“I shall not go a step further,” said Laurence, “unless you give me some proof of the interest you seem to have in us—for, after all, you are Michu.”
“Mademoiselle,” he answered, in a gentle voice; “the part I am playing can be explained to you in two words. I am, unknown to the Marquis de Simeuse and his brother, the guardian of their property. On this subject I received the last instructions of their late father and their dear mother, my protectress. I have played the part of a virulent Jacobin to serve my dear young masters. Unhappily, I began this course too late; I could not save their parents.” Here, Michu’s voice broke down. “Since the young men emigrated I have sent them regularly the sums they needed to live upon.”
“Through the house of Breintmayer of Strasburg?” asked the countess.
“Yes, mademoiselle; the correspondents of Monsieur Girel of Troyes, a royalist who, like me, made himself for good reasons, a Jacobin. The paper which your farmer picked up one evening and which I forced him to surrender, related to the affair and would have compromised your cousins. My life no longer belongs to me, but to them, you understand. I could not buy in Gondreville. In my position, I should have lost my head had the authorities known I had the money. I preferred to wait and buy it later. But that scoundrel of a Marion was the slave of another scoundrel, Malin. All the same, Gondreville shall once more belong to its rightful masters. That’s my affair. Four hours ago I had Malin sighted by my gun; ha! he was almost gone then! Were he dead, the property would be sold and you could have bought it. In case of my death my wife would have brought you a letter which would have given you the means of buying it. But I overheard that villain telling his accomplice Grevin—another scoundrel like himself—that the Marquis and his brother were conspiring against the First Consul, that they were here in the neighborhood, and that he meant to give them up and get rid of them so as to keep Gondreville in peace. I myself saw the police spies; I laid aside my gun, and I have lost no time in coming here, thinking that you must be the one to know best how to warn the young men. That’s the whole of it.”
“You are worthy to be a noble,” said Laurence, offering her hand to Michu, who tried to kneel and kiss it. She saw his motion and prevented it, saying: “Stand up!” in a tone of voice and with a look which made him amends for all the scorn of the last twelve years.
“You reward me as though I had done all that remains for me to do,” he said. “But don’t you hear them, those huzzars of the guillotine? Let us go elsewhere.”
He took the mare’s bridle, and led her a little distance.
“Think only of sitting firm,” he said, “and of saving your head from the branches of the trees which might strike you in the face.”
Then he mounted his own horse and guided the young girl for half an hour at full gallop; making turns and half turns, and striking into wood-paths, so as to confuse their traces, until they reached a spot where he pulled up.
“I don’t know where I am,” said the countess looking about her,—“I, who know the forest as well as you do.”