Sons of the Soil

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


"You are in the wrong, Vatel," said Brunet; "you have no right to
enter houses, don't you see?"

The old woman, a little hump-backed creature, stood on the sill of the
door, with her hands on her hips, darting flashes from her eyes and
curses from her foaming lips shrill enough to be heard at Blangy.

"Ha! the villain, 'twas well done! May hell get you! To suspect me of
cutting trees!--_me_, the most honest woman in the village. To hunt me
like vermin! I'd like to see you lose your cursed eyes, for then we'd
have peace. You are birds of ill-omen, the whole of you; you invent
shameful stories to stir up strife between your master and us."

The keeper allowed the sheriff to bathe his eyes and all the while the
latter kept telling him that he was legally wrong.

"The old thief! she has tired us out," said Vatel at last. "She has
been at work in the woods all night."

As the whole family had taken an active hand in hiding the live wood
and putting things straight in the cottage, Tonsard presently appeared
at the door with an insolent air. "Vatel, my man, if you ever again
dare to force your way into my domain, my gun shall answer you," he
said. "To-day you have had the ashes; the next time you shall have the
fire. You don't know your own business. That's enough. Now if you feel
hot after this affair take some wine, I offer it to you; and you may
come in and see that my old mother's bundle of fagots hadn't a scrap
of live wood in it; it is every bit brushwood."

"Scoundrel!" said the keeper to the sheriff, in a low voice, more
enraged by this speech than by the smart of his eyes.

Just then Charles, the groom, appeared at the gate of the
Grand-I-Vert.

"What is the matter, Vatel?" he said.

"Ah!" said the keeper, wiping his eyes, which he had plunged wide open
into the rivulet to give them a final cleansing. "I have some debtors
in there that I'll cause to rue the day they saw the light."

"If you take it that way, Monsieur Vatel," said Tonsard, coldly, "you
will find we don't want for courage in Burgundy."

Vatel departed. Not feeling much curiosity to know what the trouble
was, Charles went up the steps and looked into the house.

"Come to the chateau, you and your otter,--if you really have one," he
said to Pere Fourchon.

The old man rose hurriedly and followed him.

"Well, where is it,--that otter of yours?" said Charles, smiling
doubtfully.

"This way," said the old fellow, going toward the Thune.

The name is that of a brook formed by the overflow of the mill-race
and of certain springs in the park of Les Aigues. It runs by the side
of the county road as far as the lakelet of Soulanges, which it
crosses, and then falls into the Avonne, after feeding the mills and
ponds on the Soulanges estate.

"Here it is; I hid it in the brook, with a stone around its neck."

As he stooped and rose again the old man missed the coin out of his
pocket, where metal was so uncommon that he was likely to notice its
presence or its absence immediately.

"Ah, the sharks!" he cried. "If I hunt otters they hunt fathers-in-law!
They get out of me all I earn, and tell me it is for my good! If it
were not for my poor Mouche, who is the comfort of my old age, I'd
drown myself. Children! they are the ruin of their fathers. You
haven't married, have you, Monsieur Charles? Then don't; never get
married, and then you can't reproach yourself for spreading bad blood.
I, who expected to buy my tow with that money, and there it is
filched, stolen! That monsieur up at Les Aigues, a fine young fellow,
gave me ten francs; ha! well! it'll put up the price of my otter now."

Charles distrusted the old man so profoundly that he took his
grievances (this time very sincere) for the preliminary of what he
called, in servant's slang, "varnish," and he made the great mistake
of letting his opinion appear in a satirical grin, which the spiteful
old fellow detected.

"Come, come! Pere Fourchon, now behave yourself; you are going to see
Madame," said Charles, noticing how the rubies flashed on the nose and
cheeks of the old drunkard.

"I know how to attend to business, Charles; and the proof is that if
you will get me out of the kitchen the remains of the breakfast and a
bottle or two of Spanish wine, I'll tell you something which will save
you from a 'foul.'"

