Parisians, who are accustomed to eat the fruits of the earth after they have had a second ripening in the sun of a city, infected by the air of the streets, fermenting in close shops, and watered from time to time by the market-women to give them a deceitful freshness, have little idea of the exquisite flavors of really fresh produce, to which nature has lent fugitive but powerful charms when eaten as it were alive.
The butcher of Soulanges brought his best meat under fear of losing Rigou's custom.The poultry, raised on the premises, was of the finest quality.
This system of secret pampering embraced everything in which Rigou was personally concerned.Though the slippers of the knowing Thelemist were of stout leather they were lined with lamb's wool.Though his coat was of rough cloth it did not touch his skin, for his shirt, washed and ironed at home, was of the finest Frisian linen.His wife, Annette, and Jean drank the common wine of the country, the wine he reserved from his own vineyards; but in his private cellar, as well stocked as the cellars of Belgium, the finest vintages of Burgundy rubbed sides with those of Bordeaux, Champagne, Roussillon, not to speak of Spanish and Rhine wines, all bought ten years in advance of use and bottled by Brother Jean.The liqueurs in that cellar were those of the Isles, and came originally from Madame Amphoux.Rigou had laid in a supply to last him the rest of his days, at the national sale of a chateau in Burgundy.
The ex-monk ate and drank like Louis XIV.(one of the greatest consumers of food and drink ever known), which reveals the costs of a life that was more than voluptuous.Careful and very shrewd in managing his secret prodigalities, he disputed all purchases as only churchmen can dispute.Instead of taking infinite precautions against being cheated, the sly monk kept patterns and samples, had the agreements reduced to writing, and warned those who forwarded his wines or his provisions that if they fell short of the mark in any way he should refuse to accept their consignments.
Jean, who had charge of the fruit-room, was trained to keep fresh the finest fruits grown in the department; so that Rigou ate pears and apples and sometimes grapes, at Easter.
No prophet regarded as a God was ever more blindly obeyed than was Rigou in his own home.A mere motion of his black eyelashes could plunge his wife, Annette, and Jean into the deepest anxiety.He held his three slaves by the multiplicity of their many duties, which were like a chain in his hands.These poor creatures were under the perpetual yoke of some ordered duty, with an eye always on them; but they had come to take a sort of pleasure in accomplishing these tasks, and did not suffer under them.All three had the comfort and well-
being of that one man before their minds as the sole end and object of all their thoughts.
Annette was (since 1795) the tenth pretty girl in Rigou's service, and he expected to go down to his grave with relays of such servants.
Brought to him at sixteen, she would be sent away at nineteen.All these girls, carefully chosen at Auxerre, Clamecy, or in the Morvan, were enticed by the promise of future prosperity; but Madame Rigou persisted in living.So at the end of every three years some quarrel, usually brought about by the insolence of the servant to the poor mistress, caused their dismissal.
Annette, who was a picture of delicate beauty, ingenuous and sparkling, deserved to be a duchess.Rigou knew nothing of the love affair between her and Jean-Louis Tonsard, which proves that he had let himself be fooled by the girl,--the only one of his many servants whose ambition had taught her to flatter the lynx as the only way to blind him.
This uncrowned Louis XV.did not keep himself wholly to his pretty Annette.Being the mortgagee of lands bought by peasants who were unable to pay for them, he kept a harem in the valley, from Soulanges to five miles beyond Conches on the road to La Brie, without making other payments than "extension of time," for those fugitive pleasures which eat into the fortunes of so many old men.
This luxurious life, a life like that of Bouret, cost Rigou almost nothing.Thanks to his white slaves, he could cut and mow down and gather in his wood, hay, and grain.To the peasant manual labor is a small matter, especially if it serves to postpone the payment of interest due.And so Rigou, while requiring little premiums on each month's delay, squeezed a great deal of manual labor out of his debtors,--positive drudgery, to which they submitted thinking they gave little because nothing left their pockets.Rigou sometimes obtained in this way more than the principal of a debt.
Deep as a monk, silent as a Benedictine in the throes of writing history, sly as a priest, deceitful as all misers, carefully keeping within the limits of the law, the man might have been Tiberius in Rome, Richelieu under Louis XIII., or Fouche, had the ambition seized him to go to the Convention; but, instead of all that, Rigou had the common sense to remain a Lucullus without ostentation, in other words, a parsimonious voluptuary.To occupy his mind he indulged a hatred manufactured out of the whole cloth.He harassed the Comte de Montcornet.He worked the peasants like puppets by hidden wires, the handling of which amused him as though it were a game of chess where the pawns were alive, the knights caracoled, the bishops, like Fourchon, gabbled, the feudal castles shone in the sun, and the queen maliciously checkmated the king.Every day, when he got out of bed and saw from his window the proud towers of Les Aigues, the chimneys of the pavilions, and the noble gates, he said to himself: "They shall fall! I'll dry up the brooks, I'll chop down the woods." But he had two victims in mind, a chief one and a lesser one.Though he meditated the dismemberment of the chateau, the apostate also intended to make an end of the Abbe Brossette by pin-pricks.