THE FOOTPAD.
Early in June of the year ’93 I left Paris in company with M.
Crépin. At that time in the flower of his, somewhat mediocre,
fortunes, he had been intrusted with a mission which was entirely
after his own heart. He was to represent the Executive, in fact, in a
“sequestrating” tour through Limosin and Guienne,--or rather through
the new-found departments that had deposed those ancient
territories,--and his interest had procured me a post as his clerk or
assistant. What duties this embraced perhaps the Government would have
found it as difficult to specify as their sub-agent; but, after all,
Jacques Bonhomme emancipated was excessively conservative in the
matter of his retention of the system of complimentary sinecures. For
myself, I looked upon my appointment as the simple means to postpone
an inevitable denunciation.
Crépin and I had by then ceased to fraternise. I could never quite
learn to adapt my sympathies to a certain _mauvais ton_ that underlay
in him all the sensitiveness of the voluptuary. Also, perhaps, I was
beginning a little to resent the humourless methods of a destiny that
had not the wit, it seemed, to rebuke my innate luxuriousness but by
affecting a concern to accommodate me with house-fellows of my own
kidney. We parted on the best of terms; and he none the less attended
to my interests and, as far as possible, to my safety. To the end, I
think, he retained an admiration for the superior quality of my
epigastrium; and when his opportunity came to do me a service, he
never failed to remind me of his indebtedness to my fastidious
_gourmandise_.
We left the city, travelling _en roi_, on a fine blowing afternoon. We
had our roomy carriage, with four well-blooded horses, and a postilion
to each pair. An escort of four patriots, moreover, mounted, armed,
and generally drunk, accompanied us to enforce the letter of the law.
We went out by the suburb of Passy, starting from the
Pavillon-Liberté, close by the Thuilleries,--where Crépin received
his papers of administration--and whipping along the river-bank by way
of the Port aux Pierres. Close by the gates the carriage gave a
thudding jolt, and drew up suddenly to an accompaniment of noise like
the screaming of a swollen axle.
I started up in my corner.
“What is it?” I exclaimed; but three men, risen at that moment from a
bench under some chestnut-trees, engaged my surprised attention. They
made at the postilions, it seemed, and the face of him that was
foremost twitched with a rage of nervous resentment. Their hats had
been laid beside them in the shade, and I noticed that as this
individual sprang to his feet, the powder leapt from his head as if a
musket-ball had struck it. For he was very sprucely groomed, every
hair currycombed to run parallel with its fellows; and there was a
fastidious neatness about his appearance that was like the peevish
delicacy of an invalid.
Such, indeed, he was, from more than one point of view; for he was no
other than M. Robespierre himself, dressed in the fine blue coat he
was studying to make historical, and exhibiting the weak extremes of
his nature in presence of a run-over dog.
“But this is infamous!” I heard him shrill, in a strained wavering
voice. “Thus to shock our humanity and our nerves!”
He ran to the carriage window in uncontrollable excitement. He bustled
with his shaking speech so that it was hardly audible.
“What mischief produces itself that you tear through the streets like
brigands? Messieurs--messieurs! but I say you have no right--citizens,
do you hear?”
Crépin, dismayed, muttered something about authority. The other
snapped at the word and worried it.
“Authority! there is none in this city to be careless of innocent
lives. Authority! who excuses himself to me--to the Republic--by
assuming a licence to murder under its ægis,--yes, murder, I say? You
would adopt the prerogatives of aristocrats--you are an
aristocrat--Tachereau! St Just!”
He was beside himself. His lean hands picked at the window-frame. All
the time the poor cur in the road was screeching, and the sound seemed
to jar him out of his self-control. One of his companions stepped up
to him, put a hand upon his arm, and drew him away. Quite a little mob
had gathered about us.
“_Reculez les chevaux!_” said this person to the postilions. “Complete
what you have begun.”
The horses backed the carriage once, and drew forward again, stilling
the cries. Personally I should have preferred alighting during the
operation. Robespierre ran to the trees and put his palms to his ears,
doubling himself up as if he had the toothache. The other came to the
window once more.
This was the “Apocalyptic!” of the Assembly, its most admirable type
of fanaticism. Dark and immovable as a Nubian archer in a wall
painting, he might have been represented for ever holding the taut
string and the arrow that should whistle to its mark. He was young, a
mere boy--melancholy, olive-skinned, beautiful in his way. Cold,
incorruptible, merciless, nevertheless, he--this St Just--was yet that
one of the ultra-revolutionists I could find it in me to regard
admiringly. Of all, he alone acted up to the last letter of his creed
of purification. Of all, he alone was willing to do a long life’s
reaping without wage, without even that posthumous consideration of a
niche in the “Pantheon of history.” Like the figure of Time on a
clock, he was part and parcel of the scythe with which he wrought. He
must move when the hour came--cutting right and left--and with the
last stroke of inspiration he must stop until the wheels of being
should bring him to the front once more. Truly, he was not great, but,
quite possibly, necessary; and as such, one could not but exclaim over
his faultless mechanism. He sacrificed his life to his cause, long
before it was demanded of him, and in the end flung himself to the axe
as to a kindred spirit with which his structural and destructive
genius was quite in sympathy. One must acknowledge that he made a
consistent practice of that which is the true art of reform--to know
whom to exclude from one’s system. Only, he was a little too drastic
in his exclusion; and that came from a lack of _ton_. For your fanatic
sees a reactionary in every one whose mouth opens for what reason
soever but to applaud his methods; and the sneers which his
sensitiveness regards as levelled at himself, he puts to the account
of treason against his policy.
“Citizen Crépin,” he said (for he had already identified my
companion), “for the future, if you must ride rough-shod, I would
recommend you to make the meanest your first consideration.”
“But, citizen, it was no fault of mine.”
“You have a voice to control, I presume?”--he stepped back and waved
his hand. “_Allez vous promener!_”--and the carriage jerked forward.
I shot a glance at the other as we passed. He was retired from the
scene, and he seemed endeavouring to control the agitation into which
he had been betrayed; but he looked evilly from under his jumping
eyelids at us as we went by.
We travelled cautiously until we were gone a long gunshot from the
city walls, and then Crépin put his head out of the window and cursed
on the postilions furiously.
“_Savant sacré!_” he cried, sinking back on the seat; “we are whipt
and rebuked like schoolboys. Is a Republic a seminary for street curs?
They should hoist Reason in a balloon if she is to travel. That St
Just--he will make it indictable to crack a flea on one’s thumb-nail.”
“What were they doing in that quarter of the town?”
“How should I know, Citizen Thibaut? Spinning webs under the trees,
maybe, to catch unwary flies. They and others spend much of each day
in the suburbs. It is the custom of attorneys, as it is of
story-writers, to hatch their plots in green nooks. They brood for a
week that they may speak for an hour. Robespierre comes to Passy and
Auteuil for inspiration. Couthon goes every day to Neuilly for
bagatelle. My faith, but how these advocates make morality
unattractive! A dozen lawyers amongst the elect would produce a second
revolt of the angels. That is why the devil is loath to recall them.”
“To recall them?”
“They are his ambassadors, monsieur, and it is his trouble that they
are for ever being handed their passports to quit such soil as he
would be represented on. Then they return to him for fresh
instructions; but they will not understand that human passions are not
to be controlled by rule of thumb.”
“Or sounded by depth of plumb, Crépin; and, upon my word, you are a
fine bailiff to your masters.”
Now, I have no wish to detail the processes of our monotonous journey
into the south-westerly departments, whereto--that is to say, to the
borders of Dordogne--it took us eight days to travel. We had our
excitements, our vexations, our adventures even; but these were by the
way, and without bearing on what I have set myself to relate.
