The children’s future prospects troubled Madame de Mortsauf almost as much as their feeble health. I soon saw the truth of what she had told me with regard to her unconfessed importance in the business of the property, which I gradually understood as I studied such facts about the country as a statesman ought to know. After ten years’ struggles Madame Mortsauf had at last reformed the management of the lands. She had quartered them—mis en quatre—a term used in those parts for the rotation of crops, a method of sowing wheat on the same field only once in four years, so that the land yields some crop every year instead of lying fallow. To overcome the pigheaded resistance of the peasantry, it had been necessary to cancel the old leases, to divide the property into four large holdings, and farm on half-profits, the system peculiar to Touraine and the adjacent provinces. The landowner provides the dwelling and outbuildings, and supplies seed to working farmers, with whom he agrees to share the cost of husbandry and the profits. The division is undertaken by a métivier, a farm bailiff, who is authorized to take the half due to the proprietor; and this system, a costly one, is complicated by the way of keeping accounts, which leads to constant changes in the estimate of the shares.
The Countess had persuaded Monsieur de Mortsauf to keep a fifth farm, consisting of the enclosed lands round Clochegourde, in his own hands, partly to give him occupation, but also to demonstrate to the share-farmers by the evidence of facts the superiority of the new methods. Being able here to manage the crops, she had by degrees, with womanly tenacity, had two of the farmhouses rebuilt on the plan of the farms in Artois and Flanders. Her scheme was self-evident. She intended, when the leases on half-profits should expire, to make these two farms into first-class holdings, and let them for rent in money to active and intelligent tenants, so as to simplify the returns to Clochegourde. Dreading lest she should die the first, she was anxious to leave to the Count an income easily collected, and to the children a property which no misadventure could make ruinous.
By this time the fruit-trees planted ten years since were in full bearing. The hedges which guaranteed the boundaries against any dispute in the future had all grown up. The poplars and elms were flourishing. With the recent additions, and by introducing the new system of culture, the estate of Clochegourde, divided into four large holdings, might be made to yield sixteen thousand francs a year in hard cash, at a rent of four thousand francs for each farm; exclusive of the vineyards, the two hundred acres of coppice adjoining, and the home farm. The lanes from these farms were all to come into an avenue leading straight from Clochegourde to the Chinon road. The distance to Tours by this road was no more than five leagues; farmers would certainly not be lacking, especially at a time when everybody was talking of the Count’s improvements and his success, and the increased return from his land.
She proposed to spend about fifteen thousand francs on each of the newly-purchased properties, to convert the houses on them into fine homesteads so as to let them to advantage after farming them for a year or two, while placing there as steward a man named Martineau, the most trustworthy of the bailiffs, who would presently be out of place; for the leases of the four half-profit farms were about to fall in, and the moment was coming for uniting them into two holdings, and letting them for a rent in money.
These very simple plans, complicated only by the necessary outlay of more than thirty thousand francs, were at this time the subject of long discussions between her and the Count—terrible arguments, in which she was emboldened only by the thought of the children’s interests. The mere thought, “If I were to die tomorrow, what would become of them?” made her sick at heart. Only gentle and peaceable souls, to whom rage is impossible, and who long to see the peace they feel within them reign around them, can ever understand what an effort such a contest needs, what rushes of blood oppress the heart before the struggle is faced, what exhaustion follows after a battle in which nothing has been won. Just now, when her children were less wan, less starveling, and more full of life, for the fruitful season had had its effect on them; just now, when she could watch their play with moistened eyes, and a sense of satisfaction that renewed her strength by reviving her spirits, the poor woman was a victim to the insulting thrusts and cutting innuendoes of determined antagonism. The Count, startled by these changes, denied their utility and their possibility with rigid oppugnancy. To all conclusive reasoning he answered with the arguments of a child who should doubt
