Sons of the Soil Part 15

"Indeed, Monsieur le comte, I have watched the woods so many nights that I'm ill from it. I've got a chill, and I suffer such pain this morning that my wife has just made me a poultice in that saucepan."

"My good fellow," said the count, "I don't know of any pain that a coffee poultice cures except that of hunger. Listen to me, you rascal! I rode through my forest yesterday, and then through those of Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles. Theirs are carefully watched and preserved, while mine is in a shameful state."

"Ah, monsieur! but they are the old lords of the neighborhood; everybody respects their property. How can you expect me to fight against six districts? I care for my life more than for your woods. A man who would undertake to watch your woods as they ought to be watched would get a ball in his head for wages in some dark corner of the forest--"

"Coward!" cried the general, trying to control the anger the man's insolent reply provoked in him. "Last night was as clear as day, yet it cost me three hundred francs in actual robbery and over a thousand in future damages. You will leave my service unless you do better. All wrong-doing deserves some mercy; therefore these are my conditions: You may have the fines, and I will pay you three francs for every indictment you bring against these depredators. If I don't get what I expect, you know what you have to expect, and no pension either. Whereas, if you serve me faithfully and contrive to stop these depredations, I'll give you an annuity of three hundred francs for life. You can think it over.

Here are six ways," continued the count, pointing to the branching roads; "there's only one for you to take,--as for me also, who am not afraid of b.a.l.l.s; try and find the right one."

Courtecuisse, a small man about forty-six years of age, with a full-moon face, found his greatest happiness in doing nothing. He expected to live and die in that pavilion, now considered by him _his_ pavilion. His two cows were pastured in the forest, from which he got his wood; and he spent his time in looking after his garden instead of after the delinquents. Such neglect of duty suited Gaubertin, and Courtecuisse knew it did. The keeper chased only those depredators who were the objects of his personal dislike,--young women who would not yield to his wishes, or persons against whom he held a grudge; though for some time past he had really felt no dislikes, for every one yielded to him on account of his easy-going ways with them.

Courtecuisse had a place always kept for him at the table of the Grand-I-Vert; the wood-pickers feared him no longer; indeed, his wife and he received many gifts in kind from them; his wood was brought in; his vineyard dug; in short, all delinquents at whom he blinked did him service.

Counting on Gaubertin for the future, and feeling sure of two acres whenever Les Aigues should be brought to the hammer, he was roughly awakened by the curt speech of the general, who, after four quiescent years, was now revealing his true character,--that of a bourgeois rich man who was determined to be no longer deceived. Courtecuisse took his cap, his game-bag, and his gun, put on his gaiters and his belt (which bore the very recent arms of Montcornet), and started for Ville-aux-Fayes, with the careless, indifferent air and manner under which country-people often conceal very deep reflections, while he gazed at the woods and whistled to the dogs to follow him.

"What! you complain of the Shopman when he proposes to make your fortune?" said Gaubertin. "Doesn't the fool offer to give you three francs for every arrest you make, and the fines to boot? Have an understanding with your friends and you can bring as many indictments as you please,--hundreds if you like! With one thousand francs you can buy La Bachelerie from Rigou, become a property owner, live in your own house, and work for yourself, or rather, make others work for you, and take your ease. Only--now listen to me--you must manage to arrest only such as haven't a penny in the world. You can't shear sheep unless the wool is on their backs. Take the Shopman's offer and leave him to collect the costs,--if he wants them; tastes differ. Didn't old Mariotte prefer losses to profits, in spite of my advice?"

Courtecuisse, filled with admiration for these words of wisdom, returned home burning with the desire to be a land-owner and a bourgeois like the rest.

When the general reached Les Aigues he related his expedition to Sibilet.

"Monsieur le comte did very right," said the steward, rubbing his hands; "but he must not stop short half-way. The field-keeper of the district who allows the country-people to prey upon the meadows and rob the harvests ought to be changed. Monsieur le comte should have himself chosen mayor, and appoint one of his old soldiers, who would have the courage to carry out his orders, in place of Vaudoyer. A great land-owner should be master in his own district. Just see what difficulties we have with the present mayor!"

