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"Aristocrat!" cried Beau-Pied, sternly, "if you don't want me to send you to your ci-devant paradise, you will not say a word against that beautiful lady." Mademoiselle de Verneuil returned to Fougeres by the paths which connect the rocks of Saint-Sulpice with the Nid-aux-Crocs.
Certain that a fight was at hand, he looked at his men composedly. "There'll be a row," said Beau-Pied to his comrades in a low voice. "See, the commandant is rubbing his hands." In critical situations like that in which the detachment and its commander were now placed, life is so clearly at stake that men of nerve make it a point of honor to show coolness and self-possession.
"It means that the troops that's us are to march firm; don't you see the compasses are open, both legs apart? that's an emblem." "Such much for your learning, my lad; it isn't an emblem it's called a problem. I've served in the artillery," continued Beau-Pied, "and problems were meat and drink to my officers." "I say it's an emblem." "It's a problem." "What will you bet?" "Anything."
"Aristocrat!" he cried, "don't stir, or I'll demolish you in a wink, like the Bastille." "Monsieur Beau-Pied," said Mademoiselle de Verneuil, in a persuasive voice, "you will be answerable to me for this prisoner. Do as you like with him now, but you must return him to me safe and sound at Fougeres." "Enough, madame!" "Is the road to Fougeres clear?"
"True for you," replied Beau-Pied, "and you may add that she gives pretty good cider but I can't drink it in peace till I know what's behind those devilish hedges. I always remember poor Larose and Vieux-Chapeau rolling down the ditch at La Pelerine. I shall recollect Larose's queue to the end of my days; it went hammering down like the knocker of a front door."
Hearing the rustle of this movement through the gorse, seven or eight men, at the head of whom was Beau-Pied, hastily hid behind some chestnut-trees which topped the bank of this particular field. Gudin's men did not see them, in spite of the white reflections of the hoar-frost and their own practised sight. "Hush! here they are," said Beau-Pied, cautiously putting out his head.
It is now half-past ten; they must all be here by twelve. Take hackney cabs and go faster than that!" he added, a republican allusion which in past days had been often on his lips. And he put on the scowl that had brought his soldiers to attention when he was beating the broom on the heaths of Brittany in 1799. "You shall be obeyed, Marechal," said Beau-Pied, with a military salute.
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. "Impossible! but so much the better," cried the old soldier, still half asleep; "then he can fight."
Within about twenty minutes she had brought back Adeline, whom she had told of the Marshal's threat to his brother. The Marshal, without looking at Hector, rang the bell for his factotum, the old soldier who had served him for thirty years. "Beau-Pied," said he, "fetch my notary, and Count Steinbock, and my niece Hortense, and the stockbroker to the Treasury.
"If you ever want a sabre to deal some special blow, my life is yours. I am good for that. My name is Jean Falcon, otherwise called Beau-Pied, sergeant of the first company of Hulot's veterans, seventy-second half-brigade, nicknamed 'Les Mayencais. Excuse my vanity; I can only offer you the soul of a sergeant, but that's at your service." He turned on his heel and walked off whistling.
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