loaded cannon pointed at its heart.'

c We agree,' said Chesnel, without admitting that
the three hundred thousand francs was in his possession ;
* but the amount must be deposited with a third party
and returned to the family after your election and
repayment.'

1 No ; after the marriage of my grand-niece, Mile.
Duval. She will very likely have four million francs
some day ; the reversion of our property (mine and my
wife's) shall be settled upon her by her marriage-con-
tract, and you shall arrange a match between her and
the young Count.'

' Never ! '

4 Never ! ' repeated du Croisier, quite intoxicated with
triumph. c Good-night ! '

' Idiot that I am,' thought Chesnel, ' why did I shrink
from a lie to such a man ? '

Du Croisier took himself off; he was pleased with
himself; he had enjoyed Chesnel's humiliation ; he had
held the destinies of a proud house, the representative of
the aristocracy of the province, suspended in his hand ;
he had set the print of his heel on the very heart of the
d'Esgrignons ; and, finally, he had broken off the whole



278 The Jealousies of a Country Town

negotiation on the score of his wounded pride. He
went up to his room, leaving his wife alone with
Chesnel. In his intoxication, he saw his victory clear
before him. He firmly believed that the three hundred
thousand francs had been squandered ; the d'Esgrignons
must sell or mortgage all that they had to raise the
money ; the Assize Court was inevitable to his mind.

An affair of forgery can always be settled out of
court in France if the missing amount is returned.
The losers by the crime are usually well-to-do, and have
no wish to blight an imprudent man's character. But
du Croisier had no mind to slacken his hold until he
knew what he was about. He meditated until he fell
asleep on the magnificent manner in which his hopes
would be fulfilled by way of the Assize Court or by
marriage. The murmur of voices below, the lamenta-
tions of Chesnel and Mme. du Croisier, sounded sweet in
his ears.

Mme. du Croisier shared Chesnel's views of the
d'Esgrignons. She was a deeply religious woman, a
Royalist attached to the noblesse ; the interview had
been in every way a cruel shock to her feelings. She, a
staunch Royalist, had heard the roaring of that Liberal-
ism, which, in her director's opinion, wished to crush
the Church. The Left benches for her meant the
popular upheaval and the scaffolds of 1793.

' What would your uncle, that sainted man who hears
us, say to this ? ' exclaimed Chesnel. Mme. du Croisier
made no reply, but the great tears rolled down her
cheeks.

4 You have already been the cause of one poor boy's
death ; his mother will go mourning all her days,' con-
tinued Chesnel (he saw how his words told, but he
would have struck harder and even broken this woman's
heart to save Victurnien). c Do you want to kill Mile.
Armande, for she would not survive the dishonour of
the house for a week ? Do you wish to be the death of



The Jealousies of a Country Town 279

poor Chesnel, your old notary ? For I shall kill the
Count in prison before they shall bring the charge
against him, and take my own life afterwards, before
they shall try me for murder in an Assize Court.'

' That is enough ! that is enough, my friend ? I
would do anything to put a stop to such an affair ; but I
never knew M. du Croisier's real character until a few
minutes ago. To you I can make the admission : there
is nothing to be done.'

'But what if there is? '

c I would give half the blood in my veins that it were
so,' said she, finishing her sentence by a wistful shake
of the head.

As the First Consul, beaten on the field of Marengo
till five o'clock in the evening, by six o'clock saw the
tide of battle turned by Desaix's desperate attack and
Kellermann's terrific charge, so Chesnel in the midst of
defeat saw the beginnings of victory. No one but a
Chesnel, an old notary, an ex-steward of the manor, old
Maitre Sorbier's junior clerk, in the sudden flash of
lucidity which comes with despair, could rise thus, high
as a Napoleon, nay, higher. This was not Marengo, it
was Waterloo, and the Prussians had come up ; Chesnel
saw this, and was determined to beat them off the
field.

' Madame,' he said, 'remember that I have been your
man of business for twenty years ; remember that if
the d'Esgrignons mean the honour of the province,
you represent the honour of the bourgeoisie; it
rests with you, and you alone, to save the ancient
house. Now, answer me ; are you going to allow dis-
honour to fall on the shade of your dead uncle, on the
d'Esgrignons, on poor Chesnel ? Do you want to kill
Mile. Armande weeping yonder ? Or do you wish to
expiate wrongs done to others by a deed which will
rejoice your ancestors, the intendants of the dukes of
Alencon, and bring comfort to the soul of our dear



280 The Jealousies of a Country Town

Abbe. If he could rise from his grave, he would com-
mand you to do this thing that I beg of you upon my
knees.'

