Sons of the Soil

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"Well, how are you now?" she said to La Pechina as the latter
recovered consciousness.

Catherine had placed her victim on a little mound beside the brook and
was bringing her to her senses with dashes of cold water. "Where am
I?" said the child, opening her beautiful black eyes through which a
sun-ray seemed to glide.

"Ah!" said Catherine, "if it hadn't been for me you'd have been
killed."

"Thank you," said the girl, still bewildered; "what happened to me?"

"You stumbled over a root and fell flat in the road over there, as if
shot. Ha! how you did run!"

"It was your brother who made me," said La Pechina, remembering
Nicolas.

"My brother? I did not see him," said Catherine. "What did he do to
you, poor fellow, that should make you fly as if he were a wolf? Isn't
he handsomer than your Monsieur Michaud?"

"Oh!" said the girl, contemptuously.

"See here, little one; you are laying up a crop of evils for yourself
by loving those who persecute us. Why don't you keep to our side?"

"Why don't you come to church; and why do you steal things night and
day?" asked the child.

"So you let those people talk you over!" sneered Catherine. "They love
us, don't they?--just as they love their food which they get out of
us, and they want new dishes every day. Did you ever know one of them
to marry a peasant-girl? Not they! Does Sarcus the rich let his son
marry that handsome Gatienne Giboulard? Not he, though she is the
daughter of a rich upholsterer. You have never been at the Tivoli ball
at Soulanges in Socquard's tavern; you had better come. You'll see 'em
all there, these bourgeois fellows, and you'll find they are not worth
the money we shall get out of them when we've pulled them down. Come
to the fair this year!"

"They say it's fine, that Soulanges fair!" cried La Pechina,
artlessly.

"I'll tell you what it is in two words," said Catherine. "If you are
handsome, you are well ogled. What is the good of being as pretty as
you are if you are not admired by the men? Ha! when I heard one of
them say for the first time, 'What a fine sprig of a girl!' all my
blood was on fire. It was at Socquard's, in the middle of a dance; my
grandfather, Fourchon, who was playing the clarionet, heard it and
laughed. Tivoli seemed to me as grand and fine as heaven itself. It's
lighted up, my dear, with glass lamps, and you'll think you are in
paradise. All the gentlemen of Soulanges and Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes
will be there. Ever since that first night I've loved the place
where those words rang in my ears like military music. It's worthy
giving your eternity to hear such words said of you by a man you
love."

"Yes, perhaps," replied La Pechina, thoughtfully.

"Then come, and get the praise of men; you're sure of it!" cried
Catherine. "Ha! you'll have a fine chance, handsome as you are, to
pick up good luck. There's the son of Monsieur Lupin, Amaury, he might
marry you. But that's not all; if you only knew what comforts you can
find there against vexation and worry. Why, Socquard's boiled wine
will make you forget every trouble you ever had. Fancy! it can make
you dream, and feel as light as a bird. Didn't you ever drink boiled
wine? Then you don't know what life is."

The privilege enjoyed by older persons to wet their throats with
boiled wine excites the curiosity of the children of the peasantry
over twelve years of age to such a degree that Genevieve had once put
her lips to a glass of boiled wine ordered by the doctor for her
grandfather when ill. The taste had left a sort of magic influence in
the memory of the poor child, which may explain the interest with
which she listened, and on which the evil-minded Catherine counted to
carry out a plan already half-successful. No doubt she was trying to
bring her victim, giddy from the fall, to the moral intoxication so
dangerous to young women living in the wilds of nature, whose
imagination, deprived of other nourishment, is all the more ardent
when the occasion comes to exercise it. Boiled wine, which Catherine
had held in reserve, was to end the matter by intoxicating the victim.

"What do they put into it?" asked La Pechina.

"All sorts of things," replied Catherine, glancing back to see if her
brother were coming; "in the first place, those what d' ye call 'ems
that come from India, cinnamon, and herbs that change you by magic,
--you fancy you have everything you wish for; boiled wine makes you
happy! you can snap your fingers at all your troubles!"

"I should be afraid to drink boiled wine at a dance," said La Pechina.

"Afraid of what?" asked Catherine. "There's not the slightest danger.
Think what lots of people there will be. All the bourgeois will be
looking at us! Ah! it is one of those days that make up for all our
misery. See it and die,--for it's enough to satisfy any one."

"If Monsieur and Madame Michaud would only take me!" cried La Pechina,
her eyes blazing.

