During Madame's lifetime dinner was served to her and to her company by themselves.Neither Cochet nor Gaubertin, in spite of their great familiarity with the mistress, was ever admitted to her table; the leading lady of the Academie Royale retained, to her last hour, her sense of etiquette, her style of dress, her rouge and her heeled slippers, her carriage, her servants, and the majesty of her deportment.A divinity at the Opera, a divinity within her range of Parisian social life, she continued a divinity in the country solitudes, where her memory is still worshipped, and still holds its own against that of the old monarchy in the minds of the "best society" of Soulanges.
Soudry, who had paid his addresses to Mademoiselle Cochet from the time he first came into the neighborhood, owned the finest house in Soulanges, an income of six thousand francs, and the prospect of a retiring pension whenever he should quit the service.As soon as Cochet became Madame Soudry she was treated with great consideration in the town.Though she kept the strictest secrecy as to the amount of her savings,--which were intrusted, like those of Gaubertin, to the commissary of wine-merchants of the department in Paris, a certain Leclercq, a native of Soulanges, to whom Gaubertin supplied funds as sleeping partner in his business,--public opinion credited the former waiting-maid with one of the largest fortunes in the little town of twelve hundred inhabitants.
To the great astonishment of every one, Monsieur and Madame Soudry acknowledged as legitimate, in their marriage contract, a natural son of the gendarme, to whom, in future, Madame Soudry's fortune was to descend.At the time when this son was legally supplied with a mother, he had just ended his law studies in Paris and was about to enter into practice, with the intention of fitting himself for the magistracy.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that a mutual understanding of twenty years had produced the closest intimacy between the families of Gaubertin and Soudry.Both reciprocally declared themselves, to the end of their days, "urbi et orbi," to be the most upright and honorable persons in all France.Such community of interests, based on the mutual knowledge of the secret spots on the white garment of conscience, is one of the ties least recognized and hardest to untie in this low world.You who read this social drama, have you never felt a conviction as to two persons which has led you to say to yourself, in order to explain the continuance of a faithful devotion which made your own egotism blush, "They must surely have committed some crime together"?
After an administration of twenty-five years, Gaubertin, the land-
steward, found himself in possession of six hundred thousand francs in money, and Cochet had accumulated nearly two hundred and fifty thousand.The rapid and constant turning over and over of their funds in the hands of Leclercq and Company (on the quai Bethume, Ile Saint Louis, rivals of the famous house of Grandet) was a great assistance to the fortunes of all parties.On the death of Mademoiselle Laguerre, Jenny, the steward's eldest daughter was asked in marriage by Leclercq.Gaubertin expected at that time to become owner of Les Aigues by means of a plot laid in the private office of Lupin, the notary, whom the steward had set up and maintained in business within the last twelve years.
Lupin, a son of the former steward of the estate of Soulanges, had lent himself to various slight peculations,--investments at fifty per cent below par, notices published surreptitiously, and all the other manoeuvres, unhappily common in the provinces, to wrap a mantle, as the saying is, over the clandestine manipulations of property.Lately a company has been formed in Paris, so they say, to levy contributions upon such plotters under a threat of outbidding them.But in 1816
France was not, as it is now, lighted by a flaming publicity; the accomplices might safely count on dividing Les Aigues among them, that is, between Cochet, the notary, and Gaubertin, the latter of whom reserved to himself, "in petto," the intention of buying the others out for a sum down, as soon as the property fairly stood in his own name.The lawyer employed by the notary to manage the sale of the estate was under personal obligations to Gaubertin, so that he favored the spoliation of the heirs, unless any of the eleven farmers of Picardy should take it into their heads to think they were cheated, and inquire into the real value of the property.
Just as those interested expected to find their fortunes made, a lawyer came from Paris on the evening before the final settlement, and employed a notary at Ville-aux-Fayes, who happened to be one of his former clerks, to buy the estate of Les Aigues, which he did for eleven hundred thousand francs.None of the conspirators dared outbid an offer of eleven hundred thousand francs.Gaubertin suspected some treachery on Soudry's part, and Soudry and Lupin thought they were tricked by Gaubertin.But a statement on the part of the purchasing agent, the notary of Ville-aux-Fayes, disabused them of these suspicions.The latter, though suspecting the plan formed by Gaubertin, Lupin, and Soudry, refrained from informing the lawyer in Paris, for the reason that if the new owners indiscreetly repeated his words, he would have too many enemies at his heels to be able to stay where he was.This reticence, peculiar to provincials, was in this particular case amply justified by succeeding events.If the dwellers in the provinces are dissemblers, they are forced to be so; their excuse lies in the danger expressed in the old proverb, "We must howl with the wolves," a meaning which underlies the character of Phillinte.
