They sat side by side on the back seat, for they dreaded to be seen, and at first they did not speak. But as soon as the carriage had started, as soon as they had left behind the sorrowful Calvary where his honor remained on the gibbet, Jansoulet, at the end of his strength, laid his head against his mother's shoulder, hid his face in a fold of the old green shawl, and there, shedding hot tears, his whole body shaken by sobs, the cry of his infancy came once more to his lips, hispatoiswail when he was a little child: "Mamma! mamma!"
"Que l'heure est donc brèveQu'on passe en aimant!C'est moins qu'un moment,Un peu plus qu'un rêve."[7]
In the half-light of the great salon clad in its summer garb, filled with flowers, the plush furniture swathed in white covers, the chandeliers draped in gauze, the shades lowered and the windows open, Madame Jenkins sits at the piano, picking out the last production of the fashionable musician of the day; a few sonorous chords accompany the exquisite lines, a melancholyLiedin unequal measures, which seems to have been written for the serious sweetness of her voice and the anxious state of her mind.
"Le temps nous enlève,Notre enchantement,"[8]
sighs the poor woman, moved by the sound of her own lament; and while the notes fly away throughthe courtyard of the mansion, tranquil as usual, where the fountain is playing in the midst of a clump of rhododendrons, the singer interrupts herself, her hands prolonging the chord, her eyes fixed on the music, but her glance far, far away. The doctor is absent. The interests of his business and his health have banished him from Paris for a few days, and, as frequently happens in solitude, the fair Madame Jenkins' thoughts have assumed that serious cast, that analytical tendency which sometimes makes a brief separation fatal to the most united households. United they had not been for a long time. They met only at table, before the servants, hardly spoke to each other, unless he, the man of oleaginous manners, chose to indulge in some brutal, uncivil remark concerning her son, her years which were beginning to tell upon her at last, or a dress which was not becoming to her. Always gentle and serene, she forced back her tears, submitted to everything, pretended not to understand; not that she loved him still, after so much cruel and contemptuous treatment, but it was the old story, as Joe the coachman said, of "an old incubus who wants to be married." Heretofore a terrible obstacle, the life of the legitimate spouse, had prolonged a shameful situation. Now that the obstacle no longer existed, she wanted to put an end to the comedy, because of André, who might any day be forced to despise his mother, because of the world which they had been deceiving for ten years, so that she never went into society without a sinking at the heart, dreading the welcomethat would be accorded her on the morrow of a disclosure. To her hints, her entreaties, Jenkins had replied at first with vague phrases, with grandiloquent gestures: "Do you doubt me? Isn't our engagement sacred?"
He also dwelt upon the difficulty of keeping secret a ceremony of such importance. Then he had taken refuge in malevolent silence, big with chilling anger and violent resolutions. The duke's death, the check thereby administered to his insane vanity, had dealt the last blow; for disaster, which often brings together hearts that are ripe for a mutual understanding, consummates and completes disunion. And that was a genuine disaster. The popularity of the Jenkins Pearls suddenly arrested, the very thorough exposure of the position of the foreign physician, the charlatan, by old Bouchereau in the journal of the Academy, caused the leaders of society to gaze at one another in alarm, even paler from terror than from the absorption of arsenic into their systems, and the Irishman had already felt the effect of those bewilderingly sudden changes of the wind which make Parisian infatuations so dangerous.
It was for that reason, doubtless, that Jenkins had deemed it advisable to disappear for some time, leaving Madame to continue to frequent the salons that were still open, in order to feel the pulse of public opinion and hold it in awe. It was a cruel task for the poor woman, who found everywhere something of the same cold, distant reception she had met with at Hemerlingue's.But she did not complain, hoping in this way to earn her marriage, to knit between him and herself, as a last resort, the painful bond of pity, of trials undergone in common. And as she knew that she was always in demand in society because of her talent, because of the artistic entertainment she furnished at select parties, being always ready to lay her long gloves and her fan on the piano, as a prelude to some portion of her rich repertory, she labored constantly, passed her afternoons turning over new music, selecting by preference melancholy and complicated pieces, the modern music which is no longer content to be an art but is becoming a science, and is much better adapted to the demands of our nervous fancies, our anxieties, than to the demands of sentiment.
"C'est moins qu'un moment,Un pen plus qu'un rêve.Le temps nous enlèveNotre enchantement."
A flood of bright light suddenly burst into the salon with the maid, who brought her mistress a card: "Heurteux,homme d'affaires."
The gentleman was waiting. He insisted on seeing Madame.
"Did you tell him that the doctor was away from home?"
She had told him; but it was Madame with whom he wished to speak.
"With me?"
With a feeling of uneasiness she scrutinizedthat coarse, rough card, that unfamiliar, harsh name: "Heurteux." Who could he be?
"Very well; show him in."
Heurteux,homme d'affaires, coming from the bright sunlight into the semi-darkness of the salon, blinked uncertainly, tried to distinguish his surroundings. She, on the contrary, distinguished very clearly a stiff, wooden figure, grizzly whiskers, a protruding under-jaw, one of those brigands of the Law whom we meet in the outskirts of the Palais de Justice, and who seem to have been born fifty years old, with a bitter expression about the mouth, an envious manner, and morocco satchels under their arms. He sat down on the edge of the chair to which she waved him, turned his head to make sure that the servant had left the room, then opened his satchel with great deliberation, as if to look for a paper. Finding that he did not speak, she began in an impatient tone:
"I must inform you, Monsieur, that my husband is away and that I am not familiar with any of his business matters."
