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The Chouans, a novel by Honore de Balzac |
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3. A Day without a Morrow - Part 17 |
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_ Midnight was striking. The moon rose, giving the appearance of white smoke to the fog. Pille-Miche squeezed Marche-a-Terre's arm and silently showed him on the terrace just above them, the triangular iron of several shining bayonets. "The Blues are there already," said Pille-Miche; "we sha'n't gain anything by force." "Patience," replied Marche-a-Terre; "if I examined right this morning, we must be at the foot of the Papegaut tower between the ramparts and the Promenade,--that place where they put the manure; it is like a feather-bed to fall on." "If Saint-Labre," remarked Pille-Miche, "would only change into cider the blood we shall shed to-night the citizens might lay in a good stock to-morrow." Marche-a-Terre laid his large hand over his friend's mouth; then an order muttered by him went from rank to rank of the Chouans suspended as they were in mid-air among the brambles of the slate rocks. Corentin, walking up and down the esplanade had too practiced an ear not to hear the rustling of the shrubs and the light sound of pebbles rolling down the sides of the precipice. Marche-a-Terre, who seemed to possess the gift of seeing in darkness, and whose senses, continually in action, were acute as those of a savage, saw Corentin; like a trained dog he had scented him. Fouche's diplomatist listened but heard nothing; he looked at the natural wall of rock and saw no signs. If the confusing gleam of the fog enabled him to see, here and there, a crouching Chouan, he took him, no doubt, for a fragment of rock, for these human bodies had all the appearance of inert nature. This danger to the invaders was of short duration. Corentin's attention was diverted by a very distinct noise coming from the other end of the Promenade, where the rock wall ended and a steep descent leading down to the Queen's Staircase began. When Corentin reached the spot he saw a figure gliding past it as if by magic. Putting out his hand to grasp this real or fantastic being, who was there, he supposed, with no good intentions, he encountered the soft and rounded figure of a woman. "The devil take you!" he exclaimed, "if any one else had met you, you'd have had a ball through your head. What are you doing, and where are you going, at this time of night? Are you dumb? It certainly is a woman," he said to himself. The silence was suspicious, but the stranger broke it by saying, in a voice which suggested extreme fright, "Ah, my good man, I'm on my way back from a wake." "It is the pretended mother of the marquis," thought Corentin. "I'll see what she's about. Well, go that way, old woman," he replied, feigning not to recognize her. "Keep to the left if you don't want to be shot." He stood quite still; then observing that Madame du Gua was making for the Papegaut tower, he followed her at a distance with diabolical caution. During this fatal encounter the Chouans had posted themselves on the manure towards which Marche-a-Terre had guided them. "There's the Grande-Garce!" thought Marche-a-Terre, as he rose to his feet against the tower wall like a bear. "We are here," he said to her in a low voice. "Good," she replied, "there's a ladder in the garden of that house about six feet above the manure; find it, and the Gars is saved. Do you see that small window up there? It is in the dressing-room; you must get to it. This side of the tower is the only one not watched. The horses are ready; if you can hold the passage over the Nancon, a quarter of an hour will put him out of danger--in spite of his folly. But if that woman tries to follow him, stab her." Corentin now saw several of the forms he had hitherto supposed to be stones moving cautiously but swiftly. He went at once to the guard-room at the Porte Saint-Leonard, where he found the commandant fully dressed and sound asleep on a camp bed. "Let him alone," said Beau-Pied, roughly, "he has only just lain down." "The Chouans are here!" cried Corentin, in Hulot's ear. "Impossible! but so much the better," cried the old soldier, still half asleep; "then he can fight." When Hulot reached the Promenade Corentin pointed out to him the singular position taken by the Chouans. "They must have deceived or strangled the sentries I placed between the castle and the Queen's Staircase. Ah! what a devil of a fog! However, patience! I'll send a squad of men under a lieutenant to the foot of the rock. There is no use attacking them where they are, for those animals are so hard they'd let themselves roll down the precipice without breaking