Honore de Balzac (11 page)

"Through the house of Breintmayer of Strasburg?" asked the countess.

"Yes, mademoiselle; the correspondents of Monsieur Girel of Troyes, a
royalist who, like me, made himself for good reasons, a Jacobin. The
paper which your farmer picked up one evening and which I forced him
to surrender, related to the affair and would have compromised your
cousins. My life no longer belongs to me, but to them, you understand. I
could not buy in Gondreville. In my position, I should have lost my head
had the authorities known I had the money. I preferred to wait and
buy it later. But that scoundrel of a Marion was the slave of another
scoundrel, Malin. All the same, Gondreville shall once more belong
to its rightful masters. That's my affair. Four hours ago I had Malin
sighted by my gun; ha! he was almost gone then! Were he dead, the
property would be sold and you could have bought it. In case of my death
my wife would have brought you a letter which would have given you the
means of buying it. But I overheard that villain telling his accomplice
Grevin—another scoundrel like himself—that the Marquis and his brother
were conspiring against the First Consul, that they were here in the
neighborhood, and that he meant to give them up and get rid of them so
as to keep Gondreville in peace. I myself saw the police spies; I laid
aside my gun, and I have lost no time in coming here, thinking that you
must be the one to know best how to warn the young men. That's the whole
of it."

"You are worthy to be a noble," said Laurence, offering her hand to
Michu, who tried to kneel and kiss it. She saw his motion and prevented
it, saying: "Stand up!" in a tone of voice and with a look which made
him amends for all the scorn of the last twelve years.

"You reward me as though I had done all that remains for me to do," he
said. "But don't you hear them, those huzzars of the guillotine? Let us
go elsewhere."

He took the mare's bridle, and led her a little distance.

"Think only of sitting firm," he said, "and of saving your head from the
branches of the trees which might strike you in the face."

Then he mounted his own horse and guided the young girl for half an
hour at full gallop; making turns and half turns, and striking into
wood-paths, so as to confuse their traces, until they reached a spot
where he pulled up.

"I don't know where I am," said the countess looking about her,—"I, who
know the forest as well as you do."

"We are in the heart of it," he replied. "Two gendarmes are after us,
but we are quite safe."

The picturesque spot to which the bailiff had guided Laurence was
destined to be so fatal to the principal personages of this drama, and
to Michu himself, that it becomes our duty, as an historian, to describe
it. The scene became, as we shall see hereafter, one of noted interest
in the judiciary annals of the Empire.

The forest of Nodesme belonged to the monastery of Notre-Dame. That
monastery, seized, sacked, and demolished, had disappeared entirely,
monks and property. The forest, an object of much cupidity, was taken
into the domain of the Comtes de Champagne, who mortgaged it later and
allowed it to be sold. In the course of six centuries nature covered
its ruins with her rich and vigorous green mantle, and effaced them
so thoroughly that the existence of one of the finest convents was no
longer even indicated except by a slight eminence shaded by noble trees
and circled by thick, impenetrable shrubbery, which, since 1794, Michu
had taken great pains to make still more impenetrable by planting the
thorny acacia in all the slight openings between the bushes. A pond was
at the foot of the eminence and showed the existence of a hidden stream
which no doubt determined in former days the site of the monastery.
The late owner of the title to the forest of Nodesme was the first
to recognize the etymology of the name, which dated back for eight
centuries, and to discover that at one time a monastery had existed in
the heart of the forest. When the first rumblings of the thunder of the
Revolution were heard, the Marquis de Simeuse, who had been forced to
look into his title by a lawsuit and so learned the above facts as
it were by chance, began, with a secret intention not difficult to
conceive, to search for some remains of the former monastery. The
keeper, Michu, to whom the forest was well known, helped his master
in the search, and it was his sagacity as a forester which led to the
discovery of the site. Observing the trend of the five chief roads of
the forest, some of which were now effaced, he saw that they all ended
either at the little eminence or by the pond at the foot of it, to which
points travellers from Troyes, from the valley of Arcis and that of
Cinq-Cygne, and from Bar-sur-Aube doubtless came. The marquis wished
to excavate the hillock but he dared not employ the people of the
neighborhood. Pressed by circumstances, he abandoned the intention,
leaving in Michu's mind a strong conviction that the eminence had either
the treasure or the foundations of the former abbey. He continued,
all alone, this archaeological enterprise; he sounded the earth and
discovered a hollowness on the level of the pond between two trees, at
the foot of the only craggy part of the hillock.

One fine night he came to the place armed with a pickaxe, and by the
sweat of his brow uncovered a succession of cellars, which were entered
by a flight of stone steps. The pond, which was three feet deep in the
middle, formed a sort of dipper, the handle of which seemed to come from
the little eminence, and went far to prove that a spring had once issued
from the crags, and was now lost by infiltration through the forest. The
marshy shores of the pond, covered with aquatic trees, alders, willow,
and ash, were the terminus of all the wood-paths, the remains of former
roads and forest by-ways, now abandoned. The water, flowing from a
spring, though apparently stagnant, was covered with large-leaved
plants and cresses, which gave it a perfectly green surface almost
indistinguishable from the shores, which were covered with fine close
herbage. The place is too far from human habitations for any animal,
unless a wild one, to come there. Convinced that no game was in the
marsh and repelled by the craggy sides of the hills, keepers and hunters
had never explored or visited this nook, which belonged to a part of the
forest where the timber had not been cut for many years and which Michu
meant to keep in its full growth when the time came round to fell it.

At the further end of the first cellar was a vaulted chamber, clean
and dry, built with hewn stone, a sort of convent dungeon, such as they
called in monastic days the
in pace
. The salubrity of the chamber and
the preservation of this part of the staircase and of the vaults were
explained by the presence of the spring, which had been enclosed at some
time by a wall of extraordinary thickness built in brick and cement
like those of the Romans, and received all the waters. Michu closed the
entrance to this retreat with large stones; then, to keep the secret of
it to himself and make it impenetrable to others, he made a rule never
to enter it except from the wooded height above, by clambering down the
crag instead of approaching it from the pond.

Just as the fugitives arrived, the moon was casting her beautiful
silvery light on the aged tree-tops above the crag, and flickering on
the splendid foliage at the corners of the several paths, all of which
ended here, some with one tree, some with a group of trees. On all
sides the eye was irresistibly led along their vanishing perspectives,
following the curve of a wood-path or the solemn stretch of a forest
glade flanked by a wall of verdure that was nearly black. The moonlight,
filtering through the branches of the crossways, made the lonely,
tranquil waters, where they peeped between the crosses and the
lily-pads, sparkle like diamonds. The croaking of the frogs broke the
deep silence of this beautiful forest-nook, the wild odors of which
incited the soul to thoughts of liberty.

"Are we safe?" said the countess to Michu.

"Yes, mademoiselle. But we have each some work to do. Do you go and
fasten our horses to the trees at the top of the little hill; tie a
handkerchief round the mouth of each of them," he said, giving her his
cravat; "your beast and mine are both intelligent, they will understand
they are not to neigh. When you have done that, come down the crag
directly above the pond; but don't let your habit catch anywhere. You
will find me below."

While the countess hid the horses and tied and gagged them, Michu
removed the stones and opened the entrance to the caverns. The countess,
who thought she knew the forest by heart, was amazed when she descended
into the vaulted chambers. Michu replaced the stones above them with the
dexterity of a mason. As he finished, the sound of horses' feet and the
voices of the gendarmes echoed in the darkness; but he quietly struck
a match, lighted a resinous bit of wood and led the countess to the
in
pace
, where there was still a piece of the candle with which he had
first explored the caves. An iron door of some thickness, eaten in
several places by rust, had been put in good order by the bailiff, and
could be fastened securely by bars slipping into holes in the wall on
either side of it. The countess, half dead with fatigue, sat down on a
stone bench, above which there still remained an iron ring, the staple
of which was embedded in the masonry.

"We have a salon to converse in," said Michu. "The gendarmes may prowl
as much as they like; the worst they could do would be to take our
horses."

"If they do that," said Laurence, "it would be the death of my cousins
and the Messieurs d'Hauteserre. Tell me now, what do you know?"

Michu related what he had overheard Malin say to Grevin.

"They are already on the road to Paris; they were to enter it to-morrow
morning," said the countess when he had finished.

"Lost!" exclaimed Michu. "All persons entering or leaving the barriers
are examined. Malin has strong reasons to let my masters compromise
themselves; he is seeking to get them killed out of his way."

"And I, who don't know anything of the general plan of the affair,"
cried Laurence, "how can I warn Georges, Riviere, and Moreau? Where are
they?—However, let us think only of my cousins and the d'Hauteserres;
you must catch up with them, no matter what it costs."

"The telegraph goes faster than the best horse," said Michu; "and of
all the nobles concerned in this conspiracy your cousins are the closest
watched. If I can find them, they must be hidden here and kept here till
the affair is over. Their poor father may have had a foreboding when he
set me to search for this hiding-place; perhaps he felt that his sons
would be saved here."

"My mare is from the stables of the Comte d'Artois,—she is the daughter
of his finest English horse," said Laurence; "but she has already gone
sixty miles, she would drop dead before you reached them."

"Mine is in good condition," replied Michu; "and if you did sixty miles
I shall have only thirty to do."

"Nearer forty," she said, "they have been walking since dark. You will
overtake them beyond Lagny, at Coupvrai, where they expected to be at
daybreak. They are disguised as sailors, and will enter Paris by the
river on some vessel. This," she added, taking half of her mother's
wedding-ring from her finger, "is the only thing which will make them
trust you; they have the other half. The keeper of Couvrai is the father
of one of their soldiers; he has hidden them tonight in a hut in the
forest deserted by charcoal-burners. They are eight in all, Messieurs
d'Hauteserre and four others are with my cousins."

"Mademoiselle, no one is looking for the others! let them save
themselves as they can; we must think only of the Messieurs de Simeuse.
It is enough just to warn the rest."

"What! abandon the Hauteserres? never!" she said. "They must all perish
or be saved together!"

"Only petty noblemen!" remarked Michu.

"They are only chevaliers, I know that," she replied, "but they are
related to the Cinq-Cygne and Simeuse blood. Save them all, and advise
them how best to regain this forest."

"The gendarmes are here,—don't you hear them? they are holding a
council of war."

"Well, you have twice had luck to-night; go! bring my cousins here and
hide them in these vaults; they'll be safe from all pursuit—Alas! I am
good for nothing!" she cried, with rage; "I should be only a beacon to
light the enemy—but the police will never imagine that my cousins are
in the forest if they see me at my ease. So the question resolves itself
into this: how can we get five good horses to bring them in six hours
from Lagny to the forest,—five horses to be killed and hidden in some
thicket."

"And the money?" said Michu, who was thinking deeply as he listened to
the young countess.

"I gave my cousins a hundred louis this evening," she replied.

"I'll answer for them!" cried Michu. "But once hidden here you must not
attempt to see them. My wife, or the little one, shall bring them
food twice a week. But, as I can't be sure of what may happen to me,
remember, mademoiselle, in case of trouble, that the main beam in my
hay-loft has been bored with an auger. In the hole, which is plugged
with a bit of wood, you will find a plan showing how to reach this spot.
The trees which you will find marked with a red dot on the plan have a
black mark at their foot close to the earth. Each of these trees is a
sign-post. At the foot of the third old oak which stands to the left
of each sign-post, two feet in front of it and buried seven feet in the
ground, you will find a large metal tube; in each tube are one
hundred thousand francs in gold. These eleven trees—there are only
eleven—contain the whole fortune of the Simeuse brothers, now that
Gondreville has been taken from them."