We have an officer in this town who has nothing to do, and spends all his time in nagging at us ——”
“The devil!” said Corentin, while Derville entered their names and his profession as attorney to the lower Court in the department of the Seine,
“I fancied the Sechards were very rich.” “Some people say they are millionaires,” replied the innkeeper. “But as to hindering tongues from wagging, you might as well try to stop the river from flowing.
Old Sechard left two hundred thousand francs’ worth of landed property, it is said; and that is not amiss for a man who began as a workman.
Well, and he may have had as much again in savings, for he made ten or twelve thousand francs out of his land at last.
So, supposing he were fool enough not to invest his money for ten years, that would be all told.
But even if he lent it at high interest, as he is suspected of doing there would be three hundred thousand francs perhaps, and that is all.
Five hundred thousand francs is a long way short of a million.
I should be quite content with the difference, and no more of the Belle Etoile for me!”
“Really!” said Corentin. “Then Monsieur David Sechard and his wife have not a fortune of two or three millions?”
“Why,” exclaimed the innkeeper’s wife, “that is what the Cointets are supposed to have, who robbed him of his invention, and he does not get more than twenty thousand francs out of them. Where do you suppose such honest folks would find millions?
They were very much pinched while the father was alive.
But for Kolb, their manager, and Madame Kolb, who is as much attached to them as her husband, they could scarcely have lived.
Why, how much had they with La Verberie!
— A thousand francs a year perhaps.”
Corentin drew Derville aside and said:
“In vino veritas! Truth lives under a cork.
For my part, I regard an inn as the real registry office of the countryside; the notary is not better informed than the innkeeper as to all that goes on in a small neighborhood.
— You see! we are supposed to know all about the Cointets and Kolb and the rest. “Your innkeeper is the living record of every incident; he does the work of the police without suspecting it.
A government should maintain two hundred spies at most, for in a country like France there are ten millions of simple-minded informers.
— However, we need not trust to this report; though even in this little town something would be known about the twelve hundred thousand francs sunk in paying for the Rubempre estate. We will not stop here long ——”
“I hope not!” Derville put in.
“And this is why,” added Corentin; “I have hit on the most natural way of extracting the truth from the mouth of the Sechard couple.
I rely upon you to support, by your authority as a lawyer, the little trick I shall employ to enable you to hear a clear and complete account of their affairs. — After dinner we shall set out to call on Monsieur Sechard,” said Corentin to the innkeeper’s wife. “Have beds ready for us, we want separate rooms.
There can be no difficulty ‘under the stars.’”
“Oh, monsieur,” said the woman, “we invented the sign.”
“The pun is to be found in every department,” said Corentin; “it is no monopoly of yours.”
“Dinner is served, gentlemen,” said the innkeeper.
“But where the devil can that young fellow have found the money?
Is the anonymous writer accurate?
Can it be the earnings of some handsome baggage?” said Derville, as they sat down to dinner.
“Ah, that will be the subject of another inquiry,” said Corentin. “Lucien de Rubempre, as the Duc de Chaulieu tells me, lives with a converted Jewess, who passes for a Dutch woman, and is called Esther van Bogseck.”
“What a strange coincidence!” said the lawyer. “I am hunting for the heiress of a Dutchman named Gobseck — it is the same name with a transposition of consonants.”
“Well,” said Corentin, “you shall have information as to her parentage on my return to Paris.”
An hour later, the two agents for the Grandlieu family set out for La Verberie, where Monsieur and Madame Sechard were living.
Never had Lucien felt any emotion so deep as that which overcame him at La Verberie when comparing his own fate with that of his brother-in-law.
The two Parisians were about to witness the same scene that had so much struck Lucien a few days since.
Everything spoke of peace and abundance.
At the hour when the two strangers were arriving, a party of four persons were being entertained in the drawing-room of La Verberie: the cure of Marsac, a young priest of five-and-twenty, who, at Madame Sechard’s request, had become tutor to her little boy Lucien; the country doctor, Monsieur Marron; the Maire of the commune; and an old colonel, who grew roses on a plot of land opposite to La Verberie on the other side of the road.
Every evening during the winter these persons came to play an artless game of boston for centime points, to borrow the papers, or return those they had finished.
When Monsieur and Madame Sechard had bought La Verberie, a fine house built of stone, and roofed with slate, the pleasure-grounds consisted of a garden of two acres.
In the course of time, by devoting her savings to the purpose, handsome Madame Sechard had extended her garden as far as a brook, by cutting down the vines on some ground she purchased, and replacing them with grass plots and clumps of shrubbery.
At the present time the house, surrounded by a park of about twenty acres, and enclosed by walls, was considered the most imposing place in the neighborhood.
Old Sechard’s former residence, with the outhouses attached, was now used as the dwelling-house for the manager of about twenty acres of vineyard left by him, of five farmsteads, bringing in about six thousand francs a year, and ten acres of meadow land lying on the further side of the stream, exactly opposite the little park; indeed, Madame Sechard hoped to include them in it the next year.
La Verberie was already spoken of in the neighborhood as a chateau, and Eve Sechard was known as the Lady of Marsac.
Lucien, while flattering her vanity, had only followed the example of the peasants and vine-dressers.
Courtois, the owner of the mill, very picturesquely situated a few hundred yards from the meadows of La Verberie, was in treaty, it was said, with Madame Sechard for the sale of his property; and this acquisition would give the finishing touch to the estate and the rank of a “place” in the department.
Madame Sechard, who did a great deal of good, with as much judgment as generosity, was equally esteemed and loved.
Her beauty, now really splendid, was at the height of its bloom.
She was about six-and-twenty, but had preserved all the freshness of youth from living in the tranquillity and abundance of a country life.