a limb." The cracked clock of the belfry was ringing two when the commandant got back to the Promenade after giving these orders and taking every military precaution to seize the Chouans. The sentries were doubled and Mademoiselle de Verneuil's house became the centre of a little army. Hulot found Corentin absorbed in contemplation of the window which overlooked the tower. "Citizen," said the commandant, "I think the /ci-devant/ has fooled us; there's nothing stirring." "He is there," cried Corentin, pointing to the window. "I have seen a man's shadow on the curtain. But I can't think what has become of that boy. They must have killed him or locked him up. There! commandant, don't you see that? there's a man's shadow; come, come on!" "I sha'n't seize him in bed; thunder of God! He will come out if he went in; Gudin won't miss him," cried Hulot, who had his own reasons for waiting till the Gars could defend himself. "Commandant, I enjoin you, in the name of the law to proceed at once into that house." "You're a fine scoundrel to try to make me do that." Without showing any resentment at the commandant's language, Corentin said coolly: "You will obey me. Here is an order in good form, signed by the minister of war, which will force you to do so." He drew a paper from his pocket and held it out. "Do you suppose we are such fools as to leave that girl to do as she likes? We are endeavoring to suppress a civil war, and the grandeur of the purpose covers the pettiness of the means." "I take the liberty, citizen, of sending you to--you understand me? Enough. To the right-about, march! Let me alone, or it will be the worse for you." "But read that," persisted Corentin. "Don't bother me with your functions," cried Hulot, furious at receiving orders from a man he regarded as contemptible. At this instant Galope-Chopine's boy suddenly appeared among them like a rat from a hole. "The Gars has started!" he cried. "Which way?" "The rue Saint-Leonard." "Beau-Pied," said Hulot in a whisper to the corporal who was near him, "go and tell your lieutenant to draw in closer round the house, and make ready to fire. Left wheel, forward on the tower, the rest of you!" he shouted. To understand the conclusion of this fatal drama we must re-enter the house with Mademoiselle de Verneuil when she returned to it after denouncing the marquis to the commandant. When passions reach their crisis they bring us under the dominion of far greater intoxication than the petty excitements of wine or opium. The lucidity then given to ideas, the delicacy of the high-wrought senses, produce the most singular and unexpected effects. Some persons when they find themselves under the tyranny of a single thought can see with extraordinary distinctness objects scarcely visible to others, while at the same time the most palpable things become to them almost as if they did not exist. When Mademoiselle de Verneuil hurried, after reading the marquis's letter, to prepare the way for vengeance just as she had lately been preparing all for love, she was in that stage of mental intoxication which makes real life like the life of a somnambulist. But when she saw her house surrounded, by her own orders, with a triple line of bayonets a sudden flash of light illuminated her soul. She judged her conduct and saw with horror that she had committed a crime. Under the first shock of this conviction she sprang to the threshold of the door and stood there irresolute, striving to think, yet unable to follow out her reasoning. She knew so vaguely what had happened that she tried in vain to remember why she was in the antechamber, and why she was leading a strange child by the hand. A million of stars were floating in the air before her like tongues of fire. She began to walk about, striving to shake off the horrible torpor which laid hold of her; but, like one asleep, no object appeared to her under its natural form or in its own colors. She grasped the hand of the little boy with a violence not natural to her, dragging him along with such precipitate steps that she seemed to have the motions of a madwoman. She saw neither persons nor things in the salon as she crossed it, and yet she was saluted by three men who made way to let her pass. "That must be she," said one of them. "She is very handsome," exclaimed another, who was a priest. "Yes," replied the first; "but how pale and agitated--" "And beside herself," said the third; "she did not even see us." At the door of her own room Mademoiselle de Verneuil saw the smiling face of Francine, who whispered to her: "He is here, Marie." Mademoiselle de Verneuil awoke, reflected, looked at the child whose hand she held, remembered all, and replied to the girl: "Shut up that boy; if you wish me to live do not let him escape you." As she slowly said the words her eyes were fixed on the door of her bedroom, and there they continued fastened with so dreadful a fixedness that it seemed as if she saw her victim through the wooden panels. Then she gently opened it, passed through and closed it behind her without turning round, for she saw the marquis standing before the fireplace. His dress, without being too choice, had the look of careful arrangement which adds so much to the admiration which a woman feels for her lover. All her self-possession came back to her at the sight of him. Her lips, rigid, although half-open, showed the enamel of her white teeth and formed a smile that was fixed and terrible rather than voluptuous. She walked with slow steps toward the young man and pointed with her finger to the clock. "A man who is worthy of love is worth waiting for," she said with deceptive gaiety. Then, overcome with the violence of her emotions, she dropped upon the sofa which was near the fireplace. "Dear Marie, you are so charming when you are angry," said the marquis, sitting down beside her and taking her hand, which she let him take, and entreating a look, which she refused him. "I hope," he continued, in a tender, caressing voice, "that my wife will not long refuse a glance to her loving husband." Hearing the words she turned abruptly and looked into his eyes. "What is the meaning of that dreadful look?" he said, laughing. "But your hand is burning! oh, my love, what is it?" "Your love!" she repeated, in a dull, changed voice. "Yes," he said, throwing himself on his knees beside her and taking her two hands which he covered with kisses. "Yes, my love--I am thine for life." She pushed him violently away from her and rose. Her features contracted, she laughed as mad people laugh, and then she said to him: "You do not mean one word of all you are saying, base man--baser than the lowest villain." She sprang to the dagger which was lying beside a flower-vase, and let it sparkle before the eyes of the amazed young marquis. "Bah!" she said, flinging it away from her, "I do not respect you enough to kill you. Your blood is even too vile to be shed by soldiers; I see nothing fit for you but the executioner." The words were painfully uttered in a low voice, and she moved her feet like a spoilt child, impatiently. The marquis went to her and tried to clasp her. "Don't touch me!" she cried, recoiling from him with a look of horror. "She is mad!" said the marquis in despair. "Mad, yes!" she repeated, "but not mad enough to be your dupe. What would I not forgive to passion? but to seek to possess me without love, and to write to that woman--" "To whom have I written?" he said, with an astonishment which was certainly not feigned. "To that chaste woman who sought to kill me." The marquis turned pale with anger and said, grasping the back of a chair until he broke it, "If Madame du Gua has committed some dastardly wrong--" Mademoiselle de Verneuil looked for the letter; not finding it she called to Francine. "Where is that letter?" she asked. "Monsieur Corentin took it." "Corentin! ah! I understand it all; he wrote the letter; he has deceived me with diabolical art--as he alone can deceive." With a piercing cry she flung herself on the sofa, tears rushing from her eyes. Doubt and confidence were equally dreadful now. The marquis knelt beside her and clasped her to his breast, saying, again and again, the only words he was able to utter:-- "Why do you weep, my darling? there is no harm done; your reproaches were all love; do not weep, I love you--I shall always love you." Suddenly he felt her press him with almost supernatural force. "Do you still love me?" she said, amid her sobs. "Can you doubt it?" he replied in a tone that was almost melancholy. She abruptly disengaged herself from his arms, and fled, as if frightened and confused, to a little distance. "Do I doubt it?" she exclaimed, but a smile of gentle meaning was on her lover's face, and the words died away upon her lips; she let him take her by the hand and lead her to the salon. There an altar had been hastily arranged during her absence. The priest was robed in his officiating vestments. The lighted tapers shed upon the ceiling a glow as soft as hope itself. She now recognized the two men who had bowed to her, the Comte de Bauvan and the Baron du Guenic, the witnesses chosen by Montauran. "You will not still refuse?" said the marquis. But at the sight she stopped, stepped backward into her chamber and fell on her knees; raising her hands towards the marquis she cried out: "Pardon! pardon! pardon!" Her voice died away, her head fell back, her eyes closed, and she lay in the arms of her lover and Francine