"'It is the secret of my life!'
"He was lying on a sort of sick chair or lounge, in the library where he passed his last days with his books. He made me sit down beside him. He took my hand and said:
"'I am going to die. I believed that the end had come last night. I called thee. Oh, well, if I had died there is one being in the world who would not have had the fortune which—I have'——
"He lowered his voice as if he thought we were spied upon, as if some one could hear.
"'I have a daughter. Yes, even from thee I have hidden this secret, which tortures me. A daughter who loves me and who has not the right to confess this tenderness, no more than I have the right to give her my name. Ah! our youth, sad youth! I might have had a home to-day, a fireside of my own, a dear one near me, and instead of that, an affection of which I am ashamed and whichI have hidden even from thee, Jacques, from thee, dost thou comprehend?'
"I remember each of Rovère's words as if I was hearing them now. This conversation with my poor friend is among the most poignant yet most precious of my remembrances. With much emotion, which distressed me, the poor man revealed to me the secret which he had believed it his duty to hide from me so many years, and I vowed to him—I swore to him on my honor, and that is why I hesitated to speak, or rather refused to speak, not wishing to compromise any one, neither the dead nor living—I swore to him, Monsieur le Juge, to repeat nothing of what he told me to any one, to any one but to her"——
"Her?" interrogated M. Ginory.
"His daughter," Dantin replied.
The Examining Magistrate recalled that visitor in black, who had been seen occasionally at Rovère's apartments, and the little romance of which Paul Rodier had written in his paper—the romance of the Woman in Black!
"And this daughter?"
"She bears," said Dantin, with a discouraged gesture, "the name of the father which the law gives her, and this name is a great name, an illustrious name, that of a retired general officer, living in one of the provinces, a widower, and who adores the girl who is another man's child. The motheris dead. The father has never known. When dying, the mother revealed the secret to her daughter. She came, by command of the dead, to see Rovère, but as a Sister of Charity, faithful to the name which she bears. She does not wish to marry; she will never leave the crippled old soldier who calls her his daughter, and who adores her."
"Oh!" said M. Ginory, remaining mute a moment before this very simple drama, and in which, in that moment of reflection, he comprehended, he analyzed, nearly all of the hidden griefs, the secret tears, the stifled sobs, the stolen kisses. "And that is why you kept silent?" he asked.
"Yes, Monsieur. Oh! but I could not endure the torture any longer, and not seeing the expected release any nearer, I would have spoken, I would have spoken to escape that cell, that sense of suffocation, I endured there. It seemed to me, however, that I owed it to my dead friend not to reveal his secret to any one, not even to you. I shall never forget Rovère's joy, when relieved of the burden, by the confidence which he had reposed in me, he said to me, that now that she who was his daughter, and was poor, living at Blois only on the pension of a retired officer to whom she had appointed herself nurse, knowing that she was not his daughter, this innocent child, who was paying with a life of devotion for the sins of two guilty ones, would at least have happiness at last.
"She is young, and the one for whom she cares cannot live always. My fortune will give her a dowry. And then!"
"It was to me to whom he confided this fortune. He had very little money with his notary. Erratic and distrustful, Rovère kept his valuables in his safe, as he kept his books in his library. It seemed that he was a collector, picking up all kinds of things. Avaricious? No; but he wished to have about him, under his hand, everything which belonged to him. He possibly may have wished to give what he had directly to the one to whom it seemed good to him to give it, and confide it to me in trust.
"I regret not having asked him directly that day what he counted on doing with his fortune and how he intended enriching his child, whom he had not the right to recognize. I dared, or, rather, I did not think of it. I experienced a strong emotion when I saw my friend enfeebled and almost dying. I had known him so different, so handsome. Oh! those poor, sad, restless eyes, that lowered voice, as if he feared an enemy was listening! Illness had quickly, brutally changed that vigorous man, suddenly old and timorous.
"I went away from that first interview much distressed, carrying a secret which seemed to me a heavy and cruel one; and which made me think of the uselessness, the wickedness, the vain loves of aruined life. But I felt that Rovère owed truly his fortune to that girl who, the next day after the death of the one whom she had piously attended, found herself poor and isolated in a little house in a steep street, near the Château, above Blois. I felt that, whatever this unknown father left, ought not to go to distant relatives, who cared nothing for him; did not even know him; were ignorant of his sufferings and perhaps even of his existence, and who by law would inherit.
"A dying man, yes! There could be no question about it, and Dr. Vilandry, whom I begged to accompany me to see my friend, did not hide it from me. Rovère was dying of a kidney difficulty, which had made rapid progress.
"It was necessary, then, since he was not alone in the world, that he should think of the one of whom he had spoken and whom he loved.
"'For I love her, that child whom I have no right to name. I love her! She is good, tender, admirable. If I did not see that she resembled me—for she does resemble me—I should tell thee that she was beautiful. I would be proud to cry aloud: "This is my daughter!" To promenade with her on my arm—and I must hide this secret from all the world. That is my torture! And it is the chastisement of all that has not been right in my life. Ah! sad, unhappy loves!' That same malediction for the past came to his lips as it hadcome to his thoughts. The old workman, burdened with labor throughout the week, who could promenade on the Boulevard de Clichy on Sunday, with his daughter on his arm, was happier than Rovère. And—a strange thing, sentiment of shame and remorse—feeling himself traveling fast to his last resting-place in the cemetery, he expressed no wish to see that child, to send for her to come from Blois under some pretext or other, easy enough to find.
"No, he experienced a fierce desire for solitude, he shrunk from an interview, in which he feared all his grief would rush to his lips in a torrent of words. He feared for himself, for his weakness, for the strange feeling he experienced in his head.
