Five days later Gaudissart started from the Hotel des Faisans, at
which he had put up in Tours, and went to Vouvray, a rich and populous
district where the public mind seemed to him susceptible of cultivation.
Mounted upon his horse, he trotted along the embankment thinking no more
of his phrases than an actor thinks of his part which he has played for
a hundred times. It was thus that the illustrious Gaudissart went his
cheerful way, admiring the landscape, and little dreaming that in the
happy valleys of Vouvray his commercial infallibility was about to
perish.
Here a few remarks upon the public mind of Touraine are essential to our
story. The subtle, satirical, epigrammatic tale-telling spirit stamped
on every page of Rabelais is the faithful expression of the Tourangian
mind,--a mind polished and refined as it should be in a land where
the kings of France long held their court; ardent, artistic, poetic,
voluptuous, yet whose first impulses subside quickly. The softness of
the atmosphere, the beauty of the climate, a certain ease of life and
joviality of manners, smother before long the sentiment of art, narrow
the widest heart, and enervate the strongest will. Transplant the
Tourangian, and his fine qualities develop and lead to great results, as
we may see in many spheres of action: look at Rabelais and Semblancay,
Plantin the printer and Descartes, Boucicault, the Napoleon of his day,
and Pinaigrier, who painted most of the colored glass in our cathedrals;
also Verville and Courier. But the Tourangian, distinguished though he
may be in other regions, sits in his own home like an Indian on his mat
or a Turk on his divan. He employs his wit in laughing at his neighbor
and in making merry all his days; and when at last he reaches the end
of his life, he is still a happy man. Touraine is like the Abbaye of
Theleme, so vaunted in the history of Gargantua. There we may find the
complying sisterhoods of that famous tale, and there the good cheer
celebrated by Rabelais reigns in glory.
As to the do-nothingness of that blessed land it is sublime and well
expressed in a certain popular legend: “Tourangian, are you hungry,
do you want some soup?” “Yes.” “Bring your porringer.” “Then I am not
hungry.” Is it to the joys of the vineyard and the harmonious loveliness
of this garden land of France, is it to the peace and tranquillity of a
region where the step of an invader has never trodden, that we owe
the soft compliance of these unconstrained and easy manners? To such
questions no answer. Enter this Turkey of sunny France, and you will
stay there,--lazy, idle, happy. You may be as ambitious as Napoleon, as
poetic as Lord Byron, and yet a power unknown, invisible, will compel
you to bury your poetry within your soul and turn your projects into
dreams.
The illustrious Gaudissart was fated to encounter here in Vouvray one of
those indigenous jesters whose jests are not intolerable solely because
they have reached the perfection of the mocking art. Right or wrong, the
Tourangians are fond of inheriting from their parents. Consequently the
doctrines of Saint-Simon were especially hated and villified among them.
In Touraine hatred and villification take the form of superb disdain
and witty maliciousness worthy of the land of good stories and practical
jokes,--a spirit which, alas! is yielding, day by day, to that other
spirit which Lord Byron has characterized as “English cant.”
For his sins, after getting down at the Soleil d’Or, an inn kept by a
former grenadier of the imperial guard named Mitouflet, married to a
rich widow, the illustrious traveller, after a brief consultation
with the landlord, betook himself to the knave of Vouvray, the jovial
merry-maker, the comic man of the neighborhood, compelled by fame and
nature to supply the town with merriment. This country Figaro was once
a dyer, and now possessed about seven or eight thousand francs a year,
a pretty house on the slope of the hill, a plump little wife, and robust
health. For ten years he had had nothing to do but take care of his wife
and his garden, marry his daughter, play whist in the evenings, keep the
run of all the gossip in the neighborhood, meddle with the elections,
squabble with the large proprietors, and order good dinners; or else
trot along the embankment to find out what was going on in Tours,
torment the cure, and finally, by way of dramatic entertainment, assist
at the sale of lands in the neighborhood of his vineyards. In short, he
led the true Tourangian life,--the life of a little country-townsman. He
was, moreover, an important member of the bourgeoisie,--a leader among
the small proprietors, all of them envious, jealous, delighted to catch
up and retail gossip and calumnies against the aristocracy; dragging
things down to their own level; and at war with all kinds of
superiority, which they deposited with the fine composure of ignorance.
Monsieur Vernier--such was the name of this great little man--was just
finishing his breakfast, with his wife and daughter on either side of
him, when Gaudissart entered the room through a window that looked out
on the Loire and the Cher, and lighted one of the gayest dining-rooms of
that gay land.
