THE DESCENDANTS OF THE WANDERING JEW.
That lonely wayfarer whom we have heard so plaintively urging to be
relieved of his gigantic burden of misery, spoke of "his sister's
descendants" being of all ranks, from the working man to the king's son.
They were seven in number, who had, in the year 1832, been led to Paris,
directly or indirectly, by a bronze medal which distinguished them from
others, bearing these words:-VICTIM of L. C. D. J. Pray for me!
-----PARIS, February the 13th, 1682.
IN PARIS, Rue St. Francois, No. 3, In a century and a half you will be.
February the 13th, 1832. -----PRAY FOR ME!
The son of the King of Mundi had lost his father and his domains in India
by the irresistible march of the English, and was but in title Prince
Djalma. Spite of attempts to make his departure from the East delayed
until after the period when he could have obeyed his medal's command, he
had reached France by the second month of 1832. Nevertheless, the results
of shipwreck had detained him from Paris till after that date. A second
possessor of this token had remained unaware of its existence, only
discovered by accident. But an enemy who sought to thwart the union of
these seven members, had shut her up in a mad-house, from which she was
released only after that day. Not alone was she in imprisonment. An old
Bonapartist, General Simon, Marshal of France, and Duke de Ligny, had
left a wife in Russian exile, while he (unable to follow Napoleon to St.
Helena) continued to fight the English in India by means of Prince
Djalma's Sepoys, whom he drilled. On the latter's defeat, he had meant to
accompany his young friend to Europe, induced the more by finding that
the latter's mother, a Frenchwoman, had left him such another bronze
medal as he knew his wife to have had.
Unhappily, his wife had perished in Siberia, without his knowing it, any
more than he did, that she had left twin daughters, Rose and Blanche.
Fortunately for them, one who had served their father in the Grenadiers
of the Guard. Francis Baudoin, nicknamed Dagobert, undertook to fulfil
the dying mother's wishes, inspired by the medal. Saving a check at
Leipsic, where one Morok the lion-tamer's panther had escaped from its
cage and killed Dagobert's horse, and a subsequent imprisonment (which
the Wandering Jew's succoring hand had terminated) the soldier and his
orphan charges had reached Paris in safety and in time. But there, a
renewal of the foe's attempt had gained its end. By skillful devices,
Dagobert and his son Agricola were drawn out of the way while Rose and
Blanche Simon were decoyed into a nunnery, under the eyes of Dagobert's
wife. But she had been bound against interfering by the influence of the
Jesuit confessional. The fourth was M. Hardy, a manufacturer, and the
fifth, Jacques Rennepont, a drunken scamp of a workman, who were more
easily fended off, the latter in a sponging house, the former by a
friend's lure. Adrienne de Cardoville, daughter of the Count of
Rennepont, who had also been Duke of Cardoville, was the lady who had
been unwarrantably placed in the lunatic asylum. The fifth, unaware of
the medal, was Gabriel, a youth, who had been brought up, though a
foundling, in Dagobert's family, as a brother to Agricola. He had entered
holy orders, and more, was a Jesuit, in name though not in heart. Unlike
the others, his return from abroad had been smoothed. He had signed away
all his future prospects, for the benefit of the order of Loyola, and,
moreover, executed a more complete deed of transfer on the day, the 13th
of February, 1832, when he, alone of the heirs, stood in the room of the
house, No. 3, Rue St. Francois, claiming what was a vast surprise for the
Jesuits, who, a hundred and fifty years before, had discovered that Count
Marius de Rennepont had secreted a considerable amount of his wealth, all
of which had been confiscated to them, in those painful days of
dragoonings, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They had
bargained for some thirty or forty millions of francs to be theirs, by
educating Gabriel into resigning his inheritance to them, but it was two
hundred and twelve millions which the Jesuit representatives (Father
d'Aigrigny and his secretary, Rodin) were amazed to hear their nursling
placed in possession of. They had the treasure in their hands, in fact,
when a woman of strangely sad beauty had mysteriously entered the room
where the will had been read, and laid a paper before the notary. It was
a codicil, duly drawn up and signed, deferring the carrying out of the
testament until the first day of June the same year. The Jesuits fled
from the house, in rage and intense disappointment. Father d'Aigrigny was
so stupor-stricken at the defeat, that he bade his secretary at once
write off to Rome that the Rennepont inheritance had escaped them, and
hopes to seize it again were utterly at an end. Upon this, Rodin had
revolted, and shown that he had authority to command where he had, so
far, most humbly obeyed. Many such spies hang about their superior's
heels, with full powers to become the governor in turn, at a moment's
notice. Thenceforward, he, Rodin, had taken the business into his own
hands. He had let Rose and Blanche Simon out of the convent into their
father's arms. He had gone in person to release Adrienne de Cardoville
from the asylum. More, having led her to sigh for Prince Djalma, he
prompted the latter to burn for her.
He let not M. Hardy escape. A friend whom the latter treated as a
brother, had been shown up to him as a mere spy of the Jesuits; the woman
whom he adored, a wedded woman, alas! who had loved him in spite of her
vows, had been betrayed. Her mother had compelled her to hide her shame
in America, and, as she had often said--"Much as you are endeared to me,
I cannot waver between you and my mother!" so she had obeyed, without one
farewell word to him. Confess, Rodin was a more dextrous man than his
late master! In the pages that ensue farther proofs of his superiority in
baseness and satanic heartlessness will not be wanting.