The Village Rector | Page 5

back, and leading the miserable horse and
cart full of crockery with which her husband plied a disguised usury.
Dark-skinned, high-colored, enjoying robust health, and showing when
she laughed a brilliant set of teeth, white, long, and broad as almonds,
Madame Sauviat had the hips and bosom of a woman made by Nature
expressly for maternity.
If this strong girl were not earlier married, the fault must be attributed
to the Harpagon "no dowry" her father practised, though he never read
Moliere. Sauviat was not deterred by the lack of dowry; besides, a man
of fifty can't make difficulties, not to speak of the fact that such a wife
would save him the cost of a servant. He added nothing to the furniture
of his bedroom where, from the day of his wedding to the day he left
the house, twenty years later, there was never anything but a single
four-post bed, with valance and curtains of green serge, a chest, a
bureau, four chairs, a table, and a looking-glass, all collected from
different localities. The chest contained in its upper section pewter
plates, dishes, etc., each article dissimilar from the rest. The kitchen can
be imagined from the bedroom.
Neither husband nor wife knew how to read,--a slight defect of

education which did not prevent them from ciphering admirably and
doing a most flourishing business. Sauviat never bought any article
without the certainty of being able to sell it for one hundred per cent
profit. To relieve himself of the necessity of keeping books and
accounts, he bought and sold for cash only. He had, moreover, such a
perfect memory that the cost of any article, were it only a farthing,
remained in his mind year after year, together with its accrued interest.
Except during the time required for her household duties, Madame
Sauviat was always seated in a rickety wooden chair placed against the
corner pillar of the building. There she knitted and looked at the passers,
watched over the old iron, sold and weighed it, and received payment if
Sauviat was away making purchases. When at home the husband could
be heard at daybreak pushing open his shutters; the household dog
rushed out into the street; and Madame Sauviat presently came out to
help her man in spreading upon the natural counter made by the low
walls on either side of the corner of the house on the two streets, the
multifarious collection of bells, springs, broken gunlocks, and the other
rubbish of their business, which gave a poverty-stricken look to the
establishment, though it usually contained as much as twenty thousand
francs' worth of lead, steel, iron, and other metals.
Never were the former peddler and his wife known to speak of their
fortune; they concealed its amount as carefully as a criminal hides a
crime; and for years they were suspected of shaving both gold and
silver coins. When Champagnac died the Sauviats made no inventory
of his property; but they rummaged, with the intelligence of rats, into
every nook and corner of the old man's house, left it as naked as a
corpse, and sold the wares it contained in their own shop.
Once a year, in December, Sauviat went to Paris in one of the public
conveyances. The gossips of the neighborhood concluded that in order
to conceal from others the amount of his fortune, he invested it himself
on these occasions. It was known later that, having been connected in
his youth with one of the most celebrated dealers in metal, an
Auvergnat like himself, who was living in Paris, Sauviat placed his
funds with the firm of Bresac, the mainspring and spine of that famous
association known by the name of the "Bande Noire," which, as we
have already said, took its rise from a suggestion made by Sauviat
himself.

Sauviat was a fat little man with a weary face, endowed by Nature with
a look of honesty which attracted customers and facilitated the sale of
goods. His straightforward assertions, and the perfect indifference of
his tone and manner, increased this impression. In person, his naturally
ruddy complexion was hardly perceptible under the black metallic dust
which powdered his curly black hair and the seams of a face pitted with
the small-pox. His forehead was not without dignity; in fact, it
resembled the well-known brow given by all painters to Saint Peter, the
man of the people, the roughest, but withal the shrewdest, of the
apostles. His hands were those of an indefatigable worker,--large, thick,
square, and wrinkled with deep furrows. His chest was of seemingly
indestructible muscularity. He never relinquished his peddler's
costume,--thick, hobnailed shoes; blue stockings knit by his wife and
hidden by leather gaiters; bottle-green velveteen trousers; a checked
waistcoat, from which depended the brass key of his silver watch