CHAPTER XIII

Cartouche, released, at the end of a week, from his inaugural

business in the Le Prieuré Prefecture, returned forthwith to

Turin--and to the re-encountering a problem, whose difficulties, one

had thought, he might have studied more profitably at a distance. But

a characteristic precipitancy, in deed and word--as much acquired as

born of self-reliance in him--compelled him from hesitating on the

brink of things. When angels and devils were at contest in his

interests, he was not going to miss the excitement, nor the chance of

applauding, or perhaps damning, the victors.

But he had had a more wearing time of it than he would have cared to

admit, even to himself. He was not apt at moral conundrums; and one

had come to consume his peace confoundedly. He felt it always

smouldering in his breast, ready to break out into flame at any

moment.

And he had really laid out its premises very impartially for his own

consideration. He was an eclectic by nature; as, alas! is the case

with a number of naughty people. It is unfortunate, indeed, that

righteousness so often lacks the sense of humour, which is the faculty

for seeing both sides of a question. The want seems to give obliquity

such a superiority--though it is a specious one, of course.

He could admit, then, the inevitableness of a deed, which had

preserved an honour most dear and sacred to himself. He could not

admit a claim to that honour personified, as the price of blood.

Louis, the slayer of a woman’s husband, could not take that husband’s

place. Were she, knowingly, to let him, her honour would be forfeit:

were he to take advantage of her ignorance, he would be doing a vile

thing. She was not for Louis: could never be, in any scheme of moral

purifications.

For whom, then? Why, scarcely less vile were he, Cartouche, to seek to

take advantage of his friend’s hard fortune (It will be observed that

he somehow inferred for that problematic vileness its problematic

opportunity--the ineradicable instinct, perhaps, of an _amoroso_,

experienced in the ways of audacity, to whom a rebuff had always

stood, and likely been always justified in standing, for an incitement

to fresh aggression).

As to another question, that of his own relationship to the dead man,

he utterly declined to recognise it as one involving his personal

interdiction. The marriage had been a mere conditional contract, of

the essence of a betrothal, and the conditions had not been observed.

No moral prohibition, such as touched upon the forbidden degrees, was

implied by it, he told himself: and told himself so, he insisted,

merely to emphasise the singleness of his renunciation. He would have

the full credit for his self-sacrifice. His responsibility was not to

a sentimental scruple, but to his ideal of an immaculate honour in the

woman he worshipped.

Remained the question of his attitude towards the murderer of his

father, and of his royal commission to hunt down that unknown

assassin. Well, he had both discovered and exonerated him; but the

offence was still officially _un crime qualifié_. To condone it were

to make himself an accessory.

He would condone it, however, since by so doing he testified to his

loyalty to his ideal. Yolande’s eternal fame should owe him that

sacrifice of his duty to his nobler conscience. By so little, at

least, he would justify himself in the thankless wardenship of her

honour; by so little he would make himself the right to claim her into

an association with himself.

So far and so good for his solution of the problem. This dear prize

was not for Louis; it was not for him. What, then, was to be its

destiny?

There was his ideal. Eternal maid, by virtue of her deathless bondage

to the past, she was to exist the unattainable goddess of all desire.

He might not reach to her; but he might enforce his own precedence in

her worship. He would be the high-priest of that altar, winning to his

place by heart’s-devotion. He pictured her, a virgin for ever

unfulfilled, the flying figure on the vase, and himself, the

passionate shepherd, stricken to an endless rapture of pursuit. What

sweeter, more idealistic heaven?

“She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss;

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.”

A pretty, pretty romance! But was it practical?

His soul, at least, flamed out to it. It gave him a mad wild joy to

think that circumstance, and by no contrivance of his own, had removed

the one mortal bar to its attainment.

Whence, now, and wherefore, his return to Turin--to make himself

secure of his transfigured idol--to confirm Louis-Marie, if necessary,

in his renunciation of an untenable claim. For knowing the man, he

could not but have his doubts of his resolution. So much of him was

based on emotion--a treacherous foundation.

And, for the rest--his own title, by way of redemption, to that

priesthood? Why, Molly, of course, was to be included in the

transcendent scheme. She was to share his atonement, and be appointed

a vestal to the altar of his love. He would pension her off for that

purpose; he would--

O, “a mad world, my masters,” where love could not legalise itself

without making a scapegoat of somebody!

And there was even another flaw--his promise to Yolande. But he had

been obliged to forget all about that.

As he walked, in a sort of sombre self-complacency (as of a martyr

about to testify) through the streets, his mind was busy over those

first practical solutions of his problem which he was about to face.

It would be necessary, he had decided, to inform his friend--restored,

he hoped, by now to reason--of the impossible situation which his

appointment had brought about, and to urge him to resolve its

insuperable difficulties by instant flight. That must be the first

step. And, afterwards--?

Alert, perspicacious by instinct, his eyes had become aware, as he

moved on, of something oddly inquisitorial, something droll and

furtive, in the glances of friends and acquaintances whom he met,

whether directed at himself, or slyly interchanged. He affected to

pass all by unconcerned, nodding brightly here and there without stop

or comment; but he made mental notes, abstractedly stroking his

sword-hilt, as if it were a pet terrier’s head. He felt, quietly, a

little wicked. His theory of self-reforms, it would appear, halted yet

something short of meekness and the second cheek to the smiter. At the

corner of a street he ran plump upon Dr Bonito.

The adverb is figurative. The Doctor was always as shrewd an encounter

as an edge of north wind. He cut into one’s meditations like a

draught. On the present occasion, it seemed, he cut to get home into

an adversary unprepared. His lean face kindled to the unexpectedness

and opportuneness of the meeting.

“Hail, hail, M. le Préfet!” he croaked, in hoarse glee. “Here’s a

magnetic conjunction! What man so much in my mind!--and, lo! I look

up; and the man himself! Have you despatched both rogues and measures

in your new Province? But doubtless you are returned betimes to assay

the truthfulness of the great report. Well, be satisfied; it is true.”

Cartouche balanced on his heel, imperturbably conning the face of his

old familiar. He saw enough there to detain him a reflective moment.

The two had not met since their parting “Under the Porticoes.”

“Father Bonito,” said he; “I do not want to possess your mind. You can

stick up a bill for a new tenant. I have grown a little particular in

my tastes. In the meanwhile, I am only this hour returned to Turin,

and greatly pressed for time. What, in a word, is this report, of

which you speak and I know nothing?”

The doctor sprawled up his hands in feigned astonishment.

“Gods! I believe he really hasn’t heard it! and the very stones of the

town babbling with it these days past. Not to have heard it--the one

most interested, with myself--he hasn’t! I’m my own first suitor to

his gratitude for this.”

“Well; the devil give you brevity!”

“No, no--one moment--stop! The Marchioness di Rocco, Mr Trix--ah!”

He withdrew a detaining hand, grinned, took off his hat, and mopped

his forehead with a ropey clout, eying his halted prey the while.

“A long throw that, Monsieur,” he said; “yet it hooked you. But, to be

sure, she’s a killing bait.”

Cartouche, just lifting his eyebrows, vouchsafed him no other answer.

He knew his man--was steeling himself quietly against some blow which

he felt was preparing, and which he saw would be designed to take him

off his guard. Let Bonito, in that case, extract what satisfaction he

could out of his manner.

In fact, when the stroke actually fell, his reception of it was so

apparently unconcerned as even to deceive the doctor into a doubt of

the effectiveness of his own home-thrust, and to aggravate his malice

proportionately.

“Yes, a killing bait--a--killing--bait,” he said; and threw his

handkerchief into his hat, and covered himself--all deliberately.

“Well,” he said, “congratulate me, Mr Trix. He was shy; but--he’s

taken her at last.”

Cartouche yawned.

“In the name of patience--who’s taken whom?” said he.

“Who? Why M. Saint-Péray has taken his Marchesa, that’s all.”

“Well, those are news, to be sure.”

“Are they not--eh? He-he! You are looking worn, Mr Trix. I’m afraid

you take your new duties too seriously. You shouldn’t forget that all

social office is a compromise--a figure representing the balance

between good and evil, to lower one of which unduly is to exalt the

other unduly. Yes, we’ve married our couple.”

“Have we, indeed? And who are ‘we,’ my Bonito?”

“There! these low levels tell on one coming from the heights. You must

be careful of your throat. I notice a huskiness in it already. Why,

indeed, save for a natural diffidence, I might say, Monsieur, that

‘we’ stands for ‘I’; seeing that, as a fact, the initiative was mine.

In any case, what we were one in desiring is, at this moment, an

accomplished thing. The two are married--not, as you may suppose, a

union regarded with favour in certain quarters.”

“No; I suppose not. And how did you bring it about?”

“Ah--ha! there’s the marrow! Why, how you flush and pale! I doubt the

prudence of exciting you, Mr Trix, in this present turbulent state of

your blood.”

“Exciting me? What do you mean? Why should I be excited? Have I been

hanging rogues so few as to start at the mention of a noose? Tell me

how you managed it, my dear excellent old devil.”

