THE TAVERN OF THE GRAND SAINT-JACQUES.
One word on the lay of the land about the village of Saint-Philbert. Without this little topographical preface, which shall be short, like all our prefaces, it would be difficult for our readers to follow in detail the scenes we are now about to lay before their eyes.
The village of Saint-Philbert stands at the angle formed by the river Boulogne as it falls into the lake of Grand-Lieu; the village is on the left bank of the river. The church and the principal houses are somewhere about fifteen hundred yards from the lake; the main, in fact the only street follows the river-bank, and the lower it goes to the lake, the fewer and poorer the houses; so that when the vast blue sheet of water, framed in reeds, which forms the terminus of the street is reached, there is nothing to be seen but a few thatched huts occupied by men who are employed in the fisheries.
Yet there is, or rather was at the time of which we write, one exception to this decadence of the lower end of the village street. About thirty steps away from the huts we have mentioned stood a brick and stone house, with red roofs and green shutters, surrounded with hay and straw stacks, like sentinels round a camp, and peopled with a world of cows, sheep, chickens, ducks,--all either lowing and bleating in the stables or clucking and gabbling before the door as they preened themselves in the dust of the road.
The road served as the courtyard of the house, which, if deprived of that useful resort, could still fall back upon its gardens, which are simply the most magnificent and productive of all the country round. From the road the crests of the fruit-trees can be seen above the farm-buildings, covered in spring-time with the rosy snow of their blossoms; in summer, with fruits of all kinds; and during nine months of the year, with verdure. These trees spread in a semi-circle about a thousand feet southerly, to a little hill crowned with ruins which looks down upon the waters of the lake of Grand-Lieu.
This house is the inn kept by the mother of Marianne Picaut. These ruins are those of the château de Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu.
The high walls and gigantic towers of this the most celebrated baronial castle in the province, built to hold the country in check and command the waters of the lake, the gloomy arches that once echoed to the clanking spurs of Comte Gilles de Retz as he trod its paved floors, meditating on those monstrous debauches which surpassed all that Rome in its decadence ever invented,--now, dismantled, dilapidated, swathed in ivy, overgrown with gilliflowers, crumbling on all sides, have descended, from degradation to degradation, to the lowest of all; grand, savage, terrible as they once were, they are now humbly utilitarian; they have been reduced at last to making a living for a family of peasants, descendants of poor serfs who in former days regarded them, no doubt, with fear and trembling.
These ruins shelter the gardens from the northwest wind, so fatal to fertility, and make this little corner of earth a perfect Eldorado, where all things grow and prosper,--from the native pear to the grape, the fruiting sorbus to the fig-tree.
But this was not the only service which the old feudal castle did to its new proprietors. In the lower halls, cooled by currents of impetuous air, they kept their fruits and garden products, preserving them in good condition after the ordinary season had passed; thus doubling their value. And besides this source of profit, the dungeons, where Gilles de Retz had piled his victims, were now a dairy, the butter and cheese of which were justly celebrated. This is what time has done with the Titanic works of the former lords of Saint-Philbert.
One word now on what they once were.
The château de Saint-Philbert consisted originally of a vast parallelogram enclosed with walls, bathed on one side by the waters of the lake and protected on the other side by a broad moat hollowed in the rock. Four square towers flanked the four corners of this enormous mass of stone; a citadel in the centre, with its portcullis bristling with spikes, defended the entrance. Opposite to the citadel, on the other side of the castle, a fifth square tower, taller and more imposing than the rest, commanded the whole structure, and the lake, which surrounded it on three sides.
With the exception of this fifth tower and the citadel, or keep, all the rest of the fortress, walls and main-buildings, had pretty much crumbled away, and time had not entirely spared the great tower itself. The rotten beams of the first floor, unable to support the stones which year by year slid down upon them in greater numbers, had sunk to the ground-floor, raising it by over a foot, leaving no other ceiling in the tower than the rafters of the roof.
It was in this lower room that the grandfather of the widow Picaut had principally kept his fruit, and the walls were lined with shelves on which the good man spread in winter the various products of his garden. The doors and windows of this portion of the tower had remained more or less intact, and at one of these windows could still be seen an iron bar covered with rust, which undoubtedly dated from the days of Comte Gilles.
The other towers and the walls of the main building were completely in ruins; the masses of masonry which had fallen had rolled either into the courtyard, which they obstructed, or into the lake, which covered them with its reeds at all times and its foam in stormy weather. The citadel, about as intact as the great tower, was crowded with an enormous mass of ivy which took the place of a roof; in it were two small chambers, which, notwithstanding the colossal appearance of the structure, were not more than eight or ten feet square, owing to the enormous thickness of the walls.
The inner courtyard, used in feudal days as the barrack-ground of the castle's defenders, obstructed by the rubbish which time had heaped there,--fragments of columns and battlements, broken arches, dilapidated statues,--was now impassable. A narrow path led to the great tower; another, less carefully cleared, led to a remaining vestige of the east tower, where a stone staircase was actually left standing, by which all persons desirous of enjoying a beautiful view could, after a series of acrobatic feats, reach the platform of the main tower by following a gallery which ran along the wall like those Alpine paths cut on the face of the rock between precipice and mountain.
It is unnecessary to say that, except during the period of the year when the fruits were stored there, no one frequented these ruins of the château de Saint-Philbert. At that period a watchman was stationed there, who slept in the keep; all the rest of the year the gates of the tower were locked and the place was abandoned to lovers of historical reminiscences, and to the boys of the village, who pervaded the old ruins, where they found nests to pillage, flowers to pick, dangers to brave,--all things of eager attraction to children.
It was in these ruins that Courtin had appointed to meet Monsieur Hyacinthe. He knew they would be absolutely deserted at the hour he named to his associate, inasmuch as the lingering ill-repute of the place drove away at night all the village urchins who, as long as the sun was above the horizon, scampered like lizards among the dentelled ridges of the old ruin.
The mayor of La Logerie left Nantes about five o'clock; he was on foot, and yet he walked so fast that he was an hour earlier than he needed to be when he crossed the bridge which led into the village of Saint-Philbert. Maître Courtin was somewhat of a personage in the village. To see him desert the Grand Saint-Jacques (the inn before which he usually tied his pony Sweetheart) in favor of the Pomme de Pin, the tavern kept by the mother of the widow Picaut, would have been an event which, as he very well knew, would have set the village tongues a wagging. He was so convinced of this that, although, being deprived of his pony and never taking any refreshment except what was offered to him, it seemed a useless matter to go to an inn at all, the mayor of La Logerie stopped, as usual, before the door of the Grand Saint-Jacques, where he held with the inhabitants of the village (who, since the double defeat at Chêne and La Pénissière, had drawn closer to him) a conversation which, under present circumstances, was not unimportant to him.
"Maître Courtin," said one man, "is it true what they say?"
"What do they say, Matthieu?" replied Courtin. "Tell me; I'd like to know."
"Hang it! they say you've turned your coat, and nothing can be seen but the lining of it,--so that what was blue is now white."
"Well done!" said Courtin; "if that isn't nonsense!"
"You've given occasion for it, my man; and since your young master went over to the Whites it is a fact that you've stopped gabbling against them as you once did."
"Gabbling!" exclaimed Courtin, with his slyest look, "what's the good of that? I have something better to do than gabble, and--and you'll hear of it soon, my lad."
"So much the better! for, don't you see, Maître Courtin, all these public troubles are death to business. If patriots can't agree, they'll die of poverty and hunger instead of being shot like our forefathers. Whereas, if we could only get rid of those troublesome gars who roam the forests about here and make trouble, business would soon pick up, and that's all we want."
"Roaming?" repeated Courtin, "who are roaming? Seems to me that none but ghosts are left to roam now."
"Pooh! there's plenty of them left. It isn't ten minutes since I saw the boldest of them go by, gun in hand, pistols in his belt,--just as if there weren't any red-breeches in the land."
"Who was he?"
"Joseph Picaut, by God!--the man who killed his brother."
"Joseph Picaut! here?" exclaimed Courtin, turning livid. "It isn't possible!"
"It's as true as you live, Maître Courtin! as true as there is a God! He did have on a sailor's hat and jacket, but never mind, I recognized him all the same."
Maître Courtin reflected a moment. The plan he had laid in his head, which rested on the existence of the house with two issues, and the daily intercourse of Maître Pascal with Petit-Pierre, might fail; in which case, he had Bertha to fall back upon as a last resource. There would then remain, in order to discover Petit-Pierre's retreat, one means open to him,--the means he had already failed in with Mary,--namely, to follow Bertha when she went to Nantes. If Bertha saw Joseph Picaut all was lost; still worse would it be if Bertha put Picaut in communication with Michel! Then the part he had played in stopping the embarkation would be disclosed to the young baron, and the farmer was a ruined man.
Courtin asked for pen, ink, and paper, wrote a few lines, and gave them to the man who had spoken to him.
"Here, gars Matthieu," he said, "here's a proof that I'm a patriot and that I don't turn round like a weathercock to the wind of any master. You accuse me of following my young landlord in all his performances; well, the fact is that I have only known within the last hour where he is hiding, and now I am going to lay hands on him. The more occasion I have to destroy the enemies of the nation, the better pleased I am, and the more I hasten to take advantage of it; and what's more, I do it without inquiring whether it is to my advantage or disadvantage, or whether the persons I denounce are my friends or not."
The peasant, who was a double-dyed Blue, shook Courtin's hand heartily.
"Are your legs good?" continued the latter.
"I should think so!" said the peasant.
"Well, then, carry that to Nantes at once; and as I have a good many haystacks out, I rely on you to keep my secret; for, you understand, if I'm suspected of having the young baron arrested, those stacks will never get into my barn."
The peasant made a promise of secrecy, and Courtin, as it was now dusk, left the inn on the right, made a tack across the fields, and then, returning cautiously on his steps, took a path which led to the ruins of Saint-Philbert.
He reached them by the shore of the lake, followed the moat, and entered the courtyard by a stone bridge which had long replaced the portcullis that gave entrance to the citadel.
As he entered the courtyard he whistled softly. At the signal a man sitting on the fallen masonry rose and came to him. The man was Monsieur Hyacinthe.
"Is that you?" he said, as he approached with some caution.
"Yes," said Courtin, "don't be alarmed."
"What news?"
"Good; but this is not the place to tell it."
"Why not?"
"Because it is as dark as a pocket. I almost walked over you before I knew it. A man might be hidden here at our feet and we not be the wiser. Come! the affair is in too good shape just now to risk anything."
"Very good; but where will you find a lonelier place than this?"
"We must find one. If I knew of an open desert in the neighborhood I'd go there and speak low. But, for want of a desert, we'll find some place where we are certain of being alone."
"Go on; I'll follow you."