3.V.5.1. IN WHICH THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PLASTER APPEARS AGAIN
SOME time after the events which we have just recorded,
Sieur Boulatruelle experienced a lively emotion.
Sieur Boulatruelle was that road-mender of Montfermeil
whom the reader has already seen in the gloomy parts of this
book.
Boulatruelle, as the reader may, perchance, recall, was a
man who was occupied with divers and troublesome matters.
He broke stones and damaged travellers on the highway.
Road-mender and thief as he was, he cherished one dream;
he believed in the treasures buried in the forest of Montfermeil.
He hoped some day to find the money in the earth at
the foot of a tree; in the meanwhile, he lived to search the
pockets of passersby.
Nevertheless, for an instant, he was prudent. He had just
escaped neatly. He had been, as the reader is aware, picked
up in Jondrette's garret in company with the other ruffians.
Utility of a vice: his drunkenness had been his salvation.
The authorities had never been able to make out whether he
had been there in the quality of a robber or a man who had
been robbed. An order of nolle prosequi, founded on his
well
authenticated state of intoxication on the evening of the ambush,
had set him at liberty. He had taken to his heels. He
had returned to his road from Gagny to Lagny, to make,
under administrative supervision, broken stone for the good
of the state, with downcast mien, in a very pensive mood, his
ardor for theft somewhat cooled; but he was addicted none
the less tenderly to the wine which had recently saved him.
As for the lively emotion which he had experienced a short
time after his return to his road-mender's turf-thatched cot,
here it is:
One morning, Boulatruelle, while on his way as was his
wont, to his work, and possibly also to his ambush, a little
before daybreak caught sight, through the branches of the
trees, of a man, whose back alone he saw, but the shape of
whose shoulders, as it seemed to him at that distance and in
the early dusk, was not entirely unfamiliar to him.
Boulatruelle,
although intoxicated, had a correct and lucid memory,
a defensive arm that is indispensable to any one who is at all
in conflict with legal order.
"Where the deuce have I seen something like that man
yonder?" he said to himself. But he could make himself no
answer, except that the man resembled some one of whom his
memory preserved a confused trace.
However, apart from the identity which he could not manage
to catch, Boulatruelle put things together and made calculations.
This man did not belong in the country-side. He
had just arrived there. On foot, evidently. No public
conveyance
passes through Montfermeil at that hour. He had
walked all night. Whence came he? Not from a very great
distance; for he had neither haversack, nor bundle. From
Paris, no doubt. Why was he in these woods? why was he
there at such an hour? what had he come there for?
Boulatruelle thought of the treasure. By dint of
ransacking
his memory, he recalled in a vague way that he had
already, many years before, had a similar alarm in connection
with a man who produced on him the effect that he might
well be this very individual.
"By the deuce," said Boulatruelle, "I'll find him again.
I'll discover the parish of that parishioner. This prowler of
Patron-Minette has a reason, and I'll know it. People can't
have secrets in my forest if I don't have a finger in the pie."
He took his pick-axe which was very sharply pointed.
"There now," he grumbled, "is something that will search
the earth and a man."
And, as one knots one thread to another thread, he took up
the line of march at his best pace in the direction which the
man must follow, and set out across the thickets.
When he had compassed a hundred strides, the day, which
was already beginning to break, came to his assistance. Foot-prints
stamped in the sand, weeds trodden down here and
there, heather crushed, young branches in the brushwood bent
and in the act of straightening themselves up again with the
graceful deliberation of the arms of a pretty woman who
stretches herself when she wakes, pointed out to him a sort of
track. He followed it, then lost it. Time was flying. He
plunged deeper into the woods and came to a sort of eminence.
An early huntsman who was passing in the distance along
a path, whistling the air of Guillery, suggested to him the idea
of climbing a tree. Old as he was, he was agile. There stood
close at hand a beech-tree of great size, worthy of Tityrus and
of Boulatruelle. Boulatruelle ascended the beech as high as
he was able.
The idea was a good one. On scrutinizing the solitary
waste on the side where the forest is thoroughly entangled and
wild, Boulatruelle suddenly caught sight of his man.
Hardly had he got his eye upon him when he lost sight of
him.
The man entered, or rather, glided into, an open glade, at
a
considerable distance, masked by large trees, but with which
Boulatruelle was perfectly familiar, on account of having
noticed, near a large pile of porous stones, an ailing chestnut-tree
bandaged with a sheet of zinc nailed directly upon the
bark. This glade was the one which was formerly called the
Blaru-bottom. The heap of stones, destined for no one knows
what employment, which was visible there thirty years ago,
is doubtless still there. Nothing equals a heap of stones in
longevity, unless it is a board fence. They are temporary
expedients.
What a reason for lasting!
Boulatruelle, with the rapidity of joy, dropped rather
than
descended from the tree. The lair was unearthed, the question
now was to seize the beast. That famous treasure of his
dreams was probably there.
It was no small matter to reach that glade. By the beaten
paths, which indulge in a thousand teasing zigzags, it required
a good quarter of an hour. In a bee-line, through the
underbrush, which is peculiarly dense, very thorny, and very
aggressive in that locality, a full half hour was necessary.
Boulatruelle committed the error of not comprehending this.
He believed in the straight line; a respectable optical illusion
which ruins many a man. The thicket, bristling as it was,
struck him as the best road.
"Let's take to the wolves' Rue de Rivoli," said he.
Boulatruelle, accustomed to taking crooked courses, was on
this occasion guilty of the fault of going straight.
He flung himself resolutely into the tangle of
undergrowth.
He had to deal with holly bushes, nettles, hawthorns,
eglantines,
thistles, and very irascible brambles. He was much
lacerated.
At the bottom of the ravine he found water which he was
obliged to traverse.
At last he reached the Blaru-bottom, after the lapse of
forty
minutes, sweating, soaked, breathless, scratched, and ferocious.
There was no one in the glade. Boulatruelle rushed to the
heap of stones. It was in its place. It had not been carried
off.
As for the man, he had vanished in the forest. He had
made his escape. Where? in what direction? into what
thicket? Impossible to guess.
And, heartrending to say, there, behind the pile of
stones,
in front of the tree with the sheet of zinc, was freshly turned
earth, a pick-axe, abandoned or forgotten, and a hole.
The hole was empty.
"Thief!" shrieked Boulatruelle, shaking his fist at the
horizon.