第15章

"Because your days were dear to me.You do not know then the tenderness of hatred!I wished you to live,and that your life should be a hell."And then he added,panting:

"The lover of the Countess Olga,...was I."The Count staggered as if struck by lightning.He supported himself by the back of a chair,to avoid falling;then springing to the table,he seized a carafe full of water and emptied it in a single draught.Then in a convulsed voice,he exclaimed:

"You lie!The Countess Olga could never have given herself to a serf!""Refer to your memory once more,Kostia Petrovitch.You forget that in her eyes I was not a serf,but an illustrious physician,a sort of great man.However,I will console you.The Countess Olga loved me no more than I loved her.My magnetic eyes,my threats had,as it were,bewitched her poor head;in my arms she was dying with fear,and when at the end of one of these sweet interviews,she heard me cry out,'Olga Vassilievna,your lover is a serf,'she nearly perished of shame and horror."The Count cast upon his serf a look of indescribable disgust,and,making a superhuman effort to speak,once more exclaimed:

"Impossible!That letter which you addressed to me at Paris--""I feared that your dishonor might be concealed from you,and what would life have been to me then?"M.Leminof turned to the priest who remained standing at the other end of the room."Father Alexis,is what this man says true?"The priest silently bowed.

"And was it for this,foolish priest,that you have endured death and martyrdom--to prolong the days of a worm of the earth?""I cared little for his life,"answered the priest,with dignity,"but much for my conscience,and for the inviolable secrecy of the confessional.""And for two years in succession you have suffered my mortal enemy to lodge under my roof without warning me?""I was ignorant of his history and of the fact that he had reasons for hating you.I fancied that a mad passion had made him a traitor to friendship,and that in repentance he sought to expiate his fault,by the assiduous attentions which he lavished upon you.""Poor fellow!"said the Count,crushing him with a look of pity.

Then Vladimir resumed in a voice growing more and more feeble:

"Since that cursed hour,when I crawled at your feet,without being able to soften your stony heart with my tears,I became disgusted with life.To feel that I belonged to you was every instant a torment.But if you ask me why I have deferred my death so long,Ianswer that while you had a daughter living my vengeance was not complete.I let this child grow up;but when the clock of fate struck the hour I waited for,courage suddenly failed me,and I was seized with scruples,which still astonish me.But what am Isaying?I bless my weakness,since I brought home a victim pure and without stain,and since her virginal innocence adds to the horror of your crime.Ah!tell me,was the steel which pierced her heart the same that silenced Morlof's?Oh,sword,thou art predestinated!"Count Kostia's eyes brightened.He had something like a presentiment that he was about to be delivered from that fatal doubt which for so many years had poisoned his life,and he fixed his vulture-like eyes upon Vladimir.

"That child,"said he,"was not my daughter."Vladimir opened his vest,tore the lining with his nails and drew out a folded paper,which he threw at the Count's feet:

"Pick up that letter!"cried he,"the writing is known to you.Imeant to have sent it to you by your dishonored daughter.Go and read it near your dead child."M.Leminof picked up the letter,unfolded it,and read it to the end with bearing calm and firm.The first lines ran thus:"Vile Moujik.Thou hast made me a mother.Be happy and proud.Thou hast revealed to me that maternity can be a torture.In my ignorant simplicity,I did not know until now it could be aught else than an intoxication,a pride,a virtue,which God and the church regard with favor,and the angels shelter with their white wings.When for the first time I felt my Stephan and my Stephane stir within me,my heart leaped for joy,and I could not find words enough to bless Heaven which at last rewarded six years of expectation;but now it is not a child I carry in bosom,it is a crime..."This letter of four pages shed light,and carried conviction into the mind of Count Kostia.

"She was really my daughter,"said he,coolly..."Fortunately Ihave not killed her."

He left the room,and an instant after re-appeared,accompanied by Gilbert,and carrying in his arms his daughter,pale and disheveled,but living.He advanced into the middle of the room.

There,as if speaking to himself,he said:

"This young man is my good genius.He tore my sword from me.God be praised!he has saved her and me.This dear child was frightened,she fell,but she is unhurt.You see her,she is alive,her eyes are open,she hears,she breathes.To-morrow she shall smile,to-morrow we shall all be happy.

Then drawing her to the head of the bed and calling Gilbert to him,he placed his hands together,and standing behind them,embracing their shoulders in his powerful arms,and thrusting his head between theirs,he forced them,in spite of themselves,to bend with him over the dying man.

Gilbert and Stephane closed their eyes.

The Count's and Vladimir's were wide open devouring each other.

The master's flamed like torches;the serf's were sunken,glassy,and filled with the fear and horror of death.He seemed almost petrified,and murmured in a failing voice:

"I am lost.I have undone my own work.To-morrow,to-morrow,they will be happy."One last look,full of hatred,flashed from his eyes,over which the eternal shadow was creeping,his features contracted,his mouth became distorted,and,uttering a frightful cry,he rendered up his soul.

Then the Count slowly raised himself.His arms,in which he held the two young people as in a living vice,relaxed,and Stephane fell upon Gilbert's breast.Confused,colorless,wild-eyed,intoxicated with joy and terror at the same time,clinging to her friend as the sailor to his plank of safety,she said in an indistinct voice:

"In the life to which you condemn me,my father,the joys are as terrible as the sorrows."The Count said to Gilbert:

"Console her,calm her emotion.She is yours.I have given her to you.Do not fear that I shall take her back again."Then,turning again to the bed,he exclaimed:"What a terrible thorn death has just drawn from my heart!"In the midst of so many tragic sensations,who was happy?Father Alexis was,and he had no desire to hide it.He went and came,moved the furniture,passed his hand over his beard,struck his chest with all his might,and presently in his excess of joy threw himself upon Stephane and then upon Gilbert,caressing and embracing them.At last,kneeling down by the bed of death,under the eyes of the Count,he took the head of the dead man between his hands and kissed him upon the mouth and cheeks,saying:

"My poor brother,thou hast perhaps been more unfortunate than guilty.May God,in the unfathomable mystery of his infinite mercy,give thee one day,as I have,the kiss of peace!Then raising his clasped hands,he said:"Holy mother of God:blessed be thy name.Thou hast done more than I dared to ask."At that moment Ivan,roused at last from his long lethargy,appeared at the threshold of the door.For some minutes he remained paralyzed by astonishment,and looked around distractedly;then,throwing himself at his master's feet and tearing his hair,he cried:

"Seigneur Pere,I am not a traitor!That man mixed some drug in my tea which put me to sleep.Seigneur Pere,kill me,but do not say that I am a traitor.""Rise,"returned the Count gayly,"rise,I say.I shall not kill thee.I am not going to kill anybody.My son,thou'rt a rusty old tool.Dost know what I shall do with thee?I shall slip thee in among the wedding presents of Madame Gilbert Saville."Paul Bourget Andre Cornelis I

I was nine years old.It was in 1864,in the month of June at the close of a warm,bright afternoon.I was at my studies in my room as usual,having come in from the Lycee Bonaparte,and the outer shutters were closed.We lived in the Rue Tronchet,near the Madeleine,in the seventh house on the left,coming from the church.Three highly-polished steps (how often have I slipped on them!)led to the little room,so prettily furnished,all in blue,within whose walls I passed the last completely happy days of my life.Everything comes back to me.I was seated at my table,dressed in a large black overall,and engaged in writing out the tenses of a Latin verb on a ruled sheet divided into several compartments.All of a sudden I heard a loud cry,followed by a clamor of voices;then rapid steps trod the corridor outside my room.Instinctively I rushed to the door and came up against a man-servant,who was deadly pale,and had a roll of linen in his hand.I understood the use of this afterwards.I had not to question this man,for at sight of me he exclaimed,as though involuntarily:

"Ah!M.Andre,what an awful misfortune!"Then,regaining his presence of mind,he said:

"Go back into your room--go back at once!"Before I could answer,he caught me up in his arms,rather threw than placed me on the upper step of my staircase,locked the door of the corridor,and walked rapidly away.

