Découvrez *La Vampire* de Paul Féval, un chef-d’œuvre du roman gothique français qui plonge le lecteur dans une atmosphère d’épouvante, de passion et de mystère. 🦇📖 Publié au XIXe siècle, ce récit captivant mêle le fantastique, le surnaturel et le drame romantique, offrant une expérience unique aux amateurs de littérature sombre et envoûtante.
Dans cette œuvre, Féval explore le mythe du vampire avec une intensité dramatique rare, révélant des personnages troublés, des intrigues obscures et des scènes inoubliables. Le texte nous emmène dans un voyage au cœur de l’imaginaire macabre, où l’amour, la mort et l’étrange se confondent dans une danse envoûtante. 💀✨
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**Navigate by Chapters or Titles:**
00:00:33 Chapter 1.
00:19:53 Chapter 2.
00:42:19 Chapter 3.
00:58:45 Chapter 4.
01:21:07 Chapter 5.
01:39:23 Chapter 6.
01:58:18 Chapter 7.
02:13:05 Chapter 8.
02:29:49 Chapter 9.
02:49:09 Chapter 10.
03:08:19 Chapter 11.
03:23:52 Chapter 12.
03:42:56 Chapter 13.
03:56:46 Chapter 14.
04:15:30 Chapter 15.
04:32:15 Chapter 16.
04:52:25 Chapter 17.
05:14:53 Chapter 18.
05:40:06 Chapter 19.
06:01:23 Chapter 20.
06:18:23 Chapter 21.
06:30:28 Chapter 22.
06:47:52 Chapter 23.
06:59:36 Chapter 24.
07:11:21 Chapter 25.
07:25:15 Chapter 26.
07:41:45 Chapter 27.
Let’s dive together into the mysterious and captivating world of Paul Féval with his novel “The Vampire.” Published in the 19th century, this story takes us to the heart of dark romanticism, where the strange mixes with the disturbing. Féval, master of the popular novel, explores the myth of the vampire from a fascinating angle, between fear, seduction, and superstition. Through his pages, we discover gothic atmospheres , tormented destinies, and enigmas that defy reason. Prepare to cross the threshold of a world where the border between life and death seems to waver. Chapter 1. THE MIRACULOUS CATCH The beginning of the century we are in was much more legendary than is generally believed. And I am not speaking here of that immense legend of our military glories, whose republican blood wrote the first pages to the triumphant sound of the Marseilles fanfare, which unfurled its songs through the dazzling empire and drowned its last verse—a splendid cry—in the great mourning of Waterloo. I am speaking of the legend of storytellers, of tales that lull to sleep or excite the evening, of poetic, bizarre, supernatural things, of which the skepticism of the eighteenth century had tried to sweep the slate clean. Let us remember that the Emperor Napoleon I was madly in love with the dreamy mists of Ossian, passed through the academic sieve by M. Baour. It is the stuffy legend, stiffened by starch; but it is still the legend. And let us also remember that the legitimate king of the legendary countries, Walter Scott, was thirty years old when the century was born. Anne Radcliffe, the dark mother of so many mysteries and so many terrors, was then in all the splendor of that vogue which gave Europe the shivers. People were running after fear, they were looking for the dark. Some book without head or tail achieved a frenzied success simply by the description of a spring-loaded dungeon, a cemetery populated by ghosts at the hour when the brass strikes twelve times or a confessional with a false bottom crammed with horrible and lewd impossibilities. It was the fashion; these nonsense were given a makeover with grand words, belonging especially to this solemn period; they put everything like a purée under the hero, cooked to perfection, who was a virtuous heart, a sensitive soul, deigning to believe in the sovereign master of the universe and loving to see the dawn rise. The contrast between these philosophical preserves and these sepulchral abominations formed a hybrid dish, barely edible, but with a strange taste that pleased these pretty ladies, dressed so oddly, with rings on their toes, their belts above their breasts, their hips in an umbrella sheath, and their heads under a gigantic chicory leaf. Paris has always adored tall tales, which give it the delicious sensation of goosebumps. When Paris was still very young, it already had many stories to make one shudder, from the guilty association formed between the barber and the pastry chef on the Rue des Marmousets, for the sale of gentlemen’s vol-au-vents , to the tragic gallant event of the house in the cul-de-sac Saint-Benoît, whose demolished walls contained more human bones than stones. And for so long, in this respect, Paris has changed little. In the early months of 1804, there was a vague and gloomy rumor in Paris, born from the fact that miraculous catches had been taking place for some time at the eastern tip of the Ile Saint-Louis, turning a little to the southeast, not far from the place where the Petit baths today bring together, in the summer months, the elite of Parisian newts. It is a rare thing to see a school of fish in Paris. So many hooks, so many traps, so many different devices are hidden underwater between Bercy and Grenelle, that only gudgeon, usually, and imprudent barbels venture into this route strewn with perils. You would find neither a carp, nor a tench, nor a perch, and if sometimes a pike engages in it, it is because this freshwater shark has a particularly adventurous character. Also the fishing people made a great noise about the windfall sent by Providence to the citizens who love the line, the cast net and the plaice. On a journey of a hundred paces from the sewer of Bretonvilliers to the Quai de la Tournelle, all along the Quai de Béthune, you would have seen, for as long as the day lasted, a line of true believers, motionless and silent, holding the line and following with a worried eye the cork floating in the water. To say that everyone filled their basket would be an imposture. The schools of fish, in Paris, do not resemble those of our coasts; but it is certain that here and there a lucky fellow caught a person of all types of body pike or a barbel of unusual size. Gudgeon abounded, chubs circled at the surface of the water, and one could see gliding through the murky water those purple reflections that announce the presence of roach. This, in the middle of winter and when usually the Parisian fish, chilly as marmots, seem to desert the Seine to go and warm themselves who knows where. On the surface, there is a long way between this joy of the fishermen and this madness for fish and the lugubrious rumor whose birth we have announced. But Paris is a reasoner of the first force; it readily goes back from the effect to the cause, and God knows that it sometimes invents very strange causes for the most vulgar effects. Besides, we have not said everything. It was not exclusively to catch fish that so many lines suspended the bait along the quay of Béthune. Among the professional or habitual fishermen who came there every day, there were many laymen, people of adventure and imagination, who aimed for a completely different prey. Peru was out of fashion and California had not yet been invented . The poor devils who run after fortune did not know where to turn and sought their lives at random. Ungrateful Europe does not know the service rendered by these magical blisters which are named on the world map San Francisco, Monterey, Sydney or Melbourne. There was indeed the battle, in those days, but in battle one wins more blows than crowns, and the model adventurers, the true gold prospectors, rarely make good soldiers in pitched battle. There, under the Quai de Béthune, were demoted poets, defeated inventors, former Don Juans, bankrupts of the love industry who had broken their arms and legs trying to climb the ladder of women, politicians whose ambition had taken root in the gutter, artists buffeted by fame, — that cruel one! — hated actors, clumsy philanthropists , persecuted geniuses, and that notary who is everywhere, even in the galleys, for having fulfilled his priesthood with too much fervor. We repeat, in our days, all these brave men would have been in the Sonore or in Australia, which are very useful countries. In the year 1804, if they shivered with their feet in the water, sounding with melancholy the troubled course of the Seine, it was because legend placed at the bottom of the Seine a fantastic Eldorado. At the corner of Rue de Bretonvilliers and the quay, there was a small, newly founded cabaret whose sign bore a painting, naively painted by a painter who was not a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. This painting represented two subjects fraternally juxtaposed in the same frame. First subject: Ezekiel in the costume of a ravager, turning his begging bowl with one hand, at the bottom of which gold coins glittered, and with the other lifting a line, the pole of which, folded in two, supported a sea monster copied from nature in the story of Théramène. Ezekiel was the name of the owner of the cabaret. Second subject: Ezekiel in his house costume, disemboweling, in the silence of the room, the monster mentioned above and removing from her belly a signet ring adorned with a brilliant that shone like the sun. It is only fair to add that the ring had been placed on a finger and that the finger belonged to a hand. The whole thing had been swallowed by the monster in Theramène’s story, without prior chewing and with an evident voluptuousness which was still evidenced by: His rump curved into tortuous folds. The two twin subjects had only one caption which said in badly formed letters: To the miraculous catch. The reader is perhaps beginning to understand the connection existing between the famous school of fish on the Île Saint-Louis and this funereal rumor which vaguely circulated in Paris. We will not, moreover, bargain with him on the chapter of explanations. But, for the moment, we must say that all of Paris knew the adventure of Ezekiel represented by the painting, an authentic, accepted, popular adventure, and whose proven accuracy no one would have thought of questioning. Indeed, with the proceeds from the sale of this jewel found in the monster’s stomach, Ezekiel had set up, in full view of everyone , his tavern. And since he had been the first to discover this miniature Peru, this deposit of underwater riches, the imagination of onlookers was allowed to string together a whole string of golden hypotheses about him . His name indicated an Israelite origin, and we know the good reputation granted to the ancient people of God by the working class. There was already talk of a vault where Ezekiel was hoarding treasures. The others had come when the gold vein had already been skimmed; the others, naive fishermen or fishermen of adventure: the poets, the inventors, the beaten Don Juans, the fallen industrialists, the failed artists, the weary actors, the philanthropists worn down to the bone, the geniuses stung by verses – and the notary had had for all soup the remains of that happy Ezekiel. They were there, not for the fish which really abounded in an extraordinary way, but for the signet ring whose brilliant setting shone like the sun. They would willingly have plunged headfirst to explore the bottom of the water, if the Seine, yellow, high, rapid and carrying foaming whirlpools in its course, had not forbidden feats of this kind. They brought begging bowls to ravage the lower bank as soon as the water level lowered. They waited, feverishly scanning the low water, and seeing piles of riches at the bottom of the water. Ezekiel, sitting at his counter, sold them brandy and carefully entertained them in this opinion which kept his tavern busy. He was eloquent, this Ezekiel, and readily recounted that one night, by moonlight, he had seen, with his own eyes, fish fighting over scraps of human flesh on the surface of the water. Moreover, he added that having drowned his long lines, baited with Gruyère cheese and ox blood, downstream from the sewer, he had caught one of those short, plump eels marked with fiery spots that one finds in the Loire between Paimboeuf and Nantes, but which are as rare in the Seine as the white blackbird in our orchards: a lamprey, that cannibalistic fish, which the patricians of Rome fed with slave flesh. Where did the abundant and mysterious food come from that attracted so many voracious guests precisely to this place? This question was asked a thousand times every day, and there was no shortage of answers. There were all sorts; only none was plausible or good. However, the Miraculous Fishing tavern and its master Ezekiel prospered. The sign made a fortune, like almost all things with a double meaning. It flattered both, in fact, serious fishermen, fishermen, and that other, more numerous category, fishermen of chimeras, poets, painters, actors, finders, industrialists, tormentors of women on call and the notary.
Each of these hoped at any moment that a thousand- louis loner would catch on his hook. And opposite the row of fishermen, there was, on the other side of the river, a row of onlookers watching with all their eyes. The gossip came and went, the comments crossed: enough blunders were being concocted there to quench the thirst of all Paris, incessantly thirsty for true things that do not make common sense. I say true things, because, be well persuaded of this, beneath every popular rumor, however absurd it may seem, a real fact is always hidden. The most accredited opinion, if not the most plausible, was summed up in a word that energetically solicited the imagination and was worth in itself two or three of the most dark books of Mrs. Anne Radcliffe. This word was darker than the famous title The Confessional of the Black Penitents. This word was more mysterious than The Mysteries of the Pyrenean Castle, than The Mysteries of Udolpho and than The Mysteries of the Apennine Cave; it sounded the death knell, it smelled of the grave. This word, sincerely appetizing for restless, curious, avid minds , for women, for young people, for all those curious about terror and horror, was VAMPIRE. Our education on the subject of these funereal pages of the marvelous in mourning has made little progress since then. We have indeed written some of these books which discuss without explaining, which compile without condensing and which bind together in volumes the pale boredom of their didactic pages, but it would seem that the scholars themselves, these brave men of thought, approach with a troubled mind the formidable questions of demonology. Among them, the believers have a bit of the physiognomy of someone with mental health problems, and the unbelievers remain wet with that cold sweat, doubt, which certainly communicates contagious boredom. I search, and I cannot find in my childhood memories the title of the prodigious book which pronounced for the first time before my eyes the word Vampire. It was not a discouraging magazine article, it was not a slice of that banal bread that is crumbled in dictionaries: it was a poor German tale, full of sap and passion under its starchy naivete. It told good-naturedly, almost timidly, stories so wild, that my heart still sinks. I remember that it was in three small volumes, and that there was an intaglio engraving at the head of each volume. They were not worth a price for anyone mentally ill, but, Lord God, how they made one shudder! The first intaglio engraving, calm and peaceful like the prologue to any great poem, represented… I was going to say Faust and Marguerite at their first meeting. There was nothing there but a young man looking at a young girl, and it sent a chill through your veins, so clearly was Marguerite subjected to the fatal magnetism that gushed forth in invisible sprays from Faust’s eye! Why should we not keep these names: Faust and Marguerite? What is Goethe’s masterpiece if not the splendid staging of the eternal fact of vampirism which, since the beginning of the world, has dried up and emptied the hearts of so many families? So Faust was looking at Marguerite.–And it was a wedding, imagine, a country wedding where Marguerite was the Bride and Faust a chance guest. They danced to marijuana among rose bushes. The imprudent parents and the groom too, for he had the bouquet at his side, the poor young boor, gazed with admiration at Faust who was making Marguerite waltz. Faust smiled; Marguerite’s charming head was leaning over his shoulder, dressed in the Hungarian dolman. And on the rose bush that bloomed in the foreground, there was a wide dodecagonal net: a spider’s web, in the center of which The monstrous insect, also called the vampire, sucked at leisure the marrow of a captive fly… That was all for the intaglio engraving. Now for the text. The pen paints better than the pencil. –These are immense plains that the old fortress of Ofen looks out over across the Danube, which separates it from modern Pesth. From Pesth to the Baconier forests, along the muddy and tumultuous Theiss, it is the plain, always the plain, as boundless as the sea. By day, the sun smiles on this ocean of verdure, and the happy breeze playfully caresses the immeasurable field of corn, which is southern Hungary. By night, the moon glides over these silent solitudes. Over there, the villages have sixty thousand souls, but there are no hamlets. The memory of the battle with the Turk still clusters the rustic dwellings, sheltered like flocks of sheep in their folds, behind the pot-bellied tower topped with the eastern dome and armed with unserviceable cannons. It is night. The dead are going quickly to the Magyar country in Germany, but they are going in wagons and not on horseback. It is night. The moon hangs from the azure dome, watching the clouds gallop madly past. The flat horizon rounds as far as the eye can see, showing here and there an isolated tree or the seesaw of a well raised like a gallows. A chariot drawn by four horses of full horsepower passes swift as a storm: a strange chariot, high on wheels, half Wallachian, half Tartar, and whose axle utters resounding cries. Have you recognized this hussar whose dolman flutters in the breeze?–And this child, this sweet and blond girl? The dead move quickly: the bell towers of Czegled have fled into the distance, and the towers of Keczkemet and the minarets of Szegedin. Here are the proud walls of Temesvar, then, over there, Belgrade, the city of mosques… But the chariot does not go that far. Its wheel has touched the marble tables of the last Christian cemetery; its wheel breaks. Faust is standing, carrying the fainting Marguerite in his arms… The second intaglio print, oh! I remember it well! depicted the interior of a stately tomb in the cemetery of Petervardein: a long row of arches where the light of a single lamp was dying . Marguerite was lying on a bed that looked like a coffin. She still had her bride’s clothes on. She was asleep. Under the dimly lit arches, a long line of coffins, which resembled beds, supported beautiful and pale statues, lying and sleeping the eternal sleep. All were dressed as brides; all had around their foreheads the crown of orange blossom. All were white from head to toe, except for one gnawed spot below the left breast: the wound from which Faust-Vampire had drunk their heart’s blood. And Faust, it must be said, was leaning over the sleeping Marguerite: the handsome Faust, the admired waltzer, the tempter and the fascinator. He was gaunt; without his hussar’s costume you would not have recognized him; the bones of his skull no longer had any hair, and his eyes, his beautiful eyes, were missing from their empty sockets. He was a corpse, this Faust, and, hideous to think, a drunken corpse ! He had just finished his lugubrious orgy: he had drunk all the blood from Marguerite’s heart! And the text? Well, I don’t remember. This second volume was much less amusing than the first. The Hungarian vampire is bored at home like Don Juan the Spaniard, like the Englishman Lovelace, like the Frenchman, executioner of hearts, whatever his name. All these scoundrels kill flatly, like the cowards they are deep down. They are only worth anything before the assassination. I have never been able to discover, for my part, the great difference there is between this poor Dumolard, vampire of the cooks, and Don Juan the great lord. The statue of the Commander itself does not seem to me stronger than the guillotine. And if there is a scoundrel capable of pleading the three-quarters lost cause of the guillotine, it is Don Juan. Let us move on to the third intaglio print, and give me a prize for memory! That one was the statue of the Commander, the guillotine, whatever you like. Everyone knows that a good vampire was invulnerable and immortal, like Achilles, son of Peleus, on the condition of not being wounded in a certain place and in a certain way. The famous vampire of Debreckzin lived and died, or rather, for 444 years. He would still be alive if Professor Hemzer had not plunged a previously red-hot crimping iron into his heart . This is a well-known recipe and one which, at first glance, does not seem to us to be without efficacy. The third engraving showed Faust’s real coffin, where he had perhaps been lying for centuries, retaining the strange permission to get up certain nights, to put on his hussar costume, always clean and very elegant, to go hunting for Marguerite. Faust was there, the monster! with his shining eyes and his moist lips. He was drinking the blood of Marguerite, who was lying a little further away. The wedding party had, I don’t know how, discovered his hiding place. They had brought a forge furnace, they had made a valiant iron bar red hot, and the fiancé was passing it with both hands, with all his heart , through the stomach of the vampire, who took no heed. And Marguerite was waking up there, as if the death of her executioner had given her back her life. This is what my old book in three small volumes said and contained . And I declare that the articles in scholarly collections have never taught me so much about vampires. I add that the onlookers of Paris, in the year 1804, were about as strong as we were, the book and me: which gives the measure of what their opinion could have been about this mysterious being that public fear had baptized: the Vampire. Chapter 2. SAINT-LOUIS-EN-L’ILE. The vampire existed, that is the starting point and the certain thing: whether it was a fantastic monster as some firmly believed , or a daring band of criminals united under this corporate name, as more enlightened people thought, the vampire existed. For a month there had been rumors of several disappearances. The victims seemed to be chosen with care from this floating and wealthy population that an interval of peace brought to Paris. There was talk of at least twenty foreigners, all young, all having marked their passage through Paris by spending a great deal, and who had suddenly vanished without leaving a trace. Were there twenty, in fact? The police denied it. The police would have readily affirmed that these rumors had not the slightest foundation and that they were the work of an opposition that was becoming bolder by the day. But popular opinion was strengthened all the more as the police denials became more precise. In the suburbs, it was not twenty victims that were being spoken of, they counted the victims by the hundreds. So much so that the existence of a dark mass grave located on the banks of the river was affirmed. It is true that no one knew where this mass grave could be hidden; even material impossibilities were objected, for it would have been necessary to suppose that the river communicated directly with this tomb, to explain the phenomenon of the miraculous catch. And how could one admit the presence of a canal unknown to the people of the neighborhood? In the summer season, the Seine abandons its banks and reveals to all eyes the secret of its banks. This was certainly a striking objection and one which supported the outrageous improbability of the fact itself: a dungeon in the nineteenth century! The skeptics had plenty of time to laugh. Paris did not fail to imitate the skeptics. It laughed; it repeated in all tones; it’s absurd, it’s impossible. But he was afraid. When village cowards are afraid, at night, in the sunken lanes , they sing at the top of their lungs. Paris is like that: in the midst of its greatest terrors, it often laughs out loud. Paris therefore laughed while trembling or trembled while laughing, because objections and reasoning can do nothing against certain evidences. Panic was slowly setting in. Wise people perhaps did not yet believe, but contagious anxiety was taking hold of them, and the mockers themselves, by peddling their mockery, increased the fever.
Two facts remained, moreover: the disappearance of several foreigners and provincials, a disappearance which was beginning to produce its result of judicial agitation, and this other circumstance which the reader will judge as he will, but which impressed Paris even more vividly than the first: the miraculous catch of fish from the quay of Béthune. It was, one can say, a general preoccupation. Those who merely nodded their heads and admitted that there was something there could pass for models of prudence. Is it necessary to add that politics provided its note to this concert? Never were circumstances more propitious for mixing political melodrama with the imbroglio of private crime. Great events were in preparation, terrible perils, recently avoided, left the administration tired and panting. The Empire, which was quietly melting into the bedroom of the First Consul, was giving the prefecture the cramps of childbirth. The citizen prefect, who was never to be an eagle and who was not yet called Count Dubois, shuddered from head to toe at every sound of a closing door, believing he heard an echo of this infernal machine whose explosion he had not been able to prevent. The dark inventors of this device, Saint-Rejant and Carbon, had their heads carried to the scaffold: but, from the depths of his disgrace, Fouché murmured words that rose to the head of state. Fouché said: Saint-Rejant and Carbon left sons. Before them, there were Ceracchi, Diana, and Arena who left brothers. Between the First Consul and the crown, there is republican France and royalist France. To take this step, one would need a good horse, and Dubois is only a donkey! The word was harsh, but the future Duke of Otranto had a tongue of iron. The one who was to be the emperor listened to him much more than he wanted to appear. As for Louis-Nicolas-Pierre-Joseph Dubois, he was not a donkey, no, since he ate truffles and chicken, but he was a good man who was prodigiously embarrassed. The cards were, in fact, being shuffled again, and a conspiracy far more formidable than that of Saint-Rejant was threatening the First Consul. The three or four police forces charged with the protection of Paris, suddenly panicked by this invisible danger that everyone felt, but of which no one could grasp the palpable trace, clashed in the night of their ignorance, harmed each other, thwarted each other, and above all accused each other with equal enthusiasm. Paris had so much affection for them and so much confidence in them, that one morning Paris awoke saying and believing that the vampire, this fond of corpses, was the police, and that the missing young people were paying with their lives for certain mistakes of the police or of the police striking at random the supposed constructors of an infernal machine. That day Paris forgot to laugh; but he made up for it the next day when he learned that Louis-Nicolas-Pierre-Joseph Dubois had had the Madeleine enclosure surrounded by two hundred and fifty agents, just twelve hours after the end of an open-air meeting held by Georges Cadoudal and his accomplices, behind the walls of the church under construction. It seemed, in truth, that Paris knew what Citizen Dubois did not. Citizen Dubois passed through the midst of these events, people of all types of threat bodies, like the eternal husband in comedy who is the only one who does not see the gaiety of his bridal chamber. He looked everywhere where he should not find, he struggled, he sweated blood and water and, in the end, threw his tongue to the dog in despair. It was in this secret meeting in the Church of the Madeleine that Georges Cadoudal proposed to the ex-generals Pichegru and Moreau the bold plan which was to stop the career of the future emperor. The word bold comes from Fouché, Duke of Otranto. To the word bold Fouché adds the word easy. Here is what this plan was, well known, almost famous. The three conspirators had in Paris a heterogeneous contingent, since it belonged to all the parties hostile to the First Consul, but united by a common passion and composed of resolute men. Contemporary memoirs put this core at at least two thousand fighters: Vendeans, Chouans from Brittany, National Guards from Lyon, Babouvists, and former soldiers from Coudé. An elite of three hundred men, among these partisans, had been provided with uniforms belonging to the consular guard. The head of state lived in the Château de Saint-Cloud. At the morning guard, and with the help of intelligence that is not entirely explained, the three hundred conspirators, dressed in the regulation uniform, were to take up service at the château. It seems proven that the order was received. Upon his awakening, the First Consul would therefore have found himself in the power of the insurrection. The plan failed, not because of the actions of the police, who ignored it until the last moment, but because of Moreau’s indecision. This general was subject to these moral failings. He felt either fear or remorse. The execution of the complete plan was postponed for four days. Postponed plots are never executed. It is said that a conspirator from Brittany, M. de Querelles, seized with fear at the sight of these hesitations, requested and obtained an audience with the First Consul himself and revealed all the details of the plan. Napoleon Bonaparte gathered, it is said, in his cabinet, his military police, his political police and his urban police: M. Savary, later Duke of Rovigo; the great judge Régnier and H. Dubois. He told them the very curious story of the conspiracy; he proved to them that Moreau and Pichegru had been coming and going for eight days in the streets of Paris like good bourgeois, and that Georges Cadoudal, a person of all types of body, a man of cheerful morals , assiduously frequented the cafes of the left bank after his dinner. History does not say that his speech was strewn with very warm compliments for his three chargés d’affaires in the department of clairvoyance. The future emperor thanked only God—and his old friend J.-Victor Moreau, whom he had always regarded as a good weapon, poorly loaded and likely to misfire. Moreau and Pichegru were arrested. Georges Cadoudal, who was not, however, of a build to fit through the eye of a needle, remained free. And Fouché rubbed his hands, saying: You will see that I will have to get involved! In fact, police officers are rare, and Fouché himself was at fault many times. Argus may have fifty pairs of eyes, but what does it matter if he is short-sighted? The history of the blunders of the police would be curious, instructive, but monotonous and so long, so long, that discouragement would set in halfway. We had, for placing this short historical digression here, several reasons, all of which belong to our profession as storytellers. First, we wanted to clearly establish the framework in which the characters of our drama will act; then it seemed useful to us to explain, if not to excuse, the inertia of the urban police in the face of these rumors which created, through the city, a real competition to the state gossip. The police had other things to do and could not deal with the vampire. The police were busy, searching, searching, finding nothing and were on edge. On February 28, 1804, the very day Pichegru was arrested in his bed, rue Chabanais, at the home of the commercial broker Leblanc, a man passed quickly on the Marché-Neuf, in front of a small building which was under construction, at the very edge of the quay, and whose scaffolding overlooked the Seine. The masons who were packing up their luggage and the construction supervisors knew this man well, for they called him, saying: “Boss, haven’t you come to see if we have made any progress today? ” The man waved to them and continued on his way up the river. Masons and overseers began to smile as they exchanged knowing glances , for there was a young girl walking a hundred paces ahead of the man, wrapped in a black woolen mantle and hiding her face under a veil. “For three days in a row,” said a stonemason, “the boss has been running around in that direction. ” “He’s still green,” added another, “the boss!” And a third: “Listen! We’re not made of wood! The boss has a job that shouldn’t cheer him up more than is reasonable. We must laugh a little. ” An old mason, who was putting on his plaster-white jacket, murmured: “I’ve known the boss for thirty years; he doesn’t laugh like everyone else . ” The man, however, walked on at great speed, and was already disappearing behind the hovels that clutter the Marché-Neuf, on the outskirts of the Rue de la Cité. As for the veiled girl, she had completely disappeared. The man was old, but he had a tall and noble figure, boldly set off. His costume, which seemed to classify him among the lower middle classes, exempt from all toilet expenses, was worn in a grand style. This man had, from head to toe, the frank and free bearing that comes from the habit of certain bodily exercises, usually reserved for the wealthiest class. From the building under construction to the Pont Notre-Dame, many people uncovered themselves as he passed; he was obviously a notable of the neighborhood. He responded to greetings with a kind and cordial gesture, but he did not slow down in his run. His run seemed calculated, not to catch up with the young girl, but to never lose sight of her. The latter, whose legs were shorter, went as fast as she could. She did not know she was being pursued; at least not once did she turn her head to look back. She looked ahead, with all her eyes, with all her soul. Ahead, there was a young man with an elegant and haughty appearance who was at that moment walking along the Quai de la Grève. Was she following him? The closer our man, whom the masons of the Marché-Neuf called the boss, approached the Hôtel-de-Ville, the fewer people greeted him with an air of acquaintance. Paris is like that and contains celebrities of the street who do not go beyond a certain number of a certain street. Once the man had reached the Quai des Ormes, no one greeted him any more. The man, however, the boss, whether he was running the guilledou or not, had good eyesight, for, despite the darkness which was beginning to limit the distance, he was watching not only the little girl, but also the charming cavalier whom the little girl seemed to be following. The latter turned the corner of the Pont-Marie first, which he crossed to enter the Île Saint-Louis; the little girl did likewise; The boss took the same route. The girl’s pace slowed noticeably and became painful. Nothing escaped the boss, for his chest gave a sigh , while he murmured: “He’ll kill her! Must so much happiness have turned into misery like this! ” The young rider, who had to turn the corner of the Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile and Deux-Ponts streets. The little girl was now walking with such visible effort that the patron made a movement as if he wanted to spring forward to support her. But he did not give in to temptation, and simply calculated his pace so as to see clearly where she would direct her course, after leaving the rue des Deux-Ponts. She turned to the left and without hesitation crossed the door of the Saint-Louis church. The mist was already falling in this narrow street. In the shadow of the church and in front of the gate, there was a rich carriage lighting its silver lanterns. The Republic was sleeping, ready to awaken as the Empire. It had given a short respite from the extravagant luxury of the Directory, but it in no way proscribed lordly airs. The carriage stopped at the door of the Saint-Louis church would have done honor to a prince. The carriage was splendid, the trunk exquisitely elegant, and the liveries shone impeccably. At that time, the rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile was not distinguished by exceptional liveliness: it served a sleepy and almost deserted district; it came from no center, it led to no artery. You would have said, seeing it, the main street of a cantonal capital located a hundred leagues from Paris. At the present time, Paris has no deserted districts. Commerce has taken over the Marais and the Île Saint-Louis. Some say that it dishonors these magnificent mansions of the old city, others that it rehabilitates them. In this regard, commerce has no bias. It does not ask to rehabilitate, it is not afraid to defile. It wants to make money and does not care about the rest. Under the Consulate, Paris had barely more than 500,000 inhabitants. This entire eastern portion of the city, abandoned by the nobility of the robe and not yet having any industry, was a solitude. Because of this, no doubt, the resplendent carriage stationed at the church door had attracted an unusual crowd of curious onlookers: you could easily have counted in the street a dozen gossips and an equal number of children. The open-air council was presided over by a porter. The porter, given like his peers to an austere philosophy and hating everything beautiful because he was horribly ugly, delivered a speech against luxury. The children watched the lanterns gleam and the horses prance; the gossips said to each other: If heaven were just, we would also splash the poor world! “Please,” asked the patron of the masons of the New Market, “whose carriage does this belong to?” The kids, the gossips, and the porter looked him up and down. “That one isn’t from the neighborhood,” the kids said. “Is he in charge of policing?” a gossip asked. “What’s your name, friend?” the porter asked. “We don’t have to answer to strangers. For the people of Paris are strangers to these fierce islanders, penitùs toto divisos orbe, separated from the rest of the universe by the two branches of the Seine. ” Just as the owner was about to answer, the church door opened, and he stepped back three steps with a cry of surprise, as if a spectre had appeared to him. It was, in any case, a charming phantom: a very young and beautiful woman , whose blond hair fell in graceful curls around an adorable face. This woman was giving her arm to a young man of twenty-five or thirty , who was not the one our little girl had been following recently, and whom you would have judged German from certain details of his costume. “Ramberg!” murmured the owner. The delicious blonde was already sitting on the cushions of the carriage where the young German took a seat beside her. A sonorous and sweet voice commanded: “To the hotel!” And the door closed. The fine horses immediately took up a parade trot in the direction of the Pont-Marie. “I tell you she’s a ci-devant!” affirmed the porter. “No, not at all!” retorted a gossip, “she’s a duchess from Turkey or somewhere else. ” “A spy for Pitt and Coburg, perhaps!” The boys, to whom white coins had been thrown, ran after the crew, shouting fervently: “Long live the princess!” The skipper remained motionless for a moment. His gaze was lowered; the work of his thoughts could be read on his pale brow. “Ramberg!” he repeated. “Who is this woman? And who will give me the answer to the riddle?… Baron de Ramberg was thought to have been gone for eight days, and it has been more than two weeks since Count Wenzel disappeared… The woman with whom I saw him was dark-haired, but it was the same look… Without worrying further about the small gathering that was now examining him with distrust, he thoughtfully climbed the steps of the church and crossed the threshold. The church seemed completely deserted. The last rays of daylight barely sent dark and uncertain glimmers through the windows. The perpetual lamp let its ever- dying glow beat in front of the high altar. Not a sound in the nave indicated the presence of a human being. The patron, however, was quite sure that he had seen the young girl enter, and if the young girl had entered, it must have been in the footsteps of the one she was following. The patron had already walked along one of the side aisles, inspecting each chapel with his eyes, and half of the other, when a hand touched him as he passed, emerging from the shadow of a pillar. He stopped, but did not speak, because the human creature who was there, crouching in the deep corner left behind the pulpit, put a finger to his lips and then pointed to a confessional located a few steps away. The patron knelt on the slab and assumed the attitude of prayer. The next moment, the door of the confessional opened, and a still young priest, whose tonsure left a place of dazzling whiteness amidst a forest of black hair, went to the altar of the Virgin and prostrated himself there. After a short prayer, during which he struck his breast three times, the priest kissed the stone outside the balustrade, and went to the sacristy. The shadow then came out of its corner and said: “Now we are alone. ” He was a child, or at least he seemed so, for his head did not quite reach his companion’s shoulder, but his voice had a manly timbre, and the little that could be seen of his features belied his small stature. “Have you been here long, Patou?” asked our man. “Mr. Guardian,” replied the shadow, “Doctor Loysel’s clinic ended at twelve minutes past three, and it’s a long way from Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile to the School of Medicine. ” “What did you see?” asked again the one who was called here Mr. Guardian, and there the boss. Instead of answering this time, the pretended child shook with a sudden movement the bristling hair that was crimping on his large head, and murmured as if speaking to himself: “I would have come sooner, but Professor Loysel was giving his lesson on Samuel Hahnemann’s Organon. ” This interlude has lasted for eight days, in which there is no more question of the clinic than of the flood. I had never heard of this Samuel Hahnemann, but he is insulted so much and so well at the School, that I am beginning to regard him as a great inventor… “Patou, my friend,” interrupted the guard, “you others of the Faculty, you are all chatterboxes. It is not about this Samuel, who must be a Jew or at least a German gabbler, since he has a name in Mann… What did you see? Tell me quickly! ” “Ah! Mr. Guard,” replied Patou, “strange things, on my honor! The police must be having fun, that’s for sure, because for once when I played the spy, I amused myself like an angel!… The pretty woman, I say! –What woman? –The countess. –Ah! ah! said the guardian, she’s a countess! –Abbé Martel called her that… But did you think I meant your Angèle, poor dear heart, since you asked me: What woman? –Have you not seen Angèle? –Yes… very pale and with tears in her beautiful eyes. –And René? –René too… paler than Angèle… but with a burning gaze and no one mentally ill… –And have you guessed? –Patience!… At the sick person’s bedside, he who best explains the symptoms does not always discover the remedy. There are scholars and doctors: those who teach and those who heal… I will tell you the facts: I am the scholar… you will be the doctor, if you guess the word of the charade… or charades, for there is more than one illness there, I am sure. A sound of keys was heard at that moment from the sacristy, and the verger began a round, saying aloud: We are going to close the doors. Apart from the guardian and Patou, there was no one in the church. The guardian went towards the main entrance, but Patou held him back and began to walk in the opposite direction. Passing near the small holy water font by the side door, the guardian dipped the fingers of his right hand in it and offered some holy water to Patou, who said thank you with a laugh. The guardian crossed himself gravely. Patou said: “I have not yet examined this.” Yesterday I made fun of Samuel Hahnemann, today I would gladly attach his name to my hat; when I have finished my medical course, I intend to study a little theology, and perhaps I will die a Capuchin. He interrupted himself to add, pointing to the door: “It is through there that M. René left and after him Miss Angèle.” The guard was thoughtful. “Perhaps you are right to study everything, Patou, my friend,” he said with a sort of weariness, “I have studied nothing, except music, fencing and men… ” “Excuse me for so little!” said the apprentice doctor. “It is too late to study the rest,” finished the guard. “I am from the past, you have a future: the past believed in what it did not know; you will doubtless believe in what you have learned; I hope so, for it is good to believe. I believe in God who created me; I believe in the republic that I love and in my conscience, which has never deceived me.
Patou jumped onto the pavement of Rue Poultier and performed a four-beat entrechat that one would not have expected from his short legs. “You, boss,” he said, bursting into laughter, “you are as naive as a child, as solid as an athlete, and as absurd as a pretty woman. You confuse all notions. I have a great-nephew who said to me the other day: I love Mama and apples. It’s from your… By the way! – it’s that beautiful blonde countess who makes me think of that – what a subject to dissect! I’m currently studying the special diseases of women. I would greatly need someone… I mean someone young and well-formed… a fine subject… Would you have that in your blessing vault, Mr. Jean-Pierre? Chapter 3. GERMAIN PATOU. It was almost dark. A single step, heavy and slow, sounded on the pavement, so old, but almost virgin, of these melancholy streets where no one passes and which the clear gaze of the open shops never illuminates. This solitary step was that of a poor cripple who went along, lighting one after the other the smoky wicks of the street lamps, stingy with rays. The cripple jolted under his rags like a wicked boat tossed by the swell. He sang a joke sadder than a libera.
Patou and the man we have already designated by so many names, the boss of the masons of the Marché-Neuf, Mr. the guardian, Mr. Jean-Pierre, were going down from the little door of the church of Saint-Louis to the quay of Bethune. In the shadows, the difference between their sizes reached the fantastic. Patou seemed a dwarf and Jean-Pierre a giant. Someday we will find this dwarf, grown, not much physically , but morally; we will see Doctor Germain Patou wearing on his hat, according to his own will, the name of Samuel Hahnemann like a cockade and producing those miracles which once had the founder of the homeopathic school stoned in Leipzig, but which later melted the bronze from which his colossal statue is made, the statue of this same Samuel Hahnemann, erected in the middle of the main square, in this same city of Leipzig, his homeland. If one could apply a divine word to these small persecutions which stop for a moment, then fertilize progress through the centuries, we would say that the most curious of all the stories to be told is that of triumphant calvaries. In this bizarre and terrible comedy that we will soon be staging under the title: Number Thirteen, Doctor Germain Patou will have a role. The boss answered his last question thus: “Little man, you do not always speak with enough respect about the things that are in my care. I do not like jokes on this subject; but you are worth more than your irony, and they say that for the profession you have chosen it is not bad to harden one’s heart a little. I knew you as a child; I did not do for you all that I would have liked.
” Patou interrupted him with another squeeze of the hand. “Stop there,” he cried. “You have given me bread twice, Monsieur Sévérin,” he said with a deep emotion that would have astonished you even more than the entrechat with four compartments: bread for the body and bread for the soul; It is through you that I have lived, it is through you that I have studied; if I dominate my comrades at school, it is because you have opened to me this dark amphitheater near which you sleep, merciful and calm, like the incarnate goodness of God… A tear fell on the boss’s hand. “You are a good little fellow!” he murmured, “thank you. ” “I will be what the future wills,” replied Patou, who straightened his short stature. “I don’t know, but I can vouch for the present and tell you that, at a sign from you, I would throw myself into the water or the fire, whichever you prefer! ” The boss bent over him and kissed him, repeating in a low voice: “Thank you, little man. I would be very embarrassed to say exactly where the shoe pinches me, but I feel that I will soon need all those who love me… Tell me what you saw.” They resumed walking side by side, and Patou began thus: “When I arrived, after school, Abbé Martel was alone with the horse-trading person of all kinds. They were talking about this and that, about Pichegru’s arrest, I suppose, for Abbé Martel said: “The unfortunate man has tarnished some very fine years of glory in a few days. ” “Knowledge, knowledge!” replied the horse-trading person of all kinds; it depends on your point of view !
Then he added: “Monsieur l’abbé, you know that I hardly get involved in politics. My business comes first, and if something happens to the First Consul, you can imagine what a waste it would be! ” “God forbid!” said the Abbé, making a great sign of the cross. After which he gave the horse-trader the address of a person whose name I did not catch and who lives at his hotel on the Chaussée des Minimes.
And he added: “That one is an angel and a saint. ” “Whatever you want, Monsieur l’Abbé,” replied the person of all types of merchant corps, who seems like a cheerful companion, “as long as she buys me a pair or two of my fine Norman horses… ” “He didn’t mention his nephew?” asked the boss. “Not that I know of,” replied Patou, “but I only heard the end of their conversation…” And Professor Loysel’s lesson was still running through my mind. a little by the head! What a fellow this Hahnemann is!… A real angel, I won’t say a saint, I don’t know, that’s that blonde countess. You couldn’t see her as well as I did. Night was already falling, and broad daylight is necessary for these exquisite perfections. Eyes, imagine two sapphires! A mouth that is a smile, a figure that is a dream of grace and youth, transparent hair where the light glides and plays… “Little man,” interrupted the boss, “I am here for René and for Angèle. ” “Good!” cried Patou. It seems that I was burning like an armful of dry wood, boss? And yet I don’t feel like a lover. But it is certain that, if the devil could tempt me, that creature… Anyway, no matter; let us come to M. René de Kervoz. I believe that Mr. René de Kervoz is of the same opinion as me and that your poor Angèle had guessed all this before us. I will give you the pure and simple report of what I saw. It is not much, but you are a shrewd one, you, boss, and you will find the answer to the riddle at the first attempt. After the departure of the person of all types of horse-trading corps, Abbé Martel returned to the sacristy, and I took up my post at the corner of the pillar. A light step made me turn my head; a dazzling light passed before my eyes: it was the blond angel. Word of honor! I have never imagined anything more charming… The angel crossed the threshold of the sacristy, leaving behind her that perfumed wind which betrayed the presence of Venus. See Virgil, When she came out, Abbé Martel was following her: a handsome priest, very venerable, although he was a little too involved in politics. He was still talking politics as he made his way to his confessional, and he said: “My daughter, the First Consul did a lot for religion; I fear that you are mixed up in all these intrigues of the conspirators. ” The beautiful blonde gave a strange smile as she replied: “My father, today you will learn the secret of my life. A fatality weighs on me. Do not suspect me before I have told you my misfortune and the hope that remains to me. I am of noble race, even of powerful race; death has reaped around me, leaving me alone. The letter from the Archbishop Primate of Gran, Vicar General of His Holiness in Hungary, told you that I seek protection, a family, in the Church. Conspiracies horrify me, and if I lose the last chance I have of being happy in my heart, my plan is to seek peace in the depths of a cloister. Abbé Martel’s confessional opened, then closed. I heard nothing more… Here the apprentice doctor stopped abruptly to fix on his companion his eyes that shone in the night. “Boss,” he asked, “do you understand anything about this? ” “Stay,” replied the guard, whose pensive head was bowed on his chest. “If you understand, good for you!” resumed Patou. “I continue.” About a quarter of an hour passed. This good church of Saint Louis-en-l’Ile does not receive many visitors. The first person who entered was that tall German boy to whom you used to give fencing lessons. “Ramberg,” murmured the guard. “I saw him.” “This meeting must have surprised you, because you told me he had left for Germany.” Upon entering, he went straight to the sacristy, where Father Martel and the divine blonde soon joined him. In the sacristy, there was a conference of a little over twenty minutes, after which the delicious blonde went to kneel before the altar of the Virgin, while the German and Father Martel took their places in the confessional. Don’t people confess before getting married, boss? The warden didn’t reply. Patou continued: “Mr. René de Kervoz entered while the German was confessing. Angèle followed him closely. You can imagine if I had my eyes and ears in my pocket! René de Kervoz crossed the church with a quick step. It must not have been the first time he had an appointment in this place, or at least in a place like this. My blonde goddess heard the sound of his footsteps and turned around. She put a finger to her mouth. Kervoz stopped as if by magic. They thought they were alone together, for Angèle, pale, breathless, and ready to fall from exhaustion, but with her eyes burning and her chest heaving, stood motionless a few steps from me, behind the same pillar. Night was already falling. Angèle did not see me. When she knelt down, no longer able to stand on her legs, I could have touched her, just by stretching out my hand. I remained motionless, but my heart was heavy with the dull sound of sobs tearing at her chest. They must have thought they were alone. Neither of them suspected my presence, and from the confessional where Abbé Martel was listening to the German, one cannot see the altar of the Virgin. The charming stranger had a face to paint, lit as she was by the last rays of daylight passing through the stained-glass windows. Behind me, poor Angèle murmured in a voice drowned by tears: “My God, my God! How beautiful she is!” Kervoz wanted to speak; with an imperious gesture, he closed his mouth. The queen of blondes smiled like a Madonna. She uttered a few words that did not reach me, and it seemed to me that her finger pointed to Abbé Martel’s confessional. The interview, moreover, did not last a minute. The hand of my beautiful stranger extended outward, and René de Kervoz, with the obedience of a slave, left the church by the side door. Angèle, the poor child, got up, groaning, to rush back in his footsteps. Just at that moment the German’s confession ended. My unknown woman—for she is mine too, patron, and although I am a rather ugly butterfly, I would gladly burn both my wings on this diabolical or celestial torch—my unknown woman joined M. de Ramberg, and they knelt beside each other. Before leaving, they both bowed before the confessional, from which issued a word of benediction. That is all, except this detail: I heard a double offering fall into the poor box , heavy and resounding. You know the rest better than I, since you came in at the moment they were leaving together… “Now, patron,” interrupted the little doctor, who fixed his eyes, shining with curiosity, on his companion, “have pity on me. If you see clearly, tell me quickly the key to this charade, for I am burning to know!” Is this just a gallant intrigue? The old story of a pretty woman playing underfoot two lovers? Are we on the trail of a plot? Is this priest deceived? Is he an accomplice? Everything about it is bizarre, even the person of all types of horse-trading corps, whose face appears menacing and terrible to me, when I look back… You don’t answer, boss? The guard was indeed thoughtful and silent. They had stopped at the end of Rue Poultier, in front of the parapet of the quay overlooking the wine port. The moon, rising behind the trees of the Île Louviers, extended by the enormous poplars of the Mail Henri IV, struck obliquely the current of the Seine and formed a long spectre made of moving spangles. There is no longer an Île Louviers, and the giant poplars of the Arsenal have fallen. Towards the west, all along the water. Paris cheerfully lit its candles, its lamps and its street lamps; on the eastern side, it was almost country night, because the Île Louviers and the Mail hid the Arsenal district, and, on the other bank of the Seine, the gaze had to go as far as Ivry, beyond the Jardin des Plantes, to meet a few lights. A single glow, bright and red, caught the eye at the corner of the rue de Bretonvilliers. It was the provocative lantern of the cabaret of Ezekiel, the master of the Miraculous Catch. There was not a soul on the quay, but the silence was sometimes suddenly broken by sudden rumors mixed with bursts of laughter. This noise came from the river, and to know its origin it would have been enough to lean over the parapet. The miracle fishermen were at their posts despite the late hour. There was on the bank a hurried line of good people who cast the hook with patient zeal. The clamour and laughter were produced by those little incidents which constantly enliven fishing in the Seine, where the hook catches more old hats, more drowned boots and more carcasses of deceased cats than sturgeons. Every disappointment of this kind brought transports of joy. The apprentice doctor, who was obviously a fellow who enjoyed everything, listened for a moment to the commotion taking place at the foot of the wall. He seemed to know the place very well as well as the kind of work that brought everyone together. After a minute or two, he raised his head towards his companion and repeated: “Boss, aren’t you answering?” The guard had put his elbows on the parapet, beyond which his gaze plunged. “Do you believe in that, Patou?” he asked, pointing at the row of fishermen who were at that moment silent. “I believe in everything,” replied the little man: “it’s less tiring than doubting. Besides, I bought here last week a very beautiful femur which seemed to have been disarticulated by a preparer from the amphitheater. ” “Ah!” said the guard. He added: “Your femur had been pulled out of the water! ” “It hadn’t been there long,” Patou replied, “and nothing will take away my idea that there is some devilry underneath… But all that is not an answer to my question. Do you know more than I do, yes or no?” The guard sat down on the parapet and lifted his hat to wipe the sweat that bathed his bare forehead. “What is happening there,” he said, “is an enigma to me as it is to you. It is because I do not understand that I am afraid.” He was deeply moved; he said again: “I would not want anyone to harm the First Consul; I love him, although I suspect him of wanting to confiscate the Republic… But the First Consul is good at defending himself if he is attacked; I’m not thinking of the First Consul… Angèle, René, those two children are the blood of my heart… I would give my right hand to know! “A valiant hand!” cried Patou; “it would be too expensive! ” “Whether it’s a love intrigue,” continued the guard, “a conspiracy, or both together… or even one of those dark villainies who take advantage of troubled times to achieve their ends, there is something… I feel there is something threatening and bloody… I will know the bottom of all this, even if I have to go as far as the Prefect of Police!” Patou gave a sneer that did not testify to great confidence in this important magistrate. “I will go further if necessary,” continued the guard. “One of my three friends from Germany has already disappeared. If Ramberg disappears, it will be in the same hole. I warned the first, I will warn the second; But this woman is beautiful, and her gaze makes one dizzy… “You’d think so!” began Patou, who remained speechless. “I’m scared!” said the guardian for the third time. The little man murmured: “It’s true! Her gaze makes one dizzy… I’m beginning to understand.” There was an explosion of shouts at the water’s edge. “Hold on, Colinet,” they said. “Firm, Colinet! Don’t let go!” “Colinet, you’re holding your fortune! Come on!” Our two companions stood on the balcony on the parapet and watched. By the moonlight they could see the ranks of fishermen breaking to surround a man in a shabby costume, harnessed to a bottom line and pulling with all his might. “This time, it must be a whale!” grumbled Patou. “Or a whole corpse,” said the warden. They came to the aid of Colinet, whose line was solid, and after a few carefully directed efforts, the fished object appeared at the surface of the water, lit by straw torches that the curious onlookers had lit. A tremendous burst of laughter awakened the deserted echoes of the shore, from the chevet of Notre Dame to the Quai de la Râpée. “Bravo, Colinet!” “Colinet is lucky!” “Colinet has caught a Pierrot on the bottom line, with a ball of clay! Long live Colinet!” The object was indeed a Pierrot, dressed from head to toe in the traditional garb of the jester in Italian comedy, but it was not a drowned man in the flesh. For one reason or another, this dismal trick had been played on the fishermen of miracles, of sinking in their favorite place a mannequin stuffed with straw and sand. The noise from the bank took a long time to subside. Colinet, devoid of bad shame, made a bundle of the rags that clothed the mannequin and put them up for auction at the price of forty sous. Patou had laughed at first like the others, but reflection came to him, and he said: “Those who did this must have had some interest.” “Little man,” replied the guardian abruptly, “I have no more need of you. Now go up to the house, where my good wife is alone and perhaps worried. Angèle should be home by now.” If you know a remedy for grief, write him a prescription… Tell him I’ll be back late, and good night. Patou, thus dismissed, walked obediently away in the direction of the Pont-Marie. The guard, left alone, began to walk slowly towards Ezéchiel’s cabaret, at the sign of the Miraculous Peach. Chapter 4. THE HEART OF GOLD If the Lady of the Camellias, this photograph taken after his death by Alexandre Dumas fils, the charming and implacable poet, had taken passage in good time on a clipper of the Australian General Company, she would have been cured of her pulmonary consumption and would now be featured in the festivals of the Three-Quarters of the World as a baroness of anything. She would be terribly rich; she would have at her feet all the illustrations of the time and would give her contemporaries alms with memoirs in ten volumes, instructive, amusing and particularly suited to forming the heart of the nineteenth century. The priestesses of love need a California, whether they are ladies with ten-louis camellias or ladies with one-penny wallflowers, whether El Dorado is ancient Peru or New South Wales. They no longer cough as soon as they go into battle, just as Marlborough, Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, Captain Cook discovered and conquered two out of five parts of the world for them; Mr. Benazet founded the sixth. Have you ever seen them spit blood at the sound of gold being stirred up by the shovel? Have they ever been lacking in any gambling den, brilliant or humble? God forbid we compare Ezekiel’s sordid cabaret to the marvelous gold fields surrounding Melbourne, the Paris of Oceania, to the romantic placers of the Vermilion Sea, or even to this pleasant paradise of Baden. There are categories among gambling dens. We only want to say that every gambling den, hideous or magnificent, attracted these ladies with flowers like wool attracts moths; they are happy there, they thrive there; that is, obviously, their own atmosphere. There were ladies with wallflowers in the cabaret of the brave Ezéchiel, which was a gambling den. This poor field of gold on the Quai de Béthune attracted the adventurous women of the Cité and the Faubourg Saint-Marceau, who came to see Midas in rags risking on a dirty map the poor windfall snatched from the mud of this Pactolus for a laugh. Ezekiel alone earned a little money from this. Whether the story of the first wreck pulled from the river, the diamond ring, was fabricated or authentic, it is certain that Ezekiel had very skillfully taken advantage of it . He was a tall fellow, people of all body types, yellow in complexion and hair; he had a flat face, an insignificant look, a faded smile. The cunning in him was hidden under a thick layer of innocence. You have all known these parishioners, half Norman, half Jewish, who would show the Auvergnats themselves a lesson in roguery. Ezekiel, before becoming a capitalist, was a fisherman by trade. He knew from experience how one makes a rendezvous with the fish by casting in advance the abundant bait in certain places. Had he prepared a place here, not for fish, but for dupes? This idea had not yet occurred to anyone. The only thing that was astonishing in Ezekiel’s story was the rare success with which he had overcome the material difficulties that stood in the way of even establishing his cabaret. The Quai de Béthune then, as it does today, presented a rigid and monumental alignment. There was no room there for a shack. On the other side of the point, near the Hôtel Lambert, which now gives its name to the ladies’ baths, there were indeed a few hovels, but they turned their backs on the place already consecrated by the first find. The Casino had to be near the beach: there could not have been a better choice than the corner of the Rue de Bretonvilliers. Only the two corners of this street were formed by two large devils of hotels with rectangular walls, made of cut stone, as thick as ramparts. The real miracle, for Ezekiel, had been to obtain permission to attack one of these angles and to nestle his den in the thickness of this noble masonry, as one sees the impudent larva rounding its dwelling in the healthy sapwood of a large tree. Ezekiel had obtained this permission. The cabaret of the Miraculous Peach, a sort of irregular cavern, insinuated itself like a gut inside the buildings and took up only about a third of the height of the ground floor. Since the Marais became favored in industry, a number of hotels have, moreover, followed this example, opening their own sides, like the pelican, not out of charity, but out of avarice. The floor of Ezekiel’s cabaret was a little lower than the street. There they drank, ate, played, bought lines, hooks, bait, rods, everything needed, in a word, to harpoon fish, fed with signet rings. The hotel belonged to a respectable old man, M. d’Aubremesnil, formerly a councilor in parliament, who had not emigrated and lived in Versailles. The only inhabited building was a pavilion, located at the end of a large garden, and whose entrance was on rue Saint-Louis, opposite the outbuildings of the Hôtel Lambert. This pavilion had been rented a few months earlier by a young lady of rare beauty, who lived in solitude and occupied herself with good works.
