“The devil take you!” he exclaimed, “if any one else had met you, you’d have had a ball through your head. What are you doing, and where are you going, at this time of night? Are you dumb? It certainly is a woman,” he said to himself.
The silence was suspicious, but the stranger broke it by saying, in a voice which suggested extreme fright, “Ah, my good man, I’m on my way back from a wake.”
“It is the pretended mother of the marquis,” thought Corentin. “I’ll see what she’s about. Well, go that way, old woman,” he replied, feigning not to recognize her. “Keep to the left if you don’t want to be shot.”
He stood quite still; then observing that Madame du Gua was making for the Papegaut tower, he followed her at a distance with diabolical caution. During this fatal encounter the Chouans had posted themselves on the manure towards which Marche-a-Terre had guided them.
“There’s the Grande-Garce!” thought Marche-a-Terre, as he rose to his feet against the tower wall like a bear.
“We are here,” he said to her in a low voice.
“Good,” she replied, “there’s a ladder in the garden of that house about six feet above the manure; find it, and the Gars is saved. Do you see that small window up there? It is in the dressing-room; you must get to it. This side of the tower is the only one not watched. The horses are ready; if you can hold the passage over the Nancon, a quarter of an hour will put him out of danger—in spite of his folly. But if that woman tries to follow him, stab her.”
Corentin now saw several of the forms he had hitherto supposed to be stones moving cautiously but swiftly. He went at once to the guard-room at the Porte Saint-Leonard, where he found the commandant fully dressed and sound asleep on a camp bed.
“Let him alone,” said Beau-Pied, roughly, “he has only just lain down.”
“The Chouans are here!” cried Corentin, in Hulot’s ear.