"My dearest child," said the latter, "you have of your own free will

accepted Count S---- as your husband. Much as jour father desired this,

he has never at all insisted on it since poor Moritz's death; indeed,

it seems to me as though he had had much of the feeling which (I cannot

hide from you) I have had myself; it is utterly incomprehensible to me

how you can have forgotten poor Moritz so soon. However, the time has

come; you are giving your hand to the Count. Examine your own heart. It

is not yet too late. May the remembrance of him whom you have forgotten

never fall across your heart like some black shadow."

"Never," cried Angelica, while the tears ran down her cheeks, "never

can I forget Moritz. Never; oh! never can I love as I loved _him_! What

I feel for the Count is something totally different. I cannot explain

how it is that the Count has made me feel this irresistible attachment

to him; but feel it I do, in every fibre of my being. It is not that I

love him: I do not; I cannot love him in the way I loved Moritz; but

I feel as if I could not, and cannot live apart from him--without

him--independently of him. That it is only through him that I can think

and feel. A spirit voice seems perpetually enjoining me to cleave to

him as a wife; telling me that I _must_ do so, and that unless I do

there is no further, or other life possible for me here below. And I

obey this voice, which I believe to be the mysterious prompting of

Providence."

The maid here came in to say that Marguerite, who had been missing

since the early part of the morning, had not made her appearance yet,

but that the Gardener had just brought a little note which she had

given him, with instructions to deliver it when he had finished his

work and taken the last of the flowers to the Castle. It was as

follows:--

"You will never see me more; a dark mystery drives me from your house.

I implore you--you, who have been to me as a tender mother--not to have

me followed, or brought back by force. My second attempt to kill myself

will be more successful than the first. May Angelica enjoy to the full

that bliss, the idea of which pierces my heart. Farewell for ever!

Forget the unfortunate Marguerite."

"What is this?" cried Madame von G----; "the poor soul seems to have

set her whole mind upon destroying our happiness. Must she always come

in your way just as you are going to give your hand to the man of your

choice? Let her go; the foolish, ungrateful thing, whom I treated and

cared for as if she had been my own daughter. I shall certainly never

trouble my head about her any more."

Angelica cried bitterly at the loss of her whom she had looked on as a

sister; her mother implored her not to waste a thought on the foolish

creature at such an important time.

The guests were assembled in the _salon_, ready, as soon as the

appointed hour should come, to go to the little chapel where a catholic

priest was to marry the couple. The Colonel led in the bride. Everyone

marvelled at her beauty, which was enhanced by the simple richness of

her dress. The Count had not arrived. One quarter of an hour succeeded

another, and still he did not make his appearance. The Colonel went to

the Count's rooms. There he found his valet, who said his master, just

when he was fully dressed for the ceremony, had suddenly felt unwell,

and had gone out for a turn in the park, hoping the fresh air would

revive him, and forbidding him, the valet, to follow him.

The Colonel could not explain to himself why it was that this

proceeding of the Count's fell on him with such a weight--why it was

that an idea immediately came to him that something terrible had

happened. He sent back to the house to say that the Count would come

very shortly, and that a celebrated doctor, who was one of the guests,

was to be privately told to come out to him as quickly as possible. As

soon as he came, he, the Colonel and the valet, went to search for the

Count in the park. Striking out of the main alley, they went to an open

space surrounded by thick shrubberies, which the Colonel remembered to

have been a favourite resort of the Count's; and there they saw him

sitting on a mossy bank, dressed all in black, with his star sparkling

on his breast, and his hands folded, leaning his back against an

elder-tree in full blossom, staring, motionless, before him. They

shuddered at the sight, for his hollow, darkly-gleaming eyes were

evidently devoid of the faculty of vision.

"Count S----! what has happened?" the Colonel cried; but there was no

answer, no movement, not the slightest appearance of respiration. The

doctor hurried forward; tore off the Count's coat, waistcoat, and

neckcloth, and rubbed his brow: turning then to the Colonel, he said in

hollow tones, "Human help is useless here. He is dead!--there has been

an attack of apoplexy!"

The valet broke out into loud lamentations. The Colonel, mastering his

inward horror with all his soldierly self-control, ordered him to hold

his peace, saying, "If we are not careful what we are about, we shall

kill Angelica on the spot." He caused the body to be taken up and

carried by unfrequented paths to a pavilion at some distance, of which

he happened to have the key in his pocket. There he left it under the

valet's charge, and, with the doctor, went back to the chateau again.

Hovering between one resolve and another, he could not make up his mind

whether to conceal the whole matter from Angelica, or tell her, calmly

and quietly, the terrible truth.

When he came into the house he found everything in the utmost confusion

and consternation. Angelica, in the middle of an animated conversation,

had suddenly closed her eyes, and fallen into a state of profound

insensibility. She was lying on a sofa in an adjoining room. Her face

was not pale, nor in the least distorted; the roses of her cheeks

bloomed brighter and fresher than ever, and her face shone with an

indescribable expression of happiness and delight. She was as one

penetrated with the highest blissfulness. The doctor, after observing

her with the minutest carefulness of examination for a long while,

declared that there was not the least cause for anxiety in her

condition, nor the slightest danger. He said she was (although it was

entirely inexplicable _how_ she was) in a magnetized condition, and

that he would not venture to awaken her from it: she would wake from it

of her own accord presently.

Meanwhile mysterious whisperings arose amongst the guests. The sudden

death of the Count seemed to have somehow got wind, and they all

dispersed in gloomy silence. One could hear the carriages rolling away.

Madame von G----, bending over Angelica, watched her every respiration.

She seemed to be whispering words, but none could hear or understand

them. The doctor would not allow her to be undressed; even her gloves

were not to be taken off; he said it would be hurtful even to touch

her.

All at once she opened her eyes, started up from the sofa, and, with a

resounding cry of "Here he is!" "Here he is!" went rushing out of the

room, through the ante-chamber and down the stairs.

"She is out of her mind," cried Madame von G----. "Oh, God of Heaven,

she is mad!" "No, no," the Doctor said, "this is not madness; there is

something altogether unheard of taking place," with which he hastened

after her down the steps.

He saw her speeding like an arrow, with her arms lifted up above her

head, out of the gate and away along the broad high road, her rich

lace-ornamented dress fluttering, and her hair, which had come down,

streaming in the wind.

A man on horseback was coming tearing up towards her; when he reached

her, he sprang from his horse and clasped her in his arms. Two other

riders who were following him drew rein and dismounted.

The Colonel, who had followed the doctor in hot haste, stood gazing on

the group in speechless astonishment, rubbing his forehead, as if

striving to keep firm hold of his thoughts.

It was Moritz who was holding Angelica fast pressed to his heart;

beside him stood Dagobert, and a fine-looking young man in the handsome

uniform of a Russian General.

"No," cried Angelica over and over again, as the lovers embraced

one another, "I was never untrue to you, my beloved Moritz." And

Moritz cried, "Oh, I know that; I know that quite well, my darling

angel-child. He enchanted you by his satanic arts."

And he more carried than led her back to the chateau, while the others

followed in silence. Not till he came to the castle did the Colonel

give a profound sigh, as if it was only then that he came fully to his

senses; and, looking round him with questioning glances, said, "What

miracles! what extraordinary events!"

"Everything will be explained," said Moritz, presenting the stranger to

the Colonel as General Bogislav von Se----n, a Russian officer, his

most intimate friend.

As soon as they came into the chateau, Moritz, with a wild look, and

unheeding the Colonel's alarmed amazement, cried out, "Where is Count

von S----i?"

"Among the dead!" said the Colonel, in a hollow voice, "he was seized

with apoplexy an hour ago."

Angelica shrank and shuddered. "Yes," she said, "that I know. At the

very instant when he died I felt as though some crystal thing within my

being shivered, and broke with a 'kling.' I fell into an extraordinary

state. I think I must have gone on carrying that frightful dream (which

I told you of) further, because, when I came to look at matters again,

I found that those terrible eyes had no more power over me; the web of

fire loosened and broke away. Heavenly blissfulness was all about me. I

saw Moritz, my own Moritz; he was coming to me. I flew to meet him,"

and she clasped her arms round him as if she thought he was going to

escape from her again.

"Praised be Heaven," said Madame von G----. "Now the weight has gone

from my heart which was stifling it. I am freed from that inexpressible

anxiety and alarm which came upon me at the instant when Angelica

promised to marry that terrible Count. I always felt as though she were

betrothing herself to mysterious, unholy powers with her betrothal

ring."

General von Se----n expressed a desire to see the Count's remains, and

when the body was uncovered and he saw the pale countenance now fixed

in death, he cried, "By Heaven, it is he! It is none other than

himself."

Angelica had fallen into a gentle sleep in Moritz's arms, and had been

carried to her bed, the doctor thinking that nothing more beneficial

could have happened to her than this slumber, which would rest the

life-spirits, overstrained as they had been. He considered that in this

manner a threatening illness would be naturally dispelled.

"Now," said the Colonel, "it is time to solve all those riddles and

explain all those miraculous events. Tell us, Moritz, what angel of

Heaven has called you back to life?"

"You know," said Moritz, "all about the murderous and treacherous

attack which was made upon me near S----, though the armistice had been

proclaimed. I was struck by a bullet, and fell from my horse. How long

I lay in that deathlike state I cannot tell. When I first awoke to a

dim consciousness, I was being moved somewhere, travelling. It was dark

night; several voices were whispering near me. They were speaking

French. Thus I knew that I was badly wounded and in the hands of the

enemy. This thought came upon me with all its horror, and I sank again

into a deep fainting fit. After that came a condition which has only

left me the recollection of a few hours of violent headache; but at

last, one morning, I awoke to complete consciousness. I found myself in

a comfortable, almost sumptuous bed, with silk curtains and great

cords and tassels. The room was lofty, and had silken hangings and

richly-gilt tables and chairs, in the old French style. A strange man

was bending over me and looking closely into my face. He hurried to a

bell-rope and pulled at it hard. Presently the doors opened, and two

men came in, the elder of whom had on an old-fashioned embroidered

coat, and the cross of Saint Louis. The younger came to me, felt my

pulse, and said to the elder, in French, 'All danger is over; he is

saved.' The elder gentleman now introduced himself to me as the

Chevalier de T----. The house was his in which I found myself. He said

he had chanced, on a journey, to be passing through the village at the

very moment when the treacherous attack was made upon me, and the

peasants were going to plunder me. He succeeded in rescuing me, had me

put into a conveyance, and brought to his chateau, which was quite

out of the way of the military routes of communication. Here his own

body-surgeon had applied himself to the arduous task of curing me of my

very serious wound in the head. He said, in conclusion, that he loved

my nation, which had shown him kindness in the stormy revolutionary

times, and was delighted to be able to be of service to me. Everything

in his chateau which could conduce to my comfort or amusement was

freely at my disposal, and he would not, on any pretence, allow me to

leave him until all risk, whether from my wound or the insecurity of

the routes, should be over. All that he regretted was the impossibility

of communicating with my friends for the moment, so as to let them know

where I was.