"'It seems as if it oscillated upon my shoulders,' he said. 'If Marthe came (and he repeated the name as a child would have pronounced it who was just learning to name the letters of a word) I would give her but the sad spectacle of a broken-down man, and leave on her mind only the impression of a human ruin. And then—and then—not to see her! not to have the right to see her! that is all right—it is my chastisement!'
"Let it be so! I understood. I feared that an interview would be mortal. He had been so terribly agitated when he had sent for me that other time.
"But I, at least, wished to recall to him hisformer wish which he had expressed of providing for the girl's future. I desired that he should make up for the past, since money is one of the forms of reparation. But I dared not speak to him again in regard to it, or of that trust of which he had spoken.
"He said to me, this strong man whom Death had never frightened, and whom he had braved many times, he said to me now, weakened by this illness which was killing him hour by hour:
"If I knew that my end was near I would decide—but I have time."
"Time! Each day brought him a little nearer to that life about which I feared to say to him: 'The time has come!' The fear, in urging him to a last resolution, of seeming like an executioner whose presence seemed to say: 'To-day is the day!' prevented me. You understand, Monsieur? And why not? I ought to wait no longer. Rovère's confidence had made of me a second Rovère who possessed the strength and force of will which the first one now lacked. I felt that I held in my hands, so to speak, Marthe's fate. I did not know her, but I looked upon her as a martyr in her vocation of nurse to the old paralytic to whom she was paying, in love, the debt of the dead wife. I said to myself: 'It is to me, to me alone, that Rovère must give instructions of what he wishes to leave to his daughter, and it is for me to urgehim to do this, it is for me to brace his weakened will! I was resolved! It was a duty! Each day the unhappy man's strength failed. I saw it—this human ruin! One morning, when I went to his apartments, I found him in a singular state of terror. He related me a story, I knew not what, of a thief, whose victim he was; the lock of his door had been forced, his safe opened. Then, suddenly, interrupting himself, he began to laugh, a feeble laugh, which made me ill.
"'I am a fool,' he said. 'I am dreaming, awake—I continue in the daytime the nightmares of the night—a thief here! No one has come—Mme. Moniche has watched—but my head is so weak, so weak! I have known so many rascals in my life! Rascals always return,hein!'
"He made a sad attempt at a laugh.
"It was delirium! A delirium which soon passed away, but which frightened me. It returned with increased force each day, and at shorter intervals.
"Well, I said to myself, during a lucid interview, 'he must do what he has resolved to do, what he had willed to do—what he wishes to do!' And I decided—it was the night before the assassination—to bring him to the point, to aid his hesitation. I found him calmer that day. He was lying on his lounge, enveloped in his dressing gown, with a traveling rug thrown across his thinlegs. With his black skull-cap and his grayish beard he looked like a dying Doge.
"He held out his bony hand to me, giving me a sad smile, and said that he felt better. A period of remission in his disease, a feeling of comfort pervading his general condition.
"'What if I should recover?' he said, looking me full in the face.
"I comprehended by that ardent look, which was of singular vitality, that this man, who had never feared death, still clung to life. It was instinct.
"I replied that certainly he might, and I even said that he would surely recover, but—with what grievous repugnance did I approach the subject—I asked him if, experiencing the general feeling of ease and comfort which pervaded his being, whether he would not be even more comfortable and happy if he thought of what he ought to do for that child of whom he had spoken, and for whose future he wished to provide.
"'And since thou art feeling better, my dear Rovère, it is perhaps the opportunity to put everything in order in that life which thou art about to recover, and which will be a new life.'
"He looked fixedly at me with his beautiful eyes. It was a profound regard, and I saw that he divined my thought.
"'Thou art right!' he said firmly; 'no weakness.'
"Then, gathering all his forces, he arose, stood upright, refusing even the arm which I held out to him, and in his dressing gown, which hung about him, he seemed to me taller, thinner, even handsomer. He took two or three steps, at first a little unsteady, then, straightening up, he walked directly to his safe, turned the letters, and opened it, after having smiled, and said:
"'I had forgotten the word—four letters; it is, however, a little thing. My head is empty.'
"Then, the safe opened, he took out papers—of value, without doubt—papers which he took back to his lounge, spread out on a table near at hand, and said:
"'Let us see! This which I am going to give thee is for her——A will, yes, I could make a will——but it would create talk——it would be asked what I had done——it would be searched out, dug out of the past, it would open a tomb——I cannot!—--What I have shall be hers, thou wilt give it to her—thou'——
"And his large, haggard eyes searched through the papers.
"'Ah! here!' he said; 'here are some bonds! Egyptian—of a certain value to the holder, at 3 per cent. I hid that—where did I put it?'
"He picked up the papers, turned them over and over, became alarmed, turned pale.
"'But,' I said to him, 'is it not among those papers?'
"He shrugged his shoulders, displayed with an ironical smile the engraved papers.
"'Some certificates of decorations! The bric-a-brac of a Consular life.'
"Then with renewed energy he again went to the safe, opened the till, pulled it out, and searched again and again.
"Overcome with fright, he exclaimed: 'It is not there!'
"'Why is it not there?'
"And he gave me another look—haggard! terrible! His face was fearfully contracted. He clasped his head with both hands, and stammered, as if coming out of a dream.
"'It is true, I remember—I have hidden it! Yes, I hid it! I do not know where—in some book! In which one?'
"He looked around him with wild eyes. The cerebral anæmia which had made him fear robbery again seized him, and poor Rovère, my old friend, plainly showed that he was enduring the agony of a man who is drowning, and who does not know where to cling in order to save himself.
"He was still standing, but as he turned around, he staggered.
