"The devil!" cried Michaud; "the matter must be cleared up."

Emile and the bailiff left the two ladies with Joseph and the horses, and returned to the wild garden of the open. They went down the bank to the pond; looked everywhere along the slope, but found no clue. Blondet jumped back first, and as he did so he saw, in a thicket which stood on higher ground, one of those trees he had noticed in the morning with withered heads. He showed it to Michaud, and proposed to go to it. The two sprang forward in a straight line across the forest, avoiding the trunks and going round the matted tangles of brier and holly until they found the tree.

"It is a fine elm," said Michaud, "but there's a worm in it,—a worm which gnaws round the bark close to the roots."

He stopped and took up a bit of the bark, saying: "See how they work."

"You have a great many worms in this forest," said Blondet.

Just then Michaud noticed a red spot; a moment more and he saw the head of his greyhound. He sighed.

"The scoundrels!" he said. "Madame was right."

Michaud and Blondet examined the body and found, just as the countess had said, that some one had cut the greyhound's throat. To prevent his barking he had been decoyed with a bit of meat, which was still between his tongue and his palate.

"Poor brute; he died of self-indulgence."

"Like all princes," said Blondet.

"Some one, whoever it is, has just gone, fearing that we might catch him or her," said Michaud. "A serious offence has been committed. But for all that, I see no branches about and no lopped trees."

Blondet and the bailiff began a cautious search, looking at each spot where they set their feet before setting them. Presently Blondet pointed to a tree beneath which the grass was flattened down and two hollows made.

"Some one knelt there, and it must have been a woman, for a man would not have left such a quantity of flattened grass around the impression of his two knees; yes, see! that is the outline of a petticoat."

The bailiff, after examining the base of the tree, found the beginning of a hole beneath the bark; but he did not find the worm with the tough skin, shiny and squamous, covered with brown specks, ending in a tail not unlike that of a cockchafer, and having also the latter's head, antennae, and the two vigorous hooks or shears with which the creature cuts into the wood.

"My dear fellow," said Blondet, "now I understand the enormous number of dead trees that I noticed this morning from the terrace of the chateau, and which brought me here to find out the cause of the phenomenon. Worms are at work; but they are no other than your peasants."

The bailiff gave vent to an oath and rushed off, followed by Blondet, to rejoin the countess, whom he requested to take his wife home with her. Then he jumped on Joseph's horse, leaving the man to return on foot, and disappeared with great rapidity to cut off the retreat of the woman who had killed his dog, hoping to catch her with the bloody bill-hook in her hand and the tool used to make the incisions in the bark of the tree.

"Let us go and tell the general at once, before he breakfasts," cried the countess; "he might die of anger."

"I'll prepare him," said Blondet.

"They have killed the dog," said Olympe, in tears.

"You loved the poor greyhound, dear, enough to weep for him?" said the countess.

"I think of Prince as a warning; I fear some danger to my husband."

"How they have ruined this beautiful morning for us," said the countess, with an adorable little pout.

"How they have ruined the country," said Olympe, gravely.

They met the general near the chateau.

"Where have you been?" he asked.

"You shall know in a minute," said Blondet, mysteriously, as he helped the countess and Madame Michaud to alight. A moment more and the two gentlemen were alone on the terrace of the apartments.

"You have plenty of moral strength, general; you won't put yourself in a passion, will you?"

"No," said the general; "but come to the point or I shall think you are making fun of me."

"Do you see those trees with dead leaves?"

"Yes."

"Do you see those others that are wilting?"

"Yes."

"Well, every one of them has been killed by the peasants you think you have won over by your benefits."

And Blondet related the events of the morning.

The general was so pale that Blondet was frightened.

"Come, curse, swear, be furious! your self-control may hurt you more than anger!"

"I'll go and smoke," said the general, turning toward the kiosk.

During breakfast Michaud came in; he had found no one. Sibilet, whom the count had sent for, came also.

"Monsieur Sibilet, and you, Monsieur Michaud, are to make it known, cautiously, that I will pay a thousand francs to whoever will arrest in the act the person or persons who are killing my trees; they must also discover the instrument with which the work is done, and where it was bought. I have settled upon a plan."