Unmoved, with his hand still fumbling among his documents, the man replied:
"I am quite well aware that Monsieur Jenkins is away, Madame—" he laid particular stress on the words "Monsieur Jenkins,"—"especially as I come from him."
She stared at him in terror.
"From him?"
"Alas! yes, Madame. The doctor—as you are doubtless aware—is in a very embarrassed positionfor the moment. Unfortunate operations on the Bourse, the downfall of a great financial institution in which he had funds invested, the heavy burden of the Work of Bethlehem now resting on him alone, all these disasters combined have compelled him to form an heroic resolution. He is selling his house, his horses, everything that he owns, and has given me a power of attorney to that end."
He had found at last what he was looking for, one of those stamped papers, riddled with memoranda and words erased and interlined, into which the unfeeling law sometimes crowds so much cowardice and falsehood. Madame Jenkins was on the point of saying: "But I was here. I would have done whatever he wished, carried out all his orders," when she suddenly realized, from the visitor's lack of constraint, his self-assured, almost insolent manner, that she too was involved in that general overturn, in that throwing overboard of the expensive house and useless chattels, and that her departure would be the signal for the sale.
She rose abruptly. The man, still seated, continued:
"What I still have to say, Madame,"—Oh! she knew, she could have dictated what he still had to say—"is so painful, so delicate—Monsieur Jenkins is leaving Paris for a long time, and, fearing to expose you to the perils and hazards of the new life upon which he is entering, to take you away from a son of whom you are very fond, and in whose interest it will be better perhaps—"
She no longer heard or saw him, but, given over todespair, to madness perhaps, while he lost himself in involved sentences, she listened to a voice within persistently singing the air which haunted her in that terrible crash, as the drowning man's eyes retain the image of the last object upon which they rested.
"Le temps nous enlèveNotre enchantement."
Suddenly her pride returned to her.
"Let us put an end to this, Monsieur. All your circumlocution and your fine words are simply an additional insult. The truth is that I am to be driven out, turned into the street like a servant."
"O Madame! Madame! The situation is painful enough, let us not embitter it by words. In working out hismodus vivendi, Monsieur Jenkins parts from you, but he does it with death in his heart, and the propositions I am instructed to make to you are a sufficient proof of his feeling for you. In the first place, as to furniture and clothes, I am authorized to allow you to take—"
"Enough," said she.
She rushed to the bell:
"I am going out. My hat, my cloak at once,—something, no matter what. I am in a hurry."
And while her servant went to bring what she required, she added:
"Everything here belongs to Monsieur Jenkins. Let him dispose of it as he will. I will take nothing from him—do not insist—it is useless."
The man did not insist. His errand being performed, the rest was of little consequence to him.
Coolly, without excitement, she carefully adjusted her hat in front of the mirror, the servant attaching the veil and arranging the folds of the cape over her shoulders; then she looked around for a moment to see if she had forgotten anything that was of value to her. No, nothing; her son's letters were in her pocket; she never parted from them.
"Does Madame wish the carriage?"
"No."
And she left the house.
It was about five o'clock. At that moment Bernard Jansoulet was passing through the iron gateway of the Corps Législatif, his mother on his arm; but, painful as was the drama that was being enacted there, this one far surpassed it in that respect, being more sudden, more unforeseen, devoid of the slightest solemnity, one of the private domestic dramas which Paris improvises every hour in the day; and it may be that that gives to the air we breathe in Paris that vibrating, quivering quality which excites the nerves. The weather was superb. The streets in those wealthy quarters, as broad and straight as avenues, shone resplendent in the light, which was already beginning to fade, enlivened by open windows, by flower-laden balconies, by glimpses of verdure toward the boulevards, light and tremulous between the harsh, rigid lines of stone. Madame Jenkins' hurried steps were bent in that direction, as she hastened along at random in a pitiable state of bewilderment. What a horrible downfall! Five minutes ago, rich, encompassedby all the respect and comforts of a luxurious existence. Now, nothing! Not even a roof to shelter her, not even a name! The street.
Where was she to go? What would become of her?
At first she had thought of her son. But to confess her sin, to blush before the child who respected her, to weep before him while depriving herself of the right to be consoled, was beyond her strength. No, there was nothing left for her but death. To die as soon as possible, to avoid shame by disappearing utterly, the inevitable end of situations from which there is no escape. But where to die? And how? There were so many ways of turning one's back on life! And as she walked along she reviewed them all in her mind. All around her was overflowing life, the charm that Paris lacks in winter, the open-air display of its splendor, its refined elegance, visible at that hour of the day and that season of the year around the Madeleine and its flower-market, in a space marked off by the fragrance of the roses and carnations. On the broad sidewalk, where gorgeous toilets were displayed, blending their rustling with the cool quivering of the leaves, there was something of the pleasure of a meeting in a salon, an air of acquaintance among the promenaders, smiles and quiet greetings as they passed. And suddenly Madame Jenkins, anxious concerning the distress depicted on her features, and concerning what people might think to see her hurrying along with that heedless, preoccupied manner, slackened herpace to the saunter of a simple promenader, and stopped to look at the shop windows. The bright-colored, gauzy window displays all spoke of travelling, of the country: light trains for the fine gravel of the park, hats wrapped about with gauze as a protection against the sun at the seashore, fans, umbrellas, purses. Her eyes gazed at all those gewgaws without seeing them; but an indistinct, pale reflection in the clear glass showed her her own body lying motionless on a bed in a furnished lodging, the leaden sleep of a narcotic in her head, or outside the walls yonder, displacing the mud beneath some boat. Which was the better?
