The Chouans by Honoré de Balzac (open ebook txt) 📕

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