Part 2 (2/2)

At twenty Lacheneur was only a poor ploughboy in the service of the Sairmeuse family.

His ambition was modest then. When stretched beneath a tree at the hour of noonday rest, his dreams were as simple as those of an infant.

”If I could but ama.s.s a hundred pistoles,” he thought, ”I would ask Father Barrois for the hand of his daughter Martha; and he would not refuse me.” A hundred pistoles! A thousand francs!--an enormous sum for him who, in two years of toil and privation had only laid by eleven louis, which he had placed carefully in a tiny box and hidden in the depths of his straw mattress.

Still he did not despair. He had read in Martha's eyes that she would wait.

And Mlle. Armande de Sairmeuse, a rich old maid, was his G.o.d-mother; and he thought, if he attacked her adroitly, that he might, perhaps, interest her in his love-affair.

Then the terrible storm of the revolution burst over France.

With the fall of the first thunder-bolts, the Duke of Sairmeuse left France with the Count d'Artois. They took refuge in foreign lands as a pa.s.ser-by seeks shelter in a doorway from a summer shower, saying to himself: ”This will not last long.”

The storm did last, however; and the following year Mlle. Armande, who had remained at Sairmeuse, died.

The chateau was then closed, the president of the district took possession of the keys in the name of the government, and the servants were scattered.

Lacheneur took up his residence in Montaignac.

Young, daring, and personally attractive, blessed with an energetic face, and an intelligence far above his station, it was not long before he became well known in the political clubs.

For three months Lacheneur was the tyrant of Montaignac.

But this metier of public speaker is by no means lucrative, so the surprise throughout the district was immense, when it was ascertained that the former ploughboy had purchased the chateau, and almost all the land belonging to his old master.

It is true that the nation had sold this princely domain for scarcely a twentieth part of its real value. The apprais.e.m.e.nt was sixty-nine thousand francs. It was giving the property away.

And yet, it was necessary to have this amount, and Lacheneur possessed it, since he had poured it in a flood of beautiful louis d'or into the hands of the receiver of the district.

From that moment his popularity waned. The patriots who had applauded the ploughboy, cursed the capitalist. He discreetly left them to recover from their rage as best they could, and returned to Sairmeuse. There everyone bowed low before Citoyen Lacheneur.

Unlike most people, he did not forget his past hopes at the moment when they might be realized.

He married Martha Barrois, and, leaving the country to work out its own salvation without his a.s.sistance, he gave his time and attention to agriculture.

Any close observer, in those days, would have felt certain that the man was bewildered by the sudden change in his situation.

His manner was so troubled and anxious that one, to see him, would have supposed him a servant in constant fear of being detected in some indiscretion.

He did not open the chateau, but installed himself and his young wife in the cottage formerly occupied by the head game-keeper, near the entrance of the park.

But, little by little, with the habit of possession, came a.s.surance.

The Consulate had succeeded the Directory, the Empire succeeded the Consulate, Citoyen Lacheneur became M. Lacheneur.

Appointed mayor two years later, he left the cottage and took possession of the chateau.

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