Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/55

Rh Just as the gleam of the bayonets of the four soldiers was no longer visible, Captain Merle came back after executing the commandant's orders with lightning speed. With two or three words of command Hulot set the rest of his troop in order of battle in the middle of the road; then he gave the word to regain the summit of the Pèlerine, where his little advance guard was posted, and he himself followed last of all, walking backwards, so that he might see the slightest change that should come over any of the principal points in that view which nature had made so enchanting, and man, so full of terrors.

Marche-à-Terre had followed all the commandant's manœuvres with indifferent eyes, but he had watched the two soldiers as they penetrated the woods that lay to the right with incredible keenness; and now, as Hulot reached the spot where Gérard stood on guard over him, Marche-à-Terre began to whistle two or three times in a way that imitated the shrill, far-reaching cry of the screech-owl.

The three notorious smugglers whose names have been already mentioned used to employ some of the notes of that cry at night to give warning of an ambush, of danger, or of anything else that concerned them. In this way the nickname Chuin arose, which, in the dialect of the country, means an owl, or screech-owl. A corruption of the word served to designate those who in the previous war had adopted the tactics and signals of the three brothers, so that when he heard the suspicious whistle the commandant stopped and fixed his gaze on Marche-à-Terre. He affected to be deceived by the Chouan's appearance of imbecility, that he might keep him at his side as a kind of barometer to indicate the enemy's movements. So he caught Gérard's hand as it was raised to dispatch the Chouan, and posted two soldiers a few paces away from the spy, ordering them in loud and distinct tones to be ready to shoot him down if he attempted to make the slightest signal of any kind. In spite of his imminent peril, Marche-à-Terre showed no sort of perturbation, and the commandant, who was studying him, noticed this indifference.