"Those people never betray one another," said Sibilet, "if the crime done is for their benefit and premeditated. There is no denying that this diabolical business has been planned, carefully planned and contrived."

"Yes, but a thousand francs means a couple of acres of land."

"We can try," said Sibilet; "fifteen hundred francs might buy you a traitor, especially if you promise secrecy."

"Very good; but let us act as if we suspected nothing, I especially; if not, we shall be the victims of some collusion; one has to be as wary with these brigands as with the enemy in war."

"But the enemy is here," said Blondet.

Sibilet threw him the furtive glance of a man who understood the meaning of the words, and then he withdrew.

"I don't like your Sibilet," said Blondet, when he had seen the steward leave the house. "That man is playing false."

"Up to this time he has done nothing I could complain of," said the general.

Blondet went off to write letters. He had lost the careless gayety of his first arrival, and was now uneasy and preoccupied; but he had no vague presentiments like those of Madame Michaud; he was, rather, in full expectation of certain foreseen misfortunes. He said to himself, "This affair will come to some bad end; and if the general does not take decisive action and will not abandon a battle-field where he is overwhelmed by numbers there must be a catastrophe; and who knows who will come out safe and sound,—perhaps neither he nor his wife. Good God! that adorable little creature! so devoted, so perfect! how can he expose her thus! He thinks he loves her! Well, I'll share their danger, and if I can't save them I'll suffer with them."



CHAPTER VIII. RURAL VIRTUE

That night Marie Tonsard was stationed on the road to Soulanges, sitting on the rail of a culvert waiting for Bonnebault, who had spent the day, as usual, at the Cafe de la Paix. She heard him coming at some distance, and his step told her that he was drunk, and she knew also that he had lost money, for he always sang if he won.

"Is that you, Bonnebault?"

"Yes, my girl."

"What's the matter?"

"I owe twenty-five francs, and they may wring my neck twenty-five times before I can pay them."

"Well, I know how you can get five hundred," she said in his ear.

"Oh! by killing a man; but I prefer to live."

"Hold your tongue. Vaudoyer will give us five hundred francs if you will let him catch your mother at a tree."

"I'd rather kill a man than sell my mother. There's your old grandmother; why don't you sell her?"

"If I tried to, my father would get angry and stop the trick."

"That's true. Well, anyhow, my mother sha'n't go to prison, poor old thing! She cooks my food and keeps me in clothes, I'm sure I don't know how. Go to prison,—and through me! I shouldn't have any bowels within me; no, no! And for fear any one else should sell her, I'll tell her this very night not to kill any more trees."

"Well, my father may say and do what he likes, but I shall tell him there are five hundred francs to be had, and perhaps he'll ask my grandmother if she'll earn them. They'll never put an old woman seventy-eight years of age in prison,—though, to be sure, she'd be better off there than in her garret."

"Five hundred francs! well, yes; I'll speak to my mother," said Bonnebault, "and if it suits her to give 'em to me, I'll let her have part to take to prison. She could knit, and amuse herself; and she'd be well fed and lodged, and have less trouble than she has at Conches. Well, to-morrow, my girl, I'll see you about it; I haven't time to stop now."

The next morning at daybreak Bonnebault and his old mother knocked at the door of the Grand-I-Vert. Mother Tonsard was the only person up.

"Marie!" called Bonnebault, "that matter is settled."

"You mean about the trees?" said Mother Tonsard; "yes, it is all settled; I've taken it."

"Nonsense!" cried Mother Bonnebault, "my son has got the promise of an acre of land from Monsieur Rigou—"

The two old women squabbled as to which of them should be sold by her children. The noise of the quarrel woke up the household. Tonsard and Bonnebault took sides for their respective mothers.

"Pull straws," suggested Tonsard's wife.

The short straw gave it in favor of the tavern.

Three days later, in the forest of Ville-aux-Fayes at daybreak, the gendarmes arrested old Mother Tonsard caught "in flagrante delicto" by the bailiff, his assistants, and the field-keeper, with a rusty file which served to tear the tree, and a chisel, used by the delinquent to scoop round the bark just as the insect bores its way. The indictment stated that sixty trees thus destroyed were found within a radius of five hundred feet. The old woman was sent to Auxerre, the case coming under the jurisdiction of the assize-court.

