10
JEAN TETEROL'S IDEA.
"The idea is not mine," said M. Teterol,
bowing modestly. "One day I was talking
¦with that excelUnt M. Crepin, your steward; he
proposed it to me—he encouraged me to think,
in fact, he promised me------"
"I must inform you, Monsieur Teterol, that
your excellent M. Crepin is no longer my
steward, and that his promises, which are never
of much value, are now binding only so far as
he himself is concerned. Still, your proposi-
tion deserves consideration. I will reflect upon
it, and possibly, that for love of geometry—I
should be so charmed to oblige you------"
"Especially if you can do so without dis-
commoding yourself, Monsieur le Baron."
" Yes, my good neighbor; of course, a good
bargain always makes two people happy; and it
would be a pleasure to me to thus inaugurate
our friendly relations, to which I attach great
value. But I hear my dinner-bell calling me.
Au revoir, Monsieur Teterol."
The two neighbors bowed and separated, ap-
parently enchanted with each other.
" The fish has swallowed the bait; the quarry
is mine," thought M. Teterol.
" Ah! my good man, so you are coveting my
quarry! You have been sighing before the
fencethat surrounds it as a Spanish lover sighs
before the lattice that separates him from his
lady-love.
"Now, I know what you are after; and I will
give myself the pleasure of seeing you work
for it,"
With age and with circumstances a man's
nature changes. In his early days, M. Teterol
had displayed admirable patience; he had not
chafed at delay; he had quietly bided his time,
and had never plucked his fruit before it was
fully ripe. Now that he had reached his goal,
he did not hold his passions so well under con-
trol; and passion is always impatient.
A fortnight later he again met the baron;
this time in the village, just as M. de Saligneux
was coming out of the cure's dwelling. He
stopped him, and could not refrain from speak-
ing of the quarry. M. de Saligneux was too
clever a man not to know his own faults, and
even profit by them when opportunity offered.
Conscious of his poor memory, for which he
often reproached himself, he complained of it
openly as a most distressing infirmity and one
which often played him a bad turn. Sometimes
he really did forget, sometimes he only pre-
tended to forget! On M. Teterol's first allusion
to the quarry, he opened his eyes in pretended
astonishment, and exclaimed: "What is that?
What do you mean?" Apparently, he had never
thought of selling his quarry, and had never
supposed, for a moment, that M. Teterol de-
sired to purchase it. So the latter was obliged
to begin anew.
"Ah ! I see," said the baron, " that wretched
fence annoys you. I am sorry for it, but
however extensive one's possessions may be,
one always has a neighbor; and a neighbor,
even a good neighbor, is a nuisance. As, for
example, your house is a constant eye-sore to
me; and yet I have taught myself to make the
best of it."
" My house is an eye-sore to you!" repeated
M. Teterol, feigning profound astonishment, in
his turn.
" Formerly I had a very pretty view of the
plain.    You have walled me in."
"Believe me, Monsieur le Baron, had I once
suspected such a thing------   I cannot however
demolish my house now."
"God forbid!" responded M. de Saligneux.
Then leaning towards M. Teterol, he whis-
pered in his ear:
"Honestly, Monsieur Teterol, did my steward
cost you very dear?"
M. Teterol started violently.
" For whom do you take me?" he replied, with
a great show of indignation. " So you suspect
me of having bought M. Crepin. I wish you
to understand that I have never bought any
person."
"lam quite sure that no one has ever succeed-
ed in buying you. You belong, Monsieur
Teterol, to the race of incorruptible corrupters;
it is a charmins occupation. Oh, pray do not
be angry. I do not refuse to sell you my
quarry; but you should allow me time for re-
flection. You will hear from me before long.
A speedy meeting, my good neighbor!"
Again M. Teterol believed that he had gained
his point; that the quarry was his. Alas! he
passed six months more in alternate hope and
fear. Throughout the entire summer and au-
tumn, M. de Saligneux amused himself by
keeping his neighbor in an agony of suspense.
