“...I have just heard from Valentine de Saint-Prix,” wrote Arnica, “that Julius is in Rome, too, where he has been summoned to a congress. I am so glad to think that you will meet him! Unfortunately Valentine was not able to give me his address. She thinks he is at the Grand Hotel, but she isn’t sure. She knows, however, that he is going to the Vatican on Thursday morning; he wrote beforehand to Cardinal Pazzi so as to be given an audience. He has just been to Milan, where he saw Anthime, who is in great distress because he can’t get what the Church promised him after his conversion; so Julius means to go and ask the Holy Father for justice; for of course he knowsnothing about it as yet. He is sure to tell you about his visit and then you will be able to inform him.“I hope you are being very careful to take precautions against the malaria and that you are not tiring yourself too much. I shall be so glad when you write to say that you are coming home....” Etc.
“...I have just heard from Valentine de Saint-Prix,” wrote Arnica, “that Julius is in Rome, too, where he has been summoned to a congress. I am so glad to think that you will meet him! Unfortunately Valentine was not able to give me his address. She thinks he is at the Grand Hotel, but she isn’t sure. She knows, however, that he is going to the Vatican on Thursday morning; he wrote beforehand to Cardinal Pazzi so as to be given an audience. He has just been to Milan, where he saw Anthime, who is in great distress because he can’t get what the Church promised him after his conversion; so Julius means to go and ask the Holy Father for justice; for of course he knowsnothing about it as yet. He is sure to tell you about his visit and then you will be able to inform him.
“I hope you are being very careful to take precautions against the malaria and that you are not tiring yourself too much. I shall be so glad when you write to say that you are coming home....” Etc.
Then, scribbled in pencil across the fourth page, a few words from Blafaphas:
“If you go to Naples, you should take the opportunity of finding out how they make the hole in the macaroni. I am on the brink of a new discovery.”
“If you go to Naples, you should take the opportunity of finding out how they make the hole in the macaroni. I am on the brink of a new discovery.”
Joy rang through Amédée’s heart like a clarion. But it was accompanied by a certain misgiving. Thursday, the day of the audience, was that very day. He had not dared send his clothes to the wash and he was running short of clean linen—at any rate, he was afraid so. That morning he had put on yesterday’s collar; but it suddenly ceased to seem sufficiently clean, now that he knew there was a chance of seeing Julius. The joy that this circumstance would otherwise have caused him was slightly dashed. As to returning to the Via dei Vecchierelli, it was not to be thought of if he intended to catch his brother-in-law on his way out from the audience—and this would be less agitating than looking up at the Grand Hotel. At any rate, he took care to turn his cuffs; as for his collar, he pulled his comforter up to cover it, which had the added advantage of concealing his pimple as well.
But what did such trifles matter? The fact is, Fleurissoire felt unspeakably cheered by his letter; and the prospect of renewing contact with one of his own people, with his own past life, abolished at one sweep themonsters begotten of his traveller’s imagination. Carola, Father Cave, the Cardinal, all floated before him like a dream which is suddenly interrupted by the crowing of the cock. Why had he left Pau? What sense was there in this absurd fable which had disturbed him in his happiness? There was a Pope, bless us! and he would soon be hearing Julius declare that he had seen him. A Pope—that was enough. Was it possible that God should have authorised such a monstrous substitution? Fleurissoire would certainly never have believed it if it had not been for his absurd pride in the part he had to play in the business.
Amédée was walking hurriedly; it was all he could do to prevent himself from running; at last he was regaining confidence, whilst around him once more everything recovered weight and size, and natural position and convincing reality. He was holding his straw hat in his hand; when he arrived in front of the basilica, he was in such a state of lofty exhilaration that he began to walk round the fountain on the right-hand side; and as he passed to the windward of the spray, allowing it to wet him, he smiled up at the rainbow.
Suddenly he came to an abrupt stop. There, close to him, sitting on the base of the fourth pillar of the colonnade, surely that was Julius he caught sight of? He hesitated to recognise him, for if his attire was respectable, his attitude was very far from being so; the Comte de Baraglioul had placed his black straw Cronstadt beside him on the crook of his walking-stick, which he had stuck into the ground between two paving-stones, and all regardless of the solemnity of the spot, with his right foot cocked up on his left knee (like anyprophet in the Sixtine Chapel), he was propping a note-book on his right knee, while from time to time his pencil, poised in air, swooped down upon the pages, and he began to write; so absorbed was his attention, and the dictates of his inspiration so urgent, that Amédée might have turned a somersault in front of him without his noticing it. He was speaking to himself as he wrote; and though the splashing of the fountain drowned his voice, the movement of his lips was plainly visible.
Amédée drew near, going discreetly round by the other side of the pillar. As he was about to touch him on the shoulder:
“In that case, what does it matter?” declaimed Julius, and he consigned these words with a final flourish to his note-book; then, putting his pencil in his pocket and rising abruptly, he came nose to nose with Amédée.
“In Heaven’s name, what areyoudoing here?”
Amédée, trembling with emotion, began to stutter without being able to reply; he convulsively pressed one of Julius’s hands between both his own. Julius, in the meanwhile, was examining him:
“My poor fellow, what a sight you look!”
Providence had dealt unkindly with Julius; of the two brothers in-law who were left to him, one was a church mouse and the other a scarecrow. It was less than three years since he had seen Amédée—but he thought him aged by at least twelve; his cheeks were sunken; his Adam’s apple was protuberant; his magenta comforter enhanced the paleness of his face; his chin was quivering; his blear eyes rolled in a way which should have been pathetic, but was merely grotesque; his yesterday’s expedition had left him with a mysterious hoarseness, sothat his voice seemed to come from a long way off. Full of his preoccupations:
“So you have seen him?” he said.
“Seen whom?” asked Julius.
This “whom” sounded in Amédée’s ears like a knell and a blasphemy. He particularised discreetly:
“I thought you had just come from the Vatican.”
“So I have. Excuse me, I was thinking of something else.... If you only knew what has happened to me!”
His eyes were sparkling; he looked on the verge of jumping out of his skin.
“Oh, please!” entreated Fleurissoire, “talk about that afterwards; tell me first of all about your visit. I’m so impatient to hear....”
“Does it interest you?”
“You’ll soon know how much. Go on, go on, I beg you.”
“Well, then,” began Julius, seizing hold of Fleurissoire by one arm and dragging him away from the neighbourhood of St. Peter’s, “perhaps you may have heard in what miserable poverty our poor brother Anthime has been living as a result of his conversion. He is still waiting in vain for what the Church promised to give him in order to make up for the loss inflicted on him by the freemasons. Anthime has been duped; so much must be admitted. I don’t know, my dear fellow, how this affair strikes you—as for me, I consider it an absolute farce ... but it’s thanks to it perhaps that I’m more or less clear as to the matter in hand, about which I’m most anxious to talk to you. Well, then—acreature of inconsequence! That’s going rather far perhaps ... and no doubt his apparent inconsequence hides what is,in reality, a subtler and more recondite sequence—the important point is that what makes him act should not be a matter of interest, or, as the usual phrase is, that he should not be merely actuated by interested motives.”
“I don’t follow you very well,” said Amédée.
“True, true! I was straying from the subject of my visit. Well, then, I had determined to take Anthime’s business in hand.... Ah, my dear fellow, if you’d seen the apartment in which he’s living in Milan! ‘You can’t possibly stay on here,’ I said to him at once. And when I think of that unfortunate Veronica! But he’s going in for asceticism—turning into a regular saint; he won’t allow anyone to pity him—and as for blaming the clergy! ‘My dear friend,’ I said to him, ‘I grant you that the higher clergy are not to blame, but it can only be because they know nothing about it. You must let me go and tell them how matters stand.’”
“I thought that Cardinal Pazzi....” suggested Fleurissoire.
“Yes, but it wasn’t any good. You see, these high dignitaries are all afraid of compromising themselves. It was necessary for someone who was quite an outsider to take the matter up. Myself, for instance. For just see in what a wonderful way discoveries are made!—I mean, the most important ones; the thing seems like a sudden illumination—but not at all—in reality one hasn’t ceased thinking of it. So with me; for a long time past I had been worrying over my characters—their excessive logic, and at the same time their insufficient definition.”
“I’m afraid,” said Amédée gently, “that you’re straying from the point again.”
“Nothing of the kind,” went on Julius; “it’s you whodon’t follow my idea. In short, I determined to present the petition to the Holy Father himself, and I went this morning to hand it to him.”
“Well? Quick! Did you see him?”
“My dear Amédée, if you keep interrupting all the time.... Well, you can’t imagine how difficult it is to get to see him.”
“Can’t I?” said Amédée.
“What did you say?”
“I’ll tell you by and by.”
“First of all, I had entirely to give up any idea of presenting my petition myself; it was a neat roll of paper. But as soon as I got to the second antechamber (or the third, I forget which), a great big fellow, dressed up in black and red, politely removed it.”
Amédée began to chuckle like a person with private information who knows there is good reason to laugh.
“In the next antechamber, I was relieved of my hat, which they put on a table. In the fifth or sixth, I waited for a long time in the company of two ladies and three prelates, and then a kind of chamberlain came and ushered me into the next room, where as soon as I was in the presence of the Holy Father (he was perched, as far as I could see, on a throne with a sort of canopy over it) he instructed me to prostrate myself—which I did—so that I saw nothing more.”
“But surely you didn’t keep your head bowed down so low that....”
“My dear Amédée, it’s all very well for you to talk; don’t you know that one can be struck blind with awe? And not only didn’t I dare raise my head, but every time I tried to speak of Anthime, a kind of major-domo, witha species of ruler, gave me a little tap on the back of my neck, which made me bow it again.”
“But at any rate, didhespeak to you?”
“Yes, about my book, which he admitted he hadn’t read.”
“My dear Julius,” said Amédée, after a moment’s silence, “what you have just told me is of the highest importance. So you didn’t see him! And from your whole account one thing stands out clear—that there’s a mysterious difficulty about seeing him. Alas! all my cruellest apprehensions are confirmed. Julius, I must now tell you ... but come along here—this street is so crowded....”
He dragged him into an almost desertedvicolo, and Julius, amused rather than otherwise, made no resistance.
“What I am going to confide to you is so grave.... Whatever you do, don’t make any sign. Let’s look as if we weren’t talking about anything important and make up your mind to hear something terrible.—Julius, my dear friend, the person you saw this morning....”
“Whom I didn’t see, you mean.”
“Exactly ... is not thereal one.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I tell you that you can’t have seen the Pope, for the monstrous reason that ... I have it from a secret and unimpeachable source—the real Pope has been kidnapped.”
This astonishing revelation had the most unexpected effect upon Julius. He suddenly let go Amédée’s arm, and running on ahead, he called out at the top of his voice right across thevicolo:
“Oh, no! no! Not that! Good God! No! Not that!”
Then, drawing near Amédée again:
“What! I succeed—with great difficulty—in clearing my mind of the whole thing; I convince myself that there’s nothing to be expected—nothing to be hoped for—nothing to be admitted; that Anthime has been taken in—that the whole thing is quackery—that there’s nothing left to do but to laugh at it—when up you come and say: ‘Hold hard! There’s been a mistake—a miscalculation—we must begin again.’ Oh, no! Not a bit of it! Never in the world! I shan’t budge. If he isn’t the real one, so much the worse.”
Fleurissoire was horrified.
“But,” said he, “the Church....” And he regretted that his hoarseness prevented any flights of eloquence. “But supposing the Church herself is taken in?”
