The Last Vendée

XXXVII.

AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH

In order to follow Monsieur Hyacinthe for a moment we were obliged to leave our older acquaintance, Courtin, stretched on the ground, legs and arms tied, in thickest darkness, between the two wounded bandits.

The sound of Maître Jacques' heavy breathing and Joseph's moans terrified him as much as their threats had done. He trembled lest one or the other might revive and remember he was here, and execute summary vengeance on him; he held his breath, lest even its tremor might recall him to their minds.

And yet, another feeling was even more powerful in him than the love of life. He was resolved to keep to the very last moment the precious belt from those who might be his murderers, and he continued to hug it to his breast, even daring, in order to hide it, that which he would not have dared to save his life; he gently suffered the belt to slip to the ground beside him, and then with an almost imperceptible motion he crept in the same direction until he had covered it with his body.

Just as he had managed to execute this difficult man[oe]uvre he heard the door of the tower rolling and creaking on its rusty hinges, and he saw a sort of phantom clothed in black advancing toward him, holding a torch in one hand, and dragging with the other a heavy musket, the butt-end of which resounded on the stones.

Though the shades of death were already darkening his eyes, Joseph Picaut saw the apparition; for he cried out, in a voice broken with agony: -

"The widow! the widow!"

The widow of Pascal Picaut, for it was she, walked slowly forward, without a glance at Courtin or Maître Jacques, who, pressing his left hand on a wound in his breast, was striving to rise upon his right; then she stopped in front of her brother-in-law and gazed at him with an eye that was still threatening.

"A priest! a priest!" cried the dying man, horrified by that awful phantom, which roused a hitherto unknown feeling in his breast, – that of remorse.

"A priest! What good will a priest do you, miserable man? Can he bring back to life your brother whom you murdered?"

"No, no!" cried Joseph; "no, I did not murder Pascal. I swear it by eternity, to which I am now going!"

"You did not kill him, but you let others do so, – if, indeed, you did not urge them to the crime. Not content with that, you fired at me. You would have been twice a fratricide in one day if the hand of a brave man had not pushed aside your weapon. But be sure of this: it is not the harm you tried to do to me that I am avenging. It is the hand of God that strikes you through me-Cain!"

"What!" exclaimed Joseph Picaut and Maître Jacques, "that shot-"

"I fired it; I knew I should surprise you here in the commission of another crime, and it was I who shot you in the act. Yes, Joseph, yes; you so brave, you so proud of your strength, bow down before God's judgment! – you die by a woman's hand."

"What matters it to me how I die? Death comes from God. I implore you, woman, give my repentance chance for efficacy; let me be reconciled to the Heaven I have offended; bring me a priest, I implore you!"

"Did your brother have a priest in his last hour? Did you give him, you, the time to lift his soul to God when he fell beneath the blows of your accomplices at the ford of the Boulogne? No, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth! Die a violent death; die without help temporal or spiritual, as your brother died. And may all brigands," she added, turning to Maître Jacques, "all brigands who, in the name of any flag, no matter which it is, bring ruin to their country and mourning to their homes, descend with you to the lowest hell!"

"Woman!" cried Maître Jacques, who had succeeded in raising himself, "whatever be his crime, whatever he may have done to you, it is not good that you should speak to him thus. Forgive him, that you may yourself be forgiven!"

"I?" said the widow. "Who dares to raise a voice against me?"

"The man whom, without intending it, you have sent to his grave; he who received the ball you meant for your brother-in-law; the man who speaks to you, I-I whom you have killed. And yet I am not angry with you; for, by the way the world wags now, the best thing men of heart can do is to go and see if that three-colored rag which seems to be to the fore here waves in God's heaven."

Marianne gave a cry of astonishment, almost of horror, when she heard what Maître Jacques told her. As the reader has doubtless understood, she had watched for the arrival of Courtin; then when he and his companion had entered the tower she went up the old staircase and along the outer gallery till she reached the platform of the tower; thence, through the rafters of the roof, she had fired on her brother-in-law.

We have seen how, in consequence of the movement, made by Maître Jacques to save Courtin, he was the one to receive the shot.

This miscarriage of her hatred had, as we have said, bewildered the widow; but quickly recovering herself as she remembered what bandits these men really were, she said: -

"Even if that is true, if I did shoot one intending to shoot the other, my shot struck you as you were both about to commit another crime. I have saved the life of an innocent man."

A savage smile curled the pale lips of Maître Jacques on hearing her last words. He turned toward Courtin and felt in his belt for the handle of his second pistol.

"Ha! yes!" he said with a dangerous laugh; "here's an innocent man; I had almost forgotten him. Well, that innocent, since you remind me of him, I'll give him his brevet as martyr. I won't die without accomplishing my mission."