The mayor of the district of Blangy, formerly a Benedictine, named Rigou, had married, in the first year of the Republic, the servant-woman of the late priest of Blangy. In spite of the repugnance which a married monk excited at the Prefecture, he had continued to be mayor after 1815, for the reason that there was no-one else at Blangy who was capable of filling the post. But in 1817, when the bishop sent the Abbe Brossette to the parish of Blangy (which had then been vacant over twenty-five years), a violent opposition not unnaturally broke out between the old apostate and the young ecclesiastic, whose character is already known to us. The war which was then and there declared between the mayor's office and the parsonage increased the popularity of the magistrate, who had hitherto been more or less despised. Rigou, whom the peasants had disliked for usurious dealings, now suddenly represented their political and financial interests, supposed to be threatened by the Restoration, and more especially by the clergy.

A copy of the "Const.i.tutionnel," that great organ of liberalism, after making the rounds of the Cafe de la Paix, came back to Rigou on the seventh day,--the subscription, standing in the name of old Socquard the keeper of the coffee-house, being shared by twenty persons. Rigou pa.s.sed the paper on to Langlume the miller, who, in turn, gave it in shreds to any one who knew how to read. The "Paris items," and the anti-religion jokes of the liberal sheet formed the public opinion of the valley des Aigues. Rigou, like the _venerable_ Abbe Gregoire, became a hero.

For him, as for certain Parisian bankers, politics spread a mantle of popularity over his shameful dishonesty.

At this particular time the perjured monk, like Francois Keller the great orator, was looked upon as a defender of the rights of the people,--he who, not so very long before, dared not walk in the fields after dark, lest he should stumble into pitfalls where he would seem to have been killed by accident! Persecute a man politically and you not only magnify him, but you redeem his past and make it innocent. The liberal party was a great worker of miracles in this respect. Its dangerous journal, which had the wit to make itself as commonplace, as calumniating, as credulous, and as sillily perfidious as every audience made up the general ma.s.ses, did in all probability as much injury to private interests as it did to those of the Church.

Rigou flattered himself that he should find in a Bonapartist general now laid on the shelf, in a son of the people raised from nothing by the Revolution, a sound enemy to the Bourbons and the priests. But the general, bearing in mind his private ambitions, so arranged matters as to evade the visit of Monsieur and Madame Rigou when he first came to Les Aigues.

When you have become better acquainted with the terrible character of Rigou, the lynx of the valley, you will understand the full extent of the second capital blunder which the general's aristocratic ambitions led him to commit, and which the countess made all the greater by an offence which will be described in the further history of Rigou.

If Montcornet had courted the mayor's good-will, if he had sought his friendship, perhaps the influence of the renegade might have neutralized that of Gaubertin. Far from that, three suits were now pending in the courts of Ville-aux-Fayes between the general and the ex-monk. Until the present time the general had been so absorbed in his personal interests and in his marriage that he had never remembered Rigou, but when Sibilet advised him to get himself made mayor in Rigou's place, he took post-horses and went to see the prefect.

The prefect, Comte Martial de la Roche-Hugon, had been a friend of the general since 1804; and it was a word from him said to Montcornet in a conversation in Paris, which brought about the purchase of Les Aigues.

Comte Martial, a prefect under Napoleon, remained a prefect under the Bourbons, and courted the bishop to retain his place. Now it happened that Monseigneur had several times requested him to get rid of Rigou.

Martial, to whom the condition of the district was perfectly well known, was delighted with the general's request; so that in less than a month the Comte de Montcornet was mayor of Blangy.

By one of those accidents which come about naturally, the general met, while at the prefecture where his friend put him up, a non-commissioned officer of the ex-Imperial guard, who had been cheated out of his retiring pension. The general had already, under other circ.u.mstances, done a service to the brave cavalryman, whose name was Groison; the man, remembering it, now told him his troubles, admitting that he was penniless. The general promised to get him his pension, and proposed that he should take the place of field-keeper to the district of Blangy, as a way of paying off his score of grat.i.tude by devotion to the new mayor's interests. The appointments of master and man were made simultaneously, and the general gave, as may be supposed, very firm instructions to his subordinate.

Vaudoyer, the displaced keeper, a peasant on the Ronquerolles estate, was only fit, like most field-keepers, to stalk about, and gossip, and let himself be petted by the poor of the district, who asked nothing better than to corrupt at subaltern authority,--the advanced guard, as it were, of the land-owners. He knew Soudry, the brigadier at Soulanges, for brigadiers of gendarmerie, performing functions that are semi-judicial in drawing up criminal indictments, have much to do with the rural keepers, who are, in fact, their natural spies. Soudry, being appealed to, sent Vaudoyer to Gaubertin, who received his old acquaintance very cordially, and invited him to drink while listening to the recital of his troubles.

"My dear friend," said the mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, who could talk to every man in his own language, "what has happened to you is likely to happen to us all. The n.o.bles are back upon us. The men to whom the Emperor gave t.i.tles make common cause with the old n.o.bility. They all want to crush the people, re-establish their former rights and take our property from us. But we are Burgundians; we must resist, and drive those Arminacs back to Paris. Return to Blangy; you shall be agent for Monsieur Polissard, the wood-merchant, who is contractor for the forest of Ronquerolles. Don't be uneasy, my lad; I'll find you enough to do for the whole of the coming year. But remember one thing; the wood is for ourselves! Not a single depredation, or the thing is at an end. Send all interlopers to Les Aigues. If there's brush or f.a.gots to sell make people buy ours; don't let them buy of Les Aigues. You'll get back to your place as field-keeper before long; this thing can't last. The general will get sick of living among thieves. Did you know that that Shopman called me a thief, me!--son of the stanchest and most incorruptible of republicans; me!--the son in law of Mouchon, that famous representative of the people, who died without leaving me enough to bury him?"

The general raised the salary of the new field-keeper to three hundred francs; and built a town-hall, in which he gave him a residence. Then he married him to a daughter of one of his tenant-farmers, who had lately died, leaving her an orphan with three acres of vineyard. Groison attached himself to the general as a dog to his master. This legitimate fidelity was admitted by the whole community. The keeper was feared and respected, but like the captain of a vessel whose ship's company hate him; the peasantry shunned him as they would a leper. Met either in silence or with sarcasms veiled under a show of good-humor, the new keeper was a sentinel watched by other sentinels. He could do nothing against such numbers. The delinquents took delight in plotting depredations which it was impossible for him to prove, and the old soldier grew furious at his helplessness. Groison found the excitement of a war of factions in his duties, and all the pleasures of the chase,--a chase after petty delinquents. Trained in real war to a loyalty which consists in part of playing a fair game, this enemy of traitors came at last to hate these people, so treacherous in their conspiracies, and so clever in their thefts that they mortified his self-esteem. He soon observed that the depredations were committed only at Les Aigues; all the other estates were respected. At first he despised a peasantry ungrateful enough to pillage a general of the Empire, an essentially kind and generous man; presently, however, he added hatred to contempt. But multiply himself as he would, he could not be everywhere, and the enemy pillaged everywhere that he was not.

Groison made the general understand that it was necessary to organize the defence on a war footing, and proved to him the insufficiency of his own devoted efforts and the evil disposition of the inhabitants of the valley.

"There is something behind it all, general," he said; "these people are so bold they fear nothing; they seem to rely on the favor of the good G.o.d."

"We shall see," replied the count.

Fatal word! The verb "to see" has no future tense for politicians.

At the moment, Montcornet was considering another difficulty, which seemed to him more pressing. He needed an alter ego to do his work in the mayor's office during the months he lived in Paris. Obliged to find some man who knew how to read and write for the position of a.s.sistant mayor, he knew of none and could hear of none throughout the district but Langlume, the tenant of his own flour-mill. The choice was disastrous. Not only were the interests of mayor and miller diametrically opposed, but Langlume had long hatched swindling projects with Rigou, who lent him money to carry on his business, or to acquire property. The miller had bought the right to the hay of certain fields for his horses, and Sibilet could not sell it except to him. The hay of all the fields in the district was sold at better prices than that of Les Aigues, though the yield of the latter was the best.

Langlume, then, became the provisional mayor; but in France the provisional is eternal,--though Frenchmen are suspected of loving change. Acting by Rigou's advice, he played a part of great devotion to the general; and he was still a.s.sistant-mayor at the moment when, by the omnipotence of the historian, this drama begins.

In the absence of the mayor, Rigou, necessarily a member of the district council, reigned supreme, and brought forward resolutions all injuriously affecting the general. At one time he caused money to be spent for purposes that were profitable to the peasants only,--the greater part of the expenses falling upon Les Aigues, which, by reason of its great extent, paid two thirds of the taxes; at other times the council refused, under his influence, certain useful and necessary allowances, such as an increase in salary for the abbe, repairs or improvements to the parsonage, or "wages" to the school-master.

"If the peasants once know how to read and write, what will become of us?" said Langlume, naively, to the general, to excuse this anti-liberal action taken against a brother of the Christian Doctrine whom the Abbe Brossette wished to establish as a public school-master in Blangy.

The general, delighted with his old Groison, returned to Paris and immediately looked about him for other old soldiers of the late imperial guard, with whom to organize the defence of Les Aigues on a formidable footing. By dint of searching out and questioning his friends and many officers on half-pay, he unearthed Michaud, a former quartermaster at headquarters of the cuira.s.siers of the guard; one of those men whom troopers call "hard-to-cook," a nickname derived from the mess kitchen where refractory beans are not uncommon. Michaud picked out from among his friends and acquaintances, three other men fit to be his helpers, and able to guard the estate without fear and without reproach.

The first, named Steingel, a pure-blooded Alsacian, was a natural son of the general of that name, who fell in one of Bonaparte's first victories with the army of Italy. Tall and strong, he belonged to the cla.s.s of soldiers accustomed, like the Russians, to obey, pa.s.sively and absolutely. Nothing hindered him in the performance of his duty; he would have collared an emperor or a pope if such were his orders. He ignored danger. Perfectly fearless, he had never received the smallest scratch during his sixteen years' campaigning. He slept in the open air or in his bed with stoical indifference. At any increased labor or discomfort, he merely remarked, "It seems to be the order of the day."

The second man, Vatel, son of the regiment, corporal of voltigeurs, gay as a lark, rather free and easy with the fair s.e.x, brave to foolhardiness, was capable of shooting a comrade with a laugh if ordered to execute him. With no future before him and not knowing how to employ himself, the prospect of finding an amusing little war in the functions of keeper, attracted him; and as the grand army and the Emperor had hitherto stood him in place of a religion, so now he swore to serve the brave Montcornet against and through all and everything. His nature was of that essentially wrangling quality to which a life without enemies seems dull and objectless,--the nature, in short, of a litigant, or a policeman. If it had not been for the presence of the sheriff's officer, he would have seized Tonsard and the bundle of wood at the Grand-I-Vert, snapping his fingers at the law on the inviolability of a man's domicile.

The third man, Gaillard, also an old soldier, risen to the rank of sub-lieutenant, and covered with wounds, belonged to the cla.s.s of mechanical soldiers. The fate of the Emperor never left his mind and he became indifferent to everything else. With the care of a natural daughter on his hands, he accepted the place that was now offered to him as a means of subsistence, taking it as he would have taken service in a regiment.

