How long I had been sleeping there I do not know. But suddenly a curious, though well-known sensation drew me from my slumber—the sense of a strange presence near me, and of a gaze fixed upon me. I was lying on one side, with my forehead resting on my bent arm. Evidently then I could not see; but the emanation of that presence and the weight of that gaze impressed me at one and the same time, as a veritable blow striking me on the back of the head. The experience was not new to me. Often in a sound sleep have I thus divined the approach of a living being—though never with such intensity as this. I had the consciousness that the person who was thus powerfully exerting his influence upon me could be like no other human being I had ever seen. And I, who at that time—how unutterably distant in the past it seems!—was a young, a vigorous, a courageous man, instead of sitting up at once, and facing my visitant, lay there as I was, for some moments, with my forehead resting on my arm, pretending not to be awake, and listening, listening.
Through my half-opened eyelids, I could see perhaps a square foot of earth and moss in the area encircled by my arm. That earth and that moss were lighted by a pale, trembling, yellowish glow. I understood that someone was waving a light above my head.
At last I did sit up and with a start, as though I had just awakened. And I rose to my feet, drawing back a step in bewilderment.
A man was standing before me, a very very aged man; as I remarked from the long, broad, glistening, snow-white beard that covered his chest and abdomen. That much I could see in spite of the glare from a dark lantern which he was holding with the spotlight up-turned into my face. However, his voice had no huskiness when he addressed me. It was deep and solemn, but without a sign of trembling or of faintness—on the contrary, it seemed resonant with virility and vigor. I was somewhat taken aback, besides, with the curt abruptness with which he questioned me:
“What are you doing here, Monsieur?”
That was not the greeting I had been expecting; and in view of the obvious plight I was in, I found it quite discourteous. But the man was at least three times my age, I judged, and I answered as politely as I could:
“As you see, Sir, I am off the road and quite lost, I fear.”
He kept the spotlight playing on my features, and I observed that his two piercing, extraordinarily luminous eyes were studying me critically.
“Lost, eh? And here! How did you get here, Sir? And where were you going?”
I was now frankly irritated at these irrelevancies; so much so, indeed, that I failed to note the incongruity of such formal and correct language in the mouth of what must apparently have been a charcoal-burner of the mountains.
Drily I exclaimed:
“I came from Toulon by way of Solliès-Pont headed for the battery on the Grand Cap. I missed the trail somewhere near the Col de la Mort de Gauthier. There my horse fell and broke his leg; and I got lost trying to reach the paths up the Cap, cross-country.”
This version of my experiences seemed moderately to satisfy the old man. He took the light away from my eyes and swept the bushes and rocks about us with it. It was, in truth, an appallingly wild locality. In my mad race through the darkness I had reached a jumbled region of rocks and ravines where my presence might well astonish anybody. But I had just asgood a right to wonder. How should he happen to be there, too?
“And you, Sir, what were you doing away off here?”
He shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the top of an escarpment that towered on my left.
“I saw you from up there!” he said.
And he fell silent, as did I.
No longer pestered with the glare in my eyes, I could examine my strange companion at more advantage. He was an old man, no doubt of that, an extremely old man, as his snow-white beard, his wrinkled, withered skin, his lean, tenuous hands attested. But he was a marvellously robust and wiry old fellow. There was no droop to his shoulders. He held his head erect. His arms were well knit at the joints and he seemed lithe and agile on his legs. In view of his whole bearing, which suggested strength, energy, initiative, I gathered that the cane on which he was leaning he carried not for support but as a weapon.
I, a soldier in my early thirties, felt helpless in the presence of that powerful octogenarian. Instinctively my hand went to the automatic in my hip-pocket, where only one of the eight bullets was dead—the one that had put poor Siegfried out of his agony. However, I felt ashamed, almost at once, of such stupid andunreasonable fear of the man. I again addressed him, and this time with a deferential and somewhat effusive politeness:
“I have not thanked you, Sir, as yet. Do, please, excuse such rudeness. I appreciate your generous kindness in going to so much trouble in my behalf. I am sure you have saved my life by coming to my rescue down that perilous cliff. Please accept my deepest thanks. I am Captain André Narcy, of the staff of Vice-Admiral de Fierce ...!”
I stopped, expecting that a name would be volunteered in exchange for mine. But the old man did not introduce himself, though he did listen to what I was saying with the closest attention. I began again:
“I was, I am, the bearer of a dispatch to the corporal on guard at the Grand Cap battery. It was in an effort to execute that mission, unfortunately still unperformed, that I lost my way, wandered aimlessly about for a time, and finally lay down here to sleep when I was quite all in. And now, Sir, might I impose upon your kindness further? Could you not direct me to the Grand Cap trail, the good one, the one I was looking for and could not manage to find myself?”
Meanwhile I was studying the old man carefully. There was nothing unusual about hisdress. His clothes were, to a button approximately, those one might expect to find in such weather on a shepherd, a hunter, a wood-chopper of those mountain regions; heavy hobnailed shoes and thick leggings, corduroy trousers and coat, a plain flannel shirt. But it was just at this point that the contrast between his costume and the cultivated intonation of his language first impressed me. The observation caused me another thrill of fear. In my confusion I caught his reply but indistinctly:
“The good road, Monsieur? In truth, you are on the bad road, the worst road, I might even say!”
I suppressed my uneasiness as best I could:
“Where am I, exactly? Am I far from the battery?”
“Very, very far!”
“Well, but ... what do you call this place?”
“I doubt if it has a name! At any rate, you will not find it on your chart!”
“Oh, you must be joking. I can’t be so very far off the road! I must be somewhere between the Mort de Gauthier and the Grand Cap! Call it eight miles to the fort ... and you will be putting it high!”
The fist that was clenched about the cane rose and fell in a gesture of ironic helplessness:
“Well, call it eight miles, Monsieur. How could you do eight miles in a dark like this?”
Again he swept the spotlight around that chaotic devil’s dump of boulders. To tell the truth, I cringed with involuntary terror, though I did manage to pull myself together again:
“Do them I must, in any event. The dispatch of which I have the honor to be bearer is of the first importance. You will be so kind, Sir, as to suggest the direction of the battery—and I will be infinitely obliged.”
The point of the cane swung upward from the ground toward the steepest of the precipices, the upper brink of which projected out into the chasm in a menacing overhang.
“It’s off in that direction,” said the old man.
I bowed with some ceremony, determined to waste no further time:
“Thank you, and good night, Sir!”
Resolutely I advanced to the foot of the cliff, and climbed up to the first indentation in the virtually perpendicular wall. But a sullen rage came over me as I realized the impossibility of making the ascent:
“Off in this direction, eh? But there are night hawks that seem to get around all right—and with little loss of time!”