"You shall not stain your last hour with blood, as you have stained your whole life, Maître Jacques!" cried the widow, placing herself between Courtin and the Chouan. "I know how to prevent it."

And she turned the muzzle of her gun full on Maître Jacques.

"Very good," said Maître Jacques, as if he resigned himself. "Presently, if God allows me time and strength, I will make you know the two scoundrels whom you call innocent; but, for the time being, I will let this one live. In exchange, and to deserve the absolution I gave you just now, forgive your poor brother. Don't you hear the rattle in his throat? He will be dead in ten minutes, and then it will be too late."

"No, never! never!" said the widow, in a muffled voice.

Not only the voice but the rattle in Joseph's throat grew perceptibly weaker, and yet he did not cease to use his last remaining strength in beseeching his sister's pardon.

"It is God and not I whom you must implore," she said.

"No," said the dying man, shaking his head; "I dare not pray to God so long as your curse is upon me."

"Then address your brother, and pray to him to forgive you."

"My brother!" murmured Joseph, closing his eyes as if a terrible spectre were before him; "my brother! I shall see him! I shall be face to face with him!"

And he strove to push away with his hand the bloody phantom which seemed to beckon to him. Then, in a voice that was hardly intelligible, and was indeed scarcely more than a whisper, -

"Brother! brother!" he murmured, "why do you turn away your head when I pray to you? In the name of our mother, Pascal, let me clasp your knees. Remember the tears we shed together in our childhood, which the first Blues made so bitter. Forgive me for having followed the terrible path our father enjoined on both of us. Alas! alas! how could I know it would bring you and me face to face as enemies? My God! my God! he does not answer me! Oh, Pascal, why do you turn away your head? Oh! my poor child, my little Louis, whom I shall never see again," continued the Chouan, "pray to your uncle, pray to him for me! He loved you as his own child; ask him, in the name of your dying father, to help a repentant sinner to reach the throne of God! Ah, brother! brother!" he murmured, with a sudden expression of joy that bordered on ecstasy, "you hear him, you pardon me, you stretch your hand to the child. My God! my God! take my soul now, for my brother has forgiven me!"

He fell back upon the ground from which, by a mighty effort, he had risen to stretch his arms toward the vision.

During this time, and gradually, the hatred and vengeance in the widow's face subsided. When Joseph spoke of the little boy whom Pascal loved as his own child, a tear forced its way from her eyelids; and when at last, by the gleam of her torch, she saw the face of the dying man illuminated, not with an earthly light, but by a sacred halo, she fell upon her knees, and pressing the hand of her wounded brother, she cried out: -

"I believe you, I believe you, Joseph! God unseals the eyes of the dying and lets them see into the heights of heaven. If Pascal pardons you, I pardon you. As he forgets, so I forget. Yes, I forget all to remember one thing only, – that you were his brother. Brother of Pascal, die in peace!"

"Thank you, thank you," stammered Joseph, whose voice now hissed through his lips, which were stained with a bloody froth. "Thank you! but-the wife, the children?"

"Your wife shall be my sister, and your children are my children," said the widow, solemnly. "Die in peace, Joseph!"

The hand of the Chouan went to his forehead as though he meant to make the sign of the cross; his lips murmured a few words, doubtless not said for human ears, for no one understood them. Then he opened his eyes unnaturally wide, stretched out his arm, and gave a sigh; it was his last.

"Amen!" said Maître Jacques.

The widow knelt down and prayed beside the body for some instants, – quite amazed that her eyes should be filled with tears for him who had made her weep so bitterly.

A long silence followed. No doubt this silence oppressed Maître Jacques, for he suddenly called out: -

"Sacredié! who would suppose there was one living Christian still here? I say one, for I don't call Judas a Christian."

The widow quivered; beside the dead she had indeed forgotten the dying.

"I'll go back to the house and send help," she said.

"Help? Don't do anything of the kind; they'd only cure me for the guillotine; and, thank you, la Picaut, I'd rather die the death of a soldier. I've got it, and I won't let go of it now."

"Do you suppose I'd give you up to the authorities?"

"Yes; for you are a Blue and the wife of a Blue. Damn it! the capture of Maître Jacques would make a fine figure on your record-book."

"My husband was a patriot, and I shared his feelings, that is true. But I have a horror, above all things, of traitors and treachery. For all the gold in the world I would not betray a person, not even you."

"You say you have a horror of treachery. Do you hear that, you cur?"

"Come, Jacques, let me send help," said the widow.

"No," said the Chouan bandit, "I'm at the end of my tether; I feel it and I know it. I've made too many such holes not to know all about it. In two hours, or three at most, I shall be disporting myself on the great open moor, – the last, grand, beautiful moor of the good God. But listen to me now."

"I am listening."

"This man whom you see here," he continued, pushing Courtin with his foot as he might a noxious animal, "this man, for a few gold coins, has sold a head which ought to be sacred to all, not only because it is of those who are destined to wear a crown, but because her heart is noble and kind and generous."

