In order to follow Monsieur Hyacinthe for a moment we were obliged to
leave our older acquaintance, Courtin, stretched on the ground, legs
and arms tied, in thickest darkness, between the two wounded bandits.
The sound of Maître Jacques' heavy breathing and Joseph's moans
terrified him as much as their threats had done. He trembled lest one
or the other might revive and remember he was here, and execute
summary vengeance on him; he held his breath, lest even its tremor
might recall him to their minds.
And yet, another feeling was even more powerful in him than the love
of life. He was resolved to keep to the very last moment the precious
belt from those who might be his murderers, and he continued to hug it
to his breast, even daring, in order to hide it, that which he would
not have dared to save his life; he gently suffered the belt to slip
to the ground beside him, and then with an almost imperceptible motion
he crept in the same direction until he had covered it with his body.
Just as he had managed to execute this difficult man[oe]uvre he heard
the door of the tower rolling and creaking on its rusty hinges, and he
saw a sort of phantom clothed in black advancing toward him, holding a
torch in one hand, and dragging with the other a heavy musket, the
butt-end of which resounded on the stones.
Though the shades of death were already darkening his eyes, Joseph
Picaut saw the apparition; for he cried out, in a voice broken with
agony:--
"The widow! the widow!"
The widow of Pascal Picaut, for it was she, walked slowly forward,
without a glance at Courtin or Maître Jacques, who, pressing his left
hand on a wound in his breast, was striving to rise upon his right;
then she stopped in front of her brother-in-law and gazed at him with
an eye that was still threatening.
"A priest! a priest!" cried the dying man, horrified by that awful
phantom, which roused a hitherto unknown feeling in his breast,--that
of remorse.
"A priest! What good will a priest do you, miserable man? Can he bring
back to life your brother whom you murdered?"
"No, no!" cried Joseph; "no, I did not murder Pascal. I swear it by
eternity, to which I am now going!"
"You did not kill him, but you let others do so,--if, indeed, you did
not urge them to the crime. Not content with that, you fired at me.
You would have been twice a fratricide in one day if the hand of a
brave man had not pushed aside your weapon. But be sure of this: it is
not the harm you tried to do to me that I am avenging. It is the hand
of God that strikes you through me--Cain!"
"What!" exclaimed Joseph Picaut and Maître Jacques, "that shot--"
"I fired it; I knew I should surprise you here in the commission of
another crime, and it was I who shot you in the act. Yes, Joseph, yes;
you so brave, you so proud of your strength, bow down before God's
judgment!--you die by a woman's hand."
"What matters it to me how I die? Death comes from God. I implore you,
woman, give my repentance chance for efficacy; let me be reconciled to
the Heaven I have offended; bring me a priest, I implore you!"
"Did your brother have a priest in his last hour? Did you give him,
you, the time to lift his soul to God when he fell beneath the blows
of your accomplices at the ford of the Boulogne? No, an eye for an
eye, and a tooth for a tooth! Die a violent death; die without help
temporal or spiritual, as your brother died. And may all brigands,"
she added, turning to Maître Jacques, "all brigands who, in the name
of any flag, no matter which it is, bring ruin to their country and
mourning to their homes, descend with you to the lowest hell!"
"Woman!" cried Maître Jacques, who had succeeded in raising himself,
"whatever be his crime, whatever he may have done to you, it is not
good that you should speak to him thus. Forgive him, that you may
yourself be forgiven!"
"I?" said the widow. "Who dares to raise a voice against me?"
"The man whom, without intending it, you have sent to his grave; he
who received the ball you meant for your brother-in-law; the man who
speaks to you, I--I whom you have killed. And yet I am not angry with
you; for, by the way the world wags now, the best thing men of heart
can do is to go and see if that three-colored rag which seems to be to
the fore here waves in God's heaven."
Marianne gave a cry of astonishment, almost of horror, when she heard
what Maître Jacques told her. As the reader has doubtless understood,
she had watched for the arrival of Courtin; then when he and his
companion had entered the tower she went up the old staircase and
along the outer gallery till she reached the platform of the tower;
thence, through the rafters of the roof, she had fired on her
brother-in-law.
We have seen how, in consequence of the movement, made by Maître
Jacques to save Courtin, he was the one to receive the shot.
This miscarriage of her hatred had, as we have said, bewildered the
widow; but quickly recovering herself as she remembered what bandits
these men really were, she said:--
"Even if that is true, if I did shoot one intending to shoot the
other, my shot struck you as you were both about to commit another
crime. I have saved the life of an innocent man."
