Marquis de Montauran when I thought him a hero, but now I feel only a
pitying friendship for him; I see him shorn of all his glory by a fickle
love for a worthless woman.”
“As for love,” said the marquis, in a sarcastic tone, “you judge me
wrong. If I loved that girl, madame, I might desire her less; if it were
not for you, perhaps I should not think of her at all.”
“Here she is!” exclaimed Madame du Gua, abruptly.
The haste with which the marquis looked round went to the heart of the
woman; but the clear light of the wax candles enabled her to see every
change on the face of the man she loved so violently, and when he turned
back his face, smiling at her woman’s trick, she fancied there was still
some hope of recovering him.
“What are you laughing at?” asked the Comte de Bauvan.
“At a soap-bubble which has burst,” interposed Madame du Gua, gaily.
“The marquis, if we are now to believe him, is astonished that his
heart ever beat the faster for that girl who presumes to call herself
Mademoiselle de Verneuil. You know who I mean.”
“That girl!” echoed the count. “Madame, the author of a wrong is
bound to repair it. I give you my word of honor that she is really the
daughter of the Duc de Verneuil.”
“Monsieur le comte,” said the marquis, in a changed voice, “which of
your statements am I to believe,--that of La Vivetiere, or that now
made?”
The loud voice of a servant at the door announced Mademoiselle de
Verneuil. The count sprang forward instantly, offered his hand to the
beautiful woman with every mark of profound respect, and led her through
the inquisitive crowd to the marquis and Madame du Gua. “Believe the one
now made,” he replied to the astonished young leader.
Madame du Gua turned pale at the unwelcome sight of the girl, who stood
for a moment, glancing proudly over the assembled company, among whom
she sought to find the guests at La Vivetiere. She awaited the forced
salutation of her rival, and, without even looking at the marquis, she
allowed the count to lead her to the place of honor beside Madame du
Gua, whose bow she returned with an air that was slightly protecting.
But the latter, with a woman’s instinct, took no offense; on the
contrary, she immediately assumed a smiling, friendly manner. The
extraordinary dress and beauty of Mademoiselle de Verneuil caused a
murmur throughout the ballroom. When the marquis and Madame du Gua
looked towards the late guests at La Vivetiere they saw them in an
attitude of respectful admiration which was not assumed; each seemed
desirous of recovering favor with the misjudged young woman. The enemies
were in presence of each other.
“This is really magic, mademoiselle,” said Madame du Gua; “there is no
one like you for surprises. Have you come all alone?”
“All alone,” replied Mademoiselle de Verneuil. “So you have only one to
kill to-night, madame.”
“Be merciful,” said Madame du Gua. “I cannot express to you the pleasure
I have in seeing you again. I have truly been overwhelmed by the
remembrance of the wrongs I have done you, and am most anxious for an
occasion to repair them.”
“As for those wrongs, madame, I readily pardon those you did to me, but
my heart bleeds for the Blues whom you murdered. However, I excuse all,
in return for the service you have done me.”
Madame du Gua lost countenance as she felt her hand pressed by her
beautiful rival with insulting courtesy. The marquis had hitherto stood
motionless, but he now seized the arm of the count.
“You have shamefully misled me,” he said; “you have compromised my
honor. I am not a Geronte of comedy, and I shall have your life or you
will have mine.”
“Marquis,” said the count, haughtily, “I am ready to give you all the
explanations you desire.”
They passed into the next room. The witnesses of this scene, even those
least initiated into the secret, began to understand its nature, so
that when the musicians gave the signal for the dancing to begin no one
moved.
“Mademoiselle, what service have I rendered you that deserves a return?”
said Madame du Gua, biting her lips in a sort of rage.
“Did you not enlighten me as to the true character of the Marquis de
Montauran, madame? With what utter indifference that man allowed me to
go to my death! I give him up to you willingly!”
“Then why are you here?” asked Madame du Gua, eagerly.
“To recover the respect and consideration you took from me at La
Vivetiere, madame. As for all the rest, make yourself easy. Even if the
marquis returned to me, you know very well that a return is never love.”
Madame du Gua took Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s hand with that
affectionate touch and motion which women practise to each other,
especially in the presence of men.
“Well, my poor dear child,” she said, “I am glad to find you so
reasonable. If the service I did you was rather harsh,” she added,
pressing the hand she held, and feeling a desire to rend it as her
fingers felt its softness and delicacy, “it shall at least be thorough.
Listen to me, I know the character of the Gars; he meant to deceive you;
he neither can nor will marry any woman except--”
“Ah!”
“Yes, mademoiselle, he has accepted his dangerous mission to win the
hand of Mademoiselle d’Uxelles, a marriage to which his Majesty has
promised his countenance.”
“Ah! ah!”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil added not a word to that scornful ejaculation.
The young and handsome Chevalier du Vissard, eager to be forgiven for
the joke which had led to the insults at La Vivetiere, now came up to
her and respectfully invited her to dance. She placed her hand in his,
and they took their places in a quadrille opposite to Madame du Gua. The
gowns of the royalist women, which recalled the fashions of the exiled
court, and their creped and powdered hair seemed absurd as soon as they
were contrasted with the attire which republican fashions authorized
Mademoiselle de Verneuil to wear. This attire, which was elegant, rich,
and yet severe, was loudly condemned but inwardly envied by all the
women present. The men could not restrain their admiration for the
beauty of her natural hair and the adjustment of a dress the charm of
which was in the proportions of the form which it revealed.
At that moment the marquis and the count re-entered the ballroom behind
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who did not turn her head. If a mirror had not
been there to inform her of Montauran’s presence, she would have
known it from Madame du Gua’s face, which scarcely concealed, under an
apparently indifferent air, the impatience with which she awaited the
conflict which must, sooner or later, take place between the lovers.
Though the marquis talked with the count and other persons, he heard
the remarks of all the dancers who from time to time in the mazes of the
quadrille took the place of Mademoiselle de Verneuil and her partner.
“Positively, madame, she came alone,” said one.
“She must be a bold woman,” replied the lady.
“If I were dressed like that I should feel myself naked,” said another
woman.
“Oh, the gown is not decent, certainly,” replied her partner; “but it is
so becoming, and she is so handsome.”
“I am ashamed to look at such perfect dancing, for her sake; isn’t it
exactly that of an opera girl?” said the envious woman.
“Do you suppose that she has come here to intrigue for the First
Consul?” said another.
“A joke if she has,” replied the partner.
“Well, she can’t offer innocence as a dowry,” said the lady, laughing.
The Gars turned abruptly to see the lady who uttered this sarcasm, and
Madame du Gua looked at him as if to say, “You see what people think of
her.”
“Madame,” said the count, laughing, “so far, it is only women who have
taken her innocence away from her.”
The marquis privately forgave the count. When he ventured to look at his
mistress, whose beauty was, like that of most women, brought into relief
by the light of the wax candles, she turned her back upon him as she
resumed her place, and went on talking to her partner in a way to let
the marquis hear the sweetest and most caressing tones of her voice.
“The First Consul sends dangerous ambassadors,” her partner was saying.
“Monsieur,” she replied, “you all said that at La Vivetiere.”
“You have the memory of a king,” replied he, disconcerted at his own
awkwardness.
“To forgive injuries one must needs remember them,” she said quickly,
relieving his embarrassment with a smile.
“Are we all included in that amnesty?” said the marquis, approaching
her.
But she darted away in the dance, with the gaiety of a child, leaving
him without an answer. He watched her coldly and sadly; she saw it, and
bent her head with one of those coquettish motions which the graceful
lines of her throat enabled her to make, omitting no movement or
attitude which could prove to him the perfection of her figure. She
attracted him like hope, and eluded him like a memory. To see her thus
was to desire to possess her at any cost. She knew that, and the
sense it gave her of her own beauty shed upon her whole person an
inexpressible charm. The marquis felt the storm of love, of rage, of
madness, rising in his heart; he wrung the count’s hand violently, and
left the room.
“Is he gone?” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, returning to her place.
The count gave her a glance and passed into the next room, from which he
presently returned accompanied by the Gars.
“He is mine!” she thought, observing his face in the mirror.
She received the young leader with a displeased air and said nothing,
but she smiled as she turned away from him; he was so superior to all
about him that she was proud of being able to rule him; and obeying an
instinct which sways all women more or less, she resolved to let him
know the value of a few gracious words by making him pay dear for them.
As soon as the quadrille was over, all the gentlemen who had been at
La Vivetiere surrounded Mademoiselle de Verneuil, wishing by their
flattering attentions to obtain her pardon for the mistake they had
made; but he whom she longed to see at her feet did not approach the
circle over which she now reigned a queen.
“He thinks I still love him,” she thought, “and does not wish to be
confounded with mere flatterers.”
She refused to dance again. Then, as if the ball were given for her, she
walked about on the arm of the Comte de Bauvan, to whom she was pleased
to show some familiarity. The affair at La Vivetiere was by this time
known to all present, thanks to Madame du Gua, and the lovers were the
object of general attention. The marquis dared not again address his
mistress; a sense of the wrong he had done her and the violence of his
returning passion made her seem to him actually terrible. On her side
Marie watched his apparently calm face while she seemed to be observing
the ball.
“It is fearfully hot here,” she said to the count. “Take me to the other
side where I can breathe; I am stifling here.”
And she motioned towards a small room where a few card-players were
assembled. The marquis followed her. He ventured to hope she had left
the crowd to receive him, and this supposed favor roused his passion to
extreme violence; for his love had only increased through the resistance
he had made to it during the last few days. Mademoiselle de Verneuil
still tormented him; her eyes, so soft and velvety for the count, were
hard and stern when, as if by accident, they met his. Montauran at last
made a painful effort and said, in a muffled voice, “Will you never
forgive me?”
“Love forgives nothing, or it forgives all,” she said, coldly. “But,”
she added, noticing his joyful look, “it must be love.”
She took the count’s arm once more and moved forward into a small
boudoir which adjoined the cardroom. The marquis followed her.
“Will you not hear me?” he said.
“One would really think, monsieur,” she replied, “that I had come here
to meet you, and not to vindicate my own self-respect. If you do not
cease this odious pursuit I shall leave the ballroom.”
“Ah!” he cried, recollecting one of the crazy actions of the last Duc de
Lorraine, “let me speak to you so long as I can hold this live coal in
my hand.”
He stooped to the hearth and picking up a brand held it tightly.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil flushed, took her arm from that of the count,
and looked at the marquis in amazement. The count softly withdrew,
leaving them alone together. So crazy an action shook Marie’s heart, for
there is nothing so persuasive in love as courageous folly.
“You only prove to me,” she said, trying to make him throw away the
brand, “that you are willing to make me suffer cruelly. You are extreme
in everything. On the word of a fool and the slander of a woman you
suspected that one who had just saved your life was capable of betraying
you.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling, “I have been very cruel to you; but
nevertheless, forget it; I shall never forget it. Hear me. I have been
shamefully deceived; but so many circumstances on that fatal day told
against you--”
“And those circumstances were stronger than your love?”
He hesitated; she made a motion of contempt, and rose.
“Oh, Marie. I shall never cease to believe in you now.”
“Then throw that fire away. You are mad. Open your hand; I insist upon
it.”
He took delight in still resisting the soft efforts of her fingers, but
she succeeded in opening the hand she would fain have kissed.
“What good did that do you?” she said, as she tore her handkerchief and
laid it on the burn, which the marquis covered with his glove.
Madame du Gua had stolen softly into the cardroom, watching the lovers
with furtive eyes, but escaping theirs adroitly; it was, however,
impossible for her to understand their conversation from their actions.
“If all that they said of me was true you must admit that I am avenged
at this moment,” said Marie, with a look of malignity which startled the
marquis.
“What feeling brought you here?” he asked.
“Do you suppose, my dear friend, that you can despise a woman like me
with impunity? I came here for your sake and for my own,” she continued,
after a pause, laying her hand on the hilt of rubies in her bosom and
showing him the blade of her dagger.
“What does all that mean?” thought Madame du Gua.
“But,” she continued, “you still love me; at any rate, you desire me,
and the folly you have just committed,” she added, taking his hand,
“proves it to me. I will again be that I desired to be; and I return to
Fougeres happy. Love absolves everything. You love me; I have regained
the respect of the man who represents to me the whole world, and I can
die.”
“Then you still love me?” said the marquis.
“Have I said so?” she replied with a scornful look, delighting in the
torture she was making him endure. “I have run many risks to come here.
I have saved Monsieur de Bauvan’s life, and he, more grateful than
others, offers me in return his fortune and his name. You have never
even thought of doing that.”
The marquis, bewildered by these words, stifled the worst anger he had
ever felt, supposing that the count had played him false. He made no
answer.
“Ah! you reflect,” she said, bitterly.
“Mademoiselle,” replied the young man, “your doubts justify mine.”
“Let us leave this room,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, catching sight
of a corner of Madame du Gua’s gown, and rising. But the wish to reduce
her rival to despair was too strong, and she made no further motion to
go.
“Do you mean to drive me to hell?” cried the marquis, seizing her hand
and pressing it violently.
“Did you not drive me to hell five days ago? are you not leaving me at
this very moment uncertain whether your love is sincere or not?”
“But how do I know whether your revenge may not lead you to obtain my
life to tarnish it, instead of killing me?”
“Ah! you do not love me! you think of yourself and not of me!” she said
angrily, shedding a few tears.
The coquettish creature well knew the power of her eyes when moistened
by tears.
“Well, then,” he cried, beside himself, “take my life, but dry those
tears.”
“Oh, my love! my love!” she exclaimed in a stifled voice: “those are the
words, the accents, the looks I have longed for, to allow me to prefer
your happiness to mine. But,” she added, “I ask one more proof of your
love, which you say is so great. I wish to stay here only so long as may
be needed to show the company that you are mine. I will not even drink
a glass of water in the house of a woman who has twice tried to kill me,
who is now, perhaps, plotting mischief against us,” and she showed the
marquis the floating corner of Madame du Gua’s drapery. Then she dried
her eyes and put her lips to the ear of the young man, who quivered as
he felt the caress of her warm breath. “See that everything is prepared
for my departure,” she said; “you shall take me yourself to Fougeres and
there only will I tell you if I love you. For the second time I trust
you. Will you trust me a second time?”
“Ah, Marie, you have brought me to a point where I know not what I do. I
am intoxicated by your words, your looks, by you--by you, and I am ready
to obey you.”
“Well, then, make me for an instant very happy. Let me enjoy the only
triumph I desire. I want to breathe freely, to drink of the life I have
dreamed, to feed my illusions before they are gone forever. Come--come
into the ballroom and dance with me.”
They re-entered the room together, and though Mademoiselle de Verneuil
was as completely satisfied in heart and vanity as any woman ever could
be, the unfathomable gentleness of her eyes, the demure smile on her
lips, the rapidity of the motions of a gay dance, kept the secret of her
thoughts as the sea swallows those of the criminal who casts a weighted
body into its depths. But a murmur of admiration ran through the company
as, circling in each other’s arms, voluptuously interlaced, with heavy
heads, and dimmed sight, they waltzed with a sort of frenzy, dreaming of
the pleasures they hoped to find in a future union.
A few moments later Mademoiselle de Verneuil and the marquis were in
the latter’s travelling-carriage drawn by four horses. Surprised to
see these enemies hand in hand, and evidently understanding each other,
Francine kept silence, not daring to ask her mistress whether her
conduct was that of treachery or love. Thanks to the darkness, the
marquis did not observe Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s agitation as
they neared Fougeres. The first flush of dawn showed the towers of
Saint-Leonard in the distance. At that moment Marie was saying to
herself: “I am going to my death.”
As they ascended the first hill the lovers had the same thought; they
left the carriage and mounted the rise on foot, in memory of their first
meeting. When Marie took the young man’s arm she thanked him by a smile
for respecting her silence; then, as they reached the summit of the
plateau and looked at Fougeres, she threw off her reverie.
“Don’t come any farther,” she said; “my authority cannot save you from
the Blues to-day.”
Montauran showed some surprise. She smiled sadly and pointed to a block
of granite, as if to tell him to sit down, while she herself stood
before him in a melancholy attitude. The rending emotions of her soul no
longer permitted her to play a part. At that moment she would have knelt
on red-hot coals without feeling them any more than the marquis had felt
the fire-brand he had taken in his hand to prove the strength of his
passion. It was not until she had contemplated her lover with a look of
the deepest anguish that she said to him, at last:--
“All that you have suspected of me is true.”
The marquis started.
“Ah! I pray you,” she said, clasping her hands, “listen to me without
interruption. I am indeed the daughter of the Duc de Verneuil,--but his
natural daughter. My mother, a Demoiselle de Casteran, who became a nun
to escape the reproaches of her family, expiated her fault by fifteen
years of sorrow, and died at Seez, where she was abbess. On her
death-bed she implored, for the first time and only for me, the help of
the man who had betrayed her, for she knew she was leaving me without
friends, without fortune, without a future. The duke accepted the
charge, and took me from the roof of Francine’s mother, who had hitherto
taken care of me; perhaps he liked me because I was beautiful; possibly
I reminded him of his youth. He was one of those great lords of the
old regime, who took pride in showing how they could get their crimes
forgiven by committing them with grace. I will say no more, he was my
father. But let me explain to you how my life in Paris injured my soul.
The society of the Duc de Verneuil, to which he introduced me, was
bitten by that scoffing philosophy about which all France was
then enthusiastic because it was wittily professed. The brilliant
conversations which charmed my ear were marked by subtlety of perception
and by witty contempt for all that was true and spiritual. Men laughed
at sentiments, and pictured them all the better because they did
not feel them; their satirical epigrams were as fascinating as the
light-hearted humor with which they could put a whole adventure into
a word; and yet they had sometimes too much wit, and wearied women by
making love an art, and not a matter of feeling. I could not resist the
tide. And yet my soul was too ardent--forgive this pride--not to feel
that their minds had withered their hearts; and the life I led resulted
in a perpetual struggle between my natural feelings and beliefs and the
vicious habits of mind which I there contracted. Several superior men
took pleasure in developing in me that liberty of thought and contempt
for public opinion which do tear from a woman her modesty of soul,
robbed of which she loses her charm. Alas! my subsequent misfortunes
have failed to lessen the faults I learned through opulence. My father,”
she continued, with a sigh, “the Duc de Verneuil, died, after duly
recognizing me as his daughter and making provisions for me by his will,
which considerably reduced the fortune of my brother, his legitimate
son. I found myself one day without a home and without a protector. My
brother contested the will which made me rich. Three years of my late
life had developed my vanity. By satisfying all my fancies my father
had created in my nature a need of luxury, and given me habits of
self-indulgence of which my own mind, young and artless as it then was,
could not perceive either the danger or the tyranny. A friend of my
father, the Marechal Duc de Lenoncourt, then seventy years old, offered
to become my guardian, and I found myself, soon after the termination of
the odious suit, in a brilliant home, where I enjoyed all the advantages
of which my brother’s cruelty had deprived me. Every evening the old
marechal came to sit with me and comfort me with kind and consoling
words. His white hair and the many proofs he gave me of paternal
tenderness led me to turn all the feelings of my heart upon him, and
I felt myself his daughter. I accepted his presents, hiding none of my
caprices from him, for I saw how he loved to gratify them. I heard one
fatal evening that all Paris believed me the mistress of the poor old
man. I was told that it was then beyond my power to recover an innocence
thus gratuitously denied me. They said that the man who had abused my
inexperience could not be lover, and would not be my husband. The week
in which I made this horrible discovery the duke left Paris. I was
shamefully ejected from the house where he had placed me, and which did
not belong to him. Up to this point I have told you the truth as though
I stood before God; but now, do not ask a wretched woman to give account
of sufferings which are buried in her heart. The time came when I found
myself married to Danton. A few days later the storm uprooted the mighty
oak around which I had thrown my arms. Again I was plunged into the
worst distress, and I resolved to kill myself. I don’t know whether
love of life, or the hope of wearying ill-fortune and of finding at
the bottom of the abyss the happiness which had always escaped me were,
unconsciously to myself, my advisers, or whether I was fascinated by the
arguments of a young man from Vendome, who, for the last two years, has
wound himself about me like a serpent round a tree,--in short, I know
not how it is that I accepted, for a payment of three hundred thousand
francs, the odious mission of making an unknown man fall in love with
me and then betraying him. I met you; I knew you at once by one of
those presentiments which never mislead us; yet I tried to doubt my
recognition, for the more I came to love you, the more the certainty
appalled me. When I saved you from the hands of Hulot, I abjured the
part I had taken; I resolved to betray the slaughterers, and not
their victim. I did wrong to play with men, with their lives, their
principles, with myself, like a thoughtless girl who sees only
sentiments in this life. I believed you loved me; I let myself cling to
the hope that my life might begin anew; but all things have revealed my
past,--even I myself, perhaps, for you must have distrusted a woman so
passionate as you have found me. Alas! is there no excuse for my love
and my deception? My life was like a troubled sleep; I woke and thought
myself a girl; I was in Alencon, where all my memories were pure and
chaste. I had the mad simplicity to think that love would baptize me
into innocence. For a moment I thought myself pure, for I had never
loved. But last night your passion seemed to me true, and a voice
cried to me, ‘Do not deceive him.’ Monsieur le marquis,” she said, in a
guttural voice which haughtily challenged condemnation, “know this; I am
a dishonored creature, unworthy of you. From this hour I accept my fate
as a lost woman. I am weary of playing a part,--the part of a woman to
whom you had brought back the sanctities of her soul. Virtue is a burden
to me. I should despise you if you were weak enough to marry me. The
Comte de Bauvan might commit that folly, but you--you must be worthy of
your future and leave me without regret. A courtesan is too exacting; I
should not love you like the simple, artless girl who felt for a moment
the delightful hope of being your companion, of making you happy, of
doing you honor, of becoming a noble wife. But I gather from that futile
hope the courage to return to a life of vice and infamy, that I may put
an eternal barrier between us. I sacrifice both honor and fortune
to you. The pride I take in that sacrifice will support me in my
wretchedness,--fate may dispose of me as it will. I will never betray
you. I shall return to Paris. There your name will be to me a part of
myself, and the glory you win will console my grief. As for you, you are
a man, and you will forget me. Farewell.”
She darted away in the direction of the gorges of Saint-Sulpice, and
disappeared before the marquis could rise to detain her. But she came
back unseen, hid herself in a cavity of the rocks, and examined the
young man with a curiosity mingled with doubt. Presently she saw him
walking like a man overwhelmed, without seeming to know where he went.
“Can he be weak?” she thought, when he had disappeared, and she felt
she was parted from him. “Will he understand me?” She quivered. Then
she turned and went rapidly towards Fougeres, as though she feared the
marquis might follow her into the town, where certain death awaited him.
“Francine, what did he say to you?” she asked, when the faithful girl
rejoined her.
“Ah! Marie, how I pitied him. You great ladies stab a man with your
tongues.”
“How did he seem when he came up to you?”
“As if he saw me not at all! Oh, Marie, he loves you!”
“Yes, he loves me, or he does not love me--there is heaven or hell for
me in that,” she answered. “Between the two extremes there is no spot
where I can set my foot.”
After thus carrying out her resolution, Marie gave way to grief, and her
face, beautified till then by these conflicting sentiments, changed
for the worse so rapidly that in a single day, during which she floated
incessantly between hope and despair, she lost the glow of beauty, and
the freshness which has its source in the absence of passion or the
ardor of joy. Anxious to ascertain the result of her mad enterprise,
Hulot and Corentin came to see her soon after her return. She received
them smiling.
“Well,” she said to the commandant, whose care-worn face had a
questioning expression, “the fox is coming within range of your guns;
you will soon have a glorious triumph over him.”
“What happened?” asked Corentin, carelessly, giving Mademoiselle de
Verneuil one of those oblique glances with which diplomatists of his
class spy on thought.
“Ah!” she said, “the Gars is more in love than ever; I made him come
with me to the gates of Fougeres.”
“Your power seems to have stopped there,” remarked Corentin; “the fears
of your _ci-devant_ are greater than the love you inspire.”
“You judge him by yourself,” she replied, with a contemptuous look.
“Well, then,” said he, unmoved, “why did you not bring him here to your
own house?”
“Commandant,” she said to Hulot, with a coaxing smile, “if he really
loves me, would you blame me for saving his life and getting him to
leave France?”
The old soldier came quickly up to her, took her hand, and kissed it
with a sort of enthusiasm. Then he looked at her fixedly and said in a
gloomy tone: “You forget my two friends and my sixty-three men.”
“Ah, commandant,” she cried, with all the naivete of passion, “he was
not accountable for that; he was deceived by a bad woman, Charette’s
mistress, who would, I do believe, drink the blood of the Blues.”
“Come, Marie,” said Corentin, “don’t tease the commandant; he does not
understand such jokes.”
“Hold your tongue,” she answered, “and remember that the day when you
displease me too much will have no morrow for you.”
“I see, mademoiselle,” said Hulot, without bitterness, “that I must
prepare for a fight.”
“You are not strong enough, my dear colonel. I saw more than six
thousand men at Saint-James,--regular troops, artillery, and English
officers. But they cannot do much unless _he_ leads them? I agree with
Fouche, his presence is the head and front of everything.”
“Are we to get his head?--that’s the point,” said Corentin, impatiently.
“I don’t know,” she answered, carelessly.
“English officers!” cried Hulot, angrily, “that’s all that was wanting
to make a regular brigand of him. Ha! ha! I’ll give him English, I
will!”
“It seems to me, citizen-diplomat,” said Hulot to Corentin, after the
two had taken leave and were at some distance from the house, “that you
allow that girl to send you to the right-about when she pleases.”
“It is quite natural for you, commandant,” replied Corentin, with a
thoughtful air, “to see nothing but fighting in what she said to us. You
soldiers never seem to know there are various ways of making war. To use
the passions of men and women like wires to be pulled for the benefit
of the State; to keep the running-gear of the great machine we call
government in good order, and fasten to it the desires of human nature,
like baited traps which it is fun to watch,--I call _that_ creating a
world, like God, and putting ourselves at the centre of it!”
“You will please allow me to prefer my calling to yours,” said the
soldier, curtly. “You can do as you like with your running-gear; I
recognize no authority but that of the minister of war. I have my
orders; I shall take the field with veterans who don’t skulk, and face
an enemy you want to catch behind.”
“Oh, you can fight if you want to,” replied Corentin. “From what that
girl has dropped, close-mouthed as you think she is, I can tell you that
you’ll have to skirmish about, and I myself will give you the pleasure
of an interview with the Gars before long.”
“How so?” asked Hulot, moving back a step to get a better view of this
strange individual.
“Mademoiselle de Verneuil is in love with him,” replied Corentin, in
a thick voice, “and perhaps he loves her. A marquis, a knight
of Saint-Louis, young, brilliant, perhaps rich,--what a list of
temptations! She would be foolish indeed not to look after her own
interests and try to marry him rather than betray him. The girl is
attempting to fool us. But I saw hesitation in her eyes. They probably
have a rendezvous; perhaps they’ve met already. Well, to-morrow I shall
have him by the forelock. Yesterday he was nothing more than the enemy
of the Republic, to-day he is mine; and I tell you this, every man who
has been so rash as to come between that girl and me has died upon the
scaffold.”
So saying, Corentin dropped into a reverie which hindered him from
observing the disgust on the face of the honest soldier as he discovered
the depths of this intrigue, and the mechanism of the means employed by
Fouche. Hulot resolved on the spot to thwart Corentin in every way that
did not conflict essentially with the success of the government, and to
give the Gars a fair chance of dying honorably, sword in hand, before
he could fall a prey to the executioner, for whom this agent of the
detective police acknowledged himself the purveyor.
“If the First Consul would listen to me,” thought Hulot, as he turned
his back on Corentin, “he would leave those foxes to fight aristocrats,
and send his solders on other business.”
Corentin looked coldly after the old soldier, whose face had brightened
at the resolve, and his eyes gleamed with a sardonic expression, which
showed the mental superiority of this subaltern Machiavelli.
“Give an ell of blue cloth to those fellows, and hang a bit of iron at
their waists,” he said to himself, “and they’ll think there’s but one
way to kill people.” Then, after walking up and down awhile very slowly,
he exclaimed suddenly, “Yes, the time has come, that woman shall be
mine! For five years I’ve been drawing the net round her, and I have
her now; with her, I can be a greater man in the government than Fouche
himself. Yes, if she loses the only man she has ever loved, grief will
give her to me, body and soul; but I must be on the watch night and
day.”
A few moments later the pale face of this man might have been seen
through the window of a house, from which he could observe all who
entered the cul-de-sac formed by the line of houses running parallel
with Saint-Leonard, one of those houses being that now occupied by
Mademoiselle de Verneuil. With the patience of a cat watching a mouse
Corentin was there in the same place on the following morning, attentive
to the slightest noise, and subjecting the passers-by to the closest
examination. The day that was now beginning was a market-day. Although
in these calamitous times the peasants rarely risked themselves in
the towns, Corentin presently noticed a small man with a gloomy face,
wrapped in a goatskin, and carrying on his arm a small flat basket; he
was making his way in the direction of Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s house,
casting careless glances about him. Corentin watched him enter the
house; then he ran down into the street, meaning to waylay the man as
he left; but on second thoughts it occurred to him that if he called
unexpectedly on Mademoiselle de Verneuil he might surprise by a single
glance the secret that was hidden in the basket of the emissary.
Besides, he had already learned that it was impossible to extract
anything from the inscrutable answers of Bretons and Normans.
“Galope-Chopine!” cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil, when Francine brought
the man to her. “Does he love me?” she murmured to herself, in a low
voice.
The instinctive hope sent a brilliant color to her cheeks and joy into
her heart. Galope-Chopine looked alternately from the mistress to the
maid with evident distrust of the latter; but a sign from Mademoiselle
de Verneuil reassured him.
“Madame,” he said, “about two o’clock _he_ will be at my house waiting
for you.”
Emotion prevented Mademoiselle de Verneuil from giving any other reply
than a movement of her head, but the man understood her meaning. At
that moment Corentin’s step was heard in the adjoining room, but
Galope-Chopine showed no uneasiness, though Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s
look and shudder warned him of danger, and as soon as the spy had
entered the room the Chouan raised his voice to an ear-splitting tone.
“Ha, ha!” he said to Francine, “I tell you there’s Breton butter _and_
Breton butter. You want the Gibarry kind, and you won’t give more than
eleven sous a pound; then why did you send me to fetch it? It is good
butter that,” he added, uncovering the basket to show the pats which
Barbette had made. “You ought to be fair, my good lady, and pay one sou
more.”
His hollow voice betrayed no emotion, and his green eyes, shaded by
thick gray eyebrows, bore Corentin’s piercing glance without flinching.
“Nonsense, my good man, you are not here to sell butter; you are talking
to a lady who never bargained for a thing in her life. The trade you
run, old fellow, will shorten you by a head in a very few days”; and
Corentin, with a friendly tap on the man’s shoulder, added, “you can’t
keep up being a spy of the Blues and a spy of the Chouans very long.”
Galope-Chopine needed all his presence of mind to subdue his rage,
and not deny the accusation which his avarice had made a just one. He
contented himself with saying:--
“Monsieur is making game of me.”
Corentin turned his back on the Chouan, but, while bowing to
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whose heart stood still, he watched him in
the mirror behind her. Galope-Chopine, unaware of this, gave a glance
to Francine, to which she replied by pointing to the door, and saying,
“Come with me, my man, and we will settle the matter between us.”
Nothing escaped Corentin, neither the fear which Mademoiselle de
Verneuil could not conceal under a smile, nor her color and the
contraction of her features, nor the Chouan’s sign and Francine’s reply;
he had seen all. Convinced that Galope-Chopine was sent by the marquis,
he caught the man by the long hairs of his goatskin as he was leaving
the room, turned him round to face him, and said with a keen look:
“Where do you live, my man? I want butter, too.”
“My good monsieur,” said the Chouan, “all Fougeres knows where I live. I
am--”
“Corentin!” exclaimed Mademoiselle de Verneuil, interrupting
Galope-Chopine. “Why do you come here at this time of day? I am scarcely
dressed. Let that peasant alone; he does not understand your tricks any
more than I understand the motive of them. You can go, my man.”
Galope-Chopine hesitated a moment. The indecision, real or feigned, of
the poor devil, who knew not which to obey, deceived even Corentin; but
the Chouan, finally, after an imperative gesture from the lady, left the
room with a dragging step. Mademoiselle de Verneuil and Corentin looked
at each other in silence. This time Marie’s limpid eyes could not endure
the gleam of cruel fire in the man’s look. The resolute manner in which
the spy had forced his way into her room, an expression on his face
which Marie had never seen there before, the deadened tones of his
shrill voice, his whole demeanor,--all these things alarmed her; she
felt that a secret struggle was about to take place between them,
and that he meant to employ against her all the powers of his evil
influence. But though she had at this moment a full and distinct view
of the gulf into which she was plunging, she gathered strength from her
love to shake off the icy chill of these presentiments.
“Corentin,” she said, with a sort of gayety, “I hope you are going to
let me make my toilet?”
“Marie,” he said,--“yes, permit me to call you so,--you don’t yet know
me. Listen; a much less sagacious man than I would see your love for
the Marquis de Montauran. I have several times offered you my heart
and hand. You have never thought me worthy of you; and perhaps you are
right. But however much you may feel yourself too high, too beautiful,
too superior for me, I can compel you to come down to my level. My
ambition and my maxims have given you a low opinion of me; frankly, you
are mistaken. Men are not worth even what I rate them at, and that is
next to nothing. I shall certainly attain a position which will gratify
your pride. Who will ever love you better, or make you more absolutely
mistress of yourself and of him, than the man who has loved you now for
five years? Though I run the risk of exciting your suspicions,--for you
cannot conceive that any one should renounce an idolized woman out
of excessive love,--I will now prove to you the unselfishness of my
passion. If the marquis loves you, marry him; but before you do so, make
sure of his sincerity. I could not endure to see you deceived, for I do
prefer your happiness to my own. My resolution may surprise you; lay
it to the prudence of a man who is not so great a fool as to wish to
possess a woman against her will. I blame myself, not you, for the
failure of my efforts to win you. I hoped to do so by submission and
devotion, for I have long, as you well know, tried to make you happy
according to my lights; but you have never in any way rewarded me.”
“I have suffered you to be near me,” she said, haughtily.
“Add that you regret it.”
“After involving me in this infamous enterprise, do you think that I
have any thanks to give you?”
“When I proposed to you an enterprise which was not exempt from blame to
timid minds,” he replied, audaciously, “I had only your own prosperity
in view. As for me, whether I succeed or fail, I can make all results
further my ends. If you marry Montauran, I shall be delighted to serve
the Bourbons in Paris, where I am already a member of the Clichy club.
Now, if circumstances were to put me in correspondence with the princes
I should abandon the interests of the Republic, which is already on its
last legs. General Bonaparte is much too able a man not to know that he
can’t be in England and in Italy at the same time, and that is how the
Republic is about to fall. I have no doubt he made the 18th Brumaire
to obtain greater advantages over the Bourbons when it came to
treating with them. He is a long-headed fellow, and very keen; but the
politicians will get the better of him on their own ground. The betrayal
of France is another scruple which men of superiority leave to fools.
I won’t conceal from you that I have come here with the necessary
authority to open negotiations with the Chouans, _or_ to further their
destruction, as the case may be; for Fouche, my patron, is deep; he
has always played a double part; during the Terror he was as much for
Robespierre as for Danton--”
“Whom you basely abandoned,” she said.
“Nonsense; he is dead,--forget him,” replied Corentin. “Come, speak
honestly to me; I have set you the example. Old Hulot is deeper than
he looks; if you want to escape his vigilance, I can help you. Remember
that he holds all the valleys and will instantly detect a rendezvous. If
you make one in Fougeres, under his very eyes, you are at the mercy of
his patrols. See how quickly he knew that this Chouan had entered your
house. His military sagacity will show him that your movements betray
those of the Gars--if Montauran loves you.”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil had never listened to a more affectionate
voice; Corentin certainly seemed sincere, and spoke confidingly. The
poor girl’s heart was so open to generous impressions that she was on
the point of betraying her secret to the serpent who had her in his
folds, when it occurred to her that she had no proof beyond his own
words of his sincerity, and she felt no scruple in blinding him.
“Yes,” she said, “you are right, Corentin. I do love the marquis, but
he does not love me--at least, I fear so; I can’t help fearing that the
appointment he wishes me to make with him is a trap.”
“But you said yesterday that he came as far as Fougeres with you,”
returned Corentin. “If he had meant to do you bodily harm you wouldn’t
be here now.”
“You’ve a cold heart, Corentin. You can draw shrewd conclusions as to
the ordinary events of human life, but not on those of passion.
Perhaps that is why you inspire me with such repulsion. As you are
so clear-sighted, you may be able to tell me why a man from whom I
separated myself violently two days ago now wishes me to meet him in a
house at Florigny on the road to Mayenne.”
At this avowal, which seemed to escape her with a recklessness that was
not unnatural in so passionate a creature, Corentin flushed, for he
was still young; but he gave her a sidelong penetrating look, trying
to search her soul. The girl’s artlessness was so well played, however,
that she deceived the spy, and he answered with crafty good-humor,
“Shall I accompany you at a distance? I can take a few solders with me,
and be ready to help and obey you.”
“Very good,” she said; “but promise me, on your honor,--no, I don’t
believe in it; by your salvation,--but you don’t believe in God; by your
soul,--but I don’t suppose you have any! what pledge _can_ you give me
of your fidelity? and yet you expect me to trust you, and put more than
my life--my love, my vengeance--into your hands?”
The slight smile which crossed the pallid lips of the spy showed
Mademoiselle de Verneuil the danger she had just escaped. The man, whose
nostrils contracted instead of dilating, took the hand of his victim,
kissed it with every mark of the deepest respect, and left the room with
a bow that was not devoid of grace.
Three hours after this scene Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who feared the
man’s return, left the town furtively by the Porte Saint-Leonard,
and made her way through the labyrinth of paths to the cottage of
Galope-Chopine, led by the dream of at last finding happiness, and also
by the purpose of saving her lover from the danger that threatened him.
During this time Corentin had gone to find the commandant. He had some
difficulty in recognizing Hulot when he found him in a little square,
where he was busy with certain military preparations. The brave veteran
had made a sacrifice, the full merit of which may be difficult to
appreciate. His queue and his moustache were cut off, and his hair had
a sprinkling of powder. He had changed his uniform for a goatskin, wore
hobnailed shoes, a belt full of pistols, and carried a heavy carbine.
In this costume he was reviewing about two hundred of the natives of
Fougeres, all in the same kind of dress, which was fitted to deceive the
eye of the most practised Chouan. The warlike spirit of the little town
and the Breton character were fully displayed in this scene, which
was not at all uncommon. Here and there a few mothers and sisters
were bringing to their sons and brothers gourds filled with brandy, or
forgotten pistols. Several old men were examining into the number and
condition of the cartridges of these young national guards dressed in
the guise of Chouans, whose gaiety was more in keeping with a hunting
expedition than the dangerous duty they were undertaking. To them, such
encounters with Chouannerie, where the Breton of the town fought the
Breton of the country district, had taken the place of the old chivalric
tournaments. This patriotic enthusiasm may possibly have been connected
with certain purchases of the “national domain.” Still, the benefits
of the Revolution which were better understood and appreciated in the
towns, party spirit, and a certain national delight in war, had a great
deal to do with their ardor.
Hulot, much gratified, was going through the ranks and getting
information from Gudin, on whom he was now bestowing the confidence and
good-will he had formerly shown to Merle and Gerard. A number of the
inhabitants stood about watching the preparations, and comparing the
conduct of their tumultuous contingent with the regulars of Hulot’s
brigade. Motionless and silent the Blues were awaiting, under control of
their officers, the orders of the commandant, whose figure they followed
with their eyes as he passed from rank to rank of the contingent. When
Corentin came near the old warrior he could not help smiling at the
change which had taken place in him. He looked like a portrait that has
little or no resemblance to the original.
“What’s all this?” asked Corentin.
“Come with us under fire, and you’ll find out,” replied Hulot.
“Oh! I’m not a Fougeres man,” said Corentin.
“Easy to see that, citizen,” retorted Gudin.
A few contemptuous laughs came from the nearest ranks.
“Do you think,” said Corentin, sharply, “that the only way to serve
France is with bayonets?”
Then he turned his back to the laughers, and asked a woman beside him if
she knew the object of the expedition.
“Hey! my good man, the Chouans are at Florigny. They say there are more
than three thousand, and they are coming to take Fougeres.”
“Florigny?” cried Corentin, turning white; “then the rendezvous is not
there! Is Florigny on the road to Mayenne?” he asked.
“There are not two Florignys,” replied the woman, pointing in the
direction of the summit of La Pelerine.
“Are you going in search of the Marquis de Montauran?” said Corentin to
Hulot.
“Perhaps I am,” answered the commandant, curtly.
“He is not at Florigny,” said Corentin. “Send your troops there by all
means; but keep a few of those imitation Chouans of yours with you, and
wait for me.”
“He is too malignant not to know what he’s about,” thought Hulot as
Corentin made off rapidly, “he’s the king of spies.”
Hulot ordered the battalion to start. The republican soldiers marched
without drums and silently through the narrow suburb which led to the
Mayenne high-road, forming a blue and red line among the trees and
houses. The disguised guard followed them; but Hulot, detaining Gudin
and about a score of the smartest young fellows of the town, remained in
the little square, awaiting Corentin, whose mysterious manner had piqued
his curiosity. Francine herself told the astute spy, whose suspicions
she changed into certainty, of her mistress’s departure. Inquiring of
the post guard at the Porte Saint-Leonard, he learned that Mademoiselle
de Verneuil had passed that way. Rushing to the Promenade, he was,
unfortunately, in time to see her movements. Though she was wearing a
green dress and hood, to be less easily distinguished, the rapidity
of her almost distracted step enabled him to follow her with his eye
through the leafless hedges, and to guess the point towards which she
was hurrying.
“Ha!” he cried, “you said you were going to Florigny, but you are in
the valley of Gibarry! I am a fool, she has tricked me! No matter, I can
light my lamp by day as well as by night.”
Corentin, satisfied that he knew the place of the lovers’ rendezvous,
returned in all haste to the little square, which Hulot, resolved not to
wait any longer, was just quitting to rejoin his troops.
“Halt, general!” he cried to the commandant, who turned round.
He then told Hulot the events relating to the marquis and Mademoiselle
de Verneuil, and showed him the scheme of which he held a thread. Hulot,
struck by his perspicacity, seized him by the arm.
“God’s thunder! citizen, you are right,” he cried. “The brigands are
making a false attack over there to keep the coast clear; but the two
columns I sent to scour the environs between Antrain and Vitre have not
yet returned, so we shall have plenty of reinforcements if we need them;
and I dare say we shall, for the Gars is not such a fool as to risk his
life without a bodyguard of those damned owls. Gudin,” he added, “go and
tell Captain Lebrun that he must rub those fellows’ noses at Florigny
without me, and come back yourself in a flash. You know the paths.
I’ll wait till you return, and _then_--we’ll avenge those murders at La
Vivetiere. Thunder! how he runs,” he added, seeing Gudin disappear as if
by magic. “Gerard would have loved him.”
On his return Gudin found Hulot’s little band increased in numbers by
the arrival of several soldiers taken from the various posts in the
town. The commandant ordered him to choose a dozen of his compatriots
who could best counterfeit the Chouans, and take them out by the Porte
Saint-Leonard, so as to creep round the side of the Saint-Sulpice rocks
which overlooks the valley of Couesnon and on which was the hovel of
Galope-Chopine. Hulot himself went out with the rest of his troop by
the Porte Saint-Sulpice, to reach the summit of the same rocks, where,
according to his calculations, he ought to meet the men under Beau-Pied,
whom he meant to use as a line of sentinels from the suburb of
Saint-Sulpice to the Nid-aux-Crocs.
Corentin, satisfied with having delivered over the fate of the Gars to
his implacable enemies, went with all speed to the Promenade, so as to
follow with his eyes the military arrangements of the commandant. He
soon saw Gudin’s little squad issuing from the valley of the Nancon
and following the line of the rocks to the great valley, while Hulot,
creeping round the castle of Fougeres, was mounting the dangerous path
which leads to the summit of Saint-Sulpice. The two companies were
therefore advancing on parallel lines. The trees and shrubs, draped by
the rich arabesques of the hoarfrost, threw whitish reflections which
enabled the watcher to see the gray lines of the squads in motion. When
Hulot reached the summit of the rocks, he detached all the soldiers in
uniform from his main body, and made them into a line of sentinels, each
communicating with the other, the first with Gudin, the last with Hulot;
so that no shrub could escape the bayonets of the three lines which were
now in a position to hunt the Gars across field and mountain.
“The sly old wolf!” thought Corentin, as the shining muzzle of the last
gun disappeared in the bushes. “The Gars is done for. If Marie had only
betrayed that damned marquis, she and I would have been united in the
strongest of all bonds--a vile deed. But she’s mine, in any case.”
The twelve young men under Gudin soon reached the base of the rocks
of Saint-Sulpice. Here Gudin himself left the road with six of them,
jumping the stiff hedge into the first field of gorse that he came to,
while the other six by his orders did the same on the other side of the
road. Gudin advanced to an apple-tree which happened to be in the middle
of the field. Hearing the rustle of this movement through the gorse,
seven or eight men, at the head of whom was Beau-Pied, hastily hid
behind some chestnut-trees which topped the bank of this particular
field. Gudin’s men did not see them, in spite of the white reflections
of the hoar-frost and their own practised sight.
“Hush! here they are,” said Beau-Pied, cautiously putting out his head.
“The brigands have more men than we, but we have ‘em at the muzzles of
our guns, and we mustn’t miss them, or, by the Lord, we are not fit to
be soldiers of the pope.”
By this time Gudin’s keen eyes had discovered a few muzzles pointing
through the branches at his little squad. Just then eight voices cried
in derision, “Qui vive?” and eight shots followed. The balls whistled
round Gudin and his men. One fell, another was shot in the arm. The
five others who were safe and sound replied with a volley and the cry,
“Friends!” Then they marched rapidly on their assailants so as to reach
them before they had time to reload.
“We did not know how true we spoke,” cried Gudin, as he recognized the
uniforms and the battered hats of his own brigade. “Well, we behaved
like Bretons, and fought before explaining.”
The other men were stupefied on recognizing the little company.
“Who the devil would have known them in those goatskins?” cried
Beau-Pied, dismally.
“It is a misfortune,” said Gudin, “but we are all innocent if you were
not informed of the sortie. What are you doing here?” he asked.
“A dozen of those Chouans are amusing themselves by picking us off, and
we are getting away as best we can, like poisoned rats; but by dint
of scrambling over these hedges and rocks--may the lightning blast
‘em!--our compasses have got so rusty we are forced to take a rest. I
think those brigands are now somewhere near the old hovel where you see
that smoke.”
“Good!” cried Gudin. “You,” he added to Beau-Pied and his men, “fall
back towards the rocks through the fields, and join the line of
sentinels you’ll find there. You can’t go with us, because you are in
uniform. We mean to make an end of those curs now; the Gars is with
them. I can’t stop to tell you more. To the right, march! and don’t
administer any more shots to our own goatskins; you’ll know ours by
their cravats, which they twist round their necks and don’t tie.”
Gudin left his two wounded men under the apple-tree, and marched towards
Galope-Chopine’s cottage, which Beau-Pied had pointed out to him, the
smoke from the chimney serving as a guide.
While the young officer was thus closing in upon the Chouans, the little
detachment under Hulot had reached a point still parallel with that at
which Gudin had arrived. The old soldier, at the head of his men, was
silently gliding along the hedges with the ardor of a young man; he
jumped them from time to time actively enough, casting his wary eyes to
the heights and listening with the ear of a hunter to every noise. In
the third field to which he came he found a woman about thirty years
old, with bent back, hoeing the ground vigorously, while a small boy
with a sickle in his hand was knocking the hoarfrost from the rushes,
which he cut and laid in a heap. At the noise Hulot made in jumping
the hedge, the boy and his mother raised their heads. Hulot mistook
the young woman for an old one, naturally enough. Wrinkles, coming
long before their time, furrowed her face and neck; she was clothed so
grotesquely in a worn-out goatskin that if it had not been for a dirty
yellow petticoat, a distinctive mark of sex, Hulot would hardly have
known the gender she belonged to; for the meshes of her long black hair
were twisted up and hidden by a red worsted cap. The tatters of the
little boy did not cover him, but left his skin exposed.
“Ho! old woman!” called Hulot, in a low voice, approaching her, “where
is the Gars?”
The twenty men who accompanied Hulot now jumped the hedge.
“Hey! if you want the Gars you’ll have to go back the way you came,”
said the woman, with a suspicious glance at the troop.
“Did I ask you the road to Fougeres, old carcass?” said Hulot, roughly.
“By Saint-Anne of Auray, have you seen the Gars go by?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” replied the woman, bending over her hoe.
“You damned garce, do you want to have us eaten up by the Blues who are
after us?”
At these words the woman raised her head and gave another look of
distrust at the troop as she replied, “How can the Blues be after you?
I have just seen eight or ten of them who were going back to Fougeres by
the lower road.”
“One would think she meant to stab us with that nose of hers!” cried
Hulot. “Here, look, you old nanny-goat!”
And he showed her in the distance three or four of his sentinels, whose
hats, guns, and uniforms it was easy to recognize.
“Are you going to let those fellows cut the throats of men who are sent
by Marche-a-Terre to protect the Gars?” he cried, angrily.
“Ah, beg pardon,” said the woman; “but it is so easy to be deceived.
What parish do you belong to?”
“Saint-Georges,” replied two or three of the men, in the Breton patois,
“and we are dying of hunger.”
“Well, there,” said the woman; “do you see that smoke down there? that’s
my house. Follow the path to the right, and you will come to the rock
above it. Perhaps you’ll meet my man on the way. Galope-Chopine is sure
to be on watch to warn the Gars. He is spending the day in our house,”
she said, proudly, “as you seem to know.”
“Thank you, my good woman,” replied Hulot. “Forward, march! God’s
thunder! we’ve got him,” he added, speaking to his men.
The detachment followed its leader at a quick step through the path
pointed out to them. The wife of Galope-Chopine turned pale as she heard
the un-Catholic oath of the so-called Chouan. She looked at the gaiters
and goatskins of his men, then she caught her boy in her arms, and sat
down on the ground, saying, “May the holy Virgin of Auray and the ever
blessed Saint-Labre have pity upon us! Those men are not ours; their
shoes have no nails in them. Run down by the lower road and warn your
father; you may save his head,” she said to the boy, who disappeared
like a deer among the bushes.
* * * * *
Mademoiselle de Verneuil met no one on her way, neither Blues nor
Chouans. Seeing the column of blue smoke which was rising from the
half-ruined chimney of Galope-Chopine’s melancholy dwelling, her heart
was seized with a violent palpitation, the rapid, sonorous beating of
which rose to her throat in waves. She stopped, rested her hand against
a tree, and watched the smoke which was serving as a beacon to the foes
as well as to the friends of the young chieftain. Never had she felt
such overwhelming emotion.
“Ah! I love him too much,” she said, with a sort of despair. “To-day,
perhaps, I shall no longer be mistress of myself--”
She hurried over the distance which separated her from the cottage,
and reached the courtyard, the filth of which was now stiffened by the
frost. The big dog sprang up barking, but a word from Galope-Chopine
silenced him and he wagged his tail. As she entered the house Marie
gave a look which included everything. The marquis was not there. She
breathed more freely, and saw with pleasure that the Chouan had taken
some pains to clean the dirty and only room in his hovel. He now took
his duck-gun, bowed silently to his guest and left the house, followed
by his dog. Marie went to the threshold of the door and watched him as
he took the path to the right of his hut. From there she could overlook
a series of fields, the curious openings to which formed a perspective
of gates; for the leafless trees and hedges were no longer a barrier to
a full view of the country. When the Chouan’s broad hat was out of
sight Mademoiselle de Verneuil turned round to look for the church at
Fougeres, but the shed concealed it. She cast her eyes over the valley
of the Couesnon, which lay before her like a vast sheet of muslin, the
whiteness of which still further dulled a gray sky laden with snow. It
was one of those days when nature seems dumb and noises are absorbed by
the atmosphere. Therefore, though the Blues and their contingent were
marching through the country in three lines, forming a triangle which
drew together as they neared the cottage, the silence was so profound
that Mademoiselle de Verneuil was overcome by a presentiment which added
a sort of physical pain to her mental torture. Misfortune was in the
air.
At last, in a spot where a little curtain of wood closed the perspective
of gates, she saw a young man jumping the barriers like a squirrel and
running with astonishing rapidity. “It is he!” she thought.
The Gars was dressed as a Chouan, with a musket slung from his shoulder
over his goatskin, and would have been quite disguised were it not for
the grace of his movements. Marie withdrew hastily into the cottage,
obeying one of those instinctive promptings which are as little
explicable as fear itself. The young man was soon beside her before the
chimney, where a bright fire was burning. Both were voiceless, fearing
to look at each other, or even to make a movement. One and the same hope
united them, the same doubt; it was agony, it was joy.
“Monsieur,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil at last, in a trembling voice,
“your safety alone has brought me here.”
“My safety!” he said, bitterly.
“Yes,” she answered; “so long as I stay at Fougeres your life is
threatened, and I love you too well not to leave it. I go to-night.”
“Leave me! ah, dear love, I shall follow you.”
“Follow me!--the Blues?”
“Dear Marie, what have the Blues got to do with our love?”
“But it seems impossible that you can stay with me in France, and still
more impossible that you should leave it with me.”
“Is there anything impossible to those who love?”
“Ah, true! true! all is possible--have I not the courage to resign you,
for your sake.”
“What! you could give yourself to a hateful being whom you did not love,
and you refuse to make the happiness of a man who adores you, whose life
you fill, who swears to be yours, and yours only. Hear me, Marie, do you
love me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Then be mine.”
“You forget the infamous career of a lost woman; I return to it, I leave
you--yes, that I may not bring upon your head the contempt that falls on
mine. Without that fear, perhaps--”
“But if I fear nothing?”
“Can I be sure of that? I am distrustful. Who could be otherwise in
a position like mine? If the love we inspire cannot last at least it
should be complete, and help us to bear with joy the injustice of the
world. But you, what have you done for me? You desire me. Do you think
that lifts you above other men? Suppose I bade you renounce your ideas,
your hopes, your king (who will, perhaps, laugh when he hears you have
died for him, while I would die for you with sacred joy!); or suppose I
should ask you to send your submission to the First Consul so that you
could follow me to Paris, or go with me to America,--away from the world
where all is vanity; suppose I thus tested you, to know if you loved
me for myself as at this moment I love you? To say all in a word, if I
wished, instead of rising to your level, that you should fall to mine,
what would you do?”
“Hush, Marie, be silent, do not slander yourself,” he cried. “Poor
child, I comprehend you. If my first desire was passion, my passion now
is love. Dear soul of my soul, you are as noble as your name, I know
it,--as great as you are beautiful. I am noble enough, I feel myself
great enough to force the world to receive you. Is it because I foresee
in you the source of endless, incessant pleasure, or because I find in
your soul those precious qualities which make a man forever love the one
woman? I do not know the cause, but this I know--that my love for you is
boundless. I know I can no longer live without you. Yes, life would be
unbearable unless you are ever with me.”
“Ever with you!”
“Ah! Marie, will you not understand me?”
“You think to flatter me by the offer of your hand and name,” she said,
with apparent haughtiness, but looking fixedly at the marquis as if to
detect his inmost thought. “How do you know you would love me six months
hence? and then what would be my fate? No, a mistress is the only woman
who is sure of a man’s heart; duty, law, society, the interests of
children, are poor auxiliaries. If her power lasts it gives her joys and
flatteries which make the trials of life endurable. But to be your wife
and become a drag upon you,--rather than that, I prefer a passing love
and a true one, though death and misery be its end. Yes, I could be a
virtuous mother, a devoted wife; but to keep those instincts firmly in
a woman’s soul the man must not marry her in a rush of passion. Besides,
how do I know that you will please me to-morrow? No, I will not bring
evil upon you; I leave Brittany,” she said, observing hesitation in his
eyes. “I return to Fougeres now, where you cannot come to me--”
“I can! and if to-morrow you see smoke on the rocks of Saint-Sulpice
you will know that I shall be with you at night, your lover, your
husband,--what you will that I be to you; I brave all!”
“Ah! Alphonse, you love me well,” she said, passionately, “to risk your
life before you give it to me.”
He did not answer; he looked at her and her eyes fell; but he read in
her ardent face a passion equal to his own, and he held out his arms to
her. A sort of madness overcame her, and she let herself fall softly on
his breast, resolved to yield to him, and turn this yielding to great
results,--staking upon it her future happiness, which would become more
certain if she came victorious from this crucial test. But her head
had scarcely touched her lover’s shoulder when a slight noise was heard
without. She tore herself from his arms as if suddenly awakened, and
sprang from the cottage. Her coolness came back to her, and she thought
of the situation.
“He might have accepted me and scorned me,” she reflected. “Ah! if I
could think that, I would kill him. But not yet!” she added, catching
sight of Beau-Pied, to whom she made a sign which the soldier was quick
to understand. He turned on his heel, pretending to have seen nothing.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil re-entered the cottage, putting her finger to
her lips to enjoin silence.
“They are there!” she whispered in a frightened voice.
“Who?”
“The Blues.”
“Ah! must I die without one kiss!”
“Take it,” she said.
He caught her to him, cold and unresisting, and gathered from her lips a
kiss of horror and of joy, for while it was the first, it might also be
the last. Then they went together to the door and looked cautiously
out. The marquis saw Gudin and his men holding the paths leading to the
valley. Then he turned to the line of gates where the first rotten trunk
was guarded by five men. Without an instant’s pause he jumped on the
barrel of cider and struck a hole through the thatch of the roof, from
which to spring upon the rocks behind the house; but he drew his head
hastily back through the gap he had made, for Hulot was on the height;
his retreat was cut off in that direction. The marquis turned and looked
at his mistress, who uttered a cry of despair; for she heard the tramp
of the three detachments near the house.
“Go out first,” he said; “you shall save me.”
Hearing the words, to her all-glorious, she went out and stood before
the door. The marquis loaded his musket. Measuring with his eye the
space between the door of the hut and the old rotten trunk where seven
men stood, the Gars fired into their midst and sprang forward instantly,
forcing a passage through them. The three troops rushed towards the
opening through which he had passed, and saw him running across the
field with incredible celerity.
“Fire! fire! a thousand devils! You’re not Frenchmen! Fire, I say!”
called Hulot.
As he shouted these words from the height above, his men and Gudin’s
fired a volley, which was fortunately ill-aimed. The marquis reached the
gate of the next field, but as he did so he was almost caught by
Gudin, who was close upon his heels. The Gars redoubled his speed.
Nevertheless, he and his pursuer reached the next barrier together; but
the marquis dashed his musket at Gudin’s head with so good an aim that
he stopped his rush. It is impossible to depict the anxiety betrayed
by Marie, or the interest of Hulot and his troops as they watched the
scene. They all, unconsciously or silently, repeated the gestures which
they saw the runners making. The Gars and Gudin reached the little wood
together, but as they did so the latter stopped and darted behind a
tree. About twenty Chouans, afraid to fire at a distance lest they
should kill their leader, rushed from the copse and riddled the tree
with balls. Hulot’s men advanced at a run to save Gudin, who, being
without arms, retreated from tree to tree, seizing his opportunity as
the Chouans reloaded. His danger was soon over. Hulot and the Blues met
him at the spot where the marquis had thrown his musket. At this instant
Gudin perceived his adversary sitting among the trees and out of breath,
and he left his comrades firing at the Chouans, who had retreated behind
a lateral hedge; slipping round them, he darted towards the marquis with
the agility of a wild animal. Observing this manoeuvre the Chouans set
up a cry to warn their leader; then, having fired on the Blues and their
contingent with the gusto of poachers, they boldly made a rush for them;
but Hulot’s men sprang through the hedge which served them as a rampart
and took a bloody revenge. The Chouans then gained the road which
skirted the fields and took to the heights which Hulot had committed the
blunder of abandoning. Before the Blues had time to reform, the Chouans
were entrenched behind the rocks, where they could fire with impunity on
the Republicans if the latter made any attempt to dislodge them.
While Hulot and his soldiers went slowly towards the little wood to
meet Gudin, the men from Fougeres busied themselves in rifling the
dead Chouans and dispatching those who still lived. In this fearful war
neither party took prisoners. The marquis having made good his escape,
the Chouans and the Blues mutually recognized their respective positions
and the uselessness of continuing the fight; so that both sides prepared
to retreat.
“Ha! ha!” cried one of the Fougeres men, busy about the bodies, “here’s
a bird with yellow wings.”
And he showed his companions a purse full of gold which he had just
found in the pocket of a stout man dressed in black.
“What’s this?” said another, pulling a breviary from the dead man’s
coat.
“Communion bread--he’s a priest!” cried the first man, flinging the
breviary on the ground.
