Sons of the Soil

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


No one interrupted Pere Fourchon, who seemed to owe his eloquence to
his potations. At first Sibilet tried to cut him short, but desisted
at a sign from Blondet. The abbe, the general, and the countess, all
understood from the expression of the writer's eye that he wanted to
study the question of pauperism from life, and perhaps take his
revenge on Pere Fourchon.

"What sort of education are you giving Mouche?" asked Blondet. "Do you
expect to make him any better than your daughters?"

"Does he ever speak to him of God?" said the priest.

"Oh, no, no! Monsieur le cure, I don't tell him to fear God, but men.
God is good; he has promised us poor folks, so you say, the kingdom of
heaven, because the rich people keep the earth to themselves. I tell
him: 'Mouche! fear the prison, and keep out of it,--for that's the way
to the scaffold. Don't steal anything, make people give it to you.
Theft leads to murder, and murder brings down the justice of men. The
razor of justice,--_that's_ what you've got to fear; it lets the rich
sleep easy and keeps the poor awake. Learn to read. Education will
teach you ways to grab money under cover of the law, like that fine
Monsieur Gaubertin; why, you can even be a land-steward like Monsieur
Sibilet here, who gets his rations out of Monsieur le comte. The thing
to do is to keep well with the rich, and pick up the crumbs that fall
from their tables.' That's what I call giving him a good, solid
education; and you'll always find the little rascal on the side of the
law,--he'll be a good citizen and take care of me."

"What do you mean to make of him?" asked Blondet.

"A servant, to begin with," returned Fourchon, "because then he'll see
his masters close by, and learn something; he'll complete his
education, I'll warrant you. Good example will be a fortune to him,
with the law on his side like the rest of you. If M'sieur le comte
would only take him in his stables and let him learn to groom the
horses, the boy will be mighty pleased, for though I've taught him to
fear men, he don't fear animals."

"You are a clever fellow, Pere Fourchon," said Blondet; "you know what
you are talking about, and there's sense in what you say."

"Oh, sense? no; I left my sense at the Grand-I-Vert when I lost those
silver pieces."

"How is it that a man of your capacity should have dropped so low? As
things are now, a peasant can only blame himself for his poverty; he
is a free man, and he can become a rich one. It is not as it used to
be. If a peasant lays by his money, he can always buy a bit of land
and become his own master."

"I've seen the olden time and I've seen the new, my dear wise
gentleman," said Fourchon; "the sign over the door has changed, that's
true, but the wine is the same,--to-day is the younger brother of
yesterday, that's all. Put that in your newspaper! Are we poor folks
free? We still belong to the same parish, and its lord is always
there,--I call him Toil. The hoe, our sole property, has never left
our hands. Let it be the old lords or the present taxes which take the
best of our earnings, the fact remains that we sweat our lives out in
toil."

"But you could undertake a business, and try to make your fortune,"
said Blondet.

"Try to make my fortune! And where shall I try? If I wish to leave my
own province, I must get a passport, and that costs forty sous. Here's
forty years that I've never had a slut of a forty-sous piece jingling
against another in my pocket. If you want to travel you need as many
crowns as there are villages, and there are mighty few Fourchons who
have enough to get to six of 'em. It is only the draft that gives us a
chance to get away. And what good does the army do us? The colonels
live by the solider, just as the rich folks live by the peasant; and
out of every hundred of 'em you won't find more than one of our breed.
It is just as it is the world over, one rolling in riches, for a
hundred down in the mud. Why are we in the mud? Ask God and the
usurers. The best we can do is to stay in our own parts, where we are
penned like sheep by the force of circumstances, as our fathers were
by the rule of the lords. As for me, what do I care what shackles they
are that keep me here? let it be the law of public necessity or the
tyranny of the old lords, it is all the same; we are condemned to dig
the soil forever. There, where we are born, there we dig it, that
earth! and spade it, and manure it, and delve in it, for you who are
born rich just as we are born poor. The masses will always be what
they are, and stay what they are. The number of us who manage to rise
is nothing like the number of you who topple down! We know that well
enough, if we have no education! You mustn't be after us with your
sheriff all the time,--not if you're wise. We let you alone, and you
must let us alone. If not, and things get worse, you'll have to feed
us in your prisons, where we'd be much better off than in our homes.
You want to remain our masters, and we shall always be enemies, just
as we were thirty years ago. You have everything, we have nothing; you
can't expect we should ever be friends."

"That's what I call a declaration of war," said the general.

"Monseigneur," retorted Fourchon, "when Les Aigues belonged to that
poor Madame (God keep her soul and forgive her the sins of her youth!)
we were happy. _She_ let us get our food from the fields and our fuel
from the forest; and was she any the poorer for it? And you, who are
at least as rich as she, you hunt us like wild beasts, neither more
nor less, and drag the poor before the courts. Well, evil will come of
it! you'll be the cause of some great calamity. Haven't I just seen
your keeper, that shuffling Vatel, half kill a poor old woman for a
stick of wood? It is such fellows as that who make you an enemy to the
poor; and the talk is very bitter against you. They curse you every
bit as hard as they used to bless the late Madame. The curse of the
poor, monseigneur, is a seed that grows,--grows taller than your tall
oaks, and oak-wood builds the scaffold. Nobody here tells you the
truth; and here it is, yes, the truth! I expect to die before long,
and I risk very little in telling it to you, the _truth_! I, who play
for the peasants to dance at the great fetes at Soulanges, I heed what
the people say. Well, they're all against you; and they'll make it
impossible for you to stay here. If that damned Michaud of yours
doesn't change, they'll force you to change him. There! that
information _and_ the otter are worth twenty francs, and more too."

As the old fellow uttered the last words a man's step was heard, and
the individual just threatened by Fourchon entered unannounced. It was
easy to see from the glance he threw at the old man that the threat
had reached his ears, and all Fourchon's insolence sank in a moment.
The look produced precisely the same effect upon him that the eye of a
policeman produces on a thief. Fourchon knew he was wrong, and that
Michaud might very well accuse him of saying these things merely to
terrify the inhabitants of Les Aigues.

"This is the minister of war," said the general to Blondet, nodding at
Michaud.

"Pardon me, madame, for having entered without asking if you were
willing to receive me," said the newcomer to the countess; "but I have
urgent reasons for speaking to the general at once."

Michaud, as he said this, took notice of Sibilet, whose expression of
keen delight in Fourchon's daring words was not seen by the four
persons seated at the table, because they were so preoccupied by the
old man; whereas Michaud, who for secret reasons watched Sibilet
constantly, was struck with his air and manner.

"He has earned his twenty francs, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet;
"the otter is fully worth it."

"Give him twenty francs," said the general to the footman.

"Do you mean to take my otter away from me?" said Blondet to the
general.

"I shall have it stuffed," replied the latter.

"Ah! but that good gentleman said I might keep the skin," cried
Fourchon.

"Well, then," exclaimed the countess, hastily, "you shall have five
francs more for the skin; but go away now."

The powerful odor emitted by the pair made the dining-room so horribly
offensive that Madame de Montcornet, whose senses were very delicate,
would have been forced to leave the room if Fourchon and Mouche had
remained. To this circumstance the old man was indebted for his
twenty-five francs. He left the room with a timid glance at Michaud,
making him an interminable series of bows.

"What I was saying to monseigneur, Monsieur Michaud," he added, "was
really for your good."

"Or for that of those who pay you," replied Michaud, with a searching
look.

"When you have served the coffee, leave the room," said the general to
the servants, "and see that the doors are shut."

Blondet, who had not yet seen the bailiff of Les Aigues, was
conscious, as he now saw him, of a totally different impression from
that conveyed by Sibilet. Just as the steward inspired distrust and
repulsion, so Michaud commanded respect and confidence. The first
attraction of his presence was a happy face, of a fine oval, pure in
outline, in which the nose bore part,--a regularity which is lacking
in the majority of French faces. Though the features were correct in
drawing, they were not without expression, due, perhaps, to the
harmonious coloring of the warm brown and ochre tints, indicative of
physical health and strength. The clear brown eyes, which were bright
and piercing, kept no reserves in the expression of his thought; they
looked straight into the eyes of others. The broad white forehead was
thrown still further into relief by his abundant black hair. Honesty,
decision, and a saintly serenity were the animating points of this
noble face, where a few deep lines upon the brow were the result of
the man's military career. Doubt and suspicion could there be read the
moment they had entered his mind. His figure, like that of all men
selected for the elite of the cavalry service, though shapely and
elegant, was vigorously built. Michaud, who wore moustachios,
whiskers, and a chin beard, recalled that martial type of face which a
deluge of patriotic paintings and engravings came very near to making
ridiculous. This type had the defect of being common in the French
army; perhaps the continuance of the same emotions, the same camp
sufferings from which none were exempt, neither high nor low, and more
especially the same efforts of officers and men upon the battle-fields,
may have contributed to produce this uniformity of countenance.
Michaud, who was dressed in dark blue cloth, still wore the black satin
stock and high boots of a soldier, which increased the slight stiffness
and rigidity of his bearing. The shoulders sloped, the chest expanded,
as though the man were still under arms. The red ribbon of the Legion
of honor was in his buttonhole. In short, to give a last touch in one
word about the moral qualities beneath this purely physical presentment,
it may be said that while the steward, from the time he first entered
upon his functions, never failed to call his master "Monsieur le
comte," Michaud never addressed him otherwise than as "General."

