第34章

"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.