don’t exterminate one of two of those fellows may I lose my name.”
“You!” said Tonsard, “you’d let them put the whole district in prison;
but I--if they dare to touch my old mother, there’s my gun and it never
misses.”
“Well,” said Laroche to Vaudoyer, “I tell you that if they make a single
prisoner at Conches one gendarme shall fall.”
“He has said it, old Laroche!” cried Courtecuisse.
“He has said it,” remarked Vaudoyer, “but he hasn’t done it, and he
won’t do it. What good would it do to get yourself guillotined for some
gendarme or other? No, if you kill, I say, kill Michaud.”
During this scene Catherine Tonsard stood sentinel at the door to
warn the drinkers to keep silent if any one passed. In spite of their
half-drunken legs they sprang rather than walked out of the tavern,
and their bellicose temper started them at a good pace on the road to
Conches, which led for over a mile along the park wall of Les Aigues.
Conches was a true Burgundian village, with one street, which was
crossed by the main road. The houses were built either of brick or of
cobblestones, and were squalid in aspect. Following the mail-road
from Ville-aux-Fayes, the village was seen from the rear and there
it presented rather a picturesque effect. Between the road and the
Ronquerolles woods, which continued those of Les Aigues and crowned
the heights, flowed a little river, and several houses, rather prettily
grouped, enlivened the scene. The church and the parsonage stood alone
and were seen from the park of Les Aigues, which came nearly up to
them. In front of the church was a square bordered by trees, where the
conspirators of the Grand-I-Vert saw the gendarmerie and hastened their
already hasty steps. Just then three men on horseback rode rapidly
out of the park of Les Aigues and the peasants at once recognized the
general, his groom, and Michaud the bailiff, who came at a gallop into
the square. Tonsard and his party arrived a minute or two after them.
The delinquents, men and women, had made no resistance, and were
standing between five of the Soulanges gendarmes and fifteen of those
from Ville-aux-Fayes. The whole village had assembled. The fathers,
mothers, and children of the prisoners were going and coming and
bringing them what they might want in prison. It was a curious scene,
that of a population one and all exasperated, but nearly all silent, as
though they had made up their minds to a course of action. The old
women and the young ones alone spoke. The children, boys and girls, were
perched on piles of wood and heaps of stones to get a better sight of
what was happening.
“They have chosen their time, those hussars of the guillotine,” said one
old woman; “they are making a fete of it.”
“Are you going to let ‘em carry of your man like that? How shall you
manage to live for three months?--the best of the year, too, when he
could earn so much.”
“It’s they who rob us,” replied the woman, looking at the gendarmes with
a threatening air.
“What do you mean by that, old woman?” said the sergeant. “If you insult
us it won’t take long to settle you.”
“I meant nothing,” said the old woman, in a humble and piteous tone.
“I heard you say something just now you may have cause to repent of.”
“Come, come, be calm, all of you,” said the mayor of Conches, who was
also the postmaster. “What the devil is the use of talking? These men,
as you know very well, are under orders and must obey.”
“That’s true; it’s the owner of Les Aigues who persecutes us--But
patience!”
Just then the general rode into the square and his arrival caused a few
groans which did not trouble him in the least. He rode straight up
to the lieutenant in command, and after saying a few words gave him
a paper; the officer then turned to his men and said: “Release your
prisoners; the general has obtained their pardon.”
General Montcornet was then speaking to the mayor; after a few moments’
conversation in a low tone, the latter, addressing the delinquents,
who expected to sleep in prison and were a good deal surprised to find
themselves free, said to them:--
“My friends, thank Monsieur le comte. You owe your release to him. He
went to Paris and obtained your pardon in honor of the anniversary of
the king’s restoration. I hope that in future you will conduct yourself
properly to a man who has behaved so well to you, and that you will in
future respect his property. Long live the King!”
The peasants shouted “Long live the King!” with enthusiasm, to avoid
shouting, “Hurrah for the Comte de Montcornet!”
The scene was a bit of policy arranged between the general, the prefect,
and the attorney-general; for they were all anxious, while showing
enough firmness to keep the local authorities up to their duty and awe
the country-people, to be as gentle as possible, fully realizing as
they did the difficulties of the question. In fact, if resistance had
occurred, the government would have been in a tight place. As Laroche
truly said, they could not guillotine or even convict a whole community.
The general invited the mayor of Conches, the lieutenant, and the
sergeant to breakfast. The conspirators of the Grand-I-Vert adjourned
to the tavern of Conches, where the delinquents spent in drink the money
their relations had given them to take to prison, sharing it with
the Blangy people, who were naturally part of the wedding,--the word
“wedding” being applied indiscriminately in Burgundy to all such
rejoicings. To drink, quarrel, fight, eat and go home drunk and
sick,--that is a wedding to these peasants.
The general, who had come by the park, took his guests back through the
forest that they might see for themselves the injury done to the timber,
and so judge of the importance of the question.
Just as Rigou and Soudry were on their way back to Blangy, the count and
countess, Emile Blondet, the lieutenant of gendarmerie, the sergeant,
and the mayor of Conches were finishing their breakfast in the splendid
dining-room where Bouret’s luxury had left the delightful traces already
described by Blondet in his letter to Nathan.
“It would be a terrible pity to abandon this beautiful home,” said
the lieutenant, who had never before been at Les Aigues, and who was
glancing over a glass of champagne at the circling nymphs that supported
the ceiling.
“We intend to defend it to the death,” said Blondet.
“If I say that,” continued the lieutenant, looking at his sergeant as
if to enjoin silence, “it is because the general’s enemies are not only
among the peasantry--”
The worthy man was quite moved by the excellence of the breakfast, the
magnificence of the silver service, the imperial luxury that surrounded
him, and Blondet’s clever talk excited him as much as the champagne he
had imbibed.
“Enemies! have I enemies?” said the general, surprised.
“He, so kind!” added the countess.
“But you are on bad terms with our mayor, Monsieur Gaubertin,” said
the lieutenant. “It would be wise, for the sake of the future, to be
reconciled with him.”
“With him!” cried the count. “Then you don’t know that he was my former
steward, and a swindler!”
“A swindler no longer,” said the lieutenant, “for he is mayor of
Ville-aux-Fayes.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed Blondet, “the lieutenant’s wit is keen; evidently a
mayor is essentially an honest man.”
The lieutenant, convinced by the count’s words that it was useless
to attempt to enlighten him, said no more on that subject, and the
conversation changed.
CHAPTER VI. THE FOREST AND THE HARVEST
The scene at Conches had, apparently, a good effect on the peasantry;
on the other hand, the count’s faithful keepers were more than ever
watchful that only dead wood should be gathered in the forest of Les
Aigues. But for the last twenty years the woods had been so thoroughly
cleared out that very little else than live wood was now there; and this
the peasantry set about killing, in preparation for winter, by a simple
process, the results of which could only be discovered in the course of
time. Tonsard’s mother went daily into the forest; the keepers saw her
enter; knew where she would come out; watched for her and made her open
her bundle, where, to be sure, were only fallen branches, dried chips,
and broken and withered twigs. The old woman would whine and complain at
the distance she had to go at her age to gather such a miserable bunch
of fagots. But she did not tell that she had been in the thickest part
of the wood and had removed the earth at the base of certain young
trees, round which she had then cut off a ring of bark, replacing the
earth, moss, and dead leaves just as they were before she touched them.
It was impossible that any one could discover this annular incision,
made, not like a cut, but more like the ripping or gnawing of animals or
those destructive insects called in different regions borers, or
turks, or white worms, which are the first stage of cockchafers. These
destructive pests are fond of the bark of trees; they get between the
bark and the sap-wood and eat their way round. If the tree is large
enough for the insect to pass into its second state (of larvae, in which
it remains dormant until its second metamorphose) before it has gone
round the trunk, the tree lives, because so long as even a small bit of
the sap-wood remains covered by the bark, the tree will still grow
and recover itself. To realize to what a degree entomology affects
agriculture, horticulture, and all earth products, we must know that
naturalists like Latreille, the Comte Dejean, Klugg of Berlin, Gene of
Turin, etc., find that the vast majority of all known insects live at
the sacrifice of vegetation; that the coleoptera (a catalogue of which
has lately been published by Monsieur Dejean) have twenty-seven thousand
species, and that, in spite of the most earnest research on the part of
entomologists of all countries, there is an enormous number of species
of whom they cannot trace the triple transformations which belong to
all insects; that there is, in short, not only a special insect to
every plant, but that all terrestrial products, however much they may
be manipulated by human industry, have their particular parasite. Thus
flax, after covering the human body and hanging the human being, after
roaming the world on the back of an army, becomes writing-paper; and
those who write or who read are familiar with the habits and morals
of an insect called the “paper-louse,” an insect of really marvellous
celerity and behavior; it undergoes its mysterious transformations in
a ream of white paper which you have carefully put away; you see
it gliding and frisking along in its shining robe, that looks like
isinglass or mica,--truly a little fish of another element.
