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Updated: July 6, 2025
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.
The carved settee, the high-backed chairs covered with tapestry, the consoles, the clocks, the tall embroidery frames, the tables, the lustres, hidden away in the second-hand shops of Auxerre and Ville-aux-Fayes were fifty per-cent cheaper than the modern, ready-made furniture of the faubourg Saint Antoine.
The appearance of three keepers handsomely dressed in green cloth, the Emperor's color, with faces denoting firmness, and each of them well-made, active, and capable of spending their nights in the woods, was a great event in the valley, from Conches to Ville-aux-Fayes. Throughout the district Groison was the only man who welcomed these veterans.
The next evening the sub-prefect, having ended his visit at the chateau, was welcomed in the salon of Monsieur Gaubertin at Ville-aux-Fayes in these words: "Well, Monsieur des Lupeaulx, so you have returned from Les Aigues?"
Gaubertin, now mayor of Ville-aux-Fayes, received steady support from his brother-in-law Gendrin, who was judge of the municipal court. Gaubertin the younger, the solicitor who had the most practice before this court and much repute in the arrondissement, was already thinking of selling his practice after five years' exercise of it.
By daybreak, eight persons the count, Groison, the three keepers, and two gendarmes sent from Soulanges with their sergeant searched the country. It was not till the middle of the morning that they found the body of the bailiff in a copse between the mail-road and the smaller road leading to Ville-aux-Fayes, at the end of the park of Les Aigues, not far from Conches.
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.
No spot was ever more adapted for revenge or murder, for the road to Ronquerolles continues to the bridge over the Avonne in front of the pavilion of the Rendezvous, while that to Cerneux leads off above the mail-road; so that between the four roads, to Les Aigues, Ville-aux-Fayes, Ronquerolles, and Cerneux, a murderer could choose his line of retreat and leave his pursuers in uncertainty.
Bent by toil, with pallid face and silvery hair, the old vinedresser, now the sole representative of civic virtue in the community, had been, during the Revolution, president of the Jacobin club at Ville-aux-Fayes, and a juror in the revolutionary tribunal of the district.
"I have already," wrote Sibilet, "sued these men in the courts at Ville-aux-Fayes, for they have taken legal residence there, on account of this lease, with my old employer, Maitre Corbinet. I fear we shall lose the suit." "It is a question of income, my dear," said the general, showing the letter to his wife. "Will you go down to Les Aigues a little earlier this year than last?"
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