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The Honor of the Name

by Emile Gaboriau · English · Gutenberg #4002 · 892,923 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Honor of the Name

Author: Emile Gaboriau


        
Release date: April 13, 2006 [eBook #4002]
                Most recently updated: February 20, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4002

Credits: Produced by David Moynihan; Dagny; David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HONOR OF THE NAME ***


THE HONOR OF THE NAME

By Emile Gaboriau




THE HONOR OF THE NAME



CHAPTER I

On the first Sunday in the month of August, 1815, at ten o’clock
precisely--as on every Sunday morning--the sacristan of the parish
church at Sairmeuse sounded the three strokes of the bell which warn
the faithful that the priest is ascending the steps of the altar to
celebrate high mass.

The church was already more than half full, and from every side little
groups of peasants were hurrying into the church-yard. The women were
all in their bravest attire, with cunning little _fichus_ crossed upon
their breasts, broad-striped, brightly colored skirts, and large white
coifs.

Being as economical as they were coquettish, they came barefooted,
bringing their shoes in their hands, but put them on reverentially
before entering the house of God.

But few of the men entered the church. They remained outside to talk,
seating themselves in the porch, or standing about the yard, in the
shade of the century-old elms.

For such was the custom in the hamlet of Sairmeuse.

The two hours which the women consecrated to prayer the men employed
in discussing the news, the success or the failure of the crops; and,
before the service ended, they could generally be found, glass in hand,
in the bar-room of the village inn.

For the farmers for a league around, the Sunday mass was only an excuse
for a reunion, a sort of weekly bourse.

All the cures who had been successively stationed at Sairmeuse had
endeavored to put an end to this scandalous habit, as they termed it;
but all their efforts had made no impression upon country obstinacy.

They had succeeded in gaining only one concession. At the moment of the
elevation of the Host, voices were hushed, heads uncovered, and a few
even bowed the knee and made the sign of the cross.

But this was the affair of an instant only, and conversation was
immediately resumed with increased vivacity.

But to-day the usual animation was wanting.

No sounds came from the little knots of men gathered here and there, not
an oath, not a laugh. Between buyers and sellers, one did not overhear
a single one of those interminable discussions, punctuated with the
popular oaths, such as: “By my faith in God!” or “May the devil burn
me!”

They were not talking, they were whispering together. A gloomy
sadness was visible upon each face; lips were placed cautiously at the
listener’s ear; anxiety could be read in every eye.

One scented misfortune in the very air. Only a month had elapsed since
Louis XVIII. had been, for the second time, installed in the Tuileries
by a triumphant coalition.

The earth had not yet had time to swallow the sea of blood that flowed
at Waterloo; twelve hundred thousand foreign soldiers desecrated the
soil of France; the Prussian General Muffling was Governor of Paris.

And the peasantry of Sairmeuse trembled with indignation and fear.

This king, brought back by the allies, was no less to be dreaded than
the allies themselves.

To them this great name of Bourbon signified only a terrible burden of
taxation and oppression.

Above all, it signified ruin--for there was scarcely one among them who
had not purchased some morsel of government land; and they were assured
now that all estates were to be returned to the former proprietors, who
had emigrated after the overthrow of the Bourbons.

Hence, it was with a feverish curiosity that most of them clustered
around a young man who, only two days before, had returned from the
army.

With tears of rage in his eyes, he was recounting the shame and the
misery of the invasion.

He told of the pillage at Versailles, the exactions at Orleans, and the
pitiless requisitions that had stripped the people of everything.

“And these accursed foreigners to whom the traitors have delivered
us, will not go so long as a shilling or a bottle of wine is left in
France!” he exclaimed.

As he said this he shook his clinched fist menacingly at a white flag
that floated from the tower.

His generous anger won the close attention of his auditors, and they
were still listening to him with undiminished interest, when the sound
of a horse’s hoofs resounded upon the stones of the only street in
Sairmeuse.

A shudder traversed the crowd. The same fear stopped the beating of
every heart.

Who could say that this rider was not some English or Prussian officer?
He had come, perhaps, to announce the arrival of his regiment, and
imperiously demand money, clothing, and food for his soldiers.

But the suspense was not of long duration.

The rider proved to be a fellow-countryman, clad in a torn and dirty
blue linen blouse. He was urging forward, with repeated blows, a little,
bony, nervous mare, fevered with foam.

“Ah! it is Father Chupin,” murmured one of the peasants with a sigh of
relief.

“The same,” observed another. “He seems to be in a terrible hurry.”

“The old rascal has probably stolen the horse he is riding.”

This last remark disclosed the reputation Father Chupin enjoyed among
his neighbors.

He was, indeed, one of those thieves who are the scourge and the terror
of the rural districts. He pretended to be a day-laborer, but the
truth was, that he held work in holy horror, and spent all his time in
sleeping and idling about his hovel. Hence, stealing was the only
means of support for himself, his wife, two sons--terrible youths, who,
somehow, had escaped the conscription.

They consumed nothing that was not stolen. Wheat, wine, fuel,
fruits--all were the rightful property of others. Hunting and fishing
at all seasons, and with forbidden appliances, furnished them with ready
money.

Everyone in the neighborhood knew this; and yet when Father Chupin was
pursued and captured, as he was occasionally, no witness could be found
to testify against him.

“He is a hard case,” men said; “and if he had a grudge against anyone,
he would be quite capable of lying in ambush and shooting him as he
would a squirrel.”

Meanwhile the rider had drawn rein at the inn of the Boeuf Couronne.

He alighted from his horse, and, crossing the square, approached the
church.

He was a large man, about fifty years of age, as gnarled and sinewy as
the stem of an old grape-vine. At the first glance one would not have
taken him for a scoundrel. His manner was humble, and even gentle; but
the restlessness of his eye and the expression of his thin lips betrayed
diabolical cunning and the coolest calculation.

At any other time this despised and dreaded individual would have been
avoided; but curiosity and anxiety led the crowd toward him.

“Ah, well, Father Chupin!” they cried, as soon as he was within the
sound of their voices; “whence do you come in such haste?”

“From the city.”

To the inhabitants of Sairmeuse and its environs, “the city” meant
the country town of the _arrondissement_, Montaignac, a charming
sub-prefecture of eight thousand souls, about four leagues distant.

“And was it at Montaignac that you bought the horse you were riding just
now?”

“I did not buy it; it was loaned to me.”

This was such a strange assertion that his listeners could not repress a
smile. He did not seem to notice it, however.

“It was loaned me,” he continued, “in order that I might bring some
great news here the quicker.”

Fear resumed possession of the peasantry.

“Is the enemy in the city?” anxiously inquired some of the more timid.

“Yes; but not the enemy you refer to. This is the former lord of the
manor, the Duc de Sairmeuse.”

“Ah! they said he was dead.”

“They were mistaken.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No, I have not seen him, but someone else has seen him for me, and has
spoken to him. And this someone is Monsieur Laugeron, the proprietor of
the Hotel de France at Montaignac. I was passing the house this morning,
when he called me. ‘Here, old man,’ he said, ‘do you wish to do me a
favor?’ Naturally I replied: ‘Yes.’ Whereupon he placed a coin in my
hand and said: ‘Well! go and tell them to saddle a horse for you,
then gallop to Sairmeuse, and tell my friend Lacheneur that the Duc
de Sairmeuse arrived here last night in a post-chaise, with his son,
Monsieur Martial, and two servants.’”

Here, in the midst of these peasants, who were listening to him with
pale cheeks and set teeth, Father Chupin preserved the subdued mien
appropriate to a messenger of misfortune.

But if one had observed him carefully, one would have detected an
ironical smile upon his lips and a gleam of malicious joy in his eyes.

He was, in fact, inwardly jubilant. At that moment he had his revenge
for all the slights and all the scorn he had been forced to endure. And
what a revenge!

And if his words seemed to fall slowly and reluctantly from his lips, it
was only because he was trying to prolong the sufferings of his auditors
as much as possible.

But a robust young fellow, with an intelligent face, who, perhaps, read
Father Chupin’s secret heart, brusquely interrupted him:

“What does the presence of the Duc de Sairmeuse at Montaignac matter to
us?” he exclaimed. “Let him remain at the Hotel de France as long as he
chooses; we shall not go in search of him.”

“No! we shall not go in search of him,” echoed the other peasants,
approvingly.

The old rogue shook his head with affected commiseration.

“Monsieur le Duc will not put you to that trouble,” he replied; “he will
be here in less than two hours.”

“How do you know?”

“I know it through Monsieur Laugeron, who, when I mounted his horse,
said to me: ‘Above all, old man, explain to my friend Lacheneur that the
duke has ordered horses to be in readiness to convey him to Sairmeuse at
eleven o’clock.’”

With a common movement, all the peasants who had watches consulted them.

“And what does he want here?” demanded the same young farmer.

“Pardon! he did not tell me,” replied Father Chupin; “but one need not
be very cunning to guess. He comes to revisit his former estates, and
to take them from those who have purchased them, if possible. From you,
Rousselet, he will claim the meadows upon the Oiselle, which always
yield two crops; from you, Father Gauchais, the ground upon which
the Croix-Brulee stands; from you, Chanlouineau, the vineyards on the
Borderie----”

Chanlouineau was the impetuous young man who had interrupted Father
Chupin twice already.

“Claim the Borderie!” he exclaimed, with even greater violence; “let
him try, and we will see. It was waste land when my father bought
it--covered with briers; even a goat could not have found pasture there.
We have cleared it of stones, we have scratched up the soil with our
very nails, we have watered it with our sweat, and now they would try to
take it from us! Ah! they shall have my last drop of blood first!”

“I do not say but----”

“But what? Is it any fault of ours that the nobles fled to foreign
lands? We have not stolen their lands, have we? The government offered
them for sale; we bought them, and paid for them; they are lawfully
ours.”

“That is true; but Monsieur de Sairmeuse is the great friend of the
king.”

The young soldier, whose voice had aroused the most noble sentiments
only a moment before, was forgotten.

Invaded France, the threatening enemy, were alike forgotten. The
all-powerful instinct of avarice was suddenly aroused.

“In my opinion,” resumed Chanlouineau, “we should do well to consult the
Baron d’Escorval.”

“Yes, yes!” exclaimed the peasants; “let us go at once!”

They were starting, when a villager who sometimes read the papers,
checked them by saying:

“Take care what you do. Do you not know that since the return of the
Bourbons Monsieur d’Escorval is of no account whatever? Fouche has him
upon the proscription list, and he is under the surveillance of the
police.”

This objection dampened the enthusiasm.

“That is true,” murmured some of the older men; “a visit to Monsieur
d’Escorval would, perhaps, do us more harm than good. And, besides, what
advice could he give us?”

Chanlouineau had forgotten all prudence.

“What of that?” he exclaimed. “If Monsieur d’Escorval has no counsel to
give us about this matter, he can, perhaps, teach us how to resist and
to defend ourselves.”

For some moments Father Chupin had been studying, with an impassive
countenance, the storm of anger he had aroused. In his secret heart
he experienced the satisfaction of the incendiary at the sight of the
flames he has kindled.

Perhaps he already had a presentiment of the infamous part he would play
a few months later.

Satisfied with his experiment, he assumed, for the time, the role of
moderator.

“Wait a little. Do not cry before you are hurt,” he exclaimed, in an
ironical tone. “Who told you that the Duc de Sairmeuse would trouble
you? How much of his former domain do you all own between you? Almost
nothing. A few fields and meadows and a hill on the Borderie. All these
together did not in former times yield him an income of five thousand
francs a year.”

“Yes, that is true,” replied Chanlouineau; “and if the revenue you
mention is quadrupled, it is only because the land is now in the hands
of forty proprietors who cultivate it themselves.”

“Another reason why the duke will not say a word; he will not wish to
set the whole district in commotion. In my opinion, he will dispossess
only one of the owners of his former estates, and that is our worthy
ex-mayor--Monsieur Lacheneur, in short.”

Ah! he knew only too well the egotism of his compatriots. He knew with
what complacency and eagerness they would accept an expiatory victim
whose sacrifice should be their salvation.

“That is a fact,” remarked an old man; “Monsieur Lacheneur owns nearly
all the Sairmeuse property.”

“Say all, while you are about it,” rejoined Father Chupin. “Where does
Monsieur Lacheneur live? In that beautiful Chateau de Sairmeuse whose
gable we can see there through the trees. He hunts in the forests which
once belonged to the Ducs de Sairmeuse; he fishes in their lakes; he
drives the horses which once belonged to them, in the carriages upon
which one could now see their coat-of-arms, if it had not been painted
out.

“Twenty years ago, Lacheneur was a poor devil like myself; now, he is a
grand gentleman with fifty thousand livres a year. He wears the finest
broadcloth and top-boots like the Baron d’Escorval. He no longer works;
he makes others work; and when he passes, everyone must bow to the
earth. If you kill so much as a sparrow upon his lands, as he says, he
will cast you into prison. Ah, he has been fortunate. The emperor made
him mayor. The Bourbons deprived him of his office; but what does that
matter to him? He is still the real master here, as the Sairmeuse were
in other days. His son is pursuing his studies in Paris, intending to
become a notary. As for his daughter, Mademoiselle Marie-Anne--”

“Not a word against her!” exclaimed Chanlouineau; “if she were mistress,
there would not be a poor man in the country; and yet, how some of her
pensioners abuse her bounty. Ask your wife if this is not so, Father
Chupin.”

Undoubtedly the impetuous young man spoke at the peril of his life.

But the wicked old Chupin swallowed this affront which he would never
forget, and humbly continued:

“I do not say that Mademoiselle Marie-Anne is not generous; but after
all her charitable work she has plenty of money left for her fine
dresses and her fallals. I think that Monsieur Lacheneur ought to
be very well content, even after he has restored to its former owner
one-half or even three-quarters of the property he has acquired--no one
can tell how. He would have enough left then to grind the poor under
foot.”

After his appeal to selfishness, Father Chupin appealed to envy. There
could be no doubt of his success.

But he had not time to pursue his advantage. The services were over, and
the worshippers were leaving the church.

Soon there appeared upon the porch the man in question, with a young
girl of dazzling beauty leaning upon his arm.

Father Chupin walked straight toward him, and brusquely delivered his
message.

M. Lacheneur staggered beneath the blow. He turned first so red, then so
frightfully pale, that those around him thought he was about to fall.

But he quickly recovered his self-possession, and without a word to the
messenger, he walked rapidly away, leading his daughter.

Some minutes later an old post-chaise, drawn by four horses, dashed
through the village at a gallop, and paused before the house of the
village cure.

Then one might have witnessed a singular spectacle.

Father Chupin had gathered his wife and his children together, and the
four surrounded the carriage, shouting, with all the power of their
lungs:

“Long live the Duc de Sairmeuse!”



CHAPTER II

A gently ascending road, more than two miles in length, shaded by a
quadruple row of venerable elms, led from the village to the Chateau de
Sairmeuse.

Nothing could be more beautiful than this avenue, a fit approach to a
palace; and the stranger who beheld it could understand the naively vain
proverb of the country: “He does not know the real beauty of France, who
has never seen Sairmeuse nor the Oiselle.”

The Oiselle is the little river which one crosses by means of a wooden
bridge on leaving the village, and whose clear and rapid waters give a
delicious freshness to the valley.

At every step, as one ascends, the view changes. It is as if an
enchanting panorama were being slowly unrolled before one.

On the right you can see the saw-mills of Fereol. On the left, like an
ocean of verdure, the forest of Dolomien trembles in the breeze. Those
imposing ruins on the other side of the river are all that remain of
the feudal manor of the house of Breulh. That red brick mansion, with
granite trimmings, half concealed by a bend in the river, belongs to the
Baron d’Escorval.

And, if the day is clear, one can easily distinguish the spires of
Montaignac in the distance.

This was the path traversed by M. Lacheneur after Chupin had delivered
his message.

But what did he care for the beauties of the landscape!

Upon the church porch he had received his death-wound; and now, with a
tottering and dragging step, he dragged himself along like one of those
poor soldiers, mortally wounded upon the field of battle, who go back,
seeking a ditch or quiet spot where they can lie down and die.

He seemed to have lost all thought of his surroundings--all
consciousness of previous events. He pursued his way, lost in his
reflections, guided only by force of habit.

Two or three times his daughter, Marie-Anne, who was walking by his
side, addressed him; but an “Ah! let me alone!” uttered in a harsh tone,
was the only response she could draw from him.

Evidently he had received a terrible blow; and undoubtedly, as often
happens under such circumstances, the unfortunate man was reviewing all
the different phases of his life.

At twenty Lacheneur was only a poor ploughboy in the service of the
Sairmeuse family.

His ambition was modest then. When stretched beneath a tree at the hour
of noonday rest, his dreams were as simple as those of an infant.

“If I could but amass a hundred pistoles,” he thought, “I would ask
Father Barrois for the hand of his daughter Martha; and he would not
refuse me.” A hundred pistoles! A thousand francs!--an enormous sum
for him who, in two years of toil and privation had only laid by eleven
louis, which he had placed carefully in a tiny box and hidden in the
depths of his straw mattress.

Still he did not despair. He had read in Martha’s eyes that she would
wait.

And Mlle. Armande de Sairmeuse, a rich old maid, was his god-mother;
and he thought, if he attacked her adroitly, that he might, perhaps,
interest her in his love-affair.

Then the terrible storm of the revolution burst over France.

With the fall of the first thunder-bolts, the Duke of Sairmeuse left
France with the Count d’Artois. They took refuge in foreign lands as
a passer-by seeks shelter in a doorway from a summer shower, saying to
himself: “This will not last long.”

The storm did last, however; and the following year Mlle. Armande, who
had remained at Sairmeuse, died.

The chateau was then closed, the president of the district took
possession of the keys in the name of the government, and the servants
were scattered.

Lacheneur took up his residence in Montaignac.

Young, daring, and personally attractive, blessed with an energetic
face, and an intelligence far above his station, it was not long before
he became well known in the political clubs.

For three months Lacheneur was the tyrant of Montaignac.

But this metier of public speaker is by no means lucrative, so the
surprise throughout the district was immense, when it was ascertained
that the former ploughboy had purchased the chateau, and almost all the
land belonging to his old master.

It is true that the nation had sold this princely domain for scarcely
a twentieth part of its real value. The appraisement was sixty-nine
thousand francs. It was giving the property away.

And yet, it was necessary to have this amount, and Lacheneur possessed
it, since he had poured it in a flood of beautiful louis d’or into the
hands of the receiver of the district.

From that moment his popularity waned. The patriots who had applauded
the ploughboy, cursed the capitalist. He discreetly left them to recover
from their rage as best they could, and returned to Sairmeuse. There
everyone bowed low before Citoyen Lacheneur.

Unlike most people, he did not forget his past hopes at the moment when
they might be realized.

He married Martha Barrois, and, leaving the country to work out its
own salvation without his assistance, he gave his time and attention to
agriculture.

Any close observer, in those days, would have felt certain that the man
was bewildered by the sudden change in his situation.

His manner was so troubled and anxious that one, to see him, would
have supposed him a servant in constant fear of being detected in some
indiscretion.

He did not open the chateau, but installed himself and his young wife in
the cottage formerly occupied by the head game-keeper, near the entrance
of the park.

But, little by little, with the habit of possession, came assurance.

The Consulate had succeeded the Directory, the Empire succeeded the
Consulate, Citoyen Lacheneur became M. Lacheneur.

Appointed mayor two years later, he left the cottage and took possession
of the chateau.

The former ploughboy slumbered in the bed of the Ducs de Sairmeuse; he
ate from the massive plate, graven with their coat-of-arms; he received
his visitors in the magnificent salon in which the Ducs de Sairmeuse had
received their friends in years gone by.

To those who had known him in former days, M. Lacheneur had become
unrecognizable. He had adapted himself to his lofty station. Blushing
at his own ignorance; he had found the courage--wonderful in one of his
age--to acquire the education which he lacked.

Then, all his undertakings were successful to such a degree that
his good fortune had become proverbial. That he took any part in an
enterprise, sufficed to make it turn out well.

His wife had given him two lovely children, a son and a daughter.

His property, managed with a shrewdness and sagacity which the former
owners had not possessed, yielded him an income of at least sixty
thousand francs.

How many, under similar circumstances, would have lost their heads! But
he, M. Lacheneur, had been wise enough to retain his _sang-froid_.

In spite of the princely luxury that surrounded him, his own habits were
simple and frugal. He had never had an attendant for his own person. His
large income he consecrated almost entirely to the improvement of his
estate or to the purchase of more land. And yet, he was not avaricious.
In all that concerned his wife or children, he did not count the cost.
His son, Jean, had been educated in Paris; he wished him to be fitted
for any position. Unwilling to consent to a separation from his
daughter, he had procured a governess to take charge of her education.

Sometimes his friends accused him of an inordinate ambition for his
children; but he always shook his head sadly, as he replied:

“If _I_ can only insure them a modest and comfortable future! But what
folly it is to count upon the future. Thirty years ago, who could have
foreseen that the Sairmeuse family would be deprived of their estates?”

With such opinions he should have been a good master; he was, but no one
thought the better of him on that account. His former comrades could not
forgive him for his sudden elevation.

They seldom spoke of him without wishing his ruin in ambiguous words.

Alas! the evil days came. Toward the close of the year 1812, he lost his
wife, the disasters of the year 1813 swept away a large portion of his
personal fortune, which had been invested in a manufacturing enterprise.

