Honore de Balzac (10 page)

"The surest way to seize them all is to warn them," said Peyrade to
Corentin. "At the moment when they are well frightened and are trying to
save their papers or to escape we'll fall upon them like a thunderbolt.
The gendarmes surround the chateau now and are as good as a net. We
sha'n't lose one of them!"

"You had better send the mayor to warn them," said the corporal. "He
is friendly to them and wouldn't like to see them harmed; they won't
distrust him."

Just as Goulard was preparing to go to bed, Corentin, who stopped
the vehicle in a little wood, went to his house and told him,
confidentially, that in a few moments an emissary from the government
would require him to enter the chateau of Cinq-Cygne and arrest
the brothers d'Hauteserre and Simeuse; and in case they had already
disappeared he would have to ascertain if they had slept there the
night before, search Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne's papers, and, possibly,
arrest both the masters and servants of the household.

"Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne," said Corentin, "is undoubtedly protected
by some great personages, for I have received private orders to warn
her of this visit, and to do all I can to save her without compromising
myself. Once on the ground, I shall no longer be able to do so, for I am
not alone; go to the chateau yourself and warn them."

The mayor's visit at that time of night was all the more bewildering to
the card-players when they saw the agitation of his face.

"Where is the countess?" were his first words.

"She has gone to bed," said Madame d'Hauteserre.

The mayor, incredulous, listened to noises that were heard on the upper
floor.

"What is the matter with you, Goulard?" said Monsieur d'Hauteserre.

Goulard was dumb with surprise as he noted the tranquil ease of the
faces about him. Observing the peaceful and innocent game of cards which
he had thus interrupted, he was unable to imagine what the Parisian
police meant by their suspicions.

At that moment Laurence, kneeling in her oratory, was praying fervently
for the success of the conspiracy. She prayed to God to send help and
succor to the murderers of Bonaparte. She implored Him ardently to
destroy that fatal being. The fanaticism of Harmodius, Judith, Jacques
Clement, Ankarstroem, of Charlotte Corday and Limoelan, inspired this
pure and virgin spirit. Catherine was preparing the bed, Gothard was
closing the blinds, when Marthe Michu coming under the windows flung a
pebble on the glass and was seen at once.

"Mademoiselle, here's some one," said Gothard, seeing a woman.

"Hush!" said Marthe, in a low voice. "Come down and speak to me."

Gothard was in the garden in less time than a bird would have taken to
fly down from a tree.

"In a minute the chateau will be surrounded by the gendarmerie. Saddle
mademoiselle's horse without making any noise and take it down through
the breach in the moat between the stables and this tower."

Marthe quivered when she saw Laurence, who had followed Gothard,
standing beside her.

"What is it?" asked Laurence, quietly.

"The conspiracy against the First Consul is discovered," replied Marthe,
in a whisper. "My husband, who seeks to save your two cousins, sends me
to ask you to come and speak to him."

Laurence drew back and looked at Marthe. "Who are you?" she said.

"Marthe Michu."

"I do not know what you want of me," replied the countess, coldly.

"Take care, you will kill them. Come with me, I implore you in the
Simeuse name," said Marthe, clasping her hands and stretching them
towards Laurence. "Have you papers here which may compromise you? If so,
destroy them. From the heights over there my husband has just seen the
silver-laced hats and the muskets of the gendarmerie."

Gothard had already clambered to the hay-loft and seen the same sight;
he heard in the stillness of the evening the sound of their horses'
hoofs. Down he slipped into the stable and saddled his mistress's mare,
whose feet Catherine, at a word from the lad, muffled in linen.

"Where am I to go?" said Laurence to Marthe, whose look and language
bore the unmistakable signs of sincerity.

"Through the breach," she replied; "my noble husband is there. You shall
learn the value of a 'Judas'!"

Catherine went quickly into the salon, picked up the hat, veil, whip,
and gloves of her mistress, and disappeared. This sudden apparition and
action were so striking a commentary on the mayor's inquiry that
Madame d'Hauteserre and the abbe exchanged glances which contained the
melancholy thought: "Farewell to all our peace! Laurence is conspiring;
she will be the death of her cousins."

