The fisherman landed his passengers at the Pornic point. Picaut, for whose benefit the skipper's son had given up his spencer and his oilskin cap, started across country in a bee-line for Nantes, swearing in every key that Courtin had better look out for himself. But before leaving the marquis he begged him to tell Maître Jacques all the particulars of his adventure, feeling quite certain that the master of the warren would fraternally assist in his revenge.
It was thus that, thanks to his knowledge of localities, he was able to reach Nantes about nine that evening; and going, naturally, to his old post at the Point du Jour, he overheard a part at least of the conversation between Courtin and the mysterious individual of Aigrefeuille, and saw the money, or rather the bank-bills, which Courtin did not regard as valuable until they were changed into coin.
As for the marquis and his daughter, it was not until nightfall that they ventured, notwithstanding Bertha's impatience, to start for the forest of Touvois; and it was not without actual grief of heart that the old gentleman thought of the happy morning he had spent among the fishes, reflecting that it would have no morrow, and that he was fatally condemned to live, for an indefinite time, like a rat in his hole.
[XXXIII.]
THAT WHICH HAPPENED IN TWO DWELLINGS.
Maître Jacques was not mistaken in his presentiments; Jean Oullier was living. The ball which Courtin had fired at random into the bush--on chance, as it were--had entered his breast; and when the widow Picaut (the wheels of whose cart had alarmed Courtin and his companion) reached him, she felt sure she was lifting a dead body. With a charitable sentiment, very natural to a peasant-woman, she did not choose that the body of a man for whom her husband had always, in spite of their political differences, expressed the utmost respect, should be left as food for the buzzards and jackals; she was determined that the good Vendéan should lie in holy ground, and she therefore placed him on her cart to take him home.
Only, instead of hiding him in the cart, as she had intended doing, she now laid him on it uncovered, and several of the peasants whom she met on the way stopped to look at and touch the bloody remains of the Marquis de Souday's old keeper. In this way the news of Jean Oullier's death was spread about the canton; and this was how the marquis and his daughters heard of it, and why Courtin,--who, the next day, wanted to make sure that the man he most feared was no longer living to terrify him,--why Courtin had been deceived and misled like the rest.
It was to the old cottage where she had formerly lived with her husband that Marianne Picaut now took the body. Since Pascal's death she had, in her loneliness, removed to the inn kept by her mother at Saint-Philbert. The cottage was nearer to Machecoul, Jean Oullier's parish, than the inn; to which, had he been living, she intended to take him and keep him safely concealed till he was well.
Just as the cart reached the open crossway we have often mentioned, one road of which led to the dwelling of the two Picaut brothers, it met a man on horseback following the road to Machecoul. This man, who was no other than our old acquaintance, Monsieur Roger, the doctor at Légé, questioned some of the little ragamuffins who, with the persistency and curiosity of their age, were following the cart. When the doctor heard that it contained the body of Jean Oullier, he left his present direction and followed the cart to the Picaut dwelling.
The widow placed Jean Oullier on the bed where Pascal Picaut and the poor Comte de Bonneville had lain side by side. While thus busy in doing him the last offices, and wiping the blood and dust which covered his face and matted his hair, the widow suddenly looked up and saw the doctor.