An Historical Mystery | Page 9

chased the game; he at
least had neither cares nor troubles. Of all the family, Francois alone
was happy in a home thus isolated from the neighborhood by its
position between the park and the forest, and by the still greater moral
solitude of universal repulsion.
"Pick up these things," said his father, pointing to the parapet, "and put
them away. Look at me! You love your father and your mother, don't
you?" The child flung himself on his father as if to kiss him, but Michu
made a movement to shift the gun and pushed him back. "Very good.
You have sometimes chattered about things that are done here,"
continued the father, fixing his eyes, dangerous as those of a wild- cat,
on the boy. "Now remember this; if you tell the least little thing that
happens here to Gaucher, or to the Grouage and Bellache people, or
even to Marianne who loves us, you will kill your father. Never tattle
again, and I will forgive what you said yesterday." The child began to

cry. "Don't cry; but when any one questions you, say, as the peasants
do, 'I don't know.' There are persons roaming about whom I distrust.
Run along! As for you two," he added, turning to the women, "you
have heard what I said. Keep a close mouth, both of you."
"Husband, what are you going to do?"
Michu, who was carefully measuring a charge of powder, poured it into
the barrel of his gun, rested the weapon against the parapet and said to
Marthe:--
"No one knows I own that gun. Stand in front of it."
Couraut, who had sprung to his feet, was barking furiously.
"Good, intelligent fellow!" cried Michu. "I am certain there are spies
about--"
Man and beast feel a spy. Couraut and Michu, who seemed to have one
and the same soul, lived together as the Arab and his horse in the desert.
The bailiff knew the modulations of the dog's voice, just as the dog
read his master's meaning in his eyes, or felt it exhaling in the air from
his body.
"What do you say to that?" said Michu, in a low voice, calling his
wife's attention to two strangers who appeared in a by-path making for
the /rond-point/.
"What can it mean?" cried the old mother. "They are Parisians."
"Here they come!" said Michu. "Hide my gun," he whispered to his
wife.
The two men who now crossed the wide open space of the /rond-point/
were typical enough for a painter. One, who appeared to be the
subaltern, wore top-boots, turned down rather low, showing well-made
calves, and colored silk stockings of doubtful cleanliness. The breeches,
of ribbed cloth, apricot color with metal buttons, were too large; they

were baggy about the body, and the lines of their creases seemed to
indicate a sedentary man. A marseilles waistcoat, overloaded with
embroidery, open, and held together by one button only just above the
stomach, gave to the wearer a dissipated look,--all the more so, because
his jet black hair, in corkscrew curls, hid his forehead and hung down
his cheeks. Two steel watch-chains were festooned upon his breeches.
The shirt was adorned with a cameo in white and blue. The coat,
cinnamon-colored, was a treasure to caricaturists by reason of its long
tails, which, when seen from behind, bore so perfect a resemblance to a
cod that the name of that fish was given to them. The fashion of codfish
tails lasted ten years; almost the whole period of the empire of
Napoleon. The cravat, loosely fastened, and with numerous small folds,
allowed the wearer to bury his face in it up to the nostrils. His pimpled
skin, his long, thick, brick-dust colored nose, his high cheek-bones, his
mouth, lacking half its teeth but greedy for all that and menacing, his
ears adorned with huge gold rings, his low forehead,--all these personal
details, which might have seemed grotesque in many men, were
rendered terrible in him by two small eyes set in his head like those of a
pig, expressive of insatiable covetousness, and of insolent, half-jovial
cruelty. These ferreting and perspicacious blue eyes, glassy and glacial,
might be taken for the model of that famous Eye, the formidable
emblem of the police, invented during the Revolution. Black silk
gloves were on his hands and he carried a switch. He was certainly
some official personage, for he showed in his bearing, in his way of
taking snuff and ramming it into his nose, the bureaucratic importance
of an office subordinate, one who signs for his superiors and acquires a
passing sovereignty by enforcing their orders.
The other man, whose dress was in the same style, but elegant and
elegantly put on and careful in its smallest detail, wore boots /a la/