The Salt Smugglers (11 page)

Gendarmes again! ... Or rather, gendarmes already! ... — Well, there are no more gendarmes at Senlis. I had found them polite, but a little over-susceptible ... Today they have been replaced by cuirassiers from the cavalry regiment camped nearby. — They stand out at the town ball, take over all the public spaces, and make it impossible for a simple pedestrian to catch the eyes of the local Senlis beauties.

But this time around I had no disagreeable run-ins with the law: — I had a passport chock full of German stamps and, what's more, I hired my own private cab to take me to Ermenonville. Fate was clearly smiling upon me, — and I remembered this phrase uttered by a hotel keeper in one of Balzac's works:

« They shall be treated like princes, — princes with money. »

The young lady adds:

« Neither the cruel treatment to which he had been subjected by my father nor the latter's admonitions that he remain within the bounds prescribed by his duties could keep him from spending that night with me. This is the ruse he resorted to: having been ordered to go to the Beauvoisis by my father, he accordingly rode off on his horse, but instead of proceeding on to his destination, he stopped in the forest of Guny until night had fallen, and then went to have something to eat at Tancar's in Coucy-la-Ville; after supper, he took his two pistols and crept back into Verneuil by the small garden, where I was waiting for him with complete assurance, knowing as I did that everybody thought he was by now far away. I took him up to my room, and he said to me: “This is too fine an occasion to waste without kissing each other. Let us therefore get undressed ... There is nothing to fear ...” »

La Corbinière fell ill, which caused the count to be less severe in his regard. — But to get him out of his daughter's sight, he said to him: « You shall have to go to the garrison at Orbaix, for the rest of gendarmes are already there. »

Which he did with a heavy heart.

At Orbaix, La Corbinière entrusted a letter for Angélique de Longueval to a certain Toquette who was the valet of the count's falconer and was on his way to Verneuil. Fearing that the letter might be intercepted, he instructed the valet to place it under a stone before entering the castle, this way, if they searched him, they would find nothing.

Once he had made it into the castle, it would be very simple to go recover the letter from under the stone and remit it to the young lady. The young boy carried out his assignment very well; he approached Angélique de Longueval and said to her: « I have something for you. »

She was extremely happy with this letter. La Corbinière informed her that he had quit a most advantageous position in Germany to be by her side, and that he could not go on living if she did not consent to see him.

Having accompanied her brother to the castle of Neuville, Angélique asked one of her mother's servants whose name was Court-Toujours: « Would you be so kind as to deliver this letter secretly to La Corbinière, who has just returned from Germany? »

COMMENTARY. — FRENCH LEGEND CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF ANGÉLIQUE LONGUEVAL

Before going into detail about Angélique de Longueval's great decision, I wonder whether I might be allowed to insert a few words here. I promise that I shall hereafter interrupt the narrative only on rare occasions. It being illegal to engage in the historical
novel,
we shall just have to serve up the sauce on some other platter; — that is, local color, period atmosphere, analysis of characters, — complementing the material truth of the facts being related.

I hope that in what follows you will excuse me for having simply copied out a number of passages from the manuscript which I discovered in the Archives and which I have supplemented with other materials that I have researched. Habituated as I have been for the past fifteen years to the breakneck speed of newspaper writing, I actually tend to spend more time carefully choosing and copying than I do imagining things.

I have difficulty accounting for the trip La Corbinière took to Germany. Angélique de Longueval mentions nothing about it. Back in those days they used to refer to the entire area of upper Burgundy as Germany. It was here, as we have seen, that the duke de Longueval had come down with dysentery and, in all likelihood, it was here that La Corbinière probably spent some time in his service.

If I am to believe the ballads I used to hear in my childhood, the character of the fathers in the region I am now visiting has not changed over time. They display a mixture of paternal severity and grandfatherly goodnaturedness. Here is one of the songs I have collected in this ancient land of Île-de France that stretches from
Parisis
to the edge of Picardy:

Such is the character of the young women of this region. The father, — who shows quite a bit of character himself, — replies:

To which the daughter responds:

The father sticks to his guns:

The balladeer adds:

Here we have just had an example of paternal strictness; — now let's turn to paternal leniency.

It's a shame you cannot hear these old tunes for yourself, — they are all the more poetic given the fact that their lines, which are full of assonances (in the Spanish style), follow the rhythm of the music:

This ballad has since been ruined by anthologists who have tinkered with its lines and pretended that it came from the Bourbonnais region. They even printed a version of it accompanied by illustrations and dedicated it to the deposed queen of France ... I cannot quote the thing in its entirety, but here are some details I still remember.

