, had
+married a Princess Scherbellof, worth about a million, but the arrival
+of two sons and three daughters kept him poor. His family, ancient and
+formerly powerful, now consisted of the Marquis de Troisville, peer of
+France, head of the house and scutcheon, and two deputies, with
+numerous offspring, who were busy, for their part, with the budget and
+the ministries and the court, like fishes round bits of bread.
+Therefore, when Montcornet was presented by Madame de Carigliano,--the
+Napoleonic duchess, who was now a most devoted adherent of the
+Bourbons, he was favorably received. The general asked, in return for
+his fortune and tender indulgence to his wife, to be appointed to the
+Royal Guard, with the rank of marquis and peer of France; but the
+branches of the Troisville family would do no more than promise him
+their support.
+
+"You know what that means," said the duchess to her old friend, who
+complained of the vagueness of the promise. "They cannot oblige the
+king to do as they wish; they can only influence him."
+
+Montcornet made Virginie de Troisville his heir in the marriage
+settlements. Completely under the control of his wife, as Blondet's
+letter has already shown, he was still without children, but Louis
+XVIII. had received him, and given him the cordon of Saint-Louis,
+allowing him to quarter his ridiculous arms with those of the
+Troisvilles, and promising him the title of marquis as soon as he had
+deserved the peerage by his services.
+
+A few days after the audience at which this promise had been given,
+the Duc de Barry was assassinated; the Marsan clique carried the day;
+the Villele ministry came into power, and all the wires laid by the
+Troisvilles were snapped; it became necessary to find new ways of
+fastening them upon the ministry.
+
+"We must bide our time," said the Troisvilles to Montcornet, who was
+always overwhelmed with politeness in the faubourg Saint-Germain.
+
+This will explain how it was that the general did not return to Les
+Aigues until May, 1820.
+
+The ineffable happiness of the son of a shop-keeper of the faubourg
+Saint-Antoine in possessing a young, elegant, intelligent, and gentle
+wife, a Troisville, who had given him an entrance into all the salons
+of the faubourg Saint-Germain, and the delight of making her enjoy the
+pleasures of Paris, had kept him from Les Aigues and made him forget
+about Gaubertin, even to his very name. In 1820 he took the countess
+to Burgundy to show her the estate, and he accepted Sibilet's accounts
+and leases without looking closely into them; happiness never cavils.
+The countess, well pleased to find the steward's wife a charming young
+woman, made presents to her and to the children, with whom she
+occasionally amused herself. She ordered a few changes at Les Aigues,
+having sent to Paris for an architect; proposing, to the general's
+great delight, to spend six months of every year on this magnificent
+estate. Montcornet's savings were soon spent on the architectural work
+and the exquisite new furniture sent from Paris. Les Aigues thus
+received the last touch which made it a choice example of all the
+diverse elegancies of four centuries.
+
+In 1821 the general was almost peremptorily urged by Sibilet to be at
+Les Aigues before the month of May. Important matters had to be
+decided. A lease of nine years, to the amount of thirty thousand
+francs, granted by Gaubertin in 1812 to a wood-merchant, fell in on
+the 15th of May of the current year. Sibilet, anxious to prove his
+rectitude, was unwilling to be responsible for the renewal of the
+lease. "You know, Monsieur le comte," he wrote, "that I do not choose
+to profit by such matters." The wood-merchant claimed an indemnity,
+extorted from Madame Laguerre, through her hatred of litigation, and
+shared by him with Gaubertin. This indemnity was based on the injury
+done to the woods by the peasants, who treated the forest of Les
+Aigues as if they had a right to cut the timber. Messrs. Gravelot
+Brothers, wood-merchants in Paris, refused to pay their last quarter
+dues, offering to prove by an expert that the woods were reduced one-
+fifth in value, through, they said, the injurious precedent
+established by Madame Laguerre.
+
+"I have already," wrote Sibilet, "sued these men in the courts at
+Ville-aux-Fayes, for they have taken legal residence there, on account
+of this lease, with my old employer, Maitre Corbinet. I fear we shall
+lose the suit."
+
+"It is a question of income, my dear," said the general, showing the
+letter to his wife. "Will you go down to Les Aigues a little earlier
+this year than last?"
+
+"Go yourself, and I will follow you when the weather is warmer," said
+the countess, not sorry to remain in Paris alone.
+
+The general, who knew very well the canker that was eating into his
+revenues, departed without his wife, resolved to take vigorous
+measures. In so doing he reckoned, as we shall see, without his
+Gaubertin.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE GREAT REVOLUTIONS OF A LITTLE VALLEY
+
+"Well, Maitre Sibilet," said the general to his steward, the morning
+after his arrival, giving him a familiar title which showed how much
+he appreciated his services, "so we are, to use a ministerial phrase,
+at a crisis?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, following the general.
+
+The fortunate possessor of Les Aigues was walking up and down in front
+of the steward's house, along a little terrace where Madame Sibilet
+grew flowers, at the end of which was a wide stretch of meadow-land
+watered by the canal which Blondet has described. From this point the
+chateau of Les Aigues was seen in the distance, and in like manner the
+profile, as it were, of the steward's lodge was seen from Les Aigues.
+
+"But," resumed the general, "what's the difficulty? If I do lose the
+suit against the Gravelots, a money wound is not mortal, and I'll have
+the leasing of my forest so well advertised that there will be
+competition, and I shall sell the timber at its true value."
+
+"Business is not done in that way, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet.
+"Suppose you get no lessees, what will you do?"
+
+"Cut the timber myself and sell it--"
+
+"You, a wood merchant?" said Sibilet. "Well, without looking at
+matters here, how would it be in Paris? You would have to hire a wood-
+yard, pay for a license and the taxes, also for the right of
+navigation, and duties, and the costs of unloading; besides the salary
+of a trustworthy agent--"
+
+"Yes, it is impracticable," said the general hastily, alarmed at the
+prospect. "But why can't I find persons to lease the right of cutting
+timber as before?"
+
+"Monsieur le comte has enemies."
+
+"Who are they?"
+
+"Well, in the first place, Monsieur Gaubertin."
+
+"Do you mean the scoundrel whose place you took?"
+
+"Not so loud, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, showing fear; "I beg
+of you, not so loud,--my cook might hear us."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me that I am not to speak on my own estate of a
+villain who robbed me?" cried the general.
+
+"For the sake of your own peace and comfort, come further away,
+Monsieur le comte. Monsieur Gaubertin is mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes."
+
+"Ha! I congratulate Ville-aux-Fayes. Thunder! what a nobly governed
+town!--"
+
+"Do me the honor to listen, Monsieur le comte, and to believe that I
+am talking of serious matters which may affect your future life in
+this place."
+
+"I am listening; let us sit down on this bench here."
+
+"Monsieur le comte, when you dismissed Gaubertin, he had to find some
+employment, for he was not rich--"
+
+"Not rich! when he stole twenty thousand francs a year from this
+estate?"
+
+"Monsieur le comte, I don't pretend to excuse him," replied Sibilet.
+"I want to see Les Aigues prosperous, if it were only to prove
+Gaubertin's dishonest; but we ought not to abuse him openly for he is
+one of the most dangerous scoundrels to be found in all Burgundy, and
+he is now in a position to injure you."
+
+"In what way?" asked the general, sobering down.
+
+"Gaubertin has control of nearly one third of the supplies sent to
+Paris. As general agent of the timber business, he orders all the work
+of the forests,--the felling, chopping, floating, and sending to
+market. Being in close relations with the workmen, he is the arbiter
+of prices. It has taken him three years to create this position, but
+he holds it now like a fortress. He is essential to all dealers, never
+favoring one more than another; he regulates the whole business in
+their interests, and their affairs are better and more cheaply looked
+after by him than they were in the old time by separate agents for
+each firm. For instance, he has so completely put a stop to
+competition that he has absolute control of the auction sales; the
+crown and the State are both dependent on him. Their timber is sold
+under the hammer and falls invariably to Gaubertin's dealers; in fact,
+no others attempt now to bid against them. Last year Monsieur
+Mariotte, of Auxerre, urged by the commissioner of domains, did
+attempt to compete with Gaubertin. At first, Gaubertin let him buy the
+standing wood at the usual prices; but when it came to cutting it, the
+Avonnais workmen asked such enormous prices that Monsieur Mariotte was
+obliged to bring laborers from Auxerre, whom the Ville-aux-Fayes
+workmen attacked and drove away. The head of the coalition, and the
+ringleader of the brawl were brought before the police court, and the
+suits cost Monsieur Mariotte a great deal of money; for, besides the
+odium of having convicted and punished poor men, he was forced to pay
+all costs, because the losing side had not a farthing to do it with. A
+suit against laboring men is sure to result in hatred to those who
+live among them. Let me warn you of this; for if you follow the course
+you propose, you will have to fight against the poor of this district
+at least. But that's not all. Counting it over, Monsieur Mariotte, a
+worthy man, found he was the loser by his original lease. Forced to
+pay ready money, he was nevertheless obliged to sell on time;
+Gaubertin delivered his timber at long credits for the purpose of
+ruining his competitor. He undersold him by at least five per cent,
+and the end of it is that poor Mariotte's credit is badly shaken.
+Gaubertin is now pressing and harassing the poor man so that he is
+driven, they tell me, to leave not only Auxerre, but even Burgundy
+itself; and he is right. In this way land-owners have long been
+sacrificed to dealers who now set the market-prices, just as the
+furniture-dealers in Paris dictate values to appraisers. But Gaubertin
+saves the owners so much trouble and worry that they are really
+gainers."
+
+"How so?" asked the general.
+
+"In the first place, because the less complicated a business is, the
+greater the profits to the owners," answered Sibilet. "Besides which,
+their income is more secure; and in all matters of rural improvement
+and development that is the main thing, as you will find out. Then,
+too, Monsieur Gaubertin is the friend and patron of working-men; he
+pays them well and keeps them always at work; therefore, though their
+families live on the estates, the woods leased to dealers and
+belonging to the land-owners who trust the care of their property to
+Gaubertin (such as MM. de Soulanges and de Ronquerolles) are not
+devastated. The dead wood is gathered up, but that is all--"
+
+"That rascal Gaubertin has lost no time!" cried the general.
+
+"He is a bold man," said Sibilet. "He really is, as he calls himself,
+the steward of the best half of the department, instead of being
+merely the steward of Les Aigues. He makes a little out of everybody,
+and that little on every two millions brings him in forty to fifty
+thousand francs a year. He says himself, 'The fires on the Parisian
+hearths pay it all.' He is your enemy, Monsieur le comte. My advice to
+you is to capitulate and be reconciled with him. He is intimate, as
+you know, with Soudry, the head of the gendarmerie at Soulanges; with
+Monsieur Rigou, our mayor at Blangy; the patrols are under his
+influence; therefore you will find it impossible to repress the
+pilferings which are eating into your estate. During the last two
+years your woods have been devastated. Consequently the Gravelots are
+more than likely to win their suit. They say, very truly: 'According
+to the terms of the lease, the care of the woods is left to the owner;
+he does not protect them, and we are injured; the owner is bound to
+pay us damages.' That's fair enough; but it doesn't follow that they
+should win their case."
+
+"We must be ready to defend this suit at all costs," said the general,
+"and then we shall have no more of them."
+
+"You shall gratify Gaubertin," remarked Sibilet.
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Suing the Gravelots is the same as a hand to hand fight with
+Gaubertin, who is their agent," answered Sibilet. "He asks nothing
+better than such a suit. He declares, so I hear, that he will bring
+you if necessary before the Court of Appeals."
+
+"The rascal! the--"
+
+"If you attempt to work your own woods," continued Sibilet, turning
+the knife in the wound, "you will find yourself at the mercy of
+workmen who will force you to pay rich men's prices instead of market-
+prices. In short, they'll put you, as they did that poor Mariotte, in
+a position where you must sell at a loss. If you then try to lease the
+woods you will get no tenants, for you cannot expect that any one
+should take risks for himself which Mariotte only took for the crown
+and the State. Suppose a man talks of his losses to the government!
+The government is a gentleman who is, like your obedient servant when
+he was in its employ, a worthy man with a frayed overcoat, who reads
+the newspapers at a desk. Let his salary be twelve hundred or twelve
+thousand francs, his disposition is the same, it is not a whit softer.
+Talk of reductions and releases from the public treasury represented
+by the said gentleman! He'll only pooh-pooh you as he mends his pen.
+No, the law is the wrong road for you, Monsieur le comte."
+
+"Then what's to be done?" cried the general, his blood boiling as he
+tramped up and down before the bench.
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, abruptly, "what I say to you is not
+for my own interests, certainly; but I advise you to sell Les Aigues
+and leave the neighborhood."
+
+On hearing these words the general sprang back as if a cannon-ball had
+struck him; then he looked at Sibilet with a shrewd, diplomatic eye.
+
+"A general of the Imperial Guard running away from the rascals, when
+Madame la comtesse likes Les Aigues!" he said. "No, I'll sooner box
+Gaubertin's ears on the market-place of Ville-aux-Fayes, and force him
+to fight me that I may shoot him like a dog."
+
+"Monsieur le comte, Gaubertin is not such a fool as to let himself be
+brought into collision with you. Besides, you could not openly insult
+the mayor of so important a place as Ville-aux-Fayes."
+
+"I'll have him turned out; the Troisvilles can do that for me; it is a
+question of income."
+
+"You won't succeed, Monsieur le comte; Gaubertin's arms are long; you
+will get yourself into difficulties from which you cannot escape."
+
+"Let us think of the present," interrupted the general. "About that
+suit?"
+
+"That, Monsieur le comte, I can manage to win for you," replied
+Sibilet, with a knowing glance.
+
+"Bravo, Sibilet!" said the general, shaking his steward's hand; "how
+are you going to do it?"
+
+"You will win it on a writ of error," replied Sibilet. "In my opinion
+the Gravelots have the right of it. But it is not enough to be in the
+right, they must also be in order as to legal forms, and that they
+have neglected. The Gravelots ought to have summoned you to have the
+woods better watched. They can't ask for indemnity, at the close of a
+lease, for damages which they know have been going on for nine years;
+there is a clause in the lease as to this, on which we can file a bill
+of exceptions. You will lose the suit at Ville-aux-Fayes, possibly in
+the upper court as well, but we will carry it to Paris and you will
+win at the Court of Appeals. The costs will be heavy and the expenses
+ruinous. You will have to spend from twelve to fifteen thousand francs
+merely to win the suit,--but you will win it, if you care to. The suit
+will only increase the enmity of the Gravelots, for the expenses will
+be even heavier on them. You will be their bugbear; you will be called
+litigious and calumniated in every way; still, you can win--"
+
+"Then, what's to be done?" repeated the general, on whom Sibilet's
+arguments were beginning to produce the effect of a violent poison.
+
+Just then the remembrance of the blows he had given Gaubertin with his
+cane crossed his mind, and made him wish he had bestowed them on
+himself. His flushed face was enough to show Sibilet the irritation
+that he felt.
+
+"You ask me what can be done, Monsieur le comte? Why, only one thing,
+compromise; but of course you can't negotiate that yourself. I must be
+thought to cheat you! We, poor devils, whose only fortune and comfort
+is in our good name, it is hard on us to even seem to do a
+questionable thing. We are always judged by appearances. Gaubertin
+himself saved Mademoiselle Laguerre's life during the Revolution, but
+it seemed to others that he was robbing her. She rewarded him in her
+will with a diamond worth ten thousand francs, which Madame Gaubertin
+now wears on her head."
+
+The general gave Sibilet another glance still more diplomatic than the
+first; but the steward seemed to take no notice of the challenge it
+expressed.
+
+"If I were to appear dishonest, Monsieur Gaubertin would be so
+overjoyed that I could instantly obtain his help," continued Sibilet.
+"He would listen with all his ears if I said to him: 'Suppose I were
+to extort twenty thousand francs from Monsieur le comte for Messrs.
+Gravelot, on condition that they shared them with me?' If your
+adversaries consented to that, Monsieur le comte, I should return you
+ten thousand francs; you lose only the other ten, you save
+appearances, and the suit is quashed."
+
+"You are a fine fellow, Sibilet," said the general, taking his hand
+and shaking it. "If you can manage the future as well as you do the
+present, I'll call you the prince of stewards."
+
+"As to the future," said Sibilet, "you won't die of hunger if no
+timber is cut for two or three years. Let us begin by putting proper
+keepers in the woods. Between now and then things will flow as the
+water does in the Avonne. Gaubertin may die, or get rich enough to
+retire from business; at any rate, you will have sufficient time to
+find him a competitor. The cake is too rich not to be shared. Look for
+another Gaubertin to oppose the original."
+
+"Sibilet," said the old soldier, delighted with this variety of
+solutions. "I'll give you three thousand francs if you'll settle the
+matter as you propose. For the rest, we'll think about it."
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, "first and foremost have the forest
+properly watched. See for yourself the condition in which the
+peasantry have put it during your two years' absence. What could I do?
+I am steward; I am not a bailiff. To guard Les Aigues properly you
+need a mounted patrol and three keepers."
+
+"I certainly shall have the estate properly guarded. So it is to be
+war, is it? Very good, then we shall make war. That doesn't frighten
+me," said Montcornet, rubbing his hands.
+
+"A war of francs," said Sibilet; "and you may find that more difficult
+than the other kind; men can be killed but you can't kill self-
+interest. You will fight your enemy on the battle-field where all
+landlords are compelled to fight,--I mean cash results. It is not
+enough to produce, you must sell; and in order to sell, you must be on
+good terms with everybody."
+
+"I shall have the country people on my side."
+
+"By what means?"
+
+"By doing good among them."
+
+"Doing good to the valley peasants! to the petty shopkeepers of
+Soulanges!" exclaimed Sibilet, squinting horribly, by reason of the
+irony which flamed brighter in one eye than in the other. "Monsieur le
+comte doesn't know what he undertakes. Our Lord Jesus Christ would die
+again upon the cross in this valley! If you wish an easy life, follow
+the example of the late Mademoiselle Laguerre; let yourself be robbed,
+or else make people afraid of you. Women, children, and the masses are
+all governed by fear. That was the great secret of the Convention, and
+of the Emperor, too."
+
+"Good heavens! is this the forest of Bondy?" cried the general.
+
+"My dear," said Sibilet's wife, appearing at this moment, "your
+breakfast is ready. Pray excuse him, Monsieur le comte; he has eaten
+nothing since morning for he was obliged to go to Ronquerolles to
+deliver some barley."
+
+"Go, go, Sibilet," said the general.
+
+The next morning the count rose early, before daylight, and went to
+the gate of the Avonne, intending to talk with the one forester whom
+he employed and find out what the man's sentiments really were.
+
+Some seven or eight hundred acres of the forest of Les Aigues lie
+along the banks of the Avonne; and to preserve the majestic beauty of
+the river the large trees that border it have been left untouched for
+a distance of three leagues on both sides in an almost straight line.
+The mistress of Henri IV., to whom Les Aigues formerly belonged, was
+as fond of hunting as the king himself. In 1593 she ordered a bridge
+to be built of a single arch with shelving roadway by which to ride
+from the lower side of the forest to a much larger portion of it,
+purchased by her, which lay upon the slopes of the hills. The gate of
+the Avonne was built as a place of meeting for the huntsmen; and we
+know the magnificence bestowed by the architects of that day upon all
+buildings intended for the delight of the crown and the nobility. Six
+avenues branched away from it, their place of meeting forming a half-
+moon. In the centre of the semi-circular space stood an obelisk
+surmounted by a round shield, formerly gilded, bearing on one side the
+arms of Navarre and on the other those of the Countess de Moret.
+Another half-moon, on the side toward the river, communicated with the
+first by a straight avenue, at the opposite end of which the steep
+rise of the Venetian-shaped bridge could be seen. Between two elegant
+iron railings of the same character as that of the magnificent railing
+which formerly surrounded the garden of the Place Royale in Paris, now
+so unfortunately destroyed, stood a brick pavilion, with stone courses
+hewn in facets like those of the chateau, with a very pointed roof and
+window-casings of stone cut in the same manner. This old style, which
+gave the building a regal air, is suitable only to prisons when used
+in cities; but standing in the heart of forests it derives from its
+surroundings a splendor of its own. A group of trees formed a screen,
+behind which the kennels, an old falconry, a pheasantry, and the
+quarters of the huntsmen were falling into ruins, after being in their
+day the wonder and admiration of Burgundy.
+
+In 1595, the royal hunting-parties set forth from this magnificent
+pavilion, preceded by those fine dogs so dear to Rubens and to Paul
+Veronese; the huntsmen mounted on high-steeping steeds with stout and
+blue-white satiny haunches, seen no longer except in Wouverman's
+amazing work, followed by footmen in livery; the scene enlivened by
+whippers-in, wearing the high top-boots with facings and the yellow
+leathern breeches which have come down to the present day on the
+canvas of Van der Meulen. The obelisk was erected in commemoration of
+the visit of the Bearnais, and his hunt with the beautiful Comtesse de
+Moret; the date is given below the arms of Navarre. That jealous
+woman, whose son was afterwards legitimatized, would not allow the
+arms of France to figure on the obelisk, regarding them as a rebuke.
