Sons of the Soil Part 43

"If I give you what you ask, will you tell me who offered you those three thousand francs?" said the general.

"I don't know myself; and the person who is urging me to do the thing is some one I love too well to tell of. Besides, even if you did know it was Marie Tonsard, that wouldn't help you; Marie Tonsard would be as silent as that wall, and I should deny every word I've said."

"Come and see me to-morrow," said the general.

"Enough," replied Bonnebault; "and if they begin to say I'm too dilatory, I'll let you know in time."

A week after that singular conversation the whole arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, indeed the whole department, was covered with posters, advertising the sale of Les Aigues at the office of Maitre Corbineau, the notary of Soulanges.

All the lots were knocked down to Rigou, and the price paid amounted to two millions five hundred thousand francs. The next day Rigou had the names changed; Monsieur Gaubertin took the woods, Rigou and Soudry the vineyards and the farms. The chateau and the park were sold over again in small lots among the sons of the soil, the peasantry,--excepting the pavilion, its dependencies, and fifty surrounding acres, which Monsieur Gaubertin retained as a gift to his poetic and sentimental spouse.

Many years after these events, during the year 1837, one of the most remarkable political writers of the day, Emile Blondet, reached the last stages of a poverty which he had so far hidden beneath an outward appearance of ease and elegance. He was thinking of taking some desperate step, realizing, as he did, that his writings, his mind, his knowledge, his ability for the direction of affairs, had made him nothing better than a mere functionary, mechanically serving the ends of others; seeing that every avenue was closed to him and all places taken; feeling that he had reached middle-life without fame and without fortune; that fools and middle-cla.s.s men of no training had taken the places of the courtiers and incapables of the Restoration, and that the government was reconst.i.tuted such as it was before 1830. One evening, when he had come very near committing suicide (a folly he had so often laughed at), while his mind travelled back over his miserable existence calumniated and worn down with toil far more than with the dissipations charged against him, the n.o.ble and beautiful face of a woman rose before his eyes, like a statue rising pure and unbroken amid the saddest ruins.

Just then the porter brought him a letter sealed with black from the Comtesse de Montcornet, telling him of the death of her husband, who had again taken service in the army and commanded a division. The count had left her his property, and she had no children. The letter, though dignified, showed Blondet very plainly that the woman of forty whom he had loved in his youth offered him a friendly hand and a large fortune.

A few days ago the marriage of the Comtesse de Montcornet with Monsieur Blondet, appointed prefect in one of the departments, was celebrated in Paris. On their way to take possession of the prefecture, they followed the road which led past what had formerly been Les Aigues. They stopped the carriage near the spot where the two pavilions had once stood, wis.h.i.+ng to see the places so full of tender memories for each. The country was no longer recognizable. The mysterious woods, the park avenues, all were cleared away; the landscape looked like a tailor's pattern-card. The sons of the soil had taken possession of the earth as victors and conquerors. It was cut up into a thousand little lots, and the population had tripled between Conches and Blangy. The levelling and cultivation of the n.o.ble park, once so carefully tended, so delightful in its beauty, threw into isolated relief the pavilion of the Rendezvous, now the Villa Buen-Retiro of Madame Isaure Gaubertin; it was the only building left standing, and it commanded the whole landscape, or as we might better call it, the stretch of cornfields which now const.i.tuted the landscape. The building seemed magnified into a chateau, so miserable were the little houses which the peasants had built around it.

"This is progress!" cried Emile. "It is a page out of Jean-Jacques'

'Social Compact'! and I--I am harnessed to the social machine that works it! Good G.o.d! what will the kings be soon? More than that, what will the nations themselves be fifty years hence under this state of things?"

"But you love me; you are beside me. I think the present delightful.

What do I care for such a distant future?" said his wife.

"Oh yes! by your side, hurrah for the present!" cried the lover, gayly, "and the devil take the future."

Then he signed to the coachman, and as the horses sprang forward along the road, the wedded pair returned to the enjoyment of their honeymoon.

1845.