When our man, the patron of the masons of the Marché-Neuf, arrived at the threshold of the semi-subterranean den where the brave Ezekiel was master after God, he hesitated, so repulsive and obscene was the appearance of this cavern . Paris has long since cast these stains from itself; Paris, despite the exaggerations of certain pen-painters , is one of the least dishonored cities in the universe. What in Paris would be a monstrous exception today is found at every step in the finest districts of London, that Babylon of glacial debauchery and shameless boredom. But the morals of Paris, in 1804, still retained the brazen stamp of the Directory. The lantern of the Miraculous Catch of Fish only illuminated the outside. Inside, it was a misty half-light, in which barely veiled nudity swarmed. Half a dozen women were there, sprawled on wooden sofas covered with a few strands of straw, drinking, playing, or watching an equal number of men belonging to the abandoned class of pounding the pavement play. It was not French, to tell the truth, any more than the stupid and cold nights of Paul Niquet are French. One can regard these hideous things as desperate borrowings from English degradation . London alone is the favorable setting for these irremediable horrors, where vice takes on the appearance of torture and where the wretched amuse themselves as one suffers in hell. In Paris, vice always retains a good deal of boasting; in London, serious and convinced perdition swims in the mud naturally like a fish in water. Anyone who has entered the spirit shops of the old Saint-Gilles district at night, or even the crowded gin palaces in the heart of the fashionable city around Covent Garden, must recognize the truth of this saying: In Paris, horror is an eccentric fashion; in London, it is a fruit of the soil. The guard hesitated, caught in the throat by the fetid exhalations that issued from this underground passage, but his hesitation did not last. He was a man who could have crossed many other barriers. “I know another cellar,” he thought, “where the air is even worse .” And he entered, smiling melancholy. Although he certainly did not have the air of a great lord in his costume, and a well-dressed bourgeois would have looked with disdain at the coarse material of his clothes, there was such a contrast between his attire and that of the regulars at the Miraculous Fishing, that his appearance caused a scandal. It was not without precedent that an honest man, excused by his passion for fishing, had entered by day at Ezekiel’s, who, as we have said, kept a shop selling all sorts of tackle; but after nightfall , the physiognomy of his den was so clearly characterized, that the most valiant of onlookers would have taken to his heels after having cast a glance inside. “There’s a lamb!” said one of the wallflowers. “A sheep, rather,” retorted a villainous-looking rogue who was holding the cards in a game of foutreau (a noble game derived from the bouillotte) and whose hooked nose held a drogue or wooden tongs proudly placed askew: “an old sheep! And tough! Look at him, Ezekiel.” Ezekiel didn’t need to be arrested: he was a purebred dog. He came to meet the guard with a pipe in his mouth and a nasty expression. “What do you want, citizen?” he asked. “Wine,” replied the landlord, who sat down. Ezekiel assumed an insolent air. “My wine isn’t good enough,” he said, “for a gentleman of your sort. ” The women burst out laughing, the men cried: “The pensioner has come to the wrong door.” The landlord took off his hat, which wasn’t new, and placed it on the table. How can I put this? There was indeed something of the rentier in the appearance of this half-stripped skull, which the good-natured gaze of two large blue eyes marked with a sort of candor, but there was also something else. The sheep had something of the wolf. The attachments of its neck stood out in broad lines, its movements were broad and supple; despite the placid manner it affected, one discovered in it something of the sort that announces the uncoupling of muscles and makes athletes. The men felt ill at ease under his gaze, and the women stopped mocking. “Give your wine as it is, friend,” he said to Ezekiel, “and do it quickly: I’m thirsty.” The innkeeper, this time, obeyed with a growl. When he returned with the full half-pint of pewter and the wet glass, princesses and rogues had resumed their frolics. “My friend,” the keeper said to him, touching a stool with his foot, ” sit down here, so that we can talk together. ” “Do you think I have time to talk?” Ezekiel began. “I don’t know if you have time, my friend, and it doesn’t matter to me. I need to talk with you: take this seat. ” “If I don’t want to, however…” said the innkeeper. “If you don’t want to,” the landlord interrupted, pouring himself a glass, ” we will discuss aloud a subject that you would prefer to discuss in a low voice. ” He drank. Ezekiel sat down. “The fact is,” the landlord continued calmly, “that your wine is detestable… How much did it cost you, friend, to obtain permission to dishonor the corner of the Hôtel d’Aubremesnil? ” Ezekiel lowered his eyebrows, behind which a flash of lightning lit up. “And what cemetery have you desecrated,” the landlord continued, “to give so much dead flesh to the fish, here near? For you are not a tiger, friend, I know you: you are only a jackal.” The innkeeper’s anger fought against an evident terror. These two feelings were expressed by the contraction of his features and the pallor of his lips. “Who are you?” he asked. “I am,” replied the guardian, “the man who comes and goes, at night, on the river. I do not chase the same game there as you. We met the evening you became rich. ” “Ah!” said Ezekiel, was that you? He added in a dull voice: “There was also a dead woman in your boat! ” The guard gravely inclined his head in affirmation. Then he took a six-pound piece from his pocket and placed it on the table. “I am not rich, friend,” he said, “and I mean you no harm . I will leave your house as I came in, if you let me know the name of the woman who pays you. You are only a blind instrument: no misfortune will befall you through me…” The innkeeper had bowed his head. He suddenly stepped back and seized his stool by one foot to brandish it above his head. “To me, sons!” he cried. “That one is an agent of Cadoudal! He came here to buy people to kill the First Consul! His head is worth a lot: let’s win the bounty!” This accusation, however absurd it may seem, and especially so completely foreign to the subject of the conversation it interrupted, should not come as a surprise. Every moment has its hobbyhorse. We have seen in Paris a certain hour when the first comer could have killed a passer-by by accusing him of having thrown cholera powder into the Seine. The regulars of the Miraculous Peach sprang to their feet and rushed to block the way to the door. The owner smiled . “That’s not my route,” he murmured. He rose in turn and put his broad-brimmed hat back on his head with great composure . “My friend,” he continued, going to the table where they had just been playing, “you have found a pretty good column there; but you don’t know who you are dealing with, and it takes something even stronger to put me in an embarrassment… Make way!” As he spoke, he had taken the lamp that was on the table in his hand. As the innkeeper raised his stool, he brushed it aside with the back of his free hand and passed on. The innkeeper took a few steps, staggering, and only stopped when he struck the wall. “A rough grip!” the ladies said admiringly. The men armed themselves with whatever they could lay their hands on; several had knives. Ezekiel growled: “If you kill that mad dog, you’ll get his weight in gold from the police!” The landlord, meanwhile, still holding his lamp high, had gone to the very back of the cellar. There were some fishing tackle there, new nets rolled into bundles, and bundles of poles. He threw the poles aside, without hurrying too much, and discovered a door, which he tested with his foot. The door gave way; it opened outward and was not locked. “Knives!” cried Ezekiel, who rushed forward bravely. “This one has done too much: he will not get out of here alive!” The landlord turned around just as the innkeeper, well accompanied by the rest, arrived at him. The lamp lit up his face so extraordinarily calmly that there was a pause in the movement of the assailants. The landlord held the lamp out to Ezekiel, who received it with a mechanical gesture. “I saw what I wanted to see,” he said, “and I’ve earned my day. ” “He’s a mentally ill person!” cried a woman, moved with pity at seeing him smiling and unsuspecting. “Close the street door,” ordered Ezekiel, “and let’s finish the job! ” “La! la!” said the boss, taking a pole and breaking it on his knee, just the right length for a fighting cane: “I tell you, you don’t know who you’re dealing with!” His smile brightened, and a gleam burst into his eyes. At the very moment when the street door was closing, the boss was attacked from three sides at once: by Ezekiel, who, lifting his stool with both hands, delivered a blow to his head, and by two ragged bandits, one of whom threw a knife at his side with a shortened arm, while the other plunged his stick into his stomach. It was a transfiguration. The boss’s whole person took on an admirable character of youth and swagger. His height expanded, his chest broadened, his forehead lit up. No one here could have said how the three attacks were parried; the boss’s head barely inclined a little to the left to let the stool pass, while his half of the pole described two semicircles, one of which made the stick jump into the air, the other of which cleanly broke the wrist, which held the knife. The wounded man let out a howl of pain and rage. “And make sure the lamp doesn’t go out,” said the devil of a boss cheerfully. “I wouldn’t be able to correct you delicately; it would be too bad for your skulls!” Ezekiel bravely placed himself in the last row. He armed himself with a long-handled boat hook and counted his soldiers by eye. “La Meslin!” he cried, “the scoundrel has crippled your man! For life: the women must get involved… If he weren’t such a nobody of all types, I’d tell you it’s Cadoudal himself. I’ll bet my life they’ll pay him a thousand crowns at the prefecture… Take the embers from the hearth, my darlings! Let’s burn him! When we should be setting fire to the house!” La Meslin was a tall, solidly built woman, who was already kneeling beside her fallen man. She got up and leaped like a lioness toward the hearth where the pot was boiling. “Let’s burn the beggar! Let’s burn him!” The men moved aside, clutching their knives and clubs, like infantry waiting for the gunners to finish their work before rushing to the charge. The hovel filled with smoke and flames; the six harpies shook their firebrands. The boss made a sideways leap that avoided the burning projectile launched by La Meslin with all her might. The terrible cane described half a dozen circles, and for a long minute, there was an indescribable hubbub inside the hovel: shouts, shocks, blasphemies, falls, gnashing of teeth, and a pistol shot. Once the minute had elapsed, this was the state of the question: our singular friend, the patron of the masons of the Marché-Neuf, stood standing in the middle of the room, where the scattered embers were smoking on all sides; his right cheek was black, and the back of his greatcoat was badly burned, but no serious injuries were visible. At the back of the hovel, the nets were beginning to blaze, damaged as they had been by the shards of embers. Ezekiel no longer had his long-handled boat hook, the pieces of which littered the floor; on the other hand, he had a magnificent bump of bloody purple on his forehead, and his toothless mouth spat red. The man from La Meslin was rolling in the mud, still holding an unloaded pistol. His frizzy hair had not protected his skull, which bore a large crack. The other bandits kept their distance, and the terrified women were huddled in a corner, except for La Meslin, who was trying to lift the split head of her lover. Not a single word had been exchanged between the besieged man, alone on his side, and the flock of assailants. At that moment the besieged man, who had lost the dazzling flash of his eyes and who seemed as calm as if he had been strolling in the Garden of the Palais-Royal, put his cane under his arm and plunged his hand into his pocket. “It’s the devil!” growled Ezekiel. “You are ten against one,” roared La Meslin, who got up drunk with rage. “Let’s all attack him together, and my man will be avenged!” She broke off with a stifled cry; the knife she had picked up from the ground slipped from her hands! “Ah!” she said, fixing a stupefied look on the skipper, “he’s much worse than the devil!… How did I not recognize him?… It’s Mr. Gâteloup!” This name of Gâteloup, repeated in every corner of the cellar, formed a long murmur. The lover of Meslin reopened his eyes and looked. The boss had removed his hand from his pocket and was calmly tying to his buttonhole the object that had made him recognized. At first glance, this seemed to give credence to Ezekiel’s accusations , for the Chouans of Brittany wore a similar object as a rallying sign on their hats or on their chests, and Georges Cadoudal must have had one in his pocket. But long before the Chouans of Brittany, the brotherhood of Parisian masters of arms had consecrated this sign that professors and provosts wore on the left side of their breastplates. It was a heart embroidered in gold and framed in a rosette of scarlet ribbons. Each master added a distinctive sign which was in a way a coat of arms and which announced his name to the initiates. Now, if the patron of the masons of the Marché-Neuf was, in his guise as a good bourgeois, a neighborhood celebrity, receiving hat-tips from the Palais de Justice to the Hôtel de Ville, in another aspect, as a fighter in revolutionary brawls, as a savior, as a trainer or moderator of the people, Gâteloup was a universally accepted glory , especially among the poor class. The good admired and loved him, the wicked feared him. In danger formerly, during civil battles, where he had played a role both terrible and benevolent, he made himself recognized by the help of his shield of master of arms: a heart of gold in a knot of red favors where two black stripes, broadly accentuated, marked a cross of Saint-André. This meant: I am Jean-Pierre Sévérin, called Gâteloup; as formerly the golden fleurs-de-lis on a field of azure said: Bourbon; the joined macles: Rohan; and the sixteen azure alerions quartering the red cross in a gold field: Montmorency. In ancient battles there was no shame for the brave man to retreat before a stronger man. The chariot of Achilles crossed the battles without encountering any enemies other than the short-sighted who did not recognize quickly enough the flaming shield present of Hippodamia. The rogues gathered at the tavern of the Pêche miraculous were not at all imbued with chivalrous prejudices. There was not a single hand to keep a weapon, and Meslin said, pointing to her man: “Ah! Citizen Gâteloup, that’s still gratitude we owe you, for if you had wanted to, you wouldn’t have knocked him halfway down! ” “That’s true, my girl,” replied the boss, “and if I put my name in my buttonhole, it’s because I was afraid of knocking you all down… Put out the fire, Ezekiel… You others, make way for me.” Two or three buckets of water thrown at the nets, which were slowly burning, did the trick. Ezekiel, with a smile on his lips, had approached the victor. This one must have been a damned scoundrel, for he hid his resentment under an obsequious and caressing air. “My good master,” he said, “it drives us crazy to think that there is a man in Paris who wants to kill Citizen Bonaparte. I, who am speaking to you, see the traitor Cadoudal everywhere … And as for the door at the back, over there, it leads quite simply to the cellar where I keep my poor wine that you find so bad.” The owner put his hand on his shoulder, and Ezekiel was on the point of collapsing as if he had been burdened with too heavy a weight. “Don’t hurt me,” he murmured. “Listen,” the owner interrupted him… “Are you the man to answer frankly and honestly the questions that will be put to you? ” “As for that, my master,” cried Ezekiel, “ask everyone, I am only too frank. With my heart on my sleeve, always!… Ah! If I had been a bit malicious, my case would have been closed long ago!” “Are you working for a lady?” the boss whispered. “For a lady?” repeated Ezekiel. “That’s an idea?” Then he added, winking confidentially. “Well, yes, there. We can’t hide anything from you, my master. It’s for a lady… and we’re trying to tie a knot around the leg of the scoundrels who want to kill the First Consul!… Is that forbidden?” The boss’s hand weighed heavier on his shoulder, but at that moment a resounding and joyous clamour passed through the street door . “A windfall! A windfall!” they cried. “Open up, Citizen Ezekiel! ” “There’s been a miraculous catch! ” “And good hunting!” added other voices that seemed more distant. “We bring in the tide!” said the fishermen. “And we bring in the game!” exclaimed the hunters. “Open up, Ezekiel! Open up, you old fellow!” “Shall we open the door, my good master?” asked the innkeeper, giving the victor of the recent fight a respectful and submissive glance. The latter made a gesture of consent. The door rolled back on its hinges, and a large company entered laden with booty. There were four of them at first, four strong fellows, to carry a very small basket containing a good fifty gudgeon. Next came the happy owner of the straw mannequin. Third, two urchins triumphantly held up a pair of old breeches, in the pocket of which a six- farthing piece had been found. “Here’s the catch!” they cried. “Shut up shop, Ezekiel. There’s nothing left in the river. ” “I know very well who’s playing these tricks on me!” replied the innkeeper melancholy : “the enemies of the First Consul!” He was interrupted by another wave arriving, shouting: “Here’s the hunt!” They were bringing on fishing rods, arranged like a stretcher, a poor beautiful child, fainted or dead. When the light of the lamp fell on her livid, but still charming, face, the boss of the masons of the Marché-Neuf gave a loud cry which was a name: –Angèle! Chapter 5. THE TERMINAL
In the first lines of this story we saw an elegant and handsome young man walking alone along the Quai de la Grève. Then, behind him, a charming young girl, also alone and who seemed to be following him from afar. Then, finally, an old man, dressed bourgeoisly, but with a noble air, who seemed to be following the two. In the course of our story, we learned the name of the young man: René de Kervoz, and the name of the young girl: Angèle. As for the old bourgeois, those who have read the first episode of this series: the Room of Loves, knew him for a long time. After the mysterious and almost silent scene which took place, towards nightfall , in the church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile, between this dazzling blonde who was called Madame la Comtesse, the German Ramberg, René and the Abbé Martel, a scene of which the apprentice doctor Germain Patou, on one side, and Angèle on the other, were the silent witnesses, René de Kervoz left first. Angèle followed him immediately, as she had done from the Place du Châtelet. She seemed very weak; his slow and painful step faltered, but these poor wounded hearts have terrible courage. It was not quite night yet when René de Kervoz, leaving by the side door, entered the rue Poultier. Instead of turning towards the Quai de Béthune, as Germain Patou and the boss were to do later , he went back up towards the rue Saint-Louis. His walk was also slow and uncertain, but it was not weakness. Those who knew him and who had seen him face to face at that hour would have noticed with astonishment the ardent red replacing the usual pallor of his cheek. His eyes burned under his violently contracted eyebrows. Angèle, poor sweet child, had grown up between two simple and good hearts, her adoptive father and her mother, the only two friends she had in the world. She knew nothing of life. She did not see René’s face; consequently she could not read the book of his physiognomy. But do we know where they get this second sight? There is an admirable sorcery in hearts sick with love. What she did not see, Angèle guessed. The passion that was transforming René de Kervoz’s features had in Angèle’s soul a sort of painful and heartbroken echo. She was not thinking of herself; her thoughts were full of him. Was he suffering? Sometimes it is happiness that crushes like this. She was almost as afraid of suffering as of happiness. And yet, ordinarily, it is only happiness that women’s jealousy dreads. But Angèle was not yet quite a woman; young girls love differently than women. Angèle held the middle ground between woman and young girl. René turned the corner of the Rue de Saint-Louis and headed towards the Quai d’Anjou, which faced the Île Louviers. This was not the first time Angèle had followed René. She had the right to follow him, if the most sacred of all promises, this contract of honor binding the man to the pure child who gave herself, confers a right. Angèle was for all the fiancée of René de Kervoz; she was his wife before God. Never had she seen so much as today. What she suspected, perhaps for a long time, entered her heart this evening like a bitter certainty. René loved another woman. Not as he had loved her, sweetly and saintly. Oh! what lost happiness! René loved the other woman with fury, with anguish. Halfway along Rue Poultier, on the eastern side of the Quai d’Anjou, a monumental wall formed the corner of Rue Bretonvilliers, at the other end of which was the cabaret of the Miraculous Peach. The block of properties between the two streets formed the eastern tip of the island; It consisted of the Bretonvilliers pavilion and the Aubremesnil hotel, with their gardens: these two dwellings, separated only by a magnificent avenue, belonged to the same master, the former councilor of parliament of whom we have spoken. Besides these noble residences, there were a few bourgeois houses with street frontage. The Bretonvilliers pavilion, which was nothing other than the gable of a very old hotel, a sort of contemporary manor house perhaps from the time when the island was still the countryside of Paris, was embedded in the wall and even projected several feet onto the road: which later motivated its demolition. It had only two floors: the first with three facade windows; the second, much lower, with five; the whole was topped with a steep roof. There was no opening on the ground floor. One entered through a door pierced in the wall, to the right of the facade and opening onto the gardens. It was at this door that René de Kervoz knocked. A dog’s bark, deep and hollow, which seemed to come from the mouth of a giant animal, answered his call. An elderly woman wearing a foreign costume came to open the door. She first barred René’s way, saying: The masters are away. René answered her, giving these two Latin words the Magyar pronunciation: Salus Hungariae. The old woman looked him in the face and seemed to hesitate. “Introi, domine,” she said finally, also in Latin pronounced in the Hungarian way, “sub auctoritate dominae meae” (enter, sir, under the authority of my mistress). The door closed. A resounding crack of the whip put an end to the barking of the person of all types of body dog. Angèle was too far away to see or hear. When she arrived at the door, all was silence inside. She stopped, motionless, slumped like the statue of Discouragement. She was not crying. It did not occur to her to knock at that door. Why had she come, however? Alas, they do not know, these poor wounded women. They go to take a look at the very depths of their misfortune, but not to fight. When the idea of fighting comes to them, they almost always push their courage to the point of madness. But the idea of fighting most often comes to them too late. They doubt for so long! For so long they cling to the dear illusion of hope. Angèle remained standing for long minutes in front of the door, her heart oppressed, her eyes half closed. No sound came from within. Outside was equally silent, for night had fallen and the footsteps of the lantern-lighters had ceased to be heard. A single murmur, confused and intermittent, came from the direction of the Quai de Béthune, where the tavern of the Miraculous Peach remained open. Opposite the door through which René had disappeared, at the corner of a house whose windows were all black and which seemed uninhabited like most of the dwellings in this sad neighborhood, there was a granite marker ringed with iron. Angèle sat down on it. From there one could see the windows of the old pavilion of Bretonvilliers. They were black too, enormous in height and strangely lit by the moon at rise, which sent its oblique rays upon them, before leaving them in shadow as it rose towards the south. Mechanically, Angèle’s gaze fell on these three gigantic windows, behind which one could make out muslin curtains, draped widely. She saw, as one sees things in a dream, one of these curtains half lift and a head appear. The moonlight now illuminated only the outlines, and it was so vague!… A young head, a beloved head: that brow and that look that Angèle saw night and day, that mouth that had said to her: I love you! Oh! and that smile! and that hair so soft that a chaste kiss had so often mingled with her own hair! René! her whole soul, her first, her only love! It was René! It was truly René! Why in this place? And alone? Was he waiting? What was he waiting for? The moon was turning; the shadows accentuated even more this smile that perhaps did not exist. For Angèle, René smiled, and so gently! and, through those cursed panes, René looked at her with such tenderness! Could it be? If René had seen her, if René had recognized her, he in that house, she in the street and on that milestone, René would not have smiled. Oh! certainly. He was good, he was noble. He would have been ashamed, and remorseful, and frightened. But what does it matter what is possible or impossible? At certain times, the mind no longer judges, fever is master. Angèle stretched out her poor trembling hands toward René and began to speak to him in a low voice. She told him those sweet things that the tête-à-tête of children in love exchanges and mulls over to enchant the most beautiful hours of life. The memory of her heart recited without her knowing the litany of young tenderness. How she loved! How she was loved! And can it be, my God! that we fail in these oaths which once sprang from one soul to another to form an indissoluble bond? Can it be… for there were more than oaths, and René was noble and good. We have already said it once; she repeated it to herself a hundred times. She did not feel that her hands were icy and that her little feet were freezing on the damp pavement on that cold February night. She only knew that her forehead was burning. One evening, it was in late autumn, the night air was so warm and so charming, I don’t know how the walk had continued along the Quai de la Grève, then to the water’s edge, under those beautiful trees which reached as far as the Pont-Marie. There were flowers and marijuana around the towpath inspector’s hut; René wanted to sit down; he was weak then and ill; Angèle spread her scarf for him on the grass. She sat down next to him, so pretty and so beautiful that René had tears in his eyes. He said to her: “If you didn’t love me anymore, I would die.” She didn’t reply, Angèle, because the thought didn’t even occur to her that her René might cease to love her. It was a dear evening, the memory of which was never to fade. Just now, as she passed over the Pont-Marie, Angèle had recognized the tall elms. And now, speaking in a low voice as if René had been beside her, Angèle said in her turn: “If you didn’t love me anymore, I would die.” The moon had turned, leaving the facade of the old pavilion at Bretonvilliers in shadow . It was impossible to see René’s silhouette at the large window, and yet Angèle still saw it. Against this black background she guessed an adored form; only René no longer smiled. His face was sad, moved, emaciated, like that evening of the walk by the water, and it seemed to Angèle that the distance was disappearing; she was going up, he was going down; they both leaned against the ancient balcony, one on the inside, the other on the outside, and they exchanged murmured words interrupted by long kisses. Suddenly Angèle started and woke up, for this was a real dream. The black facade changed its appearance: two of the large windows were brightly lit. Angèle had not been mistaken. René’s silhouette stood out darkly against this luminous background. He was there: he had not left the window. A cry was stifled in Angèle’s breast, because another silhouette stood out behind René’s: a feminine form, admirably young and graceful, which Angèle recognized at first glance. –The woman from the church of Saint-Louis! she murmured, putting both hands to her heaving chest; always her! She tried to get up and couldn’t. She would have liked to rush forward and defend her happiness. Among the confusion of her thoughts, however, an idea dawned. –The door hasn’t opened since René came through, she said, and this woman could not have preceded him here, since she left the church, accompanied… Where did she come in? The feminine shadow drawn clearly by the light that illuminated her from behind rested on the transparent curtain. One could see her slender waist and the delicate details of her hairstyle where the day seemed to play between the moving curls of her hair. “Her hair!” Angèle said again, “her blond hair! There has never been anything like it! I think I can distinguish their golden reflections… She is too beautiful. Oh! René, my René, don’t love her; one cannot have two loves… If you no longer loved me, I would die…” On the revealing curtain, two hands joined. Angèle straightened up, galvanized by her terrible anguish. “But before I die,” she said, “I will fight! I am strong! I have courage! And who will love her like me?” He is mine… She collapsed again onto the boundary stone. Around her slender waist, up there, a gallant arm had just been knotted behind the muslin curtains. Angèle stammered again: “I am strong… I will fight…” But she was tottering and her throat was rattling. Her two icy hands pressed her forehead. “It’s a dream! A dreadful dream!” she said; “I want to wake up… ” Her voice choked in her throat. The two shadows turned on the curtain and now presented their profiles: two young and charming profiles . A heartbreaking pain gripped Angèle’s chest. She felt the anguish of waiting, for it was slowly, slowly, that the two mouths met in a narrow, long kiss. Angèle fell like an inert mass on the pavement. From the hood detached from her mantle her loose hair escaped and streamed down: hair more beautiful, more brilliant, softer than that of the enchantress herself. The woman’s figure withdrew first and fled, while a resounding burst of laughter passed through the panes. René’s shadow began to pursue her. Then the third window of the facade suddenly lit up brilliantly . The two shadows passed through it intertwined and disappeared. But Àngèle no longer saw any of this. Her poor inert body stretched out at full length; between her forehead and the pavement there was only her disheveled hair, her poor hair. Only half an hour later, a group of idlers leaving the bank of the Quai de Béthune passed by. No shadows were any longer visible on the panes of the old pavilion of Bretonvilliers. The idlers returning from fishing with their empty baskets encountered Angèle’s body. Hunting was better than fishing: around Angèle’s neck was a gold cross, a gift from René de Kervoz. The idlers first thought of fighting over who would get the gold cross, then it was agreed that they would go to Ezéchiel’s tavern, who, being a bit Jewish, could value the jewel and buy it for cash to divide the cost. They had not counted on the boss of the masons of the Marché-Neuf, Mr. Jean-Pierre Sévérin, known as Gâteloup. He took off his greatcoat to wrap it around the young girl’s frozen limbs. Following his order, which no one thought to question, four porters took a stretcher on which Angèle was placed on a mattress. Then the boss commanded: On the way! And the porters set off without even inquiring where they were being taken. Clearly, this evening, at the quay of Béthune, hunting was no better than fishing. When Meslin had taken her aching man away and the rogues of both sexes had left, Ezekiel barricaded his door. He was worried, this good fellow, and in a rather bad mood. As he extinguished the magnificent lantern that was the glory of his establishment and the neighborhood, he said to himself: “This is a game that will make your bones break. There’s already a fellow who has guessed the farce. If only we knew once that all this is for divert the dogs and hide the vampire’s hole… He shuddered and looked all around him. “Every time I say that name,” he grumbled, “I get goosebumps . I don’t believe it, but it doesn’t matter… there must be something … And I’d like to see the look on those beasts’ faces when you stick a red-hot iron in their hearts! Man! It must be funny!” He smiled a smile that was both sensual and cowardly. With kicks, he disturbed the half-burnt netting that cluttered the back door and opened it, thinking aloud: “It’s not easy to amass a potful of poor money!” Beyond the door was this dark corridor, seen by the owner , leading to a stone staircase. The corridor, after passing the staircase, went down, then up again to a second door communicating with a vast garden. As soon as Ezekiel had opened this second door, a roaring bark was heard in the distance; the reader would have recognized at once the voice of the giant dog guarding the Bretonvilliers pavilion. “Everything smells of the devil,” Ezekiel said to himself, “in the country from which these people come. This dog has the voice of a demon.” He entered a dark avenue of lime trees trimmed into a hedge, which led up to the rue Saint-Louls-en-l’Ile. The barking of the mastiff soon became so violent that the innkeeper stopped in terror. “Hello! Good woman Paraxin!” he cried, “restrain your monster or I ‘ll shoot him in the head.” A burst of broken laughter came from the neighboring thicket and made him shudder from head to toe. “The dog is chained, you trembling Frenchman,” it was said from behind the trees; Don’t be afraid… But, speaking of pistols, there was a fight at your place, over there. Will there be anything for our fish? Before Ezekiel could reply, a woman as tall as a man and wearing Hungarian costume entered a gap of light that the moon cast in the avenue. “Good evening, Ezekiel,” she said in the barbaric French that she barely mumbled. “We can’t speak Latin to you; you Parisians are more ignorant than slaves!… Do you have something to tell us? ” “I want to see the Countess,” replied the innkeeper. “The Countess is far from here,” replied Paraxin, who had approached and towered over Ezekiel. “She has something to do this evening. ” “Is she eating one?” asked the innkeeper with curiosity mixed with horror. Paraxin nodded caressingly and replied, “She’s eating two.” Ezekiel stepped back in spite of himself. The tall woman sneered. She repeated, “What do you have to say? ” “I have to say,” replied Ezekiel, “that all this can’t go on. The world is talking. There are people on the trail, and the swagger of the Quai de Béthune is worn to the bone. Everything should have been finished two weeks ago… ” “Everything will be together in eight days,” interrupted the tall woman. ” The money is coming; the sum will be there. Those who have been with us to the end will have their fortunes made. Those who lose courage before the end will fatten the fish… Is that all?” Ezekiel remained silent. “What are you thinking about?” asked the Hungarian woman abruptly. “Good woman Paraxin,” replied the innkeeper, “I’m thinking about the fear I have.” Your threats frighten me greatly, I won’t hide it, for I regard you as a devil incarnate… The Hungarian woman caressed his chin cheerfully. “But,” continued Ezekiel, “I am even more frightened by the dangers that surround me on all sides because of you. What good will it do me to have earned a lot of money if my neck is cut? ” Madame Paraxin gave him a good blow between the shoulders and said a few insults in Latin. After which she continued in a serious tone : “We have something to distract attention, good man, don’t worry … Do you see that light over there?” They were reaching the end of the avenue, and the Bretonvilliers pavilion stood out its tall, dark silhouette against the sky. A glimmer shone on the first floor. “Yes, I see the light,” replied Ezekiel, “but what does it say?” “It says, my son, that there is a handsome young man there burning himself by candlelight. With this butterfly we have, if we like, two or three weeks of safety ahead of us. ” “Who is this butterfly? ” “Georges Cadoudal’s own nephew, my son, who is going to sell us, for a smile… or a kiss, or more, the secret of his uncle’s retreat.” Chapter 6. THE ISOLATED HOUSE It was a very vast room, so high up that it looked like a hall in some ancient palace of our kings. The hangings were tired and dull with age, but all the more beautiful in the eyes of the colorists, who seek harmony in the blending of nuances and who chromatize in some way the range contained in the solar spectrum to obtain their learned effects: so, for example, that the costume of a beggar provides marvelous harmonies under their brushes. The lamp surrounded by a globe of Bohemian glass, not frosted, but clouded and imitating the semi-transparency of opal, barely lit this vast expanse, touching each object with a discreet and almost mysterious glow. One could not judge either the paintings on the ceiling or those on the panels, cut into octagonal cartouches, according to the regular but uneven lines that characterized the era of Louis XIV. The burnished gilding barely reflected a few dull sparks here and there . In front of two large windows, the lamp draperies drew their wide and numerous folds, beneath which stood out soft curtains of Indian muslin. The general appearance of this room was austere and spacious, but above all sad, as almost always happens with works of the Middle Ages that the seventeenth century tried to retouch. It was in the panes of this room and under the Indian muslin that Angèle had first seen René’s face, in the first rays of the moon, then the two shadows whose amorous battle the window had betrayed . Now there was no one there. But the cheerful glimmers that passed through the half-open door of the next room, the one with only one window onto the street and which had lit up last, indicated the route to take to find together René de Kervoz and the queen of blondes, as Germain Patou called her, the radiant penitent of Abbé Martel, the unknown woman of the church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile. The jealousy of those who love deeply is rarely mistaken. There is in them a subtle and sure instinct that points out to them the preferred rival. Angèle had recognized the profile of her rival on the muslin of the curtains, and we have said it as it was, Angèle, in this mobile silhouette, had guessed even the light gold that curled in delicious curls on the forehead of the stranger. Let us, however, cross this half-open door which let in joyful glimmers. It was a much smaller room, and the threshold that separated the two rooms could count for a space of six hundred leagues. It divided the West and the East. On the other side of this threshold, in fact, was the East, the carpets as thick as a lawn, the piled cushions, the perfumed light. You would have thought you were entering one of those fairy boudoirs where the rich girls of southern Hungary compete in magnificence and softness with the queens of the Arabian Nights. The contrast was striking and complete. On the right, there was stiffness melancholic and somewhat musty of the great century; to the left of the partition, the voluptuous luxury, the semi-barbaric sumptuousness of the Ottoman frontier spread out, as if by opening the window one could see on the horizon the minarets of Belgrade, the white city. In the first room it was cold; here reigned a gentle warmth through which flowed like warm currents laden with fragrant languors. The light of two magnificent lamps, cast down by two pink crystal domes, fell on an ottoman surrounded by exotic shrubs in full flower. There was a young man and a young woman: two beautiful creatures if ever there were any; the young woman half-reclining on the ottoman, the young man sitting on the cushions at her feet. They were indeed the two silhouettes on the curtain: René de Kervoz first, whom Angèle would have recognized among a thousand, and as for the woman, Angèle could have, without being mistaken, mistaken her profile for that of the blonde foreigner. The features indeed offered a complete parity: same eyes, same smiling and haughty mouth, same facial outline, exquisite in its delicacy. Only, this admirable blond hair, so vaporous and so brilliant, existed only in Angèle’s imagination. The young woman in the ottoman had admirable hair, it is true, but blacker than jet. A glance was enough to see, despite the extreme resemblance, that she was not our mysterious Countess of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile. Just as we entered the boudoir, she was touching her adorable black hair with a mischievous gesture and smiling, saying: “I would never have believed that we could be mistaken for one another: she so fair, I so dark… and above all my handsome Breton knight, who claims that my image is engraved in his soul! ” René contemplated her with a sort of ecstasy and did not reply. He raised a graceful little hand to her lips and savored a long kiss. “Lila!” he murmured. She leaned down to his forehead, which she touched, saying: “My name is sweet in your mouth.” There are memories: a cloud passed over René’s gaze. Once, that poor child who had given him her heart, Angèle, his fiancée, had said to him: “In your mouth my name is sweet as a promise of love.” He had loved her well, and the passion that was now drawing him towards another had been fought by him like madness. He loved in spite of himself, in spite of his reason, in spite of his heart; he was subjected to an irresistible fascination. These things happen as if to provide an excuse for those who believe in spells and charms. Angèle was pious. A few weeks earlier, on the evening of February 12, René had accompanied her to the salutation at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. While Angèle prayed, René dreamed—of the coming joys of their union, no doubt. There was a woman kneeling not far from them. René saw two gleams shining beneath a veil. And I don’t know how, into the shadow where the stranger was, a ray from the altar candles penetrated. René felt within him a vague anguish. His gaze returned to Angèle, who was praying so holy. He felt fear and remorse, and was only relieved by the effort he made to stop looking at the stranger. He went out with Angèle and escorted her to her door. Their lodgings were next door. He left her to return home. But he could not have said why he returned to the church. At the door he hesitated, for he understood that to cross that threshold again was already a betrayal. Besides, she must have left. She! René entered, saying to himself: I will not go in. She crossed him as he passed in front of the holy water font. In spite of himself, René’s finger plunged into the marble conch. The stranger’s hand touched his; he felt cold to the core. That was all. She left. René remained motionless in the same place, for he said to himself: I will not follow her. A voice warned him, murmuring within himself the name of Angèle and saying: It is she who is happiness. It is the other who is extravagant caprice, fever, torment, fall… Why is it so? René rushed in the footsteps of the stranger. His heart was beating, his head was burning! There was no one on the square cluttered with hovels which then separated the façade of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois from the still unrestored Louvre. A singular thing, and one which must nevertheless be expressed, René had not even seen the one he was pursuing in spite of himself. He knew of her only the gleam of her gaze and the vague profiles drawn by the reflections descending from the altar. When their hands had touched at the holy water font, the stranger’s face was hidden behind her veil. She was a very young woman and of marvelous beauty, that’s what he would have sworn; he would not have been able to detail the impression left on him by her severe, yet extremely elegant, costume. She wore it miraculously, and as she walked away, René had admired the noble grace of her gait. Can one love for so little, and when the heart has tied elsewhere a serious and solid chain? René was honor itself. He came from a country where honor comes before all else. His childhood had been spent in a simple and severe family where only political passion had access. Yet political passion had already been dormant for a long time at the manor of Kervoz, located between Vannes and Auray; René’s father had fought as best he could, but he had laid down his arms frankly and without ulterior motive, since the parish gates had reopened for worship. There were two kinds of Chouans in Brittany: the King’s Chouans, and the God’s Chouans. When the old granite house that blessed birth, marriage, and death was returned to the latter, many gaps were left in the ranks of the rustic army. René’s father had said to his son: The past is gone; let us wait to judge the future. He was a God’s Chouan. But René’s mother had a brother who was a King’s Chouan. He was sometimes heard of at the manor near Vannes. He traveled throughout Europe, conspiring and stirring up enemies for those who held the King’s place. His name was famous. He had promised loudly to engage, alone and outlawed, against the First Consul, surrounded by so many soldiers, defended by so much glory, in a sort of single combat. All those who have received the education of our colleges must be embarrassed when they become the judges of an action of this kind. Common sense says that the true name of such a tournament is assassination. But the University, for eight mortal years, has taken the trouble to teach us completely different names, Latin or Greek. Everyone remembers the classical admiration of his professor for the dagger of Brutus. In the middle of the senate, gentlemen! In the middle of the senate! ours told us, who nevertheless received from Caesar a salary of a thousand crowns a year, no more and no less. He added: It was indeed the vir fortis et ubicumque paratus. The fellow was not afraid! In the middle of the senate, gentlemen, in the middle of the senate! Cassius, the collaborator, also had his share of praise. And from there we started to say something kind about all the citizens who, from Harmodius and Aristogeiton, to the friends of Paul I of Russia, engaged in precisely this tournament that Georges Cadoudal proposed to the first consul. Since Caesar wrote a book, it is claimed, however, that the dagger of Brutus is a little less recommended in our colleges; but Caesar’s book is very young, and we who were raised by the University in the loving respect of the man and his instrument, we feel a certain embarrassment in denying the admirations that were imposed on us: In the middle of the Senate, gentlemen! And applaud, or beware of restraint! A day will perhaps come when the University, converted to less ferocious feelings, will help Caesar to correct the proofs of his book. Let us hope that, on that day, the dagger of Brutus, definitively retired , will rust in the attics of the academy. So be it! But I ask heaven and earth what the University, before its conversion, could reproach the sword of Georges Cadoudal. René de Kervoz, nephew of Cadoudal, was not involved in his desperate intrigues. He followed the courses of the School of Law in Paris and was destined for the profession of lawyer. We must say that his uncle himself kept him away from the dangerous paths on which he walked. A sincere affection reigned between them. Of the conspiracy of which his uncle was the leader, René knew what was openly known to almost everyone; for the police, as we have already said, are often in the position of those deceived husbands who alone are ignorant of their misfortune. In Paris, the Cadoudal affair was the secret of the comedy. Everyone was talking about it. It can hardly be said that the home of the terrible Breton was a mystery. The mystery, and it is certainly a great one, lies entirely in the chronic blindness of the police. We have seen something similar in our own day, and people who do not know what gross myopia can affect the hundred eyes of Argus must believe that at certain times the police shared the weaknesses of the University with regard to the tools used by Brutus. Cadoudal knew and approved of his nephew’s love for Angèle. He had established contact, under an assumed name, with the young girl’s adoptive family and was to act as father to René at the time of the marriage. We will add that he had discussed the conditions of the contract, as a good bourgeois, with Jean-Pierre Sévérin, known as Gâteloup, the patron of the masons of the Marché-Neuf. Jean-Pierre had esteem and friendship for M. Morinière. Morinière was the assumed name of Georges Cadoudal. Cadoudal had said to his nephew: “Your Angèle will make the most delightful countess that one could ever see. I, for one, will have a cracked head one day or another, there is no doubt about that; but, when the king returns, you will be a count in memory of me, and the devil if old Georges’s nephew is not as noble as all the marquises in the universe! ” René had replied: “I love her as she is. She will be the wife of a lawyer, and I will try to make her happy.” And there was talk of dancing at the wedding. This Georges was like a fish in water in Paris, so much did he count on the drowsiness of the police. The memoirs of the time, the police memoirs especially, admit that he came and went at his leisure, minding his own business like you or me and even leading a joyous life. How Caesar must sometimes regret not being looked after by a simple poodle. Leaving the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, René de Kervoz, his eyes troubled, his chest tight, looked all around him. It was the name of Angèle that came to his lips, as if he had sought in this holy affection a refuge from his madness. He was already mentally ill. He felt it. At the corner of the Rue des Prêtres-Saint-Germain, a figure was fleeing. René jumped over the steps and ran after it. At the point where the Rue des Prêtres opens onto the Place de l’École, an elegant car was parked. The door opened, then closed. The horses set off at a brisk trot. René hadn’t seen the person who had gotten into the carriage, yet he followed as fast as he could. He was sure the carriage contained his unknown woman. The carriage trotted on for a long time with its magnificent horses. Sweat poured down René’s brow, and he was losing his breath, if not his courage, and he did not stop. The carriage followed the quays to the Hôtel de Ville, then went up Rue Saint-Antoine, where it made a short stop. The doors remained closed, only the footman got out, knocked at a door, went in, came out again, and resumed his seat, saying: “Go! The doctor will come.” René had taken advantage of the pause to catch his breath and tie his cravat around his waist. When the carriage set off again, he followed it again. What did he want, however? He would not have known how to answer this question. He went on, carried along by an irresistible force. The carriage stopped twice more, at Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine and Chaussée-des-Minimes. Twice the footman got out and got back in without having any communication with the interior of the carriage. Leaving the Chaussée-des-Minimes, the carriage returned to the Rue Saint-Antoine. At that moment, the clock of the Saint-Paul church struck ten o’clock in the night. This time the journey was long and truly hard for René. The carriage, launched at full speed, burned the pavement of the Rue Saint-Antoine, crossed the Place de la Bastille and skirted the entire suburb without slowing down. There was then a wide empty space between the last houses of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and the Place du Trône. The Rue de la Muette was only a sunken road, bordered by marshes. The carriage finally stopped in front of a rather large, isolated dwelling , located to the left of the suburb, in the land surrounding the Rue de la Muette. There was no light in the windows of this dwelling, to which a path led across the fields. In front of the door, on the other side of the path, a marsh wall was falling into ruin, revealing, through its breaches, a field of fruit bushes, raspberry bushes, gooseberry bushes, and blackcurrants, topped by a few cherry trees of people of all types who had come. René was a good runner, nevertheless, despite his efforts, he had finally been overtaken by the galloping horses. He saw from a distance the carriage turn, then halt; he could not make out in the night what was happening at the door of the house. As he reached the bend in the road, the carriage, retracing its steps, emerged once more into the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The windows of the two doors were now broken down. René was able to sneak a glance inside, which seemed empty to him. The coachman and the footman remained at their posts. The carriage resumed the road that had brought it and disappeared far into the suburb. René hesitated. His reason, awakened for a moment, energetically rebelled against the absurdity of his conduct. He asked himself once more, with a sharp surge of anger against himself: “What am I doing here?” He was from a country where superstition persists. The idea arose in him that a spell had been cast on him. And he said to himself, determined to end this sad escapade: “I will go no further!” But these are eternally the same words. Those on whom spells are cast, like the one who already held Angèle’s fiancé, always do the opposite of what they say. René turned the corner of the path and walked quite plainly towards the solitary house whose outlines were vaguely outlined by the moon, hidden beneath the clouds. This house looked like an abandoned factory. It was cold, the wind whipped a light, fine rain that made the earth soft and slippery. René walked around the house, which had neither garden nor courtyard and which, on closer inspection, looked like one of those unfinished buildings, the fruit of poor speculation, which remain in a state of ruin before they have even sheltered their owners. There were many windows. All kept their shutters closed. René returned to the facade that overlooked the road. On this side, the windows were closed as everywhere else. In front of the door, marijuana grew around the small three-step porch and up to the steps. René looked through the windows. The closed shutters let no light through. He listened. The silence and solitude allowed one to capture every sound, even the faintest. No noise reached his ears. He moved away to see better, because at night, a fleeting light is more easily seen from a distance. He passed the wall facing the house. “Nothing.” And yet he remained, repeating to himself, like a poor person with mental health problems: “She’s cast a spell on me!” The cold sore penetrated his light clothing; he was trembling with fever. He remained. Not long ago we were with a poor child, frozen to the core, who, too, was waiting, questioning the silent facade of a house in Paris. But our Angèle, sitting on her damp post, in front of the windows of the Bretonvilliers pavilion, knew what she wanted. She had come to get her ticket. René didn’t know. There wasn’t a single idea at that moment in the emptiness of his brain. He was a sick man whose veins were burning, while the shiver snaked under his skin. He sat in the wet marijuana among the bushes that hid him. The moon, freed from its veils, brightly lit the countryside. In the distance the night wind carried the twelve strokes of midnight struck on the bell tower of the Sainte-Marguerite church. At that moment a strange harmony seemed to rise from the earth. It was one of those deep, regularly timed chants that make emigrants from the German homeland recognizable in all parts of the globe. René emerged from the half-sleep that numbed his body and his mind. He listened, believing he was dreaming. As he left his retreat to approach the house and listen more closely, the sound of a car came from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. He crouched again in the bushes. The car stopped at the bend in the road. A man got out and knocked on the door of the isolated house. “Who are you?” someone asked inside, in Latin. The newcomer answered in Latin as well. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I am a brother of Virtue.” And the door opened. Chapter 7. THE LOOKOUT. The moon, momentarily freed from its veil of clouds, struck squarely on the door of the solitary house. René could see the person opening the door inside. It was an old woman of virile height, with hard, tanned features. She wore that bizarre and beautiful Hungarian costume that nomadic dancers have long made famous on our stages. The figure of the newcomer, on the other hand, remained invisible. He presented himself from behind, and the collar of his coat joined the wide brim of his hat. The old woman said something to him in a low voice. He turned quickly, as if his gaze wanted to pierce the darkness in the direction of the raspberry field where René was hidden. It was a matter of an instant. René saw only that the figure was young and framed by long hair that seemed white to him. The door closed, and the house fell silent again. But midnight must have been the time for a meeting or an appointment, for, in the space of ten minutes at most, three other carriages came up the suburb, bringing three mysterious figures who knocked at the door like the first, were like him questioned in Latin and answered in the same language. René had noticed that they had a particular way of spacing out the knocks when knocking on the door. There were six knocks, divided like this: three, two, one. When the last one entered, the surroundings remained silent for a moment. half an hour. The city was now asleep and no longer sent out those broad murmurs which, these days, fill the Parisian countryside until so late in the night. The rain had stopped; the moon spread its cold light everywhere over the flat and sad landscape. René had not moved, confused thoughts were born and died in his brain. Not once did the idea of withdrawing come to him. He was brave like nine-tenths of the young men of his age: we therefore do not wish to note as a surprising fact in him the absence of all fear. But he was discreet, scrupulous in all matters touching on honor. Given his character and his education, he should have felt some qualms, doubled by the particular situation of his family. Obviously there was a mystery there. To all appearances, the mystery related to political maneuvering. What right did René have to keep a lookout within reach of this mystery! Such conduct has a name that repels the esteem and inspires the more or less reflective intolerance of that too hasty judge who calls himself everyone: a name that is an explanation and should often be an excuse, for the spy, that soldier of the painful and inglorious struggle , puts, most of the time, his very life at the service of his obscure devotion. René was not a spy. One is a spy out of passion, out of duty, or for a salary. René lived an existence completely outside of politics. The ideas that still fevered those of his country and his race had never been in him. He belonged to that transitional generation that reacted against the violence of the great movements: he was a thinker, perhaps a poet; he was neither a Chouan, nor a republican, nor a Bonapartist. From the political point of view, the meeting that took place behind these silent walls had no kind of interest for him. Passion was lacking here; he was neither at the point of discussing nor, above all, of recognizing this duty which arises for everyone at the very moment when a conspiracy shows the tip of its ear, a controversial duty, but which the opinion of the majority would certainly characterize thus: to do or not to do. To fight for or to go against. Neutrality brings shame. René, however, remained neutral, not for lack of courage, but because, at certain times and after certain shocks, patriotism does not know what to do with it. Parties have an interest in being severe and in denying these subtle evidences; but history speaks louder than the intolerance of reasoners and confesses from time to time that there is reason to ask , among the throng of intoxicating egoisms: Where then is the fatherland! René remained there and did not even question the question of knowing what use he would make of a possible discovery! The memory of the infernal machine crossed his mind and left him in his moral drowsiness. It didn’t matter to him. It seemed as if he were in a world apart , full of romantic and childish preoccupations. A spell had been cast on him. He thought of her, of her alone. She was there. What was she doing there? He was there for her. He stayed there to see her leave as he had seen her come in, and to follow her again, anywhere. The gloomy thing was, the thought of Angèle came to him every moment and he chased it away brutally as one shakes off the tyranny of those obstinate refrains. The thought of Angèle, chased away, returned gentle, patient: poor beautiful smiling eyes, but wet with tears. And how to say this? René pushed her away as he would have a living being, saying to her angrily: Don’t you know that I love you? He loved her. Perhaps he had never loved her more. The waking dreams of that sick night showed her to him as adorably beautiful and suave. Have you known these unfortunates, these damned souls who furtively abandon the house where their cherished children and beloved wife sleep to go I know not where, to gambling, to absinthe, to vertigo, to slow and ignominious death? They are numerous, these mentally ill people. They are innumerable. One would say that their endemic illness belongs closely to human nature . They are of the people, and for them terrible speculators have recently built these almost sumptuous palaces where bargain billiards and alcohol sold at a fairer price call the poor.–And when the poor, leaving this dream of light and intoxication, returns to his dark hovel where his family asks for bread, the drama screams so terribly that the pen stops and dares no more… They are of the bourgeoisie, which has other attractions. Each caste, in fact, seems to have its particular mirage, its special madness . They leave at home a fresh, white woman, educated, witty, kind, and young; they cross the back door of a low theater, and there they are at the knees of an old, ugly, ignorant, coarse, and stupid creature. There they are loved, here they are mocked. And they throw their children’s future with both hands into the lap of this Armide, who keeps in her perfumed clothes the smell of a pipe borrowed from the other lover: the lover of the heart, that one: ugly, dirty, and beating firmly! A victor! A hero! A brute! They are from art or schools. These ones have no family. It is their very life that they desert, their noble and virile youth to go, you know where, to drink the greenish idiocy that Circe, for two sous, pours in all the corners of Paris, astride the extreme summit of civilization. They are from the judiciary and the army: two great institutions that cannot be spoken of without shaking something or someone: silence! They are from the nobility or wealth, these rival aristocracies today, who compete with each other in evil as well as in good. They demolish, with a savage fury, everything that it is in their interest to safeguard. Sometimes their unnatural orgies suddenly terrify the city, which looks around in fear to see if it might not have happened to have been called , since yesterday, Sodom or Gomorrah… Other times the livid audience of a court of assizes listens, holding its breath, to this terrifying calculation: how many blows of an axe are needed to kill a duchess! Other times still… But what is the point of continuing? And even if we were to go higher than the dukes, believe us, there would be no outrage: profound sadness does not insult. And human madness, pushed to this degree, inspires more pain than anger. René suffered this heartbreaking delirium which has always been our lot. The good man La Fontaine said it with a smile, pointing to this misguided dog who abandons his prey for the shadow. And, certainly, La Fontaine’s dog had even more wit than we do, for the shadow resembles the prey,–and we, how often do we abandon the most beautiful of prey for a hideous shadow! How can we not believe in this axiom of the naive? We cast spells, go on, that’s certain: on the people, the bourgeoisie, the artists, the schools, the magistrates, the generals, the dukes, the millionaires and the rest. René had a spell, he went thus to this woman blindly, fatally. He was for a long time, for his intelligence was struck, to join together these two ideas: the woman and the conspiracy. When these two ideas married in him, an extravagant joy made his heart leap. “She’s conspiring!” he said to himself. “I’ll conspire. Against whom? For whom? That’s never the question. Mentally ill people should not be judged by the law that governs wise men. ” Immediately René’s numb brain began to work. searched; it was a providential link. While he was searching, another hypothesis presented itself and troubled him. It is not only conspirators who hide, criminals naturally also have these mysterious ways. René shuddered, but he did not stop for that. He got away with uttering the word of lovers and mentally ill people: “It is impossible!” And he continued his mental task. Six knocks sounded, struck thus: three, two, one. To the Latin question this answer, which he already knew by heart, was given: ” In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, I am a Brother of Virtue.” This was René’s reasoning: With that one could enter the house. Once in the house, perhaps there were other tests. But chance, which had served René so strangely until then, was to serve him again. “I will see her,” he said to himself. And this single word sent tremors through his whole being. Time had passed, however. A great black cloud was coming from Paris, its jagged fringes already silvering with the approach of the moon. For several minutes the motionless silence of this night seemed to come vaguely to life. That subterranean chant which had launched René for a moment into the land of illusions had not been renewed. Nothing came from the house, still gloomy and dark, but a collection of almost imperceptible noises rose from the plain. Thus must the hearing of the man of Europe be affected, ignorant of the secrets of the prairie, when the savage redskins creep, in the dark night, on the path to battle. The noise had begun behind the house, then it had divided, scattered as it were, turning around the buildings and disappearing in the distance, only to come closer again, but in a different direction. A moment came when he seemed to leave the very enclosure where raspberry bushes, blackcurrants, gooseberry bushes, and small Montmorency cherry trees vegetated fraternally. It cannot be said that René paid much attention to these noises. He perceived them nevertheless, for he had spent his childhood in Brittany, and he was a hunter. There was a moment when he dreamed of those great chestnut groves which are between Vannes and Auray. He saw himself lying in wait there and he heard the poachers slipping towards him through the woods. But his thoughts always returned to it. He had a spell. When the great cloud with silver edges bit the moon, the steeples of Saint-Bernard, Sainte-Marguerite, Quinze-Vingts, and Saint-Antoine sent forth the first hour of the night. René was at the point of saying to himself: Come on! it is time, when the sudden darkness which covered the landscape vaguely awakened him. An animal—or a man—was evidently a few steps away from him in the thicket. Game of any kind is rare in the marshes of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. René, yielding to the obsession that tyrannized him and refusing to believe the testimony of his senses, was about to walk toward the house when these words, spoken in a very low voice, reached his ear. I can’t see him anymore; where is he? In fact, in the darkening night, René disappeared completely into the middle of the bush where he had crouched. These were no longer dreams. René immediately recovered all his composure. He had no weapons. He remained motionless and waited. The rustling had ceased for a few seconds when a long, heart-rending cry of distress rang out to his left in the gooseberry bushes. René, taken by surprise, had no idea that this could be a trick and stood up straight to rush to the rescue. There was a multiple snigger in the darkness, and a violent blow, struck on the head of the young Breton, from behind, threw him back, dazed, into the bush he had just left. For a second or two, in the midst of a great movement which surrounded him, unknown figures danced before his dazzled gaze. A torch began to run, coming from the house, whose open door showed dark gleams. In the rays brought by this torch, René saw a large, completely black silhouette: a black person of colossal size, whose white eyes shone. We speak in the positive, because it would be monotonous and impossible to recount while always maintaining the doubtful form, but it is certain that René profoundly doubted the testimony of his senses. All this was now for him an improbable nightmare. Everyone knows well what can be seen in the short space of two seconds, when the troubled eye shimmers and perceives all objects in a fantastic form. There was this black person in whom one could not believe, a black person with rolling pupils and a sharp dagger like those placed at the door of wax salons. There was a man, a nobody of any body type and pale, no longer a nobody of any body type and paler than a corpse; he seemed very young and had white hair; there was a Turk, with shaved hair under his turban, and still others whose physiognomies and costumes appeared bizarre to the point of going beyond plausibility. None of this could be real, unless our Breton had fallen into the middle of a masquerade. And the carnival was over. These violent shocks which, according to the popular saying, light thirty-six thousand candles, can also evoke other phantasmagoria. However, not only did René see, but he also heard, and what he heard related marvelously to the strange staging of his dream. All these various disguises spoke different languages. Although René did not know all these different languages, he recognized this Latin pronounced in the Hungarian manner, which he had already noticed that night, the Italian and the German. All these idioms spoke of death, and a: Let us knock down the damned rascal! (Let us knock down the damned rascal!) pronounced with the pure stammering of the London cockneys was like the summary of the general opinion. The pen cannot run like events. There was the beginning of an execution, stopped by a new incident, all this in the short space of time we have described. The Englishman was still speaking, brandishing one of those flails made of whalebone, leather, and lead that John Bull christened self-preserver and to which René doubtless owed the cowardly blow that had struck him down; The black person, putting a knee in the marijuana, was already shortening the arm that was going to strike, when a woman’s voice, sonorous and sweet, made René’s heart leap in his chest. He did not see the one who spoke, and yet he recognized her, by the sounds of a voice he had never heard. She said, very close to him, but hidden by the crowd of strange shadows that pressed around: “Don’t hurt him: it’s him! ” Chapter 8. THE NARCOTIC From that moment on, all was confusion and darkness in René’s brain. The wound in his head caused such a violent stabbing that his heart failed him. He thought he saw a hand seizing the black person’s woolly hair and throwing him back. At the same time a handkerchief was tied over his eyes and a gag compressed his mouth. It was a luxury of precautions. They took him by the legs and shoulders and placed him on a sort of stretcher. He retained only one free sense, his hearing, and even then the fainting that sought him out lent the voices roaring sonorities and drowned him in a way in the confusion of languages that surrounded him. An almost lucid thought remained in him, nevertheless, in the midst of this prostration: her! He had heard her. She had saved him. She had said: It’s him! Him? Who? Had she been mistaken? Had she lied? The few words spoken by the woman’s voice, so sweet in its imperious sonority, were, moreover, the first and the last. René listened with all his soul, but it was in vain; she spoke no more. His strength was gradually leaving him; the top of his head was a horrible burn. After a few steps he lost his senses. The last word he heard and understood seemed the least believable of all: the name of Georges Cadoudat, his uncle. It was a smiling morning at the end of winter, the sky was as blue as in the heart of summer and played in the leaves of a miniature grove , composed of tropical plants. The bed on which René lay looked out over a vast garden, planted with tall trees with bare branches. To the right was the greenhouse , which spread warm and discreet perfumes; to the left, an open door showed in perspective the shelves of a library. The bed had an antique shape and its twisted columns supported a square canopy, dressed in silk damask, as thick as velvet. The walls, covered in solid woodwork, with severe moldings, had an almost cloistered appearance which contrasted singularly with the coquettish and entirely modern decorations of the greenhouse. René had slept a peaceful and deep sleep, woke up rested, his head was heavy, a little empty, but he felt no pain. This is what his first glance saw, and perhaps without this aspect, explanatory like the illustrations that our childish life adds to every text from now on, he would have been a long time fishing out the truths scattered among the confusion of his memories. In the greenhouse, through the panes, he saw the black person—the giant black person—smoking a corn straw stuffed with tobacco, lying full length as he was under a flowering latanier. This black person gazed blissfully up into the air at the twisting flight of the smoke from his cigar and seemed the happiest of blacks. Nothing in his lazy slump suggested ferocity. He no longer possessed that sharp, diabolically sharp knife that had so nearly made the acquaintance of our young Breton’s ribs. In the room itself, not far from the window that looked out onto the garden, this very pale young man, with completely white hair, was reading, sunk in an armchair with his feet propped up on an armchair. He wore a bourgeois costume of rigorous elegance. René saw nothing else at first. But another sense, solicited more vigorously than sight itself, made her tired and still very weak eyelids droop. Through the open door of the library, a song came, accompanied by the strains of a harp. The harp was then in fashion, and every pretty woman had her portrait painted in Corinne’s pretentious costume, her feet on a pedal, her hands outstretched like ten spider legs, and strumming on the theatrical instrument par excellence solemn arpeggios like a phrase from Madame de Staël. The guitar came next, a terrible decadence of the last years of the empire and a languid transition to the migraine that the abuse of the piano spreads over the world. Of the three instruments, the most hateful is undoubtedly the piano, whose lapping keyboard even Englishwomen have come to understand . There will be nothing after the piano, which is the most accomplished expression of musical tyranny. The guitar made less noise. The harp was beautiful. The voice that came through the library door sang a bold, wild song, punctuated by the unexpected and jolting cadences of Slavic rhythm. The voice accentuated this almost barbaric melody with incredible passion. The voice was sonorous, expansive, full of those vibrations that grip the soul. It bit, if one may make a verb with the technical participle used in the language of dilettantism. If the voice had not sung, stirring René’s heart to its deepest fibers, he would have already opened his mouth to ask where he was; but he remained under its spell and held his breath. He did not know where he was. Nothing he saw through the windows reminded him of the flat landscape surrounding the house on the Chemin de la Muette. Here were tall trees and beyond, high walls, covered with vines. Just as the voice ceased to sing, a side door opened, and the tall old woman in Hungarian costume who had come out of the isolated house with a torch in her hand the previous night entered, carrying a cup of chocolate on a tray. The sound of her footsteps made the young man, a person of any body type and pale with white hair, turn his head. “Hello, Yanusza dominated,” he said with a mocking affection of respect. The old woman made a stiff and dignified bow. “I am not a mistress, I am a servant, Doctor Andrea Ceracchi,” she replied in Latin. “Will you speak to me once without laughing, you who should always be weeping, ever since the hour when your brother fell under the tyrant’s hand? ” The Italian had a spasm that contracted his features, and his thin lips curled. “Laughter is sometimes more bitter than tears, good woman Paraxin, ” he murmured, using in reply the Teutonic Latin that they used to understand each other. “Doctor,” she said with strange emphasis, “I neither laugh nor cry: I hate. They say that General Bonaparte is going to have himself acclaimed emperor. If you let him go, it will be too late. ” “I am watching!” the one she had named Andrea Geracchi said slowly. René remembered that name, which belonged to one of the two Romans implicated in the so-called Horatii plot, the companion of Diana and Arena, to the young and handsome man whose stoic end had kept Paris and the world in turmoil for eight days, and to the sculptor Joseph Ceracchi. Yanuza shook her gray head and grumbled: “It would be better to act than to watch, my lord doctor.” Then she resumed, with her hard and firm step, the path to the door, without even glancing at the bed where René lay motionless. When Yanuza had left, the Italian doctor remained motionless and thoughtful for a moment, then he dipped a piece of bread into the cup of chocolate, which he immediately pushed away from him. “Everything tastes of blood here!” he pronounced in a dull voice. For several minutes René’s eyelids had been growing heavy again and an irresistible sleep was seeking him. These last words of the Italian reached his ear, but slipped over his understanding. Suddenly a loud noise was heard inside the house. It was neither in the greenhouse nor from the library. René thought he heard a cry similar to the one that had made him return with a start the previous night, when he was hidden in the raspberry bushes in front of the isolated house. He tried to fight off sleep, but his whole being was becoming more and more numb, and it seemed to him that the black person who had sat up in the greenhouse was staring at him. It was from the white eyes of the black person that sleep came. It came like an almost visible flow, this strange sleep. René felt it rising along his veins and he experienced the sensation of a man slowly submerged in a bath of opium vapor. He still retained the use of his eyes and ears, but to see, to hear impossible things and those that opium dreamers find in their intoxication. Two men entered the greenhouse through a door that communicated with the interior of the house. They were carrying a long burden that gave René the idea of a corpse wrapped in a sheet! The black person began to smile and showed the row of his teeth dazzling. At the same time a vision, a delicious and radiant vision, illuminated the room, a woman with an adorable smile, her blond hair, light and shining with celestial reflections, crowned like a halo, leaped through the library door. “Count Wenzel has just left for Germany,” she said. René recognized that voice that so voluptuously gripped his heart. Sleep was increasingly ensnaring him. The helpless efforts he was making were tiring him to the point of anguish, and he thought: “All this is a nightmare.” The name Count Wenzel struck him. He had heard Angèle’s adoptive father speak of him and knew that Count Wenzel was a young German gentleman about to marry in Paris. This brought his thoughts back to his own marriage, the marriage so passionately desired, formerly awaited with such impatience and which now frightened him. This marriage, which was now the fulfillment of a sacred duty. And he was astonished to conceive at such a moment such clear ideas, to follow such straight reasoning. He was also astonished at the particular meaning his intelligence attached to these words, apparently the simplest in the world: Count Wenzel has just left for Germany. There was for him therein some indefinable threat. Behind the harmony of this voice something mocked coldly, pitilessly. He thought: “I will remember all this and I will ask Angela’s father for advice . ” But the poor child’s name wounded him like a knife being twisted in the wound. The ravishing blonde, with a smile sparkling like the gaiety of children, had sat down beside the Italian and was fluffing out the folds of her light dress. There was an inexplicable clarity in her whole person. Her dress shone as she shook its graceful folds, just as her hair sparkled with every movement of her smiling head. She had her back to the greenhouse where René still saw the long bundle the two men had left at the black person’s feet. The black person was peacefully finishing his cigar. “My brother is not yet avenged,” the Italian said quietly, “and I will soon have no more courage. ” “In a few days,” the blonde murmured, “it will all be over, I promise you. ” Her eyes, at that moment, turned toward the bed and René said to himself: “This one is the evil. It’s not HER! ” “Is he asleep?” she asked in a low voice with a sort of anxiety. “He has never stopped sleeping,” the Italian replied. “The narcotic was in a suitable condition… What do you want to do with him? ” “Our salvation and your revenge,” the young woman replied. The Italian’s eyes shone with a dark fire. “Countess,” he said slowly, “I was twenty-two years old when my brother died. The day after that day, my hair was white like an old man’s… I wanted to kill myself, but a man saved me and told me that he too had changed, in one night of anguish, a forest of black curls for white hair… That man had advised me to cross the sea and forget. You whispered the word revenge in my ear: I am waiting. ” The young woman seemed to grow taller, and her transfigured beauty expressed an indomitable energy. “Others are waiting like you,” she replied, “Andrea Ceracchi. Everything I have promised, I will keep. I have gathered around me those whose hearts this man has broken; and have I not already worked enough for our common cause?” She was interrupted by a dull noise in the greenhouse that made her shudder all over. Ceracchi couldn’t get any paler, but his features altered and he closed his eyes.
René, whose gaze fell in spite of himself towards the greenhouse, saw the black person standing near a square hole that opened among the crates of flowers. He smiled a sinister smile. The long package had disappeared. “You want to avenge your brother,” the young woman continued in a broken voice. “Taïeh wants to avenge his master (her finger pointed over her shoulder at the black person busy closing a large trapdoor through which he slid a crate of Yucca). Toussaint-Louverture died like Ceracchi, died more harshly, in the torture of captivity. Taïeh does not ask for an account of the price that will pay for his revenge… Osman came from Cairo with a poisoned dagger, hidden in his turban… But it is not a common dagger that will kill this man… It takes blood and gold: floods of gold and blood; it takes a hundred arms obeying a single will, it takes a will, a mission, a destiny… the blood flows, raising the level of gold day by day. The Brothers of Virtue are ready, and here I am, I whom destiny has chosen… Will Andrea Ceracchi be the first to lose confidence? Did I stop? Did I recoil?… She broke off because the Italian was kissing her hands on her knees. She was so wonderfully beautiful that her forehead radiated light. “I have faith in you!” the Italian said with mystical devotion. The young woman’s outstretched hand pointed to René. “He will provide us with the supreme weapon,” she murmured. At the door of the library, a dark-skinned head wearing an Egyptian turban appeared. “What is it? ” asked the doctor. “Baron de Ramberg,” came the reply, “is asking to see Countess Marcian Gregory.” On the evening of that same day, René de Kervoz returned to his student room, weak, but almost no longer feeling the effects of his injury. He retained a vague and morbid memory of a certain dream that had occupied a whole night of terrible fever, then a day when the nightmare had assumed the proportions of the impossible. The more he tried to clarify the confusion of his memory, the more the dream entangled its absurd twists and turns, showing him at once the living corpse of a young man with white hair, a black person lying among flowers, a woman madly beautiful and smiling in the liquid gold of fairy hair, an open trapdoor, a human body wrapped in a sheet. Then the shrew who spoke Latin, then the Turk who had announced Baron de Ramberg, then again that woman with the penetrating voice who had said: Count Wenzel has just left for Germany! There were more recent and more precise memories, which could be believed, although they were still very romantic. Toward nightfall, René had suddenly seen, at the head of his bed, in that vast room where all objects were already disappearing, bathed in darkness, a woman who seemed to be watching over his sleep. A woman with a calm and gentle face: a Madonna’s forehead that bathed the magnificent waves of hair blacker than jet. This woman resembled the vision—the strange dazzle that had passed in the dream, the voluptuous peri whose mischievous head had formerly shaken its blond coiffure of rays. But it was not the same woman, oh! certainly! René felt it in the deep beating of his heart. This one was SHE: the unknown woman from Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. When René awoke, she put a finger to her beautiful mouth and said to him: “We are being listened to, I am not the mistress here… ” “So it is the other one who is the mistress?” interrupts René. She smiled, her smile was enchanting. “Yes,” she murmured, “it’s the other one. Don’t talk. You were wrong to follow me. You must never try to penetrate certain secrets. I saved you twice, you are cured, be careful.” And before René could speak again, she closed his mouth with a caressing gesture. “You will get up,” she continued, “and get dressed. He is time to leave. She glanced at the library door, which remained half-open, and added, in a tone so low that René had difficulty grasping the meaning of her words: “You will see me again. It will be soon, and in a place where I will be allowed to hear you. In the meantime, I repeat, be careful. Do not try to question the one who is coming, and submit to everything that is required of you.” René’s hand felt a furtive pressure and he found himself alone. The next moment, a man entered carrying two torches: René recognized his clothes on a seat by his bed. He dressed with the help of the newcomer, who did not utter a single word. He felt very weak, but he was not in pain. His toilet completed, the silent valet handed him a silk handkerchief rolled into the shape of a tie and made him understand with a gesture that this blindfold should be placed over his eyes. “Why this precaution?” asked René, disobeying his protectress’s orders for the first time. “I cannot speak French, sir,” replied the man with the silk handkerchief , with a guttural accent that suddenly revived René’s memories. This brave fellow, who knew no French, had already dealt with him. It was indeed the throaty voice that had given the Brothers of Virtue this English advice: “Let’s knock out the cursed scoundrel!” René nevertheless allowed himself to be blindfolded. The next moment, he was getting into a carriage, which immediately started to trot. After ten minutes, the carriage stopped. “Shall I get out?” asked René. No one answered him. He took off his blindfold and saw with astonishment that he was alone. The coachman opened the door, saying: “Bourgeois, I drove you at a good pace from the Rue du Dragon to the Châtelet. The fare is paid. Is there a tip?” Chapter 9. BETWEEN TWO LOVES. By chance, the day after the evening when René de Kervos had accompanied Angèle to the salute at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, he was due to make a short trip. His absence was not noticed by those who loved him. We will later learn exactly what his position was with regard to his fiancée’s family. They were people of humble condition, but of good heart, and who had acted in a way that deserved his gratitude. Once back in his solitude, René tried to fight perhaps against this new element that threatened to conquer his life. His life was promised to a sweet and charming duty. There was no room in it for adventures. The romance whose first chapter had carried him so far had to be violently torn apart at this hour when a shadow of reason remained to him, or it had to become his very existence. It was so. René was not victorious in the struggle. The image of Angèle remained indelible in the depths of his heart, but he diverted his frantic gaze from it by a mirage. He was too tenderly loved for the uneasiness of his mind and heart to go unnoticed by those around him. His altered character, his changed habits aroused suspicions, aroused worries. René saw it, he suffered from it, but he was already sliding down the slope from which no one ever knew how to stop. Fate, moreover, since it is agreed that he had a fate, left him neither rest nor respite. The fascination that had begun did not end . The novel continued, tying to the pages of its prologue a whole chain of mysterious and delightful adventures. In an illness he had, René had himself bled recently by an apprentice doctor, a friend of his father-in-law, a funny little man, named Germain Patou, who spoke of the Faculty God knows how! This Germain Patou had discovered a German pathologist , named Samuel Hahnemann, who replaced the voluminous poisons of the Codex with a magic powder, which, according to Patou, produced miracles. The little man readily passed for someone mentally ill, but, although he was not yet a doctor, he cured, by hook or by crook, anyone who came his way. Two days after the nighttime brawl in which René had received this blow to the head, Patou came to see him by chance, and René showed him his wound, saying that he had fallen backward after slipping on the pavement. The wound still bore the small apparatus placed there while René slept in the mysterious house. Patou had no sooner seen the wound than he cried out: “That was enough to kill an ox.” He quickly brought his nostrils close to the apparatus. “Arnica montana!” he pronounced devoutly: “the master’s vulnerary!… My friend, you have been dressed by a true believer: will you give me his address?” In his embarrassment, René recounted what he wanted or what he could. Meanwhile, Patou was unfolding the apparatus. It was a handkerchief of very fine cambric, at the corner of which an embroidered crest was stamped with a count’s crown. “Well! Well!” said Patou, “have you read in the newspapers the story of Szandor’s tomb found on an island in the Save, above Semlin? It’s very curious. I like vampires, and I believe in them wholeheartedly . It’s the fashion, moreover: it’s all about vampires. The newspapers, the books, people talk about vampires all day long.
I know a man who makes boats go without sails or oars, with steam from boiling water; his name is Citizen de Joufroy; he is a marquis and a person mentally ill like Samuel Hahnemann; he is writing a melodrama entitled: The Vampire. The Saint-Martin Theatre will collapse! I would give Professor Loysel’s wig to see the vampire who is currently eating half of Paris… Let’s get back to our business: in the tomb of Szandor, there was a vampire who came out at night, swam across the Save, and ravaged the countryside as far as Belgrade. This vampire was a count, as the inscription on the tomb proves; he had been buried in 1646… And here’s the funny thing: the Count of Szandor had the same Latin motto as the citizen count of 1804, or the citizen countess who lent you her handkerchief to bandage your wound. So saying, Patou spread the cambric on the black table, where the embroidered letters stood out in white. The motto that ran around the escutcheon was: In vita morte, in morte vita! “True vampire motto!” cried Patou. In life, death, in death, life!… To finish the story of Count Szandor, after one hundred and fifty-eight years in his grave, this gentleman still had very beautiful black hair, almond-shaped eyes, and lips as red as coral. He was, however, missing a tooth. They drove a red-hot iron bar into his heart, a surgical method that seems to be generally adopted to treat vampirism… In their place, I would have talked a little with that fellow, to find out what was in his mind; I would have examined him from head to toe; I would have treated him, by Jove! by the Hahnemann method, and he would have been able, once cured, to tell us about the Thirty Years’ Battle, firsthand , except for the last two years… When Patou had left, René took the embroidered handkerchief and held it to his lips. The next day, he received a letter whose unknown writing made his heart beat. The large black wax seal bore the same crest as the embroidered handkerchief and the same motto: In vita mors, in morte vita. A feeling of unease coursed through René’s veins, then he smiled proudly, thinking: “These superstitions are no longer of our time.” The letter read: ” We would like to know news of an injury that gave the wounded man sleep, but another insomnia. Tonight at six o’clock, prayers will be given for the wounded man at the Calvary of Saint-Roch.” No signature. The letter had been delivered by a strange messenger: a black person, wearing the costume of the musicians of the consular guard. The day seemed long to René, and, for the first time, those who loved him noticed his unease. By five o’clock he was at the steps of Saint-Roch. He waited in vain until six o’clock for the carriage he hoped to recognize. Six o’clock struck and, battle weary, he crossed the church to reach the Calvary behind the chapel of the Virgin. There was a woman kneeling before the mystical rock. René approached. An imperceptible movement occurred under the woman’s lowered veil , who did not turn around. In this half-light, devout and moist like the chiaroscuro skillfully distributed by the great art of painters of piety, this woman, whose severe and dark attire allowed exquisite forms to appear, did well. She entered the picture. Her prayer seemed profound and without distraction. “Answer me, but very quietly,” she said in a soft, steady voice. ” We are not alone…” René looked around him. There was no one in the chapel; no one, at least, that could be seen. “Are you better?” he was asked. “My suffering is in my heart,” he replied as if in spite of himself. There was another silence. The veiled woman seemed to be listening to sounds that did not reach René’s ear. “Can one have two loves?” she murmured at last in a trembling voice. At the same time she lifted her veil, and René saw the gentle flame of that look that was henceforth his soul. “Oh!” he said, “I love only you.” She shuddered and rose, making a broad sign of the cross before leaving her place. “Don’t follow me,” she ordered hurriedly. And she walked away quickly. René, motionless, soon heard a man’s footsteps, heavy and firm, join the light sound his fairy foot made as it brushed against the chapel’s flagstones. When he finally turned his head, he saw nothing. The enchantress and her partner had crossed the Calvary gate. René rushed after them, drunk and no one mentally ill. He left by the exit that leads to the Saint-Roch passage. The passage was deserted. Drunk and no one mentally ill, as we said. He returned home in a state of feverish excitement. This took hold of his brain, a center of action far more powerful than that organ with vaguely chivalrous aspirations that we call the heart. Since the world began, the heart has always been conquered by the brain. For a time, at least, and when the hot fever has calmed, when the hour of repentance that atones comes, a voice rises, pronouncing this pitiless and useless word, for it never prevented any crime and never prevented any misfortune: “It is too late! Human life is there.” Before returning home, René had to knock at the door of Angèle’s adoptive father. There are conventions, and these good people had never done him anything but good. There, there was the good and noble calm, the holy serenity of families. The old mother was rocking a child, for René de Kervoz was far more engaged than the average fiancé; the white-haired father was reading, the young girl was embroidering, pensive and sad. But have you ever seen the magical change that the first ray of sunshine produces on the desolate landscape in spring? René was the sun here; René’s entrance was like a contagion of smiles. The mother held out her hand, the father threw down his book, the young girl, happy, got up and came to him with both arms open. René repaid as best he could this welcome, always the same, and whose dear monotony had formerly been his greatest joy. The cruelest torture for the drowning man, they say, is the sight of the shore. Here was the shore, and René was drowning. The grandmother placed the sleeping child in her arms. René kissed him with a pang of heart and did not dare look at the young mother—not that he had in any degree the cowardly thought of abandoning these poor creatures. As we have said, René was honor itself; but the awareness of the wrongs he had already done to them distressed him. He felt well that he was dragging them with him down the slope of an irreparable misfortune. And he had neither the power to stop nor perhaps the will. There had been nothing yet in the house; we know, in fact, that René’s nocturnal absence had gone unnoticed. Anxiety had not yet arisen in these good souls. It arose precisely that evening. When René had retired at the usual hour, the mother went to bed, sullen and sad for the first time in a long time; The boss silently earned his retirement, and Angèle remained alone with the little one, whom she kissed while crying. Misfortune had just entered this poor, quiet house. From now on, the slightest symptoms had to be noticed and sifted through the sieve of an already jealous affection. Angèle remained for a long time that evening, sitting at her window, watching across the street (for they were neighbors) for René’s lamp, which was taking its time to go out. René was thinking of her, or rather René believed he was thinking of her, for it was her image that he evoked as a safeguard; but, through this image, he saw his madness: a dazzling, a fatality. The other, the one who still had no name for him, the one who embraced him with terrible skill in the bonds of guilty passion. The one who had the irresistible prestige of the unknown, the attraction of romance, the seduction of mystery. In the following days, the obsession continued. It seemed that it was a decision to surround him with a vague network where the bait, always kept at a distance, escaped his hand and showed itself again to prevent discouragement or fatigue. He received letters, he was assigned appointments, if one may call such short and fleeting meetings where the presence of an invisible third party prevented the exchange of words. He was loved. The persistence of these appointments, which never came to anything, was clear proof of this. It was like the stubborn wager of a captive struggling against her jailer. Unless it was a daring and pitiless mystification. But how could one believe in a game! To what end was this prolonged mockery? On one side there was a poor gentleman from Brittany, an obscure student; on the other a great lady—for, in this respect, René had not the shadow of a doubt; his unknown woman was a great lady. She had to elude some formidable surveillance. She did her best. What could be more complete than the slavery of a noble position? They wrote to René: Come, he would run. Sometimes it was in the middle of the street: he would pass a carriage whose closed blinds revealed a white hand speaking; sometimes it was at the Tuileries, where the wind lifted the corner of a veil expressly to reveal an ardent smile and two languid eyes; it was, most often, in churches; then they would slip him a word; the holy water given and received permitted a quick handshake. And René’s fever only grew stronger. His desire, constantly irritated, never satisfied, reached a state of torture. He grew thinner, he paled. Angèle and her parents suffered as a result. Sometimes the mother would say: It’s the marriage that’s taking too long, René has the sickness of waiting; marriage will cure him. But the boss shook his white head and Angèle smiled melancholy. Angèle had been going out often for some time. If you had met her on these solitary errands, you would have said: She goes at random. But she had a goal.–Every time these fleeting encounters between René and his stranger took place , Angèle was there, somewhere, her eyes burning and dry, her chest oppressed. She sought to know. If she knew something, at least not a single word had ever fallen from her lips. She was silent with her parents, silent with her fiancé. She always gave him the child to kiss, the child who, too, was becoming people of all types of body and pale. But when she remained alone with the little creature, she spoke to her at length and from the heart, sure as she was of not being overheard. She said to her: “The hour of the wedding is near, but which of us will hear it ring?” As the days passed, however, and through a singular process known to all psychologists, René acquired a clearer retrospective perception of the confused events that had filled that famous night of February 12. The general impression was gloomy and full of terrors that continued until the 13th, spent in this house which had a large garden and a greenhouse. In the greenhouse, René saw more and more distinctly the square hole, the two men carrying a burden in human form and the black man smoking his cigarite under flowering shrubs. And he heard the woman’s voice saying with cold mockery: “Count Wensel has left for Germany!” We do not know how to express this: in René’s mind, this phrase had a double and funereal meaning. And this oblong-shaped package, which had been thrown into the hole, was Count Wensel. If things had been as they had been in the past, if René de Kervoz had still spent his evenings talking in the house of his future father-in-law, the head of the masons of the Marché-Neuf, he would have heard the name Wenzel mentioned more than once; he would have been able to gather valuable information. For Count Wenzel was often talked about at Jean-Pierre Sévérin’s, known as Gâteloup. Count Wenzel was one of a trio of young Germans, former students of the University of Tubingen. There was Wenzel, Hamberg, and Koenig: three friends, young, rich, happy. But René no longer chatted at Angèle’s parents’ house. He came there every day as if fulfilling a duty. He suffered, saw others suffer, and withdrew in despair. The idea of an incident having occurred was therefore in a confused state within him. We will go further: we will say that within him existed the idea of a series of incidents. The impression he retained was like this. The trapdoor hidden under the flower boxes must have been used more than once. And that was the most plausible excuse he could provide to his conscience for the passionate desire he had to maintain contact with his unknown woman. For him, in fact, the mysterious house contained two women, the blonde and the brunette: he had seen them with his own eyes: the countess and the one without a title, the bloody woman, to whom all crimes naturally fell, if there were any crimes, and the saving angel. The day before the day we took the beginning of our story, showing these three characters staggered on the Quai de la Grève: René first, then Angèle who followed René, then the white-haired man who followed Angèle, René had experienced a kind of aftershock of the emotion felt in the mysterious house. It was still at Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile, and it was the first time that his unknown woman had missed the appointed meeting. René had been waiting for more than an hour, when the young man with the pale face, who had completely white hair, left the sacristy with a priest whom René was seeing for the first time. A middle-aged clergyman, with an honest and serious countenance. The young man’s face struck René like a physical shock, and the name heard in a dream came to his lips: “Andrea Ceracchi!” Andrea Ceracchi passed, with the priest, right next to René, who was hidden by the shadow of a pillar, and said: “She will come tomorrow. It must be done immediately, because Baron de Ramberg is in a great hurry to return to Germany.” These words and the tone in which they were pronounced were certainly the most natural in the world. However, before René’s eyes, the trapdoor opened, the trapdoor covered with flowers, and he seemed to hear the mournful echo of these other words: Count Wenzel has left for Germany! “She will have to tell the truth,” he thought. And the next day, as we have seen, he returned to the church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile. No appointment had been made this time. Whether René had really been mistaken, or whether he had pretended to be mistaken, he had approached a woman who was not expecting him, the blonde Madonna so admired by Germain Patou and who was there for quite another purpose. After a few words had been exchanged, he had left by the side door and reached the old pavilion of Bretonvilliers, where he had been ordered to go. A corner of the veil, at the very least, was lifted: the blonde had agreed to take a message to the brunette. During the rather long space of time that René was obliged to spend alone, in the large drawing-room of the pavilion, he questioned his memories more than once , trying to find out if this house was the one where he had been reported unconscious—or asleep, after the night of February 12. His memory had remained silent as to the furniture and hangings, but the general impression told him: It is not here. The place has not only a physiognomy, but also a flavor; René remained convinced that the room where he had slept was not part of this house. Lila! He knew that name at last! And it was the blonde who had betrayed the brunette’s secret. She had said, astonished and perhaps frightened, for it would have taken little to disturb the subtle weave she was weaving at the church of Saint-Louis, she had said: “Go to the pavilion of Bretonvilliers, knock six times , spaced three, two, one, and when the door opens, pronounce these words: Salus Hungariae. You will be admitted, and I promise you that my sister Lila will come to join you. Lila! Who knows what torrents of harmony can spring from a name? Lila came.” René was at the window, where poor Angèle was looking at him from below, guessing in the night his beloved face. For a few seconds René’s eyes had been fixed by chance on an indecisive form, the form of a woman slumped over the corner marker. Certainly, he did not see her in the exact sense of the word: the shadow was too thick; but remorse has dreams like hope. A cold sweat bathed René’s temples; the name Angèle expired on his lips. He did not see her, however, we repeat, since, for him, the woman on the marker was carrying a small child in her arms. He saw the small child more distinctly than the woman. But Lila came, and René saw nothing but Lila. Angèle, the real Angèle, for, alas! it was not a vision, fell dying, while René forgot everything in a kiss. The first kiss!… Chapter 10. FACE TO FACE. The hours passed, measured by the hoarse bell of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile. The last sound in the street was the passage of those men who carried Angèle to the cabaret of the Miraculous Peach. We find Lila and René where we left them, sitting next to each other on the ottoman in the boudoir, hands in hands, eyes in eyes. And we say once again that it would have been difficult to find a younger, more beautiful, more graceful couple. Lila had just uttered these words which had cast a cloud over the René’s forehead: My name is sweet in your mouth. These words served as a starting point for us to recount a long and bizarre episode. They struck a chord in René’s heart that remained painful. By chance, long ago, one evening the memory of which lived like a cruel remorse, Angèle had spoken the same words and almost in the same tone. “Lila,” said René after a silence that the young woman had not interrupted, “the ignorance in which I am weighs on me. I am in a state of anguish and fever. To others I should explain my pain, but you know my story… the story of these twenty-four hours whose imperfect memories remain in me like a painful enigma… you know them much better than I know myself. I would like to know. ” “You will know everything,” replied the charming creature, whose large eyes had an expression of reproach, “everything I know, at least… But I hoped that between the two of us curiosity would not have had so much room. ” “Don’t misunderstand!” cried Kervoz. My curiosity is that love, a deep, an ardent love… She shook her head slowly, and her beautiful smile was tinged with bitterness. “Perhaps I deserved this,” she said. “One must never play with the heart, that is the proverb of my country. Now, I played with your heart first . The first time my gaze called you, I did not love you…” She took his hand in spite of him and brought it with a sudden movement to her lips. “Love has come,” she continued. “Do not punish me! I am mistress, but a slave. Love me well, for I would die if I did not feel loved… And above all, O René, I beg you, never judge me with your reason, I who have sacrificed my free will to a holy cause… Judge me only with your soul!” She laid her head on René’s breast, who kissed her hair. He was overcome with intoxication at the feeling of her throbbing in his arms. He fought, without knowing why, the joy of this longed- for hour and called upon Angèle for help. But they have, like flowers, these perfumes that rise to the brain, more penetrating and more powerful than the spirits of wine. They intoxicate. “Did you know me the first time?” murmured René. “Yes,” she replied, “I knew you… and I was there for you. ” “At Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois? ” “I had already come there for you, and you hadn’t noticed me… I knew that you were not yet the husband of that beautiful child who always accompanied you… ” René’s hand pressed heavily on her lips. “You don’t want me to talk to you about her,” Lila said in a docile and sad tone. “Oh! I would not have said anything against her… You have tears in your eyes, René… You still love her… “I would give the better half of my life,” replied the young Breton, “to love her always. ” Lila pressed him passionately to her heart. “Let us never speak of her, indeed,” she continued in a voice so sweet it seemed like a song. “Since I have hoped to be loved, I pray for her very often…” She stopped and continued: “Let us speak of ourselves… I was sent to you. ” “Sent! By whom? ” “By those who have the right to command me. ” “The Brothers of Virtue?” She lowered her head in affirmation. “And what did they want from me?” asked René. “Nothing from you… everything from someone else…” He wanted to ask further questions, but she closed his mouth with a quick kiss. “You were nothing to us,” she continued, “you who are now everything to me… Have you read that strange book where Cazotte tells how the demon fell in love with a beautiful, a good soul? I am not a demon… Oh! How I would like to be an angel for you, René, my beloved René!… But perhaps there is a demon among we… “The blonde?” Kervoz cried in spite of himself. Lila gave a strange smile. “My sister?” she said. “Isn’t she very pretty?… But what’s the matter with you, René?” René’s hand had seized hers almost convulsively. He was very pale. “This is an explanation I want,” he said firmly , “I demand it… There was blood, wasn’t there, beneath those apparently simple words: Count Wenzel has left for Germany! ” “Ah!” Lila said, turning pale in her turn. “Weren’t you asleep then? ” “You hoped I was?” René said quickly. “Not me,” she replied in a melancholy tone so persuasive that Kervoz’s suspicions turned away from her as if by magic. She added, fixing the candor of her beautiful eyes on him: “Never suspect me, I am yours as if my heart were beating in your chest!” Then she repeated: “Not me… I was only thinking of your recovery… but the others… Listen. René, a grave and high responsibility weighs on them… I would have had difficulty saving you if the others had known that you were not asleep. ” “And why were you in this cave, you, Lila?” asked René in a tone that contained contempt and pity. She straightened up so haughtily that the young Breton lowered his eyes in spite of himself. “Have I offended you?” he stammered. “No,” she replied with all her gentleness returned, “you cannot offend me… Only, let me tell you this, René, there are things that the nephew of Georges Cadoudal must only speak of with reserve.” René leaned back on the ottoman; a shaft of light struck him. “Ah!” he said, “is this Georges Cadoudal’s nephew you were given the mission to look for? ” “And to find,” Lila finished, smiling, “and to attract him to me by all possible means. ” “Then why so much mystery? ” “Because I did like the poor demon of Cazote, I let myself be taken in. I no longer act for them unless you are with them. I keep you free and outside of all commitment. I love you, and there is nothing left in me but this love. ” “Perhaps,” said René, who hesitated, “I have neither the same feelings nor the same opinions as my uncle Georges Cadoudal. ” “That matters little to me,” Lila replied, “I will have your opinions, I will have your feelings… I know that you cherish your uncle; I am sure you will not betray him… “Betray!” Kervoz interrupted her indignantly. Then, as she opened her mouth, he continued: “You have not yet answered me anything about Count Wenzel. ” Lila said very quietly: “I would like not to answer you on this subject. ” “I demand the truth!” Kervoz insisted. “You order, I obey… The secret societies of Germany are as old as Christianity, and their rigorous laws have been perpetuated through the ages… It was always the men of iron who signified to Charles of Burgundy, surrounded by a hundred thousand soldiers, the mysterious sentence of the rope and the dagger… The League of Virtue comes from Germany. Traitors are punished by death there.
