Thus it happened that Tonsard was disappointed from the start in the hope he had indulged of increasing his comfort by an increase of property in marriage. The idle son-in-law had chanced, by a very common accident, on an idler father-in-law. Matters went all the worse because Tonsard's wife, gifted with a sort of rustic beauty, being tall and well-made, was not fond of work in the open air. Tonsard blamed his wife for her father's short-comings, and ill-treated her, with the customary revenge of the common people, whose minds take in only an effect and rarely look back to causes.

Finding her fetters heavy, the woman lightened them. She used Tonsard's vices to get the better of him. Loving comfort and good eating herself, she encouraged his idleness and gluttony. In the first place, she managed to procure the good-will of the servants of the chateau, and Tonsard, in view of the results, made no complaint as to the means. He cared very little what his wife did, so long as she did all he wanted of her. That is the secret agreement of many a household. Madame Tonsard established the wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert, her first customers being the servants of Les Aigues and the keepers and huntsmen.

Gaubertin, formerly steward to Mademoiselle Laguerre, one of La Tonsard's chief patrons, gave her several puncheons of excellent wine to attract custom. The effect of these gifts (continued as long as Gaubertin remained a bachelor) and the fame of her rather lawless beauty commended this beauty to the Don Juans of the valley, and filled the wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert. Being a lover of good eating, La Tonsard was naturally an excellent cook; and though her talents were only exercised on the common dishes of the country, jugged hare, game sauce, stewed fish and omelets, she was considered in all the country round to be an admirable cook of the sort of food which is eaten at a counter and spiced in a way to excite a desire for drink. By the end of two years, she had managed to rule Tonsard, and turn him to evil courses, which, indeed, he asked no better than to indulge in.

The rascal was continually poaching, and with nothing to fear from it. The intimacies of his wife with Gaubertin and the keepers and the rural authorities, together with the laxity of the times, secured him impunity. As soon as his children were large enough he made them serviceable to his comfort, caring no more for their morality than for that of his wife. He had two sons and two daughters. Tonsard, who lived, as did his wife, from hand to mouth, might have come to an end of this easy life if he had not maintained a sort of martial law over his family, which compelled them to work for the preservation of it. When he had brought up his children, at the cost of those from whom his wife was able to extort gifts, the following charter and budget were the law at the Grand-I-Vert.

Tonsard's old mother and his two daughters, Catherine and Marie, went into the woods at certain seasons twice a-day, and came back laden with fagots which overhung the crutch of their poles at least two feet beyond their heads. Though dried sticks were placed on the outside of the heap, the inside was made of live wood cut from young trees. In plain words, Tonsard helped himself to his winter's fuel in the woods of Les Aigues. Besides this, father and sons were constantly poaching. From September to March, hares, rabbits, partridges, deer, in short, all the game that was not eaten at the chateau, was sold at Blangy and at Soulanges, where Tonsard's two daughters peddled milk in the early mornings,—coming back with the news of the day, in return for the gossip they carried about Les Aigues, and Cerneux, and Conches. In the months when the three Tonsards were unable to hunt with a gun, they set traps. If the traps caught more game than they could eat, La Tonsard made pies of it and sent them to Ville-aux-Fayes. In harvest-time seven Tonsards—the old mother, the two sons (until they were seventeen years of age), the two daughters, together with old Fourchon and Mouche—gleaned, and generally brought in about sixteen bushels a day of all grains, rye, barley, wheat, all good to grind.

The two cows, led to the roadside by the youngest girl, always managed to stray into the meadows of Les Aigues; but as, if it ever chanced that some too flagrant trespass compelled the keepers to take notice of it, the children were either whipped or deprived of a coveted dainty, they had acquired such extraordinary aptitude in hearing the enemy's footfall that the bailiff or the park-keeper of Les Aigues was very seldom able to detect them. Besides, the relations of those estimable functionaries with Tonsard and his wife tied a bandage over their eyes. The cows, held by long ropes, obeyed a mere twitch or a special low call back to the roadside, knowing very well that, the danger once past, they could finish their browsing in the next field. Old mother Tonsard, who was getting more and more infirm, succeeded Mouche in his duties, after Fourchon, under pretence of caring for his natural grandson's education, kept him to himself; while Marie and Catherine made hay in the woods. These girls knew the exact spots where the fine forest-grass abounded, and there they cut and spread and cocked and garnered it, supplying two thirds, at least, of the winter fodder, and leading the cows on all fine days to sheltered nooks where they could still find pasture. In certain parts of the valley of Les Aigues, as in all places protected by a chain of mountains, in Piedmont and in Lombardy for instance, there are spots where the grass keeps green all the year. Such fields, called in Italy "marciti," are of great value; though in France they are often in danger of being injured by snow and ice. This phenomenon is due, no doubt, to some favorable exposure, and to the infiltration of water which keeps the ground at a warmer temperature.