“Well, I will. There are points you mayn’t approve; but the end must

justify the means. Listen, then. I could not make our friend eligible

in the way I proposed. But still I was his matrimonial agent--you

remember the term, it was your own? As such my duty to him, my duty to

myself, demanded renewed enterprise on my part. You, who have

expressed an eagerness no less than mine to secure this match, will, I

hope, condone, even approve, the advantage I took of a report

concerning yourself to realise our common wish.”

“A report? What was that?”

“Why, that you yourself was a suitor for the hand of the lady.”

“Yes? and the advantage you took of that same veracious legend?”

“It may have been a legend: it was certainly an opportunity. What did

I do? Why--forgive me, sir--I simply went and repeated it, for what it

was worth, to the Signorina Brambello, and left the leaven to ferment.

The result was quite astonishing. She ran straight off, it appears, in

a pet of jealousy to the lady; induced her to return with her to the

bedside of her stricken gallant (by which, or thereabouts, it seems

our Madam spent the night), and married the two incontinent the next

morning at a neighbouring Chapel (called, somewhat appropriately, la

Maddalena), giving herself and another for witness. Now, am I to be

congratulated or not? A word in season hath accomplished what all your

theories of pretty heartenings and reassurances had failed to. You

appealed to the signorina’s sympathies; I to a baser but more

practical sentiment. Acknowledge who was the better sophist.”

Cartouche clapped him on the shoulder.

“You, you, my Bonito. The credit is all yours, and the triumph. I will

not forget it. I will not overlook your part in this happy

consummation.”

Bonito grinned.

“Nor your _innamorata’s_, eh, Mr Trix? Egad! she’s a name in Turin

to-day. She might command--but, there! these reports are not for my

lips.”

“Her price, you mean? Well, she shall have it. Now I must go. I have

business which can wait no longer.”

He went off, humming a little song. As once before, the doctor stood

conning his receding figure, until it had vanished round a corner.

Then he gave a short sudden laugh, and turned to his own way.

“Well acted,” he thought; “and well out of the reckoning, he; and well

saved, my own skin--for the present--I’m a little afraid at the

expense of the dear signorina’s. But, bah! if the wind were to hold

its breath for fear a leaf or two might fall, there’d be no clearing

the air in this world of scruples.”

* * * * * * * *

Cartouche walked straight to the little villa in the Lane of

Chestnuts. It was a glowing, lustful day. The white curtains in the

windows bosomed out to him like love’s own welcome; lizards basked on

the walls; the flowers in the garden hung sweet drowsy heads. He was

singing still when he reached the door: singing when he greeted

Fiorentina with a chin-chuck: he walked, with a song on his lips, into

the parlour. She was there, sure enough--a flushed palpitating beauty,

with a brave front of greeting, and a quaking heart behind it. He had

no idea of making many words about the thing. He stopped in the middle

of the room, smiling at her.

“What!” said he: “no kiss for me?”

She had never realised until this moment the fulness of her daring,

nor its madness. She gulped sickly, as she crept up to him without a

word, and put her lips to his cheek.

He had a purse of gold ready, and held it out to her.

“There are your wages, Judas.”

As if her legs had been knocked from under her, she went down at his

feet.

“No, no! He was dying, Cherry!”

“Better he had died.”

“O, don’t condemn me unheard!”

“Did you disobey me?”

“Yes; but--”

“That is enough.”

“O, my God! Am I to go?”

“Yes.”

“Think what it means to me?”

“I am thinking.”

“And you can do it?”

“And I can do it--a hundred times. And worse than that, if you tempt

me. Take your price, and go--back to England, if you are wise. Do you

see this in my hand? It’s my last mercy.”

He drew away from her, where she lay, cast upon her face and moaning.

“I am going,” he said. “But I shall return in the afternoon at three

o’clock. If then I find you still here--understand what I say--your

chance to save yourself is past. I’ll kill you on our bed--I mean it.”

A wild desolate scream broke from her throat. He threw the purse down

beside her on the floor, and left the house without another word.

At three o’clock to the minute he returned. Not till he had searched

into every corner of the villa, would he question the red-eyed

_cameristas_, huddled awaiting him in their kitchen. Then he learned

that she had gone indeed. They would have besieged his heart with

tearful clamour, telling of the scene--its rending piteousness; but he

stopped them peremptorily, paid them their wages, double and treble,

and dismissed them.

He had already seen that the purse of gold lay untouched where he had

thrown it down upon the floor. For all his gripping will, that gave

his heart a wrench. He stooped and took it in his

hand--hesitated--then, with a curse at his own weakness, thrust it

into his breast. He went from room to room, bolting the windows. In

one upstairs he paused--so long that ghosts began to stir and whisper

in the empty house. Something, he thought, was moving the curtains of

the bed to which his back was turned. Little slippers stole from

underneath a chair and walked without sound upon the floor. He heard a

sigh--it was himself sighing. With a mad oath, he turned and tramped

downstairs, resolutely, making all the noise he could. The next moment

he had clapped to the door behind him, and was in the open air.

That night, pacing the streets, he passed a hospital for Magdalens. A

box, beseeching charity, was in the wall. He stopped, and taking the

purse from his breast, dropped the coins from it, one by one, into the

slit.

Then he turned and disappeared into the darkness.

PART III

CHAPTER I

We mortals discuss the world as a subject of our common

understanding, and no two of us see it with the same eyes. To

Victor-Amadeus the third’s, for example, it was a stage for _fêtes

galantes_; to the Chevalier de France’s a ball fettered to the ankle

of an heir-at-law, infamously kept from his inheritance; to those of a

certain “little corporal,” as yet unaccredited, it was a potential

family estate; to Yolande’s and Louis-Marie’s a reformatory for

original sin; to Bonito’s it was a footstool to the stars, to

Cartouche’s an absurd necessity, to Jacques Balmat’s a glorious field

for adventure.

In 1786 Jacques was the most famous man in Le Prieuré, and for long

distances beyond it. In notability he had outstripped all these other

claimants to our attention. For he had won his mountain and his wife,

and basked in the lustre and the reward of a great enterprise greatly

accomplished. Yet he took his reputation modestly, as became one who

had looked on Death too often and too close to boast himself superior

to that God. He’d propitiated, not defied him. There was something

very solemn, very sobering in having gained that awful shadow for

one’s friend. So he accepted his part without arrogance, but without

hypocrisy.

“Ah! monsieur,” he said to Saint-Péray, lord-consort to his lady of

the Manor: “you should have held on; you should not have lost heart;

you should have been with me. There are no heights so inaccessible but

that the good God will surrender them to our trust in Him as the first

guide of us all. There is no corner of His world of which He hath

said, ‘Faith shall not enter here.’”

Madame Saint-Péray (she had dropped--flung away, rather--her title)

looked up from her needle-work, with a little frown, like an acute

accent, nicked between her eyes. She was conscious, on this occasion

as she had been on others, of that half protective half accusatory

note in the young mountaineer’s respectful addressings of her husband,

which somehow touched a corresponding chord in herself. It vibrated on

a thought of weakness; it was the tremor in the heart of dying dreams;

its first movement in her had been co-instantaneous with the fall of

her saint from transcendent to merely human heights. Something of

discharm spoke in it; a sense as of an idol convicted of petitioning

his worshipper; a sense as of an unwilling accessory to another’s

secret sin; a sense as of a responsibility incurred where help had

been expected. These several emotions she found suggested somehow in

young Balmat’s tone. Were they common to all sympathetic spirits

brought into whatsoever relations with her husband? She feared so. She

feared, more, that Louis-Marie liked it to be so. His caressing

confidence in all others than himself constituted at once his strength

and his weakness. He ruled by sweet dependence, and was satisfied to

rule.

There were hints of a certain change in her in these days--signs of an

enforced self-emancipation, which, in its process, had a little

chilled the texture of her faith. It was, in its moral, like that

hardening of the grain which only a close observer can detect in the

“fixing” of a pastel. The bloom was a thought less virgin; the eyes

less liquid-clear; the lips had tightened to a scarce perceptible

primness. Her love was as single, as great, as self-sacrificing as

ever. Only it had altered its habit to a sterner garb. It ruled where

it had served; it had made a subject of him who had been its lord; it

justified itself by every concession to the loved one but that of

self-abandonment. And in such implied reproaches as those of honest

Balmat’s it felt its attitude vindicated. “You should have been with

me,” he had said. He should. If he had, if it had been in his nature

to be, this twin history of theirs, she believed, had never come to

find its tragedy and redemption. Louis at this moment had been her

king--her tyrant, even; their parts had never of necessity been

reversed.

Of course, in all this, she only skimmed the truth. There was more to

be inferred, even than she supposed, from the young mountaineer’s

tone. It implied, in fact, a troubled conscience, seeking to allay its

own suspicions on the strength of a serenity in their object which

must surely, it told itself, be incompatible with guilt.