1 What is it ? ' asked Mme. du Croisier.

4 Well. Here are the hundred thousand crowns,'
said Chesnel, drawing the bundles of notes from
his pocket. ' Take them, and there will be an end
of it.'

' If that is all,' she began, ' and if no harm can come
of it to my husband '

4 Nothing but good,' Chesnel replied. l You are
saving him from eternal punishment in hell, at the cost
of a slight disappointment here below.

c He will not be compromised, will he ? ' she asked,
looking into Chesnel's face.

Then Chesnel read the depths of the poor wife's
mind. Mme. du Croisier was hesitating between her
two creeds ; between wifely obedience to her husband
as laid down by the Church, and obedience to the altar
and the throne. Her husband, in her eyes, was acting
wrongly, but she dared not blame him ; she would fain
save the d'Esgrignons, but she was loyal to her husband's
interests.

1 Not in the least,' Chesnel answered ; c your old
notary swears it by the Holy Gospels '

He had nothing left to lose for the d'Esgrignons but
his soul ; he risked it now by this horrible perjury, but
Mme. du Croisier must be deceived, there was no other
choice but death. Without losing a moment, he dictated
a form of receipt by which Mme. du Croisier acknow-
ledged payment of a hundred thousand crowns five
days before the fatal letter of exchange appeared j for he
recollected that du Croisier was away from home, super-
intending improvements on his wife's property at the
time.

4 Now swear to me that you will declare before the
examining magistrate that you received the money on



The Jealousies of a Country Town 281

that date,' he said, when Mme. du Croisier had taken
the notes and he held the receipt in his hand.
4 It will be a lie, will it not ? '

* Venial sin,' said Chesnel.

* I could not do it without consulting my director,
M. PAbbe Couturier.'

c Very well,' said Chesnel, l will you be guided entirely
by his advice in this affair ? '

C I promise that.'

c And you must not give the money to M. du Croisier
until you have been before the magistrate.'

c No. Ah ! God give me strength to appear in a
Court of Justice and maintain a lie before men ! '

Chesnel kissed Mme. du Croisier's hand, then stood
upright, and majestic as one of the prophets that Rafael
painted in the Vatican.

'Your uncle's soul is thrilled with joy,' he said ; 'you
have wiped out for ever the wrong that you did by
marrying an enemy of altar and throne' — words that
made a lively impression on Mme. du Croisier's timorous
mind.

Then Chesnel all at once bethought himself that he
must make sure of the lady's director, the Abbe du
Croisier. He knew how obstinately devout souls can
work for the triumph of their views when once they
come forward for their side, and wished to secure the
concurrence of the Church as early as possible. So he
went to the Hotel d'Esgrignon, roused up Mile. Armande,
gave her an account of that night's work, and sped her
to fetch the Bishop himself into the forefront of the
battle.

c Ah, God in heaven ! Thou must save the house of
d'Esgrignon ! ' he exclaimed, as he went slowly home
again. 'The affair is developing now into a fight in
a Court of Law. We are face to face with men that
have passions and interests of their own ; we can get any-
thing out of them. This du Croisier has taken advan-



282 The Jealousies of a Country Town

tage of the public prosecutor's absence ; the public
prosecutor is devoted to us, but since the opening of the
Chambers he has gone to Paris. Now, what can they
have done to get round his deputy ? They have induced
him to take up the charge without consulting his chief.
This mystery must be looked into, and the ground
surveyed to-morrow ; and then, perhaps, when I have
unravelled this web of theirs, I will go back to Paris to
set great powers at work through Mme. de Maufri-
gneuse.'

So he reasoned, poor, aged, clear-sighted wrestler,
before he lay down half dead with bearing the weight of
so much emotion and fatigue. And yet, before he fell
asleep he ran a searching eye over the list of magistrates,
taking all their secret ambitions into account, casting
about for ways of influencing them, calculating his
chances in the coming struggle. Chesnel's prolonged
scrutiny of consciences, given in a condensed form, will
perhaps serve as a picture of the judicial world in a
country town.

