“What silence!” said the countess, with emotion and in a whisper, as if not to trouble this deep peace.
They looked at the green patches on the water, — worlds where life was organizing; they pointed to the lizard playing in the sun and escaping at their approach, — behavior which has won him the title of “the friend of man.” “Proving, too, how well he knows him,” said Emile. They watched the frogs, who, less distrustful, returned to the surface of the pond, winking their carbuncle eyes as they sat upon the water-cresses. The sweet and simple poetry of Nature permeated these two souls surfeited with the conventional things of life, and filled them with contemplative emotion. Suddenly Blondet shuddered. Turning to the countess he said, —
“Did you hear that?”
“What?” she asked.
“A curious noise.”
“Ah, you literary men who live in your studies and know nothing of the country! that is only a woodpecker tapping a tree. I dare say you don’t even know the most curious fact in the history of that bird. As soon as he has given his tap, and he gives millions to pierce an oak, he flies behind the tree to see if he is yet through it; and he does this every instant.”
“The noise I heard, dear instructress of natural history, was not a noise made by an animal; there was evidence of mind in it, and that proclaims a man.”
The countess was seized with panic, and she darted back through the wild flower-garden, seeking the path by which to leave the forest.
“What is the matter?” cried Blondet, rushing after her.
“I thought I saw eyes,” she said, when they regained the path through which they had reached the charcoal-burner’s open.
Just then they heard the low death-rattle of a creature whose throat was suddenly cut, and the countess, with her fears redoubled, fled so quickly that Blondet could scarcely follow her. She ran like a will-o’-the-wisp, and did not listen to Blondet who called to her, “You are mistaken.” On she ran, and Emile with her, till they suddenly came upon Michaud and his wife, who were walking along arm-in-arm. Emile was panting and the countess out of breath, and it was some time before they could speak; then they explained. Michaud joined Blondet in laughing at the countess’s terror; then the bailiff showed the two wanderers the way to find the tilbury. When they reached the gate Madame Michaud called, “Prince!”
“Prince! Prince!” called the bailiff; then he whistled, — but no greyhound.
Emile mentioned the curious noise that began their adventure.
“My wife heard that noise,” said Michaud, “and I laughed at her.”
“They have killed Prince!” exclaimed the countess. “I am sure of it; they killed him by cutting his throat at one blow. What I heard was the groan of a dying animal.”
“The devil!” cried Michaud; “the matter must be cleared up.”
Emile and the bailiff left the two ladies with Joseph and the horses, and returned to the wild garden of the open. They went down the bank to the pond; looked everywhere along the slope, but found no clue. Blondet jumped back first, and as he did so he saw, in a thicket which stood on higher ground, one of those trees he had noticed in the morning with withered heads. He showed it to Michaud, and proposed to go to it. The two sprang forward in a straight line across the forest, avoiding the trunks and going round the matted tangles of brier and holly until they found the tree.
“It is a fine elm,” said Michaud, “but there’s a worm in it, — a worm which gnaws round the bark close to the roots.”
He stopped and took up a bit of the bark, saying: “See how they work.”
“You have a great many worms in this forest,” said Blondet.
Just then Michaud noticed a red spot; a moment more and he saw the head of his greyhound. He sighed.
“The scoundrels!” he said. “Madame was right.”
Michaud and Blondet examined the body and found, just as the countess had said, that some one had cut the greyhound’s throat. To prevent his barking he had been decoyed with a bit of meat, which was still between his tongue and his palate.
“Poor brute; he died of self-indulgence.”
“Like all princes,” said Blondet.
“Some one, whoever it is, has just gone, fearing that we might catch him or her,” said Michaud. “A serious offence has been committed. But for all that, I see no branches about and no lopped trees.”
Blondet and the bailiff began a cautious search, looking at each spot where they set their feet before setting them. Presently Blondet pointed to a tree beneath which the grass was flattened down and two hollows made.
“Some one knelt there, and it must have been a woman, for a man would not have left such a quantity of flattened grass around the impression of his two knees; yes, see! that is the outline of a petticoat.”
The bailiff, after examining the base of the tree, found the beginning of a hole beneath the bark; but he did not find the worm with the tough skin, shiny and squamous, covered with brown specks, ending in a tail not unlike that of a cockchafer, and having also the latter’s head, antennae, and the two vigorous hooks or shears with which the creature cuts into the wood.
“My dear fellow,” said Blondet, “now I understand the enormous number of dead trees that I noticed this morning from the terrace of the chateau, and which brought me here to find out the cause of the phenomenon. Worms are at work; but they are no other than your peasants.”
The bailiff gave vent to an oath and rushed off, followed by Blondet, to rejoin the countess, whom he requested to take his wife home with her. Then he jumped on Joseph’s horse, leaving the man to return on foot, and disappeared with great rapidity to cut off the retreat of the woman who had killed his dog, hoping to catch her with the bloody bill-hook in her hand and the tool used to make the incisions in the bark of the tree.
“Let us go and tell the general at once, before he breakfasts,” cried the countess; “he might die of anger.”
“I’ll prepare him,” said Blondet.
“They have killed the dog,” said Olympe, in tears.