"He repeated in a hoarse, frightened voice: 'Where, where have I hidden that? Fool! Thesafe did not seem to me secure enough! Where, where have I put it?'
"It was then, Monsieur, yes, at that moment, that the concierge entered and saw us standing face to face before those papers of which she had spoken. I must have looked greatly embarrassed, very pale, showing the violent emotion which seized me by the throat. Rovère said to her rather roughly: 'What are you here for?' and sent her away with a gesture. Mme. Moniche had had time to see the open safe and the papers spread out, which she supposed were valuable. I understand how she deceived herself, and when I think of it, I accuse myself. There was something tragic taking place between Rovère and me. This woman could not know what it was, but she felt it.
"And it was more terrible, a hundred times more terrible, when she had disappeared. There seemed to be a battle raging in Rovère's brain, as between his will and his weakness. Standing upright, striving not to give way, struggling to concentrate all his brain power in his effort to remember, to find some trace of the hidden place where he had foolishly put his fortune, between the leaves of some huge book. Rovère called violently, ardently to his aid his last remnant of strength to combat against this anæmia which took away the memory of what he had done. He rolled his eyes desperately, found nothing, remembered nothing.
"It was awful—this combat against memory, which disappeared, fled; this aspect of a panting beast, a hunted boar which seemed to seize this man—and I shivered when, with a rage, I shall never forget, the dying man rushed, in two steps, to the table, bent over the papers, snatched them up with his thin hands, crumpled them up, tore them in two and threw them under his feet, with an almost maniacal laugh, saying in strident tones:
"'Ah! Decorations! Brevets, baubles! Childish foolishness! What good are they? Would they give her a living?'
"And he kept on laughing. He excited himself over the papers, which he stamped under his feet until he had completely exhausted himself. He gasped, 'I stifle!' and he half fell over the lounge, upon which I laid him. I fully believed that he was dying. I experienced a horrible sensation, which was agonizing. He revived, however. But how, after that swoon and that crisis, could I speak to him again of his daughter, of that which he wished to leave her, to give, in trust, to me? He became preoccupied with childish things, returning to the dreams of a rich man; he spoke of going out the next day. We would go together in the Bois. We would dine at the Pavilion. He would like to travel. And thus he rambled on.
"I said to myself, 'Wait! Let us wait! To-morrow, after a good night's sleep, he will perhapsremember. I surely have some days before me. To speak to him to-day would be to provoke a new crisis.'
"And I helped him to put back in the safe the crushed, torn papers, without his asking me, or even himself questioning how they had come there, who had thrown them on the floor, or who had opened the safe. His face wore a slight smile, his gestures were automatic. Very weary, he at last said:
"'I am very tired. I would like to sleep.' I left him. He had stretched himself out and covered himself up. He closed his eyes and said:
"'It is so good to sleep!'
"I would see him to-morrow. I would try to again to-morrow awaken in him the desire which now seemed dulled. To-morrow his memory would have returned, and in some of his books where he had (like the Arabs who put their harvests in silos) placed his treasure he would find the fortune intended for his daughter.
"To-morrow! It is the word one repeats most often, and which one has the least right to use.
"I saw Rovère only after he was dead, with his throat cut—assassinated by whom? The man whom you have arrested has traveled much; he comes from a distance. Rovère was Consul at Buenos Ayres, and you know that he said to me the last day I saw him: 'I have known many rascals in my life!'Which seemed very simple when one thinks of the way he had lived.
"This is the truth, Monsieur. I ought to have told you sooner. I repeat that I had the weakness of wishing to keep the vow given to my dead friend. I had the name of a woman to betray, the name of a man, too; innocent of Rovère's fault. And then, again, it seemed to me that this truth ought to become known of itself. When I was arrested, a sort of foolish bravado urged me to see how far the absurdity of the charge could accumulate against me seeming proofs. I am a gambler. That was a part I played against you, or rather against the foolishness of destiny. I did not take a second thought that the error could be a lasting one. I had, moreover, only a word to say, but this word, I repeat, I hesitated to speak, and I willingly supported the consequence of this hesitation, even because this word was a name."
"That name," said M. Ginory, "I have not asked you."
"I refused it to the Magistrate," said Jacques Dantin, "but I confide it to the man of honor!"
"There is only a Magistrate here," M. Ginory replied, "but the legal inquiry has its secrets, as life has."
And Jacques Dantin gave the name which the one whom Louis-Pièrre Rovère called, Marthe, bore as her rightful name.
M. Ginory, M. Leriche, the chief; Bernardet, and, in fact, all the judiciary, believed that Charles Pradès was guilty of the murder of Rovère. Bernardet, who had been an actor in this drama, had now become a spectator.
Paul Rodier, a good reporter, had learned before his confreres of the arrest of the young man, and, abandoning what he had called his trail of the Woman in Black, he abruptly whirled about and quickly invented a sensational biography of the newcomer. Charles-Henri Pradès, or rather Carlos Pradès, as he called himself, had been agaucho, a buffalo tamer, a cowboy, using, turn by turn, the American revolver against the Redskins and the Mexican lasso against the Yankees.
The journalist had obtained a signature, picked up by the lodging-house keeper where the guilty man had been hunted down, and published in his paper the autographic characters; he had deduced from them some dramatic observations. Cooper, of former times; Gustave Aymard, of yesterday; Rudyard Kipling or Bret Harte, of to-day, had never met a personage more dreadful, and at the same time more heroic. Carlos Pradès used thenavaja (Spanish knife) with the terrible rapidity of a Catalan. He had felt since the days of Buenos Ayres a fierce hate for the ex-Consul, and this crime, which some of his brother reporters, habitually indifferently informed (it was Paul Rodier who spoke), now attributed alone to the avarice of this Cambrioleur from over the sea; he, Rodier, gave this note as the cause of vengeance, and built thereupon a romance which made his readers shiver. Or, rather, he said nothing outright. He permitted one a glimpse into, he outlined, one knows not what, dark history. Soon he made this Carlos Pradès the instrument and the arm of an association of vengeance. He could even believe that there was anarchy in the affair. Then he had the young man mixed in some love affair, a drama of passion, with Argentine Republic for the theatre.
