A Small TownPut thousands together Less bad, But the cage less gay.
HOBBESThe small town of Verrieres may be regarded as one of the most attractive in the Franche-Comte. Its white houses with their high pitchedroofs of red tiles are spread over the slope of a hill, the slightest contoursof which are indicated by clumps of sturdy chestnuts. The Doubs runssome hundreds of feet below its fortifications, built in times past by theSpaniards, and now in ruins.
Verrieres is sheltered on the north by a high mountain, a spur of theJura. The jagged peaks of the Verra put on a mantle of snow in the firstcold days of October. A torrent which comes tearing down from themountain passes through Verrieres before emptying its waters into theDoubs, and supplies power to a great number of sawmills; this is an extremely simple industry, and procures a certain degree of comfort for themajority of the inhabitants, who are of the peasant rather than of the burgess class. It is not, however, the sawmills that have made this little townrich. It is to the manufacture of printed calicoes, known as Mulhousestuffs, that it owes the general prosperity which, since the fall of Napoleon, has led to the refacing of almost all the houses in Verrieres.
No sooner has one entered the town than one is startled by the din of anoisy machine of terrifying aspect. A score of weighty hammers, fallingwith a clang which makes the pavement tremble, are raised aloft by awheel which the water of the torrent sets in motion. Each of these hammers turns out, daily, I cannot say how many thousands of nails. A bevyof fresh, pretty girls subject to the blows of these enormous hammers, thelittle scraps of iron which are rapidly transformed into nails. This work,so rough to the outward eye, is one of the industries that most astonishthe traveller who ventures for the first time among the mountains thatdivide France from Switzerland. If, on entering Verrieres, the traveller inquires to whom belongs that fine nail factory which deafens everybodywho passes up the main street, he will be told in a drawling accent: 'Eh!
It belongs to the Mayor.'
Provided the traveller halts for a few moments in this main street ofVerrieres, which runs from the bank of the Doubs nearly to the summitof the hill, it is a hundred to one that he will see a tall man appear, with abusy, important air.
At the sight of him every hat is quickly raised. His hair is turning grey,and he is dressed in grey. He is a Companion of several Orders, has ahigh forehead, an aquiline nose, and on the whole his face is not wantingin a certain regularity: indeed, the first impression formed of it may bethat it combines with the dignity of a village mayor that sort of charmwhich may still be found in a man of forty-eight or fifty. But soon the visitor from Paris is annoyed by a certain air of self-satisfaction and self-sufficiency mingled with a suggestion of limitations and want of originality.
One feels, finally, that this man's talent is confined to securing the exactpayment of whatever is owed to him and to postponing payment till thelast possible moment when he is the debtor.
Such is the Mayor of Verrieres, M. de Renal. Crossing the street with asolemn step, he enters the town hall and passes from the visitor's sight.
But, a hundred yards higher up, if the visitor continues his stroll, he willnotice a house of quite imposing appearance, and, through the gaps inan iron railing belonging to the house, some splendid gardens. Beyond,there is a line of horizon formed by the hills of Burgundy, which seem tohave been created on purpose to delight the eye. This view makes thevisitor forget the pestilential atmosphere of small financial interestswhich was beginning to stifle him.
He is told that this house belongs to M. de Renal. It is to the profitsthat he has made from his great nail factory that the Mayor of Verrieresis indebted for this fine freestone house which he has just finished building. His family, they say, is Spanish, old, and was or claims to have beenestablished in the country long before Louis XIV conquered it.
Since 1815 he has blushed at his connection with industry: 1815 madehim Mayor of Verrieres. The retaining walls that support the various sections of this splendid garden, which, in a succession of terraces, runsdown to the Doubs, are also a reward of M. de Renal's ability as a dealerin iron.
You must not for a moment expect to find in France those picturesquegardens which enclose the manufacturing towns of Germany; Leipsic, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, and the rest. In the Franche-Comte, the morewalls a man builds, the more he makes his property bristle with stonespiled one above another, the greater title he acquires to the
respect of hisneighbours. M. de Renal's gardens, honeycombed with walls, are stillfurther admired because he bought, for their weight in gold, certainminute scraps of ground which they cover. For instance that sawmillwhose curious position on the bank of the Doubs struck you as youentered Verrieres, and on which you noticed the name Sorel, inscribed inhuge letters on a board which overtops the roof, occupied, six years ago,the ground on which at this moment they are building the wall of thefourth terrace of M. de Renal's gardens.
For all his pride, the Mayor was obliged to make many overtures toold Sorel, a dour and obstinate peasant; he was obliged to pay him infine golden louis before he would consent to remove his mill elsewhere.
As for the public lade which supplied power to the saw, M. de Renal,thanks to the influence he wielded in Paris, obtained leave to divert it.
This favour was conferred upon him after the 182- elections.
He gave Sorel four acres in exchange for one, five hundred yardslower down by the bank of the Doubs. And, albeit this site was a greatdeal more advantageous for his trade in planks of firwood, Pere Sorel, asthey have begun to call him now that he is rich, contrived to screw out ofthe impatience and landowning mania which animated his neighbour asum of 6,000 francs.
It is true that this arrangement was adversely criticised by the localwiseacres. On one occasion, it was a Sunday, four years later, M. de Renal, as he walked home from church in his mayoral attire, saw at a distance old Sorel, supported by his three sons, watching him with a smile.
That smile cast a destroying ray of light into the Mayor's soul; ever sincethen he has been thinking that he might have brought about the exchange at less cost to himself.
To win popular esteem at Verrieres, the essential thing is not to adopt(while still building plenty of walls) any plan of construction broughtfrom Italy by those masons who in spring pass through the gorges of theJura on their way to Paris. Such an innovation would earn the rash builder an undying reputation fot wrong-headedness, and he would be lostforever among the sober and moderate folk who create reputations in theFranche-Comte.
As a matter of fact, these sober folk wield there the most irritatingform of despotism; it is owing to that vile word that residence in small towns is intolerable to anyone who has lived in that great republic whichwe call Paris. The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is asfatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States ofAmerica.