Image not available: A YOUNG GIRL SUDDENLY EMERGED FROM THE UNDERWOODA YOUNG GIRL SUDDENLY EMERGED FROM THE UNDERWOOD
As he was on the point of doing this, a young girl suddenly emerged from the underwood, threw herself on her knees beside the horse, and lifting her large, beautiful eyes, all wet with tears, to the Baron, cried:
“In the name of the God of mercy, my Lord, have pity on that man!”
The Lord of Vez looked down at the young girl. She was indeed a lovely child; hardly sixteen years of age, of a slender and exquisite figure, with a pink and white complexion, large blue eyes, soft and tender in expression, and a crown of fair hair, which fell in luxuriant waves over neck and shoulders, escaping from underneath the shabby little grey linen cap, which endeavoured in vain to imprison them.
All this the Baron took in with a glance, in spite of the humble clothing of the beautiful suppliant, and as he had no dislike to a pretty face, he smiled down on the charming young peasant girl, in response to the pleading of her eloquent eyes.
But, as he looked without speaking, and all the while the blows were still falling, she cried again, with a voice and gesture of even more earnest supplication.
“Have pity, in the name of Heaven, my Lord! Tell your servants to let the poor man go, his cries pierce my heart.”
“Ten thousand fiends!” cried the Grand Master; “you take a great interest in that rascal over there, my pretty child. Is he your brother?”
“No, my Lord.”
“Your cousin?”
“No, my Lord.”
“Your lover?”
“My lover! My Lord is laughing at me.”
“Why not? If it were so, my sweet girl, I must confess I should envy him his lot.”
The girl lowered her eyes.
“I do not know him, my Lord, and have never seen him before to-day.”
“Without counting that now she only sees him wrong side before,” Engoulevent ventured to put in, thinking that it was a suitable moment for a little pleasantry.
“Silence, sirrah!” said the Baron sternly. Then, once more turning to the girl with a smile.
“Really!” he said. “Well, if he is neither a relation nor a lover, I should like to see how far your love for your neighbour will let you go. Come, a bargain, pretty girl!”
“How, my Lord?”
“Grace for that scoundrel in return for a kiss.”
“Oh! with all my heart!” cried the young girl. “Save the life of a man with a kiss! I am sure that our goodCuréhimself would say there was no sin in that.”
And without waiting for the Baron to stoop and take himself what he had asked for, she threw off her wooden-shoe, placed her dainty little foot on the tip of the wolf-hunter’s boot, and taking hold of the horse’s mane, lifted herself up with a spring to the level of the face of the hardy huntsman, and there of her own accord offered him her round cheek, fresh, and velvety as the down of an August peach.
The Lord of Vez had bargained for one kiss, but he took two; then, true to his sworn word, he made a sign to Marcotte to stay the execution.
Marcotte was religiously counting his strokes; the twelfth was about to descend when he received the order to stop, and he did not think it expedient to stay it from falling. It is possible that he also thought it would be as well to give it the weight of two ordinary blows, so as to make up good measure and give a thirteenth in; however that may be, it is certain that it furrowed Thibault’s shoulders more cruelly than those that went before. It must be added, however, that he was unbound immediately after.
Meanwhile the Baron was conversing with the young girl.
“What is your name, my pretty one?”
“Georgine Agnelette, my Lord, my mother’s name! but the country people are content to call me simply Agnelette.”
“Ah, that’s an unlucky name, my child,” said the Baron.
“In what way my Lord?” asked the girl.
“Because it makes you a prey for the wolf, my beauty. And from what part of the country do you come, Agnelette?”
“From Préciamont, my Lord.”
“And you come alone like this into the forest, my child? that’s brave for a lambkin.”
“I am obliged to do it, my Lord, for my mother and I have three goats to feed.”
“So you come here to get grass for them?”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“And you are not afraid, young and pretty as you are?”
“Sometimes, my Lord, I cannot help trembling.”
“And why do you tremble?”
“Well, my Lord, I hear so many tales, during the winter evenings, about were-wolves, that when I find myself all alone among the trees, and can hear no sound but the west wind, and the branches creaking as it blows through them, I feel a kind of shiver run through me, and my hair seems to stand on end; but when I hear your hunting horn and the dogs crying, then I feel at once quite safe again.”
The Baron was pleased beyond measure with this reply of the girl’s, and stroking his beard complaisantly, he said:
“Well, we give Master Wolf a pretty rough time of it; but, there is a way, my pretty one, whereby you may spare yourself all these fears and tremblings.”
“And how, my Lord?”
“Come in future to the Castle of Vez; no were-wolf, or any other kind of wolf, has ever crossed the moat there, except when slung by a cord on to a hazel-pole.”
Agnelette shook her head.
“You would not like to come? and why not?”
“Because I should find something worse there than the wolf.”
On hearing this, the Baron broke into a hearty fit of laughter, and, seeing their Master laugh, all the huntsmen followed suit and joined in the chorus. The fact was, that the sight of Agnelette had entirely restored the good humour of the Lord of Vez, and he would, no doubt, have continued for some time laughing and talking with Agnelette, if Marcotte, who had been recalling the dogs, and coupling them, had not respectfully reminded my Lord that they had some distance to go on their way back to the Castle. The Baron made a playful gesture of menace with his finger to the girl, and rode off followed by his train.
Agnelette was left alone with Thibault. We have related what Agnelette had done for Thibault’s sake, and also said that she was pretty.
Nevertheless, for all that, Thibault’s first thoughts on finding himself alone with the girl, were not for the one who had saved his life, but were given up to hatred and the contemplation of vengeance.
Thibault, as you see, had, since the morning, been making rapid strides along the path of evil.
“Ah! if the devil will but hear my prayer this time,” he cried, as he shook his fist, cursing the while, after the retiring huntsmen, who were just out of view, “if the devil will but hear me, you shall be paid back with usury for all you have made me suffer this day, that I swear.”
“Oh, how wicked it is of you to behave like that!” said Agnelette, going up to him. “The Baron is a kind Lord, very good to the poor, and always gently behaved with women.”
“Quite so, and you shall see with what gratitude I will repay him for the blows he has given me.”
“Come now, frankly, friend, confess that you deserved those blows,” said the girl, laughing.
“So, so!” answered Thibault, “the Baron’s kiss has turned your head, has it, my pretty Agnelette?”
“You, I should have thought, would have been the last person to reproach me with that kiss, Monsieur Thibault. But what I have said, I say again; my Lord Baron was within his rights.”
“What, in belabouring me with blows!”
“Well, why do you go hunting on the estates of these great lords?”
“Does not the game belong to everybody, to the peasant just as much as to the great lords?”
“No, certainly not; the game is in their woods, it is fed on their grass, and you have no right to throw your boar-spear at a buck which belongs to my lord the Duke of Orleans.”
“And who told you that I threw a boar-spear at his buck?” replied Thibault, advancing towards Agnelette in an almost threatening manner.
“Who told me? why, my own eyes, which, let me tell you, do not lie. Yes, I saw you throw your boar-spear, when you were hidden there, behind the beech-tree.”