M. Teterol wrote to him every week, and the
replies that he received now aroused, and now
blighted, his hopes.
One evening the matter was arranged;
nothing remained to be done except to sign
the papers; the next day nothing was accom-
plished. The wind had changed, the baron had
reconsidered; he could not consent to part with
the hallowed soil of his ancestors. M. Teterol
was beside himself; this miserable sand-hill had
become the sole object of thought, and the only
topic of conversation with him. Resistance
had increased his desire for it; he had sworn
that he would have it, and have it he would if
he were obliged to devote his life to the winning
of it. His fields, nis houses, his millions, all
were as nothing while the fence that he ab-
horred stood there flaunting itself in his face.
He would talk of nothing else ; he repeated his
story again and again' to every passer-by who
would pause to listen, until, when any of the
villagers saw him coming, they nudged each
other and said :
"Now we shall certainly hear about that
sand-hill.    Let us get out of his way!"
He made Abbe Miraud the special confidant
of his trouble. He spent long evenings in the
quiet parlor of the parsonage, rehearsing his
wrongs to the good cure, who would gladly
have sympathized with him if he could have
done so without censuring M. de Saligneux.
"Ard he is a nobleman!" M. Teterol cried,
" he is one of your flock. I congratulate you
upon him. I am a plebeian, a mere nobody;
and yet I keep my promises. I have only one
word. Some people have two, have four, have
twenty. They say yes, they say no; and change
from biack to white three times in a single day.
And this man prides himself upon his honor!
He is a rascal—besides, mille tonnerres 1 his
sand is of the poorest quality."
" If it is of such inferior quality, why are
you so anxious to get it?" timidly inquired the
curate, quickly turning his head as if to dodge
a blow.
"I anxious for it! I anxious for it! Ah!
who told you such a thing as that? But
I do not like to be trifled with, to be laughed at,
to be taken for a buffoon. And such are tho
country squire and the gentry; you have fine
sheep in your flock, Monsieur le Cure. But
monsieur is a baron—remember that—a baron,
a real baron!"
So he sneered at the nobility and at the
church, greatly to the chagrin of Abbe Miraud,
who thought all this was in very truth making
a mountain out of a mole-hill.
One day a rumor was circulated throughout
the commune of Saligneux to the effect that
there had been a violent altercation between M.
Teterol and one of his neighbors, on account of
some trifle. The name of this neighbor was
Simoneau. It was said that harsh words had
been interchanged, and people even hinted at
blows. It was to end in a law suit. This
news reached the ears of M. de Saligneux, who,
meeting M. Teterol the next day, accosted him
smilingly and said:
" By the way, my dear neighbor, what is the
trouble between you and Simoneau? They
tell me that you are at variance."
" People talk too much!" muttered M. Tete-
rol, with the sulky air of a man who is being
questioned on a very disagreeable subject.
And he hastily resumed his walk, leaving the
baron convinced that on this occasion, at
least, Dame Rumor had spoken the truth.
M. de Saligneux was really anxious to sell his
quarry, for he had another that furnished him
with all the sand and stone that he required;
but nothing would have induced him to gratify
the desire of his neighbor, nor would anything
have induced him to forego the pleasure of tor-
menting him. He thought he had now found
an opportunity to inflict a mortal wound upon
his enemy. He sent for Simoneau, and cau-
tiously insinuated that the best revenge the latter
could wreak upon M. Teterol was to buy this
quarry, which disfigured one of that gentleman's
finest fields.
Simoneau seemed to be delighted with such
an opportunity; but said that he was obliged
1o decline the offer because he had no ready
money. The baron insisted, reduced the price
to just one half ofthe sum that had been agreed
upon between M, Teterol and himself, and
offered the most liberal conditions as to time for
making payments on the ourchase. In short,
the bargain was speedily concluded. Three
days later, M. de Saligneux was gleefully rub-
bing his hands and congratulating himself that
M. Teterol would experience the double morti-
fication of having his hopes disappointed, and
of seeing an enemy installed upon his land.
