In the summer of the year 1608, determining to take up my abode, when
not in Paris, at Villebon, where I had lately enlarged my property, I
went thither from Rouen with my wife, to superintend the building and
mark out certain plantations which I projected. As the heat that month
was great, and the dust of the train annoying, I made each stage in the
evening and on horseback, leaving my wife to proceed at her leisure.
In this way I was able, by taking rough paths, to do in two or three
hours a distance which her coaches had scarcely covered in the day; but
on the third evening, intending to make a short cut by a ford on the
Vaucouleurs, I found, to my chagrin, the advantage on the other side,
the ford, when I reached it at sunset, proving impracticable. As there
was every prospect, however, that the water would fall within a few
hours, I determined not to retrace my steps; but to wait where I was
until morning, and complete my journey to Houdan in the early hours.
There was a poor inn near the ford, a mere hovel of wood on a brick
foundation, yet with two storeys. I made my way to this with Maignan
and La Trape, who formed, with two grooms, my only attendance; but on
coming near the house, and looking about with a curious eye, I remarked
something which fixed my attention, and, for the moment, brought me to
a halt. This was the spectacle of three horses, of fair quality,
feeding in a field of growing corn, which was the only enclosure near
the inn. They were trampling and spoiling more than they ate; and,
supposing that they had strayed into the place, and the house showing
no signs of life, I bade my grooms fetch them out. The sun was about
setting, and I stood a moment watching the long shadows of the men as
they plodded through the corn, and the attitudes of the horses as, with
heads raised, they looked doubtfully at the newcomers.
Suddenly a man came round the corner of the house, and seeing us, and
what my men were doing, began to gesticulate violently, but without
sound. The grooms saw him too, and stood; and he ran up to my stirrup,
his face flushed and sullen.
"Do you want to see us all ruined?" he muttered. And he begged me to
call my men out of the corn.
"You are more likely to be ruined that way," I answered, looking down
at him. "Why, man, is it the custom in your country to turn horses
into the half-ripe corn?"
He shook his fist stealthily. "God forbid!" he said. "But the devil
is within doors, and we must do his bidding."
"Ah!" I replied, my curiosity aroused "I should like to see him."
The boor shaded his eyes, and looked at me sulkily from under his
matted and tangled hair. "You are not of his company?" he said with
suspicion.
"I hope not," I answered, smiling at his simplicity. "But your corn is
your own. I will call the men out." On which I made a sign to them to
return. "Now," I said, as I walked my horse slowly towards the house,
while he tramped along beside me, "who is within?"
"M. Gringuet," he said, with another stealthy gesture.
"Ah!" I said, "I am afraid that I am no wiser."
"The tax-gatherer."
"Oh! And those are his horses?" He nodded.
"Still, I do not see why they are in the corn?"
"I have no hay."
"But there is grass."
"Ay," the inn-keeper answered bitterly.
"And he said that I might eat it. It was not good enough for his
horses. They must have hay or corn; and if I had none, so much the
worse for me."
Full of indignation, I made in my mind a note of M. Gringuet's name;
but at the moment I said no more, and we proceeded to the house, the
exterior of which, though meagre, and even miserable, gave me an
impression of neatness. From the inside, however, a hoarse, continuous
noise was issuing, which resolved itself as we crossed the threshold
into a man's voice. The speaker was out of sight, in an upper room to
which a ladder gave access, but his oaths, complaints, and imprecations
almost shook the house. A middle-aged woman, scantily dressed, was
busy on the hearth; but perhaps that which, next to the perpetual
scolding that was going on above, most took my attention was a great
lump of salt that stood on the table at the woman's elbow, and seemed
to be evidence of greater luxury--for the GABELLE had not at that time
been reduced--than I could easily associate with the place.
The roaring and blustering continuing upstairs, I stood a moment in
sheer astonishment. "Is that M. Gringuet?" I said at last.
The inn-keeper nodded sullenly, while his wife stared at me. "But what;
is the matter with him?" I said.
"The gout. But for that he would have been gone these two days to
collect at Le Mesnil."
"Ah!" I answered, beginning to understand. "And the salt is for a
bath for his feet, is it?"
