The Earth Read online

  ‘Monsieur le député,’ Macqueron kept saying, embarrassed and red in the face, ‘it's really a great honour.’

  But Monsieur de Chédeville was carried away by Berthe's pretty face and was not listening, while her limpid eyes set in their pale circles of blue looked at him boldly. Her mother gave her age and said where she had been to school, while the girl herself, smiling and welcoming, invited Monsieur de Chédeville to come in, if he felt so inclined.

  ‘But of course, my dear girl!’ he exclaimed. Meanwhile, Father Godard had buttonholed Hourdequin and was once again begging him to persuade the municipal council to vote the necessary funds so that Rognes could have a resident priest of its own. He repeated this performance every six months, together with his reasons: the effort it involved for him and his continual squabbles with the villagers, quite apart from the interests of religion.

  ‘You mustn't say no,’ he said sharply as he saw the farmer make an evasive gesture. ‘Mention it anyway, I'll be expecting an answer.’

  And as Monsieur de Chédeville was just about to follow Berthe, he hurried over and stopped him, in his simple, determined way.

  ‘Excuse me, monsieur le député. The poor church in this village is in such a state!… I'd like to show it to you, you must help me to get it done up… Nobody listens to me. Please come and see.’

  Greatly annoyed, the aging Lothario was resisting when, hearing from Macqueron that several of the councillors were already in the town-hall and had been waiting for the last half hour, Hourdequin said, in his unceremonious way:

  ‘That's right, you go and take a look at the church. That'll kill time until I've finished and then you can take me back to the farm.’

  Monsieur de Chédeville was forced to follow the priest. The groups of people had grown and several villagers set off behind him. They were beginning to pluck up courage and they all had something in mind to ask him.

  When Hourdequin and Macqueron went up into the council-room, they found three councillors waiting, Delhomme and two others. It was a vast, whitewashed room containing only a long pine table and a dozen straw-bottomed chairs; fastened to the wall between the two windows looking onto the road was a cupboard in which were kept the archives, together with odd official documents; and on shelves round the walls there were piles of canvas fire-buckets, the gift of a rich villager for which they had been unable to find a storage place; in any case, they were a useless encumbrance because there were no pumps.

  ‘I'm sorry I'm late, gentlemen,’ said Hourdequin politely. ‘I had Monsieur de Chédeville to lunch.’

  There was no reaction and it was not clear whether his apology was accepted. They had seen the deputy arrive from the window and had strong feelings about the coming election; but it would have been a mistake to mention it out of turn.

  ‘Damn,’ said the farmer. ‘There are only five of us, we haven't got a quorum.’

  Fortunately Lengaigne came in. At first he had been determined not to go to the council meeting because he was not interested in the question of the new road; he was even hoping that his absence would prevent any vote being taken. Then, bitten by curiosity at the appearance of Monsieur de Chédeville, he had decided to come along, to learn what was happening.

  ‘Good! That makes six of us, so we can take a vote,’ exclaimed the mayor.

  And since Lequeu, who acted as secretary, now arrived, red-faced and sulky, with the minute book under his arm, the session could now begin. But Delhomme had started talking in an undertone to his neighbour, Clou, the blacksmith, a tall, dark, gaunt man; they stopped when they realized that the others were listening. But they had all overheard a name, that of the independent candidate, Monsieur Rochefontaine, and after tentatively sounding each other they all now launched, by word or innuendo or disgusted expressions, into an attack on this candidate, whom they did not even know. They were in favour of the maintenance of order, the status quo and the obedience to authority which made for a stable market. Did this gentleman fancy himself to be stronger than the government? Would he succeed in raising the price of wheat to three and a half francs a bushel? It was a blasted impertinence to send out pamphlets, promising more butter than bread when you had no commitments to anything or anybody. They even went so far as to call him an adventurer, a dishonest man combing the villages in order to steal their votes, just as he would make off with their money. Hourdequin could have explained to them that as a free trader Monsieur Rochefontaine had, basically, the same ideas as the Emperor but he deliberately let Macqueron give vent to his violent Bonapartist sympathies and Delhomme put forward his sensible, narrow-minded views; while Lengaigne, forced to keep his mouth shut because he held a tobacco licence, was grumbling away in a corner and muttering about his own brand of muddled republicanism. Although Monsieur de Chédeville's name was not once mentioned, the whole conversation pointed to him and showed how completely they were ready to truckle to his position as the official candidate.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ the mayor said at last, ‘suppose we start?’

  He had sat down at the table in the chairman's place, on a rather wider chair with a back and arms. Only his deputy sat down beside him. The four councillors remained standing, two leaning against the window-sill.

  However, Lequeu had handed a piece of paper to the mayor and whispered something in his ear; then he left the room with a dignified air.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Hourdequin, ‘the schoolmaster has given me a letter for us.’

  He read it out. It was a request for a salary rise of thirty francs a year in view of all the work he had to undertake. Everyone was frowning. They were always reluctant to spend the commune's money, almost as though it came out of their own pockets, and especially to spend money on the school. They did not even discuss it but gave a blank refusal.

  ‘Good! We'll tell him he's got to wait. He's in too much of a hurry, that young man. And now let's start on this question of the road.’

  ‘I'm sorry, Mr Mayor,’ Macqueron interrupted. ‘I'd like to say a word about the matter of the parish priest.’

  Taken aback, Hourdequin now understood why Father Godard had been lunching at the inn. Macqueron was certainly ambitious: what were his motives in pushing himself forward like this? In any case, his proposal met the same fate as that of the schoolmaster. He vainly tried to prove that they had money enough to afford their own priest and that it was really rather disreputable to make do with Bazoches-le-Doyen's leftovers. No, it was out of the question, they'd have to repair the presbytery, it would cost too much to have a priest of their own: half an hour every Sunday from the present one was ample.

  Offended by his deputy's initiative, the mayor summed up:

  ‘There's no case, the council has already taken a decision on this… And now to our road. We must decide something at last… Delhomme, would you be so kind as to ask Lequeu to come back? Does the damned fellow think we're going to spend the whole afternoon discussing his letter?’

  Lequeu was waiting on the stairs. He came solemnly in; and since they did not inform him of the fate of his request, he remained tight-lipped and uneasy, full of unuttered insults: these blasted peasants! What a set! They sent him to fetch the plan of the road from the cupboard and spread it out on the table.

  This plan was well known to the council. It had been lying about in the cupboard for years. Nonetheless, they all gathered round and, resting their elbows on the table, they examined it once again. The mayor listed the advantages for Rognes: a gently sloping street which would allow carriages to drive up to the church and then a saving of five miles compared with the present Châteaudun road which passed through Cloyes; and the commune would only have to pay for less than two miles of it since the neighbouring village of Blanville had already approved the other section, up to where it would join the main road from Châteaudun to Orléans. They listened to him, staring at the plan meanwhile, and nobody said a word. What had prevented the project from going through was above all the question of compensation. Each
councillor could see there was a lot of money to be made out of it and was concerned to discover whether any part of his own land would be affected and if he could sell some of it to the commune, at a hundred francs a pole. And if he was not going to be able to sell any part of a field belonging to him, why should he vote in favour of putting money in someone else's pocket? And as for the gentle slope and the saving in distance, fiddlesticks! His horse would have a harder pull, that's all!

  So Hourdequin did not need to invite discussion in order to know their opinions. He himself was keen on the new road merely because it would pass by his farm and give access to a number of his fields. Similarly, Macqueron and Delhomme, who also had land lying beside the route, were pressing in favour. That made three supporters but neither Clou nor the other councillor had anything to gain; and as for Lengaigne, he was violently opposed to the plan, first because there was nothing in it for him and secondly because he was incensed at the thought that his rival, the deputy, would be the gainer. If Clou and the other councillor were undecided and voted against, that would be three to three. Hourdequin became uneasy. The discussion finally began.

  ‘What's the point? What's the point?’ Lengaigne kept repeating. ‘We've already got a road. It's just for the fun of spending money, robbing Peter to pay Paul… Incidentally, you promised to hand over your piece of land for nothing.’

  This crafty remark was addressed to Macqueron. But the latter, bitterly regretting his fit of generosity, stoutly denied what he had said:

  ‘I didn't promise anything… Who told you that?’

  ‘Who? You yourself, damn it! And in the presence of witnesses. Here now, Monsieur Lequeu was present, he can say… Isn't that the case, Monsieur Lequeu?’

  The schoolmaster, furious at having to wait to learn his fate, made an abrupt dismissive gesture. What interest had all this dirty business of theirs for him!

  ‘Well, really,’ Lengaigne went on. ‘If there's no honesty left in the world, we might as well all go back to the jungle! No, I'm not going to have anything to do with your road! It's highway robbery!’

  Seeing that things were going badly, the mayor hastened to intervene.

  ‘All this is just gossip. It's not for us to go into private squabbles… We must be guided by the public interest, the common good.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Delhomme, sensibly. ‘The new road will be of great value for the whole of the community… Only there are things we want to know. The préfet keeps on saying: Vote a sum of money and then we'll see what the government can do for you. And if he were to do nothing, what's the point of wasting our time voting?’

  At this juncture, Hourdequin felt the moment ripe to announce his big news, which he had been holding in reserve:

  ‘In this connection, gentlemen, I have to inform you that Monsieur de Chédeville has given his word that he will obtain a subsidy from the government to cover half the cost… You know that he is a friend of the Emperor's. All he'll need to do is mention us, over coffee.’

  Even Lengaigne was shaken by this and a blissful look spread over everyone's face, as if at the sight of the Blessed Sacrament. And at any rate the re-election of the outgoing deputy was now assured: the friend of the Emperor was the right man at the source and fount of money and jobs, the man who was known, who was honourable and powerful, the master! There were nods of approval all round the table. These things were obvious, why bother to say them?