For, indeed, a certain serenity had come to succeed in Louis-Marie the

storms and anguish of a former state. His wife’s tender ministrations;

a year of utter peace, of utter immunity from disturbance in their

retreat, had restored him to a measure of self-confidence--even to a

point of view something broader than that in which Cartouche had

confirmed him. Now he was inclined to think that his deed had been not

only righteous, but heroic; that his bearing of its burden in silence

was a saintly discipline; that, in any case, his confiding of his

awful secret, like King Midas’s barber, to the reeds, had acquitted

him of the first responsibility to it. And the last was, after all,

his most characteristic comfort. He grew well on it, as a worried

schoolboy, quit of his imposition to a merciful parent, forgets his

troubles in a moment.

There remained only, to disturb his conscience, the question of his

conditional absolution, as decreed by Cartouche. Well, as to that, he

had assured and reassured himself, his friend was scarcely

matriculated in moral philosophy. But, even were he called upon by him

to answer for his act, he had still this to plead--that he had not

married Yolande, but Yolande him.

For the rest, slow growing sense of security had come to mend his

sickness of another shadow. A year had passed, and it had not yet

pursued him to his fastness in the Château di Rocco. He hoped now it

never would. He hoped he read, in the social exile which their own

mutinous act had decreed upon himself and Yolande, an abandonment of

any interest in their further fortunes. God grant they might be

permitted to make out their days in peace, justifying--as they for

ever strove, and intended for ever to strive to do--in their devotion

to their church, in a wide and noble beneficence, their inheritance of

a wicked man’s possessions. For to this end only had they decided to

take up the burden of an estate otherwise hateful to them.

It was a mellow September noon. The three sat under the front of the

grim old Château in the quiet sunlight. Far off across the valley, on

a level with their eyes, great flakes of silver-white, spangling a

golden haze, were the huddled masses of the Alps, no less. Soft and

unsubstantial in appearance as the floating iridescences one sees in

water, they were still the native home and most austere dominion of

primordial rock and ice. It seemed impossible to realise it. The very

shadows on their slopes were traced so soft, they were no more shadows

than the blue veins in marble, than the blue inter-webbings of running

surf. Surely that mist of peaks must be descended cloud, and the

changing colours of it the bloom of angelic wings beating within!

Below the sitters’ feet terrace declined upon terrace, until, halted

against a buttress wall, the cultivated land gave place beyond to

stony pastures, which descended to the lower verge of the estate and

the great wrought-iron gates of the entrance.

And between, poised high in the mid-ether of the valley, a watching

kestrel floated like a leaf.

Madame Saint-Péray, looking up, answered for her husband. Her

recognition that neither high achievement nor great failure was ever

for this dear weanling of her passion was not to find her loyalty to

him at fault--rather to confirm her jealousy for his reputation.

“That is a very right sentiment for a guide, M. Jacques,” she said;

“but there may be nobler conquests for duty even than those of

mountains. Monsieur owed his life to _me_; and he sacrificed his

ambitions to that debt.”

That was the thorn. Then she offered the rose.

“For you, you owed that conquest to your love; and bravely you strove

and gained. I hope the dear father recovers himself of your

naughtiness?”

Jacques laughed; then essayed his little gallantry. No Frenchman,

however primitive, lacks that essential grace,--

“I said, Monsieur should not have lost his heart for the enterprise. I

was a dog, an imbecile. What summit could equal that to which his

heart attained! I thought myself near heaven as I stood up there

alone--the first to get so near. Alas, Madame! Monsieur staying on the

ground had already gained it.”

Monsieur, lying comfortably back in his chair, smiled kindly.

“That is very true, Jacques; and I wish I could take credit for the

best deserts. But you have not answered Madama’s question.”

“Of Dr Paccard, Monsieur? The old man is almost himself again. He can

see his son-in-law at last.”

“It was cruel of you to force him to the summit,” said Madame.

“Why, what would you?” answered the mountaineer. “He would never have

believed else; and upon his belief depended my reward.”

“But, by all accounts, he could not see, even then.”

“That is true; but others could. My faith, he was bad! But it was his

bargain, not mine, that he should accompany me to witness. He would

have given up before we slept the first night on la Côte. There had

been enough and to spare already to terrify him. With dusk had come an

oppression of the air. Our axes sang like flutes. Suddenly, as I

climbed, holding my staff by the middle, it had a knob of light for

head--a thing like a luminous bladder, that palpitated, and swelled,

and shrunk and swelled again; till, in a moment, it detached itself

and floated away, far, far into the shadows, where it burst with a

clap like thunder. Then came the lightning, above, everywhere. One

blaze struck the ground, right in front of us. It was as if a bucket

of fire had been emptied from some window of the rocks. It splashed up

and was gone, leaving a stench--_Mon Dieu!_ the fish they had been

gutting up there were not very fresh.”

“O, horrible, horrible!”

“Better than that our heads had received it. But I am fatiguing

Madame?”

“No, no. Go on. I have wanted so much to hear it from your lips.”

“He slept exhausted, for all his fright, wrapped in my blanket, and

moaning for the good roast chicken, which he had ordered at home

against his soon return. When he awoke, it was bright calm sunlight,

and he had gathered new heart of rest. We went on and up; but his

courage soon ebbed, running out at his heels, until, _Mon Dieu!_ he

was crawling on his belly like a mole. That was laughable enough; but

even so, my merriment could urge him no further than the Dôme du

Goûter, where he sat down and refused to move a step further. I gave

him my glass, and told him to look how the villagers watched us from

below, and at Martha herself, the brave child, waving to us with her

handkerchief. It was all of no use. I had to leave him and go on

alone. The thin air suffocated me. The wind shaved my cheeks, drawing

blood from them like a clumsy barber. Every sweep of its razor was a

gash. But by then I was mad to conquer or perish. Though it strip me

to the bone, I thought, my skeleton shall stand on the summit. And

presently, all in an instant, I was there.

“O, Madama! It is something, that, to have seen the stars by daylight.

They were all about my head, crowning me. Perhaps their glory

intoxicated my brain. In any case, I was fierce now to go and fetch my

comrade, and force him to come up and believe. And I went down to him

again, and roused him from his stupor, and drove him before me up the

heights. He was quite dumb and silly, like a drunken man; but my will

was great, and I got him there. He could see nothing; the

snow-blindness was in his eyes; he would hear nothing. ‘Take your

Martha,’ he said, ‘and let me sleep.’ That was all. How I got him down

and home is known to none but God; it is not known to me.”

Louis-Marie, listening in a glow, had caught something of the

speaker’s transport. He turned, with kindled eyes, to Yolande. “See,”

his looks confessed, “what I have foregone for your sake!” She gave a

sudden cry “Ah!” and pointed down. The hawk had swooped into a tree,

and re-emerged with a little fluttering life in its claws.

“That is very pitiful,” she said. “I had heard the poor thing singing

to his mate but a moment ago.”

Balmat took up his hat.

“He sang of himself, by the token, Madama,” he said--“of what a fine

fellow he was. It is the way with cock-birds. That was a good lesson

to me. Be sure, it said, before you start to blow your own trumpet,

that an enemy is not within hearing.”

As, having made his respectful adieux, he went down the hill at a

swing, the lodge gate clanked at the foot of the drive far below. They

saw his diminishing figure halt against another which was approaching.

The two appeared to exchange greetings and a few words. At the end,

Balmat resumed his way down, and the stranger turned again to the

ascent. As he came on, the cuttings of the hill path swallowed him,

and he disappeared from view. In the same instant, Yolande, bent over

her work, heard her husband get hurriedly to his feet, and glanced up

at him. Silks and needles went to the ground. She was by him in a

moment.

“What is it--Louis! Louis!”

He was deadly pale; he was holding his hand to his forehead in a lost

way.

“Take me in, take me in!” he muttered. “I--I think the sun--ah!--it

was perhaps too strong for me.”

He was wild over her momentary hesitation.

“I would not stop to question if you were sick,” he said. She put her

arm about him at once, and guided him into the house. Entered into its

refuge, a little reassurance, as of a sanctuary gained, seemed to

brace him. He moved of his own accord, and towards the stairs, making

for the upper rooms. She never released him, until he was lying back

on his own pillows. Then he seized her hands and kissed them as she

knelt beside him.

“Dear wife,” he said, in great emotion. “I think, perhaps, the

sun--and the excitement--of listening. There; I shall be well in a

little--only rest--utter rest--I can see no one--no one: Yolande--it

would be very bad for me--it--”

She soothed him.

“Why needst thou, most sweet, with me to stand between? If visitor

there be, sleep here in confidence; thou shalt not be disturbed.”

A servant’s voice at the door announced that a stranger craved a word

with Madame. Madame answered that she would be down in a minute. The

invalid uttered a little tremulous cry.

“No, no, at once, in a second,” he urged in extremest agitation.

“Think if he were to anticipate you by mounting to this room! My God!

I have known him do it!”

“Him!” she exclaimed astonished. “Whom?”

“I have known people do it,” he responded in tremulous

irritation--“ill-mannered people. Why do you delay? Do you want to

drive me mad? If he comes in here, I will not answer for myself.”

Seeing him so wrought up, she felt it the wise policy to obey. With a

last word or two of assurance, she went quickly from the room and down

the stairs.

The old corridors, the old house, the old chinks piping-in the

draughts which swayed the old tapestries, the old dust which seemed to

crawl upon the floors, as if the swarming of their slow decay were for

ever being disturbed by ghostly footfalls--in all, this dark old

habitation, with its stony echoes, had never before seemed to her so

instinct with the spirit of a watchful secrecy. Wickedness hung

somewhere brooding in its vaulted silences. The air was thick with

omen.

She had to pause a moment to recover herself, before opening the door

of the room into which the visitor had been shown. But at last she

turned the handle, and entered--and there was Dr Bonito facing her.

CHAPTER II

She had seen something of this man before; had heard--to

loathe--more of him than she had seen. He was not one to be forgotten,

once encountered--least of all by gentle souls. Only her memory of him

could not somehow reconcile his past and present habits. A threadbare

pedant, dull-eyed and malefic; a godless truckler to the vicious,

prostituting his learning for a dog’s wages, abject while

starving--that was how knowledge and report had painted him to her.

Here, indeed, was the frame, but how reinvested! Snuff as of old,

seamed the wrinkles of the jaw; but now that wagged upon a lace

cravat. The hands were as skeleton and unclean; but rings sparkled on

their frowsy knuckles. The brown mouldy duds had given place to a

gold-laced coat and breeches of black velvet. There was something

evilly potential, something suggestive of chartered mischievousness in

the change, she thought: so instinctively do we estimate all human

authority by the quality of its cloth.

She curtsied, and stood up frigidly to await his explanation. This

sinister vision did nothing to allay the tumult of emotions which had

accompanied her from the bedroom. Her heart was foreboding she knew

not what; the chill of her manner hid a nameless fear. She could not

analyse its nature, nor trace it to its source in herself. She did not

know how, during all these months, it had really existed in her as a

germ, which had shrunk from its own quickening to some unspeakable

disclosure. Whispers, perhaps, half heard and put away; shadows in

conscience-troubled eyes, cast down on half-betrayals of their

secrets--to the faint record of such faint percussions on her soul,

maybe, was due that vague sense of uneasiness. And here, all in a

moment, the seed in her was stirring--swelling--touched into life by

what? and to what monstrous birth? Was this ominous presence

accountable for the change--this dark spirit, associated solely in her

mind with a dead and gone abomination? What spectre could he be, risen

from that grave to curse her later peace? What power in his hand, to

have struck her love with terror through that far recognition? For to

that recognition, she could not doubt, was due her husband’s state.

He did not keep her long in suspense. The old dreary wolf in him was

quick to sharp conclusions. His tooth was his special pleader, and he

showed it at the outset, without a thought of compromise.

He just essayed to make a responsive leg to her; but, even in the

clumsy act, grinned in derision of his own mockery, and flung his

hands behind his back, humping his shoulders bullyingly.

“You know me?” he snapped.

“I have seen you, Monsieur,” she answered.

“I was physician,” he said loudly, “to your late husband. That is

something to you. You owe me your present one. That is more to you.”

She held on to herself, bravely, a little longer.

“You asked to see me, Monsieur,” she said quietly. “I desire you will

state your business.”

“You or your husband,” he answered. “It is all one to me. Thank my

gallantry alone for this precedence. If you scorn it, send for _him_.”

She trembled, in spite of herself.

“Did he see me coming?” he continued. “I have reason to think so. He

is shy of greeting me, no doubt; though, to be sure, we are quite old

friends and confidants. It is not possible that you are his

confederate?”

He saw her, poor helpless quarry, look towards the door; and he

laughed out.

“Yes, summon assistance, if you want the truth blazoned. Many or

one--it will not change my purpose.”

Then, in her fear, she became the serpent. Her eyes glittered; her

lips parted in a conciliatory smile.

“Ah, monsieur!” she pleaded; “you rebuke me rightly for my cavalier

reception of a guest. But there are memories--associations--cannot you

understand it? that one would fain forget. Yet, if you were my

husband’s friend--?”

“And yours, and yours, mistress,” he broke in violently. “Don’t

overlook that. You owe one another to me--why should I conceal it? If

I had not blown into flame a little spirit of jealousy in the bosom of

a certain _chère amie_ of--but you know his name--our admirable dear

Prefect down yonder--”

She stopped him, flushing intolerably.

“Spare me that mention, at least, Monsieur. It is my humiliation ever

to have been associated, even indirectly, with that infamous man.”

He sniggered hatefully.

“Why, it is true, by all reports,” he croaked, “that he has not taken

salvation of his disappointment. Knowing him of old, as I do, that

miracle, if it had happened, had converted even me, I think.”

“Monsieur!” she entreated, half weeping--“I beg you--”

She checked herself; disciplined her anguish anew; held out fawning

hands to him.

“If you want thanks--recognition of that service--O, Monsieur! I am

prepared to give them, to make it, to the utmost of your desire.”

“Are you?” he said. “We shall see. Perhaps your gratitude may take

something less than full account of my claims on it. We shall see. For

there is a deadlier claim yet to come.”

Her tears, her innocence, her beauty, moved him no more than a poor

calf’s sobbings might move a butcher. Baiting made meat tender, in the

opinion of his day.

She drew back a little.

“A deadlier claim!” she said faintly.

He looked about him a moment, then approached her closely. His evil

eyes, his acrid tongue took instant command of her.

“Di Rocco was murdered,” he said.

She uttered a weak cry; caught at a chair to steady herself; stood

with closed eyes, and her head fallen back a little.

“Murdered,” he repeated--“only I, and one other, know by whom.”

“What other?”

She did not speak it; but the horror of the question took shape on her

lips.

“Your husband,” he said.

She never stirred nor cried out. In the crash of that agony her first

instinct was not to betray her love.

He let the thrust sink home, watching, with some diabolical curiosity,

the settling of the flesh, as it were, about that cruel wound.

Suddenly she moved, and came erect, hating him, his inhumanity.

“Base and wicked! you say it to torture me, because to torture is the

lust of devils. I will not listen to you. I will not even understand

what you imply. Go, before I have you scourged out of my house!”

He never moved an inch.

“Your house!” he sneered. “Well bought at the price; only you left me

out of your calculations--you and your confederate.”

She came at him then, this piety, with set teeth and clinched hands.

She was like a tigress in that instant. But he waved his arm

disdainfully, and she stopped.

“Are you not?” he said. “Then the other’s my sole quarry. I’ll make my

terms with him.”

“No, no!”

The cry broke from her instinctively; and, having uttered it, she knew

her own surrender. Pale and broken, poor lily, she drooped before him.

“Very well,” he said; “then with you. I care nothing for the deed; the

terms are my concern. I’ll not be diffident about them. I’ll justify

them, on your invitation, to the utmost of my desire. Your husband,

mistress, killed di Rocco.”

“O, my God!”

“Why, he had his provocation. The man meant lewdly, and he knew

it--knew of his intent, its method and occasion. Ask him, if you doubt

me. Ask him what he was doing that night, crouched hidden by the

glacier where the other was to cross. Ask him why he followed in di

Rocco’s tracks, down upon the ice and further. Ask him why he returned

alone, later, and slunk home in the storm and darkness, the brand of

that on his forehead which he’ll never rub out to the end of time. O,

believe me, I have a hundred eyes for things that touch my interests.

This did, and closely. He murdered di Rocco. Ask him, I say, if you

doubt me.”

Her ashy lips moved, but no sound came from them.

“Or ask him nothing,” the beast went on. “He did it for you; and maybe

you’ll think you owe him that silence. Let him live on in his fools’

paradise, taking beatitude of grace, winning his redemption, as he

views it. I’ll not interfere to damn him, so you gild my tongue from

speaking.”

“He did not do it.”

“Ask him.”

“What do you want of me?”

“Money. Do you understand? Money. Why, as it is, I’ve arrears to make

up. You’d have seen me before, if circumstances hadn’t interfered.”

“If I give you what you want, will you--will you take it in discharge

of--of this fantastic--of this debt you say I owe you--now and for

ever?”

He leered derisory, crooking his jaw to rub it back and forth with

deliberate fingers on which a dozen gems sparkled.

“Will I? This fantastic debt?” he said. “Do you think there is any end

to that, while _he_ lives? No, no, mistress. I commute no pension paid

to my silence. Why, I’ll be frank with you. I’m no common blackmailer

for a personal gain. My vileness, as you deem it, aims at a world’s

redemption. This Augean stable--filth of rotten governments--there’s

no way to cleanse it but by flood. Pour socialism through the stench.

But funds are needed to divert a river. You shall contribute--be great

by deputy. I’ll not be hard. I’ll spare you what I can, so you’ll be

amenable when I can’t.”

“You’ll come again?”