Magistrates and officials generally are obliged to
begin their career in the provinces ; judicial ambition
there ferments. At the outset every man looks towards
Paris ; they all aspire to shine in the vast theatre where
great political causes come before the courts, and the
higher branches of the legal profession are closely con-
nected with the palpitating interests of society. But
few are called to that paradise of the man of law, and
nine-tenths of the profession are bound sooner or later to
regard themselves as shelved for good in the provinces.
Wherefore, every Tribunal of First Instance and every
Court-Royal is sharply divided in two. The first
section has given up hope, and is either torpid or con-
tent ; content with the excessive respect paid to office
in a country town, or torpid with tranquillity. The
second section is made up of the younger sort, in whom
the desire of success is untempered as yet by disappoint-



The Jealousies of a Country Town 283

ment, and of the really clever men urged on continually
by ambition as with a goad ; and these two are possessed
with a sort of fanatical belief in their order.

At this time the younger men were full of Royalist
zeal against the enemies of the Bourbons. The most
insignificant deputy official was dreaming of conducting
a prosecution, and praying with all his might for one of
those political cases which bring a man's zeal into pro-
minence, draw the attention of the higher powers, and
mean advancement for King's men. Was there a
member of any official staff" of prosecuting counsel who
could hear of a Bonapartist conspiracy breaking out
somewhere else without a feeling of envy ? Where was
the man that did not burn to discover a Caron, or a
Berton, or a revolt of some sort ? With reasons of State,
and the necessity of diffusing the monarchical spirit
throughout France as their basis, and a fierce ambition
stirred up whenever party spirit ran high, these ardent
politicians on their promotion were lucid, clear-sighted,
and perspicacious. They kept up a vigorous detective
system throughout the kingdom ; they did the work of
spies, and urged the nation along a path of obedience,
from which it had no business to swerve.

Justice, thus informed with monarchical enthusiasm,
atoned for the errors of the ancient parliaments, and
walked, perhaps, too ostentatiously hand in hand with
religion. There was more zeal than discretion shown ;
but justice sinned not so much in the direction of
machiavellism as by giving too candid expression to its
views, when those views appeared to be opposed to the
general interests of a country which must be put safely
out of reach of revolutions. But taken as a whole, there
was still too much of the bourgeois element in the
administration ; it was too readily moved by petty
Liberal agitation ; and as a result, it was inevitable
that it should incline sooner or later to the Constitu-
tional party, and join ranks with the bourgeoisie in the



284 The Jealousies of a Country Town

day of battle. In the great body of legal functionaries,
as in other departments of the administration, there was
not wanting a certain hypocrisy, or rather that spirit of
imitation which always leads France to model herself on
the Court, and, quite unintentionally, to deceive the
powers that be.

Officials of both complexions were to be found in the
court in which young d'Esgrignon's fate depended. M.
le President du Ronceret and an elderly judge, Blondet
by name, represented the section of functionaries shelved
for good, and resigned to stay where they were ; while the
young and ambitious party comprised the examining
magistrate M. Camusot, and his deputy M. Michu,
appointed through the interest of the Cinq-Cygnes, and
certain of promotion to the Court of Appeal of Paris at
the first opportunity.

President du Ronceret held a permanent post ; it was
impossible to turn him out. The aristocratic party
declined to give him what he considered to be his due,
socially speaking ; so he declared for the bourgeoisie,
glossed over his disappointment with the name of in-
dependence, and failed to realise that his opinions con-
demned him to remain a president of a court of first
instance for the rest of his life. Once started on this
track, the sequence of events led du Ronceret to place
his hopes of advancement on the triumph of du Croisier
and the Left. He was in no better odour at the Pre-
fecture than at the Court-Royal. He was compelled to
keep on good terms with the authorities ; the Liberals
distrusted him, consequently he belonged to neither
party. He was obliged to resign his chances of election
to du Croisier, he exercised no influence, and played a
secondary part. The false position reacted on his
character ; he was soured and discontented ; he was tired
of political ambiguity, and privately had made up his
mind to come forward openly as leader of the Liberal
party, and so to strike ahead of du Croisier. His be-



The Jealousies of a Country Town 285

haviour in the d'Esgrignon affair was the first step in this
direction. To begin with, he was an admirable repre-
sentative of that section of the middle classes which
allows its petty passions to obscure the wider interests of
the country ; a class of crotchety politicians, upholding
the government one day and opposing it the next,
compromising every cause and helping none ; helpless
after they have done the mischief till they set about
brewing more ; unwilling to face their own incom-
petence, thwarting authority while professing to serve
it. With a compound of arrogance and humility they
demand of the people more submission than kings
expect, and fret their souls because those above them
are not brought down to their level, as if greatness
could be little, as if power existed without force.

