ld
state of sovereignty, a local god rather than a mere king. And now you
may ask yourself where he is, and look round for vestiges of my late
lord, and in all the country-side there is no trace of him but his
forlorn and fallen mansion. At the end of a long avenue, now sown with
grain, in the midst of a close full of cypresses and lilacs, ducks and
crowing chanticleers and droning bees, the old chateau lifts its red
chimneys and peaked roofs and turning vanes into the wind and sun. There
is a glad spring bustle in the air, perhaps, and the lilacs are all in
flower, and the creepers green about the broken balustrade; but no
spring shall revive the honour of the place. Old women of the people,
little children of the people, saunter and gambol in the walled court or
feed the ducks in the neglected moat. Plough-horses, mighty of limb,
browse in the long stables. The dial-hand on the clock waits for some
better hour. Out on the plain, where hot sweat trickles into men's eyes,
and the spade goes in deep and comes up slowly, perhaps the peasant may
feel a movement of joy at his heart when he thinks that these spacious
chimneys are now cold, which have so often blazed and flickered upon gay
folk at supper, while he and his hollow-eyed children watched through
the night with empty bellies and cold feet. And perhaps, as he raises
his head and sees the forest lying like a coast-line of low hills along
the sea-like level of the plain, perhaps forest and chateau hold no
unsimilar place in his affections.

If the chateau was my lord's the forest was my lord the king's; neither
of them for this poor Jacques. If he thought to eke out his meagre way
of life by some petty theft of wood for the fire, or for a new
roof-tree, he found himself face to face with a whole department, from
the Grand Master of the Woods and Waters, who was a high-born lord, down
to the common sergeant, who was a peasant like himself, and wore stripes
or bandolier by way of uniform. For the first offence, by the Salic law,
there was a fine of fifteen sols; and should a man be taken more than
once in fault, or circumstances aggravate the colour of his guilt, he
might be whipped, branded, or hanged. There was a hangman over at Melun,
and, I doubt not, a fine tall gibbet hard by the town gate, where
Jacques might see his fellows dangle against the sky as he went to
market.

And then, if he lived near to a cover, there would be the more hares and
rabbits to eat out