Chapter 1

The autumn of the year 1803 was one of the finest in the early part of
that period of the present century which we now call “Empire.” Rain had
refreshed the earth during the month of October, so that the trees were
still green and leafy in November. The French people were beginning to
put faith in a secret understanding between the skies and Bonaparte,
then declared Consul for life,--a belief in which that man owes part of
his prestige; strange to say, on the day the sun failed him, in 1812,
his luck ceased!

About four in the afternoon on the fifteenth of November, 1803, the sun
was casting what looked like scarlet dust upon the venerable tops of
four rows of elms in a long baronial avenue, and sparkling on the sand
and grassy places of an immense _rond-point_, such as we often see in
the country where land is cheap enough to be sacrificed to ornament. The
air was so pure, the atmosphere so tempered that a family was sitting
out of doors as if it were summer. A man dressed in a hunting-jacket of
green drilling with green buttons, and breeches of the same stuff, and
wearing shoes with thin soles and gaiters to the knee, was cleaning a
gun with the minute care a skilful huntsman gives to the work in his
leisure hours. This man had neither game nor game-bag, nor any of the
accoutrements which denote either departure for a hunt or the return
from it; and two women sitting near were looking at him as though beset
by a terror they could ill-conceal. Any one observing the scene taking
place in this leafy nook would have shuddered, as the old mother-in-law
and the wife of the man we speak of were now shuddering. A huntsman does
not take such minute precautions with his weapon to kill small game,
neither does he use, in the department of the Aube, a heavy rifled
carbine.

“Shall you kill a roe-buck, Michu?” said his handsome young wife, trying
to assume a laughing air.

Before replying, Michu looked at his dog, which had been lying in the
sun, its paws stretched out and its nose on its paws, in the charming
attitude of a trained hunter. The animal had just raised its head and
was snuffing the air, first down the avenue nearly a mile long which
stretched before them, and then up the cross road where it entered the
_rond-point_ to the left.

“No,” answered Michu, “but a brute I do not wish to miss, a lynx.”

The dog, a magnificent spaniel, white with brown spots, growled.

“Hah!” said Michu, talking to himself, “spies! the country swarms with
them.”

Madame Michu looked appealingly to heaven. A beautiful fair woman
with blue eyes, composed and thoughtful in expression and made like an
antique statue, she seemed to be a prey to some dark and bitter grief.
The husband’s appearance may explain to a certain extent the evident
fear of the two women. The laws of physiognomy are precise, not only in
their application to character, but also in relation to the destinies
of life. There is such a thing as prophetic physiognomy. If it were
possible (and such a vital statistic would be of value to society) to
obtain exact likenesses of those who perish on the scaffold, the science
of Lavatar and also that of Gall would prove unmistakably that the heads
of all such persons, even those who are innocent, show prophetic signs.
Yes, fate sets its mark on the faces of those who are doomed to die a
violent death of any kind. Now, this sign, this seal, visible to the eye
of an observer, was imprinted on the expressive face of the man with the
rifled carbine. Short and stout, abrupt and active in his motions as a
monkey, though calm in temperament, Michu had a white face injected
with blood, and features set close together like those of a Tartar,--a
likeness to which his crinkled red hair conveyed a sinister expression.
His eyes, clear and yellow as those of a tiger, showed depths behind
them in which the glance of whoever examined the man might lose itself
and never find either warmth or motion. Fixed, luminous, and rigid,
those eyes terrified whoever gazed into them. The singular contrast
between the immobility of the eyes and the activity of the body
increased the chilling impression conveyed by a first sight of Michu.
Action, always prompt in this man, was the outcome of a single thought;
just as the life of animals is, without reflection, the outcome of
instinct. Since 1793 he had trimmed his red beard to the shape of a fan.
Even if he had not been (as he was during the Terror) president of a
club of Jacobins, this peculiarity of his head would in itself have
made him terrible to behold. His Socratic face with its blunt nose was
surmounted by a fine forehead, so projecting, however, that it overhung
the rest of the features. The ears, well detached from the head, had the
sort of mobility which we find in those of wild animals, which are ever
on the qui-vive. The mouth, half-open, as the custom usually is among
country-people, showed teeth that were strong and white as almonds, but
irregular. Gleaming red whiskers framed this face, which was white and
yet mottled in spots. The hair, cropped close in front and allowed to
grow long at the sides and on the back of the head, brought into relief,
by its savage redness, all the strange and fateful peculiarities of this
singular face. The neck which was short and thick, seemed to tempt the
axe.