One evening as we were lazily rolling along an empty country road,
making for the little walled town of Coutras, where the fourth Henry
was known to his credit once upon a time, a trace snapped, leading to
more damage and a little confusion amongst the horses. I alighted in a
hurry--Crépin, whose veins were congested with Bordeaux, slumbering
profoundly on in his corner--and finding that the accident must cause
us some small delay, strolled back along the road we had come by, for
it looked beautiful in perspective. Our escort, I may say, affecting
ignorance of our mishap, had rattled on into the dusk.
It was a night for love, or fairies, or any of those little gracious
interchanges of soul that France had nothing the art to conceive in
those years. The wind, that had toyed all day with flowers, was sweet
with a languorous and desirable playfulness; a ripening girl moon sat
low on a causeway of mist, embroidering a banner of cloud that blew
from her hands; the floating hills were hung with blots of woodland,
and to peer into the trance of sky was to catch a star here and there
like a note of music.
I turned an elbow of the road and strolled to a little bridge spanning
a brook that I had noticed some minutes earlier in passing. Leaning
over the parapet, I saw the water swell to a miniature pond as it
approached the arch--a shallow ferry designed to cool the fetlocks of
weary horses. The whole was a mirror of placidity. It flowed like a
white oil, reflecting in intenser accent the fading vault above, so
that one seemed to be looking down upon a subterranean dawn--and, “It
is there and thus,” I murmured, “the little people begin their day.”
There were rushes fringing the brook-edge, as I knew only by their
sharp reversed pictures in the blanched water-glass, and a leaning
stake in mid-stream repeated itself blackly that the hairy goblins
below might have something to scratch themselves on; and then this
fancy did so possess me that, when a bat dipt to the surface and rose
again, its reality and not its shadow seemed to flee into the depths.
At last a nightingale sang from a little copse hard by, completing my
bewitchment--and so my thraldom to dreams was nearly made everlasting.
For, it appeared, a man had come softly out of the woods behind me,
while I hung over the parapet, and was stealing towards me on tiptoe
with clubbed bludgeon.
It was a stag-beetle that saved my life--whereout of might be snatched
many little rags of reflections; for it shot whizzing and booming past
my ear and startled me to a sudden sideway jump. The fellow was almost
on my back at the moment, and could not check his impetus. He came
crack against the low wall, his club span out of his fist, and he
himself clutched, failed, and went over with a mighty splash into the
water underneath.
The ludicrous _dénoûment_ gave me time to collect my faculties. I
was at no loss for an immediate solution of the incident. The
highways, in these glorious days of fraternity, were infested with
footpads, and no farther than five miles out of Paris we had had
trouble with them. Doubtless this rascal, the carriage being out of
sight, had taken me for a solitary pedestrian.
I looked over the parapet, feeling myself master of the situation,
though I had no weapon upon me. My assailant was gathering his long
limbs together in the shallow pool. The water dragged the hair over
his eyes and ran in a stream from his bristling chin. Suddenly he saw,
drew a pistol, and clicked it at me. It was a futile and desperate
action, and calculated only to confirm my estimate of his character.
“_Ventrebleu_ and the devil!” he shouted. “Make way for me, sir.”
I waved my hand, right and left of the ferry. Should he emerge either
way, I could easily forestall him.
“You have your choice of roads,” I said, politely.
He recognised his difficulty, and turned as if to wade up stream and
escape by the fields. His fourth step brought him into deep water, out
of which he floundered snorting.
“Try under the bridge,” I said. “It is the right passage for rats.”
He cursed me volubly.
“Well, we are one to one,” said he in sudden decision, and came
splashing out on the Coutras side.
The moment he climbed up the bank I closed with him. He was fairly
handicapped by his liquid load, and out of breath and of conceit with
his luck besides. He aimed a blow at me with his pistol-butt, but I
easily avoided it and let him topple his length again--assisting him
in fact--but this time in the dust. Then I sat on him, and threatened
his head with a great stone.
“_Pouf!_” said he, panting. “I protest I am no adept at this
business.”
“Is it your only one?” said I.
“At this date, yes.”
“So--you have been an honest man? And what more can a patriot boast
of?”
I whistled and called to my companions. My prisoner looked amazed.
“You are not alone!” he exclaimed.
“By no means. My escort is round the curve of the road there.”
He seemed to collapse under me.
“_Merci, monsieur!_” he muttered, “_merci!_”
“What, in these days!”
He dared his chance of the stone, and began to struggle violently. I
doubt if I could have held him long if Crépin and one of the
postilions had not come running up to my shout. A few words were
enough to explain the situation, and we conducted the fellow to the
carriage and strapped him upon one of the horses in a way compromising
to his dignity. And so he became of our party when we moved on once
more.
* * * * * * *
Coutras clacks with mills and is musical with weirs. The spirit of the
warlike king yet informs its old umber walls and toppling houses. I
found it a place so fragrant with antique and with natural beauties,
that my heart wept over the present human degeneracy that vulgarised
it. It lies amongst the last distant swells, as it were, of the great
billows of the Auvergne mountains, before those swells have rolled
themselves to waste in the sombre flats of the Landes. It is the
hill-slope garden on the fringe of the moor; the resting-place of the
sea and the high-rock winds; the hostelry where these meet and embrace
and people the vineyards with baby breezes. It has grown old listening
under its great chestnuts to the sweet thunder of the Isle and the
Dronne. Its peasants, pagan in their instinct for beauty, train their
vines up the elm and walnut trees, that in autumn they may dance under
a dropping rain of grapes. At the same time, I am bound to confess
that their wine suffers for the sake of this picturesqueness.
Now, as we entered it by moonlight, it was a panic town, restless,
scurrying, lurid. The new spirit ran vile and naked in its venerable
streets; the air was poisonous with the breath of _ça ira_. For,
since we left Paris, this had happened. The Girondists were fallen and
hunted men, and Tallien and Ysabeau were at La Réole, preparing for a
descent on Bordeaux. We learned it all at the gate, and also that the
spies and agents of these scoundrels were everywhere abroad, nosing
after the escaped deputies, bullying, torturing, and denouncing.
“It would appear we are forestalled,” said Crépin, drily. “M.
Thibaut, have you a mind to rake over dead ashes? Well, I have heard
of the white wine of Bergerac. At least I will taste that before I go
to bed.”
We drove up to the Golden Lion, whither our scamps had preceded us.
Patriots hooted our prisoner as we clattered through the streets, or
whipped at him with their ramrods. The decent citizens fled before us,
and white-faced girls peeped from behind the white curtains of their
little bed-chambers, crushing the dimity against their swelling
bosoms. Oh! we were great people, I can assure you.
At the hostelry--a high, mud-coloured building, with window-places
fringed with stone, and its hill of a roof fretted thick as a
dove-cote with dormer casements--they brought to our carriage a poor
weeping maid.
“_La demoiselle des pleurs_,” said Bonnet-rouge, with a grin.
“Eh?” said Crépin.
“The _aubergiste_, citizen.”
Crépin looked at the poor creature with disfavour. Certainly she was
very plain, though quite young, and her homely face was blowzed with
tears.
“Why do you cry then, little fool?”
“Monsieur, they have taken my father to La Réole.”
“He will return, if innocent.”
“Alas! no, monsieur.”
“What! you would discredit the impartiality of the Republic?”
He stepped from the carriage, and took her by the shoulder.
“He will return, if innocent, I say; and would the law had enlarged
him before we arrived! You are in charge here, _citoyenne_?”
“But yes, monsieur.”
“A thousand devils!--and disorganised, I’ll swear; no fire in the
kitchen, no food in the larder.”
“Monsieur is in error. I go at once to serve the first monsieur of our
best.”
