All heads were at the window of the Soudry salon which looked to the square. Recognizing the father of his daughter-in-law, Soudry came to the portico to receive him.

"Well, comrade," said the mayor of Soulanges, "is Annette ill, that you give us your company of an evening?"

Through an old habit acquired in the gendarmerie Soudry always went direct to the point.

"No,--There's trouble brewing," replied Rigou, touching his right fore-finger to the hand which Soudry held out to him. "I came to talk about it, for it concerns our children in a way--"

Soudry, a handsome man dressed in blue, as though he were still a gendarme, with a black collar, and spurs at his heels, took Rigou by the arm and led him up to his imposing better-half. The gla.s.s door to the terrace was open, and the guests were walking about enjoying the summer evening, which brought out the full beauty of the glorious landscape which we have already described.

"It is a long time since we have seen you, my dear Rigou," said Madame Soudry, taking the arm of the ex-Benedictine and leading him out upon the terrace.

"My digestion is so troublesome!" he replied; "see! my color is almost as high as yours."

Rigou's appearance on the terrace was the sign for an explosion of jovial greetings on the part of the a.s.sembled company.

"And how may the lord of Blangy be?" said little Sarcus, justice of the peace.

"Lord!" replied Rigou, bitterly, "I am not even c.o.c.k of my own village now."

"The hens don't say so, scamp!" exclaimed Madame Soudry, tapping her fan on his arm.

"All well, my dear master?" said the notary, bowing to his chief client.

"Pretty well," replied Rigou, again putting his fore-finger into his interlocutor's hand.

This gesture, by which Rigou kept down the process of hand-shaking to the coldest and stiffest of demonstrations would have revealed the whole man to any observer who did not already know him.

"Let us find a corner where we can talk quietly," said the ex-monk, looking at Lupin and at Madame Soudry.

"Let us return to the salon," replied the queen.

"What has the Shopman done now?" asked Soudry, sitting down beside his wife and putting his arm about her waist.

Madame Soudry, like other old women, forgave a great deal in return for such public marks of tenderness.

"Why," said Rigou, in a low voice, to set an example of caution, "he has gone to the Prefecture to demand the enforcement of the penalties; he wants the help of the authorities."

"Then he's lost," said Lupin, rubbing his hands; "the peasants will fight."

"Fight!" cried Soudry, "that depends. If the prefect and the general, who are friends, send a squadron of cavalry the peasants can't fight.

They might at a pinch get the better of the gendarmes, but as for resisting a charge of cavalry!--"

"Sibilet heard him say something much more dangerous than that," said Rigou; "and that's what brings me here."

"Oh, my poor Sophie!" cried Madame Soudry, sentimentally, alluding to her _friend_, Mademoiselle Laguerre, "into what hands Les Aigues has fallen! This is what we have gained by the Revolution!--a parcel of swaggering epaulets! We might have foreseen that whenever the bottle was turned upside down the dregs would spoil the wine!"

"He means to go to Paris and cabal with the Keeper of the Seals and others to get the whole judiciary changed down here," said Rigou.

"Ha!" cried Lupin, "then he sees his danger."

"If they appoint my son-in-law attorney-general we can't help ourselves; the general will get him replaced by some Parisian devoted to his interests," continued Rigou. "If he gets a place in Paris for Gendrin and makes Guerbet chief-justice of the court at Auxerre, he'll knock down our skittles! The gendarmerie is on his side now, and if he gets the courts as well, and keeps such advisers as the abbe and Michaud we sha'n't dance at the wedding; he'll play us some scurvy trick or other."

"How is it that in all these five years you have never managed to get rid of that abbe?" said Lupin.

"You don't know him; he's as suspicious as a blackbird," replied Rigou.

"He is not a man at all, that priest; he doesn't care for women; I can't find out that he has any pa.s.sion; there's no point at which one can attack him. The general lays himself open by his temper. A man with a vice is the servant of his enemies if they know how to pull its string.

There are no strong men but those who lead their vices instead of being led by them. The peasants are all right; their hatred against the abbe keeps up; but we can do nothing as yet. He's like Michaud, in his way; such men are too good for this world,--G.o.d ought to call them to himself."

"It would be a good plan to find some pretty servant-girl to scrub his staircase," remarked Madame Soudry. The words caused Rigou to give the little jump with which crafty natures recognize the craft of others.

"The Shopman has another vice," he said; "he loves his wife; we might get hold of him that way."

"We ought to find out how far she really influences him," said Madame Soudry.

"There's the rub!" said Lupin.

"As for you, Lupin," said Rigou, in a tone of authority, "be off to the Prefecture and see the beautiful Madame Sarcus at once! You must get her to tell you all the Shopman says and does at the Prefecture."

"Then I shall have to stay all night," replied Lupin.

"So much the better for Sarcus the rich; he'll be the gainer," said Rigou. "She is not yet out of date, Madame Sarcus--"

"Oh! Monsieur Rigou," said Madame Soudry, in a mincing tone, "are women ever out of date?"

"You may be right about Madame Sarcus; she doesn't paint before the gla.s.s," retorted Rigou, who was always disgusted by the exhibition of the Cochet's ancient charms.

Madame Soudry, who thought she used only a "suspicion" of rouge, did not perceive the sarcasm and hastened to say:--

"Is it possible that women paint?"

"Now, Lupin," said Rigou, without replying to this naivete, "go over to Gaubertin's to-morrow morning. Tell him that my fellow-mayor and I"

(striking Soudry on the thigh) "will break bread with him at breakfast somewhere about midday. Tell him everything, so that we may all have thought it over before we meet, for now's the time to make an end of that d.a.m.ned Shopman. As I drove over here I came to the conclusion it would be best to get up a quarrel between the courts and him, so that the Keeper of the Seals would be wary of making the changes he may ask in their members."

"Bravo for the son of the Church!" cried Lupin, slapping Rigou on the shoulder.

Madame Soudry was here struck by an idea which could come only to a former waiting-maid of an Opera divinity.

"If," she said, "one could only get the Shopman to the fete at Soulanges, and throw some fine girl in his way who would turn his head, we could easily set his wife against him by letting her know that the son of an upholsterer has gone back to the style of his early loves."

"Ah, my beauty!" said Soudry, "you have more sense in your head than the Prefecture of police in Paris."

"That's an idea which proves that Madame reigns by mind as well as by beauty," said Lupin, who was rewarded by a grimace which the leading society of Soulanges were in the habit of accepting without protest for a smile.

"One might do better still," said Rigou, after some thought; "if we could only turn it into a downright scandal."

"Complaint and indictment! affair in the police court!" cried Lupin.

"Oh! that would be grand!"