We left that death-chamber, one after another, leaving there only the dying man, the doctor, Moinat and Choron.
And in the night Berthelin died.
You can imagine my mother's state of mind when she heard all that had passed, and the tremendous oration she gave me on random shots. Choron's ball might just as easily have hit me as Berthelin, and thenshewould have been weeping overmydead body!
I had plenty to say against such reasoning. I told her that of course everything was possible, but that this was the first accident of its kind, within the memory of man, that had happened in the forest; that the fact of its having happened was a good reason why it should not occur again for a centuryor so; that, within this period, those who were not killed by bullets would be slain by the redoubtable hunter we call Time. In short, there was no reason why I should not form part of hunting-parties to come, as I had of those that had passed.... Alas! my poor mother hadn't a will of her own where I was concerned. I worried her until she gave in. Oh! poor mother mine! the deadly hunter was to slay thee before thy time, just when I was going to make thee happy and comfortable in return for all the sorrows and anxieties I had caused thee!
The following Thursday I went to the hunt in spite of the terrible accident of the Sunday.
The rendezvous was atla Bruyère-aux-Loupsthis time.
M. Deviolaine had summoned everybody except Choron, but, summoned or not, Choron was not the man to fail in his duty. He turned up at the same hour as the rest; but he had neither carbine nor musket.
"There he is!" said M. Deviolaine; "I was sure he would turn up!"
Then, turning to him, he said:—
"Why the devil have you come, Choron?"
"Because I am head keeper, inspector."
"But I did not summon you to come."
"Yes, I understood, and I thank you. But it must not be. I must do my duty before everything else. God knows I would gladly have given my life to have prevented this; but, if I were to stay at home lamenting, it would not lighten the earth over his body, poor fellow.... And one thing troubles me terribly, M. Deviolaine."
"What is it, Choron?"
"That he died without forgiving me."
"Why should he have pardoned you? He did not even know that it was you who fired the unfortunate shot."
"No, he did not know when he was dying, but he will know now he is above—they say the dead know everything."
"Come, come, Choron, cheer up," said M. Deviolaine.
"Cheer up! indeed; surely the fact of my being hereshows that I am doing my best,M. l'inspecteur: but all the same I wish he had pardoned me."
Then he bent down and whispered in his chief's ear: "You will see some misfortune will happen to me, some mishap ... M. Deviolaine ... and because..."
"And because?"
"Because he did not pardon me."
"Don't be a fool."
"You will see."
"Choron!"
"Well—that is what I feel."
"Very well, keep it to yourself, and let us turn the subject."
"Just as you please,M. l'inspecteur."
"Why have you come unarmed?"
"Because—do you not understand?—I could not touch a carbine or a musket to save my life, not to save my life."
"Then how do you propose to kill a boar?"
"What shall I kill it with?"
Choron took a knife out of his pocket—
"Well, I shall kill it with that!"
M. Deviolaine shrugged his shoulders.
"Shrug your shoulders to your heart's content, M. Deviolaine,—it shall be as I tell you. These wretched boars have been the cause of my uncle's death, and I should not feel as though I were killing them if I did it with a carbine or a musket—but with my knife it is a different matter! Besides, don't they cut pigs' throats with a knife? and what else is a boar but a pig?"
"Well," said M. Deviolaine, who knew he would never get the last word, "as you will not listen to anything you must be left to go your own way."
"Yes, yes; leave me to my own devices,M. l'inspecteur, and you shall see!"
"To the chase! to the chase, gentlemen!" cried the inspector.
The boar was in the preserve of a man named Lajeunesse, and we attacked it pretty soon, as the rendezvous was not more than five hundred steps from the lair.
But this time, although the boar, which was a three-year old, was hit four or five times, it led us a fine dance, and only after four or five hours' chase did it desire to turn round upon the dogs.
Everybody knows that, no matter how tired one may be, so tired as hardly to be able to stand, all fatigue is forgotten directly the boar turns at bay. We had hunted altogether, taking into account the ins and outs, some ten leagues. But, directly we recognised from the dogs' voices that they were at close quarters with the animal, each of us revived, and began to run towards the direction whence the barking was heard.
It sounded from out a young spinney of eight or ten years' standing—that is to say, a thicket of about ten or a dozen feet high, wherein the drama was being acted. As we drew nearer the sound increased, and from time to time we could see a dog flung above the young trees by a creature's tusks, its four paws in mid air, howling madly, but renewing the attack on the boar directly it touched the ground again. At last we reached a kind of clearing: the animal was pinned, as in a fortress, by the branches of a large tree which a storm had blown down. Twenty to thirty dogs were attacking it all at the same time; ten or a dozen of them were hurt, several had their stomachs ripped open. But, game beasts as they were, they did not notice their pain; they returned to the fight, with their insides hanging out, trampling on them. It was a magnificent and yet a horrible spectacle!
"Come on, come on, Mildet or Moinat, send a ball into that rascal! There are quite enough dogs killed—finish it off."
"Hah! what are you saying,M. l'inspecteur," cried Choron; "a gun-shot, a gun-shot for a hog? Nothing of the kind! A cut with a knife is good enough for him,—wait and you shall see."
Choron drew his knife, dashed at the boar, scattering the dogs, which quickly returned to the charge, making one moving, howling mass. For two or three seconds it was impossible for us to make out anything; then, suddenly, theboar made a frantic attempt to spring out. We all had our triggers ready, when we saw that the animal drew back instead of rushing out. Choron stood up, and held the beast by its two hind-legs, as he would have held a wheel-barrow, and stuck to it, in spite of all its struggles, with that iron grasp of his we knew so well; while the dogs, flying at it again, covered it with their bodies, till the whole thing looked like a mottled and moving carpet.
"Go for it, Dumas!" shouted M. Deviolaine. "Now is your chance,—pluck your first laurels."
I went nearer to the boar, which redoubled its efforts as it saw me coming, and gnashed its tusks, looking at me with bloodshot eyes; but it was caught in a regular trap this time, and none of its struggles could free it.
I put the end of the barrel of my gun into its ear, and I fired.
The shock was so violent that the animal tore itself out of Choron's hands, but only to roll over ten steps away; bullet, wadding, and powder had all entered its head, and I had literally blown out its brains.
Choron burst out laughing.
"Come now," he said. "There is still some pleasure left in life!"
