Sons of the Soil Part 29

It was this delineation, worthy of Virgil, which first raised a doubt as to Delille's superiority over Gourdon. The word "disc," contested by the opinionated Brunet, gave matter for discussions which lasted eleven months; in fact, until Gourdon the scientist, one evening when all present were on the point of getting seriously angry, annihilated the anti-discers by observing:--

"The moon, called a _disc_ by poets, is undoubtedly a ball."

"How do you know that?" retorted Brunet. "We have never seen but one side."

The third canto told the regulation story,--in this instance, the famous anecdote of the cup-and-ball which all the world knows by heart, concerning a celebrated minister of Louis XVI. According to the sacred formula delivered by the "Debats" from 1810 to 1814, in praise of these glorious words, Gourdon's ode "borrowed fresh charms from poesy to embellish the tale."

The fourth canto summed up the whole, and concluded with these daring words,--not published, be it remarked, from 1810 to 1814; in fact, they did not see the light till 1824, after Napoleon's death.

'Twas thus that I sang in the time of alarms.

Oh, if kings would consent to bear no other arms, And people enjoyed what was best for them all, The sweet little game of the Cup and the Ball, Our Burgundy then might be free of all fear, And return to the good days of Saturn and Rhea.

These fine verses were published in a first and only edition from the press of Bournier, printer of Ville-aux-Fayes. One hundred subscribers, in the sum of three francs, guaranteed the dangerous precedent of immortality to the poem,--a liberality that was all the greater because these hundred persons had heard the poem from beginning to end a hundred times over.

Madame Soudry had lately suppressed the cup-and-ball, which usually lay on a pier-table in the salon and for the last seven years had given rise to endless quotations, for she finally discovered in the toy a rival to her own attractions.

As to the author, who boasted of future poems in his desk, it is enough to quote the terms in which he mentioned to the leading society of Soulanges a rival candidate for literary honors.

"Have you heard a curious piece of news?" he had said, two years earlier. "There is another poet in Burgundy! Yes," he added, remarking the astonishment on all faces, "he comes from Macon. But you could never imagine the subjects he takes up,--a perfect jumble, absolutely unintelligible,--lakes, stars, waves, billows! not a single philosophical image, not even a didactic effort! he is ignorant of the very meaning of poetry. He calls the sky by its name. He says 'moon,'

bluntly, instead of naming it 'the planet of night.' That's what the desire to be thought original brings men to," added Gourdon, mournfully.

"Poor young man! A Burgundian, and sing such stuff as that!--the pity of it! If he had only consulted me, I would have pointed out to him the n.o.blest of all themes, wine,--a poem to be called the Baccheide; for which, alas! I now feel myself too old."

This great poet is still ignorant of his finest triumph (though he owes it to the fact of being a Burgundian), namely, that of living in the town of Soulanges, so rounded and perfected within itself that it knows nothing of the modern Pleiades, not even their names.

A hundred Gourdons made poetry under the Empire, and yet they tell us it was a period that neglected literature! Examine the "Journal de la Libraire" and you will find poems on the game of draughts, on backgammon, on tricks with cards, on geography, typography, comedy, etc.,--not to mention the vaunted masterpieces of Delille on Piety, Imagination, Conversation; and those of Berchoux on Gastromania and Dansomania, etc. Who can foresee the chances and changes of taste, the caprices of fas.h.i.+on, the transformations of the human mind? The generations as they pa.s.s along sweep out of sight the last fragments of the idols they found on their path and set up other G.o.ds,--to be overthrown like the rest.

Sarcus, a handsome little man with a dapple-gray head, devoted himself in turn to Themis and to Flora,--in other words, to legislation and a greenhouse. For the last twelve years he had been meditating a book on the History of the Inst.i.tution of Justices of the Peace, "whose political and judiciary role," he said, "had already pa.s.sed through several phases, all derived from the Code of Brumaire, year IV.; and to-day that inst.i.tution, so precious to the nation, had lost its power because the salaries were not in keeping with the importance of its functions, which ought to be performed by irremovable officials." Rated in the community as an able man, Sarcus was the accepted statesman of Madame Soudry's salon; you can readily imagine that he was the leading bore. They said he talked like a book. Gaubertin prophesied he would receive the cross of the Legion of honor, but not until the day when, as Leclercq's successor, he should take his seat on the benches of the Left Centre.

Guerbet, the collector, a man of parts, a heavy, fat, individual with a b.u.t.tery face, a toupet on his bald spot, gold earrings, which were always in difficulty with his s.h.i.+rt-collar, had the hobby of pomology.

Proud of possessing the finest fruit-garden in the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, he gathered his first crops a month later than those of Paris; his hot-beds supplied him with pine-apples, nectarines, and peas, out of season. He brought bunches of strawberries to Madame Soudry with pride when the fruit could be bought for ten sous a basket in Paris.

Soulanges possessed a pharmaceutist named Vermut, a chemist, who was more of a chemist than Sarcus was a statesman, or Lupin a singer, or Gourdon the elder a scientist, or his brother a poet. Nevertheless, the leading society of Soulanges did not take much notice of Vermut, and the second-cla.s.s society took none at all. The instinct of the first may have led them to perceive the real superiority of this thinker, who said little but smiled at their absurdities so satirically that they first doubted his capacity and then whispered tales against it; as for the other cla.s.s they took no notice of him one way or the other.

Vermut was the b.u.t.t of Madame Soudry's salon. No society is complete without a victim,--without an object to pity, ridicule, despise, and protect. Vermut, full of his scientific problems, often came with his cravat untied, his waistcoat unb.u.t.toned, and his little green surtout spotted.

The little man, gifted with the patience of a chemist, could not enjoy (that is the term employed in the provinces to express the abolition of domestic rule) Madame Vermut,--a charming woman, a lively woman, capital company (for she could lose forty sous at cards and say nothing), a woman who railed at her husband, annoyed him with epigrams, and declared him to be an imbecile unable to distil anything but dulness. Madame Vermut was one of those women who in the society of a small town are the life and soul of amus.e.m.e.nt and who set things going. She supplied the salt of her little world, kitchen-salt, it is true; her jokes were somewhat broad, but society forgave them; though she was capable of saying to the cure Taupin, a man of seventy years of age, with white hair, "Hold your tongue, my lad."

The miller of Soulanges, possessing an income of fifty thousand francs, had an only daughter whom Lupin desired for his son Amaury, since he had lost the hope of marrying him to Gaubertin's daughter. This miller, a Sarcus-Taupin, was the Nucingen of the little town. He was supposed to be thrice a millionaire; but he never transacted business with others, and thought only of grinding his wheat and keeping a monopoly of it; his most noticeable point was a total absence of politeness and good manners.

The elder Guerbet, brother of the post-master at Conches, possessed an income of ten thousand francs, besides his salary as collector. The Gourdons were rich; the doctor had married the only daughter of old Monsieur Gendrin-Vatebled, keeper of the forests and streams, whom the family were now _expecting to die_, while the poet had married the niece and sole heiress of the Abbe Taupin, the curate of Soulanges, a stout priest who lived in his cure like a rat in his cheese.

This clever ecclesiastic, devoted to the leading society, kind and obliging to the second, apostolic to the poor and unfortunate, made himself beloved by the whole town. He was cousin of the miller and cousin of the Sarcuses, and belonged therefore to the neighborhood and to its mediocracy. He always dined out and saved expenses; he went to weddings but came away before the ball; he paid the costs of public wors.h.i.+p, saying, "It is my business." And the parish let him do it, with the remark, "We have an excellent priest." The bishop, who knew the Soulanges people and was not at all misled as to the true value of the abbe, was glad enough to keep in such a town a man who made religion acceptable, and who knew how to fill his church and preach to sleepy heads.

It is unnecessary to remark that not only each of these worthy burghers possessed some one of the special qualifications which are necessary to existence in the provinces, but also that each cultivated his field in the domain of vanity without a rival. Pere Guerbet understood finance, Soudry might have been minister of war; if Cuvier had pa.s.sed that way incognito, the leading society of Soulanges would have proved to him that he knew nothing in comparison with Monsieur Gourdon the doctor.

"Adolphe Nourrit with his thread of a voice," remarked the notary with patronizing indulgence, "was scarcely worthy to accompany the nightingale of Soulanges." As to the author of the "Cup-and-Ball" (which was then being printed at Bournier's), society was satisfied that a poet of his force could not be met with in Paris, for Delille was now dead.

This provincial bourgeoisie, so comfortably satisfied with itself, took the lead through the various superiorities of its members. Therefore the imagination of those who ever resided, even for a short time, in a little town of this kind can conceive the air of profound satisfaction upon the faces of these people, who believed themselves the solar plexus of France, all of them armed with incredible dexterity and shrewdness to do mischief,--all, in their wisdom, declaring that the hero of Essling was a coward, Madame de Montcornet a manoeuvring Parisian, and the Abbe Brossette an ambitious little priest.

If Rigou, Soudry, and Gaubertin had lived at Ville-aux-Fayes, they would have quarrelled; their various pretensions would have clashed; but fate ordained that the Lucullus of Blangy felt too strongly the need of solitude, in which to wallow at his ease in usury and sensuality, to live anywhere but at Blangy; that Madame Soudry had sense enough to see that she could reign nowhere else except at Soulanges; and that Ville-aux-Fayes was Gaubertin's place of business. Those who enjoy studying social nature will admit that General Montcornet was pursued by special ill-luck in this accidental separation of his dangerous enemies, who thus accomplished the evolutions of their individual power and vanity at such distances from each other that neither star interfered with the orbit of the other,--a fact which doubled and trebled their powers of mischief.

Nevertheless, though all these worthy bourgeois, proud of their accomplishments, considered their society as far superior in attractions to that of Ville-aux-Fayes, and repeated with comic pomposity the local dictum, "Soulanges is a town of society and social pleasures," it must not be supposed that Ville-aux-Fayes accepted this supremacy. The Gaubertin salon ridiculed ("in petto") the salon Soudry. By the manner in which Gaubertin remarked, "We are a financial community, engaged in actual business; we have the folly to fatigue ourselves in making fortunes," it was easy to perceive a latent antagonism between the earth and the moon. The moon believed herself useful to the earth, and the earth governed the moon. Earth and moon, however, lived in the closest intimacy. At the carnival the leading society of Soulanges went in a body to four b.a.l.l.s given by Gaubertin, Gendrin, Leclercq, and Soudry, junior. Every Sunday the latter, his wife, Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle Elise Gaubertin dined with the Soudrys at Soulanges. When the sub-prefect was invited, and when the postmaster of Conches arrived to take pot-luck, Soulanges enjoyed the sight of four official equipages drawn up at the door of the Soudry mansion.

CHAPTER II. THE CONSPIRATORS IN THE QUEEN'S SALON

Reaching Soulanges about half-past five o'clock, Rigou was sure of finding the usual party a.s.sembled at the Soudrys'. There, as everywhere else in town, the dinner-hour was three o'clock, according to the custom of the last century. From five to nine the notables of Soulanges met in Madame Soudry's salon to exchange the news, make their political speeches, comment upon the private lives of every one in the valley, and talk about Les Aigues, which latter topic kept the conversation going for at least an hour every day. It was everybody's business to learn at least something of what was going on, and also to pay their court to the mistress of the house.

After this preliminary talk they played at boston, the only game the queen understood. When the fat old Guerbet had mimicked Madame Isaure, Gaubertin's wife, laughed at her languis.h.i.+ng airs, imitated her thin voice, her pinched mouth, and her juvenile ways; when the Abbe Taupin had related one of the tales of his repertory; when Lupin had told of some event at Ville-aux-Fayes, and Madame Soudry had been deluged with compliments ad nauseum, the company would say: "We have had a charming game of boston."

Too self-indulgent to be at the trouble of driving over to the Soudrys'

merely to hear the vapid talk of its visitors and to see a Parisian monkey in the guise of an old woman, Rigou, far superior in intelligence and education to this petty society, never made his appearance unless business brought him over to meet the notary. He excused himself from visiting on the ground of his occupations, his habits, and his health, which latter did not allow him, he said, to return at night along a road which led by the foggy banks of the Thune.

The tall, stiff usurer always had an imposing effect upon Madame Soudry's company, who instinctively recognized in his nature the cruelty of the tiger with steel claws, the craft of a savage, the wisdom of one born in a cloister and ripened by the sun of gold,--a man to whom Gaubertin had never yet been willing to fully commit himself.

The moment the little green carriole and the bay horse pa.s.sed the Cafe de la Paix, Urbain, Soudry's man-servant, who was seated on a bench under the dining-room windows, and was gossipping with the tavern-keeper, shades his eyes with his hand to see who was coming.

"It's Pere Rigou," he said. "I must go round and open the door. Take his horse, Socquard." And Urbain, a former trooper, who could not get into the gendarmerie and had therefore taken service with Soudry, went round the house to open the gates of the courtyard.

Socquard, a famous personage throughout the valley, was treated, as you see, with very little ceremony by the valet. But so it is with many ill.u.s.trious people who are so kind as to walk and to sneeze and to sleep and to eat precisely like common mortals.

Socquard, born a Hercules, could carry a weight of eleven hundred pounds; a blow of his fist applied on a man's back would break the vertebral column in two; he could bend an iron bar, or hold back a carriage drawn by one horse. A Milo of Crotona in the valley, his fame had spread throughout the department, where all sorts of foolish stories were current about him, as about all celebrities. It was told how he had once carried a poor woman and her donkey and her basket on his back to market; how he had been known to eat a whole ox and drink the fourth of a hogshead of wine in one day, etc. Gentle as a marriageable girl, Socquard, who was a stout, short man, with a placid face, broad shoulders, and a deep chest, where his lungs played like the bellows of a forge, possessed a flute-like voice, the limpid tones of which surprised all those who heard them for the first time.

Like Tonsard, whose renown released him from the necessity of giving proofs of his ferocity, in fact, like all other men who are backed by public opinion of one kind or another, Socquard never displayed his extraordinary muscular force unless asked to do so by friends. He now took the horse as the usurer drew up at the steps of the portico.

"Are you all well at home, Monsieur Rigou?" said the ill.u.s.trious innkeeper.

"Pretty well, my good friend," replied Rigou. "Do Plissoud and Bonnebault and Viollet and Amaury still continue good customers?"

This question, uttered in a tone of good-natured interest, was by no means one of those empty speeches which superiors are apt to bestow upon inferiors. In his leisure moments Rigou thought over the smallest details of "the affair," and Fourchon had already warned him that there was something suspicious in the intimacy between Plissoud, Bonnebault, and the brigadier, Viollet.

Bonnebault, in payment of a few francs lost at cards, might very likely tell the secrets he heard at Tonsard's to Viollet; or he might let them out over his punch without realizing the importance of such gossip. But as the information of the old otter man might be instigated by thirst, Rigou paid no attention except so far as it concerned Plissoud, whose situation was likely to inspire him with a desire to counteract the coalition against Les Aigues, if only to get his paws greased by one or the other of the two parties.

Plissoud combined with his duties of under-sheriff other occupations which were poorly remunerated, that of agent of insurance (a new form of enterprise just beginning to show itself in France), agent, also, of a society providing against the chances of recruitment. His insufficient pay and a love of billiards and boiled wine made his future doubtful.

Like Fourchon, he cultivated the art of doing nothing, and expected his fortune through some lucky but problematic chance. He hated the leading society, but he had measured its power. He alone knew the middle-cla.s.s coalition organized by Gaubertin to its depths; and he continued to sneer at the rich men of Soulanges and Ville-aux-Fayes, as if he alone represented the opposition. Without money and not respected, he did not seem a person to be feared professionally, and so Brunet, glad to have a despised compet.i.tor, protected him and helped him along, to prevent him selling his business to some eager young man, like Bonnac for instance, who might force him, Brunet, to divide the patronage of the canton between them.

"Thanks to those fellows, we keep the ball a-rolling," said Socquard.

"But folks are trying to imitate my boiled wine."

"Sue them," said Rigou, sententiously.

"That would lead too far," replied the innkeeper.

"Do your clients get on well together?"

"Tolerably, yes; sometimes they'll have a row, but that's only natural for players."