A savage smile curled the pale lips of Maître Jacques on hearing her
last words. He turned toward Courtin and felt in his belt for the
handle of his second pistol.
"Ha! yes!" he said with a dangerous laugh; "here's an innocent man; I
had almost forgotten him. Well, that innocent, since you remind me of
him, I'll give him his brevet as martyr. I won't die without
accomplishing my mission."
"You shall not stain your last hour with blood, as you have stained
your whole life, Maître Jacques!" cried the widow, placing herself
between Courtin and the Chouan. "I know how to prevent it."
And she turned the muzzle of her gun full on Maître Jacques.
"Very good," said Maître Jacques, as if he resigned himself.
"Presently, if God allows me time and strength, I will make you know
the two scoundrels whom you call innocent; but, for the time being, I
will let this one live. In exchange, and to deserve the absolution I
gave you just now, forgive your poor brother. Don't you hear the
rattle in his throat? He will be dead in ten minutes, and then it will
be too late."
"No, never! never!" said the widow, in a muffled voice.
Not only the voice but the rattle in Joseph's throat grew perceptibly
weaker, and yet he did not cease to use his last remaining strength in
beseeching his sister's pardon.
"It is God and not I whom you must implore," she said.
"No," said the dying man, shaking his head; "I dare not pray to God so
long as your curse is upon me."
"Then address your brother, and pray to him to forgive you."
"My brother!" murmured Joseph, closing his eyes as if a terrible
spectre were before him; "my brother! I shall see him! I shall be face
to face with him!"
And he strove to push away with his hand the bloody phantom which
seemed to beckon to him. Then, in a voice that was hardly
intelligible, and was indeed scarcely more than a whisper,--
"Brother! brother!" he murmured, "why do you turn away your head when
I pray to you? In the name of our mother, Pascal, let me clasp your
knees. Remember the tears we shed together in our childhood, which the
first Blues made so bitter. Forgive me for having followed the
terrible path our father enjoined on both of us. Alas! alas! how could
I know it would bring you and me face to face as enemies? My God! my
God! he does not answer me! Oh, Pascal, why do you turn away your
head? Oh! my poor child, my little Louis, whom I shall never see
again," continued the Chouan, "pray to your uncle, pray to him for me!
He loved you as his own child; ask him, in the name of your dying
father, to help a repentant sinner to reach the throne of God! Ah,
brother! brother!" he murmured, with a sudden expression of joy that
bordered on ecstasy, "you hear him, you pardon me, you stretch your
hand to the child. My God! my God! take my soul now, for my brother
has forgiven me!"
He fell back upon the ground from which, by a mighty effort, he had
risen to stretch his arms toward the vision.
During this time, and gradually, the hatred and vengeance in the
widow's face subsided. When Joseph spoke of the little boy whom Pascal
loved as his own child, a tear forced its way from her eyelids; and
when at last, by the gleam of her torch, she saw the face of the dying
man illuminated, not with an earthly light, but by a sacred halo, she
fell upon her knees, and pressing the hand of her wounded brother, she
cried out:--
"I believe you, I believe you, Joseph! God unseals the eyes of the
dying and lets them see into the heights of heaven. If Pascal pardons
you, I pardon you. As he forgets, so I forget. Yes, I forget all to
remember one thing only,--that you were his brother. Brother of
Pascal, die in peace!"
"Thank you, thank you," stammered Joseph, whose voice now hissed
through his lips, which were stained with a bloody froth. "Thank you!
but--the wife, the children?"
"Your wife shall be my sister, and your children are my children,"
said the widow, solemnly. "Die in peace, Joseph!"
The hand of the Chouan went to his forehead as though he meant to make
the sign of the cross; his lips murmured a few words, doubtless not
said for human ears, for no one understood them. Then he opened his
eyes unnaturally wide, stretched out his arm, and gave a sigh; it was
his last.
"Amen!" said Maître Jacques.
The widow knelt down and prayed beside the body for some
instants,--quite amazed that her eyes should be filled with tears for
him who had made her weep so bitterly.
A long silence followed. No doubt this silence oppressed Maître
Jacques, for he suddenly called out:--
"_Sacredié!_ who would suppose there was one living Christian still
here? I say one, for I don't call Judas a Christian."
The widow quivered; beside the dead she had indeed forgotten the
dying.
"I'll go back to the house and send help," she said.
"Help? Don't do anything of the kind; they'd only cure me for the
guillotine; and, thank you, la Picaut, I'd rather die the death of a
soldier. I've got it, and I won't let go of it now."
