Sons of the Soil

H >> Honore de Balzac >> Sons of the Soil


In 1595, the royal hunting-parties set forth from this magnificent
pavilion, preceded by those fine dogs so dear to Rubens and to Paul
Veronese; the huntsmen mounted on high-steeping steeds with stout and
blue-white satiny haunches, seen no longer except in Wouverman's
amazing work, followed by footmen in livery; the scene enlivened by
whippers-in, wearing the high top-boots with facings and the yellow
leathern breeches which have come down to the present day on the
canvas of Van der Meulen. The obelisk was erected in commemoration of
the visit of the Bearnais, and his hunt with the beautiful Comtesse de
Moret; the date is given below the arms of Navarre. That jealous
woman, whose son was afterwards legitimatized, would not allow the
arms of France to figure on the obelisk, regarding them as a rebuke.

At the time of which we write, when the general's eyes rested on this
splendid ruin, moss had gathered for centuries on the four faces of
the roof; the hewn-stone courses, mangled by time, seemed to cry with
yawning mouths against the profanation; disjointed leaden settings let
fall their octagonal panes, so that the windows seemed blind of an eye
here and there. Yellow wallflowers bloomed about the copings; ivy slid
its white rootlets into every crevice.

All things bespoke a shameful want of care,--the seal set by mere
life-possessors on the ancient glories that they possess. Two windows
on the first floor were stuffed with hay. Through another, on the
ground-floor, was seen a room filled with tools and logs of wood;
while a cow pushed her muzzle through a fourth, proving that
Courtecuisse, to avoid having to walk from the pavilion to the
pheasantry, had turned the large hall of the central building into a
stable,--a hall with panelled ceiling, and in the centre of each panel
the arms of all the various possessors of Les Aigues!

Black and dirty palings disgraced the approach to the pavilion, making
square inclosures with plank roofs for pigs, ducks, and hens, the
manure of which was taken away every six months. A few ragged garments
were hung to dry on the brambles which boldly grew unchecked here and
there. As the general came along the avenue from the bridge, Madame
Courtecuisse was scouring a saucepan in which she had just made her
coffee. The forester, sitting on a chair in the sun, considered his
wife as a savage considers his. When he heard a horse's hoofs he
turned round, saw the count, and seemed taken aback.

"Well, Courtecuisse, my man," said the general, "I'm not surprised
that the peasants cut my woods before Messrs. Gravelot can do so. So
you consider your place a sinecure?"

"Indeed, Monsieur le comte, I have watched the woods so many nights
that I'm ill from it. I've got a chill, and I suffer such pain this
morning that my wife has just made me a poultice in that saucepan."

"My good fellow," said the count, "I don't know of any pain that a
coffee poultice cures except that of hunger. Listen to me, you rascal!
I rode through my forest yesterday, and then through those of Monsieur
de Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles. Theirs are carefully
watched and preserved, while mine is in a shameful state."

"Ah, monsieur! but they are the old lords of the neighborhood;
everybody respects their property. How can you expect me to fight
against six districts? I care for my life more than for your woods. A
man who would undertake to watch your woods as they ought to be
watched would get a ball in his head for wages in some dark corner of
the forest--"

"Coward!" cried the general, trying to control the anger the man's
insolent reply provoked in him. "Last night was as clear as day, yet
it cost me three hundred francs in actual robbery and over a thousand
in future damages. You will leave my service unless you do better. All
wrong-doing deserves some mercy; therefore these are my conditions:
You may have the fines, and I will pay you three francs for every
indictment you bring against these depredators. If I don't get what I
expect, you know what you have to expect, and no pension either.
Whereas, if you serve me faithfully and contrive to stop these
depredations, I'll give you an annuity of three hundred francs for
life. You can think it over. Here are six ways," continued the count,
pointing to the branching roads; "there's only one for you to take,
--as for me also, who am not afraid of balls; try and find the right
one."

Courtecuisse, a small man about forty-six years of age, with a
full-moon face, found his greatest happiness in doing nothing. He
expected to live and die in that pavilion, now considered by him _his_
pavilion. His two cows were pastured in the forest, from which he got
his wood; and he spent his time in looking after his garden instead of
after the delinquents. Such neglect of duty suited Gaubertin, and
Courtecuisse knew it did. The keeper chased only those depredators who
were the objects of his personal dislike,--young women who would not
yield to his wishes, or persons against whom he held a grudge; though
for some time past he had really felt no dislikes, for every one yielded
to him on account of his easy-going ways with them.

