Honore de Balzac (9 page)

"She sleeps," said the abbe. "I have never seen her so wearied."

"Durieu tells me her mare is almost foundered," remarked Madame
d'Hauteserre. "Her gun has not been fired; the breech is clean; she has
evidently not hunted."

"Oh! that's neither here nor there," said the abbe.

"Bah?" cried Mademoiselle Goujet; "when I was twenty-three and saw I
should be an old maid all my life, I rushed about and fatigued myself
in a dozen ways. I understand how the countess can scour the country for
hours without thinking of the game. It is nearly twelve years now since
she has seen her cousins, and you know she loves them. Well, if I
were she, if I were as young and pretty, I'd make a straight line for
Germany! Poor darling, perhaps she is thinking of the frontier, and that
may be the reason why she rides so far towards it."

"You are rather giddy, Mademoiselle Goujet," said the abbe, smiling.

"Not at all," she replied. "I see you all uneasy about the goings on of
a young girl, and I am explaining them to you."

"Her cousins will submit and return soon; they will all be rich, and she
will end by calming down," said old d'Hauteserre.

"God grant it!" said his wife, taking out a gold snuff-box which had
again seen the light under the Consulate.

"There is something stirring in the neighborhood," remarked Monsieur
d'Hauteserre to the abbe. "Malin has been two days at Gondreville."

"Malin!" cried Laurence, roused by the name, though her sleep was sound.

"Yes," replied the abbe, "but he leaves to-night; everybody is
conjecturing the motive of this hasty visit."

"That man," said Laurence, "is the evil genius of our two houses."

The countess had been dreaming of her cousins and the young Hauteserres;
she saw them in peril. Her beautiful eyes grew fixed and glassy as her
mind thus warned dwelled on the dangers they were about to incur in
Paris. She rose suddenly and went to her bedroom without speaking. Her
bedroom was the best in the house; next came a dressing-room and an
oratory, in the tower which faced towards the forest. Soon after she
had left the salon the dogs barked, the bell of the small gate rang,
and Durieu rushed into the salon with a frightened face. "Here is the
mayor!" he said. "Something is the matter."

The mayor, a former huntsman of the house of Simeuse, came occasionally
to the chateau, where the d'Hauteserres showed him out of policy, a
deference to which he attached great value. His name was Goulard; he had
married a rich woman of Troyes, whose property, which was in the commune
of Cinq-Cygne, he had further increased by the purchase of a fine abbey
and its lands, in which he invested all his savings. The vast abbey of
Val-des-Preux, standing about a mile from the chateau, he had turned
into a dwelling that was almost as splendid as Gondreville; in it his
wife and he were now living like rats in a cathedral. "Ah! Goulard, you
have been greedy," Mademoiselle had said to him with a laugh the first
time she received him at Cinq-Cygne. Though greatly attached to the
Revolution and coldly received by the countess, the mayor always felt
himself bound by ties of respect to the Cinq-Cygne and Simeuse families.
He therefore shut his eyes to what went on at the chateau. He called
shutting his eyes not seeing the portraits of Louis XVI., Marie
Antoinette, and the royal children, and those of Monsieur, the Comte
d'Artois, Cazales and Charlotte Corday, which filled the various panels
of the salon; not resenting either the wishes freely expressed in his
presence for the ruin of the Republic, or the ridicule flung at the five
directors and all the other governmental combinations of that time.
The position of this man, who, like many parvenus, having once made his
fortune, reverted to his early faith in the old families, and sought to
attach himself to them, was now being made use of by the two members of
the Paris police whose profession had been so quickly guessed by Michu,
and who, before going to Gondreville had reconnoitred the neighborhood.

The worthy described as the depositary of the best traditions of the old
police, and Corentin phoenix of spies, were in fact employed on a secret
mission. Malin was not mistaken in attributing a double purpose to those
stars of tragic farces. But, before seeing them at work, it is advisable
to show the head of which they were the arms. When Bonaparte became
First Consul he found Fouche at the head of the police. The Revolution
had frankly and with good reason made the management of the police into
a special ministry. But after his return from Marengo, Bonaparte created
the prefecture of police, placed Dubois in charge of it, and called
Fouche to the Council of State, naming as his successor in the ministry
a conventional named Cochon, since known as Comte de Lapparent. Fouche,
who considered the ministry of police as by far the most important in a
government of broad ideas and fixed policy, saw disgrace or at any
rate distrust in the change. After Napoleon became aware of the immense
superiority of this great statesman, as evidenced in the affair of the
infernal machine and in the conspiracy with which we are now concerned,
he returned him to the ministry of police. Later still, becoming alarmed
at the powers Fouche displayed during his absence at the time of the
affair at Walcheren, the Emperor gave that ministry to the Duc de
Rovigo, and sent Fouche (Duc d'Otrante) as governor to the Illyrian
provinces,—an appointment which was in fact an exile.

The singular genius of this man, Fouche, which had the power of
inspiring Napoleon with a sort of fear, did not reveal itself all at
once. This obscure conventional, one of the most extraordinary men
of our time, and the most misjudged, was moulded, as it were, by the
whirlwind of events. He raised himself under the Directory to the height
from which men of genius could see the future and judge the past, and
then, like certain commonplace actors who suddenly become admirable
through the light of some vivid perception, he gave proofs of his
dexterity during the rapid revolution of the 18th Brumaire. This man
with the pallid face, educated to monastic dissimulation, possessing
the secrets of the
montagnards
to whom he belonged, and those of the
royalists to whom he ended by belonging, had slowly and silently studied
the men, the events, and the interests on the political stage; he
penetrated Napoleon's secrets, he gave him useful counsel and precious
information. Satisfied with having proven his capacity and his
usefulness, Fouche was careful not to disclose himself completely. He
wished to remain at the head of affairs, but the Emperor's restless
uneasiness about him cost him his place.

The ingratitude or rather the distrust shown by Napoleon after the
affair at Walcheren, gives the key-note to the character of a man who,
unfortunately for himself, was not a great
seigneur
, and whose conduct
was modelled on that of Talleyrand. At that time neither his former
colleagues nor his present ones had suspected the amplitude of his
genius, which was purely ministerial, essentially governmental, just
in its forecasts and incredibly sagacious. To-day, every impartial
historian perceives that Napoleon's inordinate self-love was among
the chief causes of his fall, a punishment which cruelly expiated his
wrong-doing. In the mind of that distrustful sovereign lurked a constant
jealousy for his own rising power, which influenced all his actions, and
caused his secret hatred for men of talent, the precious legacy of the
Revolution, with whom he might have made himself a cabinet capable of
being a true repository for his thoughts. Talleyrand and Fouche were not
the only ones who gave him umbrage. The misfortune of usurpers is that
those who have given them a crown are as much their enemies as those
from whom they snatch it. Napoleon's sovereignty was never convincingly
felt by those who were once his superiors or his equals, nor by those
who still held to the doctrine of rights; none of them regarded their
oath of allegiance to him as binding.

Malin, an inferior man, incapable of comprehending Fouche's hidden
genius, or of distrusting his own perceptions, burned himself, like
a moth in a candle, by asking him confidentially to send agents to
Gondreville, where, he said, he hoped to obtain certain clues to the
conspiracy. Fouche, without alarming his friend by any questions,
asked himself why Malin was going to Gondreville, and why he did not
immediately and without loss of time, give the information he already
possessed. The ex-Oratorian, fed from his youth up on trickery, and well
aware of the double part played by a good many of the conventionals,
said to himself: "From whom is Malin likely to obtain information when
we ourselves know little or nothing?" Fouche concluded therefore that
there was some either latent or prospective collusion, and took care to
say nothing about it to the First Consul. He preferred to make Malin
his instrument rather than destroy him. It was Fouche's habit to keep to
himself a good part of the secrets he detected, and he thus obtained
for his own purposes a power over those concerned which was even greater
than that of Bonaparte. This duplicity was one of the Emperor's charges
against his minister.

