[13]This is one of the few spots where we can still find the wild balsam with yellow flowers.
[XIV]
The rector began by speaking well of the marquis. He was a very good man; his intentions were excellent; he gave freely to the poor, there was no denying that; unfortunately he lacked judgment, he distributed his benefactions helter-skelter, without consulting the natural intermediary between the château and the cottage, to wit the rector of the parish. He was a little mad, harmless in himself, dangerous by reason of his rank, his wealth, and the example of refined sensuality, of frivolity and indifference in religious matters, which he afforded those about him.
And then he had a very suspicious individual in his household: that bagpipe player, who was not so dumb perhaps as he pretended to be, some heretic or sham scholar, who dabbled in astronomy, perhaps in astrology!
Old Adamas was no better: he was a base flatterer and hypocrite; and that page, so absurdly tricked out as a petty gentleman, who, being a bourgeois, was not entitled to wear satin, and who came to mass on Sundays in some sort of damask doublet!
The servants as a whole were a worthless lot. They were civil, nothing more, to Monsieur Poulain; no marked attentions; he had not yet received a special pressing invitation to dinner. They had simply told him once for all, that a cover was always laid for him. That was too unceremonious treatment. It was surprising on the part of a man who had lived a long while at court. To be sure, at the court of the Béarnais, they did not pride themselves on being over-refined, and nobodies were petted and spoiled there most shamefully. In short, Bellinde alone of all the people at the château seemed to him a person of sense.
D'Alvimar considered Monsieur Poulain's judgment excellent; the bagpiper especially seemed to him more than ever deserving of suspicion.
However, he did not dwell long upon these trivial matters. As soon as he was assured that he would do well to repose no confidence in the old marquis, he advanced a step in his investigations, and wished to know what opinion he should hold of the leading men of the province.
Monsieur Poulain was well posted as to all the little secrets of the provincial government at Bourges. He understood politics as D'Alvimar did: to pry into everyone's private life as a step toward acquiring a predominant influence in public affairs.
That evil-minded priest saw that he could safely speak; he admitted that he was mortally bored in that little hamlet, but that he was patient, because, some day or other, Monsieur de Bois-Doré or his neighbor Monsieur de Beuvre might well afford him an opportunity for a little petty persecution, of which he desired to be the victim rather than the author.