MAÎTRE JACQUES AND HIS RABBITS.
To the south, of Machecoul, forming a triangle round the village of Légé, stretch three forests. They are called respectively the forests of Touvois, Grandes-Landes, and La Roche-Servière.
The territorial importance of these forests is not great if considered separately; but standing each within three kilometres of the others, and connected by hedges and fields full of gorse and brambles, even more numerous there than elsewhere in La Vendée, they form a very considerable agglomeration of woodland. The result has been that in times of civil war they became a very hot-bed of revolt, where insurrection was fostered and concentrated before it spread through the adjacent regions.
The village of Légé, besides being the native place of the famous physician Jolly, was, almost continuously, Charette's headquarters during the great war. It was there, in the thick belt of woodland surrounding the village that he took refuge if defeated, reformed his decimated battalions, and prepared for other fights.
In 1832, although a new road from Nantes to the Sables-d'Olonne, which runs through Légé, had modified in a measure its strategic strength, the wooded neighborhood was still the most formidable centre of the insurrectionary movement then organized. The three forests hid, in their impenetrable undergrowth of holly and ferns which grew under the shadow of the great thickets, those bands of refractories (conscripts escaping service) whose ranks were daily increasing and forming the kernel of the insurrectionary divisions in the Retz region and on the plains.
The clearings made by government, even the felling of a considerable portion of the wood, had no perceptible result. It was rumored that the deserters had excavated underground dwellings, like those the first Chouans burrowed in the forests of Gralla, in the depths of which they had so often defied the closest search. In this particular case rumor was not mistaken.
Toward the close of the day when, as we have seen, Michel started on horseback from the château de Souday toward the Picaut cottage, any one who had stood concealed behind one of the huge centennial beeches that surround the glade of Folleron in the forest of Touvois, would have seen a curious sight.
At the hour when the sun, sinking toward the horizon, left a sort of twilight behind it,--an hour when the wood-paths were already in a shadow that seemed to rise from the earth, while the tree-tops were still burnished with the last rays of the dying sunlight,--this concealed spectator would have seen in the distance, and coming toward him, a personage whom, with a very slight stretch of fancy, he might have taken for some uncanny or impish being. This personage advanced slowly, looking cautiously about him,--a matter which seemed to be the more easy because, at first sight, he appeared to have two heads, with which to keep a double watch over his safety.
He was clothed in the sordid rags of an old jacket and the semblance of a pair of breeches, the original cloth of which had completely disappeared beneath the multifarious patches of many colors with which its decay had been remedied; and he appeared, as we have said, to belong to the class of bicephalous monsters who occupy a distinguished place among the choice exceptions which Nature delights to create in her fantastic moments.
The two heads were entirely distinct the one from the other, and though they apparently came from the same trunk there was no family resemblance between them. Beside a broad and brick-dust colored face, seamed with small-pox and covered with unkempt beard, appeared a second face, less repulsive, very astute, and rather malign in its ugliness, whereas the other countenance expressed only a sort of idiocy which might at times amount to ferocity.
These two distinct countenances did, in truth, belong to two men, whose acquaintance we have already made at Montaigu on the day of the fair; namely, to Aubin Courte-Joie, the tavern keeper, and--if the reader will pardon an almost too expressive name, but one we think we have no right to change--to Trigaud the Vermin, the beggar, whose herculean strength, it will be remembered, played a noted part in the riot at Montaigu by lifting the general's leg from the stirrup and throwing him out of his saddle.
By a judicious arrangement, which we have already mentioned, Aubin Courte-Joie had supplemented, or re-completed, his own personality by the help of this species of beast of burden whom he had, by good luck, encountered on his path through life. In exchange for the two legs he had left on the road to Ancenis, the truncated cripple had obtained a pair of steel limbs, which resisted all fatigue, feared no task, and served him as his own original legs never did and never could have done,--legs, in short, which did his will with passive obedience, and had reached, after a certain period of association, such adaptability that they instinctively guessed the very thoughts of Aubin Courte-Joie, if conveyed by a mere word, a single sign, or even a slight touch of a hand on the shoulder or a knee on the flank.
