Part 45 (2/2)

Hence, if her husband had organized a movement that movement was right. If he had attempted it, it was because he expected to succeed.

Therefore, it was sure to succeed.

Impatient, however, to know the result, she sent the gardener to Sairmeuse with orders to obtain information without awakening suspicion, if possible, and to hasten back as soon as he could learn anything of a positive nature.

He returned in about two hours, pale, frightened, and in tears.

The disaster had already become known, and had been related to him with the most terrible exaggerations. He had been told that hundreds of men had been killed, and that a whole army was scouring the country, ma.s.sacring defenceless peasants and their families.

While he was telling his story, Mme. d'Escorval felt that she was going mad.

She saw--yes, positively, she saw her son and her husband, dead--or still worse, mortally wounded upon the public highway--they were lying with their arms crossed upon their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, livid, b.l.o.o.d.y, their eyes staring wildly--they were begging for water--a drop of water.

”I will find them!” she exclaimed, in frenzied accents. ”I will go to the field of battle, I will seek for them among the dead, until I find them. Light some torches, my friends, and come with me, for you will aid me, will you not? You loved them; they were so good! You would not leave their dead bodies unburied! oh! the wretches! the wretches who have killed them!”

The servants were hastening to obey when the furious gallop of a horse and the sound of carriage-wheels were heard upon the drive.

”Here they are!” exclaimed the gardener; ”here they are!”

Mme. d'Escorval, followed by the servants, rushed to the door just in time to see a cabriolet enter the court-yard, and the horse, panting, exhausted, and flecked with foam, miss his footing, and fall.

Abbe Midon and Maurice had already leaped to the ground and were lifting out an apparently lifeless body.

Even Marie-Anne's great energy had not been able to resist so many successive shocks; the last trial had overwhelmed her. Once in the carriage, all immediate danger having disappeared, the excitement which had sustained her fled. She became unconscious, and all the efforts of Maurice and of the priest had failed to restore her.

But Mme. d'Escorval did not recognize Mlle. Lacheneur in the masculine habiliments in which she was clothed.

She only saw that it was not her husband whom they had brought with them; and a convulsive shudder shook her from head to foot.

”Your father, Maurice!” she exclaimed, in a stifled voice; ”and your father!”

The effect was terrible. Until that moment, Maurice and the cure had comforted themselves with the hope that M. d'Escorval would reach home before them.

Maurice tottered, and almost dropped his precious burden. The abbe perceived it, and at a sign from him, two servants gently lifted Marie-Anne, and bore her to the house.

Then the cure approached Mme. d'Escorval.

”Monsieur will soon be here, Madame,” said he, at hazard; ”he fled first----”

”Baron d'Escorval could not have fled,” she interrupted. ”A general does not desert when face to face with the enemy. If a panic seizes his soldiers, he rushes to the front, and either leads them back to combat, or takes his own life.”

”Mother!” faltered Maurice; ”mother!”

”Oh! do not try to deceive me. My husband was the organizer of this conspiracy--his confederates beaten and dispersed must have proved themselves cowards. G.o.d have mercy upon me; my husband is dead!”

In spite of the abbe's quickness of perception, he could not understand such a.s.sertions on the part of the baroness; he thought that sorrow and terror must have destroyed her reason.

<script>