"The Chevalier was a widower, and his sons were not with him, so that

there were no other occupants of the chateau but himself, the surgeon,

and a great retinue of servants. It would only weary you were I to tell

you at length how I grew better and better under the care of the

exceedingly able surgeon, and how the Chevalier did everything he

possibly could to make my hermit's life agreeable to me. His

conversation was more intellectual, and his views less shallow, than is

usually the case with his countrymen. He talked on arts and sciences,

but avoided the more novel and recent developments of them as much as

possible. I need not tell you that my sole thought was Angelica, that

it burned my soul to know that she was plunged in sorrow for my death.

I constantly urged the Chevalier to get letters conveyed to our

headquarters. He always declined to do so, on account of the

uncertainty of the attempt, as it seemed as good as certain that

fighting was going on again; but he consoled me by promising that as

soon as I was quite convalescent he would have me sent home safe and

sound, happen what might. From what he said I was led to suppose that

the campaign was going on again, and to the advantage of the allies,

and that he was avoiding telling me so in words from a wish to spare my

feelings. But I need only mention one or two little incidents to

justify the strange conjectures which Dagobert has formed in his mind.

I was nearly free from fever, when one night I suddenly fell into an

incomprehensible condition of dreaminess, the recollection of which

makes me shudder, though that recollection is of the dimmest and most

shadowy kind. I saw Angelica, but her form seemed to be dissolving away

indistinctly in a trembling radiance, and I strove in vain to hold it

fast before me. Another being pressed in between us, laid herself on my

breast, and grasped my heart within me, in the depths of my entity; and

while I was perishing in the most glowing torment, I was at the same

time penetrated with a strange miraculous sense of bliss. Next morning

my eyes fell on a picture hanging near the bed, which I had never seen

there before. I shuddered, for it was Marguerite beaming on me with her

black brilliant eyes. I asked the servant whose picture it was, and

where it came from. He said it was the Chevalier's niece, the Marquise

de T----, and had always been where it was now, only I had not noticed

it; it had been freshly dusted the day before. The Chevalier said the

same. So that, whilst--waking or dreaming--my sole desire was to see

Angelica, what was continually before me was Marguerite. It seemed to

me that I was alienated, estranged, from myself. Some exterior foreign

power seemed to have possession of me, ruling me, taking supreme

command of me. I felt that I could not get away from Marguerite. Never

shall I forget the torture of that condition.

"One morning, as I was lying in a window seat, refreshing my whole

being by drinking in the perfume and the freshness which the morning

breeze was wafting to me, I heard trumpets in the distance, and

recognized a cheery march-tune of Russian cavalry. My heart throbbed

with rapture and delight. It was as if friendly spirits were coming to

me, wafted on the wings of the wind, speaking to me in lovely voices of

comfort, as if a newly-won life was stretching out hands to me to lift

me from the coffin in which some hostile power had nailed me up. One or

two horsemen came up with lightning speed, right into the castle

enclosure. I looked down, and saw Bogislav. In the excess of my joy I

shouted out his name; the Chevalier came in, pale and annoyed,

stammering out something about an unexpected billeting, and all sorts

of trouble and annoyance. Without attending to him, I ran downstairs

and threw myself into Bogislav's embrace.

"To my astonishment, I now learned that peace had been proclaimed a

long time before, and that the greater part of the troops were on their

homeward march. All this the Chevalier had concealed from me, keeping

me on in the chateau as his prisoner. Neither Bogislav nor I knew

anything in the shape of a motive for this conduct. But each of us

dimly felt that there must be something in the nature of foul play

about it. The Chevalier was quite a different man from that moment,

sulky and peevish. Even to lack of good breeding, he wearied us with

continual exhibitions of self-will, and naggling about trifles. Nay,

when, in the purest gratitude, I spoke enthusiastically of his having

saved my life, he smiled malignantly; and, in fact, his whole conduct

was that of an incomprehensible eccentric.

"After a halt of eight-and-forty hours for rest, Bogislav marched off

again, and I went with him. We were delighted when we turned our backs

on the strange old-world place, which now looked to me like some

gloomy, uncanny prison-house. But now, Dagobert, do you go on, for it

is quite your turn to continue the account of the rest of the strange

adventures which we have met with."

"How," began Dagobert, "can we doubt, and hesitate to believe in, the

marvellous power of foreboding, and fore-knowing, events which lie so

deep in man's nature? I never believed that my friend was dead. That

Spirit or Intelligence (call it whatever you choose) which speaks to

us, comprehensibly, from out our own selves, in our dreams, told me

that Moritz was alive, and that, somehow and somewhere, he was being

held fast in bonds of some most mysterious nature. Angelica's relations

with the Count cut me to the heart; and when, some little time ago, I

came here and found her in a peculiar condition, which, I am obliged to

say, caused me an inward horror (because I seemed to see, as in a magic

mirror, some terrible mysterious secret), there ripened in me a resolve

that I would go on a pilgrimage, by land and water, until I should find

my friend Moritz. I say not a word of my delight when I found him, on

German ground, at A----, and in the company of General von S----en.

"All the furies of hell awoke in his breast when he heard of Angelica's

betrothal to the Count; but all his execrations and heart-breaking

lamentations at her unfaithfulness to him were silenced when I told

him of certain ideas which I had formed, and assured him that it

was in his power to set the whole matter straight in a moment. General

von Se----en shuddered when I mentioned the Count's name to him, and

when, at his desire, I described his face, figure, and appearance, he

cried, 'Yes, there can be no further doubt. He is the very man!'"

"You will be surprised," here interrupted the General, "to hear me say

that this Count S----i, many years ago, in Naples, carried away from

me, by means of diabolical arts, a lady whom I deeply and fondly loved.

At the very instant when I ran my sword through his body, both she and

I were seized upon by a hellish illusion which parted us for ever. I

have long known that the wounds which I gave him were not dangerous in

the slightest degree, that he became a suitor for the lady's hand, and,

alas! that on the very day when she was to have been married to him,

she fell down dead, stricken by what was said to be an attack of

apoplexy."

"Good Heavens!" cried Madame von G----. "No doubt a similar fate was

hanging over my darling child! But how is it that I feel this is so?"

"The voice of the boding Spirit tells you so, Madame," said Dagobert.

"And then," said Madame von G----, "that terrible apparition which

Moritz was telling us of that evening when the Count came in in such a

mysterious way?"

"As I was telling you then," said Moritz, "there fell a crashing blow.

An ice-cold deathly air blew upon me, and it seemed to me that a pale

indistinct form went hovering and rustling across the room, in

wavering, scarcely distinguishable outlines. I mastered my terror with

all the might of my reason. All I seemed to be conscious of was that

Bogislav was lying stiff, cold, and rigid, like a man dead. When he had

been brought back to consciousness, with great pains and trouble, by

the doctor who was summoned, he feebly reached out his hand to me, and

said, 'Soon, to-morrow at latest, all my sorrows will be over.' And it

really happened as he said, though it was the will of Providence that

it should come about in quite a different way to that which we

anticipated. In the thick of the fighting, next morning, a spent ball

struck him on the breast and knocked him out of his saddle. This kindly

ball shattered the portrait of his false love, which he wore next to

his heart, into a thousand splinters. His contusion soon healed, and

since that moment Bogislav has been quite free from everything of an

uncanny nature."

"It is as he says," said the General, "and the very memory of her who

is lost to me does no more than produce in me that gentle sadness which

is so soothing to the heart. But I hope our friend Dagobert will go on

to tell you what happened to us further."

"We made all haste away from A----," Dagobert resumed, "and this

morning, just as day was breaking, we reached the little town of P---,

about six miles from this place, meaning to rest there for an hour or

two, and then come on here. Imagine the feelings of Moritz and me when,

from one of the rooms in the inn, we saw Marguerite come bursting out

upon us, with insanity clearly written on her pallid face. She fell at

Moritz's feet and embraced his knees, weeping bitterly, calling herself

the blackest of criminals, worthy a thousand deaths. She implored him

to end her life on the spot. Moritz repulsed her with the deepest

abhorrence, and rushed away from the house."

"Yes," said Moritz, "when I saw Marguerite at my feet, all the torments

of that terrible condition in which I had been at the Chevalier's came

back upon me, goading me into a state of fury such as I had never known

before. I could scarcely help running my sword through her heart; but I

succeeded in mastering myself, and I made my escape after a mighty

effort."

"I lifted Marguerite up from the floor," Dagobert continued, "and

helped her to her room. I succeeded in calming her, and heard her tell

me, in broken sentences, exactly what I had expected and anticipated.

She gave me a letter from the Count, which had reached her the previous

midnight. I have it here."

He produced it, and read it as follows:--

"Fly, Marguerite! All is lost! The detested one is coming quickly. All

my science, knowledge, and skill are of no avail to me as against the

dark fate and destiny about to overtake me at the very culminating

point of my career.

"Marguerite, I have initiated you into mysteries which would have

annihilated any ordinary woman had she endeavoured to comprehend them.

But you, with your exceptional mental powers, and firm, strong will and

resolution, have been a worthy pupil to the deeply experienced master.

Your help has been most precious to me. It was through you that I

controlled Angelica's mind, and all her inner being. And, to reward

you, it was my desire to prepare for you the bliss of your life,

according to the manner in which your heart conceived it; and I dared

to enter within circles the most mysterious, the most perilous. I

undertook operations which often terrified even myself. In vain. Fly,

or your destruction is certain. Until the supreme moment comes I shall

battle bravely on against the hostile powers. But I know well that that

supreme moment brings to me instant death. But I will die all alone.

When the supreme moment comes I shall go to that mysterious tree, under

whose shadow I have so often spoken to you of the wondrous secrets

which were known to me, and at my command.

"Marguerite, keep aloof from those secrets for evermore. Nature,

terrible mother, angry when her precocious children prematurely pry

into her secrets and pluck at the veil which covers her mysteries,

throws to them some glittering toy which lures them on until its

destroying power is directed against them. I myself once caused the

death of a woman, who perished at the very moment when I thought I was

going to take her to my heart with the most fervid affection; and this

paralysed my powers. Yet, dolt that I was, I still thought I should

find bliss here on earth. Farewell, Marguerite, farewell. Go back to

your own country. Go to S----. The Chevalier de T---- will charge

himself with your welfare and happiness. Farewell."

As Dagobert read this letter, all the auditors felt an inward shudder,

and Madame von G---- said, "I shall be compelled to believe in things

which my whole heart and soul refuse to credit. However, I certainly

never could understand now it was that Angelica forgot Moritz so

quickly and devoted herself to the Count. At the same time I cannot but

remember that she was all the time in an extraordinary, unnatural

condition of excitement, and that was a circumstance which filled me

with the most torturing anxiety. I remember that her inclination for

the Count showed itself at first in a very strange way. She told me she

used to have the most vivid and delightful dreams of him nearly every

night."

"Exactly," said Dagobert. "Marguerite told me that, by the Count's

directions, she used to sit whole nights by Angelica's bedside,

breathing the Count's name into her ear very, very softly. And the

Count would very often come into the room about midnight, fix a

steadfast gaze on Angelica for several minutes together, and then go

away again. But now that I have read you the Count's letter, is there

any need of commentary? His aim was to operate psychically upon the

Inner Principle by various mysterious processes and arts, and in this

he succeeded, by virtue of special qualifications of his nature. There

were most intimate relations between him and the Chevalier de T----,

both of them being members of that secret society or 'school' which has

a certain number of representatives in France and Italy, and is

supposed to be descended from, or a continuation of, the celebrated

P---- school. It was at the Count's instigation that the Chevalier kept

Moritz so long shut up in his chateau, and practised all sorts of

love-spells on him. I myself could go deeper into this subject, and say

more about the mysterious means by which the Count could influence the

Psychic Principle of others, as Marguerite divulged some of them to me.

I could explain many matters by a science which is not altogether

unknown to me, though I prefer not to call it by its name, for fear of

being misunderstood. However, I had rather avoid all those subjects,

to-day at all events."

"Oh, pray avoid them for ever," cried Madame von G----. "No more

reference to the dark, unknown realm, the abode of fear and horror. I

thank the Eternal Power, which has rescued my beloved child, and freed

us from the uncanny guest who brought us such terrible trouble."

It was arranged that they should go back to town the following day,

except the Colonel and Dagobert, who stayed behind to see to the burial

of the Count's remains.

When Angelica had long been Moritz's happy wife, it chanced that one

stormy November evening the family, and Dagobert, were sitting round

the fire in the very room into which Count S---- had made his entry in

such a spectral fashion. Just as then, mysterious voices were piping,

awakened by the storm-wind in the chimney.

"Do you remember?" said Madame von G----.

"Come, come," cried the Colonel; "no ghost stories, I beg." But

Angelica and Moritz spoke of what their feelings had been on that

evening long ago; of their having been so devotedly in love with each

other, and unable to help attaching the most overweening importance to

every little incident which occurred: how the pure beam of that love of

theirs had been reflected by everything, and even the sweet bond of

alarm wove itself out of loving, longing hearts--and how the Uncanny

Guest, heralded by all the spectral voices of ill-omen, had brought

terror upon them. "Does it not seem to you, dearest Moritz," said

Angelica, "that the strange tones of the storm-wind, as we hear them

now, are speaking to us, only of our love, in the kindliest possible

tones?"

"Yes! yes!" said Dagobert, "and the singing of the kettle sounds

to-night to _me_ much more like a little cradle song than anything

eerie."

Angelica hid her blushing face on Moritz's breast. And _he_--for his

part--clasped his arm round his beautiful wife, and softly whispered,

"Is there, here below, a higher bliss than this?"

"I see very plainly," said Ottmar, when he had finished, and the

friends still sat in gloomy silence, "that my little story has not

pleased you particularly, so we had better not say much more about it,

but consign it to oblivion."

"The very best thing we could do," said Lothair.

"And yet," Cyprian said, "I must take up the cudgels for my friend.

Of course you will say that I am to some extent mixed up in the

matter--that Ottmar has taken a good many of the germs of the story

from me, and on this occasion has been cooking in my kitchen, so that

you won't be disposed to allow me to be a judge in the case. Yet,

unless you mean to condemn everything without the slightest remorse,

like so many Rhadamanthuses--you must admit, yourselves, that there is

much in Ottmar's story which must be allowed to pass as genuinely

Serapiontic; the beginning, for instance."

"Quite right," said Theodore; "the party round the tea-table may pass

as from the life, as well as many other points during the course of the

tale. But, to speak candidly, we have had a very large assortment of

spectral characters such as the stranger Count, and it will soon be a

difficult matter to go on giving them novelty and originality. He is

too much like Alban in 'The Magnetizer.' You know the tale I mean, and

indeed that story and Ottmar's have both the same _motif_. Wherefore I

wish I might beg our Ottmar and you, Cyprian, to leave monsters of that

sort out of the game in future. For Ottmar this will be possible, but

for you, Cyprian, I am not so sure that it will. So that we shall have

to allow _you_ to serve us up a 'Spook' of the kind now and then, I

suppose, only stipulating that it shall be truly Serapiontic, _i.e._

come out of the very inmost depths of your imagination. Moreover 'The

Magnetizer' _seems_ rhapsodical, but the 'Uncanny Guest' is rhapsodical

in very truth."

"I must take up the cudgels for my friend in this respect too," said

Cyprian, "and tell you that, in the very neighbourhood of this place

where we are at this moment, there actually happened an event, not very

long ago, by no means unlike the incidents of this story. Into a quiet

happy group of friends, just when supernatural matters were forming the

subject of conversation, there suddenly came a stranger, who struck

every one as being uncanny and terrifying, notwithstanding his apparent

everydayness, and seeming belonging to the common level. By his arrival

this stranger not only spoiled the enjoyment of the evening in

question, but subsequently destroyed the peace and happiness of the

family for a long period. Even at this day deadly shudders seize a

happy wife when she thinks of the crafty wickedness with which this

person tried to entangle her in his nets. I told this at the time to

Ottmar, and nothing made a greater impression on him than the moment

when the stranger made his spectral entry, and the sense of the

propinquity of the hostile Spiritual Principle seized upon every one

present with a sudden terror. This moment came vividly to Ottmar's

mind, and formed the groundwork of his tale."

"But," said Ottmar, "as a single incident is far from being a complete

story--which ought to spring perfect and complete from its author's

brain, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter--my tale is of course not

worth much as a whole, and it is little to my credit, I suppose, that I

took advantage of two or three incidents which really happened, weaving

them--not without some little success perhaps--into a network of the

imaginary."

"Yes," said Lothair, "you are right, my friend. A single striking

incident is far from being a tale, just as one well-imagined theatrical

situation is a long way from constituting a play. This reminds me of

the way in which a certain playwright (who no longer walks this world,

and whose terrible death certainly atoned for any shortcomings of his

during his life, and reconciled his worst enemies to him) used to

construct his pieces. In a company where I was present, he said,

without any concealment, that he selected some one's good dramatic

situation which occurred to him, and then, solely for the sake of that,

hung a canvas round it and painted away upon it 'just whatever came in

his head,' or 'as best he could,' to use his own expressions. This

gave me a complete explanation of, and threw a dazzling flood of light

upon, the whole character and inner being of that writer's pieces,

particularly those of his later period. None of them is without some

very happily devised central situation, but all round this the scenes,

which he made up out of commonplace material, are woven like a loosely

knitted web, although the hand of that weaver, skilled as it is in

_technique_, is never to be mistaken."

"Never, say you?" remarked Theodore. "I have been always waiting and

looking out for the points where that writer would abandon his

commonplaces, and rise into the region of romance and true poetry. The

most striking and melancholy instance of what I mean is the so-called

Romantic Drama, 'Deodata'; a strange nondescript production, on which a

clever composer ought not to have wasted capital music. There can be no

more striking proof of the utter want of infelt poetry, of any

conception of the higher dramatic life, than where the author of

'Deodata,' in his preface, finds fault with Opera because it is

unnatural that people should sing on the stage, and next goes on to

explain that he has been at pains to introduce the singing, which is

incidental to it, always in a natural manner."

"_De mortuis nil nisi bonum_," said Cyprian, "let the dead repose in

peace."

"And all the more," said Lothair, "that I see midnight is close at

hand, and he might avail himself of that circumstance to give us a box

or two on the ear (as he is said to have done to his critics in life)

with his invisible fist."

Just then the carriage which Lothair had sent for on account of

Theodore's still invalid condition, came rolling up, and the friends

went back in it to town.

SECTION SIXTH.

It so happened that some irresistible psychic force had impelled

Sylvester back to town, although, as a rule, nothing in the world would

induce him to leave the country at the time of year when the weather

was at its pleasantest. A little theatrical piece which he had written

was going to be produced, and it seems an impossibility for an author

to miss a first performance of one of his pieces, even though he may

have to contend with a world of trouble and anxiety in connection with

it. Moreover, Vincent, too, had emerged from the crowd, so that, for

the time at least, the Serapion Brotherhood was fairly reestablished;

they held their meeting in the same pleasant public-garden where they

had last assembled.

Sylvester was not like the same man; he was in better spirits and more

talkative than when he was last seen, and taking him all over, like one

who had experienced some piece of great good fortune.

"Was it not well," said Lothair, "that we put off our meeting until our

friend's piece had been produced? otherwise we should have found our

good brother preoccupied, uninterested in our conversation, oppressed

as with a heavy burden. His piece would have been haunting him like

some distressful spectre, but now that it has burst its chrysalis and

fluttered away like a beautiful butterfly into the empyrean, and has

not sued for universal favour in vain, everything is clear and bright

within him. He stands glorified in the radiance of deserved applause

which has fallen so richly to his share, and we won't, for a moment,

take it ill of him that he looks down upon us with the least bit of

pardonable pride, seeing that not one of us can boast of having done

what he has; namely, electrified some six or eight hundred people with

one spark; but let everybody have his due. Your piece is good,

Sylvester; but you must admit that the admirable rendering was what

gave it its wings. You must really have been greatly satisfied with the

actors, were you not?"

"I certainly was," said Sylvester, "although at the same time it is

very difficult to please the author of a play with the performance of

it. You see, he is himself each of the characters of the piece; and all

their most intimate peculiarities, with all their necessary conditions,

have taken their origin in his own brain; and it seems impossible to

him that any other person shall so appropriate, and make his own, those

intimate thoughts of his which are peculiar to and innate in the

character as to be able to bring them forth into actual life. The

author, however, insists in his own mind upon this being done; and the

more vividly he has conceived the character, the more is he

discontented with the very slightest shortcoming, or alteration in it,

which he can discover in the actor's rendering of it. Certain is it

that the author suffers an anxiety which destroys all his pleasure in

the representation, and it is only when he can manage to soar above

this anxiousness, and see his character, the character which he has

invented, portrayed before his eyes, just as he saw it rise before his

mental vision, that he is able to enjoy, to some extent, seeing his

piece represented."

"Still," said Ottmar, "any annoyance which a playwright may feel, when

he sees other characters, quite dissimilar from his own, represented

instead of them, is richly compensated for by the applause of the

public, to which no author can, or should, be indifferent."

"No doubt," said Sylvester; "and as it is to the actor who is playing

the part that the applause is, in the first instance, given, the

author, who from his distant seat is looking on with trembling and

anxiety, yea, often with anger and disgust, at last becomes convinced

that the character (not at all his character) which is speaking the

speeches of his one on the stage, is, at all events, not so very bad

after all as might have been. Also it is quite true, and no reasonable

author, who is not entirely shut up in himself, will deny it, that many

a clever actor, who has formed a vivid conception of a character,

develops features in that character which he himself did not think of,

at least not distinctly, and which he must nevertheless admit to be

good and appropriate. The author sees a character which was born in his

own most inmost elements, appearing before him in a shape new and

strange to him. Yet this shape is by no means foreign to the elements

of the genesis of the character, nay it does not seem now possible that

it could have assumed a different form; and he feels a glad

astonishment over this thing, which is really his own, although it

seems so different; just as if he had suddenly come upon a treasure in

his garret, whose existence he had not dreamt of."

"There," said Ottmar, "spoke my dear kind-hearted Sylvester, who does

not know the meaning of the word 'vanity,' that vanity which has

stifled many a great and true talent. There is one writer for the stage

who once said, without the slightest hesitation, that there are no

actors capable of understanding the soul which dwells within him, or of

representing the characters which he creates. How wholly otherwise was

it with our grand and glorious Schiller, who once got into that state

of delighted surprise of which Sylvester speaks, when he saw his

Wallenstein performed, and declared that it was then, for the first

time, that he had seen his hero visibly in flesh and blood before his

eyes. It was Fleck, the for ever unforgettable hero of our stage, who

played Wallenstein then."

"On the whole," said Lothair, "I am convinced, and the instance which

Ottmar has given confirms me, that the writer on whom, in the depths of

his soul, the true recognition and comprehension of art, and with them,

that worship which they give to the creating formative spirit of the

universe, have arisen in light, cannot lower himself to the degraded

idol-cult, which worships only its own self as being the Fetish that

created all things. It is very easy for a great talent to be mistaken

for real genius. But time dispels every illusion: talent succumbs to

the attacks of time, but they have no effect on true genius, which

lives on in invulnerable strength and beauty. But, to return to our

Sylvester, and his theatre-piece, I must declare to you that I cannot

understand how any one can come to the heroic decision to permit a

work, for which he is indebted to his imagination, and to fortunate

creative impulses, to be acted before him on the slippery, risky,

uncertain boards of the stage."

The friends laughed, thinking that Lothair was, after his wont, going

to utter some quaint, out-of-the-way opinion.

"Am I," asked he, "really a strange being who often thinks things which

other people are not very apt to think? Well, be that as it may; I say

again that when a fairly good writer, who has genuine talent, such as

our Sylvester, puts a piece upon the stage, it feels to me very much as

if he made up his mind to jump out of a third-floor window, and take

his chance of what might happen to him. I am going to make a

confession; when I told you I did not go to the theatre on the first

night of Sylvester's piece, I told you a lie. Of course I went; and sat

on a back seat, a second Sylvester, a second author of the piece, for

it is impossible that he can have felt the strain of anxiety, the

strange feeling compounded of pleasure and its opposite, the

restlessness amounting to real pain, in any greater degree than I did

myself. Every word of the players, every gesture of theirs, took my

breath away, and I kept saying to myself, 'Oh, gracious heavens, is it

possible that that will do, that it will go down with the audience? and

is the author responsible whether it does or not?'"

"You make the thing worse than it is," said Sylvester. "I feel a

disagreeable oppression of the breath, particularly at the beginning;

but if matters are going on pretty well, and the public expresses

itself favourably, this gradually goes off, and makes room for a very

pleasant sensation, in which I think selfish satisfaction with one's

own production occupies the principal place."

"Oh! you theatre-writers," cried out Vincent, "you are the most

conceited of all. The applause of the multitude is, to you, the very

honey of Hybla, and you sip and swallow it with the daintiest of faces

and the sweetest of smiles. But I am going to take up the role of

devil's advocate, and add that you are as little to be found fault

with, for your anxiousness and eagerness (which many folks think are

nothing but the pangs of your vanity), as anybody else who is playing a

great and risky game. You are staking yourselves; winning means

applause, but losing means not only deserved blame, but (if this

amounts to a distinct public expression of it) that besmirching of the

ludicrous which is the bitterest and (as the French think) the most

fearful and damnable condemnation which a man can' experience here

below. A virtuous Frenchman would, therefore, much rather be considered

a vile reprobate than be laughed at, and it is quite certain that a ban

of being ludicrous always falls on any playwright who has been

(theatrically speaking) 'damned'; and he never shakes it off in all his

lifetime. Even future success is a most questionable affair, and many a

man who has had this misfortune happen to him, has fled in his despair

to the doleful wilderness of those productions which possess the

outward appearance of theatrical pieces, but, as their authors solemnly

assure us, are not meant for representation."

"I," said Theodore, "can corroborate you both most thoroughly from my

own experience, that it is a most hazardous matter to put a work on to

the stage. What it really amounts to is, that you are committing a

property of yours to the mercy of the winds and the waves. When one

remembers how many thousand accidental contingencies the effect of a

work depends upon, how very often the deeply considered and carefully

contrived effect of some passage is shipwrecked by the blunder, the

unskilfulness, or the mistake of a singer or instrumentalist; how

often--"

Vincent here interrupted with a vigourous cry of "hear! hear!"

"I cry 'hear! hear!'" he explained, "as the noble lords in the English

Parliament do when one of them is just going to let the cat out of the

bag. Theodore's head is full of nothing but the opera which he put upon

the stage a few years ago. At the time, he said, 'When I had attended a

dozen rehearsals which were more or less useless and pretty much

burked, and when the last one came, and the conductor evidently had

very little real idea of my score, or about the piece as a whole, I

gave things up, and felt quite calm in my mind as to the very dubious

destiny which was hanging over my production like a most threatening

thunder-cloud.' I said, 'If it is failure, a failure let it be; I am

far away aloft above all an author's anxieties and uneasinesses.' With

other pretty speeches of a like nature. But when I saw my friend on the

day of the performance, and when it came to be time to go to the

theatre, he suddenly turned as white as a sheet (though he smiled and

laughed a great deal, nobody quite knew at what), and gave us the most

eager assurances that he had almost forgotten that that was the night

when his opera was to be given--tried, when putting on his greatcoat,

to stick his right arm into the left sleeve, so that I had to help him

on with it--and then ran off across the street like one possessed,

without a word. And, as the first chords of his overture sounded just

as he was getting into his box, he tumbled into the arms of the

terrified boxkeeper. Then--"

"There, there!" cried Theodore, "that's enough about my opera, and the

execution of it. I shall be very glad to tell you as much as you please

about them any time when we happen to be having a regular talk about

music; but not another word to-night."

"We have said enough, and more than enough," said Lothair, "on this

particular subject, and by way of winding it up, I may just say that

there is a little anecdote of Voltaire which pleases me greatly. Once,

when one of his tragedies--I think it was Zaire--was going to be given

for the first time, he was in such a terror of anxiety about its fate,

that he did not dare to be present himself; but all the way between his

house and the theatre he had people posted to send him messages every

two or three minutes, by a code of signals, bow the piece was going; so

that he was able to suffer all the torments of the Author comfortably,

_en robe de chambre_, in his own room."

"Now," cried Sylvester, "wouldn't that make a capital scene on the

stage? and what a splendid part it would be for a character actor.

Think of Voltaire on the boards. News comes that 'The public is

disturbed, uneasy.' 'Ha!' he cries, 'frivolous race! can any one

awaken your sympathy?' Next comes a message that 'the public is

applauding--shouting in delight.' 'Oh! great, grand, noble Frenchmen,'

he cries, 'you comprehend your Voltaire--you are worthy of him.' 'The

public is hissing, and there are one or two catcalls audible.' 'Ah!

traitors! this to me--to me!'"

"Enough, enough," said Ottmar. "Sylvester is so inspired by his success

that he is favouring us with a scene of a comedy instead of--like a

proper Serapion Brother--reading us a tale, the most interesting

subject of which he told me of, in writing, and which I know he has

finished and brought with him."

"Our having been talking of Voltaire," said Sylvester, "may lead us to

think of his 'Siècle de Louis XIV.,' and of that period itself, in

which I have laid the scenes of the story which I now venture, with all

modesty, to submit, hoping for your favourable opinion."

He read:--

MADEMOISELLE SCUDERI:

A Tale Of The Times Of Louis The Fourteenth.

Magdaleine Scuderi, so famous for her charming poetical and other

writings, lived in a small mansion in the Rue St. Honoré, by favour of

Louis the 14th and Madame Maintenon.

