第80章

Rigou's house, the handsomest in the village, was built of the large rubble-stone peculiar to Burgundy, imbedded in yellow mortar smoothed by the trowel, which produced an uneven surface, still further broken here and there by projecting points of the stone, which was mostly black.A band of cement, in which no stones were allowed to show, surrounded each window with a sort of frame, where time had made some slight, capricious cracks, such as appear on plastered ceilings.The outer blinds, of a clumsy pattern, were noticeable for their color, which was dragon-green.A few mosses grew among the slates of the roof.The type is that of Burgundian homesteads; the traveller will see thousands like it when visiting this part of France.

A double door opened upon a passage, half-way down which was the well of the staircase.By the entrance was the door of a large room with three windows looking out upon the square.The kitchen, built behind and beneath the staircase, was lighted from the courtyard, which was neatly paved with cobble-stones and entered by a porte-cochere.Such was the ground-floor.The first floor contained three bedrooms, above them a small attic chamber.

A wood-shed, a coach-house, and a stable adjoined the kitchen, and formed two sides of a square around the courtyard.Above these rather flimsy buildings were lofts containing hay and grain, a fruit-room, and one servant's-chamber.

A poultry-yard, the stable, and a pigsty faced the house across the courtyard.

The garden, about an acre in size and enclosed by walls, was a true priest's garden; that is, it was full of wall-fruit and fruit-trees, grape-arbors, gravel-paths, closely trimmed box-trees, and square vegetable patches, made rich with the manure from the stable.

Within, the large room, panelled in wainscot, was hung with old tapestry.The walnut furniture, brown with age and covered with stuffs embroidered in needle-work, was in keeping with the wainscot and with the ceiling, which was also panelled.The latter had three projecting beams, but these were painted, and between them the space was plastered.The mantel, also in walnut, surmounted by a mirror in the most grotesque frame, had no other ornament than two brass eggs standing on a marble base, each of which opened in the middle; the upper half when turned over showed a socket for a candle.These candlesticks for two lights, festooned with chains (an invention of the reign of Louis XV.), were becoming rare.On a green and gold bracket fastened to the wall opposite to the window was a common but excellent clock.The curtains, which squeaked upon their rods, were at least fifty years old; their material, of cotton in a square pattern like that of mattresses, alternately pink and white, came from the Indies.A sideboard and dinner-table completed the equipment of the room, which was kept with extreme nicety.

At the corner of the fireplace was an immense sofa, Rigou's especial seat.In the angle, above a little "bonheur du jour," which served him as a desk, and hanging to a common screw, was a pair of bellows, the origin of Rigou's fortune.

From this succinct description, in style like that of an auction sale, it will be easy to imagine that the bedrooms of Monsieur and Madame Rigou were limited to mere necessaries; yet it would be a mistake to suppose that such parsimony affected the essential excellence of those necessaries.For instance, the most fastidious of women would have slept well in Rigou's bed, with fine linen sheets, excellent mattresses, made luxurious by a feather-bed (doubtless bought for some abbe by a pious female parishioner) and protected from draughts by thick curtains.All the rest of Rigou's belongings were made comfortable for his use, as we shall see.

In the first place, he had reduced his wife, who could neither read, write, nor cipher, to absolute obedience.After having ruled her deceased master, the poor creature was now the servant of her husband;

she cooked and did the washing, with very little help from a pretty girl named Annette, who was nineteen years old and as much a slave to Rigou as her mistress, and whose wages were thirty francs a year.

Tall, thin, and withered, Madame Rigou, a woman with a yellow face red about the cheek-bones, her head always wrapped in a colored handkerchief, and wearing the same dress all the year round, did not leave the house for two hours in a month's time, but kept herself in exercise by doing the hard work of a devoted servant.The keenest observer could not have found a trace of the fine figure, the Rubens coloring, the splendid lines, the superb teeth, the virginal eyes which first drew the attention of the Abbe Niseron to the young girl.

The birth of her only daughter, Madame Soudry, Jr., had blighted her complexion, decayed her teeth, dimmed her eyes, and even caused the dropping of their lashes.It almost seemed as if the finger of God had fallen upon the wife of the priest.Like all well-to-do country house-

wives, she liked to see her closets full of silk gowns, made and unmade, and jewels and laces which did her no good and only excited the sin of envy and a desire for her death in the minds of all the young women who served Rigou.She was one of those beings, half-woman, half-animal, who are born to live by instinct.This ex-beautiful Arsene was disinterested; and the bequest left to her by the late Abbe Niseron would be inexplicable were it not for the curious circumstance which prompted it, and which we give here for the edification of the vast tribe of expectant heirs.