Julius planted himself in front of him, standing crosswise so as almost to block up the way, and in a mocking, cutting voice which was not like him:
“Well! What the dickens does it matter to you?”
Then a doubt fell upon Fleurissoire—a fresh, formless, atrocious doubt which was absorbed in some indefinable way into the thick mass of his discomfort—Julius, Julius himself, this Julius to whom he was talking, this Julius to whom he clung with all the longing of his heart-broken faith—this Julius was not therealJulius either.
“What! Can it be you who say such things? You, Julius? On whom I was counting so? The Comte de Baraglioul, whose writings....”
“Don’t talk to me of my writings, I beg. I’ve heardquite enough about them this morning from your Pope—false or true, whichever he may be. Thanks to my discovery, the next ones will be better—you may count upon that. I’m anxious to talk to you now about serious matters. You’ll lunch with me, won’t you?”
“With pleasure; but I must leave you early. I’m expected in Naples this evening ... yes, on some business, which I’ll tell you about. You’re not taking me to the Grand, I hope?”
“No; we’ll go to the Colonna.”
Julius, on his side, was not at all anxious to be seen at the Grand Hotel in company with such a lamentable object as Fleurissoire; and Fleurissoire, who felt pale and worn out, was already in a twitter at being seated full in the light at the restaurant table, directly opposite his brother-in-law and exposed to his scrutinising glance. If only that glance had sought his own, it would have been more tolerable; but no, he felt it already going straight to the border line of his magenta comforter, straight to that frightful spot where the suspicious pimple was budding, hopelessly divulged. And while the waiter was bringing the hors-d’œuvre:
“You ought to take sulphur baths,” said Baraglioul.
“It’s not what you think,” protested Fleurissoire.
“I’m glad to hear it,” answered Baraglioul, who, for that matter, hadn’t thought anything; “I just offered the suggestion in passing.” Then, throwing himself back in his chair, he went on in a professorial manner:
“Now this is how it is, my dear Amédée. I contend that ever since the days of La Rochefoucauld we have all followed in his footsteps like blundering idiots; Icontend that self-advantage isnotman’s guiding principle—that therearesuch things as disinterested actions....”
“I should hope so,” interrupted Fleurissoire, naïvely.
“Don’t be in such a hurry, I beg. BydisinterestedI mean gratuitous. Also that evil actions—what are commonly called evil—may be just as gratuitous as good ones.”
“In that case, why commit them?”
“Exactly! Out of sheer wantonness—or from love of sport. My contention is that the most disinterested souls are not necessarily the best—in the Catholic meaning of the word; on the contrary, from the Catholic point of view, the best-trained soul is the one that keeps the strictest accounts.”
“The one that ever feels its debt towards God,” added Fleurissoire seraphically, in an attempt to keep up to the mark.
Julius was obviously irritated by his brother-in-law’s interruptions; he thought them ludicrous.
“A contempt for what may serve is no doubt the stamp of a certain aristocracy of nature.... So once a man has shaken free from orthodoxy, from self-indulgence and from calculation, we may grant that his soul may keep no accounts at all?”
“No! No! Never! We may not grant it!” exclaimed Fleurissoire vehemently; then suddenly frightened by the sound of his own voice, he bent towards Baraglioul and whispered:
“Let’s speak lower; we shall be overheard.”
“Pooh! How could anyone be interested in what we are saying?”
“Oh, my dear Julius, I see you have no conception what the people of this country are like. I’ve spent only four days here, but during those four days the adventures I’ve had have been endless, and of a kind to teach me caution—pretty forcibly too—though it wasn’t in my nature, I swear. I am being tracked!”
“It’s your imagination.”
“I only wish it were! But what’s to be done? When falsehood takes the place of truth, truth must needs dissemble. As for me, with this mission that has been entrusted to me (I’ll tell you about it presently), placed as I am between the Lodge and the Society of Jesus, it’s all up with me. I am an object of suspicion to everyone; everything is an object of suspicion to me. Suppose I were to confess to you, my dear Julius, that just now when you met my distress with mockery, I actually doubted whether it was really you to whom I was talking—whether you weren’t an imitation Julius.... Suppose I were to tell you that this morning before I met you, I actually doubted my own reality—doubted whether I was really here in Rome—whether I wasn’t just dreaming—and whether I shouldn’t wake up presently at Pau, lying peacefully beside Arnica, back again in my everyday life.”
“My dear fellow, you’ve got fever.”
Fleurissoire seized his hand and in a voice trembling with emotion:
“Fever!” he cried. “You’re right! It’s fever I’ve got—a fever that cannot—thatmustnot be cured; a fever which I hoped would take you too when you heard what I had to reveal—which I hoped—yes, I own it—you too would catch from me, my brother, so that we mightburn together in its consuming fires.... But no! I see only too clearly now that the path I follow—the dark and dangerous path I am called upon to follow—must needs be solitary too; your own words have proved it to me. What, Julius? Can it be true?Heis not to be seen? No one succeeds in seeing him?”
“My dear fellow,” said Julius, disengaging himself from his clasp and in his turn laying a hand on the excited Amédée’s arm, “my dear fellow, I will now confess something I didn’t dare tell you just now. When I found myself in the Holy Father’s presence ... well, I was seized with a fit of absent-mindedness....”
“Absent-mindedness?” repeated Fleurissoire, aghast.
“Yes. I suddenly caught myself thinking of something else.”
“Am I really to believe you?”
“For it was precisely at that very moment that I had my revelation. ‘Well, but,’ said I to myself, pursuing my first idea, ‘supposing the evil action—the crime—is gratuitous, it will be impossible to impute it to its perpetrator and impossible, therefore, to convict him.’”
“Oh!” sighed Amédée, “are you at it again?”
“For the motive of the crime is the handle by which we lay hold of the criminal. And if, as the judge will point out,is fecit cui prodest.... You’ve studied law, haven’t you?”