Blondet exchanged another look with the Abbe Brossette, which meant,
"What a contrast!" as he signed to him to observe the two men. Then,
as if to know whether the character and mind and speech of the bailiff
harmonized with his form and countenance, he turned to Michaud and
said:--

"I was out early this morning, and found your under-keepers still
sleeping."

"At what hour?" said the late soldier, anxiously.

"Half-past seven."

Michaud gave a half-roguish glance at the general.

"By what gate did monsieur leave the park?" he asked.

"By the gate of Conches. The keeper, in his night-shirt, looked at me
through the window," replied Blondet.

"Gaillard had probably just gone to bed," answered Michaud. "You said
you were out early, and I thought you meant day-break. If my man were
at home at that time, he must have been ill; but at half-past seven he
was sure to be in bed. We are up all night," added Michaud, after a
slight pause, replying to a surprised look on the countess's face,
"but our watchfulness is often wasted. You have just given twenty-five
francs to a man who, not an hour ago, was quietly helping to hide the
traces of a robbery committed upon you this very morning. I came to
speak to you about it, general, when you have finished breakfast; for
something will have to be done."

"You are always for maintaining the right, my dear Michaud, and
'summum jus, summum injuria.' If you are not more tolerant, you will
get into trouble, so Sibilet here tells me. I wish you could have
heard Pere Fourchon just now; the wine he had been drinking made him
speak out."

"He frightened me," said the countess.

"He said nothing I did not know long ago," replied the general.

"Oh! the rascal wasn't drunk; he was playing a part; for whose benefit
I leave you to guess. Perhaps you know?" returned Michaud, fixing an
eye on Sibilet which caused the latter to turn red.

"O rus!" cried Blondet, with another look at the abbe.

"But these poor creatures suffer," said the countess, "and there is a
great deal of truth in what old Fourchon has just screamed at us,--for
I cannot call it speaking."

"Madame," replied Michaud, "do you suppose that for fourteen years the
soldiers of the Emperor slept on a bed of roses? My general is a
count, he is a grand officer of the Legion of honor, he has had
perquisites and endowments given to him; am I jealous of him, I who
fought as he did? Do I wish to cheat him of his glory, to steal his
perquisites, to deny him the honor due to his rank? The peasant should
obey as the soldier obeys; he should feel the loyalty of a soldier,
his respect for acquired rights, and strive to become an officer
himself, honorably, by labor and not by theft. The sabre and the
plough are twins; though the soldier has something more than the
peasant,--he has death hanging over him at any minute."

"I want to say that from the pulpit," cried the abbe.

"Tolerant!" continued the keeper, replying to the general's remark
about Sibilet, "I would tolerate a loss of ten per cent upon the gross
returns of Les Aigues; but as things are now thirty per cent is what
you lose, general; and, if Monsieur Sibilet's accounts show it, I
don't understand his tolerance, for he benevolently gives up a
thousand or twelve hundred francs a year."

"My dear Monsieur Michaud," replied Sibilet, in a snappish tone, "I
have told Monsieur le comte that I would rather lose twelve hundred
francs a year than my life. Think of it seriously; I have warned you
often enough."

"Life!" exclaimed the countess; "you can't mean that anybody's life is
in danger?"

"Don't let us argue about state affairs here," said the general,
laughing. "All this, my dear, merely means that Sibilet, in his
capacity of financier, is timid and cowardly, while the minister of
war is brave and, like his general, fears nothing."

"Call me prudent, Monsieur le comte," interposed Sibilet.

"Well, well!" cried Blondet, laughing, "so here we are, like Cooper's
heroes in the forests of America, in the midst of sieges and savages."

"Come, gentlemen, it is your business to govern without letting me
hear the wheels of the administration," said Madame de Montcornet.

"Ah! madame," said the cure, "but it may be right that you should know
the toil from which those pretty caps you wear are derived."

"Well, then, I can go without them," replied the countess, laughing.
"I will be very respectful to a twenty-franc piece, and grow as
miserly as the country people themselves. Come, my dear abbe, give me
your arm. Leave the general with his two ministers, and let us go to
the gate of the Avonne to see Madame Michaud, for I have not had time
since my arrival to pay her a visit, and I want to inquire about my
little protegee."

And the pretty woman, already forgetting the rags and tatters of
Mouche and Fourchon, and their eyes full of hatred, and Sibilet's
warnings, went to have herself made ready for the walk.

The abbe and Blondet obeyed the behest of the mistress of the house
and followed her from the dining-room, waiting till she was ready on
the terrace before the chateau.

"What do you think of all this?" said Blondet to the abbe.

"I am a pariah; they dog me as they would a common enemy. I am forced
to keep my eyes and ears perpetually open to escape the traps they are
constantly laying to get me out of the place," replied the abbe. "I am
even doubtful, between ourselves, as to whether they will not shoot
me."

"Why do you stay?" said Blondet.

"We can't desert God's cause any more than that of an emperor,"
replied the priest, with a simplicity that affected Blondet. He took
the abbe's hand and shook it cordially.

"You see how it is, therefore, that I know very little of the plots
that are going on," continued the abbe. "Still, I know enough to feel
sure that the general is under what in Artois and in Belgium is called
an 'evil grudge.'"

A few words are here necessary about the curate of Blangy.

This priest, the fourth son of a worthy middle-class family of Autun,
was an intelligent man carrying his head high in his collar. Small and
slight, he redeemed his rather puny appearance by the precise and
carefully dressed air that belongs to Burgundians. He accepted the
second-rate post of Blangy out of pure devotion, for his religious
convictions were joined to political opinions that were equally
strong. There was something of the priest of the olden time about him;
he held to the Church and to the clergy passionately; saw the bearings
of things, and no selfishness marred his one ambition, which was _to
serve_. That was his motto,--to serve the Church and the monarchy
wherever it was most threatened; to serve in the lowest rank like a
soldier who feels that he is destined, sooner or later, to attain
command through courage and the resolve to do his duty. He made no
compromises with his vows of chastity, and poverty, and obedience; he
fulfilled them, as he did the other duties of his position, with that
simplicity and cheerful good-humor which are the sure indications of
an honest heart, constrained to do right by natural impulses as much
as by the power and consistency of religious convictions.

The priest had seen at first sight Blondet's attachment to the
countess; he saw that between a Troisville and a monarchical
journalist he could safely show himself to be a man of broad
intelligence, because his calling was certain to be respected. He
usually came to the chateau very evening to make the fourth at a game
of whist. The journalist, able to recognize the abbe's real merits,
showed him so much deference that the pair grew into sympathy with
each other; as usually happens when men of intelligence meet their
equals, or, if you prefer it, the ears that are able to hear them.
Swords are fond of their scabbards.

"But to what do you attribute this state of things, Monsieur l'abbe,
you who are able, through your disinterestedness, to look over the
heads of things?"

"I shall not talk platitudes after such a flattering speech as that,"
said the abbe, smiling. "What is going on in this valley is spreading
more or less throughout France; it is the outcome of the hopes which
the upheaval of 1789 caused to infiltrate, if I may use that
expression, the minds of the peasantry, the sons of the soil. The
Revolution affected certain localities more than others. This side of
Burgundy, nearest to Paris, is one of those places where the
revolutionary ideas spread like the overrunning of the Franks by the
Gauls. Historically, the peasants are still on the morrow of the
Jacquerie; that defeat is burnt in upon their brain. They have long
forgotten the facts which have now passed into the condition of an
instinctive idea. That idea is bred in the peasant blood, just as the
idea of superiority was once bred in noble blood. The revolution of
1789 was the retaliation of the vanquished. The peasants then set foot
in possession of the soil which the feudal law had denied them for
over twelve hundred years. Hence their desire for land, which they now
cut up among themselves until actually they divide a furrow into two
parts; which, by the bye, often hinders or prevents the collection of
taxes, for the value of such fractions of property is not sufficient
to pay the legal costs of recovering them."

