The Last Vendée

Trigaud was equally fortunate; and save for a ball which grazed his shoulder and added more rags to those he wore, he and his partner Courte-Joie got safely across the line. The two fugitives (Trigaud and Courte-Joie count as one) now turned diagonally, one to right, the other to left, so as to meet at the point of the angle. At the end of five minutes they were within speaking distance.

"Are you all right?" said Jean Oullier to Courte-Joie.

"All right!" answered the cripple; "and in twenty minutes, if we don't have a limb lopped off by those rascally Blues, we'll be in the fields; and once we are behind a hedge the devil himself can't touch us. That was a bad idea of ours, taking to the moor, gars Oullier."

"Pooh! we'll soon be away from it; and the young folks are much safer where they are than if we had put them in the thickest forest. You are not wounded?"

"No; and you, Trigaud? I thought I felt a sort of shudder on your hide."

The giant showed the gash the ball had made in his club; evidently, this misfortune, which destroyed the symmetry of the work at which he had fondly labored all the morning, troubled him far more than the damage done to his clothing or to his deltoid, which was slightly injured by the passage of the ball.

"Oh, be joyful!" cried Courte-Joie; "here are the fields."

In truth, not a thousand steps away from the fugitives, at the bottom of a slope which was so gentle as to be almost imperceptible, fields of wheat were visible, their ears already yellowing and swaying to the breeze in their dull-green sheaths.

"Suppose we stop to breathe a minute," said Courte-Joie, who seemed to feel the fatigue that Trigaud felt.

"Yes," said Jean Oullier, "and give me time to reload. Meantime, do you look about."

Jean Oullier reloaded his gun, and Courte-Joie turned his eyes in a circle around him.

"Oh, ten million thunders!" exclaimed the cripple suddenly, just as the Vendéan was ramming in his second ball.

"What now?" said Jean Oullier, turning round.

"Forward! all the devils of hell! forward! I don't see anything yet, but I hear something that bodes no good."

"Whew! they are doing us the honor of cavalry, gars Courte-Joie. Quick, quick, lazy-bones!" he added, addressing Trigaud.

The latter, as much to relieve his lungs as to make answer to Jean Oullier, gave vent to a sort of bellow which a lusty Poitevin bull might have envied him, and then with a single stride he jumped an enormous stone which lay on his way; as he did so a cry of pain burst from Jean Oullier.

"What's the matter?" asked Courte-Joie, looking back to the latter, who had stopped and was leaning on his gun with his foot raised.

"Nothing, nothing," replied Oullier; "don't trouble about me."

He tried to walk, gave another cry, and sat down.

"Oh," said Courte-Joie, "we shall not go on without you. Tell me, what's the matter?"

"Nothing, I say."

"Are you wounded?"

"Oh, for that bone-setter of Montbert!" exclaimed Jean Oullier.

"What's that?" said Courte-Joie, who did not catch his meaning.

"I've either broken or turned my ankle by stepping into a hole; at any rate, I can't take another step."

"Trigaud will take you on one shoulder and me on the other."

"Impossible! you could never reach the hedges."

"But if we leave you behind they'll kill you, my Jean."

"Maybe so," said the Vendéan, "but I'll kill a few of them before I die; and by way of a beginning, look at that fellow."

A young officer of chasseurs, better mounted than the rest, appeared at the top of a rise about three hundred paces from the fugitives. Jean put his musket to his shoulder and fired. The young man threw up his arms and fell from his saddle. Jean Oullier reloaded his gun.

"Can't you walk at all?" asked Courte-Joie.

"I might limp a dozen steps; but what's the good of that?"

"Then here we'll stay, Trigaud."

"You won't do such a foolish thing, I hope?" cried Jean Oullier.

"Yes, by my faith, I will. Where you die we die, old friend; but, as you say, we'll bring down a few of them first."

"No, no, Courte-Joie; that sha'n't be so. You must live to look after those young ones we left over there-What are you about, Trigaud?" he suddenly asked, looking at the giant, who had gone down into a ravine and was lifting a block of granite.

"Don't scold him!" said Courte-Joie; "he isn't wasting time."

"Here, here!" cried Trigaud, showing a hollow made by the flow of water under the stone.

