The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon. Alexandre Dumas

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СКАЧАТЬ companions were acquitted; he was sentenced to death.

      “Laurent returned to the prison as nonchalantly as he had left. By then, the supreme beauty with which Nature had endowed him, the corporal recommendation, as Montaigne has called it, had already produced its effect. Every woman in Yssingeaux felt sorry for him, and for more than a few of them, pity had transferred itself into a much more tender feeling. Such was the case of the jailer’s daughter, although Laurent was not aware of it.

      “Two hours after midnight, Laurent’s cell door opened as it had for Pierre de Médicis, and the girl from Yssingeaux, like the girl in Ferrare, spoke these sweet words: ‘Non temo nulla, bentivoglio!’ (‘Have no fear, I love you!’) His angel savior had seen him only through the prison bars, but his magnetic seductive powers had touched her heart and ruled her senses. A few words were exchanged; so were rings. And Laurent walked free.

      “A horse was waiting in a neighboring village, she’d told him, and there she would meet him. Dawn broke. As he fled through the shadows, Laurent caught a glimpse of the executioner and his helpers setting up the deadly machine. For he was supposed to be executed at ten that morning, the execution having been rushed to take place only one day after the sentencing so as to coincide with market day, when everyone from the neighboring villages would be in Yssingeaux. Of course, when the sun’s first rays struck the guillotine in the square, and when the identity of the illustrious prisoner who’d climb the steps to the platform became known, no one was giving any more thought to the market.

      “Waiting in the nearby village, Laurent worried not for himself but for the woman who had saved him. Laurent became impatient. Several times he rode out toward Yssingeaux, each time riding closer to the town, to try to get information, but without success. Finally, caught up in the heat of the moment, he lost his head: He assumed that his savior had herself been captured and that she, as his accomplice, would in his place be climbing the scaffold to the guillotine. So he rides into town, his horse spurred to a gallop, and as he passes by, people shout in astonishment when they realize that the man they were expecting to see guillotined is riding free on horseback. He rides past the gendarmes who’d been posted to escort him from his cell; he reaches the square where the scaffold awaits him, and espying the woman he’s looking for, he pushes his way to her, reaches down, pulls her up behind him, and gallops off to the cheers of the whole town. All those who had come to applaud his head as it fell were now applauding his flight, his escape, his salvation.

      “That is what our leader was like, the leader who followed my brother. Such was the man under whose tutelage I learned to fight.

      “For three months I lived daily under the strain of our battles and at night I slept wrapped up in my coat, my hand on my gun, pistols in my belt. Then the rumor of a truce began to spread. I came to Paris, promising to return to my companions at the first call. I came because I had seen you once—please excuse my frankness—and I needed, I yearned, to see you again.

      “I did of course see you again, but if by chance your eyes happened to fall on me, you surely remember my face betrayed my deep sadness, my unconcern, and I might even say my apparent distaste for all of life’s pleasures. For how indeed, given the precarious position in which I found myself—obeying not my own conscience but another fatal, absolute, imperious power that exposed me to the possibility of being wounded if not killed in a stagecoach attack, or, even worse, being captured—how could I dare say to a lovely, sweet girl, the flower of the world in which she blossoms and the laws of which she accepts, how could I dare say to her: ‘I love you. Are you willing to accept a husband who has placed himself outside the law, for whom the greatest happiness possible is to be shot dead in cold blood?’

      “No, I could not declare my love. I had to be content just to be able to see you, to be intoxicated by the sight of you, to be where you were likely to be, and all the while pray that God would accomplish a miracle, that the rumored truce would become real peace, though I hardly dared to hope.

      “Finally, about four or five days ago, the newspapers announced that Cadoudal had come to Paris, that he had met with the First Consul. The same evening the same newspapers reported that the Breton general had given his word to no longer attempt any action against France, if the First Consul, for his part, would take no further action against Brittany or against him.

      “The next day”—Hector pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket—“the next day I received this circular letter written in Cadoudal’s own hand:

      “‘Because a protracted war seems to be a misfortune for France and ruin for my region, I free you from your oath of loyalty to me. I shall never call you back unless the French government should fail to keep the promise it gave to me and that I accepted in your name.

      “‘If there should happen to be some treason hidden beneath a hypocritical peace, I would not hesitate to call once more on your fidelity, and your fidelity, I am sure, would respond.’

      “You can imagine my joy when I received this leave. Once again I would be in control of my own person; no longer was I promised by the word of my father and my two brothers to a monarchy that I knew only through my family’s devotion and through the misfortunes that devotion had brought down upon our house. I was twenty-three years old; I had an annual income of one hundred thousand francs. I was in love, and supposing that I was also loved, the gates of paradise that had long been guarded by the angel of death were now opening up before me. Oh, Claire! Claire! That is why I was so happy when you saw me at Madame de Permon’s ball. I could finally ask you to meet me like this. Finally I could tell you that I loved you.”

      Claire lowered her eyes and made no answer, which in itself was almost an answer.

      “Now,” Hector went on, “everything I have just told you, all these histories hidden away out in the provinces, is completely unknown in Paris. I could have kept it hidden from you, but I chose not to. I wanted to tell you my whole life’s story, to explain by what destiny I was led finally to make my confession to you—knowing that you might suppose my actions to be a mistake or even a crime—so that I might receive absolution from your own lips.”

      “Oh, Hector dear!” cried Claire, carried away by the quiet passion that had been governing her for nearly a year. “Oh, yes, I forgive you! I absolve you,” and forgetting that she was under her mother’s watchful eyes, she added, “I love you!” And threw her arms around his neck.

      “Claire!” cried Madame de Sourdis, her voice showing more surprise than anger.

      “Mother!” answered Claire, blushing and about to faint.

      “Claire!” said Hector, taking her hand. “Don’t forget that everything I have told you is for you alone. It must be a secret between us, and since I love only you, I have no need for forgiveness from anyone but you. Do not forget. And especially, remember that I shall be truly alive only when I receive your mother’s answer to the request I have made. Claire, you have told me that you love me. I am placing our happiness in your love’s hands.”

      Without another word Hector left. But his heart, athrill with the freedom and joy of a prisoner whose death sentence has just been commuted, was not silent.

      Madame de Sourdis was waiting impatiently for her daughter. Claire’s spontaneity, when she threw herself into the arms of the young Comte de Sainte-Hermine, had seemed out of character. She wanted an explanation.

      The explanation was clear and rapid. When the girl reached her mother, she simply dropped to her knees and pronounced these three words: “I love him!”

      Our characters are molded by nature to prepare us for the times we need them to survive. It was thanks to such natural strength that Charlotte Corday and Madame Roland were able СКАЧАТЬ