Chapter VIII: The Last Day with the Peasants

That night, as the boys sat around their fire, Ned observed, "Walter, it appears to me that you have done the very thing you have been talking about so long."

"I don't understand you, Ned."

"In making that mill and press for the peasants, you have certainly done some good."

"If so, I am surely glad of it; but I thought it was a shame for people to work after such a fashion as they were doing, and, since I have heard Gabriel, I wish I could do more."

"Do you know what was running in my head all the time he was talking?"

"What?"

"That it was a blessed thing to live in a free country. If Captain Rhines asks me if I've seen any better place than home, I think I shall know what to say."

"Ned, I'm glad," glancing at the new-made grave on which the moon was shining, "that we buried those people before we heard Gabriel talk; for I am afraid we shouldn't have done it afterwards."

"Perhaps not."

"We ought to be thinking about going back."

"The captain told us we might stay as long as we liked, except it looked like a gale of wind."

"We don't want to be like old sailors--stay till the last minute; besides, our provision is almost gone."

"Then we _must_ go; for I can't live as these people do."

"Nor I, either. I was thinking how different they live from us--no tea or coffee; a little thin wine, about as strong as cider: a few olives; and soup made of bread, garlic, and potatoes; not a bit of meat; and oil instead of butter."

"Then their bread," said Ned, "as black as your hat--what do you suppose it is made of?"

"Rye and barley, I guess, or rye and buckwheat."

"But they have some nice things--fruits and preserves."

"I should think, now they've got clear of the seigniors, they might have everything if they would only put in and work--might raise two crops a year. Leroux said those potatoes he gave me were planted after the wheat came off. Now, we don't have any niceties at our house. We are plain, rough people; but, _heavens_! there's _enough_. I couldn't help thinking of the difference between their dinner and ours. We have a great pewter platter as big over as half a bushel on the table, with great junks of pork and beef on it. Father will stick the great knife up to the handle into five or six inches of clear pork or a junk of beef all yellow with fat. For vegetables, we had about a peck of potatoes, cabbages, onions, beets, and carrots; hot biscuit, tea and coffee, a great loaf of rye and Indian bread--as much better than their black stuff as white is better than Indian; and then mother will come walking along just as careful with a brimming pan of milk, and say, 'Now, boys, help yourselves.'"

"And butter," said Ned, "good, yellow butter, instead of oil."

"And then, in the fall, when we kill an ox, such soups as are soups; ain't made of bread, water, and garlics. Father'll take a great shin, crack it up with the axe, and great junks of marrow will drop out of it. That's the stuff in a cold day, I tell you. Give a boy plenty of that, and it will make him stretch out and grow; give him strength to put the axe in. We waste more in our family than they eat. I've looked in all their houses; they don't have any swill-pail at the door; eat the swill themselves."

"I'll tell you what I'd like, Wal, and, if I ever get home, I mean to have mother make it--a chicken pie, with real flaky crust, rings all round it, and apple dumplings, with lots of sauce."

"But about going back, Ned--shall we start in the morning?"

"We _can't_, Wal. We want to get the moss to fill our beds, and the willow sets for Mr. Bell; then, you know, we want to go over to Felix Bertault's, and see the silkworms."

"Well, get ready to-morrow, and start bright and early in the morning."

The next day they went over to the house of Felix. He told the boys he could not show them the silkworms, as it was not the time of year at which they were hatched. However, he showed them the eggs, which were about as large as a mustard seed, and gray. He informed them that the worm was like a common caterpillar, three or four inches long, lived upon mulberry leaves, could not bear the cold, and, when spring came, and it was most time for the mulberry to leaf, they put the eggs in a warm room, in the kitchen, or wore them on their bodies, and the heat hatched them. As soon as they were hatched, they put them on mulberry leaves, which must be dry and tender. This made them grow so fast, that in six days they were too large for their skin, when it cracked, and they shed it, coming out with a new one; in six days more, shed that, till they passed through five changes, and had four new skins.

"What do they do then?" asked Ned.

"After shedding their last skin, they seem kind of miserable for a week or more, and then they begin to eat very greedily, grow, and fill up with the stuff they make the silk of."

"What kind of stuff is it?" asked Walter. "I've torn open the bag, and it looks like gum."

"But they do something to it that makes it silk."

"What next?"

"We know now that they want to spin; so we fasten upon the shelves where we keep them little twigs, willow, bulrushes, and sprigs of lavender, which they crawl upon, and begin to spin."

"I should think they would crawl all over the room, and get trod on."

"They won't go from the leaves."

"How do they spin?" asked Ned.

"They throw out little threads of silk, the same as a spider, from two little holes in their noses, fasten them to the twigs, and make a rough kind of covering to keep off the weather; then they spin a finer thread, till they make a ball around themselves as large as a pigeon's egg; gum the inside all but one end: then they have a real warm, water-proof house, that will keep out the weather."

"Is that the end of it?" asked Walter.

"No. In this house the caterpillar turns into a moth."

