Part 3 (1/2)

Instead of getting angry, as I expected, my cousin listened calmly.

His wife only cried out against that bad lot--she spoke of all the sous-prefets in the most disrespectful manner. But my cousin, smoking his pipe after supper, took it all very easily.

”Just listen to me, Christian,” said he. ”In the first place, I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken. All that you tell me I knew beforehand; but I am not sorry to know it for certain. Yet I could wish that the sous-prefet had had my letter. As it is, since I am refused a license to sell a few gla.s.ses of wine retail, I will sell wine wholesale. I have already a stock of white wine, and no later than to-morrow I am off to Nancy. I buy a light cart and a good horse; thence I drive to Thiancourt, where I lay in a stock of red wine.

After that I rove right and left all over the country, and I sell my wine by the cask or the quarter-cask, according to the solvency of my customers: instead of having one public-house, I will have twenty. I must keep moving. With an inn, Marie Anne would still have been obliged to cook; she has quite enough to do without that.”

”Oh! yes,” she said; ”for thirty years I have been cooking dishes of sauerkraut and sausage at Krantheimer's, at Montmartre, and at Auber's, in the cloister St. Benoit.”

”Exactly so,” said George; ”and now you shall cook no longer; but you shall look after the crops, the stacking of the hay, the storage of fruit and potatoes. We shall get in our dividends, and I will trot round the country with my little pony from village to village.

Monsieur le Sous-prefet shall know that George Weber can live without him.”

Hearing this, I learned that they had money in the funds, besides all the rest; and I reflected that my cousin was quite right to laugh at all the sous-prefets in the world.

He came with me to the door, shaking hands with me; and I said to myself that it was abominable to have refused a publican's license to respectable persons, when they gave it to such men as Nicolas Reiter and Jean Kreps, whom their own wives called their best customers because they dropped under the table every evening and had to be carried to bed.

On the other hand, I saw that it was better for me; for if my cousin had been found infringing the law, I should have had to take depositions, and there would have been a quarrel with Cousin George.

So that all was for the best; the wholesale business being only the exciseman's affair.

What George had said, he did next day. At six o'clock he was already at the station, and in five or six days he had returned from Nancy upon his own char-a-banc, drawn by a strong horse, five or six years old, in its prime. The char-a-banc was a new one; a tilt could be put up in wet weather, which could be raised or lowered when necessary to deliver the wine or receive back the empty casks.

The wine from Thiancourt followed. George stored it immediately, after having paid the bill and settled with the carter. I was standing by.

As for telling you how many casks he had then in the house, that would be difficult without examining his books; but not a wine-merchant in the neighborhood, not even in town, could boast of such a vault of wine as he had, for excellence of quality, for variety in price, both red and white, of Alsace and Lorraine.

About that time, my cousin sent for me and Jacob to make a list of safe customers. He wrote on, asking us, ”How much may I give to So-and-So?”

”So much.”

”How much to that man?”

”So much.”

In the course of a single afternoon we had pa.s.sed in review all the innkeepers and publicans from Droulingen to Quatre Vents, from Quatre Vents to the Dagsberg. Jacob and I knew what they were worth to the last penny; for the man who pays readily for his flour, pays well for his wine; and those who want pulling up by the miller are in no hurry to open their purses to the others.

That was the way Cousin George conducted his business.

He took a lad from our place, the son of the cooper Gros, to drive; and he himself was salesman.

From that day he was only seen pa.s.sing through Rothalp at a quick trot, his lad loading and unloading.

My cousin, also, had a notion of distilling in the winter. He bought up a quant.i.ty of old second-hand barrels to hold the fruits which he hoped to secure at a cheap rate in autumn, and laid up a great store of firewood. Our country people had nothing to do but to look at him to learn something; but the people down our way all think themselves so amazingly clever, and that does not help to make folks richer.

Well, it is plain to you that our cousin's prospects were looking very bright. Every day, returning from his journey to Saverne or to Phalsbourg, he would stop his cart before my door, and come to see me in the mill, crying out: ”Hallo! good afternoon, Christian. How are you to-day?”

Then we used to step into the back parlor, on account of the noise and the dust, and we talked about the price of corn, cattle, provender, and everything that is interesting to people in our condition.

What astonished him most of all was the number of Germans to be met with in the mountains and in the plains.

”I see n.o.body else,” said he; ”wood-cutters, brewers' men, coopers, tinkers, photographers, contractors. I will lay a wager, Christian, that your young man Frantz is a German, too.”