“Which way did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes,” he said, “I will save her from her own despair.”
He disappeared, taking the letter with him. When he reached the street
he said to Galope-Chopine’s boy, whom he had stationed to watch the
door, “Which way did a lady go who left the house just now?”
The boy went with him a little way and showed him the steep street which
led to the Porte Saint-Leonard. “That way,” he said.
At this moment four men entered Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s house, unseen
by either the boy or Corentin.
“Return to your watch,” said the latter. “Play with the handles of the
blinds and see what you can inside; look about you everywhere, even on
the roof.”
Corentin darted rapidly in the direction given him, and thought he
recognized Mademoiselle de Verneuil through the fog; he did, in fact,
overtake her just as she reached the guard-house.
“Where are you going?” he said; “you are pale--what has happened? Is it
right for you to be out alone? Take my arm.”
“Where is the commandant?” she asked.
Hardly had the words left her lips when she heard the movement of troops
beyond the Porte Saint-Leonard and distinguished Hulot’s gruff voice in
the tumult.
“God’s thunder!” he cried, “I never saw such fog as this for a
reconnaissance! The Gars must have ordered the weather.”
“What are you complaining of?” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, grasping
his arm. “The fog will cover vengeance as well as perfidy. Commandant,”
she added, in a low voice, “you must take measures at once so that the
Gars may not escape us.”
“Is he at your house?” he asked, in a tone which showed his amazement.
“Not yet,” she replied; “but give me a safe man and I will send him to
you when the marquis comes.”
“That’s a mistake,” said Corentin; “a soldier will alarm him, but a boy,
and I can find one, will not.”
“Commandant,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, “thanks to this fog which
you are cursing, you can surround my house. Put soldiers everywhere.
Place a guard in the church to command the esplanade on which the
windows of my salon open. Post men on the Promenade; for though the
windows of my bedroom are twenty feet above the ground, despair does
sometimes give a man the power to jump even greater distances safely.
Listen to what I say. I shall probably send this gentleman out of the
door of my house; therefore see that only brave men are there to meet
him; for,” she added, with a sigh, “no one denies him courage; he will
assuredly defend himself.”
“Gudin!” called the commandant. “Listen, my lad,” he continued in a low
voice when the young man joined him, “this devil of a girl is betraying
the Gars to us--I am sure I don’t know why, but that’s no matter. Take
ten men and place yourself so as to hold the cul-de-sac in which the
house stands; be careful that no one sees either you or your men.”
“Yes, commandant, I know the ground.”
“Very good,” said Hulot. “I’ll send Beau-Pied to let you know when
to play your sabres. Try to meet the marquis yourself, and if you can
manage to kill him, so that I sha’n’t have to shoot him judicially, you
shall be a lieutenant in a fortnight or my name’s not Hulot.”
Gudin departed with a dozen soldiers.
“Do you know what you have done?” said Corentin to Mademoiselle de
Verneuil, in a low voice.
She made no answer, but looked with a sort of satisfaction at the
men who were starting, under command of the sub-lieutenant, for the
Promenade, while others, following the next orders given by Hulot, were
to post themselves in the shadows of the church of Saint-Leonard.
“There are houses adjoining mine,” she said; “you had better surround
them all. Don’t lay up regrets by neglecting a single precaution.”
“She is mad,” thought Hulot.
“Was I not a prophet?” asked Corentin in his ear. “As for the boy
I shall send with her, he is the little gars with a bloody foot;
therefore--”
He did not finish his sentence, for Mademoiselle de Verneuil by a sudden
movement darted in the direction of her house, whither he followed her,
whistling like a man supremely satisfied. When he overtook her she was
already at the door of her house, where Galope-Chopine’s little boy was
on the watch.
“Mademoiselle,” said Corentin, “take the lad with you; you cannot have
a more innocent or active emissary. Boy,” he added, “when you have seen
the Gars enter the house come to me, no matter who stops you; you’ll
find me at the guard-house and I’ll give you something that will make
you eat cake for the rest of your days.”
At these words, breathed rather than said in the child’s ear, Corentin
felt his hand squeezed by that of the little Breton, who followed
Mademoiselle de Verneuil into the house.
“Now, my good friends, you can come to an explanation as soon as you
like,” cried Corentin when the door was closed. “If you make love, my
little marquis, it will be on your winding-sheet.”
But Corentin could not bring himself to let that fatal house completely
out of sight, and he went to the Promenade, where he found the
commandant giving his last orders. By this time it was night. Two hours
went by; but the sentinels posted at intervals noticed nothing that
led them to suppose the marquis had evaded the triple line of men
who surrounded the three sides by which the tower of Papegaut was
accessible. Twenty times had Corentin gone from the Promenade to the
guard-room, always to find that his little emissary had not appeared.
Sunk in thought, the spy paced the Promenade slowly, enduring the
martyrdom to which three passions, terrible in their clashing, subject
a man,--love, avarice, and ambition. Eight o’clock struck from all the
towers in the town. The moon rose late. Fog and darkness wrapped in
impenetrable gloom the places where the drama planned by this man
was coming to its climax. He was able to silence the struggle of his
passions as he walked up and down, his arms crossed, and his eyes fixed
on the windows which rose like the luminous eyes of a phantom above the
rampart. The deep silence was broken only by the rippling of the Nancon,
by the regular and lugubrious tolling from the belfries, by the heavy
steps of the sentinels or the rattle of arms as the guard was hourly
relieved.
“The night’s as thick as a wolf’s jaw,” said the voice of Pille-Miche.
“Go on,” growled Marche-a-Terre, “and don’t talk more than a dead dog.”
“I’m hardly breathing,” said the Chouan.
“If the man who made that stone roll down wants his heart to serve as
the scabbard for my knife he’ll do it again,” said Marche-a-Terre, in a
low voice scarcely heard above the flowing of the river.
“It was I,” said Pille-Miche.
“Well, then, old money-bag, down on your stomach,” said the other, “and
wriggle like a snake through a hedge, or we shall leave our carcasses
behind us sooner than we need.”
“Hey, Marche-a-Terre,” said the incorrigible Pille-Miche, who was using
his hands to drag himself along on his stomach, and had reached the
level of his comrade’s ear. “If the Grande-Garce is to be believed
there’ll be a fine booty to-day. Will you go shares with me?”
“Look here, Pille-Miche,” said Marche-a-Terre stopping short on the flat
of his stomach. The other Chouans, who were accompanying the two men,
did the same, so wearied were they with the difficulties they had met
with in climbing the precipice. “I know you,” continued Marche-a-Terre,
“for a Jack Grab-All who would rather give blows than receive them when
there’s nothing else to be done. We have not come here to grab dead
men’s shoes; we are devils against devils, and sorrow to those whose
claws are too short. The Grande-Garce has sent us here to save the
Gars. He is up there; lift your dog’s nose and see that window above the
tower.”
Midnight was striking. The moon rose, giving the appearance of white
smoke to the fog. Pille-Miche squeezed Marche-a-Terre’s arm and silently
showed him on the terrace just above them, the triangular iron of
several shining bayonets.
“The Blues are there already,” said Pille-Miche; “we sha’n’t gain
anything by force.”
“Patience,” replied Marche-a-Terre; “if I examined right this morning,
we must be at the foot of the Papegaut tower between the ramparts and
the Promenade,--that place where they put the manure; it is like a
feather-bed to fall on.”
“If Saint-Labre,” remarked Pille-Miche, “would only change into cider
the blood we shall shed to-night the citizens might lay in a good stock
to-morrow.”
Marche-a-Terre laid his large hand over his friend’s mouth; then an
order muttered by him went from rank to rank of the Chouans suspended
as they were in mid-air among the brambles of the slate rocks. Corentin,
walking up and down the esplanade had too practiced an ear not to hear
the rustling of the shrubs and the light sound of pebbles rolling down
the sides of the precipice. Marche-a-Terre, who seemed to possess the
gift of seeing in darkness, and whose senses, continually in action,
were acute as those of a savage, saw Corentin; like a trained dog he had
scented him. Fouche’s diplomatist listened but heard nothing; he looked
at the natural wall of rock and saw no signs. If the confusing gleam of
the fog enabled him to see, here and there, a crouching Chouan, he took
him, no doubt, for a fragment of rock, for these human bodies had all
the appearance of inert nature. This danger to the invaders was of short
duration. Corentin’s attention was diverted by a very distinct noise
coming from the other end of the Promenade, where the rock wall ended
and a steep descent leading down to the Queen’s Staircase began. When
Corentin reached the spot he saw a figure gliding past it as if by
magic. Putting out his hand to grasp this real or fantastic being, who
was there, he supposed, with no good intentions, he encountered the soft
and rounded figure of a woman.
“The devil take you!” he exclaimed, “if any one else had met you, you’d
have had a ball through your head. What are you doing, and where are you
going, at this time of night? Are you dumb? It certainly is a woman,” he
said to himself.
The silence was suspicious, but the stranger broke it by saying, in a
voice which suggested extreme fright, “Ah, my good man, I’m on my way
back from a wake.”
“It is the pretended mother of the marquis,” thought Corentin. “I’ll see
what she’s about. Well, go that way, old woman,” he replied, feigning
not to recognize her. “Keep to the left if you don’t want to be shot.”
He stood quite still; then observing that Madame du Gua was making
for the Papegaut tower, he followed her at a distance with diabolical
caution. During this fatal encounter the Chouans had posted themselves
on the manure towards which Marche-a-Terre had guided them.
“There’s the Grande-Garce!” thought Marche-a-Terre, as he rose to his
feet against the tower wall like a bear.
“We are here,” he said to her in a low voice.
“Good,” she replied, “there’s a ladder in the garden of that house about
six feet above the manure; find it, and the Gars is saved. Do you see
that small window up there? It is in the dressing-room; you must get to
it. This side of the tower is the only one not watched. The horses are
ready; if you can hold the passage over the Nancon, a quarter of an hour
will put him out of danger--in spite of his folly. But if that woman
tries to follow him, stab her.”
Corentin now saw several of the forms he had hitherto supposed to be
stones moving cautiously but swiftly. He went at once to the guard-room
at the Porte Saint-Leonard, where he found the commandant fully dressed
and sound asleep on a camp bed.
“Let him alone,” said Beau-Pied, roughly, “he has only just lain down.”
“The Chouans are here!” cried Corentin, in Hulot’s ear.
“Impossible! but so much the better,” cried the old soldier, still half
asleep; “then he can fight.”
When Hulot reached the Promenade Corentin pointed out to him the
singular position taken by the Chouans.
“They must have deceived or strangled the sentries I placed between the
castle and the Queen’s Staircase. Ah! what a devil of a fog! However,
patience! I’ll send a squad of men under a lieutenant to the foot of the
rock. There is no use attacking them where they are, for those animals
are so hard they’d let themselves roll down the precipice without
breaking a limb.”
The cracked clock of the belfry was ringing two when the commandant
got back to the Promenade after giving these orders and taking every
military precaution to seize the Chouans. The sentries were doubled and
Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s house became the centre of a little army.
Hulot found Corentin absorbed in contemplation of the window which
overlooked the tower.
“Citizen,” said the commandant, “I think the _ci-devant_ has fooled us;
there’s nothing stirring.”
“He is there,” cried Corentin, pointing to the window. “I have seen a
man’s shadow on the curtain. But I can’t think what has become of that
boy. They must have killed him or locked him up. There! commandant,
don’t you see that? there’s a man’s shadow; come, come on!”
“I sha’n’t seize him in bed; thunder of God! He will come out if he
went in; Gudin won’t miss him,” cried Hulot, who had his own reasons for
waiting till the Gars could defend himself.
“Commandant, I enjoin you, in the name of the law to proceed at once
into that house.”
“You’re a fine scoundrel to try to make me do that.”
Without showing any resentment at the commandant’s language, Corentin
said coolly: “You will obey me. Here is an order in good form, signed
by the minister of war, which will force you to do so.” He drew a paper
from his pocket and held it out. “Do you suppose we are such fools as
to leave that girl to do as she likes? We are endeavoring to suppress a
civil war, and the grandeur of the purpose covers the pettiness of the
means.”
“I take the liberty, citizen, of sending you to--you understand me?
Enough. To the right-about, march! Let me alone, or it will be the worse
for you.”
“But read that,” persisted Corentin.
“Don’t bother me with your functions,” cried Hulot, furious at receiving
orders from a man he regarded as contemptible.
At this instant Galope-Chopine’s boy suddenly appeared among them like a
rat from a hole.
“The Gars has started!” he cried.
“Which way?”
“The rue Saint-Leonard.”
“Beau-Pied,” said Hulot in a whisper to the corporal who was near him,
“go and tell your lieutenant to draw in closer round the house, and make
ready to fire. Left wheel, forward on the tower, the rest of you!” he
shouted.
To understand the conclusion of this fatal drama we must re-enter
the house with Mademoiselle de Verneuil when she returned to it after
denouncing the marquis to the commandant.
When passions reach their crisis they bring us under the dominion of far
greater intoxication than the petty excitements of wine or opium. The
lucidity then given to ideas, the delicacy of the high-wrought senses,
produce the most singular and unexpected effects. Some persons when
they find themselves under the tyranny of a single thought can see with
extraordinary distinctness objects scarcely visible to others, while at
the same time the most palpable things become to them almost as if they
did not exist. When Mademoiselle de Verneuil hurried, after reading
the marquis’s letter, to prepare the way for vengeance just as she had
lately been preparing all for love, she was in that stage of mental
intoxication which makes real life like the life of a somnambulist. But
when she saw her house surrounded, by her own orders, with a triple line
of bayonets a sudden flash of light illuminated her soul. She judged her
conduct and saw with horror that she had committed a crime. Under the
first shock of this conviction she sprang to the threshold of the door
and stood there irresolute, striving to think, yet unable to follow out
her reasoning. She knew so vaguely what had happened that she tried in
vain to remember why she was in the antechamber, and why she was leading
a strange child by the hand. A million of stars were floating in the air
before her like tongues of fire. She began to walk about, striving to
shake off the horrible torpor which laid hold of her; but, like one
asleep, no object appeared to her under its natural form or in its
own colors. She grasped the hand of the little boy with a violence not
natural to her, dragging him along with such precipitate steps that she
seemed to have the motions of a madwoman. She saw neither persons nor
things in the salon as she crossed it, and yet she was saluted by three
men who made way to let her pass.
“That must be she,” said one of them.
“She is very handsome,” exclaimed another, who was a priest.
“Yes,” replied the first; “but how pale and agitated--”
“And beside herself,” said the third; “she did not even see us.”
At the door of her own room Mademoiselle de Verneuil saw the smiling
face of Francine, who whispered to her: “He is here, Marie.”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil awoke, reflected, looked at the child whose
hand she held, remembered all, and replied to the girl: “Shut up that
boy; if you wish me to live do not let him escape you.”
As she slowly said the words her eyes were fixed on the door of her
bedroom, and there they continued fastened with so dreadful a fixedness
that it seemed as if she saw her victim through the wooden panels. Then
she gently opened it, passed through and closed it behind her without
turning round, for she saw the marquis standing before the fireplace.
His dress, without being too choice, had the look of careful arrangement
which adds so much to the admiration which a woman feels for her lover.
All her self-possession came back to her at the sight of him. Her lips,
rigid, although half-open, showed the enamel of her white teeth and
formed a smile that was fixed and terrible rather than voluptuous. She
walked with slow steps toward the young man and pointed with her finger
to the clock.
“A man who is worthy of love is worth waiting for,” she said with
deceptive gaiety.
Then, overcome with the violence of her emotions, she dropped upon the
sofa which was near the fireplace.
“Dear Marie, you are so charming when you are angry,” said the marquis,
sitting down beside her and taking her hand, which she let him take, and
entreating a look, which she refused him. “I hope,” he continued, in a
tender, caressing voice, “that my wife will not long refuse a glance to
her loving husband.”
Hearing the words she turned abruptly and looked into his eyes.
“What is the meaning of that dreadful look?” he said, laughing. “But
your hand is burning! oh, my love, what is it?”
“Your love!” she repeated, in a dull, changed voice.
“Yes,” he said, throwing himself on his knees beside her and taking her
two hands which he covered with kisses. “Yes, my love--I am thine for
life.”
She pushed him violently away from her and rose. Her features
contracted, she laughed as mad people laugh, and then she said to him:
“You do not mean one word of all you are saying, base man--baser than
the lowest villain.” She sprang to the dagger which was lying beside
a flower-vase, and let it sparkle before the eyes of the amazed young
marquis. “Bah!” she said, flinging it away from her, “I do not respect
you enough to kill you. Your blood is even too vile to be shed by
soldiers; I see nothing fit for you but the executioner.”
The words were painfully uttered in a low voice, and she moved her feet
like a spoilt child, impatiently. The marquis went to her and tried to
clasp her.
“Don’t touch me!” she cried, recoiling from him with a look of horror.
“She is mad!” said the marquis in despair.
“Mad, yes!” she repeated, “but not mad enough to be your dupe. What
would I not forgive to passion? but to seek to possess me without love,
and to write to that woman--”
“To whom have I written?” he said, with an astonishment which was
certainly not feigned.
“To that chaste woman who sought to kill me.”
The marquis turned pale with anger and said, grasping the back of a
chair until he broke it, “If Madame du Gua has committed some dastardly
wrong--”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil looked for the letter; not finding it she
called to Francine.
“Where is that letter?” she asked.
“Monsieur Corentin took it.”
“Corentin! ah! I understand it all; he wrote the letter; he has deceived
me with diabolical art--as he alone can deceive.”
With a piercing cry she flung herself on the sofa, tears rushing from
her eyes. Doubt and confidence were equally dreadful now. The marquis
knelt beside her and clasped her to his breast, saying, again and again,
the only words he was able to utter:--
“Why do you weep, my darling? there is no harm done; your reproaches
were all love; do not weep, I love you--I shall always love you.”
Suddenly he felt her press him with almost supernatural force. “Do you
still love me?” she said, amid her sobs.
“Can you doubt it?” he replied in a tone that was almost melancholy.
She abruptly disengaged herself from his arms, and fled, as if
frightened and confused, to a little distance.
“Do I doubt it?” she exclaimed, but a smile of gentle meaning was on her
lover’s face, and the words died away upon her lips; she let him take
her by the hand and lead her to the salon. There an altar had been
hastily arranged during her absence. The priest was robed in his
officiating vestments. The lighted tapers shed upon the ceiling a glow
as soft as hope itself. She now recognized the two men who had bowed to
her, the Comte de Bauvan and the Baron du Guenic, the witnesses chosen
by Montauran.
“You will not still refuse?” said the marquis.
But at the sight she stopped, stepped backward into her chamber and
fell on her knees; raising her hands towards the marquis she cried out:
“Pardon! pardon! pardon!”
Her voice died away, her head fell back, her eyes closed, and she lay in
the arms of her lover and Francine as if dead. When she opened her eyes
they met those of the young man full of loving tenderness.
“Marie! patience! this is your last trial,” he said.
“The last!” she exclaimed, bitterly.
Francine and the marquis looked at each other in surprise, but she
silenced them by a gesture.
“Call the priest,” she said, “and leave me alone with him.”
They did so, and withdrew.
“My father,” she said to the priest so suddenly called to her, “in my
childhood an old man, white-haired like yourself, used to tell me that
God would grant all things to those who had faith. Is that true?”
“It is true,” replied the priest; “all things are possible to Him who
created all.”
Mademoiselle de Verneuil threw herself on her knees before him with
incredible enthusiasm.
“Oh, my God!” she cried in ecstasy, “my faith in thee is equal to my
love for him; inspire me! do here a miracle, or take my life!”
“Your prayer will be granted,” said the priest.
Marie returned to the salon leaning on the arm of the venerable old
man. A deep and secret emotion brought her to the arms of her lover more
brilliant than on any of her past days, for a serenity like that which
painters give to the martyrs added to her face an imposing dignity. She
held out her hand to the marquis and together they advanced to the
altar and knelt down. The marriage was about to be celebrated beside
the nuptial bed, the altar hastily raised, the cross, the vessels, the
chalice, secretly brought thither by the priest, the fumes of incense
rising to the ceiling, the priest himself, who wore a stole above his
cassock, the tapers on an altar in a salon,--all these things combined
to form a strange and touching scene, which typified those times of
saddest memory, when civil discord overthrew all sacred institutions.
Religious ceremonies then had the savor of the mysteries. Children were
baptized in the chambers where the mothers were still groaning from
their labor. As in the olden time, the Saviour went, poor and lowly,
to console the dying. Young girls received their first communion in the
home where they had played since infancy. The marriage of the marquis
and Mademoiselle de Verneuil was now solemnized, like many other unions,
by a service contrary to the recent legal enactments. In after
years these marriages, mostly celebrated at the foot of oaks, were
scrupulously recognized and considered legal. The priest who thus
preserved the ancient usages was one of those men who hold to their
principles in the height of the storm. His voice, which never made the
oath exacted by the Republic, uttered no word throughout the tempest
that did not make for peace. He never incited, like the Abbe Gudin, to
fire and sword; but like many others, he devoted himself to the still
more dangerous mission of performing his priestly functions for the
souls of faithful Catholics. To accomplish this perilous ministry he
used all the pious deceptions necessitated by persecution, and the
marquis, when he sought his services on this occasion, had found him in
one of those excavated caverns which are known, even to the present day,
by the name of “the priest’s hiding-place.” The mere sight of that pale
and suffering face was enough to give this worldly room a holy aspect.
All was now ready for the act of misery and of joy. Before beginning the
ceremony the priest asked, in the dead silence, the names of the bride.
“Marie-Nathalie, daughter of Mademoiselle Blanche de Casteran, abbess,
deceased, of Notre-Dame de Seez, and Victor-Amedee, Duc de Verneuil.”
“Where born?”
“At La Chasterie, near Alencon.”
“I never supposed,” said the baron in a low voice to the count, “that
Montauran would have the folly to marry her. The natural daughter of a
duke!--horrid!”
“If it were of the king, well and good,” replied the Comte de Bauvan,
smiling. “However, it is not for me to blame him; I like Charette’s
mistress full as well; and I shall transfer the war to her--though she’s
not one to bill and coo.”
The names of the marquis had been filled in previously, and the two
lovers now signed the document with their witnesses. The ceremony then
began. At that instant Marie, and she alone, heard the sound of muskets
and the heavy tread of soldiers,--no doubt relieving the guard in the
church which she had herself demanded. She trembled violently and raised
her eyes to the cross on the altar.
“A saint at last,” said Francine, in a low voice.
“Give me such saints, and I’ll be devilishly devout,” added the count,
in a whisper.
When the priest made the customary inquiry of Mademoiselle de Verneuil,
she answered by a “yes” uttered with a deep sigh. Bending to her
husband’s ear she said: “You will soon know why I have broken the oath I
made never to marry you.”
After the ceremony all present passed into the dining-room, where dinner
was served, and as they took their places Jeremie, Marie’s footman, came
into the room terrified. The poor bride rose and went to him; Francine
followed her. With one of those pretexts which never fail a woman, she
begged the marquis to do the honors for a moment, and went out, taking
Jeremie with her before he could utter the fatal words.