"Yes," said M. Deviolaine, scared by what he had just seen; "but if you go on in that fashion, my boy, you won't enjoy it long, I can tell you.... What have you done to your hand?"
"Oh, it is nothing but a scratch; the beggar's skin was so tough that my knife shut up."
"Yes, and in shutting up it has cut off your finger," said M. Deviolaine.
"Clean off,M. l'inspecteur—clean off!" And Choron held up his right hand, from which the first joint of the index finger had gone.
Then, out of the silence that this sight produced, he said as he went up to M. Deviolaine:—
"It is quite right,M. l'inspecteur, that was the finger with which I killed my uncle ..."
"But that wound must be attended to, Choron."
"Take care of that? Bah! it is not worth making a fuss about! If the wind gets to it it will soon heal."
And with that Choron reopened his knife and cut the beast up as coolly as if nothing had happened.
At the following hunt, instead of a knife Choron brought a poignard, the shape of a bayonet, with a Spanish guard to it which covered the whole hand. It had been made to his order by his brother, who was the gunsmith of Villers-Cotterets. This poignard could neither break nor bend, and thrust by Choron's fist it could penetrate to the very heart of an oak tree. The same scene I have just described again took place, only this time the boar remained in its place, and had its throat cut like a domestic pig.
He did the same at all the other hunts; so that his comrades began to nickname him the pork-butcher.
The extraordinary thing was that where any other man than Choron would have lost his life, Choron did not get so much as a scratch!
One might have said that he cut off the only vulnerable part of his body when he cut off his finger-tip. But all this did not cause him to forget the death of Berthelin; he grew more and more melancholy, and from time to time he said to the inspector:—
"You will see, Monsieur Deviolaine, nothing will prevent some misfortune happening to me one of these days!"
Then his wife would complain of his jealousy, confidentially to her friends.
"Some fine day," she said, "the wretch will kill me as he killed uncle Berthelin!"
Ought I to finish Choron's lamentable history straight away? Shall I wait till the dénouement comes to pass in due course in its proper time and place?
No, we will clear away at once the sanguinary stain that left its mark on the early records of my youth.
A wolf-hunt—Small towns—Choron's tragic death.
A wolf-hunt—Small towns—Choron's tragic death.
Five or six years had flown by since the events we have just related. I had left Villers-Cotterets, and I had returned there to spend a few days with my good mother.
It was in the month of December, and the ground was completely covered with snow.
My mother kissed me over and over again. Then, I ran straight off to M. Deviolaine's.
"Ah! there you are, boy," he said; "you have come in the nick of time!"
"A wolf-hunt, isn't it?"
"Exactly so."
"I thought there would be as I looked at the snow, and I am delighted I was not wrong in thinking so."
"Right; we have had news of three or four of those gentlemen being in the forest, and, as there are a couple of them in Choron's preserve, I sent him orders to-day to have them unearthed to-night, warning him that we shall be at his house by seven o'clock to-morrow morning."
"He is still at Maison-Neuve?"
"Yes."
"How has poor Choron got on? Does he still kill boars with bayonet thrusts."
"Oh! the boars are completely exterminated, I do not think a single one is left in the forest. He took an account of them all."
"Did their death comfort him?"
"Good gracious, no! as you will see; the poor devil issadder and gloomier than ever: he is quite an altered man. I secured a pension for Berthelin's widow; but nothing can cure him of his grief, he is struck to the heart. Moreover, he has grown more and more jealous."
"As unjustifiably as ever?"
"The poor little wife is an angel!"
"Ah! then it is a monomania! But he is still' one of your best keepers, is he not?"
"One of the best."
"He will not disappoint us of our prey to-morrow?"
"You may be sure of that."
"That is all we want; as for his folly, well! we must leave that to time to cure."
"Oh! lad, I am afraid, on the contrary, that time will only make matters worse; and, by dint of hearing him repeat it so often, I have begun to believe some misfortune will happen to him."
"Really? has it come to that?"
"Yes, upon my word. I have done my utmost for him; I have nothing to reproach myself with."
"How are all the others?"
"Capital."
"Mildet?"
"He still cuts squirrels in half with a single flying bullet; not as they climb along the tree, but now as they leap from one tree to another."
"And his rival Moinat?"
"Oh! poor devil; don't you know what happened to him?"
"Was he too killed by a nephew?"
"When he was out wolf-hunting last winter his gun burst and blew off his left hand."
"How on earth did an accident like that happen to such an old sportsman?"
"As he was leaping a ditch the butt of his gun struck the ground without his noticing it, and by some means or other the gun exploded."
"Was there no way of saving part of his hand?"
"Not one finger! Lécosse had to amputate it within a few inches of the wrist."
"Can he not hunt any more now?"
"Oh, yes! we were out shooting yesterday in the marshes of Coyolle, and he killed seventeen out of the nineteen snipe we shot."
"How clever of him! I suspect Bobino would not have hit so many with the use of both his hands? That reminds me—what has become of him?"
"Bobino?"
"Yes."
"He has made a whistle out of the boar's tail to call his dogs, and he declares he will never rest, in this world or in the other, until he has laid hands on the remaining portion of the animal."
"Then everyone is all right with the exception of poor Choron?"
"That is so."
"You say the rendezvous is at ...?"
"Six o'clock prompt to-morrow morning, at the end of the big avenue, to enable everybody to reach la Maison-Neuve by seven o'clock."
"I will be there."
And I left M. Deviolaine to go and greet all my old friends; shaking hands with some, embracing others, and wishing good fortune to all.
It is one of the best pieces of fortune in this life to be born in a small town, where one knows every inhabitant, and where each household keeps you in remembrance. I know it always excited me warmly to return home—even to-day, after thirty years of work and struggle have passed since my early days, and taken the bloom of freshness from things—to that poor little hamlet, almost unknown to the world at large, in which I first stretched out my arms towards life's fantasies—fantasies which seemed crowned with haloes and adorned with flowers. Half a league before reaching the town I get down from the carriage and count the trees as I walk along the footpath. I know from which trees I cut branches for my kites, and thoseinto which I buried my arrows or from which I stole birds' nests. I sit with closed eyes at the feet of some of these, and give myself up to pleasant day-dreams that take me back twenty years; there are some which I love as though they were old friends, before which I bow as I pass them by; there are others which have been planted since my departure, and these I pass by indifferently, as before things unknown and of no account. But when I reach the town it is quite another matter. The first person who catches sight of me utters an exclamation, and runs to the door of his house; and each one does the same as I go through the town. Then, when I have passed by, the people of the district join in welcoming me, talk of me, of my youthful escapades, of my present life so far away from theirs, so full of storm and stress, which would have flown by uneventfully and tranquilly if, like them, I had stopped at home where I was born; then, ten minutes after, my arrival is the talk of the town, and there is joy in my heart, and in the hearts of some two or three thousand persons besides.
