CHAPTER V.

Matthias André did not join the procession. He had been to mass in the morning, for the Assumption was a day of obligation. And now he sat smoking bad tobacco out of an old brown clay pipe, on the seat before his door, facing due north, towards Bernay; there was a corn-field on his right, cut off from the Isle of Swallows by a rivulet of water--a field he had ploughed whilst his daughter Gabrielle drove the horses, which he had sown with his own hands, and which he had reaped. Gabrielle had bound the sheaves after him, and now the shocks stood in goodly array, waiting to be garnered. They had been waiting thus twelve days. The harvest was late this year, owing to the cold spring. Much corn was down in the country, and the tithe-cart of the monastery had been round to farm after farm, and had come last to his. He did not dare to remove a sheaf till the Abbey had taken its tenth; and after the monks came the revenue officers, taking their twentieth. What the palmer-worm had left, the locust devoured. Now came the feast-day, on which all work ceased, so the good wheat remained a thirteenth day unstacked.

Sullen, with downcast eyes, sat the peasant without his coat, but in his red velvetine waistcoat, drawing long whiffs from his pipe, and blowing them leisurely through his nostrils.

Beside him sat a little wiry brown man, with coarse serge suit of snuff-brown, face and hands, stockings and cap, to match. His eyes were sharp and eager. This was Etienne Percenez, the colporteur.

‘You have not joined the procession, Matthias, my friend,’ said the little man, filling a pipe.

‘For five and forty years I have supplicated God, our Lady, and the Saints, to assist me in my poverty, and the answers to my prayers have been doled out in such scant measure, that I have almost given up prayer,’ answered André.

‘You must work as well as pray,’ quoth the little man, with his pipe in his mouth.

‘Do I not work?’ asked the peasant-farmer, turning almost fiercely on his friend; ‘I work from morning till night, and from the new year to the new year. But what does that avail when the season is bad? A hard winter, a late summer, and then fiery heat from June to August, without a drop of rain. The grass is hardly worth mowing; the clover is short and scanty, and the corn-crops are poor. When we thrash out the wheat, we shall find the greater part of the ear is husk.’

‘Things may mend,’ said the colporteur; ‘they always reach their worst before they right themselves. When we have the States-general, why then we shall see, we shall see!’

Matthias shrugged his shoulders. ‘What did the Notables do for us last year?’

‘The Notables are very different from the States-general. The Notables were all chosen out of the nobility--one hundred and forty oppressors met together, to decide how much greater oppression we could be made to bear. But in the States-general, the oppressed will have a voice, and can cry out.’

‘The Notables are summoned again.’

‘Yes, my friend, they are summoned by Necker, but not to consult on the deficit, but to deliberate on the form of election to the States-general, and on their composition.’

‘How great is the deficit?’

‘At the end of last year the expenditure surpassed the receipt by one hundred and ten millions, and the deficit now amounts to sixteen hundred and thirty millions. The exchequer cannot borrow money, for Necker has discredited loans by publishing the state of the finances. Do you think the Notables, the princes of blood-royal, the chiefs of the nobility, the clergy and the magistracy, will pay the debt out of their own pockets? No, no; they like to spend and not to pay. Now, the king is going to call together the States-general. The Notables pay! they saw only in Calonne’s scheme the spoliation of the nobility and clergy, that is why they drove Calonne away, and brought in Loménie de Brienne, the bishop, in his stead; they brought a churchman into the ministry to bury the public credit, dead long ago. De Brienne finds that there is no other resource but to take possession of Calonne’s plans, and ask the Parliament of Paris to consent to a vast loan. But the Parliament is made up of judges, men grave and economical, and they are indignant at an impost on their lands. Why should they be made to pay for Monsieur the Count d’Artois’ fêtes, and the queen’s follies? Why consent to a debt ever accumulating, and acquiesce in the ruin of France? Tell me that, my friend Matthias. When the walls crack, we do not paste paper over the rents to hide them--we dig down to the foundations, and we relay them. Perhaps the Parliament of Paris thought this, my André, so they appealed to the States-general. The States-general we shall have; and then, Matthias, we, the oppressed, the tax-payers, the hungry--we shall have a voice, and shall speak out; and, Matthias! we shall make ourselves heard.’

‘Go on,’ said the farmer; ‘tell me the rest.’

‘The king declares that he will convoke the States-general.’

‘We shall speak out?’ asked André, hesitatingly.

‘Our own fault, if we do not.’

‘But they will punish us if we do.’

‘What, Matthias, punish all France! Remember, all France will speak.’

‘And we can tell the good king that the tax-gatherers, and the excise, and the nobles, and the abbés, are crushing us? that they are strangling us, that we are dying?’

‘Surely.’

‘And the tax-gatherers, and the excise, and the nobles, and the abbés, cannot revenge themselves on us for saying that?’ André leaned back and laughed. He had not laughed for many years, and his laugh now was not that of gaiety.

