During the three hours that Courtin spent bound hand and foot, and
lying on the earth in the ruins of Saint-Philbert, side by side with
the corpse of Joseph Picaut, his heart passed through all the agony
that can rend and torture a human being.
He felt the precious belt beneath him, for he had managed to lie upon
it; but the gold it contained only added more pangs to his other
pangs, more terror to the countless terrors which assailed his brain.
That gold, which was more to him than life itself, was he doomed to
lose it? Who was this unknown man whom he had heard Maître Jacques
tell the widow to summon? What was this mysterious vengeance he had
now to fear? He passed in review before him all the persons to whom,
in the course of his life, he had done harm; the list was long, and
their threatening faces peopled the darkness of the tower.
And yet, at times, a ray of hope traversed his gloomy mind; vague and
undecided at first, it presently took on consistency. Could it be that
a man possessing that glorious gold should die? If vengeance rose
before him would not a handful of those coins silence it? His
imagination counted and re-counted the sum belonging to him, which was
really, really his own, which was bruising his flesh delightfully,
pressing into his loins as if the gold itself were becoming a part of
his very body. Then he reflected that if he could only escape he
should add fifty thousand more francs to the fifty thousand now
beneath him; and, helpless as he was, a victim doomed to death,
awaiting the fall of the sword of Damocles above his head, which might
at any instant cut the thread of his life, his heart melted into such
joy that it took the character of intoxication. But soon his ideas
again changed their course. He asked himself if his accomplice--in
whom he felt only the confidence of an accomplice--would not profit by
his absence to cheat him of the share that belonged to him; he saw
that man escaping, weighed down by the weight of the enormous sum he
was carrying, and refusing to divide it with him, who, after all, had
done the whole betrayal. He mentally prepared for such occasion; he
thought of words of entreaty to reach the heart of that Jew, threats
to intimidate him, reproaches that might move him; but suddenly,
when he reflected that if Monsieur Hyacinthe loved gold as he loved
it,--which was probable, inasmuch as he was a Jew,--when he measured
his associate by his own measure, when he sounded in his own soul the
depths of the sacrifice he demanded, he said to himself that tears,
prayers, threats, reproaches would all be useless, and he fell into
paroxysms of rage; he vented roars which shook the old arches of the
feudal edifice; he struggled in his bonds, he bit the ropes, he tried
to tear them with his teeth; but those ropes, slender and loosely
twisted as they were, seemed to take on life, to become living things
under his efforts; he fancied he felt them struggling against him,
increasing their tangled snarl; the knots he undid seemed to tie
themselves again, not singly as before, but in double, treble,
quadruple turns; and then, as if to punish his efforts, they buried
themselves in his flesh, where they made a burning furrow. All dreams
of hope, all thought of riches and happiness vanished like clouds
before the breath of a tempest; the phantoms of those whom the farmer
had persecuted rose terrible before him; all things lurking in the
shadow, stones, beams, fragments of broken wood-work, fallen cornices,
all took form, and each of those threatening shapes looked at him with
eyes which shone in the darkness like thousands of sparks darting on
the tissue of a black shroud. The mind of the wretched man began to
wander. Mad with terror and despair he called to the corpse of Joseph
Picaut, of which he could see the outline, stiff and stark, about four
feet from him; he offered him a fourth, a third, a half of his gold if
he would loose his bonds; but the echo of the arches alone replied in
its funereal voice, and, exhausted by emotion, he fell back for a
moment into dull insensibility.
He was in one of these moments of torpor when a noise without made him
quiver. Some one was walking in the inner courtyard of the castle,
and presently he heard the grinding of the rusty bolts of the old
fruit-room. Courtin's heart beat as though it would burst his breast.
He was breathless with fear, choking with anguish; he felt that the
coming person was the avenger summoned by Maître Jacques.
The door opened. The flame of a torch lighted the rafters with its
ruddy glare. Courtin had an instant of hope; it was the widow, bearing
the torch, whom he first saw, and he thought she was alone; but she
had scarcely made two steps into the tower before a man who was behind
her appeared. The hair of the hapless farmer rose on his head; he
dared not look at the man; he closed his eyes and was silent.
The man and the widow came nearer. Marianne gave the torch to her
companion, pointing with her finger to Courtin; and then, as if
indifferent to what was about to happen, she knelt down at the feet of
Joseph Picaut's body and began to pray.
As for the man, he came close beside the farmer and, no doubt to
convince himself that he was really the mayor of La Logerie, he cast
the light of the torch across his face.
"Can he be asleep?" he said to himself, in a low voice. "No, he is too
great a coward to sleep; no, his face is too pale--he's not sleeping."
Then he stuck his torch into a fissure in the wall, sat down on an
enormous stone which had rolled from the top to the middle of the
tower and, addressing Courtin, said to him:--
"Come, open your eyes, Monsieur le maire. We have something to say to
each other, and I like to see the eyes of those who speak to me."
"Jean Oullier!" cried Courtin, turning livid, and making a desperate
effort to burst his bonds and escape. "Jean Oullier living!"
"If it were only his ghost, Monsieur Courtin, it would be, I think,
enough to terrify you; for you have a long account to settle with
him."
"Oh, my God! my God!" exclaimed Courtin, letting himself drop back on
the ground like a man who resigns himself to his fate.
"Our hatred dates far back, doesn't it?" continued Jean Oullier; "and
its instincts have not misled us; they have embittered you against me,
and to-day, exhausted and half dead as I am, they have brought me back
to you."
"I have never hated you," said Courtin, who the moment he perceived
that Jean Oullier was not about to kill him on the spot, felt a gleam
of hope in his heart and foresaw the possibility of saving his life by
discussion. "I have never hated you; on the contrary! and if my ball
did strike you it was not because I meant it for you. I did not know
you were in that bush."
"Oh, my grievances against you go farther back than that, Monsieur
Courtin!"
"Farther back?" replied Courtin, who, little by little, was recovering
some energy. "But I swear that before that accident, which I deplore,
I never put you in any danger, I never did you any harm."
"Your memory is short, and your offences weigh most on the soul of the
offended person, it appears; for I remember the wrongs you have done
me."
"What wrongs? What can you remember against me? Speak, Monsieur Jean
Oullier! Do you think it right to kill a man without hearing him,
without allowing him to say one word in his defence?"
"Who told you I meant to kill you?" said Jean Oullier, with the icy
calmness he had not quitted for an instant. "Your conscience,
perhaps."
"Speak out, Monsieur Jean! tell me of what I am accused! Except for
that luckless shot, I know I am as white as the driven snow. Yes, I
can prove to you that no one has been a better friend than I to the
worthy family at Souday; no one has respected them more, or been more
glad of this marriage which is to unite the families of your master
and mine."
"Monsieur Courtin," said Jean Oullier, who had left free course to
this flux of words, "it is, as you say, only fair that an accused
person should defend himself. Defend yourself, therefore, if you can.
Listen to me; I begin--"
"Oh, go on! I am not afraid of your questions!" replied Courtin.
"We shall soon see that. Who betrayed me to the gendarmes at the fair
of Montaigu, so as to lay hands more securely on my master's guests,
whom you rightly supposed I was defending? Who, having done that,
basely hid himself behind the hedge of the last garden in Montaigu,
and after borrowing a gun of the owner of that garden, fired at my dog
and killed my poor companion? Answer, Monsieur Courtin!"
"Who dares to say he saw me do that?" cried the farmer.
"Three persons; among them the man from whom you borrowed the gun."
"How should I know the dog was yours? No, Monsieur Jean, upon my
honor, I was ignorant of it."
Jean made a contemptuous gesture.
"Who," he continued, in the same calm but accusing voice, "who, having
slipped into Pascal Picaut's house, sold to the Blues the secret he
discovered there,--the secret of a sacred hospitality?"
"I bear testimony to that," said the deep voice of Pascal's widow,
issuing from her silence and immobility.
The farmer shuddered and dared not defend himself.
"Whom have I constantly found," resumed Jean Oullier, "during the last
four months, busy with shameful schemes, laying his plots and
sheltering them under the name of his young master, proclaiming
devotion and fidelity to him, and soiling the very name of those
virtues by contact with his criminal intentions? Whom did I hear, on
the Bouaimé moor, discussing the price of blood? Whom did I see
weighing the gold offered him for the basest and most odious of
treacheries? Who, I say, was that man, if not you?"
"I swear to you by all there is most sacred among men!" said Courtin,
who still believed that Jean Oullier's principal grievance was the
shot that wounded him. "I swear to you that I did not know you were in
that luckless bush!"
"But I tell you I don't blame you for that! I have not said a word, I
have not opened my lips to you about it! The list of your crimes is
long enough without adding that!"
"You speak of my crimes, Jean Oullier, and you forget that my young
master, who will soon become yours, owes me his life; and that if I
had been the traitor that you call me I should have delivered him up
to the soldiers who passed and repassed my house every day while he
was there. You forget all that, while, on the contrary, you rake up
every trifling circumstance against me."
"If you did save your master," continued Jean Oullier, in the same
inexorable tone, "it is because that sham devotion was useful to your
plans. Better for him, better for those two poor girls, if you had let
them end their days honorably, gloriously, than to have mixed them up
in these shameless intrigues. That is what I have against you,
Courtin; that thought alone doubles the hatred I feel to you."
"The proof that I don't hate you, Jean Oullier, is that if I had
chosen you would long ago have been put out of this world."
"What do you mean?"
"On the day of that hunt when the father of Monsieur Michel was
killed--murdered, Monsieur Jean, we won't blink the word--a beater was
not ten paces from him; and the name of that beater was Courtin."
Jean Oullier rose to his full height.
"Yes," continued the farmer, "and this beater saw it was Jean
Oullier's ball that brought the traitor down."
"Yes," said Jean Oullier; "but it was not a crime it was an expiation.
I am proud to have been the man whom God selected to punish that
criminal."
"God alone may punish, God alone may curse," said the mayor.
"No, I am not mistaken; it is He who has put into my heart this hatred
of sin, this ineradicable recollection of treachery; it was the finger
of God touching my heart when that heart quivered at the name of the
traitor. When my shot struck that Judas I felt the breath of the
divine Justice cross my face and cool it; and, from that moment to
this I have found the peace and calmness I never had while that
unpunished criminal prospered before my eyes. God was with me."
"God is never with a murderer."
"God is always with the executioner who lifts the sword of justice.
Men have their laws, He has his. I was that day, as I am to-day, the
sword of God."
"Do you mean to murder me as you murdered Baron Michel?"
"I mean to punish the man who sold Petit-Pierre as I punished him who
sold Charette. I shall punish him without fear, without doubt, without
remorse."
"Take care; remorse will come when your future master calls you to
account for his father's death."
"That young man is just and loyal; if he is ever called upon to judge
my conduct I shall tell him what I saw in the wood of La Chabotière,
and he will judge me rightly."
"Who can testify that you tell the truth? One man alone, and that is
I. Let me live, Jean, let me live! and, as that woman did just now, I
will rise and say: 'I bear testimony to that.'"
"Fear makes you foolish, Courtin. Monsieur Michel will ask for no
other testimony when Jean Oullier says, 'This is the truth;' when Jean
Oullier, baring his breast, says, 'If you wish to avenge your father,
strike!' when Jean Oullier kneels before him and prays to God to send
the expiation if He himself judges that the deed should be expiated.
No, no! and you are wrong, wrong to evoke in your terror those bloody
memories before my mind. You, Maître Courtin, you have done worse
things than Michel did; for the blood you sold is nobler still than
that he trafficked in. I did not spare Michel, why should I spare you?
Never, never!"
"Pity! mercy! Jean Oullier. Do not kill me!" sobbed the wretched man.
"Implore those stones, ask pity of them! They may answer you; but
nothing can move my will, or shake my resolution. You shall die!"
"Ah, my God! my God!" cried Courtin, "is there no one to help me?
Widow Picaut! widow Picaut! here! here! will you let him cut my
throat? Here! help me! protect me! If you want gold, I'll give it! I
have gold, gold! No, what am I saying? My mind is wandering; I have no
gold!" said the poor wretch, fearing to spur on the murder he saw
glittering in the eyes of his enemy if he offered such hopes. "No, I
have no gold, but I have property, estates. I'll give you all; I'll
make you rich--both of you! Oh, mercy, Jean Oullier! Widow Picaut,
defend me!"