The borer is the despair of the land-owner; he works underground;
no Sicilian vespers for him until he becomes a cockchafer! If the
populations only realized with what untold disasters they are threatened
in case they let the cockchafers and the caterpillars get the
upper hand, they would pay more attention than they do to municipal
regulations.
Holland came near perishing; its dikes were undermined by the teredo,
and science is unable to discover the insect from which that mollusk
derives, just as science still remains ignorant of the metamorphoses of
the cochineal. The ergot, or spur, of rye is apparently a population of
insects where the genius of science has been able, so far, to discover
only one slight movement. Thus, while awaiting the harvest and gleaning,
fifty old women imitated the borer at the feet of five or six hundred
trees which were fated to become skeletons and to put forth no more
leaves in the spring. They were carefully chosen in the least accessible
places, so that the surrounding branches concealed them.
Who conveyed the secret information by which this was done? No one.
Courtecuisse happened to complain in Tonsard’s tavern of having found a
tree wilting in his garden; it seemed he said, to have a disease, and he
suspected a borer; for he, Courtecuisse, knew what borers were, and if
they once circled a tree just below the ground, the tree died. Thereupon
he explained the process. The old women at once set to work at the
same destruction, with the mystery and cleverness of gnomes; and their
efforts were doubled by the rules now enforced by the mayor of Blangy
and necessarily followed by the mayors of the adjoining districts.
The great land-owners of the department applauded General de
Montcornet’s course; and the prefect in his private drawing-room
declared that if, instead of living in Paris, other land-owners would
come and live on their estates and follow such a course together, a
solution of the difficulty could be obtained; for certain measures,
added the prefect, ought to be taken, and taken in concert, modified by
benefactions and by an enlightened philanthropy, such as every one could
see actuated in General Montcornet.
The general and his wife, assisted by the abbe, tried the effects of
such benevolence. They studied the subject, and endeavored to show by
incontestable results to those who pillaged them that more money
could be made by legitimate toil. They supplied flax and paid for the
spinning; the countess had the thread woven into linen suitable
for towels, aprons, and coarse napkins for kitchen use, and for
underclothing for the very poor. The general began improvements which
needed many laborers, and he employed none but those in the adjoining
districts. Sibilet was in charge of the works and the Abbe Brossette
gave the countess lists of the most needy, and often brought them to her
himself. Madame de Montcornet attended to these matters personally in
the great antechamber which opened upon the portico. It was a beautiful
waiting-room, floored with squares of white and red marble, warmed by a
porcelain stove, and furnished with benches covered with red plush.
It was there that one morning, just before harvest, old Mother Tonsard
brought her granddaughter Catherine, who had to make, she said, a
dreadful confession,--dreadful for the honor of a poor but honest
family. While the old woman addressed the countess Catherine stood in
an attitude of conscious guilt. Then she related on her own account the
unfortunate “situation” in which she was placed, which she had confided
to none but her grandmother; for her mother, she knew, would turn her
out, and her father, an honorable man, might kill her. If she only had a
thousand francs she could be married to a poor laborer named Godain, who
_knew all_, and who loved her like a brother; he could buy a poor bit
of ground and build a cottage if she had that sum. It was very touching.
The countess promised the money; resolving to devote the price of some
fancy to this marriage. The happy marriages of Michaud and Groison
encouraged her. Besides, such a wedding would be a good example to
the people of the neighborhood and stimulate to virtuous conduct. The
marriage of Catherine Tonsard and Godain was accordingly arranged by
means of the countess’s thousand francs.
Another time a horrible old woman, Mother Bonnebault, who lived in a hut
between the gate of Conches and the village, brought back a great bundle
of skeins of linen thread.
“Madame la comtesse has done wonders,” said the abbe, full of hope as to
the moral progress of his savages. “That old woman did immense damage to
your woods, but now she has no time for it; she stays at home and spins
from morning till night; her time is all taken up and well paid for.”
Peace reigned everywhere. Groison made very satisfactory reports;
depredations seemed to have ceased, and it is even possible that the
state of the neighborhood and the feeling of the inhabitants might
really have changed if it had not been for the revengeful eagerness
of Gaubertin, the cabals of the leading society of Soulanges, and the
intrigues of Rigou, who one and all, with “the affair” in view, blew the
embers of hatred and crime in the hearts of the peasantry of the valley
des Aigues.
The keepers still complained of finding a great many branches cut with
shears in the deeper parts of the wood and left to dry, evidently as
a provision for winter. They watched for the delinquents without ever
being able to catch them. The count, assisted by Groison, had given
certificates of pauperism to only thirty or forty of the real poor of
the district; but the other two mayors had been less strict. The more
clement the count showed himself in the affair at Conches the more
determined he was to enforce the laws about gleaning, which had now
degenerated into theft. He did not interfere with the management of
three of his farms which were leased to tenants, nor with those whose
tenants worked for his profit, of which he had a number; but he managed
six farms himself, each of about two hundred acres, and he now published
a notice that it was forbidden, under pain of being arrested and made
to pay the fine imposed by the courts, to enter those fields before
the crop was carried away. The order concerned only his own immediate
property. Rigou, who knew the country well, had let his farm-lands in
portions and on short leases to men who knew how to get in their own
crops, and who paid him in grain; therefore gleaning did not affect
him. The other proprietors were peasants, and no nefarious gleaning was
attempted on their land.
When the harvest began the count went himself to Michaud to see how
things were going on. Groison, who advised him to do this, was to
be present himself at the gleaning of each particular field. The
inhabitants of cities can have no idea what gleaning is to the
inhabitants of the country; the passion of these sons of the soil for
it seems inexplicable; there are women who will give up well-paid
employments to glean. The wheat they pick up seems to them sweeter than
any other; and the provision they thus make for their chief and most
substantial food has to them an extraordinary attraction. Mothers take
their babes and their little girls and boys; the feeblest old men drag
themselves into the wheat-fields; and even those who own property are
paupers for the nonce. All gleaners appear in rags.
The count and Michaud were present on horseback when the first tattered
batch entered the first fields from which the wheat had been carried. It
was ten o’clock in the morning. August had been a hot month, the sky was
cloudless, blue as a periwinkle; the earth was baked, the wheat flamed,
the harvestmen worked with their faces scorched by the reflection of the
sun-rays on the hard and arid earth. All were silent, their shirts wet
with perspiration; while from time to time, they slaked their thirst
with water from round, earthenware jugs, furnished with two handles and
a mouth-piece stoppered with a willow stick.
At the father end of the stubble-field stood the carts which contained
the sheaves, and near them a group of at least a hundred beings who far
exceeded the hideous conceptions of Murillo and Teniers, the boldest
painters of such scenes, or of Callot, that poet of the fantastic in
poverty. The pictured bronze legs, the bare heads, the ragged garments
so curiously faded, so damp with grease, so darned and spotted and
discolored, in short, the painters’ ideal of the material of abject
poverty was far surpassed by this scene; while the expression on those
faces, greedy, anxious, doltish, idiotic, savage, showed the everlasting
advantage which nature possesses over art by its comparison with the
immortal compositions of those princes of color. There were old women
with necks like turkeys, and hairless, scarlet eyelids, who stretched
their heads forward like setters before a partridge; there were
children, silent as soldiers under arms, little girls who stamped like
animals waiting for their food; the natures of childhood and old age
were crushed beneath the fierceness of a savage greed,--greed for the
property of others now their own by long abuse. All eyes were savage,
all gestures menacing; but every one kept silence in presence of the
count, the field-keeper, and the bailiff. At this moment all classes
were represented,--the great land-owners, the farmers, the working men,
the paupers; the social question was defined to the eye; hunger had
convoked the actors in the scene. The sun threw into relief the hard and
hollow features of those faces; it burned the bare feet dusty with the
soil; children were present with no clothing but a torn blouse, their
blond hair tangled with straw and chips; some women brought their babes
just able to walk, and left them rolling in the furrows.
