Fortunately for Bertha the horse she was riding had better qualities than his appearance denoted. He was a little Breton beast which, when quiet, seemed gloomy, sad, depressed, like the men of his native region; but once warmed to action (like them again) he increased every moment in vigor and energy. With flaring nostrils, and his tangled mane floating in the wind, he attained to a gallop; presently his gallop became a run. Plains, valleys, and hedges passed and disappeared behind him with fantastic rapidity, while Bertha, bending low upon his neck, gave rein and urged him onward with voice and whip.
The belated peasants whom she met, seeing the horse and its rider fade into the distance as quickly as they had seen them appear, took them for phantoms, and signed themselves devoutly behind them.
Rapid as this going was, it was not as fast as Bertha's heart demanded; to her a second seemed a week, a minute a year. She felt the terrible responsibility that rested on her,--the responsibility of blood and death and shame. Could she save Michel, and, having saved him, should she still have time to avert the danger that threatened Petit-Pierre? That was the question.
A thousand confused ideas coursed through her brain; she blamed herself for not having given Marianne's mother more careful instructions; she was seized with vertigo at the thought that after the headlong rush of that mad ride, the poor little Breton horse would surely be unable to return from Banl[oe]uvre to Nantes; she reproached herself for using in the interests of her love the time and resources which might be necessary to save the noblest head in France; then she reflected that unless others possessed, as she did, the passwords, it would be impossible for any one to reach the illustrious fugitive. So thinking, and torn by a thousand conflicting emotions, culminating in a sort of intoxication or madness, she pressed her horse with her heel and continued her wild ride, which, at any rate, cooled her brain, burning with thoughts that were like to burst it.
At the end of an hour she reached the forest of Touvois. There she was compelled to slacken speed; the way was full of quagmires. Twice the little horse plunged into them. She was forced to let him walk, calculating that in any case she had gained sufficiently on the soldiers to give Michel time to escape.
She hoped; she breathed. A moment of joyful satisfaction came to quench the all-consuming anguish of her fears; once more Michel would owe to her his life!
We must have loved, we must have known the ineffable joy of sacrifice, to comprehend what there was of happiness in this immolation of herself to the man she loved, and the proud joy with which Bertha thought for an instant that Michel's life, which she was now about to save, might cost her dear.
Her mind was full of these thoughts when she saw the white walls of the farmhouse shining in the moonlight, framed by the dark tufts of the nut-trees. The gate of the farmyard was open. Bertha dismounted, fastened her horse to a ring in the outer wall, and crossed the yard on foot.
The manure which covered the ground deadened the sound of her steps; no dog barked to welcome her, or to signify her presence to the inmates. To her great surprise Bertha noticed a horse standing, saddled and bridled, by the door of the house. The horse might belong to Michel; but then again it might belong to a stranger. Bertha was determined to make sure before entering the house.
One of the shutters in the room where Petit-Pierre had asked her hand of her father in Michel's name stood open. Bertha went softly up to it and looked within.
Hardly had her eyes rested on the interior of the room when she gave a stifled cry and almost fainted. She had seen Michel at Mary's knees; one hand was round her sister's waist, and the latter's hand was toying with his hair; their lips were smiling to each other; their eyes shone with that expression of joy which can never be mistaken by hearts that have loved.
The prostration caused by this discovery lasted but a second. Bertha rushed to the door of the room, pushed it open violently, and appeared on the threshold like an embodiment of Vengeance, her hair dishevelled, her eyes flaming, her face livid, her breast heaving.
Mary gave a cry and fell on her knees with her face in her hands. She had guessed the whole at a single glance, so frightfully convulsed was Bertha's face.
Michel, horrified by Bertha's look, rose hastily, and, as though he found himself suddenly in presence of an enemy, he mechanically put his hand on his arms.
"Strike!" cried Bertha, who saw his action; "strike, miserable man! It will be a fit conclusion to your baseness and your treachery!"
"Bertha," stammered Michel, "let me tell you, let me explain to you!"
"To your knees! to your knees!--you and your accomplice!" cried Bertha. "Say on your knees the lies you will invent for your defence! Oh, the vile wretch! And I have flown here to save his life! I, half mad with terror and despair for the fate that was hanging over him; I, who have forgotten all, all, honor, duty; I, who laid my life at his feet, who had but one thought, one object, one desire, one wish,--that of saying to him, 'Michel, look! see how I love you!'--I come, and I find him betraying his word, denying his promises, faithless to sacred ties--I will not say of love, but of gratitude--and with whom? for whom? The being I loved next to him in this world, the companion of my childhood,--my sister! Was there no other woman to seduce? Speak! speak, wretch!" went on Bertha, seizing the young man's arm and shaking it with violence. "Or did you wish, in deserting me, to take away my only consolation,--the heart of that second self I called a sister?"
"Bertha, listen to me!" said Michel. "Listen to me, I implore you! We are not, thank God, as guilty as you think us. Oh, if you did but know, Bertha!"
"I will hear nothing; I listen only to my heart, which grief is breaking, which despair has crushed; I listen only to the voice within me which says you are a coward! base! My God! my God!" she cried, grasping her hair in her clenched hands, "my God! is this the reward of my tenderness, which was so blind that my eyes refused to see, my ears to hear when they told me that this child, this timid, trembling, wavering, unmanly creature, was not worthy of my love? Oh, poor fool that I have been! I hoped that gratitude would bind him to her who took pity on his weakness, who braved all prejudice and public opinion to drag him from the bog of infamy and make his name, his degraded name, an honorable and honored one!"
"Ah!" cried Michel, rising, "enough! enough!"
"Yes, enough of a degraded name!" repeated Bertha. "That touches you, does it? So much the better; I will say it again and again. Yes, a name soiled and degraded by all that is most odious, cowardly, infamous,--by treachery! Oh, family of betrayers! The son continues in the way of the father; I ought to have expected it."
"Mademoiselle, mademoiselle!" said Michel, "you abuse the privilege of your sex in thus insulting me; and not only me, but all that a man holds most sacred,--the memory of his father!"
