The Recruit | Page 3

former client. His passion was increased by cupidity,
and his cause was backed by enormous power, the power of life and
death throughout the district. This man, still young, showed so much
apparent nobleness and generosity in his proceedings that Madame de
Dey had not yet been able to judge him. But, disregarding the danger
that attends all attempts at subtilty with Normans, she employed the
inventive wit and slyness which Nature grants to women in opposing
the four rivals one against the other. By thus gaining time, she hoped to
come safe and sound to the end of the national troubles. At this period,
the royalists in the interior of France expected day by day that the
Revolution would be ended on the morrow. This conviction was the
ruin of very many of them.
In spite of these difficulties, the countess had maintained her
independence very cleverly until the day when, by an inexplicable
imprudence, she closed her doors to her usual evening visitors.
Madame de Dey inspired so genuine and deep an interest, that the
persons who called upon her that evening expressed extreme anxiety on
being told that she was unable to receive them. Then, with that frank
curiosity which appears in provincial manners, they inquired what
misfortune, grief, or illness afflicted her. In reply to these questions, an
old housekeeper named Brigitte informed them that her mistress had
shut herself up in her room and would see no one, not even the servants
of the house. The semi-cloistral existence of the inhabitants of a little
town creates so invincible a habit of analyzing and explaining the
actions of their neighbors, that after compassionating Madame de Dey
(without knowing whether she were happy or unhappy), they proceeded
to search for the reasons of this sudden retreat.
"If she were ill," said the first Inquisitive, "she would have sent for the
doctor; but the doctor has been all day long playing chess with me. He
told me, laughing, that in these days there was but one malady, and that
was incurable."
This joke was cautiously uttered. Men, women, old men, and young
girls, all set to work to explore the vast field of conjecture. The next

day, conjectures became suspicions. As life is all aboveboard in a little
town, the women were the first to learn that Brigitte had made larger
purchases than usual in the market. This fact could not be disputed:
Brigitte had been seen there, very early in the morning; and,
extraordinary event! she had bought the only hare the market afforded.
Now all the town knew that Madame de Dey did not like game. The
hare became, therefore, the point of departure for a vast array of
suspicions. The old men who were taking their walks abroad, remarked
a sort of concentrated activity about Madame de Dey's premises, shown
by the very precautions which the servants took to conceal it. The
foot-man was beating a carpet in the garden. The day before, no one
would have noticed that fact; but the carpet now became a corner-stone
on which the whole town built up its theories. Each individual had his
or her surmise.
The second day, on learning that Madame de Dey declared herself ill,
the principal personages of Carentan, assembled in the evening at the
house of the mayor's brother, an old married merchant, a man of strict
integrity, greatly respected, and for whom Madame de Dey had shown
much esteem. There all the aspirants for the hand of the rich widow had
a tale to tell that was more or less probable; and each expected to turn
to his own profit the secret event which he thus recounted. The public
prosecutor imagined a whole drama to result in the return by night of
Madame de Dey's son, the emigre. The mayor was convinced that a
priest who refused the oath had arrived from La Vendee and asked for
asylum; but the day being Friday, the purchase of a hare embarrassed
the good mayor not a little. The judge of the district court held firmly to
the theory of a Chouan leader or a body of Vendeans hotly pursued.
Others were convinced that the person thus harbored was a noble
escaped from the Paris prisons. In short, they all suspected the countess
of being guilty of one of those generosities, which the laws of the day
called crimes, and punished on the scaffold. The public prosecutor
remarked in a low voice that it would be best to say no more, but to do
their best to save the poor woman from the abyss toward which she was
hurrying.
"If you talk about this affair," he said, "I shall be obliged to take notice

of it, and search her house, and _then_--"
He said no more, but