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

for,” she added, with a sigh, “no one denies him courage; he will assuredly defend himself.”

“Gudin!” called the commandant. “Listen, my lad,” he continued in a low voice when the young man joined him, “this devil of a girl is betraying the Gars to us—I am sure I don’t know why, but that’s no matter. Take ten men and place yourself so as to hold the cul-de-sac in which the house stands; be careful that no one sees either you or your men.”

“Yes, commandant, I know the ground.”

“Very good,” said Hulot. “I’ll send Beau-Pied to let you know when to play your sabres. Try to meet the marquis yourself, and if you can manage to kill him, so that I sha’n’t have to shoot him judicially, you shall be a lieutenant in a fortnight or my name’s not Hulot.”

Gudin departed with a dozen soldiers.

“Do you know what you have done?” said Corentin to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, in a low voice.

She made no answer, but looked with a sort of satisfaction at the men who were starting, under command of the sub-lieutenant, for the Promenade, while others, following the next orders given by Hulot, were to post themselves in the shadows of the church of Saint-Leonard.

“There are houses adjoining mine,” she said; “you had better surround them all. Don’t lay up regrets by neglecting a single precaution.”

“She is mad,” thought Hulot.

“Was I not a prophet?” asked Corentin in his ear. “As for the boy I shall send with her, he is the little gars with a bloody foot; therefore—”

He did not finish his sentence, for Mademoiselle de Verneuil by a sudden movement darted in the direction of her house, whither he followed her, whistling like a man supremely satisfied. When he overtook her she was already at the door of her house, where Galope-Chopine’s little boy was on the watch.

“Mademoiselle,” said Corentin, “take the lad with you; you cannot have a more innocent or active emissary. Boy,” he added, “when you have seen the Gars enter the house come to me, no matter who stops you; you’ll find me at the guard-house and I’ll give you something that will make you eat cake for the rest of your days.”

At these words, breathed rather than said in the child’s ear, Corentin felt his hand squeezed by that of the little Breton, who followed Mademoiselle de Verneuil into the house.

“Now, my good friends, you can come to an explanation as soon as you like,” cried Corentin when the door was closed. “If you make love, my little marquis, it will be on your winding-sheet.”

But Corentin could not bring himself to let that fatal house completely out of sight, and he went to the Promenade, where he found the commandant giving his last orders. By this time it was night. Two hours went by; but the sentinels posted at intervals noticed nothing that led them to suppose the marquis had evaded the triple line of men who surrounded the three sides by which the tower of Papegaut was accessible. Twenty times had Corentin gone from the Promenade to the guard-room, always to find that his little emissary had not appeared. Sunk in thought, the spy paced the Promenade slowly, enduring the martyrdom to which three passions, terrible in their clashing, subject a man,—love, avarice, and ambition. Eight o’clock struck from all the towers in the town. The moon rose late. Fog and darkness wrapped in impenetrable gloom the places where the drama planned by this man was coming to its climax. He was able to silence the struggle of his passions as he walked up and down, his arms crossed, and his eyes fixed on the windows which rose like the luminous eyes of a phantom above the rampart. The deep silence was broken only by the rippling of the Nancon, by the regular and lugubrious tolling from the belfries, by the heavy steps of the sentinels or the rattle of arms as the guard was hourly relieved.

“The night’s as thick as a wolf’s jaw,” said the voice of Pille-Miche.

“Go on,” growled Marche-a-Terre, “and don’t talk more than a dead dog.”

“I’m hardly breathing,” said the Chouan.

“If the man who made that stone roll down wants his heart to serve as the scabbard for my knife he’ll do it again,” said Marche-a-Terre, in a low voice scarcely heard above the flowing of the river.

“It was I,” said Pille-Miche.

“Well, then, old money-bag, down on your stomach,” said the other, “and wriggle like a snake through a hedge, or we shall leave our carcasses behind us sooner than we need.”

“Hey, Marche-a-Terre,” said the incorrigible Pille-Miche, who was using his hands to drag himself along on his stomach, and had reached the level of his comrade’s ear. “If the Grande-Garce is to be believed there’ll be a fine booty to-day. Will you go shares with me?”

“Look here, Pille-Miche,” said Marche-a-Terre stopping short on the flat of his stomach. The other Chouans, who were accompanying the two men, did the same, so wearied were they with the difficulties they had met with in climbing the precipice. “I know you,” continued Marche-a-Terre, “for a Jack Grab-All who would rather give blows than receive them when there’s nothing else to be done. We have not come here to grab dead men’s shoes; we are devils against devils, and sorrow to those whose claws are too short. The Grande-Garce has sent us here to save the Gars. He is up there; lift your dog’s nose and see that window above the tower.”

Midnight was striking. The moon rose, giving the appearance of white smoke to the fog. Pille-Miche squeezed Marche-a-Terre’s arm and silently showed him on the terrace just above them, the triangular iron of several shining bayonets.

“The Blues are there already,” said Pille-Miche; “we sha’n’t gain anything by force.”

“Patience,” replied Marche-a-Terre; “if I examined right this morning, we must be at the foot of the Papegaut tower between the ramparts and the Promenade,—that place where they put the manure; it is like a feather-bed to fall on.”

“If Saint-Labre,” remarked Pille-Miche, “would only change into cider the blood we shall shed to-night the citizens might lay in a good stock to-morrow.”

Marche-a-Terre laid his large hand over his friend’s mouth; then an order muttered by him went from rank to rank of the Chouans suspended as they were in mid-air among the brambles of the slate rocks. Corentin, walking up and down the esplanade had too practiced an ear not to hear the rustling of the shrubs and the light sound of pebbles rolling down the sides of the precipice. Marche-a-Terre, who seemed to possess the gift of seeing in darkness, and whose senses, continually in action, were acute as those of a savage, saw Corentin; like a trained dog he had scented him. Fouche’s diplomatist listened but heard nothing; he looked at the natural wall of rock and saw no signs. If the confusing gleam of the fog enabled him to see, here and there, a crouching Chouan, he took him, no doubt, for a fragment of rock, for these human bodies had all the appearance of inert nature. This danger to the invaders was of short duration. Corentin’s attention