"_Into a moth!_"

"Yes, and eats its way out of the end that was not gummed, leaving its old skin behind, just as a chicken does its shell. The female now begins to lay eggs just such as I showed you."

"What do they do then?"

"They die, the males in eight days, the females in four; and we have the eggs to begin again. There is one of their nests," showing him a cocoon.

"There's a hole in one end."

"Yes; that is where the moth gnawed out."

"What do you do with the eggs?"

"We wrap them in a cloth, and put them in a cool, dry place; but we kill all the worms that we do not want to become moths, and lay eggs, as soon as they are done spinning, by baking them in a hot oven."

"What for?"

"If we didn't, they would become moths, eat out, cut the silk off, and break the thread so that it could not be reeled."

"What is done with this rough silk that is on the outside?"

"It is carded and spun like wool; so are those cocoons that the moths hatch in."

"I don't understand how the worm makes the silk all in one thread. Does he roll over and over like a shaft, and wind it round him?"

"No; he puts it on, back and forth, moving his head from side to side in crooked patches, but all one thread, because he keeps the end of it in his mouth, and never breaks it."

"But if they don't wind it round them, what keeps it in place?"

"The gum."

"How do you get it off the cocoon?"

Felix called his wife, who took ten of the cocoons, and put them into warm water to loosen the gum; then she stirred them with a little broom of straw; the threads of the silk stuck to the broom so she was able to take hold of them with her fingers; she then joined five of the threads together, making two compound threads of the ten, and put those two through holes in a thin piece of iron that lay across the kettle, brought them together, wound them on a hand reel, and made a skein of silk, which she divided, giving one half to Ned, and the other to Walter.

Felix told the boys that they sold the cocoons at the mills where they reeled it, as it required machinery to do it properly, and his wife had only reeled that just to let them see how it could be done.

"Suppose the thread should break," said Ned.

"Then all you have to do is to lay the end on to the main thread, and the gum will stick it."

He said the reason his wife stood so far from the kettle was, that the gum might cool and the threads not stick together. He then gave them some eggs and cocoons to take home with them.

"Gabriel," said Walter, when they met again, "I've changed my mind since I came here. I thought at first it was the last place for a man to live by farming; but if ever you get a good government, under which a man can receive the fruits of his labor, and not be beggared by imposition, I will engage to come here and get rich in ten years."

"How could you do that, citizen?"

"In the first place I would make every day of the year tell. I'd raise two crops in a year, where you raise one. I would build a mill to grind and press these olives in a quarter of the time it takes you, and get a third more oil than you can get from the press I made you. I would build my house in the midst of my land, and not lose a great part of my time walking back and forth, carting stuff, and wearing out both cattle and carts. I would make a cart that would run so much easier than yours, that one mule would haul as much as two do in yours. Then, in the winter, when there was leisure, I would make a good road; that would make half as much difference more. Then, instead of making what you call a fallow (which is letting the ground, after a crop is taken off, grow up to weeds, then ploughing them in, putting back no more than you have taken out), I would keep cattle, raise corn, and have manure. It takes, according to your statement, about thirty-five days to raise a crop of silkworms; that pays first rate, and your children could do nearly all that is to be done; it also comes at a time when there's not much else to do. Now only see how much can be raised. Here's a crop of wheat, potatoes, and buckwheat; after them (at any rate every other year), vines and olives, that will grow on the mountains where nothing else will, and come off late, after the other crops are out of the way; then silk in the latter part of winter and the early spring, before work is driving."

Gabriel scratched his head, and replied, "Citizen, so much work would make a man a slave."

"You are a slave now, and get nothing for it, either. I'd rather put things through, and get something, then, when I'm old, lay back and take the good of it, than to be forever a mulling, and eat up as fast as I get. If you would only raise corn instead of this miserable rye, you could have bread, pork, beef, fodder for your cattle, and dressing for your land."

The boys now began to prepare for departure, collecting moss, lavender, and other herbs for their beds, getting willow sets from the island for Mr. Bell, and some pieces of carved panel and broken china, on which were beautiful designs, from the old castle.

When they returned, Gabriel said, "Don't take these broken things to America;" and he gave them a bowl and goblet most elaborately ornamented, while Raffard gave them a panel that had never been injured, on which was the figure of a deer with an arrow in its flank. Leroux gave Walter a pistol inlaid with silver, Tonnelot presented Ned with a rapier richly ornamented; indeed, all were sorry to part with them, and anxious to give them something as a token of affection and remembrance. Julien, François, and Beaupré (sons of Bernard and Bertault), brought from their houses pears preserved in honey, almonds, figs, pickled olives, and preserved quinces.

Early the next morning they took leave of the peasants, and set out with Gabriel for the vessel, having with them, in the cart, their presents and the wine and oil contributed by the peasants for the purchase of the tackle from the captain.

They arrived just before dinner, and the captain not only sold Gabriel the tackle, but offered to buy all the oil he and his neighbors had to dispose of at a much higher price than they could sell it for at Marseilles, and also their honey.

After feeding his mules and eating a hearty dinner himself, Gabriel went home in high spirits to carry the news to his neighbors.