“What! abandon the Hauteserres? never!” she said. “They must all perish or be saved together!”
“Only petty noblemen!” remarked Michu.
“They are only chevaliers, I know that,” she replied, “but they are related to the Cinq-Cygne and Simeuse blood. Save them all, and advise them how best to regain this forest.”
“The gendarmes are here, — don’t you hear them? they are holding a council of war.”
“Well, you have twice had luck to-night; go! bring my cousins here and hide them in these vaults; they’ll be safe from all pursuit — Alas! I am good for nothing!” she cried, with rage; “I should be only a beacon to light the enemy — but the police will never imagine that my cousins are in the forest if they see me at my ease. So the question resolves itself into this: how can we get five good horses to bring them in six hours from Lagny to the forest, — five horses to be killed and hidden in some thicket.”
“And the money?” said Michu, who was thinking deeply as he listened to the young countess.
“I gave my cousins a hundred louis this evening,” she replied.
“I’ll answer for them!” cried Michu. “But once hidden here you must not attempt to see them. My wife, or the little one, shall bring them food twice a week. But, as I can’t be sure of what may happen to me, remember, mademoiselle, in case of trouble, that the main beam in my hay-loft has been bored with an auger. In the hole, which is plugged with a bit of wood, you will find a plan showing how to reach this spot. The trees which you will find marked with a red dot on the plan have a black mark at their foot close to the earth. Each of these trees is a sign-post. At the foot of the third old oak which stands to the left of each sign-post, two feet in front of it and buried seven feet in the ground, you will find a large metal tube; in each tube are one hundred thousand francs in gold. These eleven trees — there are only eleven — contain the whole fortune of the Simeuse brothers, now that Gondreville has been taken from them.”
“It will take a hundred years for the nobility to recover from such blows,” said Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, slowly.
“Is there a pass-word?” asked Michu.
“‘France and Charles’ for the soldiers, ‘Laurence and Louis’ for the Messieurs d’Hauteserre and Simeuse. Good God! to think that I saw them yesterday for the first time in eleven years, and that now they are in danger of death — and what a death! Michu,” she said, with a melancholy look, “be as prudent during the next fifteen hours as you have been grand and devoted during the last twelve years. If disaster were to overtake my cousins now I should die of it — No,” she added, quickly, “I would live long enough to kill Bonaparte.”
“There will be two of us to do that when all is lost,” said Michu.
Laurence took his rough hand and wrung it warmly, as the English do. Michu looked at his watch; it was midnight.
“We must leave here at any cost,” he said. “Death to the gendarme who attempts to stop me! And you, madame la comtesse, without presuming to dictate, ride back to Cinq-Cygne as fast as you can. The police are there by this time; fool them! delay them!”
The hole once opened, Michu flung himself down with his ear to the earth; then he rose precipitately. “The gendarmes are at the edge of the forest towards Troyes!” he said. “Ha, I’ll get the better of them yet!”
He helped the countess to come out, and replaced the stones. When this was done he heard her soft voice telling him she must see him mounted before mounting herself. Tears came to the eyes of the stern man as he exchanged a last look with his young mistress, whose own eyes were tearless.
“Fool them! yes, he is right!” she said when she heard him no longer. Then she darted towards Cinq-Cygne at full gallop.
CHAPTER VIII. TRIALS OF THE POLICE
Madame d’Hauteserre, roused by the danger of her sons, and not believing that the Revolution was over, but still fearing its summary justice, recovered her senses by the violence of the same distress which made her lose them. Led by an agonizing curiosity she returned to the salon, which presented a picture worthy of the brush of a genre painter. The abbe, still seated at the card-table and mechanically playing with the counters, was covertly observing Corentin and Peyrade, who were standing together at a corner of the fireplace and speaking in a low voice. Several times Corentin’s keen eye met the not less keen glance of the priest; but, like two adversaries who knew themselves equally strong, and who return to their guard after crossing their weapons, each averted his eyes the instant they met. The worthy old d’Hauteserre, poised on his long thin legs like a heron, was standing beside the stout form of the mayor, in an attitude expressive of utter stupefaction. The mayor, though dressed as a bourgeois, always looked like a servant. Each gazed with a bewildered eye at the gendarmes, in whose clutches Gothard was still sobbing, his hands purple and swollen from the tightness of the cord that bound them. Catherine maintained her attitude of artless simplicity, which was quite impenetrable. The corporal, who, according to Corentin, had committed a great blunder in arresting these smaller fry, did not know whether to stay where he was or to depart. He stood pensively in the middle of the salon, his hand on the hilt of his sabre, his eye on the two Parisians. The Durieus, also stupefied, and the other servants of the chateau made an admirable group of expressive uneasiness. If it had not been for Gothard’s convulsive snifflings those present could have heard the flies fly.
When Madame d’Hauteserre, pale and terrified, opened the door and entered the room, almost carried by Mademoiselle Goujet, whose red eyes had evidently been weeping, all faces turned to her at once. The two agents hoped as much as the household feared to see Laurence enter. This spontaneous movement of both masters and servants seemed produced by the sort of mechanism which makes a number of wooden figures perform the same gesture or wink the same eye.
Madame d’Hauteserre advanced by three rapid strides towards Corentin and said, in a broken voice but violently: “For pity’s sake, monsieur, tell me what my sons are accused of. Do you really think they have been here?”
The abbe, who seemed to be saying to himself when he saw the old lady, “She will certainly commit some folly,” lowered his eyes.
“My duty and the mission I am engaged in forbid me to tell you,” answered Corentin, with a gracious but rather mocking air.
This refusal, which the detestable politeness of the vulgar fop seemed to make all the more emphatic, petrified the poor mother, who fell into a chair beside the Abbe Goujet, clasped her hands and began to pray.
“Where did you arrest that blubber?” asked Corentin, addressing the corporal and pointing to Laurence’s little henchman.
“On the road that leads to the farm along the park walls; the little scamp had nearly reached the Closeaux woods,” replied the corporal.
“And that girl?”
“She? oh, it was Oliver who caught her.”
“Where was she going?”
“Towards Gondreville.”
“They were going in opposite directions?” said Corentin.
“Yes,” replied the gendarme.
“Is that boy the groom, and the girl the maid of the citizeness Cinq-Cygne?” said Corentin to the mayor.
“Yes,” replied Goulard.
After Corentin had exchanged a few words with Peyrade in a whisper, the latter left the room, taking the corporal of gendarmes with him.
Just then the corporal of Arcis made his appearance. He went up to Corentin and spoke to him in a low voice: “I know these premises well,” he said; “I have searched everywhere; unless those young fellows are buried, they are not here. We have sounded all the floors and walls with the butt end of our muskets.”
Peyrade, who presently returned, signed to Corentin to come out, and then took him to the breach in the moat and showed him the sunken way.
“We have guessed the trick,” said Peyrade.
“And I’ll tell you how it was done,” added Corentin. “That little scamp and the girl decoyed those idiots of gend
armes and thus made time for the game to escape.”
“We can’t know the truth till daylight,” said Peyrade. “The road is damp; I have ordered two gendarmes to barricade it top and bottom. We’ll examine it after daylight, and find out by the footsteps who went that way.”
“I see a hoof-mark,” said Corentin; “let us go to the stables.”
“How many horses do you keep?” said Peyrade, returning to the salon with Corentin, and addressing Monsieur d’Hauteserre and Goulard.
“Come, monsieur le maire, you know, answer,” cried Corentin, seeing that that functionary hesitated.
“Why, there’s the countess’s mare, Gothard’s horse, and Monsieur d’Hauteserre’s.”
“There is only one in the stable,” said Peyrade.
“Mademoiselle is out riding,” said Durieu.