The strangest part of this affair was that the least satisfied partner in the firm was not Trigaud-Vermin; quite the contrary. His thick brain knew that Aubin Courte-Joie was directing his physical strength in the direction of his sympathies. The words "White" and "Blue," which dropped into his large ears, always pricked up and listening, proved to him that he supported, in his quality of locomotive to the tavern-keeper, a cause whose worship was the one glimmer of light which had survived the collapse of his brain. He made it his glory. His confidence in Aubin Courte-Joie was boundless; he was proud of being linked body and soul to a mind whose superiority he recognized, and he was now attached to the man who might indeed be called his master, with the self-abnegation that characterizes all attachments which instinct governs.
Trigaud carried Aubin sometimes on his back, sometimes on his shoulders, but always as affectionately as a mother carries her child. He took the utmost care of him; he showed him little attentions which seemed to disprove the poor devil's actual idiocy. He never thought of watching his own feet or guarding them from the cutting and wounding of stones and briers; but he carefully held aside, as he walked along, the bushes or branches which he thought might rub the body or scratch the face of his rider.
When they had advanced about a third of the way into the open, Aubin Courte-Joie touched Trigaud on the shoulder, and the giant stopped short. Then, without needing to speak, the inn-keeper pointed with his finger to a large stone lying at the foot of an enormous beech-tree, in the right-hand corner of the clearing.
The giant advanced to the beech, picked up the stone, and awaited orders.
"Now," said Aubin Courte-Joie, "strike three blows."
Trigaud did as he was told, timing the blows so that the second followed the first rapidly, and the third did not sound until after a certain interval.
At this signal, which was made on the trunk of the tree, a little square of turf and moss rose from the ground, and a head beneath it.
"Ho! it's you, is it, Maître Jacques? What's the watch-dog doing at the mouth of the burrow?" asked Aubin, visibly pleased at meeting with an intimate acquaintance.
"Hey! my gars Courte-Joie, this is the hour for business, don't you see; and I never like to let my rabbits out till I make sure myself the hunters are not about."
"And you are right, Maître Jacques; you are right," replied Courte-Joie; "to-day, especially, for there are lots of guns on the plain."
"Hey, how's that, tell me?"
"That's what I want to do."
"But first, won't you come in?"
"Oh, no; no, Jacques. It is hot enough where we are,--isn't it Trigaud?"
The giant uttered a grunt which might, at a pinch, pass for an affirmation.
"Goodness! why, he's speaking!" remarked Maître Jacques. "They used to say he was dumb. You are in luck's way, gars Trigaud, to be taken into Aubin's good graces; do you know that? Why, you are almost a man, not to speak of having your board and lodging sure; and that's more than all dogs can say,--even those at the castle of Souday."
The beggar opened his large mouth and began a chuckle of laughter, which he did not end, for a motion of Aubin's hand stopped in the cavities of his larynx that impulse to hilarity which his powerful lungs rendered dangerous.
"Hush! lower! lower, Trigaud!" he said, roughly. Then turning to Maître Jacques, "He thinks he is in the market-place of Montaigu, poor innocent!"
"Well, as you won't come in, I'll call out the gars. You're right, my Courte-Joie; it is devilish hot inside. Some of 'em say they are roasted; but you know how such fellows grumble."
"That's not like Trigaud," replied Aubin, pounding with his fist, by way of a caress, on the head of the elephant who served him as steed; "he never complains,--not he!"
Trigaud gave a nod of gratitude for the signs of friendship with which Courte-Joie honored him.
Maître Jacques, whom we have just presented to our readers, but with whom it remains for us to make them fully acquainted, was a man of fifty to fifty-five years of age, who had all the external appearance of a worthy farmer of the Retz region. Though his hair was long and floated on his shoulders, his beard, on the contrary, was cut close and shaved with the utmost care. He wore a perfectly clean jacket of gray cloth, cut in a shape that was almost modern compared with those that were still in use in La Vendée, and a waistcoat, also of cloth, in broad stripes, alternately white and fawn-colored. Breeches of coarse brown cloth and gaiters of blue twilled cotton were the only part of his costume which resembled that of his compatriots.
A pair of pistols, with shining handles, stuck into his jacket, were the only military signs he bore at this moment. But in spite of his placid, good-humored face, Maître Jacques was really the leader of the boldest band in the whole region, and the most determined Chouan to be found in a circuit of fifty miles, throughout which he enjoyed a very formidable reputation.
Maître Jacques had never seriously laid down his arms during the whole fifteen years that Napoleon's power lasted. With two or three men--oftener alone and isolated--he had managed to make head against whole brigades detailed to capture him. His courage and his luck were something supernatural, and gave rise to an idea among the superstitious population of the Bocage that his life was invulnerable, and that the balls of the Blues were harmless against him. When, therefore, after the revolution of July, in fact, during the very first days of August, 1830, Maître Jacques announced that he should take the field, all the refractories of the neighborhood flocked to his standard, and it was not long before he had under his orders a considerable body of men, with whom he had already begun the second series of his guerilla exploits.
After asking Aubin Courte-Joie to excuse him for a few moments, Maître Jacques, who, for the purposes of conversation had put first his head and then his bust above the trapdoor, now stooped down into the opening, and gave a curiously modulated whistle. At this signal a hum arose from the bowels of the earth, much like that of a hive of bees. Then, close by, between two bushes, a wide sort of lid or skylight, covered only with turf and moss and dried leaves, exactly like the ground beside it, rose vertically, supported on four stakes at the four corners. As it rose it revealed the opening to a sort of grain-pit, very broad and very deep; and from this pit about twenty men now issued, one after another, in succession.
The dress of these men had nothing of the elegant picturesqueness which characterizes brigands as we see them issue from pasteboard caverns at the Opéra-Comique,--far, very far from that. Some wore uniforms which closely resembled the rags on Trigaud-Vermin's person; others--and these were the most elegant--wore cloth jackets. But the jackets of the greater number were of cotton.
The same diversity existed in their weapons. Two or three regulation muskets, half a dozen sporting guns, and as many pistols formed the entire equipment of firearms. The display of side-arms was far from being as respectable; it consisted solely of Maître Jacques's sabre, two pikes dating back to the old war, and eight or ten scythes, carefully sharpened by their owners.
When all the braves had issued from the pit into the clearing. Maître Jacques walked up to the trunk of a felled tree, on which he sat down. Trigaud placed Aubin Courte-Joie beside him, after which the giant retired a few steps, though still within reach of his partner's signals.
"Yes, my Courte-Joie," said Maître Jacques, "the wolves are after us; but it gives me pleasure to have you take the trouble to come and warn me." Then, suddenly, "Ah, ça!" he cried; "how happens it that you can come? I thought you were caught when they took Jean Oullier? Jean Oullier got away, I know, as they crossed the ford,--there's nothing surprising in his escape; but you, my poor footless one,--how, in Heaven's name, did you get off?"
"You forget Trigaud's feet," replied Aubin Courte-Joie, laughing. "I pricked the gendarme who held me, and it seems it hurt him, for he let go of me, and my friend Trigaud did the rest. But who told you that, Maître Jacques?"
"Maître Jacques shrugged his shoulders with an indifferent air. Then, without replying to the question, which he may have thought an idle one,--
"Ah, ça!" he said; "I hope you haven't come to tell me that the day is changed?"
"No; it is still for the 24th."
"That's good," replied Maître Jacques; "for the fact is I've lost all patience with their delays and their shufflings. Good Lord! where's the need of such a fuss to pick up one's gun, say good-bye to one's wife, and be off?"
"Patience! patience! you won't have long to wait now, Maître Jacques."
"Four days!" said the other, in a tone of disgust.
"That's not long."
"I think it is too long by three. I didn't have Jean Oullier's chance to do for some of them at the springs of Baugé."
"Yes; the gars told me about that."
"Unhappily," continued Maître Jacques, "they have taken a cruel revenge for it."
"How so?"
"Haven't you heard?"
"No; I have just come straight from Montaigu."
"Ah, true; then you can't know."
"What happened?"
"They caught and killed in Pascal Picaut's house a fine young man I respected,--I, who don't think any too much of his class usually."
"What was his name?"
"Comte de Bonneville."
"Did they really? When was it?"
"Why this very day, damn it! about two in the afternoon."
"How, in the devil's name, did you hear that, down in your pit, Maître Jacques?"
"Don't I hear everything that is of use to me?"
"Then I don't know that there's any use in my telling you what brings me here."
"Why not?"
"Because you probably know it."
"That may be."
"I should like to be sure whether you do or not."
"Pooh!"
"Faith! yes, I should. It would spare me a disagreeable errand, which I only accepted against my will."
"Ah! then you have come from those gentlemen?"
Maître Jacques pronounced the words we have underscored in a tone that varied from contempt to menace.
"Yes, I do, in the first instance," replied Aubin Courte-Joie; "but I met Jean Oullier on my way, and he, too, gave me a message for you."
"Jean Oullier! Ah! anything that comes from him is welcome. He is a gars I love,--Jean Oullier! He has done a thing in his life which made me his friend forever."
"What was that?"
"That's his secret, not mine. But come; tell me, in the first place, what those lordly gentlemen want of me?"
"It is your division leader who has sent me."
"The Marquis de Souday?"
"Yes."
"Well, what does he want?"
"He complains that you attract, by your constant sorties, the attention of the government soldiers, and that you irritate the population of the towns by your exactions, and also that you paralyze the general movement by making it more difficult."
"Pooh! why haven't they made their movement sooner? We have waited long enough, God knows! For my part, I've been waiting since July 30."
"And then--"
"What! is there any more of it?"
"Yes; he orders you--"
"Orders me!"
"Wait a moment; you can obey or not obey, but he orders you--"
"Listen to me, Courte-Joie; whatever he orders I here make a vow to disobey it. Now, go on; I'm listening."
"Well, he orders you to stay quietly in your quarters till the 24th, and, above all, to stop no diligence nor any traveller on the high-road, as you have been doing lately."
"Well, I swear, for my part," replied Maître Jacques, "to capture the first person that goes to-night from Légé to Saint-Étienne or from Saint-Étienne to Légé. As for you, stay here, gars Courte-Joie, and then you can tell him what you have seen."
"Oh, no! no!" exclaimed Aubin.
"Why not?"
"Don't do that, Maître Jacques."
"Yes, by God! I will, though."
"Jacques! Jacques!" insisted the tavern-keeper; "can't you see it will compromise our sacred cause?"
"Possibly; but it will prove to him--that old fox I never chose for my superior--that I and my men are outside his division, and that here, at least, his orders shall never be obeyed. So much for the orders of the Marquis de Souday; now go on to Jean Oullier's message."
"I met him as I reached the heights near the bridge at Servières. He asked where I was going, and when I told him, 'Parbleu!' said he; 'that's the very thing! Ask Maître Jacques if he can move out and let us have his earth-hole for some one we want to hide there.'"
"Ah, ha! Did he say who the person was, my Courte-Joie?"
"No."
"Never mind! Whoever it is, if he comes in the name of Jean Oullier, he'll be welcome; for I know Jean Oullier wouldn't turn me out if it were not for some good reason. He is not one of the crowd of lazy lords who make all the noise and leave us to do the work."
"Some are good, and some are bad," said Aubin, philosophically.
"When is the person he wants to hide coming?" asked Maître Jacques.
"To-night."
"How shall I know him?"
"Jean Oullier will bring him."
"Good. Is that all he wants?"
"No; he wishes you to capture all doubtful persons in the forest to-night, and have the whole neighborhood watched, more especially the path toward Grand-Lieu."
"There now! just see that! The division commander orders me to arrest no one, and Jean Oullier wants me to clear the forest of curs and red-breeches,--reason the more why I should keep the oath I made just now. How will Jean Oullier know that I shall be expecting him?"
"If he can come--that is, if there are no troops in the way at Touvois--I am to let him know."
"Yes; but how?"
"By a branch of holly with fifteen leaves upon it in the middle of the road half-way along to Machecoul, at the crossways of Benaste, the tip end turned toward Touvois."
"Did he give you the password? Jean Oullier would surely not forget that."
"Yes; 'Vanquished' and 'Vendée.'"
"Very good," said Maître Jacques, rising and going to the middle of the open. There he called four of his men, gave them some directions in a low voice, and all four, without replying, went off in four different directions. At the end of about four minutes, during which time Maître Jacques had ordered up a jug of what seemed to be brandy, and had offered some to his companion, four individuals appeared from the four directions in which the other men had been sent. These were the sentinels just relieved by their comrades.
"Any news?" asked Maître Jacques.
"No," replied three of the men.
"Good. You,--what do you say?" he inquired of the fourth. "You had the best post."
"The diligence to Nantes was escorted by four gendarmes."
"Ah, ha! your nose is good; you smell specie. Bless me! and when I think there are those who order us not to get it! However, friends, patience! we are not to be put down."
"Well, what do you think?" interrupted Courte-Joie.
"I think there's not a pair of red breeches anywhere about. Tell Jean Oullier he can bring his people."
"Good!" said Courte-Joie, who during this examination of the sentries was preparing a branch of holly in the manner agreed upon with Jean Oullier. "Very good; I'll send Trigaud." Turning toward the giant, "Here, Vermin!" he said.
Maître Jacques stopped him.
