Shuddering with horror she sprang from the bed; the marquis, astonished, followed her.His wife motioned him to a window and raised the curtain, pointing as she did so to a score of soldiers.The moon had scattered the fog and was now casting her white light on the muskets and the uniforms, on the impassible Corentin pacing up and down like a jackal waiting for his prey, on the commandant, standing still, his arms crossed, his nose in the air, his lips curling, watchful and displeased.
"Come, Marie, leave them and come back to me.""Why do you smile? I placed them there."
"You are dreaming."
"No."
They looked at each other for a moment.The marquis divined the whole truth, and he took her in his arms."No matter!" he said, "I love you still.""All is not lost!" cried Marie, "it cannot be! Alphonse," she said after a pause, "there is hope."At this moment they distinctly heard the owl's cry, and Francine entered from the dressing-room.
"Pierre has come!" she said with a joy that was like delirium.
The marquise and Francine dressed Montauran in Chouan clothes with that amazing rapidity that belongs only to women.As soon as Marie saw her husband loading the gun Francine had brought in she slipped hastily from the room with a sign to her faithful maid.Francine then took the marquis to the dressing-room adjoining the bed-chamber.The young man seeing a large number of sheets knotted firmly together, perceived the means by which the girl expected him to escape the vigilance of the soldiers.
"I can't get through there," he said, examining the bull's-eye window.
At that instant it was darkened by a thickset figure, and a hoarse voice, known to Francine, said in a whisper, "Make haste, general, those rascally Blues are stirring.""Oh! one more kiss," said a trembling voice beside him.
The marquis, whose feet were already on the liberating ladder, though he was not wholly through the window, felt his neck clasped with a despairing pressure.Seeing that his wife had put on his clothes, he tried to detain her; but she tore herself roughly from his arms and he was forced to descend.In his hand he held a fragment of some stuff which the moonlight showed him was a piece of the waistcoat he had worn the night before.