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Leaning against the door, pale as death, he tried most energetically, but in vain, to repress the tears of rage and of sorrow which swelled up in his eyes. To insult Lacheneur was to insult Marie-Anne that is to say, to injure, to strike, to outrage him in all that he held most dear in the world.
In his opinion, Lacheneur had, ere this, crossed the frontier, and was out of danger. In this he was mistaken. The frontier bordering on Savoy was guarded by soldiers, who had received orders to allow none of the conspirators to pass.
Just then a valet opened the door, and the Duc de Sairmeuse, still in full uniform, entered. "Upon my word!" he exclaimed, as he crossed the threshold, "I must confess that Chupin is an admirable hunter. Thanks to him " He paused abruptly; he had not perceived Marie-Anne until now. "The daughter of that scoundrel Lacheneur!" said he, with an air of the utmost surprise. "What does she desire here?"
The fate that overshadows us will ruin you also." She spoke almost wildly. Her voice was so loud that it penetrated an adjoining room. The communicating door opened and M. Lacheneur appeared upon the threshold. At the sight of M. d'Escorval he uttered an oath. But there was more sorrow and anxiety than anger in his manner, as he said: "You, Monsieur, you here!"
Had he listened to the promptings of anger, Jean Lacheneur would certainly have attempted to make the Chupins repent their menaces. But a conflict was scarcely permissible under the circumstances. He departed without a word, and hastened back to the Borderie. The death of Chupin overturned all his plans, and greatly irritated him.
The handsomest young farmer in the country, and the best also. Ah! he has good blood in his veins; we may well be proud of him." "Ask him to stop," said M. d'Escorval. Lacheneur leaned over the balustrade, and, forming a trumpet out of his two hands, he called: "Oh! Chanlouineau!" The robust young farmer raised his head. "Come up," shouted Lacheneur; "the baron wishes to speak with you."
Then followed the "Hundred Days." They exasperated him. But "the good cause," as he styled it, having triumphed anew, he hastened to France. Alas! Lacheneur judged the character of his former master correctly, when he resisted the entreaties of his daughter.
If Marie-Anne had heard his covert insinuations with evident horror, M. Lacheneur had received, with even more than coldness, his advances and his offers of actual wealth. Moreover, he remembered Chanlouineau's terrible eyes. "How he measured me, that magnificent rustic!" he growled. "At a sign from Marie-Anne he would have crushed me like an eggshell, without a thought of my ancestors.
So it was with the bitterest resentment that, on the morning following her arrival in Montaignac, she recounted what she styled her "humiliations" to her father, i.e., the inconceivable arrogance of that Lacheneur girl, and the frightful brutality of which the peasants had been guilty.
Yesterday, the miserable woman who murdered my sister died from poison administered by her own hand. Poor Marie-Anne! she would have been far more terribly avenged had not an accident which happened to me, saved the Duc and the Duchesse de Sairmeuse from the snare into which I had drawn them. "Jean Lacheneur." Lecoq stood as if petrified.
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