"On mine," she answered.
"You avow that?"
"I am here to do so," she replied, her face white and red by turns, but her eyes continuing to meet mine.
"This is a very serious matter," I said. "Are you aware, mademoiselle, why M. Vilain was arrested, and of what he is accused?"
"Perfectly," she answered; "and that he is innocent. More!" she continued, clasping her hands, and looking at me bravely, "I am willing both to tell you where he is, and to bring him, if you please, into your presence."
I stared at her. "You will bring him here?" I said.
"Within five minutes," she answered, "if you will first hear me."
"What are you to him?" I said.
She blushed vividly. "I shall be his wife or no one"s," she said; and she looked a moment at my wife.
"Well, say what you have to say!" I cried roughly.
"This paper, which it is alleged that he stole--it was not found on him; but in the hollow of a tree."
"Within three paces of him! And what was he doing there?"
"He came to meet me," she answered, her voice trembling slightly. "He could have told you so, but he would not shame me."
"This is true?" I said, eyeing her closely.
"I swear it!" she answered, clasping her hands. And then, with a sudden flash of rage, "Will the other woman swear to her tale?" she cried.
"Ha!" I said, "what other woman?"
"The woman who sent you to that place," she answered. "He would not tell me her name, or I would go to her now and wring the truth from her. But he confessed to me that he had let a woman into the secret of our meeting; and this is her work."
I stood a moment pondering, with my eyes on the girl"s excited face, and my thoughts, following this new clue through the maze of recent events; wherein I could not fail to see that it led to a very different conclusion from that at which I had arrived. If Vilain had been foolish enough to wind up his love-pa.s.sages with Mademoiselle de Mars by confiding to her his pa.s.sion for the Figeac, and even the place and time at which the latter was so imprudent as to meet him, I could fancy the deserted mistress laying this plot; and first placing the packet where we found it, and then punishing her lover by laying the theft at his door. True, he might be guilty; and it might be only confession and betrayal on which jealousy had thrust her. But the longer I considered the whole of the circ.u.mstances, as well as the young man"s character, and the lengths to which I knew a woman"s pa.s.sion would carry her, the more probable seemed the explanation I had just received.
Nevertheless, I did not at once express my opinion; but veiling the chagrin I naturally felt at the simple part I had been led to play--in the event I now thought probable--I sharply ordered Mademoiselle de Figeac to retire into the next room; and then I requested my wife to fetch her maid.
Mademoiselle de Mars had been three days in solitary confinement, and might be taken to have repented of her rash accusation were it baseless. I counted somewhat on this; and more on the effect of so sudden a summons to my presence. But at first sight it seemed that I did so without cause. Instead of the agitation which she had displayed when brought before me to confess, she now showed herself quiet and even sullen; nor did the gleam of pa.s.sion, which I thought that I discerned smouldering in her dark eyes, seem to promise either weakness or repentance. However, I had too often observed the power of the unknown over a guilty conscience to despair of eliciting the truth.
"I want to ask you two or three questions," I said civilly. "First, was M. de Vilain with you when you placed the paper in the hollow of the tree? Or were you alone?"
I saw her eyelids quiver as with sudden fear, and her voice shook as she stammered, "When I placed the paper?"
"Yes," I said, "when you placed the paper. I have reason to know that you did it. I wish to learn whether he was present, or you did it merely under his orders?"
She looked at me, her face a shade paler, and I do not doubt that her mind was on the rack to divine how much I knew, and how far she might deny and how far confess. My tone seemed to encourage frankness, however, and in a moment she said, "I placed it under his directions."
"Yes," I said drily, my last doubt resolved by the admission; "but that being so, why did Vilain go to the spot?"
She grew still a shade paler, but in a moment she answered, "To meet the agent."
"Then why did you place the paper in the tree?"
She saw the difficulty in which she had placed herself, and for an instant she stared at me with the look of a wild animal caught in a trap. Then, "In case the agent was late," she muttered.
"But since Vilain had to go to the spot, why did he not deposit the paper in the tree himself? Why did he send you to the place beforehand? Why did--" and then I broke off and cried harshly, "Shall I tell you why? Shall I tell you why, you false jade?"
She cowered away from me at the words, and stood terror-stricken, gazing at me like one fascinated. But she did not answer.
"Because," I cried, "your story is a tissue of lies! Because it was you, and you only, who stole this paper! Because--Down on your knees!
down on your knees!" I thundered, "and confess! Confess, or I will have you whipped at the cart"s tail, like the false witness you are!"
She threw herself down shrieking, and caught my wife by the skirts, and in a breath had said all I wanted; and more than enough to show me that I had suspected Vilain without cause, and both played the simpleton myself and harried my household to distraction.
So far good. I could arrange matters with Vilain, and probably avoid publicity. But what was now to be done with her?