"Sex! sex! So I have a sex now, have I? I had none when you were betraying me at the feet of that poor fool, none when you were making me the most miserable of creatures; but now, because I do not lament and tear my hair and beat my breast and drag myself to your feet, now, now you suddenly discover I am a woman, a being to be respected because she is gentle, to whom suffering must be spared because she is weak! No, no! for you I have no longer a sex. You have before you, from this hour, a being whom you have mortally offended, and who returns you insult for insult. Baron de la Logerie, coward and traitor double-dyed is he who seduces the sister of his betrothed wife,--yes, I was the affianced wife of that man! Baron de la Logerie, not only are you a traitor and a coward, but you are the son of a traitor and a coward; your father was the infamous wretch who sold and betrayed Charette. He, at least, paid the penalty of his crime, which he expiated with his life. You have been told that he was killed in hunting,--a benevolent lie, which I here refute. He was killed by one who saw him do his deed of treachery; he was killed by--"
"Sister!" cried Mary, springing forward and laying her hand on her sister's lips, "you are about to commit the crime you denounce in others; you are betraying secrets which do not belong to you!"
"Be it so; but that man shall speak! The contempt I cast upon him shall make him raise his head! He shall find, in his shame or in his pride, the strength to send me out of a life that is odious to me, a life which can be henceforth but a long delirium, an eternal despair. Let him complete with one blow the ruin he has begun! My God! my God!" continued Bertha, in whose eyes the tears were beginning to force their way, "why dost thou suffer men to break the hearts of thy living creatures? My God! my God! what can ever console me for this?"
"I will," said Mary. "I will, my sister, my good sister, my precious sister, if you will but hear me, if you will only pardon me."
"Pardon you! you?" cried Bertha, pushing Mary away from her. "No! you are the partner of that man; I know you no more! But, I warn you, watch each other mutually, for your treachery will bring evil on both of you."
"Bertha! Bertha! in God's name, do not say such things! Do not curse us, do not insult us thus!"
"Ha!" exclaimed Bertha, "you feel it, do you? Yes, it is not without good reason that we are called 'she-wolves'! And now they'll say: 'The Demoiselles de Souday both loved Monsieur de la Logerie, and after promising to marry' (for I suppose he promised it to you as he did to me) 'he deserted them and took a third!' Why, even for wolves it would be monstrous!"
"Bertha! Bertha!"
"If I scorned the epithet they gave us, as I scorn all empty considerations of mock propriety," continued the young girl, still at the height of her excitement, "if I laughed at the conventions of society and the world, it was because we both--both, do you hear that?--because we both had the right to walk proudly in a virtuous independence of unsullied honor; because we were so high in our inward consciousness that such miserable insults were beneath our notice. But to-day all that is changed, and I here declare that I will do for you, Mary, what I disdain to do for myself,--if that man will not marry you, I will kill him. It will at least save our father's name from dishonor."
"That name is not dishonored; I swear it, Bertha!" cried Mary, kneeling down before her sister, who, shaken at last beyond her strength, fell into a chair and clasped her head in her hands.
"So much the better; it is one pain the less for her whom you will never see again." Then, twisting her arms with a gesture of despair, "My God! my God!" she cried, "after having loved them so well, to be forced to hate them!"
"No, you shall not hate me, Bertha! Your tears, your sufferings are worse to me than your anger. Forgive me! Oh, my God! what am I saying? You will think me guilty if I clasp your knees and ask your pardon. I am not guilty, I swear it. I will tell you--but oh! you must not suffer, you must not weep! Monsieur de la Logerie," continued Mary, turning to Michel a face that was bathed in tears, "Monsieur de la Logerie, all that has happened is a dream; the daylight has come. Go! go far away; forget me! Go at once!"
"Mary," said Bertha, who had suffered her sister to take her hand, which the latter covered with tears and kisses, "you do not reflect; it is too late; it is impossible."
"Yes, yes, it is possible, Bertha!" said Mary, with a heart-rending smile. "Bertha, we will each take a spouse whose name will protect us from the calumnies of the world."
"Whom do you mean, poor child?"
Mary raised her hand to heaven.
"God!" she said.
Bertha did not answer; grief was choking her; but she held Mary tightly clasped against her breast, while Michel, utterly overcome, fell on a bench in a corner of the room.
"Forgive us!" murmured Mary, in her sister's ear. "Do not crush him! Is it his fault if a mistaken education has made him so irresolute and timid that he had no courage to speak when it was his duty to do so? He has long wished to tell you the truth, but I have withheld him. I alone am to blame, I hoped we should forget each other. Alas, alas! God has made us very feeble against our own hearts! But now, we will never leave each other, you and I, dear sister. Look at me! let me kiss your eyes! No one shall ever come between us! no man shall bring trouble and discord between two sisters. No, no! we will live alone together, loving each other,--alone with ourselves and God, to whom we will consecrate our lives; and there will still be happiness, my Bertha, happiness in our solitude, for we can pray for him, we can pray for him!"
Mary uttered the last words in a heart-rending tone. Michel, convulsed with anguish, came and knelt beside her before Bertha, who, with her mind bent on her sister, did not notice him.
At this moment the soldiers appeared at the door which Bertha had left open, and the officer we have seen at the inn of Saint-Philbert advanced into the middle of the room and laid his hand on Michel's shoulder.
"You are Monsieur Michel de la Logerie?" he said.
"Yes, monsieur."
"Then I arrest you, in the name of the law."
"Great God!" cried Bertha, recovering her senses. "I had forgotten it! Ah, it is I who have killed him! And the other! down there! down there! Oh, what is happening there?"
"Michel, Michel!" said Mary, forgetting what she had just said to her sister. "Michel, if you die, I will die with you."
"No, no," cried Bertha, "he shall not die; I swear to you, sister, you shall still be happy! Make way, monsieur, make way!" she said to the officer.
