Sons of the Soil. Honore de Balzac
of Soulanges was heard, and five minutes later the sheriff’s officer fastened his horse to a post placed for the purpose near the wicket gate through which the cows were driven. Then he showed his head at the door of the Grand-I-Vert.
“Come, my boys, let’s lose no time,” he said, pretending to be in a hurry.
“Hey!” said Vermichel. “Here’s a refractory, Monsieur Brunet; Pere Fourchon wants to drop off.”
“He has had too many drops already,” said the sheriff; “but the law in this case does not require that he shall be sober.”
“Please excuse me, Monsieur Brunet,” said Fourchon, “I am expected at Les Aigues on business; they are in treaty for an otter.”
Brunet, a withered little man dressed from head to foot in black cloth, with a bilious skin, a furtive eye, curly hair, lips tight-drawn, pinched nose, anxious expression, and gruff in speech, exhibited the phenomenon of a character and bearing in perfect harmony with his profession. He was so well-informed as to the law, or, to speak more correctly, the quibbles of the law, that he had come to be both the terror and the counsellor of the whole canton. He was not without a certain popularity among the peasantry, from whom he usually took his pay in kind. The compound of his active and negative qualities and his knowledge of how to manage matters got him the custom of the canton, to the exclusion of his coadjutor Plissoud, about whom we shall have something to say later. This chance combination of a sheriff’s officer who does everything and a sheriff’s officer who does nothing is not at all uncommon in the country justice courts.
“So matters are getting warm, are they?” said Tonsard to little Brunet.
“What can you expect? you pilfer the man too much, and he’s going to protect himself,” replied the officer. “It will be a bad business for you in the end; government will interfere.”
“Then we, poor unfortunates, must give up the ghost!” said Mam Tonsard, offering him a glass of brandy on a saucer.
“The unfortunate may all die, yet they’ll never be lacking in the land,” said Fourchon, sententiously.
“You do great damage to the woods,” retorted the sheriff.
“Now don’t believe that, Monsieur Brunet,” said Mam Tonsard; “they make such a fuss about a few miserable fagots!”
“We didn’t crush the rich low enough during the Revolution, that’s what’s the trouble,” said Tonsard.
Just then a horrible, and quite incomprehensible noise was heard. It seemed to be a rush of hurried feet, accompanied with a rattle of arms, half-drowned by the rustling of leaves, the dragging of branches, and the sound of still more hasty feet. Two voices, as different as the two footsteps, were venting noisy exclamations. Everybody inside the inn guessed at once that a man was pursuing a woman; but why? The uncertainty did not last long.
“It is mother!” said Tonsard, jumping up; “I know her shriek.”
Then suddenly, rushing up the broken steps of the Grand-I-Vert by a last effort that can be made only by the sinews of smugglers, old Mother Tonsard fell flat on the floor in the middle of the room. The immense mass of wood she carried on her head made a terrible noise as it crashed against the top of the door and then upon the ground. Every one had jumped out of the way. The table, the bottles, the chairs were knocked over and scattered. The noise was as great as if the cottage itself had come tumbling down.
“I’m dead! The scoundrel has killed me!”
The words and the flight of the old woman were explained by the apparition on the threshold of a keeper, dressed in green livery, wearing a hat edged with silver cord, a sabre at his side, a leathern shoulder-belt bearing the arms of Montcornet charged with those of the Troisvilles, the regulation red waistcoat, and buckskin gaiters which came above the knee.
After a moment’s hesitation the keeper said, looking at Brunet and Vermichel, “Here are witnesses.”
“Witnesses of what?” said Tonsard.
“That woman has a ten-year-old oak, cut into logs, inside those fagots; it is a regular crime!”
The moment the word “witness” was uttered Vermichel thought best to breathe the fresh air of the vineyard.
“Of what? witnesses of what?” cried Tonsard, standing in front of the keeper while his wife helped up the old woman. “Do you mean to show your claws, Vatel? Accuse persons and arrest them on the highway, brigand, – that’s your domain; but get out of here! A man’s house is his castle.”
“I caught her in the act, and your mother must come with me.”
“Arrest my mother in my house? You have no right to do it. My house is inviolable, – all the world knows that, at least. Have you got a warrant from Monsieur Guerbet, the magistrate? Ha! you must have the law behind you before you come in here. You are not the law, though you have sworn an oath to starve us to death, you miserable forest-gauger, you!”
The fury of the keeper waxed so hot that he was on the point of seizing hold of the wood, when the old woman, a frightful bit of black parchment endowed with motion, the like of which can be seen only in David’s picture of “The Sabines,” screamed at him, “Don’t touch it, or I’ll fly at your eyes!”
“Well, then, undo that pile in presence of Monsieur Brunet,” said the keeper.
Though the sheriff’s officer had assumed the indifference that the routine of business does really give to officials of his class, he threw a glance at Tonsard and his wife which said plainly, “A bad business!” Old Fourchon looked at his daughter, and slyly pointed at a pile of ashes in the chimney. Mam Tonsard, who understood in a moment from that significant gesture both the danger of her mother-in-law and the advice of her father, seized a handful of ashes and flung them in the keeper’s eyes. Vatel roared with pain; Tonsard pushed him roughly upon the broken door-steps where the blinded man stumbled and fell, and then rolled nearly down to the gate, dropping his gun on the way. In an instant the load of sticks was unfastened, and the oak logs pulled out and hidden with a rapidity no words can describe. Brunet, anxious not to witness this manoeuvre, which he readily foresaw, rushed after the keeper to help him up; then he placed him on the bank and wet his handkerchief in water to wash the eyes of the poor fellow, who, in spite of his agony, was trying to reach the brook.
“You are in the wrong, Vatel,” said Brunet; “you have no right to enter houses, don’t you see?”
The old woman, a little hump-backed creature, stood on the sill of the door, with her hands on her hips, darting flashes from her eyes and curses from her foaming lips shrill enough to be heard at Blangy.
“Ha! the villain, ‘twas well done! May hell get you! To suspect me of cutting trees! —me, the most honest woman in the village. To hunt me like vermin! I’d like to see you lose your cursed eyes, for then we’d have peace. You are birds of ill-omen, the whole of you; you invent shameful stories to stir up strife between your master and us.”
The keeper allowed the sheriff to bathe his eyes and all the while the latter kept telling him that he was legally wrong.
“The old thief! she has tired us out,” said Vatel at last. “She has been at work in the woods all night.”
As the whole family had taken an active hand in hiding the live wood and putting things straight in the cottage, Tonsard presently appeared at the door with an insolent air. “Vatel, my man, if you ever again dare to force your way into my domain, my gun shall answer you,” he said. “To-day you have had the ashes; the next time you shall have the fire. You don’t know your own business. That’s enough. Now if you feel hot after this affair take some wine, I offer it to you; and you may come in and see that my old mother’s bundle of fagots hadn’t a scrap of live wood in it; it is every bit brushwood.”
“Scoundrel!” said the keeper to the sheriff, in a low voice, more enraged by this speech than by the smart of his eyes.
Just then Charles, the groom, appeared at the gate of the Grand-I-Vert.
“What is the matter, Vatel?” he said.
“Ah!”