The Last Vendée
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But just as they reached the foot of the slope a thundering sound was heard from the summit of the rise they were about to ascend; the ground shook under their feet, and a sort of avalanche came tearing down the hill with the rapidity of a thunderbolt.
"Stand aside!" cried Dermoncourt, in a voice which rose above that horrible uproar.
Seizing the widow by the arm, he spurred his horse into the bushes. The general's first thought was for his guide, who was, for the moment, the most precious thing he had. The guide and he were safe.
But the soldiers for the most part did not have time to obey their leader. Paralyzed by the strange noise they heard and not knowing what enemy to look for, blinded by the darkness, and feeling danger everywhere about them, they held to the road, where the cart (for of course it was the cart, violently impelled by Jean Oullier from the top of the steep embankment) cut its way through them like a monstrous cannon-ball, killing those the wheels ran over, and wounding others with its logs and splinters.
A moment of stupefaction followed this catastrophe, but it could not check Dermoncourt.
"Forward, men!" he cried, "and let's get out of this cut-throat place!"
At the same moment a voice, not less powerful than his own, called out: -
"Fire, my gars!"
A flash issued from every bush on either side of the marsh and a rain of balls came pelting down among the little troop. The voice that ordered the volley resounded from its front, but the shots came from its rear. The general, an old war-wolf, as sly and wary as Jean Oullier himself, saw through the man[oe]uvre.
"Forward!" he cried; "don't lose time answering them. Forward! forward!"
The column continued to advance, and in spite of the volleys which followed it, reached the top of the hill.
While the general and his men were making the ascent Jean Oullier, hiding among the underbrush, went rapidly down the hill and joined his companions.
"Bravo!" said Guérin. "Ah! if we had only ten arms like yours and a few such wood-carts as that we could get rid of this cursed army in a very short time."
"Hum!" growled Jean Oullier, "I'm not as satisfied as you. I hoped to turn them back, but we have not done it. It looks to me as if they were keeping on their way. To the crossroads, now, and as fast as our legs will take us!"
"Who says the red-breeches are keeping on their way?" asked a voice.
Jean Oullier went to the boggy path whence the voice had come, and recognized Joseph Picaut. The Vendéan, kneeling on the ground, with his gun beside him, was conscientiously emptying the pockets of three soldiers whom Jean Oullier's mighty projectile had knocked over and crushed to death. The wolf-keeper turned away with an expression of disgust.
"Listen to Joseph," said Guérin, in a low voice to Jean Oullier. "You had better listen to him, for he sees by night like the cats, and his advice is not to be despised."
"Well, I say," said Joseph Picaut, putting his plunder into a canvas bag he always carried with him, – "I say that since the Blues reached the top of the embankment they haven't budged. You haven't any ears, you fellows, or you would hear them stamping up there like sheep in a fold. If you don't hear them, I do."
"Let us make sure of that," said Jean Oullier to Guérin, thus avoiding a reply to Joseph.
"You are right, Jean Oullier, and I'll go myself," replied Guérin.
The Vendéan crossed the marsh, crept through the reeds, and went half way up the ascent, crawling on his stomach like a snake among the rocks, and gliding so gently under the bushes that they scarcely stirred as he passed. When he was only about thirty paces from the summit he stood up, put his hat on the end of a long stick, and waved it above his head. Instantly a shot from the summit sent it spinning a hundred feet below its owner.
"He was right," said Jean Oullier, who heard the shot. "But what is hindering them? Is their guide killed?"
"Their guide is not killed," said Joseph Picaut, in a savage voice.
"Did you see him?" asked another voice, for Jean Oullier seemed determined not to speak to Joseph Picaut.
"Yes," replied the Chouan.
"Did you recognize him?"
"Yes."
"Then it must be," said Jean Oullier, as if speaking to himself, "that they wanted to get away from the marsh and bivouac behind those rocks, where they are safe from our guns. No doubt they will stay there till morning."
Presently a few lights were seen flickering on the height.
Little by little they increased in number and in size, until four or five camp fires lit up with a ruddy glow the sparse vegetation which grew among the rocks.