“I beg your pardon?” said Amédée, with the beads of perspiration standing on his brow.
But at that moment the dialogue was suddenly interrupted; the restaurant page-boy came up to them holding a plate on which lay an envelope inscribed with Fleurissoire’s name. Petrified with astonishment, he opened the envelope and found inside it these words:
“You have not a moment to lose. The train for Naples starts at three o’clock. Ask Monsieur de Baraglioul to go with you to the Crédit Industriel, where he is known and where he will be able to testify to your identity.”
“You have not a moment to lose. The train for Naples starts at three o’clock. Ask Monsieur de Baraglioul to go with you to the Crédit Industriel, where he is known and where he will be able to testify to your identity.”
“There! What did I tell you?” whispered Amédée, to whom this incident was a relief rather than otherwise.
“Yes. I admit it’s very odd. How on earth do they know my name and that I have an account at the Crédit Industriel?”
“I tell you they know everything.”
“I don’t much fancy the tone of the note. The writer might have at any rate apologised for interrupting us.”
“What would have been the use? He knows well enough that everything must give way to my mission. I’ve a cheque to cash.... No, it’s impossible to tell you about it here; you can see for yourself that we are being watched.” Then, taking out his watch: “Yes, there’s only just time.”
He rang for the waiter.
“No, no,” said Julius. “You’re my guest. The Crédit’s not far off; we can take a cab if necessary. Don’t be flurried. Oh, I wanted to say that if you’re going to Naples this evening you can make use of this circular ticket of mine. It’s in my name, but it doesn’t matter.” (For Julius liked to be obliging.) “I took it in Paris, thinking that I should be going further south; but I’m kept here by this congress. How long do you think of staying?”
“As short a time as possible. I hope to be back to-morrow.”
“Then I’ll expect you to dinner.”
At the Crédit Industriel, thanks to the Comte de Baraglioul’s introduction, Fleurissoire had no difficulty in cashing his cheque for six bank-notes, which he slipped into the inner pocket of his coat. In the meantime he had told his brother-in-law, more or less coherently, the tale of the cheque, the Cardinal and theabbé. Baraglioul, who went with him to the station, listened with only half an ear.
On their way, Fleurissoire went into a shirtmaker’s to buy himself a collar, but he didn’t put it on at once, so as not to keep Julius waiting outside the shop.
“Haven’t you got a bag?” he asked as Fleurissoire joined him.
Fleurissoire would have been only too glad to go and fetch his shawl and his night things; but own up to the Via dei Vecchierelli before Baraglioul? It couldn’t be thought of.
“Oh, only for one night!” he said brightly. “Besides, there isn’t time to go round by my hotel.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Oh, behind the Coliseum,” replied Amédée at a venture.
It was as if he had said: “Oh, under a bridge!”
Julius looked at him again:
“What a funny fellow you are!”
Did he really seem so queer? Fleurissoire mopped his brow. For a few moments they paced backwards and forwards in front of the station in silence.
“Well, we must say good-bye now,” said Baraglioul, holding out his hand.
“Couldn’t you ... couldn’t you come with me?” stammered Fleurissoire timidly. “I don’t exactly know why, but I’m a little nervous about going by myself.”
“You came to Rome by yourself. What can happen to you? Excuse me for not going with you on to the platform, but the sight of a train going off always gives me an inexpressible feeling of sadness. Good-bye. Good luck! And bring back my return ticket to Paris with you when you come to the Grand Hotel to-morrow.”
“There is only one remedy! One thing alonecan cure us from being ourselves!...”“Yes; strictly speaking, the question is not howto get cured, but how to live.”—Joseph Conrad,Lord Jim, p. 225.
“There is only one remedy! One thing alonecan cure us from being ourselves!...”“Yes; strictly speaking, the question is not howto get cured, but how to live.”—Joseph Conrad,Lord Jim, p. 225.
“There is only one remedy! One thing alonecan cure us from being ourselves!...”
“Yes; strictly speaking, the question is not howto get cured, but how to live.”—Joseph Conrad,Lord Jim, p. 225.
After Lafcadio, with the solicitor’s help—Julius acting as intermediary—had come into the 40,000 francs a year left him by the late Count Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul, his chief concern was to let no signs of it appear.
“Off gold plate perhaps,” he had said to himself at the time, “but the same victuals.”
What he had not considered—or perhaps what he had not yet learned—was that his victuals for the future would have a different taste. Or, put it like this: since struggling with his hunger gave him as much pleasure as indulging his appetite, his resistance—now that he was no longer pressed by want—began to slacken. To speak plainly, thanks to a naturally aristocratic disposition he had not allowed himself to be forced by necessity into committing a single one of those actions—which he might very well commit now, out of a gambling or a mocking humour, just for the fun of putting his pleasure before his interest.
In obedience to the Count’s wishes he had not gone into mourning.
A mortifying experience awaited him when he went to replenish his wardrobe in the shops which had been patronised by his last uncle, the Marquis de Gesvres. On his mentioning this gentleman’s name as a recommendation, the tailor pulled out a number of bills which the Marquis had neglected to pay. Lafcadio had a fastidious dislike to swindling; he at once pretended that he had come on purpose to settle the account, and paid ready money for his new clothes. The same misadventure awaited him at the bootmaker’s. When it came to the shirtmaker, Lafcadio thought it more prudent to choose another.
“Oh, Uncle de Gesvres, if only I knew your address, it would be a pleasure to send you your receipted bills,” thought Lafcadio. “You would despise me for it. No matter! I’m a Baraglioul and from this day forward, you scamp of a marquis, I dismiss you from my heart.”
There was nothing to keep him in Paris—or to call him elsewhere; he crossed Italy by short stages, making his way to Brindisi, where he meant to embark on some liner bound for Java.