“Why, I understand you. Better risk all, you think, than face that

prospect. No need to. Send when I ask, what I ask, and forestall my

visitations. Money’s what I want--not lives. I’ll not kill my goose

with the golden eggs unless I’m driven. You can keep me away.”

“Tell me, now, how much you want,” she said, like one half lifeless.

* * * * * * * *

It was dusk when, lamp in hand, she stole up the stairs to their

bedroom. He was lying asleep, sunk in the reaction from emotion. But

the light on his face awoke him. He opened his eyes, drowsily, without

speculation at first; but in a moment wide apprehension sprung to

them. He half started up.

“Yolande!”

“Hush!” she said. “It was nothing--somebody who had come on business,

and is gone. Think no more about it. Husband--dear husband, have you

prayed to-night?”

He whispered a negative. She threw her arms about his neck.

“O, Louis, we have been happy during this year, have we not?”

He returned her caresses. But his hands were damp; his throat was

stiff; he could not answer. She released him feverishly.

“Get up and pray now,” she said. “We have forgotten God in our deep

content--forgotten, in our bodies’ loves, the blows and anguish which

His flesh suffered to redeem them.”

He rose, unquestioning, and knelt by the bedside. He prayed that she

might not know, that his suspicions might be unfounded, that the

burden of that knowledge might never be hers--not that he might find

strength to ask her if it were. He prayed and prayed, until the

chillness of the night air seized his frail body with a very ague of

shivering. Then she, kneeling beside him, was smitten with remorse,

and blamed her thoughtlessness, and got him into bed again with all

speed, and watched beside him till he was once more warm and restful.

Then, his comfort was so great, her beauty so pitiful, he held out

rapturous arms to her, and wooed her to his heart. Shrinking,

reluctant, she surrendered passively. Had he not wounded his soul to

save hers? How could she deny him the fruits of that wild sacrifice.

She was a murderer’s wife.

There was even a thrill of ecstasy in the delirium of that thought--a

spark of new life struck out of a dead delusion. He could answer to a

provocation, after all--for _her_!

But later, when he had fallen into a deep sleep, she rose softly from

beside him, and crept to her oratory, and, kneeling on the icy stones

before the statue of the Holy Virgin, broke into prayer, and a passion

of tears,--

“O, Mother! show me how to love, and yet be clean!”

CHAPTER III

On a flat open width of the Argentière road, a mile or so to the

north-east of Le Prieuré, a little company of astronomers was

gathered to gaze at the moon. They carried glasses and instruments;

there was not the least air of privacy about their proceedings; the

spot selected was open to all. There was an extension in the long tear

of the valley in this place, the increased interval between the

mountains being occupied by a humpish land strewn with boulders.

About eight o’clock of a September evening, this group of

enthusiasts--drinking in lunar obfuscation; its telescopes, like so

many glasses brimming with moonshine, tilted to its eyes--was joined

by a single individual, whose approach from Le Prieuré, it seemed,

had occurred unnoticed by it in its preoccupation. Nor did his arrival

affect it now, further than to its tacit acceptance of his company as

of that of a recognised kindred spirit.

The newcomer, taking a short tube from his pocket, applied the smaller

lens to his eye, and joined in the general scrutiny of that placid

orb, which floated over the mountain tops in a liquid mist. Gradually,

and scarce perceptibly as he gazed, the others edged about him, until

all were within a common focus of hearing. Then one, who appeared to

have some precedence of authority, opened his lips, but without

removing his instrument from his eye.

“The oracle, great Spartacus--hath it worked?”

“It is working, Ajax.”

“And Paris shall be deposed?”

“In time, in time. We move swifter to that end.”

“Swifter, swifter? But while we gather speed, he strikes like the

lightning.”

“Defy him. Art thou not Ajax?”

“Ajax defied the gods. He had a quicker way with mortals.”

“What words, what example are these from a Regent? Is not the dagger

alien to our policy? Hast qualified in the tables of our law to no

better end than this?”

“Forgive me, Spartacus. I spoke in heat. But this man, he harasses us;

drives us from point to point; forestalls our meetings with his

devil’s wit, and rides the country like a scourge.”

“A faithful Prefect.”

“An Alva sunk in vice.”

“He shall be deposed. I say it: Cassandra hath prophesied it: Priam

inclines our way. We’ll find a substitute anon more to our tastes. In

the meanwhile, the sinews, the sinews, Ajax--they gather in

strength--they--”

With the word he was gone--had dropped, slunk like a shadow behind a

roadside boulder. The others, inured to all quick evasions and

surprises, stood like voiceless statues, conning the moon. The next

moment, a little company of horsemen, the hoofs of their beasts

muffled, came picking their way out upon them from the black glooms of

the stone-strewn hillocks. They drew up in the road, their leader

foremost.

“A fine moon-raking night, gentlemen,” he said. “By my faith, a very

constellation of enthusiasts! What! is that you, M. Léotade? and

armed with nothing more defensive than a telescope? Why, my friend,

you can hardly realise the danger of these valleys. I’ll see you home,

with your permission.”

Laughing, urging, persuading, deaf to their explanations and protests,

he got them apart, and invited each to take the road to his separate

destination, while he made M. Léotade his own especial care. In a

minute or two the place was deserted. Only Bonito crouched,

undiscovered, behind his rock.

“Too good a servant to your master,” he muttered. “But the rod is

already in pickle for you, Mr Trix.”

CHAPTER IV

That rod, nevertheless, was not to come out of pickle for some six

years yet. And, in the meanwhile, Cartouche remained Prefect of

Faissigny. For one thing, King’s favourites are not easily deposed;

for another, the light seat in the saddle is the sure one. Cartouche

rode his duties springily, and appeared to take them with only a shade

more seriousness than he took himself.

During all this time he ruled his Province with agile, nervous young

hands, asking no favour and giving none. An easy subject for

defamation, the malignity of his enemies missed no opportunity of

distorting in the public view the most harmless motives of his

actions. He might, he thought, have cared, under impossibly different

circumstances. It mattered nothing to him now. He admired his own

character too little, was too little impressed with the

disinterestedness of most others, to resent aspersions on it. It would

give a certain lady great satisfaction, he was sure, to have her

opinion of him so confirmed. That was the only way left to him to

prove his regard for her. Truly, life for the future was to be an

upside-down affair--a test of wit, not principles.

He had no principles, he told himself; but only a commission--to

administer the law, in the first place; to root out disaffection, in

the second. He had a whimsical idea of confounding equity with

justice, and making an elegant Sancho Panza of himself. As to the

other task--that of combating the spirit of an age bent on immense

social displacements, on the reconstitution of States, on the

launching of democracy’s huge engine “down the ringing grooves of

change”--he accepted it as airily as if it were one involving just a

disputed question of etiquette.

It suggested a gallant picture--that of this slim rake (with death at

his heart all the time) facing the rising tide of revolution with not

so much as a Mrs Partington’s mop in his hand, but only a ribbon of

steel there, and a song of gay contempt on his lips. He had little

doubt but that the red waters were destined to submerge all Savoy in

the end, and beat their crests against the Alps. Well, though he were

but a coloured pebble in their path, he would delay them by that

microscopic measure. He owed it as much to his own constitution as to

the State’s.

In the meanwhile slander, nursed by deep policy, convicted him of the

seven deadly sins and more. Advoutry, barratry, crapulence,

debauchery--one might run down the alphabet of infamies, and leave the

tale incomplete. There is no need to. It would be unedifying, and, as

a fable, unnecessary.

Alas! that as such, it could even be held plausible in the district;

but experience in Savoy put no limit to the infinite rascalities of

Prefects appointed to represent a despotic government. As tyranny’s

proxies, district autocrats, they were potential as Roman Tetrarchs

for good or evil. They might honour their offices, and sometimes did;

but more often they abused them. The enforcement of conscription, of

the imposts, of the many heart-crushing taxes was all in their hands.

They controlled the _gendarmerie_, and could substitute a military for

a civil jurisdiction on slight provocation. They could hang, fine,

imprison, whip, brand, bleed, and grow rich on extortion if they

chose.

In Cartouche’s time, the Prefect of Faissigny, it was to be observed,

did not grow rich. He expended his shameful gains in riotous living,

said scandal. Such gangs of chained convicts, again it remarked, had

never yet been encountered on the public roads, wending their way to

Chambéry and the state prisons. Such a healthy moral condition, it

might have added, had never yet obtained in the Province. The majority

nevertheless thought him a strong Prefect, if privately a bad man. The

evidences for the former were unquestionable, and rather admirable;

for the latter, not even circumstantial--but they were admitted. It is

the human way to require convincing proof of a man’s virtues; but to

accept his wickedness on hearsay. There was a vile story--of the

Colonel Kirke order--which related of a father’s life sold to a child

at the price of her honour, and the contract repudiated after receipt.

The facts lay in the unconditional offer of herself to the young

autocrat by a bold-eyed jade, who had been smitten in Court by the

_beaux yeux_ of her parent’s judge, and of his answering by impounding

her for a time, while he despatched the old miscreant to his deserved

ending on the gallows.