She hesitated, comparing the two; then, having formed her decision, walked rapidly away with the resolute stride of the woman who tears herself regretfully from the artful temptations of the shop-window. As she hurried along, the Marquis de Monpavon, vivacious and superb, with a flower in his buttonhole, saluted her at a distance with the grand flourish of the hat so dear to the vanity of woman, the acme of elegance in the way of street salutations, the hat raised high in air above a rigid head. She answered with the polite greeting of the true Parisian, hardly expressed by an imperceptible movement of the figure and a smile in the eyes; and, seeing that exchange of worldly courtesies amid the springtime merrymaking, no one would have suspected that the same sinister thought guided the footsteps of those two, who met by chance on the road they were both following, in opposite directions, but aiming for the same goal.
The prediction of Mora's valet with regard to the marquis was fulfilled: "We may die or lose our power, then you will be called to account and it will be a terrible time." It was a terrible time. With the utmost difficulty the ex-receiver-general had obtained an extension of a fortnight in which to reimburse the Treasury, clinging to one last chance, that Jansoulet's election would be confirmed, and that, having recovered his millions, he would come once more to his assistance. The decision of the Chamber had deprived him of that supreme hope. As soon as he heard of it, he returned very calmly to the club and went up to his room where Francis was impatiently waiting to hand him an important paper that had arrived during the day. It was a notice to Sieur Louis-Marie-Agénor de Monpavon to appear the next day at the office of the examining magistrate. Was that addressed to the director of theCaisse Territorialeor to the defaulting ex-receiver-general? In any event, the employment at the outset of the brutal method of formal summons, instead of a quiet notification, was sufficiently indicative of the seriousness of the affair and the firm determination of the authorities.
In the face of such an extremity, which he had long foreseen and expected, the old beau's course was determined in advance. A Monpavon in the police-court, a Monpavon librarian at Mazas! Never! He put all his affairs in order, destroyed papers, carefully emptied his pockets, in which he placed only a few ingredients taken from his toilet-table, and all in such a perfectly calm andnatural way that when he said to Francis as he left the room: "Going to take a bath. Beastly Chamber. Poisonous dirt," the servant believed what he said. Indeed, the marquis did not lie. After standing through that long and exciting sitting of the Chamber in the dust of the gallery, his legs ached as if he had spent two nights in a railway carriage; and as his resolve to die blended with his longing for a good bath, it occurred to the old sybarite to go to sleep in a bath-tub like What's-his-name—Thingamy—ps—ps—ps—and other famous characters of antiquity. It is doing him no more than justice to say that not one of those Stoics went forth to meet death more tranquilly than he.
Adorned with a white camellia with which, as he passed, the pretty flower-girl at the club decorated the buttonhole above his rosette as an officer of the Legion of Honor, he was walking lightly up Boulevard des Capucines, when the sight of Madame Jenkins disturbed his serenity for a moment. He noticed a youthful air about her, a flame in her eyes, a something so alluring that he stopped to look at her. Tall and lovely, her long black gauze dress trailing behind, her shoulders covered by a lace mantle over which a garland of autumn leaves fell from her hat, she passed on, disappeared amid the throng of other women no less stylish than she, in a perfumed atmosphere; and the thought that his eyes were about to close forever on that attractive spectacle, which he enjoyed as a connoisseur, saddened the old beau a little and diminished the elasticity of his walk.But a few steps farther on a meeting of another sort restored all his courage.
A shabby, shamefaced man, dazzled by the bright light, was crossing the boulevard; it was old Marestang, ex-senator, ex-minister, who was so deeply compromised in the affair of theTourteaux de Malte, that, notwithstanding his age, his services, and the great scandal of such a prosecution, he had been sentenced to two years' imprisonment and stricken from the rolls of the Legion of Honor, where he was numbered among the great dignitaries. The affair was already ancient history, and the poor devil, a portion of his sentence having been remitted, had just come from prison, dejected, ruined, lacking even the wherewithal to gild his mental distress, for he had been compelled to disgorge. Standing on the edge of the sidewalk, he waited, hanging his head, until there should be an opportunity to cross the crowded street, sorely embarrassed by that enforced halt on the most frequented corner of the boulevards, caught between the foot-passengers and the stream of open carriages filled with familiar faces. Monpavon, passing near him, surprised his restless, timid glance, imploring recognition and at the same time seeking to avoid it. The idea that he might some day be reduced to that degree of humiliation caused him to shudder with disgust. "Nonsense! As if it were possible!" And, drawing himself up, inflating his breastplate, he walked on, with a firmer and more determined stride than before.
