darted from his blue eyes, and a smile of sorrowful indignation played
about his mobile lips. The traveller examined that strongly-marked face,
shaded by a heavy grizzly beard, wrinkled by fatigue, by exposure to the
air, perhaps by disappointment as well; and, despite the pain that his
language caused, he could not help thinking him handsome, and admiring,
in the facility with which he bluntly expressed his thoughts, a sort of
natural eloquence instinct with sincerity and love of justice; for,
although his words, of which we have failed to express all the rustic
homeliness, were simple and sometimes vulgar, his gestures were emphatic
and the tone of his voice commanded attention. A feeling of profound
depression had taken possession of his hearers, while he drew without
any artifice, and unsparingly, the portrait of the pitiless and
persevering rich man. The wine had had no effect upon him, and every
time that he raised his eyes to the young man's face, he seemed to look
into his very soul and sternly question him. Monsieur Antoine, although
slightly affected by the weight of the wine he was carrying, had lost
nothing of his harangue, and submitting as usual to the ascendancy of
that mind, of stouter temper than his own, he heaved a deep sigh from
time to time.
When the peasant had finished, "May God forgive you, indeed, my friend,
if your judgment is at fault," he said, raising his glass as an offering
to the Deity: "and if you are right, may Providence avert such a scourge
from the heads of the poor and weak!"
"Listen to me, Monsieur de Châteaubrun, and you too, my friend," cried
the young man, taking a hand of each of his companions in his own, "God,
who hears all the words of man, and who reads their real sentiments in
the depths of their hearts, knows that these evils are not to be
dreaded, and that your apprehensions are only chimeras. I know the man
of whom you speak; I know him well; and, although his face is cold, his
character obstinate, his intellect active and strong, I will answer to
you for the loyalty of his purposes and the noble use he will make of
his fortune. There is something alarming, I agree, in the firmness of
his will, and I am not surprised that his inflexible manner has caused
a sort of vertigo here, as if a supernatural being had appeared in the
midst of your peaceful fields. But that strength of purpose is based
upon moral and religious principles, which make him, if not the mildest
and most affable of men, the most rigidly just and the most royally
generous."
"So much the better, deuce take it!" rejoined the châtelain, clinking
his glass against the peasant's. "I drink to your health, and I am happy
to have reason to esteem a man when I am on the point of cursing him.
Come, don't be obstinate, old fellow, but believe this young man, who
talks like a book and knows more about the subject than you and I do.
Why, he says that he knows Cardonnet! that he knows him well! what more
do you want? He will answer for him. So we need not worry any more. And
now, friends, let us go to bed," continued the châtelain, delighted to
accept the guaranty of a man of whom he knew nothing at all, not even
his name, for a man of whom he knew little; "the clock is striking
eleven, and that's an undue hour."
"I am going to take my leave of you," said the traveller, "and continue
my journey, asking your permission to come soon to thank you for your
kindness."
"You shall not go away to-night," cried Monsieur Antoine; "it is
impossible, it rains bucketfuls, the roads are drowned, and you couldn't
see your own feet. If you persist in going, I never want to see you
again."
He was so urgent and the storm was in fact so fierce that the young man
was fain to accept the proffered hospitality.
Sylvain Charasson--that was the name of the page--brought a lantern, and
Monsieur Antoine, taking the traveller's arm, guided him among the ruins
of the manor-house in search of a bedroom.
All the floors of the square pavilion were occupied by the Châteaubrun
family; but, in addition to that small wing which was intact and
recently restored, there was an enormous tower on the other side of the
courtyard, the oldest part, the highest, the thickest, the most
impervious of the whole pile, the rooms which it contained, one above
another, being arched with stone and even more solidly constructed than
the square pavilion. The band of speculators who had purchased the
château several years before for purposes of demolition, and had
carried away all the wood and iron to the last door-hinge, had found
nothing to demolish on the lower floors, and Monsieur Antoine had had
one floor cleaned and closed, for use on the rare occasions when he had
an opportunity to entertain a guest. It had been a great display of
magnificence on the poor fellow's part to replace the doors and windows
and put a bed and a few chairs in that apartment, which was not
necessary for the accommodation of his family. He had made the effort
cheerfully, saying to Janille: "It isn't everything to be comfortable
yourself; you must think about being able to give your neighbor
shelter." And yet, when the young man entered that dismal feudal donjon,
and found himself, as it were, confined in a jail, his heart sank, and
he would gladly have followed the peasant, who went, as his custom was,
to lie on the fresh straw with Sylvain Charasson. But Monsieur Antoine
was so pleased and so proud to be able to do the honors of a _guest
chamber_, despite his poverty, that his young guest felt bound to accept
for his lodgings one of the frowning prisons of the Middle Ages.
