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

was diverted by a very distinct noise coming from the other end of the Promenade, where the rock wall ended and a steep descent leading down to the Queen’s Staircase began. When Corentin reached the spot he saw a figure gliding past it as if by magic. Putting out his hand to grasp this real or fantastic being, who was there, he supposed, with no good intentions, he encountered the soft and rounded figure of a woman.

“The devil take you!” he exclaimed, “if any one else had met you, you’d have had a ball through your head. What are you doing, and where are you going, at this time of night? Are you dumb? It certainly is a woman,” he said to himself.

The silence was suspicious, but the stranger broke it by saying, in a voice which suggested extreme fright, “Ah, my good man, I’m on my way back from a wake.”

“It is the pretended mother of the marquis,” thought Corentin. “I’ll see what she’s about. Well, go that way, old woman,” he replied, feigning not to recognize her. “Keep to the left if you don’t want to be shot.”

He stood quite still; then observing that Madame du Gua was making for the Papegaut tower, he followed her at a distance with diabolical caution. During this fatal encounter the Chouans had posted themselves on the manure towards which Marche-a-Terre had guided them.

“There’s the Grande-Garce!” thought Marche-a-Terre, as he rose to his feet against the tower wall like a bear.

“We are here,” he said to her in a low voice.

“Good,” she replied, “there’s a ladder in the garden of that house about six feet above the manure; find it, and the Gars is saved. Do you see that small window up there? It is in the dressing-room; you must get to it. This side of the tower is the only one not watched. The horses are ready; if you can hold the passage over the Nancon, a quarter of an hour will put him out of danger—in spite of his folly. But if that woman tries to follow him, stab her.”

Corentin now saw several of the forms he had hitherto supposed to be stones moving cautiously but swiftly. He went at once to the guard-room at the Porte Saint-Leonard, where he found the commandant fully dressed and sound asleep on a camp bed.

“Let him alone,” said Beau-Pied, roughly, “he has only just lain down.”

“The Chouans are here!” cried Corentin, in Hulot’s ear.

“Impossible! but so much the better,” cried the old soldier, still half asleep; “then he can fight.”

When Hulot reached the Promenade Corentin pointed out to him the singular position taken by the Chouans.

“They must have deceived or strangled the sentries I placed between the castle and the Queen’s Staircase. Ah! what a devil of a fog! However, patience! I’ll send a squad of men under a lieutenant to the foot of the rock. There is no use attacking them where they are, for those animals are so hard they’d let themselves roll down the precipice without breaking a limb.”

The cracked clock of the belfry was ringing two when the commandant got back to the Promenade after giving these orders and taking every military precaution to seize the Chouans. The sentries were doubled and Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s house became the centre of a little army. Hulot found Corentin absorbed in contemplation of the window which overlooked the tower.

“Citizen,” said the commandant, “I think the ci-devant has fooled us; there’s nothing stirring.”

“He is there,” cried Corentin, pointing to the window. “I have seen a man’s shadow on the curtain. But I can’t think what has become of that boy. They must have killed him or locked him up. There! commandant, don’t you see that? there’s a man’s shadow; come, come on!”

“I sha’n’t seize him in bed; thunder of God! He will come out if he went in; Gudin won’t miss him,” cried Hulot, who had his own reasons for waiting till the Gars could defend himself.

“Commandant, I enjoin you, in the name of the law to proceed at once into that house.”

“You’re a fine scoundrel to try to make me do that.”

Without showing any resentment at the commandant’s language, Corentin said coolly: “You will obey me. Here is an order in good form, signed by the minister of war, which will force you to do so.” He drew a paper from his pocket and held it out. “Do you suppose we are such fools as to leave that girl to do as she likes? We are endeavoring to suppress a civil war, and the grandeur of the purpose covers the pettiness of the means.”

“I take the liberty, citizen, of sending you to—you understand me? Enough. To the right-about, march! Let me alone, or it will be the worse for you.”

“But read that,” persisted Corentin.

“Don’t bother me with your functions,” cried Hulot, furious at receiving orders from a man he regarded as contemptible.

At this instant Galope-Chopine’s boy suddenly appeared among them like a rat from a hole.

“The Gars has started!” he cried.

“Which way?”

“The rue Saint-Leonard.”

“Beau-Pied,” said Hulot in a whisper to the corporal who was near him, “go and tell your lieutenant to draw in closer round the house, and make ready to fire. Left wheel, forward on the tower, the rest of you!” he shouted.

To understand the conclusion of this fatal drama we must re-enter the house with Mademoiselle de Verneuil when she returned to it after denouncing the marquis to the commandant.

When passions reach their crisis they bring us under the dominion of far greater intoxication than the petty excitements of wine or opium. The lucidity then given to ideas, the delicacy of the high-wrought senses, produce the most singular and unexpected effects. Some persons when they find themselves under the tyranny of a single thought can see with extraordinary distinctness objects scarcely visible to others, while at the same time the most palpable things become to them almost as if they did not exist. When Mademoiselle de Verneuil hurried, after reading the marquis’s letter, to prepare the way for vengeance just as she had lately been preparing all for love, she was in that stage of mental intoxication which makes real life like the life of a somnambulist. But when she saw her house surrounded, by her own orders, with a triple line of bayonets a sudden flash of light illuminated her soul. She judged her conduct and saw with horror that she had committed a crime. Under the first shock of this conviction she sprang to the threshold of the door and stood there irresolute, striving to think, yet unable to follow out her reasoning. She knew so vaguely what had happened that she tried in vain to remember why she was in the antechamber, and why she was leading a strange child by the hand. A million of stars were floating in the air before her like tongues of fire. She began to walk about, striving to shake off the horrible torpor which laid hold of her; but, like one asleep, no object appeared to