"No,no,"I cried,flinging myself against the door,"tell me all;I will,I must know."No answer.I shook the lock,I struck the panel with my clenched fists,I dashed my shoulder against the door.Vain was my frenzy!Then,sitting upon the lowest step,Ilistened,in an agony of fear,to the coming and going of people outside,who knew of "the awful misfortune,"but what was it they knew?Child as I was,I understood the terrible signification which the servant's exclamation bore under the actual circumstances.Two days previously,my father had gone out after breakfast,according to custom,to the place of business which he had occupied for over four years,in the Rue de la Victoire.He had been thoughtful during breakfast,indeed for some months past he had lost his accustomed cheerfulness.When he rose to go out,my mother,myself,and one of the habitual frequenters of our house,M.Jacques Termonde,a fellow student of my father's at the Ecole de Droit,were at table.My father left his seat before breakfast was over,having looked at the clock,and inquired whether it was quite right.

"Are you in such a hurry,Cornelis?"asked Termonde.

"Yes,"answered my father,"I have an appointment with a client who is ill--a foreigner--I have to call on him at his hotel to procure some important papers.He is an odd sort of man,and I shall not be sorry to see something of him at closer quarters.I have taken certain steps on his behalf,and I am almost tempted to regret them."And since then,no news!In the evening of that day,when dinner,which had been put off for one quarter of an hour after another,was over,and my father,who was always so methodical,so punctual,had not come in,my mother began to betray increasing uneasiness,and could not conceal from me that his last words dwelt upon her mind.It was a rare occurrence for him to speak with misgiving of his undertakings!

The night passed,then the next morning and afternoon,and once more it was evening.My mother and I were once more seated at the square table,where the cover laid for my father in front of his empty chair gave,as it were,a form to our nameless dread.

My mother had written to M.Jacques Termonde,and he came after dinner.I was sent away immediately,but not without my having had time to remark the extraordinary brightness of M.Termonde's eyes,which were blue,and usually shone coldly in his thin,sharp face.

He had fair hair and a beard best described as pale.Thus do children take note of small details,which are speedily effaced from their minds,but afterwards reappear,at the contact of life,just as certain invisible marks come out upon paper when it is held to the fire.

While begging to be allowed to remain,I was mechanically observing the hurried and agitated turning and returning of a light cane--Ihad long coveted it--held behind his back in his remarkably beautiful hands.If I had not admired the cane so much,and the fighting centaurs on its handle--a fine piece of Renaissance work--this symptom of extreme disturbance might have escaped me.But,how could M.Termonde fail to be disturbed by the disappearance of his best friend?Nevertheless,his voice,a soft voice which made all his phrases melodious,was quite calm.

"To-morrow,"he said,"I will have every inquiry made,if Cornelis has not returned;but he will come back,and all will be explained.

Depend on it,he went away somewhere on the business he told you of,and left a letter for you to be sent by a commissionaire who has not delivered it.""Ah!"said my mother,"you think that is possible?"How often,in my dark hours,have I recalled this dialogue,and the room in which it took place--a little salon,much liked by my mother,with hangings and furniture of some foreign stuff all striped in red and white,black and yellow,that my father had brought from Morocco;and how plainly have I seen my mother in my mind's eye,with her black hair,her brown eyes,her quivering lips.She was as white as the summer gown she wore that evening.

M.Termonde was dressed with his usual correctness,and I remember well his slender and elegant figure.

I attended the two classes at the Lycee,if not with a light,at least with a relieved heart.But,while I was sitting upon the lower step of my little staircase,all my uneasiness revived.Ihammered at the door again,I called as loudly as I could;but no one answered me,until the good woman who had been my nurse came into my room.

