Angelot: A Story of the First Empire

by Eleanor C. Price

"The weather will last," he said, when Martin grumbled, "and the moon will be better. Besides, those slopes are always forwarder than ours. And we shall lose nothing by helping the master. But if we did, I would rather spoil my own wine than disappoint Monsieur Angelot."

"You and the mother are in love with his pretty face," growled the soldier. "Why doesn't he go to the war, and fight for his country, and come home a fine man like his cousin? Ah, you think there are different ways of coming home, do you? Well, if you ask me, I am prouder of my lost limbs than the young captain is of his rank and his uniform."

"And Monsieur Angelot honours you, poor Martin, more than he does his smart cousin," said Joubard. "Allons! Our vintage will not suffer, now that you are at home to see to it. And they will not take you away again, my son!"

So, in those first days of October, the vintage was in full swing at La Marinière. All the peasants came to help, men and women, old and young. Dark, grave faces that matched oddly with a babel of voices and gay laughter; broad straw hats as sunburnt as their owners, white caps, blue shoulders, bobbing among the long rows of bronzed vines loaded with fruit. The vintagers cut off the bunches with sharp knives and dropped them into wooden pails; these were emptied into great hottes on men's backs, and carried to the carts, full of barrels, waiting in the lane. Slowly the patient white horses tramped down to the yard of La Marinière. There, in its own whitewashed building with the wide-arched door, the stone wine-press was ready; the grapes were thrown in in heaps, the barefooted men, splashed red to their waists, trod and crushed with a swishing sound; the red juice ran down in a stream, foaming into the vault beneath, into the vats where it was to ferment and become wine.

Angelot worked in the vineyard like anybody else, sometimes cutting grapes, sometimes leading the carts up and down, and feeding the horses with bunches of grapes, which they munched contentedly. So did the dogs who waited on the vintagers, not daring to venture in among the vines, but sitting outside with eager eyes and wagging tails till their portion of fruit was thrown to them. And the workers themselves, and the little bullet-headed boys and white-capped girls who played about the vineyard, all ate grapes to their satisfaction; for the crop was splendid, and there was no need to stint anybody.

A festal spirit reigned over all. Though most of these people were good Christians, ready to thank God for His gifts without any intention of misusing them, there was something of the old pagan feeling about. Purely a country feeling, a natural religion much older than Christianity, as Urbain remarked to the old Curé, who agreed with Madame Urbain in not quite caring for this way of looking at it. But he was accustomed to such views from Urbain, who never, for instance, let the Rogation processions pass singing through the fields without pointing out their descent from something ancient, pagan, devilish.

"But if you have cast out the devil, dear Curé, what does it matter?" said Urbain. "The beauty alone is left. And all true beauty is good by nature; and what is not beautiful is not good. You want nothing more, it seems to me."

"Ah, your philosophies!" sighed the old man.

However, in different ways, the vintage attracted everybody. Monsieur Joseph and Henriette were there, very busy among the vines; these people would help them another day. A party strolled across from Lancilly; Monsieur and Madame de Sainfoy, idly admiring the pretty scene; Captain Georges, casting superior glances, Sophie and Lucie hanging on their splendid brother's looks and words. They were allowed to walk with him, and were very happy, Mademoiselle Moineau having been left behind in charge of Hélène. The La Marinière vineyards were not considered safe ground for that young culprit. She had to be contented with a distant view, and could see from her window the white horses crawling up and down the steep hill.

Some patronising notice was bestowed by the people from the château on Martin Joubard, who moved slowly about among the old neighbours, a hero to them all, whatever their political opinions might be. For, after all, he went to the wars against his will; and when there he had done his duty; and his enthusiasm for the Emperor was a new spirit in that country, which roused curiosity, if nothing more. No one could fail to rejoice with old Joubard and his wife. Whatever they themselves thought, and hardly dared to say, was said for them by their neighbours. Few indeed had come back, of the conscript lads of Anjou. How much better, people said, to have Martin maimed than not at all. What was a wooden leg? a very useful appendage, on which Martin might limp actively about the farms; and the loss of an arm did not matter so much, for, by his father's account, he could do everything but hold and fire a gun with the one left to him. His mother had dressed him in clean country clothes, laying aside his tattered old uniform in a chest, for he would not have it destroyed. All the girls in the two villages were running after Martin, who had always been popular; all the men wanted to hear his tales of the war. He was certainly the hero of Monsieur Urbain's vintage, the centre figure of that sunny day.