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An Historical Mystery (The Gondreville Mystery)
“This must be Gondreville, is it not, my good woman?” said the young man.
“We don’t say ‘my good woman’ here,” said Michu. “We are still simple enough to say ‘citizen’ and ‘citizeness’ in these parts.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the young man, in a natural way, and without seeming at all annoyed.
Players of ecarte often have a sense of inward disaster when some unknown person sits down at the same table with them, whose manners, look, voice, and method of shuffling the cards, all, to their fancy, foretell defeat. The instant Michu looked at the young man he felt an inward and prophetic collapse. He was struck by a fatal presentiment; he had a sudden confused foreboding of the scaffold. A voice told him that that dandy would destroy him, although there was nothing whatever in common between them. For this reason his answer was rude; he was and he wished to be forbidding.
“Don’t you belong to the Councillor of State, Malin?” said the younger man.
“I am my own master,” answered Malin.
“Mesdames,” said the young man, assuming a most polite air, “are we not at Gondreville? We are expected there by Monsieur Malin.”
“There’s the park,” said Michu, pointing to the open gate.
“Why are you hiding that gun, my fine girl?” said the elder, catching sight of the carbine as he passed through the gate.
“You never let a chance escape you, even in the country!” cried his companion.
They both turned back with a sense of distrust which the bailiff understood at once in spite of their impassible faces. Marthe let them look at the gun, to the tune of Couraut’s bark; she was so convinced that her husband was meditating some evil deed that she was thankful for the curiosity of the strangers.
Michu flung a look at his wife which made her tremble; he took the gun and began to load it, accepting quietly the fatal ill-luck of this encounter and the discovery of the weapon. He seemed no longer to care for life, and his wife fathomed his inward feeling.
“So you have wolves in these parts?” said the young man, watching him.
“There are always wolves where there are sheep. You are in Champagne, and there’s a forest; we have wild-boars, large and small game both, a little of everything,” replied Michu, in a truculent manner.
“I’ll bet, Corentin,” said the elder of the two men, after exchanging a glance with his companion, “that this is my friend Michu – ”
“We never kept pigs together that I know of,” said the bailiff.
“No, but we both presided over Jacobins, citizen,” replied the old cynic, – “you at Arcis, I elsewhere. I see you’ve kept your Carmagnole civility, but it’s no longer in fashion, my good fellow.”
“The park strikes me as rather large; we might lose our way. If you are really the bailiff show us the path to the chateau,” said Corentin, in a peremptory tone.
Michu whistled to his son and continued to load his gun. Corentin looked at Marthe with indifference, while his companion seemed charmed by her; but the young man noticed the signs of her inward distress, which escaped the old libertine, who had, however, noticed and feared the gun. The natures of the two men were disclosed in this trifling yet important circumstance.
“I’ve an appointment the other side of the forest,” said the bailiff. “I can’t go with you, but my son here will take you to the chateau. How did you get to Gondreville? did you come by Cinq-Cygne?”
“We had, like yourself, business in the forest,” said Corentin, without apparent sarcasm.
“Francois,” cried Michu, “take these gentlemen to the chateau by the wood path, so that no one sees them; they don’t follow the beaten tracks. Come here,” he added, as the strangers turned to walk away, talking together as they did so in a low voice. Michu caught the boy in his arms, and kissed him almost solemnly with an expression which confirmed his wife’s fears; cold chills ran down her back; she glanced at her mother with haggard eyes, for she could not weep.
“Go,” said Michu; and he watched the boy until he was entirely out of sight. Couraut was barking on the other side of the road in the direction of Grouage. “Oh, that’s Violette,” remarked Michu. “This is the third time that old fellow has passed here to-day. What’s in the wind? Hush, Couraut!”
A few moments later the trot of a pony was heard approaching.
