About two hours after Aubin Courte-Joie's incarceration the sentry of
the post heard a cart coming up the road which led past the
guard-house. "Qui vive?" he cried; and when the cart was only a short
distance from him he ordered it to halt. The cart, or rather the
cartman, obeyed.
The corporal and four soldiers came out of the guard-room to inspect
both man and vehicle. The cart was a harmless one, loaded with hay,
and was like all the others that were plodding along the road to and
from Nantes during the evening. Only one man was with it; he explained
that he was going to Saint-Philbert with hay for his landlord,--adding
that he went by night to economize time, which was precious at this
season of the year. The corporal gave orders to let him pass.
But this permission was wasted on the poor fellow. His cart, drawn by
a single horse, had stopped at the steepest part of the rising ground
about the guard-house, and in spite of the efforts made by horse and
cartman it was impossible to start the heavy vehicle again.
"There isn't any sense," said the corporal, "in overburdening a beast
like that! Don't you see that your horse has double the load he can
draw?"
"What a pity," remarked one of the soldiers, "that the sergeant let
that big ox of a fellow we had here go. We might have harnessed him to
the horse and I'll warrant he'd have pulled to the collar."
"That's supposing he would have let himself be harnessed."
If the man who spoke last had looked behind the cart, he would have
seen good reason why Trigaud should not allow himself to be harnessed
to the front of the cart to pull it forward; he would also have
understood the difficulty the horse found in starting the cart. For
this difficulty was chiefly owing to Trigaud himself. The giant,
completely hidden in the darkness and behind the hay, was dragging at
the rear bar of the cart and opposing his strength to that of the
horse, with as much success as he had won when exhibiting his prowess
in the evening.
"Shall we lend you a hand?" said the corporal.
"Wait till I try again," said the driver, who had turned his cart
obliquely, to lessen the sharpness of the acclivity, and now, grasping
the horse by the bridle, prepared for a final effort to disprove the
blame the corporal laid upon him.
He whipped his beast vigorously, exciting him by voice and pulling on
the bridle, while the soldiers joined their cries to his. The horse
stiffened all four legs for the effort, making the sparks fly from his
heels among the stones of the road; then, he suddenly fell down, and
at the same moment, as if the wheels had encountered some obstacle
which disturbed their equilibrium, the cart swayed over to left and
upset against the building.
The soldiers ran forward and helped to release the horse from the
harness and get him on his legs. The result of their friendly
eagerness was that none of them saw Trigaud, who, satisfied no doubt
with a result to which he had powerfully contributed by slipping under
the cart and hoisting it on his Herculean shoulders, until it lost its
centre of gravity, now retired composedly behind a hedge to await
events.
"Shall we help you to set your cart back on its pin?" said the
corporal to the driver. "If so, you must get an additional horse."
"Faith, no!" cried the cartman. "To-morrow I'll see about it. It is
evident the good God doesn't mean me to keep on,--mustn't go against
His will."
So saying, the peasant threw the reins on the crupper of his horse,
pushed up the collar, mounted the animal, and departed, after wishing
good-night to the soldiers, and saying he should be back in the
morning to remove the hay. Two hundred yards from the guard-house
Trigaud joined him.
"Well," said the peasant, "was that done to your liking? Are you
satisfied?"
"Yes," replied Trigaud, "that was just as _gars_ Aubin Courte-Joie
ordered."
"Good luck to you, then! As for me, I'll put the horse back where I
found it. But when the cartman wakes up to-morrow and looks for his
cart and his hay he'll be rather surprised to find it up there."
"Well, tell him it is for the good of the cause, and he won't mind,"
replied Trigaud.
The two men parted.
Trigaud, however, did not leave the place; he roamed about its
neighborhood till he heard the stroke of twelve from the steeple of
Saint-Colombin. Then he returned to the guard-house, _sabots_ in hand,
and without making the slightest noise, or rousing the attention of
the sentry, who was pacing up and down, he crept to the grating of the
dungeon. Once there he softly drew the hay into a thick heap beside
the millstone, which he then, as softly, turned over upon it. Then he
leaned behind it to the grating, wrenched off the boards that closed
it, drew out first Courte-Joie, whom Michel pushed behind, then the
young baron by the hands; after which, putting one on each shoulder,
Trigaud, still barefooted, walked rapidly away from the neighborhood
of the guard-house, making, in spite of his immense size and the
weight he carried, no more noise than a cat on a carpet.
