The Last Vendée

Presently, however, he began to think the fisherman had gone far enough from the shore, and that it was high time to turn the boat's head to Port-Saint-Martin, which they were now leaving behind them on their right. He waited a few minutes, thinking it might be a man[oe]uvre of the fisherman's to catch some current of which he would take advantage. But still the fisherman rowed on and on towards the middle of the lake.

"Hey, gars," cried the farmer at last, "you can't have heard me rightly; you are making for Port-Saint-Père, and I told you Port-Saint-Martin. Go the way I told you, and you'll earn your money sooner!"

The fisherman was silent.

"Did you hear me? What are you about?" cried Courtin, impatiently. "Port-Saint-Martin, I say! Go to your right! It is very well not to keep too near the shore, out of reach of balls in these queer times; but I wish you to go in that direction if you please."

The boatman appeared not to hear him.

"Ah, ça! are you deaf?" exclaimed the farmer, beginning to get angry.

The fisherman replied only by a vigorous stroke of his oars, which sent the boat flying several paces farther out on the surface of the lake.

Courtin, beside himself, sprang to the bow, knocked off the hood which in the darkness concealed the fisherman's head, put his own face close to the man's face, and then, with a stifled cry, fell on his knees at the bottom of the boat.

The man let go his oars, but did not rise.

"God has spoken, Maître Courtin," he said; "His judgment is against you! I was not seeking you, but He sends you to me; I had forgotten you for a time, and He puts you in my way. God wills that you shall die, Maître Courtin."

"No, no, no! you won't kill me, Jean Oullier!" cried the wretched man, falling back into all his terrors.

"I will kill you as surely as those stars which are in the sky were placed there by God's hand. Therefore, if you have a soul, think of it; repent, and pray that your doom may not be too severe."

"Oh, you cannot do it, you will not do it, Jean Oullier! Think that you are killing a child of the good God, whose name you speak! Oh, not to tread the earth again, which is so beautiful in the sunlight! to sleep in an icy bed away forever from those I love! Oh, no, no, no! it is impossible!"

"If you were a father, if you had wife, mother, or sister expecting your return, your words might touch me; but no! useless among men, you have lived only to use them, and to return them evil for good. You blaspheme even now in lying, for you love no one. No one has ever loved you on this earth, and my knife will wound no heart but your own in killing you. Maître Courtin, you are now to appear before your Judge; once more, I say, commend your soul to Him."

"Can a few short moments suffice for that? A guilty man like me needs time, needs years of repentance to equal his crimes. You who are so pious, Jean Oullier, you will surely leave me time to sorrow for my sins."

"No; life would only enable you to commit others. Death is expiation; you fear it. Put your fears and your anguish at the feet of the Lord, and He will receive you in His mercy. Maître Courtin, time is passing, and as true as God is there above those stars, in ten minutes you will be before Him!"

"Ten minutes, my God! ten minutes! Oh, pity! pity! mercy!"

"The time you employ in useless prayers is lost to your soul; think of that, Maître Courtin, think of that!"

Courtin did not answer; his hand had touched an oar, and a gleam of hope came into his mind. He gently seized it; then rising abruptly, he aimed a blow at the head of the Vendéan. The latter threw himself to the right and evaded it; the oar fell on the forward gunwale and was shivered into a thousand bits, leaving but a fragment in the farmer's hand.

Quick as lightning Jean Oullier sprang at Courtin's throat. Again the hapless man fell on his knees. Paralyzed by fear he rolled to the bottom of the boat; his choking voice could scarcely murmur the cry for "Mercy! mercy!"

"Ha, the fear of death did awaken a spark of courage in you!" cried Jean Oullier. "Ha, you found a weapon! Well, so much the better, – so much the better! Defend yourself, Courtin; and if the weapon you hold in your hand doesn't suit you, take mine!" continued the old keeper, flinging his knife at the other's feet.

