“Why don’t you do it?” said Godain to Catherine, in a low voice; “there’d be scuttles full of money to hush up the talk; and for the time being you’d be mistress here—”
“Shall we glean, or shall we not glean? that’s the point,” said Bonnebault. “I don’t care two straws for your abbe, not I; I belong to Conches, where we haven’t a black-coat to poke up our consciences.”
“Look here,” said Vaudoyer, “we had better go and ask Rigou, who knows the law, whether the Shopman can forbid gleaning, and he’ll tell us if we’ve got the right of it. If the Shopman has the law on his side, well, then we must do as the old one says,—see about taking things sideways.”
“Blood will be spilt,” said Nicolas, darkly, as he rose after drinking a whole bottle of wine, which Catherine drew for him in order to keep him silent. “If you’d only listen to me you’d down Michaud; but you are miserable weaklings,—nothing but poor trash!”
“I’m not,” said Bonnebault. “If you are all safe friends who’ll keep your tongues between your teeth, I’ll aim at the Shopman—Hey! how I’d like to put a plum through his bottle; wouldn’t it avenge me on those cursed officers?”
“Tut! tut!” cried Jean-Louis Tonsard, who was supposed to be, more or less, Gaubertin’s son, and who had just entered the tavern. This fellow, who was courting Rigou’s pretty servant-girl, had succeeded his nominal father as clipper of hedges and shrubberies and other Tonsardial occupations. Going about among the well-to-do houses, he talked with masters and servants and picked up ideas which made him the man of the world of the family, the shrewd head. We shall presently see that in making love to Rigou’s servant-girl, Jean-Louis deserved his reputation for shrewdness.
“Well, what have you to say, prophet?” said the innkeeper to his son.
“I say that you are playing into the hands of the rich folk,” replied Jean-Louis. “Frighten the Aigues people to maintain your rights if you choose; but if you drive them out of the place and make them sell the estate, you are doing just what the bourgeois of the valley want, and it’s against your own interest. If you help the bourgeois to divide the great estates among them, where’s the national domain to be bought for nothing at the next Revolution? Wait till then, and you’ll get your land without paying for it, as Rigou got his; whereas if you go and thrust this estate into the jaws of the rich folk of the valley, the rich folk will dribble it back to you impoverished and at twice the price they paid for it. You are working for their interests, I tell you; so does everybody who works for Rigou,—look at Courtecuisse.”
The policy contained in this allocution was too deep for the drunken heads of those present, who were all, except Courtecuisse, laying by their money to buy a slice of the Aigues cake. So they let Jean-Louis harangue, and continued, as in the Chamber of Deputies, their private confabs with one another.
“Yes, that’s so; you’ll be Rigou’s cats-paw!” cried Fourchon, who alone understood his grandson.