André's aggressiveness did not lessen, indeed his irritation seemed to increase as the day fixed for the sale approached. The poor lad needed to anger himself against something or somebody to gain courage. February 20th was the date on which he had secretly planned to leave La Fromentière, four days before the departure of an emigrant ship that he was to join at Antwerp. His anger was inspired not by temper, but by the ever-increasing grief within him. He forced himself to speak ill of La Fromentière because he still loved it, and was about to desert it.
Thus Sunday, the 20th of February, arrived. On that day the silence that had reigned over La Fromentière vanished, but to give place to what noises—what clatter! Visitors were again seen within its walls, but what visitors! People had come from afar, curiosity dealers from Nantes, from La Rochelle, even from Paris. Before eight in the morning they had gathered in groups beside the two flights of steps leading to the portico. Men, short, stout, red-faced; some with auburn beards, others with bird-like noses, talking together in subdued voices, sitting on chairs—to be sold—that had been ranged in rows on the broad carriage drive, laid with the red gravel that used to crunch so pleasantly beneath the roll of carriage wheels. On the topmost of the entrance steps, now converted into an auctioneer's rostrum, were the notary, Maître Oulry, his eyes displaying discreet satisfaction behind his spectacles, the public crier, indifferent as any stone-breaker to the relics of which he was about to announce the dispersion, and the furniture removers standing in their shirt-sleeves despite the intense cold. The two flights of stone steps, stained with mud even to half way up the balustrades, testified to the crowds admitted on the previous two days to see the interior of the Château. Some had gone from curiosity, taking advantage of their first opportunity to go over a seigniorial dwelling; but all within was in disorder, faded, covered with dust. The battens, which for years had secured the windows of the rooms on the ground-floor, had been unnailed on one side, and hung down beside the open persiennes. In the dining-hall, and the two drawing-rooms en suite, had been piled the greater part of the bedroom furniture, cooking utensils, and crockery. Pictures, turned with their faces to the wall, formed a dado in front of couches and easy-chairs; there were four clocks on one mantel-piece, candelabras standing in fireplaces, fire-dogs on occasional tables, book shelves on the billiard table, baskets of choice wine standing in the boudoir of the dowager Marquise, hung with its dainty cherry-coloured satin; silk draperies trailing on a kitchen table. Broken bell-ropes and strips of torn paper hung from the walls. Everywhere was disorder and desolation as complete as is produced by Death in the human frame.
Pushing their way through the narrow passages left by all these piles of costly objects were to be seen coarse men accustomed to the handling of rags and rubbish, discharged servants, dealers in old clothes, coffee-house keepers covetously fingering carved oak chests, scratching the gold off picture frames to see how deep it was laid; opening cupboards and drawers, and bursting into rude loud laughter if, perchance, they lighted upon some private token, such as photographs, letters, missals, rosaries, relics of departed souls thus exposed to, and profaned by vulgar eyes.
On the upper floors boys in their sabots had perched themselves on the window-sills with legs hanging out, or were trying the mattresses still left on their wooden bedsteads. Gradually as the late February day dispersed the fog, and it was drifted by the wind in heavy masses over the woods, vehicles of all descriptions—cabriolets, victorias, tilburys, closed carriages formerly graced with armorial bearings, now let out on hire, mixed with some few well-appointed turn-outs—drove into the park. These were unharnessed, the carriages standing upon the lawns, some of the horses tied to the trees with nosebags of hay; while others, their feet clogged, were left to graze where they would. A row of carts stood on the border of a neighbouring copse, their shafts raised diagonally.
All round the Château was like a fair; the stables and coach-houses had been appropriated; plough horses were to be seen in the loose boxes; coachmen and stable-boys from inns, in their straw hats, gazed admiringly at the vast proportions of the stables and dependencies, or stood hypnotized before the copper appointments of the stalls, the nickel locks, the iron bars separating one from the other.
"It was a fine place after all," they said to themselves.
The sight of all the careful appointments seemed to give them a vague insight into the ancient splendours of the domain, while at the same time it came across them with stupefying force: how could a man have lost such a fortune? how could there be ruin, with a rental of hundreds of thousands of pounds? And, as a natural consequence, they gave the family credit for vices which had but a very small share in the disaster, for, spitting on the cemented floors, they exclaimed: "A pleasure-loving set!"
In front of the entrance the crowd increased rapidly, some impelled by the desire to buy, others by curiosity. Three hundred people, seated on chairs and benches, formed a compact, immovable, semicircular mass; outside them was perpetual movement of coming and going. Dealers in antiquities, sellers of old clothes, occupied the first row; after them came a number of shopkeepers, former purveyors to the Marquis, householders of Chalons with their wives, country dames dressed up as if for Easter Day, with bright eyes and loud voices, wearing little bunches of spring flowers in their bodices which they themselves had cut from the hot-houses of La Fromentière, given up this day to pillage. They commented derisively to each other on the ill-kept state of the apartments in the Château, the dirty windows, the grass-grown avenues, the bogs in the cross roads of the park. "We keep things very differently," said they. "Thank goodness, we know better what is fitting than your ruined Marquises do!" And with an air of "knowing all about it," they called up memories of bygone fêtes. Behind them, again, were to be seen peasants of Saint Gervais, of Soullans, of Saint Urbian, but men only. Very few had come from the parish itself. The auction was not for them; what should take them there? To many who had known the family, it had seemed as if it would have been an insult to assist at the humiliating spectacle. At the most some ten of the old inhabitants of Sallertaine were there, and they not the most important, keeping well at the back, not daring to sit down. Shamefaced, as though the lord of the Château were there before them and sorrowful, they had followed the crowd, having nothing else to do in their Sunday leisure, and now exchanged recollections of kind words spoken by "Monsieur Henri," of greetings and girlish smiles given by Mademoiselle Ambroisine. Alas! after all the money so lavishly spent, so many a kindly action, so much cordiality and urbanity shown for centuries past by successive Marquises of La Fromentière—after eight years there only remained that slight expression of regret to be seen in the sad faces of a handful of farmers.
Still fewer in number were the neighbouring gentry. Hidden among the throng was the Baron de la Houvelle, whose mania for collecting led him to forget what was due to his rank; the Comte de Bouart, coarse and red-faced, attracted by the wine cellar, and young d'Escaron, whose object was to secure a breeding mare.
But the notary had many commissions to buy; for earlier in the week, before the day on which the Château had been on view to the invasion of plebeians, châtelaines, young and old, friends of the family, had driven over and, shown round by the game-keeper, might have been seen in private apartments and reception rooms, examining old tapestries and household linen with many an exclamation and regret.