The Jealousies of a Country Town

Scott has taught us to revere in Jeanie Deans’ Puritan father; if, finally, you can recognize in the Roman Church the nobility of a Potius mori quam foedari which you admire in a Republican⁠—then you can understand the anguish that rent the great Abbé de Sponde when he saw the apostate in his nephew’s drawing-room; when he was compelled to meet the renegade, the backslider, the enemy of the Church, the aider and abettor of the Oath to the Constitution. It was du Bousquier’s private ambition to lord it over the countryside; and as a first proof of his power, he determined to reconcile the officiating priest of St. Leonard’s with the curé of Alençon. He gained his object. His wife imagined that peace had been made where the stern Abbé saw no peace, but surrender of principle. M. de Sponde was left alone in the faith. The Bishop came to du Bousquier’s house, and appeared satisfied with the cessation of hostilities. The Abbé François’ goodness had conquered everyone⁠—everyone except the old Roman of the Roman Church, who might have cried with Cornélie, “Ah, God! what virtues you make me hate!” The Abbé de Sponde died when orthodoxy expired in the diocese.

In 1819 the Abbé de Sponde’s property raised Mme. du Bousquier’s income from land to twenty-five thousand livres without counting the Prébaudet or the house in the Val-Noble. About the same time du Bousquier returned the amount of his wife’s savings (which she had made over to him), and instructed her to invest the moneys in purchases of land near the Prébaudet, so that the estate, including the Abbé de Sponde’s adjoining property, was one of the largest in the department. As for du Bousquier, he invested his money with the Kellers, and made a journey to Paris four times a year. Nobody knew the exact amount of his private fortune, but at this time he was supposed to be one of the wealthiest men in the department of the Orne. A dexterous man, and the permanent candidate of the Liberal party, he always lost his election by seven or eight votes under the Restoration. Ostensibly he repudiated his connection with the Liberals, offering himself as a Ministerial-Royalist candidate; but although he succeeded in gaining the support of the Congrégation and of the magistrature, the repugnance of the administration was too strong to be overcome.

Then the rabid Republican, frantic with ambition, conceived the idea of beginning a struggle with the Royalism and Aristocracy of the country, just as they were carrying all before them. He gained the support of the clergy by an appearance of piety very skilfully kept up; always going with his wife to mass, giving money to the convents, and supporting the confraternity of the Sacré-Coeur; and whenever a dispute arose between the clergy and the town, or the department, or the State, he was very careful to take the clerical side. And so, while secretly supported by the Liberals, he gained the influence of the Church; and as a Constitutional-Royalist kept close beside the aristocratic section, the better to ruin it. And ruin it he did. He was always on the watch for any mistake on the part of those high in rank or in office under the Government; with the support of the bourgeoisie he carried out all the improvements which the nobles and officials ought to have undertaken and directed, if the imbecile jealousies of place had not frustrated their efforts. Constitutional opinion carried him through in the affair of the curé, in the theatre question, and in all the various schemes of improvement which du Bousquier first prompted the Liberals to make, and afterwards supported in the course of debate, declaring himself in favor of any measures for the good of the country. He brought about an industrial revolution; and his detestation of certain families on the highroad to Brittany rapidly increased the material prosperity of the province.

And so he paved the way for his revenge upon the gens à châteaux in general, and the d’Esgrignons in particular: some day, not so very far distant, he would plunge a poisoned blade into the very heart of the clique. He found capital to revive the manufacture of point d’Alençon and to increase the linen trade. Alençon began to spin its own flax by machinery. And while his name was associated with all these interests, and written in the hearts of the masses, while he did all that Royalty left undone, du Bousquier risked not a farthing of his own. With his means, he could afford to wait while enterprising men with little capital were obliged to give up and leave the results of their labors to luckier successors. He posed as a banker. A Laffitte on a small scale, he became a sleeping partner in all new inventions, taking security for his money. And as a public benefactor, he did remarkably well for himself. He was a promoter of insurance companies, a patron of new public conveyances; he got up memorials for necessary roads and bridges. The authorities, being left behind in this way, regarded this activity in the light of an encroachment; they blundered, and put themselves in the wrong, for the prefecture was obliged to give way for the good of the country.

Du Bousquier embittered the provincial noblesse against the court nobles and the peerage. He helped, in short, to bring it to pass that a very large body of Constitutional-Royalists supported the Journal des Débats and M. de Chateaubriand in a contest with the throne. It was an ungrateful opposition based on ignoble motives which contributed to bring about the triumph of the bourgeoisie and the press in 1830. Wherefore du Bousquier, like those whom he represented, had the pleasure of watching a funeral procession of royalty5 pass through their district without a single demonstration of sympathy from a population alienated from them in ways so numerous that