boy, I'll kiss you for it!" exclaimed the foreman, clasping
Gothard in his arms,
Michu allowed the mare to walk off after her mistress
and took the hat, gloves and whip.
"You are a lad of sense, you will understand me," he
continued. "Put your horse at the bank, there, see if he
is as handy at jumping as the mare, and when up cut across
the fields and ride as if the old boy were at your heels in
the direction of the farm, drawing the gendarmes after you.
The picket is extended in open order, you see; you will
make the fellows draw in and take close order," he added,
completing his instructions with a sweeping gesture indicat-
ing the route the lad was to take. "And you, my girl, there
is another bunch of gendarmes coming down on us by the
road from Cinq-Cygne to Gondreville, I want you to start
off in a direction directly opposite to that which Gothard
A MOST MYSTERIOUS CASE 91
takes and draw them away from the chateau toward the
forest. You understand: what I want is that there shall
be no one to interfere with us here in the sunken road."
Catherine and the youth, who was subsequently to exhibit
such wonderful quickness and intelligence in this affair,
performed the part assigned them in a manner to make
each of the bodies of gendarmes believe that their prey was
escaping them. The dim and deceptive moonlight, distort-
ing the appearance of objects, was an obstacle to their dis-
tinguishing the size, sex, apparel and numbers of those whom
they were pursuing. So they started after the fugitives, full
tilt, remembering the old precept, "Arrest everybody who
runs away!" the unsoundness of which, as applied to the
more delicate operations of the police, was set forth later
in the vigorous rebuke which Corentin gave the corporal.
Michu, who had reckoned on what their instinct would
lead the gendarmes to do under the circumstances, reached
the forest shortly after the young Comtesse, whom Marthe
had guided to the appointed spot.
"Go back to the pavilion — run!" said he to Marthe.
"The forest will be guarded by the Parisians; it is dangerous
to remain here. We are likely to have need of all our
liberty."
Michu unfastened his horse's bridle and requested the
Comtesse to follow him.
"I shall go no further," Laurence replied, "until you
have given me some explanation of the interest you show
in me, for you are that Michu who — "
"Mademoiselle," he answered in a tone of gentleness,
"my position can be explained in two brief words. Un-
known to the MM. de Simeuse, I am the guardian of their
fortune. My instructions to this end were received by me
from their deceased father and the dear lady their mother,
my protectress. Wherefore I have played the part of a
furious Jacobin, in order that I might be of service to my
young masters. I began my game too late, unfortunately;
I was unable to save the old folk!"
92 BALZAC'S WORKS
At this point Michu's voice broke.
"Since the young men's flight I have sent them regularly
such sums as were needed for their maintenance."
"Through the Breintmayers of Strasburg?" she asked.
"Yes, Mademoiselle, the correspondents of M. Girel of
Troyes, who, being a Royalist, like me pretended to change
his coat in order to save his fortune. The paper that your
tenant picked up in the road one evening as we were return-
ing from Troyes was relative to this business; it might have
served to incriminate all hands, and my life was not my own
but theirs, you see. I could not acquire possession of Gon-
dreville. Situated as I was, a question as to where I got so
much money from would have been equivalent to sending
me to the block. I thought to wait and redeem the property
later on; but that villain Marion was the instrument of an-
other villain, Malin. All the same, Gondreville shall come
back to its rightful owners. I will see to that. Four hours
ago 1 had Malin covered by my rifle — oh, it was a dead sure
thing! — Dame ! if he were only dead Gondreville would be in
the courts, it would be sold, and you might buy it. In the
event of my death my wife would have given you a letter
that would have told you how. But that brigand told his
accomplice Gr^vin — another dirty blackguard — that the MM.
de Simeuse were conspiring against the First Consul and were
in the neighborhood, and that it would be better to hand them
over to the authorities and so get rid of them and have peace
at Gondreville. As I knew, however, that there were two
spies from Paris hanging around here, I uncocked my rifle
and lost no time in coming here, thinking that you would
know where and how to convey warning to the young men.
And there you have my story."
"You are a noble soul," said Laurence, extending her
hand to Michu, who showed an inclination to go down on
his knees and kiss it.
Laurence observed his movement, checked it and said
to him —
"Arise, Michu!" in accents and with a look that made
A MOST MYSTERIOUS CASE 93
him for the moment as happy as he had been miserable for
the last twelve years.
