“Do you suppose he may safely dress himself, and appear to arrive at his chateau to-morrow?”
“Why, scarcely yet, perhaps,” replied Antoine, gravely. “The peasantry are in an uncomfortable, irascible state, and the poor man would hardly have fair play among them; but it cannot last long, and then we shall have him trampling our crops again as solemnly as ever; perched, like a wax figure, on horseback, and utterly unable to comprehend such a thing as a curse against himself; or to bestow a thought as to whose ground he is trespassing upon.”
“Let us hope he has learned more consideration by his misfortunes,” said Charles. “At any rate, he may yet learn it by using his eyes and ears in the interval between this hour and his restoration to his honours and privileges,—which I suppose will happen by the time he has learned to tie his own queue according to his own fancy. Meanwhile, how is Favorite?”
“O, our beauty! She has rather languished this season; but she will be all the more brilliant next year; for two bad seasons give a pretty fair security that the third will be good. It is as if the steam of blood had come from your city, Charles, like a blight, and shrivelled her swelling fruit. The crisis is come, you say. There will soon be no more blood, and wine will gush instead. Yes, yes, next season all will be well.”
“But our peasant neighbours, Antoine. Has their condition improved as you were confident it would?”
“How should it yet? The time is not come. They have not yet got over the scarcity of last year. But the woodcocks will soon be here; and the lady Alice’s doves multiply all the faster now they are left to themselves; and in the spring, there will be a greater resource of cattle, and of their milk; and the bad seasons have not destroyed our fish. We are planning to get larger and larger supplies from Bordeaux, as well as to send out more boats upon the river.”
“Corn is too dear, at present, I suppose, for the poor, if indeed you have enough for the rich?”
“We are all somewhat better off in that respect than we were; but a great part of the discontent arises from the incessant changes in the value of whatever we get to eat, as long as the supply is turned out of its usual course. When we can no longer depend on an article whose supply is usually pretty regular, and its price not very variable, we are subject to a perpetual rise and fall which we cannot calculate, and which brings disappointments to the people which they are ill able to bear.”
“How do you mean? I thought our poor helped out their subsistence by nettle broth and frog stew; and for these, I suppose, they pay neither labour nor money?”
“No; but they must have something in addition. Presently it will be woodcocks—the most uncertain article of food that can be. If there should be a fine flight of them to be had for the killing, labour will become cheaper to us capitalists, while the labourers will be better rewarded: that is, it will cost us less to feed our labourers, while they will get more food for an equal quantity of labour. This, while it lasts, lessens the cost of production, and if it went on a whole year, would cheapen our corn considerably next harvest. But the resource lasts a very short time, and the reduction of the price of corn, therefore, is only of that temporary kind which proceeds from a relaxation of demand. Before the people well understand how this is, the cattle begin to come in from the woods,—more numerous than ever, from so much arable land having, since the storm, yielded a kind of rude pasture. This is a somewhat less uncertain resource than the woodcocks, and lowers the value of corn for a longer period. What I want, to fill up the intervals of these uncertain supplies, is a permanent provision of fish.”