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Updated: June 26, 2025
Hate, intelligence, and means at command, such were the three sides of the terrible triangle which describes the general's closest enemy, the spy ever watching Les Aigues, a shark having constant dealings with sixty to eighty small land-owners, relations or connections of the peasantry, who feared him as such men always fear their creditor. Rigou was in his way another Tonsard.
"How shall I find out what those fellows have been saying over their pool?" Rigou was asking himself, when he happened to see the waiter's face in the mirror beside him. The waiter was a jack at all trades; he cultivated Socquard's vines, swept out the cafe and the billiard-room, kept the garden in order, and watered the Tivoli, all for fifty francs a year.
Marie, instigated by her grandmother, had, as we see, followed Bonnebault; she had watched him through the very window where Rigou was now standing, and had seen him displaying his graces and paying compliments so agreeable to Mademoiselle Socquard that she was forced to smile upon him. That smile had brought about the scene in the midst of which the revelation that interested Rigou came out.
Jean, who had charge of the fruit-room, was trained to keep fresh the finest fruits grown in the department; so that Rigou ate pears and apples and sometimes grapes, at Easter. No prophet regarded as a God was ever more blindly obeyed than was Rigou in his own home. A mere motion of his black eyelashes could plunge his wife, Annette, and Jean into the deepest anxiety.
Soudry, Rigou, and Gaubertin, who were the special protectors of the family, had warned Tonsard that he must not expect to save Nicolas, who was tall and vigorous, from being recruited if he drew a fatal number.
"Well, it is for you, papa," he added, addressing Rigou, "to manoeuvre the matter so that we can get him to the fair; once there, we ought to be able to entrap him." The fair of Soulanges, which takes place on the 15th of August, is one of the features of the town, and carries the palm over all other fairs in a circuit of sixty miles, even those of the capital of the department.
"If they appoint my son-in-law attorney-general we can't help ourselves; the general will get him replaced by some Parisian devoted to his interests," continued Rigou. "If he gets a place in Paris for Gendrin and makes Guerbet chief-justice of the court at Auxerre, he'll knock down our skittles!
The patriot peasant returned to his cot at Blangy and watched the destruction, one by one, of his illusions; he saw his republic come to an end at the heels of an emperor, while he himself fell into utter poverty, to which Rigou stealthily managed to reduce him. And why? Because Niseron had never been willing to accept anything from him.
"Here I am!" cried Madame Vermut, coming into the room; "and without my re-active, for Vermut is so inactive in all that concerns me that I can't call him an active of any kind." "What the devil is that cursed old Rigou doing there?" said Soudry to Guerbet, as they saw the green chaise stop before the gate of the Tivoli. "He is one of those tiger-cats whose every step has an object."
The sagacity of a savage, which Michaud's new occupation had developed among his faculties, joined to an acquaintance with the passions and interests of Blangy, enabled him partially to understand a third idyll in the Greek style, which poor villagers like Tonsard, and middle-aged rich men like Rigou, translate freely to use the classic word in the depths of their country solitudes.
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