Gerfaut Part 3

"It is not a c.o.c.k, it is a crowned gerfaut," said Madame de Bergenheim.

"A gerfaut! How do you know what a gerfaut is? At Corandeuil, in your grandfather's time, there was a falconry, and I have seen gerfauts there, but you--I tell you it is a c.o.c.k, an old French c.o.c.k; ugly thing!

What you take for a coronet--and it really does resemble one--is a badly drawn c.o.c.k's comb. How did this horrid creature come to be there?

I should like to know if such pretty tricks are permitted at the postoffice. People protest against the 'cabinet noir', but it is a hundred times worse if one is permitted to outrage with impunity peaceable families in their own homes. I mean to find out who has played this trick. Will you be so kind as to ring the bell?"

"It really is very strange!" said Madame de Bergenheim, pulling the bell-rope with a vivacity which showed that she shared, if not the indignation, at least the curiosity of her aunt.

A servant in green livery appeared.

"Who went to Remiremont yesterday for the newspapers?" asked Mademoiselle de Corandeuil.

"It was Pere Rousselet, Mademoiselle," replied the servant.

"Where is Monsieur de Bergenheim?"

"Monsieur le Baron is playing billiards with Mademoiselle Aline."

"Send Leonard Rousselet here."

And Mademoiselle de Corandeuil settled herself back in her chair with the dignity of a chancellor about to hold court.

CHAPTER III. A DIVIDED HOUSEHOLD

The servants in the castle of Bergenheim formed a family whose members were far from living in harmony. The Baron managed his household himself, and employed a large number of day-laborers, farm servants, and kitchen-girls, whom the liveried servants treated with great disdain.

The rustics, on their side, resisted these privileged lackeys and called them "c.o.xcombs" and "Parisians," sometimes accompanying these remarks with the most expressive blows. Between these tribes of sworn enemies a third cla.s.s, much less numerous, found them selves in a critical position; these were the two servants brought by Mademoiselle de Corandeuil. It was fortunate for them that their mistress liked large, vigorous men, and had chosen them for their broad, military shoulders; but for that it would have been impossible for them to come out of their daily quarrels safe and sound.

The question of superiority between the two households had been the first apple of discord; a number of personal quarrels followed to inflame them. They fought for their colors the whole time; the Bergenheim livery was red, the Corandeuil green. There were two flags; each exalted his own while throwing that of his adversaries in the mud.

Greenhorn and crab were jokes; cuc.u.mber and lobster were insults.

Such were the gracious terms exchanged every day between the two parties. In the midst of this civil war, which was carefully concealed from their masters' eyes, whose severity they feared, lived one rather singular personage. Leonard Rousselet, Pere Rousselet, as he was generally called, was an old peasant who, disheartened with life, had made various efforts to get out of his sphere, but had never succeeded in doing so. Having been successively hairdresser, s.e.xton, school-teacher, nurse, and gardener, he had ended, when sixty years old, by falling back to the very point whence he started. He had no particular employment in M. de Bergenheim's house; he went on errands, cared for the gardens, and doctored the mules and horses; he was a tall man, about as much at ease in his clothing as a dry almond in its sh.e.l.l.

A long, dark, yellow coat usually hung about the calves of his legs, which were covered with long, blue woollen stockings, and looked more like vine-poles than human legs; a conformation which furnished daily jokes for the other servants, to which the old man deigned no response save a disdainful smile, grumbling through his teeth, "Menials, peasants without education." This latter speech expressed the late gardener's scorn, for it had been his greatest grief to pa.s.s for an uneducated man; and he had gathered from his various conditions a singularly dignified and pretentious way of speaking.

In spite of his self-confidence, it was not without some emotion that Leonard Rousselet responded to this call to appear in the drawing-room before the person he most feared in the chateau. His bearing showed this feeling when he presented himself at the drawing-room door, where he stood as grave and silent as Banquo's ghost. Constance arose at sight of this fantastic figure, barked furiously and darted toward a pair of legs for which she seemed to share the irreverence of the liveried servants; but the texture of the blue stocking and the flesh which covered the tibia were rather too hard morsels for the dowager's teeth; she was obliged to give up the attack and content herself with impotent barks, while the old man, who would gladly have given a month's wages to break her jaw with the tip of his, boot, caressed her with his hand, saying, "Softly, pretty dear! softly, pretty little creature!" in a hypocritical tone.

This courtier-like conduct touched the old lady's heart and softened the severe look upon her face.

"Stop your noise, Constance," said she, "lie down beside your mistress.

Rousselet, come nearer."

The old man obeyed, walking across the floor with reverential bows, and taking a position like a soldier presenting arms.

"You were the one," said Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, "who was sent to Remiremont yesterday? Did you perform all the commissions that were given you?"

"It is not among the impossibilities, Mademoiselle, that I may have neglected some of them," replied the old man, fearing to compromise himself by a positive affirmative.

"Tell us, then, what you did."

Leonard wiped his nose behind his hat, like a well-bred orator, and, balancing himself upon his legs in a way not at all Bourbonic, he said:

"I went to the city that morning myself because Monsieur le Baron had said the night before that he should hunt to-day, and that the groom was to help Monsieur le Baron drive a wild boar out of the Corne woods.

I reached Remiremont; I went to the butcher's; I purchased five kilogrammes of dressed goods--"

"Of dressed goods at the butcher's!" exclaimed Madame de Bergenheim.

"I would say ten pounds of what uneducated people call pork," said Rousselet, p.r.o.nouncing this last word in a strangled voice.

"Pa.s.s over these details," said Mademoiselle de Corandeuil. "You went to the post-office."

"I went to the post-office, where I put in letters for Mademoiselle, Madame, Monsieur le Baron, and one from Mademoiselle Aline for Monsieur d'Artigues."

"Aline writing to her cousin! Did you know that?" said the old aunt, turning quickly toward her niece.

"Certainly; they correspond regularly," replied Clemence with a smile which seemed to say that she saw no harm in it.

The old maid shook her head and protruded her under lip, as much as to say: We will attend to this another time.

Madame de Bergenheim, who was out of patience at this questioning, began to speak in a quick tone which was a contrast to her aunt's solemn slowness.

"Rousselet," said she, "when you took the newspapers out of the office, did you notice whether the wrappers were intact, or whether they had been opened?"

The good man half concealed his face in his cravat at this precise questioning, and it was with embarra.s.sment that he replied, after a moment's hesitation:

"Certainly, Madame--as to the wrappers--I do not accuse the postmaster--"

"If the journals were sealed when you received them, you are the only one who could have opened them."

Rousselet straightened himself up to his full height, and, giving to his nut-cracker face the most dignified look possible, he said in a solemn tone:

"With due deference to you, Madame, Leonard Rousselet is well known.

Fifty-seven years old on Saint-Hubert's day, I am incapable of opening newspapers. When they have been read at the chateau and they send me with them to the cure, I do not say--perhaps on my way--it is a recreation--and then the cure is Jean Bartou, son of Joseph Bartou, the tilemaker. But to read the newspaper before my masters have done so!

Never! Leonard Rousselet is an old man incapable of such baseness.

Baptized when a child; fifty-seven years on Saint-Hubert's day."

"When you speak of your pastor, do so in a more becoming manner,"

interrupted Mademoiselle de Colrandeuil, although she herself in private did not speak of the plebeian priest in very respectful terms. But if Joseph Bartou's son was always the son of Joseph Bartou to her, she meant that he should be Monsieur le Cure to the peasants.

Madame de Bergenheim had not been much affected by Pere Rousselet's harangue, and shook her head impatiently, saying in an imperative tone:

"I am certain that the newspapers have been opened by you, or by some person to whom you have given them, and I wish to know at once by whom."

Rousselet dropped his pose of a Roman senator; pa.s.sing his hand behind his ears, a familiar gesture with people when in embarra.s.sing positions, he continued less emphatically:

"I stopped on my way back at La Fauconnerie, at the 'Femme-sans-Tete Inn'."

"And what were you doing in a tavern?" interrupted Mademoiselle de Corandeuil severely. "You know it is not intended that the servants in this house should frequent taverns and such low places, which are not respectable and corrupt the morals of the lower cla.s.ses."