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The shortest road from Cinq-Cygne to Michu's lodge was that which led from the village past the farm at Bellache to the rond-point where the Parisian spies had first seen Michu on the preceding evening. The gendarme who was driving Corentin took this way, which was the one the corporal of Arcis had taken.
This testimony seemed so important to the justice of the peace that he sent back a messenger to Gondreville to advise Lechesneau to proceed himself to Cinq-Cygne and arrest the four gentlemen, while he went to Michu's farm, so that the five arrests might be made simultaneously. This new element was so convincing that Lechesneau started at once for Cinq-Cygne.
Learn from this, mademoiselle, that a man must die for the laws of his country just as men die here for her glory." So saying, he led her back into the hut. "Return to France," he said, looking at the marquis; "my orders shall follow you." Laurence believed in a commutation of Michu's punishment, and in her gratitude she knelt again before the Emperor and kissed his hand.
"Well, corporal, how are you?" said Corentin who had run up the stairs and found the gendarme with his head bandaged, and lying on Madame Michu's bed; his hat, sabre, and shoulder-belt on a chair. Marthe, faithful in her womanly instincts, and knowing nothing of her son's prowess, was giving all her care to the corporal, assisted by her mother.
Just then a gendarme entered the salon to ask if he might bring in Michu's son, sent by his father to speak to the gentlemen from Paris. Corentin gave an affirmative nod. Francois Michu, a sly little chip of the old block, was in the courtyard, where Gothard, now at liberty, got a chance to speak to him for an instant under the eyes of a gendarme.
Accused of corresponding with the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Cobourg, the marquis and his wife were thrust into prison and condemned to death by the revolutionary tribunal of Troyes, of which Madame Michu's father was then president. The fine domain of Gondreville was sold as national property.
Michu's anger against Monsieur Marion had serious grounds, but it was now concentrated on another man, far more criminal in his eyes, on Malin, whose secrets were known to the bailiff, he being in a better position than others to understand the conduct of the State Councillor.
One evening, coming away from Troyes in company with several peasants, among whom was the farmer at Cinq-Cygne, he let fall a paper on the main road; the farmer, who was walking behind him, stooped and picked it up. Michu's action was so sudden and violent, the tone of his voice so alarming, his eyes blazed so savagely, that the men about him turned cold with fear.
Treachery stinks in the nostrils, and primitive folks do scent it from afar." "But that's our strength," said the Provencal. "Call the corporal of Arcis," cried Corentin to one of the gendarmes. "I shall send him at once to Michu's house," he added to Peyrade. "Our ear, Violette, is there," said Peyrade. "We started without getting news from him.
Seeing the uselessness of all attempts to make them talk, and knowing what the neighborhood chose to call Michu's perversity, the justice ordered the gendarmes to bind his hands and those of Gothard, and take them both to the chateau, whither he now went himself to rejoin the director of the jury.
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