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The Chateau de Courtornieu is, next to Sairmeuse, the most magnificent habitation in the arrondissement of Montaignac. The approach to the castle was by a long and narrow road, badly paved. When the carriage containing Martial and his father turned from the public highway into this rough road, the jolting aroused the duke from the profound revery into which he had fallen on leaving Sairmeuse.
She paused to listen, and they heard a step in the passage. "Ah!" she exclaimed, "here is Monsieur le Cure now!" The son of a poor farmer in the environs of Montaignac, he owed his Latin and tonsure to the privations of his family. Tall, angular, and solemn, he was as cold and impassive as the stones of his church.
"The Duc de Sairmeuse is at Montaignac; he will soon be here; and we are dwelling in the chateau of his fathers, and his domain has become ours!" The vexed question regarding the national lands, which agitated France for thirty years, Marie understood, for she had heard it discussed a thousand times. "Ah, well, dear father," said she, "what does that matter, even if we do hold the property?
He seized the arm of his former friend, and in a voice loud enough to be heard distinctly by everyone present, he continued: "Foolish man! You have forgotten that Montaignac is a fortified city, protected by deep moats and high walls! You have forgotten that behind these fortifications is a garrison commanded by a man whose energy and valor are beyond all question the Duc de Sairmeuse."
Officials came from Montaignac charged with investigating the affair. They examined a host of witnesses, and there was even talk of sending to Paris for one of those detectives skilled in unravelling all the mysteries of crime. Aunt Medea was half crazed with terror; and her fear was so apparent that it caused Blanche great anxiety. "You will end by betraying us," she remarked, one evening.
Since her father had taken up his abode in town they met only on Sunday; on that day either Blanche went to Montaignac, or the marquis paid a visit to the chateau. Hence this proposed journey was a deviation from the regular order of things. It was explained, however, by grave circumstances.
Martial, at Montaignac, had ended by going to sleep. Blanche, when daylight came, exchanged the snowy bridal robes for a black dress, and wandered about the garden like a restless spirit. She spent most of the day shut up in her room, refusing to allow the duke, or even her father, to enter. In the evening, about eight o'clock, they received tidings from Martial.
But there was one man, who, at each of these detonations, received, as it were, his death-wound this man was Lacheneur. He had reached the Croix d'Arcy just as the firing at Montaignac began. He listened and waited. No discharge of musketry replied to the first fusillade. There might have been butchery, but combat, no.
Major Carini, the leader of the conspirators in Montaignac, who had expected to lose his head, heard himself, with astonishment, sentenced to two years' imprisonment. But there are crimes which nothing can efface or extenuate. Public opinion attributed this sudden clemency on the part of the duke and the marquis to fear.
The inquest was the subject of all her conversation with her niece. They had all the latest information in regard to the facts developed by the investigation through the butler, who took a great interest in such matters, and who had won the good-will of the agents from Montaignac, by making them familiar with the contents of his wine-cellar.
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