About five o’clock that morning early risers had seen the gendarmerie of Soulanges on its way to Conches.  The news circulated rapidly; and those whom it chiefly interested were much surprised to learn from others, who lived on high ground, that a detachment commanded by the lieutenant of Ville-aux-Fayes had marched through the forest of Les Aigues.  As it was a Monday, there were already good reasons why the peasants should be at the tavern; but it was also the eve of the anniversary of the restoration of the Bourbons, and though the frequenters of Tonsard’s den had no need of that “august cause” (as they said in those days) to explain their presence at the Grand-I-Vert, they did not fail to make the most of it if the mere shadow of an official functionary appeared.

Vaudoyer, Courtecuisse, Tonsard and his family, Godain, and an old vine-dresser named Laroche, were there early in the morning.  The latter was a man who scratched a living from day to day; he was one of the delinquents collected in Blangy under the sort of subscription invented by Sibilet and Courtecuisse to disgust the general by the results of his indictments.  Blangy had supplied three men, twelve women, also eight girls and five boys for whom parent were answerable, all of whom were in a condition of pauperism; but they were the only ones who could be found that were so.  The year 1823 had been a very profitable one to the peasantry, and 1826 as likely, through the enormous quantity of wine yielded, to bring them in a good deal of money; add to this the works at Les Aigues, undertaken by the general, which had put a great deal more in circulation throughout the three districts which bordered on the estate.  It had therefore been quite difficult to find in Blangy, Conches, and Cerneux, one hundred and twenty indigent persons against whom to bring the suits; and in order to do so, they had taken old women, mothers, and grandmothers of those who owned property but who possessed nothing of their own, like Tonsard’s mother.  Laroche, an old laborer, possessed absolutely nothing; he was not, like Tonsard, hot-blooded and vicious,—­his motive power was a cold, dull hatred; he toiled in silence with a sullen face; work was intolerable to him, but he had to work to live; his features were hard and their expression repulsive.  Though sixty years old, he was still strong, except that his back was bent; he saw no future before him, no spot that he could call his own, and he envied those who possessed the land; for this reason he had no pity on the forests of Les Aigues, and took pleasure in despoiling them uselessly.

“Will they be allowed to put us in prison?” he was saying.  “After Conches they’ll come to Blangy.  I’m an old offender, and I shall get three months.”

“What can we do against the gendarmerie, old drunkard?” said Vaudoyer.

“Why! cut the legs of their horses with our scythes.  That’ll bring them down; their muskets are not loaded, and when they find us ten to one against them they’ll decamp.  If the three villages all rose and killed two or three gendarmes, they couldn’t guillotine the whole of us.  They’d have to give way, as they did on the other side of Burgundy, where they sent a regiment.  Bah! that regiment came back again, and the peasants cut the woods just as much as they ever did.”