+
+At the time of which we write, when the general's eyes rested on this
+splendid ruin, moss had gathered for centuries on the four faces of
+the roof; the hewn-stone courses, mangled by time, seemed to cry with
+yawning mouths against the profanation; disjointed leaden settings let
+fall their octagonal panes, so that the windows seemed blind of an eye
+here and there. Yellow wallflowers bloomed about the copings; ivy slid
+its white rootlets into every crevice.
+
+All things bespoke a shameful want of care,--the seal set by mere
+life-possessors on the ancient glories that they possess. Two windows
+on the first floor were stuffed with hay. Through another, on the
+ground-floor, was seen a room filled with tools and logs of wood;
+while a cow pushed her muzzle through a fourth, proving that
+Courtecuisse, to avoid having to walk from the pavilion to the
+pheasantry, had turned the large hall of the central building into a
+stable,--a hall with panelled ceiling, and in the centre of each panel
+the arms of all the various possessors of Les Aigues!
+
+Black and dirty palings disgraced the approach to the pavilion, making
+square inclosures with plank roofs for pigs, ducks, and hens, the
+manure of which was taken away every six months. A few ragged garments
+were hung to dry on the brambles which boldly grew unchecked here and
+there. As the general came along the avenue from the bridge, Madame
+Courtecuisse was scouring a saucepan in which she had just made her
+coffee. The forester, sitting on a chair in the sun, considered his
+wife as a savage considers his. When he heard a horse's hoofs he
+turned round, saw the count, and seemed taken aback.
+
+"Well, Courtecuisse, my man," said the general, "I'm not surprised
+that the peasants cut my woods before Messrs. Gravelot can do so. So
+you consider your place a sinecure?"
+
+"Indeed, Monsieur le comte, I have watched the woods so many nights
+that I'm ill from it. I've got a chill, and I suffer such pain this
+morning that my wife has just made me a poultice in that saucepan."
+
+"My good fellow," said the count, "I don't know of any pain that a
+coffee poultice cures except that of hunger. Listen to me, you rascal!
+I rode through my forest yesterday, and then through those of Monsieur
+de Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles. Theirs are carefully
+watched and preserved, while mine is in a shameful state."
+
+"Ah, monsieur! but they are the old lords of the neighborhood;
+everybody respects their property. How can you expect me to fight
+against six districts? I care for my life more than for your woods. A
+man who would undertake to watch your woods as they ought to be
+watched would get a ball in his head for wages in some dark corner of
+the forest--"
+
+"Coward!" cried the general, trying to control the anger the man's
+insolent reply provoked in him. "Last night was as clear as day, yet
+it cost me three hundred francs in actual robbery and over a thousand
+in future damages. You will leave my service unless you do better. All
+wrong-doing deserves some mercy; therefore these are my conditions:
+You may have the fines, and I will pay you three francs for every
+indictment you bring against these depredators. If I don't get what I
+expect, you know what you have to expect, and no pension either.
+Whereas, if you serve me faithfully and contrive to stop these
+depredations, I'll give you an annuity of three hundred francs for
+life. You can think it over. Here are six ways," continued the count,
+pointing to the branching roads; "there's only one for you to take,--
+as for me also, who am not afraid of balls; try and find the right
+one."
+
+Courtecuisse, a small man about forty-six years of age, with a full-
+moon face, found his greatest happiness in doing nothing. He expected
+to live and die in that pavilion, now considered by him HIS pavilion.
+His two cows were pastured in the forest, from which he got his wood;
+and he spent his time in looking after his garden instead of after the
+delinquents. Such neglect of duty suited Gaubertin, and Courtecuisse
+knew it did. The keeper chased only those depredators who were the
+objects of his personal dislike,--young women who would not yield to
+his wishes, or persons against whom he held a grudge; though for some
+time past he had really felt no dislikes, for every one yielded to him
+on account of his easy-going ways with them.
+
+Courtecuisse had a place always kept for him at the table of the
+Grand-I-Vert; the wood-pickers feared him no longer; indeed, his wife
+and he received many gifts in kind from them; his wood was brought in;
+his vineyard dug; in short, all delinquents at whom he blinked did him
+service.
+
+Counting on Gaubertin for the future, and feeling sure of two acres
+whenever Les Aigues should be brought to the hammer, he was roughly
+awakened by the curt speech of the general, who, after four quiescent
+years, was now revealing his true character,--that of a bourgeois rich
+man who was determined to be no longer deceived. Courtecuisse took his
+cap, his game-bag, and his gun, put on his gaiters and his belt (which
+bore the very recent arms of Montcornet), and started for Ville-aux-
+Fayes, with the careless, indifferent air and manner under which
+country-people often conceal very deep reflections, while he gazed at
+the woods and whistled to the dogs to follow him.
+
+"What! you complain of the Shopman when he proposes to make your
+fortune?" said Gaubertin. "Doesn't the fool offer to give you three
+francs for every arrest you make, and the fines to boot? Have an
+understanding with your friends and you can bring as many indictments
+as you please,--hundreds if you like! With one thousand francs you can
+buy La Bachelerie from Rigou, become a property owner, live in your
+own house, and work for yourself, or rather, make others work for you,
+and take your ease. Only--now listen to me--you must manage to arrest
+only such as haven't a penny in the world. You can't shear sheep
+unless the wool is on their backs. Take the Shopman's offer and leave
+him to collect the costs,--if he wants them; tastes differ. Didn't old
+Mariotte prefer losses to profits, in spite of my advice?"
+
+Courtecuisse, filled with admiration for these words of wisdom,
+returned home burning with the desire to be a land-owner and a
+bourgeois like the rest.
+
+When the general reached Les Aigues he related his expedition to
+Sibilet.
+
+"Monsieur le comte did very right," said the steward, rubbing his
+hands; "but he must not stop short half-way. The field-keeper of the
+district who allows the country-people to prey upon the meadows and
+rob the harvests ought to be changed. Monsieur le comte should have
+himself chosen mayor, and appoint one of his old soldiers, who would
+have the courage to carry out his orders, in place of Vaudoyer. A
+great land-owner should be master in his own district. Just see what
+difficulties we have with the present mayor!"
+
+The mayor of the district of Blangy, formerly a Benedictine, named
+Rigou, had married, in the first year of the Republic, the servant-
+woman of the late priest of Blangy. In spite of the repugnance which a
+married monk excited at the Prefecture, he had continued to be mayor
+after 1815, for the reason that there was no-one else at Blangy who
+was capable of filling the post. But in 1817, when the bishop sent the
+Abbe Brossette to the parish of Blangy (which had then been vacant
+over twenty-five years), a violent opposition not unnaturally broke
+out between the old apostate and the young ecclesiastic, whose
+character is already known to us. The war which was then and there
+declared between the mayor's office and the parsonage increased the
+popularity of the magistrate, who had hitherto been more or less
+despised. Rigou, whom the peasants had disliked for usurious dealings,
+now suddenly represented their political and financial interests,
+supposed to be threatened by the Restoration, and more especially by
+the clergy.
+
+A copy of the "Constitutionnel," that great organ of liberalism, after
+making the rounds of the Cafe de la Paix, came back to Rigou on the
+seventh day,--the subscription, standing in the name of old Socquard
+the keeper of the coffee-house, being shared by twenty persons. Rigou
+passed the paper on to Langlume the miller, who, in turn, gave it in
+shreds to any one who knew how to read. The "Paris items," and the
+anti-religion jokes of the liberal sheet formed the public opinion of
+the valley des Aigues. Rigou, like the VENERABLE Abbe Gregoire, became
+a hero. For him, as for certain Parisian bankers, politics spread a
+mantle of popularity over his shameful dishonesty.
+
+At this particular time the perjured monk, like Francois Keller the
+great orator, was looked upon as a defender of the rights of the
+people,--he who, not so very long before, dared not walk in the fields
+after dark, lest he should stumble into pitfalls where he would seem
+to have been killed by accident! Persecute a man politically and you
+not only magnify him, but you redeem his past and make it innocent.
+The liberal party was a great worker of miracles in this respect. Its
+dangerous journal, which had the wit to make itself as commonplace, as
+calumniating, as credulous, and as sillily perfidious as every
+audience made up the general masses, did in all probability as much
+injury to private interests as it did to those of the Church.
+
+Rigou flattered himself that he should find in a Bonapartist general
+now laid on the shelf, in a son of the people raised from nothing by
+the Revolution, a sound enemy to the Bourbons and the priests. But the
+general, bearing in mind his private ambitions, so arranged matters as
+to evade the visit of Monsieur and Madame Rigou when he first came to
+Les Aigues.
+
+When you have become better acquainted with the terrible character of
+Rigou, the lynx of the valley, you will understand the full extent of
+the second capital blunder which the general's aristocratic ambitions
+led him to commit, and which the countess made all the greater by an
+offence which will be described in the further history of Rigou.
+
+If Montcornet had courted the mayor's good-will, if he had sought his
+friendship, perhaps the influence of the renegade might have
+neutralized that of Gaubertin. Far from that, three suits were now
+pending in the courts of Ville-aux-Fayes between the general and the
+ex-monk. Until the present time the general had been so absorbed in
+his personal interests and in his marriage that he had never
+remembered Rigou, but when Sibilet advised him to get himself made
+mayor in Rigou's place, he took post-horses and went to see the
+prefect.
+
+The prefect, Comte Martial de la Roche-Hugon, had been a friend of the
+general since 1804; and it was a word from him said to Montcornet in a
+conversation in Paris, which brought about the purchase of Les Aigues.
+Comte Martial, a prefect under Napoleon, remained a prefect under the
+Bourbons, and courted the bishop to retain his place. Now it happened
+that Monseigneur had several times requested him to get rid of Rigou.
+Martial, to whom the condition of the district was perfectly well
+known, was delighted with the general's request; so that in less than
+a month the Comte de Montcornet was mayor of Blangy.
+
+By one of those accidents which come about naturally, the general met,
+while at the prefecture where his friend put him up, a non-
+commissioned officer of the ex-Imperial guard, who had been cheated
+out of his retiring pension. The general had already, under other
+circumstances, done a service to the brave cavalryman, whose name was
+Groison; the man, remembering it, now told him his troubles, admitting
+that he was penniless. The general promised to get him his pension,
+and proposed that he should take the place of field-keeper to the
+district of Blangy, as a way of paying off his score of gratitude by
+devotion to the new mayor's interests. The appointments of master and
+man were made simultaneously, and the general gave, as may be
+supposed, very firm instructions to his subordinate.
+
+Vaudoyer, the displaced keeper, a peasant on the Ronquerolles estate,
+was only fit, like most field-keepers, to stalk about, and gossip, and
+let himself be petted by the poor of the district, who asked nothing
+better than to corrupt at subaltern authority,--the advanced guard, as
+it were, of the land-owners. He knew Soudry, the brigadier at
+Soulanges, for brigadiers of gendarmerie, performing functions that
+are semi-judicial in drawing up criminal indictments, have much to do
+with the rural keepers, who are, in fact, their natural spies. Soudry,
+being appealed to, sent Vaudoyer to Gaubertin, who received his old
+acquaintance very cordially, and invited him to drink while listening
+to the recital of his troubles.
+
+"My dear friend," said the mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, who could talk to
+every man in his own language, "what has happened to you is likely to
+happen to us all. The nobles are back upon us. The men to whom the
+Emperor gave titles make common cause with the old nobility. They all
+want to crush the people, re-establish their former rights and take
+our property from us. But we are Burgundians; we must resist, and
+drive those Arminacs back to Paris. Return to Blangy; you shall be
+agent for Monsieur Polissard, the wood-merchant, who is contractor for
+the forest of Ronquerolles. Don't be uneasy, my lad; I'll find you
+enough to do for the whole of the coming year. But remember one thing;
+the wood is for ourselves! Not a single depredation, or the thing is
+at an end. Send all interlopers to Les Aigues. If there's brush or
+fagots to sell make people buy ours; don't let them buy of Les Aigues.
+You'll get back to your place as field-keeper before long; this thing
+can't last. The general will get sick of living among thieves. Did you
+know that that Shopman called me a thief, me!--son of the stanchest
+and most incorruptible of republicans; me!--the son in law of Mouchon,
+that famous representative of the people, who died without leaving me
+enough to bury him?"
+
+The general raised the salary of the new field-keeper to three hundred
+francs; and built a town-hall, in which he gave him a residence. Then
+he married him to a daughter of one of his tenant-farmers, who had
+lately died, leaving her an orphan with three acres of vineyard.
+Groison attached himself to the general as a dog to his master. This
+legitimate fidelity was admitted by the whole community. The keeper
+was feared and respected, but like the captain of a vessel whose
+ship's company hate him; the peasantry shunned him as they would a
+leper. Met either in silence or with sarcasms veiled under a show of
+good-humor, the new keeper was a sentinel watched by other sentinels.
+He could do nothing against such numbers. The delinquents took delight
+in plotting depredations which it was impossible for him to prove, and
+the old soldier grew furious at his helplessness. Groison found the
+excitement of a war of factions in his duties, and all the pleasures
+of the chase,--a chase after petty delinquents. Trained in real war to
+a loyalty which consists in part of playing a fair game, this enemy of
+traitors came at last to hate these people, so treacherous in their
+conspiracies, and so clever in their thefts that they mortified his
+self-esteem. He soon observed that the depredations were committed
+only at Les Aigues; all the other estates were respected. At first he
+despised a peasantry ungrateful enough to pillage a general of the
+Empire, an essentially kind and generous man; presently, however, he
+added hatred to contempt. But multiply himself as he would, he could
+not be everywhere, and the enemy pillaged everywhere that he was not.
+Groison made the general understand that it was necessary to organize
+the defence on a war footing, and proved to him the insufficiency of
+his own devoted efforts and the evil disposition of the inhabitants of
+the valley.
+
+"There is something behind it all, general," he said; "these people
+are so bold they fear nothing; they seem to rely on the favor of the
+good God."
+
+"We shall see," replied the count.
+
+Fatal word! The verb "to see" has no future tense for politicians.
+
+At the moment, Montcornet was considering another difficulty, which
+seemed to him more pressing. he needed an alter ego to do his work in
+the mayor's office during the months he lived in Paris. Obliged to
+find some man who knew how to read and write for the position of
+assistant mayor, he knew of none and could hear of none throughout the
+district but Langlume, the tenant of his own flour-mill. The choice
+was disastrous. Not only were the interests of mayor and miller
+diametrically opposed, but Langlume had long hatched swindling
+projects with Rigou, who lent him money to carry on his business, or
+to acquire property. The miller had bought the right to the hay of
+certain fields for his horses, and Sibilet could not sell it except to
+him. The hay of all the fields in the district was sold at better
+prices than that of Les Aigues, though the yield of the latter was the
+best.
+
+Langlume, then, became the provisional mayor; but in France the
+provisional is eternal,--though Frenchmen are suspected of loving
+change. Acting by Rigou's advice, he played a part of great devotion
+to the general; and he was still assistant-mayor at the moment when,
+by the omnipotence of the historian, this drama begins.
+
+In the absence of the mayor, Rigou, necessarily a member of the
+district council, reigned supreme, and brought forward resolutions all
+injuriously affecting the general. At one time he caused money to be
+spent for purposes that were profitable to the peasants only,--the
+greater part of the expenses falling upon Les Aigues, which, by reason
+of its great extent, paid two thirds of the taxes; at other times the
+council refused, under his influence, certain useful and necessary
+allowances, such as an increase in salary for the abbe, repairs or
+improvements to the parsonage, or "wages" to the school-master.
+
+"If the peasants once know how to read and write, what will become of
+us?" said Langlume, naively, to the general, to excuse this anti-
+liberal action taken against a brother of the Christian Doctrine whom
+the Abbe Brossette wished to establish as a public school-master in
+Blangy.
+
+The general, delighted with his old Groison, returned to Paris and
+immediately looked about him for other old soldiers of the late
+imperial guard, with whom to organize the defence of Les Aigues on a
+formidable footing. By dint of searching out and questioning his
+friends and many officers on half-pay, he unearthed Michaud, a former
+quartermaster at headquarters of the cuirassiers of the guard; one of
+those men whom troopers call "hard-to-cook," a nickname derived from
+the mess kitchen where refractory beans are not uncommon. Michaud
+picked out from among his friends and acquaintances, three other men
+fit to be his helpers, and able to guard the estate without fear and
+without reproach.
+
+The first, named Steingel, a pure-blooded Alsacian, was a natural son
+of the general of that name, who fell in one of Bonaparte's first
+victories with the army of Italy. Tall and strong, he belonged to the
+class of soldiers accustomed, like the Russians, to obey, passively
+and absolutely. Nothing hindered him in the performance of his duty;
+he would have collared an emperor or a pope if such were his orders.
+He ignored danger. Perfectly fearless, he had never received the
+smallest scratch during his sixteen years' campaigning. He slept in
+the open air or in his bed with stoical indifference. At any increased
+labor or discomfort, he merely remarked, "It seems to be the order of
+the day."
+
+The second man, Vatel, son of the regiment, corporal of voltigeurs,
+gay as a lark, rather free and easy with the fair sex, brave to
+foolhardiness, was capable of shooting a comrade with a laugh if
+ordered to execute him. With no future before him and not knowing how
+to employ himself, the prospect of finding an amusing little war in
+the functions of keeper, attracted him; and as the grand army and the
+Emperor had hitherto stood him in place of a religion, so now he swore
+to serve the brave Montcornet against and through all and everything.
+His nature was of that essentially wrangling quality to which a life
+without enemies seems dull and objectless,--the nature, in short, of a
+litigant, or a policeman. If it had not been for the presence of the
+sheriff's officer, he would have seized Tonsard and the bundle of wood
+at the Grand-I-Vert, snapping his fingers at the law on the
+inviolability of a man's domicile.
+
+The third man, Gaillard, also an old soldier, risen to the rank of
+sub-lieutenant, and covered with wounds, belonged to the class of
+mechanical soldiers. The fate of the Emperor never left his mind and
+he became indifferent to everything else. With the care of a natural
+daughter on his hands, he accepted the place that was now offered to
+him as a means of subsistence, taking it as he would have taken
+service in a regiment.
+
+When the general reached Les Aigues, whither he had gone in advance of
+his troopers, intending to send away Courtecuisse, he was amazed at
+discovering the impudent audacity with which the keeper had fulfilled
+his commands. There is a method of obeying which makes the obedience
+of the servant a cutting sarcasm on the master's order. But all things
+in this world can be reduced to absurdity, and Courtecuisse in this
+instance went beyond its limits.
+
+One hundred and twenty-six indictments against depredators (most of
+whom were in collusion with Courtecuisse) and sworn to before the
+justice court of Soulanges, had resulted in sixty-nine commitments for
+trial, in virtue of which Brunet, the sheriff's officer, delighted at
+such a windfall of fees, had rigorously enforced the warrants in such
+a way as to bring about what is called, in legal language, a
+declaration of insolvency; a condition of pauperism where the law
+becomes of course powerless. By this declaration the sheriff proves
+that the defendant possesses no property of any kind, and is therefore
+a pauper. Where there is absolutely nothing, the creditor, like the
+king, loses his right to sue. The paupers in this case, carefully
+selected by Courtecuisse, were scattered through five neighboring
+districts, whither Brunet betook himself duly attended by his
+satellites, Vermichel and Fourchon, to serve the writs. Later he
+transmitted the papers to Sibilet with a bill of costs for five
+thousand francs, requesting him to obtain the further orders of
+Monsieur le comte de Montcornet.
+
+Just as Sibilet, armed with these papers, was calmly explaining to the
+count the result of the rash orders he had given to Courtecuisse, and
+witnessing, as calmly, a burst of the most violent anger a general of
+the French cavalry was ever known to indulge in, Courtecuisse entered
+to pay his respects to his master and to bring his own account of
+eleven hundred francs, the sum to which his promised commission now
+amounted. The natural man took the bit in his teeth and ran off with
+the general, who totally forgot his coronet and his field rank; he was
+a trooper once more, vomiting curses of which he probably was ashamed
+when he thought of them later.
+
+"Ha! eleven hundred francs!" he shouted, "eleven hundred slaps in your
+face! eleven hundred kicks!--Do you think I can't see straight through
+your lies? Out of my sight, or I'll strike you flat!"
+
+At the mere look of the general's purple face and before that warrior
+could get out the last words, Courtecuisse was off like a swallow.
+
+"Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, gently, "you are wrong."
+
+"Wrong! I, wrong?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le comte, take care, you will have trouble with that
+rascal; he will sue you."
+
+"What do I care for that? Tell the scoundrel to leave the place
+instantly! See that he takes nothing of mine, and pay him his wages."
+
+Four hours later the whole country-side was gossiping about this
+scene. The general, they said, had assaulted the unfortunate
+Courtecuisse, and refused to pay his wages and two thousand francs
+besides, which he owed him. Extraordinary stories went the rounds, and
+the master of Les Aigues was declared insane. The next day Brunet, who
+had served all the warrants for the general, now brought him on behalf
+of Courtecuisse a summon to appear before the police court. The lion
+was stung by gnats; but his misery was only just beginning.