Michaud could not refrain from saying when he discovered Mother Tonsard at the foot of the tree: "These are the persons on whom the general and Madame la comtesse have showered benefits! Faith, if Madame would only listen to me, she wouldn't give that dowry to the Tonsard girl, who is more worthless than her grandmother."

The old woman raised her gray eyes and darted a venomous look at Michaud. When the count learned who the guilty person was, he forbade his wife to give the money to Catherine Tonsard.

"Monsieur le comte is perfectly right," said Sibilet. "I know that Godain bought that land three days before Catherine came to speak to Madame. She is quite capable, that girl, of pretending she is with child, to get the money; very likely Godain has had nothing to do with it."

"What a community!" said Blondet; "the scoundrels of Paris are saints by comparison."

"Ah, monsieur," said Sibilet, "self-interest makes people guilty of horrors everywhere. Do you know who betrayed the old woman?"

"No."

"Her granddaughter Marie; she was jealous of her sister's marriage, and to get the money for her own—"

"It is awful!" said the count. "Why! they'd murder!"

"Oh yes," said Sibilet, "for a very small sum. They care so little for life, those people; they hate to have to work all their lives. Ah monsieur, queer things happen in country places, as queer as those of Paris,—but you will never believe it."

"Let us be kind and benevolent," said the countess.

The evening after the arrest Bonnebault came to the tavern of the Grand-I-Vert, where all the Tonsard family were in great jubilation. "Oh yes, yes!" said he, "make the most of your rejoicing; but I've just heard from Vaudoyer that the countess, to punish you, withdraws the thousand francs promised to Godain; her husband won't let her give them."

"It's that villain of a Michaud who has put him up to it," said Tonsard. "My mother heard him say he would; she told me at Ville-aux-Fayes where I went to carry her some money and her clothes. Well; let that countess keep her money! our five hundred francs shall help Godain buy the land; and we'll revenge ourselves for this thing. Ha! Michaud meddles with our private matters, does he? it will bring him more harm than good. What business is it of his, I'd like to know? let him keep to the woods! It's he who is at the bottom of all this trouble—he found the clue that day my mother cut the throat of his dog. Suppose I were to meddle in the affairs of the chateau? Suppose I were to tell the general that his wife is off walking in the woods before he is up in the morning, with a young man."

"The general, the general!" sneered Courtecuisse; "they can do what they like with him. But it's Michaud who stirs him up, the mischief-maker! a fellow who don't know his business; in my day, things went differently."

"Ah!" said Tonsard, "those were the good days for all of us—weren't they, Vaudoyer?"

"Yes," said the latter, "and the fact is that if Michaud were got rid of we should be left in peace."

"Enough said," replied Tonsard. "We'll talk of this later—by moonlight—in the open field."

Towards the end of October the countess returned to Paris, leaving the general at Les Aigues. He was not to rejoin her till some time later, but she did not wish to lose the first night of the Italian Opera, and moreover she was lonely and bored; she missed Emile, who was recalled by his avocations, for he had helped her to pass the hours when the general was scouring the country or attending to business.

November was a true winter month, gray and gloomy, a mixture of snow and rain, frost and thaw. The trial of Mother Tonsard had required witnesses at Auxerre, and Michaud had given his testimony. Monsieur Rigou had interested himself for the old woman, and employed a lawyer on her behalf who relied in his defence on the absence of disinterested witnesses; but the testimony of Michaud and his assistants and the field-keeper was found to outweigh this objection. Tonsard's mother was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, and the lawyer said to her son:—

"It was Michaud's testimony which got her that."



