2. One of Fouche's Ideas - Part 9

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_ Another scene had meanwhile taken place in the dining-room, which assumed, in the marquis's absence, such a threatening character that Marie, alone without her protector, might well fancy she read her death-warrant in the eyes of her rival. At the noise of the volley the guests all sprang to their feet, but Madame du Gua remained seated.

"It is nothing," she said; "our men are despatching the Blues." Then, seeing the marquis outside on the portico, she rose. "Mademoiselle whom you here see," she continued, with the calmness of concentrated fury, "came here to betray the Gars! She meant to deliver him up to the Republic."

"I could have done so twenty times to-day and yet I saved his life," said Mademoiselle de Verneuil.

Madame du Gua sprang upon her rival like lightning; in her blind excitement she tore apart the fastenings of the young girl's spencer, the stuff, the embroidery, the corset, the chemise, and plunged her savage hand into the bosom where, as she well knew, a letter lay hidden. In doing this her jealousy so bruised and tore the palpitating throat of her rival, taken by surprise at the sudden attack, that she left the bloody marks of her nails, feeling a sort of pleasure in making her submit to so degrading a prostitution. In the feeble struggle which Marie made against the furious woman, her hair became unfastened and fell in undulating curls about her shoulders; her face glowed with outraged modesty, and tears made their burning way along her cheeks, heightening the brilliancy of her eyes, as she quivered with shame before the looks of the assembled men. The hardest judge would have believed in her innocence when he saw her sorrow.

Hatred is so uncalculating that Madame du Gua did not perceive she had overshot her mark, and that no one listened to her as she cried triumphantly: "You shall now see, gentlemen, whether I have slandered that horrible creature."

"Not so horrible," said the bass voice of the guest who had thrown the first stone. "But for my part, I like such horrors."

"Here," continued the cruel woman, "is an order signed by Laplace, and counter-signed by Dubois, minister of war." At these names several heads were turned to her. "Listen to the wording of it," she went on.

"'The military citizen commanders of all grades, the district administrators, the /procureur-syndics/, et cetera, of the insurgent departments, and particularly those of the localities in which the ci-devant Marquis de Montauran, leader of the brigands and otherwise known as the Gars, may be found, are hereby commanded to give aid and assistance to the /citoyenne/ Marie Verneuil and to obey the orders which she may give them at her discretion.'

"A worthless hussy takes a noble name to soil it with such treachery," added Madame du Gua.

A movement of astonishment ran through the assembly.

"The fight is not even if the Republic employs such pretty women against us," said the Baron du Guenic gaily.

"Especially women who have nothing to lose," said Madame du Gua.

"Nothing?" cried the Chevalier du Vissard. "Mademoiselle has a property which probably brings her in a pretty good sum."

"The Republic must like a joke, to send strumpets for ambassadors," said the Abbe Gudin.

"Unfortunately, Mademoiselle seeks the joys that kill," said Madame du Gua, with a horrible expression of pleasure at the end she foresaw.

"Then why are you still living?" said her victim, rising to her feet, after repairing the disorder of her clothes.

This bitter sarcasm excited a sort of respect for so brave a victim, and silenced the assembly. Madame du Gua saw a satirical smile on the lips of the men, which infuriated her, and paying no attention to the marquis and Merle who were entering the room, she called to the Chouan who followed them. "Pille-Miche!" she said, pointing to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, "take her; she is my share of the booty, and I turn her over to you--do what you like with her."

At these words the whole assembly shuddered, for the hideous heads of Pille-Miche and Marche-a-Terre appeared behind the marquis, and the punishment was seen in all its horror.

Francine was standing with clasped hands as though paralyzed. Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who recovered her presence of mind before the danger that threatened her, cast a look of contempt at the assembled men, snatched the letter from Madame du Gua's hand, threw up her head with a flashing eye, and darted towards the door where Merle's sword was still leaning. There she came upon the marquis, cold and motionless as a statue. Nothing pleaded for her on his fixed, firm features. Wounded to the heart, life seemed odious to her. The man who had pledged her so much love must have heard the odious jests that were cast upon her, and stood there silently a witness of the infamy she had been made to endure. She might, perhaps, have forgiven him his contempt, but she could not forgive his having seen her in so humiliating a position, and she flung him a look that was full of hatred, feeling in her heart the birth of an unutterable desire for vengeance. With death beside her, the sense of impotence almost strangled her. A whirlwind of passion and madness rose in her head; the blood which boiled in her veins made everything about her seem like a conflagration. Instead of killing herself, she seized the sword and thrust it though the marquis. But the weapon slipped between his arm and side; he caught her by the wrist and dragged her from the room, aided by Pille-Miche, who had flung himself upon the furious creature when she attacked his master. Francine shrieked aloud. "Pierre! Pierre! Pierre!" she cried in heart-rending tones, as she followed her mistress.

The marquis closed the door on the astonished company. When he reached the portico he was still holding the woman's wrist, which he clasped convulsively, while Pille-Miche had almost crushed the bones of her arm with his iron fingers, but Marie felt only the burning hand of the young leader.

"You hurt me," she said.

For all answer he looked at her a moment.

"Have you some base revenge to take--like that woman?" she said. Then, seeing the dead bodies on the heap of straw, she cried out, shuddering: "The faith of a gentleman! ha! ha! ha!" With a frightful laugh she added: "Ha! the glorious day!"

"Yes," he said, "a day without a morrow."

He let go her hand and took a long, last look at the beautiful creature he could scarcely even then renounce. Neither of these proud natures yielded. The marquis may have looked for a tear, but the eyes of the girl were dry and scornful. Then he turned quickly, and left the victim to Pille-Miche.

"God will hear me, marquis," she called. "I will ask Him to give you a glorious day without a morrow."

Pille-Miche, not a little embarrassed with so rich a prize, dragged her away with some gentleness and a mixture of respect and scorn. The marquis, with a sigh, re-entered the dining-room, his face like that of a dead man whose eyes have not been closed.

Merle's presence was inexplicable to the silent spectators of this tragedy; they looked at him in astonishment and their eyes questioned each other. Merle saw their amazement, and, true to his native character, he said, with a smile: "Gentlemen, you will scarcely refuse a glass of wine to a man who is about to make his last journey."

It was just as the company had calmed down under the influence of these words, said with a true French carelessness which pleased the Vendeans, that Montauran returned, his face pale, his eyes fixed.

"Now you shall see," said Merle, "how death can make men lively."

"Ah!" said the marquis, with a gesture as if suddenly awaking, "here you are, my dear councillor of war," and he passed him a bottle of /vin de Grave/.

"Oh, thanks, citizen marquis," replied Merle. "Now I can divert myself."

At this sally Madame du Gua turned to the other guests with a smile, saying, "Let us spare him the dessert."

"That is a very cruel vengeance, madame," he said. "You forget my murdered friend who is waiting for me; I never miss an appointment."

"Captain," said the marquis, throwing him his glove, "you are free; that's your passport. The Chasseurs du Roi know that they must not kill all the game."

"So much the better for me!" replied Merle, "but you are making a mistake; we shall come to close quarters before long, and I'll not let you off. Though your head can never pay for Gerard's, I want it and I shall have it. Adieu. I could drink with my own assassins, but I cannot stay with those of my friend"; and he disappeared, leaving the guests astonished at his coolness.

"Well, gentlemen, what do you think of the lawyers and surgeons and bailiffs who manage the Republic," said the Gars, coldly.

"God's-death! marquis," replied the Comte de Bauvan; "they have shocking manners; that fellow presumed to be impertinent, it seems to me."

