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Updated: June 11, 2025
The levelling and cultivation of the noble park, once so carefully tended, so delightful in its beauty, threw into isolated relief the pavilion of the Rendezvous, now the Villa Buen-Retiro of Madame Isaure Gaubertin; it was the only building left standing, and it commanded the whole landscape, or as we might better call it, the stretch of cornfields which now constituted the landscape.
"But he would send me away, dear Monsieur Gaubertin, he would get rid of me! and you know how happy I am living there at the gate of the Avonne." "The general will soon get sick of the whole place," replied Gaubertin; "you wouldn't be long out even if he did happen to send you away. Besides, you know those woods," he added, waving his hand at the landscape; "I am stronger there than the masters."
The morning of his final departure he contrived to meet, as it were accidentally, Courtecuisse, the only keeper then employed at Les Aigues, the great extent of which really needed at least three. "Well, Monsieur Gaubertin," said Courtecuisse, "so you have had trouble with the count?" "Who told you that?" answered Gaubertin.
"I don't see where I am to get the four thousand francs I save honestly and invest every year, after you have cut up and sold Les Aigues," said Sibilet, shortly. "Monsieur Gaubertin has made me many fine promises; but the crisis is coming on; there will be fighting, surely. Promising before victory and keeping a promise after it are two very different things."
"But why can't I find persons to lease the right of cutting timber as before?" "Monsieur le comte has enemies." "Who are they?" "Well, in the first place, Monsieur Gaubertin." "Do you mean the scoundrel whose place you took?" "Not so loud, Monsieur le comte," said Sibilet, showing fear; "I beg of you, not so loud, my cook might hear us."
If Rigou, Soudry, and Gaubertin had lived at Ville-aux-Fayes, they would have quarrelled; their various pretensions would have clashed; but fate ordained that the Lucullus of Blangy felt too strongly the need of solitude, in which to wallow at his ease in usury and sensuality, to live anywhere but at Blangy; that Madame Soudry had sense enough to see that she could reign nowhere else except at Soulanges; and that Ville-aux-Fayes was Gaubertin's place of business.
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.
"Whatever you do; tell your plan." "My plan," said Gaubertin, "is to take double, and sell half to the Conches, and Cerneux, and Blangy folks who want to buy. Soudry has his clients, and you yours, and I, mine. That's not the difficulty. The thing is, how are we going to arrange among ourselves? How shall we divide up the great lots?" "Nothing easier," said Rigou.
Saved from the draft by Gaubertin, the steward of Les Aigues, whose father was prosecuting-attorney of the department, and who, moreover, could refuse nothing to Mademoiselle Cochet, Tonsard married as soon as his house was finished and his vines had begun to bear.
The annual pickings of Gaubertin and Mademoiselle Cochet, their wages and perquisites, became so large that the most affectionate relative could not possibly have been more devoted than they to their kindly mistress. There is really no describing how a swindler cossets his dupe. A mother is not so tender nor so solicitous for a beloved daughter as the practitioner of tartuferie for his milch cow.
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