Honore de Balzac (3 page)

"Francois!" called the bailiff, to hasten his son.

Francois Michu, a child of ten, played in the park and forest, and
levied his little tithes like a master; he ate the fruits; he chased
the game; he at least had neither cares nor troubles. Of all the family,
Francois alone was happy in a home thus isolated from the neighborhood
by its position between the park and the forest, and by the still
greater moral solitude of universal repulsion.

"Pick up these things," said his father, pointing to the parapet, "and
put them away. Look at me! You love your father and your mother, don't
you?" The child flung himself on his father as if to kiss him, but Michu
made a movement to shift the gun and pushed him back. "Very good. You
have sometimes chattered about things that are done here," continued the
father, fixing his eyes, dangerous as those of a wild-cat, on the boy.
"Now remember this; if you tell the least little thing that happens here
to Gaucher, or to the Grouage and Bellache people, or even to Marianne
who loves us, you will kill your father. Never tattle again, and I will
forgive what you said yesterday." The child began to cry. "Don't cry;
but when any one questions you, say, as the peasants do, 'I don't know.'
There are persons roaming about whom I distrust. Run along! As for you
two," he added, turning to the women, "you have heard what I said. Keep
a close mouth, both of you."

"Husband, what are you going to do?"

Michu, who was carefully measuring a charge of powder, poured it into
the barrel of his gun, rested the weapon against the parapet and said to
Marthe:—

"No one knows I own that gun. Stand in front of it."

Couraut, who had sprung to his feet, was barking furiously.

"Good, intelligent fellow!" cried Michu. "I am certain there are spies
about—"

Man and beast feel a spy. Couraut and Michu, who seemed to have one and
the same soul, lived together as the Arab and his horse in the desert.
The bailiff knew the modulations of the dog's voice, just as the dog
read his master's meaning in his eyes, or felt it exhaling in the air
from his body.

"What do you say to that?" said Michu, in a low voice, calling his
wife's attention to two strangers who appeared in a by-path making for
the
rond-point
.

"What can it mean?" cried the old mother. "They are Parisians."

"Here they come!" said Michu. "Hide my gun," he whispered to his wife.

The two men who now crossed the wide open space of the
rond-point
were
typical enough for a painter. One, who appeared to be the subaltern,
wore top-boots, turned down rather low, showing well-made calves, and
colored silk stockings of doubtful cleanliness. The breeches, of ribbed
cloth, apricot color with metal buttons, were too large; they were baggy
about the body, and the lines of their creases seemed to indicate a
sedentary man. A marseilles waistcoat, overloaded with embroidery, open,
and held together by one button only just above the stomach, gave to the
wearer a dissipated look,—all the more so, because his jet black hair,
in corkscrew curls, hid his forehead and hung down his cheeks. Two steel
watch-chains were festooned upon his breeches. The shirt was adorned
with a cameo in white and blue. The coat, cinnamon-colored, was a
treasure to caricaturists by reason of its long tails, which, when seen
from behind, bore so perfect a resemblance to a cod that the name of
that fish was given to them. The fashion of codfish tails lasted ten
years; almost the whole period of the empire of Napoleon. The cravat,
loosely fastened, and with numerous small folds, allowed the wearer
to bury his face in it up to the nostrils. His pimpled skin, his long,
thick, brick-dust colored nose, his high cheek-bones, his mouth, lacking
half its teeth but greedy for all that and menacing, his ears adorned
with huge gold rings, his low forehead,—all these personal details,
which might have seemed grotesque in many men, were rendered terrible in
him by two small eyes set in his head like those of a pig, expressive
of insatiable covetousness, and of insolent, half-jovial cruelty. These
ferreting and perspicacious blue eyes, glassy and glacial, might be
taken for the model of that famous Eye, the formidable emblem of the
police, invented during the Revolution. Black silk gloves were on his
hands and he carried a switch. He was certainly some official personage,
for he showed in his bearing, in his way of taking snuff and ramming it
into his nose, the bureaucratic importance of an office subordinate,
one who signs for his superiors and acquires a passing sovereignty by
enforcing their orders.