The three captains ride by the white rose tree:

You can see from these four lines that poetry does not always have to rhyme. This is something the Germans know; — in some of their poems, they use only longs and shorts in the fashion of the Romans or Greeks.

The three horsemen and the young lady who was riding pillion behind the youngest one finally reached Senlis. When they got into town, the innkeeper cast her a glance:

Realizing that she has placed herself in a somewhat compromising position, after joining them for supper she
plays dead
and the three horsemen are naïve enough
to fall for the trick. — They say to each other: « Oh lord, the girl is dead! » and wonder where they should now take her:
says the youngest one; and they proceed to dump her body beneath the rose tree.

The narrator continues:

The father and the entire family are having supper. Having worried about her absence for the past three days, they are all overjoyed to see the young lady, — who probably got married quite honorably some time later.

Let's get back to Angélique de Longueval.

« But as for my decision to leave my native land, it came about as follows: when he
⁵
who had gone to Maine returned to Verneuil, my father asked him before supper: “How well off are you?” To which he replied: “Well enough off.” Rankled by this answer, my father grabbed a knife from the table and threw himself at him. My mother and I ran toward them, but he who was to cause me so much sorrow had already wounded his finger trying to get the knife away from my father ... and even after having been treated this poorly, his love for me was such that he refused to leave as indeed he should have.

« Eight days went by without my father so much as saying a word to him, during which time he sent me letters begging me to run off with him, a decision I was still unable to make. But after eight days, my father said to him in the garden: “I am surprised that you have the gall to stay on in my house after what happened; please leave the premises immediately and never dare set foot again in any of my houses, for you shall not be welcome.”

« He quickly saddled his horse and went up to his room to get his belongings; he had made a sign that I should meet him over in d'Haraucourt's quarters where there was an antechamber with a door that closed where one could talk. I rushed over there and he said to me: “Now's the time to make your decision; otherwise you shall never see me again.”

« I asked him to give me three days to think things over. He went off to Paris and came back to Verneuil after three days. Try as I might, I could not decide to give up everything I felt for him; as I turned things over in my mind, all the indignities I had suffered passed before my eyes. In the end, love and despair made up my mind. I had come to a decision. »

After three days, La Corbninière returned to the castle and went in through the small garden. Angélique de Longueval was waiting for him there and ushered him into her quarters, where he was
seized with joy
upon hearing of the young lady's decision.

Their departure was fixed for the first Sunday of Lent
and hearing him observe « that they would need money and a horse », she said she would see what she could do.

Angélique wracked her mind for a way to get at the silver dishes, for there was no money in the house, her father having taken it all to Paris with him.

When the appointed day arrived, she said to one of the grooms by the name of Breteau:

« I would be most grateful if you could lend me a horse. I need to send for some taffeta at Soissons tonight. I promise I'll have the horse back to you by the morning, before mother gets up; the only reason I want to borrow it for the night is so she won't reprimand you for coming to my aid. »

The groom bowed to the
wishes
of the young lady of the house. Now all she needed was the key to the front gate of the castle. She told the porter that she wanted to let someone out that night so they could go fetch something for her in town but she didn't want her mother to find out ... if only he could slip her the key to the front gate without her mother noticing.

The main thing was to lay hands on the silver plate. The countess who, according to her daughter's account, seemed « inspired by God » at that very moment, said over supper to one of the housekeepers: « Huberde, since M. d' Haraucourt is away, I would like you to lock the silver dishes into this trunk and bring me the key. »

The young lady went pale, — they would have to change their day of departure. But when her mother went off to the country the following Sunday, she had a blacksmith brought in from the village to
lift off
the lock, — pretending that the key had been lost.

« But, she writes, that was not all. My younger brother had stayed behind with me and when he heard the various orders I was giving and noticed that I had closed the front gate of the castle, he said: “Sister, if you want to steal from mother and father I'm not going to go along with it; I'm going to go tell mother on you.” — Go ahead if want, you little brat, I said; she'll find out anyway from my own lips, and if she objects, I'll go ahead and do it anyway.” — But I said these words without in fact meaning them at all. The boy was running off to blurt out what I wanted to keep secret, but he kept on turning around to see if I was watching him; imagining that I did not care what he was up to, he decided to turn back. I had deliberately pretended indifference, knowing that the more you show children you are anxious, the more they want to divulge whatever you have asked them to keep secret. »