The Chouans

She pushed him violently away from her and rose. Her features contracted, she laughed as mad people laugh, and then she said to him: “You do not mean one word of all you are saying, base man – baser than the lowest villain.” She sprang to the dagger which was lying beside a flower-vase, and let it sparkle before the eyes of the amazed young marquis. “Bah!” she said, flinging it away from her, “I do not respect you enough to kill you. Your blood is even too vile to be shed by soldiers; I see nothing fit for you but the executioner.”

The words were painfully uttered in a low voice, and she moved her feet like a spoilt child, impatiently. The marquis went to her and tried to clasp her.

“Don’t touch me!” she cried, recoiling from him with a look of horror.

“She is mad!” said the marquis in despair.

“Mad, yes!” she repeated, “but not mad enough to be your dupe. What would I not forgive to passion? but to seek to possess me without love, and to write to that woman – ”

“To whom have I written?” he said, with an astonishment which was certainly not feigned.

“To that chaste woman who sought to kill me.”

The marquis turned pale with anger and said, grasping the back of a chair until he broke it, “If Madame du Gua has committed some dastardly wrong – ”

Mademoiselle de Verneuil looked for the letter; not finding it she called to Francine.

“Where is that letter?” she asked.

“Monsieur Corentin took it.”

“Corentin! ah! I understand it all; he wrote the letter; he has deceived me with diabolical art – as he alone can deceive.”

With a piercing cry she flung herself on the sofa, tears rushing from her eyes. Doubt and confidence were equally dreadful now. The marquis knelt beside her and clasped her to his breast, saying, again and again, the only words he was able to utter: —

“Why do you weep, my darling? there is no harm done; your reproaches were all love; do not weep, I love you – I shall always love you.”

Suddenly he felt her press him with almost supernatural force. “Do you still love me?” she said, amid her sobs.

“Can you doubt it?” he replied in a tone that was almost melancholy.

She abruptly disengaged herself from his arms, and fled, as if frightened and confused, to a little distance.

“Do I doubt it?” she exclaimed, but a smile of gentle meaning was on her lover’s face, and the words died away upon her lips; she let him take her by the hand and lead her to the salon. There an altar had been hastily arranged during her absence. The priest was robed in his officiating vestments. The lighted tapers shed upon the ceiling a glow as soft as hope itself. She now recognized the two men who had bowed to her, the Comte de Bauvan and the Baron du Guenic, the witnesses chosen by Montauran.

“You will not still refuse?” said the marquis.

But at the sight she stopped, stepped backward into her chamber and fell on her knees; raising her hands towards the marquis she cried out: “Pardon! pardon! pardon!”

Her voice died away, her head fell back, her eyes closed, and she lay in the arms of her lover and Francine as if dead. When she opened her eyes they met those of the young man full of loving tenderness.

“Marie! patience! this is your last trial,” he said.

“The last!” she exclaimed, bitterly.

Francine and the marquis looked at each other in surprise, but she silenced them by a gesture.

“Call the priest,” she said, “and leave me alone with him.”

They did so, and withdrew.

“My father,” she said to the priest so suddenly called to her, “in my childhood an old man, white-haired like yourself, used to tell me that God would grant all things to those who had faith. Is that true?”

“It is true,” replied the priest; “all things are possible to Him who created all.”

Mademoiselle de Verneuil threw herself on her knees before him with incredible enthusiasm.

“Oh, my God!” she cried in ecstasy, “my faith in thee is equal to my love for him; inspire me! do here a miracle, or take my life!”

“Your prayer will be granted,” said the priest.