+
+The installation of a keeper is not done without a few formalities; he
+must, for instance, file an oath in the civil court. Some days
+therefore elapsed before the three keepers really entered upon their
+functions. Though the general had written to Michaud to bring his wife
+without waiting until the lodge at the gate of the Avonne was ready
+for them, the future head-keeper, or rather bailiff, was detained in
+Paris by his marriage and his wife's family, and did not reach Les
+Aigues until a fortnight later. During those two weeks, and during the
+time still further required for certain formalities which were carried
+out with very ill grace by the authorities at Ville-aux-Fayes, the
+forest of Les Aigues was shamefully devastated by the peasantry, who
+took advantage of the fact that there was practically no watch over
+it.
+
+The appearance of three keepers handsomely dressed in green cloth, the
+Emperor's color, with faces denoting firmness, and each of them well-
+made, active, and capable of spending their nights in the woods, was a
+great event in the valley, from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes.
+
+Throughout the district Groison was the only man who welcomed these
+veterans. Delighted to be thus reinforced, he let fall a few threats
+against thieves, who before long, he said, would be watched so closely
+that they could do no damage. Thus the usual proclamation of all great
+commanders was not lacking to the present war; in this case it was
+said aloud and also whispered in secret.
+
+Sibilet called the general's attention to the fact that the
+gendarmerie of Soulanges, and especially its brigadier, Soudry, were
+thoroughly and hypocritically hostile to Les Aigues. He made him see
+the importance of substituting another brigade, which might show a
+better spirit.
+
+"With a good brigadier and a company of gendarmes devoted to your
+interests, you could manage the country," he said to him.
+
+The general went to the Prefecture and obtained from the general in
+command of the division the retirement of Soudry and the substitution
+of a man named Viallet, an excellent gendarme at headquarters, who was
+much praised by his general and the prefect. The company of gendarmes
+at Soulanges were dispersed to other places in the department by the
+colonel of the gendarmerie, an old friend of Montcornet, and chosen
+men were put in their places with secret orders to keep watch over the
+estate of the Comte de Montcornet, and prevent all future attempts to
+injure it; they were also particularly enjoined not to allow
+themselves to be gained over by the inhabitants of Soulanges.
+
+This last revolutionary measure, carried out with such rapidity that
+there was no possibility of countermining it created much astonishment
+in Soulanges and in Ville-aux-Fayes. Soudry, who felt himself
+dismissed, complained bitterly, and Gaubertin managed to get him
+appointed mayor, which put the gendarmerie under his orders. An outcry
+was made about tyranny. Montcornet became an object of general hatred.
+Not only were five or six lives radically changed by him, but many
+personal vanities were wounded. The peasants, taking their cue from
+words dropped by the small tradesmen of Ville-aux-Fayes and Soulanges,
+and by Rigou, Langlume, Guerbet, and the postmaster at Conches,
+thought they were on the eve of losing what they called their rights.
+
+The general stopped the suit brought by Courtecuisse by paying him all
+he demanded. The man then purchased, nominally for two thousand
+francs, a little property surrounded on all sides but one by the
+estate of Les Aigues,--a sort of cover into which the game escaped.
+Rigou, the owner, had never been willing to part with La Bachelerie,
+as it was called, to the possessors of the estate, but he now took
+malicious pleasure in selling it, at fifty per cent discount, to
+Courtecuisse; which made the ex-keeper one of Rigou's numerous
+henchmen, for all he actually paid for the property was one thousand
+francs.
+
+The three keepers, with Michaud the bailiff, and Groison the field-
+keeper of Blangy, led henceforth the life of guerrillas. Living night
+and day in the forest, they soon acquired that deep knowledge of
+woodland things which becomes a science among foresters, saving them
+much loss of time; they studied the tracks of animals, the species of
+the trees, and their habits of growth, training their ears to every
+sound and to every murmur of the woods. Still further, they observed
+faces, watched and understood the different families in the various
+villages of the district, and knew the individuals in each family,
+their habits, characters, and means of living,--a far more difficult
+matter than most persons suppose. When the peasants who obtained their
+living from Les Aigues saw these well-planned measures of defence,
+they met them with dumb resistance or sneering submission.
+
+From the first, Michaud and Sibilet mutually disliked each other. The
+frank and loyal soldier, with the sense of honor of a subaltern of the
+young "garde," hated the servile brutality and the discontented spirit
+of the steward. He soon took note of the objections with which Sibilet
+opposed all measures that were really judicious, and the reasons he
+gave for those that were questionable. Instead of calming the general,
+Sibilet, as the reader has already seen, constantly excited him and
+drove him to harsh measures, all the while trying to daunt him by
+drawing his attention to countless annoyances, petty vexations, and
+ever-recurring and unconquerable difficulties. Without suspecting the
+role of spy and exasperator undertaken by Sibilet (who secretly
+intended to eventually make choice in his own interests between
+Gaubertin and the general) Michaud felt that the steward's nature was
+bad and grasping, and he was unable to explain to himself its apparent
+honesty. The enmity which separated the two functionaries was
+satisfactory to the general. Michaud's hatred led him to watch the
+steward, though he would not have condescended to play the part of spy
+if the general had not required it. Sibilet fawned upon the bailiff
+and flattered him, without being able to get anything from him beyond
+an extreme politeness which the loyal soldier established between them
+as a barrier.
+
+Now, all preliminary details having been made known, the reader will
+understand the conduct of the general's enemies and the meaning of the
+conversation which he had with what he called his two ministers, after
+Madame de Montcornet, the abbe, and Blondet left the breakfast-table.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CONCERNING THE MEDIOCRACY
+
+"Well, Michaud, what's the news?" asked the general as soon as his
+wife had left the room.
+
+"General, if you will permit me to say so, it would be better not to
+talk over matters in this room. Walls have ears, and I should like to
+be certain that what we say reaches none but our own."
+
+"Very good," said the general, "then let us walk towards the steward's
+lodge by the path through the fields; no one can overhear us there."
+
+A few moments later the general, with Michaud and Sibilet, was
+crossing the meadows, while Madame de Montcornet, with the abbe and
+Blondet, was on her way to the gate of the Avonne.
+
+Michaud related the scene that had just taken place at the Grand-I-
+Vert.
+
+"Vatel did wrong," said Sibilet.
+
+"They made that plain to him at once," replied Michaud, "by blinding
+him; but that's nothing. General, you remember the plan we agreed
+upon,--to seize the cattle of those depredators against whom judgment
+was given? Well, we can't do it. Brunet, like his colleague Plissoud,
+is not loyal in his support. They both warn the delinquents when they
+are about to make a seizure. Vermichel, Brunet's assistant, went to
+the Grand-I-Vert this morning, ostensibly after Pere Fourchon; and
+Marie Tonsard, who is intimate with Bonnebault, ran off at once to
+give the alarm at Conches. The depredations have begun again."
+
+"A strong show of authority is becoming daily more and more
+necessary," said Sibilet.
+
+"What did I tell you?" cried the general. "We must demand the
+enforcement of the judgment of the court, which carried with it
+imprisonment; we must arrest for debt all those who do not pay the
+damages I have won and the costs of the suits."
+
+"These fellows imagine the law is powerless, and tell each other that
+you dare not arrest them," said Sibilet. "They think they frighten
+you! They have confederates at Ville-aux-Fayes; for even the
+prosecuting attorney seems to have ignored the verdicts against them."
+
+"I think," said Michaud, seeing that the general looked thoughtful,
+"that if you are willing to spend a good deal of money you can still
+protect the property."
+
+"It is better to spend money than to act harshly," remarked Sibilet.
+
+"What is your plan?" asked the general of his bailiff.
+
+"It is very simple," said Michaud. "Inclose the whole forest with
+walls, like those of the park, and you will be safe; the slightest
+depredation then becomes a criminal offence and is taken to the
+assizes."
+
+"At a franc and a half the square foot for the material only, Monsieur
+le comte would find his wall would cost him a third of the whole value
+of Les Aigues," said Sibilet, with a laugh.
+
+"Well, well," said Montcornet, "I shall go and see the attorney-
+general at once."
+
+"The attorney-general," remarked Sibilet, gently, "may perhaps share
+the opinion of his subordinate; for the negligence shown by the latter
+is probably the result of an agreement between them."
+
+"Then I wish to know it!" cried Montcornet. "If I have to get the
+whole of them turned out, judges, civil authorities, and the attorney-
+general to boot, I'll do it; I'll go the Keeper of the Seals, or to
+the king himself."
+
+At a vehement sign made by Michaud the general stopped short and said
+to Sibilet, as he turned to retrace his steps, "Good day, my dear
+fellow,"--words which the steward understood.
+
+"Does Monsieur le comte intend, as mayor, to enforce the necessary
+measures to repress the abuse of gleaning?" he said, respectfully.
+"The harvest is coming on, and if we are to publish the statutes about
+certificates of pauperism and the prevention of paupers from other
+districts gleaning our land, there is no time to be lost."
+
+"Do it at once, and arrange with Groison," said the count. "With such
+a class of people," he added, "we must follow out the law."
+
+So, without a moment's reflection, Montcornet gave in to a measure
+that Sibilet had been proposing to him for more than a fortnight, to
+which he had hitherto refused to consent; but now, in the violence of
+anger caused by Vatel's mishap, he instantly adopted it as the right
+thing to do.
+
+When Sibilet was at some distance the general said in a low voice to
+his bailiff:--
+
+"Well, my dear Michaud, what is it; why did you make me that sign?"
+
+"You have an enemy within the walls, general, yet you tell him plans
+which you ought not to confide even to the secret police."
+
+"I share your suspicions, my dear friend," replied Montcornet, "but I
+don't intend to commit the same fault twice over. I shall not part
+with another steward till I'm sure of a better. I am waiting to get
+rid of Sibilet, till you understand the business of steward well
+enough to take his place, and till Vatel is fit to succeed you. And
+yet, I have no ground of complaint against Sibilet. He is honest and
+punctual in all his dealings; he hasn't kept back a hundred francs in
+all these five years. He has a perfectly detestable nature, and that's
+all one can say against him. If it were otherwise, what would be his
+plan in acting as he does?"
+
+"General," said Michaud, gravely, "I will find out, for undoubtedly he
+has one; and if you would only allow it, a good bribe to that old
+scoundrel Fourchon will enable me to get at the truth; though after
+what he said just now I suspect the old fellow of having more secrets
+than one in his pouch. That swindling old cordwainer told me himself
+they want to drive you from Les Aigues. And let me tell you, for you
+ought to know it, that from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes there is not a
+peasant, a petty tradesman, a farmer, a tavern-keeper who isn't laying
+by his money to buy a bit of the estate. Fourchon confided to me that
+Tonsard has already put in his claim. The idea that you can be forced
+to sell Les Aigues has gone from end to end of the valley like an
+infection in the air. It may be that the steward's present house, with
+some adjoining land, will be the price paid for Sibilet's spying.
+Nothing is ever said among us that is not immediately known at Ville-
+aux-Fayes. Sibilet is a relative of your enemy Gaubertin. What you
+have just said about the attorney-general and the others will probably
+be reported before you have reached the Prefecture. You don't know
+what the inhabitants of this district are."
+
+"Don't I know them? I know they are the scum of the earth! Do you
+suppose I am going to yield to such blackguards?" cried the general.
+"Good heavens, I'd rather burn Les Aigues myself!"
+
+"No need to burn it; let us adopt a line of conduct which will baffle
+the schemes of these Lilliputians. Judging by threats, general, they
+are resolved on war to the knife against you; and therefore since you
+mention incendiarism, let me beg of you to insure all your buildings,
+and all your farmhouses."
+
+"Michaud, do you know whom they mean by 'Shopman'? Yesterday, as I was
+riding along by the Thune, I heard some little rascals cry out, 'The
+Shopman! here's the Shopman!' and then they ran away."
+
+"Ask Sibilet; the answer is in his line, he likes to make you angry,"
+said Michaud, with a pained look. "But--if you will have an answer--
+well, that's a nickname these brigands have given you, general."
+
+"What does it mean?"
+
+"It means, general--well, it refers to your father."
+
+"Ha! the curs!" cried the count, turning livid. "Yes, Michaud, my
+father was a shopkeeper, an upholsterer; the countess doesn't know it.
+Oh! that I should ever--well! after all, I have waltzed with queens
+and empresses. I'll tell her this very night," he cried, after a
+pause.
+
+"They also call you a coward," continued Michaud.
+
+"Ha!"
+
+"They ask how you managed to save yourself at Essling when nearly all
+your comrades perished."
+
+The accusation brought a smile to the general's lips. "Michaud, I
+shall go at once to the Prefecture!" he cried, with a sort of fury,
+"if it is only to get the policies of insurance you ask for. Let
+Madame la comtesse know that I have gone. Ha, ha! they want war, do
+they? Well, they shall have it; I'll take my pleasure in thwarting
+them,--every one of them, those bourgeois of Soulanges, and their
+peasantry! We are in the enemy's country, therefore prudence! Tell the
+foresters to keep within the limits of the law. Poor Vatel, take care
+of him. The countess is inclined to be timid; she must know nothing of
+all this; otherwise I could never get her to come back here."
+
+Neither the general nor Michaud understood their real peril. Michaud
+had been too short a time in this Burgundian valley to realize the
+enemy's power, though he saw its action. The general, for his part,
+believed in the supremacy of the law.
+
+The law, such as the legislature of these days manufactures it, has
+not the virtue we attribute to it. It strikes unequally; it is so
+modified in many of its modes of application that it virtually refutes
+its own principles. This fact may be noted more or less distinctly
+throughout all ages. Is there any historian ignorant enough to assert
+that the decrees of the most vigilant of powers were ever enforced
+throughout France?--for instance, that the requisitions of the
+Convention for men, commodities, and money were obeyed in Provence, in
+the depths of Normandy, on the borders of Brittany, as they were at
+the great centres of social life? What philosopher dares deny that a
+head falls to-day in such or such department, while in a neighboring
+department another head stays on its shoulders though guilty of a
+crime identically the same, and often more horrible? We ask for
+equality in life, and inequality reigns in law and in the death
+penalty!
+
+When the population of a town falls below a certain figure the
+administrative system is no longer the same. There are perhaps a
+hundred cities in France where the laws are vigorously enforced, and
+there the intelligence of the citizens rises to the conception of the
+problem of public welfare and future security which the law seeks to
+solve; but throughout the rest of France nothing is comprehended
+beyond immediate gratification; people rebel against all that lessens
+it. Therefore in nearly one half of France we find a power of inertia
+which defeats all legal action, both municipal and governmental. This
+resistance, be it understood, does not affect the essential things of
+public polity. The collection of taxes, recruiting, punishment of
+great crimes, as a general thing do systematically go on; but outside
+of such recognized necessities, all legislative decrees which affect
+customs, morals, private interests, and certain abuses, are a dead
+letter, owing to the sullen opposition of the people. At the very
+moment when this book is going to press, this dumb resistance, which
+opposed Louis XIV. in Brittany, may still be seen and felt. See the
+unfortunate results of the game-laws, to which we are now sacrificing
+yearly the lives of some twenty or thirty men for the sake of
+preserving a few animals.
+
+In France the law is, to at least twenty million of inhabitants,
+nothing more than a bit of white paper posted on the doors of the
+church and the town-hall. That gives rise to the term "papers," which
+Mouche used to express legality. Many mayors of cantons (not to speak
+of the district mayors) put up their bundles of seeds and herbs with
+the printed statutes. As for the district mayors, the number of those
+who do not know how to read and write is really alarming, and the
+manner in which the civil records are kept is even more so. The danger
+of this state of things, well-known to the governing powers, is
+doubtless diminishing; but what centralization (against which every
+one declaims, as it is the fashion in France to declaim against all
+things good and useful and strong),--what centralization cannot touch,
+the Power against which it will forever fling itself in vain, is that
+which the general was now about to attack, and which we shall take
+leave to call the Mediocracy.
+
+A great outcry was made against the tyranny of the nobles; in these
+days the cry is against that of capitalists, against abuses of power,
+which may be merely the inevitable galling of the social yoke, called
+Compact by Rousseau, Constitution by some, Charter by others; Czar
+here, King there, Parliament in Great Britain; while in France the
+general levelling begun in 1789 and continued in 1830 has paved the
+way for the juggling dominion of the middle classes, and delivered the
+nation into their hands without escape. The portrayal of one fact
+alone, unfortunately only too common in these days, namely, the
+subjection of a canton, a little town, a sub-prefecture, to the will
+of a family clique,--in short, the power acquired by Gaubertin,--will
+show this social danger better than all dogmatic statements put
+together. Many oppressed communities will recognize the truth of this
+picture; many persons secretly and silently crushed by this tyranny
+will find in these words an obituary, as it were, which may half
+console them for their hidden woes.
+
+At the very moment when the general imagined himself to be renewing a
+warfare in which there had really been no truce, his former steward
+had just completed the last meshes of the net-work in which he now
+held the whole arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes. To avoid too many
+explanations it is necessary to state, once for all, succinctly, the
+genealogical ramifications by means of which Gaubertin wound himself
+about the country, as a boa-constrictor winds around a tree,--with
+such art that a passing traveller thinks he beholds some natural
+effect of the tropical vegetation.
+
+In 1793 there were three brothers of the name of Mouchon in the valley
+of the Avonne. After 1793 they changed the name of the valley to that
+of the Valley des Aigues, out of hatred to the old nobility.
+
+The eldest brother, steward of the property of the Ronquerolles
+family, was elected deputy of the department to the Convention. Like
+his friend, Gaubertin's father, the prosecutor of those days, who
+saved the Soulanges family, he saved the property and the lives of the
+Ronquerolles. He had two daughters; one married to Gendrin, the
+lawyer, the other to Gaubertin. He died in 1804.
+
+The second, through the influence of his elder brother, was made
+postmaster at Conches. His only child was a daughter, married to a
+rich farmer named Guerbet. He died in 1817.
+
+The last of the Mouchons, who was a priest, and the curate of Ville-
+aux-Fayes before the Revolution, was again a priest after the re-
+establishment of Catholic worship, and again the curate of the same
+little town. He was not willing to take the oath, and was hidden for a
+long time in the hermitage of Les Aigues, under the protection of the
+Gaubertins, father and son. Now about sixty-seven years of age, he was
+treated with universal respect and affection, owing to the harmony of
+his nature with that of the inhabitants. Parsimonious to the verge of
+avarice, he was thought to be rich, and the credit of being so
+increased the respect that was shown to him. Monseigneur the bishop
+paid the greatest attention to the Abbe Mouchon, who was always spoken
+of as the venerable curate of Ville-aux-Fayes; and the fact that he
+had several times refused to go and live in a splendid parsonage
+attached to the Prefecture, where Monseigneur wished to settle him,
+made him dearer still to his people.
+
+Gaubertin, now mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, received steady support from
+his brother-in-law Gendrin, who was judge of the municipal court.
+Gaubertin the younger, the solicitor who had the most practice before
+this court and much repute in the arrondissement, was already thinking
+of selling his practice after five years' exercise of it. He wanted to
+succeed his Uncle Gendrin as counsellor whenever the latter should
+retire from the profession. Gendrin's only son was commissioner of
+mortgages.
+
+Soudry's son, who for the last two years had been prosecuting-attorney
+at the prefecture, was Gaubertin's henchman. The clever Madame Soudry
+had secured the future of her husband's son by marrying him to Rigou's
+only daughter. The united fortunes of the Soudrys and the ex-monk,
+which would come eventually to the attorney, made that young man one
+of the most important personages of the department.
+
+The sub-prefect of Ville-aux-Fayes, Monsieur des Lupeaulx, nephew of
+the general-secretary of one of the most important ministries in
+Paris, was the prospective husband of Mademoiselle Elise Gaubertin,
+the mayor's youngest daughter, whose dowry, like that of her elder
+sister, was two hundred thousand francs, not to speak of
+"expectations." This functionary showed much sense, though not aware
+of it, in falling in love with Mademoiselle Elise when he first
+arrived at Ville-aux-Fayes, in 1819. If it had not been for his social
+position, which made him "eligible," he would long ago have been
+forced to ask for his exchange. But Gaubertin in marrying him to his
+daughter thought much more of the uncle, the general-secretary, than
+of the nephew; and in return, the uncle, for the sake of his nephew,
+gave all his influence to Gaubertin.
+
+Thus the Church, the magistracy both removable and irremovable, the
+municipality, and the prefecture, the four feet of power, walked as
+the mayor pleased. Let us now see how that functionary strengthened
+himself in the spheres above and below that in which he worked.
