footman Charles.
"Ah, sir," cried the man, "you cannot imagine madame's
anxiety when she heard that you had gone out through the
Conches gate. She thinks that you are drowned. Three times
they rang the second bell for breakfast with might and main,
after shouting all over the park, and M. le Cure is still look-
ing for you there." ,
"Why, what time is it, Charles ?"
"A quarter to twelve !"
"Help me to mount "
"Perhaps monsieur has been helping to hunt old Fourchon's
otter," said the man, as he noticed the water dripping from
Blondet's boots and trousers.
That question opened the journalist's eyes.
"Not a word about it, Charles, and I will bear you in
mind," cried he.
"Oh, Lord love you, sir, M. le Comte himself was taken in
with old Fourchon's otter. As soon as any one new to the
place comes to the Aigues, old Fourchon is on the lookout for
him ; and if the town gentleman goes to see the springs of the
Avonne, the old boy sells him his otter. He keeps it up so
well, that M. le Comte went back three times and paid him
six days' wages while they sat and watched the water flow."
"And I used to think that I had seen the greatest comedians
t)f the day in Potier and the younger Baptiste," said Blondet
to himself, "and what are they compared with this beggar?"
"Oh ! he is quite up to that game, is old Fourchon," Charles
pursued. "And he has another string to his bow, for he had
himself put down on the register as a ropemaker. He has his
34 * THE PEASANTRY
ropewalk along the wall outside the Blangy gate. If yon
take it into your head to meddle with his cord, he comes
round you so cleverly, that you begin to want to turn the
wheel and make a bit of rope yourself, and then he asks you
for a prentice's premium. Madame was caught that way, and
gave him twenty francs. He is the king of sly-boots," said
Charles, picking his words.
The man's gossip gave Blondet some opportunity of reflect-
ing upon the profound astuteness of the peasantry; he also
recalled much that had been said by his father the judge of
Alengon. Then as all the malice lurking beneath old Four-
chon's simplicity came up in his mind, Charles' confidences
put those remarks in a new light; and he confessed to him-
self that he had been gulled by the old Burgundian beggar.
"You would not believe, sir, how wide awake you have to
be in the country, and here of all places, for the General is
not very popular "
"Why so?"
"Lord, I do not know," said Charles, with the stupid look
a servant can assume to screen a refusal to his betters, a look
which gave Blondet plenty of food for reflection.
"So here you are, runaway !" said the General, coming out
upon the steps at the sound of horse hoofs. "Here he is !
Set your mind at rest," he called to his wife, hearing her pat-
tering footsteps. "Now we are all here but the Abbe
Brossette. Go and look for him, Charles," he said, turning
to the servant.
Ill
THE TAVERN
THE Blangy gate dated from Bouret's time. It consisted of
two pilasters with "rustic" bossages, each surmounted by a
rampant greyhound holding a scutcheon between its fore-
p;i\vs. The steward's house was so close to the gate that the
great financier had no occasion to build another for a lodge-
THE PEASANTRY 35
keeper. An imposing iron grating, of the same style as those
made in Buffon's time for the Jardin des Plantes, opened out
upon the extreme end of the paved way which led to the cross-
road. Formerly the Aigues had combined with the house of
Soulanges to maintain this local road which connected
Conches and Cerneux and Blangy and Soulanges with Ville-
aux-Fayes, as by a flowery chain, so many are the little
houses covered with roses and honeysuckle and climbing
plants, that are dotted about among the hedge-enclosed do-
mains along its course.
Just outside, along a trim wall, stood a rotten post, a ram-
shackle wheel and heckle-boards, the entire "plant" of a vil-
lage ropemaker. Further, the wall gave place to a ha-ha
fence, so that the chateau commanded a view of the valley as
far as Soulanges, and even further.
About half-past twelve o'clock, while Blondet was taking
his place at table opposite the Abbe Brossette, and receiving
a flattering scolding from the Countess, old Fourchon and
Mouche arrived at their ropewalk. Under pretext of making
rope, old Fourchon could keep an eye upon the house and
spy the movements of the gentry. Indeed, a shutter could
not move, no two persons could stroll away together, no
trifling incident could take place at the chateau but the old
man knew of it. He had only taken up his position there
within the last three years, and neither keepers, nor servants,
nor the family had noticed a circumstance so apparently in-
significant.
