第27章

"I sha'n't let myself be fooled by any such folks as they," said Hulot to his two friends, in a growling tone."I'd rather throw my general's coat into that ditch than earn it out of a bed.What are these birds after? Have you any idea, either of you?""Yes," said Merle, "I've an idea that that's the handsomest women Iever saw! I think you're reading the riddle all wrong.Perhaps she's the wife of the First Consul.""Pooh! the First Consul's wife is old, and this woman is young," said Hulot."Besides, the order I received from the minister gives her name as Mademoiselle de Verneuil.She is a /ci-devant/.Don't I know 'em?

They all plied one trade before the Revolution, and any man could make himself a major, or a general in double-quick time; all he had to do was to say 'Dear heart' to them now and then."While each soldier opened his compasses, as the commandant was wont to say, the miserable vehicle which was then used as the mail-coach drew up before the inn of the Trois Maures, in the middle of the main street of Alencon.The sound of the wheels brought the landlord to the door.No one in Alencon could have expected the arrival of the mail-coach at the Trois Maures, for the murderous attack upon the coach at Mortagne was already known, and so many people followed it along the street that the two women, anxious to escape the curiosity of the crowd, ran quickly into the kitchen, which forms the inevitable antechamber to all Western inns.The landlord was about to follow them, after examining the coach, when the postilion caught him by the arm.

"Attention, citizen Brutus," he said; "there's an escort of the Blues behind us; but it is I who bring you these female citizens; they'll pay like /ci-devant/ princesses, therefore--""Therefore, we'll drink a glass of wine together presently, my lad,"said the landlord.

After glancing about the kitchen, blackened with smoke, and noticing a table bloody from raw meat, Mademoiselle de Verneuil flew into the next room with the celerity of a bird; for she shuddered at the sight and smell of the place, and feared the inquisitive eyes of a dirty /chef/, and a fat little woman who examined her attentively.

"What are we to do, wife?" said the landlord."Who the devil could have supposed we would have so many on our hands in these days? Before I serve her a decent breakfast that woman will get impatient.Stop, an idea! evidently she is a person of quality.I'll propose to put her with the one we have upstairs.What do you think?"When the landlord went to look for the new arrival he found only Francine, to whom he spoke in a low voice, taking her to the farther end of the kitchen, so as not to be overheard.

"If the ladies wish," he said, "to be served in private, as I have no doubt they wish to do, I have a very nice breakfast all ready for a lady and her son, and I dare say wouldn't mind sharing it with you;they are persons of condition," he added, mysteriously.

He had hardly said the words before he felt a tap on his back from the handle of a whip.He turned hastily and saw behind him a short, thick-set man, who had noiselessly entered from a side room,--an apparition which seemed to terrify the hostess, the cook, and the scullion.The landlord turned pale when he saw the intruder, who shook back the hair which concealed his forehead and eyes, raised himself on the points of his toes to reach the other's ears, and said to him in a whisper: "You know the cost of an imprudence or a betrayal, and the color of the money we pay it in.We are generous in that coin."He added a gesture which was like a horrible commentary to his words.

Though the rotundity of the landlord prevented Francine from seeing the stranger, who stood behind him, she caught certain words of his threatening speech, and was thunderstruck at hearing the hoarse tones of a Breton voice.She sprang towards the man, but he, seeming to move with the agility of a wild animal, had already darted through a side door which opened on the courtyard.Utterly amazed, she ran to the window.Through its panes, yellowed with smoke, she caught sight of the stranger as he was about to enter the stable.Before doing so, however, he turned a pair of black eyes to the upper story of the inn, and thence to the mail-coach in the yard, as if to call some friend's attention to the vehicle.In spite of his muffling goatskin and thanks to this movement which allowed her to see his face, Francine recognized the Chouan, Marche-a-Terre, with his heavy whip; she saw him, indistinctly, in the obscurity of the stable, fling himself down on a pile of straw, in a position which enabled him to keep an eye on all that happened at the inn.Marche-a-Terre curled himself up in such a way that the cleverest spy, at any distance far or near, might have taken him for one of those huge dogs that drag the hand-carts, lying asleep with his muzzle on his paws.

The behavior of the Chouan proved to Francine that he had not recognized her.Under the hazardous circumstances which she felt her mistress to be in, she scarcely knew whether to regret or to rejoice in this unconsciousness.But the mysterious connection between the landlord's offer (not uncommon among innkeepers, who can thus kill two birds with one stone), and the Chouan's threats, piqued her curiosity.