الفصل الفصل 1 · A SMALL TOWN

. A SMALL TOWN

Put thousands together less bad,

But the cage less gay.--_Hobbes_.

The little town of Verrières can pass for one of the prettiest in

Franche-Comté. Its white houses with their pointed red-tiled roofs

stretch along the slope of a hill, whose slightest undulations are

marked by groups of vigorous chestnuts. The Doubs flows to within some

hundred feet above its fortifications, which were built long ago by the

Spaniards, and are now in ruins.

Verrières is sheltered on the north by a high mountain which is one of

the branches of the Jura. The jagged peaks of the Verra are covered

with snow from the beginning of the October frosts. A torrent which

rushes down from the mountains traverses Verrières before throwing

itself into the Doubs, and supplies the motive power for a great number

of saw mills. The industry is very simple, and secures a certain

prosperity to the majority of the inhabitants who are more peasant than

bourgeois. It is not, however, the wood saws which have enriched this

little town. It is the manufacture of painted tiles, called Mulhouse

tiles, that is responsible for that general affluence which has caused

the façades of nearly all the houses in Verrières to be rebuilt since

the fall of Napoleon.

One has scarcely entered the town, before one is stunned by the din of

a strident machine of terrifying aspect. Twenty heavy hammers which

fall with a noise that makes the paved floor tremble, are lifted

up by a wheel set in motion by the torrent. Each of these hammers

manufactures every day I don't know how many thousands of nails. The

little pieces of iron which are rapidly transformed into nails by these

enormous hammers, are put in position by fresh pretty young girls. This

labour so rough at first sight is one of the industries which most

surprises the traveller who penetrates for the first time the mountains

which separate France and Helvetia. If when he enters Verrières, the

traveller asks who owns this fine nail factory which deafens everybody

who goes up the Grande-Rue, he is answered in a drawling tone "Eh!

it belongs to M. the Mayor."

And if the traveller stops a few minutes in that Grande-Rue of

Verrières which goes on an upward incline from the bank of the Doubs to

nearly as far as the summit of the hill, it is a hundred to one that he

will see a big man with a busy and important air.

When he comes in sight all hats are quickly taken off. His hair is

grizzled and he is dressed in grey. He is a Knight of several Orders,

has a large forehead and an aquiline nose, and if you take him all

round, his features are not devoid of certain regularity. One might

even think on the first inspection that it combines with the dignity

of the village mayor that particular kind of comfortableness which is

appropriate to the age of forty-eight or fifty. But soon the traveller

from Paris will be shocked by a certain air of self-satisfaction and

self-complacency mingled with an almost indefinable narrowness and lack

of inspiration. One realises at last that this man's talent is limited

to seeing that he is paid exactly what he is owed, and in paying his

own debts at the latest possible moment.

Such is M. de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. After having crossed the

road with a solemn step, he enters the mayoral residence and disappears

from the eye of the traveller. But if the latter continues to walk

a hundred steps further up, he will perceive a house with a fairly

fine appearance, with some magnificent gardens behind an iron grill

belonging to the house. Beyond that is an horizon line formed by the

hills of Burgundy, which seem ideally made to delight the eyes. This

view causes the traveller to forget that pestilential atmosphere of

petty money-grubbing by which he is beginning to be suffocated.

He is told that this house belongs to M. de Rênal. It is to the

profits which he has made out of his big nail factory that the mayor

of Verrières owes this fine residence of hewn stone which he is just

finishing. His family is said to be Spanish and ancient, and is alleged

to have been established in the country well before the conquest of

Louis XIV.

Since 1815, he blushes at being a manufacturer: 1815 made him mayor

of Verrières. The terraced walls of this magnificent garden which

descends to the Doubs, plateau by plateau, also represent the reward

of M. de Rênal's proficiency in the iron-trade. Do not expect to find

in France those picturesque gardens which surround the manufacturing

towns of Germany, like Leipsic, Frankfurt and Nurenburgh, etc. The

more walls you build in Franche-Comté and the more you fortify your

estate with piles of stone, the more claim you will acquire on the

respect of your neighbours. Another reason for the admiration due to

M. de Rênal's gardens and their numerous walls, is the fact that he

has purchased, through sheer power of the purse, certain small parcels

of the ground on which they stand. That saw-mill, for instance, whose

singular position on the banks of the Doubs struck you when you entered

Verrières, and where you notice the name of SOREL written in gigantic

characters on the chief beam of the roof, used to occupy six years

ago that precise space on which is now reared the wall of the fourth

terrace in M. de Rênal's gardens.

Proud man that he was, the mayor had none the less to negotiate with

that tough, stubborn peasant, old Sorel. He had to pay him in good

solid golden louis before he could induce him to transfer his workshop

elsewhere. As to the _public_ stream which supplied the motive power

for the saw-mill, M. de Rênal obtained its diversion, thanks to the

influence which he enjoyed at Paris. This favour was accorded him after

the election of 182-.

He gave Sorel four acres for every one he had previously held, five

hundred yards lower down on the banks of the Doubs. Although this

position was much more advantageous for his pine-plank trade, father

Sorel (as he is called since he has become rich) knew how to exploit

the impatience and _mania for landed ownership_ which animated his

neighbour to the tune of six thousand francs.

It is true that this arrangement was criticised by the wiseacres of the

locality. One day, it was on a Sunday four years later, as M. de Rênal

was coming back from church in his mayor's uniform, he saw old Sorel

smiling at him, as he stared at him some distance away surrounded by

his three sons. That smile threw a fatal flood of light into the soul

of the mayor. From that time on, he is of opinion that he could have

obtained the exchange at a cheaper rate.

In order to win the public esteem of Verrières it is essential that,

though you should build as many walls as you can, you should not adopt

some plan imported from Italy by those masons who cross the passes

of the Jura in the spring on their way to Paris. Such an innovation

would bring down upon the head of the imprudent builder an eternal

reputation for _wrongheadedness_, and he will be lost for ever in the

sight of those wise, well-balanced people who dispense public esteem in

Franche-Comté.

As a matter of fact, these prudent people exercise in the place the

most offensive despotism. It is by reason of this awful word, that

anyone who has lived in that great republic which is called Paris,

finds living in little towns quite intolerable. The tyranny of public

opinion (and what public opinion!) is as _stupid_ in the little towns

of France as in the United States of America.