“You loved the poor greyhound, dear, enough to weep for him?” said the countess.
“I think of Prince as a warning; I fear some danger to my husband.”
“How they have ruined this beautiful morning for us,” said the countess, with an adorable little pout.
“How they have ruined the country,” said Olympe, gravely.
They met the general near the chateau.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“You shall know in a minute,” said Blondet, mysteriously, as he helped the countess and Madame Michaud to alight. A moment more and the two gentlemen were alone on the terrace of the apartments.
“You have plenty of moral strength, general; you won’t put yourself in a passion, will you?”
“No,” said the general; “but come to the point or I shall think you are making fun of me.”
“Do you see those trees with dead leaves?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see those others that are wilting?”
“Yes.”
“Well, every one of them has been killed by the peasants you think you have won over by your benefits.”
And Blondet related the events of the morning.
The general was so pale that Blondet was frightened.
“Come, curse, swear, be furious! your self-control may hurt you more than anger!”
“I’ll go and smoke,” said the general, turning toward the kiosk.
During breakfast Michaud came in; he had found no one. Sibilet, whom the count had sent for, came also.
“Monsieur Sibilet, and you, Monsieur Michaud, are to make it known, cautiously, that I will pay a thousand francs to whoever will arrest in the act the person or persons who are killing my trees; they must also discover the instrument with which the work is done, and where it was bought. I have settled upon a plan.”
“Those people never betray one another,” said Sibilet, “if the crime done is for their ben
efit and premeditated. There is no denying that this diabolical business has been planned, carefully planned and contrived.”
“Yes, but a thousand francs means a couple of acres of land.”
“We can try,” said Sibilet; “fifteen hundred francs might buy you a traitor, especially if you promise secrecy.”
“Very good; but let us act as if we suspected nothing, I especially; if not, we shall be the victims of some collusion; one has to be as wary with these brigands as with the enemy in war.”
“But the enemy is here,” said Blondet.
Sibilet threw him the furtive glance of a man who understood the meaning of the words, and then he withdrew.
“I don’t like your Sibilet,” said Blondet, when he had seen the steward leave the house. “That man is playing false.”
“Up to this time he has done nothing I could complain of,” said the general.
Blondet went off to write letters. He had lost the careless gayety of his first arrival, and was now uneasy and preoccupied; but he had no vague presentiments like those of Madame Michaud; he was, rather, in full expectation of certain foreseen misfortunes. He said to himself, “This affair will come to some bad end; and if the general does not take decisive action and will not abandon a battle-field where he is overwhelmed by numbers there must be a catastrophe; and who knows who will come out safe and sound, — perhaps neither he nor his wife. Good God! that adorable little creature! so devoted, so perfect! how can he expose her thus! He thinks he loves her! Well, I’ll share their danger, and if I can’t save them I’ll suffer with them.”
CHAPTER VIII. RURAL VIRTUE
That night Marie Tonsard was stationed on the road to Soulanges, sitting on the rail of a culvert waiting for Bonnebault, who had spent the day, as usual, at the Cafe de la Paix. She heard him coming at some distance, and his step told her that he was drunk, and she knew also that he had lost money, for he always sang if he won.
“Is that you, Bonnebault?”
“Yes, my girl.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I owe twenty-five francs, and they may wring my neck twenty-five times before I can pay them.”
“Well, I know how you can get five hundred,” she said in his ear.
“Oh! by killing a man; but I prefer to live.”
“Hold your tongue. Vaudoyer will give us five hundred francs if you will let him catch your mother at a tree.”
“I’d rather kill a man than sell my mother. There’s your old grandmother; why don’t you sell her?”
“If I tried to, my father would get angry and stop the trick.”
“That’s true. Well, anyhow, my mother sha’n’t go to prison, poor old thing! She cooks my food and keeps me in clothes, I’m sure I don’t know how. Go to prison, — and through me! I shouldn’t have any bowels within me; no, no! And for fear any one else should sell her, I’ll tell her this very night not to kill any more trees.”
“Well, my father may say and do what he likes, but I shall tell him there are five hundred francs to be had, and perhaps he’ll ask my grandmother if she’ll earn them. They’ll never put an old woman seventy-eight years of age in prison, — though, to be sure, she’d be better off there than in her garret.”
“Five hundred francs! well, yes; I’ll speak to my mother,” said Bonnebault, “and if it suits her to give ‘em to me, I’ll let her have part to take to prison. She could knit, and amuse herself; and she’d be well fed and lodged, and have less trouble than she has at Conches. Well, to-morrow, my girl, I’ll see you about it; I haven’t time to stop now.”
The next morning at daybreak Bonnebault and his old mother knocked at the door of the Grand-I-Vert. Mother Tonsard was the only person up.
“Marie!” called Bonnebault, “that matter is settled.”
“You mean about the trees?” said Mother Tonsard; “yes, it is all settled; I’ve taken it.”
“Nonsense!” cried Mother Bonnebault, “my son has got the promise of an acre of land from Monsieur Rigou — ”
The two old women squabbled as to which of them should be sold by her children. The noise of the quarrel woke up the household. Tonsard and Bonnebault took sides for their respective mothers.