The gloomy scene was harrowing to the old soldier, whose heart was
kind, and he said to Michaud: “It pains me to see it. One must know the
importance of these measures to be able to insist upon them.”
“If every land-owner followed your example, lived on his property, and
did the good that you and yours are doing, general, there would be,
I won’t say no poor, for they are always with us, but no poor man who
could not live by his labor.”
“The mayors of Conches, Cerneux, and Soulanges have sent us all their
paupers,” said Groison, who had now looked at the certificates; “they
had no right to do so.”
“No, but our people will go to their districts,” said the general. “For
the time being we have done enough by preventing the gleaning before
the sheaves were taken away; we had better go step by step,” he added,
turning to leave the field.
“Did you hear him?” said Mother Tonsard to the old Bonnebault woman,
for the general’s last words were said in a rather louder tone than the
rest, and reached the ears of the two old women who were posted in the
road which led beside the field.
“Yes, yes! we haven’t got to the end yet,--a tooth to-day and to-morrow
an ear; if they could find a sauce for our livers they’d eat ‘em as they
do a calf’s!” said old Bonnebault, whose threatening face was turned in
profile to the general as he passed her, though in the twinkling of
an eye she changed its expression to one of hypocritical softness and
submission as she hastened to make him a profound curtsey.
“So you are gleaning, are you, though my wife helps you to earn so much
money?”
“Hey! my dear gentleman, may God preserve you in good health! but, don’t
you see, my grandson squanders all I earn, and I’m forced to scratch
up a little wheat to get bread in the winter,--yes, yes, I glean just a
bit; it all helps.”
The gleaning proved of little profit to the gleaners. The farmers and
tenant-farmers, finding themselves backed up, took care that their wheat
was well reaped, and superintended the making of the sheaves and their
safe removal, so that little or none of the pillage of former years
could take place.
Accustomed to get a good proportion of wheat in their gleaning, the
false as well as the true poor, forgetting the count’s pardon at
Conches, now felt a deep but silent anger against him, which was
aggravated by the Tonsards, Courtecuisse, Bonnebault, Laroche, Vaudoyer,
Godain, and their adherents. Matters went worse still after the vintage;
for the gathering of the refuse grape was not allowed until Sibilet had
examined the vines with extreme care. This last restriction exasperated
these sons of the soil to the highest pitch; but when so great a social
distance separates the angered class from the threatened class, words
and threats are lost; nothing comes to the surface or is perceived but
facts; meantime the malcontents work underground like moles.
The fair of Soulanges took place as usual quite peacefully, except
for certain jarrings between the leading society and the second-class
society of Soulanges, brought about by the despotism of the queen, who
could not tolerate the empire founded and established over the heart of
the brilliant Lupin by the beautiful Euphemie Plissoud, for she herself
laid permanent claim to his fickle fervors.
The count and countess did not appear at the fair nor at the Tivoli
fete; and that, again, was counted a wrong by the Soudrys, the
Gaubertins, and their adherents; it was pride, it was disdain, said the
Soudry salon. During this time the countess was filling the void caused
by Emile’s return to Paris with the immense interest and pleasure all
fine souls take in the good they are doing, or think they do; and the
count, for his part, applied himself no less zealously to changes and
ameliorations in the management of his estate, which he expected and
believed would modify and benefit the condition of the people and hence
their characters. Madame de Montcornet, assisted by the advice and
experience of the Abbe Brossette, came, little by little, to have a
thorough and statistical knowledge of all the poor families of the
district, their respective condition, their wants, their means of
subsistence, and the sort of help she must give to each to obtain work
so as not to make them lazy or idle.
The countess had placed Genevieve Niseron, La Pechina, in a convent at
Auxerre, under pretext of having her taught to sew that she might employ
her in her own house, but really to save her from the shameful
attempts of Nicolas Tonsard, whom Rigou had managed to save from the
conscription. The countess also believed that a religious education, the
cloister, and monastic supervision, would subdue the ardent passions of
the precocious little girl, whose Montenegrin blood seemed to her like a
threatening flame which might one day set fire to the domestic happiness
of her faithful Olympe.
So all was at peace at the chateau des Aigues. The count, misled by
Sibilet, reassured by Michaud, congratulated himself on his firmness,
and thanked his wife for having contributed by her benevolence to the
immense comfort of their tranquillity. The question of the sale of his
timber was laid aside till he should go to Paris and arrange with the
dealers. He had not the slightest notion of how to do business, and
he was in total ignorance of the power wielded by Gaubertin over the
current of the Yonne,--the main line of conveyance which supplied the
timber of the Paris market.
CHAPTER VII. THE GREYHOUND
Towards the middle of September Emile Blondet, who had gone to Paris to
publish a book, returned to refresh himself at Les Aigues and to think
over the work he was planning for the winter. At Les Aigues, the loving
and sincere qualities which succeed adolescence in a young man’s soul
reappeared in the used-up journalist.
“What a fine soul!” was the comment of the count and the countess when
they spoke of him.
Men who are accustomed to move among the abysses of social nature, to
understand all and to repress nothing, make themselves an oasis in the
heart, where they forget their perversities and those of others; they
become within that narrow and sacred circle,--saints; there, they
possess the delicacy of women, they give themselves up to a momentary
realization of their ideal, they become angelic for some one being who
adores them, and they are not playing comedy; they join their soul to
innocence, so to speak; they feel the need to brush off the mud, to
heal their sores, to bathe their wounds. At Les Aigues Emile Blondet
was without bitterness, without sarcasm, almost without wit; he made no
epigrams, he was gentle as a lamb, and platonically tender.
“He is such a good young fellow that I miss him terribly when he is not
here,” said the general. “I do wish he could make a fortune and not lead
that Paris life of his.”
Never did the glorious landscape and park of Les Aigues seem as
luxuriantly beautiful as it did just then. The first autumn days were
beginning, when the earth, languid from her procreations and delivered
of her products, exhales the delightful odors of vegetation. At this
time the woods, especially, are delicious; they begin to take the russet
warmth of Sienna earth, and the green-bronze tones which form the lovely
tapestry beneath which they hide from the cold of winter.
Nature, having shown herself in springtime jaunty and joyous as a
brunette glowing with hope, becomes in autumn sad and gentle as a blonde
full of pensive memories; the turf yellows, the last flowers unfold
their pale corollas, the white-eyed daisies are fewer in the grass, only
their crimson calices are seen. Yellows abound; the shady places are
lighter for lack of leafage, but darker in tone; the sun, already
oblique, slides its furtive orange rays athwart them, leaving long
luminous traces which rapidly disappear, like the train of a woman’s
gown as she bids adieu.
On the morning of the second day after his arrival, Emile was at a
window of his bedroom, which opened upon a terrace with a balustrade
from which a noble view could be seen. This balcony ran the whole length
of the apartments of the countess, on the side of the chateau towards
the forests and the Blangy landscape. The pond, which would have been
called a lake were Les Aigues nearer Paris, was partly in view, so was
the long canal; the Silver-spring, coming from across the pavilion of
the Rendezvous, crossed the lawn with its sheeny ribbon, reflecting the
yellow sand.
Beyond the park, between the village and the walls, lay the cultivated
parts of Blangy,--meadows where the cows were grazing, small properties
surrounded by hedges, filled with fruit of all kinds, nut and apple
trees. By way of frame, the heights on which the noble forest-trees were
ranged, tier above tier, closed in the scene. The countess had come
out in her slippers to look at the flowers in her balcony, which were
sending up their morning fragrance; she wore a cambric dressing-gown,
beneath which the rosy tints of her white shoulders could be seen; a
coquettish little cap was placed in a bewitching manner on her hair,
which escaped it recklessly; her little feet showed their warm flesh
color through the transparent stockings; the cambric gown, unconfined at
the waist, floated open as the breeze took it, and showed an embroidered
petticoat.
“Oh! are you there?” she said.
“Yes.”
“What are you looking at?”
“A pretty question! You have torn me from the contemplation of Nature.
Tell me, countess, will you go for a walk in the woods this morning
before breakfast?”
“What an idea! You know I have a horror of walking.”
“We will only walk a little way; I’ll drive you in the tilbury and take
Joseph to hold the horses. You have never once set foot in your forest;
and I have just noticed something very curious, a phenomenon; there are
spots where the tree-tops are the color of Florentine bronze, the leaves
are dried--”
“Well, I’ll dress.”
“Oh, if you do, we can’t get off for two hours. Take a shawl, put on a
bonnet, and boots; that’s all you want. I shall tell them to harness.”
“You always make me do what you want; I’ll be ready in a minute.”
“General,” said Blondet, waking the count, who grumbled and turned over,
like a man who wants his morning sleep. “We are going for a drive; won’t
you come?”
A quarter of an hour later the tilbury was slowly rolling along the park
avenue, followed by a liveried groom on horseback.
The morning was a September morning. The dark blue of the sky burst
forth here and there from the gray of the clouds, which seemed the sky
itself, the ether seeming to be the accessory; long lines of ultramarine
lay upon the horizon, but in strata, which alternated with other lines
like sand-bars; these tones changed and grew green at the level of the
forests. The earth beneath this overhanging mantle was moistly warm,
like a woman when she rises; it exhaled sweet, luscious odors, which
yet were wild, not civilized,--the scent of cultivation was added to the
scents of the woods. Just then the Angelus was ringing at Blangy, and
the sounds of the bell, mingling with the wild concert of the forest,
gave harmony to the silence. Here and there were rising vapors, white,
diaphanous.
Seeing these lovely preparations of Nature, the fancy had seized Olympe
Michaud to accompany her husband, who had to give an order to a keeper
whose house was not far off. The Soulanges doctor advised her to walk
as long as she could do so without fatigue; she was afraid of the midday
heat and went out only in the early morning or evening. Michaud now
took her with him, and they were followed by the dog he loved best,--a
handsome greyhound, mouse-colored with white spots, greedy, like all
greyhounds, and as full of vices as most animals who know they are loved
and petted.
So, then the tilbury reached the pavilion of the Rendezvous, the
countess, who stopped to ask how Madame Michaud felt, was told she had
gone into the forest with her husband.
“Such weather inspires everybody,” said Blondet, turning his horse at
hazard into one of the six avenues of the forest; “Joseph, you know the
woods, don’t you?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
And away they went. The avenue they took happened to be one of the
most delightful in the forest; it soon turned and grew narrower, and
presently became a winding way, on which the sunshine flickered through
rifts in the leafy roof, and where the breeze brought odors of lavender,
and thyme, and the wild mint, and that of falling leaves, which sighed
as they fell. Dew-drops on the trees and on the grass were scattered
like seeds by the passing of the light carriage; the occupants as
they rolled along caught glimpses of the mysterious visions of the
woods,--those cool depths, where the verdure is moist and dark, where
the light softens as it fades; those white-birch glades o’ertopped
by some centennial tree, the Hercules of the forest; those glorious
assemblages of knotted, mossy trunks, whitened and furrowed, and the
banks of delicate wild plants and fragile flowers which grow between a
woodland road and the forest. The brooks sang. Truly there is a nameless
pleasure in driving a woman along the ups and downs of a slippery way
carpeted with moss, where she pretends to be afraid or really is so, and
you are conscious that she is drawing closer to you, letting you feel,
voluntarily or involuntarily, the cool moisture of her arm, the weight
of her round, white shoulder, though she merely smiles when told that
she hinders you in driving. The horse seems to know the secret of these
interruptions, and he looks about him from right to left.
It was a new sight to the countess; this nature so vigorous in its
effects, so little seen and yet so grand, threw her into a languid
revery; she leaned back in the tilbury and yielded herself up to the
pleasure of being there with Emile; her eyes were charmed, her heart
spoke, she answered to the inward voice that harmonized with hers. He,
too, glanced at her furtively; he enjoyed that dreamy meditation, while
the ribbons of the bonnet floated on the morning breeze with the silky
curls of the golden hair. In consequence of going they knew not where,
they presently came to a locked gate, of which they had not the key.
Joseph was called up, but neither had he a key.
“Never mind, let us walk; Joseph can take care of the tilbury; we shall
easily find it again.”
Emile and the countess plunged into the forest, and soon reached a small
interior cleared space, such as is often met with in the woods. Twenty
years earlier the charcoal-burners had made it their kiln, and the place
still remained open, quite a large circumference having been burned
over. But during those twenty years Nature had made herself a garden of
flowers, a blooming “parterre” for her own enjoyment, just as an artist
gives himself the delight of painting a picture for his own happiness.
The enchanting spot was surrounded by fine trees, whose tops hung over
like vast fringes and made a dais above this flowery couch where slept
the goddess. The charcoal-burners had followed a path to a pond, always
full of water. The path is there still; it invites you to step into it
by a turn full of mystery; then suddenly it stops short and you come
upon a bank where a thousand roots run down to the water and make a sort
of canvas in the air. This hidden pond has a narrow grassy edge, where a
few willows and poplars lend their fickle shade to a bank of turf which
some lazy or pensive charcoal-burner must have made for his enjoyment.
The frogs hop about, the teal bathe in the pond, the water-fowl come and
go, a hare starts; you are the master of this delicious bath, decorated
with iris and bulrushes. Above your head the trees take many attitudes;
here the trunks twine down like boa-constrictors, there the beeches
stand erect as a Greek column. The snails and the slugs move peacefully
about. A tench shows its gills, a squirrel looks at you; and at last,
after Emile and the countess, tired with her walk, were seated, a bird,
but I know not what bird it was, sang its autumn song, its farewell
song, to which the other songsters listened,--a song welcome to love,
and heard by every organ of the being.
“What silence!” said the countess, with emotion and in a whisper, as if
not to trouble this deep peace.
They looked at the green patches on the water,--worlds where life was
organizing; they pointed to the lizard playing in the sun and escaping
at their approach,--behavior which has won him the title of “the friend
of man.” “Proving, too, how well he knows him,” said Emile. They watched
the frogs, who, less distrustful, returned to the surface of the pond,
winking their carbuncle eyes as they sat upon the water-cresses. The
sweet and simple poetry of Nature permeated these two souls surfeited
with the conventional things of life, and filled them with contemplative
emotion. Suddenly Blondet shuddered. Turning to the countess he said,--
“Did you hear that?”
“What?” she asked.
“A curious noise.”
“Ah, you literary men who live in your studies and know nothing of the
country! that is only a woodpecker tapping a tree. I dare say you don’t
even know the most curious fact in the history of that bird. As soon as
he has given his tap, and he gives millions to pierce an oak, he flies
behind the tree to see if he is yet through it; and he does this every
instant.”
“The noise I heard, dear instructress of natural history, was not a
noise made by an animal; there was evidence of mind in it, and that
proclaims a man.”
The countess was seized with panic, and she darted back through the wild
flower-garden, seeking the path by which to leave the forest.
“What is the matter?” cried Blondet, rushing after her.
“I thought I saw eyes,” she said, when they regained the path through
which they had reached the charcoal-burner’s open.
Just then they heard the low death-rattle of a creature whose throat
was suddenly cut, and the countess, with her fears redoubled, fled
so quickly that Blondet could scarcely follow her. She ran like a
will-o’-the-wisp, and did not listen to Blondet who called to her, “You
are mistaken.” On she ran, and Emile with her, till they suddenly came
upon Michaud and his wife, who were walking along arm-in-arm. Emile was
panting and the countess out of breath, and it was some time before they
could speak; then they explained. Michaud joined Blondet in laughing at
the countess’s terror; then the bailiff showed the two wanderers the way
to find the tilbury. When they reached the gate Madame Michaud called,
“Prince!”
“Prince! Prince!” called the bailiff; then he whistled,--but no
greyhound.
Emile mentioned the curious noise that began their adventure.
“My wife heard that noise,” said Michaud, “and I laughed at her.”
“They have killed Prince!” exclaimed the countess. “I am sure of it;
they killed him by cutting his throat at one blow. What I heard was the
groan of a dying animal.”
“The devil!” cried Michaud; “the matter must be cleared up.”
Emile and the bailiff left the two ladies with Joseph and the horses,
and returned to the wild garden of the open. They went down the bank to
the pond; looked everywhere along the slope, but found no clue. Blondet
jumped back first, and as he did so he saw, in a thicket which stood
on higher ground, one of those trees he had noticed in the morning with
withered heads. He showed it to Michaud, and proposed to go to it. The
two sprang forward in a straight line across the forest, avoiding the
trunks and going round the matted tangles of brier and holly until they
found the tree.