as if dead. When she opened her eyes they met those of the young man full of loving tenderness. "Marie! patience! this is your last trial," he said. "The last!" she exclaimed, bitterly. Francine and the marquis looked at each other in surprise, but she silenced them by a gesture. "Call the priest," she said, "and leave me alone with him." They did so, and withdrew. "My father," she said to the priest so suddenly called to her, "in my childhood an old man, white-haired like yourself, used to tell me that God would grant all things to those who had faith. Is that true?" "It is true," replied the priest; "all things are possible to Him who created all." Mademoiselle de Verneuil threw herself on her knees before him with incredible enthusiasm. "Oh, my God!" she cried in ecstasy, "my faith in thee is equal to my love for him; inspire me! do here a miracle, or take my life!" "Your prayer will be granted," said the priest. Marie returned to the salon leaning on the arm of the venerable old man. A deep and secret emotion brought her to the arms of her lover more brilliant than on any of her past days, for a serenity like that which painters give to the martyrs added to her face an imposing dignity. She held out her hand to the marquis and together they advanced to the altar and knelt down. The marriage was about to be celebrated beside the nuptial bed, the altar hastily raised, the cross, the vessels, the chalice, secretly brought thither by the priest, the fumes of incense rising to the ceiling, the priest himself, who wore a stole above his cassock, the tapers on an altar in a salon,--all these things combined to form a strange and touching scene, which typified those times of saddest memory, when civil discord overthrew all sacred institutions. Religious ceremonies then had the savor of the mysteries. Children were baptized in the chambers where the mothers were still groaning from their labor. As in the olden time, the Saviour went, poor and lowly, to console the dying. Young girls received their first communion in the home where they had played since infancy. The marriage of the marquis and Mademoiselle de Verneuil was now solemnized, like many other unions, by a service contrary to the recent legal enactments. In after years these marriages, mostly celebrated at the foot of oaks, were scrupulously recognized and considered legal. The priest who thus preserved the ancient usages was one of those men who hold to their principles in the height of the storm. His voice, which never made the oath exacted by the Republic, uttered no word throughout the tempest that did not make for peace. He never incited, like the Abbe Gudin, to fire and sword; but like many others, he devoted himself to the still more dangerous mission of performing his priestly functions for the souls of faithful Catholics. To accomplish this perilous ministry he used all the pious deceptions necessitated by persecution, and the marquis, when he sought his services on this occasion, had found him in one of those excavated caverns which are known, even to the present day, by the name of "the priest's hiding-place." The mere sight of that pale and suffering face was enough to give this worldly room a holy aspect. All was now ready for the act of misery and of joy. Before beginning the ceremony the priest asked, in the dead silence, the names of the bride. "Marie-Nathalie, daughter of Mademoiselle Blanche de Casteran, abbess, deceased, of Notre-Dame de Seez, and Victor-Amedee, Duc de Verneuil." "Where born?" "At La Chasterie, near Alencon." "I never supposed," said the baron in a low voice to the count, "that Montauran would have the folly to marry her. The natural daughter of a duke!--horrid!" "If it were of the king, well and good," replied the Comte de Bauvan, smiling. "However, it is not for me to blame him; I like Charette's mistress full as well; and I shall transfer the war to her--though she's not one to bill and coo." The names of the marquis had been filled in previously, and the two lovers now signed the document with their witnesses. The ceremony then began. At that instant Marie, and she alone, heard the sound of muskets and the heavy tread of soldiers,--no doubt relieving the guard in the church which she had herself demanded. She trembled violently and raised her eyes to the cross on the altar. "A saint at last," said Francine, in a low voice. "Give me such saints, and I'll be devilishly devout," added the count, in a whisper. When the priest made the customary inquiry of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, she answered by a "yes" uttered with a deep sigh. Bending to her husband's ear she said: "You will soon know why I have broken the oath I made never to marry you." After