A TYPE OF THE COUNTRY USURER
Strategically, Rigou's position at Blangy was that of a picket sentinel.He watched Les Aigues, and watched it well.The police have no spies comparable to those that serve hatred.
When the general first came to Les Aigues Rigou apparently formed some plans about him which Montcornet's marriage with a Troisville put an end to; he seemed to have wished to patronize the new land-owner.In fact his intentions were so patent that Gaubertin thought best to let him into the secrets of the coalition against Les Aigues.Before accepting any part in the affair, Rigou determined, as he said, to put the general between two stools.
One day, after the countess was fairly installed, a little wicker carriage painted green entered the grand courtyard of the chateau.The mayor, who was flanked by his mayoress, got out and came round to the portico on the garden side.As he did so Rigou saw Madame le comtesse at a window.She, however, devoted to the bishop and to religion and to the Abbe Brossette, sent word by Francois that "Madame was out."
This act of incivility, worthy of a woman born in Russia, turned the face of the ex-Benedictine yellow.If the countess had seen the man whom the abbe told her was "a soul in hell who plunged into iniquity as into a bath in his efforts to cool himself," if she had seen his face then she might have refrained from exciting the cold, deliberate hatred felt by the liberals against the royalists, increased as it was in country-places by the jealousies of neighborhood, where the recollections of wounded vanity are kept constantly alive.
A few details about this man and his morals will not only throw light on his share of the plot, called "the great affair" by his two associates, but it will have the merit of picturing an extremely curious type of man,--one of those rural existences which are peculiar to France, and which no writer has hitherto sought to depict.Nothing about this man is without significance,--neither his house, nor his manner of blowing the fire, nor his ways of eating; his habits, morals, and opinions will vividly illustrate the history of the valley.This renegade serves to show the utility of democracy; he is at once its theory and its practice, its alpha and its omega, in short, its "summum."