“Ah! Francine, to be dying a thousand deaths and not to die!” she cried.
This absence might well be supposed to have its cause in the ceremony
that had just taken place. Towards the end of the dinner, as the marquis
was beginning to feel uneasy, Marie returned in all the pomp of a bridal
robe. Her face was calm and joyful, while that of Francine who followed
her had terror imprinted on every feature, so that the guests might well
have thought they saw in these two women a fantastic picture by Salvator
Rosa, of Life and Death holding each other by the hand.
“Gentlemen,” said Marie to the priest, the baron, and the count, “you
are my guests for the night. I find you cannot leave Fougeres; it would
be dangerous to attempt it. My good maid has instructions to make you
comfortable in your apartments. No, you must not rebel,” she added to
the priest, who was about to speak. “I hope you will not thwart a woman
on her wedding-day.”
An hour later she was alone with her husband in the room she had so
joyously arranged a few hours earlier. They had reached that fatal bed
where, like a tomb, so many hopes are wrecked, where the waking to a
happy life is all uncertain, where love is born or dies, according to
the natures that are tried there. Marie looked at the clock. “Six hours
to live,” she murmured.
“Can I have slept?” she cried toward morning, wakening with one of those
sudden movements which rouse us when we have made ourselves a promise to
wake at a certain hour. “Yes, I have slept,” she thought, seeing by the
light of the candles that the hands of the clock were pointing to two in
the morning. She turned and looked at the sleeping marquis, lying like a
child with his head on one hand, the other clasping his wife’s hand, his
lips half smiling as though he had fallen asleep while she kissed him.
“Ah!” she whispered to herself, “he sleeps like an infant; he does not
distrust me--me, to whom he has given a happiness without a name.”
She touched him softly and he woke, continuing to smile. He kissed the
hand he held and looked at the wretched woman with eyes so sparkling
that she could not endure their light and slowly lowered her large
eyelids. Her husband might justly have accused her of coquetry if she
were not concealing the terrors of her soul by thus evading the fire of
his looks. Together they raised their charming heads and made each other
a sign of gratitude for the pleasures they had tasted; but after a rapid
glance at the beautiful picture his wife presented, the marquis was
struck with an expression on her face which seemed to him melancholy,
and he said in a tender voice, “Why sad, dear love?”
“Poor Alphonse,” she answered, “do you know to what I have led you?”
“To happiness.”
“To death!”
Shuddering with horror she sprang from the bed; the marquis, astonished,
followed her. His wife motioned him to a window and raised the curtain,
pointing as she did so to a score of soldiers. The moon had scattered
the fog and was now casting her white light on the muskets and the
uniforms, on the impassible Corentin pacing up and down like a jackal
waiting for his prey, on the commandant, standing still, his arms
crossed, his nose in the air, his lips curling, watchful and displeased.
“Come, Marie, leave them and come back to me.”
“Why do you smile? I placed them there.”
“You are dreaming.”
“No.”
They looked at each other for a moment. The marquis divined the whole
truth, and he took her in his arms. “No matter!” he said, “I love you
still.”
“All is not lost!” cried Marie, “it cannot be! Alphonse,” she said after
a pause, “there is hope.”
At this moment they distinctly heard the owl’s cry, and Francine entered
from the dressing-room.
“Pierre has come!” she said with a joy that was like delirium.
The marquise and Francine dressed Montauran in Chouan clothes with that
amazing rapidity that belongs only to women. As soon as Marie saw her
husband loading the gun Francine had brought in she slipped hastily
from the room with a sign to her faithful maid. Francine then took the
marquis to the dressing-room adjoining the bed-chamber. The young man
seeing a large number of sheets knotted firmly together, perceived the
means by which the girl expected him to escape the vigilance of the
soldiers.
“I can’t get through there,” he said, examining the bull’s-eye window.
At that instant it was darkened by a thickset figure, and a hoarse
voice, known to Francine, said in a whisper, “Make haste, general, those
rascally Blues are stirring.”