+
+The department to which Ville-aux-Fayes belongs is one the number of
+whose population gives it the right to elect six deputies. Ever since
+the creation of the Left Centre of the Chamber, the arrondissement of
+Ville-aux-Fayes had sent a deputy named Leclercq, formerly banking
+agent of the wine department of the custom-house, a son-in-law of
+Gaubertin, and now a governor of the Bank of France. The number of
+electors which this rich valley sent to the electoral college was
+sufficient to insure, if only through private dealing, the constant
+appointment of Monsieur de Ronquerolles, the patron of the Mouchon
+family. The voters of Ville-aux-Fayes lent their support to the
+prefect, on condition that the Marquis de Ronquerolles was maintained
+in the college. Thus Gaubertin, who was the first to broach the idea
+of this arrangement, was favorably received at the Prefecture, which
+he often, in return, saved from petty annoyances. The prefect always
+selected three firm ministerialists, and two deputies of the Left
+Centre. The latter, one of them being the Marquis de Ronquerolles,
+brother-in-law of the Comte de Serisy, and the other a governor of the
+Bank of France, gave little or no alarm to the cabinet, and the
+elections in this department were rated excellent at the ministry of
+the interior.
+
+The Comte de Soulanges, peer of France, selected to be the next
+marshal, and faithful to the Bourbons, knew that his forests and other
+property were all well-managed by the notary Lupin, and well-watched
+by Soudry. He was a patron of Gendrin's, having obtained his
+appointment as judge partly by the help of Monsieur de Ronquerolles.
+
+Messieurs Leclercq and de Ronquerolles sat in the Left Centre, but
+nearer to the left than to the centre,--a political position which
+offers great advantages to those who regard their political conscience
+as a garment.
+
+The brother of Monsieur Leclercq had obtained the situation of
+collector at Ville-aux-Fayes, and Leclercq himself, Gaubertin's son-
+in-law, had lately bought a fine estate beyond the valley of the
+Avonne, which brought him in a rental of thirty thousand francs, with
+park and chateau and a controlling influence in its own canton.
+
+Thus, in the upper regions of the State, in both Chambers, and in the
+chief ministerial department, Gaubertin could rely on an influence
+that was powerful and also active, and which he was careful not to
+weary with unimportant requests.
+
+The counsellor Gendrin, appointed judge by the Chamber, was the
+leading spirit of the Supreme Court; for the chief justice, one of the
+three ministerial deputies, left the management of it to Gendrin
+during half the year. The counsel for the Prefecture, a cousin of
+Sarcus, called "Sarcus the rich," was the right-hand man of the
+prefect, himself a deputy. Even without the family reasons which
+allied Gaubertin and young des Lupeaulx, a brother of Madame Sarcus
+would still have been desirable as sub-prefect to the arrondissement
+of Ville-aux-Fayes. Madame Sarcus, the counsellor's wife, was a Vallat
+of Soulanges, a family connected with the Gaubertins, and she was said
+to have "distinguished" the notary Lupin in her youth. Though she was
+now forty-five years old, with a son in the school of engineers, Lupin
+never went to the Prefecture without paying his respects and dining
+with her.
+
+The nephew of Guerbet, the postmaster, whose father was, as we have
+seen, collector of Soulanges, held the important situation of
+examining judge in the municipal court of Ville-aux-Fayes. The third
+judge, son of Corbinet, the notary, belonged body and soul to the all-
+powerful mayor; and, finally, young Vigor, son of the lieutenant of
+the gendarmerie, was the substitute judge.
+
+Sibilet's father, sheriff of the court, had married his sister to
+Monsieur Vigor the lieutenant, and that individual, father of six
+children, was cousin of the father of Gaubertin through his wife, a
+Gaubertin-Vallat. Eighteen months previously the united efforts of the
+two deputies, Monsieur de Soulanges and Gaubertin, had created the
+place of commissary of police for the sheriff's second son.
+
+Sibilet's eldest daughter married Monsieur Herve, a school-master,
+whose school was transformed into a college as a result of this
+marriage, so that for the past year Soulanges had rejoiced in the
+presence of a professor.
+
+The sheriff's youngest son was employed on the government domains,
+with the promise of succeeding the clerk of registrations so soon as
+that officer had completed the term of service which enabled him to
+retire on a pension.
+
+The youngest Sibilet girl, now sixteen years old, was betrothed to
+Corbinet, brother of the notary. And an old maid, Mademoiselle
+Gaubertin-Vallat, sister of Madame Sibilet, the sheriff's wife, held
+the office for the sale of stamped paper.
+
+Thus, wherever we turn in Ville-aux-Fayes we meet some member of the
+invisible coalition, whose avowed chief, recognized as such by every
+one, great and small, was the mayor of the town, the general agent for
+the entire timber business, Gaubertin!
+
+If we turn to the other end of the valley of the Avonne we shall see
+that Gaubertin ruled at Soulanges through the Soudrys, through Lupin
+the assistant mayor and steward of the Soulanges estate, who was
+necessarily in constant communication with the Comte de Soulanges,
+through Sarcus, justice of the peace, through Guerbet, the collector,
+through Gourdon, the doctor, who had married a Gendrin-Vatebled. He
+governed Blangy through Rigou, Conches through the post-master, the
+despotic ruler of his own district.
+
+Gaubertin's influence was so great and powerful that even the
+investments and the savings of Rigou, Soudry, Gendrin, Guerbet, Lupin,
+even Sarcus the rich himself, were managed by his advice. The town of
+Ville-aux-Fayes believed implicitly in its mayor. Gaubertin's ability
+was not less extolled than his honesty and his kindness; he was the
+servant of his relatives and constituents (always with an eye to a
+return of benefits), and the whole municipality adored him. The town
+never ceased to blame Monsieur Mariotte, of Auxerre, for having
+opposed and thwarted that worthy Monsieur Gaubertin.
+
+Not aware of their strength, no occasion for displaying it having
+arisen, the bourgeoisie of Ville-aux-Fayes contented themselves with
+boasting that no strangers intermeddled in their affairs and they
+believed themselves excellent citizens and faithful public servants.
+Nothing, however, escaped their despotic rule, which in itself was not
+perceived, the result being considered a triumph of the locality.
+
+The only stranger in this family community was the government engineer
+in the highway department; and his dismissal in favor of the son of
+Sarcus the rich was now being pressed, with a fair chance that this
+one weak thread in the net would soon be strengthened. And yet this
+powerful league, which monopolized all duties both public and private,
+sucked the resources of the region, and fastened on power like limpets
+to a ship, escaped all notice so completely that General Montcornet
+had no suspicion of it. The prefect boasted of the prosperity of
+Ville-aux-Fayes and its arrondissement; even the minister of the
+interior was heard to remark: "There's a model sub-prefecture, which
+runs on wheels; we should be lucky indeed if all were like it." Family
+designs were so involved with local interests that here, as in many
+other little towns and even prefectures, a functionary who did not
+belong to the place would have been forced to resign within a year.
+
+When this despotic middle-class cousinry seizes a victim, he is so
+carefully gagged and bound that complaint is impossible; he is smeared
+with slime and wax like a snail in a beehive. This invisible,
+imperceptible tyranny is upheld by powerful reasons,--such as the wish
+to be surrounded by their own family, to keep property in their own
+hands, the mutual help they ought to lend each other, the guarantees
+given to the administration by the fact that their agent is under the
+eyes of his fellow-citizens and neighbors. What does all this lead to?
+To the fact that local interests supersede all questions of public
+interest; the centralized will of Paris is frequently overthrown in
+the provinces, the truth of things is disguised, and country
+communities snap their fingers at government. In short, after the main
+public necessities have been attended to, it will be seen that the
+laws, instead of acting upon the masses, receive their impulse from
+them; the populations adapt the law to themselves and not themselves
+to the law.
+
+Whoever has travelled in the south or west of France, or in Alsace, in
+any other way than from inn to inn to see buildings and landscapes,
+will surely admit the truth of these remarks. The results of middle-
+class nepotism may be, at present, merely isolated evils; but the
+tendency of existing laws is to increase them. This low-level
+despotism can and will cause great disasters, and the events of the
+drama about to be played in the valley of Les Aigues will prove it.
+
+The monarchical and imperial systems, more rashly overthrown than
+people realize, remedied these abuses by means of certain consecrated
+lives, by classifications and categories and by those particular
+counterpoises since so absurdly defined as "privileges." There are no
+privileges now, when every human being is free to climb the greased
+pole of power. But surely it would be safer to allow open and avowed
+privileges than those which are underhand, based on trickery,
+subversive of what should be public spirit, and continuing the work of
+despotism to a lower and baser level than heretofore. May we not have
+overthrown noble tyrants devoted to their country's good, to create
+the tyranny of selfish interests? Shall power lurk in secret places,
+instead of radiating from its natural source? This is worth thinking
+about. The spirit of local sectionalism, such as we have now depicted,
+will soon be seen to invade the Chamber.
+
+Montcornet's friend, the late prefect, Comte de la Roche-Hugon, had
+lost his position just before the last arrival of the general at Les
+Aigues. This dismissal drove him into the ranks of the Liberal
+opposition, where he became one of the chorus of the Left, a position
+he soon after abandoned for an embassy. His successor, luckily for
+Montcornet, was a son-in-law of the Marquis de Troisville, uncle of
+the countess, the Comte de Casteran. He welcomed Montcornet as a
+relation and begged him to continue his intimacy at the Prefecture.
+After listening to the general's complaints the Comte de Casteran
+invited the bishop, the attorney-general, the colonel of the
+gendarmerie, counsellor Sarcus, and the general commanding the
+division to meet him the next day at breakfast.
+
+The attorney-general, Baron Bourlac (so famous in the Chanterie and
+Rifael suits), was one of those men well-known to all governments, who
+attach themselves to power, no matter in whose hands it is, and who
+make themselves invaluable by such devotion. Having owed his elevation
+in the first place to his fanaticism for the Emperor, he now owed the
+retention of his official rank to his inflexible character and the
+conscientiousness with which he fulfilled his duties. He who once
+implacably prosecuted the remnant of the Chouans now prosecuted the
+Bonapartists as implacably. But years and turmoils had somewhat
+subdued his energy and he had now become, like other old devils
+incarnate, perfectly charming in manner and ways.
+
+The general explained his position and the fears of his bailiff, and
+spoke of the necessity of making an example and enforcing the rights
+of property.
+
+The high functionaries listened gravely, making, however, no reply
+beyond mere platitudes, such as, "Undoubtedly, the laws must be
+upheld"; "Your cause is that of all land-owners"; "We will consider
+it; but, situated as we are, prudence is very necessary"; "A monarchy
+could certainly do more for the people than the people would do for
+itself, even if it were, as in 1793, the sovereign people"; "The
+masses suffer, and we are bound to do as much for them as for
+ourselves."
+
+The relentless attorney-general expressed such kindly and benevolent
+views respecting the condition of the lower classes that our future
+Utopians, had they heard him, might have thought that the higher grade
+of government officials were already aware of the difficulties of that
+problem which modern society will be forced to solve.
+
+It may be well to say here that at this period of the Restoration,
+various bloody encounters had taken place in remote parts of the
+kingdom, caused by this very question of the pillage of woods, and the
+marauding rights which the peasants were everywhere arrogating to
+themselves. Neither the government nor the court liked these
+outbreaks, nor the shedding of blood which resulted from repression.
+Though they felt the necessity of rigorous measures, they nevertheless
+treated as blunderers the officials who were compelled to employ them,
+and dismissed them on the first pretence. The prefects were therefore
+anxious to shuffle out of such difficulties whenever possible.
+
+At the very beginning of the conversation Sarcus (the rich) had made a
+sign to the prefect and the attorney-general which Montcornet did not
+see, but which set the tone of the discussion. The attorney-general
+was well aware of the state of mind of the inhabitants of the valley
+des Aigues through his subordinate, Soudry the young attorney.
+
+"I foresee a terrible struggle," the latter had said to him. "They
+mean to kill the gendarmes; my spies tell me so. It will be very hard
+to convict them for it. The instant the jury feel they are incurring
+the hatred of the friends of the twenty or thirty prisoners, they will
+not sustain us,--we could not get them to convict for death, nor even
+for the galleys. Possibly by prosecuting in person you might get a few
+years' imprisonment for the actual murderers. Better shut our eyes
+than open them, if by opening them we bring on a collision which costs
+bloodshed and several thousand francs to the State,--not to speak of
+the cost of keeping the guilty in prison. It is too high a price to
+pay for a victory which will only reveal our judicial weakness to the
+eyes of all."
+
+Montcornet, who was wholly without suspicion of the strength and
+influence of the Mediocracy in his happy valley, did not even mention
+Gaubertin, whose hand kept these embers of opposition always alive,
+though smouldering. After breakfast the attorney-general took
+Montcornet by the arm and led him to the Prefect's study. When the
+general left that room after their conference, he wrote to his wife
+that he was starting for Paris and should be absent a week. We shall
+see, after the execution of certain measures suggested by Baron
+Bourlac, the attorney-general, whether the secret advice he gave to
+Montcornet was wise, and whether in conforming to it the count and Les
+Aigues were enabled to escape the "Evil grudge."
+
+Some minds, eager for mere amusement, will complain that these various
+explanations are far too long; but we once more call attention to the
+fact that the historian of the manners, customs, and morals of his
+time must obey a law far more stringent than that imposed on the
+historian of mere facts. He must show the probability of everything,
+even the truth; whereas, in the domain of history, properly so-called,
+the impossible must be accepted for the sole reason that it did
+happen. The vicissitudes of social or private life are brought about
+by a crowd of little causes derived from a thousand conditions. The
+man of science is forced to clear away the avalanche under which whole
+villages lie buried, to show you the pebbles brought down from the
+summit which alone can determine the formation of the mountain. If the
+historian of human life were simply telling you of a suicide, five
+hundred of which occur yearly in Paris, the melodrama is so
+commonplace that brief reasons and explanations are all that need be
+given; but how shall he make you see that the self-destruction of an
+estate could happen in these days when property is reckoned of more
+value than life? "De re vestra agitur," said a maker of fables; this
+tale concerns the affairs and interests of all those, no matter who
+they be, who possess anything.
+
+Remember that this coalition of a whole canton and of a little town
+against a general, who, in spite of his rash courage, had escaped the
+dangers of actual war, is going on in other districts against other
+men who seek only to do what is right by those districts. It is a
+coalition which to-day threatens every man, the man of genius, the
+statesman, the modern agriculturalist,--in short, all innovators.
+
+This last explanation not only gives a true presentation of the
+personages of this drama, and a serious meaning even to its petty
+details, but it also throws a vivid light upon the scene where so many
+social interests are now marshalling.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE SADNESS OF A HAPPY WOMAN
+
+At the moment when the general was getting into his caleche to go to
+the Prefecture, the countess and the two gentlemen reached the gate of
+the Avonne, where, for the last eighteen months, Michaud and his wife
+Olympe had made their home.
+
+Whose remembered the pavilion in the state in which we lately
+described it would have supposed it had been rebuilt. The bricks
+fallen or broken by time, and the cement lacking to their edges, were
+replaced; the slate roof had been cleaned, and the effect of the white
+balustrade against its bluish background restored the gay character of
+the architecture. The approaches to the building, formerly choked up
+and sandy, were now cared for by the man whose duty it was to keep the
+park roadways in order. The poultry-yard, stables, and cow-shed,
+relegated to the buildings near the pheasantry and hidden by clumps of
+trees, instead of afflicting the eye with their foul details, now
+blended those soft murmurs and cooings and the sound of flapping
+wings, which are among the most delightful accompaniments of Nature's
+eternal harmony, with the peculiar rustling sounds of the forest. The
+whole scene possessed the double charm of a natural, untouched forest
+and the elegance of an English park. The surroundings of the pavilion,
+in keeping with its own exterior, presented a certain noble,
+dignified, and cordial effect; while the hand of a young and happy
+woman gave to its interior a very different look from what it wore
+under the coarse neglect of Courtecuisse.
+
+Just now the rich season of the year was putting forth its natural
+splendors. The perfume of the flowerbeds blended with the wild odor of
+the woods; and the meadows near by, where the grass had been lately
+cut, sent up the fragrance of new-mown hay.
+
+When the countess and her guests reached the end of one of the winding
+paths which led to the pavilion, they saw Madame Michaud, sitting in
+the open air before the door, employed in making a baby's garment. The
+young woman thus placed, thus employed, added the human charm that was
+needed to complete the scene,--a charm so touching in its actuality
+that painters have committed the error of endeavoring to convey it in
+their pictures. Such artists forget that the SOUL of a landscape, if
+they represent it truly, is so grand that the human element is crushed
+by it; whereas such a scene added to Nature limits her to the
+proportions of the personality, like a frame to which the mind of the
+spectator confines it. When Poussin, the Raffaelle of France, made a
+landscape accessory to his Shepherds of Arcadia he perceived plainly
+enough that man becomes diminutive and abject when Nature is made the
+principal feature on a canvas. In that picture August is in its glory,
+the harvest is ready, all simple and strong human interests are
+represented. There we find realized in nature the dream of many men
+whose uncertain life of mingled good and evil harshly mixed makes them
+long for peace and rest.
+
+Let us now relate, in few words, the romance of this home. Justin
+Michaud did not reply very cordially to the advances made to him by
+the illustrious colonel of cuirassiers when first offered the
+situation of bailiff at Les Aigues. He was then thinking of re-
+entering the service. But while the negotiations, which naturally took
+him to the Hotel Montcornet, were going on, he met the countess's head
+waiting-maid. This young girl, who was entrusted to Madame de
+Montcornet by her parents, worthy farmers in the neighborhood of
+Alencon, had hopes of a little fortune, some twenty or thirty thousand
+francs, when the heirs were all of age. Like other farmers who marry
+young, and whose own parents are still living, the father and mother
+of the girl, being pinched for immediate means, placed her with the
+young countess. Madame de Montcornet had her taught to sew and to make
+dresses, arranged that she should take her meals alone, and was
+rewarded for the care she bestowed on Olympe Charel by one of those
+unconditional attachments which are so precious to Parisians.
+
+Olympe Charel, a pretty Norman girl, rather stout, with fair hair of a
+golden tint, an animated face lighted by intelligent eyes, and
+distinguished by a finely curved thoroughbred nose, with a maidenly
+air in spite of a certain swaying Spanish manner of carrying herself,
+possessed all the points that a young girl born just above the level
+of the masses is likely to acquire from whatever close companionship a
+mistress is willing to allow her. Always suitably dressed, with modest
+bearing and manner, and able to express herself well, Michaud was soon
+in love with her,--all the more when he found that his sweetheart's
+dowry would one day be considerable. The obstacles came from the
+countess, who could not bear to part with so invaluable a maid; but
+when Montcornet explained to her the affairs at Les Aigues, she gave
+way, and the marriage was no longer delayed, except to obtain the
+consent of the parents, which, of course, was quickly given.
+
+Michaud, like his general, looked upon his wife as a superior being,
+to whom he owed military obedience without a single reservation. He
+found in the peace of his home and his busy life out-of-doors the
+elements of a happiness soldiers long for when they give up their
+profession,--enough work to keep his body healthy, enough fatigue to
+let him know the charms of rest. In spite of his well-known
+intrepidity, Michaud had never been seriously wounded, and he had none
+of those physical pains which often sour the temper of veterans. Like
+all really strong men, his temper was even; his wife, therefore, loved
+him utterly. From the time they took up their abode in the pavilion,
+this happy home was the scene of a long honey-moon in harmony with
+Nature and with the art whose creations surrounded them,--a
+circumstance rare indeed! The things about us are seldom in keeping
+with the condition of our souls!
+
+The picture was so pretty that the countess stopped short and pointed
+it out to Blondet and the abbe; for they could see Madame Michaud from
+where they stood, without her seeing them.
+
+"I always come this way when I walk in the park," said the countess,
+softly. "I delight in looking at the pavilion and its two turtle-
+doves, as much as I delight in a fine view."
+
+She leaned significantly on Blondet's arm, as if to make him share
+sentiments too delicate for words but which all women feel.
+
+"I wish I were a gate-keeper at Les Aigues," said Blondet, smiling.
+"Why! what troubles you?" he added, noticing an expression of sadness
+on the countess's face.
+
+"Nothing," she replied.
+
+Women are always hiding some important thought when they say,
+hypocritically, "It is nothing."
+
+"A woman may be the victim of ideas which would seem very flimsy to
+you," she added, "but which, to us, are terrible. As for me, I envy
+Olympe's lot."
+
+"God hears you," said the abbe, smiling as though to soften the
+sternness of his remark.
+
+Madame de Montcornet grew seriously uneasy when she noticed an
+expression of fear and anxiety in Olympe's face and attitude. By the
+way a woman draws out her needle or sets her stitches another woman
+understands her thoughts. In fact, though wearing a rose-colored
+dress, with her hair carefully braided about her head, the bailiff's
+wife was thinking of matters that were out of keeping with her pretty
+dress, the glorious day, and the work her hands were engaged on. Her
+beautiful brow, and the glance she turned sometimes on the ground at
+her feet, sometimes on the foliage around, evidently seeing nothing,
+betrayed some deep anxiety,--all the more unconsciously because she
+supposed herself alone.
+
+"Just as I was envying her! What can have saddened her?" whispered the
+countess to the abbe.
+
+"Madame," he replied in the same tone, "tell me why man is often
+seized with vague and unaccountable presentiments of evil in the very
+midst of some perfect happiness?"
+
+"Abbe!" said Blondet, smiling, "you talk like a bishop. Napoleon said,
+'Nothing is stolen, all is bought!'"
