leave the place than the prefect cared to leave his
prefecture so long as his mistress lived.

Blondet felt himself unequal at his age to a contest
with a young wife. He sought consolation in his green-
house, and engaged a very pretty servant-maid to assist
him to tend his ever-changing bevy of beauties. So
while the judge potted, pricked out, watered, layered,
slipped, blended, and induced his flowers to break,
Mme. Blondet spent his substance on the dress and
finery in which she shone at the prefecture. One
interest alone had power to draw her away from the
tender care of a romantic affection which the town
came to admire in the end : and this interest was
Emile's education. The child of love was a bright
and pretty boy, while Joseph was no less heavy and
plain-featured. The old judge, blinded by paternal
affection, loved Joseph as his wife loved Emile.

For a dozen years M. Blondet bore his lot with perfect
resignation. He shut his eyes to his wife's intrigue with
a dignified, well-bred composure, quite in the style of
an eighteenth century grand seigneur ; but, like all men
with a taste for a quiet life, he could cherish a profound
dislike, and he hated his younger son. When his wife
died, therefore, in 18 18, he turned the intruder out of
the house, and packed him off to Paris to study law on
an allowance of twelve hundred francs for all resource,
nor could any, cry of distress extract another penny from
his purse. Emile Blondet would have gone under if it
had not been for his real father.

M. Blondet's house was one of the prettiest in the
town. It stood almost opposite the prefecture, with a
neat little court in front. A row of old-fashioned iron



The Jealousies of a Country Town 291

railings between two brickwork piers enclosed it from
the street ; and a low wall, also of brick, with a second
row of railings along the top, connected the piers with
the neighbouring house. The little court, a space about
ten fathoms in width by twenty in length, was cut in
two by a brick pathway which ran from the gate to the
house door between a border on either side. Those
borders were always renewed ; at every season of the
year they exhibited a successful show of blossom, to the
admiration of the public. All along the back of the
garden-beds a quantity of climbing plants grew up and
covered the walls of the neighbouring houses with a
magnificent mantle ; the brickwork piers were hidden
in clusters of honeysuckle; and, to crown all, in a couple
of terra-cotta vases at the summit, a pair of acclimatised
cactuses displayed to the astonished eyes of the ignorant
those thick leaves bristling with spiny defences which
seem to be due to some plant disease.

It was a plain-looking house, built of brick, with
brickwork arches above the windows, and bright green
Venetian shutters to make it gay. Through the glass
door you could look straight across the house to the
opposite glass door, at the end of a long passage, and
down the central alley in the garden beyond ; while
through the windows of the dining-room and drawing-
room, which extended, like the passage, from back to front
of the house, you could often catch further glimpses of
the flower-beds in a garden of about two acres in extent.
Seen from the road, the brickwork harmonised with the
fresh flowers and shrubs, for two centuries had overlaid
it with mosses and green and russet tints. No one
could pass through the town without falling in love with
a house with such charming surroundings, so covered with
flowers and mosses to the roof-ridge, where two pigeons of
glazed crockery ware were perched by way of ornament.

M. Blondet possessed an income of about four thousand
livres derived from land, besides the old house in the



292 The Jealousies of a Country Town

town. He meant to avenge his wrongs legitimately
enough. He would leave his house, his lands, his seat
on the bench to his son Joseph, and the whole town
knew what he meant to do. He had made a will in that
son's favour ; he had gone as far as the Code will permit
a man to go in the way of disinheriting one child to
benefit another ; and what was more, he had been
putting by money for the past fifteen years to enable
his lout of a son to buy back from Emile that portion of
his father's estate which could not legally be taken away
from him.

Emile Blondet thus turned adrift had contrived to gain
distinction in Paris, but so far it was rather a name than
a practical result. Emile's indolence, recklessness, and
happy-go-lucky ways drove his real father to despair ;
and when that father died, a half-ruined man, turned out
of office by one of the political reactions so frequent
under the Restoration, it was with a mind uneasy as to
the future of a man endowed with the most brilliant
qualities.