Thibault’s anger subsided at once before the straightforward attitude of the girl, whose truthfulness was in such contrast to his falsehood.
“Well, after all,” he said, “supposing a poor devil does once in a way help himself to a good dinner from the super-abundanceof some great lord! Are you of the same mind, Mademoiselle Agnelette, as the judges who say that a man ought to be hanged just for a wretched rabbit? Come now, do you think God created that buck for the Baron more than for me?”
“God, Monsieur Thibault, has told us not to covet other men’s goods; obey the law of God, and you will not find yourself any the worse off for it!”
“Ah, I see, my pretty Agnelette, you know me then, since you call me so glibly by my name?”
“Certainly I do; I remember seeing you at Boursonnes, on the day of the fête; they called you the beautiful dancer, and stood round in a circle to watch you.”
Thibault, pleased with this compliment, was now quite disarmed.
“Yes, yes, of course,” he answered, “I remember now having seen you; and I think we danced together, did we not? but you were not so tall then as you are now, that’s why I did not recognise you at first, but I recall you distinctly now. And I remember too that you wore a pink frock, with a pretty little white bodice, and that we danced in the dairy. I wanted to kiss you, but you would not let me, for you said that it was only proper to kiss one’s vis-á-vis, and not one’s partner.”
“You have a good memory, Monsieur Thibault!”
“And do you know, Agnelette, that during these last twelve months, for it is a year since that dance, you have not only grown taller, but grown prettier too; I see you are one of those people who understand how to do two things at once.”
The girl blushed and lowered her eyes, and the blush and the shy embarrassment only made her look more charming still.
Thibault’s eyes were now turned towards her with more marked attention than before, and, in a voice, not wholly free from a slight agitation, he asked:
“Have you a lover, Agnelette?”
“No, Monsieur Thibault,” she answered, “I have never had one, and do not wish to have one.”
“And why is that? Is Cupid such a bad lad that you are afraid of him?”
“No, not that, but a lover is not at all what I want.”
“And what do you want?”
“A husband.”
Thibault made a movement, which Agnelette either did not, or pretended not to see.
“Yes,” she repeated, “a husband. Grandmother is old and infirm, and a lover would distract my attention too much from the care which I now give her; whereas, a husband, if I found a nice fellow who would like to marry me,—a husband would help me to look after her in her old age, and would share with me the task which God has laid upon me, of making her happy and comfortable in her last years.”
“But do you think your husband,” said Thibault, “would be willing that you should love your grandmother more than you loved him? and do you not think he might be jealous at seeing you lavish so much tenderness upon her?”
“Oh,” replied Agnelette, with an adorable smile, “there is no fear of that, for I will manage so as to let him have such a large share of my love and attention that he will have no cause to complain; the kinder and the more patient he is for the dear old thing, the more I shall devote myself to him, the harder shall I work that there may be nothing wanting to our little household. You see me looking small and delicate, and you doubt that I should have strength for this; but I have plenty of spirit and energy for work, and then, when the heart gives consent, one can work day and night without fatigue. Oh! how I should love the man who loved my grandmother! I promise you, that she, and my husband, and I, we should be three happy folks together.”
“You mean that you would be three very poor folks together, Agnelette!”
“And do you think the loves and friendships of the rich are worth a farthing more than those of the poor? At times, when I have been loving and caressing my grandmother, Monsieur Thibault, and she takes me on her lap and clasps me in her poor weak trembling arms, and puts her dear old wrinkled face against mine, and I feel my cheek wet with the loving tears she sheds, I begin to cry myself, and, I tell you, Monsieur Thibault, so soft and sweet are my tears, that there is no woman or girl, be she queen or princess, who has ever, I am sure, even in her happiest days, known such a real joy as mine. And, yet, there is no one in all the country round who is so destitute as we two are.”
Thibault listened to what Agnelette wassaying without answering; his mind was occupied with many thoughts, such thoughts as are indulged in by the ambitious; but his dreams of ambition were disturbed at moments by a passing sensation of depression and disillusionment.
He, the man who had spent hours at a time watching the beautiful and aristocratic dames belonging to the Court of the Duke of Orleans, as they swept up and down the wide entrance stairs; who had often passed whole nights gazing at the arched windows of the Keep at Vez, when the whole place was lit up for some festivity, he, that same man, now asked himself, if what he had so ambitiously desired to have, a lady of rank and a rich dwelling, would, after all, be so much worth possessing as a thatched roof and this sweet and gentle girl called Agnelette. And it was certain that if this dear and charming little woman were to become his, that he would be envied in turn by all the earls and barons in the countryside.
“Well, Agnelette,” said Thibault “and suppose a man like myself were to offer himself as your husband, would you accept him?”
It has been already stated that Thibault was a handsome young fellow, with fine eyes and black hair, and that his travels had left him something better than a mere workman. And it must further be borne in mind that we readily become attached to those on whom we have conferred a benefit, and Agnelette had, in all probability, saved Thibault’s life; for, under such strokes as Marcotte’s, the victim would certainly have been dead before the thirty-sixth had been given.
“Yes,” she said, “if it would be a good thing for my grandmother?”
Thibault took hold of her hand.
“Well then, Agnelette,” he said “we will speak again about this, dear child, and that as soon as may be.”
“Whenever you like, Monsieur Thibault.”
“And you will promise faithfully to love me if I marry you, Agnelette?”
“Do you think I should love any man besides my husband?”
“Never mind, I want you just to take a little oath, something of this kind, for instance; Monsieur Thibault, I swear that I will never love anyone but you.”
“What need is there to swear? the promise of an honest girl should be sufficient for an honest man.”
“And when shall we have the wedding, Agnelette?” and in saying this, Thibault tried to put his arm round her waist.
But Agnelette gently disengaged herself.
“Come and see my grandmother,” she said, “it is for her to decide about it; you must content yourself this evening with helping me up with my load of heath, for it is getting late, and it is nearly three miles from here to Préciamont.”
So Thibault helped her as desired, and then accompanied her on her way home as far as the Forest-fence of Billemont, that is until they came in sight of the village steeple. Before parting, he so begged of pretty Agnelette to give him one kiss as an earnest of his future happiness, that at last she consented, and then, far more agitated by this one kiss than she had been by the Baron’s double embrace, Agnelette hastened on her way, in spite of the load which she was carrying on her head, and which seemed far too heavy for so slender and delicate a creature.
