"What sort of road is it between Mayenne and Fougeres?""Rough; all up and down, a regular squirrel-wheel.""Well, let us start at once.As we have nothing to fear near Alencon, you can go before me; we'll join you soon.""One would think she had seen ten years' service," thought Merle, as he departed."Hulot is mistaken; that young girl is not earning her living out of a feather-bed.Ten thousand carriages! if I want to be adjutant-major I mustn't be such a fool as to mistake Saint-Michael for the devil."During Mademoiselle de Verneuil's conference with the captain, Francine had slipped out for the purpose of examining, through a window of the corridor, the spot in the courtyard which had excited her curiosity on arriving at the inn.She watched the stable and the heaps of straw with the absorption of one who was saying her prayers to the Virgin, and she presently saw Madame du Gua approaching Marche-a-Terre with the precaution of a cat that dislikes to wet its feet.
When the Chouan caught sight of the lady, he rose and stood before her in an attitude of deep respect.This singular circumstance aroused Francine's curiosity; she slipped into the courtyard and along the walls, avoiding Madame du Gua's notice, and trying to hide herself behind the stable door.She walked on tiptoe, scarcely daring to breathe, and succeeded in posting herself close to Marche-a-Terre, without exciting his attention.
"If, after all this information," the lady was saying to the Chouan, "it proves not to be her real name, you are to fire upon her without pity, as you would on a mad dog.""Agreed!" said Marche-a-Terre.
The lady left him.The Chouan replaced his red woollen cap upon his head, remained standing, and was scratching his ear as if puzzled when Francine suddenly appeared before him, apparently by magic.
"Saint Anne of Auray!" he exclaimed.Then he dropped his whip, clasped his hands, and stood as if in ecstasy.A faint color illuminated his coarse face, and his eyes shone like diamonds dropped on a muck-heap.
"Is it really the brave girl from Cottin?" he muttered, in a voice so smothered that he alone heard it."You /are/ fine," he said, after a pause, using the curious word, "godaine," a superlative in the dialect of those regions used by lovers to express the combination of fine clothes and beauty.
"I daren't touch you," added Marche-a-Terre, putting out his big hand nevertheless, as if to weigh the gold chain which hung round her neck and below her waist.
"You had better not, Pierre," replied Francine, inspired by the instinct which makes a woman despotic when not oppressed.She drew back haughtily, after enjoying the Chouan's surprise; but she compensated for the harshness of her words by the softness of her glance, saying, as she once more approached him: "Pierre, that lady was talking to you about my young mistress, wasn't she?"Marche-a-Terre was silent; his face struggled, like the dawn, between clouds and light.He looked in turn at Francine, at the whip he had dropped, and at the chain, which seemed to have as powerful an attraction for him as the Breton girl herself.Then, as if to put a stop to his own uneasiness, he picked up his whip and still kept silence.
"Well, it is easy to see that that lady told you to kill my mistress,"resumed Francine, who knew the faithful discretion of the peasant, and wished to relieve his scruples.
Marche-a-Terre lowered his head significantly.To the Cottin girl that was answer enough.
"Very good, Pierre," she said; "if any evil happens to her, if a hair of her head is injured, you and I will have seen each other for the last time; for I shall be in heaven, and you will go to hell."The possessed of devils whom the Church in former days used to exorcise with great pomp were not more shaken and agitated than Marche-a-Terre at this prophecy, uttered with a conviction that gave it certainty.His glance, which at first had a character of savage tenderness, counteracted by a fanaticism as powerful in his soul as love, suddenly became surly, as he felt the imperious manner of the girl he had long since chosen.Francine interpreted his silence in her own way.
"Won't you do anything for my sake?" she said in a tone of reproach.
At these words the Chouan cast a glance at his mistress from eyes that were black as a crow's wing.
"Are you free?" he asked in a growl that Francine alone could have understood.
"Should I be here if I were not?" she replied indignantly."But you, what are you doing here? Still playing bandit, still roaming the country like a mad dog wanting to bite.Oh! Pierre, if you were wise, you would come with me.This beautiful young lady, who, I ought to tell you, was nursed when a baby in our home, has taken care of me.Ihave two hundred francs a year from a good investment.And Mademoiselle has bought me my uncle Thomas's big house for fifteen hundred francs, and I have saved two thousand beside."But her smiles and the announcement of her wealth fell dead before the dogged immovability of the Chouan.
"The priests have told us to go to war," he replied."Every Blue we shoot earns one indulgence.""But suppose the Blues shoot you?"
He answered by letting his arms drop at his sides, as if regretting the poverty of the offering he should thus make to God and the king.
"What will become of me?" exclaimed the young girl, sorrowfully.
Marche-a-Terre looked at her stupidly; his eyes seemed to enlarge;tears rolled down his hairy cheeks upon the goatskin which covered him, and a low moan came from his breast.
"Saint Anne of Auray!--Pierre, is this all you have to say to me after a parting of seven years? You have changed indeed.""I love you the same as ever," said the Chouan, in a gruff voice.
"No," she whispered, "the king is first.""If you look at me like that I shall go," he said.
"Well, then, adieu," she replied, sadly.
"Adieu," he repeated.
He seized her hand, wrung it, kissed it, made the sign of the cross, and rushed into the stable, like a dog who fears that his bone will be taken from him.