“It is a fine elm,” said Michaud, “but there’s a worm in it,--a worm
which gnaws round the bark close to the roots.”
He stopped and took up a bit of the bark, saying: “See how they work.”
“You have a great many worms in this forest,” said Blondet.
Just then Michaud noticed a red spot; a moment more and he saw the head
of his greyhound. He sighed.
“The scoundrels!” he said. “Madame was right.”
Michaud and Blondet examined the body and found, just as the countess
had said, that some one had cut the greyhound’s throat. To prevent his
barking he had been decoyed with a bit of meat, which was still between
his tongue and his palate.
“Poor brute; he died of self-indulgence.”
“Like all princes,” said Blondet.
“Some one, whoever it is, has just gone, fearing that we might catch him
or her,” said Michaud. “A serious offence has been committed. But for
all that, I see no branches about and no lopped trees.”
Blondet and the bailiff began a cautious search, looking at each spot
where they set their feet before setting them. Presently Blondet pointed
to a tree beneath which the grass was flattened down and two hollows
made.
“Some one knelt there, and it must have been a woman, for a man would
not have left such a quantity of flattened grass around the impression
of his two knees; yes, see! that is the outline of a petticoat.”
The bailiff, after examining the base of the tree, found the beginning
of a hole beneath the bark; but he did not find the worm with the tough
skin, shiny and squamous, covered with brown specks, ending in a tail
not unlike that of a cockchafer, and having also the latter’s head,
antennae, and the two vigorous hooks or shears with which the creature
cuts into the wood.
“My dear fellow,” said Blondet, “now I understand the enormous number
of _dead_ trees that I noticed this morning from the terrace of
the chateau, and which brought me here to find out the cause of
the phenomenon. Worms are at work; but they are no other than your
peasants.”
The bailiff gave vent to an oath and rushed off, followed by Blondet, to
rejoin the countess, whom he requested to take his wife home with her.
Then he jumped on Joseph’s horse, leaving the man to return on foot, and
disappeared with great rapidity to cut off the retreat of the woman who
had killed his dog, hoping to catch her with the bloody bill-hook in her
hand and the tool used to make the incisions in the bark of the tree.
“Let us go and tell the general at once, before he breakfasts,” cried
the countess; “he might die of anger.”
“I’ll prepare him,” said Blondet.
“They have killed the dog,” said Olympe, in tears.
“You loved the poor greyhound, dear, enough to weep for him?” said the
countess.
“I think of Prince as a warning; I fear some danger to my husband.”
“How they have ruined this beautiful morning for us,” said the countess,
with an adorable little pout.
“How they have ruined the country,” said Olympe, gravely.
They met the general near the chateau.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“You shall know in a minute,” said Blondet, mysteriously, as he helped
the countess and Madame Michaud to alight. A moment more and the two
gentlemen were alone on the terrace of the apartments.
“You have plenty of moral strength, general; you won’t put yourself in a
passion, will you?”
“No,” said the general; “but come to the point or I shall think you are
making fun of me.”
“Do you see those trees with dead leaves?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see those others that are wilting?”
“Yes.”
“Well, every one of them has been killed by the peasants you think you
have won over by your benefits.”
And Blondet related the events of the morning.
The general was so pale that Blondet was frightened.
“Come, curse, swear, be furious! your self-control may hurt you more
than anger!”
“I’ll go and smoke,” said the general, turning toward the kiosk.
During breakfast Michaud came in; he had found no one. Sibilet, whom the
count had sent for, came also.
“Monsieur Sibilet, and you, Monsieur Michaud, are to make it known,
cautiously, that I will pay a thousand francs to whoever will arrest _in
the act_ the person or persons who are killing my trees; they must also
discover the instrument with which the work is done, and where it was
bought. I have settled upon a plan.”
“Those people never betray one another,” said Sibilet, “if the crime
done is for their benefit and premeditated. There is no denying that
this diabolical business has been planned, carefully planned and
contrived.”
“Yes, but a thousand francs means a couple of acres of land.”
“We can try,” said Sibilet; “fifteen hundred francs might buy you a
traitor, especially if you promise secrecy.”
“Very good; but let us act as if we suspected nothing, I especially; if
not, we shall be the victims of some collusion; one has to be as wary
with these brigands as with the enemy in war.”
“But the enemy is here,” said Blondet.
Sibilet threw him the furtive glance of a man who understood the meaning
of the words, and then he withdrew.
“I don’t like your Sibilet,” said Blondet, when he had seen the steward
leave the house. “That man is playing false.”
“Up to this time he has done nothing I could complain of,” said the
general.
Blondet went off to write letters. He had lost the careless gayety of
his first arrival, and was now uneasy and preoccupied; but he had no
vague presentiments like those of Madame Michaud; he was, rather, in
full expectation of certain foreseen misfortunes. He said to himself,
“This affair will come to some bad end; and if the general does not
take decisive action and will not abandon a battle-field where he is
overwhelmed by numbers there must be a catastrophe; and who knows who
will come out safe and sound,--perhaps neither he nor his wife. Good
God! that adorable little creature! so devoted, so perfect! how can he
expose her thus! He thinks he loves her! Well, I’ll share their danger,
and if I can’t save them I’ll suffer with them.”
CHAPTER VIII. RURAL VIRTUE
That night Marie Tonsard was stationed on the road to Soulanges, sitting
on the rail of a culvert waiting for Bonnebault, who had spent the day,
as usual, at the Cafe de la Paix. She heard him coming at some distance,
and his step told her that he was drunk, and she knew also that he had
lost money, for he always sang if he won.
“Is that you, Bonnebault?”
“Yes, my girl.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I owe twenty-five francs, and they may wring my neck twenty-five times
before I can pay them.”
“Well, I know how you can get five hundred,” she said in his ear.
“Oh! by killing a man; but I prefer to live.”
“Hold your tongue. Vaudoyer will give us five hundred francs if you will
let him catch your mother at a tree.”
“I’d rather kill a man than sell my mother. There’s your old
grandmother; why don’t you sell her?”
“If I tried to, my father would get angry and stop the trick.”
“That’s true. Well, anyhow, my mother sha’n’t go to prison, poor old
thing! She cooks my food and keeps me in clothes, I’m sure I don’t know
how. Go to prison,--and through me! I shouldn’t have any bowels within
me; no, no! And for fear any one else should sell her, I’ll tell her
this very night not to kill any more trees.”
“Well, my father may say and do what he likes, but I shall tell him
there are five hundred francs to be had, and perhaps he’ll ask my
grandmother if she’ll earn them. They’ll never put an old woman
seventy-eight years of age in prison,--though, to be sure, she’d be
better off there than in her garret.”
“Five hundred francs! well, yes; I’ll speak to my mother,” said
Bonnebault, “and if it suits her to give ‘em to me, I’ll let her have
part to take to prison. She could knit, and amuse herself; and she’d
be well fed and lodged, and have less trouble than she has at Conches.
Well, to-morrow, my girl, I’ll see you about it; I haven’t time to stop
now.”
The next morning at daybreak Bonnebault and his old mother knocked at
the door of the Grand-I-Vert. Mother Tonsard was the only person up.
“Marie!” called Bonnebault, “that matter is settled.”
“You mean about the trees?” said Mother Tonsard; “yes, it is all
settled; I’ve taken it.”
“Nonsense!” cried Mother Bonnebault, “my son has got the promise of an
acre of land from Monsieur Rigou--”
The two old women squabbled as to which of them should be sold by her
children. The noise of the quarrel woke up the household. Tonsard and
Bonnebault took sides for their respective mothers.
“Pull straws,” suggested Tonsard’s wife.
The short straw gave it in favor of the tavern.
Three days later, in the forest of Ville-aux-Fayes at daybreak, the
gendarmes arrested old Mother Tonsard caught “in flagrante delicto” by
the bailiff, his assistants, and the field-keeper, with a rusty file
which served to tear the tree, and a chisel, used by the delinquent to
scoop round the bark just as the insect bores its way. The indictment
stated that sixty trees thus destroyed were found within a radius of
five hundred feet. The old woman was sent to Auxerre, the case coming
under the jurisdiction of the assize-court.
Michaud could not refrain from saying when he discovered Mother Tonsard
at the foot of the tree: “These are the persons on whom the general and
Madame la comtesse have showered benefits! Faith, if Madame would only
listen to me, she wouldn’t give that dowry to the Tonsard girl, who is
more worthless than her grandmother.”