The truth is that this fable, with others as odious, was no more than

a political expedient for procuring the Prefect’s downfall and

removal. Mr Trix had proved himself an annoyingly sharp thorn in the

side of Illuminatism, and that body was for ever wriggling and

twisting to get rid of him. It was, as a matter of fact, in a

particularly sensitive state during the first years of the young man’s

ascendency, owing to an unhappy determination on the part of the

Elector of Bavaria to put his heel on its head, which lay in his

dominions; the result being that that same head--Weishaupt, by name,

general and brain of the Society--had flicked itself away, none

exactly knew whither; leaving to the corporate rest of it the solution

of the problem as to how a body was to continue to answer, as a

compact international entity, to an unlocalisable brain.

That bitter stroke was, indeed, the beginning of the finish with

Illuminatism. The Society survived for some years longer; but more as

a local than a universal power. It retained for a time a certain

mystic influence on events, until in the end that influence, with many

another as inherently socialistic, was absorbed into the elemental

energy of the revolution.

A significant revelation, on the seizure of its papers in 1786, was

its _rôle_ of names. They included “princes, nobles, magistrates,

bishops, priests and professors”--men of a condition weighty enough to

carry them and their occult propaganda into the very heart of society;

to bring their suggestions to bear, even, upon some heads that wore

crowns.

There was one of those, pretty vain and silly, which did not fail, you

may be sure, to make itself a subject for their practices. It had

looked out of the windows of Piedmont on the tide rising down there in

Savoy, and, with all the first tentative assurance, and none of the

after humility of Canute, had commanded the waters peevishly to

retire. They had not: on the contrary they had come determinedly on,

until they threatened to find a way through the passes into Piedmont.

The King was disgustedly amazed. He heard of peasants refusing to pay

their lawful taxes; he heard of bread riots; he heard of a

dissemination of pernicious doctrines, such as those which spoke of

commonwealths, and the right of the many to exist other than by

sufferance of the few. Was this the way to realise his ideal of a

piping Arcadia? What were his provincial viceroys doing, so to let

corruption over-run his duchy?

Innuendo whispered to him of one of them, at least. His Prefect of

Faissigny, it murmured into his ear, was as responsible as any for the

subversive creed that justice, to be effective, must be impartial.

That gave him thought. He had made rather a pet of this man; although,

it was true, his plans for his aggrandisement had fallen something

short of their intention. Was he, this Cartouche, making his

disappointment the text for a popular dissertation on the fallibility

of Kings? He began to wonder if he had misplaced his confidence.

And the gay Prefect himself--the bright siderite of all this

conspiracy? Something conscious of the forces at work against him,

indifferent to results and for himself, he continued to administer his

office in the way most characteristic of him. He had no ideals nor

delusions. Equality to him, in a world nine-tenths asses, was a

vicious chimera. He was a magistrate of the crown, and he simply

sought to make that respectable in the popular view. The rights of

man, in his, were solely to be governed justly. Roguery, in whatever

form, must be suppressed. No man should be privileged to tyrannise. He

gave practical effect to the loose tenets of reformers, who, obsessed

with a personal vanity, could see nothing in them thus presented but a

hide-bound reactionism. Many people, it is certain, think less of

their own ideals than of the credit they may gain in pursuing them.

They are quite blind to them when achieved by others.

Mr Trix’s Prefecture in Le Prieuré was a very Court of Barataria. It

was flanked by a lofty stone tower, known as the Belfry, which had

once formed part of a long-vanished monastery of Benedictines, and was

now used as a lock-up, for those condemned to walk the long road to

Chambéry. The committed to it seldom had reason to question the

justice of their convictions, or to complain of consideration of

extenuating circumstances having been withheld. Cartouche, proclaimed

a libertine and martinet, had nevertheless a happy wit for justice. He

could tell a rascal under a silk frock.

So much for his public life. What surcease of private pain he sought

in its incessant action, in that airy yet vigorous administration of

his office, might not appear. He was always reckless for himself, for

his reputation. He walked like one gaily damned, conscious of his own

bond to the devil. What did it matter what _she_ thought of him now?

What did anything matter in a world where man was held responsible for

the resolving of irresolvable ethical problems. He supposed, and

rightly, that she felt his mere presence in her neighbourhood to be an

insult to herself. What if she were to be told the truth? It could

never cleanse her of an indelible stain: it could never restore her to

him for what she had been. Sometimes he told himself now that he hated

her--that the proof of it was in his indifference to such reports of

himself as might reach her ears. Was that a proof? He took pleasure,

on her behoof, in refraining from forcing his slanderers to disgorge

their lies. Did not she want him wicked? Every nail knocked into his

character was a fresh vindication to her of her self-sacrificial love

for another.

And there was a worse true story of him, after all, than any his

enemies could invent. It was part of the irresolvable problem; but he

believed she would answer it, if she knew, with a more utter

condemnation of him than any he had yet suffered at her hands. That he

had cast the girl away, because her disobedience to him had wrought an

irremediable wrong to another, herself--would that appeal to her, even

if in the hot blaze of the truth, for righteousness? She would answer,

he knew, that he himself was the one solely responsible for the

situation which his double-dealing with the woman most entitled to his

candour had created. What justification had she herself ever given him

for submitting her to the chance assaults of jealousy? If he had been

honest with the wretched child, this climax had never reached its

period. And, instead, he had made her the scapegoat of his own deceit.

He had. And yet, if he had not, if he had confessed the passion of his

soul to her the victim of the passion of his body, how would that have

bettered things for the victim? Would she, made vestal to that altar

of his idol, have thought herself well compensated for her jilting? He

mocked now at the absurdity of his old conception--Cartouche’s was it?

or some sick neurotic monk’s? High-priest, he? What a figure of

elegance, in urim and thummim and with a thing like a flower-pot on

his head! He laughed tears of blood, recalling the ecstatic vision.

Better to be accursed than ridiculous. Better Louis-Marie should have

her, than she be made the sport of such a mummery. He did not blame

his friend, week-knee’d robber as he was. He rather admired him, for

his unexpected part. Would not he himself have dared all hell to win

the passion of those lips--O, God! the passion! Would he not? had he

not? He had at least bargained with the devil for her, and had

prevailed just so far as that it was made his privilege at last to

serve for deep contrastive shadow to that idyll of their loves.

For shadow: and for shadow within shadow? For all this time he knew he

was a haunted man. That spirit of lost love betrayed--poor Molly! The

blackest gloom in him was due to it. Not the way, he thought

defiantly, to light him back to love. He wearied of its eternal

presence; yet he could not shake it off. It leaned out to him from the

dusk of mountain passes; it flitted before him through the sorrow of

infinite woods; it cried to him for help from the hearts of squalid

tenements, where villainous deeds were enacting. He had done that

thing. It was past remedy--not past clinching his damnation. Why not

then rest on that assurance, and cease to agitate both herself and

him? Yet, step warily as he might, he could never escape her--that

desolate phantom. Crossing beds of gentian, he would tread upon her

eyes; the little freshets which he spurned from their wreathings about

his feet, were her white arms; the low wind in the pines became her

low English voice. Always faithful, weeping, appealing--never

rebuking. God! was not this insatiable hunger in him enough anguish,

without the eternal memory of that fruit, which he had plucked in his

wanton appetite, and thrown away, just tasted, for the shadow of a

sweeter! Not enough, not enough? Then to her hands be it after death

to heap the coals upon his breast! He owned their right; would submit

to them, and face the eternal ordeal. Only let them refrain now! Was

he so prosperous, so happy, as to invite their vengeance prematurely?

Torture too exquisite, it was said, became a transport. Did they want

to qualify him for that balm in hell?

He execrated the shadow in his thoughts--its endless, voiceless

weeping. He told it that he hated it. Let it take solace of his hate,

as he of another’s. He meant it. Yolande hated him, and that she did

was a wrung rapture to him at this last. By so much he had a place in

her passions, where any other was impossible. He would never imperil

it by controverting his slanderers. Let her think of him as wickedness

incarnate, if only she would think of him.

Thus was the last state of this love’s agony; while he laughed,

bleeding inwardly, and met his traducers on a hundred points of wit.

He had thought, now and then in his prostrate moments, that if he

could only once trace home the shadow, he might find it to be, after

all, no better than a black-mailing ghost. Supposing good fortune had

attended her dismissal? It might; and he have saddled his conscience

with a self-invoked incubus. Why not set himself to discover?

He dared not--that was the truth. He was a coward there; he feared the

answer. Better even the shadow, than the revelations possible of the

thing that cast it. He dared not.

For this reason, and others, he avoided Turin in these days. He was in

the city only at rare intervals of time, when officialdom compelled

him. Once or twice on these occasions he happened across the Chevalier

de France; heard him rail to others of the ingratitude of children.

