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Updated: June 11, 2025
It is easy to imagine what immense influence this triumvirate Rigou, Soudry, and Gaubertin wielded in election periods over electors whose fortunes depended on their good-will.
This provincial Fouquier-Tinville raised a false alarm of danger in the mind of the opera-divinity on the ground of her former relations to the aristocracy, so as to give his son the equally false credit of saving her life; on the strength of which Gaubertin the younger obtained very easily the release of his predecessor.
Education will teach you ways to grab money under cover of the law, like that fine Monsieur Gaubertin; why, you can even be a land-steward like Monsieur Sibilet here, who gets his rations out of Monsieur le comte.
The latter was made peer of France in 1814, and remained faithful to the Bourbons during the Hundred-Days, therefore the Keeper of the Seals readily granted an appointment at his request. This relationship gave Gaubertin a certain importance in the country.
"If Mademoiselle," thought Gaubertin, "were to manage Les Aigues herself, she would never get thirty thousand francs a year out of it; the peasants, the dealers, the workmen would rob her of the rest. It is much better that I should have it, and so enable her to live in peace." The Catholic religion, and it alone, is able to prevent these capitulations of conscience.
The general was not deficient in the special cunning of an old military fox; and after he had spent a few days in examining his new property, he saw that Gaubertin was a steward of the old system, a swindler, such as the dukes and marshals of the Empire, those mushrooms bred from the common earth, were well acquainted with.
Ever since the creation of the Left Centre of the Chamber, the arrondissement of Ville-aux-Fayes had sent a deputy named Leclercq, formerly banking agent of the wine department of the custom-house, a son-in-law of Gaubertin, and now a governor of the Bank of France.
But in 1816 France was not, as it is now, lighted by a flaming publicity; the accomplices might safely count on dividing Les Aigues among them, that is, between Cochet, the notary, and Gaubertin, the latter of whom reserved to himself, "in petto," the intention of buying the others out for a sum down, as soon as the property fairly stood in his own name.
Unfortunately, the worthy justice and his daughter, in the flush of their joy, told Madame Soudry the promise the general had made about these collections, without reflecting that the present collector of Soulanges, a man named Guerbet, brother of the postmaster of Conches, was closely allied, as we shall see later, with Gaubertin and the Gendrins.
If the dwellers in the provinces are dissemblers, they are forced to be so; their excuse lies in the danger expressed in the old proverb, "We must howl with the wolves," a meaning which underlies the character of Phillinte. When General Montcornet took possession of Les Aigues, Gaubertin was no longer rich enough to give up his place.
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