VICTORY WITHOUT A FIGHT
Madame Michaud's fears were the effect of that second sight which comes of true passion.Exclusively absorbed by one only being, the soul finally grasps the whole moral world which surrounds that being;
it sees clearly.A woman when she loves feels the same presentiments which disquiet her later when a mother.
While the poor young woman listened to the confused voices coming from afar across an unknown space, a scene was really happening in the tavern of the Grand-I-Vert which threatened her husband's life.
About five o'clock that morning early risers had seen the gendarmerie of Soulanges on its way to Conches.The news circulated rapidly; and those whom it chiefly interested were much surprised to learn from others, who lived on high ground, that a detachment commanded by the lieutenant of Ville-aux-Fayes had marched through the forest of Les Aigues.As it was a Monday, there were already good reasons why the peasants should be at the tavern; but it was also the eve of the anniversary of the restoration of the Bourbons, and though the frequenters of Tonsard's den had no need of that "august cause" (as they said in those days) to explain their presence at the Grand-I-
Vert, they did not fail to make the most of it if the mere shadow of an official functionary appeared.
Vaudoyer, Courtecuisse, Tonsard and his family, Godain, and an old vine-dresser named Laroche, were there early in the morning.The latter was a man who scratched a living from day to day; he was one of the delinquents collected in Blangy under the sort of subscription invented by Sibilet and Courtecuisse to disgust the general by the results of his indictments.Blangy had supplied three men, twelve women, also eight girls and five boys for whom parent were answerable, all of whom were in a condition of pauperism; but they were the only ones who could be found that were so.The year 1823 had been a very profitable one to the peasantry, and 1826 as likely, through the enormous quantity of wine yielded, to bring them in a good deal of money; add to this the works at Les Aigues, undertaken by the general, which had put a great deal more in circulation throughout the three districts which bordered on the estate.It had therefore been quite difficult to find in Blangy, Conches, and Cerneux, one hundred and twenty indigent persons against whom to bring the suits; and in order to do so, they had taken old women, mothers, and grandmothers of those who owned property but who possessed nothing of their own, like Tonsard's mother.Laroche, an old laborer, possessed absolutely nothing; he was not, like Tonsard, hot-blooded and vicious,--his motive power was a cold, dull hatred; he toiled in silence with a sullen face; work was intolerable to him, but he had to work to live;
his features were hard and their expression repulsive.Though sixty years old, he was still strong, except that his back was bent; he saw no future before him, no spot that he could call his own, and he envied those who possessed the land; for this reason he had no pity on the forests of Les Aigues, and took pleasure in despoiling them uselessly.
"Will they be allowed to put us in prison?" he was saying."After Conches they'll come to Blangy.I'm an old offender, and I shall get three months."
"What can we do against the gendarmerie, old drunkard?" said Vaudoyer.
"Why! cut the legs of their horses with our scythes.That'll bring them down; their muskets are not loaded, and when they find us ten to one against them they'll decamp.If the three villages all rose and killed two or three gendarmes, they couldn't guillotine the whole of us.They'd have to give way, as they did on the other side of Burgundy, where they sent a regiment.Bah! that regiment came back again, and the peasants cut the woods just as much as they ever did."
"If we kill," said Vaudoyer; "it is better to kill one man; the question is, how to do it without danger and frighten those Arminacs so that they'll be driven out of the place."
"Which one shall we kill?" asked Laroche.
"Michaud," said Courtecuisse."Vaudoyer is right, he's perfectly right.You'll see that when a keeper is sent to the shades there won't be one of them willing to stay even in broad daylight to watch us.Now they're there night and day,--demons!"
"Wherever one goes," said old Mother Tonsard,--who was seventy-eight years old, and presented a parchment face honey-combed with the small-
pox, lighted by a pair of green eyes, and framed with dirty-white hair, which escaped in strands from a red handkerchief,--"wherever one goes, there they are! they stop us, they open our bundles, and if there's a single branch, a single twig of a miserable hazel, they seize the whole bundle, and they say they'll arrest us.Ha, the villains! there's no deceiving them; if they suspect you, you've got to undo the bundle.Dogs! all three are not worth a farthing! Yes, kill 'em, and it won't ruin France, I tell you."
"Little Vatel is not so bad," said Madame Tonsard.
"He!" said Laroche, "he does his business, like the others; when there's a joke going he'll joke with you, but you are none the better with him for that.He's worse than the rest,--heartless to poor folks, like Michaud himself."
"Michaud has got a pretty wife, though," said Nicolas Tonsard.
"She's with young," said the old woman; "and if this thing goes on there'll be a queer kind of baptism for the little one when she calves."
"Oh! those Arminacs!" cried Marie Tonsard; "there's no laughing with them; and if you did, they'd threaten to arrest you."
"You've tried your hand at cajoling them, have you?" said Courtecuisse.
"You may bet on that."
"Well," said Tonsard with a determined air, "they are men like other men, and they can be got rid of."
"But I tell you," said Marie, continuing her topic, "they won't be cajoled; I don't know what's the matter with them; that bully at the pavilion, he's married, but Vatel, Gaillard, and Steingel are not;