But Courtin was incapable of seizing it; all movement had become impossible to him. He stammered a few incoherent words; his whole body trembled as though he was shaken by an ague; his ears hummed and all his senses seemed to leave him in his awful dread of death.

"My God!" cried Jean Oullier, pushing the inert mass before him with his foot, "my God! I cannot put my knife into that dead body."

He looked about him as if in search of something.

Nature was calm; the night silent; the breeze scarcely ruffled the surface of the lake; the undulation of the water rippled softly against the sides of the boat; nothing was heard but the cry of the water-fowl flying eastward, their wings dotting with black the crimson lines of the dawn as it slowly ascended heavenward.

Jean Oullier turned abruptly to Courtin and shook him by the arm.

"Maître Courtin, I will not kill you without taking my share of the danger," he said. "Maître Courtin, I will force you to defend yourself; if not against me, at least against death. Death is coming, it is here; defend yourself!"

The farmer answered only by a moan. He rolled his haggard eyes about him, but it was plain he could not distinguish the objects that surrounded him. Death, terrible, hideous, menacing, effaced all else.

At the same instant Jean Oullier gave a vigorous stamp with his heel on the bottom of the boat. The rotten planks gave way and the water entered, boiling and foaming, into the boat.

Courtin was roused by the coldness of the flood as it reached him; he gave an awful cry, – a cry in which there was nothing human.

"I am lost!" he screamed.

"It is God's judgment!" said Jean Oullier, stretching his arm to heaven. "Once I did not strike you because you were bound; this time, my hand spares you again, Maître Courtin. If your good angel wants you, let him save you; I have not stained my hands with your blood."

Courtin had risen while Jean Oullier said these words, and he moved hither and thither in the boat, making the water plash about him. Jean Oullier, calm, impassible, knelt in the bow and prayed.

The water came higher and higher.

"Oh, who will save me? who will save me?" cried Courtin, now livid, and contemplating with terror the six inches of wood which alone remained above the surface of the lake.

"God, if it pleases Him! Your life, like mine, is in His hands; let Him take one or the other-or save, or condemn us both. We are in His hands; once more, Maître Courtin, I say to you, accept His will."

As Jean Oullier spoke the boat gave a lurch; the water had reached the level of the gunwale, the skiff whirled once round, sustained itself for a second on the surface, and then slowly sank beneath the feet of the two men and buried itself in the depths of the lake with dismal mutterings.

Courtin was dragged down by the suction of the boat; but he came to the surface of the water, and his fingers seized the second oar, which floated near him. This slender bit of light dry wood supported him on the water long enough for him to make another appeal to Jean Oullier. The latter did not answer; he was swimming gently in the direction of the dawn.

"Help! help!" cried the miserable Courtin. "Help me to get ashore, Jean Oullier, and I will give you all the gold I have upon me!"

"Throw that ill-gotten gold to the bottom of the lake!" said the Vendéan, seeing the farmer buoyed upon the oar. "That is your one chance of saving your life; and this advice is the only help I will give you!"

Courtin put his hand to the belt; but drew it back as though his fingers were burned by the contact, or as if the Vendéan had commanded him to rip open his bowels and sacrifice his flesh and blood.

"No, no!" he murmured, "I can save it, and myself too."

He began to swim; but he had neither the skill nor the practice of Jean Oullier in that exercise. Moreover, the weight of the gold upon him was too great; at every stroke he went beneath the water, which, in spite of him, got into his throat. Again he called to Jean, but Jean Oullier was now a hundred yards away.

In one of these immersions, which lasted longer than the others, he was seized with a sort of vertigo, and suddenly, with a rapid movement, he detached the belt. But, before letting his precious gold drop into the gulf, he resolved to handle it, to feel it for the last time; he did clasp it, he did feel it with his trembling fingers.

That last contact with the metal he loved decided his fate; he could not resolve to release his hold of it; he pressed it to his breast, and made a strong movement with his feet to tread the water; but the weight of the upper part of his body burdened with the coin threw him off his balance; he sank. After a few seconds passed under water, he rose half suffocated, flung a curse to the heaven he saw for the last time, and then, dragged down by his gold as by a demon, he went to the bottom.