"Mademoiselle," replied the latter, with painful politeness, "like you I cannot trifle with my duty. At Saint-Philbert you were only, to me, a suspicious person. I am not a commissary of police, and I was not called upon to interfere with you. Here I find you in flagrant rebellion against the laws, and I arrest you."
"Arrest me! arrest me at this moment! You may kill me, monsieur, but you shall not have, me living!"
And before the officer could recover from his surprise, Bertha climbed the window, sprang into the courtyard, and reached the gate. It was guarded by soldiers. Looking about her the girl saw Michel's horse, which, frightened by the noise and the apparition of the soldiers, had broken loose and was running hither and thither about the yard.
Profiting by the confidence that the officer felt in the precaution taken of surrounding the house, a security which prevented him from ordering violence against a woman, she went straight to the animal and sprang into the saddle with a bound, then passing like a thunderbolt before the eyes of the amazed officer, she reached a place in the wall which was slightly broken down; there with heel and bridle she urged on the horse, which was an excellent English hunter, made it jump the barrier which was still nearly five feet high, and darted away across the plain.
"Don't fire! don't fire upon that woman!" cried the officer, who did not think the prize worth taking dead if he could not get her living.
But the soldiers who formed the cordon outside the courtyard did not understand the order, and a rain of balls hissed around Bertha as the vigorous stride of her good English beast carried her toward Nantes.
Let us now see what was happening in Nantes during this night which began with the death of Joseph Picaut, followed by the arrest of Monsieur Michel de la Logerie.
Toward nine o'clock that evening a man with his clothes soaked in water and soiled with mud presented himself at the Prefecture, and on refusal of the usher in charge to take him to the prefect, he sent in to that official a card, bearing, as it appeared, some all-powerful name, for the prefect immediately left his employment to receive this man, who was no other than the one known to us as Monsieur Hyacinthe.
Ten minutes after their interview a strong force of gendarmes and police officers was on its way to the house occupied by Maître Pascal in the rue du Marché, and soon appeared before the door of the house which opened on the street.
No precaution was taken to dull the sound of the column's advance, or to mislead any one as to its intentions; so that Maître Pascal, on becoming aware of its advance, had plenty of time to notice that the door into the alley was not guarded, and to escape in that way before the emissaries of the law could burst in the door on the rue du Marché, which was not opened to them.
He made at once for the rue du Château and entered No. 3. Monsieur Hyacinthe, whom he had not perceived, hidden as he was behind a stone block near the entrance of the alley, followed him with all the practised skill of a hunter stalking the game he covets.
During this preliminary operation, for the success of which Monsieur Hyacinthe had probably vouched, the authorities had taken strong military measures; and no sooner had the Jew made his report of what he had seen to the prefect of the Loire than twelve hundred men advanced upon the house into which the spy had seen Maître Pascal disappear. These twelve hundred men were divided into three columns. The first went down the Cours, leaving sentinels stationed along the walls of the Archbishop's garden and the adjoining houses, skirted the castle moat and came in front of No. 3 rue du Château, where it deployed. The second, following the rue de l'Evêché, crossed the place Saint-Pierre, went down the main street, and joined the first column by the rue Basse-du-Château. The third united with the two others from the upper end of the rue du Château, leaving, like the others, a long line of sentries with fixed bayonets behind it.
The investment was complete; the whole nest of houses, in the midst of which was No. 3, was securely surrounded.
The troops entered the ground-floor, preceded by the commissaries of police, who marched before them, pistol in hand. The soldiers spread themselves through the house and guarded all the exits; their mission was then fulfilled. That of the police began.
Four ladies were, apparently, the only occupants of the house. These ladies, who belonged to the upper aristocracy of Nantes, and were respected, not only for their social position, but for their honorable characters, were arrested.
Outside the house a crowd gathered, and formed another cordon behind that of the soldiers. The whole town seemed to have turned into the streets; but no sign of royalist sympathy was shown. The crowd was grave and curious, that was all.
Investigations began inside the house; and their first result confirmed the authorities in the conviction that Madame la Duchesse de Berry occupied it. A letter addressed to her Royal Highness was lying open on a table. The disappearance of Maître Pascal, who was seen to enter the house and known not to have left it, proved the existence of some hiding-place within its walls. That hiding-place must be found.
All articles of furniture were opened if the keys were in them; broken open if they were not. The sappers and masons sounded the walls and floors with their hammers; builders, who were taken from room to room, declared it impossible, comparing the internal with the external construction, that any hiding-place was made in the walls. In several of the rooms, however, articles were found, such as printed papers, jewels, articles of silver, which might, to be sure, have belonged to the owners of the house, but, under the circumstances, seemed to point to the presence of the princess within the walls. When the garret was reached the builders declared that there, less than elsewhere, was it possible for a hiding-place to exist.
The police then searched the neighboring houses, sounding the walls with such violence that fragments of masonry were detached, and at one time it was thought that the walls themselves were coming down.
While these things were happening about them the ladies of the house, who were under arrest, showed the greatest coolness; though kept in sight by their guards, they calmly sat down to dinner. Two other women,--and history ought, ere this, to have searched out their names and preserved them for posterity,--two other women were the special objects of police investigation; these women, the servants of the household, named Charlotte Moreau and Marie Boissy, were taken to the castle, thence to the barracks of the gendarmerie, where, finding that they resisted all threats, an attempt was made to corrupt them. Large and still larger sums of money were offered to them, but they answered steadily that they knew nothing whatever of the Duchesse de Berry.
After these ineffectual efforts the search relaxed; the prefect was the first to retreat, leaving, by way of precaution, a sufficient number of men to guard each room in the house, while the commissaries of police took up their quarters on the ground-floor. The house was still surrounded and the National Guard sent a detachment to relieve the troops of the line, who took a rest.
In distributing sentries, two gendarmes were placed in two attic rooms, which had, of course, been carefully searched. The cold was so sharp that these men suffered from it. One of them went downstairs and returned with an armful of peat-fuel, and ten minutes later a fine fire was blazing in the chimney, the iron back of which was soon red-hot.