‘A storm is rising,’ said Percenez, pointing over the hill.

‘Will the king listen to us?’

‘Yes, he will listen.’

‘But will he redress our wrong?’

‘We shall make him. He has put the means into our hands.’

The first roll of thunder was heard.

‘We shall be relieved of the taxes, the _gabelle_, the _corvée_?’

‘I do not say that; but the taxes will be levied on all alike.’

‘What! will the abbé and the noble pay six sous a livre for salt, and pay the taille?’

‘Certainly, we shall make them pay. We pay, so must they.’

Again André leaned back and exploded into laughter, whilst from over the hill the forked lightnings darted, and the thunder boomed.

The two men watched the approach of the tempest. The mutter of the thunder was now unceasing, and the vault was illumined with continuous flashes.

‘I must hasten home,’ said Etienne Percenez, ‘or my old dame will die of fright at being alone in the storm.’

‘And I will go in,’ said André. But he did not go in at once; he stood in his door. As Percenez crossed the foot-bridge, he heard his friend bellow. Thinking he was calling, the little brown man turned his head; he saw that André was laughing.

‘I cannot help it,’ roared the peasant; ‘to think of the nobles, the intendants, and the abbés, paying taxes!’ and he roared again. Then he signed to Percenez.

‘The storm is coming on.’

‘Very, very fast,’ cried the other, beginning to run.

Matthias went inside the house, and seated himself before the fireless hearth, and listened to the wind growling round the eaves. The rain splashed against the little window, glazed with round panes. There was a leak in the roof, and through it the water dribbled upon the floor of the bedroom overhead. It became so dark in the chamber, that Matthias would have lit a candle, had not candles cost money. The water swept down the window in waves; the house trembled at each explosion of the thunder. Going to the door, the peasant saw by the lightning no part of the landscape, for the rain falling in sheets obscured everything. He shut the door; the flashes dazzled him. Then he threw himself down on a bench, and put his hands to his ears, to shut out the detonations of the thunder, and began to think about Necker and the States-general, and the probability of the nobles and clergy paying taxes, and this idea still presented itself to him in such a novel and ludicrous light, that again he laughed aloud. All at once an idea of another kind struck him, as his hand touched the floor and encountered water. He leaped with a cry to his feet and splashed over the floor. He rushed to the door. The darkness was clearing, and by the returning light, as the rain began to cease, and the surrounding hills to become visible, he observed every lane converted into a torrent of brown fluid; the roads had become watercourses, and were pouring turbid streams through the gates into the fields and meadows. The Charentonne had risen, and was rising every moment. The water was level with the bridge which conducted into his corn-field, and that was above the surface of the ground, for it rested on a small circumvallation raised to protect the field from an overflow. For a moment he gazed at his wheat; then he burst away through the sallows and willow-herbs which grew densely together behind his cottage, drenching himself to the skin, and for ever marring the crimson velvet waistcoat; and struggled through the rising overflow and dripping bushes to the south point of his isle, where usually extended a gravelly spit. That was now submerged; he plunged forward, parting the boughs, and reached a break in the coppice, whence he could look up the valley. At that moment the sun shot from the watery rack overhead, and the bottom of the vale answered with a glare. Its green meadows and yellow corn-fields were covered with a sheet of glistening water, its surface streaked with ripples, pouring relentlessly onwards, and lifting the water-line higher as each broke. Clinging to a poplar, from which the drops shivered about him, up to his middle in water, stood Matthias André, stupefied with despair. Then slowly he turned, and worked his way back.

The few minutes of his absence had wrought a change. His garden was covered, and the flood had dissolved or overleaped the dyke of the corn-field, and was flowing around his shocks of wheat.

Nothing could possibly be done for the preservation of his harvest. He stationed himself on the bench at his door, and watched the water rise, and upset his sheaves, and float them off. Some went down the river, some congregated in an eddy, and spun about; others accumulating behind them, wedged them together, and formed a raft of straw.

‘Go!’ shouted he to his corn-sheaves; ‘sodden and spoiled, I care not if ye remain. Go! now I must starve outright, and Gabrielle--she must starve too.’

Gabrielle!

Instantly it occurred to him that she was at the church, and would need protection and assistance in returning.

He went inside and put on his coat, took a strong pole in his hand, and bent his steps towards the foot-bridge. It was not washed away, but it was under water. He felt for it with the pole, found it, and crossed cautiously. Then he took the road to La Couture. Many people met him. Recovered from their alarm, their tongues were loosened, and they were detailing their impressions of the storm to one another. André accosted a neighbour, and asked him if he had seen Gabrielle. He had not; but supposed she was behind;--many, he said, were still in the churchyard, waiting for the flood to subside.

Some old women, who lived in a cottage only a hundred paces beyond the stile across which André strode into the road from his islet, now came towards him.

‘Neighbour Elizabeth, have you seen my child?’

