In pursuance of this design, Angélique had already sent for a couple of Indian canoemen to embark Fanchon at the quay of the Friponne and convey her to St. Valier.
Half-civilized and wholly-demoralized red men were always to be found on the beach of Stadacona, as they still called the Batture of the St. Charles, lounging about in blankets, smoking, playing dice, or drinking pints or quarts,—as fortune favored them, or a passenger wanted conveyance in their bark canoes, which they managed with a dexterity unsurpassed by any boatman that ever put oar or paddle in water, salt or fresh.
These rough fellows were safe and trusty in their profession. Fanchon knew them slightly, and felt no fear whatever in seating herself upon the bear skin which carpeted the bottom of their canoe.
They pushed off at once from the shore, with scarcely a word of reply to her voluble directions and gesticulations as they went speeding their canoe down the stream. The turning tide bore them lightly on its bosom, and they chanted a wild, monotonous refrain as their paddles flashed and dipped alternately in stream and sunshine;
“Ah! ah! Tenaouich tenaga!Tenaouich tenaga, ouich ka!”
“They are singing about me, no doubt,” said Fanchon to herself. “I do not care what people say, they cannot be Christians who speak such a heathenish jargon as that: it is enough to sink the canoe; but I will repeat my paternosters and my Ave Marias, seeing they will not converse with me, and I will pray good St. Anne to give me a safe passage to St. Valier.” In which pious occupation, as the boatmen continued their savage song without paying her any attention, Fanchon, with many interruptions of worldly thoughts, spent the rest of the time she was in the Indian canoe.
Down past the green hills of the south shore the boatmen steadily plied their paddles, and kept singing their wild Indian chant. The wooded slopes of Orleans basked in sunshine as they overlooked the broad channel through which the canoe sped, and long before meridian the little bark was turned in to shore and pulled up on the beach of St. Valier.
Fanchon leaped out without assistance, wetting a foot in so doing, which somewhat discomposed the good humor she had shown during the voyage. Her Indian boatmen offered her no help, considering that women were made to serve men and help themselves, and not to be waited upon by them.
“Not that I wanted to touch one of their savage hands,” muttered Fanchon, “but they might have offered one assistance! Look there,” continued she, pulling aside her skirt and showing a very trim foot wet up to the ankle; “they ought to know the difference between their red squaws and the white girls of the city. If they are not worth politeness, WE are. But Indians are only fit to kill Christians or be killed by them; and you might as well courtesy to a bear in the briers as to an Indian anywhere.”
The boatmen looked at her foot with supreme indifference, and taking out their pipes, seated themselves on the edge of their canoe, and began to smoke.
“You may return to the city,” said she, addressing them sharply; “I pray to the bon Dieu to strike you white;—it is vain to look for manners from an Indian! I shall remain in St. Valier, and not return with you.”
“Marry me, be my squaw, Ania?” replied one of the boatmen, with a grim smile; “the bon Dieu will strike out papooses white, and teach them manners like palefaces.”
“Ugh! not for all the King's money. What! marry a red Indian, and carry his pack like Fifine Perotte? I would die first! You are bold indeed, Paul La Crosse, to mention such a thing to me. Go back to the city! I would not trust myself again in your canoe. It required courage to do so at all, but Mademoiselle selected you for my boatmen, not I. I wonder she did so, when the brothers Ballou, and the prettiest fellows in town, were idle on the Batture.”
“Ania is niece to the old medicine-woman in the stone wigwam at St. Valier; going to see her, eh?” asked the other boatman, with a slight display of curiosity.
“Yes, I am going to visit my aunt Dodier; why should I not? She has crocks of gold buried in the house, I can tell you that, Pierre Ceinture!”
“Going to get some from La Corriveau, eh? crocks of gold, eh?” said Paul La Crosse.
“La Corriveau has medicines, too! get some, eh?” asked Pierre Ceinture.
“I am going neither for gold nor medicines, but to see my aunt, if it concerns you to know, Pierre Ceinture! which it does not!”
“Mademoiselle des Meloises pay her to go, eh? not going back ever, eh?” asked the other Indian.
“Mind your own affairs, Paul La Crosse, and I will mind mine! Mademoiselle des Meloises paid you to bring me to St. Valier, not to ask me impertinences. That is enough for you! Here is your fare; now you can return to the Sault au Matelot, and drink yourselves blind with the money!”
“Very good, that!” replied the Indian. “I like to drink myself blind, will do it to-night! Like to see me, eh? Better that than go see La Corriveau! The habitans say she talks with the Devil, and makes the sickness settle like a fog upon the wigwams of the red men. They say she can make palefaces die by looking at them! But Indians are too hard to kill with a look! Fire-water and gun and tomahawk, and fever in the wigwams, only make the Indians die.”
“Good that something can make you die, for your ill manners! look at my stocking!” replied Fanchon, with warmth. “If I tell La Corriveau what you say of her there will be trouble in your wigwam, Pierre Ceinture!”
“Do not do that, Ania!” replied the Indian, crossing himself earnestly; “do not tell La Corriveau, or she will make an image of wax and call it Pierre Ceinture, and she will melt it away before a slow fire, and as it melts my flesh and bones will melt away, too! Do not tell her, Fanchon Dodier!” The Indian had picked up this piece of superstition from the white habitans, and, like them, thoroughly believed in the supernatural powers of La Corriveau.
“Well, leave me! get back to the city, and tell Mademoiselle I arrived safe at St. Valier,” replied Fanchon, turning to leave them.
The Indians were somewhat taken down by the airs of Fanchon, and they stood in awe of the far-reaching power of her aunt, from the spell of whose witchcraft they firmly believed no hiding-place, even in the deepest woods, could protect them. Merely nodding a farewell to Fanchon, the Indians silently pushed their canoe into the stream, and, embarking, returned to the city by the way they came.
A fine breezy upland lay before Fanchon Dodier. Cultivated fields of corn, and meadows ran down to the shore. A row of white cottages, forming a loosely connected street, clustered into something like a village at the point where the parish church stood, at the intersection of two or three roads, one of which, a narrow green track, but little worn by the carts of the habitans, led to the stone house of La Corriveau, the chimney of which was just visible as you lost sight of the village spire.
In a deep hollow, out of sight of the village church, almost out of hearing of its little bell, stood the house of La Corriveau, a square, heavy structure of stone, inconvenient and gloomy, with narrow windows and an uninviting door. The pine forest touched it on one side, a brawling stream twisted itself like a live snake half round it on the other. A plot of green grass, ill kept and deformed, with noxious weeds, dock, fennel, thistle, and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough wall of loose stones, forming the lawn, such as it was, where, under a tree, seated in an armchair, was a solitary woman, whom Fanchon recognized as her aunt, Marie Josephte Dodier, surnamed La Corriveau.
La Corriveau, in feature and person, took after her grand-sire Exili. She was tall and straight, of a swarthy complexion, black-haired, and intensely black-eyed. She was not uncomely of feature, nay, had been handsome, nor was her look at first sight forbidding, especially if she did not turn upon you those small basilisk eyes of hers, full of fire and glare as the eyes of a rattlesnake. But truly those thin, cruel lips of hers never smiled spontaneously, or affected to smile upon you unless she had an object to gain by assuming a disguise as foreign to her as light to an angel of darkness.
La Corriveau was dressed in a robe of soft brown stuff, shaped with a degree of taste and style beyond the garb of her class. Neatness in dress was the one virtue she had inherited from her mother. Her feet were small and well-shod, like a lady's, as the envious neighbors used to say. She never in her life would wear the sabots of the peasant women, nor go barefoot, as many of them did, about the house. La Corriveau was vain of her feet, which would have made her fortune, as she thought with bitterness, anywhere but in St. Valier.
She sat musing in her chair, not noticing the presence of her niece, who stood for a moment looking and hesitating before accosting her. Her countenance bore, when she was alone, an expression of malignity which made Fanchon shudder. A quick, unconscious twitching of the fingers accompanied her thoughts, as if this weird woman was playing a game of mora with the evil genius that waited on her. Her grandsire Exili had the same nervous twitching of his fingers, and the vulgar accused him of playing at mora with the Devil, who ever accompanied him, they believed.
The lips of La Corriveau moved in unison with her thoughts. She was giving expression to her habitual contempt for her sex as she crooned over, in a sufficiently audible voice to reach the ear of Fanchon, a hateful song of Jean Le Meung on women:
“'Toutes vous êtes, serez ou futes,De fait ou de volonté putes!'”
“It is not nice to say that, Aunt Marie!” exclaimed Fanchon, coming forward and embracing La Corriveau, who gave a start on seeing her niece so unexpectedly before her. “It is not nice, and it is not true!”
“But it is true, Fanchon Dodier! if it be not nice. There is nothing nice to be said of our sex, except by foolish men! Women know one another better! But,” continued she, scrutinizing her niece with her keen black eyes, which seemed to pierce her through and through, “what ill wind or Satan's errand has brought you to St. Valier to-day, Fanchon?”
“No ill wind, nor ill errand either, I hope, aunt. I come by command of my mistress to ask you to go to the city: she is biting her nails off with impatience to see you on some business.”
“And who is your mistress, who dares to ask La Corriveau to go to the city at her bidding?”
“Do not be angry, aunt,” replied Fanchon, soothingly. “It was I counselled her to send for you, and I offered to fetch you. My mistress is a high lady, who expects to be still higher,—Mademoiselle des Meloises!
“Mademoiselle Angélique des Meloises,—one hears enough of her! a high lady indeed! who will be low enough at last! A minx as vain as she is pretty, who would marry all the men in New France, and kill all the women, if she could have her way! What in the name of the Sabbat does she want with La Corriveau?”
“She did not call you names, aunt, and please do not say such things of her, for you will frighten me away before I tell my errand. Mademoiselle Angélique sent this piece of gold as earnest-money to prove that she wants your counsel and advice in an important matter.”
Fanchon untied the corner of her handkerchief, and took from it a broad shining louis d'or. She placed it in the hand of La Corriveau, whose long fingers clutched it like the talons of a harpy. Of all the evil passions of this woman, the greed for money was the most ravenous.
“It is long since I got a piece of gold like that to cross my hand with, Fanchon!” said she, looking at it admiringly and spitting on it for good luck.
“There are plenty more where it came from, aunt,” replied Fanchon. “Mademoiselle could fill your apron with gold every day of the week if she would: she is to marry the Intendant!”
“Marry the Intendant! ah, indeed! that is why she sends for me so urgently! I see! Marry the Intendant! She will bestow a pot of gold on La Corriveau to accomplish that match!”
“Maybe she would, aunt; I would, myself. But it is not that she wishes to consult you about just now. She lost her jewels at the ball, and wants your help to find them.”
“Lost her jewels, eh? Did she say you were to tell me that she had lost her jewels, Fanchon?”
“Yes, aunt, that is what she wants to consult you about,” replied Fanchon, with simplicity. But the keen perception of La Corriveau saw that a second purpose lay behind it.
“A likely tale!” muttered she, “that so rich a lady would send for La Corriveau from St. Valier to find a few jewels! But it will do. I will go with you to the city: I cannot refuse an invitation like that. Gold fetches any woman, Fanchon. It fetches me always. It will fetch you, too, some day, if you are lucky enough to give it the chance.”
“I wish it would fetch me now, aunt; but poor girls who live by service and wages have small chance to be sent for in that way! We are glad to get the empty hand without the money. Men are so scarce with this cruel war, that they might easily have a wife to each finger, were it allowed by the law. I heard Dame Tremblay say—and I thought her very right—the Church does not half consider our condition and necessities.”
“Dame Tremblay! the Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport! She who would have been a witch, and could not: Satan would not have her!” exclaimed La Corriveau, scornfully. “Is she still housekeeper and bedmaker at Beaumanoir?”
Fanchon was honest enough to feel rather indignant at this speech. “Don't speak so of her, aunt; she is not bad. Although I ran away from her, and took service with Mademoiselle des Meloises, I will not speak ill of her.”
“Why did you run away from Beaumanoir?” asked La Corriveau.
Fanchon reflected a moment upon the mystery of the lady of Beaumanoir, and something checked her tongue, as if it were not safe to tell all she knew to her aunt, who would, moreover, be sure to find out from Angélique herself as much as her mistress wished her to know.
“I did not like Dame Tremblay, aunt,” replied she; “I preferred to live with Mademoiselle Angélique. She is a lady, a beauty, who dresses to surpass any picture in the book of modes from Paris, which I often looked at on her dressing-table. She allowed me to imitate them, or wear her cast-off dresses, which were better than any other ladies' new ones. I have one of them on. Look, aunt!” Fanchon spread out very complacently the skirt of a pretty blue robe she wore.
La Corriveau nodded her head in a sort of silent approval, and remarked,—“She is free-handed enough! She gives what costs her nothing, and takes all she can get, and is, after all, a trollop, like the rest of us, Fanchon, who would be very good if there were neither men nor money nor fine clothes in the world, to tempt poor silly women.”
“You do say such nasty things, aunt!” exclaimed Fanchon, flashing with indignation. “I will hear no more! I am going into the house to see dear old Uncle Dodier, who has been looking through the window at me for ten minutes past, and dared not come out to speak to me. You are too hard on poor old Uncle Dodier, aunt,” said Fanchon, boldly. “If you cannot be kind to him, why did you marry him?”
“Why, I wanted a husband, and he wanted my money, that was all; and I got my bargain, and his too, Fanchon!” and the woman laughed savagely.
“I thought people married to be happy, aunt,” replied the girl, persistently.
“Happy! such folly. Satan yokes people together to bring more sinners into the world, and supply fresh fuel for his fires.”
“My mistress thinks there is no happiness like a good match,” remarked Fanchon; “and I think so, too, aunt. I shall never wait the second time of asking, I assure you, aunt.”
“You are a fool, Fanchon,” said La Corriveau; “but your mistress deserves to wear the ring of Cleopatra, and to become the mother of witches and harlots for all time. Why did she really send for me?”
The girl crossed herself, and exclaimed, “God forbid, aunt! my mistress is not like that!”
La Corriveau spat at the mention of the sacred name. “But it is in her, Fanchon. It is in all of us! If she is not so already, she will be. But go into the house and see your foolish uncle, while I go prepare for my visit. We will set out at once, Fanchon, for business like that of Angélique des Meloises cannot wait.”
Fanchon walked into the house to see her uncle Dodier. When she was gone, the countenance of La Corriveau put on a dark and terrible expression. Her black eyes looked downwards, seeming to penetrate the very earth, and to reflect in their glittering orbits the fires of the underworld.
She stood for a few moments, buried in deep thought, with her arms tightly folded across her breast. Her fingers moved nervously, as they kept time with the quick motions of her foot, which beat the ground.
“It is for death, and no lost jewels, that girl sends for me!” muttered La Corriveau through her teeth, which flashed white and cruel between her thin lips. “She has a rival in her love for the Intendant, and she will lovingly, by my help, feed her with the manna of St. Nicholas! Angélique des Meloises has boldness, craft, and falseness for twenty women, and can keep secrets like a nun. She is rich and ambitious, and would poison half the world rather than miss the thing she sets her mind on. She is a girl after my own heart, and worth the risk I run with her. Her riches would be endless should she succeed in her designs; and with her in my power, nothing she has would henceforth be her own,—but mine! mine! Besides,” added La Corriveau, her thoughts flashing back to the fate which had overtaken her progenitors, Exili and La Voisin, “I may need help myself, some day, to plead with the Intendant on my own account,—who knows?”
A strange thrill ran through the veins of La Corriveau, but she instantly threw it off. “I know what she wants,” added she. “I will take it with me. I am safe in trusting her with the secret of Beatrice Spara. That girl is worthy of it as Brinvilliers herself.”
La Corriveau entered her own apartment. She locked the door behind her, drew a bunch of keys from her bosom, and turned towards a cabinet of singular shape and Italian workmanship which stood in a corner of the apartment. It was an antique piece of furniture, made of some dark oriental wood, carved over with fantastic figures from Etruscan designs by the cunning hand of an old Italian workman, who knew well how to make secret drawers and invisible concealments for things dangerous and forbidden.
It had once belonged to Antonio Exili, who had caused it to be made, ostensibly for the safe-keeping of his cabalistic formulas and alchemic preparations, when searching for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, really for the concealment of the subtle drugs out of which his alembics distilled the aqua tofana and his crucibles prepared the poudre de succession.
In the most secret place of all were deposited, ready for use, a few vials of the crystal liquid, every single drop of which contained the life of a man, and which, administered in due proportion of time and measure, killed and left no sign, numbering its victim's days, hours, and minutes, exactly according to the will and malignity of his destroyer.
La Corriveau took out the vials, and placed them carefully in a casket of ebony not larger than a woman's hand. In it was a number of small flaskets, each filled with pills like grains of mustard-seed, the essence and quintessence of various poisons, that put on the appearance of natural diseases, and which, mixed in due proportion with the aqua tofana, covered the foulest murders with the lawful ensigns of the angel of death.
In that box of ebony was the sublimated dust of deadly nightshade, which kindles the red fires of fever and rots the roots of the tongue. There was the fetid powder of stramonium, that grips the lungs like an asthma; and quinia, that shakes its victims like the cold hand of the miasma of the Pontine marshes. The essence of poppies, ten times sublimated, a few grains of which bring on the stupor of apoplexy; and the sardonic plant, that kills its victim with the frightful laughter of madness on his countenance.
The knowledge of these and many more cursed herbs, once known to Medea in the Colchian land, and transplanted to Greece and Rome with the enchantments of their use, had been handed, by a long succession of sorcerers and poisoners, down to Exili and Beatrice Spara, until they came into the possession of La Corriveau, the legitimate inheritrix of this lore of hell.
Before closing the cabinet, La Corriveau opened one more secret drawer, and took out, with a hesitating hand, as if uncertain whether to do so or no, a glittering stiletto, sharp and cruel to see. She felt the point of it mechanically with her thumb; and, as if fascinated by the touch, placed it under her robe. “I may have need of it,” muttered she, “either to save myself OR to make sure of my work on another. Beatrice Spara was the daughter of a Sicilian bravo, and she liked this poignard better than even the poisoned chalice.”
La Corriveau rose up now, well satisfied with her foresight and preparation. She placed the ebony casket carefully in her bosom, cherishing it like an only child, as she walked out of the room with her quiet, tiger-like tread. Her look into the future was pleasant to her at this moment. There was the prospect of an ample reward for her trouble and risk, and the anticipated pleasure of practising her skill upon one whose position she regarded as similar to that of the great dames of the Court, whom Exili and La Voisin had poisoned during the high carnival of death, in the days of Louis XIV.
She was now ready, and waited impatiently to depart.
The goodman Dodier brought the calèche to the door. It was a substantial, two-wheeled vehicle, with a curious arrangement of springs, made out of the elastic wood of the hickory. The horse, a stout Norman pony, well harnessed, sleek and glossy, was lightly held by the hand of the goodman, who patted it kindly as an old friend; and the pony, in some sort, after an equine fashion, returned the affection of its master.
La Corriveau, with an agility hardly to be expected from her years, seated herself beside Fanchon in the calèche, and giving her willing horse a sharp cut with the lash for spite, not for need,—goodman Dodier said, only to anger him,—they set off at a rapid pace, and were soon out of sight at the turn of the dark pine-woods, on their way to the city of Quebec.
Angélique des Meloises had remained all day in her house, counting the hours as they flew by, laden with the fate of her unsuspecting rival at Beaumanoir.
Night had now closed in; the lamps were lit, the fire again burned red upon the hearth. Her door was inexorably shut against all visitors. Lizette had been sent away until the morrow; Angélique sat alone and expectant of the arrival of La Corriveau.
The gay dress in which she had outshone all her sex at the ball on the previous night lay still in a heap upon the floor, where last night she had thrown it aside, like the robe of innocence which once invested her. Her face was beautiful, but cruel, and in its expression terrible as Medea's brooding over her vengeance sworn against Creusa for her sin with Jason. She sat in a careless dishabille, with one white arm partly bare. Her long golden locks flowed loosely down her back and touched the floor, as she sat on her chair and watched and waited for the coming footsteps of La Corriveau. Her lips were compressed with a terrible resolution; her eyes glanced red as they alternately reflected the glow of the fire within them and of the fire without. Her hands were clasped nervously together, with a grip like iron, and lay in her lap, while her dainty foot marked the rhythm of the tragical thoughts that swept like a song of doom through her soul.
The few compunctious feelings which struggled up into her mind were instantly overborne by the passionate reflection that the lady of Beaumanoir must die! “I must, or she must—one or other! We cannot both live and marry this man!” exclaimed she, passionately. “Has it come to this: which of us shall be the wife, which the mistress? By God, I would kill him too, if I thought he hesitated in his choice; but he shall soon have no choice but one! Her death be on her own head and on Bigot's—not on mine!”
And the wretched girl strove to throw the guilt of the sin she premeditated upon her victim, upon the Intendant, upon fate, and, with a last subterfuge to hide the enormity of it from her own eyes, upon La Corriveau, whom she would lead on to suggest the crime and commit it!—a course which Angélique tried to believe would be more venial than if it were suggested by herself! less heinous in her own eyes, and less wicked in the sight of God.
“Why did that mysterious woman go to Beaumanoir and place herself in the path of Angélique des Meloises?” exclaimed she angrily. “Why did Bigot reject my earnest prayer, for it was earnest, for a lettre de cachet to send her unharmed away out of New France?”
Then Angélique sat and listened without moving for a long time. The clock ticked loud and warningly. There was a sighing of the wind about the windows, as if it sought admittance to reason and remonstrate with her. A cricket sang his monotonous song on the hearth. In the wainscot of the room a deathwatch ticked its doleful omen. The dog in the courtyard howled plaintively as the hour of midnight sounded upon the Convent bell, close by. The bell had scarcely ceased ere she was startled by a slight creaking like the opening of a door, followed by a whispering and the rustle of a woman's garments, as of one approaching with cautious steps up the stair. A thrill of expectation, not unmingled with fear, shot through the breast of Angélique. She sprang up, exclaiming to herself, “She is come, and all the demons that wait on murder come with her into my chamber!” A knock followed on the door. Angélique, very agitated in spite of her fierce efforts to appear calm, bade them come in.