Emile Blondet found support in a friendship with a
Mile, de Troisville, whom he had known before her
marriage with the Comte de Montcornet. His mother
was living when the Troisvilles came back after the
emigration ; she was related to the family, distantly it is
true, but the connection was close enough to allow her
to introduce Emile to the house. She, poor woman,
foresaw the future. She knew that when she died her
son would lose both mother and father, a thought which
made death doubly bitter, so she tried to interest others
in him. She encouraged the liking that sprang up
between Emile and the eldest daughter of the house of
Troisville ; but while the liking was exceedingly strong
on the young lady's part, a marriage was out of the
question. It was a romance on the pattern of Paul et
Virginie. Mme. Blondet did what she could to teach
her son to look to the Troisvilles, to found a lasting



The Jealousies of a Country Town 293

attachment on a children's game of c make-believe ' love,
which was bound to end as boy-and-girl romances
usually do. When Mile, de Troisville's marriage with
General Montcornet was announced, Mme. Blondet, a
dying woman, went to^the bride and solemnly implored
her never to abandon Emile, and to use her influence for
him in society in Paris, whither the General's fortune
summoned her to shine.

Luckily for Emile, he was able to make his own way.
He made his appearance, at the age of twenty, as one of
the masters of modern literature ; and met with no less
success in the society into which he was launched by the
father who at first could afford to bear the expense of
the young man's extravagance. Perhaps Emile's pre-
cocious celebrity and the good figure that he made
strengthened the bonds of his friendship with the
Countess. Perhaps Mme. de Montcornet, with the
Russian blood in her veins (her mother was the daughter
of the Princess ScherbellofF), might have cast off the
friend of her childhood if he had been a poor man
struggling with all his might among the difficulties
which beset a man of letters in Paris ; but by the time
that the real strain of Emile's adventurous life began,
their attachment was unalterable on either side. He
was looked upon as one of the leading lights of
journalism when youno; d'Esgrignon met him at his
first supper-party in Paris ; his acknowledged position
in the world of letters was very high, and he towered
above his reputation. Goodman Blondet had not the
faintest conception of the power which the Constitu-
tional Government had given to the press ; nobody
ventured to talk in his presence of the son of whom he
refused to hear. And so it came to pass that he r knew
nothing of Emile whom he had cursed and Emile's
greatness.

Old Blondet's integrity was as deeply rooted in him
as his passion for flowers ; he knew nothing but law



294 The Jealousies of a Country Town

and botany. He would have interviews with litigants,
listen to them, chat with them, and show them his
flowers ; he would accept rare seeds from them ; but
once on the bench, no judge on earth was more
impartial. Indeed, his manner of proceeding was so
well known, that litigants never went near him except
to hand over some document which might enlighten
him in the performance of his duty, and nobody tried to
throw dust in his eyes. With his learning, his lights,
and his way of holding his real talents cheap, he was so
indispensable to President du Ronceret, that, matri-
monial schemes apart, that functionary would have done
all that he could, in an underhand way, to prevent the
vice-president from retiring in favour of his son. If
the learned old man left the bench, the President would
be utterly unable to do without him.

Goodman Blondet did not know that it was in
Emile's power to fulfil all his wishes in a few hours.
The simplicity of his life was worthy of one of Plutarch's
men. In the evening he looked over his cases ; next
morning he worked among his flowers ; and all day long
he gave decisions on the bench. The pretty maid-
servant, now of ripe age, and wrinkled like an Easter
pippin, looked after the house, and they lived according
to the established customs of the strictest parsimony.
Mile. Cadot always carried the keys of her cupboards
and fruit-loft about with her. She was indefatigable.
She went to market herself, she cooked and dusted and
swept, and never missed mass of a morning. To give
some idea of the domestic life of the household, it will
be enough to remark that the father and son never ate
fruit till it was beginning to spoil, because Mile. Cadot
always brought out anything that would not keep. No
one in the house ever tasted the luxury of new bread,
and all the fast days in the calendar were punctually
observed. The gardener was put on rations like a
soldier ; the elderly Valideh always kept an eye upon



The Jealousies of a Country Town 295

him. And she, for her part, was so deferentially treated,
that she took her meals with the family, and in conse-
quence was continually trotting to and fro between the
kitchen and the parlour at breakfast and dinner time.

