"At your age and mine," replied Soudry, "there's no other way."
"With girls of any ambition it would be one way to become a widower,"
added Rigou; "especially if Madame Soudry found fault with Jeannette for her way of scrubbing the staircase."
The remark made the two husbands pensive.When Jeannette returned and announced that all was ready, Soudry said to her, "Come and help me!"
--a precaution which made the ex-monk smile.
"There's a difference, indeed!" said he."As for me, I'd leave you alone with Annette, my good friend."
A quarter of an hour later Soudry, in his best clothes, got into the wicker carriage, and the two friends drove round the lake of Soulanges to Ville-aux-Fayes.
"Look at it!" said Rigou, as they reached an eminence from which the chateau of Soulanges could be seen in profile.
The old revolutionary put into the tone of his words all the hatred which the rural middle classes feel to the great chateaux and the great estates.
"Yes, but I hope it will never be destroyed as long as I live," said Soudry."The Comte de Soulanges was my general; he did me kindness; he got my pension, and he allows Lupin to manage the estate.After Lupin some of us will have it, and as long as the Soulanges family exists they and their property will be respected.Such folks are large-
minded; they let every one make his profit, and they find it pays."
"Yes, but the Comte de Soulanges has three children, who, at his death, may not agree," replied Rigou."The husband of his daughter and his sons may go to law, and end by selling the lead and iron mines to manufacturers, from whom we shall manage to get them back."
The chateau just then showed up in profile, as if to defy the ex-monk.
"Ah! look at it; in those days they built well," cried Soudry."But just now Monsieur le Comte is economizing, so as to make Soulanges the entailed estate of his peerage."
"My dear friend," said Rigou, "entailed estates won't exist much longer."
When the topic of public matters was exhausted, the worthy pair began to discuss the merits of their pretty maids in terms too Burgundian to be printed here.That inexhaustible subject carried them so far that before they knew it they saw the capital of the arrondissement over which Gaubertin reigned, and which we hope excites enough curiosity in the reader's mind to justify a short digression.
The name of Ville-aux-Fayes, singular as it is, is explained as the corruption of the words (in low Latin) "Villa in Fago,"--the manor of the woods.This name indicates that a forest once covered the delta formed by the Avonne before it joins its confluent the Yonne.Some Frank doubtless built a fortress on the hill which slopes gently to the long plain.The savage conqueror separated his vantage-ground from the delta by a wide and deep moat and made the position a formidable one, essentially seignorial, convenient for enforcing tolls across the bridges and for protecting his rights of profit on all grains ground in the mills.
That is the history of the beginning of Ville-aux-Fayes.Wherever feudal or ecclesiastical dominion established there we find gathered together interests, inhabitants, and, later, towns when the localities were in a position to maintain them and to found and develop great industries.The method of floating timber discovered by Jean Rouvet in 1549, which required certain convenient stations to intercept it, was the making of Ville-aux-Fayes, which, up to that time, had been, compared to Soulanges, a mere village.Ville-aux-Fayes became a storage place for timber, which covered the shores of the two rivers for a distance of over thirty miles.The work of taking out of the water, computing the lost logs, and making the rafts which the Yonne carried down to the Seine, brought together a large concourse of workmen.Such a population increased consumption and encouraged trade.
Thus Ville-aux-Fayes, which had but six hundred inhabitants at the end of the seventeenth century, had two thousand in 1790, and Gaubertin had now raised the number to four thousand, by the following means.
When the legislative assembly decreed the new laying out of territory, Ville-aux-Fayes, which was situated where, geographically, a sub-
prefecture was needed, was chosen instead of Soulanges as chief town or capital of the arrondissement.The increased population of Paris, by increasing the demand for and the value of wood as fuel, necessarily increased the commerce of Ville-aux-Fayes.Gaubertin had founded his fortune, after losing his stewardship, on this growing business, estimating the effect of peace on the population of Paris, which did actually increase by over one-third between 1815 and 1825.
The shape of Ville-aux-Fayes followed the conformation of the ground.
Each side of the promontory was lined with wharves.The dam to stop the timber from floating further down was just below a hill covered by the forest of Soulanges.Between the dam and the town lay a suburb.
The lower town, covering the greater part of the delta, came down to the shores of the lake of the Avonne.
Above the lower town some five hundred houses with gardens, standing on the heights, were grouped round three sides of the promontory, and enjoyed the varied scene of the diamond waters of the lake, the rafts in construction along its edge, and the piles of wood upon the shores.
The waters, laden with timber from the river and the rapids which fed the mill-races and the sluices of a few manufactories, presented an animated scene, all the more charming because inclosed in the greenery of forests, while the long valley of Les Aigues offered a glorious contrast to the dark foil of the heights above the town itself.