‘No, Gaffer André.’

A little farther on he met a girl-friend of Gabrielle’s, in white, with her wreath somewhat faded, and her candle extinguished.

‘Josephine! where is my little one?’

‘I do not know, father André; I have been looking for her amongst the girls of our society, but I could not find her.’

‘Do you think she is still in the church?’

‘That may be, but I do not think it is likely; you know that the lightning struck the spire.’

‘Was any one killed?’

‘No; but we were all dreadfully frightened.’

Matthias pushed on. He questioned all who passed, but could gain no tidings of Gabrielle. Several, it is true, had seen her in the procession; some had noticed her in the church; but none remembered to have observed her after the fall of the lightning.

André was not, however, alarmed. He thought that possibly his daughter was still in church, praying; probably she was with some friend in a cottage at La Couture. Gabrielle had many acquaintances in that little village, and nothing was more probable than that one of them should have invited the girl home to rest, and take some refreshment, till it was ascertained that the water had sufficiently subsided to permit of her return to the Isle of Swallows.

When he reached La Couture, he went direct to the church. He was shocked to see the havoc created there by the bursting of the storm; workmen were already engaged in filling the graves that had been ploughed up by the currents, and covering the coffins which had been exposed; head-crosses lay prostrate and strewn about, and the sites of some graves had completely disappeared. A knot of people stood at the west end of the church, gazing at the ruin effected by the lightning; the summit of the spire was cloven, a portion leaned outward, the lead was curled up like a ram’s horn, and a strip of the metal dissolved by the electric fluid exposed the wooden rafters and framework of the spire. The stroke had then glanced to the apex of the nave gable, thrown down the iron cross surmounting it, had split the wall, shattered the glass, and then had fallen upon and perforated the threshold.

Matthias André entered the church, and sought through its chapels for his daughter. She was not there. No one was in the sacred building.

Then he entered the village, and visited one house after another. No one had tidings to tell of Gabrielle. The father became anxious. He enquired for the girl who had borne the banner of the Blessed Virgin. He asked her about his daughter, who had stood near her, holding the leading ribbon.

She had seen Gabrielle, of course she had, when they entered the church; she sat near her in the aisle during vespers. When the storm came on, Gabrielle seemed to be greatly alarmed; she must have fainted when the lightning fell, because two gentlemen had carried her out of church.

Whilst the girl spoke, she stood in the doorway of her cottage, holding the trunk of a vine which was trellised over the front of the house and a small open balcony, to which a flight of stairs outside the dwelling gave access.

The girl was the sister of Jean Lebertre, curé of the church, and she kept house for her brother. During the conversation, a priest stepped out of the upper room that opened on to the balcony, and leaning his elbows on the wooden rail, looked down on André.

‘What is the matter?’ he asked.

Matthias turned his face to the questioner. It was Lindet.

‘I cannot discover what has become of my daughter, Monsieur le Curé. Pauline, here, asserts that she fainted in church at the great thunder-clap, and that she was carried out by two gentlemen.’

In a moment, Lindet strode down the stairs, and said, looking fixedly with his bright eyes on the girl:

‘Answer me, Pauline, who were those gentlemen?’

‘I do not know, monsieur.’

‘What were they like?’

‘Ma foi! I was so dazzled that I hardly know.’

‘Are you sure they were gentlemen?’

‘Oh, monsieur! of course they were. One had on a velvet coat.’

‘Of what colour?’

‘Reddish-brown, I think.’

‘And is that all you observed of him?’

‘He wore a sword.’

‘And the other?’

‘The other gentleman was quite old.’

‘Did you see the face of the first?’

‘I think so.’

‘And did you notice any peculiarity? Consider, Pauline.’

‘His eyes were strange. The sockets seemed inflamed.’

Lindet beat his hands together; André folded his arms doggedly, and his chin sank on his breast, whilst a cloud settled on his brow.

‘That is enough,’ he said, in sullen tones; ‘I am going home.’

Lindet caught his arm.

‘Are you going home, man?’

‘Yes, I am tired. I have lost my crops, I have lost my daughter, and, what is worst, I have spoilt my best waistcoat.’

‘What! will you not make further enquiries? Your daughter will be ruined,’ said Lindet, vehemently.

‘Why make further enquiries? I know now where she is.’

‘And will you make no effort to recover her?’

‘Why should I? I can do nothing. The poor cannot resist the great. The storm came on just now, and the lightning smote yon spire. Why did you not make an effort to protect the spire? Because you were powerless against the bolt of heaven. Well! that is why I make no attempt to protect my child; what could I do to oppose the will of an Intendant, a great man at Court, and very rich?’

‘The child will be ruined. Make an attempt to save her.’

André shook his head.

‘No attempt I could make would save her; no attempt I could make would save my corn either. I shall go home and wipe my waistcoat; perhaps I may save _that_ from utter ruin.’