"Go round to the Avonne gate while I put up our tackle,"
said old Fourchon ; "and when you have chattered about this,
they will come to look for me at the Grand-I-Vert. I will
have a drop of something there; it is thirsty work stopping
in the water like that. If you do just as I have been telling
you, you will get a good breakfast out of them ; try to speak
with the Countess, and go on about me, so that they may take
it into their heads to give me a sermon, eh ! There will be a
glass or two of good wine to tipple down."
With these final instructions, which, to judge from
36 THE PEASANTRY
Mouche's sly looks, were almost superfluous, the old rope-
maker tucked his otter under his arm and disappeared down
the road.
Halfway between this picturesque gateway and the village,
at the time of Emile Blondet's visit, stood a house such as
may be seen anywhere in France in districts where stone is
scarce. Brickbats collected from all sources, and great flints
roughly set in stiff clay, made fairly solid walls, though the
weather had eaten them away. Stout tree boughs upheld a
roof thatched with straw and rushes ; the clumsy shutters and
the door, like everything else about the hovel, were either
lucky "finds" or had been extorted by hard begging.
The peasant brings to the making of his dwelling the same
instinct that a wild creature displays in the making of its
nest or burrow; this instinct shone conspicuously in the ar-
rangements of the whole cabin. To begin with, the door and
window were on the north side, and the house, situated on a
little knoll in the stoniest part of the vineyard, should have
been healthy enough. It was reached by three steps, in-
geniously contrived out of stakes and planks, and filled in
with small stones. The rain-water very soon flowed away;
and as in Burgundy rain seldom comes from the north, the
foundations, flimsy though they were, did not rot with the
damp. At the foot of the steps some rustic palings extended
along the footpath, till they were lost to sight in a hedge of
hawthorn and wild-brier. A collection of rough benches and
rickety tables invited passers-by to seat themselves in the
shade of the trellised vine which covered the whole space be-
tween the hut and the road. In the enclosed garden, on the
top of the knoll, grew roses, and pinks, and violets, and all
the flowers which cost nothing; honeysuckle and jessamine
trails clung about a roof heavy already with moss, in spite of
its recent date.
The owner had set up a "lean-to" cowshed against the right
wall of the house. It was a crazy wooden erection, with a
sort of yard of beaten earth in front of it, where a huge dung-
hill stood conspicuous in one corner. An outhouse at the
THE PEASANTRY 37
back, a thatched roof, supported by two tree trunks, did duty
as a shed for vinedressers' tools, empty casks, and heaps of
faggots piled about the projecting boss of the oven, which in
peasants' cottages almost invariably opens just under the
chimney shelf.
About an acre of land belonged to the house, a croft en-
closed with a quick-set hedge, full of vines, tended as a peas-
ant's vines are tended, so well manured, layered, and trenched,
that they came into leaf earlier than any others for three
leagues round. The slender tops of a few fruit-trees, almonds,
and plums, and apricots, appeared here and there above the
hedge. Potatoes or beans were usually growing among the
vine stems. Another small wedge-shaped bit of land behind
the yard and in the direction of the village was low and
damp enough to grow the cabbages and onions dear to the
laborer. A latticed gate divided it off from the yard, through
which the cows passed, trampling and manuring the earth.
Inside the house, the two rooms on the ground floor opened
on to the vineyard ; on that side of it, a rough wooden stair-
case ran up the outer wall under the thatch to a garret lighted
by a round window under the roof. Beneath these rustic steps
a cellar, built of Burgundian bricks, contained a few hogs-
heads of wine.
A peasant's batterie de cuisine usually consists of a couple
of cooking-pots, a frying-pan, and an iron kettle ; but in this
cottage, by way of exception to the rule, there were two
huge saucepans hanging up under the mantel-shelf above a
small portable stove. But in spite of this sign of comfort,
the furniture generally was in keeping with the outside of the
house. An earthen jar held the water; pewter spoons and
wooden ladles did duty for silver plate ; and the crockery ware
was cracked, riveted, brown without and white within. A
few deal chairs stood about a solid table, and the floor was
of beaten earth. The walls were whitewashed once in five
years, so were the slender rafters of the ceiling, where bacon
and ropes of onions, and bunches of candles, hung among the
bags in which the peasant keeps his seeds. Beside the bread-
38 THE PEASANTRY
hutch stood an old cupboard of black walnut wood, containing
such linen as the inmates of the cabin possessed the spare
garments and the Sunday clothes of the whole family.
