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

“Galope-Chopine!” cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil, when Francine brought the man to her. “Does he love me?” she murmured to herself, in a low voice.

The instinctive hope sent a brilliant color to her cheeks and joy into her heart. Galope-Chopine looked alternately from the mistress to the maid with evident distrust of the latter; but a sign from Mademoiselle de Verneuil reassured him.

“Madame,” he said, “about two o’clock he will be at my house waiting for you.”

Emotion prevented Mademoiselle de Verneuil from giving any other reply than a movement of her head, but the man understood her meaning. At that moment Corentin’s step was heard in the adjoining room, but Galope-Chopine showed no uneasiness, though Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s look and shudder warned him of danger, and as soon as the spy had entered the room the Chouan raised his voice to an ear-splitting tone.

“Ha, ha!” he said to Francine, “I tell you there’s Breton butter and Breton butter. You want the Gibarry kind, and you won’t give more than eleven sous a pound; then why did you send me to fetch it? It is good butter that,” he added, uncovering the basket to show the pats which Barbette had made. “You ought to be fair, my good lady, and pay one sou more.”

His hollow voice betrayed no emotion, and his green eyes, shaded by thick gray eyebrows, bore Corentin’s piercing glance without flinching.

“Nonsense, my good man, you are not here to sell butter; you are talking to a lady who never bargained for a thing in her life. The trade you run, old fellow, will shorten you by a head in a very few days”; and Corentin, with a friendly tap on the man’s shoulder, added, “you can’t keep up being a spy of the Blues and a spy of the Chouans very long.”

Galope-Chopine needed all his presence of mind to subdue his rage, and not deny the accusation which his avarice had made a just one. He contented himself with saying:—

“Monsieur is making game of me.”

Corentin turned his back on the Chouan, but, while bowing to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whose heart stood still, he watched him in the mirror behind her. Galope-Chopine, unaware of this, gave a glance to Francine, to which she replied by pointing to the door, and saying, “Come with me, my man, and we will settle the matter between us.”

Nothing escaped Corentin, neither the fear which Mademoiselle de Verneuil could not conceal under a smile, nor her color and the contraction of her features, nor the Chouan’s sign and Francine’s reply; he had seen all. Convinced that Galope-Chopine was sent by the marquis, he caught the man by the long hairs of his goatskin as he was leaving the room, turned him round to face him, and said with a keen look: “Where do you live, my man? I want butter, too.”

“My good monsieur,” said the Chouan, “all Fougeres knows where I live. I am—”

“Corentin!” exclaimed Mademoiselle de Verneuil, interrupting Galope-Chopine. “Why do you come here at this time of day? I am scarcely dressed. Let that peasant alone; he does not understand your tricks any more than I understand the motive of them. You can go, my man.”

Galope-Chopine hesitated a moment. The indecision, real or feigned, of the poor devil, who knew not which to obey, deceived even Corentin; but the Chouan, finally, after an imperative gesture from the lady, left the room with a dragging step. Mademoiselle de Verneuil and Corentin looked at each other in silence. This time Marie’s limpid eyes could not endure the gleam of cruel fire in the man’s look. The resolute manner in which the spy had forced his way into her room, an expression on his face which Marie had never seen there before, the deadened tones of his shrill voice, his whole demeanor,—all these things alarmed her; she felt that a secret struggle was about to take place between them, and that he meant to employ against her all the powers of his evil influence. But though she had at this moment a full and distinct view of the gulf into which she was plunging, she gathered strength from her love to shake off the icy chill of these presentiments.

“Corentin,” she said, with a sort of gayety, “I hope you are going to let me make my toilet?”

“Marie,” he said,—“yes, permit me to call you so,—you don’t yet know me. Listen; a much less sagacious man than I would see your love for the Marquis de Montauran. I have several times offered you my heart and hand. You have never thought me worthy of you; and perhaps you are right. But however much you may feel yourself too high, too beautiful, too superior for me, I can compel you to come down to my level. My ambition and my maxims have given you a low opinion of me; frankly, you are mistaken. Men are not worth even what I rate them at, and that is next to nothing. I shall certainly attain a position which will gratify your pride. Who will ever love you better, or make you more absolutely mistress of yourself and of him, than the man who has loved you now for five years? Though I run the risk of exciting your suspicions,—for you cannot conceive that any one should renounce an idolized woman out of excessive love,—I will now prove to you the unselfishness of my passion. If the marquis loves you, marry him; but before you do so, make sure of his sincerity. I could not endure to see you deceived, for I do prefer your happiness to my own. My resolution may surprise you; lay it to the prudence of a man who is not so great a fool as to wish to possess a woman against her will. I blame myself, not you, for the failure of my efforts to win you. I hoped to do so by submission and devotion, for I have long, as you well know, tried to make you happy according to my lights; but you have never in any way rewarded me.”

“I have suffered you to be near me,” she said, haughtily.

“Add that you regret it.”

“After involving me in this infamous enterprise, do you think that I have any thanks to give you?”

“When I proposed to you an enterprise which was not exempt from blame to timid minds,” he replied, audaciously, “I had only your own prosperity in view. As for me, whether I succeed or fail, I can make all results further my ends. If you marry Montauran, I shall be delighted to serve the Bourbons in Paris, where I am already a member of the Clichy club. Now, if circumstances were to put me in correspondence with the princes I should abandon the interests of the Republic, which is already on its last legs. General Bonaparte is much too able a man not to know that he can’t be in England and in Italy at the same time, and that is how the Republic is about to fall. I have no doubt he made the 18th Brumaire to obtain greater advantages over the Bourbons when it came to treating with them. He is a long-headed fellow, and very keen; but the politicians will get the better of him on their own ground. The betrayal of France is another scruple which men of superiority leave to fools. I won’t conceal from you that I have come here with the necessary authority to open negotiations with the Chouans, or to further their