When Jehan, in a fever of indignation, slipped stealthily out of the house in the Rue Touchet and sped up the dark, quiet street after Madame de Vidoche, he had no subtler purpose in his mind than to overtake her and warn her. The lady had spoken kindly to him on the night of the supper at Les Andelys. She was young, weak, oppressed; the plot against her seemed to the child to be fiendish in its artfulness. It needed no more to rouse every chivalrous instinct in his nature--and these in a boy should be many, or woe betide the man--and determine him to save her.
He thought that if he could overtake her and warn her all would be well; and at first his purpose went no farther than that. But as he ran, now looking over his shoulder in terror, and now peering into the darkness ahead, sometimes slipping into the gutter in his haste, and sometimes stumbling over a projecting step, a new and whimsical thought flashed into his mind, and in a moment fascinated him. How it came to one so young, whether the astrologer's duplicity, to which he had been a witness, suggested it, or it sprang from some precocious aptitude in the boy's own nature, it is impossible to say. But on a sudden there it was in his mind, full-grown, full-armed, a perfect scheme. He had only a few minutes in which to consider it before he caught madame up, and the time to put it into execution came; but in that interval he found no flaw in it. Rather he revelled in it. It satisfied the boy's stern sense of retribution and justice. It more than satisfied the boy's love of mischief and trickery.
He felt not the slightest misgiving, therefore, when it came to playing his part. He went through it without pity, without a scruple or thought of responsibility--nay, he followed madame home, and hid himself behind the curtain, with no feeling of apprehension as to what was coming, with no qualms of conscience.
But when he had seen all, and lying spell-bound in his hiding-place had witnessed the tragedy, when covering his ears with his hands, and cowering down as if he would cower through the floor, he had heard Vidoche's death-cry and winced at each syllable of madame's heart-broken utterance--when, with quaking limbs and white cheeks, he had crept at last down the stairs and fled from the accursed house, then the boy knew all; knew what he had done, and was horror-stricken! Even the darkness and freezing cold were welcome, if he might escape from that house--if he might leave those haunting cries behind. But how? by what road? He fled through street after street, alley after alley, over bridges, and along quays, by the doors of churches and the gates of prisons. But everywhere the sights and sounds went with him, forestalled him, followed him. He could not forget. When at last, utterly exhausted, he flung himself down on a pile of refuse in a distant corner of the Halles, his heart seemed bursting. He had killed a man. He had worse than killed a woman. He would be hung. The astrologer had told him truly; he was doomed, given up to evil and the devil!
He lay for a long time panting and shuddering, with his face hidden; while a burst of agony, provoked by some sudden pang of remembrance, now and again racked his frame. The spot he had, almost unconsciously, chosen for his hiding-place was a corner between two stalls, at the east end of the market: an angle well sheltered from the wind, and piled breast-high with porters' knots and rubbish. The air was a little less bitter there than outside; and by good fortune he had thrown himself down on an old sack, which he, by-and-bye, drew over him. Otherwise he must have perished. As it was, he presently sobbed himself into an uneasy slumber; but only to awake in a few minutes with a scream of affright and a dismal return of all his apprehensions.
Still, nature was already at work to console him; and misery sleeps proverbially well. After a time he dozed again for a few minutes, and then again. At length, a little before daybreak, he went off into a sounder sleep, from which he did not awake until the wintry sun was nearly an hour up, and old-fashioned people were thinking of dinner.
After opening his eyes, he lay a while between sleeping and waking, with the sense of some unknown trouble heavy upon him. On a sudden a voice, a harsh, rasping voice, speaking a strange clipped jargon, roused him effectually. "He is a runaway!" the voice said, with two or three unnecessary oaths. "A crown to a penny on it, my bully-boys! Well, it is an ill-wind blows no one any good. Rouse up the little shaveling, will you? That is not the way! Here, lend it me."
The next moment the boy sat up, with a cry of pain, for a heavy porter's knot fell on his shin-bone and nearly broke it. He found himself confronted by three or four grinning ruffians, whose eyes glistened as they scanned his velvet clothes and the little silver buttons that fastened them. The man who had spoken before seemed to be the leader of the party: a filthy beggar with one arm and a hare-lip. "Ho! ho!" he chuckled; "so you can feel, M. le Marquis, can you! Flesh and blood like other folk. And doubtless with money in your pockets to pay for your night's lodging."
He hauled the child to him and passed his hands through his clothes. But he found nothing, and his face grew dark. "Morbleu!" he swore. "The little softy has brought nothing away with him!"
The other men, gathering round, glared at the boy hungrily. In the middle of the Forest of Bondy he could not have been more at their mercy than he was in this quiet corner of the market, where a velvet coat with silver buttons was as rare a sight as a piece of the true cross. Two or three houseless wretches looked on from their frowsy lairs under the stalls, but no one dreamed of interfering with the men in possession. As for the boy, he gazed at his captors stolidly; he was white, mute, apathetic.
"Plague, if I don't think the lad is a softy!" said one, staring at him.
"Not he!" replied the man who had hold of him. And roughly seizing the boy by the head with his huge hand, he forced up an eyelid with his finger as if to examine the eye. The boy uttered a cry of pain. "There!" said the ruffian, grinning with triumph. "He is all right. The question is, what shall we do with him?"
"There are his clothes," one muttered, eyeing the boy greedily.
"To be sure, there are always his clothes," was the answer. "It does not take an Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu to see that, gaby! And, of course, they would melt to the tune of something apiece! But maybe we can do better than that with him. He has run away. You don't find truffles on the dung-hill every day."
"Well," said his duller fellows, their eyes beginning to sparkle with greed, "what then, Bec de Lièvre?"
"If we take him home again, honest market porters, why should we not be rewarded? Eh, my bully-boys?"
"That is a bright idea!" said one. So said another. The rest nodded. "Ask him where he lives, when he is at home."
They did. But Jehan remained mute. "Twist his arm!" said the last speaker. "He will soon tell you. Or stick your finger in his eye again! Blest if I don't think the kidisdumb!" the man continued, gazing with astonishment at the boy's dull face and lack-lustre eyes.
"I think I shall find a tongue for him," the former operator replied with a leer. "Here, sonny, answer before you are hurt, will you? Where do you live?"
But Jehan remained silent. The ruffian raised his hand. In another moment it would have fallen, but in the nick of time came an interruption. "Nom de ma mère!" someone close at hand cried, in a voice of astonishment. "It is my Jehan!"
Two of the party in possession turned savagely on the intruder--a middle-sized man with foxy eyes, and a half-starved ape on his shoulder. "Who asked you to speak?" snarled one. "Begone about your business, my fine fellow, or I shall be making a hole in you!" cried another.
"But he is my boy!" the new-comer answered, fairly trembling with joy and astonishment. "He is my boy!"
"Your boy?" cried Bec de Lièvre, in a tone of contempt. "You look like it, don't you? You look as if you dined on gold plate every day and had a Rohan to your cup-bearer, you do! Go along, man; don't try to bamboozle us, or it will be the worse for you!" And with an angry scowl he turned to his victim.
But the showman, though he was a coward, was not to be put down so easily. "It is the boy who is bamboozling you!" he said. "You take him for a swell! It is only his show dress he has on. He is a tumbler's boy, I tell you. He circled the pole with me for two years. Last November he ran away. If you do not believe me, ask the monkey. See, the monkey knows him."
Bec de Lièvre had to acknowledge that the monkey did know him. For the poor beast was no sooner brought close to its old playmate than it sprang upon him and covered him with caresses, gibbering and crying out the while after so human a fashion that it might well have moved hearts less hard. The boy did not return its endearments, however; but a look of intelligence came into his eyes, and on a sudden he heaved a sigh as if his heart was breaking.
The men who had taken possession of him looked at one another. "It was the boy's cursed clothes fooled us," Bec de Lièvre growled savagely. "We will have them, at any rate. Strip him and have done with it. And do you keep off, Master Tumbler, or we will tumble you."
But when the showman, who was trembling with delight and anticipation, made them understand that he would give a crown for the boy as he was in his clothes--"and that is more than the fence will give you," he added--they began to see reason. True, they stood out for a while for a higher price; but the bargain was eventually struck at a crown and a livre, and the boy handed over.
Master Crafty Eyes' hand shook as he laid it on the child's collar and turned him round so that he might see his face the better. Bec de Lièvre discerned the man's excitement, and looked at him curiously. "You must be very fond of the lad," he said.
The showman's eyes glittered ferociously. "So fond of him," he said, in a mocking tone, "that when I get him home I shall--oh, I shall not hurt his fine clothes, or his face, or his little brown hands, for those all show, and they are worth money to me. But I shall--I shall put a poker in the fire, and then Master Jehan will take off his new clothes so that they may not be singed, and--I shall teach him several new tricks with the poker."
"You are a queer one," the other answered. "I'll be shot if you don't look like a man with a good dinner before him."
"That is the man I am," the showman answered, a hideous smile distorting his face. "I have gone without dinner or supper many a day because my little friend here chose to run away one fine night, when he was on the point of making my fortune. But I am going to dine now. I am going to feed--on him!"
"Well, every man to his liking," the hare-lipped beggar answered indifferently. "You have paid for your dinner, and may cook it as you please, for me."
"I am going to," the showman answered, with an ugly look. He plucked the boy almost off his feet as he spoke, and while the men cried after him "Bon appétit!" and jeered, dragged him away across the open part of the market; finally disappearing with him in one of the noisome alleys which then led out of the Halles on the east side.
His way lay through a rabbit-warren of beetling passages and narrow lanes, where the boy, once loose, could have dodged him a hundred ways and escaped; and he held him with the utmost precaution, expecting him every moment to make a desperate attempt at it. But Jehan was not the old Jehan who had turned and twisted, walked and frolicked on the rope, and in the utmost depths of ill-treatment had still kept teeth to bite and spirit to use them. He was benumbed body and soul. He had had no food for nearly twenty hours. He had passed the night exposed to the cold. He had gone through intense excitement, horror, despair. So he stumbled along, with Vidoche's dying cries in his ears, and, famished, frozen, bemused, met the showman's threats with a face of fixed, impassive apathy. He was within a very little of madness.
For a time Crafty Eyes did not heed this strange impassiveness. The showman's fancy was busy with the punishment he would inflict when he got the boy home to his miserable room. He gloated in anticipation over the tortures he would contrive, and the care he would take that they should not maim or disfigure the boy. When he had him tied down, and the door locked, and the poker heated--ah! how he would enjoy himself! The ruffian licked his lips. His eyes sparkled with pleasure. He jerked the boy along in his hideous impatience.
But after a time the child's bearing began to annoy him. He stopped and, holding him with one hand, beat him brutally on the head with the other, until the boy fell and hung in his grasp. Then he dragged him up roughly and hauled him on with volleys of oaths; still scowling at him from time to time, as if, somehow, he found this little foretaste of vengeance less satisfying than he had expected.
There were people coming and going in the dark filthy lane where this happened--a place where smoke-grimed gables almost met overhead, and the gutter was choked with refuse--but no one interfered. What was a little beating more or less? Or, for the matter of that, what was a boy more or less? The hulking loafers and frowsy slatterns, who huddled for warmth in corners, nodded their heads and looked on approvingly. They had their own brats to beat and business to mind. There was no one to take the boy's part. And another hundred yards would lodge him in the showman's garret.
At that last moment the boy awoke from his trance and understood; and in a convulsion of fear hung back and struggled, screaming and throwing himself down. The man dragged him up savagely, and was in the act of taking him up bodily to carry him, when a person, who had already passed the pair once, came back and looked at the boy again. The next moment a hand fell on the showman's arm, and a voice said, "Stop! What boy is that?"
The showman looked up, saw that the intervener was a priest, and sneered. "What is that to you, father?" he said, trying by a side movement to pass by. "Not one of your flock, at any rate."
"No, but you are!" the priest retorted in a strangely sonorous voice. He was a stalwart man, with a mobile face and sad eyes that seemed out of keeping with the rest of him. "You are! And if you do not this minute set him down and answer my question, you ruffian, when your time comes you shall go to the tree alone!"
"Diable!" the showman muttered, startled yet scowling. "Who are you, then?"
"I am Father Bernard. Now tell me about that boy, and truly. What have you been doing to him? Ay, you may well tremble, rascal!"
For the showman was trembling. In the Paris of that day the name of Father Bernard was almost as well known as the name of Cardinal Richelieu. There was not a night-prowler or cutpurse, bully or swindler, who did not know it, and dream in his low fits, when the drink was out and the money spent, of the day when he would travel by Father Bernard's side to Montfaucon, and find no other voice and no other eye to pity him in his trouble. Impelled by feelings of humanity, rare at that time, this man made it his life-work to attend on all who were cast for execution; to wait on them in prison, and be with them at the last, and by his presence and words of comfort to alleviate their sufferings here, and bring them to a better mind. He had become so well known in this course of work that the king himself did him honour, and the Cardinal granted him special rights. The mob also. The priest passed unharmed through the lowest wynds of Paris, and penetrated habitually to places where the Lieutenant of the Châtelet, with a dozen pikes at his back, would not have been safe for a moment.
This was the man whose stern voice brought the showman to a standstill. Master Crafty Eyes faltered. Then he remembered that the boy was his boy, that his title to him was good. He said so sulkily.
"Your boy?" the priest replied, frowning. "Who are you, then?"
"An acrobat, father."
"So I thought. But do acrobats' boys wear black velvet clothes with silver buttons?"
"He was stolen from me," the showman answered eagerly. He had a good conscience as to the clothes. "I have only just recovered him, father."
"Who stole him? Where has he been?" The priest spoke quickly, and with no little excitement. He looked narrowly at the boy the while, holding him at arm's length. "Where did he spend last night, for instance?"
The showman spread out his palms and shrugged his shoulders. "How should I know?" he said. "I was not with him."
"He has black hair and blue eyes!"
"Yes. But what of that?" Crafty Eyes answered. "I can swear to him. He is my boy."
"And mine!" Father Bernard retorted with energy. "The boy I want!" The priest's eyes sparkled, his form seemed to dilate with triumph. "Deo laus! Deo laus!" he murmured sonorously, so that a score of loiterers who had gathered round, and were staring and shivering by turns, fell back affrighted and crossed themselves. "He is the boy! God has put him in my way this day as clearly as if an angel had led me by the hand. And he goes with me; he goes with me. Chut, man!"--this to the showman, who stood frowning in his path--"don't dare to look black at me. The boy goes with me, I say. I want him for a purpose. If you choose you can come too."
"Whither?"
"To the Châtelet," Father Bernard answered, with a grim chuckle. "You don't seem to relish the idea. But do as you please."
"You will take the boy?"
"This moment," the priest answered.
"Mon Dieu!but you shall not!" the showman exclaimed. Wrath for the moment drove out fear. He seized the child by the arm. "He is my boy! You shall not, I say!" he cried, almost foaming with rage. "He is mine!"
p169"'WHO STOLE HIM? WHERE HAS HE BEEN?'" (p. 169).
"Idiot! Beast! Gallows-bird!" the priest thundered in reply. "For one-half of a denier I would throw you into the next street! Let go, or I will blast you with--Oh, it is well for you you are reasonable. Now begone! Begone! or, at a word from me, there are a score here will----"
He did not finish his sentence, for the showman fell back panic-stricken, and stood off among the crowd, malevolence and craven fear struggling for the mastery in his countenance. The priest took the boy up gently in his arms and looked at him. His face grew strangely mild as he did so. The black brows grew smooth, the lips relaxed. "Get a little water," he said to the nearest man, a hulking, olive-skinned Southerner. "The child has swooned."
