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

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СКАЧАТЬ gendarmerie from Vannes. We have come to search Monsieur Doley’s farm. He has been accused of giving refuge to Chouans.”

      “Don’t listen to them, Jean,” said the woman. “It’s a trick. They’re just saying that to get you to open the gate.”

      Jean, the gardener, was of the same opinion as his wife, for he had quietly carried a ladder over to the courtyard wall and climbed up to its top. Looking over, he could see not only the four men on horseback but also roughly fifteen men crowded up against the wall.

      Meanwhile, the men dressed like gendarmes kept shouting: “Open up in the name of the law.” And three of them began pounding at the gate with the butt end of their guns while threatening to break it down if it was not opened.

      The noise of their pounding reached all the way to the farmer’s bedroom. Madame Doley’s terror increased. Shaken by his wife’s alarm, Doley was still trying to bring himself to leave the house and open the gate when the stranger emerged from the milk room, grabbed the farmer’s arm, and said: “What are you waiting for? Did I not tell you I’d take care of everything?”

      “Who are you speaking to?” cried Madame Doley.

      “Nobody at all,” Doley answered, hurrying out from the kitchen.

      As soon as he opened the door, he could hear the gardener and his wife talking to the bandits, and although he was not duped by the bandits’ trickery, he called out: “Well, Jean, why are you so stubbornly refusing to open up to the police? You know that it is wrong to try to resist them. Please excuse this man, gentlemen,” Doley continued, walking toward the gate. “He is not acting on my orders.”

      Jean had recognized Monsieur Doley. He ran up to him. “Oh, Master Doley,” he said. “I’m not mistaken. You are. They aren’t real gendarmes. In the name of heaven, don’t open up.”

      “I know what’s happening and what I have to do,” said Jacques Doley. “Go back to your rooms and lock yourself in. Or if you are afraid, take your wife and go hide in the willows. They will never look there for you.”

      “But you! What about you?”

      “There’s someone here who has promised to defend me.”

      “Come on, are you going to open up?” roared the leader of the supposed gendarmes, “or must I break the gate down?” And once again they pounded three or four times on the gate with the butts of their guns, which threatened to knock the gate off its hinges.

      “I said I was going to open up,” shouted Jacques Doley.

      And he did.

      The brigands swarmed over Jacques Doley, grabbing him by the collar. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Don’t forget that I willingly opened the gate for you. You realize that I have ten or eleven men working here. I could have given them weapons. We could have defended ourselves from behind these walls and done severe damage before surrendering.”

      “But you didn’t. Because you thought you were dealing with gendarmes and not with us.”

      Jacques showed them the ladder placed against the wall. “Yes, except that Jean saw you all from up on that ladder.”

      “Since you did open the gate, what do you expect?”

      “That you will be less demanding. If I had not opened the gate, you might have burned my farm in a moment of rage!”

      “And who’s to say that we won’t burn your farm in a moment of joy?”

      “That would be unnecessary cruelty. You want my money, fine. But you do not wish my ruin.”

      “Well, now,” said the chief, “finally someone who’s reasonable. And do you have a lot of money?”

      “No, because a week ago I paid all my bills.”

      “The devil take you! Those are not the kind of words I want to hear.”

      “They may not be what you want to hear, but they are the truth.”

      “Well, then, we were given bad information. For we were told that you’d have a large sum of money here.”

      “Someone lied to you.”

      “No one ever lies to George Cadoudal.”

      By now, they had gotten closer to the farmhouse and were pushing Jacques Doley into the kitchen. The brigands, unused to such coolness from one of their prey, were looking in astonishment at the farmer.

      “Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Madame Doley, who had once again gotten up and left the bedroom, “we’ll give you everything you want, but please you won’t hurt us, will you?”

      “Say,” said one of the brigands, “you’re like an Auray eel, crying before you’re skinned alive.”

      “Enough words,” said the chief. “The money!”

      “Woman,” said Doley, “give them the keys. These gentlemen will look themselves. That way they cannot accuse us of trying to fool them.”

      The woman looked at her husband with surprise, and made no move to obey. “Give them the keys!” he said again. “When I say give them, you give them.”

      Agape, the poor woman could not understand why her husband was so readily acquiescing to the brigands’ demands. But she gave the leader the keys, then watched in fear as he walked over to the huge walnut wardrobe, the kind in which farmers usually lock up their most valuable possessions, beginning with their linens.

      In one drawer they found silverware. The chief grabbed it up and tossed it onto the middle of the tiled kitchen floor. To Madame Doley’s great surprise, she counted only six place settings when there should have been eight. In another drawer they’d had a sack of silver and a sack of gold, about fifteen thousand francs in all. But however much the chief dug through the drawer, to the woman’s great astonishment, all he came up with was the sack of silver.

      The wife tried to exchange a look with her husband, but he did not look back. One of the brigands, however, caught the flash of her glance. “Well, now, Mother,” he said, “is your august husband trying to trick us?”

      “Oh, no, gentlemen!” she cried. “I swear.”

      “Perhaps you know more than he does. Very well, we’ll start with you then.”

      The brigands emptied the wardrobe but found nothing else of value to them. They emptied a second wardrobe as well and found only four louis, five or six six-pound crowns, and a few coins hidden in a bowl. “I think you might be right,” said the chief to the brigand who had accused the woman of trying to trick them.

      “Someone warned him we were coming,” said one of the bandits, “and he has buried his money.”

      “Thunderation!” said the chief. “We have ways of getting money to come out of the ground. Come, bring me a bundle of wood and some straw.”

      “Why?” cried the woman in terror.

      “Have you ever seen a pig СКАЧАТЬ