"He's too young to have a sweetheart yet, Mademoiselle; but you'll see some of the ladies will be quarrelling for him yet, when he's a year or two older. Well, after sending Jacques over here, he went back as bold as possible into the middle of the republicans, before Santerre and all.

M. Denot was at his worst then. He had hold of Mademoiselle Agatha, and was dragging her away from the Marquis, in spite of Santerre and the whole of them, when the Chevalier raises his stick, and strikes him across the face. I warrant you he let go Mademoiselle's hand when he felt the sharp stick come across his eyes."

"It must have been a horrid sight for Agatha," said Madame de Lescure.

"Oh! indeed it was, Madame. Only fancy that traitor Denot going on in that way, right before her eyes all night, and no one to protect her but the little Chevalier; for when it got late M. Santerre threw himself on the floor, and slept and snored like a hog. They say it was all for love, Mademoiselle. They say this Denot was greatly in love with Mademoiselle Agatha, and that she wouldn't look at him. Is it true, she was so very scornful to him?"

"She was never scornful to any one," said Marie; "but if he ever asked her for her love, I have no doubt she told him that she could not give it to him."

"That's just what they say; and that then he asked her more and more, and went down on his knees to her, and prayed her just as much as to look at him; and kissed her feet, and cried dreadfully; and that all she did was to turn aside her face, and bid him rise and leave her."

"What would you have had her say, Annot, if she felt that she could not love him?"

"Oh! I'm not presuming to find fault with her, Mademoiselle; heaven forbid! Of course, if she couldn't love him, she could do nothing but refuse him. But, heigho! it's a very dreadful thing to think of that a nice young man like him--for I'm told that this Denot was a very nice young man--should be so bewildered by love as he has been."

"Love couldn't make a man a traitor," said Marie, "nor yet a coward."

"I don't know, Mademoiselle, love is a very fearful thing when it doesn't go right. Perhaps love never made you feel so angry that you'd like to eat your lover's heart?"

"Gracious goodness, no," said Marie; "why, Annot, where did you get such a horrid idea as that?"

"Ah! Mademoiselle, your lover's one in a hundred! So handsome, so n.o.ble, so good, so grand, so amiable, so everything that a young lady could wish to dream about: one, too, that never has vagaries and jealousies, and nasty little aggravating ways. Oh! Mademoiselle, I look upon you as the happiest young lady in the world.

"What on earth, Annot, do you know about my lover, or how on earth can you know that I have a lover at all? Why, child, I and my cousin Agatha are both going to be nuns at St. Laurent."

"The blessed Virgin forbid it," said Annot. "Not but what Mademoiselle Agatha would look beautiful as a nun. She has the pale face, and the long straight nose, and the calm melancholy eyes, just as a nun ought to have; but then she should join the Carmelite ladies at the rich convent of our Blessed Lady at St. Maxent, where they all wear beautiful white dresses and white hoods, and have borders to their veils, and look so beautiful that there need hardly be any change in them when they go to heaven; and not become one of those dusty-musty black sisters of mercy at St. Laurent."

"That's your idea of a nun, is it?" said Madame de Lescure.

"I'm sure, Madame, I don't know why any girl should try to make herself look ugly, if G.o.d has made her as beautiful as Mademoiselle Agatha."

"And you think then Mademoiselle de Lescure is not fit for a nun at all?"

"Oh, Madame, we all know she is going to be married immediately to the finest, handsomest, most n.o.ble young n.o.bleman in all Poitou. Oh! I'd give all the world to have such a lover as M. Henri just for ten minutes, to see him once kneeling at my feet."

"For ten minutes," said Marie. "What good would that do you? that would only make you unhappy when the ten minutes were gone and past."

"Besides, what would you say to him in that short time?" said Madame de Lescure.

"Say to him! I don't know what I'd say to him. I don't think I'd say one word, but I'd give him such a look, so full of affection and grat.i.tude, and admiration, and--and--and downright real true love; that, if he had any heart in him at all, I don't think he'd be so base as to go away from me when the ten minutes were over."

"That's what you call borrowing a lover for ten minutes, is it?" said Marie; "and if, as you say, this young gentleman is my property, what am I to do for a lover the while?"

"I was only wishing, Mademoiselle, and you know there's no harm in wishing. Besides, the finest lady in the world couldn't rob you of your lover, let alone a poor girl like me. He is so true, and so n.o.ble, and so good."

