"We consented to this, and they were married on the seventeenth of January; it was a Friday. In the morning we signed the contract. M. Belmont settled on Marie six thousand francs a year. For folks like us it was very fine, was it not, monsieur? "After signing the contract we went to the _mairie_, and then to the church, and we all came back to dinner to the country house of M. Duvallon, who was M. Belmont's best man. "We were all seated at the table and had got as far as dessert. M. Belmont had just begun to sing some verses he had composed on his marriage, the poor dear man, when all of a sudden there arrived from Nantes one of M. Duvallon's servants. He hands a letter to his master. M. Duvallon turns pale, gets up from the table and cries out, 'Belmont! listen!' I remember that poor Belmont was singing at that moment a verse that began like this: 'Hymen waves his torch.' "M. Belmont gets up, but he has hardly read the letter which Duvallon shows him when he makes a face,--ah, monsieur, such a terrible face, that I have yet to understand how a man who had ordinarily such a kind look could ever take on such an expression of ferocity. "Then, controlling himself, he goes up to Marie, kisses her, and says: 'Don't worry about me, my _petite femme_, thou shalt have news of me very soon;' then he disappeared with Duvallon, who said to us, as he went out: 'Belmont is compromised in a political affair like--_carbonaro._' Yes, that is the word, _carbonaro_," added Madame Kerouët, in recalling her souvenirs. "'He must escape, his life depends on it. If they come here to arrest him, try and keep the _commissaire_ here as long as possible.' "They had hardly been gone a quarter of an hour when an officer of the gendarmerie arrives in a carriage with a _commissaire_ of police, as they had foreseen. They ask for M. Belmont, sea captain. "You know very well that we said never a word. They seek everywhere, but find no one, and they keep that up for at least two hours. "The _commissaire_ was about to give it up when some one of the company, having by accident spoken of the three-master _La Belle Alexandrine_, which was to sail that day from Nantes, the brigadier of gendarmerie cried out: 'And the tide is high at three o'clock! And now it is five! Before we can get back to Nantes it will be seven o'clock. If our man means to get away on that ship, he will be out of the mouth of the river by seven o'clock this evening, and beyond our reach.' "Thereupon they all get into the carriage with the _commissaire_, and start back for Nantes at a gallop; but they got there too late. That poor dear Belmont had been lucky enough to embark on _La Belle Alexandrine_, and was off to Havana. M. Duvallon came the next day to tell us all about it. "Alas! monsieur, misfortunes never come alone. Two months after all these events, my poor Kerouët died of lung fever.