An Historical Mystery (The Gondreville Mystery)

“Francois!” called the bailiff, to hasten his son.

Francois Michu, a child of ten, played in the park and forest, and levied his little tithes like a master; he ate the fruits; he chased the game; he at least had neither cares nor troubles. Of all the family, Francois alone was happy in a home thus isolated from the neighborhood by its position between the park and the forest, and by the still greater moral solitude of universal repulsion.

“Pick up these things,” said his father, pointing to the parapet, “and put them away. Look at me! You love your father and your mother, don’t you?” The child flung himself on his father as if to kiss him, but Michu made a movement to shift the gun and pushed him back. “Very good. You have sometimes chattered about things that are done here,” continued the father, fixing his eyes, dangerous as those of a wild-cat, on the boy. “Now remember this; if you tell the least little thing that happens here to Gaucher, or to the Grouage and Bellache people, or even to Marianne who loves us, you will kill your father. Never tattle again, and I will forgive what you said yesterday.” The child began to cry. “Don’t cry; but when any one questions you, say, as the peasants do, ‘I don’t know.’ There are persons roaming about whom I distrust. Run along! As for you two,” he added, turning to the women, “you have heard what I said. Keep a close mouth, both of you.”

“Husband, what are you going to do?”

Michu, who was carefully measuring a charge of powder, poured it into the barrel of his gun, rested the weapon against the parapet and said to Marthe: —

“No one knows I own that gun. Stand in front of it.”

Couraut, who had sprung to his feet, was barking furiously.

“Good, intelligent fellow!” cried Michu. “I am certain there are spies about – ”

Man and beast feel a spy. Couraut and Michu, who seemed to have one and the same soul, lived together as the Arab and his horse in the desert. The bailiff knew the modulations of the dog’s voice, just as the dog read his master’s meaning in his eyes, or felt it exhaling in the air from his body.

“What do you say to that?” said Michu, in a low voice, calling his wife’s attention to two strangers who appeared in a by-path making for the rond-point.

“What can it mean?” cried the old mother. “They are Parisians.”

“Here they come!” said Michu. “Hide my gun,” he whispered to his wife.

The two men who now crossed the wide open space of the rond-point were typical enough for a painter. One, who appeared to be the subaltern, wore top-boots, turned down rather low, showing well-made calves, and colored silk stockings of doubtful cleanliness. The breeches, of ribbed cloth, apricot color with metal buttons, were too large; they were baggy about the body, and the lines of their creases seemed to indicate a sedentary man. A marseilles waistcoat, overloaded with embroidery, open, and held together by one button only just above the stomach, gave to the wearer a dissipated look, – all the more so, because his jet black hair, in corkscrew curls, hid his forehead and hung down his cheeks. Two steel watch-chains were festooned upon his breeches. The shirt was adorned with a cameo in white and blue. The coat, cinnamon-colored, was a treasure to caricaturists by reason of its long tails, which, when seen from behind, bore so perfect a resemblance to a cod that the name of that fish was given to them. The fashion of codfish tails lasted ten years; almost the whole period of the empire of Napoleon. The cravat, loosely fastened, and with numerous small folds, allowed the wearer to bury his face in it up to the nostrils. His pimpled skin, his long, thick, brick-dust colored nose, his high cheek-bones, his mouth, lacking half its teeth but greedy for all that and menacing, his ears adorned with huge gold rings, his low forehead, – all these personal details, which might have seemed grotesque in many men, were rendered terrible in him by two small eyes set in his head like those of a pig, expressive of insatiable covetousness, and of insolent, half-jovial cruelty. These ferreting and perspicacious blue eyes, glassy and glacial, might be taken for the model of that famous Eye, the formidable emblem of the police, invented during the Revolution. Black silk gloves were on his hands and he carried a switch. He was certainly some official personage, for he showed in his bearing, in his way of taking snuff and ramming it into his nose, the bureaucratic importance of an office subordinate, one who signs for his superiors and acquires a passing sovereignty by enforcing their orders.