Compromised by the first Restoration, he was obliged to conceal himself
for a time; and to cap the climax, the conduct of his son, who was still
in Paris, caused him serious disquietude.

Only the evening before, he had thought himself the most unfortunate of
men.

But here was another misfortune menacing him; a misfortune so terrible
that all the others were forgotten.

From the day on which he had purchased Sairmeuse to this fatal Sunday in
August, 1815, was an interval of twenty years.

Twenty years! And it seemed to him only yesterday that, blushing and
trembling, he had laid those piles of louis d’or upon the desk of the
receiver of the district.

Had he dreamed it?

He had not dreamed it. His entire life, with its struggles and its
miseries, its hopes and its fears, its unexpected joys and its blighted
hopes, all passed before him.

Lost in these memories, he had quite forgotten the present situation,
when a commonplace incident, more powerful than the voice of his
daughter, brought him back to the terrible reality. The gate leading to
the Chateau de Sairmeuse, to _his_ chateau, was found to be locked.

He shook it with a sort of rage; and, being unable to break the
fastening, he found some relief in breaking the bell.

On hearing the noise, the gardener came running to the scene of action.

“Why is this gate closed?” demanded M. Lacheneur, with unwonted violence
of manner. “By what right do you barricade my house when I, the master,
am without?”

The gardener tried to make some excuse.

“Hold your tongue!” interrupted M. Lacheneur. “I dismiss you; you are no
longer in my service.”

He passed on, leaving the gardener petrified with astonishment, crossed
the court-yard--a court-yard worthy of the mansion, bordered with velvet
turf, with flowers, and with dense shrubbery.

In the vestibule, inlaid with marble, three of his tenants sat awaiting
him, for it was on Sunday that he always received the workmen who
desired to confer with him.

They rose at his approach, and removed their hats deferentially. But he
did not give them time to utter a word.

“Who permitted you to enter here?” he said, savagely, “and what do you
desire? They sent you to play the spy on me, did they? Leave, I tell
you!”

The three farmers were even more bewildered and dismayed than the
gardener had been, and their remarks must have been interesting.

But M. Lacheneur could not hear them. He had opened the door of the
grand salon, and dashed in, followed by his frightened daughter.

Never had Marie-Anne seen her father in such a mood; and she trembled,
her heart torn by the most frightful presentiments.

She had heard it said that oftentimes, under the influence of some dire
calamity, unfortunate men have suddenly lost their reason entirely; and
she was wondering if her father had become insane.

It would seem, indeed, that such was the case. His eyes flashed,
convulsive shudders shook his whole body, a white foam gathered on his
lips.

He made the circuit of the room as a wild beast makes the circuit of his
cage, uttering harsh imprecations and making frenzied gestures.

His actions were strange, incomprehensible. Sometimes he seemed to be
trying the thickness of the carpet with the toe of his boot; sometimes
he threw himself upon a sofa or a chair, as if to test its softness.

Occasionally, he paused abruptly before some one of the valuable
pictures that covered the walls, or before a bronze. One might have
supposed that he was taking an inventory, and appraising all the
magnificent and costly articles which decorated this apartment, the most
sumptuous in the chateau.

“And I must renounce all this!” he exclaimed, at last.

These words explained everything.

“No, never!” he resumed, in a transport of rage; “never! never! I
cannot! I will not!”

Now Marie-Anne understood it all. But what was passing in her father’s
mind? She wished to know; and, leaving the low chair in which she had
been seated, she went to her father’s side.

“Are you ill, father?” she asked, in her sweet voice; “what is the
matter? What do you fear? Why do you not confide in me?--Am I not your
daughter? Do you no longer love me?”

At the sound of this dear voice, M. Lacheneur trembled like a sleeper
suddenly aroused from the terrors of a nightmare, and he cast an
indescribable glance upon his daughter.

“Did you not hear what Chupin said to me?” he replied, slowly. “The Duc
de Sairmeuse is at Montaignac; he will soon be here; and we are dwelling
in the chateau of his fathers, and his domain has become ours!”

The vexed question regarding the national lands, which agitated France
for thirty years, Marie understood, for she had heard it discussed a
thousand times.

“Ah, well, dear father,” said she, “what does that matter, even if we do
hold the property? You have bought it and paid for it, have you not? So
it is rightfully and lawfully ours.”

M. Lacheneur hesitated a moment before replying.

But his secret suffocated him. He was in one of those crises in which a
man, however strong he may be, totters and seeks some support, however
fragile.

“You would be right, my daughter,” he murmured, with drooping head, “if
the money that I gave in exchange for Sairmeuse had really belonged to
me.”

At this strange avowal the young girl turned pale and recoiled a step.

“What?” she faltered; “this gold was not yours, my father? To whom did
it belong? From whence did it come?”

The unhappy man had gone too far to retract.

“I will tell you all, my daughter,” he replied, “and you shall judge.
You shall decide. When the Sairmeuse family fled from France, I had only
my hands to depend upon, and as it was almost impossible to obtain work,
I wondered if starvation were not near at hand.

“Such was my condition when someone came after me one evening to tell
me that Mademoiselle Armande de Sairmeuse, my godmother, was dying, and
wished to speak with me. I ran to the chateau.

“The messenger had told the truth. Mademoiselle Armande was sick unto
death. I felt this on seeing her upon her bed, whiter than wax.

“Ah! if I were to live a hundred years, never should I forget her face
as it looked at that moment. It was expressive of a strength of will and
an energy that would hold death at bay until the task upon which she had
determined was performed.

“When I entered the room I saw a look of relief appear upon her
countenance.

“‘How long you were in coming!’ she murmured faintly.

“I was about to make some excuse, when she motioned me to pause, and
ordered the women who surrounded her to leave the room.

“As soon as we were alone:

“‘You are an honest boy,’, said she, ‘and I am about to give you a proof
of my confidence. People believe me to be poor, but they are mistaken.
While my relatives were gayly ruining themselves, I was saving the five
hundred louis which the duke, my brother, gave me each year.’

“She motioned me to come nearer, and to kneel beside her bed.

“I obeyed, and Mademoiselle Armande leaned toward me, almost glued her
lips to my ear, and added:

“‘I possess eighty thousand francs.’

“I felt a sudden giddiness, but my godmother did not notice it.

“‘This amount,’ she continued, ‘is not a quarter part of the former
income from our family estates. But now, who knows but it will, one day,
be the only resource of the Sairmeuse? I am going to place it in your
charge, Lacheneur. I confide it to your honor and to your devotion. The
estates belonging to the emigrants are to be sold, I hear. If such an
act of injustice is committed, you will probably be able to purchase
our property for seventy thousand francs. If the property is sold by the
government, purchase it; if the lands belonging to the emigrants are not
sold, take that amount to the duke, my brother, who is with the
Count d’Artois. The surplus, that is to say, the ten thousand francs
remaining, I give to you--they are yours.’

“She seemed to recover her strength. She raised herself in bed, and,
holding the crucifix attached to her rosary to my lips, she said:

“‘Swear by the image of our Saviour, that you will faithfully execute
the last will of your dying godmother.’

“I took the required oath, and an expression of satisfaction overspread
her features.

“‘That is well,’ she said; ‘I shall die content. You will have a
protector on high. But this is not all. In times like these in which we
live, this gold will not be safe in your hands unless those about you
are ignorant that you possess it. I have been endeavoring to discover
some way by which you could remove it from my room, and from the
chateau, without the knowledge of anyone; and I have found a way. The
gold is here in this cupboard, at the head of my bed, in a stout oaken
chest. You must find strength to move the chest--you must. You can
fasten a sheet around it and let it down gently from the window into the
garden. You will then leave the house as you entered it, and as soon as
you are outside, you must take the chest and carry it to your home. The
night is very dark, and no one will see you, if you are careful. But
make haste; my strength is nearly gone.’

“The chest was heavy, but I was very strong.

“In less than ten minutes the task of removing the chest from the
chateau was accomplished, without a single sound that would betray us.
As I closed the window, I said:

“‘It is done, godmother.’

“‘God be praised!’ she whispered; ‘Sairmeuse is saved!’

“I heard a deep sigh. I turned; she was dead.”

This scene that M. Lacheneur was relating rose vividly before him.

To feign, to disguise the truth, or to conceal any portion of it was an
impossibility.

He forgot himself and his daughter; he thought only of the dead woman,
of Mlle. Armande de Sairmeuse.

And he shuddered on pronouncing the words: “She was dead.” It seemed to
him that she was about to speak, and to insist upon the fulfilment of
his pledge.

After a moment’s silence, he resumed, in a hollow voice:

“I called for aid; it came. Mademoiselle Armande was adored by everyone;
there was great lamentation, and a half hour of indescribable confusion
followed her death. I was able to withdraw, unnoticed, to run into
the garden, and to carry away the oaken chest. An hour later, it was
concealed in the miserable hovel in which I dwelt. The following year I
purchased Sairmeuse.”

He had confessed all; and he paused, trembling, trying to read his
sentence in the eyes of his daughter.

“And can you hesitate?” she demanded.

“Ah! you do not know----”

“I know that Sairmeuse must be given up.”

This was the decree of his own conscience, that faint voice which speaks
only in a whisper, but which all the tumult on earth cannot overpower.

“No one saw me take away the chest,” he faltered. “If anyone suspected
it, there is not a single proof against me. But no one does suspect it.”

Marie-Anne rose, her eyes flashed with generous indignation.

“My father!” she exclaimed; “oh! my father!”

Then, in a calmer tone, she added:

“If others know nothing of this, can _you_ forget it?”

M. Lacheneur appeared almost ready to succumb to the torture of the
terrible conflict raging in his soul.

“Return!” he exclaimed. “What shall I return? That which I have
received? So be it. I consent. I will give the duke the eighty thousand
francs; to this amount I will add the interest on this sum since I have
had it, and--we shall be free of all obligation.”

The girl sadly shook her head.

“Why do you resort to subterfuges which are so unworthy of you?” she
asked, gently. “You know perfectly well that it was Sairmeuse which
Mademoiselle Armande intended to intrust to the servant of her house.
And it is Sairmeuse which must be returned.”

The word “servant” was revolting to a man, who, at least, while the
empire endured, had been a power in the land.

“Ah! you are cruel, my daughter,” he said, with intense bitterness; “as
cruel as a child who has never suffered--as cruel as one who, having
never himself been tempted, is without mercy for those who have yielded
to temptation.

“It is one of those acts which God alone can judge, since God alone can
read the depths of one’s secret soul.

“I am only a depositary, you tell me. It was, indeed, in this light that
I formerly regarded myself.

“If your poor sainted mother was still alive, she would tell you the
anxiety and anguish I felt on being made the master of riches which
were not mine. I trembled lest I should yield to their seductions; I was
afraid of myself. I felt as a gambler might feel who had the winnings
of others confided to his care; as a drunkard might feel who had been
placed in charge of a quantity of the most delicious wines.

“Your mother would tell you that I moved heaven and earth to find the
Duc de Sairmeuse. But he had left the Count d’Artois, and no one knew
where he had gone or what had become of him. Ten years passed before
I could make up my mind to inhabit the chateau--yes, ten years--during
which I had the furniture dusted each morning as if the master was to
return that evening.

“At last I ventured. I had heard Monsieur d’Escorval declare that the
duke had been killed in battle. I took up my abode here. And from day to
day, in proportion as the domain of Sairmeuse became more beautiful
and extensive beneath my care, I felt myself more and more its rightful
owner.”

But this despairing pleading in behalf of a bad cause produced no
impression upon Marie-Anne’s loyal heart.

“Restitution must be made,” she repeated. M. Lacheneur wrung his hands.

“Implacable!” he exclaimed; “she is implacable. Unfortunate girl! does
she not understand that it is for her sake I wish to remain where I
am? I am old, and I am familiar with toil and poverty; idleness has
not removed the callosities from my hands. What do I require to keep me
alive until the day comes for me to take my place in the graveyard? A
crust of bread and an onion in the morning, a porringer of soup in the
evening, and for the night a bundle of straw. I could easily earn that.
But you, unhappy child! and your brother, what will become of you?”

“We must not discuss nor haggle with duty, my father. I think, however,
that you are needlessly alarmed. I believe the duke is too noble-hearted
ever to allow you to suffer want after the immense service you have
rendered him.”

The old servitor of the house of Sairmeuse laughed a loud, bitter laugh.

“You believe that!” said he; “then you do not know the nobles who have
been our masters for ages. ‘A., you are a worthy fellow!’--very coldly
said--will be the only recompense I shall receive; and you will see us,
me, at my plough; you, out at service. And if I venture to speak of
the ten thousand francs that were given me, I shall be treated as an
impostor, as an impudent fool. By the holy name of God this shall not
be!”

“Oh, my father!”

“No! this shall not be. And I realize--as you cannot realize--the
disgrace of such a fall. You think you are beloved in Sairmeuse? You are
mistaken. We have been too fortunate not to be the victims of hatred and
jealousy. If I fall to-morrow, you will see all who kissed your hands
to-day fall upon you to tear you to pieces!”

His eye glittered; he believed he had found a victorious argument.

“And then you, yourself, will realize the horror of the disgrace. It
will cost you the deadly anguish of a separation from him whom your
heart has chosen.”

He had spoken truly, for Marie-Anne’s beautiful eyes filled with tears.

“If what you say proves true, father,” she murmured, in an altered
voice, “I may, perhaps, die of sorrow; but I cannot fail to realize that
my confidence and my love has been misplaced.”

“And you still insist upon my returning Sairmeuse to its former owner?”

“Honor speaks, my father.”

M. Lacheneur made the arm-chair in which he was seated tremble by a
violent blow of his fist.

“And if I am just as obstinate,” he exclaimed--“if I keep the
property--what will you do?”

“I shall say to myself, father, that honest poverty is better than
stolen wealth. I shall leave this chateau, which belongs to the Duc
de Sairmeuse, and I shall seek a situation as a servant in the
neighborhood.”

M. Lacheneur sank back in his arm-chair sobbing. He knew his daughter’s
nature well enough to be assured that what she said, that she would do.

But he was conquered; his daughter had won the battle. He had decided to
make the heroic sacrifice.

“I will relinquish Sairmeuse,” he faltered, “come what may----”

He paused suddenly; a visitor was entering the room.

It was a young man about twenty years of age, of distinguished
appearance, but with a rather melancholy and gentle manner.

His eyes when he entered the apartment encountered those of Marie-Anne;
he blushed slightly, and the girl half turned away, crimsoning to the
roots of her hair.

“Monsieur,” said the young man, “my father sends me to inform you that
the Duc de Sairmeuse and his son have just arrived. They have asked the
hospitality of our cure.”

M. Lacheneur rose, unable to conceal his frightful agitation.

“You will thank the Baron d’Escorval for his attention, my dear
Maurice,” he responded. “I shall have the honor of seeing him to-day,
after a very momentous step which we are about to take, my daughter and
I.”

Young d’Escorval had seen, at the first glance, that his presence was
inopportune, so he remained only a few moments.

But as he was taking leave, Marie-Anne found time to say, in a low
voice:

“I think I know your heart, Maurice; this evening I shall know it
certainly.”



CHAPTER III

Few of the inhabitants of Sairmeuse knew, except by name, the terrible
duke whose arrival had thrown the whole village into commotion.

Some of the oldest residents had a faint recollection of having seen
him long ago, before ‘89 indeed, when he came to visit his aunt, Mlle.
Armande.

His duties, then, had seldom permitted him to leave the court.

If he had given no sign of life during the empire, it was because he had
not been compelled to submit to the humiliations and suffering which so
many of the emigrants were obliged to endure in their exile.

On the contrary, he had received, in exchange for the wealth of which he
had been deprived by the revolution, a princely fortune.

Taking refuge in London after the defeat of the army of Conde, he had
been so fortunate as to please the only daughter of Lord Holland, one of
the richest peers in England, and he had married her.

She possessed a fortune of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds
sterling, more than six million francs.

Still the marriage was not a happy one. The chosen companion of the
dissipated and licentious Count d’Artois was not likely to prove a very
good husband.

The young duchess was contemplating a separation when she died,
in giving birth to a boy, who was baptized under the names of
Anne-Marie-Martial.

The loss of his wife did not render the Duc de Sairmeuse inconsolable.

He was free and richer than he had ever been.

As soon as _les convenances_ permitted, he confided his son to the care
of a relative of his wife, and began his roving life again.

Rumor had told the truth. He had fought, and that furiously, against
France in the Austrian, and then in the Russian ranks.

And he took no pains to conceal the fact; convinced that he had only
performed his duty. He considered that he had honestly and loyally
gained the rank of general which the Emperor of all the Russias had
bestowed upon him.

He had not returned to France during the first Restoration; but his
absence had been involuntary. His father-in-law, Lord Holland, had just
died, and the duke was detained in London by business connected with his
son’s immense inheritance.

Then followed the “Hundred Days.” They exasperated him.

But “the good cause,” as he styled it, having triumphed anew, he
hastened to France.

Alas! Lacheneur judged the character of his former master correctly,
when he resisted the entreaties of his daughter.

This man, who had been compelled to conceal himself during the first
Restoration, knew only too well, that the returned _emigres_ had learned
nothing and forgotten nothing.

The Duc de Sairmeuse was no exception to the rule.

He thought, and nothing could be more sadly absurd, that a mere act
of authority would suffice to suppress forever all the events of the
Revolution and of the empire.

When he said: “I do not admit that!” he firmly believed that there was
nothing more to be said; that controversy was ended; and that what _had_
been was as if it had never been.

If some, who had seen Louis XVII. at the helm in 1814, assured the duke
that France had changed in many respects since 1789, he responded with a
shrug of the shoulders:

“Nonsense! As soon as we assert ourselves, all these rascals, whose
rebellion alarms you, will quietly sink out of sight.”

Such was really his opinion.

On the way from Montaignac to Sairmeuse, the duke, comfortably ensconced
in his berlin, unfolded his theories for the benefit of his son.

“The King has been poorly advised,” he said, in conclusion. “Besides,
I am disposed to believe that he inclines too much to Jacobinism. If
he would listen to my advice, he would make use of the twelve hundred
thousand soldiers which our friends have placed at his disposal, to
bring his subjects to a sense of their duty. Twelve hundred thousand
bayonets have far more eloquence than the articles of a charter.”

He continued his remarks on this subject until the carriage approached
Sairmeuse.

Though but little given to sentiment, he was really affected by the
sight of the country in which he was born--where he had played as a
child, and of which he had heard nothing since the death of his aunt.

Everything was changed: still the outlines of the landscape remained the
same; the valley of the Oiselle was as bright and laughing as in days
gone by.

“I recognize it!” he exclaimed, with a delight that made him forget
politics. “I recognize it!”

Soon the changes became more striking.

The carriage entered Sairmeuse, and rattled over the stones of the only
street in the village.

This street, in former years, had been unpaved, and had always been
rendered impassable by wet weather.

“Ah, ha!” murmured the duke, “this is an improvement!”

It was not long before he noticed others. The dilapidated, thatched
hovels had given place to pretty and comfortable white cottages with
green blinds, and a vine hanging gracefully over the door.

As the carriage passed the public square in front of the church, Martial
observed the groups of peasants who were still talking there.

“What do you think of all these peasants?” he inquired of his father.
“Do they have the appearance of people who are preparing a triumphal
reception for their old masters?”

M. de Sairmeuse shrugged his shoulders. He was not the man to renounce
an illusion for such a trifle.

“They do not know that I am in this post-chaise,” he replied. “When they
know----”

Shouts of “Vive Monsieur le Duc de Sairmeuse!” interrupted him.

“Do you hear that, Marquis?” he exclaimed.

And pleased by these cries that proved him in the right, he leaned from
the carriage-window, waving his hand to the honest Chupin family, who
were running after the vehicle with noisy shouts.

The old rascal, his wife, and his children, all possessed powerful
voices; and it was not strange that the duke believed the whole village
was welcoming him. He was convinced of it; and when the berlin stopped
before the house of the cure, M. de Sairmeuse was persuaded that the
_prestige_ of the nobility was greater than ever.

Upon the threshold of the parsonage, Bibiaine, the old housekeeper, was
standing. She knew who these guests must be, for the cure’s servants
always know what is going on.

“Monsieur has not yet returned from church,” she said, in response to
the duke’s inquiry; “but if the gentlemen wish to wait, it will not be
long before he comes, for the poor, dear man has not breakfasted yet.”

“Let us go in,” the duke said to his son. And guided by the housekeeper,
they entered a sort of drawing-room, where the table was spread.

M. de Sairmeuse took an inventory of the apartment in a single glance.
The habits of a house reveal those of its master. This was clean, poor,
and bare. The walls were whitewashed; a dozen chairs composed the entire
furniture; upon the table, laid with monastic simplicity, were only tin
dishes.

This was either the abode of an ambitious man or a saint.

“Will these gentlemen take any refreshments?” inquired Bibiaine.

“Upon my word,” replied Martial, “I must confess that the drive has
whetted my appetite amazingly.”

“Blessed Jesus!” exclaimed the old housekeeper, in evident despair.
“What am I to do? I, who have nothing! That is to say--yes--I have an
old hen left in the coop. Give me time to wring its neck, to pick it,
and clean it----”

She paused to listen, and they heard a step in the passage.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, “here is Monsieur le Cure now!”