“Here’s a wretch!” cried a third, finding only two crowns in the pockets
of the body he was stripping, “a cheat!”
“But he’s got a fine pair of shoes!” said a soldier, beginning to pull
them off.
“You can’t have them unless they fall to your share,” said the Fougeres
man, dragging the dead feet away and flinging the boots on a heap of
clothing already collected.
Another Chouan took charge of the money, so that lots might be drawn as
soon as the troops were all assembled. When Hulot returned with Gudin,
whose last attempt to overtake the Gars was useless as well as perilous,
he found about a score of his own men and thirty of the contingent
standing around eleven of the enemy, whose naked bodies were thrown into
a ditch at the foot of the bank.
“Soldiers!” cried Hulot, sternly. “I forbid you to share that clothing.
Form in line, quick!”
“Commandant,” said a soldier, pointing to his shoes, at the points of
which five bare toes could be seen on each foot, “all right about the
money, but those boots,” motioning to a pair of hobnailed boots with the
butt of his gun, “would fit me like a glove.”
“Do you want to put English shoes on your feet?” retorted Hulot.
“But,” said one of the Fougeres men, respectfully, “we’ve divided the
booty all through the war.”
“I don’t prevent you civilians from following your own ways,” replied
Hulot, roughly.
“Here, Gudin, here’s a purse with three louis,” said the officer who
was distributing the money. “You have run hard and the commandant won’t
prevent your taking it.”
Hulot looked askance at Gudin, and saw that he turned pale.
“It’s my uncle’s purse!” exclaimed the young man.
Exhausted as he was with his run, he sprang to the mound of bodies, and
the first that met his eyes was that of his uncle. But he had hardly
recognized the rubicund face now furrowed with blue lines, and seen
the stiffened arms and the gunshot wound before he gave a stifled cry,
exclaiming, “Let us be off, commandant.”
The Blues started. Hulot gave his arm to his young friend.
“God’s thunder!” he cried. “Never mind, it is no great matter.”
“But he is dead,” said Gudin, “dead! He was my only relation, and though
he cursed me, still he loved me. If the king returns, the neighborhood
will want my head, and my poor uncle would have saved it.”
“What a fool Gudin is,” said one of the men who had stayed behind to
share the spoils; “his uncle was rich, and he hasn’t had time to make a
will and disinherit him.”
The division over, the men of Fougeres rejoined the little battalion of
the Blues on their way to the town.
* * * * *
Towards midnight the cottage of Galope-Chopine, hitherto the scene of
life without a care, was full of dread and horrible anxiety. Barbette
and her little boy returned at the supper-hour, one with her heavy
burden of rushes, the other carrying fodder for the cattle. Entering the
hut, they looked about in vain for Galope-Chopine; the miserable chamber
never looked to them as large, so empty was it. The fire was out, and
the darkness, the silence, seemed to tell of some disaster. Barbette
hastened to make a blaze, and to light two _oribus_, the name given to
candles made of pitch in the region between the villages of Amorique
and the Upper Loire, and still used beyond Amboise in the Vendomois
districts. Barbette did these things with the slowness of a person
absorbed in one overpowering feeling. She listened to every sound.
Deceived by the whistling of the wind she went often to the door of the
hut, returning sadly. She cleaned two beakers, filled them with cider,
and placed them on the long table. Now and again she looked at her boy,
who watched the baking of the buckwheat cakes, but did not speak to
him. The lad’s eyes happened to rest on the nails which usually held his
father’s duck-gun, and Barbette trembled as she noticed that the gun was
gone. The silence was broken only by the lowing of a cow or the splash
of the cider as it dropped at regular intervals from the bung of
the cask. The poor woman sighed while she poured into three brown
earthenware porringers a sort of soup made of milk, biscuit broken into
bits, and boiled chestnuts.
“They must have fought in the field next to the Berandiere,” said the
boy.
“Go and see,” replied his mother.
The child ran to the place where the fighting had, as he said, taken
place. In the moonlight he found the heap of bodies, but his father was
not among them, and he came back whistling joyously, having picked up
several five-franc pieces trampled in the mud and overlooked by the
victors. His mother was sitting on a stool beside the fire, employed
in spinning flax. He made a negative sign to her, and then, ten o’clock
having struck from the tower of Saint-Leonard, he went to bed, muttering
a prayer to the holy Virgin of Auray. At dawn, Barbette, who had not
closed her eyes, gave a cry of joy, as she heard in the distance a
sound she knew well of hobnailed shoes, and soon after Galope-Chopine’s
scowling face presented itself.
“Thanks to Saint-Labre,” he said, “to whom I owe a candle, the Gars is
safe. Don’t forget that we now owe three candles to the saint.”
He seized a beaker of cider and emptied it at a draught without drawing
breath. When his wife had served his soup and taken his gun and he
himself was seated on the wooden bench, he said, looking at the fire: “I
can’t make out how the Blues got here. The fighting was at Florigny. Who
the devil could have told them that the Gars was in our house; no one
knew it but he and the handsome garce and we--”
Barbette turned white.
“They made me believe they were the gars of Saint-Georges,” she said,
trembling, “it was I who told them the Gars was here.”
Galope-Chopine turned pale himself and dropped his porringer on the
table.
“I sent the boy to warn you,” said Barbette, frightened, “didn’t you
meet him?”
The Chouan rose and struck his wife so violently that she dropped, pale
as death, upon the bed.
“You cursed woman,” he said, “you have killed me!” Then seized with
remorse, he took her in his arms. “Barbette!” he cried, “Barbette!--Holy
Virgin, my hand was too heavy!”
“Do you think,” she said, opening her eyes, “that Marche-a-Terre will
hear of it?”
“The Gars will certainly inquire who betrayed him.”
“Will he tell it to Marche-a-Terre?”
“Marche-a-Terre and Pille-Miche were both at Florigny.”
Barbette breathed a little easier.
“If they touch a hair of your head,” she cried, “I’ll rinse their
glasses with vinegar.”
“Ah! I can’t eat,” said Galope-Chopine, anxiously.
His wife set another pitcher full of cider before him, but he paid no
heed to it. Two big tears rolled from the woman’s eyes and moistened the
deep furrows of her withered face.
“Listen to me, wife; to-morrow morning you must gather fagots on the
rocks of Saint-Sulpice, to the right and Saint-Leonard and set fire to
them. That is a signal agreed upon between the Gars and the old rector
of Saint-Georges who is to come and say mass for him.”
“Is the Gars going to Fougeres?”
“Yes, to see his handsome garce. I have been sent here and there all
day about it. I think he is going to marry her and carry her off; for he
told me to hire horses and have them ready on the road to Saint-Malo.”
Thereupon Galope-Chopine, who was tired out, went to bed for an hour or
two, at the end of which time he again departed. Later, on the following
morning, he returned, having carefully fulfilled all the commissions
entrusted to him by the Gars. Finding that Marche-a-Terre and
Pille-Miche had not appeared at the cottage, he relieved the
apprehensions of his wife, who went off, reassured, to the rocks of
Saint-Sulpice, where she had collected the night before several piles of
fagots, now covered with hoarfrost. The boy went with her, carrying fire
in a broken wooden shoe.
Hardly had his wife and son passed out of sight behind the shed when
Galope-Chopine heard the noise of men jumping the successive barriers,
and he could dimly see, through the fog which was growing thicker, the
forms of two men like moving shadows.
“It is Marche-a-Terre and Pille-Miche,” he said, mentally; then he
shuddered. The two Chouans entered the courtyard and showed their gloomy
faces under the broad-brimmed hats which made them look like the figures
which engravers introduce into their landscapes.
“Good-morning, Galope-Chopine,” said Marche-a-Terre, gravely.
“Good-morning, Monsieur Marche-a-Terre,” replied the other, humbly.
“Will you come in and drink a drop? I’ve some cold buckwheat cake and
fresh-made butter.”
“That’s not to be refused, cousin,” said Pille-Miche.
The two Chouans entered the cottage. So far there was nothing alarming
for the master of the house, who hastened to fill three beakers from his
huge cask of cider, while Marche-a-Terre and Pille-Miche, sitting on the
polished benches on each side of the long table, cut the cake and spread
it with the rich yellow butter from which the milk spurted as the knife
smoothed it. Galope-Chopine placed the beakers full of frothing cider
before his guests, and the three Chouans began to eat; but from time to
time the master of the house cast side-long glances at Marche-a-Terre as
he drank his cider.
“Lend me your snuff-box,” said Marche-a-Terre to Pille-Miche.
Having shaken several pinches into the palm of his hand the Breton
inhaled the tobacco like a man who is making ready for serious business.
“It is cold,” said Pille-Miche, rising to shut the upper half of the
door.
The daylight, already dim with fog, now entered only through the
little window, and feebly lighted the room and the two seats; the fire,
however, gave out a ruddy glow. Galope-Chopine refilled the beakers, but
his guests refused to drink again, and throwing aside their large
hats looked at him solemnly. Their gestures and the look they gave him
terrified Galope-Chopine, who fancied he saw blood in the red woollen
caps they wore.
“Fetch your axe,” said Marche-a-Terre.
“But, Monsieur Marche-a-Terre, what do you want it for?”
“Come, cousin, you know very well,” said Pille-Miche, pocketing his
snuff-box which Marche-a-Terre returned to him; “you are condemned.”
The two Chouans rose together and took their guns.
“Monsieur Marche-a-Terre, I never said one word about the Gars--”
“I told you to fetch your axe,” said Marche-a-Terre.
The hapless man knocked against the wooden bedstead of his son, and
several five-franc pieces rolled on the floor. Pille-Miche picked them
up.
“Ho! ho! the Blues paid you in new money,” cried Marche-a-Terre.
“As true as that’s the image of Saint-Labre,” said Galope-Chopine, “I
have told nothing. Barbette mistook the Fougeres men for the gars of
Saint-Georges, and that’s the whole of it.”
“Why do you tell things to your wife?” said Marche-a-Terre, roughly.
“Besides, cousin, we don’t want excuses, we want your axe. You are
condemned.”
At a sign from his companion, Pille-Miche helped Marche-a-Terre to seize
the victim. Finding himself in their grasp Galope-Chopine lost all
power and fell on his knees holding up his hands to his slayers in
desperation.
“My friends, my good friends, my cousin,” he said, “what will become of
my little boy?”
“I will take charge of him,” said Marche-a-Terre.
“My good comrades,” cried the victim, turning livid. “I am not fit to
die. Don’t make me go without confession. You have the right to take my
life, but you’ve no right to make me lose a blessed eternity.”
“That is true,” said Marche-a-Terre, addressing Pille-Miche.
The two Chouans waited a moment in much uncertainty, unable to decide
this case of conscience. Galope-Chopine listened to the rustling of the
wind as though he still had hope. Suddenly Pille-Miche took him by the
arm into a corner of the hut.
“Confess your sins to me,” he said, “and I will tell them to a priest
of the true Church, and if there is any penance to do I will do it for
you.”
Galope-Chopine obtained some respite by the way in which he confessed
his sins; but in spite of their number and the circumstances of each
crime, he came finally to the end of them.
“Cousin,” he said, imploringly, “since I am speaking to you as I would
to my confessor, I do assure you, by the holy name of God, that I
have nothing to reproach myself with except for having, now and then,
buttered my bread on both sides; and I call on Saint-Labre, who is there
over the chimney-piece, to witness that I have never said one word about
the Gars. No, my good friends, I have not betrayed him.”
“Very good, that will do, cousin; you can explain all that to God in
course of time.”
“But let me say good-bye to Barbette.”
“Come,” said Marche-a-Terre, “if you don’t want us to think you worse
than you are, behave like a Breton and be done with it.”
The two Chouans seized him again and threw him on the bench where he
gave no other sign of resistance than the instinctive and convulsive
motions of an animal, uttering a few smothered groans, which ceased when
the axe fell. The head was off at the first blow. Marche-a-Terre took it
by the hair, left the room, sought and found a large nail in the rough
casing of the door, and wound the hair about it; leaving the bloody
head, the eyes of which he did not even close, to hang there.
The two Chouans then washed their hands, without the least haste, in a
pot full of water, picked up their hats and guns, and jumped the gate,
whistling the “Ballad of the Captain.” Pille-Miche began to sing in
a hoarse voice as he reached the field the last verses of that rustic
song, their melody floating on the breeze:--
“At the first town
Her lover dressed her
All in white satin;
“At the next town
Her lover dressed her
In gold and silver.
