“I came too late!” he said to himself.  “Violette shall pay dear for this! what a time it took to make him drunk!  What can be done?”

He heard the detachment that was coming through the forest reach the iron gates and turn into the main road, where before long it would meet the squad coming up from the other direction.

“Still five or six minutes!” he said.

At that instant the countess appeared.  Michu took her with a firm hand and pushed her into the covered way.

“Keep straight before you!  Lead her to where my horse is,” he said to his wife, “and remember that gendarmes have ears.”

Seeing Catherine, who carried the hat and whip, and Gothard leading the mare, the man, keen-witted in presence of danger, bethought himself of playing the gendarmes a trick as useful as the one he had just played Violette.  Gothard had forced the mare to mount the bank.

“Her feet muffled!  I thank thee, boy,” exclaimed the bailiff.

Michu let the mare follow her mistress and took the hat, gloves, and whip from Catherine.

“You have sense, boy, you’ll understand me,” he said.  “Force your own horse up here, jump on him, and draw the gendarmes after you across the fields towards the farm; get the whole squad to follow you—­And you,” he added to Catherine, “there are other gendarmes coming up on the road from Cinq-Cygne to Gondreville; run in the opposite direction to the one Gothard takes, and draw them towards the forest.  Manage so that we shall not be interfered with in the covered way.”

Catherine and the boy, who were destined to give in this affair such remarkable proofs of intelligence, executed the manoeuvre in a way to make both detachments of gendarmes believe that they held the game.  The dim light of the moon prevented the pursuers from distinguishing the figure, clothing, sex, or number of those they followed.  The pursuit was based on the maxim, “Always arrest those who are escaping,”—­the folly of which saying was, as we have seen, energetically declared by Corentin to the corporal in command.  Michu, counting on this instinct of the gendarmes, was able to reach the forest a few moments after the countess, whom Marthe had guided to the appointed place.

“Go home now,” he said to Marthe.  “The forest is watched and it is dangerous to remain here.  We need all our freedom.”

Michu unfastened his horse and asked the countess to follow him.

“I shall not go a step further,” said Laurence, “unless you give me some proof of the interest you seem to have in us—­for, after all, you are Michu.”

“Mademoiselle,” he answered, in a gentle voice; “the part I am playing can be explained to you in two words.  I am, unknown to the Marquis de Simeuse and his brother, the guardian of their property.  On this subject I received the last instructions of their late father and their dear mother, my protectress.  I have played the part of a virulent Jacobin to serve my dear young masters.  Unhappily, I began this course too late; I could not save their parents.”  Here, Michu’s voice broke down.  “Since the young men emigrated I have sent them regularly the sums they needed to live upon.”