"Liar--ruffian!" said I through my teeth. The Chevalier answered
for me:
"I would stake my life on her truth and purity."
"You forget the mock marriage, dear Chevalier."
"It was after the manner of his creed and people."
"It was after a manner we all have used at times."
"Speak for yourself, your Excellency," was the austere reply.
Nevertheless, I could see that the Chevalier was much troubled.
"She forgot race, religion, people--all, to spend still hours with
a foreign spy in prison," urged Bigot, with damnable point and
suggestion.
"Hush, sir!" said the Chevalier. "She is a girl once much beloved
and ever admired among us. Let not your rancour against the man be
spent upon the maid. Nay, more, why should you hate the man so? It
is said, your Excellency, that this Moray did not fire the shot
that wounded you, but one who has less reason to love you."
Bigot smiled wickedly, but said nothing.
The Chevalier laid a hand on Bigot's arm. "Will you not oppose
the Governor and the bishop? Her fate is sad enough."
"I will not lift a finger. There are weightier matters. Let
Doltaire, the idler, the Don Amato, the hunter of that fawn, save
her from the holy ambush. Tut, tut, Chevalier. Let her go. Your
nephew is to marry her sister; let her be swallowed up--a shame
behind the veil, the sweet litany of the cloister."
The Chevalier's voice set hard as he said in quick reply, "My
family honour, Francois Bigot, needs no screen. And if you
doubt that, I will give you argument at your pleasure;" so saying,
he turned and went back into the chateau.
Thus the honest Chevalier kept his word, given to me when I
released him from serving me on the St. Lawrence.
Bigot came down the steps, smiling detestably, and passed me
with no more than a quick look. I made my way cautiously through
the streets towards the cathedral, for I owed a duty to the poor
soldier who had died in my arms, through whose death I had been
able to enter the town.
Disarray and ruin met my sight at every hand. Shot and shell had
made wicked havoc. Houses where, as a hostage, I had dined, were
battered and broken; public buildings were shapeless masses,
and dogs and thieves prowled among the ruins. Drunken soldiers
staggered past me; hags begged for sous or bread at corners; and
devoted priests and long-robed Recollet monks, cowled and alert,
hurried past, silent, and worn with labours, watchings, and
prayers. A number of officers in white uniforms rode by, going
towards the chateau, and a company of coureurs de bois came up
from Mountain Street, singing:
"Giron, giran! le canon grand--
Commencez-vous, commencez-vous!"
Here and there were fires lighted in the streets, though it was
not cold, and beside them peasants and soldiers drank and quarreled
over food--for starvation was abroad in the land.
By one of these fires, in a secluded street--for I had come a
roundabout way--were a number of soldiers of Languedoc's regiment
(I knew them by their trick of headgear and their stoutness), and
with them reckless girls, who, in their abandonment, seemed to me
like those revellers in Herculaneum, who danced their way into the
Cimmerian darkness. I had no thought of staying there to moralize
upon the theme; but, as I looked, a figure came out of the dusk
ahead, and moved swiftly towards me.
It was Mathilde. She seemed bent on some errand, but the
revellers at the fire caught her attention, and she suddenly
swerved towards them, and came into the dull glow, her great black
eyes shining with bewildered brilliancy and vague keenness, her
long fingers reaching out with a sort of chafing motion. She did
not speak till she was among them. I drew into the shade of a
broken wall, and watched. She looked all round the circle, and
then, without a word, took an iron crucifix which hung upon her
breast, and silently lifted it above their heads for a moment. I
myself felt a kind of thrill go through me, for her wild beauty
was almost tragical. Her madness was not grotesque, but solemn
and dramatic. There was something terribly deliberate in her
strangeness; it was full of awe to the beholder, more searching
and painfully pitiful than melancholy.
Coarse hands fell away from wanton waists; ribaldry hesitated;
hot faces drew apart; and all at once a girl with a crackling
laugh threw a tin cup of liquor into the fire. Even as she did it,
a wretched dwarf sprang into the circle without a word, and,
snatching the cup out of the flames, jumped back again into the
darkness, peering into it with a hollow laugh. As he did so a
soldier raised a heavy stick to throw at him; but the girl caught
him by the arms, and said, with a hoarse pathos, "My God, no,
Alphonse! It is my brother!"
Here Mathilde, still holding out the cross, said in a loud
whisper, "'Sh, 'sh! My children, go not to the palace, for there
is Francois Bigot, and he has a devil. But if you have no cottage,
I will give you a home. I know the way to it up in the hills.
Poor children, see, I will make you happy."
She took a dozen little wooden crosses from her girdle, and,
stepping round the circle, gave each person one. No man refused,
save a young militiaman; and when, with a sneering laugh, he threw
his into the fire, she stooped over him and said, "Poor boy! poor
boy!"
She put her fingers on her lips, and whispered, "Beati
immaculati--miserere mei, Deus," stray phrases gathered from
the liturgy, pregnant to her brain, order and truth flashing out of
wandering and fantasy. No one of the girls refused, but sat there,
some laughing nervously, some silent; for this mad maid had come
to be surrounded with a superstitious reverence in the eyes of the
common people. It was said she had a home in the hills somewhere,
to which she disappeared for days and weeks, and came back hung
about the girdle with crosses; and it was also said that her red
robe never became frayed, shabby, or disordered.
Suddenly she turned and left them. I let her pass, unchecked,
and went on towards the cathedral, humming an old French chanson.
I did this because now and then I met soldiers and patrols, and my
free and careless manner disarmed notice. Once or twice drunken
soldiers stopped me and threw their arms about me, saluting me on
the cheeks a la mode, asking themselves to drink with me. Getting
free of them, I came on my way, and was glad to reach the cathedral
unchallenged. Here and there a broken buttress or a splintered wall
told where our guns had played upon it, but inside I could hear an
organ playing and a Miserere being chanted. I went round to its
rear, and there I saw the little house described by the sentinel
at the chateau. Coming to the door, I knocked, and it was opened
at once by a warm-faced, woman of thirty or so, who instantly
brightened on seeing me. "Ah, you come from Cap Rouge, m'sieu',"
she said, looking at my clothes--her own husband's, though she
knew it not.
"I come from Jean," said I, and stepped inside.
She shut the door, and then I saw, sitting in a corner, by a
lighted table, an old man, bowed and shrunken, white hair and white
beard falling all about him, and nothing of his features to be seen
save high cheek-bones and two hawklike eyes which peered up at me.
"So, so, from Jean," he said in a high, piping voice. "Jean's a
pretty boy--ay, ay, Jean's like his father, but neither with a foot
like mine--a foot for the Court, said Frotenac to me--yes, yes, I
knew the great Frotenac--"
The wife interrupted his gossip. "What news from Jean?" said she.
"He hoped to come one day this week."
"He says," responded I gently, "that Jacques Dobrotte owes you
ten francs and a leg of mutton, and that you are to give his great
beaver coat to Gabord the soldier."
"Ay, ay, Gabord the soldier, he that the English spy near sent
to heaven." quavered the old man.
The bitter truth was slowly dawning upon the wife. She was
repeating my words in a whisper, as if to grasp their full
meaning.
"He said also," I continued, "'Tell Babette I weep with her.'"
She was very still and dazed; her fingers went to her white lips,
and stayed there for a moment. I never saw such a numb misery in
any face.
"And last of all, he said, 'Ah, mon grand homme de Calvaire--bon
soir!'"
She turned round, and went and sat down beside the old man,
looked into his face for a minute silently, and then said,
"Grandfather, Jean is dead; our Jean is dead."
The old man peered at her for a moment, then broke into a
strange laugh, which had in it the reflection of a distant misery,
and said, "Our little Jean, our little Jean Labrouk! Ha! ha! There
was Villon, Marmon, Gabriel, and Gouloir, and all their sons;
and they all said the same at the last, 'Mon grand homme--de
Calvaire--bon soir!' Then there was little Jean, the pretty
little Jean. He could not row a boat, but he could ride a horse,
and he had an eye like me. Ha, ha! I have seen them all say
good-night. Good-morning, my children, I will say one day, and I
will give them all the news, and I will tell them all I have
done these hundred years. Ha, ha, ha--"
The wife put her fingers on his lips, and, turning to me, said
with a peculiar sorrow, "Will they fetch him to me?"