Peyrol

“ Not the faintest sound came from anywhere. Citizen Scevola sighed. It seemed to him that he was the only patriot left, and even in his retirement his life was not safe.
“I know,” said Peyrol. “I saw the whole affair out of the window. You can run like a hare, citizen.”
“Was I to allow myself to be sacrificed by those superstitious brutes?” argued Citizen Scevola in a high-pitched voice and with genuine indignation, which Peyrol watched coldly. He could hardly catch the mutter of “Perhaps it would have been just as well if I had let those reactionary dogs kill me that time.” ”

“ At the first turn of the path they got the view of the Escampobar buildings with the pigeons still walking on the ridges of the roofs, of the sunny orchards and yards without a living soul in them. Peyrol remarked that everybody, no doubt, was in the kitchen waiting for his and the lieutenant’s return. He himself was properly hungry. “And you, lieutenant?”
The lieutenant was not hungry. Hearing this declaration made in a peevish tone, Peyrol gave a sagacious movement of his head behind the lieutenant’s back. Well, whatever happened, a man had to eat. ”

“ Peyrol made as if to leave the kitchen, but Catherine stopped him. “For God’s sake, Monsieur Peyrol,” she said, half in entreaty and half in command, “don’t wake up the child. Let her sleep. Oh, let her sleep! Don’t wake her up. God only knows how long it is since she has slept properly. ”

“ Arlette stood in the doorway of the salle. The gleam of light in the whites of her eyes set off her black and penetrating glance. The surprise was complete. The profile of Catherine, who was standing by the table, became, if possible, harder; a sharp carving of an old prophetess of some desert tribe. Arlette made three steps forward. In Peyrol even extreme astonishment was deliberate. He had been famous for never looking as though he had been caught unprepared. Age had accentuated that trait of a born leader. ”

“ A mute, strangely suspicious, defiant understanding had established itself imperceptibly between him and that lawless old man who might have been suspected to have come there only to die, if the whole robust personality of Peyrol with its quiet vitality had not been antagonistic to the notion of death. ”

“ There was enough of the peasant-born in Peyrol, still, to remark that he had seen no man, woman, or child, or four-footed beast for hours, and that he would hardly have thought that there was any land worth looking after anywhere around. ”

“ That one of the corvette’s boats was still in the cove he had not the slightest doubt. As to the motive of her coming, it was incomprehensible. Only that senseless form lying at his feet could perhaps have told him: but Peyrol had little hope that it would ever speak again. If his friends started to look for their shipmate there was just a bare chance that they would not discover the existence of the basin. Peyrol stooped and felt the body all over. He found no weapon of any kind on it. There was only a common clasp-knife on a lanyard round its neck. ”

“ In the stress of the situation Peyrol at once asked himself: Now why does he say that? Where did he expect me to be? The lieutenant need not have spoken at all. He had known him now for about two years off and on, and it had happened many times that they had sat side by side on that bench in a sort of “at arm’s length” equality without exchanging a single word. ”

“ The lieutenant, as he sat there, unaware of Peyrol’s survey of his person, gave no notion of slipperiness. On the contrary, he looked rather immovably established. Very much at home. Too much at home. Even after Peyrol sat down by his side he continued to look{120} immovable—or at least difficult to get rid of. In the still noonday heat the faint shrilling of cicadas was the only sound of life heard for quite a long time. Delicate, evanescent, cheerful, careless sort of life, yet not without passion. ”

“ He leaned over the big tiller, and seemed to be hovering above the lieutenant’s shoulder.
“What’s this infernal company?” murmured the latter without even looking at Peyrol.
“All old friends—quoi?” said Peyrol in a homely tone. “We will keep that little affair amongst ourselves. The fewer the men, the greater the glory. Catherine is getting the vegetables ready for the noonday soup and the Englishman is coming down towards the Passe, where he will arrive about noon too, ready to have his eye put out. You know, lieutenant, that will be your job. ”

“ After his dog’s death the fisherman had abandoned the salt lagoon, leaving his rotting punt exposed on the dismal shore and his miserable nets shut up in the dark hut. He did not care for another dog, and besides, who was there to give him a dog? He was the last of men. Somebody must be last. There was no place for him in the life{96} of the village. So one fine morning he had walked up to the farm in order to see Peyrol. More correctly perhaps, to let himself be seen by Peyrol. That was exactly Michel’s only hope. ”

“ He had remained there quaking till a man in a cocked hat and with a sabre at his side (the boy had never seen either such a hat or such a sabre in his life) had seized him by the arm{33} close to the armpit and had hauled him out from there; a man who might have been an ogre (only Peyrol had never heard of an ogre) , but at any rate in his own way was alarming and wonderful beyond anything he could have imagined—if the faculty of imagination had been developed in him then. ”

“ A man who is in such a frame of mind that a leaping goat makes him start cannot be happy. However, the other goat remained lying down. There was really no reason for alarm, and Peyrol, composing his features as near as possible to their usual placid expression, followed the lieutenant into the house.{92}
VII A single cover having been laid at the end of a long table in the salle for the lieutenant, he had his meal there while the others sat down to theirs in the kitchen, the usual strangely assorted company served by the anxious and silent Catherine. ”

“ He is, however, just such a personage as the mind's eye sees walking on the terrace of the Peyrou of an October afternoon in the early years of the century; a plump figure in a chocolate-colored coat and a culotte that exhibits a good leg, - a culotte provided with a watch-fob from which a heavy seal is suspended. This Peyrou (to come to it at last) is a wonderful place, especially to be found in a little provincial city. France is certainly the country of towns that aim at completeness; more than in other lands, they contain stately features as a matter of course. ”

“ And another strange thing, Master Peyrou, is that monseigneur is not willing to get rid of that wicked little horse, Mistraon, that has been the cause of all the mischief; he rides it in preference to any other. Now say, Master Peyrou, don’t you think that is tempting Providence?”
“Have these strangers departed from Marseilles?” asked the watchman, without replying to Stephanette.
“Yes, Master Peyrou, they say they have taken the route to Languedoc, after having made a visit to the Marshal of Vitry. They say, too, that this wicked duke is quite worthy of being acquainted with such rascals. ”

“ Peyrou was sad; the last words of the Baron des Anbiez on the subject of the commander had awakened the most painful memories.
But as he ascended the steep fortifications of the promontory, his heart expanded. Too much accustomed to solitude to find enjoyment in the society of men, the watchman was happy only when he was on the summit of his rock, where he listened in sweet meditation to the distant roaring of the sea and the terrible bursts of the tempest. ”

“ Three men had fled from M. de Mirabeau's alley; we had no means of knowing whether this Peyrot were he who ran as we came up, he whom I had encountered, or he who had engaged M. Étienne. And did we know, that would not tell us which of the three had stabbed and plundered Huguet. Peyrot might have the packet, or he might know who had it, or he might be in honest ignorance of its existence. If he had it, it were a crying shame to pay out honest money for what we might take by force; to buy your own goods from a thief were a sin. ”

“ I wondered if we were going to sell ornaments to Peyrot."
He locked the box and proceeded solemnly and thoroughly to damn Peyrot. He cursed him waking, cursed him sleeping; cursed him eating, cursed him drinking; cursed him walking, riding, sitting; cursed him summer, cursed him winter; cursed him young, cursed him old; living, dying, and dead. I inferred that the packet had not been recovered.
"No, pardieu! Vigo went straight on horseback to the Bonne Femme, but Peyrot had vanished. ”

“ A few hours before the moment when Peyrade was to be roused in his garret in the Rue Saint-Georges, Corentin, coming in from his country place at Passy, had made his way to the Duc de Grandlieu’s, in the costume of a retainer of a superior class. He wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole. He had made up a withered old face with powdered hair, deep wrinkles, and a colorless skin. His eyes were hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles. He looked like a retired office-clerk. ”

“ They trotted down the main street of the town, passing the inn, [177] where the revellers were in full sway, and were out on the highroad to Poissy again. Their way now lay through thick forest, and Péron was not without uneasiness, seeing her mood and not knowing the exact extent of the risk they ran of defeat. He would infinitely have preferred the clash of swords to this silent ride through unknown perils, with the responsibility of controlling a wilful and quick-witted young woman who was bent on his discomfiture. ”

“ It is curious that when Peyral has been drunk for a month, and reforms so as not to die, he goes to the mountains for a week and shoots an animal.”
We said bon jour, and he joined us. Le Brunnec proposed that we try to kill two bulls, share the labor of carrying the meat to Atuona, and divide it there. Peyral gruffly assented, and, as he was the more skillful chasseur, gave us our stations. We were to start up one or more taureaux sauvages and to endeavor to refrain from firing at them until they were as near as possible to the cliff. ”

“ The first long shafts of sunlight made wide avenues of glory through the forest, and there was the merry twittering of birds in every thicket. Péron felt his spirits rise with the day; whatever the outcome of his mission, he had steadily endeavored to do his duty, and he had assuredly accomplished something of importance. Aware now of how nearly Renée de Nançay had defeated his plans, he could not suppress a feeling of curiosity to know how she regarded the turn of events. ”

“ Never a captain of a merchantman, never a cockswain of a bark, put to sea without having consulted Master Peyrou.
Men ordinarily surround with a sort of superstitious reverence and halo those who live apart from the rest of the world.
Peyrou was no exception to the rule.
As his predictions about the weather were almost invariably realised, the inhabitants of La Ciotat and the environs soon persuaded themselves that a man who knew so much of the things in the sky could not be ignorant of the things on the earth. ”

“ She was going to interrogate Peyrou, when, to her amazement, he accosted her with a question about the Bohemian.
“Mademoiselle, did the vagabond enter Maison-Forte last night?” said Peyrou, quickly.
“No; my father is much concerned about him. They think that he must have spent the night drinking in some tavern in La Ciotat.”
“That would be astonishing,” added Stephanette, “for the poor fellow seems to be of exemplary sobriety.”
“This poor fellow,” exclaimed the watchman, “is a spy of the pirates.”
“He!” exclaimed Reine. ”

“ M. Peyron replied, after a brief calculation. “You have just six months in all to live from that date. They will offer you up by Tu-Kila-Kila’s hut the day the sun reaches the summer solstice.”
“But why did they make us gods then?” Felix interposed, with tremulous lips. “Why treat us with such honors meanwhile, if they mean in the end to kill us?”
He received his sentence of death with greater calmness than the Frenchman had expected. “Monsieur,” the older arrival answered, with a reflective air, “there comes in the mystery. ”

“ But it is time I was free to look for that packet."
M. Étienne's eyes went over to the chest.
"I wish you all success in your arduous search."
"It is like to be, in truth, a long and weary search," Peyrot sighed. "My ignorance of the perpetrators of the outrage makes my task difficult indeed. But rest assured, monsieur, that I shall question every man in Paris, if need be. I shall leave no stone unturned."
M. Étienne still pensively regarded the chest.
"If you leave no key unturned, 'twill be more to the purpose." ”

“ At this moment, Peyrou heard a rustling in the air; one of the branches of the old pine cracked, and Brilliant alighted with a heavy wing on the stone roof of the sentry-box; then from the roof she descended to the ground.
“Ah, ah! Brilliant,” said the watchman, “you come to get your part of the Christmas present, do you? Take this!” and he handed her a piece of the turkey, which the eagle refused.
“Ah! cruel wretch, you would not disdain that morsel if it was bloody. Do you want some of this pie? No? Ah! you will not find every day such a treat as the pigeon of that accursed Bohemian. ”

“ Peytral pursued, "then I need not expatiate on it, and you will understand the sort of place that Mayes fled to, and how it suited him. He was a man of far greater ability than any of the coarse scoundrels in power, and he was worse than all of them. He was not such a fool as to aim at ostensible political power—that way generally led to assassination. ”