A Beleaguered City Read online

brutal faith. 'Go!' she cried, inanger; 'you are all the same. Money is your god. _De grosses pieces_,that is all you think of in these days.'

  '_Eh, bien,_ madame,' said the peasant; 'and if so, what then? Don't youothers, gentlemen and ladies, do just the same? What is there in theworld but money to think of? If it is a question of marriage, you demandwhat is the _dot_; if it is a question of office, you ask, MonsieurUntel, is he rich? And it is perfectly just. We know what money can do;but as for _le bon Dieu_, whom our grandmothers used to talk about--'

  And lo! our _gros paysan_ made exactly the same gesture as Jean Pierre.He put up his shoulders to his ears, and spread out the palms of hishands, as who should say, There is nothing further to be said.

  Then there occurred a still more remarkable repetition. My mother, asmay be supposed, being a very respectable person, and more or less_devote_, grew red with indignation and horror.

  'Oh, these poor grandmothers!' she cried; 'God give them rest! It isenough to make the dead rise out of their graves.'

  'Oh, I will answer for _les morts_! they will give nobody any trouble,'he said with a laugh. I went in and reproved the man severely, findingthat, as I supposed, he had attempted to cheat my good mother in theprice of the wood. Fortunately she had been quite as clever as he was.She went upstairs shaking her head, while I gave the man to understandthat no one should speak to her but with the profoundest respect in myhouse. 'She has her opinions, like all respectable ladies,' I said,'but under this roof these opinions shall always be sacred.' And, to dohim justice, I will add that when it was put to him in this wayGros-Jean was ashamed of himself.

  When I talked over these incidents with my wife, as we gave each otherthe narrative of our day's experiences, she was greatly distressed, asmay be supposed. 'I try to hope they are not so bad as Bonne Mamanthinks. But oh, _mon ami!_' she said, 'what will the world come to ifthis is what they really believe?'

  'Take courage,' I said; 'the world will never come to anything muchdifferent from what it is. So long as there are _des anges_ like thee topray for us, the scale will not go down to the wrong side.'

  I said this, of course, to please my Agnes, who is the best of wives;but on thinking it over after, I could not but be struck with theextreme justice (not to speak of the beauty of the sentiment) of thisthought. The _bon Dieu_--if, indeed, that great Being is as representedto us by the Church--must naturally care as much for one-half of Hiscreatures as for the other, though they have not the same weight in theworld; and consequently the faith of the women must hold the balancestraight, especially if, as is said, they exceed us in point of numbers.This leaves a little margin for those of them who profess the samefreedom of thought as is generally accorded to men--a class, I must add,which I abominate from the bottom of my heart.

