The Chouans

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 of 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.”

“Who?  Corentin?” said the young lady, accenting the words by two inflections of her voice expressive of contempt, a sentiment which appeared in the gesture with which she waved her hand towards the rider.  “Listen, Francine,” she said.  “Do you remember Patriot, the monkey I taught to imitate Danton?”

“Yes, mademoiselle.”

“Well, were you afraid of him?”

“He was chained.”

“And Corentin is muzzled, my dear.”

“We used to play with Patriot by the hour,” said Francine,—­“I know that; but he always ended by serving us some bad trick.”  So saying, Francine threw herself hastily back close to her mistress, whose hands she caught and kissed in a coaxing way; saying in a tone of deep affection:  “You know what I mean, Marie, but you will not answer me.  How can you, after all that sadness which did so grieve me—­oh, indeed it grieved me!—­how can you, in twenty-four hours, change about and become so gay? you, who talked of suicide!  Why have you changed?  I have a right to ask these questions of your soul—­it is mine, my claim to it is before that of others, for you will never be better loved than you are by me.  Speak, mademoiselle.”

“Why, Francine, don’t you see all around you the secret of my good spirits?  Look at the yellowing tufts of those distant tree-tops; not one is like another.  As we look at them from this distance don’t they seem like an old bit of tapestry?  See the hedges from behind which the Chouans may spring upon us at any moment.  When I look at that gorse I fancy I can see the muzzles of their guns.  Every time the road is shady under the trees I fancy I shall hear firing, and then my heart beats and a new sensation comes over me.  It is neither the shuddering of fear nor an emotion of pleasure; no, it is better than either, it is the stirring of everything within me—­it is life!  Why shouldn’t I be gay when a little excitement is dropped into my monotonous existence?”

“Ah! you are telling me nothing, cruel girl!  Holy Virgin!” added Francine, raising her eyes in distress to heaven; “to whom will she confess herself if she denies the truth to me?”

“Francine,” said the lady, in a grave tone, “I can’t explain to you my present enterprise; it is horrible.”

“Why do wrong when you know it to be wrong?”

“How can I help it?  I catch myself thinking as if I were fifty, and acting as if I were still fifteen.  You have always been my better self, my poor Francine, but in this affair I must stifle conscience.  And,” she added after a pause, “I cannot.  Therefore, how can you expect me to take a confessor as stern as you?” and she patted the girl’s hand.

“When did I ever blame your actions?” cried Francine.  “Evil is so mixed with good in your nature.  Yes, Saint Anne of Auray, to whom I pray to save you, will absolve you for all you do.  And, Marie, am I not here beside you, without so much as knowing where you go?” and she kissed her hands with effusion.

“But,” replied Marie, “you may yet desert me, if your conscience—­”

“Hush, hush, mademoiselle,” cried Francine, with a hurt expression.  “But surely you will tell me—­”

“Nothing!” said the young lady, in a resolute voice.  “Only—­and I wish you to know it—­I hate this enterprise even more than I hate him whose gilded tongue induced me to undertake it.  I will be rank and own to you that I would never have yielded to their wishes if I had not foreseen, in this ignoble farce, a mingling of love and danger which tempted me.  I cannot bear to leave this empty world without at least attempting to gather the flowers that it owes me,—­whether I perish in the attempt or not.  But remember, for the honor of my memory, that had I ever been a happy woman, the sight of their great knife, ready to fall upon my neck, would not have driven me to accept a part in this tragedy—­for it is a tragedy.  But now,” she said, with a gesture of disgust, “if it were countermanded, I should instantly fling myself into the Sarthe.  It would not be destroying life, for I have never lived.”

“Oh, Saint Anne of Auray, forgive her!”

“What are you so afraid of?  You know very well that the dull round of domestic life gives no opportunity for my passions.  That would be bad in most women, I admit; but my soul is made of a higher sensibility and can bear great tests.  I might have been, perhaps, a gentle being like you.  Why, why have I risen above or sunk beneath the level of my sex?  Ah! the wife of Bonaparte is a happy woman!  Yes, I shall die young, for I am gay, as you say,—­gay at this pleasure-party, where there is blood to drink, as that poor Danton used to say.  There, there, forget what I am saying; it is the woman of fifty who speaks.  Thank God! the girl of fifteen is still within me.”

The young country-girl shuddered.  She alone knew the fiery, impetuous nature of her mistress.  She alone was initiated into the mysteries of a soul rich with enthusiasm, into the secret emotions of a being who, up to this time, had seen life pass her like a shadow she could not grasp, eager as she was to do so.  After sowing broadcast with full hands and harvesting nothing, this woman was still virgin in soul, but irritated by a multitude of baffled desires.  Weary of a struggle without an adversary, she had reached in her despair to the point of preferring good to evil, if it came in the form of enjoyment; evil to good, if it offered her some poetic emotion; misery to mediocrity, as something nobler and higher; the gloomy and mysterious future of present death to a life without hopes or even without sufferings.  Never in any heart was so much powder heaped ready for the spark, never were so many riches for love to feed on; no daughter of Eve was ever moulded, with a greater mixture of gold in her clay.  Francine, like an angel of earth, watched over this being whose perfections she adored, believing that she obeyed a celestial mandate in striving to bring that spirit back among the choir of seraphim whence it was banished for the sin of pride.

“There is the clock-tower of Alencon,” said the horseman, riding up to the carriage.

“I see it,” replied the young lady, in a cold tone.

“Ah, well,” he said, turning away with all the signs of servile submission, in spite of his disappointment.

“Go faster,” said the lady to the postilion.  “There is no longer any danger; go at a fast trot, or even a gallop, if you can; we are almost into Alencon.”

As the carriage passed the commandant, she called out to him, in a sweet voice:—­

“We will meet at the inn, commandant.  Come and see me.”

“Yes, yes,” growled the commandant. “‘The inn’!  ‘Come and see me’!  Is that how you speak to an officer in command of the army?” and he shook his fist at the carriage, which was now rolling rapidly along the road.

“Don’t be vexed, commandant, she has got your rank as general up her sleeve,” said Corentin, laughing, as he endeavored to put his horse into a gallop to overtake the carriage.

“I sha’n’t let myself be fooled by any such folks as they,” said Hulot to his two friends, in a growling tone.  “I’d rather throw my general’s coat into that ditch than earn it out of a bed.  What are these birds after?  Have you any idea, either of you?”

“Yes,” said Merle, “I’ve an idea that that’s the handsomest women I ever saw!  I think you’re reading the riddle all wrong.  Perhaps she’s the wife of the First Consul.”

“Pooh! the First Consul’s wife is old, and this woman is young,” said Hulot.  “Besides, the order I received from the minister gives her name as Mademoiselle de Verneuil.  She is a ci-devant.  Don’t I know ’em?  They all plied one trade before the Revolution, and any man could make himself a major, or a general in double-quick time; all he had to do was to say ‘Dear heart’ to them now and then.”

While each soldier opened his compasses, as the commandant was wont to say, the miserable vehicle which was then used as the mail-coach drew up before the inn of the Trois Maures, in the middle of the main street of Alencon.  The sound of the wheels brought the landlord to the door.  No one in Alencon could have expected the arrival of the mail-coach at the Trois Maures, for the murderous attack upon the coach at Mortagne was already known, and so many people followed it along the street that the two women, anxious to escape the curiosity of the crowd, ran quickly into the kitchen, which forms the inevitable antechamber to all Western inns.  The landlord was about to follow them, after examining the coach, when the postilion caught him by the arm.

“Attention, citizen Brutus,” he said; “there’s an escort of the Blues behind us; but it is I who bring you these female citizens; they’ll pay like ci-devant princesses, therefore—­”

“Therefore, we’ll drink a glass of wine together presently, my lad,” said the landlord.

After glancing about the kitchen, blackened with smoke, and noticing a table bloody from raw meat, Mademoiselle de Verneuil flew into the next room with the celerity of a bird; for she shuddered at the sight and smell of the place, and feared the inquisitive eyes of a dirty chef, and a fat little woman who examined her attentively.

“What are we to do, wife?” said the landlord.  “Who the devil could have supposed we would have so many on our hands in these days?  Before I serve her a decent breakfast that woman will get impatient.  Stop, an idea! evidently she is a person of quality.  I’ll propose to put her with the one we have upstairs.  What do you think?”

When the landlord went to look for the new arrival he found only Francine, to whom he spoke in a low voice, taking her to the farther end of the kitchen, so as not to be overheard.

“If the ladies wish,” he said, “to be served in private, as I have no doubt they wish to do, I have a very nice breakfast all ready for a lady and her son, and I dare say wouldn’t mind sharing it with you; they are persons of condition,” he added, mysteriously.

He had hardly said the words before he felt a tap on his back from the handle of a whip.  He turned hastily and saw behind him a short, thick-set man, who had noiselessly entered from a side room,—­an apparition which seemed to terrify the hostess, the cook, and the scullion.  The landlord turned pale when he saw the intruder, who shook back the hair which concealed his forehead and eyes, raised himself on the points of his toes to reach the other’s ears, and said to him in a whisper:  “You know the cost of an imprudence or a betrayal, and the color of the money we pay it in.  We are generous in that coin.”

He added a gesture which was like a horrible commentary to his words.  Though the rotundity of the landlord prevented Francine from seeing the stranger, who stood behind him, she caught certain words of his threatening speech, and was thunderstruck at hearing the hoarse tones of a Breton voice.  She sprang towards the man, but he, seeming to move with the agility of a wild animal, had already darted through a side door which opened on the courtyard.  Utterly amazed, she ran to the window.  Through its panes, yellowed with smoke, she caught sight of the stranger as he was about to enter the stable.  Before doing so, however, he turned a pair of black eyes to the upper story of the inn, and thence to the mail-coach in the yard, as if to call some friend’s attention to the vehicle.  In spite of his muffling goatskin and thanks to this movement which allowed her to see his face, Francine recognized the Chouan, Marche-a-Terre, with his heavy whip; she saw him, indistinctly, in the obscurity of the stable, fling himself down on a pile of straw, in a position which enabled him to keep an eye on all that happened at the inn.  Marche-a-Terre curled himself up in such a way that the cleverest spy, at any distance far or near, might have taken him for one of those huge dogs that drag the hand-carts, lying asleep with his muzzle on his paws.

