Presently the scoffer continued: “The Duvarneys would remain in the
city, and on that very night, as they sit at dinner, a shell disturbs
them, a splinter strikes Madame, and two days after she is carried to
her grave.”
They linked arms and walked on.
It was a dangerous business I was set on, for I was sure that I would
be hung without shrift if captured. As it proved afterwards, I had been
proclaimed, and it was enjoined on all Frenchmen and true Catholics to
kill me if the chance showed.
Only two things could I depend on: Voban and my disguise, which was
very good. From the Terror of France I had got a peasant’s dress, and by
rubbing my hands and face with the stain of butternut, cutting again
my new-grown beard, and wearing a wig, I was well guarded against
discovery.
How to get into the city was the question. By the St. Charles River and
the Palace Gate, and by the St. Louis Gate, not far from the citadel,
were the only ways, and both were difficult. I had, however, two or
three plans, and these I chewed as I went across Maitre Abraham’s
fields, and came to the main road from Sillery to the town.
Soon I heard the noise of clattering hoofs, and jointly with this I
saw a figure rise up not far ahead of me, as if waiting for the coming
horseman. I drew back. The horseman passed me, and, as he came on
slowly, I saw the figure spring suddenly from the roadside and make a
stroke at the horseman. In a moment they were a rolling mass upon the
ground, while the horse trotted down the road a little, and stood still.
I never knew the cause of that encounter--robbery, or private hate, or
paid assault; but there was scarcely a sound as the two men struggled.
Presently, there was groaning, and both lay still. I hurried to them,
and found one dead, and the other dying, and dagger wounds in both, for
the assault had been at such close quarters that the horseman had had no
chance to use a pistol.
My plans were changed on the instant. I drew the military coat, boots,
and cap off the horseman, and put them on myself; and thrusting my hand
into his waistcoat--for he looked like a courier--I found a packet. This
I put into my pocket, and then, making for the horse which stood quiet
in the road, I mounted it and rode on towards the town. Striking a
light, I found that the packet was addressed to the Governor. A serious
thought disturbed me: I could not get into the town through the gates
without the countersign. I rode on, anxious and perplexed.
Presently a thought pulled me up. The courier was insensible when I
left him, and he was the only one who could help me in this. I greatly
reproached myself for leaving him while he was still alive. “Poor
devil,” thought I to myself, “there is some one whom his death will
hurt. He must not die alone. He was no enemy of mine.” I went back, and,
getting from the horse, stooped to him, lifted up his head, and found
that he was not dead. I spoke in his ear. He moaned, and his eyes
opened.
“What is your name?” said I.
“Jean--Labrouk,” he whispered.
Now I remembered him. He was the soldier whom Gabord had sent as
messenger to Voban the night I was first taken to the citadel.
“Shall I carry word for you to any one?” asked I.
There was a slight pause; then he said, “Tell my--Babette--Jacques
Dobrotte owes me ten francs--and--a leg--of mutton. Tell--my Babette--to
give my coat of beaver fur to Gabord the soldier. Tell”...he sank back,
but raised himself, and continued: “Tell my Babette I weep with her....
Ah, mon grand homme de Calvaire--bon soir!” He sank back again, but
I roused him with one question more, vital to me. I must have the
countersign.
“Labrouk! Labrouk!” said I sharply.
He opened his dull, glazed eyes.
“Qui va la?” said I, and I waited anxiously.
Thought seemed to rally in him, and, staring--alas! how helpless and
how sad: that look of a man brought back for an instant from the
Shadows!--his lips moved.
“France,” was the whispered reply.
“Advance and give the countersign!” I urged.
“Jesu--” he murmured faintly. I drew from my breast the cross that
Mathilde had given me, and pressed it to his lips. He sighed softly,
lifted his hand to it, and then fell back, never to speak again.
After covering his face and decently laying the body out, I mounted the
horse again. Glancing up, I saw that this bad business had befallen not
twenty feet from a high Calvary at the roadside.
I was in a painful quandary. Did Labrouk mean that the countersign was
“Jesu,” or was that word the broken prayer of his soul as it hurried
forth? So strange a countersign I had never heard, and yet it might be
used in this Catholic country. This day might be some great feast of the
Church--possibly that of the naming of Christ (which was the case, as
I afterwards knew). I rode on, tossed about in my mind. So much hung on
this. If I could not give the countersign, I should have to fight my
way back again the road I came. But I must try my luck. So I went on,
beating up my heart to confidence; and now I came to the St. Louis Gate.
A tiny fire was burning near, and two sentinels stepped forward as I
rode boldly on the entrance.
“Qui va la?” was the sharp call.
“France,” was my reply, in a voice as like the peasant’s as possible.
“Advance and give the countersign,” came the demand.
Another voice called from the darkness of the wall: “Come and drink,
comrade; I’ve a brother with Bougainville.”
“Jesu,” said I to the sentinel, answering his demand for the
countersign, and I spurred on my horse idly, though my heart was
thumping hard, for there were several sturdy fellows lying beyond the
dull handful of fire.
Instantly the sentinel’s hand came to my bridle-rein. “Halt!” roared he.
Surely some good spirit was with me then to prompt me, for, with a
careless laugh, as though I had not before finished the countersign,
“Christ,” I added--“Jesu Christ!”
With an oath the soldier let go the bridle-rein, the other opened the
gates, and I passed through. I heard the first fellow swearing roundly
to the others that he would “send yon courier to fires of hell, if he
played with him again so.”
The gates closed behind me, and I was in the town which had seen the
worst days and best moments of my life. I rode along at a trot, and once
again beyond the citadel was summoned by a sentinel. Safely passed on,
I came down towards the Chateau St. Louis. I rode boldly up to the great
entrance door, and handed the packet to the sentinel.
“From whom?” he asked.
“Look in the corner,” said I. “And what business is’t of yours?”
“There is no word in the corner,” answered he doggedly. “Is’t from
Monsieur le General at Cap Rouge?”
“Bah! Did you think it was from an English wolf?” I asked.
His dull face broke a little. “Is Jean Labrouk with Bougainville yet?”
“He’s done with Bougainville; he’s dead,” I answered.
“Dead! dead!” said he, a sort of grin playing on his face.
I made a shot at a venture. “But you’re to pay his wife Babette the ten
francs and the leg of mutton in twenty-four hours, or his ghost will
follow you. Swallow that, pudding-head! And see you pay it, or every man
in our company swears to break a score of shingles on your bare back.”
“I’ll pay, I’ll pay,” he said, and he took to trembling.
“Where shall I find Babette?” asked I. “I come from Isle aux Coudres; I
know not this rambling town.”
“A little house hugging the cathedral rear,” he explained. “Babette
sweeps out the vestry, and fetches water for the priests.”
“Good,” said I. “Take that to the Governor at once, and send the
corporal of the guard to have this horse fed and cared for, and he’s
to carry back the Governor’s messenger. I’ve further business for the
General in the town. And tell your captain of the guard to send and pick
up two dead men in the highway, just against the first Calvary beyond
the town.”
He did my bidding, and I dismounted, and was about to get away, when I
saw the Chevalier de la Darante and the Intendant appear at the door.
They paused upon the steps. The Chevalier was speaking most earnestly:
“To a nunnery--a piteous shame! it should not be, your Excellency.”
“To decline upon Monsieur Doltaire, then?” asked Bigot, with a sneer.
“Your Excellency believes in no woman,” responded the Chevalier stiffly.
“Ah yes, in one!” was the cynical reply.
“Is it possible? And she remains a friend of your Excellency?” came back
in irony.
“The very best; she finds me unendurable.”
“Philosophy shirks the solving of that problem, your Excellency,” was
the cold reply.
“No, it is easy. The woman to be trusted is she who never trusts.”
“The paragon--or prodigy--who is she?”
“Even Madame Jamond.”
“She danced for you once, your Excellency, they tell me.”
“She was a devil that night; she drove us mad.”
So Doltaire had not given up the secret of that affair! There was
silence for a moment, and then the Chevalier said, “Her father will not
let her go to a nunnery--no, no. Why should he yield to the Church in
this?”
Bigot shrugged a shoulder. “Not even to hide--shame?”
“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?”