The calves were sold for about eighty francs. The milk, deducting the time when the cows calved or went dry, brought in about one hundred and sixty francs a year besides supplying the wants of the family. Tonsard himself managed to earn another hundred and sixty by doing odd jobs of one kind or another.

The sale of food and wine in the tavern, after all costs were paid, returned a profit of about three hundred francs, for the great drinking-bouts happened only at certain times and in certain seasons; and as the topers who indulged in them gave Tonsard and his wife due notice, the latter bought in the neighboring town the exact quantity of provisions needed and no more. The wine produced by Tonsard's vineyard was sold in ordinary years for twenty francs a cask to a wine-dealer at Soulanges with whom Tonsard was intimate. In very prolific years he got as much as twelve casks from his vines; but eight was the average; and Tonsard kept half for his own traffic. In all wine-growing districts the gleaning of the large vineyards gives a good perquisite, and out of it the Tonsard family usually managed to obtain three casks more. But being, as we have seen, sheltered and protected by the keepers, they showed no conscience in their proceedings,—entering vineyards before the harvesters were out of them, just as they swarmed into the wheat-fields before the sheaves were made. So, the seven or eight casks of wine, as much gleaned as harvested, were sold for a good price. However, out of these various proceeds the Grand-I-Vert was mulcted in a good sum for the personal consumption of Tonsard and his wife, who wanted the best of everything to eat, and better wine than they sold,—which they obtained from their friend at Soulanges in payment for their own. In short, the money scraped together by this family amounted to about nine hundred francs, for they fattened two pigs a year, one for themselves and the other to sell.

The idlers and scapegraces and also the laborers took a fancy to the tavern of the Grand-I-Vert, partly because of La Tonsard's merits, and partly on account of the hail-fellow-well-met relation existing between this family and the lower classes of the valley. The two daughters, both remarkably handsome, followed the example of their mother as to morals. Moreover, the long established fame of the Grand-I-Vert, dating from 1795, made it a venerable spot in the eyes of the common people. From Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes, workmen came there to meet and make their bargains and hear the news collected by the Tonsard women and by Mouche and old Fourchon, or supplied by Vermichel and Brunet, that renowned official, when he came to the tavern in search of his practitioner. There the price of hay and of wine was settled; also that of a day's work and of piece-work. Tonsard, a sovereign judge in such matters, gave his advice and opinion while drinking with his guests. Soulanges, according to a saying in these parts, was a town for society and amusement only, while Blangy was a business borough; crushed, however, by the great commercial centre of Ville-aux-Fayes, which had become in the last twenty-five years the capital of this flourishing valley. The cattle and grain market was held at Blangy, in the public square, and the prices there obtained served as a tariff for the whole arrondissement.

By staying in the house and doing no out-door work, La Tonsard continued fresh and fair and dimpled, in comparison with the women who worked in the fields and faded as rapidly as the flowers, becoming old and haggard before they were thirty. She liked to be well-dressed. In point of fact, she was only clean, but in a village cleanliness is a luxury. The daughters, better dressed than their means warranted, followed their mother's example. Beneath their outer garment, which was relatively handsome, they wore linen much finer than that of the richest peasant women. On fete-days they appeared in dresses that were really pretty, obtained, Heaven knows how! For one thing, the men-servants at Les Aigues sold to them, at prices that were easily paid, the cast-off clothing of the lady's-maids, which, after sweeping the streets of Paris and being made over to fit Marie and Catherine, appeared triumphantly in the precincts of the Grand-I-Vert. These girls, bohemians of the valley, received not one penny in money from their parents, who gave them food only, and the wretched pallets on which they slept with their grandmother in the barn, where their brothers also slept, curled up in the hay like animals. Neither father nor mother paid any heed to this propinquity.

