One morning towards the end of Brumaire just as Hulot was exercising his
brigade, now by order of his superiors wholly concentrated at Mayenne,
a courier arrived from Alencon with despatches, at the reading of which
his face betrayed extreme annoyance.
“Forward, then!” he cried in an angry tone, sticking the papers into the
crown of his hat. “Two companies will march with me towards Mortagne.
The Chouans are there. You will accompany me,” he said to Merle and
Gerard. “May be I created a nobleman if I can understand one word of
that despatch. Perhaps I’m a fool! well, anyhow, forward, march! there’s
no time to lose.”
“Commandant, by your leave,” said Merle, kicking the cover of the
ministerial despatch with the toe of his boot, “what is there so
exasperating in that?”
“God’s thunder! nothing at all--except that we are fooled.”
When the commandant gave vent to this military oath (an object it must
be said of Republican atheistical remonstrance) it gave warning of
a storm; the diverse intonations of the words were degrees of a
thermometer by which the brigade could judge of the patience of its
commander; the old soldier’s frankness of nature had made this knowledge
so easy that the veriest little drummer-boy knew his Hulot by heart,
simply by observing the variations of the grimace with which the
commander screwed up his cheek and snapped his eyes and vented his oath.
On this occasion the tone of smothered rage with which he uttered the
words made his two friends silent and circumspect. Even the pits of the
small-pox which dented that veteran face seemed deeper, and the skin
itself browner than usual. His broad queue, braided at the edges, had
fallen upon one of his epaulettes as he replaced his three-cornered
hat, and he flung it back with such fury that the ends became untied.
However, as he stood stock-still, his hands clenched, his arms crossed
tightly over his breast, his mustache bristling, Gerard ventured to ask
him presently: “Are we to start at once?”
“Yes, if the men have ammunition.”
“They have.”
“Shoulder arms! Left wheel, forward, march!” cried Gerard, at a sign
from the commandant.
The drum-corps marched at the head of the two companies designated by
Gerard. At the first roll of the drums the commandant, who still stood
plunged in thought, seemed to rouse himself, and he left the town
accompanied by his two officers, to whom he said not a word. Merle and
Gerard looked at each other silently as if to ask, “How long is he going
to keep us in suspense?” and, as they marched, they cautiously kept
an observing eye on their leader, who continued to vent rambling words
between his teeth. Several times these vague phrases sounded like oaths
in the ears of his soldiers, but not one of them dared to utter a word;
for they all, when occasion demanded, maintained the stern discipline
to which the veterans who had served under Bonaparte in Italy were
accustomed. The greater part of them had belonged, like Hulot, to the
famous battalions which capitulated at Mayenne under a promise not to
serve again on the frontier, and the army called them “Les Mayencais.”
It would be difficult to find leaders and men who more thoroughly
understood each other.
At dawn of the day after their departure Hulot and his troop were on the
high-road to Alencon, about three miles from that town towards Mortagne,
at a part of the road which leads through pastures watered by the
Sarthe. A picturesque vista of these meadows lay to the left, while the
woodlands on the right which flank the road and join the great forest
of Menil-Broust, serve as a foil to the delightful aspect of the
river-scenery. The narrow causeway is bordered on each side by ditches
the soil of which, being constantly thrown out upon the fields, has
formed high banks covered with furze,--the name given throughout the
West to this prickly gorse. This shrub, which spreads itself in thorny
masses, makes excellent fodder in winter for horses and cattle; but as
long as it was not cut the Chouans hid themselves behind its breastwork
of dull green. These banks bristling with gorse, signifying to
travellers their approach to Brittany, made this part of the road at the
period of which we write as dangerous as it was beautiful; it was these
dangers which compelled the hasty departure of Hulot and his soldiers,
and it was here that he at last let out the secret of his wrath.
He was now on his return, escorting an old mail-coach drawn by
post-horses, which the weariness of his soldiers, after their forced
march, was compelling to advance at a snail’s pace. The company of Blues
from the garrison at Mortagne, who had escorted the rickety vehicle
to the limits of their district, where Hulot and his men had met them,
could be seen in the distance, on their way back to their quarters,
like so many black specks. One of Hulot’s companies was in the rear, the
other in advance of the carriage. The commandant, who was marching with
Merle and Gerard between the advance guard and the carriage, suddenly
growled out: “Ten thousand thunders! would you believe that the general
detached us from Mayenne to escort two petticoats?”
“But, commandant,” remarked Gerard, “when we came up just now and took
charge I observed that you bowed to them not ungraciously.”
“Ha! that’s the infamy of it. Those dandies in Paris ordered the
greatest attention paid to their damned females. How dare they dishonor
good and brave patriots by trailing us after petticoats? As for me, I
march straight, and I don’t choose to have to do with other people’s
zigzags. When I saw Danton taking mistresses, and Barras too, I said to
them: ‘Citizens, when the Republic called you to govern, it was not that
you might authorize the vices of the old regime!’ You may tell me that
women--oh yes! we must have women, that’s all right. Good soldiers of
course must have women, and good women; but in times of danger, no!
Besides, where would be the good of sweeping away the old abuses if
patriots bring them back again? Look at the First Consul, there’s a man!
no women for him; always about his business. I’d bet my left mustache
that he doesn’t know the fool’s errand we’ve been sent on!”
“But, commandant,” said Merle, laughing, “I have seen the tip-end of
the nose of the young lady, and I’ll declare the whole world needn’t be
ashamed to feel an itch, as I do, to revolve round that carriage and get
up a bit of a conversation.”
“Look out, Merle,” said Gerard; “the veiled beauties have a man
accompanying them who seems wily enough to catch you in a trap.”
“Who? that _incroyable_ whose little eyes are ferretting from one side
of the road to the other, as if he saw Chouans? The fellow seems to have
no legs; the moment his horse is hidden by the carriage, he looks like
a duck with its head sticking out of a pate. If that booby can hinder me
from kissing the pretty linnet--”
“‘Duck’! ‘linnet’! oh, my poor Merle, you have taken wings indeed! But
don’t trust the duck. His green eyes are as treacherous as the eyes of
a snake, and as sly as those of a woman who forgives her husband. I
distrust the Chouans much less than I do those lawyers whose faces are
like bottles of lemonade.”
“Pooh!” cried Merle, gaily. “I’ll risk it--with the commandant’s
permission. That woman has eyes like stars, and it’s worth playing any
stakes to see them.”
“Caught, poor fellow!” said Gerard to the commandant; “he is beginning
to talk nonsense!”
Hulot made a face, shrugged his shoulders, and said: “Before he swallows
the soup, I advise him to smell it.”
“Bravo, Merle,” said Gerard, “judging by his friend’s lagging step that
he meant to let the carriage overtake him. Isn’t he a happy fellow? He
is the only man I know who can laugh over the death of a comrade without
being thought unfeeling.”
“He’s the true French soldier,” said Hulot, in a grave tone.
“Just look at him pulling his epaulets back to his shoulders, to show he
is a captain,” cried Gerard, laughing,--“as if his rank mattered!”
The coach toward which the officer was pivoting did, in fact, contain
two women, one of whom seemed to be the servant of the other.
“Such women always run in couples,” said Hulot.
A lean and sharp-looking little man ambled his horse sometimes before,
sometimes behind the carriage; but, though he was evidently accompanying
these privileged women, no one had yet seen him speak to them. This
silence, a proof either of respect or contempt, as the case might be;
the quantity of baggage belonging to the lady, whom the commandant
sneeringly called “the princess”; everything, even to the clothes of her
attendant squire, stirred Hulot’s bile. The dress of the unknown man
was a good specimen of the fashions of the day then being caricatured as
“incroyable,”--unbelievable, unless seen. Imagine a person trussed up in
a coat, the front of which was so short that five or six inches of the
waistcoat came below it, while the skirts were so long that they hung
down behind like the tail of a cod,--the term then used to describe
them. An enormous cravat was wound about his neck in so many folds that
the little head which protruded from that muslin labyrinth certainly did
justify Captain Merle’s comparison. The stranger also wore tight-fitting
trousers and Suwaroff boots. A huge blue-and-white cameo pinned his
shirt; two watch-chains hung from his belt; his hair, worn in ringlets
on each side of his face, concealed nearly the whole forehead; and, for
a last adornment, the collar of his shirt and that of his coat came so
high that his head seemed enveloped like a bunch of flowers in a horn of
paper. Add to these queer accessories, which were combined in utter want
of harmony, the burlesque contradictions in color of yellow trousers,
scarlet waistcoat, cinnamon coat, and a correct idea will be gained of
the supreme good taste which all dandies blindly obeyed in the first
years of the Consulate. This costume, utterly uncouth, seemed to have
been invented as a final test of grace, and to show that there was
nothing too ridiculous for fashion to consecrate. The rider seemed to
be about thirty years old, but he was really twenty-two; perhaps he
owed this appearance of age to debauchery, possibly to the perils of the
period. In spite of his preposterous dress, he had a certain elegance of
manner which proved him to be a man of some breeding.
When the captain had dropped back close to the carriage, the dandy
seemed to fathom his design, and favored it by checking his horse.
Merle, who had flung him a sardonic glance, encountered one of those
impenetrable faces, trained by the vicissitudes of the Revolution to
hide all, even the most insignificant, emotion. The moment the curved
end of the old triangular hat and the captain’s epaulets were seen
by the occupants of the carriage, a voice of angelic sweetness said:
“Monsieur l’officier, will you have the kindness to tell us at what part
of the road we now are?”
There is some inexpressible charm in the question of an unknown
traveller, if a woman,--a world of adventure is in every word; but if
the woman asks for assistance or information, proving her weakness or
ignorance of certain things, every man is inclined to construct some
impossible tale which shall lead to his happiness. The words, “Monsieur
l’officier,” and the polite tone of the question stirred the captain’s
heart in a manner hitherto unknown to him. He tried to examine the lady,
but was cruelly disappointed, for a jealous veil concealed her features;
he could barely see her eyes, which shone through the gauze like onyx
gleaming in the sunshine.
“You are now three miles from Alencon, madame,” he replied.
“Alencon! already!” and the lady threw herself, or, rather, she gently
leaned back in the carriage, and said no more.
“Alencon?” said the other woman, apparently waking up; “then you’ll see
it again.”
She caught sight of the captain and was silent. Merle, disappointed in
his hope of seeing the face of the beautiful incognita, began to examine
that of her companion. She was a girl about twenty-six years of age,
fair, with a pretty figure and the sort of complexion, fresh and white
and well-fed, which characterizes the women of Valognes, Bayeux, and the
environs of Alencon. Her blue eyes showed no great intelligence, but a
certain firmness mingled with tender feeling. She wore a gown of some
common woollen stuff. The fashion of her hair, done up closely under a
Norman cap, without any pretension, gave a charming simplicity to her
face. Her attitude, without, of course, having any of the conventional
nobility of society, was not without the natural dignity of a modest
young girl, who can look back upon her past life without a single cause
for repentance. Merle knew her at a glance for one of those wild
flowers which are sometimes taken from their native fields to Parisian
hot-houses, where so many blasting rays are concentrated, without ever
losing the purity of their color or their rustic simplicity. The naive
attitude of the girl and her modest glance showed Merle very plainly
that she did not wish a listener. In fact, no sooner had he withdrawn
than the two women began a conversation in so low a tone that only a
murmur of it reached his ear.
“You came away in such a hurry,” said the country-girl, “that you hardly
took time to dress. A pretty-looking sight you are now! If we are going
beyond Alencon, you must really make your toilet.”
“Oh! oh! Francine!” cried the lady.
“What is it?”
“This is the third time you have tried to make me tell you the reasons
for this journey and where we are going.”
“Have I said one single word which deserves that reproach?”
