The unfortunate Renée had, in time, to make a confidante of her mother, who in her grief and anger revealed all to M. Corbeau. He heaped the most bitter reproaches on their daughter, but agreed that some plan should be adopted to bring Pousset, who was now studiously absenting himself, to reason and a sense of justice. It was arranged that he and Madame Corbeau should feign a journey to a little country mansion they possessed not far from Angers, and that Renée should press Pousset to visit her, when they should take advantage of the occasion to surprise him; a project which was executed with complete success.
Thrown completely off his guard by this unexpected stratagem, the lover said with much apparent candour:
"Monsieur Corbeau, be not alarmed for the error which our love for each other has led us into; but pardon us, I beseech you. My intentions are still most honourable, and I shall be but too happy to espouse your daughter."
The incensed Corbeau was somewhat comforted by this prompt promise of reparation, and sent immediately for a notary, his friend, who lived close by. The latter drew up a formal contract of marriage in legal form, and to this, with Renée, M. Pousset appended his signature and seal, after which he took a tender farewell of the weeping girl, and retired with the view of, reluctantly, breaking the matter to his family; but so true is it that "affection is the root of love in woman, and passion is the root of love in man," that from the hour in which he signed the—to him—fatal contract, all his regard for Renée evaporated.
Her beauty and her sorrow alike failed to impress him now, and the faithless Pousset repented him so bitterly of what he angrily deemed a legal entanglement, that he hastened to Tees and unfolded the whole of the affair to his father in a story artfully coloured and fashioned to suit himself.
M. Pousset the senior, who possessed a magnificent estate, never doubted but that his amiable and facile son had been entrapped by an artful girl and her parents, and sternly told him that he could never approve of his marriage with one whose portion was so small, and desired him to commit her, the contract, and the whole affair, to oblivion. While the document, signed and sealed existed, this, however, proved impossible; so young Pousset, either by his father's advice or his own inclination, took refuge in the bosom of the Church, and was somewhat too speedily ordained sub-deacon, and then deacon, thinking thereby to vitiate the power of the contract, and to create for life an invincible barrier between himself and Renée.
With all the grief and horror a tender and affectionate heart could feel when love is so repaid by black perfidy, she heard these tidings, and her soul seemed to die within her; but her old father, who was filled with just indignation, and whose sword the ordination of Pousset kept in its scabbard, raised a civil action against him before the principal court at Angers for having deluded, and then declined, to marry his daughter in the face of the notary's contract.
The recreant was compelled to appear; but he appealed against the order, and denied the jurisdiction of the court; hence the cause was brought before the Parliament of Paris. Before this tribunal, then, were brought the wrongs of Renée Corbeau, and the whole affair seemed so cruel and odious to the judges—especially the fact of Pousset having taken holy orders (and thereby degraded them) to evade the contract of marriage—that they condemned him to espouse Renée or lose his head by the sword of the executioner.
He urged that the sanctity of holy orders utterly precluded the former reparation. On this the court unanimously declared that he must undergo the latter. He was accordingly replaced in the Bastile; the priest who was to attend in his last moments came to prepare him for death, and as all sentences were summarily executed in those days, already the headsman awaited him.
The heart of the poor girl, who loved him still, was now wrung with new anguish and pity, and she accused herself of being the cause of his approaching doom. Crushed by that dreadful conviction, in her anxiety to save him, or at least have his sentence mitigated in some manner, she conceived the idea of taking all the guilt of his position upon herself.