Claude Trépagny’s failed pursuit of Charles Duquet ends not in a duel or a return to the manor, but in the death of Trépagny and the traumatized return of Elphège. Set in motion by domestic discontent and a desire for vengeance, the expedition disappears into the woods; its outcome surfaces months later through the injuries and eventual testimony of the only returning witness.

Causes and Departure

At the manor, Trépagny had grown weary of his wife, Mélissande du Mouton-Noir, whose repeated wish to return to Paris sharpened his discontent with the life he had made. His attention turned from consolidating the domus to revenge against Duquet. Trépagny remarked that, had Duquet been a gentleman, he would have pursued him and challenged him to a duel. Though time had passed, he resolved to begin the pursuit at the next full moon and ordered Elphège to accompany him as his squire.

The departure also coincided with a new road-building corvée called by Monsieur Bouchard. It was an onerous obligation that even a man with a particule could not evade, placing Trépagny’s private expedition against the backdrop of public demands on the seigneurial household. The text presents the corvée as a possible additional spur to his decision, rather than establishing it as his sole motive.

Mari understood the danger differently from Trépagny. At night she wept, accepting that Trépagny might pursue Duquet if he wished, but insisting that Elphège had no reason to go. Her protest identifies the expedition’s human cost before either traveler returns: Elphège’s participation follows his lord’s command, not a personal quarrel with Duquet.

Disappearance and Return

Before setting out, Trépagny buried a small metal box beneath the manor’s front doorstep, muttering curses. A Spanish maid watched from an upstairs hall window. Under the hard point of the moon, Trépagny and Elphège left; no news came of them, Duquet, or the bearded brothers until the following spring. The departure therefore opens a long interval of uncertainty rather than a narrated account of the pursuit itself.

As the snow melted, water running off the trees and through the clearing, a limping man appeared. Mari recognized Elphège and ran to help him into the house. He was emaciated, covered in old cuts and bruises, and his right ankle had swollen into a purple lump. He could not speak. Mari tended him with a sleep potion, nourishing moose broth, and a poultice made from pounded white cedar cones and fern root and leaf; René Sel watched over the half-conscious boy and gently asked where Trépagny was.

Elphège could not answer at first. Through questions that he could answer with nods or shakes of the head, Mari learned that Trépagny was dead, though Elphège did not then say when or how. He lay quiet and half-asleep for nine days. After a sudden flush of strength, he recovered enough to join René in the woods within a month, chopping trees. His return did not mean a return to his former self: he remained silent, rarely smiled, and habitually kept his eyes lowered.

The Death Revealed

Many months after returning, Elphège spoke for the first time at the evening meal. His voice croaked from disuse, and he said that someday he would take revenge on the Iroquois and their English masters. The declaration connected Trépagny’s death to a wider conflict, while revealing how the expedition had left Elphège with a purpose shaped by violence and loss.

Later that winter, while resting after a long morning of girdling trees, Elphège told René what had happened to Trépagny. Iroquois women had severed Trépagny’s leg tendons, sewn him up tightly, and closed every bodily opening. After two or three days he swelled like a thundercloud and burst. The pursuit’s outcome, withheld during Elphège’s return and recovery, thus emerges in a stark, delayed account of torture rather than in a narrated battle or confrontation with Duquet.

Elphège asked René not to tell Mari, because he believed she would suffer. René, however, thought Mari would not suffer, yet still could not bring himself to describe Trépagny’s painful death and the injuries to his intimate parts. The account ends not with an explanation of Duquet’s fate or the expedition’s route, but with René’s silence about what he has learned.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

The expedition fails on its own terms: Trépagny does not return with Duquet, and the text supplies no encounter between the two men. Instead, the pursuit becomes a disappearance followed by a casualty’s return. Elphège’s bodily damage, prolonged muteness, and later disclosure make the cost legible in stages, while leaving the central journey itself outside the narrated scene.

The episode also reverses the expected relation between seigneur and squire. Trépagny sets out as commander, with Elphège assigned to serve him, but after the expedition Elphège is the surviving witness and Trépagny’s fate is known only through the boy’s delayed testimony. His wish for revenge against the Iroquois and the English marks the continuation of violence beyond the failed pursuit, while René’s decision not to tell Mari shows how knowledge of the death remains confined even within the household. The hidden metal box under the doorstep forms another unresolved trace of Trépagny’s departure: the Spanish maid later finds it, but its contents—human teeth and locks of hair—do not explain the pursuit or the death.