At this moment the sunbeams, falling in long lines athwart the group,
lighted up the three heads at which the dog from time to time glanced
up. The spot on which this scene took place was magnificently fine. The
_rond-point_ is at the entrance of the park of Gondreville, one of the
finest estates in France, and by far the finest in the departments of
the Aube; it boasts of long avenues of elms, a castle built from designs
by Mansart, a park of fifteen hundred acres enclosed by a stone wall,
nine large farms, a forest, mills, and meadows. This almost regal
property belonged before the Revolution to the family of Simeuse.
Ximeuse was a feudal estate in Lorraine; the name was pronounced
Simeuse, and in course of time it came to be written as pronounced.

The great fortune of the Simeuse family, adherents of the House of
Burgundy, dates from the time when the Guises were in conflict with
the Valois. Richelieu first, and afterwards Louis XIV. remembered their
devotion to the factious house of Lorraine, and rebuffed them. Then
the Marquis de Simeuse, an old Burgundian, old Guiser, old leaguer, old
_frondeur_ (he inherited the four great rancors of the nobility against
royalty), came to live at Cinq-Cygne. The former courtier, rejected at
the Louvre, married the widow of the Comte de Cinq-Cygne, younger branch
of the famous family of Chargeboeuf, one of the most illustrious names
in Champagne, and now as celebrated and opulent as the elder. The
marquis, among the richest men of his day, instead of wasting his
substance at court, built the chateau of Gondreville, enlarged the
estate by the purchase of others, and united the several domains, solely
for the purposes of a hunting-ground. He also built the Simeuse mansion
at Troyes, not far from that of the Cinq-Cygnes. These two old houses
and the bishop’s palace were long the only stone mansions at Troyes. The
marquis sold Simeuse to the Duc de Lorraine. His son wasted the father’s
savings and some part of his great fortune under the reign of Louis
XV., but he subsequently entered the navy, became a vice-admiral, and
redeemed the follies of his youth by brilliant services. The Marquis
de Simeuse, son of this naval worthy, perished with his wife on the
scaffold at Troyes, leaving twin sons, who emigrated and were, at the
time our history opens, still in foreign parts following the fortunes of
the house of Conde.

The _rond-point_ was the scene of the meet in the time of the
“Grand Marquis”--a name given in the family to the Simeuse who built
Gondreville. Since 1789 Michu lived in the hunting lodge at the entrance
to the park, built in the reign of Louis XIV., and called the pavilion
of Cinq-Cygne. The village of Cinq-Cygne is at the end of the forest of
Nodesme (a corruption of Notre-Dame) which was reached through the fine
avenue of four rows of elms where Michu’s dog was now suspecting spies.
After the death of the Grand Marquis this pavilion fell into disuse. The
vice-admiral preferred the court and the sea to Champagne, and his son
gave the dilapidated building to Michu for a dwelling.

This noble structure is of brick, with vermiculated stone-work at the
angles and on the casings of the doors and windows. On either side is
a gateway of finely wrought iron, eaten with rust and connected by a
railing, beyond which is a wide and deep ha-ha, full of vigorous trees,
its parapets bristling with iron arabesques, the innumerable sharp
points of which are a warning to evil-doers.