"My father!"I cried,"where is my father?""Poor child,poor child,"said nurse,and took me in her arms.

She had been sent to tell me the awful truth,but her strength failed her.I escaped from her,ran out into the corridor,and reached my father's bedroom before anyone could stop me.Ah!upon the bed lay a rigid form covered by a white sheet,upon the pillow a bloodless,motionless face,with fixed,wide-open eyes,for the lids had not been closed;the chin was supported by a bandage,a napkin was bound around the forehead;at the bed's foot knelt a woman,still dressed in her white summer gown,crushed and helpless with grief.These were my father and my mother.

I flung myself madly upon her,and she clasped me passionately,with the piercing cry,"My Andre,my Andre!"In that cry there was such intense grief,in that embrace there was such frenzied tenderness,her heart was then so big with tears,that it warms my own even now to think of it.The next moment she rose and carried me out of the room,that I might see the dreadful sight no more.

She did this easily,her terrible excitement had doubled her strength."God punishes me!God punishes me!"she said over and over again taking no heed of her words.She had always been given,by fits and starts,to mystical piety.Then she covered my face,my neck,and my hair with kisses and tears.May all that we suffered,the dead and I,be forgiven you,poor mother,for the sincerity of those tears at that moment!

II

When I asked my mother,on the instant,to tell me all about the awful event,she said that my father had been seized with a fit in a hackney carriage,and that as no papers were found upon him,he had not been recognized for two days.

Grown-up people are much too ready to think it is equally easy to tell lies to all children.

Now,I was a child who pondered long in my thoughts over things that were said to me,and by dint of putting a number of small facts together,I came to the conviction that I did not know the whole truth.If my father's death had occurred in the manner stated to me,why should the man-servant have asked me,one day when he took me out to walk,what had been said to me about it?

And when I answered him,why did he say no more,and,being a very talkative person,why had he kept silence ever since?Why,too,did I feel the same silence all around me,in the air,sitting on every lip,hidden in every look?Why was the subject of conversation constantly changed whenever I drew near?I guessed this by many trifling signs.Why was not a single newspaper left lying about,whereas,during my father's lifetime,the three journals to which we subscribed were always to be found on a table in the salon?Above all,why did both the masters and my schoolfellows look at me so curiously,when I went back to school early in October,four months after our great misfortune?Alas!it was their curiosity which revealed the full extent of the catastrophe to me.

It was only a fortnight after the reopening of the school,when Ihappened to be playing one morning with two new boys;I remember their names,Rastonaix and Servoin,now,and I can see the big fat cheeks of Rastonaix and the ferret-like face of Servoin.Although we were day pupils,we were allowed a quarter of an hour's recreation at school,between the Latin and English lessons.The two boys had engaged me on the previous day for a game of ninepins,and when it was over,they came close to me,and looking at each other to keep up their courage,they put to me the following questions,point-blank:

"Is it true that the murderer of your father has been arrested?""And that he is to be guillotined?"

This occurred sixteen years ago,but I cannot now recall the beating of my heart at those words without horror.I must have turned frightfully pale,for the two boys,who had struck me this blow with the carelessness of their age--of our age--stood there disconcerted.A blind fury seized upon me,urging me to command them to be silent,and to hit them with my fists if they spoke again;but at the same time I felt a wild impulse of curiosity--what if this were the explanation of the silence by which I felt myself surrounded?--and also a pang of fear,the fear of the unknown.The blood rushed into my face,and I stammered out:

"I do not know."

The drum-tap,summoning us back to the schoolroom,separated us.

What a day I passed,bewildered by my trouble,turning the two terrible sentences over and over again.

It would have been natural for me to question my mother;but the truth is,I felt quite unable to repeat to her what my unconscious tormentors had said.It was strange but true,that thenceforth my mother,whom nevertheless I loved with all my heart,exercised a paralyzing influence over me.She was so beautiful in her pallor,so royally beautiful and proud.