“Oh! one more kiss,” said a trembling voice beside him.
The marquis, whose feet were already on the liberating ladder, though
he was not wholly through the window, felt his neck clasped with a
despairing pressure. Seeing that his wife had put on his clothes, he
tried to detain her; but she tore herself roughly from his arms and
he was forced to descend. In his hand he held a fragment of some stuff
which the moonlight showed him was a piece of the waistcoat he had worn
the night before.
“Halt! fire!”
These words uttered by Hulot in the midst of a silence that was
almost horrible broke the spell which seemed to hold the men and their
surroundings. A volley of balls coming from the valley and reaching to
the foot of the tower succeeded the discharges of the Blues posted on
the Promenade. Not a cry came from the Chouans. Between each discharge
the silence was frightful.
But Corentin had heard a fall from the ladder on the precipice side of
the tower, and he suspected some ruse.
“None of those animals are growling,” he said to Hulot; “our lovers
are capable of fooling us on this side, and escaping themselves on the
other.”
The spy, to clear up the mystery, sent for torches; Hulot, understanding
the force of Corentin’s supposition, and hearing the noise of a serious
struggle in the direction of the Porte Saint-Leonard, rushed to the
guard-house exclaiming: “That’s true, they won’t separate.”
“His head is well-riddled, commandant,” said Beau-Pied, who was the
first to meet him, “but he killed Gudin, and wounded two men. Ha!
the savage; he got through three ranks of our best men and would have
reached the fields if it hadn’t been for the sentry at the gate who
spitted him on his bayonet.”
The commandant rushed into the guard-room and saw on a camp bedstead a
bloody body which had just been laid there. He went up to the supposed
marquis, raised the hat which covered the face, and fell into a chair.
“I suspected it!” he cried, crossing his arms violently; “she kept him,
cursed thunder! too long.”
The soldiers stood about, motionless. The commandant himself unfastened
the long black hair of a woman. Suddenly the silence was broken by the
tramp of men and Corentin entered the guardroom, preceding four soldiers
who bore on their guns, crossed to make a litter, the body of Montauran,
who was shot in the thighs and arms. They laid him on the bedstead
beside his wife. He saw her, and found strength to clasp her hand with
a convulsive gesture. The dying woman turned her head, recognized her
husband, and shuddered with a spasm that was horrible to see, murmuring
in a voice almost extinct: “A day without a morrow! God heard me too
well!”
“Commandant,” said the marquis, collecting all his strength, and still
holding Marie’s hand, “I count on your honor to send the news of my
death to my young brother, who is now in London. Write him that if he
wishes to obey my last injunction he will never bear arms against his
country--neither must he abandon the king’s service.”
“It shall be done,” said Hulot, pressing the hand of the dying man.
“Take them to the nearest hospital,” cried Corentin.
Hulot took the spy by the arm with a grip that left the imprint of his
fingers on the flesh.
“Out of this camp!” he cried; “your business is done here. Look well at
the face of Commander Hulot, and never find yourself again in his way if
you don’t want your belly to be the scabbard of his blade--”
And the older soldier flourished his sabre.
“That’s another of the honest men who will never make their way,” said
Corentin to himself when he was some distance from the guard-room.
The marquis was still able to thank his gallant adversary by a look
marking the respect which all soldiers feel for loyal enemies.
* * * * *
In 1827 an old man accompanied by his wife was buying cattle in the
market-place of Fougeres. Few persons remembered that he had killed
a hundred or more men, and that his former name was Marche-a-Terre. A
person to whom we owe important information about all the personages of
this drama saw him there, leading a cow, and was struck by his simple,
ingenuous air, which led her to remark, “That must be a worthy man.”
As for Cibot, otherwise called Pille-Miche, we already know his end. It
is likely that Marche-a-Terre made some attempt to save his comrade from
the scaffold; possibly he was in the square at Alencon on the occasion
of the frightful tumult which was one of the events of the famous trial
of Rifoel, Briond, and la Chanterie.