"Ask your grandfather Niseron; you have not given him up, poor dear
man, and he'd be pleased to see you admired like a little queen. Why
do you like those Arminacs the Michauds better than your grandfather
and the Burgundians. It's bad to neglect your own people. Besides, why
should the Michauds object if your grandfather takes you to the fair?
Oh! if you knew what it is to reign over a man and put him beside
himself, and say to him, as I say to Godain, 'Go there!' and he goes,
'Do that!' and he does it! You've got it in you, little one, to turn
the head of a bourgeois like that son of Monsieur Lupin. Monsieur
Amaury took a fancy to my sister Marie because she is fair and because
he is half-afraid of me; but he'd adore you, for ever since those
people at the pavilion have spruced you up a bit you've got the airs
of an empress."

Adroitly leading the innocent heart to forget Nicolas and so put it
off its guard, Catherine distilled into the girl the insidious nectar
of compliments. Unawares, she touched a secret wound. La Pechina,
without being other than a poor peasant girl, was a specimen of
alarming precocity, like many another creature doomed to die as
prematurely as it blooms. Strange product of Burgundian and
Montenegrin blood, conceived and born amid the toils of war, the girl
was doubtless in many ways the result of her congenital circumstances.
Thin, slender, brown as a tobacco leaf, and short in stature, she
nevertheless possessed extraordinary strength,--a strength unseen by
the eyes of peasants, to whom the mysteries of the nervous system are
unknown. Nerves are not admitted into the medical rural mind.

At thirteen years of age Genevieve had completed her growth, though
she was hardly as tall as an ordinary girl of her age. Did her face
owe its topaz skin, so dark and yet so brilliant, dark in tone and
brilliant in the quality of its tissue, giving a look of age to the
childish face, to her Montenegrin origin, or to the ardent sun of
Burgundy? Medical science may dismiss the inquiry. The premature old
age on the surface of the face was counterbalanced by the glow, the
fire, the wealth of light which made the eyes two stars. Like all eyes
which fill with sunlight and need, perhaps, some sheltering screen,
the eyelids were fringed with lashes of extraordinary length. The
hair, of a bluish black, long and fine and abundant, crowned a brow
moulded like that of the Farnese Juno. That magnificent diadem of
hair, those grand Armenian eyes, that celestial brow eclipsed the rest
of the face. The nose, though pure in form as it left the brow, and
graceful in curve, ended in flattened and flaring nostrils. Anger
increased this effect at times, and then the face wore an absolutely
furious expression. All the lower part of the face, like the lower
part of the nose, seemed unfinished, as if the clay in the hands of
the divine sculptor had proved insufficient. Between the lower lip and
the chin the space was so short that any one taking La Pechina by the
chin would have rubbed the lip; but the teeth prevented all notice of
this defect. One might almost believe those little bones had souls, so
brilliant were they, so polished, so transparent, so exquisitely
shaped, disclosed as they were by too wide a mouth, curved in lines
that bore resemblance to the fantastic shapes of coral. The shells of
the ears were so transparent to the light that in the sunshine they
were rose-colored. The complexion, though sun-burned, showed a
marvellous delicacy in the texture of the skin. If, as Buffon
declared, love lies in touch, the softness of the girl's skin must
have had the penetrating and inciting influence of the fragrance of
daturas. The chest and indeed the whole body was alarmingly thin; but
the feet and hands, of alluring delicacy, showed remarkable nervous
power, and a vigorous organism.

This mixture of diabolical imperfections and divine beauties,
harmonious in spite of discords, for they blended in a species of
savage dignity, also this triumph of a powerful soul over a feeble
body, as written in those eyes, made the child, when once seen,
unforgettable. Nature had wished to make that frail young being a
woman; the circumstances of her conception moulded her with the face
and body of a boy. A poet observing the strange creature would have
declared her native clime to be Arabia the Blest; she belonged to the
Afrite and Genii of Arabian tales. Her face told no lies. She had the
soul of that glance of fire, the intellect of those lips made
brilliant by the bewitching teeth, the thought enshrined within that
glorious brow, the passion of those nostrils ready at all moments to
snort flame. Therefore love, such as we imagine it on burning sands,
in lonely deserts, filled that heart of twenty in the breast of a
child, doomed, like the snowy heights of Montenegro, to wear no
flowers of the spring.

