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Then Gascogne, the Chief of the Detective Force, who had remained in the rear of the chalet, continuing the search through the outbuildings, made his appearance, pushing before him a bundle of rags and mud, which two policemen held on either side. And this bundle was the man, the hunted man, who had just been discovered in the coach-house, inside a staved cask, covered with hay.
With him in the darkness were the cows, a store of food and water, and his provisions for the long summer season. With nothing but hope to animate him, he set to work burrowing upward among the rocks, storing the débris in the room of the chalet.
He dared not wander about Ingouville; moreover, he made it a point of honor to obey orders, and he therefore went back to Paris, previously writing a letter which Francoise Cochet duly delivered on the morrow with the Havre postmark. It was the custom of Monsieur and Madame Latournelle to dine at the Chalet every Sunday when they brought back Modeste after vespers.
In some nook or on some crag of the square leagues of desert that swell around him a troop of the desiderated ruminants is grazing, if grazing it can be called where grass is none. He is very sure of that. Even from the door of his chalet he scans the slopes in the half hope of detecting a flock or a single goat. So he prepares himself anew for the wild and perilous tramp.
Then, as the rain came down more heavily and they could perceive a kind of chalet, a little cafe-restaurant amid a clump of trees, they hastened thither for better protection. In a side road, which they passed on their way, they saw a cab standing, its driver waiting there in philosophical fashion under the falling shower.
The chalet roofs shone white beneath the moon, and pitch-black shadows gathered against the walls of the church. His eye rested a moment on the square stone tower with its frosted cross that pointed to the sky: then travelled with a leap of many thousand feet to the enormous mountains that brushed the brilliant stars.
How can the owner of a dainty chalet, with smoked-oak furniture, imitation Venetian tapestry curtains, hot and cold water laid on, a bed of geraniums and hollyhocks, a baby crawling down the veranda, and a self-acting twirly-whirly hose gently hissing over the grass in the balmy dusk of an August evening how can such a man despair of the Republic, or descend into the streets on voting days and mix cheerfully with "the boys"?
"But how was the trunk conveyed hence?" "I do not know, monsieur." "Did you see Mademoiselle Madeleine the next morning?" inquired Bertha. "No, mademoiselle. I could not help going to the châlet the first thing when I came out to work. I pushed the door open and looked in; the trunk was not there, and I knew that Mademoiselle Madeleine was gone too!"
Society wished to show civilities to Madame and Mademoiselle Mignon; but they had already obeyed the father's last wishes and taken refuge in the Chalet, where they went on the very morning of his departure, the exact hour of which had been concealed from them. Not to be shaken in his resolution by his grief at parting, the brave man said farewell to his wife and daughter while they slept.
On Bernard's expressing surprise and saying that he had supposed them to be fixed at the sea-side for the rest of the season, the femme de chambre, who seemed a very intelligent person, begged to remind him that the season was drawing to a close, that Madame had taken the chalet but for five weeks, only ten days of which period were yet to expire, that ces dames, as Monsieur perhaps knew, were great travellers, who had been half over the world and thought nothing of breaking camp at an hour's notice, and that, in fine, Madame might very well have received a telegram summoning her to another part of the country.
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