Monsieur de Monpavon is walking to his death. He goes thither by the long line of the boulevards, all aflame in the direction of the Madeleine, treading once more the springy asphalt like any loiterer, his nose in the air, his hands behind his back. He has plenty of time, there is nothing to hurry him,—the hour for the rendezvous is within his control. At every step he smiles, wafts a patronizing little greeting with the ends of his fingers, or performs the great flourish of the hat of a moment ago. Everything charms him, fascinates him, from the rumbling of the watering-carts to the rattle of the blinds at the doors of cafés which overflow to the middle of the sidewalk. The approach of death gives him the acute faculties of a convalescent, sensitive to all the beauties, all the hidden poesy of a lovely hour in summer in the heart of Parisian life,—of a lovely hour which will be his last, and which he would like to prolong until night. That is the reason, doubtless, why he passes the sumptuous establishment where he usually takes his bath; nor does he pause at the Chinese Baths. He is too well known hereabout. All Paris would know what had happened the same evening. There would be a lot of ill-bred gossip in clubs and salons, much spiteful comment on his death; and the old fop, the man of breeding, wishes to spare himself that shame, to plunge and be swallowed up in the uncertainty and anonymity of suicide, like the soldiers who, on the day after a great battle, are reported neither as living, wounded or dead, but simply as missing. That iswhy he had been careful to keep nothing upon him that might lead to his identification or furnish any precise information for the police reports, and why he seeks the distant, out-of-the-way quarters of the vast city, where the ghastly but comforting confusion of the common grave will protect him. Already the aspect of the boulevards has changed greatly. The crowd has become compact, more active and engrossed, the houses smaller and covered with business signs. When he has passed Portes Saint-Martin and Saint-Denis, through which the swarming overflow of the faubourgs streams at all hours of the day, the provincial character of the city becomes accentuated. The old beau no longer sees any one whom he knows and can boast of being a stranger to all.
The shopkeepers, who stare curiously at him, with his display of linen, his fine frock-coat, his erect figure, take him for some famous actor out for a little healthful exercise before the play, on the old boulevard, the scene of his earliest triumphs. The wind is cooler, the twilight darkens distant objects, and while the long street is still flooded with light in those portions through which he has passed, the light fades at every step. So it is with the past when its rays fall upon him who looks back and regrets. It seems to Monpavon that he is entering the darkness. He shivers a little, but does not lose courage, and walks on with head erect and unfaltering gait.
Monsieur de Monpavon is walking to his death. Now he enters the complicated labyrinth of noisystreets where the rumble of the omnibuses blends with the thousand and one industries of the working quarters, where the hot smoke from the factories is mingled with the fever of a whole population struggling against hunger. The air quivers, the gutters smoke, the buildings tremble as the heavy drays pass and collide at the corners of the narrow streets. Suddenly the marquis stops; he has found what he wanted. Between a charcoal dealer's dark shop and an undertaker's establishment, where the spruce boards leaning against the wall cause him to shudder, is a porte-cochère surmounted by a sign, the word "Baths" on a dull lantern. He enters and crosses a damp little garden where a fountain weeps in a basin of artificial rockwork. That is just the dismal retreat he has been seeking. Who will ever dream of thinking that the Marquis de Monpavon came to that place to cut his throat? The house is at the end of the garden, a low house with green shutters, a glass door, and the false villa-like air that they all have. He orders a bath, plenty of towels, walks along the narrow corridor, and while the bath is being prepared, listening to the running water behind him, he smokes his cigar at the window, gazes at the flower-garden with its spindling lilacs, and the high wall that incloses it.
Adjoining it is a great yard, the yard of a fire-engine house with a gymnasium, whose poles and swings and horizontal bars, seen indistinctly over the wall, have the look of gibbets. A bugle rings out in the yard, and that blast carries the marquisback thirty years, reminds him of his campaigns in Algeria, the lofty ramparts of Constantine, Mora's arrival in the regiment, and duels, and select card-parties. Ah! how well life began! What a pity that those infernal cards—Ps—ps—ps—However, it's worth something to have saved one's breeding.
"Monsieur," said the attendant, "your bath is ready."
At that moment Madame Jenkins, pale and gasping for breath, entered André's studio, drawn thither by an instinct stronger than her will, by the feeling that she must embrace her child before she died. And yet, when she opened the door—he had given her a duplicate key—it was a relief to her to see that he had not returned, that her excitement, increased by a long walk, an unusual experience in her luxurious life as a woman of wealth, would have time to subside. No one in the room. But on the table the little note that he always left when he went out, so that his mother, whose visits, because of Jenkins' tyranny, had become more and more infrequent and brief, might know where he was, and either wait for him or join him. Those two had not ceased to love each other dearly, profoundly, despite the cruel circumstances which compelled them to introduce into their relations as mother and son the precautions, the clandestine mystery of a different kind of love.
"I am at my rehearsal," said the little note to-day, "I shall return about seven."