I grumbled the words between my clenched teeth, addressing them to my own angry selfalone. The man was fully fifty feet away and could not possibly have heard. Yet I suddenly felt the same pressure on the back of my head and between my shoulders which had been the cause of my awakening. The man was looking at me! That impact was the shock from his piercing eyes! I turned sharply about, almost expecting an attack from him.
But he was standing just where I had left him, his eyes fixed upon me with an expression in no sense hostile. Rather I seemed to catch a smile of kindliness playing about his withered, wrinkly features. When he now spoke, the same note of kindly benevolence was sensible in his voice, and the abruptness noticeable in his first questions had also softened measurably:
“Monsieur,” said he, “I was loathe to venture a suggestion which you had failed to invite and which, doubtless, you would be quite unwilling to accept. Nevertheless ... I should be grievously at fault, were I to let you run to certain death. I will give you an hour to break a leg, or an arm, or your neck, in tumbling into one of these gorges. Suppose you lay with a fractured skull at the foot of a wall of rock—your message would not be delivered any the sooner, would it? Don’t be impatient! Wait till daylight comes! And an early morning start will bring you to the fort and, perhaps, intime. Try to get there now and your dispatch, I assure you, will never reach its destination!”
He stood there thinking for a moment and then he concluded pensively: “A mountaineer as experienced as I am might possibly venture such a thing. But at night, over rock that is forever breaking off under your feet ...!”
I don’t know why, at just that moment, my thoughts reverted to the other encounter I had had a few hours earlier in that self-same neighborhood. I closed my eyes to reconstruct in my mind the image of Madeleine, deaf, mute, unconscious apparently, running that heath like a somnambulist.... And for the third time, but on this occasion full in the face, I felt the impact of the fluid energy which seemed to spurt from the eyes that were fixed upon me. When I looked up again, the same uncontrollable terror was in possession of me: the man was in truth gazing at me—and that was all. An extravagant suspicion flitted across my mind: that man, that curious old man—could he be listening to the sound of my thoughts, as I could hear the sound of his words?
At last he seemed willing to come to the point:
“Consider, Monsieur! I live not far from here! Would you not accept my hospitality until dawn? The rain is beginning again. Itwill be wet and cold on the mountains, and it is hardly midnight.”
I looked around in astonishment into the wall of darkness about us. He lived near-by? A house, in that appalling solitude?
He understood my perplexity.
“Quite so!” he said, answering my unexpressed thought. “Quite so! Just a step or two! This way, Monsieur, if you please!”
His voice had now a soft, caressing gentleness; though I sensed an imperious order in his words—a command I could only obey.
When he turned to go, I followed him.
Easily, lightly, rapidly, over the jumbled rocks and through the tangled underbrush, the hoary old man made his way, beating his cane to right and left to open a path before us. I kept carefully to his foot-prints, really exerting myself, however, to maintain his rate of progress.
Fully a quarter of an hour it must have been that we walked thus in file one behind the other. Then my guide stopped of a sudden, turned toward me, and said:
“Monsieur, you will be careful!”
His cane pointed to some obstacle, or to some danger, just to my right. Cautiously I stepped nearer, and a creeping chill ran over me: we were on the brink of a precipice, its edges so thoroughly masked with fern that a step six inches off the path would have hurled me into a void. I could not have guessed the nearness of such peril. Feeling the ground in front of me with my toe, I leaned over and peered down into the abyss. Along its bottom a mountain torrent ran, black water rushing over polished white stones. The sheer face ofthe gorge offered not a projection to foot or hand.
“Keep well to the left, Monsieur,” said the old man; and he strode on.
The ground now took on a strange contour previously unknown to me. The ditched, pockmarked, crevassed soil of the Mort de Gauthier where my horse was lying, and the maze of gorges through which I had pursued Madeleine, came to an end. We were now on a gently sloping table-land broken in all directions by curious blocks of stone. The soil was overgrown with brambles, juniper, and numerous other spiny shrubs. The rocks sprang naked from the earth in abrupt faces cut apparently to geometrical design, triangles, squares, polygons, as though fashioned with human tools. On the one hand, none of their surfaces was sufficiently smooth to warrant the assumption of deliberate working; on the other there was too little irregularity in their structure and disposition to allay wonder at such a strange caprice of Nature. As a whole, indeed, they formed a veritable labyrinth, through which it would have been difficult to pick one’s way even in broad daylight. The old man went indifferently onward, nevertheless, not hesitating in the least, and finding his path without effort through this entanglement of scattered boulders.
Again the topography changed. The monoliths became fewer in number; the plateau had a perceptible down grade. The junipers, myrtles and mastics grew stunted and less crowded, and the land was otherwise quite barren.
If I describe this walk of ours in such detail, I do so in the hope that some of you may be tempted to seek out in the neighborhood of my misfortune, the house of which I am to speak. Its exact location I cannot recall. I could not find it again for the life of me; nor could I really identify it among other houses you might show me. It is, nevertheless, the House of the Secret, though all I can say of it is that, at last, we came to it.
In the opaque wall of darkness ahead of us a tall black mass stood out against the paler black of the night around it. First came a hedge of tall cypress trees, the boundary of a private park, a hedge like the thousands of other hedges one may find about the country villas of Provence—the Provence that frizzles in summer sunshine.
In the hedge was an iron gate, between the bars of which the old man slipped a hand and turned some secret lock. The gate swung open. My feet began to tread on a soft, thick sod, unmown. Brushing my head I could feel low-hangingbranches of cedars, pines and cork-trees. Finally through the inky black of the grove the brick-stone front of a house came into view. It was so dark under the matted interlacing of branches along the walk, that I could not isolate a single distinctive feature on the façade before me, except perhaps the stone stairway up which I went to a door. There were just eight steps. I remember because I counted them. One other detail: from the roof, and on my left as I went in, an indistinct but tall, slender mass seemed to rise, a sort of tower, or belfry.... Mark this item carefully.... It may help you!
The door was of heavy oak, studded with iron nails. The knocker was a hammer and an anvil, the latter with two points and set deep into the thick panelling.
As he raised the hammer, my companion turned to me, his eyes gleaming with an eagerness I did not like. But his voice, soft, calm, caressing, benevolent, once more relieved my fear, once more constrained me to resist an impulse to stand on my guard like an animal at bay!
“Monsieur,” he said, “I am sure you will forgive me for a slight advertence: my father, who is about to open the door, is a very old man, and his sleep must be respected; you will begood enough to make as little noise inside as possible!”
