The Honor of the Name Part 83

"_Mille tonnerres_!" he exclaimed; "and my uniform! To enter the village in this rig would excite suspicion at once; before we had a chance to sit down, the Piedmontese gendarmes would arrest us."

He reflected for a moment, twirling his mustache furiously; then, in a tone that would have made a pa.s.serby tremble, he said:

"All things are fair in love and war. The next peasant who pa.s.ses--"

"But I have money," interrupted Maurice, unbuckling a belt filled with gold, which he had put on under his clothing on the night of the revolt.

"Eh! we are fortunate!" cried Bavois. "Give me some, and I will soon find some shop in the suburbs where I can purchase a change of clothing." He departed; but it was not long before he reappeared, transformed by a peasant's costume, which fitted him perfectly. His small, thin face was almost hidden beneath an immense broad-brimmed hat.

"Now, steady, forward, march!" he said to Maurice and Marie-Anne, who scarcely recognized him in this disguise.

The town, which they soon reached, was called Saliente. They read the name upon a guide-post.

The fourth house after entering the place was a hostelry, the Traveller's Rest. They entered it, and ordered the hostess to take the young lady to a room and to a.s.sist her in disrobing.

The order was obeyed, and Maurice and the corporal went into the dining-room and ordered something to eat.

The desired refreshments were served, but the glances cast upon the guests were by no means friendly. It was evident that they were regarded with suspicion.

A large man, who was apparently the proprietor of the house, hovered around them, and at last embraced a favorable opportunity to ask their names.

"My name is Dubois," replied Maurice, without the slightest hesitation.

"I am travelling on business, and this man here is my farmer."

These replies seemed to rea.s.sure the host a little.

"And what is your business?" he inquired.

"I came into this land of inquisitive people to buy mules," laughed Maurice, striking his belt of money.

On hearing the jingle of the coin the man lifted his cap deferentially.

Raising mules was the chief industry of the country. This bourgeois was very young, but he had a well-filled purse, and that was enough.

"You will excuse me," resumed the host, in quite a different tone. "You see, we are obliged to be very careful. There has been some trouble in Montaignac."

The imminence of the peril and the responsibility devolving upon him, gave Maurice an a.s.surance unusual to him; and it was in the most careless, off-hand manner possible that he concocted a quite plausible story to explain his early arrival on foot accompanied by a sick wife.

He congratulated himself upon his address, but the old corporal was far from satisfied.

"We are too near the frontier to bivouac here," he grumbled. "As soon as the young lady is on her feet again we must hurry on."

He believed, and Maurice hoped, that twenty-four hours of rest would restore Marie-Anne.

They were mistaken. The very springs of life in her existence seemed to have been drained dry. She did not appear to suffer, but she remained in a death-like torpor, from which nothing could arouse her. They spoke to her but she made no response. Did she hear? did she comprehend? It was extremely doubtful.

By rare good fortune the mother of the proprietor proved to be a good, kind-hearted old woman, who would not leave the bedside of Marie-Anne--of Mme. Dubois, as she was called at the Traveller's Rest.

It was not until the evening of the third day that they heard Marie-Anne utter a word.

"Poor girl!" she sighed; "poor, wretched girl!"

It was of herself that she spoke.

By a phenomenon not very unusual after a crisis in which reason has been temporarily obscured, it seemed to her that it was someone else who had been the victim of all the misfortunes, whose recollections gradually returned to her like the memory of a painful dream.

What strange and terrible events had taken place since that August Sabbath, when, on leaving the church with her father, she heard of the arrival of the Duc de Sairmeuse.

And that was only eight months ago.

What a difference between those days when she lived happy and envied in that beautiful Chateau de Sairmeuse, of which she believed herself the mistress, and at the present time, when she found herself lying in the comfortless room of a miserable country inn, attended by an old woman whom she did not know, and with no other protection than that of an old soldier--a deserter, whose life was in constant danger--and that of her proscribed lover.

From this total wreck of her cherished ambitions, of her hopes, of her fortune, of her happiness, and of her future, she had not even saved her honor.

But was she alone responsible? Who had imposed upon her the odious role which she had played with Maurice, Martial, and Chanlouineau?

As this last name darted through her mind, the scene in the prison-cell rose suddenly and vividly before her.

Chanlouineau had given her a letter, saying as he did so:

"You will read this when I am no more."

She might read it now that he had fallen beneath the bullets of the soldiery. But what had become of it? From the moment that he gave it to her until now she had not once thought of it.

She raised herself in bed, and in an imperious voice:

"My dress," she said to the old nurse, seated beside her; "give me my dress."

The woman obeyed; with an eager hand Marie-Anne examined the pocket.

She uttered an exclamation of joy on finding the letter there.

She opened it, read it slowly twice, then, sinking back on her pillows, she burst into tears.

Maurice anxiously approached her.

"What is the matter?" he inquired anxiously.

She handed him the letter, saying: "Read."

Chanlouineau was only a poor peasant. His entire education had been derived from an old country pedagogue, whose school he attended for three winters, and who troubled himself much less about the progress of his students than about the size of the books which they carried to and from the school.

This letter, which was written upon the commonest kind of paper, was sealed with a huge wafer, as large as a two-sou piece, which he had purchased from a grocer in Sairmeuse.

The chirography was labored, heavy and trembling; it betrayed the stiff hand of a man more accustomed to guiding the plough than the pen.

The lines zigzagged toward the top or toward the bottom of the page, and faults of orthography were everywhere apparent.

But if the writing was that of a vulgar peasant, the thoughts it expressed were worthy of the n.o.blest, the proudest in the land.

This was the letter which Chanlouineau had written, probably on the eve of the insurrection: