Produced by John Bickers, Dagny, and Bonnie Sala
AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY
(The Gondreville Mystery)
By Honore De Balzac
Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
DEDICATION
To Monsieur de Margone.
In grateful remembrance, from his guest at the Chateau de Sache.
De Balzac.
AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY
PART I
CHAPTER I. JUDAS
The autumn of the year 1803 was one of the finest in the early part of
that period of the present century which we now call “Empire.” Rain had
refreshed the earth during the month of October, so that the trees were
still green and leafy in November. The French people were beginning to
put faith in a secret understanding between the skies and Bonaparte,
then declared Consul for life,--a belief in which that man owes part of
his prestige; strange to say, on the day the sun failed him, in 1812,
his luck ceased!
About four in the afternoon on the fifteenth of November, 1803, the sun
was casting what looked like scarlet dust upon the venerable tops of
four rows of elms in a long baronial avenue, and sparkling on the sand
and grassy places of an immense _rond-point_, such as we often see in
the country where land is cheap enough to be sacrificed to ornament. The
air was so pure, the atmosphere so tempered that a family was sitting
out of doors as if it were summer. A man dressed in a hunting-jacket of
green drilling with green buttons, and breeches of the same stuff, and
wearing shoes with thin soles and gaiters to the knee, was cleaning a
gun with the minute care a skilful huntsman gives to the work in his
leisure hours. This man had neither game nor game-bag, nor any of the
accoutrements which denote either departure for a hunt or the return
from it; and two women sitting near were looking at him as though beset
by a terror they could ill-conceal. Any one observing the scene taking
place in this leafy nook would have shuddered, as the old mother-in-law
and the wife of the man we speak of were now shuddering. A huntsman does
not take such minute precautions with his weapon to kill small game,
neither does he use, in the department of the Aube, a heavy rifled
carbine.
“Shall you kill a roe-buck, Michu?” said his handsome young wife, trying
to assume a laughing air.
Before replying, Michu looked at his dog, which had been lying in the
sun, its paws stretched out and its nose on its paws, in the charming
attitude of a trained hunter. The animal had just raised its head and
was snuffing the air, first down the avenue nearly a mile long which
stretched before them, and then up the cross road where it entered the
_rond-point_ to the left.
“No,” answered Michu, “but a brute I do not wish to miss, a lynx.”
The dog, a magnificent spaniel, white with brown spots, growled.
“Hah!” said Michu, talking to himself, “spies! the country swarms with
them.”
Madame Michu looked appealingly to heaven. A beautiful fair woman
with blue eyes, composed and thoughtful in expression and made like an
antique statue, she seemed to be a prey to some dark and bitter grief.
The husband’s appearance may explain to a certain extent the evident
fear of the two women. The laws of physiognomy are precise, not only in
their application to character, but also in relation to the destinies
of life. There is such a thing as prophetic physiognomy. If it were
possible (and such a vital statistic would be of value to society) to
obtain exact likenesses of those who perish on the scaffold, the science
of Lavatar and also that of Gall would prove unmistakably that the heads
of all such persons, even those who are innocent, show prophetic signs.
Yes, fate sets its mark on the faces of those who are doomed to die a
violent death of any kind. Now, this sign, this seal, visible to the eye
of an observer, was imprinted on the expressive face of the man with the
rifled carbine. Short and stout, abrupt and active in his motions as a
monkey, though calm in temperament, Michu had a white face injected
with blood, and features set close together like those of a Tartar,--a
likeness to which his crinkled red hair conveyed a sinister expression.
His eyes, clear and yellow as those of a tiger, showed depths behind
them in which the glance of whoever examined the man might lose itself
and never find either warmth or motion. Fixed, luminous, and rigid,
those eyes terrified whoever gazed into them. The singular contrast
between the immobility of the eyes and the activity of the body
increased the chilling impression conveyed by a first sight of Michu.
Action, always prompt in this man, was the outcome of a single thought;
just as the life of animals is, without reflection, the outcome of
instinct. Since 1793 he had trimmed his red beard to the shape of a fan.
Even if he had not been (as he was during the Terror) president of a
club of Jacobins, this peculiarity of his head would in itself have
made him terrible to behold. His Socratic face with its blunt nose was
surmounted by a fine forehead, so projecting, however, that it overhung
the rest of the features. The ears, well detached from the head, had the
sort of mobility which we find in those of wild animals, which are ever
on the qui-vive. The mouth, half-open, as the custom usually is among
country-people, showed teeth that were strong and white as almonds, but
irregular. Gleaming red whiskers framed this face, which was white and
yet mottled in spots. The hair, cropped close in front and allowed to
grow long at the sides and on the back of the head, brought into relief,
by its savage redness, all the strange and fateful peculiarities of this
singular face. The neck which was short and thick, seemed to tempt the
axe.
At this moment the sunbeams, falling in long lines athwart the group,
lighted up the three heads at which the dog from time to time glanced
up. The spot on which this scene took place was magnificently fine. The
_rond-point_ is at the entrance of the park of Gondreville, one of the
finest estates in France, and by far the finest in the departments of
the Aube; it boasts of long avenues of elms, a castle built from designs
by Mansart, a park of fifteen hundred acres enclosed by a stone wall,
nine large farms, a forest, mills, and meadows. This almost regal
property belonged before the Revolution to the family of Simeuse.
Ximeuse was a feudal estate in Lorraine; the name was pronounced
Simeuse, and in course of time it came to be written as pronounced.
The great fortune of the Simeuse family, adherents of the House of
Burgundy, dates from the time when the Guises were in conflict with
the Valois. Richelieu first, and afterwards Louis XIV. remembered their
devotion to the factious house of Lorraine, and rebuffed them. Then
the Marquis de Simeuse, an old Burgundian, old Guiser, old leaguer, old
_frondeur_ (he inherited the four great rancors of the nobility against
royalty), came to live at Cinq-Cygne. The former courtier, rejected at
the Louvre, married the widow of the Comte de Cinq-Cygne, younger branch
of the famous family of Chargeboeuf, one of the most illustrious names
in Champagne, and now as celebrated and opulent as the elder. The
marquis, among the richest men of his day, instead of wasting his
substance at court, built the chateau of Gondreville, enlarged the
estate by the purchase of others, and united the several domains, solely
for the purposes of a hunting-ground. He also built the Simeuse mansion
at Troyes, not far from that of the Cinq-Cygnes. These two old houses
and the bishop’s palace were long the only stone mansions at Troyes. The
marquis sold Simeuse to the Duc de Lorraine. His son wasted the father’s
savings and some part of his great fortune under the reign of Louis
XV., but he subsequently entered the navy, became a vice-admiral, and
redeemed the follies of his youth by brilliant services. The Marquis
de Simeuse, son of this naval worthy, perished with his wife on the
scaffold at Troyes, leaving twin sons, who emigrated and were, at the
time our history opens, still in foreign parts following the fortunes of
the house of Conde.
The _rond-point_ was the scene of the meet in the time of the
“Grand Marquis”--a name given in the family to the Simeuse who built
Gondreville. Since 1789 Michu lived in the hunting lodge at the entrance
to the park, built in the reign of Louis XIV., and called the pavilion
of Cinq-Cygne. The village of Cinq-Cygne is at the end of the forest of
Nodesme (a corruption of Notre-Dame) which was reached through the fine
avenue of four rows of elms where Michu’s dog was now suspecting spies.
After the death of the Grand Marquis this pavilion fell into disuse. The
vice-admiral preferred the court and the sea to Champagne, and his son
gave the dilapidated building to Michu for a dwelling.
This noble structure is of brick, with vermiculated stone-work at the
angles and on the casings of the doors and windows. On either side is
a gateway of finely wrought iron, eaten with rust and connected by a
railing, beyond which is a wide and deep ha-ha, full of vigorous trees,
its parapets bristling with iron arabesques, the innumerable sharp
points of which are a warning to evil-doers.
The park walls begin on each side of the circumference of the
_rond-point_; on the one hand the fine semi-circle is defined by slopes
planted with elms; on the other, within the park, a corresponding
half-circle is formed by groups of rare trees. The pavilion, therefore,
stands at the centre of this round open space, which extends before it
and behind it in the shape of two horseshoes. Michu had turned the rooms
on the lower floor into a stable, a kitchen, and a wood-shed. The only
trace remaining of their ancient splendor was an antechamber paved with
marble in squares of black and white, which was entered on the park side
through a door with small leaded panes, such as might still be seen at
Versailles before Louis-Philippe turned that Chateau into an asylum
for the glories of France. The pavilion is divided inside by an old
staircase of worm-eaten wood, full of character, which leads to the
first story. Above that is an immense garret. This venerable edifice
is covered by one of those vast roofs with four sides, a ridgepole
decorated with leaden ornaments, and a round projecting window on each
side, such as Mansart very justly delighted in; for in France, the
Italian attics and flat roofs are a folly against which our climate
protests. Michu kept his fodder in this garret. That portion of the park
which surrounds the old pavilion is English in style. A hundred feet
from the house a former lake, now a mere pond well stocked with fish,
makes known its vicinity as much by a thin mist rising above the
tree-tops as by the croaking of a thousand frogs, toads, and other
amphibious gossips who discourse at sunset. The time-worn look of
everything, the deep silence of the woods, the long perspective of the
avenue, the forest in the distance, the rusty iron-work, the masses of
stone draped with velvet mosses, all made poetry of this old structure,
which still exists.
At the moment when our history begins Michu was leaning against a
mossy parapet on which he had laid his powder-horn, cap, handkerchief,
screw-driver, and rags,--in fact, all the utensils needed for his
suspicious occupation. His wife’s chair was against the wall beside the
outer door of the house, above which could still be seen the arms of the
Simeuse family, richly carved, with their noble motto, “Cy meurs.” The
old mother, in peasant dress, had moved her chair in front of Madame
Michu, so that the latter might put her feet upon the rungs and keep
them from dampness.
“Where’s the boy?” said Michu to his wife.
“Round the pond; he is crazy about the frogs and the insects,” answered
the mother.
Michu whistled in a way that made his hearers tremble. The rapidity with
which his son ran up to him proved plainly enough the despotic power of
the bailiff of Gondreville. Since 1789, but more especially since 1793,
Michu had been well-nigh master of the property. The terror he inspired
in his wife, his mother-in-law, a servant-lad named Gaucher, and the
cook named Marianne, was shared throughout a neighborhood of twenty
miles in circumference. It may be well to give, without further delay,
the reasons for this fear,--all the more because an account of them will
complete the moral portrait of the man.
The old Marquis de Simeuse transferred the greater part of his property
in 1790; but, overtaken by circumstances, he had not been able to put
the estate of Gondreville into sure hands. Accused of corresponding with
the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Cobourg, the marquis and his
wife were thrust into prison and condemned to death by the revolutionary
tribunal of Troyes, of which Madame Michu’s father was then president.
The fine domain of Gondreville was sold as national property. The
head-keeper, to the horror of many, was present at the execution of
the marquis and his wife in his capacity as president of the club of
Jacobins at Arcis. Michu, the orphan son of a peasant, showered with
benefactions by the marquise, who brought him up in her own home and
gave him his place as keeper, was regarded as a Brutus by excited
demagogues; but the people of the neighborhood ceased to recognize him
after this act of base ingratitude. The purchaser of the estate was a
man from Arcis named Marion, grandson of a former bailiff in the Simeuse
family. This man, a lawyer before and after the Revolution, was afraid
of the keeper; he made him his bailiff with a salary of three thousand
francs, and gave him an interest in the sales of timber; Michu, who was
thought to have some ten thousand francs of his own laid by, married
the daughter of a tanner at Troyes, an apostle of the Revolution in that
town, where he was president of the revolutionary tribunal. This tanner,
a man of profound convictions, who resembled Saint-Just as to character,
was afterwards mixed up in Baboeuf’s conspiracy and killed himself to
escape execution. Marthe was the handsomest girl in Troyes. In spite of
her shrinking modesty she had been forced by her formidable father to
play the part of Goddess of Liberty in some republican ceremony.
The new proprietor came only three times to Gondreville in the course
of seven years. His grandfather had been bailiff of the estate under the
Simeuse family, and all Arcis took for granted that the citizen Marion
was the secret representative of the present Marquis and his twin
brother. As long as the Terror lasted, Michu, still bailiff of
Gondreville, a devoted patriot, son-in-law of the president of the
revolutionary tribunal of Troyes and flattered by Malin, representative
from the department of the Aube, was the object of a certain sort
of respect. But when the Mountain was overthrown and after his
father-in-law committed suicide, he found himself a scape-goat;
everybody hastened to accuse him, in common with his father-in-law, of
acts to which, so far as he was concerned, he was a total stranger. The
bailiff resented the injustice of the community; he stiffened his back
and took an attitude of hostility. He talked boldly. But after the
18th Brumaire he maintained an unbroken silence, the philosophy of the
strong; he struggled no longer against public opinion, and contented
himself with attending to his own affairs,--wise conduct, which led his
neighbors to pronounce him sly, for he owned, it was said, a fortune of
not less than a hundred thousand francs in landed property. In the first
place, he spent nothing; next, this property was legitimately acquired,
partly from the inheritance of his father-in-law’s estate, and partly
from the savings of six-thousand francs a year, the salary he derived
from his place with its profits and emoluments. He had been bailiff of
Gondreville for the last twelve years and every one had estimated the
probable amount of his savings, so that when, after the Consulate was
proclaimed, he bought a farm for fifty thousand francs, the suspicions
attaching to his former opinions lessened, and the community of Arcis
gave him credit for intending to recover himself in public estimation.
Unfortunately, at the very moment when public opinion was condoning
his past a foolish affair, envenomed by the gossip of the country-side,
revived the latent and very general belief in the ferocity of his
character.
One evening, coming away from Troyes in company with several peasants,
among whom was the farmer at Cinq-Cygne, he let fall a paper on the main
road; the farmer, who was walking behind him, stooped and picked it up.
Michu turned round, saw the paper in the man’s hands, pulled a pistol
from his belt and threatened the farmer (who knew how to read) to blow
his brains out if he opened the paper. Michu’s action was so sudden and
violent, the tone of his voice so alarming, his eyes blazed so savagely,
that the men about him turned cold with fear. The farmer of Cinq-Cygne
was already his enemy. Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, the man’s employer,
was a cousin of the Simeuse brothers; she had only one farm left for her
maintenance and was now residing at her chateau of Cinq-Cygne. She lived
for her cousins the twins, with whom she had played in childhood at
Troyes and at Gondreville. Her only brother, Jules de Cinq-Cygne, who
emigrated before the twins, died at Mayence, but by a privilege which
was somewhat rare and will be mentioned later, the name of Cinq-Cygne
was not to perish through lack of male heirs.
This affair between Michu and the farmer made a great noise in the
arrondissement and darkened the already mysterious shadows which seemed
to veil him. Nor was it the only circumstance which made him feared.
A few months after this scene the citizen Marion, present owner of the
Gondreville estate, came to inspect it with the citizen Malin. Rumor
said that Marion was about to sell the property to his companion, who
had profited by political events and had just been appointed on the
Council of State by the First Consul, in return for his services on
the 18th Brumaire. The shrewd heads of the little town of Arcis now
perceived that Marion had been the agent of Malin in the purchase of the
property, and not of the brothers Simeuse, as was first supposed. The
all-powerful Councillor of State was the most important personage in
Arcis. He had obtained for one of his political friends the prefecture
of Troyes, and for a farmer at Gondreville the exemption of his son from
the draft; in fact, he had done services to many. Consequently, the sale
met with no opposition in the neighborhood where Malin then reigned, and
where he still reigns supreme.
The Empire was just dawning. Those who in these days read the histories
of the French Revolution can form no conception of the vast spaces which
public thought traversed between events which now seem to have been so
near together. The strong need of peace and tranquillity which every
one felt after the violent tumults of the Revolution brought about a
complete forgetfulness of important anterior facts. History matured
rapidly under the advance of new and eager interests. No one, therefore,
except Michu, looked into the past of this affair, which the community
accepted as a simple matter. Marion, who had bought Gondreville for six
hundred thousand francs in assignats, sold it for the value of a couple
of million in coin; but the only payments actually made by Malin were
for the costs of registration. Grevin, a seminary comrade of Malin,
assisted the transaction, and the Councillor rewarded his help with
the office of notary at Arcis. When the news of the sale reached the
pavilion, brought there by a farmer whose farm, at Grouage, was situated
between the forest and the park on the left of the noble avenue, Michu
turned pale and left the house. He lay in wait for Marion, and finally
met him alone in one of the shrubberies of the park.
“Is monsieur about to sell Gondreville?” asked the bailiff.
“Yes, Michu, yes. You will have a man of powerful influence for your
master. He is the friend of the First Consul, and very intimate with all
the ministers; he will protect you.”
“Then you were holding the estate for him?”
“I don’t say that,” replied Marion. “At the time I bought it I was
looking for a place to put my money, and I invested in national property
as the best security. But it doesn’t suit me to keep an estate once
belonging to a family in which my father was--”
“--a servant,” said Michu, violently. “But you shall not sell it! I want
it; and I can pay for it.”
“You?”
“Yes, I; seriously, in good gold,--eight hundred thousand francs.”
“Eight hundred thousand francs!” exclaimed Marion. “Where did you get
them?”
“That’s none of your business,” replied Michu; then, softening his
tone, he added in a low voice: “My father-in-law saved the lives of many
persons.”
“You are too late, Michu; the sale is made.”
“You must put it off, monsieur!” cried the bailiff, seizing his master
by the hand which he held as in a vice. “I am hated, but I choose to be
rich and powerful, and I must have Gondreville. Listen to me; I don’t
cling to life; sell me that place or I’ll blow your brains out!--”
“But do give me time to get off my bargain with Malin; he’s troublesome
to deal with.”
“I’ll give you twenty-four hours. If you say a word about this matter
I’ll chop your head off as I would chop a turnip.”
Marion and Malin left the chateau in the course of the night. Marion was
frightened; he told Malin of the meeting and begged him to keep an eye
on the bailiff. It was impossible for Marion to avoid delivering the
property to the man who had been the real purchaser, and Michu did not
seem likely to admit any such reason. Moreover, this service done by
Marion to Malin was to be, and in fact ended by being, the origin of the
former’s political fortune, and also that of his brother. In 1806 Malin
had him appointed chief justice of an imperial court, and after
the creation of tax-collectors his brother obtained the post of
receiver-general for the department of the Aube. The State Councillor
told Marion to stay in Paris, and he warned the minister of police, who
gave orders that Michu should be secretly watched. Not wishing to push
the man to extremes, Malin kept him on as bailiff, under the iron rule
of Grevin the notary of Arcis.
From that moment Michu became more absorbed and taciturn than ever, and
obtained the reputation of a man who was capable of committing a crime.
Malin, the Councillor of State (a function which the First Consul raised
to the level of a ministry), and a maker of the Code, played a great
part in Paris, where he bought one of the finest mansions in the
Faubuorg Saint-Germain after marrying the only daughter of a rich
contractor named Sibuelle. He never came to Gondreville; leaving all
matters concerning the property to the management of Grevin, the Arcis
notary. After all, what had he to fear?--he, a former representative of
the Aube, and president of a club of Jacobins. And yet, the unfavorable
opinion of Michu held by the lower classes was shared by the
bourgeoisie, and Marion, Grevin, and Malin, without giving any reason or
compromising themselves on the subject, showed that they regarded him as
an extremely dangerous man. The authorities, who were under instructions
from the minister of police to watch the bailiff, did not of course
lessen this belief. The neighborhood wondered that he kept his place,
but supposed it was in consequence of the terror he inspired. It is easy
now, after these explanations, to understand the anxiety and sadness
expressed in the face of Michu’s wife.
In the first place, Marthe had been piously brought up by her mother.
Both, being good Catholics, had suffered much from the opinions and
behavior of the tanner. Marthe could never think without a blush of
having marched through the street of Troyes in the garb of a goddess.
Her father had forced her to marry Michu, whose bad reputation was
then increasing, and she feared him too much to be able to judge him.
Nevertheless, she knew that he loved her, and at the bottom of her heart
lay the truest affection for this awe-inspiring man; she had never known
him to do anything that was not just; never did he say a brutal word,
to her at least; in fact, he endeavored to forestall her every wish. The
poor pariah, believing himself disagreeable to his wife, spent most
of his time out of doors. Marthe and Michu, distrustful of each other,
lived in what is called in these days an “armed peace.” Marthe, who
saw no one, suffered keenly from the ostracism which for the last seven
years had surrounded her as the daughter of a revolutionary butcher, and
the wife of a so-called traitor. More than once she had overheard the
laborers of the adjoining farm (held by a man named Beauvisage, greatly
attached to the Simeuse family) say as they passed the pavilion, “That’s
where Judas lives!” The singular resemblance between the bailiff’s head
and that of the thirteenth apostle, which his conduct appeared to carry
out, won him that odious nickname throughout the neighborhood. It was
this distress of mind, added to vague but constant fears for the future,
which gave Marthe her thoughtful and subdued air. Nothing saddens so
deeply as unmerited degradation from which there seems no escape. A
painter could have made a fine picture of this family of pariahs in
the bosom of their pretty nook in Champagne, where the landscape is
generally sad.
“Francois!” called the bailiff, to hasten his son.
Francois Michu, a child of ten, played in the park and forest, and
levied his little tithes like a master; he ate the fruits; he chased
the game; he at least had neither cares nor troubles. Of all the family,
Francois alone was happy in a home thus isolated from the neighborhood
by its position between the park and the forest, and by the still
greater moral solitude of universal repulsion.
“Pick up these things,” said his father, pointing to the parapet, “and
put them away. Look at me! You love your father and your mother, don’t
you?” The child flung himself on his father as if to kiss him, but Michu
made a movement to shift the gun and pushed him back. “Very good. You
have sometimes chattered about things that are done here,” continued the
father, fixing his eyes, dangerous as those of a wild-cat, on the boy.
“Now remember this; if you tell the least little thing that happens here
to Gaucher, or to the Grouage and Bellache people, or even to Marianne
who loves us, you will kill your father. Never tattle again, and I will
forgive what you said yesterday.” The child began to cry. “Don’t cry;
but when any one questions you, say, as the peasants do, ‘I don’t know.’