He was sitting all alone in a compartment of the train which was carrying him away from Rome, and contemplating—not without satisfaction—his hands in their grey doeskin gloves, as they lay on the rich fawn-coloured plaid, which, in spite of the heat, he had spread negligently over his knees. Through the soft woollen material of his travelling-suit he breathed ease and comfort at every pore; his neck was unconfined in its collar which without being low was unstarched, and from beneathwhich the narrow line of a bronze silk neck-tie ran, slender as a grass-snake, over his pleated shirt. He was at ease in his skin, at ease in his clothes, at ease in his shoes, which were cut out of the same doeskin as his gloves; his foot in its elastic prison could stretch, could bend, could feel itself alive. His beaver hat was pulled down over his eyes and kept out the landscape; he was smoking dried juniper, after the Algerian fashion, in a little clay pipe and letting his thoughts wander at their will. He thought:
“—— The old woman with the little white cloud above her head, who pointed to it and said: ‘It won’t rain to-day!’ that poor, shrivelled old woman whose sack I carried on my shoulders” (he had followed his fancy of travelling on foot for four days across the Apennines, between Bologna and Florence, and had slept a night at Covigliajo) “and whom I kissed when we got to the top of the hill ... one of what thecuréof Covigliajo would have called my ‘good actions.’ I could just as easily have throttled her—my hand would have been steady—when I felt her dirty wrinkled skin beneath my fingers.... Ah! how caressingly she stroked and dusted my coat collar and said ‘figlio mio! carino!’ ... I wonder what made my joy so intense when afterwards—I was still in a sweat—I lay down on the moss—not smoking though—in the shade of that big chestnut-tree. I felt as though I could have clasped the whole of mankind to my heart in my single embrace—or strangled it, for that matter. Human life! What a paltry thing! And with what alacrity I’d risk mine if only some deed of gallantry would turn up—something really rather pleasantly rash and daring!... All the same, I can’t turn alpinist oraviator.... I wonder what that hidebound old Julius would advise.... It’s a pity he’s such a stick-in-the-mud! I should have liked to have a brother.
“Poor Julius! So many writers and so few readers! It’s a fact. People read less and less nowadays ... to judge by myself, as they say. It’ll end by some catastrophe—some stupendous catastrophe, reeking with horror. Printing will be chucked overboard altogether; and it’ll be a miracle if the best doesn’t sink to the bottom with the worst.
“But the curious thing would be to know what the old woman would have said if I had begun to squeeze. One imagineswhat would happen if, but there’s always a little hiatus through which the unexpected creeps in. Nothing ever happens exactly as one thinks it’s going to.... That’s what makes me want to act.... One does so little!... ‘Let all that can be, be!’ That’s my explanation of the Creation.... In love with what might be. If I were the Government I should lock myself up.
“Nothing very exciting about the correspondence of that Monsieur Gaspard Flamand which I claimed as mine at the Poste Restante at Bologna. Nothing that would have been worth the trouble of returning to him.
“Heavens! how few people one meets whose portmanteau one would care to ransack!... And yet how few there are from whom one wouldn’t get some queer reaction if one knew the right word—the right gesture!... A fine lot of puppets; but, by Jove, one sees the strings too plainly. One meets no one in the streets nowadays but jackanapes and blockheads. Is it possible for a decent person—I ask you, Lafcadio—to take sucha farce seriously? No, no! Be off with you! It’s high time! Off to a new world! Print your foot upon Europe’s soil and take a flying leap. If in the depths of Borneo’s forests there still remains a belated anthropopithex, go there and reckon the chances of a future race of mankind....
“I should have liked to see Protos again. No doubt he’s made tracks for America. He used to make out that the barbarians of Chicago were the only persons he esteemed.... Not voluptuous enough for my taste—a pack of wolves! I’m feline by nature.... Well, enough of that!
“Thepadreof Covigliajo with his cheery face didn’t look in the least inclined to deprave the little boy he was talking to. He was certainly in charge of him. I should have liked to make friends with him—not with thecuré, my word!—but with the little boy.
“How beautiful his eyes were when he raised them to mine! He was as anxious and as afraid to meet my look as I his—but I looked away at once. He was barely five years younger than I. Yes, between fourteen and sixteen—not more. What was I at that age? Astripling[H]full of covetousness, whom I should like to meet now; I think I should take a great fancy to myself.... Faby was quite abashed at first to feel that he had fallen in love with me; it was a good thing he made a clean breast of it to my mother; after that he felt lighterhearted. But how irritated I was by his self-restraint! Later on in the Aures, when I told him about it under the tent, we had a good laugh together.... I shouldlike to see him again; it’s a pity he’s dead. Well, enough of that!
“The truth is, I hoped thecuréwould dislike me. I tried to think of disagreeable things to say to him—I could hit on nothing that wasn’t charming. It’s wonderful how hard I find it not to be fascinating. Yet I really can’t stain my face with walnut juice, as Carola recommended, or start eating garlic.... Ah! don’t let me think of that poor creature any more. It’s to her I owe the most mediocre of my pleasures.... Oh!! What kind of ark can that strange old man have come out of?”
The sliding door into the corridor had just let in Amédée Fleurissoire. Fleurissoire had travelled in an empty compartment as far as Frosinone. At that station a middle-aged Italian had got into his carriage and had begun to stare at him with such glowering eyes that Fleurissoire had made haste to take himself off.
In the next compartment, Lafcadio’s youthful grace, on the contrary, attracted him.
“Dear me! What a charming boy!” thought he; “hardly more than a child! On his holidays, no doubt. How beautifully dressed he is! His eyes look so candid! Oh, what a relief it will be to be quit of my suspicions for once! If only he knew French, I should like to talk to him.”
He sat down opposite to him in the corner next the door. Lafcadio turned up the brim of his hat and began to consider him with a lifeless and apparently indifferent eye.