The park walls begin on each side of the circumference of the
_rond-point_; on the one hand the fine semi-circle is defined by slopes
planted with elms; on the other, within the park, a corresponding
half-circle is formed by groups of rare trees. The pavilion, therefore,
stands at the centre of this round open space, which extends before it
and behind it in the shape of two horseshoes. Michu had turned the rooms
on the lower floor into a stable, a kitchen, and a wood-shed. The only
trace remaining of their ancient splendor was an antechamber paved with
marble in squares of black and white, which was entered on the park side
through a door with small leaded panes, such as might still be seen at
Versailles before Louis-Philippe turned that Chateau into an asylum
for the glories of France. The pavilion is divided inside by an old
staircase of worm-eaten wood, full of character, which leads to the
first story. Above that is an immense garret. This venerable edifice
is covered by one of those vast roofs with four sides, a ridgepole
decorated with leaden ornaments, and a round projecting window on each
side, such as Mansart very justly delighted in; for in France, the
Italian attics and flat roofs are a folly against which our climate
protests. Michu kept his fodder in this garret. That portion of the park
which surrounds the old pavilion is English in style. A hundred feet
from the house a former lake, now a mere pond well stocked with fish,
makes known its vicinity as much by a thin mist rising above the
tree-tops as by the croaking of a thousand frogs, toads, and other
amphibious gossips who discourse at sunset. The time-worn look of
everything, the deep silence of the woods, the long perspective of the
avenue, the forest in the distance, the rusty iron-work, the masses of
stone draped with velvet mosses, all made poetry of this old structure,
which still exists.

At the moment when our history begins Michu was leaning against a
mossy parapet on which he had laid his powder-horn, cap, handkerchief,
screw-driver, and rags,--in fact, all the utensils needed for his
suspicious occupation. His wife’s chair was against the wall beside the
outer door of the house, above which could still be seen the arms of the
Simeuse family, richly carved, with their noble motto, “Cy meurs.” The
old mother, in peasant dress, had moved her chair in front of Madame
Michu, so that the latter might put her feet upon the rungs and keep
them from dampness.

“Where’s the boy?” said Michu to his wife.

“Round the pond; he is crazy about the frogs and the insects,” answered
the mother.

Michu whistled in a way that made his hearers tremble. The rapidity with
which his son ran up to him proved plainly enough the despotic power of
the bailiff of Gondreville. Since 1789, but more especially since 1793,
Michu had been well-nigh master of the property. The terror he inspired
in his wife, his mother-in-law, a servant-lad named Gaucher, and the
cook named Marianne, was shared throughout a neighborhood of twenty
miles in circumference. It may be well to give, without further delay,
the reasons for this fear,--all the more because an account of them will
complete the moral portrait of the man.

The old Marquis de Simeuse transferred the greater part of his property
in 1790; but, overtaken by circumstances, he had not been able to put
the estate of Gondreville into sure hands. Accused of corresponding with
the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Cobourg, the marquis and his
wife were thrust into prison and condemned to death by the revolutionary
tribunal of Troyes, of which Madame Michu’s father was then president.
The fine domain of Gondreville was sold as national property. The
head-keeper, to the horror of many, was present at the execution of
the marquis and his wife in his capacity as president of the club of
Jacobins at Arcis. Michu, the orphan son of a peasant, showered with
benefactions by the marquise, who brought him up in her own home and
gave him his place as keeper, was regarded as a Brutus by excited
demagogues; but the people of the neighborhood ceased to recognize him
after this act of base ingratitude. The purchaser of the estate was a
man from Arcis named Marion, grandson of a former bailiff in the Simeuse
family. This man, a lawyer before and after the Revolution, was afraid
of the keeper; he made him his bailiff with a salary of three thousand
francs, and gave him an interest in the sales of timber; Michu, who was
thought to have some ten thousand francs of his own laid by, married
the daughter of a tanner at Troyes, an apostle of the Revolution in that
town, where he was president of the revolutionary tribunal. This tanner,
a man of profound convictions, who resembled Saint-Just as to character,
was afterwards mixed up in Baboeuf’s conspiracy and killed himself to
escape execution. Marthe was the handsomest girl in Troyes. In spite of
her shrinking modesty she had been forced by her formidable father to
play the part of Goddess of Liberty in some republican ceremony.

The new proprietor came only three times to Gondreville in the course
of seven years. His grandfather had been bailiff of the estate under the
Simeuse family, and all Arcis took for granted that the citizen Marion
was the secret representative of the present Marquis and his twin
brother. As long as the Terror lasted, Michu, still bailiff of
Gondreville, a devoted patriot, son-in-law of the president of the
revolutionary tribunal of Troyes and flattered by Malin, representative
from the department of the Aube, was the object of a certain sort
of respect. But when the Mountain was overthrown and after his
father-in-law committed suicide, he found himself a scape-goat;
everybody hastened to accuse him, in common with his father-in-law, of
acts to which, so far as he was concerned, he was a total stranger. The
bailiff resented the injustice of the community; he stiffened his back
and took an attitude of hostility. He talked boldly. But after the
18th Brumaire he maintained an unbroken silence, the philosophy of the
strong; he struggled no longer against public opinion, and contented
himself with attending to his own affairs,--wise conduct, which led his
neighbors to pronounce him sly, for he owned, it was said, a fortune of
not less than a hundred thousand francs in landed property. In the first
place, he spent nothing; next, this property was legitimately acquired,
partly from the inheritance of his father-in-law’s estate, and partly
from the savings of six-thousand francs a year, the salary he derived
from his place with its profits and emoluments. He had been bailiff of
Gondreville for the last twelve years and every one had estimated the
probable amount of his savings, so that when, after the Consulate was
proclaimed, he bought a farm for fifty thousand francs, the suspicions
attaching to his former opinions lessened, and the community of Arcis
gave him credit for intending to recover himself in public estimation.
Unfortunately, at the very moment when public opinion was condoning
his past a foolish affair, envenomed by the gossip of the country-side,
revived the latent and very general belief in the ferocity of his
character.

One evening, coming away from Troyes in company with several peasants,
among whom was the farmer at Cinq-Cygne, he let fall a paper on the main
road; the farmer, who was walking behind him, stooped and picked it up.
Michu turned round, saw the paper in the man’s hands, pulled a pistol
from his belt and threatened the farmer (who knew how to read) to blow
his brains out if he opened the paper. Michu’s action was so sudden and
violent, the tone of his voice so alarming, his eyes blazed so savagely,
that the men about him turned cold with fear. The farmer of Cinq-Cygne
was already his enemy. Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, the man’s employer,
was a cousin of the Simeuse brothers; she had only one farm left for her
maintenance and was now residing at her chateau of Cinq-Cygne. She lived
for her cousins the twins, with whom she had played in childhood at
Troyes and at Gondreville. Her only brother, Jules de Cinq-Cygne, who
emigrated before the twins, died at Mayence, but by a privilege which
was somewhat rare and will be mentioned later, the name of Cinq-Cygne
was not to perish through lack of male heirs.

This affair between Michu and the farmer made a great noise in the
arrondissement and darkened the already mysterious shadows which seemed
to veil him. Nor was it the only circumstance which made him feared.
A few months after this scene the citizen Marion, present owner of the
Gondreville estate, came to inspect it with the citizen Malin. Rumor
said that Marion was about to sell the property to his companion, who
had profited by political events and had just been appointed on the
Council of State by the First Consul, in return for his services on
the 18th Brumaire. The shrewd heads of the little town of Arcis now
perceived that Marion had been the agent of Malin in the purchase of the
property, and not of the brothers Simeuse, as was first supposed. The
all-powerful Councillor of State was the most important personage in
Arcis. He had obtained for one of his political friends the prefecture
of Troyes, and for a farmer at Gondreville the exemption of his son from
the draft; in fact, he had done services to many. Consequently, the sale
met with no opposition in the neighborhood where Malin then reigned, and
where he still reigns supreme.

