Part 36 (1/2)
”Besides, cousin, we don't want excuses, we want your axe. You are condemned.”
At a sign from his companion, Pille-Miche helped Marche-a-Terre to seize the victim. Finding himself in their grasp Galope-Chopine lost all power and fell on his knees holding up his hands to his slayers in desperation.
”My friends, my good friends, my cousin,” he said, ”what will become of my little boy?”
”I will take charge of him,” said Marche-a-Terre.
”My good comrades,” cried the victim, turning livid. ”I am not fit to die. Don't make me go without confession. You have the right to take my life, but you've no right to make me lose a blessed eternity.”
”That is true,” said Marche-a-Terre, addressing Pille-Miche.
The two Chouans waited a moment in much uncertainty, unable to decide this case of conscience. Galope-Chopine listened to the rustling of the wind as though he still had hope. Suddenly Pille-Miche took him by the arm into a corner of the hut.
”Confess your sins to me,” he said, ”and I will tell them to a priest of the true Church, and if there is any penance to do I will do it for you.”
Galope-Chopine obtained some respite by the way in which he confessed his sins; but in spite of their number and the circ.u.mstances of each crime, he came finally to the end of them.
”Cousin,” he said, imploringly, ”since I am speaking to you as I would to my confessor, I do a.s.sure you, by the holy name of G.o.d, that I have nothing to reproach myself with except for having, now and then, b.u.t.tered my bread on both sides; and I call on Saint-Labre, who is there over the chimney-piece, to witness that I have never said one word about the Gars. No, my good friends, I have not betrayed him.”
”Very good, that will do, cousin; you can explain all that to G.o.d in course of time.”
”But let me say good-bye to Barbette.”
”Come,” said Marche-a-Terre, ”if you don't want us to think you worse than you are, behave like a Breton and be done with it.”
The two Chouans seized him again and threw him on the bench where he gave no other sign of resistance than the instinctive and convulsive motions of an animal, uttering a few smothered groans, which ceased when the axe fell. The head was off at the first blow. Marche-a-Terre took it by the hair, left the room, sought and found a large nail in the rough casing of the door, and wound the hair about it; leaving the b.l.o.o.d.y head, the eyes of which he did not even close, to hang there.
The two Chouans then washed their hands, without the least haste, in a pot full of water, picked up their hats and guns, and jumped the gate, whistling the ”Ballad of the Captain.” Pille-Miche began to sing in a hoa.r.s.e voice as he reached the field the last verses of that rustic song, their melody floating on the breeze:-
”At the first town Her lover dressed her All in white satin;
”At the next town Her lover dressed her In gold and silver.
”So beautiful was she They gave her veils To wear in the regiment.”
The tune became gradually indistinguishable as the Chouans got further away; but the silence of the country was so great that several of the notes reached Barbette's ear as she neared home, holding her boy by the hand. A peasant-woman never listens coldly to that song, so popular is it in the West of France, and Barbette began, unconsciously, to sing the first verses:-
”Come, let us go, my girl, Let us go to the war; Let us go, it is time.
”Brave captain, Let it not trouble you, But my daughter is not for you.
”You shall not have her on earth, You shall not have her at sea, Unless by treachery.
”The father took his daughter, He unclothed her And flung her out to sea.
”The captain, wiser still, Into the waves he jumped And to the sh.o.r.e he brought her.
”Come, let us go, my girl, Let us go to the war; Let us go, it is time.
”At the first town Her lover dressed her,”