"An officer of the King! and soldiers!"
"What does the officer want?" asked Bertha without stirring.
"To search the manor, instantly, he says, for a criminal. The porter refused to open the gate without your orders, mademoiselle; the officer threatens to use force."
"Heaven and earth! They will not take me alive!" cried Nominoe, drawing his dagger partly out of its sheath. "The soldiers of the Grand Monarch will not enjoy the pleasure of arresting me--I shall escape their gibbet."
"Keep cool, my friend; keep cool," replied Mademoiselle Plouernel, stepping towards the door of the hall with a tranquil smile. "Come, nurse."
"Bertha," asked Nominoe, "where are you going?"
"I am going to ask the officer whether he has completely lost his senses. What! Armed men demand, at this advanced hour of the night, to search the house of Mademoiselle Plouernel, when she is at home! No, no!
I shall induce the n.o.ble officer to postpone his search for to-morrow. I feel certain the officer will feel happy to accede to my wishes."
"And suppose the officer should persist in forcing his way in?"
"Mademoiselle, there is a safe way of escape," said Marion anxiously.
"The pa.s.sage that leads from the close to the orchard runs under the path that skirts the walls of the garden; once in the orchard, the fields and the seash.o.r.e can be safely reached."
"Mademoiselle!" the old equerry in turn ran in crying bewildered: "The soldiers have entered the yard and are trying to beat down the house door with the b.u.t.ts of their muskets."
"The door is thick; the walls of the close are high; we still have the pa.s.sage to the orchard," observed Bertha calmly, and she added almost mirthfully: "If, contrary to my expectations, and after having _heard_ me--I shall say nothing of after having _seen_ me--the officer should persist in his savage conduct, then I shall return here instantly, and we shall have time to carry out our project, Nominoe. I have penetrated your thought. It is in accord with mine."
As Mademoiselle Plouernel uttered these last words she cast upon Nominoe a glance that intoxicated him. She left the hall followed by Marion and the old equerry and went to the manor door.
Left alone, Nominoe exclaimed in a transport of joy:
"She knows my mind! Oh, G.o.d be blessed for having brought me back to Mezlean! The minutes are numbered! I must now hasten to fulfill my father"s wishes in the matter of our family narratives and relics. On the eve of the insurrection he deposited them at Vannes with a faithful and devoted friend, the only relative we have left in Brittany."
Nominoe drew a thick package from his pocket, laid it beside him, and rapidly covered several leaves with a fine and close writing.
Mademoiselle Plouernel re-entered the hall, and smilingly said to Nominoe:
"We were wholly wrong, my friend, in doubting the gallantry of the officer. "Is it not true, monsieur," I asked him, "that it is not your intention to invade to-night the dwelling of a young lady, who is alone in her house with her nurse and an old grey-headed equerry? To-morrow it will be daylight. The gate of the manor shall be thrown open to you. You shall then search for your criminal. Place your sentries at the gate.
Surround the walls, if you fear escape in that quarter. To-morrow I should be happy to express to you my appreciation of your courtesy, and to the best of my powers I shall do you the honors of my house." Our man," Bertha added, "lost himself in apologies; he postponed for to-morrow his visit to the manor, and asked my pardon for the liberty he would take of placing sentrymen at the gate and at the wall of the close in order to render all escape impossible. Thereupon I bade the officer good evening--and here I am back again."
