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All I have to record of the first twenty-three years of my life is the enumeration of them. A simple bead-roll is enough; it represents their family likeness and family monotony. I lost my parents when I was very young. I can hardly recall their faces; and I should keep no memories of La Chatre, our home, had I not been brought up quite close to it.
"It is not La Chatre, the superb, whose amour I have come into this cursed wilderness to serve." "Then who ?" But I stopped at the beginning of the question, as a new thought came to me. "The secretary!" I said. "Montignac, the modest and meditative," replied De Berquin. I might have thought it.
Again my weapons clashed with Montignac's. Julie looked swiftly around. Her eye alighted on the dagger that lay on one of the chairs. She drew it from its sheath. "If we die, it is together!" she cried, holding it aloft. There came a deadened, thumping sound, growing swiftly to great volume. It was that of men rushing up the stairs. "To the rescue!" cried La Chatre.
Leaving Pierre to unsaddle and rub down his horse, Philip walked to the farther edge of the wood, to view the country beyond. They were, he knew, not far from La Chatre; and he was not surprised to see the town, lying in a valley, to which the ground sloped down from the wood. It was about a mile and a half distant.
I threw aside the bed-curtain, stepped forth, and said: "That time has come, monsieur!" M. de la Chatre could not have been more surprised if a spirit had risen from the floor at his feet. He stared at me with startled eyes. I had sheathed my sword while behind the curtains, and now I stood motionless, with folded arms, before him. Mademoiselle uttered a slight cry.
"It is nigh three weeks back, sir." "The Lord be praised!" the count said solemnly, taking off his cap and looking upwards. "He has shown me many mercies, but this is the greatest. For the last two months I have mourned her as dead. News was brought to me, by one of my retainers, that she was with a congregation who were attacked by the people of La Chatre, and that all had been massacred.
The author, in her preface, tells us how, whilst mechanically listening to the incessant chatter of the Venetian sempstresses in the next room to her own, she was struck by the resemblance between the mode of life and thought their talk betrayed, and that of the same class of girls at La Châtre; and how in the midst of Venice, to the sound of the rippling waters stirred by the gondolier's oar, of guitar and serenade, and within sight of the marble palaces, her thoughts flew back to the dark and dirty streets, the dilapidated houses, the wretched moss-grown roofs, the shrill concerts of the cocks, cats, and children of the little French provincial town.
Monsieur, the captain," and I rode forward towards the leader of the governor's troops, "your informant speaks truly. Permit me to introduce myself. I am the Sieur de la Tournoire, the person named in that order." With which I politely handed him the pass that I had forced from La Chatre, which I had for a time forgotten. It was about three hours after midnight, and the moon was not yet very low.
My persistent, though deferential, inquiries elicited from her, in a wavering voice, that she had not previously possessed the governor's acquaintance; that her entreaties had evoked only the governor's wrathful orders to depart from the province on pain of sharing her father's fate; and that La Chatre had refused to allow her even to see her father in his dungeon in the Chateau of Fleurier.
"My dagger is ready, monsieur!" Again the door closed; again I was alone with La Chatre. I had lost my former advantage. For now, should I strike my tray once, for the purpose of summoning Montignac, so that I might be at the door to slay him at first sight, the governor could strike his bowl, and Montignac would hear two strokes or more signal for mademoiselle's death.
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