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Updated: July 11, 2025
Soudry followed Rigou's example from Soulanges to a distance of fifteen miles beyond Ville-aux-Fayes. These two usurers shared the district between them. Gaubertin, whose rapacity was in a higher sphere, not only did not compete against that of his associates, but he prevented all other capital in Ville-aux-Fayes from being employed in the same fruitful manner.
His dress, which never varied, consisted of a long blue surtout with a military collar, a black cravat, with waistcoat and trousers of black cloth. His shoes, very thick soled, had iron nails outside, and inside woollen linings knit by his wife in the winter evenings. Annette and her mistress also knit the master's stockings. Rigou's name was Gregoire.
"Ran tan plan! masters indeed!" shouted old Fourchon. "I say, my lad," he added to Nicolas, "after your performance this morning it's not my clarionet that you'll get between your thumb and four fingers!" "Don't plague him, or he'll make you throw up your wine by a punch in the stomach," said Catherine, roughly. Strategically, Rigou's position at Blangy was that of a picket sentinel.
Until the present time the general had been so absorbed in his personal interests and in his marriage that he had never remembered Rigou, but when Sibilet advised him to get himself made mayor in Rigou's place, he took post-horses and went to see the prefect.
Rigou's house, the handsomest in the village, was built of the large rubble-stone peculiar to Burgundy, imbedded in yellow mortar smoothed by the trowel, which produced an uneven surface, still further broken here and there by projecting points of the stone, which was mostly black.
The butcher of Soulanges brought his best meat under fear of losing Rigou's custom. The poultry, raised on the premises, was of the finest quality. This system of secret pampering embraced everything in which Rigou was personally concerned. Though the slippers of the knowing Thelemist were of stout leather they were lined with lamb's wool.
When Rigou's little green chaise appeared, towards twelve o'clock, in the broad avenue which skirts the river, Gaubertin, in cap, boots, and jacket, was returning from the wharves. He hastened his steps, feeling very sure that Rigou's object in coming over could only be "the great affair."
The curtains, which squeaked upon their rods, were at least fifty years old; their material, of cotton in a square pattern like that of mattresses, alternately pink and white, came from the Indies. A sideboard and dinner-table completed the equipment of the room, which was kept with extreme nicety. At the corner of the fireplace was an immense sofa, Rigou's especial seat.
From this succinct description, in style like that of an auction sale, it will be easy to imagine that the bedrooms of Monsieur and Madame Rigou were limited to mere necessaries; yet it would be a mistake to suppose that such parsimony affected the essential excellence of those necessaries. All the rest of Rigou's belongings were made comfortable for his use, as we shall see.
"Yes, that's so; you'll be Rigou's cats-paw!" cried Fourchon, who alone understood his grandson. Just then Langlume, the miller of Les Aigues, passed the tavern. Madame Tonsard hailed him. "Is it true," she said, "that gleaning is to be forbidden?" Langlume, a jovial white man, white with flour and dressed in grayish-white clothes, came up the steps and looked in.
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