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!”