Sons of the Soil, Honoré de Balzac [epub read online books TXT] 📗

rare indeed! The things about us are seldom in keeping with the condition of our souls!

The picture was so pretty that the countess stopped short and pointed it out to Blondet and the abbe; for they could see Madame Michaud from where they stood, without her seeing them.

"I always come this way when I walk in the park," said the countess, softly. "I delight in looking at the pavilion and its two turtle-doves, as much as I delight in a fine view."

She leaned significantly on Blondet's arm, as if to make him share sentiments too delicate for words but which all women feel.

"I wish I were a gate-keeper at Les Aigues," said Blondet, smiling. "Why! what troubles you?" he added, noticing an expression of sadness on the countess's face.

"Nothing," she replied.

Women are always hiding some important thought when they say, hypocritically, "It is nothing."

"A woman may be the victim of ideas which would seem very flimsy to you," she added, "but which, to us, are terrible. As for me, I envy Olympe's lot."

"God hears you," said the abbe, smiling as though to soften the sternness of his remark.

Madame de Montcornet grew seriously uneasy when she noticed an expression of fear and anxiety in Olympe's face and attitude. By the way a woman draws out her needle or sets her stitches another woman understands her thoughts. In fact, though wearing a rose-colored dress, with her hair carefully braided about her head, the bailiff's wife was thinking of matters that were out of keeping with her pretty dress, the glorious day, and the work her hands were engaged on. Her beautiful brow, and the glance she turned sometimes on the ground at her feet, sometimes on the foliage around, evidently seeing nothing, betrayed some deep anxiety,--all the more unconsciously because she supposed herself alone.

"Just as I was envying her! What can have saddened her?" whispered the countess to the abbe.

"Madame," he replied in the same tone, "tell me why man is often seized with vague and unaccountable presentiments of evil in the very midst of some perfect happiness?"

"Abbe!" said Blondet, smiling, "you talk like a bishop. Napoleon said, 'Nothing is stolen, all is bought!'"

"Such a maxim, uttered by those imperial lips, takes the proportions of society itself," replied the priest.

"Well, Olympe, my dear girl, what is the matter?" said the countess going up to her former maid. "You seem sad and thoughtful; is it a lover's quarrel?"

Madame Michaud's face, as she rose, changed completely.

"My dear," said Emile Blondet, in a fatherly tone, "I should like to know what clouds that brow of yours, in this pavilion where you are almost as well lodged as the Comte d'Artois at the Tuileries. It is like a nest of nightingales in a grove! And what a husband we have!--the bravest fellow of the young garde, and a handsome one, who loves us to distraction! If I had known the advantages Montcornet has given you here I should have left my diatribing business and made myself a bailiff."

"It is not the place for a man of your talent, monsieur," replied Olympe, smiling at Blondet as an old acquaintance.

"But what troubles you, dear?" said the countess.

"Madame, I'm afraid--"

"Afraid! of what?" said the countess, eagerly; for the word reminded her of Mouche and Fourchon.

"Afraid of the wolves, is that it?" said Emile, making Madame Michaud a sign, which she did not understand.

"No, monsieur,--afraid of the peasants. I was born in Le Perche, where of course there are some bad people, but I had no idea how wicked people could be until I came here. I try not to meddle in Michaud's affairs, but I do know that he distrusts the peasants so much that he goes armed, even in broad daylight, when he enters the forest. He warns his men to be always on the alert. Every now and then things happen about here that bode no good. The other day I was walking along the wall, near the source of that little sandy rivulet which comes from the forest and enters the park through a culvert about five hundred feet from here,--you know it, madame? it is called Silver Spring, because of the star-flowers Bouret is said to have sown there. Well, I overheard the talk of two women who were washing their linen just where the path to Conches crosses the brook; they did not know I was there. Our house can be seen from that point, and one old woman pointed it out to the other, saying: 'See what a lot of money they have spent on the man who turned out Courtecuisse.' 'They ought to pay a man well when they set him to harass poor people as that man does,' answered the other. 'Well, it won't be for long,' said the first one; 'the thing is going to end soon. We have a right to our wood. The late Madame allowed us to take it. That's thirty years ago, so the right is ours.' 'We'll see what we shall see next winter,' replied the second. 'My man has sworn the great oath that all the gendarmerie in the world sha'n't keep us from getting our wood; he says he means to get it himself, and if the worst happens so much the worse for them!' 'Good God!' cried the other; 'we can't die of cold, and we must bake bread to eat! They want for nothing, _those others_! the wife of that scoundrel of a Michaud will be taken care of, I warrant you!' And then, Madame, they said such horrible things of me and of you and of Monsieur le comte; and they finally declared that the farms would all be burned, and then the chateau."

"Bah!" said Emile, "idle talk! They have been robbing the general, and they will not be allowed to rob him any longer. These people are furious, that's the whole of it. You must remember that the law and the government are always strongest everywhere, even in Burgundy. In case of an outbreak the general could bring a regiment of cavalry here, if necessary."

The abbe made a sign to Madame Michaud from behind the countess, telling her to say no more about her fears, which were doubtless the effect of that second sight which true passion bestows. The soul, dwelling exclusively on one only being, grasps in the end the moral elements that surround it, and sees in them the makings of the future. The woman who loves feels the same presentiments that later illuminate her motherhood. Hence a certain melancholy, a certain inexplicable sadness which surprises men, who are one and all distracted from any such concentration of their souls by the cares of life and the continual necessity for action. All true love becomes to a woman an active contemplation, which is more or less lucid, more or less profound, according to her nature.

"Come, my dear, show your home to Monsieur Emile," said the countess, whose mind was so pre-occupied that she forgot La Pechina, who was the ostensible object of her visit.

The interior of the restored pavilion was in keeping with its exterior. On the ground-floor the old divisions had been replaced, and the architect, sent from Paris with his own workmen (a cause of bitter complaint in the neighborhood against the master of Les Aigues), had made four rooms out of the space. First, an ante-chamber, at the farther end of which was a winding wooden staircase, behind which came the kitchen; on either side of the antechamber was a dining-room and a parlor panelled in oak now nearly black, with armorial bearings in the divisions of the ceilings. The architect chosen by Madame de Montcornet for the restoration of Les Aigues had taken care to put the furniture of this room in keeping with its original decoration.

At the time of which we write fashion had not yet given an exaggerated value to the relics of past ages. The carved settee, the high-backed chairs covered with tapestry, the consoles, the clocks, the tall embroidery frames, the tables, the lustres, hidden away in the second-hand shops of Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes were fifty per-cent cheaper than the modern, ready-made furniture of the faubourg Saint Antoine. The architect had therefore bought two or three cartloads of well-chosen old things, which, added to a few others discarded at the chateau, made the little salon of the gate of the Avonne an artistic creation. As to the dining-room, he painted it in browns and hung it with what was called a Scotch paper, and Madame Michaud added white cambric curtains with green borders at the windows, mahogany chairs covered with green cloth, two large buffets and a table, also in mahogany. This room, ornamented with engravings of military scenes, was heated by a porcelain stove, on each side of which were sporting-guns suspended on the walls. These adornments, which cost but little, were talked of throughout the whole valley as the last extreme of oriental luxury. Singular to say, they, more than anything else, excited the envy of Gaubertin, and whenever he thought of his fixed determination to bring Les Aigues to the hammer and cut it in pieces, he reserved for himself, "in petto," this beautiful pavilion.

On the next floor three chambers sufficed for the household. At the windows were muslin curtains which reminded a Parisian of the particular taste and fancy of bourgeois requirements. Left to herself in the decoration of these rooms, Madame Michaud had chosen satin papers; on the mantel-shelf of her bedroom--which was furnished in that vulgar style of mahogany and Utrecht velvet which is seen everywhere, with its high-backed bed and canopy to which embroidered muslin curtains are fastened--stood an alabaster clock between two candelabra covered with gauze and flanked by two vases filled with artificial flowers protected by glass shades, a conjugal gift of the former cavalry sergeant. Above, under the roof, the bedrooms of the cook, the man-of-all-work, and La Pechina had benefited by the recent restoration.

"Olympe, my dear, you did not tell me all," said the countess, entering Madame Michaud's bedroom, and leaving Emile and the abbe on the stairway, whence they descended when they heard her shut the door.

Madame Michaud, to whom the abbe had contrived to whisper a word, was now anxious to say no more about her fears, which were really greater than she had intimated, and she therefore began to talk of a matter which reminded the countess of the object of her visit.

"I love Michaud, madame, as you know. Well, how would you like to have, in your own house, a rival always beside you?"

"A rival?"

"Yes, madame; that swarthy girl you gave me to take care of loves Michaud without knowing it, poor thing! The child's conduct, long a mystery to me, has been cleared up in my mind for some days."

"Why, she is only thirteen years old!"

"I know that, madame. But you will admit that a woman who is three months pregnant and means to nurse her child herself may have some fears; but as I did not want to speak of this before those gentlemen, I talked a great deal of nonsense when you questioned me," said the generous creature, adroitly.

Madame Michaud was not really afraid of Genevieve Niseron, but for the last three days she was in mortal terror of some disaster from the peasantry.

"How did you discover this?" said the countess.

"From everything and from nothing," replied Olympe. "The poor little thing moves with the slowness of a tortoise when she is obliged to obey me,