However, there was a good fire in the huge fireplace, and the bed, which
consisted of a mattress of oat-chaff with a thick quilt spread upon it,
was not to be despised. Everything was cheap and clean. The young man
soon drove away the melancholy thoughts that assail every traveller
quartered in such a place, and, despite the rumbling of the thunder, the
cries of the night-birds and the roar of the wind and rain, which shook
his windows, while the rats made furious assaults upon his door, he was
soon sound asleep.
His sleep, however, was disturbed by strange dreams, and he had a sort
of nightmare just before dawn, as if it were impossible to pass the
night in a place stained with the mysterious crimes of feudal days
without being made the victim of painful visions. He dreamed that
Monsieur Cardonnet entered the room, and as he struggled to get out of
bed and run to meet him, he made an imperative sign to him not to stir;
then, coming to him with an impassive air, he climbed on his chest,
paying no heed to his groans and giving no indication upon his stony
face that he was aware of the agony he caused him.
Crushed beneath that terrible weight, the sleeper struggled in vain for
a space that seemed to him more than a century, and he had the
death-rattle in his throat when he succeeded in rousing himself. But,
although the day was beginning to break, and he could see everything in
the tower distinctly, he remained so completely under the influence of
his dream that he fancied that he still saw that inflexible face before
his eyes and felt the weight of a body as heavy as a mountain of brass
on his crushed and sunken chest. He arose and walked around the room
several times before returning to bed, for, although he was anxious to
make an early start, he was overcome by an unconquerable feeling of
prostration. But his eyes were no sooner closed than the spectre
recurred to his determination to stifle him, until, feeling that he was
at the point of death, the young man cried out in a broken voice:
"Father! father! what have I done to you, and why have you determined to
murder your own son?"
The sound of his own voice woke him, and, finding that he was still
pursued by the apparition, he ran to the window and opened it. As soon
as the cool outer air entered that low room, in the atmosphere of which
there was something lethargic, the hallucination vanished, and he
dressed in haste, in order to leave the place where he had been the
plaything of such a cruel fancy. But, notwithstanding all his efforts to
think of something else, he could not shake off a feeling of painful
disquietude, and the _guest-chamber_ of Châteaubrun seemed to him even
more dismal than on the night before.
The dull, gray light enabled him at last to see the whole of the
château from his window.
It was literally nothing but a heap of ruins, the still magnificent
ruins of a seignorial abode built at different periods. The courtyard,
overgrown with weeds, through which the infrequent going and coming of a
family reduced to the strict necessaries of life had worn only two or
three narrow paths, from the large tower to the small one, and from the
well to the main entrance, was surrounded opposite his window by
crumbling walls which could be recognized as the foundations and lower
courses of several buildings, among others a dainty chapel, of which the
pediment, with a pretty rose-window surrounded by festoons of ivy, was
still standing. At the end of the courtyard, in the centre of which was
a large well, rose the dismantled skeleton of what had once been the
principal abiding-place of the lords of Châteaubrun from the time of
François I. to the Revolution. This once sumptuous edifice was now
naught but a shapeless skeleton, open on all sides, a strange mass of
ruins to which the crumbling away of the interior partitions imparted an
appearance of enormous height. Neither the towers in which the graceful
spiral staircases were enclosed, nor the great frescoed rooms, nor the
beautiful mantels of carved stone had been respected by the hammer of
the demolisher, and some few vestiges of this splendor, which they had
been unable to reach, some fragments of richly decorated friezes, some
garlands of leaves carved by the skilful craftsmen of the Renaissance,
and an escutcheon bearing the arms of France crossed by the baton of
bastardy--all of fine white stone, which time had not yet been able to
darken--presented the melancholy spectacle of a work of art
remorselessly sacrificed to the brutal law of necessity.
When young Cardonnet turned his eyes toward the small pavilion occupied
by the last scion of a once wealthy and illustrious family, he felt a
thrill of compassion as he reflected that there was in that pavilion a
young woman whose ancestresses had had pages, vassals, fine horses and
packs of hounds, whereas this inheritress of a ghastly ruin was destined
perhaps, like the Princess Nausicaa, to wash her own linen at the
fountain.
As he made this reflection he saw a little round window on the upper
floor of the square pavilion open gently, and a woman's head, supported
by the loveliest neck imaginable, lean forward as if to speak to some
one in the courtyard. Emile Cardonnet, although he belonged to a
generation of myopes, had excellent sight, and the distance was not so
great that he could not distinguish the features belonging to that
graceful blond head, whose hair the wind tossed about in some confusion.
It seemed to him what in fact it was, an angel's head, arrayed in all
the bloom of youth, sweet and noble at the same time. The tone of the
voice was fascinating and the pronunciation was remarkably elegant.
"So it rained all night, did it, Jean?" she said. "See how full of water
the courtyard is! All the fields I can see from my window are like
ponds."
"It's a regular deluge, my dear child," the peasant, who seemed to be an
intimate friend of the family, replied from below, "a genuine
water-spout! I don't know whether the worst of the storm broke here or
somewhere else, but I never saw the fountain so full."
"The roads must be all washed out, Jean, and you had better stay here.
Is father awake?"
"Not yet, Gilberte, but Mère Janille is up and about."
"Will you ask her to come up to my room, my old Jean? I have something
to ask her."
"I will go at once."
The girl closed the window without apparently noticing that the
traveller's window was open and that he was standing there looking at
her.
A moment later he was in the courtyard, where the rain had transformed
the paths into little torrents, and he found Sylvain Charasson in the
stable, cleaning his horse and Monsieur Antoine's, and discussing the
effects of such a terrible night with the peasant whose Christian name
Emile Cardonnet had learned at last. The night before, this man had
caused him a sort of indefinable uneasiness, as if there were something
mysterious and fateful about him. He had noticed that Monsieur Antoine
had not once called him by name, and that, on several occasions when
Janille had been on the point of doing so, he had warned her with a
glance to be careful. They called him only _friend_, _comrade_ or _old
fellow_, and it seemed that his name was a secret which they did not
choose to divulge. Who could this man be, who had the outward aspect and
the language of a peasant and who, nevertheless, carried his gloomy
anticipations so far, and his severe criticism to such a point.
Emile strove to enter into conversation with him, but to no purpose; he
was even more reserved than on the preceding day, and when he was
questioned concerning the damage done by the storm, he replied simply:
"I advise you to lose no time in starting for Gargilesse if you want to
find any bridges across the stream, for in less than two hours there'll
be a most infernal _dribe_ there."
"What do you mean by that? I don't understand that word."
"You don't know what a _dribe_ is? Well, you will see one to-day and
you'll never forget it. Good-day, monsieur; be off at once for your
friend Cardonnet will be in trouble before long."
And he turned away without another word.
Impelled by a vague feeling of alarm, Emile hastily saddled his horse
himself, and said to Charasson, tossing him a piece of money:
"Tell your master, my boy, that I have gone without taking leave of him,
but that I shall come again soon to thank him for his kindness to me."
He was riding through the gateway when Janille came running up to detain
him. She insisted on waking Monsieur Antoine; mademoiselle was dressing;
breakfast would be ready in a moment; the roads were too wet; it was
going to rain again. The young man, with many thanks, succeeded in
escaping from her hospitable attentions, and made her also a present,
which she seemed very glad to accept. But he had not reached the foot of
the hill when he heard a horse trotting behind him, his great, heavy
feet just razing the ground. It was Sylvain Charasson, mounted on
Monsieur Antoine's mare, with no other bridle than a rope halter passed
between the animal's teeth, riding hastily after him. "I am going to
guide you, monsieur," he cried, as he passed him; "Mademoiselle Janille
says you'll kill yourself, as you don't know the roads, and that's the
truth too."
"All right, but take the shortest road," replied the young man.
"Never fear," rejoined the rustic page, and, plying his clogs, he urged
the hollow-backed mare into a fast trot, her huge stomach, stuffed with
hay unmixed with oats, presenting a striking contrast to her thin flanks
and bony chest.
V
THE DRIBE
The slopes crowned by Châteaubrun were so steep that the young man and
his new guide were delayed by no torrent of any size and soon reached
the valley. But as they rode rapidly by a small pond full to the brim,
the boy exclaimed, with a glance of amazement: "The _Font-Margot_ full!
That means a lot of damage in the low lands. We shall have trouble
crossing the river. Let's hurry, monsieur!"--He urged the mare to a
gallop; and despite her ungainly build and her broad, flat feet
embellished with a fringe of long hair that trailed on the ground, she
picked her way over the uneven ground with remarkable skill and sureness
of foot.
The extensive plains of this region form great plateaus broken by
ravines, which, with their abrupt and deep declivities, make veritable
mountains to ascend and descend. After riding about an hour, our
travellers found themselves opposite the valley of Gargilesse, and a
fascinating landscape was spread out before them. The village of
Gargilesse, built like a sugar-loaf on a steep knoll, and overlooked by
its pretty church and its ancient monastery, seemed to rise from the
depths of the precipices; and the boy pointed out to Emile a number of
enormous buildings, entirely new and of fine appearance, at the bottom
of the steepest of those precipices, saying:
"Look, monsieur, there are Monsieur Cardonnet's buildings."
It was the first time that Emile, who was a law-student at Poitiers and
passed his vacations at Paris, had visited the region where his father
had been engaged for a year past in an important undertaking. The
natural aspect of the spot seemed to him beautiful, and he was grateful
to his parents for having happened upon a location where industry could
flourish without banishing the influences of poesy.
They had still some distance to ride across the plateau before reaching
the slope, where all the details of the landscape could be embraced in a
single glance. As Emile approached the edge he discovered new beauties,
and the convent-château of Gargilesse, planted proudly on the rock over
the Cardonnet factories, seemed a decoration placed there designedly to
crown the whole picture. The sides of the ravine, into which the little
stream flowed swiftly, were covered with hardy vegetation, and the young
man, who involuntarily allowed his attention to be absorbed by the
external aspect of his new inheritance, observed with satisfaction that,
amid the clearing away that had to be done to install the establishment
in such a thickly-wooded spot, they had spared some magnificent old
trees, which were the noblest ornament of the dwelling-house.
This house, situated a little behind the factory, was convenient,
tasteful, simple in its richness, and the fact that there were curtains
at almost all the windows indicated that it was already occupied. It was
surrounded by a fine garden, terraced along the stream, and from afar he
could distinguish the bright colors of the blooming plants which had
been substituted as if by enchantment for the willow stumps and pools of
stagnant water with which the banks were formerly bordered. The young
man's heart beat fast when he saw a woman descend the steps of this
modern château and walk slowly among her favorite flowers; for it was
his mother. He threw up his arms and waved his cap to attract her
attention, but without success. Madame Cardonnet was intent upon
examining her horticultural pets; she did not expect her son until
evening.
On a more open space Emile saw the complicated,
scientifically-constructed buildings of the factory; and fifty or more
busy workmen moving amid the medley of materials of all sorts--some
cutting stone, others preparing the mortar, others trimming rafters,
others loading carts drawn by enormous horses. As it was absolutely
necessary to descend the steep road at a foot-pace, little Charasson
found opportunity to speak.
"This is a bad place, isn't it, monsieur? Keep a tight rein on your
horse! It would be a good thing if Monsieur Cardonnet would build a road
to take people from our house to his factory. See what fine roads he's
built in other directions! and the pretty bridges! all of stone, you
see! Before he came you had to wet your feet crossing the river in
summer, and in winter you didn't cross at all. He's the kind of man that
everybody ought to kiss the ground he walks on."
"So you don't agree with your friend Jean who says so much ill of him?"
"Oh! Jean! Jean! you needn't pay much attention to his croaking. He's a
man who has _ennuis_, and he sees everything crooked lately, although he
isn't an unkind man, not at all. But he's the only man hereabout who
talks like that; everybody else is all in favor of Monsieur Cardonnet.
He isn't stingy, I tell you. He talks a little hard, he pushes his
workmen a little, but bless me! he pays; you ought to see the wages he
pays! and if you do break your back working, if you're well paid you
ought to be satisfied, eh, monsieur?"
The young man stifled a sigh. He did not absolutely agree with Monsieur
Sylvain Charasson's theory of economic compensations, and, however much
he might desire to approve his father's course, he could not see very
clearly how wages could replace the loss of health and life.
"I'm surprised not to see him on his workmen's backs," added the page of
Châteaubrun ingenuously and with no malicious intent, "for he isn't in
the habit of giving them much time to breathe. Ah, indeed! he's a man to
push work ahead! He isn't like Mère Janille at our house, who's always
making a noise and never lets other people do anything. He doesn't seem
to move about, but anyone would say he did the work with his eyes. When
a workman speaks or puts down his pick to light his pipe, or just takes
a little bit of a nap at noon in the heat of the day, he'll say, without
losing his temper: 'Look here, you can't smoke or sleep comfortably
here; go home, you'll be more comfortable.'--And that's all. He won't
employ him again for a week, and the second time it's a month, and the
third he's done for good."
Emile sighed again: he recognized his father's inflexible severity in
these details, and he had to turn his thoughts toward the presumed
object of his efforts in order to be reconciled to his methods.
"Ah! _pardine_! there he is," cried the boy, pointing to Monsieur
Cardonnet, whose tall figure and dark clothes were discernible on the
other bank. "He's looking at the water; perhaps he's afraid of the
_dribe_, although he usually says it's all nonsense."
"So the _dribe_ is a freshet, is it?" queried Emile, beginning to
understand the word, a corruption of _dérive_.
"Yes, monsieur, it's like a waterspout, that comes with great storms.
But the storm has passed and the _dribe_ hasn't come, and I believe Jean
was all wrong in his prophesying. And yet, monsieur, look at the water,
how low it is! it's almost dried up since yesterday and that's a bad
sign. Let's hurry across, it may come any minute."
They quickened their pace and easily forded the first arm of the stream.
But in the effort that Emile's horse made to climb the somewhat steep
bank of the little island, he broke his girths, and his rider had to
dismount and try to fix his saddle. It was not an easy task, and in his
haste to join his parents Emile bungled over it; the knot that he had
made slipped when he put his foot in the stirrup, and Charasson was
obliged to cut off a piece of the rope he was using for a bridle in
order to make the necessary repairs. All this took some time, during
which their attention was wholly diverted from the disaster Sylvain
dreaded. The island was covered with a dense growth of willows which
made it impossible for them to look ten yards in any direction.
Suddenly a noise like the prolonged rumble of thunder reached their
ears. Emile, mistaking the cause of the noise, looked up at the sky,
which was perfectly clear overhead. But the child turned pale as death.
"The _dribe_!" he cried, "the _dribe_! we must run for it, monsieur!"
They crossed the island at a gallop; but before they were clear of the
willow scrub, they were met by waves of yellowish water covered with
foam. It was already up to their horses' breasts when they found
themselves face to face with the swollen torrent, which was spreading
furiously over the surrounding country.
Emile would have attempted to cross; but his guide clung to him.
"No, monsieur, no," he cried; "it's too late. See the force of the
stream and the logs it's bringing down! No man or beast could go through
that. Let us leave the horses, monsieur, let us leave the horses;
perhaps they will have sense enough to save themselves; but it's too
much of a risk for Christians! Look, there's the footbridge gone! Do as
I do, monsieur, do as I do, or you're a dead man!"
And Charasson, who already had the water up to his shoulders, began to
run nimbly up a tree. Emile, judging from the fury of the torrent, which
increased a foot in depth every second, that courage would be sheer
folly, and thinking of his mother, decided to follow the little
peasant's example.
"Not that one, monsieur, not that one!" cried the boy, seeing him start
to climb an aspen. "That's too weak, it will be carried away like a
straw. Come up here, by me; for the love of God, climb my tree!"
Emile, recognizing the wisdom of Sylvain's suggestion,--for the child,
in the midst of his terror, lost neither his presence of mind nor the
commendable desire to save his neighbor,--ran to the old oak to which he
was clinging and soon succeeded in reaching a position not far from him,
on a stout branch several feet above the water. But they had soon to
abandon that post to the angry element, which continued to rise; and,
ascending in their turn from branch to branch, they succeeded in saving
their lives.