When the mayor of La Fougeraie, a notorious Free Mason, headed a subscription for setting up a public fountain in the village square, the lord and lady of the château refused to contribute, but immediately devoted 2,000 francs to purchasing a holy water font of Carrara marble, on which might be seen a flight of angels carrying heavenward the escutcheon with the three gates.
As for the poor who did not shrink from personally soliciting alms, the Baron and Baroness alike held them in profound contempt. In the history of every wretched beggar there invariably turned out to be some fault in conduct making him unworthy of charity. One of them had got drunk last Sunday at the tavern, one was accused of stealing potatoes, another had been mixed up in a brawl at the village festival. How could disorderly living of this sort lead to anything but mendicancy? "You ought to go to work, my good man," they would say. "Look for employment. Do you so much as go to mass? Do you keep Lent? Go and see the curé. It is to him we give our alms, for the whole countryside knows we keep nothing for ourselves of what the Good God has given us. It is not to the deceitful riches of this earth that we must cling, my poor friend; for heavenly things only must we strive. Go and see the curé, he is so kind. He will know how to minister to the needs of your soul."
Sometimes the gift of a little brass medal with the image of Saint Joseph or the Virgin Mary would accompany this homily, and the beggar, however hardened in his evil ways, would depart with humble salutations and a melancholy thankfulness.
It is true that vice deserves hate, but can it be denied that certain aspects of virtue are utterly hateful? Vice, not unlikely to bring about humility and repentance, is sometimes capable of generous actions without hope of reward. The selfish goodness of calculating virtue sees in Christian charity the opening of a bank account with the Creator, and while making lavish gifts, forfeits the merit of giving, by the avowed exaction of a profit immeasurably greater than the amount paid. The Baron and Baroness de Grillères basked in the delight of hearing themselves praised from the pulpit. No flattering hyperbole seemed to them excessive, for, as they sowed money on all sides, they looked for a great harvest of splendidly ostentatious veneration. All they lacked in order to be loved was that they should first love a little.
Of family life they never knew anything but the companionship of two egoisms, both fiercely straining toward an incomprehensible future felicity, to be earned by the application of a language of love, in which was wrapped their lust of eternity. They had for incidental diversion the base adulation of poor relations, whose mean calculations did not, however, escape them. But the habit of hearing, at every step, every conceivable virtue attributed to them, was an agreeable one, and although they knew that money counted for something in the outpouring of eulogistic superlatives of which they were the objects, they lent themselves easily to the sweet belief that they did, in fact, achieve prodigies of kindness every hour of their lives. No need to say that they never made a gift of three shirts or a pair of shoes to a grand nephew without the fact being trumpeted abroad.
A delightful game, for the Baroness, was distributing legacies among her relatives. Not a piece of furniture, of jewellery, or of silver, did she possess, not a single object of commonest use, that she had not in theory and in anticipation given to some one of her heirs. She would open a wardrobe and show the happy prospective owner a label posted on the inside of the door: "I bequeathe this piece of furniture, which came to me from my dear Mamma, to my good little cousin Mary, whom I love with all my heart." Picture the embraces, the ensuing effusions of tenderness! Further on, the corner of a bit of paper would stick out from under the pedestal of a clock. "I bequeathe this clock, which was the property of my beloved Grandmother, to my grandnephew, Charles, who will pray for his good aunt." With what ecstasy little grandnephew Charles, led with much mystery to the spot, would with his own eyes read the text naming him possessor of the treasure! No member of the family was without his allotted share.
Only, the capricious Baroness, whom it was very easy to annoy, was perpetually taking offence. For a delayed letter, for thanks which seemed insufficient tribute to her generosity, she would declare that Mary or Charles no longer loved her, and as she looked upon affection merely as a marketable commodity, the little slips of paper referring to heirship were immediately replaced by others. Mary's wardrobe would fall to Selina. Charles's clock would leap into John's inheritance, who would be apprised of the fact in deep secret, until presently, for some unconscious fault, the clock would be temporarily bestowed upon Alphonse, and the wardrobe upon Rose. Variable book-keeping, which kindled among relatives inextinguishable hatreds. But the Baroness' masterpiece was the marriage between John and Rose.
John was an overseer of highway and bridge construction. He loved his cousin Mary, who contributed by her needlework to the slender family earnings. The young people had been betrothed six months, when one fine day, without any known reason, the Baroness declared that Rose was the one for John, and John exactly suited to Rose. Great commotion. The fear of being disinherited kept every one concerned in subjection to the "dearly beloved Aunt." Mary, desperately weeping, was preached into promising to enter a convent, the Baroness paying her dowry; this for the dear sake of John, whose name she might unite in her prayers with that of the Providential Aunt, who mercifully opened the way of salvation to her. John, alas, was more easily persuaded than she, when he learned that he and Rose together would be chief heirs; and Rose, who had ideas of grandeur, and dreamt of nothing less than going on to the stage, lent herself with her whole heart to the comedy of love fatly remunerative. John was invited to give up his work and "live like a gentleman," and Rose's natural tendencies coöperating, the young couple, loaded down with gifts of sounding specie, spread themselves gloriously, under the happy eyes of the Baroness, in every description of silly extravagance.
The Baron died of an attack of gout, a disease unknown to clodhoppers. His wealth passed to his wife. Rose and John had received on their marriage an income of only 10,000 francs, but they had the formal promise of the entire inheritance. Unfortunately, a week before her death, the Baroness was shocked by "a lack of regard" on Rose's part, which consisted in not having evinced a sufficiently vociferous despair at the recital of her Aunt's sufferings! By a will made in her last moments everything was bequeathed to the Church, in payment for numberless ceremonies whereby the utmost of celestial bliss was to be secured for the dying woman.
Rose and John, after a torrent of invectives, left that part of the country. An income of 10,000 francs signified poverty for them. They fled to Paris, where in less than a year John lost down to his last penny in speculations. After that they went their respective ways, Rose to sing in a café-concert of the Faubourg St. Martin, John to take employment with a booking agency for the races. He has as yet only been sentenced to one month's imprisonment for a swindling card-game.