In the condition of soul in which Mademoiselle de Verneuil now existed

external life seemed to her a species of phantasmagoria. The carriage

passed through villages and valleys and mounted hills which left no

impressions on her mind. They reached Mayenne; the soldiers of the

escort were changed; Merle spoke to her; she replied; they crossed the

whole town and were again in the open country; but the faces, houses,

streets, landscape, men, swept past her like the figments of a dream.

Night came, and Marie was travelling beneath a diamond sky, wrapped in

soft light, and yet she was not aware that darkness had succeeded day;

that Mayenne was passed; that Fougeres was near; she knew not even where

she was going. That she should part in a few hours from the man she

had chosen, and who, she believed, had chosen her, was not for her a

possibility. Love is the only passion which looks to neither past nor

future. Occasionally her thoughts escaped in broken words, in phrases

devoid of meaning, though to her lover’s ears they sounded like promises

of love. To the two witnesses of this birth of passion she seemed to

be rushing onward with fearful rapidity. Francine knew Marie as well as

Madame du Gua knew the marquis, and their experience of the past made

them await in silence some terrible finale. It was, indeed, not long

before the end came to the drama which Mademoiselle de Verneuil had

called, without perhaps imagining the truth of her words, a tragedy.

When the travellers were about three miles beyond Mayenne they heard

a horseman riding after them with great rapidity. When he reached the

carriage he leaned towards it to look at Mademoiselle de Verneuil,

who recognized Corentin. That offensive personage made her a sign of

intelligence, the familiarity of which was deeply mortifying; then he

turned away, after chilling her to the bone with a look full of some

base meaning. The young _emigre_ seemed painfully affected by this

circumstance, which did not escape the notice of his pretended mother;

but Marie softly touched him, seeming by her eyes to take refuge in his

heart as thought it were her only haven. His brow cleared at this proof

of the full extent of his mistress’s attachment, coming to him as it

were by accident. An inexplicable fear seemed to have overcome

her coyness, and her love was visible for a moment without a veil.

Unfortunately for both of them, Madame du Gua saw it all; like a miser

who gives a feast, she seemed to count the morsels and begrudge the

wine.

Absorbed in their happiness the lovers arrived, without any

consciousness of the distance they had traversed, at that part of the

road which passed through the valley of Ernee. There Francine noticed

and showed to her companions a number of strange forms which seemed to

move like shadows among the trees and gorse that surrounded the fields.

When the carriage came within range of these shadows a volley of

musketry, the balls of which whistled above their heads, warned the

travellers that the shadows were realities. The escort had fallen into a

trap.

Captain Merle now keenly regretted having adopted Mademoiselle de

Verneuil’s idea that a rapid journey by night would be a safe one,--an

error which had led him to reduce his escort from Mayenne to sixty men.

He at once, under Gerard’s orders, divided his little troop into two

columns, one on each side of the road, which the two officers marched

at a quick step among the gorse hedges, eager to meet the assailants,

though ignorant of their number. The Blues beat the thick bushes right

and left with rash intrepidity, and replied to the Chouans with a steady

fire.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s first impulse was to jump from the carriage

and run back along the road until she was out of sight of the battle;

but ashamed of her fears, and moved by the feeling which impels us all

to act nobly under the eyes of those we love, she presently stood still,

endeavoring to watch the combat coolly.

The marquis followed her, took her hand, and placed it on his breast.

“I was afraid,” she said, smiling, “but now--”

Just then her terrified maid cried out: “Marie, take care!”

But as she said the words, Francine, who was springing from the

carriage, felt herself grasped by a strong hand. The sudden weight

of that enormous hand made her shriek violently; she turned, and was

instantly silenced on recognizing Marche-a-Terre.

“Twice I owe to chance,” said the marquis to Mademoiselle de Verneuil,

“the revelation of the sweetest secrets of the heart. Thanks to Francine

I now know you bear the gracious name of Marie,--Marie, the name I have

invoked in my distresses,--Marie, a name I shall henceforth speak in

joy, and never without sacrifice, mingling religion and love. There can

be no wrong where prayer and love go together.”

They clasped hands, looked silently into each other’s eyes, and the

excess of their emotion took away from them the power to express it.

“There’s no danger for _the rest of you_,” Marche-a-Terre was saying

roughly to Francine, giving to his hoarse and guttural voice a

reproachful tone, and emphasizing his last words in a way to stupefy the

innocent peasant-girl. For the first time in her life she saw ferocity

in that face. The moonlight seemed to heighten the effect of it. The

savage Breton, holding his cap in one hand and his heavy carbine in the

other, dumpy and thickset as a gnome, and bathed in that white light the

shadows of which give such fantastic aspects to forms, seemed to belong

more to a world of goblins than to reality. This apparition and its

tone of reproach came upon Francine with the suddenness of a phantom.

He turned rapidly to Madame du Gua, with whom he exchanged a few eager

words, which Francine, who had somewhat forgotten the dialect of Lower

Brittany, did not understand. The lady seemed to be giving him a series

of orders. The short conference ended by an imperious gesture of the

lady’s hand pointing out to the Chouan the lovers standing a little

distance apart. Before obeying, Marche-a-Terre glanced at Francine whom

he seemed to pity; he wished to speak to her, and the girl was aware

that his silence was compulsory. The rough and sunburnt skin of his

forehead wrinkled, and his eyebrows were drawn violently together. Did

he think of disobeying a renewed order to kill Mademoiselle de Verneuil?

The contortion of his face made him all the more hideous to Madame du

Gua, but to Francine the flash of his eye seemed almost gentle, for it

taught her to feel intuitively that the violence of his savage nature

would yield to her will as a woman, and that she reigned, next to God,

in that rough heart.

The lovers were interrupted in their tender interview by Madame du

Gua, who ran up to Marie with a cry, and pulled her away as though some

danger threatened her. Her real object however, was to enable a member

of the royalist committee of Alencon, whom she saw approaching them, to

speak privately to the Gars.

“Beware of the girl you met at the hotel in Alencon; she will betray

you,” said the Chevalier de Valois, in the young man’s ear; and

immediately he and his little Breton horse disappeared among the bushes

from which he had issued.

The firing was heavy at that moment, but the combatants did not come to

close quarters.

“Adjutant,” said Clef-des-Coeurs, “isn’t it a sham attack, to capture

our travellers and get a ransom.”

“The devil is in it, but I believe you are right,” replied Gerard,

darting back towards the highroad.

Just then the Chouan fire slackened, for, in truth, the whole object

of the skirmish was to give the chevalier an opportunity to utter his

warning to the Gars. Merle, who saw the enemy disappearing across the

hedges, thought best not to follow them nor to enter upon a fight that

was uselessly dangerous. Gerard ordered the escort to take its former

position on the road, and the convoy was again in motion without the

loss of a single man. The captain offered his hand to Mademoiselle

de Verneuil to replace her in the coach, for the young nobleman stood

motionless, as if thunderstruck. Marie, amazed at his attitude, got into

the carriage alone without accepting the politeness of the Republican;

she turned her head towards her lover, saw him still motionless, and was

stupefied at the sudden change which had evidently come over him. The

young man slowly returned, his whole manner betraying deep disgust.

“Was I not right?” said Madame du Gua in his ear, as she led him to the

coach. “We have fallen into the hands of a creature who is trafficking

for your head; but since she is such a fool as to have fallen in love

with you, for heaven’s sake don’t behave like a boy; pretend to love her

at least till we reach La Vivetiere; once there--But,” she thought to

herself, seeing the young man take his place with a dazed air, as if

bewildered, “can it be that he already loves her?”

The coach rolled on over the sandy road. To Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s

eyes all seemed changed. Death was gliding beside her love. Perhaps it

was only fancy, but, to a woman who loves, fancy is as vivid as reality.

Francine, who had clearly understood from Marche-a-Terre’s glance that

Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s fate, over which she had commanded him to

watch, was in other hands than his, looked pale and haggard, and could

scarcely restrain her tears when her mistress spoke to her. To her

eyes Madame du Gua’s female malignancy was scarcely concealed by

her treacherous smiles, and the sudden changes which her obsequious

attentions to Mademoiselle de Verneuil made in her manners, voice, and

expression was of a nature to frighten a watchful observer. Mademoiselle

de Verneuil herself shuddered instinctively, asking herself, “Why should

I fear? She is his mother.” Then she trembled in every limb as the

thought crossed her mind, “Is she really his mother?” An abyss suddenly

opened before her, and she cast a look upon the mother and son, which

finally enlightened her. “That woman loves him!” she thought. “But why

has she begun these attentions after showing me such coolness? Am I

lost? or--is she afraid of me?”

As for the young man, he was flushed and pale by turns; but he kept

a quiet attitude and lowered his eyes to conceal the emotions which

agitated him. The graceful curve of his lips was lost in their close

compression, and his skin turned yellow under the struggle of his stormy

thoughts. Mademoiselle de Verneuil was unable to decide whether any love

for her remained in his evident anger. The road, flanked by woods at

this particular point, became darker and more gloomy, and the obscurity

prevented the eyes of the silent travellers from questioning each other.

The sighing of the wind, the rustling of the trees, the measured step

of the escort, gave that almost solemn character to the scene which

quickens the pulses. Mademoiselle de Verneuil could not long try in vain

to discover the reason of this change. The recollection of Corentin came

to her like a flash, and reminded her suddenly of her real destiny.

For the first time since the morning she reflected seriously on her

position. Until then she had yielded herself up to the delight of

loving, without a thought of the past or of the future. Unable to bear

the agony of her mind, she sought, with the patience of love, to obtain

a look from the young man’s eyes, and when she did so her paleness and

the quiver in her face had so penetrating an influence over him that he

wavered; but the softening was momentary.

“Are you ill, mademoiselle?” he said, but his voice had no gentleness;

the very question, the look, the gesture, all served to convince her

that the events of this day belonged to a mirage of the soul which was

fast disappearing like mists before the wind.

“Am I ill?” she replied, with a forced laugh. “I was going to ask you

the same question.”

“I supposed you understood each other,” remarked Madame du Gua with

specious kindliness.

Neither the young man nor Mademoiselle de Verneuil replied. The girl,

doubly insulted, was angered at feeling her powerful beauty powerless.

She knew she could discover the cause of the present situation the

moment she chose to do so; but, for the first time, perhaps, a woman

recoiled before a secret. Human life is sadly fertile in situations

where, as a result of either too much meditation or of some catastrophe,

our thoughts seem to hold to nothing; they have no substance, no point

of departure, and the present has no hooks by which to hold to the past

or fasten on the future. This was Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s condition

at the present moment. Leaning back in the carriage, she sat there like

an uprooted shrub. Silent and suffering, she looked at no one, wrapped

herself in her grief, and buried herself so completely in the unseen

world, the refuge of the miserable, that she saw nothing around her.

Crows crossed the road in the air above them cawing, but although,

like all strong hearts, hers had a superstitious corner, she paid no

attention to the omen. The party travelled on in silence. “Already

parted?” Mademoiselle de Verneuil was saying to herself. “Yet no one

about us has uttered one word. Could it be Corentin? It is not his

interest to speak. Who can have come to this spot and accused me? Just

loved, and already abandoned! I sow attraction, and I reap contempt. Is

it my perpetual fate to see happiness and ever lose it?” Pangs hitherto

unknown to her wrung her heart, for she now loved truly and for the

first time. Yet she had not so wholly delivered herself to her lover

that she could not take refuge from her pain in the natural pride and

dignity of a young and beautiful woman. The secret of her love--a secret

often kept by women under torture itself--had not escaped her lips.

Presently she rose from her reclining attitude, ashamed that she had

shown her passion by her silent sufferings; she shook her head with a

light-hearted action, and showed a face, or rather a mask, that was gay

and smiling, then she raised her voice to disguise the quiver of it.

“Where are we?” she said to Captain Merle, who kept himself at a certain

distance from the carriage.