Observers ought now to understand how it was that La Pechina, from
whom passion issued by every pore, awakened in perverted natures the
feelings deadened by abuse; just as water fills the mouth at sight of
those twisted, blotched, and speckled fruits which gourmands know by
experience, and beneath whose skin nature has put the rarest flavors
and perfumes. Why did Nicolas, that vulgar laborer, pursue this being
who was worthy of a poet, while the eyes of the country-folk pitied
her as a sickly deformity? Why did Rigou, the old man, feel the
passion of a young one for this girl? Which of the two men was young,
and which was old? Was the young peasant as blase as the old usurer?
Why did these two extremes of life meet in one common and devilish
caprice? Does the vigor that draws to its close resemble the vigor
that is only dawning? The moral perversities of men are gulfs guarded
by sphinxes; they begin and end in questions to which there is no
answer.

The exclamation, formerly quoted, of the countess, "Piccina!" when she
first saw Genevieve by the roadside, open-mouthed at sight of the
carriage and the elegantly dressed woman within it, will be
understood. This girl, almost a dwarf, of Montenegrin vigor, loved the
handsome, noble bailiff, as children of her age love, when they do
love, that is to say, with childlike passion, with the strength of
youth, with the devotion which in truly virgin souls gives birth to
divinest poesy. Catherine had just swept her coarse hands across the
sensitive strings of that choice harp, strung to the breaking-point.
To dance before Michaud, to shine at the Soulanges ball and inscribe
herself on the memory of that adored master! What glorious thoughts!
To fling them into that volcanic head was like casting live coals upon
straw dried in the August sun.

"No, Catherine," replied La Pechina, "I am ugly and puny; my lot is to
sit in a corner and never to be married, but live alone in the world."

"Men like weaklings," said Catherine. "You see me, don't you?" she
added, showing her handsome, strong arms. "I please Godain, who is a
poor stick; I please that little Charles, the count's groom; but
Lupin's son is afraid of me. I tell you it is the small kind of men
who love me, and who say when they see me go by at Ville-aux-Fayes and
at Soulanges, 'Ha! what a fine girl!' Now YOU, that's another thing;
you'll please the fine men."

"Ah! Catherine, if it were true--that!" cried the bewitched child.

"It is true, it is so true that Nicolas, the handsomest man in the
canton, is mad about you; he dreams of you, he is losing his mind; and
yet all the other girls are in love with him. He is a fine lad! If
you'll put on a white dress and yellow ribbons, and come to Socquard's
for the midsummer ball, you'll be the handsomest girl there, and all
the fine people from Ville-aux-Fayes will see you. Come, won't you?
--See here, I've been cutting grass for the cows, and I brought some
boiled wine in my gourd; Socquard gave it me this morning," she added
quickly, seeing the half-delirious expression in La Pechina's eyes
which women understand so well. "We'll share it together, and you'll
fancy the men are in love with you."

During this conversation Nicolas, choosing the grassy spots to step
on, had noiselessly slipped behind the trunk of an old oak near which
his sister had seated La Pechina. Catherine, who had now and then cast
her eyes behind her, saw her brother as she turned to get the boiled
wine.

"Here, take some," she said, offering it.

"It burns me!" cried Genevieve, giving back the gourd, after taking
two or three swallows from it.

"Silly child!" replied Catherine; "see here!" and she emptied the
rustic bottle without taking breath. "See how it slips down; it goes
like a sunbeam into the stomach."

"But I ought to be carrying the milk to Mademoiselle Gaillard," cried
Genevieve; "and it is all spilt! Nicolas frightened me so!"

"Don't you like Nicolas?"

"No," answered Genevieve. "Why does he persecute me? He can get plenty
other girls, who are willing."

"But if he likes you better than all the other girls in the valley--"

"So much the worse for him."

"I see you don't know him," answered Catherine, as she seized the girl
rapidly by the waist and flung her on the grass, holding her down in
that position with her strong arms. At this moment Nicolas appeared.
Seeing her odious persecutor, the child screamed with all her might,
and drove him five feet away with a violent kick in the stomach; then
she twisted herself like an acrobat, with a dexterity for which
Catherine was not prepared, and rose to run away. Catherine, still on
the ground, caught her by one foot and threw her headlong on her face.
This frightful fall stopped the brave child's cries for a moment.
Nicolas attempted, furiously, to seize his victim, but she, though
giddy from the wine and the fall, caught him by the throat in a grip
of iron.

"Help! she's strangling me, Catherine," cried Nicolas, in a stifled
voice.

La Pechina uttered piercing screams, which Catherine tried to choke by
putting her hands over the girl's mouth, but she bit them and drew
blood. It was at this moment that Blondet, the countess, and the abbe
appeared at the edge of the wood.