CHAPTER II. A CRIME RELINQUISHED
Violette, mounted on one of those little nags which the farmers in the neighborhood of Paris use so much, soon appeared, wearing a round hat with a broad brim, beneath which his wood-colored face, deeply wrinkled, appeared in shadow. His gray eyes, mischievous and lively, concealed in a measure the treachery of his nature. His skinny legs, covered with gaiters of white linen which came to the knee, hung rather than rested in the stirrups, seemingly held in place by the weight of his hob-nailed shoes. Above his jacket of blue cloth he wore a cloak of some coarse woollen stuff woven in black and white stripes. His gray hair fell in curls behind his ears. This dress, the gray horse with its short legs, the manner in which Violette sat him, stomach projecting and shoulders thrown back, the big chapped hands which held the shabby bridle, all depicted him plainly as the grasping, ambitious peasant who desires to own land and buys it at any price. His mouth, with its bluish lips parted as if a surgeon had pried them open with a scalpel, and the innumerable wrinkles of his face and forehead hindered the play of features which were expressive only in their outlines. Those hard, fixed lines seemed menacing, in spite of the humility which country-folks assume and beneath which they conceal their emotions and schemes, as savages and Easterns hide theirs behind an imperturbable gravity. First a mere laborer, then the farmer of Grouage through a long course of persistent ill-doing, he continued his evil practices after conquering a position which surpassed his early hopes. He wished harm to all men and wished it vehemently. When he could assist in doing harm he did it eagerly. He was openly envious; but, no matter how malignant he might be, he kept within the limits of the law, – neither beyond it nor behind it, like a parliamentary opposition. He believed his prosperity depended on the ruin of others, and that whoever was above him was an enemy against whom all weapons were good. A character like this is very common among the peasantry.
Violette’s present business was to obtain from Malin an extension of the lease of his farm, which had only six years longer to run. Jealous of the bailiff’s means, he watched him narrowly. The neighbors reproached him for his intimacy with “Judas”; but the sly old farmer, wishing to obtain a twelve years’ lease, was really lying in wait for an opportunity to serve either the government or Malin, who distrusted Michu. Violette, by the help of the game-keeper of Gondreville and others belonging to the estate, kept Malin informed of all Michu’s actions. Malin had endeavored, fruitlessly, to win over Marianne, the Michus’ servant-woman; but Violette and his satellites heard everything from Gaucher, – a lad on whose fidelity Michu relied, but who betrayed him for cast-off clothing, waistcoats, buckles, cotton socks and sugar-plums. The boy had no suspicion of the importance of his gossip. Violette in his reports blackened all Michu’s actions and gave them a criminal aspect by absurd suggestions, – unknown, of course, to the bailiff, who was aware, however, of the base part played by the farmer, and took delight in mystifying him.
“You must have a deal of business at Bellache to be here again,” said Michu.
“Again! is that meant as a reproach, Monsieur Michu? – Hey! I did not know you had that gun. You are not going to whistle for the sparrows on that pipe, I suppose – ”
“It grew in a field of mine which bears guns,” replied Michu. “Look! this is how I sow them.”
The bailiff took aim at a viper thirty feet away and cut it in two.
“Have you got that bandit’s weapon to protect your master?” said Violette. “Perhaps he gave it to you.”
“He came from Paris expressly to bring it to me,” replied Michu.
“People are talking all round the neighborhood of this journey of his; some say he is in disgrace and has to retire from office; others that he wants to see things for himself down here. But anyway, why does he come, like the First Consul, without giving warning? Did you know he was coming?”
“I am not on such terms with him as to be in his confidence.”
“Then you have not seen him?”
“I did not know he was here till I got back from my rounds in the forest,” said Michu, reloading his gun.
“He has sent to Arcis for Monsieur Grevin,” said Violette; “they are scheming something.”
“If you are going round by Cinq-Cygne, take me up behind you,” said the bailiff. “I’m going there.”
Violette was too timid to have a man of Michu’s strength on his crupper, and he spurred his beast. Judas slung his gun over his shoulder and walked rapidly up the avenue.
“Who can it be that Michu is angry with?” said Marthe to her mother.
“Ever since he heard of Monsieur Malin’s arrival he has been gloomy,” replied the old woman. “But it is getting damp here, let us go in.”
After the two women had settled themselves in the chimney corner they heard Couraut’s bark.
“There’s my husband returning!” cried Marthe.
Michu passed up the stairs; his wife, uneasy, followed him to their bedroom.
“See if any one is about,” he said to her, in a voice of some emotion.
“No one,” she replied. “Marianne is in the field with the cow, and Gaucher – ”
“Where is Gaucher?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I distrust that little scamp. Go up in the garret, look in the hay-loft, look everywhere for him.”
Marthe left the room to obey the order. When she returned she found Michu on his knees, praying.
“What is the matter?” she said, frightened.
The bailiff took his wife round the waist and drew her to him, saying in a voice of deep feeling: “If we never see each other again remember, my poor wife, that I loved you well. Follow minutely the instructions which you will find in a letter buried at the foot of the larch in that copse. It is enclosed in a tin tube. Do not touch it until after my death. And remember, Marthe, whatever happens to me, that in spite of man’s injustice, my arm has been the instrument of the justice of God.”
Marthe, who turned pale by degrees, became white as her own linen; she looked at her husband with fixed eyes widened by fear; she tried to speak, but her throat was dry. Michu disappeared like a shadow, having tied Couraut to the foot of his bed where the dog, after the manner of all dogs, howled in despair.
Michu’s anger against Monsieur Marion had serious grounds, but it was now concentrated on another man, far more criminal in his eyes, – on Malin, whose secrets were known to the bailiff, he being in a better position than others to understand the conduct of the State Councillor. Michu’s father-in-law had had, politically speaking, the confidence of the former representative to the Convention, through Grevin.
Perhaps it would be well here to relate the circumstances which brought the Simeuse and the Cinq-Cygne families into connection with Malin, – circumstances which weighed heavily on the fate of Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne’s twin cousins, but still more heavily on that of Marthe and Michu.
The Cinq-Cygne mansion at Troyes stands opposite to that of Simeuse. When the populace, incited by minds that were as shrewd as they were cautious, pillaged the hotel Simeuse, discovered the marquis and marchioness, who were accused of corresponding with the nation’s enemies, and delivered them to the national guards who took them to prison, the crowd shouted, “Now for the Cinq-Cygnes!” To their minds the Cinq-Cygnes were as guilty as other aristocrats. The brave and worthy Monsieur de Simeuse in the endeavor to save his two sons, then eighteen years of age, whose courage was likely to compromise them, had confided them, a few hours before the storm broke, to their aunt, the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne. Two servants attached to the Simeuse family accompanied the young men to her house. The old marquis, who was anxious that his name should not die out, requested that what was happening might be concealed from his sons, even in the event of dire disaster. Laurence, the only daughter of the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, was then twelve years of age; her cousins both loved her and she loved them equally. Like other twins the Simeuse brothers were so alike that for a long while their mother dressed them in different colors to know them apart. The first comer, the eldest, was named Paul-Marie, the other Marie-Paul. Laurence de Cinq-Cygne, to whom their danger was revealed, played her woman’s part well though still a mere child. She coaxed and petted her cousins and kept them occupied until the very moment when the populace surrounded the Cinq-Cygne mansion. The two brothers then knew their danger for the first time, and looked at each other. Their resolution was instantly taken; they armed their own servants and those of the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, barricaded the doors, and stood guard at the windows, after closing the wooden blinds, with the five men-servants and the Abbe d’Hauteserre, a relative of the Cinq-Cygnes. These eight courageous champions poured a deadly fire into the crowd. Every shot killed or wounded an assailant. Laurence, instead of wringing her hands, loaded the guns with extraordinary coolness, and passed the balls and powder to those who needed them. The Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne was on her knees.
“What are you doing, mother?” said Laurence.
“I am praying,” she answered, “for them and for you.”
Sublime words, – said also by the mother of Godoy, prince of the Peace, in Spain, under similar circumstances.
