THIBAULT’S LAST WISH
Urged in her flight by a hideous terror, and anxious to reach the
village where she had left her husband with all speed possible,
Agnelette, for the very reason that she was running so hastily, was
forced by her failing breath, to pause at intervals along the way.
During these short spaces of rest, she endeavoured to reason with
herself, trying to convince herself of the folly of attaching importance
to words which could have no power in themselves, and which were
dictated by jealousy and hatred, words which had by now been scattered
to the winds; but notwithstanding all her mental arguments, she had no
sooner regained her breath than she started off again at the same
precipitate pace, for she felt she should know no peace until she had
seen her husband again. Best part of her way led through the forest, and
near the wildest and most solitary enclosures, but she gave no thought
to the wolves, which were the terror of every town and village within
ten miles round. Only one fear possessed her, that of coming across her
husband’s dead body. More than once, as her foot struck against a stone
or a branch, her heart stopped beating, and she felt as if her last
breath had been drawn, while a sharp cold seemed to enter her very
vitals, her hair stood on end and her face grew wet with perspiration.
At last, at the end of the long path she had been traversing, arched
over by the trees, she saw ahead of her, a vista of open country lying
bathed in the soft silver light of the moon. As she emerged from the
gloom into the light, a man, who had been concealed behind a bush in the
hollow lying between the forest and the open country, sprang in front of
her and took her in his arms.
“Ah! ah!” he said, laughing, “and where are you off to, Madame, at this
hour of the night, and at this pace too?” Agnelette recognised her
husband.
“Etienne! dear, dear Etienne,” cried the young woman, throwing her arms
round his neck. “How thankful I am to see you again, and to find you
alive and well! Oh, my God, I thank Thee!”
“What, did you think, you poor little Agnelette,” said Engoulevent,
“that Thibault and his wolves had been making their dinner of me?”
“Ah! do not even speak of Thibault, Etienne! let us fly, dear one, fly
to where there are houses!”
The young huntsman laughed again. “Well, now then, you will make all the
gossips of Préciamont and Vez declare that a husband is of no use at
all, not even to restore his wife’s courage.”
“You are right, Etienne; but although I have just had the courage to
come through these great dreadful woods, now that I have you with me and
should feel reassured, I tremble with fear, and yet I know not why.”
“What has happened to you? Come, tell me all about it,” said Etienne,
giving his wife a kiss. Then Agnelette told him how she had been
attacked by the wolf, how Thibault had rescued her from its claws, and
what had passed between them afterwards. Engoulevent listened with the
greatest attention.
“Listen,” he said to Agnelette, “I am going to take you home and shut
you up carefully with the grandmother, so that no harm may come to you;
and then I shall ride over and tell my lord of Vez where Thibault has
taken up his quarters.”
“Oh! no, no!” cried Agnelette, “you would have to ride through the
forest, and there is no knowing what danger you might run.”
“I will make a détour,” said Etienne, “I can go round by Croyolles and
Value instead of crossing the forest.”
Agnelette sighed and shook her head, but made no further resistance; she
knew that Engoulevent would not give in on this matter, and she reserved
her strength wherewith to renew her entreaties when she was once
indoors.
And in truth, the young huntsman only considered that he was doing his
duty, for a great _battue_ had been arranged for the next day in a part
of the forest on the further side from that on which Agnelette had met
Thibault. Etienne, therefore, was bound to go without delay and report
to his master the whereabouts of the Wolf-leader. There was not too much
of the night left for the work of re-arranging for the morrow’s
_battue_.
As they drew near Préciamont, Agnelette, who had not spoken for a while,
decided that she had, during her silence, amassed a sufficient number of
reasons to justify her in beginning her solicitations afresh, which she
did with even more earnestness than she had put into her former
arguments. She reminded Etienne that Thibault, even though he might be a
were-wolf, had, so far from hurting her, actually saved her life; and
that after all, he had not abused his power when he had her in it, but
had allowed her to leave him and rejoin her husband. And after that, to
betray where he was to his mortal enemy, the Lord of Vez, was not
performing a duty, but committing an act of treachery; and Thibault, who
would certainly get wind of this treachery, would never under similar
circumstances show mercy to any one again. Agnelette became quite
eloquent as she pleaded Thibault’s cause. But, when marrying
Engoulevent, she had made no more secret of her former engagement to the
shoe-maker than she had of this last interview with him, and however
perfect a confidence he had in his wife, Engoulevent was nevertheless
not unsusceptible to jealousy. More than that, there existed an old
grudge between the two men, ever since the day when Engoulevent had
spied out Thibault in his tree, and his boar-spear in a neighbouring
bush. So he stood his ground, and though listening to Agnelette,
continued to walk briskly towards Préciamont. And so arguing together,
and each insisting that he or she was in the right, they came to within
a stone’s throw of the first forest-fences. To protect themselves as far
as possible from Thibault’s sudden and unexpected assaults, the peasants
had instituted patrol parties, who mounted guard at night as in times of
war. Etienne and Agnelette were so pre-occupied with their discussion,
that they did not hear the call of “Who goes there!” from the sentinel
behind the hedge, and went walking on in the direction of the village.
The sentinel, seeing something moving in the darkness which to his
prepossessed imagination appeared to be a monstrous form of some kind,
and hearing no answer to his challenge, he prepared to shoot. Looking up
at that moment, the young huntsman suddenly caught sight of the
sentinel, as the moonlight shone on the barrel of his gun. Calling out
“Friend,” he threw himself in front of Agnelette, flinging his arms
round her, so as to make a shield of his body. But at the same instant
the gun went off, and the unfortunate Etienne, giving one last sigh,
fell forward without a groan against the wife he was clasping in his
arms. The bullet had pierced his heart. When the people of Préciamont,
on hearing the gun shot, came running up to the spot, they found
Engoulevent dead, and Agnelette lying unconscious beside her husband.
They carried her to her grandmother’s, but she only came to her senses
to fall into a state of despair which bordered on delirium, and which at
last became almost madness. She accused herself of her husband’s death,
called him by name, begged the invisible spirits, which seemed to haunt
her, even in the short intervals of slumber which her excited state of
brain made possible, to have mercy upon him. She called Thibault’s name,
and addressed such heartbroken supplications to him that those about her
were moved to tears. By degrees, in spite of the incoherence of her
words, the real facts became evident, and it grew to be generally
understood that the Wolf-leader was in some way accountable for the
unhappy accident which had caused poor Etienne’s death. The common enemy
was therefore accused of having cast a spell over the two unfortunate
young creatures, and the animosity felt towards the former shoe-maker
became intensified.
In vain doctors were sent for from Villers-Cotterets and Ferté-Milon,
Agnelette became worse and worse; her strength was rapidly failing; her
voice, after the first few days, grew feebler, her breath shorter,
although her delirium was as violent as ever, and everything, even the
silence on the doctors’ part, led to the belief that poor Agnelette
would soon follow her husband to the grave. The voice of the old blind
woman alone seemed to have any power to allay the fever. When she heard
her grandmother speaking, she grew calmer, the haggard staring eyes grew
softer and suffused with tears; she would pass her hand over her
forehead as if to drive away some haunting thought, and a sorrowful
wandering smile would pass across her lips.
One evening, towards night, her slumber seemed to be more agitated and
distressed than usual. The hut, feebly lit by a little copper lamp, was
in semi-darkness; the grandmother sat by the hearth, with that
immobility of countenance under which peasants and savages hide their
strongest feelings. At the foot of the bed on which Agnelette lay, so
worn and white that, had it not been for the regular rise and fall of
her bosom with its troubled breathing, you might have taken her for
dead, knelt one of the women, whom the Baron was paying to attend upon
the widow of his young huntsman, engaged in telling her beads; the other
was silently spinning with her distaff. All at once, the sick woman, who
for some minutes past had been shivering at intervals, seemed to be
fighting against some horrible dream, and gave a piercing cry of
anguish. At that moment the door burst open, a man seemingly encircled
by flames, rushed into the room, leapt to Agnelette’s bed, clasped the
dying woman in his arms, pressed his lips upon her forehead, uttering
cries of sorrow, then, rushing to another door which gave on to the open
country, opened it and disappeared. The apparition had come and gone so
quickly that it seemed almost like an hallucination, and as if Agnelette
were endeavouring to repulse some invisible object as she cried out,
“Take him away! take him away!” But the two watchers had seen the man
and had recognised Thibault, and there was a clamouring outside, in the
midst of which the name of Thibault could be distinguished. Soon the
clamour came nearer to Agnelette’s hut, and those who were uttering the
cries ere long appeared on the threshold; they were in pursuit of the
Wolf-leader. Thibault had been seen prowling in the neighbourhood of the
hut, and the villagers, warned of this by their sentinels, had armed
themselves with pitch-forks and sticks preparatory to giving him chase.
Thibault, hearing of the hopeless condition in which Agnelette was, had
not been able to resist his longing to see her once again, and at the
risk of what might happen to him, he had passed through the village,
trusting to the rapidity of his movements, had opened the door of the
hut and rushed in to see the dying woman.
The two women showed the peasants the door by which Thibault had
escaped, and like a pack that has recovered the scent they started
afresh on his track with renewed cries and threats. Thibault, it need
hardly be said, escaped from them and disappeared in the forest.
Agnelette’s condition, after the terrible shock given her by Thibault’s
presence and embrace, became so alarming that before the night was over
the priest was sent for; she had evidently now but a few hours longer to
live and suffer. Towards midnight the priest arrived, followed by the
sacristan carrying the cross, and the choir-boys bearing the holy water.
These went and knelt at the foot of the bed, while the priest took his
place at the head beside Agnelette. And now, some mysterious power
seemed to re-animate the dying woman. For a long time she spoke in a low
voice with the priest, and as the poor child had no need of long prayers
for herself, it was certain that she must be praying for another. And
who was that other? God, the priest, and Agnelette alone knew.