The Empire was just dawning. Those who in these days read the histories
of the French Revolution can form no conception of the vast spaces which
public thought traversed between events which now seem to have been so
near together. The strong need of peace and tranquillity which every
one felt after the violent tumults of the Revolution brought about a
complete forgetfulness of important anterior facts. History matured
rapidly under the advance of new and eager interests. No one, therefore,
except Michu, looked into the past of this affair, which the community
accepted as a simple matter. Marion, who had bought Gondreville for six
hundred thousand francs in assignats, sold it for the value of a couple
of million in coin; but the only payments actually made by Malin were
for the costs of registration. Grevin, a seminary comrade of Malin,
assisted the transaction, and the Councillor rewarded his help with
the office of notary at Arcis. When the news of the sale reached the
pavilion, brought there by a farmer whose farm, at Grouage, was situated
between the forest and the park on the left of the noble avenue, Michu
turned pale and left the house. He lay in wait for Marion, and finally
met him alone in one of the shrubberies of the park.

“Is monsieur about to sell Gondreville?” asked the bailiff.

“Yes, Michu, yes. You will have a man of powerful influence for your
master. He is the friend of the First Consul, and very intimate with all
the ministers; he will protect you.”

“Then you were holding the estate for him?”

“I don’t say that,” replied Marion. “At the time I bought it I was
looking for a place to put my money, and I invested in national property
as the best security. But it doesn’t suit me to keep an estate once
belonging to a family in which my father was--”

“--a servant,” said Michu, violently. “But you shall not sell it! I want
it; and I can pay for it.”

“You?”

“Yes, I; seriously, in good gold,--eight hundred thousand francs.”

“Eight hundred thousand francs!” exclaimed Marion. “Where did you get
them?”

“That’s none of your business,” replied Michu; then, softening his
tone, he added in a low voice: “My father-in-law saved the lives of many
persons.”

“You are too late, Michu; the sale is made.”

“You must put it off, monsieur!” cried the bailiff, seizing his master
by the hand which he held as in a vice. “I am hated, but I choose to be
rich and powerful, and I must have Gondreville. Listen to me; I don’t
cling to life; sell me that place or I’ll blow your brains out!--”

“But do give me time to get off my bargain with Malin; he’s troublesome
to deal with.”

“I’ll give you twenty-four hours. If you say a word about this matter
I’ll chop your head off as I would chop a turnip.”

Marion and Malin left the chateau in the course of the night. Marion was
frightened; he told Malin of the meeting and begged him to keep an eye
on the bailiff. It was impossible for Marion to avoid delivering the
property to the man who had been the real purchaser, and Michu did not
seem likely to admit any such reason. Moreover, this service done by
Marion to Malin was to be, and in fact ended by being, the origin of the
former’s political fortune, and also that of his brother. In 1806 Malin
had him appointed chief justice of an imperial court, and after
the creation of tax-collectors his brother obtained the post of
receiver-general for the department of the Aube. The State Councillor
told Marion to stay in Paris, and he warned the minister of police, who
gave orders that Michu should be secretly watched. Not wishing to push
the man to extremes, Malin kept him on as bailiff, under the iron rule
of Grevin the notary of Arcis.