"Faith, he's right. I declare if he hasn't the mind of a monkey this day, my gars Trigaud! Here, Jean Oullier, here, get under! get under!"

Jean Oullier dragged himself to the stone and rolled into the excavation, where he curled himself into a ball with the water to his middle. Trigaud then replaced the stone, leaving just enough space to give air and light to the living being it covered like a tombstone.

The giant had just concluded this work when the horsemen appeared at the top of the slope; and after convincing themselves that the young officer was really dead, dashed down in pursuit of the Chouans at full gallop.

Nevertheless, all hope was not lost. Trigaud and Courte-Joie were scarcely fifty steps from a hedge beyond which they would be safe from horsemen; and as for the foot-soldiers, they appeared to have relinquished their pursuit.

But a subaltern officer admirably mounted pressed them so hard that Courte-Joie felt the hot breath of the animal on his legs. The rider, determined to end the matter, rose in his stirrups and aimed such a blow with his sabre at the cripple's head that he would certainly have split it in two; but the horse, which he did not have well in hand, swerved to the left, while Trigaud instinctively flung himself to the right. The weapon therefore missed its mark and merely made a flesh wound on the cripple's arm.

"Face about!" cried Courte-Joie to Trigaud, as though he were commanding a company. The latter pivoted round, absolutely as though his body were riveted to the ground with an iron screw.

The horse, passing beside him, struck him in the breast, but did not shake him. At the same instant Courte-Joie, firing one barrel of his little gun, knocked over the subaltern, who was dragged to some distance by the impetus of his horse.

"One!" counted Trigaud, in whom the imminence of danger seemed to develop a loquacity which was not habitual with him.

During the moment that this affair lasted the other horsemen were rapidly approaching; a few horse's-lengths alone separated them from the two Vendéans, who could hear, above the tramp of their galloping steeds, the sharp cocking of their pistols and musketoons. But that moment had sufficed Courte-Joie to judge of the resources offered him by the place in which he found himself.

They were now at the farther end of the moor of Bouaimé, a few steps from a crossway whence several roads diverged. Like all such open spaces in Brittany and La Vendée, this crossway had its crucifix; and the cross, which was of stone, and dilapidated on one side, offered a temporary refuge which might soon become untenable. To right were the first hedges of the fields; but there was no chance whatever of reaching them, for three or four horsemen, forestalling their intention, had obliquely advanced to thwart it. Opposite to them and flowing to their left was the river Maine, which made a bend at this place; but Courte-Joie knew it was useless to even think of putting the river between himself and the soldiers, for the opposite bank was a face of rock rising from the water; and in following the current to find a spot to land, the two Chouans would have been simply a target for the enemy.

It was, therefore, the refuge of the cross on which Courte-Joie decided, and in that direction Trigaud, under his master's orders, proceeded. But just as he reached the column of stone and turned it to put its bulk between the soldiers and themselves, a ball struck an arm of the cross, ricochetted, and wounded Courte-Joie in the cheek, – not, however, preventing the cripple from replying to it in turn.

Unfortunately, the blood which poured from the wound fell on Trigaud's hands. He saw that blood, gave a roar of fury, – as though he felt nought but that which injured his companion, – and charged madly on the soldiers like a wild-boar on its hunters.

In an instant Courte-Joie and Trigaud were surrounded; a dozen sabres whirled above their heads, a dozen pistol muzzles threatened their bodies, and one gendarme seized Courte-Joie. But Trigaud's club descended; it fell upon the leg of the gendarme and crushed it; the hapless rider uttered a terrible cry and fell from his horse, which fled across the moor.

At the same instant a dozen shots were fired; Trigaud had a ball in the breast, and Courte-Joie's right arm, broken in two places, hung helpless at his side. The giant seemed insensible to pain; with his trunk of a tree he made a moulinet which broke two or three sabres and warded others.

"To the cross! to the cross!" cried Courte-Joie. "It is well to die there."

"Yes," muttered Trigaud; hearing his master speak of dying he brought down his club convulsively on the head of a horseman, who fell like a log. Then, executing the order he had received, he walked backward to the cross-to cover as much as possible the body of his friend with his own body.

