第77章

Perfect silence reigned in the tavern.When Groison had got to a safe distance, Mother Tonsard made a sign, and the discussion began again on the question as to whether they should persist in gleaning, as before, without a certificate.

"You'll have to give in," said Pere Fourchon; "for the Shopman has gone to see the prefect and get troops to enforce the order.They'll shoot you like dogs,--and that's what we are!" cried the old man, trying to conquer the thickening of his speech produced by his potations of sherry.

This fresh announcement, absurd as it was, made all the drinkers thoughtful; they really believed the government capable of slaughtering them without pity.

"I remember just such troubles near Toulouse, when I was stationed there," said Bonnebault."We were marched out, and the peasants were cut and slashed and arrested.Everybody laughed to see them try to resist cavalry.Ten were sent to the galleys, and eleven put in prison; the whole thing was crushed.Hey! what? why, soldiers are soldiers, and you are nothing but civilian beggars; they've a right, they think, to sabre peasants, the devil take you!"

"Well, well," said Tonsard, "what is there in all that to frighten you like kids? What can they get out of my mother and daughters? Put 'em in prison? well, then they must feed them; and the Shopman can't imprison the whole country.Besides, prisoners are better fed at the king's expense than they are at their own; and they're kept warmer, too."

"You are a pack of fools!" roared Fourchon."Better gnaw at the bourgeois than attack him in front; otherwise, you'll get your backs broke.If you like the galleys, so be it,--that's another thing! You don't work as hard there as you do in the fields, true enough; but you don't have your liberty."

"Perhaps it would be well," said Vaudoyer, who was among the more valiant in counsel, "if some of us risked our skins to deliver the neighborhood of that Languedoc fellow who has planted himself at the gate of the Avonne."

"Do Michaud's business for him?" said Nicolas; "I'm good for that."

"Things are not ripe for it," said old Fourchon."We should risk too much, my children.The best way is to make ourselves look miserable and cry famine; then the Shopman and his wife will want to help us, and you'll get more out of them that way than you will by gleaning."

"You are all blind moles," shouted Tonsard, "let 'em pick a quarrel with their law and their troops, they can't put the whole country in irons, and we've plenty of friends at Ville-aux-Fayes and among the old lords who'll sustain us."

"That's true," said Courtecuisse; "none of the other land-owners complain, it is only the Shopman; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur de Ronquerolles and others, they are satisfied.When I think that if that cuirassier had only had the courage to let himself be killed like the rest I should still be happy at the gate of the Avonne, and that it was he that turned my life topsy-turvy, it just puts me beside myself."

"They won't call out the troops for a Shopman who has set every one in the district against him," said Godain."The fault's his own; he tried to ride over everybody here, and upset everything; and the government will just say to him, 'Hush up.'"

"The government never says anything else; it can't, poor government!"

said Fourchon, seized with a sudden tenderness for the government.

"Yes, I pity it, that good government; it is very unlucky,--it hasn't a penny, like us; but that's very stupid of a government that makes the money itself, very stupid! Ah! if I were the government--"

"But," cried Courtecuisse, "they tell me in Ville-aux-Fayes that Monsieur de Ronquerolles talked about our rights in the Assembly."

"That's in Monsieur Rigou's newspaper," said Vaudoyer, who in his capacity of ex-field-keeper knew how to read and write; "I read it--"

In spite of his vinous tenderness, old Fourchon, like many of the lower classes whose faculties are stimulated by drunkenness, was following, with an intelligent eye and a keen ear, this curious discussion which a variety of asides rendered still more curious.

Suddenly, he stood up in the middle of the room.

"Listen to the old one, he's drunk!" said Tonsard, "and when he is, he is twice as full of deviltry; he has his own and that of the wine--"

"Spanish wine, and that trebles it!" cried Fourchon, laughing like a satyr."My sons, don't butt your head straight at the thing,--you're too weak; go at it sideways.Lay low, play dead; the little woman is scared.I tell you, the thing'll come to an end before long; she'll leave the place, and if she does the Shopman will follow her, for she's his passion.That's your plan.Only, to make 'em go faster, my advice is to get rid of their counsellor, their support, our spy, our ape--"

"Who's that?"

"The damned abbe, of course," said Tonsard; "that hunter after sins, who thinks the host is food enough for us."

"That's true," cried Vaudoyer; "we were happy enough till he came.We ought to get rid of that eater of the good God,--he's the real enemy."

"Finikin," added Fourchon, using a nickname which the abbe owed to his prim and rather puny appearance, "might be led into temptation and fall into the power of some sly girl, for he fasts so much.Then if we could catch him in the act and drum him up with a good charivari, the bishop would be obliged to send him elsewhere.It would please old Rigou devilish well.Now if your daughter, Courtecuisse, would leave Auxerre--she's a pretty girl, and if she'd take to piety, she might save us all.Hey! ran tan plan!--"

"Why don't YOU do it?" said Godain to Catherine, in a low voice;