she is a pretty little fool.”
“Monsieur,” interrupted Gaston, indignantly; “I have told you that I love her, and have promised to marry her. You seem to forget.”
“Ta, ta ta!” cried the marquis, “your scruples are absurd. You know full well that her great-grandfather led our great-grandmother astray. Now we are quits! I am delighted at the retaliation, for the old witch’s sake.”
“I swear by the memory of my mother, that Valentine shall be my wife!”
“Do you dare assume that tone toward me?” cried the exasperated marquis. “Never, understand me clearly; never will I give my consent. You know how dear to me is the honor of our house. Well, I would rather see you tried for murder, and even chained to the galleys, than married to this worthless jade!”
This last word was too much for Gaston.
“Then your wish shall be gratified, monsieur. I will remain here, and be arrested. I care not what becomes of me! What is life to me without the hope of Valentine? Take back these jewels: they are useless now.”
A terrible scene would have taken place between the father and son, had they not been interrupted by a domestic who rushed into the room, and excitedly cried:
“The gendarmes! here are the gendarmes!”
At this news the old marquis started up, and seemed to forget his gout, which had yielded to more violent emotions.
“Gendarmes!” he cried, “in my house at Clameran! They shall pay dear for their insolence! You will help me, will you not, my men?”
“Yes, yes,” answered the servants. “Down with the gendarmes! down with them!”
Fortunately Louis, during all this excitement, preserved his presence of mind.
“To resist would be folly,” he said. “Even if we repulsed the gendarmes to-night, they would return to-morrow with reinforcements.”
“Louis is right,” said the marquis, bitterly. “Might is right, as they said in ‘93. The gendarmes are all powerful. Do they not even have the impertinence to come up to me while I am hunting, and ask to see my shooting-license?—I, a Clameran, show a license!”
“Where are they?” asked Louis of the servants.
“At the outer gate,” answered La Verdure, one of the grooms. “Does not monsieur hear the noise they are making with their sabres?”
“Then Gaston must escape over the garden wall.”
“It is guarded, monsieur,” said La Verdure, “and the little gate in the park besides. There seems to be a regiment of them. They are even stationed along the park walls.”
This was only too true. The rumor of Lazet’s death had spread like wildfire throughout the town of Tarascon, and everybody was in a state of excitement. Not only mounted gendarmes, but a platoon of hussars from the garrison, had been sent in pursuit of the murderer.
At least twenty young men of Tarascon were volunteer guides to the armed force.
“Then,” said the marquis, “we are surrounded?”
“Not a single chance for escape,” groaned St. Jean.
“We shall see about that, Jarnibleu!” cried the marquis. “Ah, we are not the strongest, but we can be the most adroit. Attention! Louis, my son, you and La Verdure go down to the stable, and mount the fastest horses; then as quietly as possible station yourselves, you, Louis, at the park gate, and you, La Verdure, at the outer gate. Upon the signal I shall give you by firing a pistol, let every door be instantly opened, while Louis and Verdure dash through the gates, and make the gendarmes pursue them.”
“I will make them fly,” said La Verdure.
“Listen. During this time, Gaston, aided by St. Jean, will scale the park wall, and hasten along the river to the cabin of Pilorel, the fisherman. He is an old sailor of the republic, and devoted to our house. He will take Gaston in his boat; and, when they are once on the Rhone, there is nothing to be feared save the wrath of God. Now go, all of you: fly!”
Left alone with his son, the old man slipped the jewelry into a silk purse, and, handing them once more to Gaston, said, as he stretched out his arms toward him:
“Come here, my son, and let me embrace you, and bestow my blessing.”
Gaston hesitated.
“Come,” insisted the old man in broken tones, “I must embrace you for the last time: I may never see you again. Save yourself, save your name, Gaston, and then—you know how I love you, my son: take back the jewels. Come.”
For an instant the father and son clung to each other, overpowered by emotion.
But the continued noise at the gates now reaches their ears.
“We must part!” said M. de Clameran, “go!” And, taking from his desk a little pair of pistols, he handed them to his son, and added, with averted eyes, “You must not be captured alive, Gaston!”
Gaston did not immediately descend to the park.
He yearned to see Valentine, and give her one last kiss before leaving France, and determined to persuade Pilorel to stop the boat as they went by the park of La Verberie.
He hastened to his room, placed the signal in the window so that Valentine might know he was coming, and waited for an answering light.
“Come, M. Gaston,” entreated old St. Jean, who could not understand the strange conduct. “For God’s sake make haste! your life is at stake!”
At last he came running down the stairs, and had just reached the vestibule when a pistol-shot, the signal given by the marquis, was heard.
The loud swinging open of the large gate, the rattling of the sabres of the gendarmes, the furious galloping of many horses, and a chorus of loud shouts and angry oaths, were next heard.
Leaning against the window, his brow beaded with cold perspiration, the Marquis de Clameran breathlessly awaited the issue of this expedient, upon which depended the life of his eldest son.
His measures were excellent, and deserved success. As he had ordered, Louis and La Verdure dashed out through the gate, one to the right, the other to the left, each one pursued by a dozen mounted men. Their horses flew like arrows, and kept far ahead of the pursuers.
Gaston would have been saved, but for the interference of fate; but was it fate, or was it malice?
Suddenly Louis’s horse stumbled, and fell to the ground with his rider. The gendarmes rode up, and at once recognized the second son of M. de Clameran.
“This is not the assassin!” they cried. “Let us hurry back, else he will escape!”
They returned just in time to see, by the uncertain light of the moon peeping from behind a cloud, Gaston climbing the garden wall.
“There is our man!” exclaimed the corporal.
