Kitabı oku: «The Chouans», sayfa 21
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
