The Golden Dog/Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIII: La Corriveau
[edit]Angelique scarcely noticed her brother, except to bid him good-night when she left him in the vestibule of the mansion. Gathering her gay robes in her jewelled hand, she darted up the broad stairs to her own apartment, the same in which she had received Le Gardeur on that memorable night in which she crossed the Rubicon of her fate.
There was a fixedness in her look and a recklessness in her step that showed anger and determination. It struck Lizette with a sort of awe, so that, for once, she did not dare to accost her young mistress with her usual freedom. The maid opened the door and closed it again without offering a word, waiting in the anteroom until a summons should come from her mistress.
Lizette observed that she had thrown herself into a fauteuil, after hastily casting off her mantle, which lay at her feet. Her long hair hung loose over her shoulders as it parted from all its combs and fastenings. She held her hands clasped hard across her forehead, and stared with fixed eyes upon the fire which burned low on the hearth, flickering in the depths of the antique fireplace, and occasionally sending a flash through the room which lit up the pictures on the wall, seeming to give them life and movement, as if they, too, would gladly have tempted Angelique to better thoughts. But she noticed them not, and would not at that moment have endured to look at them.
Angelique had forbidden the lamps to be lighted: it suited her mood to sit in the half-obscure room, and in truth her thoughts were hard and cruel, fit only to be brooded over in darkness and alone. She clenched her hands, and raising them above her head, muttered an oath between her teeth, exclaiming,--
"Par Dieu! It must be done! It must be done!" She stopped suddenly when she had said that. "What must be done?" asked she sharply of herself, and laughed a mocking laugh. "He gave me her life! He did not mean it! No! The Intendant was treating me like a petted child. He offered me her life while he refused me a lettre de cachet! The gift was only upon his false lips, not in his heart! But Bigot shall keep that promise in spite of himself. There is no other way,--none!"
This was a new world Angelique suddenly found herself in. A world of guilty thoughts and unresisted temptations, a chaotic world where black, unscalable rocks, like a circle of the Inferno, hemmed her in on every side, while devils whispered in her ears the words which gave shape and substance to her secret wishes for the death of her "rival," as she regarded the poor sick girl at Beaumanoir.
How was she to accomplish it? To one unpractised in actual deeds of wickedness, it was a question not easy to be answered, and a thousand frightful forms of evil, stalking shapes of death came and went before her imagination, and she clutched first at one, then at another of the dire suggestions that came in crowds that overwhelmed her power of choice.
In despair to find an answer to the question, "What must be done?" she rose suddenly and rang the bell. The door opened, and the smiling face and clear eye of Lizette looked in. It was Angelique's last chance, but it was lost. It was not Lizette she had rung for. Her resolution was taken.
"My dear mistress!" exclaimed Lizette, "I feared you had fallen asleep. It is almost day! May I now assist you to undress for bed?" Voluble Lizette did not always wait to be first spoken to by her mistress.
"No, Lizette, I was not asleep; I do not want to undress; I have much to do. I have writing to do before I retire; send Fanchon Dodier here." Angelique had a forecast that it was necessary to deceive Lizette, who, without a word, but in no serene humor, went to summon Fanchon to wait on her mistress.
Fanchon presently came in with a sort of triumph glittering in her black eye. She had noticed the ill humor of Lizette, but had not the slightest idea why she had been summoned to wait on Angelique instead of her own maid. She esteemed it quite an honor, however.
"Fanchon Dodier!" said she, "I have lost my jewels at the ball; I cannot rest until I find them; you are quicker-witted than Lizette: tell me what to do to find them, and I will give you a dress fit for a lady."
Angelique with innate craft knew that her question would bring forth the hoped-for reply.
Fanchon's eyes dilated with pleasure at such a mark of confidence. "Yes, my Lady," replied she, "if I had lost my jewels I should know what to do. But ladies who can read and write and who have the wisest gentlemen to give them counsel do not need to seek advice where poor habitan girls go when in trouble and perplexity."
"And where is that, Fanchon? Where would you go if in trouble and perplexity?"
"My Lady, if I had lost all my jewels,"--Fanchon's keen eye noticed that Angelique had lost none of hers, but she made no remark on it,-- "if I had lost all mine, I should go see my aunt Josephte Dodier. She is the wisest woman in all St. Valier; if she cannot tell you all you wish to know, nobody can."
"What! Dame Josephte Dodier, whom they call La Corriveau? Is she your aunt?"
Angelique knew very well she was. But it was her cue to pretend ignorance in order to impose on Fanchon.
"Yes, ill-natured people call her La Corriveau, but she is my aunt, nevertheless. She is married to my uncle Louis Dodier, but is a lady, by right of her mother, who came from France, and was once familiar with all the great dames of the Court. It was a great secret why her mother left France and came to St. Valier; but I never knew what it was. People used to shake their heads and cross themselves when speaking of her, as they do now when speaking of Aunt Josephte, whom they call La Corriveau; but they tremble when she looks at them with her black, evil eye, as they call it. She is a terrible woman, is Aunt Josephte! but oh, Mademoiselle, she can tell you things past, present, and to come! If she rails at the world, it is because she knows every wicked thing that is done in it, and the world rails at her in return; but people are afraid of her all the same."