One makes a home everywhere one goes, but, in Paris, streets change their name, increase or decrease in length, according to the caprice of the head road-surveyor. If you leave Paris for ten years you do not recognise either your street or your house on your return.
So I promised myself a high festival with all the keepers on the morrow, in honour of my return.
This festival began at six in the morning. I saw the old faces, with their beards covered with hoar-frost; for, as I have pointed out, it had snowed in the night, and it was horribly cold; we all shook hands cordially, then we started for la Maison-Neuve. It was still dark.
When we reachedSaut-du-Serf(so called because once, when the duc d'Orléans was hunting in the forest, a stag had leapt over the road which was enclosed between two thickets), we saw traces of daylight beginning. The weather was capital for hunting: no snow had fallen for twelve hours, so nothing prevented us following the trail; should any wolves have been turned out of their lairs, they were certain to fall into our hands.
We went another half league farther, until we caught sight of the corner where Choron usually waited for us. He was not there.
Such an infringement of habit in a man so punctual in his engagements as Choron made us uneasy. We hurried our pace, and we soon struck the path whence we could see la Maison-Neuve about a kilomètre away.
Thanks to the carpet of snow over the ground, all objects were easy to distinguish, even at some distance off. We saw the little white house half buried in the trees; we saw a thin column of smoke which, rising from the chimney, mounted up into the air; we saw, too, a riderless horse, saddled and bridled; but we did not see Choron.
We heard the dogs making a dismal howling, and that was all.
We looked at one another and shook our heads sadly,—instinct told us something unusual had happened, and we quickened our pace.
As we drew nearer nothing changed from our first view of things.
When we got within a hundred paces of the house we unconsciously slackened our steps, feeling that we were on the brink of discovering some dreadful mishap.
We came to a standstill when within fifty paces of the house.
"We must know what it is all about," said M. Deviolaine; so we set off afresh, silently, with anxious hearts, not uttering a word.
As we approached, the horse craned its neck towards us and, with smoking nostrils, whinnied to us.
The dogs rushed at their chains, champing wildly to be released from their kennels.
Ten steps from the house we perceived a spot of blood on the snow, and a discharged pistol close by it.
A track of blood led towards the house from that spot.
We shouted: no answer.
"We must go in," said the inspector.
We went in, and we found Choron stretched on the floor,near his bed, the bed-clothes still gripped between his clasped fingers.
Upon a little table by his bed stood two bottles of white wine—one empty, the other opened and begun. A large wound was in his left side, which his favourite dog was licking.
He was still warm, and could not have been dead above ten minutes.
This is what had happened; we learnt next day from a postman from a neighbouring village, who had almost seen what had occurred.
We have spoken of Choron's jealousy of his wife, and, although nothing justified this jealousy, as the inspector had told me, it had increased as time went on.
He had taken advantage of a splendid moon to set out at one o'clock in the morning to turn out a couple of wolves which he knew were round about.
A quarter of an hour after his departure a messenger came to tell his wife that her father had been struck with apoplexy, and asked to see her before he died.
The poor woman got up and set out immediately, without being able to leave word where she was going; neither she nor the messenger could write.
When Choron returned at five o'clock and found the house empty, he felt the bed and found it was cold; he called his wife, he hunted all over; she had disappeared.
"So, she has taken advantage of my absence," said Choron, "to go to her lover, and she has not yet returned, thinking I should not be home so soon. She has deceived me—I will kill her!"
He thought he knew where to find her, so he took down his holster pistols, loaded them, put fourteen buckshot in one and seventeen in the other.
The fourteen buckshot were found in the undischarged pistol and the seventeen in Choron's body.
Then he saddled his horse, brought it out of the stable and led it in front of his door.
He put one of the pistols in the right holster, and it fittedperfectly: but the left holster happened to be narrower, and it was difficult to get the pistol into its place, so Choron tried to make it go forcibly: he took the holster in one hand and the butt end of the pistol in his other hand, and violently pushed the pistol into its place; the prod moved the trigger and the gun went off.
Choron had pressed the holster close to him to hold it steady, so the whole charge, shot, wadding, and powder, entered his left side, tearing and rupturing his internal organs.
The postman, who happened to be passing at the moment, ran up at the sound of the shot. Choron was standing, leaning against his saddle.
"My God, what have you done, M. Choron?" asked the postman.
"My good Martineau, that has happened which I have been expecting," answered Choron; "I killed my uncle with a gun-shot, and now I have killed myself with a pistol-shot. It says somewhere in the Scriptures that 'he who lives by the sword, shall perish by the sword.'"
"You are killed—you, M. Choron?" cried the postman; "there is nothing the matter with you."
Choron smiled and turned round; his clothes were singed, his blood flowed in a stream down his trousers, which were dyed red all down.
"Oh! my God!" exclaimed the postman, starting back. "What can I do for you? Shall I go for the doctor?"
"The doctor—what the devil do you suppose he can do?" replied Choron.
Then, in a melancholy voice, he added: "Did the doctor prevent my poor uncle Berthelin from dying?"
"At least let me do something, M. Choron."
"Go and fetch me two bottles of my cooling draught, from the cellar, and unchain Rocador for me."
The postman, who used to take a passing drink every morning with Choron, took the key, went down into the cellar, got two bottles of white wine, unfastened Rocador and then came back.
He found Choron, seated before a table, writing.
"Here it is," said the postman.
"Thank you, my friend," replied Choron; "put the two bottles upon the night table, and then you had better go on with your own work."
"But, M. Choron," the postman insisted, "tell me, at least, how it happened."
Choron reflected for a moment; then, in a whisper, he murmured: "Perhaps it will be as well that people should know." And, turning to the man, he said:
"Will you go when I have told you everything?"