"That head," replied the widow, "I have sheltered beneath my roof."

In the portrait Maître Jacques had drawn she recognized the duchess.

"Yes, you saved her that time, la Picaut, I know it; and it is that which makes you so great in my eyes; it is that which leads me to make you my last request."

"Tell me what it is."

"Come nearer and stoop down; you alone must know what I have to say."

The widow went close to Maître Jacques and leaned over him and listened attentively.

"You must," he said in a very low voice, "tell all this to the man you have in your house."

"Who is that?" asked the widow, thunderstruck.

"The man you are hiding in your stable; the one you go every night to nurse and comfort."

"But who told you?"

"Pooh! do you think anything can be hidden from Maître Jacques? All I say is true, la Picaut, and it makes Maître Jacques the Chouan, Maître Jacques the Chauffeur, proud to be among your friends."

"But the gars is a very sick man; he has hardly strength to stand, and then only by leaning on the wall."

"He'll find strength, never fear; he's a man, – a man indeed such as there'll be no more of after we have gone," said the Vendéan, with savage pride; "and if he can't take the field himself he'll make others do so. Tell him merely that he must warn Nantes instantly, without losing a minute, a second; he must warn he knows who. That other man who was here is already on the march while we are talking."

"It shall be done, Maître Jacques."

"Ah! if that rascal Joseph had only spoken sooner!" resumed Maître Jacques, raising his body to stop the blood which was rushing violently to his chest. "He knew, I am certain, what was plotting between these two villains; but he had them in his power and he never thought to die. Well! man proposes, and God disposes. It must have been the booty that tempted him. By the bye, widow, you ought to be able to find that booty somewhere."

"What must I do with it?"

"Divide it in two parts; give one to the orphans this war has made, white as well as blue; that's my share. The other belongs to Joseph; give that to his children."

Courtin gave a sigh of anguish; for the words were spoken loud enough for him to hear.

"No," said the widow, "no, it is the money of Judas; it would bring evil. I will not take that money for those poor children, innocent as they are."

"You are right; then give it all to the poor. The hands that receive alms cleanse everything, even crime."

"And he?" said the widow, motioning toward Courtin but not looking at him, "what is to be done with him?"

"He's well bound and gagged, isn't he?"

"He seems to be."

"Well, leave it to the man you have at your house to say what shall be done with him."

"So be it."

"By the bye, la Picaut, when you go for him, give him this roll of tobacco. I have no further use for it, and I think it will please him mightily. I declare, though," continued the master of warrens, "it makes me half sorry to die. Ha! I'd give my twenty-five thousand francs prize-money to see the meeting of our man and this one; droll enough, that will be!"

"But you must not stay here," said Marianne Picaut. "We have a little bedroom in the citadel, where I will carry you. There, at any rate, you can see a priest."

"As you please, widow; but first, do me the kindness to make sure that my scoundrel is securely bound. It would embitter my last moments, don't you see, if I thought he would get loose before the shaking up he is going to have presently."

The widow bent over Courtin. The ropes were so tightly bound around his arms that they entered the flesh which was red and swollen on each side of them. The farmer's face, above all, betrayed the misery he was enduring and was paler than that of Maître Jacques.

"He can't stir," said Marianne. "See! Besides, I'll turn the key on him."

"Very good; it won't be for long. You will go at once, won't you, la Picaut?"

"Yes, I promise."

"Thank you. Ah! the thanks I give you are nothing to those the man you have over there will give when you tell him all."

"Well, well! Now let me carry you to the citadel, where you can have the care you need. The confessor and the doctor will both hold their tongues, don't be afraid of that."

"Very good; carry me along. It will be queer to see Maître Jacques die in a bed, when he never, in all his life, slept on anything but ferns and heather."

The widow took him in her arms and carried him to the little room we have mentioned, and laid him on a pallet that was kept there. Maître Jacques, in spite of the suffering he must have endured, in spite of the gravity of his position, continued, in the presence of death, the same merry but sardonic being he had been all his life. The nature of this man, totally unlike that of his compatriots, never belied itself for a single instant. But, in the midst of his lively sarcasms, flung at the things he had defended quite as much as at those he had attacked, he never ceased to urge the widow Picaut to go at once and fulfil the errand to Jean Oullier which he had intrusted to her.

Thus urged, Marianne only took time to lock the door and push the bolts of the fruit-room in which she left Courtin a prisoner. She crossed the garden, re-entered the inn, and found her old mother greatly alarmed by the noise of the shots which had reached her. Her daughter's absence increased the old woman's fears, and she was beginning to be terribly alarmed lest the widow had been made the victim of some trap by her brother-in-law, when Marianne returned.

