Complete Works of Emile Zola (969 page)

And caught he did get, as was only natural. Farmer Hourdequin, exasperated by the destruction of his game, had given the most stringent orders to Bécu, and the latter annoyed at never being able to catch any one, had determined to pass his nights on a stack and keep watch. One morning, just at daybreak, the report of a gun, the flame of which flashed in front of his face, awoke him with a start. It was Hyacinthe, on the look-out behind the stack, who had just killed a hare at short range.

“Ah, God Almighty! it’s you, is it?” cried the rural con­stable, seizing hold of the gun which the other had laid down so as to pick up the hare. “Ah! you scamp, I ought to have guessed it was you!”

They were boon companions at the taverns, but in the fields they could not meet without danger; the one being constantly on the point of arresting the other, and the latter being deter­mined to wring his neck.

“Well, yes, it’s I!” replied Hyacinthe; “and I don’t care a fig for you. Come, give me my gun back!”

Bécu was already regretting his capture. He generally turned to the right whenever he saw Hyacinthe on his left. What was the good of having a bother with a friend? he used to say. But this time his duty was evident, and it was impossible for him to close his eyes. And, besides, when a man is taken red-handed, the least that can be expected of him is to be civil!

“Your gun, you scamp! No, I’m going to keep that and take it to the mayor. Now, you be quiet, and don’t try to play any of your tricks, or I’ll let you have the other barrel in your guts!”

Hyacinthe, deprived of his gun and in a great rage, thought for a moment of making a spring at the other’s throat. How­ever, when he saw him directing his steps towards the village, he followed him quietly, still holding the hare dangling from his hand. The two men walked on for nearly a mile without speaking, but casting fierce furtive glances at each other. A violent scene seemed inevitable every moment, though both of them were regretting what had happened more and more acutely every minute. How unfortunate it was that they had come across each other in that way!

As they passed behind the church, at a couple of steps from the Château, the poacher made a last effort.

“I say, old fellow, don’t be stupid; come inside, and have a glass.”

“No, I must go and lay an information,” replied the rural constable stiffly.

He was obstinate, like an old soldier whose orders are his only law. However, he stopped, and, as his companion took hold of his arm and tried to induce him to come with him, he ended by saying:

“Well, if you’ve got pen and ink, it will make no difference, I don’t care where the statement is drawn up, whether in your house or elsewhere, so long as it is drawn up somewhere.”

When Bécu arrived at Hyacinthe’s abode, the sun was just rising. Old Fouan, who was already smoking his pipe at the door, guessed what had happened, and began to feel very un­comfortable, the more so, as matters assumed a serious aspect. Some ink and a rusty old pen were hunted up, and the constable, spreading out his elbows, and assuming an air of deep thought, began to rack his brains for suitable phrases. In the meantime, La Trouille, at a word from her father, brought a quart of wine and three glasses; and by the time Bécu had got to his fifth line, he accepted a bumper feeling exhausted by his struggle with the complicated statement of facts. Then the situation gradually became less strained. A second quart of wine was produced, and then a third. Two hours later, the three men were talking together in loud and friendly voices. They were all very drunk, and they had quite forgotten the incident of the morning.

“You blessed cuckold!” suddenly cried Hyacinthe to Bécu, “you know that I do as I like with your wife.”

This was quite true. Since the day of the local fête he had tumbled Bécu’s wife in quiet corners, looking upon her as an elderly person with whom no particular show of delicacy was necessary. Bécu, however, whose wine had made him irritable, now lost his temper. Although he was able to tolerate the poacher’s relations with his wife when he was sober, the mention of them wounded his feelings when he was drunk.

“You filthy swine!” he bellowed out, brandishing an empty bottle.

