To the south, of Machecoul, forming a triangle round the village of
Légé, stretch three forests. They are called respectively the forests
of Touvois, Grandes-Landes, and La Roche-Servière.
The territorial importance of these forests is not great if considered
separately; but standing each within three kilometres of the others,
and connected by hedges and fields full of gorse and brambles, even
more numerous there than elsewhere in La Vendée, they form a very
considerable agglomeration of woodland. The result has been that in
times of civil war they became a very hot-bed of revolt, where
insurrection was fostered and concentrated before it spread through
the adjacent regions.
The village of Légé, besides being the native place of the famous
physician Jolly, was, almost continuously, Charette's headquarters
during the great war. It was there, in the thick belt of woodland
surrounding the village that he took refuge if defeated, reformed his
decimated battalions, and prepared for other fights.
In 1832, although a new road from Nantes to the Sables-d'Olonne, which
runs through Légé, had modified in a measure its strategic strength,
the wooded neighborhood was still the most formidable centre of the
insurrectionary movement then organized. The three forests hid, in
their impenetrable undergrowth of holly and ferns which grew under the
shadow of the great thickets, those bands of refractories (conscripts
escaping service) whose ranks were daily increasing and forming the
kernel of the insurrectionary divisions in the Retz region and on the
plains.
The clearings made by government, even the felling of a considerable
portion of the wood, had no perceptible result. It was rumored that
the deserters had excavated underground dwellings, like those the
first Chouans burrowed in the forests of Gralla, in the depths of
which they had so often defied the closest search. In this particular
case rumor was not mistaken.
Toward the close of the day when, as we have seen, Michel started on
horseback from the château de Souday toward the Picaut cottage, any
one who had stood concealed behind one of the huge centennial beeches
that surround the glade of Folleron in the forest of Touvois, would
have seen a curious sight.
At the hour when the sun, sinking toward the horizon, left a sort of
twilight behind it,--an hour when the wood-paths were already in a
shadow that seemed to rise from the earth, while the tree-tops were
still burnished with the last rays of the dying sunlight,--this
concealed spectator would have seen in the distance, and coming toward
him, a personage whom, with a very slight stretch of fancy, he might
have taken for some uncanny or impish being. This personage advanced
slowly, looking cautiously about him,--a matter which seemed to be the
more easy because, at first sight, he appeared to have two heads, with
which to keep a double watch over his safety.
He was clothed in the sordid rags of an old jacket and the semblance
of a pair of breeches, the original cloth of which had completely
disappeared beneath the multifarious patches of many colors with which
its decay had been remedied; and he appeared, as we have said, to
belong to the class of bicephalous monsters who occupy a distinguished
place among the choice exceptions which Nature delights to create in
her fantastic moments.
The two heads were entirely distinct the one from the other, and
though they apparently came from the same trunk there was no family
resemblance between them. Beside a broad and brick-dust colored face,
seamed with small-pox and covered with unkempt beard, appeared a
second face, less repulsive, very astute, and rather malign in its
ugliness, whereas the other countenance expressed only a sort of
idiocy which might at times amount to ferocity.
These two distinct countenances did, in truth, belong to two men,
whose acquaintance we have already made at Montaigu on the day of the
fair; namely, to Aubin Courte-Joie, the tavern keeper, and--if the
reader will pardon an almost too expressive name, but one we think we
have no right to change--to Trigaud the Vermin, the beggar, whose
herculean strength, it will be remembered, played a noted part in the
riot at Montaigu by lifting the general's leg from the stirrup and
throwing him out of his saddle.
By a judicious arrangement, which we have already mentioned, Aubin
Courte-Joie had supplemented, or re-completed, his own personality by
the help of this species of beast of burden whom he had, by good luck,
encountered on his path through life. In exchange for the two legs he
had left on the road to Ancenis, the truncated cripple had obtained a
pair of steel limbs, which resisted all fatigue, feared no task, and
served him as his own original legs never did and never could have
done,--legs, in short, which did his will with passive obedience,
and had reached, after a certain period of association, such
adaptability that they instinctively guessed the very thoughts of
Aubin Courte-Joie, if conveyed by a mere word, a single sign, or even
a slight touch of a hand on the shoulder or a knee on the flank.
The strangest part of this affair was that the least satisfied partner
in the firm was not Trigaud-Vermin; quite the contrary. His thick
brain knew that Aubin Courte-Joie was directing his physical strength
in the direction of his sympathies. The words "White" and "Blue,"
which dropped into his large ears, always pricked up and listening,
proved to him that he supported, in his quality of locomotive to the
tavern-keeper, a cause whose worship was the one glimmer of light
which had survived the collapse of his brain. He made it his glory.
His confidence in Aubin Courte-Joie was boundless; he was proud of
being linked body and soul to a mind whose superiority he recognized,
and he was now attached to the man who might indeed be called his
master, with the self-abnegation that characterizes all attachments
which instinct governs.
Trigaud carried Aubin sometimes on his back, sometimes on his
shoulders, but always as affectionately as a mother carries her child.
He took the utmost care of him; he showed him little attentions which
seemed to disprove the poor devil's actual idiocy. He never thought of
watching his own feet or guarding them from the cutting and wounding
of stones and briers; but he carefully held aside, as he walked along,
the bushes or branches which he thought might rub the body or scratch
the face of his rider.
When they had advanced about a third of the way into the open, Aubin
Courte-Joie touched Trigaud on the shoulder, and the giant stopped
short. Then, without needing to speak, the inn-keeper pointed with his
finger to a large stone lying at the foot of an enormous beech-tree,
in the right-hand corner of the clearing.
The giant advanced to the beech, picked up the stone, and awaited
orders.
"Now," said Aubin Courte-Joie, "strike three blows."
Trigaud did as he was told, timing the blows so that the second
followed the first rapidly, and the third did not sound until after a
certain interval.
At this signal, which was made on the trunk of the tree, a little
square of turf and moss rose from the ground, and a head beneath it.
"Ho! it's you, is it, Maître Jacques? What's the watch-dog doing at
the mouth of the burrow?" asked Aubin, visibly pleased at meeting with
an intimate acquaintance.
"Hey! my _gars_ Courte-Joie, this is the hour for business, don't you
see; and I never like to let my rabbits out till I make sure myself
the hunters are not about."
"And you are right, Maître Jacques; you are right," replied
Courte-Joie; "to-day, especially, for there are lots of guns on the
plain."
"Hey, how's that, tell me?"
"That's what I want to do."
"But first, won't you come in?"
"Oh, no; no, Jacques. It is hot enough where we are,--isn't it
Trigaud?"
The giant uttered a grunt which might, at a pinch, pass for an
affirmation.
"Goodness! why, he's speaking!" remarked Maître Jacques. "They used to
say he was dumb. You are in luck's way, _gars_ Trigaud, to be taken
into Aubin's good graces; do you know that? Why, you are almost a man,
not to speak of having your board and lodging sure; and that's more
than all dogs can say,--even those at the castle of Souday."
The beggar opened his large mouth and began a chuckle of laughter,
which he did not end, for a motion of Aubin's hand stopped in the
cavities of his larynx that impulse to hilarity which his powerful
lungs rendered dangerous.
"Hush! lower! lower, Trigaud!" he said, roughly. Then turning to
Maître Jacques, "He thinks he is in the market-place of Montaigu, poor
innocent!"
"Well, as you won't come in, I'll call out the _gars_. You're right,
my Courte-Joie; it is devilish hot inside. Some of 'em say they are
roasted; but you know how such fellows grumble."
"That's not like Trigaud," replied Aubin, pounding with his fist, by
way of a caress, on the head of the elephant who served him as steed;
"he never complains,--not he!"
Trigaud gave a nod of gratitude for the signs of friendship with which
Courte-Joie honored him.
Maître Jacques, whom we have just presented to our readers, but with
whom it remains for us to make them fully acquainted, was a man of
fifty to fifty-five years of age, who had all the external appearance
of a worthy farmer of the Retz region. Though his hair was long and
floated on his shoulders, his beard, on the contrary, was cut close
and shaved with the utmost care. He wore a perfectly clean jacket of
gray cloth, cut in a shape that was almost modern compared with those
that were still in use in La Vendée, and a waistcoat, also of cloth,
in broad stripes, alternately white and fawn-colored. Breeches of
coarse brown cloth and gaiters of blue twilled cotton were the only
part of his costume which resembled that of his compatriots.
A pair of pistols, with shining handles, stuck into his jacket, were
the only military signs he bore at this moment. But in spite of his
placid, good-humored face, Maître Jacques was really the leader of the
boldest band in the whole region, and the most determined Chouan to be
found in a circuit of fifty miles, throughout which he enjoyed a very
formidable reputation.
Maître Jacques had never seriously laid down his arms during the
whole fifteen years that Napoleon's power lasted. With two or three
men--oftener alone and isolated--he had managed to make head against
whole brigades detailed to capture him. His courage and his luck were
something supernatural, and gave rise to an idea among the
superstitious population of the Bocage that his life was invulnerable,
and that the balls of the Blues were harmless against him. When,
therefore, after the revolution of July, in fact, during the very
first days of August, 1830, Maître Jacques announced that he should
take the field, all the refractories of the neighborhood flocked to
his standard, and it was not long before he had under his orders a
considerable body of men, with whom he had already begun the second
series of his guerilla exploits.
After asking Aubin Courte-Joie to excuse him for a few moments, Maître
Jacques, who, for the purposes of conversation had put first his head
and then his bust above the trapdoor, now stooped down into the
opening, and gave a curiously modulated whistle. At this signal a hum
arose from the bowels of the earth, much like that of a hive of bees.
Then, close by, between two bushes, a wide sort of lid or skylight,
covered only with turf and moss and dried leaves, exactly like the
ground beside it, rose vertically, supported on four stakes at the
four corners. As it rose it revealed the opening to a sort of
grain-pit, very broad and very deep; and from this pit about twenty
men now issued, one after another, in succession.
The dress of these men had nothing of the elegant picturesqueness
which characterizes brigands as we see them issue from pasteboard
caverns at the Opéra-Comique,--far, very far from that. Some wore
uniforms which closely resembled the rags on Trigaud-Vermin's person;
others--and these were the most elegant--wore cloth jackets. But the
jackets of the greater number were of cotton.
The same diversity existed in their weapons. Two or three regulation
muskets, half a dozen sporting guns, and as many pistols formed the
entire equipment of firearms. The display of side-arms was far from
being as respectable; it consisted solely of Maître Jacques's sabre,
two pikes dating back to the old war, and eight or ten scythes,
carefully sharpened by their owners.
When all the braves had issued from the pit into the clearing. Maître
Jacques walked up to the trunk of a felled tree, on which he sat down.
Trigaud placed Aubin Courte-Joie beside him, after which the giant
retired a few steps, though still within reach of his partner's
signals.
"Yes, my Courte-Joie," said Maître Jacques, "the wolves are after us;
but it gives me pleasure to have you take the trouble to come and warn
me." Then, suddenly, "Ah, _ça!_" he cried; "how happens it that you
can come? I thought you were caught when they took Jean Oullier? Jean
Oullier got away, I know, as they crossed the ford,--there's nothing
surprising in his escape; but you, my poor footless one,--how, in
Heaven's name, did you get off?"
"You forget Trigaud's feet," replied Aubin Courte-Joie, laughing. "I
pricked the gendarme who held me, and it seems it hurt him, for he let
go of me, and my friend Trigaud did the rest. But who told you that,
Maître Jacques?"
"Maître Jacques shrugged his shoulders with an indifferent air. Then,
without replying to the question, which he may have thought an idle
one,--
"Ah, _ça!_" he said; "I hope you haven't come to tell me that the day
is changed?"
"No; it is still for the 24th."
"That's good," replied Maître Jacques; "for the fact is I've lost all
patience with their delays and their shufflings. Good Lord! where's
the need of such a fuss to pick up one's gun, say good-bye to one's
wife, and be off?"
"Patience! patience! you won't have long to wait now, Maître Jacques."
"Four days!" said the other, in a tone of disgust.
"That's not long."
"I think it is too long by three. I didn't have Jean Oullier's chance
to do for some of them at the springs of Baugé."
"Yes; the _gars_ told me about that."
"Unhappily," continued Maître Jacques, "they have taken a cruel
revenge for it."
"How so?"
"Haven't you heard?"
"No; I have just come straight from Montaigu."
"Ah, true; then you can't know."
"What happened?"
"They caught and killed in Pascal Picaut's house a fine young man I
respected,--I, who don't think any too much of his class usually."
"What was his name?"
"Comte de Bonneville."
"Did they really? When was it?"
"Why this very day, damn it! about two in the afternoon."
"How, in the devil's name, did you hear that, down in your pit, Maître
Jacques?"
"Don't I hear everything that is of use to me?"
"Then I don't know that there's any use in my telling you what brings
me here."
"Why not?"
"Because you probably know it."
"That may be."
"I should like to be sure whether you do or not."
"Pooh!"
"Faith! yes, I should. It would spare me a disagreeable errand, which
I only accepted against my will."
"Ah! then you have come from _those gentlemen?_"
Maître Jacques pronounced the words we have underscored in a tone that
varied from contempt to menace.
"Yes, I do, in the first instance," replied Aubin Courte-Joie; "but I
met Jean Oullier on my way, and he, too, gave me a message for you."
"Jean Oullier! Ah! anything that comes from him is welcome. He is a
_gars_ I love,--Jean Oullier! He has done a thing in his life which
made me his friend forever."
"What was that?"
"That's his secret, not mine. But come; tell me, in the first place,
what those lordly gentlemen want of me?"
"It is your division leader who has sent me."
"The Marquis de Souday?"
"Yes."
"Well, what does he want?"
"He complains that you attract, by your constant sorties, the
attention of the government soldiers, and that you irritate the
population of the towns by your exactions, and also that you paralyze
the general movement by making it more difficult."
"Pooh! why haven't they made their movement sooner? We have waited long
enough, God knows! For my part, I've been waiting since July 30."
"And then--"
"What! is there any more of it?"
"Yes; he orders you--"
"Orders me!"
"Wait a moment; you can obey or not obey, but he orders you--"
"Listen to me, Courte-Joie; whatever he orders I here make a vow to
disobey it. Now, go on; I'm listening."
"Well, he orders you to stay quietly in your quarters till the 24th,
and, above all, to stop no diligence nor any traveller on the
high-road, as you have been doing lately."
"Well, I swear, for my part," replied Maître Jacques, "to capture the
first person that goes to-night from Légé to Saint-Étienne or from
Saint-Étienne to Légé. As for you, stay here, _gars_ Courte-Joie, and
then you can tell him what you have seen."
"Oh, no! no!" exclaimed Aubin.
"Why not?"
"Don't do that, Maître Jacques."
"Yes, by God! I will, though."
"Jacques! Jacques!" insisted the tavern-keeper; "can't you see it will
compromise our sacred cause?"
"Possibly; but it will prove to him--that old fox I never chose for my
superior--that I and my men are outside his division, and that here,
at least, his orders shall never be obeyed. So much for the _orders_
of the Marquis de Souday; now go on to Jean Oullier's message."
"I met him as I reached the heights near the bridge at Servières. He
asked where I was going, and when I told him, '_Parbleu!_' said he;
'that's the very thing! Ask Maître Jacques if he can move out and let
us have his earth-hole for some one we want to hide there.'"
"Ah, ha! Did he say who the person was, my Courte-Joie?"
"No."
"Never mind! Whoever it is, if he comes in the name of Jean Oullier,
he'll be welcome; for I know Jean Oullier wouldn't turn me out if it
were not for some good reason. He is not one of the crowd of lazy
lords who make all the noise and leave us to do the work."
"Some are good, and some are bad," said Aubin, philosophically.
"When is the person he wants to hide coming?" asked Maître Jacques.
"To-night."
"How shall I know him?"
"Jean Oullier will bring him."
"Good. Is that all he wants?"
"No; he wishes you to capture all doubtful persons in the forest
to-night, and have the whole neighborhood watched, more especially the
path toward Grand-Lieu."
"There now! just see that! The division commander _orders_ me to
arrest no one, and Jean Oullier wants me to clear the forest of curs
and red-breeches,--reason the more why I should keep the oath I made
just now. How will Jean Oullier know that I shall be expecting him?"
"If he can come--that is, if there are no troops in the way at
Touvois--I am to let him know."
"Yes; but how?"
"By a branch of holly with fifteen leaves upon it in the middle of the
road half-way along to Machecoul, at the crossways of Benaste, the tip
end turned toward Touvois."
"Did he give you the password? Jean Oullier would surely not forget
that."
"Yes; 'Vanquished' and 'Vendée.'"
"Very good," said Maître Jacques, rising and going to the middle of
the open. There he called four of his men, gave them some directions
in a low voice, and all four, without replying, went off in four
different directions. At the end of about four minutes, during which
time Maître Jacques had ordered up a jug of what seemed to be brandy,
and had offered some to his companion, four individuals appeared from
the four directions in which the other men had been sent. These were
the sentinels just relieved by their comrades.
"Any news?" asked Maître Jacques.
"No," replied three of the men.
"Good. You,--what do you say?" he inquired of the fourth. "You had the
best post."
"The diligence to Nantes was escorted by four gendarmes."
"Ah, ha! your nose is good; you smell specie. Bless me! and when I
think there are those who _order_ us not to get it! However, friends,
patience! we are not to be put down."
"Well, what do you think?" interrupted Courte-Joie.
"I think there's not a pair of red breeches anywhere about. Tell Jean
Oullier he can bring his people."
"Good!" said Courte-Joie, who during this examination of the sentries
was preparing a branch of holly in the manner agreed upon with Jean
Oullier. "Very good; I'll send Trigaud." Turning toward the giant,
"Here, Vermin!" he said.
Maître Jacques stopped him.
"Ah, _ça!_" he exclaimed; "are you crazy, to part with your legs in
that way? Suppose you should need him? Nonsense! there are forty men
here who would like no better than to stretch their legs. Wait, you
shall see--Hi! Joseph Picaut!"
At the call, our old acquaintance, who was sleeping on the grass in a
sleep he seemed much to need, sat up and listened.
"Joseph Picaut!" repeated Maître Jacques, impatiently.
That decided the man. He rose, grumbling, and went up to Maître
Jacques.
"Here is a branch of holly," said the leader of the belligerents;
"don't pluck off a single leaf. Carry it immediately to the crossway
of La Benaste on the road to Machecoul, and lay it down in front of
the crucifix, with its tip-end pointing toward Touvois."