The man had never forgiven his daughter her _mésalliance_; but,

nevertheless, in repudiating her, in refusing to visit her, he was

only, had the truth been known, making a virtue of necessity. Madame’s

self-emancipation had taken strict account of his share in the events

which had made it peremptory. He had to answer for it, to a daughter

strangely converted to new conceptions of duty; strangely altered in

many ways. She made him a princely allowance--which he spent _en

prince_; she would accept him at di Rocco only on her own terms, and

to those he refused to subscribe. He would not submit to the part of a

mere honoured dependant on her bounty, franked by her husband’s grace.

She denied him any closer rights. Therefore he kept away--it was best

for both of them--and maintained his individual state in the Via della

Zecca, sneering to intimates of the niggardliness which any promotion

to affluence was sure to find out in women, posing as an injured

father, enjoying his independence arrogantly in his dull selfish way.

Cartouche longed to insult him--could, indeed, have found plentiful

opportunity to do so, had not the fact of his being _her_ father

withheld him. The Chevalier, on the few occasions when they met,

always scowled at him askance, as if to imply how he knew very well

that to this bastard, this _faux enfant_, this royal favourite

disappointed of his daughter, was to be attributed his own disfavour

with the King. But he was let live, for the sake of her whom he

traduced.

* * * * * * * *

And so the gay Prefect, with that death always at his heart, and the

tongue in his mouth a sword to wound, stood up against the rising

tide, fearless before its roar and babble. He was well served by his

police--admiring thralls to his courage, his quick wit, his retentive

memory. In these days there was not much of secret information,

touching the moral health of his Province, which did not reach his

ears. Thus, he early learned of Bonito’s visit to the Château, and to

draw some odd conclusions from its sequel. Their fruit will appear in

the course of things. In the meanwhile, it was observed by him that

some curious retrenchments reported up at the great house dated from

that visit, and were seemingly coincident with a look, as it were also

of retrenchment, in Madame Saint-Péray’s beautiful face. It had to

happen occasionally that he encountered the Lady of the Manor in the

exercise of his duties; and, inasmuch as she always disdained at such

times to acknowledge, or even to see him, he had ample opportunity for

studying her expression. That was beginning to shape itself, he could

not but think, on the lines of some gripping inward reserve. It were

too much to say that it betrayed any confirmation of the Chevalier’s

coward accusation; but certainly it looked pinched and drawn, as if

the sweet sap in it were somehow souring from its freshness. He

wondered.

He wondered still when whispers reached him how Maire and priests,

confident almoners of her bounty, were softly complaining of an

inexplicable parsimony in a hand once lavish to munificence in

charity. His wonder increased to hear the charge substantiated by her

husband.

He had never avoided Louis-Marie; nor had ever put himself in his way.

He had held his deed justified, and had told him so. For the rest, he

was no precisian in matters of conscience; and if Saint-Péray could

reconcile his marriage with his (as, by his growing air of

resignation, not to say, of self-complacency, he appeared to be able

to do), he had no mind to deny him his lovely provocation. He had

never referred to the subject on their meetings--which were rare,

because Louis was a dutiful husband. But once, to his surprise, his

friend opened upon it voluntarily.

They had chanced upon one another on the road, when each was

unattended. Something of an ancient warmth spoke in Louis’s greeting.

“Gaston,” he said: “we see so little of one another now. Is it because

you blame me?”

“_Si on est bien, qu’on s’y tienne_,” said the other chauntingly. “Why

allude to it?”

“Because I cannot bear to think I have lost your respect. Gaston, I

must always hold that of more worth than--than some others do.”

Cartouche smiled.

“You are looking very well under the infliction, Louis. That is the

moral of your loss.”

The young man broke out eagerly,--

“She was losing her faith in God: only I could restore it. I have

always so longed to tell you. You know it was not the money! The first

condition of our union was that it should be given all away--that

curse turned to a blessing. I have never touched a penny of it--have

never claimed the right to; only as her almoner. And now! O, if that

dead man’s hand should still be on it, buying her soul to his in

vengeance!”

“What do you mean?”

“I think I must always have someone to hold to, Gaston. You were so

strong. I don’t know what I mean. Only now, when I ask her, for my own

charities--often--Gaston, she says she has none to spare--no

money--she!”

“She is a better business-man than you, that’s all. It doesn’t

surprise me.”

“Perhaps. God bless you, Gaston!”

“Certainly, if He will. But I haven’t many dealings with Him. _Bonne

chance_, old friend!”

Cartouche set his private agents to work; but the information he

sought was long in coming to him. And in the meanwhile the tide rose

up and up, under an ever more lowering sky, and the snarl of coming

tempest shook the black waters. But, slow as the years drawled on for

those up at the Château, to Cartouche they racketed past like a Dance

of Death.

CHAPTER V

At the lower end of the Via del Po, where it debouched upon the

river, stood, nicked out of the north side of the street, a little

Square of houses known as the Court of Doctors. The buildings in this

Square--for the most part unoccupied--were very high, very narrow,

very crazy, and so few in number that no more than two or three of

them counted to any one of its three sides, the fourth lying open to

the stream of fashionable traffic which flowed by it all day.

Quidnuncs had always been a power in Turin; whence this one-time

appropriation of a niche to their worship. The Court of Doctors, in

its present aspect, was said to date from the Regency of Madame

Reale--daughter to the fourth Henry of France, and wife to the first

Victor-Amadeus of Savoy--to whose politic superstition it had been

indebted for a sort of unofficial charter. For what destinies

foreshadowed, for what poisons brewed, for what villainies set

bubbling in crucible and alembic within its precincts its past history

was responsible, only its own dark heart might know. To this day the

atmosphere of that sunless well of brick seemed brassy with chemicals;

its doorways emitted a faint stale scent of drugs; an air of stagnant

mystery overhung its pavements. But it was mystery grown unnegotiable.

The moon of its prosperity had set; black decay hung brooding on its

roofs; the ministers to its former notoriety were flown. Not that

empirics were fewer than of yore in Turin, nor less potent in their

persuasions. But traps for credulity, like traps for mice, miss of

their efficacy after a few score, or a few hundred captures; and the

bait must be laid down in some other place and form.

There was one building in the Square, however, which of late years had

been infinitely successful in reclaiming to itself a full measure of

its own past fame, or infamy. This house stood, on the north-east

side, one of three compact whose rears were to the river, from whose

swift waters only a rotting wharf, sinking in sludge and slime,

divided them. In front, panels of starry devices--suns and golden

orbs, reeling in strange elliptics on an azure field--betokened the

particular business of the house’s master, while they gave the

building itself a meretricious distinction over its frowsy neighbours.

This was, in fact, the mystic abode of Spartacus, the famous seer--to

whose _séances_ all Turin was thrall in these days--and of his lovely

Sibyl Cassandra. They did a roaring business between them there--if

any such term may be applied to methods quite cavernous in their

secrecy.

Thus, anyone seeking converse with the soothsayer, must commit his

destinies to darkness from the outset. He approached the black

Egyptian door, and, after a pause to rally his sinking heart, knocked

thereon. No sound of footstep answered him from within; but all in a

moment the door itself gaped an inky mouth, engulfed him, and closed

again noiseless on his entombment. He strained his eyes through

pitch--in vain. Not one tiniest theft from darkness could they

compass. Suddenly a label sprang to light on a wall--“_Ascend_.” He

saw a stairfoot; stumbled upwards between bat-wing hangings; the light

shut behind him. At the turn of the stair another glowed out

suddenly--“_Ascend_”--directed him on and vanished. A third time this

occurred, committing him to a short passage, along which he slunk,

until, lo! “_Greeting!_” flashed out an instant before his eyes, was

as instantly extinguished, and, halted with strained breath and

prickling skin in a close vault of night, he realised that he had

gained to the inner Arcanum--the unholy of unholies.

That was a lofty attic room, panelled all round its walls (to confess

its properties) with tall mirrors hidden behind black curtains; but

those were so controlled, that all or any one of them, answering to a

noiseless drop and pulley worked from without, could be made to gather

softly away, revealing, unrecognised by the fearful visitor, the

lustreless glass behind. One curtain, however, concealed a mid-wall

alcove, a cimmerian cavity in which stood a tripod of cunning

construction. For under its chafing-dish burned perpetually a

concealed lamp, which kept the metal above it at a heat sufficient, at

need, to ignite spirit cast upon it, or even gums and aromatic resins,

the effect being as of a very immaculate conception of fire. But the

dim blue flame thus evoked was of a luminosity just enough to reveal

to the terrified observer the pale shadows of misbegotten horrors

about him--his own reflection, if he had but known it, in such

uncurtained mirrors as were not exposed to the direct rays of the

burning naptha; but, so it seemed to him, a film had been withdrawn,

in the silent rising of the draperies, from his own mental vision.

