The Recruit | Page 3

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 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