“Does she often ride about at this time of night?” said the libertine Peyrade, addressing Monsieur d’Hauteserre.
“Often,” said the good man, simply. “Monsieur le maire can tell you that.”
“Everybody knows she has her freaks,” remarked Catherine; “she looked at the sky before she went to bed, and I think the glitter of your bayonets in the moonlight puzzled her. She told me she wanted to know if there was going to be another revolution.”
“When did she go?” asked Peyrade.
“When she saw your guns.”
“Which road did she take?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s another horse missing,” said Corentin.
“The gendarmes — took it — away from me,” said Gothard.
“Where were you going?” said one of them.
“I was — following — my mistress to the farm,” sobbed the boy.
The gendarme looked towards Corentin as if expecting an order. But Gothard’s speech was evidently so true and yet so false, so perfectly innocent and so artful that the two Parisians again looked at each other as if to echo Peyrade’s former words: “They are not ninnies.”
Monsieur d’Hauteserre seemed incapable of a word; the mayor was bewildered; the mother, imbecile from maternal fears, was putting questions to the police agents that were idiotically innocent; the servants had been roused from their sleep. Judging by these trifling signs, and these diverse characters, Corentin came to the conclusion that his only real adversary was Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne. Shrewd and dexterous as the police may be, they are always under certain disadvantages. Not only are they forced to discover all that is known to a conspirator, but they must also suppose and test a great number of things before they hit upon the right one. The conspirator is always thinking of his own safety, whereas the police is only on duty at certain hours. Were it not for treachery and betrayals, nothing would be easier than to conspire successfully. The conspirator has more mind concentrated upon himself than the police can bring to bear with all its vast facilities of action. Finding themselves stopped short morally, as they might be physically by a door which they expected to find open being shut in their faces, Corentin and Peyrade saw they were tricked and misled, without knowing by whom.
“I assert,” said the corporal of Arcis, in their ear, “that if the four young men slept here last night it must have been in the beds of their father and mother, and Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, or those of the servants; or they must have spent the night in the park. There is not a trace of their presence.”
“Who could have warned them?” said Corentin, to Peyrade. “No one but the First Consul, Fouche, the ministers, the prefect of police, and Malin knew anything about it.”
“We must set spies in the neighborhood,” whispered Peyrade.
“And watch the spies,” said the abbe, who smiled as he overheard the word and guessed all.
“Good God!” thought Corentin, replying to the abbe’s smile with one of his own; “there is but one intelligent being here, — he’s the one to come to an understanding with; I’ll try him.”
“Gentlemen — ” said the mayor, anxious to give some proof of devotion to the First Consul and addressing the two agents.
“Say ‘citizens’; the Republic still exists,” interrupted Corentin, looking at the priest with a quizzical air.
“Citizens,” resumed the mayor, “just as I entered this salon and before I had opened my mouth Catherine rushed in and took her mistress’s hat, gloves, and whip.”
A low murmur of horror came from the breasts of all the household except Gothard. All eyes but those of the agent and the gendarmes were turned threateningly on Goulard, the informer, seeming to dart flames at him.
“Very good, citizen mayor,” said Peyrade. “We see it all plainly. Some one” (this with a glance of evident distrust at Corentin) “warned the citizeness Cinq-Cygne in time.”
“Corporal, handcuff that boy,” said Corentin, to the gendarme, “and take him away by himself. And shut up that girl, too,” pointing to Catherine. “As for you, Peyrade, search for papers,” adding in his ear, “Ransack everything, spare nothing. — Monsieur l’abbe,” he said, confidentially, “I have an important communication to make to you”; and he took him into the garden.
“Listen to me attentively, monsieur,” he went on; “you seem to have the mind of a bishop, and (no one can hear us) you will understand me. I have no longer any hope except through you of saving these families, who, with the greatest folly, are letting themselves roll down a precipice where no one can save them. The Messieurs Simeuse and d’Hauteserre have been betrayed by one of those infamous spies whom governments introduce into all conspiracies to learn their objects, means, and members. Don’t confound me, I beg of you, with the wretch who is with me. He belongs to the police; but I am honorably attached to the Consular cabinet, I am therefore behind the scenes. The ruin of the Simeuse brothers is not desired. Though Malin would like to see them shot, the First Consul, if they are here and have come without evil intentions, wishes them to be warned out of danger, for he likes good soldiers. The agent who accompanies me has all the powers, I, apparently, am nothing. But I see plainly what is hatching. The agent is pledged to Malin, who has doubtless promised him his influence, an office, and perhaps money if he finds the Simeuse brothers and delivers them up. The First Consul, who is a really great man, never favors selfish schemes — I don’t want to know if those young men are here,” he added, quickly, observing the abbe’s gesture, “but I wish to tell you that there is only one way to save them. You know the law of the 6th Floreal, year X., which amnestied all the emigres who were still in foreign countries on condition that they returned home before the 1st Vendemiaire of the year XI., that is to say, in September of last year. But the Messieurs Simeuse having, like the Messieurs d’Hauteserre, served in the army of Conde, they come into the category of exceptions to this law. Their presence in France is therefore criminal, and suffices, under the circumstances in which we are, to make them suspected of collusion in a horrible plot. The First Consul saw the error of this exception which has made enemies for his government, and he wishes the Messieurs Simeuse to know that no steps will be taken against them, if they will send him a petition saying that they have re-entered France intending to submit to the laws, and agreeing to take oath to the Constitution. You can understand that the document ought to be in my hands before they are arrested, and be dated some days earlier. I would then be the bearer of it — I do not ask you where those young men are,” he said again, seeing another gesture of denial from the priest. “We are, unfortunately, sure of finding them; the forest is guarded, the entrances to Paris and the frontiers are all watched. Pray listen to me; if these gentlemen are between the forest and Paris they must be taken; if they are in Paris they will be found; if they retreat to the frontier they will still be arrested. The First Consul likes the ci-devants, and cannot endure the republicans — simple enough; if he wants a throne he must needs strangle Liberty. Keep the matter a secret between us. This is what I will do; I will stay here till to-morrow and be blind; but beware of the agent; that cursed Provencal is the devil
’s own valet; he has the ear of Fouche just as I have that of the First Consul.”
“If the Messieurs Simeuse are here,” said the abbe, “I would give ten pints of my blood and my right arm to save them; but if Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne is in the secret she has not — and this I swear on my eternal salvation — betrayed it in any way, neither has she done me the honor to consult me. I am now very glad of her discretion, if discretion there be. We played cards last night as usual, at boston, in almost complete silence, until half-past ten o’clock, and we neither saw nor heard anything. Not a child can pass through this solitary valley without the whole community knowing it, and for the last two weeks no one has come from other places. Now the d’Hauteserre and the Simeuse brothers would make a party of four. Old d’Hauteserre and his wife have submitted to the present government, and they have made all imaginable efforts to persuade their sons to return to France; they wrote to them again yesterday. I can only say, upon my soul and conscience, that your visit has alone shaken my firm belief that these young men are living in Germany. Between ourselves, there is no one here, except the young countess, who does not do justice to the eminent qualities of the First Consul.”
“Fox!” thought Corentin. “Well, if those young men are shot,” he said, aloud; “it is because their friends have willed it — I wash my hands of the affair.”
He had led the abbe to a part of the garden which lay in the moonlight, and as he said the last words he looked at him suddenly. The priest was greatly distressed, but his manner was that of a man surprised and wholly ignorant.
“Understand this, monsieur l’abbe,” resumed Corentin; “the right of these young men to the estate of Gondreville will render them doubly criminal in the eyes of the middle class. I’d like to see them put faith in God and not in his saints — ”
“Is there really a plot?” asked the abbe, simply.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 882