The Last Vendée
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"Poor little thing! poor little thing!" she said, speaking to her sister as if to a child she had chanced to injure; "forgive me! I have hurt you, and, worse still, I have grieved you; oh, forgive me!" Then, gathering herself together, she repeated, "Forgive me! It is my fault. I ought to have opened my heart to you before letting you see that the strange love I feel for that man-that child," she added with a touch of scorn-"has such power over me that it makes me jealous of one whom I love better than all the world, better than life itself, better than I love him, – jealous of you! Ah! if you only knew, my poor Mary, the misery this senseless love, which I know to be beneath me, has already brought upon me! If you knew the struggles I have gone through to subdue it! how bitterly I deplore my weakness! There is nothing in him of all I respect, nothing of what I love, – neither distinction of race, nor religious faith, nor ardor, nor vigor, nor strength, nor courage; and yet, in spite of all, I love him! I loved him the first moment that I saw him. I love him so much that sometimes, breathless, frantic, bathed in perspiration, and suffering almost unspeakable anguish, I have cried aloud like one possessed, 'My God! make me die, but let him love me!' For the last few months-ever since, to my misfortune, we met him-the thought of this man has never left me for an instant. I feel for him some strange emotion, which must be that a woman feels to a lover, but which is really far more like the affection of a mother for her child. Each day that passes, my life is more bound up in him; I put not only my thoughts, but all my dreams, my hopes on him. Ah, Mary! Mary! just now I was asking you to pardon me; but now I say to you, pity me, sister! Oh, my sister, have pity upon me!"
And Bertha, quite beside herself, clasped her sister frantically in her arms.
Poor Mary had listened, trembling, to this explosion of an almost savage passion, such as the powerful and self-willed nature of Bertha alone could feel. Each cry, each word, each sentence tore to shreds the rosy vapors which a few moments earlier she had seen on the horizon. Her sister's impetuous voice swept those fragments from her sight, as the gust of a rising tempest sweeps the light, fleecy clouds before it. Her grief and bewilderment was such during Bertha's last words that the latter's silence alone warned her she was expected to reply. She made a great effort over herself, striving to check her sobs.
"Oh, sister," she said, "my heart is breaking; my grief is all the greater because what has happened to-night is partly my fault."
"No, no!" cried Bertha, with her accustomed violence. "It was I who ought to have looked to see what became of him when we left the chapel. But," she continued, with that pertinacity of ideas which characterizes persons who are violently in love, "what was he saying to you? Why was he kneeling at your feet?"
Mary felt that Bertha shuddered as she asked the question; she herself trembled violently at the thought of what she had to answer. It seemed to her that each word by which she was forced to explain the truth to Bertha would scorch her lips as they left her heart.
"Come, come!" said Bertha, weeping, her tears having more effect on Mary than her anger, – "Come, tell me, dear sister; have pity on me! The suspense is worse a hundred-fold than any pain. Tell me, tell me; did he speak to you of love?"
Mary could not lie; or rather, self-devotion had not yet taught her to do so.
"Yes," she said.
"Oh, my God! my God!" cried Bertha, tearing herself from her sister's breast and falling, with outstretched arms, her face against the wall.
There was such a tone of absolute despair in the cry that Mary was terrified. She forgot Michel, she forgot her love; she forgot all except her sister. The sacrifice before which her heart had quailed at the moment when she first heard that Bertha loved Michel, she now made valiantly, with sublime self-abnegation; for she smiled, with a breaking heart.
"Foolish girl that you are!" she cried, springing to Bertha's neck; "let me finish what I have to say."
"Did you not tell me that he spoke of love?" replied the suffering creature.
"Yes; but I did not tell you whom he loves."
"Mary! Mary! have pity on my heart!"
"Bertha! dear Bertha!"
"Was it of me he spoke?"
Mary had not the strength to reply in words; she made a sign of acquiescence with her head.
Bertha breathed heavily, passed her hand several times over her burning forehead. The shock had been too violent to allow her to recover instantly her normal condition.
"Mary," she said, "what you have just told me seems so unlikely, so impossible, that you must swear it. Swear to me-" She hesitated.
