“I cannot make you the return you wish. I can give you no other answer.”
“Well, Agatha, so be it. You shall find now that I can be calm, when my unalterable resolve requires it. You shall find that I am a man; at any rate, you shall not again have to tell me that I am despicable,” and he curled his upper lip, and showed his teeth in a very ferocious manner. “You shall never repeat that word in regard to Adolphe Denot. Should kind fortune favour my now dearest wish, you will soon hear that my bones are whitening under the walls of Saumur. You will hear that your des-pi-ca-ble lover,” and he hissed out the offending word, syllable by syllable, between his closed teeth, “has perished in his attempt to be the first to place the white flag of La Vendée above the tri-colour. If some friendly bullet will send me to my quiet home, Adolphe Denot shall trouble you no longer,” and as he spoke the last few words, he softened his voice, and re-assumed his sentimental look; but he did not remain long in his quiet mood, for he again became furious, as he added: “But if fortune should deny me this boon, if I cannot find the death I go to seek, I swear by your own surpassing beauty, by your glorious unequalled form, that I will not live without you. Death shall be welcome to me,” and he raised his hands to heaven, and then dashed them against his breast. “Oh! how dearly welcome! Yes, heroic death upon the battlefield shall calm this beating heart—shall quell these agonized pangs. Yes, Agatha, if fortune be but kind, death, cold death, shall soon relieve us both; shall leave you free to bestow upon a colder suitor the prize you have refused to my hot, impatient love; but if,” (and here he glanced very wildly round him), “my prayers are not heard, if after Saumur’s field, life be still left within my body’s sanctuary, I will return to seize you as my own, though hosts in armour try to stop my way. I will not live without you. I will not endure to see another man aspire to the hand which has been refused to me. Adieu, Agatha, adieu! I trust we shall meet no more; in thinking of me, at any rate, your memory shall not call me despicable,” and he rushed out of the door and down stairs, without waiting to hear whether Agatha intended making any answer to this poetical expression of his fixed resolution.
In the commencement of his final harangue, Agatha had determined to hear him quietly to the end; but she had not expected anything so very mad as the exhibition he made. However, she sat quietly through the whole of it, and was glad that she was spared the necessity of a reply.
Nothing more was seen of Adolphe Denot that night. Henri asked his sister whether she had seen him, and she told him that he had made a declaration of love to her, and had expressed himself ill-satisfied with the only answer she had been able to give him. She did not tell her brother how like a demoniac his friend had behaved. To Marie she was more explicit; to her she repeated as nearly as possible the whole scene as it had occurred; and although Agatha was almost weeping with sorrow, there was so much that was ludicrous in the affair, that Marie could not keep herself from laughing.
“He will trouble you no more,” said she. “You will find that he will not return to Durbellière to carry you off through the armed hosts. He will go to England or emigrate; and in a few years’ time, when you meet him again, you will find him settled down, and as quiet as his neighbours. He is like new-made wine, my dear—he only wants age.”
On the following morning, by break of day, the party left Durbellière, and Adolphe Denot joined his friend on the gravelled ring before the house; and Agatha, who had been with her brother in his room, looking from the widow saw her unmanageable lover mount his horse in a quiet, decent way, like the rest of the party.
CHAPTER IX. — LE MOUCHOIR ROUGE.
Nothing interfered to oppose the advance of the royalist troops towards Saumur. At Coron, as had been proposed, Larochejaquelin and Denot joined Father Jerome; and Cathelineau also, and M. d’Elbée joined them there. Every house in the town was open to them, and the provisions, which by the care of M. de Larochejaquelin had been sent there, were almost unneeded. If there was any remnant of republican feeling in Coron, at any rate it did not dare to shew itself. The road which the royalists intended to take ran from Cholet, through Coron, Vihiers, and Doué, to Saumur. The republicans, who were now in great force at Saumur, under Generals Coustard and Quetineau, had sent small parties of soldiers into the town of Vihiers and Doué, the inhabitants of which were mostly republican. Before the arrival of M. de Larochejaquelin, the blues, as the republican troops were called by the Vendeans, had been driven out of Vihiers by a party of royalists under the direction of Stofflet, who had raised himself to distinction soon after the commencement of the revolt. This man was a gamekeeper in the employment of an emigrant nobleman, and though he was a rough, harsh, uneducated, quarrelsome man, nevertheless, by his zeal and courage, he had acquired great influence among the people, and was now at the head of a numerous, and, for La Vendée, well-armed body of men.