"You reward me as if I had accomplished all that re-
mains for me to do," said he. "Do you hear them, the
hussars of the guillotine off yonder? We will go else-
where to finish our conversation."
He took the mare by the bridle, stationing himself on the
animal's off side, and said to the Comtesse.
"Your horsemanship will be tried; give your whole at-
tention to keeping your seat, holding your mount in hand,
and avoiding the low-hanging branches that might sweep
you out of your saddle."
Then for a half-hour he led the young woman a harum-
scarum chase through the wood at the mare's best and unre-
laxed speed, now this way, now that, in and out, round and
about, frequently doubling on his trail so as to mislead pur-
suers, until they came to a spot where he stopped.
"I don't know where I am, and I thought I knew the
forest as well as you do," said the Comtesse, surveying her
surroundings.
"We are exactly in the middle of it," he replied. "We
have a couple of gendarmes on our trail, but we are safe."
The picturesque spot to which the foreman had brought
Laurence was to exert such a powerful influence on the des-
tinies of the principal personages of this drama, and on Michu
as well, that it behooves the historian to describe it. The
spot, moreover, as will be seen, acquired celebrity in the
judicial annals of the Empire.
The forest of Nodesme had belonged to a monastery
known as Notre-Dame. This monastery, captured, pil-
laged and demolished, disappeared utterly — the monks
and all their temporal possessions. The forest, long the
object of covetousness, was incorporated in the domain of
the Comtes de Champagne, who afterward hypothecated it
and allowed it to be sold. In the course of six centuries
nature spread her rich and puissant green mantle over the
"ruins, obliterating them so completely that the site of what
94 BALZAC'S WORKS
had been one of the finest examples of conventual architec-
ture was marked only by an eminence of moderate height,
overshadowed by handsome trees and hemmed in by thick
hedges and impenetrable copses which Michu, subsequent to
1794, had taken it into his head to make yet more impene-
trable by planting thorny acacias in the intervals between the
bushes. There was a pond at the bottom of the eminence,
indicating the existence of subterranean springs, which
doubtless had determined in times long past the situation of
the monastery. Only the holder of the title-deeds to the
forest of Nodesme could have divined the etymology of
that name, eight centuries old, or known that in the mid-
dle of the wood there once had been a convent. When the
first claps of the thunder of the Kevolation made themselves
heard the Marquis de Simeuse, obliged to refer to his title-
deeds to settle a contested point and chancing to light upon
these particulars, with a secret purpose in mind that may
readily be imagined applied himself to searching for the
site of the monastery. The keeper, to whom the forest was
so familiar, naturally assisted his master in this undertaking,
and it was to his skill in woodcraft that the discovery of the
locality was due. Observing the direction of the five prin-
cipal forest roads, of which some were almost entirely ob-
literated, he saw that they all ended in the vicinity of the
mound and the near-by pond, whither the people must at
one time have resorted in numbers from Troyes, from the
valleys of Arcis and Cinq-Cygne, and from Bar-sur-Aube.
It was the Marquis's intention to explore the interior of the
barrow, but it would not have answered to employ in that
operation men living in the neighborhood. Circumstances
proving unpropitious, he abandoned his researches, leaving
Michu's curiosity unsatisfied as to whether the mound con-
tained a buried treasure or merely the foundations of the old
abbey. The foreman resolved to continue the archeological
enterprise on his own account; there was a spot between two
trees just on a level with the pond, at the foot of the only
escarpment of the eminence where, when he stamped his'
A MOST MYSTERIOUS CASE 95
foot, the earth gave back a hollow sound. So, one fine
night, equipped with a pick, he sought the spot, and his
labor was rewarded by the discovery of a subterranean
apartment to which access was afforded by a short flight of
stone steps. The pond, which is not more than three feet
deep in its deepest part, is shaped like a shovel, with its
handle projecting from the eminence, and would lead one
to believe that there issues from that artificial rock a foun-
tain that loses itself by infiltration in the vast forest. This
marsh, encircled by trees that love the water, alders, willows,
ashes, is the common centre of many convergent paths, relics
of ancient highways and woodland walks, to-day deserted.