Almost at the same time, although it was scarcely daylight, the work of the masons began again; their crow-bars and mallets struck the walls of the attic rooms and made them tremble. In spite of this noisy racket, one of the gendarmes was fast asleep; his companion, now comfortably warm, had ceased to keep up the fire, and the masons, satisfied at last, gave up the search in this part of the house, which, with the instinct of their trade, they had carefully explored.
The gendarme who was awake, profiting by the silence that followed the diabolical uproar which had continued since early on the previous evening, went to sleep himself. His companion soon after waked up cold. His eyes were scarcely open before he thought of warming himself, and relighted the fire; but as the peat did not ignite very readily, he threw into the fireplace a number of copies of the "Quotidienne" which lay pell-mell upon the table. The flames from the newspapers produced a thicker smoke and greater heat than the peat had done at any time. The gendarme, feeling comfortable, was occupying his time by reading the "Quotidienne," when all of a sudden his pyrotechnic edifice came tumbling clown, and the peat squares which he had set against the chimney-back rolled into the room.
At the same instant he heard from behind that back a noise which gave him an odd idea; he fancied there were rats in the chimney, and that the heat of his fire had forced them to decamp. On this he woke up his comrade, and together they made ready to chase the rodents, sabre in hand.
While their attention was wholly fixed on this new species of game, one of them noticed a decided movement of the chimney-back, and he called out:--
"Who's there?"
A woman's voice replied:--
"We surrender,--we will open the door; put out your fire!"
The two gendarmes jumped to their fire and scattered it out with a few kicks. The chimney-back then slowly turned on a pivot and disclosed a hollow space, from which a woman, bareheaded, her face pale, her hair standing up from her forehead like that of a man, dressed in a simple Neapolitan gown of a brown color, scorched in many places, came forth, placing her feet and hands on the heated hearth.
This woman was Petit-Pierre, her Royal Highness Marie-Caroline, the Duchesse de Berry.
Her companions followed her. For sixteen hours they had been confined in that cramped place without food. The hole which was thus their asylum was made between the flue of the chimney and the wall of the adjoining house under the roof, the rafters of which served to conceal it.
At the moment when the troops surrounded the house her Royal Highness was listening to Maître Pascal, who gave her an amusing account of the scare which had led him to leave his house and come to hers. Through the windows of the room in which she sat the duchess could see the moon rising in the calm sky, and defining, like a brown silhouette, the massive towers, the silent, motionless towers of the old castle.
There are moments when nature seems so gentle, so friendly, that it is impossible to believe a danger lurks and threatens us from the midst of such perfect quietude.
Suddenly Maître Pascal, coming nearer to the window, saw the flash of bayonets. Instantly he threw himself back, exclaiming:--
"Escape! save yourself, Madame!"
The duchess at once rushed up the staircase, the others following her. Reaching the hiding-place, she turned and called to her companions. As they knew the place could only be entered on their hands and knees, the men went first; then, as the young lady who attended on her Royal Highness was unwilling to pass before her, the duchess said, laughing:--
"Go in, go in! Good strategy requires that when a retreat is made the commander should always be in the rear."
The soldiers entered the door of the house just as that of the hiding-place was closed on the princess and her friends.
We have seen with what minute care the search had been made. Every blow struck on the walls resounded in the refuge of the duchess; the plaster fell in showers, the bricks were loosened, and the prisoners came near being buried in the mass of rubbish shaken down by the jar of the hammers and the iron-bars and joists of the searchers. When the gendarmes built their fire the back of the chimney and the wall gave forth a heat which made the little chamber almost insupportable. After a while those who were imprisoned in it could scarcely breathe, and they would have perished asphyxiated if they had not succeeded in getting a few slates off the roof, which made an opening that let in air.
The duchess suffered the most; for, having entered last, she was nearest to the chimney-back. Each of her companions begged her to change places, but she would not consent to it. To the danger of being suffocated was now added that of being burned alive. The door of the hiding-place was red-hot, and threatened at every moment to set fire to the clothing of the women. In fact, Madame's gown had been twice on fire and she had put it out with her hands, which were badly burned; the scars remained visible for many months.
Every minute exhausted the interior air, and the external air admitted through the tiny holes did not suffice to renew it. The breathing of the prisoners became more and more difficult; another ten minutes in that furnace might sacrifice the future life of the duchess. Her companions implored her to surrender; but she would not. Her eyes filled with tears of anger, which the scorching air dried upon her cheeks. The fire had again caught her gown and again she had extinguished it; but in the movement she thus made she chanced to touch the spring of the chimney-back, which moved and attracted the attention of the gendarme.
Supposing that this accident had betrayed her retreat, and pitying the sufferings of her companions, Madame consented to surrender, leaving the chimney as we have related. Her first words were a request to see General Dermoncourt. One of the gendarmes went to find him on the ground-floor, which he had not chosen to leave throughout the search.
As soon as the general's arrival was announced, Madame went hastily toward him.
"General," she said quickly, "I surrender to you; and I trust to your loyalty!"
"Madame," replied Dermoncourt, "your Royal Highness is under the safeguard of French honor!"
He led her to a chair, and as she seated herself she pressed his arm firmly and said:--
"General, I have nothing to reproach myself with. I have done my duty as a mother to recover my son's inheritance."
Her voice was clear and accentuated. Though pale, she was excited as if by fever. The general sent for a glass of water, in which she dipped her fingers; the refreshing coolness calmed her.
During this time the prefect and the commander of the National Guard were notified of what had happened. The prefect was the first to arrive. He entered the room in which Madame was sitting, with his hat on his head, ignoring that a woman was a prisoner there,--a woman whose rank and whose misfortunes deserved more respect than had ever been shown her.
He approached the duchess, looked at her, touched his hat cavalierly, and said:--
"Yes, that is really she."
Then he went out to give some orders.
"Who is that man?" asked the princess.
The question was a natural one, for the prefect had presented himself without any of the distinctive signs of his high administrative position.
