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Title: The Vatican swindle
        (Les caves du Vatican)

Author: André Gide

Translator: Dorothy Bussy

Release date: June 16, 2024 [eBook #73838]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Alfred A. Knopf

Credits: Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VATICAN SWINDLE ***





                          THE VATICAN SWINDLE

                         _ALSO BY ANDRÉ GIDE_


                          STRAIT IS THE GATE

  “Deservedly the book which made André Gide famous. It is one of the
great classics of French fiction since the death of Flaubert.”--Ernest
                      Boyd in _The New Republic_.




                          THE VATICAN SWINDLE

                       (_Les Caves Du Vatican_)

                    _Translated from the French of_

                              ANDRÉ GIDE

                          _by Dorothy Bussy_

                       [Illustration: colophon]

                  _New York_ ALFRED·A·KNOPF _Mcmxxv_


               COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

             MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




CONTENTS


BOOK I   ANTHIME ARMAND-DUBOIS       9

BOOK II  JULIUS DE BARAGLIOUL       46

BOOK III AMÉDÉE FLEURISSOIRE       100

BOOK IV  THE MILLIPEDE             139

BOOK V   LAFCADIO                  204




THE VATICAN SWINDLE




BOOK I: ANTHIME ARMAND-DUBOIS

     “_Pour ma part, mon choix est fait. J’ai opté pour l’athéisme
     social. Cet athéisme, je l’ai exprimé depuis une quinzaine
     d’années, dans une série d’ouvrages_....”

                                       --GEORGES PALANTE.

     _Chronique philosophique du Mercure de France_ (December, 1912).


I

In 1890, during the pontificate of Leo XIII, Anthime Armand-Dubois,
unbeliever and freemason, visited Rome in order to consult Dr. X, the
celebrated specialist for rheumatic complaints.

“What!” cried Julius de Baraglioul, his brother-in-law. “Is it your body
you are going to treat in Rome? Pray Heaven you may realise when you get
there that your soul is in far worse case.”

To which Armand-Dubois replied in a tone of excessive commiseration:

“My poor dear fellow, just look at my shoulders.”

Baraglioul was obliging; he raised his eyes and glanced, in spite of
himself, at his brother-in-law’s shoulders; they were quivering
spasmodically as though laughter, deep-seated and irrepressible, were
heaving them; and the sight of this huge half-crippled frame spending
the last remnants of its physical strength in so absurd a parody, was
pitiable enough. Well, well! They had taken up their positions once and
for all. Baraglioul’s eloquence wouldn’t change matters. Time perhaps?
Or the secret influence of holy surroundings?... Julius merely said in
an infinitely discouraged manner:

“Anthime, you grieve me.” (The shoulders stopped quivering at once, for
Anthime was fond of his brother-in-law.) “When I go to see you in Rome
three years hence, at the time of the Jubilee, I trust I may find you
amended!”

Veronica, at any rate, accompanied her husband in a very different frame
of mind. She was as pious as her sister Marguerite and as Julius
himself, and this long stay in Rome was the fulfilment of one of her
dearest wishes. She was a disappointed, barren woman who filled her
monotonous life with trivial, religious observances and, for lack of a
child, devoted herself to nursing her spiritual aspirations. She no
longer had much hope left, alas! of bringing her Anthime back to the
fold. Many years had taught her the obstinacy of which that broad brow
was capable, and the power of denial with which it was stamped. Father
Flons had warned her:

“Madam,” said he, “the most unyielding wills are the worst. You need
hope for nothing but a miracle.”

She had even ceased to mind much. They had no sooner settled in Rome
than they arranged their private lives independently of each other--he
on his side, she on hers; Veronica in the care of the household and in
the pursuit of her devotions, Anthime in his scientific researches. In
this way they lived beside each other, close to each other and just able
to bear the contact by turning their backs to one another. Thanks to
this there reigned a kind of harmony between them; a sort of
semi-felicity settled down upon them; the virtue of each found its
modest exercise in putting up with the faults of the other.

Their apartment, which they found by the help of an agency, combined,
like most Italian houses, unlooked-for advantages with extraordinary
inconveniences. It occupied the whole first floor of the Palazzo
Forgetti, Via in Lucina, and had the benefit of a fair-sized terrace,
where Veronica immediately set to work growing aspidistras--so difficult
to grow in Paris apartments. But in order to reach this terrace one had
to go through the orangery, which Anthime had immediately seized on for
a laboratory, and through which it was agreed she should be allowed to
pass at certain stated hours of the day.

Veronica would push open the door noiselessly and then, with her eyes on
the ground, would slip furtively by, much as a convert might pass a wall
covered with obscene graffiti; at the other end of the room, Anthime,
stooping over some villainous operation or other, with his enormous back
bulging out of the arm-chair on to which he had hooked his crutch, was a
sight she scorned to behold! Anthime, on his side, pretended not to hear
her. But as soon as she had passed out again, he would rise heavily from
his chair, drag himself to the door, and, with tightened lips and an
imperious thrust of his forefinger, would viciously snap to the latch.

This was the time when Beppo, the procurer, would come in at the other
door to take his orders.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was a little ragamuffin of twelve or thirteen years old, without
either family or home. It was in front of the hotel in the Via Bocca di
Leone, where the couple had stayed for a few days while they were
looking for rooms, that Anthime had noticed him, soon after their
arrival in Rome. Here Beppo used to attract the attention of passers-by
with a grasshopper which lay cowering under a few blades of grass in a
little cage made out of twisted rushes. Anthime paid six soldi for the
insect and then in his broken Italian gave the boy to understand, as
best he could, that he wanted some rats to be taken to the apartment in
Via in Lucina, into which he was going to move the next day. Anything
that crept or swam or crawled or flew served to experiment on. He was a
worker in live flesh.

Beppo was a procurer born; he would have brought to market the eagle or
the she-wolf from the Capitol. The profession pleased him--indulged him
in his taste for thieving. He was given ten soldi a day; he helped
besides in the house. Veronica at first looked on him with no favourable
eye; but the moment she saw him crossing himself as he passed the image
of the Madonna at the north corner of the house, she forgave him his
rags and allowed him to carry water, coal and fire-wood into the
kitchen; he used even to carry the basket for Veronica when she went to
market--on Tuesdays and Fridays, the days when Caroline, the maid they
had brought with them from Paris, was too busy at home.

Beppo disliked Veronica; but he took a fancy to the learned Anthime, who
soon, instead of going laboriously down to the court-yard to take over
his victims, allowed the boy to come up to his laboratory. There was an
entrance to it direct from the terrace, which was connected with the
court-yard by a back staircase. Anthime’s heart beat quicker when he
heard the light patter of the little bare feet on the tiles. But he
would show no sign of it; nothing disturbed him in his work.

The boy used not to knock at the glass door: he scratched; and as
Anthime remained bending over his table without answering, he would step
forward three or four paces and in his fresh voice fling out a
“_Permesso?_” which filled the room with azure. From his voice one would
have taken him for an angel; in reality he was an under-executioner.
What new victim was he bringing in the bag which he dropped on to the
torture table? Anthime was often too much absorbed to open the bag at
once; he threw a hasty glance at it; if he saw it stirring, he was
satisfied: rats, mice, sparrows, frogs--all were welcome to this Moloch.
Sometimes Beppo brought him nothing; but he came in all the same. He
knew that Armand-Dubois was expecting him even empty-handed; and while
the boy, standing silent beside the man of science, leaned forward to
watch some abominable experiment, I wish I could certify that the man of
science experienced no thrill of pleasure--no false god’s vanity--at
feeling the child’s astonished look fall, in turn, with terror upon the
animal, and with admiration upon himself.

Anthime’s modest pretension, before going on to deal with human beings,
was merely to reduce all the animal activities he had under observation,
to what he termed “tropisms.” Tropisms! The word was no sooner invented
than nothing else was to be heard of; an entire category of
psychologists would admit nothing in the world but tropisms. Tropisms! A
sudden flood of light emanated from these syllables! Organic matter was
obviously governed by the same involuntary impulses as those which turn
the flower of the heliotrope to face the sun (a fact which is easily to
be explained by a few simple laws of physics and thermochemistry). The
order of the universe could at last be hailed as reassuringly benign. In
all the motions of life, however surprising, a perfect obedience to the
agent could be universally recognised.

With the purpose of wringing from the helpless animal the acknowledgment
of its own simplicity, Anthime Armand-Dubois had just invented a
complicated system of boxes--boxes with passages, boxes with trap-doors,
boxes with labyrinths, boxes with compartments (some with food in them,
some with nothing, some sprinkled with a sternutatory powder), boxes
with doors of different shapes and colours--diabolical instruments,
which a little later became the rage in Germany under the name of
_Vexierkasten_, and were of the greatest use in helping the new school
of psycho-physiologists to take another step forward in the path of
unbelief. And in order to act severally on one or other of the animal’s
senses, on one or other portion of its brain, he blinded some, deafened
others, emasculated, skinned or brained them, depriving them of one
organ after another, which you would have sworn indispensable, but which
the animal, for Anthime’s better instruction, did without.

His paper on “Conditional Reflexes” had just revolutionised the
University of Upsal; it had given rise to an acrimonious controversy, in
which many of the most distinguished men of science had taken part. In
the meantime fresh problems were crowding into Anthime’s mind; leaving
his colleagues to indulge in empty verbiage, he pressed forward his
investigations in other directions, for he was bold enough to aim at
storming God in His most secret strongholds.

He was not content with admitting in a general way that all activity
entails expenditure, and that an animal expends simply by the exercise
of its muscles or senses. After each expenditure, he asked himself: “How
much?.” And if the extenuated sufferer attempted to recuperate, Anthime,
instead of feeding him, weighed him. To have added any further elements
to the following experiment would have led to excessive complications:
six rats which had been bound and kept without food, were placed on the
scales every day; two of them were blind, two were one-eyed, and two
could see, but the eyesight of the two latter was continually being
strained by the turning of a little mechanical mill. After five days’
fast, what did their respective loss of weight amount to? Every day at
noon, Armand-Dubois filled in his specially prepared tables with a fresh
row of triumphant figures.


II

The Jubilee was at hand. The Armand-Dubois were expecting the
Baragliouls from day to day. The morning that the telegram came
announcing their arrival for the same evening, Anthime went out to buy
himself a neck-tie.

Anthime went out very little--as seldom as possible, because of his
difficulty in getting about; Veronica used often to do his shopping for
him, or the tradespeople would come themselves to take his orders from
his own patterns. Anthime was past the age for worrying about the
fashion. But though he wanted his tie to be unobtrusive--a plain bow of
black surah--still, he liked choosing it himself. The ends of the dark
brown satin spread tie, which he had bought for the journey and worn
during his stay at the hotel, were constantly coming out of his
waistcoat, which he always wore cut very low. This tie had been replaced
by a cream-coloured neckerchief, fastened with a pin, on which he had
had mounted a large antique cameo of no particular value. Marguerite de
Baraglioul would certainly not consider this neckwear dressy enough; it
had been a great mistake to abandon the little ready-made black bows he
used habitually to wear in Paris, and particularly foolish not to have
kept one as a pattern. What makes would they show him? He would not
settle on anything without having seen the principal shirt-makers in the
Corso and the Via dei Condotti. For a man of fifty, loose ends were not
staid enough; yes, a plain bow made of dull black silk was the thing....

Lunch was not before one o’clock. Anthime came in about twelve with his
parcel, in time to weigh his animals.

Though he was not vain, Anthime felt he must try on his tie before
starting work. There was a broken bit of looking-glass lying on the
table, which he had used on occasion for the purpose of provoking
tropisms. He propped it up against a cage and leant forward to look at
his own reflection.

Anthime wore his hair _en brosse_; it was still thick and had once been
red; at the present time it was of the greyish yellow of worn
silver-gilt; his whiskers, which were cut short and high, had kept the
same reddish tinge as his stiff moustache. He passed the back of his
hand over his flat cheeks and under his square chin, and muttered:
“Yes, yes. I’ll shave after lunch.”

He took the tie out of its envelope and placed it before him; unfastened
his cameo pin and then took off his neckerchief. Round his powerful
neck, he wore a collar of medium height with turned-down corners. And
now, notwithstanding my desire to relate nothing but what is essential,
I cannot pass over in silence Anthime Armand-Dubois’ wen. For until I
have learnt to distinguish more surely between the accidental and the
necessary, what can I demand from my pen but the most rigorous fidelity?
And, indeed, who could affirm that this wen had no share, no weight, in
the decisions of what Anthime called his _free_ thought? He was more
willing to overlook his sciatica; but this paltry trifle was a thing for
which he could not forgive Providence.

It had made its appearance, without his knowing how, shortly after his
marriage; and at first it had been merely an inconsiderable wart,
south-east of his left ear, just where the hair begins to grow; for a
long time he was able to conceal this excrescence in the thickness of
his hair, which he combed over it in a curl; Veronica herself had not
noticed it, till once, in the course of a nocturnal caress, her hand had
suddenly encountered it.

“Dear me!” she had exclaimed. “What have you got there?”

And, as though the swelling, once discovered, had no further reason for
discretion, it grew in a few months to the size of an egg--a
partridge’s--a guinea-fowl’s--and then a hen’s. There it stopped, while
his hair, as it grew scantier, exposed it more and more to view between
its meagre strands. At forty-six years of age, Anthime Armand-Dubois
could have no further pretensions to good looks; he cut his hair close
and adopted a style of collar of medium height, with a kind of recess in
it, which hid and at the same time revealed the wen. But enough of
Anthime’s wen!

He put the tie round his neck. In the middle of the tie was a little
metal slide, through which a fastening of tape was passed and then kept
in place by a spring clip. An ingenious contrivance--but no sooner was
the tape inserted into the slide than it came unsewn and the tie fell on
to the operating-table. There was no help for it but to have recourse to
Veronica. She came running at the summons.

“Just sew this thing on for me, will you?” said Anthime.

“Machine-made,” she muttered, “rubbishy stuff!”

“It was certainly not sewn on very well.”

Veronica used always to wear, stuck into the left breast of her morning
gown, two needles, threaded one with white cotton, the other with black.
Without troubling to sit down, she did her mending standing beside the
glass door.

She was a stoutish woman, with marked features; as obstinate as himself,
but pleasant on the whole and generally smiling, so that a trace of
moustache had not hardened her face.

“She has her good points,” thought Anthime, as he watched her plying her
needle. “I might have married a flirt who would have deceived me, or a
minx who would have deserted me, or a chatterbox who would have deaved
me, or a goose who would have driven me mad, or a cross-patch like my
sister-in-law.”

“Thank you,” he said, less grumpily than usual, as Veronica finished her
work and departed.

       *       *       *       *       *

With his new tie round his neck, Anthime engrossed himself in his work.
No voice was raised; there was silence round him--silence in his heart.
He had already weighed the blind rats. But what was this? The one-eyed
rats were stationary. He went on to weigh the sound pair. Suddenly he
started with such violence that his crutch rolled on the ground.
Stupefaction! The sound rats ... he weighed them over again--there was
no denying it--since yesterday, the sound rats had _gained_ in weight! A
ray of light flashed into his mind.

“Veronica!”

He picked up his crutch and with a tremendous effort rushed to the door.

“Veronica!”

Once more she came running, anxious to oblige. Then, as he stood in the
doorway, he asked solemnly:

“Who has been touching my rats?”

No answer. Slowly, articulating each word, as if Veronica had ceased to
understand the language, he repeated:

“Someone has been feeding them while I was out. Was it you, may I ask?”

Picking up her courage, she turned towards him, almost aggressively:

“You were letting them die of hunger, poor creatures! I haven’t
interfered with your experiment in the least; I merely gave them....”

But at this he seized her by the sleeve and, limping back to the table,
dragged her with him. There he pointed to his tables of records.

“Do you see these papers, Madam? For one fortnight I have been noting
here my observations on these animals. My colleague Potier is expecting
my notes to read to the Académie des Sciences at the sitting of May 17th
next. To-day, April 15th, what am I to put down in this row of figures?
What _can_ I put down?”

And as she uttered not a word, he began scratching on the blank paper
with the square end of his forefinger, as if it were a pen, and
continued:

“On that day Madame Armand-Dubois, the investigator’s wife, listening to
the dictates of her tender heart, committed--what am I to call it?--the
indiscretion--the blunder--the folly ...?”

“No! say I took pity on the poor creatures--victims of an insensate
curiosity.”

He drew himself up with dignity:

“If that is your attitude, you will understand, Madam, that I must beg
you henceforth to use the back staircase when you go to look after your
plants.”

“Do you suppose it’s any pleasure to me to come into your old hole?”

“Then, pray, for the future, refrain from coming into it.”

And, in order to add emphasis to his words with the eloquence of
gesture, he seized his records and tore them into little bits.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a fortnight, he had said; in reality, his rats had been kept fasting
for only four days. And his irritation, no doubt, worked itself off with
this exaggeration of his grievance, for at table he was able to show an
unruffled brow; he pushed equanimity even to the point of holding out to
his spouse the right hand of reconciliation. For he was still more
anxious than Veronica that the religious and proper Baragliouls should
not be offered the spectacle of disagreements, which they would
certainly lay to the door of Anthime’s opinions.

At about five o’clock Veronica changed her morning gown for a black
cloth coat and skirt and started for the station to meet Marguerite and
Julius, who were due to arrive in Rome at six o’clock.

Anthime went to shave; he had consented to exchange his neckerchief for
a black bow; that must be sufficient; he disliked ceremony and saw no
reason why his sister-in-law’s presence should make him forswear his
alpaca coat, his white waistcoat, spotted with blue, his duck trousers
and his comfortable black leather slippers without heels, which he used
to wear even out of doors, and which were excusable because of his
lameness.

He picked up the torn bits of paper, pieced them together, and carefully
copied them out while he was waiting for the Baragliouls.


III

The Baragliouls (the _gl_ is pronounced Italian fashion, as in _Broglie_
[the duke of] and in _miglionnaire_) came originally from Parma. It was
a Baraglioul (Alessandro) who, in 1514, married as his second wife
Filippa Visconti, a few months after the annexation of the Duchy to the
Papal States. Another Baraglioul (also Alessandro) distinguished himself
at the battle of Lepanto, and was assassinated in 1589, in
circumstances which still remain mysterious. It would be easy, though
not very interesting, to trace the family fortunes up till 1807, the
year in which France took over the Duchy of Parma and in which Robert de
Baraglioul, Julius’s grandfather, settled at Pau. In 1828 Charles X
bestowed on him the title of Count--a title which was destined to be
borne with honour by his third son (the two elder died in infancy),
Juste-Agénor, whose keen intelligence and diplomatic talents shone with
such brilliancy and carried off such triumphant successes in the
ambassadorial career.

Juste-Agénor’s second child, Julius, who since his marriage had lived a
blameless life, had had several love affairs in his youth. But at any
rate he could do himself this justice--he had never placed his
affections beneath him. The fundamental distinction of his nature and
that kind of moral elegance which was apparent in the slightest of his
writings, had always prevented him from giving rein to his desires and
from following a path down which his curiosity as a novelist would
doubtless have urged him. His blood flowed calmly but not coldly, as
many beautiful and aristocratic ladies might have testified.... And I
should not have made any allusion to this fact, had not his early novels
made it abundantly clear--to which, indeed, their remarkable success in
the fashionable world was partly due. The high distinction of the public
to which they appealed enabled one of them to appear in the
_Correspondant_ and two others in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. And thus
he found himself, almost without an effort and while he was still young,
on the high road to the Academy. Already this destiny seemed marked out
for him by his fine presence, by the grave unction of his look and by
the pensive paleness of his brow.

Anthime professed great contempt for the advantages of rank, fortune and
looks--to Julius’s not unnatural mortification--but he appreciated a
certain kindliness of disposition in Julius and a lack of skill in
argument so great that free thought was often able to carry off the
victory.

       *       *       *       *       *

At six o’clock Anthime heard his guests’ carriage draw up at the door.
He went out to meet them on the landing. Julius came up first. In his
hard felt hat and his overcoat with silk _revers_, he would have seemed
dressed for visiting rather than for travelling, had it not been for the
plaid shawl he was carrying on his arm; the long journey had not in the
least tried him. Marguerite de Baraglioul followed, leaning on her
sister’s arm; she, on the other hand, was in a pitiable state; her
bonnet and chignon awry, she stumbled upstairs with her face half hidden
by her handkerchief, which she was holding pressed up against it like a
poultice.

As she drew near Anthime, “Marguerite has a bit of coal dust in her
eye,” whispered Veronica.

Julie, their daughter, a charming little girl of nine years old, and the
maid, brought up the rear, in silent consternation.

With a person like Marguerite, there was no question of making light of
the matter. Anthime suggested sending for an oculist; but Marguerite
knew all about the reputation of Italian saw-bones and wouldn’t hear of
such a thing for the world. In a die-away voice she murmured:

“Some cold water! Just a little cold water! Oh!”

“Yes, my dear Marguerite,” went on Anthime, “cold water may relieve you
for the moment, by bringing down the inflammation, but it won’t cure the
evil.” Then, turning to Julius: “Were you able to see what it was?”

“Not very well. As soon as the train stopped and I wanted to look in her
eye, Marguerite got into such a state of nerves....”

“Don’t say that, Julius. You were horribly clumsy. Instead of lifting my
eyelid properly, you pulled my eyelashes so far back....”

“Shall I have a try?” said Anthime. “Perhaps I shall be able to manage
better.”

A facchino brought up the luggage, and Caroline lighted a lamp.

“Come, my dear,” said Veronica, “you can’t do the operation in the
passage.” And she led the Baragliouls to their room.

The Armand-Dubois’ apartment was arranged round the four sides of an
inner court-yard, on to which looked the windows of a corridor which ran
from the entrance hall to the orangery. Into this corridor opened,
first, the dining-room, then the drawing-room (an enormous badly
furnished corner room, which the Armand-Dubois left unused), then two
spare rooms, which had been arranged, the larger for the two Baragliouls
and the smaller for Julie, and lastly the Armand-Dubois’ bedroom. All
these rooms communicated with each other on the inside. The kitchen and
two servants’ rooms were on the other side of the landing....

“Please, don’t all come crowding round,” moaned Marguerite. “Julius,
can’t you see after the luggage?”

Veronica made her sister sit down in an arm-chair and held the lamp
while Anthime set about his examination.

“Yes, it’s very much inflamed. Suppose you were to take off your
bonnet?”

But Marguerite, fearing perhaps that in the disordered state of her hair
certain artificial aids might become visible, declared she would take it
off later; a plain bonnet with strings wouldn’t prevent her from leaning
her head back against the chair.

“So, you want me to remove the mote out of your eye before I take the
beam out of my own,” said Anthime, with a kind of snigger. “That seems
to me very contrary to the teaching of Scripture.”

“Oh, please don’t make me regret accepting your kindness.”

“I’ll say no more.... With the corner of a clean handkerchief ... I see
it.... Good heavens! Don’t be frightened! Look up! There it is!”

And Anthime, with the corner of the handkerchief, removed an
infinitesimal speck of dust.

“Thank you! Thank you! I should like to be left alone now. I’ve a
frightful headache.”

       *       *       *       *       *

While Marguerite was resting and Julius unpacking with the maid and
Veronica looking after the dinner, Anthime took charge of Julie and led
her off to his room. His niece, whom he had left as a tiny child, was
hardly recognisable in this tall girl, whose smile had become grave as
well as ingenuous. After a little, as he was holding her close to his
knee, talking such childish trivialities as he hoped might please her,
his eye was caught by a thin silver chain which the child was wearing
round her neck. “Medallions!” his instinct told him. An indiscreet jerk
of his big forefinger brought them into sight outside her bodice, and,
hiding his morbid repugnance under a show of astonishment:

“What are these little things?” he asked.

Julie understood well enough that the question was not a serious one,
but why should she take offence?

“What, uncle? Have you never seen any medallions before?”

“Not I, my dear,” he lied; “they aren’t exactly pretty pretty, but I
suppose they’re of some use?”

And as even the serenest piety is not inconsistent with innocent
playfulness, the child pointed with her finger to a photograph of
herself, which she had caught sight of propped up against the glass over
the mantelpiece, and said:

“There’s a picture of a little girl there, uncle, who isn’t pretty
pretty either. What use can it be to you?”

Surprised at finding a Christian capable of such pointed repartee and
doubtless of such good sense too, Uncle Anthime was for a moment taken
aback. But he really couldn’t embark on a metaphysical argument with a
little girl of nine years old. He smiled. The child made use of her
advantage immediately, and, holding out her little sacred images:

“This,” said she, “is my patron saint, St. Julia; and this, the Sacred
Heart of Our....”

“And haven’t you got one of God?” interrupted Anthime absurdly.

The child answered with perfect simplicity:

“No, people don’t make any of God. But this is the prettiest--Our Lady
of Lourdes. Aunt Fleurissoire gave it to me; she brought it back from
Lourdes; I put it round my neck the day that Papa and Mamma offered me
to the Virgin.”

This was too much for Anthime. Without attempting for a moment to
understand all the ineffable loveliness that such images call up--the
month of May, the white and blue procession of children--he gave way to
his crazy desire to blaspheme.

“So the Holy Virgin didn’t want to have anything to do with you, since
you are still with us?”

The child made no answer. Did she realise already that the best answer
to certain impertinences is to say nothing? As a matter of fact, after
this senseless question, it was not Julie, it was the unbeliever that
blushed; and then, to hide this moment of confusion--this slight qualm
which ever secretly accompanies impropriety--the uncle pressed a
respectful and atoning kiss on his niece’s candid brow.

“Why do you pretend to be so naughty, Uncle Anthime?”

The child was not to be deceived; at bottom, this impious man of science
had a tender heart.

Then why this obstinate resistance?

At that moment Adèle opened the door.

“Madame is asking for Miss Julie.”

Marguerite de Baraglioul, it seems, was afraid of her brother-in-law’s
influence and had no wish to leave her daughter alone with him for long.
He ventured to say as much to her in a whisper a little later on, as the
family were going in to dinner. But Marguerite, with an eye still
slightly inflamed, glanced at Anthime:

“Afraid of you? My dear friend, Julie is more likely to convert a dozen
infidels like you than to be moved a hair’s breadth by any of your
scoffs. No, no! Our faith is not so easily shaken as that. But still,
don’t forget that she is a child. She knows that in an age as corrupt as
this, and in a country as shamefully governed as ours, nothing but
blasphemy can be looked for. Nevertheless, it’s sad that her first
experience of offence should come from her uncle, whom we should so much
like her to respect.”


IV

Would Anthime feel the calming effect of words so temperate and so wise?

Yes; during the first two courses (the dinner, which was good but plain,
did not comprise more than three dishes altogether) and as long as the
talk meandered in domestic fashion round about subjects that were not
contentious. Out of consideration for Marguerite’s eye, they first
talked about eyesight and oculists (the Baragliouls pretended not to
notice that Anthime’s wen had grown); then about Italian cooking--out of
politeness to Veronica--with allusions to the excellence of her dinner;
then Anthime enquired after the Fleurissoires, whom the Baragliouls had
recently been to see at Pau, and after the Comtesse de Saint-Prix,
Julius’s sister, who was in the habit of spending her holidays in that
neighbourhood; and then after the Baragliouls’ charming elder daughter,
whom they would have liked to bring with them to Rome, but who could
never be persuaded to leave her work at the Hospital for Sick Children,
in the Rue de Sèvres, where she went every morning to tend the
suffering little ones. Julius then broached the serious subject of the
expropriation of Anthime’s property: Anthime, when travelling as a young
man for the first time in Egypt, had bought a piece of land, which,
owing to its inconvenient situation, had hitherto been of very little
value; but there had lately been some question of making the new
Cairo-to-Heliopolis railway pass through it. There is no doubt that the
Armand-Dubois’ budget, which had suffered from risky speculations, was
in great need of this windfall. Julius, however, before leaving Paris,
had discussed the affair with Maniton, the consulting engineer of the
projected line, and he advised his brother-in-law not to raise his hopes
too high--for the whole thing might very well end in smoke. Anthime, for
his part, made no mention of the fact that the Lodge, which always backs
its friends, was looking after his interests.

Anthime spoke to Julius about his candidature to the Academy and his
chances of getting in; he spoke with a smile, for he had very little
belief in them; and Julius himself pretended to a calm and, as it were,
resigned indifference. What was the use of saying that his sister, the
Comtesse de Saint-Prix, had got Cardinal André up her sleeve, and in
consequence the other fifteen immortals who always voted with him?
Anthime then said a vague word or two of sketchy compliment about
Julius’s last novel, _On the Heights_. As a matter of fact he had
thought it an extremely bad book; and Julius, who was not in the least
deceived, hurriedly put himself in the right by saying:

“I was quite aware that you wouldn’t like a book of that kind.”

Anthime might have excused the book. But this allusion to his opinions
touched him in a sore place; he began to protest that they never in the
least influenced his judgment of works of art in general, or of his
brother-in-law’s novels in particular. Julius smiled condescendingly,
and, in order to change the subject, enquired after his brother-in-law’s
sciatica, which he inadvertently called “lumbago.” Ah! why had he not
enquired instead about his scientific researches? Then it would have
been a satisfaction to answer him. But his “lumbago”! It would be his
wen next, most likely! But his brother-in-law, apparently, knew nothing
about his scientific researches--he _chose_ to know nothing about
them.... Anthime was exasperated and his “lumbago” was hurting him. With
a sneering laugh, he answered viciously:

“Am I better? Ha, ha, ha! You’d be very sorry to hear that I was!”

Julius was astonished and begged his brother-in-law to say why such
uncharitable feelings should be imputed to him.

“Good heavens! You Catholics aren’t above calling in a doctor when one
of you falls ill; but when the patient gets well, it’s no thanks to
science--it’s all because of the prayers you said while the doctor was
looking after him. You would think it a gross impertinence if a man who
didn’t go to church got better.”

“Would you rather remain ill than go to church?” said Marguerite,
earnestly.

What made her poke _her_ oar in? As a rule she never took part in
conversations of general interest, and as soon as Julius opened his
mouth, she would meekly efface herself. This was man’s talk. Pooh! Why
should he show her any consideration? He turned to her abruptly:

“My dear girl, kindly understand that if I knew that an instantaneous
and certain cure lay to my hand, there--do you hear?--_there!_” (and he
pointed wildly to the salt-cellar) “but that before taking it, I must
beg the Principal” (this was his jocose name for the Supreme Being on
the days when he was in a bad temper) “or beseech him to intervene--to
upset for my sake the established order--the natural order--the
venerable order of cause and effect, I wouldn’t take his cure. I
wouldn’t! I should say to the Principal: ‘Don’t come bothering me with
your miracle! I don’t want it--at any price! I don’t want it!’”

He stressed each word--each syllable. The loudness of his voice matched
the fury of his temper. He was frightful.

“You wouldn’t want it? Why not?” asked Julius, very calmly.

“Because it would force me to believe in God--who doesn’t exist,” he
cried, banging his fist down on the table.

Marguerite and Veronica exchanged anxious glances, and then both looked
towards Julie.

“I think it’s time to go to bed, my darling,” said her mother. “Make
haste. We’ll come and say good night to you when you’re in bed.”

The child, terrified by the dreadful words and diabolical appearance of
her uncle, fled.

“If I am to be cured, I want to owe it to no one but myself. So there!”

“Then what about the doctor?” ventured Marguerite.

“I pay him for his visits. We are quits.”

“Whilst gratitude to God,” said Julius in his gravest, deepest voice,
“would bind you....”

“Yes, brother Julius, and that is why I don’t pray.”

“Others pray for you, my dear.”

This remark came from Veronica, who up till now had said nothing. At the
gentle sound of her well-known voice, Anthime started and completely
lost all self-control. Contradictions and incoherences came jostling
from his lips. “You have no right to pray for a person against his will,
to ask for a favour for him without his leave. It’s treachery! You
haven’t gained much by it, however. That’s one comfort. It’ll teach you
what your prayers are worth. Much to be proud of. I’m sure!... But,
after all, perhaps you didn’t go on praying long enough.”

“Don’t be alarmed! I _am_ going on,” Veronica announced in the same
gentle voice as before. And then, smiling quietly, as though she stood
outside the range of his tempestuous anger, she went on to tell
Marguerite that every evening, without missing a single one, she burnt
two candles for Anthime and placed them beside the wayside figure of the
Madonna standing at the north corner of the house--the same figure in
front of which she had once caught Beppo crossing himself. There was a
recess in the wall close by, into which the boy used to tuck himself,
when he wanted to rest. Veronica could be sure of finding him there at
the right time. She couldn’t have managed by herself, as the shrine was
too high up--out of the reach of passers-by. But Beppo (he was a slim
lad now of about fifteen) by clinging to the stones and to a metal ring
that was in the wall, scrambled up and was able to place two candles,
already lighted and flaring, beside the holy image.... The conversation
insensibly drifted away from Anthime--closed over him, so to speak, as
the sisters went on to talk of the simple, touching piety of the common
folk, who love most to honour the rudest statues.... Anthime was
completely engulfed. What! not content with feeding his rats behind his
back, Veronica must needs now burn candles for him! His own wife! And,
moreover, mix Beppo up in all this idiotic tomfoolery.... Ha, ha! We’ll
soon see!

The blood rushed to Anthime’s head; he choked; his temples drummed a
tattoo. With a huge effort he rose, knocking down his chair behind him.
He emptied a glass of water on to his napkin and mopped his forehead.
Was he going to be ill? Veronica was all concern. He pushed her away
brutally, made for the door and slammed it behind him; they heard his
halting step, accompanied by the dull thud of his crutch, clatter down
the passage.

This abrupt departure left them perplexed and saddened. For a few
moments they remained silent.

“My poor dear!” said Marguerite at last. This incident served once again
to illustrate the difference between the two sisters. Marguerite’s soul
was of that admirable stuff out of which God makes his martyrs. She was
aware of it and with all her might yearned to suffer. Life unfortunately
offered her little to complain of. Her lot overflowed with blessings, so
that she was reduced to seeking occasions for her power of endurance, in
the trifling vexations of daily life. She did her best to find thorns in
the smoothest path and caught eagerly at anything that had the smallest
resemblance to a bramble. It must be admitted that she was an adept in
the art of managing to get herself slighted; but Julius seemed
continually endeavouring to give her less and less scope for exercising
her virtues. Is it to be wondered at, then, that her attitude towards
him was always discontented and complaining? How splendid her vocation
would have been with a husband like Anthime! She was vexed to see her
sister make so little of her opportunities. Veronica, indeed, eluded
every grievance; sarcasms and jeers alike slipped off her smiling
unruffled smoothness like water off a duck’s back. She had no doubt long
ago become reconciled to the solitude of her life; Anthime, moreover,
didn’t really treat her badly--she didn’t grudge him speaking his mind.
She explained that the reason he spoke so loud was that he found it so
difficult to move. His temper would be less violent if his legs were
more active; and as Julius asked where he could have gone to, “To the
laboratory,” she answered, and when Marguerite added that perhaps it
would be as well to go and see whether he hadn’t been taken ill after
such a fit of anger, she assured her it was better to let him get over
it by himself and not pay too much attention to his outburst.

“Let us finish dinner quietly,” she concluded.


V

No! Uncle Anthime had not stayed in his laboratory.

He had passed rapidly through the room in which the six rats were
bringing their long-drawn sufferings to a close. Why did he not linger
on the terrace which lay bathed in the glimmer of the western sky?
Perhaps the celestial radiance of the evening might have calmed his
rebel soul--inclined his.... But no, he stopped his ears to so wise a
counsel. He went on, took the difficult winding stairs and reached the
court-yard, which he crossed. To us, who know what efforts each painful
step cost him, this crippled haste seems tragic. When shall we see him
show such savage energy in a good cause? Sometimes a groan escaped his
lips; his features were distorted. Where would his impious rage lead
him?

The Madonna, who stood in the corner niche, was watching over the house
and perhaps interceding for the blasphemer himself. Grace and
radiance--whose light was borrowed from Heaven’s own--streamed from her
outstretched hands upon the world below. This figure of the Virgin was
not one of those modern statues, made out of Blafaphas’ newly invented
_Roman Plaster_, such as the firm of Fleurissoire and Lévichon turn out
by the gross. In our eyes the very artlessness of the figure makes it
all the more expressive of the people’s simple piety--gives it an added
beauty--an enhanced eloquence. The colourless face, the gleaming hands,
the blue cloak, were lighted by a lantern, which hung some way in front
of the statue; a zinc roof projected over the niche and at the same time
sheltered the ex-votos, which were fixed to the wall on each side of it.
A little metal door, of which the beadle of the parish kept the key, was
within arm’s reach and protected the fastening of the cord to which the
lantern was attached. Two candles burnt day and night before the statue.
Fresh ones had been placed there that afternoon by Veronica. At the
sight of these candles which were burning, he knew, for him, the
unbeliever’s wrath blazed out afresh. Beppo, who was munching a crust
and a stalk or two of fennel in his hole in the wall, came running to
meet him. Without answering his friendly greeting, Anthime seized him by
the shoulder and, bending down, whispered something in his ear. What
could it have been to make the boy shudder? “No! No!” he protested.
Anthime took out a five-lira note from his waistcoat pocket. Beppo grew
indignant.... Later on he might steal perhaps--perhaps he might even
kill--who knows with what sordid defilement poverty might not smirch his
brow? But raise his hand against his protectress?--against the Virgin to
whom every night he breathed out a last sigh before he slept, and whom,
every morning when he woke, he greeted with his first smile? Anthime
might try in turn entreaties, blows, bribes, threats; nothing would make
him yield.

But don’t let us exaggerate. It was not precisely the Virgin that was
the object of Anthime’s fury. It was more particularly Veronica’s
candles that enraged him. But Beppo’s simple soul could make nothing of
such distinctions; and, moreover, the candles had by now been
consecrated; no one had the right to extinguish them.

Anthime, exasperated by this resistance, pushed the boy away. He would
act alone. Setting his shoulder against the wall, he seized his crutch
by the lower end and, swinging it backwards, hurled it with terrific
violence into the air. The wooden missile rebounded from the inside wall
of the niche and fell noisily to the ground, bringing with it some
fragment or other of broken plaster. He picked up his crutch and stepped
back to look at the niche.... Hell and fury! The two candles were still
burning! But what was this? The statue’s right hand had disappeared and
in its place there was nothing to be seen but a piece of black iron rod.

For a moment he gazed with disillusioned eyes at the melancholy result
of his handiwork. That it should end in such a ludicrous assault!...

Fie! Oh, fie! He turned to look for Beppo; the boy had vanished.
Darkness was closing in; Anthime was alone; but what was this he caught
sight of, lying on the pavement?--The fragment which he had brought down
with his crutch; he picked it up--it was a little plaster hand, which
with a shrug of his shoulders he slipped into his waistcoat pocket.

Shame on his brow and rage in his heart, the iconoclast went up again to
his laboratory; he wanted to work but the abominable effort he had just
made had shattered him. He had no heart for anything but sleep. He would
certainly not say good night to anyone before he went to bed. And yet,
just as he was entering his room, a sound of voices stopped him. The
door of the next room was open and he stole into the darkness of the
passage.

Little Julie in her night-gown, like some tiny familiar angel, was
kneeling on her bed; at the head of the bed, full in the light of the
lamp, Veronica and Marguerite were both on their knees; a little further
off, Julius, with one hand on his heart and the other covering his eyes,
was standing in an attitude at once devout and manly; they were
listening to the child’s prayers. The deep silence in which the scene
was wrapped brought back to Anthime’s recollection a certain tranquil,
golden evening on the banks of the Nile. Like the blue smoke that had
risen that evening into the pureness of the sky, the little girl’s
innocent prayer rose straight to Heaven.

Her prayers were no doubt drawing to a close; the child had gone through
all the usual formula, and was praying now in her own words, out of the
fullness of her heart; she prayed for the little orphans, for the sick,
for the poor, for sister Genevieve, for Aunt Veronica, for Papa, for
dear Mamma’s eye to be well soon.... As he listened, Anthime’s heart
grew sore within him; from the threshold of the door where he was
standing, he called out in a voice that was meant to be ironical, and
loud enough to be heard at the other end of the room:

“And is God not to be asked anything for Uncle Anthime?”

And then, to everyone’s astonishment, the child, in an extraordinarily
steady voice, went on:

“And please, dear God, forgive Uncle Anthime his sins.”

These words struck home to the very depths of the atheist’s heart.


VI

That night Anthime had a dream. There was a knock at his bedroom
door--not the door into the passage, nor the door into the next room;
the knock was at another door, which he had not noticed in his waking
hours and which led straight into the street. That was why he was
frightened, and at first, instead of answering, lay low. There was a
faint light which made the smallest objects in the room visible--a sort
of dim effulgence, such as a night-light gives--but there was no
night-light. As he was trying to make out where this light could come
from, there was a second knock.

“What do you want?” he cried in a trembling voice.

At the third knock, he fell into a kind of daze; an extraordinary
feeling of yielding--in which every trace of fear was swallowed
up--paralysed him. (He called it afterwards a tender resignation.) He
suddenly felt both that he was incapable of resistance and that the door
was going to open. It opened noiselessly and for a moment he saw nothing
but a dark alcove, which at first was empty, but in which, as he gazed,
there appeared, as in a shrine, the figure of the Holy Virgin. At first
he took the small white form for his little niece Julie, dressed as he
had just seen her, with her bare feet showing below her night-gown; but
a second later he recognised her whom he had insulted; I mean that her
appearance was the same as the wayside statue’s; he could even make out
the injury to her right arm; and yet the pale face was still more
beautiful, still more smiling than before. Without seeming to walk
exactly, she came gliding towards him, and when she was close up against
his bedside:

“Dost thou think, thou who hast hurt me,” she asked, “that I have need
of my hand to cure thee?” And with this she raised her empty sleeve and
struck him.

It seemed to him that it was from her that this strange effulgence
emanated. But when the iron rod suddenly pierced his side he felt a stab
of frightful pain and woke up in the dark.

       *       *       *       *       *

Anthime was perhaps a quarter of an hour before coming to his senses. He
felt in his whole body a strange kind of torpor--of stupefied
numbness--and then a tingling which was almost pleasant, so that he
doubted now whether he had really felt any pain in his side; he could
not make out where his dream had begun or ended, and whether he was
awake now or whether he had dreamt then. He pinched himself, felt
himself all over, put his arm out and finally struck a match. Veronica
was asleep beside him with her face to the wall.

Then, untucking the sheets and flinging aside the blankets, he let the
tips of his bare feet slide down, till they rested on his slippers. His
crutch was there, leaning beside the bedside table; without taking it,
he raised himself by pushing with his hands against the bed; then he
thrust his feet well into the leather slippers; then, stood bolt upright
on his legs; then, still doubtful, with one arm stretched in front of
him and one behind, he took a step--two steps alongside the bed--three
steps; then across the room.... Holy Virgin! Was he ...?

Noiselessly and rapidly he slipped into his trousers, put on his
waistcoat, his coat.... Stop, my pen! What rashness is yours? What
matters the cure of a paralysed body, what matter all its clumsy
agitations, in comparison with the flutterings of a newly liberated
soul, when first she tries her wings?

When, a quarter of an hour later, Veronica, disturbed by some kind of
presentiment, awoke, she became uneasy at feeling that Anthime was not
beside her; she became still more uneasy when, having struck a match,
she saw his crutch (which of necessity never left him) still standing by
the bedside. The match went out between her fingers, for Anthime had
taken the candle with him when he left the room; Veronica hastily
slipped on a few things as best she could in the dark, and then in her
turn leaving the room, she followed the thread of light which shone from
beneath the laboratory door.

“Anthime, are you there, my dear?”

No answer. Veronica, listening with all her might and main, heard a
singular noise. Then, sick with anxiety, she pushed open the door. What
she saw transfixed her with amazement.

Her Anthime was there, straight in front of her. He was not sitting; he
was not standing; the top of his head was on a level with the table and
in the full light of the candle, which he had placed upon it; Anthime,
the learned man of science, Anthime the atheist, who for many a long
year had bowed neither his stiff knee nor his stubborn will (for it was
remarkable how in his case body and soul kept pace with each
other)--Anthime was kneeling!

He was on his knees, was Anthime; he was holding in his two hands a
little fragment of plaster, which he was bathing with his tears, and
covering with frantic kisses. At first he took no notice of her, and
Veronica, astounded at this mystery, was afraid either to withdraw or to
go forward and was already on the point herself of falling on her knees
in the doorway opposite her husband, when, oh, miracle! he rose without
an effort, walked towards her with a steady step, and, catching her in
his arms:

“Henceforth,” he said, as he pressed her to his heart and bent his face
towards hers, “henceforth, my dearest, we will pray together.”


VII

The conversion of the unbeliever could not long remain a secret. Julius
de Baraglioul did not delay a single day before communicating the news
to Cardinal André in France, who spread it abroad amongst the
conservative party and the higher clergy; while Veronica announced it to
Father Anselm, so that it soon reached the ears of the Vatican.

Doubtless Armand-Dubois had been the object of special mercy. It would
perhaps be imprudent to affirm that the Virgin had actually appeared to
him, but even if he had seen her only in a dream, his cure was still a
matter of fact--incontrovertible, demonstrable and assuredly miraculous.
Now if perhaps in Anthime’s opinion it was enough that he should have
been cured, in the Church’s it was not. A public recantation was
demanded of him, which was to be accompanied by a ceremony of unusual
splendour.

“What!” said Father Anselm to him a few days later, “in the course of
your errors you have propagated heresy by all the means in your power,
and now you would elude the duty of allowing Heaven to dispose of you
for its own high purposes of instruction and example? How many souls
have been turned aside from the true Light by the false glimmers of your
misguided science? It lies with you now to bring them back to the fold,
and you hesitate? It lies with you? Nay! It is your strict duty. I will
not insult you by supposing that you do not feel it.”

No! Anthime would not elude his duty. But he could not help fearing its
consequences. He had heavy pecuniary interests in Egypt which, as we
have seen, were in the hands of the freemasons. What could he do without
the help of the Lodge? And how could he hope to be assisted by the very
institution he was flouting? Formerly he had expected fortune at their
hands, and now he saw himself absolutely ruined.

He confided as much to Father Anselm, and Father Anselm, who had not
been aware of Anthime’s high rank as a freemason, rejoiced at the
thought that his recantation would be all the more striking. Two days
later Anthime’s high rank was no longer a secret for any of the readers
of the _Osservatore_ and the _Santa Croce_.

“You are ruining me,” said Anthime.

“On the contrary, my son,” answered Father Anselm, “we are bringing you
salvation. As for your material needs, take no thought for them. The
Church will provide. I have dwelt at length upon your case to Cardinal
Pazzi, who is going to speak to Rampolla about it. I may tell you,
moreover, that the Holy Father himself is informed of your recantation.
The Church understands what you have sacrificed for her sake, and will
undertake that you do not suffer. Don’t you think, though, that upon
this occasion you have over-estimated” (and he smiled) “the value of the
freemasons’ influence? Not but what I know well enough that they must be
reckoned with only too seriously. Never mind! Have you calculated the
amount that their hostility may cost you? Tell it me roughly” (he raised
his left forefinger to his nose with good-humoured slyness) “and fear
nothing.”

Ten days after the celebration of the Jubilee, Anthime’s recantation
took place in the Gesù, attended by every circumstance of excessive
pomp. It is not for me to relate this ceremony, which was described in
all the Italian papers of the time. Father T., the Jesuit General’s
socius, pronounced one of his most remarkable orations on this occasion.
“The freemason’s sick and tormented soul had doubtless come near to
madness and the very extremity of his hatred had foreboded the coming of
Love.” The preacher recalled Saul of Tarsus and pointed out that
Anthime’s act of iconoclasm showed a surprising analogy to the stoning
of St. Stephen. The reverend father’s eloquence swelled and rolled
through the aisle, as the thronging surges of the tide roll through the
vaults of some sounding cavern, and Anthime thought the while of his
niece’s childish treble, and in his secret heart he thanked her for
having called down upon her infidel uncle’s sins the merciful attention
of her whom henceforth he would serve alone.

From that day onwards, Anthime, absorbed by more elevated
preoccupations, scarcely noticed the noise that was made about his name.
Julius de Baraglioul suffered in his stead and never opened a paper
without a beating heart. The first enthusiasm of the orthodox press was
answered by the vituperation of the liberal organs. An important article
in the _Osservatore_--“A New Victory for the Church”--was met by a
diatribe in the _Tempo Felice_--“Another Fool.” Finally the _Dépeche de
Toulouse_ headed Anthime’s usual page, which he had sent in the day
before his cure, with a few gibing introductory remarks. Julius, in his
brother-in-law’s name, wrote a short, dignified letter in reply, to
inform the _Dépeche_ that it need no longer consider “the convert” as
one of its contributors. The _Zukunft_ was beforehand with Anthime and
politely thanked him for his services, intimating that there would be no
further use for them. He accepted these blows with that serenity of
countenance which is the mark of the truly devout soul.

“Fortunately the columns of the _Correspondant_ will be open to you,”
snarled Julius.

“But, my dear fellow, what in the world could I write in them?” objected
Anthime benevolently. “None of my former occupations has any further
interest for me.”

Then silence closed down over the affair. Julius had been obliged to
return to Paris.

Anthime, in the meanwhile, pressed by Father Anselm, had obediently
quitted Rome. The withdrawal of the Lodge’s assistance had been rapidly
followed by the ruin of his worldly fortunes; and the applications which
Veronica, confident of the Church’s support, had urged him to make,
merely resulted in wearing out the patience of the influential members
of the clergy and finally in setting them against him. He was advised in
a friendly way to go to Milan. There he was to await the long-since
promised compensation and any scraps which might fall from a celestial
bounty that had grown in the meantime singularly lukewarm.




BOOK II: JULIUS DE BARAGLIOUL

     _“Puisqu’il ne faut jamais ôter le retour à personne.”_

                               --RETZ, VIII, p. 93.


I

On March 30th, at twelve o’clock at night, the Baragliouls got back to
Paris and went straight to their apartment in the Rue de Verneuil.

While Marguerite was getting ready for the night, Julius, with a small
lamp in his hand and slippers on his feet, went to his study--a room to
which he never returned without pleasure; it was soberly decorated and
furnished; one or two Lépines and a Boudin hung on the walls; in one
corner a marble bust of his wife by Chapu, which stood on a revolving
pedestal, made a patch of whiteness that was somewhat glaring; in the
middle of the room stood an enormous Renaissance table, littered with
books, pamphlets and prospectuses which had been accumulating during his
absence; in a salver of cloisonné enamel lay a few visiting-cards with
their corners turned down, and well in sight, apart from the others and
leaning against a bronze Barye, there was a letter addressed in a
handwriting which Julius recognised as his old father’s. He immediately
tore open the envelope and read as follows:

     “MY DEAR SON,

     “I have been growing much weaker lately. It is impossible to
     misunderstand the nature of the warnings which tell me I must be
     preparing to depart; and indeed I have not much to gain by delaying
     longer.

     “I know that you are returning to Paris to-night and I count on you
     for doing me a service without delay. In order to make some
     arrangements, of which I shall shortly inform you, it is necessary
     for me to know whether a young man called Lafcadio Wluiki
     (pronounced _Louki_--the _w_ and _i_ are hardly sounded) is still
     living at No. 12 Impasse Claude-Bernard.

     “I should be much obliged if you would be so good as to call at
     this address and ask to see the said young man. (A novelist like
     you will easily be able to invent some excuse for introducing
     yourself.) I want to know:

     “1. What the young man is doing;

     “2. What he intends to do--whether he is ambitious, and, if so, in
     what way?

     “3. Lastly, tell me shortly what seem to you to be his means of
     existence, his abilities, his inclinations and his tastes....

     “Don’t try to see me for the present; I am in an unsociable mood.
     You can give me the information I ask just as well by letter. If I
     am inclined to talk or if I feel the final departure is at hand, I
     will let you know.

     “Yours affecˡʸ,

                                           “JUSTE-AGÉNOR DE BARAGLIOUL.

     “P.S. Don’t let it appear that you come from me. The young man
     knows nothing of me and must continue to know nothing.

     “Lafcadio Wluiki is now nineteen--a Roumanian subject--an orphan.

     “I have looked at your last book. If after that you don’t get into
     the Academy, such rubbish is unpardonable.”

There was no denying it, Julius’s last book had not been well received.
In spite of his fatigue, the novelist ran his eye over a bundle of
newspaper cuttings, in which he found his name mentioned with scant
indulgence. Then he opened a window and breathed for a moment the misty
night air. Julius’s study windows looked on to the gardens of an
Embassy--pools of lustral shadow, where eyes and mind could cleanse
themselves from the squalor of the streets and from the meannesses of
the world. The pure and thrilling note of a blackbird held him listening
a moment or two.... Then he went back to the bedroom where Marguerite
was already asleep.

As he was afraid of insomnia he took from the chest of drawers a bottle
of orange-flower water which he frequently used. Ever careful to observe
conjugal courtesy, he had taken the precaution of lowering the wick of
the lamp, before placing it where it would be least likely to disturb
the sleeper; but a slight tinkling of the glass as he put it down after
he had finished drinking, reached Marguerite, where she lay plunged in
unconsciousness; she gave an animal grunt and turned to the wall.
Julius, glad of an excuse for considering her awake, drew near the bed
and asked as he began to undress:

“Would you like to hear what my father says about my book?”

“Oh, my dear, your poor father has no feeling for literature. You’ve
told me so a hundred times,” murmured Marguerite whose one desire was to
go on sleeping. But Julius’s heart was too full.

“He says it’s unpardonable rubbish.”

There was a long silence, during which Marguerite sank once more into
the depths of slumber. Julius was already resigning himself to
uncompanioned solitude, when, making a desperate effort for his sake,
she rose again to the surface:

“I hope you’re not going to be upset about it.”

“I am taking it with perfect calm, as you can see,” answered Julius at
once. “But at the same time I really don’t think it’s my father’s place
to speak so--especially not my father’s--and especially not about that
book, which in reality is nothing from first to last but a monument in
his honour.”

Had not Julius, indeed, retraced in this book the old diplomat’s truly
representative career? As a companion picture to the turbulent follies
of romanticism, had he not glorified the dignified, the ordered, the
classic calm of Juste-Agénor’s existence in its twofold aspect,
political and domestic?

“Fortunately, you didn’t write it to please him.”

“He insinuates that I wrote _On the Heights_ in order to get into the
Academy.”

“Well! and if you did! Even if you did get into the Academy by writing a
fine book! What then?” And she added with contemptuous pity: “Let’s
hope, at any rate, that the reviews will set him right.”

Julius exploded.

“The reviews! Good God! The reviews!” he exclaimed, and then turning
furiously upon Marguerite as if it were her fault, added with a bitter
laugh:

“They do nothing but abuse me.”

At last Marguerite was effectually awakened.

“Is there a great deal of criticism?” she asked with solicitude.

“Yes, and a great deal of crocodile praise too.”

“Oh, how right you are to despise all those wretched journalists! Think
of what M. de Vogué wrote to you the day before yesterday: ‘A pen like
yours defends France like a sword!’”

“‘Threatened as France is with barbarism, a pen like yours defends her
better than a sword!’” corrected Julius.

“And when Cardinal André promised you his vote the other day, he
declared that you had the whole Church behind you.”

“A precious lot of good _that_’ll do me!”

“Oh, my dear Julius!”

“We’ve just seen in Anthime’s case what the protection of the clergy is
worth.”

“Julius, you’re getting bitter. You’ve often told me you didn’t work for
the hope of reward--nor for the sake of other people’s approval--that
your own was enough. You’ve even written some splendid things to that
effect.”

“I know, I know,” said Julius impatiently.

With such a rankling pain at his heart, this soothing syrup was of no
avail. He went back to his dressing-room.

Why did he let himself go in this lamentable fashion before his wife?
His was not the kind of trouble which could be comforted by the coddling
of a wife; pride--shame--should make him hide it in his heart.
“Rubbish!” All the time he was brushing his teeth, the word throbbed in
his temples and played havoc amongst his noblest thoughts. After all,
what did his last book matter? He forgot his father’s phrase--or at any
rate he forgot it was his father’s. For the first time in his life awful
questionings beset him. He, who up to that time had never met with
anything but approval and smiles, felt rising within him a doubt as to
the sincerity of those smiles, as to the value of that approval, as to
the value of his works, as to the reality of his thought, as to the
genuineness of his life. He returned to the bedroom, absent-mindedly
holding his tooth-glass in one hand and his tooth-brush in the other; he
placed the glass, which was half full of rose-coloured water, on the
chest of drawers, and put the brush in the glass; then he sat down at a
little satin-wood escritoire, where Marguerite did her writing. He
seized his wife’s pen-holder and, taking a sheet of paper, which was
tinted mauve and delicately perfumed, began:

     “MY DEAR FATHER,

     “I found your note awaiting me on my return home this evening. Your
     errand shall be punctually performed to-morrow morning. I hope to
     be able to manage the matter to your satisfaction, and by so doing
     to give you a proof of my devoted attachment.”

For Julius was one of those noble natures whose true greatness flowers
amid the thorns of humiliation. Then, leaning back in his chair, he
remained a few moments, pen in hand, trying to turn his sentence:

     “It is a matter of grief to me that you, of all people in the
     world, should be the one to suspect my disinterestedness, which ...”

No! Perhaps:

     “Do you think that literary honesty is less dear to me than ...”

The sentence wouldn’t come. Julius, who was in his night things, felt
that he was catching cold; he crumpled up the paper, took up his
tooth-glass and went back with it to his dressing-room, at the same time
throwing the crumpled letter into the slop-pail.

Just as he was getting into bed, he touched his wife upon the shoulder:

“And what do _you_ think of my book?” he asked.

Marguerite half opened a glazed and lifeless eye. Julius was obliged to
repeat his question. Turning partly round, Marguerite looked at him. His
eyebrows raised under a network of wrinkles, his lips contracted, Julius
was a pitiable object.

“What’s the matter, dear? Do you really think your last book isn’t as
good as the others?”

That was no sort of answer. Marguerite was eluding the point.

“I think the others are no better than this. So there!”

“Oh, well then!...”

And Marguerite, losing heart in the face of these monstrosities, and
feeling that all her tender arguments were wasted, turned round towards
the dark and once more slept.


II

Notwithstanding a certain amount of professional curiosity and the
flattering illusion that nothing human was alien to him, Julius had
rarely derogated from the customs of his class and he had very few
dealings except with persons of his own _milieu_. This was from lack of
opportunity rather than of taste. As he was preparing next morning to
start for his visit, Julius realised that his get-up was not exactly
what it should have been. His overcoat, his spread tie, even his
Cronstadt hat had something or other proper, staid, respectable about
them.... But, after all, it was perhaps better that his dress should
not encourage the young man to too prompt a familiarity. It would be
more suitable to engage his confidence by way of conversation. And as he
bent his steps towards the Impasse Claude-Bernard, Julius turned over in
his mind the manner in which he should introduce himself and pursue his
enquiries, running through all the precautions and pretexts that would
be necessary.

What in the world could Count Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul have to do with
this young man Lafcadio? The question buzzed importunate in Julius’s
mind. He was certainly not going to allow himself any curiosity on the
subject of his father’s life just at the very moment he had finished
writing it. He did not wish to know any more than his father chose to
tell him. During the last few years the Count had grown taciturn, but he
had never practised concealment. As Julius was crossing the Luxembourg
Gardens he was overtaken by a shower.

In front of the door of No. 12 Impasse Claude-Bernard a _fiacre_ was
drawn up, in which Julius as he passed caught sight of a lady whose hat
was a trifle large and whose dress was a trifle loud.

His heart beat as he gave his name to the porter of the lodging-house;
it seemed to the novelist that he was plunging into an unknown sea of
adventure; but as he went upstairs the place looked so common,
everything in it was so second-rate, that he was filled with disgust;
there was nothing here to kindle his curiosity, which flickered out and
was succeeded by repugnance.

On the fourth floor an uncarpeted passage, which was lighted only by the
staircase, turned at right angles a few steps from the landing; there
were shut doors on each side of this passage; the door at the end was
ajar and a small shaft of light came from it. Julius knocked; there was
no answer; he timidly pushed the door open a little further; there was
no one in the room. Julius went downstairs again.

“If he isn’t there, he won’t be long,” the porter had said.

The rain was falling in torrents. In the hall, opposite the staircase,
was a waiting-room, into which Julius made a half-hearted attempt to
enter; but its rancid smell and God-forsaken appearance drove him out
and made him reflect that he might just as well have opened the door
upstairs more decidedly and, without more ado, have waited for the young
man in his own room. Julius went up again.

As he turned down the passage for the second time, a woman came out of
the room that was next-door to the end one. Julius collided with her and
apologised.

“You are looking for ...?”

“Monsieur Wluiki lives here, doesn’t he?”

“He’s gone out.”

“Oh!” said Julius in a tone of such annoyance that the woman asked:

“Is it very urgent?”

Julius had prepared himself solely for an encounter with the unknown
Lafcadio and he was taken aback; yet here was a fine opportunity; this
woman was perhaps in a position to give him a great deal of information
about the young man; if only he could get her to talk....

“There was something I wanted to ask him about.”

“On whose behalf, may I ask?”

“Does she suspect I come from the police?” thought Julius.

“My name is Vicomte Julius de Baraglioul,” said he, rather pompously and
slightly raising his hat.

“Oh, Monsieur le Comte, I really must beg you to excuse me for not
having.... The passage is so very dark! Please, be so good as to come
in.” (She pushed open the door of the end room.) “Lafcadio’s certain to
be back in a moment. He was only going as far as the.... Oh! excuse me!”

And as Julius was going in, she brushed in front of him and darted
towards a pair of ladies’ drawers, which were very indiscreetly spread
out to view on a chair, and which, after an attempt at concealment had
proved ineffectual, she endeavoured to make at any rate less
conspicuous.

“I’m afraid the place is very untidy....

“Never mind! Never mind!” said Julius indulgently. “I’m quite accustomed
to....”

Carola Venitequa was a rather large-sized, not to say plump young
person; but her figure was good and she was wholesome-looking; her
features were ordinary but not vulgar and not unattractive; she had
gentle eyes like an animal’s and a voice that bleated. She was dressed
for going out and had on a little soft felt hat, a shirt blouse, a
sailor tie and a man’s collar and white cuffs.

“Have you known M. Wluiki long?”

“I might perhaps give him a message,” she remarked without answering.

“Well, I wanted to know whether he was very busy.”

“It depends.”

“Because if he had any free time, I thought of asking him to do a small
job for me.”

“What sort of job?”

“Well, that’s just it, you see.... To begin with, I should have liked to
know the kind of pursuits he’s engaged in.”

The question lacked subtlety. But Carola’s appearance was not of the
sort to invite subtlety. In the meantime the Comte de Baraglioul had
recovered his self-possession; he was seated in the chair which Carola
had cleared, and Carola was leaning on the table close to him, just
beginning to speak, when a loud disturbance was heard in the passage;
the door opened noisily and the woman Julius had noticed in the carriage
made her appearance.

“I was sure of it,” she said, “when I saw him going upstairs.”

Carola drew away a little from Julius and answered quickly:

“Nothing of the kind, my dear--we were just talking. My friend, Bertha
Grand-Marnier--Monsieur le Comte ... there now! I’m so sorry! I’ve
forgotten your name.”

“It’s of no consequence,” said Julius, rather stiffly, as he pressed the
gloved hand which Bertha offered him.

“Now, introduce _me_,” said Carola....

“Look here, dearie, we’re an hour late already,” went on the other,
after having introduced her friend. “If you want to talk to the
gentleman, let him come with us; I’ve got a carriage.”

“He hasn’t come to see me.”

“Oh, all right! Come along then! Won’t you dine with us to-night?”

“I’m exceedingly sorry, but....”

Carola blushed. She was anxious now to take her friend off as quickly as
possible.

“Will you please excuse me, Sir?” she said. “Lafcadio will be back in a
moment.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The two women as they went out left the door open behind them. Every
sound in the uncarpeted passage was audible; a person coming from the
stairs would not be seen because of the turning, but he would certainly
be heard.

“After all,” thought Julius, “I shall find out even more from the room
than from the woman.” He set quietly to work to examine it.

In these commonplace lodgings there was hardly anything, alas! which
could offer a clue to curiosity so unskilled as his.

Not a bookshelf! Not a picture on the walls! Standing on the mantelpiece
was a vile edition of Defoe’s _Moll Flanders_ in English and only
two-thirds cut, and a copy of the _Novelle_ of Anton Francesco Grazzini,
styled the Lasca, in Italian. These two books puzzled Julius. Beside
them, and behind a bottle of spirits of peppermint, was a photograph
which did more than puzzle him. It showed, grouped upon a sandy beach, a
woman, who was no longer very young but strangely beautiful, leaning
upon the arm of a man of a pronounced English type, slim and elegant and
dressed in a sport suit, and at their feet, sitting on an overturned
canoe, a well-knit, slender lad of about fifteen, with a mass of fair,
tousled hair, with bold laughing eyes and without a stitch of clothes on
him.

Julius took up the photograph and, holding it to the light, saw written
in the right-hand corner a few words in faded ink: _Duino, July, 1889_.
He was not much the wiser for this, though he remembered that Duino was
a small town on the Austrian coast of the Adriatic. With tightened lips
and a disapproving shake of his head, he put the photograph back. In the
empty fire-place were stowed a box of oatmeal, a bag of lentils and a
bag of rice; a little further off was a chess-board leaning against the
wall. There was nothing which could give Julius any hint of the kind of
studies or occupations which filled the young man’s days.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lafcadio had apparently just finished his breakfast; on the table was a
spirit lamp and a small saucepan; in this there was still to be seen one
of those little perforated, hollow eggs, which ingenious travellers use
for making tea; and there were a few bread crumbs and a dirtied cup.
Julius drew near the table; in the table was a drawer and in the drawer
a key....

I should be sorry if what follows were to give a wrong impression of
Julius’s character. Nothing was further from Julius than indiscretion;
he was respectful of the cloak with which each man chooses to cover his
inner life; he was highly respectful of the decencies. But upon this
occasion he was bound to waive his personal preferences in obedience to
his father’s command. He waited and listened for another moment, then,
as he heard nothing--against his inclinations and against his
principles, but with the delicate feeling of performing a duty--he
pulled open the drawer, the key of which had not been turned.

Inside was a Russia-leather pocket-book; which Julius took and opened.
On the first page, in the same writing as that on the photograph, were
these words:

    For my trusty comrade Cadio,
    This account book from his old uncle,
                              FABY,

and with hardly any space between came the following words, written in a
straight, regular and rather childish hand:

     Duino. This morning, July 17th, ’89, Lord Fabian joined us here. He
     brought me a canoe, a rifle and this beautiful pocket-book.

Nothing else on the first page.

On the third page, under the date Aug. 29th, was written:

     Swimming match with Faby. Gave him four strokes.

And the next day:

     Gave him twelve strokes.

Julius gathered that he had got hold of a mere training book. The list
of days soon stopped, however, and after a blank page, he read:

     Sept. 20th. Left Algiers for the Aures.

The a few jottings of places and dates and finally this last entry:

     Oct. 5th. Return to El Kantara--50 kilometres _on horseback_,[A]
     without stopping.

Julius turned over a few blank pages, but, a little further on, the
entries began again. At the top of a page, the following words were
written in larger and more carefully formed characters, arranged so as
to look like a fresh title:

CENTER
QUI INCOMMINCIA IL LIBRO
DELLA NOVA ESIGENZA
E
DELLA SUPREMA VIRTU.



And below this came the motto:

    “_Tanto quanto se ne taglia._”
                   --BOCCACCIO.

Any expression of moral ideas was quick to arouse the hunter’s instinct
in Julius; here was game for him. But the very next page was a
disappointment; it landed him in another batch of accounts. And yet
these accounts were of a different kind. Without any indication of dates
or places appeared the following entries:

    For having beaten Protos at chess                1 punta.
    For having shown that I spoke Italian            3 punte.
    For having answered before Protos                1 p.
    For having had the last word                     1 p.
    For having cried at hearing of Faby’s death      4 p.

Julius, reading hurriedly, took _punta_ to be some kind of foreign coin
and assumed that the figures were nothing but a childish and trifling
computation of merits and rewards. Then the accounts came to an end
again. Julius turned another page and read:

     This 4th April, conversation with Protos:

     “Do you understand the meaning of the words, ‘TO PUSH ON’?

There the writing stopped.

Julius shrugged his shoulders, pursed up his lips, shook his head and
put the book back where he had found it. He took out his watch, got up,
walked to the window and looked out; it had stopped raining. He went
towards the corner of the room where he had put down his umbrella when
he first came in; at that moment he saw, leaning back a little in the
opening of the doorway, a handsome, fair young man, who was watching him
with a smile on his lips.


III

The youth of the photograph had hardly aged. Juste-Agénor had said
nineteen; one would not have taken him for more than sixteen. Lafcadio
could certainly have only just arrived; when Julius was putting back the
pocket-book a moment before, he had raised his eyes to look at the door
and had seen no one; but how was it he had not heard him coming? An
instinctive glance at the young man’s feet showed Julius that he was
wearing goloshes instead of boots.

There was nothing hostile about Lafcadio’s smile; he seemed amused, on
the contrary--and ironical; he had kept his travelling-cap on his head,
but when he met Julius’s eyes, he took it off and bowed ceremoniously.

“Monsieur Wluiki?” asked Julius.

The young man bowed again without answering.

“Please excuse my sitting down in your room while I was waiting for you.
I really shouldn’t have ventured to do so if I hadn’t been shown in.”

Julius spoke faster and louder than usual to convince himself that he
was at ease. Lafcadio frowned imperceptibly; he went towards Julius’s
umbrella and without a word put it outside to stream in the passage;
then coming back into the room again, he motioned Julius to sit down.

“You are no doubt surprised to see me?”

Lafcadio quietly took a cigarette out of a silver cigarette case and lit
it.

“I will explain my reason for calling in a few words. Of course you will
understand....”

The more he spoke, the more he felt his assurance oozing away.

“Well, then!--But first allow me to introduce myself....” and as though
he felt embarrassed at having to pronounce his own name, he drew a
visiting-card out of his waistcoat pocket and held it out to Lafcadio,
who put it down on the table without looking at it.

“I am ... I have just finished a rather important piece of work; it’s a
small piece of work which I have no time to copy out myself. Someone
mentioned you to me as having an excellent handwriting and I thought
that, perhaps ...” here Julius’s glance travelled eloquently over the
bareness of the room--“I thought that perhaps you would have no
objection....”

“There is no one in Paris,” interrupted Lafcadio, “no one who could have
mentioned my handwriting to you.” As he spoke, he directed his eyes
towards the drawer, in opening which Julius had unwittingly destroyed a
minute and almost invisible seal of soft wax; then turning the key
violently in the lock and putting it in his pocket:

“No one, that is, who has any right to”; and as he spoke he watched
Julius’s face redden.

“On the other hand” (he spoke very slowly--almost stolidly, without any
expression at all), “I don’t quite grasp so far what reasons Monsieur
...” (he looked at the card) “what reasons Count Julius de Baraglioul
can have for taking a special interest in me. Nevertheless” (and his
voice suddenly became smooth and mellifluous in imitation of Julius’s),
“your proposal deserves to be taken into consideration by a person who,
as it has not escaped you, is in need of money.” (He got up.) “Kindly
allow me to bring you my answer to-morrow morning.”

The hint to leave was unmistakable. Julius felt too uncomfortable to
insist. He took up his hat, hesitated an instant and then:

“I should have liked a little further talk with you,” he said awkwardly.
“Let me hope that to-morrow ... I shall expect you any time after ten
o’clock.”

Lafcadio bowed.

       *       *       *       *       *

As soon as Julius had turned the corner of the passage, Lafcadio pushed
to the door and bolted it. He ran to the drawer, pulled out the
pocket-book, opened it at the last telltale page and just at the place
where he had left off several months before, he wrote in pencil in a
large hand, sloping defiantly backwards and very unlike the former:

     “For having let Olibrius poke his dirty nose into this book ... 1
     punta.”

He took a penknife out of his pocket; its blade had been sharpened away
until nothing was left of it but a short point like a stiletto, which he
passed over the flame of a match and then thrust through his trouser
pocket, straight into his thigh. In spite of himself he made a grimace.
But he was still not satisfied. Leaning upon the table, without sitting
down, he again wrote just below the last sentence:

    “And for having shown him that I knew it ... 2 punte.”

This time he hesitated; unfastened his trousers and turned them down on
one side. He looked at his thigh in which the little wound he had just
made was bleeding; he examined the scars of similar wounds, which were
like vaccination marks all round. Then, having once more passed the
blade over the flame of a match, he very quickly and twice in succession
plunged it into his flesh.

“I usedn’t to take so many precautions in the old days,” he said, going
to the bottle of spirits of peppermint and sprinkling a few drops on
each of the wounds.

His anger had cooled a little, when, as he was putting back the bottle,
he noticed that the photograph of himself and his mother had been
slightly disturbed. Then he seized it, gazed at it for the last time
with a kind of anguish, and as the blood rushed to his face, tore it
furiously to shreds. He tried to burn the pieces, but he could not get
them to light; so, clearing the fire-place of the bags which littered
it, he took his only two books and set them in the hearth to serve as
fire-dogs, pulled his pocket-book apart, hacked it to pieces, crumpled
it up, flung his picture on the top and set fire to the whole.

With his face close to the flames he persuaded himself that it was with
unspeakable satisfaction that he watched these keepsakes burning, but
when he rose to his feet after nothing was left of them but ashes, his
head was swimming. The room was full of smoke. He went to his
wash-hand-stand and bathed his face.

He was now able to consider the little visiting-card with a steadier
eye.

“Count Julius de Baraglioul,” he repeated. “_Dapprima importa sapere chi
è._”

He tore off the silk handkerchief which he was wearing instead of a
collar and tie, unfastened his shirt and, standing in front of the open
window, let the cool air play round his chest and sides. Then suddenly
all eagerness to go out, with his boots rapidly drawn on, his cravat
swiftly knotted, a respectable grey felt hat on his head--appeased and
civilised as far as in him lay--Lafcadio shut the door of his room
behind him and made his way to the Place St. Sulpice. There, in the big
lending-library opposite the town hall, he would be certain to find all
the information he wanted.


IV

As he passed under the arcades of the Odéon, Julius’s novel, which was
on sale in the book shops, caught his eye; it was a yellow paper book,
the mere sight of which on any other occasion would have made him yawn.
He felt in his pocket and flung a five-franc piece on the counter.

“A fine fire for this evening,” thought he, as he carried off the book
and the change.

In the lending-library a “Who’s Who” gave a short account of Julius’s
invertebrate career, mentioned the titles of his works and praised them
in terms so conventional as effectually to quench any desire to read
them.

“Ugh!” said Lafcadio.... He was just going to shut up the book when
three or four words in the preceding paragraph caught his eye and made
him start.

A few lines above _Julius de Baraglioul (Vmte.)_ Lafcadio saw under the
heading _Juste-Agénor_: “Minister at Bucharest in 1873.” What was there
in these simple words to make his heart beat so fast?

Lafcadio, whose mother had given him five uncles, had never known his
father; he was content to regard him as dead and had always refrained
from asking questions. As for his uncles (all of them of different
nationalities and three of them in the diplomatic service), he had
pretty soon perceived that they had no other relationship with him than
that which the fair Wanda chose to give them. Now Lafcadio was just
nineteen. He had been born in Bucharest in 1874, exactly at the end of
the second year which the Comte de Baraglioul had spent there in his
official capacity.

Now that he had been put on the alert by Julius’s mysterious visit, how
was it possible to look upon this as merely a fortuitous coincidence? He
made a great effort to read Juste-Agénor’s biography, but the lines
danced before his eyes; he just managed to make out that Julius’s
father, the Comte de Baraglioul, was a man of considerable importance.

The explosion of insolent joy in his heart was so riotous that he
thought the outside world must hear it. But no! this covering of flesh
was unquestionably solid and impervious. He furtively examined his
neighbours--old habitués of the reading-room, all engrossed in their
dreary occupations.... He began to calculate: “If he was born in 1821,
the Count must be seventy-two by now. _Ma chi sa se vive ancora?..._”
He put the dictionary back and went out.

The azure sky was clearing itself of a few light clouds which a fresh
breeze had sent scudding. “_Importa di domesticare questo nuovo
proposito_,” said Lafcadio to himself, who prized above all things the
free possession of his soul; and hopeless of reducing so turbulent a
thought to order, he resolved to banish it for a moment from his mind.
He took Julius’s novel out of his pocket and made a great effort to
distract himself with it; but the book had no allurement in it of
indirectness or mystery, and nothing could have helped him less to
escape from a too urgent self.

“And yet it is to the author of _that_ that I am going to-morrow to play
at being secretary!” he couldn’t refrain from repeating.

He bought a newspaper at a kiosk and went into the Luxembourg. The
benches were sopping; he opened the book, sat down on it and unfolded
the paper to look at the various items of the day. Suddenly, and as
though he had been expecting to find it there, his eye fell upon the
following announcement:

     “It is hoped that Count Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul, whose health
     has lately given grave cause for anxiety, is now recovering. His
     condition, however, still remains too precarious to admit of his
     receiving any but a few intimate friends.”

Lafcadio sprang from the bench. In a moment he had made up his mind.
Forgetting his book, he hurried off to a stationer’s shop in the Rue de
Médicis, where he remembered having seen in the window a notice that
visiting-cards were printed “while you wait at three francs the
hundred.” He smiled as he went, amused by the boldness of his idea and
possessed by the spirit of adventure.

“How long will it take to print a hundred cards?” he asked the
shopkeeper.

“You can have them before nightfall.”

“I’ll pay you double if you let me have them by two o’clock this
afternoon.”

The shopkeeper made a pretence of consulting his order-book.

“Very well ... to oblige you. You can call for them at two o’clock. What
name?”

Then, without a tremor or a blush, but with a heart that beat a little
unsteadily, he signed:

     Lafcadio de Baraglioul.

“The rascal doesn’t believe me,” said he to himself as he left, for he
was piqued that the shopkeeper’s bow had not been lower. Then, as he
looked at his reflection in a shop window, “I must admit I don’t look
very like a Baraglioul,” he thought. “We must see whether we can’t
improve the resemblance before this afternoon.”

It was not yet twelve o’clock. Lafcadio, who was in a state of madcap
exhilaration, had not begun to feel hungry.

“First, let’s take a little walk, or I shall fly into the air,” thought
he. “And I must keep in the middle of the road. If I go too near the
passers-by, they will notice that I’m a head and shoulders taller than
any of them. Another superiority to conceal. One has never done putting
the finishing touches to one’s education.”

He went into a post office.

“Place Malesherbes ... this afternoon!” he said to himself, as he copied
out Count Juste-Agénor’s address from the directory. “But what’s to
prevent me from going this morning to prospect Rue de Verneuil?” (This
was the address on Julius’s card.)

Lafcadio knew and loved this part of Paris; leaving the more frequented
thoroughfares, he took a roundabout way by Rue Vaneau; in that quiet
street the young freshness of his joy would have space to breathe more
freely. As he turned into the Rue de Babylone he saw people running;
near the Impasse Oudinot a crowd was collecting in front of a
two-storied house from which was pouring an evil-looking smoke. He
forced himself not to hurry his pace, though he was naturally a quick
walker....

Lafcadio, my friend, here you require the pen of a newspaper
reporter--mine abandons you! My readers must not expect me to relate the
incoherent comments of the onlookers, the broken exclamations, the....

Wriggling through the crowd like an eel, Lafcadio made his way to the
front. There a poor woman was sobbing on her knees.

“My children! My little children!” she wept. She was being supported by
a young girl, whose simple elegance of dress showed she was no relation;
she was very pale and so lovely that Lafcadio was instantly drawn to
her. She answered his questions.

“No, I don’t know her. I have just made out that her two little children
are in that room on the second floor which the flames are just going to
reach--they have caught the staircase already; the fire brigade has been
sent for, but by the time they come the children will have been
smothered by the smoke. Oh! wouldn’t it be possible to get up to the
balcony by climbing that wall--look!--and helping oneself up by that
waterpipe? Some of these people say that thieves did it a little while
ago--thieves did it to steal money, but no one dares do it to save two
children. I’ve offered my purse, but it’s no good. Oh! if only I were a
man!”

Lafcadio listened no longer. Dropping his stick and hat at the young
lady’s feet, he darted forward. With a bound he caught hold of the top
of the wall unaided; a pull of his arms raised him on to it; in a moment
he was standing upright and walking along the narrow edge, regardless of
the broken pieces of glass with which it bristled.

But the amazement of the crowd redoubled when, seizing hold of the
vertical pipe, he swarmed up it, hardly resting his feet here and there
for a second on the clamps which fixed it to the wall. There he is--at
the balcony now--now he has vaulted the railings; the admiring crowd no
longer trembles--it can only admire, for, indeed, he moves with
consummate ease. One push of his shoulder shivers the window-pane; he
has disappeared into the room. Agonising moment of unspeakable suspense!
Here he comes again, holding a crying infant in his arms. Out of a sheet
torn in two and knotted together end to end, he hastily contrives a
rope--ties the child to it--lowers it gently to the arms of the
distracted mother. The second child is saved in the same way.

When Lafcadio came down in his turn, the crowd cheered him as a hero.

“They take me for a clown,” thought he, as he roughly and ungraciously
repulsed their greetings, exasperated at feeling himself blush. But
when the young lady, whom he again approached, shyly held out to him his
hat and stick and with them the purse she had promised, he took it with
a smile, emptied it of the sixty francs that it contained, and gave the
money to the poor mother, who was smothering her children with kisses.

“May I keep the purse in remembrance of you, Mademoiselle?”

He kissed the little embroidered purse. The two looked at each other for
a moment. The young girl was agitated and paler than ever; she seemed
desirous of speaking, but Lafcadio abruptly turned on his heel and
opened a way through the crowd with his stick. His air was so forbidding
that they very soon stopped cheering and following him.

       *       *       *       *       *

He regained the Luxembourg, made a hasty meal at the restaurant
Gambrinus near the Odéon and returned swiftly to his room. There under a
board in the floor he kept his store of money; three twenty-franc pieces
and one ten-franc piece were extracted from their hiding-place. He
reckoned:

Visiting-cards    six francs
A pair of gloves  five francs
A tie             five francs (how shall I get anything decent at that price?)
A pair of shoes   thirty-five francs (I shan’t use them long.)
Left over         nineteen francs for emergencies.

(Lafcadio had a horror of owing anything to anyone and always paid ready
money.)

He went to a wardrobe and pulled out a suit made of soft dark tweed,
perfectly cut and still fresh.

“Unfortunately,” he said to himself, “I’ve grown since....” His thoughts
went back to that dazzling time, not so long ago, when he used to dance
gaily off with the Marquis de Gesvres (the last of his uncles) to the
tailor’s, the hatter’s, the shirtmaker’s.

Ill-fitting clothes were as shocking to Lafcadio as lying to a
Calvinist.

“The most urgent first. My uncle de Gesvres used always to say you could
judge a man by his foot-wear.”

And out of respect for the shoes he was going to try on, he began by
changing his socks.


V

Comte Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul had not left the luxurious apartment
which he occupied in the Place Malesherbes, for the last five years. It
was there that he set about preparing for death; this was his care as he
wandered pensively among the rare objects with which his great salons
were crowded, or oftener still as he sat shut up in his bedroom, seeking
to ease the pain of his aching arms and shoulders with hot cloths and
soothing compresses. An enormous madeira-coloured silk handkerchief was
wrapped round his fine head like a turban, one end of which fell loose
and hung down upon his lace collar and upon his thick brown knitted
waistcoat, over which his beard flowed like a silvery waterfall. His
feet, shod in soft white leather slippers, rested on a hot water bottle.
Beside him, and heated by a spirit lamp, was a bath of hot sand into
which he plunged first one and then the other of his pale emaciated
hands. A grey shawl was spread over his knees. Incontestably he was like
Julius; but he was still more like a portrait by Titian; and Julius’s
features were only a vapid replica of his father’s, just as Julius’s
novel was a bowdlerised and namby-pamby version of his life.

Juste-Agénor was drinking a cup of tisane and listening to a homily from
his confessor, Father April, whom he had fallen into the habit of
frequently consulting; at this moment there was a knock at the door and
the faithful Hector, who for the last twenty years had acted as the
Count’s valet and nurse, and on occasion as his confidential adviser,
brought in a small envelope on a lacquered salver.

“The gentleman hopes that M. le Comte will be good enough to see him.”

Juste-Agénor put down his cup, tore open the envelope and took out
Lafcadio’s card. He crumpled it nervously in his hand.

“Tell him....” Then, controlling himself with an effort: “A
gentleman?... a young man, you mean? What kind of person is he, Hector?”

“M. le Comte may very well receive him.”

“My dear Abbé,” said the Count, turning to Father April, “please forgive
me if I ask you to put off the rest of our conversation for the present;
but mind you come again to-morrow. I shall probably have some news for
you; I think you will be pleased.”

With his forehead bowed on his hand, he waited until Father April had
left the room by the drawing-room door; then at last, raising his head:

“Show him in,” he said.

Lafcadio, holding his head high, stepped into the room with a manly and
self-confident bearing; as soon as he was in front of the old man, he
bowed gravely. As he had made up his mind not to speak before he had had
time to count twelve, it was the Count who began.

“In the first place, let me tell you there is no such person as Lafcadio
de Baraglioul,” said he, tearing up the visiting-card, “and be so good
as to inform Monsieur Lafcadio Wluiki, since he is a friend of yours,
that if he makes any use of these cards--that if he fails to destroy
them all like this” (he tore it up into minute fragments, which he
dropped into his empty cup), “I shall give notice to the police and have
him arrested for a common swindler. Do you understand?... Now, come to
the light and let me look at you.”

“Lafcadio Wluiki will obey you, Sir.” (His voice was very deferential
and trembled a little.) “Forgive him for approaching you by such means
as these; he had no evil intention. He wishes he could convince you that
he is not undeserving of ... your esteem, at any rate.”

“Your figure is good, but your clothes don’t fit,” went on the Count,
who was determined not to hear.

“Then I was not mistaken?” said Lafcadio, venturing upon a smile and
submitting himself good-humouredly to the scrutiny.

“Thank God! it’s his mother he takes after,” muttered the old Count.

“If I don’t let it be too apparent, mayn’t I be allowed as well to take
after....”

“I was speaking of your looks. It is too late now for me to know whether
your mother is the only person you are like. God will not grant me
time.”

Just then, the grey shawl slipped off his knees on to the floor.

Lafcadio sprang forward and as he bent down he felt the old man’s hand
weigh gently on his shoulder.

“Lafcadio Wluiki,” went on Juste-Agénor, when he had raised himself, “my
days are numbered. I shall not fence with you--it would be too
fatiguing. I am willing to grant that you are not stupid; I am glad that
you are not ugly. There is a touch of boldness in this venture of yours
which is not unbecoming. I thought at first it was impudence, but your
voice, your manner reassure me. As to other things, I asked my son
Julius to report to me, but I find that I take no great interest in
them--it was more important to see you. Now, Lafcadio, listen. There is
not a single document of any sort in existence which testifies to your
identity. I have been careful to leave you no possibility of making any
claims. No, don’t protest. It’s useless. Don’t interrupt me. Your
silence up to now is a sign that your mother kept her word not to speak
of me to you. Very good. In accordance with the promise I made her, you
shall have material proof of my gratitude. In spite of legal
difficulties, you will receive at the hands of my son Julius that share
of my inheritance which I told your mother should be reserved for you.
That is to say, I shall increase my son Julius’s legacy by the amount by
which the law permits me to reduce that of my other child, the Countess
Guy de Saint-Prix--which is actually the exact sum I mean him to pass on
to you. It will, I think, come to ... let us say about forty thousand
francs[B] a year. But I must see my solicitor and go into the exact
figures with him.... Sit down, you will listen more comfortably.”
(Lafcadio had leant for a breathing-space on the edge of the table.)
“Julius may make objections; the law is on his side; but I count on his
fairness not to--and I count on yours never to trouble Julius’s family,
just as your mother never troubled mine. As far as Julius is concerned,
the only person who exists is Lafcadio Wluiki. I don’t wish you to wear
mourning for me. My child, the institution of the family is a closed
thing. You will never be anything but a bastard.”

Lafcadio, who had been caught by his father’s glance in the act of
staggering, had nevertheless refused the invitation to be seated. He had
already overcome the swimming of his brain and was now leaning on the
table on which were placed the cup and the spirit lamp. His attitude
remained highly deferential.

“Now, tell me--you saw my son Julius this morning? Did he tell you ...?”

“He told me nothing. I guessed.”

“Clumsy fellow!... Oh! I don’t mean _you_.... Are you to see him again?”

“He asked me to be his secretary.”

“Have you accepted?”

“Do you object?”

“No. But I think it would be better for you not to recognise each
other.”

“I thought so too. But without recognising him exactly, I should like to
get to know him a little.”

“I suppose, though, that you don’t mean to fill a subordinate position
like that for long?”

“Just long enough to look round.”

“And after that what do you think of doing, now that you are well off?”

“Why, yesterday I hardly had enough to eat, Sir. Give me time to take
the measure of my appetite.”

At this moment Hector knocked at the door.

“Monsieur le Vicomte to see you, Sir. Shall I show him in?”

The old man’s forehead grew sombre. He kept silent for a moment, but
when Lafcadio discreetly rose to take leave:

“Don’t go!” cried Juste-Agénor, so violently that the young man’s heart
went out to him; then turning to Hector:

“It can’t be helped. It’s his own fault. I told him particularly not to
try and see me.... Tell him I’m busy, that ... I’ll write to him.”

Hector bowed and went out.

The old man remained for a few moments with his eyes closed. He seemed
asleep, except that his lips, half-hidden by his beard, could be seen
moving. At last he raised his eyelids, held out his hand to Lafcadio,
and in a voice that was changed and softened, a voice that seemed broken
with fatigue:

“Give me your hand, child,” he said. “You must leave me now.”

“I must make a confession,” said Lafcadio, hesitating. “In order to make
myself presentable to come and see you, I exhausted my supplies. If you
don’t help me, I shall have very little dinner to-night and none at all
to-morrow ... unless your son, M. le Vicomte....”

“In the meantime you can have this,” said the Count, taking five
hundred francs out of a drawer. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

“I should like to ask you, too ... whether I mayn’t hope to see you
again?”

“Upon my word, I’ll admit, it would give me pleasure. But the reverend
persons who are in charge of my soul, keep me in a frame of mind in
which pleasure passes as a secondary consideration. As for my blessing,
I’ll give it to you at once.” And the old man opened his arms to receive
him. But Lafcadio, instead of throwing himself into them, knelt down
before him and laid his head, sobbing, on the Count’s knees; touched in
a moment and all subdued to tenderness by the embrace, he felt his heart
and all its fierce resolves melt within him.

“My child, my child,” stammered the old man, “I have delayed too long.”

When Lafcadio got up his face was wet with tears.

At the moment of leaving, as he was putting the note, which he had not
immediately taken, into his pocket, Lafcadio came upon his
visiting-cards. Holding them out to the Count:

“Here is the whole packet,” said he.

“I trust you. Tear them up yourself. Good-bye.”

“He would have made the best of uncles,” thought Lafcadio, as he was
walking back to the Quartier Latin; “and even,” he added, with the
faintest touch of melancholy, “a little more into the bargain.--Pooh!”

He took the packet of cards, spread them out fan-wise and with a single
easy movement tore them in half.

“I never had any confidence in drains,” murmured he, as he threw
“Lafcadio” down a grating in the street; and it was not till two
gratings further on that he threw down “de Baraglioul.”

“Never mind! Baraglioul or Wluiki, let’s set to work now to settle up
our arrears.”

There was a jeweller’s shop in the Boulevard St. Germain before which
Carola used to keep him standing every day. A day or two earlier, she
had discovered a curious pair of sleeve-links in the flashy shop window;
they were joined together two and two by a little gilt chain and were
cut out of a peculiar kind of quartz--a sort of smoky agate, which was
not transparent, though it looked as if it were--and made to represent
four cats’ heads. Venitequa, as I have already said, was in the habit of
wearing a tailormade coat and skirt and a man’s shirt with stiff cuffs,
and as she had a taste for oddities, she coveted these sleeve-links.

They were more queer than attractive; Lafcadio thought them hideous; it
would have irritated him to see his mistress wearing them; but now that
he was going to leave her.... He went into the shop and paid a hundred
and twenty francs for the links.

“A piece of writing-paper, please.” And leaning on the counter, he wrote
on a sheet of note-paper which the shopman brought him, these words:

NIND
“For Carola Venitequa,

     With thanks for having shown the stranger into my room, and begging
     her never to set her foot in it again.”

He folded the paper and slipped it into the box in which the trinkets
were packed.

“No precipitation!” he said to himself as he was on the point of
handing the box to the porter. “I’ll pass one more night under this
roof. For this evening let’s be satisfied with locking Miss Carola out.”


VI

The moral law which Descartes considered provisional, but to which he
submitted in the meantime, until he had established the rules that
should regulate his life and conduct hereafter, was the same law--its
provisional powers indefinitely protracted--which governed Julius de
Baraglioul.

But Julius’s temperament was not so intractable nor his intellect so
commanding as to have given him hitherto much trouble in conforming to
the proprieties. On the whole all that he demanded of life was his
comfort--part of which consisted in his being successful as a man of
letters. The failure of his last novel was the first experience of his
life which had ever really galled him.

He had been not a little mortified at being refused admittance to his
father; he would have been much more so if he had known who it was who
had forestalled him. On his way back to the Rue de Verneuil, it was with
less and less conviction that he repelled the importunate supposition
which had assailed him as he went to visit Lafcadio in the morning. He
too had juxtaposed facts and dates; he too was obliged to recognise in
this strange conjunction something more than a mere coincidence.
Lafcadio’s youthful grace, moreover, had captivated him, and though he
suspected his father was going to cheat him of a portion of his
patrimony for the sake of this bastard brother, he felt no ill will
towards him; he was even expecting him this morning with a curiosity
that was almost tender in its solicitude.

As for Lafcadio, shy of approach and reticent though he was, this rare
opportunity of speaking tempted him--and also the pleasure of making
Julius feel a little uncomfortable. For he had never taken even Protos
very deeply into his confidence. And how far he had travelled since
then! After all he did not dislike Julius--absurd and shadowy though he
thought him. It amused him to know that they were brothers.

As he was on his way to Julius’s house, the morning after his visit, a
somewhat curious adventure befell him.

Whether it was his liking for the roundabout that prompted him, or the
inspiration of his guiding genius, or whether he wanted to quell a
certain unruliness of body and mind, so as to be master of himself when
he arrived at his brother’s--for whatever reason, Lafcadio took the
longest way round; he had followed the Boulevard des Invalides, passed
again by the scene of the fire, and was going down the Rue de
Bellechasse.

“Thirty-four Rue de Verneuil,” he was saying to himself as he walked
along, “four and three, seven--a lucky number.”

He was turning out of the Rue St. Dominique where it intersects the
Boulevard St. Germain, when, on the other side of the road, he thought
he saw and recognised the young girl, who, it must be confessed, had
occupied his thoughts not a little since the day before. He immediately
quickened his pace.... Sure enough, it was she! He caught her up at the
end of the short Rue de Villersexel, but, reflecting that it would not
be very like a Baraglioul to accost her, he contented himself with
smiling, raising his hat a little and bowing discreetly; then, after
passing her swiftly, he thought it highly expedient to drop into a
tobacconist’s shop, while the young lady, who was again in front, turned
down the Rue de l’Université.

When Lafcadio came out of the tobacconist’s and entered the same street
in his turn, he looked right and left: the young girl had
vanished.--Lafcadio, my friend, you are verging on the commonplace. If
you are going to fall in love, do not count on my pen to paint the
disturbance of your heart.... But no! the idea of beginning a pursuit
was distasteful to him; and besides he did not want to be late for his
appointment with Julius, and the roundabout way by which he had come
allowed no time for further dawdling. Fortunately the Rue de Verneuil
was near at hand, and the house in which Julius lived, at the first
corner. Lafcadio tossed the Count’s name to the porter and darted
upstairs.

In the meantime, Genevieve de Baraglioul, Count Julius’s elder
daughter--for it was she, on her way back from the Hospital for Sick
Children, where she went every morning--had been far more agitated than
Lafcadio by this second meeting, and hurrying home as quickly as she
could, she had entered the front door just as Lafcadio had turned into
the street, and was already nearing the second floor, when the sound of
rapid steps behind her made her look round; someone was coming upstairs
more quickly than she; she stood aside to let the person pass, but when
she recognized Lafcadio, who stopped, petrified, in front of her:

“Is it worthy of you,” she said in as angry a tone as she could muster,
“to follow me like this?”

“Oh! what can you think of me?” cried Lafcadio. “I’m afraid you’ll not
believe me when I say that I didn’t see you coming into this house--that
I’m extremely astonished to meet you here. Isn’t this where Count Julius
de Baraglioul lives?”

“What?” said Genevieve, blushing; “can you be the new secretary my
father is expecting? Monsieur Lafcadio Wlou ... you have such a peculiar
name, I don’t know how to pronounce it.” And as Lafcadio, blushing in
his turn, bowed, she went on:

“Since I’ve met you, may I ask you as a favour not to speak to my
parents about yesterday’s adventure, which I don’t think would be at all
to their taste; and particularly not to say anything about my purse,
which I told them I had lost.”

“I was going to ask you myself to say nothing about the absurd part you
saw me play in the business. I’m like your parents; I don’t at all
understand it or approve of it. You must have taken me for a
Newfoundland. I couldn’t restrain myself. Forgive me. I have much to
learn.... But I shall learn in time, I promise you.... Will you give me
your hand?”

Genevieve de Baraglioul, who did not own to herself that she thought
Lafcadio very handsome, did not own to Lafcadio that, far from thinking
him ridiculous, she had set him up as the image of a hero. She held out
her hand to him and he raised it impetuously to his lips; then smiling
simply, she begged him to go down a few steps and wait till she had gone
in and shut the door before ringing in his turn, so that they might not
be seen together; and he was to take special care not to show that they
had ever met before.

A few minutes later Lafcadio was ushered into the novelist’s study.

Julius’s welcome was kindly and encouraging; Julius, however, was a
blunderer; the young man immediately assumed the defensive.

“I must begin by warning you, M. le Comte, that I can’t abide either
gratitude or debts; and whatever you may do for me, you will never be
able to make me feel that I am under any obligation to you.”

Julius in his turn was nettled.

“I am not trying to buy you, Monsieur Wluiki,” he began loftily....
Then, both realising that to continue in this way would mean burning
their boats, they pulled themselves up short. After a moment’s silence
Lafcadio began in a more conciliatory manner:

“What work was it that you thought of giving me?”

Julius made an evasive answer, excusing himself that his MS. was not
quite ready yet; and besides it would be no bad thing for them to begin
by getting better acquainted with each other.

“You must admit, M. de Baraglioul,” said Lafcadio pleasantly, “that you
have lost no time in beginning that without me, and that you did me the
honour yesterday of examining a certain pocket-book of mine....”

Julius lost countenance and answered in some confusion: “I admit that I
did.” And then he went on with dignity: “I apologise. If the thing were
to occur again....”

“It will not occur again. I have burnt the pocket-book.”

Julius’s features expressed grief.

“Are you very angry?”

“If I were still angry I shouldn’t mention it. Forgive my manner when I
came in just now,” went on Lafcadio, determined to send his thrust home.
“All the same I should like very much to know whether you read a scrap
of letter as well, that happened to be in the pocket-book?”

Julius had not read any scrap of letter, for the very good reason that
he had not found any; but he took the opportunity of protesting his
discretion. It amused Lafcadio to show his amusement.

“I partly revenged myself yesterday on your new book.”

“It is not at all likely to interest you,” Julius hastened to say.

“Oh, I didn’t read the whole of it. I must confess I am not very fond of
reading. In reality the only book I ever enjoyed was _Robinson
Crusoe_.... Oh, yes! _Aladdin_ too.... That must do for me in your
opinion.”

Julius raised his hand gently.

“I merely pity you. You deprive yourself of great joys.”

“I have others.”

“Perhaps not of such sterling quality.”

“Oh, you may be sure of that!” and Lafcadio’s laugh was decidedly
impertinent.

“You will suffer for it some day,” returned Julius, a little ruffled by
this disrespectful gibing.

“When it will be too late,” Lafcadio finished the sentence with affected
gravity; then he asked abruptly: “Does it really amuse you very much to
write?”

Julius drew himself up.

“I don’t write for the sake of amusement,” he answered nobly. “The joy
that I feel in writing is superior to any that I might find in living.
Moreover, the one is not incompatible with the other.”

“So they say,” replied Lafcadio. Then abruptly raising his voice, which
he had dropped as though inadvertently: “Do you know what it is I
dislike about writing?--All the scratchings out and touchings up that
are necessary.”

“Do you think there are no corrections in life too?” asked Julius,
beginning to prick up his ears.

“You misunderstand me. In life one corrects _oneself_--one improves
_oneself_--so people say; but one can’t correct what one _does_. It’s
the power of revising that makes writing such a colourless affair--such
a....” (He left his sentence unfinished.) “Yes! that’s what seems to me
so fine about life. It’s like fresco-painting--erasures aren’t allowed.”

“Would there be much to erase in your life?”

“No ... not much so far.... And as one can’t....”

Lafcadio was silent a moment, and then: “All the same, it was because I
wanted to make an erasure that I flung my pocket-book into the fire!...
Too late--as you see! You must admit, however, that you didn’t
understand what it was all about.”

No! Julius would never admit that.

“Will you allow me a few questions?” he said, by way of answer.

Lafcadio rose to his feet so abruptly that Julius thought he was going
to make off on the spot; but he only went up to the window and, raising
the muslin curtain:

“Is this garden yours?” he asked.

“No,” said Julius.

“M. de Baraglioul, I have hitherto allowed no one to pry in the smallest
degree into my life,” went on Lafcadio without turning round. Then, as
he walked back towards Julius, who had begun to take him for nothing
more than a schoolboy: “But to-day is a red-letter day; for once in my
life I will give myself a holiday. Put your questions--I undertake to
answer them all.... Oh! let me tell you first that I have turned away
that young baggage who showed you into my room yesterday.”

Julius thought it proper to put on an air of concern.

“Because of me? Really....”

“Pooh! I had been looking for an excuse to get rid of her for some time
past.”

“Were you ... m ... m ... living with her?” asked Julius, rather
awkwardly.

“Yes; for health’s sake.... But as little as possible, and in memory of
a friend of mine whose mistress she had been.”

“Monsieur Protos, perhaps?” ventured Julius, who was now firmly
determined to stifle his indignation--his disgust--his reprobation--and
to show--on this first occasion--no more of his astonishment than was
necessary to make his rejoinders sufficiently lively.

“Yes, Protos,” replied Lafcadio, brimming over with laughter. “Would you
like to know about Protos?”

“To know something of your friends would be perhaps a step towards
knowing you.”

“He was an Italian of the name of.... My word, I’ve forgotten, and it’s
of no consequence. The other boys--even the masters--never called him
anything but Protos from the day he unexpectedly carried off a first for
Greek composition.”

“I don’t remember ever having been first myself,” said Julius, to
encourage confidence, “but, like you, I have always wanted to be friends
with those who were. So Protos ...?”

“Oh! it was because of a bet he made. Before that, though he was among
the elder boys, he had always been one of the last of the class--whilst
I was one of the youngest--not that I worked any the better for that.
Protos showed the greatest contempt for everything the masters taught
us; but one day, when one of the fellows who was good at book-learning
and whom he detested, said to him: ‘It’s all very fine to despise what
you can’t do’ (or something to that effect), Protos got his back up,
worked hard for a fortnight and to such purpose that at the next Greek
composition class he went up over the other fellows’ heads and took the
first place to the utter amazement of us all--of _them_ all, I should
say. As for me, I had too high an opinion of Protos to be much
astonished. When he said to me: ‘I’ll show them it’s not so difficult as
all that,’ I believed him.”

“If I understand you rightly, Protos influenced you not a little?”

“Perhaps. At any rate he rather overawed me. As a matter of fact,
however, I never had but one single intimate conversation with him--but
that seemed to me so cogent that the very next day I ran away from
school, where I was beginning to droop like a plant in a cellar, and
made my way on foot to Baden, where my mother was living at that time
with my uncle, the Marquis de Gesvres.... But we are beginning by the
end. You would certainly question me very badly. Just let me tell you my
own story as it comes. You will learn more in that way than you would
ever dream of asking me--more, very likely, than you will care to
learn.... No, thank you, I prefer my own,” said he, taking out his case
and throwing away the cigarette which Julius had offered him when he
first came in and which he had allowed to go out while he was talking.


VII

“I was born at Bucharest in 1874,” he began slowly, “and, as I think you
know, I lost my father a few months after my birth. The first person who
stands out in my recollection at my mother’s side, was a German, my
uncle, the Baron Heldenbruck. But as I lost him when I was twelve years
old, I have only a hazy recollection of him. He was, it seems, a
distinguished financier. As well as his own language, he taught me
arithmetic, and that by such ingenious devices that I found it
prodigiously amusing. He made me what he used laughingly to call his
‘cashier’--that is, he gave into my keeping a whole fortune of petty
cash, and wherever we went together, it was I who had to do the paying.
Whatever he bought--and he used to buy a great deal--he insisted on my
adding up the bill in as short a time as it took me to pull the notes or
coins out of my pocket. Sometimes he used to puzzle me with foreign
money, so that there were questions of exchange; then of discount, of
interest, of brokerage and finally even of speculation. With such a
training, I very soon became fairly clever at doing multiplication--and
even division--sums of several figures in my head.... Don’t be alarmed”
(for he saw Julius’s eyebrows beginning to frown), “it gave me no taste
either for money or reckoning. For instance, if you care to know, I
never keep accounts. In reality this early education of mine was merely
practical and matter-of-fact. It never touched anything vital in me....
Then Heldenbruck was wonderfully understanding about the proper hygiene
for children; he persuaded my mother to let me go bare-headed and
bare-footed in all weathers, and to keep me out of doors as much as
possible; he used even to give me a cold dip himself every day, summer
and winter. I enjoyed it immensely.... But you don’t care about these
details.”

“Yes, yes!”

“Then he was called away on business to America and I never saw him
again.

“My mother’s salon in Bucharest was frequented by the most brilliant,
and also, as far as I can judge from recollection, by the most mixed
society; but her particular intimates at that time were my uncle, Prince
Wladimir Bielkowski and Ardengo Baldi, whom for some reason I never
called my uncle. They spent three or four years at Bucharest in the
service of Russia (I was going to say Poland) and of Italy. I learnt
from each of them his own language--Polish, that is, and Italian--as for
Russian, I read and understand it pretty well, but I have never spoken
it fluently. In the society of the kind of people who frequented my
mother’s house and who made a great deal of me, not a day passed without
my having occasion to practise three or four languages; and at the age
of thirteen I could speak them all without any accent and with almost
equal ease--and yet French preferably, because it was my father’s tongue
and my mother had made a point of my learning it first.

“Bielkowski, like everyone else who wanted to please my mother, took
considerable notice of me; it always seemed as though _I_ were the
person to be courted; but in his case I think it was disinterested, for
he always followed his bent, however rapidly it led him and in whatever
direction. He paid a great deal of attention to me even outside of
anything my mother could have knowledge of, and I couldn’t help being
flattered by the particular attachment he had for me. Our rather humdrum
existence was transformed by this singular person, from one day to the
next, into a kind of riotous holiday. No! to talk of his _yielding_ to
his bent is not enough; his bent was a wild and precipitous rush; he
flung himself upon his pleasure with a kind of frenzy.

“For three summers he carried us off to a villa, or rather to a castle,
on the Hungarian slope of the Carpathians, near Eperjes; we often used
to drive there, but we preferred riding and my mother enjoyed nothing
better than scouring the country and the forests--which were very
beautiful--on horseback and in any direction our fancy led us. The pony
which Wladimir gave me was the thing I loved best on earth for a whole
year.

“During the second summer, Ardengo Baldi joined us; it was then that he
taught me chess. Heldenbruck had broken me in to doing sums in my head
and I was pretty soon able to play without looking at the chess-board.

“Baldi got on very well with Bielkowski. Of an evening, in our solitary
tower, plunged in the silence of the park and the forest, we all four
used to sit up till late into the night, playing game after game of
cards; for though I was only a child--thirteen years old--Baldi, who
hated dummy, had taught me how to play whist--and how to cheat.

“Juggler, conjurer, mountebank, acrobat, he began to frequent us just at
the time when my imagination was emerging from the long fast to
which it had been subjected by Heldenbruck. I was hungry for
marvels--credulous--of a green and eager curiosity. Later on, Baldi
explained his tricks to me, but no familiarity could abolish that first
sensation of mystery when, the first evening, I saw him light his
cigarette at his little finger-nail, and then, as he had been losing at
cards, draw out of my ears and my nose as many roubles as he
wanted--which absolutely terrified me, but greatly entertained the
company, for he kept saying, still with the same perfect coolness:
‘Fortunately this boy here is an inexhaustible mine!’

“On the evenings when he was alone with my mother and me, he was for
ever inventing some new game, some surprise, some absurd joke or other;
he mimicked all our acquaintance, pulled faces, made himself
unrecognisable, imitated all sorts of voices, the cries of animals, the
sounds of instruments, produced extraordinary noises from Heaven knows
where, sang to the accompaniment of the guzla, danced, pranced, walked
on his hands, jumped over the tables and chairs, juggled with his bare
feet like a Japanese, twirling the drawing-room screen or the small
tea-table on the tip of his big toe; he juggled with his hands still
better; at his bidding, a torn and crumpled piece of paper would burst
forth into a swarm of white butterflies, which I would blow this way and
that, and which the fluttering of his fan would keep hovering in the
air. In his neighbourhood, objects lost their weight and reality--their
presence even--or else took on some fresh, queer, unexpected
significance, totally remote from all utility. ‘There are very few
things it isn’t amusing to juggle with,’ he used to say. And with it all
he was so funny that I used to grow faint with laughing, and my mother
would cry out: ‘Stop, Baldi! Cadio will never be able to sleep.’ And,
indeed, my nerves must have been pretty solid to hold out against such
excitements.

“I benefited greatly by this teaching; at the end of a few months I
could have given points to Baldi himself in more than one of his tricks,
and even....”

“It is clear, my dear boy, that you were given a most careful
education,” interrupted Julius at this moment.

Lafcadio burst out laughing at the novelist’s horrified countenance.
“Oh! none of it sank very deep; don’t be alarmed. But it was high time
Uncle Faby appeared on the scene, wasn’t it? It was he who became
intimate with my mother when Bielkowski and Baldi were called away to
other posts.”

“Faby? Was it his writing I saw on the first page of your pocket-book?”

“Yes. Fabian Taylor, Lord Gravensdale. He took my mother and me to a
villa he had rented near Duino on the Adriatic, where my health and
strength greatly improved. The coast at that place forms a rocky
peninsula which was entirely occupied by the grounds of the villa. There
I ran wild, spending the whole day long under the pines, among the rocks
and creeks, or swimming or canoeing in the sea. The photograph you saw
belongs to that time. I burnt that too.”

“It seems to me,” said Julius, “that you might have made yourself a
little more respectable for the occasion.”

“That’s exactly what I couldn’t have done,” answered Lafcadio, laughing.
“Faby, under pretence of wanting me to get bronzed, kept all my wardrobe
under lock and key--even my linen....”

“And what did your mother say?”

“She was very much entertained; she said if her guests were shocked they
might go; but as a matter of fact it didn’t prevent any single one of
our visitors from remaining.”

“And during all this time, my poor boy, your education ...!”

“Yes, I was so quick at learning that my mother rather neglected it; it
was not till I was sixteen that she seemed suddenly to become aware of
the fact, and after a marvellous journey in Algeria, which I took with
Uncle Faby (I think it was the best time of my life), I was sent to
Paris and put in charge of a thick-skinned brute of a jailer, who looked
after my schooling.”

“After such excessive liberty, I readily understand that constraint of
that kind must have seemed rather hard to you.”

“I should never have borne it without Protos. He was a boarder at the
same school as I--in order to learn French, it was said; but he spoke it
to perfection and I could never make out the point of his being
there--nor of my being there either. I was sick of the whole
thing--pining away. I hadn’t exactly any feeling of friendship for
Protos, but I turned towards him as though I expected him to save me. He
was a good deal older than I was and looked even older than he was,
without a trace of childhood left in his bearing or tastes. His
features were extraordinarily illuminating when he chose, and could
express anything and everything; but when he was at rest he used to look
like an idiot. One day when I chaffed him about it, he replied that the
important thing in this world was never to look like what one was. He
was not content merely with being thought humble--he wanted to be
thought stupid. It amused him to say that what is fatal to most people
is that they prefer parade to drill and won’t hide their talents; but he
didn’t say it to anybody but me. He kept himself aloof from
everyone--even from me, though I was the only person in the school he
didn’t despise. When once I succeeded in getting him to talk he became
extraordinarily eloquent, but most of the time he was taciturn and
seemed to be brooding over some dark design, which I should have liked
to know about. When I asked him--politely, for no one ever treated him
with familiarity--what he was doing in such a place, he answered: ‘I am
getting under way.’ He had a theory that in life one could get out of
the worst holes by saying to oneself: ‘What’s the odds!’ That’s what I
repeated to myself so often that I ran away.

“I started with eighteen francs in my pocket and reached Baden by short
stages, eating anything, sleeping anywhere. I was rather done up when I
arrived, but, on the whole, pleased with myself, for I still had three
francs left; it is true that I picked up five or six by the way. I found
my mother there with my uncle de Gesvres, who was delighted with my
escapade, and made up his mind to take me back to Paris; he was
inconsolable, he said, that I should have unpleasant recollections of
Paris. And it’s a fact that when I went back there with him, Paris made
a much more favourable impression on me.

“The Marquis de Gesvres took a positively frenzied pleasure in spending
money; it was a perpetual need--a craving; it seemed as though he were
grateful to me for helping him to satisfy it--for increasing his
appetite by the addition of my own. It was he who taught me (the
contrary of Faby) to like dress. I think I wore my clothes well; he was
a good master; his elegance was perfectly natural--like a second
sincerity. I got on with him very well. We spent whole mornings together
at the shirtmaker’s, the shoemaker’s, the tailor’s; he paid particular
attention to shoes, saying that you could tell a man as certainly by his
shoes as by the rest of his dress and by his features--and more
secretly.... He taught me to spend money without keeping accounts and
without taking thought beforehand as to whether I should have enough to
satisfy my fancy, my desire or my hunger. He laid it down as a principle
that of these three it was always hunger that should be satisfied last,
for (I remember his words) the appeal of fancy or desire is fugitive,
while hunger is certain to return and only becomes more imperative the
longer it has to wait. He taught me, too, not to enjoy a thing more
because it had cost a great deal, nor less if, by chance, it cost
nothing at all.

“It was at this point that I lost my mother. A telegram called me
suddenly back to Bucharest; I arrived in time only to see her dead.
There I learnt that after the Marquis’s departure she had run so deeply
into debt that she had left no more than just enough to clear her
estate, so that there was no expectation for me of a single copeck, or a
single pfennig or a single groschen. Directly after the funeral I
returned to Paris, where I thought I should find my uncle de Gesvres;
but he had unexpectedly left for Russia without leaving an address.

“There is no need to tell you my reflections. True, I had certain
accomplishments in my outfit by means of which one can always manage to
pull through; but the more I was in need of them, the more repugnant I
felt to making use of them. Fortunately one night as I was walking the
pavement rather at a loose end, I came across Proto’s ex-mistress--the
Carola Venitequa you saw yesterday--who gave me a decent house-room. A
few days later I received a rather mysterious communication to say that
a scanty allowance would be paid me on the first of every month at a
certain solicitor’s; I have a horror of getting to the bottom of things
and I drew it without further enquiries. Then you came along ... and now
you know more or less everything I felt inclined to tell you.”

“It is fortunate,” said Julius solemnly, “it is fortunate, Lafcadio,
that a little money is coming your way; with no profession, with no
education, condemned to live by expedients ... now that I know you, and
such as I take you for, you were ready for anything.”

“On the contrary, ready for nothing,” replied Lafcadio, looking at
Julius gravely. “In spite of all I have told you, I see that you _don’t_
know me. Nothing hinders me so effectually as want. I have never yet
been tempted but by the things that could be of no service to me.”

“Paradoxes, for instance. And is that what you call nourishing?”

“It depends on the stomach. You choose to give the name of paradox to
what yours refuses. As for me, I should let myself die of hunger if I
had nothing before me but such a hash of bare bones as the logic you
feed your characters on.”

“Allow me....”

“The hero of your last book, at any rate. Is it true that it’s a
portrait of your father? The pains you take to keep him always and
everywhere consistent with you and with himself--faithful to his duties
and his principles--to your theories, that is--you can imagine how it
strikes a person like me!... Monsieur de Baraglioul, you may take my
word for it--I am a creature of inconsequence. And look, how much I have
been talking! when only yesterday I considered myself the most silent,
the most secretive, the most retired of beings. But it was a good thing
that we should become acquainted without delay--there will be no need to
go over the ground again. To-morrow--this evening I shall withdraw again
into my privacy.”

The novelist, completely thrown off his centre by these remarks, made an
effort to recover himself.

“In the first place you may rest assured that there is no such thing as
inconsequence--in psychology any more than in physics,” he began. “You
are a being in process of formation and....”

Repeated knocks at the door interrupted him. But as no one appeared, it
was Julius who left the room. A confused noise of voices reached
Lafcadio through the open door. Then there was a long silence. Lafcadio,
after waiting for ten minutes, was preparing to go, when a servant in
livery came in to him:

“Monsieur le Comte says that he won’t ask you to wait any longer, Sir.
He has just had bad news of his father and hopes you will kindly excuse
him.”

From the tone in which this was said, Lafcadio guessed that the old
Count was dead. He mastered his emotion.

“Courage!” said he to himself as he returned homewards. “The moment has
come. _It is time to launch the ship._[C] From whatever quarter the wind
blows now it will be the right one. Since I cannot live really near the
old man, I might as well prepare to leave him altogether.”

As he passed by the hotel porter’s lodge, he gave him the small box
which he had been carrying about with him ever since the day before.

“Please give this parcel to Mlle. Venitequa when she comes in this
evening, and kindly prepare my bill.”

An hour later his box was packed and he sent for a cab. He went off
without leaving an address. His solicitor’s was enough.




BOOK III: AMÉDÉE FLEURISSOIRE


I

The Countess Guy de Saint-Prix, Julius’s younger sister, who had been
suddenly summoned to Paris by Count Juste-Agénor’s death, had not long
since returned to Pezac (an elegant country residence, four miles out of
Pau, which she had scarcely ever left since her widowhood, and to which
she had become more than ever attached now that her children were all
married and settled), when she received a singular visit.

She had just come in from her drive (she was in the habit of going out
every morning in a light dog-cart which she drove herself), when she was
informed that there was a priest in the drawing-room who had been
waiting for over an hour to see her. The stranger came with an
introduction from Cardinal André, as was shown by the card which was
handed to the Countess; the card was in an envelope; under the
Cardinal’s name, in his fine and almost feminine handwriting, were
written the following words:

     “Recommends Father J. P. Salus, canon of Virmontal, to the Countess
     de Saint-Prix’s very particular attention.”

That was all--and it was enough. The Countess was always glad to receive
members of the clergy; Cardinal André, moreover, held the Countess’s
soul in the hollow of his hand. Without a second’s delay, she hurried
to the drawing-room and excused herself for having kept the visitor
waiting.

The canon of Virmontal was a fine figure of a man. His noble countenance
shone with a manly energy which conflicted strangely with the hesitating
caution of his voice and gestures; and in like manner his hair, which
was almost white, formed a surprising contrast to the bright and
youthful freshness of his complexion.

Notwithstanding the Countess’s affability, the conversation at the
outset was laborious, lagging, in conventional phrases, round about the
lady’s recent bereavement, Cardinal André’s health and Julius’s renewed
failure to enter the Academy. All this while the Abbé’s utterance was
becoming slower and more muffled and the expression of his countenance
more and more harrowing. At last he rose, but instead of taking leave:

“Madame la comtesse,” he said, “I should like to speak to you--on behalf
of the Cardinal--about an important matter. But our voices sound very
loud in this room and the number of doors alarms me; I am afraid of
being overheard.”

The Countess adored confidences and mysteries; she showed the canon into
a small boudoir, which could be entered only from the drawing-room, and
shut the door.

“We are alone here,” she said. “Speak freely.”

But instead of speaking, the abbé, who had seated himself on an
arm-chair opposite the Countess, pulled a silk handkerchief out of his
pocket and buried his face in it, sobbing convulsively. The Countess, in
some perplexity, stretched out her hand for her work basket, which was
standing on a small table beside her, took out a bottle of salts,
hesitated whether she should offer them to the abbé, and finally solved
the difficulty by smelling them herself.

“Forgive me,” said the abbé at last, disinterring an apoplectic face
from his handkerchief. “I know you are too good a Catholic, Madame la
comtesse, not to understand and share my emotion, when you hear....”

The Countess could not abide lack of control; her propriety took refuge
behind a lorgnette. The abbé quickly recovered himself and, drawing his
chair nearer:

“It required the Cardinal’s solemn assurance, Madame la comtesse, before
I could bring myself to come and see you--his assurance that your faith
was something more than worldly conventionality--not a mere cloak for
indifference.”

“Let’s get to the point, Monsieur l’abbé.”

“The Cardinal assured me, then, that I might have perfect confidence in
your discretion--the discretion of the confessional, if I may say
so....”

“Excuse me, Monsieur l’abbé, but if the secret is one with which the
Cardinal is acquainted--a secret of such importance--how is it that he
has not told me of it himself?”

The abbé’s smile alone would have sufficed to show the Countess the
futility of her question.

“In a letter! But, my dear Madam, the post nowadays opens all cardinals’
letters.”

“He might have confided one to you.”

“Yes, Madam, but who knows what may happen to a paper, with the
surveillance to which we are subjected? More than that--the Cardinal
prefers to ignore what I am about to tell you--to have nothing to do
with it.... Ah! Madam, at the last moment my courage fails me and I can
hardly....”

“Monsieur l’abbé, as you are a stranger to me; I cannot feel offended
that your confidence in me is no greater,” said the Countess very
gently, turning her head aside and letting her lorgnette fall. “I have
the utmost respect for the secrets which are confided to me. God knows I
have never betrayed the smallest. But I have never been a person to
solicit confidences.”

She made a slight movement as though to rise; the abbé stretched out his
hand toward her.

“You will excuse me, Madame la comtesse, when you condescend to reflect
that you are the first woman to have been judged worthy by the persons
who have entrusted me with the fearful task of enlightening you--the
first, I say, worthy to hear and keep this secret. I am alarmed, I
confess, when I consider that this revelation is of a nature to weigh
heavily--crushingly--on a woman’s intelligence.”

“There are very mistaken opinions held about the feebleness of women’s
intelligence,” said the Countess almost dryly; then, with her hands
slightly raised, she sat concealing her curiosity beneath an air which
was a mixture of absent-mindedness, resignation and ecstatic
vagueness--an air which she thought would be appropriate for receiving
an important and confidential communication from the Church. The abbé
drew his chair still nearer.

But the secret which Father Salus prepared to confide to the Countess
seems to me even now so disconcertingly peculiar that I cannot venture
to relate it without further precautions.

Fiction there is--and history. Certain critics of no little discernment
have considered that fiction is history which _might_ have taken place,
and history fiction which _has_ taken place. We are, indeed, forced to
acknowledge that the novelist’s art often compels belief, just as
reality sometimes defies it. Alas! there exists an order of minds so
sceptical that they deny the possibility of any fact as soon as it
diverges from the commonplace. It is not for them that I write.

Whether the representative of God upon earth was actually snatched from
the Holy See and by the machinations of the Quirinal stolen, so to
speak, from the whole body of Christendom, is an exceedingly thorny
problem, and one which I have not the temerity to raise here. But it is
an _historical_ fact that towards the end of the year 1893 a rumour to
that effect was in circulation. Certain newspapers mentioned it timidly;
they were silenced. A pamphlet on the subject appeared at St. Malo[D]
and was suppressed. For, on the one hand, the freemasons were as little
anxious that the report of such an abominable outrage should be spread
abroad, as, on the other, the Catholic leaders were afraid to
support--or could not resign themselves to countenance--the
extraordinary collections which were immediately started in this
connection. There is no doubt that innumerable pious souls bled
themselves freely (the sums which were collected--or dispersed--on this
occasion are reckoned at close upon half a million francs), but what
remained doubtful was whether all those who received the funds were
really the devout persons they pretended to be, or whether some of them
were not mere swindlers. At any rate, for the successful accomplishment
of this scheme there was necessary, in the absence of religious
conviction, an audacity, a skilfulness, a tact, an eloquence, a
knowledge of facts and characters, a vigour of constitution, such as
fall to the lot of few only in this world--strapping fellows, like
Protos, for instance, Lafcadio’s old school-mate. I honestly warn the
reader that it is he I am now introducing, under the appearance and
borrowed name of the canon of Virmontal.

The Countess, firmly determined neither to open her lips nor change her
attitude, nor even her expression, before getting to the very roots of
the secret, listened imperturbably to the bogus priest, whose assurance
was gradually becoming more and more confident. He had risen and begun
striding up and down. To make his explanations clearer, he traced the
affair back--not exactly to its sources (since the conflict between the
Church and the Lodge--inherent in their very essence--may be said to
date from all time) but to certain incidents in which their hostility
had openly declared itself. He first of all begged the Countess to
remember that in December,’92, the Pope had published two letters,
addressed, one to the Italian people, and the other more particularly to
the bishops, warning Catholics against the machinations of the
freemasons; then, as the Countess’s memory failed her, he was obliged to
go further back and recall the erection of Giordano Bruno’s statue,
which had been planned and presided over by Crispi, behind whom the
Lodge had still then concealed itself. He told of Crispi’s fury that the
Pope should have repulsed his advances, should have refused to
negotiate with him--and in this instance, what could negotiation mean
but submission? He traced the history of that tragic day and told how
the two camps had taken up their positions: how the freemasons had at
last lifted their mask, and--while the whole diplomatic corps accredited
to the Holy See were calling at the Vatican and thus showing their
contempt for Crispi and their veneration for the Holy Father in his
grievous affliction--how the Lodge, flags flying and bands playing, had
acclaimed the illustrious blasphemer in the Campo dei Fiori, on the spot
where the insulting and idolatrous effigy had been raised.

“In the consistory which followed shortly after, on June 30, 1889,” he
continued (he was still standing, leaning now across the table, his arms
in front of him, his face bent down towards the Countess), “Leo XIII
gave vent to his vehement indignation. His protestations were heard by
the entire universe, and all Christendom shuddered to hear him speak of
leaving Rome! Leaving Rome! Those were my words!... All this, Madame la
Comtesse, you know already--you grieved for it--you remember it--as well
as I.”

He again began his pacing to and fro.

“At last Crispi fell from power. Would the Church be able to breathe
again? In December, 1892, you remember, the Pope wrote those two
letters. Madam....”

He sat down again abruptly, drew his arm-chair nearer to the sofa, and,
seizing the Countess’s arm:

“A month later the Pope was imprisoned!”

As the Countess remained obstinately impassive, the canon let go her arm
and continued in a calmer tone:

“I shall not attempt, Madam, to arouse your pity for the sufferings of a
captive. Women’s hearts are, I know, always moved by misfortune. It is
to your intelligence that I appeal, Countess, and I beg you to consider
the state of miserable confusion into which the disappearance of our
spiritual leader plunged us Christians.”

A slight shade passed over the Countess’s pale brow.

“No Pope is a frightful thing, but--God save us--a false Pope is more
frightful still. For the Lodge, in order to cover up its crime--nay,
more, in the hopes of inducing the Church to compromise herself
fatally--the Lodge, I say, has installed on the pontifical throne, in
the place of Leo XIII, some cat’s-paw or other of the Quirinal’s, some
vile impostor! And it is to him that we must pretend submission so as
not to injure the real one--and oh! shame upon shame! it was to him that
all Christendom bowed down at the Jubilee!”

At these words the handkerchief he was wringing in his hands tore
across.

“The first act of the false Pope was that too famous encyclical--the
encyclical to France--at the thought of which the heart of every
Frenchman worthy of the name still bleeds. Yes, yes, Madam, I know how
your great lady’s generous heart must have suffered at hearing Holy
Church deny the holy cause of royalty, and the Vatican such is the
fact--give its approval to the Republic. Alas! Be comforted, Madam! You
were right in your amazement. Be comforted, Madame la Comtesse. But
think of the sufferings of the Holy Father in his captivity at hearing
the cat’s-paw--the impostor proclaim him a Republican!”

Then, flinging himself back with a laugh that was half a sob:

“And what did you think, Comtesse de Saint-Prix, what did you think,
when as a corollary to that cruel encyclical our Holy Father granted an
audience to the editor of the _Petit Journal_! You realize the
impossibility of such a thing. Your generous heart has already cried
aloud to you that it is false!”

“But,” exclaimed the Countess, no longer able to contain herself, “it
must be cried aloud to the whole world!”

“No, Madam! It must be kept silent!” thundered the abbé, towering
formidably above her. “It must first be kept silent; we must keep silent
so as to be able to act.”

Then apologetically, with a voice turned suddenly piteous:

“You see I am speaking to you as if you were a man.”

“Quite right, Monsieur l’abbé. To act, you said. Quick! What have you
decided on?”

“Ah! I knew I should find in you a noble, virile impatience, worthy the
blood of the Baragliouls! But, alas! nothing is more dangerous in the
present circumstances than untimely zeal. Certain of the elect, it is
true, have been apprised of these abominable crimes, but it is
indispensable, Madam, that we should be able to count on their absolute
discretion, on their total and ungrudging obedience to the instructions
which they will in due time receive. To act without us is to act against
us. And in addition to the Church’s disapproval, which--God save
us!--may even go so far as to entail excommunication, all private
initiative will be met with the most explicit and categorical denials
from our party. This is a crusade, Madame la comtesse, yes! but a
secret crusade. Forgive me for insisting on this point, but I am
specially commissioned by the Cardinal to impress it on you; it is his
firm intention, moreover, to know absolutely nothing of what is going
on, and if he is spoken to on the subject he will fail to understand a
single word. The Cardinal will not have seen me; and if, later on,
circumstances throw us together again, let it be thoroughly understood
there too that you and I have never spoken to each other. Our Holy
Father will recognise his true servants in good time.”

Somewhat disappointed, the Countess asked timidly:

“But then ...?”

“We are at work, Madame la comtesse, we are at work; have no fear. And I
am even authorised to reveal to you a portion of our plan of campaign.”

He settled himself squarely in his arm-chair, well opposite the
Countess, who was now leaning forward, her hands up to her face, her
elbows on her knees, and her chin resting between her palms.

       *       *       *       *       *

He began by saying that the Pope was probably not confined in the
Vatican, but in the Castle of St. Angelo, which, as the Countess
certainly knew, communicated with the Vatican by an underground passage;
that doubtless it would not be very difficult to rescue him from this
prison, were it not for the semi-superstitious fear that all his
attendants had of the freemasons, though in their inmost hearts with and
of the Church. The kidnapping of the Holy Father was an example which
had struck terror into their souls. Not one of the attendants would
agree to give his assistance until means had been afforded him to leave
the country and live out of the persecutors’ reach. Important sums had
been contributed for this purpose by a few persons of noteworthy piety
and discretion. There remained but one single obstacle to overcome, but
it was one which necessitated more than all the others put together. For
this obstacle was a prince--Leo XIII’s jailer-in-chief.

“You remember, Madame la comtesse, the mystery which still shrouds the
double death of the Archduke Rudolph, the Austrian Crown Prince, and of
his young bride, Maria Wettsyera, Princess Grazioli’s niece, who was
found in a dying condition beside him.... Suicide, it was said. But the
pistol was put there merely as a blind to public opinion; the truth is
they were both poisoned. A cousin of the Archduke’s--an Archduke
himself--who, alas! was madly in love with Maria Wettsyera, had been
unable to bear seeing her the bride of another.... After this abominable
crime, Jean-Salvador de Lorraine, son of Marie-Antoinette, Grand-Duchess
of Tuscany, left the court of his cousin, the Emperor Francis Joseph.
Knowing that he was discovered at Vienna, he went to Rome to confess his
guilt to the Pope--to throw himself at his feet--to implore his pardon.
He obtained it. Monaco, however--Cardinal Monaco-la-Valette--alleging
the necessity of penance, had him confined in the Castle of St. Angelo,
where he has been languishing for the last three years.”

The canon delivered the whole of this speech in a voice that was
perfectly level; at this point he paused for a moment; then, emphasising
his words with a slight tap of his foot:

“This is the man,” he cried, “that Monaco has made jailer-in-chief to
Leo XIII.”

“What, the Cardinal!” exclaimed the Countess. “Can a cardinal be a
freemason?”

“Alas!” said the canon pensively, “the Church has suffered sad inroads
from the Lodge. You can easily see, Madame la comtesse, that if the
Church had defended herself better, none of this would have happened.
The Lodge was enabled to seize the person of the Holy Father only
through the connivance of a few highly placed accomplices.”

“But it’s appalling!”

“What more is there to tell you, Madame la comtesse? Jean-Salvador
imagined he was the prisoner of the Church, when in reality he was the
prisoner of the freemasons. He will not consent to work for the
liberation of our Holy Father unless he is at the same time enabled to
flee himself. And he can flee only to a very distant country, where
there is no extradition. He demands two hundred thousand francs.”

Valentine de Saint-Prix had sunk back in her chair and let her arms drop
beside her; at these words she flung her head back, uttered a feeble
moan and lost consciousness. The canon darted forward.

“Courage, Madame la comtesse”--he patted her hands briskly--“it’s not so
bad as all that, God save us!”--he put the smelling-salts to her nose.
“A hundred and forty of the two hundred thousand have been subscribed
already”--and as the Countess opened one eye: “The duchesse de Lectoure
has not promised more than fifty; there remain sixty to be found.”

“You shall have them,” murmured the Countess, almost inaudibly.

“Countess, the Church never doubted you.”

He rose very gravely--almost solemnly--paused a moment, and then:

“Comtesse de Saint-Prix, I have the most absolute confidence in your
generous promise; but reflect for a moment on the innumerable
difficulties which will accompany, hamper, and possibly prevent the
handing over of this sum; a sum, which as I told you, it will be your
duty to forget ever having given me, which I myself must deny ever
having received; for which I am not even permitted to give you a
receipt.... The only prudent method is for you to hand it over to me
personally. We are watched. My presence in your house may have been
observed. Can we ever be sure of the servants? Think of the Comte de
Baraglioul’s election! I must not be seen here again.”

But as after these words he stood rooted to the ground without stirring
or speaking, the Countess understood.

“But, Monsieur l’abbé, it stands to reason I haven’t got such an
enormous sum as that about me. And even....”

The abbé showed signs of impatience, so that she did not dare to add
that she wanted time (for she had great hopes that she would not have to
provide the whole sum herself).

“What is to be done?” she murmured.

Then, as the canon’s eyebrows grew more and more menacing:

“It’s true I have a few jewels upstairs....”

“Oh, fie! Madam! Jewels are keepsakes. Can you fancy me as a bagman? And
do you suppose I can afford to arouse suspicion by trying to get a good
price for them? Why, I should run the risk of compromising you and our
undertaking into the bargain.”

His deep voice had grown harsh and violent. The Countess trembled
slightly.

“Wait a minute, Monsieur le chanoine, I will go and see what I have got
upstairs.”

She came down again in a moment or two, nervously crumpling a bundle of
bank-notes in her hand.

“Fortunately I have just collected my rents. I can give you six
thousand, five hundred francs at once.”

The canon shrugged his shoulders:

“What do you suppose I can do with that?”

And with an air of sorrowful contempt he loftily waved the Countess
away.

“No, Madam, no! I will not take those notes. I will take them with the
others or not at all. Only petty souls can consent to petty dealings.
When can you give me the whole amount?”

“How much time can you let me have?... a week ...?” asked the Countess,
who was thinking how she could make a collection.

“Comtesse de Saint-Prix, has the Church been deceived in you? A week! I
will say but one word--the Pope is waiting.”

Then, raising his arms to Heaven:

“What! the incomparable honour of delivering him lies in your hands and
you delay! Have a fear, Madam, have a fear that the Lord in the day of
your own deliverance may keep your niggardly soul waiting and
languishing in just such a manner outside the gates of Paradise!”

He became menacing--terrible; then, suddenly and swiftly raising the
cross of a rosary to his lips, he absented himself in a rapid prayer.

“Surely there’s time for me to write to Paris?” moaned the Countess
wildly.

“Telegraph! Tell your banker to deposit the sixty thousand francs at the
Crédit Foncier in Paris and tell them to telegraph to the Crédit Foncier
at Pau to remit the sum immediately. It’s rudimentary.”

“I have some money on deposit at Pau,” she stammered.

Then his indignation knew no bounds.

“Ah, Madam! All this beating about the bush before you tell me so? Is
this your eagerness? What would you say now if I were to refuse your
assistance?...”

Then pacing up and down the room, his hands crossed behind his back, and
as though nothing she could say now could placate him:

“This is worse than lukewarmness,” and he made little clicks with his
tongue to show his disgust, “this is almost duplicity.”

“Monsieur l’abbé, I implore you....”

For a few moments the abbé, with frowning brows, inflexibly continued
his pacing. Then at last:

“You are acquainted, I know, with Father Boudin, with whom I am lunching
this very morning--” (he pulled out his watch) “I shall be late. Make
out a cheque in his name; he will be able to cash the sixty thousand at
once and hand it over to me. When you see him again, just say that it
was ‘for the expiatory chapel’; he is a man of discretion and tact--he
will not insist further. Well! What are you waiting for?”

The Countess, prostrate on the sofa, rose, dragged herself towards a
small bureau, which she opened, and took out from it an olive-green
cheque-book, a leaf of which she filled in with her long pointed
handwriting.

“Excuse me for having been a little severe with you just now, Madame la
comtesse,” said the abbé in a softened voice as he took the cheque she
held out to him, “but such interests are at stake!”

Then, slipping the cheque into an inner pocket:

“It would be impious to thank you, would it not?--even in the name of
Him in whose hands I am but an unworthy instrument.”

He was overcome by a brief fit of sobbing, which he stifled in his
handkerchief; but recovering himself in a moment, with a sharp stamp of
his heel on the ground, he rapidly murmured a few words in a foreign
language.

“Are you Italian?” asked the Countess.

“Spanish! The sincerity of my emotions betrays me.”

“Your accent doesn’t. Really your French is so perfect....”

“You are very kind, Madame la comtesse. Excuse me for leaving you a
little abruptly. Now that we have come to an arrangement, I shall be
able to get to Narbonne this very evening; the archbishop is expecting
me there impatiently. Good-bye!”

He took both the Countess’s hands in his and, with his head thrown back,
looked at her fixedly:

“Good-bye, Countess de Saint-Prix!” Then, with a finger on his lips:

“Remember that a word of yours may ruin everything.”

He had no sooner left the house than the Countess flew to the
bell-pull.

“Amélie, tell Pierre that I shall want the barouche directly after lunch
to drive into Pau. Oh, and wait a minute!... Tell Germain to get his
bicycle at once and take a note to Madame Fleurissoire. I’ll write it
now.”

And leaning on the bureau which she had not shut, she wrote as follows:

NIND
“Dear Madame Fleurissoire,

     “I shall be coming to see you this afternoon. Please expect me at
     about two o’clock. I have something of the greatest importance to
     tell you. Will you arrange for us to be alone?”

She signed the note, then sealed the envelope and handed it to Amélie.


II

Madame Amédée Fleurissorie, _née_ Péterat, the youngest sister of
Veronica Armand-Dubois and Marguerite de Baraglioul, answered to the
outlandish name of Arnica. Philibert Péterat, a botanist, who had
acquired some celebrity under the Second Empire on account of his
conjugal misfortunes, had as a young man determined to give the names of
flowers to any children he might happen to have. Some of his friends
considered the name of Veronica which he gave to his first-born,
somewhat peculiar; but when it was followed by the name of Marguerite
and people insinuated that he had climbed down--given in to public
opinion--conformed to the commonplace, he determined in a cantankerous
moment to bestow upon his third product a name so resolutely botanical
as to stop the mouths of all back-biters.

Shortly after Arnica’s birth, Philibert, whose temper had become
soured, separated from his wife, left the capital and settled at Pau.
His wife would linger on in Paris during the winter months, but every
spring, at the beginning of the fine weather, she would return to
Tarbes, her native town, and invite her two elder daughters to stay with
her there in the old family mansion which she occupied.

Veronica and Marguerite divided the year between Tarbes and Pau. As for
little Arnica, whom her mother and sisters looked down upon (it is true
she was rather foolish and more pathetic than pretty), she spent the
whole time, summer as well as winter, with her father.

The child’s greatest joy was to go botanising in the country; but the
eccentric old man would often give way to his morose temper and leave
her in the lurch; he would go off by himself on an inordinately long
expedition, come home dog-tired and immediately after the evening meal
take to his bed, without giving his daughter the charity of a word or a
smile. When he was in a poetical mood he would play the flute and
insatiably repeat the same tune over and over again. The rest of his
time he spent drawing portraits of flowers in minute detail.

An old servant, nicknamed Réséda, who was both cook and housemaid,
looked after the child and taught her what little she knew herself. With
this education, Arnica reached the age of ten hardly knowing how to
read. Fear of his neighbour’s tongues at last brought Philibert to a
better sense of his duty. Arnica was sent to a school kept by a Madame
Semène, a widow lady who instilled the rudiments of learning into a
dozen or so little girls and a very few small boys.

Arnica Péterat--guileless and helpless creature--had never until that
moment suspected that there might be anything laughable[E] in her name;
on her first day at school its ridicule came upon her as a sudden
revelation; she bowed her head, like some sluggish water-weed, to the
stream of jeers that flowed over her; she turned red; she turned pale;
she wept; and Madame Semène, by injudiciously punishing the whole class
for its indecorous conduct, added a spice of animosity to what had
before been a boisterous but not unkindly merriment.

Long, limp, anæmic and dull-eyed, Arnica stood with dangling arms,
staring stupidly, in the middle of the little schoolroom, and when
Madame Semène pointed out “the third bench on the left, Mademoiselle
Péterat,” the whole class, in spite of reprimands, burst out again
louder than ever.

Poor Arnica! Life seemed nothing but a dreary avenue stretching
interminably before her and bordered on either side by sniggers and
bullyings. Fortunately for her, Madame Semène was not impervious to the
little girl’s misery, and she soon found a refuge in the widow’s
charitable bosom.

When lessons were over, Arnica was glad enough to stay behind at school,
rather than go home to find her father absent; Madame Semène had a
daughter, a girl who was seven years older than Arnica and slightly
hump-backed, but good-natured; in the hopes of catching a husband for
her, Madame Semène used to have Sunday evening “at homes,” and on two
Sundays a year she would even get up a little party with recitations
and dancing; these parties were attended by some of her old pupils, who
came out of gratitude, escorted by their parents, and by a few youths
without either means or prospects, who came out of idleness. Arnica was
always present--a flower that lacked lustre--so modest as to be almost
indistinguishable--but yet destined not to go altogether unperceived.

When, at fourteen, Arnica lost her father, it was Madame Semène who took
in the orphan. Her two sisters, who were considerably older than she
was, visited her only rarely. It was in the course of one of these
visits, however, that Marguerite first met the young man who was to
become her husband. Julius de Baraglioul was then aged twenty-eight and
was on a visit to his grandfather, who, as we have already said, had
settled in the neighbourhood of Pau shortly after the annexation of the
Duchy of Parma by France.

Marguerite’s brilliant marriage (as a matter of fact, the Misses Péterat
were not absolutely without fortune) made her appear more distant than
ever to Arnica’s dazzled eyes; she had a shrewd suspicion that no
Count--no Julius--would ever stoop to breathe her perfume. She envied
her sister for having at last succeeded in escaping from the
ill-sounding name of Péterat. The name of _Marguerite_ was charming. How
well it went with _de Baraglioul_! Alas! Was there any name wedded to
which _Arnica_ would cease to seem ridiculous?

Repelled by the world of fact, her soul, in its soreness and immaturity,
tried to take refuge in poetry. At sixteen, she wore two drooping
ringlets on each side of her sallow face, and her dreamy blue eyes
looked out their astonishment beside the blackness of her hair. Her
toneless voice was not ungentle; she read verses and made strenuous
efforts to write them. She considered everything that helped her to
escape from life, poetical.

Two young men, who since their early childhood had been friends and
partners in affection, used to frequent Madame Semène’s evening parties.
One, weedy without being tall, scraggy rather than thin, with hair that
was not so much fair as faded, with an aggressive nose and timid eyes,
was Amédée Fleurissoire. The other was fat and stumpy, with stiff black
hair growing low on his forehead, and the odd habit of holding his head
on one side, his mouth open and his right hand stretched out in front of
him: such is the portrait of Gaston Blafaphas. Amédée was the son of a
stonecutter with a business in tombstones and funeral wreaths; Gaston’s
father had an important chemist’s shop.

(However strange the name of Blafaphas may seem, it is very common in
the villages of the lower slopes of the Pyrenees, though it is sometimes
spelt in slightly different ways. Thus, for instance, in the single
small town of Sta ..., where the writer of these lines was once called
on some business connected with an examination, he saw a notary
Blaphaphas, a hairdresser Blafafaz, and a pork-butcher Blaphaface, who,
on being questioned, disclaimed any common origin, while each one of
them expressed considerable contempt for the name of the other two and
its inelegant orthography.--But these philological remarks will be of
interest only to a somewhat restricted class of reader.)

What would Fleurissoire and Blafaphas have been without each other? It
is hard to imagine such a thing. At school, during their recreation
time they were continually together; constantly teased and tormented by
the other boys, they gave each other patience, comfort and support. They
were nicknamed the Blafafoires. To each of them their friendship seemed
the ark of salvation--the single oasis in life’s pitiless desert.
Neither of them tasted a joy that he did not immediately wish to share
with the other--or, to speak more truly, there were no joys for either
of them save those which could be tasted together.

Indifferent scholars--in spite of their disarming industry--and
fundamentally refractory to any sort of culture, the Blafafoires would
always have been at the bottom of their form if it had not been for the
assistance of Eudoxe Lévichon, who, in return for a small consideration,
corrected and even wrote their exercises for them. This Lévichon was the
son of one of the chief jewellers of the town. (Albert Lévy, shortly
after his marriage twenty years earlier with the only daughter of the
jeweller Cohen, had found his business so prosperous that he had quitted
the lower quarters of the town in order to establish himself not far
from the Casino, and at the same time he had judged it a favourable
opportunity to unite and agglutinate the two names as he had united the
two businesses.)

Blafaphas had a wiry constitution, but Fleurissoire was delicate. At the
approach of puberty Gaston’s superficies had turned dusky--one would
have thought that the sap was going to burst forth into hair over the
whole of his body; while Amédée’s more sensitive epidermis resisted,
grew fiery--grew pimply, as if the hair were bashful at making its
appearance. Old Monsieur Blafaphas advised the use of detergents and
every Monday Gaston used to bring over in his bag a bottle of
anti-scorbutic mixture, which he surreptitiously handed to his friend.
They used ointments as well.

About this time Amédée caught his first cold--a cold which,
notwithstanding the salubrious climate of Pau, lasted all the winter and
left behind an unfortunate bronchial delicacy. This gave Gaston the
opportunity for renewed attentions; he overwhelmed his friend with
liquorice, with jujubes, with cough mixtures and with eucalyptus
pectoral lozenges, specially prepared by Monsieur Blafaphas _père_ from
a receipt which had been given him by an old _curé_. Amédée became
subject to constant catarrh and had to resign himself to never going out
without a comforter.

The highest flight of Amédée’s ambition was to succeed to his father’s
business. Gaston, however, notwithstanding his indolent appearance, was
not without initiative; even at school he amused himself with devising
small inventions, chiefly, it must be confessed, of a somewhat trifling
nature--a fly-trap, a weighing-machine for marbles, a safety lock for
his desk--which, for that matter, had no more secrets in it than his
heart. Innocent as these first applications of his industry were, they
nevertheless led him on to the more serious labours which afterwards
engaged him, and the first result of which was the invention of a
“hygienic, fumivorous [or smoke-consuming] pipe for weak-chested and
other smokers,” which for a long time occupied a prominent place in the
chemist’s shop window.

       *       *       *       *       *

Amédée Fleurissoire and Gaston Blafaphas both fell in love with Arnica
at the same moment--it was as inevitable as fate. The admirable thing
was that this budding passion, which each hastened to confess to the
other, instead of dividing them, only welded them together more closely
than ever. And, indeed, Arnica did not at first give either of them any
great cause for jealousy. Neither the one nor the other, moreover, had
declared himself; and it would never have occurred to Arnica to imagine
their flame, notwithstanding their trembling voices when, at Madame
Semène’s Sunday evenings, she offered them raspberry vinegar, or
camomile ... or cowslip tea. And both of them, as they went home in the
evening, praised her grace, and the modesty of her behaviour--grew
concerned for her paleness--gathered boldness.

They agreed to propose together on the same evening and then submit to
her choice. Arnica, young to love, thanked Heaven in the surprise and
simplicity of her heart. She begged her two admirers to give her time to
reflect.

Truth to tell, she was not more attracted by the one than the other, and
was interested in them only because they were interested in her, at a
time when she had given up all hopes of interesting anyone. During six
whole weeks, growing the while more and more perplexed, Arnica relished
with a mild intoxication her two suitors’ parallel wooing. And while,
during their midnight walks, the Blafafoires calculated together the
rate of their respective progress, describing to each other lengthily
and undisguisedly every word, look and smile _she_ had bestowed on them,
Arnica, in the seclusion of her bedroom, spent the time writing on bits
of paper (which she afterwards carefully burnt in the flame of the
candle) or else in repeating indefatigably, turn and turn about: Arnica
Blafaphas?... Arnica Fleurissoire?--incapable of deciding between the
equal horror of these two atrocious names.

Then, suddenly, on the evening of a little dance, she had chosen
Fleurissoire; had not Amédée just called her Arn_i_ca, putting the
accent on the penultimate in a way that seemed to her Italian? (As a
matter of fact, he had done it without reflection, carried away, no
doubt, by Mademoiselle Semène’s piano, with whose rhythm the atmosphere
was throbbing.) And this name of Arnica--her own name--had there and
then seemed to her fraught with unexpected music--as capable as any
other of expressing poetry and love.... They were alone together in a
little sitting-room next-door to the drawing-room, and so close to each
other that when Arnica, almost swooning with emotion and gratitude, let
fall her drooping head, it touched Amédée’s shoulder; and then, very
gravely, he had taken Arnica’s hand and kissed the tips of her fingers.

When, during their walk home that night, Amédée had announced his
happiness to his friend, Gaston, contrary to his custom, had said
nothing, and as they were passing a street lamp, Fleurissoire thought he
saw him crying. Could Amédée really have been simple enough to suppose
that his friend would share his happiness to this last degree? Abashed
and remorseful, he took Blafaphas in his arms (the street was empty) and
swore that however great his love might be, his friendship was greater
still, that he had no intention of letting his marriage interfere with
it, and, finally, that rather than feel that Blafaphas was suffering
from jealousy, he was ready to promise on his honour never to claim his
conjugal rights.

Neither Blafaphas nor Fleurissoire possessed a very ardent temperament;
Gaston, however, whose manhood troubled him a little more, kept silence
and allowed Amédée to promise.

Shortly after Amédée’s marriage, Gaston, who, in order to console
himself, had plunged over head and ears into work, discovered his
Plastic Plaster. The first consequence of this invention, which, to
begin with, had seemed of very little importance, was that it brought
about the revival of Lévichon’s friendship for the Blafafoires--a
friendship which for some time past had been allowed to lapse. Eudoxe
Lévichon immediately divined the services which this composition would
render to religious statuary. With a remarkable eye to contingencies, he
at once christened it Roman Plaster.[F] The firm of Blafaphas,
Fleurissoire and Lévichon was founded.

The undertaking was launched with a capital of sixty thousand francs, of
which the Blafafoires modestly subscribed ten thousand. Lévichon,
unwilling that his two friends should be pressed, generously provided
the other fifty thousand. It is true that of these fifty thousand, forty
were advanced by Fleurissoire out of Arnica’s marriage portion; the sum
was repayable in ten years with compound interest at 4½ per cent--which
was more than Arnica had ever hoped for--and Amédée’s small fortune was
thus guaranteed from the risks which such an undertaking must
necessarily incur. The Blafafoires, on their side, brought as an asset
their family connexions and those of the Baragliouls, which meant, when
once Roman Plaster had proved its reliability, the patronage of several
influential members of the clergy; these latter (besides giving one or
two important orders themselves) persuaded several small parishes to
supply the growing needs of the faithful from the firm of B., F. & L.,
the increasing improvement of artistic education having created a demand
for works of more exquisite finish than those which satisfied the ruder
faith of our ancestors. To supply this demand a few artists of
acknowledged value in the Church’s eyes, were enlisted by the firm of
Roman Plaster, and were at last placed in the position of seeing their
works accepted by the jury of the Salon. Leaving the Blafafoires at Pau,
Lévichon established himself in Paris, where, with his social facility,
the business soon developed considerably.

What could be more natural than that the Countess Valentine de
Saint-Prix should endeavour, through Arnica, to interest the firm of
Blafaphas & Co. in the secret cause of the Pope’s deliverance, and that
she should confidently hope that the Fleurissoires’ extreme piety would
reimburse her a portion of what she had subscribed? Unfortunately, the
Blafafoires, owing to the minuteness of the amount which they had
originally invested in the business, got very little out of
it--two-twelfths of the disclosed profits and none at all of the others.
The Countess could not be aware of this, for Arnica, like Amédée, was
modestly shy of talking about their money matters.


III

“Dear Madame de Saint-Prix, what is the matter? Your letter frightened
me.”

The Countess dropped into the arm-chair which Arnica pushed towards her.

“Oh, Madame Fleurissoire!... Oh! mayn’t I call you Arnica?... this
trouble--it is yours as well as mine--will draw us together. Oh! if you
only knew!...”

“Speak! Speak! don’t leave me in suspense!”

“I’ve only just heard it myself. I’ll tell you directly, but mind, it
must be a secret between you and me.”

“I have never betrayed anyone’s confidence,” said Arnica,
plaintively--not that anyone had ever confided in her.

“You’ll not believe it.”

“Yes, yes,” wailed Arnica.

“Ah!” wailed the Countess. “Oh, would you be kind enough to get me a cup
of ... anything ... it doesn’t matter what.... I feel as if I were
fainting.”

“What would you like? Cowslip? Lime-flower? Camomile?”

“It doesn’t matter.... Tea, I think.... I wouldn’t believe it myself at
first.”

“There’s some boiling water in the kitchen. It won’t take a minute.”

While Arnica busied herself about the tea, the Countess appraised the
drawing-room and its contents with a calculating eye. They were
depressingly modest. A few green rep chairs; one red velvet arm-chair;
one other arm-chair (in which she was seated) in common tapestry; one
table; one mahogany console; in front of the fire-place, a woolwork rug;
on the chimney-piece, on each side of the alabaster clock (which was in
a glass case), two large vases in alabaster fretwork, also in glass
cases; on the table, a photograph album for the family photographs; on
the console, a figure of Our Lady of Lourdes in her grotto, in Roman
Plaster (a small-sized model)--there was not a thing in the room that
was not discouraging, and the Countess felt her heart sink within her.

But after all they were perhaps only shamming poverty--perhaps they were
merely miserly....

Arnica came back with the tea-pot, the sugar and a cup on a tray.

“I’m afraid I’m giving you a great deal of trouble.”

“Oh, not at all!... I’d rather do it now--before; afterwards, I mightn’t
be able to.”

“Well, then, listen!” began Valentine, after Arnica had sat down. “The
Pope----”

“No, no, don’t tell me! don’t tell me!” exclaimed Madame Fleurissoire
instantly, stretching out her hand in front of her; then, uttering a
faint cry, she fell back with her eyes closed.