The pond, whose waters, stagnant to appearance, are con-
stantly renewed, covered with cresses and broad- leaved
plants, displays a surface mantled over with a coat of
emerald green, hardly to be distinguished from its shores,
that are clothed with a dense growth of tine, short, succu-
lent grass. The tender herbage is too remote from man's
habitations, though, for animals, save the denizens of the
forest, to come and graze on it. Convinced that no living
thing could exist below the marsh, and deterred by the in-
accessibility of the approaches, hunters and foresters had
never visited or explored that quiet nook inhabited by the
oldest and stateliest monarchs of the wood, that Michu re-
served for a grand battue when time should come for them
to be laid low. At the further end of the underground
apartment is a smaller chamber with a vaulted roof, fin-
ished in cut stone and perfectly cleanly and wholesome,
reminding one of what used to be called the in pace^ the
convent dungeon. The salubrity of the place and the well-
preserved condition of the steps and the inner cell were prob-
ably due to the spring, which seemed to have been respected
by the destroyers, and to a wall of brick and cement, appar-
ently of immense thickness, reminding one of the construc-
tions of the ancient Eomans, which served to keep back the
surface water that percolated through the roof. Michu
brought big flat stones and laid them over the entrance to
96 - BALZAC'S WORKS
this retreat; then, to keep the secret entirely in his own
possession and preserve it inviolate, he made it a rule, in-
stead of entering the cellar from the direction of the pond,
always to climb the wooded eminence and descend by way
of the escarpment. When our two fugitives reached the
spot the moon was silvering with her mellow light the sum-
mits of the secular trees upon the mound, and playing
hide-and-seek among the magnificent masses of the arborial
promontories described in many diverse shapes by the roads
that centred there, some rounded, others pointed, this termi-
nating in a single tree, that in a cluster.
Thence the gaze of the beholder was irresistibly at-
tracted by the charm of numerous perspectives fading in
the distance, in which the eye followed now the sinuous
windings of a woodland path, now the sublime spectacle
of a long forest alley, or again a darkling wall of verdure
where the shadows rested. The sullen, slumbering surface
of the pond, in the open stretches left uncovered by the
cresses and nenuphars, broke into life and flashed and
sparkled like diamonds in the silvery light that filtered
through the branches. The music made by multitudinous
frogs alone disturbed the deep stillness of this charming
forest nook, whose wild perfume awakened in the soul
ideas of freedom.
"Are we in safety here?" the Comtesse asked Michu.
"Yes, Mademoiselle. But there remains something for
us both to do. Lead the horses up yonder low hill and tie
them to the trees, and fasten a handkerchief about the muz-
zle of each of them," said he, removing his neckcloth and
giving it to her; "our beasts are intelligent, they will know
enough to hold their peace. When you have done that,
come straight down that embankment to the waterside — be
careful not to let your skirt catch on the bushes — you will
find me at the bottom."
While the Comtesse was performing the duties assigned
to her, Michu removed the stones and uncovered the en-
trance to the cellar. The Comtesse, who had believed
A MOST MYSTERIOUS CASE 97
that she knew her torest thoroughly, was immeasurably
surprised by what she saw. Michu replaced the stones
above the entrance; a mason could not have done it in a
more workmanlike manner. Hardly had he finished when
the tramp of horses and the voices of gendarmes resounded
in the silence of the night; but he drew his tinder-box from
his pocket, tranquilly lighted a sliver of fat pine, and con-
ducted the Comtesse into the in pace, where he found the
remnant of the candle that had helped him to explore the
chamber on a previous occasion. The thick iron door had
been eaten through in places by rust, but it had been re-
paired by the foreman; it was fastened on the outside by
wooden bars that fell into sockets placed on either side of
the doorway. The Comtesse, half dead with fatigue, sank
down upon a stone bench over which still hung an iron
ring soldered into the wall.
"We have a salon for our confab, you see," said Michu,
"Now let the gendarmes do their worst; they may run off
with our horses, but that is the extent of the harm they can
do us."
"Eun off with our horses!" Laurence repeated. "That
would mean the death of my cousins and the MM. d'Haute-
serre. Come, how much do you know, exactly?"
Michu repeated what little he had overheard of the con-
versation between Malin and Gr^vin.
"They are on their way to Paris, they are due to arrive
there to-morrow morning," said the Comtesse when he had
finished.
"They are lost!" exclaimed Michu. "You know that
every one entering or leaving the city is subjected to a
rigid examination at the barriers. It is Malin's interest
that my masters should compromise themselves in every
way possible and so destroy themselves."
"It is too bad that I am not better acquainted with the
general scope of the affair!" cried Laurence. "How can
we convey information to Georges, Riviere and Moreau ?
Where are they to be found? Well, never mind; we will
(E)— Vol. 17
98 BALZAC'S WORKS
think only of my cousins and the d'Hauteserres; you must
get to them at any and every cost."
"The telegraph travels faster than the speediest horse,"
returned Michu, "and of all the nobles involved in this
conspiracy none will be tracked with more ardor than your
cousins. If I succeed in coming up with them, here is the
spot where we must house them; we will keep them here
until the affair has blown over. Their poor father must
have been guided by more than human wisdom when he
put me in the way of discovering this retreat; he must have
had a presentiment that it would be a refuge to his sons in
their hour of peril!"
"My mare is from the Comte d'Artois' stables, she is the
offspring of his best English stallion," said she; "but she
has covered thirty-six leagues to-day, she would not carry
you to the end, she would drop dead."
"My horse is pretty fresh," said Michu, "and if you
covered thirty-six leagues, 1 should not have more than
eighteen to ride?"
"Twenty-three," she replied, "for they are now five
hours on their way. You should find them somewhere
above Lagny, probably at Coupvrai, whence they are to
set out at daylight disguised as bargemen; they intend to
enter Paris by the river. Here is something," she added,
taking from her finger the half of her mother's wedding-
ring, "which, if you show it them, they will trust you. I
gave them the other half. The keeper at Coupvrai is the
father of one of their enlisted men; he is to conceal them
to-night in the abandoned shed of some charcoal-burners in
the depths of the forest. They are eight in all. The MM.
d'Hauteserre and four privates are with my cousins."
"Mademoiselle, we are not going to break our necks run-
ning after private soldiers; we will look out for the MM. de
Simeuse and let the others shift for themselves as best they
may. Is it not sufficient to warn them of their danger?"
"Abandon the d'Hauteserres? Never!" she cried.
"Either all shall perish or all be saved!"
A MOST MYSTERIOUS CASE 99
*'What, the little country gentlemen?" Michu objected.
"True, they are only chevaliers," she replied, "I know-
that; but still they are related to the Cinq-Cygnes and
the Simeuses. Restore to me, then, my cousins and the
d'Hauteserres, and advise with them how they may all
most quickly and safely regain this forest."
"The gendarmes are here again! Do you hear them
colloguing together in a whisper?"
"Well, fortune has already twice befriended you this
evening. Go! and bring them back; conceal them in this
vault, where they will be safe from all pursuit! I can do
nothing to help you," she said with impotent rage; "I
should simply be a pharos to guide the footsteps of the
foe. The police, seeing me leading my usual tranquil life,
will never suspect that my relatives are in the forest. So,
the question resolves itself into how we may obtain five
horses capable of making the distance from Lagny in six
hours, five horses that will go till they drop dead."
"And the money?" suggested Michu, who had been
giving profound attention to the young Comtesse's words.
"I have supplied my cousins; I gave them a hundred
louis last night."
"I will bring them safe through," exclaimed Michu.
"You will have to deny yourself the pleasure of seeing
them when they are safely housed. My wife or my little
boy will convey food and drink to them twice a week. As
I cannot answer for my own safety, however, I wish to say
to you, Mademoiselle, that the interior of the main beam in
the garret of my pavilion has been drilled out with an
auger. In the cavity, which is stopped with a wooden
plug, you will find a plan of a portion of the forest. The
trees which you will see marked with a red cross on the
plan you will find daubed with black paint at the bottom of
their trunk on the ground. Each of these trees is a pointer.
At the foot of the third oak tree to the left of each of these
pointers you will find, buried seven feet in the ground and
distant two feet from the trunk, a round tin box containing
100 BALZAC'S WORKS
one hundred thousand francs in gold. These eleven trees —
there are only eleven of them — constitute the entire fortune
of the Simeuses now that Gondreville has passed out of
their hands."
"The noblesse will not recover in a hundred years from
the blows that have been dealt it," Mile, de Cinq-Cygne
slowly said.
"Is there a password?" Michu inquired.