The woman nodded.
"Well," I said, as Maignan came in with my saddlebags and laid them on
the floor, "he will swear still louder when he gets the bill, I should
think."
"Bill?" the housewife answered bitterly, looking up again from her
pots. "A tax-gatherer's bill? Go to the dead man and ask for the
price of his coffin; or to the babe for a nurse-fee! You will get paid
as soon. A tax-gatherer's bill? Be thankful if he does not take the
dish with the sop!"
She spoke plainly; yet I found a clearer proof of the slavery in which
the man held them in the perfect indifference with which they regarded
my arrival--though a guest with two servants must have been a rarity in
such a place--and the listless way in which they set about attending to
my wants. Keenly remembering that not long before this my enemies had
striven to prejudice me in the King's eyes by alleging that, though I
filled his coffers, I was grinding the poor into the dust--and even, by
my exactions, provoking a rebellion I was in no mood to look with an
indulgent eye on those who furnished such calumnies with a show of
reason. But it has never been my wont to act hastily; and while I stood
in the middle of the kitchen, debating whether I should order the
servants to fling the fellow out, and bid him appear before me at
Villebon, or should instead have him brought up there and then, the
man's coarse voice, which had never ceased to growl and snarl above us,
rose on a sudden still louder. Something fell on the floor over our
heads and rolled across it; and immediately a young girl, barefoot and
short-skirted, scrambled hurriedly and blindly down the ladder and
landed among us.
She was sobbing, and a little blood was flowing from a cut in her lip;
and she trembled all over. At sight of the blood and her tears the
woman seemed to be transported. Snatching up a saucepan, she sprang
towards the ladder with a gesture of rage, and in a moment would have
ascended if her husband had not followed and dragged her back. The
girl also, as soon as she could speak, added her entreaties to his,
while Maignan and La Trape looked sharply at me, as if they expected a
signal.
All this while, the bully above continued his maledictions. "Send that
slut back to me!" he roared. "Do you think that I am going to be left
alone in this hole? Send her back, or--" and he added half-a-dozen
oaths of a kind to make an honest man's blood boil. In the midst of
this, however, and while the woman was still contending with her
husband, he suddenly stopped and shrieked in anguish, crying out for
the salt-bath.
But the woman, whom her husband had only half-pacified, shook her fist
at the ceiling with a laugh of defiance. "Shriek; ay, you may shriek,
you wretch!" she cried. "You must be waited on by my girl, must
you--no older face will do for you--and you beat her? Your horses must
eat corn, must they, while we eat grass? And we buy salt for you, and
wheaten bread for you, and are beggars for you! For you, you thieving
wretch, who tax the poor and let the rich go free; who--"
"Silence, woman!" her husband cried, cutting her short, with a pale
face. "Hush, hush; he will hear you!"
But the woman was too far gone in rage to obey. "What! and is it not
true?" she answered, her eyes glittering. "Will he not to-morrow go
to Le Mesnil and squeeze the poor? Ay, and will not Lescauts the
corn-dealer, and Philippon the silk-merchant, come to him with bribes,
and go free? And de Fonvelle and de Curtin--they with a DE,
forsooth!--plead their nobility, and grease his hands, and go free?
Ay, and--"
"Silence, woman!" the man said again, looking apprehensively at me,
and from me to my attendants, who were grinning broadly. "You do not
know that this gentleman is not--"
"A tax-gatherer?" I said, smiling. "No. But how long has your friend
upstairs been here?"
"Two days, Monsieur," she answered, wiping the perspiration from her
brow, and speaking more quietly. "He is talking of sending on a deputy
to Le Mesnil; but Heaven send he may recover, and go from here himself!"
"Well," I answered, "at any rate, we have had enough of this noise. My
servant shall go up and tell him that there is a gentleman here who
cannot put up with a disturbance. Maignan," I continued, "see the man,
and tell him that the inn is not his private house, and that he must
groan more softly; but do not mention my name. And let him have his
brine bath, or there will be no peace for anyone."