"But is it not wicked? Is it not forbidden by the Church to consult a woman like her, a sorciere?" Angelique took a sort of perverse merit to herself for arguing against her own resolution.
"Yes, my Lady! but although forbidden by the Church, the girls all consult her, nevertheless, in their losses and crosses; and many of the men, too, for she does know what is to happen, and how to do things, does Aunt Josephte. If the clergy cannot tell a poor girl about her sweetheart, and how to keep him in hand, why should she not go and consult La Corriveau, who can?"
"Fanchon, I would not care to consult your aunt. People would laugh at my consulting La Corriveau, like a simple habitan girl; what would the world say?"
"But the world need not know, my Lady. Aunt Josephte knows secrets, they say, that would ruin, burn, and hang half the ladies of Paris. She learned those terrible secrets from her mother, but she keeps them safe in those close lips of hers. Not the faintest whisper of one of them has ever been heard by her nearest neighbor. Indeed, she has no gossips, and makes no friends, and wants none. Aunt Josephte is a safe confidante, my Lady, if you wish to consult her."
"I have heard she is clever, supernatural, terrible, this aunt of yours! But I could not go to St. Valier for advice and help; I could not conceal my movements like a plain habitan girl."
"No, my Lady," continued Fanchon, "it is not fitting that you should go to Aunt Josephte. I will bring Aunt Josephte here to you. She will be charmed to come to the city and serve a lady like you."
"Well,--no! it is not well, but ill! but I want to recover my jewels, so go for your aunt, and bring her back with you. And mind, Fanchon!" said Angelique, lifting a warning finger, "if you utter one word of your errand to man or beast, or to the very trees of the wayside, I will cut out your tongue, Fanchon Dodier!"
Fanchon trembled and grew pale at the fierce look of her mistress. "I will go, my Lady, and I will keep silent as a fish!" faltered the maid. "Shall I go immediately?"
"Immediately if you will! It is almost day, and you have far to go. I will send old Gujon the butler to order an Indian canoe for you. I will not have Canadian boatmen to row you to St. Valier: they would talk you out of all your errand before you were half-way there. You shall go to St. Valier by water, and return with La Corriveau by land. Do you understand? Bring her in to-night, and not before midnight. I will leave the door ajar for you to enter without noise; you will show her at once to my apartment, Fanchon! Be wary, and do not delay, and say not a word to mortal!"
"I will not, my Lady. Not a mouse shall hear us come in!" replied Fanchon, quite proud now of the secret understanding between herself and her mistress.
"And again mind that loose tongue of yours! Remember, Fanchon, I will cut it out as sure as you live if you betray me."
"Yes, my Lady!" Fanchon's tongue felt somewhat paralyzed under the threat of Angelique, and she bit it painfully as if to remind it of its duty.
"You may go now," said Angelique. "Here is money for you. Give this piece of gold to La Corriveau as an earnest that I want her. The canotiers of the St. Lawrence will also require double fare for bringing La Corriveau over the ferry."
"No, they rarely venture to charge her anything at all, my Lady," replied Fanchon; "to be sure it is not for love, but they are afraid of her. And yet Antoine La Chance, the boatman, says she is equal to a Bishop for stirring up piety; and more Ave Marias are repeated when she is in his boat, than are said by the whole parish on Sunday."
"I ought to say my Ave Marias, too!" replied Angelique, as Fanchon left the apartment, "but my mouth is parched and burns up the words of prayer like a furnace; but that is nothing to the fire in my heart! That girl, Fanchon Dodier, is not to be trusted, but I have no other messenger to send for La Corriveau. I must be wary with her, too, and make her suggest the thing I would have done. My Lady of Beaumanoir!" she apostrophized in a hard monotone, "your fate does not depend on the Intendant, as you fondly imagine. Better had he issued the lettre de cachet than for you to fall into the hands of La Corriveau!"
Daylight now shot into the windows, and the bright rays of the rising sun streamed full in the face of Angelique. She saw herself reflected in the large Venetian mirror. Her countenance looked pale, stern, and fixed as marble. The fire in her eyes startled her with its unearthly glow. She trembled and turned away from her mirror, and crept to her couch like a guilty thing, with a feeling as if she was old, haggard, and doomed to shame for the sake of this Intendant, who cared not for her, or he would not have driven her to such desperate and wicked courses as never fell to the lot of a woman before.
"C'est sa faute! C'est sa faute!" exclaimed she, clasping her hands passionately together. "If she dies, it is his fault, not mine! I prayed him to banish her, and he would not! C'est sa faute! C'est sa faute!" Repeating these words Angelique fell into a feverish slumber, broken by frightful dreams which lasted far on into the day.