The metallic beat of the hammer upon the anvil strangely mingled in my ears with the words I had just heard. It was something like an echo of the stupor, which, at these strange phrases, struck me like a blow. So this old fellow had a father, whom he referred to as an old man! If he was eighty, more or less, how old would this parent be?
Again the hammer fell upon the anvil in a double rapid stroke like the ritualistic stamp of the fencer’s foot as the duel begins. And this double stroke was followed by another, a single one, like the first.
The door swung open.
The anteroom that now came into view was a spacious one, dimly lighted by two candles. I could make out a series of frescos on the four walls above the paneling, which was of some dark almost black wood, oak or walnut, I should say. Except for the heads of two stags with antlers, there were no ornamental furnishings. The doors, in some ancient style, were so fashioned as to blend, when closed, with the sheathing.
But one detail I did see with absolute distinctness the moment I crossed the threshold. Standing in front of me, with his left hand still on the latch which it had just opened, was an old man so like in every particular to my guide that I turned, despite myself, to be sure it was really a case of two different individuals and not of one with an image reflected in a mirror. They had the same long, wide, flowing snow-white beards; the same serious, motionless, mysterious eyes. Yes, I turned and stared. Such complete identity was beyond belief. But yet, they were really two men,—father and son,—the son bowing with deference to the father. In fact, this demeanor on the part of the person who had come through the heath with me was the means, henceforth, by which I managed to distinguish the younger from the older man; though both, to the eye, seemed equally full of years, not to say centuries, ages; both equally robust, withal, equally erect of carriage, equally muscular with the litheness of youth.
I had stopped instinctively, eventually mustering presence of mind enough to bow deeply to mine host, a greeting which he returned politely but without pronouncing a word. His eyes, meanwhile, were surveying me with the most searching fixity. After a time they turned for the fraction of a second upon my escort, and I understood that they carried a question, imperiously.
“I took upon myself, Sir, the responsibility of bringing this gentleman here. I found him lying out in the rain in the hapless state you see him in. He had gone astray among the boulders at the outer end of the labyrinth.”
These sentences were uttered in a half-whisper, as though the speaker were afraid of disturbing a household at slumber.
The father did not answer for a space of time which I found a markedly long one. Then he said:
“Your conduct was quite proper, I believe, Sir.”
And he too spoke in a half-whisper.
These “Sirs” between father and son astonished me with their savor of antique formality; and I was impelled thereby to glance at the costume of this hoary gentleman who was thus addressing his offspring with the ceremonious formulas of bygone feudal days. Nothing in particular! A rustic outfit in corduroy, exactly like that of the “boy”; except that the elder man wore old-fashioned knee-breeches with woolen stockings and buckles at the knees.
The son was meantime recounting my story to his parent with a fullness that neglected no detail.
“Monsieur is an officer,” said he. “His name is Narcy, Captain André Narcy. He is the bearer of a sealed dispatch for the fort on the Grand Cap, and this dispatch, a very urgent one so it seems, must be delivered at the earliest possible moment. That is why I judged it best to offer our hospitality to monsieur for the night: he must have a good rest to be in condition for a hurried journey tomorrow morning, when daylight will permit him to make the ascent without such a distant wandering from his path as he fell into—for lack of a guiding hand—tonight. For, without any doubtwhatever, monsieur met not a living soul along the trail to set him on the right road. And that, without any doubt whatever, is the reason why monsieur strayed so very very far from this Grand Cap where he was going.”
The innuendos in this narrative did not fail to impress me. I scanned the faces of the two men, one after the other, anxiously; but neither carried the slightest expression. The father answered also in a tone that was entirely normal, repeating word for word his earlier sentence of approval:
“Your conduct was quite proper, I believe, Sir.”
I groped about in my mind for an appropriate phrase of thanks; but before I hit upon one, mine host, pointing a finger at one of the invisible doors in the paneling, remarked, still addressing his son:
“It is evident that monsieur should be allowed to retire at once. Be so good as to show him to his room, Sir! You will need a light.”
I bowed in acknowledgement, without speaking. The son was already in motion, leading the way with the same spotlight playing on the room about us. Our first steps on the tiled floor raised a curious echo in that all but unfurnished chamber, the four walls of which threw each sound back upon us and seemed toprolong it with a briefly sustained tremor. The spotlight chanced to cast a round, luminous circle upon one of the frescos. As far as my hasty glimpse of it enabled me to judge, it was a mythological subject in faded color and not over-stressed design—a birth of Aphrodite from the sea, perhaps.
My guide drew back, in succession, three long thick bolts, longer and thicker than any bolts I could remember ever having seen. They secured the door to which the elder of the two men had pointed. A closer view of the wall revealed to me that beside this door there was another, similarly disguised in the paneling and fastened in the same way. Taken together, they might have been mistaken for the two wings of one folding door, joining very badly, for that matter, despite their rugged hinges; for a gap of a full inch was visible under each of the presumed wings, leaving free play to draughts.
These observations had scarcely flashed through my mind, when the old man, the father, that is, who had been standing in the center of the reception hall with his eyes glued upon me, advanced suddenly in my direction, and his steps, light as they were, echoed about the room as ours had done. I stopped and looked at him.With a gesture, and speaking to me directly for the first time, he said:
“Monsieur, I forgot to remind you that in our house, and not far indeed from the quarters you will occupy, we have a case of sickness. Might I request you, therefore, kindly to make as little noise as possible?”
This was the second time I had been urged not to talk; but the pretext had been different on each occasion....
And then something happened ... a very inconsiderable thing, which gave me a distinct shiver of excitement. It was not so much myself who trembled, but rather that submerged, unconscious being we each have within us which watches while we slumber and ever has a memory and a consciousness quite apart from our waking selves....
From under the other door—the door which had not been opened, namely—a sudden draught of warm air came. It was cold, noticeably cold, in the reception hall; but behind the closed door was a room which they kept much better heated. Now that draught of warm air!... As it passed through my nostrils, I became gradually aware of its fragrance. It was sweet with a perfume which my conscious self did not recognize, but which my submerged ego at once remembered—my submerged ego only, indeed.That is why I had crossed the threshold of the open door before I really understood....
Before I really understood, that is, what the closed door concealed....
Beyond the door that was open stretched a passageway, and at the end of the passageway came another door. Once we were through the latter, the spotlight of my escort fell upon a flight of stairs, six steps high, as I counted. I noted also that the treads were of the same red square tiles as the floor of the reception hall. Only the nosings were of wood, a wood much worn from long service. At the top of the steps my guide opened one last door.
I now found myself in a very dark room, so dark, indeed, that I paused just inside the threshold from fear of colliding with some piece of furniture. The man, however, drew aside the top of his lantern and from the flame within it began to light the three wicks of a massive iron candlestick, a sort of tripod fashioned to represent three lances supporting one another.