"Madame can surely guess," said the general.
She looked at him with a slight laugh.
"I suppose it must be the prefect," she said.
"Madame could not have been more correct had she seen his license."
"Did that man serve under the Restoration?"
"No, Madame."
"I am glad for the Restoration."
The prefect now returned, entering without being announced, as before; and, as before, he did not remove his hat. Apparently, the prefect was hungry on that particular morning, for he brought with him, on a plate which he held in his hand, a slice of pâté. He put the plate on the table, asked for a knife and fork, and began to eat with his back to the princess.
Madame looked at him with an expression of mingled anger and contempt.
"General," she said, "do you know what I most regret in the station I once occupied?"
"No, Madame."
"Two ushers, to turn that man out."
When the prefect had finished his repast he turned round and asked the duchess for her papers.
Madame replied that he could look in her late hiding-place, where he would find a white portfolio she had left there.
The prefect went to fetch the portfolio and brought it back with him.
"Monsieur," said the duchess, opening it, "the papers in this portfolio are of very little consequence; but I wish to give them to you myself in order that I may explain their ownership."
So saying, she gave him one after the other the things that were in the portfolio.
"Does Madame know how much money she has here?" asked the prefect.
"Monsieur, there ought to be about thirty-six thousand francs; of which twelve thousand belong to persons whom I will designate."
The general here approached and said that if Madame felt better it was urgent that she should leave the house.
"To go where?" she said, looking at him fixedly.
"To the castle, Madame."
"Ah, yes, and from there to Blaye, no doubt?"
"General," said one of Madame's companions, "her Royal Highness cannot go on foot; it would not be proper."
"Monsieur," replied Dermoncourt, "a carriage would only encumber us. Madame can go on foot by throwing a mantle over her shoulders and wearing a hat."
On this the general's secretary and the prefect, who seemed to be suddenly pricked by gallantry, went down stairs and returned with three hats. The princess chose a black one, because, as she said, the color was analogous to the circumstances; after which she took the general's arm to leave the house. As she passed before the door of the garret she gave a glance at the chimney-back, which remained open.
"Ah, general!" she said, laughing, "if you had not treated me as they treated Saint Lawrence,--which by the bye is quite unworthy of your military generosity,--you wouldn't have me under your arm, now. Come, friends," she added, addressing her companions.
The princess went down the staircase on the general's arm. As she was about to cross the threshold into the street she heard a great noise among the crowd, who flocked behind the soldiers and formed a line ten times as deep as that of the military.
Madame may have thought that those cries and shouts were aimed at her; but she gave no sign of fear except that she pressed a little closer to the general's arm.
When the princess advanced between the double line of soldiers and National Guards, who made a lane from the house to the castle, the cries and mutterings she had heard became louder and more violent than before. The general cast his eyes in the direction from which the tumult chiefly came, and there he saw a young peasant-woman trying to force her way through the ranks of the soldiers who opposed her passage; and yet, being struck by her beauty and the despair that was visible on her face, were refraining from violence in repulsing her.
Dermoncourt recognized Bertha, and called the duchess's attention to her. The latter gave a cry.
"General," she said eagerly, "you have promised not to separate me from my friends; let that young girl come to me."
On a sign from the general the ranks opened, and Bertha reached the august prisoner.
"Pardon, Madame! pardon for an unhappy woman who might have saved you, and did not! Oh, I would I could die, cursing that fatal love which has made me the involuntary accomplice of the traitors who have sold your Royal Highness!"
"I don't know what you mean, Bertha!" interrupted the princess, raising the young girl and giving her the arm that was free. "What you are doing at this moment proves that whatever else has happened I cannot doubt a devotion the memory of which will never leave me. But I have to talk to you of other things, dear child. I have to ask your pardon for contributing to an error which may, perhaps, have made you most unhappy; I have to tell you that--"
"I know all, Madame," said Bertha, lifting her eyes, that were red with tears, to the princess.
"Poor child!" exclaimed the duchess, pressing the girl's hand. "Then, follow me, come with me; time and my affection will calm a sorrow that I comprehend, that I respect--"
"I beg your Highness to forgive me for not obeying her, but I have made a vow which I must fulfil. God alone is placed by duty above my princess."
"Then go, dear child!" said Madame, comprehending the young girl's meaning. "Go, and may the God you seek be with you! When you pray to Him remember Petit-Pierre; the prayers of a broken heart ascend to Him."[3]
They had now reached the gates of the prison. The duchess raised her eyes to the blackened walls of the old castle; then she held out her hand to Bertha, who, kneeling down, laid a kiss upon it, murmuring once more the words, "Forgive me!" Then Madame, after an instant's hesitation, passed through the postern, giving a last smile in token of farewell to Bertha.
The general withdrew his arm from the duchess to allow her to pass in; then he turned hastily to Bertha and said in a low voice:--
"Where is your father?"
"He is at Nantes."
"Tell him to return to the château, and stay there quietly; he shall not be disturbed. I'll break my sword sooner than allow him to be arrested, my old enemy!"
"Thank you for him, general."
"And you, if you have any need of my services, command them, mademoiselle."
"I want a passport to Paris."
"When?"
"At once."
"Where shall I send it to you?"
"To the other side of the pont Rousseau; to the inn of the Point du Jour."
"In an hour you shall have it, mademoiselle."
With a sign of farewell the general turned and disappeared beneath the gloomy portal.
Bertha worked her way through the close-pressed ranks of the crowd until she reached the nearest church, which she entered. There she remained a long time kneeling on the cold stone pavement.
When she rose the stones were wet with tears.
Then she crossed the town and the pont Rousseau. Approaching the inn of the Point du Jour, she saw her father sitting at the threshold of the door. Within the last few hours the Marquis de Souday had aged ten years; his eye had lost the humorous, bantering look which gave it such expression; he carried his head low, like a man whose burden was too heavy for him.
