“Well, then, undo that pile in presence of Monsieur Brunet,” said the keeper.
Though the sheriff’s officer had assumed the indifference that the routine of business does really give to officials of his class, he threw a glance at Tonsard and his wife which said plainly, “A bad business!” Old Fourchon looked at his daughter, and slyly pointed at a pile of ashes in the chimney. Mam Tonsard, who understood in a moment from that significant gesture both the danger of her mother-in-law and the advice of her father, seized a handful of ashes and flung them in the keeper’s eyes. Vatel roared with pain; Tonsard pushed him roughly upon the broken door-steps where the blinded man stumbled and fell, and then rolled nearly down to the gate, dropping his gun on the way. In an instant the load of sticks was unfastened, and the oak logs pulled out and hidden with a rapidity no words can describe. Brunet, anxious not to witness this manoeuvre, which he readily foresaw, rushed after the keeper to help him up; then he placed him on the bank and wet his handkerchief in water to wash the eyes of the poor fellow, who, in spite of his agony, was trying to reach the brook.
“You are in the wrong, Vatel,” said Brunet; “you have no right to enter houses, don’t you see?”
The old woman, a little hump-backed creature, stood on the sill of the door, with her hands on her hips, darting flashes from her eyes and curses from her foaming lips shrill enough to be heard at Blangy.
“Ha! the villain, ‘twas well done! May hell get you! To suspect me of cutting trees! —me, the most honest woman in the village. To hunt me like vermin! I’d like to see you lose your cursed eyes, for then we’d have peace. You are birds of ill-omen, the whole of you; you invent shameful stories to stir up strife between your master and us.”
The keeper allowed the sheriff to bathe his eyes and all the while the latter kept telling him that he was legally wrong.
“The old thief! she has tired us out,” said Vatel at last. “She has been at work in the woods all night.”
As the whole family had taken an active hand in hiding the live wood and putting things straight in the cottage, Tonsard presently appeared at the door with an insolent air. “Vatel, my man, if you ever again dare to force your way into my domain, my gun shall answer you,” he said. “To-day you have had the ashes; the next time you shall have the fire. You don’t know your own business. That’s enough. Now if you feel hot after this affair take some wine, I offer it to you; and you may come in and see that my old mother’s bundle of fagots hadn’t a scrap of live wood in it; it is every bit brushwood.”
“Scoundrel!” said the keeper to the sheriff, in a low voice, more enraged by this speech than by the smart of his eyes.
Just then Charles, the groom, appeared at the gate of the Grand-I-Vert.
“What is the matter, Vatel?” he said.
“Ah!” said the keeper, wiping his eyes, which he had plunged wide open into the rivulet to give them a final cleansing. “I have some debtors in there that I’ll cause to rue the day they saw the light.”
“If you take it that way, Monsieur Vatel,” said Tonsard, coldly, “you will find we don’t want for courage in Burgundy.”
Vatel departed. Not feeling much curiosity to know what the trouble was, Charles went up the steps and looked into the house.
“Come to the chateau, you and your otter, – if you really have one,” he said to Pere Fourchon.
The old man rose hurriedly and followed him.
“Well, where is it, – that otter of yours?” said Charles, smiling doubtfully.
“This way,” said the old fellow, going toward the Thune.
The name is that of a brook formed by the overflow of the mill-race and of certain springs in the park of Les Aigues. It runs by the side of the county road as far as the lakelet of Soulanges, which it crosses, and then falls into the Avonne, after feeding the mills and ponds on the Soulanges estate.
“Here it is; I hid it in the brook, with a stone around its neck.”
As he stooped and rose again the old man missed the coin out of his pocket, where metal was so uncommon that he was likely to notice its presence or its absence immediately.
“Ah, the sharks!” he cried. “If I hunt otters they hunt fathers-in-law! They get out of me all I earn, and tell me it is for my good! If it were not for my poor Mouche, who is the comfort of my old age, I’d drown myself. Children! they are the ruin of their fathers. You haven’t married, have you, Monsieur Charles? Then don’t; never get married, and then you can’t reproach yourself for spreading bad blood. I, who expected to buy my tow with that money, and there it is filched, stolen! That monsieur up at Les Aigues, a fine young fellow, gave me ten francs; ha! well! it’ll put up the price of my otter now.”
Charles distrusted the old man so profoundly that he took his grievances (this time very sincere) for the preliminary of what he called, in servant’s slang, “varnish,” and he made the great mistake of letting his opinion appear in a satirical grin, which the spiteful old fellow detected.
“Come, come! Pere Fourchon, now behave yourself; you are going to see Madame,” said Charles, noticing how the rubies flashed on the nose and cheeks of the old drunkard.
“I know how to attend to business, Charles; and the proof is that if you will get me out of the kitchen the remains of the breakfast and a bottle or two of Spanish wine, I’ll tell you something which will save you from a ‘foul.’”
“Tell me, and Francois shall get Monsieur’s own order to give you a glass of wine,” said the groom.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Well then, I know you meet my granddaughter Catherine under the bridge of the Avonne. Godain is in love with her; he saw you, and he is fool enough to be jealous, – I say fool, for a peasant oughtn’t to have feelings which belong only to rich folks. If you go to the ball of Soulanges at Tivoli and dance with her, you’ll dance higher than you’ll like. Godain is rich and dangerous; he is capable of breaking your arm without your getting a chance to arrest him.”
“That would be too dear; Catherine is a fine girl, but she is not worth all that,” replied Charles. “Why should Godain be so angry? others are not.”
“He loves her enough to marry her.”
“If he does, he’ll beat her,” said Charles.
“I don’t know about that,” said the old man. “She takes after her mother, against whom Tonsard never raised a finger, – he’s too afraid she’ll be off, hot foot. A woman who knows how to hold her own is mighty useful. Besides, if it came to fisticuffs with Catherine, Godain, though he’s pretty strong, wouldn’t give the last blow.”
“Well, thank you, Pere Fourchon; here’s forty sous to drink my health in case I can’t get you the sherry.”
Pere Fourchon turned his head aside as he pocketed the money lest Charles should see the expression of amusement and sarcasm which he was unable to repress.
“Catherine,” he resumed, “is a proud minx; she likes sherry. You had better tell her to go and get it at Les Aigues.”
Charles looked at Pere Fourchon with naive admiration, not suspecting the eager interest the general’s enemies took in slipping one more spy into the chateau.
“The general ought to feel happy now,” continued Fourchon; “the peasants are all quiet. What does he say? Is he satisfied with Sibilet?”
“It is only Monsieur Michaud who finds fault with Sibilet. They say he’ll get him sent away.”
“Professional jealousy!” exclaimed Fourchon. “I’ll bet you would like to get rid of Francois and take his place.”
“Hang it! he has twelve hundred francs wages,” said Charles; “but they can’t send him off, – he knows the general’s secrets.”
“Just as Madame Michaud knows the countess’s,” remarked Fourchon, watching the other carefully. “Look here, my boy, do you know whether Monsieur and Madame have separate rooms?”
“Of course; if they didn’t, Monsieur wouldn’t be so fond of Madame.”
“Is that all you know?” said Fourchon.
As they were now before the kitchen windows nothing more was said.
CHAPTER V. ENEMIES FACE TO FACE
While breakfast was in progress at the chateau, Francois, the head footman, whispered to Blondet, but loud enough for the general to overhear him, —
“Monsieur, Pere Fourchon’s boy is here; he says they have caught the otter, and wants to know if you would like it, or whether they shall take it to the sub-prefect at Ville-aux-Fayes.”
Emile Blondet, though himself a past-master of hoaxing, could not keep his cheeks from blushing like those of a virgin who hears an indecorous story of which she knows the meaning.
“Ha! ha! so you have hunted the otter this morning with Pere Fourchon?” cried the general, with a roar of laughter.
“What is it?” asked the countess, uneasy at her husband’s laugh.
“When a man of wit and intelligence is taken in by old Fourchon,” continued the general, “a retired cuirassier need not blush for having hunted that otter; which bears an enormous resemblance to the third posthorse we are made to pay for and never see.” With that he went off into further explosions of laughter, in the midst of which he contrived to say: “I am not surprised you had to change your boots – and your trousers; I have no doubt you have been wading! The joke didn’t go as far as that with me, – I stayed on the bank; but then, you know, you are so much more intelligent than I – ”
“But you forget,” interrupted Madame de Montcornet, “that I do not know what you are talking of.”
At these words, said with some pique, the general grew serious, and Blondet told the story of his fishing for the otter.
“But if they really have an otter,” said the countess, “those poor people are not to blame.”
“Oh, but it is ten years since an otter has been seen about here,” said the pitiless general.
“Monsieur le comte,” said Francois, “the boy swears by all that’s sacred that he has got one.”
“If they have one I’ll buy it,” said the general.
“I don’t suppose,” remarked the Abbe Brossette, “that God has condemned Les Aigues to never have otters.”
“Ah, Monsieur le cure!” cried Blondet, “if you bring the Almighty against me – ”
“But what is all this? Who is here?” said the countess, hastily.
“Mouche, madame, – the boy who goes about with old Fourchon,” said the footman.
“Bring him in – that is, if Madame will allow it?” said the general; “he may amuse you.”
Mouche presently appeared, in his usual state of comparative nudity. Beholding this personification of poverty in the middle of this luxurious dining-room, the cost of one panel of which would have been a fortune to the bare-legged, bare-breasted, and bare-headed child, it was impossible not to be moved by an impulse of charity. The boy’s eyes, like blazing coals, gazed first at the luxuries of the room, and then at those on the table.
“Have you no mother?” asked Madame de Montcornet, unable otherwise to explain the child’s nakedness.
“No, ma’am; m’ma died of grief for losing p’pa, who went to the army in 1812 without marrying her with papers, and got frozen, saving your presence. But I’ve my Grandpa Fourchon, who is a good man, – though he does beat me bad sometimes.”
“How is it, my dear, that such wretched people can be found on your estate?” said the countess, looking at the general.
“Madame la comtesse,” said the abbe, “in this district we have none but voluntary paupers. Monsieur le comte does all he can; but we have to do with a class of persons who are without religion and who have but one idea, that of living at your expense.”
“But, my dear abbe,” said Blondet, “you are here to improve their morals.”
“Monsieur,” replied the abbe, “my bishop sent me here as if on a mission to savages; but, as I had the honor of telling him, the savages of France cannot be reached. They make it a law unto themselves not to listen to us; whereas the church does get some hold on the savages of America.”
“M’sieur le cure, they do help me a bit now,” remarked Mouche; “but if I went to your church they wouldn’t, and the other folks would make game of my breeches.”
“Religion ought to begin by giving him trousers, my dear abbe,” said Blondet. “In your foreign missions don’t you begin by coaxing the savages?”
“He would soon sell them,” answered the abbe, in a low tone; “besides, my salary does not enable me to begin on that line.”
“Monsieur le cure is right,” said the general, looking at Mouche.
The policy of the little scamp was to appear not to hear what they were saying when it was against himself.
“The boy is intelligent enough to know good from evil,” continued the count, “and he is old enough to work; yet he thinks of nothing but how to commit evil without being found out. All the keepers know him. He is very well aware that the master of an estate may witness a trespass on his property and yet have no right to arrest the trespasser. I have known him keep his cows boldly in my meadows, though he knew I saw him; but now, ever since I have been mayor, he runs away fast enough.”
“Oh, that is very wrong,” said the countess; “you should not take other people’s things, my little man.”
“Madame, we must eat. My grandpa gives me more slaps than food, and they don’t fill my stomach, slaps don’t. When the cows come in I milk ‘em just a little and I live on that. Monseigneur isn’t so poor but what he’ll let me drink a drop o’ milk the cows get from his grass?”
“Perhaps he hasn’t eaten anything to-day,” said the countess, touched by his misery. “Give him some bread and the rest of that chicken; let him have his breakfast,” she added, looking at the footman. “Where do you sleep, my child?”
“Anywhere, madame; under the stars in summer, and wherever they’ll let us in winter.”
“How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“There is still time to bring him up to better ways,” said the countess to her husband.
“He will make a good soldier,” said the general, gruffly; “he is well toughened. I went through that kind of thing myself, and here I am.”
“Excuse me, general, I don’t belong to nobody,” said the boy. “I can’t be drafted. My poor mother wasn’t married, and I was born in a field. I’m a son of the ‘airth,’ as grandpa says. M’ma saved me from the army, that she did! My name ain’t no more Mouche than nothing at all. Grandpa keeps telling me all my advantages. I’m not on the register, and when I’m old enough to be drafted I can go all over France and they can’t take me.”
“Are you fond of your grandfather?” said the countess, trying to look into the child’s heart.
“My! doesn’t he box my ears when he feels like it! but then, after all, he’s such fun; he’s such good company! He says he pays himself that way for having taught me to read and write.”
“Can you read?” asked the count.
“Yah, I should think so, Monsieur le comte, and fine writing too – just as true as we’ve got that otter.”
“Read that,” said the count, giving him a newspaper.
“The Qu-o-ti-dienne,” read Mouche, hesitating only three times.
Every one, even the abbe, laughed.
“Why do you make me read that newspaper?” cried Mouche, angrily. “My grandpa says it is made up to please the rich, and everybody knows later just what’s in it.”
“The child is right, general,” said Blondet; “and he makes me long to see my hoaxing friend again.”
Mouche understood perfectly that he was posing for the amusement of the company; the pupil of Pere Fourchon was worthy of his master, and he forthwith began to cry.
“How can you tease a child with bare feet?” said the countess.
“And who thinks it quite natural that his grandfather should recoup himself for his education by boxing his ears,” said Blondet.
“Tell me, my poor little fellow, have you really caught an otter?”
“Yes, madame; as true as that you are the prettiest lady I have seen, or ever shall see,” said the child, wiping his eyes.
“Then show me the otter,” said the general.
“Oh M’sieur le comte, my grandpa has hidden it; but it was kicking still when we were at work at the rope-walk. Send for my grandpa, please; he wants to sell it to you himself.”
“Take him into the kitchen,” said the countess to Francois, “and give him his breakfast, and send Charles to fetch Pere Fourchon. Find some shoes, and a pair of trousers and a waistcoat for the poor child; those who come here naked must go away clothed.”
“May God bless you, my beautiful lady,” said Mouche, departing. “M’sieur le cure may feel quite sure that I’ll keep the things and wear ‘em fete-days, because you give ‘em to me.”
Emile and Madame Montcornet looked at each other with some surprise, and seemed to say to the abbe, “The boy is not a fool!”
“It is quite true, madame,” said the abbe after the child had gone, “that we cannot reckon with Poverty. I believe it has hidden excuses of which God alone can judge, – physical excuses, often congenital; moral excuses, born in the character, produced by an order of things that are often the result of qualities which, unhappily for society, have no vent. Deeds of heroism performed upon the battle-field ought to teach us that the worst scoundrels may become heroes. But here in this place you are living under exceptional circumstances; and if your benevolence is not controlled by reflection and judgment you run the risk of supporting your enemies.”
“Our enemies?” exclaimed the countess.
“Cruel enemies,” said the general, gravely.
“Pere Fourchon and his son-in-law Tonsard,” said the abbe, “are the strength and the intelligence of the lower classes of this valley, who consult them on all occasions. The Machiavelism of these people is beyond belief. Ten peasants meeting in a tavern are the small change of great political questions.”
Just then Francois announced Monsieur Sibilet.
“He is my minister of finance,” said the general, smiling; “ask him in. He will explain to you the gravity of the situation,” he added, looking at his wife and Blondet.
“Because he has reasons of his own for not concealing it,” said the cure, in a low tone.
Blondet then beheld a personage of whom he had heard much ever since his arrival, and whom he desired to know, the land-steward of Les Aigues. He saw a man of medium height, about thirty years of age, with a sulky look and a discontented face, on which a smile sat ill. Beneath an anxious brow a pair of greenish eyes evaded the eyes of others, and so disguised their thought. Sibilet was dressed in a brown surtout coat, black trousers and waistcoat, and wore his hair long and flat to the head, which gave him a clerical look. His trousers barely concealed that he was knock-kneed. Though his pallid complexion and flabby flesh gave the impression of an unhealthy constitution, Sibilet was really robust. The tones of his voice, which were a little thick, harmonized with this unflattering exterior.
Blondet gave a hasty look at the abbe, and the glance with which the young priest answered it showed the journalist that his own suspicions about the steward were certainties to the curate.
“Did you not tell me, my dear Sibilet,” said the general, “that you estimate the value of what the peasants steal from us at a quarter of the whole revenue?”
“Much more than that, Monsieur le comte,” replied the steward. “The poor about here get more from your property than the State exacts in taxes. A little scamp like Mouche can glean his two bushels a day. Old women, whom you would really think at their last gasp, become at the harvest and vintage times as active and healthy as girls. You can witness that phenomenon very soon,” said Sibilet, addressing Blondet, “for the harvest, which was put back by the rains in July will begin next week, when they cut the rye. The gleaners must have a certificate of pauperism from the mayor of the district, and no district should allow any one to glean except the paupers; but the districts of one canton do glean in those of another without certificate. If we have sixty real paupers in our district, there are at least forty others who could support themselves if they were not so idle. Even persons who have a business leave it to glean in the fields and in the vineyards. All these people, taken together, gather in this neighborhood something like three hundred bushels a day; the harvest lasts two weeks, and that makes four thousand five hundred bushels in this district alone. The gleaning takes more from an estate than the taxes. As to the abuse of pasturage, it robs us of fully one-sixth the produce of the meadows; and as to that of the woods, it is incalculable, – they have actually come to cutting down six-year-old trees. The loss to you, Monsieur le comte, amounts to fully twenty-odd thousand francs a year.”
“Do you hear that, madame?” said the general to his wife.
“Is it not exaggerated?” asked Madame de Montcornet.
“No, madame, unfortunately not,” said the abbe. “Poor Niseron, that old fellow with the white head, who combines the functions of bell-ringer, beadle, grave-digger, sexton, and clerk, in defiance of his republican opinions, – I mean the grandfather of the little Genevieve whom you placed with Madame Michaud – ”
“La Pechina,” said Sibilet, interrupting the abbe.
“Pechina!” said the countess, “whom do you mean?”
“Madame la comtesse, when you met little Genevieve on the road in a miserable condition, you cried out in Italian, ‘Piccina!’ The word became a nickname, and is now corrupted all through the district into Pechina,” said the abbe. “The poor girl comes to church with Madame Michaud and Madame Sibilet.”
“And she is none the better for it,” said Sibilet, “for the others ill-treat her on account of her religion.”
“Well, that poor old man of seventy gleans, honestly, about a bushel and a half a day,” continued the priest; “but his natural uprightness prevents him from selling his gleanings as others do, – he keeps them for his own consumption. Monsieur Langlume, your miller, grinds his flour gratis at my request, and my servant bakes his bread with mine.”
“I had quite forgotten my little protegee,” said the countess, troubled at Sibilet’s remark. “Your arrival,” she added to Blondet, “has quite turned my head. But after breakfast I will take you to the gate of the Avonne and show you the living image of those women whom the painters of the fifteenth century delighted to perpetuate.”
The sound of Pere Fourchon’s broken sabots was now heard; after depositing them in the antechamber, he was brought to the door of the dining-room by Francois. At a sign from the countess, Francois allowed him to pass in, followed by Mouche with his mouth full and carrying the otter, hanging by a string tied to its yellow paws, webbed like those of a palmiped. He cast upon his four superiors sitting at table, and also upon Sibilet, that look of mingled distrust and servility which serves as a veil to the thoughts of the peasantry; then he brandished his amphibian with a triumphant air.
“Here it is!” he cried, addressing Blondet.
“My otter!” returned the Parisian, “and well paid for.”
“Oh, my dear gentleman,” replied Pere Fourchon, “yours got away; she is now in her burrow, and she won’t come out, for she’s a female, – this is a male; Mouche saw him coming just as you went away. As true as you live, as true as that Monsieur le comte covered himself and his cuirassiers with glory at Waterloo, the otter is mine, just as much as Les Aigues belongs to Monseigneur the general. But the otter is yours for twenty francs; if not I’ll take it to the sub-prefect. If Monsieur Gourdon thinks it too dear, then I’ll give you the preference; that’s only fair, as we hunted together this morning!”
“Twenty francs!” said Blondet. “In good French you can’t call that giving the preference.”
“Hey, my dear gentleman,” cried the old fellow. “Perhaps I don’t know French, and I’ll ask it in good Burgundian; as long as I get the money, I don’t care, I’ll talk Latin: ‘latinus, latina, latinum’! Besides, twenty francs is what you promised me this morning. My children have already stolen the silver you gave me; I wept about it, coming along, – ask Charles if I didn’t. Not that I’d arrest ‘em for the value of ten francs and have ‘em up before the judge, no! But just as soon as I earn a few pennies, they make me drink and get ‘em out of me. Ah! it is hard, hard to be reduced to go and get my wine elsewhere. But just see what children are these days! That’s what we got by the Revolution; it is all for the children now-a-days, and parents are suppressed. I’m bringing up Mouche on another tack; he loves me, the little scamp,” – giving his grandson a poke.
“It seems to me you are making him a little thief, like all the rest,” said Sibilet; “he never lies down at night without some sin on his conscience.”
“Ha! Monsieur Sibilet, his conscience is as clean as yours any day! Poor child! what can he steal? A little grass! that’s better than throttling a man! He don’t know mathematics like you, nor subtraction, nor addition, nor multiplication, – you are very unjust to us, that you are! You call us a nest of brigands, but you are the cause of the misunderstandings between our good landlord here, who is a worthy man, and the rest of us, who are all worthy men, – there ain’t an honester part of the country than this. Come, what do you mean? do I own property? don’t I go half-naked, and Mouche too? Fine sheets we slept in, washed by the dew every morning! and unless you want the air we breathe and the sunshine we drink, I should like to know what we have that you can take away from us! The rich folks rob as they sit in their chimney-corners, – and more profitably, too, than by picking up a few sticks in the woods. I don’t see no game-keepers or patrols after Monsieur Gaubertin, who came here as naked as a worm and is now worth his millions. It’s easy said, ‘Robbers!’ Here’s fifteen years that old Guerbet, the tax-gatherer at Soulanges, carries his money along the roads by the dead of night, and nobody ever took a farthing from him; is that like a land of robbers? has robbery made us rich? Show me which of us two, your class or mine, live the idlest lives and have the most to live on without earning it.”
“If you were to work,” said the abbe, “you would have property. God blesses labor.”
“I don’t want to contradict you, M’sieur l’abbe, for you are wiser than I, and perhaps you’ll know how to explain something that puzzles me. Now see, here I am, ain’t I? – that drunken, lazy, idle, good-for-nothing old Fourchon, who had an education and was a farmer, and got down in the mud and never got up again, – well, what difference is there between me and that honest and worthy old Niseron, seventy years old (and that’s my age) who has dug the soil for sixty years and got up every day before it was light to go to his work, and has made himself an iron body and a fine soul? Well, isn’t he as bad off as I am? His little granddaughter, Pechina, is at service with Madame Michaud, whereas my little Mouche is as free as air. So that poor good man gets rewarded for his virtues in exactly the same way that I get punished for my vices. He don’t know what a glass of good wine is, he’s as sober as an apostle, he buries the dead, and I – I play for the living to dance. He is always in a peck o’ troubles, while I slip along in a devil-may-care way. We have come along about even in life; we’ve got the same snow on our heads, the same funds in our pockets, and I supply him with rope to ring his bell. He’s a republican and I’m not even a publican, – that’s all the difference as far as I can see. A peasant may do good or do evil (according to your ideas) and he’ll go out of the world just as he came into it, in rags; while you wear the fine clothes.”
No one interrupted Pere Fourchon, who seemed to owe his eloquence to his potations. At first Sibilet tried to cut him short, but desisted at a sign from Blondet. The abbe, the general, and the countess, all understood from the expression of the writer’s eye that he wanted to study the question of pauperism from life, and perhaps take his revenge on Pere Fourchon.
“What sort of education are you giving Mouche?” asked Blondet. “Do you expect to make him any better than your daughters?”
“Does he ever speak to him of God?” said the priest.
“Oh, no, no! Monsieur le cure, I don’t tell him to fear God, but men. God is good; he has promised us poor folks, so you say, the kingdom of heaven, because the rich people keep the earth to themselves. I tell him: ‘Mouche! fear the prison, and keep out of it, – for that’s the way to the scaffold. Don’t steal anything, make people give it to you. Theft leads to murder, and murder brings down the justice of men. The razor of justice, —that’s what you’ve got to fear; it lets the rich sleep easy and keeps the poor awake. Learn to read. Education will teach you ways to grab money under cover of the law, like that fine Monsieur Gaubertin; why, you can even be a land-steward like Monsieur Sibilet here, who gets his rations out of Monsieur le comte. The thing to do is to keep well with the rich, and pick up the crumbs that fall from their tables.’ That’s what I call giving him a good, solid education; and you’ll always find the little rascal on the side of the law, – he’ll be a good citizen and take care of me.”
“What do you mean to make of him?” asked Blondet.
“A servant, to begin with,” returned Fourchon, “because then he’ll see his masters close by, and learn something; he’ll complete his education, I’ll warrant you. Good example will be a fortune to him, with the law on his side like the rest of you. If M’sieur le comte would only take him in his stables and let him learn to groom the horses, the boy will be mighty pleased, for though I’ve taught him to fear men, he don’t fear animals.”
“You are a clever fellow, Pere Fourchon,” said Blondet; “you know what you are talking about, and there’s sense in what you say.”
“Oh, sense? no; I left my sense at the Grand-I-Vert when I lost those silver pieces.”
“How is it that a man of your capacity should have dropped so low? As things are now, a peasant can only blame himself for his poverty; he is a free man, and he can become a rich one. It is not as it used to be. If a peasant lays by his money, he can always buy a bit of land and become his own master.”
“I’ve seen the olden time and I’ve seen the new, my dear wise gentleman,” said Fourchon; “the sign over the door has changed, that’s true, but the wine is the same, – to-day is the younger brother of yesterday, that’s all. Put that in your newspaper! Are we poor folks free? We still belong to the same parish, and its lord is always there, – I call him Toil. The hoe, our sole property, has never left our hands. Let it be the old lords or the present taxes which take the best of our earnings, the fact remains that we sweat our lives out in toil.”