The iron age and the age of gold are more alike than we think for. In the one nothing aroused vigilance; in the other, everything rouses it; the result to society is, perhaps, very much the same. The presence of old Mother Tonsard, which was more a necessity than a precaution, was simply one immorality the more. And thus it was that the Abbe Brossette, after studying the morals of his parishioners, made this pregnant remark to his bishop:—

"Monseigneur, when I observe the stress that the peasantry lay on their poverty, I realize how they fear to lose that excuse for their immorality."

Though everybody knew that the family had no principles and no scruples, nothing was ever said against the morals of the Grand-I-Vert. At the beginning of this book it is necessary to explain, once for all, to persons accustomed to the decencies of middle-class life, that the peasants have no decency in their domestic habits and customs. They make no appeal to morality when their daughters are seduced, unless the seducer is rich and timid. Children, until the State takes possession of them, are used either as capital or as instruments of convenience. Self-interest has become, specially since 1789, the sole motive of the masses; they never ask if an action is legal or immoral, but only if it is profitable. Morality, which is not to be confounded with religion, begins only at a certain competence,—just as one sees, in a higher sphere, how delicacy blossoms in the soul when fortune decorates the furniture. A positively moral and upright man is rare among the peasantry. Do you ask why? Among the many reasons that may be given for this state of things, the principal one is this: Through the nature of their social functions, the peasants live a purely material life which approximates to that of savages, and their constant union with nature tends to foster it. When toil exhausts the body it takes from the mind its purifying action, especially among the ignorant. The Abbe Brossette was right in saying that the state policy of the peasant is his poverty.

Meddling in everybody's interests, Tonsard heard everybody's complaints, and often instigated frauds to benefit the needy. His wife, a kindly appearing woman, had a good word for evil-doers, and never withheld either approval or personal help from her customers in anything they undertook against the rich. This inn, a nest of vipers, brisk and venomous, seething and active, was a hot-bed for the hatred of the peasants and the workingmen against the masters and the wealthy.

The prosperous life of the Tonsards was, therefore, an evil example. Others asked themselves why they should not take their wood, as the Tonsards did, from the forest; why not pasture their cows and have game to eat and to sell as well as they; why not harvest without sowing the grapes and the grain. Accordingly, the pilfering thefts which thin the woods and tithe the ploughed lands and meadows and vineyards became habitual in this valley, and soon existed as a right throughout the districts of Blangy, Conches, and Cerneux, all adjacent to the domain of Les Aigues. This sore, for certain reasons which will be given in due time, did far greater injury to Les Aigues than to the estates of Ronquerolles or Soulanges. You must not, however, fancy that Tonsard, his wife and children, and his old mother ever deliberately said to themselves, "We will live by theft, and commit it as cleverly as we can." Such habits grow slowly. To the dried sticks they added, in the first instance, a single bit of good wood; then, emboldened by habit and a carefully prepared immunity (necessary to plans which this history will unfold), they ended at last in cutting "their wood," and stealing almost their entire livelihood. Pasturage for the cows and the abuses of gleaning were established as customs little by little. When the Tonsards and the do-nothings of the valley had tasted the sweets of these four rights (thus captured by rural paupers, and amounting to actual robbery) we can easily imagine they would never give them up unless compelled by a power greater than their own audacity.

At the time when this history begins Tonsard, then about fifty years of age, tall and strong, rather stout than thin, with curly black hair, skin highly colored and marbled like a brick with purple blotches, yellow whites to the eyes, large ears with broad flaps, a muscular frame, encased, however, in flabby flesh, a retreating forehead, and a hanging lip,—Tonsard, such as you see him, hid his real character under an external stupidity, lightened at times by a show of experience, which seemed all the more intelligent because he had acquired in the company of his father-in-law a sort of bantering talk, much affected by old Fourchon and Vermichel. His nose, flattened at the end as if the finger of God intended to mark him, gave him a voice which came from his palate, like that of all persons disfigured by a disease which thickens the nasal passages, through which the air then passes with difficulty. His upper teeth overlapped each other, and this defect (which Lavater calls terrible) was all the more apparent because they were as white as those of a dog. But for a certain lawless and slothful good humor, and the free-and-easy ways of a rustic tippler, the man would have alarmed the least observing of spectators.

If the portraits of Tonsard, his inn, and his father-in-law take a prominent place in this history, it is because that place belongs to him and to the inn and to the family. In the first place, their existence, so minutely described, is the type of a hundred other households in the valley of Les Aigues. Secondly, Tonsard, without being other than the instrument of deep and active hatreds, had an immense influence on the struggle that was about to take place, being the friend and counsellor of all the complainants of the lower classes. His inn, as we shall presently see, was the rendezvous for the aggressors; in fact, he became their chief, partly on account of the fear he inspired throughout the valley—less, however, by his actual deeds than by those that were constantly expected of him. The threat of this man was as much dreaded as the thing threatened, so that he never had occasion to execute it.

Every revolt, open or concealed, has its banner. The banner of the marauders, the drunkards, the idlers, the sluggards of the valley des Aigues was the terrible tavern of the Grand-I-Vert. Its frequenters found amusement there,—as rare and much-desired a thing in the country as in a city. Moreover, there was no other inn along the country-road for over twelve miles, a distance which conveyances (even when laden) could easily do in three hours; so that those who went from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes always stopped at the Grand-I-Vert, if only to refresh themselves. The miller of Les Aigues, who was also assistant-mayor, and his men came there. The grooms and valets of the general were not averse to Tonsard's wine, rendered attractive by Tonsard's daughters; so the Grand-I-Vert held subterraneous communication with the chateau through the servants, and knew immediately everything that they knew. It is impossible either by benefits or through their own self-interests, to break up the perpetual understanding that exists between the servants of a household and the people from whom they come. Domestic service is of the masses, and to the masses it will ever remain attached. This fatal comradeship explains the reticence of the last words of Charles the groom, as he and Blondet reached the portico of the chateau.



CHAPTER IV. ANOTHER IDYLL

"Ha! by my pipe, papa!" exclaimed Tonsard, seeing his father-in-law as the old man entered and supposing him in quest of food, "your stomach is lively this morning! We haven't anything to give you. How about that rope,—the rope, you know, you were to make for us? It is amazing how much you make over night and how little there is made in the morning! You ought long ago to have twisted the one that is to twist you out of existence; you are getting too costly for us."

The wit of a peasant or laborer is very Attic; it consists in speaking out his mind and giving it a grotesque expression. We find the same thing in a drawing-room. Delicacy of wit takes the place of picturesque vulgarity, and that is really all the difference there is.

"That's enough for the father-in-law!" said the old man. "Talk business; I want a bottle of the best."

So saying, Fourchon rapped a five-franc piece that gleamed in his hand on the old table at which he was seated,—which, with its coating of grease, its scorched black marks, its wine stains, and its gashes, was singular to behold. At the sound of coin Marie Tonsard, as trig as a sloop about to start on a cruise, glanced at her grandfather with a covetous look that shot from her eyes like a spark. La Tonsard came out of her bedroom, attracted by the music of metal.

"You are always rough to my poor father," she said to her husband, "and yet he has earned a deal of money this year; God grant he came by it honestly. Let me see that," she added, springing at the coin and snatching it from Fourchon's fingers.

"Marie," said Tonsard, gravely, "above the board you'll find some bottled wine. Go and get a bottle."

Wine is of only one quality in the country, but it is sold as of two kinds,—cask wine and bottled wine.

"Where did you get this, papa" demanded La Tonsard, slipping the coin into her pocket.

"Philippine! you'll come to a bad end," said the old man, shaking his head but not attempting to recover his money. Doubtless he had long realized the futility of a struggle between his daughter, his terrible son-in-law, and himself.

"Another bottle of wine for which you get five francs out of me," he added, in a peevish tone. "But it shall be the last. I shall give my custom to the Cafe de la Paix."

"Hold your tongue, papa!" remarked his fair and fat daughter, who bore some resemblance to a Roman matron. "You need a shirt, and a pair of clean trousers, and a hat; and I want to see you with a waistcoat. That's what I take the money for."

"I have told you again and again that such things would ruin me," said the old man. "People would think me rich and stop giving me anything."

The bottle brought by Marie put an end to the loquacity of the old man, who was not without that trait, characteristic of those whose tongues are ready to tell out everything, and who shrink from no expression of their thought, no matter how atrocious it may be.

"Then you don't want to tell where you filched that money?" said Tonsard. "We might go and get more where that came from,—the rest of us."