The widow, without telling her mother a word of what had happened, begged her not to let any one pass into the ruins; then, flinging her mantle over her shoulders, she prepared to go out. Just as she laid her hand on the latch of the door a light knock was given without. Marianne turned back to her mother.

"Mother," she said, "if any stranger asks to pass the night at the inn say we have no room. No one must enter the house this night; the hand of God is upon it."

The person outside rapped again.

"Who's there?" said the widow, opening the door, but barring the way with her own person.

Bertha appeared on the threshold.

"You sent me word this morning, madame," said the young girl, "that you had an important communication to make to me."

"You are right," said the widow. "I had wholly forgotten it."

"Good God!" cried Bertha, noticing that Marianne's kerchief was stained with blood, "has any harm happened to my people, – to Mary, my father, Michel?"

And in spite of her strength of mind, this last thought shook her so terribly that she leaned against the wall to keep herself from falling.

"Don't be uneasy," answered the widow. "I have no misfortune to tell you; on the contrary, I am to say that an old friend whom you thought lost is living, and wants to see you."

"Jean Oullier!" cried Bertha, instantly guessing whom she meant, "Jean Oullier! It is he whom you mean, isn't it? He is living? Oh, God be thanked! my father will be so glad! Take me to him at once, – at once, I entreat you!"

"It was my intention to do so this morning; but since then events have happened which lay upon you a duty more pressing still."

"A duty!" exclaimed Bertha, astonished. "What duty?"

"That of going to Nantes immediately; for I doubt if poor Jean Oullier, exhausted as he is, can possibly do what Maître Jacques requests of him."

"What am I to do in Nantes?"

"Tell him, or her, whom you call Petit-Pierre that the secret of her present hiding-place has been sold and bought, and she must leave it instantly. Any place is safer than the one she is now in. Betrayal is close upon her; God grant you may get there in time!"

"Betrayed!" cried Bertha, "betrayed by whom?"

"By the man who once before sent the soldiers to my house to capture her, – by Courtin, the mayor of La Logerie."

"Courtin! Have you seen him?"

"Yes," replied Marianne, laconically.

"Oh!" cried Bertha, clasping her hands, "let me see him!"

"Young girl, young girl," said the widow, evading a reply to this request, "it is I, whom the partisans of that woman have made a widow, who urge you to make haste and save her; and it is you, who boast of being faithful to her, who hesitate to go!"

"No, no; that is not so!" cried Bertha. "I do not hesitate; I am going."

She made a motion to go out; the widow stopped her.

"You cannot go to Nantes on foot; you would get there too late. In the stable of this house you will find two horses; take either you please, and tell the hostler to saddle him."

"Oh," said Bertha, "I can saddle him myself. But what can we ever do for you, my poor widow, who have twice saved her life?"

"Tell her to remember what I said to her in my cottage beside the bodies of two men killed for her sake; tell her that it is a crime to bring discord and civil war into a region where her enemies themselves protect her from treachery. Go, mademoiselle, go! and may God guide you."

So saying, the widow left the house hurriedly, – going first to the rector of Saint-Philbert, whom she asked to visit the citadel, and then, as rapidly as possible, she struck across the fields to her own house.

XXXVIII.

THE RED-BREECHES

For the last twenty-four hours Bertha's anxiety had been extreme. It was not only on Courtin that her suspicions fell; they extended to Michel himself.

Her recollections of that evening preceding the fight at Chêne, the apparition of a man at her sister's window, had never entirely left Bertha's mind; from time to time they crossed it like a flash of flame, leaving behind them a painful furrow, which the passive attitude taken toward her by Michel during his convalescence was far from soothing. But when she learned that Courtin, whom she supposed to have acted under Michel's directions, had ordered the schooner to sail, and when, above all, she returned, frightened and breathless with love, to the farmhouse at La Logerie, and did not find him whom she came to seek, then indeed her jealous suspicions became intense.

Nevertheless, she forgot all to obey the duty laid upon her by the widow; before that duty all considerations must give way, even those of her love. She ran to the stable without losing another moment; chose the horse that seemed to her most fit to do the distance rapidly; gave him a double feed of oats to put into his legs the elasticity they needed; threw upon his back, as he ate, the sort of pack-saddle used in those regions; and, bridle in hand, waited until the animal had finished eating.

As she stood there waiting, a sound, well-known in those days, reached her ears. It was that of the regular tramp of a troop of armed men. At the same moment a loud knocking was heard on the inn door.

Through a glazed sash, which looked into a bake-house that opened into the kitchen, the young girl saw the soldiers, and discovered at the first words they said that they wanted a guide. At that moment everything was significant to Bertha; she trembled for her father, for Michel, for Petit-Pierre. She therefore would not start until she had found out what these men were after. Confident of not being recognized in the peasant-woman's dress she wore, she passed through the bake-house and entered the kitchen. A lieutenant was in command of the little squad.