  All the same, Hourdequin remained concerned at Clou's silence. He stood up and looked out of the window. Spying the gamekeeper, he instructed him to go and find old Loiseau and bring him along, dead or alive. This man Loiseau was a deaf old peasant, Macqueron's uncle; the latter had had him elected to the council but he never turned up at any meeting because, he said, it was too much of a bother. His son worked at La Borderie and he was completely in Hourdequin's pocket. So as soon as he appeared, in a fluster, all the mayor had to do was to shout into his ear that it was the question of the road. Everyone was already awkwardly scribbling on his voting paper; head down and elbows spread out so that no one else could read. Then they proceeded to the vote of half the cost, in a little whitewood box, like a church collecting-box. There was a superb majority, six for and only one against, Lengaigne. That wretched fellow Clou had voted the right way. And the meeting came to an end after everyone had signed the minute book which the schoolmaster had prepared in advance, leaving a blank space for the result of the vote. Then they all clumped off downstairs at the double, without shaking hands or saying goodbye.

  ‘Oh, I was forgetting,’ Hourdequin said to Lequeu, who was still waiting. ‘Your request for a rise was turned down. The council felt that too much is being spent on the school already.’

  ‘Gang of savages,’ exclaimed the young man, seething with anger, as soon as he was alone. ‘Go on back to your pigsty!’

  The meeting had lasted two hours and Hourdequin found Monsieur de Chédeville standing in front of the town-hall, where he had only just returned from his tour of the village. First of all the priest had not spared him the smallest details of the decrepitude of the church: the hole in the roof, the broken stained-glass, the bare walls. Then, as he was finally making his escape from the vestry which needed repainting, the villagers, now completely recovered from their shyness, fought over him to gain a hearing, tugging him this way and that, full of requests and complaints or asking for favours. One of them dragged him off to the village pond, which was no longer regularly cleaned out through lack of funds; another wanted a covered public washplace on the Aigre, at a spot which he showed him; a third asked for the street to be widened in front of his door so that he could turn his cart round; there was even one old woman who, after forcing the deputy into her house, showed him her swollen legs and asked him if he didn't know a cure for that in Paris. Flustered and out of breath, he still kept a good-humoured smile on his face and was full of promises. Ah, he was a good sort, not too stuck up to talk to us poor folk!

  ‘Well, are we off?’ asked Hourdequin. ‘They're expecting me up at the farm.’

  But at that moment, Coelina came hurrying to her doorway with her daughter Berthe, begging Monsieur de Chédeville to come in for a second; and he would not have asked for anything better, relieved to be able to relax and delighted to see these disingenuously limpid eyes with their circles round them:

  ‘No, we can't,’ the farmer said. ‘We're late as it is. Some other time.’

  And he bustled the bewildered deputy into the gig, meanwhile informing the priest, who was still standing there, that the council had taken no new decision about the question of the parish priest. The coachman whipped up his horse and the carriage shot off, surrounded by the delighted, friendly villagers. The furious priest was left to walk the two miles from Rognes to Bazoches-le-Doyen by himself.

  A fortnight later, Monsieur de Chédeville was elected with a large majority; and by the end of August he had kept his promise and the commune received its subsidy for the new road. Work started on it at once.

  The evening the first stone was turned, Coelina, the dark, lean wife of Macqueron, was at the fountain listening to Bécu's lanky wife, who was talking endlessly, her hands clasped under her apron. For the last week, the tremendous repercussions of the new road had revolutionized the fountain gossip; all they could talk about was the money that some people were going to receive and the backbiting fury of those who weren't. And every day Bécu's wife kept Coelina up to date with what Flore Lengaigne had to say about it; not to set them at odds with each other, of course, but so they could explain their views to each other, which was the best way to agree. Women lost all count of time as they stood there with their arms dangling and their full water jugs at their feet.

  ‘So you see,’ she said, ‘it was all arranged between the mayor and his deputy, so they could have a good rake-off on their land. And she also said your husband didn't keep his promises…’

  At this moment, Flore came out of her house carrying her jug. When she came up, stout
and flabby, Coelina, hands on hips, with her prickly sense of fair play, and always ready with foul language, started to give her a piece of her mind, throwing her slut of a daughter in her face and accusing her herself of sleeping with her own customers; while the tearful down-at-heel Flore merely kept muttering:

  ‘What a bitch! What a bitch!’

  Bécu's wife rushed between them and tried to make them embrace, which nearly made them come to blows. Then she added another piece of news:

  ‘I say, talking about that, did you know that Mouche's daughters are going to get five hundred francs?’

  ‘It's not possible.’

  The quarrel was forgotten there and then and they all gathered round, abandoning their jugs. Yes, it was true. Up at Les Cornailles, the road passed alongside the field belonging to the Mouche girls and they would have to cut off the verge over a distance of two hundred and fifty yards; and at two francs a yard, that worked out at five hundred francs, and with access to the road the land would also increase in value. It was a stroke of luck.