Sons of the Soil Part 32

"Well, then," said Soudry, following him to the portico, "to-morrow, early."

"I'll come and fetch you--Ha! Lupin," he said to the notary, who came out with him to order his horse, "try to make sure that Madame Sarcus hears all the Shopman says and does against us at the Prefecture."

"If she doesn't hear it, who will?" replied Lupin.

"Excuse me," said Rigou, smiling blandly, "but there are such a lot of ninnies in there that I forgot there was one clever man."

"The wonder is that I don't grow rusty among them," replied Lupin, naively.

"Is it true that Soudry has hired a pretty servant?"

"Yes," replied Lupin; "for the last week our worthy mayor has set the charms of his wife in full relief by comparing her with a little peasant-girl about the age of an old ox; and we can't yet imagine how he settles it with Madame Soudry, for, would you believe it, he has the audacity to go to bed early."

"I'll find out to-morrow," said the village Sardanapalus, trying to smile.

The two plotters shook hands as they parted.

Rigou, who did not like to be on the road after dark for, notwithstanding his present popularity, he was cautious, called to his horse, "Get up, Citizen,"--a joke this son of 1793 was fond of letting fly at the Revolution. Popular revolutions have no more bitter enemies than those they have trained themselves.

"Pere Rigou's visits are pretty short," said Gourdon the poet to Madame Soudry.

"They are pleasant, if they are short," she answered.

"Like his own life," said the doctor; "his abuse of pleasures will cut that short."

"So much the better," remarked Soudry, "my son will step into the property."

"Did he bring you any news about Les Aigues?" asked the Abbe Taupin.

"Yes, my dear abbe," said Madame Soudry. "Those people are the scourge of the neighborhood. I can't comprehend how it is that Madame de Montcornet, who is certainly a well-bred woman, doesn't understand their interests better."

"And yet she has a model before her eyes," said the abbe.

"Who is that?" asked Madame Soudry, smirking.

"The Soulanges."

"Ah, yes!" replied the queen after a pause.

"Here I am!" cried Madame Vermut, coming into the room; "and without my re-active,--for Vermut is so inactive in all that concerns me that I can't call him an active of any kind."

"What the devil is that cursed old Rigou doing there?" said Soudry to Guerbet, as they saw the green chaise stop before the gate of the Tivoli. "He is one of those tiger-cats whose every step has an object."

"You may well say cursed," replied the fat little collector.

"He has gone into the Cafe de la Paix," remarked Gourdon, the doctor.

"And there's some trouble there," added Gourdon the poet; "I can hear them yelping from here."

"That cafe," said the abbe, "is like the temple of Ja.n.u.s; it was called the Cafe de la Guerre under the Empire, and then it was peace itself; the most respectable of the bourgeoisie met there for conversation--"

"Conversation!" interrupted the justice of the peace. "What kind of conversation was it which produced all the little Bourniers?"

"--but ever since it has been called, in honor of the Bourbons, the Cafe de la Paix, fights take place there every day," said Abbe Taupin, finishing the sentence which the magistrate had taken the liberty of interrupting.

This idea of the abbe was, like the quotations from "The Cup-and-Ball,"

of frequent recurrence.

"Do you mean that Burgundy will always be the land of fisticuffs?" asked Pere Guerbet.

"That's not ill said," remarked the abbe; "not at all; in fact it's almost an exact history of our country."

"I don't know anything about the history of France," blurted Soudry; "and before I try to learn it, it is more important to me to know why old Rigou has gone into the Cafe de la Paix with Socquard."

"Oh!" returned the abbe, "wherever he goes and wherever he stays, you may be quite certain it is for no charitable purpose."

"That man gives me goose-flesh whenever I see him," said Madame Vermut.

"He is so much to be feared," remarked the doctor, "that if he had a spite against me I should have no peace till he was dead and buried; he would get out of his coffin to do you an ill-turn."

"If any one can force the Shopman to come to the fair, and manage to catch him in a trap, it'll be Rigou," said Soudry to his wife, in a low tone.

"Especially," she replied, in a loud one, "if Gaubertin and you, my love, help him."

"There! didn't I tell you so?" cried Guerbet, poking the justice of the peace. "I knew he would find some pretty girl at Socquard's,--there he is, putting her into his carriage."

"You are quite wrong, gentlemen," said Madame Soudry; "Monsieur Rigou is thinking of nothing but the great affair; and if I'm not mistaken, that girl is only Tonsard's daughter."

"He is like the chemist who lays in a stock of vipers," said old Guerbet.

"One would think you were intimate with Monsieur Vermut to hear you talk," said the doctor, pointing to the little apothecary, who was then crossing the square.

"Poor fellow!" said the poet, who was suspected of occasionally sharpening his wit with Madame Vermut; "just look at that waddle of his!

and they say he is learned!"

"Without him," said the justice of the peace, "we should be hard put to it about post-mortems; he found poison in poor Pigeron's stomach so cleverly that the chemists of Paris testified in the court at Auxerre that they couldn't have done better--"

"He didn't find anything at all," said Soudry; "but, as President Gendrin says, it is a good thing to let people suppose that poison will always be found--"

"Madame Pigeron was very wise to leave Auxerre," said Madame Vermut; "she was silly and wicked both. As if it were necessary to have recourse to drugs to annul a husband! Are not there other ways quite as sure, but innocent, to rid ourselves of that inc.u.mbrance? I would like to have a man dare to question my conduct! The worthy Monsieur Vermut doesn't hamper me in the least,--but he has never been ill yet. As for Madame de Montcornet, just see how she walks about the woods and the hermitage with that journalist whom she brought from Paris at her own expense, and how she pets him under the very eyes of the general!"

"At her own expense!" cried Madame Soudry. "Are you sure? If we could only get proof of it, what a fine subject for an anonymous letter to the general!"

"The general!" cried Madame Vermut, "he won't interfere with things; he plays his part."

"What part, my dear?" asked Madame Soudry.

"Oh! the paternal part."