" 'France and Charles' for the privates, 'Laurence and
Lonis' for the d'Hauteserres and the Simeuses. Mon Dieu!
that I should have seen them yesterday for the first time in
eleven years, and to know to-day that they are in danger of
death — and what a death! Michu," said she with an ex-
pression of deep melancholy, "be as prudent during the
next fifteen hours as you have shown yourself grand and
devoted during these last twelve years. If evil should
befall my cousins I should die — No," she hastily added,
correcting herself, "1 would live long enough to kill
Bonaparte."
"There will be two of us for that job, when the time is
ripe for it."
Laurence seized the foreman's horny hand and gave it a
vigorous squeeze after the manner of the English. Michu
drew out his watch; it was midnight.
"We must get out of this, at whatever risk," said he.
"Let the gendarme look out for himself who attempts to
stop me! And you, Madame la Comtesse — don't consider
me disrespectful — get on your horse and ride back at speed
to Cinq-Cygne; the police are there, amuse them."
Michu, when he had uncovered the entrance, heard no
sound; he threw himself down and applied his ear to the
ground, then rose hurriedly.
"They are over Troyes way somewhere, on the edge of
the forest," said he; "I'll fix their flint for 'em!"
He assisted the Comtesse up the steps and replaced the
stones. When he had finished he heard himself called by
Laurence's pleasant voice, who wished to see him on his
A MOST MYSTERIOUS CASE 101
horse before she got on hers. The rough man's eyes were
wet with tears as he exchanged a parting look with his
young mistress, but hers were perfectly dry.
"He was right, we will amuse them," she said when the
sound of his horse's receding steps was lost in the distance.
And giving her mare the rein she struck ofi at a gallop
in the direction of Cinq-Cygne.
When she was apprised that her sons were menaced with
death, Mme. d'Hauteserre, who could not bring herself to
believe that the Revolution was over and had a vivid recol-
lection of the summary manner in which justice was ad-
ministered in those days, recovered her wits and strength
of mind by the very excess of the grief that had served to
deprive her of them. Drawn by a horrible curiosity that
she was unable to withstand she descended to the salon,
the picture presented by which at that moment would have
been a fit subject for a genre painter. Still seated at the
card-table, the cur^ was mechanically toying with the
counters and covertly watching Peyrade and Corentin, who
were standing at one of the corners of the chimney and talk-
ing together in an undertone. Several times did Corentin's
perspicacious glance encounter the equally keen glance of
the cure, but as two adversaries who, on crossing swords
and finding themselves of equal force, resume their guard,
both promptly turned their eyes elsewhere. Old man
d'Hauteserre, planted on his long slender legs like a
heron, stood at the side of the big, fat, gross and glutton-
ous Goulard, in the attitude which his stupefaction had
originally imparted to him and which he had been unable
to shake off. The mayor, although he affected the attire of
a bourgeois, always had the appearance of a valet. Both
were stupidly regarding the two gendarmes, placed one on
each side of the still snivelling Gothard, whose hands had
been bound so tightly that they were purple and swollen.
Catherine preserved the attitude of her selection, full of
simplicity and artlessness, but quite impenetrable. The
102 BALZAC'S WORKS
corporal, who, as Corentin had been at pains to inform him,
had made an egregious ass of himself by arresting those two
honest, innocent young people, was evidently undecided
whether to go or to remain. He stood by himself in the
middle of the salon carefully considering the matter, his
hand on the hilt of his sword, his eyes fixed on the Pari-
sians. A painter wishing to depict anxiety and alarm
should have seen the group composed of the Durieus and
other servants of the chateau. One might have heard the
buzzing of the flies had it not been for Gothard's convul-
sive sobs.
When the mother, supported by Mile. Goujet, whose red
eyes bore witness that she also had been weeping, showed
her pale, scared face in the doorway, the eyes of all in the
salon were turned on the two women. The two agents had
hoped, in the same measure as the inmates of the chateau
had feared, to see Laurence enter. The spontaneous move-
ment of the entire company, servants and masters, was pro-
duced, the beholder would have declared, by one of those
simple mechanisms which set an assortment of wooden
manikins wagging their heads and winking their eyes
with perfect uniformity of gesture.
Mme. d'Hauteserre advanced into the room with three
long and disordered strides until she stood before Corentin,
to whom she said in broken but loud and distinct accents: