"Must I ask you to bail me, Monsieur d'Hauteserre?" cried Laurence to her former guardian, who was roused by the cry, clear and agonizing to his ear as the sound of the last trumpet.
He tried to wipe the tears which sprang to his eyes; he now understood what was passing, and said to his young relation in a quivering voice, "Forgive me, countess; you know that I am yours, body and soul."Lechesneau, who at first was much struck by the evident tranquillity in which the whole party were dining, now returned to his former opinion of their guilt as he noticed the stupefaction of the old people and the evident anxiety of Laurence, who was seeking to discover the nature of the trap which was set for them.
"Gentlemen," he said, politely, "you are too well-bred to make a useless resistance; follow me to the stables, where I must, in your presence, have the shoes of your horses taken off; they afford important proof of either guilt or innocence. Come, too, mademoiselle."The blacksmith of Cinq-Cygne and his assistant had been summoned by Lechesneau as experts. While the operation at the stable was going on the justice of peace brought in Gothard and Michu. The work of detaching the shoes of each horse, putting them together and ticketing them, so as to compare them with the hoof-prints in the park, took time. Lechesneau, notified of the arrival of Pigoult, left the prisoners with the gendarmes and returned to the dining-room to dictate the indictment. The justice of peace called his attention to the condition of Michu's clothes and related the circumstances of his arrest.
"They must have killed the senator and plastered the body up in some wall," said Pigoult.
"I begin to fear it," answered Lechesneau. "Where did you carry that plaster?" he said to Gothard.
The boy began to cry.
"The law frightens him," said Michu, whose eyes were darting flames like those of a lion in the toils.
The servants, who had been detained at the village by order of the mayor, now arrived and filled the antechamber where Catherine and Gothard were weeping. To all the questions of the director of the jury and the justice of peace Gothard replied by sobs; and by dint of weeping he brought on a species of convulsion which alarmed them so much that they let him alone. The little scamp, perceiving that he was no longer watched, looked at Michu with a grin, and Michu signified his approval by a glance. Lechesneau left the justice of peace and returned to the stables.
"Monsieur," said Madame d'Hauteserre, at last, addressing Pigoult;"can you explain these arrests?"
"The gentlemen are accused of abducting the senator by armed force and keeping him a prisoner; for we do not think they have murdered him--in spite of appearances," replied Pigoult.
"What penalties are attached to the crime?" asked Monsieur d'Hauteserre.
"Well, as the old law continues in force, and they are not amenable under the Code, the penalty is death," replied the justice.
"Death!" cried Madame d'Hauteserre, fainting away.
The abbe now came in with his sister, who stopped to speak to Catherine and Madame Durieu.
"We haven't even seen your cursed senator!" said Michu.
"Madame Marion, Madame Grevin, Monsieur Grevin, the senator's valet, and Violette all tell another tale," replied Pigoult, with the sour smile of magisterial conviction.
"I don't understand a thing about it," said Michu, dumbfounded by his reply, and beginning now to believe that his masters and himself were entangled in some plot which had been laid against them.
Just then the party from the stables returned. Laurence went up to Madame d'Hauteserre, who recovered her senses enough to say: "The penalty is death!""Death!" repeated Laurence, looking at the four gentlemen.
The word excited a general terror, of which Giguet, formerly instructed by Corentin, took immediate advantage.
"Everything can be arranged," he said, drawing the Marquis de Simeuse into a corner of the dining-room. "Perhaps after all it is nothing but a joke; you've been a soldier and soldiers understand each other. Tell me, what have you really done with the senator? If you have killed him --why, that's the end of it! But if you have only locked him up, release him, for you see for yourself your game is balked. Do this and I am certain the director of the jury and the senator himself will drop the matter.""We know absolutely nothing about it," said the marquis.
"If you take that tone the matter is likely to go far," replied the lieutenant.
"Dear cousin," said the Marquis de Simeuse, "we are forced to go to prison; but do not be uneasy; we shall return in a few hours, for there is some misunderstanding in all this which can be explained.""I hope so, for your sakes, gentlemen," said the magistrate, signing to the gendarmes to remove the four gentlemen, Michu, and Gothard.
"Don't take them to Troyes; keep them in your guardhouse at Arcis," he said to the lieutenant; "they must be present to-morrow, at daybreak, when we compare the shoes of their horses with the hoof-prints in the park."Lechesneau and Pigoult did not follow until they had closely questioned Catherine, Monsieur and Madame d'Hauteserre, and Laurence.
The Durieus, Catherine, and Marthe declared they had only seen their masters at breakfast-time; Monsieur d'Hauteserre said he had seen them at three o'clock.
When, at midnight, Laurence found herself alone with Monsieur and Madame d'Hauteserre, the abbe and his sister, and without the four young men who for the last eighteen months had been the life of the chateau and the love and joy of her own life, she fell into a gloomy silence which no one present dared to break. No affliction was ever deeper or more complete than hers. At last a deep sigh broke the stillness, and all eyes turned towards the sound.
Marthe, forgotten in a corner, rose, exclaiming, "Death! They will kill them in spite of their innocence!""Mademoiselle, what is the matter with you?" said the abbe.
Laurence left the room without replying. She needed solitude to recover strength in presence of this terrible unforeseen disaster.
