Page:The Works of Honoré de Balzac Volume 29.djvu/84

56 "Well, I escape without blame for once, Marquis," she said. "Heaven be praised!"

"So you take all things with a light heart, even remorse?" the young man asked; but she flushed up with such evident contrition that he relented. The Abbé politely handed to her the tenth he had just received with as good a face as he could put upon it, and followed the young leader, who was returning by the way he had come. The young lady waited behind for a moment, and beckoned to Marche-à-Terre.

"You must go over towards Mortagne," she said in a low voice. "I know that the Blues must be continually transmitting large sums of money to Alençon for the prosecution of the war. I give up to your comrades the money I have lost to-day; but I shall expect them to make it up to me. And before all things, the Gars is not to know the reason for this expedition; but if anything should go wrong, I will pacify him."

"Madame," the Marquis began, as she sat behind him en croupe, having made over her horse to the Abbé, "our friends in Paris are writing to tell us to keep a sharp lookout, for the Republic means to take us with craft and guile."

"Well, they might do worse," she replied; "it is not at all a bad idea of theirs. I shall take part now in the war, and meet the enemy on my own ground."

"Faith, yes," said the Marquis. "Pichegru warns me to be on my guard as to friendships of every kind. The Republic does me the honor to consider me more formidable than all the Vendeans put together, and thinks to get me into its grasp by working on my weaknesses."

"Are you going to suspect me?" she said, tapping his breast with the hand by which she held him close to her.

"Would you be there, in my heart, if I could?" he said, and turned to receive a kiss on his forehead.

"Then we are like to run more risks from Fouché's police than from regular troops or from Counter-Chouans," was the Abbé's comment.