“What is there in common between me and that squalid little rat?” reflected he. “He seems to fancy himself too.What is he smiling at me like that for? Does he imagine I’m going to embrace him? Is it possible that there exist women who fondle old men? No doubt he’d be exceedingly astonished to know that I can read writing or print with perfect fluency, upside down, or in transparency, or in a looking-glass, or on blotting-paper—a matter of three months’ training and two years’ practice—all for the love of art. Cadio, my dear boy, the problem is this: to impinge on that fellow’s fate ... but how?... Oh! I’ll offer him a cachou. Whether he accepts or not, I shall at any rate hear in what language.”
“Grazio! Grazio!” said Fleurissoire as he refused.
“Nothing doing with the old dromedary. Let’s go to sleep,” went on Lafcadio to himself, and pulling the brim of his hat down over his eyes, he tried to spin a dream out of one of his youthful memories.
He saw himself back at the time when he used to be called Cadio, in that remote castle in the Carpathians where his mother and he spent two summers in company with Baldi, the Italian, and Prince Wladimir Bielkowski. His room is at the end of a passage. This is the first year he has not slept near his mother.... The bronze door-handle is shaped like a lion’s head and is held in place by a big nail.... Ah! how clearly he remembers his sensations!... One night he is aroused from a deep sleep to see Uncle Wladimir—or is it a dream?—standing by his bedside, looking more gigantic even than usual—a very nightmare, draped in the fold of a huge rust-coloured caftan, with his drooping moustache, and an outrageous night-cap stuck on his head like a Persian bonnet, so that there seems no end to the length of him.He is holding in his hand a dark lantern, which he sets down on the table near the bed, beside Cadio’s watch, pushing aside a bag of marbles to make room for it. Cadio’s first thought is that his mother is dead or ill. He is on the point of asking, when Bielkowski puts his finger on his lips and signs to him to get up. The boy hastily slips on his bathing-wrap, which his uncle takes from the back of a chair and hands to him—all this with knitted brows and the look of a person who is not to be trifled with. But Cadio has such immense faith in Wladi that he hasn’t a moment’s fear. He pops on his slippers and follows him, full of curiosity at these goings-on and, as usual, all athrill for amusement.
They step into the passage; Wladimir advances gravely—mysteriously, carrying the lantern well in front of him; they look as if they are accomplishing a rite or walking in a procession; Cadio is a little unsteady on his feet, for he is still dazed with dreaming; but curiosity soon clears his brains. As they pass his mother’s room, they both stop for a moment and listen—not a sound! The whole house is fast asleep. When they reach the landing they hear the snoring of a footman whose room is in the attics. They go downstairs. Wladi’s stockinged feet drop on the steps as softly as cotton-wool; at the slightest creak he turns round, looking so furious that Cadio can hardly keep from laughing. He points out one particular step and signs to him not to tread on it, with as much seriousness as if they were really in danger. Cadio takes care not to spoil his pleasure by asking himself whether these precautions are necessary, nor what can be the meaning of it all; he enters into the spirit of the game andslides down the banister, past the step.... He is so tremendously entertained by Wladi that he would go through fire and water to follow him.
When they reach the ground floor, they both sit down on the bottom step for a moment’s breathing-space; Wladi nods his head and gives vent to a little sigh through his nose, as much as to say: ‘My word! we’ve had a narrow squeak!’ They start off again. At the drawing-room door, what redoubled precautions! The lantern, which it is now Cadio’s turn to hold, lights up the room so queerly that the boy hardly recognises it; it seems to him fantastically big; a ray of light steals through a chink in the shutters; everything is plunged in a supernatural calm; he is reminded of a pond the moment before the stealthy casting of a net; and he recognises all the familiar objects, each one there in its place—but for the first time he realises their strangeness.
Wladi goes up to the piano, half opens it and lightly touches two or three notes with his finger-tips, so as to draw from them the lightest of sounds. Suddenly the lid slips from his hand and falls with a terrific din. (The mere recollection of it made Lafcadio jump again.) Wladi makes a dash at the lantern, muffles it and then crumples up into an arm-chair; Cadio slips under the table; they stay endless minutes, waiting motionless, listening in the dark ... but no—nothing stirs in the house; in the distance a dog bays the moon. Then gently, slowly, Wladi uncovers the lantern.
In the dining-room, with what an air he unlocks the sideboard! The boy knows well enough it is nothing but a game, but his uncle seems actually taken in by it himself. He sniffs about as though to scent out where thebest things lie hid; pounces on a bottle of Tokay; pours out two small glasses full for them to dip their biscuits in; signs to Cadio to pledge him, with finger on lip; the glasses tinkle faintly as they touch.... When the midnight feast is over, Wladi sets to work to put things straight again; he goes with Cadio to rinse the glasses in the pantry sink, wipes them, corks the bottle, shuts up the biscuit box, dusts away the crumbs with scrupulous care and gives one last glance to see that everything is tidy again in the cupboard.... Right you are! Not the ghost of a trace!
Wladi accompanies Cadio back to his bedroom door and takes leave of him with a low bow. Cadio picks up his slumbers again where he had left them, and wonders the next day whether the whole thing wasn’t a dream.
An odd kind of entertainment for a little boy! What would Julius have thought of it?...
Lafcadio, though his eyes were shut, was not asleep; he could not sleep.
“The old boy over there believes I am asleep,” thought he; “if I were to take a peek at him through my eyelids, I should see him looking at me. Protos used to make out that it was particularly difficult to pretend to be asleep while one was really watching; he claimed that he could always spot pretended sleep by just that slight quiver of the eyelids ... I’m repressing now. Protos himself would be taken in....”
The sun meanwhile had set, and Fleurissoire, in sentimental mood, was gazing at the last gleams of its splendour as they gradually faded from the sky. Suddenly the electric light that was set in the rounded ceiling ofthe railway carriage, blazed out with a vividness that contrasted brutally with the twilight’s gentle melancholy. Fleurissoire was afraid, too, that it might disturb his neighbour’s slumbers, and turned the switch; the result was not total darkness but merely a shifting of the current from the centre lamp to a dark blue night-light. To Fleurissoire’s thinking, this was still too bright; he turned the switch again; the night-light went out, but two side brackets were immediately turned on, whose glare was even more disagreeable than the centre light’s; another turn, and the night-light came on again; at this he gave up.
“Will he never have done fiddling with the light?” thought Lafcadio impatiently. “What’s he up to now? (No! I’llnotraise my eyelids.) He is standing up. Can he have taken a fancy to my portmanteau? Bravo! He has noticed that it isn’t locked. It was a bright idea of mine to have a complicated lock fitted to it at Milan and then lose the key, so that I had to have it picked at Bologna! A padlock, at any rate, is easy to replace.... God damn it! Is he taking off his coat? Oh! all the same, let’s have a look!”
Fleurissoire, with no eyes for Lafcadio’s portmanteau, was struggling with his new collar and had taken his coat off, so as to be able to put the stud in more easily; but the starched linen was as hard as cardboard and he struggled in vain.
“He doesn’t look happy,” went on Lafcadio to himself. “He must be suffering from a fistula or some unpleasant complaint of that kind. Shall I go to his help? He’ll never manage it by himself....”
Yes, though! At last the collar yielded to the stud.Fleurissoire then took up his tie, which he had placed on the seat beside his hat, his coat and his cuffs, and going up to the door of the carriage, looked at himself in the window-pane, endeavouring, like Narcissus in the water, to distinguish his reflection from the surrounding landscape.
“He can’t see.”
Lafcadio turned on the light. The train at that moment was running alongside a bank, which could be seen through the window, illuminated by the light cast upon it from one after another of the compartments of the train; a procession of brilliant squares was thus formed which danced along beside the railroad and suffered, each one in its turn, the same distortions, according to the irregularities of the ground. In the middle of one of these squares danced Fleurissoire’s grotesque shadow; the others were empty.
“Who would see?” thought Lafcadio. “There—just to my hand—under my hand, this double fastening, which I can easily undo; the door would suddenly give way and he would topple out; the slightest push would do it; he would fall into the darkness like a stone; one wouldn’t even hear a scream.... And off to-morrow to the East!... Who would know?”
The tie—a little ready-made sailor knot—was put on by now and Fleurissoire had taken up one of the cuffs and was arranging it upon his right wrist, examining, as he did so, the photograph above his seat, which represented some palace by the sea, and was one of four that adorned the compartment.
“A crime without a motive,” went on Lafcadio, “what a puzzle for the police! As to that, however, going alongbeside this blessed bank, anybody in the next-door compartment might notice the door open and the old blighter’s shadow pitch out. The corridor curtains, at any rate, are drawn.... It’s not so much about events that I’m curious, as about myself. There’s many a man thinks he’s capable of anything, who draws back when it comes to the point.... What a gulf between the imagination and the deed!... And no more right to take back one’s move than at chess. Pooh! If one could foresee all the risks, there’d be no interest in the game!... Between the imagination of a deed and.... Hullo! the bank’s come to an end. Here we are on a bridge, I think; a river....”
The window-pane had now turned black and the reflections in it became more distinct. Fleurissoire leant forward to straighten his tie.
“Here, just under my hand the double fastening—now that he’s looking away and not paying attention—upon my soul, it’s easier to undo than I thought. If I can count up to twelve, without hurrying, before I see a light in the country-side, the dromedary is saved. Here goes! One, two, three, four (slowly! slowly!), five, six, seven, eight, nine ... a light!...”
Fleurissoire did not utter a single cry. When he felt Lafcadio’s push and found himself facing the gulf which suddenly opened in front of him, he made a great sweep with his arm to save himself; his left hand clutched at the smooth framework of the door, while, as he half turned round, he flung his right well behind him andover Lafcadio’s head, sending his second cuff, which he had been in the act of putting on, spinning to the other end of the carriage, where it rolled underneath the seat.
Lafcadio felt a horrible claw descend upon the back of his neck, lowered his head and gave another push, more impatient than the first; this was followed by the sensation of nails scraping through his flesh; and after that, nothing was left for Fleurissoire to catch hold of but the beaver hat, which he snatched at despairingly and carried away with him in his fall.
“Now then, let’s keep cool,” said Lafcadio to himself. “I mustn’t slam the door to; they might hear it in the next carriage.”
He drew the door towards him, in the teeth of the wind, and then shut it quietly.
“He has left me his frightful sailor hat; in another minute I should have kicked it after him, but he has taken mine along with him and that’s enough. That was an excellent precaution of mine—cutting out my initials.... But there’s the hatter’s name in the crown, and people don’t order a beaver hat of that kind every day of the week.... It can’t be helped, I’ve played now.... Perhaps they’ll think it an accident.... No, not now that I’ve shut the door.... Stop the train?... Come, come, Cadio! no touching up! You’ve only yourself to thank.
“To prove now that I’m perfectly self-possessed, I shall begin by quite quietly seeing what that photograph is the old chap was examining just now....Miramar!No desire at all to go and visitthat.... It’s stifling in here.”
He opened the window.
“The old brute has scratched me ... I’m bleeding.... He has made me very ill. I must bathe it a little; the lavatory is at the end of the corridor, on the left. Let’s take another handkerchief.”
He reached down his portmanteau from the rack above him and opened it on the seat, in the place where he had been sitting.
“If I meet anyone in the corridor I must be calm.... No! my heart’s quiet again. Now for it!... Ah! his coat! I can easily hide it under mine. Papers in the pocket! Something to while away the time for the rest of the journey.”