The other man, whose dress was in the same style, but elegant and elegantly put on and careful in its smallest detail, wore boots a la Suwaroff which came high upon the leg above a pair of tight trousers, and creaked as he walked. Above his coat he wore a spencer, an aristocratic garment adopted by the Clichiens and the young bloods of Paris, which survived both the Clichiens and the fashionable youths. In those days fashions sometimes lasted longer than parties, – a symptom of anarchy which the year of our Lord 1830 has again presented to us. This accomplished dandy seemed to be thirty years of age. His manners were those of good society; he wore jewels of value; the collar of his shirt came to the tops of his ears. His conceited and even impertinent air betrayed a consciousness of hidden superiority. His pallid face seemed bloodless, his thin flat nose had the sardonic expression which we see in a death’s head, and his green eyes were inscrutable; their glance was discreet in meaning just as the thin closed mouth was discreet in words. The first man seemed on the whole a good fellow compared with this younger man, who was slashing the air with a cane, the top of which, made of gold, glittered in the sunshine. The first man might have cut off a head with his own hand, but the second was capable of entangling innocence, virtue, and beauty in the nets of calumny and intrigue, and then poisoning them or drowning them. The rubicund stranger would have comforted his victim with a jest; the other was incapable of a smile. The first was forty-five years old, and he loved, undoubtedly, both women and good cheer. Such men have passions which keep them slaves to their calling. But the young man was plainly without passions and without vices. If he was a spy he belonged to diplomacy, and did such work from a pure love of art. He conceived, the other executed; he was the idea, the other was the form.

“This must be Gondreville, is it not, my good woman?” said the young man.

“We don’t say ‘my good woman’ here,” said Michu. “We are still simple enough to say ‘citizen’ and ‘citizeness’ in these parts.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the young man, in a natural way, and without seeming at all annoyed.

Players of ecarte often have a sense of inward disaster when some unknown person sits down at the same table with them, whose manners, look, voice, and method of shuffling the cards, all, to their fancy, foretell defeat. The instant Michu looked at the young man he felt an inward and prophetic collapse. He was struck by a fatal presentiment; he had a sudden confused foreboding of the scaffold. A voice told him that that dandy would destroy him, although there was nothing whatever in common between them. For this reason his answer was rude; he was and he wished to be forbidding.

“Don’t you belong to the Councillor of State, Malin?” said the younger man.

“I am my own master,” answered Malin.

“Mesdames,” said the young man, assuming a most polite air, “are we not at Gondreville? We are expected there by Monsieur Malin.”

“There’s the park,” said Michu, pointing to the open gate.

“Why are you hiding that gun, my fine girl?” said the elder, catching sight of the carbine as he passed through the gate.

“You never let a chance escape you, even in the country!” cried his companion.

They both turned back with a sense of distrust which the bailiff understood at once in spite of their impassible faces. Marthe let them look at the gun, to the tune of Couraut’s bark; she was so convinced that her husband was meditating some evil deed that she was thankful for the curiosity of the strangers.

Michu flung a look at his wife which made her tremble; he took the gun and began to load it, accepting quietly the fatal ill-luck of this encounter and the discovery of the weapon. He seemed no longer to care for life, and his wife fathomed his inward feeling.

“So you have wolves in these parts?” said the young man, watching him.

“There are always wolves where there are sheep. You are in Champagne, and there’s a forest; we have wild-boars, large and small game both, a little of everything,” replied Michu, in a truculent manner.

“I’ll bet, Corentin,” said the elder of the two men, after exchanging a glance with his companion, “that this is my friend Michu – ”

“We never kept pigs together that I know of,” said the bailiff.

“No, but we both presided over Jacobins, citizen,” replied the old cynic, – “you at Arcis, I elsewhere. I see you’ve kept your Carmagnole civility, but it’s no longer in fashion, my good fellow.”

“The park strikes me as rather large; we might lose our way. If you are really the bailiff show us the path to the chateau,” said Corentin, in a peremptory tone.

Michu whistled to his son and continued to load his gun. Corentin looked at Marthe with indifference, while his companion seemed charmed by her; but the young man noticed the signs of her inward distress, which escaped the old libertine, who had, however, noticed and feared the gun. The natures of the two men were disclosed in this trifling yet important circumstance.

“I’ve an appointment the other side of the forest,” said the bailiff. “I can’t go with you, but my son here will take you to the chateau. How did you get to Gondreville? did you come by Cinq-Cygne?”

“We had, like yourself, business in the forest,” said Corentin, without apparent sarcasm.

“Francois,” cried Michu, “take these gentlemen to the chateau by the wood path, so that no one sees them; they don’t follow the beaten tracks. Come here,” he added, as the strangers turned to walk away, talking together as they did so in a low voice. Michu caught the boy in his arms, and kissed him almost solemnly with an expression which confirmed his wife’s fears; cold chills ran down her back; she glanced at her mother with haggard eyes, for she could not weep.

“Go,” said Michu; and he watched the boy until he was entirely out of sight. Couraut was barking on the other side of the road in the direction of Grouage. “Oh, that’s Violette,” remarked Michu. “This is the third time that old fellow has passed here to-day. What’s in the wind? Hush, Couraut!”

A few moments later the trot of a pony was heard approaching.

CHAPTER II. A CRIME RELINQUISHED

Violette, mounted on one of those little nags which the farmers in the neighborhood of Paris use so much, soon appeared, wearing a round hat with a broad brim, beneath which his wood-colored face, deeply wrinkled, appeared in shadow. His gray eyes, mischievous and lively, concealed in a measure the treachery of his nature. His skinny legs, covered with gaiters of white linen which came to the knee, hung rather than rested in the stirrups, seemingly held in place by the weight of his hob-nailed shoes. Above his jacket of blue cloth he wore a cloak of some coarse woollen stuff woven in black and white stripes. His gray hair fell in curls behind his ears. This dress, the gray horse with its short legs, the manner in which Violette sat him, stomach projecting and shoulders thrown back, the big chapped hands which held the shabby bridle, all depicted him plainly as the grasping, ambitious peasant who desires to own land and buys it at any price. His mouth, with its bluish lips parted as if a surgeon had pried them open with a scalpel, and the innumerable wrinkles of his face and forehead hindered the play of features which were expressive only in their outlines. Those hard, fixed lines seemed menacing, in spite of the humility which country-folks assume and beneath which they conceal their emotions and schemes, as savages and Easterns hide theirs behind an imperturbable gravity. First a mere laborer, then the farmer of Grouage through a long course of persistent ill-doing, he continued his evil practices after conquering a position which surpassed his early hopes. He wished harm to all men and wished it vehemently. When he could assist in doing harm he did it eagerly. He was openly envious; but, no matter how malignant he might be, he kept within the limits of the law, – neither beyond it nor behind it, like a parliamentary opposition. He believed his prosperity depended on the ruin of others, and that whoever was above him was an enemy against whom all weapons were good. A character like this is very common among the peasantry.

Violette’s present business was to obtain from Malin an extension of the lease of his farm, which had only six years longer to run. Jealous of the bailiff’s means, he watched him narrowly. The neighbors reproached him for his intimacy with “Judas”; but the sly old farmer, wishing to obtain a twelve years’ lease, was really lying in wait for an opportunity to serve either the government or Malin, who distrusted Michu. Violette, by the help of the game-keeper of Gondreville and others belonging to the estate, kept Malin informed of all Michu’s actions. Malin had endeavored, fruitlessly, to win over Marianne, the Michus’ servant-woman; but Violette and his satellites heard everything from Gaucher, – a lad on whose fidelity Michu relied, but who betrayed him for cast-off clothing, waistcoats, buckles, cotton socks and sugar-plums. The boy had no suspicion of the importance of his gossip. Violette in his reports blackened all Michu’s actions and gave them a criminal aspect by absurd suggestions, – unknown, of course, to the bailiff, who was aware, however, of the base part played by the farmer, and took delight in mystifying him.

“You must have a deal of business at Bellache to be here again,” said Michu.

“Again! is that meant as a reproach, Monsieur Michu? – Hey! I did not know you had that gun. You are not going to whistle for the sparrows on that pipe, I suppose – ”

“It grew in a field of mine which bears guns,” replied Michu. “Look! this is how I sow them.”

The bailiff took aim at a viper thirty feet away and cut it in two.

“Have you got that bandit’s weapon to protect your master?” said Violette. “Perhaps he gave it to you.”

“He came from Paris expressly to bring it to me,” replied Michu.

“People are talking all round the neighborhood of this journey of his; some say he is in disgrace and has to retire from office; others that he wants to see things for himself down here. But anyway, why does he come, like the First Consul, without giving warning? Did you know he was coming?”

