CHAPTER V.
A Chapter of mighty import, which may be read or not, as the Reader thinks fit, the Book being quite as well without it.
WITH the happy irregularity of all true stories, we must return, for a moment, to a very insignificant person,—the Woodman of Mantes. Indeed, I have to beg my reader’s pardon for saying so much about any one under the rank of a Chevalier at least; but all through this most untractable of all histories, I have been pestered with a set of shabby fellows in very indifferent circumstances. Woodcutters, robbers, gentlemen’s servants, and the like, who make themselves so abominably useful, that though we wish them at the Devil all the time, we can no way do without them. Let the sin not be attributed to me; for I declare, upon my conscience, that when first I undertook to record this tale, I attempted a thorough reform; I superseded a great number of subordinate characters, put others upon the retired list, and dismissed a great many as useless sinecurists; but when I had done, all was in confusion; and then, after considering matters for half an hour, and turning over a page or two in the book of Nature, I found, that the most brilliant actions and the greatest events were generally brought about from the meanest motives and most petty causes: I perceived, that women and valets de-chambre govern the world: I found that saur-kraut had disagreed with Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, made her insolent to Queen Anne, made Queen Anne threaten to box her ears, made England resign her advantages over France—placed the Bourbon dynasty on the throne of Spain, and changed the face of Europe even to the present day. So, if saur-kraut did all this, surely I may return to Philip, the woodman of Mantes.
Chavigni, as we have seen, cast his purse upon the ground, and rode away from the cottage of the Woodman, little heeding what so insignificant an agent might do or say. Yet Philip’s first thought was one which would have procured him speedy admission to the Bastille, had Chavigni been able to divine its nature. “The young Count shall know all about it,” said Philip to himself. “That’s a great rogue in Isabel and silver, for all his fine clothes, or I’m much mistaken.”
His next object of attention was the purse; and after various pros and cons, Inclination, the best logician in the world, reasoned him into taking it. “For,” said Philip, “dirty fingers soil no gold;” and having carefully put it into his pouch, the Woodman laid his finger upon the side of his nose, and plunged headlong into a deep meditation concerning the best and least suspicious method of informing the young Count de Blenau of all he had seen, heard, or suspected. We will not follow the course of this cogitation, which, as it doubtless took place in the French tongue, must necessarily suffer by translation, but taking a short cut straight through all the zig-zags of Philip’s mind, arrive directly at the conclusion, or rather at the consequences, which were these. In the first place, he commanded his son Charles to load the mule with wood, notwithstanding the boy’s observation, that no one would buy wood at that time of the morning, or rather the night; for, to make use of Shakspeare’s language, the Morn, far from being yet clad in any russet mantle, was snugly wrapped up in the blanket of the dark, and snoring away, fast asleep, like her betters.
Precisely in the same situation as Aurora, that is to say, soundly sleeping, till her ordinary hour of rising, was Joan, the Woodman’s wife. Philip, however, by sundry efforts, contrived to awaken her to a sense of external things; and perceiving that, after various yawns and stretches, her mind had arrived at the point of comprehending a simple proposition, “Get up, Joan, get up!” cried he. “I want you to write a letter for me; writing being a gift that, by the blessing of God, I do not possess.”
The wife readily obeyed; for Philip, though as kind as the air of spring, had a high notion of marital privileges, and did not often suffer his commands to be disputed within his little sphere of dominion. However, it seemed a sort of tenure by which his sway was held, that Joan, his wife, should share in all his secrets; and accordingly, in the present instance, the good Woodman related in somewhat prolix style, not only all that had passed between Chavigni and Lafemas in the house, but much of what they had said before they even knocked at his door.
“For you must know, Joan,” said he, “that I could not sleep for thinking of all this day’s bad work; and, as I lay awake, I heard horses stop at the water, and people speaking, and very soon what they said made me wish to hear more, which I did, as I have told you. And now, Joan, I think it right, as a Christian and a man, to let this young cavalier know what they are plotting against him. So sit thee down; here is a pen and ink, and a plain sheet out of the boy’s holy catechism,—God forgive me! But it could not go to a better use.”
It matters not much to tell all the various considerations which were weighed and discussed by Philip and his wife in the construction of this epistle. Suffice it to say, that like two unskilful players at battledoor and shuttlecock, they bandied backwards and forwards the same objections a thousand times between them, for ever letting them drop, and taking them up again anew, till such time as day was well risen before they finished. Neither would it much edify the world, in all probability, to know the exact style and tenor of the composition when it was complete, although Philip heard his wife read it over with no small satisfaction, and doubtless thought it as pretty a piece of oratory as ever was penned.
It is now unfortunately lost to the public, and all that can be satisfactorily vouched upon the subject is, that it was calculated to convey to the Count de Blenau all the information which the Woodcutter possessed, although that information might be clothed in homely language, without much perfection, either in writing or orthography.