The behavior of the Chouan proved to Francine that he had not recognized her.  Under the hazardous circumstances which she felt her mistress to be in, she scarcely knew whether to regret or to rejoice in this unconsciousness.  But the mysterious connection between the landlord’s offer (not uncommon among innkeepers, who can thus kill two birds with one stone), and the Chouan’s threats, piqued her curiosity.  She left the dirty window from which she could see the formless heap which she knew to be Marche-a-Terre, and returned to the landlord, who was still standing in the attitude of a man who feels he has made a blunder, and does not know how to get out of it.  The Chouan’s gesture had petrified the poor fellow.  No one in the West was ignorant of the cruel refinements of torture with which the “Chasseurs du Roi” punished those who were even suspected of indiscretion; the landlord felt their knives already at his throat.  The cook looked with a shudder at the iron stove on which they often “warmed” (“chauffaient”) the feet of those they suspected.  The fat landlady held a knife in one hand and a half-peeled potato in the other, and gazed at her husband with a stupefied air.  Even the scullion puzzled himself to know the reason of their speechless terror.  Francine’s curiosity was naturally excited by this silent scene, the principal actor of which was visible to all, though departed.  The girl was gratified at the evident power of the Chouan, and though by nature too simple and humble for the tricks of a lady’s maid, she was also far too anxious to penetrate the mystery not to profit by her advantages on this occasion.

“Mademoiselle accepts your proposal,” she said to the landlord, who jumped as if suddenly awakened by her words.

“What proposal?” he asked with genuine surprise.

“What proposal?” asked Corentin, entering the kitchen.

“What proposal?” asked Mademoiselle de Verneuil, returning to it.

“What proposal?” asked a fourth individual on the lower step of the staircase, who now sprang lightly into the kitchen.

“Why, the breakfast with your persons of distinction,” replied Francine, impatiently.

“Distinction!” said the ringing and ironical voice of the person who had just come down the stairway.  “My good fellow, that strikes me as a very poor inn joke; but if it’s the company of this young female citizen that you want to give us, we should be fools to refuse it.  In my mother’s absence, I accept,” he added, striking the astonished innkeeper on the shoulder.

The charming heedlessness of youth disguised the haughty insolence of the words, which drew the attention of every one present to the new-comer.  The landlord at once assumed the countenance of Pilate washing his hands of the blood of that just man; he slid back two steps to reach his wife’s ear, and whispered, “You are witness, if any harm comes of it, that it is not my fault.  But, anyhow,” he added, in a voice that was lower still, “go and tell Monsieur Marche-a-Terre what has happened.”

The traveller, who was a young man of medium height, wore a dark blue coat and high black gaiters coming above the knee and over the breeches, which were also of blue cloth.  This simple uniform, without epaulets, was that of the pupils of the Ecole Polytechnique.  Beneath this plain attire Mademoiselle de Verneuil could distinguish at a glance the elegant shape and nameless something that tells of natural nobility.  The face of the young man, which was rather ordinary at first sight, soon attracted the eye by the conformation of certain features which revealed a soul capable of great things.  A bronzed skin, curly fair hair, sparkling blue eyes, a delicate nose, motions full of ease, all disclosed a life guided by noble sentiments and trained to the habit of command.  But the most characteristic signs of his nature were in the chin, which was dented like that of Bonaparte, and in the lower lip, which joined the upper one with a graceful curve, like that of an acanthus leaf on the capital of a Corinthian column.  Nature had given to these two features of his face an irresistible charm.

“This young man has singular distinction if he is really a republican,” thought Mademoiselle de Verneuil.

To see all this at a glance, to brighten at the thought of pleasing, to bend her head softly and smile coquettishly and cast a soft look able to revive a heart that was dead to love, to veil her long black eyes with lids whose curving lashes made shadows on her cheeks, to choose the melodious tones of her voice and give a penetrating charm to the formal words, “Monsieur, we are very much obliged to you,”—­all this charming by-play took less time than it has taken to describe it.  After this, Mademoiselle de Verneuil, addressing the landlord, asked to be shown to a room, saw the staircase, and disappeared with Francine, leaving the stranger to discover whether her reply was intended as an acceptance or a refusal.

“Who is that woman?” asked the Polytechnique student, in an airy manner, of the landlord, who still stood motionless and bewildered.

“That’s the female citizen Verneuil,” replied Corentin, sharply, looking jealously at the questioner; “a ci-devant; what is she to you?”

The stranger, who was humming a revolutionary tune, turned his head haughtily towards Corentin.  The two young men looked at each other for a moment like cocks about to fight, and the glance they exchanged gave birth to a hatred which lasted forever.  The blue eye of the young soldier was as frank and honest as the green eye of the other man was false and malicious; the manners of the one had native grandeur, those of the other were insinuating; one was eager in his advance, the other deprecating; one commanded respect, the other sought it.

“Is the citizen du Gua Saint-Cyr here?” said a peasant, entering the kitchen at that moment.

“What do you want of him?” said the young man, coming forward.

The peasant made a low bow and gave him a letter, which the young cadet read and threw into the fire; then he nodded his head and the man withdrew.

“No doubt you’ve come from Paris, citizen?” said Corentin, approaching the stranger with a certain ease of manner, and a pliant, affable air which seemed intolerable to the citizen du Gua.

“Yes,” he replied, shortly.

“I suppose you have been graduated into some grade of the artillery?”

“No, citizen, into the navy.”

“Ah! then you are going to Brest?” said Corentin, interrogatively.

But the young sailor turned lightly on the heels of his shoes without deigning to reply, and presently disappointed all the expectations which Mademoiselle de Verneuil had based on the charm of his appearance.  He applied himself to ordering his breakfast with the eagerness of a boy, questioned the cook and the landlady about their receipts, wondered at provincial customs like a Parisian just out of his shell, made as many objections as any fine lady, and showed the more lack of mind and character because his face and manner had seemed to promise them.  Corentin smiled with pity when he saw the face he made on tasting the best cider of Normandy.

“Heu!” he cried; “how can you swallow such stuff as that?  It is meat and drink both.  I don’t wonder the Republic distrusts a province where they knock their harvest from trees with poles, and shoot travellers from the ditches.  Pray don’t put such medicine as that on the table; give us some good Bordeaux, white and red.  And above all, do see if there is a good fire upstairs.  These country-people are so backward in civilization!” he added.  “Alas!” he sighed, “there is but one Paris in the world; what a pity it is I can’t transport it to sea!  Heavens! spoil-sauce!” he suddenly cried out to the cook; “what makes you put vinegar in that fricassee when you have lemons?  And, madame,” he added, “you gave me such coarse sheets I couldn’t close my eyes all night.”  Then he began to twirl a huge cane, executing with a silly sort of care a variety of evolutions, the greater or less precision and agility of which were considered proofs of a young man’s standing in the class of the Incroyables, so-called.

“And it is with such dandies as that,” said Corentin to the landlord confidentially, watching his face, “that the Republic expects to improve her navy!”

“That man,” said the young sailor to the landlady, in a low voice, “is a spy of Fouche’s.  He has ‘police’ stamped on his face, and I’ll swear that spot he has got on his chin is Paris mud.  Well, set a thief to catch—­”

Just then a lady to whom the young sailor turned with every sign of outward respect, entered the kitchen of the inn.

“My dear mamma,” he said.  “I am glad you’ve come.  I have recruited some guests in your absence.”

“Guests?” she replied; “what folly!”

“It is Mademoiselle de Verneuil,” he said in a low voice.

“She perished on the scaffold after the affair of Savenay; she went to Mans to save her brother the Prince de Loudon,” returned his mother, rather brusquely.

“You are mistaken, madame,” said Corentin, gently, emphasizing the word “madame”; “there are two demoiselles de Verneuil; all great houses, as you know, have several branches.”

The lady, surprised at this freedom, drew back a few steps to examine the speaker; she turned her black eyes upon him, full of the keen sagacity so natural to women, seeking apparently to discover in what interest he stepped forth to explain Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s birth.  Corentin, on the other hand, who was studying the lady cautiously, denied her in his own mind the joys of motherhood and gave her those of love; he refused the possession of a son of twenty to a woman whose dazzling skin, and arched eyebrows, and lashes still unblemished, were the objects of his admiration, and whose abundant black hair, parted on the forehead into simple bands, bought out the youthfulness of an intelligent head.  The slight lines of the brow, far from indicating age, revealed young passions.  Though the piercing eyes were somewhat veiled, it was either from the fatigue of travelling or the too frequent expression of excitement.  Corentin remarked that she was wrapped in a mantle of English material, and that the shape of her hat, foreign no doubt, did not belong to any of the styles called Greek, which ruled the Parisian fashions of the period.  Corentin was one of those beings who are compelled by the bent of their natures to suspect evil rather than good, and he instantly doubted the citizenship of the two travellers.  The lady, who, on her side, had made her observations on the person of Corentin with equal rapidity, turned to her son with a significant look which may be faithfully translated into the words:  “Who is this queer man?  Is he of our stripe?”

To this mute inquiry the youth replied by an attitude and a gesture which said:  “Faith!  I can’t tell; but I distrust him.”  Then, leaving his mother to fathom the mystery, he turned to the landlady and whispered:  “Try to find out who that fellow is; and whether he is really accompanying the young lady; and why.”

“So,” said Madame du Gua, looking at Corentin, “you are quite sure, citizen, that Mademoiselle de Verneuil is living?”

“She is living in flesh and blood as surely, madame, as the citizen du Gua Saint-Cyr.”

This answer contained a sarcasm, the hidden meaning of which was known to none but the lady herself, and any one but herself would have been disconcerted by it.  Her son looked fixedly at Corentin, who coolly pulled out his watch without appearing to notice the effect of his answer.  The lady, uneasy and anxious to discover at once if the speech meant danger or was merely accidental, said to Corentin in a natural tone and manner; “How little security there is on these roads.  We were attacked by Chouans just beyond Mortagne.  My son came very near being killed; he received two balls in his hat while protecting me.”

“Is it possible, madame? were you in the mail-coach which those brigands robbed in spite of the escort,—­the one we have just come by?  You must know the vehicle well.  They told me at Mortagne that the Chouans numbered a couple of thousands and that every one in the coach was killed, even the travellers.  That’s how history is written!  Alas! madame,” he continued, “if they murder travellers so near to Paris you can fancy how unsafe the roads are in Brittany.  I shall return to Paris and not risk myself any farther.”

“Is Mademoiselle de Verneuil young and handsome?” said the lady to the hostess, struck suddenly with an idea.

Just then the landlord interrupted the conversation, in which there was something of an angry element, by announcing that breakfast was ready.  The young sailor offered his hand to his mother with an air of false familiarity that confirmed the suspicions of Corentin, to whom the youth remarked as he went up the stairway:  “Citizen, if you are travelling with the female citizen de Verneuil, and she accepts the landlord’s proposal, you can come too.”

Though the words were said in a careless tone and were not inviting, Corentin followed.  The young man squeezed the lady’s hand when they were five or six steps above him, and said, in a low voice:  “Now you see the dangers to which your imprudent enterprises, which have no glory in them, expose us.  If we are discovered, how are we to escape?  And what a contemptible role you force me to play!”

All three reached a large room on the upper floor.  Any one who has travelled in the West will know that the landlord had, on such an occasion, brought forth his best things to do honor to his guests, and prepared the meal with no ordinary luxury.  The table was carefully laid.  The warmth of a large fire took the dampness from the room.  The linen, glass, and china were not too dingy.  Corentin saw at once that the landlord had, as they say familiarly, cut himself into quarters to please the strangers.  “Consequently,” thought he, “these people are not what they pretend to be.  That young man is clever.  I took him for a fool, but I begin to believe him as shrewd as myself.”

The sailor, his mother, and Corentin awaited Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whom the landlord went to summon.  But the handsome traveller did not come.  The youth expected that she would make difficulties, and he left the room, humming the popular song, “Guard the nation’s safety,” and went to that of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, prompted by a keen desire to get the better of her scruples and take her back with him.  Perhaps he wanted to solve the doubts which filled his mind; or else to exercise the power which all men like to think they wield over a pretty woman.

“May I be hanged if he’s a Republican,” thought Corentin, as he saw him go.  “He moves his shoulders like a courtier.  And if that’s his mother,” he added, mentally, looking at Madame du Gua, “I’m the Pope!  They are Chouans; and I’ll make sure of their quality.”

The door soon opened and the young man entered, holding the hand of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whom he led to the table with an air of self-conceit that was nevertheless courteous.  The devil had not allowed that hour which had elapsed since the lady’s arrival to be wasted.  With Francine’s assistance, Mademoiselle de Verneuil had armed herself with a travelling-dress more dangerous, perhaps, than any ball-room attire.  Its simplicity had precisely that attraction which comes of the skill with which a woman, handsome enough to wear no ornaments, reduces her dress to the position of a secondary charm.  She wore a green gown, elegantly cut, the jacket of which, braided and frogged, defined her figure in a manner that was hardly suitable for a young girl, allowing her supple waist and rounded bust and graceful motions to be fully seen.  She entered the room smiling, with the natural amenity of women who can show a fine set of teeth, transparent as porcelain between rosy lips, and dimpling cheeks as fresh as those of childhood.  Having removed the close hood which had almost concealed her head at her first meeting with the young sailor, she could now employ at her ease the various little artifices, apparently so artless, with which a woman shows off the beauties of her face and the grace of her head, and attracts admiration for them.  A certain harmony between her manners and her dress made her seem so much younger than she was that Madame du Gua thought herself beyond the mark in supposing her over twenty.  The coquetry of her apparel, evidently worn to please, was enough to inspire hope in the young man’s breast; but Mademoiselle de Verneuil bowed to him, as she took her place, with a slight inclination of her head and without looking at him, putting him aside with an apparently light-hearted carelessness which disconcerted him.  This coolness might have seemed to an observer neither caution nor coquetry, but indifference, natural or feigned.  The candid expression on the young lady’s face only made it the more impenetrable.  She showed no consciousness of her charms, and was apparently gifted with the pretty manners that win all hearts, and had already duped the natural self-conceit of the young sailor.  Thus baffled, the youth returned to his own seat with a sort of vexation.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil took Francine, who accompanied her, by the hand and said, in a caressing voice, turning to Madame de Gua:  “Madame, will you have the kindness to allow this young girl, who is more a friend than a servant to me, to sit with us?  In these perilous times such devotion as hers can only be repaid by the heart; indeed, that is very nearly all that is left to us.”

Madame du Gua replied to the last words, which were said half aside, with a rather unceremonious bow that betrayed her annoyance at the beauty of the new-comer.  Then she said, in a low voice, to her son:  “‘Perilous times,’ ‘devotion,’ ‘madame,’ ‘servant’! that is not Mademoiselle de Verneuil; it is some girl sent here by Fouche.”

The guests were about to sit down when Mademoiselle de Verneuil noticed Corentin, who was still employed in a close scrutiny of the mother and son, who were showing some annoyance at his glances.

“Citizen,” she said to him, “you are no doubt too well bred to dog my steps.  The Republic, when it sent my parents to the scaffold, did not magnanimously provide me with a guardian.  Though you have, from extreme and chivalric gallantry accompanied me against my will to this place” (she sighed), “I am quite resolved not to allow your protecting care to become a burden to you.  I am safe now, and you can leave me.”

She gave him a fixed and contemptuous look.  Corentin understood her; he repressed the smile which almost curled the corners of his wily lips as he bowed to her respectfully.

“Citoyenne,” he said, “it is always an honor to obey you.  Beauty is the only queen a Republican can serve.”

Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s eyes, as she watched him depart, shone with such natural pleasure, she looked at Francine with a smile of intelligence which betrayed so much real satisfaction, that Madame du Gua, who grew prudent as she grew jealous, felt disposed to relinquish the suspicions which Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s great beauty had forced into her mind.

“It may be Mademoiselle de Verneuil, after all,” she whispered to her son.

“But that escort?” answered the young man, whose vexation at the young lady’s indifference allowed him to be cautious.  “Is she a prisoner or an emissary, a friend or an enemy of the government?”

Madame du Gua made a sign as if to say that she would soon clear up the mystery.

However, the departure of Corentin seemed to lessen the young man’s distrust, and he began to cast on Mademoiselle de Verneuil certain looks which betrayed an immoderate admiration for women, rather than the respectful warmth of a dawning passion.  The young girl grew more and more reserved, and gave all her attentions to Madame du Gua.  The youth, angry with himself, tried, in his vexation, to turn the tables and seem indifferent.  Mademoiselle de Verneuil appeared not to notice this manoeuvre; she continued to be simple without shyness and reserved without prudery.

This chance meeting of personages who, apparently, were not destined to become intimate, awakened no agreeable sympathy on either side.  There was even a sort of vulgar embarrassment, an awkwardness which destroyed all the pleasure which Mademoiselle de Verneuil and the young sailor had begun by expecting.  But women have such wonderful conventional tact, they are so intimately allied with each other, or they have such keen desires for emotion, that they always know how to break the ice on such occasions.  Suddenly, as if the two beauties had the same thought, they began to tease their solitary knight in a playful way, and were soon vying with each other in the jesting attention which they paid to him; this unanimity of action left them free.  At the end of half an hour, the two women, already secret enemies, were apparently the best of friends.  The young man then discovered that he felt as angry with Mademoiselle de Verneuil for her friendliness and freedom as he had been with her reserve.  In fact, he was so annoyed by it that he regretted, with a sort of dumb anger, having allowed her to breakfast with them.

“Madame,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, “is your son always as gloomy as he is at this moment?”

“Mademoiselle,” he replied, “I ask myself what is the good of a fleeting happiness.  The secret of my gloom is the evanescence of my pleasure.”

“That is a madrigal,” she said, laughing, “which rings of the Court rather than the Polytechnique.”

“My son only expressed a very natural thought, mademoiselle,” said Madame du Gua, who had her own reasons for placating the stranger.

“Then laugh while you may,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, smiling at the young man.  “How do you look when you have really something to weep for, if what you are pleased to call a happiness makes you so dismal?”

This smile, accompanied by a provoking glance which destroyed the consistency of her reserve, revived the youth’s feelings.  But inspired by her nature, which often impels a woman to do either too much or too little under such circumstances, Mademoiselle de Verneuil, having covered the young man with that brilliant look full of love’s promises, immediately withdrew from his answering expression into a cold and severe modesty,—­a conventional performance by which a woman sometimes hides a true emotion.  In a moment, a single moment, when each expected to see the eyelids of the other lowered, they had communicated to one another their real thoughts; but they veiled their glances as quickly as they had mingled them in that one flash which convulsed their hearts and enlightened them.  Confused at having said so many things in a single glance, they dared no longer look at each other.  Mademoiselle de Verneuil withdrew into cold politeness, and seemed to be impatient for the conclusion of the meal.

“Mademoiselle, you must have suffered very much in prison?” said Madame du Gua.

“Alas, madame, I sometimes think that I am still there.”