the ceremony all present passed into the dining-room, where dinner was served, and as they took their places Jeremie, Marie's footman, came into the room terrified. The poor bride rose and went to him; Francine followed her. With one of those pretexts which never fail a woman, she begged the marquis to do the honors for a moment, and went out, taking Jeremie with her before he could utter the fatal words. "Ah! Francine, to be dying a thousand deaths and not to die!" she cried. This absence might well be supposed to have its cause in the ceremony that had just taken place. Towards the end of the dinner, as the marquis was beginning to feel uneasy, Marie returned in all the pomp of a bridal robe. Her face was calm and joyful, while that of Francine who followed her had terror imprinted on every feature, so that the guests might well have thought they saw in these two women a fantastic picture by Salvator Rosa, of Life and Death holding each other by the hand. "Gentlemen," said Marie to the priest, the baron, and the count, "you are my guests for the night. I find you cannot leave Fougeres; it would be dangerous to attempt it. My good maid has instructions to make you comfortable in your apartments. No, you must not rebel," she added to the priest, who was about to speak. "I hope you will not thwart a woman on her wedding-day." An hour later she was alone with her husband in the room she had so joyously arranged a few hours earlier. They had reached that fatal bed where, like a tomb, so many hopes are wrecked, where the waking to a happy life is all uncertain, where love is born or dies, according to the natures that are tried there. Marie looked at the clock. "Six hours to live," she murmured. "Can I have slept?" she cried toward morning, wakening with one of those sudden movements which rouse us when we have made ourselves a promise to wake at a certain hour. "Yes, I have slept," she thought, seeing by the light of the candles that the hands of the clock were pointing to two in the morning. She turned and looked at the sleeping marquis, lying like a child with his head on one hand, the other clasping his wife's hand, his lips half smiling as though he had fallen asleep while she kissed him. "Ah!" she whispered to herself, "he sleeps like an infant; he does not distrust me--me, to whom he has given a happiness without a name." She touched him softly and he woke, continuing to smile. He kissed the hand he held and looked at the wretched woman with eyes so sparkling that she could not endure their light and slowly lowered her large eyelids. Her husband might justly have accused her of coquetry if she were not concealing the terrors of her soul by thus evading the fire of his looks. Together they raised their charming heads and made each other a sign of gratitude for the pleasures they had tasted; but after a rapid glance at the beautiful picture his wife presented, the marquis was struck with an expression on her face which seemed to him melancholy, and he said in a tender voice, "Why sad, dear love?" "Poor Alphonse," she answered, "do you know to what I have led you?" "To happiness." "To death!" Shuddering with horror she sprang from the bed; the marquis, astonished, followed her. His wife motioned him to a window and raised the curtain, pointing as she did so to a score of soldiers. The moon had scattered the fog and was now casting her white light on the muskets and the uniforms, on the impassible Corentin pacing up and down like a jackal waiting for his prey, on the commandant, standing still, his arms crossed, his nose in the air, his lips curling, watchful and displeased. "Come, Marie, leave them and come back to me." "Why do you smile? I placed them there." "You are dreaming." "No." They looked at each other for a moment. The marquis divined the whole truth, and he took her in his arms. "No matter!" he said, "I love you still." "All is not lost!" cried Marie, "it cannot be! Alphonse," she said after a pause, "there is hope." At this moment they distinctly heard the owl's cry, and Francine entered from the dressing-room. "Pierre has come!" she said with a joy that was like delirium. The marquise and Francine dressed Montauran in Chouan clothes with that amazing rapidity that belongs only to women. As soon as Marie saw her husband loading the gun Francine had brought in she slipped hastily from the room with a sign to her faithful maid. Francine then took the marquis to the dressing-room adjoining the bed-chamber. The young man seeing a large number of sheets knotted firmly together, perceived the means by which the girl expected him to escape the vigilance of the soldiers. "I can't get through there," he said, examining the bull's-eye window. At that instant it was darkened by a thickset figure, and a hoarse voice, known to Francine, said in a whisper, "Make haste, general, those rascally Blues are stirring." "Oh! one more kiss," said a trembling voice beside him. The marquis, whose feet were already on the liberating ladder, though he was not wholly through the window, felt his neck clasped with a despairing pressure. Seeing that his wife had put on his clothes, he tried to detain her; but she tore herself roughly from his arms and he was forced to descend. In his hand he held a fragment of some stuff which the moonlight showed him was a piece of the waistcoat he had worn the night before. "Halt! fire!" These words uttered by Hulot in the midst of a silence that was almost horrible broke the spell which seemed to hold the men and their surroundings. A volley of balls coming from the valley and reaching to the foot of the tower succeeded the discharges of the Blues posted on the Promenade. Not a cry came from the Chouans. Between each discharge the silence was frightful. But Corentin had heard a fall from the ladder on the precipice side of the tower, and he suspected some ruse. "None of those animals are growling," he said to Hulot; "our lovers are capable of fooling us on this side, and escaping themselves on the other." The spy, to clear up the mystery, sent for torches; Hulot, understanding the force of Corentin's supposition, and hearing the noise of a serious struggle in the direction of the Porte Saint-Leonard, rushed to the guard-house exclaiming: "That's true, they won't separate." "His head is well-riddled, commandant," said Beau-Pied, who was the first to meet him, "but he killed Gudin, and wounded two men. Ha! the savage; he got through three ranks of our best men and would have reached the fields if it hadn't been for the sentry at the gate who spitted him on his bayonet." The commandant rushed into the guard-room and saw on a camp bedstead a bloody body which had just been laid there. He went up to the supposed marquis, raised the hat which covered the face, and fell into a chair. "I suspected it!" he cried, crossing his arms violently; "she kept him, cursed thunder! too long." The soldiers stood about, motionless. The commandant himself unfastened the long black hair of a woman. Suddenly the silence was broken by the tramp of men and Corentin entered the guardroom, preceding four soldiers who bore on their guns, crossed to make a litter, the body of Montauran, who was shot in the thighs and arms. They laid him on the bedstead beside his wife. He saw her, and found strength to clasp her hand with a convulsive gesture. The dying woman turned her head, recognized her husband, and shuddered with a spasm that was horrible to see, murmuring in a voice almost extinct: "A day without a morrow! God heard me too well!" "Commandant," said the marquis, collecting all his strength, and still holding Marie's hand, "I count on your honor to send the news of my death to my young brother, who is now in London. Write him that if he wishes to obey my last injunction he will never bear arms against his country--neither must he abandon the king's service." "It shall be done," said Hulot, pressing the hand of the dying man. "Take them to the nearest hospital," cried Corentin. Hulot took the spy by the arm with a grip that left the imprint of his fingers on the flesh. "Out of this camp!" he cried; "your business is done here. Look well at the face of Commander Hulot, and never find yourself again in his way if you don't want your belly to be the scabbard of his blade--" And the older soldier flourished his sabre. "That's another of the honest men who will never make their way," said Corentin to himself when he was some distance from the guard-room. The marquis was still able to thank his gallant adversary by a look marking the respect which all soldiers feel for loyal enemies. * * * * * In 1827 an old man accompanied by his wife was buying cattle in the market-place of Fougeres. Few persons remembered that he had killed a hundred or more men, and that his former name was Marche-a-Terre. A person to whom we owe important information about all the personages of this drama saw him there, leading a cow, and was struck by his simple, ingenuous air, which led her to remark, "That must be a worthy man." As for Cibot, otherwise called Pille-Miche, we already know his end. It is likely that Marche-a-Terre made some attempt to save his comrade from the scaffold; possibly he was in the square at Alencon on the occasion of the frightful tumult which was one of the events of the famous trial of Rifoel, Briond, and la Chanterie. ADDENDUM The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
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