"A thousand thunders!" shouted a corporal; "we are wasting time and lives and powder on those beggars."

So saying, he spurred his horse and forced it with one bound upon the two Vendéans. The horse's head struck Trigaud full in the chest, and the shock was so violent that it brought the giant to his knees. The soldier profited by the chance to strike Courte-Joie a blow which entered his skull.

"Throw me at the foot of the cross and escape if you can!" said Courte-Joie, in a failing voice. "It is all over with me." Then he began the prayer: "Receive my soul, God!"

But the colossus no longer obeyed him; maddened with blood and fury he uttered hoarse, inarticulate cries, like those of a lion at bay; his eyes, usually dull and lifeless, cast out flames; his lips drew up, exposing the clenched and savage teeth ready to render eraunch for eraunch with a tiger. The gallop of the horse had carried the soldier who wounded Courte-Joie to some distance. Trigaud could not reach him; but he measured the space with his eye, and whirling the club above his head, he flung it hissing through the air as if from a catapult.

The rider forced his horse to rear, and so avoided the blow; but the horse received it on his head. The creature beat the air with his forefeet as he fell over backward, and rolled with his rider on the ground.

Trigaud uttered a cry of joy more terrible and horrible than a cry of pain; the rider's leg was caught beneath the animal. He flung himself upon him, parried with his arm, which was deeply gashed, a sabre-cut; seized the soldier by the leg; dragged him from the body of the horse; and then, twirling him in the air, as a child does a sling, he dashed out his brains upon an arm of the cross.

The byzantine stone shook to its base, and remained bent over to one side, and covered with blood. A cry of horror and of vengeance burst from the troops, but this specimen of the giant's strength deterred the soldiers from approaching him; they stopped where they were, to reload their guns.

During this time Courte-Joie breathed his last, saying, in a load voice: -

"Amen!"

Then Trigaud, feeling his beloved master dead, and utterly ignoring the preparations the chasseurs were making to kill him, – Trigaud sat down at the foot of the cross, unfastened the body of Courte-Joie from his shoulders and laid it on his knees, as a mother might handle the body of her child; he gazed on the livid face, wiping with his sleeve the blood that blurred it, while a torrent of tears-the first that being, indifferent to all the miseries of life, had ever shed-flowed thick and fast from his eyes, mingling with the blood he was piously and absorbedly removing.

A violent explosion, two new wounds, and the dull thud produced by three or four balls striking the body which Trigaud was holding in his arms and pressing to his breast, roused him from his grief and his insensibility, he rose to his full height; and this movement, which made the soldiers think he meant to spring upon them, caused them to gather up the reins of their horses, while a visible shudder ran through their ranks.

But Trigaud never looked at them; he thought of them no longer; he was seeking a means of not being parted from his friend by death; was he searching for a spot which promised him a union throughout eternity?

He walked toward the river. In spite of his wounds, in spite of the blood which flowed down his body from the holes of several pistol-balls and left a rivulet of blood behind him, Trigaud walked firm and erect. He reached the river-bank before a single soldier thought of preventing him; there he stopped at a point overlooking a black pool of water, the stillness of which proclaimed its depth. Clasping the body of the cripple still tighter to his breast, and gathering up his last remaining strength, he sprang forward into its depths without uttering a word.

The water dashed noisily above the mighty mass it now engulfed, boiling and foaming long over the place where Trigaud and his friend had disappeared; then it subsided into rings, which widened, widened ever till they died upon the shore.

The soldiers had ridden up. They thought the beggar had thrown himself into the water to reach the other bank, and pistol in hand they held themselves ready to fire the moment he came to the surface of the stream.

But Trigaud never reappeared; his soul had gone to join the soul of the only being he had loved in this world, and their bodies lay softly together on a bed of reeds in a pool of the river Maine.

XXI.

IN WHICH SUCCOR COMES FROM AN UNEXPECTED QUARTER

During the week which had just elapsed Maître Courtin kept prudently quiet and out of sight in his farmhouse at La Logerie. Like all diplomatists, Courtin had no great fancy for war; he calculated, very justly, that the period of pistol-shots and sabre-cuts must soon pass by, and he wished to be fresh and lively for the succeeding period, when he might be useful to the cause-and to himself-according to the petty means which Nature allotted to him.