When the general reached Les Aigues, whither he had gone in advance of his troopers, intending to send away Courtecuisse, he was amazed at discovering the impudent audacity with which the keeper had fulfilled his commands. There is a method of obeying which makes the obedience of the servant a cutting sarcasm on the master's order. But all things in this world can be reduced to absurdity, and Courtecuisse in this instance went beyond its limits.

One hundred and twenty-six indictments against depredators (most of whom were in collusion with Courtecuisse) and sworn to before the justice court of Soulanges, had resulted in sixty-nine commitments for trial, in virtue of which Brunet, the sheriff's officer, delighted at such a windfall of fees, had rigorously enforced the warrants in such a way as to bring about what is called, in legal language, a declaration of insolvency; a condition of pauperism where the law becomes of course powerless. By this declaration the sheriff proves that the defendant possesses no property of any kind, and is therefore a pauper. Where there is absolutely nothing, the creditor, like the king, loses his right to sue. The paupers in this case, carefully selected by Courtecuisse, were scattered through five neighboring districts, whither Brunet betook himself duly attended by his satellites, Vermichel and Fourchon, to serve the writs. Later he transmitted the papers to Sibilet with a bill of costs for five thousand francs, requesting him to obtain the further orders of Monsieur le comte de Montcornet.

Just as Sibilet, armed with these papers, was calmly explaining to the count the result of the rash orders he had given to Courtecuisse, and witnessing, as calmly, a burst of the most violent anger a general of the French cavalry was ever known to indulge in, Courtecuisse entered to pay his respects to his master and to bring his own account of eleven hundred francs, the sum to which his promised commission now amounted.

The natural man took the bit in his teeth and ran off with the general, who totally forgot his coronet and his field rank; he was a trooper once more, vomiting curses of which he probably was ashamed when he thought of them later.

"Ha! eleven hundred francs!" he shouted, "eleven hundred slaps in your face! eleven hundred kicks!--Do you think I can't see straight through your lies? Out of my sight, or I'll strike you flat!"

At the mere look of the general's purple face and before that warrior could get out the last words, Courtecuisse was off like a swallow.

"Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, gently, "you are wrong."

"Wrong! I, wrong?"

"Yes, Monsieur le comte, take care, you will have trouble with that rascal; he will sue you."

"What do I care for that? Tell the scoundrel to leave the place instantly! See that he takes nothing of mine, and pay him his wages."

Four hours later the whole country-side was gossiping about this scene.

The general, they said, had a.s.saulted the unfortunate Courtecuisse, and refused to pay his wages and two thousand francs besides, which he owed him. Extraordinary stories went the rounds, and the master of Les Aigues was declared insane. The next day Brunet, who had served all the warrants for the general, now brought him on behalf of Courtecuisse a summon to appear before the police court. The lion was stung by gnats; but his misery was only just beginning.

The installation of a keeper is not done without a few formalities; he must, for instance, file an oath in the civil court. Some days therefore elapsed before the three keepers really entered upon their functions.

Though the general had written to Michaud to bring his wife without waiting until the lodge at the gate of the Avonne was ready for them, the future head-keeper, or rather bailiff, was detained in Paris by his marriage and his wife's family, and did not reach Les Aigues until a fortnight later. During those two weeks, and during the time still further required for certain formalities which were carried out with very ill grace by the authorities at Ville-aux-Fayes, the forest of Les Aigues was shamefully devastated by the peasantry, who took advantage of the fact that there was practically no watch over it.

The appearance of three keepers handsomely dressed in green cloth, the Emperor's color, with faces denoting firmness, and each of them well-made, active, and capable of spending their nights in the woods, was a great event in the valley, from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes.

Throughout the district Groison was the only man who welcomed these veterans. Delighted to be thus reinforced, he let fall a few threats against thieves, who before long, he said, would be watched so closely that they could do no damage. Thus the usual proclamation of all great commanders was not lacking to the present war; in this case it was said aloud and also whispered in secret.