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

a volley, which was fortunately ill-aimed. The marquis reached the gate of the next field, but as he did so he was almost caught by Gudin, who was close upon his heels. The Gars redoubled his speed. Nevertheless, he and his pursuer reached the next barrier together; but the marquis dashed his musket at Gudin’s head with so good an aim that he stopped his rush. It is impossible to depict the anxiety betrayed by Marie, or the interest of Hulot and his troops as they watched the scene. They all, unconsciously or silently, repeated the gestures which they saw the runners making. The Gars and Gudin reached the little wood together, but as they did so the latter stopped and darted behind a tree. About twenty Chouans, afraid to fire at a distance lest they should kill their leader, rushed from the copse and riddled the tree with balls. Hulot’s men advanced at a run to save Gudin, who, being without arms, retreated from tree to tree, seizing his opportunity as the Chouans reloaded. His danger was soon over. Hulot and the Blues met him at the spot where the marquis had thrown his musket. At this instant Gudin perceived his adversary sitting among the trees and out of breath, and he left his comrades firing at the Chouans, who had retreated behind a lateral hedge; slipping round them, he darted towards the marquis with the agility of a wild animal. Observing this manoeuvre the Chouans set up a cry to warn their leader; then, having fired on the Blues and their contingent with the gusto of poachers, they boldly made a rush for them; but Hulot’s men sprang through the hedge which served them as a rampart and took a bloody revenge. The Chouans then gained the road which skirted the fields and took to the heights which Hulot had committed the blunder of abandoning. Before the Blues had time to reform, the Chouans were entrenched behind the rocks, where they could fire with impunity on the Republicans if the latter made any attempt to dislodge them.

While Hulot and his soldiers went slowly towards the little wood to meet Gudin, the men from Fougeres busied themselves in rifling the dead Chouans and dispatching those who still lived. In this fearful war neither party took prisoners. The marquis having made good his escape, the Chouans and the Blues mutually recognized their respective positions and the uselessness of continuing the fight; so that both sides prepared to retreat.

“Ha! ha!” cried one of the Fougeres men, busy about the bodies, “here’s a bird with yellow wings.”

And he showed his companions a purse full of gold which he had just found in the pocket of a stout man dressed in black.

“What’s this?” said another, pulling a breviary from the dead man’s coat.

“Communion bread—he’s a priest!” cried the first man, flinging the breviary on the ground.

“Here’s a wretch!” cried a third, finding only two crowns in the pockets of the body he was stripping, “a cheat!”

“But he’s got a fine pair of shoes!” said a soldier, beginning to pull them off.

“You can’t have them unless they fall to your share,” said the Fougeres man, dragging the dead feet away and flinging the boots on a heap of clothing already collected.

Another Chouan took charge of the money, so that lots might be drawn as soon as the troops were all assembled. When Hulot returned with Gudin, whose last attempt to overtake the Gars was useless as well as perilous, he found about a score of his own men and thirty of the contingent standing around eleven of the enemy, whose naked bodies were thrown into a ditch at the foot of the bank.

“Soldiers!” cried Hulot, sternly. “I forbid you to share that clothing. Form in line, quick!”

“Commandant,” said a soldier, pointing to his shoes, at the points of which five bare toes could be seen on each foot, “all right about the money, but those boots,” motioning to a pair of hobnailed boots with the butt of his gun, “would fit me like a glove.”

“Do you want to put English shoes on your feet?” retorted Hulot.

“But,” said one of the Fougeres men, respectfully, “we’ve divided the booty all through the war.”

“I don’t prevent you civilians from following your own ways,” replied Hulot, roughly.

“Here, Gudin, here’s a purse with three louis,” said the officer who was distributing the money. “You have run hard and the commandant won’t prevent your taking it.”

Hulot looked askance at Gudin, and saw that he turned pale.

“It’s my uncle’s purse!” exclaimed the young man.

Exhausted as he was with his run, he sprang to the mound of bodies, and the first that met his eyes was that of his uncle. But he had hardly recognized the rubicund face now furrowed with blue lines, and seen the stiffened arms and the gunshot wound before he gave a stifled cry, exclaiming, “Let us be off, commandant.”

The Blues started. Hulot gave his arm to his young friend.

“God’s thunder!” he cried. “Never mind, it is no great matter.”

“But he is dead,” said Gudin, “dead! He was my only relation, and though he cursed me, still he loved me. If the king returns, the neighborhood will want my head, and my poor uncle would have saved it.”

“What a fool Gudin is,” said one of the men who had stayed behind to share the spoils; “his uncle was rich, and he hasn’t had time to make a will and disinherit him.”

The division over, the men of Fougeres rejoined the little battalion of the Blues on their way to the town.

Towards midnight the cottage of Galope-Chopine, hitherto the scene of life without a care, was full of dread and horrible anxiety. Barbette and her little boy returned at the supper-hour, one with her heavy burden of rushes, the other carrying fodder for the cattle. Entering the hut, they looked about in vain for Galope-Chopine; the miserable chamber never looked to them as large, so empty was it. The fire was out, and the darkness, the silence, seemed to tell of some disaster. Barbette hastened to make a blaze, and to light two oribus, the name given to candles made of pitch in the region between the villages of Amorique and the Upper Loire, and still used beyond Amboise in the Vendomois districts. Barbette did these things with the slowness of a person absorbed in one overpowering feeling. She listened to every sound. Deceived by the whistling of the wind she went often to the door of the hut, returning sadly. She cleaned two beakers, filled them with cider, and placed them on the long table. Now and again she looked at her boy, who watched the baking of the buckwheat cakes, but did not speak to him. The lad’s eyes happened to rest on the nails which usually held his father’s duck-gun, and Barbette trembled as she noticed that the gun was gone. The silence was broken only by the lowing of a cow or the splash of the cider as it dropped at regular intervals from the bung of the cask. The poor woman sighed while she poured into three brown earthenware porringers a sort of soup made of milk, biscuit broken into bits, and boiled chestnuts.

“They must have fought in the field next to the Berandiere,”