  I need not dwell upon other little scenes which impressed the same ideastill more upon my mind. Semur, I need not say, is not the centre of theworld, and might, therefore, be supposed likely to escape the fullcurrent of worldliness. We amuse ourselves little, and we have not anyopportunity of rising to the heights of ambition; for our town is noteven the _chef-lieu_ of the department,--though this is a subject uponwhich I cannot trust myself to speak. Figure to yourself that LaRochette--a place of yesterday, without either the beauty or theantiquity of Semur--has been chosen as the centre of affairs, theresidence of M. le Prefet! But I will not enter upon this question. WhatI was saying was, that, notwithstanding the fact that we amuse ourselvesbut little, that there is no theatre to speak of, little society, fewdistractions, and none of those inducements to strive for gain and toindulge the senses, which exist, for instance, in Paris--that capital ofthe world--yet, nevertheless, the thirst for money and for pleasure hasincreased among us to an extent which I cannot but consider alarming.Gros-Jean, our peasant, toils for money, and hoards; Jacques, who is acooper and maker of wine casks, gains and drinks; Jean Pierre snatchesat every sous that comes in his way, and spends it in yet worsedissipations. He is one who quails when he meets my eye; he sins _encachette_; but Jacques is bold, and defies opinion; and Gros-Jean isfirm in the belief that to hoard money is the highest of mortaloccupations. These three are types of what the population is at Semur.The men would all sell their souls for a _grosse piece_ of fiftysous--indeed, they would laugh, and express their delight that any oneshould believe them to love souls, if they could but have a chance ofselling them; and the devil, who was once supposed to deal in thatcommodity, would be very welcome among us. And as for the _bonDieu--pouff!_ that was an affair of the grandmothers--_le bon Dieu c'estl'argent_. This is their creed. I was very near the beginning of myofficial year as Maire when my attention was called to these matters asI have described above. A man may go on for years keeping quiethimself--keeping out of tumult, religious or political--and make nodiscovery of the general current of feeling; but when you are forced toserve your country in any official capacity, and when your eyes areopened to the state of affairs around you, then I allow that aninexperienced observer might well cry out, as my wife did, 'What willbecome of the world?' I am not prejudiced myself--unnecessary to saythat the foolish scruples of the women do not move me. But the devotionof the community at large to this pursuit of gain-money without anygrandeur, and pleasure without any refinement--that is a thing whichcannot fail to wound all who believe in human nature. To be amillionaire--that, I grant, would be pleasant. A man as rich as MonteChristo, able to do whatever he would, with the equipage of an Englishduke, the palace of an Italian prince, the retinue of a Russiannoble--he, indeed, might be excused if his money seemed to him a kind ofgod. But Gros-Jean, who lays up two sous at a time, and lives on blackbread and an onion; and Jacques, whose _grosse piece_ but secures himthe headache of a drunkard next morning--what to them could be thismiserable deity? As for myself, however, it was my business, as Maireof the commune, to take as little notice as possible of the folliesthese people might say, and to hold the middle course between theprejudices of the respectable and the levities of the foolish. Withthis, without more, to think of, I had enough to keep all my facultiesemployed.

  THE NARRATIVE OF M. LE MAIRE CONTINUED: BEGINNING OF THE LATE REMARKABLEEVENTS.

  I do not attempt to make out any distinct connection between the simpleincidents above recorded, and the extraordinary events that followed. Ihave related them as they happened; chiefly by way of showing the stateof feeling in the city, and the sentiment which pervaded thecommunity--a sentiment, I fear, too common in my country. I need not saythat to encourage superstition is far from my wish. I am a man of mycentury, and proud of being so; very little disposed to yield to thedomination of the clerical party, though desirous of showing all justtolerance for conscientious faith, and every respect for the prejudicesof the ladies of my family. I am, moreover, all the more inclined to becareful of giving in my adhesion to any prodigy, in consequence of aconsciousness that the faculty of imagination has always been one of mycharacteristics. It usually is so, I am aware, in superior minds, and ithas procured me many pleasures unknown to the common herd. Had it beenpossible for me to believe that I had been misled by this faculty, Ishould have carefully refrained from putting upon record any account ofmy individual impressions; but my attitude here is not that of a manrecording his personal experiences only, but of one who is the officialmouthpiece and representative of the commune, and whose duty it is torender to government and to the human race a true narrative of the verywonderful facts to which every citizen of Semur can bear witness. Inthis capacity it has become my duty so to arrange and edit the differentaccounts of the mystery, as to present one coherent and trustworthychronicle to the world.

  To proceed, however, with my narrative. It is not necessary for me todescribe what summer is in the Haute Bourgogne. Our generous wines, ourglorious fruits, are sufficient proof, without any assertion on my part.The summer with us is as a perpetual _fete_--at least, before the insectappeared it was so, though now anxiety about the condition of our vinesmay cloud our enjoyment of the glorious sunshine which ripens them
hourly before our eyes. Judge, then, of the astonishment of the worldwhen there suddenly came upon us a darkness as in the depth of winter,falling, without warning, into the midst of the brilliant weather towhich we are accustomed, and which had never failed us before in thememory of man! It was the month of July, when, in ordinary seasons, acloud is so rare that it is a joy to see one, merely as a variety uponthe brightness. Suddenly, in the midst of our summer delights, thisdarkness came. Its first appearance took us so entirely by surprise thatlife seemed to stop short, and the business of the whole town wasdelayed by an hour or two; nobody being able to believe that at sixo'clock in the morning the sun had not risen. I do not assert that thesun did not rise; all I mean to say is that at Semur it was still dark,as in a morning of winter, and when it gradually and slowly became daymany hours