Warned by the priest who had received the last confession of Maître Jacques, and who went to the forest of Touvois to tell the marquis what had happened, the old man started at once for Nantes. A mile from the pont Rousseau he met Bertha, whose horse had fallen, having broken a tendon in the furious pace to which she had urged him.
The girl confessed to her father what had happened. The old man did not reproach her, but he broke the stick he held in his hand against the stones of the road.
When they reached the pont Rousseau public rumor informed them, though it was only seven in the morning, of the arrest of the princess before that arrest was actually accomplished. Bertha, not daring to raise her eyes to her father, rushed toward Nantes; the old man seated himself on the bench before the inn, where we find him four hours later.
This sorrow was the only one against which his selfish and epicurean philosophy was impotent. He would have pardoned his daughter many faults; but he could not think without despair that she had covered his name with the crime and shame of lèze-chivalry, and that a Souday, the last of the name, should have helped to fling royalty into the gulf.
When Bertha approached him he silently held out to her a paper a gendarme had given him. It was her passport from the general.
"Father, will you not forgive me as she forgave me?" said the girl, in a gentle, humble tone which contrasted strangely with her self-assuming manner in other days.
The old gentleman sadly shook his head.
"Where shall I find my poor Jean Oullier?" he said. "Since God has preserved him to me I want to see him. I want him to go with me out of this country!"
"Will you leave Souday, father?"
"Yes."
"Where will you go?"
"Where I can hide my name."
"And Mary, poor Mary, who is innocent!"
"Mary will be the wife of the man who is the cause of this execrable crime. I will never see Mary again!"
"You will be alone."
"No; I shall have Jean Oullier."
Bertha bowed her head; she entered the inn, where she changed her peasant dress for mourning garments, which she had bought on her way through the town. When she came out the old man had gone. Looking about her she saw him, with his hands clasped behind his back, his head sunk on his breast, sadly walking in the direction of Saint-Philbert.
Bertha sobbed; then she cast a lingering look at the verdant plain of the Retz region, which can be seen in the distance from Nantes, backed by the dark-blue line of the forest of Machecoul.
"Farewell, all that I love in this world!" she cried.
Then she turned and re-entered the town of Nantes.
During the three hours that Courtin spent bound hand and foot, and lying on the earth in the ruins of Saint-Philbert, side by side with the corpse of Joseph Picaut, his heart passed through all the agony that can rend and torture a human being.
He felt the precious belt beneath him, for he had managed to lie upon it; but the gold it contained only added more pangs to his other pangs, more terror to the countless terrors which assailed his brain. That gold, which was more to him than life itself, was he doomed to lose it? Who was this unknown man whom he had heard Maître Jacques tell the widow to summon? What was this mysterious vengeance he had now to fear? He passed in review before him all the persons to whom, in the course of his life, he had done harm; the list was long, and their threatening faces peopled the darkness of the tower.
And yet, at times, a ray of hope traversed his gloomy mind; vague and undecided at first, it presently took on consistency. Could it be that a man possessing that glorious gold should die? If vengeance rose before him would not a handful of those coins silence it? His imagination counted and re-counted the sum belonging to him, which was really, really his own, which was bruising his flesh delightfully, pressing into his loins as if the gold itself were becoming a part of his very body. Then he reflected that if he could only escape he should add fifty thousand more francs to the fifty thousand now beneath him; and, helpless as he was, a victim doomed to death, awaiting the fall of the sword of Damocles above his head, which might at any instant cut the thread of his life, his heart melted into such joy that it took the character of intoxication. But soon his ideas again changed their course. He asked himself if his accomplice--in whom he felt only the confidence of an accomplice--would not profit by his absence to cheat him of the share that belonged to him; he saw that man escaping, weighed down by the weight of the enormous sum he was carrying, and refusing to divide it with him, who, after all, had done the whole betrayal. He mentally prepared for such occasion; he thought of words of entreaty to reach the heart of that Jew, threats to intimidate him, reproaches that might move him; but suddenly, when he reflected that if Monsieur Hyacinthe loved gold as he loved it,--which was probable, inasmuch as he was a Jew,--when he measured his associate by his own measure, when he sounded in his own soul the depths of the sacrifice he demanded, he said to himself that tears, prayers, threats, reproaches would all be useless, and he fell into paroxysms of rage; he vented roars which shook the old arches of the feudal edifice; he struggled in his bonds, he bit the ropes, he tried to tear them with his teeth; but those ropes, slender and loosely twisted as they were, seemed to take on life, to become living things under his efforts; he fancied he felt them struggling against him, increasing their tangled snarl; the knots he undid seemed to tie themselves again, not singly as before, but in double, treble, quadruple turns; and then, as if to punish his efforts, they buried themselves in his flesh, where they made a burning furrow. All dreams of hope, all thought of riches and happiness vanished like clouds before the breath of a tempest; the phantoms of those whom the farmer had persecuted rose terrible before him; all things lurking in the shadow, stones, beams, fragments of broken wood-work, fallen cornices, all took form, and each of those threatening shapes looked at him with eyes which shone in the darkness like thousands of sparks darting on the tissue of a black shroud. The mind of the wretched man began to wander. Mad with terror and despair he called to the corpse of Joseph Picaut, of which he could see the outline, stiff and stark, about four feet from him; he offered him a fourth, a third, a half of his gold if he would loose his bonds; but the echo of the arches alone replied in its funereal voice, and, exhausted by emotion, he fell back for a moment into dull insensibility.
He was in one of these moments of torpor when a noise without made him quiver. Some one was walking in the inner courtyard of the castle, and presently he heard the grinding of the rusty bolts of the old fruit-room. Courtin's heart beat as though it would burst his breast. He was breathless with fear, choking with anguish; he felt that the coming person was the avenger summoned by Maître Jacques.
The door opened. The flame of a torch lighted the rafters with its ruddy glare. Courtin had an instant of hope; it was the widow, bearing the torch, whom he first saw, and he thought she was alone; but she had scarcely made two steps into the tower before a man who was behind her appeared. The hair of the hapless farmer rose on his head; he dared not look at the man; he closed his eyes and was silent.
