Within a stone’s throw of the royal Palace, under its usurious eye,
as it were, stood the Palazzo di Citta, the headquarters of the Banco
del Regio Lotto. There, every alternate Saturday at noon, the drawing
of the numbers took place, and the impoverishment of a few thousand
King’s subjects, guilty of nothing but fatuity, was decided by lot.
It was a recurrently mad time, whose agitation was transmitted to
remotest parishes all over the country--only with this distinction:
the Piémontais, watching the central game, was held hostage to its
excitement; the poor Savoyard, ruined out of sight, cursed himself for
a blockhead victim to fraud, and, with the common inconsistency, vowed
hatred against a Government which could thus rob him of his mite.
That was inevitable. Gambling in cold blood can only breed usurers
where it succeeds, and desperadoes where it fails. The Turinois
possessed the glitter of the table. It was not he who was to fail the
Monarchy in the dark days to come.
He was as fevered, as voluble, as gesticulatory, as seething in his
numbers on this particular occasion of the drawing, as he had been any
time since M. D’Aubonne first brought his damnable invention of the
lottery-wheel from France some fifty years earlier. His cheek was as
glowing, his heart as fluttering with a sense of novelty, as if he had
never before seen a hundred or two of butterflies broken on the wheel.
Even Dr Bonito, standing amidst the pack with a young friend, felt the
infection of the occasion, and bit his blue lips with that sort of
agonised transport which makes men under the lash set their teeth in
whatsoever they encounter.
He had had that vanity of his qualities, the old grey rat, to hold by
an independence even to the last capacity of the gutter for yielding
him one. The stars, the cards (a greasy pack), the astrolabe and
divining rod, had procured him thence, latterly, an obscene living. In
taking it, he had had at least the justification of his own
superstition. If he sold immortal truths at a halfpenny apiece, it was
only because necessity obliged him. They had all the value of
genuineness in his eyes, and to “fake” antiques would only discredit
him with the gods, upon whom was his ultimate reliance. What he had
borrowed from Louis-Marie had been a loan to conviction--a last ounce
of metal needed to insure his winged feet to the Perseus of his
destiny. That he fully believed. Beyond it--it was a fact--he had not
asked, nor accepted, a farthing from the young man.
But superstition, as a one-devil possession, prevails only through its
plausibility. Let its dupe once be disillusioned, and all the moral
obliquities, out of which it had shaped its pretence, confess
themselves the owners of the mansion. The maggots which devour a dead
faith were bred in it living. Superstition, cast down, becomes the
prey of what it had entertained. Dr Bonito, a Rosicrucian by
conviction, had never perhaps been really dangerous until the stars
came to prove themselves impostors. And then he delivered himself
wholly to corruption.
In the meanwhile, bond-slave to his faith, foreseeing nothing so
little as the imminent disruption of that faith’s particles, or
articles, he cherished for the moment no particular thought of
rascality towards anyone. He may even have felt a little cold thaw of
emotion towards the human souls about him, as towards beings
predestined to witness in him alone, conversant with the hieroglyphics
of fate, that apotheosis which they all desired vainly for themselves.
Smugly self-conscious of his frowsy coat and broken shoes, he likened
himself to Elijah, on the banks of the Jordan, awaiting, an
unconsidered prophet, the descent of the fiery chariot. His eyes
travelled incessantly, feverishly, from his companion--poor
Louis-Marie, the dull, apathetic soul--to the steps of the Town-hall,
on which was displayed--under guard, but for all to see--the wheel of
Fortune.
Suddenly a sound went over the vast throng, like a sweep of wind over
a bed of rushes, bowing all heads in a single direction. It wailed,
and passed, and died, and was succeeded by an intense hush. The wheel
was seen to turn--and stop. Bonito clutched his voucher, holding it
under his nose for identification.
The number, large and white, cynosure of a thousand eyes, went up on
a black board--61.
A thin wheeze, such as strains itself from lungs winded by a blow,
came from him. Then he gasped, and, twitching in all his features,
nudged his companion, and set his finger on the card--61, sure enough.
The sigh, the wail, rose again over the throng, and died down--11.
Bonito, for all his faith, was shaking as if palsied as his finger
travelled to the number. Even Louis-Marie, standing staring in his
place, felt in his veins a sluggish thrill of excitement. Again the
wheel turned, and again the card duplicated its record--81; and then
once more it revolved and disgorged a single number--9, and the
quatern was accomplished.
Bonito looked up. His forehead was wet; his lips were dribbling and
smiling in one.
“_Quantum fati parva tabella vehit_,” he said crookedly. “And there
are those who mock at astrology!”
A roar, instant, overwhelming, heart-shaking, broke upon his words. It
greeted the appearance on the board of the fifth and final figure--a
zero!
The gods had laughed. _All stakes were cancelled, and forfeit to the
Government_.
Dr Bonito stood quite still. The sweat dried from his forehead. Slowly
his face seemed to turn into grinning stone. The surge of the crowd
roared round him, like fierce water about a pile. He heeded nothing of
it. He only grinned and grinned, until his grin became a blasphemy, a
horror. Then he recognised that he must stir, speak, do something
human, to cheat the hell to which his looks were claiming him. He was
conscious of a rigor enchaining his flesh; his feet seemed locked in
the jaws of a quicksand; a little, and he would be under.
At the crisis, the card in his hand caught his attention. Very
stiffly, moving his arms mechanically, he tore it into halves, folded,
quartered, requartered, and, at a wrench, divided and sent those
fluttering piecemeal. The act spoke an inhuman grip. It had hardly
been possible to him a minute earlier. But its madness rent the veil.
He twisted awry, and glared up at his companion. Louis-Marie
remembered that night in the _café_. He recognised well enough what
had happened. The calamity might have stirred him little on his own
account, had it not been for this look in the ruined face turned to
him. He shivered slightly.
“So much for the Taroc Mysteries!” whispered the doctor, “chaff of the
gods! But I forgot that nought stood for the Fool.”
His tongue rustled on his palate like a dry scale.
“He hunts butterflies,” he said. “Why, you cursed owl, what are you
staring at? Have you never seen him, with his net, on the cards?
Nought is the Fool, I say, and I am nought--the butt of the gods. I’ll
pay them!”
He took a frantic step or two, returned, seized his companion’s arm,
and urged him from the press.
“Come,” he said hoarsely; “you lent me the means to it--I owe this to
you--I’ll not let you go now.”
All his tolerance, it seemed, was turned to hatred. He regarded the
young man as the instrument, however contemptible, of his undoing. The
worse for the poor tool of Fortune! He would have to act whipping-boy
to her ladyship. And serve the weak creature right for his flaccidity.
He sneered horribly at him.
“Faith’s dead in me,” he snarled. “You’ll have to serve her turn.”
Quite stunned and helpless, Saint-Péray let him lead him whither he
would. As they crossed into the Via Seminario, a royal carriage,
making for the Palace, was brought to a stand against a gabbling
stream of pedestrians, and stopped across their very path. They faced
direct into a window of it; _and there inside was Yolande_.
Pale, agitated, her Dresden-shepherdess eyes glanced to and fro, and,
all in an instant, caught that vision of other two, other four, fixed
upon them.
We’ve heard of faces stricken into stone before some Gorgon
apparition. Love’s severed head converts to softer stuff. His art is
the plastic art, and answers to his dead hauntings in features
stiffening into wax.
So seemed Yolande’s features in that moment. Her breath hung suspended
on her lips, the colour in her cheeks. She had procured Love’s death,
and thus was Love revenged upon her. Like a thing of wax she
confronted the sweet cruelty of his eyes.
There sat a thin grey gentleman by her side, of a very refined and
arrogant mien. The Chevalier de France had never encountered Louis,
nor Louis him. Suddenly the former projected his head from the window,
and demanded in haughty tones the reason of the delay.
“Monsignore,” said a postillion, “it is the Lottery.”
The Chevalier _sacre’d_.
“Does that concern a minister of State, puppy? Drive through the
rabble.”
The carriage jerked forward, and rolled on its way. Saint-Péray stood
motionless, following it with his eyes. A touch on his arm aroused
him. Acrid, vicious, fearfully expressive, the face of Dr Bonito
peered up into his.
“Monsieur,” whispered the Rosicrucian: “there goes Madame
Saint-Péray.”
Louis-Marie gave a mortal start, and put his hand to his forehead.
“There is something weaving in my brain,” he muttered. “Look,
look--shake it out! My God, it is an enormous spider!”