第17章

Mouche and Fourchon, bound together by vice as Mentor and Telemachus by virtue, travelled like the latter, in search of their father, "panis angelorum,"--the only Latin words which the old fellow's memory had retained.They went about scraping up the pickings of the Grand-I-

Vert, and those of the adjacent chateaux; for between them, in their busiest and most prosperous years, they had never contrived to make as much as three hundred and sixty fathoms of rope.In the first place, no dealer within a radius of fifty miles would have trusted his tow to either Mouche or Fourchon.The old man, surpassing the miracles of modern chemistry, knew too well how to resolve the tow into the all-

benignant juice of the grape.Moreover, his triple functions of public writer for three townships, legal practitioner for one, and clarionet-

player at large, hindered, so he said, the development of his business.

Thus it happened that Tonsard was disappointed from the start in the hope he had indulged of increasing his comfort by an increase of property in marriage.The idle son-in-law had chanced, by a very common accident, on an idler father-in-law.Matters went all the worse because Tonsard's wife, gifted with a sort of rustic beauty, being tall and well-made, was not fond of work in the open air.Tonsard blamed his wife for her father's short-comings, and ill-treated her, with the customary revenge of the common people, whose minds take in only an effect and rarely look back to causes.

Finding her fetters heavy, the woman lightened them.She used Tonsard's vices to get the better of him.Loving comfort and good eating herself, she encouraged his idleness and gluttony.In the first place, she managed to procure the good-will of the servants of the chateau, and Tonsard, in view of the results, made no complaint as to the means.He cared very little what his wife did, so long as she did all he wanted of her.That is the secret agreement of many a household.Madame Tonsard established the wine-shop of the Grand-I-

Vert, her first customers being the servants of Les Aigues and the keepers and huntsmen.

Gaubertin, formerly steward to Mademoiselle Laguerre, one of La Tonsard's chief patrons, gave her several puncheons of excellent wine to attract custom.The effect of these gifts (continued as long as Gaubertin remained a bachelor) and the fame of her rather lawless beauty commended this beauty to the Don Juans of the valley, and filled the wine-shop of the Grand-I-Vert.Being a lover of good eating, La Tonsard was naturally an excellent cook; and though her talents were only exercised on the common dishes of the country, jugged hare, game sauce, stewed fish and omelets, she was considered in all the country round to be an admirable cook of the sort of food which is eaten at a counter and spiced in a way to excite a desire for drink.By the end of two years, she had managed to rule Tonsard, and turn him to evil courses, which, indeed, he asked no better than to indulge in.

The rascal was continually poaching, and with nothing to fear from it.

The intimacies of his wife with Gaubertin and the keepers and the rural authorities, together with the laxity of the times, secured him impunity.As soon as his children were large enough he made them serviceable to his comfort, caring no more for their morality than for that of his wife.He had two sons and two daughters.Tonsard, who lived, as did his wife, from hand to mouth, might have come to an end of this easy life if he had not maintained a sort of martial law over his family, which compelled them to work for the preservation of it.

When he had brought up his children, at the cost of those from whom his wife was able to extort gifts, the following charter and budget were the law at the Grand-I-Vert.

Tonsard's old mother and his two daughters, Catherine and Marie, went into the woods at certain seasons twice a-day, and came back laden with fagots which overhung the crutch of their poles at least two feet beyond their heads.Though dried sticks were placed on the outside of the heap, the inside was made of live wood cut from young trees.In plain words, Tonsard helped himself to his winter's fuel in the woods of Les Aigues.Besides this, father and sons were constantly poaching.

From September to March, hares, rabbits, partridges, deer, in short, all the game that was not eaten at the chateau, was sold at Blangy and at Soulanges, where Tonsard's two daughters peddled milk in the early mornings,--coming back with the news of the day, in return for the gossip they carried about Les Aigues, and Cerneux, and Conches.In the months when the three Tonsards were unable to hunt with a gun, they set traps.If the traps caught more game than they could eat, La Tonsard made pies of it and sent them to Ville-aux-Fayes.In harvest-

time seven Tonsards--the old mother, the two sons (until they were seventeen years of age), the two daughters, together with old Fourchon and Mouche--gleaned, and generally brought in about sixteen bushels a day of all grains, rye, barley, wheat, all good to grind.

The two cows, led to the roadside by the youngest girl, always managed to stray into the meadows of Les Aigues; but as, if it ever chanced that some too flagrant trespass compelled the keepers to take notice of it, the children were either whipped or deprived of a coveted dainty, they had acquired such extraordinary aptitude in hearing the enemy's footfall that the bailiff or the park-keeper of Les Aigues was very seldom able to detect them.Besides, the relations of those estimable functionaries with Tonsard and his wife tied a bandage over their eyes.The cows, held by long ropes, obeyed a mere twitch or a special low call back to the roadside, knowing very well that, the danger once past, they could finish their browsing in the next field.