"Here are those Aigues people!" exclaimed Catherine, helping Genevieve
to rise.

"Do you want to live?" hissed Nicolas in the child's ear.

"What then?" she asked.

"Tell them we were all playing, and I'll forgive you," said Nicolas,
in a threatening voice.

"Little wretch, mind you say it!" repeated Catherine, whose glance was
more terrifying than her brother's murderous threat.

"Yes, I will, if you let me alone," replied the child. "But anyhow I
will never go out again without my scissors."

"You are to hold your tongue, or I'll drown you in the Avonne," said
Catherine, ferociously.

"You are monsters," cried the abbe, coming up; "you ought to be
arrested and taken to the assizes."

"Ha! and pray what do you do in your drawing-rooms?" said Nicolas,
looking full at the countess and Blondet. "You play and amuse
yourselves, don't you? Well, so do we, in the fields which are ours.
We can't always work; we must play sometimes,--ask my sister and La
Pechina."

"How do you fight if you call that playing?" cried Blondet.

Nicolas gave him a murderous look.

"Speak!" said Catherine, gripping La Pechina by the forearm and
leaving a blue bracelet on the flesh. "Were not we amusing ourselves?"

"Yes, madame, we were amusing ourselves," said the child, exhausted by
her display of strength, and now breaking down as though she were
about to faint.

"You hear what she says, madame," said Catherine, boldly, giving the
countess one of those looks which women give each other like dagger
thrusts.

She took her brother's arm, and the pair walked off, not mistaking the
opinion they left behind them in the minds of the three persons who
had interrupted the scene. Nicolas twice looked back, and twice
encountered Blondet's gaze. The journalist continued to watch the tall
scoundrel, who was broad in the shoulders, healthy and vigorous in
complexion, with black hair curling tightly, and whose rather soft
face showed upon its lips and around the mouth certain lines which
reveal the peculiar cruelty that characterizes sluggards and
voluptaries. Catherine swung her petticoat, striped blue and white,
with an air of insolent coquetry.

"Cain and his wife!" said Blondet to the abbe.

"You are nearer the truth than you know," replied the priest.

"Ah! Monsieur le cure, what will they do to me?" said La Pechina, when
the brother and sister were out of sight.

The countess, as white as her handkerchief, was so overcome that she
heard neither Blondet nor the abbe nor La Pechina.

"It is enough to drive one from this terrestrial paradise," she said
at last. "But the first thing of all is to save that child from their
claws."

"You are right," said Blondet in a low voice. "That child is a poem, a
living poem."

Just then the Montenegrin girl was in a state where soul and body
smoke, as it were, after the conflagration of an anger which has
driven all forces, physical and intellectual, to their utmost tension.
It is an unspeakable and supreme splendor, which reveals itself only
under the pressure of some frenzy, be it resistance or victory, love
or martyrdom. She had left home in a dress with alternate lines of
brown and yellow, and a collarette which she pleated herself by rising
before daylight; and she had not yet noticed the condition of her gown
soiled by her struggle on the grass, and her collar torn in
Catherine's grasp. Feeling her hair hanging loose, she looked about
her for a comb. At this moment Michaud, also attracted by the screams,
came upon the scene. Seeing her god, La Pechina recovered her full
strength. "Monsieur Michaud," she cried, "he did not even touch me!"

The cry, the look, the action of the girl were an eloquent commentary,
and told more to Blondet and the abbe than Madame Michaud had told the
countess about the passion of that strange nature for the bailiff, who
was utterly unconscious of it.

"The scoundrel!" cried Michaud.

Then, with an involuntary and impotent gesture, such as mad men and
wise men can both be forced into giving, he shook his fist in the
direction in which he had caught sight of Nicolas disappearing with
his sister.

"Then you were not playing?" said the abbe with a searching look at La
Pechina.

"Don't fret her," interposed the countess; "let us return to the
pavilion."

Genevieve, though quite exhausted, found strength under Michaud's eyes
to walk. The countess followed the bailiff through one of the by-paths
known to keepers and poachers where only two can go abreast, and which
led to the gate of the Avonne.

"Michaud," said the countess when they reached the depth of the wood,
"We must find some way of ridding the neighborhood of such vile
people; that child is actually in danger of death."

"In the first place," replied Michaud, "Genevieve shall not leave the
pavilion. My wife will be glad to take the nephew of Vatel, who has
the care of the park roads, into the house. With Gounod (that is his
name) and old Cornevin, my wife's foster-father, always at hand, La
Pechina need never go out without a protector."