+
+"Such a maxim, uttered by those imperial lips, takes the proportions
+of society itself," replied the priest.
+
+"Well, Olympe, my dear girl, what is the matter?" said the countess
+going up to her former maid. "You seem sad and thoughtful; is it a
+lover's quarrel?"
+
+Madame Michaud's face, as she rose, changed completely.
+
+"My dear," said Emile Blondet, in a fatherly tone, "I should like to
+know what clouds that brow of yours, in this pavilion where you are
+almost as well lodged as the Comte d'Artois at the Tuileries. It is
+like a nest of nightingales in a grove! And what a husband we have!--
+the bravest fellow of the young garde, and a handsome one, who loves
+us to distraction! If I had known the advantages Montcornet has given
+you here I should have left my diatribing business and made myself a
+bailiff."
+
+"It is not the place for a man of your talent, monsieur," replied
+Olympe, smiling at Blondet as an old acquaintance.
+
+"But what troubles you, dear?" said the countess.
+
+"Madame, I'm afraid--"
+
+"Afraid! of what?" said the countess, eagerly; for the word reminded
+her of Mouche and Fourchon.
+
+"Afraid of the wolves, is that it?" said Emile, making Madame Michaud
+a sign, which she did not understand.
+
+"No, monsieur,--afraid of the peasants. I was born in Le Perche, where
+of course there are some bad people, but I had no idea how wicked
+people could be until I came here. I try not to meddle in Michaud's
+affairs, but I do know that he distrusts the peasants so much that he
+goes armed, even in broad daylight, when he enters the forest. He
+warns his men to be always on the alert. Every now and then things
+happen about here that bode no good. The other day I was walking along
+the wall, near the source of that little sandy rivulet which comes
+from the forest and enters the park through a culvert about five
+hundred feet from here,--you know it, madame? it is called Silver
+Spring, because of the star-flowers Bouret is said to have sown there.
+Well, I overheard the talk of two women who were washing their linen
+just where the path to Conches crosses the brook; they did not know I
+was there. Our house can be seen from that point, and one old woman
+pointed it out to the other, saying: 'See what a lot of money they
+have spent on the man who turned out Courtecuisse.' 'They ought to pay
+a man well when they set him to harass poor people as that man does,'
+answered the other. 'Well, it won't be for long,' said the first one;
+'the thing is going to end soon. We have a right to our wood. The late
+Madame allowed us to take it. That's thirty years ago, so the right is
+ours.' 'We'll see what we shall see next winter,' replied the second.
+'My man has sworn the great oath that all the gendarmerie in the world
+sha'n't keep us from getting our wood; he says he means to get it
+himself, and if the worst happens so much the worse for them!' 'Good
+God!' cried the other; 'we can't die of cold, and we must bake bread
+to eat! They want for nothing, THOSE OTHERS! the wife of that
+scoundrel of a Michaud will be taken care of, I warrant you!' And
+then, Madame, they said such horrible things of me and of you and of
+Monsieur le comte; and they finally declared that the farms would all
+be burned, and then the chateau."
+
+"Bah!" said Emile, "idle talk! They have been robbing the general, and
+they will not be allowed to rob him any longer. These people are
+furious, that's the whole of it. You must remember that the law and
+the government are always strongest everywhere, even in Burgundy. In
+case of an outbreak the general could bring a regiment of cavalry
+here, if necessary."
+
+The abbe made a sign to Madame Michaud from behind the countess,
+telling her to say no more about her fears, which were doubtless the
+effect of that second sight which true passion bestows. The soul,
+dwelling exclusively on one only being, grasps in the end the moral
+elements that surround it, and sees in them the makings of the future.
+The woman who loves feels the same presentiments that later illuminate
+her motherhood. Hence a certain melancholy, a certain inexplicable
+sadness which surprises men, who are one and all distracted from any
+such concentration of their souls by the cares of life and the
+continual necessity for action. All true love becomes to a woman an
+active contemplation, which is more or less lucid, more or less
+profound, according to her nature.
+
+"Come, my dear, show your home to Monsieur Emile," said the countess,
+whose mind was so pre-occupied that she forgot La Pechina, who was the
+ostensible object of her visit.
+
+The interior of the restored pavilion was in keeping with its
+exterior. On the ground-floor the old divisions had been replaced, and
+the architect, sent from Paris with his own workmen (a cause of bitter
+complaint in the neighborhood against the master of Les Aigues), had
+made four rooms out of the space. First, an ante-chamber, at the
+farther end of which was a winding wooden staircase, behind which came
+the kitchen; on either side of the antechamber was a dining-room and a
+parlor panelled in oak now nearly black, with armorial bearings in the
+divisions of the ceilings. The architect chosen by Madame de
+Montcornet for the restoration of Les Aigues had taken care to put the
+furniture of this room in keeping with its original decoration.
+
+At the time of which we write fashion had not yet given an exaggerated
+value to the relics of past ages. The carved settee, the high-backed
+chairs covered with tapestry, the consoles, the clocks, the tall
+embroidery frames, the tables, the lustres, hidden away in the second-
+hand shops of Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes were fifty per-cent cheaper
+than the modern, ready-made furniture of the faubourg Saint Antoine.
+The architect had therefore bought two or three cartloads of well-
+chosen old things, which, added to a few others discarded at the
+chateau, made the little salon of the gate of the Avonne an artistic
+creation. As to the dining-room, he painted it in browns and hung it
+with what was called a Scotch paper, and Madame Michaud added white
+cambric curtains with green borders at the windows, mahogany chairs
+covered with green cloth, two large buffets and a table, also in
+mahogany. This room, ornamented with engravings of military scenes,
+was heated by a porcelain stove, on each side of which were sporting-
+guns suspended on the walls. These adornments, which cost but little,
+were talked of throughout the whole valley as the last extreme of
+oriental luxury. Singular to say, they, more than anything else,
+excited the envy of Gaubertin, and whenever he thought of his fixed
+determination to bring Les Aigues to the hammer and cut it in pieces,
+he reserved for himself, "in petto," this beautiful pavilion.
+
+On the next floor three chambers sufficed for the household. At the
+windows were muslin curtains which reminded a Parisian of the
+particular taste and fancy of bourgeois requirements. Left to herself
+in the decoration of these rooms, Madame Michaud had chosen satin
+papers; on the mantel-shelf of her bedroom--which was furnished in
+that vulgar style of mahogany and Utrecht velvet which is seen
+everywhere, with its high-backed bed and canopy to which embroidered
+muslin curtains are fastened--stood an alabaster clock between two
+candelabra covered with gauze and flanked by two vases filled with
+artificial flowers protected by glass shades, a conjugal gift of the
+former cavalry sergeant. Above, under the roof, the bedrooms of the
+cook, the man-of-all-work, and La Pechina had benefited by the recent
+restoration.
+
+"Olympe, my dear, you did not tell me all," said the countess,
+entering Madame Michaud's bedroom, and leaving Emile and the abbe on
+the stairway, whence they descended when they heard her shut the door.
+
+Madame Michaud, to whom the abbe had contrived to whisper a word, was
+now anxious to say no more about her fears, which were really greater
+than she had intimated, and she therefore began to talk of a matter
+which reminded the countess of the object of her visit.
+
+"I love Michaud, madame, as you know. Well, how would you like to
+have, in your own house, a rival always beside you?"
+
+"A rival?"
+
+"Yes, madame; that swarthy girl you gave me to take care of loves
+Michaud without knowing it, poor thing! The child's conduct, long a
+mystery to me, has been cleared up in my mind for some days."
+
+"Why, she is only thirteen years old!"
+
+"I know that, madame. But you will admit that a woman who is three
+months pregnant and means to nurse her child herself may have some
+fears; but as I did not want to speak of this before those gentlemen,
+I talked a great deal of nonsense when you questioned me," said the
+generous creature, adroitly.
+
+Madame Michaud was not really afraid of Genevieve Niseron, but for the
+last three days she was in mortal terror of some disaster from the
+peasantry.
+
+"How did you discover this?" said the countess.
+
+"From everything and from nothing," replied Olympe. "The poor little
+thing moves with the slowness of a tortoise when she is obliged to
+obey me, but she runs like a lizard when Justin asks for anything, she
+trembles like a leaf at the sound of his voice; and her face is that
+of a saint ascending to heaven when she looks at him. But she knows
+nothing about love; she has no idea that she loves him."
+
+"Poor child!" said the countess with a smile and tone that were full
+of naivete.
+
+"And so," continued Madame Michaud, answering with a smile the smile
+of her late mistress, "Genevieve is gloomy when Justin is out of the
+house; if I ask her what she is thinking of she replies that she is
+afraid of Monsieur Rigou, or some such nonsense. She thinks people
+envy her, though she is as black as the inside of a chimney. When
+Justin is patrolling the woods at night the child is as anxious as I
+am. If I open my window to listen for the trot of his horse, I see a
+light in her room, which shows me that La Pechina (as they call here)
+is watching and waiting too. She never goes to bed, any more than I
+do, till he comes in."
+
+"Thirteen!" exclaimed the countess; "unfortunate child!"
+
+"Unfortunate? no. This passion will save her."
+
+"From what?" asked Madame de Montcornet.
+
+"From the fate which overtakes nearly all the girls of her age in
+these parts. Since I have taught her cleanliness she is much less ugly
+than she was; in fact, there is something odd and wild about her which
+attracts men. She is so changed that you would hardly recognize her.
+The son of that infamous innkeeper of the Grand-I-Vert, Nicolas, the
+worst fellow in the whole district, wants her; he hunts her like game.
+Though I can't believe that Monsieur Rigou, who changes his servant-
+girls every year or two is persecuting such a little fright, it is
+quite certain that Nicolas Tonsard is. Justin told me so. It would be
+a dreadful fate, for the people of this valley actually live like
+beasts; but Justin and our two servants and I watch her carefully.
+Therefore don't be uneasy, madame; she never goes out alone except in
+broad daylight, and then only as far as the gate of Conches. If by
+chance she fell into an ambush, her feeling for Justin would give her
+strength and wit to escape; for all women who have a preference in
+their hearts can resist a man they hate."
+
+"It was about her that I came," said the countess, "and I little
+thought my visit could be so useful to you. That child, you know,
+can't remain thirteen; and she will probably grow better-looking."
+
+"Oh, madame," replied Olympe, smiling, "I am quite sure of Justin.
+What a man! what a heart!-- If you only knew what a depth of gratitude
+he feels for his general, to whom, he says, he owes his happiness. He
+is only too devoted; he would risk his life for him here, as he would
+on the field of battle, and he forgets sometimes that he will one day
+be father of a family."
+
+"Ah! I once regretted losing you," said the countess, with a glance
+that made Olympe blush; "but I regret it no longer, for I see you
+happy. What a sublime and noble thing is married love!" she added,
+speaking out the thought she had not dared express before the abbe.
+
+Virginie de Troisville dropped into a revery, and Madame Michaud kept
+silence.
+
+"Well, at least the girl is honest, is she not?" said the countess, as
+if waking from a dream.
+
+"As honest as I am myself, madame."
+
+"Discreet?"
+
+"As the grave."
+
+"Grateful?"
+
+"Ah! madame; she has moments of humility and gentleness towards me
+which seem to show an angelic nature. She will kiss my hands and say
+the most upsetting things. 'Can we die of love?' she asked me
+yesterday. 'Why do you ask me that?' I said. 'I want to know if love
+is a disease.'"
+
+"Did she really say that?"
+
+"If I could remember her exact words I would tell you a great deal
+more," replied Olympe; "she appears to know much more than I do."
+
+"Do you think, my dear, that she could take your place in my service.
+I can't do without an Olympe," said the countess, smiling in a rather
+sad way.
+
+"Not yet, madame,--she is too young; but in two years' time, yes. If
+it becomes necessary that she should go away from here I will let you
+know. She ought to be educated, and she knows nothing of the world.
+Her grandfather, Pere Niseron, is a man who would let his throat be
+cut sooner than tell a lie; he would die of hunger in a baker's shop;
+he has the strength of his opinions, and the girl was brought up to
+all such principles. La Pechina would consider herself your equal; for
+the old man has made her, as he says, a republican,--just as Pere
+Fourchon has made Mouche a bohemian. As for me, I laugh at such ideas,
+but you might be displeased. She would revere you as her benefactress,
+but never as her superior. It can't be otherwise; she is wild and free
+like the swallows--her mother's blood counts for a good deal in what
+she is."
+
+"Who was her mother?"
+
+"Doesn't madame know the story?" said Olympe. "Well, the son of the
+old sexton at Blangy, a splendid fellow, so the people about here tell
+me, was drafted at the great conscription. In 1809 young Niseron was
+still only an artilleryman, in a corps d'armee stationed in Illyria
+and Dalmatia when it received sudden orders to advance through Hungary
+and cut off the retreat of the Austrian army in case the Emperor won
+the battle of Wagram. Michaud told me all about Dalmatia, for he was
+there. Niseron, being so handsome a man, captivated a Montenegrin girl
+of Zahara among the mountains, who was not averse to the French
+garrison. This lost her the good-will of her compatriots, and life in
+her own town became impossible after the departure of the French. Zena
+Kropoli, called in derision the Frenchwoman, followed the artillery,
+and came to France after the peace. Auguste Niseron asked permission
+to marry her; but the poor woman died at Vincennes in January, 1810,
+after giving birth to a daughter, our Genevieve. The papers necessary
+to make the marriage legal arrived a few days later. Auguste Niseron
+then wrote to his father to come and take the child, with a wetnurse
+he had got from its own country; and it was lucky he did, for he was
+killed soon after by the bursting of a shell at Montereau. Registered
+by the name of Genevieve and baptized at Soulanges, the little
+Dalmatian was taken under the protection of Mademoiselle Laguerre, who
+was touched by her story. It seems as if it were the destiny of the
+child to be taken care of by the owners of Les Aigues! Pere Niseron
+obtained its clothes, and now and then some help in money from
+Mademoiselle."
+
+The countess and Olympe were just then standing before a window from
+which they could see Michaud approaching the abbe and Blondet, who
+were walking up and down the wide, semi-circular gravelled space which
+repeated on the park side of the pavilion the exterior half-moon; they
+were conversing earnestly.
+
+"Where is she?" said the countess; "you make me anxious to see her."
+
+"She is gone to carry milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard at the gate of
+Conches; she will soon be back, for it is more than an hour since she
+started."
+
+"Well, I'll go and meet her with those gentlemen," said Madame de
+Montcornet, going downstairs.
+
+Just as the countess opened her parasol, Michaud came up and told her
+that the general had left her a widow for probably two days.
+
+"Monsieur Michaud," said the countess, eagerly, "don't deceive me,
+there is something serious going on. Your wife is frightened, and if
+there are many persons like Pere Fourchon, this part of the country
+will be uninhabitable--"
+
+"If it were so, madame," answered Michaud, laughing, "we should not be
+in the land of the living, for nothing would be easier than to make
+away with us. The peasant's grumble, that is all. But as to passing
+from growls to blows, from pilfering to crime, they care too much for
+life and the free air of the fields. Olympe has been saying something
+that frightened you, but you know she is in state to be frightened at
+nothing," he added, drawing his wife's hand under his arm and pressing
+it to warn her to say no more.
+
+"Cornevin! Juliette!" cried Madame Michaud, who soon saw the head of
+her old cook at the window. "I am going for a little walk; take care
+of the premises."
+
+Two enormous dogs, who began to bark, proved that the effectiveness of
+the garrison at the gate of the Avonne was not to be despised. Hearing
+the dogs, Cornevin, an old Percheron, Olympe's foster-father, came
+from behind the trees, showing a head such as no other region than La
+Perche can manufacture. Cornevin was undoubtedly a Chouan in 1794 and
+1799.
+
+The whole party accompanied the countess along that one of the six
+forest avenues which led directly to the gate of Conches, crossing the
+Silver-spring rivulet. Madame de Montcornet walked in front with
+Blondet. The abbe and Michaud and his wife talked in a low voice of
+the revelation that had just been made to the countess of the state of
+the country.
+
+"Perhaps it is providential," said the abbe; "for if madame is
+willing, we might, perhaps, by dint of benefits and constant
+consideration of their wants, change the hearts of these people."
+
+At about six hundred feet from the pavilion and below the brooke, the
+countess caught sight of a broken red jug and some spilt milk.
+
+"Something has happened to the poor child!" she cried, calling to
+Michaud and his wife, who were returning to the pavilion.
+
+"A misfortune like Perrette's," said Blondet, laughing.
+
+"No; the poor child has been surprised and pursued, for the jug was
+thrown outside the path," said the abbe, examining the ground.
+
+"Yes, that is certainly La Pechina's step," said Michaud; "the print
+of the feet, which have turned, you see, quickly, shows sudden terror.
+The child must have darted in the direction of the pavilion, trying to
+get back there."
+
+Every one followed the traces which the bailiff pointed out as he
+walked along examining them. Presently he stopped in the middle of the
+path about a hundred feet from the broken jug, where the girl's foot-
+prints ceased.
+
+"Here," he said, "she turned towards the Avonne; perhaps she was
+headed off from the direction of the pavilion."
+
+"But she has been gone more than an hour," cried Madame Michaud.
+
+Alarm was in all faces. The abbe ran towards the pavilion, examining
+the state of the road, while Michaud, impelled by the same thought,
+went up the path towards Conches.
+
+"Good God! she fell here," said Michaud, returning from a place where
+the footsteps stopped near the brook, to that where they had turned in
+the road, and pointing to the ground, he added, "See!"
+
+The marks were plainly seen of a body lying at full length on the
+sandy path.
+
+"The footprints which have entered the wood are those of some one who
+wore knitted soles," said the abbe.
+
+"A woman, then," said the countess.
+
+"Down there, by the broken pitcher, are the footsteps of a man," added
+Michaud.
+
+"I don't see traces of any other foot," said the abbe, who was
+tracking into the wood the prints of the woman's feet.
+
+"She must have been lifted and carried into the wood," cried Michaud.
+
+"That can't be, if it is really a woman's foot," said Blondet.
+
+"It must be some trick of that wretch, Nicolas," said Michaud. "He has
+been watching La Pechina for some time. Only this morning I stood two
+hours under the bridge of the Avonne to see what he was about. A woman
+may have helped him."
+
+"It is dreadful!" said the countess.
+
+"They call it amusing themselves," added the priest, in a sad and
+grieved tone.
+
+"Oh! La Pechina would never let them keep her," said the bailiff; "she
+is quite able to swim across the river. I shall look along the banks.
+Go home, my dear Olympe; and you gentlemen and madame, please to
+follow the avenue towards Conches."
+
+"What a country!" exclaimed the countess.
+
+"There are scoundrels everywhere," replied Blondet.
+
+"Is it true, Monsieur l'abbe," asked Madame de Montcornet, "that I
+saved the poor child from the clutches of Rigou?"
+
+"Every young girl over fiften years of age whom you may protect at the
+chateau is saved from that monster," said the abbe. "In trying to get
+possession of La Pechina from her earliest years, the apostate sought
+to satisfy both his lust and his vengeance. When I took Pere Niseron
+as sexton I told him what Rigou's intentions were. That is one of the
+causes of the late mayor's rancor against me; his hatred grew out of
+it. Pere Niseron said to him solemnly that he would kill him if any
+harm came to Genevieve, and he made him responsible for all attempts
+upon the poor child's honor. I can't help thinking that this pursuit
+of Nicolas is the result of some infernal collusion with Rigou, who
+thinks he can do as he likes with these people."
+
+"Doesn't he fear the law?"
+
+"In the first place, he is father-in-law of the prosecuting-attorney,"
+said the abbe, pausing to listen. "And then," he resumed, "you have no
+conception of the utter indifference of the rural police to what is
+done around them. So long as the peasants do not burn the farm-houses
+and buildings, commit no murders, poison no one, and pay their taxes,
+they let them do as they like; and as these people are not restrained
+by any religious principle, horrible things happen every day. On the
+other side of the Avonne helpless old men are afraid to stay in their
+own homes, for they are allowed nothing to eat; they wander out into
+the fields as far as their tottering legs can bear them, knowing well
+that if they take to their beds they will die for want of food.
+Monsieur Sarcus, the magistrate, tells me that if they arrested and
+tried all criminals, the costs would ruin the municipality."
+
+"Then he at least sees how things are?" said Blondet.
+
+"Monseigneur thoroughly understands the condition of the valley, and
+especially the state of this district," continued the abbe. "Religion
+alone can cure such evils; the law seems to me powerless, modified as
+it is now--"
+
+The words were interrupted by loud cries from the woods, and the
+countess, preceded by Emile and the abbe, sprang bravely into the
+brushwood in the direction of the sounds.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE OARISTYS, EIGHTEENTH ECLOGUE OF THEOCRITUS;
+LITTLE ADMIRED ON THE POLICE CALENDAR
+
+The sagacity of a savage, which Michaud's new occupation had developed
+among his faculties, joined to an acquaintance with the passions and
+interests of Blangy, enabled him partially to understand a third idyll
+in the Greek style, which poor villagers like Tonsard, and middle-aged
+rich men like Rigou, translate FREELY--to use the classic word--in the
+depths of their country solitudes.