From that moment Michu became more absorbed and taciturn than ever, and
obtained the reputation of a man who was capable of committing a crime.
Malin, the Councillor of State (a function which the First Consul raised
to the level of a ministry), and a maker of the Code, played a great
part in Paris, where he bought one of the finest mansions in the
Faubuorg Saint-Germain after marrying the only daughter of a rich
contractor named Sibuelle. He never came to Gondreville; leaving all
matters concerning the property to the management of Grevin, the Arcis
notary. After all, what had he to fear?--he, a former representative of
the Aube, and president of a club of Jacobins. And yet, the unfavorable
opinion of Michu held by the lower classes was shared by the
bourgeoisie, and Marion, Grevin, and Malin, without giving any reason or
compromising themselves on the subject, showed that they regarded him as
an extremely dangerous man. The authorities, who were under instructions
from the minister of police to watch the bailiff, did not of course
lessen this belief. The neighborhood wondered that he kept his place,
but supposed it was in consequence of the terror he inspired. It is easy
now, after these explanations, to understand the anxiety and sadness
expressed in the face of Michu’s wife.

In the first place, Marthe had been piously brought up by her mother.
Both, being good Catholics, had suffered much from the opinions and
behavior of the tanner. Marthe could never think without a blush of
having marched through the street of Troyes in the garb of a goddess.
Her father had forced her to marry Michu, whose bad reputation was
then increasing, and she feared him too much to be able to judge him.
Nevertheless, she knew that he loved her, and at the bottom of her heart
lay the truest affection for this awe-inspiring man; she had never known
him to do anything that was not just; never did he say a brutal word,
to her at least; in fact, he endeavored to forestall her every wish. The
poor pariah, believing himself disagreeable to his wife, spent most
of his time out of doors. Marthe and Michu, distrustful of each other,
lived in what is called in these days an “armed peace.” Marthe, who
saw no one, suffered keenly from the ostracism which for the last seven
years had surrounded her as the daughter of a revolutionary butcher, and
the wife of a so-called traitor. More than once she had overheard the
laborers of the adjoining farm (held by a man named Beauvisage, greatly
attached to the Simeuse family) say as they passed the pavilion, “That’s
where Judas lives!” The singular resemblance between the bailiff’s head
and that of the thirteenth apostle, which his conduct appeared to carry
out, won him that odious nickname throughout the neighborhood. It was
this distress of mind, added to vague but constant fears for the future,
which gave Marthe her thoughtful and subdued air. Nothing saddens so
deeply as unmerited degradation from which there seems no escape. A
painter could have made a fine picture of this family of pariahs in
the bosom of their pretty nook in Champagne, where the landscape is
generally sad.

“Francois!” called the bailiff, to hasten his son.

Francois Michu, a child of ten, played in the park and forest, and
levied his little tithes like a master; he ate the fruits; he chased
the game; he at least had neither cares nor troubles. Of all the family,
Francois alone was happy in a home thus isolated from the neighborhood
by its position between the park and the forest, and by the still
greater moral solitude of universal repulsion.

“Pick up these things,” said his father, pointing to the parapet, “and
put them away. Look at me! You love your father and your mother, don’t
you?” The child flung himself on his father as if to kiss him, but Michu
made a movement to shift the gun and pushed him back. “Very good. You
have sometimes chattered about things that are done here,” continued the
father, fixing his eyes, dangerous as those of a wild-cat, on the boy.
“Now remember this; if you tell the least little thing that happens here
to Gaucher, or to the Grouage and Bellache people, or even to Marianne
who loves us, you will kill your father. Never tattle again, and I will
forgive what you said yesterday.” The child began to cry. “Don’t cry;
but when any one questions you, say, as the peasants do, ‘I don’t know.’
There are persons roaming about whom I distrust. Run along! As for you
two,” he added, turning to the women, “you have heard what I said. Keep
a close mouth, both of you.”

“Husband, what are you going to do?”

Michu, who was carefully measuring a charge of powder, poured it into
the barrel of his gun, rested the weapon against the parapet and said to
Marthe:--

“No one knows I own that gun. Stand in front of it.”

Couraut, who had sprung to his feet, was barking furiously.

“Good, intelligent fellow!” cried Michu. “I am certain there are spies
about--”

Man and beast feel a spy. Couraut and Michu, who seemed to have one and
the same soul, lived together as the Arab and his horse in the desert.
The bailiff knew the modulations of the dog’s voice, just as the dog
read his master’s meaning in his eyes, or felt it exhaling in the air
from his body.

