第51章

When you have become better acquainted with the terrible character of Rigou, the lynx of the valley, you will understand the full extent of the second capital blunder which the general's aristocratic ambitions led him to commit, and which the countess made all the greater by an offence which will be described in the further history of Rigou.

If Montcornet had courted the mayor's good-will, if he had sought his friendship, perhaps the influence of the renegade might have neutralized that of Gaubertin.Far from that, three suits were now pending in the courts of Ville-aux-Fayes between the general and the ex-monk.Until the present time the general had been so absorbed in his personal interests and in his marriage that he had never remembered Rigou, but when Sibilet advised him to get himself made mayor in Rigou's place, he took post-horses and went to see the prefect.

The prefect, Comte Martial de la Roche-Hugon, had been a friend of the general since 1804; and it was a word from him said to Montcornet in a conversation in Paris, which brought about the purchase of Les Aigues.

Comte Martial, a prefect under Napoleon, remained a prefect under the Bourbons, and courted the bishop to retain his place.Now it happened that Monseigneur had several times requested him to get rid of Rigou.

Martial, to whom the condition of the district was perfectly well known, was delighted with the general's request; so that in less than a month the Comte de Montcornet was mayor of Blangy.

By one of those accidents which come about naturally, the general met, while at the prefecture where his friend put him up, a non-

commissioned officer of the ex-Imperial guard, who had been cheated out of his retiring pension.The general had already, under other circumstances, done a service to the brave cavalryman, whose name was Groison; the man, remembering it, now told him his troubles, admitting that he was penniless.The general promised to get him his pension, and proposed that he should take the place of field-keeper to the district of Blangy, as a way of paying off his score of gratitude by devotion to the new mayor's interests.The appointments of master and man were made simultaneously, and the general gave, as may be supposed, very firm instructions to his subordinate.

Vaudoyer, the displaced keeper, a peasant on the Ronquerolles estate, was only fit, like most field-keepers, to stalk about, and gossip, and let himself be petted by the poor of the district, who asked nothing better than to corrupt at subaltern authority,--the advanced guard, as it were, of the land-owners.He knew Soudry, the brigadier at Soulanges, for brigadiers of gendarmerie, performing functions that are semi-judicial in drawing up criminal indictments, have much to do with the rural keepers, who are, in fact, their natural spies.Soudry, being appealed to, sent Vaudoyer to Gaubertin, who received his old acquaintance very cordially, and invited him to drink while listening to the recital of his troubles.

"My dear friend," said the mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, who could talk to every man in his own language, "what has happened to you is likely to happen to us all.The nobles are back upon us.The men to whom the Emperor gave titles make common cause with the old nobility.They all want to crush the people, re-establish their former rights and take our property from us.But we are Burgundians; we must resist, and drive those Arminacs back to Paris.Return to Blangy; you shall be agent for Monsieur Polissard, the wood-merchant, who is contractor for the forest of Ronquerolles.Don't be uneasy, my lad; I'll find you enough to do for the whole of the coming year.But remember one thing;

the wood is for ourselves! Not a single depredation, or the thing is at an end.Send all interlopers to Les Aigues.If there's brush or fagots to sell make people buy ours; don't let them buy of Les Aigues.

You'll get back to your place as field-keeper before long; this thing can't last.The general will get sick of living among thieves.Did you know that that Shopman called me a thief, me!--son of the stanchest and most incorruptible of republicans; me!--the son in law of Mouchon, that famous representative of the people, who died without leaving me enough to bury him?"

The general raised the salary of the new field-keeper to three hundred francs; and built a town-hall, in which he gave him a residence.Then he married him to a daughter of one of his tenant-farmers, who had lately died, leaving her an orphan with three acres of vineyard.

Groison attached himself to the general as a dog to his master.This legitimate fidelity was admitted by the whole community.The keeper was feared and respected, but like the captain of a vessel whose ship's company hate him; the peasantry shunned him as they would a leper.Met either in silence or with sarcasms veiled under a show of good-humor, the new keeper was a sentinel watched by other sentinels.

He could do nothing against such numbers.The delinquents took delight in plotting depredations which it was impossible for him to prove, and the old soldier grew furious at his helplessness.Groison found the excitement of a war of factions in his duties, and all the pleasures of the chase,--a chase after petty delinquents.Trained in real war to a loyalty which consists in part of playing a fair game, this enemy of traitors came at last to hate these people, so treacherous in their conspiracies, and so clever in their thefts that they mortified his self-esteem.He soon observed that the depredations were committed only at Les Aigues; all the other estates were respected.At first he despised a peasantry ungrateful enough to pillage a general of the Empire, an essentially kind and generous man; presently, however, he added hatred to contempt.But multiply himself as he would, he could not be everywhere, and the enemy pillaged everywhere that he was not.