He was making a snare, and as he finished it the ferocious innkeeper happened to glance at his father-in-law's trousers, and there he spied a raised round spot which clearly defined a second five-franc piece.

"Having become a capitalist I drink your health," said Pere Fourchon.

"If you choose to be a capitalist you can be," said Tonsard; "you have the means, you have! But the devil has bored a hole in the back of your head through which everything runs out."

"Hey! I only played the otter trick on that young fellow they have got at Les Aigues. He's from Paris. That's all there is to it."

"If crowds of people would come to see the sources of the Avonne, you'd be rich, Grandpa Fourchon," said Marie.

"Yes," he said, drinking the last glassful the bottle contained, "and I've played the sham otter so long, the live otters have got angry, and one of them came right between my legs to-day; Mouche caught it, and I am to get twenty francs for it."

"I'll bet your otter is made of tow," said Tonsard, looking slyly at his father-in-law.

"If you will give me a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, and some list braces, so as not to disgrace Vermichel on the music stand at Tivoli (for old Socquard is always scolding about my clothes), I'll let you keep that money, my daughter; your idea is a good one. I can squeeze that rich young fellow at Les Aigues; may be he'll take to otters."

"Go and get another bottle," said Tonsard to his daughter. "If your father really had an otter, he would show it to us," he added, speaking to his wife and trying to touch up Fourchon.

"I'm too afraid it would get into your frying-pan," said the old man, winking one of his little green eyes at his daughter. "Philippine has already hooked my five-franc piece; and how many more haven't you bagged under pretence of clothing me and feeding me? and now you say that my stomach is too lively, and that I go half-naked."

"You sold your last clothes to drink boiled wine at the Cafe de la Paix, papa," said his daughter, "though Vermichel tried to prevent it."

"Vermichel! the man I treated! Vermichel is incapable of betraying my friendship. It must have been that lump of old lard on two legs that he is not ashamed to call his wife!"

"He or she," replied Tonsard, "or Bonnebault."

"If it was Bonnebault," cried Fourchon, "he who is one of the pillars of the place, I'll—I'll—Enough!"

"You old sot, what has all that got to do with having sold your clothes? You sold them because you did sell them; you're of age!" said Tonsard, slapping the old man's knee. "Come, do honor to my drink and redden up your throat! The father of Mam Tonsard has a right to do so; and isn't that better than spending your silver at Socquard's?"

"What a shame it is that you have been fifteen years playing for people to dance at Tivoli and you have never yet found out how Socquard cooks his wine,—you who are so shrewd!" said his daughter; "and yet you know very well that if we had the secret we should soon get as rich as Rigou."

Throughout the Morvan, and in that region of Burgundy which lies at its feet on the side toward Paris, this boiled wine with which Mam Tonsard reproached her father is a rather costly beverage which plays a great part in the life of the peasantry, and is made by all grocers and wine-dealers, and wherever a drinking-shop exists. This precious liquor, made of choice wine, sugar, and cinnamon and other spices, is preferable to all those disguises or mixtures of brandy called ratafia, one-hundred-and-seven, brave man's cordial, black currant wine, vespetro, spirit-of-sun, etc. Boiled wine is found throughout France and Switzerland. Among the Jura, and in the wild districts trodden only by a few special tourists, the innkeepers call it, on the word of commercial travellers, the wine of Syracuse. Excellent it is, however, and their guests, hungry as hounds after ascending the surrounding peaks, very gladly pay three and four francs a bottle for it. In the homes of the Morvan and in Burgundy the least illness or the slightest agitation of the nerves is an excuse for boiled wine. Before and after childbirth the women take it with the addition of burnt sugar. Boiled wine has soaked up the property of many a peasant, and more than once the seductive liquid has been the cause of marital chastisement.

"Ha! there's no chance of grabbing that secret," replied Fourchon, "Socquard always locks himself in when he boils his wine; he never told how he does it to his late wife. He sends to Paris for his materials."

"Don't plague your father," cried Tonsard; "doesn't he know? well, then, he doesn't know! People can't know everything!"

Fourchon grew very uneasy on seeing how his son-in-law's countenance softened as well as his words.

"What do you want to rob me of now?" he asked, candidly.

"I?" said Tonsard, "I take none but my legitimate dues; if I get anything from you it is in payment of your daughter's portion, which you promised me and never paid."