The old woman raised her gray eyes and darted a venomous look at
Michaud. When the count learned who the guilty person was, he forbade
his wife to give the money to Catherine Tonsard.
“Monsieur le comte is perfectly right,” said Sibilet. “I know that
Godain bought that land three days before Catherine came to speak to
Madame. She is quite capable, that girl, of pretending she is with
child, to get the money; very likely Godain has had nothing to do with
it.”
“What a community!” said Blondet; “the scoundrels of Paris are saints by
comparison.”
“Ah, monsieur,” said Sibilet, “self-interest makes people guilty of
horrors everywhere. Do you know who betrayed the old woman?”
“No.”
“Her granddaughter Marie; she was jealous of her sister’s marriage, and
to get the money for her own--”
“It is awful!” said the count. “Why! they’d murder!”
“Oh yes,” said Sibilet, “for a very small sum. They care so little
for life, those people; they hate to have to work all their lives. Ah
monsieur, queer things happen in country places, as queer as those of
Paris,--but you will never believe it.”
“Let us be kind and benevolent,” said the countess.
The evening after the arrest Bonnebault came to the tavern of the
Grand-I-Vert, where all the Tonsard family were in great jubilation.
“Oh yes, yes!” said he, “make the most of your rejoicing; but I’ve just
heard from Vaudoyer that the countess, to punish you, withdraws the
thousand francs promised to Godain; her husband won’t let her give
them.”
“It’s that villain of a Michaud who has put him up to it,” said Tonsard.
“My mother heard him say he would; she told me at Ville-aux-Fayes where
I went to carry her some money and her clothes. Well; let that countess
keep her money! our five hundred francs shall help Godain buy the land;
and we’ll revenge ourselves for this thing. Ha! Michaud meddles with our
private matters, does he? it will bring him more harm than good. What
business is it of his, I’d like to know? let him keep to the woods! It’s
he who is at the bottom of all this trouble--he found the clue that day
my mother cut the throat of his dog. Suppose I were to meddle in the
affairs of the chateau? Suppose I were to tell the general that his wife
is off walking in the woods before he is up in the morning, with a young
man.”
“The general, the general!” sneered Courtecuisse; “they can do what they
like with him. But it’s Michaud who stirs him up, the mischief-maker! a
fellow who don’t know his business; in my day, things went differently.”
“Ah!” said Tonsard, “those were the good days for all of us--weren’t
they, Vaudoyer?”
“Yes,” said the latter, “and the fact is that if Michaud were got rid of
we should be left in peace.”
“Enough said,” replied Tonsard. “We’ll talk of this later--by
moonlight--in the open field.”
Towards the end of October the countess returned to Paris, leaving the
general at Les Aigues. He was not to rejoin her till some time later,
but she did not wish to lose the first night of the Italian Opera, and
moreover she was lonely and bored; she missed Emile, who was recalled by
his avocations, for he had helped her to pass the hours when the general
was scouring the country or attending to business.
November was a true winter month, gray and gloomy, a mixture of snow and
rain, frost and thaw. The trial of Mother Tonsard had required witnesses
at Auxerre, and Michaud had given his testimony. Monsieur Rigou had
interested himself for the old woman, and employed a lawyer on her
behalf who relied in his defence on the absence of disinterested
witnesses; but the testimony of Michaud and his assistants and the
field-keeper was found to outweigh this objection. Tonsard’s mother was
sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, and the lawyer said to her son:--
“It was Michaud’s testimony which got her that.”
CHAPTER IX THE CATASTROPHE
One Saturday evening, Courtecuisse, Bonnebault, Godain, Tonsard, his
daughters, wife, and Pere Fourchon, also Vaudoyer and several mechanics
were supping at the tavern. The moon was at half-full, the first snow
had melted, and frost had just stiffened the ground so that a man’s step
left no traces. They were eating a stew of hare caught in a trap;
all were drinking and laughing. It was the day after the wedding of
Catherine and Godain, and the wedded pair were to be conducted to their
new home, which was not far from that of Courtecuisse; for when Rigou
sold an acre of land it was sure to be isolated and close to the woods.
Courtecuisse and Vaudoyer had brought their guns to accompany the bride.
The neighborhood was otherwise fast asleep; not a light was to be seen;
none but the wedding party were awake, but they made noise enough. In
the midst of it the old Bonnebault woman entered, and every one looked
at her.
“I think she is going to lie-in,” she whispered in Tonsard’s ear. “_He_
has saddled his horse and is going for the doctor at Soulanges.”
“Sit down,” said Tonsard, giving her his place at the table, and going
himself to lie on a bench.
Just then the gallop of a horse passing rapidly along the road was
heard. Tonsard, Courtecuisse, and Vaudoyer went out hurriedly, and saw
Michaud on his way to the village.
“He knows what he’s about,” said Courtecuisse; “he came down by the
terrace and he means to go by Blangy and the road,--it’s the safest
way.”
“Yes,” said Tonsard, “but he will bring the doctor back with him.”
“He won’t find him,” said Courtecuisse, “the doctor has been sent for to
Conches for the postmistress.”
“Then he’ll go from Soulanges to Conches by the mail-road; that’s
shortest.”
“And safest too, for us,” said Courtecuisse, “there’s a fine moon, and
there are no keepers on the roads as there are in the woods; one can
hear much farther; and down there, by the pavilions, behind the hedges,
just where they join the little wood, one can aim at a man from behind,
like a rabbit, at five hundred feet.”
“It will be half-past eleven before he comes past there,” said Tonsard,
“it will take him half an hour to go to Soulanges and as much more to
get back,--but look here! suppose Monsieur Gourdon were on the road?”
“Don’t trouble about that,” said Courtecuisse, “I’ll stand ten minutes
away from you to the right on the road towards Blangy, and Vaudoyer
will be ten minutes away on your left towards Conches; if anything comes
along, the mail, or the gendarmes, or whatever it is, we’ll fire a shot
into the ground,--a muffled sound, you’ll know it.”
“But suppose I miss him?” said Tonsard.
“He’s right,” said Courtecuisse, “I’m the best shot; Vaudoyer, I’ll go
with you; Bonnebault may watch in my place; he can give a cry; that’s
easier heard and less suspicious.”
All three returned to the tavern and the wedding festivities went on;
but about eleven o’clock Vaudoyer, Courtecuisse, Tonsard, and Bonnebault
went out, carrying their guns, though none of the women took any notice
of them. They came back in about three-quarters of an hour, and sat
drinking till past one o’clock. Tonsard’s girls and their mother and the
old Bonnebault woman had plied the miller, the mechanics, and the two
peasants, as well as Fourchon, with so much drink that they were all
on the ground and snoring when the four men left the tavern; on their
return, the sleepers were shaken and roused, and every one seemed to
them, as before, in his place.
While this orgy was going on Michaud’s household was in a scene of
mortal anxiety. Olympe had felt false pains, and her husband, thinking
she was about to be delivered, rode off instantly in haste for the
doctor. But the poor woman’s pains ceased as soon as she realized that
Michaud was gone; for her mind was so preoccupied by the danger her
husband ran at that hour of the night, in a lawless region filled with
determined foes, that the anguish of her soul was powerful enough
to deaden and momentarily subdue those of the body. In vain her
servant-woman declared her fears were imaginary; she seemed not to
comprehend a word that was said to her, and sat by the fire in her
bed-chamber listening to every sound. In her terror, which increased
every moment, she had the man wakened, meaning to give him some order
which still she did not give. At last, the poor woman wandered up and
down, coming and going in feverish agitation; she looked out of all the
windows and opened them in spite of the cold; then she went downstairs
and opened the door into the courtyard, looking out and listening.
“Nothing! nothing!” she said. Then she went up again in despair. About
a quarter past twelve, she cried out: “Here he is! I hear the horse!”
Again she went down, followed by the man who went to open the iron gate
of the courtyard. “It is strange,” she said, “that he should return by
the Conches woods!”
As she spoke she stood still, horrorstruck, motionless, voiceless. The
man shared her terror, for, in the furious gallop of the horse, the
clang of the empty stirrups, the neigh of the frightened animal, there
was something, they scarcely knew what, of unspeakable warning. Soon,
too soon for the unhappy wife, the horse reached the gate, panting and
sweating, but alone; he had broken the bridle, no doubt by entangling
it. Olympe gazed with haggard eyes at the servant as he opened the gate;
she saw the horse, and then, without a word, she ran to the chateau
like a madwoman; when she reached it she fell to the ground beneath the
general’s windows crying out: “Monsieur, they have murdered him!”