"But now, my friend," Bertha proceeded in a more serious tone, after a pause, "in an hour it will be daylight. Before that hour shall have elapsed we must take and carry out a resolution that has been long decreed. You must have been convinced thereof by the letter which I wrote to you. And, once upon this subject, I must say that, even if the death of your bride had not rendered our marriage impossible, it became so by reason of your encounter with my brother. You struck him with a sword; I could not accept your hand, now that it is reddened with my brother"s blood. Above all, however legitimate the revolt was, it caused his death, and you were one of the chiefs of the uprising. An abyss separates us in this world, Nominoe. Back in this manor after the burning of the Castle of Plouernel, I faced the reality without weakness. Our separation, the barriers that rendered our union impossible, weakened in nothing my love. That can not be affected by earthly causes. But my existence--sorely tried by so many misfortunes, by so many and cruel disappointments, even in the bosom of my own family--was becoming intolerable to me. Our marriage being broken off, my life lacked purpose. Then came the pa.s.sionate desire to see my mother again, and shall I confess it to you?--an invincible, a devouring curiosity regarding the worlds where our lives are continued, body and soul: a curiosity that bordered on vertigo, when, back at Mezlean, and seated here in the evening with my eyes fixed upon the sky, I contemplated the myriads of stars, where our re-births are effected, as infinite in number as all eternity. All these reasons determined me to leave this world, to the end of rejoining my mother and waiting for you, Nominoe, there where we shall meet again those whom we have loved. My determination being taken, I wrote to you, I wished to bid you good-bye and receive a word of farewell from you. My emissary departed in quest of you. Soon a metamorphosis operated itself in me. The burning insomnias, the painful anxieties that had so long been undermining my health and exhausting my strength, ceased in the face of the certainty that soon I should meet again my mother, and soon my enchanted eyes will have opened to the marvels of the new worlds! This a.s.surance gave me the needed peace of mind. My health recovered rapidly; my days pa.s.sed in ineffable reveries while waiting for the return of the messenger who carried my letter to you. And yet, at times, I felt a sort of hesitation with regard to the manner in which I was to undertake that voyage, which seems so distant, and yet lasts but the length of a breath. I went almost every day to Karnak, where your ancestress Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen, immolated herself centuries ago, offering her blood as a sacrifice to the G.o.ds of Gaul. I delighted in strolling along that deserted beach that the winds and waves ever beat against. Occasionally, I clambered up the highest of the Karnak rocks, the top of which offers a sort of platform, and I thought of leaping from there into the waves the foam of which seethes at the foot of the boulder. Other times I thought of imitating your ancestress Hena; I thought of cutting with a firm hand the slender thread that fetters our existence here below. But one day Marion accidentally informed me that one of her relatives _blew_--besides that he was ruining himself in the attempt to discover the philosopher"s stone. I knew that those _blowers_, being experts in alchemy, often find in their alembics things that they do not look for--subtile poisons, sudden and frightful in their effects, which our sad days have, alas! often seen employed with disastrous results. Among other things these alchemists have discovered what is called the _powder of succession_. I went with Marion to Vannes, where the good man resides; I promised him a liberal reward if he would prepare me a mortal beverage, one that was certain and that left the victim in full control of his senses up to the last moment. Attracted by the prospect of gain, the blower set his retorts over the fire, and, in order to prove to me the efficacy of his liquid, left the room and quickly returned with a black cat in his arms. "Just watch the effect of my philter," said the blower to me, "watch!" and before I had time to object to the experiment, he poured a few drops of the liquid into the mouth of the poor animal. The cat immediately lay down quietly. Her eyes remained clear, brilliant and alert. She stretched herself out with easy playfulness. But by little and little sleep seemed to overcome her, she lay down on one side; made a few slight motions--and expired peacefully, without the slightest tremor or symptom of pain. The alchemist had told me the truth! I took my newly acquired treasure with me. The certainty of a death that was so easy and sweet capped my sense of security, confidence and safety. Finally, returning to Mezlean this very night, my messenger informed me of the fruitlessness of his search for you, Nominoe. The revolt, of which you were one of the leaders, has provoked frightful reprisals. Brittany swims in blood. I decided to depart before to-morrow from this homicidal earth. I gave my last instructions to my old servitors. Under the pretext of contemplating a long voyage, I enclosed my testament in this casket."
Mademoiselle Plouernel paused. Only then did she notice that Nominoe, who was seated in an att.i.tude of deep meditation, with his forehead resting upon his hand, was writing with the other. Until that moment the casket had concealed from Bertha"s eyes the motion of his hand.
"Nominoe!" said Mademoiselle Plouernel in a tone of kind reproach, "I thought you were listening to my words--what are you writing there?"
"I am writing down your words, Bertha."
"Why so?"
"To join them to this," and Nominoe held up the envelope which he had laid upon the table.
"What does that package contain?"
"It contains the account of our love, which we may both be proud of. It is the narrative of what has happened to us, dear Bertha."
"And for whom do you destine that account?"
"For the descendants of the Lebrenn family," answered Nominoe, reading from one of the pages of his ma.n.u.script:
"Oh, sons of Joel--you who some day will read these lines traced by me, Nominoe Lebrenn, at this supreme hour, at the manor of Mezlean, under the eyes of Bertha of Plouernel--fail not to remember that angel of goodness and of concord, and, in her name, forget, pardon the injuries that her family has done to ours. Be merciful! Neither vengeance nor reprisals!"
"n.o.ble heart!" answered Bertha with eyes moist with tears, and contemplating Nominoe with an expression of boundless love.
