CHAPTER III.
SUMS LODGED AT LAFITTE'S.
Father Madeleine remained as simple as he had been on the first day:he had gray hair, a serious eye, the bronzed face of a workingman,and the thoughtful face of a philosopher. He habitually wore abroad-brimmed hat, and a long coat of coarse cloth buttoned up to thechin. He performed his duties as Mayor, but beyond that lived solitary;he spoke to few persons, shunned compliments, smiled to save himselffrom talking, and gave to save himself from smiling. The women said ofhim, "What a good bear!" and his great pleasure was to walk about thefields. He always took his meals with an open book before him, and hehad a well-selected library. He was fond of books, for they are calmand sure friends. In proportion as leisure came with fortune, he seemedto employ it in cultivating his mind: it was noticed that with eachyear he spent in M---- his language became more polite, chosen, andgentle.
He was fond of taking a gun with him on his walks, but rarely fired;when he did so by accident, he had an infallible aim, which was almostterrific. He never killed an inoffensive animal or a small bird. Thoughhe was no longer young, he was said to possess prodigious strength: helent a hand to any one who needed it, raised a fallen horse, put hisshoulder to a wheel stuck in the mud, or stopped a runaway bull by thehorns. His pockets were always full of half-pence when he went out,and empty when he came home; whenever he passed through a village,the ragged children ran merrily after him, and surrounded him like aswarm of gnats. It was supposed that he must have formerly lived arustic life, for he had all sorts of useful secrets which he taught thepeasants. He showed them how to destroy blight in wheat by sprinklingthe granary and pouring into the cracks of the boards a solution ofcommon salt, and to get rid of weevils by hanging up everywhere, on thewalls and roots, flowering orviot. He had recipes to extirpate fromarable land tares and other parasitic plants which injure wheat, andwould defend a rabbit hutch from rats by the mere smell of a littleGuinea pig, which he placed in it.
One day he saw some countrymen very busy in tearing up nettles; helooked at the pile of uprooted and already withered plants and said:"They are dead, and yet they are good if you know how to use them.When nettles are young, the tops are an excellent vegetable. Whenthey are old, they have threads and fibre like hemp and flax. Whenchopped up, nettles are good for fowls; when pounded, excellent forhorned cattle. Nettle-seed mixed with the food renders the coats ofcattle shining, and the root mixed with salt produces a fine yellowcolor. The nettle is also excellent hay, which can be mown twice; andwhat does it require? A little earth, no care, and no cultivation.The only thing is that the seed falls as it ripens, and is difficultto garner. If a little care were taken, the nettle would be useful;but, being neglected, it becomes injurious, and is then killed. Howmen resemble nettles!" He added after a moment's silence: "My friends,remember this,--there are no bad herbs or bad men; there are only badcultivators."
The children also loved him, because he could make them pretty littletoys of straw and cocoa-nut shells. When he saw a church door hung withblack, he went in; he went after a funeral as other persons do aftera christening. The misfortunes of others attracted him, owing to hisgreat gentleness; he mingled with friends in mourning, and with thepriests round a coffin. He seemed to be fond of hearing those mournfulpsalms which are full of the vision of another world. With his eyefixed on heaven, he listened, with a species of aspiration toward allthe mysteries of Infinitude, to the sad voice singing on the brink ofthe obscure abyss of death. He did a number of good actions, while ascareful to hide them as if they were bad. He would quietly at nightenter houses, and furtively ascend the stairs. A poor fellow, onreturning to his garret, would find that his door had been opened, attimes forced, during his absence; the man would cry that a robber hadbeen there, but when he entered, the first thing he saw was a gold coinleft on the table. The robber who had been there was Father Madeleine.
He was affable and sad: people said, "There is a rich man who does notlook proud: a lucky man who does not look happy." Some persons assertedthat he was a mysterious character, and declared that no one everentered his bed-room, which was a real anchorite's cell, furnished withwinged hour-glasses and embellished with cross-bones and death's-heads.This was so often repeated that some elegant and spiteful ladies ofM---- came to him one day, and said, "Monsieur le Maire, _do_ show usyour bed-room, for people say that it is a grotto." He smiled and ledthem straightway to the "grotto;" they were terribly punished for theircuriosity, as it was a bed-room merely containing mahogany furnitureas ugly as all furniture of that sort, and hung with a paper at twelvesous a roll. They could not notice anything but two double-branchedcandlesticks of an antiquated pattern, standing on the mantel-piece,and seeming to be silver, "because they were Hall-marked,"--a remarkfull of the wit of small towns. People did not the less continue torepeat, however, that no one ever entered this bed-room, and thatit was a hermitage, a hole, a tomb. They also whispered that he hadimmense sums lodged with Lafitte, and with this peculiarity that thingswere always at his immediate disposal, "so that," they added, "M.Madeleine could go any morning to Lafitte's, sign a receipt, and carryoff his two or three millions of francs in ten minutes." In reality,these "two or three millions" were reduced, as we have said, to sixhundred and thirty or forty thousand francs.