The cry was so terrible it awoke the count; he rang violently, bringing
the whole household to their feet; and the groans of Madame Michaud, who
as she lay on the ground, gave birth to a child that died in being born,
brought the general and all the servants about her. They raised the poor
dying woman, who expired, saying to the general: “They have murdered
him!”
“Joseph!” cried the count to his valet, “go for the doctor; there may
yet be time to save her. No, better bring the curate; the poor woman is
dead, and her child too. My God! my God! how thankful I am that my wife
is not here. And you,” he said to the gardener, “go and find out what
has happened.”
“I can tell you,” said the pavilion servant, coming up, “Monsieur
Michaud’s horse has come back alone, the reins broke, his legs bloody;
and there’s a spot of blood on the saddle.”
“What can be done at this time of night?” cried the count. “Call
up Groison, send for the keepers, saddle the horses; we’ll beat the
country.”
By daybreak, eight persons--the count, Groison, the three keepers, and
two gendarmes sent from Soulanges with their sergeant--searched the
country. It was not till the middle of the morning that they found the
body of the bailiff in a copse between the mail-road and the smaller
road leading to Ville-aux-Fayes, at the end of the park of Les Aigues,
not far from Conches. Two gendarmes started, one to Ville-aux-Fayes for
the prosecuting attorney, the other to Soulanges for the justice of the
peace. Meantime the general, assisted by the sergeant, noted down the
facts. They found on the road, just above the two pavilions, the print
of the stamping of the horse’s feet as he roared, and the traces of his
frightened gallop from there to the first opening in the woods above the
hedge. The horse, no longer guided, turned into the wood-path. Michaud’s
hat was found there. The animal evidently took the nearest way to reach
his stable. The bailiff had a ball though his back which broke the
spine.
Groison and the sergeant studied the ground around the spot where the
horse reared (which might be called, in judicial language, the theatre
of the crime) with remarkable sagacity, but without obtaining any clue.
The earth was too frozen to show the footprints of the murderer, and all
they found was the paper of a cartridge. When the attorney and the judge
and Monsieur Gourdon, the doctor, arrived and raised the body to make
the autopsy, it was found that the ball, which corresponded with the
fragments of the wad, was an ammunition ball, evidently from a military
musket; and no such musket existed in the district of Blangy. The judge
and Monsieur Soudry the attorney, who came that evening to the chateau,
thought it best to collect all the facts and await events. The same
opinion was expressed by the sergeant and the lieutenant of the
gendarmerie.
“It is impossible that it can be anything but a planned attack on the
part of the peasants,” said the sergeant; “but there are two districts,
Conches and Blangy, in each of which there are five or six persons
capable of being concerned in the murder. The one that I suspect most,
Tonsard, passed the night carousing in the Grand-I-Vert; but your
assistant, general, the miller Langlume, was there, and he says that
Tonsard did not leave the tavern. They were all so drunk they could not
stand; they took the bride home at half-past one; and the return of
the horse proves that Michaud was murdered between eleven o’clock and
midnight. At a quarter past ten Groison saw the whole company assembled
at table, and Monsieur Michaud passed there on his way to Soulanges,
which he reached at eleven. His horse reared between the two pavilions
on the mail-road; but he may have been shot before reaching Blangy and
yet have stayed in the saddle for some little time. We should have to
issue warrants for at least twenty persons and arrest them; but I know
these peasants, and so do these gentlemen; you might keep them a year in
prison and you would get nothing out of them but denials. What could you
do with all those who were at Tonsard’s?”
They sent for Langlume, the miller, and the assistant of General
Montcornet as mayor; he related what had taken place in the tavern, and
gave the names of all present; none had gone out except for a minute or
two into the courtyard. He had left the room for a moment with Tonsard
about eleven o’clock; they had spoken of the moon and the weather, and
heard nothing. At two o’clock the whole party had taken the bride and
bridegroom to their own house.
The general arranged with the sergeant, the lieutenant, and the civil
authorities to send to Paris for the cleverest detective in the service
of the police, who should come to the chateau as a workman, and behave
so ill as to be dismissed; he should then take to drinking and frequent
the Grand-I-Vert and remain in the neighborhood in the character of an
ill-wisher to the general. The best plan they could follow was to watch
and wait for a momentary revelation, and then make the most of it.
“If I have to spend twenty thousand francs I’ll discover the murderer of
my poor Michaud,” the general was never weary of saying.
He went off with that idea in his head, and returned from Paris in the
month of January with one of the shrewdest satellites of the chief of
the detective police, who was brought down ostensibly to do some work
to the interior of the chateau. The man was discovered poaching. He was
arrested, and turned off, and soon after--early in February--the general
rejoined his wife in Paris.
CHAPTER X. THE TRIUMPH OF THE VANQUISHED
One evening in the month of May, when the fine weather had come and the
Parisians had returned to Les Aigues, Monsieur de Troisville,--who had
been persuaded to accompany his daughter,--Blondet, the Abbe Brossette,
the general, and the sub-prefect of Ville-aux-Fayes, who was on a visit
to the chateau, were all playing either whist or chess. It was about
half-past eleven o’clock when Joseph entered and told his master that
the worthless poaching workman who had been dismissed wanted to see
him,--something about a bill which he said the general still owed him.
“He is very drunk,” added Joseph.
“Very good, I’ll go and speak to him.”
The general went out upon the lawn to some distance from the house.
“Monsieur le comte,” said the detective, “nothing will ever be got out
of these people. All that I have been able to gather is that if you
continue to stay in this place and try to make the peasants renounce the
pilfering habits which Mademoiselle Laguerre allowed them to acquire,
they will shoot you as well as your bailiff. There is no use in my
staying here; for they distrust me even more than they do the keepers.”
The count paid his spy, who left the place the next day, and his
departure justified the suspicions entertained about him by the
accomplices in the death of Michaud.
When the general returned to the salon there were such signs of emotion
upon his face that his wife asked him, anxiously, what news he had just
heard.
“Dear wife,” he said, “I don’t want to frighten you, and yet it is right
you should know that Michaud’s death was intended as a warning for us to
leave this part of the country.”
“If I were in your place,” said Monsieur de Troisville, “I would not
leave it. I myself have had just such difficulties in Normandy, only
under another form; I persisted in my course, and now everything goes
well.”
“Monsieur le marquis,” said the sub-prefect, “Normandy and Burgundy are
two very different regions. The grape heats the blood far more than the
apple. We know much less of law and legal proceedings; we live among the
woods; the large industries are unknown among us; we are still savages.
If I might give my advice to Monsieur le comte it would be to sell this
estate and put the money in the Funds; he would double his income and
have no anxieties. If he likes living in the country he could buy a
chateau near Paris with a park as beautiful as that of Les Aigues,
surrounded by walls, where no one can annoy him, and where he can let
all his farms and receive the money in good bank-bills, and have no law
suits from one year’s end to another. He could come and go in three or
four hours, and Monsieur Blondet and Monsieur le marquis would not be so
often away from you, Madame la comtesse.”
“I, retreat before the peasantry when I did not recoil before the
Danube!” cried the general.
“Yes, but what became of your cuirassiers?” asked Blondet.
“Such a fine estate!”
“It will sell to-day for over two millions.”
“The chateau alone must have cost that,” remarked Monsieur de
Troisville.
“One of the best properties in a circumference of sixty miles,” said the
sub-prefect; “but you can find a better near Paris.”
“How much income does one get from two millions?” asked the countess.
“Now-a-days, about eighty thousand francs,” replied Blondet.
“Les Aigues does not bring in, all told, more than thirty thousand,”
said the countess; “and lately you have been at such immense
expenses,--you have surrounded the woods this year with ditches.”
“You could get,” added Blondet, “a royal chateau for four hundred
thousand francs near Paris. In these days people buy the follies of
others.”
“I thought you cared for Les Aigues!” said the count to his wife.
“Don’t you feel that I care a thousand times more for your life?” she
replied. “Besides, ever since the death of my poor Olympe and Michaud’s
murder the country is odious to me; all the faces I meet seem to wear a
treacherous or threatening expression.”
