Matthias André did not join the procession. He had been to mass in
the morning, for the Assumption was a day of obligation. And now
he sat smoking bad tobacco out of an old brown clay pipe, on the
seat before his door, facing due north, towards Bernay; there was
a corn-field on his right, cut off from the Isle of Swallows by
a rivulet of water--a field he had ploughed whilst his daughter
Gabrielle drove the horses, which he had sown with his own hands, and
which he had reaped. Gabrielle had bound the sheaves after him, and
now the shocks stood in goodly array, waiting to be garnered. They
had been waiting thus twelve days. The harvest was late this year,
owing to the cold spring. Much corn was down in the country, and
the tithe-cart of the monastery had been round to farm after farm,
and had come last to his. He did not dare to remove a sheaf till
the Abbey had taken its tenth; and after the monks came the revenue
officers, taking their twentieth. What the palmer-worm had left, the
locust devoured. Now came the feast-day, on which all work ceased, so
the good wheat remained a thirteenth day unstacked.
Sullen, with downcast eyes, sat the peasant without his coat, but in
his red velvetine waistcoat, drawing long whiffs from his pipe, and
blowing them leisurely through his nostrils.
Beside him sat a little wiry brown man, with coarse serge suit of
snuff-brown, face and hands, stockings and cap, to match. His eyes
were sharp and eager. This was Etienne Percenez, the colporteur.
‘You have not joined the procession, Matthias, my friend,’ said the
little man, filling a pipe.
‘For five and forty years I have supplicated God, our Lady, and the
Saints, to assist me in my poverty, and the answers to my prayers
have been doled out in such scant measure, that I have almost given
up prayer,’ answered André.
‘You must work as well as pray,’ quoth the little man, with his pipe
in his mouth.
‘Do I not work?’ asked the peasant-farmer, turning almost fiercely on
his friend; ‘I work from morning till night, and from the new year
to the new year. But what does that avail when the season is bad? A
hard winter, a late summer, and then fiery heat from June to August,
without a drop of rain. The grass is hardly worth mowing; the clover
is short and scanty, and the corn-crops are poor. When we thrash out
the wheat, we shall find the greater part of the ear is husk.’
‘Things may mend,’ said the colporteur; ‘they always reach their
worst before they right themselves. When we have the States-general,
why then we shall see, we shall see!’
Matthias shrugged his shoulders. ‘What did the Notables do for us
last year?’
‘The Notables are very different from the States-general. The
Notables were all chosen out of the nobility--one hundred and forty
oppressors met together, to decide how much greater oppression we
could be made to bear. But in the States-general, the oppressed will
have a voice, and can cry out.’
‘The Notables are summoned again.’
‘Yes, my friend, they are summoned by Necker, but not to consult
on the deficit, but to deliberate on the form of election to the
States-general, and on their composition.’
‘How great is the deficit?’
‘At the end of last year the expenditure surpassed the receipt by
one hundred and ten millions, and the deficit now amounts to sixteen
hundred and thirty millions. The exchequer cannot borrow money, for
Necker has discredited loans by publishing the state of the finances.
Do you think the Notables, the princes of blood-royal, the chiefs
of the nobility, the clergy and the magistracy, will pay the debt
out of their own pockets? No, no; they like to spend and not to pay.
Now, the king is going to call together the States-general. The
Notables pay! they saw only in Calonne’s scheme the spoliation of
the nobility and clergy, that is why they drove Calonne away, and
brought in Loménie de Brienne, the bishop, in his stead; they brought
a churchman into the ministry to bury the public credit, dead long
ago. De Brienne finds that there is no other resource but to take
possession of Calonne’s plans, and ask the Parliament of Paris to
consent to a vast loan. But the Parliament is made up of judges,
men grave and economical, and they are indignant at an impost on
their lands. Why should they be made to pay for Monsieur the Count
d’Artois’ fêtes, and the queen’s follies? Why consent to a debt ever
accumulating, and acquiesce in the ruin of France? Tell me that, my
friend Matthias. When the walls crack, we do not paste paper over
the rents to hide them--we dig down to the foundations, and we relay
them. Perhaps the Parliament of Paris thought this, my André, so they
appealed to the States-general. The States-general we shall have; and
then, Matthias, we, the oppressed, the tax-payers, the hungry--we
shall have a voice, and shall speak out; and, Matthias! we shall make
ourselves heard.’
‘Go on,’ said the farmer; ‘tell me the rest.’
‘The king declares that he will convoke the States-general.’
‘We shall speak out?’ asked André, hesitatingly.
‘Our own fault, if we do not.’
‘But they will punish us if we do.’
‘What, Matthias, punish all France! Remember, all France will speak.’
‘And we can tell the good king that the tax-gatherers, and the
excise, and the nobles, and the abbés, are crushing us? that they are
strangling us, that we are dying?’
‘Surely.’
‘And the tax-gatherers, and the excise, and the nobles, and the
abbés, cannot revenge themselves on us for saying that?’ André leaned
back and laughed. He had not laughed for many years, and his laugh
now was not that of gaiety.
‘A storm is rising,’ said Percenez, pointing over the hill.
‘Will the king listen to us?’
‘Yes, he will listen.’
‘But will he redress our wrong?’
‘We shall make him. He has put the means into our hands.’
The first roll of thunder was heard.
‘We shall be relieved of the taxes, the _gabelle_, the _corvée_?’
‘I do not say that; but the taxes will be levied on all alike.’
‘What! will the abbé and the noble pay six sous a livre for salt, and
pay the taille?’
‘Certainly, we shall make them pay. We pay, so must they.’
Again André leaned back and exploded into laughter, whilst from over
the hill the forked lightnings darted, and the thunder boomed.
The two men watched the approach of the tempest. The mutter of
the thunder was now unceasing, and the vault was illumined with
continuous flashes.
‘I must hasten home,’ said Etienne Percenez, ‘or my old dame will die
of fright at being alone in the storm.’
‘And I will go in,’ said André. But he did not go in at once; he
stood in his door. As Percenez crossed the foot-bridge, he heard his
friend bellow. Thinking he was calling, the little brown man turned
his head; he saw that André was laughing.
‘I cannot help it,’ roared the peasant; ‘to think of the nobles, the
intendants, and the abbés, paying taxes!’ and he roared again. Then
he signed to Percenez.
‘The storm is coming on.’
‘Very, very fast,’ cried the other, beginning to run.
Matthias went inside the house, and seated himself before the
fireless hearth, and listened to the wind growling round the eaves.
The rain splashed against the little window, glazed with round panes.
There was a leak in the roof, and through it the water dribbled upon
the floor of the bedroom overhead. It became so dark in the chamber,
that Matthias would have lit a candle, had not candles cost money.
The water swept down the window in waves; the house trembled at each
explosion of the thunder. Going to the door, the peasant saw by the
lightning no part of the landscape, for the rain falling in sheets
obscured everything. He shut the door; the flashes dazzled him. Then
he threw himself down on a bench, and put his hands to his ears, to
shut out the detonations of the thunder, and began to think about
Necker and the States-general, and the probability of the nobles and
clergy paying taxes, and this idea still presented itself to him in
such a novel and ludicrous light, that again he laughed aloud. All
at once an idea of another kind struck him, as his hand touched the
floor and encountered water. He leaped with a cry to his feet and
splashed over the floor. He rushed to the door. The darkness was
clearing, and by the returning light, as the rain began to cease,
and the surrounding hills to become visible, he observed every
lane converted into a torrent of brown fluid; the roads had become
watercourses, and were pouring turbid streams through the gates into
the fields and meadows. The Charentonne had risen, and was rising
every moment. The water was level with the bridge which conducted
into his corn-field, and that was above the surface of the ground,
for it rested on a small circumvallation raised to protect the
field from an overflow. For a moment he gazed at his wheat; then he
burst away through the sallows and willow-herbs which grew densely
together behind his cottage, drenching himself to the skin, and for
ever marring the crimson velvet waistcoat; and struggled through the
rising overflow and dripping bushes to the south point of his isle,
where usually extended a gravelly spit. That was now submerged; he
plunged forward, parting the boughs, and reached a break in the
coppice, whence he could look up the valley. At that moment the
sun shot from the watery rack overhead, and the bottom of the vale
answered with a glare. Its green meadows and yellow corn-fields were
covered with a sheet of glistening water, its surface streaked with
ripples, pouring relentlessly onwards, and lifting the water-line
higher as each broke. Clinging to a poplar, from which the drops
shivered about him, up to his middle in water, stood Matthias André,
stupefied with despair. Then slowly he turned, and worked his way
back.
The few minutes of his absence had wrought a change. His garden was
covered, and the flood had dissolved or overleaped the dyke of the
corn-field, and was flowing around his shocks of wheat.
Nothing could possibly be done for the preservation of his harvest.
He stationed himself on the bench at his door, and watched the
water rise, and upset his sheaves, and float them off. Some went
down the river, some congregated in an eddy, and spun about; others
accumulating behind them, wedged them together, and formed a raft of
straw.
‘Go!’ shouted he to his corn-sheaves; ‘sodden and spoiled, I care not
if ye remain. Go! now I must starve outright, and Gabrielle--she must
starve too.’
Gabrielle!
Instantly it occurred to him that she was at the church, and would
need protection and assistance in returning.
He went inside and put on his coat, took a strong pole in his hand,
and bent his steps towards the foot-bridge. It was not washed away,
but it was under water. He felt for it with the pole, found it, and
crossed cautiously. Then he took the road to La Couture. Many people
met him. Recovered from their alarm, their tongues were loosened, and
they were detailing their impressions of the storm to one another.
André accosted a neighbour, and asked him if he had seen Gabrielle.
He had not; but supposed she was behind;--many, he said, were still
in the churchyard, waiting for the flood to subside.
Some old women, who lived in a cottage only a hundred paces beyond
the stile across which André strode into the road from his islet, now
came towards him.
