CHAPTER L
CHAPTER I
On the first Sunday in the month of August, 1815, at ten o’clock precisely—as on every Sunday morning—the sacristan of the parish church at Sairmeuse sounded the three strokes of the bell which warn the faithful that the priest is ascending the steps of the altar to celebrate high mass.
The church was already more than half full, and from every side little groups of peasants were hurrying into the church-yard. The women were all in their bravest attire, with cunning little fichus crossed upon their breasts, broad-striped, brightly colored skirts, and large white coifs.
Being as economical as they were coquettish, they came barefooted, bringing their shoes in their hands, but put them on reverentially before entering the house of God.
But few of the men entered the church. They remained outside to talk, seating themselves in the porch, or standing about the yard, in the shade of the century-old elms.
For such was the custom in the hamlet of Sairmeuse.
The two hours which the women consecrated to prayer the men employed in discussing the news, the success or the failure of the crops; and, before the service ended, they could generally be found, glass in hand, in the bar-room of the village inn.
For the farmers for a league around, the Sunday mass was only an excuse for a reunion, a sort of weekly bourse.
All the cures who had been successively stationed at Sairmeuse had endeavored to put an end to this scandalous habit, as they termed it; but all their efforts had made no impression upon country obstinacy.
They had succeeded in gaining only one concession. At the moment of the elevation of the Host, voices were hushed, heads uncovered, and a few even bowed the knee and made the sign of the cross.
But this was the affair of an instant only, and conversation was immediately resumed with increased vivacity.
But to-day the usual animation was wanting.
No sounds came from the little knots of men gathered here and there, not an oath, not a laugh. Between buyers and sellers, one did not overhear a single one of those interminable discussions, punctuated with the popular oaths, such as: “By my faith in God!” or “May the devil burn me!”
They were not talking, they were whispering together. A gloomy sadness was visible upon each face; lips were placed cautiously at the listener’s ear; anxiety could be read in every eye.
One scented misfortune in the very air. Only a month had elapsed since Louis XVIII. had been, for the second time, installed in the Tuileries by a triumphant coalition.
The earth had not yet had time to swallow the sea of blood that flowed at Waterloo; twelve hundred thousand foreign soldiers desecrated the soil of France; the Prussian General Muffling was Governor of Paris.
And the peasantry of Sairmeuse trembled with indignation and fear.
This king, brought back by the allies, was no less to be dreaded than the allies themselves.
To them this great name of Bourbon signified only a terrible burden of taxation and oppression.
Above all, it signified ruin—for there was scarcely one among them who had not purchased some morsel of government land; and they were assured now that all estates were to be returned to the former proprietors, who had emigrated after the overthrow of the Bourbons.
Hence, it was with a feverish curiosity that most of them clustered around a young man who, only two days before, had returned from the army.
With tears of rage in his eyes, he was recounting the shame and the misery of the invasion.
He told of the pillage at Versailles, the exactions at Orleans, and the pitiless requisitions that had stripped the people of everything.
“And these accursed foreigners to whom the traitors have delivered us, will not go so long as a shilling or a bottle of wine is left in France!” he exclaimed.
As he said this he shook his clinched fist menacingly at a white flag that floated from the tower.
His generous anger won the close attention of his auditors, and they were still listening to him with undiminished interest, when the sound of a horse’s hoofs resounded upon the stones of the only street in Sairmeuse.
A shudder traversed the crowd. The same fear stopped the beating of every heart.
Who could say that this rider was not some English or Prussian officer? He had come, perhaps, to announce the arrival of his regiment, and imperiously demand money, clothing, and food for his soldiers.
But the suspense was not of long duration.
The rider proved to be a fellow-countryman, clad in a torn and dirty blue linen blouse. He was urging forward, with repeated blows, a little, bony, nervous mare, fevered with foam.
“Ah! it is Father Chupin,” murmured one of the peasants with a sigh of relief.
“The same,” observed another. “He seems to be in a terrible hurry.”
“The old rascal has probably stolen the horse he is riding.”
This last remark disclosed the reputation Father Chupin enjoyed among his neighbors.
He was, indeed, one of those thieves who are the scourge and the terror of the rural districts. He pretended to be a day-laborer, but the truth was, that he held work in holy horror, and spent all his time in sleeping and idling about his hovel. Hence, stealing was the only means of support for himself, his wife, two sons—terrible youths, who, somehow, had escaped the conscription.
They consumed nothing that was not stolen. Wheat, wine, fuel, fruits—all were the rightful property of others. Hunting and fishing at all seasons, and with forbidden appliances, furnished them with ready money.
Everyone in the neighborhood knew this; and yet when Father Chupin was pursued and captured, as he was occasionally, no witness could be found to testify against him.
“He
