"Monsieur," replied the abbe, "my bishop sent me here as if on a mission to savages; but, as I had the honor of telling him, the savages of France cannot be reached. They make it a law unto themselves not to listen to us; whereas the church does get some hold on the savages of America."

"M'sieur le cure, they do help me a bit now," remarked Mouche; "but if I went to your church they _wouldn't_, and the other folks would make game of my breeches."

"Religion ought to begin by giving him trousers, my dear abbe," said Blondet. "In your foreign missions don't you begin by coaxing the savages?"

"He would soon sell them," answered the abbe, in a low tone; "besides, my salary does not enable me to begin on that line."

"Monsieur le cure is right," said the general, looking at Mouche.

The policy of the little scamp was to appear not to hear what they were saying when it was against himself.

"The boy is intelligent enough to know good from evil," continued the count, "and he is old enough to work; yet he thinks of nothing but how to commit evil without being found out. All the keepers know him. He is very well aware that the master of an estate may witness a trespa.s.s on his property and yet have no right to arrest the trespa.s.ser. I have known him keep his cows boldly in my meadows, though he knew I saw him; but now, ever since I have been mayor, he runs away fast enough."

"Oh, that is very wrong," said the countess; "you should not take other people's things, my little man."

"Madame, we must eat. My grandpa gives me more slaps than food, and they don't fill my stomach, slaps don't. When the cows come in I milk 'em just a little and I live on that. Monseigneur isn't so poor but what he'll let me drink a drop o' milk the cows get from his gra.s.s?"

"Perhaps he hasn't eaten anything to-day," said the countess, touched by his misery. "Give him some bread and the rest of that chicken; let him have his breakfast," she added, looking at the footman. "Where do you sleep, my child?"

"Anywhere, madame; under the stars in summer, and wherever they'll let us in winter."

"How old are you?"

"Twelve."

"There is still time to bring him up to better ways," said the countess to her husband.

"He will make a good soldier," said the general, gruffly; "he is well toughened. I went through that kind of thing myself, and here I am."

"Excuse me, general, I don't belong to n.o.body," said the boy. "I can't be drafted. My poor mother wasn't married, and I was born in a field.

I'm a son of the 'airth,' as grandpa says. M'ma saved me from the army, that she did! My name ain't no more Mouche than nothing at all. Grandpa keeps telling me all my advantages. I'm not on the register, and when I'm old enough to be drafted I can go all over France and they can't take me."

"Are you fond of your grandfather?" said the countess, trying to look into the child's heart.

"My! doesn't he box my ears when he feels like it! but then, after all, he's such fun; he's such good company! He says he pays himself that way for having taught me to read and write."

"Can you read?" asked the count.

"Yah, I should think so, Monsieur le comte, and fine writing too--just as true as we've got that otter."

"Read that," said the count, giving him a newspaper.

"The Qu-o-ti-dienne," read Mouche, hesitating only three times.

Every one, even the abbe, laughed.

"Why do you make me read that newspaper?" cried Mouche, angrily. "My grandpa says it is made up to please the rich, and everybody knows later just what's in it."

"The child is right, general," said Blondet; "and he makes me long to see my hoaxing friend again."

Mouche understood perfectly that he was posing for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the company; the pupil of Pere Fourchon was worthy of his master, and he forthwith began to cry.

"How can you tease a child with bare feet?" said the countess.

"And who thinks it quite natural that his grandfather should recoup himself for his education by boxing his ears," said Blondet.

"Tell me, my poor little fellow, have you really caught an otter?"

"Yes, madame; as true as that you are the prettiest lady I have seen, or ever shall see," said the child, wiping his eyes.

"Then show me the otter," said the general.

"Oh M'sieur le comte, my grandpa has hidden it; but it was kicking still when we were at work at the rope-walk. Send for my grandpa, please; he wants to sell it to you himself."

