第50章

and he spent his time in looking after his garden instead of after the delinquents.Such neglect of duty suited Gaubertin, and Courtecuisse knew it did.The keeper chased only those depredators who were the objects of his personal dislike,--young women who would not yield to his wishes, or persons against whom he held a grudge; though for some time past he had really felt no dislikes, for every one yielded to him on account of his easy-going ways with them.

Courtecuisse had a place always kept for him at the table of the Grand-I-Vert; the wood-pickers feared him no longer; indeed, his wife and he received many gifts in kind from them; his wood was brought in;

his vineyard dug; in short, all delinquents at whom he blinked did him service.

Counting on Gaubertin for the future, and feeling sure of two acres whenever Les Aigues should be brought to the hammer, he was roughly awakened by the curt speech of the general, who, after four quiescent years, was now revealing his true character,--that of a bourgeois rich man who was determined to be no longer deceived.Courtecuisse took his cap, his game-bag, and his gun, put on his gaiters and his belt (which bore the very recent arms of Montcornet), and started for Ville-aux-

Fayes, with the careless, indifferent air and manner under which country-people often conceal very deep reflections, while he gazed at the woods and whistled to the dogs to follow him.

"What! you complain of the Shopman when he proposes to make your fortune?" said Gaubertin."Doesn't the fool offer to give you three francs for every arrest you make, and the fines to boot? Have an understanding with your friends and you can bring as many indictments as you please,--hundreds if you like! With one thousand francs you can buy La Bachelerie from Rigou, become a property owner, live in your own house, and work for yourself, or rather, make others work for you, and take your ease.Only--now listen to me--you must manage to arrest only such as haven't a penny in the world.You can't shear sheep unless the wool is on their backs.Take the Shopman's offer and leave him to collect the costs,--if he wants them; tastes differ.Didn't old Mariotte prefer losses to profits, in spite of my advice?"

Courtecuisse, filled with admiration for these words of wisdom, returned home burning with the desire to be a land-owner and a bourgeois like the rest.

When the general reached Les Aigues he related his expedition to Sibilet.

"Monsieur le comte did very right," said the steward, rubbing his hands; "but he must not stop short half-way.The field-keeper of the district who allows the country-people to prey upon the meadows and rob the harvests ought to be changed.Monsieur le comte should have himself chosen mayor, and appoint one of his old soldiers, who would have the courage to carry out his orders, in place of Vaudoyer.A

great land-owner should be master in his own district.Just see what difficulties we have with the present mayor!"

The mayor of the district of Blangy, formerly a Benedictine, named Rigou, had married, in the first year of the Republic, the servant-

woman of the late priest of Blangy.In spite of the repugnance which a married monk excited at the Prefecture, he had continued to be mayor after 1815, for the reason that there was no-one else at Blangy who was capable of filling the post.But in 1817, when the bishop sent the Abbe Brossette to the parish of Blangy (which had then been vacant over twenty-five years), a violent opposition not unnaturally broke out between the old apostate and the young ecclesiastic, whose character is already known to us.The war which was then and there declared between the mayor's office and the parsonage increased the popularity of the magistrate, who had hitherto been more or less despised.Rigou, whom the peasants had disliked for usurious dealings, now suddenly represented their political and financial interests, supposed to be threatened by the Restoration, and more especially by the clergy.

A copy of the "Constitutionnel," that great organ of liberalism, after making the rounds of the Cafe de la Paix, came back to Rigou on the seventh day,--the subscription, standing in the name of old Socquard the keeper of the coffee-house, being shared by twenty persons.Rigou passed the paper on to Langlume the miller, who, in turn, gave it in shreds to any one who knew how to read.The "Paris items," and the anti-religion jokes of the liberal sheet formed the public opinion of the valley des Aigues.Rigou, like the VENERABLE Abbe Gregoire, became a hero.For him, as for certain Parisian bankers, politics spread a mantle of popularity over his shameful dishonesty.

At this particular time the perjured monk, like Francois Keller the great orator, was looked upon as a defender of the rights of the people,--he who, not so very long before, dared not walk in the fields after dark, lest he should stumble into pitfalls where he would seem to have been killed by accident! Persecute a man politically and you not only magnify him, but you redeem his past and make it innocent.

The liberal party was a great worker of miracles in this respect.Its dangerous journal, which had the wit to make itself as commonplace, as calumniating, as credulous, and as sillily perfidious as every audience made up the general masses, did in all probability as much injury to private interests as it did to those of the Church.

Rigou flattered himself that he should find in a Bonapartist general now laid on the shelf, in a son of the people raised from nothing by the Revolution, a sound enemy to the Bourbons and the priests.But the general, bearing in mind his private ambitions, so arranged matters as to evade the visit of Monsieur and Madame Rigou when he first came to Les Aigues.