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Updated: May 19, 2025
"Chupin, my boy," said he, "I do not ask you to discover Monsieur d'Escorval in order to denounce him; far from it I only desire you to ascertain if anyone at Saint-Pavin, or at Saint-Jean-de-Coche, knows of his having crossed the frontier." On hearing the name Saint-Jean-de-Coche, Chupin's face blanched. "Do you wish me to be murdered?" he exclaimed, remembering Balstain and his vow.
Transported with anger, he pushed Balstain violently aside, crying to the soldiers: "Come are we going to spend the night here?" An implacable hatred gleamed in the eye of the Piedmontese. He drew his knife from his pocket, and making the sign of the cross in the air: "Saint-Jean-de-Coche," he exclaimed, in a ringing voice, "and you, Holy Virgin, hear my vow.
"The reward belongs to me I denounced him first on the other side of the frontier. The gendarmes at Saint-Jean-de-Coche will testify to that. He would have been captured last night in my house, but he ran away in my absence; and I have been following the bandit for sixteen hours."
The fugitives went to the nearest house after crossing the frontier. It was a lonely inn, about a league from the little village of Saint-Jean-de-Coche, and was kept by a man named Balstain. They rapped, in spite of the lateness of the hour it was past midnight. They were admitted, and they ordered supper.
"You are on the summit of the mountain, Monsieur," said he; "and exactly on the boundary line. Here is France; there is Savoy." "And what is the nearest village?" "On the Savoyard side, Saint-Jean-de-Coche; on the French side, Saint-Pavin." So after all his terrible exertions, Lacheneur was not a league from the inn.
"For did he not deceive us?" they said to themselves. They decided, at last, that as soon as they had finished their supper, they would go to Saint-Jean-de-Coche and inform the Piedmontese guards. But they reckoned without their host.
"But," pleaded the innkeeper's wife, still on her knees before him, "they have just started for Saint-Jean-de-Coche, where they will denounce you. I heard them say that your life would purchase theirs. They have certainly gone to summon the gendarmes! Is this not enough, or am I obliged to endure the shame of confessing that my own husband, too, has gone to betray you."
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