“Pull straws,” suggested Tonsard’s wife.
The short straw gave it in favor of the tavern.
Three days later, in the forest of Ville-aux-Fayes at daybreak, the gendarmes arrested old Mother Tonsard caught “in flagrante delicto” by the bailiff, his assistants, and the field-keeper, with a rusty file which served to tear the tree, and a chisel, used by the delinquent to scoop round the bark just as the insect bores its way. The indictment stated that sixty trees thus destroyed were found within a radius of five hundred feet. The old woman was sent to Auxerre, the case coming under the jurisdiction of the assize-court.
Michaud could not refrain from saying when he discovered Mother Tonsard at the foot of the tree: “These are the persons on whom the general and Madame la comtesse have showered benefits! Faith, if Madame would only listen to me, she wouldn’t give that dowry to the Tonsard girl, who is more worthless than her grandmother.”
The old woman raised her gray eyes and darted a venomous look at Michaud. When the count learned who the guilty person was, he forbade his wife to give the money to Catherine Tonsard.
“Monsieur le comte is perfectly right,” said Sibilet. “I know that Godain bought that land three days before Catherine came to speak to Madame. She is quite capable, that girl, of pretending she is with child, to get the money; very likely Godain has had nothing to do with it.”
“What a community!” said Blondet; “the scoundrels of Paris are saints by comparison.”
“Ah, monsieur,” said Sibilet, “self-interest makes people guilty of horrors everywhere. Do you know who betrayed the old woman?”
“No.”
“Her granddaughter Marie; she was jealous of her sister’s marriage, and to get the money for her own — ”
“It is awful!” said the count. “Why! they’d murder!”
“Oh yes,” said Sibilet, “for a very small sum. They care so little for life, those people; they hate to have to work all their lives. Ah monsieur, queer things happen in country places, as queer as those of Paris, — but you will never believe it.”
“Let us be kind and benevolent,” said the countess.
The evening after the arrest Bonnebault came to the tavern of the Grand-I-Vert, where all the Tonsard family were in great jubilation. “Oh yes, yes!” said he, “make the most of your rejoicing; but I’ve just heard from Vaudoyer that the countess, to punish you, withdraws the thousand francs promised to Godain; her husband won’t let her give them.”
“It’s that villain of a Michaud who has put him up to it,” said Tonsard. “My mother heard him say he would; she told me at Ville-aux-Fayes where I went to carry her some money and her clothes. Well; let that countess keep her money! our five hundred francs shall help Godain buy the land; and we’ll revenge ourselves for this thing. Ha! Michaud meddles with our private matters, does he? it will bring him more harm than good. What business is it of his, I’d like to know? let him keep to the woods! It’s he who is at the bottom of all this trouble — he found the clue that day my mother cut the throat of his dog. Suppose I were to meddle in the affairs of the chateau? Suppose I were to tell the general that his wife is off walking in the woods before he is up in the morning, with a young man.”
“The general, the general!” sneered Courtecuisse; “they can do what they like with him. But it’s Michaud who stirs him up, the mischief-maker! a fellow who don’t know his business; in my day, things went differently.”
“Ah!” said Tonsard, “those were the good days for all of us — weren’t they, Vaudoyer?”
“Yes,” said the latter, “and the fact is that if Michaud were got rid of we should be left in peace.”
“Enough said,” replied Tonsard. “We’ll talk of this later — by moonlight — in the open field.”
&n
bsp; Towards the end of October the countess returned to Paris, leaving the general at Les Aigues. He was not to rejoin her till some time later, but she did not wish to lose the first night of the Italian Opera, and moreover she was lonely and bored; she missed Emile, who was recalled by his avocations, for he had helped her to pass the hours when the general was scouring the country or attending to business.
November was a true winter month, gray and gloomy, a mixture of snow and rain, frost and thaw. The trial of Mother Tonsard had required witnesses at Auxerre, and Michaud had given his testimony. Monsieur Rigou had interested himself for the old woman, and employed a lawyer on her behalf who relied in his defence on the absence of disinterested witnesses; but the testimony of Michaud and his assistants and the field-keeper was found to outweigh this objection. Tonsard’s mother was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, and the lawyer said to her son: —
“It was Michaud’s testimony which got her that.”
CHAPTER IX THE CATASTROPHE
One Saturday evening, Courtecuisse, Bonnebault, Godain, Tonsard, his daughters, wife, and Pere Fourchon, also Vaudoyer and several mechanics were supping at the tavern. The moon was at half-full, the first snow had melted, and frost had just stiffened the ground so that a man’s step left no traces. They were eating a stew of hare caught in a trap; all were drinking and laughing. It was the day after the wedding of Catherine and Godain, and the wedded pair were to be conducted to their new home, which was not far from that of Courtecuisse; for when Rigou sold an acre of land it was sure to be isolated and close to the woods. Courtecuisse and Vaudoyer had brought their guns to accompany the bride. The neighborhood was otherwise fast asleep; not a light was to be seen; none but the wedding party were awake, but they made noise enough. In the midst of it the old Bonnebault woman entered, and every one looked at her.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 1007