When he had gone about five hundred yards he stopped; not that he was
tired but because Aubin Courte-Joie signed to him. Michel slipped to
the ground and feeling in his pocket pulled out a handful of money,
among it a few gold coins which he deposited in Trigaud's capacious
hand.
The giant made as though he were about to put them in a pocket twice
as capacious as the hand itself, but Aubin Courte-Joie stopped him.
"Return that to monsieur," he said; "we don't take pay from both
sides."
"Both sides!" exclaimed Michel, "what do you mean?"
"Yes; we haven't obliged you personally as much as you think for,"
said Courte-Joie.
"I don't understand you, friend."
"My young gentleman," said the cripple, "now that we are safely
outside that cellar I'll frankly admit that I lied to you just now,
when I said I had got myself locked up merely to get you out of that
hole. But, don't you see, I wanted your help; I could never have
clambered up alone to that grating. Now, however, thanks to your
good-will and my friend Trigaud's wrists, we've given 'em the slip
successfully, and I feel bound to tell you that you have only
exchanged one captivity for another."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that just now you were in a damp unhealthy prison, and now,
though you are in the midst of the fields, on a calm, still night, you
are none the less in prison."
"In prison?"
"Well, a prisoner."
"Whose prisoner?"
"Mine, of course!"
"Yours?" said Michel, laughing.
"Yes, for the time being. Oh, you needn't laugh! You are a prisoner, I
tell you, till I consign you to the hands that want you."
"Whose hands are they?"
"As for that, you can find out for yourself. I fulfil my errand,
neither more nor less. You needn't be frightened; you might have
fallen into worse hands, that's all I shall tell you."
"But--"
"Well, in return for services that have been done, and in
consideration of a good sum of money for my poor Trigaud, I took the
order of a person who said: 'Help M. le Baron Michel de la Logerie to
escape, and bring him to me.' I have helped you to escape, and now I
am taking you to that person, Monsieur le baron."
"Listen," said the young man, who did not comprehend one word of all
the tavern-keeper was telling him: "Here is my purse, well-filled; put
me on the road to La Logerie, where I desire to be this evening, and
take the purse and my thanks to boot."
Michel fancied that his two liberators did not think the price paid
sufficient.
"Monsieur," said Courte-Joie, with all the dignity of which he was
capable, "my comrade Trigaud cannot accept your reward because he has
been already paid for doing exactly the contrary of what you wish. As
for me, I am not aware if you know who I am, and therefore it is best
to tell you. I am an honest trader, whom differences of opinion with
the government have compelled to close his business; but, miserable as
my external appearance may be, let me tell you that I give my services
to others, I don't sell them."
"But where the devil are you taking me?" demanded Michel, who
certainly did not expect such sensitive feelings in his strange
conductor.
"Be so good as to follow us, and in less than an hour you will find
out."
"Follow you, indeed! when you say I am your prisoner! Not I! I am not
so amiable as all that."
Courte-Joie made no answer; but a single touch on Trigaud's arm told
the giant what he had to do, and the young man had scarcely uttered
the words and made a hasty step in advance, before Trigaud, flinging
out his arm like a grapnel-iron, seized him by the collar. Michel
tried to shout, preferring to be retaken by the soldiers rather than
be Trigaud's prisoner. But with his free hand the giant grasped the
baron's face and silenced him as successfully as the famous gag of
Monsieur de Vendôme might have done it. In this condition Michel was
rushed, with the rapidity of a race-horse, across the fields for a
distance of some seven or eight hundred yards, half suspended in space
by the arm of the colossus, so that he touched the ground with the
points of his toes only.
"That will do, Trigaud," said Courte-Joie, who was in his usual place
on the shoulders of his human steed, who seemed to care little for the
double burden; "that will do; the young baron is disgusted enough by
this time with the idea of going back to La Logerie. Besides, we were
cautioned to take care of him; it won't do to spoil the merchandise."
Then as Trigaud halted obediently, Aubin said to Michel, who was
nearly suffocated, "Will you be docile now?"
"You are the stronger, and I have no arms," said the baron. "I am
therefore obliged to submit to your ill-treatment."
"Ill-treatment! Ha! don't you say that, or I'll appeal to your honor
to say if it isn't true that you have urged me all along, both in the
dungeon of the Blues and here in the fields, to let you go back to La
Logerie, and that it was only your obstinacy which obliged me to use
violence."
"Well, at any rate, tell me the name of the person who ordered you to
come after me and take me to him."
"I am positively forbidden to do so," said Courte-Joie, "but, without
transgressing orders, I can tell you that it is one of your very best
friends."
A cold chill ran through Michel's heart. He thought of Bertha. He
fancied she had received his letter. It was doubtless an angry
"she-wolf" who awaited him, and, painful as the interview would be, he
felt that he could not, in honor, refuse it.
"Very good," he said; "I know now who it is."
"You know, do you?"
"Yes, it is Mademoiselle de Souday."
Aubin Courte-Joie did not answer; but he looked at Trigaud with an air
that seemed to say, "Faith! he's guessed it!" Michel intercepted the
look.
"Let us walk on," he said.
"You won't try to get away?"
"No."
"On your word of honor?"
"On my word of honor."
"Well, as you are now sensible, we'll give you the means of getting
along without skinning your feet among the briers or gluing them to
this cursed sticky soil, which adds at least seven pound weight to our
boots."
These words were soon explained to Michel, for after crossing the
highway behind Trigaud, and going a hundred yards into the woods that
bordered the road he heard the whinnying of a horse.
"My horse!" he exclaimed, not concealing his surprise.
"Did you think we had stolen it?" asked Courte-Joie.
"Why didn't you stay at the place where I gave it to you?"
"Confound it!" replied Aubin. "I'll tell you: we noticed a lot of men
walking round us and watching us with an interest that was too deep
not to be disquieting; and as inquisitive folk are not to my taste,
and time went by and you didn't return, we thought we had better take
your beast to Banl[oe]uvre, where we supposed you had gone, if not
arrested; and it was only as we went along we discovered that if not
actually arrested you soon would be."
"Soon would be?"
"Yes, and so you were."
"Were you near me when the gendarmes arrested me?"
"My young gentleman," replied Courte-Joie in his jeering, sarcastic
way, "you must have little experience in life or you wouldn't go along
the high-roads dreaming of your own affairs, instead of looking about
you and seeing who go and come and what they are doing. You might have
heard the trot of those gendarmes ten minutes before they came up with
you; we heard them, and you might easily have gone into the woods as
we did."
Michel took care not to say what was filling his mind to the exclusion
of every other thought at the moment the gendarmes arrested him; he
contented himself by giving a deep sigh at this reminder of his
sufferings. Then he mounted his horse, which Trigaud had unfastened
and presented to him awkwardly enough, though Courte-Joie endeavored
to show his henchman how to hold a stirrup properly. Then they took
once more to the high-road, and the giant, with his hand on the
withers of the horse, accompanied Michel easily at whatever pace the
latter chose to ride.
A mile and a half farther on they struck into a crossroad, and Michel
fancied, dark as it was, that he recognized the path from certain
shapes in the dark masses of the trees. Presently they reached a
crossway at sight of which the young man quivered. He had passed that
place on the evening when for the first time he walked home with
Bertha from Tinguy's cottage. A minute more and they were making their
way to the cottage itself, where, in spite of the lateness of the
hour, a light was sparkling; at that instant a little cry, apparently
a call, came from behind the hedge that ran along the road.
Aubin Courte-Joie answered it.
"Is that you, Monsieur Courte-Joie?" asked a woman's voice, and at the
same moment a white form showed itself above the hedge.
"Yes, but who are you?"
"Rosine, Tinguy's daughter; don't you remember me?"
"Rosine!" exclaimed Michel, confirmed in the thought that Bertha was
awaiting him by the sight of her young maid.
Courte-Joie with his monkey-like agility slid down Trigaud's body, and
went to the hedge-bank with a movement a good deal like that of a
frog's jump, leaving Trigaud to keep guard over Michel.
"Pest, little one!" he cried, "the night is so dark one may well take
white for gray. But," he added, lowering his voice, "why are not you
at home, where we were told to find you?"
"Because there are people in the cottage, and it won't do to take
Monsieur Michel there."
"People? Ah, _ça!_ those damned Blues get a footing everywhere."
"There are no soldiers there; it is only Jean Oullier, who has spent
the day going round the country, and has brought a few of the Montaigu
men with him."
"What are they doing?"
"Only talking. Go in, and drink a cup of cider with them, and warm
yourself a bit."
"Well, but our young gentleman, my dear, what shall we do with him?"
"Leave him with me. That was agreed upon, you know, Maître
Courte-Joie."
"We were to give him to you in your house, where there's a cellar or a
garret to put him in; and that's easy enough to do, for he is not hard
to manage, poor fellow,--but here in the open fields there's a risk of
losing him; he'll slip away from you like an eel."
"Pooh!" said Rosine, with a smile which since the deaths of her father
and brother seldom came upon her lips, "do you think he would make
more objection to following a pretty girl than two old fellows like
you?"
"But suppose the prisoner carries off his keeper?" said Courte-Joie,
still dissatisfied.
"Oh! don't trouble yourself about that; I've a good foot, a good eye,
and an honest heart. Besides, Baron Michel is my foster-brother; we've
known each other this long while, and I know he is no more capable of
forcing the virtue of a girl than the bolts of a prison. Besides, what
were you told to do?"
"Release him if we could and bring him, willingly or unwillingly, to
your father's house, where we were to find you."
"Well, here I am, and there's the house; the bird is out of his cage;
that's all that was asked of you, wasn't it?"
"Hang it! yes, I believe so."
"Then, good-night."
"Look here, Rosine, for greater security, don't you want us to put a
rope round his paws?" said Courte-Joie, sarcastically.
"Thank you, no, Maître Courte-Joie," said Rosine, going toward Michel;
"better put one on your own tongue."
Michel, in spite of the distance at which he stood, had distinguished
Rosine's name and perceived, as we have said, the connivance which
evidently existed between her and his captors. He was more and more
confirmed in the belief that he owed his deliverance to Bertha.
Courte-Joie's proceedings, the sort of violence he had used toward
him, by means of his auxiliary Trigaud, the mystery in which the
tavern-keeper had wrapped the origin and reason of his devotion to a
man whom he scarcely knew,--all these things agreed wonderfully with
the irritation which the letter he had sent by the notary was
calculated to rouse in the violent and irascible heart of the young
girl.
"Oh! Rosine, is that you?" he exclaimed, raising his voice as soon as
he saw through the darkness his foster-sister coming toward him.
"Good!" cried Rosine, "you are not like that wretch of a Courte-Joie,
who didn't choose to recognize me at first. You knew me at once,
didn't you, Monsieur Michel?"
"Yes, of course. Tell me, Rosine, where is she?"
"Who?"
"Mademoiselle Bertha."
"Mademoiselle Bertha?"
"Yes."
"I don't know," said Rosine, with a simplicity which Michel knew to be
sincere.
"What! you don't know?" he repeated.
"I suppose she is at Souday."
"You don't know, you only suppose?"
"Bless me--"
"Have you seen her to-day?"
"No, Monsieur Michel; I only know that she was to go to the château
to-day with Monsieur le marquis; but I've been at Nantes myself."
"At Nantes!" cried the young man, "were you at Nantes this morning?"
"Yes."
"What time were you there?"
"It was striking nine as we crossed the pont Rousseau."
"You say _we?_"
"Yes, of course."
"Then you were not alone?"
"Why, no! I went there to accompany Mademoiselle Mary; it was sending
to the château for me that delayed her journey."
"But where is she now,--Mademoiselle Mary?"
"Now, this minute?"
"Yes."
"On the little island of La Jonchère; and that's where I am going to
take you. But how queer of you to ask me all this, Monsieur Michel!"
"Are you really going to take me to her?" cried Michel, beside himself
with joy. "Then come along, come quick, my little Rosine."
"Good! and that old fool Courte-Joie, who said I couldn't manage you!
What idiots men are!"
"Rosine, my dear, for heaven's sake don't lose time."
"I'm ready; but hadn't you better take me up behind? and then we can
go faster."
"Of course we can," said Michel, whose heart, at the mere idea of
seeing Mary, abjured all its jealous suspicions, and glowed with the
thought that she whom he loved was really the one who had so
effectually managed his release. "Come, come on!"
"Here I am! give me your hand," said Rosine, resting her wooden shoe
on the young man's foot. Then, making her spring, "There! I'm all
right," she said, settling herself. "Now then, turn to the right."
The young man obeyed, with no more thought of Courte-Joie and Trigaud
than if they did not exist. To him, there was no one at this moment in
the world but Mary.
"Rosine," he said, after he had gone a little way, longing to talk
about Mary, "how did mademoiselle know I was arrested by the
gendarmes?"
"Bless me! I should have to tell you what happened before that,
Monsieur Michel."
"Tell me all you can, my dear, good Rosine; only, do speak up. I'm
burning with impatience. Ah! how good it is to be free," cried the
young man; "and to be going to Mary!"
"Then I must tell you that mademoiselle came from Banl[oe]uvre to
Souday very early this morning; she borrowed my Sunday clothes and put
them on, and then she said 'Rosine, you are to go with me.'"
"Go on, Rosine, do! I'm listening."
"Well, then we started, with eggs in our baskets like real
peasant-women. At Nantes while I sold eggs mademoiselle did her
errand."
"What was that errand, Rosine?" asked Michel, before whose eyes the
form of the young man disguised as a peasant now loomed like a
spectre.
"Oh, that I don't know, Monsieur Michel." Then, without pausing to
notice the heavy sigh with which Michel received her words, she added:
"As mademoiselle was very tired we asked Monsieur Loriot, the Légé
notary, to drive us back in his carriole. We stopped half way to bait
the horse and while the notary was gossiping with the inn-keeper we
went into the garden to get away from the people who stared at
mademoiselle,--who is really much too beautiful for a peasant-woman.
There she read a letter, which made her cry dreadfully."
"A letter!" exclaimed Michel.
"Yes, a letter Monsieur Loriot gave her as we came along."
"My letter!" murmured Michel; "she has read my letter to her sister!
Oh!"
He stopped his horse abruptly, not knowing whether to rejoice or to be
terrified at this fact.
"What's the matter?" asked Rosine, who of course, did not understand
the sudden halt.
"Nothing, nothing," replied Michel, shaking the reins and putting the
horse to a trot.
Rosine resumed her tale.
"Well, she was crying over the letter when some one called us from the
other side of the hedge: it was Aubin Courte-Joie, and Trigaud with
him. He told us your adventure, and asked mademoiselle what he had
better do with your horse. Then, poor young lady, she seemed to feel
worse than when she read that letter. She was all upset, and said such
a lot of things to Courte-Joie--who, indeed, is under great
obligations to Monsieur le marquis--that she persuaded him to rescue
you from the soldiers. You've got a good friend in her, Monsieur
Michel."
Michel listened delightedly; he was almost beside himself with joy and
satisfaction, and would gladly have paid a piece of gold for every
syllable Rosine uttered. He began to think his horse went much too
slowly, and cutting a branch from a nut-tree he endeavored to excite
the animal to a pace in keeping with the pulses of his heart.
"But," he asked, "why didn't she wait for me in your father's cottage,
Rosine?"
"We did intend to, Monsieur le baron; in fact, we made Monsieur Loriot
leave us there, telling him we would walk to Souday. Mademoiselle had
charged Courte-Joie to take you to my house, and on no account let you
go to Banl[oe]uvre until she had seen you; but as ill-luck would have
it, the cottage, which since father's death has been quite deserted,
was to-night as full of people as an inn. Jean Oullier has got a
meeting there of all the leaders of his district. So Mademoiselle Mary
hid herself in the barn, and asked me to take her to some place where
she could see you alone as soon as Courte-Joie brought you. Here we
are on a level with the mill of Saint-Philbert; we shall see the lake
of Grand-Lieu in a moment."
Rosine's last words brought a more emphatic blow with the nut-stick on
the horse's quarters than any that preceded it. Michel felt that an
end was coming to the difficult position in which he stood. Mary now
knew the strength of his love; she knew that it was powerful enough to
make him reject the proffered marriage; she was evidently not offended
by it, since her regard for him had led her to do him a signal service
and even to risk her reputation by doing it. Timid, reserved, and
backward as Michel was, his hopes now rose to the level of these
proofs, as he thought them, of Mary's affection. It seemed to him
impossible that a young girl who braved public opinion, her father's
anger, her sister's reproaches, to secure the safety of a man whose
love and whose hopes she thoroughly well knew, could deny herself to
that love or disappoint those hopes. He saw his future through a misty
horizon still, but the mists were roseate as he began to descend the
hill which locks in the lake of Grand-Lieu to the southeast.
"Are we getting there?" he said to Rosine.
"Yes," she replied, slipping from the horse's back, "follow me."
Michel dismounted and the pair entered a little thicket of osiers, in
the middle of which stood a willow, to which Michel tied his horse.
Then they pushed their way for a hundred yards or so through the
flexible branches, until they came out upon the bank of a sort of
creek which flowed to the lake, Rosine jumped into a little boat with
a flat bottom. Michel offered to take the oars, but Rosine, knowing
that he was a novice at such performances, pushed him back and took
her seat on the thwart with an oar in each hand.
"No, no!" she said, "I can manage better than you; I have often rowed
my poor father when he cast his nets into the lake."
"But," said Michel, "are you sure you can hit the island of Jonchère
in this darkness?"
"Look!" she said, without turning round, "can't you see anything on
the water?"
"Yes," replied the young man, "I see what looks like a star."
"Well, that star is Mademoiselle Mary, who is holding a lamp in her
hand. She must have heard the oars, and is coming to meet us."
Michel would gladly have flung himself into the sea to precede the
boat, for, in spite of Rosine's nautical skill, it progressed very
slowly. He began to think he should never get over the distance
between himself and that light, which was now seen to grow brighter
and brighter every moment.
But, alas! contrary to the hopes which Rosine had inspired, when they
were near enough to the island to distinguish the one willow which
adorned it Michel did not see Mary awaiting him on the shore; the glow
came from a fire of rushes which she had doubtless lighted and left to
burn slowly out upon the shore.
"Rosine," cried Michel, aghast, jumping up in the boat which he nearly
overset, "I don't see Mademoiselle Mary."
"She is probably in the duck-shooters' hut," replied the girl, pulling
in her oars. "Take one of those burning sticks; you'll find the hut on
the other side toward the offing."
Michel sprang ashore, did as he was told, and hurried away in the
direction of the hut.
The island of Jonchère is some two or three hundred yards square. It
is covered with reeds on the low ground, which is overflowed in winter
by the waters of the lake. About fifty feet square of dry land rise
above the level of this inundation; on this elevation old Tinguy had
built for himself a little hut, to which he came on winter nights to
watch for wild-duck. This was the place to which Rosine had taken
Mary.
Whatever his hopes might be, Michel's heart beat almost to bursting
when he came in sight of the little building. As he laid his hand on
the latch of the door the oppression became so great that he
hesitated.
During that momentary pause his eyes rested on a pane of glass
introduced into the upper half of the entrance door, through which it
was possible to look into the cabin. There he beheld Mary, sitting on
a heap of reeds, her head bending forward on her breast.
By the feeble light of a lantern which was placed on a stool he
fancied he saw two tears glittering on the long, fringed eyelashes of
the young girl, and the thought that those tears were shed for him
made him lose all diffidence. He opened the door and rushed to her
feet, crying out:
"Mary, Mary, I love you!"