第74章

Niseron, the Aristides of Blangy, spoke little, like all noble dupes who wrap themselves in the mantle of resignation; but he was never silent against evil, and the peasants feared him as thieves fear the police.He seldom came more than six times a year to the Grand-I-Vert, though he was always warmly welcomed there.The old man cursed the want of charity of the rich,--their selfishness disgusted him; and through this fiber of his mind he seemed to the peasants to belong to them; they were in the habit of saying, "Pere Niseron doesn't like the rich; he's one of us."

The civic crown won by this noble life throughout the valley lay in these words: "That good old Niseron! there's not a more honest man."

Often taken as umpire in certain kinds of disputes, he embodied the meaning of that archaic term,--the village elder.Always extremely clean, though threadbare, he wore breeches, coarse woollen stockings, hob-nailed shoes, the distinctively French coat with large buttons and the broad-brimmed felt hat to which all old peasants cling; but for daily wear he kept a blue jacket so patched and darned that it looked like a bit of tapestry.The pride of a man who feels he is free, and knows he is worthy of freedom, gave to his countenance and his whole bearing a SOMETHING that was inexpressibly noble; you would have felt he wore a robe, not rags.

"Hey! what's happening so unusual?" he said, "I heard the noise down here from the belfry."

They told him of Vatel's attack on the old woman, talking all at once after the fashion of country-people.

"If she didn't cut the tree, Vatel was wrong; but if she did cut it, you have done two bad actions," said Pere Niseron.

"Take some wine," said Tonsard, offering a full glass to the old man.

"Shall we start?" said Vermichel to the sheriff's officer.

"Yes," replied Brunet, "we must do without Pere Fourchon and take the assistant at Conches.Go on before me; I have a paper to carry to the chateau.Rigou has gained his second suit, and I've got to deliver the verdict."

So saying, Monsieur Brunet, all the livelier for a couple of glasses of brandy, mounted his gray mare after saying good-bye to Pere Niseron; for the whole valley were desirous in their hearts of the good man's esteem.

No science, not even that of statistics, can explain the rapidity with which news flies in the country, nor how it spreads over those ignorant and untaught regions which are, in France, a standing reproach to the government and to capitalists.Contemporaneous history can show that a famous banker, after driving post-horses to death between Waterloo and Paris (everybody knows why--he gained what the Emperor had lost, a commission!) carried the fatal news only three hours in advance of rumor.So, not an hour after the encounter between old mother Tonsard and Vatel, a number of the customers of the Grand-

I-Vert assembled there to hear the tale.

The first to come was Courtecuisse, in whom you would scarcely have recognized the once jovial forester, the rubicund do-nothing, whose wife made his morning coffee as we have before seen.Aged, and thin, and haggard, he presented to all eyes a lesson that no one learned.

"He tried to climb higher than the ladder," was what his neighbors said when others pitied him and blamed Rigou."He wanted to be a bourgeois himself."

In fact, Courtecuisse did intend to pass for a bourgeois in buying the Bachelerie, and he even boasted of it; though his wife went about the roads gathering up the horse-droppings.She and Courtecuisse got up before daylight, dug their garden, which was richly manured, and obtained several yearly crops from it, without being able to do more than pay the interest due to Rigou for the rest of the purchase-money.

Their daughter, who was living at service in Auxerre, sent them her wages; but in spite of all their efforts, in spite of this help, the last day for the final payment was approaching, and not a penny in hand with which to meet it.Madame Courtecuisse, who in former times occasionally allowed herself a bottle of boiled wine or a bit of roast meat, now drank nothing but water.Courtecuisse was afraid to go to the Grand-I-Vert lest he should have to leave three sous behind him.

Deprived of power, he had lost his privilege of free drinks, and he bitterly complained, like all other fools, of man's ingratitude.In short, he found, according to the experience of all peasants bitten with the demon of proprietorship, that toil had increased and food decreased.

"Courtecuisse has done too much to the property," the people said, secretly envying his position."He ought to have waited till he had paid the money down and was master before he put up those fruit palings."

With the help of his wife he had managed to manure and cultivate the three acres of land sold to him by Rigou, together with the garden adjoining the house, which was beginning to be productive; and he was in danger of being turned out of it all.Clothed in rags like Fourchon, poor Courtecuisse, who lately wore the boots and gaiters of a huntsman, now thrust his feet into sabots and accused "the rich" of Les Aigues of having caused his destitution.These wearing anxieties had given to the fat little man and his once smiling and rosy face a gloomy and dazed expression, as though he were ill from the effects of poison or with some chronic malady.

"What's the matter with you, Monsieur Courtecuisse; is your tongue tied?" asked Tonsard, as the man continued silent after he had told him about the battle which had just taken place.

"No, no!" cried Madame Tonsard; "he needn't complain of the midwife who cut his string,--she made a good job of it."

"It is enough to make a man dumb, thinking from morning till night of some way to escape Rigou," said the premature old man, gloomily.

"Bah!" said old Mother Tonsard, "you've got a pretty daughter, seventeen years old.If she's a good girl you can easily manage matters with that old jail bird--"