The Chouans, Honoré de Balzac [red queen ebook txt] 📗

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