That attention from her son, whom she had not been to see for three weeks, and who persisted in expecting her none the less, brought to the mother's eyes a flood of tears which blinded her. One would have said that she had entered a new world. It was so light, so peaceful, so high, that little room which caught the last gleam of daylight on its windows, which was all aflame with the last rays of the sun already sinking below the horizon, and which seemed, like all attic rooms, carved out of a piece of sky, with its bare walls, decorated only by a large portrait, her own; nothing but her own portrait smiling in the place of honor and another in a gilt frame on the table. Yes, in very truth, the humble little lodging, which was still so light when all Paris was becoming dark, produced a supernatural impression upon her, despite the poverty of its scanty furniture, scattered through two rooms, its common chintz coverings, and its mantel adorned with two great bunches of hyacinths, the flowers that are drawn through the streets by cartloads in the morning. What a lovely, brave, dignified life she might have led there with her André! And in a moment, with the rapidity of a dream, she placed her bed in one corner, her piano in another, saw herself giving lessons, taking charge of the house, to which she brought her share of enthusiasm and courageous cheerfulness. How could she have failed to understand that that should be the duty, the pride of her widowhood? What blindness, what shameful weakness!
A sad mistake, doubtless, but one for which much extenuation might have been found in her easily influenced, affectionate nature, in the adroitness and knavery of her accomplice, who talked constantly of marriage, concealing from her the fact that he was not free himself, and when at last he was obliged to confess, drawing such a picture of the unrelieved gloom of his life, of his despair, of his love, that the poor creature, already so seriously involved in the eyes of the world, incapable of one of those heroic efforts which place one above false situations, had yielded at last, had accepted that twofold existence, at once so brilliant and so wretched, resting everything upon a lie that had lasted ten years. Ten years of intoxicating triumphs and indescribable anxiety, ten years during which she had never sung without the fear of being betrayed between two measures, during which the slightest remark concerning irregular establishments wounded her like an allusion to her own case, during which the expression of her face had gradually assumed that air of gentle humility, of a culprit demanding pardon. Then the certainty of being abandoned at some time had ruined even those borrowed joys, had caused her luxurious surroundings to wither and fade; and what agony, what suffering she had silently undergone, what never-ending humiliations, down to the last and most horrible of all!
While she reviews her life thus sorrowfully in the cool evening air and the peaceful calm of the deserted house, ringing laughter, an outburst ofjoyous youthful spirits ascends from the floor below; and remembering André's confidences, his last letter, in which he told her the great news, she tries to distinguish among those unfamiliar, youthful voices that of her daughter Élise, her son's fiancée, whom she does not know, whom she will never know. That thought, which completes the voluntary disherison of the mother, adds to the misery of her last moments and fills them with such a flood of remorse and regret that, notwithstanding her determination to be brave, she weeps and weeps.
The night falls gradually. Great streaks of shadow strike the sloping windows, while the sky, immeasurable in its depth, becomes colorless, seems to recede into the darkness. The roofs mass for the night as soldiers do for an attack. The clocks gravely tell each other the hour, while the swallows circle about in the neighborhood of a hidden nest and the wind makes its usual incursion among the ruins in the old lumber-yard. Tonight it blows with a wailing noise like the sea, with a shudder of fog; it blows from the river as if to remind the wretched woman that that is where she must go. Oh! how she shivers in her lace mantle at the thought! Why did she come here to revive her taste for life, which would be impossible after the confession she would be forced to make? Swift footsteps shake the staircase, the door is thrown open; it is André. He is singing, he is happy, and in a great hurry, for he is expected to dine with the Joyeuses. A glimmer oflight, quick, so that the lover may beautify himself. But, as he scratches the match, he divines the presence of some one in the studio, a shadow moving among the motionless shadows.
"Who's there?"
Something answers, something like a stifled laugh or a sob. He thinks it is his young neighbors, a scheme of the "children" to amuse themselves. He draws near. Two hands, two arms seize him, are wound about him.
"It is I."
And in a feverish voice, which talks hurriedly in self-defence, she tells him that she is about to start on a long journey, and that before starting—
"A journey. Where are you going, pray?"
"Oh! I don't know. We are going ever so far away,—to his own country on some business of his."
"What! you won't be here for my play? It's to be given in three days. And then, right after it, my wedding. Nonsense! he can't prevent your being present at my wedding."
She excuses herself, invents reasons, but her burning hands, which her son holds in his, her unnatural voice, convince André that she is not telling the truth. He attempts to light the candles, but she prevents him.
"No, no, we don't need a light. It is better this way. Besides, I have so many preparations still to make; I must go."
They are both standing, ready for the parting; but André will not let her go until he has madeher confess what the matter is, what tragic anxiety causes the wrinkles on that lovely face, in which the eyes—is it an effect of the twilight?—gleam with fierce brilliancy.
"Nothing—no, nothing, I promise you. Only the thought that I cannot share in your joys, your triumphs. But you know that I love you, you do not doubt your mother, do you? I have never passed a day without thinking of you. Do you do as much; keep a place in your heart for me. And now kiss me, and let me go at once. I have delayed too long."
A moment more and she will not have strength to do what she still has to do. She rushes toward the door.
"I say no, you shall not go. I have a feeling that some extraordinary thing is taking place in your life that you don't wish to tell me. You are in great sorrow, I am sure of it. That man has done some shameful thing to you."
"No, no; let me go, let me go."
But on the contrary, he holds her, holds her fast.
"Come, what is the matter? Tell me, tell me—"
Then, under his breath, in a low, loving voice, like a kiss:
"He has left you, has he not?"
The unhappy creature shudders, struggles.
"Don't ask me any questions. I will not tell you anything. Adieu!"
And he rejoins, straining her to his heart:
"What can you tell me that I do not know already, my poor mother? Didn't you understand why I left his house six months ago?"
"You know?"
"Everything. And this that has happened to you to-day I have long foreseen and hoped for."
"Oh! wretched, wretched woman that I am, why did I come?"
"Because this is your proper place, because you owe me ten years of my mother. You see that I must keep you."
He says this kneeling in front of the couch upon which she has thrown herself in a flood of tears and with the last plaintive outcries of her wounded pride. For a long while she weeps thus, her son at her feet. And lo! the Joyeuses, anxious at André's non-appearance, come up in a body in search of him. There is a veritable invasion of innocent faces, waving curls, modest costumes, rippling gayety, and over the whole group shines the great lamp, the good old lamp with the huge shade, which M. Joyeuse solemnly holds aloft as high and as straight as he can, in the attitude of acanephora. They halt abruptly, dumbfounded, at sight of that pale, sad woman who gazes, deeply moved, at all those smiling, charming creatures, especially at Élise, who stands a little behind the others, and whose embarrassment in making that indiscreet visit stamps her as thefiancée.
"Élise, kiss our mother and thank her. She has come to live with her children."
Behold her entwined in all those caressing arms,pressed to four little womanly hearts which have long lacked a mother's support, behold her made welcome with sweet cordiality in the circle of light cast by the family lamp, broadened a little so that she can find room there, can dry her eyes, obtain warmth and light for her heart at that sturdy flame which rises without a flicker, even in that little artist's studio under the roof, where the storm howled so fiercely just now, the terrible storm that must be at once forgotten.
The man who is breathing his last yonder, lying in a heap in the bloody bath-tub, has never known that sacred flame. Selfish and hard-hearted, he lived to the last for show, puffing out his superficial breastplate with a blast of vanity. And that vanity was the best that there was in him. It was that which kept him on his feet and jaunty and swaggering so long, that which clenched his teeth on the hiccoughs of his death agony. In the damp garden the fountain drips sadly. The firemen's bugle sounds the curfew. "Just go up to number 7," says the mistress of the establishment, "he's a long while over his bath." The attendant goes up and utters a shriek of horror: "O Madame, he 's dead—but it isn't the same man." They run to the spot, and no one, in truth, can recognize the fine gentleman who entered just now in this lifeless doll, with its head hanging over the side of the bath-tub, the rouge mingling with the blood that moistens it, and every limb relaxed in utter weariness of the part played to the very end, until it killed the actor. Two slashes of the razor acrossthe magnificent, unwrinkled breastplate, and all his factitious majesty has burst like a bubble, has resolved itself into this nameless horror, this mass of mud and blood and ghastly, streaked flesh, wherein lies unrecognizable the model of good-breeding, Marquis Louis-Marie-Agénor de Monpavon.
I here set down, in haste and with an intensely agitated pen, the shocking events of which I have been the plaything for some days past. This time it is all up with theTerritorialeand all my ambitious dreams. Protests, levies, police-raids, all our books in the custody of the examining magistrate, the Governor a fugitive, our director Bois-l'Héry at Mazas, our director Monpavon disappeared. My head is in a whirl with all these disasters. And to think that, if I had followed the warnings of sound common-sense, I should have been tranquilly settled at Montbars six months ago, cultivating my little vineyard, with no other preoccupation than watching the grapes grow round and turn to the color of gold in the pleasant Burgundian sunshine, and picking from the vines, after a shower, the little gray snails that make such an excellent fricassee. With the results of my economy I would have built, on the high land at the end of the vineyard, on a spot that I can see at this moment, a stone summer-house like M. Chalmette's, so convenient for an afternoon nap,while the quail are singing all around among the vines. But no, constantly led astray by treacherous illusions, I longed to make a fortune, to speculate, to try banking operations on a grand scale, to tie my fortune to the chariot of the successful financiers of the day; and now here I am at the most melancholy stage of my history, clerk in a ruined counting-house, intrusted with the duty of answering a horde of creditors, of shareholders drunk with rage, who pour out the vilest insults upon my white hairs and would fain hold me responsible for the Nabob's ruin and the governor's flight. As if I were not as cruelly hit myself, with my four years' back pay which I lose once more, and my seven thousand francs of money advanced, all of which I intrusted to that villain, Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio.
But it was written that I should drink the cup of humiliation and mortification to the dregs. Was I not forced to appear before the examining magistrate, I, Passajon, formerly apparitor to the Faculty, with my record of thirty years of faithful service and the ribbon of an officer of the Academy! Oh! when I saw myself ascending that stairway at the Palais de Justice, so long and broad, with no rail to cling to, I felt my head going round and my legs giving way under me. That was when I had a chance to reflect, as I passed through those halls, black with lawyers and judges, with here and there a high green door, behind which I could hear the impressive sounds of courts in session; and upabove, in the corridor where the offices of the examining magistrates are, during the hour that I had to wait on a bench where I had prison vermin crawling up my legs, while I listened to a lot of thieves, pickpockets and girls in Saint-Lazare caps, talking and laughing with Gardes de Paris, and the ringing of the muskets on the floor of the corridors, and the dull rumbling of prison vans. I realized then the danger ofcombinazioni, and that it was not always well to laugh at M. Gogo.
One thing comforted me somewhat, however, and that was that, as I had never taken part in the deliberations of theTerritoriale, I was in no way responsible for its transactions and swindles. But explain this. When I was in the magistrate's office, facing that man in a velvet cap who stared at me from the other side of the table with his little crooked eyes, I had such a feeling that I was being explored and searched and turned absolutely inside out that, in spite of my innocence, I longed to confess. To confess what? I have no idea. But that is the effect that justice produces. That devil of a man sat for five long minutes staring at me without speaking, turning over a package of papers covered with a coarse handwriting that seemed familiar to me, then said to me abruptly, in a tone that was at once cunning and stern:
"Well, Monsieur Passajon! How long is it since we played the drayman's trick?"
The memory of a certain little peccadillo, inwhich I had taken part in days of distress, was so distant that at first I did not understand; but a few words from the magistrate proved to me that he was thoroughly posted as to the history of our bank. That terrible man knew everything, to the most trivial, the most secret details.
Who could have given him such accurate information?
And with it all he was very sharp, very abrupt, and when I attempted to guide the course of justice by some judicious observations, he had a certain insolent way of saying: "None of your fine phrases," which was the more wounding to me, at my age, with my reputation as a fine speaker, because we were not alone in his office. A clerk sat near me, writing down my deposition, and I could hear some one behind turning over the leaves of some great book. The magistrate asked me all sorts of questions about the Nabob, the time when he had made his contributions, where we kept our books, and all at once, addressing the person whom I did not see, he said:
"Show us the cash-book, Monsieur l'Expert."
A little man in a white cravat brought the great volume and placed it on the table. It was M. Joyeuse, formerly cashier for Hemerlingue and Son. But I had no time to present my respects to him.
"Who did that?" the magistrate asked me, opening the book at a place where a leaf had been torn out. "Come, do not lie about it."
I did not lie, for I had no idea, as I neverconcerned myself about the books. However, I thought it my duty to mention M. de Géry, the Nabob's secretary, who used often to come to our offices at night and shut himself up alone in the counting-room for hours at a time. Thereupon little Père Joyeuse turned red with anger.
"What he says is absurd, Monsieur le Juge d'Instruction. Monsieur de Géry is the young man I mentioned to you. He went to theTerritorialesolely for the purpose of keeping an eye on affairs there, and felt too deep an interest in poor Monsieur Jansoulet to destroy the receipts for his contributions, the proofs of his blind but absolute honesty. However, Monsieur de Géry, who has been detained a long while in Tunis, is now on his way home, and will soon be able to afford all necessary explanations."
I felt that my zeal was likely to compromise me.
"Be careful, Passajon," said the judge very sternly. "You are here only as a witness; but if you try to give the investigation a wrong turn you may return as a suspect."—Upon my word the monster seemed to desire it.—"Come, think, who tore out this page?"
Thereupon I very opportunely remembered that, a few days before leaving Paris, our Governor had told me to bring the books to his house, where they had remained until the following day. The clerk made a note of my declaration, whereupon the magistrate dismissed me with a wave of the hand, warning me that I must hold myself at his disposal. When I was at the door he recalled me:
"Here, Monsieur Passajon, take this; I have no further use for it."
He handed me the papers he had been consulting while he questioned me; and my confusion can be imagined when I saw on the cover the word "Memoirs" written in my roundest hand. I had myself furnished justice with weapons, with valuable information which the suddenness of our catastrophe had prevented me from rescuing from the general cleaning out executed by the police in our offices.
My first impulse, on returning, was to tear these tale-bearing sheets in pieces; then, after reflection, having satisfied myself that there was nothing in theseMemoirsto compromise me, I decided, instead of destroying them, to continue them, with the certainty of making something out of them some day or other. There is no lack in Paris of novelists without imagination, who have not the art of introducing anything but true stories in their books, and who will not be sorry to buy a little volume of facts. That will be my way of revenging myself on this crew of high-toned pirates with whom I have become involved, to my shame and to my undoing.
It was necessary, however, for me to find some way of occupying my leisure time. Nothing to do at the office, which has been utterly deserted since the legal investigation began, except to pile up summonses of all colors. I have renewed my former practice of writing for the cook on the second floor, Mademoiselle Séraphine, from whomI accept some trifling supplies which I keep in the safe, once more a pantry. The Governor's wife also is very kind to me and stuffs my pockets whenever I go to see her in her fine apartments in the Chaussée d'Antin. Nothing is changed there. The same magnificence, the same comfort; furthermore, a little baby three months old, the seventh, and a superb nurse, whose Normandy cap creates a sensation when they drive in the Bois de Boulogne. I suppose that when people are once fairly started on the railway of fortune they require a certain time to slacken their speed or come to a full stop. And then, too, that thief of a Paganetti, to guard against accidents, had put everything in his wife's name. Perhaps that is why that jabbering Italian has taken a vow of affection for him which nothing can weaken. He is a fugitive, he is in hiding; but she is fully convinced that her husband is a little St. John in guilelessness, a victim of his kindness of heart and credulity. You should hear her talk: "You know him, Moussiou Passajon. You know whether he isescrupulous. Why, as true as there's a God, if my husband had done the dishonest things they accuse him of, I myself—do you hear me—I myself would have put a gun in his hands, and I would have said: 'Here, Tchecco, blow your head off!'" And the way she opens the nostrils in her little turned-up nose, and her round black eyes, like two balls of jet, makes you feel that that little Corsican from Île Rousse would have done as she says. I tell you that damned Governor must bea shrewd fellow to deceive even his wife, to act a part in his own house, where the cleverest let themselves be seen as they are.
Meanwhile all these people are living well; Bois-l'Héry at Mazas has his meals sent from the Café Anglais, and Uncle Passajon is reduced to living on odds and ends picked up in kitchens. However, we must not complain too much. There are those who are more unfortunate than we, M. Francis, for instance, whom I saw at theTerritorialethis morning, pale and thin, with disgraceful linen and ragged cuffs, which he continues to pull down as a matter of habit.
I was just in the act of broiling a bit of bacon in front of the fire in the directors' room, my cover being laid on the corner of a marquetry table with a newspaper underneath in order not to soil it. I invited Monpavon's valet to share my frugal repast; but, because he has waited on a marquis, that fellow fancies that he's one of the nobility, and he thanked me with a dignified air, which made me want to laugh when I looked at his hollow cheeks. He began by telling me that he was still without news of his master, that they had sent him away from the club on Rue Royale where all the papers were under seal and crowds of creditors swooping down like flocks of swallows on the marquis's trifling effects. "So that I find myself a little short," added M. Francis. That meant that he had not a sou in his pocket, that he had slept two nights on the benches along the boulevards, waked every minute by policemen,compelled to get up, to feign drunkenness in order to obtain another shelter. As for eating, I believe that he had not done that for a long while, for he stared at the food with hungry eyes that made one's heart ache, and when I had forcibly placed a slice of bacon and a glass of wine in front of him, he fell on them like a wolf. The blood instantly came to his cheeks, and as he ate he began to chatter and chatter.
"Do you know, Père Passajon," he said between two mouthfuls, "I know where he is—I've seen him."
He winked slyly. For my part, I stared at him in amazement.
"In God's name, what have you seen, Monsieur Francis?"
"The marquis, my master—yonder in the little white house behind Notre Dame." He did not say the morgue, because that is a too vulgar word. "I was very sure I should find him there. I went straight there the next day. And there he was. Oh! very well hidden, I promise you. No one but his valet de chambre could have recognized him. His hair all gray, his teeth gone, and his real wrinkles, his sixty-five years that he used to fix up so well. As he lay there on that marble slab with the faucet dripping on him, I fancied I saw him at his dressing table."
"And you said nothing?"
"No, I had known his intentions on that subject for a long while. I let him go out of the world quietly, in the English fashion, as he wantedto do. All the same, he might have given me a bit of bread before he went, when I had been in his service twenty years."
Suddenly he brought his fist down upon the table in a rage:
"When I think that, if I had chosen, I might have entered Mora's service instead of Monpavon's, that I might have had Louis's place! There was a lucky dog! Think of the rolls of a thousand he nabbed at his duke's death!—And the clothes the duke left, shirts by the hundred, a dressing-gown in blue fox-skin worth more than twenty thousand francs! And there's that Noël, he must have lined his pockets! Simply by making haste,parbleu!for he knew it couldn't last long. And there's nothing to be picked up on Place Vendôme now. An old gendarme of a mother who manages everything. They're selling Saint-Romans, they're selling the pictures. Half of the house is to let. It's the end of everything."
I confess that I could not help showing my satisfaction; for, after all, that wretched Jansoulet is the cause of all our misfortunes. A man who boasted of being so rich and talked about it everywhere. The public was taken in by it, like the fish that sees scales shining in a net. He has lost millions, I grant you; but why did he let people think he had plenty more? They have arrested Bois-l'Héry, but he's the one they should have arrested.—Ah! if we had had another expert, I am sure it would have been done long ago.—Indeed, as I said to Francis, one has only to lookat that parvenu of a Jansoulet to see what he amounts to. Such a face, like a high and mighty brigand!
"And so common," added the former valet.
"Not the slightest moral character."
"Utter lack of breeding.—However, he's under water, and Jenkins too, and many others with them."
"What! the doctor too? That's too bad. Such a polite, pleasant man!"
"Yes, there's another man that's being sold out. Horses, carriages, furniture. The courtyard at his house is full of placards and sounds empty as if death had passed that way. The château at Nanterre's for sale. There were half a dozen 'little Bethlehems' left, and they packed them off in a cab. It's the crash, I tell you, Père Passajon, a crash that we may not see the end of, perhaps, because we're both old, but it will be complete. Everything's rotten; everything must burst!"
It was horrible to see that old flunkey of the Empire, gaunt and stooping, covered with filth and crying like Jeremiah: "This is the end," with his toothless mouth wide open like a great black hole. I was afraid and ashamed before him, I longed to see his back; and I thought to myself: "O Monsieur Chalmette! O my little vineyard at Montbars!"