As a result he had succeeded in making interesting the man whom Bernardet had pushed a few nights before into the station house.
And, what was a singular thing, the reporter had divined part of the truth. It was still another episode in his past that Rovère expiated when he found himself one day, in his salon in the Boulevard de Clichy, face to face with the man who was to be his murderer. At Buenos Ayres, the ex-Consul had been associated in a large agricultural enterprise with a man whose hazardous speculations, play and various adventures had completelyruined him, and who had left two children—a young girl whom Rovère thought for a moment of marrying, and a son, younger—poor beings of whom the Consul, paying his partner's debts, seemed the natural protector. Jean Pradès, in committing suicide—he had killed himself, frightened at the magnitude of his debts—had commended his children to Rovère's care.
If Carlotta had lived, without doubt Rovère would have made her his wife. He loved her with a deep and respectful tenderness. The poor girl died very suddenly, and there remained to Rovère only his dream. One of those remembrances of a fireside, one of those spectres which brush the forehead with their wings or the folds of their winding sheets, when in the solitude in which he has voluntarily buried himself the searcher after adventures recalls the past. The past of yesterday. Illusions, disillusions, old loves, miseries!
Rovère gave to this brother of the dead girl the affection which he had felt for her. He remembered, also, the father's request. Pradès's son, passionate, eager to live, tempted in all his appetites, accepted as his due Rovère's truly paternal devotion, worked on the sympathy of this man, who, through pity and duty, too, gave to Charles a little of the affection which he had felt for the sister, almost his fiancee, and for the father, dead by his own hand.
But, little by little, the solicitations, the unreasonable demands of Pradès, who, believing that he had a just claim on his father's old partner, found it very natural that Rovère should devote himself to him—these continual and pressing demands became for the Consul irritating obsessions. Rovère seemed to this young man, who was a spendthrift and a gambler—a gambler possessed with atavistic frenzy—a sort of living savings bank, from which he could draw without counting. His importunities at last seemed fatiguing and excessive, and Pradès was advised one beautiful day that he no longer need count from that moment on the generosity of his benefactor. All this happened at Buenos Ayres, and about the time of the Consul's departure for France. Rovère added to this very curt declaration a last benefit. He gave to the brother of the dead girl, to the son of Pradès, of the firm of Rovère and Pradès, a sum sufficient to enable him to live while waiting for better things, and he told the young man in proper terms that, as he had now no one to depend upon, that he had better take himself elsewhere to be hung. The word could not be, with the appetites and habits of Charles Pradès, taken in a figurative sense, and the young man continued his life of adventures, as tragic in their reality and as improbable as the reporters' melodramatic inventions.
Then, at the end of his resources, after havingsearched for fortune among miners, weary of tramping about in America, he embarked one morning for Havre, with the idea that the best gold mine was still that living placer which he had exploited in Buenos Ayres, and which was called Pièrre Rovère.
At Paris, where he knew the Consul had retired, Pradès soon found trace of him, and learned where was the retreat of his brother-in-law. His brother-in-law! He pronounced the word with a wicked sneer, as if it had for him a something understood about the sweet and maiden remembrance of the dead girl. There, in gay Paris, with some resources which allowed him to pay for his board and lodging in a third-rate hotel, he searched, asked, discovered, at last, the address of the ex-Consul, and presented himself to Rovère, who felt, at sight of this spectre, his anger return.
The first time that Charles Pradès had asked at the lodge if M. Rovère was at home, the Moniches had permitted him to go upstairs, and perhaps Mme. Moniche would have suspected the man in the sombrero if she had not surprised Jacques Dantin before the open safe and the papers.
Pradès, moreover, had appeared only three times at Rovère's house, and on the day of the murder he had entered at the moment when Mme. Moniche was sweeping the upper floors, and Moniche was working in his shop in the rear of the lodge, andthe staircase was empty. He rang, and Rovère, with dragging steps, came to open the door. Rovère was ill and was a little ennuied, and he believed, or instinctively hoped, that it was the woman in black—his daughter!
Everything served Pradès's projects. He had come not to kill, but by some means to gain entrance to Rovère's apartments, and, when once there, to find some resource—a loan, more or less freely given, more or less forced—and he would leave with it.
Rovère, already worn out, weary of his former supplications, felt tempted to shut the door in his face, but Pradès pushed it back, entered, closed it, and said:
"A last interview! You will never see me again! But listen to me!"
Then, Rovère allowed him to enter the salon, and despite the terrible weakness which he experienced wished to make this a final, decisive interview; to disembarrass himself once for all of this everlasting beggar, sometimes whining, sometimes threatening.
"Will you not let me die in peace?" he said. "Have I not paid my debt?"
But Pradès had seated himself in a fauteuil, crossed his legs and hung over his knee his sombrero, on which he drummed a minstrel march.
"My dear Monsieur Rovère, it is a last appealfor funds. I believe that America is better than Paris. And in order to return there or to do what I ought here, I must have what I have not—money!"
"I am tired of giving you money!" Rovère quickly replied.
And between these two men, bound by the remembrance of the dead girl—a bond burdensome to the one, imposed upon by the other—a storm of bitter words and harsh sentiments arose and kindled fierce anger in both.