There are persons roaming about whom I distrust. Run along! As for you
two,” he added, turning to the women, “you have heard what I said. Keep
a close mouth, both of you.”
“Husband, what are you going to do?”
Michu, who was carefully measuring a charge of powder, poured it into
the barrel of his gun, rested the weapon against the parapet and said to
Marthe:--
“No one knows I own that gun. Stand in front of it.”
Couraut, who had sprung to his feet, was barking furiously.
“Good, intelligent fellow!” cried Michu. “I am certain there are spies
about--”
Man and beast feel a spy. Couraut and Michu, who seemed to have one and
the same soul, lived together as the Arab and his horse in the desert.
The bailiff knew the modulations of the dog’s voice, just as the dog
read his master’s meaning in his eyes, or felt it exhaling in the air
from his body.
“What do you say to that?” said Michu, in a low voice, calling his
wife’s attention to two strangers who appeared in a by-path making for
the _rond-point_.
“What can it mean?” cried the old mother. “They are Parisians.”
“Here they come!” said Michu. “Hide my gun,” he whispered to his wife.
The two men who now crossed the wide open space of the _rond-point_ were
typical enough for a painter. One, who appeared to be the subaltern,
wore top-boots, turned down rather low, showing well-made calves, and
colored silk stockings of doubtful cleanliness. The breeches, of ribbed
cloth, apricot color with metal buttons, were too large; they were baggy
about the body, and the lines of their creases seemed to indicate a
sedentary man. A marseilles waistcoat, overloaded with embroidery, open,
and held together by one button only just above the stomach, gave to the
wearer a dissipated look,--all the more so, because his jet black hair,
in corkscrew curls, hid his forehead and hung down his cheeks. Two steel
watch-chains were festooned upon his breeches. The shirt was adorned
with a cameo in white and blue. The coat, cinnamon-colored, was a
treasure to caricaturists by reason of its long tails, which, when seen
from behind, bore so perfect a resemblance to a cod that the name of
that fish was given to them. The fashion of codfish tails lasted ten
years; almost the whole period of the empire of Napoleon. The cravat,
loosely fastened, and with numerous small folds, allowed the wearer
to bury his face in it up to the nostrils. His pimpled skin, his long,
thick, brick-dust colored nose, his high cheek-bones, his mouth, lacking
half its teeth but greedy for all that and menacing, his ears adorned
with huge gold rings, his low forehead,--all these personal details,
which might have seemed grotesque in many men, were rendered terrible in
him by two small eyes set in his head like those of a pig, expressive
of insatiable covetousness, and of insolent, half-jovial cruelty. These
ferreting and perspicacious blue eyes, glassy and glacial, might be
taken for the model of that famous Eye, the formidable emblem of the
police, invented during the Revolution. Black silk gloves were on his
hands and he carried a switch. He was certainly some official personage,
for he showed in his bearing, in his way of taking snuff and ramming it
into his nose, the bureaucratic importance of an office subordinate,
one who signs for his superiors and acquires a passing sovereignty by
enforcing their orders.
The other man, whose dress was in the same style, but elegant and
elegantly put on and careful in its smallest detail, wore boots _a la_
Suwaroff which came high upon the leg above a pair of tight trousers,
and creaked as he walked. Above his coat he wore a spencer, an
aristocratic garment adopted by the Clichiens and the young bloods of
Paris, which survived both the Clichiens and the fashionable youths. In
those days fashions sometimes lasted longer than parties,--a symptom of
anarchy which the year of our Lord 1830 has again presented to us. This
accomplished dandy seemed to be thirty years of age. His manners were
those of good society; he wore jewels of value; the collar of his shirt
came to the tops of his ears. His conceited and even impertinent air
betrayed a consciousness of hidden superiority. His pallid face seemed
bloodless, his thin flat nose had the sardonic expression which we see
in a death’s head, and his green eyes were inscrutable; their glance was
discreet in meaning just as the thin closed mouth was discreet in words.
The first man seemed on the whole a good fellow compared with this
younger man, who was slashing the air with a cane, the top of which,
made of gold, glittered in the sunshine. The first man might have cut
off a head with his own hand, but the second was capable of entangling
innocence, virtue, and beauty in the nets of calumny and intrigue, and
then poisoning them or drowning them. The rubicund stranger would have
comforted his victim with a jest; the other was incapable of a smile.
The first was forty-five years old, and he loved, undoubtedly, both
women and good cheer. Such men have passions which keep them slaves
to their calling. But the young man was plainly without passions and
without vices. If he was a spy he belonged to diplomacy, and did such
work from a pure love of art. He conceived, the other executed; he was
the idea, the other was the form.
“This must be Gondreville, is it not, my good woman?” said the young
man.
“We don’t say ‘my good woman’ here,” said Michu. “We are still simple
enough to say ‘citizen’ and ‘citizeness’ in these parts.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the young man, in a natural way, and without seeming at
all annoyed.
Players of ecarte often have a sense of inward disaster when some
unknown person sits down at the same table with them, whose manners,
look, voice, and method of shuffling the cards, all, to their fancy,
foretell defeat. The instant Michu looked at the young man he felt an
inward and prophetic collapse. He was struck by a fatal presentiment; he
had a sudden confused foreboding of the scaffold. A voice told him that
that dandy would destroy him, although there was nothing whatever in
common between them. For this reason his answer was rude; he was and he
wished to be forbidding.
“Don’t you belong to the Councillor of State, Malin?” said the younger
man.
“I am my own master,” answered Malin.
“Mesdames,” said the young man, assuming a most polite air, “are we not
at Gondreville? We are expected there by Monsieur Malin.”
“There’s the park,” said Michu, pointing to the open gate.
“Why are you hiding that gun, my fine girl?” said the elder, catching
sight of the carbine as he passed through the gate.
“You never let a chance escape you, even in the country!” cried his
companion.
They both turned back with a sense of distrust which the bailiff
understood at once in spite of their impassible faces. Marthe let them
look at the gun, to the tune of Couraut’s bark; she was so convinced
that her husband was meditating some evil deed that she was thankful for
the curiosity of the strangers.
Michu flung a look at his wife which made her tremble; he took the
gun and began to load it, accepting quietly the fatal ill-luck of this
encounter and the discovery of the weapon. He seemed no longer to care
for life, and his wife fathomed his inward feeling.
“So you have wolves in these parts?” said the young man, watching him.
“There are always wolves where there are sheep. You are in Champagne,
and there’s a forest; we have wild-boars, large and small game both, a
little of everything,” replied Michu, in a truculent manner.
“I’ll bet, Corentin,” said the elder of the two men, after exchanging a
glance with his companion, “that this is my friend Michu--”
“We never kept pigs together that I know of,” said the bailiff.
“No, but we both presided over Jacobins, citizen,” replied the old
cynic,--“you at Arcis, I elsewhere. I see you’ve kept your Carmagnole
civility, but it’s no longer in fashion, my good fellow.”
“The park strikes me as rather large; we might lose our way. If you are
really the bailiff show us the path to the chateau,” said Corentin, in a
peremptory tone.
Michu whistled to his son and continued to load his gun. Corentin looked
at Marthe with indifference, while his companion seemed charmed by
her; but the young man noticed the signs of her inward distress, which
escaped the old libertine, who had, however, noticed and feared the gun.
The natures of the two men were disclosed in this trifling yet important
circumstance.
“I’ve an appointment the other side of the forest,” said the bailiff. “I
can’t go with you, but my son here will take you to the chateau. How did
you get to Gondreville? did you come by Cinq-Cygne?”
“We had, like yourself, business in the forest,” said Corentin, without
apparent sarcasm.
“Francois,” cried Michu, “take these gentlemen to the chateau by the
wood path, so that no one sees them; they don’t follow the beaten
tracks. Come here,” he added, as the strangers turned to walk away,
talking together as they did so in a low voice. Michu caught the boy
in his arms, and kissed him almost solemnly with an expression which
confirmed his wife’s fears; cold chills ran down her back; she glanced
at her mother with haggard eyes, for she could not weep.
“Go,” said Michu; and he watched the boy until he was entirely out
of sight. Couraut was barking on the other side of the road in the
direction of Grouage. “Oh, that’s Violette,” remarked Michu. “This is
the third time that old fellow has passed here to-day. What’s in the
wind? Hush, Couraut!”
A few moments later the trot of a pony was heard approaching.
CHAPTER II. A CRIME RELINQUISHED
Violette, mounted on one of those little nags which the farmers in the
neighborhood of Paris use so much, soon appeared, wearing a round hat
with a broad brim, beneath which his wood-colored face, deeply wrinkled,
appeared in shadow. His gray eyes, mischievous and lively, concealed
in a measure the treachery of his nature. His skinny legs, covered with
gaiters of white linen which came to the knee, hung rather than rested
in the stirrups, seemingly held in place by the weight of his hob-nailed
shoes. Above his jacket of blue cloth he wore a cloak of some coarse
woollen stuff woven in black and white stripes. His gray hair fell in
curls behind his ears. This dress, the gray horse with its short legs,
the manner in which Violette sat him, stomach projecting and shoulders
thrown back, the big chapped hands which held the shabby bridle, all
depicted him plainly as the grasping, ambitious peasant who desires
to own land and buys it at any price. His mouth, with its bluish lips
parted as if a surgeon had pried them open with a scalpel, and the
innumerable wrinkles of his face and forehead hindered the play of
features which were expressive only in their outlines. Those hard, fixed
lines seemed menacing, in spite of the humility which country-folks
assume and beneath which they conceal their emotions and schemes, as
savages and Easterns hide theirs behind an imperturbable gravity. First
a mere laborer, then the farmer of Grouage through a long course of
persistent ill-doing, he continued his evil practices after conquering a
position which surpassed his early hopes. He wished harm to all men
and wished it vehemently. When he could assist in doing harm he did it
eagerly. He was openly envious; but, no matter how malignant he might
be, he kept within the limits of the law,--neither beyond it nor behind
it, like a parliamentary opposition. He believed his prosperity depended
on the ruin of others, and that whoever was above him was an enemy
against whom all weapons were good. A character like this is very common
among the peasantry.
Violette’s present business was to obtain from Malin an extension of the
lease of his farm, which had only six years longer to run. Jealous of
the bailiff’s means, he watched him narrowly. The neighbors reproached
him for his intimacy with “Judas”; but the sly old farmer, wishing
to obtain a twelve years’ lease, was really lying in wait for an
opportunity to serve either the government or Malin, who distrusted
Michu. Violette, by the help of the game-keeper of Gondreville and
others belonging to the estate, kept Malin informed of all Michu’s
actions. Malin had endeavored, fruitlessly, to win over Marianne, the
Michus’ servant-woman; but Violette and his satellites heard everything
from Gaucher,--a lad on whose fidelity Michu relied, but who betrayed
him for cast-off clothing, waistcoats, buckles, cotton socks and
sugar-plums. The boy had no suspicion of the importance of his gossip.
Violette in his reports blackened all Michu’s actions and gave them
a criminal aspect by absurd suggestions,--unknown, of course, to the
bailiff, who was aware, however, of the base part played by the farmer,
and took delight in mystifying him.
“You must have a deal of business at Bellache to be here again,” said
Michu.
“Again! is that meant as a reproach, Monsieur Michu?--Hey! I did not
know you had that gun. You are not going to whistle for the sparrows on
that pipe, I suppose--”
“It grew in a field of mine which bears guns,” replied Michu. “Look!
this is how I sow them.”
The bailiff took aim at a viper thirty feet away and cut it in two.
“Have you got that bandit’s weapon to protect your master?” said
Violette. “Perhaps he gave it to you.”
“He came from Paris expressly to bring it to me,” replied Michu.
“People are talking all round the neighborhood of this journey of his;
some say he is in disgrace and has to retire from office; others that he
wants to see things for himself down here. But anyway, why does he
come, like the First Consul, without giving warning? Did you know he was
coming?”
“I am not on such terms with him as to be in his confidence.”
“Then you have not seen him?”
“I did not know he was here till I got back from my rounds in the
forest,” said Michu, reloading his gun.
“He has sent to Arcis for Monsieur Grevin,” said Violette; “they are
scheming something.”
“If you are going round by Cinq-Cygne, take me up behind you,” said the
bailiff. “I’m going there.”
Violette was too timid to have a man of Michu’s strength on his crupper,
and he spurred his beast. Judas slung his gun over his shoulder and
walked rapidly up the avenue.
“Who can it be that Michu is angry with?” said Marthe to her mother.
“Ever since he heard of Monsieur Malin’s arrival he has been gloomy,”
replied the old woman. “But it is getting damp here, let us go in.”
After the two women had settled themselves in the chimney corner they
heard Couraut’s bark.
“There’s my husband returning!” cried Marthe.
Michu passed up the stairs; his wife, uneasy, followed him to their
bedroom.
“See if any one is about,” he said to her, in a voice of some emotion.
“No one,” she replied. “Marianne is in the field with the cow, and
Gaucher--”
“Where is Gaucher?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I distrust that little scamp. Go up in the garret, look in the
hay-loft, look everywhere for him.”
Marthe left the room to obey the order. When she returned she found
Michu on his knees, praying.
“What is the matter?” she said, frightened.
The bailiff took his wife round the waist and drew her to him, saying in
a voice of deep feeling: “If we never see each other again remember, my
poor wife, that I loved you well. Follow minutely the instructions which
you will find in a letter buried at the foot of the larch in that copse.
It is enclosed in a tin tube. Do not touch it until after my death.
And remember, Marthe, whatever happens to me, that in spite of man’s
injustice, my arm has been the instrument of the justice of God.”
Marthe, who turned pale by degrees, became white as her own linen; she
looked at her husband with fixed eyes widened by fear; she tried to
speak, but her throat was dry. Michu disappeared like a shadow, having
tied Couraut to the foot of his bed where the dog, after the manner of
all dogs, howled in despair.
Michu’s anger against Monsieur Marion had serious grounds, but it was
now concentrated on another man, far more criminal in his eyes,--on
Malin, whose secrets were known to the bailiff, he being in a better
position than others to understand the conduct of the State Councillor.
Michu’s father-in-law had had, politically speaking, the confidence of
the former representative to the Convention, through Grevin.
Perhaps it would be well here to relate the circumstances which
brought the Simeuse and the Cinq-Cygne families into connection with
Malin,--circumstances which weighed heavily on the fate of Mademoiselle
de Cinq-Cygne’s twin cousins, but still more heavily on that of Marthe
and Michu.
The Cinq-Cygne mansion at Troyes stands opposite to that of Simeuse.
When the populace, incited by minds that were as shrewd as they were
cautious, pillaged the hotel Simeuse, discovered the marquis and
marchioness, who were accused of corresponding with the nation’s
enemies, and delivered them to the national guards who took them to
prison, the crowd shouted, “Now for the Cinq-Cygnes!” To their minds the
Cinq-Cygnes were as guilty as other aristocrats. The brave and worthy
Monsieur de Simeuse in the endeavor to save his two sons, then eighteen
years of age, whose courage was likely to compromise them, had confided
them, a few hours before the storm broke, to their aunt, the Comtesse de
Cinq-Cygne. Two servants attached to the Simeuse family accompanied the
young men to her house. The old marquis, who was anxious that his name
should not die out, requested that what was happening might be concealed
from his sons, even in the event of dire disaster. Laurence, the only
daughter of the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, was then twelve years of age;
her cousins both loved her and she loved them equally. Like other twins
the Simeuse brothers were so alike that for a long while their mother
dressed them in different colors to know them apart. The first comer,
the eldest, was named Paul-Marie, the other Marie-Paul. Laurence de
Cinq-Cygne, to whom their danger was revealed, played her woman’s part
well though still a mere child. She coaxed and petted her cousins and
kept them occupied until the very moment when the populace surrounded
the Cinq-Cygne mansion. The two brothers then knew their danger for the
first time, and looked at each other. Their resolution was instantly
taken; they armed their own servants and those of the Comtesse de
Cinq-Cygne, barricaded the doors, and stood guard at the windows, after
closing the wooden blinds, with the five men-servants and the Abbe
d’Hauteserre, a relative of the Cinq-Cygnes. These eight courageous
champions poured a deadly fire into the crowd. Every shot killed or
wounded an assailant. Laurence, instead of wringing her hands, loaded
the guns with extraordinary coolness, and passed the balls and powder to
those who needed them. The Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne was on her knees.
“What are you doing, mother?” said Laurence.
“I am praying,” she answered, “for them and for you.”
Sublime words,--said also by the mother of Godoy, prince of the Peace,
in Spain, under similar circumstances.
In a moment eleven persons were killed and lying on the ground among a
number of wounded. Such results either cool or excite a populace; either
it grows savage at the work or discontinues it. On the present occasion
those in advance recoiled; but the crowd behind them were there to kill
and rob, and when they saw their own dead, they cried out: “Murder!
Murder! Revenge!” The wiser heads went in search of the representative
to the Convention, Malin. The twins, by this time aware of the
disastrous events of the day, suspected Malin of desiring the ruin
of their family, and of causing the arrest of their parents, and the
suspicion soon became a certainty. They posted themselves beneath the
porte-cochere, gun in hand, intending to kill Malin as soon as he made
his appearance; but the countess lost her head; she imagined her house
in ashes and her daughter assassinated, and she blamed the young men for
their heroic defence and compelled them to desist. It was Laurence who
opened the door slightly when Malin summoned the household to admit
him. Seeing her, the representative relied upon the awe he expected to
inspire in a mere child, and he entered the house. To his first words
of inquiry as to why the family were making such a resistance, the girl
replied: “If you really desire to give liberty to France how is it that
you do not protect us in our homes? They are trying to tear down this
house, monsieur, to murder us, and you say we have no right to oppose
force to force!”
Malin stood rooted to the ground.
“You, the son of a mason employed by the Grand Marquis to build his
castle!” exclaimed Marie-Paul, “you have let them drag our father to
prison--you have believed calumnies!”
“He shall be released at once,” said Malin, who thought himself lost
when he saw each youth clutch his weapon convulsively.
“You owe your life to that promise,” said Marie-Paul, solemnly. “If it
is not fulfilled to-night we shall find you again.”
“As to that howling populace,” said Laurence, “If you do not send them
away, the next blood will be yours. Now, Monsieur Malin, leave this
house!”
The Conventionalist did leave it, and he harangued the crowd, dwelling
on the sacred rights of the domestic hearth, the habeas corpus and
the English “home.” He told them that the law and the people were
sovereigns, that the law _was_ the people, and that the people could
only act through the law, and that power was vested in the law. The
particular law of personal necessity made him eloquent, and he managed
to disperse the crowd. But he never forgot the contemptuous expression
of the two brothers, nor the “Leave this house!” of Mademoiselle de
Cinq-Cygne. Therefore, when it was a question of selling the estates of
the Comte de Cinq-Cygne, Laurence’s brother, as national property, the
sale was rigorously made. The agents left nothing for Laurence but the
chateau, the park and gardens, and one farm called that of Cinq-Cygne.
Malin instructed the appraisers that Laurence had no rights beyond her
legal share,--the nation taking possession of all that belonged to her
brother, who had emigrated and, above all, had borne arms against the
Republic.
The evening after this terrible tumult, Laurence so entreated her
cousins to leave the country, fearing treachery on the part of Malin,
or some trap into which they might fall, that they took horse that night
and gained the Prussian outposts. They had scarcely reached the forest
of Gondreville before the hotel Cinq-Cygne was surrounded; Malin came
himself to arrest the heirs of the house of Simeuse. He dared not lay
hands on the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, who was in bed with a nervous
fever, nor on Laurence, a child of twelve. The servants, fearing the
severity of the Republic, had disappeared. The next day the news of the
resistance of the brothers and their flight to Prussia was known to the
neighborhood. A crowd of three thousand persons assembled before the
hotel de Cinq-Cygne, which was demolished with incredible rapidity.
Madame de Cinq-Cygne, carried to the hotel Simeuse, died there from the
effects of the fever aggravated by terror.
Michu did not appear in the political arena until after these events,
for the marquis and his wife remained in prison over five months. During
this time Malin was away on a mission. But when Monsieur Marion sold
Gondreville to the Councillor of State, Michu understood the latter’s
game,--or rather, he thought he did; for Malin was, like Fouche, one of
those personages who are of such depth in all their different aspects
that they are impenetrable when they play a part, and are never
understood until long after their drama is ended.
In all the chief circumstances of Malin’s life he had never failed to
consult his faithful friend Grevin, the notary of Arcis, whose judgment
on men and things was, at a distance, clear-cut and precise. This
faculty is the wisdom and makes the strength of second-rate men. Now, in
November, 1803, a combination of events (already related in the “Depute
d’Arcis”) made matters so serious for the Councillor of State that a
letter might have compromised the two friends. Malin, who hoped to be
appointed senator, was afraid to offer his explanations in Paris. He
came to Gondreville, giving the First Consul only one of the reasons
that made him wish to be there; that reason gave him an appearance of
zeal in the eyes of Bonaparte; whereas his journey, far from concerning
the interests of the State, related to his own interests only. On this
particular day, as Michu was watching the park and expecting, after
the manner of a red Indian, a propitious moment for his vengeance,
the astute Malin, accustomed to turn all events to his own profit, was
leading his friend Grevin to a little field in the English garden,
a lonely spot in the park, favorable for a secret conference. There,
standing in the centre of the grass plot and speaking low, the friends
were at too great a distance to be overheard if any one were lurking
near enough to listen to them; they were also sure of time to change the
conversation if others unwarily approached.
“Why couldn’t we have stayed in a room in the chateau?” asked Grevin.
“Didn’t you take notice of those two men whom the prefect of police has
sent here to me?”
Though Fouche made himself in the matter of the Pichegru, Georges,
Moreau, and Polignac conspiracy the soul of the Consular cabinet, he
did not at this time control the ministry of police, but was merely a
councillor of State like Malin.
“Those men,” continued Malin, “are Fouche’s two arms. One, that dandy
Corentin, whose face is like a glass of lemonade, vinegar on his lips
and verjuice in his eyes, put an end to the insurrection at the West
in the year VII. in less than fifteen days. The other is a disciple of
Lenoir; he is the only one who preserves the great traditions of the
police. I had asked for an agent of no great account, backed by some
official personage, and they send me those past-masters of the business!
Ah, Grevin, Fouche wants to pry into my game. That’s why I left those
fellows dining at the chateau; they may look into everything for all I
care; they won’t find Louis XVIII. nor any sign of him.”
“But see here, my dear fellow, what game are you playing?” cried Grevin.
“Ha, my friend, a double game is a dangerous one, but this, taking
Fouche into account, is a triple one. He may have nosed the fact that I
am in the secrets of the house of Bourbon.”
“You?”
“I,” replied Malin.
“Have you forgotten Favras?”
The words made an impression on the councillor.
“Since when?” asked Grevin, after a pause.
“Since the Consulate for life.”
“I hope there’s no proof of it?”
“Not that!” said Malin, clicking his thumb-nail against his teeth.
In few words the Councillor of State gave a clear and succinct account
of the critical position in which Bonaparte was about to hold England,
by threatening her with invasion from the camp at Boulogne; he explained
to Grevin the bearings of that project, which was unobserved by France
and Europe but suspected by Pitt; also the critical position in which
England was about to put Bonaparte. A powerful coalition, Prussia,
Austria, and Russia, paid by English gold, was pledged to furnish
seven hundred thousand men under arms. At the same time a formidable
conspiracy was throwing a network over the whole of France, including
among its members montagnards, chouans, royalists, and their princes.
“Louis XVIII. held that as long as there were three Consuls anarchy was
certain, and that he could at some opportune moment take his revenge
for the 13th Vendemiaire and the 18th Fructidor,” said Malin, “but the
Consulate for life has unmasked Bonaparte’s intentions--he will soon be
emperor. The late sub-lieutenant means to create a dynasty! This time
his life is in actual danger; and the plot is far better laid than that
of the Rue Saint-Nicaise. Pichegru, Georges, Moreau, the Duc d’Enghien,
Polignac and Riviere, the two friends of the Comte d’Artois are in it.”
“What an amalgamation!” cried Grevin.
“France is being silently invaded; no stone is left unturned; the thing
will be carried with a rush. A hundred picked men, commanded by Georges,
are to attack the Consular guard and the Consul hand to hand.”
“Well then, denounce them.”
“For the last two months the Consul, his minister of police, the prefect
and Fouche, hold some of the clues of this vast conspiracy; but they
don’t know its full extent, and at this particular moment they are
leaving nearly all the conspirators free, so as to discover more about
it.”
“As to rights,” said the notary, “the Bourbons have much more right to
conceive, plan, and execute a scheme against Bonaparte, than Bonaparte
had on the 18th Brumaire against the Republic, whose product he was. He
murdered his mother on that occasion, but these royalists only seek to
recover what was theirs. I can understand that the princes and
their adherents, seeing the lists of the _emigres_ closed, mortgages
suppressed, the Catholic faith restored, anti-revolutionary decrees
accumulating, should begin to see that their return is becoming
difficult, not to say impossible. Bonaparte being the sole obstacle now
in their way, they want to get rid of him--nothing simpler. Conspirators
if defeated are brigands, if successful, heroes; and your perplexity
seems to me very natural.”
“The matter now is,” said Malin, “to make Bonaparte fling the head of
the Duc d’Enghien at the Bourbons, just as the Convention flung the head
of Louis XVI. at the kings, so as to commit him as fully as we are to
the Revolution; _or else_, we must upset the idol of the French people
and their future emperor, and seat the true throne upon his ruins. I am
at the mercy of some event, some fortunate pistol-shot, some infernal
machine which does its work. Even I don’t know the whole conspiracy;
they don’t tell me all; but they have asked me to call the Council
of State at the critical moment and direct its action towards the
restoration of the Bourbons.”
“Wait,” said the notary.
“Impossible! I am compelled to make my decision at once.”
“Why?”
“Well, the Simeuse brothers are in the conspiracy; they are here in
the neighborhood; I must either have them watched, let them compromise
themselves, and so be rid of them, or else I must privately protect
them. I asked the prefect for underlings and he has sent me lynxes, who
came through Troyes and have got the gendarmerie to support them.”
“Gondreville is your real object,” said Grevin, “and this conspiracy
your best chance of keeping it. Fouche, Talleyrand, and those two
fellows have nothing to do with that. Therefore play fair with
them. What nonsense! those who cut Louis XVI.’s head off are in the
government; France is full of men who have bought national property,
and yet you talk of bringing back those who would require you to give up
Gondreville! If the Bourbons were not imbeciles they would pass a sponge
over all we have done. Warn Bonaparte, that’s my advice.”
“A man of my rank can’t denounce,” said Malin, quickly.
“Your rank!” exclaimed Grevin, smiling.
“They have offered to make me Keeper of the Seals.”
“Ah! Now I understand your bewilderment, and it is for me to see clear
in this political darkness and find a way out for you. Now, it is quite
impossible to foresee what events may happen to bring back the Bourbons
when a General Bonaparte is in possession of eighty line of battle
ships and four hundred thousand men. The most difficult thing of all in
expectant politics is to know when a power that totters will fall; but,
my old man, Bonaparte’s power is not tottering, it is in the ascendant.
Don’t you think that Fouche may be sounding you so as to get to the
bottom of your mind, and then get rid of you?”
“No; I am sure of my go-between. Besides, Fouche would never, under
those circumstances, send me such fellows as these; he would know they
would make me suspicious.”
“They alarm me,” said Grevin. “If Fouche does not distrust you, and is
not seeking to probe you, why does he send them? Fouche doesn’t play
such a trick as that without a motive; what is it?”
“What decides me,” said Malin, “is that I should never be easy with
those two Simeuse brothers in France. Perhaps Fouche, who knows how I am
placed towards them, wants to make sure they don’t escape him, and hopes
through them to reach the Condes.”
“That’s right, old fellow; it is not under Bonaparte that the present
possessor of Gondreville can be ousted.”
Just then Malin, happening to look up, saw the muzzle of a gun through
the foliage of a tall linden.
“I was not mistaken, I thought I heard the click of a trigger,” he said
to Grevin, after getting behind the trunk of a large tree, where the
notary, uneasy at his friend’s sudden movement, followed him.
“It is Michu,” said Grevin; “I see his red beard.”
“Don’t let us seem afraid,” said Malin, who walked slowly away, saying
at intervals: “Why is that man so bitter against the owners of this
property? It was not you he was covering. If he overheard us he had
better ask the prayers of the congregation! Who the devil would have
thought of looking up into the trees!”
“There’s always something to learn,” said the notary. “But he was a good
distance off, and we spoke low.”
“I shall tell Corentin about it,” replied Malin.
CHAPTER III. THE MASK THROWN OFF
A few moments later Michu returned home, his face pale, his features
contracted.
“What is the matter?” said his wife, frightened.
“Nothing,” he replied, seeing Violette whose presence silenced him.
Michu took a chair and sat down quietly before the fire, into which
he threw a letter which he drew from a tin tube such as are given to
soldiers to hold their papers. This act, which enabled Marthe to draw
a long breath like one relieved of a great burden, greatly puzzled
Violette. The bailiff laid his gun on the mantel-shelf with admirable
composure. Marianne the servant, and Marthe’s mother were spinning by
the light of a lamp.
“Come, Francois,” said the father, presently, “it is time to go to bed.”
He lifted the boy roughly by the middle of his body and carried him off.
“Run down to the cellar,” he whispered, when they reached the stairs.
“Empty one third out of two bottles of the Macon wine, and fill them up
with the Cognac brandy which is on the shelf. Then mix a bottle of white
wine with one half brandy. Do it neatly, and put the three bottles on
the empty cask which stands by the cellar door. When you hear me open
the window in the kitchen come out of the cellar, run to the
stable, saddle my horse, mount it, and go and wait for me at
Poteaudes-Gueux--That little scamp hates to go to bed,” said Michu,
returning; “he likes to do as grown people do, see all, hear all, and
know all. You spoil my people, pere Violette.”
“Goodness!” cried Violette, “what has loosened your tongue? I never
heard you say as much before.”
“Do you suppose I let myself be spied upon without taking notice of it?
You are on the wrong side, pere Violette. If, instead of serving those
who hate me, you were on my side I could do better for you than renew
that lease of yours.”
“How?” said the peasant, opening wide his avaricious eyes.
“I’ll sell you my property cheap.”
“Nothing is cheap when we have to pay,” said Violette, sententiously.
“I want to leave the neighborhood, and I’ll let you have my farm of
Mousseau, the buildings, granary, and cattle for fifty thousand francs.”
“Really?”
“Does that suit you?”
“Hang it! I must think--”
“We’ll talk about it--I shall want earnest money.”
“I have no money.”
“Well, a note.”
“Can’t give it.”
“Tell me who sent you here to-day.”
“I am on my way back from where I spent this afternoon, and I only
stopped in to say good-evening.”
“Back without your horse? What a fool you must take me for! You are
lying, and you shall not have my farm.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, it was monsieur Grevin who sent me. He
said ‘Violette, we want Michu; do you go and get him; if he isn’t at
home, wait for him.’ I saw I should have to stay here all this evening.”
“Are those sharks from Paris still at the chateau?”
“Ah! that I don’t know; but there were people in the salon.”
“You shall have my farm; we’ll settle the terms now. Wife, go and get
some wine to wash down the contract. Take the best Roussillon, the wine
of the ex-marquis,--we are not babes. You’ll find a couple of bottles on
the empty cask near the door, and a bottle of white wine.”
“Very good,” said Violette, who never got drunk. “Let us drink.”
“You have fifty thousand francs beneath the floor of your bedroom under
your bed, pere Violette; you will give them to me two weeks after we
sign the deed of sale before Grevin--” Violette stared at Michu and grew
livid. “Ah! you came here to spy upon a Jacobin who had the honor to be
president of the club at Arcis, and you imagine he will let you get the
better of him! I have eyes, I saw where your tiles have been freshly
cemented, and I concluded that you did not pry them up to plant wheat
there. Come, drink.”
Violette, much troubled, drank a large glass of wine without noticing
the quality; terror had put a hot iron in his stomach, the brandy was
not hotter than his cupidity. He would have given many things to be
safely home and able to change the hiding-place of his treasure. The
three women smiled.
“Do you like that wine?” said Michu, refilling his glass.
“Yes, I do.”
After a good half-hour’s decision on the time when the buyer might take
possession, and on the various punctilios which the peasantry bring
forward when concluding a bargain,--in the midst of assertions and
counter-assertions, the filling and emptying of glasses, the giving of
promises and denials, Violette suddenly fell forward with his head on
the table, not tipsy, but dead-drunk. The instant that Michu saw his
eyes blur he opened the window.
“Where’s that scamp, Gaucher?” he said to his wife.
“In bed.”
“You, Marianne,” said the bailiff to his faithful servant, “stand in
front of his door and watch him. You, mother, stay down here, and keep
an eye on this spy; keep your eyes and ears open and don’t unfasten the
door to any one but Francois. It is a question of life or death,” he
added, in a deep voice. “Every creature beneath my roof must remember
that I have not quitted it this night; all of you must assert that--even
though your heads were on the block. Come,” he said to Marthe,
“come, wife, put on your shoes, take your coat, and let us be off! No
questions--I go with you.”
For the last three quarters of an hour the man’s demeanor and glance
were of despotic authority, all-powerful, irresistible, drawn from the
same mysterious source from which great generals on fields of battle who
inflame an army, great orators inspiring vast audiences, and (it must be
said) great criminals perpetrating bold crimes derive their inspiration.
At such times invincible influence seems to exhale from the head and
issue from the tongue; the gesture even can inject the will of the one
man into others. The three women knew that some dreadful crisis was at
hand; without warning of its nature they felt it in the rapid actions of
the man, whose countenance shone, whose forehead spoke, whose brilliant
eyes glittered like stars; they saw it in the sweat that covered his
brow to the roots of his hair, while more than once his voice vibrated
with impatience and fury. Marthe obeyed passively. Armed to the teeth
and with his gun over his shoulder Michu dashed into the avenue,
followed by his wife. They soon reached the cross-roads where Francois
was in waiting hidden among the bushes.
“The boy is intelligent,” said Michu, when he caught sight of him.
These were his first words. His wife had rushed after him, unable to
speak.
“Go back to the house, hide in a thick tree, and watch the country
and the park,” he said to his son. “We have all gone to bed, no one is
stirring. Your grandmother will not open the door until you ask her to
let you in. Remember every word I say to you. The life of your father
and mother depends on it. No one must know we did not sleep at home.”
After whispering these words to the boy, who instantly disappeared in
the forest like an eel in the mud, Michu turned to his wife.
“Mount behind me,” he said, “and pray that God be with us. Sit firm,
the beast may die of it.” So saying he kicked the horse with both heels,
pressing him with his powerful knees, and the animal sprang forward with
the rapidity of a hunter, seeming to understand what his master wanted
of him, and crossed the forest in fifteen minutes. Then Michu, who had
not swerved from the shortest way, pulled up, found a spot at the
edge of the woods from which he could see the roofs of the chateau of
Cinq-Cygne lighted by the moon, tied his horse to a tree, and followed
by his wife, gained a little eminence which overlooked the valley.
The chateau, which Marthe and Michu looked at together for a moment,
makes a charming effect in the landscape. Though it has little extent
and is of no importance whatever as architecture, yet archaeologically
it is not without a certain interest. This old edifice of the fifteenth
century, placed on an eminence, surrounded on all sides by a moat,
or rather by deep, wide ditches always full of water, is built in
cobble-stones buried in cement, the walls being seven feet thick.
Its simplicity recalls the rough and warlike life of feudal days. The
chateau, plain and unadorned, has two large reddish towers at either
end, connected by a long main building with casement windows, the
stone mullions of which, being roughly carved, bear some resemblance to
vine-shoots. The stairway is outside the house, at the middle, in a sort
of pentagonal tower entered through a small arched door. The interior
of the ground-floor together with the rooms on the first storey
were modernized in the time of Louis XIV., and the whole building is
surmounted by an immense roof broken by casement windows with carved
triangular pediments. Before the castle lies a vast green sward the
trees of which had recently been cut down. On either side of the
entrance bridge are two small dwellings where the gardeners live,
connected across the road by a paltry iron railing without character,
evidently modern. To right and left of the lawn, which is divided in
two by a paved road-way, are the stables, cow-sheds, barns, wood-house,
bakery, poultry-yard, and the offices, placed in what were doubtless
the remains of two wings of the old building similar to those that were
still standing. The two large towers, with their pepper-pot roofs which
had not been rased, and the belfry of the middle tower, gave an air of
distinction to the village. The church, also very old, showed near by
its pointed steeple, which harmonized well with the solid masses of the
castle. The moon brought out in full relief the various roofs and towers
on which it played and sparkled.
Michu gazed at this baronial structure in a manner that upset all his
wife’s ideas about him; his face, now calm, wore a look of hope and also
a sort of pride. His eyes scanned the horizon with a glance of defiance;
he listened for sounds in the air. It was now nine o’clock; the moon
was beginning to cast its light upon the margin of the forest and to
illumine the little bluff on which they stood. The position struck him
as dangerous and he left it, fearful of being seen. But no suspicious
noise troubled the peace of the beautiful valley encircled on this side
by the forest of Nodesme. Marthe, exhausted and trembling, was awaiting
some explanation of their hurried ride. What was she engaged in? Was she
to aid in a good deed or an evil one? At that instant Michu bent to his
wife’s ear and whispered:--
“Go the house and ask to speak to the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne; when you
see her beg her to speak to you alone. If no one can overhear you, say
to her: ‘Mademoiselle, the lives of your two cousins are in danger, and
he who can explain the how and why is waiting to speak to you.’ If
she seems afraid, if she distrusts you, add these words: ‘They are
conspiring against the First Consul and the conspiracy is discovered.’
Don’t give your name; they distrust us too much.”
Marthe raised her face towards her husband and said:--
“Can it be that you serve them?”
“What if I do?” he said, frowning, taking her words as a reproach.
“You don’t understand me,” cried Marthe, seizing his large hand and
falling on her knees beside him as she kissed it and covered it with her
tears.
“Go, go, you shall cry later,” he said, kissing her vehemently.
When he no longer heard her step his eyes filled with tears. He had
distrusted Marthe on account of her father’s opinions; he had hidden the
secrets of his life from her; but the beauty of her simple nature had
suddenly appeared to him, just as the grandeur of his had, as suddenly,
revealed itself to her. Marthe had passed in a moment from the deep
humiliation caused by the degradation of the man whose name she bore,
to the exaltation given by a sense of his nobleness. The change was
instantaneous, without transition; it was enough to make her tremble.
She told him later that she went, as it were, through blood from the
pavilion to the edge of the forest, and there was lifted to heaven, in
a moment, among the angels. Michu, who had known he was not appreciated,
and who mistook his wife’s grieved and melancholy manner for lack of
affection, and had left her to herself, living chiefly out of doors
and reserving all his tenderness for his boy, instantly understood the
meaning of her tears. She had cursed the part which her beauty and her
father’s will had forced her to take; but now happiness, in the midst of
this great storm, played, with a beautiful flame like a vivid lightning
about them. And it was lightning! Each thought of the last ten years of
misconception, and they blamed themselves only. Michu stood motionless,
his elbow on his gun, his chin on his hand, lost in deep reverie. Such
a moment in a man’s life makes him willing to accept the saddest moments
of a painful past.
Marthe, agitated by the same thoughts as those of her husband, was also
troubled in heart by the danger of the Simeuse brothers; for she now
understood all, even the faces of the two Parisians, though she still
could not explain to herself her husband’s gun. She darted forward like
a doe, and soon reached the road to the chateau. There she was surprised
by the steps of a man following behind her; she turned, with a cry, and
her husband’s large hand closed her mouth.
“From the hill up there I saw the silver lace of the gendarmes’ hats.
Go in by the breach in the moat between Mademoiselle’s tower and the
stables. The dogs won’t bark at you. Go through the garden and call the
countess by the window; order them to saddle her horse, and ask her to
come out through the breach. I’ll be there, after discovering what the
Parisians are planning, and how to escape them.”
Danger, which seemed to be rolling like an avalanche upon them, gave
wings to Marthe’s feet.
CHAPTER IV. LAURENCE DE CINQ-CYGNE
The old Frank name of the Cinq-Cygnes and the Chargeboeufs was Duineff.
Cinq-Cygne became that of the younger branch of the Chargeboeufs after
the defence of a castle made, during their father’s absence, by five
daughters of that race, all remarkably fair, and of whom no one expected
such heroism. One of the first Comtes de Champagne wished, by bestowing
this pretty name, to perpetuate the memory of their deed as long as the
family existed. Laurence, the last of her race, was, contrary to Salic
law, heiress of the name, the arms, and the manor. She was therefore
Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne in her own right; her husband would have to take
both her name and her blazon, which bore for device the glorious answer
made by the elder of the five sisters when summoned to surrender the
castle, “We die singing.” Worthy descendant of these noble heroines,
Laurence was fair and lily-white as though nature had made her for a
wager. The lines of her blue veins could be seen through the delicate
close texture of her skin. Her beautiful golden hair harmonized
delightfully with eyes of the deepest blue. Everything about her
belonged to the type of delicacy. Within that fragile though active
body, and in defiance as it were of its pearly whiteness, lived a
soul like that of a man of noble nature; but no one, not even a close
observer, would have suspected it from the gentle countenance and
rounded features which, when seen in profile, bore some slight
resemblance to those of a lamb. This extreme gentleness, though noble,
had something of the stupidity of the little animal. “I look like a
dreamy sheep,” she would say, smiling. Laurence, who talked little,
seemed not so much dreamy as dormant. But, did any important
circumstance arise, the hidden Judith was revealed, sublime; and
circumstances had, unfortunately, not been wanting.
At thirteen years of age, Laurence, after the events already related,
was an orphan living in a house opposite to the empty space where
so recently had stood one of the most curious specimens in France
of sixteenth-century architecture, the hotel Cinq-Cygne. Monsieur
d’Hauteserre, her relation, now her guardian, took the young heiress to
live in the country at her chateau of Cinq-Cygne. That brave provincial
gentleman, alarmed at the death of his brother, the Abbe d’Hauteserre,
who was shot in the open square as he was about to escape in the dress
of a peasant, was not in a position to defend the interests of his
ward. He had two sons in the army of the princes, and every day, at the
slightest unusual sound, he believed that the municipals of Arcis were
coming to arrest him. Laurence, proud of having sustained a siege and of
possessing the historic whiteness of her swan-like ancestors, despised
the prudent cowardice of the old man who bent to the storm, and dreamed
only of distinguishing herself. So, she boldly hung the portrait of
Charlotte Corday on the walls of her poor salon at Cinq-Cygne, and
crowned it with oak-leaves. She corresponded by messenger with her
twin cousins, in defiance of the law, which punished the act, when
discovered, with death. The messenger, who risked his life, brought back
the answers. Laurence lived only, after the catastrophes at Troyes,
for the triumph of the royal cause. After soberly judging Monsieur and
Madame d’Hauteserre (who lived with her at the chateau de Cinq-Cygne),
and recognizing their honest, but stolid natures, she put them outside
the lines of her own life. She had, moreover, too good a mind and too
sound a judgment to complain of their natures; always kind, amiable,
and affectionate towards them, she nevertheless told them none of her
secrets. Nothing forms a character so much as the practice of constant
concealment in the bosom of a family.
After she attained her majority Laurence allowed Monsieur d’Hauteserre
to manage her affairs as in the past. So long as her favorite mare was
well-groomed, her maid Catherine dressed to please her, and Gothard
the little page was suitably clothed, she cared for nothing else. Her
thoughts were aimed too high to come down to occupations and interests
which in other times than these would doubtless have pleased her. Dress
was a small matter to her mind; moreover her cousins were not there to
see her. She wore a dark-green habit when she rode, and a gown of some
common woollen stuff with a cape trimmed with braid when she walked;
in the house she was always seen in a silk wrapper. Gothard, the little
groom, a brave and clever lad of fifteen, attended her wherever she
went, and she was nearly always out of doors, riding or hunting over the
farms of Gondreville, without objection being made by either Michu or
the farmers. She rode admirably well, and her cleverness in hunting was
thought miraculous. In the country she was never called anything but
“Mademoiselle” even during the Revolution.
Whoever has read the fine romance of “Rob Roy” will remember that
rare woman for whose making Walter Scott’s imagination abandoned its
customary coldness,--Diana Vernon. The recollection will serve to make
Laurence understood if, to the noble qualities of the Scottish huntress
you add the restrained exaltation of Charlotte Corday, surpassing,
however, the charming vivacity which rendered Diana so attractive. The
young countess had seen her mother die, the Abbe d’Hauteserre shot down,
the Marquis de Simeuse and his wife executed; her only brother had died
of his wounds; her two cousins serving in Conde’s army might be killed
at any moment; and, finally, the fortunes of the Simeuse and the
Cinq-Cygne families had been seized and wasted by the Republic without
being of any benefit to the nation. Her grave demeanor, now lapsing into
apparent stolidity, can be readily understood.
Monsieur d’Hauteserre proved an upright and most careful guardian. Under
his administration Cinq-Cygne became a sort of farm. The good man, who
was far more of a close manager than a knight of the old nobility, had
turned the park and gardens to profit, and used their two hundred acres
of grass and woodland as pasturage for horses and fuel for the family.
Thanks to his severe economy the countess, on coming of age, had
recovered by his investments in the State funds a competent fortune.
In 1798 she possessed about twenty thousand francs a year from those
sources, on which, in fact, some dividends were still due, and twelve
thousand francs a year from the rentals at Cinq-Cygne, which had lately
been renewed at a notable increase. Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre
had provided for their old age by the purchase of an annuity of three
thousand francs in the Tontines Lafarge. That fragment of their former
means did not enable them to live elsewhere than at Cinq-Cygne, and
Laurence’s first act on coming to her majority was to give them the use
for life of the wing of the chateau which they occupied.
The Hauteserres, as niggardly for their ward as they were for
themselves, laid up every year nearly the whole of their annuity for the
benefit of their sons, and kept the young heiress on miserable fare.
The whole cost of the Cinq-Cygne household never exceeded five thousand
francs a year. But Laurence, who condescended to no details, was
satisfied. Her guardian and his wife, unconsciously ruled by the
imperceptible influence of her strong character, which was felt even in
little things, had ended by admiring her whom they had known and treated
as a child,--a sufficiently rare feeling. But in her manner, her deep
voice, her commanding eye, Laurence held that inexplicable power which
rules all men,--even when its strength is mere appearance. To vulgar
minds real depth is incomprehensible; it is perhaps for that reason that
the populace is so prone to admire what it cannot understand. Monsieur
and Madame d’Hauteserre, impressed by the habitual silence and erratic
habits of the young girl, were constantly expecting some extraordinary
thing of her.
Laurence, who did good intelligently and never allowed herself to be
deceived, was held in the utmost respect by the peasantry although
she was an aristocrat. Her sex, name, and great misfortunes, also the
originality of her present life, contributed to give her authority over
the inhabitants of the valley of Cinq-Cygne. She was sometimes absent
for two days, attended by Gothard, but neither Monsieur nor Madame
d’Hauteserre questioned her, on her return, as to the reasons of
her absence. Please observe, however, that there was nothing odd or
eccentric about Laurence. What she was and what she did was masked, as
it were, by a feminine and even fragile appearance. Her heart was full
of extreme sensibility, though her head contained a stoical firmness
and the virile gift of resolution. Her clear-seeing eyes knew not how to
weep; but no one would have imagined that the delicate white wrist with
its tracery of blue veins could defy that of the boldest horseman. Her
hand, so noble, so flexible, could handle gun or pistol with the ease of
a practised marksman. She always wore when out of doors the coquettish
little cap with visor and green veil which women wear on horseback. Her
delicate fair face, thus protected, and her white throat tied with a
black cravat, were never injured by her long rides in all weathers.
Under the Directory and at the beginning of the Consulate, Laurence had
been able to escape the observation of others; but since the government
had become a more settled thing, the new authorities, the prefect of the
Aube, Malin’s friends, and Malin himself had endeavored to undermine
her in the community. Her preoccupying thought was the overthrow of
Bonaparte, whose ambition and its triumphs excited the anger of her
soul,--a cold, deliberate anger. The obscure and hidden enemy of a man
at the pinnacle of glory, she kept her gaze upon him from the depths
of her valley and her forests, with relentless fixity; there were
times when she thought of killing him in the roads about Malmaison or
Saint-Cloud. Plans for the execution of this idea may have been the
cause of many of her past actions, but having been initiated, after the
peace of Amiens, into the conspiracy of the men who expected to make
the 18th Brumaire recoil upon the First Consul, she had thenceforth
subordinated her faculties and her hatred to their vast and well
laid scheme, which was to strike at Bonaparte externally by the vast
coalition of Russia, Austria, and Prussia (vanquished at Austerlitz) and
internally by the coalition of men politically opposed to each other,
but united by their common hatred of a man whose death some of them
were meditating, like Laurence herself, without shrinking from the word
assassination. This young girl, so fragile to the eye, so powerful to
those who knew her well, was at the present moment the faithful guide
and assistant of the exiled gentlemen who came from England to take part
in this deadly enterprise.
Fouche relied on the co-operation of the _emigres_ everywhere beyond
the Rhine to lure the Duc d’Enghien into the plot. The presence of that
prince in the Baden territory, not far from Strasburg, gave much weight
later to the accusation. The great question of whether the prince really
knew of the enterprise, and was waiting on the frontier to enter France
on its success, is one of those secrets about which, as about several
others, the house of Bourbon has maintained an unbroken silence. As the
history of that period recedes into the past, impartial historians
will declare the imprudence, to say the least, of the Duc d’Enghien in
placing himself close to the frontier at a time when a vast conspiracy
was about to break forth, the secret of which was undoubtedly known to
every member of the Bourbon family.
The caution which Malin displayed in talking with Grevin in the open
air, Laurence applied to her every action. She met the emissaries and
conferred with them either at various points in the Nodesme forest, or
beyond the valley of the Cinq-Cygne, between the villages of Sezanne
and Brienne. Often she rode forty miles on a stretch with Gothard,
and returned to Cinq-Cygne without the least sign of weariness or
pre-occupation on her fair young face.
Some years earlier, Laurence had seen in the eyes of a little cow-boy,
then nine years old, the artless admiration which children feel for
everything that is out of the common way. She made him her page, and
taught him to groom a horse with the nicety and care of an Englishman.
She saw in the lad a desire to do well, a bright intelligence, and a
total absence of sly motives; she tested his devotion and found he had
not only mind but nobility of character; he never dreamed of reward. The
young girl trained this soul that was still so young; she was good to
him, good with dignity; she attached him to her by attaching herself
to him, and by herself polishing a nature that was half wild, without
destroying its freshness or its simplicity. When she had sufficiently
tested the almost canine fidelity she had nurtured, Gothard became her
intelligent and ingenuous accomplice. The little peasant, whom no one
could suspect, went from Cinq-Cygne to Nancy, and often returned before
any one had missed him from the neighborhood. He knew how to practise
all the tricks of a spy. The extreme distrust and caution his mistress
had taught him did not change his natural self. Gothard, who possessed
all the craft of a woman, the candor of a child, and the ceaseless
observation of a conspirator, hid every one of these admirable qualities
beneath the torpor and dull ignorance of a country lad. The little
fellow had a silly, weak, and clumsy appearance; but once at work he was
active as a fish; he escaped like an eel; he understood, as the dogs do,
the merest glance; he nosed a thought. His good fat face, both round and
red, his sleepy brown eyes, his hair, cut in the peasant fashion, his
clothes, and his slow growth gave him the appearance of a child of ten.
The two young d’Hauteserres and the twin brothers Simeuse, under the
guidance of their cousin Laurence, who had been watching over their
safety and that of the other _emigres_ who accompanied them from
Strasburg to Bar-sur-Aube, had just passed through Alsace and Lorraine,
and were now in Champagne while other conspirators, not less bold,
were entering France by the cliffs of Normandy. Dressed as workmen the
d’Hauteserres and the Simeuse twins had walked from forest to forest,
guided on their way by relays of persons, chosen by Laurence during
the last three months from among the least suspected of the Bourbon
adherents living in each neighborhood. The _emigres_ slept by day and
travelled by night. Each brought with him two faithful soldiers; one
of whom went before to warn of danger, the other behind to protect a
retreat. Thanks to these military precautions, this valuable detachment
had at last reached, without accident, the forest of Nodesme, which
was chosen as the rendezvous. Twenty-seven other gentlemen had entered
France from Switzerland and crossed Burgundy, guided towards Paris with
the same caution.
Monsieur de Riviere counted on collecting five hundred men, one hundred
of whom were young nobles, the officers of this sacred legion. Monsieur
de Polignac and Monsieur de Riviere, whose conduct as chiefs of this
advance was most remarkable, afterwards preserved an impenetrable
secrecy as to the names of those of their accomplices who were not
discovered. It may be said, therefore, now that the Restoration has made
matters clearer, that Bonaparte never knew the extent of the danger he
then ran, any more than England knew the peril she had escaped from
the camp at Boulogne; and yet the police of France was never more
intelligently or ably managed.
At the period when this history begins, a coward--for cowards are always
to be found in conspiracies which are not confined to a small number
of equally strong men--a sworn confederate, brought face to face with
death, gave certain information, happily insufficient to cover the
extent of the conspiracy, but precise enough to show the object of the
enterprise. The police had therefore, as Malin told Grevin, left the
conspirators at liberty, though all the while watching them, hoping to
discover the ramifications of the plot. Nevertheless, the government
found its hand to a certain extent forced by Georges Cadoudal, a man
of action who took counsel of himself only, and who was hiding in
Paris with twenty-five _chouans_ for the purpose of attacking the First
Consul.
Laurence combined both hatred and love within her breast. To destroy
Bonaparte and bring back the Bourbons was to recover Gondreville and
make the fortune of her cousins. The two sentiments, one the counterpart
of the other, were sufficient, more especially at twenty-three years of
age, to excite all the faculties of her soul and all the powers of her
being. So, for the last two months, she had seemed to the inhabitants
of Cinq-Cygne more beautiful than at any other period of her life.
Her cheeks became rosy; hope gave pride to her brow; but when old
d’Hauteserre read the Gazette at night and discussed the conservative
course of the First Consul she lowered her eyes to conceal her
passionate hopes of the coming fall of that enemy of the Bourbons.
No one at the chateau had the faintest idea that the young countess had
met her cousins the night before. The two sons of Monsieur and Madame
d’Hauteserre had passed the preceding night in Laurence’s own room,
under the same roof with their father and mother; and Laurence, after
knowing them safely in bed had gone between one and two o’clock in the
morning to a rendezvous with her cousins in the forest, where she hid
them in the deserted hut of a wood-dealer’s agent. The following day,
certain of seeing them again, she showed no signs of her joy; nothing
about her betrayed emotion; she was able to efface all traces of
pleasure at having met them again; in fact, she was impassible.
Catherine, her pretty maid, daughter of her former nurse, and Gothard,
both in the secret, modelled their behavior upon hers. Catherine was
nineteen years old. At that age a girl is a fanatic and would let
her throat be cut before betraying a thought of one she loves. As for
Gothard, merely to inhale the perfume which the countess used in her
hair and among her clothes he would have born the rack without a word.
CHAPTER V. ROYALIST HOMES AND PORTRAITS UNDER THE CONSULATE
At the moment when Marthe, driven by the imminence of the peril, was
gliding with the rapidity of a shadow towards the breach of which
Michu had told her, the salon of the chateau of Cinq-Cygne presented a
peaceful sight. Its occupants were so far from suspecting the storm that
was about to burst upon them that their quiet aspect would have roused
the compassion of any one who knew their situation. In the large
fireplace, the mantel of which was adorned with a mirror with
shepherdesses in paniers painted on its frame, burned a fire such as
can be seen only in chateaus bordering on forests. At the corner of
this fireplace, on a large square sofa of gilded wood with a magnificent
brocaded cover, the young countess lay as it were extended, in an
attitude of utter weariness. Returning at six o’clock from the confines
of Brie, having played the part of scout to the four gentlemen whom she
guided safely to their last halting-place before they entered Paris, she
had found Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre just finishing their dinner.
Pressed by hunger she sat down to table without changing either her
muddy habit or her boots. Instead of doing so at once after dinner,
she was suddenly overcome with fatigue and allowed her head with its
beautiful fair curls to drop on the back of the sofa, her feet being
supported in front of her by a stool. The warmth of the fire had dried
the mud on her habit and on her boots. Her doeskin gloves and the little
peaked cap with its green veil and a whip lay on the table where she had
flung them. She looked sometimes at the old Boule clock which stood on
the mantelshelf between the candelabra, perhaps to judge if her four
conspirators were asleep, and sometimes at the card-table in front of
the fire where Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre, the cure of Cinq-Cygne,
and his sister were playing a game of boston.
Even if these personages were not embedded in this drama, their
portraits would have the merit of representing one of the aspects of
the aristocracy after its overthrow in 1793. From this point of view,
a sketch of the salon at Cinq-Cygne has the raciness of history seen in
dishabille.
Monsieur d’Hauteserre, then fifty-two years of age, tall, spare,
high-colored, and robust in health, would have seemed the embodiment of
vigor if it were not for a pair of porcelain blue eyes, the glance of
which denoted the most absolute simplicity. In his face, which ended
in a long pointed chin, there was, judging by the rules of design,
an unnatural distance between his nose and mouth which gave him a
submissive air, wholly in keeping with his character, which harmonized,
in fact, with other details of his appearance. His gray hair, flattened
by his hat, which he wore nearly all day, looked much like a skull-cap
on his head, and defined its pear-shaped outline. His forehead, much
wrinkled by life in the open air and by constant anxieties, was flat and
expressionless. His aquiline nose redeemed the face somewhat; but the
sole indication of any strength of character lay in the bushy eyebrows
which retained their blackness, and in the brilliant coloring of his
skin. These signs were in some respects not misleading, for the worthy
gentlemen, though simple and very gentle, was Catholic and monarchical
in faith, and no consideration on earth could make him change his views.
Nevertheless he would have let himself be arrested without an effort
at defence, and would have gone to the scaffold quietly. His annuity of
three thousand francs kept him from emigrating. He therefore obeyed the
government _de facto_ without ceasing to love the royal family and to
pray for their return, though he would firmly have refused to compromise
himself by any effort in their favor. He belonged to that class of
royalists who ceaselessly remembered that they were beaten and robbed;
and who remained thenceforth dumb, economical, rancorous, without
energy; incapable of abjuring the past, but equally incapable of
sacrifice; waiting to greet triumphant royalty; true to religion and
true to the priesthood, but firmly resolved to bear in silence
the shocks of fate. Such an attitude cannot be considered that of
maintaining opinions, it becomes sheer obstinacy. Action is the essence
of party. Without intelligence, but loyal, miserly as a peasant yet
noble in demeanor, bold in his wishes but discreet in word and
action, turning all things to profit, willing even to be made mayor of
Cinq-Cygne, Monsieur d’Hauteserre was an admirable representative of
those honorable gentlemen on whose brow God Himself has written the
word _mites_,--Frenchmen who burrowed in their country homes and let the
storms of the Revolution pass above their heads; who came once more to
the surface under the Restoration, rich with their hidden savings,
proud of their discreet attachment to the monarchy, and who, after 1830,
recovered their estates.
Monsieur d’Hauteserre’s costume, expressive envelope of his distinctive
character, described to the eye both the man and his period. He always
wore one of those nut-colored great-coats with small collars which the
Duc d’Orleans made the fashion after his return from England, and which
were, during the Revolution, a sort of compromise between the hideous
popular garments and the elegant surtouts of the aristocracy. His velvet
waistcoat with flowered stripes, the style of which recalled those of
Robespierre and Saint-Just, showed the upper part of a shirt-frill in
fine plaits. He still wore breeches; but his were of coarse blue cloth,
with burnished steel buckles. His stockings of black spun-silk defined
his deer-like legs, the feet of which were shod in thick shoes, held
in place by gaiters of black cloth. He retained the former fashion of
a muslin cravat in innumerable folds fastened by a gold buckle at the
throat. The worthy man had not intended an act of political eclecticism
in adopting this costume, which combined the styles of peasant,
revolutionist, and aristocrat; he simply and innocently obeyed the
dictates of circumstances.
Madame d’Hauteserre, forty years of age and wasted by emotions, had a
faded face which seemed to be always posing for its portrait. A lace
cap, trimmed with bows of white satin, contributed singularly to give
her a solemn air. She still wore powder, in spite of a white kerchief,
and a gown of puce-colored silk with tight sleeves and full skirt, the
sad last garments of Marie-Antoinette. Her nose was pinched, her chin
sharp, the whole face nearly triangular, the eyes worn-out with weeping;
but she now wore a touch of rouge which brightened their grayness. She
took snuff, and each time that she did so she employed all the pretty
precautions of the fashionable women of her early days; the details of
this snuff-taking constituted a ceremony which could be explained by one
fact--she had very pretty hands.
For the last two years the former tutor of the Simeuse twins, a friend
of the late Abbe d’Hauteserre, named Goujet, Abbe des Minimes, had
taken charge of the parish of Cinq-Cygne out of friendship for the
d’Hauteserres and the young countess. His sister, Mademoiselle Goujet,
who possessed a little income of seven hundred francs, added that sum to
the meagre salary of her brother and kept his house. Neither church nor
parsonage had been sold during the Revolution on account of their small
value. The abbe and his sister lived close to the chateau, for the wall
of the parsonage garden and that of the park were the same in places.
Twice a week the pair dined at the chateau, but they came every evening
to play boston with the d’Hauteserres; for Laurence, unable to play a
game, did not even know one card from another.
The Abbe Goujet, an old man with white hair and a face as white as that
of an old woman, endowed with a kindly smile and a gentle and persuasive
voice, redeemed the insipidity of his rather mincing face by a fine
intellectual brow and a pair of keen eyes. Of medium height, and
very well made, he still wore the old-fashioned black coat, silver
shoe-buckles, breeches, black silk stockings, and a black waistcoat
on which lay his clerical bands, giving him a distinguished air which
detracted nothing from his dignity. This abbe, who became bishop of
Troyes after the Restoration, had long made a study of young people
and fully understood the noble character of the young countess; he
appreciated her at her full value, and had shown her, from the first,
a respectful deference which contributed much to her independence at
Cinq-Cygne, for it led the austere old lady and the kind old gentleman
to yield to the young girl, who by rights should have yielded to them.
For the last six months the abbe had watched Laurence with the intuition
peculiar to priests, the most sagacious of men; and although he did
not know that this girl of twenty-three was thinking of overturning
Bonaparte as she lay there twisting with slender fingers the frogged
lacing of her riding-habit, he was well aware that she was agitated by
some great project.
Mademoiselle Goujet was one of those unmarried women whose portrait can
be drawn in one word which will enable the least imaginative mind to
picture her; she was ungainly. She knew her own ugliness and was the
first to laugh at it, showing her long teeth, yellow as her complexion
and her bony hands. She was gay and hearty. She wore the famous short
gown of former days, a very full skirt with pockets full of keys, a cap
with ribbons and a false front. She was forty years of age very early,
but had, so she said, caught up with herself by keeping at that age for
twenty years. She revered the nobility; and knew well how to preserve
her own dignity by giving to persons of noble birth the respect and
deference that were due to them.
This little company was a god-send to Madame d’Hauteserre, who had not,
like her husband, rural occupations, nor, like Laurence, the tonic of
hatred, to enable her to bear the dulness of a retired life. Many things
had happened to ameliorate that life within the last six years. The
restoration of Catholic worship allowed the faithful to fulfil their
religious duties, which play more of a part in country life than
elsewhere. Protected by the conservative edicts of the First Consul,
Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre had been able to correspond with their
sons, and no longer in dread of what might happen to them could even
hope for the erasure of their names from the lists of the proscribed and
their consequent return to France. The Treasury had lately made up
the arrearages and now paid its dividends promptly; so that the
d’Hauteserres received, over and above their annuity, about eight
thousand francs a year. The old man congratulated himself on the
sagacity of his foresight in having put all his savings, amounting to
twenty thousand francs, together with those of his ward, in the public
Funds before the 18th Brumaire, which, as we all know, sent those stocks
up from twelve to eighteen francs.
The chateau of Cinq-Cygne had long been empty and denuded of furniture.
The prudent guardian was careful not to alter its aspect during the
revolutionary troubles; but after the peace of Amiens he made a journey
to Troyes and brought back various relics of the pillaged mansions which
he obtained from the dealers in second-hand furniture. The salon was
furnished for the first time since their occupation of the house.
Handsome curtains of white brocade with green flowers, from the hotel de
Simeuse, draped the six windows of the salon, in which the family were
now assembled. The walls of this vast room were entirely of wood, with
panels encased in beaded mouldings with masks at the angles; the whole
painted in two shades of gray. The spaces over the four doors were
filled with those designs, painted in cameo of two colors, which were
so much in vogue under Louis XV. Monsieur d’Hauteserre had picked up
at Troyes certain gilded pier-tables, a sofa in green damask, a crystal
chandelier, a card-table of marquetry, among other things that served
him to restore the chateau. In 1792 all the furniture of the house had
been taken or destroyed, for the pillage of the mansions in town was
imitated in the valley. Each time that the old man went to Troyes he
returned with some relic of the former splendor, sometimes a fine carpet
for the floor of the salon, at other times part of a dinner service, or
a bit of rare old porcelain of either Sevres or Dresden. During the last
six months he had ventured to dig up the family silver, which the cook
had buried in the cellar of a little house belonging to him at the end
of one of the long faubourgs in Troyes.
That faithful servant, named Durieu, and his wife had followed the
fortunes of their young mistress. Durieu was the factotum of the
chateau, and his wife was the housekeeper. He was helped in the cooking
by the sister of Catherine, Laurence’s maid, to whom he was teaching his
art and who gave promise of becoming an excellent cook. An old gardener,
his wife, a son paid by the day, and a daughter who served as a
dairy-woman, made up the household. Madame Durieu had lately and
secretly had the Cinq-Cygne liveries made for the gardener’s son and for
Gothard. Though blamed for this imprudence by Monsieur d’Hauteserre,
the housekeeper took great pleasure in seeing the dinner served on the
festival of Saint-Laurence, the countess’s fete-day, with almost as much
style as in former times.
This slow and difficult restoration of departed things was the delight
of Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre and the Durieus. Laurence smiled
at what she thought nonsense. But the worthy old d’Hauteserre did not
forget the more solid matters; he repaired the buildings, put up the
walls, planted trees wherever there was a chance to make them grow, and
did not leave an inch of unproductive land. The whole valley regarded
him as an oracle in the matter of agriculture. He had managed to recover
a hundred acres of contested land, not sold as national property, being
in some way confounded with that of the township. This land he had
turned into fields which afforded good pasturage for his horses and
cattle, and he planted them round with poplars, which now, at the end
of six years, were making a fine growth. He intended to buy back some of
the lost estate, and to utilize all the out-buildings of the chateau by
making a second farm and managing it himself.
Life at the chateau had thus become during the last two years prosperous
and almost happy. Monsieur d’Hauteserre was off at daybreaks to overlook
his laborers, for he employed them in all weathers. He came home to
breakfast, mounted his farm pony as soon as the meal was over, and
made his rounds of the estate like a bailiff,--getting home in time for
dinner, and finishing the day with a game of boston. All the inhabitants
of the chateau had their stated occupations; life was as closely
regulated there as in a convent. Laurence alone disturbed its even
tenor by her sudden journeys, her uncertain returns, and by what Madame
d’Hauteserre called her pranks. But with all this peacefulness there
existed at Cinq-Cygne conflicting interests and certain causes of
dissension. In the first place Durieu and his wife were jealous of
Catherine and Gothard, who lived in greater intimacy with their young
mistress, the idol of the household, than they did. Then the two
d’Hauteserres, encouraged by Mademoiselle Goujet and the abbe, wanted
their sons as well as the Simeuse brothers to take the oath and return
to this quiet life, instead of living miserably in foreign countries.
Laurence scouted the odious compromise and stood firmly for the
monarchy, militant and implacable. The four old people, anxious that
their present peaceful existence should not be risked, nor their spot
of refuge, saved from the furious waters of the revolutionary torrent,
lost, did their best to convert Laurence to their cautious views,
believing that her influence counted for much in the unwillingness of
their sons and the Simeuse twins to return to France. The superb disdain
with which she met the project frightened these poor people, who were
not mistaken in their fears that she was meditating what they called
knight-errantry. This jarring of opinion came to the surface after the
explosion of the infernal machine in the rue Saint-Nicaise, the first
royalist attempt against the conqueror of Marengo after his refusal
to treat with the house of Bourbon. The d’Hauteserres considered
it fortunate that Bonaparte escaped that danger, believing that the
republicans had instigated it. But Laurence wept with rage when she
heard he was safe. Her despair overcame her usual reticence, and she
vehemently complained that God had deserted the sons of Saint-Louis.
“I,” she exclaimed, “I could have succeeded! Have we no right,” she
added, seeing the stupefaction her words produced on the faces about
her, and addressing the abbe, “no right to attack the usurper by every
means in our power?”
“My child,” replied the abbe, “the Church has been greatly blamed by
philosophers for declaring in former times that the same weapons might
be employed against usurpers which the usurpers themselves had employed
to succeed; but in these days the Church owes far too much to the First
Consul not to protect him against that maxim,--which, by the by, was due
to the Jesuits.”
“So the Church abandons us!” she answered, gloomily.
From that day forth whenever the four old people talked of submitting
to the decrees of Providence, Laurence left the room. Of late, the abbe,
shrewder than Monsieur d’Hauteserre, instead of discussing principles,
drew pictures of the material advantages of the consular rule, less to
convert the countess than to detect in her eyes some expression
which might enlighten him as to her projects. Gothard’s frequent
disappearances, the long rides of his mistress, and her evident
preoccupation, which, for the last few days, had appeared in her face,
together with other little signs not to be hidden in the silence and
tranquillity of such a life, had roused the fears of these submissive
royalists. Still, as no event happened, and perfect quiet appeared to
reign in the political atmosphere, the minds of the little household
were soothed into peace, and the countess’s long rides were one more
attributed to her passion for hunting.
It is easy to imagine the deep silence which reigned at nine o’clock in
the evening in the park, courtyards, and gardens of Cinq-Cygne, where at
that particular moment the persons we have described were harmoniously
grouped, where perfect peace pervaded all things, where comfort and
abundance were again enjoyed, and where the worthy and judicious old
gentleman was still hoping to convert his late ward to his system of
obedience to the ruling powers by the argument of what we may call the
continuity of prosperous results.
These royalists continued to play their boston, a game which spread
ideas of independence under a frivolous form over the whole of France;
for it was first invented in honor of the American insurgents, its very
terms applying to the struggle which Louis XVI. encouraged. While making
their “independences” and “poverties,” the players kept an eye on the
countess, who had fallen asleep, overcome by fatigue, with a singular
smile on her lips, her last waking thought having been of the terror two
words could inspire in the minds of the peaceful company by informing
the d’Hauteserres that their sons had passed the preceding night under
that roof. What young girl of twenty-three would not have been, as
Laurence was, proud to play the part of Destiny? and who would not have
felt, as she did, a sense of compassion for those whom she felt to be so
far below her in loyalty?
“She sleeps,” said the abbe. “I have never seen her so wearied.”
“Durieu tells me her mare is almost foundered,” remarked Madame
d’Hauteserre. “Her gun has not been fired; the breech is clean; she has
evidently not hunted.”
“Oh! that’s neither here nor there,” said the abbe.
“Bah?” cried Mademoiselle Goujet; “when I was twenty-three and saw I
should be an old maid all my life, I rushed about and fatigued myself
in a dozen ways. I understand how the countess can scour the country for
hours without thinking of the game. It is nearly twelve years now since
she has seen her cousins, and you know she loves them. Well, if I
were she, if I were as young and pretty, I’d make a straight line for
Germany! Poor darling, perhaps she is thinking of the frontier, and that
may be the reason why she rides so far towards it.”
“You are rather giddy, Mademoiselle Goujet,” said the abbe, smiling.
“Not at all,” she replied. “I see you all uneasy about the goings on of
a young girl, and I am explaining them to you.”
“Her cousins will submit and return soon; they will all be rich, and she
will end by calming down,” said old d’Hauteserre.
“God grant it!” said his wife, taking out a gold snuff-box which had
again seen the light under the Consulate.
“There is something stirring in the neighborhood,” remarked Monsieur
d’Hauteserre to the abbe. “Malin has been two days at Gondreville.”
“Malin!” cried Laurence, roused by the name, though her sleep was sound.
“Yes,” replied the abbe, “but he leaves to-night; everybody is
conjecturing the motive of this hasty visit.”
“That man,” said Laurence, “is the evil genius of our two houses.”
The countess had been dreaming of her cousins and the young Hauteserres;
she saw them in peril. Her beautiful eyes grew fixed and glassy as her
mind thus warned dwelled on the dangers they were about to incur in
Paris. She rose suddenly and went to her bedroom without speaking. Her
bedroom was the best in the house; next came a dressing-room and an
oratory, in the tower which faced towards the forest. Soon after she
had left the salon the dogs barked, the bell of the small gate rang,
and Durieu rushed into the salon with a frightened face. “Here is the
mayor!” he said. “Something is the matter.”
CHAPTER VI. A DOMICILIARY VISIT
The mayor, a former huntsman of the house of Simeuse, came occasionally
to the chateau, where the d’Hauteserres showed him out of policy, a
deference to which he attached great value. His name was Goulard; he had
married a rich woman of Troyes, whose property, which was in the commune
of Cinq-Cygne, he had further increased by the purchase of a fine abbey
and its lands, in which he invested all his savings. The vast abbey of
Val-des-Preux, standing about a mile from the chateau, he had turned
into a dwelling that was almost as splendid as Gondreville; in it his
wife and he were now living like rats in a cathedral. “Ah! Goulard, you
have been greedy,” Mademoiselle had said to him with a laugh the first
time she received him at Cinq-Cygne. Though greatly attached to the
Revolution and coldly received by the countess, the mayor always felt
himself bound by ties of respect to the Cinq-Cygne and Simeuse families.
He therefore shut his eyes to what went on at the chateau. He called
shutting his eyes not seeing the portraits of Louis XVI., Marie
Antoinette, and the royal children, and those of Monsieur, the Comte
d’Artois, Cazales and Charlotte Corday, which filled the various panels
of the salon; not resenting either the wishes freely expressed in his
presence for the ruin of the Republic, or the ridicule flung at the five
directors and all the other governmental combinations of that time.
The position of this man, who, like many parvenus, having once made his
fortune, reverted to his early faith in the old families, and sought to
attach himself to them, was now being made use of by the two members of
the Paris police whose profession had been so quickly guessed by Michu,
and who, before going to Gondreville had reconnoitred the neighborhood.
The worthy described as the depositary of the best traditions of the old
police, and Corentin phoenix of spies, were in fact employed on a secret
mission. Malin was not mistaken in attributing a double purpose to those
stars of tragic farces. But, before seeing them at work, it is advisable
to show the head of which they were the arms. When Bonaparte became
First Consul he found Fouche at the head of the police. The Revolution
had frankly and with good reason made the management of the police into
a special ministry. But after his return from Marengo, Bonaparte created
the prefecture of police, placed Dubois in charge of it, and called
Fouche to the Council of State, naming as his successor in the ministry
a conventional named Cochon, since known as Comte de Lapparent. Fouche,
who considered the ministry of police as by far the most important in a
government of broad ideas and fixed policy, saw disgrace or at any
rate distrust in the change. After Napoleon became aware of the immense
superiority of this great statesman, as evidenced in the affair of the
infernal machine and in the conspiracy with which we are now concerned,
he returned him to the ministry of police. Later still, becoming alarmed
at the powers Fouche displayed during his absence at the time of the
affair at Walcheren, the Emperor gave that ministry to the Duc de
Rovigo, and sent Fouche (Duc d’Otrante) as governor to the Illyrian
provinces,--an appointment which was in fact an exile.
The singular genius of this man, Fouche, which had the power of
inspiring Napoleon with a sort of fear, did not reveal itself all at
once. This obscure conventional, one of the most extraordinary men
of our time, and the most misjudged, was moulded, as it were, by the
whirlwind of events. He raised himself under the Directory to the height
from which men of genius could see the future and judge the past, and
then, like certain commonplace actors who suddenly become admirable
through the light of some vivid perception, he gave proofs of his
dexterity during the rapid revolution of the 18th Brumaire. This man
with the pallid face, educated to monastic dissimulation, possessing
the secrets of the _montagnards_ to whom he belonged, and those of the
royalists to whom he ended by belonging, had slowly and silently studied
the men, the events, and the interests on the political stage; he
penetrated Napoleon’s secrets, he gave him useful counsel and precious
information. Satisfied with having proven his capacity and his
usefulness, Fouche was careful not to disclose himself completely. He
wished to remain at the head of affairs, but the Emperor’s restless
uneasiness about him cost him his place.
The ingratitude or rather the distrust shown by Napoleon after the
affair at Walcheren, gives the key-note to the character of a man who,
unfortunately for himself, was not a great _seigneur_, and whose conduct
was modelled on that of Talleyrand. At that time neither his former
colleagues nor his present ones had suspected the amplitude of his
genius, which was purely ministerial, essentially governmental, just
in its forecasts and incredibly sagacious. To-day, every impartial
historian perceives that Napoleon’s inordinate self-love was among
the chief causes of his fall, a punishment which cruelly expiated his
wrong-doing. In the mind of that distrustful sovereign lurked a constant
jealousy for his own rising power, which influenced all his actions, and
caused his secret hatred for men of talent, the precious legacy of the
Revolution, with whom he might have made himself a cabinet capable of
being a true repository for his thoughts. Talleyrand and Fouche were not
the only ones who gave him umbrage. The misfortune of usurpers is that
those who have given them a crown are as much their enemies as those
from whom they snatch it. Napoleon’s sovereignty was never convincingly
felt by those who were once his superiors or his equals, nor by those
who still held to the doctrine of rights; none of them regarded their
oath of allegiance to him as binding.
Malin, an inferior man, incapable of comprehending Fouche’s hidden
genius, or of distrusting his own perceptions, burned himself, like
a moth in a candle, by asking him confidentially to send agents to
Gondreville, where, he said, he hoped to obtain certain clues to the
conspiracy. Fouche, without alarming his friend by any questions,
asked himself why Malin was going to Gondreville, and why he did not
immediately and without loss of time, give the information he already
possessed. The ex-Oratorian, fed from his youth up on trickery, and well
aware of the double part played by a good many of the conventionals,
said to himself: “From whom is Malin likely to obtain information when
we ourselves know little or nothing?” Fouche concluded therefore that
there was some either latent or prospective collusion, and took care to
say nothing about it to the First Consul. He preferred to make Malin
his instrument rather than destroy him. It was Fouche’s habit to keep to
himself a good part of the secrets he detected, and he thus obtained
for his own purposes a power over those concerned which was even greater
than that of Bonaparte. This duplicity was one of the Emperor’s charges
against his minister.
Fouche knew of the swindling transaction by which Malin became possessed
of Gondreville and which led him to keep his eyes so anxiously on the
Simeuse brothers. These gentlemen were now serving in the army of Conde;
Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne was their cousin; possibly they were in
her neighborhood, and were sharers in the conspiracy; if so, it would
implicate the house of Conde to which they were devoted. Talleyrand
and Fouche were bent on casting light into this dark corner of the
conspiracy of 1803. All these considerations Fouche saw at a glance,
rapidly and with great clearness. But between Malin, Talleyrand,
and himself there were strong ties which forced him to the utmost
circumspection, and made him anxious to know the exact state of things
within the walls of Gondreville. Corentin was unreservedly attached to
Fouche, just as Monsieur de la Besnardiere was to Talleyrand, Gentz to
Monsieur de Metternich, Dundas to Pitt, Duroc to Napoleon, Chavigny to
Cardinal Richelieu. Corentin was not the counsellor of his master, but
his instrument, the Tristan to this Louis XI. of low estate. Fouche had
kept him in the ministry of the police when he himself left it, so as to
still keep an eye and a finger in it. It was said that Corentin belonged
to Fouche by some unavowed relationship, for he rewarded him lavishly
after every service. Corentin had a friend in Peyrade, the old pupil of
the last lieutenant of police; but he kept a good many of his secrets
from him. Fouche gave Corentin an order to explore the chateau of
Gondreville, to get the plan of it into his memory, and to know every
hiding-place within its walls.
“We may be obliged to return there,” said the ex-minister, precisely
as Napoleon told his lieutenants to explore the field of Austerlitz on
which he intended to fall back.
Corentin was also to study Malin’s conduct, discover what influence
he had in the neighborhood, and observe the men he employed. Fouche
regarded it as certain that the Simeuse brothers were in that part of
the country. By cautiously watching the two officers, who were closely
allied with the Prince de Conde, Peyrade and Corentin could obtain
precious light on the ramifications of the conspiracy beyond the Rhine.
In any case, however, Corentin received the means, the orders, and
the agents, to surround the chateau of Cinq-Cygne and watch the whole
region, from the forest of Nodesme into Paris. Fouche insisted on the
utmost caution, and would only allow a domiciliary visit to Cinq-Cygne
in case Malin gave them positive information which made it necessary. By
way of instructions he explained to Corentin the otherwise inexplicable
personality of Michu, who had been watched by the police for the last
three years. Corentin’s idea was that of his master: “Malin knows all
about the conspiracy--But,” he added to himself, “perhaps Fouche does,
too; who knows?”
Corentin, having started for Troyes before Malin, had made arrangements
with the commandant of the gendarmerie in that town, who picked out a
number of his most intelligent men and placed them under orders of an
able captain. Corentin chose Gondreville as the place of rendezvous,
and directed the captain to send some of his men at night in four
detachments to different points of the valley of Cinq-Cygne at
sufficient distance from each other to cause no alarm. These four
pickets were to form a square and close in around the chateau of
Cinq-Cygne. By leaving Corentin alone at Gondreville during his
consultation in the fields with Grevin, Malin had enabled him to fulfil
part of Fouche’s orders and explore the house. When the Councillor of
State returned home he told Corentin so positively that the d’Hauteserre
and Simeuse brothers were in the neighborhood and probably at Cinq-Cygne
that the two agents despatched the captain with the rest of his company,
who, fortunately for the four gentlemen, crossed the forest on their
way to the chateau during the time when Michu was making Violette drunk.
Malin had told Corentin and Peyrade of the escape he had from lying in
wait for him. The two agents related the incident of the gun they
had seen the bailiff load, and Grevin had sent Violette to obtain
information as to what was going on at Michu’s house. Corentin advised
the notary to take Malin to his own house in the little town of Arcis,
and let him sleep there as a measure of precaution. At the moment when
Michu and his wife were rushing through the forest on their way to
Cinq-Cygne, Peyrade and Corentin were starting from Gondreville for
Cinq-Cygne in a shabby wicker carriage, drawn by one post-horse driven
by the corporal of Arcis, one of the shrewdest men in the Legion, whom
the commandant at Troyes advised them to employ.
“The surest way to seize them all is to warn them,” said Peyrade to
Corentin. “At the moment when they are well frightened and are trying to
save their papers or to escape we’ll fall upon them like a thunderbolt.
The gendarmes surround the chateau now and are as good as a net. We
sha’n’t lose one of them!”
“You had better send the mayor to warn them,” said the corporal. “He
is friendly to them and wouldn’t like to see them harmed; they won’t
distrust him.”
Just as Goulard was preparing to go to bed, Corentin, who stopped
the vehicle in a little wood, went to his house and told him,
confidentially, that in a few moments an emissary from the government
would require him to enter the chateau of Cinq-Cygne and arrest
the brothers d’Hauteserre and Simeuse; and in case they had already
disappeared he would have to ascertain if they had slept there the
night before, search Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne’s papers, and, possibly,
arrest both the masters and servants of the household.
“Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne,” said Corentin, “is undoubtedly protected
by some great personages, for I have received private orders to warn
her of this visit, and to do all I can to save her without compromising
myself. Once on the ground, I shall no longer be able to do so, for I am
not alone; go to the chateau yourself and warn them.”
The mayor’s visit at that time of night was all the more bewildering to
the card-players when they saw the agitation of his face.
“Where is the countess?” were his first words.
“She has gone to bed,” said Madame d’Hauteserre.
The mayor, incredulous, listened to noises that were heard on the upper
floor.
“What is the matter with you, Goulard?” said Monsieur d’Hauteserre.
Goulard was dumb with surprise as he noted the tranquil ease of the
faces about him. Observing the peaceful and innocent game of cards which
he had thus interrupted, he was unable to imagine what the Parisian
police meant by their suspicions.
At that moment Laurence, kneeling in her oratory, was praying fervently
for the success of the conspiracy. She prayed to God to send help and
succor to the murderers of Bonaparte. She implored Him ardently to
destroy that fatal being. The fanaticism of Harmodius, Judith, Jacques
Clement, Ankarstroem, of Charlotte Corday and Limoelan, inspired this
pure and virgin spirit. Catherine was preparing the bed, Gothard was
closing the blinds, when Marthe Michu coming under the windows flung a
pebble on the glass and was seen at once.
“Mademoiselle, here’s some one,” said Gothard, seeing a woman.
“Hush!” said Marthe, in a low voice. “Come down and speak to me.”
Gothard was in the garden in less time than a bird would have taken to
fly down from a tree.
“In a minute the chateau will be surrounded by the gendarmerie. Saddle
mademoiselle’s horse without making any noise and take it down through
the breach in the moat between the stables and this tower.”
Marthe quivered when she saw Laurence, who had followed Gothard,
standing beside her.
“What is it?” asked Laurence, quietly.
“The conspiracy against the First Consul is discovered,” replied Marthe,
in a whisper. “My husband, who seeks to save your two cousins, sends me
to ask you to come and speak to him.”
Laurence drew back and looked at Marthe. “Who are you?” she said.
“Marthe Michu.”
“I do not know what you want of me,” replied the countess, coldly.
“Take care, you will kill them. Come with me, I implore you in the
Simeuse name,” said Marthe, clasping her hands and stretching them
towards Laurence. “Have you papers here which may compromise you? If so,
destroy them. From the heights over there my husband has just seen the
silver-laced hats and the muskets of the gendarmerie.”
Gothard had already clambered to the hay-loft and seen the same sight;
he heard in the stillness of the evening the sound of their horses’
hoofs. Down he slipped into the stable and saddled his mistress’s mare,
whose feet Catherine, at a word from the lad, muffled in linen.
“Where am I to go?” said Laurence to Marthe, whose look and language
bore the unmistakable signs of sincerity.
“Through the breach,” she replied; “my noble husband is there. You shall
learn the value of a ‘Judas’!”
Catherine went quickly into the salon, picked up the hat, veil, whip,
and gloves of her mistress, and disappeared. This sudden apparition and
action were so striking a commentary on the mayor’s inquiry that
Madame d’Hauteserre and the abbe exchanged glances which contained the
melancholy thought: “Farewell to all our peace! Laurence is conspiring;
she will be the death of her cousins.”
“But what do you really mean?” said Monsieur d’Hauteserre to the mayor.
“The chateau is surrounded. You are about to receive a domiciliary
visit. If your sons are here tell them to escape, and the Simeuse
brothers too, if they are with them.”
“My sons!” exclaimed Madame d’Hauteserre, stupefied.
“We have seen no one,” said Monsieur d’Hauteserre.
“So much the better,” said Goulard; “but I care too much for the
Cinq-Cygne and Simeuse families to let any harm come to them. Listen to
me. If you have any compromising papers--”
“Papers!” repeated the old gentleman.
“Yes, if you have any, burn them at once,” said the mayor. “I’ll go and
amuse the police agents.”
Goulard, whose object was to run with the royalist hare and hold with
the republican hounds, left the room; at that moment the dogs barked
violently.
“There is no longer time,” said the abbe, “here they come! But who is to
warn the countess? Where is she?”
“Catherine didn’t come for her hat and whip to make relics of them,”
remarked Mademoiselle Goujet.
Goulard tried to detain the two agents for a few moments, assuring them
of the perfect ignorance of the family at Cinq-Cygne.
“You don’t know these people!” said Peyrade, laughing at him.
The two agents, insinuatingly dangerous, entered the house at once,
followed by the corporal from Arcis and one gendarme. The sight of them
paralyzed the peaceful card-players, who kept their seats at the table,
terrified by such a display of force. The noise produced by a dozen
gendarmes whose horses were stamping on the terrace, was heard without.
“I do not see Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne,” said Corentin.
“She is probably asleep in her bedroom,” said Monsieur d’Hauteserre.
“Come with me, ladies,” said Corentin, turning to pass through the
ante-chamber and up the staircase, followed by Mademoiselle Goujet and
Madame d’Hauteserre. “Rely upon me,” he whispered to the old lady. “I am
in your interests. I sent the mayor to warn you. Distrust my colleague
and look to me. I can save every one of you.”
“But what is it all about?” said Mademoiselle Goujet.
“A matter of life and death; you must know that,” replied Corentin.
Madame d’Hauteserre fainted. To Mademoiselle Goujet’s great astonishment
and Corentin’s disappointment, Laurence’s room was empty. Certain that
no one could have escaped from the park or the chateau, for all the
issues were guarded, Corentin stationed a gendarme in every room and
ordered others to search the farm buildings, stables, and sheds. Then he
returned to the salon, where Durieu and his wife and the other servants
had rushed in the wildest excitement. Peyrade was studying their faces
with his little blue eye, cold and calm in the midst of the uproar. Just
as Corentin reappeared alone (Mademoiselle Goujet remaining behind to
take care of Madame d’Hauteserre) the tramp of horses was heard, and
presently the sound of a child’s weeping. The horses entered by the
small gate; and the general suspense was put an end to by a corporal
appearing at the door of the salon pushing Gothard, whose hands were
tied, and Catherine whom he led to the agents.
“Here are some prisoners,” he said; “that little scamp was escaping on
horseback.”
“Fool!” said Corentin, in his ear, “why didn’t you let him alone? You
could have found out something by following him.”
Gothard had chosen to burst into tears and behave like an idiot.
Catherine took an attitude of artless innocence which made the old agent
reflective. The pupil of Lenoir, after considering the two prisoners
carefully, and noting the vacant air of the old gentleman whom he took
to be sly, the intelligent eye of the abbe who was still fingering the
cards, and the utter stupefaction of the servants and Durieu, approached
Corentin and whispered in his ear, “We are not dealing with ninnies.”
Corentin answered with a look at the card-table; then he added, “They
were playing at boston! Mademoiselle’s bed was just being made for the
night; she escaped in a hurry; it is a regular surprise; we shall catch
them.”
CHAPTER VII. A FOREST NOOK
A breach has always a cause and a purpose. Here is the explanation of
how the one which led from the tower called that of Mademoiselle and the
stables came to be made. After his installation as Laurence’s guardian
at Cinq-Cygne old d’Hauteserre converted a long ravine, through which
the water of the forest flowed into the moat, into a roadway between two
tracts of uncultivated land belonging to the chateau, by merely planting
out in it about a hundred walnut trees which he found ready in the
nursery. In eleven years these trees had grown and branched so as to
nearly cover the road, hidden already by steep banks, which ran into a
little wood of thirty acres recently purchased. When the chateau had its
full complement of inhabitants they all preferred to take this covered
way through the breach to the main road which skirted the park walls and
led to the farm, rather than go round by the entrance. By dint of thus
using it the breach in the sides of the moat had gradually been widened
on both sides, with all the less scruple because in this nineteenth
century of ours moats are no longer of the slightest use, and Laurence’s
guardian had often talked of putting this one to some other purpose. The
constant crumbling away of the earth and stones and gravel had ended by
filling up the ditch, so that only after heavy rains was the causeway
thus constructed covered. But the bank was still so steep that it was
difficult to make a horse descend it, and even more difficult to get him
up upon the main road. Horses, however, seem in times of peril to share
their masters’ thought.
While the young countess was hesitating to follow Marthe, and asking
explanations, Michu, from his vantage-ground watched the closing in of
the gendarmes and understood their plan. He grew desperate as time
went by and the countess did not come to him. A squad of gendarmes were
marching along the park wall and stationing themselves as sentinels,
each man being near enough to communicate with those on either side of
them, by voice and eye. Michu, lying flat on his stomach, his ear to
earth, gauged, like a red Indian, by the strength of the sounds the time
that remained to him.
“I came too late!” he said to himself. “Violette shall pay dear for
this! what a time it took to make him drunk! What can be done?”
He heard the detachment that was coming through the forest reach the
iron gates and turn into the main road, where before long it would meet
the squad coming up from the other direction.
“Still five or six minutes!” he said.
At that instant the countess appeared. Michu took her with a firm hand
and pushed her into the covered way.
“Keep straight before you! Lead her to where my horse is,” he said to
his wife, “and remember that gendarmes have ears.”
Seeing Catherine, who carried the hat and whip, and Gothard leading the
mare, the man, keen-witted in presence of danger, bethought himself of
playing the gendarmes a trick as useful as the one he had just played
Violette. Gothard had forced the mare to mount the bank.
“Her feet muffled! I thank thee, boy,” exclaimed the bailiff.
Michu let the mare follow her mistress and took the hat, gloves, and
whip from Catherine.
“You have sense, boy, you’ll understand me,” he said. “Force your own
horse up here, jump on him, and draw the gendarmes after you across the
fields towards the farm; get the whole squad to follow you--And you,”
he added to Catherine, “there are other gendarmes coming up on the road
from Cinq-Cygne to Gondreville; run in the opposite direction to the one
Gothard takes, and draw them towards the forest. Manage so that we shall
not be interfered with in the covered way.”
Catherine and the boy, who were destined to give in this affair such
remarkable proofs of intelligence, executed the manoeuvre in a way to
make both detachments of gendarmes believe that they held the game. The
dim light of the moon prevented the pursuers from distinguishing the
figure, clothing, sex, or number of those they followed. The pursuit was
based on the maxim, “Always arrest those who are escaping,”--the folly
of which saying was, as we have seen, energetically declared by Corentin
to the corporal in command. Michu, counting on this instinct of
the gendarmes, was able to reach the forest a few moments after the
countess, whom Marthe had guided to the appointed place.
“Go home now,” he said to Marthe. “The forest is watched and it is
dangerous to remain here. We need all our freedom.”
Michu unfastened his horse and asked the countess to follow him.
“I shall not go a step further,” said Laurence, “unless you give me some
proof of the interest you seem to have in us--for, after all, you are
Michu.”
“Mademoiselle,” he answered, in a gentle voice; “the part I am playing
can be explained to you in two words. I am, unknown to the Marquis de
Simeuse and his brother, the guardian of their property. On this subject
I received the last instructions of their late father and their dear
mother, my protectress. I have played the part of a virulent Jacobin to
serve my dear young masters. Unhappily, I began this course too late;
I could not save their parents.” Here, Michu’s voice broke down. “Since
the young men emigrated I have sent them regularly the sums they needed
to live upon.”
“Through the house of Breintmayer of Strasburg?” asked the countess.
“Yes, mademoiselle; the correspondents of Monsieur Girel of Troyes, a
royalist who, like me, made himself for good reasons, a Jacobin. The
paper which your farmer picked up one evening and which I forced him
to surrender, related to the affair and would have compromised your
cousins. My life no longer belongs to me, but to them, you understand. I
could not buy in Gondreville. In my position, I should have lost my head
had the authorities known I had the money. I preferred to wait and
buy it later. But that scoundrel of a Marion was the slave of another
scoundrel, Malin. All the same, Gondreville shall once more belong
to its rightful masters. That’s my affair. Four hours ago I had Malin
sighted by my gun; ha! he was almost gone then! Were he dead, the
property would be sold and you could have bought it. In case of my death
my wife would have brought you a letter which would have given you the
means of buying it. But I overheard that villain telling his accomplice
Grevin--another scoundrel like himself--that the Marquis and his brother
were conspiring against the First Consul, that they were here in the
neighborhood, and that he meant to give them up and get rid of them so
as to keep Gondreville in peace. I myself saw the police spies; I laid
aside my gun, and I have lost no time in coming here, thinking that you
must be the one to know best how to warn the young men. That’s the whole
of it.”
“You are worthy to be a noble,” said Laurence, offering her hand to
Michu, who tried to kneel and kiss it. She saw his motion and prevented
it, saying: “Stand up!” in a tone of voice and with a look which made
him amends for all the scorn of the last twelve years.
“You reward me as though I had done all that remains for me to do,” he
said. “But don’t you hear them, those huzzars of the guillotine? Let us
go elsewhere.”
He took the mare’s bridle, and led her a little distance.
“Think only of sitting firm,” he said, “and of saving your head from the
branches of the trees which might strike you in the face.”
Then he mounted his own horse and guided the young girl for half an
hour at full gallop; making turns and half turns, and striking into
wood-paths, so as to confuse their traces, until they reached a spot
where he pulled up.
“I don’t know where I am,” said the countess looking about her,--“I, who
know the forest as well as you do.”
“We are in the heart of it,” he replied. “Two gendarmes are after us,
but we are quite safe.”
The picturesque spot to which the bailiff had guided Laurence was
destined to be so fatal to the principal personages of this drama, and
to Michu himself, that it becomes our duty, as an historian, to describe
it. The scene became, as we shall see hereafter, one of noted interest
in the judiciary annals of the Empire.
The forest of Nodesme belonged to the monastery of Notre-Dame. That
monastery, seized, sacked, and demolished, had disappeared entirely,
monks and property. The forest, an object of much cupidity, was taken
into the domain of the Comtes de Champagne, who mortgaged it later and
allowed it to be sold. In the course of six centuries nature covered
its ruins with her rich and vigorous green mantle, and effaced them
so thoroughly that the existence of one of the finest convents was no
longer even indicated except by a slight eminence shaded by noble trees
and circled by thick, impenetrable shrubbery, which, since 1794, Michu
had taken great pains to make still more impenetrable by planting the
thorny acacia in all the slight openings between the bushes. A pond was
at the foot of the eminence and showed the existence of a hidden stream
which no doubt determined in former days the site of the monastery.
The late owner of the title to the forest of Nodesme was the first
to recognize the etymology of the name, which dated back for eight
centuries, and to discover that at one time a monastery had existed in
the heart of the forest. When the first rumblings of the thunder of the
Revolution were heard, the Marquis de Simeuse, who had been forced to
look into his title by a lawsuit and so learned the above facts as
it were by chance, began, with a secret intention not difficult to
conceive, to search for some remains of the former monastery. The
keeper, Michu, to whom the forest was well known, helped his master
in the search, and it was his sagacity as a forester which led to the
discovery of the site. Observing the trend of the five chief roads of
the forest, some of which were now effaced, he saw that they all ended
either at the little eminence or by the pond at the foot of it, to which
points travellers from Troyes, from the valley of Arcis and that of
Cinq-Cygne, and from Bar-sur-Aube doubtless came. The marquis wished
to excavate the hillock but he dared not employ the people of the
neighborhood. Pressed by circumstances, he abandoned the intention,
leaving in Michu’s mind a strong conviction that the eminence had either
the treasure or the foundations of the former abbey. He continued,
all alone, this archaeological enterprise; he sounded the earth and
discovered a hollowness on the level of the pond between two trees, at
the foot of the only craggy part of the hillock.
One fine night he came to the place armed with a pickaxe, and by the
sweat of his brow uncovered a succession of cellars, which were entered
by a flight of stone steps. The pond, which was three feet deep in the
middle, formed a sort of dipper, the handle of which seemed to come from
the little eminence, and went far to prove that a spring had once issued
from the crags, and was now lost by infiltration through the forest. The
marshy shores of the pond, covered with aquatic trees, alders, willow,
and ash, were the terminus of all the wood-paths, the remains of former
roads and forest by-ways, now abandoned. The water, flowing from a
spring, though apparently stagnant, was covered with large-leaved
plants and cresses, which gave it a perfectly green surface almost
indistinguishable from the shores, which were covered with fine close
herbage. The place is too far from human habitations for any animal,
unless a wild one, to come there. Convinced that no game was in the
marsh and repelled by the craggy sides of the hills, keepers and hunters
had never explored or visited this nook, which belonged to a part of the
forest where the timber had not been cut for many years and which Michu
meant to keep in its full growth when the time came round to fell it.
At the further end of the first cellar was a vaulted chamber, clean
and dry, built with hewn stone, a sort of convent dungeon, such as they
called in monastic days the _in pace_. The salubrity of the chamber and
the preservation of this part of the staircase and of the vaults were
explained by the presence of the spring, which had been enclosed at some
time by a wall of extraordinary thickness built in brick and cement
like those of the Romans, and received all the waters. Michu closed the
entrance to this retreat with large stones; then, to keep the secret of
it to himself and make it impenetrable to others, he made a rule never
to enter it except from the wooded height above, by clambering down the
crag instead of approaching it from the pond.
Just as the fugitives arrived, the moon was casting her beautiful
silvery light on the aged tree-tops above the crag, and flickering on
the splendid foliage at the corners of the several paths, all of which
ended here, some with one tree, some with a group of trees. On all
sides the eye was irresistibly led along their vanishing perspectives,
following the curve of a wood-path or the solemn stretch of a forest
glade flanked by a wall of verdure that was nearly black. The moonlight,
filtering through the branches of the crossways, made the lonely,
tranquil waters, where they peeped between the crosses and the
lily-pads, sparkle like diamonds. The croaking of the frogs broke the
deep silence of this beautiful forest-nook, the wild odors of which
incited the soul to thoughts of liberty.
“Are we safe?” said the countess to Michu.
“Yes, mademoiselle. But we have each some work to do. Do you go and
fasten our horses to the trees at the top of the little hill; tie a
handkerchief round the mouth of each of them,” he said, giving her his
cravat; “your beast and mine are both intelligent, they will understand
they are not to neigh. When you have done that, come down the crag
directly above the pond; but don’t let your habit catch anywhere. You
will find me below.”
While the countess hid the horses and tied and gagged them, Michu
removed the stones and opened the entrance to the caverns. The countess,
who thought she knew the forest by heart, was amazed when she descended
into the vaulted chambers. Michu replaced the stones above them with the
dexterity of a mason. As he finished, the sound of horses’ feet and the
voices of the gendarmes echoed in the darkness; but he quietly struck
a match, lighted a resinous bit of wood and led the countess to the _in
pace_, where there was still a piece of the candle with which he had
first explored the caves. An iron door of some thickness, eaten in
several places by rust, had been put in good order by the bailiff, and
could be fastened securely by bars slipping into holes in the wall on
either side of it. The countess, half dead with fatigue, sat down on a
stone bench, above which there still remained an iron ring, the staple
of which was embedded in the masonry.
“We have a salon to converse in,” said Michu. “The gendarmes may prowl
as much as they like; the worst they could do would be to take our
horses.”
“If they do that,” said Laurence, “it would be the death of my cousins
and the Messieurs d’Hauteserre. Tell me now, what do you know?”
Michu related what he had overheard Malin say to Grevin.
“They are already on the road to Paris; they were to enter it to-morrow
morning,” said the countess when he had finished.
“Lost!” exclaimed Michu. “All persons entering or leaving the barriers
are examined. Malin has strong reasons to let my masters compromise
themselves; he is seeking to get them killed out of his way.”
“And I, who don’t know anything of the general plan of the affair,”
cried Laurence, “how can I warn Georges, Riviere, and Moreau? Where are
they?--However, let us think only of my cousins and the d’Hauteserres;
you must catch up with them, no matter what it costs.”
“The telegraph goes faster than the best horse,” said Michu; “and of
all the nobles concerned in this conspiracy your cousins are the closest
watched. If I can find them, they must be hidden here and kept here till
the affair is over. Their poor father may have had a foreboding when he
set me to search for this hiding-place; perhaps he felt that his sons
would be saved here.”
“My mare is from the stables of the Comte d’Artois,--she is the daughter
of his finest English horse,” said Laurence; “but she has already gone
sixty miles, she would drop dead before you reached them.”
“Mine is in good condition,” replied Michu; “and if you did sixty miles
I shall have only thirty to do.”
“Nearer forty,” she said, “they have been walking since dark. You will
overtake them beyond Lagny, at Coupvrai, where they expected to be at
daybreak. They are disguised as sailors, and will enter Paris by the
river on some vessel. This,” she added, taking half of her mother’s
wedding-ring from her finger, “is the only thing which will make them
trust you; they have the other half. The keeper of Couvrai is the father
of one of their soldiers; he has hidden them tonight in a hut in the
forest deserted by charcoal-burners. They are eight in all, Messieurs
d’Hauteserre and four others are with my cousins.”
“Mademoiselle, no one is looking for the others! let them save
themselves as they can; we must think only of the Messieurs de Simeuse.
It is enough just to warn the rest.”
“What! abandon the Hauteserres? never!” she said. “They must all perish
or be saved together!”
“Only petty noblemen!” remarked Michu.
“They are only chevaliers, I know that,” she replied, “but they are
related to the Cinq-Cygne and Simeuse blood. Save them all, and advise
them how best to regain this forest.”
“The gendarmes are here,--don’t you hear them? they are holding a
council of war.”
“Well, you have twice had luck to-night; go! bring my cousins here and
hide them in these vaults; they’ll be safe from all pursuit--Alas! I am
good for nothing!” she cried, with rage; “I should be only a beacon to
light the enemy--but the police will never imagine that my cousins are
in the forest if they see me at my ease. So the question resolves itself
into this: how can we get five good horses to bring them in six hours
from Lagny to the forest,--five horses to be killed and hidden in some
thicket.”
“And the money?” said Michu, who was thinking deeply as he listened to
the young countess.
“I gave my cousins a hundred louis this evening,” she replied.
“I’ll answer for them!” cried Michu. “But once hidden here you must not
attempt to see them. My wife, or the little one, shall bring them
food twice a week. But, as I can’t be sure of what may happen to me,
remember, mademoiselle, in case of trouble, that the main beam in my
hay-loft has been bored with an auger. In the hole, which is plugged
with a bit of wood, you will find a plan showing how to reach this spot.
The trees which you will find marked with a red dot on the plan have a
black mark at their foot close to the earth. Each of these trees is a
sign-post. At the foot of the third old oak which stands to the left
of each sign-post, two feet in front of it and buried seven feet in the
ground, you will find a large metal tube; in each tube are one
hundred thousand francs in gold. These eleven trees--there are only
eleven--contain the whole fortune of the Simeuse brothers, now that
Gondreville has been taken from them.”
“It will take a hundred years for the nobility to recover from such
blows,” said Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, slowly.
“Is there a pass-word?” asked Michu.
“‘France and Charles’ for the soldiers, ‘Laurence and Louis’ for the
Messieurs d’Hauteserre and Simeuse. Good God! to think that I saw them
yesterday for the first time in eleven years, and that now they are in
danger of death--and what a death! Michu,” she said, with a melancholy
look, “be as prudent during the next fifteen hours as you have been
grand and devoted during the last twelve years. If disaster were to
overtake my cousins now I should die of it--No,” she added, quickly, “I
would live long enough to kill Bonaparte.”
“There will be two of us to do that when all is lost,” said Michu.
Laurence took his rough hand and wrung it warmly, as the English do.
Michu looked at his watch; it was midnight.
“We must leave here at any cost,” he said. “Death to the gendarme who
attempts to stop me! And you, madame la comtesse, without presuming
to dictate, ride back to Cinq-Cygne as fast as you can. The police are
there by this time; fool them! delay them!”
The hole once opened, Michu flung himself down with his ear to the
earth; then he rose precipitately. “The gendarmes are at the edge of the
forest towards Troyes!” he said. “Ha, I’ll get the better of them yet!”
He helped the countess to come out, and replaced the stones. When this
was done he heard her soft voice telling him she must see him mounted
before mounting herself. Tears came to the eyes of the stern man as
he exchanged a last look with his young mistress, whose own eyes were
tearless.
“Fool them! yes, he is right!” she said when she heard him no longer.
Then she darted towards Cinq-Cygne at full gallop.
CHAPTER VIII. TRIALS OF THE POLICE
Madame d’Hauteserre, roused by the danger of her sons, and not believing
that the Revolution was over, but still fearing its summary justice,
recovered her senses by the violence of the same distress which made
her lose them. Led by an agonizing curiosity she returned to the salon,
which presented a picture worthy of the brush of a genre painter. The
abbe, still seated at the card-table and mechanically playing with the
counters, was covertly observing Corentin and Peyrade, who were standing
together at a corner of the fireplace and speaking in a low voice.
Several times Corentin’s keen eye met the not less keen glance of the
priest; but, like two adversaries who knew themselves equally strong,
and who return to their guard after crossing their weapons, each averted
his eyes the instant they met. The worthy old d’Hauteserre, poised on
his long thin legs like a heron, was standing beside the stout form of
the mayor, in an attitude expressive of utter stupefaction. The mayor,
though dressed as a bourgeois, always looked like a servant. Each gazed
with a bewildered eye at the gendarmes, in whose clutches Gothard was
still sobbing, his hands purple and swollen from the tightness of the
cord that bound them. Catherine maintained her attitude of artless
simplicity, which was quite impenetrable. The corporal, who, according
to Corentin, had committed a great blunder in arresting these smaller
fry, did not know whether to stay where he was or to depart. He stood
pensively in the middle of the salon, his hand on the hilt of his sabre,
his eye on the two Parisians. The Durieus, also stupefied, and the
other servants of the chateau made an admirable group of expressive
uneasiness. If it had not been for Gothard’s convulsive snifflings those
present could have heard the flies fly.
When Madame d’Hauteserre, pale and terrified, opened the door and
entered the room, almost carried by Mademoiselle Goujet, whose red eyes
had evidently been weeping, all faces turned to her at once. The two
agents hoped as much as the household feared to see Laurence enter. This
spontaneous movement of both masters and servants seemed produced by
the sort of mechanism which makes a number of wooden figures perform the
same gesture or wink the same eye.
Madame d’Hauteserre advanced by three rapid strides towards Corentin and
said, in a broken voice but violently: “For pity’s sake, monsieur,
tell me what my sons are accused of. Do you really think they have been
here?”
The abbe, who seemed to be saying to himself when he saw the old lady,
“She will certainly commit some folly,” lowered his eyes.
“My duty and the mission I am engaged in forbid me to tell you,”
answered Corentin, with a gracious but rather mocking air.
This refusal, which the detestable politeness of the vulgar fop seemed
to make all the more emphatic, petrified the poor mother, who fell into
a chair beside the Abbe Goujet, clasped her hands and began to pray.
“Where did you arrest that blubber?” asked Corentin, addressing the
corporal and pointing to Laurence’s little henchman.
“On the road that leads to the farm along the park walls; the little
scamp had nearly reached the Closeaux woods,” replied the corporal.
“And that girl?”
“She? oh, it was Oliver who caught her.”
“Where was she going?”
“Towards Gondreville.”
“They were going in opposite directions?” said Corentin.
“Yes,” replied the gendarme.
“Is that boy the groom, and the girl the maid of the citizeness
Cinq-Cygne?” said Corentin to the mayor.
“Yes,” replied Goulard.
After Corentin had exchanged a few words with Peyrade in a whisper, the
latter left the room, taking the corporal of gendarmes with him.
Just then the corporal of Arcis made his appearance. He went up to
Corentin and spoke to him in a low voice: “I know these premises well,”
he said; “I have searched everywhere; unless those young fellows are
buried, they are not here. We have sounded all the floors and walls with
the butt end of our muskets.”
Peyrade, who presently returned, signed to Corentin to come out, and
then took him to the breach in the moat and showed him the sunken way.
“We have guessed the trick,” said Peyrade.
“And I’ll tell you how it was done,” added Corentin. “That little scamp
and the girl decoyed those idiots of gendarmes and thus made time for
the game to escape.”
“We can’t know the truth till daylight,” said Peyrade. “The road is
damp; I have ordered two gendarmes to barricade it top and bottom. We’ll
examine it after daylight, and find out by the footsteps who went that
way.”
“I see a hoof-mark,” said Corentin; “let us go to the stables.”
“How many horses do you keep?” said Peyrade, returning to the salon with
Corentin, and addressing Monsieur d’Hauteserre and Goulard.
“Come, monsieur le maire, you know, answer,” cried Corentin, seeing that
that functionary hesitated.
“Why, there’s the countess’s mare, Gothard’s horse, and Monsieur
d’Hauteserre’s.”
“There is only one in the stable,” said Peyrade.
“Mademoiselle is out riding,” said Durieu.
“Does she often ride about at this time of night?” said the libertine
Peyrade, addressing Monsieur d’Hauteserre.
“Often,” said the good man, simply. “Monsieur le maire can tell you
that.”
“Everybody knows she has her freaks,” remarked Catherine; “she looked at
the sky before she went to bed, and I think the glitter of your bayonets
in the moonlight puzzled her. She told me she wanted to know if there
was going to be another revolution.”
“When did she go?” asked Peyrade.
“When she saw your guns.”
“Which road did she take?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s another horse missing,” said Corentin.
“The gendarmes--took it--away from me,” said Gothard.
“Where were you going?” said one of them.
“I was--following--my mistress to the farm,” sobbed the boy.
The gendarme looked towards Corentin as if expecting an order. But
Gothard’s speech was evidently so true and yet so false, so perfectly
innocent and so artful that the two Parisians again looked at each other
as if to echo Peyrade’s former words: “They are not ninnies.”
Monsieur d’Hauteserre seemed incapable of a word; the mayor was
bewildered; the mother, imbecile from maternal fears, was putting
questions to the police agents that were idiotically innocent; the
servants had been roused from their sleep. Judging by these trifling
signs, and these diverse characters, Corentin came to the conclusion
that his only real adversary was Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne. Shrewd
and dexterous as the police may be, they are always under certain
disadvantages. Not only are they forced to discover all that is known
to a conspirator, but they must also suppose and test a great number
of things before they hit upon the right one. The conspirator is always
thinking of his own safety, whereas the police is only on duty at
certain hours. Were it not for treachery and betrayals, nothing would
be easier than to conspire successfully. The conspirator has more mind
concentrated upon himself than the police can bring to bear with all its
vast facilities of action. Finding themselves stopped short morally,
as they might be physically by a door which they expected to find open
being shut in their faces, Corentin and Peyrade saw they were tricked
and misled, without knowing by whom.
“I assert,” said the corporal of Arcis, in their ear, “that if the four
young men slept here last night it must have been in the beds of their
father and mother, and Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, or those of the
servants; or they must have spent the night in the park. There is not a
trace of their presence.”
“Who could have warned them?” said Corentin, to Peyrade. “No one but the
First Consul, Fouche, the ministers, the prefect of police, and Malin
knew anything about it.”
“We must set spies in the neighborhood,” whispered Peyrade.
“And watch the spies,” said the abbe, who smiled as he overheard the
word and guessed all.
“Good God!” thought Corentin, replying to the abbe’s smile with one of
his own; “there is but one intelligent being here,--he’s the one to come
to an understanding with; I’ll try him.”
“Gentlemen--” said the mayor, anxious to give some proof of devotion to
the First Consul and addressing the two agents.
“Say ‘citizens’; the Republic still exists,” interrupted Corentin,
looking at the priest with a quizzical air.
“Citizens,” resumed the mayor, “just as I entered this salon and before
I had opened my mouth Catherine rushed in and took her mistress’s hat,
gloves, and whip.”
A low murmur of horror came from the breasts of all the household except
Gothard. All eyes but those of the agent and the gendarmes were turned
threateningly on Goulard, the informer, seeming to dart flames at him.
“Very good, citizen mayor,” said Peyrade. “We see it all plainly. Some
one” (this with a glance of evident distrust at Corentin) “warned the
citizeness Cinq-Cygne in time.”
“Corporal, handcuff that boy,” said Corentin, to the gendarme, “and take
him away by himself. And shut up that girl, too,” pointing to Catherine.
“As for you, Peyrade, search for papers,” adding in his ear, “Ransack
everything, spare nothing.--Monsieur l’abbe,” he said, confidentially,
“I have an important communication to make to you”; and he took him into
the garden.
“Listen to me attentively, monsieur,” he went on; “you seem to have the
mind of a bishop, and (no one can hear us) you will understand me. I
have no longer any hope except through you of saving these families,
who, with the greatest folly, are letting themselves roll down a
precipice where no one can save them. The Messieurs Simeuse and
d’Hauteserre have been betrayed by one of those infamous spies whom
governments introduce into all conspiracies to learn their objects,
means, and members. Don’t confound me, I beg of you, with the wretch who
is with me. He belongs to the police; but I am honorably attached to
the Consular cabinet, I am therefore behind the scenes. The ruin of the
Simeuse brothers is not desired. Though Malin would like to see them
shot, the First Consul, if they are here and have come without evil
intentions, wishes them to be warned out of danger, for he likes
good soldiers. The agent who accompanies me has all the powers, I,
apparently, am nothing. But I see plainly what is hatching. The agent
is pledged to Malin, who has doubtless promised him his influence, an
office, and perhaps money if he finds the Simeuse brothers and delivers
them up. The First Consul, who is a really great man, never favors
selfish schemes--I don’t want to know if those young men are here,” he
added, quickly, observing the abbe’s gesture, “but I wish to tell you
that there is only one way to save them. You know the law of the 6th
Floreal, year X., which amnestied all the _emigres_ who were still in
foreign countries on condition that they returned home before the 1st
Vendemiaire of the year XI., that is to say, in September of last year.
But the Messieurs Simeuse having, like the Messieurs d’Hauteserre,
served in the army of Conde, they come into the category of exceptions
to this law. Their presence in France is therefore criminal, and
suffices, under the circumstances in which we are, to make them
suspected of collusion in a horrible plot. The First Consul saw the
error of this exception which has made enemies for his government, and
he wishes the Messieurs Simeuse to know that no steps will be taken
against them, if they will send him a petition saying that they have
re-entered France intending to submit to the laws, and agreeing to take
oath to the Constitution. You can understand that the document ought to
be in my hands before they are arrested, and be dated some days earlier.
I would then be the bearer of it--I do not ask you where those young men
are,” he said again, seeing another gesture of denial from the priest.
“We are, unfortunately, sure of finding them; the forest is guarded, the
entrances to Paris and the frontiers are all watched. Pray listen to me;
if these gentlemen are between the forest and Paris they must be taken;
if they are in Paris they will be found; if they retreat to the frontier
they will still be arrested. The First Consul likes the _ci-devants_,
and cannot endure the republicans--simple enough; if he wants a throne
he must needs strangle Liberty. Keep the matter a secret between us.
This is what I will do; I will stay here till to-morrow and _be blind_;
but beware of the agent; that cursed Provencal is the devil’s own valet;
he has the ear of Fouche just as I have that of the First Consul.”
“If the Messieurs Simeuse are here,” said the abbe, “I would give ten
pints of my blood and my right arm to save them; but if Mademoiselle de
Cinq-Cygne is in the secret she has not--and this I swear on my eternal
salvation--betrayed it in any way, neither has she done me the honor to
consult me. I am now very glad of her discretion, if discretion there
be. We played cards last night as usual, at boston, in almost complete
silence, until half-past ten o’clock, and we neither saw nor heard
anything. Not a child can pass through this solitary valley without the
whole community knowing it, and for the last two weeks no one has come
from other places. Now the d’Hauteserre and the Simeuse brothers would
make a party of four. Old d’Hauteserre and his wife have submitted to
the present government, and they have made all imaginable efforts
to persuade their sons to return to France; they wrote to them again
yesterday. I can only say, upon my soul and conscience, that your visit
has alone shaken my firm belief that these young men are living in
Germany. Between ourselves, there is no one here, except the young
countess, who does not do justice to the eminent qualities of the First
Consul.”
“Fox!” thought Corentin. “Well, if those young men are shot,” he said,
aloud; “it is because their friends have willed it--I wash my hands of
the affair.”
He had led the abbe to a part of the garden which lay in the moonlight,
and as he said the last words he looked at him suddenly. The priest
was greatly distressed, but his manner was that of a man surprised and
wholly ignorant.
“Understand this, monsieur l’abbe,” resumed Corentin; “the right of
these young men to the estate of Gondreville will render them doubly
criminal in the eyes of the middle class. I’d like to see them put faith
in God and not in his saints--”
“Is there really a plot?” asked the abbe, simply.
“Base, odious, cowardly, and so contrary to the generous spirit of
the nation,” replied Corentin, “that it will meet with universal
opprobrium.”
“Well! Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne is incapable of baseness,” cried the
abbe.
“Monsieur l’abbe,” replied Corentin, “let me tell you this; there is for
us (meaning you and me) proof positive of her guilt; but there is not
enough for the law. You see she took flight when we came; I sent the
mayor to warn her.”
“Yes, but for one who is so anxious to save them, you followed rather
closely on his heels,” said the abbe.
At those words the two men looked at each other, and all was said.
Each belonged to those profound anatomists of thought to whom a mere
inflexion of the voice, a look, a word suffices to reveal a soul, just
as the Indians track their enemies by signs invisible to European eyes.
“I expected to draw something out of him, and I have only betrayed
myself,” thought Corentin.
“Ha! the sly rogue!” thought the priest.
Midnight rang from the old church clock just as Corentin and the abbe
re-entered the salon. The opening and shutting of doors and closets
could be heard from the bedrooms above. The gendarmes pulled open the
beds; Peyrade, with the quick perception of a spy, handled and sounded
everything. Such desecration excited both fear and indignation among
the faithful servants of the house, who still stood motionless about the
salon. Monsieur d’Hauteserre exchanged looks of commiseration with his
wife and Mademoiselle Goujet. A species of horrible curiosity kept every
one on the qui vive. Peyrade at length came down, holding in his hand a
sandal-wood box which had probably been brought from China by Admiral
de Simeuse. This pretty casket was flat and about the size of a quarto
volume.
Peyrade made a sign to Corentin and took him into the embrasure of a
window.
“I’ve an idea!” he said, “that Michu, who was ready to pay Marion eight
hundred thousand francs in gold for Gondreville, and who evidently
meant to shoot Malin yesterday, is the man who is helping the Simeuse
brothers. His motive in threatening Marion and aiming at Malin must
be the same. I thought when I saw him that he was capable of ideas;
evidently he has but one; he discovered what was going on and he must
have come here to warn them.”
“Probably Malin talked about the conspiracy to his friend the notary,
and Michu from his ambush overheard what was said,” remarked Corentin,
continuing the inductions of his colleague. “No doubt he has only
postponed his shot to prevent an evil he thinks worse than the loss of
Gondreville.”
“He knew what we were the moment he laid eyes on us,” said Peyrade. “I
thought then that he was amazingly intelligent for a peasant.”
“That proves that he is always on his guard,” replied Corentin. “But,
mind you, my old man, don’t let us make a mistake. Treachery stinks in
the nostrils, and primitive folks do scent it from afar.”
“But that’s our strength,” said the Provencal.
“Call the corporal of Arcis,” cried Corentin to one of the gendarmes. “I
shall send him at once to Michu’s house,” he added to Peyrade.
“Our ear, Violette, is there,” said Peyrade.
“We started without getting news from him. Two of us are not enough;
we ought to have had Sabatier with us--Corporal,” he said, when the
gendarme appeared, taking him aside with Peyrade, “don’t let them fool
you as they did the Troyes corporal just now. We think Michu is in this
business. Go to his house, put your eye on everything, and bring word of
the result.”
“One of my men heard horses in the forest just as they arrested the
little groom; I’ve four fine fellows now on the track of whoever is
hiding there,” replied the gendarme.
He left the room, and the gallop of his horse which echoed on the paved
courtyard died rapidly away.
“One thing is certain,” said Corentin to himself, “either they have gone
to Paris or they are retreating to Germany.”
He sat down, pulled a note-book from the pocket of his spencer, wrote
two orders in pencil, sealed them, and made a sign to one of the
gendarmes to come to him.
“Be off at full gallop to Troyes, wake up the prefect, and tell him to
start the telegraph as soon as there’s light enough.”
The gendarme departed. The meaning of this movement and Corentin’s
intentions were so evident that the hearts of the household sank within
them; but this new anxiety was additional to another that was now
martyrizing them; their eyes were fixed on the sandal-wood box! All the
while the two agents were talking together they were each taking note of
those eager looks. A sort of cold anger stirred the unfeeling hearts of
these men who relished the power of inspiring terror. The police man has
the instincts and emotions of a hunter: but where the one employs his
powers of mind and body in killing a hare, a partridge, or a deer, the
other is thinking of saving the State, or a king, and of winning a large
reward. So the hunt for men is superior to the other class of hunting
by all the distance that there is between animals and human beings.
Moreover, a spy is forced to lift the part he plays to the level and
the importance of the interests to which he is bound. Without looking
further into this calling, it is easy to see that the man who follows
it puts as much passionate ardor into his chase as another man does into
the pursuit of game. Therefore the further these men advanced in their
investigations the more eager they became; but the expression of their
faces and their eyes continued calm and cold, just as their ideas,
their suspicions, and their plans remained impenetrable. To any one who
watched the effects of the moral scent, if we may so call it, of these
bloodhounds on the track of hidden facts, and who noted and understood
the movements of canine agility which led them to strike the truth in
their rapid examination of probabilities, there was in it all something
actually horrifying. How and why should men of genius fall so low when
it was in their power to be so high? What imperfection, what vice, what
passion debases them? Does a man become a police-agent as he becomes
a thinker, writer, statesmen, painter, general, on the condition of
knowing nothing but how to spy, as the others speak, write, govern,
paint, and fight? The inhabitants of the chateau had but one wish,--that
the thunderbolts of heaven might fall upon these miscreants; they were
athirst for vengeance; and had it not been for the presence, up to this
time, of the gendarmes there would undoubtedly have been an outbreak.
“No one, I suppose, has the key of this box?” said the cynical Peyrade,
questioning the family as much by the movement of his huge red nose as
by his words.
The Provencal noticed, not without fear, that the guards were no longer
present; he and Corentin were alone with the family. The younger man
drew a small dagger from his pocket, and began to force the lock of the
box. Just then the desperate galloping of a horse was heard upon the
road and then upon the pavement by the lawn; but most horrible of all
was the fall and sighing of the animal, which seemed to drop all at
once at the door of the middle tower. A convulsion like that which
a thunderbolt might produce shook the spectators when Laurence, the
trailing of whose riding-habit announced her coming, entered the room.
The servants hastily formed into two lines to let her pass.
In spite of her rapid ride, the girl had felt the full anguish the
discovery of the conspiracy must needs cause her. All her hopes were
overthrown! she had galloped through ruins as her thoughts turned to the
necessity of submission to the Consular government. Were it not for the
danger which threatened the four gentlemen, and which served as a tonic
to conquer her weariness and her despair, she would have dropped
asleep on the way. The mare was almost killed in her haste to reach the
chateau, and stand between her cousins and death. As all present looked
at the heroic girl, pale, her features drawn, her veil aside, her whip
in her hand, standing on the threshold of the door, whence her burning
glance grasped the whole scene and comprehended it, each knew from the
almost imperceptible motion which crossed the soured and bittered face
of Corentin, that the real adversaries had met. A terrible duel was
about to begin.
Noticing the box, now in the hands of Corentin, the countess raised her
whip and sprang rapidly towards him. Striking his hands with so violent
a blow that the casket fell to the ground, she seized it, flung it into
the middle of the fire, and stood with her back to the chimney in a
threatening attitude before either of the agents recovered from their
surprise. The scorn which flamed from her eyes, her pale brow, her
disdainful lips, were even more insulting than the haughty action which
treated Corentin as though he were a venomous reptile. Old d’Hauteserre
felt himself once more a cavalier; all his blood rushed to his face, and
he grieved that he had no sword. The servants trembled for an instant
with joy. The vengeance they had called down upon these men had come.
But their joy was driven back within their souls by a terrible fear; the
gendarmes were still heard coming and going in the garrets.
The _spy_--noun of strength, under which all shades of the police are
confounded, for the public has never chosen to specify in language the
varieties of those who compose this dispensary of social remedies so
essential to all governments--the spy has this curious and magnificent
quality: he never becomes angry; he possesses the Christian humility of
a priest; his eyes are stolid with an indifference which he holds as
a barrier against the world of fools who do not understand him; his
forehead is adamant under insult; he pursues his ends like a reptile
whose carapace is fractured only by a cannonball; but (like that
reptile) he is all the more furious when the blow does reach him,
because he believed his armor invulnerable. The lash of the whip upon
his fingers was to Corentin, pain apart, the cannonball that cracked
the shell. Coming from that magnificent and noble girl, this action,
emblematic of her disgust, humiliated him, not only in the eyes of the
people about him, but in his own.
Peyrade sprang to the hearth, caught Laurence’s foot, raised it, and
compelled her, out of modesty, to throw herself on the sofa, where she
had lately lain asleep. The scene, like other contrasts in human things,
was burlesque in the midst of terror. Peyrade scorched his hand as he
dashed it into the fire to seize the box; but he got it, threw it on the
floor and sat down upon it. These little actions were done with great
rapidity and without a word being uttered. Corentin, recovering from the
pain of the blow, caught Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne by both hands, and
held her.
“Do not compel me to use force against you,” he said, with withering
politeness.
Peyrade’s action had extinguished the fire by the natural process of
suppressing the air.
“Gendarmes! here!” he cried, still occupying his ridiculous position.
“Will you promise to behave yourself?” said Corentin, insolently,
addressing Laurence, and picking up his dagger, but not committing the
great fault of threatening her with it.
“The secrets of that box do not concern the government,” she answered,
with a tinge of melancholy in her tone and manner. “When you have read
the letters it contains you will, in spite of your infamy, feel ashamed
of having read them--that is, if you can still feel shame at anything,”
she added, after a pause.
The abbe looked at her as if to say, “For God’s sake, be calm!”
Peyrade rose. The bottom of the box, which had been nearly burned
through, left a mark upon the floor; the lid was scorched and the sides
gave way. The grotesque Scaevola, who had offered to the god of the
Police and Terror the seat of his apricot breeches, opened the two sides
of the box as if it had been a book, and slid three letters and two
locks of hair upon the card-table. He was about to smile at Corentin
when he perceived that the locks were of two shades of gray. Corentin
released Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne’s hands and went up to the table to
read the letter from which the hair had fallen.
Laurence rose, moved to the table beside the spies, and said:--“Read it
aloud; that shall be your punishment.”
As the two men continued to read to themselves, she herself read out the
following words:--
Dear Laurence,--My husband and I have heard of your noble conduct
on the day of our arrest. We know that you love our dear twins as
much, almost, as we love them ourselves. Therefore it is with you
that we leave a token which will be both precious and sad to them.
The executioner has come to cut our hair, for we are to die in a
few moments; he has promised to put into your hands the only
remembrance we are able to leave to our beloved orphans. Keep
these last remains of us and give them to our sons in happier
days. We have kissed these locks of hair and have laid our
blessing upon them. Our last thought will be of our sons, of you,
and of God. Love them, Laurence.
Berthe de Cinq-Cygne. Jean de Simeuse.
Tears came to the eyes of all the household as they listened to the
letter.
Laurence looked at the agents with a petrifying glance and said, in a
firm voice:--
“You have less pity than the executioner.”
Corentin quietly folded the hair in the letter, laid the letter aside on
the table, and put a box of counters on the top of it as if to prevent
its blowing away. His coolness in the midst of the general emotion was
horrible.
Peyrade unfolded the other letters.
“Oh, as for those,” said Laurence, “they are very much alike. You hear
the will; you can now hear of its fulfilment. In future I shall have no
secrets from any one.”
1794, Andernach. Before the battle.
My dear Laurence,--I love you for life, and I wish you to know it.
But you ought also to know, in case I die, that my brother,
Paul-Marie, loves you as much as I love you. My only consolation in
dying would be the thought that you might some day make my brother
your husband without being forced to see me die of jealousy--which
must surely happen if, both of us being alive, you preferred him
to me. After all, that preference seems natural, for he is,
perhaps, more worthy of your love than I--
Marie-Paul.
“Here is the other letter,” she said, with the color in her cheeks.
