The Chouans, Honoré de Balzac [best fantasy books to read .TXT] 📗

sigh, "Ah! if you take it that way, I have gone too far not to continue on."

He politely assisted Marie to climb a few more steps rather strangely constructed, and half willingly, half reluctantly, ushered her into a small closet about four feet square, lighted by a lamp hanging from the ceiling. It was easy to see that the miser had made preparations to spend more than one day in this retreat if the events of the civil war compelled him to hide himself.

"Don't brush against that wall, you might whiten yourself," said d'Orgemont suddenly, as he hurriedly put his hand between the girl's shawl and the stones which seemed to have been lately whitewashed. The old man's action produced quite another effect from that he intended. Marie looked about her and saw in one corner a sort of projection, the shape of which forced from her a cry of terror, for she fancied it was that of a human being standing erect and mortared into the wall. D'Orgemont made a violent sign to her to hold her tongue, and his little eyes of a porcelain blue showed as much fear as those of his companion.

"Fool! do you think I murdered him? It is the body of my brother," and the old man gave a lugubrious sigh. "He was the first sworn-in priest; and this was the only asylum where he was safe against the fury of the Chouans and the other priests. He was my elder brother, and he alone had the patience to each me the decimal calculus. Oh! he was a good priest! He was economical and laid by money. It is four years since he died; I don't know what was the matter with him; perhaps it was that priests are so in the habit of kneeling down to pray that he couldn't get accustomed to standing upright here as I do. I walled him up there; _they'd_ have dug him up elsewhere. Some day perhaps I can put him in holy ground, as he used to call it,--poor man, he only took the oath out of fear."

A tear rolled from the hard eyes of the little old man, whose rusty wig suddenly seemed less hideous to the girl, and she turned her eyes respectfully away from his distress. But, in spite of these tender reminiscences, d'Orgemont kept on saying, "Don't go near the wall, you might--"

His eyes never ceased to watch hers, hoping thus to prevent her from examining too closely the walls of the closet, where the close air was scarcely enough to inflate the lungs. Marie succeeded, however, in getting a sufficiently good look in spite of her Argus, and she came to the conclusion that the strange protuberances in the walls were neither more nor less than sacks of coin which the miser had placed there and plastered up.

Old d'Orgemont was now in a state of almost grotesque bewilderment. The pain in his legs, the terror he felt at seeing a human being in the midst of his hoards, could be read in every wrinkle of his face, and yet at the same time his eyes expressed, with unaccustomed fire, a lively emotion excited in him by the presence of his liberator, whose white and rosy cheek invited kisses, and whose velvety black eye sent waves of blood to his heart, so hot that he was much in doubt whether they were signs of life or of death.

"Are you married?" he asked, in a trembling voice.

"No," she said, smiling.

"I have a little something," he continued, heaving a sigh, "though I am not so rich as people think for. A young girl like you must love diamonds, trinkets, carriages, money. I've got all that to give--after my death. Hey! if you will--"

The old man's eyes were so shrewd and betrayed such calculation in this ephemeral love that Mademoiselle de Verneuil, as she shook her head in sign of refusal, felt that his desire to marry her was solely to bury his secret in another himself.

"Money!" she said, with a look of scorn which made him satisfied and angry both; "money is nothing to me. You would be three times as rich as you are, if you had all the gold that I have refused--" she stopped suddenly.

"Don't go near that wall, or--"

"But I hear a voice," she said; "it echoes through that wall,--a voice that is more to me than all your riches."

Before the miser could stop her Marie had laid her hand on a small colored engraving of Louis XV. on horseback; to her amazement it turned, and she saw, in a room beneath her, the Marquis de Montauran, who was loading a musket. The opening, hidden by a little panel on which the picture was gummed, seemed to form some opening in the ceiling of the adjoining chamber, which, no doubt, was the bedroom of the royalist general. D'Orgemont closed the opening with much precaution, and looked at the girl sternly.

"Don't say a word if you love your life. You haven't thrown your grappling-iron on a worthless building. Do you know that the Marquis de Montauran is worth more than one hundred thousand francs a year from lands which have not yet been confiscated? And I read in the Primidi de l'Ille-et-Vilaine a decree of the Consuls putting an end to confiscation. Ha! ha! you'll think the Gars a prettier fellow than ever, won't you? Your eyes are shining like two new louis d'or."

Mademoiselle de Verneuil's face was, indeed, keenly excited when she heard that well-known voice so near her. Since she had been standing there, erect, in the midst as it were of a silver mine, the spring of her mind, held down by these strange events, recovered itself. She seemed to have formed some sinister resolution and to perceive a means of carrying it out.

"There is no return from such contempt," she was saying to herself; "and if he cannot love me, I will kill him--no other woman shall have him."

"No, abbe, no!" cried the young chief, in a loud voice which was heard through the panel, "it must be so."

"Monsieur le marquis," replied the Abbe Gudin, haughtily; "you will scandalize all Brittany if you give that ball at Saint James. It is preaching, not dancing, which will rouse our villagers. Take guns, not fiddles."

"Abbe, you have sense enough to know that it is not in a general assembly of our partisans that I can learn to know these people, or judge of what I may be able to undertake with them. A supper is better for examining faces than all the spying in the world, of which, by the bye, I have a horror; they can be made to talk with glasses in their hand."

Marie quivered, as she listened, and conceived the idea of going to the ball and there avenging herself.

"Do you take me for an idiot with your sermon against dancing?" continued Montauran. "Wouldn't you yourself dance a reed if it would restore your order under its new name of Fathers of the Faith? Don't you know that Bretons come away from the mass and go to dancing? Are you aware that Messieurs Hyde de Neuville and d'Andigne had a conference, five days ago, with the First Consul, on the question of restoring his Majesty Louis XVIII.? Ah, monsieur, the princes are deceived as to the true state of France. The devotions which uphold them are solely those of rank. Abbe, if I have set my feet in blood, at least I will not go into it to my middle without full knowledge of what I do. I am devoted to the king, but not to four hot-heads, not to a man crippled with debt like Rifoel, not to 'chauffeurs,' not to--"

"Say frankly, monsieur, not to abbes who force contributions on the highway to carry on the war," retorted the Abbe Gudin.

"Why should I not say it?" replied the marquis, sharply; "and I'll say, further, that the great and heroic days of La Vendee are over."

"Monsieur le marquis, we can perform miracles without you."

"Yes, like that of Marie Lambrequin, whom I hear you have brought to life," said the marquis, smiling. "Come, come, let us have no rancor, abbe. I know that you run all risks and would shoot a Blue as readily as you say an _oremus_. God willing, I hope to make you assist with a mitre on your head at the king's coronation."

This last remark must have had some magic power, for the click of a musket was heard as the abbe exclaimed, "I have fifty cartridges in my pocket, monsieur le marquis, and my life is the king's."

"He's a debtor of mine," whispered the usurer to Marie. "I don't mean the five or six hundred crowns he has borrowed, but a debt of blood which I hope to make him pay. He can never suffer as much evil as I wish him, the damned Jesuit! He swore the death of my brother, and raised the country against him. Why? Because the poor man was afraid of the new laws." Then, after applying his ear to another part of his hiding-place, he added, "They are all decamping, those brigands. I suppose they are going to do some other miracle elsewhere. I only hope they won't bid me good-bye as they did the last time, by setting fire to my house."

After the lapse of about half an hour, during which time the usurer and Mademoiselle de Verneuil looked at each other as if they were studying a picture, the coarse, gruff voice of Galope-Chopine was heard saying, in a muffled tone: "There's no longer any danger, Monsieur d'Orgemont. But this time, you must allow that I have earned my thirty crowns."

"My dear," said the miser to Marie, "swear to shut your eyes."

Mademoiselle de Verneuil placed one hand over her eyelids; but for greater security d'Orgemont blew out the lamp, took his liberator by the hand, and helped her to make seven or eight steps along a difficult passage. At the end of some minutes he gently removed her hand, and she found herself in the very room the Marquis de Montauran had just quitted, and which was, in fact, the miser's own bedroom.

"My dear girl," said the old man, "you can safely go now. Don't look about you that way. I dare say you have no money with you. Here are ten crowns; they are a little shaved, but they'll pass. When you leave the garden you will see a path that leads straight to the town, or, as they say now, the district. But the Chouans will be at Fougeres, and it is to be presumed that you can't get back there at once. You may want some safe place to hide in. Remember what I say to you, but don't make use of it unless in some great emergency. You will see on the road which leads to Nid-aux-Crocs through the Val de Gibarry, a farmhouse belonging to Cibot--otherwise called Galope-Chopine. Go in, and say to his wife: 'Good-day, Becaniere,' and Barbette will hide you. If Galope-Chopine discovers you he will either take you for the ghost, if it is dark, or ten crowns will master him if it is light. Adieu, our account is squared. But if you choose," he added, waving his hand about him, "all this is yours."

Mademoiselle de Verneuil gave the strange old man a look of thanks, and succeeded in extracting a sigh from him, expressing a variety of emotions.

"You will of course return me my ten crowns; and