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CHAPTER XXI

CÉLINE

EULALIK DE KERSABIEC, a daughter of one of Madame's most devoted adherents, arrived at le Meslier shortly after their return. She was of the same height as Madame, a brunette, with dark, sparkling eyes, light-hearted, adventurous. It was considered that she might personate the duchess in an emergency. Petit-Paul they christened her; and Madame would amuse herself dressing up her friend as a boy, and declare that Eulalie looked the part better than she did. The marquis was appealed to on the point.

'Either lady would make her fortune,' he said, ‘at the Comédie-Française.'

Lucien noted with surprise that Madame was not at all cast down to find that she had been deceived about the South.

'The message was providential all the same,' said she. It saved me from going, and now everyone agrees that it is best for me to stay. We are quit of Berryer too. He has gone back to the Plenipotentiary of the Shades of Night, I suppose.'

De Bourmont arrived from Nantes on the Friday, and stayed a day and a night. Madame was disinclined at first to forgive him the counter-order, but one of her sunny disposition could not harbour malice; and when she heard that Berryer had visited Nantes before he came to le Meslier, she grew more lenient. Perhaps

she was not sorry to find that Berryer had outwitted somebody else. The counsels of de Bourmont were very different now.

Far from persuading her to fly, the marshal encouraged her to remain. He had seen too many vicissitudes to think anything impossible.

At last there was but one subject of dispute between them. She was determined that the rising should take place on Friday, June 1, the day appointed for it in Paris; while he was equally resolved that it should be on Sunday, June 3, when the peasants would be gathered together in the churches to hear Mass, and no suspicion would attach to their movements. In the end he convinced her, and she yielded the point. Neither of them knew as yet the disastrous results of the counter-order.

Many a story the old marshal told Lucien, basking among the vines, or sitting long at table after a slender meal, of the old days in la Vendée, when he had been the last man to lay down his arms. Madame would come and listen, too, while he spoke of the years that he spent in prison for making an infernal machine of which he had never heard; of the hole pierced in the cell, and the cord swung over the ramparts of Besançon; of the murderous cold in Russia; of the battle of Lützen; of the wild fighting in Africa.

'Ah!' he said, 'Cardinal Ximenes could not get rid of the pirates, nor the Knights of Rhodes, nor Charles V., nor le Roi Soleil, nor the great men of England-but I did. And there I left my son-my second son out of the four who went with me. He was the only officer killed. He was about your age,' he added, turning to Lucien.

'How well he died!' said Lucien gently; and the old father nodded.

'All the world says,' cried Madame,' that if you had been in Paris two years ago, my child would never have left it.'

6

They say truly, Madame. At any rate, he would have left it over my dead body; and I am tough.'

He sighed, still thinking of his boy's grave at Staouëli.

'Have you warned de la Roberie that the rising has been put off for two days?' asked the marquis.

'No,' said Madame; ' I will see to it.'

She spoke as if she did not hear. In her hand was a letter. Her eyes brightened as she read, and they grew soft, but she said nothing of the contents.

The envelope, which she had torn off, lay on the table. It came from Sicily.

Lucien, who did not observe such little incidents, noticed this because the marquis looked long at it. 'You will not forget?' he said to her after a while. 'Oh no.'

Next morning he left, ostensibly that he might inquire into the affairs of Monsieur Clémenceau; while the marshal returned to the right bank of the Loire to direct the movements of the troops for seizing Angers and Nantes.

Madame had intended to leave le Meslier for the Wolf's Den on May 29, but when it came to the point she had an odd reluctance to go, and showed it, not in open opposition, but by every excuse that she could think of to stave off the dreaded moment. At length. de Charette insisted. He had remarked suspicious characters lurking in the neighbourhood. The first

of June was at hand. It could not be safe to wait longer.

They got silently to horse about midnight. Madame kissed her hand to the vines.

A cloud of depression settled down upon the little band. Lucien did not wonder whether the rest felt as he did; he knew it. The very horses walked slowly, with downcast heads.

They had not gone far from le Meslier when Madame was thrown. Quick to recollect her forebodings, he thought she was killed. She was not even hurt, but thereafter he rode as if the darkness were full of hidden enemies, as if every tree on the road, every insignificant stream they forded threatened her life.

Confidence returned with the first streak of gray dawn. Given that he had the light for him, he could protect her against the world.

About an hour before sunrise they reached an old mill.

All mills, whether of wind or water, belong to the same family. Lucien's heart went out to this one as to the old home which had sheltered him in the days of boyhood.

'De la Roberie and the younger Jacinth were to be here,' said de Charette anxiously. There is not a sign

of them.'

He put his hands over his mouth and raised the hoarse cry of the owl, but no one responded.

'I never knew him fail before. Is it possible that Your Royal Highness's messenger did not reach him, that he still thinks the rising is for to-day?'

'I did not send,' said Madame; ' I forgot.'

The colour flushed her cheeks. She looked ashamed

and conscience-stricken, like a naughty child found out. Lucien could have forgiven her anything; so, it seemed, could de Charette.

'You had much on your mind,' said he.

'Yet,' he remarked aside to Lucien later on, it is odd; she used not to forget.'

'She had received a letter from Sicily, and she was thinking of it all day. I noticed that she scarcely spoke to us.'

De Charette reflected for a minute or two, then shook his head.

'No, I do not understand. It cannot be helped. We dare not go to the Wolf's Den now, in full daylight, without the master. I can find my way to the house of his brother-in-law. We had best seek shelter there; they will know his movements. He may wish to receive us at la Mouchetière, where he and his family live.'

De Charette was right. Jacinth himself was still absent, but the two elder daughters came at once on receipt of a message from their uncle; and Madame was persuaded to change clothes with Luce, who remained behind, and to return with Pauline, Lucien taking another road, that the village people might observe nothing. His mind worked with unnatural clearness, as the mind will when a certain stage of weariness is over after a fast of many hours' duration.

The sun was going westward as they turned in at a high iron gateway, rusty with age. Stone pillars, wreathed in ivy, guarded it on either side, one of them surmounted by a fox with a broken nose, who sat upon his hind-legs, holding a battered shield. Within, the grass grew long and rank-it had not been mown for

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