In a moment eleven persons were killed and lying on the ground among a number of wounded. Such results either cool or excite a populace; either it grows savage at the work or discontinues it. On the present occasion those in advance recoiled; but the crowd behind them were there to kill and rob, and when they saw their own dead, they cried out: “Murder! Murder! Revenge!” The wiser heads went in search of the representative to the Convention, Malin. The twins, by this time aware of the disastrous events of the day, suspected Malin of desiring the ruin of their family, and of causing the arrest of their parents, and the suspicion soon became a certainty. They posted themselves beneath the porte-cochere, gun in hand, intending to kill Malin as soon as he made his appearance; but the countess lost her head; she imagined her house in ashes and her daughter assassinated, and she blamed the young men for their heroic defence and compelled them to desist. It was Laurence who opened the door slightly when Malin summoned the household to admit him. Seeing her, the representative relied upon the awe he expected to inspire in a mere child, and he entered the house. To his first words of inquiry as to why the family were making such a resistance, the girl replied: “If you really desire to give liberty to France how is it that you do not protect us in our homes? They are trying to tear down this house, monsieur, to murder us, and you say we have no right to oppose force to force!”
Malin stood rooted to the ground.
“You, the son of a mason employed by the Grand Marquis to build his castle!” exclaimed Marie-Paul, “you have let them drag our father to prison – you have believed calumnies!”
“He shall be released at once,” said Malin, who thought himself lost when he saw each youth clutch his weapon convulsively.
“You owe your life to that promise,” said Marie-Paul, solemnly. “If it is not fulfilled to-night we shall find you again.”
“As to that howling populace,” said Laurence, “If you do not send them away, the next blood will be yours. Now, Monsieur Malin, leave this house!”
The Conventionalist did leave it, and he harangued the crowd, dwelling on the sacred rights of the domestic hearth, the habeas corpus and the English “home.” He told them that the law and the people were sovereigns, that the law was the people, and that the people could only act through the law, and that power was vested in the law. The particular law of personal necessity made him eloquent, and he managed to disperse the crowd. But he never forgot the contemptuous expression of the two brothers, nor the “Leave this house!” of Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne. Therefore, when it was a question of selling the estates of the Comte de Cinq-Cygne, Laurence’s brother, as national property, the sale was rigorously made. The agents left nothing for Laurence but the chateau, the park and gardens, and one farm called that of Cinq-Cygne. Malin instructed the appraisers that Laurence had no rights beyond her legal share, – the nation taking possession of all that belonged to her brother, who had emigrated and, above all, had borne arms against the Republic.
The evening after this terrible tumult, Laurence so entreated her cousins to leave the country, fearing treachery on the part of Malin, or some trap into which they might fall, that they took horse that night and gained the Prussian outposts. They had scarcely reached the forest of Gondreville before the hotel Cinq-Cygne was surrounded; Malin came himself to arrest the heirs of the house of Simeuse. He dared not lay hands on the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, who was in bed with a nervous fever, nor on Laurence, a child of twelve. The servants, fearing the severity of the Republic, had disappeared. The next day the news of the resistance of the brothers and their flight to Prussia was known to the neighborhood. A crowd of three thousand persons assembled before the hotel de Cinq-Cygne, which was demolished with incredible rapidity. Madame de Cinq-Cygne, carried to the hotel Simeuse, died there from the effects of the fever aggravated by terror.
Michu did not appear in the political arena until after these events, for the marquis and his wife remained in prison over five months. During this time Malin was away on a mission. But when Monsieur Marion sold Gondreville to the Councillor of State, Michu understood the latter’s game, – or rather, he thought he did; for Malin was, like Fouche, one of those personages who are of such depth in all their different aspects that they are impenetrable when they play a part, and are never understood until long after their drama is ended.
In all the chief circumstances of Malin’s life he had never failed to consult his faithful friend Grevin, the notary of Arcis, whose judgment on men and things was, at a distance, clear-cut and precise. This faculty is the wisdom and makes the strength of second-rate men. Now, in November, 1803, a combination of events (already related in the “Depute d’Arcis”) made matters so serious for the Councillor of State that a letter might have compromised the two friends. Malin, who hoped to be appointed senator, was afraid to offer his explanations in Paris. He came to Gondreville, giving the First Consul only one of the reasons that made him wish to be there; that reason gave him an appearance of zeal in the eyes of Bonaparte; whereas his journey, far from concerning the interests of the State, related to his own interests only. On this particular day, as Michu was watching the park and expecting, after the manner of a red Indian, a propitious moment for his vengeance, the astute Malin, accustomed to turn all events to his own profit, was leading his friend Grevin to a little field in the English garden, a lonely spot in the park, favorable for a secret conference. There, standing in the centre of the grass plot and speaking low, the friends were at too great a distance to be overheard if any one were lurking near enough to listen to them; they were also sure of time to change the conversation if others unwarily approached.
“Why couldn’t we have stayed in a room in the chateau?” asked Grevin.
“Didn’t you take notice of those two men whom the prefect of police has sent here to me?”
Though Fouche made himself in the matter of the Pichegru, Georges, Moreau, and Polignac conspiracy the soul of the Consular cabinet, he did not at this time control the ministry of police, but was merely a councillor of State like Malin.
“Those men,” continued Malin, “are Fouche’s two arms. One, that dandy Corentin, whose face is like a glass of lemonade, vinegar on his lips and verjuice in his eyes, put an end to the insurrection at the West in the year VII. in less than fifteen days. The other is a disciple of Lenoir; he is the only one who preserves the great traditions of the police. I had asked for an agent of no great account, backed by some official personage, and they send me those past-masters of the business! Ah, Grevin, Fouche wants to pry into my game. That’s why I left those fellows dining at the chateau; they may look into everything for all I care; they won’t find Louis XVIII. nor any sign of him.”
“But see here, my dear fellow, what game are you playing?” cried Grevin.
“Ha, my friend, a double game is a dangerous one, but this, taking Fouche into account, is a triple one. He may have nosed the fact that I am in the secrets of the house of Bourbon.”
“You?”
“I,” replied Malin.
“Have you forgotten Favras?”
The words made an impression on the councillor.
“Since when?” asked Grevin, after a pause.
“Since the Consulate for life.”
“I hope there’s no proof of it?”
“Not that!” said Malin, clicking his thumb-nail against his teeth.
In few words the Councillor of State gave a clear and succinct account of the critical position in which Bonaparte was about to hold England, by threatening her with invasion from the camp at Boulogne; he explained to Grevin the bearings of that project, which was unobserved by France and Europe but suspected by Pitt; also the critical position in which England was about to put Bonaparte. A powerful coalition, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, paid by English gold, was pledged to furnish seven hundred thousand men under arms. At the same time a formidable conspiracy was throwing a network over the whole of France, including among its members montagnards, chouans, royalists, and their princes.
“Louis XVIII. held that as long as there were three Consuls anarchy was certain, and that he could at some opportune moment take his revenge for the 13th Vendemiaire and the 18th Fructidor,” said Malin, “but the Consulate for life has unmasked Bonaparte’s intentions – he will soon be emperor. The late sub-lieutenant means to create a dynasty! This time his life is in actual danger; and the plot is far better laid than that of the Rue Saint-Nicaise. Pichegru, Georges, Moreau, the Duc d’Enghien, Polignac and Riviere, the two friends of the Comte d’Artois are in it.”
“What an amalgamation!” cried Grevin.
“France is being silently invaded; no stone is left unturned; the thing will be carried with a rush. A hundred picked men, commanded by Georges, are to attack the Consular guard and the Consul hand to hand.”
“Well then, denounce them.”
“For the last two months the Consul, his minister of police, the prefect and Fouche, hold some of the clues of this vast conspiracy; but they don’t know its full extent, and at this particular moment they are leaving nearly all the conspirators free, so as to discover more about it.”
“As to rights,” said the notary, “the Bourbons have much more right to conceive, plan, and execute a scheme against Bonaparte, than Bonaparte had on the 18th Brumaire against the Republic, whose product he was. He murdered his mother on that occasion, but these royalists only seek to recover what was theirs. I can understand that the princes and their adherents, seeing the lists of the emigres closed, mortgages suppressed, the Catholic faith restored, anti-revolutionary decrees accumulating, should begin to see that their return is becoming difficult, not to say impossible. Bonaparte being the sole obstacle now in their way, they want to get rid of him – nothing simpler. Conspirators if defeated are brigands, if successful, heroes; and your perplexity seems to me very natural.”
“The matter now is,” said Malin, “to make Bonaparte fling the head of the Duc d’Enghien at the Bourbons, just as the Convention flung the head of Louis XVI. at the kings, so as to commit him as fully as we are to the Revolution; or else, we must upset the idol of the French people and their future emperor, and seat the true throne upon his ruins. I am at the mercy of some event, some fortunate pistol-shot, some infernal machine which does its work. Even I don’t know the whole conspiracy; they don’t tell me all; but they have asked me to call the Council of State at the critical moment and direct its action towards the restoration of the Bourbons.”
“Wait,” said the notary.
“Impossible! I am compelled to make my decision at once.”
“Why?”
“Well, the Simeuse brothers are in the conspiracy; they are here in the neighborhood; I must either have them watched, let them compromise themselves, and so be rid of them, or else I must privately protect them. I asked the prefect for underlings and he has sent me lynxes, who came through Troyes and have got the gendarmerie to support them.”
“Gondreville is your real object,” said Grevin, “and this conspiracy your best chance of keeping it. Fouche, Talleyrand, and those two fellows have nothing to do with that. Therefore play fair with them. What nonsense! those who cut Louis XVI.‘s head off are in the government; France is full of men who have bought national property, and yet you talk of bringing back those who would require you to give up Gondreville! If the Bourbons were not imbeciles they would pass a sponge over all we have done. Warn Bonaparte, that’s my advice.”
“A man of my rank can’t denounce,” said Malin, quickly.
“Your rank!” exclaimed Grevin, smiling.
“They have offered to make me Keeper of the Seals.”
“Ah! Now I understand your bewilderment, and it is for me to see clear in this political darkness and find a way out for you. Now, it is quite impossible to foresee what events may happen to bring back the Bourbons when a General Bonaparte is in possession of eighty line of battle ships and four hundred thousand men. The most difficult thing of all in expectant politics is to know when a power that totters will fall; but, my old man, Bonaparte’s power is not tottering, it is in the ascendant. Don’t you think that Fouche may be sounding you so as to get to the bottom of your mind, and then get rid of you?”
“No; I am sure of my go-between. Besides, Fouche would never, under those circumstances, send me such fellows as these; he would know they would make me suspicious.”
“They alarm me,” said Grevin. “If Fouche does not distrust you, and is not seeking to probe you, why does he send them? Fouche doesn’t play such a trick as that without a motive; what is it?”
“What decides me,” said Malin, “is that I should never be easy with those two Simeuse brothers in France. Perhaps Fouche, who knows how I am placed towards them, wants to make sure they don’t escape him, and hopes through them to reach the Condes.”
“That’s right, old fellow; it is not under Bonaparte that the present possessor of Gondreville can be ousted.”
Just then Malin, happening to look up, saw the muzzle of a gun through the foliage of a tall linden.
“I was not mistaken, I thought I heard the click of a trigger,” he said to Grevin, after getting behind the trunk of a large tree, where the notary, uneasy at his friend’s sudden movement, followed him.
“It is Michu,” said Grevin; “I see his red beard.”
“Don’t let us seem afraid,” said Malin, who walked slowly away, saying at intervals: “Why is that man so bitter against the owners of this property? It was not you he was covering. If he overheard us he had better ask the prayers of the congregation! Who the devil would have thought of looking up into the trees!”
“There’s always something to learn,” said the notary. “But he was a good distance off, and we spoke low.”
“I shall tell Corentin about it,” replied Malin.