Jean Oullier, turning at that moment, saw rings upon the surface of the water, – the last sign given by the mayor of La Logerie of his existence; the last movement ever made around him in the land of the living.

The Vendéan raised his eyes to heaven and worshipped God for the justice of his decrees.

Jean Oullier swam well; but his recent wound and the fatigues and emotions of this terrible night had exhausted him. When he was only a hundred strokes from the shore he felt that his strength betrayed his courage; nevertheless, calm and resolute in this crucial moment as he had been all his life, he resolved to struggle to the last. On he swam.

Soon he felt a sort of faintness; his limbs grew numb; he fancied a thousand pins were pricking and tearing his flesh; his muscles grew painful; the blood mounted violently to his brain, and a dull, confused humming, like the roaring of the sea against the rocks, clamored in his ears; black clouds filled with phosphorescent sparks danced before his eyes; he thought he was about to die, and yet his limbs, obedient in their impotence, continued the motion his will imposed upon them. He still swam.

His eyes closed in spite of himself; his limbs now stiffened entirely; he gave a last thought to those with whom he had crossed the sea of life, – to the children, to the wife, to the old man who had brightened his youth; to the two young girls who had taken the places of those he loved; he desired that his last prayer, like his last thought, should be of them.

But at that instant, and in spite of himself, an idea suddenly crossed his brain. A phantom passed before his eyes; he saw the elder Michel bathed in his blood, dying on the mossy ground of the forest. Raising his arm from the water aloft to heaven he cried out: -

"God! if I was mistaken, if it was a crime, forgive me! not in this world but the next!"

Then, as if that solemn invocation had exhausted its last powers, the soul seemed to leave the body, which floated inert upon the current at the moment when the sun, rising above the mountains on the horizon, gilded with its earliest fires the waters of the lake, – the same moment when Courtin, sinking to the bottom, rendered his last breath; the same moment when Petit-Pierre, in Nantes, was driven from her hiding-place and arrested.

Michel, in charge of the soldiers, was making his way to Nantes.

After marching half an hour along the high-road, the lieutenant who commanded the little troop came up to his prisoner.

"Monsieur," he said, "you look like a gentleman; I have the honor to be one myself. It pains me to see you handcuffed. Will you give me your word of honor not to escape if I release you?"

"Gladly," said Michel; "and I thank you, monsieur, swearing to you that no matter from what direction succor may come to me, I will not leave your side without your permission."

After this they continued their way, arm in arm; so that any one who met them would little have suspected that one was a prisoner.

The night was fine, the sunrise splendid; all the flowers, moist with dew, sparkled like diamonds; the air was full of sweetest fragrance; the birds were singing in the branches. This march to Nantes was really a delightful promenade.

When they reached the extremity of the lake of Grand-Lieu the lieutenant stopped his prisoner, with whom he had advanced fully half a mile beyond the escort, and pointing to a black mass, which was floating on the surface of the water, about fifty feet from the shore, he asked him what he thought it was.

"It looks like the body of a man," answered Michel.

"Can you swim?"

"A little."

"Ah, if I knew how to swim I'd be in the water now," said the officer, sighing, and turning as if to call up his men.

Michel waited for nothing more; he ran to the bank, threw off his clothes, and jumped into the lake. A few instants later he brought to shore a body he had already recognized as that of Jean Oullier.

During this time the soldiers had come up, and they at once set to work to revive the drowning man. One of them took out his flask, and prying open the Vendéan's teeth poured a few drops of brandy into his mouth.

This revived him. His first glance fell on Michel, who was holding his head, and such an expression of anguish came upon his face that the lieutenant noticed and mistook it.

"This is the man who saved you, my friend," he said, pointing to Michel.

"Saved me! he! his son!" exclaimed Jean Oullier. "Ah! I thank thee, God, who art wonderful in thy mercy as thou art terrible in thy justice!"