” “And Count Wenzel was a traitor?” Kervoz asked. Lila replied: “I do not know everything. ” “Does your sister know more than you?” “My sister is a Rosicrucian of the thirty-third palace,” Lila replied, not without a certain emphasis. “She governed the kingdom of Buda. There is nothing she should not know. ” “And you, Lila, what are you?” She enveloped her with a charming look, and, letting herself slide to her knees, she murmured: “I am your slave! I love you! Oh! I love you! ” René’s entire being rushed towards her. In his eyes one could guess the words of love that wanted to spring forth, and yet he said: “Lila, what do these words mean: Baron de Ramberg is going to leave too?” for Germany? Is this another incident? Is it time to prevent it? The young woman’s eyelids lowered, while the delicate arch of her eyebrows contracted slightly. “I don’t know everything,” she repeated. “You are cruel!” Then she continued, drawing René’s two hands to her heart. “Don’t ask me what I don’t know; don’t ask me what concerns foreigners, enemies… Georges Cadoudal is also going to die, and I can only think of Georges Cadoudal, who is your mother’s brother . ” René had stood up straight before the end of the sentence. “Could my uncle be in the power of the First Consul?” he stammered. “Your uncle had two companions,” replied Lila; “only yesterday, he stood proud and menacing before Napoleon Bonaparte. Today your uncle is alone: Pichegru and Moreau are prisoners. ” “God save them!” thought René aloud. They were two glorious men of war, and no one knows the secret of their conscience… But perhaps it is the salvation of my uncle Georges, for he will now understand the madness of his enterprise… “His enterprise is not mad,” Lila interrupted him in a resolute and firm tone. “Even if it were even more insane than you believe, Georges will never confess its madness. Do not protest: what is the use? You know him and you feel the truth of what I say. If Georges Cadoudal could flee as easily as I raise this finger to impose silence on you, for I must speak and you must listen to me, Georges Cadoudal would not flee. His enterprise can be severely judged from the point of view of honor, and yet, what sustains him is the point of honor itself. He will die with a threat on his lips and blood in his eyes; like the wild boar cornered by the pack… But, even if he wanted to flee, understand this well, escape would henceforth be impossible for him. Paris is guarded like a jail, and it is precisely by fleeing that he would be caught… Your uncle’s safety is in the hands of a man… “Name this man!” cried the young Breton. “This man is called René de Kervoz.” He began to pace the room with great strides. Lila followed him with a smiling look. “I must love you,” she said, as if the thought had slipped unwittingly from her lips; “it seems that each minute that passes delivers me to you more completely. I am in a hurry to be done with what is not you. It is no longer for those who sent me that I am here, and it is no longer for Georges Cadoudal, it is for you… Come.” Her caressing gesture called him back. He returned anxious. She said to him: “Now you don’t love me anymore!” Kervoz’s burning gaze answered her. She took his head in her hands and pressed her mouth to his lips, murmuring: “When are we going to talk about love?” René trembled, and his eyes were drowning. She was beautiful; she was living charm, voluptuousness incarnate. “Will we have time to save him?” he asked. “They are already watching over him,” she replied, “or at least they are hunting those who are pursuing him. ” “But who are they, in the end, these men?” “The Brothers of Virtue,” replied the young woman, whose smile faded and whose voice became serious, “are those who will restore to Georges Cadoudal his lost strength. ” Two powerful allies have just been taken from him, he will find a thousand more… I was not authorized, Monsieur de Kervoz, to reveal to you the secret of the association… But you will see if I love you, René, my René! I will lift the veil for you, at the risk of terrible punishment… Kervoz wanted to stop her, but she seized both his hands and continued in spite of him: –Those who dig their furrow through the crowd leave behind them blood and intolerance. To show very high, one must put one’s foot on many heads. From the square in front of Saint-Roch to Aboukir, General Bonaparte, has climbed many degrees. Every step of the staircase he has climbed is made of human flesh… Don’t argue with me, René; if you love him, I will love him: I would love Satan if you ordered me to. Besides, I do not hate the First Consul: I fear him and I admire him. But those who are my masters,—those who were my masters before this hour when I give myself to you, hate him to death. They are all those whom he violently pushed aside to pass, all those whom he mercilessly crushed to ascend. You have seen some of them through the mist of the feverish hours; you vaguely remember: I will clarify your memories. And what you have not seen, I will show you. Our leader is a woman. I will speak of her last. The one who comes after Countess Marcian Gregoryi, my sister, is a young man with a livid forehead, crowned with white hair. When God makes two twins, the death of one takes the life of the other: Joseph and Andrea Ceracchi were twins. One of the two paid with his blood for a daring attack; the other is a living dead who breathes only for vengeance. Toussaint-Louverture, the Christ of the black race, had a satellite soul, just as Mahomet led Seïd. You have seen Taïeh, the ebony giant who will devour the heart of his master’s assassin. You have seen the Welshman Kaërnarvon, who sums up in himself all the rancor of defeated England, and Osman, the Mameluke of Mourad-Bey, who has been following the victor of the Pyramids since Jaffa. Osman is like Taïeh: a tiger that must be chained. Those you have not seen are numerous. Glory wounds the envious in the depths of their obscurity, as the sun’s rays make the eyes of the short-sighted bleed. Avengers multiply through the jealous. We have, behind the sacred battalion of intolerance, that immortal multitude who were already alive when Athens flourished and who voted for the exile of Aristides, because Aristides, happy, dazzled too many eyes. We have Lucullus of the Directory, bitterly regretting his fall and the diamonds that adorned the toes of the half-naked muse, proud shame of her box at the comedy; we have the small change of the gagged Mirabeau, the ruined chivalry of Coblentz, Vendée swords, September knives… We have everything: the angry past, the jealous present, the terrified future. The republic and the monarchy, France and Europe. We receive daggers from the New World and gold to penetrate even into Tarquin’s house, where they bargain over wavering devotions. It is not Tarquin, Tarquin was king: it is Caesar who always uncovers himself when setting foot on the first step of the throne. General Bonaparte may have been invulnerable, but it is on a bare head that the crown is placed, and he has no breastplate under his imperial mantle; The best breastplate, moreover, was his title of simple citizen. He strips it of himself. Jupiter troubles the minds of those he wants to kill: here he is without armor! She stopped and ran the fingers of her beautiful hand over her forehead, where the jet of her hair streamed. As she spoke, her voice had taken on strange tones, and the flash of her large eyes punctuated her words so powerfully that René remained completely speechless. For the second time he asked: “Lila, who are you?” She smiled sadly. “Perhaps,” she murmured instead of answering, “perhaps Jupiter wants to kill the last demigod that the world-weary old age can still produce. Is this man too great for us?… You think I’m exaggerating, René; and indeed, those of my country often dream, but I remain below the truth… I am Lila, a poor girl from the Danube, already tried by many sorrows, but on whom fate finally seems to smile, since she met you on her way. I tell you what is. It would be as foolish to count those who are with us as to seek the vestige of those who betrayed us. We are the free judges of old Germany, resurrected and recruiting from the entire universe the magistrates of the mysterious tribunal. This tribunal is composed of all the enemies of the hero and some of his friends. We did not want Pichegru and Moreau: they fell only because our hand did not support them… Countess Marcian Gregoryi cast a favorable eye on Georges Cadoudal… It is thanks to her that he has today avoided the fate of his accomplices… a more cruel fate, René, because we have some measures to keep in mind with regard to two illustrious generals, having so often led the republican armies to victory; while the rebellious peasant, the Chouan, the brigand should be knocked into a corner, as one would shoot a rabid dog. René bowed his head. His reason, taken like his senses, rebelled in the same way. Lila did not give him time to question his thoughts. “It remains for me to speak to you of my sister,” she said abruptly, knowing well that she would awaken her dormant curiosity, “of my sister and of me, for her superior destiny has drawn me in her wake, and I am only the shadow of my sister. We are the two daughters of the magnate of Bangkeli, and our mother, at the age of sixteen, perished victim of the vampire of Uszel, whose tomb, as big as a church, was found full of skulls that had belonged to young girls or young women. You French people don’t believe in that. The story is thus, and I tell it to you as my father, colonel of the Black Hussars of Bangkeli, in the cavalry of Prince Charles of Lorraine, Archduke of Austria, told it. The vampire, of Uszel, whom the inhabitants of the Save called the beauty with the changing hair, because she appeared sometimes brunette, sometimes blonde to the young men immediately subjugated by her charms, was, during her mortal life, a noble Bulgarian who shared the crimes and debauchery of the ban of Szandor, under Louis II, the last of the Jagiellons of Bohemia who reigned in Hungary. She remained a whole century peaceful in her coffin, then she awoke, opened and dug with her own hands an underground passage which led from the depths of her closed tomb to the banks of the Save. In these distant countries which already have the splendors of the Orient, but where reign these mysterious scourges, relegated by you to the rank of fables, everyone knows well that every vampire, whatever their sex, has a particular gift of evil, which they exercise under one condition, a rigorous law whose violation costs the monster abominable tortures. The gift of Addhéma, as the Bulgarian woman was called, was to be reborn beautiful and young like Cupid each time she could apply to the hideous nudity of her skull a living hair: I mean a hair torn from the head of a living person. And that is why her tomb was full of skulls of young women and girls. Similar to the savages of North America who scalp their vanquished enemies and carry off their hair like trophies, Addhéma chose the most beautiful and happy foreheads around her tomb to snatch from them this prey which restored a few days of youth to her. For the spell lasted only a few days. As many days as the victim had years to live their natural life. At the end of that time, a new crime was needed and another victim. The banks of the Save are not populated like those of the Seine. I don’t need to tell you that soon young girls and young women became rare around Uszel… You smile, René, instead of shuddering… She smiled herself, but in that gaiety, which was like An obedient concession to the young man’s skepticism, there were adorable melancholies. “I listen,” replied René, “and I marvel at the distance we have traveled, under the pretext of speaking of love. ” “You no longer wish to speak of love, Monsieur de Kervoz!” murmured Lila, whose smile had a touch of mockery. René did not protest, he only said: “The banks of the Seine have nothing to envy the banks of the Save. We also have a vampire. ” “Do you believe it?” asked Lila, who immediately added: “You would be ashamed to believe it, you fine spirit! ” “Where did you get this strange motto?” murmured René instead of replying: “In vita mors, in morte vita.” –Death in life, Lila said slowly, life in death: that is the motto of the human race… It comes to us from one of our ancestors, the Ban of Szandor, who was also accused of being a vampire… We are a strange family, you will see… René, my René, she suddenly broke off, straightening up, proud and so beautiful that the young Breton’s eye sparkled, it is I who have driven love away, it is I who will bring it back: I am not afraid of your coldness; in a moment, you will be at my feet! Chapter 11. COUNT MARCIAN GREGORYI The clock in the boudoir marked ten o’clock. There was, inside and outside the pavilion of Bretonvilliers, a profound silence. Barely a few murmurs came in the distance from the living city. René and Lila were sitting next to each other on the ottoman. René had lowered his eyes under the amorous challenge that had just sprung from Lila’s eyes. He knew only too well that she was sure of victory. “You must know all these things, Monsieur de Kervoz,” she continued. “Your Breton superstitions are not the same as our Hungarian superstitions. What does that matter? Fables or realities, these premises of my story will lead to incontestable facts, on which depends the life or death of a relative who is dear to you, and on which perhaps also depends the death or life of the greatest of men. I continue. Each time Addhéma, the vampire of Uszel, managed to warm the cold bones of her skull with the help of a young head of hair plucked from life, she gained a few days, sometimes a few weeks, but sometimes also only a few hours of a new existence: a week for seven years, a month for six years. It was like a terrible game where the profit could be great or small; Addhéma never knew it in advance; but what did it matter, after all? The hours won, whether numerous or rare, were at least always hours of youth, beauty, pleasure, for Addhéma became again the splendid courtesan of old, with her fiery passion and her irresistible attraction. Here was the gift. I will tell you the condition imposed with regard to the gift: the law which she could not break under penalty of suffering a thousand deaths. Addhéma could not give herself to a lover before having told him her own story. It was necessary that in the middle of a conversation of love she should bring up the strange story that I am telling you here, speaking of dead young girls, of torn hair and relating with exactitude the bizarre conditions of her death which was a life, of her life which was a death… I use the past tense, because she once failed to comply with the law of her hideous resurrections; and it was precisely while she was wearing our mother’s blond hair. Love made her forget her strange duty. She received the kiss of a young Serb, beautiful as the day, before having sought and found the opportunity to place the supernatural story. The spirit of evil seized her at the moment when she stammered words of tenderness, and the young Serb recoiled in horror at the sight of his mistress restored to her real state: a corpse of an old woman, emaciated, frozen, bald and crumbling to dust. It was of her own accord, then, that she revealed herself, for, in these hours of punishment, every vampire is forced to tell the truth. The Serb heard these words which seemed to come from the earth: “Kill me! My greatest torture is to live. The hour is favorable, kill me. To kill me, you must burn my heart!” The recent mourning which was in the house of the magnate of Bangkeli, leaving an inconsolable husband and two small children in the cradle, had caused a great stir in the country. The Serb mounted his horse and came to find our father in the midst of the funeral festivities. Our father took with him all his relatives, all his guests, and they went to the tomb of Uszel, for the corpse of the vampire was already no longer in the Serb’s home. Uszel’s tomb was demolished, and our father, having made his own saber red hot in the fire, plunged it three times and turned it three times into the heart of Addhéma the Bulgarian. My sister and I grew up in the sad and seemingly empty castle. We missed our mother’s caresses, we were lulled with the tale of these gloomy mysteries. There was a song that said: One day for a year, twenty-four hours for three hundred and sixty-five days.
At the last minute of the last hour, the hair dies, the spell is broken, and the hideous witch flees, defeated, to her vault… My sister was in her sixteenth year and I was about to turn fifteen, when our father hoisted the red banner from the highest towers of Bangkeli. At the same time, he sent his Czechs to the lodgings of his tenants, along the river; There were four of them, one carried his saber, the second his pistol-carbine, the third his dolman, the fourth his jatspka. In the evening, there were twelve hundred hussars equipped and armed around our ancient walls. My father told us: take your clothes, your jewels and your daggers. And we left, that very night, on post for Trieste. The regiment, – my father’s twelve hundred tenants formed the regiment of the Black Hussars of Bangkeli, – had taken the same route on horseback. The rendezvous was at Treviso. Archduke Charles of Austria occupied Treviso with his staff. Bonaparte had already completed two-thirds of this lightning campaign in Italy which was to end in the very heart of Germany. Our army had changed commanders four times and was retreating, no longer counting the battles lost. Yet there were celebrations in Treviso, where twelve new regiments, arrived from the Tyrol, Bohemia, and Hungary, presented a magnificent appearance, and Prince Charles swore to annihilate the French at the first encounter. My sister and I had never seen anything but the wild banks of the Save and the austere solitude of the castle. For three days it was like a dream to us. On the fourth day, our father said to my sister: You are to be the wife of Count Marcian Gregoryi. My sister did not have to answer yes or no; it was not a question: it was a law. Marcian Gregoryi was twenty-two years old. He wore his brilliant Croatian costume heroically. The very day before, Prince Charles had made him a general. He was handsome, noble, richer than a king, in love, and happy. My sister and he were married on the morning of the day Bonaparte crossed the Tagliamento; The next day took place the great battle which killed the Archduke in his hopes and in his glory, by opening the passage of the Tyrol to the French. We were separated from our father. Count Marcian Gregoryi watched over us. We spent the night in an inn near Udine. My room was separated by a simple partition from the one where the young couple were to sleep. Around midnight, I heard my sister’s voice rising firm and hard. I thought at first that it was another woman, for I did not know her commanding accent. She said: “Count, I have no intolerance towards you. You are brave, you must have met many women to admire your noble figure and your beautiful face. I obeyed my father, who is my master and who told me: This one will be your husband… But my father, when leaving Bangkeli, had also told me: Take your dagger. My dagger is in my hand. It is my freedom. If you take a step towards me, I will kill myself. ” Marcian Gregoryi begged and wept. “Do I know why I was on Marcian’s side against my sister?” “Oh!” she interrupted herself, running her slender fingers through René’s hair, “you mustn’t be jealous! Marcian Gregoryi died a long time ago. At the end of that month, which was March 1797, the French, still chasing us before them, entered Trieste. My sister and I were both together on March 24th, the 6th of Germinal, as they called it then, in a country house located a league from the Chiuza. In the evening, my sister came to see me. I had never seen her so beautiful. Her finery was dazzling, and there were flashes of pride in her eyes. She kissed me on the lips and said goodbye. I didn’t have time to question her. Two minutes later, the gallop of her horse raised waves of dust on the road, and from my window I could follow its mad race, which was already disappearing into the night. In the distance and in different directions, we could hear the cannonade. Yanusza, the nurse of us both, it is this old woman who brought you here this evening, came up to my room and squatted on the threshold. “My master’s eldest daughter is on the road to her death!” she moaned with tears in her eyes. She silenced my questions. A loud noise of horses was heard in the courtyard. Marcian Gregoryi’s booming voice commanded: Gallop! And for the second time the road disappeared behind the swirling dust. Marcian Gregoryi was following the same direction as my sister. A few leagues away, there was a very simple tent, pitched in the corner of a clump of ash trees and surrounded by the fires of a bivouac. In front of the tent, French general officers were talking in low voices. Inside, a young man of twenty-six, pale, people of all body types, puny, with flat hair on a powerful forehead, was sleeping with his head resting on a pointed map. A letter signed Josephine was open on the table and bore the mark of the French post office. This one could sleep; he had worked terribly since sunrise . An entire army was guarding him, soldiers and generals; He was the hope and glory of the French Republic, victorious over the universe. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte; he could sleep in peace. To reach him, the enemy had to pass over the bodies of thirty thousand men. However, he was suddenly awakened by a hand placed on his shoulder. A man he did not know—an enemy—was standing before him, saber in hand. A tall, strong, young man, endowed to the supreme degree with the masculine beauty of the Magyar race, and whose eyes spoke a terrible language of anger and intolerance. “General,” he said coldly, “I am Count Marcian Gregoryi; my fathers were noble before the birth of Christ, our savior; there have never been anything but soldiers in my house. I would not know how to murder. I beg you to take up your sword in order to defend yourself, for my wife has betrayed me for you, and one of us must die.” The hour of awakening is weak, but Bonaparte was not afraid, for he did not call out, although the murmur of the people who were watching was heard around the tent . If he had called out, he would have been dead, for the point of Marcian Gregory’s sabre was very close to his chest. “You are mistaken or you are mentally ill,” he replied. “I do not know your wife.” He added, bringing back the open letter with a calm gesture: “There is only one woman to me, she is my wife.” “General,” replied Marcian, “you are lying!” And without losing his position as a man ready to strike, he took from his bosom an equally open letter which he presented to Bonaparte. The letter was written in French; my sister and I, like almost all Hungarian noblewomen, spoke French from childhood, as well as our mother tongue. The letter was addressed to Marcian Gregoryi and said: Count, You will never see me again. A whim of my father threw me into your arms; you did not ask me if I loved you before taking me as your wife. This is unworthy of a man of heart, unworthy also of a man of intelligence. You are punished by your very sin. Only one thing could have made me submit to you: force. I love force. If my husband had violently conquered me the day after the wedding, I would perhaps have been a submissive and kneeling woman. You were weak, you backed down before my threats. I do not like those who back down; I despise those who yield. I belong to myself; I am leaving. Do not bother to look for me. There is a man who has never backed down, never yielded, never weakened: the victor of all your defeats, young as Alexander the Great and destined like him to place his heel on the brow of the human race. I love this man and I admire him with all the intolerance, with all the disdain that I have for you. I repeat, do not look for me, unless you dare follow me to General Bonaparte’s tent! It was signed with my sister’s name. The French general read the letter to the end. Perhaps he hoped that one of his lieutenants would by chance enter his tent, but he did not take a second longer than necessary to read the letter. “Monsieur le comte,” he said, and his voice was as calm as his gaze, “I will, if you wish, facilitate the means for you to leave my camp. I have heard it said that jealousy is madness: I repeat to you that I do not know your wife. ” “And I repeat to you that you are lying!” gritted Gregoryi between clenched teeth. At the same time the finger of his left hand, convulsively extended, pointed to the second door of the tent, placed behind Bonaparte. The latter turned and saw a marvelously beautiful woman, wearing the opulent costume of the Magyars and with incomparable blond hair through which ran long twists of sapphires. A cry escaped from his breast, for he saw himself lost, this time, and killed by the very presence of this woman. The rest was quicker than lightning. Marcian Gregoryi was not a man to let go of his prey. He had asked for a fight, he was refused, and master that he was, by virtue of his naked saber, a delay of a second would make him a slave. The French general’s cry would bring a hundred swords. Marcian Gregoryi aimed at his rival’s heart and struck a thrust with his shortened arm. But before the sharp saber, thrown so as to pierce right through that frail chest, had completed half its journey, a convulsive movement of the arm stopped it. A flash had illuminated the half-light of the tent; an explosion had resounded. The saber slipped from Gregoryi’s hands, who fell thunderstruck. My sister had also aimed. The bullet from her pistol, by shattering her husband’s skull, preserved the life of General Bonaparte. Officers, generals, soldiers entered from all sides at once to see Bonaparte standing there, a little pale but cold, with on his right a man bathed in his own blood, on his left this dazzling woman, whose half-naked breast palpitated and who still held her smoking pistol in her hand. “Citizens,” said Bonaparte, “you are arriving a little late. Take better care of the future. It seems that the tent of your commander-in-chief is not well guarded. And, while the dismayed audience remained silent, he added: “I had fallen asleep; I was wrong, for we have work to do. I have been awakened… Citizens, let this man be dressed with great care, if he is still alive; if he is dead, let him be buried honorably: he is not a murderer. ” He dismissed those around him with a gesture, and said again: “Citizens, be ready. Presently I will assemble the council. ” The body of Marcian Gregoryi was carried away, as he was no longer breathing. My sister remained alone with General Bonaparte. You have only caught a glimpse of her, and seven years have passed over her beauty. I know of no woman who can compare to her. She was then a hundred times more beautiful, and certainly, the man she had just saved should not have seen her with eyes of indifference. General Bonaparte had a large and beautiful Geneva watch, placed on the maps that covered his work table. He consulted it and said: “Madame, speak quickly, and try to justify yourself… ” “Does that surprise you?” Lila interrupted here, responding to a gesture of surprise that René had been unable to restrain. René had not ceased for a moment to listen with a strange interest. “Yes,” he murmured, “that surprises me. Your story seizes me because I believe it to be true… This woman goes to Georges Cadoudal as she went to Bonaparte… ” “No,” Lila interrupted him dryly. Her quickly lowered eyelid hid the flash that, in spite of herself, lit up in her eyes. Her mouth alone expressed a shade of disdain. She added in a dreamy tone: “Do not compare; There is no possible comparison. Georges Cadoudal may not be a vulgar man, Bonaparte is a giant. Intolerance is more clear-sighted than you believe, and my sister hates all the more the more she admires him. The magnet that drew her to Bonaparte was glory; the force that draws her to Cadoudal is revenge. Let me continue, I beg you, for I have finished and I am eager to get to what concerns us. My sister refused to justify herself; she had come with other hopes. Perhaps she said so, for I have never met a heart bolder than hers. Her words slipped over a marble ear. Her gaze, which nothing can resist, grew dull against lowered eyelids. I cannot relate in detail what happened. My sister never told me. I guessed her silence; I translated the flash of her eye and the trembling of her pale lip. My sister will never forgive. The hand ticked for two minutes on the watch, then General Bonaparte called again, saying: “Citizens, take your seats, the council is about to open…. I give the order that Countess Marcian Gregoryi be escorted back to the Austrian outposts. ” Chapter 12. THE ROOM WITHOUT A WINDOW “In Prince Charles’s army,” Lila continued, “no one knew how General Count Marcian Gregoryi died. My sister and I entered the convent of Varasdin. It was occupied by cloistered nuns of the Order of Saint Vladimir, but there are neither walls high enough nor locks strong enough to stop my sister’s will.” During the short and victorious Tyrolean campaign, Bonaparte encountered dangers that history will not recount, except for two or three that appear like chapters of a novel in the midst of the great epic of his life. The hand of Countess Marcian Gregoryi was there. Our father died around this time, and my sister became mistress of his actions. I did not know how to resist her. She dominated me, a poor young girl, with all the height of her intolerance. We owned estates on the banks of the Save, as large as a province; all our possessions were sold, but, inexplicably, my sister kept the barren field where the tomb of the vampire of Uszel was located. This desolate field still belongs to her. We left for France after the Treaty of Campo-Formio. Amid the triumphs that welcomed the victorious Bonaparte to Paris, there was an enemy gaze that followed him like a curse. A man soon stood before the young general radiating with glory, a man who seemed to have sworn to abruptly stop the rise of his fortune. It was Director Rewbell, that arrogant puritan who recited his Genevan litanies with an Alsatian accent. Rewbel had an Egeria to support him in this unequal struggle of mediocrity against genius. In a villa on the heights of Passy lived a young woman whose reputation for extraordinary beauty was growing, despite the silent retreat in which she hid her life. Every evening the puritan Rewbell came to visit her. My sister, the brilliant Countess Gregoryi, had made herself the mistress of the lawyer from Colmar to satisfy his intolerance. Like an eagle that one would like to entangle in a spider’s web, Bonaparte broke with a single leap the threads of these petty intrigues, and terrified Egypt saw one morning the French army cover its shores. The villa at Passy where Rewbell slipped in at night became solitary again. An English ship took us to Alexandria. All those who are to dazzle or dominate the world have a star, that is certain. Bonaparte’s star appeared to me in Egypt, where he should have died a hundred times over. My sister, tireless, spent her days and nights setting traps that were always useless. And he went on his historic way, not even knowing that he was trampling underfoot the mine dug in his path. What can I say? I was becoming a woman, he was growing in my eyes like a god. It was not love: I was only too well aware of the enormous gap that was widening between us; and besides, there are destinies: my heart was waiting for you and was to beat only for you. No, it was not love. There was in me a fearful and respectful admiration for him. I don’t know how to tell you this, René; there was a secret horror mingled with the cult that brought me to its knees . I am the daughter of a dead woman. I see everywhere that terrible thing called vampirism: this gift of living at the expense of another’s blood. And with what are all these glories made, if not with blood? With blood, it is said, the hermetics created gold; they needed tons of it. Glory, more precious than gold, demands torrents of it. And on this red ocean a man floats, a sublime vampire, who has multiplied his life by a hundred thousand deaths. I deserted my sister’s cause in my soul. Perhaps there was a secret charm to protect from below, I, so weak, the providential march of this giant. I protected him, that’s the truth: the Fable tells with a smile what the humblest of animals could do for the lion king. I protected him on those long marches across the sands of Egypt. I protected him during the crossing, and when he fought that other battle, at the Council of Five Hundred, a battle where composure seemed to abandon him for a moment, I protected him again. There was a moment, I tell you, when his famous grenadiers would not have known how to defend him. And woe to him who lets himself be defended too often by soldiers elsewhere than in the plain, where the soldiers belong ! My sister wondered if some demon was protecting this man’s life. His conspiracy persisted, tireless. On October 10, 1800, my sister put a dagger in the hand of Giuseppe Ceracchi, a young sculptor already famous, of whom she had intoxicated the chivalrous soul. Arena, Demerville and Topino-Lebrun had sworn that Bonaparte would not see the end of the performance of The Horatii, which was being given that evening. A note in unknown handwriting warned General Lannes. I wept over the death of Ceracchi.–But Bonaparte was saved. Three months later, on December 24, at the moment when the First Consul’s carriage was turning the corner of the Rue Saint-Nicaise to take the Rue de Rohan which was to take him to the Opera, a young boy shouted to the coachman: Gallop, if you want to save your life! The terrified coachman whipped his horses, which in their rapid run jumped over an obstacle placed across the track. The obstacle was the infernal machine! Need I tell you who the young boy was ? Since then I have kept watch. I am giving you here the secret of my life, René, for I would not defend myself against my sister. With a word you can lose me. By fighting my sister, I have constantly safeguarded her life. I do not love her; she terrifies me, but she remains sacred to me and I would lie across the threshold of the room where she sleeps to guarantee her sleep. Before being arrested, Moreau and Pichegru received warnings: it was I who warned them. They ignored them, they lost themselves… “What do you want from me?” asked René de Kervoz after a long silence. “The means to save your mother’s brother, without compromising the safety of the First Consul. I want to have an interview with Georges Cadoudal. ” René remained silent. “You do not trust me,” murmured Lila sadly. “I would trust you for myself,” replied the young Breton. What you have done so far is well done, and in your story, which I have listened to without missing a word, I have seen the energy of a righteous and noble soul. But my uncle’s secrets do not belong to me. She stood up, smiling. “Let it be as you wish,” she said. ” I have already given, this evening, and it is for you, for you alone, to this man, whom I do not know, a part of the precious hours which should have been entirely ours: for us, I mean for our love; I have explained to you all that you wanted to know; there is no longer any mystery for you in the strange adventure of the isolated house where you first heard of the Brothers of Virtue…. And note well that in doing this, I have not delivered my sister to you. My sister is one of those whom one does not attack without madness. Whoever would go against her would be broken. She too at her star! She clapped her hands gently and continued: “Confidence will come when you have seen how far my tenderness goes for you. In the meantime, not another word about these matters which have robbed us of an entire evening of happiness. Midnight is about to strike. Give me your hand, René, and let us both put into action the beautiful refrain of the students of Germany: Let us rejoice while we are young…” As she spoke, a drapery slowly opened, revealing another room where pink candles shed a sweet light. In the middle of this second room, a table was laid with an elegant repast. At the far end, one could see a half-open alcove where the bed was half-hidden behind the streaming draperies of Indian muslin. Only two seats were placed near the table. There were flowers everywhere and the soft fire burning in the hearth exhaled fragrant vapors. When René crossed the threshold of this room, Lila seemed more beautiful to him. But there was in him some vague fear that froze his passion. The bizarre story he had just heard shimmered in the eyes of his memory. Lila had conducted this story with a charm that we have not been able to render, and yet René remained tormented by a doubt which had its source in instinct even more than in reason. Strangely enough, in this story, what had struck him most strongly was the cloudy episode of the vampire. René would have responded with a smile of contempt to anyone who had asked him if he believed in female or male vampires. And yet his idea could not detach him from this striking image, despite its absurdity: the bald dead woman, lying in this tomb for centuries, and who awoke young, ardent, lascivious, as soon as a living head of hair, still wet with warm blood, covered the horrible nudity of her skull. He looked at the undulating ebony of this marvelous black hair which crowned Lila’s forehead, this forehead sparkling with youth and charm, and he said to himself: “Those whose hair was torn away by death were like this!” And he shuddered. But the shudder penetrated to the marrow of his bones when he had this other thought that he tried in vain to chase away: “And the dead woman was like that too when she had torn out their hair! The dead woman! The vampire! Sometimes brunette, sometimes blonde, according to whether her last victim had had jet-black or golden hair! ” Lila poured into the glasses the contents of a flask of tokay, a liquid topaz that fills the exquisitely embroidered Bohemian crystal with tawny sparkles. They dipped their lips together in this nectar, then Lila wanted to exchange the cups and said: “It is my country that produces this liqueur of princes and queens. At the place where the Save, always Christian, flows into the Danube, which ends, Muslim, at Semlin, near Belgrade, the young girls sing the Ballad of Amber, while each lover plucks a tokay pearl from the lip of his mistress, in a smiling kiss. A golden tear trembled on the coral of her mouth. René drank it, and it seemed to him that this drop of ambrosia was intoxication itself and voluptuousness. His temples throbbed, his heart tightened in a spasm of anguish and delight. He looked at Lila, whose large eyes languished, thirsty for caresses. She was beautiful like those dreams of oriental paradise whose doors are opened by opium vapor . Around her spread a supernatural radiance. Her long eyelids let sparkling prayers well up. René still struggled. He tried to pronounce Angèle’s name in his soul.
But this wine was passion, oblivion, madness. It shone like a flame in diamond-cut cups, like a flame it burned. “One more pearl on your lips,” he murmured, “and may the adored fever of this beautiful dream never, never awaken!” Lila refilled the cups. Again their mouths touched. René, fainting, staggered in his seat; Lila held him with a sudden embrace. “And you don’t trust me!” she said. René saw her eyes filled with beautiful tears. “I love you!” he stammered, “oh! I love you!” Then, exalted to the point of delirium: “Didn’t you tell me what you want? Isn’t your thought as celestial as your beauty? You are the angel placed here below by the clemency of God to fight the demon. I want to give you everything, even my conscience! Georges Cadoudal is a hero, struck blind; you will save him because of the blood of my veins that is in him, but you will prevent him from killing the destiny of this century. I place his life in your hands.” Then… And he spoke, giving the secret of the retreat that allowed the Breton conspirator to remain hidden while showing himself and to wander through Paris like those werewolves of legendary times who had a magic lair. Lila obeyed; she listened, and every word spoken was engraved in her memory. The pink candles were going out. A night lamp, hanging from the ceiling, soon lit up the solitude of this room, formerly so gaily voluptuous, and which now borrowed from these trembling lights an almost funereal aspect. The muslin curtains hung motionless, protecting the closed alcove. In the alcove, René de Kervoz slept, alone. For how long? The table was cleared, the fire was dying in the hearth. Outside, one could hear mingled, distant sounds, like the great murmur of a waking city. And closer, certainly, it was an illusion, for garden birds do not sing at night, one could hear something like a chorus of small babbling birds. It was night, black night. But, strangely enough, through the closed door placed opposite the alcove, a brilliant light passed between the floor and the doors. You would have said it was the reflection of a ray of sunlight. It was through this door that Lila and René had entered the collation room. Was it day outside? In that strange room there was no sign of a window. How long had René been asleep? It had been, it must be explained, a long dream rather than sleep, a delicious dream, intoxicated, adorable,–then feverish,–then sad, gloomy, full of lugubrious terrors. René thought, vaguely, but always. He heard, he saw, or perhaps he thought he heard and saw.
Such are dreams, whether they are called happy dreams or horrible nightmares.
How beautiful she was, young, ardent, divine! What dear words exchanged! And what silences a thousand times more eloquent than words! It was the first hour. René remembered having contemplated her asleep, her charming head bathed in black hair and leaning on his bare arm. Then there had been an interval of true sleep, no doubt, of which he retained neither feeling nor memory. Then a sort of awakening; a harsh, bitter kiss, a broken voice that said: “I have never loved anyone but you: you will not die!” These words remained in his mind; he heard them constantly like a stubborn refrain. What meaning did they have? Then again… But who would be surprised at the absurdity of a dream? Everyone knows, moreover, that impressions received in the waking state return to disturb sleep. It was that hideous story of the vampire of Uszel, that bald corpse who lived on young hair. Lila, grace incarnate, the enchantress, Lila was the corpse. René saw her change in her sleep, change rapidly and pass through all the successive degradations that separate exuberant life from death, from dreadful death, hiding its ruin at the bottom of a tomb. That velvety cheek had turned livid, then the bones had pierced the eaten flesh. But why attempt the impossible? What René had seen, no pen would dare to say. Only one fact must be noted, because it related to René’s fixed idea. While this formidable transformation was taking place before his eyes, the black hair, the splendid hair, was slowly coming off , like glued parchment that would shrivel in the fire. There was first a sort of crack going around the forehead and rising at the temples. The dried skin creaked, revealing a frightful skull… René wanted to flee, but his body was leaden. He wanted to scream; his throat had no more voice. She stood up,—Lila——must we still call her that? Her legs, sonorous like those of a skeleton, clashed and produced that noise that freezes the blood in the veins. The hair still clung to the top of her skull. She approached the hearth. The hair fell there and gave off a black smoke. René saw nothing more, except an inert form, lying across the rug in front of the hearth. A voice coming from who knows where, from everywhere, from nowhere, said with a cry of agony: “Yanusza, help!” The old woman who spoke Latin appeared. She came right up to the bed, sneering and murmuring incomprehensible words. As she passed, she nudged the prone mass with her foot, which rang out sharply. The old woman leaned over René and roughly felt his heart. “Why didn’t she kill that one?” she asked. At the touch of those rough, cold fingers, René made a desperate effort to recover the use of his muscles; but he remained paralyzed. The old woman removed the cover without hurrying. Then she spread the tablecloth on the floor and slid the creaking mass, rumbling, to the center of the cloth, the four ends of which she tied together. It formed a bundle, noisy like a sack filled with ivory toys
. She threw it over her shoulders and withdrew, bent under the burden. The next-to-last noise René heard was that of the bolt forcing the lock; the last, the creaking of two solid bolts being closed from the outside. When René finally awoke, for he did wake, his head was heavy and all his joints ached, as sometimes happens after a great excess at the table. The previous evening, however, he had eaten nothing; at most he had emptied twice that famous glass of Bohemian content with Hungarian ambrosia: the wine of Tokai. His first thought was for Angèle, and he had a sort of great joy that pervaded his whole being at the feeling that he loved her as much as before. His second thought was for Lila, and he felt, for a quarter of a minute, that voluptuous sinking which had been the beginning of his sleep. But through these vague delights, a shudder came that froze the marrow of his bones: The memory of his dream… Was it a dream? How else could he explain the black madness of these confused adventures? And yet he was there, in that bed. Where had Lila fled? By the flickering light of the lamp, he consulted his watch on the night table. His watch read eleven o’clock. He thought it had stopped. He held it to his ear; it was ticking… Eleven o’clock! He was quite sure he had heard the twelve strokes of midnight, at the moment Lila’s story ended. So it was eleven o’clock in the morning! But then, this darkness that surrounded him?… Was he really in the dark land of the impossible? He jumped out of bed. His clothes were there, scattered and thrown on the floor. He didn’t remember taking them off. As he began to wash, his gaze fell on the ray of light that passed under the door. He felt cold, and his eyes quickly darted around the room, looking for a window. The room had no window. For the first time, the idea of captivity arose in him. But it was so improbable! In the middle of Paris! He was ashamed of himself and smiled contemptuously, saying: “This is the continuation of the dream!” He dressed, no longer wanting to see that lying ray of light, no longer wanting to hear those noises from outside, no longer wanting to understand, or think, or reason. There are extravagant things one cannot believe. When he was dressed, he tried, but in vain, to open the door. An icy sweat bathed his temples. He called out. In that room, the muffled voice seemed to strike the walls and fall back muffled. No one answered him. He climbed onto the table and took down the lamp where the oil was running low. He looked for an exit.–The room had no exit. As he returned to the hearth, an object caught his eye; a scrap of parchment-like skin to which half-burned black hair adhered . He himself sank down on the floor, his heart gripped by a extravagant terror and thinking: “The vampire!… Could my dream be true?” The lamp threw out a great glow and illuminated above the fireplace an escutcheon, stamped with the count’s crown, around which ran the motto: “In vita mors, in mors vita.” Then the lamp went out. René pressed both hands against his revolted heart. His ears rang with the word: “The vampire! The vampire!” And as he searched for objections in his desperate reason, saying to himself: “Would she have dared to tell me her own story herself?” his memory answered him: “It is the law! She obeyed the law of her infernal existence by telling me her own story! ” He gave a horrible cry, and, jumping to his feet, he rushed madly against the door. The door was as solid as a wall. For an hour he exhausted himself in vain efforts. When he finally fell, broken, it seemed to him that a wet and icy lip pressed against his mouth, and he lost feeling, as the bell tower of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile chimed the midday Angelus. Chapter 13. THE SECRETARY GENERAL Two days later, that is to say, on March 3 of that same year, 1804, all Paris remained in great excitement over the Moreau-Pichegru-Cadoudal conspiracy, which had been, it was said, so close to succeeding. The secretary general of the police prefecture received notice, around nightfall, that a man insisted on speaking in secret to M. Dubois. Moreau and Pichegru were behind bars, but Georges Cadoudal remained free, and all the measures taken to discover his retreat had failed. Citizen Dubois, who was to be a Count of the Empire, had held the police prefecture since the 18th Brumaire; he had done his best in the affairs of the Théâtre-Français and the Carousel, nevertheless the First Consul had a rather mediocre opinion of him and did not regard him as a sorcerer, on the contrary. There were, at that time, even more police forces than we have said , and the police of Mr. the Prefect was very strictly controlled: first by the general police of the Grand Judge Régnier, then by the police of the castle, led by Bourienne, and the military police, to which Anne-Jean-Marie-René Savary, Duke of Rovigo, was given as chief, finally by the counter-police of Fouché, who, having returned to private life and living alternately in his castle of Pont-Carré or his hotel on the rue du Bac, always had an eye on all the locks. Mr. Dubois was convinced that his future influence and his fortune depended on the outcome of the Cadoudal affair . He was then a man of forty-eight, well-built, well -dressed, rather handsome, but whose vulgar physiognomy did not promise much more than the character was capable of holding. The notice we have spoken of was transmitted to him at the moment when he was putting on his gloves to go out and did not prevent him from going about his little business. His secretary-general was a good old man, moldering in the offices, whom he had chosen less strong than himself for his own pleasure. Citizen Berthellemot, an overripe fruit of the directorial reaction, had considerable pretensions, very fine bureaucratic traditions, a deep cult for routine and some tinge of erudition. He desired the position of citizen prefect, who desired the office of citizen grand judge. He was a tall and dry man, remarkably clean, tiresomely formal, excessively talkative, fussy and proud like all useless people. He was over fifty, to his bitter regret. Mr. Berthellemot was alone in his large office, overlooking the Rue du Harlay-du-Palais, when Divisional Inspector Despaux came to announce the arrival of a stranger who insisted on speaking to the Prefect of Police. “What man is he?” asked the secretary general. “A tall, half-bald man with graying hair, with a serious and resolved of those whose youth was not spent keeping their hands in their pockets. I have a vague idea of having met that figure somewhere; in the Palais district or around the cathedral. “Monsieur Despaux,” said the secretary-general severely, “a police employee must not have vague ideas. He either knows or he does not know . ” “Then, sir, I do not know.” The secretary-general looked at him askance, but Despaux was much stronger than his chief, and sustained this glance without flinching. M. de Talleyrand said that one must go as far as England to find chiefs stronger than their clerks. That was very bad language. “Do you like to receive him?” asked M. Despaux. The secretary- general hesitated. “Wait, Mr. Inspector, wait!” he replied. “How you go! It is clear that no responsibility weighs on you. I see further than the end of my nose, sir!” Despaux bowed coldly. Berthellemot continued. “We’re going through a nasty patch, do you know that? The September supporters are stirring in the shadows, and the Babouvist faction is simply in a state of devilry. ” “They are the old friends of the Prefect,” Despaux said calmly, ” and of the Secretary General. ” “You are mistaken, sir!” Berthellemot declared solemnly. ” I have always shared the sentiments of the First Consul… and we are thinking of cleaning up our offices, the Prefect and I.” Despaux began to smile. “If the Prefect would grant me leave,” he said, “temporary or permanent,” I have an invitation from the secretary of Mr. Fouché, who has some fine fishing trips over there at Pont-Carré… I will send you a basket of trout, Mr. Berthellemot.” The Secretary General frowned and crumpled a letter he was holding in his hand. He was quite angry. “Say nothing, Inspector!” he growled through gritted teeth. “I have the good graces of the First Consul… I have just arrested the most dangerous man of this century… when I say ‘me,’ I mean the Prefect. ” “Cadoudal?” Despaux interrupted, still smiling. –Pichegru!… I have managed to stifle the scandalous noise that was being made around the supposedly liberticidal measures that Napoleon Bonaparte is taking for the salvation of the State… I have succeeded, sir!… when I say I… you understand… And certainly, we were right to demolish the Bastille in the past… But the Conciergerie is standing, Mr. Inspector!… And if a man like you, who knows far too much, were planning a shameful desertion… for I tell you, sir, if you don’t know, the First Consul distrusts his Minister of Police… and he has his reasons for that! –Not possible! said Despaux. That good citizen Fouché!… –The word citizen is erased from the official language, I beg you to remember that, Mr. Despaux! And I would not be far off, my dear inspector, if I am pleased with you… and in memory of the always excellent relations we have had together, I would not be far off from seriously considering your advancement… When I say me, it is clearly understood that I am referring to my superior, Mr. Prefect. The divisional inspector fell silent and smiled. “Will the secretary general be so kind as to receive our man who is waiting?” he asked. “Ah! ah! he is waiting… I had forgotten him… I think I am not at the service of the first comer, Mr. Despaux… If I specifically asked you to question him? ” “He would refuse to answer me. ” “Did he announce it? ” “Very clearly.” “Your personal opinion, Mr. Despaux, is that I should receive him, in the absence of Mr. Prefect! ” “Mr. Secretary General,” replied the inspector, “I hardly allow myself to give advice to my superiors, but in the circumstances in which we find ourselves… –These are diabolical circumstances, sir. –It could be that the revelations of this stranger… –So he is going to make revelations to me? –Everything leads us to believe so… and if they relate to the plot… You know that we are no further ahead than on the first day. –Sir, Berthellemot interrupted him, my line of conduct, and when I say my line, I mean that of the Prefect… our line of conduct is always settled in advance, independently of the opinion of this one or that one. Great events are being prepared, very great events. I know more than I want to tell you, believe me… France needs a master: I have never varied on this point. Time will tell. As soon as you spoke to me about this man, I nourished the formal intention of receiving him. If he has evil designs on me, my duty is to risk my life… and when I say my life… But no matter, for the service of His Majesty… “His Majesty!” repeated Despaux without much astonishment. “Did I say His Majesty?… It is proof of the profound respect I have for the First Consul… Be careful, Mr. Inspector… perhaps chance has allowed you today to raise your gaze well above your sphere… Please place two agents under observation… and bring in the man who has come to speak to me about Georges Cadoudal. ” The secretary-general pushed back his chair and stood on his feet. With a solemn gesture, he dismissed Despaux, who wanted to protest against his last words. The next moment, heavy boots were heard marching in an adjoining room. It was the two agents taking up their observation post. Then the usher on duty introduced the mysterious stranger through the back door. Mr. Berthellemot was standing. He looked the newcomer up and down with that supposedly profound look of actors who play Mr. de Sartines or Mr. de la Reynie in melodramatic theaters. Note that this look alone would be enough to immediately put the most vulgar scoundrel on his guard. I affirm on my honor that Mr. de la Reynie, who was a man of great merit, nor even this good Mr. de Sartines, who had little more than Mr. Berthellemot, never used this compromising look. This look is, however, very popular in the theater. A self-respecting actor never chooses another when he has the opportunity to disguise himself as a police lieutenant. This look did not seem to produce any impression whatsoever on the singular character who entered and who turned peacefully to thank the usher for his kindness. Mr. Berthellemot crossed his arms over his chest. The stranger greeted him with good-natured politeness. “Come closer,” said M. Berthellemot. The stranger obeyed. The description of Divisional Inspector Despaux had its merits. The man was a strapping fellow. At least, he must have been. He was now a former strapping fellow, and to all appearances, judging by the wrinkles on his forehead and the color of his hair, he could only be a resigned fellow. He was dressed in black, very neatly and very poorly. We remember having used identical expressions to describe the costume of Papa Sévérin, the first time we met him, on his wooden bench at the Tuileries. He was tall, he seemed strong; his vigorously accentuated features, but calm and good, bore the trace of more than one ravage, whether he had struggled against disordered passions, or whether he had only delivered the eternal battle of man against his misfortune. When he had covered two-thirds of the distance which separated the door from the work table, he bowed decently and said: “It is to Monsieur the Prefect that I wished to have the honor of speaking. “Impossible,” replied Berthellemot solemnly. “Besides, the prefect and I are one and the same. ” “Then,” said the old man, “for lack of blackbirds… I thank you all the same for granting me an audience. ” Berthellemot sat down and put his hand under his tailcoat; then, crossing his legs over each other, he took out a paper knife, which he examined very carefully. “My good fellow,” he replied, affecting an air of distraction, ” I hope you will prove yourself worthy of it.” The stranger placed his hand, a strong and very white hand, on the back of a chair. As a certain astonishment appeared in the eyes of the secretary-general, the stranger said simply: “I’ve been running around Paris a lot today, Mr. Clerk, and I can’t afford to drive.” He sat down. But do not think that there was the slightest effrontery in this act. The stranger, while sitting down, maintained his decent and courteous air. M. Berthellemot wondered if he was a man of importance, badly dressed, or simply a poor wretch sinning through ignorance of the profound respect due to him, M. Berthellemot, alter ego of M. Dubois. He was a lynx by profession, but myopic by nature, no matter how hard he sharpened M. de Sartines’s own gaze, which he had found in the boxes, he could not resolve this alternative. “My friend,” he said, “for this time, I tolerate a familiarity which is not in my habit towards agents. ” “I am not an agent, Mr. Employee,” replied the stranger, ” and I thank you for your kindness. I recognize you well, now that I look at you.” At the time when there were clubs, you spoke loudly and clearly about equality, fraternity, etc. This succeeded for you and I congratulate you. While you preached, I practiced, which brought in less money. Since you closed the clubs where you no longer had anything to do, I have kept my old habits, much older than the clubs; I continue to speak frankly to my inferiors, to my equals and to my superiors too. Humility is not generally the fault of upstart tribunes. At that time of the consulate, one saw in Paris only little Brutus, who had become rabid patricians: as if it were true to say that the intolerance of the aristocracy is often simply the immoderate desire to kill the aristocrat to get under his skin. M. Berthellemot belonged energetically to that category of conquering bourgeois who push the wheel of revolutions to make themselves a decent living, and who stop everything altogether, as soon as they have something to lose, adoring then with a frankness beyond all praise what they have reviled, reviling what they have reviled. You know so many of them like that, I say so many and so many, that it is useless to insist. “My friend,” he said disdainfully, “I know you too. The constant happiness which accompanies my measures, as skillful as they are salutary, displeases the enemies of the First Consul… ” “I am devoted to the First Consul,” the stranger interrupted him without ceremony. “Personally devoted. ” “Little word! You speak loudly, my friend! Be careful! I warn you that a man like me is never unprepared. I would have only to say the word to severely chastise your insolence!” He rapped three times on his desk with the paper knife he held in his hand. A dramatic turn of events, on which he had obviously been counting greatly , immediately occurred. The side door opened its two leaves wide , and two men of ill-looking appearance appeared standing on the threshold. The stranger began to smile as he looked at them: “Look! Laurent!” he said softly, “and Charlevoy! My poor boys, I was the only one in the whole neighborhood who didn’t believe it! So you’re one of them?” An expression of embarrassment spread over the features of the two officers. We would be lying if we claimed they looked like princes in disguise. “Do you know this man?” asked the secretary . “As for that, yes,” replied Laurent, “as everyone knows him, Monsieur Berthellemot. ” “Who is he? ” “If the Secretary General had asked him,” murmured Charleroy, ” he would already know, for this one doesn’t hide. ” “Who is he?” repeated Monsieur Berthellemot, stamping his foot. The stranger silenced the two agents with his hand, and turning to the magistrate, he replied with such lofty modesty that it was almost majesty: “Monsieur l’employé, I am not much; I am Jean-Pierre Sévérin, successor to my father, sworn guardian of the vault of watches and confrontations of the Paris tribunal.” Chapter 14. CITIZEN BONAPARTE’S LESSON IN FIGHTING There are names that cause adventures. That of Jean-Pierre Sévérin, sworn guardian of the Morgue, did not seem to produce an extraordinary effect on the secretary general of the police headquarters. “Just a word! Monsieur Sévérin,” Berthellemot said simply, in a tone that was not without mockery, “I am dealing with a man from the government, it seems… Withdraw, gentlemen, but stay within earshot. ” The two agents disappeared behind the closed door. “Sir,” the secretary general then continued, his tone becoming severe, “I don’t really see what the posture you have adopted near me can lead to. I am in the place and stead of the prefect! ” “I have not adopted any posture,” replied Jean-Pierre. ” I have been myself for almost forty-five years, and I do not intend to change. It is not I who have misplaced the conversation.” “Let’s break it off, please, Mr. Morgue Keeper, ” Berthellemot interrupted abruptly. “Our time is precious. ” “Ours too,” said Jean-Pierre simply. “What do you want from me? ” “I want to do you a favor and ask for one from you. ” “Is this the big deal? ” “I don’t know of any bigger deal than the one we’re talking about.” The secretary-general dropped his paper knife, and his face flushed. He dreamed of getting his hands on a piece of state information of prime importance while his boss was running around in his prime. He saw himself as police prefect. “Why didn’t you talk!” he cried, his voice now trembling with impatience. “You will be richly rewarded, Mr. Sévérin! You will set the amount yourself…” “Mr. Clerk, I’m not asking for a reward.” “As you wish, Monsieur Sévérin, as you wish… Do you know where he is hiding? ” “Where he is hiding?” repeated the guardian of the Morgue. “You mean: Where they are hiding him?” And as the secretary-general looked at him without understanding, he added: “Where they are hiding them, even, for there are two of them: a young man and a girl. ” Berthellemot frowned, then he seemed struck by a sudden idea. “There are several Sévérins of you?” he said, hastily opening one of the drawers of his desk. “It is not a very rare name,” replied the guardian; “but of my family, I only know my son and me. ” “How old is your son?” “Ten years old. ” The secretary-general was reading attentively a document he had just taken from his drawer. “Have you heard, near or far,” he said, “of a man of your name… of a Sévérin who bears the nickname of Gâteloup?” “It’s me,” replied the warden. H. Bertbellemot gave a short shudder, which he immediately suppressed. The warden continued: “I am Sévérin,” said Gâteloup. “Gâteloup was my nickname as provost of arms, even before the Revolution. ” “Ah! ah!” said Berthellemot, who began to look at him again with a defiant air, “so you have had more than one job, Mr. Warden.” sworn? “I’ve had many jobs, Mr. Clerk.” “And perhaps you continue to eat from more than one trough, Mr. Gâteloup? ” “Senior Clerk,” the old man corrected obediently. “Berthellemot continued: And perhaps you continue to eat from more than one trough, Mr. Gâteloup? ” This was said in a pointed tone: the clever tone, the Sartines tone. Jean-Pierre Sévérin took from his pocket a most venerable round onion watch and consulted it. “If Mr. Senior Clerk wanted to send me off…” he began. “Don’t worry,” interrupted Berthellemot, who, at that moment, had a figure that would earn a hundred livres a month in any theater playing the comic noble fathers, “don’t worry, sworn guardian! We’ll send you off, and in the right way!” He leaned back in his chair and added: “Sévérin,” said Gâteloup, “do you think the First Consul chooses his servants at random? If he entrusted me with the important mission of replacing or supplementing M. Dubois, it is because his keen eye had discovered in me that sureness of vision, that coolness, that discernment that the annals of the police grant only to a few outstanding magistrates . You have tried in vain to deceive me, I see right through you : you are conspiring! ” Jean-Pierre fixed on him his large blue eye, which sometimes had the limpid gaze of childhood. “Ah, well!” he said. M. Berthellemot continued: “Yesterday, at nine thirty in the evening, you were seen and recognized holding conference with the traitor Georges Cadoudal, in the Rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie. ” “Ah, well!” repeated Jean-Pierre. And if the traitor Georges Cadoudal has been recognized, he added, why has he not been locked up? “I challenge you,” Mr. Berthellemot declared majestically, “to probe the depths of our schemes! ” Jean-Pierre was no longer listening. “It is nevertheless true,” he said, “that I was yesterday evening, at nine thirty , at the crossroads of the Théâtre-Brûlé, or the Odéon, if you prefer . There, I spoke with Mr. Morinière about the very affair which brings me to you… But I affirm that I do not know the traitor Georges Cadoudal at all. ” “Don’t look for useless subterfuges…” Berthellemot began. And as Jean-Pierre frowned very frankly at his people of all body types, the secretary general added: “I am speaking to you in your own interest.” One should never play tricks on the administration, especially when it is represented by a man like me, who misses nothing and who easily reads the depths of consciences. You revelationists are in the habit of throwing yourselves into backroads to double, to triple the price of information. That’s your way of bargaining; I don’t approve of it. While he was catching his breath, Jean-Pierre said to him with a disgruntled air: “And how upright you are, you, Mr. Senior Employee! Just now, you accused me of conspiring, now you take me for a fly! ” H. Berthellemot did not lose his smile of imperturbable arrogance. “With us, it’s quite different,” he replied, “we feel around, we go right and left, beating the bushes… each of these bushes, good man, can hide an infernal machine!” –So, said Jean-Pierre, who settled comfortably on his chair, beat the bushes, Mr. Senior Employee, and shout watch out, when you find the machine… As soon as you have finished, we will talk, if you like. All very shrewd men have a particular gesture, a pout, a tic, in moments of mental embarrassment: Archimedes at such times, would come out of the bath completely naked and walk the streets of Syracuse like this: one would no longer tolerate that; Voltaire, more timid, would limit himself to throwing his snuffbox in the air and caught it with great skill; Machiavelli ate a small piece of his lip; M. de Talleyrand amused himself by turning the long skin of his eyelids upside down. M. Dubois, prefect of police, did none of this. With the help of a great habit he had of this exercise, he obtained from each of the joints of his fingers a little snap which amused himself and annoyed others. When everything succeeded, he could produce, with three per finger, thirty small explosions, but the thumbs sometimes only gave two. M. Berthellemot imitated his leader in what his leader had good. When the prefect was not there, the secretary general sometimes obtained up to thirty-six cracks and thought to himself: I do everything better than the prefect!… Today, while disarticulating his phalanges, Mr. Berthellemot said to himself: “There is a man as dangerous and deep as a well. He must be circumvented, and I will take care of it! Little word! ” “My dear Mr. Sévérin,” he continued with noble condescension, ” you are not the first comer. You have received a good education, that is obvious, and you have a very proper way of presenting yourself. The position you occupy is mediocre… ” “I am content with it,” Gâteloup interrupted him with a sort of rudeness. “Very well… We have certain funds here, intended to reward devotion… ” “I do not need money,” Gâteloup interrupted him again. Then he added, with a smile that truly smacked of his gentleman: “Monsieur l’officier, you’re beating bushes where I’m not. ” “Morbleu! In the end,” cried Berthellemot, “what do you have to say to me, my good fellow? ” “It’s not my fault if Monsieur l’officier doesn’t already know,” replied Jean Pierre. “I’m coming here…” But the demon of interrogation was resuming Monsieur Berthellemot: “Permit me!” he said in a tone of authority. “It’s up to me, I suppose, to conduct the interview. Let’s not get lost… You say that the suspicious person with whom you were in the Rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie is called Morinière… ” “And that he is not suspicious,” interposed Jean-Pierre. “You deny that he is the same as Georges Cadoudal? ” “For that, with all my heart! ” “Then who is he? ” “A horse dealer from Normandy.” “Ah! ah! from Normandy!… I’m taking notes, don’t be alarmed … The fact is that there are many horse dealers in Normandy… And why, if I may ask, Mr. Séverin, do you associate with horse dealers? ” “Because Mr. Morinière is in the same situation as me,” replied Jean-Pierre. “Be careful!” cried Mr. Berthellemot; “you’re making matters worse. In what situation are you? ” “In the situation of a man who has lost a child. ” “And you come to the prefecture?” “So that the prefect may help me find him, that’s all. There are people who wear two pairs of glasses.” In a glance at Mr. de Sartines, which he generally used, Mr. Berthellemot met Mr. Lenoir’s. The late Argus had even more. “Is that plausible?” he grumbled. “I’m taking notes… Ah! ah!” The prefect would be very embarrassed! “And if that’s not your profession, Mr. Senior Employee,” added Jean-Pierre, making as if to rise, “I’ll go elsewhere. ” “Where will you go, my boy? ” “To the First Consul, if you will allow it. ” M. Berthellemot jumped up in his chair. “To the First Consul,” he repeated. “Good man, do you think one enters the First Consul’s office like that? ” “I do,” replied Jean-Pierre simply. “So you must tell me, yes or no, and without getting angry, if it is your job to help people in distress.” The question thus put clearly displeased the secretary general, who took up his paper knife again and sharpened it on his knee. “Friend,” he said between his teeth, “you have already taken up a great deal of my time, which belongs to the public interest. If you ever claimed that I did not receive you kindly, you would be a bold slanderer. I do not have a profession, you should know that: I have a high office, the most important of all offices, almost a priesthood! I would formally deny you should you suggest that I refused you my help. Do you blame me for the precautions with which I surround the precious life of our master? Explain yourself briefly, clearly, categorically. No ambiguity, no detours, no circumlocutions! What do you demand? I am listening to you. ” “I have come,” Jean-Pierre began immediately, “to ask you…” But M. Berthellemot interrupted him with a familiar gesture, which formed an almost touching contrast with the somewhat haughty gravity of his demeanor . “Wait! wait!” he said as if a sudden idea had crossed his mind. I would lose that! Let us grasp the matter in passing! By what chance, my dear Monsieur Sévérin, do you have access to the First Consul?… It is understood that, if it is a secret, I do not insist in the least. “It is not a secret,” replied Jean-Pierre. “It happened to me once during the Convention… ” “We understand each other well, my dear Monsieur Sévérin, I am not forcing you, at least… ” “Senior employee,” interrupted Jean-Pierre in his turn, “if it was not my idea to answer you, you could force me in vain. I never say anything but what I want. ” “A good man!” cried the secretary general with an admiration whose sincerity we cannot guarantee, a truly good man… go on!” “Under the Convention,” continued Jean-Pierre, “towards the end of the Convention, and, if I must be precise, I believe it was in the first days of Vendémiaire, Year IV, on the 23rd or 24th of September 1795, a young man in bourgeois clothes, looking sickly and pale, came to my fencing hall… ” “What fencing hall?” asked M. Berthellemot. “I had been married for three years already, and I had my little boy. As there was no longer any need for singers at Saint-Sulpice, whose doors were closed, I had taken it into my head to set up a small academy in a room at the back of the former Hôtel d’Aligre, on Rue Saint-Honoré. But those who run the fencing halls were far away at that time, along with those who go to church, and I was not earning a living. ” “Poor Monsieur Sévérin!” punctuated Berthellemot, I can’t tell you how much your story interests me? –That young man in bourgeois clothes I was telling you about had a military bearing… –I think so, my dear Monsieur Sévérin! Like Caesar! Like Alexander the Great! Like… –Like Napoleon Bonaparte, Monsieur Senior Employee, you can’t get enough of him; you guessed it was him. Berthellemot put his right hand in his jabot and said with conviction: –Say nothing, you’ll see many more. It’s not by chance that the First Consul chooses those who are to occupy certain positions. No, it’s not by chance! “So,” resumed Jean-Pierre Sévérin, “young Bonaparte, a brigadier general on leave, attached, by some unknown means, to the Ministry of Battle, thanks to the protection of M. de Pontécoulant, discontented, feverish, tormented, – poor scabbard worn by a magnificent blade, – entered quite simply: into the first fencing room he came across, to seek a physical fatigue that would soothe the nerves and subdue the intelligence. – Do you know that you express yourself very well, my dear Monsieur Sévérin?” said the secretary-general. “I had never seen him,” continued Jean-Pierre, “and I had never even heard his name pronounced, but I pass; for being a bit of a sorcerer. ” Berthellemot moved back his seat. Jean-Pierre continued: “You don’t believe in sorcerers, and neither do I… However, Mr. Senior Employee, very strange things are happening in Paris at this moment, and the reason for my presence in your office relates to an adventure that borders very closely on the supernatural… But let’s return to young Bonaparte. I was shocked when I saw him. A luminous fog fell before my eyes. He smiled and took a foil, which he put on guard in a novice and almost clumsy hand. “Are you Citizen Sévérin?” said Gâteloup! “Yes, Citizen General,” I replied. “I ‘m not mistaken , ” Jean-Pierre interrupted himself here. “I called him Citizen General, and I can’t explain why. ” “Captain, my friend,” he corrected me. ” And do you think I’m too old for my rank? ” Citizen Bonaparte was then just twenty-five years old, and looked no more than twenty. I no longer remember what I answered; I was very upset. He continued: “Antoine Dubois, my doctor, has ordered me to exercise; I don’t know how to walk; it takes too long, and I could spend twenty-four hours on horseback without tiring. Are you the man to break my bones and strain my muscles in twenty minutes each day? ” “Yes, Citizen General. ” “They call you captain… And how much will you charge me for that? I am not rich.” We agreed on the price, and we had to start immediately; for, from that moment on, he did not like to wait. I did not tire him; I ground him so beautifully and so well that he begged for mercy and fell panting on my bench. “Of course!” he said, laughing and wiping his flat hair, which streamed with sweat from his large forehead. Madame de Beauharnais would utter pretty cries if she saw me in such a state! I was mute and almost as tired as he was, I whose arm is of iron and whose shank is of steel. “Well! my master,” he said, rising suddenly, “I have lost more than twenty minutes. Let me pay you, and see you tomorrow!” He hastily plunged his long, slender hand into his pocket, but he withdrew it empty: he had forgotten or lost his purse. “Here I am!” he said, blushing slightly, “I have given myself a false reputation here, and I shall be obliged to ask you for credit! ” “General,” I replied, “you have deceived no one. ” “That is true… You knew me? ” “No, on my honor!…” “Then how do you know!… ” “I know nothing.” He frowned. “Sire…” I continued. “Sire!” cried the secretary-general, who was listening with avid attention. “Pretty words! You called him sire, my dear Monsieur Gâteloup! ” “Mr. Clerk,” interrupted Jean-Pierre, “I tell you things as they were. I promised to relate, not to explain.” Citizen Bonaparte did as you did: he repeated the word: sire! And he stepped back several steps, saying: “My friend, I am a republican!” I continued, speaking like the ancient pythonesses, with a wit that was not my own: “Sire, I am a republican, I too, I was one before you, I will be one after you. Do not fear that I will ever demand too heavy an interest for the credit I extend to Your Majesty today! ” “You say that?” murmured Berthellemot, “before the 13th Vendémiaire!” It’s curious, little word, it’s extremely curious! –Not long before… it was the 4th or the 5th. –And what did the Emperor reply?… I mean the First Consul… I mean Citizen Bonaparte. –Citizen Bonaparte looked at me fixedly. The pallor of his hollow and emaciated cheek had become more matte. –Friend Gâteloup, he said to me, ordinarily I like neither the enlightened nor the mentally ill… but you seem like a good soul, and you have properly sore… See you tomorrow. And he left. –And he came back? asked Berthellemot. –No… never. –What! never? –He didn’t have time… His soreness was not yet healed when the 13th Vendémiaire arrived. At the battle before Saint-Roch, he commanded the artillery. There was a lot of blood shed there: French blood . The young brigadier general was named divisional general by the Directory: he no longer needed the protection of M. de Pontécoulant… I followed him from afar; I went where people were talking about him, and soon people were talking about him everywhere… How can I put this? He inspired in me a terror in which there was intolerance and love… The following year, he married this Madame de Beauharnais who would have uttered pretty cries, if she had seen him in the state in which I had put him in my armory; then he left, general-in-chief of the army of Italy. “And you had not seen him again?” asked the secretary-general, who forgot to play his part, so much did curiosity hold him. “I had not seen him again,” replied Jean-Pierre. “Should I conclude that he is still in your debt? ” “No! He paid me. “Generously? ” “Honestly. ” “What did he give you? ” “The price of my fee was one crown of six livres. He gave me one crown of six livres.” The secretary-general puffed out his cheeks and puffed like Aeolus, cracking his knuckles. “Not possible!” Sweet words, not possible! “What was not possible,” Jean-Pierre Sévérin said slowly, his handsome head raising as if in spite of himself, “was to give me more. ” “Because?” Berthellemot said naively. “I told you, Mr. Senior Employee,” Jean-Pierre replied: “I was a Republican before General Bonaparte; I am a Republican now that the First Consul is hardly one anymore; I will remain a Republican when the Emperor is no longer one at all.” Chapter 15. LANTERN STREET The secretary general of the prefecture drew his chair closer and assumed an air that he wanted to make completely charming. “So,” he said, “dear Mr. Sévérin, we sometimes go and pay our old pupil a little visit, without ceremony? ” “Sometimes,” Jean-Pierre replied, “not often. ” “And we never ask for anything?” “Yes, indeed… I always ask for something. ” “We are not refused?” “I haven’t been refused yet… ” “And yet,” he added, speaking to himself, “my last request was for six thousand louis… ” “Malepeste! Six thousand louis! There are plenty of six-pound stamps in there, my dear Monsieur Sévérin! ” “When you go to the Marché-Neuf, Monsieur Clerk, look at the little house they’re building there… ” “The new Morgue!” cried Berthellemot. “By Jove! I know it already ! They didn’t want to follow our plans… ” “It’s because they didn’t conform to mine,” Jean-Pierre said modestly. “Good! good! good!” the secretary-general said three times. “I am, in truth, very delighted to have made your acquaintance. We are neighbors, my dear Monsieur Sévérin… when you need me, don’t hesitate, I will introduce you to the prefect.” “It’s been more than an hour and a half, sir,” Jean-Pierre interrupted gently, “since you know I need you. ” “It’s agreed, my neighbor, it’s agreed… don’t worry… agreed, pretty word! agreed! ” “What’s agreed? ” “Everything… and anything… here we are, like two fingers on one hand… ah! ah! mercy! it’s not republicans like you that we fear… I don’t remember ever having met a man whose conversation interested me more keenly… But what do we need listeners at the doors for, tell me?” Laurent! Charlevoy! Here, my fellows! The side door opened immediately, revealing the two agents, hats in hand. “Go to the cabaret and see if we are there, citizens,” Berthellemot told them; “and as you pass, inform M. Despaux that I will place him tomorrow at the disposal of this good M. Séverin… for a very serious, very urgent matter, and which concerns a devoted friend of the consular government. ” “May I interrupt you, Mr. Employee?” asked Jean-Pierre. “What, my dear neighbor!… Wait, you others! ” “I simply wanted to point out to you,” said Jean-Pierre, “that it is not tomorrow, but this very evening that I will request your assistance. ” “You hear, Laurent! You hear, Charlevoy! Inform M. Despaux that he does not leave the prefecture, and you yourselves remain in the vicinity… There will be a night service, if necessary… Go!… Just a word!” There are people for whom one cannot do too much. “You see, good friend and neighbor,” Berthellemot continued when the two agents had disappeared, “everything here is ordered, oiled, greased like a machine in good condition. The First Consul knows well that I am the soul of the house; he would have liked to raise me to functions more in keeping with my abilities, but I am so desperately needed by this excellent Mr. Dubois. On the other hand, I have become attached to this poor, good city of Paris, of which I am the guardian and supervisor… the mischievous girl that she is gives me some trouble , but that doesn’t matter, I have a weakness for her… Oh, now that we are alone, let’s talk… When you see the First Consul, I hope you will tell him with what eagerness I have placed myself at your disposal… ” “May I explain my business to you, Mr. Employee? ” “Yes, certainly, yes,” Berthellemot replied. I belong to you from head to toe. Only, you know, no useless details; let’s not drown ourselves in chatter! Chatter is my bête noire. In two words, I will undertake to explain the most difficult case, and that is what makes me strong… Take your time! Collect your thoughts. That’s just
how he is! I mean the First Consul! He must have been deeply struck by this oddity: a man who addresses him as Sire and Your Majesty, in the middle of the Convention!… And do you know? Often people placed in positions… unusual gain more influence over him than the most important officials… I am all ears, my dear Monsieur Sévérin. “Senior employee,” began Jean-Pierre, “although I have no desire to tell you my own story, you must know that I married a little late in life. ” “And how is madame?” asked Monsieur Berthellemot blandly. “Quite well, thank you.” When I married her, in 1789… “Great memory!” the secretary general piqued. “She had,” Jean-Pierre continued, “an adopted child, a little girl… ” “Do you want me to take notes?” Berthellemot interrupted petulantly . “It’s not necessary. ” “Wait, it’s always better. My memory is so full!… and while we are both here on good terms, my dear neighbor and colleague… for after all, we are also salaried by the State… let me tell you something that will surprise you: I don’t look at all like the First Consul! ” Jean-Pierre was not as surprised as M. Berthellemot had hoped. “I don’t resemble him,” he continued, “in the sense that I believe a little in all those machines… I’m not superstitious… Come on!… apart from the Supreme Being that we have admitted because he is not a problem, I really don’t care about all religions… But, you see, it is undeniable that certain devilries exist. I had an old aunt who had a black cat… Don’t laugh, that cat was amazing? And I would defy you. ” to philosophically explain the care he took to hide deep in the cellar when there were thirteen of us at the table… Do you know the anecdote about Mr. Bourtibourg? It’s curious. Mr. Bourtibourg had lost his wife from a bout of pent-up sweat. He was a thrifty and tidy man, who kept his cook tidy so as not to bother chasing the guilledou. Do you disapprove of that? Opinions are divided. I think the best thing is to have no ties and to go from day to day. One evening he was doing his picket duty with the vicar of Saint-Merry… I mean the former vicar, because he had married the wife of citizen Lancelot, a stocking and slipper merchant at the Barillerie… They had divorced, the Lancelots, that is… And Lancelot was courting, at that time, Mr. Fouché’s cousin, who was not yet buying émigré land… Well! They heard walking in the corridor, where there was no one, as was only right, and Mathieu Luneau, the brigadier of the Paris guard, who acted like father and mother, died suddenly within a week. I can assure you of this: I had taken notes… Besides, the historians of antiquity are full of similar facts: the eve of Philippi, the eve of Actium… You know all this as well as I do, for you must be an educated man, Monsieur Sévérin: I am rarely wrong in my assessments… “Time passes…” wanted to say Jean-Pierre, who had already consulted his big watch two or three times. “Excuse me! I never speak at random. It was to tell you that at this very moment, in the heart of Paris, a momentous event is taking place… Do you believe in vampires, my neighbor? ” “Yes,” replied Jean-Pierre without hesitation. “Ah, well! said Mr. Berthellemot, rubbing his hands, “have you seen any? ” “I did better than see any,” replied the guardian of the Morgue, lowering his voice this time, “I have had some. ” “What! You have had some! This is a subject that particularly excites my curiosity. Explain yourself, I beg you, and don’t be offended if I take a few notes. ” “Senior employee,” Jean-Pierre said slowly, “every man has some point on which he does not want to explain himself. If I were questioned in court, I would answer according to my conscience. ” “Very well, Mr. Sévérin, very well… You believe in vampires, that’s enough for me for the moment… I wanted to tell you that at the present time , a hundred thousand people in Paris are convinced that a being of this species prowls the nights of the capital of the civilized world.” “I came to talk to you about this, Mr. Employee,” Jean-Pierre interrupted, “and if you don’t mind… ” “Pardon! One more word! Just one more word… Would you believe that we are still in a state of complete ignorance on the subject, despite the learned works published in Germany? I read everything, without interfering with my official duties. That’s where my organization is truly astonishing! Our onlookers call the being in question the vampire, as if it were not well known that the female vampire is the oupire or succubus, also called a ghoul in the Middle Ages… I have eleven complaints so far… seven missing young men and four young girls… But I will point out to you, and these are the very words of my report to the Prefect, that there is no need for a ghoul, a succubus, or an oupire for this. Paris is a monster that devours children.” “As of this hour, Mr. Clerk,” said Jean-Pierre , rising, “you have thirteen complaints, since I bring you two: one in my own name, one in the name of my friend and companion, Citizen Morinière, a horse dealer, whom you took for Georges Cadoudal. ” Berthellemot touched his forehead briskly. “I knew I had something to ask you!” he cried. We should take notes. Do you feel any reluctance to tell me how long you have known this Mr. Morinière? “None. I saw him for the first time two years ago. He came to my hall to lose weight. He is a good blade. ” “Is it customary among horse dealers to know and practice fencing?” “Not exactly, Mr. Clerk, but the best swordsman in Paris, after me, who am a former parish cantor, is François Maniquet, the baker at the hospices… the profession doesn’t matter. ” “And you have never stopped seeing this citizen Morinière for two years?
” “On the contrary, I had lost sight of him. His business does not allow him to stay long in Paris.” Berthellemot winked and scratched the tip of his nose. No detail is superfluous when it comes to these historical figures. “That boastful Fouché,” he grumbled, “would scour the countryside and go looking for noon at two o’clock; Mr. Dubois would remain entangled… I fall straight onto the trail like a well-trained bloodhound. ” “My dear Mr. Sévérin,” he continued aloud, “under what circumstances did you find Mr. Morinière, your crony and companion? ” “At the Morgue. ” “Recently?” “Yesterday morning…” He came there, very sad and trembling, to make sure that his son’s body was not lying in the vault. “But, sarpebleu!” cried Berthellemot, “I don’t know of any adult son of Georges Cadoudal! Swear!” Jean-Pierre did not reply. Berthellemot continued: “Here I am all yours for our little affair of the abducted girl . You would not believe, my neighbor, how much this line of thought interests me and sets my ardent imagination to work.” If Paris has a ghoul, I must find it, examine it, describe it… You know that these people have lips that betray them… If I have only a small trace, I will arrive straight at the lair, the cavern, the tomb where the monster shelters… That is the pleasant part of the profession, you see; it relaxes from serious work. Make your report at your leisure, be truthful and precise. I will take notes. “Mr. Clerk,” asked Jean-Pierre before sitting down again, “can I hope that I will not be interrupted again? ” “I do not think, my neighbor,” replied Berthellemot with a slightly piqued air, “that I have abused the power of speech. My fault is to be too taciturn and too reserved. Come, I am as mute as a rock.” Jean-Pierre Sévérin resumed his seat and began thus: –The new establishment of the New Market, of which I am to be the clerk-concierge, is almost completed and already requires on my part a very subjugating supervision. They are still exhibiting in the old vault, but in a few days they will be holding the first reception at the Morgue… and it is an astonishing thing; I have been thinking about it for many weeks. I wonder in spite of myself: who will come there first? Certainly, it is a house to which one cannot bring luck, but still, there are omens. Who will come there first! A criminal? A gambler? A drinker? A deceived husband? A disappointed young girl? The result of misfortune or the product of a crime? We live a stone’s throw from the Châtelet, at the corner of the little rue de la Lanterne. I love my wife as the desperate can cherish consolation, the condemned mercy. At a sad time in my life when I thought my heart was dead, I went to seek my wife in the depths of an agony of pain, and my heart was resurrected. Our home is very narrow; we are huddled together; my son is growing pale and weak. We do not have enough space or air, but we are happy like this; we like to squeeze into this corner where our souls touch. There are three rooms in our house: mine, where my son sleeps, the one where My wife takes care of her housework; we eat there, and that’s where the stove is lit in winter; finally, the one where Angèle embroidered while singing with her pretty, sweet voice. That one is barely a few square feet, but it’s right at the corner of the street, and it gets a little sun. The rosebush on Angèle’s window produced a flower yesterday. It’s the first. She didn’t see it… Will she see it? On the other side of the street stands a house that’s better than ours and not as old. Rooms are rented there by the month to young clerks and to those who are doing their apprenticeship to enter the judiciary. It’s been a little over a year, not two weeks since my wife and I said to each other: Angèle is now a young girl, a student came to stay in the house opposite. They gave him a room on the third floor, a beautiful room, in fact, with two windows, and as large in itself as our entire home. He was a handsome young man, with long, curly blond hair. He looked shy and gentle. He was attending law school. I learned this later, for I don’t take much notice of things in our neighborhood. My wife knew it before me, and Angèle before my wife. The young man’s name was Kervoz or de Kervoz, for now we are starting to call each other as we used to. He was the son of a Breton gentleman who died with M. de Sombreuil, at the tip of Quiberon… M. Berthellemot took a note and said: “Bad race! ” “As I have never changed my mind,” replied Jean-Pierre, “I do not insult those who do not change. Time to come will forgive bloodshed rather than insult.” May God sustain the men who live by their faith, and give eternal peace to the men who died for their faith. I do not want to tell you that our little girl was pretty and cheerful, and happy and pure. Although my son belongs to both of us, I do not know if I loved him more tenderly than Angela, who belongs, by blood ties , only to my poor dear wife. When she came in the morning to offer her smiling brow to my lips, I felt light-hearted and I thanked God who kept this dear and adored treasure in our humble house . We loved him too much. You have guessed the story, and I will not tell you it at length. The street is narrow. The glances and smiles went easily from one window to the other, then we chatted; we could almost have touched hands. One evening when I came home late, having attended a medical investigation at the Châtelet, I thought I was dreaming. There was an object suspended above my head in the Rue de la Lanterne. It was at the beginning of last winter, on a moonless night; the sky was overcast, the darkness profound. At first glance, it seemed to me I saw an unlit street lamp, swung in the air in a place that was not its own. The rope that supported it was attached on one side to the young student’s window , on the other to Angèle’s window. “Do you see that!” murmured the secretary-general. “There are lots of angels like that. I’m taking notes. ” “I,” continued Jean-Pierre, “didn’t guess at first, so sure was I of my little girl. ” “The good note you had there, my neighbor!” sneered Berthellemot. Jean-Pierre was as pale as death. The secretary-general continued: “Don’t be angry!” No one deplores more than I the profound immorality that the morals of the Directory have inoculated into France, our homeland. I would willingly compare the Directory to the Regency, for the laxity of morals. It takes time to cure this leprosy, but we are there, my neighbor… “You were there, indeed, Mr. Prefect,” interrupted Jean-Pierre, “or at least you came there, for you were leaving the Calf Suckling with a lady. ” “Shh!” said the secretary general, blushing and smiling. Some People attach some stupid glory to these weaknesses; we are not made of bronze, my dear Monsieur Sévérin. Was it the president or little Duvernoy? There she is, you know, launched at the Opera! She owes me a lot! “I don’t know if it was little Duvernoy or the president,” replied Jean-Pierre. “I know neither. I know that your passage diverted my attention for a moment: when I looked up , there was nothing above my head. ” “Had the street lamp completed its crossing?” cried the secretary- general. “Whatever you say, it’s funny. With that, Monsieur Picard could make a very pretty little comedy. ” Jean-Pierre remained dreamy. “I took notes,” continued Berthellemot. “Is it over? ” “No,” replied the clerk-concierge; “it’s barely begun.” I climbed our poor staircase with a faltering step. My heart was heavy and my brain was on fire. Arriving in my room, I opened my desk to take out a pair of pistols… “Ah! devil! my neighbor, you finally guessed? ” I renewed the primers, and, without waking my wife, I went to knock on Angèle’s room. Chapter 16. THE THREE GERMANS In my poor little Angèle’s room,” continued Jean-Pierre Sévérin, known as Gâteloup, “no one answered me at first, but the door was so thin that I heard the sound of two heavy breathings. “Run away!” said the voice of the terrified little girl, “run away quickly! ” “Stay!” I ordered without raising my voice. “If you try to cross the street again, I’ll open my window and put two bullets in your head.” Angèle said, and her voice had stopped trembling: It’s the father! We must open the door. The next moment, I entered, pistols in hand, into the little room, lit by a candle. Angèle looked me in the face. She didn’t know how to look any other way. She was very pale, but she wasn’t ashamed… “Word!” M. Berthellemot wanted to interrupt. “You are not the judge of that!” Jean-Pierre pronounced with a calm full of authority. “It is about something else that I came to seek your advice…” The young man was standing at the back of the room, his figure straight, his head held high. On the table beside him, there was a book of hours and a crucifix. “Well! well!” said the secretary general. “Were they saying mass? ” I remained motionless for a moment, looking at them, for I was moved to the depths of my soul, and the words would not come to me. They were two beautiful, two noble creatures: she ardent and half- rebellious, he proud and resigned. What were you doing there? I asked. At once the secretary-general burst out laughing. Jean-Pierre did not get angry. “Your profession hardens the heart, Mr. Clerk,” he simply said. Then he continued: “Questions give rise to laughter or trembling, depending on the circumstances in which they are asked. No one here was in a joking mood. And yet, Angèle’s answer will seem even more amusing to you than my question. She replied, looking me in the eye: “Father, we were getting married. ” “Good!” cried Berthellemot, cracking all her fingers. “Small word! I’m taking notes. ” “We are religious at home,” continued Jean-Pierre, “although I had the reputation of a miscreant when I sang vespers at Saint-Sulpice.” My wife thinks of God often, like all great people, like all good hearts. You must not believe that a republican, – and I was one before the republic, me, Mr. Prefect, – is forced to be impious. Our little Angèle prayed for us every morning and every evening… For his part, young Mr. de Kervoz came from a country where the Christian idea is profoundly deep-rooted. He is not a devout man, but he is a believer… “And a Chouan!” murmured Berthellemot. Jean-Pierre stopped to question him with a fixed, piercing look. “And a Chouan,” he repeated, “I don’t say no. If it was your police who made him disappear, I beg you to inform me frankly. That will put an end to one part of my search and make the other half easier. ” Berthellemot shrugged his shoulders and replied: “We hunt one more person of all types of game, my neighbor. ” “Then,” resumed Jean-Pierre Sévérin, “I accept as true that you contributed nothing to the disappearance of René de Kervoz, and I continue. My poor little Angèle had therefore said to me: Father, we are in the process of getting married.” René de Kervoz took a step towards me and added: “I have pistols like you; but if you attack me, I will not defend myself. You have the right: I entered your house by night like a criminal. You must believe that I have stolen your daughter’s honor . I looked at him attentively, and admired the noble beauty of his face. Angèle said: “René, the father will not kill you. He knows very well that I would die with you. ” “Do not threaten your father!” said young Kervoz in a low voice, who placed himself between her and me, crossing his arms over his chest. “You do not know me, Mr. Employee,” interrupted Jean-Pierre here, “and I must show myself to you as God made me. I wanted to embrace him; for I passionately love everything that is brave and proud.” “And besides,” Berthellemot whispered, “this René de Kervoz, Chouan though he is, has land in Lower Brittany, and wouldn’t make a bad match for a grisette from Paris… Don’t frown, my neighbor, I don’t blame you: you’re a father. ” “I’m Sévérin,” said Gâteloup, rejoined the former fencing master harshly, “and I’ve spent my life putting my foot down on your petty conventions and your petty calculations. By the sarrabugoy! As they used to swear, when I was the friend of so many marquises and so many countesses, I had ten thousand crowns of income just in my throat, citizen prefect, and the moors of Lower Brittany would fit in the corner of my eye. I wanted to kiss that child, because I liked him, that’s all… and don’t interrupt me again if you want to know the rest!” Berthellemot smiled good-naturedly as he replied: “La, la, my neighbor, let’s calm down! I’m taking notes. You didn’t kill anyone, I suppose! ” “No, I was a witness at the wedding. ” “So they married, the lovebirds? ” “Temporarily, without a priest or mayor, in front of the crucifix…” And I received René’s word of honor, who swore not to dance again on the tightrope across the street until the mayor and the priest had passed by. “Another good note, my neighbor! ” “He kept his promise faithfully… too faithfully. ” “Ah! Pestilence! That’s another way of perjuring oneself.” Jean-Pierre’s fingers pressed his forehead, where there were deep wrinkles . “My wife and I,” he said in an almost boastful tone, trying to defy the mockery, “we were godfather and godmother when the child came…
” “Little word!” cried Berthellemot with an explosion of hilarity. I knew it was a done deal! Was it a Chouanet or a Chouanette? “Senior clerk, you will pay me for your jokes when you find my children, won’t you?” asked Jean-Pierre, who seized his arm with cold violence. “My neighbor!” said Berthellemot, seized with a vague fright. But Jean-Pierre was already smiling. “She was a little angel,” he said, “and we named her Angèle, like her mother… My God, yes, you understood it very well, the evil was done. The night I entered Angèle’s little room with my pistols, René was there to make or promise reparation. All this was explained to us, for I have no secrets from my wife, and my wife did not know how to be more severe than I. We accepted all of René de Kervoz’s promises; we recognized the sincerity of the explanations he gave us. He could not marry now; the marriage was postponed, and we formed a family. It was a beautiful and sweet thing to see them love each other, this proud young man, this dear, this tender young girl. Oh! I can’t stop you from laughing any longer. There are there, in my heart, enough delicious and profound memories to combat all the sarcasm in the universe! They were there, that evening, between us. I don’t know if my poor wife didn’t love her René as much as her Angèle. It seems to me that I see them, hands joined, smiles merged, he worried because Angèle was very pale, despite her suffering, happy to be adored like this. Then Angèle bloomed again; she was beautiful in a different way and much more beautiful with her child in her arms… Here, Mr. Berthellemot consulted his watch in turn, an elegant and rich watch. “Fortunately I had a little time off this evening,” he murmured. “You are not brief, my neighbor. ” “I will be from now on, Mr. Employee,” replied Jean-Pierre, changing his tone completely. “As well, I plead a won cause; your excellent heart is moved, that is evident! ” “Certainly, certainly…” stammered the general secretary. “I am skipping over the details and arriving at the catastrophe.” About a month ago , our little angel was six weeks old, and his young mother, happy, was breastfeeding him. René came to tell us one evening that nothing stood in the way of the fulfillment of his promise, and God knows that the dear boy was happier than we were. There isn’t much money at home, and René, for the moment, isn’t rich. However, it was agreed that the wedding would be magnificent. For once in our lives, my poor wife and I had ideas of luxury and madness. This great day of Angèle’s wedding was the celebration of our common happiness. It was set thirty days from the date, this dear celebration, which was not to be celebrated. Angèle and René were to be married the day after tomorrow. We began to work on the preparations that evening, and that evening, as if heaven were giving us all the good omens, our little angel had his first smile. Fifteen days passed. Once, at mealtime, René did not appear .
When he arrived, long after the hour, he was worried and pale. The next day, his absence was longer. The day after that, Angèle also missed the family supper. The little girl began to suffer and lose weight: her mother’s milk, which had previously made her feel so fresh, became warm, then dried up. We were obliged to hire a wet nurse. What was happening? I questioned our Angèle; her mother questioned her; all was useless. Our Angèle was fine, she said. Until the last moment she refused to answer us, and we did not learn her secret. It was the same with René. René gave plausible reasons for his absences and explained his sudden sadness by bad news arriving from Brittany. Angèle was so changed that we had difficulty recognizing her. We constantly caught sight of her with big tears in her eyes. And yet the wedding day was approaching. It has been three times twenty-four hours since René de Kervoz has slept in his bed . On the 28th of February, he visited the church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile, where he met a woman. Angèle had followed him, I had followed Angèle. That evening, Angèle was reported to me to be dying; she refused to answer my questions. The next day, weak as she was, she escaped from our house, after kissing his little girl, weeping. René did not return, and we did not see our Angèle again. Jean-Pierre Sévérin fell silent. During the last part of his story, delivered in a clear and brief, though deeply sad, voice, the secretary general had been very attentive. “I took notes,” he said when his interlocutor finally remained silent. “The series of my duties includes small things as well as large, and I am particularly gifted with the ability to embrace ten subjects at once. Moreover, I grasp their connections with astonishing precision. Your affair, which at first seems so vulgar, my dear neighbor, intersects with another, which touches on the salvation of the State. That is my assessment. ” “Be careful!” began Jean-Pierre. “Don’t get lost. ” “I never get lost!” interrupted Berthellemot majestically. “It ‘s a double self-harm.” The clerk-concierge of the Morgue shook his head slowly. “As for taking one’s own life,” he said quietly, “no one can be more competent than me. Of my two children, only one had reason to end his life. ” “René de Kervoz? ” “No… Our daughter Angèle. ” “Then you haven’t told me everything?” Jean-Pierre hesitated before replying. “Mr. Clerk,” he finally murmured, “the mysterious being who is currently causing a stir at Parisian vigils, THE VAMPIRE, is neither a ghoul, nor a succubus, nor a squirrel… ” “Do you know her?” Berthellemot cried quickly. “I’ve seen her twice.” The secretary-general hurriedly grabbed his paper and pencil. “It’s not blood the Vampire is greedy for,” Jean-Pierre continued. What she wants is gold. “Explain yourself, neighbor! Explain yourself! ” “I told you, Mr. Clerk, that the idea had come to us to mint money for this dear nuptials of Angèle and René. I had reopened my fencing room, and as soon as my fencing master’s door was even half-open, the students immediately flocked in. Many came. Among them were three young Germans from Swabia, Count Wenzel, Baron Ramberg, and Franz Koënig, whose father owned the great alabaster mines of Würtz, in the Black Forest. All these people from Württemberg are like their king: they love France and the First Consul. With the exception of the comrades of the How… “How?” repeated the secretary-general. “That’s the name of the code of companionship at the University of Tubingen, where the Mossy Houses, the Golden Foxes, and the Old Towers have a bit of the devil in their bodies. ” “Ah, that! Ah, that!” said Berthellemot, “what language are you speaking, my neighbor? I’m taking notes. Just a word! The prefect won’t notice anything. ” “I speak the language of those good Germans, who eternally play three or four dismal farces: the farce of the duel, the farce of conspiracies, the farce of self-harm, and that farce where Brutus talks so much, so loudly, and for so long about killing Caesar, that Caesar finally hears and shuts Brutus in the bottom of a ditch. One day when we have time, I’ll tell you the story of the Burschenschaft and Tugenbaud, which you seem to be ignorant of… ” “How is it written, my dear Mr. Severin?” asked the secretary general, and do you really think that they had anything to do with the infernal machine? “Posterity will know,” replied Jean-Pierre with ironic gravity, “unless, however, time can lift this mystery. But let us return to our three young Germans from Swabia, Count Wenzel, Baron de Ramberg and Franz Koënig, who did not belong to the League of Virtue and had no evil designs. Count Wenzel was rich, Baron de Ramberg was very rich, Franz Koënig counts in millions: this solid dairy, alabaster, being very fashionable for some time. Count Wenzel had wit, Baron Ramberg had a lot of wit, Franz Koënig has wit like a demon. “You always speak of the first two in the past tense, my neighbor,” observed the secretary general. “Are they dead? ” “God only knows,” Jean-Pierre said quietly. “You’ll see. I have rarely met three more handsome cavaliers, especially the alabaster merchant: a delicate and fine face on the body of an athlete, blond hair to make a woman envious. Besides, all three were brave, adventurous, and frankly seeking pleasure. Count Wenzel left first for Germany; it was as quick as a whim. Baron Ramberg followed him a short distance behind, and, something truly singular among people of this sort, both left while remaining my debtors. Any fixed idea changes the character. I have spent my life neglecting my interests; but I wanted money for our son of the family: I would not have spared a single crown to my best friend. I wrote to the Count first, for him and for the Baron. No reply . I then wrote to the Baron, asking him to inform the Count, the same silence. Note well that I knew them to be the most honest, the most generous young people on earth. I loved them. I was seized with worry. I addressed a letter to our French chargé d’affaires in Stuttgart, Mr. Aulagnier, who is my former student for music theory.–I have friends almost everywhere.–Mr. Aulagnier replied to me that not only had Count Wenzel and Baron de Ramberg not returned to Stuttgart, but that their families were beginning to get frightened. There had been no news of them since a certain day when the Count had written to request the sending of a sum of one hundred thousand bank florins, intended to form his dowry, for he was getting married in Paris, he said , and entering a considerable family. An identical adventure happened to Baron von Ramberg, who, only, instead of one hundred thousand bank florins, had requested two hundred thousand. The double sending had taken place. And what terrified the friends of my two pupils was that Count Wenzel and Baron von Ramberg were to marry the same woman: Countess Marcian Gregoryi. “Countess Marcian Gregoryi!” repeated M. Berthellemot. Jean-Pierre waited a moment to see if he would add anything . “Is that name known to you?” he asked finally. “It is not unknown to me,” replied the secretary general, “in that tone at once fearful and hostile which office workers adopt when speaking of matters concerning their superiors. ” “M. The prefect must have pronounced it in front of me… I’m taking notes. Jean-Pierre waited again. That was all. Berthellemot continued: “This matter didn’t come up in the offices. We haven’t received anything from the Württemberg embassy. ” “It’s just that we haven’t received anything,” replied Jean-Pierre. “I’m just leaving the embassy. The messages must have been intercepted. ” Berthellemot smiled his administrative smile. “That would imply such powerful ramifications… ” he began. “That would imply,” Jean-Pierre Sévérin interrupted coldly, ” the infidelity of a postal employee… and the thing has been seen. ” “Sometimes,” admitted the secretary general, who did not lose his smile. ” Between administrations, charity is practiced quite well.” “Besides,” Jean-Pierre continued, “I do not pretend that this mysterious and bloody enterprise, to which public terror is beginning to give the social name: The Vampire, does not have very powerful ramifications. ” “But does it exist?” cried Berthellemot, who got up and paced the room with an agitated step. “A man in my position loses himself by sometimes doubting, sometimes by showing himself too credulous!… the skill consists… –Pardon, Mr. Senior Employee, said Jean-Pierre. I am the son of a poor man, who thought a lot and spoke little. Do you want to know how my father judged skill? My father used to say: Go straight on your path, you will never fall into the ditches on the right and left of the road… And I, who am an old provost, add: Sword in hand, stand straight and shoot straight? Every feint opens a hole through which death passes… It is not a question here of knowing where your interest lies, but where your duty lies. The secretary general’s walk stopped short. –My neighbor, he said, you speak like a book. Continue, I pray you. “I must tell you, Mr. Employee,” Jean-Pierre continued , “that I saw Baron de Ramberg again after his supposed departure for Germany, in the midst of singular circumstances and in this church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile where my two children disappeared for me… Ramberg was with Countess Marcian Gregoryi… and I believe he was leaving for a journey much longer than the one to Germany. ” “Do you accuse this Countess?” Berthellemot asked. “God help those I accuse,” Jean-Pierre replied. ” So, two of our Germans have been dismissed; that left the alabaster merchant, the millionaire Franz Koënig, heir to the Würtz quarries. He is neither a baron nor a count, but I don’t know many clever people, French or not, capable of playing his part when it comes to negotiating a deal. In pleasure he is fiery, in business he is marble.” This one lasted longer than the others, although it had been obvious to me for several days already that a new element had entered his life. I guessed around him the mysterious traps into which his two companions might have fallen. And I watched him much more closely, alas! than I watched over my poor dear children, René and Angèle. Franz Koënig came to my fencing room again today. He will not come tomorrow. “Because?” murmured the secretary general, who shuddered as he sat down again. “Because, like the others, he has realized a large sum, and the time has come to strip him. ” “You would have made a remarkable agent,” said Berthellemot. “I take notes. ” “When I deal with the police,” replied Jean-Pierre, “it is on my own account.” This has happened to me more than once in my life, and I sat in the office of Thiroux de Crosne, the lieutenant of police who succeeded M. Lenoir, as I intended to sit today in the office of M. Dubois, the prefect. Sévérin, called Gâteloup, was here alluding to the bizarre adventure which is the subject of our previous story: the Chamber of Loves. We remember the important role that, under his name of Gâteloup, cantor at Saint-Sulpice and provost of arms, he played in this drama. –There is no need for numerous squads, he continued, to pick up a trail and to lead a hunt. I had to avenge the wound which poisoned my youth, and I had to save the children I loved. I was young, bold, and wise, although I had the fault of sometimes seeking oblivion from a bitter sorrow at the bottom of the bottle… Now I am almost an old man, and that is why I have come to ask for help. Not much help: a man or two that I will choose myself. That will not weaken your army, Mr. Clerk, and that will be enough for me. Franz Koënig did not need to write to Stuttgart to receive the large sum I have spoken of: he had unlimited credit with the house of Mannheim and Co. At two o’clock this afternoon, he left my room; at three o’clock he left the house of Mannheim and loaded into his carriage two hundred and fifty thousand Prussian thalers in bonds from the royal treasury of Berlin. That is why, sir, I did not use the past tense when pronouncing the name of Franz Koënig, as I did when speaking of Count Wenzel and Baron de Ramberg. It is because the first has perhaps not yet had time to be killed, while the other two are certainly dead. Chapter 17. A NIGHT ON THE SEINE After these words, Jean-Pierre Sévérin remained silent for a moment. The secretary-general played busily with his paper knife, and reflected, cracking his knuckles from time to time . “It would take double,” he said finally, “and triple and quadruple as well to accomplish only half the work that is my responsibility, for God knows what use the prefect is to me. I do not eat, I do not sleep , I do not talk, and yet the twenty-four hours of the day are far from enough for me.” The First Consul has that remarkable eye of sovereigns who choose and distinguish useful men from the crowd. I am not boasting, it would be superfluous, since everyone knows the services I have rendered to my country… The First Consul, at the moment I speak, must have his eyes on me . My dear Monsieur Sévérin, I would be led by vocation to take a serious interest in your affair and I do not hide from you that if I did, it would be sunk to the bottom in a day… But the safety of the State depends on me, and it would be culpable to abandon such serious interests for an object of simple curiosity… What I would like to see, he interrupted himself, is whether the lips of these kinds of people really have a special appearance. They say that they are raw and perpetually wet with blood… I took notes at the time… And I happened to talk with Fog-Bog, the English clown, who ate raw meat. He ate dog not without pleasure; but he was not a vampire, for he died from a blow from a megaphone given to him by his master, without malice, and he never returned to suck the blood of young people… What are you thinking of, my dear Monsieur Sévérin? “Of Countess Marcian Gregoryi,” replied Jean-Pierre. “Didn’t you say that you had seen her? ” “I saw her. ” “Tell me about her lips. I’ll take notes. The lips of these people have a special appearance. ” “Her lips are pure and beautiful,” the sworn guardian said slowly. ” They would seem a little pale on another face, but they suit the adorable whiteness of her complexion well… ” “Very well, continue. Pallor is a sign. ” “There are women of marble; she is a woman of alabaster…” “Then that good Württemberg man, Mr. Franz Koënig, could have taken her for one of his products.” The secretary-general was sincerely pleased with this joke and gave way to a good-natured laugh, after having cracked all the joints of his ten fingers. Jean-Pierre was not laughing. “And her eyes?” asked Mr. Berthellemot. ” Eyes also have a particular character in these people.” “She has dark blue eyes,” replied the sworn guardian, “beneath the sharp, bold arch of her eyebrows, black as jet; her hair is black too, strangely black, with those bronze reflections that one sees in deep water when it reflects a stormy sky. And the contrast is so violent between the broad daylight of that complexion and the night of that hair, that the gaze is wounded. “It must be ugly, surely, my neighbor? ” “It is splendid! Everything beautiful in the world passes through Paris at least once.” I saw, without leaving Paris, the marvelous courtesans of the last royal festivals, the goddesses of the republic, the foolish virgins of the Directory; I saw the daughters of England, crowned with gold, the charmers of Italy, the sparkling fairies who come from Spain, descending the Pyrenees in dancing; I have seen living paintings by Rubens arrive from Austria or Bavaria, Muscovites as charming as Frenchwomen; I have seen houris from Circassia, Georgian sultanas, Greek women, animated statues of Phidias: I have never seen anything so magnificently beautiful as Countess Marcian Gregoryi! “Sweet word!” said the magistrate, “that is a pretty portrait. ” “I have been a painter,” said Jean-Pierre. “So you have been everything? ” “Pretty much. ” “And do you know the address of this eighth wonder of the world? ” “If I knew it!” began Jean-Pierre, whose blue eyes had a dark gleam. “What would you do?” asked the prefect. Jean-Pierre replied: “That is my secret. ” “Have you met her often? ” “Twice. ” “Where did you meet her? ” “At the church… the first time. ” “When? ” “The night before yesterday.” “And the second time?” “Under the Pont au Change, at the water’s edge. ” “When? ” “This night.” Berthellemot opened his eyes wide and said with impatient curiosity: “Come now! Make your report!” The sworn guardian involuntarily straightened his tall figure. “Pardon, neighbor, pardon,” continued the secretary-general, “I meant to say, tell me your little story.” Before replying, Jean-Pierre collected himself for a moment. “I don’t know if you can call it a story,” he thought aloud. “I don’t think so. To anyone other than me, these facts must seem so extraordinary and so insane… ” “Little word!” interrupted Mr. Berthellemot, “you’re making my mouth water !” I like improbable things… “It was at the church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile,” continued Jean-Pierre, “and if I hadn’t been there for my two children, perhaps at this very moment Baron de Ramberg would still be among the living. She was with Baron de Ramberg; she was taking him to that place from which Count Wensel never returned… You have all the information you need, I suppose, Mr. Clerk, on the events that occurred at the Quai de Béthune? ” “The miraculous catch!” cried Berthellemot, laughing. “Are your almanacs of that quality, my neighbor?… The innkeeper Ézéchiel keeps us informed: he is one of us. ” “Mr. Clerk,” said Jean-Pierre gravely, “those who took the trouble to play out this audacious and lugubrious comedy must have had a great interest in it.” The powers that enlist people like Ezekiel are deceived twice: once by Ezekiel, once by those who deceive Ezekiel. I worked a lot yesterday. The human remains found at the Quai de Béthune come from the cemeteries, audaciously violated for several weeks. There is a bias there to divert attention. Paris currently contains a vast factory of incidents, and the purpose of all these mummeries is to hide the charnel house that devours the corpses of the victims. “Is that your opinion, my neighbor?” murmured Berthellemot. “I’m taking notes. The job you do must be a bit hard on the brain.” Jean-Pierre pointed to the hand that marked eight o’clock on the dial of the large watch. “The First Consul must be home,” he murmured. Perhaps he is reading the letter I wrote to him today… And I won’t hide from you, Mr. Clerk, I would have been out of my league a long time ago if I wasn’t waiting here for General Bonaparte’s reply. Berthellemot gave a small nod, both skeptical and submissive. Jean-Pierre continued. “I have a lot to tell you about your Ezekiel and the back of his shop. Thank God, I’m beginning to see clearly at the bottom of this ink bottle; but you would take me for a mentally ill person, better and better, Mr. Clerk, and that would be a shame. Did I tell you?” spoke of Abbé Martel? “No, by all the devils, my neighbor!” grumbled the secretary general, “and your way of informing the administration is not the clearest, do you know? ” “It’s just that I don’t need to tell the administration everything, my neighbor; I intend to do a little of it myself. Abbé Martel is a worthy priest who finds himself mixed up, without his knowledge, in some diabolical affair. I returned to Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile today, and I asked for him in the sacristy. They were just bringing him the viaticum; he had been struck down during the night by a stroke. I was able to get to him. I found him paralyzed and speechless. But when I spoke certain names in his ear, his eyes came to life to paint a picture of horror and terror. “What names, my neighbor?” “Among others, that of Countess Marcian Gregoryi.” Mr. Berthellemot lowered his voice to ask: “In the end, would you think that this Countess Marcian Gregoryi is the vampire?” Jean-Pierre replied calmly: “I’m pretty sure of it. ” “But…” Berthellemot stammered, “Mr. Prefect… ” “I know,” Jean-Pierre interrupted, “that she’s on the best of terms with Mr. Prefect… ” “From now on,” he added, resolutely stuffing his big watch into his pocket, “I’ll give myself half an hour to wait for the First Consul’s reply, and since we have some leisure, I’ll return to the beautiful Countess. This will amuse us, Mr. Clerk: It’s as curious as a charade.” The first time I met Countess Marcian Gregoryi, I saw her as I described her to you: young, beautiful, with ebony hair on an ivory forehead… “And the second,” asked Mr. Berthellemot, “had she already aged?” Jean-Pierre gave him a strange look. “There is a legend from the country of Hungary,” he replied, “that my friend Germain Patou knows… as he knows all things… it is called the story of the Beauty with the Changing Hair… I must tell you that Germain Patou is an orphan, the son of a drowned man, whom I helped a little to become a man. He is as tall as a boot, but he has more wit than a dozen giants… and he is looking everywhere for a vampire to dissect or cure him, as the case may be. ” He plans to go to Belgrade, after his thesis is completed, to excavate the tomb of the vampire of Szandor, which is on an island in the Sava, and the tomb of the vampire of Uszel, as big as a palace, where there are, they say, more than a thousand skulls of young girls… “What is all this, my neighbor?” murmured Berthellemot. “I warn you that I’m losing my mind. I don’t hate vampires, but not too many are needed… ” “In the legend of Germain Patou,” continued Jean-Pierre imperturbably, “the vampire or the oopire of Uszel, the Beauty with the Changing Hair is madly in love with Count Szandor, her husband, who holds her grudge and only lets himself be loved for crazy sums. It takes millions of florins to buy a kiss from this cruel husband… ” “And stingy,” interjected the secretary general. “And stingy,” repeated Jean-Pierre seriously. The Beauty with the Changing Hair is so named because of a particular circumstance and entirely in keeping with the dark imaginations of Slavic poetry. She appears sometimes brunette, sometimes blonde… “By Jove!” said Berthellemot, “if she has two wigs… ” “She has a thousand!” interrupted Jean-Pierre, “and each of these wigs is worth the life of a young and dear creature, beautiful, happy, loved…” Here Jean-Pierre recounted the legend that we had already heard from Lila, in the boudoir of the Bretonvilliers pavilion. When he had finished, he continued: “The second time I saw Countess Marcian Gregoryi, her hair was as blonde as amber.” Berthellemot shifted in his armchair. “That’s going too far!” he grumbled. “Senior clerk,” Jean-Pierre said dreamily, ” I’ve almost finished. Countess Marcian Gregoryi had blond hair as beautiful as her brown hair was once splendid. I have never seen anything in my life but one head of hair comparable to that: it’s the golden rings that play on our little Angela’s beloved forehead. The same shade, the same richness, the same lightness beneath the kisses of the wind. This is so true, sir, that this time, at two o’clock in the night, I approached Countess Marcian Gregoryi, believing she was my Angela. I must tell you that I work at night as well as during the day. You thought just now that my profession affects the brain. It may be. In any case, it unlearns sleep.” When there is fever in the air, fever or sorrow, when the nerves are sick, agitated, painful, when the breath, difficult, oppresses the chest, I say to myself: This is one of those nights when the unfortunate are weak against despair; the Seine is going to carry some sad remains towards the bridge of Saint-Cloud. Then I untie my boat, still moored under the rampart of the Châtelet, and I take my oars. Yesterday I did so. The atmosphere was heavy, Angèle was missing from home, and I had a great deal of anxiety in my heart. René was missing too… Do I know why? I thought less of René than of Angèle. René is an ardent and bold young man; for some time a seduction has surrounded him; he could be in the grip of one of those adventures which will eternally carry youth away. But Angèle, our little saint, the purest soul God has made, Angèle who respects us so well and loves us so much! How can we explain her absence? I left my wife, drowsy from crying, and went down under the tower of the Châtelet. It was a stormy night. The rain had stopped, but turbulent clouds were racing across the sky, hurled northward like immense flocks, passing furiously over the disc of the moon, which seemed to be fleeing in the opposite direction. The Seine was high and roared as it swirled under the bridge; but the current knows me, and my old arms still know how to fight the river’s anger. I looked for an eddy; and I swam toward the islands. The Quai de Béthune has attracted me for many days, and I am sure that one night or another, I will discover some fatal secret there. I passed the Pont Notre-Dame under the arch of the Quai aux Fleurs, where the water is less strong, because of the curve presented by the city. As I left the arch, the moon lit up both banks. Listen to this, Mr. Employee; I had a healthy head, clear eyes ; I now drink little but water and I am not yet mentally ill, whatever you may think. I saw, as distinctly as in broad daylight, a fact which at first I did not want to believe, because it is against all the laws of nature. I saw a body, a dead body, which passed the shadow of the bridge at the same time as me, but at the very other end, under the last arch, on the side of the Rue Planche-Mibraie. And this body, inert however, like a corpse that it was, instead of obeying the current, came back up, at the same rate as me, who was obliged to use all my strength to gain a fathom in a minute. As soon as a cloud passed over the moon, I ceased to see it, and then I said to myself: I was dreaming; but the cloud fled, the moon shed its rays on the muddy tumults of the river, and I saw again the corpse, long, rigid, straight as a recumbent statue, which followed the same route as me, on the other side of the river, and which gained exactly the same ground as me. I called, and the idea finally came to me that it was a living creature, but nothing answered me, except the anxious alert of the sentries from the Place de Grève… I pressed on my oars to let go of gaining upstream, in order to cross afterwards; but in vain I did, although favored by the eddy, my boat had difficulty keeping itself on the same line as the body. As for cutting the current straight, it would have been as good as trying to walk on the water like Our Lord. The pleasure boat of the First Consul, which I saw at Saint-Cloud, could not have supported the drift with its sixteen oarsmen. However, the desire I had to see more closely became a passion; the fever rose to my head. I redoubled my efforts, and, going up to the point of the Archbishopric, I threw myself into the current, which carries at this point towards the right bank. As I was in the middle of the river, losing, alas! everything I had gained, there was a great dazzling of light. The moon crossed a pool of azure, and each eddy in the river began to shine, as if millions of sparks had been stirred out of sight. The body, shrunk by the distance, appeared to me one last time, always rising and disappearing under the shade of the large trees that line the Quai des Ormes. Over there, not far from the Pont Marie, along the water and precisely under the Quai des Ormes, there is a sacred place for us, I mean for my wife, for Angèle, for me and for René Kervoz too, I hope. Angèle told us everything. She brought us there sometimes, on the lawn, among the flowers, to tell us how, in this very spot, one beautiful spring evening, her heart and René’s were united, calling God to witness. I came there often, and since misfortune was around us, I sometimes prayed there. I don’t know why my heart sank painfully when I saw the corpse enter under this shadow where we placed such dear memories. All my efforts were aimed at reaching the right bank; for it was now obvious to me that I could not reach my goal by remaining in my boat. To go down to the bank and run as fast as I could towards the Pont Marie, such was the only reasonable plan. I executed it, and, after hastily mooring my boat, I started my run towards the garden of the Quai des Ormes. To say why my hamstrings were loose and as if paralyzed would be impossible for me. The wind that froze the sweat on my temples pushed me back. I had that weakness which takes hold of the limbs at the approach of a great illness of the mind, when a great misfortune threatens. I was far away, very far away still. How did I see this from so far away and so distinctly, in the darkness under these trees? I saw it, I affirm that I saw it, for I let out a cry of anguish as I hastened my course. It lasted the time of a flash. I saw, at the edge of the water, where the flowers and the lawns are, a young girl kneeling, a desperate one, no doubt, one of those I always seek and sometimes find, thanks to the goodness of God. I recognize them among a thousand. They almost all pray like this before losing their poor blinded souls. And do you think that eternal mercy has no pity for this heartbreaking madness?… Here Jean-Pierre Sévérin, called Gâteloup, passed his hand over his damp forehead. The words hesitated in his throat. Entirely absorbed in the emotion of his thought, he spoke much more for himself than for his interlocutor who, from now on, was motionless and mute. Mr. Berthellemot was so discreet as not to answer the last question put to him, a philosophical question, however, which could have served as the subject of some long chatter. And if the reader is surprised by this excessive reserve in such a determined interrupter, we will confess that Mr. Berthellemot, like many other senior employees, had the useful talent of sleeping soundly while sitting upright in his seat and maintaining all the appearances of vigilant attention. He was asleep, this just man, and perhaps dreaming of the fortunate hour when, the piercing eye of the First Consul finally distinguishing his outstanding merit , the Moniteur would insert this sentence so eloquent and so short: M. Berthellemot is appointed Prefect of Police. Jean-Pierre, moreover, did not need an answer; he continued: –There is a sublime contradiction, one that I have encountered ten times on my path. Any human creature determined to destroy itself can be stopped at the edge of the abyss by the hope of saving its fellow man. The man who is about to commit self-harm is always ready to prevent the self-harm of another. In such a way that two desperate people, leaning over the edge of the abyss, will stop each other and find words that advise courage and resignation. The young girl on the Quai des Ormes had made the sign of the cross, and I was saying to myself: Let us hasten my helpless journey, I shall arrive too late, when I suddenly saw, in front of her, the body coming up the Seine, skirting the bank. It shone, this body, with a light of its own, and it seemed to me that the picture was lit up by pale rays emanating from it. I felt cold in all my veins. Why? I could not have said. The young girl bent forward and stretched out her arm. Another arm, that of the body, also stretched out towards the young girl. My hair stood on end and my vision became clouded. I glimpsed, through a fog, something unheard of and impossible. It was not the young girl who drew the body to her, it was the body that drew the young girl to itself. Both the body and the girl remained above water for a moment, for the body had stopped and stood up. A dead hand plunged into the girl’s abundant hair , while the other hand described a rapid circle around her forehead and temples. Then the body rose onto the bank, alive, agile, young, while the poor child took her place in the choppy water. But, instead of going upstream like the body, the girl began to descend with the current, whirling and diving… I threw myself headfirst into the Seine, and did my best. After swimming in vain for a quarter of an hour, I found myself, carried away by the furious drift, level with my own house, which is on the Place du Châtelet. The girl had disappeared. As I was going back up onto the platform, defeated, exhausted, desolate, by the steps of the New Morgue, a woman passed in front of me, this woman who had Angela’s hair. I stopped her. When she turned around, I recognized Countess Marcian Gregoryi, dazzlingly beautiful and young, but with blond hair. And, do I know why? The sight of her made me think of that livid body that had recently been swimming upstream. I didn’t speak, astonishment closed my mouth. Countess Marcian Gregoryi pronounced a strange name, which I believe to be: Yanusa. A carriage, drawn by two black horses, came out of the shadows, at the corner of the New Market. The Countess climbed into it, and the carriage set off at a gallop in the direction of Notre-Dame… A violent ringing of the bell suddenly made Jean-Pierre start and woke the secretary-general with a start. “Present!” said M. Berthellemot, rubbing his eyes vigorously. As he tried to take in the noise that had just interrupted his peaceful sleep, the main door opened abruptly, and Charlevoy, one of the agents, who had formerly been on guard, entered, saying: “An urgent message from the Tuileries, with the mark of the First Consul.” Berthellemot stood up, staggering and quite dizzy. He had already forgotten the bell. “To M. Sévérin,” added Charlevoy. “Ah! ah!” said Berthellemot, “M. Sévérin… I’ve taken notes…” The man who said: Your Majesty, under the National Convention… Give it! The bell rang again, and Berthellemot, alert this time, cried: “It’s the Prefect.” He was just finding his legs to rush toward the door that communicated with his chief’s office, when Jean-Pierre stopped him, handing him the open letter, the letter that came from the Tuileries. It wasn’t long and said only: Order to place at the disposal of Mr. Sévérin the agents he requests. And the signature of Bonaparte, First Consul. “Monsieur Despaux!” Berthellemot cried, “all the agents we have under the orders of this excellent man… Pardon me, if I leave you, my neighbor… the prefecture is yours. Just a word!” Your story was very interesting… You will testify before whomever it may concern that I did not even take Mr. Dubois’s advice in obeying the orders of the First Consul… Sweet word! Between the First Consul and Mr. Dubois, one cannot hesitate… Third ring of the bell, which broke the cord. Berthellemot threw himself, head first, into the door, like the equerries of the Olympic Circus, who pass through drums of paper. When he arrived in the prefect’s office, the latter was kissing the hand of a young woman radiant with beauty and wearing dazzling blond hair. Mr.
Dubois looked very animated and was doing the administrative cartwheel to perfection. “Mr. Secretary General,” he said sternly, “I have called three times.”
He interrupted his interlocutor’s stammering excuse to add: “Mr. Secretary General, please understand that the entire police prefecture is at the disposal of Countess Marcian Gregoryi, who is here. ” And as Berthellemot recoiled in astonishment, Mr. Dubois finished, straightening up majestically: “Autograph order of the First Consul!” Chapter 18. Countess Marcian Gregoryi. Mr. Berthellemot was no ordinary man; we have seen that he possessed the piercing gaze of Mr. de Sartines, the irony of Mr. Lenoir, and I no longer know what tic belonging to Mr. de La Reynie. He also swore elegantly and knew how to crack his knuckles like an angel. Let us add that he was talkative, pleased with himself , and jealous of his superiors. Foreigners and malicious people claim that the French administration has always appreciated these amiable virtues. It is these virtues, and others besides, which have earned it the European reputation it has for accomplishing, in three months, with sixty employees, all bachelors of arts, the work that is done in London in three days with four office boys. It is only fair to add that the English military gentlemen readily boast of having saved the French army at Inkermann, which came to pull them back, beaten, from the bottom of a ditch, and that it is well known in Turin that Sevastopol was taken by the Piedmontese infantry alone. Let us beware of believing in the boasting of rival peoples and let us be proud of our administration, which would be enough to clutter the offices of the entire universe. Mr.
Berthellemot, despite his talents and experience, was at first completely stunned at the sight of this beautiful person, insolently blond, who looked at him with a somewhat mocking air. If he didn’t love his prefect, he at least feared him with all his soul.
How could he tell him that this charming woman was a vampire, an oupire, a ghoul, a hideous collection of dried bones whose tomb, located somewhere on the banks of the Seine, was filled with skulls that had belonged to unfortunate young girls whom she, Countess Marcian Gregoryi, the ghoul, the oupire, the vampire, had scalped for her own profit ? This insinuation might have seemed improbable. I will go further: by what means can you establish that this monstrous creature, whose dimpled cheeks smiled admirably, fed on human flesh? How can you accuse her of having been dark yesterday, she, whose child’s forehead shone under a profusion of golden curls? You could have cried in vain: “She’s bald!” no one would have believed you. M. Berthellemot felt that. Moreover, he himself doubted it, so naturally were those amber hairs planted. He was not at all far from believing that his Neighbor had made him the victim of a daring mystification. “Monsieur le préfet,” he stammered finally, “I beg you to take it for granted that I have taken notes… and I am indeed the humble servant of Madame la Comtesse.” “Autograph order, sir,” repeated Mr. Dubois nobly, “and worded in a form that seems to presage the great events whose favorable omen… In short, I understand myself, sir, and I do not suppose that you need to know the secrets of the State.” Berthellemot bowed to the ground. “Please listen, I beg you,” continued the prefect, who unfolded a small piece of paper, covered in bold and somewhat irregular writing. And he read in a voice suddenly saturated with unction: ” We charge Mr. L. N. P. J. Dubois, our prefect of police, to listen with the greatest care to the information that will be provided to him by the bearer of the present. Countess Marcian Gregoryi is a Hungarian noblewoman who has already rendered us a signal service during the Italian campaign. We have tested her personal devotion. What she requests must be carried out to the letter. Signed : N—-. ” “Yes, indeed!” cried M. Dubois, putting the paper in his pocket to crack his fingers, but not as skillfully as the secretary-general; yes, indeed! I am his prefect of police, until death! It’s peculiar, sir, and even confidential! I know proud people who treat me like a snitch, and whom this simple piece of paper would make tremble. My position is taking shape; one cannot always remain under wraps, can it not ? Merit is emerging. And remember that an eagle’s eye is fixed on us.
Berthellemot opened her mouth timidly, but M. Dubois closed it with a sweeping gesture, and said: “I beg you, sir, to remain silent.” He glanced at the countess to see the effect produced by this firm word. Countess Marcian Gregoryi had sat down and was gracefully arranging the folds of an exquisite gown. She was so young, so beautiful, and so pretty that one wondered how old she could have been in 1797, when she rendered this signal service to General Bonaparte. M. Dubois continued: “It is signed with only an N, a capital N. I feel sincere joy, sir, and I cannot hide it. My opinions are known, they have never varied. He who is the destiny of France and the world has, I hope, sounded the depths of my heart… and Madame la Comtesse will testify, I am sure, before whomever is entitled, of my eagerness, of my… In a word, the aspirations of our country are manifestly monarchical. ” Berthellemot placed his right hand on his chest to give a premature acclamation, but the prefect said to him again: “Sir, I beg you to remain silent. Madame la Comtesse,” he added solemnly, “my secretary general is listening to your commands.” This delicious blonde had not yet spoken. Her voice came out like a song. “The most urgent thing,” she said, “is to arrest this malicious person who, despite his very subordinate position, is the most dangerous enemy of the First Consul: I mean the sworn guardian of the vault of watches and confrontations at the Châtelet. ” “My neighbor!” Berthellemot murmured with a moan. “The man named Jean-Pierre Sévérin,” said Gâteloup, the Countess finished. “But…” cried Berthellemot, choking, “but, Madame Countess… but, Monsieur Prefect… this Gâteloup is the Emperor’s friend!” M. Dubois was embarrassed, not by the fact itself, but by the word. “No one more than I,” he said with emotion, “wishes, desires , calls for with all their wishes… with all their aspirations… and Madame Countess must have no doubt about it… but finally, I must protest, in the name of the Head of State himself… ” “Time is pressing,” the adorable blonde interrupted him coldly, her delicate eyebrows furrowed. “Every minute lost makes the situation worse… and I’m afraid that the Secretary General has made some blunder.” This was said clearly and did not shock the prefect, who murmured in a tone of commiseration: “Ah! certainly, the poor fellow is quite capable of it!… If only they knew in high places how pitifully we are seconded! ” Berthellemot, flushed with anger, lost all sense of proportion for the first time in his administrative life. “Pretty words!” he cried. “Who should we believe? You, Monsieur Dubois, or the First Consul? I too received an order! A handwritten order… ” “A handwritten order!” repeated the prefect. “From him to you?” “To me!” retorted Berthellemot, firmly on his quibbles. “That is to say… Anyway, my personal opinion was that I should not disobey Napoleon Bonaparte. ” “And what did the order say?” asked the countess, who had turned slightly pale. “The order placed the police headquarters at the disposal of M. Jean-Pierre Sévérin, who was the fencing master of the First Consul. ” “The order must be false!” cried the Countess. “This Sévérin is Georges Cadoudal’s most dangerous accomplice. ” The two officials were stunned. M. Dubois fell rather than sat down in his chair, and Berthellemot, performing his duties as squire of the Olympic Circus for the second time, jumped headfirst through the door. He was absent only three minutes. He spent those three minutes with M. Despaux, who reported that, on his orders, M. Berthellemot, Jean-Pierre Sévérin had been given a peace officer wearing his sash and four chosen agents, among whom were Laurent and Charlevoy. “And all those people have left?” asked the unfortunate secretary- general. “A fine time ago!” replied Despaux. Sévérin looked as if the devil were on his trail. “Where did they go? ” “I wasn’t asked to inquire about that. ” “You kept the order, I suppose? ” “What order? ” “The order of the First Consul. ” “I didn’t even know there was an order from the First Consul. I obeyed only you, my immediate superior.” Berthellemot looked at him with a look in which distress vied with fury. “Small talk!” he cried. “You are suspect to me, sir. It’s no use making an example of me! I leave you the choice between these two epithets: incapable or criminal! ” “Whenever the Secretary-General wishes,” replied Despaux, hat in hand; “I am a hunter, and Mr. Fouché is going to make some very fine hunts on his estate at Pont-Carré. ” “Sir, sir!” Berthellemot snarled, “you answer for the life of the First Consul!” Despaux bowed with a sneer and backed out. When M. Berthellemot re-entered the prefect’s office, he looked like a beaten dog. Far from cracking his fingers, he twitched his thumbs in dismay . “That’s all I can do,” he murmured, “put M. Despaux in prison. ” The prefect cut him off with a razor-sharp gesture: “I beg you to remain silent, sir,” he said. “You are a suspect to me!” Berthellemot’s legs wobbled under the weight of his body. “Incapable or criminal, sir,” Dubois continued. “I leave you the choice between these two epithets. You are not worthy, I am forced to tell you, to be the lieutenant of the man who, by his zeal and his foresight, was able to prevent the disastrous consequences of the various plots directed against a precious life… of the man who stands like an insurmountable barrier… like a diamond shield, sir, between the head of state and the perfidious intrigues of the factions… of the man who seized Pichegru and Moreau… of the man who is going to seize Cadoudal today! ” “Ah!” Berthellemot said, his mouth hanging open. Dubois folded his hands behind his back. He dazzled his secretary-general. “Mr.
Despaux, sir,” he continued, “does not seem to me to be absolutely unfit to fulfill functions which now seem to be beyond your capabilities.” It is beyond my power to make an example… “Ah! Monsieur le Préfet!” cried Berthellemot, “after all the trouble I have taken… Sic vos non vobis!… ” “Do you want to make people believe that you have something to do with the constant success of my efforts?” asked Dubois superbly. “Pretty words,” replied the secretary-general bravely, finding a bit of courage in the depths of his distress; “just dismiss me, and you will see if I have my tongue in my pocket… I took notes, thank God… M. Fouché, no later than today, was having me tested by this same Despaux… Fouché was the terror of all who had to do with the police. It was known that between him and the First Consul, it was a bit of a domestic quarrel, and that sooner or later reconciliation would come. ” M. Dubois took a few steps into his room. “Withdraw, monsieur,” he said in a less haughty tone. I need to be alone with the Countess, thanks to whom I am going to accomplish an act that will be the honor of my public career… We are going through difficult circumstances; you have made a mistake, try to repair it… I charge you to find at all costs this Jean-Pierre Sévérin, who is a brazen criminal, and to seize him dead or alive… At this price, I leave you the hope of regaining my confidence… “Ah! Monsieur le Préfet!” cried Berthellemot with tears in her eyes. “One last word!” interrupted Dubois, cutting short this tenderness: “I hold you responsible for the life of the First Consul… Go! ” “That’s how we manage them!” he said, approaching the Countess, as soon as Berthellemot had disappeared behind the closed door. And that’s how we must deal with these inferior natures. Only God and the head of state can measure the prodigious difference that exists between a police prefect and a secretary general! Berthellemot, however, shared this opinion with God and the head of state, but he established the difference in the opposite direction. “Abject brute!” he thought as he returned, his ear lowered, to his office; “miserable weathervane turning in all the winds! I will have your place or I will die in labor! Everything that gives you a certain luster, it is I who have done it! I, I alone, who am as much above you as the free bird is above the poultry of our farmyards … Pretty word, you will pay me for that! and when I am at the head of the administration, the whole universe will have news of you stupid! The song says that the beggars are happy people and that they love each other, but it does not hear about those who administer us. If you want to see some beautiful and good intolerance, well concentrated, well vitriolic, well venomous, go to the offices. While thinking, however, and while timing the orders that were to send an army of agents on the trail of Jean-Pierre Sévérin, called Gâteloup, Mr. Berthellemot caressed in his thoughts the image of Countess Marcian Gregoryi. “A pretty sprig!” he said to himself, “little word! They say that vampires have lips sticky with blood… this one is a rose… But, after all, it is quite certain that one of the two orders signed by the First Consul is false… What if it was his?…” “Now, if you please, madame,” continued the prefect, sitting beside the adorable blonde, “let us continue our work, beginning with Georges Cadoudal… ” “No,” interrupted the countess, “I must first have all the Brothers of Virtue arrested… If a single one remains free, I am no longer responsible for anything.” She took from a Russian leather wallet, decorated with rich arabesques, a list which was long and contained, among many others, several names known to us: Andrea Ceracchi, Taïeh, Caërnarvon, Osman, etc. Opposite each name was an address. “I have come a long way,” she said, “and my journey had only one purpose: to save the man whose glory already dazzles our half- wild lands. The thought of this devotion was born in me beyond the Danube, in the plains of Hungary, where the League of Virtue is beginning to recruit daggers. I entered the bloody association expressly to combat it. I was not unaware, when I left, of any of the perils of this enterprise, in which my three dearest friends lost their lives: I speak of Count Wenzel, the brave heart; of Baron Ramberg, the brilliant, loyal young man; and finally of Franz Koënig, whose future seemed so bright…” Dubois quickly opened the drawer of his desk and consulted a note. “Count Wenzel,” he murmured, “Baron Ramberg… both from Stuttgart… This is the first time I have heard of the third.” “You only heard of the other two once, Mr. Prefect,” replied the Countess melancholy, “and it was I who brought the news of their death to the Prefecture. The third shared the fate of his two companions today. You may add his name to your list. He was also from Stuttgart. ” The Prefect’s eyes were lowered, and his eyebrows drew together as if he had been laboriously reflecting. “Without them,” continued the Countess, “the knights errant of young Germany, I would have done a month ago what I am doing today. I would have come here where they denounce and I would have denounced. But Wenzel, Ramberg, and Koënig had said: We will fight by ourselves, and with our own forces; we will crush the vampire… ” “The vampire!” repeated Mr. Dubois in astonishment. Countess Marcian Gregoryi smiled. “It’s a name that is much spoken in Paris,” she said, “I know it. M. Dubois, the man of reason, of science, and of enlightenment, M. Dubois to whom the future government of the Emperor promises such a high fortune, does not believe, I suppose, in these poor fables of Eastern Europe… The prefect of police of Paris does not believe in vampires… ” “No… certainly not!” stammered Dubois. “My education, my knowledge… ” “The vampire I’m talking about,” interrupted Countess Gregory in a clear and firm voice, “is the secret society that calls itself the League of Virtue, and which is nothing but a bundle of scoundrels, united in the thought of a crime! ” “Well!” said M. Dubois naively, “I suspected as much!” –Association of owls, continued the beautiful blonde, becoming animated, gathered in the night to stop the flight of the eagle… collection of intolerances, envy or cowardly ambitions… The real vampire, the league of assassins, invented the other vampire, the false one, the fantastic and impossible monster that frightens the grown-up children of Paris. The fable was intended to deceive those who would have wanted to pursue reality… just as this comedy on the Quai de Béthune, the miraculous catch of fish, had the object of attracting public attention far, far away from the charnel house, alas! all too real, where decompose the mortal remains of so many victims already sacrificed! Dubois had put his forehead in his hand. “That explains everything!” he murmured, “and it falls into a series of ideas that I have more than once subjected to the test of my reasoning… for nothing escapes me… nothing, madame, and you will see it presently. The people who come here, with floured mouths, to say to me: Watch out! Watch out for this! Watch out for that! are a little like the fly in the ointment. ” “You are the Minister of Police of the future!” declared Countess Marcian Gregoryi solemnly. “Only,” continued M. Dubois, “I am not seconded. A flock of goslings, madame, that is my army… without counting that I have in my wheels two or three sticks that I will not name and who are called MM. Savary, Bourienne, Fouché and the devil… Do you understand that?… And without counting that above me, yes, madame, above, there is a cardboard senator, a mannequin, a stuffed turkey, Mr. Grand Judge, if you please, who would be enough, he alone, to jam the best-oiled machine… Without them, I would have already stuffed the vampire twenty times in my pocket, whether she be a secret society or a ghoul plucked from the gutters of the Saint-Jacques tower. Tragic event… I give you my word, madame. “I told the Emperor,” murmured the Countess as if she were speaking to herself. “Shh!” said Dubois. “Let’s not abuse this description.” Fouché has flies even in my offices… I beg you to tell me, madame, not to teach me anything, but so that I can compare opinions, what, in your opinion, was the purpose of these numerous incidents? –The purpose was threefold, Mr. Prefect: to disturb the population, to make enemies disappear, and to mint money… –Ah! ah!… these gentlemen of Virtue are thieves? –It takes money to attack a head of state, Mr. Prefect. –That’s true, madame, and I admire your ability. Here Dubois fixed on her that look borrowed from M. de Sartines, and which Berthellemot assumed in his absence, as any good valet from time to time puts on his master’s patent leather boots. “And allow me,” he said, changing his tone, “to give you the proof I promised you just now… proof of the fact that nothing escapes me, however poorly assisted I may be; my personal clairvoyance is sufficient for everything… almost… You have a file here, Madame la Comtesse. ” The beautiful blonde bowed. “You must have married this Count Wenzel?” the prefect continued. “The rumor has spread, sir.” “The entry has been made in the sacristy of Saint-Eustache. ” “Nothing can be hidden from you, in truth! ” “You must have also married Baron de Ramberg? ” “So it has been said. ” “I have the extract from the registers of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile.” “It’s marvelous, Mr. Prefect!… What an institution your police force is!… But you seem to be unaware that I was also engaged, and in the same way, to that valiant, that handsome Franz Koënig… ” M. Dubois let out a gesture of astonishment. “Suppose I dared ask you for an explanation?” he began. “I certainly intended to offer it to you,” interrupted the Countess, whose large eyes had, in truth, at that hour, an expression of religious sadness. Wenzel, Ramberg, and Koënig were the dearest of my friends; that is saying too little: they were my brothers, and I do not hide the fact that my ardor to continue the common work is doubled by the hope of avenging them. We were league against league: the league of good against the league of evil. I had lavished my fortune on the preliminaries of the struggle, and, for good as for evil, the sinews of battle are necessary. My three beloved companions were rich, but young; They needed pretexts to draw large sums of money on their businessmen, who had remained in the country. We did not bother to vary the pretext, because each of us believed that the end of the fight was near. Wenzel sent to Stuttgart the extract from the registers of Saint-Eustache, with the signature of Abbé Aymar, vicar; Ramberg a similar piece, signed by Abbé Martel, vicar of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile; Koënig… “The first two pieces alone are here,” said the prefect. “Have you got the money?
” “The vampire,” replied the countess, whose voice darkened, “won nearly a million francs at this game.” Mr. Dubois closed his drawer with a noise. “Now, sir,” continued the charming blonde, whose tone became brief and deliberate as at the beginning of the interview, “allow me to anticipate the question, for night is drawing on and everything must be finished by tomorrow morning. I am touching on a fact of which you are still ignorant, but which will soon be revealed to you and which will explain the bold step attempted by this Jean-Pierre Sévérin, with the aid of a forged signature of the First Consul. ” “False?” asked Dubois. “False,” repeated the Countess confidently, “for the First Consul left this evening at seven o’clock for the Château de Fontainebleau. ” “Without my being warned!” cried Dubois, leaping from his seat. “The last person the First Consul saw in Paris was me, and I was charged with warning you.” Dubois rang the bell. M. Despaux entered almost immediately. It would have taken an even more penetrating gaze than that of the Prefect of Police to catch the quick glance that was exchanged between the newcomer and Countess Marcian Gregory. “To the Tuileries, immediately, an express!” ordered Dubois. “The First Consul would have left this evening for Fontainebleau… ” “The news has just been brought,” said Despaux, “and I was on my way to tell the Prefect. ” Despaux left at a sign from his chief. “The fact I wanted to discuss with you,” the delightful blonde continued calmly, “is the private chartering, by me, of a young law student named René de Kervoz, future son-in-law of Jean-Pierre Sévérin…
” “The devil take him!” cried the Prefect with all his heart. “And the very nephew,” continued the Countess, “of the Chouan Georges Cadoudal. ” M. Dubois immediately brightened up and became attentive. “A child, Mr. Prefect, as far removed as possible from all political plots, and whom I am holding prisoner precisely to keep him away from the violent scenes that will take place tomorrow morning .” “Is it through him that you learned of Cadoudal’s retreat?” asked Dubois. “It is through him. ” “So he has betrayed me? ” “He loves me,” replied Countess Marcian Gregoryi, blushing, not with shame, but with pride. “Now that we have said everything, Mr. Prefect,” she continued after a silence, “let us agree on our facts. I remind you that I have nothing to solicit from you. It is I who lays down the conditions. I lay down as the first condition that today, at midnight, a sufficient force will surround the house located on Chemin de la Muette, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and of which here is the exact plan.” (She placed a paper on the desk.) All the members of the League of Virtue will be gathered in this house. You will have to seize them, and this is how you will be introduced: one of your men will present himself at the door opening onto the Chemin de la Muette and will knock six times, spaced like this and not otherwise: three, two, one. The door will be opened, and he will be asked: Who are you? He will reply: In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, I am a brother of Virtue. At the same hour, if possible, or immediately after, your agents will enter the hotel which bears the number 7, Chaussée des Minimes, in the Marais. You will seize there all the papers of the conspirators, all the tests! My name will frequently appear in these papers. You now know in what capacity. I howled with the wolves to have the right to follow them to the bottom of their den. In the greenhouse, located to the left of the living room, the third crate from the glass door, a crate containing a yucca, will be disturbed and will reveal a trapdoor. Under the trapdoor is a sepulchre, the true charnel house of the vampire. No harm will come to young René de Kervoz when he reappears among the living. This very moment you will prepare my passports for Vienna. I will travel with a woman named Yanusza Paraxin, who is my nurse, with my coachman and my valet. I will leave tomorrow, immediately after having delivered Georges Cadoudal into your hands. Until that moment I remain as a hostage. “And how will you deliver Georges Cadoudal?” asked Dubois. “Is everything accepted? ” “Yes, everything is accepted.” Countess Marcian Gregoryi stood up, and Mr. Dubois, who was a connoisseur, could not help but admire the exquisite graces of her figure. Here is how I will deliver Georges Cadoudal to you, she said. Before daybreak, your men, all dressed in bourgeois uniform, will be in ambush in the rue Saint-Hyacinthe-Saint-Michel, from the rue Saint-Jacques to the square. Some will even turn the corner of the rue Saint-Jacques, others will spread out along the rue de la Harpe, so as to surround the entire block to the south. At eight o’clock in the morning, a hired cabriolet will come and park at one of the doors of this block, I don’t yet know which one, because Georges Cadoudal has managed to create a retreat that resembles a fox’s den: it has ten exits for every one. The arrival of the cabriolet will be the signal to look at the windows. At one of the windows a veiled woman will appear. When this veiled woman appears, Georges will cross the threshold and climb into the cabriolet. The rest will be done by the officers. She bowed slightly, like the great lady that she was, and went to the door, escorted from a distance by the police prefect, who was mingling with greetings. Chapter 19. LAST NIGHT. Left alone, the prefect adopted a meditative attitude to sincerely admit to himself that since the invention of the police, no magistrate had ever shown such perspicacity. Thanks to his talent and with a single stone, he would strike three magnificent blows: confiscate the vampire’s success for his own benefit, reveal to a dazzled Paris the existence of the League of Virtue, and trap that wolf Cadoudal. Triple glory! Rubbing his hands, he regretted that they could not make a sub-emperor, for he felt worthy of a small throne. Meanwhile, Countess Marcian Gregoryi’s carriage was waiting in Rue Harlay-du-Palais. It was indeed the same elegant carriage, drawn by two fine black horses, that we once saw parked at the threshold of the church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile. “To the hotel!” ordered the Countess, crossing the step. As she closed the door, a shadow detached itself from the corner of a neighboring house and glided noiselessly toward the carriage. The shadow was almost as big as a man, but at most the size of a twelve-year-old child. When the carriage set off at a gallop, we could have seen, passing under the next streetlamp, our friend Germain Patou clinging to the footman’s seat. The fine horses only stopped at the carriage entrance of a magnificent old house located on Chaussée des Minimes, number 7. Countess Marcian Gregoryi climbed a grand staircase. In the antechamber on the first floor, an old woman of virile stature was waiting, with an enormous dog sprawled on the flagstones beside her. As the Countess entered, it stood up on all fours and stretched out its neck like dogs do when they howl. “Peace, Pluto!” said Yanusza in his barbaric Latin. Pluto knew Latin, for he shaved, then lay down and crawled towards the newcomer, sweeping the flagstones with the hair on his stomach. “Has Franz Koënig arrived?” asked the Countess. “He has arrived,” replied Yanusza. “At the appointed hour? ” “Before the appointed hour. ” “Did he have the 150,000 thalers? ” “He had the 150,000 thalers and three caskets containing the wedding jewels. The basket will come tomorrow morning. ” The Countess gave a gloomy smile. “Is he waiting for me?” she asked again. “No doubt,” replied the old woman. “With whom?” “With Taïeh, the black person, and Osman, the unfaithful one. ” “And do you think the matter is settled?” Just as Yanusza opened his mouth to reply, a heart-rending, deep, piteous cry pierced the thick wall of the antechamber. The Countess gave a slight start, and Yanusza made the sign of the cross. “Requiescat in pace!” she murmured. The large dog howled a long wail. “Pack the trunks, Paraxin,” ordered the Countess, who had already recovered her composure, “and don’t waste any time. ” “The trunks are packed, mistress,” rejoined the old woman. ” Are you
quite sure we’re leaving tomorrow? ” “As sure as you’re a good Christian, Yanusza. This is the last night. Franz Koënig has completed the million ducats demanded by Count Szandor. I will live and die, I who am deprived of both death and life. In vita mors, in morte vita!” Szandor, my beloved husband, will give me one hour of love before burning my heart! As varnish suddenly casts strange lights on a masterpiece , his ardent passion now transfigured her beauty. She took a step toward the door that communicated with the inner apartments; but before touching the latch, she stopped. “And…” she murmured with a sort of hesitation, “that poor child? ” “He threatens,” replied the old woman, “he prays, he blasphemes, he cries… This evening, he called for his Angela… ” “And did he not pronounce Lila’s name? ” “So done… to curse her.” The silk fringe that bordered the countess’s eyelids fell. “Has he never wanted for anything?” she asked again. “Never: I brought him his meal while he slept. ” “Is he asleep?” “You know that well, mistress, since…” The Countess smiled, putting a finger to her lips. “You didn’t forget, before leaving,” she said in a low voice, ” to put that dream-inducing wine by his bedside? ” “No,” replied Yanusza, “I didn’t forget.” The Countess went through the door, while the old woman crossed herself a second time, muttering a Latin prayer. They were vast rooms built and decorated in the style of Henry IV, with deeply molded woodwork, coffered ceilings, tall carved wooden fireplaces, tapestries whose brilliance had not been dulled by age. After passing through a dining room whose walls seemed to bend beneath the painted game, the fruits, the flowers and the bottles, a drawing room lined with high rails, framed in silver, and a boudoir that would have served the beautiful Gabrielle with dignity, Countess Marcian Gregoryi pushed open one last door and entered a room that we would have immediately recognized. It was there that René de Kervoz had been dressed the day after his visit to the isolated house on the Chemin de la Muette. Everything was in the same condition, except for the four-poster bed, which had its curtains closed, and the light from the lamps replacing the day. The greenhouse, open, sent out the scents of the tropical flora, mingled with the smoke from Taïeh’s cigarrito, who was at his post under the large yucca, not stretched out like a lazy man as the other time, but busy tying the four corners of a mattress cloth on a bundle of sinister form. The night wind outside stirred the bare branches of the trees in the garden. In the very armchair where we saw him a short while ago, sat that young man, pale as death and with white hair, Dr. Andrea Ceracchi. Since then he had grown even thinner and looked more like a ghost. His livid head rested between his two hands. The black person hummed a Creole song as he finished his work. “Victory!” cried the Countess as she crossed the threshold. “Cadoudal is with us, and in a few hours all our brothers will be avenged! ” Taïeh drew a curtain that masked the interior of the greenhouse. We heard the crate creak as it rolled over the planks, then the trapdoor open. Andrea Ceracchi had raised her head. All that remained of her life was in her ardent eyes. The Countess shook her hand and continued: “I followed your advice, Andrea.” By delivering Cadoudal, we gained a few days of security. What does it matter if we only need a few hours? Cadoudal is worth more than that. Instead of selling him, we will use him, and tomorrow, Caesar, with his throat cut, will be among the gods. “I want to strike!” said Ceracchi in a gloomy voice. “I promised my brother I would strike.” On the other side of the curtain, the trapdoor closed with a dull thud. “Here is the third one gone with the other two!” cried the person in black. And he raised the curtain to enter, saying: “I too want to strike! I promised my master I would strike. ” “You will all strike, those who want to strike!” cried the countess. ” There is room in this glory for a thousand daggers. I hate the man much more than you, since I admire him and have loved him on my knees: I hate him as the impious abhor God!” I too want to strike: I promised it to no one, I swore it to myself! The doctor and the black person lowered their eyes under the fulminating glare of his gaze. “When you are here, Addhéma,” murmured Ceracchi, “doubts vanish, and one is tempted to believe in you. The blood shed is like a weight on my conscience; but if my brother is avenged, joy will heal remorse… What must be done? ” “What must be done?” repeated the black person, handing the countess a wallet and three caskets. “The last drop of innocent blood has flowed,” she replied, “and you have kept your hands pure, Andrea Ceracchi. It is sharing that makes complicity. You have remained poor in the midst of your enriched brothers. We have now arrived at the supreme hour. Go once more to the place of our meetings.” Let the lamp of our councils be lit once more in the solitary house, to which history will perhaps give a name. All the brothers of Virtue will be present; they have been summoned this very day. It is you who will preside, for I will not arrive until the moment of action, and with Georges Cadoudal himself… “Will you do that?” cried Ceracchi, “will you bring the bull of Morbihan? ” “I pledge my faith that I will bring back before the third hour after midnight strikes… While waiting for the signal that will announce our arrival, here is what you will have to do. It is good that our family secrets are not confided to this Georges Cadoudal. You will have to tell our brothers that this very day, I took out bills on Vienna from Jacob Schwartzchild and Co. for a million ducats. If the familiar demon who watches over the safety of this Bonaparte protects him against our blows, the rendezvous will be in Vienna; The association will have lost only its time and its blood, it will be rich, it will be able to start again. If we succeed, on the contrary, those among us who want freedom will have enough to profit from their victory to raise to their idol a throne so high and so wide, that no tyrant will ever be able to climb it again. Let them be ready; let them have confidence; the sun of tomorrow will not will not sleep without having seen the event that will change the face of the world. She held out one hand to Ceracchi and the other to Taïeh. The blackness imprinted its lip on it. Andrea Ceracchi said: “Where is Lila?” “Lila,” replied the countess, “has no more relatives, she is in my care; in the hour of danger, my first thought must have been to put her in a safe place. ” In turn, Andrea kissed his hand. “So, see you tonight!” he said, “three o’clock!” And he went out accompanied by Taïeh, to reach the place of rendezvous. The charming blonde listened for a moment to the sound of their footsteps. “Three o’clock!” she repeated. ” You will not wait until then!” She opened the caskets and the wallet in turn, in order to check their contents. Then she went to the door, without having looked towards the greenhouse. She had hardly disappeared when the window, carefully pushed open, opened its two sashes, and the short figure of the apprentice doctor Germain Patou appeared astride the sill. “A job that would make your bones break!” he grumbled. “I must love that Papa Jean-Pierre! So this is where she lives, that adorable blonde!… But, to know that, I’m not much further ahead. ” He climbed over the sill and took a few steps inside. “We smoke in here!” he thought. “She’s well housed, damn it!… A royal bed like those in the Château de Meudon… Let’s see.” He parted the curtains and stepped back several steps, as if he had received a blow to the face. The bed was in disarray and the sheets dripped with blood. “Thank God!” he thought, “my blonde doesn’t know that, I’m sure of it! The blood is fresh… Or has just killed here!” His piercing gaze, in which shone a bold intelligence, circled the room and plunged to the back of the greenhouse. For a moment, one might have thought that some kind of divination was revealing to him the terrible mystery of this dwelling. But a clock struck in the next room, and he sprang toward the window, which he climbed over again. “The boss is waiting for me,” he said to himself. “I have accomplished the mission he entrusted me with. I know where Countess Marcian Gregoryi lives… and perhaps I have guessed the outcome of this comedy, the first scene of which was performed in the church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile.” He descended as he had ascended, by the strength of his short but sturdy arms. At the moment when his head was already level with the balcony, his last glance met, in the canopy of the bed, the enameled plaque that fixed the folds of the curtains. It was an escutcheon that seemed to reflect in a beam all the rays of the lamp. A motto in black Gothic letters ran across the gold background and read: In vita mors, in morte vita … Countess Marcian Gregoryi was lying nonchalantly on the cushions of her carriage, whose driver, following orders received in advance, stopped his horses at the corner of the Pont Marie, on the Quai d’Anjou. The Countess got out and said: “Wait.” She set off along the quay, toward the eastern part of the island. The enclosing wall of the Bretonvilliers gardens formed the extreme point of the spur. It was a solid enclosure, built like a rampart. Not far from the corner of the Rue Saint-Louis, which faces the Hôtel Lambert, an old, square, squat building raised its half-ruined terrace a few feet above the wall. There was a low postern gate there, which still existed a few years ago, and whose deep depression served as a shelter for the small establishment of a traveling tinker. Countess Marcian Gregoryi had the key to this postern gate, which she opened to enter a damp and pitch-black place. When she closed the door behind her, it was completely dark. From the time of Cagliostro, and even more than a century before him, the properties of phosphorus were known to adepts; we would not dare It was impossible to say, fearing the accusation of anachronism, that Countess Marcian Gregoryi had a bundle of chemical matches in her pocket, and yet a slight friction that rustled in the darkness produced a bright and instantaneous glow. The candle of a dull lantern lit up, illuminating the saltpeter walls of a long corridor. The Countess began to walk at once, like a woman who knows the way. After about fifty paces, a cool wind struck her in the face. There was a fairly wide crevice in the left wall through which the outside air and a ray of moonlight passed. The Countess stopped, listening attentively. She pressed the soul of the lantern to her chest and glanced outside. Outside was a dark, bushy, poorly maintained garden. “It sounds like footsteps,” she murmured, “and voices… ” She missed Pluto, the giant dog who usually wandered freely beneath these dark shadows. But, although she looked with all her eyes, she saw nothing but the tangled branches clashing in the wind. She continued on her way. “Even if Ezekiel had betrayed me,” she thought again, ” what does it matter? They won’t have time!” The corridor ended with a cellar staircase which the Countess climbed; at the top of the staircase was a narrow landing where a cleverly disguised door opened. The Countess opened it, still holding the soul of her lantern hidden under her clothes, then closed it and began to listen. The sound of faint, regular breathing reached her ear. “He’s asleep!” she said. Then she uncovered her dull lantern, by whose rays we would have recognized this room where René de Kervoz and Lila dined on the evening of the day that began our story: The room without windows. In the neighborhood, it is good to say, many things were said concerning this old hotel of Aubremesnil and its even older outbuildings: the pavilion of Bretonvilliers and the house by the water.