The room brightened. I noted that it contained this candelabrum, one chair, and one bed, the latter simple, home-made articles such as a peasant might improvise for himself.
“And I wish you a good night, Monsieur,” said my guide, with a bow. “Please sleep quiteat your ease. I shall have the honor of waking you in time, myself.”
“At sunrise?” said I.
“At sunrise,” he answered, “or perhaps ... perhaps a moment or two before sunrise....”
That seemed to me a very natural thing to say, and I returned his courtesy:
“Good night, Monsieur!”
He went away. I listened to his footsteps as they clacked on the tiles of the six steps, and then on the pavement of the passage. Finally I heard the door into the anteroom swing to, and, less to my surprise than to my alarm, the great iron bolts slide back into their places: the grating sound they made, however slight, was quite audible in the absolute silence of the mansion.
I sat down on the wicker chair at the foot of the plain pine bedstead.
In sitting down I had intended to collect my thoughts if possible, bring a little order into the chaos of impressions, suspicions and fears that were whirling in my bewildered brain. But I had hardly touched the seat, when an unexpected sensation put an end to my reflections.
I had cast my eyes about the four walls of the room where I now was—four walls cheaply papered in a stock design of loud colors. Againthe miserable poverty of the furnishings had impressed me, with the exception of the antique candlestick. The place, indeed, in its present condition, had all the appearances of a spare room, roughly fitted up with these few odd and ill-matched articles. I should not have thought it strange had I detected there the close musty odor that one always meets in apartments long unoccupied and rarely aired.
But that was not the smell that came to my nostrils. Quite the contrary in fact! The room was suddenly fragrant with a warm living perfume, a perfume that now reminded me of the one I had vaguely perceived in the draught from under the closed door of the anteroom. It was not the same perfume, by any means, though it was of the same general kind, one of those essences which float about every house where women are, combining the most diverse aromas into a single fragrance that is the alluring fragrance of feminine beauty.
I brought all my senses to bear upon it. “Heliotrope,” I analyzed, ... “and rose”! The isolation of these two essences seemed all at once to sharpen my memory of the earlier perfume; the latter, unmistakably, had been a lily of the valley.
“Muguet,” I said aloud, “lily of the valley!”
All a-quiver I leapt to my feet, terrified,stunned, but ferociously determined. Of course! Of course! The two syllables of that French word,muguet, had brought a flood of light into my clouded mind. Of course!Muguet!Her perfume! Madeleine! Madeleine!
It is curious that in the overwhelming anguish that had now seized upon me, an insignificant thought came to the surface of my seething consciousness and restored all the coolness and self-control that I had lost: “What an unconscionable ass I have been! Fool! Fool! Fool! Of course! Of course! Why did I not get the point at the very first? Long ago, long ago? After the very first suspicious words I heard from the mouths of those two weird hosts of mine?... Fool of fools! Why did I not recognize her perfume out there in the hall where I first perceived it—before those three bolts were drawn upon me, leaving me a helpless prisoner in this hole where I am caught like a rat in a trap?
“Helpless, eh? Like a rat in a trap, eh? Not quite.”
I was almost normally calm as I put a hand to my belt and drew my revolver. Helpless, eh? There were eight cartridges in my automatic, and I had used only one—the one that put poor Siegfried out of his misery! “Seven left!Helpless? Not so helpless as all that? There must be seven of them!”
I snapped the lock on the hammer and opened the magazine. The seven bullets were in place. I threw the barrel back into position and released the lock again, testing the trigger lightly with my finger to be sure the requisite free play was there. I put the pistol into my coat pocket, with my right hand upon it.
“At sunrise, eh? You were coming back at sunrise, old Methuselah? Do! I shall be glad to see you!”
I looked at my watch. Two o’clock! It was mid-winter time. The dawn would be long in coming.
I rose from the chair and stepped over to the bed. The sheets were singularly delicate, the coverlets thick and downy. Another breath of perfume floated past my nostrils.—I buried a fist in my hot, feverish cheek.... That bed, so daintily prepared! It had been offered to me! But for whom had it been made so cosy? Who slept there ordinarily? And my thoughts flashed out through the walls and partitions of that accursed mansion to another room, where there would be another bed and in it a woman, sleeping! Madeleine, my Madeleine!
The dart of horrified jealousy that ran through my heart was like the thrust of a sharp,white-hot sword. Madeleine! There, in that other chamber, at night! The victim of what unconscionable sorcery! The plaything of what loathsome and unmentionable desires!
But no—my calmer judgment soon concluded. Those men—demons, perhaps—could not have been dastards in the thrall of lust! That secret house could not be a House of Love! What was the mystery, then? What? Oh, what?
The three candles were flickering at the three points of their tripod of lances. The door! I looked at it. Here also the joinings yawned from age. And that would doubtless be the case with the window.
For there was a window in the room, the room that was really my prison.
I stepped over to examine it, pressing my forehead to the panes and plunging my gaze into the outer blanket of darkness.
Nothing! Nothing at all. An impenetrable pall of inky blackness came right up against my eyes. A thick growth of ivy formed an outer curtain over the window, weaving a fabric through and around the heavy iron bars which guarded it.
A prison! That was the very name for it!
I heard footsteps moving softly along one of the partitions behind me. I held my breath.Soon silence returned, complete death-like silence.
I went back to the bed and lay down upon it, waiting, ready for anything. I had my clothes and my boots on. My hand clutched the butt of the automatic in my pocket.
I waited, my eyes glued upon the door, my ears straining to catch the slightest sound.
I waited!
Little by little my brain had regained its lucidity and my heart its normal beat. Now, outstretched on the bed, with my boots and clothes on, and my hand upon my pistol, I was waiting, waiting. I noted the fact: the hand upon my pistol had not a tremor: it was ready to kill. My Adventure was approaching its dénouement. I would soon have to fight a battle, where I must needs come off victorious. These considerations were like a potent cordial to my overstrained nerves. So cool and collected indeed had I become that I was now prepared to take everything as a matter of course. I could, that is, restrain my astonishment, or at least postpone any expression of it. Madeleine, in that mysterious house, at that time of night! No, there was no explaining it, with any explanation at all convincing. But, for the moment, no explanation was necessary, or in point. We would come to that later—after the combat—which must end in my victory. Meantime, all conjecture would be superfluous.
The three candles were still burning on theirtripod of the three crossed lances. But they were getting short. I took out my watch and looked at it. Half past two! The candles would almost certainly fail to outlast the night. And to shoot accurately you must see, clearly see, your target! I rose from the bed, walked over to the candlestick and put out two of the three wicks burning. Then I went back to my bed again.
But I had my boots on. My spurs had scraped noisily on the tiling of the floor; and, since the latter had no carpet, my heels had clacked loudly as I walked. And that was not the worst of it. As my weight came down upon the edge of the bed, the spring gave a long, piercing, metallic squeak, which, in case anyone at all were guarding me, had a fine chance of being heard, in that sepulchral silence reigning, two or three partitions away. This reflection had had just time to settle clearly in my mind, when, and almost as an echo to the creaking of the spring, the lock in the door of my room creaked in turn.
With a bound I was off the bed; and I had to restrain myself in order not to level my automatic upon the door and let fly the moment it opened.
I managed to control that impulse. Besides there came a knock, a discreet, a courteousknock, on the panel. The door swung open slowly, and in the doorway I saw one of my hosts, I could not decide whether the father or the son, but at any rate one of the two old men with the long, broad, glistening, snow-white beards. He was standing there quite motionless, not presuming to come in. His eyes, in truth, had swept me with a glance from head to foot; and there I was, with my clothes and my boots on, in the unmistakable posture of a man who had not been in bed at all, who had resisted slumber, and kept on watch, nervous, suspicious, mistrustful, ready for any emergency that might arise. I caught a rapid flash in those scrutinizing eyes, a lightning-like flare that vanished on the instant. And again a thought that I had had before flitted across my straining consciousness: those penetrating eyes—did they not have, perchance, the power of going deeper than my forehead, piercing through to the secret thoughts harbored naked in my brain?
And then the old man spoke:
“Monsieur has not been sleeping. Truly, we suspected as much. In view of that, why should monsieur pass such a dull time alone here in this chamber? Would monsieur not like to join us in the room below? I think that would be far better—for monsieur, as well as for us.”
I had regained my composure once more; and I answered with decision:
“I will accept your invitation, Sir!”
And I advanced upon him.
But he drew back, as though to let me pass in front of him. This I refused to do. He may have guessed what was in my mind, for he did not insist. He led the way in front of me, with the words:
“As you will, Monsieur, ... just to show you the way!...”
On reaching the reception hall, I stopped in front of the door where I had caught the breath of Madeleine’s perfume. But it was not toward it—not as yet toward it—that I was guided.
In fact, the old man went straight across the anteroom, and, seeing me motionless in front of the same door, politely called:
“This way, if Monsieur will be so kind!”
Another door, concealed as all the others in the paneling, now opened, not, however, into a corridor, but directly into a large, in fact, a very very large room, which was thus cut off from the reception hall by the thickness of one partition.
My eyes winced before the glare of some fifty or sixty candles distributed about the room in holders along the walls and of two massive lamps, one to either side of the fire-place. Thelatter was a majestic hearth in ancient style with a huge embossed and sculptured hood spacious enough, I thought, to accommodate a goodly number of whole oxen.
Seated in an armchair and facing me as I came in was the old father—so at least I decided; but next to him, now, was a third aged man whom I had not seen as yet, and whom I took for a much younger person than the other two, though he also was far from young. They both bowed in greeting as I entered.
I stopped near enough to the door to prevent its being closed. The man to whom I had not been introduced motioned toward an empty chair. I declined it with a shake of my head; whereupon he rose:
“As you will,” said he, “I understand your feeling!”
His voice was in a very queer falsetto.
I saw him push his chair back and come forward a step in my direction. His two aged companions took up positions to the right and left of him, as though he were their chief. Chief indeed he proved to be.
There was a moment’s silence: then this man resumed:
“Monsieur le capitaine, I must offer you my apologies. It may seem inconsiderate of me to have disturbed you in your slumbers. But itmay be you were not having a very quiet repose. In that case I may count on your forgiveness!...”
He broke off, and pointed with a gesture first to the one and then to the other of his two companions.
“And pray forgive them, too,” he added. “They are well-meaning boys, on the whole, though their manners leave something to be desired. In this they are entitled to be excused, perhaps, in view of the place and the times we are living in and our aloofness from most men of the world. Certainly it would be difficult to explain away all their breaches of good form to a stickler on the niceties of conduct or to some one of over-delicate susceptibilities. But such, fortunately, you prove not to be, and I must congratulate you on your forbearance. Nevertheless, I cannot overlook the first and grossest of the impertinences inflicted on you. When you were so kind as to volunteer your name, this young man here neglected to give his name to you. I have reproved him severely for this oversight, and I solicit your indulgence in his behalf. He is the Vicomte Antoine, at your service, Sir; and here is Count François, his father, if you please. And I—you will pardon me—am the Marquis Gaspard, father of Count François and grandfather to Vicomte Antoine. Thereyou have us all; and now, I trust, you will not impose upon me the hardship of remaining longer standing. Let us be comfortable! Will you not please take a chair!”
The door behind me was wide open still, as I satisfied myself with a glance in that direction. Moreover, the strange address I had been listening to had a curiously persuasive quality. I sat down as had been suggested, and the three of them did likewise.
“Dear me, dear me,” said the Marquis Gaspard as he eased himself in his cushions. “You have left the door wide open, and a terrible draught is coming into the room!”
Hastily the Vicomte Antoine arose; but he was not so quick as I. I was at the door in a second and closed it with my own hands, making sure, meanwhile, that a simple latch was all that fastened it.
“Thanks, a thousand thanks!” exclaimed the marquis. “But, Monsieur le capitaine, why go to such extremes of courtesy? My grandson could have closed it just as well!”
I was already in my seat again, and the vicomte in his. There was a period of silence, in which my eyes had time to flit about the room. A couple of logs were glowing in the ancient fire-place. The candles about the walls were gleaming brightly. The beams in the ceilingwere darkened from the smoke of the open fire during many years. The easy chairs I found quite beautiful in their upholstery of old brocade.
And there were my three hosts!
An uncontrollable astonishment now came over me, something far in excess of any of the surprises I had experienced heretofore. Those two more than centenarians in their long snow-white beards were respectively son and grandson of the third, who seemed to be, by far, the youngest of the three! His face, smooth shaven, had not the trace of a wrinkle. There was no suggestion of sunkenness about his eyes; just as his falsetto voice came from high in his throat without a tremor and without hesitation. And yet—such the situation seemed to be! He was indeed the ancestor par excellence, the veritable patriarch, and of an age that beggared the full many years of the fathers of Abraham!
But of what could I be really sure?
The silence continued unbroken. Now we were in our chairs, the three of them facing me. They looked for all the world like a tribunal, with the marquis figuring as chief justice, and his son and grandson as associates. And I, what was I in that picture? Suspect? Defendant? A culprit awaiting sentence?
