From the Memoirs of a Minister of France
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Stanley Weyman >> From the Memoirs of a Minister of France
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She was sobbing, and a little blood was flowing from a cut in her
lip; and she trembled all over. At sight of the blood and her
tears the woman seemed to be transported. Snatching up a
saucepan, she sprang towards the ladder with a gesture of rage,
and in a moment would have ascended if her husband had not
followed and dragged her back. The girl also, as soon as she
could speak, added her entreaties to his, while Maignan and La
Trape looked sharply at me, as if they expected a signal.
All this while, the bully above continued his maledictions.
"Send that slut back to me!" he roared. "Do you think that I am
going to be left alone in this hole? Send her back, or--" and he
added half-a-dozen oaths of a kind to make an honest man's blood
boil. In the midst of this, however, and while the woman was
still contending with her husband, he suddenly stopped and
shrieked in anguish, crying out for the salt-bath.
But the woman, whom her husband had only half-pacified, shook her
fist at the ceiling with a laugh of defiance. "Shriek; ay, you
may shriek, you wretch!" she cried. "You must be waited on by
my girl, must you--no older face will do for you--and you beat
her? Your horses must eat corn, must they, while we eat grass?
And we buy salt for you, and wheaten bread for you, and are
beggars for you! For you, you thieving wretch, who tax the poor
and let the rich go free; who--"
"Silence, woman!" her husband cried, cutting her short, with a
pale face. "Hush, hush; he will hear you!"
But the woman was too far gone in rage to obey. "What! and is
it not true?" she answered, her eyes glittering. "Will he not
to-morrow go to Le Mesnil and squeeze the poor? Ay, and will not
Lescauts the corn-dealer, and Philippon the silk-merchant, come
to him with bribes, and go free? And de Fonvelle and de Curtin--
they with a DE, forsooth!--plead their nobility, and grease his
hands, and go free? Ay, and--"
"Silence, woman!" the man said again, looking apprehensively at
me, and from me to my attendants, who were grinning broadly.
"You do not know that this gentleman is not--"
"A tax-gatherer?" I said, smiling. "No. But how long has your
friend upstairs been here?"
"Two days, Monsieur," she answered, wiping the perspiration from
her brow, and speaking more quietly. "He is talking of sending
on a deputy to Le Mesnil; but Heaven send he may recover, and go
from here himself!"
"Well," I answered, "at any rate, we have had enough of this
noise. My servant shall go up and tell him that there is a
gentleman here who cannot put up with a disturbance. Maignan," I
continued, "see the man, and tell him that the inn is not his
private house, and that he must groan more softly; but do not
mention my name. And let him have his brine bath, or there will
be no peace for anyone."
Maignan and La Trape, who knew me, and had counted on a very
different order, stared at me, wondering at my easiness and
complaisance; for there is a species of tyranny, unassociated
with rank, that even the coarsest view with indignation. But the
woman's statement, which, despite its wildness and her
excitement, I saw no reason to doubt, had suggested to me a
scheme of punishment more refined; and which might, at one and
the same time, be of profit to the King's treasury and a lesson
to Gringuet. To carry it through I had to submit to some
inconvenience, and particularly to a night passed under the same
roof with the rogue; but as the news that a traveller of
consequence was come had the effect, aided by a few sharp words
from Maignan, of lowering his tone, and forcing him to keep
within bounds, I was able to endure this and overlook the
occasional outbursts of spleen which his disease and pampered
temper still drew from him.
His two men, who had been absent on an errand at the time of my
arrival, presently returned, and were doubtless surprised to find
a second company in possession. They tried my attendants with a
number of questions, but without success; while I, by listening
while I had my supper, learned more of their master's habits and
intentions than they supposed. They suspected nothing, and at
day-break we left them; and, the water having duly fallen in the
night, we crossed the river without mishap, and for a league
pursued our proper road. Then I halted, and despatching the two
grooms to Houdan with a letter for my wife, I took, myself, the
road to Le Mesnil, which lies about three leagues to the west.
At a little inn, a league short of Le Mesnil, I stopped, and
instructing my two attendants in the parts they were to play,
prepared, with the help of the seals, which never left Maignan's
custody, the papers necessary to enable me to enact the role of
Gringuet's deputy. Though I had been two or three times to
Villebon, I had never been within two leagues of Le Mesnil, and
had no reason to suppose that I should be recognised; but to
lessen the probability of this I put on a plain suit belonging to
Maignan, with a black-hilted sword, and no ornaments. I
furthermore waited to enter the town until evening, so that my
presence, being reported, might be taken for granted before I was
seen.
