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A dozen soldiers were indeed approaching at the top of their speed. "Ah! I spoke the truth!" exclaimed Maurice. "The coward came, but the gendarmes accompanied him." He bounded back, and breaking his sword over his knee, he hurled the fragments in Martial's face, saying: "Here, miserable wretch!" "Wretch!" repeated Jean and Corporal Bavois, "traitor! coward!"
It is one of the strictest laws of the Republic that the patricians and their families shall not hold any intercourse with the foreign ambassadors and their suites. But the decision taken by Bavois did not prevent my friends speaking in his favour, and they succeeded in obtaining employment for him, as will be seen further on.
Never had the unfortunate man seemed so cheerful; and it was with the most jubilant air that he explained the reason of his long silence. "Three days after we crossed the frontier," said he, "Corporal Bavois and I reached Turin. It was time, for we were tired out. We went to a small inn, and they gave us a room with two beds.
The next day they heard of the meeting at the Reche. A peasant who, from a distance, had witnessed the preliminaries of the duel which had not been fought, was able to give them the fullest details. He had seen the two adversaries take their places, then the soldiers run to the spot, and afterward pursue Maurice, Jean and Bavois. But he was sure that the soldiers had not overtaken them.
And finally, at the bottom of the casket, he found the marriage-certificate of Marie-Anne Lacheneur and Maurice d'Escorval, drawn up by the Cure of Vigano and signed by the old physician and Corporal Bavois. The truth was as clear as daylight. Stunned, frozen with horror, Martial scarcely had strength to return the letters to the casket and restore it to its place.
Calvi died two or three years later. De la Haye, who was bent upon forming pupils, became, two or three months after Calvi's death, the tutor of the young Chevalier de Morosini, the nephew of the nobleman to whom Bavois was indebted for his rapid fortune, who was then the Commissioner of the Republic to settle its boundaries with the Austrian Government represented by Count Christiani.
The harsh grating that had so alarmed the baron was no longer heard, and Bavois, finding he had nothing more to dread from the keenest ears, now made preparations to shelter himself from observation. To cover the opening in the door would arouse suspicion at once so the corporal adopted another expedient.
What did amaze him was the breaking of the rope a rope so large that one would have supposed it capable of sustaining the weight of ten men like the baron. As he could not, by reason of the darkness, see the ruptured place, Bavois felt it with his finger; and, to his inexpressible astonishment, he found it smooth.
People know that I would not leave the baron, who is my friend; my priestly robe would attract attention; one of you must assume it. God will forgive this deception on account of its worthy motive." It was now necessary to procure the litter; and the officers were trying to decide where they should go to obtain it, when Corporal Bavois interrupted them.
My friend Bavois was there, and he seized the opportunity to borrow from me fifty sequins, which he never returned; true, I never asked him for them.
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