"Remain inside," he said, imperiously, to Antoine and his wife. "I am going out; they must not arrest me in your house."
As he spoke, he stepped outside the door, with a firm tread, a dauntless brow, a calm and a.s.sured mien.
The soldiers were but a few feet from him.
"Halt!" he exclaimed, in a strong, ringing voice. "It is Lacheneur you are seeking, is it not? I am he! I surrender myself."
An unbroken stillness reigned. Not a sound, not a word replied.
The spectre of death that hovered above his head imparted such an imposing majesty to his person that the soldiers paused, silent and awed.
But there was one man who was terrified by this resonant voice, and that was Chupin.
Remorse filled his cowardly heart, and pale and trembling, he tried to hide behind the soldiers.
Lacheneur walked straight to him.
"So it is you who have sold my life, Chupin?" he said, scornfully. "You have not forgotten, I see plainly, how often Marie-Anne has filled your empty larder--and now you take your revenge."
The miserable wretch seemed crushed. Now that he had done this foul deed, he knew what treason really was.
"So be it," said M. Lacheneur. "You will receive the price of my blood; but it will not bring you good fortune--traitor!"
But Chupin, indignant with himself for his weakness, was already trying to shake off the fear that mastered him.
"You have conspired against the King," he stammered. "I have done only my duty in denouncing you."
And turning to the soldiers, he said:
"As for you, comrades, you may rest a.s.sured that the Duc de Sairmeuse will testify his grat.i.tude for your services."
They had bound Lacheneur"s hands, and the party were about to descend the mountain, when a man appeared, bareheaded, covered with perspiration, and panting for breath.
Twilight was falling, but M. Lacheneur recognized Balstain.
"Ah! you have him!" he exclaimed, as soon as he was within hearing distance, and pointing to the prisoner. "The reward belongs to me--I denounced him first on the other side of the frontier. The gendarmes at Saint-Jean-de-Coche will testify to that. He would have been captured last night in my house, but he ran away in my absence; and I have been following the bandit for sixteen hours."
He spoke with extraordinary vehemence and volubility, beside himself with fear lest he was about to lose his reward, and lest his treason would bring him nothing save disgrace and obloquy.
"If you have any right to the reward, you must prove it before the proper authorities," said the officer in command.
"If I have any right!" interrupted Balstain; "who contests my right, then?"
He looked threateningly around, and his eyes fell on Chupin.
"Is it you?" he demanded. "Do you dare to a.s.sert that you discovered the brigand?"
"Yes, it was I who discovered his hiding-place."
"You lie, impostor!" vociferated the innkeeper; "you lie!"
The soldiers did not move. This scene repaid them for the disgust they had experienced during the afternoon.
"But," continued Balstain, "what else could one expect from a vile knave like Chupin? Everyone knows that he has been obliged to flee from France a dozen times on account of his crimes. Where did you take refuge when you crossed the frontier, Chupin? In my house, in the inn kept by honest Balstain. You were fed and protected there. How many times have I saved you from the gendarmes and from the galleys? More times than I can count. And to reward me, you steal my property; you steal this man who was mine----"
"He is insane!" said the terrified Chupin, "he is mad!"
Then the innkeeper changed his tactics.
"At least you will be reasonable," he exclaimed. "Let us see, Chupin, what you will do for an old friend? Divide, will you not? No, you say no? What will you give me, comrade? A third? Is that too much? A quarter, then----"
Chupin felt that all the soldiers were enjoying his terrible humiliation. They were sneering at him, and only an instant before they had avoided coming in contact with him with evident horror.
Transported with anger, he pushed Balstain violently aside, crying to the soldiers:
"Come--are we going to spend the night here?"
An implacable hatred gleamed in the eye of the Piedmontese.
He drew his knife from his pocket, and making the sign of the cross in the air:
"Saint-Jean-de-Coche," he exclaimed, in a ringing voice, "and you, Holy Virgin, hear my vow. May my soul burn in h.e.l.l if I ever use a knife at my repasts until I have plunged this, which I now hold, into the heart of the scoundrel who has defrauded me!"
Having said this, he disappeared in the woods, and the soldiers took up their line of march.
But Chupin was no longer the same. All his accustomed impudence had fled. He walked on with bowed head, a prey to the most sinister presentiments.
He felt a.s.sured that an oath like that of Balstain"s, and uttered by such a man, was equivalent to a death-warrant, or at least to a speedy prospect of a.s.sa.s.sination.
This thought tormented him so much that he would not allow the detachment to spend the night at Saint-Pavin, as had been agreed upon.
He was impatient to leave the neighborhood.
After supper Chupin sent for a cart; the prisoner, securely bound, was placed in it, and the party started for Montaignac.
The great bell was striking two when Lacheneur was brought into the citadel.
At that very moment M. d"Escorval and Corporal Bavois were making their preparations for escape.
CHAPTER x.x.xII
Alone in his cell, Chanlouineau, after Marie-Anne"s departure, abandoned himself to the most frightful despair.
He had just given more than life to the woman he loved so fervently.
For had he not, in the hope of obtaining an interview with her, perilled his honor by simulating the most ign.o.ble fear? While doing so, he thought only of the success of his ruse. But now he knew only too well what those who had witnessed his apparent weakness would say of him.
"This Chanlouineau is only a miserable coward after all," he fancied he could hear them saying among themselves. "We have seen him on his knees, begging for mercy, and promising to betray his accomplices."