The captain's hasty retreat had a motive. The despised, humiliated woman, who was even then, perhaps, being put to death, had so won upon him during the scene of her degradation that he said to himself, as he left the room, "If she is a prostitute, she is not an ordinary one, and I'll marry her." He felt so sure of being able to rescue her from the savages that his first thought, when his own life was given to him, was to save hers. Unhappily, when he reached the portico, he found the courtyard deserted. He looked about him, listened to the silence, and could hear nothing but the distant shouts and laughter of the Chouans, who were drinking in the gardens and dividing their booty. He turned the corner to the fatal wing before which his men had been shot, and from there he could distinguish, by the feeble light of a few stray lanterns, the different groups of the Chasseurs du Roi. Neither Pille-Miche, nor Marche-a-Terre, nor the girl were visible; but he felt himself gently pulled by the flap of his uniform, and, turning round, saw Francine on her knees.

"Where is she?" he asked.

"I don't know; Pierre drove me back and told me not to stir from here."

"Which way did they go?"

"That way," she replied, pointing to the causeway.

The captain and Francine then noticed in that direction a line of strong shadows thrown by the moonlight on the lake, and among them that of a female figure.

"It is she!" cried Francine.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil seemed to be standing, as if resigned, in the midst of other figures, whose gestures denoted a debate.

"There are several," said the captain. "Well, no matter, let us go to them."

"You will get yourself killed uselessly," said Francine.

"I have been killed once before to-day," he said gaily.

They both walked towards the gloomy gateway which led to the causeway; there Francine suddenly stopped short.

"No," she said, gently, "I'll go no farther; Pierre told me not to meddle; I believe in him; if we go on we shall spoil all. Do as you please, officer, but leave me. If Pierre saw us together he would kill you."

Just then Pille-Miche appeared in the gateway and called to the postilion who was left in the stable. At the same moment he saw the captain and covered him with his musket, shouting out, "By Saint Anne of Auray! the rector was right enough in telling us the Blues had signed a compact with the devil. I'll bring you to life, I will!"

"Stop! my life is sacred," cried Merle, seeing his danger. "There's the glove of your Gars," and he held it out.

"Ghosts' lives are not sacred," replied the Chouan, "and I sha'n't give you yours. Ave Maria!"

He fired, and the ball passed through his victim's head. The captain fell. When Francine reached him she heard him mutter the words, "I'd rather die with them than return without them."

The Chouan sprang upon the body to strip it, saying, "There's one good thing about ghosts, they come to life in their clothes." Then, recognizing the Gars' glove, that sacred safeguard, in the captain's hand, he stopped short, terrified. "I wish I wasn't in the skin of my mother's son!" he exclaimed, as he turned and disappeared with the rapidity of a bird.

To understand this scene, so fatal to poor Merle, we must follow Mademoiselle de Verneuil after the marquis, in his fury and despair, had abandoned her to Pille-Miche. Francine had caught Marche-a-Terre by the arm and reminded him, with sobs, of the promise he had made her. Pille-Miche was already dragging away his victim like a heavy bundle. Marie, her head and hair hanging back, turned her eyes to the lake; but held as she was in a grasp of iron she was forced to follow the Chouan, who turned now and then to hasten her steps, and each time that he did so a jovial thought brought a hideous smile upon his face.

"Isn't she a morsel!" he cried, with a coarse laugh.

Hearing the words, Francine recovered speech.

"Pierre?"

"Well, what?"

"He'll kill her."

"Not at once."

"Then she'll kill herself, she will never submit; and if she dies I shall die too."

"Then you love her too much, and she shall die," said Marche-a-Terre.

"Pierre! if we are rich and happy we owe it all to her; but, whether or no, you promised me to save her."

"Well, I'll try; but you must stay here, and don't move."

Francine at once let go his arm, and waited in horrible suspense in the courtyard where Merle found her. Meantime Marche-a-Terre joined his comrade at the moment when the latter, after dragging his victim to the barn, was compelling her to get into the coach. Pille-Miche called to him to help in pulling out the vehicle.

"What are you going to do with all that?" asked Marche-a-Terre.