Then he hurled the bottle, which broke against the wall, just missing Hyacinthe, who went on with his maudlin chatter, smiling a weak, tipsy smile. To appease the cuckold, they settled to remain there together, and eat the hare at once. Whenever La Trouille cooked a “civet,” a pleasant odour spread from one end of Rognes to the other. It was a rough sort of feast, which lasted all day. They were still at table, sucking the bones, when darkness closed in. Then they lighted a couple of candles, and still sat on. Fouan found a couple of two-franc pieces, and sent the girl off to buy a quart of brandy. The men were still sipping their liquor after the whole village had fallen asleep. As Hyacinthe’s fumbling fingers were groping about for something with which he could light his pipe, they came across the unfinished report, which was lying on the corner of the table, stained with wine and gravy.

“Ah, it’s true, we ought to get this finished!” he stammered out, his belly shaking with tipsy laughter.

As he looked at the paper he tried to think of some facetious trick by which he might show his deep contempt both for the report and the law. Then he suddenly raised his leg, and, slipping the paper underneath him, he let off on the face of it a heavy, sonorous discharge, one of those explosions which, he used to say, came from a tightly-loaded mortar.

“There, it’s signed for you now!”

They all began to laugh merrily, even Bécu himself. There was no dulness that night at the Château!

It was about this time that Hyacinthe made a friend. As he went to hide one evening in a ditch till the gendarmes he had espied passed by, he found it already occupied by another man, who, like himself, was desirous of escaping observation. They began to talk. The stranger seemed a pleasant fellow. His name, he said, was Leroi, but he was generally known as Canon. He was a journeyman carpenter, and had left Paris some two years before on account of certain little incidents in his career which had had troublesome consequences, preferring to live in the country, and to wander from village to village, staying a week here and a week there, and going about to the different farms to offer his services whenever patrons were scarce. Trade, he said, was shocking bad just now, and he had taken to begging on the high roads as he tramped along. He had been living on stolen vegetables and fruit, hustled about from pillar to post, and was only too happy whenever he was able to get a night’s lodging behind a hay-rick.

It must be said, however, that his appearance was not cal­culated to inspire any confidence. His clothes were all in rags, and he was very dirty and very ugly, bearing evident marks of a life of wretchedness and vice. His face, fringed with a scanty growth of hair, was so fleshless and pallid that the women shut their doors and windows at the mere sight of him.

What was worse, however, than his appearance was his con­versation. He talked about cutting the throats of all the rich folks, and of having, some fine day, a glut of licentious pleasure with the wives and wine of other people. He let fall all kinds of threats in a tragic voice, clenching his fist, and launching out into wild revolutionary theories which he had picked up in the slums of Paris. He ranted, for instance, in the most virulent language about the rights of the people, and their coming en­forcement, his flood of words quite frightening and dazing the peasants who heard him. During the last two years the inhabitants of the farms had been accustomed to see him make his appearance at night-fall asking for a corner and a bundle of straw for a bed. When he sat down by the fire he quite froze every one’s blood by his terrible words. Then the next morning he went off, to reappear again a week later on, at the same gloomy twilight hour, and with the same prophecies of approaching ruin and death. And it was because his gloomy and uncanny appearance about the neighbourhood caused so much fear, and excited so much angry indignation, that he was now always sent about his business as soon as possible.

He and Hyacinthe, however, took to each other at once. “Ah,” cried the latter, “what a mistake I made in not cutting every throat in Cloyes in ‘48! Come along, old fellow, and let’s have a glass together!”