‘Neighbour Elizabeth, have you seen my child?’
‘No, Gaffer André.’
A little farther on he met a girl-friend of Gabrielle’s, in white,
with her wreath somewhat faded, and her candle extinguished.
‘Josephine! where is my little one?’
‘I do not know, father André; I have been looking for her amongst the
girls of our society, but I could not find her.’
‘Do you think she is still in the church?’
‘That may be, but I do not think it is likely; you know that the
lightning struck the spire.’
‘Was any one killed?’
‘No; but we were all dreadfully frightened.’
Matthias pushed on. He questioned all who passed, but could gain
no tidings of Gabrielle. Several, it is true, had seen her in the
procession; some had noticed her in the church; but none remembered
to have observed her after the fall of the lightning.
André was not, however, alarmed. He thought that possibly his
daughter was still in church, praying; probably she was with some
friend in a cottage at La Couture. Gabrielle had many acquaintances
in that little village, and nothing was more probable than that one
of them should have invited the girl home to rest, and take some
refreshment, till it was ascertained that the water had sufficiently
subsided to permit of her return to the Isle of Swallows.
When he reached La Couture, he went direct to the church. He was
shocked to see the havoc created there by the bursting of the
storm; workmen were already engaged in filling the graves that had
been ploughed up by the currents, and covering the coffins which had
been exposed; head-crosses lay prostrate and strewn about, and the
sites of some graves had completely disappeared. A knot of people
stood at the west end of the church, gazing at the ruin effected by
the lightning; the summit of the spire was cloven, a portion leaned
outward, the lead was curled up like a ram’s horn, and a strip of
the metal dissolved by the electric fluid exposed the wooden rafters
and framework of the spire. The stroke had then glanced to the apex
of the nave gable, thrown down the iron cross surmounting it, had
split the wall, shattered the glass, and then had fallen upon and
perforated the threshold.
Matthias André entered the church, and sought through its chapels for
his daughter. She was not there. No one was in the sacred building.
Then he entered the village, and visited one house after another. No
one had tidings to tell of Gabrielle. The father became anxious. He
enquired for the girl who had borne the banner of the Blessed Virgin.
He asked her about his daughter, who had stood near her, holding the
leading ribbon.
She had seen Gabrielle, of course she had, when they entered the
church; she sat near her in the aisle during vespers. When the
storm came on, Gabrielle seemed to be greatly alarmed; she must have
fainted when the lightning fell, because two gentlemen had carried
her out of church.
Whilst the girl spoke, she stood in the doorway of her cottage,
holding the trunk of a vine which was trellised over the front of the
house and a small open balcony, to which a flight of stairs outside
the dwelling gave access.
The girl was the sister of Jean Lebertre, curé of the church, and she
kept house for her brother. During the conversation, a priest stepped
out of the upper room that opened on to the balcony, and leaning his
elbows on the wooden rail, looked down on André.
‘What is the matter?’ he asked.
Matthias turned his face to the questioner. It was Lindet.
‘I cannot discover what has become of my daughter, Monsieur le Curé.
Pauline, here, asserts that she fainted in church at the great
thunder-clap, and that she was carried out by two gentlemen.’
In a moment, Lindet strode down the stairs, and said, looking fixedly
with his bright eyes on the girl:
‘Answer me, Pauline, who were those gentlemen?’
‘I do not know, monsieur.’
‘What were they like?’
‘Ma foi! I was so dazzled that I hardly know.’
‘Are you sure they were gentlemen?’
‘Oh, monsieur! of course they were. One had on a velvet coat.’
‘Of what colour?’
‘Reddish-brown, I think.’
‘And is that all you observed of him?’
‘He wore a sword.’
‘And the other?’
‘The other gentleman was quite old.’
‘Did you see the face of the first?’
‘I think so.’
‘And did you notice any peculiarity? Consider, Pauline.’
‘His eyes were strange. The sockets seemed inflamed.’
Lindet beat his hands together; André folded his arms doggedly, and
his chin sank on his breast, whilst a cloud settled on his brow.
‘That is enough,’ he said, in sullen tones; ‘I am going home.’
Lindet caught his arm.
‘Are you going home, man?’
‘Yes, I am tired. I have lost my crops, I have lost my daughter, and,
what is worst, I have spoilt my best waistcoat.’
‘What! will you not make further enquiries? Your daughter will be
ruined,’ said Lindet, vehemently.
‘Why make further enquiries? I know now where she is.’
‘And will you make no effort to recover her?’
‘Why should I? I can do nothing. The poor cannot resist the great.
The storm came on just now, and the lightning smote yon spire. Why
did you not make an effort to protect the spire? Because you were
powerless against the bolt of heaven. Well! that is why I make no
attempt to protect my child; what could I do to oppose the will of an
Intendant, a great man at Court, and very rich?’
‘The child will be ruined. Make an attempt to save her.’
André shook his head.
‘No attempt I could make would save her; no attempt I could make
would save my corn either. I shall go home and wipe my waistcoat;
perhaps I may save _that_ from utter ruin.’