Maignan and La Trape, who knew me, and had counted on a very different
order, stared at me, wondering at my easiness and complaisance; for
there is a species of tyranny, unassociated with rank, that even the
coarsest view with indignation. But the woman's statement, which,
despite its wildness and her excitement, I saw no reason to doubt, had
suggested to me a scheme of punishment more refined; and which might,
at one and the same time, be of profit to the King's treasury and a
lesson to Gringuet. To carry it through I had to submit to some
inconvenience, and particularly to a night passed under the same roof
with the rogue; but as the news that a traveller of consequence was
come had the effect, aided by a few sharp words from Maignan, of
lowering his tone, and forcing him to keep within bounds, I was able to
endure this and overlook the occasional outbursts of spleen which his
disease and pampered temper still drew from him.
His two men, who had been absent on an errand at the time of my
arrival, presently returned, and were doubtless surprised to find a
second company in possession. They tried my attendants with a number
of questions, but without success; while I, by listening while I had my
supper, learned more of their master's habits and intentions than they
supposed. They suspected nothing, and at day-break we left them; and,
the water having duly fallen in the night, we crossed the river without
mishap, and for a league pursued our proper road. Then I halted, and
despatching the two grooms to Houdan with a letter for my wife, I took,
myself, the road to Le Mesnil, which lies about three leagues to the
west.
At a little inn, a league short of Le Mesnil, I stopped, and
instructing my two attendants in the parts they were to play, prepared,
with the help of the seals, which never left Maignan's custody, the
papers necessary to enable me to enact the role of Gringuet's deputy.
Though I had been two or three times to Villebon, I had never been
within two leagues of Le Mesnil, and had no reason to suppose that I
should be recognised; but to lessen the probability of this I put on a
plain suit belonging to Maignan, with a black-hilted sword, and no
ornaments. I furthermore waited to enter the town until evening, so
that my presence, being reported, might be taken for granted before I
was seen.
In a larger place my scheme must have miscarried, but in this little
town on the hill, looking over the plain of vineyards and cornfields,
with inn, market-house, and church in the square, and on the fourth
side the open battlements, whence the towers of Chartres could be seen
on a clear day, I looked to have to do only with small men, and saw no
reason why it should fail.
Accordingly, riding up to the inn about sunset, I called, with an air,
for the landlord. There were half-a-dozen loungers seated in a row on
a bench before the door, and one of these went in to fetch him. When
the host came out, with his apron twisted round his waist, I asked him
if he had a room.
"Yes," he said, shading his eyes to look at me, "I have."
"Very well," I answered pompously, considering that I had just such an
audience as I desired--by which I mean one that, without being too
critical, would spread the news. "I am M. Gringuet's deputy, and I am
here with authority to collect and remit, receive and give receipts
for, his Majesty's taxes, tolls, and dues, now, or to be, due and
owing. Therefore, my friend, I will trouble you to show me to my room."
I thought that this announcement would impress him as much as I
desired; but, to my surprise, he only stared at me. "Eh!" he
exclaimed at last, in a faltering tone, "M. Gringuet's deputy?"
"Yes," I said, dismounting somewhat impatiently; "he is ill with the
gout and cannot come."
"And you--are his deputy?"
"I have said so."
Still he did not move to do my bidding, but continued to rub his bald
head and stare at me as if I fascinated him. "Well, I am--I mean--I
think we are full," he stammered at last, with his eyes like saucers.
I replied, with some impatience, that he had just said that he had a
room; adding, that if I was not in it and comfortably settled before
five minutes were up I would know the reason. I thought that this
would settle the matter, whatever maggot had got into the man's head;
and, in a way, it did so, for he begged my pardon hastily, and made way
for me to enter, calling, at the same time, to a lad who was standing
by, to attend to the horses. But when we were inside the door, instead
of showing me through the kitchen to my room, he muttered something,
and hurried away; leaving me to wonder what was amiss with him, and why
the loungers outside, who had listened with all their ears to our
conversation, had come in after us as far as they dared, and were
regarding us with an odd mixture of suspicion and amusement.
The landlord remained long away, and seemed, from sounds that came to
my ears, to be talking with someone in a distant room. At length,
however, he returned, bearing a candle and followed by a serving-man.