“Is your escort sent to protect you, mademoiselle, or to watch you?  Are you still suspected by the Republic?”

Mademoiselle felt instinctively that Madame du Gua had no real interest in her, and the question alarmed her.

“Madame,” she replied, “I really do not know myself the exact nature of my relations to the Republic.”

“Perhaps it fears you?” said the young man, rather satirically.

“We must respect her secrets,” interposed Madame du Gua.

“Oh, madame, the secrets of a young girl who knows nothing of life but its misfortunes are not interesting.”

“But,” answered Madame du Gua, wishing to continue a conversation which might reveal to her all that she wanted to know, “the First Consul seems to have excellent intentions.  They say that he is going to remove the disabilities of the emigres.”

“That is true, madame,” she replied, with rather too much eagerness, “and if so, why do we rouse Brittany and La Vendee?  Why bring civil war into France?”

This eager cry, in which she seemed to share her own reproach, made the young sailor quiver.  He looked earnestly at her, but was unable to detect either hatred or love upon her face.  Her beautiful skin, the delicacy of which was shown by the color beneath it, was impenetrable.  A sudden and invincible curiosity attracted him to this strange creature, to whom he was already drawn by violent desires.

“Madame,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, after a pause, “may I ask if you are going to Mayenne?”

“Yes, mademoiselle,” replied the young man with a questioning look.

“Then, madame,” she continued, “as your son serves the Republic” (she said the words with an apparently indifferent air, but she gave her companions one of those furtive glances the art of which belongs to women and diplomatists), “you must fear the Chouans, and an escort is not to be despised.  We are now almost travelling companions, and I hope you will come with me to Mayenne.”

Mother and son hesitated, and seemed to consult each other’s faces.

“I am not sure, mademoiselle,” said the young man, “that it is prudent in me to tell you that interests of the highest importance require our presence to-night in the neighborhood of Fougeres, and we have not yet been able to find a means of conveyance; but women are so naturally generous that I am ashamed not to confide in you.  Nevertheless,” he added, “before putting ourselves in your hands, I ought to know whether we shall get out of them safe and sound.  In short, mademoiselle, are you the sovereign or the slave of your Republican escort?  Pardon my frankness, but your position does not seem to me exactly natural—­”

“We live in times, monsieur, when nothing takes place naturally.  You can accept my proposal without anxiety.  Above all,” she added, emphasizing her words, “you need fear no treachery in an offer made by a woman who has no part in political hatreds.”

“A journey thus made is not without danger,” he said, with a look which gave significance to that commonplace remark.

“What is it you fear?” she answered, smiling sarcastically.  “I see no peril for any one.”

“Is this the woman who a moment ago shared my desires in her eyes?” thought the young man.  “What a tone in her voice! she is laying a trap for me.”

At that instant a shrill cry of an owl which appeared to have perched on the chimney top vibrated in the air like a warning.

“What does that mean?” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil.  “Our journey together will not begin under favorable auspices.  Do owls in these woods screech by daylight?” she added, with a surprised gesture.

“Sometimes,” said the young man, coolly.  “Mademoiselle,” he continued, “we may bring you ill-luck; you are thinking of that, I am sure.  We had better not travel together.”

These words were said with a calmness and reserve which puzzled Mademoiselle de Verneuil.

“Monsieur,” she replied, with truly aristocratic insolence, “I am far from wishing to compel you.  Pray let us keep the little liberty the Republic leaves us.  If Madame were alone, I should insist—­”

The heavy step of a soldier was heard in the passage, and the Commandant Hulot presently appeared in the doorway with a frowning brow.

“Come here, colonel,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, smiling and pointing to a chair beside her.  “Let us talk over the affairs of State.  But what is the matter with you?  Are there Chouans here?”

The commandant stood speechless on catching sight of the young man, at whom he looked with peculiar attention.

“Mamma, will you take some more hare?  Mademoiselle, you are not eating,” said the sailor to Francine, seeming busy with the guests.

But Hulot’s astonishment and Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s close observation had something too dangerously serious about them to be ignored.

“What is it, citizen?” said the young man, abruptly; “do you know me?”

“Perhaps I do,” replied the Republican.

“You are right; I remember you at the School.”

“I never went to any school,” said the soldier, roughly.  “What school do you mean?”

“The Polytechnique.”

“Ha, ha, those barracks where they expect to make soldiers in dormitories,” said the veteran, whose aversion for officers trained in that nursery was insurmountable.  “To what arm do you belong?”

“I am in the navy.”

“Ha!” cried Hulot, smiling vindictively, “how many of your fellow-students are in the navy?  Don’t you know,” he added in a serious tone, “that none but the artillery and the engineers graduate from there?”

The young man was not disconcerted.

“An exception was made in my favor, on account of the name I bear,” he answered.  “We are all naval men in our family.”

“What is the name of your family, citizen?” asked Hulot.

“Du Gua Saint-Cyr.”

“Then you were not killed at Mortagne?”

“He came very near being killed,” said Madame du Gua, quickly; “my son received two balls in—­”

“Where are your papers?” asked Hulot, not listening to the mother.

“Do you propose to read them?” said the young man, cavalierly; his blue eye, keen with suspicion, studied alternately the gloomy face of the commandant and that of Mademoiselle de Verneuil.

“A stripling like you to pretend to fool me!  Come, produce your papers, or—­”

“La! la! citizen, I’m not such a babe as I look to be.  Why should I answer you?  Who are you?”

“The commander of this department,” answered Hulot.

“Oh, then, of course, the matter is serious; I am taken with arms in my hand,” and he held a glass full of Bordeaux to the soldier.

“I am not thirsty,” said Hulot.  “Come, your papers.”

At that instant the rattle of arms and the tread of men was heard in the street.  Hulot walked to the window and gave a satisfied look which made Mademoiselle de Verneuil tremble.  That sign of interest on her part seemed to fire the young man, whose face had grown cold and haughty.  After feeling in the pockets of his coat he drew forth an elegant portfolio and presented certain papers to the commandant, which the latter read slowly, comparing the description given in the passport with the face and figure of the young man before him.  During this prolonged examination the owl’s cry rose again; but this time there was no difficulty whatever in recognizing a human voice.  The commandant at once returned the papers to the young man, with a scoffing look.

“That’s all very fine,” he said; “but I don’t like the music.  You will come with me to headquarters.”

“Why do you take him there?” asked Mademoiselle de Verneuil, in a tone of some excitement.

“My good lady,” replied the commandant, with his usual grimace, “that’s none of your business.”

Irritated by the tone and words of the old soldier, but still more at the sort of humiliation offered to her in presence of a man who was under the influence of her charms, Mademoiselle de Verneuil rose, abandoning the simple and modest manner she had hitherto adopted; her cheeks glowed and her eyes shone as she said in a quiet tone but with a trembling voice:  “Tell me, has this young man met all the requirements of the law?”

“Yes—­apparently,” said Hulot ironically.

“Then, I desire that you will leave him, apparently, alone,” she said.  “Are you afraid he will escape you?  You are to escort him with me to Mayenne; he will be in the coach with his mother.  Make no objection; it is my will—­Well, what?” she added, noticing Hulot’s grimace; “do you suspect him still?”

“Rather.”

“What do you want to do with him?”

“Oh, nothing; balance his head with a little lead perhaps.  He’s a giddy-pate!” said the commandant, ironically.

“Are you joking, colonel?” cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil.

“Come!” said the commandant, nodding to the young man, “make haste, let us be off.”

At this impertinence Mademoiselle de Verneuil became calm and smiling.

“Do not go,” she said to the young man, protecting him with a gesture that was full of dignity.

“Oh, what a beautiful head!” said the youth to his mother, who frowned heavily.

Annoyance, and many other sentiments, aroused and struggled with, did certainly bring fresh beauties to the young woman’s face.  Francine, Madame du Gua, and her son had all risen from their seats.  Mademoiselle de Verneuil hastily advanced and stood between them and the commandant, who smiled amusedly; then she rapidly unfastened the frogged fastenings of her jacket.  Acting with that blindness which often seizes women when their self-love is threatened and they are anxious to show their power, as a child is impatient to play with a toy that has just been given to it, she took from her bosom a paper and presented it to Hulot.

“Read that,” she said, with a sarcastic laugh.

Then she turned to the young man and gave him, in the excitement of her triumph, a look in which mischief was mingled with an expression of love.  Their brows cleared, joy flushed each agitated face, and a thousand contradictory thoughts rose in their hearts.  Madame du Gua noted in that one look far more of love than of pity in Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s intervention; and she was right.  The handsome creature blushed beneath the other woman’s gaze, understanding its meaning, and dropped her eyelids; then, as if aware of some threatening accusation, she raised her head proudly and defied all eyes.  The commandant, petrified, returned the paper, countersigned by ministers, which enjoined all authorities to obey the orders of this mysterious lady.  Having done so, he drew his sword, laid it across his knees, broke the blade, and flung away the pieces.

“Mademoiselle, you probably know what you are about; but a Republican has his own ideas, and his own dignity.  I cannot serve where women command.  The First Consul will receive my resignation to-morrow; others, who are not of my stripe, may obey you.  I do not understand my orders and therefore I stop short,—­all the more because I am supposed to understand them.”

There was silence for a moment, but it was soon broken by the young lady, who went up to the commandant and held out her hand, saying, “Colonel, though your beard is somewhat long, you may kiss my hand; you are, indeed, a man!”

“I flatter myself I am, mademoiselle,” he replied, depositing a kiss upon the hand of this singular young woman rather awkwardly.  “As for you, friend,” he said, threatening the young man with his finger, “you have had a narrow escape this time.”

“Commandant,” said the youth, “it is time all this nonsense should cease; I am ready to go with you, if you like, to headquarters.”

“And bring your invisible owl, Marche-a-Terre?”

“Who is Marche-a-Terre?” asked the young man, showing all the signs of genuine surprise.

“Didn’t he hoot just now?”

“What did that hooting have to do with me, I should like to know?  I supposed it was your soldiers letting you know of their arrival.”

“Nonsense, you did not think that.”

“Yes, I did.  But do drink that glass of Bordeaux; the wine is good.”

Surprised at the natural behaviour of the youth and also by the frivolity of his manners and the youthfulness of his face, made even more juvenile by the careful curling of his fair hair, the commandant hesitated in the midst of his suspicions.  He noticed that Madame du Gua was intently watching the glances that her son gave to Mademoiselle de Verneuil, and he asked her abruptly:  “How old are you, citoyenne?”

“Ah, Monsieur l’officier,” she said, “the rules of the Republic are very severe; must I tell you that I am thirty-eight?”

“May I be shot if I believe it!  Marche-a-Terre is here; it was he who gave that cry; you are Chouans in disguise.  God’s thunder!  I’ll search the inn and make sure of it!”

Just then a hoot, somewhat like those that preceded it, came from the courtyard; the commandant rushed out, and missed seeing the pallor that covered Madame du Gua’s face as he spoke.  Hulot saw at once that the sound came from a postilion harnessing his horses to the coach, and he cast aside his suspicions, all the more because it seemed absurd to suppose that the Chouans would risk themselves in Alencon.  He returned to the house confounded.

“I forgive him now, but later he shall pay dear for the anxiety he has given us,” said the mother to the son, in a low voice, as Hulot re-entered the room.

The brave old officer showed on his worried face the struggle that went on in his mind betwixt a stern sense of duty and the natural kindness of his heart.  He kept his gruff air, partly, perhaps, because he fancied he had deceived himself, but he took the glass of Bordeaux, and said:  “Excuse me, comrade, but your Polytechnique does send such young officers—­”

“The Chouans have younger ones,” said the youth, laughing.

“For whom did you take my son?” asked Madame du Gua.

“For the Gars, the leader sent to the Chouans and the Vendeans by the British cabinet; his real name is Marquis de Montauran.”

The commandant watched the faces of the suspected pair, who looked at each other with a puzzled expression that seemed to say:  “Do you know that name?” “No, do you?” “What is he talking about?” “He’s dreaming.”

The sudden change in the manner of Marie de Verneuil, and her torpor as she heard the name of the royalist general was observed by no one but Francine, the only person to whom the least shade on that young face was visible.  Completely routed, the commandant picked up the bits of his broken sword, looked at Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whose ardent beauty was beginning to find its way to his heart, and said:  “As for you, mademoiselle, I take nothing back, and to-morrow these fragments of my sword will reach Bonaparte, unless—­”

“Pooh! what do I care for Bonaparte, or your republic, or the king, or the Gars?” she cried, scarcely repressing an explosion of ill-bred temper.

A mysterious emotion, the passion of which gave to her face a dazzling color, showed that the whole world was nothing to the girl the moment that one individual was all in all to her.  But she suddenly subdued herself into forced calmness, observing, like a trained actor, that the spectators were watching her.  The commandant rose hastily and went out.  Anxious and agitated, Mademoiselle de Verneuil followed him, stopped him in the corridor, and said, in an almost solemn tone:  “Have you any good reason to suspect that young man of being the Gars?”

“God’s thunder! mademoiselle, that fellow who rode here with you came back to warn me that the travellers in the mail-coach had all been murdered by the Chouans; I knew that, but what I didn’t know was the name of the murdered persons,—­it was Gua de Saint-Cyr!”

“Oh! if Corentin is at the bottom of all this, nothing surprises me,” she cried, with a gesture of disgust.

The commandant went his way without daring to look at Mademoiselle de Verneuil, whose dangerous beauty began to affect him.

“If I had stayed two minutes longer I should have committed the folly of taking back my sword and escorting her,” he was saying to himself as he went down the stairs.

As Madame du Gua watched the young man, whose eyes were fixed on the door through which Mademoiselle de Verneuil had passed, she said to him in a low voice:  “You are incorrigible.  You will perish through a woman.  A doll can make you forget everything.  Why did you allow her to breakfast with us?  Who is a Demoiselle de Verneuil escorted by the Blues, who accepts a breakfast from strangers and disarms an officer with a piece of paper hidden in the bosom of her gown like a love-letter?  She is one of those contemptible creatures by whose aid Fouche expects to lay hold of you, and the paper she showed the commandant ordered the Blues to assist her against you.”

“Eh! madame,” he replied in a sharp tone which went to the lady’s heart and turned her pale; “her generous action disproves your supposition.  Pray remember that the welfare of the king is the sole bond between us.  You, who have had Charette at your feet must find the world without him empty; are you not living to avenge him?”

The lady stood still and pensive, like one who sees from the shore the wreck of all her treasures, and only the more eagerly longs for the vanished property.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil re-entered the room; the young man exchanged a smile with her and gave her a glance full of gentle meaning.  However uncertain the future might seem, however ephemeral their union, the promises of their sudden love were only the more endearing to them.  Rapid as the glance was, it did not escape the sagacious eye of Madame du Gua, who instantly understood it; her brow clouded, and she was unable to wholly conceal her jealous anger.  Francine was observing her; she saw the eyes glitter, the cheeks flush; she thought she perceived a diabolical spirit in the face, stirred by some sudden and terrible revulsion.  But lightning is not more rapid, nor death more prompt than this brief exhibition of inward emotion.  Madame du Gua recovered her lively manner with such immediate self-possession that Francine fancied herself mistaken.  Nevertheless, having once perceived in this woman a violence of feeling that was fully equal to that of Mademoiselle de Verneuil, she trembled as she foresaw the clash with which such natures might come together, and the girl shuddered when she saw Mademoiselle de Verneuil go up to the young man with a passionate look and, taking him by the hand, draw him close beside her and into the light, with a coquettish glance that was full of witchery.

“Now,” she said, trying to read his eyes, “own to me that you are not the citizen du Gua Saint-Cyr.”

“Yes, I am, mademoiselle.”

“But he and his mother were killed yesterday.”

“I am very sorry for that,” he replied, laughing.  “However that may be, I am none the less under a great obligation to you, for which I shall always feel the deepest gratitude and only wish I could prove it to you.”

“I thought I was saving an emigre, but I love you better as a Republican.”

The words escaped her lips as it were impulsively; she became confused; even her eyes blushed, and her face bore no other expression than one of exquisite simplicity of feeling; she softly released the young man’s hand, not from shame at having pressed it, but because of a thought too weighty, it seemed, for her heart to bear, leaving him drunk with hope.  Suddenly she appeared to regret this freedom, permissible as it might be under the passing circumstances of a journey.  She recovered her conventional manner, bowed to the lady and her son, and taking Francine with her, left the room.  When they reached their own chamber Francine wrung her hands and tossed her arms, as she looked at her mistress, saying:  “Ah, Marie, what a crowd of things in a moment of time! who but you would have such adventures?”

Mademoiselle de Verneuil sprang forward and clasped Francine round the neck.

“Ah! this is life indeed—­I am in heaven!”

“Or hell,” retorted Francine.

“Yes, hell if you like!” cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil.  “Here, give me your hand; feel my heart, how it beats.  There’s fever in my veins; the whole world is now a mere nothing to me!  How many times have I not seen that man in my dreams!  Oh! how beautiful his head is—­how his eyes sparkle!”

“Will he love you?” said the simple peasant-woman, in a quivering voice, her face full of sad foreboding.

“How can you ask me that!” cried Mademoiselle de Verneuil.  “But, Francine, tell me,” she added throwing herself into a pose that was half serious, half comic, “will it be very hard to love me?”

“No, but will he love you always?” replied Francine, smiling.

They looked at each other for a moment speechless,—­Francine at revealing so much knowledge of life, and Marie at the perception, which now came to her for the first time, of a future of happiness in her passion.  She seemed to herself hanging over a gulf of which she had wanted to know the depth, and listening to the fall of the stone she had flung, at first heedlessly, into it.

“Well, it is my own affair,” she said, with the gesture of a gambler.  “I should never pity a betrayed woman; she has no one but herself to blame if she is abandoned.  I shall know how to keep, either living or dead, the man whose heart has once been mine.  But,” she added, with some surprise and after a moment’s silence, “where did you get your knowledge of love, Francine?”

“Mademoiselle,” said the peasant-woman, hastily, “hush, I hear steps in the passage.”

“Ah! not his steps!” said Marie, listening.  “But you are evading an answer; well, well, I’ll wait for it, or guess it.”

Francine was right, however.  Three taps on the door interrupted the conversation.  Captain Merle appeared, after receiving Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s permission to enter.

With a military salute to the lady, whose beauty dazzled him, the soldier ventured on giving her a glance, but he found nothing better to say than:  “Mademoiselle, I am at your orders.”

“Then you are to be my protector, in place of the commander, who retires; is that so?”

“No, my superior is the adjutant-major Gerard, who has sent me here.”

“Your commandant must be very much afraid of me,” she said.

“Beg pardon, mademoiselle, Hulot is afraid of nothing.  But women, you see, are not in his line; it ruffled him to have a general in a mob-cap.”

“And yet,” continued Mademoiselle de Verneuil, “it was his duty to obey his superiors.  I like subordination, and I warn you that I shall allow no one to disobey me.”

“That would be difficult,” replied Merle, gallantly.

“Let us consult,” said Mademoiselle de Verneuil.  “You can get fresh troops here and accompany me to Mayenne, which I must reach this evening.  Shall we find other soldiers there, so that I might go on at once, without stopping at Mayenne?  The Chouans are quite ignorant of our little expedition.  If we travel at night, we can avoid meeting any number of them, and so escape an attack.  Do you think this feasible?”

“Yes, mademoiselle.”

“What sort of road is it between Mayenne and Fougeres?”

“Rough; all up and down, a regular squirrel-wheel.”

“Well, let us start at once.  As we have nothing to fear near Alencon, you can go before me; we’ll join you soon.”

“One would think she had seen ten years’ service,” thought Merle, as he departed.  “Hulot is mistaken; that young girl is not earning her living out of a feather-bed.  Ten thousand carriages! if I want to be adjutant-major I mustn’t be such a fool as to mistake Saint-Michael for the devil.”

During Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s conference with the captain, Francine had slipped out for the purpose of examining, through a window of the corridor, the spot in the courtyard which had excited her curiosity on arriving at the inn.  She watched the stable and the heaps of straw with the absorption of one who was saying her prayers to the Virgin, and she presently saw Madame du Gua approaching Marche-a-Terre with the precaution of a cat that dislikes to wet its feet.  When the Chouan caught sight of the lady, he rose and stood before her in an attitude of deep respect.  This singular circumstance aroused Francine’s curiosity; she slipped into the courtyard and along the walls, avoiding Madame du Gua’s notice, and trying to hide herself behind the stable door.  She walked on tiptoe, scarcely daring to breathe, and succeeded in posting herself close to Marche-a-Terre, without exciting his attention.

“If, after all this information,” the lady was saying to the Chouan, “it proves not to be her real name, you are to fire upon her without pity, as you would on a mad dog.”

“Agreed!” said Marche-a-Terre.

The lady left him.  The Chouan replaced his red woollen cap upon his head, remained standing, and was scratching his ear as if puzzled when Francine suddenly appeared before him, apparently by magic.

“Saint Anne of Auray!” he exclaimed.  Then he dropped his whip, clasped his hands, and stood as if in ecstasy.  A faint color illuminated his coarse face, and his eyes shone like diamonds dropped on a muck-heap.  “Is it really the brave girl from Cottin?” he muttered, in a voice so smothered that he alone heard it.  “You are fine,” he said, after a pause, using the curious word, “godaine,” a superlative in the dialect of those regions used by lovers to express the combination of fine clothes and beauty.

“I daren’t touch you,” added Marche-a-Terre, putting out his big hand nevertheless, as if to weigh the gold chain which hung round her neck and below her waist.

“You had better not, Pierre,” replied Francine, inspired by the instinct which makes a woman despotic when not oppressed.  She drew back haughtily, after enjoying the Chouan’s surprise; but she compensated for the harshness of her words by the softness of her glance, saying, as she once more approached him:  “Pierre, that lady was talking to you about my young mistress, wasn’t she?”

Marche-a-Terre was silent; his face struggled, like the dawn, between clouds and light.  He looked in turn at Francine, at the whip he had dropped, and at the chain, which seemed to have as powerful an attraction for him as the Breton girl herself.  Then, as if to put a stop to his own uneasiness, he picked up his whip and still kept silence.

“Well, it is easy to see that that lady told you to kill my mistress,” resumed Francine, who knew the faithful discretion of the peasant, and wished to relieve his scruples.

Marche-a-Terre lowered his head significantly.  To the Cottin girl that was answer enough.

“Very good, Pierre,” she said; “if any evil happens to her, if a hair of her head is injured, you and I will have seen each other for the last time; for I shall be in heaven, and you will go to hell.”

The possessed of devils whom the Church in former days used to exorcise with great pomp were not more shaken and agitated than Marche-a-Terre at this prophecy, uttered with a conviction that gave it certainty.  His glance, which at first had a character of savage tenderness, counteracted by a fanaticism as powerful in his soul as love, suddenly became surly, as he felt the imperious manner of the girl he had long since chosen.  Francine interpreted his silence in her own way.

“Won’t you do anything for my sake?” she said in a tone of reproach.

At these words the Chouan cast a glance at his mistress from eyes that were black as a crow’s wing.

“Are you free?” he asked in a growl that Francine alone could have understood.

“Should I be here if I were not?” she replied indignantly.  “But you, what are you doing here?  Still playing bandit, still roaming the country like a mad dog wanting to bite.  Oh!  Pierre, if you were wise, you would come with me.  This beautiful young lady, who, I ought to tell you, was nursed when a baby in our home, has taken care of me.  I have two hundred francs a year from a good investment.  And Mademoiselle has bought me my uncle Thomas’s big house for fifteen hundred francs, and I have saved two thousand beside.”

But her smiles and the announcement of her wealth fell dead before the dogged immovability of the Chouan.

“The priests have told us to go to war,” he replied.  “Every Blue we shoot earns one indulgence.”

“But suppose the Blues shoot you?”

He answered by letting his arms drop at his sides, as if regretting the poverty of the offering he should thus make to God and the king.

“What will become of me?” exclaimed the young girl, sorrowfully.

Marche-a-Terre looked at her stupidly; his eyes seemed to enlarge; tears rolled down his hairy cheeks upon the goatskin which covered him, and a low moan came from his breast.

“Saint Anne of Auray!—­Pierre, is this all you have to say to me after a parting of seven years?  You have changed indeed.”

“I love you the same as ever,” said the Chouan, in a gruff voice.

“No,” she whispered, “the king is first.”

“If you look at me like that I shall go,” he said.

“Well, then, adieu,” she replied, sadly.

“Adieu,” he repeated.

He seized her hand, wrung it, kissed it, made the sign of the cross, and rushed into the stable, like a dog who fears that his bone will be taken from him.

“Pille-Miche,” he said to his comrade.  “Where’s your tobacco-box?”

“Ho! sacre bleu! what a fine chain!” cried Pille-Miche, fumbling in a pocket constructed in his goatskin.

Then he held out to Marche-a-Terre the little horn in which Bretons put the finely powdered tobacco which they prepare themselves during the long winter nights.  The Chouan raised his thumb and made a hollow in the palm of his hand, after the manner in which an “Invalide” takes his tobacco; then he shook the horn, the small end of which Pille-Miche had unscrewed.  A fine powder fell slowly from the little hole pierced in the point of this Breton utensil.  Marche-a-Terre went through the same process seven or eight times silently, as if the powder had power to change the current of his thoughts.  Suddenly he flung the horn to Pille-Miche with a gesture of despair, and caught up a gun which was hidden in the straw.

“Seven or eight shakes at once!  I suppose you think that costs nothing!” said the stingy Pille-Miche.

“Forward!” cried Marche-a-Terre in a hoarse voice.  “There’s work before us.”

Thirty or more Chouans who were sleeping in the straw under the mangers, raised their heads, saw Marche-a-Terre on his feet, and disappeared instantly through a door which led to the garden, from which it was easy to reach the fields.

When Francine left the stable she found the mail-coach ready to start.  Mademoiselle de Verneuil and her new fellow-travellers were already in it.  The girl shuddered as she saw her young mistress sitting side by side with the woman who had just ordered her death.  The young man had taken his seat facing Marie, and as soon as Francine was in hers the heavy vehicle started at a good pace.

The sun had swept away the gray autumnal mists, and its rays were brightening the gloomy landscape with a look of youth and holiday.  Many lovers fancy that such chance accidents of the sky are premonitions.  Francine was surprised at the strange silence which fell upon the travellers.  Mademoiselle de Verneuil had recovered her cold manner, and sat with her eyes lowered, her head slightly inclined, and her hands hidden under a sort of mantle in which she had wrapped herself.  If she raised her eyes it was only to look at the passing scenery.  Certain of being admired, she rejected admiration; but her apparent indifference was evidently more coquettish than natural.  Purity, which gives such harmony to the diverse expressions by which a simple soul reveals itself, could lend no charm to a being whose every instinct predestined her to the storms of passion.  Yielding himself up to the pleasures of this dawning intrigue, the young man did not try to explain the contradictions which were obvious between the coquetry and the enthusiasm of this singular young girl.  Her assumed indifference allowed him to examine at his ease a face which was now as beautiful in its calmness as it had been when agitated.  Like the rest of us, he was not disposed to question the sources of his enjoyment.

It is difficult for a pretty woman to avoid the glances of her companions in a carriage when their eyes fasten upon her as a visible distraction to the monotony of a journey.  Happy, therefore, in being able to satisfy the hunger of his dawning passion, without offence or avoidance on the part of its object, the young man studied the pure and brilliant lines of the girl’s head and face.  To him they were a picture.  Sometimes the light brought out the transparent rose of the nostrils and the double curve which united the nose with the upper lip; at other times a pale glint of sunshine illuminated the tints of the skin, pearly beneath the eyes and round the mouth, rosy on the cheeks, and ivory-white about the temples and throat.  He admired the contrasts of light and shade caused by the masses of black hair surrounding her face and giving it an ephemeral grace,—­for all is fleeting in a woman; her beauty of to-day is often not that of yesterday, fortunately for herself, perhaps!  The young man, who was still at an age when youth delights in the nothings which are the all of love, watched eagerly for each movement of the eyelids, and the seductive rise and fall of her bosom as she breathed.  Sometimes he fancied, suiting the tenor of his thoughts, that he could see a meaning in the expression of the eyes and the imperceptible inflection of the lips.  Every gesture betrayed to him the soul, every motion a new aspect of the young girl.  If a thought stirred those mobile features, if a sudden blush suffused the cheeks, or a smile brought life into the face, he found a fresh delight in trying to discover the secrets of this mysterious creature.  Everything about her was a snare to the soul and a snare to the senses.  Even the silence that fell between them, far from raising an obstacle to the understanding of their hearts, became the common ground for mutual thoughts.  But after a while the many looks in which their eyes encountered each other warned Marie de Verneuil that the silence was compromising her, and she turned to Madame du Gua with one of those commonplace remarks which open the way to conversation; but even in so doing she included the young man.

“Madame,” she said, “how could you put your son into the navy? have you not doomed yourself to perpetual anxiety?”

“Mademoiselle, the fate of women, of mothers, I should say, is to tremble for the safety of their dear ones.”

“Your son is very like you.”

“Do you think so, mademoiselle?”

The smile with which the young man listened to these remarks increased the vexation of his pretended mother.  Her hatred grew with every passionate glance he turned on Marie.  Silence or conversation, all increased the dreadful wrath which she carefully concealed beneath a cordial manner.

“Mademoiselle,” said the young man, “you are quite mistaken.  Naval men are not more exposed to danger than soldiers.  Women ought not to dislike the navy; we sailors have a merit beyond that of the military, —­we are faithful to our mistresses.”

“Oh, from necessity,” replied Mademoiselle de Verneuil, laughing.

“But even so, it is fidelity,” said Madame du Gua, in a deep voice.

The conversation grew lively, touching upon subjects that were interesting to none but the three travellers, for under such circumstances intelligent persons given new meanings to commonplace talk; but every word, insignificant as it might seem, was a mutual interrogation, hiding the desires, hopes, and passions which agitated them.  Marie’s cleverness and quick perception (for she was fully on her guard) showed Madame du Gua that calumny and treachery could alone avail to triumph over a rival as formidable through her intellect as by her beauty.  The mail-coach presently overtook the escort, and then advanced more slowly.  The young man, seeing a long hill before them, proposed to the young lady that they should walk.  The friendly politeness of his offer decided her, and her consent flattered him.

“Is Madame of our opinion?” she said, turning to Madame du Gua.  “Will she walk, too?”

“Coquette!” said the lady to herself, as she left the coach.

Marie and the young man walked together, but a little apart.  The sailor, full of ardent desires, was determined to break the reserve that checked him, of which, however, he was not the dupe.  He fancied that he could succeed by dallying with the young lady in that tone of courteous amiability and wit, sometimes frivolous, sometimes serious, which characterized the men of the exiled aristocracy.  But the smiling Parisian beauty parried him so mischievously, and rejected his frivolities with such disdain, evidently preferring the stronger ideas and enthusiasms which he betrayed from time to time in spite of himself, that he presently began to understand the true way of pleasing her.  The conversation then changed.  He realized the hopes her expressive face had given him; yet, as he did so, new difficulties arose, and he was still forced to suspend his judgment on a girl who seemed to take delight in thwarting him, a siren with whom he grew more and more in love.  After yielding to the seduction of her beauty, he was still more attracted to her mysterious soul, with a curiosity which Marie perceived and took pleasure in exciting.  Their intercourse assumed, insensibly, a character of intimacy far removed from the tone of indifference which Mademoiselle de Verneuil endeavored in vain to give to it.

Though Madame du Gua had followed the lovers, the latter had unconsciously walked so much more rapidly than she that a distance of several hundred feet soon separated them.  The charming pair trod the fine sand beneath their feet, listening with childlike delight to the union of their footsteps, happy in being wrapped by the same ray of a sunshine that seemed spring-like, in breathing with the same breath autumnal perfumes laden with vegetable odors which seemed a nourishment brought by the breezes to their dawning love.  Though to them it may have been a mere circumstance of their fortuitous meeting, yet the sky, the landscape, the season of the year, did communicate to their emotions a tinge of melancholy gravity which gave them an element of passion.  They praised the weather and talked of its beauty; then of their strange encounter, of the coming rupture of an intercourse so delightful; of the ease with which, in travelling, friendships, lost as soon as made, are formed.  After this last remark, the young man profited by what seemed to be a tacit permission to make a few tender confidences, and to risk an avowal of love like a man who was not unaccustomed to such situations.

“Have you noticed, mademoiselle,” he said, “how little the feelings of the heart follow the old conventional rules in the days of terror in which we live?  Everything about us bears the stamp of suddenness.  We love in a day, or we hate on the strength of a single glance.  We are bound to each other for life in a moment, or we part with the celerity of death itself.  All things are hurried, like the convulsions of the nation.  In the midst of such dangers as ours the ties that bind should be stronger than under the ordinary course of life.  In Paris during the Terror, every one came to know the full meaning of a clasp of the hand as men do on a battle-field.”

“People felt the necessity of living fast and ardently,” she answered, “for they had little time to live.”  Then, with a glance at her companion which seemed to tell him that the end of their short intercourse was approaching, she added, maliciously:  “You are very well informed as to the affairs of life, for a young man who has just left the Ecole Polytechnique!”

“What are you thinking of me?” he said after a moment’s silence.  “Tell me frankly, without disguise.”

“You wish to acquire the right to speak to me of myself,” she said laughing.

“You do not answer me,” he went on after a slight pause.  “Take care, silence is sometimes significant.”

“Do you think I cannot guess all that you would like to say to me?  Good heavens! you have already said enough.”

“Oh, if we understand each other,” he replied, smiling, “I have obtained more than I dared hope for.”

She smiled in return so graciously that she seemed to accept the courteous struggle into which all men like to draw a woman.  They persuaded themselves, half in jest, half in earnest, that they never could be more to each other than they were at that moment.  The young man fancied, therefore, he might give reins to a passion that could have no future; the young woman felt she might smile upon it.  Marie suddenly struck her foot against a stone and stumbled.

“Take my arm,” said her companion.

“It seems I must,” she replied; “you would be too proud if I refused; you would fancy I feared you.”

“Ah, mademoiselle,” he said, pressing her arm against his heart that she might feel the beating of it, “you flatter my pride by granting such a favor.”

“Well, the readiness with which I do so will cure your illusions.”

“Do you wish to save me from the danger of the emotions you cause?”

“Stop, stop!” she cried; “do not try to entangle me in such boudoir riddles.  I don’t like to find the wit of fools in a man of your character.  See! here we are beneath the glorious sky, in the open country; before us, above us, all is grand.  You wish to tell me that I am beautiful, do you not?  Well, your eyes have already told me so; besides, I know it; I am not a woman whom mere compliments can please.  But perhaps you would like,” this with satirical emphasis, “to talk about your sentiments?  Do you think me so simple as to believe that sudden sympathies are powerful enough to influence a whole life through the recollections of one morning?”

“Not the recollections of a morning,” he said, “but those of a beautiful woman who has shown herself generous.”

“You forget,” she retorted, laughing, “half my attractions,—­a mysterious woman, with everything odd about her, name, rank, situation, freedom of thought and manners.”

“You are not mysterious to me!” he exclaimed.  “I have fathomed you; there is nothing that could be added to your perfections except a little more faith in the love you inspire.”

“Ah, my poor child of eighteen, what can you know of love?” she said smiling.  “Well, well, so be it!” she added, “it is a fair subject of conversation, like the weather when one pays a visit.  You shall find that I have neither false modesty nor petty fears.  I can hear the word love without blushing; it has been so often said to me without one echo of the heart that I think it quite unmeaning.  I have met with it everywhere, in books, at the theatre, in society,—­yes, everywhere, and never have I found in it even a semblance of its magnificent ideal.”

“Did you seek that ideal?”

“Yes.”

The word was said with such perfect ease and freedom that the young man made a gesture of surprise and looked at Marie fixedly, as if he had suddenly changed his opinion on her character and real position.

“Mademoiselle,” he said with ill-concealed devotion, “are you maid or wife, angel or devil?”

“All,” she replied, laughing.  “Isn’t there something diabolic and also angelic in a young girl who has never loved, does not love, and perhaps will never love?”

“Do you think yourself happy thus?” he asked with a free and easy tone and manner, as though already he felt less respect for her.

“Oh, happy, no,” she replied.  “When I think that I am alone, hampered by social conventions that make me deceitful, I envy the privileges of a man.  But when I also reflect on the means which nature has bestowed on us women to catch and entangle you men in the invisible meshes of a power which you cannot resist, then the part assigned to me in the world is not displeasing to me.  And then again, suddenly, it does seem very petty, and I feel that I should despise a man who allowed himself to be duped by such vulgar seductions.  No sooner do I perceive our power and like it, than I know it to be horrible and I abhor it.  Sometimes I feel within me that longing towards devotion which makes my sex so nobly beautiful; and then I feel a desire, which consumes me, for dominion and power.  Perhaps it is the natural struggle of the good and the evil principle in which all creatures live here below.  Angel or devil! you have expressed it.  Ah! to-day is not the first time that I have recognized my double nature.  But we women understand better than you men can do our own shortcomings.  We have an instinct which shows us a perfection in all things to which, nevertheless, we fail to attain.  But,” she added, sighing as she glanced at the sky; “that which enhances us in your eyes is—­”

“Is what?” he said.

“—­that we are all struggling, more or less,” she answered, “against a thwarted destiny.”

“Mademoiselle, why should we part to-night?”

“Ah!” she replied, smiling at the passionate look which he gave her, “let us get into the carriage; the open air does not agree with us.”

Marie turned abruptly; the young man followed her, and pressed her arm with little respect, but in a manner that expressed his imperious admiration.  She hastened her steps.  Seeing that she wished to escape an importune declaration, he became the more ardent; being determined to win a first favor from this woman, he risked all and said, looking at her meaningly:—­

“Shall I tell you a secret?”

“Yes, quickly, if it concerns you.”

“I am not in the service of the Republic.  Where are you going?  I shall follow you.”

At the words Marie trembled violently.  She withdrew her arm and covered her face with both hands to hide either the flush or the pallor of her cheeks; then she suddenly uncovered her face and said in a voice of deep emotion:—­

“Then you began as you would have ended, by deceiving me?”

“Yes,” he said.

At this answer she turned again from the carriage, which was now overtaking them, and began to almost run along the road.

“I thought,” he said, following her, “that the open air did not agree with you?”

“Oh! it has changed,” she replied in a grave tone, continuing to walk on, a prey to agitating thoughts.

“You do not answer me,” said the young man, his heart full of the soft expectation of coming pleasure.