"But what do you really mean?" said Monsieur d'Hauteserre to the mayor.

"The chateau is surrounded. You are about to receive a domiciliary
visit. If your sons are here tell them to escape, and the Simeuse
brothers too, if they are with them."

"My sons!" exclaimed Madame d'Hauteserre, stupefied.

"We have seen no one," said Monsieur d'Hauteserre.

"So much the better," said Goulard; "but I care too much for the
Cinq-Cygne and Simeuse families to let any harm come to them. Listen to
me. If you have any compromising papers—"

"Papers!" repeated the old gentleman.

"Yes, if you have any, burn them at once," said the mayor. "I'll go and
amuse the police agents."

Goulard, whose object was to run with the royalist hare and hold with
the republican hounds, left the room; at that moment the dogs barked
violently.

"There is no longer time," said the abbe, "here they come! But who is to
warn the countess? Where is she?"

"Catherine didn't come for her hat and whip to make relics of them,"
remarked Mademoiselle Goujet.

Goulard tried to detain the two agents for a few moments, assuring them
of the perfect ignorance of the family at Cinq-Cygne.

"You don't know these people!" said Peyrade, laughing at him.

The two agents, insinuatingly dangerous, entered the house at once,
followed by the corporal from Arcis and one gendarme. The sight of them
paralyzed the peaceful card-players, who kept their seats at the table,
terrified by such a display of force. The noise produced by a dozen
gendarmes whose horses were stamping on the terrace, was heard without.

"I do not see Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne," said Corentin.

"She is probably asleep in her bedroom," said Monsieur d'Hauteserre.

"Come with me, ladies," said Corentin, turning to pass through the
ante-chamber and up the staircase, followed by Mademoiselle Goujet and
Madame d'Hauteserre. "Rely upon me," he whispered to the old lady. "I am
in your interests. I sent the mayor to warn you. Distrust my colleague
and look to me. I can save every one of you."

"But what is it all about?" said Mademoiselle Goujet.

"A matter of life and death; you must know that," replied Corentin.

Madame d'Hauteserre fainted. To Mademoiselle Goujet's great astonishment
and Corentin's disappointment, Laurence's room was empty. Certain that
no one could have escaped from the park or the chateau, for all the
issues were guarded, Corentin stationed a gendarme in every room and
ordered others to search the farm buildings, stables, and sheds. Then he
returned to the salon, where Durieu and his wife and the other servants
had rushed in the wildest excitement. Peyrade was studying their faces
with his little blue eye, cold and calm in the midst of the uproar. Just
as Corentin reappeared alone (Mademoiselle Goujet remaining behind to
take care of Madame d'Hauteserre) the tramp of horses was heard, and
presently the sound of a child's weeping. The horses entered by the
small gate; and the general suspense was put an end to by a corporal
appearing at the door of the salon pushing Gothard, whose hands were
tied, and Catherine whom he led to the agents.

"Here are some prisoners," he said; "that little scamp was escaping on
horseback."

"Fool!" said Corentin, in his ear, "why didn't you let him alone? You
could have found out something by following him."

Gothard had chosen to burst into tears and behave like an idiot.
Catherine took an attitude of artless innocence which made the old agent
reflective. The pupil of Lenoir, after considering the two prisoners
carefully, and noting the vacant air of the old gentleman whom he took
to be sly, the intelligent eye of the abbe who was still fingering the
cards, and the utter stupefaction of the servants and Durieu, approached
Corentin and whispered in his ear, "We are not dealing with ninnies."

Corentin answered with a look at the card-table; then he added, "They
were playing at boston! Mademoiselle's bed was just being made for the
night; she escaped in a hurry; it is a regular surprise; we shall catch
them."

A breach has always a cause and a purpose. Here is the explanation of
how the one which led from the tower called that of Mademoiselle and the
stables came to be made. After his installation as Laurence's guardian
at Cinq-Cygne old d'Hauteserre converted a long ravine, through which
the water of the forest flowed into the moat, into a roadway between two
tracts of uncultivated land belonging to the chateau, by merely planting
out in it about a hundred walnut trees which he found ready in the
nursery. In eleven years these trees had grown and branched so as to
nearly cover the road, hidden already by steep banks, which ran into a
little wood of thirty acres recently purchased. When the chateau had its
full complement of inhabitants they all preferred to take this covered
way through the breach to the main road which skirted the park walls and
led to the farm, rather than go round by the entrance. By dint of thus
using it the breach in the sides of the moat had gradually been widened
on both sides, with all the less scruple because in this nineteenth
century of ours moats are no longer of the slightest use, and Laurence's
guardian had often talked of putting this one to some other purpose. The
constant crumbling away of the earth and stones and gravel had ended by
filling up the ditch, so that only after heavy rains was the causeway
thus constructed covered. But the bank was still so steep that it was
difficult to make a horse descend it, and even more difficult to get him
up upon the main road. Horses, however, seem in times of peril to share
their masters' thought.

While the young countess was hesitating to follow Marthe, and asking
explanations, Michu, from his vantage-ground watched the closing in of
the gendarmes and understood their plan. He grew desperate as time
went by and the countess did not come to him. A squad of gendarmes were
marching along the park wall and stationing themselves as sentinels,
each man being near enough to communicate with those on either side of
them, by voice and eye. Michu, lying flat on his stomach, his ear to
earth, gauged, like a red Indian, by the strength of the sounds the time
that remained to him.

"I came too late!" he said to himself. "Violette shall pay dear for
this! what a time it took to make him drunk! What can be done?"

He heard the detachment that was coming through the forest reach the
iron gates and turn into the main road, where before long it would meet
the squad coming up from the other direction.

"Still five or six minutes!" he said.

At that instant the countess appeared. Michu took her with a firm hand
and pushed her into the covered way.

"Keep straight before you! Lead her to where my horse is," he said to
his wife, "and remember that gendarmes have ears."

Seeing Catherine, who carried the hat and whip, and Gothard leading the
mare, the man, keen-witted in presence of danger, bethought himself of
playing the gendarmes a trick as useful as the one he had just played
Violette. Gothard had forced the mare to mount the bank.

"Her feet muffled! I thank thee, boy," exclaimed the bailiff.

Michu let the mare follow her mistress and took the hat, gloves, and
whip from Catherine.

"You have sense, boy, you'll understand me," he said. "Force your own
horse up here, jump on him, and draw the gendarmes after you across the
fields towards the farm; get the whole squad to follow you—And you,"
he added to Catherine, "there are other gendarmes coming up on the road
from Cinq-Cygne to Gondreville; run in the opposite direction to the one
Gothard takes, and draw them towards the forest. Manage so that we shall
not be interfered with in the covered way."

Catherine and the boy, who were destined to give in this affair such
remarkable proofs of intelligence, executed the manoeuvre in a way to
make both detachments of gendarmes believe that they held the game. The
dim light of the moon prevented the pursuers from distinguishing the
figure, clothing, sex, or number of those they followed. The pursuit was
based on the maxim, "Always arrest those who are escaping,"—the folly
of which saying was, as we have seen, energetically declared by Corentin
to the corporal in command. Michu, counting on this instinct of
the gendarmes, was able to reach the forest a few moments after the
countess, whom Marthe had guided to the appointed place.

"Go home now," he said to Marthe. "The forest is watched and it is
dangerous to remain here. We need all our freedom."

Michu unfastened his horse and asked the countess to follow him.

"I shall not go a step further," said Laurence, "unless you give me some
proof of the interest you seem to have in us—for, after all, you are
Michu."

"Mademoiselle," he answered, in a gentle voice; "the part I am playing
can be explained to you in two words. I am, unknown to the Marquis de
Simeuse and his brother, the guardian of their property. On this subject
I received the last instructions of their late father and their dear
mother, my protectress. I have played the part of a virulent Jacobin to
serve my dear young masters. Unhappily, I began this course too late;
I could not save their parents." Here, Michu's voice broke down. "Since
the young men emigrated I have sent them regularly the sums they needed
to live upon."