The other man, whose dress was in the same style, but elegant and
elegantly put on and careful in its smallest detail, wore boots
a la
Suwaroff which came high upon the leg above a pair of tight trousers,
and creaked as he walked. Above his coat he wore a spencer, an
aristocratic garment adopted by the Clichiens and the young bloods of
Paris, which survived both the Clichiens and the fashionable youths. In
those days fashions sometimes lasted longer than parties,—a symptom of
anarchy which the year of our Lord 1830 has again presented to us. This
accomplished dandy seemed to be thirty years of age. His manners were
those of good society; he wore jewels of value; the collar of his shirt
came to the tops of his ears. His conceited and even impertinent air
betrayed a consciousness of hidden superiority. His pallid face seemed
bloodless, his thin flat nose had the sardonic expression which we see
in a death's head, and his green eyes were inscrutable; their glance was
discreet in meaning just as the thin closed mouth was discreet in words.
The first man seemed on the whole a good fellow compared with this
younger man, who was slashing the air with a cane, the top of which,
made of gold, glittered in the sunshine. The first man might have cut
off a head with his own hand, but the second was capable of entangling
innocence, virtue, and beauty in the nets of calumny and intrigue, and
then poisoning them or drowning them. The rubicund stranger would have
comforted his victim with a jest; the other was incapable of a smile.
The first was forty-five years old, and he loved, undoubtedly, both
women and good cheer. Such men have passions which keep them slaves
to their calling. But the young man was plainly without passions and
without vices. If he was a spy he belonged to diplomacy, and did such
work from a pure love of art. He conceived, the other executed; he was
the idea, the other was the form.

"This must be Gondreville, is it not, my good woman?" said the young
man.

"We don't say 'my good woman' here," said Michu. "We are still simple
enough to say 'citizen' and 'citizeness' in these parts."

"Ah!" exclaimed the young man, in a natural way, and without seeming at
all annoyed.

Players of ecarte often have a sense of inward disaster when some
unknown person sits down at the same table with them, whose manners,
look, voice, and method of shuffling the cards, all, to their fancy,
foretell defeat. The instant Michu looked at the young man he felt an
inward and prophetic collapse. He was struck by a fatal presentiment; he
had a sudden confused foreboding of the scaffold. A voice told him that
that dandy would destroy him, although there was nothing whatever in
common between them. For this reason his answer was rude; he was and he
wished to be forbidding.

"Don't you belong to the Councillor of State, Malin?" said the younger
man.

"I am my own master," answered Malin.

"Mesdames," said the young man, assuming a most polite air, "are we not
at Gondreville? We are expected there by Monsieur Malin."

"There's the park," said Michu, pointing to the open gate.

"Why are you hiding that gun, my fine girl?" said the elder, catching
sight of the carbine as he passed through the gate.

"You never let a chance escape you, even in the country!" cried his
companion.

They both turned back with a sense of distrust which the bailiff
understood at once in spite of their impassible faces. Marthe let them
look at the gun, to the tune of Couraut's bark; she was so convinced
that her husband was meditating some evil deed that she was thankful for
the curiosity of the strangers.

Michu flung a look at his wife which made her tremble; he took the
gun and began to load it, accepting quietly the fatal ill-luck of this
encounter and the discovery of the weapon. He seemed no longer to care
for life, and his wife fathomed his inward feeling.

"So you have wolves in these parts?" said the young man, watching him.

"There are always wolves where there are sheep. You are in Champagne,
and there's a forest; we have wild-boars, large and small game both, a
little of everything," replied Michu, in a truculent manner.

"I'll bet, Corentin," said the elder of the two men, after exchanging a
glance with his companion, "that this is my friend Michu—"

"We never kept pigs together that I know of," said the bailiff.

"No, but we both presided over Jacobins, citizen," replied the old
cynic,—"you at Arcis, I elsewhere. I see you've kept your Carmagnole
civility, but it's no longer in fashion, my good fellow."

"The park strikes me as rather large; we might lose our way. If you are
really the bailiff show us the path to the chateau," said Corentin, in a
peremptory tone.