"Tell me, and Francois shall get Monsieur's own order to give you a
glass of wine," said the groom.

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"Well then, I know you meet my granddaughter Catherine under the
bridge of the Avonne. Godain is in love with her; he saw you, and he
is fool enough to be jealous,--I say fool, for a peasant oughtn't to
have feelings which belong only to rich folks. If you go to the ball
of Soulanges at Tivoli and dance with her, you'll dance higher than
you'll like. Godain is rich and dangerous; he is capable of breaking
your arm without your getting a chance to arrest him."

"That would be too dear; Catherine is a fine girl, but she is not
worth all that," replied Charles. "Why should Godain be so angry?
others are not."

"He loves her enough to marry her."

"If he does, he'll beat her," said Charles.

"I don't know about that," said the old man. "She takes after her
mother, against whom Tonsard never raised a finger,--he's too afraid
she'll be off, hot foot. A woman who knows how to hold her own is
mighty useful. Besides, if it came to fisticuffs with Catherine,
Godain, though he's pretty strong, wouldn't give the last blow."

"Well, thank you, Pere Fourchon; here's forty sous to drink my health
in case I can't get you the sherry."

Pere Fourchon turned his head aside as he pocketed the money lest
Charles should see the expression of amusement and sarcasm which he
was unable to repress.

"Catherine," he resumed, "is a proud minx; she likes sherry. You had
better tell her to go and get it at Les Aigues."

Charles looked at Pere Fourchon with naive admiration, not suspecting
the eager interest the general's enemies took in slipping one more spy
into the chateau.

"The general ought to feel happy now," continued Fourchon; "the
peasants are all quiet. What does he say? Is he satisfied with
Sibilet?"

"It is only Monsieur Michaud who finds fault with Sibilet. They say
he'll get him sent away."

"Professional jealousy!" exclaimed Fourchon. "I'll bet you would like
to get rid of Francois and take his place."

"Hang it! he has twelve hundred francs wages," said Charles; "but they
can't send him off,--he knows the general's secrets."

"Just as Madame Michaud knows the countess's," remarked Fourchon,
watching the other carefully. "Look here, my boy, do you know whether
Monsieur and Madame have separate rooms?"

"Of course; if they didn't, Monsieur wouldn't be so fond of Madame."

"Is that all you know?" said Fourchon.

As they were now before the kitchen windows nothing more was said.



CHAPTER V

ENEMIES FACE TO FACE

While breakfast was in progress at the chateau, Francois, the head
footman, whispered to Blondet, but loud enough for the general to
overhear him,--

"Monsieur, Pere Fourchon's boy is here; he says they have caught the
otter, and wants to know if you would like it, or whether they shall
take it to the sub-prefect at Ville-aux-Fayes."

Emile Blondet, though himself a past-master of hoaxing, could not keep
his cheeks from blushing like those of a virgin who hears an
indecorous story of which she knows the meaning.

"Ha! ha! so you have hunted the otter this morning with Pere
Fourchon?" cried the general, with a roar of laughter.

"What is it?" asked the countess, uneasy at her husband's laugh.

"When a man of wit and intelligence is taken in by old Fourchon,"
continued the general, "a retired cuirassier need not blush for having
hunted that otter; which bears an enormous resemblance to the third
posthorse we are made to pay for and never see." With that he went off
into further explosions of laughter, in the midst of which he
contrived to say: "I am not surprised you had to change your boots
--and your trousers; I have no doubt you have been wading! The joke
didn't go as far as that with me,--I stayed on the bank; but then, you
know, you are so much more intelligent than I--"

"But you forget," interrupted Madame de Montcornet, "that I do not
know what you are talking of."

At these words, said with some pique, the general grew serious, and
Blondet told the story of his fishing for the otter.

"But if they really have an otter," said the countess, "those poor
people are not to blame."

"Oh, but it is ten years since an otter has been seen about here,"
said the pitiless general.

"Monsieur le comte," said Francois, "the boy swears by all that's
sacred that he has got one."

