An Historical Mystery | Page 6

son ran up to him proved plainly enough the despotic
power of the bailiff of Gondreville. Since 1789, but more especially
since 1793, Michu had been well-nigh master of the property. The
terror he inspired in his wife, his mother-in-law, a servant-lad named
Gaucher, and the cook named Marianne, was shared throughout a
neighborhood of twenty miles in circumference. It may be well to give,
without further delay, the reasons for this fear,--all the more because an
account of them will complete the moral portrait of the man.
The old Marquis de Simeuse transferred the greater part of his property
in 1790; but, overtaken by circumstances, he had not been able to put
the estate of Gondreville into sure hands. Accused of corresponding
with the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Cobourg, the marquis
and his wife were thrust into prison and condemned to death by the
revolutionary tribunal of Troyes, of which Madame Michu's father was
then president. The fine domain of Gondreville was sold as national
property. The head-keeper, to the horror of many, was present at the
execution of the marquis and his wife in his capacity as president of the
club of Jacobins at Arcis. Michu, the orphan son of a peasant, showered
with benefactions by the marquise, who brought him up in her own
home and gave him his place as keeper, was regarded as a Brutus by
excited demagogues; but the people of the neighborhood ceased to

recognize him after this act of base ingratitude. The purchaser of the
estate was a man from Arcis named Marion, grandson of a former
bailiff in the Simeuse family. This man, a lawyer before and after the
Revolution, was afraid of the keeper; he made him his bailiff with a
salary of three thousand francs, and gave him an interest in the sales of
timber; Michu, who was thought to have some ten thousand francs of
his own laid by, married the daughter of a tanner at Troyes, an apostle
of the Revolution in that town, where he was president of the
revolutionary tribunal. This tanner, a man of profound convictions, who
resembled Saint-Just as to character, was afterwards mixed up in
Baboeuf's conspiracy and killed himself to escape execution. Marthe
was the handsomest girl in Troyes. In spite of her shrinking modesty
she had been forced by her formidable father to play the part of
Goddess of Liberty in some republican ceremony.
The new proprietor came only three times to Gondreville in the course
of seven years. His grandfather had been bailiff of the estate under the
Simeuse family, and all Arcis took for granted that the citizen Marion
was the secret representative of the present Marquis and his twin
brother. As long as the Terror lasted, Michu, still bailiff of Gondreville,
a devoted patriot, son-in-law of the president of the revolutionary
tribunal of Troyes and flattered by Malin, representative from the
department of the Aube, was the object of a certain sort of respect. But
when the Mountain was overthrown and after his father-in-law
committed suicide, he found himself a scape- goat; everybody hastened
to accuse him, in common with his father-in- law, of acts to which, so
far as he was concerned, he was a total stranger. The bailiff resented the
injustice of the community; he stiffened his back and took an attitude of
hostility. He talked boldly. But after the 18th Brumaire he maintained
an unbroken silence, the philosophy of the strong; he struggled no
longer against public opinion, and contented himself with attending to
his own affairs,-- wise conduct, which led his neighbors to pronounce
him sly, for he owned, it was said, a fortune of not less than a hundred
thousand francs in landed property. In the first place, he spent nothing;
next, this property was legitimately acquired, partly from the
inheritance of his father-in-law's estate, and partly from the savings of
six- thousand francs a year, the salary he derived from his place with its

profits and emoluments. He had been bailiff of Gondreville for the last
twelve years and every one had estimated the probable amount of his
savings, so that when, after the Consulate was proclaimed, he bought a
farm for fifty thousand francs, the suspicions attaching to his former
opinions lessened, and the community of Arcis gave him credit for
intending to recover himself in public estimation. Unfortunately, at the
very moment when public opinion was condoning his past a foolish
affair, envenomed by the gossip of the country- side, revived the latent
and very general belief in the ferocity of his character.
One evening, coming away from Troyes in company with several
peasants, among whom was the farmer at Cinq-Cygne, he let fall a
paper on the main road; the farmer, who was walking behind him,
stooped