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The Chouans, a novel by Honore de Balzac |
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3. A Day without a Morrow - Part 16 |
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_ Towards midnight the cottage of Galope-Chopine, hitherto the scene of life without a care, was full of dread and horrible anxiety. Barbette and her little boy returned at the supper-hour, one with her heavy burden of rushes, the other carrying fodder for the cattle. Entering the hut, they looked about in vain for Galope-Chopine; the miserable chamber never looked to them as large, so empty was it. The fire was out, and the darkness, the silence, seemed to tell of some disaster. Barbette hastened to make a blaze, and to light two /oribus/, the name given to candles made of pitch in the region between the villages of Amorique and the Upper Loire, and still used beyond Amboise in the Vendomois districts. Barbette did these things with the slowness of a person absorbed in one overpowering feeling. She listened to every sound. Deceived by the whistling of the wind she went often to the door of the hut, returning sadly. She cleaned two beakers, filled them with cider, and placed them on the long table. Now and again she looked at her boy, who watched the baking of the buckwheat cakes, but did not speak to him. The lad's eyes happened to rest on the nails which usually held his father's duck-gun, and Barbette trembled as she noticed that the gun was gone. The silence was broken only by the lowing of a cow or the splash of the cider as it dropped at regular intervals from the bung of the cask. The poor woman sighed while she poured into three brown earthenware porringers a sort of soup made of milk, biscuit broken into bits, and boiled chestnuts. "They must have fought in the field next to the Berandiere," said the boy. "Go and see," replied his mother. The child ran to the place where the fighting had, as he said, taken place. In the moonlight he found the heap of bodies, but his father was not among them, and he came back whistling joyously, having picked up several five-franc pieces trampled in the mud and overlooked by the victors. His mother was sitting on a stool beside the fire, employed in spinning flax. He made a negative sign to her, and then, ten o'clock having struck from the tower of Saint-Leonard, he went to bed, muttering a prayer to the holy Virgin of Auray. At dawn, Barbette, who had not closed her eyes, gave a cry of joy, as she heard in the distance a sound she knew well of hobnailed shoes, and soon after Galope-Chopine's scowling face presented itself. "Thanks to Saint-Labre," he said, "to whom I owe a candle, the Gars is safe. Don't forget that we now owe three candles to the saint." He seized a beaker of cider and emptied it at a draught without drawing breath. When his wife had served his soup and taken his gun and he himself was seated on the wooden bench, he said, looking at the fire: "I can't make out how the Blues got here. The fighting was at Florigny. Who the devil could have told them that the Gars was in our house; no one knew it but he and the handsome garce and we--" Barbette turned white. "They made me believe they were the gars of Saint-Georges," she said, trembling, "it was I who told them the Gars was here." Galope-Chopine turned pale himself and dropped his porringer on the table. "I sent the boy to warn you," said Barbette, frightened, "didn't you meet him?" The Chouan rose and struck his wife so violently that she dropped, pale as death, upon the bed. "You cursed woman," he said, "you have killed me!" Then seized with remorse, he took her in his arms. "Barbette!" he cried, "Barbette! --Holy Virgin, my hand was too heavy!" "Do you think," she said, opening her eyes, "that Marche-a-Terre will hear of it?" "The Gars will certainly inquire who betrayed him." "Will he tell it to Marche-a-Terre?" "Marche-a-Terre and Pille-Miche were both at Florigny." Barbette breathed a little easier. "If they touch a hair of your head," she cried, "I'll rinse their glasses with vinegar." "Ah! I can't eat," said Galope-Chopine, anxiously. His wife set another pitcher full of cider before him, but he paid no heed to it. Two big tears rolled from the woman's eyes and moistened the deep furrows of her withered face. "Listen to me, wife; to-morrow morning you must gather fagots on the rocks of Saint-Sulpice, to the right and Saint-Leonard and set fire to them. That is a signal agreed upon between the Gars and the old rector of Saint-Georges who is to come and say mass for him." "Is the Gars going to Fougeres?" "Yes, to see his handsome garce. I have been sent here and there all day about it. I think he is going to marry her and carry her off; for he told me to hire horses and have them ready on the road to Saint-Malo." Thereupon Galope-Chopine, who was tired out, went to bed for an hour or two, at the end of which time he again departed. Later, on the following morning, he returned, having carefully fulfilled all the commissions entrusted to him by the Gars. Finding that Marche-a-Terre and Pille-Miche had not appeared at the cottage, he relieved the apprehensions of his wife, who went off, reassured, to the rocks of Saint-Sulpice, where she had collected the night before several piles of fagots, now covered with hoarfrost. The boy went with her, carrying fire in a broken wooden shoe. Hardly had his wife and son passed out of sight behind the shed when Galope-Chopine heard the noise of men jumping the successive barriers, and he could dimly see, through the fog which was growing thicker, the forms of two men like moving shadows. "It is Marche-a-Terre and Pille-Miche," he said, mentally; then he shuddered. The two Chouans entered the courtyard and showed their gloomy faces