"If they have one I'll buy it," said the general.

"I don't suppose," remarked the Abbe Brossette, "that God has
condemned Les Aigues to never have otters."

"Ah, Monsieur le cure!" cried Blondet, "if you bring the Almighty
against me--"

"But what is all this? Who is here?" said the countess, hastily.

"Mouche, madame,--the boy who goes about with old Fourchon," said the
footman.

"Bring him in--that is, if Madame will allow it?" said the general;
"he may amuse you."

Mouche presently appeared, in his usual state of comparative nudity.
Beholding this personification of poverty in the middle of this
luxurious dining-room, the cost of one panel of which would have been
a fortune to the bare-legged, bare-breasted, and bare-headed child, it
was impossible not to be moved by an impulse of charity. The boy's
eyes, like blazing coals, gazed first at the luxuries of the room, and
then at those on the table.

"Have you no mother?" asked Madame de Montcornet, unable otherwise to
explain the child's nakedness.

"No, ma'am; m'ma died of grief for losing p'pa, who went to the army
in 1812 without marrying her with papers, and got frozen, saving your
presence. But I've my Grandpa Fourchon, who is a good man,--though he
does beat me bad sometimes."

"How is it, my dear, that such wretched people can be found on your
estate?" said the countess, looking at the general.

"Madame la comtesse," said the abbe, "in this district we have none
but voluntary paupers. Monsieur le comte does all he can; but we have
to do with a class of persons who are without religion and who have
but one idea, that of living at your expense."

"But, my dear abbe," said Blondet, "you are here to improve their
morals."

"Monsieur," replied the abbe, "my bishop sent me here as if on a
mission to savages; but, as I had the honor of telling him, the
savages of France cannot be reached. They make it a law unto
themselves not to listen to us; whereas the church does get some hold
on the savages of America."

"M'sieur le cure, they do help me a bit now," remarked Mouche; "but if
I went to your church they _wouldn't_, and the other folks would make
game of my breeches."

"Religion ought to begin by giving him trousers, my dear abbe," said
Blondet. "In your foreign missions don't you begin by coaxing the
savages?"

"He would soon sell them," answered the abbe, in a low tone; "besides,
my salary does not enable me to begin on that line."

"Monsieur le cure is right," said the general, looking at Mouche.

The policy of the little scamp was to appear not to hear what they
were saying when it was against himself.

"The boy is intelligent enough to know good from evil," continued the
count, "and he is old enough to work; yet he thinks of nothing but how
to commit evil without being found out. All the keepers know him. He
is very well aware that the master of an estate may witness a trespass
on his property and yet have no right to arrest the trespasser. I have
known him keep his cows boldly in my meadows, though he knew I saw
him; but now, ever since I have been mayor, he runs away fast enough."

"Oh, that is very wrong," said the countess; "you should not take
other people's things, my little man."

"Madame, we must eat. My grandpa gives me more slaps than food, and
they don't fill my stomach, slaps don't. When the cows come in I milk
'em just a little and I live on that. Monseigneur isn't so poor but
what he'll let me drink a drop o' milk the cows get from his grass?"

"Perhaps he hasn't eaten anything to-day," said the countess, touched
by his misery. "Give him some bread and the rest of that chicken; let
him have his breakfast," she added, looking at the footman. "Where do
you sleep, my child?"

"Anywhere, madame; under the stars in summer, and wherever they'll let
us in winter."

"How old are you?"

"Twelve."

"There is still time to bring him up to better ways," said the
countess to her husband.

"He will make a good soldier," said the general, gruffly; "he is well
toughened. I went through that kind of thing myself, and here I am."

"Excuse me, general, I don't belong to nobody," said the boy. "I can't
be drafted. My poor mother wasn't married, and I was born in a field.
I'm a son of the 'airth,' as grandpa says. M'ma saved me from the
army, that she did! My name ain't no more Mouche than nothing at all.
Grandpa keeps telling me all my advantages. I'm not on the register,
and when I'm old enough to be drafted I can go all over France and
they can't take me."

