"Fool! do you think I murdered him? It is the body of my brother," and the old man gave a lugubrious sigh."He was the first sworn-in priest;and this was the only asylum where he was safe against the fury of the Chouans and the other priests.He was my elder brother, and he alone had the patience to each me the decimal calculus.Oh! he was a good priest! He was economical and laid by money.It is four years since he died; I don't know what was the matter with him; perhaps it was that priests are so in the habit of kneeling down to pray that he couldn't get accustomed to standing upright here as I do.I walled him up there; /they'd/ have dug him up elsewhere.Some day perhaps I can put him in holy ground, as he used to call it,--poor man, he only took the oath out of fear."A tear rolled from the hard eyes of the little old man, whose rusty wig suddenly seemed less hideous to the girl, and she turned her eyes respectfully away from his distress.But, in spite of these tender reminiscences, d'Orgemont kept on saying, "Don't go near the wall, you might--"His eyes never ceased to watch hers, hoping thus to prevent her from examining too closely the walls of the closet, where the close air was scarcely enough to inflate the lungs.Marie succeeded, however, in getting a sufficiently good look in spite of her Argus, and she came to the conclusion that the strange protuberances in the walls were neither more nor less than sacks of coin which the miser had placed there and plastered up.
Old d'Orgemont was now in a state of almost grotesque bewilderment.
The pain in his legs, the terror he felt at seeing a human being in the midst of his hoards, could be read in every wrinkle of his face, and yet at the same time his eyes expressed, with unaccustomed fire, a lively emotion excited in him by the presence of his liberator, whose white and rosy cheek invited kisses, and whose velvety black eye sent waves of blood to his heart, so hot that he was much in doubt whether they were signs of life or of death.
"Are you married?" he asked, in a trembling voice.
"No," she said, smiling.
"I have a little something," he continued, heaving a sigh, "though Iam not so rich as people think for.A young girl like you must love diamonds, trinkets, carriages, money.I've got all that to give--after my death.Hey! if you will--"The old man's eyes were so shrewd and betrayed such calculation in this ephemeral love that Mademoiselle de Verneuil, as she shook her head in sign of refusal, felt that his desire to marry her was solely to bury his secret in another himself.
"Money!" she said, with a look of scorn which made him satisfied and angry both; "money is nothing to me.You would be three times as rich as you are, if you had all the gold that I have refused--" she stopped suddenly.
"Don't go near that wall, or--"
"But I hear a voice," she said; "it echoes through that wall,--a voice that is more to me than all your riches."Before the miser could stop her Marie had laid her hand on a small colored engraving of Louis XV.on horseback; to her amazement it turned, and she saw, in a room beneath her, the Marquis de Montauran, who was loading a musket.The opening, hidden by a little panel on which the picture was gummed, seemed to form some opening in the ceiling of the adjoining chamber, which, no doubt, was the bedroom of the royalist general.D'Orgemont closed the opening with much precaution, and looked at the girl sternly.
"Don't say a word if you love your life.You haven't thrown your grappling-iron on a worthless building.Do you know that the Marquis de Montauran is worth more than one hundred thousand francs a year from lands which have not yet been confiscated? And I read in the Primidi de l'Ille-et-Vilaine a decree of the Consuls putting an end to confiscation.Ha! ha! you'll think the Gars a prettier fellow than ever, won't you? Your eyes are shining like two new louis d'or."Mademoiselle de Verneuil's face was, indeed, keenly excited when she heard that well-known voice so near her.Since she had been standing there, erect, in the midst as it were of a silver mine, the spring of her mind, held down by these strange events, recovered itself.She seemed to have formed some sinister resolution and to perceive a means of carrying it out.
"There is no return from such contempt," she was saying to herself;"and if he cannot love me, I will kill him--no other woman shall have him.""No, abbe, no!" cried the young chief, in a loud voice which was heard through the panel, "it must be so.""Monsieur le marquis," replied the Abbe Gudin, haughtily; "you will scandalize all Brittany if you give that ball at Saint James.It is preaching, not dancing, which will rouse our villagers.Take guns, not fiddles.""Abbe, you have sense enough to know that it is not in a general assembly of our partisans that I can learn to know these people, or judge of what I may be able to undertake with them.A supper is better for examining faces than all the spying in the world, of which, by the bye, I have a horror; they can be made to talk with glasses in their hand."Marie quivered, as she listened, and conceived the idea of going to the ball and there avenging herself.
