Monsieur Lecoq Émile Gaboriau (popular books of all time .txt) 📖

that the nation had sold this princely domain for scarcely a twentieth part of its real value. The appraisement was sixty-nine thousand francs. It was giving the property away.

And yet, it was necessary to have this amount, and Lacheneur possessed it, since he had poured it in a flood of beautiful louis d’or into the hands of the receiver of the district.

From that moment his popularity waned. The patriots who had applauded the ploughboy, cursed the capitalist. He discreetly left them to recover from their rage as best they could, and returned to Sairmeuse. There everyone bowed low before Citoyen Lacheneur.

Unlike most people, he did not forget his past hopes at the moment when they might be realized.

He married Martha Barrois, and, leaving the country to work out its own salvation without his assistance, he gave his time and attention to agriculture.

Any close observer, in those days, would have felt certain that the man was bewildered by the sudden change in his situation.

His manner was so troubled and anxious that one, to see him, would have supposed him a servant in constant fear of being detected in some indiscretion.

He did not open the château, but installed himself and his young wife in the cottage formerly occupied by the head gamekeeper, near the entrance of the park.

But, little by little, with the habit of possession, came assurance.

The Consulate had succeeded the Directory, the Empire succeeded the Consulate, Citoyen Lacheneur became M. Lacheneur.

Appointed mayor two years later, he left the cottage and took possession of the château.

The former ploughboy slumbered in the bed of the Ducs de Sairmeuse; he ate from the massive plate, graven with their coat-of-arms; he received his visitors in the magnificent salon in which the Ducs de Sairmeuse had received their friends in years gone by.

To those who had known him in former days, M. Lacheneur had become unrecognizable. He had adapted himself to his lofty station. Blushing at his own ignorance; he had found the courage⁠—wonderful in one of his age⁠—to acquire the education which he lacked.

Then, all his undertakings were successful to such a degree that his good fortune had become proverbial. That he took any part in an enterprise, sufficed to make it turn out well.

His wife had given him two lovely children, a son and a daughter.

His property, managed with a shrewdness and sagacity which the former owners had not possessed, yielded him an income of at least sixty thousand francs.

How many, under similar circumstances, would have lost their heads! But he, M. Lacheneur, had been wise enough to retain his sangfroid.

In spite of the princely luxury that surrounded him, his own habits were simple and frugal. He had never had an attendant for his own person. His large income he consecrated almost entirely to the improvement of his estate or to the purchase of more land. And yet, he was not avaricious. In all that concerned his wife or children, he did not count the cost. His son, Jean, had been educated in Paris; he wished him to be fitted for any position. Unwilling to consent to a separation from his daughter, he had procured a governess to take charge of her education.

Sometimes his friends accused him of an inordinate ambition for his children; but he always shook his head sadly, as he replied:

“If I can only insure them a modest and comfortable future! But what folly it is to count upon the future. Thirty years ago, who could have foreseen that the Sairmeuse family would be deprived of their estates?”

With such opinions he should have been a good master; he was, but no one thought the better of him on that account. His former comrades could not forgive him for his sudden elevation.

They seldom spoke of him without wishing his ruin in ambiguous words.

Alas! the evil days came. Toward the close of the year 1812, he lost his wife, the disasters of the year 1813 swept away a large portion of his personal fortune, which had been invested in a manufacturing enterprise.

Compromised by the first Restoration, he was obliged to conceal himself for a time; and to cap the climax, the conduct of his son, who was still in Paris, caused him serious disquietude.

Only the evening before, he had thought himself the most unfortunate of men.

But here was another misfortune menacing him; a misfortune so terrible that all the others were forgotten.

From the day on which he had purchased Sairmeuse to this fatal Sunday in August, 1815, was an interval of twenty years.

Twenty years! And it seemed to him only yesterday that, blushing and trembling, he had laid those piles of louis d’or upon the desk of the receiver of the district.

Had he dreamed it?

He had not dreamed it. His entire life, with its struggles and its miseries, its hopes and its fears, its unexpected joys and its blighted hopes, all passed before him.

Lost in these memories, he had quite forgotten the present situation, when a commonplace incident, more powerful than the voice of his daughter, brought him back to the terrible reality. The gate leading to the Château de Sairmeuse, to his château, was found to be locked.

He shook it with a sort of rage; and, being unable to break the fastening, he found some relief in breaking the bell.

On hearing the noise, the gardener came running to the scene of action.

“Why is this gate closed?” demanded M. Lacheneur, with unwonted violence of manner. “By what right do you barricade my house when I, the master, am without?”

The gardener tried to make some excuse.

“Hold your tongue!” interrupted M. Lacheneur. “I dismiss you; you are no longer in my service.”

He passed on, leaving the gardener petrified with astonishment, crossed the courtyard⁠—a courtyard worthy of the mansion, bordered with velvet turf, with flowers, and with dense shrubbery.

In the vestibule, inlaid with marble, three of his tenants sat awaiting him, for it was on Sunday that he always received the workmen who desired to confer with him.

They rose at his approach, and removed their hats