United States or Lebanon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The grooms and valets of the general were not averse to Tonsard's wine, rendered attractive by Tonsard's daughters; so the Grand-I-Vert held subterraneous communication with the chateau through the servants, and knew immediately everything that they knew.
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.
Nicolas, Tonsard's second son, had drawn an unlucky number at a recent conscription.
Monsieur Rigou had interested himself for the old woman, and employed a lawyer on her behalf who relied in his defence on the absence of disinterested witnesses; but the testimony of Michaud and his assistants and the field-keeper was found to outweigh this objection. Tonsard's mother was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, and the lawyer said to her son:
Tonsard blamed his wife for her father's short-comings, and ill-treated her, with the customary revenge of the common people, whose minds take in only an effect and rarely look back to causes. Finding her fetters heavy, the woman lightened them. She used Tonsard's vices to get the better of him. Loving comfort and good eating herself, she encouraged his idleness and gluttony.
Thus it happened that Tonsard was disappointed from the start in the hope he had indulged of increasing his comfort by an increase of property in marriage. The idle son-in-law had chanced, by a very common accident, on an idler father-in-law. Matters went all the worse because Tonsard's wife, gifted with a sort of rustic beauty, being tall and well-made, was not fond of work in the open air.
"My God! if it be Thy will to loose the poor like a torrent to reform society, I know, I comprehend, why it is that Thou hast abandoned the wealthy to their blindness!" Old Mother Tonsard's screams brought a number of people from Blangy to know what was happening at the Grand-I-Vert, the distance from the village to the inn not being greater than that from the inn to the gate of Blangy.
From September to March, hares, rabbits, partridges, deer, in short, all the game that was not eaten at the chateau, was sold at Blangy and at Soulanges, where Tonsard's two daughters peddled milk in the early mornings, coming back with the news of the day, in return for the gossip they carried about Les Aigues, and Cerneux, and Conches.
When he had brought up his children, at the cost of those from whom his wife was able to extort gifts, the following charter and budget were the law at the Grand-I-Vert. Tonsard's old mother and his two daughters, Catherine and Marie, went into the woods at certain seasons twice a-day, and came back laden with fagots which overhung the crutch of their poles at least two feet beyond their heads.
We should have to issue warrants for at least twenty persons and arrest them; but I know these peasants, and so do these gentlemen; you might keep them a year in prison and you would get nothing out of them but denials. What could you do with all those who were at Tonsard's?"
Word Of The Day