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"Then, what's to be done?" repeated the general, on whom Sibilet's arguments were beginning to produce the effect of a violent poison. Just then the remembrance of the blows he had given Gaubertin with his cane crossed his mind, and made him wish he had bestowed them on himself. His flushed face was enough to show Sibilet the irritation that he felt.
It may be that the steward's present house, with some adjoining land, will be the price paid for Sibilet's spying. Nothing is ever said among us that is not immediately known at Ville-aux-Fayes. Sibilet is a relative of your enemy Gaubertin. What you have just said about the attorney-general and the others will probably be reported before you have reached the Prefecture.
Sibilet's father, sheriff of the court, had married his sister to Monsieur Vigor the lieutenant, and that individual, father of six children, was cousin of the father of Gaubertin through his wife, a Gaubertin-Vallat. Eighteen months previously the united efforts of the two deputies, Monsieur de Soulanges and Gaubertin, had created the place of commissary of police for the sheriff's second son.
"My dear," said Sibilet's wife, appearing at this moment, "your breakfast is ready. Pray excuse him, Monsieur le comte; he has eaten nothing since morning for he was obliged to go to Ronquerolles to deliver some barley." "Go, go, Sibilet," said the general.
And the pretty woman, already forgetting the rags and tatters of Mouche and Fourchon, and their eyes full of hatred, and Sibilet's warnings, went to have herself made ready for the walk. The abbe and Blondet obeyed the behest of the mistress of the house and followed her from the dining-room, waiting till she was ready on the terrace before the chateau.
Monsieur Langlume, your miller, grinds his flour gratis at my request, and my servant bakes his bread with mine." "I had quite forgotten my little protegee," said the countess, troubled at Sibilet's remark. "Your arrival," she added to Blondet, "has quite turned my head.
But as most men are not observers, and as among observers three fourths observe only after a thing has taken place, Adolphe Sibilet's grumbling manner was considered the result of an honest frankness, of a capacity much praised by his master, and of a stubborn uprightness which no temptation could shake. Some men are as much benefited by their defects as others by their good qualities.
Sibilet's eldest daughter married Monsieur Herve, a school-master, whose school was transformed into a college as a result of this marriage, so that for the past year Soulanges had rejoiced in the presence of a professor.
"Tolerant!" continued the keeper, replying to the general's remark about Sibilet, "I would tolerate a loss of ten per cent upon the gross returns of Les Aigues; but as things are now thirty per cent is what you lose, general; and, if Monsieur Sibilet's accounts show it, I don't understand his tolerance, for he benevolently gives up a thousand or twelve hundred francs a year."
Gaubertin's exclamation, though easy to understand from this summary of young Sibilet's life, needs a few more explanatory details. Adolphe Sibilet, supremely unlucky, as we have shown by the foregoing sketch of him, was one of those men who cannot reach the heart of a woman except by way of the altar and the mayor's office.
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