Late one night--about midnight--in the autumn of the year 1680, there

came a knocking at the door of this house, so loud and violent that it

shook the very ground. Baptiste, who filled the offices of cook,

butler, and doorkeeper in the lady's modest establishment, had gone, by

her leave, to the country to his sister's wedding, so that La

Martinière, the _femme de chambre_, was the only person still awake in

the house. She heard this knocking, which went on without ceasing

almost, and she remembered that, as Baptiste was away, she and her

mistress were alone and unprotected. She thought of the housebreakings,

robberies, and murders which were so frequent in Paris at that time,

and felt convinced that some of the numerous bands of malefactors,

knowing the defenceless state of the house that night, were raising

this alarum at the door, and would commit some outrage if it was

opened; so she remained in her room, trembling and terrified,

anathematizing Baptiste, and his sister's marriage into the bargain.

Meantime the thundering knocking went on at the door, and she thought

she heard a voice calling in the intervals, "Open, for the love of

Christ! Open!--open!" At last, her alarm increasing, she took her

candle and ran out on to the landing, where she distinctly heard the

voice crying, "Open the door, for the love of Christ!"

"After all," she said to herself, "one knows that a robber would not be

crying out in that way. Perhaps it is somebody who is being pursued and

is come to my lady for refuge. She is known to be always ready to do a

kind action--but we must be very careful!"

She opened a window, and called down into the street, asking who it was

who was making such a tremendous thundering at the door at that time of

the night, rousing everybody from their sleep. This she did in a voice

which she tried to make as like a man's as she could. By the glimmer of

the moon, which was beginning to break through dark clouds, she could

make out a tall figure, in a long grey cloak, with a broad hat drawn

down over the forehead. Then she cried, in a loud voice, so that this

person in the street should hear, "Baptiste! Claude! Pierre! Get up,

and see who this rascal is who is trying to get in at this time of

night." But a gentle, entreating voice spake from beneath, saying, "Ah,

La Martinière, I know it is you, you kind soul, though you are trying

to alter your voice; and I know well enough that Baptiste is away in

the country, and that there is nobody in the house but your mistress

and yourself. Let me in. I _must_ speak with your lady this instant."

"Do you imagine," asked La Martinière, "that my lady is going to speak

to you in the middle of the night? Can't you understand that she has

been in bed ever so long, and that it is as much as my place is worth

to awaken her out of her first sweet sleep, which is so precious to a

person at her time of life?"

"I know," answered the person beneath, "that she has just this moment

put away the manuscript of the novel 'Clelia,' at which she is working

so hard, and is writing some verses which she means to read to-morrow

at Madame de Maintenon's. I implore you, Madame La Martinière, be so

compassionate as to open the door. Upon your doing so depends the

escape of an unfortunate creature from destruction. Nay, honour,

freedom, a human life, depend on this moment in which I _must_ speak

with your lady. Remember, her anger will rest upon you for ever when

she comes to know that it was you who cruelly drove away from her door

the unfortunate wretch who came to beg for her help."

"But why should you come for her help at such an extraordinary time of

the night?" asked La Martinière. "Come back in the morning at a

reasonable hour." But the reply came up, "Does destiny, when it strikes

like the destroying lightning, consider hours and times? When there is

but one moment when rescue is possible, is help to be put off? Open me

the door. Have no fear of a wretched being who is without defence,

hunted, under the pressure of a terrible fate, and flies to your lady

for succour from the most imminent peril."

La Martinière heard the stranger moaning and groaning as he uttered

those words in the deepest sorrow, and the tone of his voice was that

of a youth, soft and gentle, and going profoundly to the heart. She was

deeply touched, and without much more hesitation she went and fetched

the key.

As soon as she opened the door, the form shrouded in the mantle burst

violently in, and passing La Martinière, cried in a wild voice, "Take

me to your lady!" La Martinière held up the light which she was

carrying, and the glimmer fell on the face of a very young man,

distorted and frightfully drawn, and as pale as death. She almost fell

down on the landing for terror when he opened his cloak and showed the

glittering hilt of a stiletto sticking in his doublet. He flashed his

gleaming eyes at her, and cried, more wildly than before, "Take me to

your lady, I tell you."

La Martinière saw that her mistress was in the utmost danger. All her

affection for her, who was to her as the kindest of mothers, flamed up

and created a courage which she herself would scarcely have thought

herself capable of. She quickly closed the door of her room, moved

rapidly in front of it, and said, in a brave, firm voice, "Your furious

behaviour, now that you have got into the house, is very different to

what might have been expected from the way you spoke down in the

street. I see now that I had pity on you a little too easily. My lady

you shall not see or speak with at this hour. If you have no bad

designs, and are not afraid to show yourself in daylight, come and tell

her your business to-morrow; but take yourself off out of this house

now."

He heaved a hollow sigh, glared at La Martinière with a terrible

expression, and grasped his dagger. She silently commended her soul to

God, but stood firm and looked him straight in the face, pressing

herself more firmly against the door through which he would have to

pass in order to reach her mistress.

"Let me get to your lady, I tell you!" he cried once more.

"Do what you will," said La Martinière, "I shall not move from this

spot. Finish the crime which you have begun to commit. A shameful death

on the Place de Grève will overtake you, as it has your accursed

comrades in wickedness."

"Ha! you are right, La Martinière," he cried. "I am armed, and I look

as if I were an accursed robber and murderer. But my comrades are not

executed--are not executed," and he drew his dagger, advancing with

poisonous looks towards the terrified woman.

"Jesus!" she cried, expecting her death-wound; but at that moment there

came up from the street below the clatter and the ring of arms, and the

hoof-tread of horses.

"La Marechaussée! La Marechaussée! Help! help!" she cried.

"Wretched woman, you will be my destruction," he cried. "All is over

now--all over! Here, take it; take it. Give this to your lady now, or

to-morrow if you like it better." As he said this in a whisper, he took

the candelabra from her, blew out the tapers, and placed a casket in

her hands. "As you prize your eternal salvation," he cried, "give this

to your lady." He dashed out of the door, and was gone.

La Martinière had sunk to the floor. She raised herself with

difficulty, and groped her way back in the darkness to her room,

where, wholly overcome and unable to utter a sound, she fell into an

arm-chair. Presently she heard the bolts rattle, which she had left

unfastened when she closed the house door. The house was therefore now

shut up, and soft unsteady steps were approaching her room. Like one

under a spell, unable to move, she was preparing for the very worst,

when, to her inexpressible joy, the door opened, and by the pale light

of the night-lamp she saw it was Baptiste. He was deadly pale, and much

upset. "For the love of all the saints," he exclaimed, "tell me what

has happened! Oh, what a state I am in! Something--I don't know what it

was--told me to come away from the wedding yesterday--forced me to come

away. So when I got to this street, I thought, Madame Martinière isn't

a heavy sleeper; she'll hear me if I knock quietly at the door, and let

me in. Then up came a strong patrol meeting me, horsemen and foot,

armed to the teeth. They stopped me, and wouldn't let me go. Luckily

Desgrais was there, the lieutenant of the Marechaussée. He knows me,

and as they were holding their lanterns under my nose, he said, 'Ho,

Baptiste! How come you here in the streets at this time of the night?

You ought to be at home, taking care of the house. This is not a very

safe spot just at this moment. We're expecting to make a fine haul, an

important arrest, to-night.' You can't think, Madame La Martinière, how

I felt when he said that. And when I got to the door, lo! and behold! a

man in a cloak comes bursting out with a drawn dagger in his hand, runs

round me, and makes off. The door was open, the keys in the lock. What,

in the name of all that's holy, is the meaning of it all?"

La Martinière, relieved from her alarm, told him all that had happened,

and both she and he went back to the hall, where they found the

candelabra on the floor, where the stranger had thrown it on taking his

flight. "There can't be the slightest doubt that our mistress was

within an ace of being robbed, and murdered too, very likely," Baptiste

said. "According to what you say, the scoundrel knew well enough that

there was nobody in the house but her and you, and even that she was

still sitting up at her writing. Of course he was one of those infernal

blackguards who pry into folks' houses and spy out everything that can

be of use to them in their devilish designs. And the little casket,

Madame Martinière, that, I think, we'll throw into the Seine where it's

deepest. Who shall be our warrant that some monster or other isn't

lying in wait for our mistress's life? Very likely, if she opens the

casket, she may tumble down dead, as the old Marquis de Tournay did

when he opened a letter which came to him, he didn't know where from."

After a long consultation, they came to the conclusion that they would,

next morning, tell their lady everything that had happened, and even

hand her the mysterious casket, which might, perhaps, be opened if

proper precautions were taken. On carefully weighing all the

circumstances connected with the apparition of the stranger, they

thought that there must be some special secret or mystery involved in

the affair, which they were not in a position to unravel, but must

leave to be elucidated by their superiors.

There were good grounds for Baptiste's fears. Paris, at the time in

question, was the scene of atrocious deeds of violence, and that just

at a period when the most diabolical inventions of hell provided the

most facile means for their execution.

Glaser, a German apothecary, the most learned chemist of his day,

occupied himself--as people who cultivate his science often do--with

alchemical researches and experiments. He had set himself the task of

discovering the philosopher's stone. An Italian of the name of Exili

associated himself with him; but to him the art of goldmaking formed a

mere pretext. What he aimed at mastering was the blending, preparation,

and sublimation of the various poisonous substances which Glaser hoped

would give him the results he was in search of, and at length Exili

discovered how to prepare that delicate poison which has no odour nor

taste, and which, killing either slowly or in a moment, leaves not the

slightest trace in the human organism, and baffles the utmost skill of

the physician, who, not suspecting poison as the means of death,

ascribes it to natural causes. But cautiously as Exili went about this,

he fell under suspicion of dealing with poisons, and was thrown into

the Bastille. In the same cell with him there was presently quartered

an officer of the name of Godwin de Sainte-Croix, who had long lived

in relations with the Marquise de Brinvilliers which brought shame

upon all her family; and at length, as her husband cared nothing

about her conduct, her father (Dreux d'Aubray, Civil Lieutenant of

Paris) had to part the guilty pair by means of a _lettre de cachet_

against Sainte-Croix. The latter, being a man of passionate nature,

characterless, affecting sanctity, but addicted from his youth to

every vice, jealous, envious even to fury, nothing could be more

welcome to him than Exili's devilish secret, which gave him the power

of destroying all his enemies. He became Exili's assiduous pupil, and

soon equalled his instructor, so that when he was released from prison

he was in a position to carry on operations by himself on his own

account.