"I tried to let you remain in peace, my dear Consul. But hunger has driven the wolf out of the woods. I am very hungry. And here I am!"
"I have nothing with which to feed your appetites. You are nothing but a burden to me."
"Oh! Ingratitude!" and Pradès, with his Argentine accent, spoke his sister's name.
"My father died and Carlotta herself entrusted me to your care, my dear brother-in-law!"
It seemed to the sick man, irritated as he was, that this name—which he had buried deep in his heart with chaste tenderness—was a supreme insult.
"I forbid you to evoke that memory! You do not see, then, that the memory of that dear and saintly creature is one of the griefs of my life!"
"And it is one of my heritages! Brother-in-law of a consul,Senor mia, but it is a title, and I hold it!"
Rovère experienced a strong desire to call, to ring, to give an order to have this troublesome visitor put out. But energetic and fearless as he had been but a short time before, now weakened by illness, he trembled before a possible scandal. Then he, unaided, attempted to push the young man out of the salon. Pradès resisted, and, at the first touch, gave a bound, and all that was evil in him suddenly awoke.
A struggle ensued, without a word being pronounced by either; a quick, brutal struggle. Rovère counted on his past strength, taking by the collar this Pradès who threatened him, and Pradès, while clutching the ex-Consul with his left hand, searched in his pocket for a weapon—the one which Bernardet had taken from him.
This was a sinister moment! Pradès pushed Rovère back; he staggered and fell against a piece of furniture, while the young man disengaging himself, stepped back, quickly opened his Spanish knife, then, with a bound, caught Rovère, shook him, and holding the knife uplifted, said:
"Thou hast willed it!"
It was at this instant that Rovère, whose hands were contracted, dug his nails into the assassin's neck—the nails which the Commissary Desbrière and M. Jacquelin Audrays had found still red with blood.
Pradès, who had come there either to supplicateor threaten, now had only one thought, hideous and ferocious—to kill! He did not reason. It was no more than an unchained instinct. The noise of the organs upon the Boulevard, which accompanied with their musical, dragging notes this savage scene, like a tremulo undertone to a melodrama at the theatre, he did not hear. The whole intensity of his life seemed to be concentrated in his fury, in his hand armed with the knife. He threw himself on Rovère; he struck the flesh, opening the throat, as across the water among the Gauchos he had been accustomed to kill sheep or cut the throat of an ox.
Rovère staggered, wavered, freed from the hand which held him, and Pradès stepping back, looked at him.
Livid, the dying man seemed to live only in his eyes. He had cast upon the murderer a last meaning look—now, in a sort of supreme agony, he looked around, his eyes searched for a support, for aid, yes, they called, while from that throat horrible sounds issued.
Pradès saw with a kind of fright, Rovère, with a superhuman tragic effort, step back, staggering like a drunken man, pull with his poor contracted hands from above the chimney piece an object which the murderer had not noticed and upon which, with an ardent, prayerful expression he fixed his eyes, stammering some quick inarticulate words which Pradès could not hear or understand.
It seemed to Pradès that between his victim and himself there was a witness, and whether he thought of the value of the stones imbedded in the frame or whether he wished to take from Rovère this last support in his distress, he went to him and attempted to tear the portrait from his hands. But an extraordinary strength seemed to come to the dying man and Rovère resisted, fastening his eyes upon the portrait, casting upon it a living flame, like the last flare of a dying lamp, and with this last, despairing, agonizing look the ex-Consul breathed his last. He fell. Pradès tore the portrait from the fingers which clutched it. That frame, he could sell it. He picked up here and there some pieces which seemed to him of value, as if on a pillaging tour on the prairies. He was about to enter the library where the safe was, when the noise of the opening of the entrance door awakened his trapper's instinct. Some one was coming. Who it could be was of little importance. To remain was to expose himself, to be at once arrested. The corpse once seen, the person would cry aloud, rush out, close the door and send for the police.
Hesitating between a desire to pillage and the necessity for fright, Pradès did not wait long to decide. Should he hide? Impossible! Then, stepping back to the salon door, he flattened himself as much as possible against the wall and waited until the door should be opened when hewould be completely hidden behind it. As Mme. Moniche stepped into the room and cried out as she saw Rovère lying on the floor, Pradès slipped into the ante-chamber, found himself on the landing, closed the door, rapidly descended the stairs and stepped out upon the Boulevard de Clichy among the passers-by, even before Mme. Moniche, terrified, had called for help.
Allthe details of that murder, M. Ginory had drawn, one by one, from Pradès in his examination. The murderer denied at first; hesitated; discussed; then at last, like a cask with the bung out, from which pours not wine, but blood, the prisoner told all; confessed; recounted; loosened his tongue; abandoned himself weakened and conquered, weary of his misery.
"I was so foolish, so stupid," he violently said, "as to keep the portrait. I believed that the frame was worth a fortune. Fool! I sold it for a hundred sous!"
He gave the merchant's address, it was on the Quai Saint Michel. Bernardet found the frame as he had found the painted panel, and this time, no great credit was due him.
"Now," said he, "the affair is ended,classé. My children (he was relating his adventures to his little girls), we must pass to another. And why"—
"Why, what?" asked Mme. Bernardet.
"Eh! there it is! Why—it lacks the elucidation of a problem. I will see! I will know!"
He still remembered the young Danish doctor, whom he had seen with M. Morin at the autopsy.With his knowledge of men, with the sharp, keen eye of the police officer, Bernardet had recognized a man of superior mind; a mind dreamy and mysterious. He knew where Dr. Erwin lived during his sojourn in Paris, and he went to his apartment one beautiful morning and rang the bell at the door of a hotel in the Boulevard Saint Martin, where students and strangers lodge. He might have asked advice of M. Morin, of the master of French Science, but he, the Inspector of Sureté, approach these high personages, to question them. He dared not as long as there was a Danish doctor.
