CITIZEN FRAN?OIS GOULIN  
Mademoiselle Rotrou, or rather, Diane de Fargas, fell into a profound revery after leaving Chateaubriant. In the state of her heart at that time, it was, or so she thought, insensible to all tender sentiments, particularly love. But beauty, refinement, and courtesy will always exercise upon a woman of breeding a sufficient influence to make her dream if not love.
Mademoiselle de Fargas, therefore, dreamed of her fellow-traveller, and for the first time a suspicion occurred to her. She began to ask herself how it was that a man so amply protected by the triple signature of Barras, Rewbell, and La Reveillière-Lepaux should evince such an unconquerable repugnance toward the agent of a government which had honored him with such noteworthy confidence.
She forgot that she herself, whose sympathies were far from being with the Revolutionary government, was travelling under the same protection; and even supposing Monsieur d'Argentan to be an aristocrat, which she surmised to be the case from some words he let fall during their last interview, it was possible that, under the stress of circumstances like hers, he had availed himself of a protection which he was somewhat ashamed to claim.
Then, too, she noticed that Monsieur d'Argentan, when he dismounted from his horse, always removed a valise from the saddle whose weight seemed somewhat disproportionate to its size.
Although the young man was strong and vigorous, as if[Pg 488] to divert suspicion he often carried it with one hand, as he would a valise containing a mere change of clothing. But it taxed his strength far more than he was willing to have it appear.
Was he carrying money? If so, he was a curious kind of tax-gatherer, to be carrying money from Paris to Vitré, instead of sending it from Vitré to Paris.
While the constant revolution of the wheel of Fortune made it difficult to determine such matters accurately, Mademoiselle de Fargas was too familiar with the different rounds of the social ladder not to know that it was unusual to find an insignificant tax-collector of an obscure canton at the furthest extremity of France, who rode like an English gentleman and expressed himself with the courtesy which had about it the indelible perfume of gentle birth. And this was especially noticeable toward the close of a period when everybody had put on a varnish of vulgarity to please the powers that were.
She asked herself—without a flutter of the heart, however—who the unknown could be, and what motive had induced him to travel with a passport that was certainly not his own.
By a curious coincidence, when Monsieur d'Argentan left Diane de Fargas he asked himself the same questions about her.
Suddenly, just as they reached the summit of the hill which guarded the entrance of the post-town of La Guerche, from which the road was visible for miles around, Diane was startled and dazzled by the gleam of gun-barrels, reflecting the light of the sun. The road looked like an immense river of flashing steel. It was the Republican column, whose advance guard had already reached La Guerche, while the rest of the troops were still a mile and a half behind them.
Everything was of importance in these troublous times, and, as Diane paid her attendants well, the postilion asked her whether he should take his place in the rear of the col[Pg 489]umn, or drive along the side of the road without slackening his pace, and thus reach La Guerche.
Mademoiselle de Fargas told him to raise the top of the carriage, that she might not be made the object of undue curiosity, and to drive on without slackening his speed. The postilion did as she bid him; and then, remounting his horse, set off at the smart pace at which the horses of the Department of Posts used to make their six miles an hour. As a result, Mademoiselle de Fargas duly reached the gates of La Guerche. When we say gates, we mean the beginning of the street which branched into the Chateaubriant road.
There they found an obstruction, in the nature of an immense machine, drawn by twelve horses, on a truck which was too wide to pass the gates, and which blocked the entire road.
Mademoiselle de Fargas, seeing that her carriage had stopped, and not knowing the reason, put her head through the open window, and said: "What is the matter, postilion?"
"The matter is, citizeness," replied the postilion, "that our streets are not wide enough for the things they wish to carry through them, and they will have to dig up one of the posts before M. Guillotin's machine can enter La Guerche."
And, in fact, as Fran?ois Goulin had decided to travel for the edification of towns and village............