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Updated: May 19, 2025
Most assuredly they would say that I was very avaricious of my own blood, while I was very ready to risk the lives of others. Still I may be mistaken; I may misjudge him." He sighed, and added: "Beware!" So it was really Maurice d'Escorval whom the Marquis de Sairmeuse had seen leaving Lacheneur's house. Martial was not certain of it, but the very possibility made his heart swell with anger.
But Lacheneur's horse, its chest cut open by the bayonets, reared, beat the air with his hoofs, then fell backward, burying his rider beneath him. And the soldiers marched on, not suspecting that beneath the body of the horse the brave rider was struggling to free himself. It was half-past one in the morning the place was deserted.
They had bound Lacheneur's hands, and the party were about to descend the mountain, when a man appeared, bareheaded, covered with perspiration, and panting for breath. Twilight was falling, but M. Lacheneur recognized Balstain. "Ah! you have him!" he exclaimed, as soon as he was within hearing distance, and pointing to the prisoner.
He threw a coin down upon the counter, and without waiting for his change, rushed back to the citadel, and asked the sergeant at the gate for pen and paper. The old rascal generally wrote slowly and painfully; to-day it took him but a moment to trace these lines: "I know Lacheneur's retreat, and beg monseigneur to order some mounted soldiers to accompany me, in order to capture him. Chupin."
Reason returned; he realized the enormity of his suspicions, and was horrified with himself for having dared to give utterance to them. "Oh! pardon!" he faltered, "pardon!" What did the mysterious causes of all these events which had so rapidly succeeded each other, or M. Lacheneur's secrets, or Marie-Anne's reticence, matter to him now?
Since he had received the price of Lacheneur's blood the twenty thousand francs which had so fascinated him Chupin had deserted the house of the Duc de Sairmeuse. He had taken up his quarters in a small inn on the outskirts of the town; and he spent his days alone in a large room on the second floor.
"Yes," promptly replied the youth, who had heard nothing of the kind. Martial was silent, ashamed, perhaps, of allowing himself to listen to the gossip, but glad to have been informed of such an important circumstance. If Chupin was not telling a falsehood and what reason could he have for doing so it became evident that M. Lacheneur's conduct concealed some great mystery.
Unfortunately, he had nothing whatever to guide him in his researches; no clew, however vague. All that was known in Montaignac was that M. Lacheneur's horse was killed at the Croix d'Arcy. But no one knew whether Lacheneur himself had been wounded, or whether he had escaped from the fray uninjured. Had he reached the frontier? or had he found an asylum in the house of one of his friends?
They thought they had arrived in time. Alas! here, as on the Reche, all their efforts, all their entreaties, and all their threats were futile. They had come in the hope of arresting the movement; they only precipitated it. "We have gone too far to draw back," exclaimed one of the neighboring farmers, who was the recognized leader in Lacheneur's absence.
His excessively nervous organization had succumbed before the rude assaults of destiny. When, in obedience to M. Lacheneur's imperative order, he left the grove on the Reche, he lost the power of reflecting calmly and deliberately upon the situation.
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