compete against that of his associates, but he prevented all other
capital in Ville-aux-Fayes from being employed in the same fruitful
manner. It is easy to imagine what immense influence this triumvirate
--Rigou, Soudry, and Gaubertin--wielded in election periods over
electors whose fortunes depended on their good-will.

Hate, intelligence, and means at command, such were the three sides of
the terrible triangle which describes the general's closest enemy, the
spy ever watching Les Aigues,--a shark having constant dealings with
sixty to eighty small land-owners, relations or connections of the
peasantry, who feared him as such men always fear their creditor.

Rigou was in his way another Tonsard. The one throve on thefts from
nature, the other waxed fat on legal plunder. Both liked to live well.
It was the same nature in two species,--the one natural, the other
whetted by his training in a cloister.

It was about four o'clock when Vaudoyer left the tavern of the
Grand-I-Vert to consult the former mayor. Rigou was at dinner. Finding
the front door locked, Vaudoyer looked above the window blinds and
called out:--

"Monsieur Rigou, it is I,--Vaudoyer."

Jean came round from the porte-cochere and said to Vaudoyer:--

"Come into the garden; Monsieur has company."

The company was Sibilet, who, under pretext of discussing the verdict
Brunet had just handed in, was talking to Rigou of quite other