Maître Courtin had been very unhappy in mind during the whole evening
Madame de la Logerie had compelled him to pass with her. By gluing his
ear to the door he had heard every word the baroness had said to her
son, and he knew, therefore, of the scheme of the schooner.
Michel's departure would, of course, upset all his projects for the
discovery of Petit-Pierre; consequently, he was little desirous of the
honor the baroness did him in taking him home with her. He was, in
fact, most anxious to get back to the farmhouse. He hoped, by evoking
the image of Mary, to prevent, or at least delay, the flight of his
young master; for if the latter departed he lost, of course, the
thread by which he expected to penetrate the labyrinth in which
Petit-Pierre was hidden.
Unluckily for him, as soon as Madame de la Logerie reached the château
she struck another vein of ideas. In taking Courtin from the farmhouse
her only idea had been to hide her son's departure and protect him
from the farmer's curiosity; but on reaching the château she found the
house, occupied for the last few weeks by a band of soldiers, in such
deplorable disorder that she forgot, in presence of a devastation
which assumed to her eyes the proportions of a catastrophe, all her
natural distrust of Courtin, and she kept him with her as the
recipient and echo of her lamentations. Her despair, expressed with
the energy of conviction, prevented Courtin from leaving her, without
some decided pretext, and therefore delayed his return to the
farmhouse.
He was too shrewd not to suspect that the baroness had brought him to
keep him away from her son; but her despair was so genuine at the
sight of her broken china, shattered mirrors, greasy carpets, and her
salon transformed into a guard-room and adorned with primitive but most
expressive designs, that he began to doubt his first suspicion, and to
think that if his young master had really not been cautioned against
him it would be an easy matter to join him before he could board the
vessel.
It was nine o'clock before the baroness, after shedding a last tear
over the filthy defacements of the château, got into her carriage and
Courtin was enabled to give the order to the postilion to drive on:
"Road to Paris!" No sooner had he done so than he turned round rapidly
and ran with all his might toward the farmhouse.
It was empty; the servant told him that Monsieur Michel and
Mademoiselle Bertha had been gone two hours, and had taken the road to
Nantes.
Courtin at once thought of following them, and ran to the stable to
get his pony,--that, too, had gone! In his hurry he had forgotten to
ask the servant by what manner of locomotion his young master had
started. The recollection of his pony's extremely slow method of
progression reassured him somewhat; but, at any rate, he only stopped
in his own house long enough to get some money and the insignia of his
dignity as mayor; then he started bravely afoot in quest of him whom
by this time he regarded as a fugitive and almost as the embezzler of
a hundred thousand francs, which his imagination had already
discounted through the person of Mary de Souday's lover.
Maître Courtin ran like one who sees the wind whirling away his
bank-notes; in fact, he went almost as fast as the wind. But his haste
did not prevent him from stopping to make inquiries of every one he
passed. The mayor of La Logerie was innately prying at all times, and
on this occasion, as may well be supposed, he was not backward with
his questions.
At Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu, he was told that his pony had been
seen about half-past seven o'clock that evening. He asked who rode it;
but he got no satisfactory answer on that point,--the inn-keeper, of
whom he inquired, having taken notice only of the obstinacy of the
animal in refusing to pass the tavern sign (a branch of holly and
three apples saltierwise) where his master usually baited him on the
way to Nantes.
A little farther on, however, the farmer was luckier; the rider was
described to him so exactly that he could have no doubt about his
being the young baron; and he was also told that the traveller was
alone. The mayor, a prudent man if ever there was one, supposed that
the two young people had parted company out of prudence, meaning to
rejoin each other by different roads. Luck was evidently on his side;
the pair were parted, and he knew, if he could only meet Michel alone,
the game was won.
He felt so sure that the young baron had not deviated from the
road and was now in Nantes that when he reached the inn of the
Point-du-Jour he did not trouble himself to ask the inn-keeper for
further information, which, by the bye, he doubted if the man would
give him. He stopped only long enough to eat a mouthful, and then,
instead of following Michel into Nantes, he turned back over the pont
Rousseau and then to the right, in the direction of Pèlerin. The wily
farmer had his plan.
We have already explained the hopes which Courtin had founded on
Michel. Mary's lover would sooner or later betray to him, for some
personal end, the secret hiding-place of the woman he loved; and as
that beloved woman was living with Petit-Pierre, Michel's betrayal of
Mary's retreat would also betray the duchess. But if Michel contrived
to escape, all Courtin's hopes went with him. Consequently, at any
cost Michel must not escape. Now, if Michel did not find the "Jeune
Charles" at her anchorage Michel would be forced to remain.
As for Madame de la Logerie, she being well on the road to Paris, it
would be some days at least before she could hear that her son had not
sailed, and could take other measures to remove him from La Vendée.
Courtin was confident that this delay would suffice him to obtain from
Michel the clue he sought.
The only difficulty was that he did not know in what way to reach the
captain of the "Jeune Charles," the name of the schooner which he had
heard the baroness tell to Michel; but--without dreaming of his
likeness in this to the greatest man of antiquity--Courtin resolved to
run for luck.
Luck did not escape him. When he reached the top of the hill above
Couéron he saw, above the poplar-trees on the islet, the masts of the
schooner; the foretopsail was hoisted and was flapping to the breeze.
Undoubtedly, it was the vessel he was in search of. In the lessening
twilight, which was beginning to make all things indistinct, Maître
Courtin, glancing along the shore, saw at about ten paces from him a
fishing-rod held horizontally over the river with a line at the end,
and a cork at the end of the line which floated on the current.
The rod seemed to come from a small hillock, but the arm that held it
was invisible. Maître Courtin was not a man to remain in ignorance of
what he wanted to know; he walked straight to the hillock and round
it; there he discovered a man crouching in a hollow between two rocks,
absorbed in contemplation of the swaying of his float at the will of
the current.
The man was dressed as a sailor,--that is, he wore trousers of
tarred-cloth and a pea-jacket; on his head was a species of
Scotch-cap. A few feet from him the stern of a boat, fastened by its
bow to the shore, swayed gently to the wash of the water. The
fisherman did not turn his head as Courtin approached him, although
the latter took the precaution to cough, and make his cough
significant of a desire to enter into conversation. The fisherman not
only kept an obstinate silence, but he did not even look Courtin's
way.
"It is pretty late to be fishing," remarked the mayor of La Logerie at
last.
"That shows you know nothing about it," replied the fisherman, with a
contemptuous grimace. "I think, on the contrary, that it is rather too
early. Night is the time it is worth while to fish; you can catch
something better than the young fry at night."
"Yes; but if it is dark how can you see your float?"
"What matter?" replied the fisherman, shrugging his shoulders. "My
night eyes are here," he added, showing the palm of his hand.
"I understand; you mean you feel a bite," said Courtin, sitting down
beside him. "I'm fond of fishing myself; and little as you think so, I
know a good deal about it."
"You? fishing with a line?" said the other, with a doubtful air.
"No, not that," replied Courtin. "I depopulate the river about La
Logerie with nets."
Courtin dropped this hint of his locality, hoping that the fisherman,
whom he took to be a sailor stationed there by the captain of the
schooner to take Monsieur Michel de la Logerie on board, would catch
it up; but he was mistaken; the man gave no sign of recognizing the
name; on the contrary he remarked coolly:--
"You boast of your talent for the great art of fishing, but I don't
believe in it."
"Pray why?" asked Courtin. "Have you the monopoly?"
"Because you seem to me, my good sir, to be ignorant of the first
principle of that art."
"And what may that principle be?" asked Courtin.
"When you want to catch fish avoid four things."
"What are they?"
"Wind, dogs, women, and chatterers. It is true, I might say three,"
added the man in the pea-jacket, philosophically, "for women and
chatterers are one."
"Pshaw! you'll soon find out that my chattering, as you call it, is
not out of season, for I am going to propose to you to earn a couple
of francs."
"When I've caught half a dozen fish I shall have earned more than a
couple of francs, and amused myself into the bargain."
"Well, I'll go as far as four, or even five francs," continued
Courtin; "and you will have the chance to do a service to your
neighbor, which counts for something, doesn't it?"
"Come," said the fisherman, "don't beat round the bush; what do you
want of me?"
"I want you to take me on board your schooner, the 'Jeune Charles,'
the masts of which I see over there beyond the trees."
"The 'Jeune Charles,'" said the sailor, reflectively, "what's the
'Jeune Charles'?"
"Here," said Maître Courtin, giving the fisherman an oil-skin hat he
had picked up on the shore, on which appeared the words, in gilt
letters: "LE JEUNE CHARLES."
"Well, I admit you must be a fisherman, my friend," said the sailor.
"The devil take me if your eyes are not in your fingers, like mine;
otherwise you never could have read that in the darkness! Now, then,
what have you to do with the 'Jeune Charles'?"
"Didn't I mention something just now that struck your ear?"
"My good man," said the fisherman, "I'm like a well-bred dog; I don't
yelp when bitten. Heave your own log and don't trouble yourself about
my keel."
"Well, I am Madame la Baronne de la Logerie's farmer."
"What of it?"
"I am sent by her," said Courtin, growing more and more audacious as
he went on.
"What of that?" asked the sailor, in the same tone, but more
impatiently. "You come from Madame de la Logerie; well, what have you
got to say for her?"
"I came to tell you that the thing is a failure; it is all discovered,
and you must get away as fast as you can."
"That maybe," replied the fisherman; "but it doesn't concern me. I am
only the mate of the 'Jeune Charles;' though I do know enough of the
matter to put you aboard and let you talk with the captain."
So saying, he tranquilly wound up his line and threw it into the boat,
which he pulled toward him. Making a sign to Courtin to sit down in
the stern, he put twenty feet between him and the shore with one
stroke of the oars. After rowing five minutes he turned his head and
found they were close alongside the "Jeune Charles," which, being in
ballast, rose some twelve feet above them out of the water.
At the sound of oars a curiously modulated whistle came from the
schooner, to which the mate replied in somewhat the same manner. A
figure then appeared in the bows; the boat came up on the starboard
side and a rope was thrown to it. The man with the pea-jacket climbed
aboard with the agility of a cat, then he hauled up Courtin, who was
less used to such nautical scrambling.