“I am not on such terms with him as to be in his confidence.”

“Then you have not seen him?”

“I did not know he was here till I got back from my rounds in the forest,” said Michu, reloading his gun.

“He has sent to Arcis for Monsieur Grevin,” said Violette; “they are scheming something.”

“If you are going round by Cinq-Cygne, take me up behind you,” said the bailiff. “I’m going there.”

Violette was too timid to have a man of Michu’s strength on his crupper, and he spurred his beast. Judas slung his gun over his shoulder and walked rapidly up the avenue.

“Who can it be that Michu is angry with?” said Marthe to her mother.

“Ever since he heard of Monsieur Malin’s arrival he has been gloomy,” replied the old woman. “But it is getting damp here, let us go in.”

After the two women had settled themselves in the chimney corner they heard Couraut’s bark.

“There’s my husband returning!” cried Marthe.

Michu passed up the stairs; his wife, uneasy, followed him to their bedroom.

“See if any one is about,” he said to her, in a voice of some emotion.

“No one,” she replied. “Marianne is in the field with the cow, and Gaucher – ”

“Where is Gaucher?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I distrust that little scamp. Go up in the garret, look in the hay-loft, look everywhere for him.”

Marthe left the room to obey the order. When she returned she found Michu on his knees, praying.

“What is the matter?” she said, frightened.

The bailiff took his wife round the waist and drew her to him, saying in a voice of deep feeling: “If we never see each other again remember, my poor wife, that I loved you well. Follow minutely the instructions which you will find in a letter buried at the foot of the larch in that copse. It is enclosed in a tin tube. Do not touch it until after my death. And remember, Marthe, whatever happens to me, that in spite of man’s injustice, my arm has been the instrument of the justice of God.”

Marthe, who turned pale by degrees, became white as her own linen; she looked at her husband with fixed eyes widened by fear; she tried to speak, but her throat was dry. Michu disappeared like a shadow, having tied Couraut to the foot of his bed where the dog, after the manner of all dogs, howled in despair.

Michu’s anger against Monsieur Marion had serious grounds, but it was now concentrated on another man, far more criminal in his eyes, – on Malin, whose secrets were known to the bailiff, he being in a better position than others to understand the conduct of the State Councillor. Michu’s father-in-law had had, politically speaking, the confidence of the former representative to the Convention, through Grevin.

Perhaps it would be well here to relate the circumstances which brought the Simeuse and the Cinq-Cygne families into connection with Malin, – circumstances which weighed heavily on the fate of Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne’s twin cousins, but still more heavily on that of Marthe and Michu.

The Cinq-Cygne mansion at Troyes stands opposite to that of Simeuse. When the populace, incited by minds that were as shrewd as they were cautious, pillaged the hotel Simeuse, discovered the marquis and marchioness, who were accused of corresponding with the nation’s enemies, and delivered them to the national guards who took them to prison, the crowd shouted, “Now for the Cinq-Cygnes!” To their minds the Cinq-Cygnes were as guilty as other aristocrats. The brave and worthy Monsieur de Simeuse in the endeavor to save his two sons, then eighteen years of age, whose courage was likely to compromise them, had confided them, a few hours before the storm broke, to their aunt, the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne. Two servants attached to the Simeuse family accompanied the young men to her house. The old marquis, who was anxious that his name should not die out, requested that what was happening might be concealed from his sons, even in the event of dire disaster. Laurence, the only daughter of the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, was then twelve years of age; her cousins both loved her and she loved them equally. Like other twins the Simeuse brothers were so alike that for a long while their mother dressed them in different colors to know them apart. The first comer, the eldest, was named Paul-Marie, the other Marie-Paul. Laurence de Cinq-Cygne, to whom their danger was revealed, played her woman’s part well though still a mere child. She coaxed and petted her cousins and kept them occupied until the very moment when the populace surrounded the Cinq-Cygne mansion. The two brothers then knew their danger for the first time, and looked at each other. Their resolution was instantly taken; they armed their own servants and those of the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, barricaded the doors, and stood guard at the windows, after closing the wooden blinds, with the five men-servants and the Abbe d’Hauteserre, a relative of the Cinq-Cygnes. These eight courageous champions poured a deadly fire into the crowd. Every shot killed or wounded an assailant. Laurence, instead of wringing her hands, loaded the guns with extraordinary coolness, and passed the balls and powder to those who needed them. The Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne was on her knees.

“What are you doing, mother?” said Laurence.

“I am praying,” she answered, “for them and for you.”

Sublime words, – said also by the mother of Godoy, prince of the Peace, in Spain, under similar circumstances.

In a moment eleven persons were killed and lying on the ground among a number of wounded. Such results either cool or excite a populace; either it grows savage at the work or discontinues it. On the present occasion those in advance recoiled; but the crowd behind them were there to kill and rob, and when they saw their own dead, they cried out: “Murder! Murder! Revenge!” The wiser heads went in search of the representative to the Convention, Malin. The twins, by this time aware of the disastrous events of the day, suspected Malin of desiring the ruin of their family, and of causing the arrest of their parents, and the suspicion soon became a certainty. They posted themselves beneath the porte-cochere, gun in hand, intending to kill Malin as soon as he made his appearance; but the countess lost her head; she imagined her house in ashes and her daughter assassinated, and she blamed the young men for their heroic defence and compelled them to desist. It was Laurence who opened the door slightly when Malin summoned the household to admit him. Seeing her, the representative relied upon the awe he expected to inspire in a mere child, and he entered the house. To his first words of inquiry as to why the family were making such a resistance, the girl replied: “If you really desire to give liberty to France how is it that you do not protect us in our homes? They are trying to tear down this house, monsieur, to murder us, and you say we have no right to oppose force to force!”

Malin stood rooted to the ground.

“You, the son of a mason employed by the Grand Marquis to build his castle!” exclaimed Marie-Paul, “you have let them drag our father to prison – you have believed calumnies!”

“He shall be released at once,” said Malin, who thought himself lost when he saw each youth clutch his weapon convulsively.

“You owe your life to that promise,” said Marie-Paul, solemnly. “If it is not fulfilled to-night we shall find you again.”

“As to that howling populace,” said Laurence, “If you do not send them away, the next blood will be yours. Now, Monsieur Malin, leave this house!”

The Conventionalist did leave it, and he harangued the crowd, dwelling on the sacred rights of the domestic hearth, the habeas corpus and the English “home.” He told them that the law and the people were sovereigns, that the law was the people, and that the people could only act through the law, and that power was vested in the law. The particular law of personal necessity made him eloquent, and he managed to disperse the crowd. But he never forgot the contemptuous expression of the two brothers, nor the “Leave this house!” of Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne. Therefore, when it was a question of selling the estates of the Comte de Cinq-Cygne, Laurence’s brother, as national property, the sale was rigorously made. The agents left nothing for Laurence but the chateau, the park and gardens, and one farm called that of Cinq-Cygne. Malin instructed the appraisers that Laurence had no rights beyond her legal share, – the nation taking possession of all that belonged to her brother, who had emigrated and, above all, had borne arms against the Republic.

The evening after this terrible tumult, Laurence so entreated her cousins to leave the country, fearing treachery on the part of Malin, or some trap into which they might fall, that they took horse that night and gained the Prussian outposts. They had scarcely reached the forest of Gondreville before the hotel Cinq-Cygne was surrounded; Malin came himself to arrest the heirs of the house of Simeuse. He dared not lay hands on the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne, who was in bed with a nervous fever, nor on Laurence, a child of twelve. The servants, fearing the severity of the Republic, had disappeared. The next day the news of the resistance of the brothers and their flight to Prussia was known to the neighborhood. A crowd of three thousand persons assembled before the hotel de Cinq-Cygne, which was demolished with incredible rapidity. Madame de Cinq-Cygne, carried to the hotel Simeuse, died there from the effects of the fever aggravated by terror.

Michu did not appear in the political arena until after these events, for the marquis and his wife remained in prison over five months. During this time Malin was away on a mission. But when Monsieur Marion sold Gondreville to the Councillor of State, Michu understood the latter’s game, – or rather, he thought he did; for Malin was, like Fouche, one of those personages who are of such depth in all their different aspects that they are impenetrable when they play a part, and are never understood until long after their drama is ended.