In a larger place my scheme must have miscarried, but in this
little town on the hill, looking over the plain of vineyards and
cornfields, with inn, market-house, and church in the square, and
on the fourth side the open battlements, whence the towers of
Chartres could be seen on a clear day, I looked to have to do
only with small men, and saw no reason why it should fail.
Accordingly, riding up to the inn about sunset, I called, with an
air, for the landlord. There were half-a-dozen loungers seated
in a row on a bench before the door, and one of these went in to
fetch him. When the host came out, with his apron twisted round
his waist, I asked him if he had a room.
"Yes," he said, shading his eyes to look at me, "I have."
"Very well," I answered pompously, considering that I had just
such an audience as I desired--by which I mean one that, without
being too critical, would spread the news. "I am M. Gringuet's
deputy, and I am here with authority to collect and remit,
receive and give receipts for, his Majesty's taxes, tolls, and
dues, now, or to be, due and owing. Therefore, my friend, I will
trouble you to show me to my room.
I thought that this announcement would impress him as much as I
desired; but, to my surprise, he only stared at me. "Eh!" he
exclaimed at last, in a faltering tone, "M. Gringuet's deputy?"
"Yes," I said, dismounting somewhat impatiently; "he is ill with
the gout and cannot come."
"And you--are his deputy?"
"I have said so."
Still he did not move to do my bidding, but continued to rub his
bald head and stare at me as if I fascinated him. "Well, I am--I
mean--I think we are full," he stammered at last, with his eyes
like saucers.
I replied, with some impatience, that he had just said that he
had a room; adding, that if I was not in it and comfortably
settled before five minutes were up I would know the reason. I
thought that this would settle the matter, whatever maggot had
got into the man's head; and, in a way, it did so, for he begged
my pardon hastily, and made way for me to enter, calling, at the
same time, to a lad who was standing by, to attend to the horses.
But when we were inside the door, instead of showing me through
the kitchen to my room, he muttered something, and hurried away;
leaving me to wonder what was amiss with him, and why the
loungers outside, who had listened with all their ears to our
conversation, had come in after us as far as they dared, and were
regarding us with an odd mixture of suspicion and amusement.
The landlord remained long away, and seemed, from sounds that
came to my ears, to be talking with someone in a distant room.
At length, however, he returned, bearing a candle and followed by
a serving-man. I asked him roughly why he had been so long, and
began to rate him; but he took the words out of my mouth by his
humility, and going before me through the kitchen--where his wife
and two or three maids who were about the fire stopped to look at
us, with the basting spoons in their hands--he opened a door
which led again into the outer air.
"It is across the yard," he said apologetically, as he went
before, and opening a second door, stood aside for us to enter.
"But it is a good room, and, if you please, a fire shall be
lighted. The shutters are closed," he continued, as we passed
him, Maignan and "La Trape carrying my baggage, "but they shall
be opened. Hallo! Pierre! Pierre, there! Open these shut--"
On the word his voice rose--and broke; and in a moment the door,
through which we had all passed unsuspecting, fell to with a
crash behind us. Before we could move we heard the bars drop
across it. A little before, La Trape had taken a candle from
someone's hand to light me the better; and therefore we were not
in darkness. But the light this gave only served to impress on
us what the falling bars and the rising sound of voices outside
had already told us--that we were outwitted! We were prisoners.
The room in which we stood, looking foolishly at one another, was
a great barn-like chamber, with small windows high in the
unplaistered walls. A long board set on trestles, and two or
three stools placed round it--on the occasion, perhaps, of some
recent festivity--had for a moment deceived us, and played the
landlord's game.
In the first shock of the discovery, hearing the bars drop home,
we stood gaping, and wondering what it meant. Then Maignan, with
an oath, sprang to the door and tried it--fruitlessly.
I joined him more at my leisure, and raising my voice, asked
angrily what this folly meant. "Open the door there! Do you
hear, landlord?" I cried.
No one moved, though Maignan continued to rattle the door
furiously.
"Do you hear?" I repeated, between anger and amazement at the
fix in which we had placed ourselves. "Open!"
