The path of honor: A tale of the war in the Bocage

DAWN was just breaking as I bade my fat little host at the Beau Visage good-by and, leaving the white streets of Tours behind me, crossed the shallow river and turned my face southward on the pleasant road to Poitiers.

The morning was a perfect one, soft and warm, with the shimmer of sunshine and the stirring of green things over the earth; for spring had come again to our fair land of Touraine, and I sat erect in the saddle, drinking long draughts of the good air, riotously, gloriously happy. For I was young, heart-whole, care-free, and setting forth upon a pilgrimage which would have given my father joy had he been alive to know. Yes, and it was the last morning of my life that I could apply to myself those three adjectives--though I did not suspect it then.

The way was thronged with market-women hastening toward the town, pushing their little carts before them, their sabots clacking merrily upon the hard, clean road, and their tongues clacking more merrily still. They looked up, with smiling countenances under their white caps, to wish me good-morning and God-speed, and more than once I caught a flash of dark eyes in a fresh and rosy face which sent through me a pang of regret that I could not linger.

The broad valley of the river seemed one continued village, so closely were cottages and farmsteads set; but as I pushed forward into the flat country beyond, houses became less frequent, the road grew more and more deserted, and the fields stretched fallow and neglected to left and right as far as the eye could reach. Here and there, indeed, I caught a glimpse of a château veiled by a screen of trees, but the land itself seemed empty of humankind. There were no flocks in the pastures, no peasants in the fields, not a single plow driving a furrow through the waiting soil.

All of which, I told myself, was the bitter fruit of the Revolution. No one would sow when there was small likelihood of reaping; besides, the canaille found it more amusing to jostle about the streets of Paris, to shout for the Nation, and to watch the guillotine at work. Ever since that dusty battalion from Marseilles, with its red bonnets and furious faces, had marched up to Paris, singing its terrifying hymn, others, large and small, had followed, until it seemed that all France was crowding to the capital. When hunger gnawed there was always Citizen Santerre, offering refreshment to every one under certain easy conditions; there was work on the fortifications, or enlistment in the National Guard; and finally of course, food might be stolen, if too difficult to earn. Or as a last resort information against one’s neighbor might be laid before the Committee of Public Safety, and a reward secured.

I thanked God that we of Touraine had not yet been caught in the eddies of that maelstrom. Danton had been too busy at home to cast his eyes in our direction, and if our peasants ran away it was at least without leaving behind them blackened walls and outraged bodies. So we had lived our lives in peace, undisturbed by massacres, by the worship of Reason, or by that grim machine which toiled so ceaselessly upon the Place de la Révolution.

But as I topped a rise in the road, I saw that the instruments of war at least had at last invaded even this peaceful country. Under a tree by the roadside a group of soldiers were sitting, and it needed no second glance to tell me they were Republicans. They were lolling about, talking idly among themselves; only their officer was on his feet, but he was watching the road intently and the instant his eyes met mine he uttered a sharp command. In a breath his men had sprung to arms and deployed across the road.

I was a peaceful traveller, intent on my own business; so telling myself that I had nothing to fear from even the most rabid of Revolutionists, I continued on without hesitating. It could not be for such a small and inoffensive fish as I that a net so elaborate had been spread.

“Halt, citizen!” called the officer, as I came up. “I must ask you to dismount,” he added, looking at me with eyes of extraordinary brilliancy.

“Willingly,” I replied, “if one of your men will hold my horse;” but two of them had him by the bridle before the words were fully uttered.

“Now, citizen,” continued the officer, urbanely, as I sprang from the saddle and faced him, “there are a few questions which I shall have to ask you. But the sun is warm, and to stand is fatiguing, so let us sit down together in the shade of that tree yonder.”

“Very well,” I assented, and followed him to a spot where we were defended not only from the rays of sun but also from the curious ears of the soldiers of the detachment, which still held its position across the road.

My companion paused a moment to look at me before he began his questioning, and gave me in turn the opportunity to examine him. He was a tall, raw-boned man, evidently of enormous strength. His face was roughened by wind and rain and burned to a deep red by the sun. A ferocious mustache shaded mouth and chin, and his eyes gleamed behind their bushy brows like those of a beast in ambush. His hair was streaked with gray, but I judged not so much from age,--for his whole being was instinct with fire and vigor,--as from the appalling scenes in which he had played a part. He embodied for me at that moment the very spirit of the Revolution, irate, implacable, but with a certain rude sense of honor and of justice and a confused belief that its cause was in some way bound up with human rights and human progress.

“Come, citizen,” he began at last, “your name?”

“Jean Tavernay,” I answered, deeming it wise to omit the preposition.

“Your home?”

“Near Beaufort.”

“Your destination?”

“Poitiers.”

“Your business?”

I hesitated.

“A private matter,” I said finally.

He frowned fiercely.

“The Republic has the right to know!” he said, in a formidable voice.

“This is not a thing which in any way concerns the Republic. It concerns only myself.”

“That is for me to judge. Besides, the business of the Republic is that of each of its citizens. Will you answer?”

I have,--I may as well confess at once what the reader must soon discover,--concealed under an exterior the most ordinary, a vein of obstinacy which has often impelled me to deeds the most foolish. It was so now. A hesitancy which had its origin in boyish shyness crystallized suddenly into sullen determination.

“Come,” repeated my questioner even more fiercely, “will you answer?”

“No!” I said bluntly, and nerved myself for what might follow.

Then I began to suspect that this dragon, like that of Rouen, was ferocious only in appearance, for he contented himself with gnawing at his mustache and looking at me darkly.

“How am I to know you are not a ci-devant?” he rasped out at last. “A traitor, a conspirator against the Nation, a scoundrel upon whose head a price has been set?”

“Merely by looking at me, my friend,” I retorted, and smiled at the thought that I, whose whole life had passed peacefully at Beaufort, could be any of those things.

I cannot say that he actually smiled in answer, but his face certainly relaxed.

“When did you leave Beaufort?” he questioned, in a milder tone.

“Yesterday morning.”

“And last night?”

“I spent at Tours.”

“What inn?”

“The Beau Visage.”

“The landlord’s name?”