Александр Дюма
The Last Vendée
XXXIV.
COURTIN FINGERS AT LAST HIS FIFTY THOUSAND FRANCS
Petit-Pierre's letter to Bertha had not told Courtin much, except that Petit-Pierre was in Nantes and awaited Bertha. As to her hiding-place and the means of reaching it, the letter left him in the dark.
He did, however, possess an important piece of information in his knowledge of the house with two entrances, through which Michel, Mary, and the duchess had undoubtedly passed. For a moment he thought of continuing his method of spying, and of following Bertha when, in obedience to Petit-Pierre's injunction, she should seek the princess in Nantes; and he also thought of discounting to his profit the distress of the girl's mind when she should discover the true relations of Michel and her sister. But the farmer had now come to doubt the efficacy of the means he had hitherto employed; he felt he might lose, without recovery, his last chance of success, if accident or the vigilance of those he watched were to baffle once more his sagacity and cunning. He therefore decided to try another means and take the initiative.
Was the house which opened on the nameless alley to which we have several times taken the reader, and also on the rue du Marché, actually inhabited? If so, who lived there? Through that person, or persons, might it not be possible to reach Petit-Pierre? Such were the questions which reflection placed before the mind of the mayor of La Logerie.
In order to solve them it was necessary that he should stay in Nantes; and Maître Courtin at once resolved to give up returning to his farm, where it was very probable that Bertha had already gone to meet Michel on learning of the failure of his attempt to escape. He therefore boldly decided on his new course.
The next day, at ten o'clock in the morning, he knocked at the door of the mysterious house; but instead of presenting himself at the door on the alley, he went to that on the rue du Marché, – his intention being to convince himself that the two doors gave entrance to the same house.
When the person who answered the knock had satisfied himself through a little iron grating that the person knocking was alone, he opened, or rather half-opened the door. The two heads now came face to face.
"Where do you come from?" asked the man inside.
Taken aback by the suddenness with which this question was put, Courtin hesitated.
"Pardieu!" he said, "from Touvois."
"No one is expected from there," replied the man, attempting to close the door; but it was not so easy to do this, for Courtin had his foot against it.
A ray of light darted into the farmer's mind; he remembered the words Michel had used to obtain the two horses from the landlord of the Point du Jour, and he felt certain that those words, which he had not understood at the time, were the countersign.
The man continued to push the door; but Courtin held firm.
"Wait, wait!" he said. "When I said I came from Touvois I was only trying to find out if you were in the secret; one can't take too many precautions in these devilish times. Well, there! I don't come from Touvois, I come from the South."
"And where are you going?" asked his questioner, without, however, yielding one inch of the way.
"Where do you expect me to go, if I come from the South, but to Rosny?"
"That's all right," said the servant; "but don't you see, my fine friend, that no one can come in here without showing a white paw?"
"For those who are all white, that isn't difficult."
"Hum! so much the better," said the man, a peasant of Lower Brittany, who was running over the beads of a chaplet in his hand while speaking.
But inasmuch as Courtin had really answered with the proper passwords, he showed him, though with evident reluctance, into a small room, and said, pointing to a chair: -
"Monsieur is engaged just now. I will announce you as soon as he has finished with the person who is now in his office. Sit down, – unless you want to spend the time more usefully."
Courtin saw that he had gained more than he expected. He had hoped to meet some subordinate agent from whom he could extract, either by trickery or corruption, the clues he wanted. When the man who admitted him spoke of announcing him to his master, he felt that the matter was becoming serious, and that he ought to be ready with some tale to meet the necessities of the situation. He refrained from questioning the servant, whose stern and gloomy countenance showed him to be one of those rigid fanatics who are still to be found on the Celtic peninsula. Courtin instantly perceived the tone he ought to take.
"Yes," he said, giving to his countenance a humble and sanctimonious expression, "I will wait Monsieur's leisure and employ the time in prayer. May I take one of those prayer-books?" he added, glancing at the table.
"Don't touch those books if you are what you pretend to be; they are not prayer-books, they are profane books," replied the Breton. "I'll lend you mine," he continued, drawing from the pocket of his embroidered jacket a little book, the cover and edges of which were blackened by time and usage.