The son of a poor farmer in the environs of Montaignac, he owed his
Latin and tonsure to the privations of his family.

Tall, angular, and solemn, he was as cold and impassive as the stones of
his church.

By what immense efforts of will, at the cost of what torture, had he
made himself what he was? One could form some idea of the terrible
restraint to which he had subjected himself by looking at his eyes,
which occasionally emitted the lightnings of an impassioned soul.

Was he old or young? The most subtle observer would have hesitated to
say on seeing this pallid and emaciated face, cut in two by an immense
nose--a real eagle’s beak--as thin as the edge of a razor.

He wore a white cassock, which had been patched and darned in numberless
places, but which was a marvel of cleanliness, and which hung about his
tall, attenuated body like the sails of a disabled vessel.

He was known as the Abbe Midon.

At the sight of the two strangers seated in his drawing-room, he
manifested some slight surprise.

The carriage standing before the door had announced the presence of a
visitor; but he had expected to find one of his parishioners.

No one had warned him or the sacristan, and he was wondering with whom
he had to deal, and what they desired of him.

Mechanically, he turned to Bibiaine, but the old servant had taken
flight.

The duke understood his host’s astonishment.

“Upon my word, Abbe!” he said, with the impertinent ease of a _grand
seigneur_ who makes himself at home everywhere, “we have taken your
house by storm, and hold the position, as you see. I am the Duc de
Sairmeuse, and this is my son, the Marquis.”

The priest bowed, but he did not seem very greatly impressed by the
exalted rank of his guests.

“It is a great honor for me,” he replied, in a more than reserved tone,
“to receive a visit from the former master of this place.”

He emphasized this word “former” in such a manner that it was impossible
to doubt his sentiments and his opinions.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “you will not find here the comforts to
which you are accustomed, and I fear----”

“Nonsense!” interrupted the duke. “An old soldier is not fastidious,
and what suffices for you, Monsieur Abbe, will suffice for us. And rest
assured that we shall amply repay you in one way or another for any
inconvenience we may cause you.”

The priest’s eye flashed. This want of tact, this disagreeable
familiarity, this last insulting remark, kindled the anger of the man
concealed beneath the priest.

“Besides,” added Martial, gayly, “we have been vastly amused by
Bibiaine’s anxieties, we already know that there is a chicken in the
coop----”

“That is to say there was one, Monsieur le Marquis.”

The old housekeeper, who suddenly reappeared, explained her master’s
response. She seemed overwhelmed with despair.

“Blessed Virgin! Monsieur, what shall I do?” she clamored. “The chicken
has disappeared. Someone has certainly stolen it, for the coop is
securely closed!”

“Do not accuse your neighbor hastily,” interrupted the cure; “no one has
stolen it from us. Bertrande was here this morning to ask alms in the
name of her sick daughter. I had no money, and I gave her this fowl that
she might make a good bouillon for the sick girl.”

This explanation changed Bibiaine’s consternation to fury.

Planting herself in the centre of the room, one hand upon her hip, and
gesticulating wildly with the other, she exclaimed, pointing to her
master:

“That is just the sort of man he is; he has less sense than a baby! Any
miserable peasant who meets him can make him believe anything he wishes.
Any great falsehood brings tears to his eyes, and then they can do what
they like with him. In that way they take the very shoes off his feet
and the bread from his mouth. Bertrande’s daughter, messieurs, is no
more ill than you or I!”

“Enough,” said the priest, sternly, “enough.” Then, knowing by
experience that his voice had not the power to check her flood of
reproaches, he took her by the arm and led her out into the passage.

M. de Sairmeuse and his son exchanged a glance of consternation.

Was this a comedy that had been prepared for their benefit? Evidently
not, since their arrival had not been expected.

But the priest, whose character had been so plainly revealed by this
quarrel with his domestic, was not a man to their taste.

At least, he was evidently not the man they had hoped to find--not the
auxiliary whose assistance was indispensable to the success of their
plans.

Yet they did not exchange a word; they listened.

They heard the sound as of a discussion in the passage. The master spoke
in low tones, but with an unmistakable accent of command; the servant
uttered an astonished exclamation.

But the listeners could not distinguish a word.

Soon the priest re-entered the apartment.

“I hope, gentlemen,” he said, with a dignity that could not fail to
check any attempt at raillery, “that you will excuse this ridiculous
scene. The cure of Sairmeuse, thank God! is not so poor as she says.”

Neither the duke nor Martial made any response.

Even their remarkable assurance was very sensibly diminished; and M. de
Sairmeuse deemed it advisable to change the subject.

This he did, by relating the events which he had just witnessed in
Paris, and by insisting that His Majesty, Louis XVIII., had been
welcomed with enthusiasm and transports of affection.

Fortunately, the old housekeeper interrupted this recital.

She entered, loaded with china, silver, and bottles, and behind her came
a large man in a white apron, bearing three or four covered dishes in
his hands.

It was the order to go and obtain this repast from the village inn which
had drawn from Bibiaine so many exclamations of wonder and dismay in the
passage.

A moment later the cure and his guests took their places at the table.

Had the much-lamented chicken constituted the dinner the rations would
have been “short.” This the worthy woman was obliged to confess, on
seeing the terrible appetite evinced by M. de Sairmeuse and his son.

“One would have sworn that they had eaten nothing for a fortnight,” she
told her friends, the next day.

Abbe Midon was not hungry, though it was two o’clock, and he had eaten
nothing since the previous evening.

The sudden arrival of the former masters of Sairmeuse filled his
heart with gloomy forebodings. Their coming, he believed, presaged the
greatest misfortunes.

So while he played with his knife and fork, pretending to eat, he was
really occupied in watching his guests, and in studying them with
all the penetration of a priest, which, by the way, is generally far
superior to that of a physician or of a magistrate.

The Duc de Sairmeuse was fifty-seven, but looked considerably younger.

The storms of his youth, the dissipation of his riper years, the great
excesses of every kind in which he had indulged, had not impaired his
iron constitution in the least.

Of herculean build, he was extremely proud of his strength, and of his
hands, which were well-formed, but large, firmly knit and powerful, such
hands as rightly belonged to a gentleman whose ancestors had given many
a crushing blow with ponderous battle-axe in the crusades.

His face revealed his character. He possessed all the graces and all the
vices of a courtier.

He was, at the same time _spirituel_ and ignorant, sceptical and
violently imbued with the prejudices of his class.

Though less robust than his father, Martial was a no less
distinguished-looking cavalier. It was not strange that women raved over
his blue eyes, and the beautiful blond hair which he inherited from his
mother.

To his father he owed energy, courage, and, it must also be added,
perversity. But he was his superior in education and in intellect. If he
shared his father’s prejudices, he had not adopted them without weighing
them carefully. What the father might do in a moment of excitement, the
son was capable of doing in cold blood.

It was thus that the abbe, with rare sagacity, read the character of his
guests.

So it was with great sorrow, but without surprise, that he heard the
duke advance, on the questions of the day, the impossible ideas shared
by nearly all the _emigres_.

Knowing the condition of the country, and the state of public opinion,
the cure endeavored to convince the obstinate man of his mistake; but
upon this subject the duke would not permit contradiction, or even
raillery; and he was fast losing his temper, when Bibiaine appeared at
the parlor door.

“Monsieur le Duc,” said she, “Monsieur Lacheneur and his daughter are
without and desire to speak to you.”



CHAPTER IV.

This name Lacheneur awakened no recollection in the mind of the duke.

First, he had never lived at Sairmeuse.

And even if he had, what courtier of the _ancien regime_ ever troubled
himself about the individual names of the peasants, whom he regarded
with such profound indifference.

When a _grand seigneur_ addressed these people, he said: “Halloo! hi,
there! friend, my worthy fellow!”

So it was with the air of a man who is making an effort of memory that
the Duc de Sairmeuse repeated:

“Lacheneur--Monsieur Lacheneur----”

But Martial, a closer observer than his father, had noticed that the
priest’s glance wavered at the sound of this name.

“Who is this person, Abbe?” demanded the duke, lightly.

“Monsieur Lacheneur,” replied the priest, with very evident hesitation,
“is the present owner of the Chateau de Sairmeuse.”

Martial, the precocious diplomat, could not repress a smile on hearing
this response, which he had foreseen. But the duke bounded from his
chair.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “it is the rascal who has had the impudence--Let him
come in, old woman, let him come in.”

Bibiaine retired, and the priest’s uneasiness increased.

“Permit me, Monsieur le Duc,” he said, hastily, “to remark that Monsieur
Lacheneur exercises a great influence in this region--to offend him
would be impolitic----”

“I understand--you advise me to be conciliatory. Such sentiments are
purely Jacobin. If His Majesty listens to the advice of such as you,
all these sales of confiscated estates will be ratified. Zounds! our
interests are the same. If the Revolution has deprived the nobility of
their property, it has also impoverished the clergy.”

“The possessions of a priest are not of this world, Monsieur,” said the
cure, coldly.

M. de Sairmeuse was about to make some impertinent response, when M.
Lacheneur appeared, followed by his daughter.

The wretched man was ghastly pale, great drops of perspiration stood out
upon his temples, his restless, haggard eyes revealed his distress of
mind.

Marie-Anne was as pale as her father, but her attitude and the light
that burned in her eyes told of invincible energy and determination.

“Ah, well! friend,” said the duke, “so we are the owner of Sairmeuse, it
seems.”

This was said with such a careless insolence of manner that the cure
blushed that they should thus treat, in his own house, a man whom he
considered his equal.

He rose and offered the visitors chairs.

“Will you take a seat, dear Monsieur Lacheneur?” said he, with
a politeness intended as a lesson for the duke; “and you, also,
Mademoiselle, do me the honor----”

But the father and the daughter both refused the proffered civility with
a motion of the head.

“Monsieur le Duc,” continued Lacheneur, “I am an old servant of your
house----”

“Ah! indeed!”

“Mademoiselle Armande, your aunt, accorded my poor mother the honor of
acting as my godmother----”

“Ah, yes,” interrupted the duke. “I remember you now. Our family
has shown great goodness to you and yours. And it was to prove your
gratitude, probably, that you made haste to purchase our estate!”

The former ploughboy was of humble origin, but his heart and his
character had developed with his fortunes; he understood his own worth.

Much as he was disliked, and even detested, by his neighbors, everyone
respected him.

And here was a man who treated him with undisguised scorn. Why? By what
right?

Indignant at the outrage, he made a movement as if to retire.

No one, save his daughter, knew the truth; he had only to keep silence
and Sairmeuse remained his.

Yes, he had still the power to keep Sairmeuse, and he knew it, for
he did not share the fears of the ignorant rustics. He was too well
informed not to be able to distinguish between the hopes of the
_emigres_ and the possible. He knew that an abyss separated the dream
from the reality.

A beseeching word uttered in a low tone by his daughter, made him turn
again to the duke.

“If I purchased Sairmeuse,” he answered, in a voice husky with emotion,
“it was in obedience to the command of your dying aunt, and with the
money which she gave me for that purpose. If you see me here, it is only
because I come to restore to you the deposit confided to my keeping.”

Anyone not belonging to that class of spoiled fools which surround a
throne would have been deeply touched.

But the duke thought this grand act of honesty and of generosity the
most simple and natural thing in the world.

“That is very well, so far as the principal is concerned,” said he. “Let
us speak now of the interest. Sairmeuse, if I remember rightly, yielded
an average income of one thousand louis per year. These revenues, well
invested, should have amounted to a very considerable amount. Where is
this?”

This claim, thus advanced and at such a moment, was so outrageous, that
Martial, disgusted, made a sign to his father, which the latter did not
see.

But the cure hoping to recall the extortioner to something like a sense
of shame, exclaimed:

“Monsieur le Duc! Oh, Monsieur le Duc!”

Lacheneur shrugged his shoulders with an air of resignation.

“The income I have used for my own living expenses, and in educating
my children; but most of it has been expended in improving the estate,
which today yields an income twice as large as in former years.”

“That is to say, for twenty years, Monsieur Lacheneur has played the
part of lord of the manor. A delightful comedy. You are rich now, I
suppose.”

“I possess nothing. But I hope you will allow me to take ten thousand
francs, which your aunt gave to me.”

“Ah! she gave you ten thousand francs? And when?”

“On the same evening that she gave me the eighty thousand francs
intended for the purchase of the estate.”

“Perfect! What proof can you furnish that she gave you this sum?”

Lacheneur stood motionless and speechless. He tried to reply, but
he could not. If he opened his lips it would only be to pour forth a
torrent of menaces, insults, and invectives.

Marie-Anne stepped quickly forward.

“The proof, Monsieur,” said she, in a clear, ringing voice, “is the word
of this man, who, of his own free will, comes to return to you--to give
you a fortune.”

As she sprang forward her beautiful dark hair escaped from its
confinement, the rich blood crimsoned her cheeks, her dark eyes flashed
brilliantly, and sorrow, anger, horror at the humiliation, imparted a
sublime expression to her face.

She was so beautiful that Martial regarded her with wonder.

“Lovely!” he murmured, in English; “beautiful as an angel!”

These words, which she understood, abashed Marie-Anne. But she had said
enough; her father felt that he was avenged.

He drew from his pocket a roll of papers, and throwing them upon the
table: “Here are your titles,” he said, addressing the duke in a tone
full of implacable hatred. “Keep the legacy that your aunt gave me,
I wish nothing of yours. I shall never set foot in Sairmeuse again.
Penniless I entered it, penniless I will leave it!”

He quitted the room with head proudly erect, and when they were outside,
he said but one word to his daughter:

“Well!”

“You have done your duty,” she replied; “it is those who have not done
it, who are to be pitied!”

She had no opportunity to say more. Martial came running after them,
anxious for another chance of seeing this young girl whose beauty had
made such an impression upon him.

“I hastened after you,” he said, addressing Marie-Anne, rather than M.
Lacheneur, “to reassure you. All this will be arranged, Mademoiselle.
Eyes so beautiful as yours should never know tears. I will be your
advocate with my father--”

“Mademoiselle Lacheneur has no need of an advocate!” a harsh voice
interrupted.

Martial turned, and saw the young man, who, that morning, went to warn
M. Lacheneur of the duke’s arrival.

“I am the Marquis de Sairmeuse,” he said, insolently.

“And I,” said the other, quietly, “am Maurice d’Escorval.”

They surveyed each other for a moment; each expecting, perhaps, an
insult from the other. Instinctively, they felt that they were to
be enemies; and the bitterest animosity spoke in the glances they
exchanged. Perhaps they felt a presentiment that they were to be
champions of two different principles, as well as rivals.

Martial, remembering his father, yielded.

“We shall meet again, Monsieur d’Escorval,” he said, as he retired. At
this threat, Maurice shrugged his shoulders, and said:

“You had better not desire it.”



CHAPTER V

The abode of the Baron d’Escorval, that brick structure with stone
trimmings which was visible from the superb avenue leading to Sairmeuse,
was small and unpretentious.

Its chief attraction was a pretty lawn that extended to the banks of the
Oiselle, and a small but beautifully shaded park.

It was known as the Chateau d’Escorval, but that appellation was gross
flattery. Any petty manufacturer who had amassed a small fortune would
have desired a larger, handsomer, and more imposing establishment.

M. d’Escorval--and it will be an eternal honor to him in history--was
not rich.

Although he had been intrusted with several of those missions from which
generals and diplomats often return laden with millions, M. d’Escorval’s
worldly possessions consisted only of the little patrimony bequeathed
him by his father: a property which yielded an income of from twenty to
twenty-five thousand francs a year.

This modest dwelling, situated about a mile from Sairmeuse, represented
the savings of ten years.

He had built it in 1806, from a plan drawn by his own hand; and it was
the dearest spot on earth to him.

He always hastened to this retreat when his work allowed him a few days
of rest.

But this time he had not come to Escorval of his own free will.

He had been compelled to leave Paris by the proscribed list of the 24th
of July--that fatal list which summoned the enthusiastic Labedoyere and
the honest and virtuous Drouot before a court-martial.

And even in this solitude, M. d’Escorval’s situation was not without
danger.

He was one of those who, some days before the disaster of Waterloo, had
strongly urged the Emperor to order the execution of Fouche, the former
minister of police.

Now, Fouche knew this counsel; and he was powerful.

“Take care!” M. d’Escorval’s friends wrote him from Paris.

But he put his trust in Providence, and faced the future, threatening
though it was, with the unalterable serenity of a pure conscience.

The baron was still young; he was not yet fifty, but anxiety, work, and
long nights passed in struggling with the most arduous difficulties of
the imperial policy, had made him old before his time.

He was tall, slightly inclined to _embonpoint_, and stooped a little.

His calm eyes, his serious mouth, his broad, furrowed forehead, and his
austere manners inspired respect.

“He must be stern and inflexible,” said those who saw him for the first
time.

But they were mistaken.

If, in the exercise of his official duties, this truly great man had the
strength to resist all temptations to swerve from the path of right; if,
when duty was at stake, he was as rigid as iron, in private life he
was as unassuming as a child, and kind and gentle even to the verge of
weakness.

To this nobility of character he owed his domestic happiness, that rare
and precious happiness which fills one’s existence with a celestial
perfume.

During the bloodiest epoch of the Reign of Terror, M. d’Escorval had
wrested from the guillotine a young girl named Victoire-Laure d’Alleu, a
distant cousin of the Rhetaus of Commarin, as beautiful as an angel, and
only three years younger than himself.

He loved her--and though she was an orphan, destitute of fortune, he
married her, considering the treasure of her virgin heart of far greater
value than the most magnificent dowry.

She was an honest woman, as her husband was an honest man, in the most
strict and vigorous sense of the word.

She was seldom seen at the Tuileries, where M. d’Escorval’s worth made
him eagerly welcomed. The splendors of the Imperial Court, which at
that time surpassed all the pomp of the time of Louis XIV., had no
attractions for her.

Grace, beauty, youth and accomplishments--she reserved them all for the
adornment of her home.

Her husband was her God. She lived in him and through him. She had not a
thought which did not belong to him.

The short time that he could spare from his arduous labors to devote to
her were her happiest hours.

And when, in the evening, they sat beside the fire in their modest
drawing-room, with their son Maurice playing on the rug at their feet,
it seemed to them that they had nothing to wish for here below.

The overthrow of the empire surprised them in the heydey of their
happiness.

Surprised them? No. For a long time M. d’Escorval had seen the
prodigious edifice erected by the genius whom he had made his idol
totter as if about to fall.

Certainly, he felt intense chagrin at this fall, but he was heart-broken
at the sight of all the treason and cowardice which followed it. He was
indignant and horrified at the rising _en masse_ of the avaricious, who
hastened to gorge themselves with the spoil.

Under these circumstances, exile from Paris seemed an actual blessing.

“Besides,” as he remarked to the baroness, “we shall soon be forgotten
here.”

But even while he said this he felt many misgivings. Still, by his side,
his noble wife presented a tranquil face, even while she trembled for
the safety of her adored husband.

On this first Sunday in August, M. d’Escorval and his wife had been
unusually sad. A vague presentiment of approaching misfortune weighed
heavily upon their hearts.

At the same hour that Lacheneur presented himself at the house of the
Abbe Midon, they were seated upon the terrace in front of the house,
gazing anxiously at the two roads leading from Escorval to the chateau,
and to the village of Sairmeuse.

Warned, that same morning, by his friends in Montaignac of the arrival
of the duke, the baron had sent his son to inform M. Lacheneur.

He had requested him to be absent as short a time as possible; but
in spite of this fact, the hours were rolling by, and Maurice had not
returned.

“What if something has happened to him!” both father and mother were
thinking.

No; nothing had happened to him. Only a word from Mlle. Lacheneur had
sufficed to make him forget his usual deference to his father’s wishes.

“This evening,” she had said, “I shall certainly know your heart.”

What could this mean? Could she doubt him?

Tortured by the most cruel anxieties, the poor youth could not resolve
to go away without an explanation, and he hung around the chateau hoping
that Marie-Anne would reappear.

She did reappear at last, but leaning upon the arm of her father.

Young d’Escorval followed them at a distance, and soon saw them enter
the parsonage. What were they going to do there? He knew that the duke
and his son were within.

The time that they remained there, and which he passed in the public
square, seemed more than a century long.

They emerged at last, however, and he was about to join them when he was
prevented by the appearance of Martial, whose promises he overheard.

Maurice knew nothing of life; he was as innocent as a child, but he
could not mistake the intentions that dictated this step on the part of
the Marquis de Sairmeuse.

At the thought that a libertine’s caprice should dare rest for an
instant upon the pure and beautiful girl whom he loved with all the
strength of his being--whom he had sworn should be his wife--all his
blood mounted madly to his brain.

He felt a wild longing to chastise the insolent wretch.

Fortunately--unfortunately, perhaps--his hand was arrested by the
recollection of a phrase which he had heard his father repeat a thousand
times:

“Calmness and irony are the only weapons worthy of the strong.”

And he possessed sufficient strength of will to appear calm, while, in
reality, he was beside himself with passion. It was Martial who lost his
self-control, and who threatened him.

“Ah! yes, I will find you again, upstart!” repeated Maurice, through his
set teeth as he watched his enemy move away.

For Martial had turned and discovered that Marie-Anne and her father had
left him. He saw them standing about a hundred paces from him. Although
he was surprised at their indifference, he made haste to join them, and
addressed M. Lacheneur.

