Ch. 2 - One of Fouche's Ideas

One morning towards the end of Brumaire just as Hulot was exercising
his brigade, now by order of his superiors wholly concentrated at
Mayenne, a courier arrived from Alencon with despatches, at the
reading of which his face betrayed extreme annoyance.

"Forward, then!" he cried in an angry tone, sticking the papers into
the crown of his hat. "Two companies will march with me towards
Mortagne. The Chouans are there. You will accompany me," he said to
Merle and Gerard. "May be I created a nobleman if I can understand one
word of that despatch. Perhaps I'm a fool! well, anyhow, forward,
march! there's no time to lose."

"Commandant, by your leave," said Merle, kicking the cover of the
ministerial despatch with the toe of his boot, "what is there so
exasperating in that?"

"God's thunder! nothing at all--except that we are fooled."

When the commandant gave vent to this military oath (an object it must
be said of Republican atheistical remonstrance) it gave warning of a
storm; the diverse intonations of the words were degrees of a
thermometer by which the brigade could judge of the patience of its
commander; the old soldier's frankness of nature had made this
knowledge so easy that the veriest little drummer-boy knew his Hulot
by heart, simply by observing the variations of the grimace with which
the commander screwed up his cheek and snapped his eyes and vented his
oath. On this occasion the tone of smothered rage with which he
uttered the words made his two friends silent and circumspect. Even
the pits of the small-pox which dented that veteran face seemed
deeper, and the skin itself browner than usual. His broad queue,
braided at the edges, had fallen upon one of his epaulettes as he
replaced his three-cornered hat, and he flung it back with such fury
that the ends became untied. However, as he stood stock-still, his
hands clenched, his arms crossed tightly over his breast, his mustache
bristling, Gerard ventured to ask him presently: "Are we to start at
once?"

"Yes, if the men have ammunition."

"They have."

"Shoulder arms! Left wheel, forward, march!" cried Gerard, at a sign
from the commandant.

The drum-corps marched at the head of the two companies designated by
Gerard. At the first roll of the drums the commandant, who still stood
plunged in thought, seemed to rouse himself, and he left the town
accompanied by his two officers, to whom he said not a word. Merle and
Gerard looked at each other silently as if to ask, "How long is he
going to keep us in suspense?" and, as they marched, they cautiously
kept an observing eye on their leader, who continued to vent rambling
words between his teeth. Several times these vague phrases sounded
like oaths in the ears of his soldiers, but not one of them dared to
utter a word; for they all, when occasion demanded, maintained the
stern discipline to which the veterans who had served under Bonaparte
in Italy were accustomed. The greater part of them had belonged, like
Hulot, to the famous battalions which capitulated at Mayenne under a
promise not to serve again on the frontier, and the army called them
"Les Mayencais." It would be difficult to find leaders and men who
more thoroughly understood each other.

At dawn of the day after their departure Hulot and his troop were on
the high-road to Alencon, about three miles from that town towards
Mortagne, at a part of the road which leads through pastures watered
by the Sarthe. A picturesque vista of these meadows lay to the left,
while the woodlands on the right which flank the road and join the
great forest of Menil-Broust, serve as a foil to the delightful aspect
of the river-scenery. The narrow causeway is bordered on each side by
ditches the soil of which, being constantly thrown out upon the
fields, has formed high banks covered with furze,--the name given
throughout the West to this prickly gorse. This shrub, which spreads
itself in thorny masses, makes excellent fodder in winter for horses
and cattle; but as long as it was not cut the Chouans hid themselves
behind its breastwork of dull green. These banks bristling with gorse,
signifying to travellers their approach to Brittany, made this part of
the road at the period of which we write as dangerous as it was
beautiful; it was these dangers which compelled the hasty departure of
Hulot and his soldiers, and it was here that he at last let out the
secret of his wrath.

He was now on his return, escorting an old mail-coach drawn by
post-horses, which the weariness of his soldiers, after their forced
march, was compelling to advance at a snail's pace. The company of
Blues from the garrison at Mortagne, who had escorted the rickety
vehicle to the limits of their district, where Hulot and his men had
met them, could be seen in the distance, on their way back to their
quarters, like so many black specks. One of Hulot's companies was in
the rear, the other in advance of the carriage. The commandant, who
was marching with Merle and Gerard between the advance guard and the
carriage, suddenly growled out: "Ten thousand thunders! would you
believe that the general detached us from Mayenne to escort two
petticoats?"

"But, commandant," remarked Gerard, "when we came up just now and took
charge I observed that you bowed to them not ungraciously."

"Ha! that's the infamy of it. Those dandies in Paris ordered the
greatest attention paid to their damned females. How dare they
dishonor good and brave patriots by trailing us after petticoats? As
for me, I march straight, and I don't choose to have to do with other
people's zigzags. When I saw Danton taking mistresses, and Barras too,
I said to them: 'Citizens, when the Republic called you to govern, it
was not that you might authorize the vices of the old regime!' You may
tell me that women--oh yes! we must have women, that's all right. Good
soldiers of course must have women, and good women; but in times of
danger, no! Besides, where would be the good of sweeping away the old
abuses if patriots bring them back again? Look at the First Consul,
there's a man! no women for him; always about his business. I'd bet my
left mustache that he doesn't know the fool's errand we've been sent
on!"

"But, commandant," said Merle, laughing, "I have seen the tip-end of
the nose of the young lady, and I'll declare the whole world needn't
be ashamed to feel an itch, as I do, to revolve round that carriage
and get up a bit of a conversation."

"Look out, Merle," said Gerard; "the veiled beauties have a man
accompanying them who seems wily enough to catch you in a trap."

"Who? that /incroyable/ whose little eyes are ferretting from one side
of the road to the other, as if he saw Chouans? The fellow seems to
have no legs; the moment his horse is hidden by the carriage, he looks
like a duck with its head sticking out of a pate. If that booby can
hinder me from kissing the pretty linnet--"

"'Duck'! 'linnet'! oh, my poor Merle, you have taken wings indeed! But
don't trust the duck. His green eyes are as treacherous as the eyes of
a snake, and as sly as those of a woman who forgives her husband. I
distrust the Chouans much less than I do those lawyers whose faces are
like bottles of lemonade."

"Pooh!" cried Merle, gaily. "I'll risk it--with the commandant's
permission. That woman has eyes like stars, and it's worth playing any
stakes to see them."

"Caught, poor fellow!" said Gerard to the commandant; "he is beginning
to talk nonsense!"

Hulot made a face, shrugged his shoulders, and said: "Before he
swallows the soup, I advise him to smell it."

"Bravo, Merle," said Gerard, judging by his friend's lagging step that
he meant to let the carriage overtake him. Isn't he a happy fellow? He
is the only man I know who can laugh over the death of a comrade
without being thought unfeeling."

"He's the true French soldier," said Hulot, in a grave tone.

"Just look at him pulling his epaulets back to his shoulders, to show
he is a captain," cried Gerard, laughing,--"as if his rank mattered!"

The coach toward which the officer was pivoting did, in fact, contain
two women, one of whom seemed to be the servant of the other.

"Such women always run in couples," said Hulot.

A lean and sharp-looking little man ambled his horse sometimes before,
sometimes behind the carriage; but, though he was evidently
accompanying these privileged women, no one had yet seen him speak to
them. This silence, a proof either of respect or contempt, as the case
might be; the quantity of baggage belonging to the lady, whom the
commandant sneeringly called "the princess"; everything, even to the
clothes of her attendant squire, stirred Hulot's bile. The dress of
the unknown man was a good specimen of the fashions of the day then
being caricatured as "incroyable,"--unbelievable, unless seen. Imagine
a person trussed up in a coat, the front of which was so short that
five or six inches of the waistcoat came below it, while the skirts
were so long that they hung down behind like the tail of a cod,--the
term then used to describe them. An enormous cravat was wound about
his neck in so many folds that the little head which protruded from
that muslin labyrinth certainly did justify Captain Merle's
comparison. The stranger also wore tight-fitting trousers and Suwaroff
boots. A huge blue-and-white cameo pinned his shirt; two watch-chains
hung from his belt; his hair, worn in ringlets on each side of his
face, concealed nearly the whole forehead; and, for a last adornment,
the collar of his shirt and that of his coat came so high that his
head seemed enveloped like a bunch of flowers in a horn of paper. Add
to these queer accessories, which were combined in utter want of
harmony, the burlesque contradictions in color of yellow trousers,
scarlet waistcoat, cinnamon coat, and a correct idea will be gained of
the supreme good taste which all dandies blindly obeyed in the first
years of the Consulate. This costume, utterly uncouth, seemed to have
been invented as a final test of grace, and to show that there was
nothing too ridiculous for fashion to consecrate. The rider seemed to
be about thirty years old, but he was really twenty-two; perhaps he
owed this appearance of age to debauchery, possibly to the perils of
the period. In spite of his preposterous dress, he had a certain
elegance of manner which proved him to be a man of some breeding.

When the captain had dropped back close to the carriage, the dandy
seemed to fathom his design, and favored it by checking his horse.
Merle, who had flung him a sardonic glance, encountered one of those
impenetrable faces, trained by the vicissitudes of the Revolution to
hide all, even the most insignificant, emotion. The moment the curved
end of the old triangular hat and the captain's epaulets were seen by
the occupants of the carriage, a voice of angelic sweetness said:
"Monsieur l'officier, will you have the kindness to tell us at what
part of the road we now are?"

There is some inexpressible charm in the question of an unknown
traveller, if a woman,--a world of adventure is in every word; but if
the woman asks for assistance or information, proving her weakness or
ignorance of certain things, every man is inclined to construct some
impossible tale which shall lead to his happiness. The words,
"Monsieur l'officier," and the polite tone of the question stirred the
captain's heart in a manner hitherto unknown to him. He tried to
examine the lady, but was cruelly disappointed, for a jealous veil
concealed her features; he could barely see her eyes, which shone
through the gauze like onyx gleaming in the sunshine.

"You are now three miles from Alencon, madame," he replied.

"Alencon! already!" and the lady threw herself, or, rather, she gently
leaned back in the carriage, and said no more.

"Alencon?" said the other woman, apparently waking up; "then you'll
see it again."

She caught sight of the captain and was silent. Merle, disappointed in
his hope of seeing the face of the beautiful incognita, began to
examine that of her companion. She was a girl about twenty-six years
of age, fair, with a pretty figure and the sort of complexion, fresh
and white and well-fed, which characterizes the women of Valognes,
Bayeux, and the environs of Alencon. Her blue eyes showed no great
intelligence, but a certain firmness mingled with tender feeling. She
wore a gown of some common woollen stuff. The fashion of her hair,
done up closely under a Norman cap, without any pretension, gave a
charming simplicity to her face. Her attitude, without, of course,
having any of the conventional nobility of society, was not without
the natural dignity of a modest young girl, who can look back upon her
past life without a single cause for repentance. Merle knew her at a
glance for one of those wild flowers which are sometimes taken from
their native fields to Parisian hot-houses, where so many blasting
rays are concentrated, without ever losing the purity of their color
or their rustic simplicity. The naive attitude of the girl and her
modest glance showed Merle very plainly that she did not wish a
listener. In fact, no sooner had he withdrawn than the two women began
a conversation in so low a tone that only a murmur of it reached his
ear.

"You came away in such a hurry," said the country-girl, "that you
hardly took time to dress. A pretty-looking sight you are now! If we
are going beyond Alencon, you must really make your toilet."

"Oh! oh! Francine!" cried the lady.

"What is it?"

"This is the third time you have tried to make me tell you the reasons
for this journey and where we are going."

"Have I said one single word which deserves that reproach?"

"Oh, I've noticed your manoeuvring. Simple and truthful as you are, you
have learned a little cunning from me. You are beginning to hold
questioning in horror; and right enough, too, for of all the known
ways of getting at a secret, questions are, to my mind, the silliest."

"Well," said Francine, "since nothing escapes you, you must admit,
Marie, that your conduct would excite the curiosity of a saint.
Yesterday without a penny, to-day your hands are full of gold; at
Mortagne they give you the mail-coach which was pillaged and the
driver killed, with government troops to protect you, and you are
followed by a man whom I regard as your evil genius."

"Who? Corentin?" said the young lady, accenting the words by two
inflections of her voice expressive of contempt, a sentiment which
appeared in the gesture with which she waved her hand towards the
rider. "Listen, Francine," she said. "Do you remember Patriot, the
monkey I taught to imitate Danton?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"Well, were you afraid of him?"

"He was chained."

"And Corentin is muzzled, my dear."

"We used to play with Patriot by the hour," said Francine,--"I know
that; but he always ended by serving us some bad trick." So saying,
Francine threw herself hastily back close to her mistress, whose hands
she caught and kissed in a coaxing way; saying in a tone of deep
affection: "You know what I mean, Marie, but you will not answer me.
How can you, after all that sadness which did so grieve me--oh, indeed
it grieved me!--how can you, in twenty-four hours, change about and
become so gay? you, who talked of suicide! Why have you changed? I
have a right to ask these questions of your soul--it is mine, my claim
to it is before that of others, for you will never be better loved
than you are by me. Speak, mademoiselle."

"Why, Francine, don't you see all around you the secret of my good
spirits? Look at the yellowing tufts of those distant tree-tops; not
one is like another. As we look at them from this distance don't they
seem like an old bit of tapestry? See the hedges from behind which the
Chouans may spring upon us at any moment. When I look at that gorse I
fancy I can see the muzzles of their guns. Every time the road is
shady under the trees I fancy I shall hear firing, and then my heart
beats and a new sensation comes over me. It is neither the shuddering
of fear nor an emotion of pleasure; no, it is better than either, it
is the stirring of everything within me--it is life! Why shouldn't I
be gay when a little excitement is dropped into my monotonous
existence?"

"Ah! you are telling me nothing, cruel girl! Holy Virgin!" added
Francine, raising her eyes in distress to heaven; "to whom will she
confess herself if she denies the truth to me?"

"Francine," said the lady, in a grave tone, "I can't explain to you my
present enterprise; it is horrible."

"Why do wrong when you know it to be wrong?"

"How can I help it? I catch myself thinking as if I were fifty, and
acting as if I were still fifteen. You have always been my better
self, my poor Francine, but in this affair I must stifle conscience.
And," she added after a pause, "I cannot. Therefore, how can you
expect me to take a confessor as stern as you?" and she patted the
girl's hand.

"When did I ever blame your actions?" cried Francine. "Evil is so
mixed with good in your nature. Yes, Saint Anne of Auray, to whom I
pray to save you, will absolve you for all you do. And, Marie, am I
not here beside you, without so much as knowing where you go?" and she
kissed her hands with effusion.

"But," replied Marie, "you may yet desert me, if your conscience--"

"Hush, hush, mademoiselle," cried Francine, with a hurt expression.
"But surely you will tell me--"

"Nothing!" said the young lady, in a resolute voice. "Only--and I wish
you to know it--I hate this enterprise even more than I hate him whose
gilded tongue induced me to undertake it. I will be rank and own to
you that I would never have yielded to their wishes if I had not
foreseen, in this ignoble farce, a mingling of love and danger which
tempted me. I cannot bear to leave this empty world without at least
attempting to gather the flowers that it owes me,--whether I perish in
the attempt or not. But remember, for the honor of my memory, that had
I ever been a happy woman, the sight of their great knife, ready to
fall upon my neck, would not have driven me to accept a part in this
tragedy--for it is a tragedy. But now," she said, with a gesture of
disgust, "if it were countermanded, I should instantly fling myself
into the Sarthe. It would not be destroying life, for I have never
lived."

"Oh, Saint Anne of Auray, forgive her!"

"What are you so afraid of? You know very well that the dull round of
domestic life gives no opportunity for my passions. That would be bad
in most women, I admit; but my soul is made of a higher sensibility
and can bear great tests. I might have been, perhaps, a gentle being
like you. Why, why have I risen above or sunk beneath the level of my
sex? Ah! the wife of Bonaparte is a happy woman! Yes, I shall die
young, for I am gay, as you say,--gay at this pleasure-party, where
there is blood to drink, as that poor Danton used to say. There,
there, forget what I am saying; it is the woman of fifty who speaks.
Thank God! the girl of fifteen is still within me."

The young country-girl shuddered. She alone knew the fiery, impetuous
nature of her mistress. She alone was initiated into the mysteries of
a soul rich with enthusiasm, into the secret emotions of a being who,
up to this time, had seen life pass her like a shadow she could not
grasp, eager as she was to do so. After sowing broadcast with full
hands and harvesting nothing, this woman was still virgin in soul, but
irritated by a multitude of baffled desires. Weary of a struggle
without an adversary, she had reached in her despair to the point of
preferring good to evil, if it came in the form of enjoyment; evil to
good, if it offered her some poetic emotion; misery to mediocrity, as
something nobler and higher; the gloomy and mysterious future of
present death to a life without hopes or even without sufferings.
Never in any heart was so much powder heaped ready for the spark,
never were so many riches for love to feed on; no daughter of Eve was
ever moulded, with a greater mixture of gold in her clay. Francine,
like an angel of earth, watched over this being whose perfections she
adored, believing that she obeyed a celestial mandate in striving to
bring that spirit back among the choir of seraphim whence it was
banished for the sin of pride.

"There is the clock-tower of Alencon," said the horseman, riding up to
the carriage.

"I see it," replied the young lady, in a cold tone.

"Ah, well," he said, turning away with all the signs of servile
submission, in spite of his disappointment.

"Go faster," said the lady to the postilion. "There is no longer any
danger; go at a fast trot, or even a gallop, if you can; we are almost
into Alencon."

As the carriage passed the commandant, she called out to him, in a
sweet voice:--

"We will meet at the inn, commandant. Come and see me."

"Yes, yes," growled the commandant. "'The inn'! 'Come and see me'! Is
that how you speak to an officer in command of the army?" and he shook
his fist at the carriage, which was now rolling rapidly along the
road.

"Don't be vexed, commandant, she has got your rank as general up her
sleeve," said Corentin, laughing, as he endeavored to put his horse
into a gallop to overtake the carriage.

"I sha'n't let myself be fooled by any such folks as they," said Hulot
to his two friends, in a growling tone. "I'd rather throw my general's
coat into that ditch than earn it out of a bed. What are these birds
after? Have you any idea, either of you?"

"Yes," said Merle, "I've an idea that that's the handsomest women I
ever saw! I think you're reading the riddle all wrong. Perhaps she's
the wife of the First Consul."

"Pooh! the First Consul's wife is old, and this woman is young," said
Hulot. "Besides, the order I received from the minister gives her name
as Mademoiselle de Verneuil. She is a /ci-devant/. Don't I know 'em?
They all plied one trade before the Revolution, and any man could make
himself a major, or a general in double-quick time; all he had to do
was to say 'Dear heart' to them now and then."

While each soldier opened his compasses, as the commandant was wont to
say, the miserable vehicle which was then used as the mail-coach drew
up before the inn of the Trois Maures, in the middle of the main
street of Alencon. The sound of the wheels brought the landlord to the
door. No one in Alencon could have expected the arrival of the
mail-coach at the Trois Maures, for the murderous attack upon the coach
at Mortagne was already known, and so many people followed it along the
street that the two women, anxious to escape the curiosity of the
crowd, ran quickly into the kitchen, which forms the inevitable
antechamber to all Western inns. The landlord was about to follow
them, after examining the coach, when the postilion caught him by the
arm.

"Attention, citizen Brutus," he said; "there's an escort of the Blues
behind us; but it is I who bring you these female citizens; they'll
pay like /ci-devant/ princesses, therefore--"

"Therefore, we'll drink a glass of wine together presently, my lad,"
said the landlord.

After glancing about the kitchen, blackened with smoke, and noticing a
table bloody from raw meat, Mademoiselle de Verneuil flew into the
next room with the celerity of a bird; for she shuddered at the sight
and smell of the place, and feared the inquisitive eyes of a dirty
/chef/, and a fat little woman who examined her attentively.

"What are we to do, wife?" said the landlord. "Who the devil could
have supposed we would have so many on our hands in these days? Before
I serve her a decent breakfast that woman will get impatient. Stop, an
idea! evidently she is a person of quality. I'll propose to put her
with the one we have upstairs. What do you think?"

When the landlord went to look for the new arrival he found only
Francine, to whom he spoke in a low voice, taking her to the farther
end of the kitchen, so as not to be overheard.

"If the ladies wish," he said, "to be served in private, as I have no
doubt they wish to do, I have a very nice breakfast all ready for a
lady and her son, and I dare say wouldn't mind sharing it with you;
they are persons of condition," he added, mysteriously.

He had hardly said the words before he felt a tap on his back from the
handle of a whip. He turned hastily and saw behind him a short,
thick-set man, who had noiselessly entered from a side room,--an
apparition which seemed to terrify the hostess, the cook, and the
scullion. The landlord turned pale when he saw the intruder, who shook
back the hair which concealed his forehead and eyes, raised himself on
the points of his toes to reach the other's ears, and said to him in a
whisper: "You know the cost of an imprudence or a betrayal, and the
color of the money we pay it in. We are generous in that coin."

He added a gesture which was like a horrible commentary to his words.
Though the rotundity of the landlord prevented Francine from seeing
the stranger, who stood behind him, she caught certain words of his
threatening speech, and was thunderstruck at hearing the hoarse tones
of a Breton voice. She sprang towards the man, but he, seeming to move
with the agility of a wild animal, had already darted through a side
door which opened on the courtyard. Utterly amazed, she ran to the
window. Through its panes, yellowed with smoke, she caught sight of
the stranger as he was about to enter the stable. Before doing so,
however, he turned a pair of black eyes to the upper story of the inn,
and thence to the mail-coach in the yard, as if to call some friend's
attention to the vehicle. In spite of his muffling goatskin and thanks
to this movement which allowed her to see his face, Francine
recognized the Chouan, Marche-a-Terre, with his heavy whip; she saw
him, indistinctly, in the obscurity of the stable, fling himself down
on a pile of straw, in a position which enabled him to keep an eye on
all that happened at the inn. Marche-a-Terre curled himself up in such
a way that the cleverest spy, at any distance far or near, might have
taken him for one of those huge dogs that drag the hand-carts, lying
asleep with his muzzle on his paws.

The behavior of the Chouan proved to Francine that he had not
recognized her. Under the hazardous circumstances which she felt her
mistress to be in, she scarcely knew whether to regret or to rejoice
in this unconsciousness. But the mysterious connection between the
landlord's offer (not uncommon among innkeepers, who can thus kill two
birds with one stone), and the Chouan's threats, piqued her curiosity.
She left the dirty window from which she could see the formless heap
which she knew to be Marche-a-Terre, and returned to the landlord, who
was still standing in the attitude of a man who feels he has made a
blunder, and does not know how to get out of it. The Chouan's gesture
had petrified the poor fellow. No one in the West was ignorant of the
cruel refinements of torture with which the "Chasseurs du Roi"
punished those who were even suspected of indiscretion; the landlord
felt their knives already at his throat. The cook looked with a
shudder at the iron stove on which they often "warmed" ("chauffaient")
the feet of those they suspected. The fat landlady held a knife in one
hand and a half-peeled potato in the other, and gazed at her husband
with a stupefied air. Even the scullion puzzled himself to know the
reason of their speechless terror. Francine's curiosity was naturally
excited by this silent scene, the principal actor of which was visible
to all, though departed. The girl was gratified at the evident power
of the Chouan, and though by nature too simple and humble for the
tricks of a lady's maid, she was also far too anxious to penetrate the
mystery not to profit by her advantages on this occasion.

"Mademoiselle accepts your proposal," she said to the landlord, who
jumped as if suddenly awakened by her words.

"What proposal?" he asked with genuine surprise.

"What proposal?" asked Corentin, entering the kitchen.

"What proposal?" asked Mademoiselle de Verneuil, returning to it.

"What proposal?" asked a fourth individual on the lower step of the
staircase, who now sprang lightly into the kitchen.

"Why, the breakfast with your persons of distinction," replied
Francine, impatiently.

"Distinction!" said the ringing and ironical voice of the person who
had just come down the stairway. "My good fellow, that strikes me as a
very poor inn joke; but if it's the company of this young female
citizen that you want to give us, we should be fools to refuse it. In
my mother's absence, I accept," he added, striking the astonished
innkeeper on the shoulder.

The charming heedlessness of youth disguised the haughty insolence of
the words, which drew the attention of every one present to the
new-comer. The landlord at once assumed the countenance of Pilate
washing his hands of the blood of that just man; he slid back two
steps to reach his wife's ear, and whispered, "You are witness, if any
harm comes of it, that it is not my fault. But, anyhow," he added, in
a voice that was lower still, "go and tell Monsieur Marche-a-Terre
what has happened."

The traveller, who was a young man of medium height, wore a dark blue
coat and high black gaiters coming above the knee and over the
breeches, which were also of blue cloth. This simple uniform, without
epaulets, was that of the pupils of the Ecole Polytechnique. Beneath
this plain attire Mademoiselle de Verneuil could distinguish at a
glance the elegant shape and nameless /something/ that tells of
natural nobility. The face of the young man, which was rather ordinary
at first sight, soon attracted the eye by the conformation of certain
features which revealed a soul capable of great things. A bronzed
skin, curly fair hair, sparkling blue eyes, a delicate nose, motions
full of ease, all disclosed a life guided by noble sentiments and
trained to the habit of command. But the most characteristic signs of
his nature were in the chin, which was dented like that of Bonaparte,
and in the lower lip, which joined the upper one with a graceful
curve, like that of an acanthus leaf on the capital of a Corinthian
column. Nature had given to these two features of his face an
irresistible charm.

"This young man has singular distinction if he is really a
republican," thought Mademoiselle de Verneuil.

To see all this at a glance, to brighten at the thought of pleasing,
to bend her head softly and smile coquettishly and cast a soft look
able to revive a heart that was dead to love, to veil her long black
eyes with lids whose curving lashes made shadows on her cheeks, to
choose the melodious tones of her voice and give a penetrating charm
to the formal words, "Monsieur, we are very much obliged to you,"--all
this charming by-play took less time than it has taken to describe it.
After this, Mademoiselle de Verneuil, addressing the landlord, asked
to be shown to a room, saw the staircase, and disappeared with
Francine, leaving the stranger to discover whether her reply was
intended as an acceptance or a refusal.

"Who is that woman?" asked the Polytechnique student, in an airy
manner, of the landlord, who still stood motionless and bewildered.

"That's the female citizen Verneuil," replied Corentin, sharply,
looking jealously at the questioner; "a /ci-devant/; what is she to
you?"

The stranger, who was humming a revolutionary tune, turned his head
haughtily towards Corentin. The two young men looked at each other for
a moment like cocks about to fight, and the glance they exchanged gave
birth to a hatred which lasted forever. The blue eye of the young
soldier was as frank and honest as the green eye of the other man was
false and malicious; the manners of the one had native grandeur, those
of the other were insinuating; one was eager in his advance, the other
deprecating; one commanded respect, the other sought it.

"Is the citizen du Gua Saint-Cyr here?" said a peasant, entering the
kitchen at that moment.

"What do you want of him?" said the young man, coming forward.

The peasant made a low bow and gave him a letter, which the young
cadet read and threw into the fire; then he nodded his head and the
man withdrew.

"No doubt you've come from Paris, citizen?" said Corentin, approaching
the stranger with a certain ease of manner, and a pliant, affable air
which seemed intolerable to the citizen du Gua.

"Yes," he replied, shortly.

"I suppose you have been graduated into some grade of the artillery?"

"No, citizen, into the navy."

"Ah! then you are going to Brest?" said Corentin, interrogatively.

But the young sailor turned lightly on the heels of his shoes without
deigning to reply, and presently disappointed all the expectations
which Mademoiselle de Verneuil had based on the charm of his
appearance. He applied himself to ordering his breakfast with the
eagerness of a boy, questioned the cook and the landlady about their
receipts, wondered at provincial customs like a Parisian just out of
his shell, made as many objections as any fine lady, and showed the
more lack of mind and character because his face and manner had seemed
to promise them. Corentin smiled with pity when he saw the face he
made on tasting the best cider of Normandy.

"Heu!" he cried; "how can you swallow such stuff as that? It is meat
and drink both. I don't wonder the Republic distrusts a province where
they knock their harvest from trees with poles, and shoot travellers
from the ditches. Pray don't put such medicine as that on the table;
give us some good Bordeaux, white and red. And above all, do see if
there is a good fire upstairs. These country-people are so backward in
civilization!" he added. "Alas!" he sighed, "there is but one Paris in
the world; what a pity it is I can't transport it to sea! Heavens!
spoil-sauce!" he suddenly cried out to the cook; "what makes you put
vinegar in that fricassee when you have lemons? And, madame," he
added, "you gave me such coarse sheets I couldn't close my eyes all
night." Then he began to twirl a huge cane, executing with a silly
sort of care a variety of evolutions, the greater or less precision
and agility of which were considered proofs of a young man's standing
in the class of the Incroyables, so-called.

"And it is with such dandies as that," said Corentin to the landlord
confidentially, watching his face, "that the Republic expects to
improve her navy!"

"That man," said the young sailor to the landlady, in a low voice, "is
a spy of Fouche's. He has 'police' stamped on his face, and I'll swear
that spot he has got on his chin is Paris mud. Well, set a thief to
catch--"

Just then a lady to whom the young sailor turned with every sign of
outward respect, entered the kitchen of the inn.

"My dear mamma," he said. "I am glad you've come. I have recruited
some guests in your absence."

"Guests?" she replied; "what folly!"

"It is Mademoiselle de Verneuil," he said in a low voice.

"She perished on the scaffold after the affair of Savenay; she went to
Mans to save her brother the Prince de Loudon," returned his mother,
rather brusquely.

"You are mistaken, madame," said Corentin, gently, emphasizing the
word "madame"; "there are two demoiselles de Verneuil; all great
houses, as you know, have several branches."

The lady, surprised at this freedom, drew back a few steps to examine
the speaker; she turned her black eyes upon him, full of the keen
sagacity so natural to women, seeking apparently to discover in what
interest he stepped forth to explain Mademoiselle de Verneuil's birth.
Corentin, on the other hand, who was studying the lady cautiously,
denied her in his own mind the joys of motherhood and gave her those
of love; he refused the possession of a son of twenty to a woman whose
dazzling skin, and arched eyebrows, and lashes still unblemished, were
the objects of his admiration, and whose abundant black hair, parted
on the forehead into simple bands, bought out the youthfulness of an
intelligent head. The slight lines of the brow, far from indicating
age, revealed young passions. Though the piercing eyes were somewhat
veiled, it was either from the fatigue of travelling or the too
frequent expression of excitement. Corentin remarked that she was
wrapped in a mantle of English material, and that the shape of her
hat, foreign no doubt, did not belong to any of the styles called
Greek, which ruled the Parisian fashions of the period. Corentin was
one of those beings who are compelled by the bent of their natures to
suspect evil rather than good, and he instantly doubted the
citizenship of the two travellers. The lady, who, on her side, had
made her observations on the person of Corentin with equal rapidity,
turned to her son with a significant look which may be faithfully
translated into the words: "Who is this queer man? Is he of our
stripe?"

To this mute inquiry the youth replied by an attitude and a gesture
which said: "Faith! I can't tell; but I distrust him." Then, leaving
his mother to fathom the mystery, he turned to the landlady and
whispered: "Try to find out who that fellow is; and whether he is
really accompanying the young lady; and why."

"So," said Madame du Gua, looking at Corentin, "you are quite sure,
citizen, that Mademoiselle de Verneuil is living?"

"She is living in flesh and blood as surely, /madame/, as the citizen
du Gua Saint-Cyr."

This answer contained a sarcasm, the hidden meaning of which was known
to none but the lady herself, and any one but herself would have been
disconcerted by it. Her son looked fixedly at Corentin, who coolly
pulled out his watch without appearing to notice the effect of his
answer. The lady, uneasy and anxious to discover at once if the speech
meant danger or was merely accidental, said to Corentin in a natural
tone and manner; "How little security there is on these roads. We were
attacked by Chouans just beyond Mortagne. My son came very near being
killed; he received two balls in his hat while protecting me."

"Is it possible, madame? were you in the mail-coach which those
brigands robbed in spite of the escort,--the one we have just come by?
You must know the vehicle well. They told me at Mortagne that the
Chouans numbered a couple of thousands and that every one in the coach
was killed, even the travellers. That's how history is written! Alas!
madame," he continued, "if they murder travellers so near to Paris you
can fancy how unsafe the roads are in Brittany. I shall return to
Paris and not risk myself any farther."

"Is Mademoiselle de Verneuil young and handsome?" said the lady to the
hostess, struck suddenly with an idea.

Just then the landlord interrupted the conversation, in which there
was something of an angry element, by announcing that breakfast was
ready. The young sailor offered his hand to his mother with an air of
false familiarity that confirmed the suspicions of Corentin, to whom
the youth remarked as he went up the stairway: "Citizen, if you are
travelling with the female citizen de Verneuil, and she accepts the
landlord's proposal, you can come too."

Though the words were said in a careless tone and were not inviting,
Corentin followed. The young man squeezed the lady's hand when they
were five or six steps above him, and said, in a low voice: "Now you
see the dangers to which your imprudent enterprises, which have no
glory in them, expose us. If we are discovered, how are we to escape?
And what a contemptible role you force me to play!"

All three reached a large room on the upper floor. Any one who has
travelled in the West will know that the landlord had, on such an
occasion, brought forth his best things to do honor to his guests, and
prepared the meal with no ordinary luxury. The table was carefully
laid. The warmth of a large fire took the dampness from the room. The
linen, glass, and china were not too dingy. Corentin saw at once that
the landlord had, as they say familiarly, cut himself into quarters to
please the strangers. "Consequently," thought he, "these people are
not what they pretend to be. That young man is clever. I took him for
a fool, but I begin to believe him as shrewd as myself."

The sailor, his mother, and Corentin awaited Mademoiselle de Verneuil,
whom the landlord went to summon. But the handsome traveller did not
come. The youth expected that she would make difficulties, and he left
the room, humming the popular song, "Guard the nation's safety," and
went to that of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, prompted by a keen desire to
get the better of her scruples and take her back with him. Perhaps he
wanted to solve the doubts which filled his mind; or else to exercise
the power which all men like to think they wield over a pretty woman.

"May I be hanged if he's a Republican," thought Corentin, as he saw
him go. "He moves his shoulders like a courtier. And if that's his
mother," he added, mentally, looking at Madame du Gua, "I'm the Pope!
They are Chouans; and I'll make sure of their quality."

The door soon opened and the young man entered, holding the hand of
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whom he led to the table with an air of
self-conceit that was nevertheless courteous. The devil had not
allowed that hour which had elapsed since the lady's arrival to be
wasted. With Francine's assistance, Mademoiselle de Verneuil had armed
herself with a travelling-dress more dangerous, perhaps, than any
ball-room attire. Its simplicity had precisely that attraction which
comes of the skill with which a woman, handsome enough to wear no
ornaments, reduces her dress to the position of a secondary charm. She
wore a green gown, elegantly cut, the jacket of which, braided and
frogged, defined her figure in a manner that was hardly suitable for a
young girl, allowing her supple waist and rounded bust and graceful
motions to be fully seen. She entered the room smiling, with the
natural amenity of women who can show a fine set of teeth, transparent
as porcelain between rosy lips, and dimpling cheeks as fresh as those
of childhood. Having removed the close hood which had almost concealed
her head at her first meeting with the young sailor, she could now
employ at her ease the various little artifices, apparently so
artless, with which a woman shows off the beauties of her face and the
grace of her head, and attracts admiration for them. A certain harmony
between her manners and her dress made her seem so much younger than
she was that Madame du Gua thought herself beyond the mark in
supposing her over twenty. The coquetry of her apparel, evidently worn
to please, was enough to inspire hope in the young man's breast; but
Mademoiselle de Verneuil bowed to him, as she took her place, with a
slight inclination of her head and without looking at him, putting him
aside with an apparently light-hearted carelessness which disconcerted
him. This coolness might have seemed to an observer neither caution
nor coquetry, but indifference, natural or feigned. The candid
expression on the young lady's face only made it the more
impenetrable. She showed no consciousness of her charms, and was
apparently gifted with the pretty manners that win all hearts, and had
already duped the natural self-conceit of the young sailor. Thus
baffled, the youth returned to his own seat with a sort of vexation.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil took Francine, who accompanied her, by the
hand and said, in a caressing voice, turning to Madame de Gua:
"Madame, will you have the kindness to allow this young girl, who is
more a friend than a servant to me, to sit with us? In these perilous
times such devotion as hers can only be repaid by the heart; indeed,
that is very nearly all that is left to us."

Madame du Gua replied to the last words, which were said half aside,
with a rather unceremonious bow that betrayed her annoyance at the
beauty of the new-comer. Then she said, in a low voice, to her son:
"'Perilous times,' 'devotion,' 'madame,' 'servant'! that is not
Mademoiselle de Verneuil; it is some girl sent here by Fouche."

The guests were about to sit down when Mademoiselle de Verneuil
noticed Corentin, who was still employed in a close scrutiny of the
mother and son, who were showing some annoyance at his glances.

"Citizen," she said to him, "you are no doubt too well bred to dog my
steps. The Republic, when it sent my parents to the scaffold, did not
magnanimously provide me with a guardian. Though you have, from
extreme and chivalric gallantry accompanied me against my will to this
place" (she sighed), "I am quite resolved not to allow your protecting
care to become a burden to you. I am safe now, and you can leave me."

She gave him a fixed and contemptuous look. Corentin understood her;
he repressed the smile which almost curled the corners of his wily
lips as he bowed to her respectfully.

"Citoyenne," he said, "it is always an honor to obey you. Beauty is
the only queen a Republican can serve."

Mademoiselle de Verneuil's eyes, as she watched him depart, shone with
such natural pleasure, she looked at Francine with a smile of
intelligence which betrayed so much real satisfaction, that Madame du
Gua, who grew prudent as she grew jealous, felt disposed to relinquish
the suspicions which Mademoiselle de Verneuil's great beauty had
forced into her mind.

"It may be Mademoiselle de Verneuil, after all," she whispered to her
son.

"But that escort?" answered the young man, whose vexation at the young
lady's indifference allowed him to be cautious. "Is she a prisoner or
an emissary, a friend or an enemy of the government?"

Madame du Gua made a sign as if to say that she would soon clear up
the mystery.

However, the departure of Corentin seemed to lessen the young man's
distrust, and he began to cast on Mademoiselle de Verneuil certain
looks which betrayed an immoderate admiration for women, rather than
the respectful warmth of a dawning passion. The young girl grew more
and more reserved, and gave all her attentions to Madame du Gua. The
youth, angry with himself, tried, in his vexation, to turn the tables
and seem indifferent. Mademoiselle de Verneuil appeared not to notice
this manoeuvre; she continued to be simple without shyness and reserved
without prudery.

This chance meeting of personages who, apparently, were not destined
to become intimate, awakened no agreeable sympathy on either side.
There was even a sort of vulgar embarrassment, an awkwardness which
destroyed all the pleasure which Mademoiselle de Verneuil and the
young sailor had begun by expecting. But women have such wonderful
conventional tact, they are so intimately allied with each other, or
they have such keen desires for emotion, that they always know how to
break the ice on such occasions. Suddenly, as if the two beauties had
the same thought, they began to tease their solitary knight in a
playful way, and were soon vying with each other in the jesting
attention which they paid to him; this unanimity of action left them
free. At the end of half an hour, the two women, already secret
enemies, were apparently the best of friends. The young man then
discovered that he felt as angry with Mademoiselle de Verneuil for her
friendliness and freedom as he had been with her reserve. In fact, he
was so annoyed by it that he regretted, with a sort of dumb anger,
having allowed her to breakfast with them.

"Madame," said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, "is your son always as gloomy
as he is at this moment?"

"Mademoiselle," he replied, "I ask myself what is the good of a
fleeting happiness. The secret of my gloom is the evanescence of my
pleasure."

"That is a madrigal," she said, laughing, "which rings of the Court
rather than the Polytechnique."

"My son only expressed a very natural thought, mademoiselle," said
Madame du Gua, who had her own reasons for placating the stranger.

"Then laugh while you may," said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, smiling at
the young man. "How do you look when you have really something to weep
for, if what you are pleased to call a happiness makes you so dismal?"

This smile, accompanied by a provoking glance which destroyed the
consistency of her reserve, revived the youth's feelings. But inspired
by her nature, which often impels a woman to do either too much or too
little under such circumstances, Mademoiselle de Verneuil, having
covered the young man with that brilliant look full of love's
promises, immediately withdrew from his answering expression into a
cold and severe modesty,--a conventional performance by which a woman
sometimes hides a true emotion. In a moment, a single moment, when
each expected to see the eyelids of the other lowered, they had
communicated to one another their real thoughts; but they veiled their
glances as quickly as they had mingled them in that one flash which
convulsed their hearts and enlightened them. Confused at having said
so many things in a single glance, they dared no longer look at each
other. Mademoiselle de Verneuil withdrew into cold politeness, and
seemed to be impatient for the conclusion of the meal.

"Mademoiselle, you must have suffered very much in prison?" said
Madame du Gua.

"Alas, madame, I sometimes think that I am still there."

"Is your escort sent to protect you, mademoiselle, or to watch you?
Are you still suspected by the Republic?"

Mademoiselle felt instinctively that Madame du Gua had no real
interest in her, and the question alarmed her.

"Madame," she replied, "I really do not know myself the exact nature
of my relations to the Republic."

"Perhaps it fears you?" said the young man, rather satirically.

"We must respect her secrets," interposed Madame du Gua.

"Oh, madame, the secrets of a young girl who knows nothing of life but
its misfortunes are not interesting."

"But," answered Madame du Gua, wishing to continue a conversation
which might reveal to her all that she wanted to know, "the First
Consul seems to have excellent intentions. They say that he is going
to remove the disabilities of the /emigres/."

"That is true, madame," she replied, with rather too much eagerness,
"and if so, why do we rouse Brittany and La Vendee? Why bring civil
war into France?"

This eager cry, in which she seemed to share her own reproach, made
the young sailor quiver. He looked earnestly at her, but was unable to
detect either hatred or love upon her face. Her beautiful skin, the
delicacy of which was shown by the color beneath it, was impenetrable.
A sudden and invincible curiosity attracted him to this strange
creature, to whom he was already drawn by violent desires.

"Madame," said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, after a pause, "may I ask if
you are going to Mayenne?"

"Yes, mademoiselle," replied the young man with a questioning look.

"Then, madame," she continued, "as your son serves the Republic" (she
said the words with an apparently indifferent air, but she gave her
companions one of those furtive glances the art of which belongs to
women and diplomatists), "you must fear the Chouans, and an escort is
not to be despised. We are now almost travelling companions, and I
hope you will come with me to Mayenne."

Mother and son hesitated, and seemed to consult each other's faces.

"I am not sure, mademoiselle," said the young man, "that it is prudent
in me to tell you that interests of the highest importance require our
presence to-night in the neighborhood of Fougeres, and we have not yet
been able to find a means of conveyance; but women are so naturally
generous that I am ashamed not to confide in you. Nevertheless," he
added, "before putting ourselves in your hands, I ought to know
whether we shall get out of them safe and sound. In short,
mademoiselle, are you the sovereign or the slave of your Republican
escort? Pardon my frankness, but your position does not seem to me
exactly natural--"

"We live in times, monsieur, when nothing takes place naturally. You
can accept my proposal without anxiety. Above all," she added,
emphasizing her words, "you need fear no treachery in an offer made by
a woman who has no part in political hatreds."

"A journey thus made is not without danger," he said, with a look
which gave significance to that commonplace remark.

"What is it you fear?" she answered, smiling sarcastically. "I see no
peril for any one."

"Is this the woman who a moment ago shared my desires in her eyes?"
thought the young man. "What a tone in her voice! she is laying a trap
for me."

At that instant a shrill cry of an owl which appeared to have perched
on the chimney top vibrated in the air like a warning.

"What does that mean?" said Mademoiselle de Verneuil. "Our journey
together will not begin under favorable auspices. Do owls in these
woods screech by daylight?" she added, with a surprised gesture.

"Sometimes," said the young man, coolly. "Mademoiselle," he continued,
"we may bring you ill-luck; you are thinking of that, I am sure. We
had better not travel together."

These words were said with a calmness and reserve which puzzled
Mademoiselle de Verneuil.

"Monsieur," she replied, with truly aristocratic insolence, "I am far
from wishing to compel you. Pray let us keep the little liberty the
Republic leaves us. If Madame were alone, I should insist--"

The heavy step of a soldier was heard in the passage, and the
Commandant Hulot presently appeared in the doorway with a frowning
brow.

"Come here, colonel," said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, smiling and
pointing to a chair beside her. "Let us talk over the affairs of
State. But what is the matter with you? Are there Chouans here?"

The commandant stood speechless on catching sight of the young man, at
whom he looked with peculiar attention.

"Mamma, will you take some more hare? Mademoiselle, you are not
eating," said the sailor to Francine, seeming busy with the guests.

But Hulot's astonishment and Mademoiselle de Verneuil's close
observation had something too dangerously serious about them to be
ignored.

"What is it, citizen?" said the young man, abruptly; "do you know me?"

"Perhaps I do," replied the Republican.

"You are right; I remember you at the School."

"I never went to any school," said the soldier, roughly. "What school
do you mean?"

"The Polytechnique."

"Ha, ha, those barracks where they expect to make soldiers in
dormitories," said the veteran, whose aversion for officers trained in
that nursery was insurmountable. "To what arm do you belong?"

"I am in the navy."

"Ha!" cried Hulot, smiling vindictively, "how many of your
fellow-students are in the navy? Don't you know," he added in a
serious tone, "that none but the artillery and the engineers graduate
from there?"

The young man was not disconcerted.

"An exception was made in my favor, on account of the name I bear," he
answered. "We are all naval men in our family."

"What is the name of your family, citizen?" asked Hulot.

"Du Gua Saint-Cyr."

"Then you were not killed at Mortagne?"

"He came very near being killed," said Madame du Gua, quickly; "my son
received two balls in--"

"Where are your papers?" asked Hulot, not listening to the mother.

"Do you propose to read them?" said the young man, cavalierly; his
blue eye, keen with suspicion, studied alternately the gloomy face of
the commandant and that of Mademoiselle de Verneuil.

"A stripling like you to pretend to fool me! Come, produce your
papers, or--"

"La! la! citizen, I'm not such a babe as I look to be. Why should I
answer you? Who are you?"

"The commander of this department," answered Hulot.

"Oh, then, of course, the matter is serious; I am taken with arms in
my hand," and he held a glass full of Bordeaux to the soldier.

"I am not thirsty," said Hulot. "Come, your papers."

At that instant the rattle of arms and the tread of men was heard in
the street. Hulot walked to the window and gave a satisfied look which
made Mademoiselle de Verneuil tremble. That sign of interest on her
part seemed to fire the young man, whose face had grown cold and
haughty. After feeling in the pockets of his coat he drew forth an
elegant portfolio and presented certain papers to the commandant,
which the latter read slowly, comparing the description given in the
passport with the face and figure of the young man before him. During
this prolonged examination the owl's cry rose again; but this time
there was no difficulty whatever in recognizing a human voice. The
commandant at once returned the papers to the young man, with a
scoffing look.

"That's all very fine," he said; "but I don't like the music. You will
come with me to headquarters."

"Why do you take him there?" asked Mademoiselle de Verneuil, in a tone
of some excitement.

"My good lady," replied the commandant, with his usual grimace,
"that's none of your business."

Irritated by the tone and words of the old soldier, but still more at
the sort of humiliation offered to her in presence of a man who was
under the influence of her charms, Mademoiselle de Verneuil rose,
abandoning the simple and modest manner she had hitherto adopted; her
cheeks glowed and her eyes shone as she said in a quiet tone but with
a trembling voice: "Tell me, has this young man met all the
requirements of the law?"

"Yes--apparently," said Hulot ironically.

"Then, I desire that you will leave him, /apparently/, alone," she
said. "Are you afraid he will escape you? You are to escort him with
me to Mayenne; he will be in the coach with his mother. Make no
objection; it is my will--Well, what?" she added, noticing Hulot's
grimace; "do you suspect him still?"

"Rather."

"What do you want to do with him?"

"Oh, nothing; balance his head with a little lead perhaps. He's a
giddy-pate!" said the commandant, ironically.

"Are you joking, colonel?" cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil.

"Come!" said the commandant, nodding to the young man, "make haste,
let us be off."

At this impertinence Mademoiselle de Verneuil became calm and smiling.

"Do not go," she said to the young man, protecting him with a gesture
that was full of dignity.

"Oh, what a beautiful head!" said the youth to his mother, who frowned
heavily.

Annoyance, and many other sentiments, aroused and struggled with, did
certainly bring fresh beauties to the young woman's face. Francine,
Madame du Gua, and her son had all risen from their seats.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil hastily advanced and stood between them and
the commandant, who smiled amusedly; then she rapidly unfastened the
frogged fastenings of her jacket. Acting with that blindness which
often seizes women when their self-love is threatened and they are
anxious to show their power, as a child is impatient to play with a
toy that has just been given to it, she took from her bosom a paper
and presented it to Hulot.

"Read that," she said, with a sarcastic laugh.

Then she turned to the young man and gave him, in the excitement of
her triumph, a look in which mischief was mingled with an expression
of love. Their brows cleared, joy flushed each agitated face, and a
thousand contradictory thoughts rose in their hearts. Madame du Gua
noted in that one look far more of love than of pity in Mademoiselle
de Verneuil's intervention; and she was right. The handsome creature
blushed beneath the other woman's gaze, understanding its meaning, and
dropped her eyelids; then, as if aware of some threatening accusation,
she raised her head proudly and defied all eyes. The commandant,
petrified, returned the paper, countersigned by ministers, which
enjoined all authorities to obey the orders of this mysterious lady.
Having done so, he drew his sword, laid it across his knees, broke the
blade, and flung away the pieces.

"Mademoiselle, you probably know what you are about; but a Republican
has his own ideas, and his own dignity. I cannot serve where women
command. The First Consul will receive my resignation to-morrow;
others, who are not of my stripe, may obey you. I do not understand my
orders and therefore I stop short,--all the more because I am supposed
to understand them."

There was silence for a moment, but it was soon broken by the young
lady, who went up to the commandant and held out her hand, saying,
"Colonel, though your beard is somewhat long, you may kiss my hand;
you are, indeed, a man!"

"I flatter myself I am, mademoiselle," he replied, depositing a kiss
upon the hand of this singular young woman rather awkwardly. "As for
you, friend," he said, threatening the young man with his finger, "you
have had a narrow escape this time."

"Commandant," said the youth, "it is time all this nonsense should
cease; I am ready to go with you, if you like, to headquarters."

"And bring your invisible owl, Marche-a-Terre?"

"Who is Marche-a-Terre?" asked the young man, showing all the signs of
genuine surprise.

"Didn't he hoot just now?"

"What did that hooting have to do with me, I should like to know? I
supposed it was your soldiers letting you know of their arrival."

"Nonsense, you did not think that."

"Yes, I did. But do drink that glass of Bordeaux; the wine is good."

Surprised at the natural behaviour of the youth and also by the
frivolity of his manners and the youthfulness of his face, made even
more juvenile by the careful curling of his fair hair, the commandant
hesitated in the midst of his suspicions. He noticed that Madame du
Gua was intently watching the glances that her son gave to
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, and he asked her abruptly: "How old are you,
/citoyenne/?"

"Ah, Monsieur l'officier," she said, "the rules of the Republic are
very severe; must I tell you that I am thirty-eight?"

"May I be shot if I believe it! Marche-a-Terre is here; it was he who
gave that cry; you are Chouans in disguise. God's thunder! I'll search
the inn and make sure of it!"

Just then a hoot, somewhat like those that preceded it, came from the
courtyard; the commandant rushed out, and missed seeing the pallor
that covered Madame du Gua's face as he spoke. Hulot saw at once that
the sound came from a postilion harnessing his horses to the coach,
and he cast aside his suspicions, all the more because it seemed
absurd to suppose that the Chouans would risk themselves in Alencon.
He returned to the house confounded.

"I forgive him now, but later he shall pay dear for the anxiety he has
given us," said the mother to the son, in a low voice, as Hulot
re-entered the room.

The brave old officer showed on his worried face the struggle that
went on in his mind betwixt a stern sense of duty and the natural
kindness of his heart. He kept his gruff air, partly, perhaps, because
he fancied he had deceived himself, but he took the glass of Bordeaux,
and said: "Excuse me, comrade, but your Polytechnique does send such
young officers--"

"The Chouans have younger ones," said the youth, laughing.

"For whom did you take my son?" asked Madame du Gua.

"For the Gars, the leader sent to the Chouans and the Vendeans by the
British cabinet; his real name is Marquis de Montauran."

The commandant watched the faces of the suspected pair, who looked at
each other with a puzzled expression that seemed to say: "Do you know
that name?" "No, do you?" "What is he talking about?" "He's dreaming."

The sudden change in the manner of Marie de Verneuil, and her torpor
as she heard the name of the royalist general was observed by no one
but Francine, the only person to whom the least shade on that young
face was visible. Completely routed, the commandant picked up the bits
of his broken sword, looked at Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whose ardent
beauty was beginning to find its way to his heart, and said: "As for
you, mademoiselle, I take nothing back, and to-morrow these fragments
of my sword will reach Bonaparte, unless--"

"Pooh! what do I care for Bonaparte, or your republic, or the king, or
the Gars?" she cried, scarcely repressing an explosion of ill-bred
temper.

A mysterious emotion, the passion of which gave to her face a dazzling
color, showed that the whole world was nothing to the girl the moment
that one individual was all in all to her. But she suddenly subdued
herself into forced calmness, observing, like a trained actor, that
the spectators were watching her. The commandant rose hastily and went
out. Anxious and agitated, Mademoiselle de Verneuil followed him,
stopped him in the corridor, and said, in an almost solemn tone: "Have
you any good reason to suspect that young man of being the Gars?"

"God's thunder! mademoiselle, that fellow who rode here with you came
back to warn me that the travellers in the mail-coach had all been
murdered by the Chouans; I knew that, but what I didn't know was the
name of the murdered persons,--it was Gua de Saint-Cyr!"

"Oh! if Corentin is at the bottom of all this, nothing surprises me,"
she cried, with a gesture of disgust.

The commandant went his way without daring to look at Mademoiselle de
Verneuil, whose dangerous beauty began to affect him.

"If I had stayed two minutes longer I should have committed the folly
of taking back my sword and escorting her," he was saying to himself
as he went down the stairs.

As Madame du Gua watched the young man, whose eyes were fixed on the
door through which Mademoiselle de Verneuil had passed, she said to
him in a low voice: "You are incorrigible. You will perish through a
woman. A doll can make you forget everything. Why did you allow her to
breakfast with us? Who is a Demoiselle de Verneuil escorted by the
Blues, who accepts a breakfast from strangers and disarms an officer
with a piece of paper hidden in the bosom of her gown like a
love-letter? She is one of those contemptible creatures by whose aid
Fouche expects to lay hold of you, and the paper she showed the
commandant ordered the Blues to assist her against you."

"Eh! madame," he replied in a sharp tone which went to the lady's
heart and turned her pale; "her generous action disproves your
supposition. Pray remember that the welfare of the king is the sole
bond between us. You, who have had Charette at your feet must find the
world without him empty; are you not living to avenge him?"

The lady stood still and pensive, like one who sees from the shore the
wreck of all her treasures, and only the more eagerly longs for the
vanished property.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil re-entered the room; the young man exchanged
a smile with her and gave her a glance full of gentle meaning. However
uncertain the future might seem, however ephemeral their union, the
promises of their sudden love were only the more endearing to them.
Rapid as the glance was, it did not escape the sagacious eye of Madame
du Gua, who instantly understood it; her brow clouded, and she was
unable to wholly conceal her jealous anger. Francine was observing
her; she saw the eyes glitter, the cheeks flush; she thought she
perceived a diabolical spirit in the face, stirred by some sudden and
terrible revulsion. But lightning is not more rapid, nor death more
prompt than this brief exhibition of inward emotion. Madame du Gua
recovered her lively manner with such immediate self-possession that
Francine fancied herself mistaken. Nevertheless, having once perceived
in this woman a violence of feeling that was fully equal to that of
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, she trembled as she foresaw the clash with
which such natures might come together, and the girl shuddered when
she saw Mademoiselle de Verneuil go up to the young man with a
passionate look and, taking him by the hand, draw him close beside her
and into the light, with a coquettish glance that was full of
witchery.

"Now," she said, trying to read his eyes, "own to me that you are not
the citizen du Gua Saint-Cyr."

"Yes, I am, mademoiselle."

"But he and his mother were killed yesterday."

"I am very sorry for that," he replied, laughing. "However that may
be, I am none the less under a great obligation to you, for which I
shall always feel the deepest gratitude and only wish I could prove it
to you."

"I thought I was saving an /emigre/, but I love you better as a
Republican."

The words escaped her lips as it were impulsively; she became
confused; even her eyes blushed, and her face bore no other expression
than one of exquisite simplicity of feeling; she softly released the
young man's hand, not from shame at having pressed it, but because of
a thought too weighty, it seemed, for her heart to bear, leaving him
drunk with hope. Suddenly she appeared to regret this freedom,
permissible as it might be under the passing circumstances of a
journey. She recovered her conventional manner, bowed to the lady and
her son, and taking Francine with her, left the room. When they
reached their own chamber Francine wrung her hands and tossed her
arms, as she looked at her mistress, saying: "Ah, Marie, what a crowd
of things in a moment of time! who but you would have such
adventures?"

Mademoiselle de Verneuil sprang forward and clasped Francine round the
neck.

"Ah! this is life indeed--I am in heaven!"

"Or hell," retorted Francine.

"Yes, hell if you like!" cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil. "Here, give
me your hand; feel my heart, how it beats. There's fever in my veins;
the whole world is now a mere nothing to me! How many times have I not
seen that man in my dreams! Oh! how beautiful his head is--how his
eyes sparkle!"

"Will he love you?" said the simple peasant-woman, in a quivering
voice, her face full of sad foreboding.

"How can you ask me that!" cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil. "But,
Francine, tell me," she added throwing herself into a pose that was
half serious, half comic, "will it be very hard to love me?"

"No, but will he love you always?" replied Francine, smiling.

They looked at each other for a moment speechless,--Francine at
revealing so much knowledge of life, and Marie at the perception,
which now came to her for the first time, of a future of happiness in
her passion. She seemed to herself hanging over a gulf of which she
had wanted to know the depth, and listening to the fall of the stone
she had flung, at first heedlessly, into it.

"Well, it is my own affair," she said, with the gesture of a gambler.
"I should never pity a betrayed woman; she has no one but herself to
blame if she is abandoned. I shall know how to keep, either living or
dead, the man whose heart has once been mine. But," she added, with
some surprise and after a moment's silence, "where did you get your
knowledge of love, Francine?"

"Mademoiselle," said the peasant-woman, hastily, "hush, I hear steps
in the passage."

"Ah! not /his/ steps!" said Marie, listening. "But you are evading an
answer; well, well, I'll wait for it, or guess it."

Francine was right, however. Three taps on the door interrupted the
conversation. Captain Merle appeared, after receiving Mademoiselle de
Verneuil's permission to enter.

With a military salute to the lady, whose beauty dazzled him, the
soldier ventured on giving her a glance, but he found nothing better
to say than: "Mademoiselle, I am at your orders."

"Then you are to be my protector, in place of the commander, who
retires; is that so?"

"No, my superior is the adjutant-major Gerard, who has sent me here."

"Your commandant must be very much afraid of me," she said.

"Beg pardon, mademoiselle, Hulot is afraid of nothing. But women, you
see, are not in his line; it ruffled him to have a general in a
mob-cap."

"And yet," continued Mademoiselle de Verneuil, "it was his duty to
obey his superiors. I like subordination, and I warn you that I shall
allow no one to disobey me."

"That would be difficult," replied Merle, gallantly.

"Let us consult," said Mademoiselle de Verneuil. "You can get fresh
troops here and accompany me to Mayenne, which I must reach this
evening. Shall we find other soldiers there, so that I might go on at
once, without stopping at Mayenne? The Chouans are quite ignorant of
our little expedition. If we travel at night, we can avoid meeting any
number of them, and so escape an attack. Do you think this feasible?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"What sort of road is it between Mayenne and Fougeres?"

"Rough; all up and down, a regular squirrel-wheel."

"Well, let us start at once. As we have nothing to fear near Alencon,
you can go before me; we'll join you soon."

"One would think she had seen ten years' service," thought Merle, as
he departed. "Hulot is mistaken; that young girl is not earning her
living out of a feather-bed. Ten thousand carriages! if I want to be
adjutant-major I mustn't be such a fool as to mistake Saint-Michael
for the devil."

During Mademoiselle de Verneuil's conference with the captain,
Francine had slipped out for the purpose of examining, through a
window of the corridor, the spot in the courtyard which had excited
her curiosity on arriving at the inn. She watched the stable and the
heaps of straw with the absorption of one who was saying her prayers
to the Virgin, and she presently saw Madame du Gua approaching
Marche-a-Terre with the precaution of a cat that dislikes to wet its
feet. When the Chouan caught sight of the lady, he rose and stood
before her in an attitude of deep respect. This singular circumstance
aroused Francine's curiosity; she slipped into the courtyard and along
the walls, avoiding Madame du Gua's notice, and trying to hide herself
behind the stable door. She walked on tiptoe, scarcely daring to
breathe, and succeeded in posting herself close to Marche-a-Terre,
without exciting his attention.

"If, after all this information," the lady was saying to the Chouan,
"it proves not to be her real name, you are to fire upon her without
pity, as you would on a mad dog."

"Agreed!" said Marche-a-Terre.

The lady left him. The Chouan replaced his red woollen cap upon his
head, remained standing, and was scratching his ear as if puzzled when
Francine suddenly appeared before him, apparently by magic.

"Saint Anne of Auray!" he exclaimed. Then he dropped his whip, clasped
his hands, and stood as if in ecstasy. A faint color illuminated his
coarse face, and his eyes shone like diamonds dropped on a muck-heap.
"Is it really the brave girl from Cottin?" he muttered, in a voice so
smothered that he alone heard it. "You /are/ fine," he said, after a
pause, using the curious word, "godaine," a superlative in the dialect
of those regions used by lovers to express the combination of fine
clothes and beauty.

"I daren't touch you," added Marche-a-Terre, putting out his big hand
nevertheless, as if to weigh the gold chain which hung round her neck
and below her waist.

"You had better not, Pierre," replied Francine, inspired by the
instinct which makes a woman despotic when not oppressed. She drew
back haughtily, after enjoying the Chouan's surprise; but she
compensated for the harshness of her words by the softness of her
glance, saying, as she once more approached him: "Pierre, that lady
was talking to you about my young mistress, wasn't she?"

Marche-a-Terre was silent; his face struggled, like the dawn, between
clouds and light. He looked in turn at Francine, at the whip he had
dropped, and at the chain, which seemed to have as powerful an
attraction for him as the Breton girl herself. Then, as if to put a
stop to his own uneasiness, he picked up his whip and still kept
silence.

"Well, it is easy to see that that lady told you to kill my mistress,"
resumed Francine, who knew the faithful discretion of the peasant, and
wished to relieve his scruples.

Marche-a-Terre lowered his head significantly. To the Cottin girl that
was answer enough.

"Very good, Pierre," she said; "if any evil happens to her, if a hair
of her head is injured, you and I will have seen each other for the
last time; for I shall be in heaven, and you will go to hell."

The possessed of devils whom the Church in former days used to
exorcise with great pomp were not more shaken and agitated than
Marche-a-Terre at this prophecy, uttered with a conviction that gave
it certainty. His glance, which at first had a character of savage
tenderness, counteracted by a fanaticism as powerful in his soul as
love, suddenly became surly, as he felt the imperious manner of the
girl he had long since chosen. Francine interpreted his silence in her
own way.

"Won't you do anything for my sake?" she said in a tone of reproach.

At these words the Chouan cast a glance at his mistress from eyes that
were black as a crow's wing.

"Are you free?" he asked in a growl that Francine alone could have
understood.

"Should I be here if I were not?" she replied indignantly. "But you,
what are you doing here? Still playing bandit, still roaming the
country like a mad dog wanting to bite. Oh! Pierre, if you were wise,
you would come with me. This beautiful young lady, who, I ought to
tell you, was nursed when a baby in our home, has taken care of me. I
have two hundred francs a year from a good investment. And
Mademoiselle has bought me my uncle Thomas's big house for fifteen
hundred francs, and I have saved two thousand beside."

But her smiles and the announcement of her wealth fell dead before the
dogged immovability of the Chouan.

"The priests have told us to go to war," he replied. "Every Blue we
shoot earns one indulgence."

"But suppose the Blues shoot you?"

He answered by letting his arms drop at his sides, as if regretting
the poverty of the offering he should thus make to God and the king.

"What will become of me?" exclaimed the young girl, sorrowfully.

Marche-a-Terre looked at her stupidly; his eyes seemed to enlarge;
tears rolled down his hairy cheeks upon the goatskin which covered
him, and a low moan came from his breast.

"Saint Anne of Auray!--Pierre, is this all you have to say to me after
a parting of seven years? You have changed indeed."

"I love you the same as ever," said the Chouan, in a gruff voice.

"No," she whispered, "the king is first."

"If you look at me like that I shall go," he said.

"Well, then, adieu," she replied, sadly.

"Adieu," he repeated.

He seized her hand, wrung it, kissed it, made the sign of the cross,
and rushed into the stable, like a dog who fears that his bone will be
taken from him.

"Pille-Miche," he said to his comrade. "Where's your tobacco-box?"

"Ho! /sacre bleu/! what a fine chain!" cried Pille-Miche, fumbling in
a pocket constructed in his goatskin.

Then he held out to Marche-a-Terre the little horn in which Bretons
put the finely powdered tobacco which they prepare themselves during
the long winter nights. The Chouan raised his thumb and made a hollow
in the palm of his hand, after the manner in which an "Invalide"
takes his tobacco; then he shook the horn, the small end of which
Pille-Miche had unscrewed. A fine powder fell slowly from the little
hole pierced in the point of this Breton utensil. Marche-a-Terre went
through the same process seven or eight times silently, as if the
powder had power to change the current of his thoughts. Suddenly he
flung the horn to Pille-Miche with a gesture of despair, and caught up
a gun which was hidden in the straw.

"Seven or eight shakes at once! I suppose you think that costs
nothing!" said the stingy Pille-Miche.

"Forward!" cried Marche-a-Terre in a hoarse voice. "There's work
before us."

Thirty or more Chouans who were sleeping in the straw under the
mangers, raised their heads, saw Marche-a-Terre on his feet, and
disappeared instantly through a door which led to the garden, from
which it was easy to reach the fields.

When Francine left the stable she found the mail-coach ready to start.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil and her new fellow-travellers were already in
it. The girl shuddered as she saw her young mistress sitting side by
side with the woman who had just ordered her death. The young man had
taken his seat facing Marie, and as soon as Francine was in hers the
heavy vehicle started at a good pace.

The sun had swept away the gray autumnal mists, and its rays were
brightening the gloomy landscape with a look of youth and holiday.
Many lovers fancy that such chance accidents of the sky are
premonitions. Francine was surprised at the strange silence which fell
upon the travellers. Mademoiselle de Verneuil had recovered her cold
manner, and sat with her eyes lowered, her head slightly inclined, and
her hands hidden under a sort of mantle in which she had wrapped
herself. If she raised her eyes it was only to look at the passing
scenery. Certain of being admired, she rejected admiration; but her
apparent indifference was evidently more coquettish than natural.
Purity, which gives such harmony to the diverse expressions by which a
simple soul reveals itself, could lend no charm to a being whose every
instinct predestined her to the storms of passion. Yielding himself up
to the pleasures of this dawning intrigue, the young man did not try
to explain the contradictions which were obvious between the coquetry
and the enthusiasm of this singular young girl. Her assumed
indifference allowed him to examine at his ease a face which was now
as beautiful in its calmness as it had been when agitated. Like the
rest of us, he was not disposed to question the sources of his
enjoyment.

It is difficult for a pretty woman to avoid the glances of her
companions in a carriage when their eyes fasten upon her as a visible
distraction to the monotony of a journey. Happy, therefore, in being
able to satisfy the hunger of his dawning passion, without offence or
avoidance on the part of its object, the young man studied the pure
and brilliant lines of the girl's head and face. To him they were a
picture. Sometimes the light brought out the transparent rose of the
nostrils and the double curve which united the nose with the upper
lip; at other times a pale glint of sunshine illuminated the tints of
the skin, pearly beneath the eyes and round the mouth, rosy on the
cheeks, and ivory-white about the temples and throat. He admired the
contrasts of light and shade caused by the masses of black hair
surrounding her face and giving it an ephemeral grace,--for all is
fleeting in a woman; her beauty of to-day is often not that of
yesterday, fortunately for herself, perhaps! The young man, who was
still at an age when youth delights in the nothings which are the all
of love, watched eagerly for each movement of the eyelids, and the
seductive rise and fall of her bosom as she breathed. Sometimes he
fancied, suiting the tenor of his thoughts, that he could see a
meaning in the expression of the eyes and the imperceptible inflection
of the lips. Every gesture betrayed to him the soul, every motion a
new aspect of the young girl. If a thought stirred those mobile
features, if a sudden blush suffused the cheeks, or a smile brought
life into the face, he found a fresh delight in trying to discover the
secrets of this mysterious creature. Everything about her was a snare
to the soul and a snare to the senses. Even the silence that fell
between them, far from raising an obstacle to the understanding of
their hearts, became the common ground for mutual thoughts. But after
a while the many looks in which their eyes encountered each other
warned Marie de Verneuil that the silence was compromising her, and
she turned to Madame du Gua with one of those commonplace remarks
which open the way to conversation; but even in so doing she included
the young man.

"Madame," she said, "how could you put your son into the navy? have
you not doomed yourself to perpetual anxiety?"

"Mademoiselle, the fate of women, of mothers, I should say, is to
tremble for the safety of their dear ones."

"Your son is very like you."

"Do you think so, mademoiselle?"

The smile with which the young man listened to these remarks increased
the vexation of his pretended mother. Her hatred grew with every
passionate glance he turned on Marie. Silence or conversation, all
increased the dreadful wrath which she carefully concealed beneath a
cordial manner.

"Mademoiselle," said the young man, "you are quite mistaken. Naval men
are not more exposed to danger than soldiers. Women ought not to
dislike the navy; we sailors have a merit beyond that of the military,
--we are faithful to our mistresses."

"Oh, from necessity," replied Mademoiselle de Verneuil, laughing.

"But even so, it is fidelity," said Madame du Gua, in a deep voice.

The conversation grew lively, touching upon subjects that were
interesting to none but the three travellers, for under such
circumstances intelligent persons given new meanings to commonplace
talk; but every word, insignificant as it might seem, was a mutual
interrogation, hiding the desires, hopes, and passions which agitated
them. Marie's cleverness and quick perception (for she was fully on
her guard) showed Madame du Gua that calumny and treachery could alone
avail to triumph over a rival as formidable through her intellect as
by her beauty. The mail-coach presently overtook the escort, and then
advanced more slowly. The young man, seeing a long hill before them,
proposed to the young lady that they should walk. The friendly
politeness of his offer decided her, and her consent flattered him.

"Is Madame of our opinion?" she said, turning to Madame du Gua. "Will
she walk, too?"

"Coquette!" said the lady to herself, as she left the coach.

Marie and the young man walked together, but a little apart. The
sailor, full of ardent desires, was determined to break the reserve
that checked him, of which, however, he was not the dupe. He fancied
that he could succeed by dallying with the young lady in that tone of
courteous amiability and wit, sometimes frivolous, sometimes serious,
which characterized the men of the exiled aristocracy. But the smiling
Parisian beauty parried him so mischievously, and rejected his
frivolities with such disdain, evidently preferring the stronger ideas
and enthusiasms which he betrayed from time to time in spite of
himself, that he presently began to understand the true way of
pleasing her. The conversation then changed. He realized the hopes her
expressive face had given him; yet, as he did so, new difficulties
arose, and he was still forced to suspend his judgment on a girl who
seemed to take delight in thwarting him, a siren with whom he grew
more and more in love. After yielding to the seduction of her beauty,
he was still more attracted to her mysterious soul, with a curiosity
which Marie perceived and took pleasure in exciting. Their intercourse
assumed, insensibly, a character of intimacy far removed from the tone
of indifference which Mademoiselle de Verneuil endeavored in vain to
give to it.

Though Madame du Gua had followed the lovers, the latter had
unconsciously walked so much more rapidly than she that a distance of
several hundred feet soon separated them. The charming pair trod the
fine sand beneath their feet, listening with childlike delight to the
union of their footsteps, happy in being wrapped by the same ray of a
sunshine that seemed spring-like, in breathing with the same breath
autumnal perfumes laden with vegetable odors which seemed a
nourishment brought by the breezes to their dawning love. Though to
them it may have been a mere circumstance of their fortuitous meeting,
yet the sky, the landscape, the season of the year, did communicate to
their emotions a tinge of melancholy gravity which gave them an
element of passion. They praised the weather and talked of its beauty;
then of their strange encounter, of the coming rupture of an
intercourse so delightful; of the ease with which, in travelling,
friendships, lost as soon as made, are formed. After this last remark,
the young man profited by what seemed to be a tacit permission to make
a few tender confidences, and to risk an avowal of love like a man who
was not unaccustomed to such situations.

"Have you noticed, mademoiselle," he said, "how little the feelings of
the heart follow the old conventional rules in the days of terror in
which we live? Everything about us bears the stamp of suddenness. We
love in a day, or we hate on the strength of a single glance. We are
bound to each other for life in a moment, or we part with the celerity
of death itself. All things are hurried, like the convulsions of the
nation. In the midst of such dangers as ours the ties that bind should
be stronger than under the ordinary course of life. In Paris during
the Terror, every one came to know the full meaning of a clasp of the
hand as men do on a battle-field."

"People felt the necessity of living fast and ardently," she answered,
"for they had little time to live." Then, with a glance at her
companion which seemed to tell him that the end of their short
intercourse was approaching, she added, maliciously: "You are very
well informed as to the affairs of life, for a young man who has just
left the Ecole Polytechnique!"

"What are you thinking of me?" he said after a moment's silence. "Tell
me frankly, without disguise."

"You wish to acquire the right to speak to me of myself," she said
laughing.

"You do not answer me," he went on after a slight pause. "Take care,
silence is sometimes significant."

"Do you think I cannot guess all that you would like to say to me?
Good heavens! you have already said enough."

"Oh, if we understand each other," he replied, smiling, "I have
obtained more than I dared hope for."

She smiled in return so graciously that she seemed to accept the
courteous struggle into which all men like to draw a woman. They
persuaded themselves, half in jest, half in earnest, that they never
could be more to each other than they were at that moment. The young
man fancied, therefore, he might give reins to a passion that could
have no future; the young woman felt she might smile upon it. Marie
suddenly struck her foot against a stone and stumbled.

"Take my arm," said her companion.

"It seems I must," she replied; "you would be too proud if I refused;
you would fancy I feared you."

"Ah, mademoiselle," he said, pressing her arm against his heart that
she might feel the beating of it, "you flatter my pride by granting
such a favor."

"Well, the readiness with which I do so will cure your illusions."

"Do you wish to save me from the danger of the emotions you cause?"

"Stop, stop!" she cried; "do not try to entangle me in such boudoir
riddles. I don't like to find the wit of fools in a man of your
character. See! here we are beneath the glorious sky, in the open
country; before us, above us, all is grand. You wish to tell me that I
am beautiful, do you not? Well, your eyes have already told me so;
besides, I know it; I am not a woman whom mere compliments can please.
But perhaps you would like," this with satirical emphasis, "to talk
about your /sentiments/? Do you think me so simple as to believe that
sudden sympathies are powerful enough to influence a whole life
through the recollections of one morning?"

"Not the recollections of a morning," he said, "but those of a
beautiful woman who has shown herself generous."

"You forget," she retorted, laughing, "half my attractions,--a
mysterious woman, with everything odd about her, name, rank,
situation, freedom of thought and manners."

"You are not mysterious to me!" he exclaimed. "I have fathomed you;
there is nothing that could be added to your perfections except a
little more faith in the love you inspire."

"Ah, my poor child of eighteen, what can you know of love?" she said
smiling. "Well, well, so be it!" she added, "it is a fair subject of
conversation, like the weather when one pays a visit. You shall find
that I have neither false modesty nor petty fears. I can hear the word
love without blushing; it has been so often said to me without one
echo of the heart that I think it quite unmeaning. I have met with it
everywhere, in books, at the theatre, in society,--yes, everywhere,
and never have I found in it even a semblance of its magnificent
ideal."

"Did you seek that ideal?"

"Yes."

The word was said with such perfect ease and freedom that the young
man made a gesture of surprise and looked at Marie fixedly, as if he
had suddenly changed his opinion on her character and real position.

"Mademoiselle," he said with ill-concealed devotion, "are you maid or
wife, angel or devil?"

"All," she replied, laughing. "Isn't there something diabolic and also
angelic in a young girl who has never loved, does not love, and
perhaps will never love?"

"Do you think yourself happy thus?" he asked with a free and easy tone
and manner, as though already he felt less respect for her.

"Oh, happy, no," she replied. "When I think that I am alone, hampered
by social conventions that make me deceitful, I envy the privileges of
a man. But when I also reflect on the means which nature has bestowed
on us women to catch and entangle you men in the invisible meshes of a
power which you cannot resist, then the part assigned to me in the
world is not displeasing to me. And then again, suddenly, it does seem
very petty, and I feel that I should despise a man who allowed himself
to be duped by such vulgar seductions. No sooner do I perceive our
power and like it, than I know it to be horrible and I abhor it.
Sometimes I feel within me that longing towards devotion which makes
my sex so nobly beautiful; and then I feel a desire, which consumes
me, for dominion and power. Perhaps it is the natural struggle of the
good and the evil principle in which all creatures live here below.
Angel or devil! you have expressed it. Ah! to-day is not the first
time that I have recognized my double nature. But we women understand
better than you men can do our own shortcomings. We have an instinct
which shows us a perfection in all things to which, nevertheless, we
fail to attain. But," she added, sighing as she glanced at the sky;
"that which enhances us in your eyes is--"

"Is what?" he said.

"--that we are all struggling, more or less," she answered, "against a
thwarted destiny."

"Mademoiselle, why should we part to-night?"

"Ah!" she replied, smiling at the passionate look which he gave her,
"let us get into the carriage; the open air does not agree with us."

Marie turned abruptly; the young man followed her, and pressed her arm
with little respect, but in a manner that expressed his imperious
admiration. She hastened her steps. Seeing that she wished to escape
an importune declaration, he became the more ardent; being determined
to win a first favor from this woman, he risked all and said, looking
at her meaningly:--

"Shall I tell you a secret?"

"Yes, quickly, if it concerns you."

"I am not in the service of the Republic. Where are you going? I shall
follow you."

At the words Marie trembled violently. She withdrew her arm and
covered her face with both hands to hide either the flush or the
pallor of her cheeks; then she suddenly uncovered her face and said in
a voice of deep emotion:--

"Then you began as you would have ended, by deceiving me?"

"Yes," he said.

At this answer she turned again from the carriage, which was now
overtaking them, and began to almost run along the road.

"I thought," he said, following her, "that the open air did not agree
with you?"

"Oh! it has changed," she replied in a grave tone, continuing to walk
on, a prey to agitating thoughts.

"You do not answer me," said the young man, his heart full of the soft
expectation of coming pleasure.

"Oh!" she said, in a strained voice, "the tragedy begins."

"What tragedy?" he asked.

She stopped short, looked at the young student from head to foot with
a mingled expression of fear and curiosity; then she concealed her
feelings that were agitating her under the mask of an impenetrable
calmness, showing that for a girl of her age she had great experience
of life.

"Who are you?" she said,--"but I know already; when I first saw you I
suspected it. You are the royalist leader whom they call the Gars. The
ex-bishop of Autun was right in saying we should always believe in
presentiments which give warning of evil."

"What interest have you in knowing the Gars?"

"What interest has he in concealing himself from me who have already
saved his life?" She began to laugh, but the merriment was forced. "I
have wisely prevented you from saying that you love me. Let me tell
you, monsieur, that I abhor you. I am republican, you are royalist; I
would deliver you up if you were not under my protection, and if I had
not already saved your life, and if--" she stopped. These violent
extremes of feeling and the inward struggle which she no longer
attempted to conceal alarmed the young man, who tried, but in vain, to
observe her calmly. "Let us part here at once,--I insist upon it;
farewell!" she said. She turned hastily back, made a few steps, and
then returned to him. "No, no," she continued, "I have too great an
interest in knowing who you are. Hide nothing from me; tell me the
truth. Who are you? for you are no more a pupil of the Ecole
Polytechnique than you are eighteen years old."

"I am a sailor, ready to leave the ocean and follow you wherever your
imagination may lead you. If I have been so lucky as to rouse your
curiosity in any particular I shall be very careful not to lessen it.
Why mingle the serious affairs of real life with the life of the heart
in which we are beginning to understand each other?"

"Our souls might have understood each other," she said in a grave
voice. "But I have no right to exact your confidence. You will never
know the extent of your obligations to me; I shall not explain them."

They walked a few steps in silence.

"My life does interest you," said the young man.

"Monsieur, I implore you, tell me your name or else be silent. You are
a child," she added, with an impatient movement of her shoulders, "and
I feel a pity for you."

The obstinacy with which she insisted on knowing his name made the
pretended sailor hesitate between prudence and love. The vexation of a
desired woman is powerfully attractive; her anger, like her
submission, is imperious; many are the fibres she touches in a man's
heart, penetrating and subjugating it. Was this scene only another
aspect of Mademoiselle de Verneuil's coquetry? In spite of his sudden
passion the unnamed lover had the strength to distrust a woman thus
bent on forcing from him a secret of life and death.

"Why has my rash indiscretion, which sought to give a future to our
present meeting, destroyed the happiness of it?" he said, taking her
hand, which she left in his unconsciously.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who seemed to be in real distress, was
silent.

"How have I displeased you?" he said. "What can I do to soothe you?"

"Tell me your name."

He made no reply, and they walked some distance in silence. Suddenly
Mademoiselle de Verneuil stopped short, like one who has come to some
serious determination.

"Monsieur le Marquis de Montauran," she said, with dignity, but
without being able to conceal entirely the nervous trembling of her
features, "I desire to do you a great service, whatever it may cost
me. We part here. The coach and its escort are necessary for your
protection, and you must continue your journey in it. Fear nothing
from the Republicans; they are men of honor, and I shall give the
adjutant certain orders which he will faithfully execute. As for me, I
shall return on foot to Alencon with my maid, and take a few of the
soldiers with me. Listen to what I say, for your life depends on it.
If, before you reach a place of safety, you meet that odious man you
saw in my company at the inn, escape at once, for he will instantly
betray you. As for me,--" she paused, "as for me, I fling myself back
into the miseries of life. Farewell, monsieur, may you be happy;
farewell."

She made a sign to Captain Merle, who was just then reaching the brow
of the hill behind her. The marquis was taken unawares by her sudden
action.

"Stop!" he cried, in a tone of despair that was well acted.

This singular caprice of a girl for whom he would at that instant have
thrown away his life so surprised him that he invented, on the spur of
the moment, a fatal fiction by which to hide his name and satisfy the
curiosity of his companion.

"You have almost guessed the truth," he said. "I am an /emigre/,
condemned to death, and my name is Vicomte de Bauvan. Love of my
country has brought me back to France to join my brother. I hope to be
taken off the list of /emigres/ through the influence of Madame de
Beauharnais, now the wife of the First Consul; but if I fail in this,
I mean to die on the soil of my native land, fighting beside my friend
Montauran. I am now on my way secretly, by means of a passport he has
sent me, to learn if any of my property in Brittany is still
unconfiscated."

While the young man spoke Mademoiselle de Verneuil examined him with a
penetrating eye. She tried at first to doubt his words, but being by
nature confiding and trustful, she slowly regained an expression of
serenity, and said eagerly, "Monsieur, are you telling me the exact
truth?"

"Yes, the exact truth," replied the young man, who seemed to have no
conscience in his dealings with women.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil gave a deep sigh, like a person who returns
to life.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, "I am very happy."

"Then you hate that poor Montauran?"

"No," she said; "but I could not make you understand my meaning. I was
not willing that /you/ should meet the dangers from which I will try
to protect him,--since he is your friend."

"Who told you that Montauran was in danger?"

"Ah, monsieur, even if I had not come from Paris, where his enterprise
is the one thing talked of, the commandant at Alencon said enough to
show his danger."

"Then let me ask you how you expect to save him from it."

"Suppose I do not choose to answer," she replied, with the haughty air
that women often assume to hide an emotion. "What right have you to
know my secrets?"

"The right of a man who loves you."

"Already?" she said. "No, you do not love me. I am only an object of
passing gallantry to you,--that is all. I am clear-sighted; did I not
penetrate your disguise at once? A woman who knows anything of good
society could not be misled, in these days, by a pupil of the
Polytechnique who uses choice language, and conceals as little as you
do the manners of a /grand seigneur/ under the mask of a Republican.
There is a trifle of powder left in your hair, and a fragrance of
nobility clings to you which a woman of the world cannot fail to
detect. Therefore, fearing that the man whom you saw accompanying me,
who has all the shrewdness of a woman, might make the same discovery,
I sent him away. Monsieur, let me tell you that a true Republican
officer just from the Polytechnique would not have made love to me as
you have done, and would not have taken me for a pretty adventuress.
Allow me, Monsieur de Bauvan, to preach you a little sermon from a
woman's point of view. Are you too juvenile to know that of all the
creatures of my sex the most difficult to subdue is that same
adventuress,--she whose price is ticketed and who is weary of
pleasure. That sort of woman requires, they tell me, constant
seduction; she yields only to her own caprices; any attempt to please
her argues, I should suppose, great conceit on the part of a man. But
let us put aside that class of women, among whom you have been good
enough to rank me; you ought to understand that a young woman,
handsome, brilliant, and of noble birth (for, I suppose, you will
grant me those advantages), does not sell herself, and can only be won
by the man who loves her in one way. You understand me? If she loves
him and is willing to commit a folly, she must be justified by great
and heroic reasons. Forgive me this logic, rare in my sex; but for the
sake of your happiness,--and my own," she added, dropping her head,
--"I will not allow either of us to deceive the other, nor will I
permit you to think that Mademoiselle de Verneuil, angel or devil, maid
or wife, is capable of being seduced by commonplace gallantry."

"Mademoiselle," said the marquis, whose surprise, though he concealed
it, was extreme, and who at once became a man of the great world, "I
entreat you to believe that I take you to be a very noble person, full
of the highest sentiments, or--a charming girl, as you please."

"I don't ask all that," she said, laughing. "Allow me to keep my
incognito. My mask is better than yours, and it pleases me to wear it,
--if only to discover whether those who talk to me of love are
sincere. Therefore, beware of me! Monsieur," she cried, catching his
arm vehemently, "listen to me; if you were able to prove that your
love is true, nothing, no human power, could part us. Yes, I would
fain unite myself to the noble destiny of some great man, and marry a
vast ambition, glorious hopes! Noble hearts are never faithless, for
constancy is in their fibre; I should be forever loved, forever happy,
--I would make my body a stepping-stone by which to raise the man who
loved me; I would sacrifice all things to him, bear all things from
him, and love him forever,--even if he ceased to love me. I have never
before dared to confess to another heart the secrets of mine, nor the
passionate enthusiasms which exhaust me; but I tell you something of
them now because, as soon as I have seen you in safety, we shall part
forever."

"Part? never!" he cried, electrified by the tones of that vigorous
soul which seemed to be fighting against some overwhelming thought.

"Are you free?" she said, with a haughty glance which subdued him.

"Free! yes, except for the sentence of death which hangs over me."

She added presently, in a voice full of bitter feeling: "If all this
were not a dream, a glorious life might indeed be ours. But I have
been talking folly; let us beware of committing any. When I think of
all you would have to be before you could rate me at my proper value I
doubt everything--"

"I doubt nothing if you will only grant me--"

"Hush!" she cried, hearing a note of true passion in his voice, "the
open air is decidedly disagreeing with us; let us return to the
coach."

That vehicle soon came up; they took their places and drove on several
miles in total silence. Both had matter for reflection, but henceforth
their eyes no longer feared to meet. Each now seemed to have an equal
interest in observing the other, and in mutually hiding important
secrets; but for all that they were drawn together by one and the same
impulse, which now, as a result of this interview, assumed the
dimensions of a passion. They recognized in each other qualities which
promised to heighten all the pleasures to be derived from either their
contest or their union. Perhaps both of them, living a life of
adventure, had reached the singular moral condition in which, either
from weariness or in defiance of fate, the mind rejects serious
reflection and flings itself on chance in pursuing an enterprise
precisely because the issues of chance are unknown, and the interest
of expecting them vivid. The moral nature, like the physical nature,
has its abysses into which strong souls love to plunge, risking their
future as gamblers risk their fortune. Mademoiselle de Verneuil and
the young marquis had obtained a revelation of each other's minds as a
consequence of this interview, and their intercourse thus took rapid
strides, for the sympathy of their souls succeeded to that of their
senses. Besides, the more they felt fatally drawn to each other, the
more eager they were to study the secret action of their minds. The
so-called Vicomte de Bauvan, surprised at the seriousness of the
strange girl's ideas, asked himself how she could possibly combine
such acquired knowledge of life with so much youth and freshness. He
thought he discovered an extreme desire to appear chaste in the
modesty and reserve of her attitudes. He suspected her of playing a
part; he questioned the nature of his own pleasure; and ended by
choosing to consider her a clever actress. He was right; Mademoiselle
de Verneuil, like other women of the world, grew the more reserved the
more she felt the warmth of her own feelings, assuming with perfect
naturalness the appearance of prudery, beneath which such women veil
their desires. They all wish to offer themselves as virgins on love's
altar; and if they are not so, the deception they seek to practise is
at least a homage which they pay to their lovers. These thoughts
passed rapidly through the mind of the young man and gratified him. In
fact, for both, this mutual examination was an advance in their
intercourse, and the lover soon came to that phase of passion in which
a man finds in the defects of his mistress a reason for loving her the
more.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil was thoughtful. Perhaps her imagination led
her over a greater extent of the future than that of the young
/emigre/, who was merely following one of the many impulses of his
life as a man; whereas Marie was considering a lifetime, thinking to
make it beautiful, and to fill it with happiness and with grand and
noble sentiments. Happy in such thoughts, more in love with her ideal
than with the actual reality, with the future rather than with the
present, she desired now to return upon her steps so as to better
establish her power. In this she acted instinctively, as all women
act. Having agreed with her soul that she would give herself wholly
up, she wished--if we may so express it--to dispute every fragment of
the gift; she longed to take back from the past all her words and
looks and acts and make them more in harmony with the dignity of a
woman beloved. Her eyes at times expressed a sort of terror as she
thought of the interview just over, in which she had shown herself
aggressive. But as she watched the face before her, instinct with
power, and felt that a being so strong must also be generous, she
glowed at the thought that her part in life would be nobler than that
of most women, inasmuch as her lover was a man of character, a man
condemned to death, who had come to risk his life in making war
against the Republic. The thought of occupying such a soul to the
exclusion of all rivals gave a new aspect to many matters. Between the
moment, only five hours earlier, when she composed her face and toned
her voice to allure the young man, and the present moment, when she
was able to convulse him with a look, there was all the difference to
her between a dead world and a living one.

In the condition of soul in which Mademoiselle de Verneuil now existed
external life seemed to her a species of phantasmagoria. The carriage
passed through villages and valleys and mounted hills which left no
impressions on her mind. They reached Mayenne; the soldiers of the
escort were changed; Merle spoke to her; she replied; they crossed the
whole town and were again in the open country; but the faces, houses,
streets, landscape, men, swept past her like the figments of a dream.
Night came, and Marie was travelling beneath a diamond sky, wrapped in
soft light, and yet she was not aware that darkness had succeeded day;
that Mayenne was passed; that Fougeres was near; she knew not even
where she was going. That she should part in a few hours from the man
she had chosen, and who, she believed, had chosen her, was not for her
a possibility. Love is the only passion which looks to neither past
nor future. Occasionally her thoughts escaped in broken words, in
phrases devoid of meaning, though to her lover's ears they sounded
like promises of love. To the two witnesses of this birth of passion
she seemed to be rushing onward with fearful rapidity. Francine knew
Marie as well as Madame du Gua knew the marquis, and their experience
of the past made them await in silence some terrible finale. It was,
indeed, not long before the end came to the drama which Mademoiselle
de Verneuil had called, without perhaps imagining the truth of her
words, a tragedy.

When the travellers were about three miles beyond Mayenne they heard a
horseman riding after them with great rapidity. When he reached the
carriage he leaned towards it to look at Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who
recognized Corentin. That offensive personage made her a sign of
intelligence, the familiarity of which was deeply mortifying; then he
turned away, after chilling her to the bone with a look full of some
base meaning. The young /emigre/ seemed painfully affected by this
circumstance, which did not escape the notice of his pretended mother;
but Marie softly touched him, seeming by her eyes to take refuge in
his heart as thought it were her only haven. His brow cleared at this
proof of the full extent of his mistress's attachment, coming to him
as it were by accident. An inexplicable fear seemed to have overcome
her coyness, and her love was visible for a moment without a veil.
Unfortunately for both of them, Madame du Gua saw it all; like a miser
who gives a feast, she seemed to count the morsels and begrudge the
wine.

Absorbed in their happiness the lovers arrived, without any
consciousness of the distance they had traversed, at that part of the
road which passed through the valley of Ernee. There Francine noticed
and showed to her companions a number of strange forms which seemed to
move like shadows among the trees and gorse that surrounded the
fields. When the carriage came within range of these shadows a volley
of musketry, the balls of which whistled above their heads, warned the
travellers that the shadows were realities. The escort had fallen into
a trap.

Captain Merle now keenly regretted having adopted Mademoiselle de
Verneuil's idea that a rapid journey by night would be a safe one,--an
error which had led him to reduce his escort from Mayenne to sixty
men. He at once, under Gerard's orders, divided his little troop into
two columns, one on each side of the road, which the two officers
marched at a quick step among the gorse hedges, eager to meet the
assailants, though ignorant of their number. The Blues beat the thick
bushes right and left with rash intrepidity, and replied to the
Chouans with a steady fire.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil's first impulse was to jump from the carriage
and run back along the road until she was out of sight of the battle;
but ashamed of her fears, and moved by the feeling which impels us all
to act nobly under the eyes of those we love, she presently stood
still, endeavoring to watch the combat coolly.

The marquis followed her, took her hand, and placed it on his breast.

"I was afraid," she said, smiling, "but now--"

Just then her terrified maid cried out: "Marie, take care!"

But as she said the words, Francine, who was springing from the
carriage, felt herself grasped by a strong hand. The sudden weight of
that enormous hand made her shriek violently; she turned, and was
instantly silenced on recognizing Marche-a-Terre.

"Twice I owe to chance," said the marquis to Mademoiselle de Verneuil,
"the revelation of the sweetest secrets of the heart. Thanks to
Francine I now know you bear the gracious name of Marie,--Marie, the
name I have invoked in my distresses,--Marie, a name I shall
henceforth speak in joy, and never without sacrifice, mingling
religion and love. There can be no wrong where prayer and love go
together."

They clasped hands, looked silently into each other's eyes, and the
excess of their emotion took away from them the power to express it.

"There's no danger for /the rest of you/," Marche-a-Terre was saying
roughly to Francine, giving to his hoarse and guttural voice a
reproachful tone, and emphasizing his last words in a way to stupefy
the innocent peasant-girl. For the first time in her life she saw
ferocity in that face. The moonlight seemed to heighten the effect of
it. The savage Breton, holding his cap in one hand and his heavy
carbine in the other, dumpy and thickset as a gnome, and bathed in
that white light the shadows of which give such fantastic aspects to
forms, seemed to belong more to a world of goblins than to reality.
This apparition and its tone of reproach came upon Francine with the
suddenness of a phantom. He turned rapidly to Madame du Gua, with whom
he exchanged a few eager words, which Francine, who had somewhat
forgotten the dialect of Lower Brittany, did not understand. The lady
seemed to be giving him a series of orders. The short conference ended
by an imperious gesture of the lady's hand pointing out to the
Chouan the lovers standing a little distance apart. Before obeying,
Marche-a-Terre glanced at Francine whom he seemed to pity; he wished to
speak to her, and the girl was aware that his silence was compulsory.
The rough and sunburnt skin of his forehead wrinkled, and his eyebrows
were drawn violently together. Did he think of disobeying a renewed
order to kill Mademoiselle de Verneuil? The contortion of his face
made him all the more hideous to Madame du Gua, but to Francine the
flash of his eye seemed almost gentle, for it taught her to feel
intuitively that the violence of his savage nature would yield to her
will as a woman, and that she reigned, next to God, in that rough
heart.

The lovers were interrupted in their tender interview by Madame du
Gua, who ran up to Marie with a cry, and pulled her away as though
some danger threatened her. Her real object however, was to enable a
member of the royalist committee of Alencon, whom she saw approaching
them, to speak privately to the Gars.

"Beware of the girl you met at the hotel in Alencon; she will betray
you," said the Chevalier de Valois, in the young man's ear; and
immediately he and his little Breton horse disappeared among the
bushes from which he had issued.

The firing was heavy at that moment, but the combatants did not come
to close quarters.

"Adjutant," said Clef-des-Coeurs, "isn't it a sham attack, to capture
our travellers and get a ransom."

"The devil is in it, but I believe you are right," replied Gerard,
darting back towards the highroad.

Just then the Chouan fire slackened, for, in truth, the whole object
of the skirmish was to give the chevalier an opportunity to utter his
warning to the Gars. Merle, who saw the enemy disappearing across the
hedges, thought best not to follow them nor to enter upon a fight that
was uselessly dangerous. Gerard ordered the escort to take its former
position on the road, and the convoy was again in motion without the
loss of a single man. The captain offered his hand to Mademoiselle de
Verneuil to replace her in the coach, for the young nobleman stood
motionless, as if thunderstruck. Marie, amazed at his attitude, got
into the carriage alone without accepting the politeness of the
Republican; she turned her head towards her lover, saw him still
motionless, and was stupefied at the sudden change which had evidently
come over him. The young man slowly returned, his whole manner
betraying deep disgust.

"Was I not right?" said Madame du Gua in his ear, as she led him to
the coach. "We have fallen into the hands of a creature who is
trafficking for your head; but since she is such a fool as to have
fallen in love with you, for heaven's sake don't behave like a boy;
pretend to love her at least till we reach La Vivetiere; once there
--But," she thought to herself, seeing the young man take his place
with a dazed air, as if bewildered, "can it be that he already loves
her?"

The coach rolled on over the sandy road. To Mademoiselle de Verneuil's
eyes all seemed changed. Death was gliding beside her love. Perhaps it
was only fancy, but, to a woman who loves, fancy is as vivid as
reality. Francine, who had clearly understood from Marche-a-Terre's
glance that Mademoiselle de Verneuil's fate, over which she had
commanded him to watch, was in other hands than his, looked pale and
haggard, and could scarcely restrain her tears when her mistress spoke
to her. To her eyes Madame du Gua's female malignancy was scarcely
concealed by her treacherous smiles, and the sudden changes which her
obsequious attentions to Mademoiselle de Verneuil made in her manners,
voice, and expression was of a nature to frighten a watchful observer.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil herself shuddered instinctively, asking
herself, "Why should I fear? She is his mother." Then she trembled in
every limb as the thought crossed her mind, "Is she really his
mother?" An abyss suddenly opened before her, and she cast a look upon
the mother and son, which finally enlightened her. "That woman loves
him!" she thought. "But why has she begun these attentions after
showing me such coolness? Am I lost? or--is she afraid of me?"

As for the young man, he was flushed and pale by turns; but he kept a
quiet attitude and lowered his eyes to conceal the emotions which
agitated him. The graceful curve of his lips was lost in their close
compression, and his skin turned yellow under the struggle of his
stormy thoughts. Mademoiselle de Verneuil was unable to decide whether
any love for her remained in his evident anger. The road, flanked by
woods at this particular point, became darker and more gloomy, and the
obscurity prevented the eyes of the silent travellers from questioning
each other. The sighing of the wind, the rustling of the trees, the
measured step of the escort, gave that almost solemn character to the
scene which quickens the pulses. Mademoiselle de Verneuil could not
long try in vain to discover the reason of this change. The
recollection of Corentin came to her like a flash, and reminded her
suddenly of her real destiny. For the first time since the morning she
reflected seriously on her position. Until then she had yielded
herself up to the delight of loving, without a thought of the past or
of the future. Unable to bear the agony of her mind, she sought, with
the patience of love, to obtain a look from the young man's eyes, and
when she did so her paleness and the quiver in her face had so
penetrating an influence over him that he wavered; but the softening
was momentary.

"Are you ill, mademoiselle?" he said, but his voice had no gentleness;
the very question, the look, the gesture, all served to convince her
that the events of this day belonged to a mirage of the soul which was
fast disappearing like mists before the wind.

"Am I ill?" she replied, with a forced laugh. "I was going to ask you
the same question."

"I supposed you understood each other," remarked Madame du Gua with
specious kindliness.

Neither the young man nor Mademoiselle de Verneuil replied. The girl,
doubly insulted, was angered at feeling her powerful beauty powerless.
She knew she could discover the cause of the present situation the
moment she chose to do so; but, for the first time, perhaps, a woman
recoiled before a secret. Human life is sadly fertile in situations
where, as a result of either too much meditation or of some
catastrophe, our thoughts seem to hold to nothing; they have no
substance, no point of departure, and the present has no hooks by
which to hold to the past or fasten on the future. This was
Mademoiselle de Verneuil's condition at the present moment. Leaning
back in the carriage, she sat there like an uprooted shrub. Silent and
suffering, she looked at no one, wrapped herself in her grief, and
buried herself so completely in the unseen world, the refuge of the
miserable, that she saw nothing around her. Crows crossed the road in
the air above them cawing, but although, like all strong hearts, hers
had a superstitious corner, she paid no attention to the omen. The
party travelled on in silence. "Already parted?" Mademoiselle de
Verneuil was saying to herself. "Yet no one about us has uttered one
word. Could it be Corentin? It is not his interest to speak. Who can
have come to this spot and accused me? Just loved, and already
abandoned! I sow attraction, and I reap contempt. Is it my perpetual
fate to see happiness and ever lose it?" Pangs hitherto unknown to her
wrung her heart, for she now loved truly and for the first time. Yet
she had not so wholly delivered herself to her lover that she could
not take refuge from her pain in the natural pride and dignity of a
young and beautiful woman. The secret of her love--a secret often kept
by women under torture itself--had not escaped her lips. Presently she
rose from her reclining attitude, ashamed that she had shown her
passion by her silent sufferings; she shook her head with a
light-hearted action, and showed a face, or rather a mask, that was gay
and smiling, then she raised her voice to disguise the quiver of it.

"Where are we?" she said to Captain Merle, who kept himself at a
certain distance from the carriage.

"About six miles from Fougeres, mademoiselle."

"We shall soon be there, shall we not?" she went on, to encourage a
conversation in which she might show some preference for the young
captain.

"A Breton mile," said Merle much delighted, "has the disadvantage of
never ending; when you are at the top of one hill you see a valley and
another hill. When you reach the summit of the slope we are now
ascending you will see the plateau of Mont Pelerine in the distance.
Let us hope the Chouans won't take their revenge there. Now, in going
up hill and going down hill one doesn't make much headway. From La
Pelerine you will still see--"

The young /emigre/ made a movement at the name which Marie alone
noticed.

"What is La Pelerine?" she asked hastily, interrupting the captain's
description of Breton topography.

"It is the summit of a mountain," said Merle, "which gives its name to
the Maine valley through which we shall presently pass. It separates
this valley from that of Couesnon, at the end of which is the town of
Fougeres, the chief town in Brittany. We had a fight there last
Vendemiaire with the Gars and his brigands. We were escorting Breton
conscripts, who meant to kill us sooner than leave their own land; but
Hulot is a rough Christian, and he gave them--"

"Did you see the Gars?" she asked. "What sort of man is he?"

Her keen, malicious eyes never left the so-called vicomte's face.

"Well, mademoiselle," replied Merle, nettled at being always
interrupted, "he is so like citizen du Gua, that if your friend did
not wear the uniform of the Ecole Polytechnique I could swear it was
he."

Mademoiselle de Verneuil looked fixedly at the cold, impassible young
man who had scorned her, but she saw nothing in him that betrayed the
slightest feeling of alarm. She warned him by a bitter smile that she
had now discovered the secret so treacherously kept; then in a jesting
voice, her nostrils dilating with pleasure, and her head so turned
that she could watch the young man and yet see Merle, she said to the
Republican: "That new leader gives a great deal of anxiety to the
First Consul. He is very daring, they say; but he has the weakness of
rushing headlong into adventures, especially with women."

"We are counting on that to get even with him," said the captain. "If
we catch him for only an hour we shall put a bullet in his head. He'll
do the same to us if he meets us, so /par pari/--"

"Oh!" said the /emigre/, "we have nothing to fear. Your soldiers
cannot go as far as La Pelerine, they are tired, and, if you consent,
we can all rest a short distance from here. My mother stops at La
Vivetiere, the road to which turns off a few rods farther on. These
ladies might like to stop there too; they must be tired with their
long drive from Alencon without resting; and as mademoiselle," he
added, with forced politeness, "has had the generosity to give safety
as well as pleasure to our journey, perhaps she will deign to accept a
supper from my mother; and I think, captain," he added, addressing
Merle, "the times are not so bad but what we can find a barrel of
cider for your men. The Gars can't have taken all, at least my mother
thinks not--"

"Your mother?" said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, interrupting him in a
tone of irony, and making no reply to his invitation.

"Does my age seem more improbable to you this evening, mademoiselle?"
said Madame du Gua. "Unfortunately I was married very young, and my
son was born when I was fifteen."

"Are you not mistaken, madame?--when you were thirty, perhaps."

Madame du Gua turned livid as she swallowed the sarcasm. She would
have liked to revenge herself on the spot, but was forced to smile,
for she was determined at any cost, even that of insult, to discover
the nature of the feelings that actuated the young girl; she therefore
pretended not to have understood her.

"The Chouans have never had a more cruel leader than the Gars, if we
are to believe the stories about him," she said, addressing herself
vaguely to both Francine and her mistress.

"Oh, as for cruel, I don't believe that," said Mademoiselle de
Verneuil; "he knows how to lie, but he seems rather credulous himself.
The leader of a party ought not to be the plaything of others."

"Do you know him?" asked the /emigre/, quietly.

"No," she replied, with a disdainful glance, "but I thought I did."

"Oh, mademoiselle, he's a /malin/, yes a /malin/," said Captain Merle,
shaking his head and giving with an expressive gesture the peculiar
meaning to the word which it had in those days but has since lost.
"Those old families do sometimes send out vigorous shoots. He has just
returned from a country where, they say, the /ci-devants/ didn't find
life too easy, and men ripen like medlars in the straw. If that fellow
is really clever he can lead us a pretty dance. He has already formed
companies of light infantry who oppose our troops and neutralize the
efforts of the government. If we burn a royalist village he burns two
of ours. He can hold an immense tract of country and force us to
spread out our men at the very moment when we want them on one spot.
Oh, he knows what he is about."

"He is cutting his country's throat," said Gerard in a loud voice,
interrupting the captain.

"Then," said the /emigre/, "if his death would deliver the nation, why
don't you catch him and shoot him?"

As he spoke he tried to look into the depths of Mademoiselle de
Verneuil's soul, and one of those voiceless scenes the dramatic
vividness and fleeting sagacity of which cannot be reproduced in
language passed between them in a flash. Danger is always interesting.
The worst criminal threatened with death excites pity. Though
Mademoiselle de Verneuil was now certain that the lover who had cast
her off was this very leader of the Chouans, she was not ready to
verify her suspicions by giving him up; she had quite another
curiosity to satisfy. She preferred to doubt or to believe as her
passion led her, and she now began deliberately to play with peril.
Her eyes, full of scornful meaning, bade the young chief notice the
soldiers of the escort; by thus presenting to his mind triumphantly an
image of his danger she made him feel that his life depended on a word
from her, and her lips seemed to quiver on the verge of pronouncing
it. Like an American Indian, she watched every muscle of the face of
her enemy, tied, as it were, to the stake, while she brandished her
tomahawk gracefully, enjoying a revenge that was still innocent, and
torturing like a mistress who still loves.

"If I had a son like yours, madame," she said to Madame du Gua, who
was visibly frightened, "I should wear mourning from the day when I
had yielded him to danger; I should know no peace of mind."

No answer was made to this speech. She turned her head repeatedly to
the escort and then suddenly to Madame du Gua, without detecting the
slightest secret signal between the lady and the Gars which might have
confirmed her suspicions on the nature of their intimacy, which she
longed to doubt. The young chief calmly smiled, and bore without
flinching the scrutiny she forced him to undergo; his attitude and the
expression of his face were those of a man indifferent to danger; he
even seemed to say at times: "This is your chance to avenge your
wounded vanity--take it! I have no desire to lessen my contempt for
you."

Mademoiselle de Verneuil began to study the young man from the
vantage-ground of her position with coolness and dignity; at the
bottom of her heart she admired his courage and tranquillity. Happy in
discovering that the man she loved bore an ancient title (the
distinctions of which please every woman), she also found pleasure in
meeting him in their present situation, where, as champion of a cause
ennobled by misfortune, he was fighting with all the faculties of a
strong soul against a Republic that was constantly victorious. She
rejoiced to see him brought face to face with danger, and still
displaying the courage and bravery so powerful on a woman's heart;
again and again she put him to the test, obeying perhaps the instinct
which induces a woman to play with her victim as a cat plays with a
mouse.

"By virtue of what law do you put the Chouans to death?" she said to
Merle.

"That of the 14th of last Fructidor, which outlaws the insurgent
departments and proclaims martial law," replied the Republican.

"May I ask why I have the honor to attract your eyes?" she said
presently to the young chief, who was attentively watching her.

"Because of a feeling which a man of honor cannot express to any
woman, no matter who she is," replied the Marquis de Montauran, in a
low voice, bending down to her. "We live in times," he said aloud,
"when women do the work of the executioner and wield the axe with even
better effect."

She looked at de Montauran fixedly; then, delighted to be attacked by
the man whose life she held in her hands, she said in a low voice,
smiling softly: "Your head is a very poor one; the executioner does
not want it; I shall keep it myself."

The marquis looked at the inexplicable girl, whose love had overcome
all, even insult, and who now avenged herself by forgiving that which
women are said never to forgive. His eyes grew less stern, less cold;
a look of sadness came upon his face. His love was stronger than he
suspected. Mademoiselle de Verneuil, satisfied with these faint signs
of a desired reconciliation, glanced at him tenderly, with a smile
that was like a kiss; then she leaned back once more in the carriage,
determined not to risk the future of this happy drama, believing she
had assured it with her smile. She was so beautiful! She knew so well
how to conquer all obstacles to love! She was so accustomed to take
all risks and push on at all hazards! She loved the unexpected, and
the tumults of life--why should she fear?

Before long the carriage, under the young chief's directions, left the
highway and took a road cut between banks planted with apple-trees,
more like a ditch than a roadway, which led to La Vivetiere. The
carriage now advanced rapidly, leaving the escort to follow slowly
towards the manor-house, the gray roofs of which appeared and
disappeared among the trees. Some of the men lingered on the way to
knock the stiff clay of the road-bed from their shoes.

"This is devilishly like the road to Paradise," remarked Beau-Pied.

Thanks to the impatience of the postilion, Mademoiselle de Verneuil
soon saw the chateau of La Vivetiere. This house, standing at the end
of a sort of promontory, was protected and surrounded by two deep
lakelets, and could be reached only by a narrow causeway. That part of
the little peninsula on which the house and gardens were placed was
still further protected by a moat filled with water from the two lakes
which it connected. The house really stood on an island that was
well-nigh impregnable,--an invaluable retreat for a chieftain, who
could be surprised there only by treachery.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil put her head out of the carriage as she heard
the rusty hinges of the great gates open to give entrance to an arched
portal which had been much injured during the late war. The gloomy
colors of the scene which met her eyes almost extinguished the
thoughts of love and coquetry in which she had been indulging. The
carriage entered a large courtyard that was nearly square, bordered on
each side by the steep banks of the lakelets. Those sterile shores,
washed by water, which was covered with large green patches, had no
other ornament than aquatic trees devoid of foliage, the twisted
trunks and hoary heads of which, rising from the reeds and rushes,
gave them a certain grotesque likeness to gigantic marmosets. These
ugly growths seemed to waken and talk to each other when the frogs
deserted them with much croaking, and the water-fowl, startled by the
sound of the wheels, flew low upon the surface of the pools. The
courtyard, full of rank and seeded grasses, reeds, and shrubs, either
dwarf or parasite, excluded all impression of order or of splendor.
The house appeared to have been long abandoned. The roof seemed to
bend beneath the weight of the various vegetations which grew upon it.
The walls, though built of the smooth, slaty stone which abounds in
that region, showed many rifts and chinks where ivy had fastened its
rootlets. Two main buildings, joined at the angle by a tall tower
which faced the lake, formed the whole of the chateau, the doors and
swinging, rotten shutters, rusty balustrades, and broken windows of
which seemed ready to fall at the first tempest. The north wind
whistled through these ruins, to which the moon, with her indefinite
light, gave the character and outline of a great spectre. But the
colors of those gray-blue granites, mingling with the black and tawny
schists, must have been seen in order to understand how vividly a
spectral image was suggested by the empty and gloomy carcass of the
building. Its disjointed stones and paneless windows, the battered
tower and broken roofs gave it the aspect of a skeleton; the birds of
prey which flew from it, shrieking, added another feature to this
vague resemblance. A few tall pine-trees standing behind the house
waved their dark foliage above the roof, and several yews cut into
formal shapes at the angles of the building, festooned it gloomily
like the ornaments on a hearse. The style of the doors, the coarseness
of the decorations, the want of harmony in the architecture, were all
characteristic of the feudal manors of which Brittany was proud;
perhaps justly proud, for they maintained upon that Gaelic ground a
species of monumental history of the nebulous period which preceded
the establishment of the French monarchy.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, to whose imagination the word "chateau"
brought none but its conventional ideas, was affected by the funereal
aspect of the scene. She sprang from the carriage and stood apart
gazing at in terror, and debating within herself what action she ought
to take. Francine heard Madame du Gua give a sigh of relief as she
felt herself in safety beyond reach of the Blues; an exclamation
escaped her when the gates were closed, and she saw the carriage and
its occupants within the walls of this natural fortress.

The Marquis de Montauran turned hastily to Mademoiselle de Verneuil,
divining the thoughts that crowded in her mind.

"This chateau," he said, rather sadly, "was ruined by the war, just as
my plans for our happiness have been ruined by you."

"How ruined?" she asked in surprise.

"Are you indeed 'beautiful, brilliant, and of noble birth'?" he asked
ironically, repeating the words she had herself used in their former
conversation.

"Who has told you to the contrary?"

"Friends, in whom I put faith; who care for my safety and are on the
watch against treachery."

"Treachery!" she exclaimed, in a sarcastic tone. "Have you forgotten
Hulot and Alencon already? You have no memory,--a dangerous defect in
the leader of a party. But if friends," she added, with increased
sarcasm, "are so all-powerful in your heart, keep your friends.
Nothing is comparable to the joys of friendship. Adieu; neither I nor
the soldiers of the Republic will stop here."

She turned towards the gateway with a look of wounded pride and scorn,
and her motions as she did so displayed a dignity and also a despair
which changed in an instant the thoughts of the young man; he felt
that the cost of relinquishing his desires was too great, and he gave
himself up deliberately to imprudence and credulity. He loved; and the
lovers had no desire now to quarrel with each other.

"Say but one word and I will believe you," he said, in a supplicating
voice.

"One word?" she answered, closing her lips tightly, "not a single
word; not even a gesture."

"At least, be angry with me," he entreated, trying to take the hand
she withheld from him,--"that is, if you dare to be angry with the
leader of the rebels, who is now as sad and distrustful as he was
lately happy and confiding."

Marie gave him a look that was far from angry, and he added: "You have
my secret, but I have not yours."

The alabaster brow appeared to darken at these words; she cast a look
of annoyance on the young chieftain, and answered, hastily: "Tell you
my secret? Never!"

In love every word, every glance has the eloquence of the moment; but
on this occasion Mademoiselle de Verneuil's exclamation revealed
nothing, and, clever as Montauran might be, its secret was
impenetrable to him, though the tones of her voice betrayed some
extraordinary and unusual emotion which piqued his curiosity.

"You have a singular way of dispelling suspicion," he said.

"Do you still suspect me?" she replied, looking him in the eye, as if
to say, "What rights have you over me?"

"Mademoiselle," said the young man, in a voice that was submissive and
yet firm, "the authority you exercise over Republican troops, this
escort--"

"Ah, that reminds me! My escort and I," she asked, in a slightly
satirical tone, "your protectors, in short,--will they be safe here?"

"Yes, on the word of a gentleman. Whoever you be, you and your party
have nothing to fear in my house."

The promise was made with so loyal and generous an air and manner that
Mademoiselle de Verneuil felt absolutely secure as to the safety of
the Republican soldiers. She was about to speak when Madame du Gua's
approach silenced her. That lady had either overheard or guessed part
of their conversation, and was filled with anxiety at no longer
perceiving any signs of animosity between them. As soon as the marquis
caught sight of her, he offered his hand to Mademoiselle de Verneuil
and led her hastily towards the house, as if to escape an undesired
companion.

"I am in their way," thought Madame du Gua, remaining where she was.
She watched the lovers walking slowly towards the portico, where they
stopped, as if satisfied to have placed some distance between
themselves and her. "Yes, yes, I am in their way," she repeated,
speaking to herself; "but before long that creature will not be in
mine; the lake, God willing, shall have her. I'll help him keep his
word as a gentleman; once under the water, she has nothing to fear,
--what can be safer than that?"

She was looking fixedly at the still mirror of the little lake to the
right when suddenly she heard a rustling among the rushes and saw in
the moonlight the face of Marche-a-Terre rising behind the gnarled
trunk of an old willow. None but those who knew the Chouan well could
have distinguished him from the tangle of branches of which he seemed
a part. Madame du Gua looked about her with some distrust; she saw the
postilion leading his horses to a stable in the wing of the chateau
which was opposite to the bank where Marche-a-Terre was hiding;
Francine, with her back to her, was going towards the two lovers, who
at that moment had forgotten the whole earth. Madame du Gua, with a
finger on her lip to demand silence, walked towards the Chouan, who
guessed rather than heard her question, "How many of you are here?"

"Eighty-seven."

"They are sixty-five; I counted them."

"Good," said the savage, with sullen satisfaction.

Attentive to all Francine's movements, the Chouan disappeared behind
the willow, as he saw her turn to look for the enemy over whom she was
keeping an instinctive watch.

Six or eight persons, attracted by the noise of the carriage-wheels,
came out on the portico, shouting: "It is the Gars! it is he; here he
is!" On this several other men ran out, and their coming interrupted
the lovers. The Marquis de Montauran went hastily up to them, making
an imperative gesture for silence, and pointing to the farther end of
the causeway, where the Republican escort was just appearing. At the
sight of the well-known blue uniforms with red facings, and the
glittering bayonets, the amazed conspirators called out hastily, "You
have surely not betrayed us?"

"If I had, I should not warn you," said the marquis, smiling bitterly.
"Those Blues," he added, after a pause, "are the escort of this young
lady, whose generosity has delivered us, almost miraculously, from a
danger we were in at Alencon. I will tell you about it later.
Mademoiselle and her escort are here in safety, on my word as a
gentleman, and we must all receive them as friends."

Madame du Gua and Francine were now on the portico; the marquis
offered his hand to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, the group of gentlemen
parted in two lines to allow them to pass, endeavoring, as they did
so, to catch sight of the young lady's features; for Madame du Gua,
who was following behind, excited their curiosity by secret signs.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil saw, with surprise, that a large table was
set in the first hall, for about twenty guests. The dining-room opened
into a vast salon, where the whole party were presently assembled.
These rooms were in keeping with the dilapidated appearance of the
outside of the house. The walnut panels, polished by age, but rough
and coarse in design and badly executed, were loose in their places
and ready to fall. Their dingy color added to the gloom of these
apartments, which were barren of curtains and mirrors; a few venerable
bits of furniture in the last stages of decay alone remained, and
harmonized with the general destruction. Marie noticed maps and plans
stretched out upon long tables, and in the corners of the room a
quantity of weapons and stacked carbines. These things bore witness,
though she did not know it, to an important conference between the
leaders of the Vendeans and those of the Chouans.

The marquis led Mademoiselle de Verneuil to a large and worm-eaten
armchair placed beside the fireplace; Francine followed and stood
behind her mistress, leaning on the back of that ancient bit of
furniture.

"You will allow me for a moment to play the part of master of the
house," he said, leaving the two women and mingling with the groups of
his other guests.

Francine saw the gentlemen hasten, after a few words from Montauran,
to hide their weapons, maps, and whatever else might arouse the
suspicions of the Republican officers. Some took off their broad
leather belts containing pistols and hunting-knives. The marquis
requested them to show the utmost prudence, and went himself to see to
the reception of the troublesome guests whom fate had bestowed upon
him.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who had raised her feet to the fire and was
now warming them, did not turn her head as Montauran left the room,
thus disappointing those present, who were anxious to see her.
Francine alone saw the change produced upon the company by the
departure of the young chief. The gentlemen gathered hastily round
Madame du Gua, and during a conversation carried on in an undertone
between them, they all turned several times to look curiously at the
stranger.

"You know Montauran," Madame du Gua said to them; "he has fallen in
love with that worthless girl, and, as you can easily understand, he
thinks all my warnings selfish. Our friends in Paris, Messieurs de
Valois and d'Esgrignon, have warned him of a trap set for him by
throwing some such creature at his head; but in spite of this he
allows himself to be fooled by the first woman he meets,--a girl who,
if my information is correct, has stolen a great name only to disgrace
it."

The speaker, in whom our readers have already recognized the lady who
instigated the attack on the "turgotine," may be allowed to keep the
name which she used to escape the dangers that threatened her in
Alencon. The publication of her real name would only mortify a noble
family already deeply afflicted at the misconduct of this woman; whose
history, by the bye, has already been given on another scene.

The curiosity manifested by the company of men soon became impertinent
and almost hostile. A few harsh words reached Francine's ear, and
after a word said to her mistress the girl retreated into the
embrasure of a window. Marie rose, turned towards the insolent group,
and gave them a look full of dignity and even disdain. Her beauty, the
elegance of her manners, and her pride changed the behavior of her
enemies, and won her the flattering murmur which escaped their lips.
Two or three men, whose outward appearance seemed to denote the habits
of polite society and the gallantry acquired in courts, came towards
her; but her propriety of demeanor forced them to respect her, and
none dared speak to her; so that, instead of being herself arraigned
by the company, it was she who appeared to judge of them. These chiefs
of a war undertaken for God and the king bore very little resemblance
to the portraits her fancy had drawn of them. The struggle, really
great in itself, shrank to mean proportions as she observed these
provincial noblemen, all, with one or two vigorous exceptions, devoid
of significance and virility. Having made to herself a poem of such
heroes, Marie suddenly awakened to the truth. Their faces expressed to
her eyes more a love of scheming than a love of glory; self-interest
had evidently put arms into their hands. Still, it must be said that
these men did become heroic when brought into action. The loss of her
illusions made Mademoiselle de Verneuil unjust, and prevented her from
recognizing the real devotion which rendered several of these men
remarkable. It is true that most of those now present were
commonplace. A few original and marked faces appeared among them, but
even these were belittled by the artificiality and the etiquette of
aristocracy. If Marie generously granted intellect and perception to
the latter, she also discerned in them a total absence of the
simplicity, the grandeur, to which she had been accustomed among the
triumphant men of the Republic. This nocturnal assemblage in the old
ruined castle made her smile; the scene seemed symbolic of the
monarchy. But the thought came to her with delight that the marquis at
least played a noble part among these men, whose only remaining merit
in her eyes was devotion to a lost cause. She pictured her lover's
face upon the background of this company, rejoicing to see it stand
forth among those paltry and puny figures who were but the instruments
of his great designs.

The footsteps of the marquis were heard in the adjoining room.
Instantly the company separated into little groups and the whisperings
ceased. Like schoolboys who have plotted mischief in the master's
absence, they hurriedly became silent and orderly. Montauran entered.
Marie had the happiness of admiring him among his fellows, of whom he
was the youngest, the handsomest, and the chief. Like a king in his
court, he went from group to group, distributing looks and nods and
words of encouragement or warning, with pressure of the hands and
smiles; doing his duty as leader of a party with a grace and
self-possession hardly to be expected in the young man whom Marie had
so lately accused of heedlessness.

The presence of the marquis put an end to the open curiosity bestowed
on Mademoiselle de Verneuil, but Madame du Gua's scandalous
suggestions bore fruit. The Baron du Guenic, familiarly called
"l'Intime," who by rank and name had the best right among those
present to treat Montauran familiarly, took the young leader by the
arm and led him apart.

"My dear marquis," he said; "we are much disturbed at seeing you on
the point of committing an amazing folly."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Do you know where that girl comes from, who she is, and what her
schemes about you are?"

"Don't trouble yourself, my dear Intime; between you and me my fancy
for her will be over to-morrow."

"Yes; but suppose that creature betrays you to-night?"

"I'll answer that when you tell me why she has not done it already,"
said Montauran, assuming with a laugh an air of conceit. "My dear
fellow, look at that charming girl, watch her manners, and dare to
tell me she is not a woman of distinction. If she gave you a few
favorable looks wouldn't you feel at the bottom of your soul a respect
for her? A certain lady has prejudiced you. I will tell you this: if
she were the lost creature our friends are trying to make her out, I
would, after what she and I have said to each other, kill her myself."

"Do you suppose," said Madame du Gua, joining them, "that Fouche is
fool enough to send you a common prostitute out of the streets? He has
provided seductions according to your deserts. You may choose to be
blind, but your friends are keeping their eyes open to protect you."

"Madame," replied the Gars, his eyes flashing with anger, "be warned;
take no steps against that lady, nor against her escort; if you do,
nothing shall save you from my vengeance. I choose that Mademoiselle
de Verneuil is to be treated with the utmost respect, and as a lady
belonging to my family. We are, I believe, related to the de
Verneuils."

The opposition the marquis was made to feel produced the usual effect
of such obstacles on all young men. Though he had, apparently, treated
Mademoiselle de Verneuil rather lightly, and left it to be supposed
that his passion for her was a mere caprice, he now, from a feeling of
pride, made immense strides in his relation to her. By openly
protecting her, his honor became concerned in compelling respect to
her person; and he went from group to group assuring his friends, in
the tone of a man whom it was dangerous to contradict, that the lady
was really Mademoiselle de Verneuil. The doubts and gossip ceased at
once. As soon as Montauran felt that harmony was restored and anxiety
allayed, he returned to his mistress eagerly, saying in a low voice:--

"Those mischievous people have robbed me of an hour's happiness."

"I am glad you have come back to me," she said, smiling. "I warn you
that I am inquisitive; therefore you must not get tired of my
questions. Tell me, in the first place, who is that worthy in a green
cloth jacket?"

"That is the famous Major Brigaut, a man from the Marais, a comrade of
the late Mercier, called La Vendee."

"And that fat priest with the red face to whom he is talking at this
moment about me?" she went on.

"Do you want to know what they are saying?"

"Do I want to know it? What a useless question!"

"But I could not tell it without offending you."

"If you allow me to be insulted in your house without avenging me,
marquis, adieu!" she said. "I will not stay another moment. I have
some qualms already about deceiving these poor Republicans, loyal and
confiding as they are!"

She made a few hasty steps; the marquis followed her.

"Dear Marie, listen to me. On my honor, I have silenced their evil
speaking, without knowing whether it was false or true. But, placed as
I am, if friends whom we have in all the ministries in Paris warn me
to beware of every woman I meet, and assure me that Fouche has
employed against me a Judith of the streets, it is not unnatural that
my best friends here should think you too beautiful to be an honest
woman."

As he spoke the marquis plunged a glance into Mademoiselle de
Verneuil's eyes. She colored, and was unable to restrain her tears.

"I deserve these insults," she said. "I wish you really thought me
that despicable creature and still loved me; then, indeed, I could no
longer doubt you. I believed in you when you were deceiving me, and
you will not believe me now when I am true. Let us make an end of
this, monsieur," she said, frowning, but turning pale as death,
--"adieu!"

She rushed towards the dining-room with a movement of despair.

"Marie, my life is yours," said the young marquis in her ear.

She stopped short and looked at him.

"No, no," she said, "I will be generous. Farewell. In coming with you
here I did not think of my past nor of your future--I was beside
myself."

"You cannot mean that you will leave me now when I offer you my life?"

"You offer it in a moment of passion--of desire."

"I offer it without regret, and forever," he replied.

She returned to the room they had left. Hiding his emotions the
marquis continued the conversation.

"That fat priest whose name you asked is the Abbe Gudin, a Jesuit,
obstinate enough--perhaps I ought to say devoted enough,--to remain in
France in spite of the decree of 1793, which banished his order. He is
the firebrand of the war in these regions and a propagandist of the
religious association called the Sacre-Coeur. Trained to use religion
as an instrument, he persuades his followers that if they are killed
they will be brought to life again, and he knows how to rouse their
fanaticism by shrewd sermons. You see, it is necessary to work upon
every man's selfish interests to attain a great end. That is the
secret of all political success."

"And that vigorous, muscular old man, with the repulsive face, who is
he? I mean the one in the ragged gown of a barrister."

"Barrister! he aspires to be considered a brigadier-general. Did you
never hear of de Longuy?"

"Is that he!" exclaimed Mademoiselle de Verneuil, horrified. "You
employ such men as that?"

"Hush! he'll hear you. Do you see that other man in malignant
conversation with Madame du Gua?"

"The one in black who looks like a judge?"

"That is one of our go-betweens, La Billardiere, son of a councillor
to the Breton Parliament, whose real name is something like Flamet; he
is in close correspondence with the princes."

"And his neighbor? the one who is just putting up his white clay pipe,
and uses all the fingers of his right hand to snap the box, like a
countryman."

"By Jove, you are right; he was game-keeper to the deceased husband of
that lady, and now commands one of the companies I send against the
Republican militia. He and Marche-a-Terre are the two most
conscientious vassals the king has here."

"But she--who is she?"

"Charette's last mistress," replied the marquis. "She wields great
influence over all these people."

"Is she faithful to his memory?"

For all answer the marquis gave a dubious smile.

"Do you think well of her?"

"You are very inquisitive."

"She is my enemy because she can no longer be my rival," said
Mademoiselle de Verneuil, laughing. "I forgive her her past errors if
she forgives mine. Who is that officer with the long moustache?"

"Permit me not to name him; he wants to get rid of the First Consul by
assassination. Whether he succeeds or not you will hear of him. He is
certain to become famous."

"And you have come here to command such men as these!" she exclaimed
in horror. "Are /they/ they king's defenders? Where are the gentlemen
and the great lords?"

"Where?" said the marquis, coolly, "they are in all the courts of
Europe. Who else should win over kings and cabinets and armies to
serve the Bourbon cause and hurl them at that Republic which threatens
monarchies and social order with death and destruction?"

"Ah!" she said, with generous emotion, "be to me henceforth the source
from which I draw the ideas I must still acquire about your cause--I
consent. But let me still remember that you are the only noble who
does his duty in fighting France with Frenchmen, without the help of
foreigners. I am a woman; I feel that if my child struck me in anger I
could forgive him; but if he saw me beaten by a stranger, and
consented to it, I should regard him as a monster."

"You shall remain a Republican," said the marquis, in the ardor
produced by the generous words which confirmed his hopes.

"Republican! no, I am that no longer. I could not now respect you if
you submitted to the First Consul," she replied. "But neither do I
like to see you at the head of men who are pillaging a corner of
France, instead of making war against the whole Republic. For whom are
you fighting? What do you expect of a king restored to his throne by
your efforts? A woman did that great thing once, and the liberated
king allowed her to be burned. Such men are the anointed of the Lord,
and there is danger in meddling with sacred things. Let God take care
of his own, and place, displace, and replace them on their purple
seats. But if you have counted the cost, and seen the poor return that
will come to you, you are tenfold greater in my eyes than I thought
you--"

"Ah! you are bewitching. Don't attempt to indoctrinate my followers,
or I shall be left without a man."

"If you would let me convert you, only you," she said, "we might live
happily a thousand leagues away from all this."

"These men whom you seem to despise," said the marquis, in a graver
tone, "will know how to die when the struggle comes, and all their
misdeeds will be forgotten. Besides, if my efforts are crowned with
some success, the laurel leaves of victory will hide all."

"I see no one but you who is risking anything."

"You are mistaken; I am not the only one," he replied, with true
modesty. "See, over there, the new leaders from La Vendee. The first,
whom you must have heard of as 'Le Grand Jacques,' is the Comte de
Fontain; the other is La Billardiere, whom I mentioned to you just
now."

"Have you forgotten Quiberon, where La Billardiere played so equivocal
a part?" she said, struck by a sudden recollection.

"La Billardiere took a great deal upon himself. Serving princes is far
from lying on a bed of roses."

"Ah! you make me shudder!" cried Marie. "Marquis," she continued, in a
tone which seemed to indicate some mysterious personal reticence, "a
single instant suffices to destroy illusions and to betray secrets on
which the life and happiness of many may depend--" she stopped, as
though she feared she had said too much; then she added, in another
tone, "I wish I could be sure that those Republican soldiers were in
safety."

"I will be prudent," he said, smiling to disguise his emotion; "but
say no more about your soldiers; have I not answered for their safety
on my word as a gentleman?"

"And after all," she said, "what right have I to dictate to you? Be my
master henceforth. Did I not tell you it would drive me to despair to
rule a slave?"

"Monsieur le marquis," said Major Brigaut, respectfully, interrupting
the conversation, "how long are the Blues to remain here?"

"They will leave as soon as they are rested," said Marie.

The marquis looked about the room and noticed the agitation of those
present. He left Mademoiselle de Verneuil, and his place beside her
was taken at once by Madame du Gua, whose smiling and treacherous face
was in no way disconcerted by the young chief's bitter smile. Just
then Francine, standing by the window, gave a stifled cry. Marie,
noticing with amazement that the girl left the room, looked at Madame
du Gua, and her surprise increased as she saw the pallor on the face
of her enemy. Anxious to discover the meaning of Francine's abrupt
departure, she went to the window, where Madame du Gua followed her,
no doubt to guard against any suspicions which might arise in her
mind. They returned together to the chimney, after each had cast a
look upon the shore and the lake,--Marie without seeing anything that
could have caused Francine's flight, Madame du Gua seeing that which
satisfied her she was being obeyed.

The lake, at the edge of which Marche-a-Terre had shown his head,
where Madame du Gua had seen him, joined the moat in misty curves,
sometimes broad as ponds, in other places narrow as the artificial
streamlets of a park. The steep bank, washed by its waters, lay a few
rods from the window. Francine, watching on the surface of the water
the black lines thrown by the willows, noticed, carelessly at first,
the uniform trend of their branches, caused by a light breeze then
prevailing. Suddenly she thought she saw against the glassy surface a
figure moving with the spontaneous and irregular motion of life. The
form, vague as it was, seemed to her that of a man. At first she
attributed what she saw to the play of the moonlight upon the foliage,
but presently a second head appeared, then several others in the
distance. The shrubs upon the bank were bent and then violently
straightened, and Francine saw the long hedge undulating like one of
those great Indian serpents of fabulous size and shape. Here and
there, among the gorse and taller brambles, points of light could be
seen to come and go. The girl's attention redoubled, and she thought
she recognized the foremost of the dusky figures; indistinct as its
outlines were, the beating of her heart convinced her it was no other
than her lover, Marche-a-Terre. Eager to know if this mysterious
approach meant treachery, she ran to the courtyard. When she reached
the middle of its grass plot she looked alternately at the two wings
of the building and along the steep shores, without discovering, on
the inhabited side of the house, any sign of this silent approach. She
listened attentively and heard a slight rustling, like that which
might be made by the footfalls of some wild animal in the silence of
the forest. She quivered, but did not tremble. Though young and
innocent, her anxious curiosity suggested a ruse. She saw the coach
and slipped into it, putting out her head to listen, with the caution
of a hare giving ear to the sound of the distant hunters. She saw
Pille-Miche come out of the stable, accompanied by two peasants, all
three carrying bales of straw; these they spread on the ground in a
way to form a long bed of litter before the inhabited wing of the
house, parallel with the bank, bordered by dwarf trees.

"You're spreading straw as if you thought they'd sleep here! Enough,
Pille-Miche, enough!" said a low, gruff voice, which Francine
recognized.

"And won't they sleep here?" returned Pille-Miche with a laugh. "I'm
afraid the Gars will be angry!" he added, too low for Francine to
hear.

"Well, let him," said Marche-a-Terre, in the same tone, "we shall have
killed the Blues anyway. Here's that coach, which you and I had better
put up."

Pille-Miche pulled the carriage by the pole and Marche-a-Terre pushed
it by one of the wheels with such force that Francine was in the barn
and about to be locked up before she had time to reflect on her
situation. Pille-Miche went out to fetch the barrel of cider, which
the marquis had ordered for the escort; and Marche-a-Terre was passing
along the side of the coach, to leave the barn and close the door,
when he was stopped by a hand which caught and held the long hair of
his goatskin. He recognized a pair of eyes the gentleness of which
exercised a power of magnetism over him, and he stood stock-still for
a moment under their spell. Francine sprang from the carriage, and
said, in the nervous tone of an excited woman: "Pierre, what news did
you give to that lady and her son on the road? What is going on here?
Why are you hiding? I must know all."

These words brought a look on the Chouan's face which Francine had
never seen there before. The Breton led his innocent mistress to the
door; there he turned her towards the blanching light of the moon, and
answered, as he looked in her face with terrifying eyes: "Yes, by my
damnation, Francine, I will tell you, but not until you have sworn on
these beads (and he pulled an old chaplet from beneath his goatskin)
--on this relic, which /you know well/," he continued, "to answer me
truly one question."

Francine colored as she saw the chaplet, which was no doubt a token of
their love. "It was on that," he added, much agitated, "that you
swore--"

He did not finish the sentence. The young girl placed her hand on the
lips of her savage lover and silenced him.

"Need I swear?" she said.

He took his mistress gently by the hand, looked at her for a moment
and said: "Is the lady you are with really Mademoiselle de Verneuil?"

Francine stood with hanging arms, her eyelids lowered, her head bowed,
pale and speechless.

"She is a strumpet!" cried Marche-a-Terre, in a terrifying voice.

At the word the pretty hand once more covered his lips, but this time
he sprang back violently. The girl no longer saw a lover; he had
turned to a wild beast in all the fury of its nature. His eyebrows
were drawn together, his lips drew apart, and he showed his teeth like
a dog which defends its master.

"I left you pure, and I find you muck. Ha! why did I ever leave you!
You are here to betray us; to deliver up the Gars!"

These sentences sounded more like roars than words. Though Francine
was frightened, she raised her angelic eyes at this last accusation
and answered calmly, as she looked into his savage face: "I will
pledge my eternal safety that that is false. That's an idea of the
lady you are serving."

He lowered his head; then she took his hand and nestling to him with a
pretty movement said: "Pierre, what is all this to you and me? I don't
know what you understand about it, but I can't make it out. Recollect
one thing: that noble and beautiful young lady has been my
benefactress; she is also yours--we live together like two sisters. No
harm must ever come to her where we are, you and I--in our lifetime at
least. Swear it! I trust no one here but you."

"I don't command here," said the Chouan, in a surly tone.

His face darkened. She caught his long ears and twisted them gently as
if playing with a cat.

"At least," she said, seeing that he looked less stern, "promise me to
use all the power you have to protect our benefactress."

He shook his head as if he doubted of success, and the motion made her
tremble. At this critical moment the escort was entering the
courtyard. The tread of the soldiers and the rattle of their weapons
awoke the echoes and seemed to put an end to Marche-a-Terre's
indecision.

"Perhaps I can save her," he said, "if you make her stay in the house.
And mind," he added, "whatever happens, you must stay with her and
keep silence; if not, no safety."

"I promise it," she replied in terror.

"Very good; then go in--go in at once, and hide your fears from every
one, even your mistress."

"Yes."

She pressed his hand; he stood for a moment watching her with an
almost paternal air as she ran with the lightness of a bird up the
portico; then he slipped behind the bushes, like an actor darting
behind the scenes as the curtain rises on a tragedy.

"Do you know, Merle," said Gerard as they reached the chateau, "that
this place looks to me like a mousetrap?"

"So I think," said the captain, anxiously.

The two officers hastened to post sentinels to guard the gate and the
causeway; then they examined with great distrust the precipitous banks
of the lakes and the surroundings of the chateau.

"Pooh!" said Merle, "we must do one of two things: either trust
ourselves in this barrack with perfect confidence, or else not enter
it at all."

"Come, let's go in," replied Gerard.

The soldiers, released at the word of command, hastened to stack their
muskets in conical sheaves, and to form a sort of line before the
litter of straw, in the middle of which was the promised barrel of
cider. They then divided into groups, to whom two peasants began to
distribute butter and rye-bread. The marquis appeared in the portico
to welcome the officers and take them to the salon. As Gerard went up
the steps he looked at both ends of the portico, where some venerable
larches spread their black branches; and he called up Clef-des-Coeurs
and Beau-Pied.

"You will each reconnoitre the gardens and search the bushes, and post
a sentry before your line."

"May we light our fire before starting, adjutant?" asked
Clef-des-Coeurs.

Gerard nodded.

"There! you see, Clef-des-Coeurs," said Beau-Pied, "the adjutant's
wrong to run himself into this wasp's-nest. If Hulot was in command we
shouldn't be cornered here--in a saucepan!"

"What a stupid you are!" replied Clef-des-Coeurs, "haven't you guessed,
you knave of tricks, that this is the home of the beauty our jovial
Merle has been whistling round? He'll marry her to a certainty--that's
as clear as a well-rubbed bayonet. A woman like that will do honor to
the brigade."

"True for you," replied Beau-Pied, "and you may add that she gives
pretty good cider--but I can't drink it in peace till I know what's
behind those devilish hedges. I always remember poor Larose and
Vieux-Chapeau rolling down the ditch at La Pelerine. I shall recollect
Larose's queue to the end of my days; it went hammering down like the
knocker of a front door."

"Beau-Pied, my friend; you have too much imagination for a soldier;
you ought to be making songs at the national Institute."

"If I've too much imagination," retorted Beau-Pied, "you haven't any;
it will take you some time to get your degree as consul."

A general laugh put an end to the discussion, for Clef-des-Coeurs found
no suitable reply in his pouch with which to floor his adversary.

"Come and make our rounds; I'll go to the right," said Beau-Pied.

"Very good, I'll take the left," replied his comrade. "But stop one
minute, I must have a glass of cider; my throat is glued together like
the oiled-silk of Hulot's best hat."

The left bank of the gardens, which Clef-des-Coeurs thus delayed
searching at once, was, unhappily, the dangerous slope where Francine
had seen the moving line of men. All things go by chance in war.

As Gerard entered the salon and bowed to the company he cast a
penetrating eye on the men who were present. Suspicions came forcibly
to his mind, and he went at once to Mademoiselle de Verneuil and said
in a low voice: "I think you had better leave this place immediately.
We are not safe here."

"What can you fear while I am with you?" she answered, laughing. "You
are safer here than you would be at Mayenne."

A woman answers for her lover in good faith. The two officers were
reassured. The party now moved into the dining-room after some
discussion about a guest, apparently of some importance, who had not
appeared. Mademoiselle de Verneuil was able, thanks to the silence
which always reigns at the beginning of a meal, to give some attention
to the character of the assemblage, which was curious enough under
existing circumstances. One thing struck her with surprise. The
Republican officers seemed superior to the rest of the assembly by
reason of their dignified appearance. Their long hair tied behind in a
queue drew lines beside their foreheads which gave, in those days, an
expression of great candor and nobleness to young heads. Their
threadbare blue uniforms with the shabby red facings, even their
epaulets flung back behind their shoulders (a sign throughout the
army, even among the leaders, of a lack of overcoats),--all these
things brought the two Republican officers into strong relief against
the men who surrounded them.

"Oh, they are the Nation, and that means liberty!" thought Marie;
then, with a glance at the royalists, she added, "on the other side is
a man, a king, and privileges." She could not refrain from admiring
Merle, so thoroughly did that gay soldier respond to the ideas she had
formed of the French trooper who hums a tune when the balls are
whistling, and jests when a comrade falls. Gerard was more imposing.
Grave and self-possessed, he seemed to have one of those truly
Republican spirits which, in the days of which we write, crowded the
French armies, and gave them, by means of these noble individual
devotions, an energy which they had never before possessed. "That is
one of my men with great ideals," thought Mademoiselle de Verneuil.
"Relying on the present, which they rule, they destroy the past for
the benefit of the future."

The thought saddened her because she could not apply it to her lover;
towards whom she now turned, to discard by a different admiration,
these beliefs in the Republic she was already beginning to dislike.
Looking at the marquis, surrounded by men who were bold enough,
fanatical enough, and sufficiently long-headed as to the future to
give battle to a victorious Republic in the hope of restoring a dead
monarchy, a proscribed religion, fugitive princes, and lost
privileges, "He," thought she, "has no less an aim than the others;
clinging to those fragments, he wants to make a future from the past."
Her mind, thus grasped by conflicting images, hesitated between the
new and the old wrecks. Her conscience told her that the one was
fighting for a man, the other for a country; but she had now reached,
through her feelings, the point to which reason will also bring us,
namely: to a recognition that the king /is/ the Nation.

The steps of a man echoed in the adjoining room, and the marquis rose
from the table to greet him. He proved to be the expected guest, and
seeing the assembled company he was about to speak, when the Gars made
him a hasty sign, which he concealed from the Republicans, to take his
place and say nothing. The more the two officers analyzed the faces
about them, the more their suspicions increased. The clerical dress of
the Abbe Gudin and the singularity of the Chouan garments were so many
warnings to them; they redoubled their watchfulness, and soon
discovered many discrepancies between the manners of the guests and
the topics of their conversation. The republicanism of some was quite
as exaggerated as the aristocratic bearing of others was unmistakable.
Certain glances which they detected between the marquis and his
guests, certain words of double meaning imprudently uttered, but above
all the fringe of beard which was round the necks of several of the
men and was very ill-concealed by their cravats, brought the officers
at last to a full conviction of the truth, which flashed upon their
minds at the same instant. They gave each other one look, for Madame
du Gua had cleverly separated them and they could only impart their
thoughts by their eyes. Such a situation demanded the utmost caution.
They did not know whether they and their men were masters of the
situation, or whether they had been drawn into a trap, or whether
Mademoiselle de Verneuil was the dupe or the accomplice of this
inexplicable state of things. But an unforeseen event precipitated a
crisis before they had fully recognized the gravity of their
situation.

The new guest was one of those solid men who are square at the base
and square at the shoulders, with ruddy skins; men who lean backward
when they walk, seeming to displace much atmosphere about them, and
who appear to think that more than one glance of the eye is needful to
take them in. Notwithstanding his rank, he had taken life as a joke
from which he was to get as much amusement as possible; and yet,
although he knelt at his own shrine only, he was kind, polite, and
witty, after the fashion of those noblemen who, having finished their
training at court, return to live on their estates, and never suspect
that they have, at the end of twenty years, grown rusty. Men of this
type fail in tact with imperturbable coolness, talk folly wittily,
distrust good with extreme shrewdness, and take incredible pains to
fall into traps.

When, by a play of his knife and fork which proclaimed him a good
feeder, he had made up for lost time, he began to look round on the
company. His astonishment was great when he observed the two
Republican officers, and he questioned Madame du Gua with a look,
while she, for all answer, showed him Mademoiselle de Verneuil in the
same way. When he saw the siren whose demeanor had silenced the
suspicions Madame du Gua had excited among the guests, the face of the
stout stranger broke into one of those insolent, ironical smiles which
contain a whole history of scandal. He leaned to his next neighbor and
whispered a few words, which went from ear to ear and lip to lip,
passing Marie and the two officers, until they reached the heart of
one whom they struck to death. The leaders of the Vendeans and the
Chouans assembled round that table looked at the Marquis de Montauran
with cruel curiosity. The eyes of Madame du Gua, flashing with joy,
turned from the marquis to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who was
speechless with surprise. The Republican officers, uneasy in mind,
questioned each other's thoughts as they awaited the result of this
extraordinary scene. In a moment the forks remained inactive in every
hand, silence reigned, and every eye was turned to the Gars. A
frightful anger showed upon his face, which turned waxen in tone. He
leaned towards the guest from whom the rocket had started and said, in
a voice that seemed muffled in crape, "Death of my soul! count, is
that true?"

"On my honor," said the count, bowing gravely.

The marquis lowered his eyes for a moment, then he raised them and
looked fixedly at Marie, who, watchful of his struggle, knew that look
to be her death-warrant.

"I would give my life," he said in a low voice, "for revenge on the
spot."

Madame du Gua understood the words from the mere movement of the young
man's lips, and she smiled upon him as we smile at a friend whose
regrets are about to cease. The scorn felt for Mademoiselle de
Verneuil and shown on every face, brought to its height the growing
indignation of the two Republicans, who now rose hastily:--

"Do you want anything, citizens?" asked Madame du Gua.

"Our swords, /citoyenne/," said Gerard, sarcastically.

"You do not need them at table," said the marquis, coldly.

"No, but we are going to play at a game you know very well," replied
Gerard. "This is La Pelerine over again."

The whole party seemed dumfounded. Just then a volley, fired with
terrible regularity, echoed through the courtyard. The two officers
sprang to the portico; there they beheld a hundred or so of Chouans
aiming at the few soldiers who were not shot down at the first
discharge; these they fired upon as upon so many hares. The Bretons
swarmed from the bank, where Marche-a-Terre had posted them at the
peril of their lives; for after the last volley, and mingling with the
cries of the dying, several Chouans were heard to fall into the lake,
where they were lost like stones in a gulf. Pille-Miche took aim at
Gerard; Marche-a-Terre held Merle at his mercy.

"Captain," said the marquis to Merle, repeating to the Republican his
own words, "you see that men are like medlars, they ripen on the
straw." He pointed with a wave of his hand to the entire escort of the
Blues lying on the bloody litter where the Chouans were despatching
those who still breathed, and rifling the dead bodies with incredible
rapidity. "I was right when I told you that your soldiers will not get
as far as La Pelerine. I think, moreover, that your head will fill
with lead before mine. What say you?"

Montauran felt a horrible necessity to vent his rage. His bitter
sarcasm, the ferocity, even the treachery of this military execution,
done without his orders, but which he now accepted, satisfied in some
degree the craving of his heart. In his fury he would fain have
annihilated France. The dead Blues, the living officers, all innocent
of the crime for which he demanded vengeance, were to him the cards by
which a gambler cheats his despair.

"I would rather perish than conquer as you are conquering," said
Gerard. Then, seeing the naked and bloody corpses of his men, he cried
out, "Murdered basely, in cold blood!"

"That was how you murdered Louis XVI., monsieur," said the marquis.

"Monsieur," replied Gerard, haughtily, "there are mysteries in a
king's trial which you could never comprehend."

"Do you dare to accuse the king?" exclaimed the marquis.

"Do you dare to fight your country?" retorted Gerard.

"Folly!" said the marquis.

"Parricide!" exclaimed the Republican.

"Well, well," cried Merle, gaily, "a pretty time to quarrel at the
moment of your death."

"True," said Gerard, coldly, turning to the marquis. "Monsieur, if it
is your intention to put us to death, at least have the goodness to
shoot us at once."

"Ah! that's like you, Gerard," said Merle, "always in a hurry to
finish things. But if one has to travel far and can't breakfast on the
morrow, at least we might sup."

Gerard sprang forward without a word towards the wall. Pille-Miche
covered him, glancing as he did so at the motionless marquis, whose
silence he took for an order, and the adjutant-major fell like a tree.
Marche-a-Terre ran to share the fresh booty with Pille-Miche; like two
hungry crows they disputed and clamored over the still warm body.

"If you really wish to finish your supper, captain, you can come with
me," said the marquis to Merle.

The captain followed him mechanically, saying in a low voice: "It is
that devil of a strumpet that caused all this. What will Hulot say?"

"Strumpet!" cried the marquis in a strangled voice, "then she is one?"

The captain seemed to have given Montauran a death-blow, for he
re-entered the house with a staggering step, pale, haggard, and
undone.

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.