第 三 章 · THE POOR FUND

with the utmost

scrupulous honesty?"

"He only comes to _throw_ blame and afterwards he will get some

articles into the Liberal press."

"You never read them, my dear."

"But they always talk to us about those Jacobin articles, all that

distracts us and prevents us from doing good.[1] Personally, I shall

never forgive the curé."

[1] Historically true.

Chapter 3. THE POOR FUND

A virtuous curé who does not intrigue is a providence

for the village.--_Fleury_

It should be mentioned that the curé of Verrières, an old man of

ninety, who owed to the bracing mountain air an iron constitution and

an iron character, had the right to visit the prison, the hospital and

the workhouse at any hour. It had been at precisely six o'clock in the

morning that M. Appert, who had a Paris recommendation to the curé,

had been shrewd enough to arrive at a little inquisitive town. He had

immediately gone on to the curé's house.

The curé Chélan became pensive as he read the letter written to him by

the M. le Marquis de La Mole, Peer of France, and the richest landed

proprietor of the province.

"I am old and beloved here," he said to himself in a whisper, "they

would not dare!" Then he suddenly turned to the gentleman from Paris,

with eyes, which in spite of his great age, shone with that sacred fire

which betokens the delight of doing a fine but slightly dangerous act.

"Come with me, sir," he said, "but please do not express any opinion of

the things which we shall see, in the presence of the jailer, and above

all not in the presence of the superintendents of the workhouse."

M. Appert realised that he had to do with a man of spirit. He followed

the venerable curé, visited the hospital and workhouse, put a lot of

questions, but in spite of somewhat extraordinary answers, did not

indulge in the slightest expression of censure.

This visit lasted several hours; the curé invited M. Appert to dine,

but the latter made the excuse of having some letters to write; as a

matter of fact, he did not wish to compromise his generous companion to

any further extent. About three o'clock these gentlemen went to finish

their inspection of the workhouse and then returned to the prison.

There they found the jailer by the gate, a kind of giant, six feet

high, with bow legs. His ignoble face had become hideous by reason of

his terror.

"Ah, monsieur," he said to the curé as soon as he saw him, "is not the

gentleman whom I see there, M. Appert?"

"What does that matter?" said the curé.

"The reason is that I received yesterday the most specific orders, and

M. the Prefect sent a message by a gendarme who must have galloped

during the whole of the night, that M. Appert was not to be allowed in

the prisons."

"I can tell you, M. Noiroud," said the curé, "that the traveller who is

with me is M. Appert, but do you or do you not admit that I have the

right to enter the prison at any hour of the day or night accompanied

by anybody I choose?"

"Yes, M. the curé," said the jailer in a low voice, lowering his head

like a bull-dog, induced to a grudging obedience by fear of the stick,

"only, M. the curé, I have a wife and children, and shall be turned out

if they inform against me. I only have my place to live on."

"I, too, should be sorry enough to lose mine," answered the good curé,

with increasing emotion in his voice.

"What a difference!" answered the jailer keenly. "As for you, M. le

curé, we all know that you have eight hundred francs a year, good solid

money."

Such were the facts which, commented upon and exaggerated in twenty

different ways, had been agitating for the last two days all the odious

passions of the little town of Verrières.

At the present time they served as the text for the little discussion

which M. de Rênal was having with his wife. He had visited the curé

earlier in the morning accompanied by M. Valenod, the director of the

workhouse, in order to convey their most emphatic displeasure. M.

Chélan had no protector, and felt all the weight of their words.

"Well, gentlemen, I shall be the third curé of eighty years of age who

has been turned out in this district. I have been here for fifty-six

years. I have baptized nearly all the inhabitants of the town, which

was only a hamlet when I came to it. Every day I marry young people

whose grandparents I have married in days gone by. Verrières is my

family, but I said to myself when I saw the stranger, 'This man from

Paris may as a matter of fact be a Liberal, there are only too many of

them about, but what harm can he do to our poor and to our prisoners?'"

The reproaches of M. de Rênal, and above all, those of M. Valenod, the

director of the workhouse, became more and more animated.

"Well, gentlemen, turn me out then," the old curé exclaimed in a

trembling voice; "I shall still continue to live in the district. As

you know, I inherited forty-eight years ago a piece of land that brings

in eight hundred francs a year; I shall live on that income. I do not

save anything out of my living, gentlemen; and that is perhaps why,

when you talk to me about it, I am not particularly frightened."

M. de Rênal always got on very well with his wife, but he did not know

what to answer when she timidly repeated the phrase of M. le curé,

"What harm can this Paris gentleman do the prisoners?" He was on the

point of quite losing his temper when she gave a cry. Her second son

had mounted the parapet of the terrace wall and was running along it,

although the wall was raised to a height of more than twenty feet above

the vineyard on the other side. The fear of frightening her son and

making him fall prevented Madame de Rênal speaking to him. But at last

the child, who was smiling at his own pluck, looked at his mother, saw

her pallor, jumped down on to the walk and ran to her. He was well

scolded.

This little event changed the course of the conversation.

"I really mean to take Sorel, the son of the sawyer, into the house,"

said M. de Rênal; "he will look after the children, who are getting too

naughty for us to manage. He is a young priest, or as good as one, a

good Latin scholar, and will make the children get on. According to the

curé, he has a steady character. I will give him three hundred francs a

year and his board. I have some doubts as to his morality, for he used

to be the favourite of that old Surgeon-Major, Member of the Legion of

Honour, who went to board with the Sorels, on the pretext that he was

their cousin. It is quite possible that that man was really simply a

secret agent of the Liberals. He said that the mountain air did his

asthma good, but that is something which has never been proved. He

has gone through all _Buonaparte's_ campaigns in Italy, and had even,

it was said, voted against the Empire in the plebiscite. This Liberal

taught the Sorel boy Latin, and left him a number of books which he had

brought with him. Of course, in the ordinary way, I should have never

thought of allowing a carpenter's son to come into contact with our

children, but the curé told me, the very day before the scene which

has just estranged us for ever, that Sorel has been studying theology

for three years with the intention of entering a seminary. He is,

consequently, not a Liberal, and he certainly is a good Latin scholar.

"This arrangement will be convenient in more than one way," continued

M. de Rênal, looking at his wife with a diplomatic air. "That Valenod

is proud enough of his two fine Norman horses which he has just bought

for his carriage, but he hasn't a tutor for his children."

"He might take this one away from us."

"You approve of my plan, then?" said M. de Rênal, thanking his wife

with a smile for the excellent idea which she had just had. "Well,

that's settled."

"Good gracious, my dear, how quickly you make up your mind!"

"It is because I'm a man of character, as the curé found out right

enough. Don't let us deceive ourselves; we are surrounded by Liberals

in this place. All those cloth merchants are jealous of me, I am

certain of it; two or three are becoming rich men. Well, I should

rather fancy it for them to see M. de Rênal's children pass along the

street as they go out for their walk, escorted by _their tutor_. It

will impress people. My grandfather often used to tell us that he had

a tutor when he was young. It may run me into a hundred crowns, but

that ought to be looked upon as an expense necessary for keeping up our

position."

This sudden resolution left Madame de Rênal quite pensive. She was

a big, well-made woman, who had been the beauty of the country, to

use the local expression. She had a certain air of simplicity and

youthfulness in her deportment. This naïve grace, with its innocence

and its vivacity, might even have recalled to a Parisian some

suggestion of the sweets he had left behind him. If she had realised

this particular phase of her success, Madame de Rênal would have been

quite ashamed of it. All coquetry, all affectation, were absolutely

alien to her temperament. M. Valenod, the rich director of the

workhouse, had the reputation of having paid her court, a fact which

had cast a singular glamour over her virtue; for this M. Valenod, a

big young man with a square, sturdy frame, florid face, and big, black

whiskers, was one of those coarse, blustering, and noisy people who

pass in the provinces for a "fine man."

Madame de Rênal, who had a very shy, and apparently a very uneven

temperament, was particularly shocked by M. Valenod's lack of repose,

and by his boisterous loudness. Her aloofness from what, in the

Verrières' jargon, was called "having a good time," had earned her the

reputation of being very proud of her birth. In fact, she never thought

about it, but she had been extremely glad to find the inhabitants of

the town visit her less frequently. We shall not deny that she passed

for a fool in the eyes of _their_ good ladies because she did not

wheedle her husband, and allowed herself to miss the most splendid

opportunities of getting fine hats from Paris or Besançon. Provided she

was allowed to wander in her beautiful garden, she never complained.

She was a naïve soul, who had never educated herself up to the point

of judging her husband and confessing to herself that he bored her.

She supposed, without actually formulating the thought, that there was

no greater sweetness in the relationship between husband and wife than

she herself had experienced. She loved M. de Rênal most when he talked

about his projects for their children. The elder he had destined for

the army, the second for the law, and the third for the Church. To sum

up, she found M. de Rênal much less boring than all the other men of

her acquaintance.

This conjugal opinion was quite sound. The Mayor of Verrières had a

reputation for wit, and above all, a reputation for good form, on

the strength of half-a-dozen "chestnuts" which he had inherited from

an uncle. Old Captain de Rênal had served, before the Revolution, in

the infantry regiment of M. the Duke of Orleans, and was admitted

to the Prince's salons when he went to Paris. He had seen Madame de

Montesson, the famous Madame de Genlis, M. Ducret, the inventor, of the

Palais-Royal. These personages would crop up only too frequently in M.

de Rênal's anecdotes. He found it, however, more and more of a strain

to remember stories which required such delicacy in the telling, and

for some time past it had only been on great occasions that he would

trot out his anecdotes concerning the House of Orleans. As, moreover,

he was extremely polite, except on money matters, he passed, and justly

so, for the most aristocratic personage in Verrières.