"Do you suppose I'd give you up to the authorities?"
"Yes; for you are a Blue and the wife of a Blue. Damn it! the capture
of Maître Jacques would make a fine figure on your record-book."
"My husband was a patriot, and I shared his feelings, that is true.
But I have a horror, above all things, of traitors and treachery. For
all the gold in the world I would not betray a person, not even you."
"You say you have a horror of treachery. Do you hear that, you cur?"
"Come, Jacques, let me send help," said the widow.
"No," said the Chouan bandit, "I'm at the end of my tether; I feel it
and I know it. I've made too many such holes not to know all about it.
In two hours, or three at most, I shall be disporting myself on the
great open moor,--the last, grand, beautiful moor of the good God. But
listen to me now."
"I am listening."
"This man whom you see here," he continued, pushing Courtin with his
foot as he might a noxious animal, "this man, for a few gold coins,
has sold a head which ought to be sacred to all, not only because it
is of those who are destined to wear a crown, but because her heart is
noble and kind and generous."
"That head," replied the widow, "I have sheltered beneath my roof."
In the portrait Maître Jacques had drawn she recognized the duchess.
"Yes, you saved her that time, la Picaut, I know it; and it is that
which makes you so great in my eyes; it is that which leads me to make
you my last request."
"Tell me what it is."
"Come nearer and stoop down; you alone must know what I have to say."
The widow went close to Maître Jacques and leaned over him and
listened attentively.
"You must," he said in a very low voice, "tell all this to the man you
have in your house."
"Who is that?" asked the widow, thunderstruck.
"The man you are hiding in your stable; the one you go every night to
nurse and comfort."
"But who told you?"
"Pooh! do you think anything can be hidden from Maître Jacques? All I
say is true, la Picaut, and it makes Maître Jacques the Chouan, Maître
Jacques the Chauffeur, proud to be among your friends."
"But the _gars_ is a very sick man; he has hardly strength to stand,
and then only by leaning on the wall."
"He'll find strength, never fear; he's a man,--a man indeed such as
there'll be no more of after we have gone," said the Vendéan, with
savage pride; "and if he can't take the field himself he'll make
others do so. Tell him merely that he must warn Nantes instantly,
without losing a minute, a second; he must warn _he knows who_. That
other man who was here is already on the march while we are talking."
"It shall be done, Maître Jacques."
"Ah! if that rascal Joseph had only spoken sooner!" resumed Maître
Jacques, raising his body to stop the blood which was rushing
violently to his chest. "He knew, I am certain, what was plotting
between these two villains; but he had them in his power and he never
thought to die. Well! man proposes, and God disposes. It must have
been the booty that tempted him. By the bye, widow, you ought to be
able to find that booty somewhere."
"What must I do with it?"
"Divide it in two parts; give one to the orphans this war has made,
white as well as blue; that's my share. The other belongs to Joseph;
give that to his children."
Courtin gave a sigh of anguish; for the words were spoken loud enough
for him to hear.
"No," said the widow, "no, it is the money of Judas; it would bring
evil. I will not take that money for those poor children, innocent as
they are."
"You are right; then give it all to the poor. The hands that receive
alms cleanse everything, even crime."
"And he?" said the widow, motioning toward Courtin but not looking at
him, "what is to be done with him?"
"He's well bound and gagged, isn't he?"
"He seems to be."
"Well, leave it to the man you have at your house to say what shall be
done with him."
"So be it."
"By the bye, la Picaut, when you go for him, give him this roll of
tobacco. I have no further use for it, and I think it will please him
mightily. I declare, though," continued the master of warrens, "it
makes me half sorry to die. Ha! I'd give my twenty-five thousand
francs prize-money to see the meeting of our man and this one; droll
enough, that will be!"
"But you must not stay here," said Marianne Picaut. "We have a little
bedroom in the citadel, where I will carry you. There, at any rate,
you can see a priest."
"As you please, widow; but first, do me the kindness to make sure that
my scoundrel is securely bound. It would embitter my last moments,
don't you see, if I thought he would get loose before the shaking up
he is going to have presently."
The widow bent over Courtin. The ropes were so tightly bound around
his arms that they entered the flesh which was red and swollen on each
side of them. The farmer's face, above all, betrayed the misery he was
enduring and was paler than that of Maître Jacques.
"He can't stir," said Marianne. "See! Besides, I'll turn the key on
him."
"Very good; it won't be for long. You will go at once, won't you, la
Picaut?"
"Yes, I promise."
"Thank you. Ah! the thanks I give you are nothing to those the man you
have over there will give when you tell him all."
