Honore de Balzac by An Historical Mystery_The Gondreville Mystery

said the abbe.
    "Bah?" cried Mademoiselle Goujet; "when I was twenty-three and saw I
should be an old maid all my life, I rushed about and fatigued myself
in a dozen ways. I understand how the countess can scour the country for
hours without thinking of the game. It is nearly twelve years now since
she has seen her cousins, and you know she loves them. Well, if I
were she, if I were as young and pretty, I'd make a straight line for
Germany! Poor darling, perhaps she is thinking of the frontier, and that
may be the reason why she rides so far towards it."
    "You are rather giddy, Mademoiselle Goujet," said the abbe, smiling.
    "Not at all," she replied. "I see you all uneasy about the goings on of
a young girl, and I am explaining them to you."
    "Her cousins will submit and return soon; they will all be rich, and she
will end by calming down," said old d'Hauteserre.
    "God grant it!" said his wife, taking out a gold snuff-box which had
again seen the light under the Consulate.
    "There is something stirring in the neighborhood," remarked Monsieur
d'Hauteserre to the abbe. "Malin has been two days at Gondreville."
    "Malin!" cried Laurence, roused by the name, though her sleep was sound.
    "Yes," replied the abbe, "but he leaves to-night; everybody is
conjecturing the motive of this hasty visit."
    "That man," said Laurence, "is the evil genius of our two houses."
    The countess had been dreaming of her cousins and the young Hauteserres;
she saw them in peril. Her beautiful eyes grew fixed and glassy as her
mind thus warned dwelled on the dangers they were about to incur in
Paris. She rose suddenly and went to her bedroom without speaking. Her
bedroom was the best in the house; next came a dressing-room and an
oratory, in the tower which faced towards the forest. Soon after she
had left the salon the dogs barked, the bell of the small gate rang,
and Durieu rushed into the salon with a frightened face. "Here is the
mayor!" he said. "Something is the matter."

Chapter VI - A Domiciliary Visit
*
    The mayor, a former huntsman of the house of Simeuse, came occasionally
to the chateau, where the d'Hauteserres showed him out of policy, a
deference to which he attached great value. His name was Goulard; he had
married a rich woman of Troyes, whose property, which was in the commune
of Cinq-Cygne, he had further increased by the purchase of a fine abbey
and its lands, in which he invested all his savings. The vast abbey of
Val-des-Preux, standing about a mile from the chateau, he had turned
into a dwelling that was almost as splendid as Gondreville; in it his
wife and he were now living like rats in a cathedral. "Ah! Goulard, you
have been greedy," Mademoiselle had said to him with a laugh the first
time she received him at Cinq-Cygne. Though greatly attached to the
Revolution and coldly received by the countess, the mayor always felt
himself bound by ties of respect to the Cinq-Cygne and Simeuse families.
He therefore shut his eyes to what went on at the chateau. He called
shutting his eyes not seeing the portraits of Louis XVI., Marie
Antoinette, and the royal children, and those of Monsieur, the Comte
d'Artois, Cazales and Charlotte Corday, which filled the various panels
of the salon; not resenting either the wishes freely expressed in his
presence for the ruin of the Republic, or the ridicule flung at the five
directors and all the other governmental combinations of that time.
The position of this man, who, like many parvenus, having once made his
fortune, reverted to his early faith in the old families, and sought to
attach himself to them, was now being made use of by the two members of
the Paris police whose profession had been so quickly guessed by Michu,
and who, before going to Gondreville had reconnoitred the neighborhood.
    The worthy described as the depositary of the best traditions of the old
police, and Corentin phoenix of spies, were in fact employed on a secret
mission. Malin was not mistaken in attributing a double purpose to