"Are you fond of your grandfather?" said the countess, trying to look
into the child's heart.

"My! doesn't he box my ears when he feels like it! but then, after
all, he's such fun; he's such good company! He says he pays himself
that way for having taught me to read and write."

"Can you read?" asked the count.

"Yah, I should think so, Monsieur le comte, and fine writing too--just
as true as we've got that otter."

"Read that," said the count, giving him a newspaper.

"The Qu-o-ti-dienne," read Mouche, hesitating only three times.

Every one, even the abbe, laughed.

"Why do you make me read that newspaper?" cried Mouche, angrily. "My
grandpa says it is made up to please the rich, and everybody knows
later just what's in it."

"The child is right, general," said Blondet; "and he makes me long to
see my hoaxing friend again."

Mouche understood perfectly that he was posing for the amusement of
the company; the pupil of Pere Fourchon was worthy of his master, and
he forthwith began to cry.

"How can you tease a child with bare feet?" said the countess.

"And who thinks it quite natural that his grandfather should recoup
himself for his education by boxing his ears," said Blondet.

"Tell me, my poor little fellow, have you really caught an otter?"

"Yes, madame; as true as that you are the prettiest lady I have seen,
or ever shall see," said the child, wiping his eyes.

"Then show me the otter," said the general.

"Oh M'sieur le comte, my grandpa has hidden it; but it was kicking
still when we were at work at the rope-walk. Send for my grandpa,
please; he wants to sell it to you himself."

"Take him into the kitchen," said the countess to Francois, "and give
him his breakfast, and send Charles to fetch Pere Fourchon. Find some
shoes, and a pair of trousers and a waistcoat for the poor child;
those who come here naked must go away clothed."

"May God bless you, my beautiful lady," said Mouche, departing.
"M'sieur le cure may feel quite sure that I'll keep the things and
wear 'em fete-days, because you give 'em to me."

Emile and Madame Montcornet looked at each other with some surprise,
and seemed to say to the abbe, "The boy is not a fool!"

"It is quite true, madame," said the abbe after the child had gone,
"that we cannot reckon with Poverty. I believe it has hidden excuses
of which God alone can judge,--physical excuses, often congenital;
moral excuses, born in the character, produced by an order of things
that are often the result of qualities which, unhappily for society,
have no vent. Deeds of heroism performed upon the battle-field ought
to teach us that the worst scoundrels may become heroes. But here in
this place you are living under exceptional circumstances; and if your
benevolence is not controlled by reflection and judgment you run the
risk of supporting your enemies."

"Our enemies?" exclaimed the countess.

"Cruel enemies," said the general, gravely.

"Pere Fourchon and his son-in-law Tonsard," said the abbe, "are the
strength and the intelligence of the lower classes of this valley, who
consult them on all occasions. The Machiavelism of these people is
beyond belief. Ten peasants meeting in a tavern are the small change
of great political questions."

Just then Francois announced Monsieur Sibilet.

"He is my minister of finance," said the general, smiling; "ask him
in. He will explain to you the gravity of the situation," he added,
looking at his wife and Blondet.

"Because he has reasons of his own for not concealing it," said the
cure, in a low tone.

Blondet then beheld a personage of whom he had heard much ever since
his arrival, and whom he desired to know, the land-steward of Les
Aigues. He saw a man of medium height, about thirty years of age, with
a sulky look and a discontented face, on which a smile sat ill.
Beneath an anxious brow a pair of greenish eyes evaded the eyes of
others, and so disguised their thought. Sibilet was dressed in a brown
surtout coat, black trousers and waistcoat, and wore his hair long and
flat to the head, which gave him a clerical look. His trousers barely
concealed that he was knock-kneed. Though his pallid complexion and
flabby flesh gave the impression of an unhealthy constitution, Sibilet
was really robust. The tones of his voice, which were a little thick,
harmonized with this unflattering exterior.

Blondet gave a hasty look at the abbe, and the glance with which the
young priest answered it showed the journalist that his own suspicions
about the steward were certainties to the curate.

"Did you not tell me, my dear Sibilet," said the general, "that you
estimate the value of what the peasants steal from us at a quarter of
the whole revenue?"

"Much more than that, Monsieur le comte," replied the steward. "The
poor about here get more from your property than the State exacts in
taxes. A little scamp like Mouche can glean his two bushels a day. Old
women, whom you would really think at their last gasp, become at the
harvest and vintage times as active and healthy as girls. You can
witness that phenomenon very soon," said Sibilet, addressing Blondet,
"for the harvest, which was put back by the rains in July will begin
next week, when they cut the rye. The gleaners must have a certificate
of pauperism from the mayor of the district, and no district should
allow any one to glean except the paupers; but the districts of one
canton do glean in those of another without certificate. If we have
sixty real paupers in our district, there are at least forty others
who could support themselves if they were not so idle. Even persons
who have a business leave it to glean in the fields and in the
vineyards. All these people, taken together, gather in this
neighborhood something like three hundred bushels a day; the harvest
lasts two weeks, and that makes four thousand five hundred bushels in
this district alone. The gleaning takes more from an estate than the
taxes. As to the abuse of pasturage, it robs us of fully one-sixth the
produce of the meadows; and as to that of the woods, it is
incalculable,--they have actually come to cutting down six-year-old
trees. The loss to you, Monsieur le comte, amounts to fully twenty-odd
thousand francs a year."

"Do you hear that, madame?" said the general to his wife.

"Is it not exaggerated?" asked Madame de Montcornet.

"No, madame, unfortunately not," said the abbe. "Poor Niseron, that
old fellow with the white head, who combines the functions of
bell-ringer, beadle, grave-digger, sexton, and clerk, in defiance of
his republican opinions,--I mean the grandfather of the little
Genevieve whom you placed with Madame Michaud--"

"La Pechina," said Sibilet, interrupting the abbe.

"Pechina!" said the countess, "whom do you mean?"

"Madame la comtesse, when you met little Genevieve on the road in a
miserable condition, you cried out in Italian, 'Piccina!' The word
became a nickname, and is now corrupted all through the district into
Pechina," said the abbe. "The poor girl comes to church with Madame
Michaud and Madame Sibilet."

"And she is none the better for it," said Sibilet, "for the others
ill-treat her on account of her religion."

"Well, that poor old man of seventy gleans, honestly, about a bushel
and a half a day," continued the priest; "but his natural uprightness
prevents him from selling his gleanings as others do,--he keeps them
for his own consumption. Monsieur Langlume, your miller, grinds his
flour gratis at my request, and my servant bakes his bread with mine."

"I had quite forgotten my little protegee," said the countess,
troubled at Sibilet's remark. "Your arrival," she added to Blondet,
"has quite turned my head. But after breakfast I will take you to the
gate of the Avonne and show you the living image of those women whom
the painters of the fifteenth century delighted to perpetuate."

The sound of Pere Fourchon's broken sabots was now heard; after
depositing them in the antechamber, he was brought to the door of the
dining-room by Francois. At a sign from the countess, Francois allowed
him to pass in, followed by Mouche with his mouth full and carrying
the otter, hanging by a string tied to its yellow paws, webbed like
those of a palmiped. He cast upon his four superiors sitting at table,
and also upon Sibilet, that look of mingled distrust and servility
which serves as a veil to the thoughts of the peasantry; then he
brandished his amphibian with a triumphant air.

"Here it is!" he cried, addressing Blondet.

"My otter!" returned the Parisian, "and well paid for."

