LITMIR.BIZ

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my father, the Marechal Duc de Lenoncourt, then seventy years old, offered to become my guardian, and I found myself, soon after the termination of the odious suit, in a brilliant home, where I enjoyed all the advantages of which my brother’s cruelty had deprived me. Every evening the old marechal came to sit with me and comfort me with kind and consoling words. His white hair and the many proofs he gave me of paternal tenderness led me to turn all the feelings of my heart upon him, and I felt myself his daughter. I accepted his presents, hiding none of my caprices from him, for I saw how he loved to gratify them. I heard one fatal evening that all Paris believed me the mistress of the poor old man. I was told that it was then beyond my power to recover an innocence thus gratuitously denied me. They said that the man who had abused my inexperience could not be lover, and would not be my husband. The week in which I made this horrible discovery the duke left Paris. I was shamefully ejected from the house where he had placed me, and which did not belong to him. Up to this point I have told you the truth as though I stood before God; but now, do not ask a wretched woman to give account of sufferings which are buried in her heart. The time came when I found myself married to Danton. A few days later the storm uprooted the mighty oak around which I had thrown my arms. Again I was plunged into the worst distress, and I resolved to kill myself. I don’t know whether love of life, or the hope of wearying ill-fortune and of finding at the bottom of the abyss the happiness which had always escaped me were, unconsciously to myself, my advisers, or whether I was fascinated by the arguments of a young man from Vendome, who, for the last two years, has wound himself about me like a serpent round a tree,—in short, I know not how it is that I accepted, for a payment of three hundred thousand francs, the odious mission of making an unknown man fall in love with me and then betraying him. I met you; I knew you at once by one of those presentiments which never mislead us; yet I tried to doubt my recognition, for the more I came to love you, the more the certainty appalled me. When I saved you from the hands of Hulot, I abjured the part I had taken; I resolved to betray the slaughterers, and not their victim. I did wrong to play with men, with their lives, their principles, with myself, like a thoughtless girl who sees only sentiments in this life. I believed you loved me; I let myself cling to the hope that my life might begin anew; but all things have revealed my past,—even I myself, perhaps, for you must have distrusted a woman so passionate as you have found me. Alas! is there no excuse for my love and my deception? My life was like a troubled sleep; I woke and thought myself a girl; I was in Alencon, where all my memories were pure and chaste. I had the mad simplicity to think that love would baptize me into innocence. For a moment I thought myself pure, for I had never loved. But last night your passion seemed to me true, and a voice cried to me, ‘Do not deceive him.’ Monsieur le marquis,” she said, in a guttural voice which haughtily challenged condemnation, “know this; I am a dishonored creature, unworthy of you. From this hour I accept my fate as a lost woman. I am weary of playing a part,—the part of a woman to whom you had brought back the sanctities of her soul. Virtue is a burden to me. I should despise you if you were weak enough to marry me. The Comte de Bauvan might commit that folly, but you—you must be worthy of your future and leave me without regret. A courtesan is too exacting; I should not love you like the simple, artless girl who felt for a moment the delightful hope of being your companion, of making you happy, of doing you honor, of becoming a noble wife. But I gather from that futile hope the courage to return to a life of vice and infamy, that I may put an eternal barrier between us. I sacrifice both honor and fortune to you. The pride I take in that sacrifice will support me in my wretchedness,—fate may dispose of me as it will. I will never betray you. I shall return to Paris. There your name will be to me a part of myself, and the glory you win will console my grief. As for you, you are a man, and you will forget me. Farewell.”

      She darted away in the direction of the gorges of Saint-Sulpice, and disappeared before the marquis could rise to detain her. But she came back unseen, hid herself in a cavity of the rocks, and examined the young man with a curiosity mingled with doubt. Presently she saw him walking like a man overwhelmed, without seeming to know where he went.

      “Can he be weak?” she thought, when he had disappeared, and she felt she was parted from him. “Will he understand me?” She quivered. Then she turned and went rapidly towards Fougeres, as though she feared the marquis might follow her into the town, where certain death awaited him.

      “Francine, what did he say to you?” she asked, when the faithful girl rejoined her.

      “Ah! Marie, how I pitied him. You great ladies stab a man with your tongues.”

      “How did he seem when he came up to you?”

      “As if he saw me not at all! Oh, Marie, he loves you!”

      “Yes, he loves me, or he does not love me—there is heaven or hell for me in that,” she answered. “Between the two extremes there is no spot where I can set my foot.”

      After thus carrying out her resolution, Marie gave way to grief, and her face, beautified till then by these conflicting sentiments, changed for the worse so rapidly that in a single day, during which she floated incessantly between hope and despair, she lost the glow of beauty, and the freshness which has its source in the absence of passion or the ardor of joy. Anxious to ascertain the result of her mad enterprise, Hulot and Corentin came to see her soon after her return. She received them smiling.

      “Well,” she said to the commandant, whose care-worn face had a questioning expression, “the fox is coming within range of your guns; you will soon have a glorious triumph over him.”

      “What happened?” asked Corentin, carelessly, giving Mademoiselle de Verneuil one of those oblique glances with which diplomatists of his class spy on thought.

      “Ah!” she said, “the Gars is more in love than ever; I made him come with me to the gates of Fougeres.”

      “Your power seems to have stopped there,” remarked Corentin; “the fears of your ci-devant are greater than the love you inspire.”

      “You judge him by yourself,” she replied, with a contemptuous look.

      “Well, then,” said he, unmoved, “why did you not bring him here to your own house?”

      “Commandant,” she said to Hulot, with a coaxing smile, “if he really loves me, would you blame me for saving his life and getting him to leave France?”

      The old soldier came quickly up to her, took her hand, and kissed it with a sort of enthusiasm. Then he looked at her fixedly and said in a gloomy tone: “You forget my two friends and my sixty-three men.”

      “Ah, commandant,” she cried, with all the naivete of passion, “he was not accountable for that; he was deceived by a bad woman, Charette’s mistress, who would, I do believe, drink the blood of the Blues.”

      “Come, Marie,” said Corentin, “don’t tease the commandant; he does not understand such jokes.”

      “Hold your tongue,” she answered, “and remember that the day when you displease me too much will have no morrow for you.”

      “I see, mademoiselle,” said Hulot, without bitterness, “that I must prepare for a fight.”

      “You are not strong enough, my dear colonel. I saw more than six thousand men at Saint-James,—regular troops, artillery, and English officers. But they cannot do much unless he leads them? I agree with Fouche, his presence is the head and front of everything.”

      “Are we to get his head?—that’s the point,” said Corentin, impatiently.

      “I don’t know,” she answered, carelessly.

      “English officers!” cried Hulot, angrily, “that’s all that was wanting to make a regular brigand of him. Ha! ha! I’ll give him English, I will!”

      “It seems to me, citizen-diplomat,” said Hulot to Corentin, after the two had taken leave and were at some distance from the house, “that you allow that girl to send you to the right-about when she pleases.”

      “It is quite natural for you, commandant,” replied Corentin, with a thoughtful air, “to see nothing but fighting in what she said to us. You soldiers never seem to know there are

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