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Notwithstanding that he had received the delicate attentions of one of the most charming women in Paris, Emile Blondet was able to feel once more the long forgotten delights of a truant schoolboy; and on the morning of the day after his letter was written he had himself called by Francois, the head valet, who was specially appointed to wait on him, for the purpose of exploring the valley of the Avonne.
The geographical position of the Avonne, navigable for over twelve miles, had, ever since Jean Bouvet invented rafts, given full money value to the forests of Les Aigues, Soulanges, and Ronquerolles, standing on the crest of the hills between which this charming river flows.
The dam to stop the timber from floating further down was just below a hill covered by the forest of Soulanges. Between the dam and the town lay a suburb. The lower town, covering the greater part of the delta, came down to the shores of the lake of the Avonne.
If we turn to the other end of the valley of the Avonne we shall see that Gaubertin ruled at Soulanges through the Soudrys, through Lupin the assistant mayor and steward of the Soulanges estate, who was necessarily in constant communication with the Comte de Soulanges, through Sarcus, justice of the peace, through Guerbet, the collector, through Gourdon, the doctor, who had married a Gendrin-Vatebled.
Though the general had written to Michaud to bring his wife without waiting until the lodge at the gate of the Avonne was ready for them, the future head-keeper, or rather bailiff, was detained in Paris by his marriage and his wife's family, and did not reach Les Aigues until a fortnight later.
"If crowds of people would come to see the sources of the Avonne, you'd be rich, Grandpa Fourchon," said Marie. "Yes," he said, drinking the last glassful the bottle contained, "and I've played the sham otter so long, the live otters have got angry, and one of them came right between my legs to-day; Mouche caught it, and I am to get twenty francs for it."
How could such facts be understood unless we had previously taken that rapid glance at the Mediocracy. Fourchon was right; the middle classes now held the position of the former lords. The small land-owners, of whom Courtecuisse is a type, were tenants in mortmain of a Tiberius in the valley of the Avonne, just as, in Paris, traders without money are the peasantry of the banking system.
Every one followed the traces which the bailiff pointed out as he walked along examining them. Presently he stopped in the middle of the path about a hundred feet from the broken jug, where the girl's foot-prints ceased. "Here," he said, "she turned towards the Avonne; perhaps she was headed off from the direction of the pavilion." "But she has been gone more than an hour," cried Madame Michaud.
"If you can manage the future as well as you do the present, I'll call you the prince of stewards." "As to the future," said Sibilet, "you won't die of hunger if no timber is cut for two or three years. Let us begin by putting proper keepers in the woods. Between now and then things will flow as the water does in the Avonne.
Some seven or eight hundred acres of the forest of Les Aigues lie along the banks of the Avonne; and to preserve the majestic beauty of the river the large trees that border it have been left untouched for a distance of three leagues on both sides in an almost straight line. The mistress of Henri IV., to whom Les Aigues formerly belonged, was as fond of hunting as the king himself.
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