“We are just going to your father’s house,” was the response he
received, in an almost ferocious tone.

A glance from Marie-Anne commanded silence. He obeyed, and walked a
few steps behind them, with his head bowed upon his breast, terribly
anxious, and seeking vainly to explain what had passed.

His attitude betrayed such intense sorrow that his mother divined it as
soon as she caught sight of him.

All the anguish which this courageous woman had hidden for a month,
found utterance in a single cry.

“Ah! here is misfortune!” said she, “we shall not escape it.”

It was, indeed, misfortune. One could not doubt it when one saw M.
Lacheneur enter the drawing-room.

He advanced with the heavy, uncertain step of a drunken man, his eye
void of expression, his features distorted, his lips pale and trembling.

“What has happened?” asked the baron, eagerly.

But the other did not seem to hear him.

“Ah! I warned her,” he murmured, continuing a monologue which had begun
before he entered the room. “I told my daughter so.”

Mme. d’Escorval, after kissing Marie-Anne, drew the girl toward her.

“What has happened? For God’s sake, tell me what has happened!” she
exclaimed.

With a gesture expressive of the most sorrowful resignation, the girl
motioned her to look and to listen to M. Lacheneur.

He had recovered from that stupor--that gift of God--which follows
cries that are too terrible for human endurance. Like a sleeper who, on
waking, finds his miseries forgotten during his slumber, lying in wait
for him, he regained with consciousness the capacity to suffer.

“It is only this, Monsieur le Baron,” replied the unfortunate man in a
harsh, unnatural voice: “I rose this morning the richest proprietor
in the country, and I shall lay down to-night poorer than the
poorest beggar in this commune. I had everything; I no longer have
anything--nothing but my two hands. They earned me my bread for
twenty-five years; they will earn it for me now until the day of my
death. I had a beautiful dream; it is ended.”

Before this outburst of despair, M. d’Escorval turned pale.

“You must exaggerate your misfortune,” he faltered; “explain what has
happened.”

Unconscious of what he was doing, M. Lacheneur threw his hat upon a
chair, and flinging back his long, gray hair, he said:

“To you I will tell all. I came here for that purpose. I know you; I
know your heart. And have you not done me the honor to call me your
friend?”

Then, with the cruel exactness of the living, breathing truth, he
related the scene which had just taken place at the presbytery.

The baron listened petrified with astonishment, almost doubting the
evidence of his own senses. Mme. d’Escorval’s indignant and sorrowful
exclamations showed that every noble sentiment in her soul revolted
against such injustice.

But there was one auditor, whom Marie-Anne alone observed, who was moved
to his very entrails by this recital. This auditor was Maurice.

Leaning against the door, pale as death, he tried most energetically,
but in vain, to repress the tears of rage and of sorrow which swelled up
in his eyes.

To insult Lacheneur was to insult Marie-Anne--that is to say, to injure,
to strike, to outrage him in all that he held most dear in the world.

Ah! it is certain that Martial, had he been within his reach, would have
paid dearly for these insults to the father of the girl Maurice loved.

But he swore that this chastisement was only deferred--that it should
surely come.

And it was not mere angry boasting. This young man, though so modest
and so gentle in manner, had a heart that was inaccessible to fear. His
beautiful, dark eyes, which had the trembling timidity of the eyes of a
young girl, met the gaze of an enemy without flinching.

When M. Lacheneur had repeated the last words which he had addressed to
the Duc de Sairmeuse, M. d’Escorval offered him his hand.

“I have told you already that I was your friend,” he said, in a voice
faltering with emotion; “but I must tell you to-day that I am proud of
having such a friend as you.”

The unfortunate man trembled at the touch of that loyal hand which
clasped his so warmly, and his face betrayed an ineffable satisfaction.

“If my father had not returned it,” murmured the obstinate Marie-Anne,
“my father would have been an unfaithful guardian--a thief. He has done
only his duty.”

M. d’Escorval turned to the young girl, a little surprised.

“You speak the truth, Mademoiselle,” he said, reproachfully; “but when
you are as old as I am, and have had my experience, you will know that
the accomplishment of a duty is, under certain circumstances, a heroism
of which few persons are capable.”

M. Lacheneur turned to his friend.

“Ah! your words do me good, Monsieur,” said he. “Now, I am content with
what I have done.”

The baroness rose, too much the woman to know how to resist the generous
dictates of her heart.

“And I, also, Monsieur Lacheneur,” she said, “desire to press your hand.
I wish to tell you that I esteem you as much as I despise the ingrates
who have sought to humiliate you, when they should have fallen at your
feet. They are heartless monsters, the like of whom certainly cannot be
found upon the earth.”

“Alas!” sighed the baron, “the allies have brought back others who, like
these men, think the world created exclusively for their benefit.”

“And these people wish to be our masters,” growled Lacheneur.

By some strange fatality no one chanced to hear the remark made by M.
Lacheneur. Had they overheard and questioned him, he would probably have
disclosed some of the projects which were as yet in embryo in his own
mind; and in that case what disastrous consequences might have been
averted.

M. d’Escorval had regained his usual coolness.

“Now, my dear friend,” he inquired, “what course do you propose to
pursue with these members of the Sairmeuse family?”

“They will hear nothing more from me--for some time, at least.”

“What! Shall you not claim the ten thousand francs that they owe you?”

“I shall ask them for nothing.”

“You will be compelled to do so. Since you have alluded to the legacy,
your own honor will demand that you insist upon its payment by all legal
methods. There are still judges in France.”

M. Lacheneur shook his head.

“The judges will not accord me the justice I desire. I shall not apply
to them.”

“But----”

“No, Monsieur, no. I wish to have nothing to do with these men. I
shall not even go to the chateau to remove my clothing nor that of my
daughter. If they send it to us--very well. If it pleases them to keep
it, so much the better. The more shameful, infamous and odious their
conduct appears, the better I shall be satisfied.”

The baron made no reply; but his wife spoke, believing she had a sure
means of conquering this incomprehensible obstinacy.

“I should understand your determination if you were alone in the world,”
 said she, “but you have children.”

“My son is eighteen, Madame; he possesses good health and an excellent
education. He can make his own way in Paris, if he chooses to remain
there.”

“But your daughter?”

“Marie-Anne will remain with me.”

M. d’Escorval thought it his duty to interfere.

“Take care, my dear friend, that your grief does not overthrow your
reason,” said he. “Reflect! What will become of you--your daughter and
yourself?”

The wretched man smiled sadly.

“Oh,” he replied, “we are not as destitute as I said. I exaggerated our
misfortune. We are still landed proprietors. Last year an old cousin,
whom I could never induce to come and live at Sairmeuse, died,
bequeathing all her property to Marie-Anne. This property consisted of a
poor little cottage near the Reche, with a little garden and a few acres
of sterile land. In compliance with my daughter’s entreaties, I repaired
the cottage, and sent there a few articles of furniture--a table, some
chairs, and a couple of beds. My daughter designed it as a home for old
Father Guvat and his wife. And I, surrounded by wealth and luxury, said
to myself: ‘How comfortable those two old people will be there.
They will live as snug as a bug in a rug!’ Well, what I thought so
comfortable for others, will be good enough for me. I will raise
vegetables, and Marie-Anne shall sell them.”

Was he speaking seriously?

Maurice must have supposed so, for he sprang forward.

“This shall not be, Monsieur Lacheneur!” he exclaimed.

“Oh----”

“No, this shall not be, for I love Marie-Anne, and I ask you to give her
to me for my wife.”



CHAPTER VI

Maurice and Marie-Anne had loved each other for many years.

As children, they had played together in the magnificent grounds
surrounding the Chateau de Sairmeuse, and in the park at Escorval.

Together they chased the brilliant butterflies, searched for pebbles
on the banks of the river, or rolled in the hay while their mothers
sauntered through the meadows bordering the Oiselle.

For their mothers were friends.

Mme. Lacheneur had been reared like other poor peasant girls; that is
to say, on the day of her marriage it was only with great difficulty she
succeeded in inscribing her name upon the register.

But from the example of her husband she had learned that prosperity, as
well as _noblesse_, entails certain obligations upon one, and with rare
courage, crowned with still rarer success, she had undertaken to acquire
an education in keeping with her fortune and her new rank.

And the baroness had made no effort to resist the sympathy that
attracted her to this meritorious young woman, in whom she had discerned
a really superior mind and a truly refined nature.

When Mme. Lacheneur died, Mme. d’Escorval mourned for her as she would
have mourned for a favorite sister.

From that moment Maurice’s attachment assumed a more serious character.

Educated in a Parisian lyceum, his teachers sometimes had occasion to
complain of his want of application.

“If your professors are not satisfied with you,” said his mother, “you
shall not accompany me to Escorval on the coming of your vacation, and
you will not see your little friend.”

And this simple threat was always sufficient to make the school-boy
resume his studies with redoubled diligence.

So each year, as it passed, strengthened the _grande passion_ which
preserved Maurice from the restlessness and the errors of adolescence.

The two children were equally timid and artless, and equally infatuated
with each other.

Long walks in the twilight under the eyes of their parents, a glance
that revealed their delight at meeting each other, flowers exchanged
between them--which were religiously preserved--such were their simple
pleasures.

But that magical and sublime word, love--so sweet to utter, and so sweet
to hear--had never once dropped from their lips.

The audacity of Maurice had never gone beyond a furtive pressure of the
hand.

The parents could not be ignorant of this mutual affection; and if they
pretended to shut their eyes, it was only because it did not displease
them nor disturb their plans.

M. and Mme. d’Escorval saw no objection to their son’s marriage with a
young girl whose nobility of character they appreciated, and who was as
beautiful as she was good. That she was the richest heiress in all the
country round about was naturally no objection.

So far as M. Lacheneur was concerned, he was delighted at the prospect
of a marriage which would ally him, a former ploughboy, with an old
family whose head was universally respected.

So, although no direct allusion to the subject had ever escaped the lips
of the baron or of M. Lacheneur, there was a tacit agreement between the
two families.

Yes, the marriage was considered a foregone conclusion.

And yet this impetuous and unexpected declaration by Maurice struck
everyone dumb.

In spite of his agitation, the young man perceived the effect produced
by his words, and frightened by his own boldness, he turned and looked
questioningly at his father.

The baron’s face was grave, even sad; but his attitude expressed no
displeasure.

This gave renewed courage to the anxious lover.

“You will excuse me, Monsieur,” he said, addressing Lacheneur, “for
presenting my request in such a manner, and at such a time. But surely,
when fate glowers ominously upon you, that is the time when your friends
should declare themselves--and deem themselves fortunate if their
devotion can make you forget the infamous treatment to which you have
been subjected.”

As he spoke, he was watching Marie-Anne.

Blushing and embarrassed, she turned away her head, perhaps to conceal
the tears which inundated her face--tears of joy and of gratitude.

The love of the man she adored came forth victorious from a test which
it would not be prudent for many heiresses to impose.

Now she could truly say that she knew Maurice’s heart.

He, however, continued:

“I have not consulted my father, sir; but I know his affection for me
and his esteem for you. When the happiness of my life is at stake, he
will not oppose me. He, who married my dear mother without a dowry, must
understand my feelings.”

He was silent, awaiting the verdict.

“I approve your course, my son,” said M. d’Escorval, deeply affected;
“you have conducted yourself like an honorable man. Certainly you
are very young to become the head of a family; but, as you say,
circumstances demand it.”

He turned to M. Lacheneur, and added:

“My dear friend, I, in my son’s behalf, ask the hand of your daughter in
marriage.”

Maurice had not expected so little opposition.

In his delight he was almost tempted to bless the hateful Duc de
Sairmeuse, to whom he would owe his approaching happiness.

He sprang toward his father, and seizing his hands, he raised them to
his lips, faltering:

“Thanks! you are so good! I love you! Oh, how happy I am!”

Alas! the poor boy was in too much haste to rejoice.

A gleam of pride flashed in M. Lacheneur’s eyes; but his face soon
resumed its gloomy expression.

“Believe me, Monsieur le Baron, I am deeply touched by your grandeur of
soul--yes, deeply touched. You wish to make me forget my humiliation;
but, for this very reason, I should be the most contemptible of men if I
did not refuse the great honor you desire to confer upon my daughter.”

“What!” exclaimed the baron, in utter astonishment; “you refuse?”

“I am compelled to do so.”

Thunderstruck at first, Maurice afterward renewed the attack with an
energy which no one had ever suspected in his character before.

“Do you, then, wish to ruin my life, Monsieur?” he exclaimed; “to ruin
_our_ life; for if I love Marie-Anne, she also loves me.”

It was easy to see that he spoke the truth. The unhappy girl, crimson
with happy blushes the moment before, had suddenly become whiter than
marble, as she looked imploringly at her father.

“It cannot be,” repeated M. Lacheneur; “and the day will come when you
will bless the decision I make known at this moment.”

Alarmed by her son’s evident agony, Mme. d’Escorval interposed:

“You must have reasons for this refusal.”

“None that I can disclose, Madame. But never while I live shall my
daughter be your son’s wife!”

“Ah! it will kill my child!” exclaimed the baroness.

M. Lacheneur shook his head.

“Monsieur Maurice,” said he, “is young; he will console himself--he will
forget.”

“Never!” interrupted the unhappy lover--“never!”

“And your daughter?” inquired the baroness.

Ah! this was the weak spot in his armor; the instinct of a mother was
not mistaken. M. Lacheneur hesitated a moment; but he finally conquered
the weakness that had threatened to master him.

“Marie-Anne,” he replied, slowly, “knows her duty too well not to obey
when I command. When I tell her the motive that governs my conduct, she
will become resigned; and if she suffers, she will know how to conceal
her sufferings.”

He paused suddenly. They heard in the distance a firing of musketry, the
discharge of rifles, whose sharp ring overpowered even the sullen roar
of cannon.

Every face grew pale. Circumstances imparted to these sounds an ominous
significance.

With the same anguish clutching the hearts of both, M. d’Escorval and
Lacheneur sprang out upon the terrace.

But all was still again. Extended as was the horizon, the eye could
discern nothing unusual. The sky was blue; not a particle of smoke hung
over the trees.

“It is the enemy,” muttered M. Lacheneur, in a tone which told how
gladly he would have shouldered his gun, and, with five hundred others,
marched against the united allies.

He paused. The explosions were repeated with still greater violence, and
for a period of five minutes succeeded each other without cessation.

M. d’Escorval listened with knitted brows.

“That is not the fire of an engagement,” he murmured.

To remain long in such a state of uncertainty was out of the question.

“If you will permit me, father,” ventured Maurice, “I will go and
ascertain----”

“_Go_,” replied the baron, quietly; “but if it is anything, which I
doubt, do not expose yourself to danger; return.”

“Oh! be prudent!” insisted Mme. d’Escorval, who already saw her son
exposed to the most frightful peril.

“Be prudent!” entreated Marie-Anne, who alone understood what
attractions danger might have for a despairing and unhappy man.

These precautions were unnecessary. As Maurice was rushing to the door,
his father stopped him.

“Wait,” said he; “here is someone who can probably give us information.”

A man had just appeared around a turn of the road leading to Sairmeuse.

He was advancing bareheaded in the middle of the dusty road, with
hurried strides, and occasionally brandishing his stick, as if
threatening an enemy visible to himself alone.

Soon they were able to distinguish his features.

“It is Chanlouineau!” exclaimed M. Lacheneur.

“The owner of the vineyards on the Borderie?”

“The same! The handsomest young farmer in the country, and the best
also. Ah! he has good blood in his veins; we may well be proud of him.”

“Ask him to stop,” said M. d’Escorval.

Lacheneur leaned over the balustrade, and, forming a trumpet out of his
two hands, he called:

“Oh! Chanlouineau!”

The robust young farmer raised his head.

“Come up,” shouted Lacheneur; “the baron wishes to speak with you.”

Chanlouineau responded by a gesture of assent. They saw him enter
the gate, cross the garden, and at last appear at the door of the
drawing-room.

His features were distorted with fury, his disordered clothing gave
evidence of a serious conflict. His cravat was gone, and his torn
shirt-collar revealed his muscular throat.

“Where is this fighting?” demanded Lacheneur eagerly; “and with whom?”

Chanlouineau gave a nervous laugh which resembled a roar of rage.

“They are not fighting,” he replied; “they are amusing themselves. This
firing which you hear is in honor of Monsieur le Duc de Sairmeuse.”

“Impossible!”

“I know it very well; and yet, what I have told you is the truth. It is
the work of that miserable wretch and thief, Chupin. Ah, _canaille_! If
I ever find him within reach of my arm he will never steal again.”

M. Lacheneur was confounded.

“Tell us what has happened,” he said, excitedly.

“Oh, it is as clear as daylight. When the duke arrived at Sairmeuse,
Chupin, the old scoundrel, with his two rascally boys, and that old hag,
his wife, ran after the carriage like beggars after a diligence,
crying, ‘Vive Monsieur le Duc!’ The duke was enchanted, for he doubtless
expected a volley of stones, and he placed a six-franc piece in the hand
of each of the wretches. This money gave Chupin an appetite for more,
so he took it into his head to give this old noble a reception like that
which was given to the Emperor. Having learned through Bibiaine, whose
tongue is as long as a viper’s, all that has passed at the presbytery,
between you, Monsieur Lacheneur, and the duke, he came and proclaimed it
in the market-place. When they heard it, all who had purchased national
lands were frightened. Chupin had counted on this, and soon he began
telling the poor fools that they must burn powder under the duke’s nose
if they wished him to confirm their titles to their property.”

“And did they believe him?”

“Implicitly. It did not take them long to make their preparations. They
went to the town hall and took the firemen’s rifles, and the guns used
for firing a salute on fete days; the mayor gave them the powder, and
you heard----

“When I left Sairmeuse there were more than two hundred idiots before
the presbytery, shouting:

“_Vive Monseigneur! Vive le Duc de Sairmeuse_!”

It was as d’Escorval had thought.

“The same pitiful farce that was played in Paris, only on a smaller
scale,” he murmured. “Avarice and human cowardice are the same the world
over!”

Meanwhile, Chanlouineau was going on with his recital.

“To make the fete complete, the devil must have warned all the nobility
in the neighborhood, for they all came running. They say that Monsieur
de Sairmeuse is a favorite with the King, and that he can get anything
he wishes. So you can imagine how they all greeted him! I am only a poor
peasant, but never would I lie down in the dust before any man as these
old nobles who are so haughty with us, did before the duke. They kissed
his hands, and he allowed them to do it. He walked about the square with
the Marquis de Courtornieu----”

“And his son?” interrupted Maurice.

“The Marquis Martial, is it not? He is also walking before the church
with Mademoiselle Blanche de Courtornieu upon his arm. Ah! I do not
understand how people can call her pretty--a little bit of a thing,
so blond that one might suppose her hair was gray. Ah! how those two
laughed and made fun of the peasants. They say they are going to marry
each other. And even this evening there is to be a banquet at the
Chateau de Courtornieu in honor of the duke.”

He had told all he knew. He paused.

“You have forgotten only one thing,” said M. Lacheneur; “that is,
to tell us how your clothing happened to be torn, as if you had been
fighting.”

The young farmer hesitated for a moment, then replied, somewhat
brusquely:

“I can tell you, all the same. While Chupin was preaching, I also
preached, but not in the same strain. The scoundrel reported me. So, in
crossing the square, the duke paused before me and remarked: ‘So you are
an evil-disposed person?’ I said no, but that I knew my rights. Then he
took me by the coat and shook me, and told me that he would cure me,
and that he would take possession of _his_ vineyard again. _Saint Dieu_!
When I felt the old rascal’s hand upon me my blood boiled. I pinioned
him. Fortunately, six or seven men fell upon me, and compelled me to let
him go. But he had better make up his mind not to come prowling around
my vineyard!”

He clinched his hands, his eyes blazed ominously, his whole person
breathed an intense desire for vengeance.

And M. d’Escorval was silent, fearing to aggravate this hatred,
so imprudently kindled, and whose explosion, he believed, would be
terrible.

M. Lacheneur had risen from his chair.

“I must go and take possession of my cottage,” he remarked to
Chanlouineau; “you will accompany me; I have a proposition to make to
you.”

M. and Mme. d’Escorval endeavored to detain him, but he would not allow
himself to be persuaded, and he departed with his daughter.

But Maurice did not despair; Marie-Anne had promised to meet him the
following day in the pine-grove near the Reche.



CHAPTER VII

The demonstrations which had greeted the Duc de Sairmeuse had been
correctly reported by Chanlouineau.

Chupin had found the secret of kindling to a white heat the enthusiasm
of the cold and calculating peasants who were his neighbors.

He was a dangerous rascal, the old robber, shrewd and cautious; bold, as
those who possess nothing can afford to be; as patient as a savage; in
short, one of the most consummate scoundrels that ever existed.

The peasants feared him, and yet they had no conception of his real
character.

All his resources of mind had, until now, been expended in evading the
precipice of the rural code.

To save himself from falling into the hands of the gendarmes, and to
steal a few sacks of wheat, he had expended treasures of intrigue which
would have made the fortunes of twenty diplomats.

Circumstances, as he always said, had been against him.

So he desperately caught at the first and only opportunity worthy of his
talent, which had ever presented itself.

Of course, the wily rustic had said nothing of the true circumstances
which attended the restoration of Sairmeuse to its former owner.

From him, the peasants learned only the bare fact; and the news spread
rapidly from group to group.

“Monsieur Lacheneur has given up Sairmeuse,” said he. “Chateau, forests,
vineyards, fields--he surrenders everything.”

This was enough, and more than enough to terrify every land-owner in the
village.

If Lacheneur, this man who was so powerful in their eyes, considered the
danger so threatening that he deemed it necessary or advisable to make
a complete surrender, what was to become of them--poor devils--without
aid, without counsel, without defence?

They were told that the government was about to betray their interests;
that a decree was in process of preparation which would render their
title-deeds worthless. They could see no hope of salvation, except
through the duke’s generosity--that generosity which Chupin painted with
the glowing colors of the rainbow.

When one is not strong enough to weather the gale, one must bow like the
reed before it and rise again after the storm has passed; such was their
conclusion.

And they bowed. And their apparent enthusiasm was all the more
vociferous on account of the rage and fear that filled their hearts.

A close observer would have detected an undercurrent of anger and menace
in their shouts.

Each man also said to himself:

“What do we risk by crying, ‘Vive le Duc?’ Nothing; absolutely
nothing. If he is contented with that as a compensation for his lost
property--good! If he is not content, we shall have time afterward to
adopt other measures.”

So they shouted themselves hoarse.

And while the duke was sipping his coffee in the little drawing-room
of the presbytery, he expressed his lively satisfaction at the scene
without.

He, this _grand seigneur_ of times gone by, this man of absurd
prejudices and obstinate illusions; the unconquerable, and the
incorrigible--he took these acclamations, “truly spurious coin,” as
Chateaubriand says, for ready money.

“How you have deceived me, cure,” he was saying to Abbe Midon. “How
could you declare that your people were unfavorably disposed toward us?
One is compelled to believe that these evil intentions exist only in
your own mind and in your own heart.”

Abbe Midon was silent. What could he reply?

He could not understand this sudden revolution in public opinion--this
abrupt change from gloom and discontent to excessive gayety.

There is somebody at the bottom of all this, he thought.

It was not long before it became apparent who that somebody was.

Emboldened by his success without, Chupin ventured to present himself at
the presbytery.

He entered the drawing-room with his back rounded into a circle,
scraping and cringing, an obsequious smile upon his lips.

And through the half-open door one could discern, in the shadows of the
passage, the far from reassuring faces of his two sons.

He came as an ambassador, he declared, after an interminable litany of
protestations--he came to implore monseigneur to show himself upon the
public square.

“Ah, well--yes,” exclaimed the duke, rising; “yes, I will yield to the
wishes of these good people. Follow me, Marquis!”

As he appeared at the door of the presbytery, a loud shout rent the air;
the rifles were discharged, the guns belched forth their smoke and fire.
Never had Sairmeuse heard such a salvo of artillery. Three windows in
the Boeuf Couronne were shattered.

A veritable _grand seigneur_, the Duc de Sairmeuse knew how to preserve
an appearance of haughtiness and indifference. Any display of emotion
was, in his opinion, vulgar; but, in reality, he was delighted, charmed.

So delighted that he desired to reward his welcomers.

A glance over the deeds handed him by Lacheneur had shown him that
Sairmeuse had been restored to him intact.

The portions of the immense domain which had been detached and sold
separately were of relatively minor importance.

The duke thought it would be politic, and, at the same time,
inexpensive, to abandon all claim to these few acres, which were now
shared by forty or fifty peasants.

“My friends,” he exclaimed, in a loud voice, “I renounce, for myself and
for my descendants, all claim to the lands belonging to my house which
you have purchased. They are yours--I give them to you!”

By this absurd pretence of a gift, M. de Sairmeuse thought to add the
finishing touch to his popularity. A great mistake! It simply assured
the popularity of Chupin, the organizer of the farce.

And while the duke was promenading through the crowd with a proud and
self-satisfied air, the peasants were secretly laughing and jeering at
him.

And if they promptly took sides with him against Chanlouineau, it
was only because his gift was still fresh in their minds; except for
this----

But the duke had not time to think much about this encounter, which
produced a vivid impression upon his son.

One of his former companions in exile, the Marquis de Courtornieu, whom
he had informed of his arrival, hastened to welcome him, accompanied by
his daughter, Mlle. Blanche.

Martial could do no less than offer his arm to the daughter of his
father’s friend; and they took a leisurely promenade in the shade of
the lofty trees, while the duke renewed his acquaintance with all the
nobility of the neighborhood.

There was not a single nobleman who did not hasten to press the hand of
the Duc de Sairmeuse. First, he possessed, it was said, a property of
more than twenty millions in England. Then, he was the friend of the
King, and each neighbor had some favor to ask for himself, for his
relatives, or for his friends.

Poor king! He should have had entire France to divide like a cake
between these cormorants, whose voracious appetites it was impossible to
satisfy.

That evening, after a grand banquet at the Chateau de Courtornieu,
the duke slept in the Chateau de Sairmeuse, in the room which had been
occupied by Lacheneur, “like Louis XVIII.,” he laughingly said, “in the
chamber of Bonaparte.”

He was gay, chatty, and full of confidence in the future.

“Ah! it is good to be in one’s own house!” he remarked to his son again
and again.

But Martial responded only mechanically. His mind was occupied with
thoughts of two women who had made a profound impression upon his by
no means susceptible heart that day. He was thinking of those two young
girls, so utterly unlike. Blanche de Courtornieu--Marie-Anne Lacheneur.



CHAPTER VIII

Only those who, in the bright springtime of life, have loved, have been
loved in return, and have suddenly seen an impassable gulf open between
them and happiness, can realize Maurice d’Escorval’s disappointment.

All the dreams of his life, all his future plans, were based upon his
love for Marie-Anne.

If this love failed him, the enchanted castle which hope had erected
would crumble and fall, burying him in the ruins.

Without Marie-Anne he saw neither aim nor motive in his existence. Still
he did not suffer himself to be deluded by false hopes. Although at
first, his appointed meeting with Marie-Anne on the following day
seemed salvation itself, on reflection he was forced to admit that this
interview would change nothing, since everything depended upon the will
of another party--the will of M. Lacheneur.

The remainder of the day he passed in mournful silence. The dinner-hour
came; he took his seat at the table, but it was impossible for him
to swallow a morsel, and he soon requested his parents’ permission to
withdraw.

M. d’Escorval and the baroness exchanged a sorrowful glance, but did not
allow themselves to offer any comment.

They respected his grief. They knew that his was one of those sorrows
which are only aggravated by any attempt at consolation.

“Poor Maurice!” murmured Mme. d’Escorval, as soon as her son had left
the room. And, as her husband made no reply: “Perhaps,” she added,
hesitatingly, “perhaps it will not be prudent for us to leave him too
entirely to the dictates of his despair.”

The baron shuddered. He divined only too well the terrible apprehensions
of his wife.

“We have nothing to fear,” he replied, quickly; “I heard Marie-Anne
promise to meet Maurice to-morrow in the grove on the Reche.”

The anxious mother breathed more freely. Her blood had frozen with
horror at the thought that her son might, perhaps, be contemplating
suicide; but she was a mother, and her husband’s assurances did not
satisfy her.

She hastily ascended the stairs leading to her son’s room, softly opened
the door, and looked in. He was so engrossed in his gloomy revery that
he had heard nothing, and did not even suspect the presence of the
anxious mother who was watching over him.

He was sitting at the window, his elbows resting upon the sill, his head
supported by his hands, looking out into the night.

There was no moon, but the night was clear, and over beyond the light
fog that indicated the course of the Oiselle one could discern the
imposing mass of the Chateau de Sairmeuse, with its towers and fanciful
turrets.

More than once he had sat thus silently gazing at this chateau, which
sheltered what was dearest and most precious in all the world to him.

From his windows he could see those of the room occupied by Marie-Anne;
and his heart always quickened its throbbing when he saw them
illuminated.

“She is there,” he thought, “in her virgin chamber. She is kneeling to
say her prayers. She murmurs my name after that of her father, imploring
God’s blessing upon us both.”

But this evening he was not waiting for a light to gleam through the
panes of that dear window.

Marie-Anne was no longer at Sairmeuse--she had been driven away.

Where was she now? She, accustomed to all the luxury that wealth could
procure, no longer had any home except a poor thatch-covered hovel,
whose walls were not even whitewashed, whose only floor was the earth
itself, dusty as the public highway in summer, frozen or muddy in
winter.

She was reduced to the necessity of occupying herself the humble abode
she, in her charitable heart, had intended as an asylum for one of her
pensioners.

What was she doing now? Doubtless she was weeping.

At this thought poor Maurice was heartbroken.

What was his surprise, a little after midnight, to see the chateau
brilliantly illuminated.

The duke and his son had repaired to the chateau after the banquet given
by the Marquis de Courtornieu was over; and, before going to bed, they
made a tour of inspection through this magnificent abode in which
their ancestors had lived. They, therefore, might be said to have
taken possession of the mansion whose threshold M. de Sairmeuse had not
crossed for twenty-two years, and which Martial had never seen.

Maurice saw the lights leap from story to story, from casement to
casement, until at last even the windows of Marie-Anne’s room were
illuminated.

At this sight the unhappy youth could not restrain a cry of rage.

These men, these strangers, dared enter this virgin bower, which he,
even in thought, scarcely dared to penetrate.

They trampled carelessly over the delicate carpet with their heavy
boots. Maurice trembled in thinking of the liberties which they, in
their insolent familiarity, might venture upon. He fancied he could see
them examining and handling the thousand petty trifles with which young
girls love to surround themselves; they opened the presses, perhaps they
were reading an unfinished letter lying upon her writing-desk.

Never until this evening had Martial supposed he could hate another as
he hated these men.

At last, in despair, he threw himself upon his bed, and passed the
remainder of the night in thinking over what he should say to Marie-Anne
on the morrow, and in seeking some issue from this inextricable
labyrinth.

He rose before daybreak, and wandered about the park like a soul in
distress, fearing, yet longing, for the hour that would decide his fate.
Mme. d’Escorval was obliged to exert all her authority to make him take
some nourishment. He had quite forgotten that he had passed twenty-four
hours without eating.

When eleven o’clock sounded he left the house.

The lands of the Reche are situated on the other side of the Oiselle.
Maurice, to reach his destination, was obliged to cross the river at
a ferry only a short distance from his home. When he reached the
river-bank he found six or seven peasants who were waiting to cross.

These people did not observe Maurice. They were talking earnestly, and
he listened.

“It is certainly true,” said one of the men. “I heard it from
Chanlouineau himself only last evening. He was wild with delight. ‘I
invite you all to the wedding!’ he cried. ‘I am betrothed to Monsieur
Lacheneur’s daughter; the affair is decided.’”

This astounding news positively stunned Maurice. He was actually unable
to think or to move.

“Besides, he has been in love with her for a long time. Everyone knows
that. One had only to see his eyes when he met her--coals of fire were
nothing to them. But while her father was so rich he did not dare to
speak. Now that the old man has met with these reverses, he ventures to
offer himself, and is accepted.”

“An unfortunate thing for him,” remarked a little old man.

“Why so?”

“If Monsieur Lacheneur is ruined, as they say----”

The others laughed heartily.

“Ruined--Monsieur Lacheneur!” they exclaimed in chorus. “How absurd!
He is richer than all of us together. Do you suppose that he has been
stupid enough not to have laid anything aside during all these years? He
has put this money not in grounds, as he pretends, but somewhere else.”

“You are saying what is untrue!” interrupted Maurice, indignantly.
“Monsieur Lacheneur left Sairmeuse as poor as he entered it.”

On recognizing M. d’Escorval’s son, the peasants became extremely
cautious. He questioned them, but could obtain only vague and
unsatisfactory answers. A peasant, when interrogated, will never give
a response which he thinks will be displeasing to his questioner; he is
afraid of compromising himself.

The news he had heard, however, caused Maurice to hasten on still more
rapidly after crossing the Oiselle.

“Marie-Anne marry Chanlouineau!” he repeated; “it is impossible! it is
impossible!”



CHAPTER IX

The Reche, literally translated the “Waste,” where Marie-Anne had
promised to meet Maurice, owed its name to the rebellious and sterile
character of the soil.

Nature seemed to have laid her curse upon it. Nothing would grow there.
The ground was covered with stones, and the sandy soil defied all
attempts to enrich it.

A few stunted oaks rose here and there above the thorns and broom-plant.

But on the lowlands of the Reche is a flourishing grove. The firs are
straight and strong, for the floods of winter have deposited in some
of the clefts of the rock sufficient soil to sustain them and the wild
clematis and honeysuckle that cling to their branches.

On reaching this grove, Maurice consulted his watch. It marked the hour
of mid-day. He had supposed that he was late, but he was more than an
hour in advance of the appointed time.

He seated himself upon a high rock, from which he could survey the
entire Reche, and waited.

The day was magnificent; the air intensely hot. The rays of the August
sun fell with scorching violence upon the sandy soil, and withered the
few plants which had sprung up since the last rain.

The stillness was profound, almost terrible. Not a sound broke the
silence, not even the buzzing of an insect, nor a whisper of breeze in
the trees. All nature seemed sleeping. And on no side was there anything
to remind one of life, motion, or mankind.

This repose of nature, which contrasted so vividly with the tumult
raging in his own heart, exerted a beneficial effect upon Maurice.
These few moments of solitude afforded him an opportunity to regain his
composure, to collect his thoughts scattered by the storm of passion
which had swept over his soul, as leaves are scattered by the fierce
November gale.

With sorrow comes experience, and that cruel knowledge of life which
teaches one to guard one’s self against one’s hopes.

It was not until he heard the conversation of these peasants that
Maurice fully realized the horror of Lacheneur’s position. Suddenly
precipitated from the social eminence which he had attained, he found,
in the valley of humiliations into which he was cast, only hatred,
distrust, and scorn. Both factions despised and denied him. Traitor,
cried one; thief, cried the other. He no longer held any social status.
He was the fallen man, the man who _had_ been, and who was no more.

Was not the excessive misery of such a position a sufficient explanation
of the strangest and wildest resolutions?

This thought made Maurice tremble. Connecting the stories of the
peasants with the words addressed to Chanlouineau at Escorval by M.
Lacheneur on the preceding evening, he arrived at the conclusion that
this report of Marie-Anne’s approaching marriage to the young farmer was
not so improbable as he had at first supposed.

But why should M. Lacheneur give his daughter to an uncultured peasant?
From mercenary motives? Certainly not, since he had just refused an
alliance of which he had been proud in his days of prosperity. Could it
be in order to satisfy his wounded pride, then? Perhaps he did not wish
it to be said that he owed anything to a son-in-law.

Maurice was exhausting all his ingenuity and penetration in endeavoring
to solve this mystery, when at last, on a foot-path which crosses the
waste, a woman appeared--Marie-Anne.

He rose, but fearing observation, did not venture to leave the shelter
of the grove.

Marie-Anne must have felt a similar fear, for she hurried on, casting
anxious glances on every side as she ran. Maurice remarked, not without
surprise, that she was bare-headed, and that she had neither shawl nor
scarf about her shoulders.

As she reached the edge of the wood, he sprang toward her, and catching
her hand raised it to his lips.

But this hand, which she had so often yielded to him, was now gently
withdrawn, with so sad a gesture that he could not help feeling there
was no hope.

“I came, Maurice,” she began, “because I could not endure the thought of
your anxiety. By doing so I have betrayed my father’s confidence--he was
obliged to leave home. I hastened here. And yet I promised him, only two
hours ago, that I would never see you again. You hear me--never!”

She spoke hurriedly, but Maurice was appalled by the firmness of her
accent.

Had he been less agitated, he would have seen what a terrible effort
this semblance of calmness cost the young girl. He would have understood
it from her pallor, from the contraction of her lips, from the redness
of the eyelids which she had vainly bathed with fresh water, and which
betrayed the tears that had fallen during the night.

“If I have come,” she continued, “it is only to tell you that, for
your own sake, as well as for mine, there must not remain in the secret
recesses of your heart even the slightest shadow of a hope. All is over;
we are separated forever! Only weak natures revolt against a destiny
which they cannot alter. Let us accept our fate uncomplainingly. I
wished to see you once more, and to say this: Have courage, Maurice. Go
away--leave Escorval--forget me!”

“Forget you, Marie-Anne!” exclaimed the wretched young man, “forget
you!”

His eyes met hers, and in a husky voice he added:

“Will you then forget me?”

“I am a woman, Maurice--”

But he interrupted her:

“Ah! I did not expect this,” he said, despondently. “Poor fool that I
was! I believed that you would find a way to touch your father’s heart.”

She blushed slightly, hesitated, and said:

“I have thrown myself at my father’s feet; he repulsed me.”

Maurice was thunderstruck, but recovering himself:

“It was because you did not know how to speak to him!” he exclaimed in
a passion of fury; “but I shall know--I will present such arguments that
he will be forced to yield. What right has he to ruin my happiness with
his caprices? I love you---by right of this love, you are mine--mine
rather than his! I will make him understand this, you shall see. Where
is he? Where can I find him?”

Already he was starting to go, he knew not where. Marie-Anne caught him
by the arm.

“Remain,” she commanded, “remain! So you have failed to understand me,
Maurice. Ah, well! you must know the truth. I am acquainted now with the
reasons of my father’s refusal; and though his decision should cost me
my life, I approve it. Do not go to find my father. If, moved by your
prayers, he gave his consent, I should have the courage to refuse mine!”

Maurice was so beside himself that this reply did not enlighten him.
Crazed with anger and despair, and with no remorse for the insult he
addressed to this woman whom he loved so deeply, he exclaimed:

“Is it for Chanlouineau, then, that you are reserving your consent? He
believes so since he goes about everywhere saying that you will soon be
his wife.”

Marie-Anne shuddered as if a knife had entered her very heart; and yet
there was more sorrow than anger in the glance she cast upon Maurice.

“Must I stoop so low as to defend myself from such an imputation?” she
asked, sadly. “Must I declare that if even I suspect such an arrangement
between Chanlouineau and my father, I have not been consulted? Must I
tell you that there are some sacrifices which are beyond the strength
of poor human nature? Understand this: I have found strength to renounce
the man I love--I shall never be able to accept another in his place!”

Maurice hung his head, abashed by her earnest words, dazzled by the
sublime expression of her face.

Reason returned; he realized the enormity of his suspicions, and was
horrified with himself for having dared to give utterance to them.

“Oh! pardon!” he faltered, “pardon!”

What did the mysterious causes of all these events which had so rapidly
succeeded each other, or M. Lacheneur’s secrets, or Marie-Anne’s
reticence, matter to him now?

He was seeking some chance of salvation; he believed that he had found
it.

“We must fly!” he exclaimed: “fly at once without pausing to look back.
Before night we shall have passed the frontier.”

He sprang toward her with outstretched arms, as if to seize her and bear
her away; but she checked him by a single look.

“Fly!” said she, reproachfully; “fly! and is it you, Maurice, who
counsel me thus? What! while misfortune is crushing my poor father to
the earth, shall I add despair and shame to his sorrows? His friends
have deserted him; shall I, his daughter, also abandon him? Ah! if I
did that, I should be the vilest, the most cowardly of creatures! If
my father, yesterday, when I believed him the owner of Sairmeuse, had
demanded the sacrifice to which I consented last evening, I might,
perhaps, have resolved upon the extreme measure you have counselled. In
broad daylight I might have left Sairmeuse on the arm of my lover. It
is not the world that I fear! But if one might consent to fly from the
chateau of a rich and happy father, one _cannot_ consent to desert the
poor abode of a despairing and penniless parent. Leave me, Maurice,
where honor holds me. It will not be difficult for me, who am the
daughter of generations of peasants, to become a peasant. Go! I cannot
endure more! Go! and remember that one cannot be utterly wretched if
one’s conscience is clean, and one’s duty fulfilled!”

Maurice was about to reply, when a crackling of dry branches made him
turn his head.

Scarcely ten paces off, Martial de Sairmeuse was standing motionless,
leaning upon his gun.



CHAPTER X

The Duc de Sairmeuse had slept little and poorly on the night following
his return, or his restoration, as he styled it.

Inaccessible, as he pretended to be, to the emotions which agitate the
common herd, the scenes of the day had greatly excited him.

He could not help reviewing them, although he made it the rule of his
life never to reflect.

While exposed to the scrutiny of the peasants and of his acquaintances
at the Chateau de Courtornieu, he felt that his honor required him
to appear cold and indifferent, but as soon as he had retired to the
privacy of his own chamber, he gave free vent to his excessive joy.

For his joy _was_ intense, almost verging on delirium.

Now he was forced to admit to himself the immense service Lacheneur had
rendered him in restoring Sairmeuse.

This poor man to whom he had displayed the blackest ingratitude, this
man, honest to heroism, whom he had treated as an unfaithful servant,
had just relieved him of an anxiety which had poisoned his life.

Lacheneur had just placed the Duc de Sairmeuse beyond the reach of a not
probable, but very possible calamity which he had dreaded for some time.

If his secret anxiety had been made known, it would have created much
merriment.

“Nonsense!” people would have exclaimed, “everyone knows that the
Sairmeuse possesses property to the amount of at least eight or ten
millions, in England.”

This was true. Only these millions, which had accrued from the estate of
the duchess and of Lord Holland, had not been bequeathed to the duke.

He enjoyed absolute control of this enormous fortune; he disposed of
the capital and of the immense revenues to please himself; but it all
belonged to his son--to his only son.

The duke possessed nothing--a pitiful income of twelve hundred francs,
perhaps; but, strictly speaking, not even the means of subsistence.

Martial, certainly, had never said a word which would lead him to
suspect that he had any intention of removing his property from his
father’s control; but he might possibly utter this word.

Had he not good reason to believe that sooner or later this fatal word
would be uttered?

And even at the thought of such a contingency he shuddered with horror.

He saw himself reduced to a pension, a very handsome pension,
undoubtedly, but still a fixed, immutable, regular pension, by which he
would be obliged to regulate his expenditures.

He would be obliged to calculate that two ends might meet--he, who had
been accustomed to inexhaustible coffers.

“And this will necessarily happen sooner or later,” he thought. “If
Martial should marry, or if he should become ambitious, or meet with
evil counsellors, that will be the end of my reign.”

He watched and studied his son as a jealous woman studies and watches
the lover she mistrusts. He thought he read in his eyes many thoughts
which were not there; and according as he saw him, gay or sad, careless
or preoccupied, he was reassured or still more alarmed.

Sometimes he imagined the worst. “If I should quarrel with Martial,” he
thought, “he would take possession of his entire fortune, and I should
be left without bread.”

These torturing apprehensions were, to a man who judged the sentiments
of others by his own, a terrible chastisement.

Ah! no one would have wished his existence at the price he paid for
it--not even the poor wretches who envied his lot and his apparent
happiness, as they saw him roll by in his magnificent carriage.

There were days when he almost went mad.

“What am I?” he exclaimed, foaming with rage. “A mere plaything in the
hands of a child. My son owns me. If I displease him, he casts me aside.
Yes, he can dismiss me as he would a lackey. If I enjoy his fortune,
it is only because he is willing that I should do so. I owe my very
existence, as well as my luxuries, to his charity. But a moment of
anger, even a caprice, may deprive me of everything.”

With such ideas in his brain, the duke could not love his son.

He hated him.

He passionately envied him all the advantages he possessed--his youth,
his millions, his physical beauty, and his talents, which were really of
a superior order.

We meet every day mothers who are jealous of their daughters, and some
fathers!

This was one of those cases.

The duke, however, showed no sign of mental disquietude; and if Martial
had possessed less penetration, he would have believed that his father
adored him. But if he had detected the duke’s secret, he did not allow
him to discover it, nor did he abuse his power.

Their manner toward each other was perfect. The duke was kind even to
weakness; Martial full of deference. But their relations were not those
of father and son. One was in constant fear of displeasing the other;
the other was a little too sure of his power. They lived on a footing of
perfect equality, like two companions of the same age.

From this trying situation, Lacheneur had rescued the duke.

The owner of Sairmeuse, an estate worth more than a million, the duke
was free from his son’s tyranny; he had recovered his liberty.

What brilliant projects flitted through his brain that night!

He beheld himself the richest landowner in that locality; he was the
chosen friend of the King; had he not a right to aspire to anything?

Such a prospect enchanted him. He felt twenty years younger--the twenty
years that had been passed in exile.

So, rising before nine o’clock, he went to awaken Martial.

On returning from dining with the Marquis de Courtornieu, the
evening before, the duke had gone through the chateau; but this hasty
examination by candle-light had not satisfied his curiosity. He wished
to see it in detail by daylight.

Followed by his son, he explored one after another of the rooms of the
princely abode; and, with every step, the recollections of his infancy
crowded upon him.

Lacheneur had respected everything. The duke found articles as old as
himself, religiously preserved, occupying the old familiar places from
which they had never been removed.

When his inspection was concluded:

“Decidedly, Marquis,” he exclaimed, “this Lacheneur was not such a
rascal as I supposed. I am disposed to forgive him a great deal, on
account of the care which he has taken of our house in our absence.”

Martial seemed engrossed in thought.

“I think, Monsieur,” he said, at last, “that we should testify our
gratitude to this man by paying him a large indemnity.”

This word excited the duke’s anger.

“An indemnity!” he exclaimed. “Are you mad, Marquis? Think of the income
that he has received from my estate. Have you forgotten the calculation
made for us last evening by the Chevalier de la Livandiere?”

“The chevalier is a fool!” declared Martial promptly. “He forgot that
Lacheneur has trebled the value of Sairmeuse. I think that our family
honor requires us to bestow upon this man an indemnity of at least
one hundred thousand francs. This would, moreover, be a good stroke of
policy in the present state of public sentiment, and His Majesty would,
I am sure, be much pleased.”

“Stroke of policy”--“public sentiment”--“His Majesty.” One might have
obtained almost anything from M. de Sairmeuse by these arguments.

“Heavenly powers!” he exclaimed; “a hundred thousand francs! how you
talk! It is all very well for you, with your fortune! Still, if you
really think so----”

“Ah! my dear sir, is not my fortune yours? Yes, such is really my
opinion. So much so, indeed, that if you will allow me to do so, I will
see Lacheneur myself, and arrange the matter in such a way that his
pride will not be wounded. His is a devotion which it would be well to
retain.”

The duke opened his eyes to their widest extent.

“Lacheneur’s pride!” he murmured. “Devotion which it would be well to
retain! Why do you sing in this strain? Whence comes this extraordinary
interest?”

He paused, enlightened by a sudden recollection.

“I understand!” he exclaimed; “I understand. He has a pretty daughter.”

Martial smiled without replying.

“Yes, pretty as a rose,” continued the duke; “but one hundred thousand
francs! Zounds! That is a round sum to pay for such a whim. But, if you
insist upon it----”

Armed with this authorization, Martial, two hours later, started on his
mission.

The first peasant he met told him the way to the cottage which M.
Lacheneur now occupied.

“Follow the river,” said the man, “and when you see a pine-grove upon
your left, cross it.”

Martial was crossing it, when he heard the sound of voices. He
approached, recognized Marie-Anne and Maurice d’Escorval, and obeying an
angry impulse, he paused.



CHAPTER XI

During the decisive moments of life, when one’s entire future depends
upon a word, or a gesture, twenty contradictory inspirations can
traverse the mind in the time occupied by a flash of lightning.

On the sudden apparition of the young Marquis de Sairmeuse, Maurice
d’Escorval’s first thought was this:

“How long has he been there? Has he been playing the spy? Has he been
listening to us? What did he hear?”

His first impulse was to spring upon his enemy, to strike him in the
face, and compel him to engage in a hand-to-hand struggle.

The thought of Anne-Marie checked him.

He reflected upon the possible, even probable results of a quarrel born
of such circumstances. The combat which would ensue would cost this pure
young girl her reputation. Martial would talk of it; and country people
are pitiless. He saw this girl, whom he looked so devotedly upon, become
the talk of the neighborhood; saw the finger of scorn pointed at her,
and possessed sufficient self-control to master his anger. All these
reflections had occupied only half a second.

Then, politely touching his hat, and stepping toward Martial:

“You are a stranger, Monsieur,” said he, in a voice which was
frightfully altered, “and you have doubtless lost your way?” His words
were ill-chosen, and defeated his prudent intentions. A curt “Mind your
own business” would have been less wounding. He forgot that this word
“stranger” was the most deadly insult that one could cast in the face of
the former _emigres_, who had returned with the allied armies.

Still the young marquis did not change his insolently nonchalant
attitude.

He touched the visor of his hunting cap with his finger, and replied:

“It is true--I have lost my way.”

Agitated as Marie-Anne was, she could not fail to understand that her
presence was all that restrained the hatred of these two young men.
Their attitude, the glance with which they measured each other, did not
leave the shadow of a doubt on that score. If one was ready to spring
upon the other, the other was on the alert, ready to defend himself.

The silence of nearly a moment which followed was as threatening as the
profound calm which precedes the storm.

Martial was the first to break it.

“A peasant’s directions are not generally remarkable for their
clearness,” he said, lightly; “and for more than an hour I have been
seeking the house to which Monsieur Lacheneur has retired.”

“Ah!”

“I am sent to him by the Duc de Sairmeuse, my father.”

Knowing what he did, Maurice supposed that these strangely rapacious
individuals had some new demand to make.

“I thought,” said he, “that all relations between Monsieur Lacheneur and
Monsieur de Sairmeuse were broken off last evening at the house of the
abbe.”

This was said in the most provoking manner, and yet Martial never so
much as frowned. He had sworn that he would remain calm, and he had
strength enough to keep his word.

“If these relations--as God forbid--have been broken off,” he replied,
“believe me, Monsieur d’Escorval, it is no fault of ours.”

“Then it is not as people say?”

“What people? Who?”

“The people here in the neighborhood.”

“Ah! And what do these people say?”

“The truth. That you have been guilty of an offence which a man of honor
could never forgive nor forget.”

The young marquis shook his head gravely.

“You are quick to condemn, sir,” he said, coldly. “Permit me to hope
that Monsieur Lacheneur will be less severe than yourself; and that his
resentment--just, I confess, will vanish before”--he hesitated--“before
a truthful explanation.”

Such an expression from the lips of this haughty young aristocrat! Was
it possible?

Martial profited by the effect he had produced to advance toward
Marie-Anne, and, addressing himself exclusively to her, seemed after
that to ignore the presence of Maurice completely.

“For there has been a mistake--a misunderstanding, Mademoiselle,” he
continued. “Do not doubt it. The Sairmeuse are not ingrates. How
could anyone have supposed that we would intentionally give offense
to a--devoted friend of our family, and that at a moment when he had
rendered us a most signal service! A true gentleman like my father, and
a hero of probity like yours, cannot fail to esteem each other. I admit
that in the scene of yesterday, Monsieur de Sairmeuse did not appear to
advantage; but the step he takes today proves his sincere regret.”

Certainly this was not the cavalier tone which he had employed in
addressing Marie-Anne, for the first time, on the square in front of the
church.

He had removed his hat, he remained half inclined before her, and
he spoke in a tone of profound respect, as though it were a haughty
duchess, and not the humble daughter of that “rascal” Lacheneur whom he
was addressing.

Was it only a _roue’s_ manoeuvre? Or had he also involuntarily submitted
to the power of this beautiful girl? It was both; and it would have
been difficult for him to say where the voluntary ended, and where the
involuntary began.

He continued:

“My father is an old man who has suffered cruelly. Exile is hard to
bear. But if sorrows and deceptions have embittered his character, they
have not changed his heart. His apparent imperiousness and arrogance
conceal a kindness of heart which I have often seen degenerate into
positive weakness. And--why should I not confess it?--the Duc de
Sairmeuse, with his white hair, still retains the illusions of a child.
He refuses to believe that the world has progressed during the past
twenty years. Moreover, people had deceived him by the most absurd
fabrications. To speak plainly, even while we were in Montaignac,
Monsieur Lacheneur’s enemies succeeded in prejudicing my father against
him.”

One would have sworn that he was speaking the truth, so persuasive was
his voice, so entirely did the expression of his face, his glance, and
his gestures accord with his words.

And Maurice, who felt--who was certain that the young man was lying,
impudently lying, was abashed by this scientific prevarication which is
so universally practised in good society, and of which he was entirely
ignorant.

But what did the marquis desire here--and why this farce?

“Need I tell you, Mademoiselle,” he resumed, “all that I suffered last
evening in the little drawing-room in the presbytery? No, never in my
whole life can I recollect such a cruel moment. I understood, and I
did honor to Monsieur Lacheneur’s heroism. Hearing of our arrival, he,
without hesitation, without delay, hastened to voluntarily surrender
a princely fortune--and he was insulted. This excessive injustice
horrified me. And if I did not openly protest against it--if I did not
show my indignation--it was only because contradiction drives my father
to the verge of frenzy. And what good would it have done for me to
protest? The filial love and piety which you displayed were far more
powerful in their effect than any words of mine would have been. You
were scarcely out of the village before Monsieur de Sairmeuse, already
ashamed of his injustice, said to me: ‘I have been wrong, but I am an
old man; it is hard for me to decide to make the first advance; you,
Marquis, go and find Monsieur Lacheneur, and obtain his forgiveness.’”

Marie-Anne, redder than a peony, and terribly embarrassed, lowered her
eyes.

“I thank you, Monsieur,” she faltered, “in the name of my father--”

“Oh! do not thank me,” interrupted Martial, earnestly; “it will be my
duty, on the contrary, to render you thanks, if you can induce Monsieur
Lacheneur to accept the reparation which is due him--and he will accept
it, if you will only condescend to plead our cause. Who could resist
your sweet voice, your beautiful, beseeching eyes?”

However inexperienced Maurice might be, he could no longer fail to
comprehend Martial’s intentions. This man whom he mortally hated
already, dared to speak of love to Marie-Anne, and before him, Maurice.
In other words, the marquis, not content with having ignored and
insulted him, presumed to take an insolent advantage of his supposed
simplicity.

The certainty of this insult sent all his blood in a boiling torrent to
his brain.

He seized Martial by the arm, and with irresistible power whirled him
twice around, then threw him more than ten feet, exclaiming:

“This last is too much, Marquis de Sairmeuse!”

Maurice’s attitude was so threatening that Martial fully expected
another attack. The violence of the shock had thrown him down upon one
knee; without rising, he lifted his gun, ready to take aim.

It was not from anything like cowardice on the part of the Marquis de
Sairmeuse that he decided to fire upon an unarmed foe; but the affront
which he had received was so deadly and so ignoble in his opinion, that
he would have shot Maurice like a dog, rather than feel the weight of
his finger upon him again.

This explosion of anger from Maurice Marie-Anne had been expecting and
hoping for every moment.

She was even more inexperienced than her lover; but she was a woman, and
could not fail to understand the meaning of the young marquis.

He was evidently “paying his court to her.” And with what intentions! It
was only too easy to divine.

Her agitation, while the marquis spoke in a more and more tender voice,
changed first to stupor, then to indignation, as she realized his
marvellous audacity.

After that, how could she help blessing the violence which put an end
to a situation which was so insulting for her, and so humiliating for
Maurice?

An ordinary woman would have thrown herself between the two men who were
ready to kill each other. Marie-Anne did not move a muscle.

Was it not the duty of Maurice to protect her when she was insulted?
Who, then, if not he, should defend her from the insolent gallantry of
this libertine? She would have blushed, she who was energy personified,
to love a weak and pusillanimous man.

But any intervention was unnecessary. Maurice comprehended that this
was one of those affronts which the person insulted must not seem to
suspect, under penalty of giving the offending party the advantage.

He felt that Marie-Anne must not be regarded as the cause of the
quarrel!

His instant recognition of the situation produced a powerful reaction
in his mind; and he recovered, as if by magic, his coolness and the free
exercise of his faculties.

“Yes,” he resumed, defiantly, “this is hypocrisy enough. To dare to
prate of reparation after the insults that you and yours have inflicted,
is adding intentional humiliation to insult--and I will not permit it.”

Martial had thrown aside his gun; he now rose and brushed the knee of
his pantaloons, to which a few particles of dust had adhered, with a
phlegm whose secret he had learned in England.

He was too discerning not to perceive that Maurice had disguised the
true cause of his outburst of passion; but what did it matter to him?
Had he avowed it, the marquis would not have been displeased.

Yet it was necessary to make some response, and to preserve the
superiority which he imagined he had maintained up to that time.

“You will never know, Monsieur,” he said, glancing alternately at his
gun and at Marie-Anne, “all that you owe to Mademoiselle Lacheneur. We
shall meet again, I hope--”

“You have made that remark before,” Maurice interrupted, tauntingly.
“Nothing is easier than to find me. The first peasant you meet will
point out the house of Baron d’Escorval.”

“_Eh bien_! sir, I cannot promise that you will not see two of my
friends.”

“Oh! whenever it may please you!”

“Certainly; but it would gratify me to know by what right you make
yourself the judge of Monsieur Lacheneur’s honor, and take it upon
yourself to defend what has not been attacked. Who has given you this
right?”

From Martial’s sneering tone, Maurice was certain that he had overheard,
at least a part of, his conversation with Marie-Anne.

“My right,” he replied, “is that of friendship. If I tell you that your
advances are unwelcome, it is because I know that Monsieur Lacheneur
will accept nothing from you. No, nothing, under whatever guise you may
offer these alms which you tender merely to appease your own conscience.
He will never forgive the affront which is his honor and your shame. Ah!
you thought to degrade him, Messieurs de Sairmeuse! and you have lifted
him far above your mock grandeur. _He_ receive anything from you! Go;
learn that your millions will never give you a pleasure equal to the
ineffable joy he will feel, when seeing you roll by in your carriage, he
says to himself: ‘Those people owe everything to me!’”

His burning words vibrated with such intensity of feeling that
Marie-Anne could not resist the impulse to press his hand; and this
gesture was his revenge upon Martial, who turned pale with passion.

“But I have still another right,” continued Maurice. “My father
yesterday had the honor of asking of Monsieur Lacheneur the hand of his
daughter----”

“And I refused it!” cried a terrible voice.

Marie-Anne and both young men turned with the same movement of alarm and
surprise.

M. Lacheneur stood before them, and by his side was Chanlouineau, who
surveyed the group with threatening eyes.

“Yes, I refused it,” resumed M. Lacheneur, “and I do not believe that my
daughter will marry anyone without my consent. What did you promise me
this morning, Marie-Anne? Can it be you, you who grant a rendezvous to
gallants in the forest? Return to the house, instantly----”

“But father----”

“Return!” he repeated with an oath; “return, I command you.”

She obeyed and departed, not without giving Maurice a look in which he
read a farewell that she believed would be eternal.

As soon as she had gone, perhaps twenty paces, M. Lacheneur, with folded
arms, confronted Maurice.

“As for you, Monsieur d’Escorval,” said he, rudely, “I hope that you
will no longer undertake to prowl around my daughter----”

“I swear to you, Monsieur--”

“Oh, no oaths, if you please. It is an evil action to endeavor to turn
a young girl from her duty, which is obedience. You have broken forever
all relations between your family and mine.”

The poor youth tried to excuse himself, but M. Lacheneur interrupted
him.

“Enough! enough!” said he; “go back to your home.”

And as Maurice hesitated, he seized him by the collar and dragged him to
the little footpath leading through the grove.

It was the work of scarcely ten seconds, and yet, he found time to
whisper in the young man’s ear, in his formerly friendly tones:

“Go, you little wretch! do you wish to render all my precautions
useless?”

He watched Maurice as he disappeared, bewildered by the scene he had
just witnessed, and stupefied by what he had just heard; and it was not
until he saw that young d’Escorval was out of hearing that he turned to
Martial.

“As I have had the honor of meeting you, Monsieur le Marquis,” said he,
“I deem it my duty to inform you that Chupin and his sons are searching
for you everywhere. It is at the instance of the duke, your father, who
is anxious for you to repair at once to the Chateau de Courtornieu.”

He turned to Chanlouineau, and added:

“We will now proceed on our way.”

But Martial detained him with a gesture.

“I am much surprised to hear that they are seeking me,” said he. “My
father knows very well where he sent me; I was going to your house,
Monsieur, and at his request.”

“To my house?”

“To your house, yes, Monsieur, to express our sincere regret at the
scene which took place at the presbytery last evening.”

And without waiting for any response, Martial, with wonderful cleverness
and felicity of expression, began to repeat to the father the story
which he had just related to the daughter.

According to his version, his father and himself were in despair. How
could M. Lacheneur suppose them guilty of such black ingratitude?
Why had he retired so precipitately? The Duc de Sairmeuse held at
M. Lacheneur’s disposal any amount which it might please him to
mention--sixty, a hundred thousand francs, even more.

But M. Lacheneur did not appear to be dazzled in the least; and when
Martial had concluded, he replied, respectfully, but coldly, that he
would consider the matter.

This coldness amazed Chanlouineai; he did not conceal the fact when
the marquis, after many earnest protestations, at last wended his way
homeward.

“We have misjudged these people,” he declared.

But M. Lacheneur shrugged his shoulders.

“And so you are foolish enough to suppose that it was to me that he
offered all that money?”

“Zounds! I have ears.”

“Ah, well! my poor boy, you must not believe all they hear, if you have.
The truth is, that these large sums were intended to win the favor of my
daughter. She has pleased this coxcomb of a marquis; and--he wishes to
make her his mistress----”

Chanlouineau stopped short, with eyes flashing, and hands clinched.

“Good God!” he exclaimed; “prove that, and I am yours, body and soul--to
do anything you desire.”



CHAPTER XII

“No, never in my whole life have I met a woman who can compare with this
Marie-Anne! What grace and what dignity! Ah! her beauty is divine!”

So Martial was thinking while returning to Sairmeuse after his proposals
to M. Lacheneur.

At the risk of losing his way he took the shortest course, which led
across the fields and over ditches, which he leaped with the aid of his
gun.

He found a pleasure, entirely novel and very delightful, in picturing
Marie-Anne as he had just seen her, blushing and paling, about to swoon,
then lifting her head haughtily in her pride and disdain.

Who would have suspected that such indomitable energy and such an
impassioned soul was hidden beneath such girlish artlessness and
apparent coldness? What an adorable expression illumined her face, what
passion shone in those great black eyes when she looked at that little
fool d’Escorval! What would not one give to be regarded thus, even for a
moment? How could the boy help being crazy about her?

He himself loved her, without being, as yet, willing, to confess it.
What other name could be given to this passion which had overpowered
reason, and to the furious desires which agitated him?

