“It is no fault of theirs,” replied Antoine. “The law forbids hoeing and weeding, lest the young partridges should be hurt; and the hay must not be cut before a certain day, let the season be what it will, lest the game should be deprived of shelter. Many crops are thus spoiled.”
“What tyranny!” exclaimed the Englishman. “But some fault seems still to remain with the cultivators. They do not use half the manure at their disposal, while their land evidently wants it much. Yonder field is an instance.”
“Certain sorts of manure are thought to give an unpleasant flavour to the birds which subsist on the grain which springs from them,” replied Antoine. “Such manure is not allowed to be used.”
On Steele’s exclaiming again that such prohibitions were too arbitrary to be endured, Antoine laughed, and wondered what he would say to certain other regulations, in comparison with which these were trifles. What did he think of the lot of those who were sent to the galleys for having entered or approached the groves where the wild pigeons of the marquis were appointed to breed undisturbed; or of such as were ruined by being taken from their tillage to make for him ornamental roads which led nowhere; or by the fines which they had to pay in commutation of the service of keeping the frogs quiet by night? On one side the chateau, a marsh extended for some distance, and its frogs greatly annoyed a former marquis by their croaking. His peasantry were employed to beat the ponds. By degrees, as the nuisance decreased, this service was commuted for a fine,—and a very oppressive one it was found at this day. Antoine was proceeding to describe another grievance of great magnitude, when his description was superseded by an example.
The young men were now in a chestnut grove, within which the distant sounds of the hunt were beginning to be heard. A figure of a peasant crossed the glades at intervals, and an occasional voice hailed them from overhead, where lookers out were perched on the loftiest trees to watch what course the devastation of the boar and its hunters would take. After a few moments of quiet, a cry burst forth, and was echoed from mouth to mouth through the wood, a heavy plunging tread was heard, and a rushing and crashing in the thicket, which warned Steele to fly to the protection of the largest trunk at hand, while Antoine climbed a tree as nimbly as a squirrel. The ferocious, clumsy animal immediately appeared, its small eyes red and flaming, its coarse hide bristling, and its terrific tusks looking as if they could plough up the very ground over which it rushed headlong. The moment the danger was past, Antoine descended, and followed at full speed to see the issue of the chase; Steele keeping up with his companion as well as he could, but not without some qualms lest the beast should be met at the extremity of the wood, and driven back upon his steps. The hunt was a little too late, however, to accomplish this manœuvre, and Steele began to feel himself somewhat more comfortable, when a cry of horror from Antoine, who was a little way in advance, renewed all his fears.
“O, Favorite! O La Haute Favorite!” cried he. “She is spoiled,—she will be wholly desolated by the monster and the hunters!” And poor Antoine threw himself down at the foot of a tree, and would look no more. His companion saw one horseman after another leap the fence which had been kept in such perfect repair, watched them wheeling round and round among the choice vines, which they must be treading like so much common grass, and finally follow the boar out at the opposite side, while the servants who attended in the rear wantonly rode over the same ground, when they might just as easily have kept the road. In a great passion, Steele flew to warn, and threaten, and scold; but before he had time to commit himself, Antoine was at hand to interpose, and silence the indignant Englishman.
“I cannot conceive what you mean, Antoine,” cried Steele, the moment they had the place to themselves. “You flung yourself upon the ground in as great an agony as if your bride had been snatched from you; and presently you come to speak these rascals as fair as if they had done you a favour!”
“It is the only way to keep what we have left,” replied Antoine, mournfully. “There is no use, but much peril, in complaint. Redress there is none; and ill-will towards the lord’s pleasure is resented more deeply and lastingly than injury to his property. You may rob his chateau of its plate, and be more easily forgiven than for repining at anything which happens in the course of his sports.”
Steele was ready to burst with indignation against the people which permitted such usages to endure. He was answered by a reference to the cruel old forest laws of England, and certain national blemishes of an analogous character which still remained; and the friends were in danger of quarrelling, for the first time, when they remembered that it would be more to the purpose to contemplate the present than the past and the absent, and to help one another under the vexatious event which had befallen them.
It was mournful to look around, and see what had been done within a few minutes;—the clean soil trodden and strewed, the props thrown down, the laden branches snapped off, the ripening fruit crushed and scattered, and the whole laid open to intruders; whether men to steal, or troops of deer to browze. If, by any exertion, these intruders could be kept out, there was hope that some, even a considerable portion, of the expected vintage might be saved, as some rows of vines had not been touched, and others had fallen merely from their supports being removed. Antoine set off in search of labourers. Not one would follow him till the issue of the hunt was known, and it became certain whose fields would be devastated before the sun went down, and whose not; but when the boar’s head was at length carried towards the chateau, with the usual honours, and the proud train returned to their stately festivities, a gang of peasants, safe for this bout, set to work, under Antoine and Steele, to stop up the fences till they could be properly repaired; while their less fortunate neighbours hid themselves to groan over the destroyed harvests which were their only hope;—hid themselves, because if their own little children had spoken of their grief, the galleys would infallibly be their destination ere long. Neither those who chaunted over their work, however, nor those who brooded over wrongs within, nor the two young men who toiled, went home, and retired to rest in gloomy silence, anticipated what would be their relative position at the same hour the next evening. Nothing could now appear more certain to Antoine than that he and his brother had sustained a great loss in the destruction of half the crop of their best vineyard, or to Steele than that it would be a misfortune to his employers to be disappointed of half the quantity of that superlative wine which they were to have on favourable terms, and might sell at almost any price they might choose to set upon it: yet another turn of fortune happened within a few hours which promised to do more than repair the pecuniary damage, though it still remained to be lamented that La Haute Favorite should have been exposed to wanton devastation.