Part 20

X. PRAY FOR THOSE WHO DESPITEFULLY USE YOU AND PERSECUTE YOU

This legal paper, much shorter and more imperative than such indictments are these days, when they are far more detailed and more precise, especially as to the antecedent life of accused persons, affected Godefroid deeply. The dryness of the statement in which the official pen narrated in red ink the principal details of the affair stirred his imagination. Concise, abbreviated narratives are to some minds texts into the hidden meaning of which they love to burrow.

In the middle of the night, aided by the silence, by the darkness, by the terrible relation intimated by the worthy Alain between the facts of that document and Madame de la Chanterie, Godefroid applied all the forces of his intellect to decipher the dreadful theme.

Evidently the name Lechantre stood for la Chanterie; in all probably the aristocracy of the name was intentionally thus concealed during the Revolution and under the Empire.

Godefroid saw, in imagination, the landscape and the scenes where this drama had taken place. The forms and faces of the accomplices passed before his eyes. He pictured to himself not “one Rifoel” but a Chevalier du Vissard, a young man something like the Fergus of Walter Scott, a French Jacobite. He developed the romance of an ardent young girl grossly deceived by an infamous husband (a style of romance then much the fashion); loving the young and gallant leader of a rebellion against the Empire; giving herself, body and soul, like another Diana Vernon, to the conspiracy, and then, once launched on that fatal incline, unable to stop herself. Had she rolled to the scaffold?

The young man saw in his own mind a whole world, and he peopled it. He wandered in the shade of those Norman groves; he saw the Breton hero and Madame Bryond among the gorse and shrubbery; he inhabited the old chateau of Saint-Savin; he shared in the diverse acts of all those many personages, picturing to himself the notary, the merchant, and those bold Chouans. His mind conceived the state of that wild country where lingered still the memory of the Comtes de Bauvan, de Longuy, the exploits of Marche-a-Terre, the massacre at La Vivetiere, the death of the Marquis de Montauran--of whose prowess Madame de la Chanterie had told him.

This sort of vision of things, of men, of places was rapid. When he remembered that this drama must relate to the dignified, noble, deeply religious old woman whose virtue was acting upon him so powerfully as to be upon the point of metamorphosing him, Godefroid was seized with a sort of terror, and turned hastily to the second document which Monsieur Alain had given him. This was entitled:--

Summary on behalf of Madame Henriette Bryond des Tours-Minieres, nee Lechantre de la Chanterie.

“No longer any doubt!” murmured Godefroid.

We are condemned and guilty; but if ever the Sovereign had reason to exercise his right of clemency it is surely in a case like this.

Here is a young woman, about to become a mother, and condemned to death.

From a prison cell, with the scaffold before her, this woman will tell the truth.

The trial before the Criminal Court of Alencon had, as in all cases where there are many accused persons in a conspiracy inspired by party-spirit, certain portions which were seriously obscure.

The Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty knows now the truth about the mysterious personage named Le Marchand, whose presence in the department of the Orne was not denied by the government during the trial, but whom the prosecution did not think proper to call as witness, and whom the defence had neither the power nor the opportunity to find.

That personage is, as the prosecuting officer, the police of Paris, and the Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty well know, the Sieur Bernard-Polydor Bryond des Tours-Minieres, the correspondent, since 1794, of the Comte de Lille,--known elsewhere as the Baron des Tours-Minieres, and on records of the Parisian police under the name of Contenson.

He is notorious. His youth and name were degraded by vices so imperative, an immorality so profound, conduct so criminal, that his infamous life must have ended on the scaffold if he had not possessed the ability to play a double part, as indicated by his names. Hereafter, as his passions rule him more and more, he will end by falling to the depths of infamy in spite of his incontestable ability and a remarkable mind.

When the Comte de Lille became aware of this man’s character he no longer permitted him to take part in the royalist councils or to handle the money sent to France; he thus lost the resources derived from these masters, whose service had been profitable to him.

It was then that he returned to his country home, crippled with debt.

His traitorous connection with the intrigues of England and the Comte de Lille, won him the confidence of the old families attached to the cause now vanquished by the genius of our immortal Emperor. He there met one of the former leaders of the rebellion, with whom at the time of the expedition to Quberon, and later, at the time of the last uprising of the Chouans, he had held certain relations as an envoy from England. He encouraged the schemes of this young agitator, Rifoel, who has since paid with his life on the scaffold for his plots against the State. Through him Bryond was able to penetrate once more into the secrets of that party which has misunderstood both the glory of H.M. the Emperor Napoleon I. and the true interests of the nation united in his august person.

At the age of thirty-five, this man, then known under his true name of des Tours-Minieres, affecting a sincere piety, professing the utmost devotion to the interests of the Comte de Lille and a reverence for the memory of the insurgents who lost their lives at the West, disguising with great ability the secrets of his exhausted youth, and powerfully protected by the silence of creditors, and by the spirit of caste which exists among all country ci-devants,--this man, truly a whited sepulchre, was introduced, as possessing every claim for consideration, to Madame Lechantre, who was supposed to be the possessor of a large fortune.

All parties conspired to promote a marriage between the young Henriette, only daughter of Madame Lechantre, and this protege of the ci-devants. Priests, nobles, creditors, each with a different interest, loyal in some, selfish in others, blind for the most part, all united in furthering the union of Bernard Bryond des Tours-Minieres with Henriette Lechantre.

The good sense of the notary who had charge of Madame Lechantre’s affairs, and perhaps his distrust, were the actual cause of the disaster of this young girl. The Sieur Chesnel, notary at Alencon, put the estate of Saint-Savin, the sole property of the bride, under the dower system, reserving the right of habitation and a modest income to the mother.

The creditors, who supposed, from Madame Lechantre’s orderly and frugal way of living, that she had capital laid by, were deceived in their expectations, and they then began suits which revealed the precarious financial condition of Bryond.

Serious differences now arose between the newly married pair, and the young wife had occasion to know the depraved habits, the political and religious atheism and--shall I say the word?--the infamy of the man to whom her life had been so fatally united. Bryond, forced to let his wife into the secret of the royalist plots, gave a home in his house to their chief agent, Rifoel du Vissard.

The character of Rifoel, adventurous, brave, generous, exercised a charm on all who came in contact with him, as was abundantly proved during his trials before three successive criminal courts.

The irresistible influence, the absolute empire he acquired over the mind of a young woman who saw herself suddenly cast into the abyss of a fatal marriage, is but too visible in this catastrophe which now brings her a suppliant to the foot of the Throne. But that which the Chancellor of His Imperial and Royal Majesty can easily verify is the infamous encouragement given by Bryond to this intimacy. Far from fulfilling his duty as guide and counsellor to a child whose poor deceived mother had trusted her to him, he took pleasure in drawing closer still the bonds that united the young Henriette to the rebel leader.

The plan of this odious being, who takes pride in despising all things and considers nothing but the satisfaction of his passions, admitting none of the restraints imposed by civil or religious morality, was as follows:--

We must first remark, however, that such plotting was familiar to a man who, ever since 1794 has played a double part, who for eight years deceived the Comte de Lille and his adherents, and probably deceived at the same time the police of the Republic and the Empire: such men belong only to those who pay them most.