“The first--_sacré!_ is that also forestalled? But who is this
first?”
“The same as monsieur.”
“And dost thou know who _I_ am?”
“Alas, monsieur! You come and go, and you are all great and imperious.
But I would not with a word offend monsieur.”
“Listen, girl.” (A crowd stood about. He spoke for the benefit of
all.) “I am a high officer of the Republic, _en mission_ to rout out
the disaffected and to enforce the law. Go, and say to this citizen
that, with his permission, I will join him.”
Our rogues were unstrapping the footpad from the horse as he spoke. As
they tumbled him, half silly with his jolting and with the blows he
had received, upon his feet, the _aubergiste_ gave a faint cry.
Crépin caught her as she retreated, and twisted her about once more.
“You know this _Chevalier de la Coupe_?”
“Monsieur, I--how can I say? So many drink wine with us.”
He looked at her sternly a moment, then pushed her from him.
“For supper, the best in the house!” he called after her, and turned
to arrange for the disposition of his men and their prisoner.
By-and-by the _aubergiste_ came to conduct us to table. As we went
thither, Crépin stopped, took the girl by the chin, and looked into
her wet inflamed eyes. If the prospect of good fare exhilarated him, I
will say, also, for his credit, that I believe he had a kindly nature.
“For the future,” he said, “be discreet and make a study to command
your nerves. In these days one must look on life through the little
window of the _lunette_.”
We found our forestaller (who, by the way, had returned no answer to
Crépin’s polite message) established in the eating-room when we
entered it. He was a coarse, blotched ruffian, thick and overbearing,
and he stared at us insolently as he lay sprawled over a couple of
chairs.
“So, thou wouldst share my supper?” he cried, in a rumbling, vibrant
voice. “Lie down under the table, citizen, and thou shalt have a big
plate of scraps when once my belly is satisfied.”
Crépin paused near the threshold. I tingled with secret laughter to
watch the bludgeoning of these two parvenus. But my respected chief
had the advantage of an acquired courtesy.
“You honour me beyond my expectations,” he said. “But, if I were to
break the dish over the citizen’s face, the scraps would fall the
sooner.”
The other scrambled to his feet with a furious grimace.
“_Canaille!_” he shouted (it was curious that I never heard an upstart
but would apply this term in a quarrel to those of his own
kidney)--“Scum! pigwash! Do you know my name, my office, my
reputation? God’s-blood! I’ve a mind to have you roasted in a fat
hog’s skin and served for the first course!”
Crépin walked up to the bully very coolly. _M. le Représentant_ had
plenty of courage in the ordinary affairs of life.
“Do I know who you are?” he said. “Why, I take you for one of those
curs that are whipt on to do the dirty work of the people’s ministers.
And do you know who I am, citizen spy? I hold my commission direct
from the Committee of Safety, with full authority of sequestration and
requisition, and no tittle of responsibility to your masters at La
Réole. If you interfere with the processes of my office, I shall have
something additional to say in my report to the chiefs of my
department, whom your highness may recognise by the names of
Billaud-Varennes and Collot-d’Herbois. If you insult me personally, I
shall thrash you with a dog-whip.”
The creature was but a huge wind-bag. I never saw one collapse so
suddenly. Crépin, it is true, had some fearful names to conjure by.
“_M. le Représentant_,” said the former, in a fallen, flabby voice,
“I have no desire to oppose or embarrass you. We need not clash if I
am circumspect. For the rest, accept my apologies for the heat I was
betrayed into through inadvertence. We have to be so careful with
strangers.”
He bowed clumsily. His neck was choked with a great cravat; a huge
sabre clanked on the floor beside him as he moved. He was a very ugly
piece of goods, and he bore his humiliation with secret fury, I could
perceive--the more so as the _aubergiste_ brought in the first of the
dishes during the height of the dispute.
Crépin permitted himself to be something mollified by the sight of
supper. He complimented the girl on her promptitude. The poor creature
may have been no heroine, but she was a seductive cook. We had
_potage_, most excellent, an _entrée_ of chestnut-meal _ramequins_,
roasted kid stuffed with _truffes de Périgord_ and served with sweet
wine-sauce. Also a magnificent brand of Bergerac was in evidence.
Under the influence of these generous things our table-fellow’s
insolence a little revived; but now he would rally me as the safer
butt.
“The citizen is dainty with his food.” (The fellow himself had lapped
and sucked like a pig.)
“I owe it to the cook,” said I, serenely.
“A debt of love. Thou shalt pay it her presently when the lights are
out.”
“You are an ill-conditioned hog,” said I.
He sprang, toppling, to his feet.
“Mother of God!” he stuttered, hoarsely; “this goes too far, this----”
He caught Crépin’s eye and subsided again, muttering. We were all
pretty warm with liquor; but my superior officer was grown benignant
under its influence.
“For shame, citizens!” he said, blandly, “to put a coarse accent to
this heavenly bouquet.”
He had bettered me in the philosophy of the palate. I confess it at
once.
The other (his name, we came to know, was Lacombe--a name of infamous
notoriety in the Bordeaux business) leaned over to me presently--when
Crépin was gone from the room a moment to give a direction--with hell
glinting out of his eyes.
“_M. le Représentant’s_ fellow,” said he; “I bow to authority, but I
kick authority’s dog in the ribs if the cur molests me.”
“I don’t doubt it. It is probably the measure of your courage.”
He nodded pregnantly.
“The resurrection of France shall be in discretion. That is the real
courage to those whose overbearing impulse is to strike. We are
discreet, and we watch, and we evolve by degrees the whole alphabet of
espionage. Let us call A the language of the hands. These the frost of
poverty will stunt, the rack of labour will warp and disjoint. There
is your sign of a citizen of the people. Monsieur has very pretty
fingers and pink nails.”
“By the same token a corded fist should prove one to be a hangman.
Monsieur has a knot for every knuckle.”
He nodded again. His calmness was more deadly than his wrath.
“You spit your insults over the shoulder of your master. You think
yourself secure in your office. But there is an order of repartee
unknown to patriots, for it was hatched in the hotbeds of Versailles.”
He fell back in his chair--still eyeing me--with a grunt; then
suddenly leaned forward again.
“The alphabet,” he said, “of which B shall be designated the
penetration of disguises. Coach-drivers, colporteurs, pedlars--oh, one
may happen upon the cloven hoof amongst them all.”
I laughed, with a fine affectation of contempt. This mummy at the
feast----
There was a sound in the room. I turned my head. The little
_aubergiste_ stood at the door, weeping and wringing her hands.
“Monsieur!” she cried, “do not let it be done!”
I rose and went to the child.
“Tell me,” I said, “what is it?”
“Monsieur, the poor man that you captured! they are torturing him in
the yard.”
I pointed with my hand to a window. Without, all during our meal, had
been a confused clatter of voices and the lurid smoke of torches
rising about the glass.
“Yes,” she sobbed, quite overcome. “It is not right, monsieur. It will
bring a curse upon the place.”
I ran from the room, my blood on fire. Whatever his offence to me, I
had sooner let the rascal go than that he should fall into the hands
of drunken patriots.
The yard was a paved space scooped from the rear of the house. A well
with a windlass pierced it about the middle, and round the low wall of
this were seated a dozen red-bonnets, our own four prominent, shouting
and quarrelling and voluble as parrots. Broken bottles strewed the
ground, and here and there a torch was stuck into the chinks of the
stones, informing all with a jumping glare of red.
I pushed past two or three frightened onlookers, and rushed out into
the open.
“Where is he?” I cried in a heat. “What the devil! am I not to pass
judgment on my own!”
A moment’s silence fell. The faces of all were turned up to me,
scowling and furious. In the pause a pitiful voice came booming and
wailing up from the very bowels of the well itself.
“_Merci!_ messieurs, _merci!_ and I will conduct you to the treasure!”
I wore a sword, and I drew it and sprang to the well-mouth.
“God in heaven!” I cried, “what are you doing with him down there?”
Several had risen by this, and were set at me, snarling like dogs.
“The man is forfeit to the law!” they yelped.
“That is for the law to decide.”
“The people are the law. We sit here to condemn him while he cools his
heels.”
“Send monsieur to fetch his friend up!” cried Lacombe’s voice over
their heads. “He will be dainty to wash his white fingers after a
meal!”
There were cries of “Aristocrat!” Possibly they would have put the
brute’s suggestion into effect--for a tipsy patriot has no bowels--had
not Crépin at that moment run into the yard. I informed him of the
situation in a word, as he joined me by the well-side.
“Haul up the man!” he said, coolly and peremptorily. His office
procured him some respect and more fear. Our fellows had no stomach
but to obey, and they came to the windlass, muttering, and wound their
victim up to the surface. He was a pitiable sight when he reached it.
They had trussed him to the rope with a savagery to which his swollen
joints bore witness, and, with a refinement of cruelty, had cut the
bucket from under his feet, that the full weight of his body should
hang without support. In this condition they had then lowered him up
to his neck in the black water.
He fell, when released, a sodden moaning heap on the stones.
“And what was to be the end?” asked Crépin.
“Citizen _Représentant_, we could not decide; yet a show of hands was
in favour of singeing over a slow fire. Grace of God! but it would
seem the accused has forestalled the jury.”
He had not, however.
“Give him brandy,” said Crépin; “and bring him to the shed yonder,
when recovered, for the _procès verbal_.”
He took my arm, and we went off together to the place designated,--an
outbuilding half full of fagots. On the way he beckoned the crying
_aubergiste_, who had followed him into the yard, to attend us.
“For the present the man is saved,” he said to her when we were alone.
“Now, what is your interest in the rascal?”
“Monsieur, he was an honest man once.”
“Of the neighbourhood?”
She looked up at him with her little imploring red eyes.
“Come,” he said; “I owe you the debt of a grateful digestion.”
“Of the château,” she said faintly.
“What château?”
“Des Pierrettes, monsieur.”
Crépin, as I, I could see, was beating his brains for some memory
connected with the name.
“In Février’s _café_!” I said suddenly. Should it prove the same,
for the third time destiny seemed bringing me into touch with a lady
of this history.
“Ah!” he said. “But it is not on my list. In what direction does it
lie, girl?”
“Monsieur, two leagues away, off the Libourne road by the lane of the
Marron Cornu.”
“And who inhabits it?”
The poor girl looked infinitely distressed.
“It is M. de Lâge and his niece. You will not make me the instrument
to harm them, monsieur. They are patriots, I will swear. Monsieur,
monsieur!”
“Silence, girl! What are you to question the methods of the Republic?
It is a good recommendation at least that they commission a footpad to
patrol the neighbourhood.”
“It is none of their doing. Oh, monsieur, will you not believe me? He
was an honest servant of theirs till this religion of Reason drove him
to the crooked path. And he has been dismissed this twelvemonth.”
“Harkee, wench! If I read you right, you are well quit of a
scoundrel.”
She fell to sobbing and clucking over that again; and in the midst of
her outburst the half-revived felon was hustled into the shed.
The poor broken and collapsed creature fell at Crépin’s feet and
moaned for mercy.
“Give me a day of life,” he snuffled abjectly, “and I will lead you to
the treasure.”
One of the guard pecked at his ribs with his boot.
“_Pomme de chou!_” he grunted, “have you no other song to sing but
that?”
But Crépin was looking extremely grave and virtuous.
“The prisoner is in no state to be examined,” he said. “Place him
under lock and key, with food and drink; and I will put him to the
question later.”