“Oh!” she said, in a strained voice, “the tragedy begins.”

“What tragedy?” he asked.

She stopped short, looked at the young student from head to foot with a mingled expression of fear and curiosity; then she concealed her feelings that were agitating her under the mask of an impenetrable calmness, showing that for a girl of her age she had great experience of life.

“Who are you?” she said,—­“but I know already; when I first saw you I suspected it.  You are the royalist leader whom they call the Gars.  The ex-bishop of Autun was right in saying we should always believe in presentiments which give warning of evil.”

“What interest have you in knowing the Gars?”

“What interest has he in concealing himself from me who have already saved his life?” She began to laugh, but the merriment was forced.  “I have wisely prevented you from saying that you love me.  Let me tell you, monsieur, that I abhor you.  I am republican, you are royalist; I would deliver you up if you were not under my protection, and if I had not already saved your life, and if—­” she stopped.  These violent extremes of feeling and the inward struggle which she no longer attempted to conceal alarmed the young man, who tried, but in vain, to observe her calmly.  “Let us part here at once,—­I insist upon it; farewell!” she said.  She turned hastily back, made a few steps, and then returned to him.  “No, no,” she continued, “I have too great an interest in knowing who you are.  Hide nothing from me; tell me the truth.  Who are you? for you are no more a pupil of the Ecole Polytechnique than you are eighteen years old.”

“I am a sailor, ready to leave the ocean and follow you wherever your imagination may lead you.  If I have been so lucky as to rouse your curiosity in any particular I shall be very careful not to lessen it.  Why mingle the serious affairs of real life with the life of the heart in which we are beginning to understand each other?”

“Our souls might have understood each other,” she said in a grave voice.  “But I have no right to exact your confidence.  You will never know the extent of your obligations to me; I shall not explain them.”

They walked a few steps in silence.

“My life does interest you,” said the young man.

“Monsieur, I implore you, tell me your name or else be silent.  You are a child,” she added, with an impatient movement of her shoulders, “and I feel a pity for you.”

The obstinacy with which she insisted on knowing his name made the pretended sailor hesitate between prudence and love.  The vexation of a desired woman is powerfully attractive; her anger, like her submission, is imperious; many are the fibres she touches in a man’s heart, penetrating and subjugating it.  Was this scene only another aspect of Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s coquetry?  In spite of his sudden passion the unnamed lover had the strength to distrust a woman thus bent on forcing from him a secret of life and death.

“Why has my rash indiscretion, which sought to give a future to our present meeting, destroyed the happiness of it?” he said, taking her hand, which she left in his unconsciously.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil, who seemed to be in real distress, was silent.

“How have I displeased you?” he said.  “What can I do to soothe you?”

“Tell me your name.”

He made no reply, and they walked some distance in silence.  Suddenly Mademoiselle de Verneuil stopped short, like one who has come to some serious determination.

“Monsieur le Marquis de Montauran,” she said, with dignity, but without being able to conceal entirely the nervous trembling of her features, “I desire to do you a great service, whatever it may cost me.  We part here.  The coach and its escort are necessary for your protection, and you must continue your journey in it.  Fear nothing from the Republicans; they are men of honor, and I shall give the adjutant certain orders which he will faithfully execute.  As for me, I shall return on foot to Alencon with my maid, and take a few of the soldiers with me.  Listen to what I say, for your life depends on it.  If, before you reach a place of safety, you meet that odious man you saw in my company at the inn, escape at once, for he will instantly betray you.  As for me,—­” she paused, “as for me, I fling myself back into the miseries of life.  Farewell, monsieur, may you be happy; farewell.”

She made a sign to Captain Merle, who was just then reaching the brow of the hill behind her.  The marquis was taken unawares by her sudden action.

“Stop!” he cried, in a tone of despair that was well acted.

This singular caprice of a girl for whom he would at that instant have thrown away his life so surprised him that he invented, on the spur of the moment, a fatal fiction by which to hide his name and satisfy the curiosity of his companion.

“You have almost guessed the truth,” he said.  “I am an emigre, condemned to death, and my name is Vicomte de Bauvan.  Love of my country has brought me back to France to join my brother.  I hope to be taken off the list of emigres through the influence of Madame de Beauharnais, now the wife of the First Consul; but if I fail in this, I mean to die on the soil of my native land, fighting beside my friend Montauran.  I am now on my way secretly, by means of a passport he has sent me, to learn if any of my property in Brittany is still unconfiscated.”

While the young man spoke Mademoiselle de Verneuil examined him with a penetrating eye.  She tried at first to doubt his words, but being by nature confiding and trustful, she slowly regained an expression of serenity, and said eagerly, “Monsieur, are you telling me the exact truth?”

“Yes, the exact truth,” replied the young man, who seemed to have no conscience in his dealings with women.

Mademoiselle de Verneuil gave a deep sigh, like a person who returns to life.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, “I am very happy.”

“Then you hate that poor Montauran?”

“No,” she said; “but I could not make you understand my meaning.  I was not willing that you should meet the dangers from which I will try to protect him,—­since he is your friend.”

“Who told you that Montauran was in danger?”

“Ah, monsieur, even if I had not come from Paris, where his enterprise is the one thing talked of, the commandant at Alencon said enough to show his danger.”

“Then let me ask you how you expect to save him from it.”

“Suppose I do not choose to answer,” she replied, with the haughty air that women often assume to hide an emotion.  “What right have you to know my secrets?”

“The right of a man who loves you.”

“Already?” she said.  “No, you do not love me.  I am only an object of passing gallantry to you,—­that is all.  I am clear-sighted; did I not penetrate your disguise at once?  A woman who knows anything of good society could not be misled, in these days, by a pupil of the Polytechnique who uses choice language, and conceals as little as you do the manners of a grand seigneur under the mask of a Republican.  There is a trifle of powder left in your hair, and a fragrance of nobility clings to you which a woman of the world cannot fail to detect.  Therefore, fearing that the man whom you saw accompanying me, who has all the shrewdness of a woman, might make the same discovery, I sent him away.  Monsieur, let me tell you that a true Republican officer just from the Polytechnique would not have made love to me as you have done, and would not have taken me for a pretty adventuress.  Allow me, Monsieur de Bauvan, to preach you a little sermon from a woman’s point of view.  Are you too juvenile to know that of all the creatures of my sex the most difficult to subdue is that same adventuress,—­she whose price is ticketed and who is weary of pleasure.  That sort of woman requires, they tell me, constant seduction; she yields only to her own caprices; any attempt to please her argues, I should suppose, great conceit on the part of a man.  But let us put aside that class of women, among whom you have been good enough to rank me; you ought to understand that a young woman, handsome, brilliant, and of noble birth (for, I suppose, you will grant me those advantages), does not sell herself, and can only be won by the man who loves her in one way.  You understand me?  If she loves him and is willing to commit a folly, she must be justified by great and heroic reasons.  Forgive me this logic, rare in my sex; but for the sake of your happiness,—­and my own,” she added, dropping her head, —­“I will not allow either of us to deceive the other, nor will I permit you to think that Mademoiselle de Verneuil, angel or devil, maid or wife, is capable of being seduced by commonplace gallantry.”

“Mademoiselle,” said the marquis, whose surprise, though he concealed it, was extreme, and who at once became a man of the great world, “I entreat you to believe that I take you to be a very noble person, full of the highest sentiments, or—­a charming girl, as you please.”

“I don’t ask all that,” she said, laughing.  “Allow me to keep my incognito.  My mask is better than yours, and it pleases me to wear it, —­if only to discover whether those who talk to me of love are sincere.  Therefore, beware of me!  Monsieur,” she cried, catching his arm vehemently, “listen to me; if you were able to prove that your love is true, nothing, no human power, could part us.  Yes, I would fain unite myself to the noble destiny of some great man, and marry a vast ambition, glorious hopes!  Noble hearts are never faithless, for constancy is in their fibre; I should be forever loved, forever happy, —­I would make my body a stepping-stone by which to raise the man who loved me; I would sacrifice all things to him, bear all things from him, and love him forever,—­even if he ceased to love me.  I have never before dared to confess to another heart the secrets of mine, nor the passionate enthusiasms which exhaust me; but I tell you something of them now because, as soon as I have seen you in safety, we shall part forever.”

“Part? never!” he cried, electrified by the tones of that vigorous soul which seemed to be fighting against some overwhelming thought.

“Are you free?” she said, with a haughty glance which subdued him.

“Free! yes, except for the sentence of death which hangs over me.”

She added presently, in a voice full of bitter feeling:  “If all this were not a dream, a glorious life might indeed be ours.  But I have been talking folly; let us beware of committing any.  When I think of all you would have to be before you could rate me at my proper value I doubt everything—­”

“I doubt nothing if you will only grant me—­”

“Hush!” she cried, hearing a note of true passion in his voice, “the open air is decidedly disagreeing with us; let us return to the coach.”

That vehicle soon came up; they took their places and drove on several miles in total silence.  Both had matter for reflection, but henceforth their eyes no longer feared to meet.  Each now seemed to have an equal interest in observing the other, and in mutually hiding important secrets; but for all that they were drawn together by one and the same impulse, which now, as a result of this interview, assumed the dimensions of a passion.  They recognized in each other qualities which promised to heighten all the pleasures to be derived from either their contest or their union.  Perhaps both of them, living a life of adventure, had reached the singular moral condition in which, either from weariness or in defiance of fate, the mind rejects serious reflection and flings itself on chance in pursuing an enterprise precisely because the issues of chance are unknown, and the interest of expecting them vivid.  The moral nature, like the physical nature, has its abysses into which strong souls love to plunge, risking their future as gamblers risk their fortune.  Mademoiselle de Verneuil and the young marquis had obtained a revelation of each other’s minds as a consequence of this interview, and their intercourse thus took rapid strides, for the