"Yes, M. Choron."
Then he related "the thing", as the postman put it, in every detail.
"And now that you know what you wanted to know, please go."
"You wish me to go?"
"I do."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, good-bye."
"Good-bye."
And the postman left, hoping with all his heart that Choron was wounded less dangerously than he thought; for he could hardly believe a man who could preserve his presence of mind with such coolness could be mortally hurt.
No one ever knew what passed after the postman left him. No human creature helped Choron in that dark hour of his mortal agony—he struggled alone with death.
He had probably drunk as much of the wine out of the two bottles as was missing; then he had tried to raise himself on his bed, but his strength failed him, and he fell on the floor, clutching hold of the bed-clothes, in which position he was when we found him dead.
A piece of paper was on the table: it was the same the postman had seen him writing upon when he returned from the wine cellar.
On this paper were traced these few lines in a hand still firm:—
"M. L'INSPECTEUR,—You will find one of the wolves in Duquesnoy Wood; the other has decamped."Farewell, M. Deviolaine.... I told you truly that some misfortune would come to me.—Yours devotedly,"CHORON—Head Keeper."
"M. L'INSPECTEUR,—You will find one of the wolves in Duquesnoy Wood; the other has decamped.
"Farewell, M. Deviolaine.... I told you truly that some misfortune would come to me.—Yours devotedly,
"CHORON—Head Keeper."
What I said a while back about small towns and their pleasing memories can be said still more truly with regard to terrible recollections.
Such a catastrophe, happening in the faubourg Saint-Martin, in the rue Poissonnière, or on the place du Palais-Royal, might have left an impression for a week, or a fortnight, or a month at the most.
But in the little town of Villers-Cotterets, on the highroad leading to Soissons, which passed by the ill-fated house itself, through the beautiful arches of green foliage made by oaks and beeches, planted centuries before, beneath which keepers take their noiseless way, talking only in low tones, the event I have just recorded is as vividly remembered to-day as if it had just happened, and everyone will tell it you as I have done.
Alas! poor Choron! when I entered your house and saw you growing deathly pale, with those half-empty bottles by your side and your body still palpitating faintly, your dog licking the wound, I little imagined I should one day become the biographer of your obscure life and tragic death!
My mother realises that I am fifteen years old, and thatla maretteandla pipéewill not lead to a brilliant future for me—I enter the office of Me. Mennesson, notary, as errand-boy, otherwise guttersnipe—Me. Mennesson and his clerks—La Fontaine-Eau-Claire.
My mother realises that I am fifteen years old, and thatla maretteandla pipéewill not lead to a brilliant future for me—I enter the office of Me. Mennesson, notary, as errand-boy, otherwise guttersnipe—Me. Mennesson and his clerks—La Fontaine-Eau-Claire.
Although all these hunting parties procured me a most delightful existence, one which might have been indefinitely prolonged had I possessed an income of 20,000 livres, they did not provide a future for a poor devil whose patrimony, in spite of maternal economy, was melting away day by day in a terrible fashion.
I was fifteen years old. It was considered quite time I learnt some profession, and it was decided I should become a lawyer.
At that period, when a veil hid my future from me, and I had not yet felt any of those ambitions which have since led me into other paths, every profession, with the exception of that of the priesthood, was equally indifferent to me.
My mother left home one fine morning, and, crossing the square diagonally, went to ask her solicitor if he would be kind enough to take me as his third clerk.
The solicitor replied that he would be most happy to receive me, but it appeared to him, unless he were mistaken, that I cared too much forla marette, la pipée, and hunting, ever to become an assiduous pupil of Cujas and of Pothier.
My mother heaved a sigh; this was probably her own opinion, too, but she persisted all the same, and the lawyer replied:
"Very well, my dear Madame Dumas, since it will give you so much pleasure, send him to me, and we will see."
So it was decided that I should go to Maître Mennesson the following Monday; polite folk would say in the capacity ofthird clerk—others in that of errand-boy or guttersnipe,saute-ruisseau, to give the rank its slang name.
It gave me some pain to give up my sweet independence; but it gave my mother great pleasure when I yielded to her decision; all her friends told her it was such a good opening for me; Lafarge (you remember the spruce and clever son of the coppersmith who lived near us) had carved a brilliant and lucrative career for himself in the same profession; the thought that my profession would lead to an income of 12,000 or 15,000 francs per annum, and that then I could give bird-snaring parties in grand style, as he had done, took my fancy so enormously that—I went to M. Mennesson.
M. Mennesson would be at that time a man of about thirty-five, rather under the average height, thick-set, sturdy, well proportioned throughout his frame, almost to massiveness; his hair reddish and short, his eyes sharp, his mouth inclined to teasing. He was a clever man; often short in his manner, always obstinate; he was a fanatic, a Voltairian and a Republican, before anyone had yet thought of becoming a Republican.
The poem ofla Pucellewas his favourite reading; he knew whole passages of it by heart, and would repeat them in his good-humoured moments or after dinner.
Of course he selected the most impious and licentious passages.
I am told that he has since, without renouncing Republicanism, become extravagantly religious, and that he now takes part in processions, taper in hand, whereas previously he would keep his head covered when they passed.
May God have mercy on his soul!
Two members of that legal hierarchy stand out in my memory—the head and second clerks.
The first was called Niguet. He was a young man of twenty-six or twenty-eight, the son of a lawyer, grandson of a lawyer, nephew of a lawyer; one of those individuals who come into this world possessed of the equipment of spidery handwriting, an illegible signature, and a tremendous flourish after it.
The second was a lad of about my own age. He was fatand yellow-skinned; he had a pointed nose; he studied ten years to become a lawyer, and ended by being a forest keeper.
I never heard whether he ever raised himself above the grade of a common keeper, although he had influential connections in the administration of the forest lands, and three or four thousand livres income from his mother's family.
He was called Cousin.
My apprenticeship to the law was agreeable enough. M. Mennesson was not a bad sort of fellow, provided one did not in his presence say anything good concerning priests, or pronounce a panegyric upon the Bourbons.
If anybody did, his little grey eyes would flash; he would seize hold of an Old Testament or a History of France, open the Old Testament at the Book of Ezekiel, the History of France at the Reign of Henri III., and begin commenting on either after the fashion of theCitateurof Pigault-Lebrun.
