"Try to make my fortune! And where shall I try? If I wish to leave my own province, I must get a passport, and that costs forty sous.Here's forty years that I've never had a slut of a forty-sous piece jingling against another in my pocket.If you want to travel you need as many crowns as there are villages, and there are mighty few Fourchons who have enough to get to six of 'em.It is only the draft that gives us a chance to get away.And what good does the army do us? The colonels live by the solider, just as the rich folks live by the peasant; and out of every hundred of 'em you won't find more than one of our breed.
It is just as it is the world over, one rolling in riches, for a hundred down in the mud.Why are we in the mud? Ask God and the usurers.The best we can do is to stay in our own parts, where we are penned like sheep by the force of circumstances, as our fathers were by the rule of the lords.As for me, what do I care what shackles they are that keep me here? let it be the law of public necessity or the tyranny of the old lords, it is all the same; we are condemned to dig the soil forever.There, where we are born, there we dig it, that earth! and spade it, and manure it, and delve in it, for you who are born rich just as we are born poor.The masses will always be what they are, and stay what they are.The number of us who manage to rise is nothing like the number of you who topple down! We know that well enough, if we have no education! You mustn't be after us with your sheriff all the time,--not if you're wise.We let you alone, and you must let us alone.If not, and things get worse, you'll have to feed us in your prisons, where we'd be much better off than in our homes.
You want to remain our masters, and we shall always be enemies, just as we were thirty years ago.You have everything, we have nothing; you can't expect we should ever be friends."
"That's what I call a declaration of war," said the general.
"Monseigneur," retorted Fourchon, "when Les Aigues belonged to that poor Madame (God keep her soul and forgive her the sins of her youth!)
we were happy.SHE let us get our food from the fields and our fuel from the forest; and was she any the poorer for it? And you, who are at least as rich as she, you hunt us like wild beasts, neither more nor less, and drag the poor before the courts.Well, evil will come of it! you'll be the cause of some great calamity.Haven't I just seen your keeper, that shuffling Vatel, half kill a poor old woman for a stick of wood? It is such fellows as that who make you an enemy to the poor; and the talk is very bitter against you.They curse you every bit as hard as they used to bless the late Madame.The curse of the poor, monseigneur, is a seed that grows,--grows taller than your tall oaks, and oak-wood builds the scaffold.Nobody here tells you the truth; and here it is, yes, the truth! I expect to die before long, and I risk very little in telling it to you, the TRUTH! I, who play for the peasants to dance at the great fetes at Soulanges, I heed what the people say.Well, they're all against you; and they'll make it impossible for you to stay here.If that damned Michaud of yours doesn't change, they'll force you to change him.There! that information AND the otter are worth twenty francs, and more too."
As the old fellow uttered the last words a man's step was heard, and the individual just threatened by Fourchon entered unannounced.It was easy to see from the glance he threw at the old man that the threat had reached his ears, and all Fourchon's insolence sank in a moment.
The look produced precisely the same effect upon him that the eye of a policeman produces on a thief.Fourchon knew he was wrong, and that Michaud might very well accuse him of saying these things merely to terrify the inhabitants of Les Aigues.
"This is the minister of war," said the general to Blondet, nodding at Michaud.
"Pardon me, madame, for having entered without asking if you were willing to receive me," said the newcomer to the countess; "but I have urgent reasons for speaking to the general at once."
Michaud, as he said this, took notice of Sibilet, whose expression of keen delight in Fourchon's daring words was not seen by the four persons seated at the table, because they were so preoccupied by the old man; whereas Michaud, who for secret reasons watched Sibilet constantly, was struck with his air and manner.
"He has earned his twenty francs, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet;
"the otter is fully worth it."
"Give him twenty francs," said the general to the footman.
"Do you mean to take my otter away from me?" said Blondet to the general.
"I shall have it stuffed," replied the latter.
"Ah! but that good gentleman said I might keep the skin," cried Fourchon.
"Well, then," exclaimed the countess, hastily, "you shall have five francs more for the skin; but go away now."
The powerful odor emitted by the pair made the dining-room so horribly offensive that Madame de Montcornet, whose senses were very delicate, would have been forced to leave the room if Fourchon and Mouche had remained.To this circumstance the old man was indebted for his twenty-five francs.He left the room with a timid glance at Michaud, making him an interminable series of bows.
"What I was saying to monseigneur, Monsieur Michaud," he added, "was really for your good."
"Or for that of those who pay you," replied Michaud, with a searching look.
"When you have served the coffee, leave the room," said the general to the servants, "and see that the doors are shut."