(1) Not until that evening did Roland’s exact words about the aum?nier recur to Mme de Trélan’s memory. Who could she have been, the dying old lady who possessed this mysterious document? It was all but clear now that some treasure really did exist in Mirabel; but its existence, as a matter of fact, interested Mirabel’s mistress less than the means by which it had come to light after all these years. She had no intention of claiming the hoard.
And more amazing than all was the fact that this third treasure-seeker was a priest. It seemed almost as if her fervent wish of the last days were on its way to be granted. Could she ask him to say Mass in Mirabel—would it be safe? She knew nothing about him personally, but he could not be a man to shrink from risks, or he would not be employed on his present mission. He must equally be an insermenté, one who had not sworn allegiance to the State, or he would never be aum?nier to a Royalist division.
The desire to feel her way towards this great question of a Mass at Mirabel, as well as to satisfy her curiosity about the plan, was the reason why next day, at the same time, as the Abbé-gardener was making with a handkerchief of provisions towards the colonnades, she went up the great steps and intercepted him.
“Your coffee is awaiting you in my room, Monsieur l’Aum?nier,” she suggested, “if you will give yourself the trouble to descend thither.”
He thanked her and followed her down, unrolled his comestibles, took the plate she put before him, and with little ado set heartily to work. Valentine placed the coffee pot at his elbow and herself sat down opposite him.
“I hope you will pardon my rustic manners, Madame,” he observed after a moment or two, “but this digging gives a man a fine appetite.”
“I trust they feed you well where you lodge in the village, Monsieur l’Abbé,” said she in reply. “Where do you lodge, by the way?”
“At the little house next the church—I beg its pardon, the Temple of . . . what is it the Temple of, Madame, Age, or Genius, or Fame, or what?”
“I have never enquired,” returned the Duchesse, with a shade of contempt. “The Temple of Lunacy, I should think.—Who lives in that little house now? It used to be . . . let me see—Nicole, the locksmith, and his family.”
“Nicole the locksmith?” repeated the priest, ceasing to masticate. “He has not lived there for seven years, I understand, since Mirabel was sacked.”
“Is that so?” asked Valentine. “What happened to him?”
“I do not know,” answered the Abbé. “I only know the bare fact from the old man who lives there now.—Did you then know Mirabel-le-Chateau as long ago as that, Madame Vidal?”
“Yes, I have known Mirabel a long time,” said Valentine, after a slight hesitation. If she were going eventually to ask him to say a Mass here for the Duc de Trélan, she must give him some sort of ground for making the request.
“You have lived here before, perhaps?”
“Yes,” admitted Mme de Trélan. “How I have come to live here again, under such different auspices, is the result of circumstances with which I need not trouble you. But, since I knew the chateau before it changed owners, perhaps you will not think it strange that I should show curiosity as to how you came into possession of the plan of which M. de Céligny spoke, and of which I saw a copy in M. de Brencourt’s possession. M. de Céligny said something about an old lady who was dying, whom you visited. But how did she come to have this paper, and why did she desire to give it to . . . to M. de Trélan?”
M. Chassin wiped his mouth. “It is a long story how it came into her possession, Madame, but a much shorter one why she desired it to go to its rightful owner. She had been tiring-woman to M. de Trélan’s mother, the Duchesse Eléonore.”
“What was her name?” demanded Valentine, a little breathlessly.
“Magny, Mlle Magny,” said M. Chassin.
Valentine got up from the table and went over toward the stove. The past seemed suddenly to crowd upon her almost suffocatingly. Behind the other ghosts in Mirabel she often felt the gentle spirit of the mother-in-law who had welcomed her with such affection, and now here was another shadowy inmate. Then she was aware that the priest was watching her out of his placid, shrewd little eyes with a good deal of interest, and that she must walk warily.
“You knew Mlle Magny, I see?” he remarked.
“Yes,” said the Duchesse de Trélan. She remembered now her first sight of that prim, devoted attendant as it were yesterday. The best thing for him to suppose would be that they had been fellow-servants years ago. So she added, “I was here for the last two years of Mlle Magny’s service, when, as you say, she was maid to Mme la Duchesse Douairière.”
“Were you here, then, Madame, under the Duchesse Valentine?” was the priest’s not unnatural question.
Mme de Trélan much disliked lying, although her whole life recently might have been called a lie. She clung to the literal truth underlying her statement when she said, “No, I never served the Duchesse Valentine.” And then, to turn him away from a dangerous topic, she said, “I need not ask you, Monsieur l’Abbé, if you are an insermenté priest. You must be, to hold the position which you do, and to have received any trust from so good a Catholic as Mlle Magny.”
“No, Madame, naturally I have never taken the oath,” responded M. Chassin. He looked at her with fresh interest, and added, “You too, then, my daughter, are a good Catholic in these times of persecution?”
“I was never a Catholic worth speaking of, I am afraid,” said Valentine rather sadly, “until these times.”
“And are you able to go to your duties here, my child?” It was remarkable how the cloak of the plotter and half humorous observer slipped at once aside, and revealed the priest.
“Not here,” responded Mme de Trélan. “I always did in Paris; it is possible there. But there is no Mass here, no priest . . . O mon père!”
“What is it?”
“Lately—for a special reason—I have longed for little else, night and day, but that there might be Mass said once in the chapel here, for . . . for one who was much connected with Mirabel.”
Her deep earnestness and hardly contained emotion affected M. Chassin. He was a little puzzled, too. Did she mean Mlle Magny? If so, why did she not say so? More likely, perhaps, that she was thinking of some relative of her own. Perhaps she was the widow of a steward or something of the kind, for she was far too superior to have been an ordinary servant. However, practical as usual, he saw that the point was not for whose soul—if she meant that—the Mass was to be said, but whether it could be said at all.
“Have you the necessaries still in the chapel?” he asked thoughtfully.
“I believe so,” answered the Duchesse. “I could look . . . I know where they would be hidden. A priest comi............