I have said that I entered M. Mennesson's as errand-boy; at first the title caused me some feeling of shame; but I soon saw, on the contrary, that quite the pleasantest side of the profession of a lawyer's clerk fell to my share.
M. Mennesson drew up many deeds for the peasants of neighbouring villages. When these peasants could not make it convenient to come to him, I was commissioned to go and get their signatures to the deeds in their homes. I was told over night of the direction I was to be sent next day, and I made my plans accordingly.
If it was in the shooting season, I took an excellent companion for the wayside in the shape of my gun; if the season was over, I would go over night and set bird snares at all the pools which lay along my route.
In the first instance, it was very seldom that I did not bring back a hare or a couple of rabbits; in the second, half a dozen thrushes, blackbirds or jays, and a score of robins and other small birds.
One day my employer gave me notice that I was to go to Crespy on the day following, to collect information about a deed from his confrère, Me. Leroux.
As the distance was rather longer than usual (it is three and a half leagues from Villers-Cotterets to Crespy), I engaged a baker, who was a client of M. Mennesson, and who was concerned in the business I was going about, to lend me his horse.
It was always a treat to me to be on horseback, even though only astride a baker's steed.
I set off next morning with instructions to return the same evening, at all costs.
Besides the pleasure of the ride, there was yet another attraction for me at Crespy; I should be able to call and see once more that worthy family from whom we had received hospitality at the time of the invasion and also my friends the de Longprés.
I have related Madame de Longpré's story. She was the widow of a groom of the bedchamber to King Louis XV. She had gradually sold all her magnificent china, inherited from her husband. Her oldest son was a quartermaster in the chasseurs, a brave fellow all round, but one who would shake with fear and hide himself under the bed when there was a thunderstorm.
I set off, promising to return as quickly as possible: and I kept my word scrupulously.
First of all, I fulfilled my commission to Me. Leroux; then, when that was over, I began my calls.
I remounted my horse at seven in the evening, and started on my homeward way.
It was the month of September. The days were visibly becoming shorter; and, as the weather was gloomy on that particular evening, and almost raining, it was already dark when I set off from Crespy and put spur to my horse.
The road between Villers-Cotterets and Crespy, or rather from Crespy to Villers-Cotterets—to be topographically accurate in our descriptions—is almost a highroad, but nearly deserted by business traffic; half-way between Crespy and Villers-Cotterets it rejoins the highroad from Villers-Cotterets to Paris, describing a huge Y by its divergence.
A quarter of a league from Crespy, a portion of forest, called the Tillet Wood, extends to the roadside, but does not cross to the other side.
A league and a half farther on, the road, which hitherto is flat, drops into a kind of ravine, at the bottom of which runs a stream; the sides of this ravine are intersected on the left by quarries long since deserted and unworked.
The stream has given its name to the place, which is calledla Fontaine-Eau-Claire.
Several of these quarries open their dark and deep mouths on the road, and give the place a solitary and threatening character, which inspires the people of the countryside with terror.
There are traditions belonging to this ravine of armed robbers and assassinations—connected with obscure periods, it is true, but which are handed down in popular couplets, like the traditions connected with the forest of Bondy.
We will content ourselves by quoting the following, which, although poor enough in rhyme, is a product of the locality, and is not given as an example of poetry:—
A la Fontaine-Eau-Claire,Bois quand le jour est dans son clair."
The charming valley of Vauciennes crosses transversely that of la Fontaine-Eau-Claire, half a league farther on; this valley of Vauciennes leads to the mill of Walue à Coyolle, at the bottom of which winds a stream of liquid silver ending in the noted marsh where Moinat used to practise his skill on squirrels with M. Deviolaine.
The road descends here at a steep gradient and climbs up beyond at a still steeper slope. In frosty weather these two hills are the terror of drivers, who descend the one too quickly, and do not know how to ascend the other.
Yokes of oxen are stationed in the village on purpose to perform the office of haulers.
The summit of the second hill, from which Villers-Cotterets can be seen at about a league's distance, is crowned by a windmillbelonging to M. Picot, who owes, moreover, also part of the plain of Noue, of Coyolle, and of Largny.
This windmill plays an important rôle in the remainder of my story—for it will have been gathered that I have not described the road between Villers-Cotterets and Crespy (a road which would little interest my readers) for the mere love of description. The mill is totally isolated from all other dwelling-houses, it stands well above Vouffly, nearly three kilomètres from Largny, and a league from Villers-Cotterets.
This then was the road I followed, at as fast a trot as my baker's horse would permit, the highway of His Majesty King Louis XVIII. resounding heavily under its hoofs.
Towards about eight o'clock, I reached the neighbourhood of la Fontaine-Eau-Claire.
I have already pointed out that the weather was gloomy; the moon, in its first quarter, was shrouded in large clouds, which sped rapidly across the sky, ending off in flecks of greyish, foam-like scud.
I had money about me, I was unarmed, I was barely fifteen years old; the traditions of Fontaine-Eau-Claire were vividly present to my mind; therefore my heart was beating slightly.
Half-way down the hill I urged my horse into a trot, and, by the help of an oak branch that I had gathered in Tillet Wood, I succeeded in making him pass from a trot to a gallop.
I got past the dangerous place, themalo sitio, as they say in Spain, without accident, and, although it was behind me, I decided that I must still keep my steed to his gallop.
I was obliged, however, to slacken his pace down the steep and up the rising of Vauciennes; but I had hardly cleared the top of the hill, when I urged him into a gallop again by the help of a dig from my spur, and a couple of good lashes with my switch.
Everything round me seemed asleep. The landscape, steeped in darkness, was not even rendered less sombre by a light on the horizon or by a falling star; not even a dog bayed, a sound that would have indicated the presence, in theinvisible distance, of a farmhouse, which I knew was there, and which my eyes searched for in vain.
The windmill seemed asleep with the rest of nature; its sails were stiff and motionless, and looked like the arms of a skeleton raised to the heavens in a despairing attitude.
Only the trees along the roadside seemed alive; they twisted and groaned in the wind, which tore their leaves off roughly, sending them flying away down into the plain, like flocks of dark feathered birds.
Suddenly, my horse, which was keeping to the middle of the road and galloping fast, shied to one side so violently, and so unexpectedly, that he sent me spinning fifteen paces off across the road; then, instead of waiting for me, he went on his way at double speed, snorting noisily as he went.