The long reign of Louis XIV., full of glories and misfortunes for France, was marked towards its close by a portentous sign indicative of corrupt manners and a falling state. Among these, the crimes of secret poisoning suddenly attained a magnitude which filled the whole nation with terror and alarm.
Antonio Exili, an Italian, like many other alchemists of that period, had spent years in search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. His vain experiments to transmute the baser metals into gold reduced him to poverty and want. His quest after these secrets had led him to study deeply the nature and composition of poisons and their antidotes. He had visited the great universities and other schools of the continent, finishing his scientific studies under a famous German chemist named Glaser. But the terrible secret of the agua tofana and of the poudre de succession, Exili learned from Beatrice Spara, a Sicilian, with whom he had a liaison, one of those inscrutable beings of the gentle sex whose lust for pleasure or power is only equalled by the atrocities they are willing to perpetrate upon all who stand in the way of their desires or their ambition.
To Beatrice Spara, the secret of this subtle preparation had come down like an evil inheritance from the ancient Candidas and Saganas of imperial Rome. In the proud palaces of the Borgias, of the Orsinis, the Scaligers, the Borromeos, the art of poisoning was preserved among the last resorts of Machiavellian statecraft; and not only in palaces, but in streets of Italian cities, in solitary towers and dark recesses of the Apennines, were still to be found the lost children of science, skilful compounders of poisons, at once fatal and subtle in their operation,--poisons which left not the least trace of their presence in the bodies of their victims, but put on the appearance of other and more natural causes of death.
Exili, to escape the vengeance of Beatrice Spara, to whom he had proved a faithless lover, fled from Naples, and brought his deadly knowledge to Paris, where he soon found congenial spirits to work with him in preparing the deadly poudre de succession, and the colorless drops of the aqua tofana.
With all his crafty caution, Exili fell at last under suspicion of the police for tampering in these forbidden arts. He was arrested, and thrown into the Bastile, where he became the occupant of the same cell with Gaudin de St. Croix, a young nobleman of the Court, the lover of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, for an intrigue with whom the Count had been imprisoned. St. Croix learned from Exili, in the Bastile, the secret of the poudre de succession.
The two men were at last liberated for want of proof of the charges against them. St. Croix set up a laboratory in his own house, and at once proceeded to experiment upon the terrible secrets learned from Exili, and which he revealed to his fair, frail mistress, who, mad to make herself his wife, saw in these a means to remove every obstacle out of the way. She poisoned her husband, her father, her brother, and at last, carried away by a mania for murder, administered on all sides the fatal poudre de succession, which brought death to house, palace, and hospital, and filled the capital, nay, the whole kingdom, with suspicion and terror.
This fatal poison history describes as either a light and almost impalpable powder, tasteless, colorless, and inodorous, or a liquid clear as a dewdrop, when in the form of the aqua tofana. It was capable of causing death either instantaneously or by slow and lingering decline at the end of a definite number of days, weeks, or even months, as was desired. Death was not less sure because deferred, and it could be made to assume the appearance of dumb paralysis, wasting atrophy, or burning fever, at the discretion of the compounder of the fatal poison.
The ordinary effect of the aqua tofana was immediate death. The poudre de succession was more slow in killing. It produced in its pure form a burning heat, like that of a fiery furnace in the chest, the flames of which, as they consumed the patient, darted out of his eyes, the only part of the body which seemed to be alive, while the rest was little more than a dead corpse.
Upon the introduction of this terrible poison into France, Death, like an invisible spirit of evil, glided silently about the kingdom, creeping into the closest family circles, seizing everywhere on its helpless victims. The nearest and dearest relationships of life were no longer the safe guardians of the domestic hearth. The man who to-day appeared in the glow of health dropped to-morrow and died the next day. No skill of the physician was able to save him, or to detect the true cause of his death, attributing it usually to the false appearances of disease which it was made to assume.
The victims of the poudre de succession were counted by thousands. The possession of wealth, a lucrative office, a fair young wife, or a coveted husband, were sufficient reasons for sudden death to cut off the holder of these envied blessings. A terrible mistrust pervaded all classes of society. The husband trembled before his wife, the wife before her husband, father and son, brother and sister,--kindred and friends, of all degrees, looked askance and with suspicious eyes upon one another.
In Paris the terror lasted long. Society was for a while broken up by cruel suspicions. The meat upon the table remained uneaten, the wine undrank, men and women procured their own provisions in the market, and cooked and ate them in their own apartments. Yet was every precaution in vain. The fatal dust scattered upon the pillow, or a bouquet sprinkled with the aqua tofana, looking bright and innocent as God's dew upon the flowers, transmitted death without a warning of danger. Nay, to crown all summit of wickedness, the bread in the hospitals of the sick, the meagre tables of the convent, the consecrated host administered by the priest, and the sacramental wine which he drank himself, all in turn were poisoned, polluted, damned, by the unseen presence of the manna of St. Nicholas, as the populace mockingly called the poudre de succession.
The Court took the alarm when a gilded vial of the aqua tofana was found one day upon the table of the Duchesse de la Valliere, having been placed there by the hand of some secret rival, in order to cast suspicion upon the unhappy Louise, and hasten her fall, already approaching.
The star of Montespan was rising bright in the east, and that of La Valliere was setting in clouds and darkness in the west. But the King never distrusted for a moment the truth of La Valliere, the only woman who ever loved him for his own sake, and he knew it even while he allowed her to be supplanted by another infinitely less worthy--one whose hour of triumph came when she saw the broken- hearted Louise throw aside the velvet and brocade of the Court and put on the sackcloth of the barefooted and repentant Carmelite.
The King burned with indignation at the insult offered to his mistress, and was still more alarmed to find the new mysterious death creeping into the corridors of his palace. He hastily constituted the terrible Chambre Ardente, a court of supreme criminal jurisdiction, and commissioned it to search out, try, and burn, without appeal, all poisoners and secret assassins in the kingdom.
La Regnie, a man of Rhadamanthean justice, as hard of heart as he was subtle and suspicious, was long baffled, and to his unutterable rage, set at naught by the indefatigable poisoners who kept all France awake on its pillows.
History records how Gaudin de St. Croix, the disciple of Exili, while working in his secret laboratory at the sublimation of the deadly poison, accidentally dropped the mask of glass which protected his face. He inhaled the noxious fumes and fell dead by the side of his crucibles. This event gave Desgrais, captain of the police of Paris, a clue to the horrors which had so long baffled his pursuit.
The correspondence of St. Croix was seized. His connection with the Marchioness de Brinvilliers and his relations with Exili were discovered. Exili was thrown a second time into the Bastile. The Marchioness was arrested, and put upon her trial before the Chambre Ardente, where, as recorded in the narrative of her confessor, Pirol, her ravishing beauty of feature, blue eyes, snow-white skin, and gentle demeanor won a strong sympathy from the fickle populace of Paris, in whose eyes her charms of person and manner pleaded hard to extenuate her unparalleled crimes.
But no power of beauty or fascination of look could move the stern La Regnie from his judgment. She was pronounced guilty of the death of her husband, and sentenced first to be tortured and then beheaded and her body burnt on the Place de Greve, a sentence which was carried out to the letter. The ashes of the fairest and most wicked dame of the Court of Lous XIV. were scattered to the four corners of the city which had been the scene of her unparalleled crimes. The arch-poisoner Exili was also tried, and condemned to be burnt. The tumbril that bore him to execution was stopped on its way by the furious rabble, and he was torn in pieces by them.
For a short time the kingdom breathed freely in fancied security; but soon the epidemic of sudden as well as lingering deaths from poison broke out again on all sides. The fatal tree of the knowledge of evil, seemingly cut down with Exili and St. Croix, had sprouted afresh, like a upas that could not be destroyed.
The poisoners became more numerous than ever. Following the track of St. Croix and La Brinvilliers, they carried on the war against humanity without relaxation. Chief of these was a reputed witch and fortune-teller named La Voisin, who had studied the infernal secret under Exili and borne a daughter to the false Italian.
With La Voisin were associated two priests, Le Sage and Le Vigoureux, who lived with her, and assisted her in her necromantic exhibitions, which were visited, believed in, and richly rewarded by some of the foremost people of the Court. These necromantic exhibitions were in reality a cover to darker crimes.
It was long the popular belief in France, that Cardinal Bonzy got from La Voisin the means of ridding himself of sundry persons who stood in the way of his ecclesiastical preferment, or to whom he had to pay pensions in his quality of Archbishop of Narbonne. The Duchesse de Bouillon and the Countess of Soissons, mother of the famous Prince Eugene, were also accused of trafficking with that terrible woman, and were banished from the kingdom in consequence, while a royal duke, Francois de Montmorency, was also suspected of dealings with La Voisin.
The Chambre Ardente struck right and left. Desgrais, chief of the police, by a crafty ruse, penetrated into the secret circle of La Voisin, and she, with a crowd of associates, perished in the fires of the Place de Greve. She left an ill-starred daughter, Marie Exili, to the blank charity of the streets of Paris, and the possession of many of the frightful secrets of her mother and of her terrible father.
Marie Exili clung to Paris. She grew up beautiful and profligate; she coined her rare Italian charms, first into gold and velvet, then into silver and brocade, and at last into copper and rags. When her charms faded entirely, she began to practise the forbidden arts of her mother and father, but without their boldness or long impunity.
She was soon suspected, but receiving timely warning of her danger, from a high patroness at Court, Marie fled to New France in the disguise of a paysanne, one of a cargo of unmarried women sent out to the colony on matrimonial venture, as the custom then was, to furnish wives for the colonists. Her sole possession was an antique cabinet with its contents, the only remnant saved from the fortune of her father, Exili.