President du Ronceret was a tall, spare man with a
receding forehead and scanty, auburn hair. He was
wall-eyed, his complexion was blotched, his lips thin and
hard, his scarcely audible voice came out like the husky
wheezings of asthma. He had for a wife a great,
solemn, clumsy creature, tricked out in the most
ridiculous fashion, and outrageously overdressed. Mme.
la Presidente gave herself the airs of a queen ; she wore
vivid colours, and always appeared at balls adorned with
the turban, dear to the British female, and lovingly
cultivated in out-of-the-way districts in France. Each
of the pair had an income of four or five thousand
francs, which, with the President's salary, reached a
total of some twelve thousand. In spite of a decided
tendency to parsimony, vanity required that they should
receive one evening in the week. Du Croisier might
import modern luxury into the town, M. and Mme. du
Ronceret were faithful to the old traditions. They had
always lived in the old-fashioned house belonging to Mme.
du Ronceret, and had made no changes in it since their
marriage. The house stood between a garden and a
courtyard. The grey old gable end, with one window



2 86 The Jealousies of a Country Town

in each story, gave upon the road. High walls enclosed
the garden and the yard, but the space taken up beneath
them in the garden by a walk shaded with chestnut
trees was rilled in the yard by a row of outbuildings.
An old rust-devoured iron gate in the garden wall
balanced the yard gateway, a huge, double-leaved car-
riage entrance with a buttress on either side, and a
mighty shell on the top. The same shell was repeated
over the house-door.

The whole place was gloomy, close, and airless. The
row of iron-grated openings in the opposite wall, as you
entered, reminded you of prison windows. Every
passer-by could look in through the railings to see how
the garden grew ; the flowers in the little square borders
never seemed to thrive there.

The drawing-room on the ground floor was lighted
by a single window on the side of the street, and a
French window above a flight of steps, which gave
upon the garden. The dining-room on the other side
of the great ante-chamber, with its windows also looking
out into the garden, was exactly the same size as the
drawing-room, and all three apartments were in harmony
with the general air of gloom. It wearied your eyes to
look at the ceilings all divided up by huge painted cross-
beams and adorned with a feeble lozenge pattern or a
rosette in the middle. The paint was old, startling in
tint, and begrimed with smoke. The sun had faded the
heavy silk curtains in the drawing-room ; the old-
fashioned Beauvais tapestry which covered the white-
painted furniture had lost all its colour with wear. A
Louis Quinze clock on the chimney-piece stood between
two extravagant, branched sconces filled with yellow
wax candles, which the Presidente only lighted on
occasions when the old-fashioned rock-crystal chandelier
emerged from its green wrapper. Three card-tables,
covered with threadbare baize, and a backgammon box,
sufficed for the recreations of the company ; and Mme.



The Jealousies of a Country Town 287

du Ronceret treated them to such refreshments as
cider, chestnuts, pastry puffs, glasses of eau sucree^ and
home-made orgeat. For some time past she had made
a practice of giving a party once a fortnight, when tea
and some pitiable attempts at pastry appeared to grace
the occasion.

Once a quarter the du Roncerets gave a grand three-
course dinner, which made a great sensation in the
town, a dinner served up in execrable ware, but prepared
with the science for which the provincial cook is remark-
able. It was a Gargantuan repast, which lasted for six
whole hours, and by abundance the President tried to
vie with du Croisier's elegance.

And so du Ronceret's life and its accessories were just
what might have been expected from his character and
his false position. He felt dissatisfied at home without
precisely knowing what was the matter ; but he dared
not go to any expense to change existing conditions,
and was only too glad to put by seven or eight thousand
francs every year, so as to leave his son Fabien a hand-
some private fortune. Fabien du Ronceret had no
mind for the magistracy, the bar, or the civil service,
and his pronounced turn for doing nothing drove his
parent to despair.

On this head there was rivalry between the President
and the Vice-president, old M. Blondet. M. Blondet,
for a long time past, had been sedulously cultivating an
acquaintance between his son and the Blandureau family.
The Blandureaus were well-to-do linen manufacturers,
with an only daughter, and it was on this daughter that
the President had fixed his choice of a wife for Fabien.
Now, Joseph Blondet's marriage with Mile. Blandureau
depended on his nomination to the post which his
father, old Blondet, hoped to obtain for him when he
himself should retire. But President du Ronceret, in
underhand ways, was thwarting the old man's plans,
and working indirectly upon the Blandureaus. Indeed,



288 The Jealousies of a Country Town

if it had not been for this affair of young d'Esgrignon's,
the astute President might have cut them out, father
and son, for their rivals were very much richer.

M. Blondet, the victim of the machiavellian Presi-
dent's intrigues, was one of the curious figures which lie
buried away in the provinces like old coins in a crypt.
He was at that time a man of sixty-seven or thereabouts,
but he carried his years well ; he was very tall, and in build
reminded you of the canons of the good old times.
The smallpox had riddled his face with numberless
dints, and spoilt the shape of his nose by imparting to it
a gimlet-like twist ; it was a countenance by no means
lacking in character, very evenly tinted with a diffused
red, lighted up by a pair of bright little eyes, with
a sardonic look in them, while a certain sarcastic
twitch of the purpled lips gave expression to that
feature.

Before the Revolution broke out, Blondet senior had
been a barrister ; afterwards he became the public
accuser, and one of the mildest of those formidable
functionaries. Goodman Blondet, as they used to call
him, deadened the force of the new doctrines by
acquiescing in them all, and putting none of them in
practice. He had been obliged to send one or two
nobles to prison ; but his further proceedings were
marked with such deliberation, that he brought them
through to the 9th Thermidor with a dexterity which
won respect for him on all sides. As a matter of fact,
Goodman Blondet ought to have been President of the
Tribunal, but when the courts of law were reorganised he
had been set aside ; Napoleon's aversion from Republicans
was apt to reappear in the smallest appointments under
his government. The qualification of ex-public
accuser, written in the margin of the list against
Blondet's name, set the Emperor inquiring of Cam-
baceres whether there might not be some scion of an
ancient parliamentary stock to appoint instead. The






The Jealousies of a Country Town 289

consequence was that du Ronceret, whose father had
been a councillor of parliament, was nominated to the
presidency ; but, the Emperor's repugnance notwith-
standing, Cambaceres allowed Blondet to remain on the
bench, saying that the old barrister was one of the best
jurisconsults in France.

Blondet's talents, his knowledge of the old law of the
land and subsequent legislation, should by rights have
brought him far in his profession ; but he had this much
in common with some few great spirits : he entertained
a prodigious contempt for his own special knowledge, and
reserved all his pretentions, leisure, and capacity for a
second pursuit unconnected with the law. To this
pursuit he gave his almost exclusive attention. The
good man was passionately fond of gardening. He was
in correspondence with some of the most celebrated
amateurs ; it was his ambition to create new species ; he
took an interest in botanical discoveries, and lived, in
short, in the world of flowers. Like all florists, he had a
predilection for one particular plant ; the pelargonium was
his especial favourite. The court, the cases that came
before it, and his outward life were as nothing to him
compared with the inward life of fancies and abundant
emotions which the old man led. He fell more and more
in love with his flower-seraglio ; and the pains which he
bestowed on his garden, the sweet round of the labours
of the months, held Goodman Blondet fast in his green-
house. But for that hobby he would have been a deputy
under the Empire, and shone conspicuous beyond a
doubt in the Corps Legislatif.

His marriage was the second cause of his obscurity.
As a man of forty, he was rash enough to marry a girl
of eighteen, by whom he had a son named Joseph in the
first year of their marriage. Three years afterwards
Mme. Blondet, then the prettiest woman in the town,
inspired in the prefect of the department a passion which
ended only with her death. The prefect was the father

T



290 The Jealousies of a Country Town

of her second son Emile ; the whole town knew this, old
Blondet himself knew it. The wife who might have
roused her husband's ambition, who might have won
him away from his flowers, positively encouraged the
judge in his botanical tastes. She no more cared to