under the broad-brimmed hats which made them look like the figures which engravers introduce into their landscapes. "Good-morning, Galope-Chopine," said Marche-a-Terre, gravely. "Good-morning, Monsieur Marche-a-Terre," replied the other, humbly. "Will you come in and drink a drop? I've some cold buckwheat cake and fresh-made butter." "That's not to be refused, cousin," said Pille-Miche. The two Chouans entered the cottage. So far there was nothing alarming for the master of the house, who hastened to fill three beakers from his huge cask of cider, while Marche-a-Terre and Pille-Miche, sitting on the polished benches on each side of the long table, cut the cake and spread it with the rich yellow butter from which the milk spurted as the knife smoothed it. Galope-Chopine placed the beakers full of frothing cider before his guests, and the three Chouans began to eat; but from time to time the master of the house cast side-long glances at Marche-a-Terre as he drank his cider. "Lend me your snuff-box," said Marche-a-Terre to Pille-Miche. Having shaken several pinches into the palm of his hand the Breton inhaled the tobacco like a man who is making ready for serious business. "It is cold," said Pille-Miche, rising to shut the upper half of the door. The daylight, already dim with fog, now entered only through the little window, and feebly lighted the room and the two seats; the fire, however, gave out a ruddy glow. Galope-Chopine refilled the beakers, but his guests refused to drink again, and throwing aside their large hats looked at him solemnly. Their gestures and the look they gave him terrified Galope-Chopine, who fancied he saw blood in the red woollen caps they wore. "Fetch your axe," said Marche-a-Terre. "But, Monsieur Marche-a-Terre, what do you want it for?" "Come, cousin, you know very well," said Pille-Miche, pocketing his snuff-box which Marche-a-Terre returned to him; "you are condemned." The two Chouans rose together and took their guns. "Monsieur Marche-a-Terre, I never said one word about the Gars--" "I told you to fetch your axe," said Marche-a-Terre. The hapless man knocked against the wooden bedstead of his son, and several five-franc pieces rolled on the floor. Pille-Miche picked them up. "Ho! ho! the Blues paid you in new money," cried Marche-a-Terre. "As true as that's the image of Saint-Labre," said Galope-Chopine, "I have told nothing. Barbette mistook the Fougeres men for the gars of Saint-Georges, and that's the whole of it." "Why do you tell things to your wife?" said Marche-a-Terre, roughly. "Besides, cousin, we don't want excuses, we want your axe. You are condemned." At a sign from his companion, Pille-Miche helped Marche-a-Terre to seize the victim. Finding himself in their grasp Galope-Chopine lost all power and fell on his knees holding up his hands to his slayers in desperation. "My friends, my good friends, my cousin," he said, "what will become of my little boy?" "I will take charge of him," said Marche-a-Terre. "My good comrades," cried the victim, turning livid. "I am not fit to die. Don't make me go without confession. You have the right to take my life, but you've no right to make me lose a blessed eternity." "That is true," said Marche-a-Terre, addressing Pille-Miche. The two Chouans waited a moment in much uncertainty, unable to decide this case of conscience. Galope-Chopine listened to the rustling of the wind as though he still had hope. Suddenly Pille-Miche took him by the arm into a corner of the hut. "Confess your sins to me," he said, "and I will tell them to a priest of the true Church, and if there is any penance to do I will do it for you." Galope-Chopine obtained some respite by the way in which he confessed his sins; but in spite of their number and the circumstances of each crime, he came finally to the end of them. "Cousin," he said, imploringly, "since I am speaking to you as I would to my confessor, I do assure you, by the holy name of God, that I have nothing to reproach myself with except for having, now and then, buttered my bread on both sides; and I call on Saint-Labre, who is there over the chimney-piece, to witness that I have never said one word about the Gars. No, my good friends, I have not betrayed him." "Very good, that will do, cousin; you can explain all that to God in course of time." "But let me say good-bye to Barbette." "Come," said Marche-a-Terre, "if you don't want us to think you worse than you are, behave like a Breton and be done with it." The two Chouans seized him again and threw him on the bench where he gave no other sign of resistance than the instinctive and convulsive motions of an animal, uttering a few smothered groans, which ceased when the axe fell. The head was off at the first blow. Marche-a-Terre took it by the hair, left the room, sought and found a large nail in the rough casing of the door, and wound the hair about it; leaving the bloody head, the eyes of which he did not even close, to hang there. The two Chouans then washed their hands, without the least haste, in a pot full of water, picked up their hats and guns, and jumped the gate, whistling the "Ballad of the Captain." Pille-Miche began to sing in a hoarse voice as he reached the field the last verses of that rustic song, their melody floating on the breeze:-- "At the next town "So beautiful was she
"Brave captain, "You shall not have her on earth, "The father took his daughter, "The captain, wiser still, "Come, let us go, my girl, "At the first town
"What is it, mother?" said the child. "Walk alone," she cried, pulling her hand away and pushing him roughly; "you have neither father nor mother." The child, who was rubbing his shoulder and weeping, suddenly caught sight of the thing on the nail; his childlike face kept the nervous convulsion his crying had caused, but he was silent. He opened his eyes wide, and gazed at the head of his father with a stupid look which betrayed no emotion; then his face, brutalized by ignorance, showed savage curiosity. Barbette again took his hand, grasped it violently, and dragged him into the house. When Pille-Miche and Marche-a-Terre threw their victim on the bench one of his shoes, dropping off, fell on the floor beneath his neck and was afterward filled with blood. It was the first thing that met the widow's eye. "Take off your shoe," said the mother to her son. "Put your foot in that. Good. Remember," she cried, in a solemn voice, "your father's shoe; never put on your own without remembering how the Chouans filled it with his blood, and /kill the Chouans/!" She swayed her head with so convulsive an action that the meshes of her black hair fell upon her neck and gave a sinister expression to her face. "I call Saint-Labre to witness," she said, "that I vow you to the Blues. You shall be a soldier to avenge your father. Kill, kill the /Chouans/, and do as I do. Ha! they've taken the head of my man, and I am going to give that of the Gars to the Blues." She sprang at a bound on the bed, seized a little bag of money from a hiding-place, took the hand of the astonished little boy, and dragged him after her without giving him time to put on his shoe, and was on her way to Fougeres rapidly, without once turning her head to look at the home she abandoned. When they reached the summit of the rocks of Saint-Sulpice Barbette set fire to the pile of fagots, and the boy helped her to pile on the green gorse, damp with hoarfrost, to make the smoke more dense. "That fire will last longer than your father, longer than I, longer than the Gars," said Barbette, in a savage voice. While the widow of Galope-Chopine and her son with his bloody foot stood watching, the one, with a gloomy expression of revenge, the other with curiosity, the curling of the smoke, Mademoiselle de Verneuil's eyes were fastened on the same rock, trying, but in vain, to see her lover's signal. The fog, which had thickened, buried the whole region under a veil, its gray tints obscuring even the outlines of the scenery that was nearest the town. She examined with tender anxiety the rocks, the castle, the buildings, which loomed like shadows through the mist. Near her window several trees stood out against this blue-gray background; the sun gave a dull tone as of tarnished silver to the sky; its rays colored the bare branches of the trees, where a few last leaves were fluttering, with a dingy red. But too many dear and delightful sentiments filled Marie's soul to let her notice the ill-omens of a scene so out of harmony with the joys she was tasting in advance. For the last two days her ideas had undergone a change. The fierce, undisciplined vehemence of her passions had yielded under the influence of the equable atmosphere which a true love gives to life. The certainty of being loved, sought through so many perils, had given birth to a desire to re-enter those social conditions which sanction love, and which despair alone had made her leave. To love for a moment only now seemed to her a species of weakness. She saw herself lifted from the dregs of society, where misfortune had driven her, to the high rank in which her father had meant to place her. Her vanity, repressed for a time by the cruel alternations of hope and misconception, was awakened and showed her all the benefits of a great position. Born in a certain way to rank, marriage to a marquis meant, to her mind, living and acting in the sphere that belonged to her. Having known the chances and changes of an adventurous life, she could appreciate, better than other women, the grandeur of the feelings which make the Family. Marriage and motherhood with all their cares seemed to her less a task than a rest. She loved the calm and virtuous life she saw through the clouds of this last storm as a woman weary of virtue may sometimes covet an illicit passion. Virtue was to her a new seduction. "Perhaps," she thought, leaving the window without seeing the signal on the rocks of Saint-Sulpice, "I have been too coquettish with him --but I knew he loved me! Francine, it is not a dream; to-night I shall be Marquise de Montauran. What have I done to deserve such perfect happiness? Oh! I love him, and love alone is love's reward. And yet, I think God means to recompense me for taking heart through all my misery; he means me to forget my sufferings--for you know, Francine, I have suffered." "To-night, Marquise de Montauran, you, Marie? Ah! until it is done I cannot believe it! Who has told him your true goodness?" "Dear child! he has more than his handsome eyes to see me with, he has a soul. If you had seen him, as I have, in danger! Oh! he knows how to love--he is so brave!" "If you really love him why do you let him come to Fougeres?" "We had no time to say one word to each other when the Blues surprised us. Besides, his coming is a proof of love. Can I ever have proofs enough? And now, Francine, do my hair." But she pulled it down a score of times with motions that seemed electric, as though some stormy thoughts were mingling still with the arts of her coquetry. As she rolled a curl or smoothed the shining plaits she asked herself, with a remnant of distrust, whether the marquis were deceiving her; but treachery seemed to her impossible, for did he not expose himself to instant vengeance by entering Fougeres? While studying in her mirror the effects of a sidelong glance, a smile, a gentle frown, an attitude of anger, or of love, or disdain, she was seeking some woman's wile by which to probe to the last instant the heart of the young leader. "You are right, Francine," she said; "I wish with you that the marriage were over. This is the last of my cloudy days--it is big with death or happiness. Oh! that fog is dreadful," she went on, again looking towards the heights of Saint-Sulpice, which were still veiled in mist. She began to arrange the silk and muslin curtains which draped the window, making them intercept the light and produce in the room a voluptuous chiaro-scuro. "Francine," she said, "take away those knick-knacks on the mantelpiece; leave only the clock and the two Dresden vases. I'll fill those vases myself with the flowers Corentin brought me. Take out the chairs, I want only this sofa and a fauteuil. Then sweep the carpet, so as to bring out the colors, and put wax candles in the sconces and on the mantel." Marie looked long and carefully at the old tapestry on the walls. Guided by her innate taste she found among the brilliant tints of these hangings the shades by which to connect their antique beauty with the furniture and accessories of the boudoir, either by the harmony of color or the charm of contrast. The same thought guided the arrangement of the flowers with which she filled the twisted vases which decorated her chamber. The sofa was placed beside the fire. On either side of the bed, which filled the space parallel to that of the chimney, she placed on gilded tables tall Dresden vases filled with foliage and flowers that were sweetly fragrant. She quivered more than once as she arranged the folds of the green damask above the bed, and studied the fall of the drapery which concealed it. Such preparations have a secret, ineffable happiness about them; they cause so many delightful emotions that a woman as she makes them forgets her doubts; and Mademoiselle de Verneuil forgot hers. There is in truth a religious sentiment in the multiplicity of cares taken for one beloved who is not there to see them and reward them, but who will reward them later with the approving smile these tender preparations (always so fully understood) obtain. Women, as they make them, love in advance; and there are few indeed who would not say to themselves, as Mademoiselle de Verneuil now thought: "To-night I shall be happy!" That soft hope lies in every fold of silk or muslin; insensibly, the harmony the woman makes about her gives an atmosphere of love in which she breathes; to her these things are beings, witnesses; she has made them the sharers of her coming joy. Every movement, every thought brings that joy within her grasp. But presently she expects no longer, she hopes no more, she questions silence; the slightest sound is to her an omen; doubt hooks its claws once more into her heart; she burns, she trembles, she is grasped by a thought which holds her like a physical force; she alternates from triumph to agony, and without the hope of coming happiness she could not endure the torture. A score of times did Mademoiselle de Verneuil raise the window-curtain, hoping to see the smoke rising above the rocks; but the fog only took a grayer tone, which her excited imagination turned into a warning. At last she let fall the curtain, impatiently resolving not to raise it again. She looked gloomily around the charming room to which she had given a soul and a voice, asking herself if it were done in vain, and this thought brought her back to her preparations. "Francine," she said, drawing her into a little dressing-room which adjoined her chamber and was lighted through a small round window opening on a dark corner of the fortifications where they joined the rock terrace of the Promenade, "put everything in order. As for the salon, you can leave that as it is," she added, with a smile which women reserve for their nearest friends, the delicate sentiment of which men seldom understand. "Ah! how sweet you are!" exclaimed the little maid. "A lover is our beauty--foolish women that we are!" she replied gaily. Francine left her lying on the ottoman and went away convinced that, whether her mistress were loved or not, she would never betray Montauran. * * * * * "Are you sure of what you are telling me, old woman?" Hulot was saying to Barbette, who had sought him out as soon as she had reached Fougeres. "Have you got eyes? Look at the rocks of Saint-Sulpice, there, my good man, to the right of Saint-Leonard." Corentin, who was with Hulot, looked towards the summit in the direction pointed out by Barbette, and, as the fog was beginning to lift, he could see with some distinctness the column of white smoke the woman told of. "But when is he coming, old woman?--to-night, or this evening?" "My good man," said Barbette, "I don't know." "Why do you betray your own side?" said Hulot, quickly, having drawn her out of hearing of Corentin. "Ah! general, see my boy's foot--that's washed in the blood of my man, whom the Chouans have killed like a calf, to punish him for the few words you got out of me the other day when I was working in the fields. Take my boy, for you've deprived him of his father and his mother; make a Blue of him, my good man, teach him to kill Chouans. Here, there's two hundred crowns,--keep them for him; if he is careful, they'll last him long, for it took his father twelve years to lay them by." Hulot looked with amazement at the pale and withered woman, whose eyes were dry. "But you, mother," he said, "what will become of you? you had better keep the money." "I?" she replied, shaking her head sadly. "I don't need anything in this world. You might bolt me into that highest tower over there" (pointing to the battlements of the castle) "and the Chouans would contrive to come and kill me." She kissed her boy with an awful expression of grief, looked at him, wiped away her tears, looked at him again, and disappeared. "Commandant," said Corentin, "this is an occasion when two heads are better than one. We know all, and yet we know nothing. If you surrounded Mademoiselle de Verneuil's house now, you will only warn her. Neither you, nor I, nor your Blues and your battalions are strong enough to get the better of that girl if she takes it into her head to save the /ci-devant/. The fellow is brave, and consequently wily; he is a young man full of daring. We can never get hold of him as he enters Fougeres. Perhaps he is here already. Domiciliary visit? Absurdity! that's no good, it will only give them warning." "Well," said Hulot impatiently, "I shall tell the sentry on the Place Saint-Leonard to keep his eye on the house, and pass word along the other sentinels, if a young man enters it; as soon as the signal reaches me I shall take a corporal and four men and--" "--and," said Corentin, interrupting the old soldier, "if the young man is not the marquis, or if the marquis doesn't go in by the front door, or if he is already there, if--if--if--what then?" Corentin looked at the commandant with so insulting an air of superiority that the old soldier shouted out: "God's thousand thunders! get out of here, citizen of hell! What have I got to do with your intrigues? If that cockchafer buzzes into my guard-room I shall shoot him; if I hear he is in a house I shall surround that house and take him when he leaves it and shoot him, but may the devil get me if I soil my uniform with any of your tricks." "Commandant, the order of the ministers states that you are to obey Mademoiselle de Verneuil." "Let her come and give them to me herself and I'll see about it." "Well, citizen," said Corentin, haughtily, "she shall come. She shall tell you herself the hour at which she expects the /ci-devant/. Possibly she won't be easy till you do post the sentinels round the house." "The devil is made man," thought the old leader as he watched Corentin hurrying up the Queen's Staircase at the foot of which this scene had taken place. "He means to deliver Montauran bound hand and foot, with no chance to fight for his life, and I shall be harrassed to death with a court-martial. However," he added, shrugging his shoulders, "the Gars certainly is an enemy of the Republic, and he killed my poor Gerard, and his death will make a noble the less--the devil take him!" He turned on the heels of his boots and went off, whistling the Marseillaise, to inspect his guard-rooms. * * * * * Mademoiselle de Verneuil was absorbed in one of those meditations the mysteries of which are buried in the soul, and prove by their thousand contradictory emotions, to the woman who undergoes them, that it is possible to have a stormy and passionate existence between four walls without even moving from the ottoman on which her very life is burning itself away. She had reached the final scene of the drama she had come to enact, and her mind was going over and over the phases of love and anger which had so powerfully stirred her during the ten days which had now elapsed since her first meeting with the marquis. A man's step suddenly sounded in the adjoining room and she trembled; the door opened, she turned quickly and saw Corentin. "You little cheat!" said the police-agent, "when will you stop deceiving? Ah, Marie, Marie, you are playing a dangerous game by not taking me into your confidence. Why do you play such tricks without consulting me? If the marquis escapes his fate--" "It won't be your fault, will it?" she replied, sarcastically. "Monsieur," she continued, in a grave voice, "by what right do you come into my house?" "Your house?" he exclaimed. "You remind me," she answered, coldly, "that I have no home. Perhaps you chose this house deliberately for the purpose of committing murder. I shall leave it. I would live in a desert to get away from--" "Spies, say the word," interrupted Corentin. "But this house is neither yours nor mine, it belongs to the government; and as for leaving it you will do nothing of the kind," he added, giving her a diabolical look. Mademoiselle de Verneuil rose indignantly, made a few steps to leave the room, but stopped short suddenly as Corentin raised the curtain of the window and beckoned her, with a smile, to come to him. "Do you see that column of smoke?" he asked, with the calmness he always kept on his livid face, however intense his feelings might be. "What has my departure to do with that burning brush?" she asked. "Why does your voice tremble?" he said. "You poor thing!" he added, in a gentle voice, "I know all. The marquis is coming to Fougeres this evening; and it is not with any intention of delivering him to us that you have arranged this boudoir and the flowers and candles." Mademoiselle de Verneuil turned pale, for she saw her lover's death in the eyes of this tiger with a human face, and her love for him rose to frenzy. Each hair on her head caused her an acute pain she could not endure, and she fell on the ottoman. Corentin stood looking at her for a moment with his arms folded, half pleased at inflicting a torture which avenged him for the contempt and the sarcasms this woman had heaped upon his head, half grieved by the sufferings of a creature whose yoke was pleasant to him, heavy as it was. "She loves him!" he muttered. "Loves him!" she cried. "Ah! what are words? Corentin! he is my life, my soul, my breath!" She flung herself at the feet of the man, whose silence terrified her. "Soul of vileness!" she cried, "I would rather degrade myself to save his life than degrade myself by betraying him. I will save him at the cost of my own blood. Speak, what price must I pay you?" Corentin quivered. "I came to take your orders, Marie," he said, raising her. "Yes, Marie, your insults will not hinder my devotion to your wishes, provided you will promise not to deceive me again; you must know by this time that no one dupes me with impunity." "If you want me to love you, Corentin, help me to save him." "At what hour is he coming?" asked the spy, endeavoring to ask the question calmly. "Alas, I do not know." They looked at each other in silence. "I am lost!" thought Mademoiselle de Verneuil. "She is deceiving me!" thought Corentin. "Marie," he continued, "I have two maxims. One is never to believe a single word a woman says to me--that's the only means of not being duped; the other is to find what interest she has in doing the opposite of what she says, and behaving in contradiction to the facts she pretends to confide to me. I think that you and I understand each other now." "Perfectly," replied Mademoiselle de Verneuil. "You want proofs of my good faith; but I reserve them for the time when you give me some of yours." "Adieu, mademoiselle," said Corentin, coolly. "Nonsense," said the girl, smiling; "sit down, and pray don't sulk; but if you do I shall know how to save the marquis without you. As for the three hundred thousand francs which are always spread before your eyes, I will give them to you in good gold as soon as the marquis is safe." Corentin rose, stepped back a pace or two, and looked at Marie. "You have grown rich in a very short time," he said, in a tone of ill-disguised bitterness. "Montauran," she continued, "will make you a better offer still for his ransom. Now, then, prove to me that you have the means of guaranteeing him from all danger and--" "Can't you send him away the moment he arrives?" cried Corentin, suddenly. "Hulot does not know he is coming, and--" He stopped as if he had said too much. "But how absurd that you should ask me how to play a trick," he said, with an easy laugh. "Now listen, Marie, I do feel certain of your loyalty. Promise me a compensation for all I lose in furthering your wishes, and I will make that old fool of a commandant so unsuspicious that the marquis will be as safe at Fougeres as at Saint-James." "Yes, I promise it," said the girl, with a sort of solemnity. "No, not in that way," he said, "swear it by your mother." Mademoiselle de Verneuil shuddered; raising a trembling hand she made the oath required by the man whose tone to her had changed so suddenly. "You can command me," he said; "don't deceive me again, and you shall have reason to bless me to-night." "I will trust you, Corentin," cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil, much moved. She bowed her head gently towards him and smiled with a kindness not unmixed with surprise, as she saw an expression of melancholy tenderness on his face. "What an enchanting creature!" thought Corentin, as he left the house. "Shall I ever get her as a means to fortune and a source of delight? To fling herself at my feet! Oh, yes, the marquis shall die! If I can't get that woman in any other way than by dragging her through the mud, I'll sink her in it. At any rate," he thought, as he reached the square unconscious of his steps, "she no longer distrusts me. Three hundred thousand francs down! she thinks me grasping! Either the offer was a trick or she is already married to him." Corentin, buried in thought, was unable to come to a resolution. The fog which the sun had dispersed at mid-day was now rolling thicker and thicker, so that he could hardly see the trees at a little distance. "That's another piece of ill-luck," he muttered, as he turned slowly homeward. "It is impossible to see ten feet. The weather protects the lovers. How is one to watch a house in such a fog? Who goes there?" he cried, catching the arm of a boy who seemed to have clambered up the dangerous rocks which made the terrace of the Promenade. "It is I," said a childish voice. "Ah! the boy with the bloody foot. Do you want to revenge your father?" said Corentin. "Yes," said the child. "Very good. Do you know the Gars?" "Yes." "Good again. Now, don't leave me except to do what I bid you, and you will obey your mother and earn some big sous--do you like sous?" "Yes." "You like sous, and you want to kill the Gars who killed your father --well, I'll take care of you. Ah! Marie," he muttered, after a pause, "you yourself shall betray him, as you engaged to do! She is too violent to suspect me--passion never reflects. She does not know the marquis's writing. Yes, I can set a trap into which her nature will drive her headlong. But I must first see Hulot." Mademoiselle de Verneuil and Francine were deliberating on the means of saving the marquis from the more than doubtful generosity of Corentin and Hulot's bayonets. "I could go and warn him," said the Breton girl. "But we don't know where he is," replied Marie; "even I, with the instincts of love, could never find him." After making and rejecting a number of plans Mademoiselle de Verneuil exclaimed, "When I see him his danger will inspire me." She thought, like other ardent souls, to act on the spur of the moment, trusting to her star, or to that instinct of adroitness which rarely, if ever, fails a woman. Perhaps her heart was never so wrung. At times she seemed stupefied, her eyes were fixed, and then, at the least noise, she shook like a half-uprooted tree which the woodsman drags with a rope to hasten its fall. Suddenly, a loud report from a dozen guns echoed from a distance. Marie turned pale and grasped Francine's hand. "I am dying," she cried; "they have killed him!" The heavy footfall of a man was heard in the antechamber. Francine went out and returned with a corporal. The man, making a military salute to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, produced some letters, the covers of which were a good deal soiled. Receiving no acknowledgment, the Blue said as he withdrew, "Madame, they are from the commandant." Mademoiselle de Verneuil, a prey to horrible presentiments, read a letter written apparently in great haste by Hulot:-- "Mademoiselle--a party of my men have just caught a messenger