Presently, however, the two women went their way into the dark and narrow streets of the old Breton city.
[XXIII.]
WHAT BECAME OF JEAN OULLIER.
Though it was next to impossible for the soldiers to discover Jean Oullier in the hiding-place poor Trigaud's herculean strength had made for him, nevertheless, now that Courte-Joie and his companion were dead, Jean Oullier had only exchanged the prison into which the Blues would have thrust him, had he fallen into their hands, for another prison more terrible, a death more awful than any his captors could inflict upon him. He was buried alive; and in this deserted region there was little hope that any human being would hear his cries.
Toward the middle of the night which followed his parting from his two associates, finding they did not return, he felt certain that some fatal event had overtaken them; evidently, they were either dead or prisoners. The mere idea of the position in which he himself was placed was enough to freeze the blood in the veins of the bravest man; but Jean Oullier had one of those strongly religious natures which continue a struggle in faith when the bravest despair. He commended his soul to God in a short but fervent prayer, and then set to work as ardently as he had done in the burning ruins of La Pénissière.
Up to this time he had been crouching, bent double, with his chin on his knees; it was the only position the cramped quarters of the excavation allowed. He now endeavored to change it, and after many efforts he succeeded in getting on his knees. Then bracing himself on his hands and applying his shoulders to the heavy stone, he endeavored to raise it. But that which was child's play to Trigaud was impossible to any other man. Jean Oullier could not even shake the enormous mass which the giant had placed between him and the heavens.
He felt the ground beneath him; it was not earth but rock,--rock to right, rock to left, above and below him, rock only.
The slab of granite which Trigaud had laid like a monstrous cover on the stone box, slanted forward and left an open space about four inches wide between the bed of the rivulet and the imprisoned man, through which the air could reach him.
It was on this side that Jean Oullier, after fully reconnoitring his position, decided to apply his efforts.
He broke the point of his knife against the rock and made a chisel of it. The butt-end of his pistol answered for a hammer, and he set to work to widen the aperture. He spent twenty-four hours at this labor, without other sustenance than that contained in his huntsman's brandy-flask, from which he sipped from time to time some drops of the strengthening liquor it contained. During those twenty-four hours his courage and force of will did not desert him for a single instant.