The next evening the sub-prefect, having ended his visit at the chateau,
was welcomed in the salon of Monsieur Gaubertin at Ville-aux-Fayes in
these words:--
“Well, Monsieur des Lupeaulx, so you have returned from Les Aigues?”
“Yes,” answered the sub-prefect with a little air of triumph and a look
of tender regard at Mademoiselle Elise, “and I am very much afraid to
say we may lose the general; he talks of selling his property--”
“Monsieur Gaubertin, I speak for my pavilion. I can on longer endure the
noise, the dust of Ville-aux-Fayes; like a poor imprisoned bird I gasp
for the air of the fields, the woodland breezes,” said Madame Isaure, in
a lackadaisical voice, with her eyes half-closed and her head bending
to her left shoulder as she played carelessly with the long curls of her
blond hair.
“Pray be prudent, madame!” said her husband in a low voice; “your
indiscretions will not help me to buy the pavilion.” Then, turning to
the sub-prefect, he added, “Haven’t they yet discovered the men who were
concerned in the murder of the bailiff?”
“It seems not,” replied the sub-prefect.
“That will injure the sale of Les Aigues,” said Gaubertin to the
company generally, “I know very well that I would not buy the place. The
peasantry over there are such a bad set of people; even in the days of
Mademoiselle Laguerre I had trouble with them, and God knows she let
them do as they liked.”
At the end of the month of May the general still gave no sign that he
intended to sell Les Aigues; in fact, he was undecided. One night, about
ten o’clock, he was returning from the forest through one of the six
avenues that led to the pavilion of the Rendezvous. He dismissed the
keeper who accompanied him, as he was then so near the chateau. At a
turn of the road a man armed with a gun came from behind a bush.
“General,” he said, “this is the third time I have had you at the end of
my barrel, and the third time that I give you your life.”
“Why do you want to kill me, Bonnebault?” said the general, without
showing the least emotion.
“Faith, if I don’t, somebody else will; but I, you see, I like the men
who served the Emperor, and I can’t make up my mind to shoot you like a
partridge. Don’t question me, for I’ll tell you nothing; but you’ve
got enemies, powerful enemies, cleverer than you, and they’ll end by
crushing you. I am to have a thousand crowns if I kill you, and then I
can marry Marie Tonsard. Well, give me enough to buy a few acres of land
and a bit of a cottage, and I’ll keep on saying, as I have done, that
I’ve found no chances. That will give you time to sell your property and
get away; but make haste. I’m an honest lad still, scamp as I am; but
another fellow won’t spare you.”
“If I give you what you ask, will you tell me who offered you those
three thousand francs?” said the general.
“I don’t know myself; and the person who is urging me to do the thing
is some one I love too well to tell of. Besides, even if you did know
it was Marie Tonsard, that wouldn’t help you; Marie Tonsard would be as
silent as that wall, and I should deny every word I’ve said.”
“Come and see me to-morrow,” said the general.
“Enough,” replied Bonnebault; “and if they begin to say I’m too
dilatory, I’ll let you know in time.”
A week after that singular conversation the whole arrondissement, indeed
the whole department, was covered with posters, advertising the sale of
Les Aigues at the office of Maitre Corbineau, the notary of Soulanges.
All the lots were knocked down to Rigou, and the price paid amounted to
two millions five hundred thousand francs. The next day Rigou had the
names changed; Monsieur Gaubertin took the woods, Rigou and Soudry the
vineyards and the farms. The chateau and the park were sold over again
in small lots among the sons of the soil, the peasantry,--excepting the
pavilion, its dependencies, and fifty surrounding acres, which Monsieur
Gaubertin retained as a gift to his poetic and sentimental spouse.
* * * * *
Many years after these events, during the year 1837, one of the most
remarkable political writers of the day, Emile Blondet, reached the
last stages of a poverty which he had so far hidden beneath an outward
appearance of ease and elegance. He was thinking of taking some
desperate step, realizing, as he did, that his writings, his mind,
his knowledge, his ability for the direction of affairs, had made him
nothing better than a mere functionary, mechanically serving the ends of
others; seeing that every avenue was closed to him and all places
taken; feeling that he had reached middle-life without fame and without
fortune; that fools and middle-class men of no training had taken the
places of the courtiers and incapables of the Restoration, and that the
government was reconstituted such as it was before 1830. One evening,
when he had come very near committing suicide (a folly he had so often
laughed at), while his mind travelled back over his miserable existence
calumniated and worn down with toil far more than with the dissipations
charged against him, the noble and beautiful face of a woman rose before
his eyes, like a statue rising pure and unbroken amid the saddest ruins.
Just then the porter brought him a letter sealed with black from the
Comtesse de Montcornet, telling him of the death of her husband, who had
again taken service in the army and commanded a division. The count
had left her his property, and she had no children. The letter, though
dignified, showed Blondet very plainly that the woman of forty whom he
had loved in his youth offered him a friendly hand and a large fortune.
A few days ago the marriage of the Comtesse de Montcornet with Monsieur
Blondet, appointed prefect in one of the departments, was celebrated in
Paris. On their way to take possession of the prefecture, they followed
the road which led past what had formerly been Les Aigues. They stopped
the carriage near the spot where the two pavilions had once stood,
wishing to see the places so full of tender memories for each. The
country was no longer recognizable. The mysterious woods, the park
avenues, all were cleared away; the landscape looked like a tailor’s
pattern-card. The sons of the soil had taken possession of the earth as
victors and conquerors. It was cut up into a thousand little lots, and
the population had tripled between Conches and Blangy. The levelling and
cultivation of the noble park, once so carefully tended, so delightful
in its beauty, threw into isolated relief the pavilion of the
Rendezvous, now the Villa Buen-Retiro of Madame Isaure Gaubertin; it was
the only building left standing, and it commanded the whole landscape,
or as we might better call it, the stretch of cornfields which now
constituted the landscape. The building seemed magnified into a chateau,
so miserable were the little houses which the peasants had built around
it.
“This is progress!” cried Emile. “It is a page out of Jean-Jacques’
‘Social Compact’! and I--I am harnessed to the social machine that works
it! Good God! what will the kings be soon? More than that, what will the
nations themselves be fifty years hence under this state of things?”
“But you love me; you are beside me. I think the present delightful.
What do I care for such a distant future?” said his wife.
“Oh yes! by your side, hurrah for the present!” cried the lover, gayly,
“and the devil take the future.”
Then he signed to the coachman, and as the horses sprang forward along
the road, the wedded pair returned to the enjoyment of their honeymoon.
1845.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Note: Sons of the Soil is also known as The Peasantry and is referred to
by that title when mentioned in other addendums.
Blondet, Emile
Jealousies of a Country Town
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
Modeste Mignon
Another Study of Woman
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
The Firm of Nucingen
Blondet, Virginie
Jealousies of a Country Town
The Secrets of a Princess
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Another Study of Woman
The Member for Arcis
A Daughter of Eve
Bourlac, Bernard-Jean-Baptiste-Macloud, Baron de
The Seamy Side of History
Brossette, Abbe
Beatrix
Carigliano, Duchesse de
At the Sign of the Cat and Racket
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
The Member for Arcis
Casteran, De
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History
Jealousies of a Country Town
Beatrix
Laguerre, Mademoiselle
A Prince of Bohemia
La Roche-Hugon, Martial de
Domestic Peace
A Daughter of Eve
The Member for Arcis
The Middle Classes
Cousin Betty
Lupin, Amaury
A Start in Life
Marest, Georges
A Start in Life
Minorets, The
The Government Clerks
Montcornet, Marechal, Comte de
Domestic Peace
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
A Man of Business
Cousin Betty
Navarreins, Duc de
A Bachelor’s Establishment
Colonel Chabert
The Muse of the Department
The Thirteen
Jealousies of a Country Town
Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life
The Country Parson
The Magic Skin
The Gondreville Mystery
The Secrets of a Princess
Cousin Betty
Ronquerolles, Marquis de
The Imaginary Mistress
Ursule Mirouet
A Woman of Thirty
Another Study of Woman
The Thirteen
The Member for Arcis
Scherbelloff, Princesse (or Scherbellof or Sherbelloff)
Jealousies of a Country Town
Soulanges, Comte Leon de
Domestic Peace
Soulanges, Comtesse Hortense de
Domestic Peace
The Thirteen
Steingel
The Gondreville Mystery
Troisville, Guibelin, Vicomte de
The Seamy Side of History
The Chouans
Jealousies of a Country Town