An antiquated gun shone on the wall above the mantel-
shelf, a poacher's weapon, for which you would not have given
five francs. The gun-stock was almost charred, nor was there
any appearance about the barrel, which looked as if it never
was cleaned. Perhaps you may think that as the gate stood
open day and night, and the cabin door boasted no fasten-
ing but a latch, nothing more efficient in the way of firearms
was needed, and ask what earthly use such a weapon might be.
But in the first place, rough though the woodwork was, the
barrel had been carefully selected; it had belonged to a gun
of price, once given, no doubt, to some gamekeeper. And the
owner of the gun never missed a shot; between him and his
weapon there was the intimate understanding that exists be-
tween the craftsman and his tool. If the muzzle must be
pointed a millimetre above or below the mark, the poacher
knows and obeys the rule accurately, and is never out in his
reckoning. And an officer of artillery would see that all the
essentials were in good working order, nor more nor less.
Into everything that the peasant appropriates to his uses
he puts the exact amount of energy required to attain the
desired end the necessary labor, and nothing more. He has
not the least idea of finish, but he is a perfect judge of the
necessities in everything ; he knows all the degrees in the scale
of energy; and if he works for a master, knows exactly how to
do the least possible amount of work for the utmost possible
pay. Finally, this very gun played an important part in the
family life, as shall presently be shown.
Have you realized all the countless details about this hovel,
five hundred paces from the picturesque park gates? Can
you picture it squatting there like a beggar by a palace wall ?
Well, then, beneath all its idyllic rusticity, the velvet mosses
of its roof, the cackling hens, the wallowing pig, the lowing
heifer, and every sight and sound there lies an ugly signifi-
cance.
THE PEASANTRY 39
A high pole was set up by the front gate, to exhibit to
public view a bush made up of three withered branches of pine
and oak, tied in a bunch by a bit of rag. Above the door
stood a signboard about two feet square, on which an itinerant
artist had painted (for a breakfast) a huge green letter I on
a white field a pun in ten letters for those who could read
the Grand-I-Vert (hiver). A vulgar gaudy-colored adver-
tisement on the left-hand side of the door announced "Good
March Beer," a crude representation of a woman with an ex-
aggeratedly low-necked dress, and a hussar, in uniform, strut-
ting on either side of a foaming pint pot. In spite of the
scent of flowers and the country air, a stale reek of wine and
eatables always clung about the cabin, the same odor that lies
in wait for you as you pass by some pothouse in a low quar-
ter of Paris.
The place you know. Now, behold its inmates. Their his-
tory contains more than one lesson for the philanthropist.
The owner of the Grand-I-Vert, one Frangois Tonsard, is
not unworthy of the attention of philosophers, in that he
contrived to solve the problem of how to lead a life of com-
bined industry and idleness, in such a way that his idleness
was highly profitable to himself, while no one was a penny
the better for his industry.
He was a jack-of-all-trades. He could dig, but only on his
own land. He could also do hedging and ditching, bark trees
or fell them, for other people, for in all these occupations the
master is at the mercy of the man. Tonsard owed his bit of
land to Mile. Laguerre's generosity. While a mere lad he did
a day's work now and again for the gardener at the chateau,
for he had not his match at clipping trees in garden alleys,
and trimmed hornbeams, and thorn-trees, and horse-chest-
nuts to admiration. His name Tonsard literally, "the clip-
per" is a sufficient indication of an aptitude descended from
father to son, and in most country-places such monopolies are
secured and maintained with as much cunning as ever city
merchants use to the same end.
One day Mile. Laguerre, strolling in her garden, overheard
40 THE PEASANTRY
Tonsard, a fine strapping young fellow, saying, "All I want to
live, and live happily too, is an acre of land !" Whereupon
the good-natured creature, accustomed to make others happy,
bestowed on Tonsard that bit of vineyard near the Blangy
gate in return for a hundred days' work (a piece of delicacy
scantily appreciated), and allowed him to take up his quarters
at the Aigues, where he lived among the servants, who
thought him the best of good fellows in Burgundy.
"Poor Tonsard" (as everybody called him) did about
thirty days' work out of a hundred, the rest of the time he
spent in laughing and flirting with the maids at the house,
and more particularly with Mile. Cochet, Madame's own
woman, though she was as ugly as a charming actress' maid
is sure to be. A laugh, with Mile. Cochet, was something so
significant, that Soudry (the happy police sergeant of
Blondet's letter) still gave Tonsard black looks after five-and-
twenty years. The walnut wood press and the four-post bed-
stead with curtains, which adorned the bedroom at the Grand-
l-Vert, were, no doubt, the fruit of one of those titterings.