"Well, well! Now let me carry you to the citadel, where you can have
the care you need. The confessor and the doctor will both hold their
tongues, don't be afraid of that."
"Very good; carry me along. It will be queer to see Maître Jacques die
in a bed, when he never, in all his life, slept on anything but ferns
and heather."
The widow took him in her arms and carried him to the little room we
have mentioned, and laid him on a pallet that was kept there. Maître
Jacques, in spite of the suffering he must have endured, in spite of
the gravity of his position, continued, in the presence of death, the
same merry but sardonic being he had been all his life. The nature of
this man, totally unlike that of his compatriots, never belied itself
for a single instant. But, in the midst of his lively sarcasms, flung
at the things he had defended quite as much as at those he had
attacked, he never ceased to urge the widow Picaut to go at once and
fulfil the errand to Jean Oullier which he had intrusted to her.
Thus urged, Marianne only took time to lock the door and push the
bolts of the fruit-room in which she left Courtin a prisoner. She
crossed the garden, re-entered the inn, and found her old mother
greatly alarmed by the noise of the shots which had reached her. Her
daughter's absence increased the old woman's fears, and she was
beginning to be terribly alarmed lest the widow had been made the
victim of some trap by her brother-in-law, when Marianne returned.
The widow, without telling her mother a word of what had happened,
begged her not to let any one pass into the ruins; then, flinging her
mantle over her shoulders, she prepared to go out. Just as she laid
her hand on the latch of the door a light knock was given without.
Marianne turned back to her mother.
"Mother," she said, "if any stranger asks to pass the night at the inn
say we have no room. No one must enter the house this night; the hand
of God is upon it."
The person outside rapped again.
"Who's there?" said the widow, opening the door, but barring the way
with her own person.
Bertha appeared on the threshold.
"You sent me word this morning, madame," said the young girl, "that
you had an important communication to make to me."
"You are right," said the widow. "I had wholly forgotten it."
"Good God!" cried Bertha, noticing that Marianne's kerchief was
stained with blood, "has any harm happened to my people,--to Mary, my
father, Michel?"
And in spite of her strength of mind, this last thought shook her so
terribly that she leaned against the wall to keep herself from
falling.
"Don't be uneasy," answered the widow. "I have no misfortune to tell
you; on the contrary, I am to say that an old friend whom you thought
lost is living, and wants to see you."
"Jean Oullier!" cried Bertha, instantly guessing whom she meant, "Jean
Oullier! It is he whom you mean, isn't it? He is living? Oh, God be
thanked! my father will be so glad! Take me to him at once,--at once,
I entreat you!"
"It was my intention to do so this morning; but since then events have
happened which lay upon you a duty more pressing still."
"A duty!" exclaimed Bertha, astonished. "What duty?"
"That of going to Nantes immediately; for I doubt if poor Jean
Oullier, exhausted as he is, can possibly do what Maître Jacques
requests of him."
"What am I to do in Nantes?"
"Tell him, or her, whom you call Petit-Pierre that the secret of her
present hiding-place has been sold and bought, and she must leave it
instantly. Any place is safer than the one she is now in. Betrayal is
close upon her; God grant you may get there in time!"
"Betrayed!" cried Bertha, "betrayed by whom?"
"By the man who once before sent the soldiers to my house to capture
her,--by Courtin, the mayor of La Logerie."
"Courtin! Have you seen him?"
"Yes," replied Marianne, laconically.
"Oh!" cried Bertha, clasping her hands, "let me see him!"
"Young girl, young girl," said the widow, evading a reply to this
request, "it is I, whom the partisans of that woman have made a widow,
who urge you to make haste and save her; and it is you, who boast of
being faithful to her, who hesitate to go!"
"No, no; that is not so!" cried Bertha. "I do not hesitate; I am
going."
She made a motion to go out; the widow stopped her.
"You cannot go to Nantes on foot; you would get there too late. In the
stable of this house you will find two horses; take either you please,
and tell the hostler to saddle him."
"Oh," said Bertha, "I can saddle him myself. But what can we ever do
for you, my poor widow, who have twice saved her life?"
"Tell her to remember what I said to her in my cottage beside the
bodies of two men killed for her sake; tell her that it is a crime to
bring discord and civil war into a region where her enemies themselves
protect her from treachery. Go, mademoiselle, go! and may God guide
you."
So saying, the widow left the house hurriedly,--going first to the
rector of Saint-Philbert, whom she asked to visit the citadel, and
then, as rapidly as possible, she struck across the fields to her own
house.