“Oh, I’ve noticed your manoeuvring. Simple and truthful as you are,
you have learned a little cunning from me. You are beginning to hold
questioning in horror; and right enough, too, for of all the known ways
of getting at a secret, questions are, to my mind, the silliest.”
“Well,” said Francine, “since nothing escapes you, you must admit,
Marie, that your conduct would excite the curiosity of a saint.
Yesterday without a penny, to-day your hands are full of gold; at
Mortagne they give you the mail-coach which was pillaged and the driver
killed, with government troops to protect you, and you are followed by a
man whom I regard as your evil genius.”
“Who? Corentin?” said the young lady, accenting the words by two
inflections of her voice expressive of contempt, a sentiment which
appeared in the gesture with which she waved her hand towards the rider.
“Listen, Francine,” she said. “Do you remember Patriot, the monkey I
taught to imitate Danton?”
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
“Well, were you afraid of him?”
“He was chained.”
“And Corentin is muzzled, my dear.”
“We used to play with Patriot by the hour,” said Francine,--“I know
that; but he always ended by serving us some bad trick.” So saying,
Francine threw herself hastily back close to her mistress, whose
hands she caught and kissed in a coaxing way; saying in a tone of deep
affection: “You know what I mean, Marie, but you will not answer me. How
can you, after all that sadness which did so grieve me--oh, indeed it
grieved me!--how can you, in twenty-four hours, change about and become
so gay? you, who talked of suicide! Why have you changed? I have a
right to ask these questions of your soul--it is mine, my claim to it is
before that of others, for you will never be better loved than you are
by me. Speak, mademoiselle.”
“Why, Francine, don’t you see all around you the secret of my good
spirits? Look at the yellowing tufts of those distant tree-tops; not one
is like another. As we look at them from this distance don’t they
seem like an old bit of tapestry? See the hedges from behind which the
Chouans may spring upon us at any moment. When I look at that gorse I
fancy I can see the muzzles of their guns. Every time the road is shady
under the trees I fancy I shall hear firing, and then my heart beats and
a new sensation comes over me. It is neither the shuddering of fear nor
an emotion of pleasure; no, it is better than either, it is the stirring
of everything within me--it is life! Why shouldn’t I be gay when a
little excitement is dropped into my monotonous existence?”
“Ah! you are telling me nothing, cruel girl! Holy Virgin!” added
Francine, raising her eyes in distress to heaven; “to whom will she
confess herself if she denies the truth to me?”
“Francine,” said the lady, in a grave tone, “I can’t explain to you my
present enterprise; it is horrible.”
“Why do wrong when you know it to be wrong?”
“How can I help it? I catch myself thinking as if I were fifty, and
acting as if I were still fifteen. You have always been my better self,
my poor Francine, but in this affair I must stifle conscience. And,” she
added after a pause, “I cannot. Therefore, how can you expect me to take
a confessor as stern as you?” and she patted the girl’s hand.
“When did I ever blame your actions?” cried Francine. “Evil is so mixed
with good in your nature. Yes, Saint Anne of Auray, to whom I pray to
save you, will absolve you for all you do. And, Marie, am I not here
beside you, without so much as knowing where you go?” and she kissed her
hands with effusion.
“But,” replied Marie, “you may yet desert me, if your conscience--”
“Hush, hush, mademoiselle,” cried Francine, with a hurt expression. “But
surely you will tell me--”
“Nothing!” said the young lady, in a resolute voice. “Only--and I wish
you to know it--I hate this enterprise even more than I hate him whose
gilded tongue induced me to undertake it. I will be rank and own to you
that I would never have yielded to their wishes if I had not foreseen,
in this ignoble farce, a mingling of love and danger which tempted me.
I cannot bear to leave this empty world without at least attempting to
gather the flowers that it owes me,--whether I perish in the attempt or
not. But remember, for the honor of my memory, that had I ever been a
happy woman, the sight of their great knife, ready to fall upon my neck,
would not have driven me to accept a part in this tragedy--for it is
a tragedy. But now,” she said, with a gesture of disgust, “if it were
countermanded, I should instantly fling myself into the Sarthe. It would
not be destroying life, for I have never lived.”
“Oh, Saint Anne of Auray, forgive her!”
“What are you so afraid of? You know very well that the dull round of
domestic life gives no opportunity for my passions. That would be bad in
most women, I admit; but my soul is made of a higher sensibility and can
bear great tests. I might have been, perhaps, a gentle being like you.
Why, why have I risen above or sunk beneath the level of my sex? Ah!
the wife of Bonaparte is a happy woman! Yes, I shall die young, for I
am gay, as you say,--gay at this pleasure-party, where there is blood to
drink, as that poor Danton used to say. There, there, forget what I
am saying; it is the woman of fifty who speaks. Thank God! the girl of
fifteen is still within me.”
The young country-girl shuddered. She alone knew the fiery, impetuous
nature of her mistress. She alone was initiated into the mysteries of a
soul rich with enthusiasm, into the secret emotions of a being who, up
to this time, had seen life pass her like a shadow she could not grasp,
eager as she was to do so. After sowing broadcast with full hands and
harvesting nothing, this woman was still virgin in soul, but irritated
by a multitude of baffled desires. Weary of a struggle without an
adversary, she had reached in her despair to the point of preferring
good to evil, if it came in the form of enjoyment; evil to good, if
it offered her some poetic emotion; misery to mediocrity, as something
nobler and higher; the gloomy and mysterious future of present death to
a life without hopes or even without sufferings. Never in any heart was
so much powder heaped ready for the spark, never were so many riches
for love to feed on; no daughter of Eve was ever moulded, with a greater
mixture of gold in her clay. Francine, like an angel of earth, watched
over this being whose perfections she adored, believing that she obeyed
a celestial mandate in striving to bring that spirit back among the
choir of seraphim whence it was banished for the sin of pride.
“There is the clock-tower of Alencon,” said the horseman, riding up to
the carriage.
“I see it,” replied the young lady, in a cold tone.
“Ah, well,” he said, turning away with all the signs of servile
submission, in spite of his disappointment.
“Go faster,” said the lady to the postilion. “There is no longer any
danger; go at a fast trot, or even a gallop, if you can; we are almost
into Alencon.”
As the carriage passed the commandant, she called out to him, in a sweet
voice:--
“We will meet at the inn, commandant. Come and see me.”
“Yes, yes,” growled the commandant. “‘The inn’! ‘Come and see me’! Is
that how you speak to an officer in command of the army?” and he shook
his fist at the carriage, which was now rolling rapidly along the road.
“Don’t be vexed, commandant, she has got your rank as general up her
sleeve,” said Corentin, laughing, as he endeavored to put his horse into
a gallop to overtake the carriage.
“I sha’n’t let myself be fooled by any such folks as they,” said Hulot
to his two friends, in a growling tone. “I’d rather throw my general’s
coat into that ditch than earn it out of a bed. What are these birds
after? Have you any idea, either of you?”
“Yes,” said Merle, “I’ve an idea that that’s the handsomest women I ever
saw! I think you’re reading the riddle all wrong. Perhaps she’s the wife
of the First Consul.”
“Pooh! the First Consul’s wife is old, and this woman is young,” said
Hulot. “Besides, the order I received from the minister gives her name
as Mademoiselle de Verneuil. She is a _ci-devant_. Don’t I know ‘em?
They all plied one trade before the Revolution, and any man could make
himself a major, or a general in double-quick time; all he had to do was
to say ‘Dear heart’ to them now and then.”
While each soldier opened his compasses, as the commandant was wont to
say, the miserable vehicle which was then used as the mail-coach drew up
before the inn of the Trois Maures, in the middle of the main street of
Alencon. The sound of the wheels brought the landlord to the door. No
one in Alencon could have expected the arrival of the mail-coach at the
Trois Maures, for the murderous attack upon the coach at Mortagne was
already known, and so many people followed it along the street that the
two women, anxious to escape the curiosity of the crowd, ran quickly
into the kitchen, which forms the inevitable antechamber to all Western
inns. The landlord was about to follow them, after examining the coach,
when the postilion caught him by the arm.
“Attention, citizen Brutus,” he said; “there’s an escort of the Blues
behind us; but it is I who bring you these female citizens; they’ll pay
like _ci-devant_ princesses, therefore--”
“Therefore, we’ll drink a glass of wine together presently, my lad,”
said the landlord.
After glancing about the kitchen, blackened with smoke, and noticing a
table bloody from raw meat, Mademoiselle de Verneuil flew into the next
room with the celerity of a bird; for she shuddered at the sight and
smell of the place, and feared the inquisitive eyes of a dirty _chef_,
and a fat little woman who examined her attentively.
“What are we to do, wife?” said the landlord. “Who the devil could have
supposed we would have so many on our hands in these days? Before I
serve her a decent breakfast that woman will get impatient. Stop, an
idea! evidently she is a person of quality. I’ll propose to put her with
the one we have upstairs. What do you think?”
When the landlord went to look for the new arrival he found only
Francine, to whom he spoke in a low voice, taking her to the farther end
of the kitchen, so as not to be overheard.
“If the ladies wish,” he said, “to be served in private, as I have no
doubt they wish to do, I have a very nice breakfast all ready for a lady
and her son, and I dare say wouldn’t mind sharing it with you; they are
persons of condition,” he added, mysteriously.
He had hardly said the words before he felt a tap on his back from
the handle of a whip. He turned hastily and saw behind him a short,
thick-set man, who had noiselessly entered from a side room,--an
apparition which seemed to terrify the hostess, the cook, and the
scullion. The landlord turned pale when he saw the intruder, who shook
back the hair which concealed his forehead and eyes, raised himself on
the points of his toes to reach the other’s ears, and said to him in
a whisper: “You know the cost of an imprudence or a betrayal, and the
color of the money we pay it in. We are generous in that coin.”
He added a gesture which was like a horrible commentary to his words.
Though the rotundity of the landlord prevented Francine from seeing
the stranger, who stood behind him, she caught certain words of his
threatening speech, and was thunderstruck at hearing the hoarse tones of
a Breton voice. She sprang towards the man, but he, seeming to move with
the agility of a wild animal, had already darted through a side door
which opened on the courtyard. Utterly amazed, she ran to the window.
Through its panes, yellowed with smoke, she caught sight of the stranger
as he was about to enter the stable. Before doing so, however, he turned
a pair of black eyes to the upper story of the inn, and thence to the
mail-coach in the yard, as if to call some friend’s attention to the
vehicle. In spite of his muffling goatskin and thanks to this movement
which allowed her to see his face, Francine recognized the Chouan,
Marche-a-Terre, with his heavy whip; she saw him, indistinctly, in the
obscurity of the stable, fling himself down on a pile of straw, in a
position which enabled him to keep an eye on all that happened at the
inn. Marche-a-Terre curled himself up in such a way that the cleverest
spy, at any distance far or near, might have taken him for one of those
huge dogs that drag the hand-carts, lying asleep with his muzzle on his
paws.
The behavior of the Chouan proved to Francine that he had not recognized
her. Under the hazardous circumstances which she felt her mistress to
be in, she scarcely knew whether to regret or to rejoice in this
unconsciousness. But the mysterious connection between the landlord’s
offer (not uncommon among innkeepers, who can thus kill two birds with
one stone), and the Chouan’s threats, piqued her curiosity. She left the
dirty window from which she could see the formless heap which she
knew to be Marche-a-Terre, and returned to the landlord, who was still
standing in the attitude of a man who feels he has made a blunder, and
does not know how to get out of it. The Chouan’s gesture had petrified
the poor fellow. No one in the West was ignorant of the cruel
refinements of torture with which the “Chasseurs du Roi” punished those
who were even suspected of indiscretion; the landlord felt their knives
already at his throat. The cook looked with a shudder at the iron stove
on which they often “warmed” (“chauffaient”) the feet of those they
suspected. The fat landlady held a knife in one hand and a half-peeled
potato in the other, and gazed at her husband with a stupefied air.
Even the scullion puzzled himself to know the reason of their speechless
terror. Francine’s curiosity was naturally excited by this silent scene,
the principal actor of which was visible to all, though departed. The
girl was gratified at the evident power of the Chouan, and though by
nature too simple and humble for the tricks of a lady’s maid, she was
also far too anxious to penetrate the mystery not to profit by her
advantages on this occasion.
“Mademoiselle accepts your proposal,” she said to the landlord, who
jumped as if suddenly awakened by her words.
“What proposal?” he asked with genuine surprise.
“What proposal?” asked Corentin, entering the kitchen.
“What proposal?” asked Mademoiselle de Verneuil, returning to it.
“What proposal?” asked a fourth individual on the lower step of the
staircase, who now sprang lightly into the kitchen.
“Why, the breakfast with your persons of distinction,” replied Francine,
impatiently.
“Distinction!” said the ringing and ironical voice of the person who had
just come down the stairway. “My good fellow, that strikes me as a very
poor inn joke; but if it’s the company of this young female citizen that
you want to give us, we should be fools to refuse it. In my mother’s
absence, I accept,” he added, striking the astonished innkeeper on the
shoulder.
The charming heedlessness of youth disguised the haughty insolence
of the words, which drew the attention of every one present to the
new-comer. The landlord at once assumed the countenance of Pilate
washing his hands of the blood of that just man; he slid back two steps
to reach his wife’s ear, and whispered, “You are witness, if any harm
comes of it, that it is not my fault. But, anyhow,” he added, in a voice
that was lower still, “go and tell Monsieur Marche-a-Terre what has
happened.”
The traveller, who was a young man of medium height, wore a dark blue
coat and high black gaiters coming above the knee and over the breeches,
which were also of blue cloth. This simple uniform, without epaulets,
was that of the pupils of the Ecole Polytechnique. Beneath this plain
attire Mademoiselle de Verneuil could distinguish at a glance the
elegant shape and nameless _something_ that tells of natural nobility.
The face of the young man, which was rather ordinary at first sight,
soon attracted the eye by the conformation of certain features which
revealed a soul capable of great things. A bronzed skin, curly fair
hair, sparkling blue eyes, a delicate nose, motions full of ease, all
disclosed a life guided by noble sentiments and trained to the habit
of command. But the most characteristic signs of his nature were in the
chin, which was dented like that of Bonaparte, and in the lower lip,
which joined the upper one with a graceful curve, like that of an
acanthus leaf on the capital of a Corinthian column. Nature had given to
these two features of his face an irresistible charm.
“This young man has singular distinction if he is really a republican,”
thought Mademoiselle de Verneuil.
To see all this at a glance, to brighten at the thought of pleasing, to
bend her head softly and smile coquettishly and cast a soft look able to
revive a heart that was dead to love, to veil her long black eyes with
lids whose curving lashes made shadows on her cheeks, to choose the
melodious tones of her voice and give a penetrating charm to the formal
words, “Monsieur, we are very much obliged to you,”--all this charming
by-play took less time than it has taken to describe it. After this,
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, addressing the landlord, asked to be shown to
a room, saw the staircase, and disappeared with Francine, leaving the
stranger to discover whether her reply was intended as an acceptance or
a refusal.
“Who is that woman?” asked the Polytechnique student, in an airy manner,
of the landlord, who still stood motionless and bewildered.
“That’s the female citizen Verneuil,” replied Corentin, sharply, looking
jealously at the questioner; “a _ci-devant_; what is she to you?”
The stranger, who was humming a revolutionary tune, turned his head
haughtily towards Corentin. The two young men looked at each other for
a moment like cocks about to fight, and the glance they exchanged
gave birth to a hatred which lasted forever. The blue eye of the young
soldier was as frank and honest as the green eye of the other man was
false and malicious; the manners of the one had native grandeur, those
of the other were insinuating; one was eager in his advance, the other
deprecating; one commanded respect, the other sought it.
“Is the citizen du Gua Saint-Cyr here?” said a peasant, entering the
kitchen at that moment.
“What do you want of him?” said the young man, coming forward.
The peasant made a low bow and gave him a letter, which the young
cadet read and threw into the fire; then he nodded his head and the man
withdrew.
“No doubt you’ve come from Paris, citizen?” said Corentin, approaching
the stranger with a certain ease of manner, and a pliant, affable air
which seemed intolerable to the citizen du Gua.
“Yes,” he replied, shortly.
“I suppose you have been graduated into some grade of the artillery?”
“No, citizen, into the navy.”
“Ah! then you are going to Brest?” said Corentin, interrogatively.
But the young sailor turned lightly on the heels of his shoes without
deigning to reply, and presently disappointed all the expectations which
Mademoiselle de Verneuil had based on the charm of his appearance. He
applied himself to ordering his breakfast with the eagerness of a boy,
questioned the cook and the landlady about their receipts, wondered at
provincial customs like a Parisian just out of his shell, made as
many objections as any fine lady, and showed the more lack of mind
and character because his face and manner had seemed to promise them.
Corentin smiled with pity when he saw the face he made on tasting the
best cider of Normandy.
“Heu!” he cried; “how can you swallow such stuff as that? It is meat and
drink both. I don’t wonder the Republic distrusts a province where they
knock their harvest from trees with poles, and shoot travellers from the
ditches. Pray don’t put such medicine as that on the table; give us some
good Bordeaux, white and red. And above all, do see if there is a good
fire upstairs. These country-people are so backward in civilization!” he
added. “Alas!” he sighed, “there is but one Paris in the world; what
a pity it is I can’t transport it to sea! Heavens! spoil-sauce!” he
suddenly cried out to the cook; “what makes you put vinegar in that
fricassee when you have lemons? And, madame,” he added, “you gave me
such coarse sheets I couldn’t close my eyes all night.” Then he began
to twirl a huge cane, executing with a silly sort of care a variety
of evolutions, the greater or less precision and agility of which
were considered proofs of a young man’s standing in the class of the
Incroyables, so-called.
“And it is with such dandies as that,” said Corentin to the landlord
confidentially, watching his face, “that the Republic expects to improve
her navy!”
“That man,” said the young sailor to the landlady, in a low voice, “is
a spy of Fouche’s. He has ‘police’ stamped on his face, and I’ll swear
that spot he has got on his chin is Paris mud. Well, set a thief to
catch--”
Just then a lady to whom the young sailor turned with every sign of
outward respect, entered the kitchen of the inn.
“My dear mamma,” he said. “I am glad you’ve come. I have recruited some
guests in your absence.”
“Guests?” she replied; “what folly!”
“It is Mademoiselle de Verneuil,” he said in a low voice.
“She perished on the scaffold after the affair of Savenay; she went to
Mans to save her brother the Prince de Loudon,” returned his mother,
rather brusquely.
“You are mistaken, madame,” said Corentin, gently, emphasizing the word
“madame”; “there are two demoiselles de Verneuil; all great houses, as
you know, have several branches.”
The lady, surprised at this freedom, drew back a few steps to examine
the speaker; she turned her black eyes upon him, full of the keen
sagacity so natural to women, seeking apparently to discover in what
interest he stepped forth to explain Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s birth.
Corentin, on the other hand, who was studying the lady cautiously,
denied her in his own mind the joys of motherhood and gave her those
of love; he refused the possession of a son of twenty to a woman whose
dazzling skin, and arched eyebrows, and lashes still unblemished, were
the objects of his admiration, and whose abundant black hair, parted
on the forehead into simple bands, bought out the youthfulness of an
intelligent head. The slight lines of the brow, far from indicating age,
revealed young passions. Though the piercing eyes were somewhat veiled,
it was either from the fatigue of travelling or the too frequent
expression of excitement. Corentin remarked that she was wrapped in a
mantle of English material, and that the shape of her hat, foreign no
doubt, did not belong to any of the styles called Greek, which ruled the
Parisian fashions of the period. Corentin was one of those beings who
are compelled by the bent of their natures to suspect evil rather than
good, and he instantly doubted the citizenship of the two travellers.
The lady, who, on her side, had made her observations on the person of
Corentin with equal rapidity, turned to her son with a significant look
which may be faithfully translated into the words: “Who is this queer
man? Is he of our stripe?”
To this mute inquiry the youth replied by an attitude and a gesture
which said: “Faith! I can’t tell; but I distrust him.” Then, leaving his
mother to fathom the mystery, he turned to the landlady and whispered:
“Try to find out who that fellow is; and whether he is really
accompanying the young lady; and why.”
“So,” said Madame du Gua, looking at Corentin, “you are quite sure,
citizen, that Mademoiselle de Verneuil is living?”
“She is living in flesh and blood as surely, _madame_, as the citizen du
Gua Saint-Cyr.”
This answer contained a sarcasm, the hidden meaning of which was known
to none but the lady herself, and any one but herself would have been
disconcerted by it. Her son looked fixedly at Corentin, who coolly
pulled out his watch without appearing to notice the effect of his
answer. The lady, uneasy and anxious to discover at once if the speech
meant danger or was merely accidental, said to Corentin in a natural
tone and manner; “How little security there is on these roads. We were
attacked by Chouans just beyond Mortagne. My son came very near being
killed; he received two balls in his hat while protecting me.”
“Is it possible, madame? were you in the mail-coach which those brigands
robbed in spite of the escort,--the one we have just come by? You
must know the vehicle well. They told me at Mortagne that the Chouans
numbered a couple of thousands and that every one in the coach was
killed, even the travellers. That’s how history is written! Alas!
madame,” he continued, “if they murder travellers so near to Paris you
can fancy how unsafe the roads are in Brittany. I shall return to Paris
and not risk myself any farther.”
“Is Mademoiselle de Verneuil young and handsome?” said the lady to the
hostess, struck suddenly with an idea.
Just then the landlord interrupted the conversation, in which there was
something of an angry element, by announcing that breakfast was ready.
The young sailor offered his hand to his mother with an air of false
familiarity that confirmed the suspicions of Corentin, to whom the youth
remarked as he went up the stairway: “Citizen, if you are travelling
with the female citizen de Verneuil, and she accepts the landlord’s
proposal, you can come too.”
Though the words were said in a careless tone and were not inviting,
Corentin followed. The young man squeezed the lady’s hand when they were
five or six steps above him, and said, in a low voice: “Now you see
the dangers to which your imprudent enterprises, which have no glory in
them, expose us. If we are discovered, how are we to escape? And what a
contemptible role you force me to play!”
All three reached a large room on the upper floor. Any one who has
travelled in the West will know that the landlord had, on such an
occasion, brought forth his best things to do honor to his guests, and
prepared the meal with no ordinary luxury. The table was carefully laid.
The warmth of a large fire took the dampness from the room. The linen,
glass, and china were not too dingy. Corentin saw at once that the
landlord had, as they say familiarly, cut himself into quarters to
please the strangers. “Consequently,” thought he, “these people are
not what they pretend to be. That young man is clever. I took him for a
fool, but I begin to believe him as shrewd as myself.”
The sailor, his mother, and Corentin awaited Mademoiselle de Verneuil,
whom the landlord went to summon. But the handsome traveller did not
come. The youth expected that she would make difficulties, and he left
the room, humming the popular song, “Guard the nation’s safety,” and
went to that of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, prompted by a keen desire to
get the better of her scruples and take her back with him. Perhaps he
wanted to solve the doubts which filled his mind; or else to exercise
the power which all men like to think they wield over a pretty woman.
“May I be hanged if he’s a Republican,” thought Corentin, as he saw him
go. “He moves his shoulders like a courtier. And if that’s his mother,”
he added, mentally, looking at Madame du Gua, “I’m the Pope! They are
Chouans; and I’ll make sure of their quality.”
The door soon opened and the young man entered, holding the hand of
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whom he led to the table with an air of
self-conceit that was nevertheless courteous. The devil had not allowed
that hour which had elapsed since the lady’s arrival to be wasted. With
Francine’s assistance, Mademoiselle de Verneuil had armed herself with a
travelling-dress more dangerous, perhaps, than any ball-room attire. Its
simplicity had precisely that attraction which comes of the skill with
which a woman, handsome enough to wear no ornaments, reduces her dress
to the position of a secondary charm. She wore a green gown, elegantly
cut, the jacket of which, braided and frogged, defined her figure in a
manner that was hardly suitable for a young girl, allowing her supple
waist and rounded bust and graceful motions to be fully seen. She
entered the room smiling, with the natural amenity of women who can show
a fine set of teeth, transparent as porcelain between rosy lips, and
dimpling cheeks as fresh as those of childhood. Having removed the close
hood which had almost concealed her head at her first meeting with
the young sailor, she could now employ at her ease the various little
artifices, apparently so artless, with which a woman shows off the
beauties of her face and the grace of her head, and attracts admiration
for them. A certain harmony between her manners and her dress made her
seem so much younger than she was that Madame du Gua thought herself
beyond the mark in supposing her over twenty. The coquetry of her
apparel, evidently worn to please, was enough to inspire hope in the
young man’s breast; but Mademoiselle de Verneuil bowed to him, as
she took her place, with a slight inclination of her head and without
looking at him, putting him aside with an apparently light-hearted
carelessness which disconcerted him. This coolness might have seemed to
an observer neither caution nor coquetry, but indifference, natural or
feigned. The candid expression on the young lady’s face only made it the
more impenetrable. She showed no consciousness of her charms, and was
apparently gifted with the pretty manners that win all hearts, and
had already duped the natural self-conceit of the young sailor. Thus
baffled, the youth returned to his own seat with a sort of vexation.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil took Francine, who accompanied her, by the hand
and said, in a caressing voice, turning to Madame de Gua: “Madame, will
you have the kindness to allow this young girl, who is more a friend
than a servant to me, to sit with us? In these perilous times such
devotion as hers can only be repaid by the heart; indeed, that is very
nearly all that is left to us.”
Madame du Gua replied to the last words, which were said half aside,
with a rather unceremonious bow that betrayed her annoyance at the
beauty of the new-comer. Then she said, in a low voice, to her son:
“‘Perilous times,’ ‘devotion,’ ‘madame,’ ‘servant’! that is not
Mademoiselle de Verneuil; it is some girl sent here by Fouche.”
The guests were about to sit down when Mademoiselle de Verneuil noticed
Corentin, who was still employed in a close scrutiny of the mother and
son, who were showing some annoyance at his glances.
“Citizen,” she said to him, “you are no doubt too well bred to dog my
steps. The Republic, when it sent my parents to the scaffold, did not
magnanimously provide me with a guardian. Though you have, from extreme
and chivalric gallantry accompanied me against my will to this place”
(she sighed), “I am quite resolved not to allow your protecting care to
become a burden to you. I am safe now, and you can leave me.”
She gave him a fixed and contemptuous look. Corentin understood her; he
repressed the smile which almost curled the corners of his wily lips as
he bowed to her respectfully.
“Citoyenne,” he said, “it is always an honor to obey you. Beauty is the
only queen a Republican can serve.”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s eyes, as she watched him depart, shone
with such natural pleasure, she looked at Francine with a smile of
intelligence which betrayed so much real satisfaction, that Madame du
Gua, who grew prudent as she grew jealous, felt disposed to relinquish
the suspicions which Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s great beauty had forced
into her mind.
“It may be Mademoiselle de Verneuil, after all,” she whispered to her
son.
“But that escort?” answered the young man, whose vexation at the young
lady’s indifference allowed him to be cautious. “Is she a prisoner or an
emissary, a friend or an enemy of the government?”
Madame du Gua made a sign as if to say that she would soon clear up the
mystery.
However, the departure of Corentin seemed to lessen the young man’s
distrust, and he began to cast on Mademoiselle de Verneuil certain
looks which betrayed an immoderate admiration for women, rather than
the respectful warmth of a dawning passion. The young girl grew more and
more reserved, and gave all her attentions to Madame du Gua. The youth,
angry with himself, tried, in his vexation, to turn the tables and
seem indifferent. Mademoiselle de Verneuil appeared not to notice this
manoeuvre; she continued to be simple without shyness and reserved
without prudery.
This chance meeting of personages who, apparently, were not destined to
become intimate, awakened no agreeable sympathy on either side. There
was even a sort of vulgar embarrassment, an awkwardness which destroyed
all the pleasure which Mademoiselle de Verneuil and the young sailor
had begun by expecting. But women have such wonderful conventional tact,
they are so intimately allied with each other, or they have such keen
desires for emotion, that they always know how to break the ice on such
occasions. Suddenly, as if the two beauties had the same thought, they
began to tease their solitary knight in a playful way, and were soon
vying with each other in the jesting attention which they paid to him;
this unanimity of action left them free. At the end of half an hour, the
two women, already secret enemies, were apparently the best of friends.
The young man then discovered that he felt as angry with Mademoiselle
de Verneuil for her friendliness and freedom as he had been with her
reserve. In fact, he was so annoyed by it that he regretted, with a sort
of dumb anger, having allowed her to breakfast with them.
“Madame,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, “is your son always as gloomy
as he is at this moment?”
“Mademoiselle,” he replied, “I ask myself what is the good of a fleeting
happiness. The secret of my gloom is the evanescence of my pleasure.”
“That is a madrigal,” she said, laughing, “which rings of the Court
rather than the Polytechnique.”
“My son only expressed a very natural thought, mademoiselle,” said
Madame du Gua, who had her own reasons for placating the stranger.
“Then laugh while you may,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, smiling at
the young man. “How do you look when you have really something to weep
for, if what you are pleased to call a happiness makes you so dismal?”
This smile, accompanied by a provoking glance which destroyed the
consistency of her reserve, revived the youth’s feelings. But inspired
by her nature, which often impels a woman to do either too much or
too little under such circumstances, Mademoiselle de Verneuil, having
covered the young man with that brilliant look full of love’s promises,
immediately withdrew from his answering expression into a cold and
severe modesty,--a conventional performance by which a woman sometimes
hides a true emotion. In a moment, a single moment, when each expected
to see the eyelids of the other lowered, they had communicated to one
another their real thoughts; but they veiled their glances as quickly as
they had mingled them in that one flash which convulsed their hearts
and enlightened them. Confused at having said so many things in a
single glance, they dared no longer look at each other. Mademoiselle de
Verneuil withdrew into cold politeness, and seemed to be impatient for
the conclusion of the meal.
“Mademoiselle, you must have suffered very much in prison?” said Madame
du Gua.
“Alas, madame, I sometimes think that I am still there.”
“Is your escort sent to protect you, mademoiselle, or to watch you? Are
you still suspected by the Republic?”
Mademoiselle felt instinctively that Madame du Gua had no real interest
in her, and the question alarmed her.
“Madame,” she replied, “I really do not know myself the exact nature of
my relations to the Republic.”
“Perhaps it fears you?” said the young man, rather satirically.
“We must respect her secrets,” interposed Madame du Gua.
“Oh, madame, the secrets of a young girl who knows nothing of life but
its misfortunes are not interesting.”
“But,” answered Madame du Gua, wishing to continue a conversation which
might reveal to her all that she wanted to know, “the First Consul seems
to have excellent intentions. They say that he is going to remove the
disabilities of the _emigres_.”
“That is true, madame,” she replied, with rather too much eagerness,
“and if so, why do we rouse Brittany and La Vendee? Why bring civil war
into France?”
This eager cry, in which she seemed to share her own reproach, made
the young sailor quiver. He looked earnestly at her, but was unable
to detect either hatred or love upon her face. Her beautiful skin, the
delicacy of which was shown by the color beneath it, was impenetrable. A
sudden and invincible curiosity attracted him to this strange creature,
to whom he was already drawn by violent desires.
“Madame,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, after a pause, “may I ask if
you are going to Mayenne?”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” replied the young man with a questioning look.
“Then, madame,” she continued, “as your son serves the Republic” (she
said the words with an apparently indifferent air, but she gave her
companions one of those furtive glances the art of which belongs to
women and diplomatists), “you must fear the Chouans, and an escort is
not to be despised. We are now almost travelling companions, and I hope
you will come with me to Mayenne.”
Mother and son hesitated, and seemed to consult each other’s faces.
“I am not sure, mademoiselle,” said the young man, “that it is prudent
in me to tell you that interests of the highest importance require our
presence to-night in the neighborhood of Fougeres, and we have not yet
been able to find a means of conveyance; but women are so naturally
generous that I am ashamed not to confide in you. Nevertheless,” he
added, “before putting ourselves in your hands, I ought to know whether
we shall get out of them safe and sound. In short, mademoiselle, are
you the sovereign or the slave of your Republican escort? Pardon my
frankness, but your position does not seem to me exactly natural--”
“We live in times, monsieur, when nothing takes place naturally. You can
accept my proposal without anxiety. Above all,” she added, emphasizing
her words, “you need fear no treachery in an offer made by a woman who
has no part in political hatreds.”
“A journey thus made is not without danger,” he said, with a look which
gave significance to that commonplace remark.
“What is it you fear?” she answered, smiling sarcastically. “I see no
peril for any one.”
“Is this the woman who a moment ago shared my desires in her eyes?”
thought the young man. “What a tone in her voice! she is laying a trap
for me.”
At that instant a shrill cry of an owl which appeared to have perched on
the chimney top vibrated in the air like a warning.
“What does that mean?” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil. “Our journey
together will not begin under favorable auspices. Do owls in these woods
screech by daylight?” she added, with a surprised gesture.
“Sometimes,” said the young man, coolly. “Mademoiselle,” he continued,
“we may bring you ill-luck; you are thinking of that, I am sure. We had
better not travel together.”
These words were said with a calmness and reserve which puzzled
Mademoiselle de Verneuil.
“Monsieur,” she replied, with truly aristocratic insolence, “I am far
from wishing to compel you. Pray let us keep the little liberty the
Republic leaves us. If Madame were alone, I should insist--”
The heavy step of a soldier was heard in the passage, and the Commandant
Hulot presently appeared in the doorway with a frowning brow.
“Come here, colonel,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, smiling and
pointing to a chair beside her. “Let us talk over the affairs of State.
But what is the matter with you? Are there Chouans here?”
The commandant stood speechless on catching sight of the young man, at
whom he looked with peculiar attention.
“Mamma, will you take some more hare? Mademoiselle, you are not eating,”
said the sailor to Francine, seeming busy with the guests.
But Hulot’s astonishment and Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s close
observation had something too dangerously serious about them to be
ignored.
“What is it, citizen?” said the young man, abruptly; “do you know me?”
“Perhaps I do,” replied the Republican.
“You are right; I remember you at the School.”
“I never went to any school,” said the soldier, roughly. “What school do
you mean?”
“The Polytechnique.”
“Ha, ha, those barracks where they expect to make soldiers in
dormitories,” said the veteran, whose aversion for officers trained in
that nursery was insurmountable. “To what arm do you belong?”
“I am in the navy.”
“Ha!” cried Hulot, smiling vindictively, “how many of your
fellow-students are in the navy? Don’t you know,” he added in a serious
tone, “that none but the artillery and the engineers graduate from
there?”
The young man was not disconcerted.
“An exception was made in my favor, on account of the name I bear,” he
answered. “We are all naval men in our family.”
“What is the name of your family, citizen?” asked Hulot.
“Du Gua Saint-Cyr.”
“Then you were not killed at Mortagne?”
“He came very near being killed,” said Madame du Gua, quickly; “my son
received two balls in--”
“Where are your papers?” asked Hulot, not listening to the mother.
“Do you propose to read them?” said the young man, cavalierly; his blue
eye, keen with suspicion, studied alternately the gloomy face of the
commandant and that of Mademoiselle de Verneuil.
“A stripling like you to pretend to fool me! Come, produce your papers,
or--”
“La! la! citizen, I’m not such a babe as I look to be. Why should I
answer you? Who are you?”
“The commander of this department,” answered Hulot.
“Oh, then, of course, the matter is serious; I am taken with arms in my
hand,” and he held a glass full of Bordeaux to the soldier.
“I am not thirsty,” said Hulot. “Come, your papers.”
At that instant the rattle of arms and the tread of men was heard in the
street. Hulot walked to the window and gave a satisfied look which made
Mademoiselle de Verneuil tremble. That sign of interest on her part
seemed to fire the young man, whose face had grown cold and haughty.
After feeling in the pockets of his coat he drew forth an elegant
portfolio and presented certain papers to the commandant, which the
latter read slowly, comparing the description given in the passport with
the face and figure of the young man before him. During this prolonged
examination the owl’s cry rose again; but this time there was no
difficulty whatever in recognizing a human voice. The commandant at once
returned the papers to the young man, with a scoffing look.
“That’s all very fine,” he said; “but I don’t like the music. You will
come with me to headquarters.”
“Why do you take him there?” asked Mademoiselle de Verneuil, in a tone
of some excitement.
“My good lady,” replied the commandant, with his usual grimace, “that’s
none of your business.”
Irritated by the tone and words of the old soldier, but still more at
the sort of humiliation offered to her in presence of a man who was
under the influence of her charms, Mademoiselle de Verneuil rose,
abandoning the simple and modest manner she had hitherto adopted; her
cheeks glowed and her eyes shone as she said in a quiet tone but with a
trembling voice: “Tell me, has this young man met all the requirements
of the law?”
“Yes--apparently,” said Hulot ironically.
“Then, I desire that you will leave him, _apparently_, alone,” she said.
“Are you afraid he will escape you? You are to escort him with me to
Mayenne; he will be in the coach with his mother. Make no objection; it
is my will--Well, what?” she added, noticing Hulot’s grimace; “do you
suspect him still?”
“Rather.”
“What do you want to do with him?”
“Oh, nothing; balance his head with a little lead perhaps. He’s a
giddy-pate!” said the commandant, ironically.
“Are you joking, colonel?” cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil.
“Come!” said the commandant, nodding to the young man, “make haste, let
us be off.”
At this impertinence Mademoiselle de Verneuil became calm and smiling.
“Do not go,” she said to the young man, protecting him with a gesture
that was full of dignity.
“Oh, what a beautiful head!” said the youth to his mother, who frowned
heavily.
Annoyance, and many other sentiments, aroused and struggled with, did
certainly bring fresh beauties to the young woman’s face. Francine,
Madame du Gua, and her son had all risen from their seats. Mademoiselle
de Verneuil hastily advanced and stood between them and the commandant,
who smiled amusedly; then she rapidly unfastened the frogged fastenings
of her jacket. Acting with that blindness which often seizes women when
their self-love is threatened and they are anxious to show their power,
as a child is impatient to play with a toy that has just been given to
it, she took from her bosom a paper and presented it to Hulot.
“Read that,” she said, with a sarcastic laugh.
Then she turned to the young man and gave him, in the excitement of
her triumph, a look in which mischief was mingled with an expression
of love. Their brows cleared, joy flushed each agitated face, and a
thousand contradictory thoughts rose in their hearts. Madame du Gua
noted in that one look far more of love than of pity in Mademoiselle
de Verneuil’s intervention; and she was right. The handsome creature
blushed beneath the other woman’s gaze, understanding its meaning, and
dropped her eyelids; then, as if aware of some threatening accusation,
she raised her head proudly and defied all eyes. The commandant,
petrified, returned the paper, countersigned by ministers, which
enjoined all authorities to obey the orders of this mysterious lady.
Having done so, he drew his sword, laid it across his knees, broke the
blade, and flung away the pieces.
“Mademoiselle, you probably know what you are about; but a Republican
has his own ideas, and his own dignity. I cannot serve where women
command. The First Consul will receive my resignation to-morrow; others,
who are not of my stripe, may obey you. I do not understand my orders
and therefore I stop short,--all the more because I am supposed to
understand them.”
There was silence for a moment, but it was soon broken by the young
lady, who went up to the commandant and held out her hand, saying,
“Colonel, though your beard is somewhat long, you may kiss my hand; you
are, indeed, a man!”
“I flatter myself I am, mademoiselle,” he replied, depositing a kiss
upon the hand of this singular young woman rather awkwardly. “As for
you, friend,” he said, threatening the young man with his finger, “you
have had a narrow escape this time.”
“Commandant,” said the youth, “it is time all this nonsense should
cease; I am ready to go with you, if you like, to headquarters.”
“And bring your invisible owl, Marche-a-Terre?”
“Who is Marche-a-Terre?” asked the young man, showing all the signs of
genuine surprise.
“Didn’t he hoot just now?”
“What did that hooting have to do with me, I should like to know? I
supposed it was your soldiers letting you know of their arrival.”
“Nonsense, you did not think that.”
“Yes, I did. But do drink that glass of Bordeaux; the wine is good.”
Surprised at the natural behaviour of the youth and also by the
frivolity of his manners and the youthfulness of his face, made even
more juvenile by the careful curling of his fair hair, the commandant
hesitated in the midst of his suspicions. He noticed that Madame du Gua
was intently watching the glances that her son gave to Mademoiselle de
Verneuil, and he asked her abruptly: “How old are you, _citoyenne_?”
“Ah, Monsieur l’officier,” she said, “the rules of the Republic are very
severe; must I tell you that I am thirty-eight?”
“May I be shot if I believe it! Marche-a-Terre is here; it was he who
gave that cry; you are Chouans in disguise. God’s thunder! I’ll search
the inn and make sure of it!”
Just then a hoot, somewhat like those that preceded it, came from the
courtyard; the commandant rushed out, and missed seeing the pallor that
covered Madame du Gua’s face as he spoke. Hulot saw at once that the
sound came from a postilion harnessing his horses to the coach, and
he cast aside his suspicions, all the more because it seemed absurd to
suppose that the Chouans would risk themselves in Alencon. He returned
to the house confounded.
“I forgive him now, but later he shall pay dear for the anxiety he
has given us,” said the mother to the son, in a low voice, as Hulot
re-entered the room.
The brave old officer showed on his worried face the struggle that went
on in his mind betwixt a stern sense of duty and the natural kindness of
his heart. He kept his gruff air, partly, perhaps, because he fancied
he had deceived himself, but he took the glass of Bordeaux, and said:
“Excuse me, comrade, but your Polytechnique does send such young
officers--”
“The Chouans have younger ones,” said the youth, laughing.
“For whom did you take my son?” asked Madame du Gua.
“For the Gars, the leader sent to the Chouans and the Vendeans by the
British cabinet; his real name is Marquis de Montauran.”
The commandant watched the faces of the suspected pair, who looked at
each other with a puzzled expression that seemed to say: “Do you know
that name?” “No, do you?” “What is he talking about?” “He’s dreaming.”
The sudden change in the manner of Marie de Verneuil, and her torpor as
she heard the name of the royalist general was observed by no one but
Francine, the only person to whom the least shade on that young face
was visible. Completely routed, the commandant picked up the bits of his
broken sword, looked at Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whose ardent beauty
was beginning to find its way to his heart, and said: “As for you,
mademoiselle, I take nothing back, and to-morrow these fragments of my
sword will reach Bonaparte, unless--”
“Pooh! what do I care for Bonaparte, or your republic, or the king,
or the Gars?” she cried, scarcely repressing an explosion of ill-bred
temper.
A mysterious emotion, the passion of which gave to her face a dazzling
color, showed that the whole world was nothing to the girl the moment
that one individual was all in all to her. But she suddenly subdued
herself into forced calmness, observing, like a trained actor, that the
spectators were watching her. The commandant rose hastily and went out.
Anxious and agitated, Mademoiselle de Verneuil followed him, stopped him
in the corridor, and said, in an almost solemn tone: “Have you any good
reason to suspect that young man of being the Gars?”
“God’s thunder! mademoiselle, that fellow who rode here with you came
back to warn me that the travellers in the mail-coach had all been
murdered by the Chouans; I knew that, but what I didn’t know was the
name of the murdered persons,--it was Gua de Saint-Cyr!”
“Oh! if Corentin is at the bottom of all this, nothing surprises me,”
she cried, with a gesture of disgust.
The commandant went his way without daring to look at Mademoiselle de
Verneuil, whose dangerous beauty began to affect him.
“If I had stayed two minutes longer I should have committed the folly of
taking back my sword and escorting her,” he was saying to himself as he
went down the stairs.
As Madame du Gua watched the young man, whose eyes were fixed on the
door through which Mademoiselle de Verneuil had passed, she said to him
in a low voice: “You are incorrigible. You will perish through a
woman. A doll can make you forget everything. Why did you allow her
to breakfast with us? Who is a Demoiselle de Verneuil escorted by the
Blues, who accepts a breakfast from strangers and disarms an
officer with a piece of paper hidden in the bosom of her gown like a
love-letter? She is one of those contemptible creatures by whose
aid Fouche expects to lay hold of you, and the paper she showed the
commandant ordered the Blues to assist her against you.”
“Eh! madame,” he replied in a sharp tone which went to the lady’s heart
and turned her pale; “her generous action disproves your supposition.
Pray remember that the welfare of the king is the sole bond between us.
You, who have had Charette at your feet must find the world without him
empty; are you not living to avenge him?”
The lady stood still and pensive, like one who sees from the shore the
wreck of all her treasures, and only the more eagerly longs for the
vanished property.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil re-entered the room; the young man exchanged
a smile with her and gave her a glance full of gentle meaning. However
uncertain the future might seem, however ephemeral their union, the
promises of their sudden love were only the more endearing to them.
Rapid as the glance was, it did not escape the sagacious eye of Madame
du Gua, who instantly understood it; her brow clouded, and she was
unable to wholly conceal her jealous anger. Francine was observing her;
she saw the eyes glitter, the cheeks flush; she thought she perceived
a diabolical spirit in the face, stirred by some sudden and terrible
revulsion. But lightning is not more rapid, nor death more prompt than
this brief exhibition of inward emotion. Madame du Gua recovered her
lively manner with such immediate self-possession that Francine fancied
herself mistaken. Nevertheless, having once perceived in this woman
a violence of feeling that was fully equal to that of Mademoiselle de
Verneuil, she trembled as she foresaw the clash with which such natures
might come together, and the girl shuddered when she saw Mademoiselle de
Verneuil go up to the young man with a passionate look and, taking
him by the hand, draw him close beside her and into the light, with a
coquettish glance that was full of witchery.
“Now,” she said, trying to read his eyes, “own to me that you are not
the citizen du Gua Saint-Cyr.”
“Yes, I am, mademoiselle.”
“But he and his mother were killed yesterday.”
“I am very sorry for that,” he replied, laughing. “However that may be,
I am none the less under a great obligation to you, for which I shall
always feel the deepest gratitude and only wish I could prove it to
you.”
“I thought I was saving an _emigre_, but I love you better as a
Republican.”
The words escaped her lips as it were impulsively; she became confused;
even her eyes blushed, and her face bore no other expression than one
of exquisite simplicity of feeling; she softly released the young man’s
hand, not from shame at having pressed it, but because of a thought too
weighty, it seemed, for her heart to bear, leaving him drunk with hope.
Suddenly she appeared to regret this freedom, permissible as it might
be under the passing circumstances of a journey. She recovered her
conventional manner, bowed to the lady and her son, and taking Francine
with her, left the room. When they reached their own chamber Francine
wrung her hands and tossed her arms, as she looked at her mistress,
saying: “Ah, Marie, what a crowd of things in a moment of time! who but
you would have such adventures?”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil sprang forward and clasped Francine round the
neck.
“Ah! this is life indeed--I am in heaven!”
“Or hell,” retorted Francine.
“Yes, hell if you like!” cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil. “Here, give me
your hand; feel my heart, how it beats. There’s fever in my veins; the
whole world is now a mere nothing to me! How many times have I not
seen that man in my dreams! Oh! how beautiful his head is--how his eyes
sparkle!”
“Will he love you?” said the simple peasant-woman, in a quivering voice,
her face full of sad foreboding.
“How can you ask me that!” cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil. “But,
Francine, tell me,” she added throwing herself into a pose that was half
serious, half comic, “will it be very hard to love me?”
“No, but will he love you always?” replied Francine, smiling.
They looked at each other for a moment speechless,--Francine at
revealing so much knowledge of life, and Marie at the perception, which
now came to her for the first time, of a future of happiness in her
passion. She seemed to herself hanging over a gulf of which she had
wanted to know the depth, and listening to the fall of the stone she had
flung, at first heedlessly, into it.
“Well, it is my own affair,” she said, with the gesture of a gambler. “I
should never pity a betrayed woman; she has no one but herself to blame
if she is abandoned. I shall know how to keep, either living or dead,
the man whose heart has once been mine. But,” she added, with some
surprise and after a moment’s silence, “where did you get your knowledge
of love, Francine?”
“Mademoiselle,” said the peasant-woman, hastily, “hush, I hear steps in
the passage.”
“Ah! not _his_ steps!” said Marie, listening. “But you are evading an
answer; well, well, I’ll wait for it, or guess it.”
Francine was right, however. Three taps on the door interrupted the
conversation. Captain Merle appeared, after receiving Mademoiselle de
Verneuil’s permission to enter.
With a military salute to the lady, whose beauty dazzled him, the
soldier ventured on giving her a glance, but he found nothing better to
say than: “Mademoiselle, I am at your orders.”
“Then you are to be my protector, in place of the commander, who
retires; is that so?”
“No, my superior is the adjutant-major Gerard, who has sent me here.”
“Your commandant must be very much afraid of me,” she said.
“Beg pardon, mademoiselle, Hulot is afraid of nothing. But women,
you see, are not in his line; it ruffled him to have a general in a
mob-cap.”
“And yet,” continued Mademoiselle de Verneuil, “it was his duty to obey
his superiors. I like subordination, and I warn you that I shall allow
no one to disobey me.”
“That would be difficult,” replied Merle, gallantly.
“Let us consult,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil. “You can get fresh
troops here and accompany me to Mayenne, which I must reach this
evening. Shall we find other soldiers there, so that I might go on at
once, without stopping at Mayenne? The Chouans are quite ignorant of
our little expedition. If we travel at night, we can avoid meeting any
number of them, and so escape an attack. Do you think this feasible?”
“Yes, mademoiselle.”
“What sort of road is it between Mayenne and Fougeres?”
“Rough; all up and down, a regular squirrel-wheel.”
“Well, let us start at once. As we have nothing to fear near Alencon,
you can go before me; we’ll join you soon.”
“One would think she had seen ten years’ service,” thought Merle, as he
departed. “Hulot is mistaken; that young girl is not earning her
living out of a feather-bed. Ten thousand carriages! if I want to be
adjutant-major I mustn’t be such a fool as to mistake Saint-Michael for
the devil.”
During Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s conference with the captain, Francine
had slipped out for the purpose of examining, through a window of the
corridor, the spot in the courtyard which had excited her curiosity on
arriving at the inn. She watched the stable and the heaps of straw with
the absorption of one who was saying her prayers to the Virgin, and
she presently saw Madame du Gua approaching Marche-a-Terre with the
precaution of a cat that dislikes to wet its feet. When the Chouan
caught sight of the lady, he rose and stood before her in an attitude of
deep respect. This singular circumstance aroused Francine’s curiosity;
she slipped into the courtyard and along the walls, avoiding Madame du
Gua’s notice, and trying to hide herself behind the stable door. She
walked on tiptoe, scarcely daring to breathe, and succeeded in posting
herself close to Marche-a-Terre, without exciting his attention.
“If, after all this information,” the lady was saying to the Chouan, “it
proves not to be her real name, you are to fire upon her without pity,
as you would on a mad dog.”
“Agreed!” said Marche-a-Terre.
The lady left him. The Chouan replaced his red woollen cap upon his
head, remained standing, and was scratching his ear as if puzzled when
Francine suddenly appeared before him, apparently by magic.
“Saint Anne of Auray!” he exclaimed. Then he dropped his whip, clasped
his hands, and stood as if in ecstasy. A faint color illuminated his
coarse face, and his eyes shone like diamonds dropped on a muck-heap.
“Is it really the brave girl from Cottin?” he muttered, in a voice so
smothered that he alone heard it. “You _are_ fine,” he said, after a
pause, using the curious word, “godaine,” a superlative in the dialect
of those regions used by lovers to express the combination of fine
clothes and beauty.
“I daren’t touch you,” added Marche-a-Terre, putting out his big hand
nevertheless, as if to weigh the gold chain which hung round her neck
and below her waist.
“You had better not, Pierre,” replied Francine, inspired by the
instinct which makes a woman despotic when not oppressed. She drew back
haughtily, after enjoying the Chouan’s surprise; but she compensated for
the harshness of her words by the softness of her glance, saying, as she
once more approached him: “Pierre, that lady was talking to you about my
young mistress, wasn’t she?”
Marche-a-Terre was silent; his face struggled, like the dawn, between
clouds and light. He looked in turn at Francine, at the whip he
had dropped, and at the chain, which seemed to have as powerful an
attraction for him as the Breton girl herself. Then, as if to put a stop
to his own uneasiness, he picked up his whip and still kept silence.
“Well, it is easy to see that that lady told you to kill my mistress,”
resumed Francine, who knew the faithful discretion of the peasant, and
wished to relieve his scruples.
Marche-a-Terre lowered his head significantly. To the Cottin girl that
was answer enough.
“Very good, Pierre,” she said; “if any evil happens to her, if a hair
of her head is injured, you and I will have seen each other for the last
time; for I shall be in heaven, and you will go to hell.”
The possessed of devils whom the Church in former days used to exorcise
with great pomp were not more shaken and agitated than Marche-a-Terre
at this prophecy, uttered with a conviction that gave it certainty.
His glance, which at first had a character of savage tenderness,
counteracted by a fanaticism as powerful in his soul as love, suddenly
became surly, as he felt the imperious manner of the girl he had long
since chosen. Francine interpreted his silence in her own way.
“Won’t you do anything for my sake?” she said in a tone of reproach.
At these words the Chouan cast a glance at his mistress from eyes that
were black as a crow’s wing.
“Are you free?” he asked in a growl that Francine alone could have
understood.
“Should I be here if I were not?” she replied indignantly. “But you,
what are you doing here? Still playing bandit, still roaming the country
like a mad dog wanting to bite. Oh! Pierre, if you were wise, you would
come with me. This beautiful young lady, who, I ought to tell you, was
nursed when a baby in our home, has taken care of me. I have two hundred
francs a year from a good investment. And Mademoiselle has bought me my
uncle Thomas’s big house for fifteen hundred francs, and I have saved
two thousand beside.”
But her smiles and the announcement of her wealth fell dead before the
dogged immovability of the Chouan.
“The priests have told us to go to war,” he replied. “Every Blue we
shoot earns one indulgence.”
“But suppose the Blues shoot you?”
He answered by letting his arms drop at his sides, as if regretting the
poverty of the offering he should thus make to God and the king.
“What will become of me?” exclaimed the young girl, sorrowfully.
Marche-a-Terre looked at her stupidly; his eyes seemed to enlarge; tears
rolled down his hairy cheeks upon the goatskin which covered him, and a
low moan came from his breast.
“Saint Anne of Auray!--Pierre, is this all you have to say to me after a
parting of seven years? You have changed indeed.”
“I love you the same as ever,” said the Chouan, in a gruff voice.
“No,” she whispered, “the king is first.”
“If you look at me like that I shall go,” he said.
“Well, then, adieu,” she replied, sadly.
“Adieu,” he repeated.
He seized her hand, wrung it, kissed it, made the sign of the cross, and
rushed into the stable, like a dog who fears that his bone will be taken
from him.
“Pille-Miche,” he said to his comrade. “Where’s your tobacco-box?”
“Ho! _sacre bleu_! what a fine chain!” cried Pille-Miche, fumbling in a
pocket constructed in his goatskin.
Then he held out to Marche-a-Terre the little horn in which Bretons put
the finely powdered tobacco which they prepare themselves during the
long winter nights. The Chouan raised his thumb and made a hollow in
the palm of his hand, after the manner in which an “Invalide” takes his
tobacco; then he shook the horn, the small end of which Pille-Miche had
unscrewed. A fine powder fell slowly from the little hole pierced in
the point of this Breton utensil. Marche-a-Terre went through the same
process seven or eight times silently, as if the powder had power
to change the current of his thoughts. Suddenly he flung the horn to
Pille-Miche with a gesture of despair, and caught up a gun which was
hidden in the straw.
“Seven or eight shakes at once! I suppose you think that costs nothing!”
said the stingy Pille-Miche.
“Forward!” cried Marche-a-Terre in a hoarse voice. “There’s work before
us.”
Thirty or more Chouans who were sleeping in the straw under the mangers,
raised their heads, saw Marche-a-Terre on his feet, and disappeared
instantly through a door which led to the garden, from which it was easy
to reach the fields.
When Francine left the stable she found the mail-coach ready to start.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil and her new fellow-travellers were already in
it. The girl shuddered as she saw her young mistress sitting side by
side with the woman who had just ordered her death. The young man had
taken his seat facing Marie, and as soon as Francine was in hers the
heavy vehicle started at a good pace.
The sun had swept away the gray autumnal mists, and its rays were
brightening the gloomy landscape with a look of youth and holiday. Many
lovers fancy that such chance accidents of the sky are premonitions.
Francine was surprised at the strange silence which fell upon the
travellers. Mademoiselle de Verneuil had recovered her cold manner, and
sat with her eyes lowered, her head slightly inclined, and her hands
hidden under a sort of mantle in which she had wrapped herself. If she
raised her eyes it was only to look at the passing scenery. Certain of
being admired, she rejected admiration; but her apparent indifference
was evidently more coquettish than natural. Purity, which gives such
harmony to the diverse expressions by which a simple soul reveals
itself, could lend no charm to a being whose every instinct predestined
her to the storms of passion. Yielding himself up to the pleasures
of this dawning intrigue, the young man did not try to explain
the contradictions which were obvious between the coquetry and the
enthusiasm of this singular young girl. Her assumed indifference allowed
him to examine at his ease a face which was now as beautiful in its
calmness as it had been when agitated. Like the rest of us, he was not
disposed to question the sources of his enjoyment.
It is difficult for a pretty woman to avoid the glances of her
companions in a carriage when their eyes fasten upon her as a visible
distraction to the monotony of a journey. Happy, therefore, in being
able to satisfy the hunger of his dawning passion, without offence or
avoidance on the part of its object, the young man studied the pure and
brilliant lines of the girl’s head and face. To him they were a picture.