Marie Exili landed in New France, cursing the Old World which she had left behind, and bringing as bitter a hatred of the New, which received her without a shadow of suspicion that under her modest peasant's garb was concealed the daughter and inheritrix of the black arts of Antonio Exili and of the sorceress La Voisin.
Marie Exili kept her secret well. She played the ingenue to perfection. Her straight figure and black eyes having drawn a second glance from the Sieur Corriveau, a rich habitan of St. Valier, who was looking for a servant among the crowd of paysannes who had just arrived from France, he could not escape from the power of their fascination.
He took Marie Exili home with him, and installed her in his household, where his wife soon died of some inexplicable disease which baffled the knowledge of both the doctor and the curate, the two wisest men in the parish. The Sieur Corriveau ended his widowhood by marrying Marie Exili, and soon died himself, leaving his whole fortune and one daughter, the image of her mother, to Marie.
Marie Exili, ever in dread of the perquisitions of Desgrais, kept very quiet in her secluded home on the St. Lawrence, guarding her secret with a life-long apprehension, and but occasionally and in the darkest ways practising her deadly skill. She found some compensation and relief for her suppressed passions in the clinging sympathy of her daughter, Marie Josephte dit La Corriveau, who worshipped all that was evil in her mother, and in spite of an occasional reluctance, springing from some maternal instinct, drew from her every secret of her life. She made herself mistress of the whole formula of poisoning as taught by her grandfather Exili, and of the arts of sorcery practised by her wicked grandmother, La Voisin.
As La Corriveau listened to the tale of the burning of her grandmother on the Place de Greve, her own soul seemed bathed in the flames which rose from the faggots, and which to her perverted reason appeared as the fires of cruel injustice, calling for revenge upon the whole race of the oppressors of her family, as she regarded the punishers of their crimes.
With such a parentage, and such dark secrets brooding in her bosom, Marie Josephte, or, as she was commonly called, La Corriveau, had nothing in common with the simple peasantry among whom she lived.
Years passed over her, youth fled, and La Corriveau still sat in her house, eating her heart out, silent and solitary. After the death of her mother, some whispers of hidden treasures known only to herself, a rumor which she had cunningly set afloat, excited the cupidity of Louis Dodier, a simple habitan of St. Valier, and drew him into a marriage with her.
It was a barren union. No child followed, with God's grace in its little hands, to create a mother's feelings and soften the callous heart of La Corriveau. She cursed her lot that it was so, and her dry bosom became an arid spot of desert, tenanted by satyrs and dragons, by every evil passion of a woman without conscience and void of love.
But La Corriveau had inherited the sharp intellect and Italian dissimulation of Antonio Exili: she was astute enough to throw a veil of hypocrisy over the evil eyes which shot like a glance of death from under the thick black eyebrows.
Her craft was equal to her malice. An occasional deed of alms, done not for charity's sake, but for ostentation; an adroit deal of cards, or a horoscope cast to flatter a foolish girl; a word of sympathy, hollow as a water bubble, but colored with iridescent prettiness, averted suspicion from the darker traits of her character.
If she was hated, she was also feared by her neighbors, and although the sign of the cross was made upon the chair whereon she had sat in a neighbor's house, her visits were not unwelcome, and in the manor- house, as in the cabin of the woodman, La Corriveau was received, consulted, rewarded, and oftener thanked than cursed, by her witless dupes.
There was something sublime in the satanic pride with which she carried with her the terrible secrets of her race, which in her own mind made her the superior of every one around her, and whom she regarded as living only by her permission or forbearance.
For human love other than as a degraded menial, to make men the slaves of her mercenary schemes, La Corriveau cared nothing. She never felt it, never inspired it. She looked down upon all her sex as the filth of creation and, like herself, incapable of a chaste feeling or a pure thought. Every better instinct of her nature had gone out like the flame of a lamp whose oil is exhausted; love of money remained as dregs at the bottom of her heart. A deep grudge against mankind, and a secret pleasure in the misfortunes of others, especially of her own sex, were her ruling passions.
Her mother, Marie Exili, had died in her bed, warning her daughter not to dabble in the forbidden arts which she had taught her, but to cling to her husband and live an honest life as the only means of dying a more hopeful death than her ancestors.
La Corriveau heard much, but heeded little. The blood of Antonio Exili and of La Voisin beat too vigorously in her veins to be tamed down by the feeble whispers of a dying woman who had been weak enough to give way at last. The death of her mother left La Corriveau free to follow her own will. The Italian subtlety of her race made her secret and cautious. She had few personal affronts to avenge, and few temptations in the simple community where she lived to practise more than the ordinary arts of a rural fortune-teller, keeping in impenetrable shadow the darker side of her character as a born sorceress and poisoner.
Fanchon Dodier, in obedience to the order of her mistress, started early in the day to bear the message entrusted to her for La Corriveau. She did not cross the river and take the king's highway, the rough though well-travelled road on the south shore which led to St. Valier. Angelique was crafty enough amid her impulsiveness to see that it were better for Fanchon to go down by water and return by land: it lessened observation, and might be important one day to baffle inquiry. La Corriveau would serve her for money, but for money also she might betray her. Angelique resolved to secure her silence by making her the perpetrator of whatever scheme of wickedness she might devise against the unsuspecting lady of Beaumanoir. As for Fanchon, she need know nothing more than Angelique told her as to the object of her mission to her terrible aunt.
In pursuance of this design, Angelique had already sent for a couple of Indian canoemen to embark Fanchon at the quay of the Friponne and convey her to St. Valier.
Half-civilized and wholly-demoralized red men were always to be found on the beach of Stadacona, as they still called the Batture of the St. Charles, lounging about in blankets, smoking, playing dice, or drinking pints or quarts,--as fortune favored them, or a passenger wanted conveyance in their bark canoes, which they managed with a dexterity unsurpassed by any boatman that ever put oar or paddle in water, salt or fresh.
These rough fellows were safe and trusty in their profession. Fanchon knew them slightly, and felt no fear whatever in seating herself upon the bear skin which carpeted the bottom of their canoe.
They pushed off at once from the shore, with scarcely a word of reply to her voluble directions and gesticulations as they went speeding their canoe down the stream. The turning tide bore them lightly on its bosom, and they chanted a wild, monotonous refrain as their paddles flashed and dipped alternately in stream and sunshine;
"Ah! ah! Tenaouich tenaga!
Tenaouich tenaga, ouich ka!"
"They are singing about me, no doubt," said Fanchon to herself. "I do not care what people say, they cannot be Christians who speak such a heathenish jargon as that: it is enough to sink the canoe; but I will repeat my paternosters and my Ave Marias, seeing they will not converse with me, and I will pray good St. Anne to give me a safe passage to St. Valier." In which pious occupation, as the boatmen continued their savage song without paying her any attention, Fanchon, with many interruptions of worldly thoughts, spent the rest of the time she was in the Indian canoe.
Down past the green hills of the south shore the boatmen steadily plied their paddles, and kept singing their wild Indian chant. The wooded slopes of Orleans basked in sunshine as they overlooked the broad channel through which the canoe sped, and long before meridian the little bark was turned in to shore and pulled up on the beach of St. Valier.
Fanchon leaped out without assistance, wetting a foot in so doing, which somewhat discomposed the good humor she had shown during the voyage. Her Indian boatmen offered her no help, considering that women were made to serve men and help themselves, and not to be waited upon by them.
"Not that I wanted to touch one of their savage hands," muttered Fanchon, "but they might have offered one assistance! Look there," continued she, pulling aside her skirt and showing a very trim foot wet up to the ankle; "they ought to know the difference between their red squaws and the white girls of the city. If they are not worth politeness, WE are. But Indians are only fit to kill Christians or be killed by them; and you might as well courtesy to a bear in the briers as to an Indian anywhere."
The boatmen looked at her foot with supreme indifference, and taking out their pipes, seated themselves on the edge of their canoe, and began to smoke.
"You may return to the city," said she, addressing them sharply; "I pray to the bon Dieu to strike you white;--it is vain to look for manners from an Indian! I shall remain in St. Valier, and not return with you."
"Marry me, be my squaw, Ania?" replied one of the boatmen, with a grim smile; "the bon Dieu will strike out papooses white, and teach them manners like palefaces."
"Ugh! not for all the King's money. What! marry a red Indian, and carry his pack like Fifine Perotte? I would die first! You are bold indeed, Paul La Crosse, to mention such a thing to me. Go back to the city! I would not trust myself again in your canoe. It required courage to do so at all, but Mademoiselle selected you for my boatmen, not I. I wonder she did so, when the brothers Ballou, and the prettiest fellows in town, were idle on the Batture."
"Ania is niece to the old medicine-woman in the stone wigwam at St. Valier; going to see her, eh?" asked the other boatman, with a slight display of curiosity.
"Yes, I am going to visit my aunt Dodier; why should I not? She has crocks of gold buried in the house, I can tell you that, Pierre Ceinture!"
"Going to get some from La Corriveau, eh? crocks of gold, eh?" said Paul La Crosse.
"La Corriveau has medicines, too! get some, eh?" asked Pierre Ceinture.
"I am going neither for gold nor medicines, but to see my aunt, if it concerns you to know, Pierre Ceinture! which it does not!"
"Mademoiselle des Meloises pay her to go, eh? not going back ever, eh?" asked the other Indian.
"Mind your own affairs, Paul La Crosse, and I will mind mine! Mademoiselle des Meloises paid you to bring me to St. Valier, not to ask me impertinences. That is enough for you!" Here is your fare; now you can return to the Sault au Matelot, and drink yourselves blind with the money!"
"Very good, that!" replied the Indian. "I like to drink myself blind, will do it to-night! Like to see me, eh?" Better that than go see La Corriveau! The habitans say she talks with the Devil, and makes the sickness settle like a fog upon the wigwams of the red men. They say she can make palefaces die by looking at them! But Indians are too hard to kill with a look! Fire-water and gun and tomahawk, and fever in the wigwams, only make the Indians die."
"Good that something can make you die, for your ill manners! look at my stocking!" replied Fanchon, with warmth. "If I tell La Corriveau what you say of her there will be trouble in your wigwam, Pierre Ceinture!"
"Do not do that, Ania!" replied the Indian, crossing himself earnestly; "do not tell La Corriveau, or she will make an image of wax and call it Pierre Ceinture, and she will melt it away before a slow fire, and as it melts my flesh and bones will melt away, too! Do not tell her, Fanchon Dodier!" The Indian had picked up this piece of superstition from the white habitans, and, like them, thoroughly believed in the supernatural powers of La Corriveau.
"Well, leave me! get back to the city, and tell Mademoiselle I arrived safe at St. Valier," replied Fanchon, turning to leave them.
The Indians were somewhat taken down by the airs of Fanchon, and they stood in awe of the far-reaching power of her aunt, from the spell of whose witchcraft they firmly believed no hiding-place, even in the deepest woods, could protect them. Merely nodding a farewell to Fanchon, the Indians silently pushed their canoe into the stream, and, embarking, returned to the city by the way they came.
A fine breezy upland lay before Fanchon Dodier. Cultivated fields of corn, and meadows ran down to the shore. A row of white cottages, forming a loosely connected street, clustered into something like a village at the point where the parish church stood, at the intersection of two or three roads, one of which, a narrow green track, but little worn by the carts of the habitans, led to the stone house of La Corriveau, the chimney of which was just visible as you lost sight of the village spire.
In a deep hollow, out of sight of the village church, almost out of hearing of its little bell, stood the house of La Corriveau, a square, heavy structure of stone, inconvenient and gloomy, with narrow windows and an uninviting door. The pine forest touched it on one side, a brawling stream twisted itself like a live snake half round it on the other. A plot of green grass, ill kept and deformed, with noxious weeds, dock, fennel, thistle, and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough wall of loose stones, forming the lawn, such as it was, where, under a tree, seated in an armchair, was a solitary woman, whom Fanchon recognized as her aunt, Marie Josephte Dodier, surnamed La Corriveau.
La Corriveau, in feature and person, took after her grand-sire Exili. She was tall and straight, of a swarthy complexion, black- haired, and intensely black-eyed. She was not uncomely of feature, nay, had been handsome, nor was her look at first sight forbidding, especially if she did not turn upon you those small basilisk eyes of hers, full of fire and glare as the eyes of a rattlesnake. But truly those thin, cruel lips of hers never smiled spontaneously, or affected to smile upon you unless she had an object to gain by assuming a disguise as foreign to her as light to an angel of darkness.
La Corriveau was dressed in a robe of soft brown stuff, shaped with a degree of taste and style beyond the garb of her class. Neatness in dress was the one virtue she had inherited from her mother. Her feet were small and well-shod, like a lady's, as the envious neighbors used to say. She never in her life would wear the sabots of the peasant women, nor go barefoot, as many of them did, about the house. La Corriveau was vain of her feet, which would have made her fortune, as she thought with bitterness, anywhere but in St. Valier.
She sat musing in her chair, not noticing the presence of her niece, who stood for a moment looking and hesitating before accosting her. Her countenance bore, when she was alone, an expression of malignity which made Fanchon shudder. A quick, unconscious twitching of the fingers accompanied her thoughts, as if this weird woman was playing a game of mora with the evil genius that waited on her. Her grandsire Exili had the same nervous twitching of his fingers, and the vulgar accused him of playing at mora with the Devil, who ever accompanied him, they believed.
The lips of La Corriveau moved in unison with her thoughts. She was giving expression to her habitual contempt for her sex as she crooned over, in a sufficiently audible voice to reach the ear of Fanchon, a hateful song of Jean Le Meung on women:
"'Toutes vous etes, serez ou futes,
De fait ou de volonte putes!'"
"It is not nice to say that, Aunt Marie!" exclaimed Fanchon, coming forward and embracing La Corriveau, who gave a start on seeing her niece so unexpectedly before her. "It is not nice, and it is not true!"
"But it is true, Fanchon Dodier! if it be not nice. There is nothing nice to be said of our sex, except by foolish men! Women know one another better! But," continued she, scrutinizing her niece with her keen black eyes, which seemed to pierce her through and through, "what ill wind or Satan's errand has brought you to St. Valier to-day, Fanchon?"
"No ill wind, nor ill errand either, I hope, aunt. I come by command of my mistress to ask you to go to the city: she is biting her nails off with impatience to see you on some business."
"And who is your mistress, who dares to ask La Corriveau to go to the city at her bidding?"
"Do not be angry, aunt," replied Fanchon, soothingly. "It was I counselled her to send for you, and I offered to fetch you. My mistress is a high lady, who expects to be still higher,-- Mademoiselle des Meloises!
"Mademoiselle Angelique des Meloises,--one hears enough of her! a high lady indeed! who will be low enough at last! A minx as vain as she is pretty, who would marry all the men in New France, and kill all the women, if she could have her way! What in the name of the Sabbat does she want with La Corriveau?"
"She did not call you names, aunt, and please do not say such things of her, for you will frighten me away before I tell my errand. Mademoiselle Angelique sent this piece of gold as earnest-money to prove that she wants your counsel and advice in an important matter."
Fanchon untied the corner of her handkerchief, and took from it a broad shining louis d'or. She placed it in the hand of La Corriveau, whose long fingers clutched it like the talons of a harpy. Of all the evil passions of this woman, the greed for money was the most ravenous.
"It is long since I got a piece of gold like that to cross my hand with, Fanchon!" said she, looking at it admiringly and spitting on it for good luck.
"There are plenty more where it came from, aunt," replied Fanchon. "Mademoiselle could fill your apron with gold every day of the week if she would: she is to marry the Intendant!"
"Marry the Intendant! ah, indeed! that is why she sends for me so urgently! I see! Marry the Intendant! She will bestow a pot of gold on La Corriveau to accomplish that match!"
"Maybe she would, aunt; I would, myself. But it is not that she wishes to consult you about just now. She lost her jewels at the ball, and wants your help to find them."
"Lost her jewels, eh? Did she say you were to tell me that she had lost her jewels, Fanchon?"
"Yes, aunt, that is what she wants to consult you about," replied Fanchon, with simplicity. But the keen perception of La Corriveau saw that a second purpose lay behind it.
"A likely tale!" muttered she, "that so rich a lady would send for La Corriveau from St. Valier to find a few jewels! But it will do. I will go with you to the city: I cannot refuse an invitation like that. Gold fetches any woman, Fanchon. It fetches me always. It will fetch you, too, some day, if you are lucky enough to give it the chance."
"I wish it would fetch me now, aunt; but poor girls who live by service and wages have small chance to be sent for in that way! We are glad to get the empty hand without the money. Men are so scarce with this cruel war, that they might easily have a wife to each finger, were it allowed by the law. I heard Dame Tremblay say--and I thought her very right--the Church does not half consider our condition and necessities."
"Dame Tremblay! the Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport! She who would have been a witch, and could not: Satan would not have her!" exclaimed La Corriveau, scornfully. "Is she still housekeeper and bedmaker at Beaumanoir?"
Fanchon was honest enough to feel rather indignant at this speech. "Don't speak so of her, aunt; she is not bad. Although I ran away from her, and took service with Mademoiselle des Meloises, I will not speak ill of her."
"Why did you run away from Beaumanoir?" asked La Corriveau.
Fanchon reflected a moment upon the mystery of the lady of Beaumanoir, and something checked her tongue, as if it were not safe to tell all she knew to her aunt, who would, moreover, be sure to find out from Angelique herself as much as her mistress wished her to know.
"I did not like Dame Tremblay, aunt," replied she; I preferred to live with Mademoiselle Angelique. She is a lady, a beauty, who dresses to surpass any picture in the book of modes from Paris, which I often looked at on her dressing-table. She allowed me to imitate them, or wear her cast-off dresses, which were better than any other ladies' new ones. I have one of them on. Look, aunt!" Fanchon spread out very complacently the skirt of a pretty blue robe she wore.
La Corriveau nodded her head in a sort of silent approval, and remarked,--"She is free-handed enough! She gives what costs her nothing, and takes all she can get, and is, after all, a trollop, like the rest of us, Fanchon, who would be very good if there were neither men nor money nor fine clothes in the world, to tempt poor silly women."
"You do say such nasty things, aunt!" exclaimed Fanchon, flashing with indignation. "I will hear no more! I am going into the house to see dear old Uncle Dodier, who has been looking through the window at me for ten minutes past, and dared not come out to speak to me. You are too hard on poor old Uncle Dodier, aunt," said Fanchon, boldly. "If you cannot be kind to him, why did you marry him?"
"Why, I wanted a husband, and he wanted my money, that was all; and I got my bargain, and his too, Fanchon!" and the woman laughed savagely.
"I thought people married to be happy, aunt," replied the girl, persistently.
"Happy! such folly. Satan yokes people together to bring more sinners into the world, and supply fresh fuel for his fires."
"My mistress thinks there is no happiness like a good match," remarked Fanchon; "and I think so, too, aunt. I shall never wait the second time of asking, I assure you, aunt."
"You are a fool, Fanchon," said La Corriveau; "but your mistress deserves to wear the ring of Cleopatra, and to become the mother of witches and harlots for all time. Why did she really send for me?"
The girl crossed herself, and exclaimed, "God forbid, aunt! my mistress is not like that!"
La Corriveau spat at the mention of the sacred name. "But it is in her, Fanchon. It is in all of us! If she is not so already, she will be. But go into the house and see your foolish uncle, while I go prepare for my visit. We will set out at once, Fanchon, for business like that of Angelique des Meloises cannot wait."