“About six miles from Fougeres, mademoiselle.”

“We shall soon be there, shall we not?” she went on, to encourage a

conversation in which she might show some preference for the young

captain.

“A Breton mile,” said Merle much delighted, “has the disadvantage of

never ending; when you are at the top of one hill you see a valley

and another hill. When you reach the summit of the slope we are now

ascending you will see the plateau of Mont Pelerine in the distance.

Let us hope the Chouans won’t take their revenge there. Now, in going up

hill and going down hill one doesn’t make much headway. From La Pelerine

you will still see--”

The young _emigre_ made a movement at the name which Marie alone

noticed.

“What is La Pelerine?” she asked hastily, interrupting the captain’s

description of Breton topography.

“It is the summit of a mountain,” said Merle, “which gives its name to

the Maine valley through which we shall presently pass. It separates

this valley from that of Couesnon, at the end of which is the town

of Fougeres, the chief town in Brittany. We had a fight there last

Vendemiaire with the Gars and his brigands. We were escorting Breton

conscripts, who meant to kill us sooner than leave their own land; but

Hulot is a rough Christian, and he gave them--”

“Did you see the Gars?” she asked. “What sort of man is he?”

Her keen, malicious eyes never left the so-called vicomte’s face.

“Well, mademoiselle,” replied Merle, nettled at being always

interrupted, “he is so like citizen du Gua, that if your friend did not

wear the uniform of the Ecole Polytechnique I could swear it was he.”

Mademoiselle de Verneuil looked fixedly at the cold, impassible young

man who had scorned her, but she saw nothing in him that betrayed the

slightest feeling of alarm. She warned him by a bitter smile that she

had now discovered the secret so treacherously kept; then in a jesting

voice, her nostrils dilating with pleasure, and her head so turned

that she could watch the young man and yet see Merle, she said to the

Republican: “That new leader gives a great deal of anxiety to the First

Consul. He is very daring, they say; but he has the weakness of rushing

headlong into adventures, especially with women.”

“We are counting on that to get even with him,” said the captain. “If we

catch him for only an hour we shall put a bullet in his head. He’ll do

the same to us if he meets us, so _par pari_--”

“Oh!” said the _emigre_, “we have nothing to fear. Your soldiers cannot

go as far as La Pelerine, they are tired, and, if you consent, we can

all rest a short distance from here. My mother stops at La Vivetiere,

the road to which turns off a few rods farther on. These ladies might

like to stop there too; they must be tired with their long drive from

Alencon without resting; and as mademoiselle,” he added, with forced

politeness, “has had the generosity to give safety as well as pleasure

to our journey, perhaps she will deign to accept a supper from my

mother; and I think, captain,” he added, addressing Merle, “the times

are not so bad but what we can find a barrel of cider for your men. The

Gars can’t have taken all, at least my mother thinks not--”

“Your mother?” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, interrupting him in a tone

of irony, and making no reply to his invitation.

“Does my age seem more improbable to you this evening, mademoiselle?”

said Madame du Gua. “Unfortunately I was married very young, and my son

was born when I was fifteen.”

“Are you not mistaken, madame?--when you were thirty, perhaps.”

Madame du Gua turned livid as she swallowed the sarcasm. She would have

liked to revenge herself on the spot, but was forced to smile, for she

was determined at any cost, even that of insult, to discover the nature

of the feelings that actuated the young girl; she therefore pretended

not to have understood her.

“The Chouans have never had a more cruel leader than the Gars, if we are

to believe the stories about him,” she said, addressing herself vaguely

to both Francine and her mistress.

“Oh, as for cruel, I don’t believe that,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil;

“he knows how to lie, but he seems rather credulous himself. The leader

of a party ought not to be the plaything of others.”

“Do you know him?” asked the _emigre_, quietly.

“No,” she replied, with a disdainful glance, “but I thought I did.”

“Oh, mademoiselle, he’s a _malin_, yes a _malin_,” said Captain Merle,

shaking his head and giving with an expressive gesture the peculiar

meaning to the word which it had in those days but has since lost.

“Those old families do sometimes send out vigorous shoots. He has just

returned from a country where, they say, the _ci-devants_ didn’t find

life too easy, and men ripen like medlars in the straw. If that fellow

is really clever he can lead us a pretty dance. He has already formed

companies of light infantry who oppose our troops and neutralize the

efforts of the government. If we burn a royalist village he burns two of

ours. He can hold an immense tract of country and force us to spread out

our men at the very moment when we want them on one spot. Oh, he knows

what he is about.”

“He is cutting his country’s throat,” said Gerard in a loud voice,

interrupting the captain.

“Then,” said the _emigre_, “if his death would deliver the nation, why

don’t you catch him and shoot him?”

As he spoke he tried to look into the depths of Mademoiselle de

Verneuil’s soul, and one of those voiceless scenes the dramatic

vividness and fleeting sagacity of which cannot be reproduced in

language passed between them in a flash. Danger is always interesting.

The worst criminal threatened with death excites pity. Though

Mademoiselle de Verneuil was now certain that the lover who had cast her

off was this very leader of the Chouans, she was not ready to verify her

suspicions by giving him up; she had quite another curiosity to satisfy.

She preferred to doubt or to believe as her passion led her, and she

now began deliberately to play with peril. Her eyes, full of scornful

meaning, bade the young chief notice the soldiers of the escort; by thus

presenting to his mind triumphantly an image of his danger she made him

feel that his life depended on a word from her, and her lips seemed

to quiver on the verge of pronouncing it. Like an American Indian, she

watched every muscle of the face of her enemy, tied, as it were, to the

stake, while she brandished her tomahawk gracefully, enjoying a revenge

that was still innocent, and torturing like a mistress who still loves.

“If I had a son like yours, madame,” she said to Madame du Gua, who

was visibly frightened, “I should wear mourning from the day when I had

yielded him to danger; I should know no peace of mind.”

No answer was made to this speech. She turned her head repeatedly to

the escort and then suddenly to Madame du Gua, without detecting the

slightest secret signal between the lady and the Gars which might have

confirmed her suspicions on the nature of their intimacy, which she

longed to doubt. The young chief calmly smiled, and bore without

flinching the scrutiny she forced him to undergo; his attitude and the

expression of his face were those of a man indifferent to danger; he

even seemed to say at times: “This is your chance to avenge your wounded

vanity--take it! I have no desire to lessen my contempt for you.”

Mademoiselle de Verneuil began to study the young man from the

vantage-ground of her position with coolness and dignity; at the

bottom of her heart she admired his courage and tranquillity. Happy

in discovering that the man she loved bore an ancient title (the

distinctions of which please every woman), she also found pleasure in

meeting him in their present situation, where, as champion of a cause

ennobled by misfortune, he was fighting with all the faculties of a

strong soul against a Republic that was constantly victorious. She

rejoiced to see him brought face to face with danger, and still

displaying the courage and bravery so powerful on a woman’s heart; again

and again she put him to the test, obeying perhaps the instinct which

induces a woman to play with her victim as a cat plays with a mouse.

“By virtue of what law do you put the Chouans to death?” she said to

Merle.

“That of the 14th of last Fructidor, which outlaws the insurgent

departments and proclaims martial law,” replied the Republican.

“May I ask why I have the honor to attract your eyes?” she said

presently to the young chief, who was attentively watching her.

“Because of a feeling which a man of honor cannot express to any woman,

no matter who she is,” replied the Marquis de Montauran, in a low voice,

bending down to her. “We live in times,” he said aloud, “when women do

the work of the executioner and wield the axe with even better effect.”

She looked at de Montauran fixedly; then, delighted to be attacked

by the man whose life she held in her hands, she said in a low voice,

smiling softly: “Your head is a very poor one; the executioner does not

want it; I shall keep it myself.”

The marquis looked at the inexplicable girl, whose love had overcome

all, even insult, and who now avenged herself by forgiving that which

women are said never to forgive. His eyes grew less stern, less cold;

a look of sadness came upon his face. His love was stronger than he

suspected. Mademoiselle de Verneuil, satisfied with these faint signs of

a desired reconciliation, glanced at him tenderly, with a smile that was

like a kiss; then she leaned back once more in the carriage, determined

not to risk the future of this happy drama, believing she had assured

it with her smile. She was so beautiful! She knew so well how to conquer

all obstacles to love! She was so accustomed to take all risks and

push on at all hazards! She loved the unexpected, and the tumults of

life--why should she fear?

Before long the carriage, under the young chief’s directions, left the

highway and took a road cut between banks planted with apple-trees, more

like a ditch than a roadway, which led to La Vivetiere. The carriage

now advanced rapidly, leaving the escort to follow slowly towards the

manor-house, the gray roofs of which appeared and disappeared among the

trees. Some of the men lingered on the way to knock the stiff clay of

the road-bed from their shoes.

“This is devilishly like the road to Paradise,” remarked Beau-Pied.

Thanks to the impatience of the postilion, Mademoiselle de Verneuil soon

saw the chateau of La Vivetiere. This house, standing at the end of a

sort of promontory, was protected and surrounded by two deep lakelets,

and could be reached only by a narrow causeway. That part of the little

peninsula on which the house and gardens were placed was still further

protected by a moat filled with water from the two lakes which it

connected. The house really stood on an island that was well-nigh

impregnable,--an invaluable retreat for a chieftain, who could be

surprised there only by treachery.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil put her head out of the carriage as she heard

the rusty hinges of the great gates open to give entrance to an arched

portal which had been much injured during the late war. The gloomy

colors of the scene which met her eyes almost extinguished the thoughts

of love and coquetry in which she had been indulging. The carriage

entered a large courtyard that was nearly square, bordered on each side

by the steep banks of the lakelets. Those sterile shores, washed by

water, which was covered with large green patches, had no other ornament

than aquatic trees devoid of foliage, the twisted trunks and hoary

heads of which, rising from the reeds and rushes, gave them a certain

grotesque likeness to gigantic marmosets. These ugly growths seemed

to waken and talk to each other when the frogs deserted them with much

croaking, and the water-fowl, startled by the sound of the wheels,

flew low upon the surface of the pools. The courtyard, full of rank and

seeded grasses, reeds, and shrubs, either dwarf or parasite, excluded

all impression of order or of splendor. The house appeared to have

been long abandoned. The roof seemed to bend beneath the weight of the

various vegetations which grew upon it. The walls, though built of the

smooth, slaty stone which abounds in that region, showed many rifts and

chinks where ivy had fastened its rootlets. Two main buildings, joined

at the angle by a tall tower which faced the lake, formed the whole of

the chateau, the doors and swinging, rotten shutters, rusty balustrades,

and broken windows of which seemed ready to fall at the first tempest.

The north wind whistled through these ruins, to which the moon, with her

indefinite light, gave the character and outline of a great spectre.

But the colors of those gray-blue granites, mingling with the black and

tawny schists, must have been seen in order to understand how vividly

a spectral image was suggested by the empty and gloomy carcass of the

building. Its disjointed stones and paneless windows, the battered tower

and broken roofs gave it the aspect of a skeleton; the birds of prey

which flew from it, shrieking, added another feature to this vague

resemblance. A few tall pine-trees standing behind the house waved their

dark foliage above the roof, and several yews cut into formal shapes at

the angles of the building, festooned it gloomily like the ornaments on

a hearse. The style of the doors, the coarseness of the decorations,

the want of harmony in the architecture, were all characteristic of the

feudal manors of which Brittany was proud; perhaps justly proud, for

they maintained upon that Gaelic ground a species of monumental history

of the nebulous period which preceded the establishment of the French

monarchy.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, to whose imagination the word “chateau”

brought none but its conventional ideas, was affected by the funereal

aspect of the scene. She sprang from the carriage and stood apart gazing

at in terror, and debating within herself what action she ought to take.

Francine heard Madame du Gua give a sigh of relief as she felt herself

in safety beyond reach of the Blues; an exclamation escaped her when the

gates were closed, and she saw the carriage and its occupants within the

walls of this natural fortress.

The Marquis de Montauran turned hastily to Mademoiselle de Verneuil,

divining the thoughts that crowded in her mind.

“This chateau,” he said, rather sadly, “was ruined by the war, just as

my plans for our happiness have been ruined by you.”

“How ruined?” she asked in surprise.

“Are you indeed ‘beautiful, brilliant, and of noble birth’?” he asked

ironically, repeating the words she had herself used in their former

conversation.

“Who has told you to the contrary?”

“Friends, in whom I put faith; who care for my safety and are on the

watch against treachery.”

“Treachery!” she exclaimed, in a sarcastic tone. “Have you forgotten

Hulot and Alencon already? You have no memory,--a dangerous defect

in the leader of a party. But if friends,” she added, with increased

sarcasm, “are so all-powerful in your heart, keep your friends. Nothing

is comparable to the joys of friendship. Adieu; neither I nor the

soldiers of the Republic will stop here.”

She turned towards the gateway with a look of wounded pride and scorn,

and her motions as she did so displayed a dignity and also a despair

which changed in an instant the thoughts of the young man; he felt that

the cost of relinquishing his desires was too great, and he gave himself

up deliberately to imprudence and credulity. He loved; and the lovers

had no desire now to quarrel with each other.

“Say but one word and I will believe you,” he said, in a supplicating

voice.

“One word?” she answered, closing her lips tightly, “not a single word;

not even a gesture.”

“At least, be angry with me,” he entreated, trying to take the hand she

withheld from him,--“that is, if you dare to be angry with the leader of

the rebels, who is now as sad and distrustful as he was lately happy and

confiding.”

Marie gave him a look that was far from angry, and he added: “You have

my secret, but I have not yours.”

The alabaster brow appeared to darken at these words; she cast a look

of annoyance on the young chieftain, and answered, hastily: “Tell you my

secret? Never!”

In love every word, every glance has the eloquence of the moment; but on

this occasion Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s exclamation revealed nothing,

and, clever as Montauran might be, its secret was impenetrable to him,

though the tones of her voice betrayed some extraordinary and unusual

emotion which piqued his curiosity.

“You have a singular way of dispelling suspicion,” he said.

“Do you still suspect me?” she replied, looking him in the eye, as if to

say, “What rights have you over me?”

“Mademoiselle,” said the young man, in a voice that was submissive

and yet firm, “the authority you exercise over Republican troops, this

escort--”

“Ah, that reminds me! My escort and I,” she asked, in a slightly

satirical tone, “your protectors, in short,--will they be safe here?”

“Yes, on the word of a gentleman. Whoever you be, you and your party

have nothing to fear in my house.”

The promise was made with so loyal and generous an air and manner that

Mademoiselle de Verneuil felt absolutely secure as to the safety of

the Republican soldiers. She was about to speak when Madame du Gua’s

approach silenced her. That lady had either overheard or guessed part of

their conversation, and was filled with anxiety at no longer perceiving

any signs of animosity between them. As soon as the marquis caught sight

of her, he offered his hand to Mademoiselle de Verneuil and led her

hastily towards the house, as if to escape an undesired companion.

“I am in their way,” thought Madame du Gua, remaining where she was.

She watched the lovers walking slowly towards the portico, where they

stopped, as if satisfied to have placed some distance between themselves

and her. “Yes, yes, I am in their way,” she repeated, speaking to

herself; “but before long that creature will not be in mine; the lake,

God willing, shall have her. I’ll help him keep his word as a gentleman;

once under the water, she has nothing to fear,--what can be safer than

that?”

She was looking fixedly at the still mirror of the little lake to the

right when suddenly she heard a rustling among the rushes and saw in the

moonlight the face of Marche-a-Terre rising behind the gnarled trunk

of an old willow. None but those who knew the Chouan well could have

distinguished him from the tangle of branches of which he seemed a part.

Madame du Gua looked about her with some distrust; she saw the postilion

leading his horses to a stable in the wing of the chateau which was

opposite to the bank where Marche-a-Terre was hiding; Francine, with her

back to her, was going towards the two lovers, who at that moment had

forgotten the whole earth. Madame du Gua, with a finger on her lip to

demand silence, walked towards the Chouan, who guessed rather than heard

her question, “How many of you are here?”

“Eighty-seven.”

“They are sixty-five; I counted them.”

“Good,” said the savage, with sullen satisfaction.

Attentive to all Francine’s movements, the Chouan disappeared behind

the willow, as he saw her turn to look for the enemy over whom she was

keeping an instinctive watch.

Six or eight persons, attracted by the noise of the carriage-wheels,

came out on the portico, shouting: “It is the Gars! it is he; here he

is!” On this several other men ran out, and their coming interrupted

the lovers. The Marquis de Montauran went hastily up to them, making an

imperative gesture for silence, and pointing to the farther end of the

causeway, where the Republican escort was just appearing. At the sight

of the well-known blue uniforms with red facings, and the glittering

bayonets, the amazed conspirators called out hastily, “You have surely

not betrayed us?”

“If I had, I should not warn you,” said the marquis, smiling bitterly.

“Those Blues,” he added, after a pause, “are the escort of this young

lady, whose generosity has delivered us, almost miraculously, from

a danger we were in at Alencon. I will tell you about it later.

Mademoiselle and her escort are here in safety, on my word as a

gentleman, and we must all receive them as friends.”

Madame du Gua and Francine were now on the portico; the marquis offered

his hand to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, the group of gentlemen parted in

two lines to allow them to pass, endeavoring, as they did so, to catch

sight of the young lady’s features; for Madame du Gua, who was following

behind, excited their curiosity by secret signs.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil saw, with surprise, that a large table was set

in the first hall, for about twenty guests. The dining-room opened into

a vast salon, where the whole party were presently assembled. These

rooms were in keeping with the dilapidated appearance of the outside of

the house. The walnut panels, polished by age, but rough and coarse in

design and badly executed, were loose in their places and ready to fall.

Their dingy color added to the gloom of these apartments, which were

barren of curtains and mirrors; a few venerable bits of furniture in

the last stages of decay alone remained, and harmonized with the general

destruction. Marie noticed maps and plans stretched out upon long

tables, and in the corners of the room a quantity of weapons and stacked

carbines. These things bore witness, though she did not know it, to an

important conference between the leaders of the Vendeans and those of

the Chouans.

The marquis led Mademoiselle de Verneuil to a large and worm-eaten

armchair placed beside the fireplace; Francine followed and stood behind

her mistress, leaning on the back of that ancient bit of furniture.

“You will allow me for a moment to play the part of master of the

house,” he said, leaving the two women and mingling with the groups of

his other guests.

Francine saw the gentlemen hasten, after a few words from Montauran, to

hide their weapons, maps, and whatever else might arouse the suspicions

of the Republican officers. Some took off their broad leather belts

containing pistols and hunting-knives. The marquis requested them to

show the utmost prudence, and went himself to see to the reception of

the troublesome guests whom fate had bestowed upon him.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who had raised her feet to the fire and was

now warming them, did not turn her head as Montauran left the room, thus

disappointing those present, who were anxious to see her. Francine alone

saw the change produced upon the company by the departure of the young

chief. The gentlemen gathered hastily round Madame du Gua, and during

a conversation carried on in an undertone between them, they all turned

several times to look curiously at the stranger.

“You know Montauran,” Madame du Gua said to them; “he has fallen in love

with that worthless girl, and, as you can easily understand, he thinks

all my warnings selfish. Our friends in Paris, Messieurs de Valois and

d’Esgrignon, have warned him of a trap set for him by throwing some

such creature at his head; but in spite of this he allows himself to be

fooled by the first woman he meets,--a girl who, if my information is

correct, has stolen a great name only to disgrace it.”

The speaker, in whom our readers have already recognized the lady who

instigated the attack on the “turgotine,” may be allowed to keep

the name which she used to escape the dangers that threatened her in

Alencon. The publication of her real name would only mortify a noble

family already deeply afflicted at the misconduct of this woman; whose

history, by the bye, has already been given on another scene.

The curiosity manifested by the company of men soon became impertinent

and almost hostile. A few harsh words reached Francine’s ear, and after

a word said to her mistress the girl retreated into the embrasure of a

window. Marie rose, turned towards the insolent group, and gave them a

look full of dignity and even disdain. Her beauty, the elegance of her

manners, and her pride changed the behavior of her enemies, and won her

the flattering murmur which escaped their lips. Two or three men, whose

outward appearance seemed to denote the habits of polite society and

the gallantry acquired in courts, came towards her; but her propriety

of demeanor forced them to respect her, and none dared speak to her; so

that, instead of being herself arraigned by the company, it was she who

appeared to judge of them. These chiefs of a war undertaken for God and

the king bore very little resemblance to the portraits her fancy had

drawn of them. The struggle, really great in itself, shrank to mean

proportions as she observed these provincial noblemen, all, with one

or two vigorous exceptions, devoid of significance and virility. Having

made to herself a poem of such heroes, Marie suddenly awakened to the

truth. Their faces expressed to her eyes more a love of scheming than

a love of glory; self-interest had evidently put arms into their hands.

Still, it must be said that these men did become heroic when brought

into action. The loss of her illusions made Mademoiselle de Verneuil

unjust, and prevented her from recognizing the real devotion which

rendered several of these men remarkable. It is true that most of those

now present were commonplace. A few original and marked faces appeared

among them, but even these were belittled by the artificiality and the

etiquette of aristocracy. If Marie generously granted intellect and

perception to the latter, she also discerned in them a total absence of

the simplicity, the grandeur, to which she had been accustomed among

the triumphant men of the Republic. This nocturnal assemblage in the old

ruined castle made her smile; the scene seemed symbolic of the monarchy.

But the thought came to her with delight that the marquis at least

played a noble part among these men, whose only remaining merit in her

eyes was devotion to a lost cause. She pictured her lover’s face upon

the background of this company, rejoicing to see it stand forth among

those paltry and puny figures who were but the instruments of his great

designs.

The footsteps of the marquis were heard in the adjoining room. Instantly

the company separated into little groups and the whisperings ceased.

Like schoolboys who have plotted mischief in the master’s absence, they

hurriedly became silent and orderly. Montauran entered. Marie had

the happiness of admiring him among his fellows, of whom he was the

youngest, the handsomest, and the chief. Like a king in his court,

he went from group to group, distributing looks and nods and words of

encouragement or warning, with pressure of the hands and smiles; doing

his duty as leader of a party with a grace and self-possession hardly

to be expected in the young man whom Marie had so lately accused of

heedlessness.

The presence of the marquis put an end to the open curiosity bestowed

on Mademoiselle de Verneuil, but Madame du Gua’s scandalous suggestions

bore fruit. The Baron du Guenic, familiarly called “l’Intime,” who by

rank and name had the best right among those present to treat Montauran

familiarly, took the young leader by the arm and led him apart.

“My dear marquis,” he said; “we are much disturbed at seeing you on the

point of committing an amazing folly.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Do you know where that girl comes from, who she is, and what her

schemes about you are?”

“Don’t trouble yourself, my dear Intime; between you and me my fancy for

her will be over to-morrow.”

“Yes; but suppose that creature betrays you to-night?”

“I’ll answer that when you tell me why she has not done it already,”

said Montauran, assuming with a laugh an air of conceit. “My dear

fellow, look at that charming girl, watch her manners, and dare to tell

me she is not a woman of distinction. If she gave you a few favorable

looks wouldn’t you feel at the bottom of your soul a respect for her? A

certain lady has prejudiced you. I will tell you this: if she were the

lost creature our friends are trying to make her out, I would, after

what she and I have said to each other, kill her myself.”

“Do you suppose,” said Madame du Gua, joining them, “that Fouche is

fool enough to send you a common prostitute out of the streets? He has

provided seductions according to your deserts. You may choose to be

blind, but your friends are keeping their eyes open to protect you.”

“Madame,” replied the Gars, his eyes flashing with anger, “be warned;

take no steps against that lady, nor against her escort; if you do,

nothing shall save you from my vengeance. I choose that Mademoiselle

de Verneuil is to be treated with the utmost respect, and as a lady

belonging to my family. We are, I believe, related to the de Verneuils.”

The opposition the marquis was made to feel produced the usual effect

of such obstacles on all young men. Though he had, apparently, treated

Mademoiselle de Verneuil rather lightly, and left it to be supposed that

his passion for her was a mere caprice, he now, from a feeling of pride,

made immense strides in his relation to her. By openly protecting her,

his honor became concerned in compelling respect to her person; and he

went from group to group assuring his friends, in the tone of a man whom

it was dangerous to contradict, that the lady was really Mademoiselle

de Verneuil. The doubts and gossip ceased at once. As soon as Montauran

felt that harmony was restored and anxiety allayed, he returned to his

mistress eagerly, saying in a low voice:--

“Those mischievous people have robbed me of an hour’s happiness.”

“I am glad you have come back to me,” she said, smiling. “I warn you

that I am inquisitive; therefore you must not get tired of my questions.

Tell me, in the first place, who is that worthy in a green cloth

jacket?”

“That is the famous Major Brigaut, a man from the Marais, a comrade of

the late Mercier, called La Vendee.”

“And that fat priest with the red face to whom he is talking at this

moment about me?” she went on.

“Do you want to know what they are saying?”

“Do I want to know it? What a useless question!”

“But I could not tell it without offending you.”

“If you allow me to be insulted in your house without avenging me,

marquis, adieu!” she said. “I will not stay another moment. I have

some qualms already about deceiving these poor Republicans, loyal and

confiding as they are!”

She made a few hasty steps; the marquis followed her.

“Dear Marie, listen to me. On my honor, I have silenced their evil

speaking, without knowing whether it was false or true. But, placed as

I am, if friends whom we have in all the ministries in Paris warn me

to beware of every woman I meet, and assure me that Fouche has employed

against me a Judith of the streets, it is not unnatural that my best

friends here should think you too beautiful to be an honest woman.”

As he spoke the marquis plunged a glance into Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s

eyes. She colored, and was unable to restrain her tears.

“I deserve these insults,” she said. “I wish you really thought me that

despicable creature and still loved me; then, indeed, I could no longer

doubt you. I believed in you when you were deceiving me, and you

will not believe me now when I am true. Let us make an end of this,

monsieur,” she said, frowning, but turning pale as death,--“adieu!”

She rushed towards the dining-room with a movement of despair.

“Marie, my life is yours,” said the young marquis in her ear.

She stopped short and looked at him.

“No, no,” she said, “I will be generous. Farewell. In coming with

you here I did not think of my past nor of your future--I was beside

myself.”

“You cannot mean that you will leave me now when I offer you my life?”

“You offer it in a moment of passion--of desire.”

“I offer it without regret, and forever,” he replied.

She returned to the room they had left. Hiding his emotions the marquis

continued the conversation.

“That fat priest whose name you asked is the Abbe Gudin, a Jesuit,

obstinate enough--perhaps I ought to say devoted enough,--to remain in

France in spite of the decree of 1793, which banished his order. He

is the firebrand of the war in these regions and a propagandist of the

religious association called the Sacre-Coeur. Trained to use religion as

an instrument, he persuades his followers that if they are killed

they will be brought to life again, and he knows how to rouse their

fanaticism by shrewd sermons. You see, it is necessary to work upon

every man’s selfish interests to attain a great end. That is the secret

of all political success.”

“And that vigorous, muscular old man, with the repulsive face, who is

he? I mean the one in the ragged gown of a barrister.”

“Barrister! he aspires to be considered a brigadier-general. Did you

never hear of de Longuy?”

“Is that he!” exclaimed Mademoiselle de Verneuil, horrified. “You employ

such men as that?”

“Hush! he’ll hear you. Do you see that other man in malignant

conversation with Madame du Gua?”

“The one in black who looks like a judge?”

“That is one of our go-betweens, La Billardiere, son of a councillor to

the Breton Parliament, whose real name is something like Flamet; he is

in close correspondence with the princes.”

“And his neighbor? the one who is just putting up his white clay pipe,

and uses all the fingers of his right hand to snap the box, like a

countryman.”

“By Jove, you are right; he was game-keeper to the deceased husband

of that lady, and now commands one of the companies I send against the

Republican militia. He and Marche-a-Terre are the two most conscientious

vassals the king has here.”

“But she--who is she?”

“Charette’s last mistress,” replied the marquis. “She wields great

influence over all these people.”

“Is she faithful to his memory?”

For all answer the marquis gave a dubious smile.

“Do you think well of her?”

“You are very inquisitive.”

“She is my enemy because she can no longer be my rival,” said

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, laughing. “I forgive her her past errors if

she forgives mine. Who is that officer with the long moustache?”

“Permit me not to name him; he wants to get rid of the First Consul by

assassination. Whether he succeeds or not you will hear of him. He is

certain to become famous.”

“And you have come here to command such men as these!” she exclaimed in

horror. “Are _they_ they king’s defenders? Where are the gentlemen and

the great lords?”

“Where?” said the marquis, coolly, “they are in all the courts of

Europe. Who else should win over kings and cabinets and armies to

serve the Bourbon cause and hurl them at that Republic which threatens

monarchies and social order with death and destruction?”

“Ah!” she said, with generous emotion, “be to me henceforth the source

from which I draw the ideas I must still acquire about your cause--I

consent. But let me still remember that you are the only noble who

does his duty in fighting France with Frenchmen, without the help of

foreigners. I am a woman; I feel that if my child struck me in anger I

could forgive him; but if he saw me beaten by a stranger, and consented

to it, I should regard him as a monster.”

“You shall remain a Republican,” said the marquis, in the ardor produced

by the generous words which confirmed his hopes.

“Republican! no, I am that no longer. I could not now respect you if you

submitted to the First Consul,” she replied. “But neither do I like to

see you at the head of men who are pillaging a corner of France, instead

of making war against the whole Republic. For whom are you fighting?

What do you expect of a king restored to his throne by your efforts? A

woman did that great thing once, and the liberated king allowed her to

be burned. Such men are the anointed of the Lord, and there is danger

in meddling with sacred things. Let God take care of his own, and

place, displace, and replace them on their purple seats. But if you have

counted the cost, and seen the poor return that will come to you, you

are tenfold greater in my eyes than I thought you--”

“Ah! you are bewitching. Don’t attempt to indoctrinate my followers, or

I shall be left without a man.”

“If you would let me convert you, only you,” she said, “we might live

happily a thousand leagues away from all this.”

“These men whom you seem to despise,” said the marquis, in a graver

tone, “will know how to die when the struggle comes, and all their

misdeeds will be forgotten. Besides, if my efforts are crowned with some

success, the laurel leaves of victory will hide all.”

“I see no one but you who is risking anything.”

“You are mistaken; I am not the only one,” he replied, with true

modesty. “See, over there, the new leaders from La Vendee. The first,

whom you must have heard of as ‘Le Grand Jacques,’ is the Comte de

Fontain; the other is La Billardiere, whom I mentioned to you just now.”

“Have you forgotten Quiberon, where La Billardiere played so equivocal a

part?” she said, struck by a sudden recollection.

“La Billardiere took a great deal upon himself. Serving princes is far

from lying on a bed of roses.”

“Ah! you make me shudder!” cried Marie. “Marquis,” she continued, in

a tone which seemed to indicate some mysterious personal reticence, “a

single instant suffices to destroy illusions and to betray secrets

on which the life and happiness of many may depend--” she stopped, as

though she feared she had said too much; then she added, in another

tone, “I wish I could be sure that those Republican soldiers were in

safety.”

“I will be prudent,” he said, smiling to disguise his emotion; “but say

no more about your soldiers; have I not answered for their safety on my

word as a gentleman?”

“And after all,” she said, “what right have I to dictate to you? Be my

master henceforth. Did I not tell you it would drive me to despair to

rule a slave?”

“Monsieur le marquis,” said Major Brigaut, respectfully, interrupting

the conversation, “how long are the Blues to remain here?”

“They will leave as soon as they are rested,” said Marie.

The marquis looked about the room and noticed the agitation of those

present. He left Mademoiselle de Verneuil, and his place beside her was

taken at once by Madame du Gua, whose smiling and treacherous face was

in no way disconcerted by the young chief’s bitter smile. Just then

Francine, standing by the window, gave a stifled cry. Marie, noticing

with amazement that the girl left the room, looked at Madame du Gua, and

her surprise increased as she saw the pallor on the face of her enemy.

Anxious to discover the meaning of Francine’s abrupt departure, she

went to the window, where Madame du Gua followed her, no doubt to guard

against any suspicions which might arise in her mind. They returned

together to the chimney, after each had cast a look upon the shore

and the lake,--Marie without seeing anything that could have caused

Francine’s flight, Madame du Gua seeing that which satisfied her she was

being obeyed.

The lake, at the edge of which Marche-a-Terre had shown his head, where

Madame du Gua had seen him, joined the moat in misty curves, sometimes

broad as ponds, in other places narrow as the artificial streamlets of

a park. The steep bank, washed by its waters, lay a few rods from the

window. Francine, watching on the surface of the water the black lines

thrown by the willows, noticed, carelessly at first, the uniform trend

of their branches, caused by a light breeze then prevailing. Suddenly

she thought she saw against the glassy surface a figure moving with the

spontaneous and irregular motion of life. The form, vague as it was,

seemed to her that of a man. At first she attributed what she saw to

the play of the moonlight upon the foliage, but presently a second head

appeared, then several others in the distance. The shrubs upon the bank

were bent and then violently straightened, and Francine saw the long

hedge undulating like one of those great Indian serpents of fabulous

size and shape. Here and there, among the gorse and taller brambles,

points of light could be seen to come and go. The girl’s attention

redoubled, and she thought she recognized the foremost of the dusky

figures; indistinct as its outlines were, the beating of her heart

convinced her it was no other than her lover, Marche-a-Terre. Eager

to know if this mysterious approach meant treachery, she ran to the

courtyard. When she reached the middle of its grass plot she looked

alternately at the two wings of the building and along the steep shores,

without discovering, on the inhabited side of the house, any sign

of this silent approach. She listened attentively and heard a slight

rustling, like that which might be made by the footfalls of some wild

animal in the silence of the forest. She quivered, but did not tremble.

Though young and innocent, her anxious curiosity suggested a ruse. She

saw the coach and slipped into it, putting out her head to listen, with

the caution of a hare giving ear to the sound of the distant hunters.

She saw Pille-Miche come out of the stable, accompanied by two peasants,

all three carrying bales of straw; these they spread on the ground in a

way to form a long bed of litter before the inhabited wing of the house,

parallel with the bank, bordered by dwarf trees.

“You’re spreading straw as if you thought they’d sleep here! Enough,

Pille-Miche, enough!” said a low, gruff voice, which Francine

recognized.

“And won’t they sleep here?” returned Pille-Miche with a laugh. “I’m

afraid the Gars will be angry!” he added, too low for Francine to hear.

“Well, let him,” said Marche-a-Terre, in the same tone, “we shall have

killed the Blues anyway. Here’s that coach, which you and I had better

put up.”

Pille-Miche pulled the carriage by the pole and Marche-a-Terre pushed it

by one of the wheels with such force that Francine was in the barn and

about to be locked up before she had time to reflect on her situation.

Pille-Miche went out to fetch the barrel of cider, which the marquis had

ordered for the escort; and Marche-a-Terre was passing along the side of

the coach, to leave the barn and close the door, when he was stopped

by a hand which caught and held the long hair of his goatskin. He

recognized a pair of eyes the gentleness of which exercised a power of

magnetism over him, and he stood stock-still for a moment under their

spell. Francine sprang from the carriage, and said, in the nervous tone

of an excited woman: “Pierre, what news did you give to that lady and

her son on the road? What is going on here? Why are you hiding? I must

know all.”

These words brought a look on the Chouan’s face which Francine had never

seen there before. The Breton led his innocent mistress to the door;

there he turned her towards the blanching light of the moon, and

answered, as he looked in her face with terrifying eyes: “Yes, by my

damnation, Francine, I will tell you, but not until you have sworn on

these beads (and he pulled an old chaplet from beneath his goatskin)--on

this relic, which _you know well_,” he continued, “to answer me truly

one question.”

Francine colored as she saw the chaplet, which was no doubt a token

of their love. “It was on that,” he added, much agitated, “that you

swore--”

He did not finish the sentence. The young girl placed her hand on the

lips of her savage lover and silenced him.

“Need I swear?” she said.

He took his mistress gently by the hand, looked at her for a moment and

said: “Is the lady you are with really Mademoiselle de Verneuil?”

Francine stood with hanging arms, her eyelids lowered, her head bowed,

pale and speechless.

“She is a strumpet!” cried Marche-a-Terre, in a terrifying voice.

At the word the pretty hand once more covered his lips, but this time he

sprang back violently. The girl no longer saw a lover; he had turned

to a wild beast in all the fury of its nature. His eyebrows were drawn

together, his lips drew apart, and he showed his teeth like a dog which

defends its master.

“I left you pure, and I find you muck. Ha! why did I ever leave you! You

are here to betray us; to deliver up the Gars!”

These sentences sounded more like roars than words. Though Francine

was frightened, she raised her angelic eyes at this last accusation and

answered calmly, as she looked into his savage face: “I will pledge my

eternal safety that that is false. That’s an idea of the lady you are

serving.”

He lowered his head; then she took his hand and nestling to him with a

pretty movement said: “Pierre, what is all this to you and me? I don’t

know what you understand about it, but I can’t make it out. Recollect

one thing: that noble and beautiful young lady has been my benefactress;

she is also yours--we live together like two sisters. No harm must ever

come to her where we are, you and I--in our lifetime at least. Swear it!

I trust no one here but you.”

“I don’t command here,” said the Chouan, in a surly tone.

His face darkened. She caught his long ears and twisted them gently as

if playing with a cat.

“At least,” she said, seeing that he looked less stern, “promise me to

use all the power you have to protect our benefactress.”

He shook his head as if he doubted of success, and the motion made her

tremble. At this critical moment the escort was entering the courtyard.

The tread of the soldiers and the rattle of their weapons awoke the

echoes and seemed to put an end to Marche-a-Terre’s indecision.

“Perhaps I can save her,” he said, “if you make her stay in the house.

And mind,” he added, “whatever happens, you must stay with her and keep

silence; if not, no safety.”

“I promise it,” she replied in terror.

“Very good; then go in--go in at once, and hide your fears from every

one, even your mistress.”

“Yes.”

She pressed his hand; he stood for a moment watching her with an almost

paternal air as she ran with the lightness of a bird up the portico;

then he slipped behind the bushes, like an actor darting behind the

scenes as the curtain rises on a tragedy.

“Do you know, Merle,” said Gerard as they reached the chateau, “that

this place looks to me like a mousetrap?”

“So I think,” said the captain, anxiously.

The two officers hastened to post sentinels to guard the gate and the

causeway; then they examined with great distrust the precipitous banks

of the lakes and the surroundings of the chateau.

“Pooh!” said Merle, “we must do one of two things: either trust

ourselves in this barrack with perfect confidence, or else not enter it

at all.”

“Come, let’s go in,” replied Gerard.

The soldiers, released at the word of command, hastened to stack their

muskets in conical sheaves, and to form a sort of line before the litter

of straw, in the middle of which was the promised barrel of cider.

They then divided into groups, to whom two peasants began to distribute

butter and rye-bread. The marquis appeared in the portico to welcome

the officers and take them to the salon. As Gerard went up the steps he

looked at both ends of the portico, where some venerable larches spread

their black branches; and he called up Clef-des-Coeurs and Beau-Pied.

“You will each reconnoitre the gardens and search the bushes, and post a

sentry before your line.”

“May we light our fire before starting, adjutant?” asked

Clef-des-Coeurs.

Gerard nodded.

“There! you see, Clef-des-Coeurs,” said Beau-Pied, “the adjutant’s

wrong to run himself into this wasp’s-nest. If Hulot was in command we

shouldn’t be cornered here--in a saucepan!”

“What a stupid you are!” replied Clef-des-Coeurs, “haven’t you guessed,

you knave of tricks, that this is the home of the beauty our jovial

Merle has been whistling round? He’ll marry her to a certainty--that’s

as clear as a well-rubbed bayonet. A woman like that will do honor to

the brigade.”

“True for you,” replied Beau-Pied, “and you may add that she gives

pretty good cider--but I can’t drink it in peace till I know what’s

behind those devilish hedges. I always remember poor Larose and

Vieux-Chapeau rolling down the ditch at La Pelerine. I shall recollect

Larose’s queue to the end of my days; it went hammering down like the

knocker of a front door.”

“Beau-Pied, my friend; you have too much imagination for a soldier; you

ought to be making songs at the national Institute.”

“If I’ve too much imagination,” retorted Beau-Pied, “you haven’t any; it

will take you some time to get your degree as consul.”

A general laugh put an end to the discussion, for Clef-des-Coeurs found

no suitable reply in his pouch with which to floor his adversary.

“Come and make our rounds; I’ll go to the right,” said Beau-Pied.

“Very good, I’ll take the left,” replied his comrade. “But stop one

minute, I must have a glass of cider; my throat is glued together like

the oiled-silk of Hulot’s best hat.”

The left bank of the gardens, which Clef-des-Coeurs thus delayed

searching at once, was, unhappily, the dangerous slope where Francine

had seen the moving line of men. All things go by chance in war.

As Gerard entered the salon and bowed to the company he cast a

penetrating eye on the men who were present. Suspicions came forcibly to

his mind, and he went at once to Mademoiselle de Verneuil and said in a

low voice: “I think you had better leave this place immediately. We are

not safe here.”

“What can you fear while I am with you?” she answered, laughing. “You

are safer here than you would be at Mayenne.”

A woman answers for her lover in good faith. The two officers were

reassured. The party now moved into the dining-room after some

discussion about a guest, apparently of some importance, who had not

appeared. Mademoiselle de Verneuil was able, thanks to the silence which

always reigns at the beginning of a meal, to give some attention to the

character of the assemblage, which was curious enough under existing

circumstances. One thing struck her with surprise. The Republican

officers seemed superior to the rest of the assembly by reason of their

dignified appearance. Their long hair tied behind in a queue drew lines

beside their foreheads which gave, in those days, an expression of great

candor and nobleness to young heads. Their threadbare blue uniforms

with the shabby red facings, even their epaulets flung back behind their

shoulders (a sign throughout the army, even among the leaders, of a lack

of overcoats),--all these things brought the two Republican officers

into strong relief against the men who surrounded them.

“Oh, they are the Nation, and that means liberty!” thought Marie; then,

with a glance at the royalists, she added, “on the other side is a man,

a king, and privileges.” She could not refrain from admiring Merle, so

thoroughly did that gay soldier respond to the ideas she had formed of

the French trooper who hums a tune when the balls are whistling,

and jests when a comrade falls. Gerard was more imposing. Grave and

self-possessed, he seemed to have one of those truly Republican spirits

which, in the days of which we write, crowded the French armies, and

gave them, by means of these noble individual devotions, an energy

which they had never before possessed. “That is one of my men with great

ideals,” thought Mademoiselle de Verneuil. “Relying on the present,

which they rule, they destroy the past for the benefit of the future.”

The thought saddened her because she could not apply it to her lover;

towards whom she now turned, to discard by a different admiration, these

beliefs in the Republic she was already beginning to dislike. Looking at

the marquis, surrounded by men who were bold enough, fanatical enough,

and sufficiently long-headed as to the future to give battle to

a victorious Republic in the hope of restoring a dead monarchy, a

proscribed religion, fugitive princes, and lost privileges, “He,”

thought she, “has no less an aim than the others; clinging to those

fragments, he wants to make a future from the past.” Her mind, thus

grasped by conflicting images, hesitated between the new and the old

wrecks. Her conscience told her that the one was fighting for a man, the

other for a country; but she had now reached, through her feelings, the

point to which reason will also bring us, namely: to a recognition that

the king _is_ the Nation.

The steps of a man echoed in the adjoining room, and the marquis rose

from the table to greet him. He proved to be the expected guest, and

seeing the assembled company he was about to speak, when the Gars made

him a hasty sign, which he concealed from the Republicans, to take his

place and say nothing. The more the two officers analyzed the faces

about them, the more their suspicions increased. The clerical dress of

the Abbe Gudin and the singularity of the Chouan garments were so many

warnings to them; they redoubled their watchfulness, and soon discovered

many discrepancies between the manners of the guests and the topics of

their conversation. The republicanism of some was quite as exaggerated

as the aristocratic bearing of others was unmistakable. Certain glances

which they detected between the marquis and his guests, certain words

of double meaning imprudently uttered, but above all the fringe of

beard which was round the necks of several of the men and was very

ill-concealed by their cravats, brought the officers at last to a full

conviction of the truth, which flashed upon their minds at the same

instant. They gave each other one look, for Madame du Gua had cleverly

separated them and they could only impart their thoughts by their eyes.

Such a situation demanded the utmost caution. They did not know whether

they and their men were masters of the situation, or whether they had

been drawn into a trap, or whether Mademoiselle de Verneuil was the

dupe or the accomplice of this inexplicable state of things. But an

unforeseen event precipitated a crisis before they had fully recognized

the gravity of their situation.

The new guest was one of those solid men who are square at the base and

square at the shoulders, with ruddy skins; men who lean backward when

they walk, seeming to displace much atmosphere about them, and who

appear to think that more than one glance of the eye is needful to take

them in. Notwithstanding his rank, he had taken life as a joke from

which he was to get as much amusement as possible; and yet, although he

knelt at his own shrine only, he was kind, polite, and witty, after the

fashion of those noblemen who, having finished their training at court,

return to live on their estates, and never suspect that they have, at

the end of twenty years, grown rusty. Men of this type fail in tact with

imperturbable coolness, talk folly wittily, distrust good with extreme

shrewdness, and take incredible pains to fall into traps.

When, by a play of his knife and fork which proclaimed him a good

feeder, he had made up for lost time, he began to look round on the

company. His astonishment was great when he observed the two Republican

officers, and he questioned Madame du Gua with a look, while she, for

all answer, showed him Mademoiselle de Verneuil in the same way. When he

saw the siren whose demeanor had silenced the suspicions Madame du Gua

had excited among the guests, the face of the stout stranger broke into

one of those insolent, ironical smiles which contain a whole history of

scandal. He leaned to his next neighbor and whispered a few words, which

went from ear to ear and lip to lip, passing Marie and the two officers,

until they reached the heart of one whom they struck to death. The

leaders of the Vendeans and the Chouans assembled round that table

looked at the Marquis de Montauran with cruel curiosity. The eyes

of Madame du Gua, flashing with joy, turned from the marquis to

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who was speechless with surprise. The

Republican officers, uneasy in mind, questioned each other’s thoughts

as they awaited the result of this extraordinary scene. In a moment the

forks remained inactive in every hand, silence reigned, and every eye

was turned to the Gars. A frightful anger showed upon his face, which

turned waxen in tone. He leaned towards the guest from whom the rocket

had started and said, in a voice that seemed muffled in crape, “Death of

my soul! count, is that true?”

“On my honor,” said the count, bowing gravely.

The marquis lowered his eyes for a moment, then he raised them and

looked fixedly at Marie, who, watchful of his struggle, knew that look

to be her death-warrant.

“I would give my life,” he said in a low voice, “for revenge on the

spot.”

Madame du Gua understood the words from the mere movement of the young

man’s lips, and she smiled upon him as we smile at a friend whose

regrets are about to cease. The scorn felt for Mademoiselle de Verneuil

and shown on every face, brought to its height the growing indignation

of the two Republicans, who now rose hastily:--

“Do you want anything, citizens?” asked Madame du Gua.

“Our swords, _citoyenne_,” said Gerard, sarcastically.

“You do not need them at table,” said the marquis, coldly.

“No, but we are going to play at a game you know very well,” replied

Gerard. “This is La Pelerine over again.”

The whole party seemed dumfounded. Just then a volley, fired with

terrible regularity, echoed through the courtyard. The two officers

sprang to the portico; there they beheld a hundred or so of Chouans

aiming at the few soldiers who were not shot down at the first

discharge; these they fired upon as upon so many hares. The Bretons

swarmed from the bank, where Marche-a-Terre had posted them at the peril

of their lives; for after the last volley, and mingling with the cries

of the dying, several Chouans were heard to fall into the lake, where

they were lost like stones in a gulf. Pille-Miche took aim at Gerard;

Marche-a-Terre held Merle at his mercy.

“Captain,” said the marquis to Merle, repeating to the Republican his

own words, “you see that men are like medlars, they ripen on the straw.”

He pointed with a wave of his hand to the entire escort of the Blues

lying on the bloody litter where the Chouans were despatching those who

still breathed, and rifling the dead bodies with incredible rapidity. “I

was right when I told you that your soldiers will not get as far as La

Pelerine. I think, moreover, that your head will fill with lead before

mine. What say you?”

Montauran felt a horrible necessity to vent his rage. His bitter

sarcasm, the ferocity, even the treachery of this military execution,

done without his orders, but which he now accepted, satisfied in

some degree the craving of his heart. In his fury he would fain have

annihilated France. The dead Blues, the living officers, all innocent

of the crime for which he demanded vengeance, were to him the cards by

which a gambler cheats his despair.

“I would rather perish than conquer as you are conquering,” said Gerard.

Then, seeing the naked and bloody corpses of his men, he cried out,

“Murdered basely, in cold blood!”

“That was how you murdered Louis XVI., monsieur,” said the marquis.

“Monsieur,” replied Gerard, haughtily, “there are mysteries in a king’s

trial which you could never comprehend.”

“Do you dare to accuse the king?” exclaimed the marquis.

“Do you dare to fight your country?” retorted Gerard.

“Folly!” said the marquis.

“Parricide!” exclaimed the Republican.

“Well, well,” cried Merle, gaily, “a pretty time to quarrel at the

moment of your death.”

“True,” said Gerard, coldly, turning to the marquis. “Monsieur, if it is

your intention to put us to death, at least have the goodness to shoot

us at once.”

“Ah! that’s like you, Gerard,” said Merle, “always in a hurry to finish

things. But if one has to travel far and can’t breakfast on the morrow,

at least we might sup.”

Gerard sprang forward without a word towards the wall. Pille-Miche

covered him, glancing as he did so at the motionless marquis, whose

silence he took for an order, and the adjutant-major fell like a tree.

Marche-a-Terre ran to share the fresh booty with Pille-Miche; like two

hungry crows they disputed and clamored over the still warm body.

“If you really wish to finish your supper, captain, you can come with

me,” said the marquis to Merle.

The captain followed him mechanically, saying in a low voice: “It is

that devil of a strumpet that caused all this. What will Hulot say?”

“Strumpet!” cried the marquis in a strangled voice, “then she is one?”

The captain seemed to have given Montauran a death-blow, for he

re-entered the house with a staggering step, pale, haggard, and undone.

Another scene had meanwhile taken place in the dining-room, which

assumed, in the marquis’s absence, such a threatening character that

Marie, alone without her protector, might well fancy she read her

death-warrant in the eyes of her rival. At the noise of the volley the

guests all sprang to their feet, but Madame du Gua remained seated.

“It is nothing,” she said; “our men are despatching the Blues.” Then,

seeing the marquis outside on the portico, she rose. “Mademoiselle whom

you here see,” she continued, with the calmness of concentrated fury,

“came here to betray the Gars! She meant to deliver him up to the

Republic.”

“I could have done so twenty times to-day and yet I saved his life,”

said Mademoiselle de Verneuil.

Madame du Gua sprang upon her rival like lightning; in her blind

excitement she tore apart the fastenings of the young girl’s spencer,

the stuff, the embroidery, the corset, the chemise, and plunged her

savage hand into the bosom where, as she well knew, a letter lay hidden.

In doing this her jealousy so bruised and tore the palpitating throat

of her rival, taken by surprise at the sudden attack, that she left

the bloody marks of her nails, feeling a sort of pleasure in making

her submit to so degrading a prostitution. In the feeble struggle which

Marie made against the furious woman, her hair became unfastened and

fell in undulating curls about her shoulders; her face glowed with

outraged modesty, and tears made their burning way along her cheeks,

heightening the brilliancy of her eyes, as she quivered with shame

before the looks of the assembled men. The hardest judge would have

believed in her innocence when he saw her sorrow.

Hatred is so uncalculating that Madame du Gua did not perceive she

had overshot her mark, and that no one listened to her as she cried

triumphantly: “You shall now see, gentlemen, whether I have slandered

that horrible creature.”

“Not so horrible,” said the bass voice of the guest who had thrown the

first stone. “But for my part, I like such horrors.”

“Here,” continued the cruel woman, “is an order signed by Laplace, and

counter-signed by Dubois, minister of war.” At these names several heads

were turned to her. “Listen to the wording of it,” she went on.

“‘The military citizen commanders of all grades, the district

administrators, the _procureur-syndics_, et cetera, of the

insurgent departments, and particularly those of the localities in

which the ci-devant Marquis de Montauran, leader of the brigands

and otherwise known as the Gars, may be found, are hereby

commanded to give aid and assistance to the _citoyenne_ Marie

Verneuil and to obey the orders which she may give them at her

discretion.’

“A worthless hussy takes a noble name to soil it with such treachery,”

added Madame du Gua.

A movement of astonishment ran through the assembly.

“The fight is not even if the Republic employs such pretty women against

us,” said the Baron du Guenic gaily.

“Especially women who have nothing to lose,” said Madame du Gua.

“Nothing?” cried the Chevalier du Vissard. “Mademoiselle has a property

which probably brings her in a pretty good sum.”

“The Republic must like a joke, to send strumpets for ambassadors,” said

the Abbe Gudin.

“Unfortunately, Mademoiselle seeks the joys that kill,” said Madame du

Gua, with a horrible expression of pleasure at the end she foresaw.

“Then why are you still living?” said her victim, rising to her feet,

after repairing the disorder of her clothes.

This bitter sarcasm excited a sort of respect for so brave a victim, and

silenced the assembly. Madame du Gua saw a satirical smile on the lips

of the men, which infuriated her, and paying no attention to the marquis

and Merle who were entering the room, she called to the Chouan who

followed them. “Pille-Miche!” she said, pointing to Mademoiselle de

Verneuil, “take her; she is my share of the booty, and I turn her over

to you--do what you like with her.”

At these words the whole assembly shuddered, for the hideous heads of

Pille-Miche and Marche-a-Terre appeared behind the marquis, and the

punishment was seen in all its horror.

Francine was standing with clasped hands as though paralyzed.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who recovered her presence of mind before the

danger that threatened her, cast a look of contempt at the assembled

men, snatched the letter from Madame du Gua’s hand, threw up her head

with a flashing eye, and darted towards the door where Merle’s sword was

still leaning. There she came upon the marquis, cold and motionless as a

statue. Nothing pleaded for her on his fixed, firm features. Wounded

to the heart, life seemed odious to her. The man who had pledged her so

much love must have heard the odious jests that were cast upon her,

and stood there silently a witness of the infamy she had been made to

endure. She might, perhaps, have forgiven him his contempt, but she

could not forgive his having seen her in so humiliating a position, and

she flung him a look that was full of hatred, feeling in her heart the

birth of an unutterable desire for vengeance. With death beside her,

the sense of impotence almost strangled her. A whirlwind of passion

and madness rose in her head; the blood which boiled in her veins made

everything about her seem like a conflagration. Instead of killing

herself, she seized the sword and thrust it though the marquis. But the

weapon slipped between his arm and side; he caught her by the wrist and

dragged her from the room, aided by Pille-Miche, who had flung himself

upon the furious creature when she attacked his master. Francine

shrieked aloud. “Pierre! Pierre! Pierre!” she cried in heart-rending

tones, as she followed her mistress.

The marquis closed the door on the astonished company. When he reached

the portico he was still holding the woman’s wrist, which he clasped

convulsively, while Pille-Miche had almost crushed the bones of her arm

with his iron fingers, but Marie felt only the burning hand of the young

leader.

“You hurt me,” she said.

For all answer he looked at her a moment.

“Have you some base revenge to take--like that woman?” she said. Then,

seeing the dead bodies on the heap of straw, she cried out, shuddering:

“The faith of a gentleman! ha! ha! ha!” With a frightful laugh she

added: “Ha! the glorious day!”

“Yes,” he said, “a day without a morrow.”

He let go her hand and took a long, last look at the beautiful creature

he could scarcely even then renounce. Neither of these proud natures

yielded. The marquis may have looked for a tear, but the eyes of the

girl were dry and scornful. Then he turned quickly, and left the victim

to Pille-Miche.

“God will hear me, marquis,” she called. “I will ask Him to give you a

glorious day without a morrow.”

Pille-Miche, not a little embarrassed with so rich a prize, dragged

her away with some gentleness and a mixture of respect and scorn. The

marquis, with a sigh, re-entered the dining-room, his face like that of

a dead man whose eyes have not been closed.

Merle’s presence was inexplicable to the silent spectators of this

tragedy; they looked at him in astonishment and their eyes questioned

each other. Merle saw their amazement, and, true to his native

character, he said, with a smile: “Gentlemen, you will scarcely refuse a

glass of wine to a man who is about to make his last journey.”

It was just as the company had calmed down under the influence of these

words, said with a true French carelessness which pleased the Vendeans,

that Montauran returned, his face pale, his eyes fixed.

“Now you shall see,” said Merle, “how death can make men lively.”

“Ah!” said the marquis, with a gesture as if suddenly awaking, “here you

are, my dear councillor of war,” and he passed him a bottle of _vin de

Grave_.

“Oh, thanks, citizen marquis,” replied Merle. “Now I can divert myself.”

At this sally Madame du Gua turned to the other guests with a smile,

saying, “Let us spare him the dessert.”

“That is a very cruel vengeance, madame,” he said. “You forget my

murdered friend who is waiting for me; I never miss an appointment.”

“Captain,” said the marquis, throwing him his glove, “you are free;

that’s your passport. The Chasseurs du Roi know that they must not kill

all the game.”

“So much the better for me!” replied Merle, “but you are making a

mistake; we shall come to close quarters before long, and I’ll not let

you off. Though your head can never pay for Gerard’s, I want it and I

shall have it. Adieu. I could drink with my own assassins, but I cannot

stay with those of my friend”; and he disappeared, leaving the guests

astonished at his coolness.

“Well, gentlemen, what do you think of the lawyers and surgeons and

bailiffs who manage the Republic,” said the Gars, coldly.

“God’s-death! marquis,” replied the Comte de Bauvan; “they have shocking

manners; that fellow presumed to be impertinent, it seems to me.”

