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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
passers-by.
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.
Footprints 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.
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