Fourchon, reassured by the harshness of this remark, dropped his head on his breast as though vanquished and convinced.

"Look at that pretty snare," resumed Tonsard, coming up to his father-in-law and laying the trap upon his knee. "Some of these days they'll want game at Les Aigues, and we shall sell them their own, or there will be no good God for the poor folks."

"A fine piece of work," said the old man, examining the mischievous machine.

"It is very well to pick up the sous now, papa," said Mam Tonsard, "but you know we are to have our share in the cake of Les Aigues."

"Oh, what chatterers women are!" cried Tonsard. "If I am hanged it won't be for a shot from my gun, but for the gabble of your tongue."

"And do you really suppose that Les Aigues will be cut up and sold in lots for your pitiful benefit?" asked Fourchon. "Pshaw! haven't you discovered in the last thirty years that old Rigou has been sucking the marrow out of your bones that the middle-class folks are worse than the lords? Mark my words, when that affair happens, my children, the Soudrys, the Gaubertins, the Rigous, will make you kick your heels in the air. 'I've the good tobacco, it never shall be thine,' that's the national air of the rich man, hey? The peasant will always be the peasant. Don't you see (but you never did understand anything of politics!) that government puts such heavy taxes on wine only to hinder our profits and keep us poor? The middle classes and the government, they are all one. What would become of them if everybody was rich? Could they till their fields? Would they gather the harvest? No, they want the poor! I was rich for ten years and I know what I thought of paupers."

"Must hunt with them, though," replied Tonsard, "because they mean to cut up the great estates; after that's done, we can turn against them. If I'd been Courtecuisse, whom that scoundrel Rigou is ruining, I'd have long ago paid his bill with other balls than the poor fellow gives him."

"Right enough, too," replied Fourchon. "As Pere Niseron says (and he stayed republican long after everybody else), 'The people are tough; they don't die; they have time before them.'"

Fourchon fell into a sort of reverie; Tonsard profited by his inattention to take back the trap, and as he took it up he cut a slip below the coin in his father-in-law's pocket at the moment when the old man raised his glass to his lips; then he set his foot on the five-franc piece as it dropped on the earthen floor just where it was always kept damp by the heel-taps which the customers flung from their glasses. Though quickly and lightly done, the old man might, perhaps, have felt the theft, if Vermichel had not happened to appear at that moment.

"Tonsard, do you know where you father is?" called that functionary from the foot of the steps.

Vermichel's shout, the theft of the money, and the emptying of old Fourchon's glass, were simultaneous.

"Present, captain!" cried Fourchon, holding out a hand to Vermichel to help him up the steps.

Of all Burgundian figures, Vermichel would have seemed to you the most Burgundian. The practitioner was not red, he was scarlet. His face, like certain tropical portions of the globe, was fissured, here and there, with small extinct volcanoes, defined by flat and greenish patches which Fourchon called, not unpoetically, the "flowers of wine." This fiery face, the features of which were swelled out of shape by continual drunkenness, looked cyclopic; for it was lighted on the right side by a gleaming eye, and darkened on the other by a yellow patch over the left orb. Red hair, always tousled, and a beard like that of Judas, made Vermichel as formidable in appearance as he was meek in reality. His prominent nose looked like an interrogation-mark, to which the wide-slit mouth seemed to be always answering, even when it did not open. Vermichel, a short man, wore hob-nail shoes, bottle-green velveteen trousers, an old waistcoat patched with diverse stuffs which seemed to have been originally made of a counterpane, a jacket of coarse blue cloth and a gray hat with a broad brim. All this luxury, required by the town of Soulanges where Vermichel fulfilled the combined functions of porter at the town-hall, drummer, jailer, musician, and practitioner, was taken care of by Madame Vermichel, an alarming antagonist of Rabelaisian philosophy. This virago with moustachios, about one yard in width and one hundred and twenty kilograms in weight (but very active), ruled Vermichel with a rod of iron. Thrashed by her when drunk, he allowed her to thrash him still when sober; which caused Pere Fourchon to say, with a sniff at Vermichel's clothes, "It is the livery of a slave."

"Talk of the sun and you'll see its beams," cried Fourchon, repeating a well-worn allusion to the rutilant face of Vermichel, which really did resemble those copper suns painted on tavern signs in the provinces. "Has Mam Vermichel spied too much dust on your back, that you're running away from your four-fifths,—for I can't call her your better half, that woman! What brings you here at this hour, drum-major?"

"Politics, always politics," replied Vermichel, who seemed accustomed to such pleasantries.

"Ah! business is bad in Blangy, and there'll be notes to protest, and writs to issue," remarked Pere Fourchon, filling a glass for his friend.

"That APE of ours is right behind me," replied Vermichel, with a backward gesture.

In workmen's slang "ape" meant master. The word belonged to the dictionary of the worthy pair.

"What's Monsieur Brunet coming bothering about here?" asked Tonsard.

"Hey, by the powers, you folks!" said Vermichel, "you've brought him in for the last three years more than you are worth. Ha! that master at Les Aigues, he has his eye upon you; he'll punch you in the ribs; he's after you, the Shopman! Brunet says, if there were three such landlords in the valley his fortune would be made."

"What new harm are they going to do to the poor?" asked Marie.

"A pretty wise thing for themselves," replied Vermichel. "Faith! you'll have to give in, in the end. How can you help it? They've got the power. For the last two years haven't they had three foresters and a horse-patrol, all as active as ants, and a field-keeper who is a terror? Besides, the gendarmerie is ready to do their dirty work at any time. They'll crush you—"

"Bah!" said Tonsard, "we are too flat. That which can't be crushed isn't the trees, it's ground."

"Don't you trust to that," said Fourchon to his son-in-law; "you own property."

"Those rich folks must love you," continued Vermichel, "for they think of nothing else from morning till night! They are saying to themselves now like this: 'Their cattle eat up our pastures; we'll seize their cattle; they can't eat grass themselves.' You've all been condemned, the warrants are out, and they have told our ape to take your cows. We are to begin this morning at Conches by seizing old mother Bonnebault's cow and Godin's cow and Mitant's cow."

The moment the name of Bonnebault was mentioned, Marie, who was in love with the old woman's grandson, sprang into the vineyard with a nod to her father and mother. She slipped like an eel through a break in the hedge, and was off on the way to Conches with the speed of a hunted hare.

"They'll do so much," remarked Tonsard, tranquilly, "that they'll get their bones broken; and that will be a pity, for their mothers can't make them any new ones."

"Well, perhaps so," said old Fourchon, "but see here, Vermichel, I can't go with you for an hour or more, for I have important business at the chateau."

"More important than serving three warrants at five sous each? 'You shouldn't spit into the vintage,' as Father Noah says."

"I tell you, Vermichel, that my business requires me to go to the chateau des Aigues," repeated the old man, with an air of laughable self-importance.

"And anyhow," said Mam Tonsard, "my father had better keep out of the way. Do you really mean to find the cows?"

"Monsieur Brunet, who is a very good fellow, would much rather find nothing but their dung," answered Vermichel. "A man who is obliged to be out and about day and night had better be careful."

"If he is, he has good reason to be," said Tonsard, sententiously.

"So," continued Vermichel, "he said to Monsieur Michaud, 'I'll go as soon as the court is up.' If he had wanted to find the cows he'd have gone at seven o'clock in the morning. But that didn't suit Michaud, and Brunet has had to be off. You can't take in Michaud, he's a trained hound! Ha, the brigand!"

"Ought to have stayed in the army, a swaggerer like that," said Tonsard; "he is only fit to deal with enemies. I wish he would come and ask me my name. He may call himself a veteran of the young guard, but I know very well that if I measured spurs with him, I'd keep my feathers up longest."

"Look here!" said Mam Tonsard to Vermichel, "when are the notices for the ball at Soulanges coming out? Here it is the eighth of August."

"I took them yesterday to Monsieur Bournier at Ville-aux-Fayes, to be printed," replied Vermichel; "they do talk of fireworks on the lake."

"What crowds of people we shall have!" cried Fourchon.

"Profits for Socquard!" said Tonsard, spitefully.

"If it doesn't rain," said his wife, by way of comfort.

At this moment the trot of a horse coming from the direction of Soulanges was heard, and five minutes later the sheriff's officer fastened his horse to a post placed for the purpose near the wicket gate through which the cows were driven. Then he showed his head at the door of the Grand-I-Vert.

"Come, my boys, let's lose no time," he said, pretending to be in a hurry.