"Your pardon, father," the man answered. "He is dead."
But Father Bernard shook his head. "No, my son," he said kindly. "He who led me here to-day will keep life in him a little longer. God's ways never end in acul-de-sac. Get the water. He has swooned only."
Since the poisoning of the Prince of Condé by his servant, Brillaut, at the instigation--as was alleged and commonly believed--of Madame la Princesse, no tragedy of the kind had caused a greater sensation in Paris, or been the subject of more talk, than the murder of M. de Vidoche. The remarkable circumstances which attended it--and which lost nothing in the narration--its immediate discovery, the apparent lack of motive, and the wealth, rank, and youth of the guilty wife, all helped, with the fulness of Paris at this time and the absence of any stirring political news, to make it the one topic of interest. Nothing else was talked of in chamber or tennis court, in the Grand Gallery at the Louvre, or in the cardinal's ante-room at the Palais Richelieu. Culprit and victim were alike well known. M. de Vidoche, if no favourite, had been at least a conspicuous figure in society. He had been cast for one of the parts in the royal troupe at the Christmas carnival. His flirtation with Mademoiselle de Farincourt had been sufficiently marked to cause both amusement and interest. And if madame was a less familiar figure at Court, if she had a reputation somewhat prudish, and an air of rusticity that did not belie it, and was even less of a favourite than her husband, her position as a great heiress and the last of an old family gave her acachetwhich did not fail to make her interesting now.
Gladly would the great ladies in their coaches have gone down to the Châtelet to stare at her after the cruel fashion of that day; and, after buzzing round her in her misery, have gone away with a hundred tales of how she looked, and what she wore, and what she said in prison. But madame was saved this--this torture worse than the question--by the physician's order that no one should be admitted to her. He laid this down so strenuously--telling the lieutenant that if she had not complete repose for twenty-four hours he would be answerable neither for her life nor her reason--that that officer, who, like the Chevalier du Guet, was an old soldier, replied "No" to the most pressing insistences; and save and except Father Bernard, who had theentréeat all hours by the king's command, would let no one go in to her. "It will be bad enough by-and-bye," he said, with an oath. "If she did it, she will be punished. But she shall have a little peace to-day."
But the great world, baffled on this point, grew only the more curious; circulated stories only the more outrageous; and nodded and winked and whispered only the more assiduously. Would she be put to the question? And by the rack, or the boot, or the water torture? And who was the man? Of course there was a man. Now if it had been M. de Vidoche who had poisoned her, that would have been plain, intelligible, perspicuous; since everyone knew--and so on, and so on, with Mademoiselle de Farincourt's name at intervals.
It was believed that madame would be first examined in private; but late at night, on the day before Christmas Eve, a sealed order came to the Lieutenant of the Châtelet, commanding him to present madame, with her servants and all concerned in the case, at the Palais de Justice on the following morning. Late as it was, the news was known in every part of Paris that night. Marshal Bassompierre, lying in the Bastille, heard it, and regretted he could not see the sight. It was rumoured that the king would attend in person; even that the trial had been hastened for his pleasure. It was certain that half the Court would be there, and the other half, if it could find room. The great ladies, who had failed to storm the Châtelet, hoped to succeed better at the Palais, and the First President of the Court, and even the Commissioners appointed to sit with him, found their doors beset at dawn with delicate "poulets," or urgent, importunate applications.
Madame de Vidoche, the man and maid, were brought from the Châtelet to the Conciergerie an hour before daylight--madame in her coach, with her woman, the man on foot. That cold morning ride was such as few, thank God, are called on to endure. To the horrors of anticipation the lost wife, scarcely more than a girl, had to add the misery of retrospection; to the knowledge of what she had done, a woman's shrinking from the doom that threatened her, from shame and pain and death. But that which she felt perhaps as keenly as anything, as she crouched in a corner of her curtained vehicle and heard the yells which everywhere saluted its appearance, was the sudden sense of loneliness and isolation. True, the Lieutenant sat opposite to her, but his face was hard. She was no longer a woman to him, but a prisoner, a murderess, a poisoner. And the streets were thronged, in spite of the cold and the early hour. On the Pont au Change the people ran beside the coach and strove to get a sight of her, and jeered and sang and shouted. And at the entrance to the Palais, in the room in the Conciergerie where she had to wait, on the staircase to the court above, everywhere it was the same; all were set so thick with faces--staring, curious faces--that the guards could scarcely make a way for her. But she was cut off from all. She was no longer of them--of things living. Not one said a kind word to her; not one looked sympathy or pity. On a sudden, in a moment, with hundreds gazing at her, she, a delicate woman, found herself a thing apart, unclean, to be shunned. A thing, no longer a person. A prisoner, no longer a woman.
They placed a seat for her, and she sank into it, feeling at first nothing but the shame of being so stared at. But presently she had to rise and be sworn, and then, as she became conscious of other things, as the details of the crowded chamber forced themselves on her attention, and she saw which were the judges, and heard herself called upon to answer the questions that should be put to her, the instinct of self-preservation, the desire to clear herself, to escape and live, took hold of her. A late instinct, for hitherto all her thoughts had been of the man she had killed--her husband; but the fiercer for that. A burning flush suddenly flamed in her cheeks. Her eyes grew bright, her heart began to beat quickly. She turned giddy.
She knew only of one way in which she could escape; only of one man that could help her; and even while the first judge was in the act of calling upon her, she turned from him and looked round. She looked to the right, to the left, then behind her, for Nôtredame. He, if he told the truth, could clear her! He could say that she had come to him for a charm, and not for poison! And he only! But where was he? There was her woman, trembling and weeping, waiting to be called. There was the valet, pale and frightened. There were twice a hundred indifferent people. But Nôtredame? He was not visible. He was not there. When she had satisfied herself of this, she sank back with a moan of despair. She gave up hope again. A hundred curious eyes saw the colour fade from her cheeks; her eyes grew dull, the whole woman collapsed.
The examination began. She gave her name in a hollow whisper.
It was the practice of that day, and still is, in French courts, to take advantage of any self-betrayal or emotion on the part of the accused person. It is the duty of the judges to observe the prisoner constantly and narrowly; and the First President, on an occasion such as this, was not the man to overlook anything which was visible to the ordinary spectator. Instead, therefore, of pursuing the regular interrogatory he had in his mind, he leaned forward and asked madame what was the matter.
"I wish for the man Solomon Nôtredame," Madame de Vidoche answered, rising and speaking in a choking voice.
"That is the man from whom you bought the poison, I think?" the judge answered, affecting to look at his notes.
"Yes, but as a love-philtre--not a poison," madame said in a whisper. "I wish him to be here."
"You wish to be confronted with him?"
"Yes."
"With the man Solomon Nôtredame?"
"Yes."
"Then you shall be, presently," the judge replied, leaning back, and casting a singular glance at his colleagues. "Be satisfied. And now, madame," he continued gravely, as his eyes returned to her, "it is my duty to help you to tell, and your duty to confess frankly, all that you know concerning this matter. Be good enough, therefore, to collect yourself, and answer my questions fully and truly, as you hope for mercy here and hereafter. So you will save yourself pain, and such also as shall examine you; and may best deserve, in the worst case, the king's indulgence."
As he uttered this exhortation madame clung to the bar behind which she stood, and seemed for the moment about to faint, so that the President waited awhile before he proceeded. She looked, indeed, ghostly. Her white face gleamed through the fog--which, rising from the river, was fast filling the chamber--like a face seen for an instant on a wreck through mist and spray and tempest. Ladies who had known her as an equal, and who now gazed heartlessly down at her from galleries, felt a pleasant thrill of excitement, and whispered that they had not braved the early cold for nothing. There was not a man in the court who did not expect to see her fall.
But there is in women a power of endurance far exceeding that of men. By an immense effort madame regained control over herself. She answered the President's opening questions faintly but clearly; and, being led at once to tell of her visit to Nôtredame, had sufficient sense of her position to dwell plainly on the two facts important to her--that the object of her visit was a love-potion, and not a poison, and that the instructions first given to her were to take it herself. The latter assertion produced a startling impression in the court. It was completely unexpected; and though ninety-nine out of a hundred fancied it the bold invention of a desperate woman, all allowed that it added zest to the case.
Naturally the President pressed her hard on these points. He strove, both by cajolery and by stating objections, to make her withdraw from them. But she would not. Nor could he entrap her into narrating anything at variance with them. At length he desisted. "Very well, we will leave that," he said; and so subtly had her story gained sympathy for her that the sigh of relief uttered in the court was perfectly audible. "We will pass on, if you please. The boy who overtook you in the street, and, as you say, altered all? Who was he, madame?"
"I do not know."
"You had seen him before?"
"No."
"Did he not open the door at this Nôtredame's when you entered the house?"
"No."
"Nor when you left?"
"No."
"How did you know, then, madame, that he came from this abominable person whom you had been visiting?"
"He said he did."
"And do you tell us," the judge retorted, "that on the mere word of this boy, whom you did not know and had never seen, without the assurance of any token or countersign, you disregarded the man Nôtredame's directions on the most vital point, and, instead of taking this drug yourself, gave it to your husband?"
"I do."
"Without suspecting that it was other than that for which you had asked?"
"Yes."
"Madame," the judge said slowly, "it is incredible." He looked for a moment at his colleagues, as if to collect their opinions. They nodded. He turned to her again. "Do you not see that?" he said almost kindly.
"I do not," madame answered firmly. "It is true."
"Describe the boy, if you please."
"He had--I think he had dark clothes," she answered, faltering for the first time. "He looked about twelve years old."
"Yes," the President said; "go on."
"He had--I could not see any more," madame muttered faintly. "It was dark."
"And do you expect us to believe this?" the President replied with warmth, real or assumed. "Do you expect us to believe such a story? Or that it was at the instance of this boy only--this boy of whom you knew nothing, whom you cannot describe, whom you had never seen before--that it was at his instance only that you gave this drug to your husband, instead of taking it yourself?"
She reeled slightly, clinging to the bar. The court swam before her. She saw, as he meant her to see, the full hopelessness of her position, the full strength of the case which fate had made against her, her impotence, her helplessness. Yet she forced herself to make an effort. "It is the truth," she said, in a broken voice. "I loved him."
"Ah!" the President replied cynically. He repressed by a gesture a slight disturbance at the rear of the court. "That, of course. It is part of the story. Or why a love-philtre? But do you not see, madame," he continued, bending his brows and speaking in the tone he used to common criminals, "that all the wives in Paris might poison their husbands, and when they were found out say 'It was a love-potion,' if you are to escape? No, no; we must have some better tale than that."
She looked at him in terror and shame. "I have no other," she cried wildly. "That is the truth. If you do not believe me, there is Nôtredame. Ask him."
"You applied to be confronted with him some time back," the President answered, looking aside at his colleagues, who nodded. "Is that still your desire?"
She murmured "Yes," with dry lips.
"Then let him be called," the judge answered solemnly. "Let Solomon Nôtredame be called and confronted with the accused."
The order was received with a general stir, a movement of curiosity and expectation. Those in the galleries leaned forward to see the better; those at the back stood up. Madame, with her lips parted and her breath coming quickly--madame, the poor centre of all--gazed with her soul in her eyes towards the door at which she saw others gazing. All for her depended on this man--the man she was about to see. Would he lie and accuse her? Or would he tell the truth and corroborate her story--say, in a word, that she had come for a love-charm, and not for poison? Surely this last? Surely it would be to his interest?
But while she gazed with her soul in her eyes, the door which had been partly opened fell shut again, and disappointed her. At the same moment there was a general movement and rustling round her, an uprising in every part of the chamber. In bewilderment, almost in impatience, she turned towards the judges and found that they had risen too. Then through a door behind them she saw six gentlemen file in, with a flash and sparkle of colour that lit up the sombre bench. The first was the king.
Louis was about thirty-five years old at this time--a dark, sallow man, wearing black, with a wide-leafed hat, in which a costly diamond secured a plume of white feathers. He carried a walking cane, and saluted the judges as he entered, Three gentlemen--two about the king's age, the third a burly, soldierly man of sixty--followed him, and took their places behind the canopied chair placed for him. The fifth to enter--but he passed behind the judges and took a chair which stood on their left--wore a red robe trimmed with fur, and a small red cap. He was a man of middle height and pale complexion, keen Italian features and bright piercing eyes, and so far was not remarkable. But he had also a coal-black moustache and chin tuft, and milk-white hair; and this contrast won him recognition everywhere. He was Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke and Cardinal Richelieu, soldier, priest, and playwriter, and for sixteen years the ruler of France.
Madame gazed at them with a beating heart, with wild hopes that would rise, despite herself. But, oh God! how coldly their eyes met hers! With what a stony stare! With what curiosity, indifference, contempt! Alas, they had come for that. They had come to stare. This was their Christmas show--part of their Christmas revels. And she--she was a woman on her trial, a poisoner, a murderess, a vile thing to be questioned, tortured, dragged to a shameful death!
For a moment or two the king talked with the judges. Then he sat back in his chair. The President made a sign, and an usher in a sonorous voice cried, "Solomon Nôtredame! Let Solomon Nôtredame stand forth!"
Madame de Vidoche heard the name and braced herself again, turning towards the door as others turned, and waiting with dry lips and feverish eyes for the man who was to save her--to save her in spite of king and court. Would he never come? The door stood open, remained open. She could see through it the passage with its bare walls and dusky ceiling, and hear in the hushed silence a noise of shuffling feet. Gradually the noise grew louder; though it still seemed a thing by itself, and so distant that in the court where they waited, with every eye expectant, the slightest sound, the lowest whisper was audible. When the usher cried again, "Solomon Nôtredame, stand forward!" more than one glanced at him angrily. He balked their expectation.
Ha! at last! But they were carrying him! Madame shivered slightly as she watched the four men come slowly along the passage, bearing a chair between them. At the door they stumbled and paused, giving her time to think. They had been racking him, then, and he could not walk; she might have guessed it. Her cheek, white before, became a shade ghastlier, and she clutched the bar with a firmer grip.
They brought him slowly down the three steps and through the narrow passage towards her. The men who carried him blocked her view, but she saw presently that there was something odd about his head. When they set him down, three paces from her, she saw what it was. His face was covered. There was a loose cloth over his head, and he leaned forward in a strange way.
What did it mean? She began to tremble, gazing at him wildly, expecting she knew not what. And he did not move.
p192"THEY WERE CARRYING HIM" (p. 192).
Suddenly the President's solemn voice broke the silence. "Madame," he said--but it seemed to her that he was speaking a long way off--"here is your witness. You asked to be confronted with him, and the court, hoping that this may be the more merciful way of inducing you to confess your crime, assent to the request. But I warn you that he is a witness not for you, but against you. He has confessed."
For a moment she looked dumbly at the speaker; then her eyes went back to the veiled figure in the chair--it had a horrible attraction for her.
"Unhappy woman," the President continued, in solemn accents, "he has confessed. Will you now, before you look upon him, do likewise?"
She shook her head. She would have denied, protested, cried that she was not guilty; but her throat was parched--she had lost her voice, hope, all. There was a drumming noise in the court; or perhaps it was in her head. It was growing dark, too.
"He has confessed," she heard the President go on--but he was speaking a long, long way off now, and his voice came to her ears dully--"by executing on himself that punishment which otherwise the law would have imposed. Are you still obstinate? Let the face be uncovered then. Now, wretched woman, look on your accomplice."
Perhaps he spoke in mercy, and to prepare her; for she looked, and did not at once swoon, though the sight of that dead yellow face, with its stony eyes and open mouth, drew shrieks from more than one. The self-poisoner had done his work well. The sombre features wore even in death a cynical grin, the lips a smile of triumph. But this was on the surface. In the glassy eyes, dull and lustreless, lurked--as all saw who gazed closely--a horror; a look of sudden awakening, as if in the moment of dissolution the wicked man had come face to face with judgment; and, triumphant over his earthly foes, had met on the threshold of the dark world a shape that froze the very marrow in his bones.
Grimmest irony that he who had so long sported with the things of death, and traded on men's fear of it, should himself be brought here dead, to be exposed and gazed at! Of small use now his tricks and chemicals, his dark knowledge and the mystery in which he had wrapped himself. Orcus had him, grim head, black heart and all.
A moment, I have said, madame stared. Then gradually the truth, the hideous truth, came home to her. He was dead! He had killed himself! The horror of it overcame her at last. With a shuddering cry she fell swooning to the floor.
When she came to herself again--after how long an interval she could not tell--and the piled faces and sharp outlines of the court began to shape themselves out of the mist, her first thought, as remembrance returned, was of the ghastly figure in the chair. With an effort--someone was sponging her forehead, and would have restrained her--she turned her head and looked. To her relief it was gone. She sighed, and closing her eyes lay for a time inert, hearing the hum of voices, but paying no attention. But gradually the misery of her position took hold of her again, and with a faint moan she looked up.
In a moment she fell to trembling and crying softly, for her eyes met those of the woman who stooped over her and read there something new, strange, wonderful--kindness. The woman patted her hand softly, and murmured to her to be still and to listen. She was listening herself between times, and presently madame followed her example.
Dull as her senses still were, she noticed that the king sat forward with an odd keen look on his face, that the judges seemed startled, that even the Cardinal's pale features were slightly flushed. And not one of all had eyes for her. They were looking at a boy who stood at the end of the table, beside a priest. The cold light from a window fell full on his face, and he was speaking. "I listened," she heard him say. "Yes."
"And how long a time elapsed before Madame de Vidoche came?" the President asked, continuing, apparently, an examination of which she had missed the first part.
"Half an hour, I think," the boy answered, in a clear, bold tone.
"You are sure it was poison he required?"
"I am sure."
"And madame?"
"A love-philtre."
"You heard both interviews?"
"Both."
"You are sure of the arrangement made between Vidoche and this man, of which you have told us? That the poison should be given to madame in the form of a love-philtre? That she might take it herself?"
"I am sure."
"And it was you who ran after Madame de Vidoche and told her that the draught was to be given to her husband instead?"
"Yes."
"Do you acknowledge, then," the President continued slowly, "that it was you who, in fact, killed M. de Vidoche?"
For the first time the boy faltered and stumbled, and looked this way and that as if for a chance of escape. But there was none, and Father Bernard, by laying his hand on his arm, seemed to give him courage. "I do," he answered, in a low tone.
"Why?" the President demanded, with a quick look at his colleagues. He spoke amid an irrepressible murmur of interest. The tale had been told once, but it was a tale that bore telling.
"Because--I heard him plan his wife's death--and I thought it right," the boy stammered, terror growing in his eyes. "I wanted to save her. I did not know. I did not think."
The President looked towards the king, but suddenly from an unexpected quarter came an interruption. Madame rose trembling to her feet and stood grasping the bar before her. Her face passed from white to red, and red to white. Her eyes glittered through her tears. The woman beside her would have held her back, but she would not be restrained. "What is this?" she panted. "Does he say that my husband was--there?"
"Yes, madame, he does," the President answered indulgently.
"And that he came for poison--for me?"
"He says so, madame."
She looked at him for a moment wildly, then sank back on her stool and began to sob. She had gone through so many emotions; love and death, shame and fear, had so sported with her during the last few days that she could taste nothing to the full now, neither sweet nor bitter. As the dawning of life and hope had left her rather dazed than thankful, so this stab, that a little earlier would have pierced her very heartstrings, did but prick her. Afterwards the thankfulness and the pain--and the healing--might come. But here in the presence of all these people, where so much had happened to her, she could only sob weakly.
The President turned again to the king. Louis nodded, and with a painful effort--for he stammered terribly--spoke. "Who is th-this lad?" he said. "Ask him."
The judge bowed and returned to the witness. "You call yourself Jean de Bault?" he said somewhat roughly. The name, and especially the particle, displeased him.
The boy assented.
"Who are you, then?"
Jehan opened his mouth to answer, but Father Bernard interposed. "Tell His Majesty," he said, "what you told me."
After a moment's hesitation the boy complied, speaking fast, with his face on his breast and a flushed cheek. Nevertheless, in the silence every word reached the ear. "I am Jehan de Bault," he pattered in his treble voice, "seigneur of I know not where, and lord of seventeen lordships in the county of Perigord----" and so on, and so on, through the quaint formula to which we have listened more than once.
Ninety-nine out of a hundred who heard him, heard him with incredulous surprise, and took the tale for a mountebank's patter; though patter, they acknowledged it was of a novel kind, aptly made and well spoken. Two or three of the bolder laughed. There had been little to laugh at before. The king moved restlessly in his chair, saying, "Pish! Wh-hat is this rubbish? What is he s-saying?"
The President frowned, and taking his cue from the king, was about to rebuke the boy sharply, when one who had not before spoken, but whose voice in an instant produced silence among high and low, intervened. "The tale rings true!" the Cardinal said, in low, suave accents. "But there is no family of Bault in Perigord, is there?"
"With His Majesty's permission, no!" replied a bluff, hearty voice; and therewith the elderly soldier who had come in with the king advanced a pace to the side of his master's chair. "I am of Perigord, and know, your Eminence," he continued. "More. Two months ago I saw this lad--I recognise him now--at the fair of Fécamp. He was differently dressed then, but he had the same tale, except that he did not mention Perigord."
"S-someone has taught it him," said the king.
"Your Majesty is doubtless right," the President answered obsequiously. Then to the boy he continued, "Speak, boy; who taught it you?"
But Jehan only shook his head and looked puzzled. At last, being pressed, he said, "At Bault, in Perigord."
"There is no such place!" M. de Bresly cried roundly.
Father Bernard looked distressed. He began to repent that he had led the child to tell the tale; he began to fear that it might hurt instead of helping. Perhaps after all he had been too credulous. But again the Cardinal came to the rescue.
"Is there any family in Perigord can boast of three marshals, M. de Bresly?" he asked, in his thin incisive tones.
"None that I know of. Several that can boast of two."
"The blood of Roland?"
M. de Bresly shrugged his shoulders. "It is common to all of us," he said, smiling.
The great Cardinal smiled, too--a flickering, quickly-passing smile. Then he leaned forward and fixed the boy with his fierce black eyes. "What was your father's name?" he said.
Jehan shook his head, impotently, miserably.
"Where did you live?"
The same result. The king threw himself back and muttered, "It is no good." The President moved in his seat. Some in the galleries began to whisper.
But the Cardinal raised his hand imperiously. "Can you read?" he said.
"No," Jehan murmured.
"Then your arms?" The Cardinal spoke rapidly now, and his face was growing hard. "They were over the gate, over the door, over the fireplace. Think--look back--reflect. What were they?"
For a moment. Jehan stared at him in bewilderment, flinching under the gaze of those piercing eyes. Then on a sudden the boy's face grew crimson. He raised his hand eagerly. "Or, on a mount vert!" he cried impetuously--and stopped. But presently, in a different voice, he added slowly, "It was a tree--on a hill."
With a swift look of triumph the Cardinal turned to M. de Bresly. "Now," he said, "that belongs to----"
The soldier nodded almost sulkily. "It is Madame de Vidoche's," he said.
"And her name was----"
"Martinbault. Mademoiselle de Martinbault!"
A murmur of astonishment rose from every part of the court. For a moment the King, the Cardinal, the President, M. de Bresly, all were inaudible. The air seemed full of exclamations, questions, answers; it rang with the words, "Bault--Martinbault!" Everywhere people rose to see the boy, or craned forward and slipped with a clattering noise. Etiquette, reverence, even the presence of the king, went for nothing in the rush of excitement. It was long before the ushers could obtain silence, or any get a hearing.
Then M. de Bresly, who looked as much excited as any, and as red in the face, was found to be speaking. "Pardieu, sire, it may be so!" he was heard to say. "It is true enough, as I now remember. A child was lost in that family about eight years back. But it was at the time of the Rochelle expedition; the province was full of trouble, and M. and Madame de Martinbault were just dead; and little was made of it. All the same, this may be the boy. Nay, it is a thousand to one he is!"
"What is he, then, to M--Madame de V--Vidoche?" the king asked, with an effort. He was vastly excited--for him.
"A brother, sire," M. de Bresly answered.
That word pierced at last through the dulness which wrapped madame's faculties, and had made her impervious to all that had gone before. She rose slowly, listened, looked at the boy---looked with growing wonder, like one awakening from a dream. Possibly in that moment the later years fell from her, and she saw herself again a child--a tall, lanky girl playing in the garden of the old château with a little toddling boy who ran and lisped, beat her sturdily with fat, bare arms or cuddled to her for kisses. For with a sudden gesture she stretched out her hands, and cried in a clear voice, "Jean! Jean! It is little Jean!"
* * * * *
It became the fashion--a fashion which lasted half a dozen years at least--to call that Christmas the Martinbault Christmas; so loudly did those who were present at that famous examination, and the discovery which attended it, profess that it exceeded all the other amusements of the year, not excepting even the great ball at the Palais Cardinal, from which every lady carried off anétrenneworth a year's pin-money. The story became the rage. Those who had been present drove their friends, who had not been so fortunate, to the verge of madness. From the court the tale spread to the markets. Men made a broadsheet of it, and sold it in the streets--in the Rue Touchet, and under the gallows at Montfaucon, where the body of Solomon Nôtredame withered in the spring rains. Had Madame de Vidoche and the child stayed in Paris, it must have offended their ears ten times a day.