THE HABITANT
After what had happened Jean could not ask Monsieur Taché for help in his great enterprise. He therefore applied to Monsieur Laroche, the only other rich man in the parish, and was received with scorn.
"So," said Bonhomme Laroche, "you wish to build a dam across the St. Ange, to inundate the best land on your mother's farm, to make a pond for ducks. A great work, truly! And I am to lend you a small sum of money--ten thousand dollars, only. Why not ask for a hundred thousand? That would be nothing at all for me--a mere bagatelle. We are rich, we habitants of St. Placide, men of high finance, millionaires, and we love to encourage hare-brained enthusiasts by small loans. And on what security? A dam of logs that the first spring flood will take away. You are a fool, a dam fool. Ha! Ha! Yes, a dam fool. My little joke, you see.
"But, Jean, do not go, do not be angry at my little pleasantry. I have yet a piece of advice which I will give you for nothing, although it will be worth much to you if you have the sense to take it. Listen! You have a good farm; that is to say, your mother has it, which is the same thing, since all your brothers and sisters, the whole tribe, have gone away. Go home, Jean, to the farm; raise hay, potatoes, cattle, pigs, chickens--all that. Be an honest cultivator, like your fathers for many generations. It was good enough for them; it will be good enough for you. You will wish to make some improvements, no doubt--a new barn, a stable, a house, possibly. Good! I might be able to lend you a small sum, a thousand dollars, perhaps, or even two thousand, if necessary. The rate of interest? What is that between friends? We will arrange all that.
"Now, Jean," and here the old man assumed a confidential air, "to be a good habitant one must have a good wife. Do not blush, my lad, it is only a matter of business. Without that no habitant can succeed. One's marriage should help one along, should it not? Assuredly. That goes without saying. Well, there is my daughter Blanchette, for example. I do not say that she is very young, nor more beautiful than others, but how capable, how accomplished! And she will have a dowry, of course, something generous, you may be sure. All the other children are well provided for, and I am not yet a pauper, no indeed. There. I have said it. Consider it well, at your leisure. There is no haste to decide. I will see your mother and all can be arranged without embarrassment. Au revoir, Jean. Come to see us when you can."
Jean did not like the advice of Bonhomme Laroche, but part of it, at least, he was obliged to take, for there was no alternative, and at sunrise on the following day he was in the fields with the hired man, dexterously swinging a long scythe and laying low great swathes of timothy and red clover. He was in perfect physical condition, with every nerve and muscle surging with energy, so that the work did not tire him, but only served to release the pent-up emotion of his soul. For the soul of Jean Baptiste was full of wrath, and as he gripped the handles of the scythe and swung the keen blade through the grass with a venomous hiss, he seemed to be cutting down an army of enemies and mercilessly trampling them underfoot.
The neighbours, those ignorant, spiteful people with their vicious gossip--how he despised them all! They hated to see a person rise above them in the slightest degree, and were always reaching out envious hands to pull him down. They wanted to make a habitant of him? Well, a habitant he would be, and beat them at their own game. Of what good was all his education if he could not use it in the growing of potatoes and the raising of pigs? Yes, pigs. The neighbours were well satisfied with a yearling hog that weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, when it might as well be two hundred pounds or three hundred even. It was a question of breed and care, as it was with cattle, horses, sheep, fowl, and every other animal on the farm. As to chickens, for example, they laid eggs in plenty all summer, at fifteen cents a dozen, but laid none at all in winter when the price rose to sixty cents and more. Why such stupidity? A question of management, merely, of knowledge and attention to business. In fact, the more Jean thought of habitant life the greater seemed the possibilities of improvement in every direction. Besides, it was a life not to be despised, that of a successful cultivator, the happiest, most independent man on earth.
Certainly the advice of Bonhomme Laroche was not to be despised. But borrow money from the old miser he would not, nor marry his daughter Blanchette if she were as beautiful as an angel from Heaven. The dowry? Did the old miser think that he could buy the hearts, the souls of men? Who would barter love for gold? Who would give that which was beyond all price for all the land, the barns, the cattle of the parish--of the world? Yet there were those who would gladly make such an exchange, the poor, deluded fools.
As to Gabrielle, that was different. There was a girl of a beauty most rare, with her tall, lithe figure, her springing step, her dainty little head with its wealth of golden hair, those laughing eyes like the depths of the sky, that tantalizing, alluring smile. It was as though an angel had descended to earth to show to mortal man the perfection of beauty of the heavenly world. But what pride, what scorn, what contempt! And how unfair, how cruel! Not a thought of justice, not a word of excuse, no chance to explain. Mademoiselle Taché was too far above Jean Baptiste Giroux. In what way? In intellect? By no means. In education? Not at all. In manners? Far from it. In wealth? Ah, that was it, the pride of purse, the base contempt for all merit that had not the stamp of gold. "Good-for-nothing! Sacrée petite vierge!"
But wait--a year, two years, three at most--and he would show the little vixen whom it was that she had attacked with an insult so contemptible, so injurious. Then, when she would be only too glad to receive the attentions of the chief man in the parish, he would turn away and devote himself to another. But what other? Blanchette Laroche? Not for a thousand dowries. Who then? Well, there would be time enough to arrange that little detail. There were still good fish in the sea, though scarce and very wary. But in any case it would be necessary to humble the pride of that scornful beauty. "Good-for-nothing! Sacrés milles tonnerres!"