Fanchon opened the door, and, with a courtesy to her mistress, ushered in La Corriveau, who walked straight into the room and stood face to face with Angélique.
The eyes of the two women instantly met in a searching glance that took in the whole look, bearing, dress, and almost the very thoughts of each other. In that one glance each knew and understood the other, and could trust each other in evil, if not in good.
And there was trust between them. The evil spirits that possessed each of their hearts shook hands together, and a silent league was sworn to in their souls before a word was spoken.
And yet how unlike to human eye were these two women!—how like in God's eye, that sees the heart and reads the Spirit, of what manner it is! Angélique, radiant in the bloom of youth and beauty, her golden hair floating about her like a cloud of glory round a daughter of the sun, with her womanly perfections which made the world seem brighter for such a revelation of completeness in every external charm; La Corriveau, stern, dark, angular, her fine-cut features crossed with thin lines of cruelty and cunning, no mercy in her eyes, still less on her lips, and none at all in her heart, cold to every humane feeling, and warming only to wickedness and avarice: still these women recognized each other as kindred spirits, crafty and void of conscience in the accomplishment of their ends.
Had fate exchanged the outward circumstances of their lives, each might have been the other easily and naturally. The proud beauty had nothing in her heart better than La Corriveau, and the witch of St. Valier, if born in luxury and endowed with beauty and wealth, would have rivalled Angélique in seductiveness, and hardly fallen below her in ambition and power.
La Corriveau saluted Angélique, who made a sign to Fanchon to retire. The girl obeyed somewhat reluctantly. She had hoped to be present at the interview between her aunt and her mistress, for her curiosity was greatly excited, and she now suspected there was more in this visit than she had been told.
Angélique invited La Corriveau to remove her cloak and broad hat. Seating her in her own luxurious chair, she sat down beside her, and began the conversation with the usual platitudes and commonplaces of the time, dwelling longer upon them than need was, as if she hesitated or feared to bring up the real subject of this midnight conference.
“My Lady is fair to look on. All women will admit that; all men swear to it!” said La Corriveau, in a harsh voice that grated ominously, like the door of hell which she was opening with this commencement of her business.
Angélique replied only with a smile. A compliment from La Corriveau even was not wasted upon her; but just now she was on the brink of an abyss of explanation, looking down into the dark pit, resolved, yet hesitating to make the plunge.
“No witch or witchery but your own charms is needed, Mademoiselle,” continued La Corriveau, falling into the tone of flattery she often used towards her dupes, “to make what fortune you will in this world; what pearl ever fished out of the sea could add a grace to this wondrous hair of yours? Permit me to touch it, Mademoiselle!”
La Corriveau took hold of a thick tress, and held it up to the light of the lamp, where it shone like gold. Angélique shrank back as from the touch of fire. She withdrew her hair with a jerk from the hand of La Corriveau. A shudder passed through her from head to foot. It was the last parting effort of her good genius to save her.
“Do not touch it!” said she quickly; “I have set my life and soul on a desperate venture, but my hair—I have devoted it to our Lady of St. Foye; it is hers, not mine! Do not touch it, Dame Dodier.”
Angélique was thinking of a vow she had once made before the shrine of the little church of Lorette. “My hair is the one thing belonging to me that I will keep pure,” continued she; “so do not be angry with me,” she added, apologetically.
“I am not angry,” replied La Corriveau, with a sneer. “I am used to strange humors in people who ask my aid; they always fall out with themselves before they fall in with La Corriveau.”
“Do you know why I have sent for you at this hour, good Dame Dodier?” asked Angélique, abruptly.
“Call me La Corriveau; I am not good Dame Dodier. Mine is an ill name, and I like it best, and so should you, Mademoiselle, for the business you sent me for is not what people who say their prayers call good. It was to find your lost jewels that Fanchon Dodier summoned me to your abode, was it not?” La Corriveau uttered this with a suppressed smile of incredulity.
“Ah! I bade Fanchon tell you that in order to deceive her, not you! But you know better, La Corriveau! It was not for the sake of paltry jewels I desired you to come to the city to see me at this hour of midnight.”
“I conjectured as much!” replied La Corriveau, with a sardonic smile which showed her small teeth, white, even, and cruel as those of a wildcat. “The jewel you have lost is the heart of your lover, and you thought La Corriveau had a charm to win it back; was not that it, Mademoiselle?”
Angélique sat upright, gazing boldly into the eyes of her visitor. “Yes, it was that and more than that I summoned you for. Can you not guess? You are wise, La Corriveau, you know a woman's desire better than she dare avow it to herself!”
“Ah!” replied La Corriveau, returning her scrutiny with the eyes of a basilisk; a green light flashed out of their dark depths. “You have a lover, and you have a rival, too! A woman more potent than yourself, in spite of your beauty and your fascinations, has caught the eye and entangled the affections of the man you love, and you ask my counsel how to win him back and how to triumph over your rival. Is it not for that you have summoned La Corriveau?”
“Yes, it is that, and still more than that!” replied Angélique, clenching her hands hard together, and gazing earnestly at the fire with a look of merciless triumph at what she saw there reflected from her own thoughts distinctly as if she looked at her own face in a mirror.
“It is all that, and still more than that,—cannot you guess yet why I have summoned you here?” continued Angélique, rising and laying her left hand firmly upon the shoulder of La Corriveau, as she bent her head and whispered with terrible distinctness in her ear.
La Corriveau heard her whisper and looked up eagerly. “Yes, I know now, Mademoiselle,—you would kill your rival! There is death in your eye, in your voice, in your heart, but not in your hand! You would kill the woman who robs you of your lover, and you have sent for La Corriveau to help you in the good work! It is a good work in the eyes of a woman to kill her rival! but why should I do that to please you? What do I care for your lover, Angélique des Meloises?”
Angélique was startled to hear from the lips of another, words which gave free expression to her own secret thoughts. A denial was on her lips, but the lie remained unspoken. She trembled before La Corriveau, but her resolution was unchanged.
“It was not only to please me, but to profit yourself that I sent for you!” Angélique replied eagerly, like one trying to outstrip her conscience and prevent it from overtaking her sin. “Hark you! you love gold, La Corriveau! I will give you all you crave in return for your help,—for help me you shall! you will never repent of it if you do; you will never cease to regret it if you do not! I will make you rich, La Corrivean! or else, by God! do you hear? I swear it! I will have you burnt for a witch, and your ashes strewn all over St. Valier!”
La Corriveau spat contemptuously upon the floor at the holy name. “You are a fool, Angélique des Meloises, to speak thus to me! Do you know who and what I am? You are a poor butterfly to flutter your gay wings against La Corriveau; but still I like your spirit! women like you are rare. The blood of Exili could not have spoken bolder than you do; you want the life of a woman who has kindled the hell-fire of jealousy in your heart, and you want me to tell you how to get your revenge!”
“I do want you to do it, La Corriveau, and your reward shall be great!” answered Angélique with a burst of impatience. She could beat about the bush no longer.
“To kill a woman or a man were of itself a pleasure even without the profit,” replied La Corriveau, doggedly. “But why should I run myself into danger for you, Mademoiselle des Meloises? Have you gold enough to balance the risk?”
Angélique had now fairly overleaped all barriers of reserve. “I will give you more than your eyes ever beheld, if you will serve me in this matter, Dame Dodier!”
“Perhaps so, but I am getting old and trust neither man nor woman. Give a pledge of your good faith, before you speak one word farther to me on this business, Mademoiselle des Meloises.” La Corriveau held out her double hands significantly.
“A pledge? that is gold you want!” replied Angélique. “Yes, La Corriveau; I will bind you to me with chains of gold; you shall have it uncounted, as I get it,—gold enough to make you the richest woman in St. Valier, the richest peasant-woman in New France.”
“I am no peasant-woman,” replied La Corriveau, with a touch of pride, “I come of a race ancient and terrible as the Roman Caesars! But pshaw! what have you to do with that? Give me the pledge of your good faith and I will help you.”
Angélique rose instantly, and, opening the drawer of an escritoire, took out a long silken purse filled with louis d'or, which peeped and glittered through the interstices of the net-work. She gave it with the air of one who cared nothing for money.
La Corriveau extended both hands eagerly, clutching as with the claws of a harpy. She pressed the purse to her thin bloodless lips, and touched with the ends of her bony fingers the edges of the bright coin visible through the silken net.
“This is indeed a rare earnest-penny!” exclaimed La Corriveau. “I will do your whole bidding, Mademoiselle; only I must do it in my own way. I have guessed aright the nature of your trouble and the remedy you seek. But I cannot guess the name of your false lover, nor that of the woman whose doom is sealed from this hour.”
“I will not tell you the name of my lover,” replied Angélique. She was reluctant to mention the name of Bigot as her lover. The idea was hateful to her. “The name of the woman I cannot tell you, even if I would,” added she.
“How, Mademoiselle? you put the death-mark upon one you do not know?”
“I do not know her name. Nevertheless, La Corriveau, that gold, and ten times as much, are yours, if you relieve me of the torment of knowing that the secret chamber of Beaumanoir contains a woman whose life is death to all my hopes, and disappointment to all my plans.”
The mention of Beaumanoir startled La Corriveau.
“The lady of Beaumanoir!” she exclaimed, “whom the Abenaquis brought in from Acadia? I saw that lady in the woods of St. Valier, when I was gathering mandrakes one summer day. She asked me for some water in God's name. I cursed her silently, but I gave her milk. I had no water. She thanked me. Oh, how she thanked me! nobody ever before thanked La Corriveau so sweetly as she did! I, even I, bade her a good journey, when she started on afresh with her Indian guides, after asking me the distance and direction of Beaumanoir.”
This unexpected touch of sympathy surprised and revolted Angélique a little.
“You know her then! That is rare fortune, La Corriveau,” said she; “she will remember you, you will have less difficulty in gaining access to her and winning her confidence.”
La Corriveau clapped her hands, laughing a strange laugh, that sounded as if it came from a deep well.
“Know her? That is all I know; she thanked me sweetly. I said so, did I not? but I cursed her in my heart when she was gone. I saw she was both beautiful and good,—two things I hate.”
“Do you call her beautiful? I care not whether she be good, that will avail nothing with him; but is she beautiful, La Corriveau? Is she fairer than I, think you?”
La Corriveau looked at Angélique intently and laughed. “Fairer than you? Listen! It was as if I had seen a vision. She was very beautiful, and very sad. I could wish it were another than she, for oh, she spoke to me the sweetest I was ever spoken to since I came into the world.”
Angélique ground her teeth with anger. “What did you do, La Corriveau? Did you not wish her dead? Did you think the Intendant or any man could not help loving her to the rejection of any other woman in the world? What did you do?”
“Do? I went on picking my mandrakes in the forest, and waited for you to send for La Corriveau. You desire to punish the Intendant for his treachery in forsaking you for one more beautiful and better!”
It was but a bold guess of La Corriveau, but she had divined the truth. The Intendant Bigot was the man who was playing false with Angélique.
Her words filled up the measure of Angélique's jealous hate, and confirmed her terrible resolution. Jealousy is never so omnipotent as when its rank suspicions are fed and watered by the tales of others.
“There can be but one life between her and me!” replied the vehement girl; “Angélique des Meloises would die a thousand deaths rather than live to feed on the crumbs of any man's love while another woman feasts at his table. I sent for you, La Corriveau, to take my gold and kill that woman!”
“Kill that woman! It is easily said, Mademoiselle; but I will not forsake you, were she the Madonna herself! I hate her for her goodness, as you hate her for her beauty. Lay another purse by the side of this, and in thrice three days there shall be weeping in the Château of Beaumanoir, and no one shall know who has killed the cuckquean of the Chevalier Intendant!”
Angélique sprang up with a cry of exultation, like a pantheress seizing her prey. She clasped La Corriveau in her arms and kissed her dark, withered cheek, exclaiming, “Yes, that is her name! His cuckquean she is; his wife she is not and never shall be!—Thanks, a million golden thanks, La Corriveau, if you fulfil your prophecy! In thrice three days from this hour, was it not that you said?”
“Understand me!” said La Corriveau, “I serve you for your money, not for your liking! but I have my own joy in making my hand felt in a world which I hate and which hates me!” La Corriveau held out her hands as if the ends of her fingers were trickling poison. “Death drops on whomsoever I send it,” said she, “so secretly and so subtly that the very spirits of air cannot detect the trace of the aqua tofana.”
Angélique listened with amaze, yet trembled with eagerness to hear more. “What! La Corriveau, have you the secret of the aqua tofana, which the world believes was burnt with its possessors two generations ago, on the Place de Grève?”
“Such secrets never die,” replied the poisoner; “they are too precious! Few men, still fewer women, are there who would not listen at the door of hell to learn them. The king in his palace, the lady in her tapestried chamber, the nun in her cell, the very beggar on the street, would stand on a pavement of fire to read the tablets which record the secret of the aqua tofana. Let me see your hand,” added she abruptly, speaking to Angélique.
Angélique held out her hand; La Corriveau seized it. She looked intently upon the slender fingers and oval palm. “There is evil enough in these long, sharp spatulae of yours,” said she, “to ruin the world. You are worthy to be the inheritrix of all I know. These fingers would pick fruit off the forbidden tree for men to eat and die! The tempter only is needed, and he is never far off! Angélique des Meloises, I may one day teach you the grand secret; meantime I will show you that I possess it.”