Michu whistled to his son and continued to load his gun. Corentin looked
at Marthe with indifference, while his companion seemed charmed by
her; but the young man noticed the signs of her inward distress, which
escaped the old libertine, who had, however, noticed and feared the gun.
The natures of the two men were disclosed in this trifling yet important
circumstance.

"I've an appointment the other side of the forest," said the bailiff. "I
can't go with you, but my son here will take you to the chateau. How did
you get to Gondreville? did you come by Cinq-Cygne?"

"We had, like yourself, business in the forest," said Corentin, without
apparent sarcasm.

"Francois," cried Michu, "take these gentlemen to the chateau by the
wood path, so that no one sees them; they don't follow the beaten
tracks. Come here," he added, as the strangers turned to walk away,
talking together as they did so in a low voice. Michu caught the boy
in his arms, and kissed him almost solemnly with an expression which
confirmed his wife's fears; cold chills ran down her back; she glanced
at her mother with haggard eyes, for she could not weep.

"Go," said Michu; and he watched the boy until he was entirely out
of sight. Couraut was barking on the other side of the road in the
direction of Grouage. "Oh, that's Violette," remarked Michu. "This is
the third time that old fellow has passed here to-day. What's in the
wind? Hush, Couraut!"

A few moments later the trot of a pony was heard approaching.

Violette, mounted on one of those little nags which the farmers in the
neighborhood of Paris use so much, soon appeared, wearing a round hat
with a broad brim, beneath which his wood-colored face, deeply wrinkled,
appeared in shadow. His gray eyes, mischievous and lively, concealed
in a measure the treachery of his nature. His skinny legs, covered with
gaiters of white linen which came to the knee, hung rather than rested
in the stirrups, seemingly held in place by the weight of his hob-nailed
shoes. Above his jacket of blue cloth he wore a cloak of some coarse
woollen stuff woven in black and white stripes. His gray hair fell in
curls behind his ears. This dress, the gray horse with its short legs,
the manner in which Violette sat him, stomach projecting and shoulders
thrown back, the big chapped hands which held the shabby bridle, all
depicted him plainly as the grasping, ambitious peasant who desires
to own land and buys it at any price. His mouth, with its bluish lips
parted as if a surgeon had pried them open with a scalpel, and the
innumerable wrinkles of his face and forehead hindered the play of
features which were expressive only in their outlines. Those hard, fixed
lines seemed menacing, in spite of the humility which country-folks
assume and beneath which they conceal their emotions and schemes, as
savages and Easterns hide theirs behind an imperturbable gravity. First
a mere laborer, then the farmer of Grouage through a long course of
persistent ill-doing, he continued his evil practices after conquering a
position which surpassed his early hopes. He wished harm to all men
and wished it vehemently. When he could assist in doing harm he did it
eagerly. He was openly envious; but, no matter how malignant he might
be, he kept within the limits of the law,—neither beyond it nor behind
it, like a parliamentary opposition. He believed his prosperity depended
on the ruin of others, and that whoever was above him was an enemy
against whom all weapons were good. A character like this is very common
among the peasantry.

Violette's present business was to obtain from Malin an extension of the
lease of his farm, which had only six years longer to run. Jealous of
the bailiff's means, he watched him narrowly. The neighbors reproached
him for his intimacy with "Judas"; but the sly old farmer, wishing
to obtain a twelve years' lease, was really lying in wait for an
opportunity to serve either the government or Malin, who distrusted
Michu. Violette, by the help of the game-keeper of Gondreville and
others belonging to the estate, kept Malin informed of all Michu's
actions. Malin had endeavored, fruitlessly, to win over Marianne, the
Michus' servant-woman; but Violette and his satellites heard everything
from Gaucher,—a lad on whose fidelity Michu relied, but who betrayed
him for cast-off clothing, waistcoats, buckles, cotton socks and
sugar-plums. The boy had no suspicion of the importance of his gossip.
Violette in his reports blackened all Michu's actions and gave them
a criminal aspect by absurd suggestions,—unknown, of course, to the
bailiff, who was aware, however, of the base part played by the farmer,
and took delight in mystifying him.