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “she shall be mine. Yes, she shall be mine; I will
have her!”

Consequently he began to study the strategic side of the undertaking
which this resolution involved with the sagacity of one who had not been
without an extended experience in such matters.

His debut, he was forced to admit, had been neither fortunate nor
adroit. Conveyed compliments and money had both been rejected. If
Marie-Anne had heard his covert insinuations with evident horror, M.
Lacheneur had received, with even more than coldness, his advances and
his offers of actual wealth.

Moreover, he remembered Chanlouineau’s terrible eyes.

“How he measured me, that magnificent rustic!” he growled. “At a sign
from Marie-Anne he would have crushed me like an eggshell, without a
thought of my ancestors. Ah! does he also love her? There will be three
rivals in that case.”

But the more difficult and even perilous the undertaking seemed, the
more his passions were inflamed.

“My failures can be repaired,” he thought. “Occasions of meeting shall
not be wanting. Will it not be necessary to hold frequent interviews
with Monsieur Lacheneur in effecting a formal transfer of Sairmeuse?
I will win him over to my side. With the daughter my course is plain.
Profiting by my unfortunate experience, I will, in the future, be as
timid as I have been bold; and she will be hard to please if she is
not flattered by this triumph of her beauty. D’Escorval remains to be
disposed of----”

But this was the point upon which Martial was most exercised.

He had, it is true, seen this rival rudely dismissed by M. Lacheneur;
and yet the anger of the latter had seemed to him too great to be
absolutely real.

He suspected a comedy, but for whose benefit? For his, or for
Chanlouineau’s? And yet, what could possibly be the motive?

“And yet,” he reflected, “my hands are tied; and I cannot call this
little d’Escorval to account for his insolence. To swallow such an
affront in silence is hard. Still, he is brave, there is no denying
that; perhaps I can find some other way to provoke his anger. But even
then, what could I do? If I harmed a hair of his head, Marie-Anne would
never forgive me. Ah! I would give a handsome sum in exchange for some
little device to send him out of the country.”

Revolving in his mind these plans, whose frightful consequences he could
neither calculate nor foresee, Martial was walking up the avenue leading
to the chateau, when he heard hurried footsteps behind him.

He turned, and seeing two men running after him and motioning him to
stop, he paused.

It was Chupin, accompanied by one of his sons.

This old rascal had been enrolled among the servants charged with
preparing Sairmeuse for the reception of the duke; and he had already
discovered the secret of making himself useful to his master, which was
by seeming to be indispensable.

“Ah, Monsieur,” he cried, “we have been searching for you everywhere, my
son and I. It was Monsieur le Duc----”

“Very well,” said Martial, dryly. “I am returning----”

But Chupin was not sensitive; and although he had not been very
favorably received, he ventured to follow the marquis at a little
distance, but sufficiently near to make himself heard. He also had
his schemes; for it was not long before he began a long recital of the
calumnies which had been spread about the neighborhood in regard to the
Lacheneur affair. Why did he choose this subject in preference to any
other? Did he suspect the young marquis’s passion for Marie-Anne?

According to this report, Lacheneur--he no longer said “monsieur”--was
unquestionably a rascal; the complete surrender of Sairmeuse was only
a farce, as he must possess thousands, and hundreds of thousands of
francs, since he was about to marry his daughter.

If the scoundrel had felt only suspicions, they were changed into
certainty by the eagerness with which Martial demanded:

“How! is Mademoiselle Lacheneur to be married?”

“Yes, Monsieur.”

“And to whom?”

“To Chanlouineau, the fellow whom the peasants wished to kill yesterday
upon the square, because he was disrespectful to the duke. He is an
avaricious man; and if Marie-Anne does not bring him a good round sum as
a dowry, he will never marry her, no matter how beautiful she may be.”

“Are you sure of what you say?”

“It is true. My eldest son heard from Chanlouineau and from Lacheneur
that the wedding would take place within a month.”

And turning to his son:

“Is it not true, boy?”

“Yes,” promptly replied the youth, who had heard nothing of the kind.

Martial was silent, ashamed, perhaps, of allowing himself to listen
to the gossip, but glad to have been informed of such an important
circumstance.

If Chupin was not telling a falsehood--and what reason could he have for
doing so--it became evident that M. Lacheneur’s conduct concealed some
great mystery. Why, without some potent motive, should he have refused
to give his daughter to Maurice d’Escorval whom she loved, to bestow her
upon a peasant?

As he reached Sairmeuse, he was swearing that he would discover this
motive. A strange scene awaited him. In the broad open space extending
from the front of the chateau to the _parterre_ lay a huge pile of all
kinds of clothing, linen, plate, and furniture. One might have supposed
that the occupants of the chateau were moving. A half dozen men were
running to and fro, and standing in the centre of the rubbish was the
Duc de Sairmeuse, giving orders.

Martial did not understand the whole meaning of the scene at first. He
went to his father, and after saluting him respectfully, inquired:

“What is all this?”

M. de Sairmeuse laughed heartily.

“What! can you not guess?” he replied. “It is very simple, however. When
the lawful master, on his return, sleeps beneath the bed-coverings of
the usurper, it is delightful, the first night, not so pleasant on the
second. Everything here reminds me too forcibly of Monsieur Lacheneur.
It seems to me that I am in his house; and the thought is unendurable.
So I have had them collect everything belonging to him and to his
daughter--everything, in fact, which did not belong to the chateau in
former years. The servants will put it all into a cart and carry it to
him.”

The young marquis gave fervent thanks to Heaven that he had arrived
before it was too late. Had his father’s project been executed, he would
have been obliged to bid farewell to all his hopes.

“You surely will not do this, Monsieur le Duc?” said he, earnestly.

“And why, pray? Who will prevent me from doing it?”

“No one, most assuredly. But you will decide, on reflection, that a
man who has not conducted himself _too_ badly has a right to some
consideration.”

The duke seemed greatly astonished.

“Consideration!” he exclaimed. “This rascal has a right to some
consideration! Well, this is one of the poorest of jokes. What! I give
him--that is to say--you give him a hundred thousand francs, and that
will not content him! He is entitled to consideration! You, who are
after the daughter, may give it to him if you like, but I shall do as I
like!”

“Very well; but, Monsieur, I would think twice, if I were in your place.
Lacheneur has surrendered Sairmeuse. That is all very well; but how can
you authenticate your claim to the property? What would you do if, in
case you imprudently irritated him, he should change his mind? What
would become of your right to the estate?”

M. Sairmeuse actually turned green.

“Zounds!” he exclaimed. “I had not thought of that. Here, you fellows,
take all these things back again, and that quickly!”

And as they were obeying his order:

“Now,” he remarked, “let us hasten to Courtornieu. They have already
sent for us twice. It must be business of the utmost importance which
demands our attention.”



CHAPTER XIII

The Chateau de Courtornieu is, next to Sairmeuse, the most magnificent
habitation in the _arrondissement_ of Montaignac.

The approach to the castle was by a long and narrow road, badly paved.
When the carriage containing Martial and his father turned from the
public highway into this rough road, the jolting aroused the duke from
the profound revery into which he had fallen on leaving Sairmeuse.

The marquis thought that he had caused this unusual fit of abstraction.

“It is the result of my adroit manoeuvre,” he said to himself, not
without secret satisfaction. “Until the restitution of Sairmeuse is
legalized, I can make my father do anything I wish; yes, anything. And
if it is necessary, he will even invite Lacheneur and Marie-Anne to his
table.”

He was mistaken. The duke had already forgotten the affair; his most
vivid impressions lasted no longer than an indentation in the sand.

He lowered the glass in front of the carriage, and, after ordering the
coachman to drive more slowly:

“Now,” said he to his son, “let us talk a little. Are you really in love
with that little Lacheneur?”

Martial could not repress a start. “Oh! in love,” said he, lightly,
“that would perhaps be saying too much. Let me say that she has taken my
fancy; that will be sufficient.”

The duke regarded his son with a bantering air.

“Really, you delight me!” he exclaimed. “I feared that this love-affair
might derange, at least for the moment, certain plans that I have
formed--for I have formed certain plans for you.”

“The devil!”

“Yes, I have my plans, and I will communicate them to you later in
detail. I will content myself today by recommending you to examine
Mademoiselle Blanche de Courtornieu.”

Martial made no reply. This recommendation was entirely unnecessary. If
Mlle. Lacheneur had made him forget Mlle. de Courtornieu that morning
for some moments, the remembrance of Marie-Anne was now effaced by the
radiant image of Blanche.

“Before discussing the daughter,” resumed the duke, “let us speak of the
father. He is one of my strongest friends; and I know him thoroughly.
You have heard men reproach me for what they style my prejudices, have
you not? Well, in comparison with the Marquis de Courtornieu, I am only
a Jacobin.”

“Oh! my father!”

“Really, nothing could be more true. If I am behind the age in which
I live, he belongs to the reign of Louis XIV. Only--for there is an
only--the principles which I openly avow, he keeps locked up in his
snuff-box--and trust him for not forgetting to open it at the opportune
moment. He has suffered cruelly for his opinions, in the sense of having
so often been obliged to conceal them. He concealed them, first, under
the consulate, when he returned from exile. He dissimulated them even
more courageously under the Empire--for he played the part of a kind of
chamberlain to Bonaparte, this dear marquis. But, chut! do not remind
him of that proof of heroism; he has deplored it bitterly since the
battle of Lutzen.”

This was the tone in which M. de Sairmeuse was accustomed to speak of
his best friends.

“The history of his fortune,” he continued, “is the history of his
marriages--I say _marriages_, because he has married a number of times,
and always advantageously. Yes, in a period of fifteen years he has had
the misfortune of losing three wives, each richer than the other. His
daughter is the child of his third and last wife, a Cisse Blossac--she
died in 1809. He comforted himself after each bereavement by purchasing
a quantity of lands or bonds. So that now he is as rich as you are,
Marquis, and his influence is powerful and widespread. I forgot one
detail, however, he believes, they tell me, in the growing power of the
clergy, and has become very devout.”

He checked himself; the carriage had stopped before the entrance of
the Chateau de Courtornieu, and the marquis came forward to receive his
guests in person. A nattering distinction, which he seldom lavished upon
his visitors. The marquis was long rather than tall, and very solemn
in deportment. The head that surmounted his angular form was remarkably
small, a characteristic of his race, and covered with thin, glossy black
hair, and lighted by cold, round black eyes.

The pride that becomes a gentleman, and the humility that befits a
Christian, were continually at war with each other in his countenance.

He pressed the hands of M. de Sairmeuse and Martial, overwhelming them
with compliments uttered in a thin, rather nasal voice, which, issuing
from his immense body, was as astonishing as the sound of a flute
issuing from the pipes of an orphicleide would be.

“At last you have come,” he said; “we were waiting for you before
beginning our deliberations upon a very grave, and also very delicate
matter. We are thinking of addressing a petition to His Majesty. The
nobility, who have suffered so much during the Revolution, have a right
to expect ample compensation. Our neighbors, to the number of sixteen,
are now assembled in my cabinet, transformed for the time into a council
chamber.”

Martial shuddered at the thought of all the ridiculous and tiresome
conversation he would probably be obliged to hear; and his father’s
recommendation occurred to him.

“Shall we not have the honor of paying our respects to Mademoiselle de
Courtornieu?”

“My daughter must be in the drawing-room with our cousin,” replied
the marquis, in an indifferent tone; “at least, if she is not in the
garden.”

This might be construed into, “Go and look for her if you choose.” At
least Martial understood it in that way; and when they entered the hall,
he allowed his father and the marquis to go upstairs without him.

A servant opened the door of the drawing-room for him--but it was empty.

“Very well,” said he; “I know my way to the garden.”

But he explored it in vain; no one was to be found.

He decided to return to the house and march bravely into the presence of
the dreaded enemy. He had turned to retrace his steps when, through the
foliage of a bower of jasmine, he thought he could distinguish a white
dress.

He advanced softly, and his heart quickened its throbbing when he saw
that he was right.

Mlle. Blanche de Courtornieu was seated on a bench beside an old lady,
and was engaged in reading a letter in a low voice.

She must have been greatly preoccupied, since she had not heard
Martial’s footsteps approaching.

He was only ten paces from her, so near that he could distinguish
the shadow of her long eyelashes. He paused, holding his breath, in a
delicious ecstasy.

“Ah! how beautiful she is!” he thought. Beautiful? no. But pretty, yes;
as pretty as heart could desire, with her great velvety blue eyes
and her pouting lips. She was a blonde, but one of those dazzling and
radiant blondes found only in the countries of the sun; and from her
hair, drawn high upon the top of her head, escaped a profusion of
ravishing, glittering ringlets, which seemed almost to sparkle in the
play of the light breeze.

One might, perhaps, have wished her a trifle larger. But she had the
winning charm of all delicate and _mignonnes_ women; and her figure was
of exquisite roundness, and her dimpled hands were those of an infant.

Alas! these attractive exteriors are often deceitful, as much and even
more so, than the appearances of a man like the Marquis de Courtornieu.

The apparently innocent and artless young girl possessed the parched,
hollow soul of an experienced woman of the world, or of an old courtier.
She had been so petted at the convent, in the capacity of only daughter
of a _grand seigneur_ and millionnaire; she had been surrounded by so
much adulation, that all her good qualities had been blighted in the bud
by the poisonous breath of flattery.

She was only nineteen; and still it was impossible for any person to
have been more susceptible to the charms of wealth and of satisfied
ambition. She dreamed of a position at court as a school-girl dreams of
a lover.

If she had deigned to notice Martial--for she had remarked him--it was
only because her father had told her that this young man would lift his
wife to the highest sphere of power. Thereupon she had uttered a “very
well, we will see!” that would have changed an enamoured suitor’s love
into disgust.

Martial advanced a few steps, and Mlle. Blanche, on seeing him, sprang
up with a pretty affectation of intense timidity.

Bowing low before her, he said, gently, and with profound deference:

“Monsieur de Courtornieu, Mademoiselle, was so kind as to tell me where
I might have the honor of finding you. I had not courage to brave those
formidable discussions inside; but----”

He pointed to the letter the young girl held in her hand, and added:

“But I fear that I am _de trop_.”

“Oh! not in the least, Monsieur le Marquis, although this letter which
I have just been reading has, I confess, interested me deeply. It was
written by a poor child in whom I have taken a great interest--whom I
have sent for sometimes when I was lonely--Marie-Anne Lacheneur.”

Accustomed from his infancy to the hypocrisy of drawing-rooms, the young
marquis had taught his face not to betray his feelings.

He could have laughed gayly with anguish at his heart; he could have
preserved the sternest gravity when inwardly convulsed with merriment.

And yet, this name of Marie-Anne upon the lips of Mlle. de Courtornieu,
caused his glance to waver.

“They know each other!” he thought.

In an instant he was himself again; but Mlle. Blanche had perceived his
momentary agitation.

“What can it mean?” she wondered, much disturbed.

Still, it was with the perfect assumption of innocence that she
continued:

“In fact, you must have seen her, this poor Marie-Anne, Monsieur le
Marquis, since her father was the guardian of Sairmeuse?”

“Yes, I have seen her, Mademoiselle,” replied Martial, quietly.

“Is she not remarkably beautiful? Her beauty is of an unusual type, it
quite takes one by surprise.”

A fool would have protested. The marquis was not guilty of this folly.

“Yes, she is very beautiful,” said he.

This apparent frankness disconcerted Mlle. Blanche a trifle; and it was
with an air of hypocritical compassion that she murmured:

“Poor girl! What will become of her? Here is her father, reduced to
delving in the ground.”

“Oh! you exaggerate, Mademoiselle; my father will always preserve
Lacheneur from anything of that kind.”

“Of course--I might have known that--but where will he find a husband
for Marie-Anne?”

“One has been found already. I understand that she is to marry a youth
in the neighborhood, who has some property--a certain Chanlouineau.”

The artless school-girl was more cunning than the marquis. She had
satisfied herself that she had just grounds for her suspicions; and she
experienced a certain anger on finding him so well informed in regard to
everything that concerned Mlle. Lacheneur.

“And do you believe that this is the husband of whom she had dreamed?
Ah, well! God grant that she may be happy; for we were very fond of her,
very--were we not, Aunt Medea?”

Aunt Medea was the old lady seated beside Mlle. Blanche.

“Yes, very,” she replied.

This aunt, or cousin, rather, was a poor relation whom M. de Courtornieu
had sheltered, and who was forced to pay dearly for her bread; since
Mlle. Blanche compelled her to play the part of echo.

“It grieves me to see these friendly relations, which were so dear
to me, broken,” resumed Mlle. de Courtornieu. “But listen to what
Marie-Anne has written.”

She drew from her belt where she had placed it, Mlle. Lacheneur’s letter
and read:


“‘My dear blanche--You know that the Duc de Sairmeuse has returned. The
news fell upon us like a thunder-bolt. My father and I had become
too much accustomed to regard as our own the deposit which had been
intrusted to our fidelity; we have been punished for it. At least, we
have done our duty, and now all is ended. She whom you have called your
friend, will be, hereafter, only a poor peasant girl, as her mother was
before her.’”


The most subtle observer would have supposed that Mlle. Blanche was
experiencing the keenest emotion. One would have sworn that it was only
by intense effort that she succeeded in restraining her tears--that they
were even trembling behind her long lashes.

The truth was, that she was thinking only of discovering, upon Martial’s
face, some indication of his feelings. But now that he was on guard, his
features might have been marble for any sign of emotion they betrayed.
So she continued:


“‘I should utter an untruth if I said that I have not suffered on
account of this sudden change. But I have courage; I shall learn how to
submit. I shall, I hope, have strength to forget, for I _must_ forget!
The remembrances of past felicity would render my present misery
intolerable.’”


Mlle. de Courtornieu suddenly folded up the letter.

“You have heard it, Monsieur,” said she. “Can you understand such pride
as that? And they accuse us, daughters of the nobility, of being proud!”

Martial made no response. He felt that his altered voice would betray
him. How much more would he have been moved, if he had been allowed to
read the concluding lines:


“One must live, my dear Blanche!” added Marie-Anne, “and I feel no false
shame in asking you to aid me. I sew very nicely, as you know, and I
could earn my livelihood by embroidery if I knew more people. I will
call to-day at Courtornieu to ask you to give me a list of ladies to
whom I can present myself on your recommendation.”


But Mlle. de Courtornieu had taken good care not to allude to the
touching request. She had read the letter to Martial as a test. She
had not succeeded; so much the worse. She rose and accepted his arm to
return to the house.

She seemed to have forgotten her friend, and she was chatting gayly.
When they approached the chateau, she was interrupted by a sound of
voices raised to the highest pitch.

It was the address to the King which was agitating the council convened
in M. de Courtornieu’s cabinet.

Mlle. Blanche paused.

“I am trespassing upon your kindness, Monsieur. I am boring you with my
silly chat when you should undoubtedly be up there.”

“Certainly not,” he replied, laughing. “What should I do there? The role
of men of action does not begin until the orators have concluded.”

He spoke so energetically, in spite of his jesting tone, that Mlle. de
Courtornieu was fascinated. She saw before her, she believed, a man
who, as her father had said, would rise to the highest position in the
political world.

Unfortunately, her admiration was disturbed by a ring of the great bell
that always announces visitors.

She trembled, let go her hold on Martial’s arm, and said, very
earnestly:

“Ah, no matter. I wish very much to know what is going on up there. If
I ask my father, he will laugh at my curiosity, while you, Monsieur, if
you are present at the conference, you will tell me all.”

A wish thus expressed was a command. The marquis bowed and obeyed.

“She dismisses me,” he said to himself as he ascended the staircase,
“nothing could be more evident; and that without much ceremony. Why the
devil does she wish to get rid of me?”

Why? Because a single peal of the bell announced a visitor for Mlle.
Blanche; because she was expecting a visit from her friend; and
because she wished at any cost to prevent a meeting between Martial and
Marie-Anne.

She did not love him, and yet an agony of jealousy was torturing her.
Such was her nature.

Her presentiments were realized. It was, indeed, Mlle. Lacheneur who was
awaiting her in the drawing-room.

The poor girl was paler than usual; but nothing in her manner betrayed
the frightful anguish she had suffered during the past two or three
days.

And her voice, in asking from her former friend a list of “customers,”
 was as calm and as natural as in other days, when she was asking her to
come and spend an afternoon at Sairmeuse.

So, when the two girls embraced each other, their roles were reversed.

It was Marie-Anne who had been crushed by misfortune; it was Mlle.
Blanche who wept.

But, while writing a list of the names of persons in the neighborhood
with whom she was acquainted, Mlle. de Courtornieu did not neglect
this favorable opportunity for verifying the suspicions which had been
aroused by Martial’s momentary agitation.

“It is inconceivable,” she remarked to her friend, “that the Duc de
Sairmeuse should allow you to be reduced to such an extremity.”

Marie-Anne’s nature was so royal, that she did not wish an unjust
accusation to rest even upon the man who had treated her father so
cruelly.

“The duke is not to blame,” she replied, gently; “he offered us a very
considerable sum, this morning, through his son.”

Mlle. Blanche started as if a viper had stung her.

“So you have seen the marquis, Marie-Anne?”

“Yes.”

“Has he been to your house?”

“He was going there, when he met me in the grove on the waste.”

She blushed as she spoke; she turned crimson at the thought of Martial’s
impertinent gallantry.

This girl who had just emerged from a convent was terribly experienced;
but she misunderstood the cause of Marie-Anne’s confusion. She could
dissimulate, however, and when Marie-Anne went away, Mlle. Blanche
embraced her with every sign of the most ardent affection. But she was
almost suffocated with rage.

“What!” she thought; “they have met but once, and yet they are so
strongly impressed with each other. Do they love each other already?”



CHAPTER XIV

If Martial had faithfully reported to Mlle. Blanche all that he heard in
the Marquis de Courtornieu’s cabinet, he would probably have astonished
her a little.

He, himself, if he had sincerely confessed his impressions and his
reflections, would have been obliged to admit that he was greatly
amazed.

But this unfortunate man, who, in days to come, would be compelled to
reproach himself bitterly for the excess of his fanaticism, refused
to confess this truth even to himself. His life was to be spent in
defending prejudices which his own reason condemned.

Forced by Mlle. Blanche’s will into the midst of a discussion, he was
really disgusted with the ridiculous and intense greediness of M. de
Courtornieu’s noble guests.

Decorations, fortune, honors, power--they desired everything.

They were satisfied that their pure devotion deserved the most
munificent rewards. It was only the most modest who declared that he
would be content with the epaulets of a lieutenant-general.

Many were the recriminations, stinging words, and bitter reproaches.

The Marquis de Courtornieu, who acted as president of the council, was
nearly exhausted with exclaiming:

“Be calm, gentlemen, be calm! A little moderation, if you please!”

“All these men are mad,” thought Martial, with difficulty restraining
an intense desire to laugh; “they are insane enough to be placed in a
mad-house.”

But he was not obliged to render a report of the _seance_. The
deliberations were soon fortunately interrupted by a summons to dinner.

Mlle. Blanche, when the young marquis rejoined her, quite forgot to
question him about the doings of the council.

In fact, what did the hopes and plans of these people matter to her.

She cared very little about them or about the people themselves, since
they were below her father in rank, and most of them were not as rich.

An absorbing thought--a thought of her future, and of her happiness,
filled her mind to the exclusion of all other subjects.

The few moments that she had passed alone, after Marie-Anne’s departure,
she had spent in grave reflection.

Martial’s mind and person pleased her. In him were combined all the
qualifications which any ambitious woman would desire in a husband--and
she decided that he should be _her_ husband. Probably she would not have
arrived at this conclusion so quickly, had it not been for the feeling
of jealousy aroused in her heart. But from the very moment that she
could believe or suspect that another woman was likely to dispute the
possession of Martial with her, she desired him.

From that moment she was completely controlled by one of those
strange passions in which the heart has no part, but which take entire
possession of the brain and lead to the worst of follies.

Let the woman whose pulse has never quickened its beating under the
influence of this counterfeit of love, cast the first stone.

That she could be vanquished in this struggle for supremacy; that there
could be any doubt of the result, were thoughts which never once entered
the mind of Mlle. Blanche.

She had been told so often, it had been repeated again and again, that
the man whom she would choose must esteem himself fortunate above all
others.

She had seen her father besieged by so many suitors for her hand.

“Besides,” she thought, smiling proudly, as she surveyed her reflection
in the large mirrors; “am I not as pretty as Marie-Anne?”

“Far prettier!” murmured the voice of vanity; “and you possess what your
rival does not: birth, wit, the genius of coquetry!”

She did, indeed, possess sufficient cleverness and patience to assume
and to sustain the character which seemed most likely to dazzle and to
fascinate Martial.

As to maintaining this character _after_ marriage, if it did not please
her to do so, that was another matter!

The result of all this was that during dinner Mlle. Blanche exercised
all her powers of fascination upon the young marquis.

She was so evidently desirous of pleasing him that several of the guests
remarked it.

Some were even shocked by such a breach of conventionality. But Blanche
de Courtornieu could do as she chose; she was well aware of that. Was
she not the richest heiress for miles and miles around? No slander can
tarnish the brilliancy of a fortune of more than a million in hard cash.

“Do you know that those two young people will have a joint income of
between seven and eight hundred thousand francs!” said one old viscount
to his neighbor.

Martial yielded unresistingly to the charm of his position.

How could he suspect unworthy motives in a young girl whose eyes were so
pure, whose laugh rang out with the crystalline clearness of childhood!

Involuntarily he compared her with the grave and thoughtful Marie-Anne,
and his imagination floated from one to the other, inflamed by the
strangeness of the contrast.

He occupied a seat beside Mlle. Blanche at table; and they chatted
gayly, amusing themselves at the expense of the other guests, who were
again conversing upon political matters, and whose enthusiasm waxed
warmer and warmer as course succeeded course.

Champagne was served with the dessert; and the company drank to the
allies whose victorious bayonets had forced a passage for the King to
return to Paris; they drank to the English, to the Prussians, and to the
Russians, whose horses were trampling the crops under foot.

The name of d’Escorval heard, above the clink of the glasses, suddenly
aroused Martial from his dream of enchantment.

An old gentleman had just risen, and proposed that active measures
should be taken to rid the neighborhood of the Baron d’Escorval.

“The presence of such a man dishonors our country,” said he, “he is a
frantic Jacobin, and admitted to be dangerous, since Monsieur Fouche
has him upon his list of suspected persons; and he is even now under the
surveillance of the police.”

This discourse could not have failed to arouse intense anxiety in M.
d’Escorval’s breast had he seen the ferocity expressed on almost every
face.

Still no one spoke; hesitation could be read in every eye.

Martial, too, had turned so white that Mlle. Blanche remarked his pallor
and thought he was ill.

In fact, a terrible struggle was going on in the soul of the young
marquis; a conflict between his honor and passion.

Had he not longed only a few hours before to find some way of driving
Maurice from the country?

Ah, well! the opportunity he so ardently desired now presented itself.
It was impossible to imagine a better one. If the proposed step was
taken the Baron d’Escorval and his family would be forced to leave
France forever!

The company hesitated; Martial saw it, and felt that a single word from
him, for or against, would decide the matter.

After a few minutes of frightful uncertainty, honor triumphed.

He rose and declared that the proposed measure was bad--impolitic.

“Monsieur d’Escorval,” he remarked, “is one of those men who diffuse
around them a perfume of honesty and justice. Have the good sense to
respect the consideration which is justly his.”

As he had foreseen, his words decided the matter. The cold and haughty
manner which he knew so well how to assume, his few but incisive words,
produced a great effect.

“It would evidently be a great mistake!” was the general cry.

Martial reseated himself; Mlle. Blanche leaned toward him.

“You have done well,” she murmured; “you know how to defend your
friends.”

“Monsieur d’Escorval is not my friend,” replied Martial, in a voice
which revealed the struggle through which he had passed. “The injustice
of the proposed measure incensed me, that is all.”

Mlle. de Courtornieu was not to be deceived by an explanation like this.
Still she added:

“Then your conduct is all the more grand, Monsieur.”

But such was not the opinion of the Duc de Sairmeuse. On returning to
the chateau some hours later he reproached his son for his intervention.

“Why the devil did you meddle with the matter?” inquired the duke. “I
would not have liked to take upon myself the odium of the proposition,
but since it had been made----”

“I was anxious to prevent such an act of useless folly!”

“Useless folly! Zounds! Marquis, you carry matters with a high hand. Do
you think that this d----d baron adores you? What would you say if you
heard that he was conspiring against us?”

“I should answer with a shrug of the shoulders.”

“You would! Very well; do me the favor to question Chupin.”



CHAPTER XV

It was only two weeks since the Duc de Sairmeuse had returned to France;
he had not yet had time to shake the dust of exile from his feet, and
already his imagination saw enemies on every side.

He had been at Sairmeuse only two days, and yet he unhesitatingly
accepted the venomous reports which Chupin poured into his ears.

The suspicions which he was endeavoring to make Martial share were
cruelly unjust.

At the moment when the duke accused the baron of conspiring against the
house of Sairmeuse, that unfortunate man was weeping at the bedside of
his son, who was, he believed, at the point of death.

Maurice was indeed dangerously ill.

His excessively nervous organization had succumbed before the rude
assaults of destiny.

When, in obedience to M. Lacheneur’s imperative order, he left the grove
on the Reche, he lost the power of reflecting calmly and deliberately
upon the situation.

Marie-Anne’s incomprehensible obstinacy, the insults he had received
from the marquis, and Lacheneur’s feigned anger were mingled in
inextricable confusion, forming one immense, intolerable misfortune, too
crushing for his powers of resistance.

The peasants who met him on his homeward way were struck by his singular
demeanor, and felt convinced that some great catastrophe had just
befallen the house of the Baron d’Escorval.

Some bowed; others spoke to him, but he did not see or hear them.

Force of habit--that physical memory which mounts guard when the mind is
far away--brought him back to his home.

His features were so distorted with suffering that Mme. d’Escorval, on
seeing him, was seized with a most sinister presentiment, and dared not
address him.

He spoke first.

“All is over!” he said, hoarsely, “but do not be worried, mother; I have
some courage, as you shall see.”

He did, in fact, seat himself at the table with a resolute air. He ate
even more than usual; and his father noticed, without alluding to it,
that he drank much more wine than usual.

He was very pale, his eyes glittered, his gestures were excited, and his
voice was husky. He talked a great deal, and even jested.

“Why will he not weep,” thought Mme. d’Escorval; “then I should not be
so much alarmed, and I could try to comfort him.”

This was Maurice’s last effort. When dinner was over he went to his
room, and when his mother, who had gone again and again to listen at his
door, finally decided to enter his chamber, she found him lying upon the
bed, muttering incoherently.

She approached him. He did not appear to recognize or even to see her.
She spoke to him. He did not seem to hear. His face was scarlet, his
lips were parched. She took his hand; it was burning; and still he was
shivering, and his teeth were chattering as if with cold.

A mist swam before the eyes of the poor woman; she feared she was about
to faint; but, summoning all her strength, she conquered her weakness
and, dragging herself to the staircase, she cried:

“Help! help! My son is dying!”

With a bound M. d’Escorval reached his son’s chamber, looked at him
and dashed out again, summoned a servant, and ordered him to gallop to
Montaignac and bring a physician without a moment’s delay.

There was, indeed, a doctor at Sairmeuse, but he was the most stupid
of men--a former surgeon in the army, who had been dismissed for
incompetency. The peasants shunned him as they would the plague; and in
case of sickness always sent for the cure. M. d’Escorval followed their
example, knowing that the physician from Montaignac could not arrive
until nearly morning.

Abbe Midon had never frequented the medical schools, but since he had
been a priest the poor so often asked advice of him that he applied
himself to the study of medicine, and, aided by experience, he had
acquired a knowledge of the art which would have won him a diploma from
the faculty anywhere.

At whatever hour of the day or night parishioners came to ask his
assistance, he was always ready--his only answer: “Let us go at once.”

And when the people of the neighborhood met him on the road with his
little box of medicine slung over his shoulder, they took off their hats
respectfully and stood aside to let him pass. Those who did not respect
the priest honored the man.

For M. d’Escorval, above all others, Abbe Midon would make haste. The
baron was his friend; and a terrible apprehension seized him when he saw
Mme. d’Escorval at the gate watching for him. By the way in which
she rushed to meet him, he thought she was about to announce some
irreparable misfortune. But no--she took his hand, and, without uttering
a word, she led him to her son’s chamber.

The condition of the poor youth was really very critical; the abbe
perceived this at a glance, but it was not hopeless.

“We will get him out of this,” he said, with a smile that reawakened
hope.

And with the coolness of an old practitioner, he bled him freely, and
ordered applications of ice to his head.

In a moment all the household were busied in fulfilling the cure’s
orders. He took advantage of the opportunity to draw the baron aside in
the embrasure of a window.

“What has happened?” he asked.

“A disappointment in love,” M. d’Escorval replied, with a despairing
gesture. “Monsieur Lacheneur has refused the hand of his daughter, which
I asked in behalf of my son. Maurice was to have seen Marie-Anne to-day.
What passed between them I do not know. The result you see.”

The baroness re-entered the room, and the two men said no more. A truly
funereal silence pervaded the apartment, broken only by the moans of
Maurice.

His excitement instead of abating had increased in violence. Delirium
peopled his brain with phantoms; and the name of Marie-Anne, Martial de
Sairmeuse and Chanlouineau dropped so incoherently from his lips that it
was impossible to read his thoughts.

How long that night seemed to M. d’Escorval and his wife, those only
know who have counted each second beside the sick-bed of some loved one.

Certainly their confidence in the companion in their vigil was great;
but he was not a regular physician like the other, the one whose coming
they awaited.

Just as the light of the morning made the candles turn pale, they heard
the furious gallop of a horse, and soon the doctor from Montaignac
entered.

He examined Maurice carefully, and, after a short conference with the
priest:

“_I_ see no immediate danger,” he declared. “All that can be done
has been done. The malady must be allowed to take its course. I will
return.”

He did return the next day and many days after, for it was not until a
week had passed that Maurice was declared out of danger.

Then he confided to his father all that had taken place in the grove
on the Reche. The slightest detail of the scene had engraved itself
indelibly upon his memory. When the recital was ended:

“Are you quite sure,” asked his father, “that you correctly understood
Marie-Anne’s reply? Did she tell you that if her father gave his consent
to your marriage, she would refuse hers?”

“Those were her very words.”

“And still she loves you?”

“I am sure of it.”

“You were not mistaken in Monsieur Lacheneur’s tone when he said to
you: ‘Go, you little wretch! do you wish to render all my precautions
useless?’”

“No.”

M. d’Escorval sat for a moment in silence.

“This passes comprehension,” he murmured at last. And so low that his
son could not hear him, he added: “I will see Lacheneur to-morrow; this
mystery must be explained.”



CHAPTER XVI

The cottage where M. Lacheneur had taken refuge was situated on a hill
overlooking the water.

It was, as he had said, a small and humble dwelling, but it was rather
less miserable than the abodes of most of the peasants of the district.

It was only one story high, but it was divided into three rooms, and the
roof was covered with thatch.

In front was a tiny garden, in which a few fruit-trees, some withered
cabbages, and a vine which covered the cottage to the roof, managed to
find subsistence.

This garden was a mere nothing, but even this slight conquest over
the sterility of the soil had cost Lacheneur’s deceased aunt almost
unlimited courage and patience.

For more than twenty years the poor woman had never, for a single day,
failed to throw upon her garden three or four basketfuls of richer soil,
which she was obliged to bring more than half a league.

It had been more than a year since she died; but the little pathway
which her patient feet had worn in the performance of this daily task
was still distinctly visible.

This was the path which M. d’Escorval, faithful to his resolution, took
the following day, in the hope of wresting from Marie-Anne’s father the
secret of his inexplicable conduct.

He was so engrossed in his own thoughts that he failed to notice the
overpowering heat as he climbed the rough hill-side in the full glare of
the noonday sun.

When he reached the summit, however, he paused to take breath; and while
wiping the perspiration from his brow, he turned to look back on the
road which he had traversed.

It was the first time he had visited the spot, and he was surprised at
the extent of the landscape which stretched before him.

From this point, which is the most elevated in the surrounding country,
one can survey the entire valley of the Oiselle, and discern, in the
distance, the redoubtable citadel of Montaignac, built upon an almost
inaccessible rock.

This last circumstance, which the baron was afterward doomed to recall
in the midst of the most terrible scenes, did not strike him then.
Lacheneur’s house absorbed all his attention.

His imagination pictured vividly the sufferings of this unfortunate man,
who, only two days before, had relinquished the splendors of the Chateau
de Sairmeuse to repair to this wretched abode.

He rapped at the door of the cottage.

“Come in!” said a voice.

The baron lifted the latch and entered.

The room was small, with un-white-washed walls, but with no other floor
than the ground; no ceiling save the thatch that formed the roof.

A bed, a table and two wooden benches constituted the entire furniture.

Seated upon a stool, near the tiny window, sat Marie-Anne, busily at
work upon a piece of embroidery.

She had abandoned her former mode of dress, and her costume was that
worn by the peasant girls.

When M. d’Escorval entered she rose, and for a moment they remained
silently standing, face to face, she apparently calm, he visibly
agitated.

He was looking at Marie-Anne; and she seemed to him transfigured. She
was much paler and considerably thinner; but her beauty had a strange
and touching charm--the sublime radiance of heroic resignation and of
duty nobly fulfilled.

Still, remembering his son, he was astonished to see this tranquillity.

“You do not ask me for news of Maurice,” he said, reproachfully.

“I had news of him this morning, Monsieur, as I have had every day. I
know that he is improving; and that, since day before yesterday, he has
been allowed to take a little nourishment.”

“You have not forgotten him, then?”

She trembled; a faint blush suffused throat and forehead, but it was in
a calm voice that she replied:

“Maurice knows that it would be impossible for me to forget him, even if
I wished to do so.”

“And yet you have told him that you approve your father’s decision!”

“I told him so, Monsieur, and I shall have the courage to repeat it.”

“But you have made Maurice wretched, unhappy, child; he has almost
died.”

She raised her head proudly, sought M. d’Escorval’s eyes, and when she
had found them:

“Look at me, Monsieur. Do you think that I, too, do not suffer?”

M. d’Escorval was abashed for a moment; but recovering himself, he took
Marie-Anne’s hand, and pressing it affectionately, he said:

“So Maurice loves you; you love him; you suffer; he has nearly died, and
still you reject him!”

“It must be so, Monsieur.”

“You say this, my dear child--you say this, and you undoubtedly believe
it. But I, who have sought to discover the necessity of this immense
sacrifice, have failed to find it. Explain to me, then, why this must be
so, Marie-Anne. Who knows but you are frightened by chimeras, which my
experience can scatter with a breath? Have you no confidence in me? Am
I not an old friend? It may be that your father, in his despair,
has adopted extreme resolutions. Speak, let us combat them together.
Lacheneur knows how devotedly I am attached to him. I will speak to him;
he will listen to _me_.”

“_I_ can tell you nothing, Monsieur.”

“What! you are so cruel as to remain inflexible when a father entreats
you on his knees--a father who says to you: ‘Marie-Anne, you hold in
your hands the happiness, the life, the reason of my son----’”

Tears glittered in Marie-Anne’s eyes, but she drew away her hand.

“Ah! it is you who are cruel, Monsieur; it is you who are without pity.
Do you not see what I suffer, and that it is impossible for me to endure
further torture? No, I have nothing to tell you; there is nothing
you can say to my father. Why do you seek to impair my courage when I
require it all to struggle against my despair? Maurice must forget me;
he must never see me again. This is fate; and he must not fight against
it. It would be folly. We are parted forever. Beseech Maurice to leave
the country, and if he refuses, you, who are his father, must command
him to do so. And you, too, Monsieur, in Heaven’s name, flee from us.
We shall bring misfortune upon you. Never return here; our house is
accursed. The fate that overshadows us will ruin you also.”

She spoke almost wildly. Her voice was so loud that it penetrated an
adjoining room.

The communicating door opened and M. Lacheneur appeared upon the
threshold.

At the sight of M. d’Escorval he uttered an oath. But there was more
sorrow and anxiety than anger in his manner, as he said:

“You, Monsieur, you here!”

The consternation into which Marie-Anne’s words had thrown M. d’Escorval
was so intense that it was with great difficulty he stammered out a
response.

“You have abandoned us entirely; I was anxious about you. Have you
forgotten our old friendship? I come to you----”

The brow of the former master of Sairmeuse remained overcast.

“Why did you not inform me of the honor that the baron had done me,
Marie-Anne?” he said sternly.

She tried to speak, but could not; and it was the baron who replied:

“Why, I have but just come, my dear friend.”

M. Lacheneur looked suspiciously, first at his daughter, then at the
baron.

“What did they say to each other while they were alone?” he was
evidently wondering.

But, however great may have been his disquietude, he seemed to master
it; and it was with his old-time affability of manner that he invited M.
d’Escorval to follow him into the adjoining room.

“It is my reception-room and my cabinet combined,” he said, smiling.

This room, which was much larger than the first, was as scantily
furnished; but it contained several piles of small books and an infinite
number of tiny packages.

Two men were engaged in arranging and sorting these articles.

One was Chanlouineau.

M. d’Escorval did not remember that he had ever seen the other, who was
a young man.

“This is my son, Jean, Monsieur,” said Lacheneur. “He has changed since
you last saw him ten years ago.”

It was true. It had been, at least, ten years since the baron had seen
Lacheneur’s son.

How time flies! He had left him a boy; he found him a man.

Jean was just twenty; but his haggard features and his precocious beard
made him appear much older.

He was tall and well formed, and his face indicated more than average
intelligence.

Still he did not impress one favorably. His restless eyes were always
invading yours; and his smile betrayed an unusual degree of shrewdness,
amounting almost to cunning.

As his father presented him, he bowed profoundly; but he was very
evidently out of temper.

M. Lacheneur resumed:

“Having no longer the means to maintain Jean in Paris, I have made him
return. My ruin will, perhaps, be a blessing to him. The air of great
cities is not good for the son of a peasant. Fools that we are, we
send them there to teach them to rise above their fathers. But they do
nothing of the kind. They think only of degrading themselves.”

“Father,” interrupted the young man; “father, wait, at least, until we
are alone!”

“Monsieur d’Escorval is not a stranger.” Chanlouineau evidently sided
with the son

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