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.