The Recruit | Page 4

all present understood what he meant.
The sincere friends of Madame de Dey were so alarmed about her, that
on the morning of the third day, the procureur-syndic of the commune
made his wife write her a letter, urging her to receive her visitors as
usual that evening. Bolder still, the old merchant went himself in the
morning to Madame de Dey's house, and, strong in the service he
wanted to render her, he insisted on seeing her, and was amazed to find
her in the garden gathering flowers for her vases.
"She must be protecting a lover," thought the old man, filled with
sudden pity for the charming woman.
The singular expression on the countess's face strengthened this
conjecture. Much moved at the thought of such devotion, for all men
are flattered by the sacrifices a woman makes for one of them, the old
man told the countess of the rumors that were floating about the town,
and the dangers to which she was exposing herself.
"For," he said in conclusion, "though some of the authorities will
readily pardon a heroism which protects a priest, none of them will
spare you if they discover that you are sacrificing yourself to the
interests of your heart."
At these words Madame de Dey looked at the old man with a wild and
bewildered air, that made him shudder.
"Come," she said, taking him by the hand and leading him into her
bedroom. After assuring herself that they were quite alone, she drew
from her bosom a soiled and crumpled letter.
"Read that," she said, making a violent effort to say the words.
She fell into a chair, seemingly exhausted. While the old man searched
for his spectacles and rubbed their glasses, she raised her eyes to him,
and seemed to study him with curiosity; then she said in an altered

voice, and very softly,--
"I trust you."
"I am here to share your crime," replied the good man, simply.
She quivered. For the first time in that little town, her soul sympathized
with that of another. The old man now understood both the hopes and
the fears of the poor woman. The letter was from her son. He had
returned to France to share in Granville's expedition, and was taken
prisoner. The letter was written from his cell, but it told her to hope. He
did not doubt his means of escape, and he named to her three days, on
one of which he expected to be with her in disguise. But in case he did
not reach Carentan by the third day, she might know some fatal
difficulty had occurred, and the letter contained his last wishes and a
sad farewell. The paper trembled in the old man's hand.
"This is the third day," cried the countess, rising and walking hurriedly
up and down.
"You have been very imprudent," said the merchant. "Why send
Brigitte to buy those provisions?"
"But he may arrive half-dead with hunger, exhausted, and--"
She could say no more.
"I am sure of my brother the mayor," said the old man. "I will see him
at once, and put him in your interests."
After talking with the mayor, the shrewd old man made visits on
various pretexts to the principal families of Carentan, to all of whom he
mentioned that Madame de Dey, in spite of her illness, would receive
her friends that evening. Matching his own craft against those wily
Norman minds, he replied to the questions put to him on the nature of
Madame de Dey's illness in a manner that hoodwinked the community.
He related to a gouty old dame, that Madame de Dey had almost died
of a sudden attack of gout in the stomach, but had been relieved by a

remedy which the famous doctor, Tronchin, had once recommended to
her,--namely, to apply the skin of a freshly-flayed hare on the pit of the
stomach, and to remain in bed without making the slightest movement
for two days. This tale had prodigious success, and the doctor of
Carentan, a royalist "in petto," increased its effect by the manner in
which he discussed the remedy.
Nevertheless, suspicions had taken too strong a root in the minds of
some obstinate persons, and a few philosophers, to be thus dispelled; so
that all Madame de Dey's usual visitors came eagerly and early that
evening to watch her countenance: some out of true friendship, but
most of them to detect the secret of her seclusion.
They found the countess seated as usual, at the corner of the great
fireplace in her salon, a room almost as unpretentious as the other
salons in Carentan; for, in order not to wound the narrow view of her
guests, she denied herself the luxuries to which she was accustomed.
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