own
house, and work for yourself, or rather, make others work for you, and
take your ease. Only--now listen to me--you must manage to arrest only
such as haven't a penny in the world. You can't shear sheep unless
the wool is on their backs. Take the Shopman's offer and leave him to
collect the costs,--if he wants them; tastes differ. Didn't old Mariotte
prefer losses to profits, in spite of my advice?"

Courtecuisse, filled with admiration for these words of wisdom, returned
home burning with the desire to be a land-owner and a bourgeois like the
rest.

When the general reached Les Aigues he related his expedition to
Sibilet.

"Monsieur le comte did very right," said the steward, rubbing his hands;
"but he must not stop short half-way. The field-keeper of the district
who allows the country-people to prey upon the meadows and rob the
harvests ought to be changed. Monsieur le comte should have himself
chosen mayor, and appoint one of his old soldiers, who would have
the courage to carry out his orders, in place of Vaudoyer. A great
land-owner should be master in his own district. Just see what
difficulties we have with the present mayor!"

The mayor of the district of Blangy, formerly a Benedictine, named
Rigou, had married, in the first year of the Republic, the servant-woman
of the late priest of Blangy. In spite of the repugnance which a married
monk excited at the Prefecture, he had continued to be mayor after 1815,
for the reason that there was no-one else at Blangy who was capable of
filling the post. But in 1817, when the bishop sent the Abbe Brossette
to the parish of Blangy (which had then been vacant over twenty-five
years), a violent opposition not unnaturally broke out between the old
apostate and the young ecclesiastic, whose character is already known to
us. The war which was then and there declared between the mayor's office
and the parsonage increased the popularity of the magistrate, who
had hitherto been more or less despised. Rigou, whom the peasants had
disliked for usurious dealings, now suddenly represented their political
and financial interests, supposed to be threatened by the Restoration,
and more especially by the clergy.

A copy of the "Constitutionnel," that great organ of liberalism, after
making the rounds of the Cafe de la Paix, came back to Rigou on the
seventh day,--the subscription, standing in the name of old Socquard the
keeper of the coffee-house, being shared by twenty person