The silence lasted an unutterably long time.The three pairs of eyes fixed upon me eventually got on my nerves. To conceal my annoyance and self consciousness, I turned my head and again examined the vast hall. It was a sort of living-room—low-studded—and not a parlor, nor a lounge. The woodwork on the chairs was gilded, and the upholstery, as I had before observed, was of old brocade. The plastering was painted simply, without hangings, mirrors, or pictures, of any kind. Meagre, also, the furnishings: in addition to our four arm-chairs, two divans in the same style (an impeccable Louis XV), and two seats of fantastic form—dormeuses, one might have called them—with complicated rests for arms and feet and head, and so deep that they might have smothered rather than accommodated the human form. I further noticed an old-fashioned clock and a chest, on opposite sides of the room, and then a kind of horse, or easel, such as painters use to incline their canvases according to the fall of light.
I was studying this latter object, when the Marquis Gaspard coughed, and then sneezed noisily. My eyes came back to him. He was holding a snuff box in his hand and had just taken a pinch from it. He returned the object to his pocket, and then began, evidently by way of introduction:
“Monsieur le capitaine, I am eager, before all else, to convince you of our good will in your regard, a good will that is absolute and which will prove, I trust, efficient. Changing times have done us wrong, to tell the truth; for to look at us, I suppose, one would take us rather for brigands of the wild than for amiable, well-intentioned gentlemen. And yet, we are not so bad as we seem, a fact of which you will, in the end, become aware.”
The old man fell silent, took out his snuff-box again, treated himself to another pinch, and then sat thinking for a moment.
“Monsieur,” he resumed at last, “I should dislike being put into the position of matching wits with you. I prefer to rely on your honesty and honor as a soldier of France. I put the question quite bluntly therefore: Was it, or was it not, by pure chance, that you came, last evening, so very very close to this residence of ours?”
I did not have time to answer. He silenced me with a gesture and went on:
“Of course, I take a number of things for granted. You did not venture into this retreat for the purpose merely of paying us a visit! Far from that, monsieur! My vanity would not be crossed if I did not hear such an extravagant avowal on your part. I am quite ready to admitthat before this evening our triple existence played a slight if any part at all in your normal thoughts and preoccupations. I am right on that point, am I not? Quite so! So much for that!
“Nevertheless, it is not inconceivable that your present trespass on our domains may be due to something more, a little something more, than plain simple chance.... May I expatiate: monsieur le vicomte, my grandson, found you some hours ago in an extraordinary place, to say the least. You were on your way from the Mort de Gauthier to the Grand Cap? Be it so! Heaven preserve me from doubting your assertion in the slightest. And yet, and yet! The fact is that to reach the point where the vicomte found you, you must have proceeded with your back persistently and repeatedly turned upon your goal. The brush and undergrowth on the mountains, I suppose, are by no means an easy problem for the wayfarer. To find one’s way about therein requires no little presence of mind. Permit me, nevertheless, to express my great surprise that a gentleman of such talent as I perceive in you, a gentleman trained in cartography as the members of your distinguished profession are, should have gone so far, so very very far, astray, and over such rough and trying ground! My honor, Monsieur!Must one assume that some will-o’-the-wisp, running the heath to lure poor travellers to destruction, may have caught you in its spell! I suggest that hypothesis—one I am by no means loathe to accept. So I ask you, Monsieur le capitaine: Was it such a wandering fay—an evil fairy of the deadliest lineage—that brought you to our refuge?”
He concluded, and fastened his eyes upon me.
From the first syllable in his quaintly formal discourse, I had foreseen the point at which he was ultimately to arrive. So I was not by any means taken unawares. His address, besides, had been a long one, and I had had plenty of time to make a supreme decision. When he came to his will-o’-the-wisp, my mind was quite made up. Gently my hand had made its way to my pocket and come to rest on my revolver. I had withdrawn my left leg from beneath my chair and stiffened the muscles of the calf. Ready to spring forward and mix in, I now looked up and answered without a tremor:
“Monsieur, will you not take your own choice? You have suggested chance, foxfire, fairies. Have it as you will. I have no reply to make. On the contrary I have a number of questions to put to you!”
He did not bat an eyelash, nor did the men to the left and right of him; but eventually a smilecame to his lips and refused to fade as time went on. I got a good grip on my automatic.
“I have no intention,” I resumed, “of matching wits with you either! I expect immediate frankness on your part; for you will find it to your interest, I assure you, not to prevaricate by a syllable. Shall we then come to the point without evasion? I ask you, monsieur: are you by any chance acquainted with a young lady, Madame Madeleine de X....”
I gave her name in full, of course.
The Marquis Gaspard, still smiling and more blandly if anything, nodded and waved his hand in emphasis of assent.
“Very well,” said I. “I will go on. Monsieur, is it, or is it not, a fact, that this lady is a prisoner, at this moment, in this house?”
The hoary head was now slowly raised, while the same wide opened hand sketched a gesture of perplexity. The smile puckered into something expressive of incertitude.
“A prisoner?” said he. “That is hardly the word, Monsieur. It is a fact that the lady in question is, and at this moment as you say, honoring us with her distinguished presence in this house. But if, as I can now hardly doubt, you chanced to meet her on your way, you must have been able to see for yourself, Monsieur, that she was coming alone and of her ownaccord, without constraint from anyone, to visit us under this roof where you wrongfully choose to call her a prisoner—as she is not, Monsieur, my word of honor!”
Whereupon, he settled back into his chair, and his ghoulish, ironical, joyous face stood out more clearly against the bright brocade of the cushions.
He had outmanoeuvred me in the exchange, and for a second or two I was disconcerted. Then, however, I regained the offensive.
“As you will have it, Sir,” I said. “I was wrong, in my choice of words: I confess my error. Madame de X.... is a free woman here; and, accordingly, there is no reason in the world why I should not be admitted to her presence at once, to offer her my respectful homage. May I see her? I am one of her friends, the most intimate of her friends, I might say.”
The smiling, clean-shaven mouth relaxed into a broad laugh accentuated with little explosions of mirth in that queer falsetto:
“Oh, Monsieur le capitaine, you are telling us nothing we do not know, believe me, Sir. And rather, pray excuse the generous liberty I am taking in laughing at an affair such as yours and hers. I date from very long ago; and in my day, we were not so particular about secrecy in such matters. Let us pass on, pass on. I seethat I have hurt your feelings by my inopportune mirth. No offense, I assure you. Let us forget that whole side of the subject. You ask to interview Madame de X.... Nothing, in fact, would be easier; but unfortunately, Madame de X.... was feeling very tired, and went to bed, not long ago. She must now be in her first sleep; and I know you are far too much of a gentleman to disturb a lady under such conditions—to mention only the first of many obstacles to your satisfaction.”
He was making fun of me; and my face burned hot with anger.
“I insist,” said I, mastering my indignation. “I promise further not to disturb Madame de X.... if her first sleep is as deep and peaceful as you assert. But I insist on seeing her—and I have a right to, I should say, a right which I am certain you will not dispute.”
At last the smile faded from the Marquis Gaspard’s face. His eyes settled upon me searchingly, as he replied in an earnest voice:
“Monsieur le capitaine, you are, rest quite assured, in a position to ask everything in this house, without finding anything denied you. Will you follow me!”
He arose, walked to the door, opened it, and stepped across the reception hall. I followed in his footsteps in nervous astonishment. Theother two men also rose and came along behind me.
“Monsieur,” said the marquis softly, “you are now able to understand, I trust, why you were several times requested to make no noise in your apartment, which is so close to this one....”
I had guessed rightly, from the first. It was the room behind the door with the three long thick bolts, from under which the perfume so familiar to my nostrils had come—the fragrance ofmuguet, of lilies-of-the-valley. And it was just such a room as I had imagined later—a naked, sparsely furnished chamber like the one they had given to me; and the same bed with fine sheets and silken coverlets.
On that bed Madeleine was lying, her eyes closed, her lips white, her cheeks a leaden gray. They had told me the truth, also. She was asleep, deeply, too deeply, sunk in slumber, a strange, bloodless, icy slumber, nearer to death, perhaps, than to life.
“Monsieur will be mindful strictly of his promise,” cautioned the Marquis Gaspard. “You have satisfied yourself that Madame is sleeping, soundly sleeping. I may add that she is so greatly fatigued that the shock of a sudden awakening might be fatal to her....”
The words were uttered in a grave, solemnvoice in striking contrast with the bantering tone he had hitherto adopted.
From the very depths of my being a cold, relentless anger rose, as a hurricane of winter rises on an unsheltered plain. Drawing my pistol, I turned sharply upon the man, my enemy, and, my finger upon the unlocked trigger, I pressed the muzzle against his heart: “Peace!” I commanded, “Not a word from any one of you, or I shoot this fellow like a dog! Now, you speak up, you, Sir, you! And the truth, as you value your life! This woman! What are you doing with her here?”
I had my eyes fixed upon those of the old man under my pistol.
And these began to glow, to glow, to glow! What was happening to me? For a second I was blinded, dazzled, dazed. Then a sudden panic seized on me. I felt my prey slipping from my clutches. With my last ounce of will-power I pressed upon the trigger; but the weapon did not go off. The eyes of my prisoner had fallen slowly, quietly, deliberately from my eyes upon my hand. A vise-like grip fell upon my fingers, paralyzing, bruising, crushing them. The automatic slipped from my grasp and fell to the floor....
Then, in the same deep, solemn voice, coolly, calmly, as though nothing whatever hadoccurred, the Marquis Gaspard answered my question:
“What am I doing with this woman here? No query could be more natural, more legitimate, I am sure, Monsieur. I shall consider it a privilege to satisfy your curiosity. But perhaps Monsieur would prefer to return whence we came, to avoid any disturbance of Madame, in her slumbers.”
My two arms were hanging loose at my sides. And my two legs were free. Nevertheless I felt bound hand and foot, unable to make the slightest movement save such as my master, the Marquis Gaspard, commanded.... A prisoner, body and soul, I obeyed in silence. I walked back toward the room we had left a few moments before. As I stepped through the door of Madeleine’s chamber, I experienced a bitter longing to give her one more glance, one more, one more.
But it was not vouchsafed me to turn my head.
“Monsieur le capitaine,” the Marquis Gaspard began, “you are in a position to ask anything of us here, without its being denied you—anything except one thing—but of this we shall speak later. For the moment you have been good enough to question me in reference to Madame de X.... and I should consider myself rude indeed, were I not to answer. The explanation may be longer than you expect, I dare say. That matters little! I am completely at your service; I am ready to satisfy your every desire! Forgive me this preamble, which may seem long extended. And forgive me also if I chance to bore you with a narrative which also may seem irrelevant, but the necessity of which I am sure you will recognize as we proceed.”
He thought a moment. Then he drew his snuff-box, opened it, offered a pinch to the man on his right and another to the man on his left, took one himself, and finally continued:
“Monsieur, I was born very far from here, in a little town in Germany. It was in the year of Our Lord....”
The old man stopped. Count François had leapt from his armchair and extended a broad flat hand before his father as though begging that latter to reveal no more. The Marquis Gaspard fell silent, in fact, for as long as three seconds, in the meantime looking steadily at his son, his lips perked into an expression of indulgent irony.
“I declare!” said he, eventually, in his queer falsetto voice, “that from you, Monsieur François, at your age! Will you never grow up, Sir? Imagine! Do you not suppose that Monsieur le capitaine is already well initiated, too well initiated, into the Secret? What matters it whether he stop where he is now, or go on to learn the rest of it?”
He turned toward me again and repeated:
“Monsieur, I was born in a little town in Germany, as I had the honor of informing you. It was at Eckernfoerde, not far from Schleswig, in the year of Our Lord, One Thousand, Seven Hundred and Thirty Three! 1733! Yes, Monsieur!
“Today is the twenty-second of December, 1908. Figure it up yourself. I am one hundred and seventy-five years old! Don’t be too much surprised, Monsieur. Such is the simple fact, and it will seem simpler still, as I progress with my explanation. If we were more at leisure andyour curiosity should extend that far, it would be a great pleasure for me to give you a detailed story of my life; not, of course, of my whole life—that you would find a rambling, disconnected narrative, I am sure—but the more interesting moments, my first fifty years, let us say. That, however, would take us far afield, and the night, though a winter’s one, would scarcely suffice for such a tale. Let us keep to essentials, therefore.
“My father was a gentleman, a soldier in the service of His Majesty King Christian VI of Denmark. He had played a distinguished rôle in the wars of the preceding reign; but his position was not brilliant at the court of this Prince, who was so wholly engrossed with the gentler arts of letters, science and society. All Europe, for that matter, was enjoying a period of quiet; and my father had to make the best of the situation, however hard it bore on him, a professional soldier. But the peace was of short duration, as the event proved; and I was just turning my seventh year when a new conflict broke out, with Austria, Prussia, and France leading scores of those little kingdoms which were forever fishing in the troubled waters of Continental politics. However, Denmark was one of the few small states to keep her weapons sheathed.
“Under this disappointment my fatherchafed—refused to put up with it, in fact. He decided to go abroad to live.
“We moved first to Paris, then to Versailles, where Louis XV welcomed us cordially. A brilliant career was opening before my father, whose bravery in action soon attracted royal attention, when, on the tenth of May, 1745, just as the famous battle of Fontenoy was developing into a French triumph, an English bullet laid him low. To the victory my parent’s gallantry had contributed not a little, and that, too, under the very eyes of the King himself. The latter, anxious that such distinguished service should not pass unrecognized, called me to his presence, and there, on the battle field, elevated me to the rank of royal page.
“This, Monsieur, was the beginning of my real life as a man—a life, I may add, that was for long carefree and joyous. I can still remember the placid delights of those years which all France enjoyed under the Treaty of 1747. At Court, especially, there was one round of festivals, revelries and intrigues of love, wherein I played my part as well as the next one; and I may even say that if today you see before you in my person a hermit, a man, at least, inclined to solitude, the fact must be attributed to the immense, the delicate felicity in which I passed my early days, a happiness whose sheerperfection has disgusted me forever with the banal pleasures which you people of this modern age could offer me if I cared for them. But why arouse in you the melancholy yearning for those golden days, which I feel? I will pass on, and pray forgive me if I have dwelt too much upon them as it is. I come, then, and tardily enough, to the main point.
“I said, Monsieur, that after 1745, from the date, that is, of my father’s death on the field of honor, I was a page at the Court of Louis XV. In that capacity I was still serving five years later, in the year 1750. Indeed, it was my honor and my pleasure as a royal page, to escort the Maréchal de Belle Isle one day into the presence of His Majesty; the marshall, in turn, leading by the hand a rather handsome gentleman whose name was quite unknown to me.
“‘Sire,’ the marshall began—(How his silky wig shone, as he made obeissance! And to me how glorious his purple coat seemed, thrown up in back by the studded scabbard of his sword!)—‘Sire, I have the honor to present to your Majesty, as your Majesty deigned to command, Monsieur le Comte de Saint Germain, who, beyond all dispute, is the most aged gentleman of your kingdom.’
“My eyes, I remember, turned upon thecount in question. And, quite to the contrary of his introduction, he seemed to me a man in the flower of youth. If he were a day older than thirty, there was not the slightest reason in the world to suspect so.
“It is surely not my place, Monsieur le capitaine, to play the school-master for a man of your evident education. I am certain you are familiar with all that our historians have said about that extraordinary, that superhuman individual, known to successive generations, as the Count of Saint Germain, the Marquis of Monferrat, Count Bellamye, Signor Rotondo, Count Tzarogy, the Reverend Father Aymar, and so on. No, it was rather out of a sense of filial regard than out of any desire to enlighten you, that I forgot myself so far as to recount the detailed story of my first and fortunate encounter with this personage whom I was later to revere as father, mother, master and friend, all in one. To be sure, the intimacy between him and me was not the outcome of this first meeting only. In the ten years following, between 1750 and 1760, that is, the Count of Saint Germain was one of the most frequent guests at the Court of Versailles, and I continued as gentleman-in-waiting to the King.
“Thereafter intrigues and jealousies had their play, and the Count was no longerwelcome. Unable by that time to live apart from the company of that distinguished genius, I determined to seek him out in his banishment. For long my search was vain. Free Masonry, of which he was the secret General and Grand Master, was keeping him in hiding—as I later learned, in Moscow, where he was plotting a sort of revolution. In despair at last of ever finding him, I abandoned my quest; and, since now the thought of life in France had become intolerable to me, I decided to return to my old Danish home, establish a peaceful hearthfire there, and cultivate the memory of the prodigious friend whom I had lost.
“This I did. I went back to Eckernfoerde, to my ancestral mansion which had not been occupied for fully twenty-four years.
“It was now the year 1764. Denmark was still at peace, or virtually so. One single army indeed was campaigning in the Duchy of Mecklenburg, under the command of a young fellow, some twenty years of age, who gave promise of a most brilliant career in arms—the Landgrave Charles of Hesse-Cassel, I mean, whom King Christian VII was soon to nominate as his Lieutenant-General.
“The circumstance arose eventually whereby I was called upon to pay homage to His Highness, during a visit which he made, in theinterval between two seasons in the field, to a palace of his at Eckernfoerde. Imagine my delight, Monsieur, imagine my boundless joy, when I discovered, seated on his Highness’s right hand and in the place of honor and confidence, the man whom I had everywhere been looking for and had given up for lost. The landgrave himself wept at sight of my emotion. Saint Germain was then living under the name of Tzarogy, dividing his time between the general, whom he was advising as privy councilor, and divers other lords and gentlemen to whom he was lending the assistance of his marvelous science. Prince Orlof, was among these, I may mention, and His Highness, the Margrave Charles Alexander of Anspach....
“My own disappointments, alas, were not yet at an end, however; for, many times, I was still to be deprived of the society of this being who was growing from hour to hour more precious and more necessary to me. But finally my master ceased his wanderings. Prince Charles became, as I said, lieutenant-general to the new king, Christian VII; but, though war now broke out between Norway (a vassal state of ours) and Sweden, the new marshall was frequently at leisure; and this he spent in secret labors at which my master and I often assisted him. Fifteen years thus passed, years assolemnly and earnestly happy as the days I had spent in France had been wildly joyous. Then a horrible catastrophe came to destroy this long and perfect bliss. I referred casually, some moments ago, to the extreme youth my master had succeeded in preserving despite his unmeasurable age. That youth now suddenly began to depart from him.
“I noticed the change, without daring for a time to make mention of it to him. But his health soon broke down to such a remarkable extent that I could not endure my silence. One day I threw myself at the count’s feet and begged him to be more attentive to his well-being, indeed to make use of his own science in his own behalf. To my relief he took no offense at my presumptuousness, and lifting me tenderly to my feet, he said—in a deep sepulchral voice that froze my blood:
“‘Gaspard, there are diseases against which the science to which you advise appeal is of no avail. My wisdom is helpless, for example, against a secret cancer of which my heart is bleeding: against a will I have—a determination on my part—not to be well again.’
“So speaking, he opened before my eyes a bejewelled medallion which he was wearing about his neck; and in it, fastened to the gold, I perceived a ring of braided hair.
“‘Gaspard,’ he continued, ‘I am dying! My mistake was in trying to immortalize, not my maturer manhood, but my frivolous youth. Had I been a wiser man I should have assured—by a wrinkle or two, at least, and a few white hairs—this mortal envelop of mine against the shafts of love; in which case it might surely have become eternal. Now, when you have wholly acquired my Secret, profit by this mistake of mine, and, as my heir and continuator, show yourself worthy of the inheritance!’