“Are they calling my Amédé a thief, then?” Ma’ame Colombe demanded hotly.
“No! No!” Hector replied, trying to be patient and conciliatory. “Have I not told you that it is all a mistake? Everyone knows there are no thieves in this house; but it seems the authorities think that Amédé may have hidden those valuables pour le bon motif.”
“If he had,” the mother retorted obstinately, “he would say so. Let me just ask him—”
Hector had hold of her hand, but she wrenched it free, and before any of the soldiers could bar the way, she had run into the back parlour, shouting:
“Amédé, my little one, have you told those soldiers that you know nothing of Madame’s valuables? Why, nom de Dieu!” she went on, hands on hips, defiant and aggressive like the true female defending its young, “look at the innocent. Is that the face of a thief?”
She pointed at Amédé, who, however, remained strangely silent.
“Voyons, mon petit, tell them!” Angelique Colombe went on with perhaps a shade less assurance than she had displayed at first. The next moment, however, the Captain had seized her unceremoniously by the arm, and dragged her back into the front shop. Here he gave her arm a good shake.
“Did I not order you to hold your tongue?” he demanded roughly.
Cowed, in spite of herself, not so much by the officer’s tone of command as by Amédé’s silence, Ma’ame Colombe did in effect, hold her tongue. A sense of disaster as well as of shame had suddenly descended upon her. Her ample bosom heaving, she sank into a chair and threw her apron over her head. She was not crying, but she felt the need of shutting out from her vision, the picture of Amédé looking so confused and sullen, of Hector looking as perplexed as she was herself, as well as of that magnificent officer with his fine clothes and his tricolour sash. But chiefly she wanted for the moment to lose sight of that crowd of gaffers and urchins and neighbours, all staring at her, with that unexplainable feeling, not exactly of contentment for her misfortune, but which can only be expressed by that untranslatable word Schadenfreude. Thus shut out from the rest of her little world, the poor woman slowly rocked herself backwards and forwards, murmuring inaudible words under cover of her apron, until she heard the captain’s voice saying abruptly:
“Were you the officer in charge of detachment number ninety-seven?”
Curiosity got the better of sorrow, and Ma’ame Colombe peeped round the edge of her apron. The picture which she saw made her drop her apron altogether. The lieutenant who, the night before, had been so overbearing and so hilarious, stood before his superior officer now, a humble, dejected figure, dreading reprimand, like a schoolboy fearing the cane.
“I am in charge of the detachment ninety-seven—yes, citizen captain,” he replied haltingly.
What a contrast these two! Ma’ame Colombe, in spite of her anxiety, her indignation and whatnot, could not help but compare. Womanlike, she had an eye for the handsome male, and what more gorgeous than this Captain of the Republican, or revolutionary army, as he apparently liked to style his men, with his braided jacket and superb tricolour sash, with his blonde hair and fierce moustachios? He poked his tufted chin out at the bedraggled-looking lieutenant before him, looked down with obvious contempt at the latter’s ragged coat and mud-stained breeches. But he made no remark on the want of cleanliness and decency, as Ma’ame Colombe expected him to do.
“Where do you come from?” he demanded.
“From Orange, citizen captain.”
“What is your objective?”
“After this, Serres, citizen captain, and then Valence.”
“And your orders are to arrest on the way every person suspected of treason against the Republic?”
“Yes, citizen.”
“And how have you obeyed these orders, citizen lieutenant?” the captain demanded sternly.
“I have done my best, citizen captain,” the other replied with an attempt at bluster; “at Vaison—”
“I am not talking of Vaison, which you know quite well, citizen lieutenant. I wish to know how you obeyed the orders given to you to arrest the ci-devant Frontenac, his wife and daughter?”
“Citizen—”
“Have you done it, citizen lieutenant?” the officer thundered, and all of the bluster went out of the subaltern as he stammered meekly:
“When we reached the house of the ci-devant Frontenacs, the two women had gone.”
“Gone?” and the Captain’s voice boomed through the low-raftered room like distant roll of cannon. “Gone? Whither?”
“Gone, citizen captain,” the lieutenant murmured under his breath: “spirited away. The devil alone knows how.”
“Which means that there is a traitor among you.”
“Citizen captain—” the other protested.
“A traitor I say. You had secret orders, and yet the women were warned!” And once more the officer’s glance flashed down with scorn on his unfortunate subordinate. His blonde hair seemed to bristle with wrath; his moustachios stood out like spikes: he looked a veritable god of vengeance and of wrath.
“Where,” he thundered, “is the ci-devant Frontenac?”
“At the commissariat, citizen captain, guarded by our men,” the lieutenant replied.
“And the rest of your detachment?”
“In billets in the village.”
“And did you search this house when you entered it?”
“No—that is—no—I did not—that is—” stammered the wretched man.
“Or the other houses where you billeted your men?”
But this time the lieutenant only shook his head in dejected silence.
“Which means that you allowed soldiers of the Republic to sleep under strange roofs without ascertaining whether they were safe. Why, citizen Lieutenant, this place might have been swarming with traitors.”
“The people here, citizen, are—”
“Enough. You are relieved of your command, and you will proceed now with us to Sisteron where you will render an account of your conduct before the Committee of Public Safety.”
Ma’ame Colombe, who had watched the two men closely during this exciting colloquy, saw an ashen hue spread over the Lieutenant’s face, beneath the thick coating of grime. Though they did not know much in this tucked-away corner of Dauphiné, of what went on in the
