So he walked resolutely into the field where the men were at work, and saw, with a feeling of childlike grief, some thirty or more superb trees, all covered with foliage, lying at full length on the ground, and already partly cut up. A farmer, assisted by his men, was at work loading several huge logs on an ox-cart. The axe which was being plied so energetically, awaking all the echoes of the valley, was in the diligent hands of Jean Jappeloup!
Monsieur de Boisguilbault had not exaggerated when he previously told Emile, in glacial tones, that he was very irascible. That was another of the anomalous features of his character. At sight of the carpenter, whose face, or whose name even, always affected him painfully, he turned pale; then, as he saw him cutting in pieces his fine trees, still young and perfectly sound, he trembled with anger, flushed scarlet, stammered some incoherent words, and rushed at him with an impetuosity of which no one would have deemed him capable who had seen him a moment before, walking with measured steps, leaning on his stout cane, with its well-turned head.
XXIX
AN ADVENTURE
The felling which offended Monsieur de Boisguilbault so deeply had been done on the bank of the little stream, and the slender poplars, the old willows and the majestic elms, falling in confusion, had formed a sort of bridge of verdure over that narrow current. While the oxen were dragging some of the trees with ropes to the carts that were to haul them away, the sturdy carpenter, running about on the trunks that blocked the stream, busied himself cutting away the tangled branches whose resistance neutralized the efforts of the cattle. Intent upon his task and zealous in the work of destruction of which his trade reaps the benefit, he exerted his skill and daring with a sort of frenzy. The river was deep and swift at that point, and Jean's post was so dangerous that no one else dared to share it with him. Running with a young man's lightness of foot and self-possession to the flexible extremities of the trees that lay across the stream, he turned sometimes to cut the very branch on which he was balancing himself, and, when a loud cracking told him that his support was on the point of giving way under his feet, he would jump nimbly to a branch near by, electrified by the danger and the amazement of his comrades. His gleaming axe whirled in lightning flashes around his head, and his resonant voice stimulated the other workmen, surprised to find how simple was a task which the intelligence and energy of a single man directed, simplified and performed as by a miracle.
If Monsieur de Boisguilbault had not been excited, he would have admired with the rest, aye, and would have felt a certain respect for the man who imported the power of genius into the accomplishment of that commonplace task. But the sight of a noble tree, full of sap and life, cut down by the axe in the midst of its development, angered him and tore his heart, as if he had witnessed a murder, and when that tree belonged to him, he defended it as if it were a member of his family.
"What are you doing there, you stupid fools!" he cried, brandishing his cane, and in a high tone which anger made as shrill and ear-piercing as the note of a fife. "And you, villain!" he shouted to Jean Jappeloup, "have you taken an oath to wound me and outrage my feelings all the time?"
The peasant has a dull ear, especially the Berri peasant. The ox-drivers, excited by their unaccustomed interest in their work, did not hear the master's voice, especially as the straining of the ropes, the groaning of the yokes and the carpenter's powerful shouts, rising above everything, drowned those shrill tones. The weather was threatening, the horizon was a mass of dark purple clouds which were rapidly overspreading the sky. Jean, dripping with perspiration, had kept everybody at work, swearing that the job must be finished before the rain, which would swell the stream and might carry away the trees they had felled. A sort of frenzy had taken possession of him, and despite the true piety which reigned in his heart, he swore like a heathen, as if he thought that he could in that way increase his strength tenfold. The blood hummed in his ears; exclamations of excitement and satisfaction escaped him at every exploit of his muscular arm, and mingled with the rumbling of the thunder. Violent gusts of wind enveloped him in leaves and kept his coarse silvery locks flying about his forehead. With his pale face, his flashing eyes, his leathern apron, his tall thin figure, his bare arms brandishing the axe, he had the aspect of a Cyclops, on the sides of Mount Ætna, gathering wood to keep alight the fire of his infernal forge.
While the marquis exhausted his strength in unavailing cries, the carpenter, having cleared away the last obstacle, darted back to the round trunk of a young maple, with an address that would have done credit to a professional acrobat, leaped to the bank, and, seizing the draught-rope, was reinforcing the tired oxen with his exuberant muscular strength, when he felt upon his loins, covered with a coarse shirt only, the sting of Monsieur de Boisguilbault's flexible bamboo.
The carpenter thought that a branch had swung back against him, as often happened in such battles with verdure-clad boughs. He uttered a terrible oath, turned quickly and cut the marquis's cane in two with his axe, exclaiming: