第113章

The general and his wife, assisted by the abbe, tried the effects of such benevolence.They studied the subject, and endeavored to show by incontestable results to those who pillaged them that more money could be made by legitimate toil.They supplied flax and paid for the spinning; the countess had the thread woven into linen suitable for towels, aprons, and coarse napkins for kitchen use, and for underclothing for the very poor.The general began improvements which needed many laborers, and he employed none but those in the adjoining districts.Sibilet was in charge of the works and the Abbe Brossette gave the countess lists of the most needy, and often brought them to her himself.Madame de Montcornet attended to these matters personally in the great antechamber which opened upon the portico.It was a beautiful waiting-room, floored with squares of white and red marble, warmed by a porcelain stove, and furnished with benches covered with red plush.

It was there that one morning, just before harvest, old Mother Tonsard brought her granddaughter Catherine, who had to make, she said, a dreadful confession,--dreadful for the honor of a poor but honest family.While the old woman addressed the countess Catherine stood in an attitude of conscious guilt.Then she related on her own account the unfortunate "situation" in which she was placed, which she had confided to none but her grandmother; for her mother, she knew, would turn her out, and her father, an honorable man, might kill her.If she only had a thousand francs she could be married to a poor laborer named Godain, who KNEW ALL, and who loved her like a brother; he could buy a poor bit of ground and build a cottage if she had that sum.It was very touching.The countess promised the money; resolving to devote the price of some fancy to this marriage.The happy marriages of Michaud and Groison encouraged her.Besides, such a wedding would be a good example to the people of the neighborhood and stimulate to virtuous conduct.The marriage of Catherine Tonsard and Godain was accordingly arranged by means of the countess's thousand francs.

Another time a horrible old woman, Mother Bonnebault, who lived in a hut between the gate of Conches and the village, brought back a great bundle of skeins of linen thread.

"Madame la comtesse has done wonders," said the abbe, full of hope as to the moral progress of his savages."That old woman did immense damage to your woods, but now she has no time for it; she stays at home and spins from morning till night; her time is all taken up and well paid for."

Peace reigned everywhere.Groison made very satisfactory reports;

depredations seemed to have ceased, and it is even possible that the state of the neighborhood and the feeling of the inhabitants might really have changed if it had not been for the revengeful eagerness of Gaubertin, the cabals of the leading society of Soulanges, and the intrigues of Rigou, who one and all, with "the affair" in view, blew the embers of hatred and crime in the hearts of the peasantry of the valley des Aigues.

The keepers still complained of finding a great many branches cut with shears in the deeper parts of the wood and left to dry, evidently as a provision for winter.They watched for the delinquents without ever being able to catch them.The count, assisted by Groison, had given certificates of pauperism to only thirty or forty of the real poor of the district; but the other two mayors had been less strict.The more clement the count showed himself in the affair at Conches the more determined he was to enforce the laws about gleaning, which had now degenerated into theft.He did not interfere with the management of three of his farms which were leased to tenants, nor with those whose tenants worked for his profit, of which he had a number; but he managed six farms himself, each of about two hundred acres, and he now published a notice that it was forbidden, under pain of being arrested and made to pay the fine imposed by the courts, to enter those fields before the crop was carried away.The order concerned only his own immediate property.Rigou, who knew the country well, had let his farm-lands in portions and on short leases to men who knew how to get in their own crops, and who paid him in grain; therefore gleaning did not affect him.The other proprietors were peasants, and no nefarious gleaning was attempted on their land.

When the harvest began the count went himself to Michaud to see how things were going on.Groison, who advised him to do this, was to be present himself at the gleaning of each particular field.The inhabitants of cities can have no idea what gleaning is to the inhabitants of the country; the passion of these sons of the soil for it seems inexplicable; there are women who will give up well-paid employments to glean.The wheat they pick up seems to them sweeter than any other; and the provision they thus make for their chief and most substantial food has to them an extraordinary attraction.Mothers take their babes and their little girls and boys; the feeblest old men drag themselves into the wheat-fields; and even those who own property are paupers for the nonce.All gleaners appear in rags.

The count and Michaud were present on horseback when the first tattered batch entered the first fields from which the wheat had been carried.It was ten o'clock in the morning.August had been a hot month, the sky was cloudless, blue as a periwinkle; the earth was baked, the wheat flamed, the harvestmen worked with their faces scorched by the reflection of the sun-rays on the hard and arid earth.

All were silent, their shirts wet with perspiration; while from time to time, they slaked their thirst with water from round, earthenware jugs, furnished with two handles and a mouth-piece stoppered with a willow stick.