“My poor dear! My poor dear!” said the Countess, patting her on the
wrist. “I felt sure it would be too much for you.”

Arnica at last feebly opened half an eye and murmured sadly:

“Dead?”

Then Valentine, bending towards her, slipped into her ear the single
word:

“Imprisoned!”

Sheer stupefaction brought Madame Fleurissoire back to her senses; and
Valentine began her long story, stumbling over the dates, mixing up the
names and muddling the chronology; one fact, however, stood out, certain
and indisputable--our Holy Father had fallen into the hands of the
infidel--a crusade was being secretly organised to deliver him, and in
order to conduct it successfully a large sum of money was necessary.

“What will Amédée say?” moaned Arnica in dismay.

He was not expected home before evening, having gone out for a walk with
his friend Blafaphas....

“Mind you impress on him the necessity of secrecy,” repeated Valentine
several times over as she took her leave of Arnica. “Give me a kiss, my
dear, and courage!”

Arnica nervously presented her damp forehead to the Countess.

“I will look in to-morrow to hear what you think of doing. Consult
Monsieur Fleurissoire, but remember that the Church is at stake!... It’s
agreed, then--only to your husband! You promise, don’t you? Not a word!
Not a word!”

The Comtesse de Saint-Prix left Arnica in a state of depression
bordering on faintness. When Amédée came in from his walk:

“My dear,” she said to him at once, “I have just heard something
extremely sad. The Holy Father has been imprisoned.”

“No, not really?” said Amédée, as if he were saying “pooh!”

Arnica burst into sobs:

“I knew, I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Come, come, darling,” went on Amédée, taking off his overcoat, without
which he never went out for fear of a sudden change of temperature.
“Just think! Everyone would know if anything had happened to the Holy
Father. It would be in all the papers. And who could have imprisoned
him?”

“Valentine says it’s the Lodge.”

Amédée looked at Arnica under the impression that she had taken leave of
her senses. He said, however:

“The Lodge? What Lodge?”

“How can I tell? Valentine has promised not to say anything about it.”

“Who told her?”

“She forbade me to say.... A canon, who was sent by a cardinal, with his
card----”

Arnica understood nothing of public affairs and Madame de Saint-Prix’s
story had left but a confused impression on her. The words “captivity”
and “imprisonment” conjured up before her eyes dark and semi-romantic
images; the word “crusade” thrilled her unspeakably, and when, at last,
Amédée’s disbelief wavered and he talked of setting out at once, she
suddenly saw him on horseback, in a helmet and breastplate.... As for
him, he had begun by now to pace up and down the room.

“In the first place,” he said, “it’s no use talking about money--we
haven’t got any. And do you think I could be satisfied with merely
giving money? Do you think I should be able to sleep in peace merely
because I had sacrificed a few bank-notes?... Why, my dear, if this is
true that you’ve been telling me, it’s an appalling thing and we mustn’t
rest till we’ve done something. Appalling, do you understand me?”

“Yes, yes, I quite understand, appalling!... But all the same, do
explain why.”

“Oh, if now I’ve got to explain!” and Amédée raised discouraged arms to
Heaven.

“No, no,” he went on, “this isn’t an occasion for giving money; it’s
oneself that one must give. I’ll consult Blafaphas; we’ll see what he
says.”

“Valentine de Saint-Prix made me promise not to tell anyone,” put in
Arnica, timidly.

“Blafaphas isn’t anyone; and we’ll impress on him that he must keep it
strictly to himself.”

Then, turning towards her, he implored pathetically:

“Arnica, my dearest, let me go!”

She was sobbing. It was she now who insisted on Blafaphas coming to the
rescue. Amédée was starting to fetch him, when he turned up of his own
accord, knocking first at the drawing-room window, as was his habit.

“Well! that’s the most singular story I ever heard in my life!” he cried
when they had told him all about it. “No, really! Who would ever have
thought of such a thing?” And then, before Fleurissoire had said
anything of his intentions, he went on abruptly:

“My dear fellow, there’s only one thing for us to do--set out at once.”

“You see,” said Amédée, “it’s his first thought.”

“Unfortunately I’m kept at home by my poor father’s health,” was his
second.

“After all, it’s better that I should go by myself,” went on Amédée.
“Two of us together would attract attention.”

“But will you know how to manage?”

At this, Amédée raised his shoulders and eyebrows, as much as to say: “I
can but do my best!”

“Will you know whom to appeal to?... where to go?... And, as a matter of
fact, what exactly do you mean to do when you get there?”

“First of all, find out the facts.”

“Supposing, after all, there were no truth in the story?”

“Exactly! I can’t rest till I know.”

And Gaston immediately exclaimed: “No more can I!”

“Do take a little more time to think it over, dear,” protested Arnica
feebly.

“I have thought it over. I shall go--secretly--but I shall go.”

“When? Nothing is ready.”

“This evening. What do I need so much?”

“But you haven’t ever travelled. You won’t know how to.”

“You’ll see, my love, you’ll see! When I come back, I’ll tell you my
adventures,” said he, with an engaging little chuckle which set his
Adam’s apple shaking.

“You’re certain to catch cold.”

“I’ll wear your comforter.” He stopped in his pacing to raise Arnica’s
chin with the tip of his forefinger, as one does a baby’s, when one
wants to make it smile. Gaston’s attitude was one of reserve. Amédée
went up to him:

“I count upon you to look up my trains. Find me a good train to
Marseilles with thirds. Yes, yes, I insist upon travelling third.
Anyhow, make me out a time-table in detail and mark the places where I
shall have to change--and where I can get refreshments--at any rate, as
far as the frontier; after that, when I’ve got a start, I shall be able
to look after myself, and with God’s guidance I shall get to Rome. You
must write to me there poste restante.”

The importance of his mission was exciting his brain dangerously. After
Gaston had gone, he continued to pace the room; from time to time he
murmured, his heart melting with wonder and gratitude:

“To think that such a thing should be reserved for _me_!” So at last he
had his _raison d’être_. Ah! for pity’s sake, dear lady, let him go! To
how many beings on God’s earth is it given to find their function?

All that Arnica obtained was that he should pass this one night with
her, Gaston, indeed, having pointed out in the time-table which he
brought round in the evening, that the most convenient train was the one
that left at 8 <small>A.M.</small>

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning it poured with rain. Amédée would not allow Arnica or
Gaston to go with him to the station; so that the quaint traveller with
his cod-fish eyes, his neck muffled in a dark crimson comforter, holding
in his right hand a grey canvas portmanteau, on to which his
visiting-card had been nailed, in his left an old umbrella, and on his
arm a brown and green check shawl, was carried off by the train to
Marseilles, without a farewell glance from anyone.


IV

About this time an important sociological congress summoned Count Julius
de Baraglioul back to Rome. He was not perhaps specially invited (his
opinions on such subjects being founded more on conviction than
knowledge), but he was glad to have this opportunity of getting into
touch with one or two illustrious personages. And as Milan lay
conveniently on his road--Milan where, as we know, the Armand-Dubois had
gone to live on the advice of Father Anselm--he determined to take
advantage of the circumstance in order to see his brother-in-law.

On the same day that Fleurissoire left Pau, Julius knocked at Anthime’s
door. He was shown into a wretched apartment consisting of three
rooms--if the dark closet where Veronica herself cooked the few
vegetables which formed their chief diet, may be counted as a room. The
little light there was came from a narrow court-yard and shone down
dismally from a hideous metal reflector; Julius preferred to keep his
hat in his hand rather than set it down on the oval table with its
covering of doubtfully clean oilcloth, and remained standing because of
the horror with which the horsehair chairs inspired him.

He seized Anthime by the arm and exclaimed:

“My poor fellow, you can’t stay here.”

“What are you pitying me for?” asked Anthime.

Veronica came hurrying up at the sound of their voices.

“Would you believe it, my dear Julius?--that is the only thing he finds
to say in spite of the grossly unjust and unfair way in which we have
been treated.”

“Who suggested your coming to Milan?”

“Father Anselm; but in any case we couldn’t have kept on the Via in
Lucina apartment.”

“There was no need for us to keep it on,” said Anthime.

“That’s not the point. Father Anselm promised you compensation. Is he
aware of your distress?”

“He pretends not to be,” said Veronica.

“You must complain to the Bishop of Tarbes.”

“Anthime has done so.”

“What did he say?”

“He is a worthy man; he earnestly encouraged me in my faith.”

“But since you have been here, haven’t you complained to anyone?”

“I just missed seeing Cardinal Pazzi, who had shown some interest in my
case and to whom I had written; he did come to Milan, but he sent me
word by his footman....”

“That a fit of the gout unfortunately kept him to his room.”

“But it’s abominable! Rampolla must be told!” cried Julius.

“Told what, my dear friend? It is true that I am somewhat reduced--but
what need have we of more? In the time of my prosperity I was astray; I
was a sinner; I was ill. Now, you see, I am cured. Formerly you had good
cause to pity me. And yet you know well enough that worldly goods turn
us aside from God.”

“Yes, but those worldly goods were yours by rights. It’s all very well
that the Church should teach you to despise them, but not that she
should cheat you of them.”

“That’s the way to talk,” said Veronica. “What a relief it is to hear
you, Julius! His resignation makes me boil with rage; it’s impossible to
get him to defend himself. He has let himself be plucked like a goose
and said ‘thank you’ to everyone who robbed him, as long as they did it
in the Lord’s name.”

“Veronica! it grieves me to hear you talk like that. Whatever is done in
the Lord’s name is well done.”

“If you think it’s agreeable to be made a fool of!” said Julius.

“God’s fool, dear Julius!”

“Just listen to him! That’s what he’s like the whole time! Nothing but
Scripture texts in his mouth from morning to night! And after I’ve
toiled and slaved and done the marketing and the cooking and the
housemaiding, my good gentleman quotes the Gospel and says I’m being
busy about many things and tells me to look at the lilies of the field.”

“I help you to the best of my power, dear,” said Anthime in a seraphic
voice. “Now that I’ve got the use of my legs again, I’ve many a time
offered to do the marketing or the housework for you.”

“That’s not a man’s business. Content yourself with writing your
homilies, only try to get a little better pay for them.” And then, her
voice getting more and more querulous (hers, who used to be so
smiling!): “Isn’t it a disgrace?” she exclaimed. “When one thinks of
what he used to get for his infidel articles in the _Dépêche_! And now
when the _Pilgrim_ pays him a miserable two-pence halfpenny for his
religious meditations, he somehow or other contrives to give three
quarters of it to the poor!”

“Then he’s a complete saint!” cried Julius, aghast.

“Oh! how he irritates me with his saintliness!... Look here! Do you know
what this is?” and she fetched a small wicker cage from a dark corner of
the room. “These are the two rats whose eyes my scientific friend put
out in the old days.”

“Oh, Veronica, why will you harp on it? You used to feed them yourself
when I was experimenting on them--and then I blamed you for it.... Yes,
Julius, in my unregenerate days I blinded those poor creatures, out of
vain scientific curiosity; it’s only natural I should look after them
now.”

“I wish the Church thought it equally natural to do for you what you do
for these rats--after having blinded you in the same way.”

“Blinded, do you say! Such words from _you_? Illumined, my dear brother,
illumined!”

“My words were plain matter-of-fact. It seems to me inadmissible that
you should be abandoned in such a state as this. The Church entered into
an engagement with you; she must keep it--for her own honour--for our
faith’s sake.” Then, turning to Veronica: “If you have obtained nothing
so far, you must appeal higher still--and still higher. Rampolla, did I
say? It’s to the Pope himself that I shall present a petition--to the
Pope. He is acquainted with your story. He ought to be informed of such
a miscarriage of justice. I am returning to Rome to-morrow.”

“You’ll stop to dinner, won’t you?” asked Veronica, somewhat
apprehensively.

“Please excuse me--but really my digestion is so poor....” (and Julius,
whose nails were very carefully kept, glanced at Anthime’s large,
stumpy, square-tipped fingers). “On my way back from Rome I shall be
able to stop longer, and then I want to tell you about the new book I’m
now at work on, my dear Anthime.”

“I have just been re-reading _On the Heights_ and it seems to me better
than I thought it at first.”

“I am sorry for you! It’s a failure. I’ll explain why when you’re in a
fit state to listen and to appreciate the strange preoccupations which
beset me now. But there’s too much to say. Mum’s the word for the
present!”

He bade the Armand-Dubois keep up their spirits, and left them.




BOOK IV: THE MILLIPEDE

     “_Et je ne puis approuver que ceux qui cherchent en gémissant._”
    --PASCAL, 3421.


I

Amédée Fleurissoire had left Pau with five hundred francs in his pocket.
This, he thought, would certainly suffice him for his journey,
notwithstanding the extra expenses, to which the Lodge’s wickedness
would no doubt put him. And if, after all, this amount proved
insufficient--if he found himself obliged to prolong his stay, he would
have recourse to Blafaphas, who was keeping a small sum in reserve for
him.

As no one at Pau was to know where he was going, he had not taken his
ticket further than Marseilles. From Marseilles to Rome a third-class
ticket cost only thirty-eight francs, forty centimes, and left him free
to break his journey if he chose--an option of which he took advantage,
to satisfy, not his curiosity for foreign parts, which had never been
lively, but his desire for sleep, which was inordinately strong. There
was nothing he feared so much as insomnia, and as it was important to
the Church that he should arrive at Rome in good trim, he would not
consider the two days’ delay or the additional expense of the hotel
bills.... What was that in comparison to spending a night in the
train?--a night that would certainly be sleepless, and particularly
dangerous to health on account of the other travellers’ breaths; and
then if one of them wanted to renew the air and took it into his head to
open a window, that meant catching a cold for certain.... He would
therefore spend the first night at Marseilles and the second at Genoa,
in one of those hotels that are found in the neighbourhood of the
station, and are comfortable without being over-grand.

For the rest he was amused by the journey and at making it by
himself--at last! For, at the age of forty-seven, he had never lived but
in a state of tutelage, escorted everywhere by his wife and his friend
Blafaphas. Tucked up in his corner of the carriage, he sat with a faint
goat-like smile on his face, wishing himself Godspeed. All went well as
far as Marseilles.

On the second day he made a false start. Absorbed in the perusal of the
Baedeker for Central Italy which he had just bought, he got into the
wrong train and headed straight for Lyons; it was only at Arles that he
noticed his mistake, just as the train was starting, so that he was
obliged to go on to Tarascon and come back over the same ground for the
second time; then he took an evening train as far as Toulon rather than
spend another night at Marseilles, where he had been pestered with bugs.

And yet the room which looked on to the Cannebière had not been
uninviting, nor the bed either, for that matter; he had got into it
without misgivings, after having folded his clothes, done his accounts
and said his prayers. He was dropping with sleep and went off at once.

The manners and customs of bugs are peculiar; they wait till the candle
is out, and then, as soon as it is dark, sally forth--not at random;
they make straight for the neck, the place of their predilection;
sometimes they select the wrists; a few rare ones prefer the ankles. It
is not exactly known for what reason they inject into the sleeper’s skin
an exquisitely irritating oily substance, the virulence of which is
intensified by the slightest rubbing....

The irritation which awoke Fleurissoire was so violent that he lit his
candle again and hurried to the looking-glass to gaze at his lower jaw,
where there appeared an irregular patch of red dotted with little white
spots; but the smoky dip gave a bad light; the silver of the glass was
tarnished and his eyes were blurred with sleep.... He went back to bed
still rubbing and put out his light; five minutes later he lit it again,
for the itching had become intolerable, sprang to the wash-hand-stand,
wetted his handkerchief in his water jug and applied it to the inflamed
zone, which had greatly extended and now reached as far as his
collar-bone. Amédée thought he was going to be ill and offered up a
prayer; then he put out his candle once more. The respite which the cool
compress had granted him lasted too short a time to permit the sufferer
to go to sleep; and there was added now to the agony of the itching, the
discomfort of having the collar of his night-shirt drenched with water;
he drenched it, too, with his tears. And suddenly he started with
horror--bugs! it was bugs!... He was surprised that he had not thought
of them sooner; but he knew the insect only by name, and how was it
possible to imagine that a definite bite could result in this
indefinable burning? He shot out of his bed and for the third time lit
his candle.

Being of a nervous and theoretical disposition, his ideas about bugs,
like many other people’s, were all wrong; cold with disgust, he began by
searching for them on himself--found ne’er a one--thought he had made a
mistake--again believed that he must be falling ill. There was nothing
on his sheets either; but nevertheless, before getting into bed again,
it occurred to him to lift up his bolster. He then saw three tiny
blackish pastilles, which tucked themselves nimbly away into a fold of
the sheet. It was they, sure enough!

Setting his candle on the bed, he tracked them down, opened out the fold
and discovered five of them. Not daring to squash them with his
finger-nail, he flung them in disgust into his chamber-pot and watered
them copiously. He watched them struggling for a few moments--pleased
and ferocious. It soothed his feelings. Then he got back into bed and
blew out his candle.

The bites began again almost immediately with redoubled violence. There
were new ones now on the back of his neck. He lighted his candle once
more in a rage and took his night-shirt right off this time so as to
examine the collar at his leisure. At last he perceived four or five
minute light red specks running along the edge of the seam; he crushed
them on the linen, where they left a stain of blood--horrid little
creatures, so tiny that he could hardly believe that they were bugs
already; but a little later, on raising his bolster again, he unearthed
an enormous one--their mother for certain; at that, encouraged, excited,
amused almost, he took off the bolster, undid the sheets and began a
methodical search. He fancied now that he saw them everywhere, but as a
matter of fact caught only four; he went back to bed and enjoyed an
hour’s peace.

Then the burning and itching began again. Once more he started the hunt;
then, worn out at last with disgust and fatigue, gave it up, and noticed
that if he did not scratch, the itching subsided pretty quickly. At dawn
the last of the creatures, presumably gorged, let him be. He was
sleeping heavily when the waiter called him in time for his train.

       *       *       *       *       *

At Toulon it was fleas.

He picked them up in the train, no doubt. All night long he scratched
himself, turning from side to side without sleeping. He felt them
creeping up and down his legs, tickling the small of his back,
inoculating him with fever. As he had a sensitive skin, their bites rose
in exuberant swellings, which he inflamed with unrestrained scratching.
He lit his candle over and over again; he got up, took off his
night-shirt and put it on again, without being able to kill a single
one. He hardly caught a fleeting glimpse of them; they continually
escaped him, and even when he succeeded in catching them, when he
thought they were flattened dead beneath his finger-nail, they suddenly
and instantaneously blew themselves out again and hopped away as safe
and lively as ever. He was driven to regretting the bugs. His fury and
exasperation of the useless chase effectually wrecked every possibility
of sleep.

All next day the bites of the previous night itched horribly, while
fresh creepings and ticklings showed him that he was still infested. The
excessive heat considerably increased his discomfort. The carriage was
packed to overflowing with workmen, who drank, smoked, spat, belched and
ate such high-smelling victuals that more than once Fleurissoire thought
he was going to be sick. And yet he did not dare leave the carriage
before reaching the frontier, for fear that the workmen might see him
get into another and imagine they were incommoding him; in the
compartment into which he next got, there was a voluminous wet-nurse,
who was changing her baby’s napkins. He tried nevertheless to sleep; but
then his hat got in his way. It was one of those shallow, white straw
hats with a black ribbon round it, of the kind commonly known as
“sailor.” When Fleurissoire left it in its usual position, its stiff
brim prevented him from leaning his head back against the partition of
the carriage; if, in order to do this, he raised his hat a little, the
partition bumped it forwards; when, on the contrary, he pressed his hat
down behind, the brim was caught between the partition and the back of
his neck, and the sailor rose up over his forehead like the lid of a
valve. He decided at last to take it right off and to cover his head
with his comforter, which he arranged to fall over his eyes so as to
keep out the light. At any rate, he had taken precautions against the
night; at Toulon that morning he had bought a box of insecticide and,
even if he had to pay dear for it, he thought to himself that he would
not hesitate to spend the night in one of the best hotels; for if he had
no sleep that night, in what state of bodily wretchedness would he not
be when he arrived at Rome?--at the mercy of the meanest freemason!

At Genoa he found the omnibuses of the principal hotels drawn
up outside the station; he went straight up to one of the most
comfortable-looking, without letting himself be intimidated by the
haughtiness of the hotel servant, who seized hold of his miserable
portmanteau; but Amédée refused to be parted from it; he would not allow
it to be put on the roof of the carriage, but insisted that it should be
placed next him--there--on the same seat. In the hall of the hotel the
porter put him at his ease by talking French; then he let himself go
and, not content with asking for “a very good room,” inquired the prices
of those that were offered him, determined to find nothing to his liking
for less than twelve francs.

The seventeen-franc room which he settled on after looking at several,
was vast, clean, and elegant without ostentation; the bed stood out from
the wall--a bright brass bed, which was certainly uninhabited, and to
which his precautions would have been an insult. The washstand was
concealed in a kind of enormous cupboard. Two large windows opened on to
a garden; Amédée leant out into the night and gazed long at the
indistinct mass of sombre foliage, letting the cool air calm his fever
and invite him to sleep. From above the bed there hung down a cloudy
veil of tulle, which exactly draped three sides of it, and which was
looped up in a graceful festoon on the fourth by a few little cords,
like those that take in the reefs of a sail. Fleurissoire recognised
that this was what is known as a mosquito net--a device which he had
always disdained to make use of.

After having washed, he stretched himself luxuriously in the cool
sheets. He left the window open--not wide open, of course, for fear of
cold in the head and ophthalmia, but with one side fixed in such a way
as to prevent the night effluvia from striking him directly; did his
accounts, said his prayers and put out the light. (This was electric and
the current was cut off by turning down a switch.)

       *       *       *       *       *

Fleurissoire was just going off to sleep when a faint humming reminded
him that he had failed to take the precaution of putting out his light
before opening his window; for light attracts mosquitoes. He remembered,
too, that he had somewhere read praises of the Lord, who has bestowed on
this winged insect a special musical instrument, designed to warn the
sleeper the moment before he is going to be stung. Then he let down the
impenetrable muslin barrier all round him. “After all,” thought he to
himself as he was dropping off, “how much better this is than those
little felt cones of dried hay, which old Blafaphas sells under the
quaint name of ‘fidibus’; one lights them on a little metal saucer; as
they burn they give out a quantity of narcotic fumes; but before they
stupefy the mosquitoes, they half stifle the sleeper. Fidibus! What a
funny name! Fidibus....” He was just going off, when suddenly a sharp
sting on the left side of his nose awoke him. He put his hand to the
place and as he was softly stroking the raised and burning
flesh--another sting on his wrist. Then right against his ear there
sounded the mock of an impertinent buzzing.... Horror! he had shut the
enemy up within the citadel! He reached out to the switch and turned on
the light.

Yes! the mosquito was there, settled high up on the net. Amédée was
long-sighted and made him out distinctly; a creature that was wisp-like
to absurdity, planted on four legs, with the other pair sticking out
insolently behind him, long and curly; Amédée sat up on his bed. But how
could he crush the insect against such flimsy, yielding material? No
matter! He gave a hit with the palm of his hand, so hard and so quick
that he thought he had burst a hole in the net. Not the shadow of a
doubt but the mosquito was done for; he glanced down to look for its
corpse; there was nothing--but he felt a fresh sting on the calf of his
leg.

At that, in order to get as much as possible of his person into shelter,
he crept between the sheets and stayed there perhaps a quarter of an
hour, without daring to turn out the light; then, all the same, somewhat
reassured at catching neither sight nor sound of the enemy, he switched
it off. And instantly the music began again.

Then he put out one arm, keeping his hand close to his face, and from
time to time when he thought he felt one well settled on his forehead or
cheek, he would give himself a huge smack. But the second after, he
heard the insect’s sing-song once more.

After this it occurred to him to wrap his head round with his comforter,
which considerably interfered with the pleasure of his respiratory
organs, and did not prevent him from being stung on the chin.

Then the mosquito, gorged, no doubt, lay low; at any rate, Amédée,
vanquished by slumber, ceased to hear it; he had taken off his comforter
and was tossing in a feverish sleep; he scratched as he slept. The next
morning, his nose, which was by nature aquiline, looked like the nose of
a drunkard; the spot on the calf of his leg was budding like a boil and
the one on his chin had developed an appearance that was volcanic--he
recommended it to the particular solicitude of the barber when, before
leaving Genoa, he went to be shaved, so as to be respectable when he
arrived in Rome.


II

At Rome, as he was lingering outside the station, so tired, so lost, so
perplexed that he could not decide what to do, and had only just
strength enough left to repel the advances of the hotel porters,
Fleurissoire was lucky enough to come upon a facchino who spoke French.
Baptistin was a native of Marseilles, a young man with bright eyes and a
chin that was still smooth; he recognised a fellow-countryman in
Fleurissoire, and offered to guide him and carry his portmanteau.

Fleurissoire had spent the long journey mugging up his Baedeker. A kind
of instinct--a presentiment--an inward warning--turned his pious
solicitude aside from the Vatican to concentrate it on the Castle of St.
Angelo (in ancient days Hadrian’s Mausoleum), the celebrated jail which
had sheltered so many illustrious prisoners of yore, and which, it
seems, is connected with the Vatican by an underground passage.

He gazed upon the map. “That is where I must find a lodging,” he had
decided, setting his forefinger on the Tordinona quay, opposite the
Castle of St. Angelo. And by a providential coincidence, that was the
very place where Baptistin proposed to take him; not, that is, exactly
on the quay, which is in reality nothing but an embankment, but quite
near it--Via dei Vecchierelli (of the little old men), which is the
third street after the Ponte Umberto, and leads straight on to the river
bank; he knew of a quiet house (from the windows of the third floor, by
craning forward a little, one can see the Mausoleum) where there were
some very obliging ladies, who talked every language, and one in
particular who knew French.

“If the gentleman is tired, we can take a carriage; yes, it’s a long
way.... Yes, the air is cooler this evening; it’s been raining; a little
walk after a long railway journey does one good.... No, the portmanteau
is not too heavy; I can easily carry it so far.... The gentleman’s first
visit to Rome? He comes from Toulouse, perhaps?... No; from Pau. I ought
to have recognised the accent.”

Thus chatting, they walked along. They took the Via Viminale; then the
Via Agostino Depretis, which runs into the Viminale at the Pincio; then
by way of the Via Nazionale they got into the Corso, which they crossed;
after this their way lay through a number of little streets without any
names. The portmanteau was not so heavy as to prevent the facchino from
stepping out briskly; and Fleurissoire could hardly keep up with him. He
trotted along beside Baptistin, dropping with fatigue and dripping with
heat.

“Here we are!” said Baptistin at last, just as Amédée was going to beg
for quarter.

The street, or rather the alley of the Vecchierelli, was dark and
narrow--so much so that Fleurissoire hesitated to enter it. Baptistin,
in the meantime, had gone into the second house on the right, the door
of which was only a few yards from the quay; at the same moment,
Fleurissoire saw a _bersagliere_ come out; the smart uniform which he
had noticed at the frontier, reassured him--for he had confidence in
the army. He advanced a few steps. A lady appeared on the threshold (the
landlady of the inn apparently) and smiled at him affably. She wore an
apron of black satin, bracelets, and a sky-blue silk ribbon round her
neck; her jet-black hair was piled in an edifice on the top of her head
and sat heavily on an enormous tortoise-shell comb.

“Your portmanteau has been carried up to the third floor,” said she to
Amédée in French, using the intimate “thou,” which he imagined must be
an Italian custom, or must else be set down to want of familiarity with
the language.

“_Grazia!_” he replied, smiling in his turn. “_Grazia!_--thank
you!”--the only Italian word he could say, and which he considered it
polite to put into the feminine when he was talking to a lady.

He went upstairs, stopping to gather breath and courage at every
landing, for he was worn out with fatigue, and the sordidness of the
staircase contributed to sink his spirits still lower. The landings
succeeded each other every ten steps; the stairs hesitated, tacked, made
three several attempts before they managed to reach a floor. From the
ceiling of the first landing hung a canary cage which could be seen from
the street. On to the second landing a mangy cat had dragged a haddock
skin, which she was preparing to bolt. On the third landing the door of
the closet stood wide open and revealed to view the seat, and beside it
a yellow earthenware vase, shaped like a top-hat, from whose cup
protruded the stick of a small mop; on this landing Amédée refrained
from stopping.

On the first floor a smoky gasolene lamp was hanging beside a large
glass door, on which the word _Salone_ was written in frosted letters;
but the room was dark, and Amédée could barely make out through the
glass panes of the door a mirror in a gold frame hanging on the wall
opposite.

He was just reaching the seventh landing, when another soldier--an
artillery man this time--who had come out of a room on the second floor,
bumped up against him; he was running downstairs very fast and, after
setting Amédée on his feet again, passed on, muttering a laughing excuse
in Italian, for Fleurissoire was stumbling from fatigue and looked as if
he were drunk. The first uniform had reassured him, but the second made
him uneasy.

“These soldiers are a noisy lot,” thought he. “Fortunately my room is on
the third floor. I prefer to have them below me.”

He had no sooner passed the second floor than a woman in a gaping
dressing-gown, with her hair undone, came running from the other end of
the passage and hailed him.

“She takes me for someone else,” thought he, and hurried on, turning his
eyes away so as not to embarrass her by noticing the scantiness of her
attire.

He arrived panting on the third floor, where he found Baptistin; he was
talking Italian to a woman of uncertain age, who reminded him
extraordinarily--though she was not so fat--of the Blafaphas’ cook.

“Your portmanteau is in No. sixteen--the third door. Take care as you
pass of the pail which is in the passage.”

“I put it outside because it was leaking,” explained the woman in
French.

The door of No. sixteen was open; outside No. fifteen a tin slop-pail
was standing in the middle of a shiny repugnant-looking puddle, which
Fleurissoire stepped across. An acrid odour emanated from it. The
portmanteau was placed in full view on a chair. As soon as he got inside
the stuffy room, Amédée felt his head swim, and flinging his umbrella,
his shawl and his hat on to the bed, he sank into an arm-chair. His
forehead was streaming; he thought he was going to faint.

“This is Madame Carola, the lady who talks French,” said Baptistin.

They had both come into the room.

“Open the window a little,” sighed Fleurissoire, who was incapable of
movement.

“Goodness! how hot he is!” said Madame Carola, sponging his pallid and
perspiring countenance with a little scented handkerchief, which she
took out of her bodice.

“Let’s push him nearer the window.”

Both together lifted the arm-chair, in which Amédée swung helpless and
half unconscious, and put it down where he was able to inhale--in
exchange for the tainted atmosphere of the passage--the varied stenches
of the street. The coolness, however, revived him. Feeling in his
waistcoat pocket, he pulled out the screw of five lire which he had
prepared for Baptistin:

“Thank you very much. Please leave me now.”

The facchino went out.

“You oughtn’t to have given him such a lot,” said Carola.

She too used the familiar “thou,” which Amédée accepted as a custom of
the country; his one thought now was to go to bed; but Carola showed no
signs of leaving; then, carried away by politeness, he began to talk.

“You speak French as well as a Frenchwoman.”

“No wonder. I come from Paris. And you?”

“I come from the south.”

“I guessed as much. When I saw you, I said to myself, that gentleman
comes from the provinces. Is it your first visit to Italy?”

“My first.”

“Have you come on business?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a lovely place, Rome. There’s a lot to be seen.”

“Yes ... but this evening I’m rather tired,” he ventured; and as though
excusing himself: “I’ve been travelling for three days.”

“It’s a long journey to get here.”

“And I haven’t slept for three nights.”

At those words, Madame Carola, with a sudden Italian familiarity, which
Amédée still couldn’t help being astounded at, chucked him under the
chin.

“Naughty!” said she.

This gesture brought a little blood back into Amédée’s face, and in his
desire to repudiate the unfair insinuation, he at once began to
expatiate on fleas, bugs and mosquitoes.

“You’ll have nothing of that kind here, dearie; you see how clean it
is.”

“Yes; I hope I shall sleep well.”

But still she didn’t go. He rose with difficulty from his arm-chair,
raised his hand to the top button of his waistcoat and said tentatively:

“I think I’ll go to bed.”

Madame Carola understood Fleurissoire’s embarrassment.

“You’d like me to leave you for a bit, I see,” said she tactfully.

As soon as she had gone, Fleurissoire turned the key in the lock, took
his night-shirt out of his portmanteau and got into bed. But apparently
the catch of the lock was not working, for before he had time to blow
out his candle, Carola’s head reappeared in the half-opened door--behind
the bed--close to the bed--smiling....

       *       *       *       *       *

An hour later, when he came to himself, Carola was lying against him, in
his arms, naked.

He disengaged his left arm, which had “fallen asleep,” and then drew
away. She was asleep. A light from the alley below filled the room with
its feeble glimmer, and not a sound was to be heard but the woman’s
regular breathing. An unwonted languor lay heavy on Amédée’s body and
soul; he drew out his thin legs from between the sheets; and sitting on
the edge of the bed, he wept.

As first his sweat, so now his tears washed his face and mingled with
the dust of the railway carriage; they welled up--silently,
uninterruptedly, in a slow and steady stream, coming from his inmost
depths, as from a hidden spring. He thought of Arnica, of Blafaphas,
alas! Ah! if they could see him now! Never again would he dare to take
his place beside them. Then he thought of his august mission, for ever
compromised; he groaned below his breath:

“It’s over! I’m no longer worthy! Oh! it’s over! It’s all over!”

The strange sounds of his sobbing and sighing had in the meantime
awakened Carola. There he was, kneeling now, at the foot of the bed,
hammering on his weakly chest with little blows of his fist; and Carola,
lost in amazement, heard him repeat, as his teeth chattered and his sobs
shook him:

“Save us! Save us! The Church is crumbling!”

At last, unable to contain herself any longer:

“You poor old dear, what’s wrong with you? Have you gone crazy?”

He turned towards her:

“Please, Madame Carola, leave me. I must--I absolutely must be alone.
I’ll see you to-morrow morning.”

Then, as after all it was only himself that he blamed, he kissed her
gently on the shoulder:

“Ah! you don’t know what a dreadful thing we’ve done. No, no! You don’t
know. You can never know.”


III

The swindling concern that went under the pompous name of _Crusade for
the Deliverance of the Pope_, extended its shady ramifications through
more than one of the French departments; Protos, the false monk of
Virmontal, was not its only agent, nor the Comtesse de Saint-Prix its
only victim. All its victims, however, were not equally accommodating,
even if all the agents proved equally dexterous. Even Protos, Lafcadio’s
old school-mate, was obliged, after this exploit of his, to keep the
sharpest possible look-out; he lived in continual apprehension that the
clergy (the real clergy) would get wind of the affair, and expended as
much ingenuity in covering his rear as in pushing his attack; but his
versatility was great, and, moreover, he was admirably seconded; from
one end to the other of the band (which went by the name of the
Millipede) there reigned extraordinary harmony and discipline.

Protos was informed that same evening by Baptistin of the stranger’s
arrival, and no little alarmed at hearing that he came from Pau, he
hurried off at seven o’clock the next morning to see Carola. She was
still in bed.

The information which he gathered from her, the confused account that
she gave of the events of the previous night, the anguish of the
_pilgrim_ (this was what she called Amédée), his protestations, his
tears, left no further doubt in his mind. Decidedly his Pau preachifying
had brought forth fruit--but not precisely the kind of fruit which
Protos might have wished for; he would have to keep an eye on this
simple-minded crusader, whose clumsy blunderings might give the whole
show away....

“Come! let me pass,” said he abruptly to Carola.

This expression might seem peculiar, because Carola was lying in bed;
but Protos was never one to be stopped by the peculiar. He put one knee
on the bed, passed the other over the woman’s body and pirouetted so
cleverly that, with a slight push of the bed, he found himself between
it and the wall. Carola was no doubt accustomed to this performance, for
she asked simply:

“What are you going to do?”

“Make up as a _curé_,” answered Protos, no less simply.

“Will you come back this way?”

Protos hesitated a moment, and then:

“You’re right; it’s more natural.”

So saying, he stooped and touched the spring of a secret door, which
was concealed in the thickness of the wall and was so low that the bed
hid it completely. Just as he was passing through the door, Carola
seized him by the shoulder.

“Listen,” she said with a kind of gravity, “you’re not to hurt this one.
I won’t have it.”

“I tell you I’m going to make up as a _curé_.”

As soon as he had disappeared, Carola got up and began to dress.

I cannot exactly tell what to think of Carola Venitequa. This
exclamation of hers leads me to suppose that her heart at that time was
not altogether fundamentally corrupt. Thus sometimes, in the very midst
of abjection, the strangest delicacies of feelings suddenly reveal
themselves, just as an azure tinted flower will grow in the middle of a
dung-heap. Essentially submissive and devoted, Carola, like so many
other women, had need of guidance. When Lafcadio had abandoned her, she
had immediately rushed off to find her old lover, Protos--out of
spite--out of self-assertion--to revenge herself. She had once more gone
through hard times--and Protos had no sooner recovered her than he had
once more made her his tool. For Protos liked being master.

Another man than Protos might have raised, rehabilitated this woman. But
first of all, he must have had the wish to. Protos, on the contrary,
seemed bent on degrading her. We have seen what shameful services the
ruffian demanded of her; it is true that she apparently submitted to
them without much reluctance; but the first impulses of a soul in revolt
against the ignominy of its lot, often pass unperceived by that very
soul itself. It is only in the light of love that the secret kicking
against the pricks is revealed. Was Carola falling in love with Amédée?
It would be rash to affirm it; but, corrupt as she was, she had been
touched to emotion by the contact of his purity, and the exclamation
which I have recorded came indubitably from her heart.

Protos returned. He had not changed his dress. He carried in his hand a
bundle of clothes, which he put down on a chair.

“Well! and now what?” she asked.

“I’ve reflected. I must first go round to the post and look at his
letters. I won’t change till this afternoon. Pass me your
looking-glass.”

He went to the window, and bending towards his reflection in the glass,
he fastened to his lip a pair of short brown moustaches, a trifle
lighter than his hair.

“Call Baptistin.”

Carola had finished dressing. She went to the door and pulled a string
hanging near it.

“I’ve already told you I can’t bear to see you in those sleeve-links.
They attract attention.”

“You know very well who gave them to me.”

“Precisely.”

“You aren’t jealous, are you?”

“Silly fool!”

At this moment Baptistin knocked at the door and came in.

“Here! Try and get up in the world a peg or two,” said Protos, pointing
to a coat, collar and tie, which were lying on the chair and which he
had brought back with him from his expedition to the other side of the
wall. “You’re to keep your client company in his walks abroad. I shan’t
take him off your hands till this evening. Until then, don’t lose sight
of him.”

       *       *       *       *       *

It was to S. Luigi dei Francesche that Amédée went to confess, in
preference to St. Peter’s, whose enormousness overwhelmed him. Baptistin
guided him there, and afterwards led him to the post office. As was to
be expected, the Millipede had confederates there too. Baptistin had
learnt Amédée’s name by means of the little visiting-card which was
nailed on to the top of his portmanteau, and had informed Protos, who
had no difficulty in getting an obliging employé to hand him over a
letter of Arnica’s--and no scruple in reading it.

“It’s curious!” cried Fleurissoire, when an hour later he came in his
turn to ask for his letters. “It’s curious! The envelope looks as if it
had been opened.”

“That often happens here,” said Baptistin phlegmatically.

Fortunately the prudent Arnica had ventured only on the most discreet of
allusions. The letter, besides, was very short; she simply recommended
Amédée, on the advice of Father Mure, to go to Naples and see Cardinal
San-Felice S.B. “before attempting to do anything.” Her expressions were
as vague as could well be desired and in consequence as little
compromising.


IV

When he found himself in front of the Castle of St. Angelo, Fleurissoire
was filled with bitter disappointment. The huge mass of building rose
from the middle of an inner court-yard, access to which was forbidden
to the public, and into which only such visitors as were provided with
cards were allowed to enter. It was even specified that they must be
accompanied by one of the guardians.

These excessive precautions, to be sure, confirmed Amédée’s suspicions,
but they also enabled him to estimate the extravagant difficulty of his
task. Fleurissoire then, having at last got rid of Baptistin, was
wandering up and down the quay, which was almost deserted at that hour
of the evening, and alongside the outer wall which defends the approach
to the castle. Backwards and forwards in front of the drawbridge, he
passed and repassed, with gloomy and despondent thoughts; then he would
retreat once more to the bank of the Tiber and endeavour from there to
get a better view of the building over the top of the first enclosure.

He had not hitherto paid any particular attention to a priest (there are
so many of them in Rome) who was sitting on a bench not far from there,
and who, though apparently plunged in his breviary, had been observing
him for some time past. The worthy ecclesiastic had long and abundant
locks of silver, and the freshness of his youthful complexion--the sure
sign of purity of life--contrasted curiously with that apanage of old
age. From the face alone one would have recognised a priest, and from
that peculiarly respectable something which distinguishes him--a French
priest. As Fleurissoire was about to pass by the bench for the third
time, the _abbé_ suddenly rose, came towards him, and in a voice which
had in it something of a sob:

“What!” he said, “I am not the only one! You too are seeking him!”

So saying, he hid his face in his hands and the sobs which he had been
too long controlling burst forth. Then suddenly recovering himself:

“Imprudent! Imprudent that I am! Hide your tears! Stifle your sighs!”
... Then, seizing Amédée by the arm: “We must not stay here, Sir. We are
observed. The emotion I am unable to master has been remarked already.”

Amédée by this time was following him in a state of stupefaction.

“But how,” he at last managed to ask, “how could you guess what I am
here for?”

“Pray Heaven that no one else has been permitted to suspect it! But how
could your anxious face, your sorrowful looks, as you examined this
spot, escape the notice of one who has haunted it day and night for the
last three weeks? Alas! my dear sir, as soon as I saw you, some
presentiment, some warning from on high, told me that a sister soul....
Hush! Someone is coming. For Heaven’s sake, pretend complete unconcern.”

A man carrying vegetables was coming along the quay from the opposite
direction. Immediately, without changing his tone of voice, but speaking
in a slightly more animated manner, and as if he were continuing a
sentence:

“And that is why Virginia cigars, which some smokers appreciate so
highly, can be lighted only at the flame of a candle, after you have
removed the thin straw, that goes through the middle of them, and whose
object is to keep open a little channel in which the smoke can circulate
freely. A Virginia that doesn’t draw well is fit for nothing but to be
thrown away. I have seen smokers who are particular as to what they
smoke, throw away as many as six, my dear sir, before finding one that
suits them....”

And as soon as the man had passed them:

“Did you see how he looked at us? It was essential to put him off the
scent.”

“What!” cried Fleurissoire, flabbergasted, “is it possible that a common
market gardener can be one of the persons of whom we must beware?”

“I cannot certify that it is so, sir, but I imagine it. The
neighbourhood of this castle is watched with particular care; agents of
a special police are continually patrolling it. In order not to arouse
suspicion, they assume the most varied disguises. The people we have to
deal with are so clever--so clever! And we so credulous, so naturally
confiding! But if I were to tell you, sir, that I was within an ace of
ruining everything simply because I gave my modest luggage to an
ordinary-looking facchino to carry from the station to the lodging where
I am staying! He spoke French, and though I have spoken Italian fluently
ever since I was a child ... you yourself, I am persuaded, would have
felt the same emotion.... I couldn’t help giving way to it when I heard
someone speaking my mother tongue in a foreign land.... Well! This
facchino....”

“Was he one of them?”

“He was one of them. I was able to make practically sure of it.
Fortunately I had said very little.”

“You fill me with alarm,” said Fleurissoire; “the same thing happened to
me the evening I arrived--yesterday, that is--I fell in with a guide to
whom I entrusted my portmanteau, and who talked French.”

“Good heavens!” cried the _curé_, struck with terror; “could his name
have been Baptistin?”

“Baptistin! That was it!” wailed Amédée, who felt his knees giving way
beneath him.

“Unhappy man! What did you say to him?” The _curé_ pressed his arm.

“Nothing that I can remember.”

“Think! Think! Try to remember, for Heaven’s sake!”

“No, really!” stammered Amédée, terrified; “I don’t think I said
anything to him.”

“What did you let out?”

“No, nothing, I assure you. But you do well to warn me.”

“What hotel did he take you to?”

“I’m not in a hotel. I’m in private lodgings.”

“God save us! But you must be somewhere.”

“Oh, I’m in a little street which you certainly don’t know,” stuttered
Fleurissoire, in great confusion. “It’s of no consequence. I won’t stay
on there.”

“Be very careful! If you leave suddenly, it’ll look as if you suspected
something.”

“Yes, perhaps it will. You’re right. I had better not leave at once.”

“How I thank a merciful Heaven that you arrived in Rome to-day! One day
later and I should have missed you! To-morrow--no later than
to-morrow--I’m obliged to leave for Naples in order to see a saintly and
important personage, who is secretly devoting himself to the cause.”

“Could it be the Cardinal San-Felice?” asked Fleurissoire, trembling
with emotion.

The _curé_ took a step or two back in amazement:

“How did you know?” Then drawing nearer: “But why should I be
astonished? He is the only person in Naples who is in the secret.”

“Do you ... know him?”

“Do I know him? Alas! my dear sir, it is to him I owe.... But no matter!
Were you thinking of going to see him?”

“I suppose so; if I must.”

“He is the best of men....” With a rapid whisk of his hand, he wiped the
corner of his eye. “You know where to find him, of course?”

“I suppose anyone could tell me. Everyone knows him in Naples.”

“Naturally! But I don’t suppose you are going to inform all Naples of
your visit. Surely, you can’t have been told of his participation in ...
you know what, and perhaps entrusted with some message for him, without
having been instructed at the same time how to gain access to him.”

“Pardon me,” said Fleurissoire timidly, for Arnica had given him no such
instructions.

“What! were you meaning to go and see him straight off--in the
archbishop’s palace, perhaps!--and speak to him point-blank?”

“I confess that....”

“But are you aware, sir,” went on the other severely, “are you aware
that you run the risk of getting _him_ imprisoned too?”

He seemed so deeply vexed that Fleurissoire did not dare to speak.

“So sacred a cause confided to such imprudent hands!” murmured Protos,
and he took the end of a rosary out of his pocket, then put it back
again, then crossed himself feverishly; then turning to his companion:

“Pray tell me, sir, who asked you to concern yourself with this matter.
Whose instructions are you obeying?”

“Forgive me, Monsieur l’abbé,” said Fleurissoire in some confusion, “I
was given no instructions by anyone. I am just a poor distraught soul
seeking on my own behalf.”

These humble words disarmed the _curé_; he held out his hand to
Fleurissoire:

“I spoke to you roughly.... But such dangers surround us.” Then, after a
short hesitation:

“Look here! Will you come with me to-morrow? We will go and see my
friend together....” and raising his eyes to Heaven: “Yes, I dare to
call him my friend,” he repeated in a heartfelt voice. “Let’s sit down
for a minute on this bench. I will write him a line which we will both
sign, to give him notice of our visit. If it is posted before six
o’clock (eighteen o’clock, as they say here), he will get it to-morrow
morning in time for him to be ready to receive us by twelve; we might
even, I dare say, have lunch with him.”

They sat down. Protos took a note-book from his pocket, and under
Amédée’s haggard eyes began on a virgin sheet as follows:

“Dear old cock....”

Then, seeing the other’s stupefaction, he smiled very calmly:

“So, it’s the Cardinal you’d have addressed if you’d had your way?”

After that he became more amicable and consented to explain things to
Amédée: once a week the Cardinal San-Felice was in the habit of leaving
the archbishop’s palace in the dress of a simple _abbé_; he became plain
chaplain Bardolotti and made his way to a modest villa on the slopes of
Mount Vomero, where he received a few intimate friends, and the secret
letters which the initiated addressed him under his assumed name. But
even in this vulgar disguise, he could feel no security--he could not be
sure that his letters were not opened in the post, and begged therefore
that nothing of any significance should be said in any letter and that
the tone of a letter should in no way suggest his Eminence, or have in
it the slightest trace of respect.

Now that he was let into the secret, Amédée smiled in his turn.

“‘Dear old cock’.... Let me think! What shall we say to the dear old
cock?” joked the _abbé_, hesitating with pencil in hand. “Ah!... ‘I’ve
got a funny old chap in tow!’ (Yes, yes! It’s all right! I know the kind
of style.) ‘I’ll bring him along, so dig out a bottle or two of
Falernian and to-morrow we three will have a party.’ ... Here! you sign
too.”

“Perhaps I’d better not sign my own name.”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter about yours,” returned Protos, and after the name
of Amédée Fleurissoire he wrote the word _Cave_.[G]

“Oh, that’s very clever!”

“What! are you astonished at my signing the name _Cave_? Your head is
full of nothing but the Vatican _Cave_. You must know, my good Monsieur
Fleurissoire, that _Cave_ is a Latin word too, and that it means
BEWARE!”

All this was said in so potent and so strange a tone that poor Amédée
felt a cold shiver run down his spine. It lasted only a second; Father
Cave had already recovered his affability when he handed him the
envelope on which he had just inscribed the Cardinal’s apocryphal
address.

“Will you post it yourself? It’s more prudent; _curés’_ letters are
opened. And now we’d better part; we mustn’t be seen together any
longer. Let’s agree to meet to-morrow morning in the train that leaves
for Naples at seven-thirty. Third class of course. I shall not be in
this dress, naturally. What an idea! You must look out for just an
ordinary Calabrian peasant. (I don’t want to have to cut my hair.)
Good-bye! Good-bye!”

He went off, making little signs with his hand.

“Thanks be to Heaven that I met that excellent _abbé_!” murmured
Fleurissoire as he returned homewards. “What should I have done without
him?”

And Protos murmured as he went:

“You shall have a jolly good dose of your Cardinal, my boy!... Why, if
he had been left to himself, I’m hanged if he wouldn’t have gone to see
the _real_ one.”


V

As Fleurissoire complained of great fatigue, Carola had allowed him to
sleep that night notwithstanding the interest she took in him and the
tender compassion she was thrown into when he confessed his ignorance in
the matter of love ... sleep, that is, as much as he was able for the
intolerable itching of the bites--fleas’ as well as mosquitoes’--which
covered his whole body.

“You oughtn’t to scratch like that, dearie,” she said to him the next
morning, “you only irritate it. Oh, how inflamed this one is!” and she
touched the spot on his chin. Then as he was getting ready to go out:
“Here! wear these in remembrance of me.” And she fastened the grotesque
trinkets which Protos had objected to her wearing, into the _pilgrim’s_
cuffs. Amédée promised to come back the same evening, or at latest the
next morning.

“You’ll swear that you’ll not hurt him?” repeated Carola a moment later
to Protos, who had come through the secret door already disguised; and
as he was late because he had waited for Fleurissoire to leave before
showing himself, he was obliged to take a carriage to the station.

In his new aspect, with his open shirt, his brown breeches, his sandals,
laced over his blue stockings, his short pipe and his tan-coloured hat
with its small flat brim, it must be admitted that he looked far more
like a regular Abruzzi brigand than like a _curé_. Fleurissoire, who was
walking up and down the platform waiting for him, hesitated to recognise
the individual who, like St. Peter Martyr, with a finger on his lips,
passed by him without seeming to see him and disappeared into a carriage
at the head of the train. But after a moment he reappeared at the door
of the carriage, and looking in Amédée’s direction with one eye half
shut, he made him a surreptitious sign with his hand to come up; and as
Amédée was about to get in:

“Please see whether there’s anyone next door,” whispered Protos.

No one; and their compartment was the last in the carriage.

“I was following you in the street,” went on Protos; “but I wouldn’t
speak to you for fear that we might be seen together.”

“How is it that I didn’t see you?” asked Fleurissoire. “I turned round a
dozen times to make sure that I wasn’t being followed. Your conversation
yesterday filled me with such terror that I see nothing but spies
everywhere.”

“Yes, you show that you do only too clearly. Do you think it’s natural
to turn round every twenty paces?”

“What? Really? Do I look ...?”

“Suspicious. Alas! That’s the word--suspicious. It’s the most
compromising look you can have.”

“And yet I didn’t even discover that you were following me! On the other
hand, I see something disquieting in the appearance of everyone I pass
in the street. It alarms me if they look at me, and if they don’t look
at me they seem as if they were pretending not to see me. I didn’t
realise till to-day how rarely people’s presence in the street is
justifiable. There aren’t more than four out of twelve whose occupation
is obvious. Ah! You have given me food for thought, and no mistake! For
a naturally credulous soul like mine suspicion is not easy; it’s an
apprenticeship....”

“Pooh! You’ll get accustomed to it--quickly too; you’ll see; in a short
time it’ll become a habit--a habit, alas! Which I’ve been obliged to
adopt myself.... The main thing is to look cheerful all the time. Ah! A
word to the wise! When you’re afraid you’re being followed, don’t turn
round; just merely drop your stick or your umbrella (according to the
weather) or your handkerchief, and as you pick it up--whatever it may
be--while your head is down, look between your legs behind you, in a
natural kind of way. I advise you to practise. But tell me. What do you
think of me in this costume? I’m afraid the _curé_ may show through in
places.”

“Don’t worry,” said Fleurissoire candidly; “no one but I, I’m sure,
could see what you are.” Then, looking him up and down benevolently,
with his head a little on one side: “Evidently, when I examine you
carefully, I can see a slight touch of the ecclesiastic behind your
disguise--I can distinguish beneath the joviality of your voice the
sickening anxiety which is tormenting us both. But what self-control you
must have to let it show so little! As for me, I have still a great deal
to learn, it’s clear. Your advice....”

“What curious sleeve-links you have!” interrupted Protos, amused at
seeing Carola’s links on Fleurissoire.

“They’re a present,” he said, blushing.

The heat was sweltering. Protos was looking out of the window; “Monte
Cassino,” he said; “can you see the celebrated convent up there?”

“Yes, I see it,” said Fleurissoire absently.

“You don’t care much for scenery, then?”

“Yes, yes, I do care for it! But how can I take an interest in anything
as long as I’m so uneasy? It’s the same at Rome with the sights. I’ve
seen nothing; I’ve not tried to see anything.”

“How well I understand you!” said Protos. “I’m like that too; I told you
that ever since I’ve been in Rome I’ve spent the whole of my time
between the Vatican and the Castle of St. Angelo.”

“It’s a pity, but _you_ know Rome already.”

In this way our travellers chatted.

At Caserta they got down, and went each on his own account to the
buffet, to get a sandwich or two and a drink.

“At Naples too,” said Protos, “when we get near his villa we will part
company, if you please. You must follow me at a distance; I shall want a
little time first, especially if he isn’t alone, to explain who you are
and the object of your visit, so you mustn’t come in till a quarter of
an hour after me.”

“I’ll take the opportunity of getting shaved. I hadn’t time this
morning.”

A tram took them as far as the Piazza Dante.

“Let’s part here,” said Protos. “It’s still rather a long way off, but
it’s better so. Walk about fifty paces behind me; and don’t look at me
the whole time as if you were afraid of losing me; and don’t turn round
either; you would get yourself followed. Look cheerful.”

He started off in front. Fleurissoire followed with downcast eyes. The
street was narrow and steep; the sun blazed; sweating, hustling,
effervescing, the crowd clamoured and gesticulated and sang, while
Fleurissoire panted bewildered through their midst. A number of
half-naked children were dancing in front of a barrel organ; a kind of
mountebank was getting up an impromptu lottery at two-sous the ticket,
for a fat plucked turkey, which he was holding up at the end of a stick;
Protos, to seem more natural, took a ticket as he passed, and
disappeared into the crowd; Fleurissoire, unable to advance, thought he
had lost him for good; then, after he had managed to get through the
obstruction, he caught sight of him again, walking briskly up the hill,
with the turkey under his arm.

At last the houses became smaller and further apart, fewer people were
to be seen, and Protos slackened his pace. He stopped in front of a
barber’s shop and, turning to Fleurissoire, winked his eye; then, twenty
paces further on, stopped again in front of a little low door and rang
the bell.

The barber’s window was not particularly attractive but Father Cave
doubtless had his reasons for pointing it out; moreover, Fleurissoire
would have had to go a long way back before finding another, which would
no doubt have been equally uninviting. The door was left open on account
of the excessive heat; a wide-meshed curtain kept the flies out and let
the air in; one had to raise it to go in; he entered.

Truly, a skilful fellow, this barber! After soaping Amédée’s chin, he
cautiously pushed aside the lather with a corner of his towel and
brought to light the fiery pimple, which his nervous client pointed out
to him. Oh, somnolence! Oh, warmth and drowsiness of the quiet little
shop! Amédée, half lying in the leather arm-chair, with his head leaning
comfortably back, let himself drift. Ah! just for one short moment to
forget! To think no more of the Pope and the mosquitoes and Carola! To
imagine himself back to Pau with Arnica; to imagine himself
somewhere--anywhere else--no longer to know where he was!... He shut his
eyes, then half opening them, saw as in a dream on the wall opposite
him, a woman with streaming hair issuing out of the Bay of Naples, and
bringing up from the watery depths, together with a voluptuous sensation
of coolness, a glittering bottle of hair-restorer. Above this
advertisement were arranged, on a marble slab, more bottles, a stick of
cosmetic and a powder puff, a pair of tweezers, a comb, a lancet, a pot
of ointment, a glass jar in which a few leeches were indolently
floating, a second glass jar which contained the long ribbon of a
tapeworm and lately a third jar which was without a lid, half full of
some gelatinous substance, and had pasted on its crystalline surface a
label, inscribed by hand, in large fancy capitals, with the word
ANTISEPTIC.

The barber now, in order to bring his work to perfection, spread afresh
an unctuous lather over the already shaven chin, and with the gleaming
edge of a second rasor, which he sharpened on the palm of his damp hand,
he set about his final polishing. Amédée thought no more of his
appointment, thought no more of leaving, began to doze off.... It was
just at this moment that there came into the shop a loud-voiced
Sicilian, rending the peacefulness with his clatter; it was then that
the barber, plunging at once into talk, began to shave with a less
attentive hand, and with a sudden sweep of his blade--pop! the pimple
was beheaded!

Amédée gave a cry and was putting his hand to the cut, from which a drop
of blood came oozing:

“_Niente! Niente!_” said the barber, holding back his arm; then, taking
a piece of discoloured cotton-wool from the back of the drawer, he
lavishly dipped it into the ANTISEPTIC and applied it to the place.

Without caring now whether the passers-by turned to look at him, Amédée
fled down the hill towards the town--where else but to the first
druggist’s he could find?

He showed his hurt to the man of healing--a mouldy, greenish,
unhealthy-looking old fellow, who smiled and, taking a little round of
sticking-plaster out of a box, passed his broad tongue over it and....

Flinging out of the shop, Fleurissoire spat with disgust, tore off the
slimy plaster and, pressing his pimple between two fingers, made it
bleed as much as he could. Then, having wetted his handkerchief with
saliva--his own this time--he rubbed the place. Then, looking at his
watch, he was seized with panic, rushed up the street at a run, and
arrived in front of the Cardinal’s door, perspiring, panting, bleeding,
red in the face, and a quarter of an hour late.


VI

Protos welcomed him with a finger on his lips.

“As long as the servants are there, nothing must be said to arouse
suspicion. They all speak French. Not a word--not a sign to betray us!
Don’t go plastering him with ‘Cardinals,’ whatever you do. Your host is
Ciro Bardolotti, the chaplain. As for me, I’m not ‘Father Cave’ but
plain Cave. Understand?” And abruptly changing his tone and smacking him
on the shoulder, he explained in a loud voice: “Here he is, by Jove!
It’s Amédée! Well, old man, you’ve been a fine time over your shave! In
another moment or two, per _Baccho_, we should have sat down without
you. The turkey that turneth on the spit beginneth to glow like the
setting sun!” Then, in a whisper: “Ah, my dear sir, how painful it is to
play a part! My heart is wrung....” Then in a loud voice: “What do I
see? A cut? Thou bleedest, my lad. Run, Dorino, to the barn and fetch a
cobweb--a sovereign remedy for wounds....”

Thus clowning it, he pushed Fleurissoire across the lobby, towards a
terrace garden, where a table lay spread under a trellis of vine.

“My dear Bardolotti, allow me to introduce my cousin, Monsieur de la
Fleurissoire. He’s a devil of a fellow, as I told you.”

“I bid you welcome, sir guest,” said Bardolotti with a flourish, but
without rising from the arm-chair in which he was sitting; then,
pointing to his bare feet, which were plunged in a tub of clear water:

“These pedal ablutions improve my appetite and draw the blood from my
head.”

He was a funny little roundabout man, whose smooth face gave no
indication of age or sex. He was dressed in alpaca; there was nothing
about him to denote a high dignitary; one would have had to be
exceedingly perspicacious, or else in the secret--like Fleurissoire--to
have discovered a discreet touch of cardinalesque unction beneath the
joviality of his manners. He was leaning sideways on the table, fanning
himself languidly with a kind of cocked hat made out of a sheet of
newspaper.

“Er ... er ... highly flattered ... er ... er ... what a charming
garden!” stuttered Fleurissoire, finding speech and silence equally
embarrassing.

“Soaked enough!” cried the Cardinal. “Hullo, someone! Take away this
tub! Assunta!”

A young maidservant came running up, plump and debonair; she took up the
tub and emptied it over a flower-bed; her breasts were bursting out of
her stays and all a-quiver beneath the muslin of her bodice; she stayed
laughing and lingering beside Protos, and the gleam of her bare arms
made Fleurissoire uncomfortable. Dorino put the fiaschi down on the
table, which had no cloth on it; and the sun, streaming joyously through
the wreaths of vine, set its frolic touch of light and shade on the
dishes.

“We don’t stand upon ceremony here,” said Bardolotti, and he put on the
paper hat. “You take my meaning, my dear sir?”

In a commanding tone, emphasising the syllables and beating with his
fist on the table, Father Cave repeated in his turn:

“We don’t stand upon ceremony here!”

Fleurissoire gave a knowing wink. Did he take their meaning? Yes,
indeed, and there was no need for reiteration; but he racked his brains
in vain for a pregnant sentence that would say nothing and convey
everything.

“Speak! Speak!” prompted Protos. “Make a pun or two. They understand
French perfectly.”

“Come, come, sit down!” said Ciro. “My dear Cave, stick your knife into
this _pastecca_ and slice it up into Turkish crescents. Are you one of
those persons, Monsieur de la Fleurissoire, who prefer the pretentious
melons of the north--prescots--cantaloups--whatnots--to our streaming
Italian watermelons?”

“Nothing, I’m sure, could come up to this--but please allow me to
refrain; I’m feeling a bit squeamish,” said Amédée, who was still
heaving with repugnance at the recollection of the druggist.

“Well, then, some figs at any rate! Dorino has just picked them.”

“No, not any either. Excuse me.”

“That’s bad! That’s bad! Make a pun or two,” whispered Protos in his
ear. Then aloud: “We must dose that squeamish stomach of yours with a
little wine and get it ready for the turkey. Assunta, fill our worthy
guest’s glass!”

Amédée was obliged to pledge his hosts and drink more than he was
accustomed to; this, added to the heat and fatigue of the day, soon
fuddled him. He joked with less effort. Protos made him sing; his voice
was shrill but it enraptured his audience. Assunta wanted to kiss him.
And yet from the depths of his poor battered faith there rose a
sickening and undefinable distress; he laughed so as not to cry. He
admired Cave’s easy naturalness.... Who but Fleurissoire and the
Cardinal could ever have imagined that he was playing a part?
Bardolotti’s dissimulation and self-possession were for that matter, no
whit inferior to the _abbé’s_, and he laughed and applauded and lewdly
jostled Dorino, when Cave, upsetting Assunta in his arms, nuzzled her
with his face; and then, as Fleurissoire, with a bursting heart, bent
towards Cave and murmured: “How you must be suffering!” Cave seized his
hand behind Assunta’s back and pressed it silently, his head turned
aside and his eyes cast up to Heaven.

Then, rising abruptly, Cave clapped his hands:

“Now then, you must leave us! No, you can clear away later. Be off with
you! Via! Via!”

He went to make certain that Dorino and Assunta were not eavesdropping,
and came back with a face turned suddenly long and grave, while the
Cardinal, passing his hand over his countenance, effaced in an instant
all its profane and factitious gaiety.

“You see, Monsieur de la Fleurissoire, you see, my son, to what we are
reduced! Oh, this acting! this shameful acting!”

“It makes me turn in loathing,” added Protos, “from even the most
innocent joys--from the purest gaiety.”

“God will count it to your credit, my poor dear Father Cave,” went on
the Cardinal, turning towards Protos; “God will reward you for helping
me to drain this cup,” and, by way of symbol, he tossed off the wine
which remained in his half-emptied glass, while the most agonised
disgust was painted on his features.

“What!” cried Fleurissoire, bending forward, “is it possible that even
in this retreat and under this borrowed habit, your Eminence....”

“My son, call me plain Monsieur.”

“Forgive me! I thought in private....”

“Even when I am alone I tremble.”

“Can you not choose your servants?”

“They are chosen for me; and those two you have seen....”

“Ah! if I were to tell him,” said Protos, “that they have gone straight
off to report our most trifling words to....”

“Is it possible that in the palace....”

“Hush! No big words! You’ll get us hanged. Don’t forget that it’s to the
chaplain Ciro Bardolotti that you’re speaking.”

“I am at their mercy,” wailed Ciro.

And Protos, who was sitting with his arms crossed on the table, leant
across it towards Ciro.

“And if I were to tell him,” said he, “that you are never left alone,
night or day, for a single hour!”

“Yes, whatever disguise I put on,” continued the bogus Cardinal, “I can
never be sure that some of the secret police aren’t at my heels.”

“What! Do these people here know who you are?”

“You misunderstand him,” said Protos. “You are one of the few
persons--and I say it before God--who can pride themselves on
establishing any resemblance between Cardinal San-Felice and the modest
Bardolotti. But try to understand this--their enemies are not the same!
While the Cardinal in his palace has to defend himself against the
freemasons, chaplain Bardolotti is threatened by the....”

“Jesuits!” interrupted the chaplain wildly.

“That has not yet been explained to him,” said Protos.

“Ah! If we’ve got the Jesuits against us too!” sobbed Fleurissoire. “But
who would have thought it? Are you sure?”

“Reflect a little; you will see it is quite natural. You must understand
that the Holy See’s recent policy, all made up as it is of conciliation
and compromise, is just the thing to please them and that the last
encyclicals are exactly to their taste. Perhaps they are not aware that
the Pope who promulgated them is not the _real_ one; but they would be
heart-broken if he were changed.”

“If I understand you rightly,” Fleurissoire took him up, “the Jesuits
are allied with the freemasons in this affair.”

“How do you make that out?”

“But Monsieur Bardolotti has just revealed....”

“Don’t make him say absurdities.”

“I’m sorry. I know so little about politics.”

“That is why you must believe just what you are told and no more: two
great parties are facing each other--the Lodge and the Company of Jesus;
and as we who are in the secret cannot get support from either of them
without discovering ourselves, we have them both against us.”

“What do you think of that? Eh?” asked the Cardinal.

Fleurissoire had given up thinking; he was utterly bewildered.

“Yes, they are all against us,” went on Protos; “such is always the way
when one has truth on one’s side.”

“Ah! how happy I was when I knew nothing!” wailed Fleurissoire. “Alas!
never, never more shall I be able to know nothing!” ...

“He has not yet told you all,” continued Protos, touching him gently on
the shoulder. “Prepare for something more terrible still....” Then,
leaning forward, he whispered: “In spite of every precaution, the secret
has leaked out; a certain number of sharpers are using it to make a
house-to-house collection in the departments which have a reputation for
piety; they act in the name of the Crusade and rake in money which in
reality ought to come to us.”

“How frightful!”

“Added to which,” said Bardolotti, “they throw discredit and suspicion
on us and oblige us more than ever to make use of the greatest cunning
and caution.”

“Look here! Read this!” said Protos, holding out a copy of the _Croix_
to Fleurissoire; “it’s the day before yesterday’s paper. This short
paragraph tells its own story!”

“‘We cannot too earnestly warn devout souls against certain individuals
who are going about the country disguised as ecclesiastics, and in
particular against a certain pseudo-canon who, under pretext of being
entrusted with a secret mission, shamefully abuses the credulity of the
public and actually extorts money from them for a so-called CRUSADE FOR
THE DELIVERANCE OF THE POPE. The name alone sufficiently proclaims the
absurdity of the business.’”

Fleurissoire felt the ground give way beneath his feet.

“Whom can one trust then? Shall I tell you in my turn, gentlemen, that
it is perhaps due to this very swindler--this false canon, I mean--that
I am with you to-day?”

Father Cave looked gravely at the Cardinal, then, striking his fist on
the table:

“I suspected as much!” he cried.

“Everything contributed to make me fear,” continued Fleurissoire, “that
the person who informed me of the affair was herself a victim of this
rogue’s blandishments.”

“It would not surprise me,” said Protos.

“You see now,” went on Bardolotti, “how difficult our position is,
between these sharpers on the one hand, who have stepped into our shoes,
and the police on the other, who, when they mean to catch _them_, may
very well lay hold upon _us_ instead.”

“What is one to do?” wailed Fleurissoire. “I see danger everywhere.”

“Are you surprised now at our excessive prudence?” asked Bardolotti.

“And can you fail to understand that at moments we do not hesitate to
clothe ourselves in the livery of sin and feign indulgence towards the
most culpable of pleasures?”

“Alas!” stammered Fleurissoire, “you at any rate do no more than feign,
and you only simulate sin to hide your virtues. But I....” And as the
fumes of wine and the vapours of melancholy, drunken retchings and
hiccuping sobs all beset him at once, he began--bent double in Protos’s
direction--by bringing up his lunch and then went on to tell a muddled
story of his evening with Carola and the lamented loss of his virginity.
Bardolotti and Father Cave had a hard job to prevent themselves from
bursting into laughter.

“But have you been to confession, my son?” asked the Cardinal, full of
solicitude.

“I went next morning.”

“Did the priest give you absolution?”

“Far too readily. That’s why I’m so uneasy. But how could I confide to
him that I was no ordinary pilgrim ... reveal what it was that brought
me here?... No, no! It’s all over now. It was a chosen mission that
demanded the service of a blameless life. I was the very man. And now
it’s all over! I have fallen!” Again he was shaken by sobs and as he
struck little blows on his breast, he repeated: “I’m no longer worthy!
I’m no longer worthy!...” Then he went on in a kind of chant: “Ah! you
who hear me, you who see my anguish, judge me, condemn me, punish me....
Tell me what extraordinary penance will wash away my extraordinary
guilt. What chastisement?”

Protos and Bardolotti looked at one another. The latter rose at last and
began to pat Amédée on the shoulder:

“Come, come, my son! You mustn’t let yourself go like that. Well, yes!
you have sinned, but, hang it all, you are still needed. (You’ve dirtied
yourself; here, take this napkin; rub it off.) But of course I
understand your anguish, and since you appeal to us, we will give you
the means of redeeming yourself. (You’re not doing it properly. Let me
help you.)”

“Oh, don’t trouble! Thank you! Thank you!” said Fleurissoire as
Bardolotti, scrubbing the while, went on:

“At the same time, I understand your scruples; out of respect to them, I
will begin by setting you a little task; there’s nothing conspicuous
about it, but it will give you the opportunity of atoning and be a test
of your devotion.”

“I ask nothing more.”

“Dear Father Cave, have you that little cheque about you?”

Protos pulled a paper out of the inner pocket of his shirt.

“Surrounded on all sides by enemies as we are,” went on the Cardinal,
“we sometimes find it difficult to cash the offerings which a few
generous souls send us in response to our secret solicitations. Watched
at the same time by the freemasons and the Jesuits, by the police and by
the swindlers, it would not be suitable for us to be seen presenting
cheques or money orders at the banks and post offices, where our person
might be recognised. The sharpers Father Cave was telling you about just
now have thrown such discredit on our collections!” (Protos, in the
meantime, was thrumming impatiently on the table.) “In short, here is a
modest little cheque for six thousand francs which I beg you, my son, to
cash in our stead; it is drawn on the Credito Commerciale of Rome by
the Duchess of Ponte Cavallo; though it was addressed to the archbishop,
the name of the payee has purposely been left a blank, so that it may be
cashed by the bearer. Do not scruple to sign it with your own name,
which will arouse no suspicions. Take care not to let yourself be robbed
of it or of.... What is the matter, my dear Father Cave? You seem
agitated.”

“Go on! Go on!”

“...or of the money which you will bring back to me ... let me see ...
you return to Rome to-night; you can take the six o’clock express
to-morrow evening; you will be at Naples again at ten and you will find
me waiting for you at the station. After that we will think of employing
you on some worthier errand.... No, no, my son, do not kiss my hand. Can
you not see there is no ring on it?”

Amédée had half prostrated himself at his feet. The Cardinal touched his
forehead, and Protos, taking him by the arm, shook him gently:

“Come, come! another glass before you start. I am very sorry I can’t go
back to Rome with you; but I’m kept here by all sorts of
business--besides, it’s better we shouldn’t be seen together. Good-bye!
Let me embrace you, my dear Fleurissoire. May God keep you! I thank Him
for having permitted me to know you.”

He accompanied Fleurissoire to the door, and as he was leaving:

“Ah! sir,” he said, “what do you think of the Cardinal? Is it not
distressing to see the state to which persecution has reduced such a
noble intelligence?”

Then, as he went back to the bogus Cardinal:

“You fathead! That was a bright idea of yours, wasn’t it, to get your
cheque endorsed by a silly ass who hasn’t even got a passport, and whom
I shall have to shadow?”

But Bardolotti, heavy with sleep, let his head roll upon the table,
murmuring:

“We must keep the old ’uns busy.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Protos went indoors to take off his wig and his peasant’s costume; he
appeared a little later, looking thirty years younger and dressed like a
bank clerk or a shop assistant of inferior grade. He had very little
time to catch the train he knew Fleurissoire was going to take, and he
went off without taking leave of the slumbering Bardolotti.


VII

Fleurissoire got back to Rome and the Via dei Vecchierelli that same
evening. He was extremely tired and persuaded Carola to allow him to
sleep.

The next morning, as soon as he woke, his spot, from the way it felt,
seemed to him odd; he examined it in the glass and found that a
yellowish scab had formed over the part that had been grazed; the whole
had a decidedly nasty look. As at that moment he heard Carola outside on
the landing, he called her in and begged her to examine the place. She
led Fleurissoire up to the window and at first glance assured him:

“It’s not what you think.”

To tell the truth, Amédée had not thought particularly of _it_, but
Carola’s attempt to reassure him had the contrary effect of filling him
with alarm. For, indeed, directly she asserted that it was not _it_, it
meant there was a chance that it might be. After all, was she really
certain that it wasn’t? It seemed to him quite natural that it should
be; for there was no doubt that he had sinned; he deserved that it
should be _it_; it must be _it_. A cold shudder went down his spine.

“How did you get it?” she asked.

Ah! what signified that occasional cause--the rasor’s cut or the
chemist’s spittle? The real, the root cause, the one that had earned him
this chastisement, could he with decency tell her what it was? Would she
understand him if he did? She would laugh, no doubt.... As she repeated
her question:

“It was a barber,” he said.

“You ought to put something on it.”

This solicitude swept away his last doubts; what she had said at first
was merely to reassure him; he saw himself with his face and body eaten
away by boils--an object of disgust to Arnica; his eyes filled with
tears.

“Then you think....”

“No, no, dearie, you mustn’t get into such a state; you look like a
funeral. In the first place, it would be impossible to tell it at this
stage, even if it is that.”

“It is! It is!... Oh! it serves me right! It serves me right!” he
repeated.

She was touched.

“And, besides, it never begins like that. Shall I call Madam in to tell
you so?... No? Well, then, you’d better go out a little to distract your
thoughts. Go and get a glass of Marsala.” She kept silent for a moment.
At last, unable to restrain herself any longer:

“Listen,” she broke out. “I’ve something serious to tell you. You didn’t
happen to meet a sort of _curé_ yesterday, with white hair, did you?”

“Why?” asked Fleurissoire in amazement.

“Well ...” she hesitated again; then, looking at him and seeing how pale
he was, she went on impulsively: “Well, don’t trust him. Take my word
for it, you poor lamb; he means to fleece you. I oughtn’t to tell you
so, but ... don’t you trust him.”

Amédée was getting ready to go out, not knowing whether he was on his
head or on his heels; he was already on the stairs, when she called him
back:

“And mind, if you see him again, don’t tell him that I said anything.
You’d as good as murder me.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Decidedly, life was becoming too complicated for Amédée. And, what is
more, his feet were frozen, his head burning and his ideas topsyturvy.
How was he to know where he was, if Father Cave himself turned out to be
a humbug?... Then, the Cardinal too perhaps?... But the cheque then? He
took the paper out of his pocket, felt it and was reassured by its
reality. No, no! It wasn’t possible! Carola was wrong. And then what did
she know of the mysterious interests that compelled poor Cave to play
double? It was much more likely that the whole thing was some paltry
vengeance of Baptistin’s, against whom, in fact, the _abbé_ had warned
him.... No matter! he would keep his eyes open wider than ever; he would
suspect Cave for the future just as he already suspected Baptistin; and
who knows if even Carola ...?

“And, indeed,” he said to himself, “here we have at once the
consequence and the proof of that initial vice--the collapse of the Holy
See; everything comes tottering down with that. Whom can one trust if
not the Pope? And once the corner-stone on which the Church was built
gives way, nothing else deserves to be true.”

Amédée was walking hurriedly in the direction of the post office; he was
in great hopes of finding news from home--honest, comfortable news, on
which he could at length rest his wearied confidence. The slight
mistiness of early morning and that southern profusion of light in which
everything seemed melting away into a vaporous haze--seemed losing
substance and reality--increased his dizziness; he walked as though in a
dream, doubting the solidity of the ground, of the walls--doubting the
actual existence of the people he passed--doubting, above all, his own
presence in Rome.... Then he pinched himself so as to wake from this
horrid dream and find himself again in Pau, in his own bed, with Arnica
already up and bending over him with the accustomed question on her
lips: “Have you slept well, dear?”

At the post office they recognised him and made no difficulty in giving
him another letter from his wife.

     “...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 knows nothing 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.”

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 the monsters 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 any prophet 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 are _you_ doing 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, so that 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--a _creature 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 who don’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,
with a species of ruler, gave me a little tap on the back of my neck,
which made me bow it again.”

“But at any rate, did _he_ speak 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 deserted _vicolo_, 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 the _real 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 the _vicolo_:

“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 the _real_ Julius 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 heard quite 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; I contend that self-advantage is _not_ man’s guiding
principle--that there _are_ such things as disinterested actions....”

“I should hope so,” interrupted Fleurissoire, naïvely.

“Don’t be in such a hurry, I beg. By _disinterested_ I 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--that _must_ not 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 might burn
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? _He_ is 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.”

“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 the _abbé_. 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.”




BOOK V: LAFCADIO

      “_There is only one remedy! One thing alone_
    _can cure us from being ourselves!_ ...”

      “_Yes; strictly speaking, the question is not how_
    _to get cured, but how to live._”
                     --JOSEPH CONRAD,
                                Lord Jim, p. 225.


I

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 beneath which 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 the _curé_ of
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 or aviator.... 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 imagines _what 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 such a
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!

“The _padre_ of 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
the _curé_, 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? A _stripling_[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
should like to see him again; it’s a pity he’s dead. Well, enough of
that!

“The truth is, I hoped the _curé_ would 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 and slides 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
the best 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
of the 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’ll _not_ raise 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 along beside 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!...”


II

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 and over 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 visit _that_.... 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 was so 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 he put 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 of _Julius de
Baraglioul_. “Am I going mad?” he asked himself. “What can he have had
to do with 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.”


III

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.” The _crime_! This word seemed
odd to him, to say the very least; and _criminal_ as applied to himself
totally inappropriate. He preferred _adventurer_--a word as pliable as
his beaver and as easily twisted to suit his liking.

The morning papers had not yet mentioned the _adventure_. 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 the _Corriere_ from 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:

    CRIME, SUICIDE ... OR ACCIDENT

He read the next few paragraphs, which I translate:

     Last evening in the railway station at Naples, the company’s
     servants found a man’s coat in the rack of a first-class carriage
     of the train from Rome. In the inside pocket of this coat, which
     is of a dark brown colour, was an unfastened envelope containing
     six thousand-franc notes. There were no other papers by which to
     identify the missing owner. If there has been foul play, it is
     difficult to account for the fact that such a considerable sum of
     money should have been left in the victim’s coat; it may, at any
     rate, be inferred that the motive was not robbery.

     There were no traces of a struggle to be seen in the compartment;
     but under one of the seats a man’s shirt-cuff was discovered with
     the link attached; this article was in the shape of two cats’
     heads, linked together by a small silver-gilt chain, and carved out
     of a semi-transparent quartz, known as opalescent feldspar, and
     commonly called moonstone by jewellers.

     A thorough investigation of the railway line is being made.

Lafcadio crumpled the paper up in his hand.

“What! Carola’s sleeve-links now! The old boy is a regular public
meeting-place!”

He turned the page and read in the stop-press news:

    RECENTISSIME

    DEAD BODY FOUND ON RAILWAY LINE

Without waiting to read further, Lafcadio hurried to the Grand Hotel. He
slipped his visiting-card into an envelope after adding the following
words underneath his name:

CENTER
LAFCADIO WLUIKI

     would be glad to know whether Count Julius de Baraglioul is not in
     need of a secretary.

He sent it up.

A manservant at last came to where he was waiting in the hall, led him
along various passages and ushered him in to where Julius was sitting.

His first glance showed Lafcadio a copy of the _Corriere della Sera_,
which had been thrown down in a corner of the room. On a table in the
middle a large, uncorked bottle of eau-de-Cologne was exhaling its
powerful perfume. Julius held out his arms.

“Lafcadio! My dear fellow!... How very glad I am to see you!”

His ruffled hair waved in agitated fashion on his temples; he seemed
strangely excited; in one hand he held a black spotted handkerchief,
with which he fanned himself.

“You are certainly one of the persons I least expected to see, but the
one in the world I was most wanting to talk to this evening.... Was it
Madame Carola who told you I was here?”

“What an odd question!”

“Why! as I’ve just met her.... I’m not sure, though, that she saw me.”

“Carola! Is she in Rome?”

“Didn’t you know?”

“I’ve just this minute arrived from Sicily and you are the first person
I have seen. I’ve no desire to see her.”

“I thought she was looking extremely pretty----”

“You’re not hard to please.”

“I mean, prettier than she did in Paris.”

“Exoticism, no doubt--but if you’re feeling randy....”

“Lafcadio! Such language from you to me isn’t permissible.”

Julius tried to look severe, but only succeeded in pulling a face. He
went on:

“You find me in a great state of agitation. I’m at a turning-point of my
career. My head is burning and I feel, as it were, giddy all over, as if
I were going to evaporate. I have come to Rome for a sociological
congress, and during the three days I’ve spent here I’ve been going
from surprise to surprise. Your arrival is the finishing touch.... I
don’t recognise myself any longer.”

He was striding about the room; suddenly he stopped beside the table,
seized the bottle, poured a stream of scent on to his handkerchief,
applied it like a compress to his forehead and left it there.

“My dear young friend--if you’ll allow me to call you so.... My new
book! I think I’ve got the hang of it. The way in which you spoke to me
of _On the Heights_ in Paris, makes me think that you will not find this
one uninteresting.”

His feet sketched a kind of pirouette; the handkerchief fell to the
ground. Lafcadio hastened to pick it up and, as he was stooping, he felt
Julius’s hand laid gently on his shoulder, just as once before he had
felt Juste-Agénor’s. Lafcadio smiled and raised himself.

“I’ve known you such a short time,” said Julius, “and yet this evening I
can’t help talking to you like a....”

He stopped.

“I’m listening like a brother, Monsieur de Baraglioul,” Lafcadio was
emboldened to take up the words, “--since you allow me to.”

“You see, Lafcadio, in the set which I frequent in Paris--smart people,
and literary people, and ecclesiastics and academicians--there is really
nobody I can speak to--nobody, I mean, to whom I can confide the new
preoccupations which beset me. For I must confess to you that, since our
last meeting, my point of view has completely changed.”

“So much the better,” said Lafcadio impertinently.

“You can’t imagine, because you aren’t in the trade, how an erroneous
system of ethics can hamper the free development of one’s creative
faculties. So nothing is further from my old novels than the one I am
planning now. I used to demand logic and consistency from my characters,
and in order to make quite sure of getting them, I began by demanding
them from myself. It wasn’t natural. We prefer to go deformed and
distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of
ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the
risk of warping what’s best in us.”

Lafcadio continued to smile as he waited for what was to come next,
amused to recognise, at this remove, the effect of his first remarks.

“How shall I put it, Lafcadio? For the first time I see before me a free
field.... Can you understand what that means? A free field!... I say to
myself that it always has been, always will be free, and that
up till now the only things to hinder me have been impure
considerations--questions of a successful career, of public opinion--the
poet’s continual vain hope of reward at the hands of ungrateful judges.
Henceforth I hope for nothing--except from myself--henceforth I hope for
everything from myself--I hope for everything from the man who is
sincere--everything and anything! For now I feel in myself the strangest
possibilities. And as it’s only on paper, I shall boldly let myself go.
We shall see! We shall see!”

He took a deep breath, flung himself back sideways with one
shoulder-blade raised, almost as if a wing were already beginning to
sprout, and as if he were stifling with the weight of fresh
perplexities. He went on incoherently in a lower voice:

“And since the gentlemen of the Academy shut the door in my face, I’ll
give them good cause for it; for they had none--no cause whatever.”

His voice suddenly turned shrill as he emphasised the last words; then
he went on more calmly:

“Well, then, this is what I have imagined.... Are you listening?”

“With my whole soul,” said Lafcadio, still laughing.

“And do you follow me?”

“To the devil himself!”

Julius again soused his handkerchief and sat down in an arm-chair;
Lafcadio sat himself astride on a chair opposite him.

“The hero is to be a young man whom I wish to make a criminal.”

“I see no difficulty in that.”

“Hum! hum!” said Julius, who was not to be done out of his difficulty.

“But since you’re a novelist, once you set about imagining, what’s to
prevent you imagining things just as you choose?”

“The stranger the things I imagine, the more necessary it is to find
motives and explanations for them.”

“It’s easy enough to find motives for crime.”

“No doubt ... but that’s exactly what I don’t want to do. I don’t want a
motive for the crime--all I want is an explanation of the criminal. Yes!
I mean to lead him into committing a crime gratuitously--into wanting to
commit a crime without any motive at all.”

Lafcadio began to prick up his ears.

“We will take him as a mere youth. I mean him to show the elegance of
his nature by this--that he acts almost entirely in play, and as a
matter of course prefers his pleasure to his interest.”

“Rather unusual, I should say,” ventured Lafcadio.

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Julius, enchanted. “Then, we must add that he
takes pleasure in self-control.”

“To the point of dissimulation.”

“We’ll endow him, then, with the love of risk.”

“Bravo!” exclaimed Lafcadio, more and more amused. “If, added to that,
he is a fellow who can lend an ear to the demon of curiosity, I think
your pupil will be done to a turn.”

Progressing in this way by leaps and bounds, each in turn overtaking and
overtaken by the other, one would have likened them to two schoolboys
playing leap-frog.

_Julius._ First of all, I imagine him training himself. He is an adept
at committing all sorts of petty thefts.

_Lafcadio._ I’ve often wondered why more aren’t committed. It’s true
that the opportunity of committing them usually occurs only to people
who are free from want and without any particular hankerings.

_Julius._ Free from want! Yes, I told you so. But the only opportunities
that tempt him are the ones that demand some skill--some cunning.

_Lafcadio._ And which run him, no doubt, into some danger.

_Julius._ I said that he enjoys risk. But swindling is odious to him; he
doesn’t want to appropriate things, but finds it amusing to displace
them surreptitiously. He’s as clever at it as a conjurer.

_Lafcadio._ And, besides, he’s encouraged by impunity.

_Julius._ Yes, but sometimes vexed by it too. If he isn’t caught, it
must be because the job he set himself was too easy.

_Lafcadio._ He eggs himself on to take greater risks.

_Julius._ I make him reason this way....

_Lafcadio._ Do you really think he reasons?

_Julius_ (continuing). The author of a crime is always found out by the
need he had to commit it.

_Lafcadio._ We said that he was very clever.

_Julius._ Yes, and all the cleverer because he acts with perfect
coolness. Just think! A crime that has no motive either of passion or
need! His very reason for committing the crime is just to commit it
without any reason.

_Lafcadio._ _You_ reason about his crime--_he_ merely commits it.

_Julius._ There is no reason that a man who commits a crime without
reason should be considered a criminal.

_Lafcadio._ You’re too subtle. You have carried him to such a pitch that
you have made him what they call “a free man.”

_Julius._ At the mercy of the first opportunity.

_Lafcadio._ I’m longing to see him at work. What in the world are you
going to offer him?

_Julius._ Well, I was still hesitating. Yes, up till this very evening I
was hesitating, and then, this very evening, the latest edition of the
newspaper brought me just exactly the example I was in need of. A
providential stroke! Frightful! Only think of it! My brother-in-law has
just been murdered!

_Lafcadio._ What! the old fellow in the railway carriage was....

_Julius._ He was Amédée Fleurissoire. I had just lent him my ticket and
seen him off at the station. An hour before starting he had taken six
thousand francs out of the bank, and as he was carrying them on his
person, he was a little bit anxious as he left me; he had fancies--more
or less gloomy fancies--presentiments. Well, in the train....

But you’ve seen the paper?

_Lafcadio._ Only the head-lines.

_Julius._ Listen! I’ll read it to you. (He unfolded the _Corriere_.)
I’ll translate as I go along.

     “This afternoon, in the course of a thorough investigation of the
     line between Rome and Naples, the police discovered the body of a
     man lying in the dry bed of the Volturno, about five kilometers
     from Capua--no doubt the unfortunate owner of the coat that was
     found last night in a railway carriage. The body is that of a man
     of about fifty years of age. [He looked older than he really was.]
     No papers were on him which could give any clue to his identity.
     [Thank goodness! That’ll give me time to breathe, at any rate.] He
     had apparently been flung out of the railway carriage with
     sufficient violence to clear the parapet of the bridge, which is
     being repaired at this point and has been replaced by a wooden
     railing. [What a style!] The height of the bridge above the river
     is about fifteen metres. Death must have been caused by the fall,
     as the body bears no trace of other injuries. The man was in his
     shirt-sleeves; on his right wrist was a cuff similar to the one
     picked up in the railway carriage, but in this case the sleeve-link
     is missing. [What’s the matter?]”

Julius stopped. Lafcadio had not been able to suppress a start, for the
idea flashed upon him that the sleeve-link had been removed since the
committing of the crime--Julius went on:

     “His left hand was found still clutching a soft felt hat....”

“Soft felt indeed! The barbarians!” murmured Lafcadio.

Julius raised his nose from the paper:

“What are you so astonished at?”

“Nothing! Nothing! Go on!”

     “...soft felt hat much too large for his head and which
     presumably belongs to the aggressor; the maker’s name has been
     carefully removed from the lining, out of which a piece of leather
     has been cut of the size and shape of a laurel leaf....”

Lafcadio got up and went behind Julius’s chair so as to read the paper
over his shoulder--and perhaps, too, so as to hide his paleness. There
could no longer be any doubt about it; his crime had been tampered with;
someone else had touched it up; had cut the piece out of the lining--the
unknown person, no doubt, who had carried off his portmanteau.

In the meantime Julius went on reading:

     “...which seems to prove the crime was premeditated. [Why this
     particular crime? My hero had perhaps merely taken general
     precautions just at random....] As soon as the police had made the
     necessary notes, the body was removed to Naples for the purposes of
     identification. [Yes, I know they have the means there--and the
     habit of preserving dead bodies....]”

“Are you quite sure it was he?” Lafcadio’s voice trembled a little.

“Bless my soul! I was expecting him to dinner this evening.”

“Have you informed the police?”

“Not yet. First of all, I must get clear in my own mind a little. I’m in
mourning already, so from that point of view (as regards the dress
question, I mean) there’s no need to bother; but you see, as soon as
the victim’s name is published, I shall have to communicate with the
family, send telegrams, write letters, make arrangements for the
funeral, go to Naples to fetch the body.... Oh! my dear Lafcadio,
there’s this congress I’ve got to attend--would you mind--would you
consent to fetching the body in my place?”

“We’ll see about it.”

“That is, of course, if it won’t upset you too much. In the meantime I’m
sparing my sister-in-law a period of cruel anxiety. She’ll never suspect
from the vague accounts in the newspapers.... But to return to my
subject. Well, then, when I read this paragraph in the paper, I said to
myself: ‘This crime, which I can imagine to myself so easily, which I
can reconstruct, which I can see--I know, I tell you, I know the reason
for which it was committed; I know that if it hadn’t been for the
inducement of the six thousand francs, it would never have been
committed.’”

“But suppose....”

“Yes, yes. Let’s suppose for a moment that there had been no six
thousand francs--or, better still, that the criminal didn’t take
them--why, he’d have been my hero!”

Lafcadio in the meantime had risen; he picked up the paper which Julius
had let fall, and opening it at the second page:

“I see,” he said in as cool a voice as he could muster, “I see that you
haven’t read the latest news. That is exactly what _has_ happened. The
criminal did _not_ take the six thousand francs. Look here! Read this:
‘_The motive of the crime, therefore, does not appear to be robbery._’”

Julius snatched the sheet that Lafcadio held out to him, read it
eagerly, then passed his hand over his eyes, then sat down, then got up
abruptly, darted towards Lafcadio, and seizing him with both arms,
exclaimed:

“The motive of the crime not robbery!” and he shook Lafcadio in a kind
of transport. “The motive of the crime not robbery! Why, then”--he
pushed Lafcadio from him, rushed to the other end of the room, fanned
himself, struck his forehead, blew his nose--“Why, then, I know--good
heavens!--I know why the ruffian murdered him.... Oh! my unfortunate
friend! Oh, poor Fleurissoire! So it was true what he said! And I who
thought he was out of his mind! Why, then, it’s appalling!”

Lafcadio awaited the end of this outburst with astonishment; he was a
little irritated; it seemed to him that Julius had no right to evade him
in this manner.

“I thought that was the very thing you....”

“Be quiet! You know nothing about it. And here am I wasting my time with
you, spinning these ridiculous fancies!.... Quick! my stick! my hat!”

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“To inform the police, of course!”

Lafcadio placed himself in front of the door.

“First of all, explain,” said he imperatively. “Upon my soul, anyone
would think you had gone mad.”

“It was just now that I was mad.... Oh, poor Fleurissoire! Oh,
unfortunate friend! Luckless, saintly victim! His death just comes in
time to cut me short in a career of irreverence--of blasphemy. His
sacrifice has brought me to reason. And to think that I laughed at him!”

He had again begun to pace up and down the room; suddenly he stopped and
laying his hat and stick beside the scent bottle on the table, he
planted himself in front of Lafcadio:

“Do you want to know why the ruffian murdered him?”

“I thought it was without a motive.”

“To begin with,” exclaimed Julius furiously, “there’s no such thing as a
crime without a motive. He was got rid of because he was in
possession of a secret ... which he confided to me--an important
secret--over-important for him, indeed. They were afraid of him. That’s
what it was. There!... Oh! it’s all very well for you to laugh--you
understand nothing about matters of faith.” Then, very pale and drawing
himself up to his full height: “_I_ am the inheritor of that secret!”

“Take care! They’ll be afraid of you next.”

“You see how necessary it is to warn the police at once.”

“One more question,” said Lafcadio, stopping him again.

“No! Let me go. I’m in a desperate hurry. You may be certain that the
continual surveillance under which they kept my poor brother and which
terrified him to such a degree, will now be transferred to _me_--has now
been transferred to me. You have no idea what a crafty set they are.
Those people know everything, I tell you. It’s more important than ever
that you should go and fetch the body instead of me. Now that I’m being
watched as I am, there’s no knowing what mightn’t happen to me.
Lafcadio, my dear fellow”--he clasped his hands imploringly--“I’ve no
head at this moment, but I’ll make enquiries at the Questura as to how
to get a proper authorisation. Where shall I send it to you?”

“I’ll take a room in this hotel. It’ll be more convenient. Good-bye,
till to-morrow. Make haste! Make haste!”

He let Julius go. There was beginning to rise in him a feeling of
profound disgust--a kind of hatred almost, of himself, of Julius, of
everything. He shrugged his shoulders, and then took out of his pocket
the Cook’s ticket, which he had found in Fleurissoire’s coat and which
had the name of Baraglioul written on the first page; he put it on the
table, well in sight, leaning it up against the scent bottle--then
turned out the light and left the room.


IV

Notwithstanding all the precautions he had taken, notwithstanding his
recommendations to the Questura, Julius de Baraglioul did not succeed in
preventing the newspapers from divulging his relationship to the
victim--nor, indeed, from mentioning in so many words the name and
address of his hotel.

That evening, of a truth, he had gone through some incredibly sickening
moments of apprehension, when, on his return from the Questura at
midnight, he had found, placed in a conspicuous position in his room,
the Cook’s ticket which had his name written in it and which he had
lent to Fleurissoire. He had immediately rung the bell and, going out
into the passage, pale and trembling, had begged the waiter to look
under his bed--for he did not dare to look himself. A kind of inquiry,
which he had held on the spot, led to no results; but what confidence
can be placed in the personnel of big hotels?... However, after a good
night’s sleep, behind a solidly bolted door, Julius had woken up more at
ease. He was now under police protection. He wrote a number of letters
and telegrams, which he took to the post himself.

On his return, he was told that a lady had asked for him; she had not
given her name and was waiting for him in the reading-room. Thither
Julius went and was not a little surprised to find Carola.

It was not, however, in the first room that he found her, but in another
which was more retired, smaller and not so well lighted. She was sitting
sideways, at the corner of a distant table, and was absently turning
over the leaves of a photograph album, so as to give herself
countenance. When she saw Julius come in, she rose, looking more
confused than pleased. Beneath the long black cloak she was wearing
could be seen a bodice that was dark, plain and almost in good taste; on
the other hand, her tumultuous hat, in spite of its being black, gave
her away sadly.

“You’ll think me very forward, Monsieur le Comte. I don’t know how I
found courage enough to come to your hotel and ask for you. But you
bowed to me so kindly yesterday.... And, besides, what I have to say is
so important.”

She remained standing on the other side of the table; it was Julius who
drew near; he held out his hand to her over the table, without ceremony.

“To what am I indebted for the pleasure of your visit?”

Carola’s head sunk.

“I know you have just lost....”

Julius did not at first understand; but as Carola took out her
handkerchief and wiped her eyes:

“What! Is it a visit of condolence?”

“I knew Monsieur Fleurissoire,” she went on.

“Really?”

“Oh, I hadn’t known him long, but I was very fond of him. He was such a
dear! so kind!... In fact, it was I who gave him his sleeve-links; you
know, the ones they described in the papers. That’s how I knew it was
he. But I had no idea he was your brother-in-law. It was a great
surprise to me, and you may fancy how pleased I was.... Oh! I beg your
pardon--that wasn’t what I meant to say.”

“Never mind, dear Miss Carola. You meant, no doubt, that you are pleased
to have an opportunity of meeting me again.”

Without answering, Carola buried her face in her handkerchief; her sobs
were convulsive and Julius thought it was his duty to take her hand.

“And so am I,” he said feelingly, “so am I, my dear young lady. Pray
believe....”

“That very morning, before he went out, I told him to be careful. But it
wasn’t his nature.... He was too confiding, you know.”

“A saint, Mademoiselle, a saint!” said Julius fervently, taking out his
handkerchief in his turn.

“Yes, yes, that was just how it struck me,” cried Carola. “At night,
when he thought I was asleep, he used to get up and kneel at the foot of
the bed and....”

This unconscious revelation put the finishing touch to Julius’s
discomposure; he returned the handkerchief to his pocket and, drawing
still nearer:

“Do take your hat off, my dear young lady.”

“No, thank you; it’s not in my way.”

“But it _is_ in mine. Won’t you let me....”

But as Carola unmistakably drew back, he pulled himself together.

“Let me ask you whether you had any special reason for uneasiness?”

“Who? I?”

“Yes; when you told my brother-in-law to be careful, I want to know
whether you had any reason to suppose.... Speak openly; no one comes in
here in the mornings and we can’t be overheard. Do you suspect anyone?”

Carola’s head sank.

“It’s of particular interest to me, you see,” went on Julius with
volubility. “Put yourself in my place. Last night, when I came back from
the Questura, where I had been giving evidence, I found lying on the
table in my room--on the very middle of my table--the railway ticket
with which poor Fleurissoire had travelled. It had my name on it; I know
those circular tickets are not transferable. Quite so; I did wrong to
lend it--but that’s not the point. The very fact of bringing the ticket
back to my room--seizing the opportunity to flout me cynically when I
had gone out for a few minutes--constitutes a challenge--a piece of
bravado--an insult almost--which (I need hardly say) would not disturb
me in the least if I hadn’t good reason to suppose that I am threatened
in my turn. I’ll tell you why. Your poor friend Fleurissoire was in
possession of a secret--an abominable secret--a most dangerous secret--I
didn’t question him about it--I had no desire to hear what it was, but
he had the lamentable imprudence to confide it to me. And now I ask you
again--do you know who the person is who actually went so far as to
commit a murder for the purpose of stifling that secret? Do you know who
he is?”

“Don’t be alarmed, Monsieur le Comte; I gave his name to the police last
night.”

“Mademoiselle Carola, I expected no less of you.”

“He had promised me not to hurt him; he had only to keep his promise and
I would have kept mine. It’s more than I can stand! He may do what he
likes to me--I don’t care!”

Carola was growing more and more excited; Julius passed behind the table
and, drawing near her again:

“We should perhaps be able to talk more comfortably in my room.”

“Oh, Monsieur le Comte,” said Carola, “I’ve told you everything I had to
say; I mustn’t keep you any longer.”

As she went on retreating, she completed the tour of the table and found
herself near the door once more.

“We had better part now, Mademoiselle,” said Julius virtuously and with
the firm determination of appropriating the credit of this resistance.
“Ah! I just wanted to add that if you mean to come to the funeral the
day after to-morrow, it would be better not to recognise me.”

At this they took leave of each other, without having once mentioned the
name of the unsuspected Lafcadio.


V

Lafcadio was bringing Fleurissoire’s mortal remains back from Naples.
The funeral van which contained them was coupled to the end of the
train, but Lafcadio had not thought it indispensable to travel in it
himself. At the same time a sense of propriety had made him take his
seat--not actually in the next carriage to it, for this contained only
second-class compartments--but at any rate as near the body as was
compatible with travelling first. He had left Rome that morning and was
due back in the evening of the same day. He was reluctant to admit to
himself the new sensation which had taken possession of his soul, for
there was nothing he held in greater disdain than ennui--that secret
malady from which he had hitherto been preserved by the fine
carelessness of his youthful appetites and by the pricks of hard
necessity. He left his compartment with a heart empty of hope and joy
and prowled up and down the whole length of the corridor, harassed by a
kind of ill-defined curiosity and vaguely seeking he knew not what new
and absurd enterprise in which to engage. He no longer thought of
embarking for the East and acknowledged reluctantly that Borneo did not
in the least attract him--nor the rest of Italy either; he could not
feel any interest in the consequences of his adventure; it appeared to
him, in his present mood, compromising and grotesque. He felt resentment
against Fleurissoire for not having defended himself better; his soul
protested against the pitiful creature; he would have liked to wipe him
from his mind.

On the other hand, he would gladly have met that strapping fellow who
had carried off his portmanteau--a fine rascal that! And at Capua he
leant out of the window and searched the deserted platform with his
eyes, as though he hoped to discover him. But would he have recognised
him? He had done no more than catch a distant glimpse of his back as he
disappeared into the darkness. In his mind’s eye he followed him through
the night, saw him reach the river’s bed, find the hideous corpse, rifle
it and, almost as challenge, cut out of the hat--Lafcadio’s own
hat--that little bit of leather which, as the newspapers had elegantly
phrased it, was “of the size and shape of a laurel leaf.” With his
hatter’s address inscribed on it, it was a piece of damning evidence,
and after all Lafcadio was extremely grateful to his bag-snatcher for
having prevented it from falling into the hands of the police. It was,
no doubt, very much to this gentleman’s own interest not to attract
attention to himself, and if, notwithstanding, he thought fit to make
use of his bit of leather, upon my word! a trial of wits with him might
not be unamusing.

The night by this time had fallen. A dining-car waiter made his way
through the length of the train to announce to the first and
second-class passengers that dinner was ready. With no appetite, but at
any rate with the saving prospect of an hour’s occupation before him,
Lafcadio followed the procession, keeping some way behind it. The
dining-car was at the head of the train. The carriages through which
Lafcadio passed were empty; here and there various objects, such as
shawls, pillows, books, papers, were disposed on the seats so as to mark
and reserve the diners’ places. A lawyer’s brief-case caught his eye.
Sure of being last, he stopped in front of the compartment and went in.
In reality he was not attracted by the bag; it was simply as a matter
of conscience that he searched it. On the inner side of the flap, in
unobtrusive gilt letters, was written the name

         DEFOUQUEBLIZE

    FACULTY OF LAW--BORDEAUX

The bag contained two pamphlets on criminal law and six numbers of the
_Lawyers’ Journal_.

“More fry for the congress! Bah!” thought Lafcadio, as he put everything
back in its place and then hastily joined the little file of passengers
on their way to the restaurant.

A delicate-looking little girl and her mother brought up the rear, both
in deep mourning. Immediately in front of them was a gentleman in a
frock coat, long straight hair and grey whiskers--Monsieur Defouqueblize
apparently, the owner of the brief-bag. Their advance was slow and
unsteady because of the jolting of the train. At the last turn of the
corridor, just as the professor was going to make a dash into the kind
of accordion which connects one carriage with another, an exceptionally
violent bump toppled him over. As he was trying to regain his balance, a
sudden sprawl sent his eye-glasses flying--all their moorings
broken--into the corner of the narrow space left by the corridor in
front of the lavatory door. As he bent down to search for his eyesight,
the lady and little girl passed in front of him. Lafcadio stayed for a
moment or two watching the learned gentleman’s efforts with some
amusement; pitiably at a loss, he was groping vaguely and anxiously
over the floor with both hands; it was as though he were performing the
waddling dance of a plantigrade or, back once more in the days of his
infancy, had suddenly started playing “hunt the slipper.” ...Come,
come, Lafcadio! Listen to your heart! It is not an evil one. Now for a
generous impulse! Go to the poor man’s rescue! Hand him back the
indispensable glasses! He will never find them by himself. His back is
turned to them; in another minute he will smash them. Just then a
violent jerk flung the unhappy man head foremost against the door of the
water-closet; the shock was broken by his top-hat, which was caved in by
the force of the impact and jammed tightly down over his ears. Monsieur
Defouqueblize moaned; rose to his feet; took off his hat. Lafcadio,
meanwhile, having come to the conclusion that the joke had lasted long
enough, picked up the eye-glasses, dropped them like an alms into the
hat, and then fled so as to escape being thanked.

Dinner had begun. Lafcadio seated himself at a table for two, next the
glass door on the right-hand side of the aisle; the place opposite him
was empty; on the left side of the gangway, in the same row as himself,
the widow and her daughter were sitting at a table for four, two seats
of which were unoccupied.

“What mortal dullness exudes from such places as this!” said Lafcadio to
himself, as his listless glance slipped from one to another of the
diners, without finding a face on which to dwell. “Herds of cattle going
through life as if it were a monotonous grind, instead of the
entertainment which it is--or which it might be. How badly dressed they
are! But oh! how much uglier they would be if they were naked! I shall
certainly expire before dessert, if I don’t order some champagne.”

Here the professor entered. He had apparently just been washing his
hands, which had been dirtied by his hunt, and was examining his nails.
A waiter motioned him to sit down beside Lafcadio. The man with the
wine-list was passing from table to table. Lafcadio, without saying a
word, pointed out a Montebello Grand Crémant at twenty francs, while
Monsieur Defouqueblize ordered a bottle of St. Galmier. He was holding
his pince-nez between his finger and thumb, breathing gently on the
glasses and then wiping them with the corner of his napkin. Lafcadio
watched him curiously and wondered at his mole’s eyes blinking under
their swollen eyelids.

“Fortunately he doesn’t know it was I who gave him back his eyesight. If
he begins to thank me, I shall take myself off on the spot.”

The waiter came back with the St. Galmier and the champagne; he first
uncorked the latter and put it down between the two diners. The bottle
was no sooner on the table than Defouqueblize seized hold of it without
noticing which one it was, poured out a glassful and swallowed it at one
gulp. The waiter was going to interfere but Lafcadio stopped him with a
laugh.

“Oh! what on earth is this stuff?” cried Defouqueblize with a frightful
grimace.

“This gentleman’s Montebello,” replied the waiter with dignity. “_This_
is your St. Galmier! Here!”

He put down the second bottle.

“I’m extremely sorry, Sir.... My eyesight is so bad.... Really, I’m
overcome with....”

“You would greatly oblige me, Sir,” interrupted Lafcadio, “by not
apologising--and even by accepting another glass--if the first was to
your taste, that is.”

“Alas! my dear sir, I must confess that I thought it was horrible and I
can’t think how I came to be so absentminded as to swallow a whole
glassful.... I was so thirsty.... Would you mind telling me whether it’s
very strong wine?... because I must confess that ... I never drink
anything but water.... The slightest drop invariably goes to my head....
Good heavens! Good heavens! What’ll happen to me? Perhaps it would be
more prudent to go back at once to my compartment. I expect I had better
lie down.”

He made as though to get up.

“Stop! Stop! my dear sir,” said Lafcadio, who was beginning to be
amused. “You’d better eat your dinner, on the contrary, and not trouble
about the glass of wine. I will take you back myself later on, if you’re
in need of help; but don’t be alarmed; you haven’t taken enough to turn
the head of a baby.”

“I’ll take your word for it. But really, I don’t know how to.... May I
offer you a little St. Galmier?”

“Thank you very much--will you excuse me if I say I prefer my
champagne?”

“Ah! really! So it was champagne, was it? And ... you are going to drink
all that?”

“Just to give you confidence.”

“You’re exceedingly kind, but in your place I should....”

“Suppose you were to eat your dinner,” interrupted Lafcadio, who was
himself eating and had had enough of Defouqueblize. His attention was
now attracted by the widow.

An Italian certainly. An officer’s widow, no doubt. What modesty in her
bearing! What tenderness in her eyes! How pure a brow! What intelligent
hands! How elegantly dressed and yet how simply!... Lafcadio, when your
heart fails to re-echo to such a blended concord of harmonies, may that
heart have ceased to beat! Her daughter is like her, and even at that
early age, what nobility--half serious, half sad even--tempers the
child’s excessive grace! With what solicitude her mother bends towards
her! Ah! the fiend himself would yield to such beings as these; to such
beings as these, Lafcadio, who can doubt that you would offer your
heart’s devotion?...

At that moment the waiter passed by to change the plates. Lafcadio
allowed his to be carried away before it was half empty, for at that
moment he was gazing at a sight that filled him with sudden stupor--the
widow--the exquisitely refined widow--had bent down towards the side
nearest the aisle, and deftly raising her skirt, with the most natural
movement in the world, had revealed a scarlet stocking and a neatly
turned calf and ankle.

So incongruous was this fiery note that burst into the calm gravity of
the symphony ... could he be dreaming? In the meantime the waiter was
handing round another dish. Lafcadio was on the point of helping
himself; his eyes fell upon his plate, and what he saw there finally did
for him.

There, right in front of him, plain to his sight, in the very middle of
his plate, fallen from God knows where, frightful and unmistakable among
a thousand--don’t doubt it for an instant, Lafcadio--there lies
Carola’s sleeve-link! The sleeve-link which had been missing from
Fleurissoire’s second cuff! The whole thing was becoming a nightmare....
But the waiter is bending over him with the dish. With a sweep of his
hand, Lafcadio wipes his plate and brushes the horrid trinket on to the
table-cloth; he puts his plate back on to the top of it, helps himself
abundantly, fills his glass with champagne, empties it at a draught and
fills it again. For if a man who hasn’t dined is to have drunken
visions.... But no! it was not an hallucination; he hears the squeak of
the link against his plate; he raises his plate, seizes the link, slips
it into his waistcoat pocket beside his watch, feels it again, makes
certain--yes! there it is, safe and sound! But who shall say how it came
on his plate? Who put it there?... Lafcadio looks at Defouqueblize. The
learned gentleman is innocently eating, his nose in his plate. Lafcadio
tries to think of something else; he looks once more at the widow; but
everything about her demeanour and her attire has become proper again
and commonplace; he doesn’t think her as pretty as before; he tries to
imagine afresh the provocative gesture--the red stocking--but he fails;
he tries to imagine afresh the sleeve-link on his plate and if he did
not actually feel it in his pockets, there’s no question but that he
would doubt his senses.... But now he comes to reflect, why did he take
a sleeve-link which doesn’t belong to him? What an admission is implied
by this instinctive and absurd action--what a recognition! How he has
given himself away to the people--whoever they may be--who are watching
him--the police, perhaps! He has walked straight into their booby trap
like a fool. He feels himself grow livid. He turns sharply round;
there, behind the glass door leading into the corridor.... No! no
one.... But a moment ago there may have been someone who saw him! He
forces himself to go on eating, but his teeth clench with vexation.
Unhappy young man! it is not his abominable crime that he regrets, but
this ill-starred impulse.... What has come over the professor now? Why
is he smiling at him?

Defouqueblize had finished eating. He wiped his lips; then with both
elbows on the table, fiddling nervously with his napkin, he began to
look at Lafcadio; his lips worked in an odd sort of grin; at last, as
though unable to contain himself any longer:

“Might I venture to ask for just a little more?”

He pushed his glass timidly towards the almost empty bottle.

Lafcadio, surprised out of his uneasiness and delighted at the
diversion, poured him out the last drops.

“I’m afraid it’s impossible to give you much.... But shall I order some
more?”

“Oh, well, not more than half a bottle then.”

Defouqueblize was obviously elevated and had lost all sense of the
proprieties. Lafcadio, for whom dry champagne had no terrors and who was
amused at the other’s ingenuousness, ordered the waiter to uncork
another bottle of Montebello.

“No, no, not too much,” said Defouqueblize, as with a quavering hand he
raised the glass which Lafcadio succeeded in filling to the brim. “It’s
curious--I thought it so nasty at first. That’s the way with a great
many things which one makes mountains of till one knows more about them.
The fact is, I thought I was drinking St. Galmier, and you see I
thought that for St. Galmier it had a very queer taste. If you were
given St. Galmier now, when you thought you were drinking champagne,
wouldn’t you say: ‘For champagne, it has a very queer taste’?...”

He laughed at his own words, then bending across the table to Lafcadio,
who was laughing too, he went on in a low voice:

“I can’t think why I’m laughing so; it must be the fault of your wine. I
suspect, all the same, it’s rather more heady than you make out. Eh! Eh!
Eh! But you’ll take me back to my carriage? That’s agreed, isn’t it? If
I behave indecently, you’ll know why.”

“When one’s travelling,” hazarded Lafcadio, “there’s no fear of
consequences.”

“Oh!” replied the other at once, “all the things one would do in this
life if there were no fear of consequences, as you justly remark! If one
could only be sure that it wouldn’t lead to anything!... Why, merely
what I’m saying to you just now--which, after all, is nothing but a very
natural reflection--do you think I should venture to utter it without
more disguise, if we were in Bordeaux, now? I say Bordeaux, because
Bordeaux is where I live. I’m known there--respected. Not married, but
well-to-do in a quiet little way; I’m in an honourable walk of
life--Professor of Law at the Faculty of Bordeaux--yes, comparative
criminology, a new chair.... You can see for yourself that when I’m
there, I’m not allowed, actually not _allowed_, to get tipsy--not even
once in a while, by accident. My life must be respectable. Just fancy!
Supposing one of my pupils were to meet me in the street drunk!...
Respectable! yes--and it mustn’t look as if it were forced; there’s the
rub; one mustn’t make people think: ‘Monsieur Defouqueblize’ (my name,
sir) ‘keeps a tight hand on himself--and a jolly good thing too.’ ...
One must not only never _do_ anything out of the way, one must persuade
other people that one _couldn’t_ do anything out of the way, even with
all the licence in the world--that there’s nothing whatever out of the
way in one, wanting to come out. Is there just a little more wine left?
Only a drop or two, my dear accomplice, only a drop or two.... Such an
opportunity doesn’t come twice in a lifetime. To-morrow, at the congress
in Rome, I shall meet a number of my colleagues--grave, sober fellows,
as tame, as disciplined, as stiffly self-restrained as I shall become
myself, once I get back into harness again. People who are in society,
like you and me, owe it to ourselves to go masked.”

In the meantime the meal was drawing to a close; a waiter went round
collecting the scores and pocketing the tips.

As the car emptied, Defouqueblize’s voice became deeper and louder; at
moments its bursts of sonority made Lafcadio feel almost uncomfortable.
He went on:

“And even if there were no society to restrain us, that little group of
relations and friends whom we can’t bear to displease, would suffice.
They confront our uncivil sincerity with an image of ourselves for which
we are only half responsible--an image which has very little resemblance
to us, but out of whose borders, I tell you, it is indecent to emerge.
At this moment--it’s a fact--I have escaped from my shape--taken flight
out of myself.... Oh! dizzy adventure! Dangerous rapture!... But I’m
boring you to death!”

“You interest me singularly.”

“I keep on talking ... talking! It can’t be helped! Once a professor,
always a professor--even when one’s drunk; and it’s a subject I have at
heart.... But if you’ve finished dinner, perhaps you’ll be so kind as to
give me your arm back to my carriage, while I can still stand on my
legs. I’m afraid if I wait any longer, I mayn’t be able to get up.”

At these words Defouqueblize made a kind of bound as though in an effort
to get out of his chair, but subsided again immediately in a half sprawl
over the table, where, with his head and shoulders flung forward in
Lafcadio’s direction, he went on in a lower, semi-confidential voice:

“This is my thesis: Do you know what is needful to turn an honest man
into a rogue? A change of scene--a moment’s forgetfulness suffice. Yes,
sir, a gap in the memory and sincerity comes out into the open!... a
cessation of continuity--a simple interruption of the current.
Naturally, I don’t say this in my lectures ... but, between ourselves,
what an advantage for the bastard! Just think! a being whose very
existence is owing to an erratic impulse--to a crook in the straight
line!...”

The professor’s voice had again grown loud; the eyes he now fixed on
Lafcadio were peculiar; their glance, which was at times vague and at
times piercing, began to alarm him. Lafcadio wondered now whether the
man’s short sight were not feigned, and that peculiar glance seemed to
him almost familiar. At last, more embarrassed than he cared to own, he
got up and said abruptly:

“Come, Monsieur Defouqueblize, take my arm. Get up. Enough talk!”

Defouqueblize quitted his chair with a lumbering effort. Together they
tottered down the corridor towards the compartment where the professor
had left his brief-bag. Defouqueblize went in first. Lafcadio settled
him in his corner and took his leave. He had already turned his back to
go out, when a great hand fell heavily on his shoulder. He turned
swiftly round. Defouqueblize had sprung to his feet--but was it really
Defouqueblize?--this individual who, in a voice that was at once
mocking, commanding and jubilant, exclaimed:

“You mustn’t desert an old friend like this, Mr. Lafcadio.
What-the-deuceki. No? Really? Trying to make off?”

There remained not a trace of the tipsy, uncanny old professor of a
moment ago in this great strapping stalwart fellow in whom Lafcadio no
longer hesitated to recognise--Protos--a bigger, taller, stouter Protos
who gave an impression of formidable power.

“Ah! it’s you, Protos?” said he, simply. “That’s better. I didn’t
recognise you till this minute.”

For however terrible the reality might be, Lafcadio preferred it to the
grotesque nightmare in which he had been struggling for the last hour.

“Not badly got up, was I? I’d taken special pains for your sake. But all
the same, my dear fellow, it’s you who ought to take to spectacles.
You’ll get into trouble if you’re not cleverer than that at recognising
‘the slim.’”

What half-forgotten memories this catchword _the slim_ aroused in
Cadio’s mind! The _slim_, in their slang, at the time Protos and he were
schoolboys together, were a genus who, for one reason or another, did
not present to all persons and in all places the same appearance.
According to the boys’ classification, there were many categories of
the “slim,” more or less elegant and praiseworthy; and answering to them
and opposed to them, was the single great family of “the crusted,” whose
members strutted and swaggered through every walk of life, high or low.

Our schoolfellows accepted the following axioms:

1. The slim recognise each other.

2. The crusted do not recognise the slim.

All this came back to Lafcadio; as his nature was to throw himself into
the spirit of the game, whatever it might be, he smiled. Protos went on:

“All the same, it was lucky I happened to turn up the other day, eh?...
Not altogether by accident, maybe. I like keeping an eye on young
novices: they’ve got ideas; they’re enterprising; they’re smart. But
they’re too much inclined to think they can do without advice. Your
handiwork the other night, my dear fellow, was sadly in need of touching
up.... To wear a tile of that kind on one’s head when one’s out on the
job! Was there ever such a notion? With the hatter’s address in the
lining too! Why! you’d have been collared before the week was out. But
when it’s a case of old friends I’ve a feeling heart--and, what’s more,
I’ll prove it. Do you know, I used to be very fond of you, Cadio. I
always thought something might be made of you. With a handsome face like
yours, we could have got round all the women, and, for the matter of
that, God forgive me! bled one or two of the men into the bargain. You
can’t think how glad I was to have news of you at last and to hear you
were coming to Italy. Upon my soul, I was longing to know what had
become of you since the days we used to go and see that little wench of
ours together. You’re not bad-looking even now. Oh! she knew a thing or
two, did Carola!”

Lafcadio’s irritation was becoming more and more manifest--and likewise
his endeavours to hide it; all this amused Protos prodigiously, though
he pretended to notice nothing. He had taken a little round of leather
out of his waistcoat pocket and was now examining it.

“Neatly cut out, eh?”

Lafcadio could have strangled him; he clenched his fists till his nails
dug into his flesh. The other went on with his gibing:

“Damned good of me! Well worth the six thousand francs which--by the
way, will you tell me why you didn’t pocket?”

Lafcadio made a movement of disgust:

“Do you take me for a thief?”

“Look here, my dear boy,” went on Protos quietly, “I’m not very fond of
amateurs and I’d better tell you so at once quite frankly. And you know,
it’s not a bit of use taking up the high and mighty line with me or
playing the simpleton. You show promise--granted!--remarkable promise,
but....”

“Stop your witticisms,” interrupted Lafcadio, whose anger was now
uncontrollable. “What are you driving at? I committed an act of folly
the other day--do you think I need to be told so? Yes! you have a weapon
against me. I won’t ask whether it would be prudent of you, for your own
sake, to use it. You want me to buy back that piece of leather? Very
well, then, say so! Stop laughing and looking at me like that. You want
money? How much?”

His tone was so determined that Protos fell back for a second, but
recovered himself immediately.

“Gently! Gently!” he said. “Have I said anything ill-mannered? We are
talking between friends--coolly. There’s no need to get excited. My
word! Cadio, you’re younger than ever!”

But as he began to stroke his arm gently, Lafcadio jerked himself away.

“Let’s sit down,” went on Protos; “we shall talk more comfortably.”

He settled himself in a corner beside the door into the corridor and put
his feet up on the opposite seat. Lafcadio thought he meant to bar the
exit. Without a doubt Protos was carrying a revolver. He himself was
unarmed. He reflected that if it came to a hand-to-hand struggle, he
would certainly get the worst of it. But if for a moment he had
contemplated flight, curiosity was already getting the upper hand--that
passionate curiosity of his against which nothing--not even his personal
safety--had ever been able to prevail. He sat down.

“Money? Oh, fie!” said Protos. He took a cigar out of his cigar-case and
offered one to Lafcadio, who refused. “Perhaps you mind smoke?... Well,
then, listen to me.” He took two or three puffs at his cigar and then
said very calmly:

“No, no, Lafcadio, my friend, no, it isn’t money I want--it’s obedience.
You don’t seem, my dear boy (excuse my frankness), you don’t seem to
realise quite exactly what your situation is. You must force yourself to
face it boldly. Let me help you a little.

“A youth, then, wished to escape from the social framework that hems us
in; a sympathetic youth--a youth, indeed, entirely after my own
heart--ingenuous and charmingly impulsive--for I don’t suppose there was
much calculation in what he did.... I remember, Cadio, in the old days,
though you were a great dab at figures, you would never consent to keep
an account of your own expenses.... In short, the crusted scheme of
things disgusts you.... I leave it to others to be astonished at
that.... But what astonishes _me_ is that a person as intelligent as
you, Cadio, should have thought it possible to quit a society as simply
as all that, without stepping at the same moment into another; or that
you should have thought it possible for any society to exist without
laws.

“‘Lawless’--do you remember reading that somewhere? ‘Two hawks in the
air, two fishes swimming in the sea, not more lawless than we....’[I] A
fine thing literature! Lafcadio, my friend, learn the law of the slim!”

“You might get on a little.”

“Why hurry? We’ve plenty of time before us. I’m not getting out till
Rome. Lafcadio, my friend, it happens that a crime occasionally escapes
the detectives. I’ll explain you why it is that we are more clever than
they--it’s because our lives are at stake. Where the police fail, we
succeed. Damn it, Lafcadio, you’ve made your choice; the thing’s done
and it’s impossible now for you to escape. I should much prefer you to
be obedient, because I should really be extremely grieved to hand an old
friend like you over to the police. But what’s to be done? For the
future you are in their power--or ours.”

“If you hand me over, you hand yourself over at the same time.”

“I hoped we were speaking seriously. Try and take this in, Lafcadio. The
police collar people who kick up a row; but in Italy they’re glad to
come to terms with ‘the slim.’ ‘Come to terms’--yes, I think that’s the
right expression. I work a bit for the police myself. I’ve a way with
me. I help to keep order. I don’t act on my own--I cause others to act.

“Come, come, Cadio, stop champing at the bit. There’s nothing very
dreadful about my law. You exaggerate these things; so ingenuous--so
impulsive! Do you think it wasn’t out of obedience and just because I
willed it, that you picked up Mademoiselle Venitequa’s sleeve-link off
your plate at dinner? Ah! how thoughtless--how idyllic an action! My
poor Lafcadio, how you cursed yourself for that little action, eh? The
bloody nuisance is that I wasn’t the only one to see it. Pooh! Don’t
take on so; the waiter and the widow and the little girl are all in it
too. Charming people! It lies entirely with you to have them for your
friends. Lafcadio, my friend, be sensible. Do you give in?”

Out of excessive embarrassment perhaps, Lafcadio had taken up the line
of not speaking. He sat stiff--his lips set, his eyes staring straight
in front of him.

Protos went on, with a shrug of his shoulders:

“Rum chap!... and in reality so easy-going!... But perhaps you would
have consented already if I had told you what I expect of you. Lafcadio,
my friend, enlighten my perplexity. How is it that you, whom I left in
such poverty, refrained from picking up a windfall of six thousand
francs dropped at your feet? Does that seem to you natural? Old
Monsieur de Baraglioul, Mademoiselle Venitequa told me, happened to die
the day after Count Julius, his worthy son, came to pay you a visit; and
the evening of the same day you chucked Mademoiselle Venitequa. Since
then your connexion with Count Julius has become ... well! well! let’s
say exceedingly intimate; would you mind explaining why? Lafcadio, my
friend, in old days you were possessed to my knowledge of numerous
uncles; since then your pedigree seems to me to have become slightly
embaragliouled!... No, no, don’t say anything. I’m only joking. But what
is one to suppose?... unless, indeed, you owe your present fortune to
Mr. Julius himself?... in which case, allow me to say, that attractive
as you are, Lafcadio, the affair seems to me considerably more
scandalous still. Whichever way it may be, though, and whatever you let
us conjecture, the thing is clear enough, Lafcadio, my friend, and your
duty is as plain as a pike-staff--you must blackmail Julius. Come, come,
don’t make a fuss! Blackmail is a wholesome institution, necessary for
the maintenance of morale. What! what! are you going to leave me?”

Lafcadio had risen.

“Let me pass!” he cried, striding over Protos’s body. Stretched across
the compartment from one seat to the other, the latter made no movement
to stop him. Lafcadio, astonished at not finding himself detained,
opened the corridor door and, as he went off:

“I’m not running away,” he said. “Don’t be alarmed. You can keep your
eye on me. But anything is better than listening to you any longer.
Excuse me if I prefer the police. Go and inform them. I am ready.”


VI

On that same day the Anthimes arrived from Milan by the evening train.
As they travelled third it was not till they reached Rome that they saw
the Comtesse de Baraglioul and her daughter, who had come from Paris in
a sleeping-car of the same train.

A few hours before the arrival of the telegram announcing Fleurissoire’s
death, the Countess had received a letter from her husband; the Count
had written eloquently of the immense pleasure his unexpected meeting
with Lafcadio had caused him. Doubtless he had not breathed the faintest
word of allusion to that semi-fraternity which, in Julius’s eyes,
invested the young man with a perfidious charm (Julius, faithful to his
father’s commands, had never had any open explanation with his wife, any
more than with Lafcadio himself), but certain hints, certain reticences
had been sufficient to enlighten the Countess; I am not quite sure even
that Julius, who had very little to amuse him in the daily round of his
bourgeois existence, did not find some pleasure in fluttering about the
scandal and singeing the tips of his wings. I am not sure either that
Lafcadio’s presence at Rome, the hope of meeting him again, had not
something--had not a great deal--to do with Genevieve’s decision to
accompany her mother.

Julius was there to meet them at the station. He hurried them back to
the Grand Hotel, without speaking more than a word or two to the
Anthimes, whom he was to meet next day at the funeral. The latter went
to the hotel in the Via Bocca di Leone, where they had stayed for a day
or two during their first visit to Rome.

Marguerite brought the author good news. Not a single hitch remained in
the way of the Academy election; Cardinal André had semi-officially
informed her the day before that there was no need even for the
candidate to pay any further visits; the Academy was advancing to
welcome him with open doors.

“You see!” said Marguerite. “What did I tell you in Paris? _Tout vient à
point_.... One has nothing to do in this world but to wait.”

“And not to change,” added Julius, with an air of compunction, raising
his wife’s hand to his lips, and not noticing his daughter’s eyes grow
big with contempt as they dwelt on him. “Faithful to you, to my
opinions, to my principles! Perseverance is the most indispensable of
virtues.”

The recollection of his recent wild-goose chase had already faded from
his mind, as well as every opinion that was other than orthodox, and
every intention that was other than proper. Now that he knew the facts,
he recovered his balance without an effort. He was filled with
admiration for the subtle consistency which his mind had shown in its
temporary deviation. It was not _he_ who had changed--it was the Pope!

“On the contrary, my opinions have been extraordinarily consistent,” he
said to himself, “extraordinarily logical. The difficulty is to know
where to draw the line. Poor Fleurissoire perished from having gone
behind the scenes. The simplest course for the simple-minded is to draw
the line at the things they know. It was this hideous secret that killed
him. Knowledge never strengthens any but the strong.... No matter! I am
glad that Carola was able to warn the police. It allows me to meditate
with greater freedom.... All the same, if Armand-Dubois knew that it was
not the real Holy Father who was responsible for his losses and his
exile, what a consolation it would be for him--what an encouragement in
his faith--what a solace and relief! To-morrow, after the funeral, I
must really speak to him.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The funeral did not attract much of a concourse. Three carriages
followed the hearse. It was raining. In the first carriage came Arnica,
supported by the friendly presence of Blafaphas (as soon as she was out
of mourning, he no doubt married her); they had left Pau together two
days earlier (the thought of abandoning the widow in her grief, of
allowing her to take the long journey all by herself, was intolerable to
Blafaphas; and for what? Had he not gone into mourning like one of the
family? Was any relation in the world equal to a friend like him?), but
on account of their unfortunately missing one of their trains, they
arrived in Rome only a few hours before the ceremony.

In the last carriage were Madame Armand-Dubois with the Countess and her
daughter; in the second, the Count and Anthime Armand-Dubois.

No allusion was made over Fleurissoire’s grave to his unlucky adventure.
But on the way back from the cemetery, as soon as Julius de Baraglioul
was alone with Anthime, he began:

“I promised you I would intercede on your behalf with his Holiness.”

“God is my witness that I never asked you to.”

“True! But I was so outraged by the state of destitution in which the
Church had abandoned you, that I listened only to my own heart.”

“God is my witness that I never complained.”

“I know ... I know ... I was irritated to death by your resignation! And
even--since you insist--I must admit, my dear Anthime, that it seemed to
me a proof of pride rather than sanctity, and the last time I saw you at
Milan that exaggerated resignation of yours struck me really as
savouring more of rebellion than of true piety, and was extremely
distasteful to me as a Christian. God didn’t demand as much of you as
all that! To speak frankly, I was shocked by your attitude.”

“And I, my dear brother--perhaps I too may be allowed to say so now--was
grieved by yours. Wasn’t it you yourself who urged me to rebel and....”

Julius, who was getting heated, interrupted him:

“My own experience has sufficiently proved to myself--and to
others--during the whole course of my career, that it is perfectly
possible to be an excellent Christian, without disdaining the legitimate
advantages of the state of life to which it pleases God to call us. The
fault that I found with your attitude was precisely that its affectation
seemed to give it an appearance of superiority over mine.”

“God is my witness that....”

“Oh, don’t go on calling God to witness!” interrupted Julius again. “God
has nothing to do with it. I am merely explaining that when I say that
your attitude was almost one of rebellion ... I mean what would be
rebellion for me; and what I find fault with is precisely that while you
get credit for submitting to injustice, you leave other people to rebel
for you. As for me, I wouldn’t accept the Church’s being in the wrong;
while you with your air of not letting butter melt in your mouth, really
_put_ her in the wrong. So I made up my mind to complain in your stead.
You’ll see in a moment how right I was to be indignant.”

Julius, on whose forehead the beads of perspiration were beginning to
gather, put his top-hat on his knee.

“Wouldn’t you like a little air?” asked Anthime, as he obligingly
lowered the window on his side.

“So,” went on Julius, “as soon as I got to Rome, I solicited an
audience. It was granted. This step of mine met with the most singular
success....”

“Ah!” said Anthime indifferently.

“Yes, my dear Anthime, for though in reality I obtained nothing of what
I came to ask, at any rate I brought away from my visit an assurance
which ... effectually cleared our Holy Father from all the injurious
suppositions we had been making about him.”

“God is my witness that I never made any injurious suppositions about
our Holy Father.”

“I made them for you. I saw you wronged. I was indignant.”

“Come to the point, Julius. Did you see the Pope?”

“Well, no, then! I didn’t see the Pope,” burst out Julius at last,
containing himself no longer, “but I became possessed of a secret--a
secret which, though almost incredible at first, received sudden
confirmation from our dear Amédée’s death--an appalling--a bewildering
secret--but one from which your faith, dear Anthime, will be able to
draw comfort. You must know, then, that the Pope is innocent of the
injustice of which you were the victim....”

“Tut! I never for a moment doubted it.”

“Listen to me, Anthime--I didn’t see the Pope--because he is not to be
seen. The person who is actually seated on the pontifical throne, who is
obeyed by the Church, who promulgates--the person who spoke to me--the
Pope who is to be seen at the Vatican--the Pope whom I saw--_is not the
real one_.”

At these words Anthime began to shake all over with a fit of loud
laughter.

“Laugh away! Laugh away!” went on Julius, nettled. “I laughed too, to
begin with. If I had laughed a little less, Fleurissoire would not have
been murdered. Ah! poor dear saint that he was! Poor lamb of a
victim!...” His voice trailed off into sobs.

“What? What? Do you mean to say that this ridiculous story is really
true? Dear me! Dear me!...” said Armand-Dubois, who was disturbed by
Julius’s pathos. “All the same, this must be inquired into....”

“It was for inquiring into it that he met his death.”

“Because if after all I’ve sacrificed my fortune, my position, my
science--if I’ve consented to be made a fool of ...” continued Anthime,
who was gradually becoming excited in his turn.

“But I tell you the _real_ one is in no way responsible for any of that.
The person who made a fool of you is a mere man of straw put up by the
Quirinal.”

“Am I really to believe what you say?”

“If you don’t believe me, you can at any rate believe our poor martyr
here.”

They both remained silent for a few minutes. It had stopped raining; a
ray of sunlight broke through the clouds. The carriage slowly jolted
into Rome.

“In that case, I know what remains for me to do,” went on Anthime in his
most decided voice. “I shall give the whole show away.”

Julius started with horror.

“My dear friend, you terrify me. You’ll get yourself excommunicated for
a certainty.”

“By whom? If it’s by a sham Pope, I don’t care a damn!”

“And I, who thought I should help you to extract some consolatory virtue
out of this secret,” went on Julius, in dismay.

“You’re joking!... And who knows but what Fleurissoire, when he gets to
heaven, won’t find after all that his Almighty isn’t the _real_ God
either?”

“Come, come, my dear Anthime, you’re rambling! As if there _could_ be
two! As if there could be another!”

“It’s all very easy for you to talk--you, who have never in your life
given up anything for Him--you, who profit by everything--true or false.
Oh! I’ve had enough! I want some fresh air!”

He leant out of the window, touched the driver on the shoulder with his
walking-stick and stopped the carriage. Julius prepared to get out with
him.

“No! Let me be! I know all that’s necessary for my purpose. You can put
the rest in a novel. As for me, I shall write to the Grand Master of the
Order this very evening, and to-morrow I shall take up my scientific
reviewing for the _Dépêche_. Fine fun it’ll be!”

“What!” said Julius, surprised to see that he was limping again. “You’re
lame?”

“Yes, my rheumatism came back a few days ago.”

“Oh, I see! So _that’s_ at the bottom of it!” said Julius, as he sank
back into the corner of the carriage, without looking after him.


VII

Did Protos really intend to give Lafcadio up to the police as he had
threatened? I cannot tell. The event proved at any rate that the police
were not entirely composed of his friends. These gentlemen, who had been
advised by Carola the day before, laid their mousetrap in the Vicolo dei
Vecchierelli; they had long been acquainted with the house and knew that
the upper floor had easy means of communication with the next-door
house, whose exits also they watched.

Protos was not afraid of the detectives; nor of any particular
accusation that might be brought against him; the machinery of the law
inspired him with no terrors; he knew that it would be hard to catch him
out; that he was innocent in reality of any crime and guilty only of
misdemeanours too trifling to be brought home to him. He was therefore
not excessively alarmed when he realised that he was trapped--which he
did very quickly, having a particular flair for nosing out these gentry,
in no matter what disguise.

Hardly more than slightly perplexed, he shut himself up in Carola’s room
and waited for her to come in; he had not seen her since Fleurissoire’s
murder, and was anxious to ask her advice and to leave a few
instructions in the very probable event of his being run in.

Carola, in the meantime, in deference to Julius’s wishes, had not shown
herself in the cemetery. No one knew that, hidden behind a mausoleum and
beneath an umbrella, she was assisting at the melancholy ceremony from
afar. She waited patiently, humbly, until the approach to the newly dug
grave was free; she saw the procession re-form--Julius go off with
Anthime and the carriages drive away in the drizzling rain. Then, in her
turn, she went up to the grave, took out from beneath her cloak a big
bunch of asters, which she put down a little way from the family’s
wreaths; there she stayed for a long time, looking at nothing, thinking
of nothing, and crying instead of praying.

When she returned to the Vicolo dei Vecchierelli, she noticed, indeed,
two unfamiliar figures on the threshold, but without realising that the
house was being watched. She was anxious to rejoin Protos; she did not
for a moment doubt that it was he who had committed the murder, and she
hated him....

A few minutes later the police rushed into the house on hearing her
screams--too late, alas! Protos, exasperated at learning that she had
betrayed him, had already strangled Carola.

This happened about midday. The news came out in the evening papers, and
as the piece of leather cut out of the hat-lining was found in his
possession, his two-fold guilt did not admit of a doubt in anyone’s
mind.

Lafcadio, in the meantime, had spent the hours till evening in a state
of expectancy--of vague fear. It was not the police with whom Protos
had threatened him that he feared, so much as Protos himself, or some
nameless thing or other, against which he no longer attempted to defend
himself. An incomprehensible torpor lay heavy on him--mere fatigue
perhaps; at any rate, he gave up.

The day before, he had seen Julius for barely a moment, when the latter
had come to meet the train from Naples and take over the consignment of
the corpse; then he had tramped the town for hours, trying to walk down
the exasperation that had been left in him by his conversation with
Protos and by the feeling of his dependence.

And yet the news of Protos’s arrest did not bring Lafcadio the relief
that might have been expected. It was almost as though he were
disappointed. Queer creature! As he had deliberately rejected all the
material profits of the crime, so he was unwilling to part with any of
the risks. He could not consent to the game’s coming to an end so soon.
He would gladly--as in the old days when he used to play chess--have
given his adversary a rook; and as though this latest development had
made his victory too easy and taken away all his interest in the match,
he felt that he should never rest content till he had set Fate at
defiance more rashly still.

He dined in a neighbouring _trattoria_ so as not to be obliged to dress.
Directly he had finished his dinner, he returned to the hotel, and as he
was passing the restaurant glass doors he caught sight of Count Julius,
who was sitting at table with his wife and daughter. He had not seen
Genevieve since his first visit and was struck with her beauty. As he
was lingering in the smoking-room, waiting for dinner to be finished, a
servant came in to tell him that the Count had gone upstairs to his
room and was expecting him.

He went in. Julius de Baraglioul was alone. He had changed into a
morning coat.

“So they’ve caught the murderer,” he said at once, putting out his hand.

But Lafcadio did not take it. He remained standing in the embrasure of
the door.

“What murderer?” he asked.

“Why, my brother-in-law’s, of course!”

“_I_ am your brother-in-law’s murderer.”

He said it without a tremor, without altering or lowering his voice,
without making a movement and so naturally that at first Julius did not
understand. Lafcadio was obliged to repeat:

“Your brother-in-law’s murderer has not been arrested, I tell you, for
the good reason that I am your brother-in-law’s murderer.”

If there had been anything fierce about Lafcadio, Julius might perhaps
have taken fright, but he looked a mere child. He seemed younger even
than the first time Julius had met him; his eyes were as limpid, his
voice as clear. He had shut the door, but remained leaning with his back
against it. Julius, standing near the table, sank all of a heap into an
arm-chair.

“My poor boy!” was the first thing he said, “speak lower!... What can
have possessed you? How could you have done such a thing?”

Lafcadio bowed his head. He already regretted having spoken.

“How can I tell? I did it very quickly--just when it came over me.”

“What grudge can you have had against Fleurissoire--worthy, virtuous
man?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t look happy.... What’s the use of wanting me to
explain to you what I can’t explain to myself?”

The silence between them grew increasingly painful; their words broke it
by fits and starts, but each time it closed round them again, heavier,
deeper; and through it, from the big hall of the hotel below, there came
floating up to them snatches of vulgar Neapolitan music. Julius was
picking at a spot of candle grease on the table-cloth with his little
finger-nail, which he kept very long and pointed. He suddenly noticed
that this exquisite nail of his was broken. There was a tear right
across it which spoiled the beautiful pinkness of its polished surface.
How could he have done it? And how came he not to have noticed it
before? In any case, the damage was beyond repair. There was nothing
left for Julius to do but to cut it. His vexation was extreme, for he
took great care of his hands and was particularly attached to this nail,
which he had been long cultivating, and which enhanced and at the same
time drew attention to the elegance of his finger. The scissors were in
his dressing-table drawer and he half rose to get them, but he would
have had to pass in front of Lafcadio; with his usual tact he put off
the delicate operation till later.

“And what do you mean to do now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Give myself up, perhaps. I shall take the night to think
it over.”

Julius let his arm drop beside his arm-chair, he gazed at Lafcadio for a
moment or two and then in a tone of utter discouragement sighed out:

“And to think that I was beginning to care for you!”

It was said with no unkind intention. Lafcadio could have no doubt of
that; but for all their unconsciousness the words were none the less
cruel and they struck at his very heart. He raised his head and
stiffened himself against the sudden pang of anguish that stabbed him.
He looked at Julius. “Did I really feel almost like his brother only
yesterday?” thought he. His eyes wandered over the room where such a
short time ago he had been able to talk so gaily, in spite of his crime;
the scent bottle was still on the table, almost empty....

“Come, Lafcadio,” went on Julius, “your situation doesn’t seem to me
altogether hopeless. The presumed author of the crime....”

“Yes, I know; he has been arrested,” interrupted Lafcadio dryly. “Are
you going to advise me to allow an innocent man to be condemned in my
place?”

“Innocent? He has just murdered a woman--you knew her too.”

“Very comforting, isn’t it?”

“I don’t mean that exactly, but....”

“You mean he’s just the only person who could denounce me.”

“There’s some hope left still, you see.”

Julius got up, walked to the window, straightened the folds of the
curtain, came back and then leaning forward with his arms folded on the
back of the chair he had just left:

“Lafcadio, I shouldn’t like to part from you without a word of advice.
It lies entirely with you, I’m convinced, to become an honest man again
and to take your place in the world--as far, that is, as your birth
permits.... The Church is there to help you. Come, my lad, a little
courage; go and confess yourself.”

Lafcadio could not suppress a smile.

“I will think over your kind words.” He took a step forward and then:

“No doubt you will prefer not to shake hands with a murderer. But I
should like to thank you for your....”

“Yes, yes,” said Julius with a cordial and distant wave of the hand.
“Good-bye, my lad. I hardly dare say ‘au revoir.’ None the less, if
later on, you....”

“For the present you have nothing further to say to me?”

“Nothing further for the present.”

“Good-bye, Monsieur de Baraglioul.”

Lafcadio bowed gravely and went out.

       *       *       *       *       *

He went up to his room on the floor above, half undressed and flung
himself on his bed. The end of the day had been very hot and no
freshness had come with the night. His window stood wide open but not a
breath stirred the air; the electric globes of the Piazza dei Termi, far
away on the other side of the garden, shone into his room and filled it
with a diffused and bluish light which might have been the moon’s. He
tried to reflect, but a strange torpor--a despairing numbness--crept
over his mind; it was not of his crime that he thought nor of how to
escape; the only effort he could make was not to hear those dreadful
words of Julius: “I was beginning to care for you.” ...If he himself
did not care for Julius, were those words worth his tears?... Was that
really why he was weeping?... The night was so soft that he felt as
though he had only to let himself go for death to take him. He reached
out for the water bottle by his bed-side, soaked his handkerchief and
held it to his heart, which was hurting him.

“No drink will ever slake again the thirst of my parched heart,” said
he, letting the tears course down his face unchecked, so as to taste
their bitterness to the full on his lips. A line or two of poetry, read
he knew not where and unconsciously remembered, kept singing in his
ears:

    “My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains
     My senses....”

He fell into a doze.

       *       *       *       *       *

Is he dreaming? Or is that a knock at his door? His door, which he
always leaves unlocked at night, opens gently and a slender white figure
comes in. He hears a faint call:

“Lafcadio!... Are you there, Lafcadio?”

And yet, through his half-waking slumber, Lafcadio recognises that
voice. Can it be that he doubts the reality of so gracious an
apparition? Or does he fear that a word, a movement, may put it to
flight?... He keeps silent.

Genevieve de Baraglioul, whose room was next-door to her father’s, had
in spite of herself overheard the whole of the conversation between him
and Lafcadio. An intolerable dread had driven her to his room and when
her call remained unanswered, fully convinced that Lafcadio had killed
himself, she rushed towards the bed and fell sobbing on her knees beside
it.

As she knelt there, Lafcadio raised himself and bent over her with his
whole being drawn towards her, but not daring as yet to put his lips on
the fair forehead he saw gleaming in the darkness. Then Genevieve de
Baraglioul felt all her strength dissolve; throwing back her forehead,
which Lafcadio’s breath was already caressing, and not knowing where to
turn for help against him, save to himself alone:

“Dear friend, have pity,” she cried.

Lafcadio mastered himself at once; drawing back and at the same time
pushing her away:

“Rise, Mademoiselle de Baraglioul,” he said. “Leave me! I am not--I
cannot be your friend.”

Genevieve rose, but she did not move from the side of the bed where
Lafcadio, whom she had thought dead, lay half reclining. She tenderly
touched his burning forehead, as though to convince herself he was still
alive.

“Dear friend,” she said, “I overheard everything you said to my father
this evening. Don’t you understand that that is why I am here?”

Lafcadio half raised himself and looked at her. Her loosened hair fell
about her; her whole face was in the shadow so that he could not see her
eyes but he felt her look enfold him. As though unable to bear its
sweetness, he hid his face in his hands.

“Ah!” he groaned, “why did I meet you so late? What have I done that you
should love me? Why do you speak to me so now when I am no longer free
and no longer worthy to love you?”

She protested sadly:

“It is to you I have come, Lafcadio--to no one else. To you--a criminal.
Lafcadio! How many times have I sighed your name since the first day
when you appeared to me like a hero--indeed, you seemed a little
over-daring ... I must tell you now--I made a secret vow to myself that
I would be yours, from that very moment when I saw you risk your life so
nobly. What has happened since then? Can you really have killed someone?
What have you let yourself become?”

And as Lafcadio shook his head without answering: “Did I not hear my
father say that someone else had been arrested--a ruffian, who had just
committed a murder?... Lafcadio! while there is still time, save
yourself! This very night! Go! Go!”

Then Lafcadio:

“Too late!” he murmured. And as he felt Genevieve’s loosened hair on his
hands, he caught it, pressed it passionately to his eyes, his lips.
“Flight! Is that really what you counsel me? But where can I possibly
fly? Even if I escaped from the police, I could not escape from
myself.... And, besides, you would despise me for escaping.”

“I! Despise you!”

“I lived unconscious; I killed in a dream--a nightmare, in which I have
been struggling ever since.”

“I will save you from it,” she cried.

“What is the use of waking me, if I am to wake a criminal?” He seized
her by the arm: “Can’t you understand that the idea of impunity is
odious to me? What is there left for me to do--if not to give myself up
as soon as it is daybreak?”

“You must give yourself up to God, not to man. Even if my father had not
said it already, I should say so myself now: Lafcadio, the Church is
there to prescribe your penance and to help you back to peace through
repentance.”

Genevieve is right; most certainly the best thing Lafcadio can do now
is to be conveniently submissive; he will realise this sooner or later
and that every other issue is closed to him.... Vexatious, though, that
that milksop of a Julius should have been the first to tell him so.

“Are you repeating that by heart?” said he angrily. “Can it be you
speaking like that?”

He dropped her arm which he had been holding and pushed it from him; and
as Genevieve drew back, there swelled up in him a blind feeling of
resentment against Julius, a desire to get Genevieve away from her
father, to drag her down, to bring her nearer to himself; as he lowered
his eyes he caught the sight of her bare feet in their little silk
slippers.

“Don’t you understand that it’s not remorse that I’m afraid of, but....”

He left the bed, turned away from her and went to the open window; he
was stifling; he leant his forehead against the glass pane and cooled
his burning palms on the iron balustrade; he would have liked to forget
that she was there, that he was near her.

“Mademoiselle de Baraglioul, you have done everything that a young lady
could be expected to do for a criminal--possibly a little more. I thank
you with all my heart. You had better leave me now. Go back to your
father, your duties, your habits.... Good-bye. Who can tell whether I
shall ever see you again? Consider that when I give myself up to-morrow,
it will be to prove myself a little less unworthy of your affection.
Consider that.... No, don’t come nearer.... Do you think that a touch of
your hand would suffice me?”

Genevieve would have braved her father’s anger, the world’s opinion and
its contempt, but at Lafcadio’s icy tones, her heart fails her. Has he
not understood, then, that to come and speak to him like this at night,
to confess her love to him like this, requires courage and resolution on
her part too, and that her love deserves more, maybe, than a mere “thank
you”?... But how can she tell him that she too, up till to-day, has been
living and moving in a dream--a dream from which she escapes only now
and then among her poor children at the hospital, where, binding up
their wounds in sober earnestness, she does seem sometimes to be brought
into contact with a little reality--a petty dream, in which her parents
move beside her, hedged in by all the ludicrous conventions of their
world--and that she can never succeed in taking any of it seriously,
either their behaviour or their opinions, or their ambitions or their
principles, or indeed, their persons themselves? What wonder, then, that
Lafcadio had not taken Fleurissoire seriously? Oh! is it possible that
they should part like this? Love drives her, flings her towards him.
Lafcadio seizes her, clasps her, covers her pale forehead with kisses.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here begins a new book.

Oh, desire! Oh, palpable and living truth! At your touch the phantoms of
my brain grow dim and vanish.

We will leave our two lovers at cockcrow, at the hour when colour,
warmth and light begin at last to triumph over night. Lafcadio raises
himself from over Genevieve’s sleeping form. But it is not at his love’s
fair face, nor her moist brows, nor pearly eyelids, nor warm parted
lips, nor perfect breasts, nor weary limbs--no, it is at none of all
this that he gazes--but through the wide-open window, at the coming of
dawn and a tree that rustles in the garden.

It will soon be time for Genevieve to leave him; but still he waits;
leaning over her, he listens above her gentle breathing to the vague
rumour of the town as it begins to shake off its torpor. From the
distant barracks a bugle’s call rings out. What! is he going to renounce
life? Does he still, for the sake of Genevieve’s esteem (and already he
esteems her a little less now that she loves him a little more), does he
still think of giving himself up?




A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN WHICH THIS BOOK IS SET


_This book is set (on the Linotype) in Elzevir No. 3, a French Old
Style. For the modern revival of this excellent face we are indebted to
Gustave Mayeur of Paris, who reproduced it in 1878, basing his designs,
he says, on types used in a book which was printed by the Elzevirs at
Leyden in 1634. The Elzevir family held a distinguished position as
printers and publishers for more than a century, their best work
appearing between about 1590 and 1680. Although the Elzevirs were not
themselves type founders, they utilised the services of the best type
designers of their time, notably Van Dijk, Garamond, and Sanlecque. Many
of their books were small, or, as we should say now, “pocket” editions,
of the classics, and for these volumes they developed a type face which
is open and readable but relatively narrow in body, although in no sense
condensed, thus permitting a large amount of copy to be set in limited
space without impairing legibility._

                       [Illustration: colophon]

                   SET UP, ELECTROTYPED, PRINTED AND
                    BOUND BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS,
                   INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y. · ESPARTO
                          PAPER MANUFACTURED
                       IN SCOTLAND AND FURNISHED
                        BY W. F. ETHERINGTON &
                            CO., NEW YORK.


FOOTNOTES:

[A] In English in the original. (_Translator’s note._)

[B] Equivalent in pre-war days to £1600. (_Translator’s note._)

[C] In English in the original. (_Translator’s note._)

[D] _Compte rendu de la Délivrance de Sa Sainteté Léon XIII emprisonné
dans les cachots du Vatican_ (Saint-Malo, imprimerie Y. Billois, rue de
l’Orme 4), 1893. (_Author’s note._)

[E] There is an insinuation in Mlle. Péterat’s name which might be
rendered in English by calling her Miss Fartwell. (_Translator’s note._)

[F] Roman Plastic Plaster (announced the catalogue) is a special
fabrication of comparatively recent invention. This substance, of
which Messrs. Blafaphas, Fleurissoire and Lévichon possess the unique
secret, is a great advance on Marblette, Stucceen and other similar
compositions, whose inferior qualities have been only too well
established by use. (Follow the descriptions of the various models.)
(_Author’s note._)

[G] _Cave_ meaning cellar in French, Protos makes a double pun
impossible to render in English. (_Translator’s note._)

[H] In English in the original. (_Translator’s note._)

[I] In English in the original. (_Translator’s note._)



Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

Baraglious got back to Paris=> Baragliouls got back to Paris {pg 46}

eyebrows bginning to frown=> eyebrows beginning to frown {pg 89}

however, notwithtanding=> however, notwithstanding {pg 122}

four or five minutes=> four or five minute {pg 142}

tug of clear water=> tub of clear water {pg 175}

have trottled her=> have throttled her {pg 206}







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