But, although the murmur of voices outside the door grew louder,
no one answered, and I had time to take in the full absurdity of
the position; to measure the height; of the windows with my eye
and plumb the dark shadows under the rafters, where the feebler
rays of our candle lost themselves; to appreciate, in a word, the
extent of our predicament. Maignan was furious, La Trape
vicious, while my own equanimity scarcely supported me against
the thought that we should probably be where we were until the
arrival of my people, whom I had directed my wife to send to Le
Mesnil at noon next day. Their coming would free us, indeed, but
at the cost of ridicule and laughter. Never was man worse
placed.
Wincing at the thought, I bade Maignan be silent; and, drumming
on the door myself, I called for the landlord. Someone who had
been giving directions in a tone of great, consequence ceased
speaking, and came close to the door. After listening a moment,
he struck it with his hand.
"Silence, rogues!" he cried. "Do you hear? Silence there,
unless you want your ears nailed to the post."
"Fool!" I answered. "Open the door instantly! Are you all mad
here, that you shut up the King's servants in this way?"
"The King's servants!" be cried, jeering at us. "Where are
they?"
"Here!" I answered, swallowing my rage as well as I might. "I
am M. Gringuet's deputy, and if you do not this instant--"
"M. Gringuet's deputy! Ho! ho!" he said. "Why, you fool, M.
Gringuet's deputy arrived two hours before you. You must get up
a little earlier another time. They are poor tricksters who are
too late for the fair. And now be silent, and it may save you a
stripe or two to-morrow."
There are situations in which even the greatest find it hard to
maintain their dignity, and this was one. I looked at Maignan
and La Trape, and they at me, and by the light of the lanthorn
which the latter held I saw that they were smiling, doubtless at
the dilemma in which we had innocently placed ourselves. But I
found nothing to laugh at in the position; since the people
outside might at any moment leave us where we were to fast until
morning; and, after a moment's reflection, I called out to know
who the speaker on the other side was.
"I am M. de Fonvelle," he answered.
"Well, M. de Fonvelle," I replied, "I advise you to have a care
what you do. I am M. Gringuet's deputy. The other man is an
impostor."
He laughed.
"He has no papers," I cried.
"Oh, yes, he has!" he answered, mocking me. "M. Curtin has seen
them, my fine fellow, and he is not one to pay money without
warrant."
At this several laughed, and a quavering voice chimed in with
"Oh, yes, he has papers! I have seen them. Still, in a case--"
"There!" M. Fonvelle cried, drowning the other's words. "Now
are you satisfied--you in there?"
But M. Curtin had not done. "He has papers," he piped again in
his thin voice.
"Still, M. de Fonvelle, it is well to be cautious, and--"
"Tut, tut! it is all right."
"He has papers, but he has no authority!" I shouted.
"He has seals," Fonvelle answered. "It is all right."
"It is all wrong!" I retorted. "Wrong, I say! Go to your man,
and you will find him gone--gone with your money, M. Curtin."
Two or three laughed, but I heard the sound of feet hurrying
away, and I guessed that Curtin had retired to satisfy himself.
Nevertheless, the moment which followed was an anxious one,
since, if my random shot missed, I knew that I should find myself
in a worse position than before. But judging--from the fact that
the deputy had not confronted us himself--that he was an
impostor, to whom Gringuet's illness had suggested the scheme on
which I had myself hit, I hoped for the best; and, to be sure, in
a moment an outcry arose in the house and quickly spread. Of
those at the door, some cried to their fellows to hearken, while
others hastened off to see. Yet still a little time elapsed,
during which I burned with impatience; and then the crowd came
trampling back, all wrangling and speaking at once.
At the door the chattering ceased, and, a hand being laid on the
bar, in a moment the door was thrown open, and I walked out with
what dignity I might. Outside, the scene which met my eyes might
have been, under other circumstances, diverting. Before me stood
the landlord of the inn, bowing with a light in each hand, as if
the more he bent his backbone the more he must propitiate me;
while a fat, middle-aged man at his elbow, whom I took to be
Fonvelle, smiled feebly at me with a chapfallen expression. A
little aside, Curtin, a shrivelled old fellow, was wringing his
hands over his loss; and behind and round these, peeping over
their shoulders and staring under their arms, clustered a curious
crowd of busybodies, who, between amusement at the joke and awe
of the great men, had much ado to control their merriment.
The host began to mutter apologies, but I cut him short. "I will
talk to you to-morrow!" I said, in a voice which made him shake
in his shoes. "Now give me supper, lights, and a room--and
hurry. For you, M. Fonvelle, you are an ass! And for the
gentleman there, who has filled the rogue's purse, he will do
well another time to pay the King his dues!"