Bernardet's brain whirled. He felt almost certain that Dr. Erwin would give the same explanation which he, himself, suspected, in regard to the observed phenomenon.
"The dead man's eye has spoken and can speak," said Bernardet to himself. "Yes, surely. I am not deceived."
Dr. Erwin met Bernardet cordially and listened to him with profound attention. The police officer repeated word for word the confession drawn from Pradès. Then he asked the Danish physician if he really believed that Jacques Dantin's image had been transfixed on the retina of the dying man's eye, during the time when he had held and gazed at the portrait.
"For the proofs which I obtained were very confused," said the officer, "it is possible, and I say itis quite easy to recognize Jacques Dantin's features. We have seen it, and, according to your opinion even the painting was able to be—how shall I express myself—stored up, retained in the retina."
"You found the proof there," said Dr. Erwin.
"So, according to your opinion, I have not deceived myself?"
"No!"
"I have truly found in the retina of the dead man's eye the last vision he saw when living?"
"Yes!"
"But the vision of a painting. A painting, Doctor."
"Why not!" Dr. Erwin responded in a sharp tone. "Do you know what happened? Knowing that he was dying the unhappy man went, urged by a tragic impulse, to that portrait which represented to him all that was left, concentrating in one image alone, all his life."
"Then it is possible? It is possible?" Bernardet repeated.
"I believe it," said the Dane. "The man is dying. He has only one thought—to go directly to the one who, surviving him, guarded his secrets and his life. He seized his portrait; he tore it from its hook with all his strength; he devoured it with his eyes; he drank it in with a look, if I may be allowed the expression. To this picture of the being whom he loved he spoke; he cried to him;telling him his last wishes; dictating to him his thoughts of vengeance. At this supreme moment his energy was increased a hundredfold, I know not what intensity of life was concentrated on this image, and gathering all his failing forces in a last look the man who wished to live; the man weakened by illness, dying, assassinated, put into that last regard the electric force, the fire which fixed the image (confused, no doubt, but recognizable since you have traced the resemblance) upon the retina. A phantom, if you wish, which is reflected in the dead man's eye."
"And," repeated Bernardet, who wished to be perfectly assured in regard to the question, "it is not only the image of a living being, it is, to use your words, the phantom even of a painting which was retained on the retina?"
"I do not reply to you: 'That is possible!' It is you who say to me: 'I have seen it!' And you have seen it, in truth, and the form, vague though it may be, the painted figure permits you to find in a passer-by the man whose picture the retina had already shown you!"
"Oh! well! Doctor," said the little Bernardet, "I shall tell that, but they will deny it. They will say that it is impossible!"
Dr. Erwin smiled. He seemed to be looking, with his deep blue eyes, at some invisible perspective, not bounded by the rooms of little room.
"One has said," he began, "that the wordimpossibleis not French. It would be more exact to affirm that it was nothuman! We attain a knowledge of the unknowable. The mysterious is approachable. One must deny nothinga priori; one must believe all things possible and not only a dream. Search for the truth, theharshtruth, as your Stendhal said. Well! the word is wrong. One ought to say justly, theexquisitetruth, for it is a joy for those who search, that daily life where each movement marks a step advanced, where the heart beats at the thought of a rendezvous in the laboratory as at a rendezvous of love. Ah! he is happy who has given his life to science. He lives in a dream. It is the poetry, in our times of prose. The dream," continued the young doctor as in an ecstasy, while Bernardet listened, ravished, "the dream is everywhere. It is impossible to make it tangible. Thought, human thought, can sometime be deciphered like an open book. An American physician asked to be permitted to try an experiment upon the cranium of a condemned man, still living. Through the cranium he studied the man's brain. Has not Edison undertaken to give sight to the blind! But, in order to accomplish all these things, it is necessary, as in primitive times, to believe, to believe always. The twentieth century will see many others."
"Ah! Doctor! Doctor!" cried poor little Bernardet,much moved. "I do not wish to be the ignoramus that I am, the father of a family, who has mouths to feed, and I beg of you to take me as a sweeper in your laboratory."
He departed, enthused by the interview. Henceforth he could say that, he, the ignorant one, had, by his seemingly foolish conviction, proved the leader of an experiment which had been abandoned for some years; and the humble police officer had reopened the nearly closed door to criminal instruction.
A scruple, moreover, came to him; a doubt, an agony, and he wished to share it with M. Ginory.
All the same, with the admirable invention, he had caused an innocent man to be arrested. This thought made him very uneasy. He had produced a power which, instead of striking the guilty, had overthrown an unhappy man, and it was this famous discovery of Dr. Bourion's, persisted in by him, which had resulted in this mistake.
"It must be," he thought, "that man may be fallible even in the most marvelous discoveries. It is frightful! It is perhaps done to make us more prudent. Prudent and modest!"
Doubt now seized him. Must he stop there in these famous experiments which ended in this lie? Ought he abandon all research on a road which ended in a cul-de-sac? And he confided that unhappy scruple to the Examining Magistrate, withwhom the chances of the service had put him in sympathy. M. Ginory not only was interested in strange discoveries, but he was always indulgent toward the original, little Bernardet.
"Finally, M. le Juge," said the police officer, shaking his head, "I have thought and thought about the discovery, our discovery—that of Dr. Bourion. It is subject to errors, our discovery. It would have led us to put in prison—Jacques Dantin, and Jacques Dantin was not guilty."
"Oh, yes! M. Bernardet," said the Magistrate, who seemed thoughtful, his heavy chin resting on his hand. "It ought to make us modest. It is the fate of all human discoveries. To err—to err, is human!"
"It is not the less true," responded Bernardet, "that all which has passed opens to us the astonishing horizon of the unknown"——
"The unknowable!" murmured the Magistrate.
"A physician who sometimes asks me to his experiments invited me to his house the other evening and I saw—yes saw, or what one calls seeing, in a mirror placed before me, by the light of the X-rays—greenish rays which traversed the body—yes, Monsieur, I saw my heart beat, and my lungs perform their functions, and I am fat, and a thin person could better see himself living and breathing. Is it not fantastic, Monsieur Ginory? Would not a man have been shut up as a lunatic thirtyyears ago who would have pretended that he had discovered that? We shall see—we shall see many others!"
"And will it add to the happiness of man? and will it diminish grief, wickedness and crime?"
The Magistrate spoke as if to himself, thoughtfully, sadly. Something Bernardet said brought a smile to his lips.
"This is, Monsieur le Juge, a fine ending of the chapter for the second part of your work, 'The Duty of a Magistrate Toward Scientific Discoveries.' And if the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences does not add"——
M. Ginory suddenly turned red and interrupted Bernardet with a word and a gesture.
"Monsieur Bernardet!"
"I can only repeat, Monsieur, what public opinion thinks and says," said Bernardet, bowing low. "There was an illusion to this affair written up. An amiable fellow—that Paul Rodier."
"Ah! Monsieur Bernardet, Monsieur Bernardet!" laughingly said the Magistrate, "you have a weakness for reporters. Do you want me to tell you something? You will finish by becoming a journalist."
"And you will certainly finish in the habit of a member of the Academy, Monsieur Ginory," said the little Bernardet, with his air of a mocking abbé.
Veryoften, after his release from prison, Jacques Dantin went to the corner of the cemetery at Montmartre, where his friend lay. And he always carried flowers. It had become to him, since the terrible strain of his detention, a necessity, a habit. The dead are living! They wait, they understand, they listen!
It seemed to Dantin that he had but one aim. Alas! What had been the wish, the last dream of the dead man would never be realized. That fortune which Rovère had intended for the child whom he had no right to call his own would go, was going to some far-off cousins of whose existence the ex-Consul was not even aware perhaps, and whom he certainly had never known—to some indifferent persons, chance relatives, strangers.
"I ought not to have waited for him to tell me what his intentions were regarding his daughter," Dantin often thought. What would become of her, the poor girl, who knew the secret of her birth and who remained silent, piously devoting herself to the old soldier whose name she bore?
One day in February a sad, gray day, Jacques Dantin, thinking of the past Winter so unhappyof the sad secret grave and heavy, strolled along toward that granite tomb near which Rovère slept. He recalled the curious crowd which had accompanied his dead friend to its last resting place: the flowers; the under current of excitement; the cortège. Silence now filled the place! Dark shadows could be seen here and there between the tombs at the end of paths. It was not a visiting day nor an hour usual for funerals. This solitude pleased Jacques. He felt near to him whom he loved.
Louis-Pièrre Rovère. That name, which Moniche had had engraved, evoked many remembrances for this man who had for a time been suspected of assassinating him. All his childhood, all his youth, all the past! How quickly the years had fled, such ruined years. So much of fever, of agitation—so many ambitions, deceptions, in order to end here.
"He is at rest at least," thought Dantin, remembering his own life, without aim, without happiness. And he also would rest soon, having not even a friend in this great city of Paris whom he could depend upon to pay him a last visit. A ruined, wicked, useless life!
He again bade Rovère good-bye speaking to him, calling him thee and thou as of old. Then he went slowly away. But at the end of a walk he turned around to look once more at the place where hisfriend lay. He saw, coming that way, between the tombs, as if by some cross alley, a woman in black, who was walking directly toward the place he had left. He stopped, waiting—yes, it was to Rovère's tomb that she was going. Tall, svelte, and as far as Jacques Dantin could see, she was young. He said to himself:
"It is his daughter!"
The memory of their last interview came to him. He saw his unhappy friend, haggard, standing in front of his open safe, searching through his papers for those which represented his child's fortune. If this was his friend's daughter, it was to him that Rovère had looked to assure her future.
He walked slowly back to the tomb. The woman in black was now kneeling near the gray stone. Bent over, arranging a bouquet of chrysanthemums which she had brought. Dantin could see only her kneeling form and black draperies.
She was praying now!
Dantin stood looking at her, and when at last she arose he saw that she was tall and elegant in her mourning robes. He advanced toward her. The noise of his footsteps on the gravel caused her to turn her head, and Dantin saw a beautiful face, young and sad. She had blonde hair and large eyes, which opened wide in surprise. He saw the same expression of the eyes which Rovère's had borne.
The young woman instinctively made a movement as if to go away, to give place to the newcomer. But Dantin stopped her with a gesture.
"Do not go away, Mademoiselle. I am the best friend of the one who sleeps here."
She stopped, pale and timid.
"I know very well that you loved him," he added.
She unconsciously let a frightened cry escape her and looked helplessly around.
"He told me all," Dantin slowly said. "I am Jacques Dantin. He has spoken to you of me, I think"——
"Yes," the young woman answered.
Dantin involuntarily shivered. Her voice had the sametimbreas Rovère's.
In the silence of the cemetery, near the tomb, before that name, Louis-Pièrre Rovère, which seemed almost like the presence of his dead friend, Dantin felt the temptation to reveal to this girl what her father had wished her to know.