Marie returned to the salon leaning on the arm of the venerable old man. A deep and secret emotion brought her to the arms of her lover more brilliant than on any of her past days, for a serenity like that which painters give to the martyrs added to her face an imposing dignity. She held out her hand to the marquis and together they advanced to the altar and knelt down. The marriage was about to be celebrated beside the nuptial bed, the altar hastily raised, the cross, the vessels, the chalice, secretly brought thither by the priest, the fumes of incense rising to the ceiling, the priest himself, who wore a stole above his cassock, the tapers on an altar in a salon, – all these things combined to form a strange and touching scene, which typified those times of saddest memory, when civil discord overthrew all sacred institutions. Religious ceremonies then had the savor of the mysteries. Children were baptized in the chambers where the mothers were still groaning from their labor. As in the olden time, the Saviour went, poor and lowly, to console the dying. Young girls received their first communion in the home where they had played since infancy. The marriage of the marquis and Mademoiselle de Verneuil was now solemnized, like many other unions, by a service contrary to the recent legal enactments. In after years these marriages, mostly celebrated at the foot of oaks, were scrupulously recognized and considered legal. The priest who thus preserved the ancient usages was one of those men who hold to their principles in the height of the storm. His voice, which never made the oath exacted by the Republic, uttered no word throughout the tempest that did not make for peace. He never incited, like the Abbe Gudin, to fire and sword; but like many others, he devoted himself to the still more dangerous mission of performing his priestly functions for the souls of faithful Catholics. To accomplish this perilous ministry he used all the pious deceptions necessitated by persecution, and the marquis, when he sought his services on this occasion, had found him in one of those excavated caverns which are known, even to the present day, by the name of “the priest’s hiding-place.” The mere sight of that pale and suffering face was enough to give this worldly room a holy aspect.

All was now ready for the act of misery and of joy. Before beginning the ceremony the priest asked, in the dead silence, the names of the bride.

“Marie-Nathalie, daughter of Mademoiselle Blanche de Casteran, abbess, deceased, of Notre-Dame de Seez, and Victor-Amedee, Duc de Verneuil.”

“Where born?”

“At La Chasterie, near Alencon.”

“I never supposed,” said the baron in a low voice to the count, “that Montauran would have the folly to marry her. The natural daughter of a duke! – horrid!”

“If it were of the king, well and good,” replied the Comte de Bauvan, smiling. “However, it is not for me to blame him; I like Charette’s mistress full as well; and I shall transfer the war to her – though she’s not one to bill and coo.”

The names of the marquis had been filled in previously, and the two lovers now signed the document with their witnesses. The ceremony then began. At that instant Marie, and she alone, heard the sound of muskets and the heavy tread of soldiers, – no doubt relieving the guard in the church which she had herself demanded. She trembled violently and raised her eyes to the cross on the altar.

“A saint at last,” said Francine, in a low voice.

“Give me such saints, and I’ll be devilishly devout,” added the count, in a whisper.

When the priest made the customary inquiry of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, she answered by a “yes” uttered with a deep sigh. Bending to her husband’s ear she said: “You will soon know why I have broken the oath I made never to marry you.”

After the ceremony all present passed into the dining-room, where dinner was served, and as they took their places Jeremie, Marie’s footman, came into the room terrified. The poor bride rose and went to him; Francine followed her. With one of those pretexts which never fail a woman, she begged the marquis to do the honors for a moment, and went out, taking Jeremie with her before he could utter the fatal words.

“Ah! Francine, to be dying a thousand deaths and not to die!” she cried.

This absence might well be supposed to have its cause in the ceremony that had just taken place. Towards the end of the dinner, as the marquis was beginning to feel uneasy, Marie returned in all the pomp of a bridal robe. Her face was calm and joyful, while that of Francine who followed her had terror imprinted on every feature, so that the guests might well have thought they saw in these two women a fantastic picture by Salvator Rosa, of Life and Death holding each other by the hand.

“Gentlemen,” said Marie to the priest, the baron, and the count, “you are my guests for the night. I find you cannot leave Fougeres; it would be dangerous to attempt it. My good maid has instructions to make you comfortable in your apartments. No, you must not rebel,” she added to the priest, who was about to speak. “I hope you will not thwart a woman on her wedding-day.”

An hour later she was alone with her husband in the room she had so joyously arranged a few hours earlier. They had reached that fatal bed where, like a tomb, so many hopes are wrecked, where the waking to a happy life is all uncertain, where love is born or dies, according to the natures that are tried there. Marie looked at the clock. “Six hours to live,” she murmured.

“Can I have slept?” she cried toward morning, wakening with one of those sudden movements which rouse us when we have made ourselves a promise to wake at a certain hour. “Yes, I have slept,” she thought, seeing by the light of the candles that the hands of the clock were pointing to two in the morning. She turned and looked at the sleeping marquis, lying like a child with his head on one hand, the other clasping his wife’s hand, his lips half smiling as though he had fallen asleep while she kissed him.