He then took Canon off to the Château, where he made him sleep that night, inspired with more and more respectful admiration for the tramp the longer he listened to him. He considered him to be a man of superior mind, one who knew what he was talking about, with his plans for reorganising society at a single swoop. Two days afterwards, Canon went away. A fortnight later, however, he appeared again in the twilight, and after that he constantly dropped in at the Château — eating and sleeping there as though he were at home, and swearing each time he came that the well-to-do classes would be swept clean out of existence before another six weeks had gone by. One night when the father was out poaching, Canon made an attempt to ravish the daughter; but La Trouille, scarlet with shame and boiling over with indignation, scratched him and bit him so severely that he was obliged to let her go. Fouan was no fonder of Canon than La Trouille was. He accused him of being an idle good-for-nothing, and of trying to bring about a state of general rapine and bloodshed; and, whenever the vagrant was in the house, the old man grew quite gloomy and silent, and went out of doors to smoke his pipe. There was another matter, too, which was disturbing his life again, and causing an increased disagreement between himself and his son, indisposing him for all his former hilarious merriment. Hitherto Hyacinthe, in parting with his share of the land, had never disposed of it to any one save his brother Buteau or his brother-in-law Delhomme, to whom indeed he had sold the greater portion, a little bit at a time. Fouan had always given his signature, as was necessary, without saying a word in opposition. So long as the land remained in the family, he had no objection to its being sold. But now a troublesome question arose about the last field, upon which the poacher had borrowed money. The mortgagee was threatening to put it up to auction, as he had not received a copper of the interest that had been agreed upon. Monsieur Baillehache had been consulted, and had declared that the field would have to be sold, and sold at once, if they did not wish to be ruined by law costs. Buteau and Delhomme, unfortunately, refused to buy it, being angrily indignant with the old man for allowing him­self to be preyed upon by that rascal his elder son; indeed they had sternly resolved to do nothing for him as long as he re­mained where he was. The consequence was that the field was now to be sold by order of the authorities; writs and stamped paper were already flying about. It would be the first piece of land that had gone out of the family. The old man could get no sleep at nights for thinking of it. This land which his father and grandfather had looked at with such longing eyes, and had worked so hard to obtain; this land which, when acquired, had been guarded as jealously as a wife, was now being frittered away in law-costs, passing into the possession of another, some neighbour, for half its value! The old man groaned with rage, and he was so heart-broken that he sobbed like a child. Oh, that scamp of a poacher!

There were now several terrible scenes between the father and son. The latter, however, never replied, but allowed his father to exhaust himself in reproaches and lamentations. The old man would stand there vociferating and unburdening him­self of his wrathful indignation in the most tragic fashion.

“Yes, you are a murderer! It is just as though you had taken up a knife and sliced off a bit of my flesh! Such a splendid field as it is! There isn’t a finer anywhere! A field where anything will grow by just being planted! What a poor miserable creature you must be to allow it to go to another! Ah, good heavens, to another! The very thought of it going to an outsider makes my blood turn! And it’s all caused by your cursed drunkenness! You have drunk the laud away, you filthy, swilling swine!”

Then, as the old man almost choked with anger, and nearly sank down from sheer exhaustion, his son quickly answered:

“It’s really very foolish of you, dad, to worry yourself in this way. Fly at me as much as you like, if it relieves you in any way at all; but you really ought to take things more philosophically. One can’t eat the land, you know! You’d pull a very wry face if any one served you with a dish of soil, wouldn’t you? I’ve borrowed money on it, because five-franc pieces are the crop it best suits me to raise on it. If there’s a surplus of a few crowns, we’ll drink them! That’s the sensible way to look at things. We shall have more than enough of the soil when we’re dead!”

On one point, however, father and son were perfectly in accord, and that point was their common detestation of Vimeux the bailiff — a shabby little fellow who was entrusted with the discharge of such duties as his colleague of Cloyes refused to undertake, and who had ventured one evening to come and leave a formal notification of judgment at the Château. Vimeux was a very dirty-looking little creature, a bundle of yellow beard and whiskers, from the midst of which there peered forth a red nose and a pair of bleared eyes. He was always dressed in shabby-genteel fashion — a tall hat, black trousers, and a frock-coat, but these garments were most shockingly worn and stained. He was notorious in the neigh­bourhood on account of the terrible thrashings he had received from the peasants every time that he had been compelled to serve them with unpleasant documents in places distant from all help and succour. Stories were told about sticks being broken over his shoulders, of his being ducked in ponds, of his being pursued for a couple of miles and kept running at full speed by the continued application of pitch-forks; and of a certain sound thrashing that had been administered to him by a mother and her daughter, after his trousers had previously been let down.

On the evening when Vimeux paid his visit to the Château. Hyacinthe was just entering the house with his gun. Old Fouan was sitting on the trunk of a tree smoking his pipe and watching the bailiff’s approach.