"This is very strange if their guide is still with them," said Jean Oullier. "However, as they are certain to go by the Ragot crossways in any case, take your men there, Guérin," he said to the Chouan, who by this time had returned to his side.
"Very good," said the latter.
"If they continue their way, you know what you have to do; if, on the contrary, they have really bivouacked up there, you can let them take their ease beside their fires. It is useless to attack them."
"Why so?" asked Joseph Picaut.
Thus directly questioned as to his own order, Jean Oullier was forced to reply.
"Because," he said, "it is a crime to uselessly expose the lives of brave men."
"Say rather-"
"What?" demanded the old keeper, violently.
"Say 'Because my masters, the nobles whose servant I am, no longer want the lives of those brave men.' Say that, and you'll tell the truth, Jean Oullier."
"Who dares to say that Jean Oullier lies?" asked the wolf-keeper, frowning.
"I!" said Joseph Picaut.
Jean Oullier set his teeth, but contained himself. He seemed resolved to have neither friendship nor quarrel with the man.
"I!" repeated Picaut, – "I say that it is not out of love for our bodies that you want to prevent us from profiting by our victory, but because all you have made us fight for is to keep the red-breeches from pillaging the castle of Souday."
"Joseph Picaut," replied Jean Oullier, calmly, "though we both wear the white cockade we do not follow the same paths nor work for the same ends. I have always thought that no matter how their opinions may differ, brothers are brothers, and it grieves me to see the blood of my brethren uselessly shed. As for my relation to my masters I have always regarded humility as the first duty of a Christian, above all when that Christian is a poor peasant, as I am, and as you are. Also I consider obedience the most imperative duty of a soldier. I know that you don't think as I do, – so much the worse for you! Under other circumstances I might have made you repent for what you have just said; but at this moment I do not belong to myself. You may thank God for that."
"Well," said Joseph Picaut, sneering, "when you return into possession of yourself you'll know where to find me, Jean Oullier; you won't have far to look." Then, turning to the little troop of men, he went on: "Now, if there are any among you who think it is folly to course the hare when you can take it in its form, follow me."
He started as if to go. No one stirred; no one even answered him. Joseph Picaut, seeing that total silence followed his proposal, made an angry gesture and disappeared into the thicket.
Jean Oullier, taking Picaut's words for mere boastfulness, shrugged his shoulders.
"Come, you fellows," he said to the Chouans, "be off to the Ragot crossways, and quickly, too. Follow the bed of the brook to the clearing at Quatre-Vents; from there it will take you fifteen minutes to get to the crossways."
"Where are you going, Jean Oullier?" said Guérin.
"To Souday," said the wolf-keeper. "I must make sure that Michel did his errand."
The little band departed obediently, following, as Jean Oullier told them, the course of the rivulet. The old keeper was left alone. He listened for a few moments to the sound of the water which the Chouans splashed as they marched; but that noise soon mingled with the rippling and dash of the little rapids, and Jean Oullier turned his head in the direction of the soldiers.
The rocks on which the column had halted formed a chain, running from east to west in the direction of Souday. On the east this chain ended in a gentle slope, which came down to the rivulet up which the Chouans had just passed in order to turn the encampment of the troops. On the west it stretched for a mile and a half or more, and the nearer it came to Souday the higher and more jagged grew the rocks, the steeper and more denuded of vegetation were the slopes. On this side the miniature mountain ended in an actual precipice formed by enormous perpendicular rocks, which overhung the rivulet that washed their base. Once or twice in his life Jean Oullier had risked the descent of this precipice to gain upon a boar his dogs were pursuing. It was done by a path scarcely a foot wide, hidden among the gorse and called the Viette des Biques, meaning "the goat-path." The way was known to a few hunters only. Jean Oullier himself had been exposed to such danger in descending it that he considered it impossible that the troops should attempt it in the darkness.
If the enemy's column intended to continue its aggressive movement on Souday it must either take this goat-path, or meet the Chouans at the Ragot crossways, or return upon its steps and follow the brook up which the Chouans had just gone. All this seemed to throw the enemy into his hands, and yet Jean Oullier, by a sort of presentiment, was uneasy.
It seemed to him extraordinary that Dermoncourt had yielded to the first attack and resigned so quickly and readily his evident intention of advancing to Souday. Instead of continuing his own way to Souday, as he had told Guérin he should, he remained where he was, watching the heights, when suddenly he observed that the fires were going down and the light they threw upon the rocks was growing fainter and fainter.
Jean Oullier's decision was made in a moment. He darted along the same path Guérin had taken to observe the enemy, and used the same tactics; only, he did not stop, as Guérin had stopped, half-way up the ascent. He continued to crawl up until he was at the foot of the blocks of stone which surrounded the flat summit.
There he listened; he heard no noise. Then, rising cautiously to his feet in a space between two large rocks, he looked before him and saw nothing. The place was solitary. The fires were deserted; the furze with which they were built was crackling and going out. Jean Oullier climbed the rocks and dropped into the space where he had supposed the soldiers were. Not a man was there.
He gave a terrible cry of rage and disappointment, and shouted to his companions below to return and follow him. Then, with the swiftness of a hunted deer, straining his iron muscles to the utmost, he rushed along the summit of the rocks in the direction of Souday. No doubt remained in his mind. Some unknown guide, unknown except to Joseph Picaut, had led the soldiers to the Viette des Biques.
Notwithstanding the difficulties of the way, Jean Oullier, slipping on the flat rocks covered with mosses, striking against the granite blocks which rose in his path like sentinels, catching his feet in the briers which tore his flesh as he rushed through them, – Jean Oullier, we say, was not ten minutes in getting over the whole length of the little chain. When he reached its extremity he climbed the last line of rocks which overlooked the valley, and saw the soldiers.
They were just descending the slope of the hill, having risked the path of the Viette des Biques. The line of their torches could be seen filing cautiously along by the edge of the abyss. Jean Oullier clung to the enormous stone on which he stood and shook it, hoping to detach it and send it rolling on their heads. But all such efforts of mad anger were powerless, and only a mocking laugh replied to his imprecations. He turned round and looked behind him, thinking that Satan himself could alone laugh thus. The laugher was Joseph Picaut.
"Well, Jean Oullier," he said, coming out of a clump of gorse, "my scent was better than yours; you ought to have followed me. As it was, you made me lose my time. I got here too late; and your friends will be cooked in spite of me."
"My God! my God!" cried Jean Oullier, grasping his hair with both hands. "Who could have guided them down that path?"
"Whoever did guide them down shall never come up again, either by this path or any other," said Joseph Picaut. "Look at that guide now, Jean Oullier, if you want to see her living."
Jean Oullier leaned forward once more. The soldiers had crossed the rivulet and were gathered round the general. In the midst of them, not a hundred paces from the two men, though separated from them by the precipice, they saw a woman with dishevelled hair, who was pointing out to the general with her finger the path he must now take.
"Marianne Picaut!" exclaimed Jean Oullier.
The Chouan made no answer, but he raised his gun to his shoulder and slowly aimed it. Jean Oullier turned round when he heard the click of the trigger, and as the Chouan fired he threw up the muzzle of the gun.
"Wretch!" he cried; "give her time to bury your brother!"
The ball was fired into space.
"Damn you!" cried Joseph Picaut, furiously, seizing his gun by the barrel, and giving a terrible blow with the stock on Jean Oullier's head. "I treat Whites like you as I would Blues!"
In spite of his Herculean strength the blow was so violent that it brought the old Vendéan to his knees; then, not able to maintain himself in that position, he rolled over the edge of the precipice. As he fell he caught instinctively at a tuft of gorze; but he soon felt it yielding under the weight of his body.
Bewildered as he was, he did not altogether lose consciousness, and, expecting every moment to feel the slender shoots which alone supported him above the abyss give way, he commended his soul to God. At that instant he heard shots from the gorse and saw through his half-closed eyelids the flash of arms. Hoping that the Chouans had returned, led by Guérin, he tried to call out, but his voice felt imprisoned in his chest, and he could not raise the leaden hand which seemed to hold the breath from his lips. He was like a man in a frightful nightmare; and the pain the effort cost him was so violent that he fancied-forgetting the blow he had received-that his forehead was sweating blood.
Little by little his strength abandoned him. His fingers weakened, his muscles relaxed, and the agony he endured became so terrible that he believed he must voluntarily let go the branches which alone held him above the void. Soon he felt himself attracted to the abyss below him by an irresistible impulse. His fingers loosened their last hold; but at the very moment when he imagined he should hear the air whistling and whirling as he fell through it, and feel the jagged points of rocks tearing his body as he passed, a pair of vigorous arms caught him and bore him to a narrow platform which overhung the precipice at a little distance.
He was saved! But he knew at once that the arms that were brutally handling him were not those of friends.
XXVII.
THE GUESTS AT SOUDAY
The day after the arrival of the Comte de Bonneville and his companion at the château de Souday, the marquis returned from his expedition, or rather, his conference. As he got off his horse it was quite evident that the worthy gentleman was in a savage ill-humor.
He growled at his daughters, who had not come even so far as the door to meet him; he swore at Jean Oullier, who had taken the liberty to go off to the fair at Montaigu without his permission; he quarrelled with the cook, who, in the absence of the major-domo, came forward to hold his stirrup, and instead of grasping the one to the right, pulled with all her strength on the one to the left, thus obliging the marquis to get off on the wrong side of his horse and away from the portico.
When he reached the salon M. de Souday's wrath was still exhaling itself in monosyllables of such vehemence that Bertha and Mary, accustomed as their ears were to the freedom of language the old émigré allowed himself, did not, on this occasion, know which way to look.
In vain they attempted to coax him and smooth his angry brow. Nothing did any good; and the marquis, as he warmed his feet before the fire and switched his top-boots with his riding-whip, seemed to regret bitterly that Messieurs Blank and Blank were not the top-boots themselves, to whom he addressed, as he flourished his whip, some very offensive epithets indeed.
The fact is, the marquis was furious. For some time past he had been sadly conscious that the pleasures of the chase were beginning to pall upon him; also he had found himself yawning over the whist which regularly concluded his evenings. The joys of trumps and odd tricks were beginning to be insipid, and life at Souday threatened to become distasteful to him. Besides, for the last ten years his legs had never felt as elastic as they did now. Never had his lungs breathed freer, or his brain been so active and enterprising. He was just entering that Saint-Martin's summer for old men, – the period when their faculties sparkle with a brighter gleam before paling, and their bodies gather strength as if to prepare for the final struggle. The marquis, feeling himself more lively, more fit than he had been for many a year, growing restless in the little circle of his daily avocations, now insufficient to occupy him, and conscious, alas! that ennui was creeping over him, took it into his head that a new Vendée would be admirably suited to his renewed youth, and did not doubt that he should find in the adventurous life of a partisan those earlier enjoyments the very memory of which was the charm of his old age.
He had therefore hailed with enthusiasm the prospect of a new uprising and call to arms. A political commotion of that kind, coming as it did, proved to him once more what he had often in his placid and naïve egotism believed, – that the world was created and managed for the satisfaction and benefit of so worthy a gentleman as M. le Marquis de Souday.
But he had found among his co-royalists a lukewarmness and a disposition to procrastinate which fairly exasperated him. Some declared that the public mind was not yet ripe for any movement; others that it was imprudent to attempt anything unless assured that the army would side with legitimacy; others, again, insisted that religious and political enthusiasm was dying out among the peasantry, and that it would be difficult to rouse them to a new war. The heroic marquis, who could not comprehend why all France should not be ready when a small campaign would be so very agreeable to him, – when Jean Oullier had burnished up his best carbine, and his daughters had embroidered for him a scarf and a bloody heart, – the marquis, we say, had just quarrelled vehemently with his friends the Vendéan leaders, and leaving the meeting abruptly, had returned to the château without listening to reason.
Mary, who knew to what excess her father respected the duty of hospitality, profited by a lull in his ill humor to tell him gently of the arrival of the Comte de Bonneville at the château, hoping in this way to create a diversion for his mind.
"Bonneville! Bonneville! And who may that be?" growled the irascible old fellow. "Bonneville? Some cabbage-planter or lawyer or civilian who has jumped into epaulets, some talker who can't fire anything but words, a dilettante who'll tell me we ought to wait and let Philippe waste his popularity! Popularity, indeed! As if the thing to do were not to turn that popularity on our own king!"
"I see that Monsieur le marquis is for taking arms immediately," said a soft and flute-like voice beside him.
The marquis turned round hastily and beheld a very young man, dressed as a peasant, who was leaning, like himself, against the chimney-piece, and warming his feet before the fire. The stranger had entered the room by a side door, and the marquis, whose back was toward him as he entered, being carried away by the heat of his wrath and his imprecations, paid no heed to the signs his daughters made to warn him of the presence of a guest.
Petit-Pierre, for it was he, seemed to be about sixteen or eighteen years old; but he was very slender and frail for his years. His face was pale, and the long black hair which framed it made it seem whiter still; his large blue eyes beamed with courage and intellect; his mouth, which was delicate and curled slightly upward at the corners, was now smiling with a mischievous expression; the chin, strongly defined and prominent, indicated unusual strength of will; while a slightly aquiline nose completed a cast of countenance, the distinction of which contrasted strangely with the clothes he wore.
"Monsieur Petit-Pierre," said Bertha, taking the hand of the new-comer, and presenting him to her father.
The marquis made a profound bow, to which the young man replied with a graceful salutation. The old émigré was not very much deceived by the dress and name of Petit-Pierre. The great war had long accustomed him to the use of nicknames and aliases by which men of high birth concealed their rank, and the disguises under which they hid their natural bearing; but what did puzzle him was the extreme youth of his unexpected guest.
"I am happy, monsieur," he said, "if my daughters have been able to be of service to you and Monsieur de Bonneville; but all the same I regret that I was absent from home at the time of your arrival. If it were not for an extremely unpleasant interview with some gentlemen of my political opinions, I should have had the honor to put my poor castle at your service myself. However, I hope my little chatterers have been good substitutes, and that nothing our limited means can procure has been spared to make your stay as comfortable as it can be."
"Your hospitality, Monsieur le marquis, can only gain in the hands of such charming substitutes," said Petit-Pierre, gallantly.
"Humph!" said the marquis, pushing out his lower lip; "in other times than these we are in, my daughters ought to be able to procure for their guests some amusement. Bertha, here, knows how to follow a trail, and can turn a boar as well as any one. Mary, on the other hand, hasn't her equal for knowing the corner of the marsh where the snipe are. But except for a sound knowledge of whist, which they get from me, I regard them as altogether unfit to do the honors of a salon; and here we are, for the present, shut up with nothing to do but poke the fire." So saying, Monsieur de Souday gave a vigorous kick to the logs on the hearth, proving that his anger was not yet over.
"I think few women at court possess more grace and distinction than these young ladies; and I assure you that none unite with those qualities such nobility of heart and feeling as your daughters, Monsieur le marquis, have shown to us."
"Court?" said the marquis, interrogatively, looking with some surprise at Petit-Pierre.
Petit-Pierre colored and smiled deprecatingly, like an actor who blunders before a friendly audience.
"I spoke, of course, on presumption, Monsieur le marquis," he said, with an embarrassment that was obviously factitious. "I said the court, because that is the sphere where your daughters' name would naturally place them, and also, because it is there I should like to see them."
The marquis colored because he had made his guest color. He had just involuntarily meddled with the incognito the latter seemed anxious to preserve, and the exquisite politeness of the old gentleman reproached him bitterly for such a fault.
Petit-Pierre hastened to add: -
"I was saying to you, Monsieur le marquis, when these young ladies did me the honor to introduce us, that you seem to be one of those who desire an immediate call to arms."
"I should think so! parbleu! and I am willing to say so to you, monsieur, who, as I see, are one of us-"
Petit-Pierre nodded in affirmation.
"Yes, that is my desire," continued the marquis; "but no matter what I say and do, I can't get any one to believe an old man who scorched his skin in the terrible fire which laid waste the country from 1793 to 1797. No! they listen to a pack of gabblers, lawyers without a brief, fine dandies who dare not sleep in the open air for fear of spoiling their clothes, milk-sops, fellows," added the marquis, kicking at the logs, which revenged themselves by showering his boots with sparks, – "fellows who-"