from the Gars and have shot him. Among the intercepted letters is one which may be useful to you and I transmit it--etc." "Thank God, it was not he they shot," she exclaimed, flinging the letter into the fire. She breathed more freely and took up the other letter, enclosed by Hulot. It was apparently written to Madame du Gua by the marquis. "No, my angel," the letter said, "I cannot go to-night to La Vivetiere. You must lose your wager with the count. I triumph over the Republic in the person of their beautiful emissary. You must allow that she is worth the sacrifice of one night. It will be my only victory in this campaign, for I have received the news that La Vendee surrenders. I can do nothing more in France. Let us go back to England--but we will talk of all this to-morrow." The letter fell from Marie's hands; she closed her eyes, and was silent, leaning backward, with her head on a cushion. After a long pause she looked at the clock, which then marked four in the afternoon. "My lord keeps me waiting," she said, with savage irony. "Oh! God grant he may not come!" cried Francine. "If he does not come," said Marie, in a stifled tone, "I shall go to him. No, no, he will soon be here. Francine, do I look well?" "You are very pale." "Ah!" continued Mademoiselle de Verneuil, glancing about her, "this perfumed room, the flowers, the lights, this intoxicating air, it is full of that celestial life of which I dreamed--" "Marie, what has happened?" "I am betrayed, deceived, insulted, fooled! I will kill him, I will tear him bit by bit! Yes, there was always in his manner a contempt he could not hide and which I would not see. Oh! I shall die of this! Fool that I am," she went on laughing, "he is coming; I have one night in which to teach him that, married or not, the man who has possessed me cannot abandon me. I will measure my vengeance by his offence; he shall die with despair in his soul. I did believe he had a soul of honor, but no! it is that of a lackey. Ah, he has cleverly deceived me, for even now it seems impossible that the man who abandoned me to Pille-Miche should sink to such back-stair tricks. It is so base to deceive a loving woman, for it is so easy. He might have killed me if he chose, but lie to me! to me, who held him in my thoughts so high! The scaffold! the scaffold! ah! could I only see him guillotined! Am I cruel? He shall go to his death covered with caresses, with kisses which might have blessed him for a lifetime--" "Marie," said Francine, gently, "be the victim of your lover like other women; not his mistress and his betrayer. Keep his memory in your heart; do not make it an anguish to you. If there were no joys in hopeless love, what would become of us, poor women that we are? God, of whom you never think, Marie, will reward us for obeying our vocation on this earth,--to love, and suffer." "Dear," replied Mademoiselle de Verneuil, taking Francine's hand and patting it, "your voice is very sweet and persuasive. Reason is attractive from your lips. I should like to obey you, but--" "You will forgive him, you will not betray him?" "Hush! never speak of that man again. Compared with him Corentin is a noble being. Do you hear me?" She rose, hiding beneath a face that was horribly calm the madness of her soul and a thirst for vengeance. The slow and measured step with which she left the room conveyed the sense of an irrevocable resolution. Lost in thought, hugging her insults, too proud to show the slightest suffering, she went to the guard-room at the Porte Saint-Leonard and asked where the commandant lived. She had hardly left her house when Corentin entered it. "Oh, Monsieur Corentin," cried Francine, "if you are interested in this young man, save him; Mademoiselle has gone to give him up because of this wretched letter." Corentin took the letter carelessly and asked,-- "Which way did she go?" "I don't know." "Yes," he said, "I will save her from her own despair." He disappeared, taking the letter with him. When he reached the street he said to Galope-Chopine's boy, whom he had stationed to watch the door, "Which way did a lady go who left the house just now?" The boy went with him a little way and showed him the steep street which led to the Porte Saint-Leonard. "That way," he said. At this moment four men entered Mademoiselle de Verneuil's house, unseen by either the boy or Corentin. "Return to your watch," said the latter. "Play with the handles of the blinds and see what you can inside; look about you everywhere, even on the roof." Corentin darted rapidly in the direction given him, and thought he recognized Mademoiselle de Verneuil through the fog; he did, in fact, overtake her just as she reached the guard-house. "Where are you going?" he said; "you are pale--what has happened? Is it right for you to be out alone? Take my arm." "Where is the commandant?" she asked. Hardly had the words left her lips when she heard the movement of troops beyond the Porte Saint-Leonard and distinguished Hulot's gruff voice in the tumult. "God's thunder!" he cried, "I never saw such fog as this for a reconnaissance! The Gars must have ordered the weather." "What are you complaining of?" said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, grasping his arm. "The fog will cover vengeance as well as perfidy. Commandant," she added, in a low voice, "you must take measures at once so that the Gars may not escape us." "Is he at your house?" he asked, in a tone which showed his amazement. "Not yet," she replied; "but give me a safe man and I will send him to you when the marquis comes." "That's a mistake," said Corentin; "a soldier will alarm him, but a boy, and I can find one, will not." "Commandant," said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, "thanks to this fog which you are cursing, you can surround my house. Put soldiers everywhere. Place a guard in the church to command the esplanade on which the windows of my salon open. Post men on the Promenade; for though the windows of my bedroom are twenty feet above the ground, despair does sometimes give a man the power to jump even greater distances safely. Listen to what I say. I shall probably send this gentleman out of the door of my house; therefore see that only brave men are there to meet him; for," she added, with a sigh, "no one denies him courage; he will assuredly defend himself." "Gudin!" called the commandant. "Listen, my lad," he continued in a low voice when the young man joined him, "this devil of a girl is betraying the Gars to us--I am sure I don't know why, but that's no matter. Take ten men and place yourself so as to hold the cul-de-sac in which the house stands; be careful that no one sees either you or your men." "Yes, commandant, I know the ground." "Very good," said Hulot. "I'll send Beau-Pied to let you know when to play your sabres. Try to meet the marquis yourself, and if you can manage to kill him, so that I sha'n't have to shoot him judicially, you shall be a lieutenant in a fortnight or my name's not Hulot." Gudin departed with a dozen soldiers. "Do you know what you have done?" said Corentin to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, in a low voice. She made no answer, but looked with a sort of satisfaction at the men who were starting, under command of the sub-lieutenant, for the Promenade, while others, following the next orders given by Hulot, were to post themselves in the shadows of the church of Saint-Leonard. "There are houses adjoining mine," she said; "you had better surround them all. Don't lay up regrets by neglecting a single precaution." "She is mad," thought Hulot. "Was I not a prophet?" asked Corentin in his ear. "As for the boy I shall send with her, he is the little gars with a bloody foot; therefore--" He did not finish his sentence, for Mademoiselle de Verneuil by a sudden movement darted in the direction of her house, whither he followed her, whistling like a man supremely satisfied. When he overtook her she was already at the door of her house, where Galope-Chopine's little boy was on the watch. "Mademoiselle," said Corentin, "take the lad with you; you cannot have a more innocent or active emissary. Boy," he added, "when you have seen the Gars enter the house come to me, no matter who stops you; you'll find me at the guard-house and I'll give you something that will make you eat cake for the rest of your days." At these words, breathed rather than said in the child's ear, Corentin felt his hand squeezed by that of the little Breton, who followed Mademoiselle de Verneuil into the house. "Now, my good friends, you can come to an explanation as soon as you like," cried Corentin when the door was closed. "If you make love, my little marquis, it will be on your winding-sheet." But Corentin could not bring himself to let that fatal house completely out of sight, and he went to the Promenade, where he found the commandant giving his last orders. By this time it was night. Two hours went by; but the sentinels posted at intervals noticed nothing that led them to suppose the marquis had evaded the triple line of men who surrounded the three sides by which the tower of Papegaut was accessible. Twenty times had Corentin gone from the Promenade to the guard-room, always to find that his little emissary had not appeared. Sunk in thought, the spy paced the Promenade slowly, enduring the martyrdom to which three passions, terrible in their clashing, subject a man,--love, avarice, and ambition. Eight o'clock struck from all the towers in the town. The moon rose late. Fog and darkness wrapped in impenetrable gloom the places where the drama planned by this man was coming to its climax. He was able to silence the struggle of his passions as he walked up and down, his arms crossed, and his eyes fixed on the windows which rose like the luminous eyes of a phantom above the rampart. The deep silence was broken only by the rippling of the Nancon, by the regular and lugubrious tolling from the belfries, by the heavy steps of the sentinels or the rattle of arms as the guard was hourly relieved. "The night's as thick as a wolf's jaw," said the voice of Pille-Miche. "Go on," growled Marche-a-Terre, "and don't talk more than a dead dog." "I'm hardly breathing," said the Chouan. "If the man who made that stone roll down wants his heart to serve as the scabbard for my knife he'll do it again," said Marche-a-Terre, in a low voice scarcely heard above the flowing of the river. "It was I," said Pille-Miche. "Well, then, old money-bag, down on your stomach," said the other, "and wriggle like a snake through a hedge, or we shall leave our carcasses behind us sooner than we need." "Hey, Marche-a-Terre," said the incorrigible Pille-Miche, who was using his hands to drag himself along on his stomach, and had reached the level of his comrade's ear. "If the Grande-Garce is to be believed there'll be a fine booty to-day. Will you go shares with me?" "Look here, Pille-Miche," said Marche-a-Terre stopping short on the flat of his stomach. The other Chouans, who were accompanying the two men, did the same, so wearied were they with the difficulties they had met with in climbing the precipice. "I know you," continued Marche-a-Terre, "for a Jack Grab-All who would rather give blows than receive them when there's nothing else to be done. We have not come here to grab dead men's shoes; we are devils against devils, and sorrow to those whose claws are too short. The Grande-Garce has sent us here to save the Gars. He is up there; lift your dog's nose and see that window above the tower." _ |
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