Thibault stood for some time looking after her as she walked away across the moor. All the flexibility and grace of her youthful figure were brought into relief as the girl lifted her pretty rounded arms to support the burden upon her head, and thus silhouetted against the dark blue of the sky she made a delightful picture. At last, having reached the outskirts of the village, the land dipping at that point, she suddenly disappeared, passing out of sight of Thibault’s admiring eyes. He gave a sigh, and stood still, plunged in thought; but it was not the satisfaction of thinking that this sweet and good young creature might one day be his that had caused his sigh. Quite the contrary; he had wished for Agnelette, because Agnelette was young and pretty, and because it was part of his unfortunate disposition to long for everything that belonged or might belong to another. His desire to possess Agnelette had been quickened by the innocent frankness with which she had talked to him; but it had been a matter of fancy rather than of any deeper feeling, of the mind, and not of the heart. For Thibault was incapable of loving as a man ought to love, who, being poor himself, loves a poor girl; in such a case thereshould be no thought, no ambition on his part beyond the wish that his love may be returned. But it was not so with Thibault; on the contrary, I repeat, the farther he walked away from Agnelette, leaving it would seem his good genius farther behind him with every step, the more urgently did his envious longings begin again as usual to torment his soul. It was dark when he reached home.
THIBAULT’Sfirst thought was to get himself some supper, for he was terribly tired. The past day had been an eventful one for him, and certain things which had happened to him had evidently been calculated to produce a craving for food. The supper, it must be said, was not quite such a savoury one as he had promised himself, when starting to kill the buck; but the animal, as we know, had not been killed by Thibault, and the ferocious hunger which now consumed him made his black bread taste almost as delicious as venison.
He had hardly, however, begun his frugal repast, when he became conscious that his goat—of which I think we have already spoken—was uttering the most plaintive bleatings. Thinking that she, too, was in want of her supper, he went into the lean-to for some fresh grass, which he then carried to her, but as he opened the little door of the shed, out she rushed with such precipitancy that she nearly knocked Thibault over, and without stopping to take the provender he had brought her, ran towards the house. Thibault threw down the bundle of grass and went after her, with the intention of re-installing her in her proper place; but he found that this was more than he was able to do. He had to use all his force to get her along, for the goat, with all the strength of which a beast of her kind is capable, resisted all his efforts to drag her back by the horns, arching her back, and stubbornly refusing to move. At last, however, being vanquished in the struggle, it ended by the goat being once more shut up in her shed, but, in spite of the plentiful supper which Thibault left her with, she continued to utter the most lamentable cries. Perplexed, and cross at the same time, the shoe-maker again rose from his supper and went to the shed, this time opening the door so cautiously that the goat could not escape. Once inside he began feeling about with his hands in all the nooks and corners to try and discover the cause of her alarm. Suddenly his fingers came in contact with the warm, thick coat of some other animal. Thibault was not a coward, far from it, none the less, he drew back hastily. He returned to the house and got a light, but it almost fell from his hand, when, on re-entering the shed, he recognised in the animal that had so frightened the goat, the buck of the Lord of Vez; the same buck that he had followed, had failed to kill, that he had prayed for in the devil’s name, if he could not have it in God’s; the same that had thrown the hounds out; the very same in short which had cost him such hard blows. Thibault, after assuring himself that the door was fastened, went gently up to the animal; the poor thing was either so tired, or so tame, that it did not make the slightest attempt to move, but merely gazed out at Thibault with its large dark velvety eyes, rendered more appealing than ever by the fear which agitated it.
“I must have left the door open,” muttered the shoe-maker to himself, “and the creature, not knowing where to hide itself, must have taken refuge here.” But on thinking further over the matter, it came back to him that when he had gone to open the door, only ten minutes before, for the first time, he had found the wooden bolt pushed so firmly into the staple that he had had to get a stone to hammer it back; and then, besides, the goat, which, as we have seen, did not at all relish the society of the new-comer, would certainly have run out of the shed before, if the door had been open. What was, however, still more surprising was that Thibault, looking more closely at the buck, saw that it had been fastened up to the rack by a cord.
Thibault, as we have said, was no coward, but now a cold sweat began to break out in large drops on his brow, acurious kind of a shiver ran through his body, and his teeth chattered violently. He went out of the shed, shutting the door after him, and began looking for his goat, which had taken advantage of the moment when the shoe-maker had gone to fetch a light, and ran again into the house, where she was now lying beside the hearth, having evidently quite made up her mind this time not to forsake a resting place, which, for that night at least, she found preferable to her usual abode.
Thibault had a perfect remembrance of the unholy invocation he had addressed to Satan, and although his prayer had been miraculously answered, he still could not bring himself to believe that there was any diabolic intervention in the matter.
As the idea, however, of being under the protection of the spirit of darkness filled him with an instinctive fear, he tried to pray; but when he wished to raise his hand to make the sign of the cross on his forehead, his arm refused to bend, and although up to that time he had never missed a day saying hisAve Maria, he could not remember a single word of it.
These fruitless efforts were accompanied by a terrible turmoil in poor Thibault’s brain; evil thoughts came rushing in upon him, and he seemed to hear them whispering all around him, as one hears the murmur of the rising tide, or the laughing of the winter wind through the leafless branches of the trees.
“After all,” he muttered to himself, as he sat pale, and staring before him, “the buck is a fine windfall, whether it comes from God or the Devil, and I should be a fool not to profit by it. If I am afraid of it as being food sent from the nether regions, I am in no way forced to eat it, and what is more, I could not eat it alone, and if I asked anyone to partake of it with me, I should be betrayed; the best thing I can do is to take the live beast over to the Nunnery of Saint-Rémy, where it will serve as a pet for the Nuns and where the Abbess will give me a good round sum for it. The atmosphere of that holy place will drive the evil out of it, and I shall run no risk to my soul in taking a handful of consecrated crown pieces.
“What days of sweating over my work, and turning my auger, it would take, to earn even the quarter of what I shall get by just leading the beast to its new fold! The devil who helps one is certainly better worth than the angel who forsakes one. If my lord Satan wants to go too far with me, it will then be time enough to free myself from his claws: bless me! I am not a child, nor a young lamb like Georgine, and I am able to walk straight in front of me and go where I like.” He had forgotten, unhappy man, as he boasted of being able to go where and how he liked, that only five minutes before he had tried in vain to lift his hand to his head.
Thibault had such convincing and excellent reasons ready to hand, that he quite made up his mind to keep the buck, come whence it might, and even went so far as to decide that the money he received for it should be devoted to buying a wedding dress for his betrothed. For, strange to say, by some freak of memory, his thoughts would keep returning towards Agnelette; and he seemed to see her clad in a long white dress with a crown of white lilies on her head and a long veil. If, he said to himself, he could have such a charming guardian angel in his house, no devil, however strong and cunning he might be, would ever dare to cross the threshold. “So,” he went on, “there is always that remedy at hand, and if my lord Satan begins to be too troublesome, I shall be off to the grandmother to ask for Agnelette; I shall marry her, and if I cannot remember my prayers or am unable to make the sign of the cross, there will be a dear pretty little woman, who has had no traffic with Satan, who will do all that sort of thing for me.”
Having more or less re-assured himself with the idea of this compromise, Thibault, in order that the buck should not run down in value, and might be as fine an animal as possible to offer to the holy ladies, to whom he calculated to sell it, went and filled the rack with fodder and looked to see that the litter was soft and thick enough for the buck to rest fully at its ease. The remainder of the night passed without further incident, and without even a bad dream.
The next morning, my lord Baron again went hunting, but this time it was not a timid deer that headed the hounds, but the wolf which Marcotte had tracked the day before and had again that morning traced to his lair.
And this wolf was a genuine wolf, and no mistake; it must have seen many and many a year, although those who had that morning caught sight of it while onits track, had noted with astonishment that it was black all over. Black or grey, however, it was a bold and enterprising beast, and promised some rough work to the Baron and his huntsmen. First started near Vertefeuille, in the Dargent covert, it had made over the plain of Meutard, leaving Fleury and Dampleux to the left, crossed the road to Ferté-Milou, and finally begun to run cunning in the Ivors coppices. Then, instead of continuing in the same direction, it doubled, returning along the same track it had come, and so exactly retracing its own steps, that the Baron, as he galloped along, could actually distinguish the prints left by his horse’s hoofs that same morning.
Back again in the district of Bourg-Fontaine, he ranged the country, leading the hunt right to the very spot where the mis-adventures of the previous day had had their start, the vicinity of the shoe-maker’s hut.
Thibault, we know, had made up his mind what to do in regard to certain matters, and as he intended going over to see Agnelette in the evening, he had started work early.
You will naturally ask why, instead of sitting down to a work which brought in so little, as he himself acknowledged, Thibault did not start off at once to take his buck to the ladies of Saint-Rémy. Thibault took very good care to do nothing of the sort; the day was not the time to be leading a buck through the forest of Villers-Cotterets; the first keeper he met would have stopped him, and what explanation could he have given? No, Thibault had arranged in his own mind to leave home one evening about dusk, to follow the road to the right, then go down the sandpit lane which led into the Chemin du Pendu, and he would then be on the common of Saint-Rémy, only a hundred paces or so from the Convent.
Thibault no sooner caught the first sound of the horn and the dogs, than he immediately gathered together a huge bundle of dried heather, which he hastily piled up in front of the shed, where his prisoner was confined, so as to hide the door, in case the huntsmen and their master should halt in front of his hut, as they had the day before. He then sat down again to his work, applying to it an energy unknown even to himself before, bending over the shoe he was making with an intentness which prevented him from even lifting his eyes. All at once he thought he detected a sound like something scratching at the door; he was just going through from his lean-to to open it when the door fell back, and to Thibault’s great astonishment an immense black wolf entered the room, walking on its hind legs. On reaching the middle of the floor, it sat down after the fashion of wolves, and looked hard and fixedly at the sabot-maker.
Thibault seized a hatchet which was within reach, and in order to give a fit reception to his strange visitor, and to terrify him, he flourished the weapon above his head.
A curious mocking expression passed over the face of the wolf, and then it began to laugh.
It was the first time that Thibault had ever heard a wolf laugh. He had often heard tell that wolves barked like dogs, but never that they laughed like human beings. And what a laugh it was! If a man had laughed such a laugh, Thibault would verily and indeed have been scared out of his wits.
He brought his lifted arm down again.
“By my lord of the cloven foot,” said the wolf, in a full and sonorous voice, “you are a fine fellow! At your request, I send you the finest buck from His Royal Highness’s forests, and in return, you want to split my head open with your hatchet; human gratitude is worthy to rank with that of wolves.” On hearing a voice exactly like his own coming forth from a beast’s mouth, Thibault’s knees began to shake under him, and the hatchet fell out of his hand.
“Now then,” continued the wolf, “let us be sensible and talk together like two good friends. Yesterday you wanted the Baron’s buck, and I led it myself into your shed, and for fear it should escape, I tied it up myself to the rack. And for all this you take your hatchet to me!”
“How should I know who you were?” asked Thibault.
“I see, you did not recognise me! A nice sort of excuse to give.”
“Well, I ask you, was it likely I should take you for a friend under that ugly coat?”
“Ugly coat, indeed!” said the wolf, licking his fur with a long tongue as red as blood. “Confound you! You are hard to please. However, it’s not a matter of my coat; what I want to know is,are you willing to make me some return for the service I have done you?”
“Certainly,” said the shoe-maker, feeling rather uncomfortable! “but I ought to know what your demands are. What is it? What do you want? Speak!”
“First of all, and above all things, I should like a glass of water, for those confounded dogs have run me until I am out of breath.”
“You shall have it in a moment, my lord wolf.”
And Thibault ran and fetched a bowl of fresh, clear water from a brook which ran some ten paces from the hut. The eager readiness with which he complied with the wolf’s request betrayed his feeling of relief at getting out of the bargain so cheaply.
As he placed the bowl in front of the wolf, he made the animal a low bow. The wolf lapped up the contents with evident delight, and then stretched himself on the floor with his paws straight out in front of him, looking like a sphinx.
“Now,” he said, “listen to me.”
“There is something else you wish me to do,” asked Thibault, inwardly quaking.
“Yes, a very urgent something,” replied the wolf. “Do you hear the baying of the dogs?”
“Indeed I do, they are coming nearer and nearer, and in five minutes they will be here.”
“And what I want you to do is to get me out of their way.”
“Get you out of their way! and how?” cried Thibault, who but too well remembered what it had cost him to meddle with the Baron’s hunting the day before.
“Look about you, think, invent some way of delivering me!”
“The Baron’s dogs are rough customers to deal with, and you are asking neither more nor less than that I should save your life; for I warn you, if they once get hold of you, and they will probably scent you out, they will make short work of pulling you to pieces. And now supposing I spare you this disagreeable business,” continued Thibault, who imagined that he had now got the upper hand, “what will you do for me in return?”
“Do for you in return?” said the wolf, “and how about the buck?”
“And how about the bowl of water?” said Thibault.
“We are quits there, my good sir. Let us start a fresh business altogether; if you are agreeable to it, I am quite willing.”
“Let it be so then; tell me quickly what you want of me.”
“There are folks,” proceeded Thibault, “who might take advantage of the position you are now in, and ask for all kinds of extravagant things, riches, power, titles, and what not, but I am not going to do anything of the kind; yesterday I wanted the buck, and you gave it me, it is true; to-morrow, I shall want something else. For some time past I have been possessed by a kind of mania, and I do nothing but wish first for one thing and then for another, and you will not always be able to spare time to listen to my demands. So what I ask for is, that, as you are the devil in person or someone very like it, you will grant me the fulfilment of every wish I may have from this day forth.”
The wolf put on a mocking expression of countenance. “Is that all?” he said, “Your peroration does not accord very well with your exordium.”
“Oh!” continued Thibault, “my wishes are honest and moderate ones, and such as become a poor peasant like myself. I want just a little corner of ground, and a few timbers, and planks; that’s all that a man of my sort can possibly desire.”
“I should have the greatest pleasure in doing what you ask,” said the wolf, “but it is simply impossible, you know.”
“Then I am afraid you must make up your mind to put up with what the dogs may do to you.”
“You think so, and you suppose I have need of your help, and so you can ask what you please?”
“I do not suppose it, I am sure of it.”
“Indeed! well then, look.”
“Look where,” asked Thibault.
“Look at the spot where I was,” said the wolf. Thibault drew back in horror. The place where the wolf had been lying was empty; the wolf had disappeared, where or how it was impossible to say. The room was intact, there was not a hole in the roof large enough to let a needle through, nor a crack in the floor through which a drop of water could have filtered.
“Well, do you still think that I require your assistance to get out of trouble,” said the wolf.
“Where the devil are you?”
“If you put a question to me in my real name,” said the wolf with a sneer inhis voice, “I shall be obliged to answer you. I am still in the same place.”
“But I can no longer see you!”
“Simply because I am invisible.”
“But the dogs, the huntsmen, the Baron, will come in here after you?”
“No doubt they will, but they will not find me.”
“But if they do not find you, they will set upon me.”
“As they did yesterday; only yesterday you were sentenced to thirty-six strokes of the strap, for having carried off the buck; to-day, you will be sentenced to seventy-two, for having hidden the wolf, and Agnelette will not be on the spot to buy you off with a kiss.”
“Phew! what am I to do?”
“Let the buck loose; the dogs will mistake the scent, and they will get the blows instead of you.”
“But is it likely such trained hounds will follow the scent of a deer in mistake for that of a wolf?”
“You can leave that to me,” replied the voice, “only do not lose any time, or the dogs will be here before you have reached the shed, and that would make matters unpleasant, not for me, whom they would not find, but for you, whom they would.”
Thibault did not wait to be warned a second time, but was off like a shot to the shed. He unfastened the buck, which, as if propelled by some hidden force, leapt from the house, ran round it, crossing the track of the wolf, and plunged into the Baisemont coppice. The dogs were within a hundred paces of the hut; Thibault heard them with trepidation; the whole pack came full force against the door, one hound after the other.
Then, all at once, two or three gave cry and went off in the direction of Baisemont, the rest of the hounds after them.
The dogs were on the wrong scent; they were on the scent of the buck, and had abandoned that of the wolf.
Thibault gave a deep sigh of relief; he watched the hunt gradually disappearing in the distance, and went back to his room to the full and joyous notes of the Baron’s horn.
He found the wolf lying composedly on the same spot as before, but how it had found its way in again was quite as impossible to discover as how it had found its way out.
THIBAULTstopped short on the threshold, overcome with astonishment at this re-apparition. “I was saying,” began the wolf, as if nothing had happened to interrupt the conversation, “that it is out of my power to grant you the accomplishment of all the wishes you may have in future for your own comfort and advancement.”
“Then I am to expect nothing from you?”
“Not so, for the ill you wish your neighbour can be carried out with my help.”
“And, pray, what good would that do me personally?”
“You fool! has not a moralist said, ‘There is always something sweet to us in the misfortune of our friends,—even the dearest.’ ”
“Was it a wolf said that? I did not know wolves could boast of moralists among their number.”
“No, it was not a wolf, it was a man.”
“And was the man hanged?”
“On the contrary, he was made Governor of part of Poitou; there are, to be sure, a good many wolves in that province—well then, if there is something pleasant in the misfortune of our best friend, cannot you understand what a subject of rejoicing the misfortune of our worst enemy must be!”
“There is some truth in that, certainly,” said Thibault.
“Without taking into consideration that there is always an opportunity of profiting by our neighbour’s calamity, whether he be friend or foe.”
Thibault paused for a minute or two to consider before he answered:
“By my faith, you are right there, friend wolf, and suppose, then, you do me this service, what shall you expect in exchange? I suppose it will have to be a case of give and take, eh?”
“Certainly. Every time that you express a wish that is not to your own immediate advantage, you will have to repay me with a small portion of your person.”
Thibault drew back with an exclamation of fear.
“Oh! do not be alarmed! I shall not demand a pound of flesh, as a certainJew of my acquaintance did from his debtor.”
“What is it then you ask of me?”
“For the fulfilment of your first wish, one of your hairs; two hairs for the second wish, four for the third, and so on, doubling the number each time.”
Thibault broke into a laugh: “If that is all you require, Master Wolf, I accept on the spot; and I shall try to start with such a comprehensive wish, that I shall never need to wear a wig. So let it be agreed between us!” and Thibault held out his hand. The black wolf lifted his paw, but he kept it raised.
“Well?” said Thibault.
“I was only thinking,” replied the wolf, “that I have rather sharp claws, and, without wishing to do so, I might hurt you badly; but I see a way whereby to clinch the bargain without any damage done to you. You have a silver ring, I have a gold one; let us exchange; the barter will be to your advantage, as you see.” And the wolf held out its paw, Thibault saw a ring of the purest gold shining under the fur of what corresponded to the ring finger, and accepted the bargain without hesitation; the respective rings then changed ownership.
“Good!” said the wolf, “now we two are married.”
“You mean betrothed, Master Wolf,” put in Thibault. “Plague upon you! you go too fast.”
“We shall see about that, Master Thibault. And now you go back to your work, and I’ll go back to mine.”
“Good-bye, my lord Wolf.”
“Till we meet again, Master Thibault.”
The wolf had hardly uttered these last words, on which it had laid an unmistakeable emphasis, ere it disappeared like a pinch of lighted gun-powder, and like the gun-powder, left behind a strong smell of sulphur.
Thibault again stood for a moment dumbfounded. He had not yet grown accustomed to this manner of making one’s exit, to use a theatrical expression; he looked round him on every side, but the wolf was not there.
At first he thought the whole thing must have been a dream, but, looking down, he saw the devil’s ring on the third finger of his right hand; he drew it off and examined it. He saw a monogram engraved on the inner side, and looking more closely, perceived that it was formed of two letters, T. and S.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, in a cold sweat, “Thibault and Satan, the family names of the two contracting parties. So much the worse for me! but when one gives oneself to the devil, one has to do it without reserve.”
And Thibault began humming a song, trying to drown his thoughts, but his voice filled him with fear, for there was a new and curious sound in it, even to his own ears. So he fell silent, and went back to his work as a distraction.
He had only just begun, however, to shape his wooden shoe, when, some distance off, from the direction of Baisemont, he again heard the baying of the hounds, and the notes of the Baron’s horn. Thibault left off working to listen to these various sounds.
“Ah, my fine Lord, you may chase your wolf as long as you like; but I can tell you, you won’t get this one’s paw to nail up over the door of your castle. What a lucky beggar I am! here am I, almost as good as a magician, and while you ride on, suspecting nothing, my brave dispenser of blows, I have but to say the word, and a spell will be cast over you whereby I shall be amply avenged.” And in thinking thus, Thibault suddenly paused.
“And, after all,” he went on, “why shouldn’t I revenge myself on this damned Baron and Master Marcotte? Pshaw! with only a hair at stake I may well gratify myself on this score.” And so saying Thibault passed his hand through the thick, silky hair which covered his head like a lion’s mane.
“I shall have plenty of hairs left to lose,” he continued. “Why bother about one! And, besides, it will be an opportunity for seeing whether my friend the devil has been playing false with me or not. Very well then, I wish a serious accident to befall the Baron, and as for that good-for-nothing of a Marcotte, who laid on to me so roughly yesterday, it is only fair that something as bad again should happen to him.”
While expressing this double wish, Thibault felt anxious and agitated to the last degree; for in spite of what he had already seen of the wolf’s power, he still feared the Devil might only have been playing on his credulity. After uttering his wish, he tried in vain to return to hiswork, he took hold of his parer, wrong side up, and took the skin off his fingers, and still going on with his paring he spoilt a pair of shoes worth a good twelve sous. As he was lamenting over this misfortune, and wiping the blood off his hand, he heard a great commotion in the direction of the valley; he ran into the Chrétiennelle road and saw a number of men walking slowly two and two in his direction. These men were the prickers and kennelmen of the Lord of Vez. The road they were traversing was about two miles long, so that it was some time before Thibault could distinguish what the men were doing, who were walking as slowly and solemnly as if forming part of a funeral procession. When, however, they got to within five hundred paces of him, he saw that they were carrying two rough litters, on which were stretched two lifeless bodies, those of the Baron and of Marcotte. A cold sweat broke out over Thibault’s forehead. “Ah!” he exclaimed, “What do I see here?”
What had happened was this:
Thibault’s expedient for putting the dogs on the wrong scent had succeeded, and all had gone well as long as the buck remained in covert; but it doubled, when near Marolle, and while crossing the heath passed within ten paces of the Baron. The latter thought at first that the animal had been startled by hearing the hounds, and was trying to hide itself.
But at that moment, not more than a hundred paces behind him, the whole pack of hounds appeared, forty dogs, running, yelping, yelling, crying, some in a deep bass like great cathedral bells, others with the full sound of a gong, and again others in a falsetto key, like clarionettes out of tune, all giving cry at the top of their voices, as eagerly and merrily as if they had never followed the scent of any other beast.
Then the Baron gave way to one of his wild fits of rage, fits only worthy of Polichinello tearing a passion to tatters in a puppet-show. He did not shout, he yelled; he did not swear, he cursed. Not satisfied with lashing his dogs, he rode them down, trampling them beneath his horse’s hoofs, flinging himself about in his saddle like a devil in a stoup of holy water.
All his maledictions were hurled at his chief pricker, whom he held responsible for the stupid blunder that had occurred. This time Marcotte had not a word to say either in explanation or excuse, and the poor man was terribly ashamed of the mistake his hounds had made, and mighty uneasy at the towering passion into which it had thrown my lord. He made up his mind therefore to do everything in the power of man, if possible more, to repair the one and calm the other, and so started off at full gallop, dashing among the trees and over the brushwood, crying out at the top of his voice, while he slashed right and left with such vigour, that every stroke of his whip cut into the flesh of the poor animals. “Back, dogs! back!” But in vain he rode, and whipped, and called aloud, the dogs only seemed to become more wildly anxious to follow up the new found scent, as if they recognised the buck of the day before, and were determined that their wounded self-esteem should have its revenge. Then Marcotte grew desperate, and determined on the only course that seemed left. The river Ourcq was close by, the dogs were already on the point of crossing the water, and the one chance of breaking up the pack was to get across himself and whip back the dogs as they began to climb the opposite bank. He spurred his horse in the direction of the river, and leaped with it into the very middle of the stream, both horse and rider arriving safely in the water; but, unfortunately, as we have already mentioned, the river just at this time was terribly swollen with the rains, the horse was unable to stand against the violence of the current, and after being swept round two or three times finally disappeared. Seeing that it was useless trying to save his horse, Marcotte endeavoured to disengage himself, but his feet were so firmly fixed in the stirrups that he could not draw them out, and three seconds after his horse had disappeared, Marcotte himself was no longer to be seen.
Meanwhile, the Baron, with the remainder of the huntsmen, had ridden up to the water’s edge, and his anger was in an instant converted into grief and alarm as soon as he became aware of the perilous situation of his pricker; for the Lord of Vez had a sincere love towards those who ministered to his pleasure, whether man or beast. In a loud voice he shouted to his followers: “By all the powers of hell! Save Marcotte! Five and twenty louis,fifty louis, a hundred louis, to anyone who will save him!” And men and horses, like so many startled frogs, leaped into the water, vying with each other who should be first. The Baron was for riding into the river himself, but his henchmen held him back, and so anxious were they to prevent the worthy Baron from carrying out his heroic intention, that their affection for their master was fatal to the poor pricker. For one moment he was forgotten, but that last moment meant his death. He appeared once more above the surface, just where the river makes a bend; he was seen to battle against the water, and his face for an instant rose into view, as with one last cry he called to his hounds, “Back! dogs, back!” But the water again closed over him, stifling the last syllable of the last word, and it was not till a quarter of an hour later that his body was found lying on a little beach of sand on to which the current had washed him. Marcotte was dead; there was no doubt about it! This accident was disastrous in its effect on the Lord of Vez. Being the noble lord he was, he had somewhat of a liking for good wine; and this predisposed him ever so little to apoplexy, and now, as he came face to face with the corpse of his good servitor, the emotion was so great, that the blood rushed to his head and brought on a fit.
Thibault felt appalled as he realised with what scrupulous exactness the black wolf had fulfilled his part of the contract, and not without a shudder did he think of the right Master Isengrin now had to claim an equal punctuality of payment in return. He began to wonder uneasily whether the wolf, after all, was the kind of being that would continue to be satisfied with a few hairs—and this the more that both at the moment of his wish and during the succeeding minutes during which it was being accomplished, he had not been conscious of the slightest sensation anywhere about the roots of his hair, not even of the least little tickling. He was far from being pleasantly affected by the sight of poor Marcotte’s corpse; he had not loved him, it was true, and he had felt that he had good reason for not doing so; but his dislike to the defunct had never gone so far as to make him wish for his death, and the wolf had certainly gone far beyond his desires. At the same time, Thibault had never precisely said what he did wish, and had left the wolf a wide margin for the exercise of his malice; evidently he would have to be more careful in future in stating exactly what he wanted, and above all, more circumspect as regards any wish he might formulate.
As to the Baron, although still alive, he was almost as good as dead. From the moment when, as the result of Thibault’s wish, he had been struck down as it were by lightning, he had remained unconscious. His men had laid him on the heap of heather which the shoe-maker had piled up to hide the door of the shed, and troubled and frightened, were ransacking the place to try and find some restorative which might bring their master back to life. One asked for vinegar to put on his temples, another for a key to put down his back, this one for a bit of board to slap his hands with, that for some sulphur to burn under his nose. In the midst of all this confusion was heard the voice of little Engoulevent, calling out: “In the name of all that’s good, we don’t want all this truck, we want a goat. Ah! if only we had a goat!”
“A goat?” cried Thibault, who would have rejoiced to see the Baron recover, for it would lift at least part of the burden now weighing on his conscience, and would also rid his dwelling of these marauders. “A goat? I have a goat!”
“Really! you have a goat?” cried Engoulevent, “oh! my friends! now our dear master is saved!”
And so overcome with joy was he, that he flung his arms round Thibault’s neck, saying, “Bring out your goat, my friend! bring out your goat!”
Thibault went to the shed and led out the goat, which ran after him bleating.
“Hold it firmly by the horns,” said the huntsman, “and lift up one of its front feet.” And as he gave the word, the second huntsman drew from its sheath a little knife which he carried in his belt, and began carefully sharpening it on the grindstone which Thibault used for his tools. “What are you going to do?” asked the shoe-maker, feeling somewhat uneasy about these preparations.
“What! don’t you know,” said Engoulevent, “that there is a little bone in the shape of a cross inside a goat’s heart, which, if crushed into powder, is a sovereign remedy for apoplexy?”
“You intend to kill my goat?” exclaimed Thibault, at the same time leavinghold of the goat’s horns, and dropping its foot, “but I will not have it killed.”
“Fie, fie!” said Engoulevent, “that is not at all a becoming speech, Monsieur Thibault, would you value the life of our good master as of no more worth than that of your wretched goat? I am truly ashamed for you.”
“It’s easy for you to talk. This goat is all I have to depend upon, the only thing I possess. She gives me milk, and I am fond of her.”
“Ah! Monsieur Thibault, you cannot be thinking of what you are saying—it is fortunate that the Baron does not hear you—for he would be broken-hearted to know that his precious life was being bargained for in that miserly way.”
“And besides,” said one of the prickers with a sneering laugh, “if Master Thibault values his goat at a price which he thinks only my lord can pay, there is nothing to prevent him coming to the castle of Vez to claim this payment. The account can be settled with what was left over as due to him yesterday.”
Thibault knew that he could not get the better of these men, unless he again called the devil to his aid; but he had just received such a lesson from Satan, that there was no fear of his exposing himself, at all events for a second time the same day, to similar good offices. His one desire for the time being was not to wish any sort of ill to anyone of those present.
One man dead, another nearly so—Thibault found this lesson enough. Consequently, he kept his eyes turned away from the menacing and jeering countenances around him, for fear of being aggravated beyond control. While his back was turned, the poor goat’s throat was cut, her piteous cry alone informing him of the fact; and it was no sooner killed than its heart, which had hardly ceased throbbing, was opened in search of the little bone of which Engoulevent had spoken. This found, it was ground into powder, mixed with vinegar diluted with thirteen drops of gall from the bladder containing it, the whole stirred together in a glass with the cross of a rosary, and then poured gently down the Baron’s throat, after his teeth had been forced apart with the blade of a dagger.
The effect of the draught was immediate and truly miraculous. The Lord of Vez sneezed, sat up, and said in a voice, intelligible though still a little husky: “Give me something to drink.”
Engoulevent handed him some water in a wooden drinking-cup, a family possession, of which Thibault was very proud. But the Baron had no sooner put his lips to it and become aware of what the vile, abominable liquid was, which they had had the impudence to offer him, than, with an exclamation of disgust, he flung the vessel and its contents violently against the wall, and the cup fell, smashed into a thousand pieces. Then in a loud and sonorous voice, which left no doubt of his perfect recovery, he called out: “Bring me some wine.” One of the prickers mounted and rode at full speed to the castle of Oigny, and there requested the lord of the place to give him a flask or two of sound old Burgundy; ten minutes after he was back again. Two bottles were uncorked, and there being no glasses at hand, the Baron put them in turn to his mouth, draining each at a single draught.
Then he turned himself round with his face to the wall, and murmuring—Mâcon, 1743—fell into a profound slumber.
THEhuntsmen, being reassured with regard to their master’s health, now went in search of the dogs, which had been left to carry on the chase alone. They were found lying asleep, the ground around them stained with blood. It was evident that they had run down the buck and eaten it; if any doubt on the matter remained, it was done away with by the sight of the antlers, and a portion of the jaw bone, the only parts of the animal which they could not crunch up, and which had therefore not disappeared. In short, they were the only ones who had cause to be satisfied with the day’s work. The huntsmen, after shutting up the hounds in Thibault’s shed, seeing thattheir master was still sleeping, began to turn their thoughts to getting some supper. They laid hands on everything they could find in the poor wretch’s cupboard, and roasted the goat, politely inviting Thibault to take a share in the meal towards the cost of which he had not a little contributed. He refused, giving as a plausible excuse, the great agitation he still was under, owing to Marcotte’s death and the Baron’s accident.
He gathered up the fragments of his beloved drinking-cup, and seeing that it was useless to think of ever being able to put it together again, he began turning over in his mind what it might be possible for him to do, so as to free himself from the miserable existence which the events of the last two days had rendered more insupportable than ever. The first image that appeared to him, was that of Agnelette. Like the beautiful angels that pass before the eyes of children in their dreams, he saw her figure, dressed all in white, with large white wings, floating across a blue sky. She seemed happy and beckoned to him to follow, saying the while “Those who come with me will be very happy.” But the only answer which Thibault vouchsafed to this charming vision was a movement of the head and shoulders, which interpreted, meant, “Yes, yes, Agnelette, I see you, and recognise you; yesterday, it would have been all very well to follow you; but to-day I am, like a king, the arbiter of life and death, and I am not the man to make foolish concessions to a love only born a day ago, and which has hardly learnt to stammer out its first words. To marry you, my poor child, far from lessening the bitter hardships of our lives, would only double or treble the burden under which we are both borne down. No, Agnelette, no! You would make a charming mistress; but, a wife—she must be in a position to bring money to support the household, equal in proportion to the power which I should contribute.”
His conscience told him plainly that he was engaged to marry Agnelette; but he quieted it with the assurance that if he broke the engagement, it would be for the good of that gentle creature.
“I am an upright man,” he murmured to himself, “and it is my duty to sacrifice my personal pleasure to the welfare of the dear child. And more than that, she is sufficiently young and pretty and good, to find a better fate than what would await her as the wife of a plain sabot maker.” And the end of all these fine reflections was, that Thibault felt himself bound to allow his foolish promises of the day before to melt away into air, and to forget the betrothal, of which the only witnesses had been the quivering leaves of the birch trees, and the pink blossom of the heather. It should be added that there was another mental vision, not wholly irresponsible for the resolution at which Thibault had arrived,—the vision of a certain young widow, owner of the mill at Croyolles, a woman between twenty-six and twenty-eight, fresh and plump, with fine, rolling eyes, not devoid of mischief. Moreover, she was credibly supposed to be the richest match in all the country side, for her mill was never idle, and so, for all reasons, as one can clearly see, it was the very thing for Thibault.
Formerly, it would never have occurred to Thibault to aspire to anyone in the position of the rich and beautiful Madame Polet, for such was the name of the owner of the mill; and this will explain why her name is introduced here for the first time. And, in truth, it was the first time that she had ever occurred as a subject of serious consideration to our hero. He was astonished at himself for not having thought of her before, but then, as he said to himself, hehadoften thought about her, but without hope, while now, seeing that he was under the protection of the wolf, and that he had been endowed with a supernatural power, which he had already had occasion to exercise, it seemed to him an easy matter to get rid of all his rivals and achieve his purpose. True there were evil tongues that spoke of the owner of the mill as having something of an ill-temper and a hard heart; but the shoe-maker came to the conclusion that, with the devil up his sleeve, he need not trouble himself about any wicked spirit, any petty little second-class demon that might find a corner in Widow Polet’s disposition. And so, by the time the day broke, he had decided to go to Croyolles, for all these visions had of course visited him during the night.
The Lord of Vez awoke with the first song of the birds; he had entirely recovered from his indisposition of the day before, and woke up his followers with loud slashings of his whip. Having sentoff Marcotte’s body to Vez, he decided that he would not return home without having killed something, but that he would hunt the boar, just as if nothing out of the way had taken place on the previous day. At last, about six o’clock in the morning, they all went off, the Baron assuring Thibault that he was most grateful to him for the hospitality that he himself and his men and dogs had met with under his poor roof, in consideration of which he was quite willing, he swore, to forget all the grievances which he had against the shoe-maker.
It will be easily guessed that Thibault experienced little regret at the departure of lord, dogs, and huntsmen. All these having at last disappeared, he stood a few moments contemplating his ransacked home, his empty cupboard, his broken furniture, his empty shed, the ground scattered with fragments of his belongings. But, as he told himself, all this was the ordinary thing to happen whenever one of the great lords went through a place, and the future, as it appeared to him, was far too brilliant to allow him to dwell long on this spectacle. He dressed himself in his Sunday attire, smartening himself as best he could, ate his last bit of bread with the last morsel left of his goat, went to the spring and drank a large glass of water, and started off for Croyolles. Thibault was determined to try his fortune with Madame Polet before the day was over, and therefore set out about nine o’clock in the morning.
The shortest way to Croyolles was round by the rear of Oigny and Pisseleu. Now Thibault knew every in and out of the forest of Villers-Cotterets as well as any tailor knows the pockets he has made; why, therefore, did he take the Chrétiennelle track, seeing that it lengthened his journey by a good mile and a half? Reader, it was because this lane would bring him near to the spot where he had first seen Agnelette, for, although practical considerations were carrying him in the direction of Croyolles Mill, his heart was drawing him towards Préciamont. And there, as fate would have it, just after crossing the road that runs to La Ferté-Milou, he came upon Agnelette, cutting grass by the way-side for her goats. He might easily have passed her without being seen, for her back was turned towards him; but the evil spirit prompted him, and he went straight up to her. She was stooping to cut the grass with her sickle, but hearing someone approaching she lifted her head, and blushed as she recognised that it was Thibault. With the blush a happy smile rose to her face, which showed that the rising colour was not due to any feeling of hostility towards him.
“Ah! there you are,” she said. “I dreamt much of you last night, and prayed many prayers for you also.” And as she spoke, the vision of Agnelette passing along the sky, with the dress and wings of an Angel, and her hands joined in supplication, as he had seen her the previous night, returned to him.
“And what made you dream of me and pray for me, my pretty child?” asked Thibault with as unconcerned an air as a young lord at Court. Agnelette looked at him with her large eyes of heavenly blue.
“I dreamed of you, Thibault, because I love you,” she said, “and I prayed for you, because I saw the accident that happened to the Baron and his huntsmen, and all the trouble that you were put to in consequence.... Ah! if I had been able to obey the dictates of my heart, I should have run to you at once to give you help.”
“It is a pity you did not come; you would have found a merry company, I can tell you.”
“Oh! it was not for that I should have liked to be with you, but to be of use to you in receiving the Baron and his train. Oh! what a beautiful ring you have, Monsieur Thibault, where did you get it?”
And the girl pointed to the ring which had been given to Thibault by the wolf. Thibault felt his blood run cold. “This ring?” he said.
“Yes, that ring,” and seeing that Thibault appeared unwilling to answer her, Agnelette turned her head aside, and sighed. “A present from some fine lady, I suppose,” she said in a low voice.
“There you are mistaken, Agnelette,” replied Thibault with all the assurance of a consummate liar, “it is our betrothal ring, the one I have bought to put on your finger the day we are married.”
“Why not tell me the truth, Monsieur Thibault?” said Agnelette, shaking her head sadly.
“I am speaking the truth, Agnelette.”
“No,” and she shook her head more sadly than before.
“And what makes you think that I am telling a lie?”
“Because the ring is large enough to go over two of my fingers.” And Thibault’s finger would certainly have made two of Agnelette’s.
“If it is too large, Agnelette,” he said, “we can have it made smaller.”
“Good-bye, Monsieur Thibault.”
“What! Good-bye?”
“Yes.”
“You are going to leave me?”
“Yes, I am going.”
“And why, Agnelette?”
“Because I do not love liars.”
Thibault tried to think of some vow he could make to reassure Agnelette, but in vain.
“Listen,” said Agnelette, with tears in her eyes, for it was not without a great effort of self-control that she was turning away, “if that ring is really meant for me....”
“Agnelette, I swear to you that it is.”
“Well then, give it me to keep till our wedding day, and on that day I will give it back to you, that you may have it blessed.”
“I will give it you with all my heart,” replied Thibault, “but I want to see it on your pretty hand. You were right in saying that it was too large for you, and I am going into Villers-Cotterets to-day, we will take the measure of your finger, and I will get Monsieur Dugué, the goldsmith there, to alter it for us.”
The smile returned to Agnelette’s face and her tears were dried up at once. She put out her little hand; Thibault took it between his own, turned it over and looked at it, first on the back and then on the palm, and stooping, kissed it.
“Oh!” said Agnelette “you should not kiss my hand, Monsieur Thibault, it is not pretty enough.”
“Give me something else then to kiss.” And Agnelette lifted her face that he might kiss her on the forehead.
“And now,” she said joyously, and with childish eagerness, “let me see the ring.”
Thibault drew off the ring, and laughing, tried to put it on Agnelette’s thumb; but, to his great astonishment, he could not get it over the joint. “Well, well,” he exclaimed “who would ever have thought such a thing?”
Agnelette began to laugh. “It is funny, isn’t it!” she said.
Then Thibault tried to pass it over the first finger, but with the same result as when he put it on the thumb. He next tried the middle finger, but the ring seemed to grow smaller and smaller, as if fearing to sully this virgin hand; then the third finger, the same on which he wore it himself, but it was equally impossible to get it on. And as he made these vain attempts to fit the ring, Thibault felt Agnelette’s hand trembling more and more violently within his own, while the sweat fell from his own brow, as if he were engaged in the most arduous work; there was something diabolic at the bottom of it, as he knew quite well. At last he came to the little finger and endeavoured to pass the ring over it. This little finger, so small and transparent, that the ring should have hung as loosely upon it as a bracelet on one of Thibault’s, this little finger, in spite of all Agnelette’s efforts, refused to pass through the ring. “Ah! my God, Monsieur Thibault,” cried the child “what does this mean?”