"Ah, ça!" he exclaimed; "are you crazy, to part with your legs in that way? Suppose you should need him? Nonsense! there are forty men here who would like no better than to stretch their legs. Wait, you shall see--Hi! Joseph Picaut!"
At the call, our old acquaintance, who was sleeping on the grass in a sleep he seemed much to need, sat up and listened.
"Joseph Picaut!" repeated Maître Jacques, impatiently.
That decided the man. He rose, grumbling, and went up to Maître Jacques.
"Here is a branch of holly," said the leader of the belligerents; "don't pluck off a single leaf. Carry it immediately to the crossway of La Benaste on the road to Machecoul, and lay it down in front of the crucifix, with its tip-end pointing toward Touvois."
Maître Jacques crossed himself as he said the word "crucifix."
"But--" began Picaut, objecting.
"But?--what do you mean?"
"I mean that, after four hours of such a run as I have just made, my legs are breaking under me."
"Joseph Picaut," replied Maître Jacques, whose voice grew strident and metallic, like the blare of a trumpet, "you left your parish and enrolled yourself in my band. You came here; I did not ask you. Now, recollect one thing: at the first objection I strike; at the second I kill."
As he spoke Maître Jacques pulled a pistol from his jacket, grasped it by the barrel, and struck a vigorous blow with the butt-end on Picaut's head. The shock was so violent that the peasant, quite bewildered, came down on one knee. Probably, without the protection of his hat, which was made of thick felt, his skull would have been fractured.
"And now, go!" said Maître Jacques, calmly looking to see if the blow had shaken the powder from the pan.
Without a word Joseph Picaut picked himself up, shook his head, and went off. Courte-Joie watched him till he was out of sight; then he looked at Maître Jacques.
"Do you allow such fellows as that in your band?" he said.
"Yes; don't speak of it!"
"Have you had him long?"
"No, only a few hours."
"Bad recruit for you."
"I don't say that exactly. He is a brave gars, like his father, whom I knew well; only, he has to be taught to obey like my fellows, and to get used to the ways of the burrow. He'll improve; he'll improve."
"Oh, I don't doubt it! You have a wonderful way of educating them."
"God bless me! I've been at it a good while! But," continued Maître Jacques, "it is time for my round of inspection, and I shall have to leave you, my poor Courte-Joie. It is understood, isn't it, that Jean Oullier's friends are welcome to the burrow. As for the division commander, he shall have his answer to-night. You are sure that is all gars Oullier told you to say?"
"Yes."
"Rummage your memory."
"I am sure that is all."
"Very well. If the burrow suits him, he shall have it,--he and his friends. I don't bother myself about my gars; those scamps, they are like mice,--they have more than one hole. Good-bye for the present, gars Aubin; and while you are waiting, take a bite. I see them making ready for a stew down there."
Maître Jacques descended into what he called his burrow. Then he came out a moment later, armed with a carbine, the priming of which he examined with the utmost care; after which he disappeared among the trees.
The open was now very animated, and presented a most picturesque effect. A large fire had been lighted in the burrow, and the glare coming through the trap illumined the trees and bushes with fantastic gleams. The supper of the men, who were scattered about the open, was cooking at it, while the men waited. Some, on their knees, were telling their beads; others, sitting down, sang in low tones those national songs whose plaintive, long-drawn melodies were so in keeping with the character of the landscape. Two Bretons, lying on their stomachs at the mouth of the burrow, were betting, by means of two bones of different shades of color, for the possession of sundry copper coins, while another gars (who, from his pallid face and shrivelled skin,--shrivelled with fever,--was obviously a dweller among the marshes) employed himself, without much success, in cleaning a thick coat of rust from the barrel and match-lock of an old carbine.
Aubin Courte-Joie, accustomed to such scenes, paid no attention to the one before him. Trigaud had made him a sort of couch with leaves, and he was now seated on this improvised mattress, smoking his pipe as tranquilly as if in his tavern at Montaigu.
Suddenly he fancied he heard in the far distance the well-known cry of alarm,--the cry of the screech-owl,--but modulated in a certain long-drawn-out way which indicated danger. Courte-Joie whistled softly to warn the men about him to keep silence and listen; but almost at the same instant a shot echoed from a place about a thousand steps distant.
In the twinkling of an eye the water-pails, standing ready for this very use, had put out the fire; the roof was lowered, the trap closed, and Maître Jacques's belligerents, among them Courte-Joie, whom his physical partner remounted on his shoulders, were scattering in every direction among the trees, where they awaited the next signal from their leader.