In the case of a man I should have thought no punishment too severe, and the utmost rigour of the law too tender for such perfidy; but as she was a woman, and young, and under my wife"s protection, I hesitated. Finally, the d.u.c.h.ess interceding, I leaned to the side of that mercy which the girl had not shown to her lover; and thought her sufficiently punished, at the moment by the presence of Mademoiselle de Figeac whom I called into the room to witness her humiliation, and in the future by dismissal from my household. As this imported banishment to her father"s country-house, where her mother, a shrewd old Bearnaise, saved pence and counted lentils into the soup, and saw company once a quarter, I had perhaps reason to be content with her chastis.e.m.e.nt.
For the rest I sent for M. de Vilain, and by finding him employment in the finances, and interceding for him with the old Vicomte de Figeac, confirmed him in the attachment he had begun to feel for me before this unlucky event; nor do I doubt that I should have been able in time to advance him to a post worthy of the talents I discerned in him. But, alas, the deplorable crime, which so soon deprived me at one blow of my master and of power, put an end to this, among other and greater schemes.
VII.
THE GOVERNOR OF GUERET.
Without attaching to dreams greater importance than a prudent man will always be willing to a.s.sign to the unknown and unintelligible, I have been in the habit of reflecting on them; and have observed with some curiosity that in these later years of my life, during which France has enjoyed peace and comparative prosperity, my dreams have most often reproduced the stormy rides and bivouacs of my youth, with all the rough and b.l.o.o.d.y accompaniments which our day knows only by repute.
Considering these visions, and comparing my sleeping apathy with my daylight reflections, I have been led to wonder at the power of habit; which alone makes it possible for a man who has seen a dozen stricken fields, and viewed, scarcely with emotion, the slaughter of a hundred prisoners, to turn pale at the sight of a coach accident, and walk a mile rather than see a rogue hang.
I am impelled to this train of thought by an adventure that befell me in the summer of this year 1605; and which, as it seemed to me in the happening to be rather an evil dream of old times than a waking episode of these, may afford the reader some diversion, besides relieving the necessary tedium of the thousand particulars of finance that render the five farms a study of the utmost intricacy.
My appointment to represent the King at the a.s.sembly of Chatelherault had carried me in the month of July into Poitou. Being there, and desirous of learning for myself whether the arrest of Auvergne had pacified his country to the extent described by the King"s agents, I determined to take advantage of a vacation of the a.s.sembly and venture as far in that direction as Gueret; though Henry, fearing lest the malcontents should make an attempt on my person in revenge for the death of Biron, had strictly charged me not to approach within twenty leagues of the Limousin.
I had with me for escort at Chatelherault a hundred horse; but, these seeming to be either too many or too few for the purpose, I took with me only ten picked men with Colet their captain, five servants heavily armed, and of my gentlemen Boisrueil and La Font. Parabere, to whom I opened my mind, consented to be my companion. I gave out that I was going to spend three days at Preuilly, to examine an estate there which I thought of buying, that I might have a residence in my government; and, having amused the curious with this statement, I got away at daybreak, and by an hour before noon was at Touron, where I stayed for dinner. That night we lay at a village, and the next day dined at St.
Marcel. The second afternoon we reached Crozant.
Here I began to observe those signs of neglect and disorder which, at the close of the war, had been common in all parts of France, but in the more favoured districts had been erased by a decade of peace.
Briars and thorns choked the roads, which ran through mora.s.ses, between fields which the husbandman had resigned to tares and undergrowth.
Ruined hamlets were common, and everywhere wolves and foxes and all kinds of game abounded. But that which roused my ire to the hottest was the state of the bridges, which in this country, where the fords are in winter impa.s.sable, had been allowed to fall into utter decay. On all sides I found the peasants oppressed, disheartened, and primed with tales of the King"s severity, which those who had just cause to dread him had instilled into them. Bands of robbers committed daily excesses, and, in a word, no one thing was wanting to give the lie to the rose-coloured reports with which Bareilles, the Governor of Gueret, had amused the Council.
I confess that, at sight and thought of these things--of this country so devoured, the King"s authority so contemned, all evils laid at his door, all his profits diverted--my anger burned within me, and I said more to Parabere than was perhaps prudent, telling him, in particular, what I designed against Bareilles, of whose double-dealing I needed no further proof; by what means I proposed to lull his suspicions for the moment, since we must lie at Gueret, and how I would afterwards, on the first occasion, have him seized and punished.
I forgot, while I avowed these things, that one weakness of Parabere"s character which rendered him unable to believe evil of anyone. Even of Bareilles, though the two were the merest acquaintances, he could only think indulgently, because, forsooth, he too was a Protestant. He began to defend him therefore, and, seeing how the ground lay, after a time I let the matter drop.
Still I did not think that he had been serious in his plea, and that which happened on the following morning took me completely by surprise.
We had left Crozant an hour, and I was considering whether, the road being bad, we should even now reach Gueret before night, when Parabere, who had made some excuse to ride forward, returned, to me with signs of embarra.s.sment in his manner.