Paris then had a number of these legendary places. People spoke of a marvelous hiding place that the president of Aubremesnil, friend of the Abbé de Gondy and accomplice of M. de Beaufort, the king of the Halles, had built in his home, when Cardinal Mazarin returned victorious to his good city. It was added that this same president d’Aubremesnil, a green gallant, although he was a square head, never used his hiding place against the queen mother or her favorite minister, but that he employed it for more cheerful purposes, – bringing at night through this narrow corridor, which led to the Seine, pretty bourgeois women and dashing grisettes, in fraud of the legitimate rights of Madame la présidente… Countess Marcian Gregoryi first visited the table, where some dishes were placed. They had hardly been touched. Near the dishes there was a flask of wine and a carafe. Only the carafe was opened. The countess uncorked it, smelled the contents and smiled. She then came to the bed and turned the soul of her lantern towards the pale and handsome head of the young man which was on the pillow. We do not know what this witch Yanusza meant by these words: the wine that gives dreams, but it is certain that René de Kervoz was dreaming, for he was smiling. The large eyes of Countess Marcian Gregoryi expressed compassion and tenderness. “You will be free tomorrow,” she murmured. She brushed a kiss against his forehead. René de Kervoz stirred in his sleep and pronounced the name Angèle. The charming blonde’s eyebrows furrowed, but it was only a moment. “I love only the great Count Szandor,” she thought, raising her proud head, “what does a whim of a few hours matter? This is not my destiny.” She extinguished her lantern, and the room was plunged once more into the most complete darkness. A voice rose in the night, saying: “René, I am Lila…” René did not wake. And the voice changed its mind, saying this time with intonations softer than a song: “René, my René, I am Angèle…” Run your hand through my hair and you will recognize me. René’s lips uttered a murmur that was cut off by a kiss. Outside the city was silent. Inside, strangely enough, there was a confused echo of footsteps and whispered words. At the end of an hour, Countess Marcian Gregoryi jumped up with a start. The footsteps had sounded in the next room. She listened eagerly, but nothing could be heard. Was it an illusion? The beautiful blonde returned noiselessly to the secret door and left as she had entered. It was only in the corridor that she relighted her dull lantern. The candlelight illuminated an object she was holding: a black ribbon, supporting a silver medal of Sainte-Anne d’Auray. Countess Marcian Gregoryi walked back to her carriage, which was still waiting for her at the other end of the Quai d’Anjou, near the Pont Marie. It could then be two hours after midnight. She said to herself: “The Brothers of Virtue are being judged! ” “Rue Saint-Hyacinthe-Saint-Michel!” she added, addressing her coachman. “Gallop!” Her last thought, as she stretched out on the silky cushions, was: ” That wolf from Brittany didn’t do me any harm; but I needed my passports… Tomorrow, I’ll sleep in my bed.” On Rue Saint-Hyacinthe Saint-Michel, the carriage stopped in front of a small, blind alley. The Countess knocked at the door. There was no answer. She made the coachman get out and ordered him to knock with the handle of his whip, which he did. After ten minutes of waiting, a window opened on the mezzanine, immediately above the door to the drive. “Who do you have any for, good people?” asked the fluting voice of a fat woman who appeared in her nightgown. “I want to see Citizen Morinière, horse dealer,” replied the Countess. “Ah!” said the fluting voice, “it’s a lady… Madame, at these times of the day, horses are not being bought. ” “So, Citizen Morinière is here?” “Let’s understand… he stays here when he comes to Paris, this dear man, but at present, he is transacting business with Percherons in the Loupe region, beyond Chartres… come back in a week and at a fine hour. ” The mezzanine window closed. “Knock!” ordered the Countess to her coachman. The coachman knocked so loudly and so thickly that after three minutes the mezzanine window opened again. “By all the devils!” said the fat woman’s voice, which was no longer so flute-like, “will you let us sleep, yes or no, my good people? ” “I want to see Citizen Morinière,” replied the Countess. “Since he is not here… ” “I think he is here. ” “Then I am lying, by God’s word!… ” “Yes, you are lying, Monsieur Morinière…” The fat woman stepped back and the sharp crack of a pistol’s battery was heard . “Woman,” growled a voice that was no longer flute-like at all, “say your name and what you want… ” “I want to speak to you about a matter of life and death,” replied the Countess. I am Angèle Lenoir, daughter of Madame Sévérin du Châtelet and fiancée of your nephew René de Kervoz… A low exclamation interrupted her; she finished: “I come from your nephew, who is in prison because of you, and I bring as a pledge the medal of Sainte-Anne d’Auray, which his mother, your sister, placed around his neck the day he left Brittany . ” For the second time, the mezzanine window closed, but almost immediately afterward, the very door of the blind alley opened. “Come in!” was said. The Countess obeyed without hesitation. In the sudden darkness that fell after the door had closed, the voice resumed with a tremor of anger: “You play no game of any kind, fair lady. I know my nephew’s fiancée. You are not Angela Severino. ” “I am,” replied the Countess bravely, “Costanza Ceracchi, sister-in-law of the sculptor Giuseppe, who died on the scaffold. ” “Ah! ah!” said the voice: “a bold scoundrel! Although the dagger is the weapon of cowards… By God! I have only my sword… But how do you know my nephew? ” “Let’s go up,” said the Countess. They took her hand and led her up a staircase as steep as a ladder, at the top of which was a room lit by a night light. She entered this room. Her companion, who was the fat woman at the window, and who, seen from close up, had a cheek all blue with beard, repeated: “How do you know my nephew?” The countess took from her care the medal of Saint Anne of Auray which she held out to the bearded woman, saying: “Monsieur de Cadoudal, your nephew loves me. ” “By God!” cried Cadoudal, for it was he himself, “am I not better disguised than that?… The child is right, for you are as pretty as a picture, my gossip… and I had already heard that he was up to his mischief… But what were you talking about prison? ” “Monsieur de Cadoudal,” resumed the false sister-in-law of Guiseppe Ceracchi, “I love your nephew. ” “He is well worth it, by God!” “I came because René de Kervoz is in mortal danger… The one he betrayed has taken revenge on him… ” “Angèle!” murmured Georges, turning pale. “But then I myself… for Angèle knew what her father and mother did not know. ” “Let’s sit down and talk, Monsieur de Cadoudal,” Countess Marcian Gregoryi gravely interrupted him. ” I don’t have a whole night to tell you what you can hope for from now on and what you should fear… There is a link between you and Ceracchi’s sister: it is intolerance… When day breaks, you will know whether you must strike or flee… ” “Flee!” cried Cadoudal. “Never! ” “Then you will strike? ” “By God, fair lady,” replied Cadoudal, laughing and sitting down beside her, “good time!” You speak gold!… Just give me the means to fetch the Corsican from among his consular guard, and, by Saint Anne of Auray, I swear to you that he will never be emperor! Chapter 20. EMPTY HOUSE. It was a clear, cold night. The street lamps on the Île Saint-Louis were idle, letting the moon do the work. Chimeras fade quickly in Paris, even the most absurd. In the place where we once saw so many diamond fishermen plumbing the whitish current of the Seine, there was no one there. Clearly, the fame of the Quai de Béthune had faded; not enough signet rings had been fished under the Bretonvilliers sewer ; the prestige was defunct, the people of the hook and the pole had come to mock the miracle! And, from eleven o’clock in the evening, poor Ezéchiel’s cabaret, unlit, formed, mute, bore sufficient witness to the contempt into which the abandoned Eldorado was falling. The river flowed turbulently, at its full banks. A few minutes before eleven o’clock, hurried footsteps sounded in the Rue de Bretonvilliers, without waking the neighboring houses, long asleep. It was Jean-Pierre Sévérin, known as Gâteloup, who was going into battle at the head of his squad of policemen. We know that the keeper of the Châtelet Morgue had a well-established reputation throughout this quarter of old Paris, where chicanery and the police gather their henchmen. He was a man of courage, to use the expression of the citizens of the Marché-Natif. There is always in the police officer, whatever one wants to say or believe, a bit of adventurous vocation, and, for my part, I have often been confounded when reading the prodigious series of acts of cold, solid, implacable courage, accomplished day after day by these men who do not have at their service the stimulant of glory. On a battlefield, there is the intoxication of the point of honor, the call of the drum, the stun of the cannon, the fever of powder!… But in the gutter, at night, these terrible struggles that no emphatic bulletin will sing… These struggles where, most of the time, the armed bandit seeks to kill, and where the man of the law is forbidden to strike… What have they done, these muddy heroes, robust like Homer’s warriors , so that their accumulated prowess can never redeem the opprobrium of their livelihood! There were four of them, accompanied by a peace officer, a young man fairly well covered, who went with a cigar in his mouth and his hands in his pockets. They all followed Gâteloup with pleasure and smelled some curious brawl. The peace officer listened, maintaining the seriousness of his rank, to certain anecdotes told in low voices by Laurent and Charlevoy, all in praise of M. Sévérin’s vigorous wrist; the third officer applauded frankly; the fourth, an ugly rascal, with a hairy face covered in black beard, walked a little behind and grumbled: “I’ve seen better than that! It’s true he hits hard!” When Jean-Pierre stopped at the corner of Rue de Bretonvilliers and the quay, this fourth officer began to laugh under his breath and murmured: “Well! What a joke! He’s got it against the establishment.” Yet he had found the wine bad. Jean-Pierre knocked loudly at the door of the Miraculous Peach cabaret . No one inside answered. “My children,” said Jean-Pierre, “you must throw down these planks for me. ” “First,” observed the peace officer, “I must complete the usual formalities. ” “No need, Mr. Barbaroux,” said a voice from behind that pricked up Jean-Pierre’s ears. “The farce is played out in there. The owner has moved. ” “Is it you? Ezekiel?” cried Jean-Pierre. “To serve you, Mr. Gâteloup, if I am capable of it,” replied the fourth officer, who advanced with his hat in hand. “I put a little beard on my chin like that for the glory of not being thought of as one when I come back poaching in the neighborhood. I have my everyday bourgeois face, and my professional physiognomy: does that harm anyone?” As he spoke, he inserted a key into the lock of the door, which opened immediately… “In the name of the law,” added Ezekiel, who was in a good mood, “make the effort to enter. In this sort of cellar, which had formerly served as a tavern, there were only four walls left. ” “Oh!” said Ezekiel, responding to Jean-Pierre’s astonished look and holding in his hand a tallow candle he had just lit, “I ‘m in order, Monsieur Gâteloup. I made my report, and the Miraculous Catch of Fish has also served as a mousetrap. Times are hard, we live as we can. ” “It wasn’t the prefecture that gave you a living,” said Jean-Pierre , frowning at his people of all body types; “nor was it your job as a tavern keeper. Don’t play smart with me, man, or watch out for your ribs! You were paid by Countess Marcian Gregoryi.” “Well! Well!” grumbled Ezekiel, “so you knew that, Mr. Gâteloup? Well, it’s true, right! I put a little money aside for my old age… You don’t see clearly in these stories, at first glance, you don’t feel anything… and I took a long time to guess why the Countess had installed the mechanism on the Quai de Béthune. ” “And why is it in your report? ” “Yes, well, but the inspector didn’t want to believe me… I am I’m sorry I don’t have a glass of wine to offer you, gentlemen, although it wasn’t very good, eh, Mr. Gâteloup?… There’s something for everyone… So when I said, over there, at the prefecture, that bodies were being taken from the Bretonvilliers pavilion, nearby, to a vault somewhere in the Marais, near the Chaussée des Minimes, they laughed in my face… which is why I’m covered. The peace officer threw away his cigar. Ezekiel continued: “And as we were talking about it, the vault, and the vampire too, because everything is known in Paris, only everything is not well known, the Countess said: We must confuse the dogs. ” “The name of the inspector?” the peace officer asked impetuously, who suddenly saw himself as police commissioner. “Mr. Despaux, of course!” replied Ezekiel, and who will be secretary general when Mr. Fouché has retired Mr. Dubois. “The number of the suspicious house?” asked the peace officer again.
“As for that, Mr. Barbaroux, the most beautiful girl in the world can only say what she has been told… ” “We will know that soon,” interrupted Jean-Pierre, who was listening impatiently to this conversation. “We are here for something else… Can you introduce us to the Bretonvilliers pavilion? ” “Right up to the door, yes,” replied Ezekiel, “and these gentlemen must have something to talk about locks with. ” Constable Charlevoy rapped on his pocket, which made a rattling sound, and left: “I have my kit.” “But as for finding the magpie in the nest,” continued Ezekiel, “that’s something else .” The Countess has not returned since the evening when the comrades brought this beautiful little blonde here… You know, Mr. Guardian… it was said that a young man had entered the pavilion that evening? “Who said so? ” “Mme Paraxin, Satan’s female. ” “And was he taken away like the others? ” “I haven’t heard of that.” Jean-Pierre’s face brightened. “There remains a glimmer of hope,” he murmured. “Let’s walk!” And he went of his own accord to the low door at the back of the tavern. Ezekiel let him do so. As soon as the door was opened, Jean-Pierre Sévérin found himself facing a pile of earth and rubble that hermetically blocked the passage. “You’re the cause of this, boss,” said Ezekiel. “The day you disturbed the goods that were in front of the door, there were some of the Countess’s people here.” The next day, the passage was blocked… But they didn’t count on old Ezekiel, who knows them all, since he’s been going to school for so long… Move aside, please , and let me pass. The former innkeeper slipped, still holding his lit candle, into a narrow hole that remained to the left and led to the stairs of his cellar. Jean-Pierre and the agents followed him. The cellar was empty like the upper den, but at the eastern end of the storeroom, there was a pile of plasterwork surrounding a recently made opening. Ezekiel lit it; it could have allowed passage for a man of moderate build. “The evening I made this hole,” he said, blushing with anger, ” the cursed woman had me bitten by her dog. If he could have slipped in there, the four-legged devil, I would have been a dead man.” I have a grudge against her: not the dog, but the lady… And you, who are a scholar, Monsieur Gâteloup, do you know if it is true that one can only bring about the end of these people with a piece of fire that one puts in their hearts?… Charlevoy and Laurent were quite pale. “But is she really a vampire?” they murmured together. “Forward!” ordered Jean-Pierre. He slipped first into the opening. Ezekiel stopped him by force. “Monsieur Gâteloup,” he said, “you are a good man, and I saw you hold one against ten with a piece of wood. You suit me, and I don’t I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you, of any kind… Go first, it’s only fair, because you seem the one most interested in getting through. But before sticking your head out of the hole, watch, watch, listen. If the dog is there, it will growl. If it growls, be careful not to move forward: it’s a beast that will eat a man like a chicken. Sévérin freed himself, said thank you, and crossed the hole in two or three vigorous efforts. There was a moment of terrible waiting. Ezekiel was sweating . “Well!” said Gâteloup from outside, “are you coming? ” “It seems the dog is gone for good!” said Ezekiel. He would have already made his racket if he were there. Let’s go. He went first, not without a certain unease. The three other agents and the peace officer followed. Beyond the hole was a sort of pit, below the one called the bottle-emptying pit. It communicated with the gardens by a staircase of earth and wood. The gardens were completely deserted. The small troop first went through them and searched them in every direction; Charlevoy and Laurent were two fine bloodhounds, and the industrious Ezekiel knew the creatures. They arrived at the great wall which bordered the two quays, closing off the spur of the Ile Saint-Louis like a rampart. The night was clear. Although this part of the garden resembled a virgin forest, Laurent and Charlevoy, after having inspected it, affirmed that no human creature could remain hidden there. The door at the water’s edge, through which Countess Marcian Gregoryi was to enter an hour later, did not escape their notice, but seeing the state of its lock, they believed it to be sealed. Jean-Pierre himself, entering through a breach in the corridor which communicated from the door at the water’s edge to the windowless room, examined its entire length and took it for one of those passages, built in troubled times, which astonish the curious and remain like enigmas proposed to the perspicacity of researchers. This corridor had a fork: the passage which led to the old hiding place of the President of Aubremesnil, and a wider path, descending straight to the kitchens of the Bretonvilliers pavilion. Jean-Pierre recognized only this last passage. He called Charlevoy and had a door opened for him, solidly reinforced with iron, which would have enchanted an antiquarian. The kitchens were empty like the gardens; one could nevertheless guess the recent presence of one or more inhabitants, for the ground was strewn with vegetable peelings , and raw beef bones, half gnawed, were scattered here and there. On the table was a woman’s hat made of coarse cloth and adorned with faded tinsel. The shape of this hat indicated at first glance its Hungarian origin. “This was Mama Paraxin’s lair,” said Ezekiel, “and here are the remains of Pluto’s last supper. I have an idea that the horrible beast ate Christian bones more often than beef bones. ” “Did the people being carried away from here,” asked Gâteloup, “pass through the corridor we have just followed? ” “Never,” replied Ezekiel. “Then,” cried Charlevoy, “they must have passed through your shop, Captain.” Ezekiel blushed up to his ears and looked at him askance. From the kitchens to the ground floor was a wide staircase of cut stone , badly kept and in a state of complete decay. The ground floor doors having been opened with the help of Charlevoy’s kit, they entered a series of bare rooms, reeking of damp and decay, and which, evidently, had not been inhabited for many years. On the walls remained a few faded portraits and some rags of tapestry. The peace officer, M. Barbaroux, was a utilitarian. He rightly pointed out that there was a lot of wasted ground there and that a large number of people who slept in the street could have been accommodated in these unoccupied rooms . “Let’s go higher,” said Jean-Pierre, “there’s nothing here for us.” The first floor, much better preserved, showed, on the contrary, traces of recent occupation. It was there that René de Kervoz had been introduced the very evening our story begins. Charlevoy’s kit having still done its job, Jean-Pierre entered this living room where René had waited, dreaming and refreshing his burning forehead with the cold of the panes, for the arrival of his mysterious mistress. Opposite the window, on the other side of the rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile, was the marker where Angèle had sat to endure the cruel torture from which she was to die. It was from there that she had recognized or guessed the silhouette of her fiancé in the last rays of the moon. It was from there that she had seen, when the lamp lit inside cast two shadows on the curtain, those two heads brought together in a kiss that stabbed her heart. It was there that she had despaired of God’s goodness. There were no more curtains at the window, no more hangings at the doors, no more carpets, no more furniture, nothing. The move was done. The decrepitude of the old house was evident everywhere. Only, here and there, a faded bouquet, a woman’s rag, a book remained as witnesses to the fleeting life that had enlivened this solitude.
In the second room, the one we saw decorated in oriental fashion, and which Lila chose to tell the young Breton her fabulous or true story, the tall piles of cushions and the Bohemian lamps had disappeared like everything else. This second room was, in appearance, the end of the house. The wall opposite the door presented no break in continuity. Yet it was indeed this wall that had opened forty-eight hours earlier to show the dazzled René the charming little recess, at the back of which the alcove draped its silk curtains; the boudoir where the repast was served; the windowless room, in a word, the love bed that was to be changed into a prison. It would be an insult to the intelligence of the reader to explain to him why a room built and installed precisely to serve as a hiding place, at a time when the art of arranging hiding places was at its height, showed no trace of its existence on the outside. Jean-Pierre Sévérin and his squad remained for nearly an hour on the first floor, rummaging and searching. All their searches were useless. There was nothing left to visit but the second floor, which was found in a state of desolation even greater than the ground floor. The ceilings were broken in and the partitions were falling into ruin. Jean-Pierre said: “Let’s go down to the cellars.” I’ll demolish the house if necessary, but I ‘ll find my daughter’s fiancé dead or alive. The police were there to obey him. Barbaroux, the peace officer, merely murmured: “Mme Barbaroux is waiting for me, all alone.” Laurent and Charlevoy exchanged an incredulous smile at this. “Is she waiting?” asked Charlevoy. Laurent added: “All alone? Alas! They say that Argus, son of Avestor, head of the police force, had fifty pairs of eyes, none of which opened on the cute mysteries of his own household!” Just as Jean-Pierre and his squad, descending the stairs, were passing by the open door on the first floor again, a noise coming from inside the apartments suddenly stopped them. Jean-Pierre immediately rushed forward, followed by his agents, and arrived in the two-windowed living room just in time to see a hand reach through a pane of glass that had already been broken and nimbly turn the espagnolette. Germain Patou jumped into the room, shaking his sweat-drenched hair. While blaming him for this fault of climbing balconies in this way, we will plead in his favor several mitigating circumstances . First, the walls of the pavilion of Bretonvilliers were built in that monumental style which, leaving a deep interval between each stone, makes the use of ladders superfluous; secondly, he was moved by a good intention; thirdly , it was before he received his doctorate. If he had passed his thesis at that time, believe us, we would consider him inexcusable. “Good evening, boss,” he said; “I came in four minutes and thirty seconds, watch in hand, from the Chaussée des Minimes to here; but I lost more than a quarter of an hour prowling around the house. Then, as the door was closed, I went in by the window. The pane was broken, and I would like to know what all these little pieces of paper mean , which are there on the sill, and in each of which there is a pebble. Bring the light. “Have you found it?” asked Jean-Pierre Sévérin. “I found the den,” replied Patou, who was unfolding one of the pieces of paper he had just spoken of; “but the she-wolf has run away. ” “The she-wolf?” repeated Jean-Pierre. Patou squeezed his hand tightly. “Boss,” murmured the apprentice doctor in his ear, “there’s blood in there. Tomorrow is the opening of the Marché-Neuf Morgue; I have a feeling your new room will be too small: Franz Koënig was murdered this evening. ” Jean-Pierre’s fingers tightened on his pale forehead. “And my daughter?” he said with a groan. “And my poor René?” Charlevoy approached with the light. Gâteloup’s gaze fell on the paper Patou was holding. “Angèle’s handwriting!” he cried, snatching the letter from him. “There’s no shortage of them,” replied the medical student. “I found at least half a dozen on the window sill… And look! Here’s one right in the bedroom! It’s the one that must have broken the windowpane . ” He picked up a piece of paper containing a pebble like the others, which was lying on the floor. “Oh! oh!” he said, lowering his voice in spite of himself, “that one is written in blood!” Jean-Pierre took the torch from Ezekiel’s hands. “All of you get out!” he said in a low voice, “but don’t go far. I’ll need you in a moment.” Chapter 21. POOR ANGÈLE! Jean-Pierre Sévérin, known as Gâteloup, and Germain Patou were alone together , no longer in the living room, but in the bedroom that bordered on the hiding place. Jean-Pierre had wanted to put one more door between himself and the curiosity of the agents. They were sitting next to each other, on the step or box that customarily placed, in all old houses, in front of the windows. It was the only seat the apartment now offered. Each of them had in his hand one of those papers that contained pebbles . The candle was on the floor. They were leaning forward to read, and the guard’s white hair, falling forward, flooded his face. His breathing could be heard hissing in his throat. Tears were flowing onto the trembling paper in his hand. “Poor Angèle!” murmured Germain Patou, who also had tears in his voice. “Poor Angèle!” repeated Gâteloup in a deep tone. “She didn’t think of her mother!” “She didn’t think of you, boss!” added the medical student. ” You loved her as much as her mother. ” “Do you think she’s dead, Germain?” asked Gâteloup. Patou didn’t answer; he read: René, my darling René, you promised to love me always. I feared nothing, for there is no one on earth as noble, as loyal as you. And then, we have our little Angèle. Do you abandon a cherub in its cradle? I had a dream, René; listen to me, I’ll tell you everything; I am Of course it’s a dream. You’re in this house, I know; I saw you go in and you didn’t come back. But perhaps you’re being held back by force. Oh! She’s beautiful, it’s true! I’ve never seen anything so beautiful! Does she love you like I do? René, she’s not the mother of our little angel! I throw this paper at the window of the room where I saw you; you ‘ll read it, if you come back to that window again, to dream and look into the void. Poor friend, you’re suffering; I would like to add your suffering to mine, I would like to make you happy at the cost of all my happiness. I was there, on that marker opposite the window, on the other side of the street. Look at it. I thought you saw me. What ideas one has in those moments when the soul wavers! My God! If you had seen me, we might all have been saved! I was wrong not to call you, not to kneel with clasped hands in the middle of the street. You are good, you would have had pity. I was there, I saw you. I saw everything, I love you as before, my René. Between you and me there is our little Angèle. I love you… Germain Patou stopped reading, and the paper slipped from his fingers. “Devil of a Breton!” he grumbled, “if I held him, he would have a nasty quarter of an hour. ” “Shut up!” Gâteloup said in a low voice. He added: “Didn’t she love him? ” “He’s an angel of God!” cried the student. Ah! the rascal of a Breton.
Jean-Pierre reflected. “This must be the first letter,” he said, his eyes fixed on the damp cloth he was rereading for the tenth time. “This may be the second: I came, and I threw the paper at the window; it remained there , after falling back many times. You haven’t answered me, you haven’t read it, René! How long the hours are! My poor mother doesn’t know how desperate I am; I haven’t said anything to my father, who would perhaps like to avenge me. I have spoken only to our child. To her, I say everything, because she cannot yet understand me. There are moments when this beloved little being seems to guess my suffering; others, her smile tells me to hope. Hope, my God!… Well, yes! I still hope, since I am not dead.” I have n’t read many books, but I know that there are pulls, illnesses of the soul. You are pulled, you are sick, and this enchantress has not yet given you time to think of your child. It was at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, was it not? I saw nothing, but something disturbed my prayer. I felt within me a dull pain. My heart was tightening; the thought of our wedding no longer gave me joy. It was there, I am sure of it! Our wedding! This day so ardently desired, here it is arriving! Oh! René! René! You once said to me: It would be a crime to put a tear in those angelic eyes. The angel has fallen. Was it up to you to punish him? Coming back from the church, I no longer recognized you. I looked for your thoughts. I wept as I climbed our stairs. And I waited to see your lamp light up. The whole night passed, René. I was lost. Answer me, even if it’s just a word. What are you doing in this dark house? Do you want me to tell you my last hope? You’re conspiring, perhaps… Neither my father nor my mother learned anything from me: these are your secrets. I heard talk today of arrest… If I had slandered you in my soul, René, my beloved René! If you were only unhappy!… “What does that mean?” Jean-Pierre Sévérin interrupted himself here. “Kervoz is from Brittany,” replied Patou. He added: “Isn’t the person of all types of horse-trading corps from the church of Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile his uncle?” Jean-Pierre slapped his forehead: “Morinière!” he said quietly. “And the secretary general of the prefecture told me… ” He didn’t finish, and his thoughts swirled. “Morinière seems like a good man,” he murmured. “It’s impossible! ” “Perhaps the third letter will teach us something,” said the medical student. The handwriting changed. Jean-Pierre seized the paper that was being offered to him and kissed it. “Nothing from you, nothing! You didn’t receive my messages. You could never be so cruel to me… Our little girl is growing thin and pale since my dried-up breast no longer has anything for her. I was looking at her this morning. Perhaps God will take us all together. What a night! Could one say in a year what one thinks in the space of a night? I saw my father and mother for the last time.” All day, I will prowl around you, and all next night too. I will see you, I want to, I will speak to you… They were asleep! I kissed the white hair of my adoptive father, who loved me as if I had been his daughter. I pressed my lips to my mother’s forehead. She too suffered greatly. She had the courage to live! I also kissed my younger brother, a sweet and good child, who will cry over me. He already has the heart of a man. The father often says that he will not be happy in life. Then I returned to my daughter and dressed her in white. In her hair, I placed the garland that you had brought on my name day . Our daughter will be very beautiful. I needed to laugh and sing. I don’t know if that’s how it is when one goes mad… Gâteloup’s arms fell. His energetic face expressed such poignant torture that tears came to Patou’s eyes. “You need strength, Monsieur Jean-Pierre,” he said. “Not everything is over.” “No,” replied Gâteloup in a changed voice, “not everything is over.” He added, choking back a sob: “It’s true that the wedding was tomorrow! My poor wife wo n’t survive this…” His feverish hand unfolded another piece of paper. “I wanted to see your room, which I knew so well, although I had never been in it. I had a childlike hope: I thought I would find you there. The porter let me go up. I am writing to you at your house: it will bring me luck. I am in the place where I used to see you sitting, when I looked out of my window. It was from there that your eyes spoke to me for the first time. I have before me the portraits of your father and your mother.” How your mother must love you! And how much I love her! There is a letter you started where you spoke to her about me. Did you love me so much, René? And why did you leave me? What have I done to you? Am I not all yours? There is also a bloody handkerchief there, with a coat of arms and a crown…
I cannot stay here, I must go to you and seek you… Besides, there is another place where I will speak to you better than here, it is near the Pont Marie, under the Quai des Ormes, where we sat between the grass and the flowers, listening to the murmurs of the wind in the foliage of the tall trees. I am not mad yet, go; I have had much hope since I saw the image of the Virgin in the alley of your bed. You have not forgotten me, you are a prisoner somewhere, I will free you. René, my René, my life! I kissed your mother’s portrait… “Is it the last one?” asked Gâteloup in a failing voice. “No,” replied Patou, “there is the one written in blood. ” “Read,” murmured the old man, “I have no more strength. ” Germain Patou calmly wiped his wet eyes, whose eyelids were burning. …Another whole day, another long day! Where are you? The people of The neighborhood knows me and already calls me crazy. I threw the two letters away before dawn. Didn’t you hear the pebbles hitting the windows? I looked. You couldn’t see anything. I called out. You didn’t answer. Then the passersby came with the sun, and I started prowling around the cursed house. I went around it ten times, a hundred times. I knocked on the door you had entered by. An old woman came, speaking a foreign language. She chased me away, showing me the long teeth of an enormous dog, which has blood in its eyes. I am on the bench, near the Pont Marie. The trees are murmuring like the other time. The Seine flows at my feet. How deep it must be ! I am writing to you with a little of my blood, on the blank page of my prayer book, which I had taken with me to pray. I cannot pray. My thoughts are no longer very clear in my head, I am suffering too much. There is one thought, however, in my head, which is clear and which always comes back. I no longer try to chase it away. I will not kill myself. I will take my little Angèle in my arms, with her white dress and her crown. I will take her where I am going. What would she do here without her mother! This time, I will throw my letter through the windowpane. Perhaps it will reach you. Then I will come back here, to this bench. In the morning, if I have no answer, I will go and take my little Angèle from her cradle… “Is the little girl still with you?” the medical student suddenly asked . “Yes,” replied the guard in a dull tone. Then, speaking to himself and in a voice that was breaking with anguish: “It was she!” he continued. “She did not have time to double her crime by sacrificing her child!… Her crime! he interrupted himself with sudden violence. When the excess of misfortune has produced delirium, is there still crime? I am old; I have never met a soul so gifted or so pure… It was her!… You do not understand me, boy, and I do not have the courage to make myself understood… It is her! It is her that I saw in the very place she designates, drawn and seized by the demon of self-harm… Seen with my own eyes, do you hear, as I see you… and the rest so exceeds the limits of probability that words stop in my throat… A monster, an impure being has taken her life, her angelic life, and lavishes it on all sorts of shame… The vampire… Patou’s eye shone. “I read last night the most astonishing of all books,” he said in a low voice: “The Legend of the Ghoul Addhéma and the Vampire of Szandor,” printed in Baden in 1736 by Professor Hans Spurzheim, doctor of the University of Pressburg… The ghoul Addhéma took the lives of her victims by the mark, so to speak, living one hour for each of their years, and constantly traveling the world, in order to gather treasures for the king of the living dead, Count Szandor, whom she loves with a cursed adoration, and who sells her every kiss for a pile of gold. “And how did she inoculate herself with the lives of others?” asked Jean-Pierre, who was ashamed to question these mysteries of oriental madness. “By applying to her bald head,” replied Patou, “the hair of murdered young girls.” The guard gave a dull cry and held onto the window so as not to fall backward. “I saw the vampire Addhéma face to face,” he stammered, “I saw Angèle’s own hair, my poor child, on the skull of Countess Marcian Gregoryi!” The student recoiled in astonishment. He looked Gâteloup in the eyes, fearing the eruption of a sudden madness. Gâteloup’s eyes stared into space. Perhaps he saw that inert body, swimming upstream, along the banks of the Seine, against all the laws of nature; this body that had stretched out its arm to seize the indecisive young girl, leaning over the water, near the Pont Marie. The demon of self-harm! In the silence that followed, a noise could be heard coming from that apparently solid wall, forming the eastern part of the room. It was like the creaking of a door on its rusty hinges. Jean-Pierre and Patou listened eagerly. The door creaked a second time, then was closed with evident caution. “There’s something there!” cried Germain Patou. The boss put his hand over his mouth. They listened for a whole minute, then, the noise not having been repeated, Jean-Pierre said: “René de Kervoz is on the other side of that wall, I’m sure of it! We must pierce the wall.” Chapter 22. SIMILIA SIMILIBUS CURANTUR. In the story with which this book begins: The Chamber of Loves, we saw Jean-Pierre Sévérin, known as Gâteloup, younger, but already tormented by dark reveries. He was a wise and strong man. In the very humble sphere where fate had placed him, he had been able to see very closely the struggle of modern philosophers against the beliefs of the past. He had become involved, he had fought with his own person. A Christian, he had rejected impiety; but, free in his soul and a friend of the manly grandeurs of ancient history, he remained faithful to the republic, at the very hour when the republic was tottering. He was not superstitious. He was born in Paris, the city that boasts of having killed superstition. But he was a night traveler, a solitary man and perhaps, without knowing it himself, a poet. Nocturnal life teaches the brain strange thoughts. When Jean-Pierre Sévérin watched, leaning over his oars, listening to the eternal murmur of the river and searching for the mysterious enemy he had been fighting for so many years: self-harm, who could guess or follow the paths where his dreams were lost? As soon as he had said: we must pierce the wall, Germain Patou rushed into the living room, calling the agents aloud. They, accustomed to never wasting their time, had already arranged to sleep, while M. Barbaroux, the peace officer, smoked his pipe. Ezekiel, who thought he knew the house by heart, had formally announced that the expedition was over. Gâteloup, left alone in the second bedroom, began to test the wall, striking here and there with the palm of his open hand. The wall sounded full at first, but when Gâteloup reached the middle, a plank, covering the gap, clanged like a drum under his hand . It was the door, very cleverly concealed in the moldings of the woodwork, and which no clue pointed out to the eye. Gâteloup, in circumstances of this kind, needed neither lever nor pliers. He took his run sideways and threw his shoulder against the panel, which burst, shattered. When reinforcements arrived, Gâteloup was already in the windowless room.
“Are you there, René de Kervoz?” he asked. He listened, but the beating of his heart bothered and deafened him. He thought he heard, however, the sound of a sleeping man breathing. The rays of the tallow candle, suddenly penetrating the hiding place, showed René, stretched out on a bed, his face haggard, his hair in disarray, and sleeping soundly. “Look!” said Ezekiel, “she didn’t kill that one.” He examined the closet with a curious eye. “A nice false bottom!” he added. “Get up, Monsieur de Kervoz!” ordered Gâteloup, roughly shaking the sleeper. Laurent and Charlevoy were poking around. M. Barbaroux said: “We’re still going to arrest that fellow!” René, however, shaken by Gâteloup’s rough hand, did not move . Germain Patou uncorked the two bottles in turn and sniffed the contents, passing them quickly several times under his swollen nostrils. His sense of smell was as sure as a reagent. “Turkish opium,” he said, “Belgrade hashish: concentrated juice of Papaver somniferum. Boss, don’t bother, you’ll kill him before waking him. ” Everyone wanted to see then, and M. Barbaroux himself put his large nose above the neck like a candle extinguisher. “It smells like a little white man,” he declared, “with sugar.” Charlevoy and Laurent would have liked to taste it. “He must wake up!” Gâteloup whispered. ” Only he can put us on the trail of the vampire now! ” “Oh, man,” said M. Barbaroux, “you’ve got your greenhorn. It ‘s time to go to bed.” Charlevoy and Laurent, on the contrary, wanted to see the end of all this. They were two agents by vocation. “Do you have the means to wake him, boy?” Jean-Pierre asked Patou. “Perhaps,” the latter replied. Then he added, lowering his voice and moving closer: “Perhaps all these people are too many now. When the young man wakes up, he can speak; he will not be conscious of his first words. I would prefer, for your sake and for his, that there be no indiscreet ears around his awakening. ” “Gentlemen,” Gâteloup said immediately, “I thank you. Mr. Barbaroux is right: we have found the one I was looking for, I have no further need of you.” But the peace officer had reflected. It is never in vain for an administration to have in its midst a complete man like Mr. Berthellemot. The large image of this senior employee passed before Barbaroux’s eyes, who said: “You speak of it quite freely, my friend; would it not be believed that you have orders to give us? I have been commissioned to follow you and lend you a hand: I must submit my report to the prefect, and I am staying.” He had not yet finished these wise words when the hammer of the outer door, swinging at full speed, resounded in the silence of the night. It was a completely unexpected interruption. At first, no one could guess its nature. But soon a voice rose in the street, saying: “Open, in the name of the law! ” “Mr. Berthellemot!” cried the people of the prefecture in chorus. M. Barbaroux rushed forward first, followed by the four agents, and the next moment, the secretary-general made his solemn entrance. He had an army behind him. To introduce himself, he had worn the already well-known smile of M. Talleyrand and added it to the look of M. de Sartines. “Ah! ah! my neighbor,” he said, carefully sharpening the point of a fine irony, “nothing escapes me! We had trouble finding your traces, but we succeeded. It’s a matter! It’s a serious matter! I won’t explain its ramifications prematurely, but take it for granted that I took notes… I ask you to show me the alleged order of the First Consul, in case you haven’t already destroyed it. ” “Why would I have destroyed it?” asked Gâteloup, plunging his hand into his pocket. M.
Berthellemot cast a satisfied glance around and replied, snapping a few of his fingers: “We don’t know, my neighbor, we don’t know!” Barbaroux murmured: “From the beginning, I thought: something’s fishy!” In the next room, the secretary-general’s entourage and Barbaroux’s agents were chatting animatedly. The falsity of the order signed by Bonaparte, which Jean-Pierre Sévérin had used, was already no longer a mystery to anyone. Charlevoy said: “The character has strange ways. If we have to wrap him up, we must do it immediately, because he has supporters in his neighborhood, and It would cause a riot. “Search him,” added Ezekiel, “and you will find a heart on him, which proves that he is the Chouan of Chouans!” Meanwhile, Germain Patou was busy with René, who was still asleep. Jean-Pierre gave the order to M. Berthellemot, who had the torch brought and meticulously wiped his glasses. When he had turned the paper over and over and examined the signature, he coughed. The cough of even certain eminent men has a doctoral significance. “The prefect can’t see beyond the end of his nose!” he grumbled. “I judge the situation at a glance. This is a matter of state the devil wouldn’t know a thing about. It was indeed the First Consul who scribbled these scrawls. What would that scoundrel Fouché do in such circumstances?” He would go to God rather than to his saints… “My dear neighbor,” he said aloud and with a resolute accent, taking Gâteloup’s hand, which he shook effusively, “Mr. the Prefect is my immediate superior, but above the Prefect there is the sovereign master of the destinies of France… I mean the First Consul. You will bear witness, if necessary, to my political sentiments… What is your personal opinion of this Countess Marcian Gregoryi? ” Jean-Pierre paused for a moment before answering. “Sir, Senior Employee,” he said finally, “take a good escort, go to Chaussée des Minimes, No. 7, and search the house from top to bottom. ” “Without forgetting the greenhouse,” added Germain Patou, “and, in the greenhouse, a trapdoor which is under the third crate, starting from the crate in the living room: a crate of Yucca gloriosa.” Jean-Pierre finished: “When you have done your work there, Mr. Employee, you will no longer ask who Countess Marcian Gregory is. ” “Gentlemen, follow me,” cried Berthellemot, inflamed with a fine zeal, “and remember that the First Consul has his eyes on us. ” He thought to himself: “There is some memorable trick to play on the Prefect.” The double squad set off at a quick pace. Once in the street, Mr. Berthellemot stopped and called out: “Monsieur Barbaroux?” The peace officer having approached, Berthellemot took him aside: “For a long time, Mr. Barbaroux,” he said to him majestically, “the most serious suspicions have been aroused in me concerning this woman, unfortunately supported by high protection. I have private reports of a man named Ezekiel, who blindly obeyed an intelligent direction given by me.” I have all the notes. Without believing in vampires, sir, I reject nothing that can be admitted by enlightened skepticism. Nature has profound secrets. We are only in the infancy of the world… I charge you to watch over M. Sévérin skillfully and take care not to arouse his distrust. He has connections. If events turn out as one might reasonably predict, we will have movement at the prefecture, M. Barbaroux, and I will not forget you in the movement. The peace officer opened his mouth to briefly explain his rights to a position as police commissioner, Berthellemot interrupted him: “I will take notes,” he said. “You answer to me for this M. Sévérin… You would not believe me, sir, if I told you that this whole intrigue is clearer than day to me. ” He left, joining only Ezekiel in his former escort. Charlevoy and Laurent remained under observation in the rue Saint-Louis, under the orders of M. Barbaroux, who murmured: “You see almost as clearly as the prefect, who sees just as clearly as I, who can’t see a thing!” This prosopopoeia was addressed to M. Berthellemot. When will the subordinates understand the merits of their superiors? In the windowless room, Jean-Pierre Sévérin and his protégé Patou were leaning over Kervoz’s sleep. “How changed he is!” murmured Jean-Pierre, “and how he must have suffered!” “These forty-eight hours,” replied the medical student, “have been a long dream for him, or rather a kind of intoxication. He hasn’t suffered as you understand, boss. ” “Sweat floods his forehead and runs down his gaunt cheek. ” “He has opium fever. ” “And can’t we wake him up?” Germain Patou hesitated. “The gospels of that Samuel Hahnemann are so funny!” he murmured finally. “One doesn’t dare talk about them too much to reasonable people. They’re good for brains burned out like me… Similia similibus… If I were all alone, I’d try the Formulas of the Sorcerer of Leipzig. ” “What are these formulas? Don’t speak Latin. ” “I’ll speak French.” There are many formulas, for Samuel Hahnemann’s system, being precise and mathematical like a scale, the most mathematical thing in the world, varies and chromatizes according to the immense scale of ailments and medicines; only these thousands of formulas are unified in THE FORMULA: Similia similibus curantur, or rather, for the rule itself is expressed in a loose and insufficient way: THIS is cured by THIS; instead of the old norm, which said: THIS is cured by THAT. –These are words, murmured Jean-Pierre Sévérin, and time passes. –These are things, boss, great, noble things! Time passes, it is true, but it will not be time wasted, for your young friend, Mr. René de Kervoz, is already under the influence of a Hahnemannian preparation. I have given him the treatment that is appropriate for his condition. Jean-Pierre’s eye searched the night table for a vial, a glass, anything at all that would confirm the idea of a given medicine.