I asked him roughly why he had been so long, and began to rate him; but
he took the words out of my mouth by his humility, and going before me
through the kitchen--where his wife and two or three maids who were
about the fire stopped to look at us, with the basting spoons in their
hands--he opened a door which led again into the outer air.
"It is across the yard," he said apologetically, as he went before, and
opening a second door, stood aside for us to enter. "But it is a good
room, and, if you please, a fire shall be lighted. The shutters are
closed," he continued, as we passed him, Maignan and La Trape carrying
my baggage, "but they shall be opened. Hallo! Pierre! Pierre, there!
Open these shut--"
On the word his voice rose--and broke; and in a moment the door,
through which we had all passed unsuspecting, fell to with a crash
behind us. Before we could move we heard the bars drop across it. A
little before, La Trape had taken a candle from someone's hand to light
me the better; and therefore we were not in darkness. But the light
this gave only served to impress on us what the falling bars and the
rising sound of voices outside had already told us--that we were
outwitted! We were prisoners.
The room in which we stood, looking foolishly at one another, was a
great barn-like chamber, with small windows high in the unplaistered
walls. A long board set on trestles, and two or three stools placed
round it--on the occasion, perhaps, of some recent festivity--had for a
moment deceived us, and played the landlord's game.
In the first shock of the discovery, hearing the bars drop home, we
stood gaping, and wondering what it meant. Then Maignan, with an oath,
sprang to the door and tried it--fruitlessly.
I joined him more at my leisure, and raising my voice, asked angrily
what this folly meant. "Open the door there! Do you hear, landlord?"
I cried.
No one moved, though Maignan continued to rattle the door furiously.
"Do you hear?" I repeated, between anger and amazement at the fix in
which we had placed ourselves. "Open!"
But, although the murmur of voices outside the door grew louder, no one
answered, and I had time to take in the full absurdity of the position;
to measure the height; of the windows with my eye and plumb the dark
shadows under the rafters, where the feebler rays of our candle lost
themselves; to appreciate, in a word, the extent of our predicament.
Maignan was furious, La Trape vicious, while my own equanimity scarcely
supported me against the thought that we should probably be where we
were until the arrival of my people, whom I had directed my wife to
send to Le Mesnil at noon next day. Their coming would free us,
indeed, but at the cost of ridicule and laughter. Never was man worse
placed.
Wincing at the thought, I bade Maignan be silent; and, drumming on the
door myself, I called for the landlord. Someone who had been giving
directions in a tone of great, consequence ceased speaking, and came
close to the door. After listening a moment, he struck it with his
hand.
"Silence, rogues!" he cried. "Do you hear? Silence there, unless you
want your ears nailed to the post."
"Fool!" I answered. "Open the door instantly! Are you all mad here,
that you shut up the King's servants in this way?"
"The King's servants!" he cried, jeering at us. "Where are they?"
"Here!" I answered, swallowing my rage as well as I might. "I am M.
Gringuet's deputy, and if you do not this instant--"
"M. Gringuet's deputy! Ho! ho!" he said. "Why, you fool, M.
Gringuet's deputy arrived two hours before you. You must get up a
little earlier another time. They are poor tricksters who are too late
for the fair. And now be silent, and it may save you a stripe or two
to-morrow."
There are situations in which even the greatest find it hard to
maintain their dignity, and this was one. I looked at Maignan and La
Trape, and they at me, and by the light of the lanthorn which the
latter held I saw that they were smiling, doubtless at the dilemma in
which we had innocently placed ourselves. But I found nothing to laugh
at in the position; since the people outside might at any moment leave
us where we were to fast until morning; and, after a moment's
reflection, I called out to know who the speaker on the other side was.
"I am M. de Fonvelle," he answered.
"Well, M. de Fonvelle," I replied, "I advise you to have a care what
you do. I am M. Gringuet's deputy. The other man is an impostor."
He laughed.
"He has no papers," I cried.
"Oh, yes, he has!" he answered, mocking me. "M. Curtin has seen them,
my fine fellow, and he is not one to pay money without warrant."
At this several laughed, and a quavering voice chimed in with "Oh, yes,
he has papers! I have seen them. Still, in a case--"
"There!" M. Fonvelle cried, drowning the other's words. "Now are you
satisfied--you in there?"
But M. Curtin had not done. "He has papers," he piped again in his
thin voice.
"Still, M. de Fonvelle, it is well to be cautious, and--"
"Tut, tut! it is all right."
"He has papers, but he has no authority!" I shouted.
"He has seals," Fonvelle answered. "It is all right."
"It is all wrong!" I retorted. "Wrong, I say! Go to your man, and
you will find him gone--gone with your money, M. Curtin."
Two or three laughed, but I heard the sound of feet hurrying away, and
I guessed that Curtin had retired to satisfy himself. Nevertheless, the
moment which followed was an anxious one, since, if my random shot
missed, I knew that I should find myself in a worse position than
before. But judging--from the fact that the deputy had not confronted
us himself--that he was an impostor, to whom Gringuet's illness had
suggested the scheme on which I had myself hit, I hoped for the best;
and, to be sure, in a moment an outcry arose in the house and quickly
spread. Of those at the door, some cried to their fellows to hearken,
while others hastened off to see. Yet still a little time elapsed,
during which I burned with impatience; and then the crowd came
trampling back, all wrangling and speaking at once.
At the door the chattering ceased, and, a hand being laid on the bar,
in a moment the door was thrown open, and I walked out with what
dignity I might. Outside, the scene which met my eyes might have been,
under other circumstances, diverting. Before me stood the landlord of
the inn, bowing with a light in each hand, as if the more he bent his
backbone the more he must propitiate me; while a fat, middle-aged man
at his elbow, whom I took to be Fonvelle, smiled feebly at me with a
chapfallen expression. A little aside, Curtin, a shrivelled old
fellow, was wringing his hands over his loss; and behind and round
these, peeping over their shoulders and staring under their arms,
clustered a curious crowd of busybodies, who, between amusement at the
joke and awe of the great men, had much ado to control their merriment.
The host began to mutter apologies, but I cut him short. "I will talk
to you to-morrow!" I said, in a voice which made him shake in his
shoes. "Now give me supper, lights, and a room--and hurry. For you,
M. Fonvelle, you are an ass! And for the gentleman there, who has
filled the rogue's purse, he will do well another time to pay the King
his dues!"
With that I left the two--Fonvelle purple with indignation, and Curtin
with eyes and mouth agape and tears stayed--and followed my host to his
best room, Maignan and La Trape attending me with very grim faces.
Here the landlord would have repeated his apologies, but my thoughts
beginning to revert to the purpose which had brought me hither, I
affected to be offended, that, by keeping all at a distance, I might
the more easily preserve my character.
I succeeded so well that, though half the town, through which the news
of my adventure had spread, as fire spreads in tinder, were assembled
outside the inn until a late hour, no one was admitted to see me; and
when I made my appearance next morning in the market-place and took my
seat, with my two attendants, at a table by the corn-measures, this
reserve had so far impressed the people that the smiles which greeted
me scarcely exceeded those which commonly welcome a tax-collector.
Some had paid, and, foreseeing the necessity of paying again, found
little that was diverting in the jest. Others thought it no laughing
matter to pay once; and a few had come as ill out of the adventure as I
had. Under these circumstances, we quickly settled to work, no one
entertaining the slightest suspicion; and La Trape, who could
accommodate himself to anything, playing the part of clerk, I was
presently receiving money and hearing excuses; the minute acquaintance
with the routine of the finances, which I had made it my business to
acquire, rendering the work easy to me.
We had not been long engaged, however, when Fonvelle put in an
appearance, and elbowing the peasants aside, begged to speak with me
apart. I rose and stepped back with him two or three paces; on which
he winked at me in a very knowing fashion, "I am M. de Fonvelle," he
said. And he winked again.
"Ah!" I said.
"My name is not in your list."
"I find it there," I replied, raising a hand to my ear.
"Tut, tut! you do not understand," he muttered. "Has not Gringuet
told you?"
"What?" I said, pretending to be a little deaf.
"Has not--"