The movement he made in carrying his hand to his pocket disclosed the shining handles of two pistols stuck into his wide belt, and Courtin congratulated himself on not having risked any attempt on the fidelity of the Breton, whom he now felt to be a man who would have answered it in some dangerous way.
"Thank you," he said, as he received the book and knelt down with such humility and contrition that the Breton, much edified, removed the hat from his long hair, made the sign of the cross, and closed the door very softly, that he might not trouble the devotions of so saintly a person.
As soon as he was alone, the farmer felt a desire to examine in detail the room in which he found himself; but he was not the man to commit such a blunder as that. He reflected that the Breton's eye might be fixed on him through the keyhole; he therefore controlled himself and remained absorbed in prayer.
Nevertheless, while mumbling his pater-nosters, Courtin's eyes did rove about the floor below him. The room was not more than a dozen feet square, and was separated from an adjoining room by a partition, in which there was a door. This little room was plainly furnished in walnut, and was lighted by a window on the courtyard, the lower panes of which were provided with a very delicate iron grating painted green, which prevented any one on the outside from seeing into the apartment.
He listened attentively to hear if any sound of voices could reach him; but as to this, precautions had doubtless been taken, for though Maître Courtin strained his ears toward the door and toward the chimney, near which he was kneeling, not a sound reached him.
But, as he stooped beneath the chimney-piece to listen better, Courtin caught sight, among the ashes, of several bits of crumpled paper lying in a heap, as if placed there to be burned. These papers tempted him; he dropped his arm, and then, leaning his head against the chimney-piece, he slowly stretched out his hand and took up the papers, one by one. Without changing his position he managed to open them, confident that his movements at that level were hidden from any eye at the keyhole by a table in the middle of the room.
He had examined and thrown away as of no interest several of these papers, when on the back of one (among a number of insignificant bills which he was about to crumple up on his knee and return to the ashes) he spied certain words in a delicate and refined handwriting, which struck him; they were as follows: -
"If you feel uneasy, come at once. Our friend desires me to say that there is an empty room in our retreat which is at your service."
The note was signed M. de S. Evidently, as the initials indicated, it was signed by Mary de Souday. Courtin put it carefully away in his pocket; his peasant craftiness had instantly perceived the possible good he might get out of its possession.
He continued his investigations, however, and came to the conclusion, from sundry bills for large payments, that the owner or lessee of the house must be intrusted with the management of the duchess's money-matters. Just then he heard the sound of voices and of steps in the passage. He rose hastily and went to the window. Through the grating we have mentioned he saw the servant escorting a gentleman to the door. The latter held in his hand an empty money-bag, and before leaving the premises he folded it up and put it in his pocket. Until then Courtin had not been able to see his face; but, just as he passed in front of the servant to go out of the door, Courtin recognized Maître Loriot.
"Ah, ha!" he said. "So he's in it, is he? It is he who brings them money. Decidedly, I made a good stroke in coming here."
He returned to his place near the chimney, thinking that the time for his interview had probably arrived. When the Breton opened the door he found the visitor so absorbed in his orisons that he never stirred. The peasant went to him, touched him gently on the shoulder, and asked him to follow him; Courtin obeyed, after ending his prayer as he began it, by making the sign of the cross, which the Breton imitated.
The farmer was now shown into the same room where Maître Pascal had formerly received Michel; on this occasion, however, Maître Pascal was much more seriously employed. Before him was a table covered with papers, and Courtin fancied he saw the shining of various gold-pieces among a pile of opened letters, which seemed to have been lately heaped there as if to hide them.
Maître Pascal intercepted the farmer's glance; at first he was not displeased, attributing it to nothing more than the inquisitive interest which the peasantry always attach to the sight of gold and silver. Nevertheless, as he did not choose to allow that curiosity to go too far, he pretended to search for something in a drawer, and in order to do so threw up an end of the long green table-cloth so that it covered the pile of papers effectually. Then, turning to his visitor he said roughly: -
"What do you want?"
"To fulfil an errand."
"Who sends you?"
"Monsieur de la Logerie."
"Ah, do you belong to that young man?"
"I am his farmer, his confidential man."
"Then say what you have to say."
"But I don't know that I can do that," said Courtin, boldly.
"Why not?"
"Because you are not the person to whom Monsieur de la Logerie sent me."
"Who was it, then?" asked Maître Pascal, frowning with some uneasiness.
"Another person, to whom you were to take me."
"I don't know what you mean," returned Maître Pascal, unable to conceal the impatience he felt at what he supposed to be an unpardonable piece of heedlessness on Michel's part.
Courtin, noticing his annoyance, saw that he had gone too far; but it was dangerous to beat too rapid a retreat.
"Come," said Pascal, "will you, or will you not tell me what you are here for? I have no time to waste."
"Bless me! I don't know what to do, my good gentleman," said Courtin. "I love my young master enough to jump into the fire for him. When he says to me 'do this' or 'do that,' I always try to execute his orders just as he gives them, so as to deserve his confidence; and he did not tell me to give his message to you."
"What is your name, my good man?"
"Courtin, at your service."
"What parish do you belong to?"
"La Logerie."
Maître Pascal took up a note-book, and looked it over for a few moments; then he fixed an investigating and distrustful eye on Courtin.
"You are the mayor of La Logerie?" he asked.
"Yes, since 1830." Then, observing Maître Pascal's increasing coldness, "It was my mistress, Madame la baronne, who had me nominated," he added.
"Did Monsieur de la Logerie only give you a verbal message for the person to whom he sent you?"
"Yes; I have a bit of a letter here, but it isn't for that person."
"Can I see that bit of a letter?"
"Of course; there's no secret in it, because it isn't sealed."
And Courtin held out to Maître Pascal the paper Michel had given him for Bertha, in which Petit-Pierre begged her to come to Nantes.
"How happens it that this paper is still in your hands?" asked Maître Pascal. "It is dated some days ago."
"Because one can't do everything all at once; and I am not going back our way just yet, and till I do I can't meet the person to whom I'm to give the note."
Maître Pascal's eyes had never left the farmer's face from the moment he had failed to find Courtin's name on the list of those whose loyalty could be trusted. The latter was now affecting the same idiotic simplicity that had succeeded so well with the captain of the "Jeune Charles."
"Come, my good man," said Maître Pascal, "it is impossible for you to give your message to any one but me. Do so if you think proper; if not, go back to your master, and tell him he must come himself."
"I sha'n't do that, my dear monsieur," replied Courtin. "My master is condemned to death, and I don't wish to say a word to bring him back to Nantes. He is better off with us. I'll tell the whole thing to you; you can do what you think best about it, and if Monsieur is not pleased, he may scold me; I'd rather that than bring him here."
This artless expression of devotion reconciled Maître Pascal in a degree to the farmer, whose first answer had seriously alarmed him.
"Go on, my good man, and I will answer for it your master will not blame you."
"The matter is soon told: Monsieur Michel wants me to tell you, or rather tell Monsieur Petit-Pierre, – for that is the name of the person he sent me to find, – "
"Go on!" said Maître Pascal, smiling.
"I was to tell him that he had discovered the man who ordered the ship to sail a few moments before Monsieur Petit-Pierre, Mademoiselle Mary, and himself reached the rendezvous."
"And who may that man be?"
"One named Joseph Picaut, lately hostler at the Point du Jour."
"True; the man whom we placed there has disappeared since yesterday," said Maître Pascal. "Go on, Courtin!"
"I was to warn Monsieur Petit-Pierre to beware of this Picaut in town, and to say he would look out for him in the country. And that's all."
"Very good; thank Monsieur de la Logerie for his information. And now that I have received it, I can assure you that it was intended for me."
"That's enough to satisfy me," said Courtin, rising.
Maître Pascal accompanied the farmer as he went out with much civility, and did for him what Courtin had noticed that he did not do for Maître Loriot, – he followed him to the very door of the street.
Courtin was too wily himself to mistake the meaning of these attentions; and he was not surprised, when he had gone about twenty paces from the house, to hear the door open and close behind him. He did not turn round; but, certain that he was followed, he walked slowly, like a man at leisure, stopping to gaze like a countryman into all the shop-windows, reading the posters on the walls, and carefully avoiding everything that might confirm the suspicions he had not been able to destroy in Maître Pascal's mind. This constraint was no annoyance to him; in fact, he enjoyed his morning, feeling that he was on the verge of obtaining the reward of his trouble.
Just as he arrived in front of the hôtel des Colonies he saw Maître Loriot under the portico, talking to a stranger. Courtin, affecting great surprise, went straight to the notary, and inquired how he came to be at Nantes when it was not the market-day. Then he asked the notary if he would give him a seat in his cabriolet back to Légé, to which the latter very willingly assented, saying, however, that he still had a few errands to do and should not be ready to leave Nantes for four or five hours, and advising Courtin to wait in some café.
Now, a café was a luxury the farmer would not allow himself under any circumstances, and that day least of all. In his religious fervor he went devoutly to church, where he assisted at vespers said for the canons; after which he returned to Maître Loriot's hotel, sat down on a stone bench under a yew-tree, and went to sleep, or pretended to do so, in the calm and peaceful slumber of an easy conscience.
Two hours later the notary returned; he told Courtin that unexpected business would detain him at Nantes, and that he could not start for Légé before ten o'clock. This did not suit the farmer, whose appointment with Monsieur Hyacinthe (the name, it will be remembered, of the mysterious man of Aigrefeuille) was from seven to eight o'clock at Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu. He therefore told Monsieur Loriot that he must give up the honor of his company and go on foot, for the sun was getting low and he wanted to get home before night-fall.
When Courtin, sitting on the bench, had first opened his eyes, he saw the Breton servant watching him; he now paid no attention to him and seemed not to see him as he started to keep his rendezvous. The Breton followed him over the river; but Courtin never once betrayed, by looking backward, the usual uneasiness of those whose consciences are ill at ease. The result was that the Breton returned to his master and assured him that it was a great mistake to distrust the worthy peasant, who spent his leisure hours in the most innocent amusements and pious practices; so that even Maître Pascal, cautious as he was, began to think Michel less to blame for confiding in so faithful a servant.
XXXV.
THE TAVERN OF THE GRAND SAINT-JACQUES
One word on the lay of the land about the village of Saint-Philbert. Without this little topographical preface, which shall be short, like all our prefaces, it would be difficult for our readers to follow in detail the scenes we are now about to lay before their eyes.
The village of Saint-Philbert stands at the angle formed by the river Boulogne as it falls into the lake of Grand-Lieu; the village is on the left bank of the river. The church and the principal houses are somewhere about fifteen hundred yards from the lake; the main, in fact the only street follows the river-bank, and the lower it goes to the lake, the fewer and poorer the houses; so that when the vast blue sheet of water, framed in reeds, which forms the terminus of the street is reached, there is nothing to be seen but a few thatched huts occupied by men who are employed in the fisheries.
Yet there is, or rather was at the time of which we write, one exception to this decadence of the lower end of the village street. About thirty steps away from the huts we have mentioned stood a brick and stone house, with red roofs and green shutters, surrounded with hay and straw stacks, like sentinels round a camp, and peopled with a world of cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, – all either lowing and bleating in the stables or clucking and gabbling before the door as they preened themselves in the dust of the road.
The road served as the courtyard of the house, which, if deprived of that useful resort, could still fall back upon its gardens, which are simply the most magnificent and productive of all the country round. From the road the crests of the fruit-trees can be seen above the farm-buildings, covered in spring-time with the rosy snow of their blossoms; in summer, with fruits of all kinds; and during nine months of the year, with verdure. These trees spread in a semi-circle about a thousand feet southerly, to a little hill crowned with ruins which looks down upon the waters of the lake of Grand-Lieu.
This house is the inn kept by the mother of Marianne Picaut. These ruins are those of the château de Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu.
The high walls and gigantic towers of this the most celebrated baronial castle in the province, built to hold the country in check and command the waters of the lake, the gloomy arches that once echoed to the clanking spurs of Comte Gilles de Retz as he trod its paved floors, meditating on those monstrous debauches which surpassed all that Rome in its decadence ever invented, – now, dismantled, dilapidated, swathed in ivy, overgrown with gilliflowers, crumbling on all sides, have descended, from degradation to degradation, to the lowest of all; grand, savage, terrible as they once were, they are now humbly utilitarian; they have been reduced at last to making a living for a family of peasants, descendants of poor serfs who in former days regarded them, no doubt, with fear and trembling.
These ruins shelter the gardens from the northwest wind, so fatal to fertility, and make this little corner of earth a perfect Eldorado, where all things grow and prosper, – from the native pear to the grape, the fruiting sorbus to the fig-tree.
But this was not the only service which the old feudal castle did to its new proprietors. In the lower halls, cooled by currents of impetuous air, they kept their fruits and garden products, preserving them in good condition after the ordinary season had passed; thus doubling their value. And besides this source of profit, the dungeons, where Gilles de Retz had piled his victims, were now a dairy, the butter and cheese of which were justly celebrated. This is what time has done with the Titanic works of the former lords of Saint-Philbert.
One word now on what they once were.
The château de Saint-Philbert consisted originally of a vast parallelogram enclosed with walls, bathed on one side by the waters of the lake and protected on the other side by a broad moat hollowed in the rock. Four square towers flanked the four corners of this enormous mass of stone; a citadel in the centre, with its portcullis bristling with spikes, defended the entrance. Opposite to the citadel, on the other side of the castle, a fifth square tower, taller and more imposing than the rest, commanded the whole structure, and the lake, which surrounded it on three sides.
With the exception of this fifth tower and the citadel, or keep, all the rest of the fortress, walls and main-buildings, had pretty much crumbled away, and time had not entirely spared the great tower itself. The rotten beams of the first floor, unable to support the stones which year by year slid down upon them in greater numbers, had sunk to the ground-floor, raising it by over a foot, leaving no other ceiling in the tower than the rafters of the roof.
It was in this lower room that the grandfather of the widow Picaut had principally kept his fruit, and the walls were lined with shelves on which the good man spread in winter the various products of his garden. The doors and windows of this portion of the tower had remained more or less intact, and at one of these windows could still be seen an iron bar covered with rust, which undoubtedly dated from the days of Comte Gilles.
The other towers and the walls of the main building were completely in ruins; the masses of masonry which had fallen had rolled either into the courtyard, which they obstructed, or into the lake, which covered them with its reeds at all times and its foam in stormy weather. The citadel, about as intact as the great tower, was crowded with an enormous mass of ivy which took the place of a roof; in it were two small chambers, which, notwithstanding the colossal appearance of the structure, were not more than eight or ten feet square, owing to the enormous thickness of the walls.
The inner courtyard, used in feudal days as the barrack-ground of the castle's defenders, obstructed by the rubbish which time had heaped there, – fragments of columns and battlements, broken arches, dilapidated statues, – was now impassable. A narrow path led to the great tower; another, less carefully cleared, led to a remaining vestige of the east tower, where a stone staircase was actually left standing, by which all persons desirous of enjoying a beautiful view could, after a series of acrobatic feats, reach the platform of the main tower by following a gallery which ran along the wall like those Alpine paths cut on the face of the rock between precipice and mountain.
It is unnecessary to say that, except during the period of the year when the fruits were stored there, no one frequented these ruins of the château de Saint-Philbert. At that period a watchman was stationed there, who slept in the keep; all the rest of the year the gates of the tower were locked and the place was abandoned to lovers of historical reminiscences, and to the boys of the village, who pervaded the old ruins, where they found nests to pillage, flowers to pick, dangers to brave, – all things of eager attraction to children.
It was in these ruins that Courtin had appointed to meet Monsieur Hyacinthe. He knew they would be absolutely deserted at the hour he named to his associate, inasmuch as the lingering ill-repute of the place drove away at night all the village urchins who, as long as the sun was above the horizon, scampered like lizards among the dentelled ridges of the old ruin.
The mayor of La Logerie left Nantes about five o'clock; he was on foot, and yet he walked so fast that he was an hour earlier than he needed to be when he crossed the bridge which led into the village of Saint-Philbert. Maître Courtin was somewhat of a personage in the village. To see him desert the Grand Saint-Jacques (the inn before which he usually tied his pony Sweetheart) in favor of the Pomme de Pin, the tavern kept by the mother of the widow Picaut, would have been an event which, as he very well knew, would have set the village tongues a wagging. He was so convinced of this that, although, being deprived of his pony and never taking any refreshment except what was offered to him, it seemed a useless matter to go to an inn at all, the mayor of La Logerie stopped, as usual, before the door of the Grand Saint-Jacques, where he held with the inhabitants of the village (who, since the double defeat at Chêne and La Pénissière, had drawn closer to him) a conversation which, under present circumstances, was not unimportant to him.
"Maître Courtin," said one man, "is it true what they say?"
"What do they say, Matthieu?" replied Courtin. "Tell me; I'd like to know."
"Hang it! they say you've turned your coat, and nothing can be seen but the lining of it, – so that what was blue is now white."
"Well done!" said Courtin; "if that isn't nonsense!"
"You've given occasion for it, my man; and since your young master went over to the Whites it is a fact that you've stopped gabbling against them as you once did."
"Gabbling!" exclaimed Courtin, with his slyest look, "what's the good of that? I have something better to do than gabble, and-and you'll hear of it soon, my lad."
"So much the better! for, don't you see, Maître Courtin, all these public troubles are death to business. If patriots can't agree, they'll die of poverty and hunger instead of being shot like our forefathers. Whereas, if we could only get rid of those troublesome gars who roam the forests about here and make trouble, business would soon pick up, and that's all we want."
"Roaming?" repeated Courtin, "who are roaming? Seems to me that none but ghosts are left to roam now."
"Pooh! there's plenty of them left. It isn't ten minutes since I saw the boldest of them go by, gun in hand, pistols in his belt, – just as if there weren't any red-breeches in the land."
"Who was he?"
"Joseph Picaut, by God! – the man who killed his brother."
"Joseph Picaut! here?" exclaimed Courtin, turning livid. "It isn't possible!"
"It's as true as you live, Maître Courtin! as true as there is a God! He did have on a sailor's hat and jacket, but never mind, I recognized him all the same."
Maître Courtin reflected a moment. The plan he had laid in his head, which rested on the existence of the house with two issues, and the daily intercourse of Maître Pascal with Petit-Pierre, might fail; in which case, he had Bertha to fall back upon as a last resource. There would then remain, in order to discover Petit-Pierre's retreat, one means open to him, – the means he had already failed in with Mary, – namely, to follow Bertha when she went to Nantes. If Bertha saw Joseph Picaut all was lost; still worse would it be if Bertha put Picaut in communication with Michel! Then the part he had played in stopping the embarkation would be disclosed to the young baron, and the farmer was a ruined man.
Courtin asked for pen, ink, and paper, wrote a few lines, and gave them to the man who had spoken to him.
"Here, gars Matthieu," he said, "here's a proof that I'm a patriot and that I don't turn round like a weathercock to the wind of any master. You accuse me of following my young landlord in all his performances; well, the fact is that I have only known within the last hour where he is hiding, and now I am going to lay hands on him. The more occasion I have to destroy the enemies of the nation, the better pleased I am, and the more I hasten to take advantage of it; and what's more, I do it without inquiring whether it is to my advantage or disadvantage, or whether the persons I denounce are my friends or not."
The peasant, who was a double-dyed Blue, shook Courtin's hand heartily.
"Are your legs good?" continued the latter.
"I should think so!" said the peasant.
"Well, then, carry that to Nantes at once; and as I have a good many haystacks out, I rely on you to keep my secret; for, you understand, if I'm suspected of having the young baron arrested, those stacks will never get into my barn."
The peasant made a promise of secrecy, and Courtin, as it was now dusk, left the inn on the right, made a tack across the fields, and then, returning cautiously on his steps, took a path which led to the ruins of Saint-Philbert.
He reached them by the shore of the lake, followed the moat, and entered the courtyard by a stone bridge which had long replaced the portcullis that gave entrance to the citadel.
As he entered the courtyard he whistled softly. At the signal a man sitting on the fallen masonry rose and came to him. The man was Monsieur Hyacinthe.
"Is that you?" he said, as he approached with some caution.
"Yes," said Courtin, "don't be alarmed."
"What news?"
"Good; but this is not the place to tell it."
"Why not?"
"Because it is as dark as a pocket. I almost walked over you before I knew it. A man might be hidden here at our feet and we not be the wiser. Come! the affair is in too good shape just now to risk anything."