+
+Nicolas, Tonsard's second son, had drawn an unlucky number at a recent
+conscription. Two years earlier his elder brother had been pronounced,
+through the influence of Soudry, Gaubertin, and Sarcus the rich, unfit
+for military service, on account of a pretended weakness in the
+muscles of the right arm; but as Jean-Louis had since wielded
+instruments of husbandry with remarkable force and skill, a good deal
+of talk on the subject had gone through the district. Soudry, Rigou,
+and Gaubertin, who were the special protectors of the family, had
+warned Tonsard that he must not expect to save Nicolas, who was tall
+and vigorous, from being recruited if he drew a fatal number.
+Nevertheless Gaubertin and Rigou were so well aware of the importance
+of conciliating bold men able and willing to do mischief, if properly
+directed against Les Aigues, that Rigou held out certain hopes of
+safety to Tonsard and his son. The late monk was occasionally visited
+by Catherine Tonsard who was very devoted to her brother Nicolas; on
+one such occasion Rigou advised her to appeal to the general and the
+countess.
+
+"They may be glad to do you this service to cajole you; in that case,
+it is just so much gained from the enemy," he said. "If the Shopman
+refuses, then we shall see what we shall see."
+
+Rigou foresaw that the general's refusal would pass as one wrong the
+more done by the land-owner to the peasantry, and would bind Tonsard
+by an additional motive of gratitude to the coalition, in case the
+crafty mind of the innkeeper could suggest to him some plausible way
+of liberating Nicolas.
+
+Nicolas, who was soon to appear before the examining board, had little
+hope of the general's intervention because of the harm done to Les
+Aigues by all the members of the Tonsard family. His passion, or to
+speak more correctly, his caprice and obstinate pursuit of La Pechina,
+were so aggravated by the prospect of his immediate departure, which
+left him no time to seduce her, that he resolved on attempting
+violence. The child's contempt for her prosecutor, plainly shown,
+excited the Lovelace of the Grand-I-Vert to a hatred whose fury was
+equalled only by his desires. For the last three days he had been
+watching La Pechina, and the poor child knew she was watched. Between
+Nicolas and his prey the same sort of understanding existed which
+there is between the hunter and the game. When the girl was at some
+little distance from the pavilion she saw Nicolas in one of the paths
+which ran parallel to the walls of the park, leading to the bridge of
+the Avonne. She could easily have escaped the man's pursuit had she
+appealed to her grandfather; but all young girls, even the most
+unsophisticated, have a strange fear, possibly instinctive, of
+trusting to their natural protectors under the like circumstances.
+
+Genevieve had heard Pere Niseron take an oath to kill any man, no
+matter who he was, who should dare to TOUCH (that was his word) his
+granddaughter. The old man thought the child amply protected by the
+halo of white hair and honor which a spotless life of three-score
+years and ten had laid upon his brow. The vision of bloody scenes
+terrifies the imagination of young girls so that they need not dive to
+the bottom of their hearts for other numerous and inquisitive reasons
+which seal their lips.
+
+When La Pechina started with the milk which Madame Michaud had sent to
+the daughter of Gaillard, the keeper of the gate of Conches, whose cow
+had just calved, she looked about her cautiously, like a cat when it
+ventures out onto the street. She saw no signs of Nicolas; she
+listened to the silence, as the poet says, and hearing nothing, she
+concluded that the rascal had gone to his day's work. The peasants
+were just beginning to cut the rye; for they were in the habit of
+getting in their own harvests first, so as to benefit by the best
+strength of the mowers. But Nicolas was not a man to mind losing a
+day's work,--especially now that he expected to leave the country
+after the fair at Soulanges and begin, as the country people say, the
+new life of a soldier.
+
+When La Pechina, with the jug on her head, was about half-way, Nicolas
+slid like a wild-cat down the trunk of an elm, among the branches of
+which he was hiding, and fell like a thunderbolt in front of the girl,
+who flung away her pitcher and trusted to her fleet legs to regain the
+pavilion. But a hundred feet farther on, Catherine Tonsard, who was on
+the watch, rushed out of the wood and knocked so violently against the
+flying girl that she was thrown down. The violence of the fall made
+her unconscious. Catherine picked her up and carried her into the
+woods to the middle of a tiny meadow where the Silver-spring brook
+bubbled up.
+
+Catherine Tonsard was tall and strong, and in every respect the type
+of woman whom painters and sculptors take, as the Republic did in
+former days, for their figures of Liberty. She charmed the young men
+of the valley of the Avonne with her voluminous bosom, her muscular
+legs, and a waist as robust as it was flexible; with her plump arms,
+her eyes that could flash and sparkle, and her jaunty air; with the
+masses of hair twisted in coils around her head, her masculine
+forehead and her red lips curling with that same ferocious smile which
+Eugene Delacroix and David (of Angers) caught and represented so
+admirably. True image of the People, this fiery and swarthy creature
+seemed to emit revolt through her piercing yellow eyes, blazing with
+the insolence of a soldier. She inherited from her father so violent a
+nature that the whole family, except Tonsard, and all who frequented
+the tavern feared her.
+
+"Well, how are you now?" she said to La Pechina as the latter
+recovered consciousness.
+
+Catherine had placed her victim on a little mound beside the brook and
+was bringing her to her senses with dashes of cold water. "Where am
+I?" said the child, opening her beautiful black eyes through which a
+sun-ray seemed to glide.
+
+"Ah!" said Catherine, "if it hadn't been for me you'd have been
+killed."
+
+"Thank you," said the girl, still bewildered; "what happened to me?"
+
+"You stumbled over a root and fell flat in the road over there, as if
+shot. Ha! how you did run!"
+
+"It was your brother who made me," said La Pechina, remembering
+Nicolas.
+
+"My brother? I did not see him," said Catherine. "What did he do to
+you, poor fellow, that should make you fly as if he were a wolf? Isn't
+he handsomer than your Monsieur Michaud?"
+
+"Oh!" said the girl, contemptuously.
+
+"See here, little one; you are laying up a crop of evils for yourself
+by loving those who persecute us. Why don't you keep to our side?"
+
+"Why don't you come to church; and why do you steal things night and
+day?" asked the child.
+
+"So you let those people talk you over!" sneered Catherine. "They love
+us, don't they?--just as they love their food which they get out of
+us, and they want new dishes every day. Did you ever know one of them
+to marry a peasant-girl? Not they! Does Sarcus the rich let his son
+marry that handsome Gatienne Giboulard? Not he, though she is the
+daughter of a rich upholsterer. You have never been at the Tivoli ball
+at Soulanges in Socquard's tavern; you had better come. You'll see 'em
+all there, these bourgeois fellows, and you'll find they are not worth
+the money we shall get out of them when we've pulled them down. Come
+to the fair this year!"
+
+"They say it's fine, that Soulanges fair!" cried La Pechina,
+artlessly.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is in two words," said Catherine. "If you are
+handsome, you are well ogled. What is the good of being as pretty as
+you are if you are not admired by the men? Ha! when I heard one of
+them say for the first time, 'What a fine sprig of a girl!' all my
+blood was on fire. It was at Socquard's, in the middle of a dance; my
+grandfather, Fourchon, who was playing the clarionet, heard it and
+laughed. Tivoli seemed to me as grand and fine as heaven itself. It's
+lighted up, my dear, with glass lamps, and you'll think you are in
+paradise. All the gentlemen of Soulanges and Auxerre and Ville-aux-
+Fayes will be there. Ever since that first night I've loved the place
+where those words rang in my ears like military music. It's worthy
+giving your eternity to hear such words said of you by a man you
+love."
+
+"Yes, perhaps," replied La Pechina, thoughtfully.
+
+"Then come, and get the praise of men; you're sure of it!" cried
+Catherine. "Ha! you'll have a fine chance, handsome as you are, to
+pick up good luck. There's the son of Monsieur Lupin, Amaury, he might
+marry you. But that's not all; if you only knew what comforts you can
+find there against vexation and worry. Why, Socquard's boiled wine
+will make you forget every trouble you ever had. Fancy! it can make
+you dream, and feel as light as a bird. Didn't you ever drink boiled
+wine? Then you don't know what life is."
+
+The privilege enjoyed by older persons to wet their throats with
+boiled wine excites the curiosity of the children of the peasantry
+over twelve years of age to such a degree that Genevieve had once put
+her lips to a glass of boiled wine ordered by the doctor for her
+grandfather when ill. The taste had left a sort of magic influence in
+the memory of the poor child, which may explain the interest with
+which she listened, and on which the evil-minded Catherine counted to
+carry out a plan already half-successful. No doubt she was trying to
+bring her victim, giddy from the fall, to the moral intoxication so
+dangerous to young women living in the wilds of nature, whose
+imagination, deprived of other nourishment, is all the more ardent
+when the occasion comes to exercise it. Boiled wine, which Catherine
+had held in reserve, was to end the matter by intoxicating the victim.
+
+"What do they put into it?" asked La Pechina.
+
+"All sorts of things," replied Catherine, glancing back to see if her
+brother were coming; "in the first place, those what d' ye call 'ems
+that come from India, cinnamon, and herbs that change you by magic,--
+you fancy you have everything you wish for; boiled wine makes you
+happy! you can snap your fingers at all your troubles!"
+
+"I should be afraid to drink boiled wine at a dance," said La Pechina.
+
+"Afraid of what?" asked Catherine. "There's not the slightest danger.
+Think what lots of people there will be. All the bourgeois will be
+looking at us! Ah! it is one of those days that make up for all our
+misery. See it and die,--for it's enough to satisfy any one."
+
+"If Monsieur and Madame Michaud would only take me!" cried La Pechina,
+her eyes blazing.
+
+"Ask your grandfather Niseron; you have not given him up, poor dear
+man, and he'd be pleased to see you admired like a little queen. Why
+do you like those Arminacs the Michauds better than your grandfather
+and the Burgundians. It's bad to neglect your own people. Besides, why
+should the Michauds object if your grandfather takes you to the fair?
+Oh! if you knew what it is to reign over a man and put him beside
+himself, and say to him, as I say to Godain, 'Go there!' and he goes,
+'Do that!' and he does it! You've got it in you, little one, to turn
+the head of a bourgeois like that son of Monsieur Lupin. Monsieur
+Amaury took a fancy to my sister Marie because she is fair and because
+he is half-afraid of me; but he'd adore you, for ever since those
+people at the pavilion have spruced you up a bit you've got the airs
+of an empress."
+
+Adroitly leading the innocent heart to forget Nicolas and so put it
+off its guard, Catherine distilled into the girl the insidious nectar
+of compliments. Unawares, she touched a secret wound. La Pechina,
+without being other than a poor peasant girl, was a specimen of
+alarming precocity, like many another creature doomed to die as
+prematurely as it blooms. Strange product of Burgundian and
+Montenegrin blood, conceived and born amid the toils of war, the girl
+was doubtless in many ways the result of her congenital circumstances.
+Thin, slender, brown as a tobacco leaf, and short in stature, she
+nevertheless possessed extraordinary strength,--a strength unseen by
+the eyes of peasants, to whom the mysteries of the nervous system are
+unknown. Nerves are not admitted into the medical rural mind.
+
+At thirteen years of age Genevieve had completed her growth, though
+she was hardly as tall as an ordinary girl of her age. Did her face
+owe its topaz skin, so dark and yet so brilliant, dark in tone and
+brilliant in the quality of its tissue, giving a look of age to the
+childish face, to her Montenegrin origin, or to the ardent sun of
+Burgundy? Medical science may dismiss the inquiry. The premature old
+age on the surface of the face was counterbalanced by the glow, the
+fire, the wealth of light which made the eyes two stars. Like all eyes
+which fill with sunlight and need, perhaps, some sheltering screen,
+the eyelids were fringed with lashes of extraordinary length. The
+hair, of a bluish black, long and fine and abundant, crowned a brow
+moulded like that of the Farnese Juno. That magnificent diadem of
+hair, those grand Armenian eyes, that celestial brow eclipsed the rest
+of the face. The nose, though pure in form as it left the brow, and
+graceful in curve, ended in flattened and flaring nostrils. Anger
+increased this effect at times, and then the face wore an absolutely
+furious expression. All the lower part of the face, like the lower
+part of the nose, seemed unfinished, as if the clay in the hands of
+the divine sculptor had proved insufficient. Between the lower lip and
+the chin the space was so short that any one taking La Pechina by the
+chin would have rubbed the lip; but the teeth prevented all notice of
+this defect. One might almost believe those little bones had souls, so
+brilliant were they, so polished, so transparent, so exquisitely
+shaped, disclosed as they were by too wide a mouth, curved in lines
+that bore resemblance to the fantastic shapes of coral. The shells of
+the ears were so transparent to the light that in the sunshine they
+were rose-colored. The complexion, though sun-burned, showed a
+marvellous delicacy in the texture of the skin. If, as Buffon
+declared, love lies in touch, the softness of the girl's skin must
+have had the penetrating and inciting influence of the fragrance of
+daturas. The chest and indeed the whole body was alarmingly thin; but
+the feet and hands, of alluring delicacy, showed remarkable nervous
+power, and a vigorous organism.
+
+This mixture of diabolical imperfections and divine beauties,
+harmonious in spite of discords, for they blended in a species of
+savage dignity, also this triumph of a powerful soul over a feeble
+body, as written in those eyes, made the child, when once seen,
+unforgettable. Nature had wished to make that frail young being a
+woman; the circumstances of her conception moulded her with the face
+and body of a boy. A poet observing the strange creature would have
+declared her native clime to be Arabia the Blest; she belonged to the
+Afrite and Genii of Arabian tales. Her face told no lies. She had the
+soul of that glance of fire, the intellect of those lips made
+brilliant by the bewitching teeth, the thought enshrined within that
+glorious brow, the passion of those nostrils ready at all moments to
+snort flame. Therefore love, such as we imagine it on burning sands,
+in lonely deserts, filled that heart of twenty in the breast of a
+child, doomed, like the snowy heights of Montenegro, to wear no
+flowers of the spring.
+
+Observers ought now to understand how it was that La Pechina, from
+whom passion issued by every pore, awakened in perverted natures the
+feelings deadened by abuse; just as water fills the mouth at sight of
+those twisted, blotched, and speckled fruits which gourmands know by
+experience, and beneath whose skin nature has put the rarest flavors
+and perfumes. Why did Nicolas, that vulgar laborer, pursue this being
+who was worthy of a poet, while the eyes of the country-folk pitied
+her as a sickly deformity? Why did Rigou, the old man, feel the
+passion of a young one for this girl? Which of the two men was young,
+and which was old? Was the young peasant as blase as the old usurer?
+Why did these two extremes of life meet in one common and devilish
+caprice? Does the vigor that draws to its close resemble the vigor
+that is only dawning? The moral perversities of men are gulfs guarded
+by sphinxes; they begin and end in questions to which there is no
+answer.
+
+The exclamation, formerly quoted, of the countess, "Piccina!" when she
+first saw Genevieve by the roadside, open-mouthed at sight of the
+carriage and the elegantly dressed woman within it, will be
+understood. This girl, almost a dwarf, of Montenegrin vigor, loved the
+handsome, noble bailiff, as children of her age love, when they do
+love, that is to say, with childlike passion, with the strength of
+youth, with the devotion which in truly virgin souls gives birth to
+divinest poesy. Catherine had just swept her coarse hands across the
+sensitive strings of that choice harp, strung to the breaking-point.
+To dance before Michaud, to shine at the Soulanges ball and inscribe
+herself on the memory of that adored master! What glorious thoughts!
+To fling them into that volcanic head was like casting live coals upon
+straw dried in the August sun.
+
+"No, Catherine," replied La Pechina, "I am ugly and puny; my lot is to
+sit in a corner and never to be married, but live alone in the world."
+
+"Men like weaklings," said Catherine. "You see me, don't you?" she
+added, showing her handsome, strong arms. "I please Godain, who is a
+poor stick; I please that little Charles, the count's groom; but
+Lupin's son is afraid of me. I tell you it is the small kind of men
+who love me, and who say when they see me go by at Ville-aux-Fayes and
+at Soulanges, 'Ha! what a fine girl!' Now YOU, that's another thing;
+you'll please the fine men."
+
+"Ah! Catherine, if it were true--that!" cried the bewitched child.
+
+"It is true, it is so true that Nicolas, the handsomest man in the
+canton, is mad about you; he dreams of you, he is losing his mind; and
+yet all the other girls are in love with him. He is a fine lad! If
+you'll put on a white dress and yellow ribbons, and come to Socquard's
+for the midsummer ball, you'll be the handsomest girl there, and all
+the fine people from Ville-aux-Fayes will see you. Come, won't you?--
+See here, I've been cutting grass for the cows, and I brought some
+boiled wine in my gourd; Socquard gave it me this morning," she added
+quickly, seeing the half-delirious expression in La Pechina's eyes
+which women understand so well. "We'll share it together, and you'll
+fancy the men are in love with you."
+
+During this conversation Nicolas, choosing the grassy spots to step
+on, had noiselessly slipped behind the trunk of an old oak near which
+his sister had seated La Pechina. Catherine, who had now and then cast
+her eyes behind her, saw her brother as she turned to get the boiled
+wine.
+
+"Here, take some," she said, offering it.
+
+"It burns me!" cried Genevieve, giving back the gourd, after taking
+two or three swallows from it.
+
+"Silly child!" replied Catherine; "see here!" and she emptied the
+rustic bottle without taking breath. "See how it slips down; it goes
+like a sunbeam into the stomach."
+
+"But I ought to be carrying the milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard," cried
+Genevieve; "and it is all spilt! Nicolas frightened me so!"
+
+"Don't you like Nicolas?"
+
+"No," answered Genevieve. "Why does he persecute me? He can get plenty
+other girls, who are willing."
+
+"But if he likes you better than all the other girls in the valley--"
+
+"So much the worse for him."
+
+"I see you don't know him," answered Catherine, as she seized the girl
+rapidly by the waist and flung her on the grass, holding her down in
+that position with her strong arms. At this moment Nicolas appeared.
+Seeing her odious persecutor, the child screamed with all her might,
+and drove him five feet away with a violent kick in the stomach; then
+she twisted herself like an acrobat, with a dexterity for which
+Catherine was not prepared, and rose to run away. Catherine, still on
+the ground, caught her by one foot and threw her headlong on her face.
+This frightful fall stopped the brave child's cries for a moment.
+Nicolas attempted, furiously, to seize his victim, but she, though
+giddy from the wine and the fall, caught him by the throat in a grip
+of iron.
+
+"Help! she's strangling me, Catherine," cried Nicolas, in a stifled
+voice.
+
+La Pechina uttered piercing screams, which Catherine tried to choke by
+putting her hands over the girl's mouth, but she bit them and drew
+blood. It was at this moment that Blondet, the countess, and the abbe
+appeared at the edge of the wood.
+
+"Here are those Aigues people!" exclaimed Catherine, helping Genevieve
+to rise.
+
+"Do you want to live?" hissed Nicolas in the child's ear.
+
+"What then?" she asked.
+
+"Tell them we were all playing, and I'll forgive you," said Nicolas,
+in a threatening voice.
+
+"Little wretch, mind you say it!" repeated Catherine, whose glance was
+more terrifying than her brother's murderous threat.
+
+"Yes, I will, if you let me alone," replied the child. "But anyhow I
+will never go out again without my scissors."
+
+"You are to hold your tongue, or I'll drown you in the Avonne," said
+Catherine, ferociously.
+
+"You are monsters," cried the abbe, coming up; "you ought to be
+arrested and taken to the assizes."
+
+"Ha! and pray what do you do in your drawing-rooms?" said Nicolas,
+looking full at the countess and Blondet. "You play and amuse
+yourselves, don't you? Well, so do we, in the fields which are ours.
+We can't always work; we must play sometimes,--ask my sister and La
+Pechina."
+
+"How do you fight if you call that playing?" cried Blondet.
+
+Nicolas gave him a murderous look.
+
+"Speak!" said Catherine, gripping La Pechina by the forearm and
+leaving a blue bracelet on the flesh. "Were not we amusing ourselves?"
+
+"Yes, madame, we were amusing ourselves," said the child, exhausted by
+her display of strength, and now breaking down as though she were
+about to faint.
+
+"You hear what she says, madame," said Catherine, boldly, giving the
+countess one of those looks which women give each other like dagger
+thrusts.
+
+She took her brother's arm, and the pair walked off, not mistaking the
+opinion they left behind them in the minds of the three persons who
+had interrupted the scene. Nicolas twice looked back, and twice
+encountered Blondet's gaze. The journalist continued to watch the tall
+scoundrel, who was broad in the shoulders, healthy and vigorous in
+complexion, with black hair curling tightly, and whose rather soft
+face showed upon its lips and around the mouth certain lines which
+reveal the peculiar cruelty that characterizes sluggards and
+voluptaries. Catherine swung her petticoat, striped blue and white,
+with an air of insolent coquetry.
+
+"Cain and his wife!" said Blondet to the abbe.
