The Chouans

* * * * *

The strategical problem which troubled the commandant was causing quite as much uneasiness to the persons whom he had just seen on the summit of Mont Pelerine.  As soon as the drums of the National Guard were out of hearing and Marche-a-Terre had seen the Blues at the foot of the declivity, he gave the owl’s cry joyously, and the Chouans reappeared, but their numbers were less.  Some were no doubt busy in taking care of the wounded in the little village of La Pelerine, situated on the side of the mountain which looks toward the valley of Couesnon.  Two or three chiefs of what were called the “Chasseurs du Roi” clustered about Marche-a-Terre.  A few feet apart sat the young noble called The Gars, on a granite rock, absorbed in thoughts excited by the difficulties of his enterprise, which now began to show themselves.  Marche-a-Terre screened his forehead with his hand from the rays of the sun, and looked gloomily at the road by which the Blues were crossing the valley of La Pelerine.  His small black eyes could see what was happening on the hill-slopes on the other side of the valley.

“The Blues will intercept the messenger,” said the angry voice of one of the leaders who stood near him.

“By Saint Anne of Auray!” exclaimed another.  “Why did you make us fight?  Was it to save your own skin from the Blues?”

Marche-a-Terre darted a venomous look at his questioner and struck the ground with his heavy carbine.

“Am I your leader?” he asked.  Then after a pause he added, pointing to the remains of Hulot’s detachment, “If you had all fought as I did, not one of those Blues would have escaped, and the coach could have got here safely.”

“They’d never have thought of escorting it or holding it back if we had let them go by without a fight.  No, you wanted to save your precious skin and get out of their hands—­He has bled us for the sake of his own snout,” continued the orator, “and made us lose twenty thousand francs in good coin.”

“Snout yourself!” cried Marche-a-Terre, retreating three steps and aiming at his aggressor.  “It isn’t that you hate the Blues, but you love the gold.  Die without confession and be damned, for you haven’t taken the sacrament for a year.”

This insult so incensed the Chouan that he turned pale and a low growl came from his chest as he aimed in turn at Marche-a-Terre.  The young chief sprang between them and struck their weapons from their hands with the barrel of his own carbine; then he demanded an explanation of the dispute, for the conversation had been carried on in the Breton dialect, an idiom with which he was not familiar.

“Monsieur le marquis,” said Marche-a-Terre, as he ended his account of the quarrel, “it is all the more unreasonable in them to find fault with me because I have left Pille-Miche behind me; he’ll know how to save the coach for us.”

“What!” exclaimed the young man, angrily, “are you waiting here, all of you, to pillage that coach?—­a parcel of cowards who couldn’t win a victory in the first fight to which I led you!  But why should you win if that’s your object?  The defenders of God and the king are thieves, are they?  By Saint Anne of Auray!  I’d have you know, we are making war against the Republic, and not robbing travellers.  Those who are guilty in future of such shameful actions shall not receive absolution, nor any of the favors reserved for the faithful servants of the king.”

A murmur came from the group of Chouans, and it was easy to see that the authority of the new chief was about to be disputed.  The young man, on whom this effect of his words was by no means lost, was thinking of the best means of maintaining the dignity of his command, when the trot of a horse was heard in the vicinity.  All heads turned in the direction from which the sound came.  A lady appeared, sitting astride of a little Breton horse, which she put at a gallop as soon as she saw the young leader, so as to reach the group of Chouans as quickly as possible.

“What is the matter?” she said, looking first at the Chouans and then at their chief.

“Could you believe it, madame? they are waiting to rob the diligence from Mayenne to Fougeres when we have just had a skirmish, in order to release the conscripts of Fougeres, which has cost us a great many men without defeating the Blues.”

“Well, where’s the harm of that?” asked the young lady, to whom the natural shrewdness of a woman explained the whole scene.  “You have lost men, but there’s no lack of others; the coach is bringing gold, and there’s always a lack of that.  We bury men, who go to heaven, and we take money, which goes into the pockets of heroes.  I don’t see the difficulty.”

The Chouans approved of her speech by unanimous smiles.

“Do you see nothing in all that to make you blush?” said the young man, in a low voice.  “Are you in such need of money that you must pillage on the high-road?”

“I am so eager for it, marquis, that I should put my heart in pawn if it were not already captured,” she said, smiling coquettishly.  “But where did you get the strange idea that you could manage Chouans without letting them rob a few Blues here and there?  Don’t you know the saying, ’Thieving as an owl’?—­and that’s a Chouan.  Besides,” she said, raising her voice to be heard by the men, “it is just; haven’t the Blues seized the property of the Church, and our own?”