Sometimes the light brought out the transparent rose of the nostrils
and the double curve which united the nose with the upper lip; at other
times a pale glint of sunshine illuminated the tints of the skin,
pearly beneath the eyes and round the mouth, rosy on the cheeks, and
ivory-white about the temples and throat. He admired the contrasts of
light and shade caused by the masses of black hair surrounding her face
and giving it an ephemeral grace,--for all is fleeting in a woman;
her beauty of to-day is often not that of yesterday, fortunately for
herself, perhaps! The young man, who was still at an age when youth
delights in the nothings which are the all of love, watched eagerly for
each movement of the eyelids, and the seductive rise and fall of her
bosom as she breathed. Sometimes he fancied, suiting the tenor of his
thoughts, that he could see a meaning in the expression of the eyes and
the imperceptible inflection of the lips. Every gesture betrayed to
him the soul, every motion a new aspect of the young girl. If a thought
stirred those mobile features, if a sudden blush suffused the cheeks, or
a smile brought life into the face, he found a fresh delight in trying
to discover the secrets of this mysterious creature. Everything about
her was a snare to the soul and a snare to the senses. Even the
silence that fell between them, far from raising an obstacle to the
understanding of their hearts, became the common ground for mutual
thoughts. But after a while the many looks in which their eyes
encountered each other warned Marie de Verneuil that the silence was
compromising her, and she turned to Madame du Gua with one of those
commonplace remarks which open the way to conversation; but even in so
doing she included the young man.
“Madame,” she said, “how could you put your son into the navy? have you
not doomed yourself to perpetual anxiety?”
“Mademoiselle, the fate of women, of mothers, I should say, is to
tremble for the safety of their dear ones.”
“Your son is very like you.”
“Do you think so, mademoiselle?”
The smile with which the young man listened to these remarks increased
the vexation of his pretended mother. Her hatred grew with every
passionate glance he turned on Marie. Silence or conversation, all
increased the dreadful wrath which she carefully concealed beneath a
cordial manner.
“Mademoiselle,” said the young man, “you are quite mistaken. Naval men
are not more exposed to danger than soldiers. Women ought not to dislike
the navy; we sailors have a merit beyond that of the military,--we are
faithful to our mistresses.”
“Oh, from necessity,” replied Mademoiselle de Verneuil, laughing.
“But even so, it is fidelity,” said Madame du Gua, in a deep voice.
The conversation grew lively, touching upon subjects that were
interesting to none but the three travellers, for under such
circumstances intelligent persons given new meanings to commonplace
talk; but every word, insignificant as it might seem, was a mutual
interrogation, hiding the desires, hopes, and passions which agitated
them. Marie’s cleverness and quick perception (for she was fully on her
guard) showed Madame du Gua that calumny and treachery could alone avail
to triumph over a rival as formidable through her intellect as by her
beauty. The mail-coach presently overtook the escort, and then advanced
more slowly. The young man, seeing a long hill before them, proposed
to the young lady that they should walk. The friendly politeness of his
offer decided her, and her consent flattered him.
“Is Madame of our opinion?” she said, turning to Madame du Gua. “Will
she walk, too?”
“Coquette!” said the lady to herself, as she left the coach.
Marie and the young man walked together, but a little apart. The sailor,
full of ardent desires, was determined to break the reserve that checked
him, of which, however, he was not the dupe. He fancied that he could
succeed by dallying with the young lady in that tone of courteous
amiability and wit, sometimes frivolous, sometimes serious, which
characterized the men of the exiled aristocracy. But the smiling
Parisian beauty parried him so mischievously, and rejected his
frivolities with such disdain, evidently preferring the stronger ideas
and enthusiasms which he betrayed from time to time in spite of himself,
that he presently began to understand the true way of pleasing her. The
conversation then changed. He realized the hopes her expressive face had
given him; yet, as he did so, new difficulties arose, and he was still
forced to suspend his judgment on a girl who seemed to take delight in
thwarting him, a siren with whom he grew more and more in love. After
yielding to the seduction of her beauty, he was still more attracted
to her mysterious soul, with a curiosity which Marie perceived and took
pleasure in exciting. Their intercourse assumed, insensibly, a character
of intimacy far removed from the tone of indifference which Mademoiselle
de Verneuil endeavored in vain to give to it.
Though Madame du Gua had followed the lovers, the latter had
unconsciously walked so much more rapidly than she that a distance of
several hundred feet soon separated them. The charming pair trod the
fine sand beneath their feet, listening with childlike delight to the
union of their footsteps, happy in being wrapped by the same ray of
a sunshine that seemed spring-like, in breathing with the same breath
autumnal perfumes laden with vegetable odors which seemed a nourishment
brought by the breezes to their dawning love. Though to them it may have
been a mere circumstance of their fortuitous meeting, yet the sky, the
landscape, the season of the year, did communicate to their emotions a
tinge of melancholy gravity which gave them an element of passion. They
praised the weather and talked of its beauty; then of their strange
encounter, of the coming rupture of an intercourse so delightful; of the
ease with which, in travelling, friendships, lost as soon as made, are
formed. After this last remark, the young man profited by what seemed to
be a tacit permission to make a few tender confidences, and to risk an
avowal of love like a man who was not unaccustomed to such situations.
“Have you noticed, mademoiselle,” he said, “how little the feelings of
the heart follow the old conventional rules in the days of terror in
which we live? Everything about us bears the stamp of suddenness. We
love in a day, or we hate on the strength of a single glance. We are
bound to each other for life in a moment, or we part with the celerity
of death itself. All things are hurried, like the convulsions of the
nation. In the midst of such dangers as ours the ties that bind should
be stronger than under the ordinary course of life. In Paris during the
Terror, every one came to know the full meaning of a clasp of the hand
as men do on a battle-field.”
“People felt the necessity of living fast and ardently,” she answered,
“for they had little time to live.” Then, with a glance at her companion
which seemed to tell him that the end of their short intercourse was
approaching, she added, maliciously: “You are very well informed as
to the affairs of life, for a young man who has just left the Ecole
Polytechnique!”
“What are you thinking of me?” he said after a moment’s silence. “Tell
me frankly, without disguise.”
“You wish to acquire the right to speak to me of myself,” she said
laughing.
“You do not answer me,” he went on after a slight pause. “Take care,
silence is sometimes significant.”
“Do you think I cannot guess all that you would like to say to me? Good
heavens! you have already said enough.”
“Oh, if we understand each other,” he replied, smiling, “I have obtained
more than I dared hope for.”
She smiled in return so graciously that she seemed to accept the
courteous struggle into which all men like to draw a woman. They
persuaded themselves, half in jest, half in earnest, that they never
could be more to each other than they were at that moment. The young man
fancied, therefore, he might give reins to a passion that could have
no future; the young woman felt she might smile upon it. Marie suddenly
struck her foot against a stone and stumbled.
“Take my arm,” said her companion.
“It seems I must,” she replied; “you would be too proud if I refused;
you would fancy I feared you.”
“Ah, mademoiselle,” he said, pressing her arm against his heart that she
might feel the beating of it, “you flatter my pride by granting such a
favor.”
“Well, the readiness with which I do so will cure your illusions.”
“Do you wish to save me from the danger of the emotions you cause?”
“Stop, stop!” she cried; “do not try to entangle me in such boudoir
riddles. I don’t like to find the wit of fools in a man of your
character. See! here we are beneath the glorious sky, in the open
country; before us, above us, all is grand. You wish to tell me that
I am beautiful, do you not? Well, your eyes have already told me so;
besides, I know it; I am not a woman whom mere compliments can please.
But perhaps you would like,” this with satirical emphasis, “to talk
about your _sentiments_? Do you think me so simple as to believe that
sudden sympathies are powerful enough to influence a whole life through
the recollections of one morning?”
“Not the recollections of a morning,” he said, “but those of a beautiful
woman who has shown herself generous.”
“You forget,” she retorted, laughing, “half my attractions,--a
mysterious woman, with everything odd about her, name, rank, situation,
freedom of thought and manners.”
“You are not mysterious to me!” he exclaimed. “I have fathomed you;
there is nothing that could be added to your perfections except a little
more faith in the love you inspire.”
“Ah, my poor child of eighteen, what can you know of love?” she said
smiling. “Well, well, so be it!” she added, “it is a fair subject of
conversation, like the weather when one pays a visit. You shall find
that I have neither false modesty nor petty fears. I can hear the word
love without blushing; it has been so often said to me without one
echo of the heart that I think it quite unmeaning. I have met with it
everywhere, in books, at the theatre, in society,--yes, everywhere, and
never have I found in it even a semblance of its magnificent ideal.”
“Did you seek that ideal?”
“Yes.”
The word was said with such perfect ease and freedom that the young man
made a gesture of surprise and looked at Marie fixedly, as if he had
suddenly changed his opinion on her character and real position.
“Mademoiselle,” he said with ill-concealed devotion, “are you maid or
wife, angel or devil?”
“All,” she replied, laughing. “Isn’t there something diabolic and also
angelic in a young girl who has never loved, does not love, and perhaps
will never love?”
“Do you think yourself happy thus?” he asked with a free and easy tone
and manner, as though already he felt less respect for her.
“Oh, happy, no,” she replied. “When I think that I am alone, hampered
by social conventions that make me deceitful, I envy the privileges of
a man. But when I also reflect on the means which nature has bestowed
on us women to catch and entangle you men in the invisible meshes of a
power which you cannot resist, then the part assigned to me in the world
is not displeasing to me. And then again, suddenly, it does seem very
petty, and I feel that I should despise a man who allowed himself to be
duped by such vulgar seductions. No sooner do I perceive our power and
like it, than I know it to be horrible and I abhor it. Sometimes I feel
within me that longing towards devotion which makes my sex so nobly
beautiful; and then I feel a desire, which consumes me, for dominion
and power. Perhaps it is the natural struggle of the good and the evil
principle in which all creatures live here below. Angel or devil!
you have expressed it. Ah! to-day is not the first time that I have
recognized my double nature. But we women understand better than you
men can do our own shortcomings. We have an instinct which shows us
a perfection in all things to which, nevertheless, we fail to attain.
But,” she added, sighing as she glanced at the sky; “that which enhances
us in your eyes is--”
“Is what?” he said.
“--that we are all struggling, more or less,” she answered, “against a
thwarted destiny.”
“Mademoiselle, why should we part to-night?”
“Ah!” she replied, smiling at the passionate look which he gave her,
“let us get into the carriage; the open air does not agree with us.”
Marie turned abruptly; the young man followed her, and pressed her
arm with little respect, but in a manner that expressed his imperious
admiration. She hastened her steps. Seeing that she wished to escape an
importune declaration, he became the more ardent; being determined to
win a first favor from this woman, he risked all and said, looking at
her meaningly:--
“Shall I tell you a secret?”
“Yes, quickly, if it concerns you.”
“I am not in the service of the Republic. Where are you going? I shall
follow you.”
At the words Marie trembled violently. She withdrew her arm and covered
her face with both hands to hide either the flush or the pallor of her
cheeks; then she suddenly uncovered her face and said in a voice of deep
emotion:--
“Then you began as you would have ended, by deceiving me?”
“Yes,” he said.
At this answer she turned again from the carriage, which was now
overtaking them, and began to almost run along the road.
“I thought,” he said, following her, “that the open air did not agree
with you?”
“Oh! it has changed,” she replied in a grave tone, continuing to walk
on, a prey to agitating thoughts.
“You do not answer me,” said the young man, his heart full of the soft
expectation of coming pleasure.
“Oh!” she said, in a strained voice, “the tragedy begins.”
“What tragedy?” he asked.
She stopped short, looked at the young student from head to foot with
a mingled expression of fear and curiosity; then she concealed her
feelings that were agitating her under the mask of an impenetrable
calmness, showing that for a girl of her age she had great experience of
life.
“Who are you?” she said,--“but I know already; when I first saw you I
suspected it. You are the royalist leader whom they call the Gars.
The ex-bishop of Autun was right in saying we should always believe in
presentiments which give warning of evil.”