+
+"You are nearer the truth than you know," replied the priest.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur le cure, what will they do to me?" said La Pechina, when
+the brother and sister were out of sight.
+
+The countess, as white as her handkerchief, was so overcome that she
+heard neither Blondet nor the abbe nor La Pechina.
+
+"It is enough to drive one from this terrestrial paradise," she said
+at last. "But the first thing of all is to save that child from their
+claws."
+
+"You are right," said Blondet in a low voice. "That child is a poem, a
+living poem."
+
+Just then the Montenegrin girl was in a state where soul and body
+smoke, as it were, after the conflagration of an anger which has
+driven all forces, physical and intellectual, to their utmost tension.
+It is an unspeakable and supreme splendor, which reveals itself only
+under the pressure of some frenzy, be it resistance or victory, love
+or martyrdom. She had left home in a dress with alternate lines of
+brown and yellow, and a collarette which she pleated herself by rising
+before daylight; and she had not yet noticed the condition of her gown
+soiled by her struggle on the grass, and her collar torn in
+Catherine's grasp. Feeling her hair hanging loose, she looked about
+her for a comb. At this moment Michaud, also attracted by the screams,
+came upon the scene. Seeing her god, La Pechina recovered her full
+strength. "Monsieur Michaud," she cried, "he did not even touch me!"
+
+The cry, the look, the action of the girl were an eloquent commentary,
+and told more to Blondet and the abbe than Madame Michaud had told the
+countess about the passion of that strange nature for the bailiff, who
+was utterly unconscious of it.
+
+"The scoundrel!" cried Michaud.
+
+Then, with an involuntary and impotent gesture, such as mad men and
+wise men can both be forced into giving, he shook his fist in the
+direction in which he had caught sight of Nicolas disappearing with
+his sister.
+
+"Then you were not playing?" said the abbe with a searching look at La
+Pechina.
+
+"Don't fret her," interposed the countess; "let us return to the
+pavilion."
+
+Genevieve, though quite exhausted, found strength under Michaud's eyes
+to walk. The countess followed the bailiff through one of the by-paths
+known to keepers and poachers where only two can go abreast, and which
+led to the gate of the Avonne.
+
+"Michaud," said the countess when they reached the depth of the wood,
+"We must find some way of ridding the neighborhood of such vile
+people; that child is actually in danger of death."
+
+"In the first place," replied Michaud, "Genevieve shall not leave the
+pavilion. My wife will be glad to take the nephew of Vatel, who has
+the care of the park roads, into the house. With Gounod (that is his
+name) and old Cornevin, my wife's foster-father, always at hand, La
+Pechina need never go out without a protector."
+
+"I will tell Monsieur to make up this extra expense to you," said the
+countess. "But this does not rid us of that Nicolas. How can we manage
+that?"
+
+"The means are easy and right at hand," answered Michaud. "Nicolas is
+to appear very soon before the court of appeals on the draft. The
+general, instead of asking for his release, as the Tonsards expect,
+has only to advise his being sent to the army--"
+
+"If necessary, I will go myself," said the countess, "and see my
+cousin, de Casteran, the prefect. But until then, I tremble for that
+child--"
+
+The words were said at the end of the path close to the open space by
+the bridge. As they reached the edge of the bank the countess gave a
+cry; Michaud advanced to help her, thinking she had struck her foot
+against a stone; but he shuddered at the sight that met his eyes.
+
+Marie Tonsard and Bonnebault, seated below the bank, seemed to be
+conversing, but were no doubt hiding there to hear what passed.
+Evidently they had left the wood as the party advanced towards them.
+
+Bonnebault, a tall, wiry fellow, had lately returned to Conches after
+six years' service in the cavalry, with a permanent discharge due to
+his evil conduct,--his example being likely to ruin better men. He
+wore moustachios and a small chin-tuft; a peculiarity which, joined to
+his military carriage, made him the reigning fancy of all the girls in
+the valley. His hair, in common with that of other soldiers, was cut
+very short behind, but he frizzed it on the top of his head, brushing
+up the ends with a dandy air; on it his foraging cap was jauntily
+tilted to one side. Compared to the peasants, who were mostly in rags,
+like Mouche and Fourchon, he seemed gorgeous in his linen trousers,
+boots, and short waistcoat. These articles, bought at the time of his
+liberation, were, it is true, somewhat the worse for a life in the
+fields; but this village cock-of-the-walk had others in reserve for
+balls and holidays. He lived, it must be said, on the gifts of his
+female friends, which, liberal as they were, hardly sufficed for the
+libations, the dissipations, and the squanderings of all kinds which
+resulted from his intimacy with the Cafe de la Paix.
+
+Cowardice is like courage; of both there are various kinds. Bonnebault
+would have fought like a brave soldier, but he was weak in presence of
+his vices and his desires. Lazy as a lizard, that is to say, active
+only when it suited him, without the slightest decency, arrogant and
+base, able for much but neglectful of all, the sole pleasure of this
+"breaker of hearts and plates," to use a barrack term, was to do evil
+or inflict damage. Such a nature does as much harm in rural
+communities as it does in a regiment. Bonnebault, like Tonsard and
+like Fourchon, desired to live well and do nothing; and he had his
+plans laid. Making the most of his gallant appearance with increasing
+success, and of his talents for billiards with alternate loss and
+gain, he flattered himself that the day would come when he could marry
+Mademoiselle Aglae Socquard, only daughter of the proprietor of the
+Cafe de la Paix, a resort which was to Soulanges what, relatively
+speaking, Ranelagh is to the Bois de Boulogne. To get into the
+business of tavern-keeping, to manage the public balls, what a fine
+career for the marshal's baton of a ne'er-do-well! These morals, this
+life, this nature, were so plainly stamped upon the face of the low-
+lived profligate that the countess was betrayed into an exclamation
+when she beheld the pair, for they gave her the sensation of beholding
+snakes.
+
+Marie, desperately in love with Bonnebault, would have robbed for his
+benefit. Those moustachios, the swaggering gait of a trooper, the
+fellow's smart clothes, all went to her heart as the manners and
+charms of a de Marsay touch that of a pretty Parisian. Each social
+sphere has its own standard of distinction. The jealous Marie rebuffed
+Amaury Lupin, the other dandy of the little town, her mind being made
+up to become Madame Bonnebault.
+
+"Hey! you there, hi! come on!" cried Nicolas and Catherine from afar,
+catching sight of Marie and Bonnebault.
+
+The sharp call echoed through the woods like the cry of savages.
+
+Seeing the pair at his feet, Michaud shuddered and deeply repented
+having spoken. If Bonnebault and Marie Tonsard had overheard the
+conversation, nothing but harm could come of it. This event,
+insignificant as it seems, was destined, in the irritated state of
+feeling then existing between Les Aigues and the peasantry, to have a
+decisive influence on the fate of all,--just as victory or defeat in
+battle sometimes depends upon a brook which shepherds jump while
+cannon are unable to pass it.
+
+Gallantly bowing to the countess, Bonnebault passed Marie's arm
+through his own with a conquering air and took himself off
+triumphantly.
+
+"The King of Hearts of the valley," muttered Michaud to the countess.
+"A dangerous man. When he loses twenty francs at billiards he would
+murder Rigou to get them back. He loves a crime as he does a
+pleasure."
+
+"I have seen enough for to-day; take me home, gentlemen," murmured the
+countess, putting her hand on Emile's arm.
+
+She bowed sadly to Madame Michaud, after watching La Pechina safely
+back to the pavilion. Olympe's depression was transferred to her
+mistress.
+
+"Ah, madame," said the abbe, as they continued their way, "can it be
+that the difficulty of doing good is about to deter you? For the last
+five years I have slept on a pallet in a parsonage which has no
+furniture; I say mass in a church without believers; I preach to no
+hearers; I minister without fees or salary; I live on the six hundred
+francs the law allows me, asking nothing of my bishop, and I give the
+third of that in charity. Still, I am not hopeless. If you knew what
+my winters are in this place you would understand the strength of
+those words,--I am not hopeless. I keep myself warm with the belief
+that we can save this valley and bring it back to God. No matter for
+ourselves, madame; think of the future! If it is our duty to say to
+the poor, 'Learn how to be poor; that is, how to work, to endure, to
+strive,' it is equally our duty to say to the rich, 'Learn your duty
+as prosperous men,'--that is to say, 'Be wise, be intelligent in your
+benevolence; pious and virtuous in the place to which God has called
+you.' Ah! madame, you are only the steward of Him who grants you
+wealth; if you do not obey His behests you will never transmit to your
+children the prosperity He gives you. You will rob your posterity. If
+you follow in the steps of that poor singer's selfishness, which
+caused the evils that now terrify us, you will bring back the
+scaffolds on which your fathers died for the faults of their fathers.
+To do good humbly, in obscurity, in country solitudes, as Rigou now
+does evil,--ah! that indeed is prayer in action and dear to God. If in
+every district three souls only would work for good, France, our
+country, might be saved from the abyss that yawns; into which we are
+rushing headlong, through spiritual indifference to all that is not
+our own self-interest. Change! you must change your morals, change
+your ethics, and that will change your laws."
+
+Though deeply moved as she listened to this grand utterance of true
+catholic charity, the countess answered in the fatal words, "We will
+consider it,"--words of the rich, which contain that promise to the
+ear which saves their purses and enables them to stand with arms
+crossed in presence of all disaster, under pretext that they were
+powerless.
+
+Hearing those words, the abbe bowed to Madame de Montcornet and turned
+off into a path which led him direct to the gate of Blangy.
+
+"Belshazzar's feast is the everlasting symbol of the dying days of a
+caste, of an oligarchy, of a power!" he thought as he walked away. "My
+God! if it be Thy will to loose the poor like a torrent to reform
+society, I know, I comprehend, why it is that Thou hast abandoned the
+wealthy to their blindness!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+SHOWETH HOW THE TAVERN IS THE PEOPLE'S PARLIAMENT
+
+Old Mother Tonsard's screams brought a number of people from Blangy to
+know what was happening at the Grand-I-Vert, the distance from the
+village to the inn not being greater than that from the inn to the
+gate of Blangy. One of these inquiring visitors was old Niseron, La
+Pechina's grandfather, who was on his way, after ringing the second
+Angelus, to dig the vine-rows in his last little bit of ground.
+
+Bent by toil, with pallid face and silvery hair, the old vinedresser,
+now the sole representative of civic virtue in the community, had
+been, during the Revolution, president of the Jacobin club at Ville-
+aux-Fayes, and a juror in the revolutionary tribunal of the district.
+Jean-Francois Niseron, carved out of the wood that the apostles were
+made of, was of the type of Saint Peter; whom painters and sculptors
+have united in representing with the square brow of the people, the
+thick, naturally curling hair of the laborer, the muscles of the man
+of toil, the complexion of a fisherman; with the large nose, the
+shrewd, half-mocking lips that scoff at fate, the neck and shoulders
+of the strong man who cuts his wood to cook his dinner while the
+doctrinaires of his opinions talk.
+
+Such, at forty years of age on the breaking out of the Revolution, was
+this man, strong as iron, pure as gold. Advocate of the people, he
+believed in a republic through the very roll of that name, more
+formidable in sound perhaps than in reality. He believed in the
+republic of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the brotherhood of man, in the
+exchange of noble sentiments, in the proclamation of virtue, in the
+choice of merit without intrigue,--in short, in all that the narrow
+limits of one arrondissement like Sparta made possible, and which the
+vast proportions of an empire make chimerical. He signed his beliefs
+with his blood,--his only son went to war; he did more, he signed them
+with the prosperity of his life,--last sacrifice of self. Nephew and
+sole heir of the curate of Blangy, the then all-powerful tribune might
+have enforced his rights and recovered the property left by the priest
+to his pretty servant-girl, Arsene; but he respected his uncle's
+wishes and accepted poverty, which came upon him as rapidly as the
+fall of his cherished republic came upon France.
+
+Never a farthing's worth, never so much as the branch of a tree
+belonging to another passed into the hands of this notable republican,
+who would have made the republic acceptable to the world if he and
+such as he could have guided it. He refused to buy the national
+domains; he denied the right of the Republic to confiscate property.
+In reply to all demands of the committee of public safety he asserted
+that the virtue of citizens would do for their sacred country what low
+political intriguers did for money. This patriot of antiquity publicly
+reproved Gaubertin's father for his secret treachery, his underhand
+bargaining, his malversations. He reprimanded the virtuous Mouchon,
+that representative of the people whose virtue was nothing more nor
+less than incapacity,--as it is with so many other legislators who,
+gorged with the greatest political resources that any nation ever
+gave, armed with the whole force of a people, are still unable to
+bring forth from them the grandeur which Richelieu wrung for France
+out of the weakness of a king. Consequently, citizen Niseron became a
+living reproach to the people about him. They endeavored to put him
+out of sight and mind with the reproachful remark, "Nothing satisfies
+that man."
+
+The patriot peasant returned to his cot at Blangy and watched the
+destruction, one by one, of his illusions; he saw his republic come to
+an end at the heels of an emperor, while he himself fell into utter
+poverty, to which Rigou stealthily managed to reduce him. And why?
+Because Niseron had never been willing to accept anything from him.
+Reiterated refusals showed the ex-priest in what profound contempt the
+nephew of the curate held him; and now that icy scorn was revenged by
+the terrible threat as to his little granddaughter, about which the
+Abbe Brossette spoke to the countess.
+
+The old man had composed in his own mind a history of the French
+republic, filled with the glorious features which gave immortality to
+that heroic period to the exclusion of all else. The infamous deeds,
+the massacres, the spoliations, his virtuous soul ignored; he admired,
+with a single mind, the devotedness of the people, the "Vengeur," the
+gifts to the nation, the uprising of the country to defend its
+frontier; and he still pursued his dream that he might sleep in peace.
+
+The Revolution produced many poets like old Niseron, who sang their
+poems in the country solitudes, in the army, openly or secretly, by
+deeds buried beneath the whirlwind of that storm, just as the wounded
+left behind to die in the great wars of the empire cried out, "Long
+live the Emperor!" This sublimity of soul belongs especially to
+France. The Abbe Brossette respected the convictions of the old man,
+who became simply but deeply attached to the priest from hearing him
+say, "The true republic is in the Gospel." The stanch republican
+carried the cross, and wore the sexton's robe, half-red, half-black,
+and was grave and dignified in church,--supporting himself by the
+triple functions with which he was invested by the abbe, who was able
+to give the fine old man, not, to be sure, enough to live on, but
+enough to keep him from dying of hunger.
+
+Niseron, the Aristides of Blangy, spoke little, like all noble dupes
+who wrap themselves in the mantle of resignation; but he was never
+silent against evil, and the peasants feared him as thieves fear the
+police. He seldom came more than six times a year to the Grand-I-Vert,
+though he was always warmly welcomed there. The old man cursed the
+want of charity of the rich,--their selfishness disgusted him; and
+through this fiber of his mind he seemed to the peasants to belong to
+them; they were in the habit of saying, "Pere Niseron doesn't like the
+rich; he's one of us."
+
+The civic crown won by this noble life throughout the valley lay in
+these words: "That good old Niseron! there's not a more honest man."
+Often taken as umpire in certain kinds of disputes, he embodied the
+meaning of that archaic term,--the village elder. Always extremely
+clean, though threadbare, he wore breeches, coarse woollen stockings,
+hob-nailed shoes, the distinctively French coat with large buttons and
+the broad-brimmed felt hat to which all old peasants cling; but for
+daily wear he kept a blue jacket so patched and darned that it looked
+like a bit of tapestry. The pride of a man who feels he is free, and
+knows he is worthy of freedom, gave to his countenance and his whole
+bearing a SOMETHING that was inexpressibly noble; you would have felt
+he wore a robe, not rags.
+
+"Hey! what's happening so unusual?" he said, "I heard the noise down
+here from the belfry."
+
+They told him of Vatel's attack on the old woman, talking all at once
+after the fashion of country-people.
+
+"If she didn't cut the tree, Vatel was wrong; but if she did cut it,
+you have done two bad actions," said Pere Niseron.
+
+"Take some wine," said Tonsard, offering a full glass to the old man.
+
+"Shall we start?" said Vermichel to the sheriff's officer.
+
+"Yes," replied Brunet, "we must do without Pere Fourchon and take the
+assistant at Conches. Go on before me; I have a paper to carry to the
+chateau. Rigou has gained his second suit, and I've got to deliver the
+verdict."
+
+So saying, Monsieur Brunet, all the livelier for a couple of glasses
+of brandy, mounted his gray mare after saying good-bye to Pere
+Niseron; for the whole valley were desirous in their hearts of the
+good man's esteem.
+
+No science, not even that of statistics, can explain the rapidity with
+which news flies in the country, nor how it spreads over those
+ignorant and untaught regions which are, in France, a standing
+reproach to the government and to capitalists. Contemporaneous history
+can show that a famous banker, after driving post-horses to death
+between Waterloo and Paris (everybody knows why--he gained what the
+Emperor had lost, a commission!) carried the fatal news only three
+hours in advance of rumor. So, not an hour after the encounter between
+old mother Tonsard and Vatel, a number of the customers of the Grand-
+I-Vert assembled there to hear the tale.
+
+The first to come was Courtecuisse, in whom you would scarcely have
+recognized the once jovial forester, the rubicund do-nothing, whose
+wife made his morning coffee as we have before seen. Aged, and thin,
+and haggard, he presented to all eyes a lesson that no one learned.
+"He tried to climb higher than the ladder," was what his neighbors
+said when others pitied him and blamed Rigou. "He wanted to be a
+bourgeois himself."
+
+In fact, Courtecuisse did intend to pass for a bourgeois in buying the
+Bachelerie, and he even boasted of it; though his wife went about the
+roads gathering up the horse-droppings. She and Courtecuisse got up
+before daylight, dug their garden, which was richly manured, and
+obtained several yearly crops from it, without being able to do more
+than pay the interest due to Rigou for the rest of the purchase-money.
+Their daughter, who was living at service in Auxerre, sent them her
+wages; but in spite of all their efforts, in spite of this help, the
+last day for the final payment was approaching, and not a penny in
+hand with which to meet it. Madame Courtecuisse, who in former times
+occasionally allowed herself a bottle of boiled wine or a bit of roast
+meat, now drank nothing but water. Courtecuisse was afraid to go to
+the Grand-I-Vert lest he should have to leave three sous behind him.
+Deprived of power, he had lost his privilege of free drinks, and he
+bitterly complained, like all other fools, of man's ingratitude. In
+short, he found, according to the experience of all peasants bitten
+with the demon of proprietorship, that toil had increased and food
+decreased.
+
+"Courtecuisse has done too much to the property," the people said,
+secretly envying his position. "He ought to have waited till he had
+paid the money down and was master before he put up those fruit
+palings."
+
+With the help of his wife he had managed to manure and cultivate the
+three acres of land sold to him by Rigou, together with the garden
+adjoining the house, which was beginning to be productive; and he was
+in danger of being turned out of it all. Clothed in rags like
+Fourchon, poor Courtecuisse, who lately wore the boots and gaiters of
+a huntsman, now thrust his feet into sabots and accused "the rich" of
+Les Aigues of having caused his destitution. These wearing anxieties
+had given to the fat little man and his once smiling and rosy face a
+gloomy and dazed expression, as though he were ill from the effects of
+poison or with some chronic malady.
+
+"What's the matter with you, Monsieur Courtecuisse; is your tongue
+tied?" asked Tonsard, as the man continued silent after he had told
+him about the battle which had just taken place.
+
+"No, no!" cried Madame Tonsard; "he needn't complain of the midwife
+who cut his string,--she made a good job of it."
+
+"It is enough to make a man dumb, thinking from morning till night of
+some way to escape Rigou," said the premature old man, gloomily.
+
+"Bah!" said old Mother Tonsard, "you've got a pretty daughter,
+seventeen years old. If she's a good girl you can easily manage
+matters with that old jail bird--"
+
+"We sent her to Auxerre two years ago to Madame Mariotte the elder, to
+keep her out of harm's way; I'd rather die than--"
+
+"What a fool you are!" said Tonsard, "look at my girls,--are they any
+the worse? He who dares to say they are not as virtuous as marble
+images will have to do with my gun."
+
+"It'll be hard to have to come to that," said Courtecuisse, shaking
+his head. "I'd rather earn the money by shooting one of those
+Arminacs."
+
+"Well, I call it better for a girl to save a father than to wrap up
+her virtue and let it mildew," retorted the innkeeper.
+
+Tonsard felt a sharp tap on his shoulder, delivered by Pere Niseron.
+
+"That is not a right thing to say!" cried the old man. "A father is
+the guardian of the honor of his family. It is by behaving as you do
+that scorn and contempt are brought upon us; it is because of such
+conduct that the People are accused of being unfit for liberty. The
+People should set an example of civic virtue and honor to the rich.
+You all sell yourselves to Rigou for gold; and if you don't sell him
+your daughters, at any rate you sell him your honor,--and it's wrong."
+
+"Just see what a position Courtecuisse is in," said Tonsard.
+
+"See what a position I am in," replied Pere Niseron; "but I sleep in
+peace; there are no thorns in my pillow."
