Part 24 (1/2)
Every one recognized the vinous voice of old Fourchon, to whom the verse must have been peculiarly agreeable; Mouche accompanied in his treble tones.
”Ha! they're full!” cried old Mother Tonsard to her daughter-in-law; ”your father is as red as a grid-iron, and that chip o' the block as pink as vine-shoot.”
”Your healths!” cried the old man, ”and a fine lot of scoundrels you are! All hail!” he said to his granddaughter, whom he spied kissing Bonnebault, ”hail, Marie, full of vice! Satan is with three; cursed art thou among women, etcetera. All hail, the company present! you are done for, every one of you! you may just say good-bye to your sheaves. I being news. I always told you the rich would crush us; well now, the Shopman is going to have the law of you! Ha! see what it is to struggle against those bourgeois fellows, who have made so many laws since they got into power that they've a law to enforce every trick they play--”
A violent hiccough gave a sudden turn to the ideas of the distinguished orator.
”If Vermichel were only here I'd blow in his gullet, and he'd get an idea of sherry wine. Hey! what a wine it is! If I wasn't a Burgundian I'd be a Spaniard! It's G.o.d's own wine! the pope says ma.s.s with it--Hey!
I'm young again! Say, Courtecuisse! if your wife were only here we'd be young together. Don't tell me! Spanish wine is worth a dozen of boiled wine. Let's have a revolution if it's only to empty the cellars!”
”But what's your news, papa?” said Tonsard.
”There'll be no harvest for you; the Shopman has given orders to stop the gleaning.”
”Stop the gleaning!” cried the whole tavern, with one voice, in which the shrill tones of the four women predominated.
”Yes,” said Mouche, ”he is going to issue an order, and Groison is to take it round, and post it up all over the canton. No one is to glean except those who have pauper certificates.”
”And what's more,” said Fourchon, ”the folks from the other districts won't be allowed here at all.”
”What's that?” cried Bonnebault, ”do you mean to tell me that neither my grandmother nor I, nor your mother, G.o.dain, can come here and glean?
Here's tomfoolery for you; a pretty show of authority! Why, the fellow is a devil let loose from h.e.l.l,--that scoundrel of a mayor!”
”Shall you glean whether or no, G.o.dain?” said Tonsard to the journeyman wheelwright, who was saying a few words to Catherine.
”I? I've no property; I'm a pauper,” he replied; ”I shall ask for a certificate.”
”What did they give my father for his otter, bibi?” said Madame Tonsard to Mouche.
Though nearly at his last gasp from an over-taxed digestion and two bottles of wine, Mouche, sitting on Madame Tonsard's lap, laid his head on his aunt's neck and whispered slyly in her ear:--
”I don't know, but he has got gold. If you'll feed me high for a month, perhaps I can find out his hiding-place; he has one, I know that.”
”Father's got gold!” whispered La Tonsard to her husband, whose voice was loudest in the uproar of the excited discussion, in which all present took part.
”Hus.h.!.+ here's Groison,” cried the old sentinel.
Perfect silence reigned in the tavern. When Groison had got to a safe distance, Mother Tonsard made a sign, and the discussion began again on the question as to whether they should persist in gleaning, as before, without a certificate.
”You'll have to give in,” said Pere Fourchon; ”for the Shopman has gone to see the prefect and get troops to enforce the order. They'll shoot you like dogs,--and that's what we are!” cried the old man, trying to conquer the thickening of his speech produced by his potations of sherry.
This fresh announcement, absurd as it was, made all the drinkers thoughtful; they really believed the government capable of slaughtering them without pity.
”I remember just such troubles near Toulouse, when I was stationed there,” said Bonnebault. ”We were marched out, and the peasants were cut and slashed and arrested. Everybody laughed to see them try to resist cavalry. Ten were sent to the galleys, and eleven put in prison; the whole thing was crushed. Hey! what? why, soldiers are soldiers, and you are nothing but civilian beggars; they've a right, they think, to sabre peasants, the devil take you!”
”Well, well,” said Tonsard, ”what is there in all that to frighten you like kids? What can they get out of my mother and daughters? Put 'em in prison? well, then they must feed them; and the Shopman can't imprison the whole country. Besides, prisoners are better fed at the king's expense than they are at their own; and they're kept warmer, too.”
”You are a pack of fools!” roared Fourchon. ”Better gnaw at the bourgeois than attack him in front; otherwise, you'll get your backs broke. If you like the galleys, so be it,--that's another thing! You don't work as hard there as you do in the fields, true enough; but you don't have your liberty.”
”Perhaps it would be well,” said Vaudoyer, who was among the more valiant in counsel, ”if some of us risked our skins to deliver the neighborhood of that Languedoc fellow who has planted himself at the gate of the Avonne.”