Fouche knew of the swindling transaction by which Malin became possessed
of Gondreville and which led him to keep his eyes so anxiously on the
Simeuse brothers. These gentlemen were now serving in the army of Conde;
Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne was their cousin; possibly they were in
her neighborhood, and were sharers in the conspiracy; if so, it would
implicate the house of Conde to which they were devoted. Talleyrand
and Fouche were bent on casting light into this dark corner of the
conspiracy of 1803. All these considerations Fouche saw at a glance,
rapidly and with great clearness. But between Malin, Talleyrand,
and himself there were strong ties which forced him to the utmost
circumspection, and made him anxious to know the exact state of things
within the walls of Gondreville. Corentin was unreservedly attached to
Fouche, just as Monsieur de la Besnardiere was to Talleyrand, Gentz to
Monsieur de Metternich, Dundas to Pitt, Duroc to Napoleon, Chavigny to
Cardinal Richelieu. Corentin was not the counsellor of his master, but
his instrument, the Tristan to this Louis XI. of low estate. Fouche had
kept him in the ministry of the police when he himself left it, so as to
still keep an eye and a finger in it. It was said that Corentin belonged
to Fouche by some unavowed relationship, for he rewarded him lavishly
after every service. Corentin had a friend in Peyrade, the old pupil of
the last lieutenant of police; but he kept a good many of his secrets
from him. Fouche gave Corentin an order to explore the chateau of
Gondreville, to get the plan of it into his memory, and to know every
hiding-place within its walls.

"We may be obliged to return there," said the ex-minister, precisely
as Napoleon told his lieutenants to explore the field of Austerlitz on
which he intended to fall back.

Corentin was also to study Malin's conduct, discover what influence
he had in the neighborhood, and observe the men he employed. Fouche
regarded it as certain that the Simeuse brothers were in that part of
the country. By cautiously watching the two officers, who were closely
allied with the Prince de Conde, Peyrade and Corentin could obtain
precious light on the ramifications of the conspiracy beyond the Rhine.
In any case, however, Corentin received the means, the orders, and
the agents, to surround the chateau of Cinq-Cygne and watch the whole
region, from the forest of Nodesme into Paris. Fouche insisted on the
utmost caution, and would only allow a domiciliary visit to Cinq-Cygne
in case Malin gave them positive information which made it necessary. By
way of instructions he explained to Corentin the otherwise inexplicable
personality of Michu, who had been watched by the police for the last
three years. Corentin's idea was that of his master: "Malin knows all
about the conspiracy—But," he added to himself, "perhaps Fouche does,
too; who knows?"

Corentin, having started for Troyes before Malin, had made arrangements
with the commandant of the gendarmerie in that town, who picked out a
number of his most intelligent men and placed them under orders of an
able captain. Corentin chose Gondreville as the place of rendezvous,
and directed the captain to send some of his men at night in four
detachments to different points of the valley of Cinq-Cygne at
sufficient distance from each other to cause no alarm. These four
pickets were to form a square and close in around the chateau of
Cinq-Cygne. By leaving Corentin alone at Gondreville during his
consultation in the fields with Grevin, Malin had enabled him to fulfil
part of Fouche's orders and explore the house. When the Councillor of
State returned home he told Corentin so positively that the d'Hauteserre
and Simeuse brothers were in the neighborhood and probably at Cinq-Cygne
that the two agents despatched the captain with the rest of his company,
who, fortunately for the four gentlemen, crossed the forest on their
way to the chateau during the time when Michu was making Violette drunk.
Malin had told Corentin and Peyrade of the escape he had from lying in
wait for him. The two agents related the incident of the gun they
had seen the bailiff load, and Grevin had sent Violette to obtain
information as to what was going on at Michu's house. Corentin advised
the notary to take Malin to his own house in the little town of Arcis,
and let him sleep there as a measure of precaution. At the moment when
Michu and his wife were rushing through the forest on their way to
Cinq-Cygne, Peyrade and Corentin were starting from Gondreville for
Cinq-Cygne in a shabby wicker carriage, drawn by one post-horse driven
by the corporal of Arcis, one of the shrewdest men in the Legion, whom
the commandant at Troyes advised them to employ.