Angélique listened to the terrible tale, drinking it in with eyes, mouth, and ears. Her countenance changed to a mask of ugliness, wonderful in one by nature so fair to see. Cloud followed cloud over her face and eyes as the dread recital went on, and her imagination accompanied it with vivid pictures of every phase of the diabolical crime.
When La Corriveau described the presentation of the bouquet as a gift of Bigot, and the deadly sudden effect which followed its joyous acceptance, the thoughts of Caroline in her white robe, stricken as by a thunderbolt, shook Angélique with terrible emotion. But when La Corriveau, coldly and with a bitter spite at her softness, described with a sudden gesticulation and eyes piercing her through and through, the strokes of the poniard upon the lifeless body of her victim, Angélique sprang up, clasped her hands together, and, with a cry of woe, fell senseless upon the floor.
“She is useless now,” said La Corriveau, rising and spurning Angélique with her foot. “I deemed she had courage to equal her wickedness. She is but a woman after all,—doomed to be the slave of some man through life, while aspiring to command all men! It is not of such flesh that La Corriveau is made!”
La Corriveau stood a few moments, reflecting what was best to be done.
All things considered, she decided to leave Angélique to come to of herself, while she made the best of her way back to the house of Mère Malheur, with the intention, which she carried out, of returning to St. Valier with her infamous reward that very day.
CHAPTER XLII. “LET'S TALK OF GRAVES AND WORMS AND EPITAPHS.”
About the hour that La Corriveau emerged from the gloomy woods of Beauport, on her return to the city, the night of the murder of Caroline, two horsemen were battering at full speed on the highway that led to Charlebourg. Their dark figures were irrecognizable in the dim moonlight. They rode fast and silent, like men having important business before them, which demanded haste; business which both fully understood and cared not now to talk about.
And so it was. Bigot and Cadet, after the exchange of a few words about the hour of midnight, suddenly left the wine, the dice, and the gay company at the Palace, and mounting their horses, rode, unattended by groom or valet, in the direction of Beaumanoir.
Bigot, under the mask of gaiety and indifference, had felt no little alarm at the tenor of the royal despatch, and at the letter of the Marquise de Pompadour concerning Caroline de St. Castin.