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

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, produced some letters, the covers of which were a good deal soiled. Receiving no acknowledgment, the Blue said as he withdrew, “Madame, they are from the commandant.”

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, a prey to horrible presentiments, read a letter written apparently in great haste by Hulot:—

“Mademoiselle—a party of my men have just caught a messenger from the Gars and have shot him. Among the intercepted letters is one which may be useful to you and I transmit it—etc.”

“Thank God, it was not he they shot,” she exclaimed, flinging the letter into the fire.

She breathed more freely and took up the other letter, enclosed by Hulot. It was apparently written to Madame du Gua by the marquis.

“No, my angel,” the letter said, “I cannot go to-night to La Vivetiere. You must lose your wager with the count. I triumph over the Republic in the person of their beautiful emissary. You must allow that she is worth the sacrifice of one night. It will be my only victory in this campaign, for I have received the news that La Vendee surrenders. I can do nothing more in France. Let us go back to England—but we will talk of all this to-morrow.”

The letter fell from Marie’s hands; she closed her eyes, and was silent, leaning backward, with her head on a cushion. After a long pause she looked at the clock, which then marked four in the afternoon.

“My lord keeps me waiting,” she said, with savage irony.

“Oh! God grant he may not come!” cried Francine.

“If he does not come,” said Marie, in a stifled tone, “I shall go to him. No, no, he will soon be here. Francine, do I look well?”

“You are very pale.”

“Ah!” continued Mademoiselle de Verneuil, glancing about her, “this perfumed room, the flowers, the lights, this intoxicating air, it is full of that celestial life of which I dreamed—”

“Marie, what has happened?”

“I am betrayed, deceived, insulted, fooled! I will kill him, I will tear him bit by bit! Yes, there was always in his manner a contempt he could not hide and which I would not see. Oh! I shall die of this! Fool that I am,” she went on laughing, “he is coming; I have one night in which to teach him that, married or not, the man who has possessed me cannot abandon me. I will measure my vengeance by his offence; he shall die with despair in his soul. I did believe he had a soul of honor, but no! it is that of a lackey. Ah, he has cleverly deceived me, for even now it seems impossible that the man who abandoned me to Pille-Miche should sink to such back-stair tricks. It is so base to deceive a loving woman, for it is so easy. He might have killed me if he chose, but lie to me! to me, who held him in my thoughts so high! The scaffold! the scaffold! ah! could I only see him guillotined! Am I cruel? He shall go to his death covered with caresses, with kisses which might have blessed him for a lifetime—”

“Marie,” said Francine, gently, “be the victim of your lover like other women; not his mistress and his betrayer. Keep his memory in your heart; do not make it an anguish to you. If there were no joys in hopeless love, what would become of us, poor women that we are? God, of whom you never think, Marie, will reward us for obeying our vocation on this earth,—to love, and suffer.”

“Dear,” replied Mademoiselle de Verneuil, taking Francine’s hand and patting it, “your voice is very sweet and persuasive. Reason is attractive from your lips. I should like to obey you, but—”

“You will forgive him, you will not betray him?”

“Hush! never speak of that man again. Compared with him Corentin is a noble being. Do you hear me?”

She rose, hiding beneath a face that was horribly calm the madness of her soul and a thirst for vengeance. The slow and measured step with which she left the room conveyed the sense of an irrevocable resolution. Lost in thought, hugging her insults, too proud to show the slightest suffering, she went to the guard-room at the Porte Saint-Leonard and asked where the commandant lived. She had hardly left her house when Corentin entered it.

“Oh, Monsieur Corentin,” cried Francine, “if you are interested in this young man, save him; Mademoiselle has gone to give him up because of this wretched letter.”

Corentin took the letter carelessly and asked,—

“Which way did she go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes,” he said, “I will save her from her own despair.”

He disappeared, taking the letter with him. When he reached the street he said to Galope-Chopine’s boy, whom he had stationed to watch the door, “Which way did a lady go who left the house just now?”

The boy went with him a little way and showed him the steep street which led to the Porte Saint-Leonard. “That way,” he said.

At this moment four men entered Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s house, unseen by either the boy or Corentin.

“Return to your watch,” said the latter. “Play with the handles of the blinds and see what you can inside; look about you everywhere, even on the roof.”

Corentin darted rapidly in the direction given him, and thought he recognized Mademoiselle de Verneuil through the fog; he did, in fact, overtake her just as she reached the guard-house.

“Where are you going?” he said; “you are pale—what has happened? Is it right for you to be out alone? Take my arm.”

“Where is the commandant?” she asked.

Hardly had the words left her lips when she heard the movement of troops beyond the Porte Saint-Leonard and distinguished Hulot’s gruff voice in the tumult.

“God’s thunder!” he cried, “I never saw such fog as this for a reconnaissance! The Gars must have ordered the weather.”

“What are you complaining of?” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, grasping his arm. “The fog will cover vengeance as well as perfidy. Commandant,” she added, in a low voice, “you must take measures at once so that the Gars may not escape us.”

“Is he at your house?” he asked, in a tone which showed his amazement.

“Not yet,” she replied; “but give me a safe man and I will send him to you when the marquis comes.”

“That’s a mistake,” said Corentin; “a soldier will alarm him, but a boy, and I can find one, will not.”

“Commandant,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, “thanks to this fog which you are cursing, you can surround my house. Put soldiers everywhere. Place a guard in the church to command the esplanade on which the windows of my salon open. Post men on the Promenade; for though the windows of my bedroom are twenty feet above the ground, despair does sometimes give a man the power to jump even greater distances safely. Listen to what I say. I shall probably send this gentleman out of the door of my house; therefore see that only brave men are there to meet him;