About the hour when Roland was entering Nantes, a diligence, heavily loaded, stopped at the inn of the Croix-d’Or, in the middle of the main street of Châtillon-sur-Seine.
In those days the diligences had but two compartments1, the coupé and the interior; the rotunda2 is an adjunct of modern times.
The diligence had hardly stopped before the postilion jumped down and opened the doors. The travellers dismounted. There were seven in all, of both sexes. In the interior, three men, two women, and a child at the breast; in the coupé, a mother and her son.
The three men in the interior were, one a doctor from Troyes, the second a watchmaker from Geneva, the third an architect from Bourg. The two women were a lady’s maid travelling to Paris to rejoin her mistress, and the other a wet-nurse; the child was the latter’s nursling, which she was taking back to its parents.
The mother and son in the coupé were people of position; the former, about forty years of age, still preserving traces of great beauty, the latter a boy between eleven and twelve. The third place in the coupe was occupied by the conductor.
Breakfast was waiting, as usual, in the dining-room; one of those breakfasts which conductors, no doubt in collusion with the landlords, never give travellers the time to eat. The woman and the nurse got out of the coach and went to a baker’s shop nearby, where each bought a hot roll and a sausage, with which they went back to the coach, settling themselves quietly to breakfast, thus saving the cost, probably too great for their means, of a meal at the hotel.
The doctor, the watchmaker, the architect and the mother and son entered the inn, and, after warming themselves hastily at the large kitchen-fire, entered the dining-room and took seats at the table.
The mother contented3 herself with a cup of coffee with cream, and some fruit. The boy, delighted to prove himself a man by his appetite at least, boldly attacked the viands4. The first few moments were, as usual, employed in satisfying hunger. The watchmaker from Geneva was the first to speak.
“Faith, citizen,” said he (the word citizen was still used in public places), “I tell you frankly5 I was not at all sorry to see daylight this morning.”
“Cannot monsieur sleep in a coach?” asked the doctor.
“Oh, yes, sir,” replied the compatriot of Jean-Jacques; “on the contrary, I usually sleep straight through the night. But anxiety was stronger than fatigue6 this time.”
“Were you afraid of upsetting?” asked the architect.
“No. I’m very lucky in that respect; it seems enough for me to be in a coach to make it unupsettable. No, that wasn’t it.”
“What was it, then?” questioned the doctor.
“They say in Geneva that the roads in France are not safe.”
“That’s according to circumstances,” said the architect.
“Ah! how’s that?” inquired the watchmaker.
“Oh!” replied the architect; “if, for example, we were carrying government money, we would surely be stopped, or rather we would have been already.”
“Do you think so?” queried7 the watchmaker.
“That has never failed. I don’t know how those devils of Companions of Jehu manage to keep so well posted; but they never miss an opportunity.”
The doctor nodded affirmatively.
“Ah!” exclaimed the watchmaker, addressing the doctor; “do you think so, too?”
“I do.”
“And if you knew there was government money in the coach, would you be so imprudent as to take passage in it?”
“I must admit,” replied the doctor, “that I should think twice about it.”
“And you, sir?” said the questioner to the architect.
“Oh, I,” replied the latter—“as I am on important business, I should have started anyway.”
“I am tempted,” said the watchmaker “to take off my valise and my oases8, and wait for to-morrow’s diligence, because my boxes are filled with watches worth something like twenty thousand francs. We’ve been lucky so far, but there’s no use tempting9 Providence10.”
“Did you not hear these gentlemen say,” remarked the lady, joining in the conversation for the first time, “that we run the risk of being stopped only when the coach carries government money?”
“That’s exactly it,” replied the watchmaker, looking anxiously around. “We are carrying it.”
The mother blanched11 visibly and looked at her son. Before fearing for herself every mother fears for her child.
“What! we are carrying it?” asked the doctor and the architect in varying tones of excitement. “Are you sure of what you are saying?”
“Perfectly sure, gentlemen.”
“Then you should either have told us before, or have told us in a whisper now.”
“But perhaps,” said the doctor, “the gentleman is not quite sure of what he says.”
“Or perhaps he is joking,” added the architect.
“Heaven forbid!”
“The Genevese are very fond of a laugh,” persisted the doctor.
“Sir,” replied the Genevese, much hurt that any one should think he liked to laugh, “I saw it put on the coach myself.”
“What?”
“The money.”
“Was there much?”
“A good many bags.”
“But where does the money come from?”
“The treasury12 of the bears of Berne. You know, of course, that the bears of Berne received an income of fifty or even sixty thousand francs.”
The doctor burst out laughing.
“Decidedly, sir, you are trying to frighten us,” said he.
“Gentlemen,” said the watchmaker, “I give you my word of honor—”
“Take your places gentlemen,” shouted the conductor, opening the door. “Take your places! We are three-quarters of an hour late.”
“One moment, conductor, one moment,” Said the architect; “we are consulting.”
“About what?”
“Close the door, conductor, and come over here.”
“Drink a glass of wine with us, conductor.”
“With pleasure, gentlemen; a glass of wine is never to be refused.”
The conductor held out his glass, and the three travellers touched it; but just as he was lifting it to his lips the doctor stopped his arm.
“Come, conductor, frankly, is it true?”
“What?”
“What this gentleman says?” And he pointed14 to the Genevese.
“Monsieur Féraud?”
“I don’t know if that is his name.”
“Yes, sir, that is my name—Féraud & Company, No. 6 Rue13 du Rempart, Geneva, at your service,” replied the watchmaker, bowing.
“Gentlemen,” repeated the conductor, “take your places!”
“But you haven’t answered.”
“What the devil shall I answer? You haven’t asked me anything.”
“Yes, we asked you if it is true that you are carrying a large sum of money belonging to the French Government?”
“Blabber!” said the conductor to watchmaker, “did you tell that?”
“Confound it, my worthy15 fellow—”
“Come, gentlemen, your places.”
“But before getting in we want to know—”
“What? Whether I have government money? Yes I have. Now, if we are stopped, say nothing and all will be well.”
“Are you sure?”
“Leave me to arrange matters with these gentry16.”
“What will you do if we are stopped?” the doctor asked the architect.
“Faith! I shall follow the conductor’s advice.”
“That’s the best thing to do,” observed the latter.
“Well, I shall keep quiet,” repeated the architect.
“And so shall I,” added the watchmaker.
“Come, gentlemen, take your seats, and let us make haste.”
The boy had listened to this conversation with frowning brow and clinched17 teeth.
“Well,” he said to his mother, “if we are stopped, I know what I’ll do.”
“What will you do?” she asked.
“You’ll see.”
“What does this little boy say?” asked the watchmaker.
“I say you are all cowards,” replied the child unhesitatingly.
“Edouard!” exclaimed his mother, “what do you mean?”
“I wish they’d stop the diligence, that I do!” cried the boy, his eye sparkling with determination.
“Come, come, gentlemen, in Heaven’s name, take your places,” called the conductor once more.
“Conductor,” said the doctor, “I presume you have no weapons!”
“Yes, I have my pistols.”
“Unfortunate!”
The conductor stooped to the doctor’s ear and whispered: “Don’t be alarmed, doctor; they’re only loaded with powder.”
“Good!”
“Forward, postilion, forward!” shouted the conductor, closing the door of the interior. Then, while the postilion snapped his whip and started the heavy vehicle, he also closed that of the coupé.
“Are you not coming with us, conductor?” asked the lady.
“Thank you, no, Madame de Montrevel,” replied the conductor; “I have something to do on the imperial.” Then, looking into the window, he added: “Take care the Monsieur Edouard does not touch the pistols in the pocket of the carriage; he might hurt himself.”
“Pooh!” retorted the boy, “as if I didn’t know how to handle a pistol. I have handsomer ones than yours, that my friend Sir John had sent me from England; haven’t I, mamma?”
“Never mind, Edouard,” replied Madame de Montrevel, “I entreat18 you not to touch them.”
“Don’t worry, little mother.” Then he added softly, “All the same, if the Companions of Jehu stop us, I know what I shall do.”
The diligence was again rolling heavily on its way to Paris.
It was one of those fine winter days which makes those who think that nature is dead at that season admit that nature never dies but only sleeps. The man who lives to be seventy or eighty years of age has his nights of ten or twelve hours, and often complains that the length of his nights adds to the shortness of his days. Nature, which has an everlasting19 existence; trees, which live a thousand years; have sleeping periods of four or five months, which are winters for us but only nights for them. The poets, in their envious20 verse, sing the immortality21 of nature, which dies each autumn and revives each spring. The poets are mistaken; nature does not die each autumn, she only falls asleep; she is not resuscitated22, she awakens23. The day when our globe really dies, it will be dead indeed. Then it will roll into space or fall into the abysses of chaos24, inert25, mute, solitary26, without trees, without flowers, without verdure, without poets.
But on this beautiful day of the 23d of February, 1800, sleeping nature dreamed of spring; a brilliant, almost joyous27 sun made the grass in the ditches on either side of the road sparkle with those deceptive28 pearls of the hoarfrost which ............