"And have not you a lover of your own, Annot?"

"Oh, indeed I have, and a very good one. For all my talking in that way, I was never badly off for lovers, and now I've chosen one for good and all; and I love him dearly, Madame; dote on him, and so does he on me, but for all that there was a time when I really would have eaten his heart, if I could have got at it."

"But that was before you had accepted each other."

"Not at all, Mademoiselle; not long since. I loved then as dearly as I do now, but he let me walk home by myself three long leagues without speaking a word to me, and all because I said that a man in a picture had fine whiskers."

"A man in a picture! why this lover of yours must be a very jealous man, or else he must be very badly off for whiskers himself?"

"No he's not, Mademoiselle; he's as nice a pair as you'd wish to see; that is, begging your pardon, as nice a pair as I'd wish to see; and he's not a jealous man either about other things."

"And when do you mean to marry him, Annot?"

"Oh, Mademoiselle, we are only waiting for you."

"Waiting for me, child! What on earth do you mean? who told you I was going to be married at all?"

It was no wonder that Marie should be astonished at finding her wedding so confidently spoken of by a stranger in Echanbroignes, considering that it was not yet twenty-four hours since Henri had declared his love for her at Clisson.

"But you are going to be married to M. Henri, are you not, Mademoiselle?"

"Who told you all this? how is it you come to know so much about this young lady and M. Henri?" said Madame de Lescure.

"Why, Jacques Chapeau told me. My own husband, that is, as is to be."

"Oh! that explains the mystery," said Marie; "and so Chapeau is your lover is he? Chapeau is the man who couldn't bear the mention of the fine pair of whiskers you saw in the picture? and did he tell you that his master was going to be married immediately?" and Marie blushed as she asked the question.

"Indeed he did, Mademoiselle, and he said besides--"

"Well, what did he say besides?"

"Why, I hardly like to say now, Mademoiselle; it will look like asking a favour when I thought you could not well refuse it; and perhaps Jacques was wrong to say anything at all about it."

Marie, however, was not long in inducing Annot to reveal to her Chapeau's little plan of taking his own wife over to Durbelliere to wait upon his master's wife, and she, moreover, promised that, as far as she herself was concerned, she would consent to the arrangement, if, which she expressly inserted, she should ever marry M. Larochejaquelin.

"But an't you engaged to him, Mademoiselle?"

"Well, Annot," answered she, "as you have told me so much, I don't mind telling you that I am. But it will be long, probably, before I am married, if ever I am. Men have other things to think of now than marriage, and, alas! women too. We must wait till the wars are over, Annot."

"But I thought the wars were over now, Mademoiselle. Haven't they got that Santerre prisoner up at Durbelliere?"

"There's much, very much, I fear to do yet, and to suffer, before the wars will be really over," said Madame de Lescure. "Heaven help us, and guide us, and protect us! Come, Marie, let us go to rest, for I trust Charles will send for us early in the morning."

Annot gave such a.s.sistance to her two guests as they required, and was within her power, and then seating herself in her father's large arm chair in the kitchen, pondered over the misery of living in times when men were so busy fighting with their enemies, that they had not even leisure to get married.

"And what, after all, is the use of these wars?" said she to herself "What do they get by taking so many towns, and getting so many guns, and killing so many men? I don't know who's the better for it, but I know very well who's the worse. Why can't they let the blues alone; and the blues let them alone? I worked my poor fingers to the bone making a white flag before they went to Saumur, and all they did was to leave it in the streets of Nantes. There's not so much as a bottle of beer, and hardly a bushel of flour left in Echanbroignes. There's the poor dear lovely Cathelineau dead and gone. There's M. Henri engaged to the girl of his heart, and he can't so much as stay a day from fighting to get himself married; and there's Jacques just as bad. If Jacques cares a bit for me, he must take himself off, and me with him, to some place where there's not quite so much fighting, or else I'll be quit of him and go without him. I've no idea of living in a place where girls are not, to be married till the wars are over. Wars, wars, wars; I'm sick of the wars with all my heart."

CHAPTER XII.

SENTENCE OF DEATH.

After parting with their companion, de Lescure and Henri were not long in reaching Durbelliere; and on the road thither they also learnt that Santerre, and upwards of a hundred blue hors.e.m.e.n, were prisoners in the chateau, or in the barns, out-houses, or stables belonging to it; and that the whole place was crowded with peasants, guarding their captives.