The man and the widow came nearer. Marianne gave the torch to her companion, pointing with her finger to Courtin; and then, as if indifferent to what was about to happen, she knelt down at the feet of Joseph Picaut's body and began to pray.
As for the man, he came close beside the farmer and, no doubt to convince himself that he was really the mayor of La Logerie, he cast the light of the torch across his face.
"Can he be asleep?" he said to himself, in a low voice. "No, he is too great a coward to sleep; no, his face is too pale--he's not sleeping."
Then he stuck his torch into a fissure in the wall, sat down on an enormous stone which had rolled from the top to the middle of the tower and, addressing Courtin, said to him:--
"Come, open your eyes, Monsieur le maire. We have something to say to each other, and I like to see the eyes of those who speak to me."
"Jean Oullier!" cried Courtin, turning livid, and making a desperate effort to burst his bonds and escape. "Jean Oullier living!"
"If it were only his ghost, Monsieur Courtin, it would be, I think, enough to terrify you; for you have a long account to settle with him."
"Oh, my God! my God!" exclaimed Courtin, letting himself drop back on the ground like a man who resigns himself to his fate.
"Our hatred dates far back, doesn't it?" continued Jean Oullier; "and its instincts have not misled us; they have embittered you against me, and to-day, exhausted and half dead as I am, they have brought me back to you."
"I have never hated you," said Courtin, who the moment he perceived that Jean Oullier was not about to kill him on the spot, felt a gleam of hope in his heart and foresaw the possibility of saving his life by discussion. "I have never hated you; on the contrary! and if my ball did strike you it was not because I meant it for you. I did not know you were in that bush."
"Oh, my grievances against you go farther back than that, Monsieur Courtin!"
"Farther back?" replied Courtin, who, little by little, was recovering some energy. "But I swear that before that accident, which I deplore, I never put you in any danger, I never did you any harm."
"Your memory is short, and your offences weigh most on the soul of the offended person, it appears; for I remember the wrongs you have done me."
"What wrongs? What can you remember against me? Speak, Monsieur Jean Oullier! Do you think it right to kill a man without hearing him, without allowing him to say one word in his defence?"
"Who told you I meant to kill you?" said Jean Oullier, with the icy calmness he had not quitted for an instant. "Your conscience, perhaps."
"Speak out, Monsieur Jean! tell me of what I am accused! Except for that luckless shot, I know I am as white as the driven snow. Yes, I can prove to you that no one has been a better friend than I to the worthy family at Souday; no one has respected them more, or been more glad of this marriage which is to unite the families of your master and mine."
"Monsieur Courtin," said Jean Oullier, who had left free course to this flux of words, "it is, as you say, only fair that an accused person should defend himself. Defend yourself, therefore, if you can. Listen to me; I begin--"
"Oh, go on! I am not afraid of your questions!" replied Courtin.
"We shall soon see that. Who betrayed me to the gendarmes at the fair of Montaigu, so as to lay hands more securely on my master's guests, whom you rightly supposed I was defending? Who, having done that, basely hid himself behind the hedge of the last garden in Montaigu, and after borrowing a gun of the owner of that garden, fired at my dog and killed my poor companion? Answer, Monsieur Courtin!"
"Who dares to say he saw me do that?" cried the farmer.
"Three persons; among them the man from whom you borrowed the gun."
"How should I know the dog was yours? No, Monsieur Jean, upon my honor, I was ignorant of it."
Jean made a contemptuous gesture.
"Who," he continued, in the same calm but accusing voice, "who, having slipped into Pascal Picaut's house, sold to the Blues the secret he discovered there,--the secret of a sacred hospitality?"
"I bear testimony to that," said the deep voice of Pascal's widow, issuing from her silence and immobility.
The farmer shuddered and dared not defend himself.
"Whom have I constantly found," resumed Jean Oullier, "during the last four months, busy with shameful schemes, laying his plots and sheltering them under the name of his young master, proclaiming devotion and fidelity to him, and soiling the very name of those virtues by contact with his criminal intentions? Whom did I hear, on the Bouaimé moor, discussing the price of blood? Whom did I see weighing the gold offered him for the basest and most odious of treacheries? Who, I say, was that man, if not you?"
"I swear to you by all there is most sacred among men!" said Courtin, who still believed that Jean Oullier's principal grievance was the shot that wounded him. "I swear to you that I did not know you were in that luckless bush!"
"But I tell you I don't blame you for that! I have not said a word, I have not opened my lips to you about it! The list of your crimes is long enough without adding that!"
"You speak of my crimes, Jean Oullier, and you forget that my young master, who will soon become yours, owes me his life; and that if I had been the traitor that you call me I should have delivered him up to the soldiers who passed and repassed my house every day while he was there. You forget all that, while, on the contrary, you rake up every trifling circumstance against me."
"If you did save your master," continued Jean Oullier, in the same inexorable tone, "it is because that sham devotion was useful to your plans. Better for him, better for those two poor girls, if you had let them end their days honorably, gloriously, than to have mixed them up in these shameless intrigues. That is what I have against you, Courtin; that thought alone doubles the hatred I feel to you."
"The proof that I don't hate you, Jean Oullier, is that if I had chosen you would long ago have been put out of this world."
"What do you mean?"
"On the day of that hunt when the father of Monsieur Michel was killed--murdered, Monsieur Jean, we won't blink the word--a beater was not ten paces from him; and the name of that beater was Courtin."
Jean Oullier rose to his full height.
"Yes," continued the farmer, "and this beater saw it was Jean Oullier's ball that brought the traitor down."
"Yes," said Jean Oullier; "but it was not a crime it was an expiation. I am proud to have been the man whom God selected to punish that criminal."
"God alone may punish, God alone may curse," said the mayor.
"No, I am not mistaken; it is He who has put into my heart this hatred of sin, this ineradicable recollection of treachery; it was the finger of God touching my heart when that heart quivered at the name of the traitor. When my shot struck that Judas I felt the breath of the divine Justice cross my face and cool it; and, from that moment to this I have found the peace and calmness I never had while that unpunished criminal prospered before my eyes. God was with me."