"I will swear what you will, sister," said Mary, who was eager herself to put some insurmountable barrier between her heart and her love.
"Swear to me that Michel does not love you, and that you do not love him." She laid her hand on her sister's shoulder. "Swear it by our mother's grave."
"I swear, by the grave of our mother," said Mary, resolutely, "that I will never marry Michel."
She threw herself into her sister's arms, seeking compensation for her sacrifice in the caresses the latter gave her. If the room had been less dark Bertha might have seen on Mary's features the anguish that oath had cost her. As it was, it restored all Bertha's calmness. She sighed gently, as though her heart were lightened of a heavy weight.
"Thank you!" she said; "oh, thank you! thank you! Now let us return to the salon."
But, half-way down, Mary made an excuse to go to her room. There she locked herself in to pray and weep.
The company had not yet left the supper-table. As Bertha crossed the vestibule to reach the salon she heard bursts of laughter from the guests.
When she entered the salon Monsieur Loriot was arguing with the young baron, endeavoring to persuade him that it was his interest as well as his duty to return to La Logerie. But the negative silence of the young man was so eloquent that the notary presently found himself at the end of his arguments. It is true, however, that he had been talking for half an hour.
Michel was probably not less embarrassed than the notary himself, and he welcomed Bertha as a battalion formed in a hollow square and attacked on all sides welcomes an auxiliary who will strengthen its defence. He sprang to meet her with an eagerness which owed as much to his present difficulty as to the closing scene of his interview with Mary.
To his great surprise, Bertha, incapable of concealing for a moment what she was feeling, stretched out her hand and pressed his with effusion. She mistook the meaning of the young man's eager advance, and from being content she became radiant.
Michel, who expected quite another reception, did not feel at his ease. However, he immediately recovered himself so far as to say to Loriot: -
"You will tell my mother, monsieur, that a man of principle finds actual duties in his political opinions, and that I decide to die, if need be, in accomplishing mine."
Poor boy! he was confounding love with duty.
XXXVI.
BLUE AND WHITE
It was almost two in the morning when the Marquis de Souday proposed to his guests to return to the salon. They left the table in that satisfied condition which always follows a plenteous repast if the master of the house is in good-humor, the guests hungry, and the topics of conversation interesting enough to fill the spare moments of the chief occupation.
In proposing to adjourn to the salon the marquis had probably no other idea than change of atmosphere; for as he rose he ordered Rosine and the cook to follow him with the liqueurs, and to array the bottles with a sufficient number of glasses on a table in the salon.
Then, humming the great air in "Richard, C[oe]ur-de-Lion," and paying no heed to the fact that the general replied by a verse from the "Marseillaise," which the noble panels of the castle of Souday heard, no doubt, for the first time, the old gentleman, having filled all glasses, was preparing to resume a very interesting controversy as to the treaty of Jaunaye, which the general insisted had only sixteen articles, when the latter, pointing to the clock, called his attention to the time of night.
Dermoncourt said, laughing, that he suspected the marquis of intending to paralyze his enemies by the delights of a new Capua; and the marquis, accepting the joke with infinite tact and good-will, hastened to yield to his guests' wishes and took them at once to the bedrooms assigned to them, after which he betook himself to his own.
The Marquis de Souday, excited by the warlike inclinations of his mind and by the conversation which enlivened the evening, dreamed of combats. He was fighting a battle, compared to which those of Torfou, Laval, and Sanmur were child's play; he was in the act of advancing under a shower of shot and shell, leading his division to the assault of a redoubt, and planting the white flag in the midst of the enemy's intrenchments, when a rapping at his door interrupted his exploits.
In the dozing condition which preceded his full awakening, the dream continued, and the noise at his door was the roar of cannon. Then, little by little, the clouds rolled away from his brain, the worthy old gentleman opened his eyes, and, instead of a battlefield covered with broken gun-carriages, gasping horses, and dead bodies, over which he thought he was leaping, he found himself lying on his narrow camp bed of painted wood draped with modest white curtains edged with red.
The knocking was renewed.
"Come in!" cried the marquis, rubbing his eyes. "Ha! bless me, general, you've come just in time," he cried; "two minutes more, and you were dead."
"How so?"
"Yes, by a sword-thrust I was just putting through you."
"By way of retaliation, my good friend," said the general, holding out his hand.
"That's how I take it. But I see you are looking rather puzzled by my poor room; its shabbiness surprises you. Yes, there is some difference between this bare, forlorn place, with its horsehair chairs and carpetless floor, and the fine apartments of your Parisian lords. But I can't help it. I spent one third of my life in camps and another third in penury, and this little cot with its thin mattress seems to me luxury enough for my old age. But what in the world brings you here at this early hour, general? It is hardly light yet."
"I came to bid you good-bye, my kind host," replied the general.
"Already? Ah, see what life is! I must tell you now that only yesterday I had all sorts of prejudices against you before your arrival."
"Had you? And yet you welcomed me most cordially."
"Bah!" said the marquis, laughing; "you've been in Egypt. Did you never receive a few shots from the midst of a cool and pleasant oasis?"
"Bless me, yes! The Arabs regard an oasis as the best of ambuscades."
"Well, I was something of an Arab last night; and I say my mea culpa, regretting it all the more because I am really and truly sorry you leave me so soon."
"Is it because there is still an unexplored corner of your oasis you want me to see?"
"No; it is because your frankness, loyalty, and the community of dangers we have shared (in opposite camps) inspired me-I scarcely know why, but instantly-with a sincere and deep regard for you."
"On your word as a gentleman?"
"On my word as a gentleman and a soldier."
"Well, then, I offer you my friendship in return, my dear enemy," replied Dermoncourt. "I expected to find an old émigré, powdered like a white frost, stiff and haughty, and larded with antediluvian prejudices-"
"And you've found out that a man may wear powder and have no prejudices, – is that it, general?"
"I found a frank and loyal heart and an amiable, – bah! let's say the word openly, – jovial nature, and this with exquisite manners, which might seem to exclude all that; in short, you've seduced an old veteran, who is heartily yours."
"Well, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to hear you say so. Come, stay one more day with me!"
"Impossible!"
"Well, I have nothing to say against that decisive word; but make me a promise that you will pay me a visit after the peace, if we are both of us still living."
"After the peace!" cried the general, laughing. "Are we at war?"
"We are between peace and war."
"Yes, the happy medium."
"Well, let us say after the happy medium. Promise you will come and see me then?"
"Yes, I give you my word."
"And I shall hold you to it."
"But come, let us talk seriously," said the general, taking a chair and sitting down at the foot of the old émigré's bed.
"I am willing," replied the latter, "for once in a way."
"You love hunting?"
"Passionately."
"What kind?"
"All kinds."
"But there must be one kind you prefer?"
"Yes, boar-hunting. That reminds me most of hunting the Blues."
"Thanks."
"Boars and Blues, – they both charge alike."
"What do you say to fox-hunting?"
"Peuh!" exclaimed the marquis, sticking out his underlip like a prince of the House of Austria.
"Well, it is a fine sport," said the general.
"I leave that to Jean Oullier, who has wonderful tact and patience in watching a covert."
"He is good at watching other game than foxes, your Jean Oullier," remarked the general.
"Yes, yes; he's clever at all game, no doubt."
"Marquis, I wish you would take a fancy to fox-hunting."
"Why?"
"Because England is the land for it; and I have a fancy that the air of England would be very good just now for you and your young ladies."
"Goodness!" said the marquis, sitting up in bed.
"Yes, I have the honor to tell you so, my dear host."
"Which means that you are advising me to emigrate? No, thank you."
"Do you call an agreeable little trip emigration?"
"My dear general, those little trips, I know what they are, – worse than a journey round the world; you know when they begin, but nobody knows when they'll end. And, besides, there is one thing-you will hardly, perhaps, believe it-"
"What is that?"
"You saw yesterday, I may say this morning, that in spite of my age I have a very tolerable appetite; and I can certify that I never had an indigestion in my life. I can eat anything without being made uncomfortable."
"Well?"
"Well, that devilish London fog, I never could digest it. Isn't that curious?"
"Very good; then go to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, wherever you please, but don't stay at Souday. Leave Machecoul; leave La Vendée."
"Ha! ha! ha!"
"Yes, yes."
"Can it be that I am compromised?" said the marquis, half to himself, and rubbing his hands cheerfully.
"If you are not now, you will be soon."
"At last!" cried the old gentleman, joyously.
"No joking," said the general, becoming serious. "If I listened to my duty only, my dear marquis, you would find two sentries at your door and a sub-lieutenant in the chair where I am now sitting."
"Hey!" cried the marquis, a shade more serious.
"Yes, upon my word, that's the state of things. But I can understand how a man of your age, accustomed as you are to an active life in the free air of the forests, would suffer cooped up in a prison where the civil authorities would probably put you; and I give you a proof of my sympathetic friendship in what I said just now, though in doing so I am, in a measure, compromising with my strict duty."
"But suppose you are blamed for it, general?"
"Pooh! do you suppose I can't find excuses enough? A senile old man, worn-out, half-imbecile, who tried to stop the column on its march-"
"Of whom are you speaking, pray?"
"Why, you, of course."
"I a senile old man, worn-out, half-imbecile!" cried the marquis, sticking one muscular leg out of bed. "I'm sure I don't know, general, why I don't unhook those swords on the wall and stake our breakfast on the first blood, as we did when I was a lad and a page forty-five years ago."
"Come, come, old child!" cried Dermoncourt; "you are so bent on proving I have made a mistake that I shall have to call in the soldiers after all."
And the general pretended to rise.
"No, no," said the marquis; "no, damn it! I am senile, worn-out, half-imbecile, wholly imbecile, – anything you like, in short."
"Very good; that's all right."
"But will you tell me how and by whom I am, or shall be, compromised?"
"In the first place, your servant, Jean Oullier-"
"Yes."
"The fox man-"
"I understand."
"Your servant, Jean Oullier, – a thing I neglected to tell you last night, supposing that you knew as much about it as I did, – your man, Jean Oullier, at the head of a lot of seditious rioters, attempted to stop the column which was ordered to surround the château de Souday. In attempting this he brought about several fights, in which we lost three men killed, not counting one whom I myself did justice on, and who belongs, I think, in these parts."
"What was his name?"
"François Tinguy."
"Hush! general, don't mention it here, for pity's sake. His sister lives in this house, – the young girl who waited on you at table last night, – and her father is only just buried."
"Ah, these civil wars! the devil take them!" said the general.
"And yet they are the only logical wars."
"Maybe. However, I captured your Jean Oullier, and he got away."
"He did well, – you must own that?"
"Yes; but if he falls into my grip again-"
"Oh, there's no danger of that; once warned, I'll answer for him."
"So much the better, for I shouldn't be indulgent to him. I haven't talked of the great war with him, as I have with you."
"But he fought through it, though, and bravely, too."
"Reason the more; second offence."
"But, general," said the marquis, "I can't see, so far, how the conduct of my keeper can be twisted into a crime of mine."
"Wait, and you will see. You said last night that imps came and told you all I did between seven and ten o'clock that evening."
"Yes."
"Well, I have imps, too, and they are every bit as good as yours."
"I doubt it."
"They have told me all that happened in your castle yesterday."
"Go on," said the marquis, incredulously; "I'm listening."
"On the previous evening two persons came to stay at the château de Souday."
"Good! you are better than your word. You promised to tell me what happened yesterday, and now you begin with the day before yesterday."
"These two persons were a man and a woman."
The marquis shook his head, negatively.
"So be it; call them two men, though one of them had nothing but the clothes of our sex."
The marquis said nothing, and the general continued:
"Of these two personages, one, the smaller, spent the whole day at the castle; the other rode about the neighborhood, and gave rendezvous that evening at Souday to a number of gentlemen. If I were indiscreet I would tell you their names; but I will only mention that of the gentleman who summoned them, – namely, the Comte de Bonneville."
The marquis made no reply. He must either acknowledge or lie.
"What next?" he said.
"These gentlemen arrived at Souday, one after the other. They discussed various matters, the most calming of which was certainly not the glory, prosperity, and duration of the government of July."
"My dear general, admit that you are not one whit more in love than I with your government of July, though you serve it."
"What's that you are saying?"
"Eh? good God! I'm saying that you are a republican, blue, dark-blue; and a true dark-blue is a fast color."
"That's not the question."
"What is it then?"
"I am talking of the strangers who assembled in this house last night between eight and nine o'clock."
"Well, suppose I did receive a few neighbors, suppose I even welcomed two strangers, where's the crime, general? I've got the Code at my fingers' ends, – unless, indeed, the old revolutionary law against suspected persons is revived."
"There is no crime in neighbors visiting you; but there is crime when those neighbors assemble for a conference in which an uprising and resort to arms is discussed."
"How can that be proved?"
"By the presence of the two strangers."
"Pooh!"
"Most certainly; for the smaller and fairer of the strangers, the one who, being fair, wore a black wig to disguise herself, was no less a person than the Princess Marie-Caroline, whom you call regent of the kingdom, – her Royal Highness Madame la Duchesse de Berry, who is now pleased to call herself Petit-Pierre."
The marquis bounded in his bed. The general was better informed than he, and what he was now told entered his mind like a flash of light. He could hardly contain himself for joy at the thought that he had received Madame la Duchesse de Berry under his roof; but, unhappily, as joy is never perfect in this world, he was forced to repress his satisfaction.
"Go on," he said; "what next?"
"Well, the next is that just as you had reached the most interesting part of the discussion, a young man, whom one would scarcely expect to find in your camp, came and warned you that I and my troops were on our way to the château. And then you, Monsieur le marquis (you won't deny this, I am sure), you proposed to resist; but the contrary was decided on. Mademoiselle, your daughter, the dark one-"
"Bertha."
"Mademoiselle Bertha took a light. She left the room, and every one present, except you, Monsieur le marquis, who probably set about preparing for the new guests whom Heaven was sending you, – every one present followed her. She crossed the courtyard and went to the chapel; there she opened the door, passed in first, and went straight to the altar. Pushing a spring hidden in the left forepaw of the lamb carved on the front of the altar, she tried to open a trap-door. The spring, which had probably not been used for some time, resisted. Then she took the bell used for the mass, the handle of which is of wood, and pressed it on the button. The panel instantly yielded, and opened the way to a staircase leading to the vaults. Mademoiselle Bertha then took two wax-tapers from the altar, lighted them, and gave them to two of the persons who accompanied her. Then, your guests having gone down into the vault, she closed the panel behind them, and returned, as did another person, who did not immediately enter the house, but, on the contrary, wandered about the park for some time. As for the fugitives, when they reached the farther end of the subterranean passage, which opens, you know, among the ruins of the old château that I see from here, they had some difficulty in forcing their way through the piles of stones that cover the ground. One of them actually fell. However, they managed to reach the covered way which skirts the park wall; there they stopped to deliberate. Three took the road from Nantes to Machecoul, two followed the crossroad which leads to Légé, and the sixth and seventh doubled themselves, – I should rather say, made themselves into one-"
"Look here! is this a fairy tale you are telling me, general?"
"Wait, wait! You interrupt me at the most interesting part of all. I was telling you that the sixth and seventh doubled up; that is, the larger took the smaller on his back and went to the little brook that runs into the great rivulet flowing round the base of the Viette des Biques. Now as they are the ones I prefer among your company, I shall set my dogs of war on them."
"But, my dear general," cried the Marquis de Souday, "I do assure you all this exists only in your imagination."
"Come, come, my old enemy! You are Master of Wolves, are not you?"
"Yes."
"Well, when you see the print of a young boar's paw sharply defined in soft earth, – a clear trail as you call it, – would you let any one persuade you into thinking it was only the ghost of a tusker? Well, marquis, that trail, I have seen it, or rather, I should say, I have read it."
"The devil!" cried the marquis, turning in his bed with the admiring curiosity of an amateur; "then I wish you'd just tell me how you did it."
"Willingly," replied the general. "But we have still a good half-hour before us. Order up a pâté and a bottle of wine, and I'll tell you the rest between two mouthfuls."