+
+"Let him talk, Tonsard," whispered his wife, "you know they're just
+HIS NOTIONS, poor dear man."
+
+Bonnebault and Marie, Catherine and her brother came in at this moment
+in a state of exasperation, which had begun with Nicolas's failure,
+and was raised to the highest pitch by Michaud's advice to the
+countess about Bonnebault. As Nicolas entered the tavern he was
+uttering frightful threats against the Michaud family and Les Aigues.
+
+"The harvest's coming; well, I vow I'll not go before I've lighted my
+pipe at their wheat-stacks," he cried, striking his fist on the table
+as he sat down.
+
+"Mustn't yelp like that before people," said Godain, showing him Pere
+Niseron.
+
+"If the old fellow tells, I'll wring his neck," said Catherine. "He's
+had his day, that old peddler of foolish reasons! They call him
+virtuous; it's his temperament that keeps him so, that's all."
+
+Strange and noteworthy sight!--that of those lifted heads, that group
+of persons gathered in the reeking hovel, while old Mother Tonsard
+stood sentinel at the door as security for the secret words of the
+drinkers.
+
+Of all those faces, that of Godain, Catherine's suitor, was perhaps
+the most alarming, though the least pronounced. Godain,--a miser
+without money,--the cruelest of misers, for he who seeks money surely
+takes precedence of him who hoards it, one turning his eagerness
+within himself, the other looking outside with terrible intentness,--
+Godain represented the type of the majority of peasant faces.
+
+He was a journeyman, small in frame, and saved from the draft by not
+attaining the required military height; naturally lean and made more
+so by hard work and the enforced sobriety under which reluctant
+workers like Courtecuisse succumb. His face was no bigger than a man's
+fist, and was lighted by a pair of yellow eyes with greenish strips
+and brown spots, in which a thirst for the possession of property was
+mingled with a concupiscence which had no heat,--for desire, once at
+the boiling-point, had now stiffened like lava. His skin, brown as
+that of a mummy, was glued to his temples. His scanty beard bristled
+among his wrinkles like stubble in the furrows. Godain never
+perspired, he reabsorbed his substance. His hairy hands, formed like
+claws, nervous, never still, seemed to be made of old wood. Though
+scarcely twenty-seven years of age, white lines were beginning to show
+in his rusty black hair. He wore a blouse, through the breast opening
+of which could be seen a shirt of coarse linen, so black that he must
+have worn it a month and washed it himself in the Thune. His sabots
+were mended with old iron. The original stuff of his trousers was
+unrecognizable from the darns and the infinite number of patches. On
+his head was a horrible cap, evidently cast off and picked up in the
+doorway of some bourgeois house in Ville-aux-Fayes.
+
+Clear-sighted enough to estimate the elements of good fortune that
+centred in Catherine Tonsard, his ambition was to succeed her father
+at the Grand-I-Vert. He made use of all his craftiness and all his
+actual powers to capture her; he promised her wealth, he also promised
+her the license her mother had enjoyed; besides this, he offered his
+prospective father-in-law an enormous rental, five hundred francs a
+year, for his inn, until he could buy him out, trusting to an
+agreement he had made with Monsieur Brunet to pay these costs by notes
+on stamped paper. By trade a journeyman tool-maker, this gnome worked
+for the wheelwrights when work was plentiful, but he also hired
+himself out for any extra labor which was well paid. Though he
+possessed, unknown to the whole neighborhood, eighteen hundred francs
+now in Gaubertin's hands, he lived like a beggar, slept in a barn, and
+gleaned at the harvests. He wore Gaubertin's receipt for his money
+sewn into the waist-belt of his trousers,--having it renewed every
+year with its own added interest and the amount of his savings.
+
+"Hey! what do I care," cried Nicolas, replying to Godain's prudent
+advice not to talk before Niseron. "If I'm doomed to be a soldier I'd
+rather the sawdust of the basket sucked up my blood than have it
+dribbled out drop by drop in the battles. I'll deliver this country of
+at least one of those Arminacs that the devil has launched upon us."
+
+And he related what he called Michaud's plot against him, which Marie
+and Bonnebault had overheard.
+
+"Where do you expect France to find soldiers?" said the white-haired
+old man, rising and standing before Nicolas during the silence which
+followed the utterance of this threat.
+
+"We serve our time and come home again," remarked Bonnebault, twirling
+his moustache.
+
+Observing that all the worst characters of the neighborhood were
+collecting, Pere Niseron shook his head and left the tavern, after
+offering a farthing to Madame Tonsard in payment for his glass of
+wine. When the worthy man had gone down the steps a movement of relief
+and satisfaction passed through the assembled drinkers which would
+have told whoever watched them that each man in that company felt he
+was rid of the living image of his own conscience.
+
+"Well, what do you say to all that, hey, Courtecuisse?" asked
+Vaudoyer, who had just come in, and to whom Tonsard had related
+Vatel's attempt.
+
+Courtecuisse clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and set
+his glass on the table.
+
+"Vatel put himself in the wrong," he said. "If I were Mother Tonsard,
+I'd give myself a few wounds and go to bed and say I was ill, and have
+that Shopman and his keeper up before the assizes and get twenty
+crowns damages. Monsieur Sarcus would give them."
+
+"In any case the Shopman would give them to stop the talk it would
+make," said Godain.
+
+Vaudoyer, the former field-keeper, a man five feet six inches tall,
+with a face pitted with the small-pox and furrowed like a nut-cracker,
+kept silence with a hesitating air.
+
+"Well, you old ninny, does that ruffle you?" asked Tonsard, attracted
+by the idea of damages. "If they had broken twenty crowns' worth of my
+mother's bones we could turn it into good account; we might make a
+fine fuss for three hundred francs; Monsieur Gourdon would go to Les
+Aigues and tell them that the mother had got a broken hip--"
+
+"And break it, too," interrupted Madame Tonsard; "they do that in
+Paris."
+
+"It would cost too much," remarked Godain.
+
+"I have been too long among the people who rule us to believe that
+matters will go as you want them," said Vaudoyer at last, remembering
+his past official intercourse with the courts and the gendarmerie. "If
+it were at Soulanges, now, it might be done; Monsieur Soudry
+represents the government there, and he doesn't wish well to the
+Shopman; but if you attack the Shopman and Vatel they'll defend
+themselves viciously; they'll say, 'The woman was to blame; she had a
+tree, otherwise she would have let her bundle be examined on the
+highroad; she wouldn't have run away; if an accident happened to her
+it was through her own fault.' No, you can't trust to that plan."
+
+"The Shopman didn't resist when I sued him," said Courtecuisse; "he
+paid me at once."
+
+"I'll go to Soulanges, if you like," said Bonnebault, "and consult
+Monsieur Gourdon, the clerk of the court, and you shall know to-night
+if THERE'S MONEY IN IT."
+
+"You are only making an excuse to be after that big goose of a girl,
+Socquard's daughter," said Marie Tonsard, giving Bonnebault a slap on
+the shoulder that made his lungs hum.
+
+Just then a verse of an old Burgundian Christmas carol was heard:--
+
+  "One fine moment of his life
+  Was at the wedding feast;
+  He changed the water into wine,--
+  Madeira of the best."
+
+Every one recognized the vinous voice of old Fourchon, to whom the
+verse must have been peculiarly agreeable; Mouche accompanied in his
+treble tones.
+
+"Ha! they're full!" cried old Mother Tonsard to her daughter-in-law;
+"your father is as red as a grid-iron, and that chip o' the block as
+pink as vine-shoot."
+
+"Your healths!" cried the old man, "and a fine lot of scoundrels you
+are! All hail!" he said to his granddaughter, whom he spied kissing
+Bonnebault, "hail, Marie, full of vice! Satan is with three; cursed
+art thou among women, etcetera. All hail, the company present! you are
+done for, every one of you! you may just say good-bye to your sheaves.
+I being news. I always told you the rich would crush us; well now, the
+Shopman is going to have the law of you! Ha! see what it is to
+struggle against those bourgeois fellows, who have made so many laws
+since they got into power that they've a law to enforce every trick
+they play--"
+
+A violent hiccough gave a sudden turn to the ideas of the
+distinguished orator.
+
+"If Vermichel were only here I'd blow in his gullet, and he'd get an
+idea of sherry wine. Hey! what a wine it is! If I wasn't a Burgundian
+I'd be a Spaniard! It's God's own wine! the pope says mass with it--
+Hey! I'm young again! Say, Courtecuisse! if your wife were only here
+we'd be young together. Don't tell me! Spanish wine is worth a dozen
+of boiled wine. Let's have a revolution if it's only to empty the
+cellars!"
+
+"But what's your news, papa?" said Tonsard.
+
+"There'll be no harvest for you; the Shopman has given orders to stop
+the gleaning."
+
+"Stop the gleaning!" cried the whole tavern, with one voice, in which
+the shrill tones of the four women predominated.
+
+"Yes," said Mouche, "he is going to issue an order, and Groison is to
+take it round, and post it up all over the canton. No one is to glean
+except those who have pauper certificates."
+
+"And what's more," said Fourchon, "the folks from the other districts
+won't be allowed here at all."
+
+"What's that?" cried Bonnebault, "do you mean to tell me that neither
+my grandmother nor I, nor your mother, Godain, can come here and
+glean? Here's tomfoolery for you; a pretty show of authority! Why, the
+fellow is a devil let loose from hell,--that scoundrel of a mayor!"
+
+"Shall you glean whether or no, Godain?" said Tonsard to the
+journeyman wheelwright, who was saying a few words to Catherine.
+
+"I? I've no property; I'm a pauper," he replied; "I shall ask for a
+certificate."
+
+"What did they give my father for his otter, bibi?" said Madame
+Tonsard to Mouche.
+
+Though nearly at his last gasp from an over-taxed digestion and two
+bottles of wine, Mouche, sitting on Madame Tonsard's lap, laid his
+head on his aunt's neck and whispered slyly in her ear:--
+
+"I don't know, but he has got gold. If you'll feed me high for a
+month, perhaps I can find out his hiding-place; he has one, I know
+that."
+
+"Father's got gold!" whispered La Tonsard to her husband, whose voice
+was loudest in the uproar of the excited discussion, in which all
+present took part.
+
+"Hush! here's Groison," cried the old sentinel.
+
+Perfect silence reigned in the tavern. When Groison had got to a safe
+distance, Mother Tonsard made a sign, and the discussion began again
+on the question as to whether they should persist in gleaning, as
+before, without a certificate.
+
+"You'll have to give in," said Pere Fourchon; "for the Shopman has
+gone to see the prefect and get troops to enforce the order. They'll
+shoot you like dogs,--and that's what we are!" cried the old man,
+trying to conquer the thickening of his speech produced by his
+potations of sherry.
+
+This fresh announcement, absurd as it was, made all the drinkers
+thoughtful; they really believed the government capable of
+slaughtering them without pity.
+
+"I remember just such troubles near Toulouse, when I was stationed
+there," said Bonnebault. "We were marched out, and the peasants were
+cut and slashed and arrested. Everybody laughed to see them try to
+resist cavalry. Ten were sent to the galleys, and eleven put in
+prison; the whole thing was crushed. Hey! what? why, soldiers are
+soldiers, and you are nothing but civilian beggars; they've a right,
+they think, to sabre peasants, the devil take you!"
+
+"Well, well," said Tonsard, "what is there in all that to frighten you
+like kids? What can they get out of my mother and daughters? Put 'em
+in prison? well, then they must feed them; and the Shopman can't
+imprison the whole country. Besides, prisoners are better fed at the
+king's expense than they are at their own; and they're kept warmer,
+too."
+
+"You are a pack of fools!" roared Fourchon. "Better gnaw at the
+bourgeois than attack him in front; otherwise, you'll get your backs
+broke. If you like the galleys, so be it,--that's another thing! You
+don't work as hard there as you do in the fields, true enough; but you
+don't have your liberty."
+
+"Perhaps it would be well," said Vaudoyer, who was among the more
+valiant in counsel, "if some of us risked our skins to deliver the
+neighborhood of that Languedoc fellow who has planted himself at the
+gate of the Avonne."
+
+"Do Michaud's business for him?" said Nicolas; "I'm good for that."
+
+"Things are not ripe for it," said old Fourchon. "We should risk too
+much, my children. The best way is to make ourselves look miserable
+and cry famine; then the Shopman and his wife will want to help us,
+and you'll get more out of them that way than you will by gleaning."
+
+"You are all blind moles," shouted Tonsard, "let 'em pick a quarrel
+with their law and their troops, they can't put the whole country in
+irons, and we've plenty of friends at Ville-aux-Fayes and among the
+old lords who'll sustain us."
+
+"That's true," said Courtecuisse; "none of the other land-owners
+complain, it is only the Shopman; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur
+de Ronquerolles and others, they are satisfied. When I think that if
+that cuirassier had only had the courage to let himself be killed like
+the rest I should still be happy at the gate of the Avonne, and that
+it was he that turned my life topsy-turvy, it just puts me beside
+myself."
+
+"They won't call out the troops for a Shopman who has set every one in
+the district against him," said Godain. "The fault's his own; he tried
+to ride over everybody here, and upset everything; and the government
+will just say to him, 'Hush up.'"
+
+"The government never says anything else; it can't, poor government!"
+said Fourchon, seized with a sudden tenderness for the government.
+"Yes, I pity it, that good government; it is very unlucky,--it hasn't
+a penny, like us; but that's very stupid of a government that makes
+the money itself, very stupid! Ah! if I were the government--"
+
+"But," cried Courtecuisse, "they tell me in Ville-aux-Fayes that
+Monsieur de Ronquerolles talked about our rights in the Assembly."
+
+"That's in Monsieur Rigou's newspaper," said Vaudoyer, who in his
+capacity of ex-field-keeper knew how to read and write; "I read it--"
+
+In spite of his vinous tenderness, old Fourchon, like many of the
+lower classes whose faculties are stimulated by drunkenness, was
+following, with an intelligent eye and a keen ear, this curious
+discussion which a variety of asides rendered still more curious.
+Suddenly, he stood up in the middle of the room.
+
+"Listen to the old one, he's drunk!" said Tonsard, "and when he is, he
+is twice as full of deviltry; he has his own and that of the wine--"
+
+"Spanish wine, and that trebles it!" cried Fourchon, laughing like a
+satyr. "My sons, don't butt your head straight at the thing,--you're
+too weak; go at it sideways. Lay low, play dead; the little woman is
+scared. I tell you, the thing'll come to an end before long; she'll
+leave the place, and if she does the Shopman will follow her, for
+she's his passion. That's your plan. Only, to make 'em go faster, my
+advice is to get rid of their counsellor, their support, our spy, our
+ape--"
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"The damned abbe, of course," said Tonsard; "that hunter after sins,
+who thinks the host is food enough for us."
+
+"That's true," cried Vaudoyer; "we were happy enough till he came. We
+ought to get rid of that eater of the good God,--he's the real enemy."
+
+"Finikin," added Fourchon, using a nickname which the abbe owed to his
+prim and rather puny appearance, "might be led into temptation and
+fall into the power of some sly girl, for he fasts so much. Then if we
+could catch him in the act and drum him up with a good charivari, the
+bishop would be obliged to send him elsewhere. It would please old
+Rigou devilish well. Now if your daughter, Courtecuisse, would leave
+Auxerre--she's a pretty girl, and if she'd take to piety, she might
+save us all. Hey! ran tan plan!--"
+
+"Why don't YOU do it?" said Godain to Catherine, in a low voice;
+"there'd be scuttles full of money to hush up the talk; and for the
+time being you'd be mistress here--"
+
+"Shall we glean, or shall we not glean? that's the point," said
+Bonnebault. "I don't care two straws for your abbe, not I; I belong to
+Conches, where we haven't a black-coat to poke up our consciences."
+
+"Look here," said Vaudoyer, "we had better go and ask Rigou, who knows
+the law, whether the Shopman can forbid gleaning, and he'll tell us if
+we've got the right of it. If the Shopman has the law on his side,
+well, then we must do as the old one says,--see about taking things
+sideways."
+
+"Blood will be spilt," said Nicolas, darkly, as he rose after drinking
+a whole bottle of wine, which Catherine drew for him in order to keep
+him silent. "If you'd only listen to me you'd down Michaud; but you
+are miserable weaklings,--nothing but poor trash!"
+
+"I'm not," said Bonnebault. "If you are all safe friends who'll keep
+your tongues between your teeth, I'll aim at the Shopman-- Hey! how
+I'd like to put a plum through his bottle; wouldn't it avenge me on
+those cursed officers?"
+
+"Tut! tut!" cried Jean-Louis Tonsard, who was supposed to be, more or
+less, Gaubertin's son, and who had just entered the tavern. This
+fellow, who was courting Rigou's pretty servant-girl, had succeeded
+his nominal father as clipper of hedges and shrubberies and other
+Tonsardial occupations. Going about among the well-to-do houses, he
+talked with masters and servants and picked up ideas which made him
+the man of the world of the family, the shrewd head. We shall
+presently see that in making love to Rigou's servant-girl, Jean-Louis
+deserved his reputation for shrewdness.
+
+"Well, what have you to say, prophet?" said the innkeeper to his son.
+
+"I say that you are playing into the hands of the rich folk," replied
+Jean-Louis. "Frighten the Aigues people to maintain your rights if you
+choose; but if you drive them out of the place and make them sell the
+estate, you are doing just what the bourgeois of the valley want, and
+it's against your own interest. If you help the bourgeois to divide
+the great estates among them, where's the national domain to be bought
+for nothing at the next Revolution? Wait till then, and you'll get
+your land without paying for it, as Rigou got his; whereas if you go
+and thrust this estate into the jaws of the rich folk of the valley,
+the rich folk will dribble it back to you impoverished and at twice
+the price they paid for it. You are working for their interests, I
+tell you; so does everybody who works for Rigou,--look at
+Courtecuisse."
+
+The policy contained in this allocution was too deep for the drunken
+heads of those present, who were all, except Courtecuisse, laying by
+their money to buy a slice of the Aigues cake. So they let Jean-Louis
+harangue, and continued, as in the Chamber of Deputies, their private
+confabs with one another.
+
+"Yes, that's so; you'll be Rigou's cats-paw!" cried Fourchon, who
+alone understood his grandson.
+
+Just then Langlume, the miller of Les Aigues, passed the tavern.
+Madame Tonsard hailed him.
+
+"Is it true," she said, "that gleaning is to be forbidden?"
+
+Langlume, a jovial white man, white with flour and dressed in grayish-
+white clothes, came up the steps and looked in. Instantly all the
+peasants became as sober as judges.
+
+"Well, my children, I am forced to answer yes, and no. None but the
+poor are to glean; but the measures they are going to take will turn
+out to your advantage."
+
+"How so?" asked Godain.
+
+"Why, they can prevent any but paupers from gleaning here," said the
+miller, winking in true Norman fashion; "but that doesn't prevent you
+from gleaning elsewhere,--unless all the mayors do as the Blangy mayor
+is doing."
+
+"Then it is true," said Tonsard, in a threatening voice.
+
+"As for me," said Bonnebault, putting his foraging-cap over one ear
+and making his hazel stick whiz in the air, "I'm off to Conches to
+warn the friends."
+
+And the Lovelace of the valley departed, whistling the tune of the
+martial song,--
+
+  "You who know the hussars of the Guard,
+  Don't you know the trombone of the regiment?"
+
+"I say, Marie! he's going a queer way to get to Conches, that friend
+of yours," cried old Mother Tonsard to her granddaughter.
+
+"He's after Aglae!" said Marie, who made one bound to the door. "I'll
+have to thrash her once for all, that baggage!" she cried, viciously.
+
+"Come, Vaudoyer," said Tonsard, "go and see Rigou, and then we shall
+know what to do; he's our oracle, and his spittle doesn't cost
+anything."
+
+"Another folly!" said Jean-Louis, in a low voice, "Rigou betrays
+everybody; Annette tells me so; she says he's more dangerous when he
+listens to you than other folks are when they bluster."
+
+"I advise you to be cautious," said Langlume. "The general has gone to
+the prefecture about your misdeeds, and Sibilet tells me he has sworn
+an oath to go to Paris and see the Chancellor of France and the King
+himself, and the whole pack of them if necessary, to get the better of
+his peasantry."
+
+"His peasantry!" shouted every one.
+
+"Ha, ha! so we don't belong to ourselves any longer?"
+
+As Tonsard asked the question, Vaudoyer left the house to see Rigou.
+
+Langlume, who had already gone out, turned on the door-step, and
+answered:--
+
+"Crowd of do-nothings! are you so rich that you think you are your own
+masters?"
+
+Though said with a laugh, the meaning contained in those words was
+understood by all present, as horses understand the cut of a whip.
+
+"Ran tan plan! masters indeed!" shouted old Fourchon. "I say, my lad,"
+he added to Nicolas, "after your performance this morning it's not my
+clarionet that you'll get between your thumb and four fingers!"
+
+"Don't plague him, or he'll make you throw up your wine by a punch in
+the stomach," said Catherine, roughly.
+
+
+
+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
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac
+
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