CHAPTER IX THE CATASTROPHE

One Saturday evening, Courtecuisse, Bonnebault, Godain, Tonsard, his daughters, wife, and Pere Fourchon, also Vaudoyer and several mechanics were supping at the tavern. The moon was at half-full, the first snow had melted, and frost had just stiffened the ground so that a man's step left no traces. They were eating a stew of hare caught in a trap; all were drinking and laughing. It was the day after the wedding of Catherine and Godain, and the wedded pair were to be conducted to their new home, which was not far from that of Courtecuisse; for when Rigou sold an acre of land it was sure to be isolated and close to the woods. Courtecuisse and Vaudoyer had brought their guns to accompany the bride. The neighborhood was otherwise fast asleep; not a light was to be seen; none but the wedding party were awake, but they made noise enough. In the midst of it the old Bonnebault woman entered, and every one looked at her.

"I think she is going to lie-in," she whispered in Tonsard's ear. "He has saddled his horse and is going for the doctor at Soulanges."

"Sit down," said Tonsard, giving her his place at the table, and going himself to lie on a bench.

Just then the gallop of a horse passing rapidly along the road was heard. Tonsard, Courtecuisse, and Vaudoyer went out hurriedly, and saw Michaud on his way to the village.

"He knows what he's about," said Courtecuisse; "he came down by the terrace and he means to go by Blangy and the road,—it's the safest way."

"Yes," said Tonsard, "but he will bring the doctor back with him."

"He won't find him," said Courtecuisse, "the doctor has been sent for to Conches for the postmistress."

"Then he'll go from Soulanges to Conches by the mail-road; that's shortest."

"And safest too, for us," said Courtecuisse, "there's a fine moon, and there are no keepers on the roads as there are in the woods; one can hear much farther; and down there, by the pavilions, behind the hedges, just where they join the little wood, one can aim at a man from behind, like a rabbit, at five hundred feet."

"It will be half-past eleven before he comes past there," said Tonsard, "it will take him half an hour to go to Soulanges and as much more to get back,—but look here! suppose Monsieur Gourdon were on the road?"

"Don't trouble about that," said Courtecuisse, "I'll stand ten minutes away from you to the right on the road towards Blangy, and Vaudoyer will be ten minutes away on your left towards Conches; if anything comes along, the mail, or the gendarmes, or whatever it is, we'll fire a shot into the ground,—a muffled sound, you'll know it."

"But suppose I miss him?" said Tonsard.

"He's right," said Courtecuisse, "I'm the best shot; Vaudoyer, I'll go with you; Bonnebault may watch in my place; he can give a cry; that's easier heard and less suspicious."

All three returned to the tavern and the wedding festivities went on; but about eleven o'clock Vaudoyer, Courtecuisse, Tonsard, and Bonnebault went out, carrying their guns, though none of the women took any notice of them. They came back in about three-quarters of an hour, and sat drinking till past one o'clock. Tonsard's girls and their mother and the old Bonnebault woman had plied the miller, the mechanics, and the two peasants, as well as Fourchon, with so much drink that they were all on the ground and snoring when the four men left the tavern; on their return, the sleepers were shaken and roused, and every one seemed to them, as before, in his place.

While this orgy was going on Michaud's household was in a scene of mortal anxiety. Olympe had felt false pains, and her husband, thinking she was about to be delivered, rode off instantly in haste for the doctor. But the poor woman's pains ceased as soon as she realized that Michaud was gone; for her mind was so preoccupied by the danger her husband ran at that hour of the night, in a lawless region filled with determined foes, that the anguish of her soul was powerful enough to deaden and momentarily subdue those of the body. In vain her servant-woman declared her fears were imaginary; she seemed not to comprehend a word that was said to her, and sat by the fire in her bed-chamber listening to every sound. In her terror, which increased every moment, she had the man wakened, meaning to give him some order which still she did not give. At last, the poor woman wandered up and down, coming and going in feverish agitation; she looked out of all the windows and opened them in spite of the cold; then she went downstairs and opened the door into the courtyard, looking out and listening. "Nothing! nothing!" she said. Then she went up again in despair. About a quarter past twelve, she cried out: "Here he is! I hear the horse!" Again she went down, followed by the man who went to open the iron gate of the courtyard. "It is strange," she said, "that he should return by the Conches woods!"

As she spoke she stood still, horrorstruck, motionless, voiceless. The man shared her terror, for, in the furious gallop of the horse, the clang of the empty stirrups, the neigh of the frightened animal, there was something, they scarcely knew what, of unspeakable warning. Soon, too soon for the unhappy wife, the horse reached the gate, panting and sweating, but alone; he had broken the bridle, no doubt by entangling it. Olympe gazed with haggard eyes at the servant as he opened the gate; she saw the horse, and then, without a word, she ran to the chateau like a madwoman; when she reached it she fell to the ground beneath the general's windows crying out: "Monsieur, they have murdered him!"

The cry was so terrible it awoke the count; he rang violently, bringing the whole household to their feet; and the groans of Madame Michaud, who as she lay on the ground, gave birth to a child that died in being born, brought the general and all the servants about her. They raised the poor dying woman, who expired, saying to the general: "They have murdered him!"

"Joseph!" cried the count to his valet, "go for the doctor; there may yet be time to save her. No, better bring the curate; the poor woman is dead, and her child too. My God! my God! how thankful I am that my wife is not here. And you," he said to the gardener, "go and find out what has happened."

"I can tell you," said the pavilion servant, coming up, "Monsieur Michaud's horse has come back alone, the reins broke, his legs bloody; and there's a spot of blood on the saddle."

"What can be done at this time of night?" cried the count. "Call up Groison, send for the keepers, saddle the horses; we'll beat the country."

By daybreak, eight persons—the count, Groison, the three keepers, and two gendarmes sent from Soulanges with their sergeant—searched the country. It was not till the middle of the morning that they found the body of the bailiff in a copse between the mail-road and the smaller road leading to Ville-aux-Fayes, at the end of the park of Les Aigues, not far from Conches. Two gendarmes started, one to Ville-aux-Fayes for the prosecuting attorney, the other to Soulanges for the justice of the peace. Meantime the general, assisted by the sergeant, noted down the facts. They found on the road, just above the two pavilions, the print of the stamping of the horse's feet as he roared, and the traces of his frightened gallop from there to the first opening in the woods above the hedge. The horse, no longer guided, turned into the wood-path. Michaud's hat was found there. The animal evidently took the nearest way to reach his stable. The bailiff had a ball though his back which broke the spine.

Groison and the sergeant studied the ground around the spot where the horse reared (which might be called, in judicial language, the theatre of the crime) with remarkable sagacity, but without obtaining any clue. The earth was too frozen to show the footprints of the murderer, and all they found was the paper of a cartridge. When the attorney and the judge and Monsieur Gourdon, the doctor, arrived and raised the body to make the autopsy, it was found that the ball, which corresponded with the fragments of the wad, was an ammunition ball, evidently from a military musket; and no such musket existed in the district of Blangy. The judge and Monsieur Soudry the attorney, who came that evening to the chateau, thought it best to collect all the facts and await events. The same opinion was expressed by the sergeant and the lieutenant of the gendarmerie.

"It is impossible that it can be anything but a planned attack on the part of the peasants," said the sergeant; "but there are two districts, Conches and Blangy, in each of which there are five or six persons capable of being concerned in the murder. The one that I suspect most, Tonsard, passed the night carousing in the Grand-I-Vert; but your assistant, general, the miller Langlume, was there, and he says that Tonsard did not leave the tavern. They were all so drunk they could not stand; they took the bride home at half-past one; and the return of the horse proves that Michaud was murdered between eleven o'clock and midnight. At a quarter past ten Groison saw the whole company assembled at table, and Monsieur Michaud passed there on his way to Soulanges, which he reached at eleven. His horse reared between the two pavilions on the mail-road; but he may have been shot before reaching Blangy and yet have stayed in the saddle for some little time. We should have to issue warrants for at least twenty persons and arrest them; but I know these peasants, and so do these gentlemen; you might keep them a year in prison and you would get nothing out of them but denials. What could you do with all those who were at Tonsard's?"

They sent for Langlume, the miller, and the assistant of General Montcornet as mayor; he related what had taken place in the tavern, and gave the names of all present; none had gone out except for a minute or two into the courtyard. He had left the room for a moment with Tonsard about eleven o'clock; they had spoken of the moon and the weather, and heard nothing. At two o'clock the whole party had taken the bride and bridegroom to their own house.

The general arranged with the sergeant, the lieutenant, and the civil authorities to send to Paris for the cleverest detective in the service of the police, who should come to the chateau as a workman, and behave so ill as to be dismissed; he should then take to drinking and frequent the Grand-I-Vert and remain in the neighborhood in the character of an ill-wisher to the general. The best plan they could follow was to watch and wait for a momentary revelation, and then make the most of it.

"If I have to spend twenty thousand francs I'll discover the murderer of my poor Michaud," the general was never weary of saying.

He went off with that idea in his head, and returned from Paris in the month of January with one of the shrewdest satellites of the chief of the detective police, who was brought down ostensibly to do some work to the interior of the chateau. The man was discovered poaching. He was arrested, and turned off, and soon after—early in February—the general rejoined his wife in Paris.



CHAPTER X. THE TRIUMPH OF THE VANQUISHED

One evening in the month of May, when the fine weather had come and the Parisians had returned to Les Aigues, Monsieur de Troisville,—who had been persuaded to accompany his daughter,—Blondet, the Abbe Brossette, the general, and the sub-prefect of Ville-aux-Fayes, who was on a visit to the chateau, were all playing either whist or chess. It was about half-past eleven o'clock when Joseph entered and told his master that the worthless poaching workman who had been dismissed wanted to see him,—something about a bill which he said the general still owed him. "He is very drunk," added Joseph.

"Very good, I'll go and speak to him."

The general went out upon the lawn to some distance from the house.

"Monsieur le comte," said the detective, "nothing will ever be got out of these people. All that I have been able to gather is that if you continue to stay in this place and try to make the peasants renounce the pilfering habits which Mademoiselle Laguerre allowed them to acquire, they will shoot you as well as your bailiff. There is no use in my staying here; for they distrust me even more than they do the keepers."

The count paid his spy, who left the place the next day, and his departure justified the suspicions entertained about him by the accomplices in the death of Michaud.

When the general returned to the salon there were such signs of emotion upon his face that his wife asked him, anxiously, what news he had just heard.

"Dear wife," he said, "I don't want to frighten you, and yet it is right you should know that Michaud's death was intended as a warning for us to leave this part of the country."

"If I were in your place," said Monsieur de Troisville, "I would not leave it. I myself have had just such difficulties in Normandy, only under another form; I persisted in my course, and now everything goes well."

"Monsieur le marquis," said the sub-prefect, "Normandy and Burgundy are two very different regions. The grape heats the blood far more than the apple. We know much less of law and legal proceedings; we live among the woods; the large industries are unknown among us; we are still savages. If I might give my advice to Monsieur le comte it would be to sell this estate and put the money in the Funds; he would double his income and have no anxieties. If he likes living in the country he could buy a chateau near Paris with a park as beautiful as that of Les Aigues, surrounded by walls, where no one can annoy him, and where he can let all his farms and receive the money in good bank-bills, and have no law suits from one year's end to another. He could come and go in three or four hours, and Monsieur Blondet and Monsieur le marquis would not be so often away from you, Madame la comtesse."

"I, retreat before the peasantry when I did not recoil before the Danube!" cried the general.

"Yes, but what became of your cuirassiers?" asked Blondet.

"Such a fine estate!"

"It will sell to-day for over two millions."

"The chateau alone must have cost that," remarked Monsieur de Troisville.

"One of the best properties in a circumference of sixty miles," said the sub-prefect; "but you can find a better near Paris."

"How much income does one get from two millions?" asked the countess.

"Now-a-days, about eighty thousand francs," replied Blondet.

"Les Aigues does not bring in, all told, more than thirty thousand," said the countess; "and lately you have been at such immense expenses,—you have surrounded the woods this year with ditches."

"You could get," added Blondet, "a royal chateau for four hundred thousand francs near Paris. In these days people buy the follies of others."

"I thought you cared for Les Aigues!" said the count to his wife.

"Don't you feel that I care a thousand times more for your life?" she replied. "Besides, ever since the death of my poor Olympe and Michaud's murder the country is odious to me; all the faces I meet seem to wear a treacherous or threatening expression."

The next evening the sub-prefect, having ended his visit at the chateau, was welcomed in the salon of Monsieur Gaubertin at Ville-aux-Fayes in these words:—

"Well, Monsieur des Lupeaulx, so you have returned from Les Aigues?"

"Yes," answered the sub-prefect with a little air of triumph and a look of tender regard at Mademoiselle Elise, "and I am very much afraid to say we may lose the general; he talks of selling his property—"

"Monsieur Gaubertin, I speak for my pavilion. I can on longer endure the noise, the dust of Ville-aux-Fayes; like a poor imprisoned bird I gasp for the air of the fields, the woodland breezes," said Madame Isaure, in a lackadaisical voice, with her eyes half-closed and her head bending to her left shoulder as she played carelessly with the long curls of her blond hair.

"Pray be prudent, madame!" said her husband in a low voice; "your indiscretions will not help me to buy the pavilion." Then, turning to the sub-prefect, he added, "Haven't they yet discovered the men who were concerned in the murder of the bailiff?"

"It seems not," replied the sub-prefect.

"That will injure the sale of Les Aigues," said Gaubertin to the company generally, "I know very well that I would not buy the place. The peasantry over there are such a bad set of people; even in the days of Mademoiselle Laguerre I had trouble with them, and God knows she let them do as they liked."

At the end of the month of May the general still gave no sign that he intended to sell Les Aigues; in fact, he was undecided. One night, about ten o'clock, he was returning from the forest through one of the six avenues that led to the pavilion of the Rendezvous. He dismissed the keeper who accompanied him, as he was then so near the chateau. At a turn of the road a man armed with a gun came from behind a bush.

"General," he said, "this is the third time I have had you at the end of my barrel, and the third time that I give you your life."

"Why do you want to kill me, Bonnebault?" said the general, without showing the least emotion.

"Faith, if I don't, somebody else will; but I, you see, I like the men who served the Emperor, and I can't make up my mind to shoot you like a partridge. Don't question me, for I'll tell you nothing; but you've got enemies, powerful enemies, cleverer than you, and they'll end by crushing you. I am to have a thousand crowns if I kill you, and then I can marry Marie Tonsard. Well, give me enough to buy a few acres of land and a bit of a cottage, and I'll keep on saying, as I have done, that I've found no chances. That will give you time to sell your property and get away; but make haste. I'm an honest lad still, scamp as I am; but another fellow won't spare you."

"If I give you what you ask, will you tell me who offered you those three thousand francs?" said the general.

"I don't know myself; and the person who is urging me to do the thing is some one I love too well to tell of. Besides, even if you did know it was Marie Tonsard, that wouldn't help you; Marie Tonsard would be as silent as that wall, and I should deny every word I've said."

"Come and see me to-morrow," said the general.

"Enough," replied Bonnebault; "and if they begin to say I'm too dilatory, I'll let you know in time."

A week after that singular conversation the whole arrondissement, indeed the whole department, was covered with posters, advertising the sale of Les Aigues at the office of Maitre Corbineau, the notary of Soulanges. All the lots were knocked down to Rigou, and the price paid amounted to two millions five hundred thousand francs. The next day Rigou had the names changed; Monsieur Gaubertin took the woods, Rigou and Soudry the vineyards and the farms. The chateau and the park were sold over again in small lots among the sons of the soil, the peasantry,—excepting the pavilion, its dependencies, and fifty surrounding acres, which Monsieur Gaubertin retained as a gift to his poetic and sentimental spouse.

* * * * *

Many years after these events, during the year 1837, one of the most remarkable political writers of the day, Emile Blondet, reached the last stages of a poverty which he had so far hidden beneath an outward appearance of ease and elegance. He was thinking of taking some desperate step, realizing, as he did, that his writings, his mind, his knowledge, his ability for the direction of affairs, had made him nothing better than a mere functionary, mechanically serving the ends of others; seeing that every avenue was closed to him and all places taken; feeling that he had reached middle-life without fame and without fortune; that fools and middle-class men of no training had taken the places of the courtiers and incapables of the Restoration, and that the government was reconstituted such as it was before 1830. One evening, when he had come very near committing suicide (a folly he had so often laughed at), while his mind travelled back over his miserable existence calumniated and worn down with toil far more than with the dissipations charged against him, the noble and beautiful face of a woman rose before his eyes, like a statue rising pure and unbroken amid the saddest ruins. Just then the porter brought him a letter sealed with black from the Comtesse de Montcornet, telling him of the death of her husband, who had again taken service in the army and commanded a division. The count had left her his property, and she had no children. The letter, though dignified, showed Blondet very plainly that the woman of forty whom he had loved in his youth offered him a friendly hand and a large fortune.

A few days ago the marriage of the Comtesse de Montcornet with Monsieur Blondet, appointed prefect in one of the departments, was celebrated in Paris. On their way to take possession of the prefecture, they followed the road which led past what had formerly been Les Aigues. They stopped the carriage near the spot where the two pavilions had once stood, wishing to see the places so full of tender memories for each. The country was no longer recognizable. The mysterious woods, the park avenues, all were cleared away; the landscape looked like a tailor's pattern-card. The sons of the soil had taken possession of the earth as victors and conquerors. It was cut up into a thousand little lots, and the population had tripled between Conches and Blangy. The levelling and cultivation of the noble park, once so carefully tended, so delightful in its beauty, threw into isolated relief the pavilion of the Rendezvous, now the Villa Buen-Retiro of Madame Isaure Gaubertin; it was the only building left standing, and it commanded the whole landscape, or as we might better call it, the stretch of cornfields which now constituted the landscape. The building seemed magnified into a chateau, so miserable were the little houses which the peasants had built around it.

"This is progress!" cried Emile. "It is a page out of Jean-Jacques' 'Social Compact'! and I—I am harnessed to the social machine that works it! Good God! what will the kings be soon? More than that, what will the nations themselves be fifty years hence under this state of things?"

"But you love me; you are beside me. I think the present delightful. What do I care for such a distant future?" said his wife.

"Oh yes! by your side, hurrah for the present!" cried the lover, gayly, "and the devil take the future."

Then he signed to the coachman, and as the horses sprang forward along the road, the wedded pair returned to the enjoyment of their honeymoon.

1845.



ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Note: Sons of the Soil is also known as The Peasantry and is referred to by that title when mentioned in other addendums.

Blondet, Emile Jealousies of a Country Town A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Modeste Mignon Another Study of Woman The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of Eve The Firm of Nucingen

Blondet, Virginie Jealousies of a Country Town The Secrets of a Princess A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Another Study of Woman The Member for Arcis A Daughter of Eve

Bourlac, Bernard-Jean-Baptiste-Macloud, Baron de The Seamy Side of History

Brossette, Abbe Beatrix

Carigliano, Duchesse de At the Sign of the Cat and Racket A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Member for Arcis

Casteran, De The Chouans The Seamy Side of History Jealousies of a Country Town Beatrix

Laguerre, Mademoiselle A Prince of Bohemia

La Roche-Hugon, Martial de Domestic Peace A Daughter of Eve The Member for Arcis The Middle Classes Cousin Betty

Lupin, Amaury A Start in Life

Marest, Georges A Start in Life

Minorets, The The Government Clerks

Montcornet, Marechal, Comte de Domestic Peace Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life A Man of Business Cousin Betty

Navarreins, Duc de A Bachelor's Establishment Colonel Chabert The Muse of the Department The Thirteen Jealousies of a Country Town Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Country Parson The Magic Skin The Gondreville Mystery The Secrets of a Princess Cousin Betty

Ronquerolles, Marquis de The Imaginary Mistress Ursule Mirouet A Woman of Thirty Another Study of Woman The Thirteen The Member for Arcis

Scherbelloff, Princesse (or Scherbellof or Sherbelloff) Jealousies of a Country Town

Soulanges, Comte Leon de Domestic Peace

Soulanges, Comtesse Hortense de Domestic Peace The Thirteen

Steingel The Gondreville Mystery

Troisville, Guibelin, Vicomte de The Seamy Side of History The Chouans Jealousies of a Country Town

THE END