“Well,” Derville replied, “I can only advise your lordship to go in person to Presles and ask this Margueron to dinner. Crottat will send down his head-clerk with a form of sale ready drawn out, leaving blank pages or lines for the insertion of descriptions of the plots and the necessary titles. Your Excellency will do well to go provided with a cheque for part of the purchase-money in case of need, and not to forget the letter appointing the son to the collectorship at Senlis. If you do not strike on the nail, the farm will slip through your fingers. You have no idea, Monsieur le Comte, of peasant cunning. Given a peasant on one side and a diplomat on the other, the peasant will win the day.”
Crottat confirmed this advice, which, from the footman’s report to Pierrotin, the Count had evidently adopted. On the day before, the Count had sent a note to Moreau by the Beaumont diligence, desiring him to invite Margueron to dinner, as he meant to come to some conclusion concerning the Moulineaux farmlands.
Before all this, the Count had given orders for the restoration of the living-rooms at Presles, and Monsieur Grindot, a fashionable architect, went down there once a week. So, while treating for his acquisition, Monsieur de Sérizy proposed inspecting the works at the same time and the effect of the new decorations. He intended to give his wife a surprise by taking her to Presles, and the restoration of the château was a matter of pride to him. What event, then, could have happened, that the Count, who, only the day before, was intending to go overtly to Presles, should now wish to travel thither incognito, in Pierrotin’s chaise?
Here a few words are necessary as to the antecedent history of the steward at Presles.
This man, Moreau, was the son of a proctor in a provincial town, who at the time of the Revolution had been made a magistrate (procureur-syndic) at Versailles. In this position the elder Moreau had been largely instrumental in saving the property and life of the Sérizys, father and son. Citizen Moreau had belonged to the party of Danton; Robespierre, implacable in revenge, hunted him down, caught him, and had him executed at Versailles. The younger Moreau, inheriting his father’s doctrines and attachments, got mixed up in one of the conspiracies plotted against the First Consul on his accession to power. Then Monsieur de Sérizy, anxious to pay a debt of gratitude, succeeded in effecting Moreau’s escape after he was condemned to death; in 1804 he asked and obtained his pardon; he at first found him a place in his office, and afterwards made him his secretary and manager of his private affairs.
Some time after his patron’s marriage, Moreau fell in love with the Countess’ maid and married her. To avoid the unpleasantly false position in which he was placed by this union—and there were many such at the Imperial Court—he asked to be appointed land steward at Presles, where his wife could play the lady, and where, in a neighborhood of small folks, they would neither of them be hurt in their own conceits. The Count needed a faithful agent at Presles, because his wife preferred to reside at Sérizy, which is no more than five leagues from Paris. Moreau was familiar with all his affairs, and he was intelligent; before the Revolution he had studied law under his father. So Monsieur de Sérizy said to him:
“You will not make a fortune, for you have tied a millstone round your neck; but you will be well off, for I will provide for that.”
And, in fact, the Count gave Moreau a fixed salary of a thousand crowns, and a pretty little lodge to live in beyond the outbuildings; he also allowed him so many cords of wood a year out of the plantations for fuel, so much straw, oats, and hay for two horses, and a certain proportion of the payments in kind. A sous-préfet is less well off.
During the first eight years of his stewardship, Moreau managed the estate conscientiously, and took an interest in his work. The Count, when he came down to inspect the domain, to decide on purchases or sanction improvements, was struck by Moreau’s faithful service, and showed his approbation by handsome presents. But when Moreau found himself the father of a girl—his third child—he was so completely established at his ease at Presles, that he forgot how greatly he was indebted to Monsieur de Sérizy for such unusually liberal advantages. Thus in 1816, the steward, who had hitherto done no more than help himself freely, accepted from a wood-merchant a bonus of twenty-five thousand francs, with the promise of a rise, for signing an agreement for twelve years allowing the contractor to cut fire-logs in the woods of Presles. Moreau argued thus: He had no promise of a pension; he was the father of a family; the Count certainly owed him so much by way of premium on nearly ten years’ service. He was already lawfully possessed of sixty thousand francs in savings; with this sum added to it he could purchase for a hundred and twenty thousand a farm in the vicinity of Champagne, a hamlet on the right bank of the Oise a little way above l’Isle-Adam.
The stir of politics hindered the Count and the country-folks from taking cognizance of this investment; the business was indeed transacted in the name of Madame Moreau, who was supposed to have come into some money from an old great-aunt in her own part of the country, at Saint-Lô.
When once the steward had tasted the delicious fruits of ownership, though his conduct was still apparently honesty itself, he never missed an opportunity of adding to his clandestine wealth; the interests of his three children served as an emollient to quench the ardors of his honesty, and we must do him the justice to say that