“What interest have you in knowing the Gars?”
“What interest has he in concealing himself from me who have already
saved his life?” She began to laugh, but the merriment was forced. “I
have wisely prevented you from saying that you love me. Let me tell you,
monsieur, that I abhor you. I am republican, you are royalist; I would
deliver you up if you were not under my protection, and if I had not
already saved your life, and if--” she stopped. These violent extremes
of feeling and the inward struggle which she no longer attempted to
conceal alarmed the young man, who tried, but in vain, to observe her
calmly. “Let us part here at once,--I insist upon it; farewell!” she
said. She turned hastily back, made a few steps, and then returned to
him. “No, no,” she continued, “I have too great an interest in knowing
who you are. Hide nothing from me; tell me the truth. Who are you? for
you are no more a pupil of the Ecole Polytechnique than you are eighteen
years old.”
“I am a sailor, ready to leave the ocean and follow you wherever your
imagination may lead you. If I have been so lucky as to rouse your
curiosity in any particular I shall be very careful not to lessen it.
Why mingle the serious affairs of real life with the life of the heart
in which we are beginning to understand each other?”
“Our souls might have understood each other,” she said in a grave voice.
“But I have no right to exact your confidence. You will never know the
extent of your obligations to me; I shall not explain them.”
They walked a few steps in silence.
“My life does interest you,” said the young man.
“Monsieur, I implore you, tell me your name or else be silent. You are
a child,” she added, with an impatient movement of her shoulders, “and I
feel a pity for you.”
The obstinacy with which she insisted on knowing his name made the
pretended sailor hesitate between prudence and love. The vexation of a
desired woman is powerfully attractive; her anger, like her submission,
is imperious; many are the fibres she touches in a man’s heart,
penetrating and subjugating it. Was this scene only another aspect of
Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s coquetry? In spite of his sudden passion the
unnamed lover had the strength to distrust a woman thus bent on forcing
from him a secret of life and death.
“Why has my rash indiscretion, which sought to give a future to our
present meeting, destroyed the happiness of it?” he said, taking her
hand, which she left in his unconsciously.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who seemed to be in real distress, was silent.
“How have I displeased you?” he said. “What can I do to soothe you?”
“Tell me your name.”
He made no reply, and they walked some distance in silence. Suddenly
Mademoiselle de Verneuil stopped short, like one who has come to some
serious determination.
“Monsieur le Marquis de Montauran,” she said, with dignity, but without
being able to conceal entirely the nervous trembling of her features, “I
desire to do you a great service, whatever it may cost me. We part here.
The coach and its escort are necessary for your protection, and you must
continue your journey in it. Fear nothing from the Republicans; they are
men of honor, and I shall give the adjutant certain orders which he will
faithfully execute. As for me, I shall return on foot to Alencon with my
maid, and take a few of the soldiers with me. Listen to what I say, for
your life depends on it. If, before you reach a place of safety, you
meet that odious man you saw in my company at the inn, escape at once,
for he will instantly betray you. As for me,--” she paused, “as for me,
I fling myself back into the miseries of life. Farewell, monsieur, may
you be happy; farewell.”
She made a sign to Captain Merle, who was just then reaching the brow
of the hill behind her. The marquis was taken unawares by her sudden
action.
“Stop!” he cried, in a tone of despair that was well acted.
This singular caprice of a girl for whom he would at that instant have
thrown away his life so surprised him that he invented, on the spur of
the moment, a fatal fiction by which to hide his name and satisfy the
curiosity of his companion.
“You have almost guessed the truth,” he said. “I am an _emigre_,
condemned to death, and my name is Vicomte de Bauvan. Love of my country
has brought me back to France to join my brother. I hope to be taken off
the list of _emigres_ through the influence of Madame de Beauharnais,
now the wife of the First Consul; but if I fail in this, I mean to die
on the soil of my native land, fighting beside my friend Montauran. I am
now on my way secretly, by means of a passport he has sent me, to learn
if any of my property in Brittany is still unconfiscated.”
While the young man spoke Mademoiselle de Verneuil examined him with
a penetrating eye. She tried at first to doubt his words, but being
by nature confiding and trustful, she slowly regained an expression
of serenity, and said eagerly, “Monsieur, are you telling me the exact
truth?”
“Yes, the exact truth,” replied the young man, who seemed to have no
conscience in his dealings with women.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil gave a deep sigh, like a person who returns to
life.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, “I am very happy.”
“Then you hate that poor Montauran?”
“No,” she said; “but I could not make you understand my meaning. I was
not willing that _you_ should meet the dangers from which I will try to
protect him,--since he is your friend.”
“Who told you that Montauran was in danger?”
“Ah, monsieur, even if I had not come from Paris, where his enterprise
is the one thing talked of, the commandant at Alencon said enough to
show his danger.”
“Then let me ask you how you expect to save him from it.”
“Suppose I do not choose to answer,” she replied, with the haughty air
that women often assume to hide an emotion. “What right have you to know
my secrets?”
“The right of a man who loves you.”
“Already?” she said. “No, you do not love me. I am only an object of
passing gallantry to you,--that is all. I am clear-sighted; did I not
penetrate your disguise at once? A woman who knows anything of
good society could not be misled, in these days, by a pupil of the
Polytechnique who uses choice language, and conceals as little as you do
the manners of a _grand seigneur_ under the mask of a Republican. There
is a trifle of powder left in your hair, and a fragrance of nobility
clings to you which a woman of the world cannot fail to detect.
Therefore, fearing that the man whom you saw accompanying me, who has
all the shrewdness of a woman, might make the same discovery, I sent him
away. Monsieur, let me tell you that a true Republican officer just from
the Polytechnique would not have made love to me as you have done, and
would not have taken me for a pretty adventuress. Allow me, Monsieur de
Bauvan, to preach you a little sermon from a woman’s point of view. Are
you too juvenile to know that of all the creatures of my sex the most
difficult to subdue is that same adventuress,--she whose price is
ticketed and who is weary of pleasure. That sort of woman requires, they
tell me, constant seduction; she yields only to her own caprices; any
attempt to please her argues, I should suppose, great conceit on the
part of a man. But let us put aside that class of women, among whom you
have been good enough to rank me; you ought to understand that a young
woman, handsome, brilliant, and of noble birth (for, I suppose, you will
grant me those advantages), does not sell herself, and can only be won
by the man who loves her in one way. You understand me? If she loves
him and is willing to commit a folly, she must be justified by great and
heroic reasons. Forgive me this logic, rare in my sex; but for the sake
of your happiness,--and my own,” she added, dropping her head,--“I will
not allow either of us to deceive the other, nor will I permit you to
think that Mademoiselle de Verneuil, angel or devil, maid or wife, is
capable of being seduced by commonplace gallantry.”
“Mademoiselle,” said the marquis, whose surprise, though he concealed
it, was extreme, and who at once became a man of the great world, “I
entreat you to believe that I take you to be a very noble person, full
of the highest sentiments, or--a charming girl, as you please.”
“I don’t ask all that,” she said, laughing. “Allow me to keep my
incognito. My mask is better than yours, and it pleases me to wear
it,--if only to discover whether those who talk to me of love are
sincere. Therefore, beware of me! Monsieur,” she cried, catching his arm
vehemently, “listen to me; if you were able to prove that your love is
true, nothing, no human power, could part us. Yes, I would fain
unite myself to the noble destiny of some great man, and marry a
vast ambition, glorious hopes! Noble hearts are never faithless,
for constancy is in their fibre; I should be forever loved, forever
happy,--I would make my body a stepping-stone by which to raise the man
who loved me; I would sacrifice all things to him, bear all things from
him, and love him forever,--even if he ceased to love me. I have never
before dared to confess to another heart the secrets of mine, nor the
passionate enthusiasms which exhaust me; but I tell you something of
them now because, as soon as I have seen you in safety, we shall part
forever.”
“Part? never!” he cried, electrified by the tones of that vigorous soul
which seemed to be fighting against some overwhelming thought.
“Are you free?” she said, with a haughty glance which subdued him.
“Free! yes, except for the sentence of death which hangs over me.”
She added presently, in a voice full of bitter feeling: “If all this
were not a dream, a glorious life might indeed be ours. But I have been
talking folly; let us beware of committing any. When I think of all you
would have to be before you could rate me at my proper value I doubt
everything--”
“I doubt nothing if you will only grant me--”
“Hush!” she cried, hearing a note of true passion in his voice, “the
open air is decidedly disagreeing with us; let us return to the coach.”
That vehicle soon came up; they took their places and drove on several
miles in total silence. Both had matter for reflection, but henceforth
their eyes no longer feared to meet. Each now seemed to have an equal
interest in observing the other, and in mutually hiding important
secrets; but for all that they were drawn together by one and the
same impulse, which now, as a result of this interview, assumed the
dimensions of a passion. They recognized in each other qualities which
promised to heighten all the pleasures to be derived from either
their contest or their union. Perhaps both of them, living a life of
adventure, had reached the singular moral condition in which, either
from weariness or in defiance of fate, the mind rejects serious
reflection and flings itself on chance in pursuing an enterprise
precisely because the issues of chance are unknown, and the interest of
expecting them vivid. The moral nature, like the physical nature, has
its abysses into which strong souls love to plunge, risking their future
as gamblers risk their fortune. Mademoiselle de Verneuil and the young
marquis had obtained a revelation of each other’s minds as a consequence
of this interview, and their intercourse thus took rapid strides, for
the sympathy of their souls succeeded to that of their senses. Besides,
the more they felt fatally drawn to each other, the more eager they
were to study the secret action of their minds. The so-called Vicomte de
Bauvan, surprised at the seriousness of the strange girl’s ideas, asked
himself how she could possibly combine such acquired knowledge of life
with so much youth and freshness. He thought he discovered an extreme
desire to appear chaste in the modesty and reserve of her attitudes.
He suspected her of playing a part; he questioned the nature of his own
pleasure; and ended by choosing to consider her a clever actress. He was
right; Mademoiselle de Verneuil, like other women of the world, grew the
more reserved the more she felt the warmth of her own feelings, assuming
with perfect naturalness the appearance of prudery, beneath which such
women veil their desires. They all wish to offer themselves as virgins
on love’s altar; and if they are not so, the deception they seek to
practise is at least a homage which they pay to their lovers. These
thoughts passed rapidly through the mind of the young man and gratified
him. In fact, for both, this mutual examination was an advance in their
intercourse, and the lover soon came to that phase of passion in which
a man finds in the defects of his mistress a reason for loving her the
more.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil was thoughtful. Perhaps her imagination led her
over a greater extent of the future than that of the young _emigre_,
who was merely following one of the many impulses of his life as a man;
whereas Marie was considering a lifetime, thinking to make it beautiful,
and to fill it with happiness and with grand and noble sentiments.
Happy in such thoughts, more in love with her ideal than with the actual
reality, with the future rather than with the present, she desired now
to return upon her steps so as to better establish her power. In this
she acted instinctively, as all women act. Having agreed with her soul
that she would give herself wholly up, she wished--if we may so express
it--to dispute every fragment of the gift; she longed to take back from
the past all her words and looks and acts and make them more in harmony
with the dignity of a woman beloved. Her eyes at times expressed a sort
of terror as she thought of the interview just over, in which she
had shown herself aggressive. But as she watched the face before her,
instinct with power, and felt that a being so strong must also be
generous, she glowed at the thought that her part in life would be
nobler than that of most women, inasmuch as her lover was a man of
character, a man condemned to death, who had come to risk his life in
making war against the Republic. The thought of occupying such a soul to
the exclusion of all rivals gave a new aspect to many matters. Between
the moment, only five hours earlier, when she composed her face and
toned her voice to allure the young man, and the present moment, when
she was able to convulse him with a look, there was all the difference
to her between a dead world and a living one.