He saw nothing. “You dared?” he began. “There is no audacity in that,” Germain Patou interrupted him. “You could take what he took, a thousand times, and a hundred thousand times the dose, without your constitution experiencing any shock. ” “A hundred thousand times!” repeated Jean-Pierre indignantly. “Whatever the dose … ” “A million times!” interrupted Patou in turn. “That is the miracle, and it is the reason that will delay the popularization of the greatest medical system that has ever dazzled the scientific world. When the Sangrado school runs out of arguments to combat the young system, it will cry out: Lie! Mummery! Imposture! Hahnemann gives nothing but an inert and neutral matter: sugar, milk, or clear water!” And indeed, in what Hahnemann distributes, chemical analysis would discover nothing. –But then… –But then do you know the chemist who would discover, by ordinary analysis, the invigorating principle of good air and the harmful principle of the atmosphere in times of epidemic? If someone tells you that he knows him, answer boldly: He is a liar! The open air yields the same elements everywhere upon analysis… and yet there is an air that gives health, an air that produces disease… I mean the air that is under the sky, because the miasma concentrated in an enclosed space is chemically appreciated… You can therefore be killed or cured by an infinitesimal thing, escaping instruments that would easily recognize the millionth part of the dose of arsenic, for example, which would not be enough to give you colic… René de Kervoz made a sudden movement in his bed. –He moved, said Jean-Pierre. Patou took from his tailcoat pocket a flat box a little bigger than a snuffbox and opened it: “I spent many nights making this,” he said with naive pride. “We’ll do better, but it’s not bad for a start.” In the box were about twenty small bottles, arranged and labeled. Patou chose one, saying again: “So far, our pharmacy is not very complicated; but the master seeks and finds… There, boss, do you want my confession? Yes I were to discover that this man is mentally ill or an imposter, I would make a disease of him! Having uncorked one of the small bottles, he removed a granule which he threaded onto the point of a needle, stuck for this purpose in the silk lining the box. René de Kervoz had half-opened his lips to murmur indistinct words . Patou took advantage of a moment when the sleeper’s teeth were loosening, and nimbly introduced the globule, which remained fixed on the tongue. “What are you giving him?” asked Jean-Pierre. “Opium,” replied the student. “What, opium! You were saying just now that this lethargy was produced by opium! ” “Right! ” “Well? ” “Well, boss, it will take time and trouble to accustom people to this apparent contradiction.” The system of the man of Leipzig will undergo a long, hard test; reasoning will be opposed to it, mockery will be lavished on it. How can this kill and cure? Just now I demonstrated to you in two words the possible effect, the terrible effect of an invisible, imponderable dose—infinitesimal, since that is the technical term. Must I now prove to you, who have experience of life, that the same thing can and must produce completely opposite results, depending on the mode and quantity of use? In the moral order, passion, that supreme gift of God, source of all greatness, engenders all shame and all misery; pride debases, ambition lowers, love creates intolerance; in the physical order, wine exalts or stupefies—according to the dose. “I know that,” said Jean-Pierre, bowing his head. –The good La Fontaine, in a fable that does not amuse children, reproaches the satyr for blowing hot and cold, using one and the same thing: his breath, to cool his soup and warm his fingers. It is a vulgar, but striking, image of nature. Everything, here below, everything blows hot and cold. The universe is homogeneous; there are not in creation, so full of contrasts, two different atoms; the physicist who has just promulgated this axiom will change in a few years the face of all the natural sciences. The century we are entering will invent more, thanks to these new bases, will explain better and will produce as much, all by itself, as all the other centuries combined… –His eyes are trying to open! murmured Gâteloup, whose anxious gaze was still fixed on René de Kervoz. –They will open, replied Patou. –If you gave him another of those little sugared almonds? “Bravo, boss!” cried the student, laughing. “So you’ve converted to opium, which wakes you up! Despite Molière’s facit dormire, which is the truth itself! I didn’t need to cite to you the most extraordinary and the simplest among the scientific facts of this time: Edward Jenner’s cowpox, his vaccine, which is the very virus of smallpox and which protects against smallpox. “Give me a sugared almond, boy. ” “Patience! The dose is not enough; you need the interval… you also get drunk with those toys we call little glasses, when you empty them too often. ” Jean Pierre wiped the sweat from his brow, Patou held the sleeper’s hand and felt his pulse. “But still,” grumbled Gâteloup, whose old reason still rebelled , “if you found me, one fine morning, lying on the floor of the room, with arsenic in my stomach… ” “Boss,” interrupted the student, “you don’t need to go through with it. I’ll answer you. The day the truth struck me like a thunderbolt, it was that, no longer hoping for anything from ordinary medication and finding myself with an unfortunate man poisoned by arsenic, I tried the master’s prescription at random; I gave the dying man arsenic…” –And you saved him?… –I was wrong, for he is our friend Ezekiel; but, damn it! I saved him. Gâteloup shook his hand violently. Kervoz’s lips had just exhaled a sound. They both fell silent. After a few seconds, René’s mouth opened again, and he weakly pronounced this name: Angèle! Chapter 23. THE AWAKENING The town halls of Paris now give three francs to any poor family that has its child vaccinated. It is not expensive, and yet it pays splendidly for the twenty years of suffering, poisoned by sarcasm, that Jenner lived through, between the invention of the vaccine and the day when the vaccine was victoriously accepted. Likewise, the few thousand thalers used to melt the bronze of the statue erected to Samuel Hahnemann gloriously repay the stones that once pursued the stoned master. Thus goes the world, first spitting at what it should worship. Homeopathy is now counted among the systems illustrated by triumph. It is fashionable, its followers roll in gold, splashing the ancient and illustrious methods, which protest in vain from the height of academic thrones. Mockery has blunted its point, disdain has worn thin, intolerance has come, that providential consecration of success. This is not a book of science; at most one can find, along the way, a few detached pages of the curious history of the contradictions of the human spirit. We wish, however, to add a word, concerning the doctrine of the great physician of royal Saxony. Sometimes, homeopathy seems suddenly stopped in its triumphant march by a widespread rumor: it is accused of having killed some illustrious personage or of having opened the succession to a throne to some crown prince. This is because it is, in fact, generally the medicine of many people of whom one speaks; it treats the art that is in view and willingly feels the pulse of the hands that hold the scepter, while opening wide to work and misfortune the doors of its dispensaries. Those it kills, as our great comedian, a born enemy of doctors, said, make a noise when they fall. And then, the best medals have their reverse side. Samuel Hahnemann, who invented so many specifics, did not leave in his will the formula capable of eradicating charlatanism. There are charlatans everywhere, and charlatans, by a happy property of their nature, prefer palaces to cottages. In short, we have wanted to show here only the beginnings of an original practitioner who, under the Restoration, fifteen years later, was considered a sorcerer, so marvelous did his cures seem. After he had pronounced the name of Angèle, René de Kervoz fell silent again; but his pale face took, in a way, the power to express his thoughts. One could follow on his forehead like a fleeting reflection of the dreams that crossed his sleep. Jean-Pierre Sévérin and Germain Patou both examined him attentively . Sometimes his face lit up, betraying a vague ecstasy, sometimes a dark cloud descended over his features, which suddenly expressed a poignant suffering. The student consulted his watch several times, and only gave the third dose of the medicine when the hand marked the desired hour. A few minutes after the globule had melted on the sleeper’s tongue, his eyes opened again, but this time very large. His eyes had no gaze. “Lila!” he said in a changed voice. Then, with a sudden anger that swelled the veins in his forehead: “Go away! Go away! ” “Do you hear me, Monsieur de Kervoz?” asked Jean-Pierre, unable to contain himself. It was like a spell suddenly broken. René’s eyelids drooped as he stammered: “It’s a dream! Always the same dream! Now Lila! Now Angèle… the burning breath of the demon, the soft hair of the saint!… His hand made a quivering movement under the cover, as if he were caressing a head of hair. “Angèle is dead!” thought Jean-Pierre aloud. “I understand everything he says… everything!” His cheek was more livid than the sick man’s, and his eyes expressed an indescribable terror. René suddenly covered his face with his hands: “In vita mors,” he murmured, “in morte vita! Always the same dream! Death in life, life in death!… No… no… He is my poor mother’s brother… I will not give you the means to lose him! ” The attention of the witnesses redoubled. “Who is he talking about?” asked Patou after a moment of silence. “His mother’s brother,” replied Gâteloup, “is a horse dealer from Normandy, near the border of Brittany.” I don’t know what he means. René jumped up from his bed. “It’s you, it’s you,” he cried, “the living and the dead!… It’s you who are Countess Marcian Gregoryi!… It’s you who are Addhéma the vampire! ” He had half risen; he let himself fall back, exhausted. Jean-Pierre ran his fingers over his sweat-drenched forehead. “I don’t believe in that, at least!” he said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to believe it! It’s impossible! ” “Boss,” the student replied gravely, “I’m not old enough yet to know exactly what to believe in. There is only one thing I deny so far, and that is the impossible?” And his outstretched finger pointed to the Latin motto, running around the cartouche that adorned the fireplace. The motto said exactly the words that had escaped René from his sleep. Patou continued: “The man has been saying for a long time: It’s not because it can’t be, but for some years now, Franklin has been playing with lightning; a poor devil of the old days, the Marquis de Jouffroy, is making boats sail without sails or oars, with the smoke of boiling water… You can talk to me if you have something to say: I know the legend of Count Szandor, the king of the vampires, and his wife, the oopire Addhéma. ” “I know nothing,” replied Jean-Pierre harshly. “The world is getting old and becoming mentally ill! ” “The world is growing up and becoming wise,” replied the student. “Old republicans like you are from the old days, just like the old marquises. The day will come when we will be ashamed to doubt, as only yesterday we blushed to believe. ” The tallow candle, almost entirely consumed, bronzed the copper of the torch with its dying flame. It gave off those bright but intermittent lights, like lamps about to go out. But the end of the night had come, and the first glimmers of twilight were coming through the half-open door. René de Kervoz, sitting upright, was supported by Jean-Pierre, while Germain Patou stirred a liquid in a half-full glass that seemed to be pure water. René looked like someone with a fever or a drinker overcome by an orgy. “Don’t ask me anything,” he said; and these were his first words. “I don’t know if I’m thinking or dreaming. The slightest question would make me fall back into the depths of my delirium. ” “Drink,” Patou ordered him, putting a spoon to his lips. The young Breton obeyed mechanically. “How long has it been since you last saw me, Father?” he asked, addressing Gâteloup. “Three days,” he replied. René made an effort to clear the darkness in his brain. “And haven’t I seen Angèle since then?” he asked again. “No,” replied Jean-Pierre. “Three days,” continued René, counting with difficulty on his fingers. ” So we are now on the morning of the wedding. ” Jean-Pierre lowered his eyes. “It’s true, it’s true,” stammered the young Breton, his features falling, “Angèle is dead!” Two large tears rolled down his cheek. Jean-Pierre straightened up, stern as a judge. “How do you know that, Monsieur de Kervoz?” he asked in turn. René wept like a child, without answering. Jean-Pierre repeated his question in a tone of dark threat. “I know nothing,” stammered René. “But my heart is bruised as if someone had said to me: She is dead. ” “She is dead!” Jean-Pierre pronounced like an echo. “Who told you? ” “No one. ” “Have you seen her? ” “Her last letter,” stammered the old man, whose tears gushed forth, “was written in blood and said: I am going to die!…” René rose from his lofty height and placed his two bare feet on the parquet floor. “Perhaps there is still time!” he cried, restored as if by magic to the energy of his age. Jean-Pierre shook his head and tried to hold him back to prevent him from falling, but Germain Patou said, “It’s over, the crisis is over.” And indeed, René remained firm on his knees. “Tell me everything,” René continued in a low but firm voice. “I know nothing. These three days were torn from my life… and many others before them. I know nothing about my salvation, about my honor! I have never stopped loving her. I was a mentally ill person even more than a criminal, and that gives me the right to avenge her. ” Jean-Pierre drew her close to his heart. “We would have been too happy!” he thought aloud. ” The poor woman often said to me: I have so much joy that it frightens me! We are both old, she and I, Monsieur de Kervoz, we will not suffer much longer from now on… Promise me that you will be the brother and friend of the child who will be left all alone.” “Your son will be my son!” cried René. “Let’s go together!” said Germain Patou. “But you won’t just go away like that, boss, by all the devils! Hahnemann also cures grief. Your dear wife has her Christian resignation, and this son you speak of: she will turn her whole heart to him… ” Jean-Pierre shook his head a second time and murmured: “His heart was Angèle! ” “And if Angèle hadn’t died?” interrupted the student. “We have no proof…” This time it was René who shook his head, repeating without his knowledge: “Angèle is dead! ” Germain Patou, stubborn in hope, like all those whose will must break down some great obstacle, replied: “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Jean-Pierre told in a few words the story of those poor letters, so naively heartbreaking, found on the window sill, and the last of which, the one written in blood, had pierced the pane. René de Kervoz listened. His strength left him for a moment and his legs trembled again under the weight of his body. He fell onto the bed, groaning: “I killed her!” Then, his reason rebelling against his conviction, which had no human basis and resembled the stubbornness of madness, he cried out: “Let’s run! Let’s search!” His words stopped in his throat, and his eyes became haggard. “It was a long time ago,” he said in a voice that seemed not to be his own, “a long time ago.” I saw everything in my dream and heard everything, everything she wrote… Her poor complaint came to me from above… And I was in the garden of the Quai des Ormes, at the water’s edge… one night when the Seine was flowing at its full banks… She fell to her knees… and Despair took her by the hand, gently dragging her into that icy bed where one never wakes again… never!… A convulsive sob tore through his chest. “The rest is horrible!” he continued, speaking as if in spite of himself. “She came… my lips knew her soft hair so well. I kissed the dear curls of her hair; I am certain of it, I would swear to it… Who told me the hideous story of this monster?” gaining an hour of life for every year of existence she stole from youth, from beauty, from love?… It was a cry that answered this question. “Lila!… it was Lila who told me… And the Vampire cannot escape this law of telling her own story?” He rushed away from the bed, as if the contact of the covers had burned him. “I remember! I remember!” he groaned, prey to a spasm that shook him from head to toe, like a hurricane shakes trees before uprooting them. There are things that cannot be said… My heart will remain withered by this sepulchral kiss… This is the lair of the animated corpse… of the monster who lives in death and dies in life! His clenched finger pointed at the Latin motto, which the morning light, slipping through the half-open door, vaguely illuminated. He staggered. Jean-Pierre and Patou ran to support him, but he pushed them away with a violent gesture. “Everything is there now!” he said, striking his forehead. “My memory is resurrected. I betrayed my mother’s blood… So much the better! Do you hear? So much the better! My betrayal will put me on the trail of Countess Marcian Gregoryi… Angèle will be avenged! ” He rushed headlong through the apartments and descended the stairs in a few furious bounds. Jean-Pierre and the student set off in pursuit without having time to exchange thoughts. When they reached the street, René was already turning the corner, running with extraordinary speed toward the bridges on the right bank. Our two friends followed the same direction as fast as they could. Behind them, the agents posted by Mr. Berthellemot immediately set off in pursuit. Chapter 24. SAINT-HYACINTHE-SAINT-MICHEL STREET The Boulevard de Sébastopol (left bank), passing majestically between the Panthéon and the Luxembourg Gate, now flattens this western ridge of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. Everything is open and everything is clear in this old school district, suddenly rejuvenated. Its bizarre physiognomy of yesteryear, so picturesque and so curious, has disappeared to make way for broader aspects. Paris, the predestined capital, never loses beauty except to acquire splendor. Was it beautiful, however! It was strange, It told vivid and singular stories to the sight. Even those who frankly admire the new Paris are allowed to regret the original and talkative aspect of old Paris. How many anecdotes are inscribed on the black walls of these gables! and how well these ancient hovels told their dramatic stories! Taking a few steps outside the young boulevard, you can still encounter these horrible and charming holes where the Middle Ages ramble on under the noses of our civilizations; the wide openings even easily have the approach to these mysterious caverns. Behind the Collège de France, steeped in modern philosophy, you have only to follow this path which seems like an open sewer: here are houses, on the right and on the left, which have seen the capettes of Montaigu, lying on the fouarre; here are the remains of cloisters where the League plotted; here are chapels, transformed into stores, at the gates of which Claude Frollo had to make the sign of the cross, brooding over his forties, while his brother Jehan, a charming, mischievous and precocious beast, played some nasty trick on him from the top of this worm-eaten balcony, which already had a bad look at the time when the royal vampires smelled the blood of the captains at the tower of Nesle. It is the melodrama that says it; the melodrama, a vampire too, drinking from its tin goblet the glory of kings and the honor of queens. In 1804, at the place where the boulevard widens into a vast irregular square, looking at the Pantheon, the Luxembourg and the squat back of the Odéon at the same time, it was the rue Saint-Hyacinthe-Saint-Michel, more irregular than the square, narrow, hilly, winding, and from where one could see nothing at all. The house where Georges Cadoudal had established his retreat was famous at that time and cited as a model of a den for the use of conspirators. I have the plan before me as I write these lines. It had belonged a few years earlier to Gensonné, the Girondin, who, it is said, had a passage made through the neighboring building to reach the house exiting onto rue Saint-Jacques by the third carriage entrance, going back down towards the quays. It is not added that this passage was made with a view to avoiding, on occasion, some political danger. Another passage existed, running in the opposite direction and connecting the Fallex house (such was the name of the owner) to the courtyard of a clod factory existing at the re-entrant corner of place Saint-Michel, rue de la Harpe. This second passage, whose origin is unknown and must have dated back to a much earlier period, crossed no fewer than thirteen numbers; of these, it communicated with five houses opening onto Rue Saint-Hyacinthe, and one opening onto Place Saint-Michel. So that Georges Cadoudal’s retreat had nine exits, some of which were located at very great distances from the others. He was in the habit of saying of himself: I am a lion lodged in a fox’s den. During the trial, it was proven that most of the neighbors were unaware of these connections. Georges Cadoudal hardly ever used the two extreme exits, and even then only rarely. Usually, according to the people of the neighborhood, who knew him perfectly well by his name of Morinière, he left and returned by the very door of his house. The police therefore did not even have the excuse of the exceptional facilities that the layout of his retreat gave to Georges Cadoudal. On March 9, 1804, at seven o’clock in the morning, a cabriolet stopped in front of the Chouan chief’s door on Rue Saint-Hyacinthe and waited. All along the street, according to the measures taken the day before in the office of the police prefect, officers were stationed. There were also some at the windows of the houses. The surveillance cordon extended to the right and left as far as Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue de la Harpe. No approach had been made to the concierge of the house, who, at the invitation of the cabriolet driver, went up to the first floor of the house, knocked on Georges’s door, and shouted, as was apparently the custom: “Monsieur’s carriage is waiting.” Georges was fully dressed and very heavily armed, although none of his weapons were visible. He was holding his hand in the hand of a very young and adorably beautiful woman , who was sitting on the sofa in his living room. She was a blonde whose dark blue eyes seemed black in the false light that entered through the too-low windows. “That’s good!” said Georges to the concierge, who came back down the stairs. “I believe,” said the charming blonde, whose beautiful eyes were swimming in a sort of ecstasy, “that it is permissible to kill by any means possible the man who stands in the way of God… But how much better I love you, my valiant Breton knight, disdaining vulgar assassination and throwing down the gauntlet in the face of the tyrant! ” “I do not disdain assassination,” replied Georges, “I detest it.” He was standing, developing his tall stature, too overweight , but robust and majestic. Despite his weight, which must have been considerable, he had, in Brittany, a reputation for extraordinary agility. His face was open and round. He wore his hair short, and, something truly strange, in keeping with the chivalrous temerity of his character, he wore on his hat a bronze clasp uniting the cross and the heart, which were the distinctive and well-known sign of the Chouannerie. Countess Marcian Gregoryi made a gesture to raise Georges’s hand to her lips, but he withdrew it. “No foolishness!” he said abruptly. “As soon as day breaks, I am General Georges and I laugh no more. ” “You are,” replied the blonde enchantress, “the last knight. I will never be able to express to you how much I admire you and how much I love you. ” “You will express that to me another time, fair lady,” replied Georges Cadoudal, laughing; “there is time for everything. Today, if your information is correct and if your men have beards on their chins, I will force the future Emperor of the French to cross swords with a simple peasant from Morbihan… or to fire a pistol, for I am a good prince and I will leave him the choice of weapons. But, on my faith in God, the pistol will not suit him better than the sword, and the poor devil will die First Consul.” He threw under his arm two swords covered with a shagreen sheath and continued: “Tell me again, I beg you, the exact address and route. ” “Are you going straight ahead?” asked the Countess. “No, I have to pick up Captain L—- at the Buci crossroads. He’s my second in command. ” “A republican!” ” That’s how the world goes. We’ll both fight, the captain and I, the day after the victory. ” “Well!” continued the Countess, clapping her beautiful little hands together , “that’s what I like about you, Georges! You play with the thought of the saber like our young Magyars, always laughing in the face of death… From the Buci crossroads, you will take the Rue Dauphine, the quays, the Grève, the Rue, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, always straight ahead and you will only turn at the corner of the Chemin de la Muette, two hundred paces from the Barrière du Trône. There you will see an isolated house, an old factory, surrounded by marshes… You will knock at the main door and say to whoever opens it: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I am a brother of Virtue. “Plague!” said George, “your Welches don’t beat around the bush! And will we have to sing them a bit of Tyrolean? ” “We must add,” replied the blonde, smiling as if this carefree gaiety had delighted her: “I come by the will of the Rosicrucian of the third kingdom, sovereign of the circle of Bude, Gran, and Comorn; I ask for Dr. Andrea Ceracchi. ” “And after? ” “Afterward, you will be introduced into the sanctuary… and our brothers will put you in a position to meet this very day, in a suitable place, your enemy, General Bonaparte. ” “A master man!” grumbled George, “and who would have made a fine Chouan, if he had wanted to!” He shook the Countess’s hand briskly and headed for the door. On the threshold, he stopped to add: “There’s a little place over there, halfway down the road, on the other side of the village of Brech, that I would have liked to see again. Everyone has some memory that comes back in times of peril, and I think the dancing will be tough today… She said to me: Be for God and the king, and I swore an oath, my mouth on her lips… I was sixteen years old… I kept my promise… The captain often says: Georges, if you had been born in the Rue Saint-Honoré, you would cry: Long live the Republic!… But, well! those in Paris are as babbling as those in Brittany. Who knows the whole story?… My fair lady,” he interrupted himself, “don’t forget to take the corridor on your left: you will exit by the Place Saint-Michel.” And if anyone mentions Citizen Morinière to you, you will reply: “I have never heard that name.” In the Countess’s smile there was admiration and respect. Georges pushed open the door and went down the stairs singing. As soon as he had left, the Countess’s face changed, expressing a hard and cold sarcasm. As Georges jumped into the cabriolet, his coachman said to him in a low voice: “The street looks bad, and so does the whole neighborhood.” The Chouan’s quick, sure gaze had already assessed the situation. “Take your time, my good man,” he said, sitting down near the coachman. ” As long as you pretend not to see them, those birds stay quiet… Is your beast any good? ” “I’ll answer for it, Monsieur Morinière.” Georges laughed heartily and pretended to raise the convertible’s hood a notch. “Gather up,” he said, however, in a low voice, “and take your horse off a beat… Don’t miss your shot… You’ll be taking the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince as if the devil were taking you.” It seems that the police didn’t even have Georges Cadoudal’s description. We all complain, more or less, about our servants; heads of state are no better served than we are.” All along the street, the officers looked at each other and hesitated. The cabriolet was about to move off, and George was about to pass once again like lightning through this badly behaved pack, when at a window on the first floor, which opened gently, just above him, a woman appeared, young, adorably beautiful, giving to the morning breeze her blond hair, which glittered under the first, gaze of the rising sun. She leaned forward, graceful, and although Georges could not see her, she blew him a smiling kiss. The officers all moved at once: it was a signal. At that moment, the coachman was turning his horse; which, robust and lively, started on all fours and passed, throwing half a dozen men onto the pavement. Countess Marcian Gregoryi remained at the window, following the cabriolet, which descended the street like a whirlwind. The pavement of the Rue Saint-Hyacinthe was turning. When the cabriolet disappeared, the charming blonde backed away from the window and closed both doors. “By now,” she said, “there should not be a single one left of those in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. I have won my ransom, I am free, I leave nothing behind me… Tomorrow, I will be fifty leagues from Paris. ” She turned suddenly, astonished, because a footstep sounded on the floor of the room, which had just been deserted. Although her heart was of bronze, she gave a loud cry, a cry of terror and distress. René de Kervoz was standing before her, haggard and defeated, but his eyes burning. “I have come too late to save,” he said, but I am in time to avenge.” He seized her by the hair, without her resisting, and pressed the barrel of a pistol to her temple. The shot resounded terribly in that narrow space. The bullet made a round, dry hole, without lips, around which there was no blood. It seemed as if it had pierced a sheet of parchment. Countess Marcian Gregoryi fell and remained motionless like a beautiful reclining statue. Chapter 25. THE CAR STUFF. René do Kervoz was in the habit of entering his uncle’s house through the Rue Saint-Jacques. He had a key to the secret passage. Georges Cadoudal had arranged it this way so that his sister’s son would not be compromised in the event of a mishap. Leaving the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile, René had set off at full speed towards the Pont de la Tournelle, without worrying if he was being followed. The fever was giving him wings. Jean-Pierre was getting old and Germain Patou had short legs. Although they both did their best, they lost sight of René near the Hôtel-Dieu. Mr. Berthellemot’s agents were coming from behind, followed at a considerable distance by Mr. Barbaroux, a peace officer, who was in a pitiful mood and harbored the legitimate fear of having acquired some bad rheumatism during the night. The day was now quite broad. Arriving at the place where they had lost sight of René, The student and Gâteloup separated, each taking one of the two routes that presented themselves. Jean-Pierre continued along the quay and Patou went up the rue Saint-Jacques. It was this last route that René had chosen, but he was now well ahead and Patou could no longer see him. René let himself in, as we have seen, with the help of the key he carried with him. Entering from this side, the room where Countess Marcian Gregoryi was staying was the third. On the pedestal table of the second a pair of loaded pistols were lying around. The house, moreover, was full of weapons. René took one of the two pistols as he passed and cocked it before opening the last door. As Germain Patou reached the top of the rue Saint-Jacques, still running , he saw a large crowd of people gathered in the rue Saint-Hyacinthe. This crowd was entering house No. 7, where a cry of appeal had been heard, then a pistol shot. Germain Patou entered with the others. René was still standing, pistol in hand. Patou knelt beside the blonde, who was splendidly beautiful and seemed to be sleeping a sovereign sleep. He felt her heart. His was beating so hard that it broke the walls of his chest. “Does anyone know this woman?” he asked. As no one answered, he added: “Let her be taken to the morgue at Marché-Neuf, which opened today.” Then he said to René, hoping to save him: “Citizen, you will follow me.” His last glance, however, was for Countess Marcian Gregoryi, and he thought: “Would I have loved her? Would I have hated her? My scalpel, from now on, can seek her secret to the depths of her chest!” At the bottom of Rue Monsieur-le-Prince and in Rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie, another crowd rolled like an avalanche, shouting: “Chouan! Chouan! Arrest Georges Cadoudal!” Although it seemed that all the houses had vomited their inhabitants onto the pavement, the windows were overflowing with curious onlookers. Georges Cadoudal’s cabriolet had encountered a first obstacle at the height of Rue Voltaire. Two vegetable carts were crossing. “Get out!” ordered Georges. The two carts, overturned, threw their poor devils of drivers into the gutter. And the cabriolet passed. The people in front began to get upset, although they had no suspicions. They thought it was a horse or a mentally ill person, carried away by the bit in its teeth, and helpful crowds formed to block the road. It was a bad move for them. “Make way!” commanded Georges, who had risen to his feet in the cabriolet. As they were not obeying quickly enough for his wishes, he snatched the whip from the coachman’s hands and laid down such harsh cuts that the road was clear again in an instant. But the noise coming from behind was so loud that it could be heard rumbling in the distance. “We won’t go long like this, Monsieur Morinière,” grumbled the coachman. “We’ll go as far as Rome, if we want,” replied Cadoudal. “Do you think a man like me will be stopped by bankrupt Parisians? Light up, my boy!” he added, handing him back his whip, “and don’t be afraid!” As he approached the Odéon crossroads, the coachman was obliged to rein in. There was a heavy carriage across the road. “Go over or under!” shouted Georges, who was looking back. And he began to smile, waving to those who followed him, shouting: “Chouan! Chouan! Arrest the murderer!” From the crossroads of the Odéon to the place where the Rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie branches off into the Rue Dauphine and Rue Mazarine, there was no new obstacle, but there, a real traffic jam completely blocked the passage. “Stop, man,” said Georges, “I might as well play my last game .” here than elsewhere. Pichegru and Moreau fell, through their own fault, both alive; I will only fall dead, and I will have done my best. He stood up again, unsheathed the two swords, and put away under the cushions three pairs of pistols he had under his clothes. Those who were pursuing him were approaching. He held out his hand to the coachman. “Go away, boy,” he said to him with cordial good humor. “The rest is none of your business… If the street clears, I can drive as well as you, and they still don’t hold me!” The coachman hesitated. “I have three children,” he said finally, and he jumped onto the pavement to lose himself in the crowd. The crowd was gathering, already guessing an extraordinary spectacle. Georges completely raised the hood of the cabriolet. For a moment, seeing him thus in the midst of this crowd, you would have said one of those merry charlatans of our Parisian fairs about to begin his work. His work, in fact, was about to begin. He quickly took off the coat he was wearing and appeared dressed in a sort of morning coat, of fine cloth, it is true, but exactly reminiscent of the cut of the jacket of the boys of Auray. On the left side of this jacket, there was a heart embroidered in silver. “Chouan! Chouan! Stop the Chouan!” This time, there was a great clamour that came from all sides at once. Georges took his whip in his hand. He used it well, and it is apt to say that the whip, fitted to a Morbihan arm, becomes a weapon not to be disdained. I have seen whip fights among all types of people in the village of La Gacilly, on the Oust River, bizarre and savage tournaments that leave wounds deeper than those of the learned sabers used in the university quarrels of Germany. Georges’ whip made a wide circle around him. “What do you want from me, good people?” he asked, perfectly imitating the accent of lower Normandy. ” My name is Julien-Vincent Morinière, I sell horses by trade, I have done no harm here to anyone. ” “Chouan,” replied Charlevoy from afar, who was standing at a distance, “you stripped yourself too quickly. ” “It’s true, though,” murmured Georges, laughing. It goes without saying that he did not lose sight of his horse, always watching the embarrassment that had obstructed his course. On the other side of the embarrassment, on Rue Dauphine, the crowd was growing visibly. There was a moment when the exertion of his curiosity broke the embarrassment and opened a passage right in the middle of the road. He made a second turn to secure his rear, and, lightly touching his horse’s ears, he shouted: “Hi, Bijou! Go everywhere! We’re dealing with the fair!” The spectators were there, as if at a play. Paris is amused by everything, and out of a hundred onlookers, not ten believed in the presence of Georges Cadoudal. Despite the Breton jacket, despite the Chouan heart, nine-tenths of the spectators doubted. This person of all types of body, strapping, seemed such a good person! And the police had been so often mistaken! The horse took off with its usual vigor, while Georges, still standing, commanded: “Beware, good people! I’m not responsible for the damage.” The horse passed, but the carriage entered between the body of a cab and the wheel of a large cart which was turning. “By God!” said Georges, “we are surrounded, but we are here as if in a redoubt. ” A pistol shot, the first, came from behind him and knocked off his hat. “Lower!” he said, turning around and shooting down the man who still held the smoking weapon in his hand. The policemen fell back once more, while the onlookers, trying to flee, produced a murderous crowd. Nothing could be heard but the cries of the women and children. Georges, who had opened his knife, cut the two leather ties that attached the horse to the shafts, and said very calmly to those on the Rue Dauphine: “Citizens, will you give way to a brave man?” There was some hesitation among the onlookers. Georges turned to face the officers, who were trying to get into the two neighboring vehicles. He fired two pistol shots and was wounded by three projectiles, one of which was a bottle, fired from the cabaret on the corner of the Rue de Buci. When he looked back in front of him, the ranks had thinned considerably, but those who remained seemed determined to hold their ground: among others, a group of soldiers had drawn their sabers. At that moment, shots could be heard in the Rue de Buci. It was Captain L—- and three of his friends who were taking the officers from behind. At the same time, a tall, white-haired man cut through the crowds that cluttered the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts. He leaped onto the stage, brandishing a saber that he had just snatched from a soldier on the artillery train, who was pursuing him shouting. We have seen that Jean-Pierre Sévérin, instead of taking the Rue Saint-Jacques, like his companion Germain Patou, had continued along the quay. Everything we have just recounted had happened with such great speed that Jean-Pierre Sévérin had only just arrived, although he had always walked at a good pace. From the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts, he had recognized, in the middle of the fight, the uncle of René de Kervoz, standing in his car and firing. The idea suddenly came to him that this was a consequence of M. Berthellemot’s mistake , confusing M. Morinière, the harmless horse dealer, with Georges Cadoudal, who wanted to kill the First Consul. None of us is perfect. Every man holds to his opinion, especially knights-errant, they say, and Gâteloup was a knight-errant. His life had been spent defending the weak against the strong. In his mind perhaps, for he was subtle in his way, Morinière’s danger was connected with some trap set by Countess Marcian Gregoryi. Had he not himself, Gâteloup, been taken, at the tavern of the Miraculous Peach, for one of the assassins of the head of state? He calmed the soldier on the train by throwing out his name, known in all the armories of all the regiments, and said to him: “We will give you back your tool, my comrade.” Lend it to me for five minutes, if you’re a good boy! And, quickly fastening the heart of gold we know to his chest, he cried: “Hello! Is there anyone who wants to side with Papa Gâteloup?” Ten voices answered from the crowd: “Present, Monsieur Sévérin! Let’s go!” And the soldiers who were blocking the passage from the Rue Dauphine side put their swords back in their scabbards. Gâteloup, meanwhile, was approaching the cabriolet from the front. He understood the situation at a glance and finished unharnessing the horse. Georges looked at him in astonishment. A few men were already protecting the rear of the carriage, where the police officers were feebly resisting a vigorous push. “Compère Sévérin,” said Georges, pointing to the heart the guard wore on his chest, “are you also for God and the king?” “For God’s sake, yes, Monsieur Morinière,” replied Gâteloup, “but to hell with the king!… Mount your horse and take to the fields, I’ll see to holding back those who are chasing you. ” Georges frowned. Gâteloup looked him straight in the face. “Oh, that! Oh, that!” he grumbled, “you look strange today, friend. Are you really Georges Cadoudal? ” “Old man,” replied Georges, who was no longer laughing, “I thank you for what you wanted to do for me. To look after my nephew, who is not the cause and who perhaps likes what we are fighting over there, down there.” Sainte-Anne-d’Auray, the noble land where I was born… I am not Norman, I am Breton… I am not Morinière the horse dealer; I am Georges Cadoudal, general officer of the Catholic and royal army… I am not an assassin, I am a champion arriving all alone and head held high against the man who has millions of defenders… Get away from me: your path is not mine. Gâteloup lowered his head and walked away without a word. Georges straightened up, put two of the four pistols he had left in his belt and took the others, one in each hand. “Let it be said!” he shouted at the top of his voice: “I am the Chouan Cadoudal, and I have come to fight the one who wants to make himself emperor! ” It was no longer just the police officers, it was the entire crowd that rushed forward. All of Paris was in love with the First Consul. Georges discharged his four pistols and seized the swords. The first broke before he could be overpowered. When he fell, covered in blood from head to toe, he had only a section of the second left in his hand. The last wound he received came from a butcher’s boy, who struck him with the knife from his stall. He was not dead. The policemen did not dare approach him. It was the same butcher’s boy who threw the first rope around his neck. Five minutes later, at the moment when the cart that had stopped Georges Cadoudal’s cabriolet was taking him, bound, to the Conciergerie, a man appeared among the policemen who formed the nucleus of the immense crowd gathered at the Buci crossroads. “That’s how I run things!” said this man, rubbing his hands heartily. “Well!” said Charlevoy, “we didn’t see you during the affair, Monsieur Barbaroux!” “I think so,” said M. Berthellemot, splitting the press, “he wasn’t there! It was only me!… My children, I’m pleased with you. We did a fine job there. Everything was put together with a clear head, I had taken notes, sweet word!” M. Berthellemot was in the process of cracking his knuckles a little, when another, more majestic organ uttered these words: “Nothing escapes me. Here the master’s eye was needed. I came at the risk of my life. ” “Mr. Prefect!” stammered the secretary-general. These two officials, in truth, seemed to have sprung from the earth. While they were looking at each other, the secretary-general sheepish and jealous, the prefect triumphant, a third god, emerging from the machine, passed between them and showed off. “My dear gentlemen,” said the great judge Régnier kindly, “I had taken all the measures.” Thank you for not throwing a spanner in the works. I am going to the Tuileries to report to the First Consul… Hey! Hey! my good friends, it takes a keen eye to fill a position like mine! When Régnier, the future Duke of Massa, entered the château, he met Fouché, the future Duke of Otranto, in the antechamber, who greeted him politely and said: “The First Consul knows everything, my master. Well! I had to get my hands dirty: without me you wouldn’t have gotten out!” Chapter 26. NEW HOUSE. Paris was in a fever that day, from morning until evening. The news of Georges Cadoudal’s arrest traveled like lightning from one end of the city to the other, and crossed paths with other dramatic or terrible news. The newspapers didn’t know which to listen to. Ordinarily, when reality speaks, fantasy falls silent, and, in the midst of these great disturbances of public opinion, it is, in truth, not the time to tell fireside stories. We must nevertheless note that Paris was more concerned with the vampire than it had ever been. I mean Paris from top to bottom, Paris the great and Paris the small. This morning, the First Consul had talked about the vampire with Fouché, and As the future Minister of Police very vividly expressed the thought that the existence of vampires should be relegated to the absurdities of another age, the one who was to be Emperor had smiled… With that bronze smile that no diplomat ever boasted of having translated as he saw fit. Did the First Consul believe in vampires? Idle question. No one believes in vampires. And yet, amidst the great din of political news, a dull and sinister rumor slipped through. The word vampire was on everyone ‘s lips. They discussed it, they commented on it, they explained it. The strong men were reduced to subtly repeating the idea put forward for a long time, namely, that the vampire was only a band of thieves. This way of seeing things had a certain success, but the vast majority held on to their monster and gave it a frank name. The vampire was a vampire and her name was Countess Marcian Gregoryi. She was miraculously beautiful, and young, and seductive. She affected great piety. It was in churches that she mainly spread her nets, without excluding theaters or promenades. The circumstance that she sometimes had blond hair, sometimes black hair was carefully noted. But one cannot change the nature of Parisians. Their very superstition has the word for laughter. This miracle of hair was simply for them a matter of wigs. And, in short, the whole secret was perhaps there! Her traps were aimed especially at foreigners. She maddened them with love and led them to marriage. Since civil marriage is no joke and one can only marry once at the town hall, she introduced herself, under the guise of good works, or even politics, into the trust of these holy priests, who live outside the world, to the point of no longer knowing the time marked by the historical clock. They were always numerous and easy to deceive. She deceived them. She invented fables that made the secrecy of religious marriage indispensable. These fables always had a partisan flavor. Persecution explains so much! As for her, and temporarily, the religious marriage, celebrated according to that simple form that a recent trial has brought to light (a mass heard and mutual consent murmured at the appropriate moment), was enough to satisfy her conscience. After the mass, the two newlyweds got into the carriage. The husband had announced the day before his departure for a long journey. And, indeed, he was leaving for a country from which one does not return. Note that every priest was interested in keeping the secret, even outside of the respectable reasons she gave. Whether or not there was an exaggeration, people were saying today that most of the parishes of Paris had married Countess Marcian Gregoryi. Her last three victims were especially cited, the three young Germans from Württemberg: Count Wenzel, Baron de Ramberg, and Franz Koënig, the wealthy heir to the alabaster mines of the Black Forest. You would have said that these mysteries, so long and so deeply hidden, had suddenly burst into the light. And as the details came together, they corroborated each other. These were no longer suppositions, they were certainties. There were official reports. Through a corner that no one knew about, but about which everyone was talking, the vampire found herself mixed up in the recent attacks directed against the person of the First Consul. She had touched the infernal machine, the so-called conspiracy of the Théâtre-Français, and finally the conspiracy of Georges Cadoudal. These things go like the wind: around noon, the vampire was the mistress of Georges Cadoudal, after having been the mistress of the Roman sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi. Then a new flow of information arrived: the Countess Marcian Gregoryi had died from a pistol shot in the Chouan chief’s own home. Then another: she had been killed by a young man who miraculously remained alive, since she had drunk all his blood. This young man had been found in a dark house in the Marais, deep in a veritable dungeon, without doors or windows, asleep in a deathly sleep. And the house in question communicated by underground passages with that famous cabaret, the Miraculous Peach, which had lived for weeks and months on this sinister traffic: human remains, descending into the Seine through the Bretonvilliers sewer. Of course, no one forgot the violated cemeteries, and people wondered with horror why this abundance of horrors. In the afternoon, a third wave of news: a house on the Chaussée des Minimes, stormed by the police, had revealed excesses so hideous that words hesitated to transmit them. This was the great warehouse of corpses, and all this lugubrious comedy of the Quai de Béthune was only intended to break the dogs. A hole opened in the greenhouse of this house on the Chaussée des Minimes: a delicious place where traces of pleasure and orgies remained, a mephitic hole where veritable heaps of human bodies were being consumed, eaten away by quicklime. All this was so improbable and so strong that, towards evening, Paris began to doubt. There was too much of it. Avid as it is for dramas red or black, Paris, sated this time, felt nausea coming on. But at the moment when Paris, overcome in its formidable appetite by the mad abundance of the menu, was about to ask for mercy and desert the feast, a new course arrived, overwhelming this one, and so delicious that it was necessary to return to the table. It was no longer a matter of more or less plausible gossip: it was a fact, visible and tangible flesh, damn it! The entire residue of a terrible tragedy, the bloody residue of an entire tragic event! Had the theater where this exhibition was to take place been ten leagues from the suburbs, Paris would have taken to its heels. But the theater was in the very heart of the city, in the very middle of the Cité, between the palace and the cathedral. Do you remember that little house under construction whose masons greeted Jean-Pierre Sévérin as the patron, when he passed through the Marché-Neuf, the evening our story begins? That house was finished. It was the theater we are talking about. And the theater was opening today. An opening whose terrifying solemnity was not to be forgotten for a long time. It was the Morgue, still untouched by any exhibition. And the latest news stated that, for the Morgue’s New Year’s gift, there were twenty-seven corpses piled up in the showroom . All of Paris rushed to the City. Sometimes Paris goes out of its way like this for nothing. We often see obscene crowds, who run to the spectacle of the guillotine, returning with bowed heads, because the performance has not taken place. These ladies, who look like women, in truth, and where do they come from, these miserable creatures? And what are they doing? These ladies return with pouts on their lips. They have rented good seats in vain, and have kept the coupon for another time. Assuredly, those who ardently wish that the unemployment of crime will eliminate torture must have in their souls only a profound pity for these creatures, female or male, who act as the executioner’s claqueurs; but they cannot very severely blame the popular wrath pursuing with its jeers this height of human perversity. And no one would take the trouble to be very seriously indignant if one of these couples with blasphemous gaiety, with shameful elegance, who come there to savor a bloody sorbet between their supper and their lunch, received once and for all the whipping in the street gutter Saint-Jacques; the only punishment that could be worthy of these filthy pranks. But Paris, today, should not be deceived in its hopes. Here is what had happened. Mr. Dubois, prefect of police, on the instructions given by Countess Marcian Gregoryi, had surrounded, the previous night, the isolated house on the Chemin de la Muette, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where the Brothers of Virtue met. Whatever one may think of Mr. Dubois’s merits as prefect of police, it is certain that he was not a man of extreme measures. He was in no way the cause of the event we are about to recount. Around one o’clock after midnight, the Brothers of Virtue were gathered at the usual place of their meetings, awaiting the arrival of Countess Marcian Gregoryi, who was to bring them Georges Cadoudal. The session was very heated, because most of the members had entirely personal reasons for intolerance. It could be said that all the members of this Parisian Tugenbaud were thirsty for the blood of the First Consul. Around 1:30, a message from the sovereign, as Countess Marcian Gregoryi was called, arrived. This message contained only one line: You are betrayed. Escape is impossible. Choose between treason and death. Andrea Ceracchi gave the order to uncork the powder keg that was kept in the meeting room. A vote was taken on the question of whether, in the event of misfortune, they would blow themselves up. There were thirty-three members. The vote was unanimous in the affirmative. Six brothers were sent outside as scouts. There is no way of knowing whether they thought of their own safety rather than the general safety. In any case, none of them returned. Among these six scouts was Osman, Mourad-Bey’s slave. A quarter of an hour after their departure, the house was surrounded. The guard at the main gate came to inform them, at two o’clock , that there were more than four hundred troops and police in the Marais. Ceracchi went up to the upper floor and recognized the accuracy of the information. They all had weapons. They could have made a desperate defense. But Ceracchi was more of a dreamer than a man of action. As he entered, he said: “My brothers, the hand that wants to execute God’s decree must be pure. Our hands are not pure. This woman has drawn us into her crime, and a voice cries out within me: It is she who has betrayed you! Let us die like men!” He lit a fuse, which the Illyrian Donai snatched from his hands, replying: “Men die fighting!” The sound of rifle butts striking against the front door echoed at that moment. Two or three of the conspirators proposed to flee. It was too late. A musket shot, fired from outside, blew the lock on the main door, while the back door was attacked with axes. Taïeh, the black person, took this last post with five resolute men, while the Germans, led by Donaï, lined up in battle formation in front of the main entrance. Both doors opened simultaneously. All the guns burst forth at once, outside and inside, then a large explosion occurred, lifting the ceiling and tearing the walls apart. Andréa Ceracchi had shaken the torch over the powder keg. Twelve men were killed among the attackers, and all those in the room perished, all without exception. The new Morgue had these twenty-seven mutilated corpses as its first offering, among which that of Taïeh, the black person, aroused general curiosity . There is no theatre in Paris which can boast of having had such a long and constant success as the Morgue. Its silent and gloomy play, always the same, had for more than sixty years three hundred and sixty-five performances per year, and never tired the stalls. Nevertheless, the Morgue was not to regain the feverish vogue of this first debut, around which the city and the suburbs crowded and suffocated for two days, with madness. On leaving, the terrified, but not satiated, crowd took the road to the Marais and reached the Chaussée des Minimes, hoping to witness an even more curious spectacle. People of imagination, in fact, spoke wonders of this hole filled by the victims of the vampire, and if some speculator had been able to establish a tax office at the door of the hotel recently inhabited by the vampire, Paris, in a week, would have made him an enormous fortune. But this was a forbidden fruit. Paris, disappointed, had to stick to the Morgue. For several days, a cordon of troops defended the approaches to the hotel formerly occupied by the Countess Marcian Gregoryi. Let us now return to our characters. By eight o’clock in the morning, Jean-Pierre Sévérin was at his post. Although he had run across the gap between the Buci crossroads and the Place du Châtelet, he calmly and gravely witnessed the transfer of the registers from the old registry to the new. He remained at his duty the entire day, and it was he who received the mortal remains of the unfortunates struck down on the Chemin de la Muette. At the hour when the doors closed, he left the registry and returned to the house. His wife and son were kneeling in Angèle’s little room, before a poor little bed where a prone form lay. In a cradle at the foot of the bed, a child slept. The hideous injury that had mutilated Angèle’s forehead disappeared beneath a band of white muslin. She was beautiful with a celestial purity and resembled, beneath her candid crown, a sixteen-year-old nun, asleep in thought of heaven. Jean-Pierre said to his son, who was crying silently: “You will be neither powerful nor strong, no doubt, but you will be good. Look at that carefully. I have saved some of them. I will tell you later the names of the enemies who drag them into the abyss of self-harm. And you will do as I do, my son, you will fight.” The child replied, wiping away his tears with a proud and gentle gesture: “I will do as you do, father.” In the next room, Germain Patou was at René’s bedside, in the grip of a terrible fever. René was delirious. He called Angèle and swore to love her always. When the clock at the Châtelet struck seven, the medical student came to the door and said: “Boss, I must go. The medicine is prepared; you will give it every quarter of an hour, and I will come back tomorrow. ” He left. On the Quai Saint-Michel, he knocked at a second-hand bookseller’s stall, which was already closed . “Father Hubault,” he said, “you offered me twelve louis for my books. Come and get them, I’ll sell them to you. ” Father Hubault made the well-known grimace of old -paper dealers who see the light of day exploiting a need. “I only want to give eight louis,” he replied. “Ten or nothing!” Patou said firmly. The second-hand bookseller took his hat. Germain Patou lived in an attic on the Rue Serpente. His room had a bed, a table, two chairs, a bookcase, and a very fine skeleton. The second-hand bookseller took his load of books and left the ten louis. Germain Patou sat down and waited, thinking: “Will I finally find out?” After about ten minutes, a heavy footstep sounded on the steps of the winding staircase leading to the attic. Germain turned pale and put his hand to his beating heart. “Is it her?” he murmured. ” Thus speak young, mentally ill people anxiously awaiting a romantic encounter . Germain Patou, a searching spirit, hardworking by nature, had never made a romantic encounter. There was a knock at the door; Germain opened it immediately; the ignoble and cunning figure of Ezekiel appeared on the threshold. He was carrying a heavy burden; a sack that seemed full of straw, but which, certainly, because of its weight, must have contained something else. “I’ve had enough trouble, Monsieur Patou,” said Ezekiel. “I risked my position at the prefecture, and you know that the fun is over over there, on the Quai de Béthune… You’ll give three hundred francs. ” “I only have ten louis,” replied Germain. “Take it or leave it. ” The words were firm, but his voice trembled. Germain added, pointing to the empty cupboard where his books had once been stored: “I sold everything to get these ten louis.” Ezekiel’s gaze swept around the room. “I could have had as much there,” he grumbled; “perhaps more.” Those who play the game at the Café de la Concorde, Place Saint-Michel, wanted to see what she’s made of inside… and they wouldn’t have paid me anyone of any body type to burn her heart. “If you don’t sell her here,” replied the medical student, “you won’t sell her anywhere. I’ll go down with you and force you to deposit her at the Morgue.” Ezekiel threw his burden on the bed, which creaked. He received the ten gold pieces and left in a bad mood. When he was gone, Germain double-locked his door. The blood rushed to his cheeks and his eyes shone strangely. He lit the second torch that was on his mantelpiece, then, having placed candles in the necks of two empty bottles, he lit them too. The little room had never been so brilliantly lit. Germain took a large, well-sharpened scapel from his pencil case and slit the bag along its entire length. This done, he moved aside, with his two trembling hands, the canvas, then the straw. He thus discovered the pale and marvelous beauty of a deceased young woman, who was Countess Marcian Gregoryi. Chapter 27. ADDHEMA. She was, as we have just said, a marvelous beauty, and I do not know how to express it: the fragments of straw that soiled her disheveled hair became her like an ornament, her sagging clothes better outlined the adorable perfection of her form. She was pale, but her face and her breast had not that lividity which denotes the absence of life. The wound that had killed her formed a round hole at the temple, and was surrounded by a small, barely visible bluish circle. A look seemed to slide between her half-closed eyelids. Germain began to contemplate her. Her physiognomy, marked with the seal of the most lively intelligence, expressed her thoughts like words. And his thought, or rather the impression he was undergoing, was so complex and so subtle that perhaps he himself would not have been able to express it. At least, he did not admit it to himself. There was a great disturbance within him… The greatest disturbance, perhaps the first he had experienced in his life, apart from the emotions of science. His pulse beat with fever, and he was astonished at the oppression that weighed on his chest. After a few minutes, and without knowing what he was doing, he removed bit by bit the straw caught in his hair or in the folds of his clothing. He spent a long time performing this toilette. When he had finished, he heaved a deep sigh. “There is no woman in the world so beautiful!” he murmured. With the help of the Countess’s own handkerchief, a fine cambric whose embroidery half peeped out of the pocket of her dress, he lovingly wiped her forehead. This first contact gave him such a violent sensation that he was afraid he might faint. She was cold—she was dead—and yet the young man’s whole body vibrated under this touch. In spite of himself, he raised the handkerchief to his lips. A sweet perfume exhaled from it with a mysterious intoxication. The handkerchief unfolded and revealed an embroidered shield around which ran a motto, and Germain read, in light dots on the matte background: In vita mors, in morte vita. The handkerchief slipped from his fingers. He pulled up a chair, for his legs were giving way under his body. He sat down. The March wind blew from outside and wept in the windowpanes . From below rose the lively, shrill music of a neighboring tavern where students were dancing. Germain remained for a moment weak and searching for his thoughts that eluded him. His thoughts were science. He had sacrificed his books, his dear books, to search to the depths of a strange secret: all his books, even Samuel Hahnemann’s Organon, the reading of which had been a second birth for him. He firmly believed that his thought was science, and he repeated, as one murmurs a stubborn refrain despite oneself: “Will I know?… will I finally know?” He reopened his pencil case with a deep sigh and chose the sharpest of his scalpels. The touch of the steel gave him a shudder. “Life in death,” he said, “death in life! Is there a decrepit error or a progidious reality? The mystery is there, under this silk, behind this adorable breast, in this heart that no longer beats and yet retains a terrible and latent vitality. I can cut life, open the breast, question the heart… And this, think about it, was for him a very simple thing, a daily occupation. Anatomy already held no more secrets for him. Why did the cold sweat bathe his temples like this? Without thinking, he staunched his wet forehead with the same cambric that had just wiped the beautiful face of the dead woman. It is said that a king of France became mentally ill with love by breathing in the subtle perfumes of a veil that kept the emanations of the divine body of Diane de Poitiers. Germain closed his dazzled eyes. But he was a resolute child. He was ashamed and convulsively clutched the handle of his scalpel. “I want!” he said. ” I want to know!” He cut the silk of the dress with a sudden movement, he cut the shirt and exposed the exquisite perfection of the breast. He stood up, swaying like a drunken man, in order to strike the first blow. But this unveiled complexion was so energetically alive that the scalpel jumped out of his fingers. He clasped his head with both hands, terrified by his own transport… “Do I love her?” he thought aloud. A voice that did not come from the motionless lips of the dead woman, a weak voice that seemed distant, but distinct, answered: “You love me!” An icy flow ran through the student’s veins. He thought he was mentally ill. “Who spoke?” he asked. The voice, more distant and less clear, answered: “It’s me, Addhéma…” The March wind shook the window frames, and from below the tavern sent out shrill peals of laughter. Germain, awakened by these external noises, made a violent effort and placed the palm of his right hand on his breast, where his heart should have been beating. It was cold; it was no longer beating. Germain felt nothing, except the pulsations of his own arteries , which were rushing wildly. He felt nothing, for the verb “to feel” expresses a clear and positive fact, but he experienced something extraordinary and powerful, which he himself compared to a profound magnetization. His whole being reeled within him, as if the separation were about to take place between soul and body. For the first time since he had lived, for the last time perhaps until the hour of his death, he was conscious of the two principles composing his own entity. He recognized, by a fleeting but robust perception, matter here, spirit there. It was a heart-rending, somehow voluptuous experience. It lasted only a moment: the time it takes for a lamp to cast that great brilliance which precedes its end. Then everything became vague. He searched for his soul as just now he had searched for his thoughts. He wanted to withdraw his hand, but he could not; the muscles of his arm were of stone. This heart did not beat, this flesh was inert and cold, but a dull fluid poured out of it in a torrent. Germain recognized that he was going to fall asleep, standing as he was, and fall into a catalepsy. He tried to resist; an irresistible and ironic crushing force drove back his effort. His eyes already saw differently this white statue, so splendidly beautiful. It seemed to him to detach itself from the bed and swim in space. The light which slid between the closed eyelashes became more brilliant, lengthened, and rose towards him like a gaze. And the voice—the voice that had said, “You love me,” coming from everywhere at once and enveloping him like a speaking atmosphere, murmured within and without him words that took him a long time to understand. This voice said, “Kill me, kill me, I beg you, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! My most terrible suffering is to live in this death and to die in this life… Kill me!” These strange words seemed to come and go, mocking. From outside, nothing could be heard, neither the moaning of the wind nor the gaiety of the tavern. Everything in the room began to stir, as if it were the cabin of a ship tormented by the waves. The dead woman alone remained motionless, in the serenity of her supreme sleep, suspended by an occult power above the bed, which no longer supported her. Thus she rose slowly, lifted into the void. Germain guessed that her mouth would soon come level with his lips. And the voice said, ever more distant: “To kill me, you must burn my heart, I am the vampire whose death is a life, life a death. Kill me! My torture is to live, my salvation would be to die. Kill me, kill me! ” These words laughed bitterly around the student’s ears. And the white statue rose. When the face of the dead woman was very close to his, Germain, he saw a drop of vermilion and liquid blood coming from the wound. And a burning breath burned him. And his lip was touched by that mouth which seemed to him like fire. He received a shock whose dizzying violence no words can convey. It was his last sensation. He glimpsed, gaping, the bottomless abyss that we call eternity. He fell there… The next morning, in broad daylight, he awoke, lying sideways on his bed with his face against the covers. The body of Countess Marcian Gregoryi had disappeared. The thought wanted to arise in him that he had been the plaything of a terrible dream. But he still held his scalpel in his hand; the coarse canvas bag was there too, the straw too, the fine cambric handkerchief where the light dots outlined the Latin motto,–and on the sheet, just where his lips had once been stuck, there was a round, red stain, which was the drop of blood… They tell there, while harvesting their wide fields of corn, from Semlin to Temesvar and as far as Szegedin, they tell of the great nocturnal orgy at the ruins of Bangkeli. Our story has already had its real outcome. This is perhaps the fantastic outcome of our story. Bangkeli was a Christian castle, flanked by eight Turkish towers, which looked down on the Save from the top of a bare mountain. It was as vast as a city. The ruins attest to this. For centuries, water from the sky had been flooding the magnificent halls through the ruined roofs when the vampires’ orgy took place. Lila had lied when she told René de Kervoz that the last count was a general in Prince Charles’s army during Bonaparte’s battles. The last count was a famous and powerful voyvode in the time of Mathias Corvinus, the epic son of John Hunyades. He was killed by his wife Addhéma, who betrayed him for the rebel Szandor. And for many years, Szandor and Addhéma, masters of the immense domain, frightened the country with the rumor of their crimes. Both were vampires. In the following ages, their tombs, from which misfortune sprang, were the terror and mourning of the region. Between them, and them alone, they are the entire legend of the banks of the Save. One night, we do not say exactly when, but it was towards the beginning of this century, the Serbian boatmen saw the redder sun reflected in the broken panes of the main buildings draped in ivy. You would have said a fire. The sun disappeared, however, behind the endless plains that lead to the Adriatic Gulf, and the windows of the ancient fortress remained red. Redder. There was a great fire inside. The boatmen of the Save crossed themselves, saying: “Count Szandor is going to sell a night of love to his wife Addhéma.” And they heaved on their oars to descend quickly towards Belgrade. At the price of treasure, no one would have wanted to approach the cursed fortress. Who then recounted what happened there that night? Who was the first? We don’t know, but it is told. That’s how popular traditions always are. And perhaps you would find there the origin of the faith they inspire. We believe in them because no one can say the name of the liar who imagined them. The great hall of Bangkeli Castle was pompously illuminated. The murals, faded and soiled, seemed to come back to life in the fires of the chandeliers. The knights’ old armor reflected the dull sparks in bundles, and the Saracen galleries, added to the ancient Romanesque construction, coquettishly displayed the lightness of their polychrome lacework. On a table laid and covered with the most exquisite dishes, the wines of Hungary, Greece, and France mingled their bottles. It is, there, the climate of Italy, perhaps more beautiful and more generous. The golden alberges rose in pyramids among hills of citrons, oranges, and grapes, while the watermelons, with their green husks, bled under the knife. One could not say where the silken cushions and magnificent carpets had come from that night adorned the stately home, abandoned and deserted for centuries. On the cushions near the table, where the disordered dishes and disheveled flasks announced the end of the feast, a young man and a young woman, both beautiful enough to dazzle the eye, were half-reclining. Not far from them was a pile of gold coins, next to a chest. “My lord,” said the young woman, exposing her soft forehead, crowned with blond curls, to the kisses of her companion, “this gold has cost much blood. ” The young man replied: “It takes blood to amass gold, and the gold that is lavished makes blood flow. There is a mystical link between blood and gold. That stupid herd that populates the world, men, calls us vampires.” They hate us and unsuspectingly extend their veins to those other vampires called the clever, the happy, the strong, without thinking that the opulence of one, or the power of one , or his glory can only ever be made with the blood of all: blood, sweat, marrow, thought, valor. Thousands work, only one profits… “My lord,” murmured the young woman, “you are eloquent; my lord, you are handsome; my lord, you resemble a god, but deign to lower a glance towards your little servant Addhéma, who languishes with love for you.” The superb Szandor looked at her indeed. “You are entitled to a night of pleasure,” he replied; “you bought it. I am here to win this pile of gold… But when you are dead, Addhéma, with this gold I will buy a seraglio of princesses; I will dazzle Paris, where you come from, London, Vienna, or divine Naples; I will dispute Rome with the cardinals, Istanbul with the padischah, Mysore with the proconsuls sick of the English conquest. Wherever I am, the other vampires turn pale and disappear… ” There was a strange gleam in Addhéma’s beautiful eyes. “A kiss! Szandor, my lover! A kiss! Szandor, my lord!” The superb Szandor conceded: the bargain had to be fulfilled. The storytellers along the banks of the Save say that this kiss, which cost several millions, was heard along the river, in the plains, and deep in the forests. The love of tigers makes a great noise: it is a battle. There were howls and gnashing of teeth; the red lights stirred? The ancient fortress trembled on its ten-century-old foundations. Then, the two monsters with angelic faces remained motionless, overcome by voluptuous fatigue. The wine flowed, putting its rubies on their pale lips. Addhéma’s gaze burned dully. “Tell me the story of these golden curls that crown your brow, my fiancée,” said Szandor, reconciled; “this night, I find you beautiful. ” “Always I find you handsome,” replied the vampire. She leaned her charming head on her lover’s breast and continued: “There was on the road a beautiful little girl who was asking for her bread. I met her between Vienna and Pressburg. She smiled so sweetly that I took her with me in my carriage. For two days she was very happy, and I heard her thanking God for having found such a generous and kind mistress. This evening, before coming, I felt my blood running cold in my veins. I had to be young and beautiful. I took the child on my knees, she fell asleep, I killed her… While she spoke thus, her voice was sweet as a song. Szandor’s hands bathed in that silky, soft hair that was the prize of an incident. The tale seemed piquant to him and awakened his sleeping whim. The struggle of love began again, wild and like the frolics of wild beasts that frighten the solitude of the thickets. Then it was the turn of the orgy. And again and again! The morning light illuminated the supreme battle, amidst broken flasks, scattered gold, carpets soiled with wine and mud . In the hearth a brazier burned; Above the brazier, an iron basin contained molten metal. Among the burning coals, an iron bar was glowing red. Addhéma said: “I do not want to see the sun rise. O you whom I have loved, living and dead, Szandor, my king, my god! You promised me that I would die by your hand, after this night of delights. You know how to put an end to my suffering, for my torture is to live, and I aspire to the blissful sleep of death. ” “I promised, I will keep it, my beautiful one,” replied Szandor without too much emotion. “Well, now is day and I must set out . There are beautiful girls in Prague. I want to be in Prague before nightfall… Are you ready, my love? ” “I am ready,” replied Addhéma. Szandor wet a silk handkerchief to wrap around the end of the red-hot iron. Addhéma followed his every movement with a worried and somber gaze, watching his features for a trace of emotion. But Szandor thought of the beautiful young girls of Prague and smiled while humming a drinking song. Addhéma’s eye burned. Szandor removed the iron bar from the hearth, which sparked. “It’s ready!” he said with sinister gaiety. “It’s ready!” repeated Addhéma. “Szandor, my beloved, farewell.” “Farewell, my charming one…” Szandor raised his arm. But Addhéma said to him: “I don’t want to see you strike me, angel of my life. Give it, I ‘ll pierce my breast myself; you only pour in the molten lead. ” “As you please,” replied Szandor. “Women have whims.” And he passed him the red-hot iron. Addhéma took it and plunged it into his heart so violently that the burning rod pierced his chest right through. The monster fell, stammering an unfinished blasphemy. “The young girls of Prague can wait for you!” murmured the vampire, straightening her magnificent figure and smiling triumphantly. She withdrew the iron from the wound. There remained an enormous hole, into which she poured the molten metal that the basin contained. Then she kissed the livid forehead of her monstrous lover and put the still-red iron into her heart. That morning, there was a storm the likes of which Hungary had never seen before. Bangkeli Castle, struck by lightning twenty times, left not a stone upon another. In the tall marijuana plants growing among the rubble, two skeletons are shown, their intertwined bones uniting in a funereal kiss.
Thus ends our journey through Paul Féval’s “The Vampire,” a work that combines the fascination of the occult with the power of the Gothic novel. Through his evocative descriptions and disturbing characters , Féval reminds us how myths and legends continue to inhabit the collective imagination. If this reading captivated you, do not hesitate to explore other stories by this great author or to delve into other classics of fantasy literature. Thank you for joining us on this immersion into the heart of mystery, and we will meet again soon for a new literary adventure.
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