rand-I-Vert, they did not fail to make
the most of it if the mere shadow of an official functionary appeared.

Vaudoyer, Courtecuisse, Tonsard and his family, Godain, and an old
vine-dresser named Laroche, were there early in the morning. The latter
was a man who scratched a living from day to day; he was one of the
delinquents collected in Blangy under the sort of subscription invented
by Sibilet and Courtecuisse to disgust the general by the results of
his indictments. Blangy had supplied three men, twelve women, also eight
girls and five boys for whom parent were answerable, all of whom were in
a condition of pauperism; but they were the only ones who could be
found that were so. The year 1823 had been a very profitable one to the
peasantry, and 1826 as likely, through the enormous quantity of wine
yielded, to bring them in a good deal of money; add to this the works at
Les Aigues, undertaken by the general, which had put a great deal more
in circulation throughout the three districts which bordered on the
estate. It had therefore been quite difficult to find in Blangy,
Conches, and Cerneux, one hundred and twenty indigent persons against
whom to bring the suits; and in order to do so, they had taken old
women, mothers, and grandmothers of those who owned property but who
possessed nothing of their own, like Tonsard's mother. Laroche, an
old laborer, possessed absolutely nothing; he was not, like Tonsard,
hot-blooded and vicious,--his motive power was a cold, dull hatred; he
toiled in silence with a sullen face; work was intolerable to him, but
he had to work to live; his features were hard and their expression
repulsive. Though sixty years old, he was still strong, except that his
back was bent; he saw no future before him, no spot that he could call
his own, and he envied those who possessed the land; for this reason
he had no pity on the forests of Les Aigues, and took pleasure in
despoiling them uselessly.

"Will they be allowed to put us in prison?" he was saying. "After
Conches they'll come to Blangy. I'm an old offender, and I shall get
three months."

"What can we do against the gendarmerie, old drunkard?" said Vaudoyer.

"Why! cut the legs of their horses with our scythes. That'll bring them
down; their muskets are not loaded, and when they find us ten to one
against them they'll decamp. If the three villages all rose and killed
two or three gendarmes, they couldn't guillotine the whole of us. They'd
hav