Andernach. Before the battle.
My kind Laurence,--My heart is sad; but Marie-Paul has a gayer
nature, and will please you more than I am able to do. Some day
you will have to choose between us--well, though I love you
passionately--
“You are corresponding with _emigres_,” said Peyrade, interrupting
Laurence, and holding the letters between himself and the light to
see if they contained between the lines any treasonable writing with
invisible ink.
“Yes,” replied Laurence, folding the precious letters, the paper of
which was already yellow with time. “But by virtue of what right do you
presume to violate my dwelling and my personal liberty?”
“Ah, that’s the point!” cried Peyrade. “By what right, indeed!--it
is time to let you know it, beautiful aristocrat,” he added, taking a
warrant from his pocket, which came from the minister of justice and
was countersigned by the minister of the interior. “See, the authorities
have their eye upon you.”
“We might also ask you,” said Corentin, in her ear, “by what right you
harbor in this house the assassins of the First Consul. You have applied
your whip to my hands in a manner that authorizes me to take my revenge
upon your cousins, whom I came here to save.”
At the mere movement of her lips and the glance which Laurence cast upon
Corentin, the abbe guessed what that great artist was saying, and he
made her a sign to be distrustful, which no one intercepted but Goulard.
Peyrade struck the cover of the box to see if there were a double top.
“Don’t break it!” she exclaimed, taking the cover from him.
She took a pin, pushed the head of one of the carved figures, and the
two halves of the top, joined by a spring, opened. In the hollow half
lay miniatures of the Messieurs de Simeuse, in the uniform of the army
of Conde, two portraits on ivory done in Germany. Corentin, who felt
himself in presence of an adversary worthy of his efforts, called
Peyrade aside into a corner of the room and conferred with him.
“How could you throw _that_ into the fire?” said the abbe, speaking to
Laurence and pointing to the letter of the marquise which enclosed the
locks of hair.
For all answer the young girl shrugged her shoulders significantly. The
abbe comprehended then that she had made the sacrifice to mislead the
agents and gain time; he raised his eyes to heaven with a gesture of
admiration.
“Where did they arrest Gothard, whom I hear crying?” she asked him, loud
enough to be overheard.
“I don’t know,” said the abbe.
“Did he reach the farm?”
“The farm!” whispered Peyrade to Corentin. “Let us send there.”
“No,” said Corentin; “that girl never trusted her cousins’ safety to a
farmer. She is playing with us. Do as I tell you, so that we mayn’t have
to leave here without detecting something, after committing the great
blunder of coming here at all.”
Corentin stationed himself before the fire, lifting the long pointed
skirts of his coat to warm himself and assuming the air, manner, and
tone of a gentleman who was paying a visit.
“Mesdames, you can go to bed, and the servants also. Monsieur le maire,
your services are no longer needed. The sternness of our orders does
not permit us to act otherwise than as we have done; but as soon as the
walls, which seem to me rather thick, have been thoroughly examined, we
shall take our departure.”
The mayor bowed to the company and retired; but neither the abbe nor
Mademoiselle Goujet stirred. The servants were too uneasy not to watch
the fate of their young mistress. Madame d’Hauteserre, who, from the
moment of Laurence’s entrance, had studied her with the anxiety of a
mother, rose, took her by the arm, led her aside, and said in a low
voice, “Have you seen them?”
“Do you think I could have let your sons be under this roof without
your knowing it?” replied Laurence. “Durieu,” she added, “see if it is
possible to save my poor Stella; she is still breathing.”
“She must have gone a great distance,” said Corentin.
“Forty miles in three hours,” she answered, addressing the abbe, who
watched her with amazement. “I started at half-past nine, and it was
well past one when I returned.”
She looked at the clock which said half-past two.
“So you don’t deny that you have ridden forty miles?” said Corentin.
“No,” she said. “I admit that my cousins, in their perfect innocence,
expected not to be excluded from the amnesty, and were on their way to
Cinq-Cygne. When I found that the Sieur Malin was plotting to injure
them, I went to warn them to return to Germany, where they will be
before the telegraph can have guarded the frontier. If I have done wrong
I shall be punished for it.”
This answer, which Laurence had carefully considered, was so probable in
all its parts that Corentin’s convictions were shaken. In that decisive
moment, when every soul present hung suspended, as it were, on the faces
of the two adversaries, and all eyes turned from Corentin to Laurence
and from Laurence to Corentin, again the gallop of a horse, coming from
the forest, resounded on the road and from there through the gates to
the paved courtyard. Frightful anxiety was stamped on every face.
Peyrade entered, his eyes gleaming with joy. He went hastily to Corentin
and said, loud enough for the countess to hear him: “We have caught
Michu.”
Laurence, to whom the agony, fatigue, and tension of all her
intellectual faculties had given an unusual color, turned white and fell
back almost fainting on a chair. Madame Durieu, Mademoiselle Goujet,
and Madame d’Hauteserre sprang to help her, for she was suffocating. She
signed to cut the frogging of her habit.
“Duped!” said Corentin to Peyrade. “I am certain now they are on their
way to Paris. Change the orders.”
They left the room and the house, placing one gendarme on guard at the
door of the salon. The infernal cleverness of the two men had gained
a terrible advantage by taking Laurence in the trap of a not uncommon
trick.
CHAPTER IX. FOILED
At six o’clock in the morning, as day was dawning, Corentin and Peyrade
returned. Having explored the covered way they were satisfied that
horses had passed through it to reach the forest. They were now awaiting
the report of the captain of gendarmerie sent to reconnoitre the
neighborhood. Leaving the chateau in charge of a corporal, they went
to the tavern at Cinq-Cygne to get their breakfast, giving orders that
Gothard, who never ceased to reply to all questions with a burst of
tears, should be set at liberty, also Catherine, who still continued
silent and immovable. Catherine and Gothard went to the salon to kiss
the hands of their mistress, who lay exhausted on the sofa; Durieu also
went in to tell her that Stella would recover, but needed great care.
The mayor, uneasy and inquisitive, met Peyrade and Corentin in the
village. He declared that he could not allow such important officials to
breakfast in a miserable tavern, and he took them to his own house. The
abbey was only three quarters of a mile distant. On the way, Peyrade
remarked that the corporal of Arcis had sent no news of Michu or of
Violette.
“We are dealing with very able people,” said Corentin; “they are
stronger than we. The priest no doubt has a finger in all this.”
Just as the mayor’s wife was ushering her guests into a vast dining-room
(without any fire) the lieutenant of gendarmes arrived with an anxious
air.
“We met the horse of the corporal of Arcis in the forest without his
master,” he said to Peyrade.
“Lieutenant,” cried Corentin, “go instantly to Michu’s house and find
out what is going on there. They must have murdered the corporal.”
This news interfered with the mayor’s breakfast. Corentin and Peyrade
swallowed their food with the rapidity of hunters halting for a meal,
and drove back to the chateau in their wicker carriage, so as to be
ready to start at the first call for any point where their presence
might be necessary. When the two men reappeared in the salon into which
they had brought such trouble, terror, grief, and anxiety, they found
Laurence, in a dressing-gown, Monsieur d’Hauteserre and his wife, the
abbe and his sister, sitting round the fire, to all appearance tranquil.
“If they had caught Michu,” Laurence told herself, “they would have
brought him with them. I have the mortification of knowing that I was
not the mistress of myself, and that I threw some light upon the matter
for those wretches; but the harm can be undone--How long are we to be
your prisoners?” she asked sarcastically, with an easy manner.
“How can she know anything about Michu? No one from the outside has got
near the chateau; she is laughing at us,” said the two agents to each
other by a look.
“We shall not inconvenience you long,” replied Corentin. “In three hours
from now we shall offer our regrets for having troubled your solitude.”
No one replied. This contemptuous silence redoubled Corentin’s inward
rage. Laurence and the abbe (the two minds of their little world) had
talked the man over and drawn their conclusions. Gothard and Catherine
had set the breakfast-table near the fire and the abbe and his sister
were sharing the meal. Neither masters nor servants paid the slightest
attention to the two spies, who walked up and down the garden, the
courtyard or the lawn, returning every now and then to the salon.
At half-past two the lieutenant reappeared.
“I found the corporal,” he said to Corentin, “lying in the road which
leads from the pavilion of Cinq-Cygne to the farm at Bellache. He has
no wound, only a bad contusion of the head, caused, apparently, by his
fall. He told me he had been lifted suddenly off his horse and flung
so violently to the ground that he could not discover how the thing was
done. His feet left the stirrups, which was lucky, for he might have
been killed by the horse dragging him. We put him in charge of Michu and
Violette--”
“Michu! is Michu in his own house?” said Corentin, glancing at Laurence.
The countess smiled ironically, like a woman obtaining her revenge.
“He is bargaining with Violette about the sale of some land,” said the
lieutenant. “They seemed to me drunk; and it’s no wonder, for they have
been drinking all night and discussing the matter, and they haven’t come
to terms yet.”
“Did Violette tell you so?” cried Corentin.
“Yes,” said the lieutenant.
“Nothing is right if we don’t attend to it ourselves!” cried Peyrade,
looking at Corentin, who doubted the lieutenant’s news as much as the
other did.
“At what hour did you get to Michu’s house?” asked Corentin, noticing
that the countess had glanced at the clock.
“About two,” replied the lieutenant.
Laurence covered Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre and the abbe and his
sister in one comprehensive glance, which made them fancy they were
wrapped in an azure mantle; triumph sparkled in her eyes, she blushed,
and the tears welled up beneath her lids. Strong under all misfortunes,
the girl knew not how to weep except from joy. At this moment she was
all glorious, especially to the priest, who was sometimes distressed
by the virility of her character, and who now caught a glimpse of the
infinite tenderness of her woman’s nature. But such feelings lay in her
soul like a treasure hidden at a great depth beneath a block of granite.
Just then a gendarme entered the salon to ask if he might bring in
Michu’s son, sent by his father to speak to the gentlemen from Paris.
Corentin gave an affirmative nod. Francois Michu, a sly little chip of
the old block, was in the courtyard, where Gothard, now at liberty, got
a chance to speak to him for an instant under the eyes of a gendarme.
The little fellow managed to slip something into Gothard’s hand without
being detected, and the latter glided into the salon after him till he
reached his mistress, to whom he stealthily conveyed both halves of
the wedding-ring, a sure sign, she knew, that Michu had met the four
gentlemen and put them in safety.
“My papa wants to know what he’s to do with the corporal, who ain’t
doing well,” said Francois.
“What’s the matter with him?” asked Peyrade.
“It’s his head--he pitched down hard on the ground,” replied the boy.
“For a gindarme who knows how to ride it was bad luck--I suppose the
horse stumbled. He’s got a hole--my! as big as your fist--in the back of
his head. Seems as if he must have hit some big stone, poor man! He may
be a gindarme, but he suffers all the same--you’d pity him.”
The captain of the gendarmerie now arrived and dismounted in the
courtyard. Corentin threw up the window, not to lose time.
“What has been done?”
“We are back like the Dutchmen! We found nothing but five dead horses,
their coats stiff with sweat, in the middle of the forest. I have kept
them to find out where they came from and who owns them. The forest is
surrounded; whoever is in it can’t get out.”
“At what hour do you suppose those horsemen entered the forest?”
“About half-past twelve.”
“Don’t let a hare leave that forest without your seeing it,” whispered
Corentin. “I’ll station Peyrade at the village to help you; I am going
to see the corporal myself--Go to the mayor’s house,” he added, still
whispering, to Peyrade. “I’ll send some able man to relieve you. We
shall have to make use of the country-people; examine all faces.” He
turned towards the family and said in a threatening tone, “Au revoir!”
No one replied, and the two agents left the room.
“What would Fouche say if he knew we had made a domiciliary visit
without getting any results?” remarked Peyrade as he helped Corentin
into the osier vehicle.
“It isn’t over yet,” replied the other, “those four young men are in the
forest. Look there!” and he pointed to Laurence who was watching them
from a window. “I once revenged myself on a woman who was worth a dozen
of that one and had stirred my bile a good deal less. If this girl comes
in the way of my hatchet I’ll pay her for the lash of that whip.”
“The other was a strumpet,” said Peyrade; “this one has rank.”
“What difference is that to me? All’s fish that swims in the sea,”
replied Corentin, signing to the gendarme who drove him to whip up.
Ten minutes later the chateau de Cinq-Cygne was completely evacuated.
“How did they get rid of the corporal?” said Laurence to Francois Michu,
whom she had ordered to sit down and eat some breakfast.
“My father told me it was a matter of life and death and I mustn’t let
anybody get into our house,” replied the boy. “I knew when I heard the
horses in the forest that I’d got to do with them hounds of gindarmes,
and I meant to keep ‘em from getting in. So I took some big ropes that
were in my garret and fastened one of ‘em to a tree at the corner of
the road. Then I drew the rope high enough to hit the breast of a man
on horseback, and tied it to the tree on the opposite side of the way in
the direction where I heard the horses. That barred the road. It didn’t
miss fire, I can tell you! There was no moon, and the corporal just
pitched!--but he wasn’t killed; they’re tough, them gindarmes! I did
what I could.”
“You have saved us!” said Laurence, kissing him as she took him to
the gate. When there, she looked about her and seeing no one she said
cautiously, “Have they provisions?”
“I have just taken them twelve pounds of bread and four bottles of
wine,” said the boy. “They’ll be snug for a week.”
Returning to the salon, the girl was beset with mute questions in the
eyes of all, each of whom looked at her with as much admiration as
eagerness.
“But have you really seen them?” cried Madame d’Hauteserre.
The countess put a finger on her lips and smiled; then she left the room
and went to bed; her triumph sure, utter weariness had overtaken her.
The shortest road from Cinq-Cygne to Michu’s lodge was that which led
from the village past the farm at Bellache to the _rond-point_ where
the Parisian spies had first seen Michu on the preceding evening. The
gendarme who was driving Corentin took this way, which was the one the
corporal of Arcis had taken. As they drove along, the agent was on the
look-out for signs to show why the corporal had been unhorsed. He blamed
himself for having sent but one man on so important an errand, and he
drew from this mistake an axiom for the police Code, which he afterwards
applied.
“If they have got rid of the corporal,” he said to himself, “they have
done as much by Violette. Those five horses have evidently brought
the four conspirators and Michu from the neighborhood of Paris to the
forest. Has Michu a horse?” he inquired of the gendarme who was driving
him and who belonged to the squad from Arcis.
“Yes, and a famous little horse it is,” answered the man, “a hunter
from the stables of the ci-devant Marquis de Simeuse. There’s no better
beast, though it is nearly fifteen years old. Michu can ride him fifty
miles and he won’t turn a hair. He takes mighty good care of him and
wouldn’t sell him at any price.”
“What does the horse look like?”
“He’s brown, turning rather to black; white stockings above the hoofs,
thin, all nerves like an Arab.”
“Did you ever see an Arab?”
“In Egypt--last year. I’ve ridden the horses of the mamelukes. We have
to serve twelve years in the cavalry, and I was on the Rhine under
General Steingel, after that in Italy, and then I followed the First
Consul to Egypt. I’ll be a corporal soon.”
“When I get to Michu’s house go to the stable; if you have served twelve
years in the cavalry you know when a horse is blown. Let me know the
condition of Michu’s beast.”
“See! that’s where our corporal was thrown,” said the man, pointing to a
spot where the road they were following entered the _rond-point_.
“Tell the captain to come and pick me up at Michu’s, and I’ll go with
him to Troyes.”
So saying Corentin got down, and stood about for a few minutes examining
the ground. He looked at the two elms which faced each other,--one
against the park wall, the other on the bank of the _rond-point_; then
he saw (what no one had yet noticed) the button of a uniform lying in
the dust, and he picked it up. Entering the lodge he saw Violette and
Michu sitting at the table in the kitchen and talking eagerly. Violette
rose, bowed to Corentin, and offered him some wine.
“Thank you, no; I came to see the corporal,” said the young man, who saw
with half a glance that Violette had been drunk all night.
“My wife is nursing him upstairs,” said Michu.
“Well, corporal, how are you?” said Corentin who had run up the stairs
and found the gendarme with his head bandaged, and lying on Madame
Michu’s bed; his hat, sabre, and shoulder-belt on a chair.
Marthe, faithful in her womanly instincts, and knowing nothing of her
son’s prowess, was giving all her care to the corporal, assisted by her
mother.
“We expect Monsieur Varlet the doctor from Arcis,” she said to Corentin;
“our servant-lad has gone to fetch him.”
“Leave us alone for a moment,” said Corentin, a good deal surprised at
the scene, which amply proved the innocence of the two women. “Where
were you struck?” he asked the man, examining his uniform.
“On the breast,” replied the corporal.
“Let’s see your belt,” said Corentin.
On the yellow band with a white edge, which a recent regulation had
made part of the equipment of the guard now called National, was a metal
plate a good deal like that of the foresters, on which the law required
the inscription of these remarkable words: “Respect to persons and
to properties.” Francois’s rope had struck the belt and defaced it.
Corentin took up the coat and found the place where the button he had
picked up upon the road belonged.
“What time did they find you?” asked Corentin.
“About daybreak.”
“Did they bring you up here at once?” said Corentin, noticing that the
bed had not been slept in.
“Yes.”
“Who brought you up?”
“The women and little Michu, who found me unconscious.”
“So!” thought Corentin: “evidently they didn’t go to bed. The corporal
was not shot at, nor struck by any weapon, for an assailant must have
been at his own height to strike a blow. Something, some obstacle, was
in his way and that unhorsed him. A piece of wood? not possible! an iron
chain? that would have left marks. What did you feel?” he said aloud.
“I was knocked over so suddenly--”
“The skin is rubbed off under your chin,” said Corentin quickly.
“I think,” said the corporal, “that a rope did go over my face.”
“I have it!” cried Corentin; “somebody tied a rope from tree to tree to
bar the way.”
“Like enough,” replied the corporal.
Corentin went downstairs to the kitchen.
“Come, you old rascal,” Michu was saying to Violette, “let’s make an end
of this. One hundred thousand francs for the place, and you are master
of my whole property. I shall retire on my income.”
“I tell you, as there’s a God in heaven, I haven’t more than sixty
thousand.”
“But don’t I offer you time to pay the rest? You’ve kept me here since
yesterday, arguing it. The land is in prime order.”
“Yes, the soil is good,” said Violette.
“Wife, some more wine,” cried Michu.
“Haven’t you drunk enough?” called down Marthe’s mother. “This is the
fourteenth bottle since nine o’clock yesterday.”
“You have been here since nine o’clock this morning, haven’t you?” said
Corentin to Violette.
“No, beg your pardon, since last night I haven’t left the place, and
I’ve gained nothing after all; the more he makes me drink the more he
puts up the price.”
“In all markets he who raises his elbow raises a price,” said Corentin.
A dozen empty bottles ranged along the table proved the truth of the old
woman’s words. Just then the gendarme who had driven him made a sign to
Corentin, who went to the door to speak to him.
“There is no horse in the stable,” said the man.
“You sent your boy on horseback to the chateau, didn’t you?” said
Corentin, returning to the kitchen. “Will he be back soon?”
“No, monsieur,” said Michu, “he went on foot.”
“What have you done with your horse, then?”
“I have lent him,” said Michu, curtly.
“Come out here, my good fellow,” said Corentin; “I’ve a word for your
ear.”
Corentin and Michu left the house.
“The gun which you were loading yesterday at four o’clock you meant to
use in murdering the Councillor of State; but we can’t take you up for
that--plenty of intention, but no witnesses. You managed, I don’t know
how, to stupefy Violette, and you and your wife and that young rascal
of yours spent the night out of doors to warn Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne
and save her cousins, whom you are hiding here,--though I don’t as
yet know where. Your son or your wife threw the corporal off his horse
cleverly enough. Well, you’ve got the better of us just now; you’re a
devil of a fellow. But the end is not yet, and you won’t have the last
word. Hadn’t you better compromise? your masters would be the better for
it.”
“Come this way, where we can talk without being overheard,” said Michu,
leading the way through the park to the pond.
When Corentin saw the water he looked fixedly at Michu, who was no doubt
reckoning on his physical strength to fling the spy into seven feet of
mud below three feet of water. Michu replied with a look that was
not less fixed. The scene was absolutely as if a cold and flabby boa
constrictor had defied one of those tawny, fierce leopards of Brazil.
“I am not thirsty,” said Corentin, stopping short at the edge of the
field and putting his hand into his pocket to feel for his dagger.
“We shall never come to terms,” said Michu, coldly.
“Mind what you’re about, my good fellow; the law has its eye upon you.”
“If the law can’t see any clearer than you, there’s danger to every
one,” said the bailiff.
“Do you refuse?” said Corentin, in a significant tone.
“I’d rather have my head cut off a thousand times, if that could be
done, than come to an agreement with such a villain as you.”
Corentin got into his vehicle hastily, after one more comprehensive look
at Michu, the lodge, and Couraut, who barked at him. He gave certain
orders in passing through Troyes, and then returned to Paris. All the
brigades of gendarmerie in the neighborhood received secret instructions
and special orders.
During the months of December, January, and February the search was
active and incessant, even in remote villages. Spies were in all the
taverns. Corentin learned some important facts: a horse like that of
Michu had been found dead in the neighborhood of Lagny; the five horses
burned in the forest of Nodesme had been sold, for five hundred francs
each, by farmers and millers to a man who answered to the description of
Michu. When the decree against the accomplices and harborers of Georges
was put in force Corentin confined his search to the forest of Nodesme.
After Moreau, the royalists, and Pichegru were arrested no strangers
were ever seen about the place.
Michu lost his situation at that time; the notary of Arcis brought him a
letter in which Malin, now made senator, requested Grevin to settle all
accounts with the bailiff and dismiss him. Michu asked and obtained a
formal discharge and became a free man. To the great astonishment of the
neighborhood he went to live at Cinq-Cygne, where Laurence made him
the farmer of all the reserved land about the chateau. The day of his
installation as farmer coincided with the fatal day of the death of the
Duc d’Enghien, when nearly the whole of France heard at the same time
of the arrest, trial, condemnation, and death of the prince,--terrible
reprisals, which preceded the trial of Polignac, Riviere, and Moreau.
PART II.