This miller, a Sarcus-Taupin, was the Nucingen of the little town.He was supposed to be thrice a millionaire; but he never transacted business with others, and thought only of grinding his wheat and keeping a monopoly of it; his most noticeable point was a total absence of politeness and good manners.
The elder Guerbet, brother of the post-master at Conches, possessed an income of ten thousand francs, besides his salary as collector.The Gourdons were rich; the doctor had married the only daughter of old Monsieur Gendrin-Vatebled, keeper of the forests and streams, whom the family were now EXPECTING TO DIE, while the poet had married the niece and sole heiress of the Abbe Taupin, the curate of Soulanges, a stout priest who lived in his cure like a rat in his cheese.
This clever ecclesiastic, devoted to the leading society, kind and obliging to the second, apostolic to the poor and unfortunate, made himself beloved by the whole town.He was cousin of the miller and cousin of the Sarcuses, and belonged therefore to the neighborhood and to its mediocracy.He always dined out and saved expenses; he went to weddings but came away before the ball; he paid the costs of public worship, saying, "It is my business." And the parish let him do it, with the remark, "We have an excellent priest." The bishop, who knew the Soulanges people and was not at all misled as to the true value of the abbe, was glad enough to keep in such a town a man who made religion acceptable, and who knew how to fill his church and preach to sleepy heads.
It is unnecessary to remark that not only each of these worthy burghers possessed some one of the special qualifications which are necessary to existence in the provinces, but also that each cultivated his field in the domain of vanity without a rival.Pere Guerbet understood finance, Soudry might have been minister of war; if Cuvier had passed that way incognito, the leading society of Soulanges would have proved to him that he knew nothing in comparison with Monsieur Gourdon the doctor."Adolphe Nourrit with his thread of a voice,"
remarked the notary with patronizing indulgence, "was scarcely worthy to accompany the nightingale of Soulanges." As to the author of the "Cup-and-Ball" (which was then being printed at Bournier's), society was satisfied that a poet of his force could not be met with in Paris, for Delille was now dead.
This provincial bourgeoisie, so comfortably satisfied with itself, took the lead through the various superiorities of its members.
Therefore the imagination of those who ever resided, even for a short time, in a little town of this kind can conceive the air of profound satisfaction upon the faces of these people, who believed themselves the solar plexus of France, all of them armed with incredible dexterity and shrewdness to do mischief,--all, in their wisdom, declaring that the hero of Essling was a coward, Madame de Montcornet a manoeuvring Parisian, and the Abbe Brossette an ambitious little priest.
If Rigou, Soudry, and Gaubertin had lived at Ville-aux-Fayes, they would have quarrelled; their various pretensions would have clashed;
but fate ordained that the Lucullus of Blangy felt too strongly the need of solitude, in which to wallow at his ease in usury and sensuality, to live anywhere but at Blangy; that Madame Soudry had sense enough to see that she could reign nowhere else except at Soulanges; and that Ville-aux-Fayes was Gaubertin's place of business.
Those who enjoy studying social nature will admit that General Montcornet was pursued by special ill-luck in this accidental separation of his dangerous enemies, who thus accomplished the evolutions of their individual power and vanity at such distances from each other that neither star interfered with the orbit of the other,--
a fact which doubled and trebled their powers of mischief.
Nevertheless, though all these worthy bourgeois, proud of their accomplishments, considered their society as far superior in attractions to that of Ville-aux-Fayes, and repeated with comic pomposity the local dictum, "Soulanges is a town of society and social pleasures," it must not be supposed that Ville-aux-Fayes accepted this supremacy.The Gaubertin salon ridiculed ("in petto") the salon Soudry.By the manner in which Gaubertin remarked, "We are a financial community, engaged in actual business; we have the folly to fatigue ourselves in making fortunes," it was easy to perceive a latent antagonism between the earth and the moon.The moon believed herself useful to the earth, and the earth governed the moon.Earth and moon, however, lived in the closest intimacy.At the carnival the leading society of Soulanges went in a body to four balls given by Gaubertin, Gendrin, Leclercq, and Soudry, junior.Every Sunday the latter, his wife, Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle Elise Gaubertin dined with the Soudrys at Soulanges.When the sub-prefect was invited, and when the postmaster of Conches arrived to take pot-luck, Soulanges enjoyed the sight of four official equipages drawn up at the door of the Soudry mansion.