I picked myself up, stunned by my fall, which might have been my death, if, instead of falling on the wet side paths, I had fallen on the paved road itself.
My first thought was to run after my horse, but he had already gone so far that I decided it would be quite useless. Then, curiosity overcame me to know what object had so terribly frightened him.
I rose and tottered into the roadway.
I had hardly gone four steps before I perceived a man laid right across the road. I thought he must be some drunken peasant, and, congratulating myself that my horse had not trodden on his body, I stooped to help him to get up.
I touched his hand: it was stiff and icy.
I stood up, looked all round me, and thought I could discern a human form creeping in the ditch some ten paces away.
Then it occurred to me that the motionless man had been assassinated, and that the moving figure was very likely his murderer.
I did not wait to push my inquiries any further. I leapt over the corpse, and I took the road to Villers-Cotterets at full speed, as my horse had done.
Without stopping, without turning round, breathless, I did the remaining league of my journey in about ten minutes'time, and I reached my mother's house panting, covered with mud and sweat, just as the baker had come to tell her that his horse had returned to its stable without me.
My mother was already terribly alarmed, but her alarm was greatly increased when she caught sight of me.
I took her aside and told her everything.
My mother recommended me not to say a single word of what I had seen.
She reflected that if it were really a murdered man, there would be an inquest, an inquiry at Soissons, assizes at Laon; I should be involved in the whole thing, and compelled to appear as witness at both inquiry and assizes; and it would mean expense and waste time, and annoyance.
My mother made the excuse that I was very tired, and went herself to take the answer I had brought for M. Mennesson from Maître Leroux, whilst I changed my clothes throughout. My underclothing was saturated with perspiration, my suit was covered with mud.
My mother's visit to M. Mennesson was a brief one. She was in haste to return to me, and to ask me fresh details.
The return of the horse without its rider was put down to an ordinary fall, and as there was nothing unusual in such an occurrence the baker's suspicions were not roused.
We spent half the night without closing our eyes. My mother and I still slept in the same room, and even our beds were in the same recess. She did not give over asking questions, and I did not weary of repeating the same details over and over again, so profound was the impression they had left upon me.
Towards one o'clock we fell asleep; but that did not prevent us from waking at seven in the morning.
The whole town was in a flutter.
A carter, from Villers-Cotterets, whom I had passed half-way from the hill of Vauciennes, had come across the corpse, had put it in his waggon, had brought it to the town, and had reported the occurrence to the authorities.
Who the assassin was and who the assassinated—Auguste Picot—Equality before the law—Last exploits of Marot—His execution.
Who the assassin was and who the assassinated—Auguste Picot—Equality before the law—Last exploits of Marot—His execution.
The body was taken to the hospital, where it was exposed to view, as neither the justice of peace, the mayor, nor the chief constable recognised it. I very naturally wished to go and see by daylight the object of my fears of the night before. My mother made me promise not to say a word, for she knew that if I promised I should keep my word.
The body was sheltered under a shed and laid on a table.
It was that of a young man of fifteen or sixteen years of age. He was dressed in a poor suit of blue cotton, and a coarse shirt torn open down to his waist, leaving his chest bare.
The wound that seemed to have caused his death was a transverse cut right across the skull, and it seemed to have been made by a blunt instrument.
His feet and his hands were bare. His feet looked like those of a man used to much walking; his hands were those of a working man.
Beyond these details he was, as I have said, completely unknown in our district.
Two days passed, during which everyone held forth upon the event at leisure; then, all at once, the rumour spread abroad that the assassin had been arrested.
He was a shepherd in M. Picot's employ.
And next we saw a crowd rushing to the corner of the rue de Largny, where a man wearing a blouse, and handcuffed, was being brought in between two mounted policemen, armed with swords.
His type of face was that of a Picardy peasant of the lowest class, coarse and cunning.
He was taken to the prison, and the gate shut after him; but the crowd continued to besiege the gate in spite of its being closed. It was far too exciting an event not to bring the whole town out. The magistrate began the inquiry, and in his first examination the accused man denied everything.
But terrible proofs were brought against him. Shepherds, as is known, sleep in log huts, near their sheep-folds. The hut of the accused, during the day in which the murder had taken place, and during the night following that on which the body had been discovered, had been only a couple of hundred paces or so from the highroad.
Traces of blood had been found under a wretched mattress on the straw which covered the floor of the hut.
Besides this, the mallet with which the accused drove in the stakes of his sheep-pens was blood-stained on one side, and it appeared to have been the tool with which the deadly blow had been delivered.
In spite of all these proofs, the accused man—whose name was Marot—as we have said, completely denied the charge, and the magistrate and his clerk left without being able to get anything out of him.
But, about eleven o'clock at night, he changed his mind, called the gaoler, Sylvestre, who was also verger to the church, and begged him to send for the magistrate, as he had a confession to make.
The magistrate sent word to his clerk, and both repaired to the accused's cell.
He did not refuse to speak this time; on the contrary, he had quite a long story to relate—the upshot being a charge of murder against his master, Auguste Picot.
The man had built up a clever fabrication in the solitude of his cell, by the help of which he hoped to drag into complicity with himself a man too influential to have any dealings with him. But Marot shall tell his own tale.
On the day of the murder, a young man was walking alongthe highroad, looking for work, when he perceived Marot on the plain, busied over changing his flock from one place to another. The young man left the highroad and came straight to the shepherd, just when the latter was driving in his last picket.
He told his miserable story; he said he had no money to buy himself bread, he had tramped through the town without a bite, too proud to beg alms; but, seeing Marot was a working man, he had ventured to come and ask a bit of bread from a fellow-labourer.
Marot had brought out of his hut some of the small, round, thick loaves, such as farmers distribute each morning to their day-labourers, and he shared the loaf with the tramp, who sat down by him.
They both leant back against the hut and began their breakfast, when suddenly—it is Marot who tells the tale—Auguste Picot came up on horseback at full gallop, and cried out roughly to his shepherd:
"You scoundrel, do you suppose I give you my bread to have it eaten by beggars and by vagabonds?"