"Oh, my dear gentleman," replied Pere Fourchon, "yours got away; she
is now in her burrow, and she won't come out, for she's a female,
--this is a male; Mouche saw him coming just as you went away. As true
as you live, as true as that Monsieur le comte covered himself and his
cuirassiers with glory at Waterloo, the otter is mine, just as much as
Les Aigues belongs to Monseigneur the general. But the otter is _yours_
for twenty francs; if not I'll take it to the sub-prefect. If Monsieur
Gourdon thinks it too dear, then I'll give you the preference; that's
only fair, as we hunted together this morning!"

"Twenty francs!" said Blondet. "In good French you can't call that
_giving_ the preference."

"Hey, my dear gentleman," cried the old fellow. "Perhaps I don't know
French, and I'll ask it in good Burgundian; as long as I get the
money, I don't care, I'll talk Latin: 'latinus, latina, latinum'!
Besides, twenty francs is what you promised me this morning. My
children have already stolen the silver you gave me; I wept about it,
coming along,--ask Charles if I didn't. Not that I'd arrest 'em for
the value of ten francs and have 'em up before the judge, no! But just
as soon as I earn a few pennies, they make me drink and get 'em out of
me. Ah! it is hard, hard to be reduced to go and get my wine
elsewhere. But just see what children are these days! That's what we
got by the Revolution; it is all for the children now-a-days, and
parents are suppressed. I'm bringing up Mouche on another tack; he
loves me, the little scamp,"--giving his grandson a poke.

"It seems to me you are making him a little thief, like all the rest,"
said Sibilet; "he never lies down at night without some sin on his
conscience."

"Ha! Monsieur Sibilet, his conscience is as clean as yours any day!
Poor child! what can he steal? A little grass! that's better than
throttling a man! He don't know mathematics like you, nor subtraction,
nor addition, nor multiplication,--you are very unjust to us, that you
are! You call us a nest of brigands, but you are the cause of the
misunderstandings between our good landlord here, who is a worthy man,
and the rest of us, who are all worthy men,--there ain't an honester
part of the country than this. Come, what do you mean? do I own
property? don't I go half-naked, and Mouche too? Fine sheets we slept
in, washed by the dew every morning! and unless you want the air we
breathe and the sunshine we drink, I should like to know what we have
that you can take away from us! The rich folks rob as they sit in
their chimney-corners,--and more profitably, too, than by picking up a
few sticks in the woods. I don't see no game-keepers or patrols after
Monsieur Gaubertin, who came here as naked as a worm and is now worth
his millions. It's easy said, 'Robbers!' Here's fifteen years that old
Guerbet, the tax-gatherer at Soulanges, carries his money along the
roads by the dead of night, and nobody ever took a farthing from him;
is that like a land of robbers? has robbery made us rich? Show me
which of us two, your class or mine, live the idlest lives and have
the most to live on without earning it."

"If you were to work," said the abbe, "you would have property. God
blesses labor."

"I don't want to contradict you, M'sieur l'abbe, for you are wiser
than I, and perhaps you'll know how to explain something that puzzles
me. Now see, here I am, ain't I?--that drunken, lazy, idle,
good-for-nothing old Fourchon, who had an education and was a farmer,
and got down in the mud and never got up again,--well, what difference
is there between me and that honest and worthy old Niseron, seventy
years old (and that's my age) who has dug the soil for sixty years and
got up every day before it was light to go to his work, and has made
himself an iron body and a fine soul? Well, isn't he as bad off as I
am? His little granddaughter, Pechina, is at service with Madame
Michaud, whereas my little Mouche is as free as air. So that poor good
man gets rewarded for his virtues in exactly the same way that I get
punished for my vices. He don't know what a glass of good wine is,
he's as sober as an apostle, he buries the dead, and I--I play for the
living to dance. He is always in a peck o' troubles, while I slip
along in a devil-may-care way. We have come along about even in life;
we've got the same snow on our heads, the same funds in our pockets,
and I supply him with rope to ring his bell. He's a republican and I'm
not even a publican,--that's all the difference as far as I can see. A
peasant may do good or do evil (according to your ideas) and he'll go
out of the world just as he came into it, in rags; while you wear the
fine clothes."