THE CONSPIRATORS IN THE QUEEN'S SALON
Reaching Soulanges about half-past five o'clock, Rigou was sure of finding the usual party assembled at the Soudrys'.There, as everywhere else in town, the dinner-hour was three o'clock, according to the custom of the last century.From five to nine the notables of Soulanges met in Madame Soudry's salon to exchange the news, make their political speeches, comment upon the private lives of every one in the valley, and talk about Les Aigues, which latter topic kept the conversation going for at least an hour every day.It was everybody's business to learn at least something of what was going on, and also to pay their court to the mistress of the house.
After this preliminary talk they played at boston, the only game the queen understood.When the fat old Guerbet had mimicked Madame Isaure, Gaubertin's wife, laughed at her languishing airs, imitated her thin voice, her pinched mouth, and her juvenile ways; when the Abbe Taupin had related one of the tales of his repertory; when Lupin had told of some event at Ville-aux-Fayes, and Madame Soudry had been deluged with compliments ad nauseum, the company would say: "We have had a charming game of boston."
Too self-indulgent to be at the trouble of driving over to the Soudrys' merely to hear the vapid talk of its visitors and to see a Parisian monkey in the guise of an old woman, Rigou, far superior in intelligence and education to this petty society, never made his appearance unless business brought him over to meet the notary.He excused himself from visiting on the ground of his occupations, his habits, and his health, which latter did not allow him, he said, to return at night along a road which led by the foggy banks of the Thune.
The tall, stiff usurer always had an imposing effect upon Madame Soudry's company, who instinctively recognized in his nature the cruelty of the tiger with steel claws, the craft of a savage, the wisdom of one born in a cloister and ripened by the sun of gold,--a man to whom Gaubertin had never yet been willing to fully commit himself.
The moment the little green carriole and the bay horse passed the Cafe de la Paix, Urbain, Soudry's man-servant, who was seated on a bench under the dining-room windows, and was gossipping with the tavern-
keeper, shades his eyes with his hand to see who was coming.
"It's Pere Rigou," he said."I must go round and open the door.Take his horse, Socquard." And Urbain, a former trooper, who could not get into the gendarmerie and had therefore taken service with Soudry, went round the house to open the gates of the courtyard.
Socquard, a famous personage throughout the valley, was treated, as you see, with very little ceremony by the valet.But so it is with many illustrious people who are so kind as to walk and to sneeze and to sleep and to eat precisely like common mortals.
Socquard, born a Hercules, could carry a weight of eleven hundred pounds; a blow of his fist applied on a man's back would break the vertebral column in two; he could bend an iron bar, or hold back a carriage drawn by one horse.A Milo of Crotona in the valley, his fame had spread throughout the department, where all sorts of foolish stories were current about him, as about all celebrities.It was told how he had once carried a poor woman and her donkey and her basket on his back to market; how he had been known to eat a whole ox and drink the fourth of a hogshead of wine in one day, etc.Gentle as a marriageable girl, Socquard, who was a stout, short man, with a placid face, broad shoulders, and a deep chest, where his lungs played like the bellows of a forge, possessed a flute-like voice, the limpid tones of which surprised all those who heard them for the first time.
Like Tonsard, whose renown released him from the necessity of giving proofs of his ferocity, in fact, like all other men who are backed by public opinion of one kind or another, Socquard never displayed his extraordinary muscular force unless asked to do so by friends.He now took the horse as the usurer drew up at the steps of the portico.
"Are you all well at home, Monsieur Rigou?" said the illustrious innkeeper.
"Pretty well, my good friend," replied Rigou."Do Plissoud and Bonnebault and Viollet and Amaury still continue good customers?"
This question, uttered in a tone of good-natured interest, was by no means one of those empty speeches which superiors are apt to bestow upon inferiors.In his leisure moments Rigou thought over the smallest details of "the affair," and Fourchon had already warned him that there was something suspicious in the intimacy between Plissoud, Bonnebault, and the brigadier, Viollet.
Bonnebault, in payment of a few francs lost at cards, might very likely tell the secrets he heard at Tonsard's to Viollet; or he might let them out over his punch without realizing the importance of such gossip.But as the information of the old otter man might be instigated by thirst, Rigou paid no attention except so far as it concerned Plissoud, whose situation was likely to inspire him with a desire to counteract the coalition against Les Aigues, if only to get his paws greased by one or the other of the two parties.
Plissoud combined with his duties of under-sheriff other occupations which were poorly remunerated, that of agent of insurance (a new form of enterprise just beginning to show itself in France), agent, also, of a society providing against the chances of recruitment.His insufficient pay and a love of billiards and boiled wine made his future doubtful.Like Fourchon, he cultivated the art of doing nothing, and expected his fortune through some lucky but problematic chance.He hated the leading society, but he had measured its power.