The coat was a poor threadbare affair of a dingy liquorice colour, made of a harsh-textured and obviously cheap material; Lafcadio thought it slightly repulsive; he hung it up on a peg in the small lavatory into which he locked himself; then, bending over the basin, he began to examine himself in the glass.
There were two ugly furrows on his neck; one, a thin red streak, starting from the back of his neck, turned leftwards and came to an end just below the ear; the other and shorter one, was a deep scratch just above the first; it went straight up towards the ear, the lobe of which it had reached and slightly torn. It was bleeding, but less than might have been expected; on the other hand, the pain, which he had hardly felt at first, began to be pretty sharp. He dipped his handkerchief into the basin, staunched the blood and then washed the handkerchief. “Not enough to stain my collar,” thought he, as he put himself to rights; “all is well.”
He was on the point of going out; just then the engine whistled; a row of lights passed behind the frosted window-pane of the closet. Capua! The station wasso close to the scene of the accident that the idea of jumping out, running back in the dark and getting his beaver back again, flashed, dazzling, on his mind. He regretted his hat, so soft and light and silky, at once so warm and so cool, so uncrushable, so discreetly elegant. But it was never his way to lend an undivided ear to his desires—nor to like yielding—even to himself. More than all, he hated indecision, and for ten years he had kept on him, like a fetish, one of a pair of cribbage dice, which Baldi had given him in days gone by; he never parted from it; it was there, in his waistcoat pocket.
“If I throw six,” he said to himself as he took it out, “I’ll get down.”
He threw five.
“I shall get down all the same. Quick, the victim’s coat!... Now for my portmanteau....”
He hurried to his compartment.
Ah! how futile seem all exclamations in face of the extravagance of fact! The more surprising the occurrence, the more simple shall be my manner of relating it. I will therefore say in plain words, merely this—when Lafcadio got back to his compartment, his portmanteau was gone!
He thought at first that he had made a mistake, and went out again into the corridor.... But no! It was the right place. There was the view of Miramar.... Well, then? He sprang to the window and could not believe his eyes. There, on the station platform, and not very far from his carriage, his portmanteau was calmly proceeding on its way in company of a strapping fellow who was carrying it off at a leisurely walk.
Lafcadio’s first instinct was to dash after him; as heput out his hand to open the door, the liquorice coat dropped on to the floor.
“Tut! tut! in another moment I should have put my foot in it.... All the same, that rascal would go a little quicker if he thought there was a chance of my coming after him. Can he have seen ...?”
At this moment, as he was leaning his head out of the carriage window, a drop of blood trickled down his cheek.
“Well! Good-bye to my portmanteau! It can’t be helped! The throw said I wasn’t to get out here. It was right.”
He shut the door and sat down again.
“There were no papers in my portmanteau and my linen isn’t marked. What are the risks?... No matter, I’d better sail as soon as possible; it’ll be a little less amusing perhaps, but a good deal wiser.”
In the meantime the train started again.
“It’s not so much my portmanteau that I regret as my beaver, which I really should have liked to retrieve. Well! let’s think no more about it.”
He filled another pipe, lit it, and then, plunging his hand into the inside pocket of Fleurissoire’s coat, pulled out: a letter from Arnica, a Cook’s ticket and a large yellow envelope, which he opened.
“Three, four, five, six thousand-franc notes! Of no interest to honest folk!”
He returned the notes to the envelope and the envelope to the coat pocket.
But when, a moment later, he examined the Cook’s ticket, Lafcadio’s brain whirled. On the first page was written the name ofJulius de Baraglioul. “Am I going mad?” he asked himself. “What can he have had to dowith Julius?... A stolen ticket?... No, not possible!... a borrowed ticket ... must be. Lord! Lord! Perhaps I’ve made a mess of it. These old gentlemen are sometimes better connected than one thinks....”
Then, his fingers trembling with eagerness, he opened Arnica’s letter. The circumstances seemed too strange; he found it difficult to fix his attention; he failed, no doubt, to make out the exact relationship existing between Julius and the old gentleman, but, at any rate, he managed to grasp that Julius was in Rome. His mind was made up at once; an urgent desire to see his brother possessed him—an unbridled curiosity to find out what kind of repercussion this affair would set up in that calm and logical mind.
“That’s settled. I shall sleep to-night at Naples, get out my trunk, and to-morrow morning return by the first train to Rome. It will certainly be a good deal less wise, but perhaps a little more amusing.”
At Naples Lafcadio went to a hotel near the station; he made a point of taking his trunk with him, because travellers without luggage are looked at askance, and because he was anxious not to attract attention; then he went out to buy a few necessary articles of toilette and another hat instead of the odious straw (beside which, it was too tight) which Fleurissoire had left him. He wanted to buy a revolver as well, but was obliged to put this purchase off, as the shops were already shutting.
The train he took next day started early, arriving in Rome in time for lunch.
His intention was not to approach Julius until after the newspapers had appeared with an account of the “crime.” Thecrime! This word seemed odd to him, to say the very least; andcriminalas applied to himself totally inappropriate. He preferredadventurer—a word as pliable as his beaver and as easily twisted to suit his liking.
The morning papers had not yet mentioned theadventure. He awaited the evening ones with impatience, for he was eager to see Julius and to feel for himself that the game had begun; until then the time hung heavy on his hands, as with a child playing at hide-and-seek, who, no doubt, doesn’t want to be found, but wants, at any rate, to be sure he is being looked for. The vagueness of this state was one with which he was not as yet familiar; and the people he elbowed in the street seemed to him particularly commonplace, disagreeable and hideous.
When the evening came he bought theCorrierefrom a newspaper-seller in the Corso; then he went into a restaurant, but he laid the paper all folded on the table beside him and forced himself to finish his dinner without looking at it—out of a kind of bravado, and as though he thought in this way to put an edge on his desire; then he went out, and once in the Corso again, he stopped in the light of a shop window, unfolded the paper and on the second page saw the following head-line: