“But you could undertake a business, and try to make your fortune,” said Blondet.
“Try to make my fortune! And where shall I try? If I wish to leave my own province, I must get a passport, and that costs forty sous. Here’s forty years that I’ve never had a slut of a forty-sous piece jingling against another in my pocket. If you want to travel you need as many crowns as there are villages, and there are mighty few Fourchons who have enough to get to six of ‘em. It is only the draft that gives us a chance to get away. And what good does the army do us? The colonels live by the solider, just as the rich folks live by the peasant; and out of every hundred of ‘em you won’t find more than one of our breed. It is just as it is the world over, one rolling in riches, for a hundred down in the mud. Why are we in the mud? Ask God and the usurers. The best we can do is to stay in our own parts, where we are penned like sheep by the force of circumstances, as our fathers were by the rule of the lords. As for me, what do I care what shackles they are that keep me here? let it be the law of public necessity or the tyranny of the old lords, it is all the same; we are condemned to dig the soil forever. There, where we are born, there we dig it, that earth! and spade it, and manure it, and delve in it, for you who are born rich just as we are born poor. The masses will always be what they are, and stay what they are. The number of us who manage to rise is nothing like the number of you who topple down! We know that well enough, if we have no education! You mustn’t be after us with your sheriff all the time, – not if you’re wise. We let you alone, and you must let us alone. If not, and things get worse, you’ll have to feed us in your prisons, where we’d be much better off than in our homes. You want to remain our masters, and we shall always be enemies, just as we were thirty years ago. You have everything, we have nothing; you can’t expect we should ever be friends.”
“That’s what I call a declaration of war,” said the general.
“Monseigneur,” retorted Fourchon, “when Les Aigues belonged to that poor Madame (God keep her soul and forgive her the sins of her youth!) we were happy. She let us get our food from the fields and our fuel from the forest; and was she any the poorer for it? And you, who are at least as rich as she, you hunt us like wild beasts, neither more nor less, and drag the poor before the courts. Well, evil will come of it! you’ll be the cause of some great calamity. Haven’t I just seen your keeper, that shuffling Vatel, half kill a poor old woman for a stick of wood? It is such fellows as that who make you an enemy to the poor; and the talk is very bitter against you. They curse you every bit as hard as they used to bless the late Madame. The curse of the poor, monseigneur, is a seed that grows, – grows taller than your tall oaks, and oak-wood builds the scaffold. Nobody here tells you the truth; and here it is, yes, the truth! I expect to die before long, and I risk very little in telling it to you, the truth! I, who play for the peasants to dance at the great fetes at Soulanges, I heed what the people say. Well, they’re all against you; and they’ll make it impossible for you to stay here. If that damned Michaud of yours doesn’t change, they’ll force you to change him. There! that information and the otter are worth twenty francs, and more too.”
As the old fellow uttered the last words a man’s step was heard, and the individual just threatened by Fourchon entered unannounced. It was easy to see from the glance he threw at the old man that the threat had reached his ears, and all Fourchon’s insolence sank in a moment. The look produced precisely the same effect upon him that the eye of a policeman produces on a thief. Fourchon knew he was wrong, and that Michaud might very well accuse him of saying these things merely to terrify the inhabitants of Les Aigues.
“This is the minister of war,” said the general to Blondet, nodding at Michaud.
“Pardon me, madame, for having entered without asking if you were willing to receive me,” said the newcomer to the countess; “but I have urgent reasons for speaking to the general at once.”
Michaud, as he said this, took notice of Sibilet, whose expression of keen delight in Fourchon’s daring words was not seen by the four persons seated at the table, because they were so preoccupied by the old man; whereas Michaud, who for secret reasons watched Sibilet constantly, was struck with his air and manner.
“He has earned his twenty francs, Monsieur le comte,” said Sibilet; “the otter is fully worth it.”
“Give him twenty francs,” said the general to the footman.
“Do you mean to take my otter away from me?” said Blondet to the general.
“I shall have it stuffed,” replied the latter.
“Ah! but that good gentleman said I might keep the skin,” cried Fourchon.
“Well, then,” exclaimed the countess, hastily, “you shall have five francs more for the skin; but go away now.”
The powerful odor emitted by the pair made the dining-room so horribly offensive that Madame de Montcornet, whose senses were very delicate, would have been forced to leave the room if Fourchon and Mouche had remained. To this circumstance the old man was indebted for his twenty-five francs. He left the room with a timid glance at Michaud, making him an interminable series of bows.
“What I was saying to monseigneur, Monsieur Michaud,” he added, “was really for your good.”
“Or for that of those who pay you,” replied Michaud, with a searching look.
“When you have served the coffee, leave the room,” said the general to the servants, “and see that the doors are shut.”
Blondet, who had not yet seen the bailiff of Les Aigues, was conscious, as he now saw him, of a totally different impression from that conveyed by Sibilet. Just as the steward inspired distrust and repulsion, so Michaud commanded respect and confidence. The first attraction of his presence was a happy face, of a fine oval, pure in outline, in which the nose bore part, – a regularity which is lacking in the majority of French faces. Though the features were correct in drawing, they were not without expression, due, perhaps, to the harmonious coloring of the warm brown and ochre tints, indicative of physical health and strength. The clear brown eyes, which were bright and piercing, kept no reserves in the expression of his thought; they looked straight into the eyes of others. The broad white forehead was thrown still further into relief by his abundant black hair. Honesty, decision, and a saintly serenity were the animating points of this noble face, where a few deep lines upon the brow were the result of the man’s military career. Doubt and suspicion could there be read the moment they had entered his mind. His figure, like that of all men selected for the elite of the cavalry service, though shapely and elegant, was vigorously built. Michaud, who wore moustachios, whiskers, and a chin beard, recalled that martial type of face which a deluge of patriotic paintings and engravings came very near to making ridiculous. This type had the defect of being common in the French army; perhaps the continuance of the same emotions, the same camp sufferings from which none were exempt, neither high nor low, and more especially the same efforts of officers and men upon the battle-fields, may have contributed to produce this uniformity of countenance. Michaud, who was dressed in dark blue cloth, still wore the black satin stock and high boots of a soldier, which increased the slight stiffness and rigidity of his bearing. The shoulders sloped, the chest expanded, as though the man were still under arms. The red ribbon of the Legion of honor was in his buttonhole. In short, to give a last touch in one word about the moral qualities beneath this purely physical presentment, it may be said that while the steward, from the time he first entered upon his functions, never failed to call his master “Monsieur le comte,” Michaud never addressed him otherwise than as “General.”
Blondet exchanged another look with the Abbe Brossette, which meant, “What a contrast!” as he signed to him to observe the two men. Then, as if to know whether the character and mind and speech of the bailiff harmonized with his form and countenance, he turned to Michaud and said: —
“I was out early this morning, and found your under-keepers still sleeping.”
“At what hour?” said the late soldier, anxiously.
“Half-past seven.”
Michaud gave a half-roguish glance at the general.
“By what gate did monsieur leave the park?” he asked.
“By the gate of Conches. The keeper, in his night-shirt, looked at me through the window,” replied Blondet.
“Gaillard had probably just gone to bed,” answered Michaud. “You said you were out early, and I thought you meant day-break. If my man were at home at that time, he must have been ill; but at half-past seven he was sure to be in bed. We are up all night,” added Michaud, after a slight pause, replying to a surprised look on the countess’s face, “but our watchfulness is often wasted. You have just given twenty-five francs to a man who, not an hour ago, was quietly helping to hide the traces of a robbery committed upon you this very morning. I came to speak to you about it, general, when you have finished breakfast; for something will have to be done.”
“You are always for maintaining the right, my dear Michaud, and ‘summum jus, summum injuria.’ If you are not more tolerant, you will get into trouble, so Sibilet here tells me. I wish you could have heard Pere Fourchon just now; the wine he had been drinking made him speak out.”
“He frightened me,” said the countess.
“He said nothing I did not know long ago,” replied the general.
“Oh! the rascal wasn’t drunk; he was playing a part; for whose benefit I leave you to guess. Perhaps you know?” returned Michaud, fixing an eye on Sibilet which caused the latter to turn red.
“O rus!” cried Blondet, with another look at the abbe.
“But these poor creatures suffer,” said the countess, “and there is a great deal of truth in what old Fourchon has just screamed at us, – for I cannot call it speaking.”