The captain’s hasty retreat had a motive. The despised, humiliated

woman, who was even then, perhaps, being put to death, had so won upon

him during the scene of her degradation that he said to himself, as he

left the room, “If she is a prostitute, she is not an ordinary one, and

I’ll marry her.” He felt so sure of being able to rescue her from the

savages that his first thought, when his own life was given to him,

was to save hers. Unhappily, when he reached the portico, he found the

courtyard deserted. He looked about him, listened to the silence, and

could hear nothing but the distant shouts and laughter of the Chouans,

who were drinking in the gardens and dividing their booty. He turned the

corner to the fatal wing before which his men had been shot, and from

there he could distinguish, by the feeble light of a few stray lanterns,

the different groups of the Chasseurs du Roi. Neither Pille-Miche, nor

Marche-a-Terre, nor the girl were visible; but he felt himself gently

pulled by the flap of his uniform, and, turning round, saw Francine on

her knees.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“I don’t know; Pierre drove me back and told me not to stir from here.”

“Which way did they go?”

“That way,” she replied, pointing to the causeway.

The captain and Francine then noticed in that direction a line of strong

shadows thrown by the moonlight on the lake, and among them that of a

female figure.

“It is she!” cried Francine.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil seemed to be standing, as if resigned, in the

midst of other figures, whose gestures denoted a debate.

“There are several,” said the captain. “Well, no matter, let us go to

them.”

“You will get yourself killed uselessly,” said Francine.

“I have been killed once before to-day,” he said gaily.

They both walked towards the gloomy gateway which led to the causeway;

there Francine suddenly stopped short.

“No,” she said, gently, “I’ll go no farther; Pierre told me not to

meddle; I believe in him; if we go on we shall spoil all. Do as you

please, officer, but leave me. If Pierre saw us together he would kill

you.”

Just then Pille-Miche appeared in the gateway and called to the

postilion who was left in the stable. At the same moment he saw the

captain and covered him with his musket, shouting out, “By Saint Anne of

Auray! the rector was right enough in telling us the Blues had signed a

compact with the devil. I’ll bring you to life, I will!”

“Stop! my life is sacred,” cried Merle, seeing his danger. “There’s the

glove of your Gars,” and he held it out.

“Ghosts’ lives are not sacred,” replied the Chouan, “and I sha’n’t give

you yours. Ave Maria!”

He fired, and the ball passed through his victim’s head. The captain

fell. When Francine reached him she heard him mutter the words, “I’d

rather die with them than return without them.”

The Chouan sprang upon the body to strip it, saying, “There’s one

good thing about ghosts, they come to life in their clothes.” Then,

recognizing the Gars’ glove, that sacred safeguard, in the captain’s

hand, he stopped short, terrified. “I wish I wasn’t in the skin of

my mother’s son!” he exclaimed, as he turned and disappeared with the

rapidity of a bird.

To understand this scene, so fatal to poor Merle, we must follow

Mademoiselle de Verneuil after the marquis, in his fury and despair, had

abandoned her to Pille-Miche. Francine had caught Marche-a-Terre by

the arm and reminded him, with sobs, of the promise he had made her.

Pille-Miche was already dragging away his victim like a heavy bundle.

Marie, her head and hair hanging back, turned her eyes to the lake; but

held as she was in a grasp of iron she was forced to follow the Chouan,

who turned now and then to hasten her steps, and each time that he did

so a jovial thought brought a hideous smile upon his face.

“Isn’t she a morsel!” he cried, with a coarse laugh.

Hearing the words, Francine recovered speech.

“Pierre?”

“Well, what?”

“He’ll kill her.”

“Not at once.”

“Then she’ll kill herself, she will never submit; and if she dies I

shall die too.”

“Then you love her too much, and she shall die,” said Marche-a-Terre.

“Pierre! if we are rich and happy we owe it all to her; but, whether or

no, you promised me to save her.”

“Well, I’ll try; but you must stay here, and don’t move.”

Francine at once let go his arm, and waited in horrible suspense in

the courtyard where Merle found her. Meantime Marche-a-Terre joined his

comrade at the moment when the latter, after dragging his victim to the

barn, was compelling her to get into the coach. Pille-Miche called to

him to help in pulling out the vehicle.

“What are you going to do with all that?” asked Marche-a-Terre.

“The Grande Garce gave me the woman, and all that belongs to her is

mine.”

“The coach will put a sou or two in your pocket; but as for the woman,

she’ll scratch your eyes out like a cat.”

Pille-Miche burst into a roar of laughter.

“Then I’ll tie her up and take her home,” he answered.

“Very good; suppose we harness the horses,” said Marche-a-Terre.

A few moments later Marche-a-Terre, who had left his comrade mounting

guard over his prey, led the coach from the stable to the causeway,

where Pille-Miche got into it beside Mademoiselle de Verneuil, not

perceiving that she was on the point of making a spring into the lake.

“I say, Pille-Miche!” cried Marche-a-Terre.

“What!”

“I’ll buy all your booty.”

“Are you joking?” asked the other, catching his prisoner by the

petticoat, as a butcher catches a calf that is trying to escape him.

“Let me see her, and I’ll set a price.”

The unfortunate creature was made to leave the coach and stand between

the two Chouans, who each held a hand and looked at her as the Elders

must have looked at Susannah.

“Will you take thirty francs in good coin?” said Marche-a-Terre, with a

groan.

“Really?”

“Done?” said Marche-a-Terre, holding out his hand.

“Yes, done; I can get plenty of Breton girls for that, and choice

morsels, too. But the coach; whose is that?” asked Pille-Miche,

beginning to reflect upon his bargain.

“Mine!” cried Marche-a-Terre, in a terrible tone of voice, which showed

the sort of superiority his ferocious character gave him over his

companions.

“But suppose there’s money in the coach?”

“Didn’t you say, ‘Done’?”

“Yes, I said, ‘Done.’”

“Very good; then go and fetch the postilion who is gagged in the stable

over there.”

“But if there’s money in the--”

“Is there any?” asked Marche-a-Terre, roughly, shaking Marie by the arm.

“Yes, about a hundred crowns.”

The two Chouans looked at each other.

“Well, well, friend,” said Pille-Miche, “we won’t quarrel for a female

Blue; let’s pitch her into the lake with a stone around her neck, and

divide the money.”

“I’ll give you that money as my share in d’Orgemont’s ransom,” said

Marche-a-Terre, smothering a groan, caused by such sacrifice.

Pille-Miche uttered a sort of hoarse cry as he started to find the

postilion, and his glee brought death to Merle, whom he met on his way.

Hearing the shot, Marche-a-Terre rushed in the direction where he had

left Francine, and found her praying on her knees, with clasped hands,

beside the poor captain, whose murder had deeply horrified her.

“Run to your mistress,” said the Chouan; “she is saved.”

He ran himself to fetch the postilion, returning with all speed, and,

as he repassed Merle’s body, he noticed the Gars’ glove, which was still

convulsively clasped in the dead hand.

“Oho!” he cried. “Pille-Miche has blundered horribly--he won’t live to

spend his crowns.”

He snatched up the glove and said to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who was

already in the coach with Francine: “Here, take this glove. If any of

our men attack you on the road, call out ‘Ho, the Gars!’ show the glove,

and no harm can happen to you. Francine,” he said, turning towards her

and seizing her violently, “you and I are quits with that woman; come

with me and let the devil have her.”

“You can’t ask me to abandon her just at this moment!” cried Francine,

in distress.

Marche-a-Terre scratched his ear and forehead, then he raised his head,

and his mistress saw the ferocious expression of his eyes. “You are

right,” he said; “I leave you with her one week; if at the end of that

time you don’t come with me--” he did not finish the sentence, but he

slapped the muzzle of his gun with the flat of his hand. After making

the gesture of taking aim at her, he disappeared, without waiting for

her reply.

No sooner was he gone than a voice, which seemed to issue from the lake,

called, in a muffled tone: “Madame, madame!”

The postilion and the two women shuddered, for several corpses were

floating near them. A Blue, hidden behind a tree, cautiously appeared.

“Let me get up behind the coach, or I’m a dead man. That damned cider

which Clef-des-Coeurs would stop to drink cost more than a pint of

blood. If he had done as I did, and made his round, our poor comrades

there wouldn’t be floating dead in the pond.”

* * * * *

While these events were taking place outside the chateau, the leaders

sent by the Vendeans and those of the Chouans were holding a council

of war, with their glasses in their hands, under the presidency of

the Marquis de Montauran. Frequent libations of Bordeaux animated the

discussion, which, however, became more serious and important at the

end of the meal. After the general plan of military operations had been

decided on, the Royalists drank to the health of the Bourbons. It was at

that moment that the shot which killed Merle was heard, like an echo of

the disastrous war which these gay and noble conspirators were about to

make against the Republic. Madame du Gua quivered with pleasure at the

thought that she was freed from her rival; the guests looked at each

other in silence; the marquis rose from the table and went out.

“He loved her!” said Madame du Gua, sarcastically. “Follow him, Monsieur

de Fontaine, and keep him company; he will be as irritating as a fly if

we let him sulk.”

She went to a window which looked on the courtyard to endeavor to see

Marie’s body. There, by the last gleams of the sinking moon, she caught

sight of the coach being rapidly driven down the avenue of apple-trees.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s veil was fluttering in the wind. Madame

du Gua, furious at the sight, left the room hurriedly. The marquis,

standing on the portico absorbed in gloomy thought, was watching about

a hundred and fifty Chouans, who, having divided their booty in the

gardens, were now returning to finish the cider and the rye-bread

provided for the Blues. These soldiers of a new species, on whom the

monarchy was resting its hopes, dispersed into groups. Some drank the

cider; others, on the bank before the portico, amused themselves by

flinging into the lake the dead bodies of the Blues, to which they

fastened stones. This sight, joined to the other aspects of the strange

scene,--the fantastic dress, the savage expressions of the barbarous

and uncouth _gars_,--was so new and so amazing to Monsieur de Fontaine,

accustomed to the nobler and better-regulated appearance of the Vendean

troops, that he seized the occasion to say to the Marquis de Montauran,

“What do you expect to do with such brutes?”

“Not very much, my dear count,” replied the Gars.

“Will they ever be fit to manoeuvre before the enemy?”

“Never.”

“Can they understand or execute an order?”

“No.”

“Then what good will they be to you?”

“They will help me to plunge my sword into the entrails of the

Republic,” replied the marquis in a thundering voice. “They will give me

Fougeres in three days, and all Brittany in ten! Monsieur,” he added in

a gentler voice, “start at once for La Vendee; if d’Auticamp, Suzannet,

and the Abbe Bernier will act as rapidly as I do, if they’ll not

negotiate with the First Consul, as I am afraid they will” (here he

wrung the hand of the Vendean chief) “we shall be within reach of Paris

in a fortnight.”

“But the Republic is sending sixty thousand men and General Brune

against us.”

“Sixty thousand men! indeed!” cried the marquis, with a scoffing laugh.

“And how will Bonaparte carry on the Italian campaign? As for General

Brune, he is not coming. The First Consul has sent him against the

English in Holland, and General Hedouville, _the friend of our friend

Barras_, takes his place here. Do you understand?”

As Monsieur de Fontaine heard these words he gave Montauran a look of

keen intelligence which seemed to say that the marquis had not himself

understood the real meaning of the words addressed to him. The two

leaders then comprehended each other perfectly, and the Gars replied

with an undefinable smile to the thoughts expressed in both their eyes:

“Monsieur de Fontaine, do you know my arms? our motto is ‘Persevere unto

death.’”

The Comte de Fontaine took Montauran’s hand and pressed it, saying: “I

was left for dead at Quatre-Chemins, therefore you need never doubt me.

But believe in my experience--times have changed.”

“Yes,” said La Billardiere, who now joined them. “You are young,

marquis. Listen to me; your property has not yet been sold--”

“Ah!” cried Montauran, “can you conceive of devotion without sacrifice?”

“Do you really know the king?”

“I do.”

“Then I admire your loyalty.”

“The king,” replied the young chieftain, “is the priest; I am fighting

not for the man, but for the faith.”

They parted,--the Vendean leader convinced of the necessity of yielding

to circumstances and keeping his beliefs in the depths of his heart; La

Billardiere to return to his negotiations in England; and Montauran to

fight savagely and compel the Vendeans, by the victories he expected to

win, to co-operate in his enterprise.