Mile. Blandureau's parents had consented to her
marriage with Joseph Blondet upon one condition — the
penniless and briefless barrister must be an assistant
judge. So, with the desire of fitting his son to fill the
position, old M. Blondet racked his brains to hammer
the law into his son's head by dint of lessons, so as to
make a cut-and-dried lawyer of him. As for Blondet
junior, he spent almost every evening at the Blandureaus'
house, to which also young Fabien du Ronceret had
been admitted since his return, without raising the
slightest suspicion in the minds of father or son.

Everything in this life of theirs was measured with
an accuracy worthy of Gerard Dow's Money Changer ;
not a grain of salt too much, not a single profit for-
gone ; but the economical principles by which it was
regulated were relaxed in favour of the greenhouse and
garden. 'The garden was the master's craze,' Mile.
Cadot used to say. The master's blind fondness for
Joseph was not a craze in her eyes ; she shared the father's
predilection ; she pamperedjoseph; she darned his stock-
ings ; and would have been better pleased if the money
spent on the garden had been put by for Joseph's
benefit.

That garden was kept in marvellous order by a single
man ; the paths, covered with river-sand, continually
turned over with the rake, meandered among the borders
full of the rarest flowers. Here were all kinds of colour
and scent, here were lizards on the walls, legions of
little flower-pots standing out in the sun, regiments of
forks and hoes, and a host of innocent things, a com-
bination of pleasant results to justify the gardener's
charming hobby.

At the end of the greenhouse the judge had set up a



296 The Jealousies of a Country Town

grand stand, an amphitheatre of benches to hold some
five or six thousand pelargoniums in pots — a splendid
and famous show. People came to see his geraniums
in flower, not only from the neighbourhood, but even
from the departments round about. The Empress
Marie Louise, passing through the town, had honoured
the curiously kept greenhouse with a visit ; so much
was she impressed with the sight, that she spoke of it to
Napoleon, and the old judge received the Cross of the
Legion of Honour. But as the learned gardener never
mingled in society at all, and went nowhere except to
the Blandureaus, he had no suspicion of the President's
underhand manoeuvres ; and others who could see the
President's intentions were far too much afraid of him
to interfere or to warn the inoffensive Blondets.

As for Michu, that young man with his powerful
connections gave much more thought to making him-
self agreeable to the women in the upper social circles
to which he was introduced by the Cinq-Cygnes, than
to the extremely simple business of a provincial Tribunal.
With his independent means (he had an income of
twelve thousand livres), he was courted by mothers of
daughters, and led a frivolous life. He did just enough
at the Tribunal to satisfy his conscience, much as a
schoolboy does his exercises, saying ditto on all occa-
sions, with a c Yes, dear President.' But underneath the
appearance of indifference lurked the unusual powers of
the Paris law student who had distinguished himself as one
of the staff" of prosecuting counsel before he came to the
provinces. He was accustomed to taking broad views
of things ; he could do rapidly what the President and
Blondet could only do after much thinking, and very
often solved knotty points for them. In delicate con-
junctures the President and Vice-President took counsel
with their junior, confided thorny questions to him, and
never failed to wonder at the readiness with which he
brought back a task in which old Blondet found nothing



The Jealousies of a Country Town 297

to criticise. Michu was sure of the influence of the
most crabbed aristocrats, and he was young and rich ;
he lived, therefore, above the level of departmental
intrigues and pettinesses. He was an indispensable man
at picnics, he frisked with young ladies and paid court
to their mothers, he danced at balls, he gambled like a
capitalist. In short, he played his part of young lawyer
of fashion to admiration ; without, at the same time,
compromising his dignity, which he knew how to
assert at the right moment like a man of spirit. He
won golden opinions by the manner in which he threw
himself into provincial ways, without criticising them j
and for these reasons, every one endeavoured to make
his time of exile endurable.

