Part 14 (2/2)
Madame d'Hauteserre looked anxiously after Laurence, who left the room to consult Michu. Michu saw no reason why the young men should not be released at once from their hiding-place. Laurence, Michu, his son, and Gothard therefore started as soon as possible for the forest, taking an extra horse, for the countess resolved to accompany her cousins to Troyes and return with them. The whole household, made aware of the good news, gathered on the lawn to witness the departure of the happy cavalcade. The four young men issued from their long confinement, mounted their horses, and took the road to Troyes, accompanied by Mademoiselle Cinq-Cygne. Michu, with the help of his son and Gothard, closed the entrance to the cellar, and started to return home on foot.
On the way he recollected that he had left the forks and spoons and a silver cup, which the young men had been using, in the cave, and he went back for them alone. When he reached the edge of the pond he heard voices, and went straight to the entrance of the cave through the brushwood.
”Have you come for your silver?” said Peyrade, showing his big red nose through the branches.
Without knowing why, for at any rate his young masters were safe, Michu felt a sharp agony in all his joints, so keen was the sense of vague, indefinable coming evil which took possession of him; but he went forward at once, and found Corentin on the stairs with a taper in his hand.
”We are not very harsh,” he said to Michu; ”we might have seized your ci-devants any day for the last week; but we knew they were reinstated--You're a tough fellow to deal with, and you gave us too much trouble not to make us anxious to satisfy our curiosity about this hiding-place of yours.”
”I'd give something,” cried Michu, ”to know how and by whom we have been sold.”
”If that puzzles you, old fellow,” said Peyrade, laughing, ”look at your horses' shoes, and you'll see that you betrayed yourselves.”
”Well, there need be no rancor!” said Corentin, whistling for the captain of gendarmerie and their horses.
”So that rascally Parisian blacksmith who shoed the horses in the English fas.h.i.+on and left Cinq-Cygne only the other day was their spy!”
thought Michu. ”They must have followed our tracks when the ground was damp. Well, we're quits now!”
Michu consoled himself by thinking that the discovery was of no consequence, as the young men were now safe, Frenchmen once more, and at liberty. Yet his first presentiment was a true one. The police, like the Jesuits, have the one virtue of never abandoning their friends or their enemies.
Old d'Hauteserre returned from Paris and was more than surprised not to be the first to bring the news. Durieu prepared a succulent dinner, the servants donned their best clothes, and the household impatiently awaited the exiles, who arrived about four o'clock, happy,--and yet humiliated, for they found they were to be under police surveillance for two years, obliged to present themselves at the prefecture every month and ordered to remain in the commune of Cinq-Cygne during the said two years. ”I'll send you the papers for signature,” the prefect said to them. ”Then, in the course of a few months, you can ask to be relieved of these conditions, which are imposed on all of Pichegru's accomplices.
I will back your request.”
These restrictions, fairly deserved, rather dispirited the young men, but Laurence laughed at them.
”The Emperor of the French,” she said, ”was badly brought up; he has not yet acquired the habit of bestowing favors graciously.”
The party found all the inhabitants of the chateau at the gates, and a goodly proportion of the people of the village waiting on the road to see the young men, whose adventures had made them famous throughout the department. Madame d'Hauteserre held her sons to her breast for a long time, her face covered with tears; she was unable to speak and remained silent, though happy, through a part of the evening. No sooner had the Simeuse twins dismounted than a cry of surprise arose on all sides, caused by their amazing resemblance,--the same look, the same voice, the same actions. They both had the same movement in rising from their saddles, in throwing their leg over the crupper of their horses when dismounting, in flinging the reins upon the animal's neck. Their dress, precisely the same, contributed to this likeness. They wore boots _a la_ Suwaroff, made to fit the instep, tight trousers of white leather, green hunting-jackets with metal b.u.t.tons, black cravats, and buckskin gloves.
The two young men, just thirty-one years of age, were--to use a term in vogue in those days--charming cavaliers, of medium height but well set up, brilliant eyes with long lashes, floating in liquid like those of children, black hair, n.o.ble brows, and olive skin. Their speech, gentle as that of a woman, fell graciously from their fresh red lips; their manners, more elegant and polished than those of the provincial gentlemen, showed that knowledge of men and things had given them that supplementary education which makes its possessor a man of the world.
Not lacking money, thanks to Michu, during their emigration, they had been able to travel and be received at foreign courts. Old d'Hauteserre and the abbe thought them rather haughty; but in their present position this may have been the sign of n.o.bility of character. They possessed all the eminent little marks of a careful education, to which they added a wonderful dexterity in bodily exercises. Their only dissimilarity was in the region of ideas. The youngest charmed others by his gaiety, the eldest by his melancholy; but the contrast, which was purely spiritual, was not at first observable.
”Ah, wife,” whispered Michu in Marthe's ear, ”how could one help devoting one's self to those young fellows?”
Marthe, who admired them as a wife and mother, nodded her head prettily and pressed her husband's hand. The servants were allowed to kiss their new masters.
During their seven months' seclusion in the forest (which the young men had brought upon themselves) they had several times committed the imprudence of taking walks about their hiding-place, carefully guarded by Michu, his son, and Gothard. During these walks, taken usually on starlit nights, Laurence, reuniting the thread of their past and present lives, felt the utter impossibility of choosing between the brothers. A pure and equal love for each divided her heart. She fancied indeed that she had two hearts. On their side, the brothers dared not speak to themselves of their impending rivalry. Perhaps all three were trusting to time and accident. The condition of her mind on this subject acted no doubt upon Laurence as they entered the house, for she hesitated a moment, and then took an arm of each as she entered the salon followed by Monsieur and Madame d'Hauteserre, who were occupied with their sons.
Just then a cheer burst from the servants, ”Long live the Cinq-Cygne and the Simeuse families!” Laurence turned round, still between the brothers, and made a charming gesture of acknowledgement.
When these nine persons came to actually observe each other,--for in all meetings, even in the bosom of families, there comes a moment when friends observe those from whom they have been long parted,--the first glance which Adrien d'Hauteserre cast upon Laurence seemed to his mother and to the abbe to betray love. Adrien, the youngest of the d'Hauteserres, had a sweet and tender soul; his heart had remained adolescent in spite of the catastrophes which had nerved the man. Like many young heroes, kept virgin in spirit by perpetual peril, he was daunted by the timidities of youth. In this he was very different from his brother, a man of rough manners, a great hunter, an intrepid soldier, full of resolution, but coa.r.s.e in fibre and without activity of mind or delicacy in matters of the heart. One was all soul, the other all action; and yet they both possessed in the same degree that sense of honor which is the vital essence of a gentleman. Dark, short, slim and wiry, Adrien d'Hauteserre gave an impression of strength; whereas Robert, who was tall, pale and fair, seemed weakly. Adrien, nervous in temperament, was stronger in soul; while his brother though lymphatic, was fonder of bodily exercise. Families often present these singularities of contrast, the causes of which it might be interesting to examine; but they are mentioned here merely to explain how it was that Adrien was not likely to find a rival in his brother. Robert's affection for Laurence was that of a relation, the respect of a n.o.ble for a girl of his own caste. In matters of sentiment the elder d'Hauteserre belonged to the cla.s.s of men who consider woman as an appendage to man, limiting her sphere to the physical duties of maternity; demanding perfection in that respect, but regarding her mentally as of no account. To such men the admittance of woman as an actual sharer in society, in the body politic, in the family, meant the subversion of the social system. In these days we are so far removed from this theory of primitive people that almost all women, even those who do not desire the fatal emanc.i.p.ation offered by the new sects, will be shocked in merely hearing of it; but it must be owned that Robert d'Hauteserre had the misfortune to think in that way. Robert was a man of the middle-ages, Adrien a man of to-day. These differences instead of hindering their affection had drawn its bonds the closer. On the first evening after the return of the young men these shades of character were caught and understood by the abbe, Mademoiselle Goujet, and Madame d'Hauteserre, who, while playing their boston, were secretly foreseeing the difficulties of the future.
At twenty-three years of age, having pa.s.sed through the many reflections of a long solitude and the anguish of a defeated enterprise, Laurence had become a woman, and felt within her an absorbing desire for affection. She now put forth all her graces of her mind and was charming; she revealed the hidden beauties of her tender heart with the simple candor of a child. For the last thirteen years she had been a woman only through suffering; she longed to obtain amends for it, and she showed herself as loving and winning as she had been, up to this time, strong and great.
The four elders, who were the last to leave the salon that night, admitted to each other that they felt uneasy at the new position of this charming girl. What power might not pa.s.sion have on a young woman of her character and with her n.o.bility of soul? The twin brothers loved her with one and the same love and a blind devotion; which of the two would Laurence choose? To choose one was to kill the other. Countess in her own right, she could bring her husband a t.i.tle and certain prerogatives, together with a long lineage. Perhaps in thinking of these advantages the elder of the twins, the Marquis de Simeuse, would sacrifice himself to give Laurence to his brother, who, according to the old laws, was poor and without a t.i.tle. But would the younger brother deprive the elder of the happiness of having Laurence for a wife? At a distance, this strife of love and generosity might do no harm,--in fact, so long as the brothers were facing danger the chances of war might end the difficulty; but what would be the result of this reunion? When Marie-Paul and Paul-Marie reached the age when pa.s.sions rise to their greatest height could they share, as now, the looks and words and attentions of their cousin? must there not inevitably arise a jealousy between them the consequences of which might be horrible? What would then become of the unity of those beautiful lives, one in heart though twain in body? To these questionings, pa.s.sed from one to another as they finished their game, Madame d'Hauteserre replied that in her opinion Laurence would not marry either of her cousins. The poor lady had experienced that evening one of those inexplicable presentiments which are secrets between the mother's heart and G.o.d.
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