The widow did not stir; except for the movement of her lips she might
have been taken, as she knelt there in her mourning garments, pale as
marble, mute and motionless beside the corpse, for one of those
kneeling statues we often see at the foot of some ancient monument.
"What!" continued Courtin, "will you really kill me? kill me without a
fight, without danger, when I cannot lift a foot to escape or a hand
to defend myself? Will you cut my throat in my bonds like a beast that
they drag to a slaughter-house? Oh, Jean Oullier, that's not the work
of a soldier; you are a butcher!"
"Who told you I would do it thus? No, no, no, Maître Courtin. Look,
the wound you gave me has not healed; it still bleeds. I am weak,
tottering, feeble; I am proscribed, a price is on my head!--well, in
spite of all that, I am so certain of the justice of my cause that I
do not hesitate to appeal to the judgment of God. Courtin, you are
free!"
"Free?"
"Yes, I set you at liberty. Oh, you need not thank me; what I do, I do
for myself, not you,--that it may never be said Jean Oullier struck a
fallen man, an unarmed man. But don't mistake; the life I give you
now, I will take some day."
"Oh, God!"
"Maître Courtin, you will go from here unbound and free; but, I warn
you, beware! As soon as you have passed the threshold of these ruins I
shall be upon your traces; and those traces I will never abandon until
I have struck you down and made your body a corpse. Beware, Maître
Courtin, beware!"
So saying, Jean Oullier took his knife and cut the cords that bound
the farmer hand and foot. Courtin made a bound of almost frantic joy;
but he instantly controlled it. In springing up he felt the belt; it
seemed as though it called to him. Jean Oullier had given him life,
but what was life without his gold?
He flung himself down upon it as quickly as he had risen.
Jean Oullier had seen, rapid as Courtin's movement was, the swollen
leather of the belt, and he guessed what was passing in the farmer's
mind.
"Why don't you go?" he said. "What are you waiting for? Yes, I
understand; you are afraid that, seeing you free as myself and
stronger than I, my wrath may revive; you are afraid I may throw you
another knife like my own and say to you: 'Defend yourself, Maître
Courtin, we are equal now!' No, Jean Oullier has but one word, and
that he has given you. Make haste! depart! fly! If God is with you, He
will protect you against me; if He condemns you, what care I for the
start I give you? Take your cursèd gold, and begone!"
Maître Courtin did not answer. He rose, stumbling like a drunken man;
he tried to fasten the belt around his waist, but could not; his
fingers trembled as though they were shaken by an ague. Before
departing he kept himself turned in terror toward Jean Oullier. The
traitor feared treachery; he could not believe that the generosity of
his enemy did not hide some trap.
Jean Oullier pointed with his finger to the door. Courtin rushed into
the court; but before he reached the postern-gate he heard the voice
of the Vendéan, sonorous as the clarion of battle, calling to him:--
"Beware, Courtin! beware!"
Maître Courtin, free as he was, shuddered; and in that moment of
agitation he struck his foot against a stone, tripped, and fell
forward. He uttered a cry of agony, fancying that the Vendéan was upon
him; he thought he felt the cold steel of a knife piercing between his
shoulders.
It was only an omen. Courtin rose, and a minute later, having passed
the postern, he darted, a free man, into the open country he had not
expected to see again.
When he had disappeared the widow went up to Jean Oullier and offered
him her hand.
"Jean," she said, "as I listened to you, I thought how right my Pascal
was when he told me there were brave, strong souls under every flag."
Jean Oullier wrung the hand the worthy woman who had saved his life
held out to him.
"How do you feel now?" she asked.
"Better; we are always stronger for a struggle."
"And where are you going?"
"To Nantes. After what your mother told us, I think Bertha may not
have gone there; and I fear some disaster from the delay."
"Well, at any rate, take a boat; that will spare your legs the fatigue
of half the distance."
"I will," replied Jean Oullier.
And he followed the widow to the place on the lakeside where the boats
of the fishermen were drawn up on the sand.