"Take him into the kitchen," said the countess to Francois, "and give him his breakfast, and send Charles to fetch Pere Fourchon. Find some shoes, and a pair of trousers and a waistcoat for the poor child; those who come here naked must go away clothed."

"May G.o.d bless you, my beautiful lady," said Mouche, departing. "M'sieur le cure may feel quite sure that I'll keep the things and wear 'em fete-days, because you give 'em to me."

Emile and Madame Montcornet looked at each other with some surprise, and seemed to say to the abbe, "The boy is not a fool!"

"It is quite true, madame," said the abbe after the child had gone, "that we cannot reckon with Poverty. I believe it has hidden excuses of which G.o.d alone can judge,--physical excuses, often congenital; moral excuses, born in the character, produced by an order of things that are often the result of qualities which, unhappily for society, have no vent. Deeds of heroism performed upon the battle-field ought to teach us that the worst scoundrels may become heroes. But here in this place you are living under exceptional circ.u.mstances; and if your benevolence is not controlled by reflection and judgment you run the risk of supporting your enemies."

"Our enemies?" exclaimed the countess.

"Cruel enemies," said the general, gravely.

"Pere Fourchon and his son-in-law Tonsard," said the abbe, "are the strength and the intelligence of the lower cla.s.ses of this valley, who consult them on all occasions. The Machiavelism of these people is beyond belief. Ten peasants meeting in a tavern are the small change of great political questions."

Just then Francois announced Monsieur Sibilet.

"He is my minister of finance," said the general, smiling; "ask him in.

He will explain to you the gravity of the situation," he added, looking at his wife and Blondet.

"Because he has reasons of his own for not concealing it," said the cure, in a low tone.

Blondet then beheld a personage of whom he had heard much ever since his arrival, and whom he desired to know, the land-steward of Les Aigues. He saw a man of medium height, about thirty years of age, with a sulky look and a discontented face, on which a smile sat ill. Beneath an anxious brow a pair of greenish eyes evaded the eyes of others, and so disguised their thought. Sibilet was dressed in a brown surtout coat, black trousers and waistcoat, and wore his hair long and flat to the head, which gave him a clerical look. His trousers barely concealed that he was knock-kneed. Though his pallid complexion and flabby flesh gave the impression of an unhealthy const.i.tution, Sibilet was really robust.

The tones of his voice, which were a little thick, harmonized with this unflattering exterior.

Blondet gave a hasty look at the abbe, and the glance with which the young priest answered it showed the journalist that his own suspicions about the steward were certainties to the curate.

"Did you not tell me, my dear Sibilet," said the general, "that you estimate the value of what the peasants steal from us at a quarter of the whole revenue?"

"Much more than that, Monsieur le comte," replied the steward. "The poor about here get more from your property than the State exacts in taxes.

A little scamp like Mouche can glean his two bushels a day. Old women, whom you would really think at their last gasp, become at the harvest and vintage times as active and healthy as girls. You can witness that phenomenon very soon," said Sibilet, addressing Blondet, "for the harvest, which was put back by the rains in July will begin next week, when they cut the rye. The gleaners must have a certificate of pauperism from the mayor of the district, and no district should allow any one to glean except the paupers; but the districts of one canton do glean in those of another without certificate. If we have sixty real paupers in our district, there are at least forty others who could support themselves if they were not so idle. Even persons who have a business leave it to glean in the fields and in the vineyards. All these people, taken together, gather in this neighborhood something like three hundred bushels a day; the harvest lasts two weeks, and that makes four thousand five hundred bushels in this district alone. The gleaning takes more from an estate than the taxes. As to the abuse of pasturage, it robs us of fully one-sixth the produce of the meadows; and as to that of the woods, it is incalculable,--they have actually come to cutting down six-year-old trees. The loss to you, Monsieur le comte, amounts to fully twenty-odd thousand francs a year."

"Do you hear that, madame?" said the general to his wife.

"Is it not exaggerated?" asked Madame de Montcornet.