Another murmur, very different from the growl with which the Chouans had answered their leader, greeted these words.  The young man’s face grew darker; he took the young lady aside and said in the annoyed tone of a well-bred man, “Will those gentlemen be at La Vivetiere on the appointed day?”

“Yes,” she replied, “all of them, the Claimant, Grand-Jacques, and perhaps Ferdinand.”

“Then allow me to return there.  I cannot sanction such robbery.  Yes, madame, I call it robbery.  There may be honor in being robbed, but—­”

“Well, well,” she said, interrupting him, “then I shall have your share of the booty, and I am much obliged to you for giving it up to me; the extra sum will be extremely useful, for my mother has delayed sending me money, so that I am almost destitute.”

“Adieu!” cried the marquis.

He turned away, but the lady ran after him.

“Why won’t you stay with me?” she said, giving him the look, half-despotic, half-caressing, with which women who have a right to a man’s respect let him know their wishes.

“You are going to pillage that coach?”

“Pillage? what a word!” she said.  “Let me explain to you—­”

“Explain nothing,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it with the superficial gallantry of a courtier.  “Listen to me,” he added after a short pause:  “if I were to stay here while they capture that diligence our people would kill me, for I should certainly—­”

“Not kill them,” she said quickly, “for they would bind your hands, with all the respect that is due to your rank; then, having levied the necessary contribution for their equipment, subsistence, and munitions from our enemies, they would unbind you and obey you blindly.”

“And you wish me to command such men under such circumstances?  If my life is necessary to the cause which I defend allow me at any rate to save the honor of my position.  If I withdraw now I can ignore this base act.  I will return, in order to escort you.”

So saying, he rapidly disappeared.  The young lady listened to his receding steps with evident displeasure.  When the sound on the dried leaves ceased, she stood for a moment as if confounded, then she hastily returned to the Chouans.  With a gesture of contempt she said to Marche-a-Terre, who helped her to dismount, “That young man wants to make regular war on the Republic!  Ah, well! he’ll get over that in a few days.  How he treated me!” she thought, presently.

She seated herself on the rock where the marquis had been sitting, and silently awaited the arrival of the coach.  It was one of the phenomena of the times, and not the least of them, that this young and noble lady should be flung by violent partisanship into the struggle of monarchies against the spirit of the age, and be driven by the strength of her feelings into actions of which it may almost be said she was not conscious.  In this she resembled others of her time who were led away by an enthusiasm which was often productive of noble deeds.  Like her, many women played heroic or blameworthy parts in the fierce struggle.  The royalist cause had no emissaries so devoted and so active as these women; but none of the heroines on that side paid for mistaken devotion or for actions forbidden to their sex, with a greater expiation than did this lady when, seated on that wayside rock, she was forced to admire the young leader’s noble disdain and loyalty to principle.  Insensibly she dropped into reverie.  Bitter memories made her long for the innocence of her early years, and regret that she had escaped being a victim of the Revolution whose victorious march could no longer be arrested by feeble hands.

The coach, which, as we now see, had much to do with the attack of the Chouans, had started from the little town of Ernee a few moments before the skirmishing began.  Nothing pictures a region so well as the state of its social material.  From this point of view the coach deserves a mention.  The Revolution itself was powerless to destroy it; in fact, it still rolls to this present day.  When Turgot bought up the privileges of a company, obtained under Louis XIV., for the exclusive right of transporting travellers from one part of the kingdom to another, and instituted the lines of coaches called the “turgotines,” all the old vehicles of the former company flocked into the provinces.  One of these shabby coaches was now plying between Mayenne and Fougeres.  A few objectors called it the “turgotine,” partly to mimic Paris and partly to deride a minister who attempted innovations.  This turgotine was a wretched cabriolet on two high wheels, in the depths of which two persons, if rather fat, could with difficulty have stowed themselves.  The narrow quarters of this rickety machine not admitting of any crowding, and the box which formed the seat being kept exclusively for the postal service, the travellers who had any baggage were forced to keep it between their legs, already tortured by being squeezed into a sort of little box in shape like a bellows.  The original color of coach and running-gear was an insoluble enigma.  Two leather curtains, very difficult to adjust in spite of their long service, were supposed to protect the occupants from cold and rain.  The driver, perched on a plank seat like those of the worst Parisian “coucous,” shared in the conversation by reason of his position between his victims, biped and quadruped.  The equipage presented various fantastic resemblances to decrepit old men who have gone through a goodly number of catarrhs and apoplexies and whom death respects; it moaned as it rolled, and squeaked spasmodically.  Like a traveller overtaken by sleep, it rocked alternately forward and back, as though it tried to resist the violent action of two little Breton horses which dragged it along a road which was more than rough.  This monument of a past era contained three travellers, who, on leaving Ernee, where they had changed horses, continued a conversation begun with the driver before reaching the little town.

“What makes you think the Chouans are hereabouts?” said the coachman.  “The Ernee people tell me that Commandant Hulot has not yet started from Fougeres.”

“Ho, ho, friend driver!” said the youngest of the travellers, “you risk nothing but your own carcass!  If you had a thousand francs about you, as I have, and were known to be a good patriot, you wouldn’t take it so easy.”

“You are pretty free with your tongue, any way,” said the driver, shaking his head.

“Count your lambs, and the wolf will eat them,” remarked another of the travellers.

This man, who was dressed in black, seemed to be about forty years old, and was, probably, the rector of some parish in the neighborhood.  His chin rested on a double fold of flesh, and his florid complexion indicated a priest.  Though short and fat, he displayed some agility when required to get in or out of the vehicle.

“Perhaps you are both Chouans!” cried the man of the thousand francs, whose ample goatskin, covering trousers of good cloth and a clean waistcoat, bespoke a rich farmer.  “By the soul of Saint Robespierre!  I swear you shall be roughly handled.”

He turned his gray eyes from the driver to his fellow-travellers and showed them a pistol in his belt.

“Bretons are not afraid of that,” said the rector, disdainfully.  “Besides, do we look like men who want your money?”

Every time the word “money” was mentioned the driver was silent, and the rector had wit enough to doubt whether the patriot had any at all, and to suspect that the driver was carrying a good deal.

“Are you well laden, Coupiau?” he asked.

“Oh, no, Monsieur Gudin,” replied the coachman.  “I’m carrying next to nothing.”

The priest watched the faces of the patriot and Coupiau as the latter made this answer, and both were imperturbable.

“So much the better for you,” remarked the patriot.  “I can now take measures to save my property in case of danger.”

Such despotic assumption nettled Coupiau, who answered gruffly:  “I am the master of my own carriage, and so long as I drive you—­”

“Are you a patriot, or are you a Chouan?” said the other, sharply interrupting him.

“Neither the one nor the other,” replied Coupiau.  “I’m a postilion, and, what is more, a Breton,—­consequently, I fear neither Blues nor nobles.”

“Noble thieves!” cried the patriot, ironically.

“They only take back what was stolen from them,” said the rector, vehemently.

The two men looked at each other in the whites of their eyes, if we may use a phrase so colloquial.  Sitting back in the vehicle was a third traveller who took no part in the discussion, and preserved a deep silence.  The driver and the patriot and even Gudin paid no attention to this mute individual; he was, in truth, one of those uncomfortable, unsocial travellers who are found sometimes in a stage-coach, like a patient calf that is being carried, bound, to the nearest market.  Such travellers begin by filling their legal space, and end by sleeping, without the smallest respect for their fellow-beings, on a neighbor’s shoulder.  The patriot, Gudin, and the driver had let him alone, thinking him asleep, after discovering that it was useless to talk to a man whose stolid face betrayed an existence spent in measuring yards of linen, and an intellect employed in selling them at a good percentage above cost.  This fat little man, doubled-up in his corner, opened his porcelain-blue eyes every now and then, and looked at each speaker with a sort of terror.  He appeared to be afraid of his fellow-travellers and to care very little about the Chouans.  When he looked at the driver, however, they seemed to be a pair of free-masons.  Just then the first volley of musketry was heard on La Pelerine.  Coupiau, frightened, stopped the coach.

“Oh! oh!” said the priest, as if he had some means of judging, “it is a serious engagement; there are many men.”

“The trouble for us, Monsieur Gudin,” cried Coupiau, “is to know which side will win.”

The faces of all became unanimously anxious.

“Let us put up the coach at that inn which I see over there,” said the patriot; “we can hide it till we know the result of the fight.”

The advice seemed so good that Coupiau followed it.  The patriot helped him to conceal the coach behind a wood-pile; the abbe seized the occasion to pull Coupiau aside and say to him, in a low voice:  “Has he really any money?”

“Hey, Monsieur Gudin, if it gets into the pockets of your Reverence, they won’t be weighed down with it.”

When the Blues marched by, after the encounter on La Pelerine, they were in such haste to reach Ernee that they passed the little inn without halting.  At the sound of their hasty march, Gudin and the innkeeper, stirred by curiosity, went to the gate of the courtyard to watch them.  Suddenly, the fat ecclesiastic rushed to a soldier who was lagging in the rear.

“Gudin!” he cried, “you wrong-headed fellow, have you joined the Blues?  My lad, you are surely not in earnest?”

“Yes, uncle,” answered the corporal.  “I’ve sworn to defend France.”

“Unhappy boy! you’ll lose your soul,” said the uncle, trying to rouse his nephew to the religious sentiments which are so powerful in the Breton breast.

“Uncle,” said the young man, “if the king had placed himself at the head of his armies, I don’t say but what—­”

“Fool! who is talking to you about the king?  Does your republic give abbeys?  No, it has upset everything.  How do you expect to get on in life?  Stay with us; sooner or later we shall triumph and you’ll be counsellor to some parliament.”

“Parliaments!” said young Gudin, in a mocking tone.  “Good-bye, uncle.”

“You sha’n’t have a penny at my death,” cried his uncle, in a rage.  “I’ll disinherit you.”

“Thank you, uncle,” said the Republican, as they parted.

The fumes of the cider which the patriot copiously bestowed on Coupiau during the passage of the little troop had somewhat dimmed the driver’s perceptions, but he roused himself joyously when the innkeeper, having questioned the soldiers, came back to the inn and announced that the Blues were victorious.  He at once brought out the coach and before long it was wending its way across the valley.

When the Blues reached an acclivity on the road from which the plateau of La Pelerine could again be seen in the distance, Hulot turned round to discover if the Chouans were still occupying it, and the sun, glinting on the muzzles of the guns, showed them to him, each like a dazzling spot.  Giving a last glance to the valley of La Pelerine before turning into that of Ernee, he thought he saw Coupiau’s vehicle on the road he had just traversed.

“Isn’t that the Mayenne coach?” he said to his two officers.

They looked at the venerable turgotine, and easily recognized it.

“But,” said Hulot, “how did we fail to meet it?”

Merle and Gerard looked at each other in silence.

“Another enigma!” cried the commandant.  “But I begin to see the meaning of it all.”

At the same moment Marche-a-Terre, who also knew the turgotine, called his comrades’ attention to it, and the general shout of joy which they sent up roused the young lady from her reflections.  She advanced a little distance and saw the coach, which was beginning the ascent of La Pelerine with fatal rapidity.  The luckless vehicle soon reached the plateau.  The Chouans, who had meantime hidden themselves, swooped on their prey with hungry celerity.  The silent traveller slipped to the floor of the carriage, bundling himself up into the semblance of a bale.

“Well done!” cried Coupiau from his wooden perch, pointing to the man in the goatskin; “you must have scented this patriot who has lots of gold in his pouch—­”

The Chouans greeted these words with roars of laughter, crying out:  “Pille-Miche! hey, Pille-Miche!  Pille-Miche!”

Amid the laughter, to which Pille-Miche responded like an echo, Coupiau came down from his seat quite crestfallen.  When the famous Cibot, otherwise called Pille-Miche, helped his neighbor to get out of the coach, a respectful murmur was heard among the Chouans.

“It is the Abbe Gudin!” cried several voices.  At this respected name every hat was off, and the men knelt down before the priest as they asked his blessing, which he gave solemnly.

“Pille-Miche here could trick Saint Peter and steal the keys of Paradise,” said the rector, slapping that worthy on the shoulder.  “If it hadn’t been for him, the Blues would have intercepted us.”

Then, noticing the lady, the abbe went to speak to her apart.  Marche-a-Terre, who had meantime briskly opened the boot of the cabriolet, held up to his comrades, with savage joy, a bag, the shape of which betrayed its contents to be rolls of coin.  It did not take long to divide the booty.  Each Chouan received his share, so carefully apportioned that the division was made without the slightest dispute.  Then Marche-a-Terre went to the lady and the priest, and offered them each about six thousand francs.

“Can I conscientiously accept this money, Monsieur Gudin?” said the lady, feeling a need of justification.

“Why not, madame?  In former days the Church approved of the confiscation of the property of Protestants, and there’s far more reason for confiscating that of these revolutionists, who deny God, destroy chapels, and persecute religion.”

The abbe then joined example to precept by accepting, without the slightest scruple, the novel sort of tithe which Marche-a-Terre offered to him.  “Besides,” he added, “I can now devote all I possess to the service of God and the king; for my nephew has joined the Blues, and I disinherit him.”

Coupiau was bemoaning himself and declaring that he was ruined.

“Join us,” said Marche-a-Terre, “and you shall have your share.”

“They’ll say I let the coach be robbed on purpose if I return without signs of violence.”

“Oh, is that all?” exclaimed Marche-a-Terre.

He gave a signal and a shower of bullets riddled the turgotine.  At this unexpected volley the old vehicle gave forth such a lamentable cry that the Chouans, superstitious by nature, recoiled in terror; but Marche-a-Terre caught sight of the pallid face of the silent traveller rising from the floor of the coach.

“You’ve got another fowl in your coop,” he said in a low voice to Coupiau.

“Yes,” said the driver; “but I make it a condition of my joining you that I be allowed to take that worthy man safe and sound to Fougeres.  I’m pledged to it in the name of Saint Anne of Auray.”

“Who is he?” asked Pille-Miche.

“That I can’t tell you,” replied Coupiau.

“Let him alone!” said Marche-a-Terre, shoving Pille-Miche with his elbow; “he has vowed by Saint Anne of Auray, and he must keep his word.”

“Very good,” said Pille-Miche, addressing Coupiau; “but mind you don’t go down the mountain too fast; we shall overtake you,—­a good reason why; I want to see the cut of your traveller, and give him his passport.”

Just then the gallop of a horse coming rapidly up the slopes of La Pelerine was heard, and the young chief presently reappeared.  The lady hastened to conceal the bag of plunder which she held in her hand.

“You can keep that money without any scruple,” said the young man, touching the arm which the lady had put behind her.  “Here is a letter for you which I have just found among mine which were waiting for me at La Vivetiere; it is from your mother.”  Then, looking at the Chouans who were disappearing into the woods, and at the turgotine which was now on its way to the valley of Couesnon, he added:  “After all my haste I see I am too late.  God grant I am deceived in my suspicions!”

“It was my poor mother’s money!” cried the lady, after opening her letter, the first lines of which drew forth her exclamation.

A smothered laugh came from the woods, and the young man himself could not help smiling as he saw the lady holding in her hand the bag containing her share in the pillage of her own money.  She herself began to laugh.

“Well, well, marquis, God be praised! this time, at least, you can’t blame me,” she said, smiling.

“Levity in everything! even your remorse!” said the young man.

She colored and looked at the marquis with so genuine a contrition that he was softened.  The abbe politely returned to her, with an equivocal manner, the sum he had received; then he followed the young leader who took the by-way through which he had come.  Before following them the lady made a sign to Marche-a-Terre, who came to her.

“Advance towards Mortagne,” she said to him in a low voice.  “I know that the Blues are constantly sending large sums of money in coin to Alencon to pay for their supplies of war.  If I allow you and your comrades to keep what you captured to-day it is only on condition that you repay it later.  But be careful that the Gars knows nothing of the object of the expedition; he would certainly oppose it; in case of ill-luck, I will pacify him.”

“Madame,” said the marquis, after she had rejoined him and had mounted his horse en croupe, giving her own to the abbe, “my friends in Paris write me to be very careful of what we do; the Republic, they say, is preparing to fight us with spies and treachery.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad plan,” she replied; “they have clever ideas, those fellows.  I could take part in that sort of war and find foes.”

“I don’t doubt it!” cried the marquis.  “Pichegru advises me to be cautious and watchful in my friendships and relations of every kind.  The Republic does me the honor to think me more dangerous than all the Vendeans put together, and counts on certain of my weaknesses to lay hands upon me.”

“Surely you will not distrust me?” she said, striking his heart with the hand by which she held to him.

“Are you a traitor, madame?” he said, bending towards her his forehead, which she kissed.

“In that case,” said the abbe, referring to the news, “Fouche’s police will be more dangerous for us than their battalions of recruits and counter-Chouans.”

“Yes, true enough, father,” replied the marquis.

“Ah! ah!” cried the lady.  “Fouche means to send women against you, does he?  I shall be ready for them,” she added in a deeper tone of voice and after a slight pause.