“So beautiful was she
They gave her veils
To wear in the regiment.”
The tune became gradually indistinguishable as the Chouans got further
away; but the silence of the country was so great that several of the
notes reached Barbette’s ear as she neared home, holding her boy by the
hand. A peasant-woman never listens coldly to that song, so popular is
it in the West of France, and Barbette began, unconsciously, to sing the
first verses:--
“Come, let us go, my girl,
Let us go to the war;
Let us go, it is time.
“Brave captain,
Let it not trouble you,
But my daughter is not for you.
“You shall not have her on earth,
You shall not have her at sea,
Unless by treachery.
“The father took his daughter,
He unclothed her
And flung her out to sea.
“The captain, wiser still,
Into the waves he jumped
And to the shore he brought her.
“Come, let us go, my girl,
Let us go to the war;
Let us go, it is time.
“At the first town
Her lover dressed her,”
Etc., etc.
As Barbette reached this verse of the song, where Pille-Miche had begun
it, she was entering the courtyard of her home; her tongue suddenly
stiffened, she stood still, and a great cry, quickly repressed, came
from her gaping lips.
“What is it, mother?” said the child.
“Walk alone,” she cried, pulling her hand away and pushing him roughly;
“you have neither father nor mother.”
The child, who was rubbing his shoulder and weeping, suddenly caught
sight of the thing on the nail; his childlike face kept the nervous
convulsion his crying had caused, but he was silent. He opened his
eyes wide, and gazed at the head of his father with a stupid look which
betrayed no emotion; then his face, brutalized by ignorance, showed
savage curiosity. Barbette again took his hand, grasped it violently,
and dragged him into the house. When Pille-Miche and Marche-a-Terre
threw their victim on the bench one of his shoes, dropping off, fell on
the floor beneath his neck and was afterward filled with blood. It was
the first thing that met the widow’s eye.
“Take off your shoe,” said the mother to her son. “Put your foot in
that. Good. Remember,” she cried, in a solemn voice, “your father’s
shoe; never put on your own without remembering how the Chouans filled
it with his blood, and _kill the Chouans_!”
She swayed her head with so convulsive an action that the meshes of
her black hair fell upon her neck and gave a sinister expression to her
face.
“I call Saint-Labre to witness,” she said, “that I vow you to the Blues.
You shall be a soldier to avenge your father. Kill, kill the _Chouans_,
and do as I do. Ha! they’ve taken the head of my man, and I am going to
give that of the Gars to the Blues.”
She sprang at a bound on the bed, seized a little bag of money from a
hiding-place, took the hand of the astonished little boy, and dragged
him after her without giving him time to put on his shoe, and was on her
way to Fougeres rapidly, without once turning her head to look at
the home she abandoned. When they reached the summit of the rocks of
Saint-Sulpice Barbette set fire to the pile of fagots, and the boy
helped her to pile on the green gorse, damp with hoarfrost, to make the
smoke more dense.
“That fire will last longer than your father, longer than I, longer than
the Gars,” said Barbette, in a savage voice.
While the widow of Galope-Chopine and her son with his bloody foot stood
watching, the one, with a gloomy expression of revenge, the other with
curiosity, the curling of the smoke, Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s eyes
were fastened on the same rock, trying, but in vain, to see her lover’s
signal. The fog, which had thickened, buried the whole region under a
veil, its gray tints obscuring even the outlines of the scenery that
was nearest the town. She examined with tender anxiety the rocks, the
castle, the buildings, which loomed like shadows through the mist. Near
her window several trees stood out against this blue-gray background;
the sun gave a dull tone as of tarnished silver to the sky; its rays
colored the bare branches of the trees, where a few last leaves
were fluttering, with a dingy red. But too many dear and delightful
sentiments filled Marie’s soul to let her notice the ill-omens of a
scene so out of harmony with the joys she was tasting in advance.
For the last two days her ideas had undergone a change. The fierce,
undisciplined vehemence of her passions had yielded under the influence
of the equable atmosphere which a true love gives to life. The certainty
of being loved, sought through so many perils, had given birth to a
desire to re-enter those social conditions which sanction love, and
which despair alone had made her leave. To love for a moment only now
seemed to her a species of weakness. She saw herself lifted from the
dregs of society, where misfortune had driven her, to the high rank in
which her father had meant to place her. Her vanity, repressed for a
time by the cruel alternations of hope and misconception, was awakened
and showed her all the benefits of a great position. Born in a certain
way to rank, marriage to a marquis meant, to her mind, living and acting
in the sphere that belonged to her. Having known the chances and changes
of an adventurous life, she could appreciate, better than other women,
the grandeur of the feelings which make the Family. Marriage and
motherhood with all their cares seemed to her less a task than a rest.
She loved the calm and virtuous life she saw through the clouds of this
last storm as a woman weary of virtue may sometimes covet an illicit
passion. Virtue was to her a new seduction.
“Perhaps,” she thought, leaving the window without seeing the signal on
the rocks of Saint-Sulpice, “I have been too coquettish with him--but
I knew he loved me! Francine, it is not a dream; to-night I shall
be Marquise de Montauran. What have I done to deserve such perfect
happiness? Oh! I love him, and love alone is love’s reward. And yet, I
think God means to recompense me for taking heart through all my misery;
he means me to forget my sufferings--for you know, Francine, I have
suffered.”
“To-night, Marquise de Montauran, you, Marie? Ah! until it is done I
cannot believe it! Who has told him your true goodness?”
“Dear child! he has more than his handsome eyes to see me with, he has
a soul. If you had seen him, as I have, in danger! Oh! he knows how to
love--he is so brave!”
“If you really love him why do you let him come to Fougeres?”
“We had no time to say one word to each other when the Blues surprised
us. Besides, his coming is a proof of love. Can I ever have proofs
enough? And now, Francine, do my hair.”
But she pulled it down a score of times with motions that seemed
electric, as though some stormy thoughts were mingling still with the
arts of her coquetry. As she rolled a curl or smoothed the shining
plaits she asked herself, with a remnant of distrust, whether the
marquis were deceiving her; but treachery seemed to her impossible, for
did he not expose himself to instant vengeance by entering Fougeres?
While studying in her mirror the effects of a sidelong glance, a smile,
a gentle frown, an attitude of anger, or of love, or disdain, she was
seeking some woman’s wile by which to probe to the last instant the
heart of the young leader.
“You are right, Francine,” she said; “I wish with you that the marriage
were over. This is the last of my cloudy days--it is big with death or
happiness. Oh! that fog is dreadful,” she went on, again looking towards
the heights of Saint-Sulpice, which were still veiled in mist.
She began to arrange the silk and muslin curtains which draped the
window, making them intercept the light and produce in the room a
voluptuous chiaro-scuro.
“Francine,” she said, “take away those knick-knacks on the mantelpiece;
leave only the clock and the two Dresden vases. I’ll fill those vases
myself with the flowers Corentin brought me. Take out the chairs, I want
only this sofa and a fauteuil. Then sweep the carpet, so as to bring out
the colors, and put wax candles in the sconces and on the mantel.”
Marie looked long and carefully at the old tapestry on the walls.
Guided by her innate taste she found among the brilliant tints of these
hangings the shades by which to connect their antique beauty with the
furniture and accessories of the boudoir, either by the harmony of color
or the charm of contrast. The same thought guided the arrangement of
the flowers with which she filled the twisted vases which decorated her
chamber. The sofa was placed beside the fire. On either side of the bed,
which filled the space parallel to that of the chimney, she placed on
gilded tables tall Dresden vases filled with foliage and flowers that
were sweetly fragrant. She quivered more than once as she arranged the
folds of the green damask above the bed, and studied the fall of the
drapery which concealed it. Such preparations have a secret, ineffable
happiness about them; they cause so many delightful emotions that a
woman as she makes them forgets her doubts; and Mademoiselle de Verneuil
forgot hers. There is in truth a religious sentiment in the multiplicity
of cares taken for one beloved who is not there to see them and reward
them, but who will reward them later with the approving smile these
tender preparations (always so fully understood) obtain. Women, as they
make them, love in advance; and there are few indeed who would not say
to themselves, as Mademoiselle de Verneuil now thought: “To-night I
shall be happy!” That soft hope lies in every fold of silk or muslin;
insensibly, the harmony the woman makes about her gives an atmosphere of
love in which she breathes; to her these things are beings, witnesses;
she has made them the sharers of her coming joy. Every movement, every
thought brings that joy within her grasp. But presently she expects no
longer, she hopes no more, she questions silence; the slightest sound
is to her an omen; doubt hooks its claws once more into her heart; she
burns, she trembles, she is grasped by a thought which holds her like
a physical force; she alternates from triumph to agony, and without the
hope of coming happiness she could not endure the torture. A score of
times did Mademoiselle de Verneuil raise the window-curtain, hoping to
see the smoke rising above the rocks; but the fog only took a grayer
tone, which her excited imagination turned into a warning. At last she
let fall the curtain, impatiently resolving not to raise it again. She
looked gloomily around the charming room to which she had given a soul
and a voice, asking herself if it were done in vain, and this thought
brought her back to her preparations.
“Francine,” she said, drawing her into a little dressing-room which
adjoined her chamber and was lighted through a small round window
opening on a dark corner of the fortifications where they joined the
rock terrace of the Promenade, “put everything in order. As for the
salon, you can leave that as it is,” she added, with a smile which women
reserve for their nearest friends, the delicate sentiment of which men
seldom understand.
“Ah! how sweet you are!” exclaimed the little maid.
“A lover is our beauty--foolish women that we are!” she replied gaily.
Francine left her lying on the ottoman and went away convinced
that, whether her mistress were loved or not, she would never betray
Montauran.
* * * * *
“Are you sure of what you are telling me, old woman?” Hulot was saying
to Barbette, who had sought him out as soon as she had reached Fougeres.
“Have you got eyes? Look at the rocks of Saint-Sulpice, there, my good
man, to the right of Saint-Leonard.”
Corentin, who was with Hulot, looked towards the summit in the direction
pointed out by Barbette, and, as the fog was beginning to lift, he could
see with some distinctness the column of white smoke the woman told of.
“But when is he coming, old woman?--to-night, or this evening?”
“My good man,” said Barbette, “I don’t know.”
“Why do you betray your own side?” said Hulot, quickly, having drawn her
out of hearing of Corentin.
“Ah! general, see my boy’s foot--that’s washed in the blood of my man,
whom the Chouans have killed like a calf, to punish him for the few
words you got out of me the other day when I was working in the fields.
Take my boy, for you’ve deprived him of his father and his mother; make
a Blue of him, my good man, teach him to kill Chouans. Here, there’s two
hundred crowns,--keep them for him; if he is careful, they’ll last him
long, for it took his father twelve years to lay them by.”
Hulot looked with amazement at the pale and withered woman, whose eyes
were dry.
“But you, mother,” he said, “what will become of you? you had better
keep the money.”
“I?” she replied, shaking her head sadly. “I don’t need anything in this
world. You might bolt me into that highest tower over there” (pointing
to the battlements of the castle) “and the Chouans would contrive to
come and kill me.”
She kissed her boy with an awful expression of grief, looked at him,
wiped away her tears, looked at him again, and disappeared.
“Commandant,” said Corentin, “this is an occasion when two heads are
better than one. We know all, and yet we know nothing. If you surrounded
Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s house now, you will only warn her. Neither
you, nor I, nor your Blues and your battalions are strong enough to
get the better of that girl if she takes it into her head to save the
_ci-devant_. The fellow is brave, and consequently wily; he is a young
man full of daring. We can never get hold of him as he enters Fougeres.
Perhaps he is here already. Domiciliary visit? Absurdity! that’s no
good, it will only give them warning.”
“Well,” said Hulot impatiently, “I shall tell the sentry on the Place
Saint-Leonard to keep his eye on the house, and pass word along the
other sentinels, if a young man enters it; as soon as the signal reaches
me I shall take a corporal and four men and--”
“--and,” said Corentin, interrupting the old soldier, “if the young man
is not the marquis, or if the marquis doesn’t go in by the front door,
or if he is already there, if--if--if--what then?”
Corentin looked at the commandant with so insulting an air of
superiority that the old soldier shouted out: “God’s thousand thunders!
get out of here, citizen of hell! What have I got to do with your
intrigues? If that cockchafer buzzes into my guard-room I shall shoot
him; if I hear he is in a house I shall surround that house and take him
when he leaves it and shoot him, but may the devil get me if I soil my
uniform with any of your tricks.”
“Commandant, the order of the ministers states that you are to obey
Mademoiselle de Verneuil.”
“Let her come and give them to me herself and I’ll see about it.”
“Well, citizen,” said Corentin, haughtily, “she shall come. She shall
tell you herself the hour at which she expects the _ci-devant_. Possibly
she won’t be easy till you do post the sentinels round the house.”
“The devil is made man,” thought the old leader as he watched Corentin
hurrying up the Queen’s Staircase at the foot of which this scene had
taken place. “He means to deliver Montauran bound hand and foot, with no
chance to fight for his life, and I shall be harrassed to death with a
court-martial. However,” he added, shrugging his shoulders, “the Gars
certainly is an enemy of the Republic, and he killed my poor Gerard, and
his death will make a noble the less--the devil take him!”
He turned on the heels of his boots and went off, whistling the
Marseillaise, to inspect his guard-rooms.
* * * * *
Mademoiselle de Verneuil was absorbed in one of those meditations the
mysteries of which are buried in the soul, and prove by their thousand
contradictory emotions, to the woman who undergoes them, that it is
possible to have a stormy and passionate existence between four walls
without even moving from the ottoman on which her very life is burning
itself away. She had reached the final scene of the drama she had come
to enact, and her mind was going over and over the phases of love and
anger which had so powerfully stirred her during the ten days which
had now elapsed since her first meeting with the marquis. A man’s
step suddenly sounded in the adjoining room and she trembled; the door
opened, she turned quickly and saw Corentin.
“You little cheat!” said the police-agent, “when will you stop
deceiving? Ah, Marie, Marie, you are playing a dangerous game by not
taking me into your confidence. Why do you play such tricks without
consulting me? If the marquis escapes his fate--”
“It won’t be your fault, will it?” she replied, sarcastically.
“Monsieur,” she continued, in a grave voice, “by what right do you come
into my house?”
“Your house?” he exclaimed.
“You remind me,” she answered, coldly, “that I have no home. Perhaps you
chose this house deliberately for the purpose of committing murder. I
shall leave it. I would live in a desert to get away from--”
“Spies, say the word,” interrupted Corentin. “But this house is neither
yours nor mine, it belongs to the government; and as for leaving it you
will do nothing of the kind,” he added, giving her a diabolical look.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil rose indignantly, made a few steps to leave the
room, but stopped short suddenly as Corentin raised the curtain of the
window and beckoned her, with a smile, to come to him.
“Do you see that column of smoke?” he asked, with the calmness he always
kept on his livid face, however intense his feelings might be.
“What has my departure to do with that burning brush?” she asked.
“Why does your voice tremble?” he said. “You poor thing!” he added, in
a gentle voice, “I know all. The marquis is coming to Fougeres this
evening; and it is not with any intention of delivering him to us that
you have arranged this boudoir and the flowers and candles.”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil turned pale, for she saw her lover’s death in
the eyes of this tiger with a human face, and her love for him rose to
frenzy. Each hair on her head caused her an acute pain she could not
endure, and she fell on the ottoman. Corentin stood looking at her for a
moment with his arms folded, half pleased at inflicting a torture which
avenged him for the contempt and the sarcasms this woman had heaped upon
his head, half grieved by the sufferings of a creature whose yoke was
pleasant to him, heavy as it was.
“She loves him!” he muttered.
“Loves him!” she cried. “Ah! what are words? Corentin! he is my life,
my soul, my breath!” She flung herself at the feet of the man, whose
silence terrified her. “Soul of vileness!” she cried, “I would rather
degrade myself to save his life than degrade myself by betraying him. I
will save him at the cost of my own blood. Speak, what price must I pay
you?”
Corentin quivered.
“I came to take your orders, Marie,” he said, raising her. “Yes, Marie,
your insults will not hinder my devotion to your wishes, provided you
will promise not to deceive me again; you must know by this time that no
one dupes me with impunity.”
“If you want me to love you, Corentin, help me to save him.”
“At what hour is he coming?” asked the spy, endeavoring to ask the
question calmly.
“Alas, I do not know.”
They looked at each other in silence.
“I am lost!” thought Mademoiselle de Verneuil.
“She is deceiving me!” thought Corentin. “Marie,” he continued, “I
have two maxims. One is never to believe a single word a woman says to
me--that’s the only means of not being duped; the other is to find what
interest she has in doing the opposite of what she says, and behaving in
contradiction to the facts she pretends to confide to me. I think that
you and I understand each other now.”
“Perfectly,” replied Mademoiselle de Verneuil. “You want proofs of my
good faith; but I reserve them for the time when you give me some of
yours.”
“Adieu, mademoiselle,” said Corentin, coolly.
“Nonsense,” said the girl, smiling; “sit down, and pray don’t sulk; but
if you do I shall know how to save the marquis without you. As for the
three hundred thousand francs which are always spread before your eyes,
I will give them to you in good gold as soon as the marquis is safe.”
Corentin rose, stepped back a pace or two, and looked at Marie.
“You have grown rich in a very short time,” he said, in a tone of
ill-disguised bitterness.
“Montauran,” she continued, “will make you a better offer still for his
ransom. Now, then, prove to me that you have the means of guaranteeing
him from all danger and--”
“Can’t you send him away the moment he arrives?” cried Corentin,
suddenly. “Hulot does not know he is coming, and--” He stopped as if he
had said too much. “But how absurd that you should ask me how to play
a trick,” he said, with an easy laugh. “Now listen, Marie, I do feel
certain of your loyalty. Promise me a compensation for all I lose in
furthering your wishes, and I will make that old fool of a commandant
so unsuspicious that the marquis will be as safe at Fougeres as at
Saint-James.”
“Yes, I promise it,” said the girl, with a sort of solemnity.
“No, not in that way,” he said, “swear it by your mother.”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil shuddered; raising a trembling hand she made
the oath required by the man whose tone to her had changed so suddenly.
“You can command me,” he said; “don’t deceive me again, and you shall
have reason to bless me to-night.”
“I will trust you, Corentin,” cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil, much
moved. She bowed her head gently towards him and smiled with a kindness
not unmixed with surprise, as she saw an expression of melancholy
tenderness on his face.
“What an enchanting creature!” thought Corentin, as he left the house.
“Shall I ever get her as a means to fortune and a source of delight? To
fling herself at my feet! Oh, yes, the marquis shall die! If I can’t get
that woman in any other way than by dragging her through the mud, I’ll
sink her in it. At any rate,” he thought, as he reached the square
unconscious of his steps, “she no longer distrusts me. Three hundred
thousand francs down! she thinks me grasping! Either the offer was a
trick or she is already married to him.”
Corentin, buried in thought, was unable to come to a resolution. The
fog which the sun had dispersed at mid-day was now rolling thicker and
thicker, so that he could hardly see the trees at a little distance.
“That’s another piece of ill-luck,” he muttered, as he turned slowly
homeward. “It is impossible to see ten feet. The weather protects the
lovers. How is one to watch a house in such a fog? Who goes there?” he
cried, catching the arm of a boy who seemed to have clambered up the
dangerous rocks which made the terrace of the Promenade.
“It is I,” said a childish voice.
“Ah! the boy with the bloody foot. Do you want to revenge your father?”
said Corentin.
“Yes,” said the child.
“Very good. Do you know the Gars?”
“Yes.”
“Good again. Now, don’t leave me except to do what I bid you, and you
will obey your mother and earn some big sous--do you like sous?”
“Yes.”
“You like sous, and you want to kill the Gars who killed your
father--well, I’ll take care of you. Ah! Marie,” he muttered, after a
pause, “you yourself shall betray him, as you engaged to do! She is too
violent to suspect me--passion never reflects. She does not know the
marquis’s writing. Yes, I can set a trap into which her nature will
drive her headlong. But I must first see Hulot.”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil and Francine were deliberating on the means of
saving the marquis from the more than doubtful generosity of Corentin
and Hulot’s bayonets.
“I could go and warn him,” said the Breton girl.
“But we don’t know where he is,” replied Marie; “even I, with the
instincts of love, could never find him.”
After making and rejecting a number of plans Mademoiselle de Verneuil
exclaimed, “When I see him his danger will inspire me.”
She thought, like other ardent souls, to act on the spur of the moment,
trusting to her star, or to that instinct of adroitness which rarely, if
ever, fails a woman. Perhaps her heart was never so wrung. At times she
seemed stupefied, her eyes were fixed, and then, at the least noise, she
shook like a half-uprooted tree which the woodsman drags with a rope to
hasten its fall. Suddenly, a loud report from a dozen guns echoed from
a distance. Marie turned pale and grasped Francine’s hand. “I am dying,”
she cried; “they have killed him!”
The heavy footfall of a man was heard in the antechamber. Francine went
out and returned with a corporal. The man, making a military salute to
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, produced some letters, the covers of which
were a good deal soiled. Receiving no acknowledgment, the Blue said as
he withdrew, “Madame, they are from the commandant.”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, a prey to horrible presentiments, read a
letter written apparently in great haste by Hulot:--
“Mademoiselle--a party of my men have just caught a messenger from
the Gars and have shot him. Among the intercepted letters is one
which may be useful to you and I transmit it--etc.”
“Thank God, it was not he they shot,” she exclaimed, flinging the letter
into the fire.
She breathed more freely and took up the other letter, enclosed by
Hulot. It was apparently written to Madame du Gua by the marquis.
“No, my angel,” the letter said, “I cannot go to-night to La
Vivetiere. You must lose your wager with the count. I triumph over
the Republic in the person of their beautiful emissary. You must
allow that she is worth the sacrifice of one night. It will be my
only victory in this campaign, for I have received the news that
La Vendee surrenders. I can do nothing more in France. Let us go
back to England--but we will talk of all this to-morrow.”
The letter fell from Marie’s hands; she closed her eyes, and was silent,
leaning backward, with her head on a cushion. After a long pause she
looked at the clock, which then marked four in the afternoon.
“My lord keeps me waiting,” she said, with savage irony.
“Oh! God grant he may not come!” cried Francine.
“If he does not come,” said Marie, in a stifled tone, “I shall go to
him. No, no, he will soon be here. Francine, do I look well?”
“You are very pale.”
“Ah!” continued Mademoiselle de Verneuil, glancing about her, “this
perfumed room, the flowers, the lights, this intoxicating air, it is
full of that celestial life of which I dreamed--”
“Marie, what has happened?”
“I am betrayed, deceived, insulted, fooled! I will kill him, I will tear
him bit by bit! Yes, there was always in his manner a contempt he could
not hide and which I would not see. Oh! I shall die of this! Fool that
I am,” she went on laughing, “he is coming; I have one night in which
to teach him that, married or not, the man who has possessed me cannot
abandon me. I will measure my vengeance by his offence; he shall die
with despair in his soul. I did believe he had a soul of honor, but no!
it is that of a lackey. Ah, he has cleverly deceived me, for even now
it seems impossible that the man who abandoned me to Pille-Miche should
sink to such back-stair tricks. It is so base to deceive a loving woman,
for it is so easy. He might have killed me if he chose, but lie to me!
to me, who held him in my thoughts so high! The scaffold! the scaffold!
ah! could I only see him guillotined! Am I cruel? He shall go to his
death covered with caresses, with kisses which might have blessed him
for a lifetime--”
“Marie,” said Francine, gently, “be the victim of your lover like other
women; not his mistress and his betrayer. Keep his memory in your heart;
do not make it an anguish to you. If there were no joys in hopeless
love, what would become of us, poor women that we are? God, of whom
you never think, Marie, will reward us for obeying our vocation on this
earth,--to love, and suffer.”
“Dear,” replied Mademoiselle de Verneuil, taking Francine’s hand
and patting it, “your voice is very sweet and persuasive. Reason is
attractive from your lips. I should like to obey you, but--”
“You will forgive him, you will not betray him?”
“Hush! never speak of that man again. Compared with him Corentin is a
noble being. Do you hear me?”
She rose, hiding beneath a face that was horribly calm the madness of
her soul and a thirst for vengeance. The slow and measured step with
which she left the room conveyed the sense of an irrevocable resolution.
Lost in thought, hugging her insults, too proud to show the slightest
suffering, she went to the guard-room at the Porte Saint-Leonard and
asked where the commandant lived. She had hardly left her house when
Corentin entered it.
“Oh, Monsieur Corentin,” cried Francine, “if you are interested in this
young man, save him; Mademoiselle has gone to give him up because of
this wretched letter.”