The stranger was on the point of replying to excuse the shepherd, when Picot—so said his accuser—urged his horse on with such brutality that the youth was obliged to raise his stick, to prevent himself being kicked underfoot by the horse. At this movement in self-defence, Picot's horse wheeled round, kicked out with his hind feet, and hit the youth in the chest with one of his hoofs.
The youth fell down unconscious.
Picot then, seeing he had become an unintentional murderer, decided to become one in intention: he turned an accident he was anxious to hide into a crime. He looked round him, he saw on the ground the mallet with which Marot had just been driving in the pickets of his fold, and then (please understand thoroughly that this version is not mine, but the accused's) he dealt him a violent blow on the back of his head, finishing off the wretched tramp, who had only fainted before.
Death was almost instantaneous.
Then he offered all sort of bribes to the shepherd if he would help him to conceal the crime.
The shepherd had been weak enough to be touched by his master's entreaties: he consented to conceal the body in his hut.
Hence the blood-stains on the straw and mattress.
When evening came, Picot returned to the hut to take the dead body, under cover of darkness, to the windmill, of which he possessed the key.
The two accomplices intended to go in, shut the door upon themselves and the body, dig a pit and there bury the unfortunate tramp.
But, as they were crossing the road, they were alarmed by the sound of a horse coming at full gallop; they let the body fall out of their hands, and both ran off to hide themselves.
They returned ten minutes later; but the waggoner with his cart appeared on the top of the hill of Vauriennes, and they were obliged again to abandon their ghastly work.
The waggoner had taken up the corpse and had carried it, as we have seen, to Villers-Cotterets. All hope of hiding the crime had gone, and all their thoughts had to be given to attending to their own safety.
Marot had been captured and had at first attempted to deny the charge; but, on reflection, he preferred to confess his passive part in the crime than to risk his life by a complete denial of all complicity in it.
We shall soon see that the fable was sufficiently skilfully conceived to necessitate the arrest of Picot, even if it did not carry conviction to the judge's mind.
So, when morning came, everybody heard of the shepherd's accusation and of his master's arrest.
The news made a great stir: Picot was not liked; he was a rich and good-looking young fellow, strong in physique, haughty in his manner—all qualities and defects which are fatal to popularity in a small town.
As a matter of fact, Picot had never done an injury to anyone. But, alas! at the first news of the misfortune that had befallen him, half the town sided against him.
The Picot family were cursed with ill luck, and the Almighty made them pay very dear for the wealth He bestowed upon them.
Four years previously Stanislas Picot, it will be remembered, was killed when out shooting. Two years before, the farm had been burnt down, and now to-day the eldest son was accused of murder.
The inquiry was actively pursued, and it was decided that a visit should be paid on the following day to the spot where the murder had taken place: the Government prosecutor had arrived from Soissons.
I shall always recollect the terrible effect the sight of that procession made upon me, as it crossed the great square. The town authorities marched at its head, with the representative of the king; next came Picot between two rows of police, some before, others behind him; then the shepherd between two more rows of police placed in the same way; after these the whole town either followed the procession or stood at their doors and windows.
They all walked fast, for it rained. People talked of equality in the eye of the law, and the justices had thought to carry out this precept by placing the two men on foot each exactly the same, with an equal number of police to guard them.
But they had forgotten the different impression this would make on two such different natures, the one belonging to the head and the other to the foot of the social ladder.
Most assuredly the man at the top of the scale suffered all the tortures of the situation.
The other man was almost triumphant; he had by a few words dragged down to the same level as himself a man who had been far higher in the social scale only a week before, a man whose bread he had eaten, whose paid servant he was, and before whom he never spoke save cap in hand.
So a debased light of exultant satisfaction radiated from the man's low countenance.
Besides, he had the sympathies of the men of his own class, who looked upon him as a victim, and even of some enviously disposed people of higher ranks in life.
Picot's expression was quite unmoved, although one could realise the fury, shame, and pride that were raging tumultuously in that massive frame.
No! Justice was not evenly dealt out to these two men, in the very fact of their being treated alike.
Next day there was another ceremony quite as lugubrious—they proceeded to exhume the body.
Most discussion took place over the bruised wound in the youth's chest. The shepherd contended that it had been caused by the horse's kick. Picot retorted that if it had been bruised by a kick from a horse and from one leg only, violent enough to make him faint away, the marks of the shoe would be imprinted on the chest, which, although bruised, was more probably marked by the clogs of the shepherd than by the horse's shoe. They were both sent to the prison at Soissons, and at the end of a month Picot was given his liberty on the grounds of there being insufficient evidence against him.
He returned to his people; but the blow had been violent enough to spoil his future life. He had been proud before, but now he became misanthropic; he shut himself up on his property at home, avoided all assemblies of young people of his own age, and ended by marrying the daughter of a policeman, who had been his mistress for some time.
Doubtless—as there is compensation in the end for all unmerited misfortune—Providence had led him by dark paths into simpler and happier ways. He had one real joy,—perhaps the deepest joy of this world,—his father and his poor mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, died near him at an extreme old age.
The shepherd was sentenced to twelve or fifteen years' imprisonment, I think, forhaving stolen the clothes found on a dead man.
A strange sentence, which established the fact that a crime had been committed without pointing out a culprit!
And here are some further details that I received after the trial.
The young man whom I found assassinated on the 13thSeptember 1816 was called Félix-Adolphe-Joseph Billaudet; he was the son of François-Xavier-Léger Billaudet, court-crier to thetribunal de première instancein the arrondissement of Strasbourg; he was born at Strasbourg on the 1st April 1801, and was therefore, at the time of his death, fifteen years, six months, and twelve days old.
He was servant to M. Maréchal, forest inspector at Vervins, and had a passport upon him, at the time of his assassination, for Paris, signed at Vervins, 8th September 1816.
Probably the father and the mother of the poor lad are now dead, and I am perhaps the only person in the world who still remembers him, in thus going back to the days of my youth.
When Marot came out of prison, he returned to the country, and at first settled as a butcher in the village of Vivières. Then it seems things went badly with him, and he went to a little hamlet called Chelles, situated two or three leagues from Villers-Cotterets.
Some time after this change of residence, his wife died under mysterious and strange circumstances. While she was drawing water from a well, she leant against the pulley support, which broke; she was precipitated thirty feet deep into the well, where she was drowned.
Her death was regarded at the time as an accident.