The public prosecutor was a lawyer of the highest
ability; he had taken the plunge into political life, and
was one of the most distinguished speakers on the
ministerialist benches. The President stood in awe of
him ; if he had not been away in Paris at the time, no steps
would have been taken against Victurnien; his dexterity,
his experience of business, would have prevented the
whole affair. At that moment, however, he was in the
Chamber of Deputies, and the President and du Croisier
had taken advantage of his absence to weave their plot,
calculating, with a certain ingenuity, that if once the
law stepped in, and the matter was noised abroad, things
would have gone too far to be remedied.

As a matter of fact, no staff of prosecuting counsel in
any Tribunal, at that particular time, would have taken
up a charge of forgery against the eldest son of one of
the noblest houses in France without going into the
case at great length, and a special reference, in all pro-
bability, to the Attorney-General. In such a case as this,
the authorities and the Government would have tried
endless ways of compromising and hushing up an affair
which might send an imprudent young man to the
hulks. They would very likely have done the same for



298 The Jealousies of a Country Town

a Liberal family in a prominent position, so long as the
Liberals were not too openly hostile to the throne and
the altar. So du Croisier's charge and the young
Count's arrest had not been very easy to manage. The
President and du Croisier had compassed their ends in
the following manner.

M. Sauvager, a young Royalist barrister, had reached
the position of deputy public prosecutor by dint of sub-
servience to the Ministry. In the absence of his chief
he was head of the staff of counsel for prosecution, and,
consequently, it fell to him to take up the charge made
by du Croisier. Sauvager was a self-made man ; he had
nothing but his stipend ; and for that reason the
authorities reckoned upon some one who had everything
to gain by devotion. The President now exploited the
position. No sooner was the document with the alleged
forgery in du Croisier's hands, than Mme. la Presidente
du Ronceret, prompted by her spovise, had a long
conversation with M. Sauvager. In the course of it
she pointed out the uncertainties of a career in the
maghtrature debout compared with the magistrature assise,
and the advantages of the bench over the bar ; she
showed how a freak on the part of some official, or a
single false step, might ruin a man's career.

* If you are conscientious and give your conclusions
against the powers that be, you are lost,' continued she.
4 Now, at this moment, you might turn your position
to account to make a fine match that would put you
above unlucky chances for the rest of your life ; you may
marry a wife with fortune sufficient to land you on the
bench, in the magistrature assise. There is a fine chance
for you. M. du Croisier will never have any children ;
everybody knows why. His money, and his wife's as well,
will go to his niece, Mile. Duval. M. Duval is an iron-
master, his purse is tolerably filled, to begin with, and his
father is still alive, and has a little property besides. The
father and son have a million of francs between them ;



The Jealousies of a Country Town 299

they will double it with du Croisier's help, for du
Croisier has business connections among great capitalists
and manufacturers in Paris. M. and Mme. Duval the
younger would be certain to give their daughter to a
suitor brought forward by du Croisier, for he is sure to
leave two fortunes to his niece ; and, in all probability,
he will settle the reversion of his wife's property upon
Mile. Duval in the marriage-contract, for Mme. du
Croisier has no kin. You know how du Croisier hates
the d'Esgrignons. Do him a service, be his man, take
up this charge of forgery which he is going to make
against young d'Esgrignon, and follow up the proceed-
ings at once without consulting the public prosecutor at
Paris. And, then, pray Heaven that the Ministry dis-
misses you for doing your office impartially, in spite of
the powers that be ; for if they do, your fortune is made!
You will have a charming wife and thirty thousand
francs a year with her, to say nothing of four millions of
expectations in ten years' time.'

In two evenings Sauvager was talked over. Both
he and the President kept the affair a secret from old
Blondet, from Michu, and from the second member
of the staff of prosecuting counsel. Feeling sure of
Blondet's impartiality on a question of fact, the President
made certain of a majority without counting Camusot.
And now Camusot's unexpected defection had thrown
everything out. What the President wanted was a
committal for trial before the public prosecutor got
warning. How if Camusot or the second counsel for
the prosecution should send word to Paris ?

And here some portion of Camusot's private history
may perhaps explain how it came to pass that Chesnel
took it for granted that the examining magistrate would
be on the d'Esgrignons' side, and how he had the bold-
ness to tamper in the open street with that representative
of justice.

Camusot's father, a well-known silk mercer in the



300 The Jealousies of a Country Town

Rue des Bourdonnais, was ambitious for the only son
of his first marriage, and brought him up to the law.
When Camusot junior took a wife, he gained with her
the influence of an usher of the Royal cabinet, back-
stairs influence, it is true, but still sufficient, since it had
brought him his first appointment as justice of the peace,
and the second as examining magistrate. At the time
of his marriage, his father only settled an income of six
thousand francs upon him (the amount of his mother's
fortune, which he could legally claim), and as Mile.
Thirion brought him no more than twenty thousand
francs as her portion, the young couple knew the hard-
ships of hidden poverty. The salary of a provincial
justice of the peace does not exceed fifteen hundred
francs, while an examining magistrate's stipend is
augmented by something like a thousand francs, because
his position entails expenses and extra work. The
post, therefore, is much coveted, though it is not
permanent, and the work is heavy, and that was why
Mme. Camusot had just scolded her husband for allowing
the President to read his thoughts.

Marie Cecile Amelie Thirion, after three years of
marriage, perceived the blessing of Heaven upon it in the
regularity of two auspicious events — the births of a girl
and a boy ; but she prayed to be less blessed in future.
A few more of such blessings would turn straitened
means into distress. M. Camusot's father's money was
not likely to come to them for a long time ; and, rich
as he was, he would scarcely leave more than eight or
ten thousand francs a year to each of his children, four
in number, for he had been married twice. And besides,
by the time that all 'expectations,' as matchmakers call
them, were realised, would not the magistrate have
children of his own to settle in life ? Any one can
imagine the situation for a little woman with plenty of
sense and determination, and Mme. Camusot was such a
woman. She did not refrain from meddling in matters



The Jealousies of a Country Town 301

judicial. She had far too strong a sense of the gravity
of a false step in her husband's career.

She was the only child of an old servant of Louis xviii.,
a valet who had followed his master in his wanderings
in Italy, Courland, and England, till after the Restora-
tion the King rewarded him with the one place that
he could fill at Court, and made him usher by rotation
to the royal cabinet. So in Amelie's home there had
been, as it were, a sort of reflection of the Court.
Thirion used to tell her about the lords, and ministers,
and great men whom he announced and introduced and
saw passing to and fro. The girl, brought up at the
gates of the Tuileries, had caught some tincture of
the maxims practised there, and adopted the dogma
of passive obedience to authority. She had sagely judged
that her husband, by ranging himself on the side of
the d'Esgrignons, would find favour with Mme. la
Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and with two powerful
families on whose influence with the King the Sieur
Thirion could depend at an opportune moment. Camu-
sot might get an appointment at the first opportunity
within the jurisdiction of Paris, and afterwards at Paris
itself. That promotion, dreamed of and longed for at
every moment, was certain to have a salary of six
thousand francs attached to it, as well as the allevia-
tion of living in her own father's house, or under the
Camusots' roof, and all the advantages of a father's
fortune on either side. If the adage, 'Out of sight is
out of mind,' holds good of most women, it is parti-
cularly true where family feeling or royal or ministerial
patronage is concerned. The personal attendants of
kings prosper at all times ; you take an interest in a
man, be it only a man in livery, if you see him every
day.

Mme. Camusot, regarding herself as a bird of passage,
had taken a little house in the Rue du Cygne.
Furnished lodgings there were none ; the town was not



302 The Jealousies of a Country Town

enough of a thoroughfare, and the Camusots could
not afford to live at an inn like M. Michu. So the
fair Parisian had no choice for it but to take such
furniture as she could find ; and as she paid a very
moderate rent, the house was remarkably ugly, albeit a
certain quaintness of detail was not wanting. It was built
against a neighbouring house in such a fashion that the
side, with only one window in each story, gave upon the
street, and the front looked out upon a yard where
rose-bushes and buckthorn were growing along the
wall on either side. On the farther side, opposite the
house, stood a shed, a roof over two brick arches. A
little wicket-gate gave entrance into the gloomy place
(made gloomier still by the great walnut tree which
grew in the yard), and a double flight of steps, with an
elaborately-wrought but rust-eaten handrail, led to the
house door. Inside the house there were two rooms on