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Updated: July 3, 2025
We have good walls, strong gates, and three thousand soldiers at our command. These peasants are fools! But be grateful for their folly, my dear duke, and run and order out the Montaignac chasseurs " But suddenly a cloud overspread his face; he knit his brows, and added: "The devil! I am expecting Blanche this evening. She was to leave Courtornieu after dinner.
No allusion was made to Jean Lacheneur, so it was supposed that he had not left the country; but they had no reason to fear for his safety, since he was not upon the proscribed list. Later, it was rumored that the Marquis de Courtornieu was ill, and that Mme. Blanche did not leave his bedside.
This was the place selected by the Duc de Sairmeuse and the Marquis de Courtornieu for the assembling of the military commission. On first entering it, Maurice and the abbe felt a cold chill strike to their very hearts; and an indefinable anxiety paralyzed all their faculties. But the commission had not yet commenced its seance; and they had time to look about them.
The Duc de Sairmeuse and the Marquis de Courtornieu were past middle age; their lives had been marked by many storms and vicissitudes; they were the possessors of millions, and the owners of the most sumptuous residences in the province. Under these circumstances one might have supposed that they would desire to end their days in peace and quietness.
Many ladies were not sorry of an opportunity to repay the young Marquise de Sairmeuse for the disdain and the caustic words of Blanche de Courtornieu. Soon all the guests, who had so eagerly presented themselves that morning, had disappeared, and there remained only one old gentleman who, on account of his gout, had deemed it prudent not to mingle with the crowd.
This sum represented the savings of the Marquis de Courtornieu during the past three years. No one knew he had laid it aside, except his daughter; and now that he had lost his reason, Blanche, who knew where the hoard was concealed, could take it for her own use without the slightest danger. "With this," she thought, "I can at any moment enrich Aunt Medea without having recourse to Martial."
The sneer was so apparent that M. de Courtornieu was sorely tempted to make an angry response. But he was not a man to yield to his first impulse this former chamberlain under the Emperor, now become a grand prevot under the Restoration. He reflected. Should he, on account of a sharp word, quarrel with Martial with the only suitor who had pleased his daughter?
"So she confesses it!" thought Mlle. de Courtornieu, amazed at what she was pleased to consider an outrageous piece of impudence. But she succeeded in concealing her rage beneath a loud burst of laughter; and it was in a tone of raillery that she said: "Take care, my dear friend; I am going to call you to account. It is from my fiance that you are accepting flowers."
He advanced softly, and his heart quickened its throbbing when he saw that he was right. Mlle. Blanche de Courtornieu was seated on a bench beside an old lady, and was engaged in reading a letter in a low voice. She must have been greatly preoccupied, since she had not heard Martial's footsteps approaching.
An hour before, the Marquis de Courtornieu and the Duc de Sairmeuse had been overwhelmed with the most obsequious homage and adulation. But now there was not one in that assembly daring enough to take them openly by the hand. Just when they believed themselves all-powerful they were rudely precipitated from their lordly eminence. Disgrace and perhaps punishment were to be their portion.
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