His joy was not of long duration; he soon
learned that Simoneau was on the best of terms
With M. Teterol ; that the former had been used
only as a decoy, and that on receipt of a com-
mission of one thousand francs he had made
over the quarry to the millionaire. The bar-
on's discomfiture was extreme, but his temper-
ament was such that he was not long in con-
soling himself.
" The first trick is his," he said to himself,
" but I will win the second."
He related the whole affair to his daughter
in a very entertaining letter, to which M'lle de
Saligneux responded by two lines from La-
Fontaine, which she had taken the trCuble to
write in handsome capitals:
" Tel, comme dit Merlin, cuide engeigner autrui.
Qui souvent s'engeigne soi-meme."
She added- "My dear papa, be comforted.
According to what you tell me, your enemy is
crafty, but he is impatient; he will finally be
caught in his own trap."
" What a strange creature my daughter is!'r
thought the baron. " She is at the same time
extremely childish and extremely precocious:
when she is not ten years old, she is twenty-
five. It is almost time for me to find her a.
husband. How old will she be on her wedding
day?"
He who thinks be is deceiving others, as
Merlin said, is often deceiving himself.
VI.
The treaty of peace between the Chateau de
Saligneux and the White House had been,
broken. They spent some time in watching
and in lying in wait for each other; then, open
hostilities were begun. Between neighbors who-
arc at variance everything furnishes a cause for
dispute. They desired a pretext for quarreling,
and the farm that M. Teterol owned, on the
other side of the river, furnished it, He de-
spatched a farm-boy, clad in fustian and sabots,
to M. de Saligneux, with a complaint that one
of the branches on a large tree belonging to the
baron encroached too much upon his ground,
and requested him to have the tree removed
without delay. Then the baron sent to M.
Teterol a tall lacquey, resplendent in gold lace,
who was the bearer of a letter, in which M. de
Saligneux requested, in courteous but concise
terms, that a ditch, which infected the air,
might be cleansed at once. Message succeeded
message; note followed note; the debate be-
came animated, the language grew bitter. One
letter read :
" My tree is very well where it is, and I shall
take good care not to remove it."
The other read:
" I regret that my ditch dor-c not yield the;
perfume of orange blossoms; but I shall wait
until it suits my pleasure to cleanse it."
This discord threatened to breed serious dis-
sensions. A thunder cloud was gathering in
the sky, and one coukl easily see that it was
about to burst and rain down whole reams
of legal-cap, citation, writs, subpoenas and
bailiffs.
The servants followed the example of their
masters. Ploughmen, day laborers and-farm-
ers, all espoused the quarrel of their employ-
ers; even the animals took part in the conflict.
M. Teterol had a new acquisition in the shape
of a dog with a short nose, heavy jaws and
black hanging lips, which every one said bore
a strong resemblance to his owner. The
chateau was guarded by a large Danish blood-
hound, spotted with white, slender and ele-
gant in form, but very strong, like the baron.
Oje evening the two animals had an encounter
with each other. The conflict was prolonged
and spirited ; the victory was not decisive. The
combattants separated with torn and bleeding
ears, and otherwise disabled, to busy them-
selves in healing their wounds and in secretly
vowing vengeance one against the other. After
this, however, they contented themselves by
barking and showing their teeth to each other
from opposite sides of the river. One could
sometimes see them dash off, uttering frightful
growls, one following the left bank of the
river, the other the right, apparently seeking a
bridge where they might meet and tear each
other to pieces: but they took good care to
seek for it where it was not to be found.
M.^Teterol sought the company of men only
when he had disappointments and trials to re-
late to them. In his hours of prosperity, he did
not care to see any one: his own society was
sufficient. Now that the quarry was his, he
feared nothing.    He felt reassured by his vie-