"God is never with a murderer."
"God is always with the executioner who lifts the sword of justice. Men have their laws, He has his. I was that day, as I am to-day, the sword of God."
"Do you mean to murder me as you murdered Baron Michel?"
"I mean to punish the man who sold Petit-Pierre as I punished him who sold Charette. I shall punish him without fear, without doubt, without remorse."
"Take care; remorse will come when your future master calls you to account for his father's death."
"That young man is just and loyal; if he is ever called upon to judge my conduct I shall tell him what I saw in the wood of La Chabotière, and he will judge me rightly."
"Who can testify that you tell the truth? One man alone, and that is I. Let me live, Jean, let me live! and, as that woman did just now, I will rise and say: 'I bear testimony to that.'"
"Fear makes you foolish, Courtin. Monsieur Michel will ask for no other testimony when Jean Oullier says, 'This is the truth;' when Jean Oullier, baring his breast, says, 'If you wish to avenge your father, strike!' when Jean Oullier kneels before him and prays to God to send the expiation if He himself judges that the deed should be expiated. No, no! and you are wrong, wrong to evoke in your terror those bloody memories before my mind. You, Maître Courtin, you have done worse things than Michel did; for the blood you sold is nobler still than that he trafficked in. I did not spare Michel, why should I spare you? Never, never!"
"Pity! mercy! Jean Oullier. Do not kill me!" sobbed the wretched man.
"Implore those stones, ask pity of them! They may answer you; but nothing can move my will, or shake my resolution. You shall die!"
"Ah, my God! my God!" cried Courtin, "is there no one to help me? Widow Picaut! widow Picaut! here! here! will you let him cut my throat? Here! help me! protect me! If you want gold, I'll give it! I have gold, gold! No, what am I saying? My mind is wandering; I have no gold!" said the poor wretch, fearing to spur on the murder he saw glittering in the eyes of his enemy if he offered such hopes. "No, I have no gold, but I have property, estates. I'll give you all; I'll make you rich--both of you! Oh, mercy, Jean Oullier! Widow Picaut, defend me!"
The widow did not stir; except for the movement of her lips she might have been taken, as she knelt there in her mourning garments, pale as marble, mute and motionless beside the corpse, for one of those kneeling statues we often see at the foot of some ancient monument.
"What!" continued Courtin, "will you really kill me? kill me without a fight, without danger, when I cannot lift a foot to escape or a hand to defend myself? Will you cut my throat in my bonds like a beast that they drag to a slaughter-house? Oh, Jean Oullier, that's not the work of a soldier; you are a butcher!"
"Who told you I would do it thus? No, no, no, Maître Courtin. Look, the wound you gave me has not healed; it still bleeds. I am weak, tottering, feeble; I am proscribed, a price is on my head!--well, in spite of all that, I am so certain of the justice of my cause that I do not hesitate to appeal to the judgment of God. Courtin, you are free!"
"Free?"
"Yes, I set you at liberty. Oh, you need not thank me; what I do, I do for myself, not you,--that it may never be said Jean Oullier struck a fallen man, an unarmed man. But don't mistake; the life I give you now, I will take some day."
"Oh, God!"
"Maître Courtin, you will go from here unbound and free; but, I warn you, beware! As soon as you have passed the threshold of these ruins I shall be upon your traces; and those traces I will never abandon until I have struck you down and made your body a corpse. Beware, Maître Courtin, beware!"
So saying, Jean Oullier took his knife and cut the cords that bound the farmer hand and foot. Courtin made a bound of almost frantic joy; but he instantly controlled it. In springing up he felt the belt; it seemed as though it called to him. Jean Oullier had given him life, but what was life without his gold?
He flung himself down upon it as quickly as he had risen.
Jean Oullier had seen, rapid as Courtin's movement was, the swollen leather of the belt, and he guessed what was passing in the farmer's mind.
"Why don't you go?" he said. "What are you waiting for? Yes, I understand; you are afraid that, seeing you free as myself and stronger than I, my wrath may revive; you are afraid I may throw you another knife like my own and say to you: 'Defend yourself, Maître Courtin, we are equal now!' No, Jean Oullier has but one word, and that he has given you. Make haste! depart! fly! If God is with you, He will protect you against me; if He condemns you, what care I for the start I give you? Take your cursèd gold, and begone!"
Maître Courtin did not answer. He rose, stumbling like a drunken man; he tried to fasten the belt around his waist, but could not; his fingers trembled as though they were shaken by an ague. Before departing he kept himself turned in terror toward Jean Oullier. The traitor feared treachery; he could not believe that the generosity of his enemy did not hide some trap.
Jean Oullier pointed with his finger to the door. Courtin rushed into the court; but before he reached the postern-gate he heard the voice of the Vendéan, sonorous as the clarion of battle, calling to him:--
"Beware, Courtin! beware!"
Maître Courtin, free as he was, shuddered; and in that moment of agitation he struck his foot against a stone, tripped, and fell forward. He uttered a cry of agony, fancying that the Vendéan was upon him; he thought he felt the cold steel of a knife piercing between his shoulders.
It was only an omen. Courtin rose, and a minute later, having passed the postern, he darted, a free man, into the open country he had not expected to see again.
When he had disappeared the widow went up to Jean Oullier and offered him her hand.
"Jean," she said, "as I listened to you, I thought how right my Pascal was when he told me there were brave, strong souls under every flag."
Jean Oullier wrung the hand the worthy woman who had saved his life held out to him.
"How do you feel now?" she asked.
"Better; we are always stronger for a struggle."
"And where are you going?"
"To Nantes. After what your mother told us, I think Bertha may not have gone there; and I fear some disaster from the delay."
"Well, at any rate, take a boat; that will spare your legs the fatigue of half the distance."
"I will," replied Jean Oullier.
And he followed the widow to the place on the lakeside where the boats of the fishermen were drawn up on the sand.