“What do you say to that?” said Michu, in a low voice, calling his
wife’s attention to two strangers who appeared in a by-path making for
the _rond-point_.

“What can it mean?” cried the old mother. “They are Parisians.”

“Here they come!” said Michu. “Hide my gun,” he whispered to his wife.

The two men who now crossed the wide open space of the _rond-point_ were
typical enough for a painter. One, who appeared to be the subaltern,
wore top-boots, turned down rather low, showing well-made calves, and
colored silk stockings of doubtful cleanliness. The breeches, of ribbed
cloth, apricot color with metal buttons, were too large; they were baggy
about the body, and the lines of their creases seemed to indicate a
sedentary man. A marseilles waistcoat, overloaded with embroidery, open,
and held together by one button only just above the stomach, gave to the
wearer a dissipated look,--all the more so, because his jet black hair,
in corkscrew curls, hid his forehead and hung down his cheeks. Two steel
watch-chains were festooned upon his breeches. The shirt was adorned
with a cameo in white and blue. The coat, cinnamon-colored, was a
treasure to caricaturists by reason of its long tails, which, when seen
from behind, bore so perfect a resemblance to a cod that the name of
that fish was given to them. The fashion of codfish tails lasted ten
years; almost the whole period of the empire of Napoleon. The cravat,
loosely fastened, and with numerous small folds, allowed the wearer
to bury his face in it up to the nostrils. His pimpled skin, his long,
thick, brick-dust colored nose, his high cheek-bones, his mouth, lacking
half its teeth but greedy for all that and menacing, his ears adorned
with huge gold rings, his low forehead,--all these personal details,
which might have seemed grotesque in many men, were rendered terrible in
him by two small eyes set in his head like those of a pig, expressive
of insatiable covetousness, and of insolent, half-jovial cruelty. These
ferreting and perspicacious blue eyes, glassy and glacial, might be
taken for the model of that famous Eye, the formidable emblem of the
police, invented during the Revolution. Black silk gloves were on his
hands and he carried a switch. He was certainly some official personage,
for he showed in his bearing, in his way of taking snuff and ramming it
into his nose, the bureaucratic importance of an office subordinate,
one who signs for his superiors and acquires a passing sovereignty by
enforcing their orders.

The other man, whose dress was in the same style, but elegant and
elegantly put on and careful in its smallest detail, wore boots _a la_
Suwaroff which came high upon the leg above a pair of tight trousers,
and creaked as he walked. Above his coat he wore a spencer, an
aristocratic garment adopted by the Clichiens and the young bloods of
Paris, which survived both the Clichiens and the fashionable youths. In
those days fashions sometimes lasted longer than parties,--a symptom of
anarchy which the year of our Lord 1830 has again presented to us. This
accomplished dandy seemed to be thirty years of age. His manners were
those of good society; he wore jewels of value; the collar of his shirt
came to the tops of his ears. His conceited and even impertinent air
betrayed a consciousness of hidden superiority. His pallid face seemed
bloodless, his thin flat nose had the sardonic expression which we see
in a death’s head, and his green eyes were inscrutable; their glance was
discreet in meaning just as the thin closed mouth was discreet in words.
The first man seemed on the whole a good fellow compared with this
younger man, who was slashing the air with a cane, the top of which,
made of gold, glittered in the sunshine. The first man might have cut
off a head with his own hand, but the second was capable of entangling
innocence, virtue, and beauty in the nets of calumny and intrigue, and
then poisoning them or drowning them. The rubicund stranger would have
comforted his victim with a jest; the other was incapable of a smile.
The first was forty-five years old, and he loved, undoubtedly, both
women and good cheer. Such men have passions which keep them slaves
to their calling. But the young man was plainly without passions and
without vices. If he was a spy he belonged to diplomacy, and did such
work from a pure love of art. He conceived, the other executed; he was
the idea, the other was the form.