"Very true, for the obstinacy of the small owners--their
aggressiveness, if you choose--on this point is so great that in at
least one thousand cantons of the three thousand of French territory,
it is impossible for a rich man to buy an inch of land from a
peasant," said Blondet, interrupting the abbe. "The peasants who are
willing to divide up their scraps of land among themselves would not
sell a fraction on any condition or at any price to the middle
classes. The more money the rich man offers, the more the vague
uneasiness of the peasant increases. Legal dispossession alone is able
to bring the landed property of the peasant into the market. Many
persons have noticed this fact without being able to find a reason for
it."

"This is the reason," said the abbe, rightly believing that a pause
with Blondet was equivalent to a question: "twelve centuries have done
nothing for a caste whom the historic spectacle of civilization has
never yet diverted from its one predominating thought,--a caste which
still wears proudly the broad-brimmed hat of its masters, ever since
an abandoned fashion placed it upon their heads. That all-pervading
thought, the roots of which are in the bowels of the people, and which
attached them so vehemently to Napoleon (who was personally less to
them than he thought he was) and which explains the miracle of his
return in 1815,--that desire for land is the sole motive power of the
peasant's being. In the eyes of the masses Napoleon, ever one with
them through his million of soldiers, is still the king born of the
Revolution; the man who gave them possession of the soil and sold to
them the national domains. His anointing was saturated with that
idea."

"An idea to which 1814 dealt a blow, an idea which monarchy should
hold sacred," said Blondet, quickly; "for the people may some day find
on the steps of the throne a prince whose father bequeathed to him the
head of Louis XVI. as an heirloom."

"Here is madame; don't say any more," said the abbe, in a low voice.
"Fourchon has frightened her; and it is very desirable to keep her
here in the interests of religion and of the throne, and, indeed, in
those of the people themselves."

Michaud, the bailiff of Les Aigues, had come to the chateau in
consequence of the assault on Vatel's eyes. But before we relate the
consultation which then and there took place, the chain of events
requires a succinct account of the circumstances under which the
general purchased Les Aigues, the serious causes which led to the
appointment of Sibilet as steward of that magnificent property, and
the reasons why Michaud was made bailiff, with all the other
antecedents to which were due the tension of the minds of all, and the
fears expressed by Sibilet.

This rapid summary will have the merit of introducing some of the
principal actors in this drama, and of exhibiting their individual
interests; we shall thus be enabled to show the dangers which
surrounded the General comte de Montcornet at the moment when this
history opens.



CHAPTER VI

A TALE OF THIEVES

When Mademoiselle Laguerre first visited her estate, in 1791, she took
as steward the son of the ex-bailiff of Soulanges, named Gaubertin.
The little town of Soulanges, at present nothing more than the chief
town of a canton, was once the capital of a considerable county, in
the days when the House of Burgundy made war upon France.
Ville-aux-Fayes, now the seat of the sub-prefecture, then a mere fief,
was a dependency of Soulanges, like Les Aigues, Ronquerolles, Cerneux,
Conches, and a score of other parishes. The Soulanges have remained
counts, whereas the Ronquerolles are now marquises by the will of that
power, called the Court, which made the son of Captain du Plessis duke
over the heads of the first families of the Conquest. All of which
serves to prove that towns, like families, are variable in their
destiny.

Gaubertin, a young man without property of any kind, succeeded a
steward enriched by a management of thirty years, who preferred to
become a partner in the famous firm of Minoret rather than continue to
administer Les Aigues. In his own interests he introduced into his
place as land-steward Francois Gaubertin, his accountant for five
years, whom he now relied on to cover his retreat, and who, out of
gratitude for his instructions, promised to obtain for him a release
in full of all claims from Madame Laguerre, who by this time was
terrified at the Revolution. Gaubertin's father, the attorney-general
of the department, henceforth protected the timid woman. This
provincial Fouquier-Tinville raised a false alarm of danger in the
mind of the opera-divinity on the ground of her former relations to
the aristocracy, so as to give his son the equally false credit of
saving her life; on the strength of which Gaubertin the younger
obtained very easily the release of his predecessor. Mademoiselle
Laguerre then made Francois Gaubertin her prime minister, as much
through policy as from gratitude. The late steward had not spoiled
her. He sent her, every year, about thirty thousand francs, though Les
Aigues brought in at that time at least forty thousand. The
unsuspecting opera-singer was therefore much delighted when the new
steward Gaubertin promised her thirty-six thousand.