They knew each other without ever having met. One word was enough, one name was sufficient, in order that the secret which united them should bring them nearer each other. What Dantin was to Rovère, Rovère had told Marthe again and again.
Then, as if from the depths of the tomb, Rovère had ordered him to speak. Jacques Dantin, in the solemn silence of that City of the Dead, confided to the young girl what her father had tried to tellhim. He spoke rapidly, the words, "A legacy—in trust—a fortune" fell from his lips. But the young girl quickly interrupted him with a grand gesture.
"I do not wish to know what any one has told you of me. I am the daughter of a man who awaits me at Blois, who is old, who loves only me, who needs only me, and I need nothing!"
There was in her tone an accent of command, of resolution, which Dantin recognized as one of Rovère's most remarkable characteristics.
Had Dantin known nothing, this sound in the voice, this ardent look on the pale face, would have given him a hint or a suspicion, and have obliged him to think of Rovère. Rovère lived again in this woman in black whom Jacques Dantin saw for the first time.
"Then?" asked this friend of the dead man, as if awaiting an order.
"Then," said the young girl in her deep voice, "when you meet me near this tomb do not speak to me of anything. If you should meet me outside this cemetery, do not recognize me. The secret which was confided to you by the one who sleeps there, is the secret of a dead one whom I adored—my mother; and of a living person whom I reverence—my father!"
She accented the words with a sort of tender, passionate piety, and Jacques Dantin saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
"Now, adieu!" she said.
Jacques still wished to speak of that last confidence of the dying man, but she said again:
"Adieu!"
With her hand, gloved in black, she made the sign of the Cross, smiled sadly as she looked at the tomb where the chrysanthemums lay, then lowering her veil she went away, and Dantin, standing near the gray tomb, saw her disappear at the end of an alley.
The martyr, expiating near the old crippled man, a fault of which she was innocent, went back to him who was without suspicion; to him who adored her and to whom she was, in their poor apartment in Blois, his saint and his daughter.
She would watch, she would lose her youth, near that old soldier whose robust constitution would endure many, many long years. She would pay her dead mother's debt; she would pay it by devoting every hour of her life to this man whose name she bore—an illustrious name, a name belonging to the victories, to the struggles, to the history of yesterday—she would be the hostage, the expiatory victim.
With all her life would she redeem the fault of that other!
"And who knows, my poor Rovère," said Jacques Dantin, "thy daughter, proud of her sacrifice, is perhaps happier in doing this!"
In his turn he left the tomb, he went out of the cemetery, he wished to walk to his lodging in the Rue Richelieu. He had only taken a few steps along the Boulevard, where—it seemed but yesterday—he had followed (talking with Bernardet) behind Rovère's funeral carriage, when he nearly ran into a little man who was hurrying along the pavement. The police officer saluted him, with a shaking of the head, which had in it regret, a little confusion, some excuses.
"Ah! Monsieur Dantin, what a grudge you must have against me!"
"Not at all," said Dantin. "You thought that you were doing your duty, and it did not displease me to have you try to so quickly avenge my poor Rovère."
"Avenge him! Yes, he will be! I would not give four sous for Charles Pradès's head to-morrow, when he is tried. We shall see each other in court.Au revoir, Monsieur Dantin, and all my excuses!"
"Au revoir, Monsieur Bernardet, and all my compliments!"
The two men separated. Bernardet was on his way home to breakfast. He was late. Mme. Bernardet would be waiting, and a little red and breathless he hurried along. He stopped on hearing a newsboy announce the last number ofLutèce.
"Ask for the account of the trial to-morrow:The inquest by Paul Rodier on the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy!"
The newsboy saluted Bernardet whom he knew very well.
"Give me a paper!" said the police officer. The boy pulled out a paper from the package he was carrying, and waved it over his head like a flag.
"Ah! I understand, that interests you, Monsieur Bernardet!"
And while the little man looked for the headingLutècein capital letters—the title which Paul Rodier had given to a series of interviews with celebrated physicians, the newsboy, giving Bernardet his change, said:
"To-morrow is the trial. But there is no doubt, is there, Monsieur Bernardet? Pradès is condemned in advance!"
"He has confessed, it is an accomplished fact," Bernardet replied, pocketing his change.
"Au revoirand thanks, Monsieur Bernardet."
And the newsboy, going on his way, cried out:
"Ask forLutèce—The Rovère trial! The affair to-morrow! Paul Rodier's inquest on the eye of the dead man!" His voice was at last drowned in the noise of tramways and cabs.
M. Bernardet hurried on. The little ones would have become impatient, yes, yes, waiting for him, and asking for him around the table at home. He looked at the paper which he had bought. PaulRodier, in regard to the question which he, Bernardet, had raised, had interviewed savants physiologists, psychologists, and in good journalistic style had published, the evening before the trial, the result of his inquest.
M. Bernardet read as he hastened along the long titles in capitals in large head lines.
"A Scientific Problem Àpropos of the Rovère Affair!"
"Questions of Medical Jurisprudence!"
"The Eye of the Dead Man!"
"Interviews and Opinions of MM. Les Docteurs Brouardel, Roux, Duclaux, Pean, Robin, Pozzi, Blum, Widal, Gilles de la Tourette"——
Bernardet turned the leaves. The interviews filled two pages at least in solid columns.
"So much the better! So much the better!" said the police officer enchanted. And hastening along even faster, he said to himself:
"I am going to read all that to the children; yes, all that—it will amuse them—life is a romance like any other! More incredible than any other! And these questions; the unknown, the invisible, all these problems—how interesting they are! And the mystery—so amusing!"
JULES CLARETIE of the French Academy; Mrs. Carlton A. Kingsbury, Translator.