He was not without some uneasiness, the cautious farmer, as to the consequences which might result to him from the part he had taken in the arrest of Jean Oullier and the death of Bonneville; and at this moment when hatred, rancor, vengeance of all kinds had put the country under arms, he thought it wisest not to foolishly risk his person within their range. He was even afraid of meeting his young master, Baron Michel (inoffensive as he knew him to be), ever since a certain night when he had cut the girths of the baron's saddle.

In fact, the day after that performance, thinking that the best way to escape being killed was to seem half dead, he took to his bed and gave out, by his servant-woman, to his neighbors and administrators that a malignant fever like that of poor old Tinguy had brought him to death's door.

Madame de la Logerie, in her distress at Michel's flight, had sent twice for her farmer; but danger paralyzed Courtin's desire to please her, and the proud baroness, goaded by anxiety, was forced to go herself to the peasant's house.

She had heard that Michel was a prisoner, and was about to start for Nantes to use all her influence with the authorities to get him released, and all her authority as a mother to take him far away from this disastrous neighborhood. Under no circumstances would she return to La Logerie, where further sojourn seemed to her dangerous by reason of the conflict about to take place; and she was anxious to see Courtin and leave him in charge of the château and her interests.

Courtin promised to be worthy of her confidence, but in so weak and dolorous a voice that the baroness left the farmhouse with a heart full of pity for the poor devil, even in the midst of her own personal anxieties.

After this came the fights at Chêne and La Pénissière. On the days of their occurrence the noise of the musketry, as it reached the farmer's ears, caused a relapse in his illness. But no sooner had he heard of the result of those fights than he rose from his bed entirely cured. The next day he felt so vigorous that, in spite of his woman's remonstrance, he determined to go to Montaigu, his market-town, and get the orders of the sub-prefect as to his future course. The vulture smelt the carnage, and wanted to be sure of his little share of the spoil.

At Montaigu Maître Courtin learned that his trip was useless; the department had just been placed under military authority. The sub-prefect advised the mayor of La Logerie to go to Aigrefeuille and get his instructions from the general, who was there at that moment.

Dermoncourt, fully occupied with the movement of his columns, and having, as a brave and loyal soldier, little liking for men of Courtin's character, received the latter's denunciations, made under the guise of necessary information, with an abstracted air, and, in fact, showed a coldness to the mayor of La Logerie which greatly chilled that functionary's hopes. Nevertheless the general accepted a proposal which Courtin made him, to put a garrison in the château de la Logerie; for the position seemed to him an excellent one from which to hold the whole region in hand, from Machecoul to Saint Colombin.

Heaven owed the farmer some compensation for the general's want of sympathy, and, with its usual justice, soon bestowed it.

As he left the house which served as headquarters, Maître Courtin was approached by a man whom he had no recollection of ever having met, but who, nevertheless, showed him the utmost civility and a friendliness that was altogether touching. This individual was a man about thirty years of age, dressed in black clothes, the cut of which resembled that of priestly garments worn in a city. His forehead was low, his nose hooked like the beak of a bird of prey. His lips were thin; and yet, in spite of their thinness, they were prominent, owing to a peculiar formation of the jaw; his pointed chin protruded at an angle which was more than sharp; his hair, of a leaden black, was plastered along his temples, and his gray eyes, often dropped, seemed to see through his winking eyelids. It was the countenance of a Jesuit grafted on the face of a Jew.

A few words said by this unknown man to Courtin appeared to remove the distrust with which the latter was inclined to receive advances which seemed to him at first suspicious. He even accepted with a good grace an invitation to dinner at the hôtel Saint-Pierre, which the stranger gave him; and after two hours passed tête-à-tête in a private room, where the individual we have described ordered the table to be laid, such mutual sympathy had been developed that they treated each other, Courtin and he, as old friends; exchanging, when they parted, many shakings of the hand, while the mayor of La Logerie, as he struck his spurs into his pony's flanks, promised his new acquaintance that he should not be long without hearing from him.

Toward nine o'clock that evening Maître Courtin was jogging along, with the tail of his beast toward Aigrefeuille and its nose toward La Logerie; he seemed quite lively and joyous, and was flirting his whip by its leather handle right and left on the flanks of his little steed, with a jollity and ease that were not characteristic of him.