Courtecuisse had a place always kept for him at the table of the
Grand-I-Vert; the wood-pickers feared him no longer; indeed, his wife
and he received many gifts in kind from them; his wood was brought in;
his vineyard dug; in short, all delinquents at whom he blinked did him
service.

Counting on Gaubertin for the future, and feeling sure of two acres
whenever Les Aigues should be brought to the hammer, he was roughly
awakened by the curt speech of the general, who, after four quiescent
years, was now revealing his true character,--that of a bourgeois rich
man who was determined to be no longer deceived. Courtecuisse took his
cap, his game-bag, and his gun, put on his gaiters and his belt (which
bore the very recent arms of Montcornet), and started for Ville-aux-Fayes,
with the careless, indifferent air and manner under which country-people
often conceal very deep reflections, while he gazed at the woods and
whistled to the dogs to follow him.

"What! you complain of the Shopman when he proposes to make your
fortune?" said Gaubertin. "Doesn't the fool offer to give you three
francs for every arrest you make, and the fines to boot? Have an
understanding with your friends and you can bring as many indictments
as you please,--hundreds if you like! With one thousand francs you can
buy La Bachelerie from Rigou, become a property owner, live in your
own house, and work for yourself, or rather, make others work for you,
and take your ease. Only--now listen to me--you must manage to arrest
only such as haven't a penny in the world. You can't shear sheep
unless the wool is on their backs. Take the Shopman's offer and leave
him to collect the costs,--if he wants them; tastes differ. Didn't old
Mariotte prefer losses to profits, in spite of my advice?"

Courtecuisse, filled with admiration for these words of wisdom,
returned home burning with the desire to be a land-owner and a
bourgeois like the rest.

When the general reached Les Aigues he related his expedition to
Sibilet.

"Monsieur le comte did very right," said the steward, rubbing his
hands; "but he must not stop short half-way. The field-keeper of the
district who allows the country-people to prey upon the meadows and
rob the harvests ought to be changed. Monsieur le comte should have
himself chosen mayor, and appoint one of his old soldiers, who would
have the courage to carry out his orders, in place of Vaudoyer. A
great land-owner should be master in his own district. Just see what
difficulties we have with the present mayor!"

The mayor of the district of Blangy, formerly a Benedictine, named
Rigou, had married, in the first year of the Republic, the servant-woman
of the late priest of Blangy. In spite of the repugnance which a
married monk excited at the Prefecture, he had continued to be mayor
after 1815, for the reason that there was no-one else at Blangy who
was capable of filling the post. But in 1817, when the bishop sent the
Abbe Brossette to the parish of Blangy (which had then been vacant
over twenty-five years), a violent opposition not unnaturally broke
out between the old apostate and the young ecclesiastic, whose
character is already known to us. The war which was then and there
declared between the mayor's office and the parsonage increased the
popularity of the magistrate, who had hitherto been more or less
despised. Rigou, whom the peasants had disliked for usurious dealings,
now suddenly represented their political and financial interests,
supposed to be threatened by the Restoration, and more especially by
the clergy.

A copy of the "Constitutionnel," that great organ of liberalism, after
making the rounds of the Cafe de la Paix, came back to Rigou on the
seventh day,--the subscription, standing in the name of old Socquard
the keeper of the coffee-house, being shared by twenty persons. Rigou
passed the paper on to Langlume the miller, who, in turn, gave it in
shreds to any one who knew how to read. The "Paris items," and the
anti-religion jokes of the liberal sheet formed the public opinion of
the valley des Aigues. Rigou, like the _venerable_ Abbe Gregoire, became
a hero. For him, as for certain Parisian bankers, politics spread a
mantle of popularity over his shameful dishonesty.

At this particular time the perjured monk, like Francois Keller the
great orator, was looked upon as a defender of the rights of the
people,--he who, not so very long before, dared not walk in the fields
after dark, lest he should stumble into pitfalls where he would seem
to have been killed by accident! Persecute a man politically and you
not only magnify him, but you redeem his past and make it innocent.
The liberal party was a great worker of miracles in this respect. Its
dangerous journal, which had the wit to make itself as commonplace, as
calumniating, as credulous, and as sillily perfidious as every
audience made up the general masses, did in all probability as much
injury to private interests as it did to those of the Church.

Rigou flattered himself that he should find in a Bonapartist general
now laid on the shelf, in a son of the people raised from nothing by
the Revolution, a sound enemy to the Bourbons and the priests. But the
general, bearing in mind his private ambitions, so arranged matters as
to evade the visit of Monsieur and Madame Rigou when he first came to
Les Aigues.

When you have become better acquainted with the terrible character of
Rigou, the lynx of the valley, you will understand the full extent of
the second capital blunder which the general's aristocratic ambitions
led him to commit, and which the countess made all the greater by an
offence which will be described in the further history of Rigou.

If Montcornet had courted the mayor's good-will, if he had sought his
friendship, perhaps the influence of the renegade might have
neutralized that of Gaubertin. Far from that, three suits were now
pending in the courts of Ville-aux-Fayes between the general and the
ex-monk. Until the present time the general had been so absorbed in
his personal interests and in his marriage that he had never
remembered Rigou, but when Sibilet advised him to get himself made
mayor in Rigou's place, he took post-horses and went to see the
prefect.

The prefect, Comte Martial de la Roche-Hugon, had been a friend of the
general since 1804; and it was a word from him said to Montcornet in a
conversation in Paris, which brought about the purchase of Les Aigues.
Comte Martial, a prefect under Napoleon, remained a prefect under the
Bourbons, and courted the bishop to retain his place. Now it happened
that Monseigneur had several times requested him to get rid of Rigou.
Martial, to whom the condition of the district was perfectly well
known, was delighted with the general's request; so that in less than
a month the Comte de Montcornet was mayor of Blangy.

By one of those accidents which come about naturally, the general met,
while at the prefecture where his friend put him up, a non-commissioned
officer of the ex-Imperial guard, who had been cheated out of his
retiring pension. The general had already, under other circumstances,
done a service to the brave cavalryman, whose name was Groison; the
man, remembering it, now told him his troubles, admitting that he was
penniless. The general promised to get him his pension, and proposed
that he should take the place of field-keeper to the district of Blangy,
as a way of paying off his score of gratitude by devotion to the new
mayor's interests. The appointments of master and man were made
simultaneously, and the general gave, as may be supposed, very firm
instructions to his subordinate.

Vaudoyer, the displaced keeper, a peasant on the Ronquerolles estate,
was only fit, like most field-keepers, to stalk about, and gossip, and
let himself be petted by the poor of the district, who asked nothing
better than to corrupt at subaltern authority,--the advanced guard, as
it were, of the land-owners. He knew Soudry, the brigadier at
Soulanges, for brigadiers of gendarmerie, performing functions that
are semi-judicial in drawing up criminal indictments, have much to do
with the rural keepers, who are, in fact, their natural spies. Soudry,
being appealed to, sent Vaudoyer to Gaubertin, who received his old
acquaintance very cordially, and invited him to drink while listening
to the recital of his troubles.

"My dear friend," said the mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, who could talk to
every man in his own language, "what has happened to you is likely to
happen to us all. The nobles are back upon us. The men to whom the
Emperor gave titles make common cause with the old nobility. They all
want to crush the people, re-establish their former rights and take
our property from us. But we are Burgundians; we must resist, and
drive those Arminacs back to Paris. Return to Blangy; you shall be
agent for Monsieur Polissard, the wood-merchant, who is contractor for
the forest of Ronquerolles. Don't be uneasy, my lad; I'll find you
enough to do for the whole of the coming year. But remember one thing;
the wood is for ourselves! Not a single depredation, or the thing is
at an end. Send all interlopers to Les Aigues. If there's brush or
fagots to sell make people buy ours; don't let them buy of Les Aigues.
You'll get back to your place as field-keeper before long; this thing
can't last. The general will get sick of living among thieves. Did you
know that that Shopman called me a thief, me!--son of the stanchest
and most incorruptible of republicans; me!--the son in law of Mouchon,
that famous representative of the people, who died without leaving me
enough to bury him?"

The general raised the salary of the new field-keeper to three hundred
francs; and built a town-hall, in which he gave him a residence. Then
he married him to a daughter of one of his tenant-farmers, who had
lately died, leaving her an orphan with three acres of vineyard.
Groison attached himself to the general as a dog to his master. This
legitimate fidelity was admitted by the whole community. The keeper
was feared and respected, but like the captain of a vessel whose
ship's company hate him; the peasantry shunned him as they would a
leper. Met either in silence or with sarcasms veiled under a show of
good-humor, the new keeper was a sentinel watched by other sentinels.
He could do nothing against such numbers. The delinquents took delight
in plotting depredations which it was impossible for him to prove, and
the old soldier grew furious at his helplessness. Groison found the
excitement of a war of factions in his duties, and all the pleasures
of the chase,--a chase after petty delinquents. Trained in real war to
a loyalty which consists in part of playing a fair game, this enemy of
traitors came at last to hate these people, so treacherous in their
conspiracies, and so clever in their thefts that they mortified his
self-esteem. He soon observed that the depredations were committed
only at Les Aigues; all the other estates were respected. At first he
despised a peasantry ungrateful enough to pillage a general of the
Empire, an essentially kind and generous man; presently, however, he
added hatred to contempt. But multiply himself as he would, he could
not be everywhere, and the enemy pillaged everywhere that he was not.
Groison made the general understand that it was necessary to organize
the defence on a war footing, and proved to him the insufficiency of
his own devoted efforts and the evil disposition of the inhabitants of
the valley.

"There is something behind it all, general," he said; "these people
are so bold they fear nothing; they seem to rely on the favor of the
good God."

"We shall see," replied the count.

Fatal word! The verb "to see" has no future tense for politicians.

At the moment, Montcornet was considering another difficulty, which
seemed to him more pressing. He needed an alter ego to do his work in
the mayor's office during the months he lived in Paris. Obliged to
find some man who knew how to read and write for the position of
assistant mayor, he knew of none and could hear of none throughout the
district but Langlume, the tenant of his own flour-mill. The choice
was disastrous. Not only were the interests of mayor and miller
diametrically opposed, but Langlume had long hatched swindling
projects with Rigou, who lent him money to carry on his business, or
to acquire property. The miller had bought the right to the hay of
certain fields for his horses, and Sibilet could not sell it except to
him. The hay of all the fields in the district was sold at better
prices than that of Les Aigues, though the yield of the latter was the
best.

Langlume, then, became the provisional mayor; but in France the
provisional is eternal,--though Frenchmen are suspected of loving
change. Acting by Rigou's advice, he played a part of great devotion
to the general; and he was still assistant-mayor at the moment when,
by the omnipotence of the historian, this drama begins.

In the absence of the mayor, Rigou, necessarily a member of the
district council, reigned supreme, and brought forward resolutions all
injuriously affecting the general. At one time he caused money to be
spent for purposes that were profitable to the peasants only,--the
greater part of the expenses falling upon Les Aigues, which, by reason
of its great extent, paid two thirds of the taxes; at other times the
council refused, under his influence, certain useful and necessary
allowances, such as an increase in salary for the abbe, repairs or
improvements to the parsonage, or "wages" to the school-master.

"If the peasants once know how to read and write, what will become of
us?" said Langlume, naively, to the general, to excuse this anti-liberal
action taken against a brother of the Christian Doctrine whom the Abbe
Brossette wished to establish as a public school-master in Blangy.

The general, delighted with his old Groison, returned to Paris and
immediately looked about him for other old soldiers of the late
imperial guard, with whom to organize the defence of Les Aigues on a
formidable footing. By dint of searching out and questioning his
friends and many officers on half-pay, he unearthed Michaud, a former
quartermaster at headquarters of the cuirassiers of the guard; one of
those men whom troopers call "hard-to-cook," a nickname derived from
the mess kitchen where refractory beans are not uncommon. Michaud
picked out from among his friends and acquaintances, three other men
fit to be his helpers, and able to guard the estate without fear and
without reproach.

The first, named Steingel, a pure-blooded Alsacian, was a natural son
of the general of that name, who fell in one of Bonaparte's first
victories with the army of Italy. Tall and strong, he belonged to the
class of soldiers accustomed, like the Russians, to obey, passively
and absolutely. Nothing hindered him in the performance of his duty;
he would have collared an emperor or a pope if such were his orders.
He ignored danger. Perfectly fearless, he had never received the
smallest scratch during his sixteen years' campaigning. He slept in
the open air or in his bed with stoical indifference. At any increased
labor or discomfort, he merely remarked, "It seems to be the order of
the day."

The second man, Vatel, son of the regiment, corporal of voltigeurs,
gay as a lark, rather free and easy with the fair sex, brave to
foolhardiness, was capable of shooting a comrade with a laugh if
ordered to execute him. With no future before him and not knowing how
to employ himself, the prospect of finding an amusing little war in
the functions of keeper, attracted him; and as the grand army and the
Emperor had hitherto stood him in place of a religion, so now he swore
to serve the brave Montcornet against and through all and everything.
His nature was of that essentially wrangling quality to which a life
without enemies seems dull and objectless,--the nature, in short, of a
litigant, or a policeman. If it had not been for the presence of the
sheriff's officer, he would have seized Tonsard and the bundle of wood
at the Grand-I-Vert, snapping his fingers at the law on the
inviolability of a man's domicile.

The third man, Gaillard, also an old soldier, risen to the rank of
sub-lieutenant, and covered with wounds, belonged to the class of
mechanical soldiers. The fate of the Emperor never left his mind and
he became indifferent to everything else. With the care of a natural
daughter on his hands, he accepted the place that was now offered to
him as a means of subsistence, taking it as he would have taken
service in a regiment.

When the general reached Les Aigues, whither he had gone in advance of
his troopers, intending to send away Courtecuisse, he was amazed at
discovering the impudent audacity with which the keeper had fulfilled
his commands. There is a method of obeying which makes the obedience
of the servant a cutting sarcasm on the master's order. But all things
in this world can be reduced to absurdity, and Courtecuisse in this
instance went beyond its limits.

One hundred and twenty-six indictments against depredators (most of
whom were in collusion with Courtecuisse) and sworn to before the
justice court of Soulanges, had resulted in sixty-nine commitments for
trial, in virtue of which Brunet, the sheriff's officer, delighted at
such a windfall of fees, had rigorously enforced the warrants in such
a way as to bring about what is called, in legal language, a
declaration of insolvency; a condition of pauperism where the law
becomes of course powerless. By this declaration the sheriff proves
that the defendant possesses no property of any kind, and is therefore
a pauper. Where there is absolutely nothing, the creditor, like the
king, loses his right to sue. The paupers in this case, carefully
selected by Courtecuisse, were scattered through five neighboring
districts, whither Brunet betook himself duly attended by his
satellites, Vermichel and Fourchon, to serve the writs. Later he
transmitted the papers to Sibilet with a bill of costs for five
thousand francs, requesting him to obtain the further orders of
Monsieur le comte de Montcornet.

Just as Sibilet, armed with these papers, was calmly explaining to the
count the result of the rash orders he had given to Courtecuisse, and
witnessing, as calmly, a burst of the most violent anger a general of
the French cavalry was ever known to indulge in, Courtecuisse entered
to pay his respects to his master and to bring his own account of
eleven hundred francs, the sum to which his promised commission now
amounted. The natural man took the bit in his teeth and ran off with
the general, who totally forgot his coronet and his field rank; he was
a trooper once more, vomiting curses of which he probably was ashamed
when he thought of them later.

"Ha! eleven hundred francs!" he shouted, "eleven hundred slaps in your
face! eleven hundred kicks!--Do you think I can't see straight through
your lies? Out of my sight, or I'll strike you flat!"

At the mere look of the general's purple face and before that warrior
could get out the last words, Courtecuisse was off like a swallow.

"Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, gently, "you are wrong."

"Wrong! I, wrong?"

"Yes, Monsieur le comte, take care, you will have trouble with that
rascal; he will sue you."

"What do I care for that? Tell the scoundrel to leave the place
instantly! See that he takes nothing of mine, and pay him his wages."

Four hours later the whole country-side was gossiping about this
scene. The general, they said, had assaulted the unfortunate
Courtecuisse, and refused to pay his wages and two thousand francs
besides, which he owed him. Extraordinary stories went the rounds, and
the master of Les Aigues was declared insane. The next day Brunet, who
had served all the warrants for the general, now brought him on behalf
of Courtecuisse a summon to appear before the police court. The lion
was stung by gnats; but his misery was only just beginning.