No,I should never have ventured to reveal to her that an irresistible doubt of the story she had told me was implanted in my mind merely by the two questions of my schoolfellows;but,as Icould not keep silence entirely and live,I resolved to have recourse to Julie,my former nurse.She was a little woman,fifty years of age,an old maid too,with a flat,wrinkled face,like an over-ripe apple;but her eyes were full of kindness,and indeed so was her whole face,although her lips were drawn in by the loss of her front teeth,and this gave her a witch-like mouth.She had deeply mourned my father in my company,for she had been in his service before his marriage.Julie was retained specially on my account,and in addition to her the household consisted of the cook,the man-servant,and the femme de chambre.Julie put me to bed and tucked me in,heard me say my prayers,and listened to my little troubles.

"Oh!the wretches!"she exclaimed,when I opened my heart to her and repeated the words that had agitated me so terribly."And yet it could not have been hidden from you forever."Then it was that she told me all the truth,there in my little room,speaking very low and bending over me,while I lay sobbing in my narrow bed.She suffered in the telling of that truth as much as I in the hearing of it,and the touch of her dry old hand,with fingers scarred by the needle,fell softly on my curly head as she stroked it.

That ghastly story,which bore down my youth with the weight of an impenetrable mystery,I have found written in the newspapers of the day,but not more clearly than it was narrated by my dear old Julie.Here it is,plainly set forth,as I have turned and re-turned it over and over again in my thoughts,day after day,with the vain hope of penetrating it.

My father,who was a distinguished advocate,had resigned his practice in court some years previously,and set up as a financial agent,hoping by that means to make a fortune more rapidly than by the law.His good official connection,his scrupulous probity,his extensive knowledge of the most important questions,and his great capacity for work,had speedily secured him an exceptional position.He employed ten secretaries,and the million and a half francs which my mother and I inherited formed only the beginnings of the wealth to which he aspired,partly for his own sake,much more for his son's but,above all,for his wife's--he was passionately attached to her.Notes and letters found among his papers proved that at the time of his death,he had been for a month previously in correspondence with a certain person named,or calling himself,William Henry Rochdale,who was commissioned by the firm of Crawford,in San Francisco,to obtain a railway concession in Cochin China,then recently conquered,from the French Government.It was with Rochdale that my father had the appointment of which he spoke before he left my mother,M.

Termonde,and myself,after breakfast,on the last fatal morning.

The Instruction had no difficulty in establishing this fact.The appointed place of meeting was the Imperial Hotel,a large building,with a long facade,in the Rue de Rivoli,not far from the Ministere de la Marine.The entire block of houses was destroyed by fire in the Commune;but during my childhood Ifrequently begged Julie to take me to the spot,that I might gaze,with an aching heart,upon the handsome courtyard adorned with green shrubs,the wide,carpeted staircase,and the slab of black marble,encrusted with gold,that marked the entrance to the place whither my father wended his way,while my mother was talking with M.Termonde,and I was playing in the room with them.My father had left us at a quarter-past twelve,and he must have taken a quarter of an hour to walk to the Imperial Hotel,for the concierge,having seen the corpse,recognized it,and remembered that it was just about half-past twelve when my father inquired of him what was the number of Mr.Rochdale's rooms.This gentleman,a foreigner,had arrived on the previous day,and had fixed,after some hesitation,upon an apartment situated on the second floor,and composed of a salon and a bedroom,with a small ante-room,which separated the apartment from the landing outside.From that moment he had not gone out and he dined the same evening and breakfasted the next morning in his salon.The concierge also remembered that Rochdale came down alone,at about two o'clock on the second day;but he was too much accustomed to the continual coming and going to notice whether the visitor who arrived at half-past twelve had or had not gone away again.Rochdale handed the key of his apartment to the concierge,with directions that anybody who came,wanting to see him,should be asked to wait in his salon.

After this he walked away in a leisurely manner,with a business-like portfolio under his arm,smoking a cigar,and he did not reappear.