Maître Courtin's brain was evidently larded with couleur-de-rose ideas. He was thinking how on the morrow he should have, at a stone's throw from his farm, a detachment of fifty soldiers, whose presence would relieve him of anxiety, not only about the consequences of what he had done, but also about those of certain things that he wanted to do; he was thinking, too, that in his capacity as mayor he could use those fifty bayonets according to the needs of his private animosities. This idea gratified his self-love and his hatred together.

But, seductive as this idea of a Pretorian guard which could, if cleverly managed, be turned into his private guard, might be, it was surely not sufficient to give Maître Courtin-a practical man if ever there was one-his present exuberant satisfaction.

The mysterious unknown had no doubt dazzled his eyes with something more than the glitter of an ephemeral glory, – in fact, it was neither more nor less than piles of gold and silver which Maître Courtin was beholding in his mind's eye through the mists of the future, and toward which he was mechanically stretching out his hand with a smile of covetousness.

Under the control of these agreeable hallucinations, and somewhat hazy from the fumes of wine which his is new friend had poured for him generously, Maître Courtin let himself drop into a state of gentle somnolence; his body swayed to right and left, according to the caprices of his ambling pony, until at last, the quadruped having stumbled over a stone, Maître Courtin pitched forward and remained doubled over on the pommel of his saddle.

The position was uncomfortable, but Maître Courtin was careful not to change it; he was then in the midst of so delightful a dream that, for all the world, he would not lose it by awaking. He thought he was meeting his young master, who said to him, waving his hand over the domain of La Logerie, "All this is thine!"

The gift was proving more considerable than Courtin at first thought it; untold riches were developing. The trees in the orchard were laden down with gold and silver fruit; all the poles in the neighborhood would not suffice to hinder the branches from breaking under the weight of such wealth. The wild-roses and hawthorns were bearing, instead of their usual haws, jewels of all colors, which sparkled in the sun like so many carbuncles; and there was such a quantity of them that, although he knew they were precious stones, Courtin saw, with an eye of equanimity, a small marauder filling his pockets with them.

The farmer entered his own stable. In that stable he beheld a file of fat and well-fed cows extending out of sight so far, so far, that the one which was nearest the door seemed to be of the size of an elephant, while the one in the farthest distance was no bigger than a worm. Under each of these cows was a young girl milking. The first two had the features of the "she-wolves," the daughters of the Marquis de Souday. From the teats of the cows they were milking ran a white and yellow liquid, brilliant as two metals in fusion. As it fell into the copper pails of the two girls it produced that delightful sound which is music to the ear, – the sound of gold and silver coins piling one above the other.

As he looked into the pails the happy farmer saw that they were more than half full of rare and precious coins of various effigies. He stretched out his eager, grasping, quivering hands to seize these treasures, and as he did so a violent shock accompanied by a cry of agony put to flight his soft illusions.

Courtin opened his eyes and saw in the darkness a peasant-woman with torn clothes and dishevelled hair stretching out her hands to him.

"What do you want?" cried Maître Courtin, assuming a gruff voice and raising his stick in a threatening manner.

"Your help, my good man; I implore it in God's name!"

Finding that pity alone was asked for, and certain now that he had only a woman to deal with, Maître Courtin, who at first had looked about him in a terrified manner, was completely reassured.

"You are committing a misdemeanor, my dear," he said. "You have no right to stop persons on the high-road and ask for alms!"

"Alms! who said anything about alms?" returned the woman, in a refined and haughty tone of voice which arrested Courtin's attention. "I want you to help in rescuing an unfortunate man who is dying of fatigue and exposure! I want you to lend me your horse to take him to some farmhouse in the neighborhood."

"Who is it I am to help?"

"You seem by your dress to belong to the country people. I shall therefore not hesitate to tell you the truth, for I am sure, whatever your political opinions may be, you will not betray us, – he is a royalist officer."

The voice of the unknown woman excited Courtin's curiosity to the utmost. He leaned from his saddle striving to see in the darkness the face of her to whom the voice belonged; but he did not succeed in doing so.