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

were hung, had not been changed since the days when all Soulanges came to admire the romantic paper, also a counter painted like mahogany with a Saint-Anne marble top, on which shone vessels of plated metal and lamps with double-burners, which were, rumor said, given to the beautiful Madame Socquard by Gaubertin. A sticky coating of dirt covered everything, like that found on old pictures put away and long forgotten in a garret. The tables painted to resemble marble, the benches covered in red Utrecht velvet, the hanging glass lamp full of oil, which fed two lights, fastened by a chain to the ceiling and adorned with glass pendants, were the beginning of the celebrity of the then Cafe de la Guerre.

There, from 1802 to 1804, all the bourgeois of Soulanges played at dominoes and a game of cards called "brelan," drank tiny glasses of liqueur or boiled wine, and ate brandied fruits and biscuits; for the dearness of colonial products had banished coffee, sugar, and chocolate. Punch was a great luxury; so was "bavaroise." These infusions were made with a sugary substance resembling molasses, the name of which is now lost, but which, at the time, made the fortune of its inventor.

These succinct details will recall to the memory of all travellers many others that are analogous; and those persons who have never left Paris can imagine the ceiling blackened with smoke and the mirrors specked with millions of spots, showing in what freedom and independence the whole order of diptera lived in the Cafe de la Paix.

The beautiful Madame Socquard, whose gallant adventures surpassed those of the mistress of the Grand-I-Vert, sat there, enthroned, dressed in the last fashion. She affected the style of a sultana, and wore a turban. Sultanas, under the Empire, enjoyed a vogue equal to that of the "angel" of to-day. The whole valley took pattern from the turbans, the poke-bonnets, the fur caps, the Chinese head-gear of the handsome Socquard, to whose luxury the big-wigs of Soulanges contributed. With a waist beneath her arm-pits, after the fashion of our mothers, who were proud of their imperial graces, Junie (she was named Junie!) made the fortune of the house of Socquard. Her husband owed to her the ownership of a vineyard, of the house they lived in, and also the Tivoli. The father of Monsieur Lupin was said to have committed some follies for the handsome Madame Socquard; and Gaubertin, who had taken her from him, certainly owed him the little Bournier.

These details, together with the deep mystery with which Socquard manufactured his boiled wine, are sufficient to explain why his name and that of the Cafe de la Paix were popular; but there were other reasons for their renown. Nothing better than wine could be got at Tonsard's and the other taverns in the valley; from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes, in a circumference of twenty miles, the Cafe Socquard was the only place where the guests could play billiards and drink the punch so admirably concocted by the proprietor. There alone could be found a display of foreign wines, fine liqueurs, and brandied fruits. Its name resounded daily throughout the valley, accompanied by ideas of superfine sensual pleasures such as men whose stomachs are more sensitive than their hearts dream about. To all these causes of popularity was added that of being an integral part of the great festival of Soulanges. The Cafe de la Paix was to the town, in a superior degree, what the tavern of the Grand-I-Vert was to the peasantry,--a centre of venom; it was the point of contact and transmission between the gossip of Ville-aux-Fayes and that of the valley. The Grand-I-Vert supplied the milk and the Cafe de la Paix the cream, and Tonsard's two daughters were in daily communication between the two.

To Socquard's mind the square of Soulanges was merely an appendage to his cafe. Hercules went from door to door, talking with this one and that one, and wearing in summer no other garment than a pair of trousers and a half-buttoned waistcoat. If any one entered the tavern, the people with whom he gossiped warned him, and he slowly and reluctantly returned.

Rigou stopped his horse, and getting out of the chaise, fastened the bridle to one of the posts near the gate of the Tivoli. Then he made a pretext to listen to what was going on without being noticed, and placed himself between two windows through one of which he could, by advancing his head, see the persons in the room, watch their gestures, and catch the louder tones which came through the glass of the windows and which the quiet of the street enabled him to hear.

"If I were to tell old Rigou that your brother Nicolas is after La Pechina," cried an angry voice, "and that he waylays her, he'd rip the entrails out of every one of you,--pack of scoundrels that you are at the Grand-I-Vert!"

"If you play me such a trick as that, Aglae," said the shrill voice of Marie Tonsard, "you sha'n't tell anything more except to the worms in your coffin. Don't meddle with my brother's business or with mine and Bonnebault's either."

Marie, instigated by her grandmother, had, as we see, followed Bonnebault; she had watched him through the very window where Rigou was now standing, and had seen him displaying his graces and paying compliments so agreeable to Mademoiselle Socquard that she was forced to smile upon him. That smile had brought about the scene in the midst of which the revelation that interested Rigou came out.

"Well, well, Pere Rigou, what are you doing here?" said Socquard, slapping the usurer on the shoulder; he was coming from a barn at the end of the garden, where he kept various contrivances for the public games, such as weighing-machines, merry-go-rounds, see-saws, all in readiness for the Tivoli when opened. Socquard stepped noiselessly, for he was wearing a pair of those yellow leather-slippers which cost so little by the gross that they have an enormous sale in the provinces.

"If you have any fresh lemons, I'd like a glass of lemonade," said Rigou; "it is a warm evening."

"Who is making that racket?" said Socquard, looking through the window and seeing his daughter and Marie Tonsard.

"They are quarrelling for Bonnebault," said Rigou, sardonically.

The anger of the father was at once controlled by the interest of the tavern-keeper. The tavern-keeper judged it prudent to listen outside, as Rigou was doing; the father was inclined to enter and declare that Bonnebault, possessed of admirable qualities in the eyes of a tavern-keeper, had none at all as son-in-law to one of the notables of Soulanges. And yet Pere Socquard had received but few offers for his daughter. At twenty-two Aglae already rivalled in size and weight Madame Vermichel, whose agility seemed phenomenal. Sitting behind a counter increased the adipose tendency which she derived from her father.

"What devil is it that gets into girls?" said Socquard to Rigou.

"Ha!" replied the ex-Benedictine, "of all the devils, that's the one the Church has most to do with."

Just then Bonnebault came out of the billiard-room with a cue in his hand, and struck Marie sharply, saying:--

"You've made me miss my stroke; but I'll not miss you, and I'll give it to you till you muffle that clapper of yours."

Socquard and Rigou, who now thought it wise to interfere, entered the cafe by the front door, raising such a crowd of flies that the light from the windows was obscured; the sound was like that of the distant practising of a drum-corps. After their first excitement was over, the big flies with the bluish bellies, accompanied by the stinging little ones, returned to their quarters in the windows, where on three tiers of planks, the paint of which was indistinguishable under the fly-specks, were rows of viscous bottles ranged like soldiers.

Marie was crying. To be struck before a rival by the man she loves is one of those humiliations that no woman can endure, no matter what her place on the social ladder may be; and the lower that place is, the more violent is the expression of her wrath. The Tonsard girl took no notice of Rigou or of Socquard; she flung herself on a bench, in gloomy and sullen silence, which the ex-monk carefully watched.

"Get a fresh lemon, Aglae," said Pere Socquard, "and go and rinse that glass yourself."

"You did right to send her away," whispered Rigou, "or she might have been hurt"; and he glanced significantly at the hand with which Marie grasped a stool she had caught up to throw at Aglae's head.

"Now, Marie," said Socquard, standing before her, "people don't come here to fling stools; if you were to break one of my mirrors, the milk of your cows wouldn't pay for the damage."

"Pere Socquard, your daughter is a reptile; I'm worth a dozen of her, I'd have you know. If you don't want Bonnebault for a son-in-law, it is high time for you to tell him to go and play billiards somewhere else; he's losing a hundred sous every minute."

In the middle of this flux of words, screamed rather than said, Socquard took Marie round the waist and flung her out of the door, in spite of her cries and resistance. It was none too soon; for Bonnebault rushed out of the billiard-room, his eyes blazing.

"It sha'n't end so!" cried Marie Tonsard.

"Begone!" shouted Bonnebault, whom Viollet held back round the body lest he should do the girl some hurt. "Go to the devil, or I will never speak to you or look at you again!"

"You!" said Marie, flinging him a furious glance. "Give me back my money, and I'll leave you to Mademoiselle Socquard if she is rich enough to keep you."

Thereupon Marie, frightened when she saw that even Socquard-Alcides could scarcely hold Bonnebault, who sprang after her like a tiger, took to flight along the road.

Rigou followed, and told her to get into his carriole to escape Bonnebault, whose shouts reached the hotel Soudry; then, after hiding Marie under the leather curtains, he came back to the cafe to drink his lemonade and examine the group it now contained, composed of Plissoud, Amaury, Viollet, and the waiter, who were all trying to pacify Bonnebault.

"Come, hussar, it's your turn to play," said Amaury, a small, fair young man, with a dull eye.

"Besides, she's taken herself off," said Viollet.

If any one ever betrayed astonishment it was Plissoud when he beheld the usurer of Blangy sitting at one of the tables, and more occupied in watching him, Plissoud, than in noticing the quarrel that was going on. In spite of himself, the sheriff allowed his face to show the species of bewilderment which a man feels at an unexpected meeting with a person whom he hates and is plotting against, and he speedily withdrew into the billiard-room.

"Adieu, Pere Socquard," said Rigou.

"I'll get your carriage," said the innkeeper; "take your time."

"How shall I find out what those fellows have been saying over their pool?" Rigou was asking himself, when he happened to see the waiter's face in the mirror beside him.

The waiter was a jack at all trades; he cultivated Socquard's vines, swept out the cafe and the billiard-room, kept the garden in order, and watered the Tivoli, all for fifty francs a year. He was always without a jacket, except on grand occasions; usually his sole garments were a pair of blue linen trousers, heavy shoes, and a striped velvet waistcoat, over which he wore an apron of homespun linen when at