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.”