“Is this Monsieur Vernier himself?” said the traveller, bending his
vertebral column with such grace that it seemed to be elastic.
“Yes, Monsieur,” said the mischievous ex-dyer, with a scrutinizing look
which took in the style of man he had to deal with.
“I come, Monsieur,” resumed Gaudissart, “to solicit the aid of your
knowledge and insight to guide my efforts in this district, where
Mitouflet tells me you have the greatest influence. Monsieur, I am sent
into the provinces on an enterprise of the utmost importance, undertaken
by bankers who--”
“Who mean to win our tricks,” said Vernier, long used to the ways of
commercial travellers and to their periodical visits.
“Precisely,” replied Gaudissart, with native impudence. “But with your
fine tact, Monsieur, you must be aware that we can’t win tricks from
people unless it is their interest to play at cards. I beg you not to
confound me with the vulgar herd of travellers who succeed by humbug
or importunity. I am no longer a commercial traveller. I was one, and I
glory in it; but to-day my mission is of higher importance, and should
place me, in the minds of superior people, among those who devote
themselves to the enlightenment of their country. The most distinguished
bankers in Paris take part in this affair; not fictitiously, as in some
shameful speculations which I call rat-traps. No, no, nothing of the
kind! I should never condescend--never!--to hawk about such CATCH-FOOLS.
No, Monsieur; the most respectable houses in Paris are concerned in this
enterprise; and their interests guarantee--”
Hereupon Gaudissart drew forth his whole string of phrases, and Monsieur
Vernier let him go the length of his tether, listening with apparent
interest which completely deceived him. But after the word “guarantee”
Vernier paid no further attention to our traveller’s rhetoric, and
turned over in his mind how to play him some malicious trick and deliver
a land, justly considered half-savage by speculators unable to get a
bite of it, from the inroads of these Parisian caterpillars.
At the head of an enchanting valley, called the Valley Coquette because
of its windings and the curves which return upon each other at every
step, and seem more and more lovely as we advance, whether we ascend or
descend them, there lived, in a little house surrounded by vineyards, a
half-insane man named Margaritis. He was of Italian origin, married,
but childless; and his wife took care of him with a courage fully
appreciated by the neighborhood. Madame Margaritis was undoubtedly in
real danger from a man who, among other fancies, persisted in carrying
about with him two long-bladed knives with which he sometimes threatened
her. Who has not seen the wonderful self-devotion shown by provincials
who consecrate their lives to the care of sufferers, possibly because
of the disgrace heaped upon a bourgeoise if she allows her husband or
children to be taken to a public hospital? Moreover, who does not know
the repugnance which these people feel to the payment of the two or
three thousand francs required at Charenton or in the private lunatic
asylums? If any one had spoken to Madame Margaritis of Doctors
Dubuisson, Esquirol, Blanche, and others, she would have preferred, with
noble indignation, to keep her thousands and take care of the “good-man”
at home.
As the incomprehensible whims of this lunatic are connected with the
current of our story, we are compelled to exhibit the most striking
of them. Margaritis went out as soon as it rained, and walked about
bare-headed in his vineyard. At home he made incessant inquiries for
newspapers; to satisfy him his wife and the maid-servant used to give
him an old journal called the “Indre-et-Loire,” and for seven years he
had never yet perceived that he was reading the same number over and
over again. Perhaps a doctor would have observed with interest the
connection that evidently existed between the recurring and spasmodic
demands for the newspaper and the atmospheric variations of the weather.
Usually when his wife had company, which happened nearly every evening,
for the neighbors, pitying her situation, would frequently come to play
at boston in her salon, Margaritis remained silent in a corner and never
stirred. But the moment ten o’clock began to strike on a clock which he
kept shut up in a large oblong closet, he rose at the stroke with the
mechanical precision of the figures which are made to move by springs in
the German toys. He would then advance slowly towards the players, give
them a glance like the automatic gaze of the Greeks and Turks exhibited
on the Boulevard du Temple, and say sternly, “Go away!” There were days
when he had lucid intervals and could give his wife excellent advice
as to the sale of their wines; but at such times he became extremely
annoying, and would ransack her closets and steal her delicacies, which
he devoured in secret. Occasionally, when the usual visitors made their
appearance he would treat them with civility; but as a general thing
his remarks and replies were incoherent. For instance, a lady once asked
him, “How do you feel to-day, Monsieur Margaritis?” “I have grown
a beard,” he replied, “have you?” “Are you better?” asked another.
“Jerusalem! Jerusalem!” was the answer. But the greater part of the time
he gazed stolidly at his guests without uttering a word; and then his
wife would say, “The good-man does not hear anything to-day.”
On two or three occasions in the course of five years, and usually
about the time of the equinox, this remark had driven him to frenzy; he
flourished his knives and shouted, “That joke dishonors me!”
As for his daily life, he ate, drank, and walked about like other men in
sound health; and so it happened that he was treated with about the same
respect and attention that we give to a heavy piece of furniture. Among
his many absurdities was one of which no man had as yet discovered the
object, although by long practice the wiseheads of the community had
learned to unravel the meaning of most of his vagaries. He insisted on
keeping a sack of flour and two puncheons of wine in the cellar of his
house, and he would allow no one to lay hands on them. But then the
month of June came round he grew uneasy with the restless anxiety of a
madman about the sale of the sack and the puncheons. Madame Margaritis
could nearly always persuade him that the wine had been sold at
an enormous price, which she paid over to him, and which he hid so
cautiously that neither his wife nor the servant who watched him had
ever been able to discover its hiding-place.
The evening before Gaudissart reached Vouvray Madame Margaritis had had
more difficulty than usual in deceiving her husband, whose mind happened
to be uncommonly lucid.
“I really don’t know how I shall get through to-morrow,” she had said to
Madame Vernier. “Would you believe it, the good-man insists on watching
his two casks of wine. He has worried me so this whole day, that I
had to show him two full puncheons. Our neighbor, Pierre Champlain,
fortunately had two which he had not sold. I asked him to kindly let me
have them rolled into our cellar; and oh, dear! now that the good-man
has seen them he insists on bottling them off himself!”
Madame Vernier had related the poor woman’s trouble to her husband just
before the entrance of Gaudissart, and at the first words of the famous
traveller Vernier determined that he should be made to grapple with
Margaritis.
“Monsieur,” said the ex-dyer, as soon as the illustrious Gaudissart
had fired his first broadside, “I will not hide from you the great
difficulties which my native place offers to your enterprise. This part
of the country goes along, as it were, in the rough,--‘suo modo.’ It is
a country where new ideas don’t take hold. We live as our fathers lived,
we amuse ourselves with four meals a day, and we cultivate our vineyards
and sell our wines to the best advantage. Our business principle is to
sell things for more than they cost us; we shall stick in that rut, and
neither God nor the devil can get us out of it. I will, however, give
you some advice, and good advice is an egg in the hand. There is in
this town a retired banker in whose wisdom I have--I, particularly--the
greatest confidence. If you can obtain his support, I will add mine. If
your proposals have real merit, if we are convinced of the advantage of
your enterprise, the approval of Monsieur Margaritis (which carries with
it mine) will open to you at least twenty rich houses in Vouvray who
will be glad to try your specifics.”
When Madame Vernier heard the name of the lunatic she raised her head
and looked at her husband.
“Ah, precisely; my wife intends to call on Madame Margaritis with one
of our neighbors. Wait a moment, and you can accompany these ladies--You
can pick up Madame Fontanieu on your way,” said the wily dyer, winking
at his wife.
To pick out the greatest gossip, the sharpest tongue, the most
inveterate cackler of the neighborhood! It meant that Madame Vernier
was to take a witness to the scene between the traveller and the lunatic
which should keep the town in laughter for a month. Monsieur and Madame
Vernier played their part so well that Gaudissart had no suspicions, and
straightway fell into the trap. He gallantly offered his arm to Madame
Vernier, and believed that he made, as they went along, the conquest
of both ladies, for those benefit he sparkled with wit and humor and
undetected puns.
The house of the pretended banker stood at the entrance to the Valley
Coquette. The place, called La Fuye, had nothing remarkable about it. On
the ground floor was a large wainscoted salon, on either side of which
opened the bedroom of the good-man and that of his wife. The salon
was entered from an ante-chamber, which served as the dining-room and
communicated with the kitchen. This lower door, which was wholly without
the external charm usually seen even in the humblest dwellings in
Touraine, was covered by a mansard story, reached by a stairway built
on the outside of the house against the gable end and protected by
a shed-roof. A little garden, full of marigolds, syringas, and
elder-bushes, separated the house from the fields; and all around the
courtyard were detached buildings which were used in the vintage season
for the various processes of making wine.