La Brinvilliers was a depraved woman, and Sainte-Croix made her a

monster. She managed, by degrees, to poison, first, her own father

(with whom she was living, on the hypocritical pretence of taking care

of him in his declining years), next her two brothers, and then her

sister; the father out of revenge, and the others for their fortunes.

The histories of more than one poisoner bear terrible evidence that

this description of crime assumes the form of an irresistible passion.

Just as a chemist makes experiments for the pleasure and the interest

of watching them, poisoners have often, without the smallest ulterior

object, killed persons whose living or dying was to them a matter of

complete indifference. The sudden deaths of a number of paupers,

patients at the Hôtel Dieu, a little time after the events just alluded

to, led to suspicion that the bread which La Brinvilliers was in the

habit of giving them every week (by way of an example of piety and

benevolence) was poisoned. And it is certain that she poisoned pigeon

pasties which were served up to guests whom she had invited. The

Chevalier du Guet, and many more, were the victims of those diabolical

entertainments. Sainte-Croix, his accomplice La Chaussée, and La

Brinvilliers, managed to hide their crimes for a long while under a

veil of impenetrable secrecy. But, however the wicked may brazen

matters out, there comes a time when the Eternal Power of Heaven

punishes the criminal, even here on earth. The poisons which

Sainte-Croix prepared were so marvellously delicate that if the powder

(which the Parisians appositely named "_poudre de succession_") was

uncovered while being made, a single inhalation of it was sufficient to

cause immediate death. Therefore Sainte-Croix always wore a glass mask

when at work. This mask fell off one day just as he was shaking a

finished powder into a phial, and, having inhaled some of the powder,

he fell dead in an instant. As he had no heirs, the law courts at once

placed his property under seal, when the whole diabolical arsenal of

poison-murder which had been at the villain's disposal was discovered,

and also the letters of Madame de Brinvilliers, which left no doubt as

to her crimes. She fled to a convent at Liège. Desgrais, an officer of

the Marechaussée, was sent after her. Disguised as a priest, he got

admitted into the convent, and succeeded in involving the terrible

woman in a love-affair, and in getting her to grant him a clandestine

meeting in a sequestered garden outside the town. When she arrived

there she found herself surrounded by Desgrais' myrmidons; and her

ecclesiastical gallant speedily transformed himself into the officer of

the Marechaussée, and compelled her to get into the carriage which was

waiting outside the garden, and drove straight away to Paris,

surrounded by an ample guard. La Chaussée had been beheaded previously

to this, and La Brinvilliers suffered the same death. Her body was

burnt, and its ashes scattered to the winds.

The Parisians breathed freely again when the world was freed from the

presence of this monster, who had so long wielded, with impunity,

unpunished, the weapon of secret murder against friend and foe. But it

soon became bruited abroad that the terrible art of the accursed La

Croix had been, somehow, handed down to a successor, who was carrying

it on triumphantly. Murder came gliding like an invisible, capricious

spectre into the narrowest and most intimate circles of relationship,

love, and friendship, pouncing securely and swiftly upon its unhappy

victims. Men who, to-day, were seen in robust health, were tottering

about on the morrow feeble and sick; and no skill of physicians could

restore them. Wealth, a good appointment or office, a nice-looking

wife, perhaps a little too young for her husband, were ample reasons

for a man's being dogged to death. The most frightful mistrust snapped

the most sacred ties. The husband trembled before his wife; the father

dreaded the son; the sister the brother. When your friend asked you to

dinner, you carefully avoided tasting the dishes and wines which he set

before you; and where joy and merriment used to reign, there were now

nothing but wild looks watching to detect the secret murderer. Fathers

of families were to be seen with anxious looks, buying supplies of food

in out-of-the-way places where they were not known, and cooking them

themselves in dirty cook-shops, for dread of treason in their own

homes. And yet often the most careful and ingenious precautions were

unavailing.

For the repression of this ever-increasing disorder the King

constituted a fresh tribunal, to which he entrusted the special

investigation and punishment of those secret crimes. This was the

Chambre Ardente, which held its sittings near the Bastille. La Regnie

was its president. For a considerable time La Regnie's efforts,

assiduous as they were, were unsuccessful, and it was the lot of the

much overworked Desgrais to discover the most secret lurking-hole of

the crime. In the Faubourg Saint-Germain there lived an old woman,

named La Voisin, who followed the calling of a teller of fortunes and a

summoner of spirits, and, assisted by her accomplices Le Sage and Le

Vigoureux, managed to alarm and astonish people who were by no means to

be considered weak or superstitious. But she did more than this. She

was a pupil of Exili's, like La Croix, and, like him, prepared the

delicate, traceless poison, which helped wicked sons to speedy

inheritance and unprincipled wives to other, younger husbands. Desgrais

fathomed her secrets; she made full confession; the Chambre Ardente

sentenced her to be burned, and the sentence was carried out on the

Place de Grève. Amongst her effects was found a list of those who had

availed themselves of her services; whence it followed, not only that

execution succeeded execution, but that strong suspicion fell on

persons of high consideration. Thus it was believed that Cardinal Bonzy

had obtained from La Voisin the means of disembarrassing himself of all

the persons to whom, in his capacity of Archbishop of Narbonne, he was

bound to pay pensions. Similarly, the Duchess de Bouillon and the

Countess de Soissons (their names having been found in La Voisin's

list) were accused of having had relations with her; and even Francis

Henri de Montmorency, Boudebelle, Duke of Luxemburg, Peer and Marshal

of the realm, did not escape arraignment before the Chambre Ardente. He

surrendered himself to imprisonment in the Bastille, where the hatred

of Louvois and La Regnie immured him in a cell only six feet long.

Months elapsed before it was proved that his offences did not deserve

so severe a punishment. He had once gone to La Voisin to have his

horoscope drawn.

What is certain is that an excess of inconsiderate zeal led President

La Regnie into violently illegal and barbarous measures. His Court

assumed the character of the Inquisition. The very slightest suspicion

rendered any one liable to severe imprisonment, and the establishment

of the innocence of a person tried for his life was often only a matter

of the merest chance. Besides, Regnie was repulsive to behold, and of

malicious disposition, so that he excited the hatred of those whose

avenger or protector he was called upon to be. When he asked the

Duchess de Bouillon if she had ever seen the devil, she answered, "I

think I see him at this moment."

Whilst now, on the Place de Grève, the blood of the guilty and of the

merely suspected was flowing in streams, and secret deaths by poison

were, at last, becoming more and more rare, a trouble of another

description showed itself, spreading abroad fresh consternation. It

seemed that a gang of robbers had made up their minds to possess

themselves of all the jewels in the city. Whenever a valuable set of

ornaments was bought, it disappeared in an inexplicable manner, however

carefully preserved and protected. And everybody who dared to wear

precious stones in the evening was certain to be robbed, either in the

public streets or in the dark passages of houses. Very often they were

not only robbed, but murdered. Such of them as escaped with their lives

said they had been felled by the blow of a clenched fist on the head,

which came on them like a thunderbolt. And when they recovered their

senses they found that they had been robbed, and were in a totally

different place from that where they had been knocked down. Those

who were murdered--and they were found nearly every morning lying

in the streets or in houses--had all the selfsame mortal wound--a

dagger-thrust, right through the heart, which the surgeons said must

have been delivered with such swiftness and certainty that the victim

must have fallen dead without the power of uttering a sound. Now who,

in all the luxurious Court of Louis Quatorze, was there who was not

implicated in some secret love-affair, and, consequently, often gliding

about the streets late at night with valuable presents in his pockets?

Just as if this robber-gang were in intercourse with spirits, they

always knew perfectly well when anything of this kind was going on.

Often the fortunate lover wouldn't reach the house where his lady was

expecting him; often he would fall at her threshold, at her very door,

where, to her horror, she would discover his bleeding body lying.

It was in vain that Argenson, the Minister of Police, arrested every

individual, in all Paris, who seemed to be touched by the very faintest

suspicion; in vain La Regnie raged, striving to compel confession; in

vain guards and patrols were reinforced. Not a trace of the

perpetrators of those outrages was to be discovered. The only thing

which was of a certain degree of use was to go about armed to the

teeth, and have a light carried before you; and yet there were cases in

which the servant who carried the light had his attention occupied by

having stones thrown at him, whilst at that very instant his master was

being robbed and murdered.

It was a remarkable feature of this business that, notwithstanding all

search and investigation in every quarter where there seemed to be any

chance of dealing in jewels going on, not a trace of even the smallest

of the plundered precious stones ever came to light. Desgrais foamed in

fury that even his acumen and skill were powerless to prevent the

escape of those scoundrels. Whatever part of the town he happened to be

in for the time was let alone, whilst in some other quarter, robbery

and murder were lying in wait for their rich prey.

Desgrais hit upon the clever idea of setting several facsimiles of

himself on foot--various Desgrais, exactly alike in gait, speech,

figure, face, &c.; so that his own men could not tell the one of them

from the other, or say which was the real Desgrais. Meanwhile he, at

the risk of his life, watched alone in the most secret hiding-places,

and followed, at a distance, this or the other person who seemed, by

the looks of him, to be likely to have jewels about him. But those whom

he was watching were unharmed, so that this artifice of his was as well

known, to the culprits as everything else seemed to be. Desgrais was in

utter despair.

One morning he came to President La Regnie, pale, distorted, almost out

of his mind.

"What is it--what news? Have you come upon the clue?" the President

cried to him as he came in.

"Ah, Monsieur!" cried Desgrais, stammering in fury, "last night, near

the Louvre, the Marquis de la Fare was set upon under my very nose!"

"Heaven and earth!" cried La Regnie, overjoyed, "we have got them!"

"Wait a moment, listen," said Desgrais, with a bitter smile. "I was

standing near the Louvre, watching and waiting, with hell itself in my

heart, for those devils who have been baffling me for such a length of

time. There came a figure close by me--not seeing me--with careful

uncertain steps, always looking behind it. By the moonlight I

recognised the Marquis de la Fare. I expected that he would be passing.

I knew where he was gliding to. Scarcely had he got ten or twelve paces

beyond me, when, out of the ground apparently, springs a figure, dashes

the Marquis to the ground, falls down upon him. Losing my self-command

at this occurrence, which seemed to be likely to deliver the murderer

into my hands, I cried out aloud, and meant to spring from my

hiding-place with a great jump and seize hold of him. But I tripped up

in my cloak and fell down. I saw the fellow flee away as if on the

wings of the wind; I picked myself up, and made off after him as fast

as I could. As I ran, I sounded my horn. Out of the distance the

whistles of my men answered me. Things grew lively--clatter of arms,

tramp of horses on all sides. 'Here!--come to me!--Desgrais!' I cried,

till the streets re-echoed. All the time I saw the man before me in the

bright moonlight, turning off right--left--to get away from me. We came

to the Rue Nicaise. There his strength seemed to begin to fail. I

gathered mine up. He was not more than fifteen paces ahead of me."

"You got hold of him!--your men came up!" cried La Regnie, with

flashing eyes, grasping Desgrais by the arm as if he were the fleeing

murderer himself.

"Fifteen paces ahead of me," said Desgrais, in a hollow voice, and

drawing his breath hard, "this fellow, before my eyes, dodged to one

side, and vanished through the wall."

"Vanished!--through the wall! Are you out of your senses?" La Regnie

cried, stepping three steps backwards, and striking his hands together.

"Call me as great a madman as you please, Monsieur," said Desgrais,

rubbing his forehead like one tortured by evil thoughts. "Call me a

madman, or a silly spirit-seer; but what I have told you is the literal

truth. I stood staring at the wall, while several of my men came up out

of breath, and with them the Marquis de la Fare (who had picked himself

up), with his drawn sword in his hand. We lighted torches, we examined

the wall all over. There was not the trace of a door, a window, any

opening. It is a strong stone wall of a courtyard, belonging to a

house, in which people are living--against whom there is not the

slightest suspicion. I have looked into the whole thing again this

morning in broad daylight. It must be the very devil himself who is at

work befooling us in the matter."

This story got bruited abroad through Paris, where all heads were full

of the witch-business, spirit conjuration, devil-covenants of La

Voisin, Vigoureux, and the wicked priest Le Sage; and as it does lie in

our eternal nature that the bent towards the supernatural and the

marvellous overpasses all reason, people soon believed nothing less

than that which Desgrais had only said in his impatience--namely, that

the very devil himself must protect those rascals, and that they had

sold their souls to him. We can readily understand that Desgrais's

story soon received many absurd embellishments. It was printed, and

hawked about the town, with a woodcut at the top representing a

horrible devil-form sinking into the ground before the terrified

Desgrais. Quite enough to frighten the people, and so terrify

Desgrais's men that they lost all courage, and went about the streets

behung with amulets, and sprinkled with holy water.

Argenson, seeing that the Chambre Ardente was unsuccessful, applied to

the King to constitute--with special reference to this novel

description of crime--a tribunal armed with greater powers for tracking

and punishing offenders. The King, thinking he had already given powers

too ample to the Chambre Ardente, and shocked at the horrors of the

numberless executions, carried out by the bloodthirsty La Regnie,

refused.

Then another method of influencing His Majesty was devised.

In the apartments of Madame de Maintenon,--where the King was in the

habit of spending much of his time in the afternoons,--and also, very

often, would be at work with his Ministers till late at night--a

poetical petition was laid before him, on the part of the "Endangered

Lovers," who complained that when "galanterie" rendered it incumbent on

them to be the bearers of some valuable present to the ladies of their

hearts, they had always to do it at the risk of their lives. They said,

that, of course, it was honour and delight to pour out their blood for

the lady of their heart, in knightly encounter, but that the

treacherous attack of the assassin, against which it was impossible to

guard, was quite a different matter. They expressed their hope that

Louis, the bright pole-star of love and gallantry, might deign--arising

and shining in fullest splendour--to dispel the darkness of night, and

thus reveal the black mysteries hidden thereby; that the God-like hero,

who had hurled his foes to the dust, would now once more wave his

flashing faulchion, and, as did Hercules in the case of the Lærnean

Hydra, and Theseus in that of the Minotaur, vanquish the threatening

monster who was eating up all love-delight, and darkening all joy into

deep sorrow and inconsolable mourning.

Serious as the subject was, this poem was not deficient in most

wittily-turned phrases, particularly where it described the state of

watchful anxiety in which lovers had to glide to their lady-loves, and

how this mental strain necessarily destroyed all love-happiness, and

nipped all adventures of "galanterie" in the very bud. And, as it

wound up with a high-flown panegyric of Louis XIV., the King could not

but read it with visible satisfaction. When he perused it, he turned

to Madame de Maintenon--without taking his eyes from it--read it

again--aloud this time--and then asked, with a pleased smile, what she

thought of the petition of the 'Endangered Lovers.' Madame de

Maintenon, faithful to her serious turn, and ever wearing the garb of a

certain piousness, answered that hidden and forbidden ways did not

deserve much in the form of protection, but that the criminals probably

did require special laws for their punishment. The King, not satisfied

with this answer, folded the paper up, and was going back to the

Secretary of State, who was at work in the ante-room, when, happening

to glance sideways, his eyes rested on Mademoiselle Scuderi, who was

present, seated in a little arm-chair. He went straight to her; and the

pleased smile which had at first been playing about his mouth and

cheeks--but had disappeared--resumed the ascendency again. Standing

close before her, with his face unwrinkling itself, he said--

"The Marquise does not know, and has no desire to learn, anything about

the 'galanteries' of our enamoured gentlemen, and evades the subject in

ways which are nothing less than forbidden. But, Mademoiselle, what do

_you_ think of this poetical petition?"

Mademoiselle Scuderi rose from her chair; a transient blush, like the

purple of the evening sky, passed across her pale cheeks, and, gently

bending forward, she answered, with downcast eyes--

"Un amant qui craint les voleurs.

N'est point digne d'amour."

The King, surprised, and struck by admiration at the chivalrous spirit

of those few words--which completely took the wind out of the sails of

the poem, with all its ell-long tirades--cried, with flashing eyes--

"By Saint Denis, you are right, Mademoiselle! No blind laws, touching

the innocent and the guilty alike, shall shelter cowardice. Argenson

and La Regnie must do their best."

Next morning La Martinière enlarged upon the terrors of the time,

painting them in glowing colours to her lady, when she told her all

that had happened the previous night, and handed her the mysterious

casket, with much fear and trembling. Both she and Baptiste (who stood

in the corner as white as a sheet, kneading his cap in his hand from

agitation and anxiety) implored her, in the name of all the saints, to

take the greatest precautions in opening it. She, weighing and

examining the unopened mystery in her hand, said with a smile, "You are

a couple of bogies! The wicked scoundrels outside, who, as you say

yourselves, spy out all that goes on in every house, know, no doubt,

quite as well as you and I do, that I am not rich, and that there are

no treasures in this house worth committing a murder for. Is my life in

danger, do you think? Who could have any interest in the death of an

old woman of seventy-three, who never persecuted any evil-doers except

those in her own novels; who writes mediocre poetry, incapable of

exciting any one's envy; who has nothing to leave behind her but the

belongings of an old maid, who sometimes goes to Court, and two or

three dozen handsomely-bound books with gilt edges. And, alarming as

your account is, La Martinière, of the apparition of this man, I cannot

believe that he meant me any harm, so----"

La Martinière sprang three paces backwards, and Baptiste fell on one

knee with a hollow, "Ah!" as Mademoiselle Scuderi pressed a projecting

steel knob, and the lid of the casket flew open with a certain amount

of noise.

Great was her surprise to see that it contained a pair of bracelets,

and a necklace richly set in jewels. She took them out and as she spoke

in admiration of the marvellous workmanship of the necklace, La

Martinière cast glances of wonder at the bracelets, and cried, again

and again, that Madame Montespan herself did not possess such jewelry.

"But why is it brought to me?" cried Mademoiselle Scuderi. "What can

this mean?" She saw, however, a little folded note at the bottom of the

casket, and in this she rightly thought she would find the key to the

mystery. When she had read what was written in the note, it fell from

her trembling hands; she raised an appealing look to heaven, and then

sank down half fainting in her chair. Baptiste and La Martinière

hurried to her, in alarm. "Oh!" she cried, in a voice stifled by tears,

"the mortification! The deep humiliation! Has it been reserved for me

to undergo this in my old age? Have I ever been frivolous, like some of

the foolish young creatures? Are words, spoken half in jest, to be

found capable of such a terrible interpretation? Am I, who have been

faithful to all that is pure and good from my childhood, to be made

virtually an accomplice in the crimes of this terrible confederation?"

She held her handkerchief to her eyes, so that Baptiste and La

Martinière, altogether at sea in their anxious conjectures, felt

powerless to set about helping her, who was so dear to them, as the

best and kindest of mistresses, in her bitter affliction.

La Martinière picked up the paper from the floor. On it was written--

"Un amant qui craint les voleurs

N'est point digne d'amour."

"Your brilliant intellect, most honoured lady, has delivered us, who

exercise, on weakness and cowardice, the rights of the stronger, and

possess ourselves of treasures which would otherwise be unworthily

wasted, from much bitter persecution. As a proof of our gratitude, be

pleased to kindly accept this set of ornaments. It is the most valuable

that we have been enabled to lay hands on for many a day. Although far

more beautiful and precious jewels ought to adorn you, yet we pray you

not to deprive us of your future protection and remembrance.--THE

INVISIBLES."

"Is it possible," cried Mademoiselle Scuderi, when she had partially

recovered herself, "that shameless wickedness and abandoned insult can

be carried further by human beings?" The sun was shining brightly

through the window curtains of crimson silk, and consequently the

brilliants, which were lying on the table beside the open casket, were

flashing a rosy radiance. Looking at them, Mademoiselle Scuderi covered

her face in horror, and ordered La Martinière instantly to take those

terrible jewels away, steeped, as they seemed to be, in the blood of

the murdered. La Martinière, having at once put the necklace and

bracelets back into their case, thought the best thing to do would be

to give them to the Minister of Police, and tell him all that had

happened.

Mademoiselle Scuderi rose, and walked up and down slowly and in

silence, as if considering what it was best to do. Then she told

Baptiste to bring a sedan chair, and La Martinière to dress her, as she

was going straight to the Marquise de Maintenon.

She repaired thither at the hour when she knew Madame de Maintenon

would be alone, taking the casket and jewels with her.

Madame de Maintenon might well wonder to see this dear old lady (who

was always kindness, sweetness and amiability personified), pale,

distressed, upset, coming in with uncertain steps. "In heaven's name,

what has happened to you?" she cried to her visitor, who was scarcely

able to stand upright, striving to reach the chair which the Marquise

drew forward for her. At last, when she could find words, she told her

what a deep, irremediable insult and outrage the thoughtless speech

which she had made in reply to the King had brought upon her.

Madame de Maintenon, when she had heard the whole affair properly

related, thought Mademoiselle Scuderi was taking it far too much to

heart, strange as the occurrence was--that the insult of a pack of

wretched rabble could not hurt an upright, noble heart: and finally

begged that she might see the ornaments.

Mademoiselle Scuderi handed her the open casket, and when she saw the

splendid and valuable stones, and the workmanship of them, she could

not repress a loud expression of admiration. She took the bracelets and

necklace to the window, letting the sunlight play on the jewels, and

holding the beautiful goldsmith's work close to her eyes, so as to see

with what wonderful skill each little link of the chains was formed.

She turned suddenly to Mademoiselle Scuderi, and cried, "Do you know,

there is only one man who can have done this work--and that is René

Cardillac."

René Cardillac was then the cleverest worker in gold in all Paris, one

of the most artistic, and at the same time extraordinary men of his

day. Short, rather than tall, but broad-shouldered, and of strong and

muscular build, Cardillac, now over fifty, had still the strength and

activity of a youth. To this vigour, which was to be called unusual,

testified also his thick, curling, reddish hair, and his massive,

shining face. Had he not been known to be the most upright and

honourable of men, unselfish, open, without reserve, always ready to

help, his altogether peculiar glance out of his grimly sparkling eyes

might have brought him under suspicion of being secretly ill-tempered

and wicked. In his art he was the most skilful worker, not only in

Paris, but probably in the world at that time. Intimately acquainted

with every kind of precious stones, versed in all their special

peculiarities, he could so handle and treat them that ornaments which

at a first glance promised to be poor and insignificant, came from his

workshop brilliant and splendid. He accepted every commission with

burning eagerness, and charged prices so moderate as to seem out of all

proportion to the work. And the work left him no rest. Day and night he

was to be heard hammering in his shop; and often, when a job was nearly

finished, he would suddenly be dissatisfied with the form--would have

doubts whether some of the settings were tender enough; some little

link would not be quite to his mind--in fine, the whole affair would be

thrown into the melting-pot, and begun all over again. Thus every one

of his works was a real, unsurpassable _chef-d'œuvre_, which set the

person who had ordered it into amazement. But then, it was hardly

possible to get the finished work out of his hands. He would put the

customer off from one week to another, by a thousand excuses, ay, from

month to month. He might be offered twice the price he had agreed upon,

but it was useless; he would take no more; and when, ultimately, he was

obliged to yield to the customer's remonstrances, and deliver the work,

he could not conceal the vexation--nay, the rage--which seethed within

him. If he had to deliver some specially valuable and unusually rich

piece of workmanship, worth perhaps several thousand francs, he would

get into such a condition that he ran up and down like one demented,

cursing himself, his work, and every thing and person about him; but

should, then, some one come running up behind him, crying, "René

Cardillac, would you be so kind as to make me a beautiful necklace for

the lady I am going to marry?" or "a pair of bracelets for my girl?" or

the like, he would stop in a moment, flash his small eyes upon the

speaker, and say, "Let me see what you have got." The latter would take

out a little case, and say, "Here are jewels; they are not worth much;

only every-day affairs; but in your hands----." Cardillac would

interrupt him, snatch the casket from his hands, take out the stones

(really not very valuable), hold them up to the light, and cry, "Ho!

ho! common stones you say! Nothing of the kind!--very fine, splendid

stones! Just see what I shall make of them; and if a handful of Louis

are no object to you, I will put two or three others along with them

which will shine in your eyes like the sun himself!" The customer would

say: "I leave the matter entirely in your hands, Master René; make what

charge you please." Whether the customer were a rich burgher or a

gallant of quality, Cardillac would then throw himself violently on his

neck, embrace him and kiss him, and say he was perfectly happy again,

and that the work would be ready in eight days' time. Then he would run

home as fast as he could to his work-shop, where he would set to work

hammering away; and in eight days' time there would be a masterpiece

ready. But as soon as the customer would arrive, glad to pay the

moderate price demanded, and take away his prize, Cardillac would

become morose, ill-tempered, rude, and insolent. "But consider, Master

Cardillac," the customer would say, "to-morrow is my wedding-day."

"What do I care?" Cardillac would answer; "what is your wedding-day to

me? Come back in a fortnight." "But it is finished!--here is the money;

I must have it." "And I tell you that there are many alterations which

I must make before I let it leave my hands, and I am not going to let

you have it to-day." "And I tell you, that if you don't give me my

jewels--which I am ready to pay you for--quietly, you will see me come

back with a file of D'Argenson's men." "Now, may the devil seize you

with a hundred red-hot pincers, and hang three hundredweight on to the

necklace, that it may throttle your bride!" With which he would cram

the work into the customer's breast-pocket, seize him by the arm, push

him out of the door, so that he would go stumbling all the way

downstairs, and laugh like a fiend, out of window, when he saw the

poor wretch go limping out, holding his handkerchief to his bleeding

nose. It was not easy of explanation neither that Cardillac, when he

had undertaken a commission with alacrity and enthusiasm, would

sometimes suddenly implore the customer, with every sign of the

deepest emotion--with the most moving adjurations, even with sobs and

tears--not to ask him to go on with it. Many persons, amongst those

most highly considered by the King and nation, had in vain offered

large sums for the smallest specimen of Cardillac's work. He threw

himself at the King's feet, and supplicated that, of his mercy, he

would not command him to work for him; and he declined all orders of

Madame de Maintenon's: once, when she wished him to make a little ring,

with emblems of the arts on it, which she wanted to give to Racine, he

refused with expressions of abhorrence and terror.

"I would wager," said Madame de Maintenon, "therefore, that even if I

were to send for Cardillac, to find out, at least, for whom he had made

those ornaments, he would somehow evade coming, for fear that I should

give him an order; nothing will induce him to work for me. Yet he does

seem to have been rather less obstinate of late, for I hear he is

working more than ever, and allows his customers to take away their

jewelry at once, though he does so with deep annoyance, and turns away

his face when he hands them over."

Mademoiselle Scuderi, who was exceedingly anxious that the jewels which

came into her possession in such an extraordinary manner should be

restored to their owner as speedily as possible, thought that this

wondrous René Cardillac should be informed at once that no work was

required of him, but simply his opinion as to certain stones. The

Marquise agreed to this; he was sent for, and he came into the room in

a very brief space, almost as if he had been on the way when sent for.

When he saw Mademoiselle Scuderi, he appeared perplexed, like one

confronted with the unexpected, who, for the time, loses sight of the

calls of courtesy; he first of all made a profound reverence to her,

and then turned, in the second place, to the Marquise. Madame de

Maintenon impetuously asked him if the jewelled ornaments--to which

she pointed as they lay sparkling on the dark-green cover of the

table--were his workmanship. Cardillac scarcely glanced at them, and,

fixedly staring in her face, he hastily packed the necklace and

bracelets into their case, and shoved them away with some violence.

Then he said, with an evil smile gleaming on his red face, "The truth

is, Madame la Marquise, that one must know René Cardillac's handiwork

very little to suppose, even for a moment, that any other goldsmith in

the world made those. Of course, I made them." "Then," continued the

Marquise, "say whom you made them for." "For myself alone," he

answered. "You may think this strange," he continued, as they both

gazed at him with amazement, Madame de Maintenon incredulous, and

Mademoiselle Scuderi all anxiety as to how the matter was going to turn

out, "but I tell you the truth, Madame la Marquise. Merely for the sake

of the beauty of the work, I collected some of my finest stones

together, and worked for the enjoyment of so doing, more carefully and

diligently than usual. Those ornaments disappeared from my workshop a

short time since, in an incomprehensible manner." "Heaven be thanked!"

cried Mademoiselle Scuderi, her eyes sparkling with joy. With a smile

she sprang up from her seat, and going up to Cardillac quickly and

actively as a young girl, she laid her hands on his shoulder, saying,

"Take back your treasure, Master René, which the villains have robbed

you of!" And she circumstantially related how the ornaments had come

into her possession.

Cardillac listened in silence, with downcast eyes, merely from time to

time uttering a scarcely audible "Hm! Indeed! Ah! Ho, ho!" sometimes

placing his hands behind his back, again stroking his chin and cheeks.

When she had ended, he appeared to be struggling with strange thoughts

which had come to him during her story, and seemed unable to come to

any decision satisfactory to himself. He rubbed his brow, sighed,

passed his hand over his eyes--perhaps to keep back tears. At last he

seized the casket (which Mademoiselle Scuderi had been holding out to

him), sunk slowly on one knee, and said: "Esteemed lady! Fate destined

this casket for you; and I now feel, for the first time, that I was

thinking of you when I was at work upon it--nay, was making it

expressly for you. Do not disdain to accept this work, and to wear it;

it is the best I have done for a very long time." "Ah! Master René,"

said Mademoiselle Scuderi, jesting pleasantly, "how think you it would

become me at my age to bedeck myself with those beautiful jewels?--and

what should put it in your mind to make me such a valuable present?

Come, come! If I were as beautiful and as rich as the Marquise de

Fontange, I should certainly not let them out of my hands; but what

have my withered arms, and my wrinkled neck, to do with all that

splendour?"

Cardillac had risen, and said, with wild looks, like a man beside

himself, still holding the casket out towards her, "Do me the mercy to

take it, Mademoiselle! You have no notion how profound is the reverence

which I bear in my heart for your excellences, your high deserts. Do

but accept my little offering, as an attempt, on my part, to prove to

you the warmth of my regard."

As Mademoiselle Scuderi was still hesitating, Madame de Maintenon took

the casket from Cardillac's hands, saying, "Now, by heaven,

Mademoiselle, you are always talking of your great age. What have you

and I to do with years and their burden? You are like some bashful

young thing who would fain long for forbidden fruit, if she could

gather it without hands or fingers. Do not hesitate to accept this good

Master René's present, which thousands of others could not obtain for

money or entreaty."