Some time after that death, the body of a young carter was found buried only one or two feet deep, between Vivières and Chelles; he appeared to have been murdered by a pistol-shot, fired point blank in his back.
Some inquiry was set up, but no assassin or assassins could be traced.
Finally, some time after, Marot himself went before the magistrate to make a declaration concerning a new event that had just happened. A young glass-painter, who had come to ask hospitality of him, lacking the money needed for a stay at the inn (a request to which he had generously acceded), had died during the night of an attack of colic in the barn, where he had been given a truss of straw to lie on.
The young painter was duly buried.
Some days after, Marot's fowls were found dead in neighbouring yards and gardens.
They seemed to have been poisoned.
These facts were put together, and suspicions began to be aroused.
Marot was arrested. His own child gave evidence against him, and brought about his conviction.
The young painter had been poisoned by some soup into which Marot had put arsenic.
The young man complained that the soup had a queer taste; Marot's son took a spoonful, tasted it, and agreed with the painter.
"The soup," Marot replied, "tastes queer because it is made of pig's head. As for you, you greedy boy," he added, addressing this remark particularly to his son, "eat your own soup, and let this boy eat his—each dog has his platter."
But the taste of the soup was so acrid that the young painter left half of it. The rest was thrown on the dungheap; the fowls ate it, and, driven by pain, they scattered to right and left, their death revealing the fact of the poisoning.
The charges brought against Marot were this time too strong for him to deny them.
And, seeing there was no hope of salvation from the consequences of his latest crime, he confessed all the others.
He confessed that he had killed Billaudet, to steal some six or eight francs there were on him.
He confessed he had filed the screw that held the pulley, so that his wife, who was about to add to his family, should be flung into the well, wherein she was killed, either by the fall or by drowning.
He confessed he had shot the young carter whose body had been found between Chelles and Vivières point blank with a pistol, in order to rob him of thirty francs he had just received.
Finally, he confessed he had poisoned the young glass-painter, by putting arsenic in his plate, in order to steal twelve francs from him.
Marot was condemned to death, and executed at Beauvais in 1828 or 1829.
Spring at Villers-Cotterets—Whitsuntide—The Abbé Grégoire invites me to dance with his niece—Red books—The Chevalier de Faublas—Laurence and Vittoria—A dandy of 1818.
Spring at Villers-Cotterets—Whitsuntide—The Abbé Grégoire invites me to dance with his niece—Red books—The Chevalier de Faublas—Laurence and Vittoria—A dandy of 1818.
"O youth! springtime of life! O spring! youth of the year!" So said Metastasio.
We have now reached the beginning of May 1818, and I should be sixteen in the month of July.
The month of May, the favourite month of the year, which is abundant in beauty and in promise everywhere, is even more beautiful and resplendent at Villers-Cotterets than anywhere else.
It is difficult to form any idea of what that fine park was like at that epoch of time and at that season of the year: my heart still mourns because of the order for its destruction given by Louis-Philippe.
The park was simple and yet great in its design. Two splendid stretches of grass—rather longer than they were broad—were attached like two wings to the immense Castle which overlooked the green sward: one end touched the Castle walls, and the other joined two avenues of gigantic Spanish chestnut trees, which first formed laterally the two sides of a great square, then approached one another diagonally till they nearly met, then continued right out of sight, leaving between their two lines a large open space until within a league of the mountain of Vivières, which stood out on the distant horizon, with its crumbling red sides tufted with yellow blossoming gorse.
It was all lifeless, sad, lonely, and silent in winter; the birds had migrated to more cheerful climes; only the rooks' nests remained, sole and persistent proprietors of the highesttrees about that magnificent domain. It seemed as though hordes of savages had spoiled the grounds and laid waste the forests.
This state of desolation lasted four months of the year; but with the beginning of April the grass began to spring up, braving the hoar frost, which spread a silvery carpet over it every morning; the buds of the trees, which had looked so bare, so desolate, so dead, began to put on their velvety down. The sleeping birds—(where do birds sleep? we know nothing about them;—) wake up, hop about among the branches, and soon begin building their nests. Thence, each day of the month and every hour of the day brings its own changes, as part of Nature's great awakening. Chestnuts, limes, and beeches are the spring's advance guard. Daisies star the lawn; buttercups glow richly; and grasshoppers chirp in the long grass. Butterflies, flying flowers that blow in the air, come and kiss the flowers of earth. Pretty children come out of the town in their white frocks and their pink ribbons, and play on the grass: everything moves, and revives, and lives. Spring comes with the first breath of May, and we think we feel her touch as she passes in the morning mists, shaking her rose-filled hair and reviving the world with her sweet-scented breath.
It was at this joyous time of renaissance that our town held it's feast—a feast ever lavish and charming, for Nature took upon herself to defray its costs.
The feast, as I believe I have already said, lasted three days, and fell at Whitsuntide.
For three days the park was filled with pleasant sounds and happy murmurs, which began at early morning and did not die away until far on in the night. For three days the poor forgot their misery, and, much more extraordinary still, the rich forgot their riches. The whole town was gathered together in the park as one great family, and, as this family invited all its branches, relations, friends, acquaintances, the population increased fourfold. People came from la Ferté-Milon, from Crespy, from Soissons, from Château-Thierry, from Compiègne, from Paris! Every place in the coaches was booked for fifteendays in advance: and all kinds of other means of transport were devised; horses, cabs, tilburys, postcarts arrived and jostled each other in the only two hotels of the district, theDauphinand theBoule d'Or.For three days the little town was like a body over full of blood, whose heart was beating ten times as fast as it should. But on the Wednesday it began to part with its surplus, which gradually dwindled away during the following days, until everything little by little resumed its ordinary aspect again. The large woods, which had been disturbed for three days even in their thickest depths, recovered their silence and their solitude once more: the chestnuts again became inhabited by birds, which, flying in and out among their branches, scattered a snow of flowers. Finally, the sward, which had been trodden underfoot and despoiled of its flowers, sprang up again by degrees, under the sun's influence, and once more offered a second harvest of daisies and buttercups to the devastating hands of children.
Two strangers came to the pleasant feast of Whitsuntide, this particular year.
One was a niece of the Abbé Grégoire, named Laurence—I have forgotten her surname.
The other was a friend of hers. She made out that she was of Spanish extraction, and was called Vittoria.