"Hey!" said Vermichel. "Here's a refractory, Monsieur Brunet; Pere Fourchon wants to drop off."

"He has had too many drops already," said the sheriff; "but the law in this case does not require that he shall be sober."

"Please excuse me, Monsieur Brunet," said Fourchon, "I am expected at Les Aigues on business; they are in treaty for an otter."

Brunet, a withered little man dressed from head to foot in black cloth, with a bilious skin, a furtive eye, curly hair, lips tight-drawn, pinched nose, anxious expression, and gruff in speech, exhibited the phenomenon of a character and bearing in perfect harmony with his profession. He was so well-informed as to the law, or, to speak more correctly, the quibbles of the law, that he had come to be both the terror and the counsellor of the whole canton. He was not without a certain popularity among the peasantry, from whom he usually took his pay in kind. The compound of his active and negative qualities and his knowledge of how to manage matters got him the custom of the canton, to the exclusion of his coadjutor Plissoud, about whom we shall have something to say later. This chance combination of a sheriff's officer who does everything and a sheriff's officer who does nothing is not at all uncommon in the country justice courts.

"So matters are getting warm, are they?" said Tonsard to little Brunet.

"What can you expect? you pilfer the man too much, and he's going to protect himself," replied the officer. "It will be a bad business for you in the end; government will interfere."

"Then we, poor unfortunates, must give up the ghost!" said Mam Tonsard, offering him a glass of brandy on a saucer.

"The unfortunate may all die, yet they'll never be lacking in the land," said Fourchon, sententiously.

"You do great damage to the woods," retorted the sheriff.

"Now don't believe that, Monsieur Brunet," said Mam Tonsard; "they make such a fuss about a few miserable fagots!"

"We didn't crush the rich low enough during the Revolution, that's what's the trouble," said Tonsard.

Just then a horrible, and quite incomprehensible noise was heard. It seemed to be a rush of hurried feet, accompanied with a rattle of arms, half-drowned by the rustling of leaves, the dragging of branches, and the sound of still more hasty feet. Two voices, as different as the two footsteps, were venting noisy exclamations. Everybody inside the inn guessed at once that a man was pursuing a woman; but why? The uncertainty did not last long.

"It is mother!" said Tonsard, jumping up; "I know her shriek."

Then suddenly, rushing up the broken steps of the Grand-I-Vert by a last effort that can be made only by the sinews of smugglers, old Mother Tonsard fell flat on the floor in the middle of the room. The immense mass of wood she carried on her head made a terrible noise as it crashed against the top of the door and then upon the ground. Every one had jumped out of the way. The table, the bottles, the chairs were knocked over and scattered. The noise was as great as if the cottage itself had come tumbling down.

"I'm dead! The scoundrel has killed me!"

The words and the flight of the old woman were explained by the apparition on the threshold of a keeper, dressed in green livery, wearing a hat edged with silver cord, a sabre at his side, a leathern shoulder-belt bearing the arms of Montcornet charged with those of the Troisvilles, the regulation red waistcoat, and buckskin gaiters which came above the knee.

After a moment's hesitation the keeper said, looking at Brunet and Vermichel, "Here are witnesses."

"Witnesses of what?" said Tonsard.

"That woman has a ten-year-old oak, cut into logs, inside those fagots; it is a regular crime!"

The moment the word "witness" was uttered Vermichel thought best to breathe the fresh air of the vineyard.

"Of what? witnesses of what?" cried Tonsard, standing in front of the keeper while his wife helped up the old woman. "Do you mean to show your claws, Vatel? Accuse persons and arrest them on the highway, brigand,—that's your domain; but get out of here! A man's house is his castle."

"I caught her in the act, and your mother must come with me."

"Arrest my mother in my house? You have no right to do it. My house is inviolable,—all the world knows that, at least. Have you got a warrant from Monsieur Guerbet, the magistrate? Ha! you must have the law behind you before you come in here. You are not the law, though you have sworn an oath to starve us to death, you miserable forest-gauger, you!"

The fury of the keeper waxed so hot that he was on the point of seizing hold of the wood, when the old woman, a frightful bit of black parchment endowed with motion, the like of which can be seen only in David's picture of "The Sabines," screamed at him, "Don't touch it, or I'll fly at your eyes!"

"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."

"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.