"The Grande Garce gave me the woman, and all that belongs to her is mine."

"The coach will put a sou or two in your pocket; but as for the woman, she'll scratch your eyes out like a cat."

Pille-Miche burst into a roar of laughter.

"Then I'll tie her up and take her home," he answered.

"Very good; suppose we harness the horses," said Marche-a-Terre.

A few moments later Marche-a-Terre, who had left his comrade mounting guard over his prey, led the coach from the stable to the causeway, where Pille-Miche got into it beside Mademoiselle de Verneuil, not perceiving that she was on the point of making a spring into the lake.

"I say, Pille-Miche!" cried Marche-a-Terre.

"What!"

"I'll buy all your booty."

"Are you joking?" asked the other, catching his prisoner by the petticoat, as a butcher catches a calf that is trying to escape him.

"Let me see her, and I'll set a price."

The unfortunate creature was made to leave the coach and stand between the two Chouans, who each held a hand and looked at her as the Elders must have looked at Susannah.

"Will you take thirty francs in good coin?" said Marche-a-Terre, with a groan.

"Really?"

"Done?" said Marche-a-Terre, holding out his hand.

"Yes, done; I can get plenty of Breton girls for that, and choice morsels, too. But the coach; whose is that?" asked Pille-Miche, beginning to reflect upon his bargain.

"Mine!" cried Marche-a-Terre, in a terrible tone of voice, which showed the sort of superiority his ferocious character gave him over his companions.

"But suppose there's money in the coach?"

"Didn't you say, 'Done'?"

"Yes, I said, 'Done.'"

"Very good; then go and fetch the postilion who is gagged in the stable over there."

"But if there's money in the--"

"Is there any?" asked Marche-a-Terre, roughly, shaking Marie by the arm.

"Yes, about a hundred crowns."

The two Chouans looked at each other.

"Well, well, friend," said Pille-Miche, "we won't quarrel for a female Blue; let's pitch her into the lake with a stone around her neck, and divide the money."

"I'll give you that money as my share in d'Orgemont's ransom," said Marche-a-Terre, smothering a groan, caused by such sacrifice.

Pille-Miche uttered a sort of hoarse cry as he started to find the postilion, and his glee brought death to Merle, whom he met on his way.

Hearing the shot, Marche-a-Terre rushed in the direction where he had left Francine, and found her praying on her knees, with clasped hands, beside the poor captain, whose murder had deeply horrified her.

"Run to your mistress," said the Chouan; "she is saved."

He ran himself to fetch the postilion, returning with all speed, and, as he repassed Merle's body, he noticed the Gars' glove, which was still convulsively clasped in the dead hand.

"Oho!" he cried. "Pille-Miche has blundered horribly--he won't live to spend his crowns."

He snatched up the glove and said to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who was already in the coach with Francine: "Here, take this glove. If any of our men attack you on the road, call out 'Ho, the Gars!' show the glove, and no harm can happen to you. Francine," he said, turning towards her and seizing her violently, "you and I are quits with that woman; come with me and let the devil have her."

"You can't ask me to abandon her just at this moment!" cried Francine, in distress.

Marche-a-Terre scratched his ear and forehead, then he raised his head, and his mistress saw the ferocious expression of his eyes. "You are right," he said; "I leave you with her one week; if at the end of that time you don't come with me--" he did not finish the sentence, but he slapped the muzzle of his gun with the flat of his hand. After making the gesture of taking aim at her, he disappeared, without waiting for her reply.

No sooner was he gone than a voice, which seemed to issue from the lake, called, in a muffled tone: "Madame, madame!"

The postilion and the two women shuddered, for several corpses were floating near them. A Blue, hidden behind a tree, cautiously appeared.

"Let me get up behind the coach, or I'm a dead man. That damned cider which Clef-des-Coeurs would stop to drink cost more than a pint of blood. If he had done as I did, and made his round, our poor comrades there wouldn't be floating dead in the pond."

* * * * *

While these events were taking place outside the chateau, the leaders sent by the Vendeans and those of the Chouans were holding a council of war, with their glasses in their hands, under the presidency of the Marquis de Montauran. Frequent libations of Bordeaux animated the discussion, which, however, became more serious and important at the end of the meal. After the general plan of military operations had been decided on, the Royalists drank to the health of the Bourbons. It was at that moment that the shot which killed Merle was heard, like an echo of the disastrous war which these gay and noble conspirators were about to make against the Republic. Madame du Gua quivered with pleasure at the thought that she was freed from her rival; the guests looked at each other in silence; the marquis rose from the table and went out.

"He loved her!" said Madame du Gua, sarcastically. "Follow him, Monsieur de Fontaine, and keep him company; he will be as irritating as a fly if we let him sulk."

She went to a window which looked on the courtyard to endeavor to see Marie's body. There, by the last gleams of the sinking moon, she caught sight of the coach being rapidly driven down the avenue of apple-trees. Mademoiselle de Verneuil's veil was fluttering in the wind. Madame du Gua, furious at the sight, left the room hurriedly. The marquis, standing on the portico absorbed in gloomy thought, was watching about a hundred and fifty Chouans, who, having divided their booty in the gardens, were now returning to finish the cider and the rye-bread provided for the Blues. These soldiers of a new species, on whom the monarchy was resting its hopes, dispersed into groups. Some drank the cider; others, on the bank before the portico, amused themselves by flinging into the lake the dead bodies of the Blues, to which they fastened stones. This sight, joined to the other aspects of the strange scene,--the fantastic dress, the savage expressions of the barbarous and uncouth /gars/,--was so new and so amazing to Monsieur de Fontaine, accustomed to the nobler and better-regulated appearance of the Vendean troops, that he seized the occasion to say to the Marquis de Montauran, "What do you expect to do with such brutes?"

"Not very much, my dear count," replied the Gars.

"Will they ever be fit to manoeuvre before the enemy?"

"Never."

"Can they understand or execute an order?"

"No."

"Then what good will they be to you?"

"They will help me to plunge my sword into the entrails of the Republic," replied the marquis in a thundering voice. "They will give me Fougeres in three days, and all Brittany in ten! Monsieur," he added in a gentler voice, "start at once for La Vendee; if d'Auticamp, Suzannet, and the Abbe Bernier will act as rapidly as I do, if they'll not negotiate with the First Consul, as I am afraid they will" (here he wrung the hand of the Vendean chief) "we shall be within reach of Paris in a fortnight."

"But the Republic is sending sixty thousand men and General Brune against us."

"Sixty thousand men! indeed!" cried the marquis, with a scoffing laugh. "And how will Bonaparte carry on the Italian campaign? As for General Brune, he is not coming. The First Consul has sent him against the English in Holland, and General Hedouville, /the friend of our friend Barras/, takes his place here. Do you understand?"

As Monsieur de Fontaine heard these words he gave Montauran a look of keen intelligence which seemed to say that the marquis had not himself understood the real meaning of the words addressed to him. The two leaders then comprehended each other perfectly, and the Gars replied with an undefinable smile to the thoughts expressed in both their eyes: "Monsieur de Fontaine, do you know my arms? our motto is 'Persevere unto death.'"

The Comte de Fontaine took Montauran's hand and pressed it, saying: "I was left for dead at Quatre-Chemins, therefore you need never doubt me. But believe in my experience--times have changed."

"Yes," said La Billardiere, who now joined them. "You are young, marquis. Listen to me; your property has not yet been sold--"

"Ah!" cried Montauran, "can you conceive of devotion without sacrifice?"

"Do you really know the king?"

"I do."

"Then I admire your loyalty."

"The king," replied the young chieftain, "is the priest; I am fighting not for the man, but for the faith."

They parted,--the Vendean leader convinced of the necessity of yielding to circumstances and keeping his beliefs in the depths of his heart; La Billardiere to return to his negotiations in England; and Montauran to fight savagely and compel the Vendeans, by the victories he expected to win, to co-operate in his enterprise.

* * * * *

The events of the day had excited such violent emotions in Mademoiselle de Verneuil's whole being that she lay back almost fainting in the carriage, after giving the order to drive to Fougeres. Francine was as silent as her mistress. The postilion, dreading some new disaster, made all the haste he could to reach the high-road, and was soon on the summit of La Pelerine. Through the thick white mists of morning Marie de Verneuil crossed the broad and beautiful valley of Couesnon (where this history began) scarcely able to distinguish the slaty rock on which the town of Fougeres stands from the slopes of La Pelerine. They were still eight miles from it. Shivering with cold herself, Mademoiselle de Verneuil recollected the poor soldier behind the carriage, and insisted, against his remonstrances, in taking him into the carriage beside Francine. The sight of Fougeres drew her for a time out of her reflections. The sentinels stationed at the Porte Saint-Leonard refused to allow ingress to the strangers, and she was therefore obliged to exhibit the ministerial order. This at once gave her safety in entering the town, but the postilion could find no other place for her to stop at than the Poste inn.

"Madame," said the Blue whose life she had saved. "If you ever want a sabre to deal some special blow, my life is yours. I am good for that. My name is Jean Falcon, otherwise called Beau-Pied, sergeant of the first company of Hulot's veterans, seventy-second half-brigade, nicknamed 'Les Mayencais.' Excuse my vanity; I can only offer you the soul of a sergeant, but that's at your service."

He turned on his heel and walked off whistling.

"The lower one goes in social life," said Marie, bitterly, "the more we find generous feelings without display. A marquis returns death for life, and a poor sergeant--but enough of that."

When the weary woman was at last in a warm bed, her faithful Francine waited in vain for the affectionate good-night to which she was accustomed; but her mistress, seeing her still standing and evidently uneasy, made her a sign of distress.

"This is called a day, Francine," she said; "but I have aged ten years in it."

The next morning, as soon as she had risen, Corentin came to see her and she admitted him.

"Francine," she exclaimed, "my degradation is great indeed, for the thought of that man is not disagreeable to me."

Still, when she saw him, she felt once more, for the hundredth time, the instinctive repulsion which two years' intercourse had increased rather than lessened.

"Well," he said, smiling, "I felt certain you were succeeding. Was I mistaken? did you get hold of the wrong man?"

"Corentin," she replied, with a dull look of pain, "never mention that affair to me unless I speak of it myself."

He walked up and down the room casting oblique glances at her, endeavoring to guess the secret thoughts of the singular woman whose mere glance had the power of discomfiting at times the cleverest men.

"I foresaw this check," he replied, after a moment's silence. "If you would be willing to establish your headquarters in this town, I have already found a suitable place for you. We are in the very centre of Chouannerie. Will you stay here?"

She answered with an affirmative sign, which enabled Corentin to make conjectures, partly correct, as to the events of the preceding evening.

"I can hire a house for you, a bit of national property still unsold. They are behind the age in these parts. No one has dared buy the old barrack because it belonged to an /emigre/ who was thought to be harsh. It is close to the church of Saint Leonard; and on my word of honor the view from it is delightful. Something can really be made of the old place; will you try it?"

"Yes, at once," she cried.

"I want a few hours to have it cleaned and put in order for you, so that you may like it."

"What matter?" she said. "I could live in a cloister or a prison without caring. However, see that everything is in order before night, so that I may sleep there in perfect solitude. Go, leave me; your presence is intolerable. I wish to be alone with Francine; she is better for me than my own company, perhaps. Adieu; go--go, I say."

These words, said volubly with a mingling of coquetry, despotism, and passion, showed she had entirely recovered her self-possession. Sleep had no doubt classified the impressions of the preceding day, and reflection had determined her on vengeance. If a few reluctant signs appeared on her face they only proved the ease with which certain women can bury the better feelings of their souls, and the cruel dissimulation which enables them to smile sweetly while planning the destruction of a victim. She sat alone after Corentin had left her, thinking how she could get the marquis still living into her toils. For the first time in her life this woman had lived according to her inmost desires; but of that life nothing remained but one craving, --that of vengeance,--vengeance complete and infinite. It was her one thought, her sole desire. Francine's words and attentions were unnoticed. Marie seemed to be sleeping with her eyes open; and the long day passed without an action or even a gesture that bore testimony to her thoughts. She lay on a couch which she had made of chairs and pillows. It was late in the evening when a few words escaped her, as if involuntarily.

"My child," she said to Francine, "I understood yesterday what it was to live for love; to-day I know what it means to die for vengeance. Yes, I will give my life to seek him wherever he may be, to meet him, seduce him, make him mine! If I do not have that man, who dared to despise me, at my feet humble and submissive, if I do not make him my lackey and my slave, I shall indeed be base; I shall not be a woman; I shall not be myself."

The house which Corentin now hired for Mademoiselle de Verneuil offered many gratifications to the innate love of luxury and elegance that was part of this girl. The capricious creature took possession of it with regal composure, as of a thing which already belonged to her; she appropriated the furniture and arranged it with intuitive sympathy, as though she had known it all her life. This is a vulgar detail, but one that is not unimportant in sketching the character of so exceptional a person. She seemed to have been already familiarized in a dream with the house in which she now lived on her hatred as she might have lived on her love.

"At least," she said to herself, "I did not rouse insulting pity in him; I do not owe him my life. Oh, my first, my last, my only love! what an end to it!" She sprang upon Francine, who was terrified. "Do you love a man? Oh, yes, yes, I remember; you do. I am glad I have a woman here who can understand me. Ah, my poor Francette, man is a miserable being. Ha! he said he loved me, and his love could not bear the slightest test! But I,--if all men had accused him I would have defended him; if the universe rejected him my soul should have been his refuge. In the old days life was filled with human beings coming and going for whom I did not care; it was sad and dull, but not horrible; but now, now, what is life without him? He will live on, and I not near him! I shall not see him, speak to him, feel him, hold him, press him,--ha! I would rather strangle him myself in his sleep!"

Francine, horrified, looked at her in silence.

"Kill the man you love?" she said, in a soft voice.

"Yes, yes, if he ceases to love me."

But after those ruthless words she hid her face in her hands, and sat down silently.

The next day a man presented himself without being announced. His face was stern. It was Hulot, followed by Corentin. Mademoiselle de Verneuil looked at the commandant and trembled.

"You have come," she said, "to ask me to account for your friends. They are dead."

"I know it," he replied, "and not in the service of the Republic."

"For me, and by me," she said. "You preach the nation to me. Can the nation bring to life those who die for her? Can she even avenge them? But I--I will avenge them!" she cried. The awful images of the catastrophe filled her imagination suddenly, and the graceful creature who held modesty to be the first of women's wiles forgot herself in a moment of madness, and marched towards the amazed commandant brusquely.

"In exchange for a few murdered soldiers," she said, "I will bring to the block a head that is worth a million heads of other men. It is not a woman's business to wage war; but you, old as you are, shall learn good stratagems from me. I'll deliver a whole family to your bayonets --him, his ancestors, his past, his future. I will be as false and treacherous to him as I was good and true. Yes, commandant, I will bring that little noble to my arms, and he shall leave them to go to death. I have no other rival. The wretch himself pronounced his doom, --/a day without a morrow/. Your Republic and I shall be avenged. The Republic!" she cried in a voice the strange intonations of which horrified Hulot. "Is he to die for bearing arms against the nation? Shall I suffer France to rob me of my vengeance? Ah! what a little thing is life! death can expiate but one crime. He has but one head to fall, but I will make him know in one night that he loses more than life. Commandant, you who will kill him," and she sighed, "see that nothing betrays my betrayal; he must die convinced of my fidelity. I ask that of you. Let him know only me--me, and my caresses!"

She stopped; but through the crimson of her cheeks Hulot and Corentin saw that rage and delirium had not entirely smothered all sense of shame. Marie shuddered violently as she said the words; she seemed to listen to them as though she doubted whether she herself had said them, and she made the involuntary movement of a woman whose veil is falling from her.

"But you had him in your power," said Corentin.

"Very likely."

"Why did you stop me when I had him?" asked Hulot.

"I did not know what he would prove to be," she cried. Then, suddenly, the excited woman, who was walking up and down with hurried steps and casting savage glances at the spectators of the storm, calmed down. "I do not know myself," she said, in a man's tone. "Why talk? I must go and find him."

"Go and find him?" said Hulot. "My dear woman, take care; we are not yet masters of this part of the country; if you venture outside of the town you will be taken or killed before you've gone a hundred yards."

"There's never any danger for those who seek vengeance," she said, driving from her presence with a disdainful gesture the two men whom she was ashamed to face.

"What a woman!" cried Hulot as he walked away with Corentin. "A queer idea of those police fellows in Paris to send her here; but she'll never deliver him up to us," he added, shaking his head.

"Oh yes, she will," replied Corentin.

"Don't you see she loves him?" said Hulot.

"That's just why she will. Besides," looking at the amazed commandant, "I am here to see that she doesn't commit any folly. In my opinion, comrade, there is no love in the world worth the three hundred thousand francs she'll make out of this."

When the police diplomatist left the soldier the latter stood looking after him, and as the sound of the man's steps died away he gave a sigh, muttering to himself, "It may be a good thing after all to be such a dullard as I am. God's thunder! if I meet the Gars I'll fight him hand to hand, or my name's not Hulot; for if that fox brings him before me in any of their new-fangled councils of war, my honor will be as soiled as the shirt of a young trooper who is under fire for the first time."

The massacre at La Vivetiere, and the desire to avenge his friends had led Hulot to accept a reinstatement in his late command; in fact, the new minister, Berthier, had refused to accept his resignation under existing circumstances. To the official despatch was added a private letter, in which, without explaining the mission of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, the minister informed him that the affair was entirely outside of the war, and not to interfere with any military operations. The duty of the commanders, he said, was limited to giving assistance to that honorable /citoyenne/, if occasion arose. Learning from his scouts that the movements of the Chouans all tended towards a concentration of their forces in the neighborhood of Fougeres, Hulot secretly and with forced marches brought two battalions of his brigade into the town. The nation's danger, his hatred of aristocracy, whose partisans threatened to convulse so large a section of country, his desire to avenge his murdered friends, revived in the old veteran the fire of his youth.

* * * * *

"So this is the life I craved," exclaimed Mademoiselle de Verneuil, when she was left alone with Francine. "No matter how fast the hours go, they are to me like centuries of thought."

Suddenly she took Francine's hand, and her voice, soft as that of the first red-throat singing after a storm, slowly gave sound to the following words:--

"Try as I will to forget them, I see those two delicious lips, that chin just raised, those eyes of fire; I hear the 'Hue!' of the postilion; I dream, I dream,--why then such hatred on awakening!"

She drew a long sigh, rose, and then for the first time looked out upon the country delivered over to civil war by the cruel leader whom she was plotting to destroy. Attracted by the scene she wandered out to breathe at her ease beneath the sky; and though her steps conducted her at a venture, she was surely led to the Promenade of the town by one of those occult impulses of the soul which lead us to follow hope irrationally. Thoughts conceived under the dominion of that spell are often realized; but we then attribute their pre-vision to a power we call presentiment,--an inexplicable power, but a real one,--which our passions find accommodating, like a flatterer who, among his many lies, does sometimes tell the truth. _

Read next: 3. A Day without a Morrow: Part 10

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