“Ah!” she whispered to herself, “he sleeps like an infant; he does not distrust me – me, to whom he has given a happiness without a name.”

She touched him softly and he woke, continuing to smile. He kissed the hand he held and looked at the wretched woman with eyes so sparkling that she could not endure their light and slowly lowered her large eyelids. Her husband might justly have accused her of coquetry if she were not concealing the terrors of her soul by thus evading the fire of his looks. Together they raised their charming heads and made each other a sign of gratitude for the pleasures they had tasted; but after a rapid glance at the beautiful picture his wife presented, the marquis was struck with an expression on her face which seemed to him melancholy, and he said in a tender voice, “Why sad, dear love?”

“Poor Alphonse,” she answered, “do you know to what I have led you?”

“To happiness.”

“To death!”

Shuddering with horror she sprang from the bed; the marquis, astonished, followed her. His wife motioned him to a window and raised the curtain, pointing as she did so to a score of soldiers. The moon had scattered the fog and was now casting her white light on the muskets and the uniforms, on the impassible Corentin pacing up and down like a jackal waiting for his prey, on the commandant, standing still, his arms crossed, his nose in the air, his lips curling, watchful and displeased.

“Come, Marie, leave them and come back to me.”

“Why do you smile? I placed them there.”

“You are dreaming.”

“No.”

They looked at each other for a moment. The marquis divined the whole truth, and he took her in his arms. “No matter!” he said, “I love you still.”

“All is not lost!” cried Marie, “it cannot be! Alphonse,” she said after a pause, “there is hope.”

At this moment they distinctly heard the owl’s cry, and Francine entered from the dressing-room.

“Pierre has come!” she said with a joy that was like delirium.

The marquise and Francine dressed Montauran in Chouan clothes with that amazing rapidity that belongs only to women. As soon as Marie saw her husband loading the gun Francine had brought in she slipped hastily from the room with a sign to her faithful maid. Francine then took the marquis to the dressing-room adjoining the bed-chamber. The young man seeing a large number of sheets knotted firmly together, perceived the means by which the girl expected him to escape the vigilance of the soldiers.

“I can’t get through there,” he said, examining the bull’s-eye window.

At that instant it was darkened by a thickset figure, and a hoarse voice, known to Francine, said in a whisper, “Make haste, general, those rascally Blues are stirring.”

“Oh! one more kiss,” said a trembling voice beside him.

The marquis, whose feet were already on the liberating ladder, though he was not wholly through the window, felt his neck clasped with a despairing pressure. Seeing that his wife had put on his clothes, he tried to detain her; but she tore herself roughly from his arms and he was forced to descend. In his hand he held a fragment of some stuff which the moonlight showed him was a piece of the waistcoat he had worn the night before.

“Halt! fire!”

These words uttered by Hulot in the midst of a silence that was almost horrible broke the spell which seemed to hold the men and their surroundings. A volley of balls coming from the valley and reaching to the foot of the tower succeeded the discharges of the Blues posted on the Promenade. Not a cry came from the Chouans. Between each discharge the silence was frightful.

But Corentin had heard a fall from the ladder on the precipice side of the tower, and he suspected some ruse.

“None of those animals are growling,” he said to Hulot; “our lovers are capable of fooling us on this side, and escaping themselves on the other.”

The spy, to clear up the mystery, sent for torches; Hulot, understanding the force of Corentin’s supposition, and hearing the noise of a serious struggle in the direction of the Porte Saint-Leonard, rushed to the guard-house exclaiming: “That’s true, they won’t separate.”

“His head is well-riddled, commandant,” said Beau-Pied, who was the first to meet him, “but he killed Gudin, and wounded two men. Ha! the savage; he got through three ranks of our best men and would have reached the fields if it hadn’t been for the sentry at the gate who spitted him on his bayonet.”

The commandant rushed into the guard-room and saw on a camp bedstead a bloody body which had just been laid there. He went up to the supposed marquis, raised the hat which covered the face, and fell into a chair.

“I suspected it!” he cried, crossing his arms violently; “she kept him, cursed thunder! too long.”

