He had been strictly enjoined not to lose anything. Yet barely a quarter of an hour had passed before Tissot was already rummaging for his ticket. He emptied one pocket, then the other, offered his apologies to the woman seated opposite him, and finally retrieved the slip of paper from beneath his thigh. She observed that a man travelling on business ought to keep a sharper eye on his own. He thanked her. The rebuke restored a measure of his composure: thus far, at least, he bore the look of a tradesman.
On the previous evening, he had tried on three cravats and rehearsed the name of a commercial firm before a looking-glass. He knew the shop wherein he was supposed to be employed; he knew almost nothing of the goods it sold. His superior had counselled him to sleep through the journey. Tissot would have obeyed the instruction gladly, had sleep been an order one could execute on command.
The stagecoach was leaving Paris behind. In the woods it was soon to cross, men might be lying in wait; other men lay in wait for them. Tissot belonged to the latter. It was his duty to sustain the demeanour of an ordinary traveller long enough for the highwaymen to believe they had surprised a common conveyance. He had been provided with a purse containing a few coins, a parcel neatly wrapped in brown paper, and several plausible pretexts for journeying to Lyon. The terror was at his own expense.
The woman had set a wicker basket upon her knees. Her name was Pélagie, and she had imparted it to him with the unaffected ease of those to whom the thought of assuming another has never occurred. She had parted from her daughter that very morning. The girl had just entered service; she had wept, to be sure, but there was a room for her and a mistress who seemed of tidy habits.
Tissot replied that everyone must make a beginning. The platitude fell from his lips, and he felt a sudden pang of shame at its glibness. Pélagie might well have asked him where his own beginning had lain. Fortunately, she was occupied in untying the corners of a handkerchief to inspect its contents. He caught sight of a loaf of bread, an apple, and a folded slip of paper. None of these items bore the slightest resemblance to the fortune he was commissioned to dangle before greedy eyes.
“Are you carrying a great deal of money?” she asked.
He stiffened. The inquiry had formed no part of his rehearsals—certainly not prior to the appearance of the brigands. He looked at the basket, at the woman’s weathered hands, at her eyes, which awaited an answer without seeming to attach any particular weight to it.
“As much as is needful.”
“That is already more than I have.”
She smiled. Tissot returned the smile only by half. Ever since their departure, he had been calculating the perils lurking without; he now discovered that suspicion could extend even to the person whose shoes brushed against his own. What if she were an informant for the band? What if the tale of her daughter were merely a ruse designed to loosen a merchant’s tongue? He carried enough falsehoods in his own pockets to find those of others entirely plausible.
At the post-relay, he alighted under the pretext of stretching his legs. A fellow officer passed close by without turning his head. Tissot murmured a few hurried words concerning the passenger. The other asked what she had done. Tissot was obliged to confess that she had spoken of money.
“In that case, you will be arresting half the coach on the return journey.”
The jest rankled more than he cared to show. Pélagie was holding out her basket to him through the carriage door: she, too, wished to step down. He took it as though it contained an exhibit of evidence, then watched her ask for a cup of water. She drank half of it and poured the remainder into her palm to bathe her face. That small, weary gesture did not prove her innocence; it merely made her harder to imagine as an accomplice.
The carriage set off once more. Habitations grew sparse, and conversation sparser still. Tissot pressed the parcel firmly against his shins. He knew that officers were stationed farther along the road; he did not know which of them he might catch sight of. Such ignorance, he had been informed, was indispensable to the success of the enterprise. It struck him as singular that the police should demand of him the same blind faith expected in so many other ill-paid callings.
Pélagie fell asleep, or appeared to do so. Her head swayed with the jolts of the road. Little by little, the basket slipped. Tissot caught it; she started awake just enough to murmur her thanks and begged him to hold it for a moment. Thus he found himself burdened with a loaf of bread and an apple in the thick of an operation expected to deliver desperate murderers into the hands of justice.
The halt came far too abruptly to be that of a relay. A harsh command rang out above the clatter of the team. Tissot felt his neighbour cower beside him. Outside, a silhouette blocked a portion of the window’s pale light. The basket still encumbered his hands; he had no notion where to set it down. All the dispositions of the previous evening had arranged themselves in an orderly sequence. The reality, perversely, commenced with a preposterous predicament.
Pélagie understood before he could utter a word. She moved to untie her handkerchief, to display the poverty of her belongings. Tissot caught her by the arm.
“Get down.”
She stared at him. The voice no longer belonged to the clumsy tradesman who mislaid his ticket. She hesitated for a second, perhaps longer; he never knew how many heartbeats had been required for her to cease obeying him as a fellow traveller and begin fearing him as an armed man.
Then the tumult broke loose. A shout answered the first challenge. Boots pounded near the wheels. Tissot thrust the basket beneath the bench and wheeled toward the door. He could make out sleeves, a shoulder, the wooden stock of a weapon; the men had ceased to resemble the neatly separated factions described at headquarters. He checked his movement as Pélagie scrambled up behind him. She was groping for her basket.
“Leave it!”
The shout forced her back down. When he was finally able to tumble out into the road, one of his comrades had a man pinned fast against the carriage wheel. Farther off, shadows were pursuing one another into the undergrowth. Scuffles still raged in places, while certain passengers were already speaking as though the danger had passed. Tissot lent a hand to secure a captive. He did not ask the fellow his name. For the moment, it was enough merely to pin those hands so they could strike no more.
When Pélagie was at last permitted to alight, she asked for the paper kept inside her handkerchief. It bore her daughter’s address. The apple had rolled into the dust; the loaf of bread lay trampled. Tissot retrieved the paper from beneath the carriage seat and handed it to her. She smoothed the creases without a word of thanks, then lifted her gaze to his.
“You knew?”
He replied that they had been warned. She looked back at the carriage, wherein she was now invited to resume her seat. No words came to her that might render the remainder of the journey ordinary. Tissot picked up the apple and stood motionless, holding it in his hand.
The early account by Moreau-Christophe places an 1824 police ambush against the Lyon diligence in the forest of Sénart: twenty-one brigands were reportedly captured. Renaud, Ochard, and Delaporte, convicted of prior murders, were sentenced to death. Sanson, who associates their predations with the forest of Bondy, dates their execution to 20 April. Tissot and Pélagie are creatures of our fiction. When the coach set off once more, she would henceforth have entrusted him with her purse far more willingly than with her peace of mind.