“This must be Gondreville, is it not, my good woman?” said the young
man.

“We don’t say ‘my good woman’ here,” said Michu. “We are still simple
enough to say ‘citizen’ and ‘citizeness’ in these parts.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the young man, in a natural way, and without seeming at
all annoyed.

Players of ecarte often have a sense of inward disaster when some
unknown person sits down at the same table with them, whose manners,
look, voice, and method of shuffling the cards, all, to their fancy,
foretell defeat. The instant Michu looked at the young man he felt an
inward and prophetic collapse. He was struck by a fatal presentiment; he
had a sudden confused foreboding of the scaffold. A voice told him that
that dandy would destroy him, although there was nothing whatever in
common between them. For this reason his answer was rude; he was and he
wished to be forbidding.

“Don’t you belong to the Councillor of State, Malin?” said the younger
man.

“I am my own master,” answered Malin.

“Mesdames,” said the young man, assuming a most polite air, “are we not
at Gondreville? We are expected there by Monsieur Malin.”

“There’s the park,” said Michu, pointing to the open gate.

“Why are you hiding that gun, my fine girl?” said the elder, catching
sight of the carbine as he passed through the gate.

“You never let a chance escape you, even in the country!” cried his
companion.

They both turned back with a sense of distrust which the bailiff
understood at once in spite of their impassible faces. Marthe let them
look at the gun, to the tune of Couraut’s bark; she was so convinced
that her husband was meditating some evil deed that she was thankful for
the curiosity of the strangers.

Michu flung a look at his wife which made her tremble; he took the
gun and began to load it, accepting quietly the fatal ill-luck of this
encounter and the discovery of the weapon. He seemed no longer to care
for life, and his wife fathomed his inward feeling.

“So you have wolves in these parts?” said the young man, watching him.

“There are always wolves where there are sheep. You are in Champagne,
and there’s a forest; we have wild-boars, large and small game both, a
little of everything,” replied Michu, in a truculent manner.

“I’ll bet, Corentin,” said the elder of the two men, after exchanging a
glance with his companion, “that this is my friend Michu--”

“We never kept pigs together that I know of,” said the bailiff.

“No, but we both presided over Jacobins, citizen,” replied the old
cynic,--“you at Arcis, I elsewhere. I see you’ve kept your Carmagnole
civility, but it’s no longer in fashion, my good fellow.”

“The park strikes me as rather large; we might lose our way. If you are
really the bailiff show us the path to the chateau,” said Corentin, in a
peremptory tone.

Michu whistled to his son and continued to load his gun. Corentin looked
at Marthe with indifference, while his companion seemed charmed by
her; but the young man noticed the signs of her inward distress, which
escaped the old libertine, who had, however, noticed and feared the gun.
The natures of the two men were disclosed in this trifling yet important
circumstance.

“I’ve an appointment the other side of the forest,” said the bailiff. “I
can’t go with you, but my son here will take you to the chateau. How did
you get to Gondreville? did you come by Cinq-Cygne?”

“We had, like yourself, business in the forest,” said Corentin, without
apparent sarcasm.

“Francois,” cried Michu, “take these gentlemen to the chateau by the
wood path, so that no one sees them; they don’t follow the beaten
tracks. Come here,” he added, as the strangers turned to walk away,
talking together as they did so in a low voice. Michu caught the boy
in his arms, and kissed him almost solemnly with an expression which
confirmed his wife’s fears; cold chills ran down her back; she glanced
at her mother with haggard eyes, for she could not weep.

“Go,” said Michu; and he watched the boy until he was entirely out
of sight. Couraut was barking on the other side of the road in the
direction of Grouage. “Oh, that’s Violette,” remarked Michu. “This is
the third time that old fellow has passed here to-day. What’s in the
wind? Hush, Couraut!”

A few moments later the trot of a pony was heard approaching.