* * * * *

The events of the day had excited such violent emotions in Mademoiselle

de Verneuil’s whole being that she lay back almost fainting in the

carriage, after giving the order to drive to Fougeres. Francine was as

silent as her mistress. The postilion, dreading some new disaster,

made all the haste he could to reach the high-road, and was soon on the

summit of La Pelerine. Through the thick white mists of morning Marie de

Verneuil crossed the broad and beautiful valley of Couesnon (where this

history began) scarcely able to distinguish the slaty rock on which the

town of Fougeres stands from the slopes of La Pelerine. They were

still eight miles from it. Shivering with cold herself, Mademoiselle de

Verneuil recollected the poor soldier behind the carriage, and insisted,

against his remonstrances, in taking him into the carriage beside

Francine. The sight of Fougeres drew her for a time out of her

reflections. The sentinels stationed at the Porte Saint-Leonard refused

to allow ingress to the strangers, and she was therefore obliged to

exhibit the ministerial order. This at once gave her safety in entering

the town, but the postilion could find no other place for her to stop at

than the Poste inn.

“Madame,” said the Blue whose life she had saved. “If you ever want a

sabre to deal some special blow, my life is yours. I am good for that.

My name is Jean Falcon, otherwise called Beau-Pied, sergeant of

the first company of Hulot’s veterans, seventy-second half-brigade,

nicknamed ‘Les Mayencais.’ Excuse my vanity; I can only offer you the

soul of a sergeant, but that’s at your service.”

He turned on his heel and walked off whistling.

“The lower one goes in social life,” said Marie, bitterly, “the more

we find generous feelings without display. A marquis returns death for

life, and a poor sergeant--but enough of that.”

When the weary woman was at last in a warm bed, her faithful Francine

waited in vain for the affectionate good-night to which she was

accustomed; but her mistress, seeing her still standing and evidently

uneasy, made her a sign of distress.

“This is called a day, Francine,” she said; “but I have aged ten years

in it.”

The next morning, as soon as she had risen, Corentin came to see her and

she admitted him.

“Francine,” she exclaimed, “my degradation is great indeed, for the

thought of that man is not disagreeable to me.”

Still, when she saw him, she felt once more, for the hundredth time, the

instinctive repulsion which two years’ intercourse had increased rather

than lessened.

“Well,” he said, smiling, “I felt certain you were succeeding. Was I

mistaken? did you get hold of the wrong man?”

“Corentin,” she replied, with a dull look of pain, “never mention that

affair to me unless I speak of it myself.”

He walked up and down the room casting oblique glances at her,

endeavoring to guess the secret thoughts of the singular woman whose

mere glance had the power of discomfiting at times the cleverest men.

“I foresaw this check,” he replied, after a moment’s silence. “If you

would be willing to establish your headquarters in this town, I have

already found a suitable place for you. We are in the very centre of

Chouannerie. Will you stay here?”

She answered with an affirmative sign, which enabled Corentin to make

conjectures, partly correct, as to the events of the preceding evening.

“I can hire a house for you, a bit of national property still unsold.

They are behind the age in these parts. No one has dared buy the old

barrack because it belonged to an _emigre_ who was thought to be harsh.

It is close to the church of Saint Leonard; and on my word of honor

the view from it is delightful. Something can really be made of the old

place; will you try it?”

“Yes, at once,” she cried.

“I want a few hours to have it cleaned and put in order for you, so that

you may like it.”

“What matter?” she said. “I could live in a cloister or a prison without

caring. However, see that everything is in order before night, so that

I may sleep there in perfect solitude. Go, leave me; your presence is

intolerable. I wish to be alone with Francine; she is better for me than

my own company, perhaps. Adieu; go--go, I say.”

These words, said volubly with a mingling of coquetry, despotism, and

passion, showed she had entirely recovered her self-possession. Sleep

had no doubt classified the impressions of the preceding day, and

reflection had determined her on vengeance. If a few reluctant signs

appeared on her face they only proved the ease with which certain women

can bury the better feelings of their souls, and the cruel dissimulation

which enables them to smile sweetly while planning the destruction of

a victim. She sat alone after Corentin had left her, thinking how she

could get the marquis still living into her toils. For the first time

in her life this woman had lived according to her inmost desires; but

of that life nothing remained but one craving,--that of

vengeance,--vengeance complete and infinite. It was her one thought,

her sole desire. Francine’s words and attentions were unnoticed. Marie

seemed to be sleeping with her eyes open; and the long day passed

without an action or even a gesture that bore testimony to her thoughts.

She lay on a couch which she had made of chairs and pillows. It was late

in the evening when a few words escaped her, as if involuntarily.

“My child,” she said to Francine, “I understood yesterday what it was to

live for love; to-day I know what it means to die for vengeance. Yes,

I will give my life to seek him wherever he may be, to meet him, seduce

him, make him mine! If I do not have that man, who dared to despise me,

at my feet humble and submissive, if I do not make him my lackey and my

slave, I shall indeed be base; I shall not be a woman; I shall not be

myself.”

The house which Corentin now hired for Mademoiselle de Verneuil offered

many gratifications to the innate love of luxury and elegance that was

part of this girl. The capricious creature took possession of it with

regal composure, as of a thing which already belonged to her; she

appropriated the furniture and arranged it with intuitive sympathy, as

though she had known it all her life. This is a vulgar detail, but one

that is not unimportant in sketching the character of so exceptional a

person. She seemed to have been already familiarized in a dream with the

house in which she now lived on her hatred as she might have lived on

her love.

“At least,” she said to herself, “I did not rouse insulting pity in him;

I do not owe him my life. Oh, my first, my last, my only love! what an

end to it!” She sprang upon Francine, who was terrified. “Do you love a

man? Oh, yes, yes, I remember; you do. I am glad I have a woman here who

can understand me. Ah, my poor Francette, man is a miserable being. Ha!

he said he loved me, and his love could not bear the slightest test!

But I,--if all men had accused him I would have defended him; if the

universe rejected him my soul should have been his refuge. In the old

days life was filled with human beings coming and going for whom I did

not care; it was sad and dull, but not horrible; but now, now, what is

life without him? He will live on, and I not near him! I shall not see

him, speak to him, feel him, hold him, press him,--ha! I would rather

strangle him myself in his sleep!”

Francine, horrified, looked at her in silence.

“Kill the man you love?” she said, in a soft voice.

“Yes, yes, if he ceases to love me.”

But after those ruthless words she hid her face in her hands, and sat

down silently.

The next day a man presented himself without being announced. His face

was stern. It was Hulot, followed by Corentin. Mademoiselle de Verneuil

looked at the commandant and trembled.

“You have come,” she said, “to ask me to account for your friends. They

are dead.”

“I know it,” he replied, “and not in the service of the Republic.”

“For me, and by me,” she said. “You preach the nation to me. Can the

nation bring to life those who die for her? Can she even avenge

them? But I--I will avenge them!” she cried. The awful images of the

catastrophe filled her imagination suddenly, and the graceful creature

who held modesty to be the first of women’s wiles forgot herself in a

moment of madness, and marched towards the amazed commandant brusquely.

“In exchange for a few murdered soldiers,” she said, “I will bring to

the block a head that is worth a million heads of other men. It is not a

woman’s business to wage war; but you, old as you are, shall learn good

stratagems from me. I’ll deliver a whole family to your bayonets--him,

his ancestors, his past, his future. I will be as false and treacherous

to him as I was good and true. Yes, commandant, I will bring that little

noble to my arms, and he shall leave them to go to death. I have no

other rival. The wretch himself pronounced his doom,--_a day without a

morrow_. Your Republic and I shall be avenged. The Republic!” she cried

in a voice the strange intonations of which horrified Hulot. “Is he to

die for bearing arms against the nation? Shall I suffer France to rob me

of my vengeance? Ah! what a little thing is life! death can expiate but

one crime. He has but one head to fall, but I will make him know in one

night that he loses more than life. Commandant, you who will kill him,”

and she sighed, “see that nothing betrays my betrayal; he must die

convinced of my fidelity. I ask that of you. Let him know only me--me,

and my caresses!”

She stopped; but through the crimson of her cheeks Hulot and Corentin

saw that rage and delirium had not entirely smothered all sense of

shame. Marie shuddered violently as she said the words; she seemed to

listen to them as though she doubted whether she herself had said them,

and she made the involuntary movement of a woman whose veil is falling

from her.

“But you had him in your power,” said Corentin.

“Very likely.”

“Why did you stop me when I had him?” asked Hulot.

“I did not know what he would prove to be,” she cried. Then, suddenly,

the excited woman, who was walking up and down with hurried steps and

casting savage glances at the spectators of the storm, calmed down. “I

do not know myself,” she said, in a man’s tone. “Why talk? I must go and

find him.”

“Go and find him?” said Hulot. “My dear woman, take care; we are not yet

masters of this part of the country; if you venture outside of the town

you will be taken or killed before you’ve gone a hundred yards.”

“There’s never any danger for those who seek vengeance,” she said,

driving from her presence with a disdainful gesture the two men whom she

was ashamed to face.

“What a woman!” cried Hulot as he walked away with Corentin. “A queer

idea of those police fellows in Paris to send her here; but she’ll never

deliver him up to us,” he added, shaking his head.

“Oh yes, she will,” replied Corentin.

“Don’t you see she loves him?” said Hulot.

“That’s just why she will. Besides,” looking at the amazed commandant,

“I am here to see that she doesn’t commit any folly. In my opinion,

comrade, there is no love in the world worth the three hundred thousand

francs she’ll make out of this.”

When the police diplomatist left the soldier the latter stood looking

after him, and as the sound of the man’s steps died away he gave a sigh,

muttering to himself, “It may be a good thing after all to be such a

dullard as I am. God’s thunder! if I meet the Gars I’ll fight him hand

to hand, or my name’s not Hulot; for if that fox brings him before me in

any of their new-fangled councils of war, my honor will be as soiled as

the shirt of a young trooper who is under fire for the first time.”

The massacre at La Vivetiere, and the desire to avenge his friends had

led Hulot to accept a reinstatement in his late command; in fact, the

new minister, Berthier, had refused to accept his resignation under

existing circumstances. To the official despatch was added a private

letter, in which, without explaining the mission of Mademoiselle de

Verneuil, the minister informed him that the affair was entirely outside

of the war, and not to interfere with any military operations. The duty

of the commanders, he said, was limited to giving assistance to that

honorable _citoyenne_, if occasion arose. Learning from his scouts that

the movements of the Chouans all tended towards a concentration of their

forces in the neighborhood of Fougeres, Hulot secretly and with forced

marches brought two battalions of his brigade into the town. The

nation’s danger, his hatred of aristocracy, whose partisans threatened

to convulse so large a section of country, his desire to avenge his

murdered friends, revived in the old veteran the fire of his youth.

* * * * *

“So this is the life I craved,” exclaimed Mademoiselle de Verneuil, when

she was left alone with Francine. “No matter how fast the hours go, they

are to me like centuries of thought.”

Suddenly she took Francine’s hand, and her voice, soft as that of

the first red-throat singing after a storm, slowly gave sound to the

following words:--

“Try as I will to forget them, I see those two delicious lips, that chin

just raised, those eyes of fire; I hear the ‘Hue!’ of the postilion; I

dream, I dream,--why then such hatred on awakening!”

She drew a long sigh, rose, and then for the first time looked out upon

the country delivered over to civil war by the cruel leader whom she was

plotting to destroy. Attracted by the scene she wandered out to breathe

at her ease beneath the sky; and though her steps conducted her at a

venture, she was surely led to the Promenade of the town by one of those

occult impulses of the soul which lead us to follow hope irrationally.

Thoughts conceived under the dominion of that spell are often

realized; but we then attribute their pre-vision to a power we call

presentiment,--an inexplicable power, but a real one,--which our

passions find accommodating, like a flatterer who, among his many lies,

does sometimes tell the truth.