Neither Mabel nor Madame Coulancourt, when they retired to rest that
night, undressed, for they fully expected to be roused by the sounds of
contention from Palos Creek. Mabel remained with her mother, and both,
leaving their lamp burning, lay down as they were. Just before midnight
the loud, dull sound of a heavy gun in the direction of the creek
caused both ladies to jump up and listen; they threw up their window,
which looked in the direction of the firing, and then came plainly
enough the sounds of discharges of musketry, and the loud boom of the
twelve-pound carronade.
“Oh, Heavens! how quick the discharges of musketry are,” said Mabel,
trembling all over; “what a terrible fight they must have!”
“O God, protect those we love!” fervently uttered both mother and
daughter; “and inspire them with mercy to their enemies. It’s frightful
to think of men defacing God’s own image by slaying each other, and
without one real feeling of individual animosity.”
“Ah, mother, rulers of states have a terrible responsibility to answer
for, when they arm their poor subjects to slay and destroy other human
beings, from some paltry political feeling. There goes the great gun
again!”
A knock at the door interrupted the conversation.
“’Tis I, Mabel,” said the voice of Julia.
Mabel ran and opened the door; Julia was dressed.
“Mon Dieu!” said Mademoiselle Plessis, “what firing down at the creek;
my father has been writing this half-hour. Sergeant Perrin has gone
down to the sea-shore, he could not resist; he has left only two men
on guard. My father is sure they will either cut out the ships or burn
them; if they burn them, we shall see the glare in the heavens. My
father is going to an old fisherman, who would risk his life for him,
to get him to take out a letter and a packet of important papers to
give Lieutenant Thornton, in which he has stated his plan of escape, so
that the lieutenant may co-operate if practicable. The old fisherman
will steal out in his boat, and, if possible, deliver the packet; if
not, he will bring it safe back. To-morrow my father will make you
fully acquainted with what he has done. He has gone out by a door, left
unguarded by the departure of the men, and will bring us back word how
the contest ends.”
It was, in truth, a night of deep anxiety to all; and not till long
after the firing had ceased did any of the inhabitants of the château
retire to rest. Monsieur Plessis, however, returned before Sergeant
Perrin.
In the morning, as the family re-assembled at breakfast, jaded with
the watching and anxiety of the past night, Julia informed the mother
and daughter that the Vengeance and the brig had been both carried off
by the English, after a desperate resistance. That there were nine or
ten killed, on board and on shore, of the crew of the Vengeance, and
amongst the soldiers. Captain Gaudet was not hurt, but furious and
frantic at the loss of the vessel, which he imputed to the conduct of
the soldiers, and the cowardice of the captain of the brig—attempting
to run out instead of anchoring his vessel with her broadside to the
entrance, and firing into the boats as they came up. “My father heard
that one or two of the English had been killed, and some wounded, but
no officer hurt; that the fisherman had delivered his letter and the
packet into the hands of Lieutenant Thornton himself, who bade him say
all were well.”
A glow spread over the pale cheek of Mabel at this intelligence, though
she deeply mourned the loss of life.
“Where is your father, Julia?” demanded Madame Coulancourt, anxiously.
“He and my mother went early in the calash to Havre. He expects his
messenger to-day from Paris by the mail-post, and my mother went
with him to make some necessary arrangements. They will be back in
the evening, and the day after to-morrow he thinks we may leave
Coulancourt.”
“God grant it!” said the mother.
“What did Sergeant Perrin do down at the creek last night, did you hear
him speak about it, Julia?”
“For a wonder, madame, he did not say a word, and seems very sulky.
They are all sorely vexed at the cutting out of the Vengeance. I am
going directly to Dame Moret, and very probably I shall see her son,
and he surely will be able to tell us all the particulars; for the
English did not touch or injure the fishing luggers, but put all the
prisoners and wounded into them. I overheard one of the gendarmes
saying to Sergeant Perrin, that the English crew and their leader
that boarded the Vengeance, under a frightful fire from on board and
on shore, were diables. That they were only about fifteen or sixteen
men at first, that they cut down all before them, and that their
leader—Lieutenant Thornton, I fancy—burst through all opposition and
seized Captain Gaudet, who would otherwise have perished, and dragged
him off, throwing him into the boats alongside, so that he might swim
ashore or get on board the nearest boat.”
“That officer was surely our own dear friend,” said Mabel; “he said if
ever he captured the Vengeance he would spare Captain Gaudet, though he
did treat him and Bill Saunders most cruelly.”
“We may expect this Monsieur Gramont here to-day,” said Madame
Coulancourt.
“Yes, madame,” said Julia; “so Sergeant Perrin tells me.”
“Then I will take very good care to keep out of his way,” said Mabel:
“for I am sure it is owing to his schemes that we have been molested.”
Leaving the inmates of Château Coulancourt in a rather troubled and
apprehensive state of mind, we beg our readers to follow us into an
apartment of the mansion inhabited by Monsieur Gramont.
Stretched on a bed, in a remote chamber of the house, lay Augustine
Vadier; his right eye had been knocked out by a splinter of rock,
and although the piece had been extracted, and the wound bound up
by a surgeon from Havre, the eye was gone for ever, and there was
considerable danger from inflammation. Notwithstanding this severe
visitation and suffering, Augustine Vadier showed no kind of remorse
for his past crimes, or evinced any symptoms of regret; on the
contrary, his passion and vexation at being the only one wounded, and
the escape of the person he intended to entrap, rendered the fever much
worse.
“Has Monsieur Gramont arrived?” demanded Vadier of the sulky domestic
that attended to his wants.
“He has not,” returned the man, “but he will be here before mid-day; he
slept at Havre.”
“So those sacre Anglais have cut out the vessels in Palos Creek,”
muttered Vadier, with a smothered execration; “this would not have
occurred if that lazy rascal, the coast-guard, had followed my
directions. We should have entrapped that English spy, who was here
amongst those traitors at the Château Coulancourt, for the purpose of
prying into the situation of the Vengeance. If, instead of watching
the movements of the corvette, they had posted themselves on the
sand-hills, they would have secured them all. Curse them! I am the only
sufferer.”
“Wouldn’t care if they had settled you out and out,” muttered the man
to himself. “Ah! there is Monsieur Gramont riding into the yard.”
“Prop me up with pillows,” said the sick man, “for he will be with me
directly.”
The domestic did so, grumbling at having an office put upon him that an
old woman would have done better.
“Yes, rascal,” exclaimed the irritated invalid, “le diable, for that
matter, would do better than you, thankless scoundrel; your master
shall hear of your insolence.”
“I don’t care who hears of it,” said the man, walking away. “You
promised me five hundred francs for making Dedan a spy on her mistress,
where are they?”
A few minutes afterwards Bertram Gramont, in his riding-dress, entered
the chamber, closing the door after him.
“Here’s a pretty mess you have got yourself into,” said the maire,
throwing himself into a chair by the bedside. “Did I not tell you to
take things quietly till my return? and now here you are with your eye
knocked out; and worse, our prey escaped, when I have an order from
Fouché, the Minister of Police, to arrest the whole party, and send
them prisoners to Paris. I may almost consider the Coulancourt estate
as mine.”
“I acted for the best,” growled Augustine Vadier; “that cursed
Englishman, Lieutenant Thornton, who is the very same who had the
care of the casket in Toulon, was preparing to escape with that other
Englishman living under the name of Lebeau. Who he is I cannot imagine;
Madame Coulancourt has had him concealed in the château, and I was told
was seen embracing him.”
“The diable!” interrupted Bertram Gramont, with a start. “Not a lover,
surely, at her age, and with such a youth; are you sure of this,
Vadier? I really am sorry to hear that you will lose the sight of your
eye.”
“Lose the sight! Curse it, man, it’s knocked clean out,” exclaimed
Vadier; “but if I can get on my legs soon, I will manage with the
other. I am sure of what I say,” continued the wounded man. “They
little suspect that their servant-girl, one of old Dame Moret’s farm
domestics, is a spy upon them.”
“What induced you to attempt to entrap this Englishman before my
return?” asked Monsieur Gramont.
“Because I found out that this Lieutenant Thornton and this Louis
Lebeau, whose Christian name is, however, Julian——”
“Julian! Julian!” repeated Bertram Gramont, with a start. “By the
saints, I have it! No, no, he’s no lover. Julian! Yes, that’s the name
of Madame Coulancourt’s son, supposed to have been killed amongst the
good people of Lyons at the time D’Herbois shot them down like rooks. I
trust Sergeant Perrin has secured him, at all events?”
“Not he; that cursed Jean Plessis is too wide awake for that. He’s
gone—where, I can’t say—but he left the château on a pony last night
with a boy called Joseph.”
“Then he will be easily traced, so all is right there. How did you
contrive to get this girl to betray the secrets of a mistress so well
loved as Madame Coulancourt? I suppose you made love to her.”
“Not such a fool as that,” muttered Vadier. “You can never lay aside
your jokes, not even when your deepest interests are concerned.”
“Possibly not, mon ami,” returned Monsieur le Maire, with a laugh,
“it’s not very long ago since it was the fashion to bandy bon mots
with the executioner, when he was adjusting your head for that
interesting receptacle, the box under the guillotine. However, you
see,” continued Monsieur Gramont, “one of the consequences of your
interfering is that this Lieutenant Thornton, who was one of those who
failed in cutting out the Vengeance in Havre Roads, tried it again last
night, and, by Jove, he has got her, and the Hermaphrodite armed brig,
of Bordeaux, with a valuable cargo. If you had left him alone till my
return, this would have been prevented.”
“How so?” returned Vadier. “I do not see that; for he and that
pretended Pierre Bompart were evidently seeking to communicate with the
corvette when I thought to entrap them.”
“Yes, I admit that, mon ami; but they were not intending to go on
board then. My idea is, and I am persuaded I am right, that they
were merely communicating with the corvette, planning an escape for
Madame Coulancourt and her daughter; so my return with the order for
the arrest of the whole party would have struck a fatal blow to their
projects, and saved both the Vengeance and the brig.”
“And what do you intend doing now?” demanded Vadier. “I have the false
deeds quite ready, and the late duke’s signatures, &c., all complete.”
“I am going now—at least in half an hour—to the château; Sergeant
Perrin went there last night by my orders, to keep watch. I will
make a proposal to Madame Coulancourt, which if she does not accept,
I will enforce the order for their arrest, and send them to Paris.
She must be found guilty of plotting with the enemies of France, and
by-the-by, this affair of the Vengeance will, after all, implicate her
most forcibly, as she permitted an English officer to reside in her
mansion, under an assumed name, and passed off her own daughter as a
Mademoiselle de Tourville. I think, Augustine, I have a good head for
plotting. Once convicted of this charge, which she cannot possibly
refute, her estate will be confiscated, and then I intend producing my
deeds and the late duke’s revocal of his former will; with the interest
I possess when I shall, no doubt, be put in possession of the property.
Strange to say I could not get Fouché to give me an order to arrest
that confounded Jean Plessis. ‘No,’ said the Minister of Police, ‘he is
a protégé of Barras; let him alone.’”
“Curse him!” fiercely exclaimed Vadier. “Then I will stick a knife in
him. I hate that man; he was the chief witness against me when I was
condemned in Paris to the galleys. I’ll have my revenge of him.”
“Very proper,” said Monsieur Gramont, “but get well first; you look
feverish, and exciting yourself is bad.”
“Humph!” muttered Vadier. “I wish you would give me the five hundred
francs for that rascal Dubois; he is growling like a bear—he wants to
marry that girl Dedan, at the château, and she is getting frightened
for fear of being found out.”
“Confound the rascal! let him wait. I have not five hundred to spare,
mon cher, just yet; and as to the girl, serve her right if she is found
out. We require neither of them now.”
“Then send off that sulky rascal Dubois; he handles me as if I was a
bear.”
“Ma foi, with that hairy face of yours you are not unlike one,” said
Monsieur Gramont. “The time is past now, or else I would despatch the
rascal to prison as a royalist, and have his head off. As it is, I
will send him about his business this moment—the easiest way of paying
the five hundred francs. Now I must leave you; keep up your spirits,
you will soon be on your legs; the loss of an eye will not spoil your
beauty, and your other optic will gain redoubled force. I shall be back
in the evening.”
“Ah!” muttered Augustine Vadier, bitterly, sinking back on the bed,
“thus it always is with tools; but take care, Monsieur Gramont, I am a
dangerous tool to cast aside as worthless.”
Monsieur Gramont was just the kind of man to neglect any one but
himself. Selfish, heartless, and unprincipled, he felt for no one; he
befriended the wretch Vadier, because he was a most expert forger, and
because he knew he knew a secret or two of his late father’s, better
hidden than disclosed. He wanted him no further, so he then thought,
and in reality he was rather grieved that the splinter of the rock
did not finish him entirely, instead of merely putting out his eye.
Changing his dress, and making the most of his really handsome person,
Bertram Gramont mounted his horse, and set out alone for Château
Coulancourt.