The government will pardon; it will be merciful to repentance; its
mercy will be complete and absolute; but it will punish whosoever,
after this declaration, shall dare to resist the national
sovereignty.
“Well,” said Hulot, after the public reading of this Consular manifesto, “Isn’t that paternal enough? But you’ll see that not a single royalist brigand will be changed by it.”
The commandant was right. The proclamation merely served to strengthen each side in their own convictions. A few days later Hulot and his colleagues received reinforcements. The new minister of war notified them that General Brune was appointed to command the troops in the west of France. Hulot, whose experience was known to the government, had provisional control in the departments of the Orne and Mayenne. An unusual activity began to show itself in the government offices. Circulars from the minister of war and the minister of police gave notice that vigorous measures entrusted to the military commanders would be taken to stifle the insurrection at its birth. But the Chouans and the Vendeans had profited by the inaction of the Directory to rouse the whole region and virtually take possession of it. A new Consular proclamation was therefore issued. This time, it was the general speaking to his troops: —
SOLDIERS:
There are none but brigands, emigres, and hirelings of England
now remaining in the West.
The army is composed of more than fifty thousand brave men. Let me
speedily hear from them that the rebel chiefs have ceased to live.
Glory is won by toil alone; if it could be had by living in
barracks in a town, all would have it.
Soldiers, whatever be the rank you hold in the army, the gratitude
of the nation awaits you. To be worthy of it, you must brave the
inclemencies of weather, ice, snow, and the excessive coldness of
the nights; you must surprise your enemies at daybreak, and
exterminate those wretches, the disgrace of France.
Make a short and sure campaign; be inexorable to those brigands,
and maintain strict discipline.
National Guards, join the strength of your arms to that of the
line.
If you know among you any men who fraternize with the brigands,
arrest them. Let them find no refuge; pursue them; if traitors
dare to harbor and defend them, let them perish together.
“What a man!” cried Hulot. “It is just as it was in the army of Italy — he rings in the mass, and he says it himself. Don’t you call that talking, hey?”
“Yes, but he speaks by himself and in his own name,” said Gerard, who began to feel alarmed at the possible results of the 18th Brumaire.
“And where’s the harm, since he’s a soldier?” said Merle.
A group of soldiers were clustered at a little distance before the same proclamation posted on a wall. As none of them could read, they gazed at it, some with a careless eye, others with curiosity, while two or three hunted about for a citizen who looked learned enough to read it to them.
“Now you tell us, Clef-des-Coeurs, what that rag of a paper says,” cried Beau-Pied, in a saucy tone to his comrade.
“Easy to guess,” replied Clef-des-Coeurs.
At these words the other men clustered round the pair, who were always ready to play their parts.
“Look there,” continued Clef-des-Coeurs, pointing to a coarse woodcut which headed the proclamation and represented a pair of compasses, — which had lately superseded the level of 1793. “It means that the troops — that’s us — are to march firm; don’t you see the compasses are open, both legs apart? — that’s an emblem.”
“Such much for your learning, my lad; it isn’t an emblem — it’s called a problem. I’ve served in the artillery,” continued Beau-Pied, “and problems were meat and drink to my officers.”
“I say it’s an emblem.”
“It’s a problem.”
“What will you bet?”
“Anything.”
“Your German pipe?”
“Done!”
“By your leave, adjutant, isn’t that thing an emblem, and not a problem?” said Clef-des-Coeurs, following Gerard, who was thoughtfully walking away.
“It is both,” he replied, gravely.
“The adjutant was making fun of you,” said Beau-Pied. “That paper means that our general in Italy is promoted Consul, which is a fine grade, and we are to get shoes and overcoats.”
II. ONE OF FOUCHE’S IDEAS
One morning towards the end of Brumaire just as Hulot was exercising his brigade, now by order of his superiors wholly concentrated at Mayenne, a courier arrived from Alencon with despatches, at the reading of which his face betrayed extreme annoyance.
“Forward, then!” he cried in an angry tone, sticking the papers into the crown of his hat. “Two companies will march with me towards Mortagne. The Chouans are there. You will accompany me,” he said to Merle and Gerard. “May be I created a nobleman if I can understand one word of that despatch. Perhaps I’m a fool! well, anyhow, forward, march! there’s no time to lose.”
“Commandant, by your leave,” said Merle, kicking the cover of the ministerial despatch with the toe of his boot, “what is there so exasperating in that?”
“God’s thunder! nothing at all — except that we are fooled.”
When the commandant gave vent to this military oath (an object it must be said of Republican atheistical remonstrance) it gave warning of a storm; the diverse intonations of the words were degrees of a thermometer by which the brigade could judge of the patience of its commander; the old soldier’s frankness of nature had made this knowledge so easy that the veriest little drummer-boy knew his Hulot by heart, simply by observing the variations of the grimace with which the commander screwed up his cheek and snapped his eyes and vented his oath. On this occasion the tone of smothered rage with which he uttered the words made his two friends silent and circumspect. Even the pits of the small-pox which dented that veteran face seemed deeper, and the skin itself browner than usual. His broad queue, braided at the edges, had fallen upon one of his epaulettes as he replaced his three-cornered hat, and he flung it back with such fury that the ends became untied. However, as he stood stock-still, his hands clenched, his arms crossed tightly over his breast, his mustache bristling, Gerard ventured to ask him presently: “Are we to start at once?”
“Yes, if the men have ammunition.”
“They have.”
“Shoulder arms! Left wheel, forward, march!” cried Gerard, at a sign from the commandant.
The drum-corps marched at the head of the two companies designated by Gerard. At the first roll of the drums the commandant, who still stood plunged in thought, seemed to rouse himself, and he left the town accompanied by his two officers, to whom he said not a word. Merle and Gerard looked at each other silently as if to ask, “How long is he going to keep us in suspense?” and, as they marched, they cautiously kept an observing eye on their leader, who continued to vent rambling words between his teeth. Several times these vague phrases sounded like oaths in the ears of his soldiers, but not one of them dared to utter a word; for they all, when occasion demanded, maintained the stern discipline to which the veterans who had served under Bonaparte in Italy were accustomed. The greater part of them had belonged, like Hulot, to the famous battalions which capitulated at Mayenne under a promise not to serve again on the frontier, and the army called them “Les Mayencais.” It would be difficult to find leaders and men who more thoroughly understood each other.
At dawn of the day after their departure Hulot and his troop were on the high-road to Alencon, about three miles from that town towards Mortagne, at a part of the road which leads through pastures watered by the Sarthe. A picturesque vista of these meadows lay to the left, while the woodlands on the right which flank the road and join the great forest of Menil-Broust, serve as a foil to the
delightful aspect of the river-scenery. The narrow causeway is bordered on each side by ditches the soil of which, being constantly thrown out upon the fields, has formed high banks covered with furze, — the name given throughout the West to this prickly gorse. This shrub, which spreads itself in thorny masses, makes excellent fodder in winter for horses and cattle; but as long as it was not cut the Chouans hid themselves behind its breastwork of dull green. These banks bristling with gorse, signifying to travellers their approach to Brittany, made this part of the road at the period of which we write as dangerous as it was beautiful; it was these dangers which compelled the hasty departure of Hulot and his soldiers, and it was here that he at last let out the secret of his wrath.
He was now on his return, escorting an old mail-coach drawn by post-horses, which the weariness of his soldiers, after their forced march, was compelling to advance at a snail’s pace. The company of Blues from the garrison at Mortagne, who had escorted the rickety vehicle to the limits of their district, where Hulot and his men had met them, could be seen in the distance, on their way back to their quarters, like so many black specks. One of Hulot’s companies was in the rear, the other in advance of the carriage. The commandant, who was marching with Merle and Gerard between the advance guard and the carriage, suddenly growled out: “Ten thousand thunders! would you believe that the general detached us from Mayenne to escort two petticoats?”
“But, commandant,” remarked Gerard, “when we came up just now and took charge I observed that you bowed to them not ungraciously.”
“Ha! that’s the infamy of it. Those dandies in Paris ordered the greatest attention paid to their damned females. How dare they dishonor good and brave patriots by trailing us after petticoats? As for me, I march straight, and I don’t choose to have to do with other people’s zigzags. When I saw Danton taking mistresses, and Barras too, I said to them: ‘Citizens, when the Republic called you to govern, it was not that you might authorize the vices of the old regime!’ You may tell me that women — oh yes! we must have women, that’s all right. Good soldiers of course must have women, and good women; but in times of danger, no! Besides, where would be the good of sweeping away the old abuses if patriots bring them back again? Look at the First Consul, there’s a man! no women for him; always about his business. I’d bet my left mustache that he doesn’t know the fool’s errand we’ve been sent on!”
“But, commandant,” said Merle, laughing, “I have seen the tip-end of the nose of the young lady, and I’ll declare the whole world needn’t be ashamed to feel an itch, as I do, to revolve round that carriage and get up a bit of a conversation.”
“Look out, Merle,” said Gerard; “the veiled beauties have a man accompanying them who seems wily enough to catch you in a trap.”
“Who? that incroyable whose little eyes are ferretting from one side of the road to the other, as if he saw Chouans? The fellow seems to have no legs; the moment his horse is hidden by the carriage, he looks like a duck with its head sticking out of a pate. If that booby can hinder me from kissing the pretty linnet — ”
“‘Duck’! ‘linnet’! oh, my poor Merle, you have taken wings indeed! But don’t trust the duck. His green eyes are as treacherous as the eyes of a snake, and as sly as those of a woman who forgives her husband. I distrust the Chouans much less than I do those lawyers whose faces are like bottles of lemonade.”
“Pooh!” cried Merle, gaily. “I’ll risk it — with the commandant’s permission. That woman has eyes like stars, and it’s worth playing any stakes to see them.”
“Caught, poor fellow!” said Gerard to the commandant; “he is beginning to talk nonsense!”
Hulot made a face, shrugged his shoulders, and said: “Before he swallows the soup, I advise him to smell it.”
“Bravo, Merle,” said Gerard, “judging by his friend’s lagging step that he meant to let the carriage overtake him. Isn’t he a happy fellow? He is the only man I know who can laugh over the death of a comrade without being thought unfeeling.”
“He’s the true French soldier,” said Hulot, in a grave tone.
“Just look at him pulling his epaulets back to his shoulders, to show he is a captain,” cried Gerard, laughing, — ”as if his rank mattered!”
The coach toward which the officer was pivoting did, in fact, contain two women, one of whom seemed to be the servant of the other.
“Such women always run in couples,” said Hulot.
A lean and sharp-looking little man ambled his horse sometimes before, sometimes behind the carriage; but, though he was evidently accompanying these privileged women, no one had yet seen him speak to them. This silence, a proof either of respect or contempt, as the case might be; the quantity of baggage belonging to the lady, whom the commandant sneeringly called “the princess”; everything, even to the clothes of her attendant squire, stirred Hulot’s bile. The dress of the unknown man was a good specimen of the fashions of the day then being caricatured as “incroyable,” — unbelievable, unless seen. Imagine a person trussed up in a coat, the front of which was so short that five or six inches of the waistcoat came below it, while the skirts were so long that they hung down behind like the tail of a cod, — the term then used to describe them. An enormous cravat was wound about his neck in so many folds that the little head which protruded from that muslin labyrinth certainly did justify Captain Merle’s comparison. The stranger also wore tight-fitting trousers and Suwaroff boots. A huge blue-and-white cameo pinned his shirt; two watch-chains hung from his belt; his hair, worn in ringlets on each side of his face, concealed nearly the whole forehead; and, for a last adornment, the collar of his shirt and that of his coat came so high that his head seemed enveloped like a bunch of flowers in a horn of paper. Add to these queer accessories, which were combined in utter want of harmony, the burlesque contradictions in color of yellow trousers, scarlet waistcoat, cinnamon coat, and a correct idea will be gained of the supreme good taste which all dandies blindly obeyed in the first years of the Consulate. This costume, utterly uncouth, seemed to have been invented as a final test of grace, and to show that there was nothing too ridiculous for fashion to consecrate. The rider seemed to be about thirty years old, but he was really twenty-two; perhaps he owed this appearance of age to debauchery, possibly to the perils of the period. In spite of his preposterous dress, he had a certain elegance of manner which proved him to be a man of some breeding.