"I will tell Monsieur to make up this extra expense to you," said the
countess. "But this does not rid us of that Nicolas. How can we manage
that?"

"The means are easy and right at hand," answered Michaud. "Nicolas is
to appear very soon before the court of appeals on the draft. The
general, instead of asking for his release, as the Tonsards expect,
has only to advise his being sent to the army--"

"If necessary, I will go myself," said the countess, "and see my
cousin, de Casteran, the prefect. But until then, I tremble for that
child--"

The words were said at the end of the path close to the open space by
the bridge. As they reached the edge of the bank the countess gave a
cry; Michaud advanced to help her, thinking she had struck her foot
against a stone; but he shuddered at the sight that met his eyes.

Marie Tonsard and Bonnebault, seated below the bank, seemed to be
conversing, but were no doubt hiding there to hear what passed.
Evidently they had left the wood as the party advanced towards them.

Bonnebault, a tall, wiry fellow, had lately returned to Conches after
six years' service in the cavalry, with a permanent discharge due to
his evil conduct,--his example being likely to ruin better men. He
wore moustachios and a small chin-tuft; a peculiarity which, joined to
his military carriage, made him the reigning fancy of all the girls in
the valley. His hair, in common with that of other soldiers, was cut
very short behind, but he frizzed it on the top of his head, brushing
up the ends with a dandy air; on it his foraging cap was jauntily
tilted to one side. Compared to the peasants, who were mostly in rags,
like Mouche and Fourchon, he seemed gorgeous in his linen trousers,
boots, and short waistcoat. These articles, bought at the time of his
liberation, were, it is true, somewhat the worse for a life in the
fields; but this village cock-of-the-walk had others in reserve for
balls and holidays. He lived, it must be said, on the gifts of his
female friends, which, liberal as they were, hardly sufficed for the
libations, the dissipations, and the squanderings of all kinds which
resulted from his intimacy with the Cafe de la Paix.

Cowardice is like courage; of both there are various kinds. Bonnebault
would have fought like a brave soldier, but he was weak in presence of
his vices and his desires. Lazy as a lizard, that is to say, active
only when it suited him, without the slightest decency, arrogant and
base, able for much but neglectful of all, the sole pleasure of this
"breaker of hearts and plates," to use a barrack term, was to do evil
or inflict damage. Such a nature does as much harm in rural
communities as it does in a regiment. Bonnebault, like Tonsard and
like Fourchon, desired to live well and do nothing; and he had his
plans laid. Making the most of his gallant appearance with increasing
success, and of his talents for billiards with alternate loss and
gain, he flattered himself that the day would come when he could marry
Mademoiselle Aglae Socquard, only daughter of the proprietor of the
Cafe de la Paix, a resort which was to Soulanges what, relatively
speaking, Ranelagh is to the Bois de Boulogne. To get into the
business of tavern-keeping, to manage the public balls, what a fine
career for the marshal's baton of a ne'er-do-well! These morals, this
life, this nature, were so plainly stamped upon the face of the
low-lived profligate that the countess was betrayed into an exclamation
when she beheld the pair, for they gave her the sensation of beholding
snakes.

Marie, desperately in love with Bonnebault, would have robbed for his
benefit. Those moustachios, the swaggering gait of a trooper, the
fellow's smart clothes, all went to her heart as the manners and
charms of a de Marsay touch that of a pretty Parisian. Each social
sphere has its own standard of distinction. The jealous Marie rebuffed
Amaury Lupin, the other dandy of the little town, her mind being made
up to become Madame Bonnebault.

"Hey! you there, hi! come on!" cried Nicolas and Catherine from afar,
catching sight of Marie and Bonnebault.

The sharp call echoed through the woods like the cry of savages.

Seeing the pair at his feet, Michaud shuddered and deeply repented
having spoken. If Bonnebault and Marie Tonsard had overheard the
conversation, nothing but harm could come of it. This event,
insignificant as it seems, was destined, in the irritated state of
feeling then existing between Les Aigues and the peasantry, to have a
decisive influence on the fate of all,--just as victory or defeat in
battle sometimes depends upon a brook which shepherds jump while
cannon are unable to pass it.

Gallantly bowing to the countess, Bonnebault passed Marie's arm
through his own with a conquering air and took himself off
triumphantly.

"The King of Hearts of the valley," muttered Michaud to the countess.
"A dangerous man. When he loses twenty francs at billiards he would
murder Rigou to get them back. He loves a crime as he does a
pleasure."