The Marquis de Souday, after watching the fugitives with his eyes
until they entered the chapel, gave one of those deep exclamations
which mean that the breast is relieved of a heavy weight; then he
returned to the vestibule. But instead of proceeding from the
vestibule to the salon, he went from the vestibule to the kitchen.
Contrary to all his habits and to the great astonishment of his cook,
he walked to the fire, raised the covers of the saucepans anxiously,
made sure that no ragout was sticking to the bottom of them, and put
back the spits a trifle so that no unexpected flame should dishonor
the roasts; having done this he returned to the vestibule, thence to
the dining-room, where he inspected the bottles, doubled their number,
looked to see if the table was properly set, and then, satisfied with
the inspection, returned to the salon.
There he found his daughters, the castle gate being intrusted to
Rosine, whose only duty was to open it on the first rap.
The girls were seated beside the fire when their father entered. Mary
was anxious, Bertha dreamy. Both were thinking of Michel. Bertha was
intoxicated with that pungent joy which follows the revelation of love
in the heart of the one we love; she fancied she read in the glances
of the young baron the assurance that it was for her the poor lad, so
timid, so hesitating, had conquered his weakness and braved real
perils. She measured the greatness of the love she supposed him to
feel by the revolution that love had evidently made in his nature. She
built her castles in the air, and blamed herself bitterly for not
having urged him to return to the château when she noticed that he did
not follow those whom his devotion had saved. Then she smiled; for
suddenly a thought crossed her mind: if he had remained behind he must
be hidden in some corner of the château, and was it not for the
pleasure of meeting her privately? Perhaps if she went into the
shrubbery of the park he would start up beside her and say: "See what
I have done to obtain a word with you!"
The marquis had scarcely seated himself in his accustomed easy-chair,
and had not had time to notice the preoccupation of his daughters,
which he would, of course, attribute to another cause than the
true one, when a single rap was heard on the gate. The marquis
started,--not because he did not expect the rap, but because this rap
was not the one he expected. It was timid, almost obsequious, and,
consequently, there was nothing military about it.
"Oh! oh!" exclaimed the marquis; "whom have we here, I'd like to
know."
"Some one knocked," said Bertha, coming out of her revery.
"One rap," said Mary.
The marquis shook his head as if to say, "That's not the point," and
then, deciding to see for himself what the matter was, he left the
salon, crossed the vestibule, and advanced as far as the top step of
the portico.
There, instead of the bayonets and sabres he was expecting to see
glitter in the darkness, instead of the soldierly figures and
moustaches with which he proposed to make acquaintance, the Marquis de
Souday saw nothing but the enormous dome of a blue cotton umbrella,
which approached him, point forward, up the steps of the portico.
As this umbrella, steadily advancing like a turtle's carapace,
threatened to put out his eye with its point, which stuck forth like
the central spot of an ancient shield, the marquis raised the orb of
this buckler and came face to face with a weasel's muzzle, surmounted
by two little, glittering eyes, like carbuncles, and topped with a
very tall hat, extremely narrow in the brim and so much brushed and
rebrushed that it shone in the dusky light as though it were
varnished.
"By all the devils of hell!" cried the marquis, "if it isn't my old
crony Loriot!"
"Ready to offer you his little services if you think him worthy,"
replied a falsetto voice which its owner endeavored to make
ingratiating.
"You are very welcome indeed to Souday, Maître Loriot," said the
marquis, in a tone of good-humor and as if he expected some genuine
pleasure from the presence of the person he welcomed so cordially. "I
expect quite a numerous party this evening, and you shall help me do
the honors. Come in, and see the young ladies."
Thereupon the old gentleman, with an easy air that showed how
convinced he was of the distance between a Marquis de Souday and a
village notary, preceded his guest into the salon. It is true that
Maître Loriot took so much time to wipe his boots on the mat which lay
at the door of that sanctuary that the politeness of the marquis, had
he exercised it in remaining behind his visitor, would have been
sorely tried and lessened.
Let us profit by the moment when the legal functionary shuts his
umbrella and dries his feet to sketch his portrait, if indeed the
undertaking is not beyond our powers.
Maître Loriot, the notary of Machecoul, was a little old fellow, thin
and slim and seeming smaller than he really was from his habit of
never speaking except half double in an attitude of the profoundest
respect. A long, sharp nose was the whole of his face; nature, in
developing beyond all reason that feature of his countenance, had
economized on the rest with such extraordinary parsimony that it was
necessary to look at him for some time before perceiving that Maître
Loriot had a mouth and chin and eyes like other men; but when that
knowledge was once attained it was observable that the eyes were
vivacious and the mouth not by any means devoid of shrewdness.
Maître Loriot fulfilled the promises of his physiognomical prospectus;
and he was clever enough to wring some thirty thousand francs out of a
country practice in which his predecessors had hardly managed to make
both ends meet. To attain this result, supposed until he came to be
impossible, M. Loriot had studied, not the Code, but men; he had
learned from that study that vanity and pride were the dominant
instincts of mankind; and he had, in consequence, endeavored to make
himself agreeable to those two vices, in which effort he succeeded so
well that he soon became absolutely necessary to those who possessed
them.
By reason of this system of behavior, politeness in Maître Loriot had
become servility; he did not bow, he prostrated himself; and, like the
fakirs of India, he had so trained his body to certain submissive
motions that this attitude was now habitual with him. Never would he
have addressed a titled person, were that person only a baron or even
a chevalier, in any other than the third person. He showed a gratitude
both humble and overflowing for all affability bestowed upon him;
and as, at the same time, he manifested an exaggerated devotion to the
interests confided to him, he had finally, little by little,
obtained a very considerable _clientèle_ among the nobility of the
neighborhood.
But the thing above all others which contributed to the success of
Maître Loriot in the department of the Loire-Inférieure and even in
the adjoining departments, was the ardor of his political opinions. He
was one of those who might well be called "more royalist than the king
himself." His little gray eye flamed when he heard the name of a
Jacobin, and to his mind all who had ever belonged to the liberal
side, from M. de Chateaubriand to M. de la Fayette were Jacobins.
Never would he have recognized the monarchy of July, and he always
called the King Louis-Philippe "Monsieur le Duc d'Orléans," not even
allowing him the title of Royal Highness which Charles X. did grant
him.
Maître Loriot was a frequent visitor to the Marquis de Souday. It was
part of his policy to parade an extreme respect for this illustrious
relic of the former social order,--a social order he deeply regretted;
and his respect had gone so far that he had made various loans to the
marquis, who, being very careless, as we have said, in the matter of
money, neglected as a matter of course to pay the interest on them.
The Marquis de Souday always welcomed Maître Loriot, partly on account
of the said loans; also because the old gentleman's fibre was not less
sensitive than that of others to agreeable flattery; and, lastly,
because the coolness which existed between the owner of Souday and the
other proprietors of the neighborhood made him rather lonely, and he
was glad of any distraction to the monotony of his life.
When the little notary thought his boots were cleaned of every vestige
of mud he entered the salon. There he again bowed to the marquis, who
had returned to his usual easy chair, and then he began to compliment
the two young girls. But the marquis did not leave him time to do much
of that.
"Loriot," he said, "I am always glad to see you."
The notary bowed to the ground.
"Only," continued the marquis, "you will permit me to ask, won't you?
what brings you here into our desert at half-past nine o'clock of a
rainy night. I know that when a man has such an umbrella as yours the
sky above him is always blue, but--"
The notary judged it proper not to allow such a joke to be made by a
marquis without laughing, and murmuring "Ah, good! very good!" Then,
making a direct answer, he said:--
"I was at the château de la Logerie very late, having been there to
carry some money to Madame la baronne on an order I did not receive
till two in the afternoon. I was coming back on foot, as I usually do,
when I heard noises of evil portent in the forest, which confirmed
what I already knew of a riot at Montaigu. I feared, if I went any
farther, that I might meet the soldiers of the Duc d'Orléans; and to
avoid that unpleasantness I thought that M. le marquis would deign to
let me lodge here for the night."
At the mention of la Logerie Mary and Bertha raised their heads like
two horses who hear from afar and suddenly the sound of the bugle.
"Oh! you have come from la Logerie, have you?" said the marquis.
"Yes, as I have just had the honor of mentioning to Monsieur le
marquis," replied Maître Loriot.
"Well! well! well! We have had another visitor from la Logerie this
evening."
"The young baron, perhaps?" suggested the notary.
"Yes."
"I am looking for him."
"Loriot," said the marquis, "I am astonished to hear you--a man whose
principles I have always considered sound--to hear you prostituting a
title which you habitually respect by attaching it to the name of
those Michels."
As the marquis uttered this remark with an air of superb disdain
Bertha turned crimson and Mary turned pale. The impression produced by
his words was lost upon the old gentleman, but it did not escape the
little gray eye of the notary. He was about to speak when Monsieur de
Souday made a sign with his hand that he had not finished his remarks.
"And I wish to know why you, my old crony," he continued, "whom we
have always treated well and kindly, why you think it necessary to put
forward a subterfuge in order to enter my house."
"Monsieur le marquis!" stammered Loriot.
"You came here to look for young Michel, didn't you? That's all very
well, but why lie about it?"
"I beg Monsieur le marquis to accept my most humble excuses. The
mother of the young man, whom I have been obliged to accept as a
client, being a legacy with the practice of my predecessor, is very
anxious. Her son got out of a window on the second story at the risk
of breaking his neck, and in defiance of her maternal wishes he has
run away; consequently Madame Michel requests me--"
"Ha! ha!" cried the marquis, "did he really do that?"
"Literally, Monsieur le marquis."
"Well, that reconciles me to him,--not perhaps altogether, but
somewhat."
"If Monsieur le marquis would indicate to me where I am likely to find
the young man," said Loriot, "I could take him back to his mother."
"As for that, the devil knows where he has taken himself, I don't! Do
you know, girls?" asked the marquis, turning to his daughters.
Bertha and Mary both made signs in the negative.
"You see, my dear crony, that we can't be of the least use to you,"
said the marquis. "But do tell me why mother Michel locked up her
son."
"It seems," replied the notary, "that young Michel, hitherto so
gentle, and docile, and obedient, has fallen suddenly in love."
"Ah, ha! taken the bit in his teeth? I know what that is! Well, Maître
Loriot, if you are called in counsel, do you tell mother Michel to
give him his head and keep a light rein on him; that's better than a
martingale. He strikes me as a pretty good little devil, what I have
seen of him."
"An excellent heart, Monsieur le marquis; and then, an only son!--more
than a hundred thousand francs a year!" said the notary.
"Hum!" exclaimed the marquis, "if that's all he has, it is little
enough to cover the villanies of the name he bears."
"Father!" said Bertha, while Mary only sighed, "You forget the service
he did us to-night."
"Hey! hey!" thought Loriot, looking at Bertha, "can the baroness be
right after all? It would be a fine contract to draw."
And he began to add up the fees he might expect from a marriage
contract between Baron Michel de la Logerie and the daughter of the
Marquis de Souday.
"You are right, my child," said the marquis; "we'll leave Loriot to
hunt up mother Michel's lost lamb, and say no more about them." Then,
turning to Loriot, he added: "Are you going any further on your quest,
Mr. Notary?"
"If Monsieur le marquis will deign to permit, I would prefer--"
"Just now, you gave me, as a pretext for staying here, your dread of
encountering the soldiers," interrupted the marquis. "Are you really
afraid of them? Heavens and earth, what's the meaning of that? You,
one of us, afraid of soldiers!"
"I am not afraid," replied Loriot; "Monsieur le marquis may believe
me. But those cursed Blues turn my stomach; I feel such an aversion
for them that after I have seen even one of their uniforms I can't eat
anything for twenty-four hours."
"That explains your leanness; but the saddest part of it is that this
aversion of yours obliges me to turn you out of my house."
"Monsieur le marquis is making fun of his humble servant."
"Indeed I am not; I don't wish your death, that's all."
"My death?"
"Yes, if the sight of one soldier gives you twenty-four hours of
inanition, you'll certainly die of starvation outright if you pass a
whole night under the same roof as a regiment."
"A regiment?"
"Yes, a regiment. I have invited a regiment to sup at Souday to-night;
and the regard I have for you obliges me to send you off, hot foot, at
once. Only, be careful which way you go because those scamps the
soldiers if they catch you in the fields, or rather in the woods, at
this time of night may take you for what you are not--I mean to say,
for what you are."
"What then?"
"What then! why, they'd honor you with a shot or two, and the muskets
of M. le Duc d'Orléans are loaded with ball, you know."
The notary turned pale and stammered a few unintelligible words.
"Decide; you have the choice,--death by hunger, or by guns. You've no
time to lose; I hear the tramp of men--and there! precisely!--that's
the general knocking at the gate."
Sure enough, the knocker resounded; this time it was vigorously
handled, as became the guest whose arrival it announced.
"In company with Monsieur le marquis," said Loriot, "I will conquer my
aversion, invincible as it is."
"Good! then take that torch and go with me to meet my guests."
"Your guests? Why, really, Monsieur le marquis, I can't believe--"
"Come, come, _Thomas_ Loriot, you shall see first, and believe
afterwards."
And the Marquis de Souday, taking a torch himself, advanced to the
portico. Bertha and Mary followed him; Mary thoughtful, Bertha
anxious,--both looking earnestly into the shadows of the courtyard to
see if they could discover any sign of the presence of him they were
both thinking of.