When the captain had dropped back close to the carriage, the dandy seemed to fathom his design, and favored it by checking his horse. Merle, who had flung him a sardonic glance, encountered one of those impenetrable faces, trained by the vicissitudes of the Revolution to hide all, even the most insignificant, emotion. The moment the curved end of the old triangular hat and the captain’s epaulets were seen by the occupants of the carriage, a voice of angelic sweetness said: “Monsieur l’officier, will you have the kindness to tell us at what part of the road we now are?”
There is some inexpressible charm in the question of an unknown traveller, if a woman, — a world of adventure is in every word; but if the woman asks for assistance or information, proving her weakness or ignorance of certain things, every man is inclined to construct some impossible tale which shall lead to his happiness. The words, “Monsieur l’officier,” and the polite tone of the question stirred the captain’s heart in a manner hitherto unknown to him. He tried to examine the lady, but was cruelly disappointed, for a jealous veil concealed her features; he could barely see her eyes, which shone through the gauze like onyx gleaming in the sunshine.
“You are now three miles from Alencon, madame,” he replied.
“Alencon! already!” and the lady threw herself, or, rather, she gently leaned back in the carriage, and said no more.
“Alencon?” said the other woman, apparently waking up; “then you’ll see it again.”
She caught sight of the captain and was silent. Merle, disappointed in his hope of seeing the face of the beautiful incognita, began to examine that o
f her companion. She was a girl about twenty-six years of age, fair, with a pretty figure and the sort of complexion, fresh and white and well-fed, which characterizes the women of Valognes, Bayeux, and the environs of Alencon. Her blue eyes showed no great intelligence, but a certain firmness mingled with tender feeling. She wore a gown of some common woollen stuff. The fashion of her hair, done up closely under a Norman cap, without any pretension, gave a charming simplicity to her face. Her attitude, without, of course, having any of the conventional nobility of society, was not without the natural dignity of a modest young girl, who can look back upon her past life without a single cause for repentance. Merle knew her at a glance for one of those wild flowers which are sometimes taken from their native fields to Parisian hot-houses, where so many blasting rays are concentrated, without ever losing the purity of their color or their rustic simplicity. The naive attitude of the girl and her modest glance showed Merle very plainly that she did not wish a listener. In fact, no sooner had he withdrawn than the two women began a conversation in so low a tone that only a murmur of it reached his ear.
“You came away in such a hurry,” said the country-girl, “that you hardly took time to dress. A pretty-looking sight you are now! If we are going beyond Alencon, you must really make your toilet.”
“Oh! oh! Francine!” cried the lady.
“What is it?”
“This is the third time you have tried to make me tell you the reasons for this journey and where we are going.”
“Have I said one single word which deserves that reproach?”
“Oh, I’ve noticed your manoeuvring. Simple and truthful as you are, you have learned a little cunning from me. You are beginning to hold questioning in horror; and right enough, too, for of all the known ways of getting at a secret, questions are, to my mind, the silliest.”
“Well,” said Francine, “since nothing escapes you, you must admit, Marie, that your conduct would excite the curiosity of a saint. Yesterday without a penny, to-day your hands are full of gold; at Mortagne they give you the mail-coach which was pillaged and the driver killed, with government troops to protect you, and you are followed by a man whom I regard as your evil genius.”
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 945