"Accordingly, you are resolved, like myself, firmly resolved, to leave this sad earth for another dwelling place?"
"Even if an infamous death, from which only voluntary death could s.n.a.t.c.h me, did not await me to-morrow, my most ardent wish would be to accompany you, Bertha, upon this mysterious voyage."
"But to whom are you going to deliver the story of your life? To your father"s brother, Gildas Lebrenn, the leasehold farmer of Karnak?"
"We dug the grave of Gildas, who was butchered by the King"s soldiers on the staircase of the Castle of Plouernel."
"Will you then bequeath it to the father of your bride, your mother"s brother?"
"Tankeru, the blacksmith, was arrested day before yesterday in his house, taken to Vannes, and broken alive on the wheel, along with Madok the miller. The inoffensive Paskou the Long, the "Baz-valan" of my nuptials, was not spared either--he was hanged, like so many thousands of other insurgents!"
Nominoe rose, took up and opened his traveling wallet, and drew from it the iron head of a heavy blacksmith"s hammer.
"Look at this, Bertha! This shall be joined to our family relics--sad and painful relics of a serf family."
"What sort of a hammer is that? It carries, cut into the iron head the Breton words _Ez-Libr_."
"They mean _To Be Free_. It was the device of Tankeru the blacksmith.
He used this hammer as his weapon during the insurrection. I arrived this morning before dawn in the forest of Mezlean, feeling greatly alarmed over the fate of Tina"s father. I went to his house early this morning. I calculated upon waiting there for nightfall, not daring to draw near Mezlean by daylight. I found at Tankeru"s house only his desolate old mother. Tankeru had been arrested. Distracted with despair she informed me of her son"s execution. My eyes alighted upon his hammer which lay near his extinct forge. I took its iron head. The blacksmith"s hammer shall be joined to our symbolic relics. The ma.n.u.scripts and the relic are to be forwarded to a relative, an artisan at Vannes, who will transmit them to his children. One of them will, perhaps, continue our plebeian annals by writing the history of Mademoiselle Plouernel and Nominoe Lebrenn."
Nominoe then proceeded to write and to read as he wrote:
"I, Nominoe Lebrenn, write this on the 17th of July, 1675, at the manor of Mezlean, one hour before dawn. Bertha of Plouernel is standing beside me. In a few minutes we shall leave the manor, which is surrounded by soldiers. The pa.s.sage that leads from the close to the orchard runs under the road along which the sentries are on watch."
Nominoe stopped writing and asked Bertha:
"I understand it will be easy for us to reach the fields and the seash.o.r.e after we are in the orchard?"
"Very easy, my friend. The owners of this manor had the vaulted pa.s.sage dug under the road in order not to have to cross it every time they wished to go to the garden. The high walls that surround it will shelter us from the sight of the soldiers. The door that leads to the fields can be easily opened."
"When we leave the orchard," Nominoe proceeded to write, "we shall hasten to the seash.o.r.e. The stones of Karnak rise there. The night is clear; the moon shines. Guided by the mellow light of the planet, Bertha and I, holding each other"s hands, will climb the stairs of the ancient rock consecrated to the sacrifices, the druid trysting place, where ran the blood of Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen. When Bertha and I shall have reached the platform of the granite rock, then, in the presence of the immensity of the sky and the ocean, the illimitable expanses of which will spread before our eyes, we shall kneel down, and joining our voices, say to the G.o.d of justice:
""We could not be joined in this world--we decided to be joined in death! in death, the mysterious dawn of our eternal re-birth! This expiatory union of a daughter of the conquering Franks with a son of the subjugated Gauls being impossible in the sight of man, we consecrate it before Thee. Our two souls are merged into one. May it please Thee, Oh, Almighty! that it may be likewise henceforth with our two races which have so long been enemies! May it please Thee to cause the one to regret the iniquities it has committed for these many centuries, and the other to pardon them! May it please Thee to cause this revolt, to which the oppressed were driven by an excess of hardships, to be a lesson to the vanquishers. May it please Thee so to ordain it that this shall be the last time blood is shed in these impious conflicts! May it please Thee that in the future the children, whether of the conquerors or the conquered, be forever equal in rights, equal in duties, equal in justice, and be like brothers in a broad humanity, Oh, G.o.d our Father!
Freedom, equality, fraternity--the Universal Republic!"
"Having finished our prayer, Bertha and I--"
"Your pen, my friend!" said Mademoiselle Plouernel. "Give me your pen!"