in the town. The moon rose late. Fog and darkness wrapped in impenetrable gloom the places where the drama planned by this man was coming to its climax. He was able to silence the struggle of his passions as he walked up and down, his arms crossed, and his eyes fixed on the windows which rose like the luminous eyes of a phantom above the rampart. The deep silence was broken only by the rippling of the Nancon, by the regular and lugubrious tolling from the belfries, by the heavy steps of the sentinels or the rattle of arms as the guard was hourly relieved.
“The night’s as thick as a wolf’s jaw,” said the voice of Pille-Miche.
“Go on,” growled Marche-a-Terre, “and don’t talk more than a dead dog.”
“I’m hardly breathing,” said the Chouan.
“If the man who made that stone roll down wants his heart to serve as the scabbard for my knife he’ll do it again,” said Marche-a-Terre, in a low voice scarcely heard above the flowing of the river.
“It was I,” said Pille-Miche.
“Well, then, old money-bag, down on your stomach,” said the other, “and wriggle like a snake through a hedge, or we shall leave our carcasses behind us sooner than we need.”
“Hey, Marche-a-Terre,” said the incorrigible Pille-Miche, who was using his hands to drag himself along on his stomach, and had reached the level of his comrade’s ear. “If the Grande-Garce is to be believed there’ll be a fine booty to-day. Will you go shares with me?”
“Look here, Pille-Miche,” said Marche-a-Terre stopping short on the flat of his stomach. The other Chouans, who were accompanying the two men, did the same, so wearied were they with the difficulties they had met with in climbing the precipice. “I know you,” continued Marche-a-Terre, “for a Jack Grab-All who would rather give blows than receive them when there’s nothing else to be done. We have not come here to grab dead men’s shoes; we are devils against devils, and sorrow to those whose claws are too short. The Grande-Garce has sent us here to save the Gars. He is up there; lift your dog’s nose and see that window above the tower.”
Midnight was striking. The moon rose, giving the appearance of white smoke to the fog. Pille-Miche squeezed Marche-a-Terre’s arm and silently showed him on the terrace just above them, the triangular iron of several shining bayonets.
“The Blues are there already,” said Pille-Miche; “we sha’n’t gain anything by force.”
“Patience,” replied Marche-a-Terre; “if I examined right this morning, we must be at the foot of the Papegaut tower between the ramparts and the Promenade,—that place where they put the manure; it is like a feather-bed to fall on.”
“If Saint-Labre,” remarked Pille-Miche, “would only change into cider the blood we shall shed to-night the citizens might lay in a good stock to-morrow.”
Marche-a-Terre laid his large hand over his friend’s mouth; then an order muttered by him went from rank to rank of the Chouans suspended as they were in mid-air among the brambles of the slate rocks. Corentin, walking up and down the esplanade had too practiced an ear not to hear the rustling of the shrubs and the light sound of pebbles rolling down the sides of the precipice. Marche-a-Terre, who seemed to possess the gift of seeing in darkness, and whose senses, continually in action, were acute as those of a savage, saw Corentin; like a trained dog he had scented him. Fouche’s diplomatist listened but heard nothing; he looked at the natural wall of rock and saw no signs. If the confusing gleam of the fog enabled him to see, here and there, a crouching Chouan, he took him, no doubt, for a fragment of rock, for these human bodies had all the appearance of inert nature. This danger to the invaders was of short duration. Corentin’s attention was diverted by a very distinct noise coming from the other end of the Promenade, where the rock wall ended and a steep descent leading down to the Queen’s Staircase began. When Corentin reached the spot he saw a figure gliding past it as if by magic. Putting out his hand to grasp this real or fantastic being, who was there, he supposed, with no good intentions, he encountered the soft and rounded figure of a woman.
“The devil take you!” he exclaimed, “if any one else had met you, you’d have had a ball through your head. What are you doing, and where are you going, at this time of night? Are you dumb? It certainly is a woman,” he said to himself.
The silence was suspicious, but the stranger broke it by saying, in a voice which suggested extreme fright, “Ah, my good man, I’m on my way back from a wake.”
“It is the pretended mother of the marquis,” thought Corentin. “I’ll see what she’s about. Well, go that way, old woman,” he replied, feigning not to recognize her. “Keep to the left if you don’t want to be shot.”
He stood quite still; then observing that Madame du Gua was making for the Papegaut tower, he followed her at a distance with diabolical caution. During this fatal encounter the Chouans had posted themselves on the manure towards which Marche-a-Terre had guided them.
“There’s the Grande-Garce!” thought Marche-a-Terre, as he rose to his feet against the tower wall like a bear.
“We are here,” he said to her in a low voice.
“Good,” she replied, “there’s a ladder in the garden of that house about six feet above the manure; find it, and the Gars is saved. Do you see that small window up there? It is in the dressing-room; you must get to it. This side of the tower is the only one not watched. The horses are ready; if you can hold the passage over the Nancon, a quarter of an hour will put him out of danger—in spite of his folly. But if that woman tries to follow him, stab her.”
Corentin now saw several of the forms he had hitherto supposed to be stones moving cautiously but swiftly. He went at once to the guard-room at the Porte Saint-Leonard, where he found the commandant fully dressed and sound asleep on a camp bed.
“Let him alone,” said Beau-Pied, roughly, “he has only just lain down.”
“The Chouans are here!” cried Corentin, in Hulot’s ear.
“Impossible! but so much the better,” cried the old soldier, still half asleep; “then he can fight.”
When Hulot reached the Promenade Corentin pointed out to him the singular position taken by the Chouans.
“They must have deceived or strangled the sentries I placed between the castle and the Queen’s Staircase. Ah! what a devil of a fog! However, patience! I’ll send a squad of men under a lieutenant to the foot of the rock. There is no use attacking them where they are, for those animals are so hard they’d let themselves roll down the precipice without breaking a limb.”
The cracked clock of the belfry was ringing two when the commandant got back to the Promenade after giving these orders and taking every military precaution to seize the Chouans. The sentries were doubled and Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s house became the centre of a little army. Hulot found Corentin absorbed in contemplation of the window which overlooked the tower.
“Citizen,” said the commandant, “I think the ci-devant has fooled us; there’s nothing stirring.”
“He is there,” cried Corentin, pointing to the window. “I have seen a man’s shadow on the curtain. But I can’t think what has become of that boy. They must have killed him or locked him up. There! commandant, don’t you see that? there’s a man’s shadow; come, come on!”
“I sha’n’t seize him in bed; thunder of God! He will come out if he went in; Gudin won’t miss him,” cried Hulot, who had his own reasons for waiting till the Gars could defend himself.
“Commandant, I enjoin you, in the name of the law to proceed at once into that house.”
“You’re a fine scoundrel to try to make me do that.”
Without showing any resentment at the commandant’s language, Corentin said coolly: “You will obey me. Here is an order in good form, signed by the minister of war, which will force you to do so.” He drew a paper from his pocket and held it out. “Do you suppose we are such fools