“Madame,” replied Michaud, “do you suppose that for fourteen years the soldiers of the Emperor slept on a bed of roses? My general is a count, he is a grand officer of the Legion of honor, he has had perquisites and endowments given to him; am I jealous of him, I who fought as he did? Do I wish to cheat him of his glory, to steal his perquisites, to deny him the honor due to his rank? The peasant should obey as the soldier obeys; he should feel the loyalty of a soldier, his respect for acquired rights, and strive to become an officer himself, honorably, by labor and not by theft. The sabre and the plough are twins; though the soldier has something more than the peasant, – he has death hanging over him at any minute.”
“I want to say that from the pulpit,” cried the abbe.
“Tolerant!” continued the keeper, replying to the general’s remark about Sibilet, “I would tolerate a loss of ten per cent upon the gross returns of Les Aigues; but as things are now thirty per cent is what you lose, general; and, if Monsieur Sibilet’s accounts show it, I don’t understand his tolerance, for he benevolently gives up a thousand or twelve hundred francs a year.”
“My dear Monsieur Michaud,” replied Sibilet, in a snappish tone, “I have told Monsieur le comte that I would rather lose twelve hundred francs a year than my life. Think of it seriously; I have warned you often enough.”
“Life!” exclaimed the countess; “you can’t mean that anybody’s life is in danger?”
“Don’t let us argue about state affairs here,” said the general, laughing. “All this, my dear, merely means that Sibilet, in his capacity of financier, is timid and cowardly, while the minister of war is brave and, like his general, fears nothing.”
“Call me prudent, Monsieur le comte,” interposed Sibilet.
“Well, well!” cried Blondet, laughing, “so here we are, like Cooper’s heroes in the forests of America, in the midst of sieges and savages.”
“Come, gentlemen, it is your business to govern without letting me hear the wheels of the administration,” said Madame de Montcornet.
“Ah! madame,” said the cure, “but it may be right that you should know the toil from which those pretty caps you wear are derived.”
“Well, then, I can go without them,” replied the countess, laughing. “I will be very respectful to a twenty-franc piece, and grow as miserly as the country people themselves. Come, my dear abbe, give me your arm. Leave the general with his two ministers, and let us go to the gate of the Avonne to see Madame Michaud, for I have not had time since my arrival to pay her a visit, and I want to inquire about my little protegee.”
And the pretty woman, already forgetting the rags and tatters of Mouche and Fourchon, and their eyes full of hatred, and Sibilet’s warnings, went to have herself made ready for the walk.
The abbe and Blondet obeyed the behest of the mistress of the house and followed her from the dining-room, waiting till she was ready on the terrace before the chateau.
“What do you think of all this?” said Blondet to the abbe.
“I am a pariah; they dog me as they would a common enemy. I am forced to keep my eyes and ears perpetually open to escape the traps they are constantly laying to get me out of the place,” replied the abbe. “I am even doubtful, between ourselves, as to whether they will not shoot me.”
“Why do you stay?” said Blondet.
“We can’t desert God’s cause any more than that of an emperor,” replied the priest, with a simplicity that affected Blondet. He took the abbe’s hand and shook it cordially.
“You see how it is, therefore, that I know very little of the plots that are going on,” continued the abbe. “Still, I know enough to feel sure that the general is under what in Artois and in Belgium is called an ‘evil grudge.’”
A few words are here necessary about the curate of Blangy.
This priest, the fourth son of a worthy middle-class family of Autun, was an intelligent man carrying his head high in his collar. Small and slight, he redeemed his rather puny appearance by the precise and carefully dressed air that belongs to Burgundians. He accepted the second-rate post of Blangy out of pure devotion, for his religious convictions were joined to political opinions that were equally strong. There was something of the priest of the olden time about him; he held to the Church and to the clergy passionately; saw the bearings of things, and no selfishness marred his one ambition, which was to serve. That was his motto, – to serve the Church and the monarchy wherever it was most threatened; to serve in the lowest rank like a soldier who feels that he is destined, sooner or later, to attain command through courage and the resolve to do his duty. He made no compromises with his vows of chastity, and poverty, and obedience; he fulfilled them, as he did the other duties of his position, with that simplicity and cheerful good-humor which are the sure indications of an honest heart, constrained to do right by natural impulses as much as by the power and consistency of religious convictions.
The priest had seen at first sight Blondet’s attachment to the countess; he saw that between a Troisville and a monarchical journalist he could safely show himself to be a man of broad intelligence, because his calling was certain to be respected. He usually came to the chateau very evening to make the fourth at a game of whist. The journalist, able to recognize the abbe’s real merits, showed him so much deference that the pair grew into sympathy with each other; as usually happens when men of intelligence meet their equals, or, if you prefer it, the ears that are able to hear them. Swords are fond of their scabbards.
“But to what do you attribute this state of things, Monsieur l’abbe, you who are able, through your disinterestedness, to look over the heads of things?”
“I shall not talk platitudes after such a flattering speech as that,” said the abbe, smiling. “What is going on in this valley is spreading more or less throughout France; it is the outcome of the hopes which the upheaval of 1789 caused to infiltrate, if I may use that expression, the minds of the peasantry, the sons of the soil. The Revolution affected certain localities more than others. This side of Burgundy, nearest to Paris, is one of those places where the revolutionary ideas spread like the overrunning of the Franks by the Gauls. Historically, the peasants are still on the morrow of the Jacquerie; that defeat is burnt in upon their brain. They have long forgotten the facts which have now passed into the condition of an instinctive idea. That idea is bred in the peasant blood, just as the idea of superiority was once bred in noble blood. The revolution of 1789 was the retaliation of the vanquished. The peasants then set foot in possession of the soil which the feudal law had denied them for over twelve hundred years. Hence their desire for land, which they now cut up among themselves until actually they divide a furrow into two parts; which, by the bye, often hinders or prevents the collection of taxes, for the value of such fractions of property is not sufficient to pay the legal costs of recovering them.”
“Very true, for the obstinacy of the small owners – their aggressiveness, if you choose – on this point is so great that in at least one thousand cantons of the three thousand of French territory, it is impossible for a rich man to buy an inch of land from a peasant,” said Blondet, interrupting the abbe. “The peasants who are willing to divide up their scraps of land among themselves would not sell a fraction on any condition or at any price to the middle classes. The more money the rich man offers, the more the vague uneasiness of the peasant increases. Legal dispossession alone is able to bring the landed property of the peasant into the market. Many persons have noticed this fact without being able to find a reason for it.”
“This is the reason,” said the abbe, rightly believing that a pause with Blondet was equivalent to a question: “twelve centuries have done nothing for a caste whom the historic spectacle of civilization has never yet diverted from its one predominating thought, – a caste which still wears proudly the broad-brimmed hat of its masters, ever since an abandoned fashion placed it upon their heads. That all-pervading thought, the roots of which are in the bowels of the people, and which attached them so vehemently to Napoleon (who was personally less to them than he thought he was) and which explains the miracle of his return in 1815, – that desire for land is the sole motive power of the peasant’s being. In the eyes of the masses Napoleon, ever one with them through his million of soldiers, is still the king born of the Revolution; the man who gave them possession of the soil and sold to them the national domains. His anointing was saturated with that idea.”
“An idea to which 1814 dealt a blow, an idea which monarchy should hold sacred,” said Blondet, quickly; “for the people may some day find on the steps of the throne a prince whose father bequeathed to him the head of Louis XVI. as an heirloom.”
“Here is madame; don’t say any more,” said the abbe, in a low voice. “Fourchon has frightened her; and it is very desirable to keep her here in the interests of religion and of the throne, and, indeed, in those of the people themselves.”
Michaud, the bailiff of Les Aigues, had come to the chateau in consequence of the assault on Vatel’s eyes. But before we relate the consultation which then and there took place, the chain of events requires a succinct account of the circumstances under which the general purchased Les Aigues, the serious causes which led to the appointment of Sibilet as steward of that magnificent property, and the reasons why Michaud was made bailiff, with all the other antecedents to which were due the tension of the minds of all, and the fears expressed by Sibilet.
This rapid summary will have the merit of introducing some of the principal actors in this drama, and of exhibiting their individual interests; we shall thus be enabled to show the dangers which surrounded the General comte de Montcornet at the moment when this history opens.