The soldiers stood about, motionless. The commandant himself unfastened the long black hair of a woman. Suddenly the silence was broken by the tramp of men and Corentin entered the guardroom, preceding four soldiers who bore on their guns, crossed to make a litter, the body of Montauran, who was shot in the thighs and arms. They laid him on the bedstead beside his wife. He saw her, and found strength to clasp her hand with a convulsive gesture. The dying woman turned her head, recognized her husband, and shuddered with a spasm that was horrible to see, murmuring in a voice almost extinct: “A day without a morrow! God heard me too well!”

“Commandant,” said the marquis, collecting all his strength, and still holding Marie’s hand, “I count on your honor to send the news of my death to my young brother, who is now in London. Write him that if he wishes to obey my last injunction he will never bear arms against his country – neither must he abandon the king’s service.”

“It shall be done,” said Hulot, pressing the hand of the dying man.

“Take them to the nearest hospital,” cried Corentin.

Hulot took the spy by the arm with a grip that left the imprint of his fingers on the flesh.

“Out of this camp!” he cried; “your business is done here. Look well at the face of Commander Hulot, and never find yourself again in his way if you don’t want your belly to be the scabbard of his blade – ”

And the older soldier flourished his sabre.

“That’s another of the honest men who will never make their way,” said Corentin to himself when he was some distance from the guard-room.

The marquis was still able to thank his gallant adversary by a look marking the respect which all soldiers feel for loyal enemies.

In 1827 an old man accompanied by his wife was buying cattle in the market-place of Fougeres. Few persons remembered that he had killed a hundred or more men, and that his former name was Marche-a-Terre. A person to whom we owe important information about all the personages of this drama saw him there, leading a cow, and was struck by his simple, ingenuous air, which led her to remark, “That must be a worthy man.”

As for Cibot, otherwise called Pille-Miche, we already know his end. It is likely that Marche-a-Terre made some attempt to save his comrade from the scaffold; possibly he was in the square at Alencon on the occasion of the frightful tumult which was one of the events of the famous trial of Rifoel, Briond, and la Chanterie.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy

Berthier, Alexandre

The Gondreville Mystery

Brigaut, Major

Pierrette

Casteran, De

The Seamy Side of History

Jealousies of a Country Town

Beatrix

The Peasantry

Cibot, Jean (alias Pille-Miche)

The Seamy Side of History

Corentin

The Gondreville Mystery

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

The Middle Classes

Esgrignon, Charles-Marie-Victor-Ange-Carol,

Marquis d’ (or Des Grignons)

Jealousies of a Country Town

Falcon, Jean (alias Beaupied or Beau-Pied)

The Muse of the Department

Cousin Betty

Ferdinand

Beatrix

Fontaine, Comte de

Modeste Mignon

The Ball at Sceaux

Cesar Birotteau

The Government Clerks

Fouche, Joseph

The Gondreville Mystery

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Guenic, Gaudebert-Calyste-Charles, Baron du

Beatrix

Hulot (Marshal)

The Muse of the Department

Cousin Betty

La Billardiere, Athanase-Jean-Francois-Michel, Baron Flamet de

Cesar Birotteau

The Government Clerks

Leroi, Pierre

The Seamy Side of History

Jealousies of a Country Town

Loudon, Prince de

Modeste Mignon

Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier

The Seamy Side of History

The Gondreville Mystery

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

The Ball at Sceaux

The Lily of the Valley

Colonel Chabert

The Government Clerks

Montauran, Marquis Alphonse de

Cesar Birotteau

Montauran, Marquis de (younger brother of Alphonse de)

The Seamy Side of History

Cousin Betty

Stael-Holstein (Anne-Louise-Germaine Necker) Baronne de

Louis Lambert

Letters of Two Brides

Talleyrand-Perigord, Charles-Maurice de

The Gondreville Mystery

The Thirteen

Letters of Two Brides

Gaudissart II.

Troisville, Guibelin, Vicomte de

The Seamy Side of History

Jealousies of a Country Town

The Peasantry

Valois, Chevalier de

Jealousies of a Country Town

Verneuil, Duc de

Jealousies of a Country Town

Vissard, Charles-Amedee-Louis-Joseph Rifoel, Chevalier du

The Seamy Side of History