With that I left the two--Fonvelle purple with indignation, and
Curtin with eyes and mouth agape and tears stayed--and followed
my host to his best room, Maignan and La Trape attending me with
very grim faces. Here the landlord would have repeated his
apologies, but my thoughts beginning to revert to the purpose
which had brought me hither, I affected to be offended, that, by
keeping all at a distance, I might the more easily preserve my
character.
I succeeded so well that, though half the town, through which the
news of my adventure had spread, as fire spreads in tinder, were
assembled outside the inn until a late hour, no one was admitted
to see me; and when I made my appearance next morning in the
market-place and took my seat, with my two attendants, at a table
by the corn-measures, this reserve had so far impressed the
people that the smiles which greeted me scarcely exceeded those
which commonly welcome a tax-collector. Some had paid, and,
foreseeing the necessity of paying again, found little that was
diverting in the jest. Others thought it no laughing matter to
pay once; and a few had come as ill out of the adventure as I
had. Under these circumstances, we quickly settled to work, no
one entertaining the slightest suspicion; and La Trape, who could
accommodate himself to anything, playing the part of clerk, I was
presently receiving money and hearing excuses; the minute
acquaintance with the routine of the finances, which I had made
it my business to acquire, rendering the work easy to me.
We had not been long engaged, however, when Fonvelle put in an
appearance, and elbowing the peasants aside, begged to speak with
me apart. I rose and stepped back with him two or three paces;
on which he winked at me in a very knowing fashion, "I am M. de
Fonvelle," he said. And he winked again.
"Ah!" I said.
"My name is not in your list."
"I find it there," I replied, raising a hand to my ear.
"Tut, tut! you do not understand," he muttered. "Has not
Gringuet told you?"
"What?" I said, pretending to be a little deaf.
"Has not--"
I shook my head.
"Has not Gringuet told you?" he repeated, reddening with anger;
and this time speaking, on compulsion, so loudly that the
peasants could hear him.
I answered him in the same tone. "Yes," I said roundly. "He has
told me; of course, that every year you give him two hundred
livres to omit your name."
He glanced behind him with an oath. "Man, are you mad?" he
gasped, his jaw falling. "They will hear you."
"Yes," I said loudly, "I mean them to hear me."
I do not know what he thought of this--perhaps that I was mad--
but he staggered back from me, and looked wildly round. Finding
everyone laughing, he looked again at me, but still failed to
understand; on which, with another oath, he turned on his heel,
and forcing his way through the grinning crowd, was out of sight
in a moment.
I was about to return to my seat, when a pursy, pale-faced man,
with small eyes and a heavy jowl, whom I had before noticed,
pushed his way through the line, and came to me. Though his
neighbours were all laughing he was sober, and in a moment I
understood why.
"I am very deaf," he said in a whisper. "My name, Monsieur, is
Philippon. I am a--"
I made a sign to him that I could not hear.
"I am the silk merchant," he continued pretty audibly, but with a
suspicious glance behind him. "Probably you have--"
Again I signed to him that I could not hear.
"You have heard of me?"
"From M. Gringuet?" I said very loudly.
"Yes," he answered in a similar tone; for, aware that deaf
persons cannot hear their own voices and are seldom able to judge
how loudly they are speaking, I had led him to this. "And I
suppose that you will do as he did?"
"How?" I asked. "In what way?"
He touched his pocket with a stealthy gesture, unseen by the
people behind him.
Again I made a sign as if I could not hear.
"Take the usual little gift?" he said, finding himself compelled
to speak.
"I cannot hear a word," I bellowed. By this time the crowd were
shaking with laughter.
"Accept the usual gift?" he said, his fat, pale face perspiring,
and his little pig's eyes regarding me balefully.
"And let you pay one quarter?" I said.
"Yes," he answered.
But this, and the simplicity with which he said it, drew so loud
a roar of laughter from the crowd as penetrated even to his
dulled senses. Turning abruptly, as if a bee had stung him, he
found the place convulsed with merriment; and perceiving, in an
instant, that I had played upon him, though he could not
understand how or why, he glared about him a moment, muttered
something which I could not catch, and staggered away with the
gait of a drunken man.
