Sons of the Soil by Honoré de Balzac (latest ebook reader txt) 📕

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Hate, intelligence, and means at command, such were the three sides of the terrible triangle which describes the general's closest enemy, the spy ever watching Les Aigues,--a shark having constant dealings with sixty to eighty small land-owners, relations or connections of the peasantry, who feared him as such men always fear their creditor.

Rigou was in his way another Tonsard. The one throve on thefts from nature, the other waxed fat on legal plunder. Both liked to live well. It was the same nature in two species,--the one natural, the other whetted by his training in a cloister.

It was about four o'clock when Vaudoyer left the tavern of the Grand-I-Vert to consult the former mayor. Rigou was at dinner. Finding the front door locked, Vaudoyer looked above the window blinds and called out:--

"Monsieur Rigou, it is I,--Vaudoyer."

Jean came round from the porte-cochere and said to Vaudoyer:--

"Come into the garden; Monsieur has company."

The company was Sibilet, who, under pretext of discussing the verdict Brunet had just handed in, was talking to Rigou of quite other matters. He had found the usurer finishing his dessert. On a square dinner-table covered with a dazzling white cloth--for, regardless of his wife and Annette who did the washing, Rigou exacted clean table-linen every day--the steward noted strawberries, apricots, peaches, figs, and almonds, all the fruits of the season in profusion, served in white porcelain dishes on vine-leaves as daintily as at Les Aigues.

Seeing Sibilet, Rigou told him to run the bolts of the inside double-doors, which were added to the other doors as much to stifle sounds as to keep out the cold air, and asked him what pressing business brought him there in broad daylight when it was so much safer to confer together at night.

"The Shopman talks of going to Paris to see the Keeper of the Seals; he is capable of doing you a great deal of harm; he may ask for the dismissal of your son-in-law, and the removal of the judges at Ville-aux-Fayes, especially after reading the verdict just rendered in your favor. He has turned at bay; he is shrewd, and he has an adviser in that abbe, who is quite able to tilt with you and Gaubertin. Priests are powerful. Monseigneur the bishop thinks a great deal of the Abbe Brossette. Madame la comtesse talks of going herself to her cousin the prefect, the Comte de Casteran, about Nicolas. Michaud begins to see into our game."

"You are frightened," said Rigou, softly, casting a look on Sibilet which suspicion made less impassive than usual, and which was therefore terrific. "You are debating whether it would not be better on the whole to side with the Comte de Montcornet."

"I don't see where I am to get the four thousand francs I save honestly and invest every year, after you have cut up and sold Les Aigues," said Sibilet, shortly. "Monsieur Gaubertin has made me many fine promises; but the crisis is coming on; there will be fighting, surely. Promising before victory and keeping a promise after it are two very different things."

"I will talk to him about it," replied Rigou, imperturbably. "Meantime this is what I should say to you if I were in his place: 'For the last five years you have taken Monsieur Rigou four thousand francs a year, and that worthy man gives you seven and a half per cent; which makes your property in his hands at this moment over twenty-seven thousand francs, as you have not drawn the interest. But there exists a private signed agreement between you and Rigou, and the Shopman will dismiss his steward whenever the Abbe Brossette lays that document before his eyes; the abbe will be able to do so after receiving an anonymous letter which will inform him of your double-dealing. You would therefore do better for yourself by keeping well with us instead of clamoring for your pay in advance,--all the more because Monsieur Rigou, who is not legally bound to give you seven and a half per cent and the interest on your interest, will make you in court a legal tender of your twenty thousand francs, and you will not be able to touch that money until your suit, prolonged by legal trickery, shall be decided by the court at Ville-aux-Fayes. But if you act wisely you will find that when Monsieur Rigou gets possession of your pavilion at Les Aigues, you will have very nearly thirty thousand francs in his hands and thirty thousand more which the said Rigou may entrust to you,--which will be all the more advantageous to you then because the peasantry will have flung them themselves upon the estate of Les Aigues, divided into small lots like the poverty of the world.' That's what Monsieur Gaubertin might say to you. As for me, I have nothing to say, for it is none of my business. Gaubertin and I have our own quarrel with that son of the people who is ashamed of his own father, and we follow our own course. If my friend Gaubertin feels the need of using you, I don't; I need no one, for everybody is at my command. As to the Keeper of the Seals, that functionary is often changed; whereas we--WE are always here, and can bide our time."

"Well, I've warned you," returned Sibilet, feeling like a donkey under a pack-saddle.

"Warned me of what?" said Rigou, artfully.

"Of what the Shopman is going to do," answered the steward, humbly. "He started for the Prefecture in a rage."

"Let him go! If the Montcornets and their kind didn't use wheels, what would become of the carriage-makers?"

"I shall bring you three thousand francs to-night," said Sibilet, "but you ought to make over some of your maturing mortgages to me,--say, one or two that would secure to me good lots of land."

"Well, there's that of Courtecuisse. I myself want to be easy on him because he is the best shot in the canton; but if I make over his mortgage to you, you will seem to be harassing him on the Shopman's account, and that will be killing two birds with one stone; when Courtecuisse finds himself a beggar, like Fourchon, he'll be capable of anything. Courtecuisse has ruined himself on the Bachelerie; he has cultivated all the land, and trained fruit on the walls. The little property is now worth four thousand francs, and the count will gladly pay you that to get possession of the three acres that jut right into his land. If Courtecuisse were not such an idle hound he could have paid his interest with the game he might have killed there."

"Well, transfer the mortgage to me, and I'll make my butter out of it; the count shall buy the three acres, and I shall get the house and garden for nothing."

"What are you going to give me out of it?"

"Good heavens! you'd milk an ox!" exclaimed Sibilet,--"when I have just done you such a service, too. I have at last got the Shopman to enforce the laws about gleaning--"

"Have you, my dear fellow?" said Rigou, who a few days earlier had suggested this means of exasperating the peasantry to Sibilet, telling him to advise the general to try it. "Then we've got him; he's lost! But it isn't enough to hold him with one string; we must wind it round and round him like a roll of tobacco. Slip the bolts of the door, my lad; tell my wife to bring my coffee and the liqueurs, and tell Jean to harness up. I'm off to Soulanges; will see you to-night!--Ah! Vaudoyer, good afternoon," said the late mayor as his former field-keeper entered the room. "What's the news?"

Vaudoyer related the talk which had just taken place at the tavern, and asked Rigou's opinion as to the legality of the rules which the general thought of enforcing.

"He has the law with him," said Rigou, curtly. "We have a hard landlord; the Abbe Brossette is a malignant priest; he advises all such measures because you don't go to mass, you miserable unbelievers. I go; there's a God, I tell you. You peasants will have to bear everything, for the Shopman will always get the better of you--"

"We shall glean," said Vaudoyer, in that determined tone which characterizes Burgundians.

"Without a certificate of pauperism?" asked the usurer. "They say the Shopman has gone to the Prefecture to ask for troops so as to force you to keep the law."

"We shall glean as we have always gleaned," repeated Vaudoyer.

"Well, glean then! Monsieur Sarcus will decide whether you have the right to," said Rigou, seeming to promise the help of the justice of the peace.

"We shall glean, and we shall do it in force, or Burgundy won't be Burgundy any longer," said Vaudoyer. "If the gendarmes have sabres we have scythes, and we'll see what comes of it!"

At half-past four o'clock the great green gate of the former parsonage turned on its hinges, and the bay horse, led by Jean, was brought round to the front door. Madame Rigou and Annette came out on the steps and looked at the little wicker carriage, painted green, with a leathern hood, where their lord and master was comfortably seated on good cushions.

"Don't be late home, monsieur," said Annette, with a little pout.

The village folk, already informed of the measures the general proposed to take, were at their doors or standing in the main street as Rigou drove by, believing that he was going to Soulanges in their defence.

"Well, Madame Courtecuisse, so our mayor is on his way to protect us," remarked an old woman as she knitted; the question of depredating in the forest was of great interest to her, for her husband sold the stolen wood at Soulanges.

"Ah! the good man, his heart bleeds to see the way we are treated; he is as unhappy as we are about it," replied the poor woman, who trembled at the very name of her husband's creditor, and praised him out of fear.

"And he himself, too,--they've shamefully ill-used him! Good-day, Monsieur Rigou," said the old knitter to the usurer, who bowed to her and to his debtor's wife.

As Rigou crossed the Thune, fordable at all seasons, Tonsard came out of the tavern and met him on the high-road.

"Well, Pere Rigou," he said, "so the Shopman means to make dogs of us?"

"We'll see about that," said the usurer, whipping up his horse.

"He'll protect us," said Tonsard, turning to a group of women and children who were near him.

"Rigou is thinking as much about you as a cook thinks of the gudgeons he is frying in his pan," called out Fourchon.

"Take the clapper out of your throat when you are drunk," said Mouche, pulling his grandfather by the blouse, and tumbling him down on a bank under a poplar tree. "If that hound of a mayor heard you say that, he'd never buy any more of your tales."

The truth was that Rigou was hurrying to Soulanges in consequence of the warning given him by the steward of Les Aigues, which, in his heart, he regarded as threatening the secret coalition of the valley.



PART II

CHAPTER I. THE LEADING SOCIETY OF SOULANGES

About six kilometres (speaking legally) from Blangy, and at the same distance from Ville-aux-Fayes, on an elevation radiating from the long hillside at the foot of which flows the Avonne, stands the little town of Soulanges, surnamed La Jolie, with, perhaps, more right to that title