Once in possession of his bit of land, Tonsard replied to the
first person who remarked that "Madame had given it to
him."
"By George, it's mine ! honestly bought and honestly paid
for. Do the bourgeois ever give you anything for nothing?
And a hundred days' work is nothing, is it? That has cost
me three hundred francs as it is, and the soil is all stones !"
The talk never went beyond the circle of the peasantry.
Tonsard next built the house himself. Finding the ma-
terials here and there, asking this one and that to do a hand's
turn for him, pilfering odds and ends from the chateau, or
asking, and invariably having what he asked for. A rickety
gateway pulled down to be removed found its way to his cow-
shed. The window came from an old greenhouse. The hut,
to prove so fatal to the chateau, was built up of material from
the chateau.
Tonsard escaped military service, thanks to Gaubertin,
Mile. Laguerre's steward. Gaubertin's father was the public
THE PEASANTRY 41
prosecutor of the department, and Gaubertin could refuse
Mile. Cochet nothing. When the house was finished and the
vines in full bearing, Tonsard took unto himself a wife. A
bachelor of three-and-twenty on a friendly footing at the
Aigues, the good-for-nothing to whom Madame had given an
acre of ground had every appearance of being a hard worker,
and he had the wit to make the most of his negative virtues.
His 'Wife was the daughter of a tenant on the Eonquerolles
estate on the other side of the Forest of the Aigues.
This farmer farmed half a farm, which was going to wreck
and ruin in his hands for want of a housewife. The incon-
solable widower had tried to drown his cares in drink, in the
English fashion ; but time went on, he thought no more upon
his loss, and at last found himself wedded to the winecask,
in the jocular village phrase. Then in no time the father-in-
law ceased to be a farmer, and became a laborer, an idle, mis-
chief-making, quarrelsome sot, sticking at nothing, like most
men of his class who fall from a comparatively comfortable
position into poverty. He could read and write, his educa-
tion and practical knowledge raised him above the level of the
ordinary laborer, though his bad habits dragged him down
to the level of the tramp; and, as we have seen, he had just
been a match for one of the cleverest men in Paris in a Bu-
colic overlooked by Virgil.
At first they made old Fourchon the village schoolmaster
at Blangy, but he lost his place, partly by misconduct, partly
by his peculiar views of* primary education. His pupils made
more progress in the art of making paper boats and chickens
out of the pages of their ABC books than in reading ; and his
homilies on pilfering orchards were strangely like lessons
on the best manner of scaling walls. They still quote one of
his sayings at Soulanges, an answer given to some urchin
who came late with the excuse, "Lord, sir, I had to take our
'orse to the water."
"jfforse we say, ye dunder'ead."
From a schoolmaster he became postman. This employ-
ment, which is as good as a pension to many an old soldier,
42 THE PEASANTRY
got Daddy Fourchon into trouble every day of his life. Some-
times he left the letters in a tavern, sometimes he forgot to
deliver them, sometimes he kept them in, his pocket. When
his wits were flustered with liquor, he would leave the corre-
spondence of one commune in another; when he was sober
he read the letters. He was promptly dismissed. Having
nothing to hope in the way of a Government appointment,
Daddy Fourchon at length turned his attention to manufac-
ture. The very poorest do something in country places, and
one and all, if they do not make an honest livelihood, make
a pretence of earning it.
At the age of sixty-eight Fourchon took to ropemaking on
a small scale, that being a business in which the least possible
amount of capital is needed. The first wall you find (as has
been seen) is a sufficient workshop, ten francs will more than
pay for your machinery ; and the apprentice, like his master,
sleeps in a barn, and lives on what he can pick up. So shall
you evade the rapacity of the law which vexes the poor with
door and window tax. The raw material you borrow, and re-
turn a manufactured article.
But Daddy Fourchon, and Mouche his apprentice (the
natural son of one of his natural daughters), had another
resource, in fact,, their mainstay and support in otter-hunt-
ing, to say nothing of breakfasts and dinners given to the
pair by illiterate folk who availed themselves of Daddy
Fourchon's talents when a letter must be written or a bill
made out. Finally, the old man could play the clarionet, and
in the company of a crony, the fiddler of Soulanges, Ver-
michel by name, figured at village weddings and great balls
at the Tivoli at Soula"nges.
Vermichel's real name was Michel Vert ; but the transposi-
tion was so much in use, that Brunet, clerk of the justice of
the peace at Soulanges, described him in all documents as
"Michel-Jean-Jerome Vert, otherwise Vermichel, witness."
Daddy Fourchon had been of use in past times to Ver-
michel, a fiddler held in high esteem by the old Burgundian
Regiment ; and Vermichel out of gratitude for those services
THE PEASANTRY 43
had procured for his friend the post of practitioner (the
privilege of appearing before the justice of the peace in the
interests of this or that person), for which any man who can
sign his name is eligible in out-of-the-way places. So Daddy
Fourchon's signature was appended to any judicial documents
drawn up by the Sieur Brunet in the communes of Cerneux,
Conches, and Blangy; and the names of Vermichel and
Fourchon, bound together by a friendship cemented by
twenty years of hobnobbing, seemed almost like the style of a
firm.
Mouche and Fourchon, united as closely each to each by
malpractices as Mentor and Telemachus of old by virtues,
traveled like their anti-types in search of bread; panis an-
gelorum, the only words of Latin that linger yet in the memo-
ries of gray-headed villagers. The pair negotiated the scraps
at Tonsard's tavern, or at the great houses roundabout; for
between them in their busiest and most prosperous years their
achievement scarcely exceeded an average of some seven hun-
dred yards of rope. In the first place, no tradesman for sixty
miles round would have trusted either of them with a hank
of tow, for this venerable person (anticipating the miracles
of modern science) knew but too well how to transform the
hemp into the divine juice of the grape. And in the second
place, besides being private secretary to three communes,
Fourchon appeared for plaintiff or defendant before the jus-
tice of the peace, and performed at merrymakings upon the
clarionet his public duties were the ruin of his trade, he
said.
So Tonsard's hopes so fondly cherished were nipped in the
bud. Those comfortable additions to his property would
never be his, and the ordinary luck of life confronted a lazy
son-in-law with another do-nothing in the shape of his wife's
father. And things wera bound to do much the worse in that
La Tonsard, a tall and shapely woman with a kind of broad-
blown comeliness, showed no sort of taste for field work. Ton-
sard bore his wife a grudge for her father's bankruptcy, and
treated her badly, taking his revenge after the fashion
VOL. IO 29
44 THE PEASANTRY
familiar to a class that sees the effects, but seldom traces the
cause.
The wife, finding her bondage hard, sought alleviations.
She took advantage of Tonsard's vices to govern him. He was
an ease-loving glutton, so she encouraged him in idleness and
gluttony. She managed to secure for him the goodwill of the
servants at the chateau, and he, satisfied with the results 5
did not grumble at the means. He troubled himself uncom-
monly little about his wife's doings, so long as she did all
that he required of her, a tacit understanding in which every
second married couple lives. The tavern was La Tonsard's
next invention, and her first customers were the servants,
gamekeepers, and prickers from the Aigues.
Gaubertin, Mile. Laguerre's agent, was one of La belle Ton-
sard's earliest patrons; he let her have a few hogsheads of
good wine to attract custom. The effect of these presents,
periodically renewed so long as Gaubertin remained a
bachelor, together with the fame of the not too obdurate
beauty among the Don Juans of the valley, brought custom
to the house. La Tonsard, being fond of good eating, be-
came an excellent cook; and though she exercised her talents
only on dishes well known in the country, such as jugged
hare, game, sauce, sea-pie, and omelettes, she was supposed to
understand to admiration the art of cooking a meal served at
a table's end, and so prodigiously over-seasoned that it induces
thirst. In these ways she managed Tonsard; she gave him
a downward push, and he asked nothing better than to aban-
don himself and rolled luxuriously down hill.
The rogue became a confirmed poacher; he had nothing to
fear. His wife's relations with Gaubertin, bailiffs, and keep-
ers, and the relaxed notions of property of the Revolution,
assured him of complete immunity. As soon as the children
grew big enough, he made what he could out of them, and was
no more scrupulous as to their conduct than he had been
with his wife's. He had two girls and two boys. Tonsard
lived, like his wife, from hand to mouth, and there would
soon have been an end of this merrv life of his if he had not
THE PEASANTRY 45
/aid down the almost martial law, that every one in his house