After this, it was useless to suppose that I could amuse myself
with others. The crowd, which had never dreamed of such a tax-
collector, and could scarcely believe either eyes or ears,
hesitated to come forward even to pay; and I was considering what
I should do next, when a commotion in one corner of the square
drew my eyes to that quarter. I looked and saw at first only
Curtin. Then, the crowd dividing and making way for him, I
perceived that he had the real Gringuet with him--Gringuet, who
rode through the market with an air of grim majesty, with one
foot in a huge slipper and eyes glaring with ill-temper.
Doubtless Curtin, going to him on the chance of hearing something
of the rogue who had cheated him, had apprised the tax-collector
of the whole matter; for on seeing me in my chair of state, he
merely grinned in a vicious way, and cried to the nearest not to
let me escape. "We have lost one rogue, but we will hang the
other," he said. And while the townsfolk stood dumbfounded round
us, he slipped with a groan from his horse, and bade his two
servants seize me.
"And do you," he called to the host, "see that you help, my man!
You have harboured him, and you shall pay for it if he escapes."
With that he hopped a step nearer; and then, not dreaming of
resistance, sank with another groan--for his foot was immensely
swollen by the journey--into the chair from which I had risen.
A glance showed me that, if I would not be drawn into an unseemly
brawl, I must act; and meeting Maignan's eager eye fixed upon my
face, I nodded. In a second he seized the unsuspecting Gringuet
by the neck, snatched him up from the chair, and flung him half-
a-dozen paces away. "Lie there," he cried, "you insolent rascal!
Who told you to sit before your betters?"
The violence of the action, and Maignan's heat, were such that
the nearest drew back affrighted; and even Gringuet's servants
recoiled, while the market people gasped with astonishment. But
I knew that the respite would last a moment only, and I stood
forward. "Arrest that man," I said, pointing to the collector,
who was grovelling on the ground, nursing his foot and shrieking
foul threats at us.
In a second my two men stood over him. "In the King's name," La
Trape cried; "let no man interfere."
"Raise him up," I continued, "and set him before me; and Curtin
also, and Fonvelle, and Philippon; and Lescaut, the corn-dealer,
if he is here."
I spoke boldly, but I felt some misgiving. So mighty, however,
is the habit of command, that the crowd, far from resisting,
thrust forward the men I named. Still, I could not count on this
obedience, and it was with pleasure that I saw at this moment, as
I looked over the heads of the crowd, a body of horsemen entering
the square. They halted an instant, looking at the unusual
concourse; while the townsfolk, interrupted in the middle of the
drama, knew not which way to stare. Then Boisrueil, seeing me,
and that I was holding some sort of court, spurred his horse
through the press, and saluted me.
"Let half-a-dozen of your varlets dismount and guard these men,"
I said; "and do you, you rogue," I continued, addressing
Gringuet, "answer me, and tell me the truth. How much does each
of these knaves give you to cheat the King, and your master?
Curtin first. How much does he give you?"
"My lord," he answered, pale and shaking, yet with a mutinous
gleam in his eyes, "I have a right to know first before whom I
stand."
"Enough," I thundered, "that it is before one who has the right
to question you! answer me, villain, and be quick. What is the
sum of Curtin's bribe?"
He stood white and mute.
"Fonvelle's?"
Still he stood silent, glaring with the devil in his eyes; while
the other men whimpered and protested their innocence, and the
crowd stared as if they could never see enough.
"Philippon's?"
"I take no bribes," he muttered.
"Lescaut's?"
"Not a denier."
"Liar!" I exclaimed. "Liar, who devour widows' houses and poor
men's corn! Who grind the weak and say it is the King; and let
the rich go free. Answer me, and answer the truth. How much do
these men give you?"
"Nothing," he said defiantly.
"Very well," I answered; "then I will have the list. It is in
your shoe."
"I have no list," he said, beginning to tremble.
"It is in your shoe," I repeated, pointing to his gouty foot.
"Maignan, off with his shoe, and look in it."
Disregarding his shrieks of pain, they tore it off and looked in
it. There was no list.
"Off with his stocking," I said roundly.
"It is there."
He flung himself down at that, cursing and protesting by turns.
But I remembered the trampled corn, and the girl's bleeding face,
and I was inexorable. The stocking was drawn off, not too
tender]y, and turned inside out. Still no list was found.
"He has it," I persisted. "We have tried the shoe and we have
tried the stocking, now we must try the foot. Fetch a stirrup-
leather, and do you hold him, and let one of the grooms give him
a dozen on that foot."
But at that he gave way; he flung himself on his knees, screaming
for mercy.
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