THE TRYSTING-PLACE OF THE WOLVES.
It was a Sunday morning the very day on which Mdlle.de Cardoville had received Rodin's letter with regard to Mother Bunch's disappearance.Two men were talking to together, seated at a table in one of the public houses in the little village of Villiers, situated at no great distance from Hardy's factory.The village was for the most part inhabited by quarrymen and stonecutters, employed in working the neighboring quarries.
Nothing can be ruder and more laborious, and at the same time less adequately paid, than the work of this class of people.Therefore, as Agricola had told Mother Bunch, they drew painful comparisons between their condition, almost always miserable, and the comfort and comparative ease enjoyed by M.Hardy's workmen, thanks to his generous and intelligent management, and to the principles of association and community which he had put in practice amongst them.Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils.Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.For a long time, the happiness of M.Hardy's workmen had been naturally envied, but not with a jealousy amounting to hatred.As soon, however, as the secret enemies of the manufacturer, uniting with his rival Baron Tripeaud, had an interest in changing this peaceful state of things--it changed accordingly.
With diabolical skill and perseverance they succeeded in kindling the most evil passions.By means of chosen emissaries, they applied to those quarrymen and stonecutters of the neighborhood, whose bad conduct had aggravated their misery.Notorious for their turbulence, audacity, and energy, these men might exercise a dangerous influence on the majority of their companions, who were peaceful, laborious, and honest, but easily intimidated by violence.These turbulent leaders, previously embittered by misfortune, were soon impressed with an exaggerated idea of the happiness of M.Hardy's workmen, and excited to a jealous hatred of them.
They went still further; the incendiary sermons of an abbe, a member of the Jesuits, who had come expressly from Paris to preach during Lent against M.Hardy, acted powerfully on the minds of the women, who filled the church, whilst their husbands were haunting the taverns.Profiting by the growing fear, which the approach of the Cholera then inspired, the preacher struck with terror these weak and credulous imaginations by pointing to M.Hardy's factory as a centre of corruption and damnation, capable of drawing down the vengeance of Heaven, and bringing the fatal scourge upon the country.Thus the men, already inflamed with envy, were still more excited by the incessant urgency of their wives, who, maddened by the abbe's sermons, poured their curses on that band of atheists, who might bring down so many misfortunes upon them and their children.Some bad characters, belonging to the factory of Baron Tripeaud, and paid by him (for it was a great interest the honorable manufacturer had in the ruin of M.Hardy), came to augment the general irritation, and to complete it by raising one of those alarming union-questions, which in our day have unfortunately caused so much bloodshed.Many of M.Hardy's workmen, before they entered his employ, had belonged to a society or union, called the Devourers; while many of the stonecutters in the neighboring quarries belonged to a society called the Wolves.Now, for a long time, an implacable rivalry had existed between the Wolves and Devourers, and brought about many sanguinary struggles, which are the more to be deplored, as, in some respects, the idea of these unions is excellent, being founded on the fruitful and mighty principle of association.But unfortunately, instead of embracing all trades in one fraternal communion, these unions break up the working-class into distinct and hostile societies, whose rivalry often leads to bloody collisions.[27] For the last week, the Wolves, excited by so many different importunities, burned to discover an occasion or a pretext to come to blows with the Devourers; but the latter, not frequenting the public-houses, and hardly leaving the factory during the week, had hitherto rendered such a meeting impossible, and the Wolves had been forced to wait for the Sunday with ferocious impatience.
Moreover, a great number of the quarrymen and stonecutters, being peaceable and hard-working people, had refused, though Wolves themselves to join this hostile manifestation against the Devourers of M.Hardy's factory; the leaders had been obliged to recruit their forces from the vagabonds and idlers of the barriers, whom the attraction of tumult and disorder had easily enlisted under the flag of the warlike Wolves.Such then was the dull fermentation, which agitated the little village of Villiers, whilst the two men of whom we have spoken were at table in the public-house.
These men had asked for a private room, that they might be alone.One of them was still young, and pretty well dressed.But the disorder in his clothes, his loose cravat, his shirt spotted with wine, his dishevelled hair, his look of fatigue, his marble complexion, his bloodshot eyes, announced that a night of debauch had preceded this morning; whilst his abrupt and heavy gesture, his hoarse voice, his look, sometimes brilliant, and sometimes stupid, proved that to the last fumes of the intoxication of the night before, were joined the first attacks of a new state of drunkenness.The companion of this man said to him, as he touched his glass with his own: "Your health, my boy!"
"Yours!" answered the young man; "though you look to me like the devil."
"I!--the devil?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"How did you come to know me?"
"Do you repent that you ever knew me?"
"Who told you that I was a prisoner at Sainte-Pelagie?"
"Didn't I take you out of prison?"
"Why did you take me out?"
"Because I have a good heart."