Crystal globes there were, moreover; strings of phosphorescent balls,

which could be made to travel hither and thither on invisible wires;

webs of luminous thread; entanglements of all sorts at command, the

wizard himself, like a livid spider, poised in their midst. But, even

so, great Spartacus despite, his skill and compelling magic, it is

doubtful if, with all, the abode of mystery had won for itself any

exceptional notoriety, had it not been for its loveliest mystery of

all--that Hebe, who called herself Cassandra, and dropped flowers of

prophecy from sweet lips, offering, it might be, asps in roses. She it

was that, like a caged nymph butterfly, brought the males to beat

their wings upon her crystal prison, scattering about it an incense of

golden meal.

One dark evening, in the Spring of 1790, two gentlemen, coming rapidly

down the Via del Po, turned into the Court of Doctors and stopped

before the Wizard’s door. They wore masks and dominoes. They were both

small men, one lean and the other plump. The plump man was by many

years the junior of the lean one. He was also by several social

degrees his inferior, being no more, indeed, than our friend Caius

Sempronius Gracchus (_alias_ the Vicomte di Mirobole) house-steward to

his Majesty; while the other was his Majesty himself, no less.

“Is this the place, then?” muttered Victor-Amadeus, drawing a step

back. He looked pinched and harried, like some little _petit-maître_

of a Frankenstein pursued by a monster of his own creating. “My heart

beats, Mirobole,” he said. “I think I fear the test.”

M. Mirobole clasped his fat hands and opened remonstrant eyes.

“Ah, sire!” he said. “Condescend to deem one truth better than a

multitude of conjectures. These hundred shadows on your heart! What if

he show you how one tree may cast them all--branches of a single hate,

which, if severed at its root, the sunshine shall be yours again

without a fleck!”

“You have certainly a reassuring confidence in your Magician,

Viscount,” said the King with a smile. Then he sighed. “Well, I have

only to reveal myself if he presumes too far. Lead on, my friend.”

M. Mirobole knocked instantly, and softly, on the tomb-like door. It

answered with a startling unaccustomed promptitude to his summons; but

his Majesty, never having visited here before, was without suspicion

of any collusion implied in that show of eagerness to secure him.

Forcing himself to resolution and treading on the heels of his

companion, he stepped within the black jaws, which snapped immediately

on their prey.

Almost simultaneously the tablet on the wall shone out. Craving his

royal charge’s close attendance, the Viscount led the way upstairs. He

was familiar with the mysteries of the place; though, to be sure,

there was no mystery in it all to be compared with that of his own

blind faith in the charlatan its master. Presently the two were

committed, scarce breathing, to the dark “operating” room.

“I do not like it,” whispered the King suddenly.

There was certainly nothing very likeable in that profound gloom. It

was so dense, so gross, as to appear palpable to him; sooty cobwebs

seemed to stroke his face; he swept his hand over it disgustedly.

“Understand,” he muttered, in angry agitation, “that you are my

mouthpiece; that I will not be betrayed; that--Ah!”--he gave a little

jerk and shriek--“something touched me!”

On the instant, light glowed out in the room--or rather diluted

darkness than light--and in the same moment an apparition showed

itself.

Bonito, in black skull-cap and black skin-tights, his unearthly face

and long white hands showing in the gloom like detached members, made

a sufficiently ghastly spectacle. Even the little Vicomte, accustomed

initiate, could never surmount a certain terror of him under such

circumstances. And the present ones found him exceptionally nervous.

“Hail, Spartacus!” he whispered, his voice fluttering like a leaf.

“Thou seest before thee a petitioner.”

“For what?”

The soothsayer’s face seemed to hang, a livid intent blot, in the

darkness, its lips alone alive.

“For the truth.”

“Canst thou not, then, conceive it save out of Magic? The truth walks

in the sun.”

“Nay, but if the sun’s eclipsed? We come to thee to light a candle to

the truth obscured.”

“_We_, sayst thou?”

“I speak for him beside me here.”

“What is his name?”

“Why, were not to withhold it to honour best your skill? Shall

Spartacus show no better than the Egyptian’s guile, fitting his

prescience to his subject once identified. Name him, quotha! What

need? Wiser is Spartacus.”

“Yet not so wise, it seems, as M. Mirobole.”

The King started violently.

“Knowest thou me, too, Magician?” he muttered.

“Ay, Monarch,” answered the pale lips; “and thy purpose in seeking

me.”

“Sancta Maria! Tell me, then, what is that.”

“For light on an ancient prophecy.”

“It is true. God in heaven! What prophecy?”

“It occurs in the Almanac for 1700 by Duret de Montbrison; wherein it

is stated that in the year 1792 the Monarchy of Sardinia shall suffer

an eclipse.”

The King was trembling violently. He regarded the soothsayer by now

with a fearful reverence.

“Tell me, Magician,” he said. “The courses of the heavens are, I know,

inexorable. Yet may not the results of their forecastings, where

directed upon perishable things, be nullified, if those objects be

withdrawn? The shadow of its ages ceases from the felled tree. May it

not be so?”

“It may be, King.”

“Fatality creeps on me. The land is thick with threatening voices. I

am like one in the dark, hearing whispers all about me--not knowing

where to strike and where to withhold. If I could but tell the

shadow--where it lies--and uproot the tree! Whence threatens this

eclipse? Show me the place, if thou lovest rich reward.”

The Wizard, looking upward, raised both his white hands. There floated

into the dark above him luminous twin spheres attached, like a

two-fold bubble.

“Seest thou those?” he said. “The one is Piedmont, the other is Savoy.

So are the hemispheres of the human brain--of which one is dedicate to

the fiend, and one to God. Between them is that eternal strife for

precedence which we call man’s dual personality. But in the

encroachments of either upon either, who is to distinguish between the

sources of good and evil. This tree may stand in Piedmont or Savoy.

Answer for which, Cassandra!”

With the word, she was there before them. The curtain over the alcove

had silently risen and revealed her. The flame in the tripod, going up

like a blue draught, shot her tawny drapery with streaks of emerald.

A broad cincture, heavy with large green stones, was looped about her

hips. Her bare arms and bosom rounded into soft violet shadows. Amid

the chestnut loopings of her hair a coil of little jewelled serpents

shone entangled. She was lovely in her face--life blooming out of

death--her lips incarnadined with lust of sorrow--large eyes of tragic

blue. The King looked on her, fascinated.

“Priestess,” said the Wizard, in a hollow voice: “answer, if of thine

inspiration thou mayest, whence threatens the shadow of this Kingdom’s

foretold eclipse?”

As he spoke, there came out of the darkness a string of little stars,

of softest radiance and many colours, which took noiseless flight

about the Sibyl’s head, and circled there in wondrous convolutions,

faster and faster, until they seemed to whirl like lashing snakes.

Then, in a moment, one of a red tint poised itself above her brow, and

the rest fled away and were extinguished.

His Majesty, flaccid with awe, was by now in a condition to believe

anything. And the priestess answered--in that old soft English voice.

Poor Molly’s broken “Frenchings” had by now mended themselves

wonderfully; but no call to shriller accents could spoil the quality

of the throat which uttered them.

“I see a figure down in Faissigny,” she cried--“the figure of a man.

It standeth in the sun like other men, and like other men doth cast

its shadow. But, lo! the shadow of this man swells outward from his

feet, onward and ever onward, until it engulfs the whole Province,

laying it under tribute to his darkness.”

“The Prefect!” muttered the King. He saw his confirmation here of some

black suspicions.

“Ask her,” he said, trembling, to the Wizard; “is the figure that of

mine own Prefect of Faissigny?”

“Thou hearest, Cassandra?” said Bonito.

“Ay,” she answered; “it is the man!”

The King uttered an ejaculation, and lifted deploring hands.

“What motive in this monstrous thing?”

“The motive,” said the Sibyl, “of resentment, for a reward once

promised and withheld; the motive of man’s ambition, which is

ruthless; the motive of one whose nature it is to betray all trusts

confided in him.”

She really believed, poor girl, on the misrepresentations of _her_

employer, that Cartouche was conspiring to overthrow _his_.

The King smote his thigh.

“He shall die,” he cried.

Bonito saw, though he did not, how Cassandra started at the word.

“Nay,” he said hurriedly; “the Fates are not to be propitiated with

blood. Uproot the tree--not fell it.”

“But the shadow, Magician,” said the King peevishly--“how it hath

spread already, sowing the ground with insurrection!”

“That crop would but grow lusty with his blood. Nay, I know not but

that only to uproot him might not precipitate the eclipse.”

“My God! You falsify the parable.”

“The parable was thine own, King.”

“What am I to do?”

He was jerking and mowing in a fever of petulance.

The Wizard turned to his priestess.

“Shall nothing, then, arrest this darkness, stunt its growth, and

nullify the prophecy?”

“One thing--one man alone,” she answered impassive. Indeed she was

only repeating a lesson.

“What thing?” he said.

“To plant another instant in his place, while yet the ground gapes

wide from his uprooting.”

“What other?”

She held her hands palm downwards over the chafing-dish. Instantly a

lurid smoke rose from it, and in the midst appeared upright letters of

fire, which spelt the name Léotade. She raised her hands, and the

letters sunk and disappeared (in one piece).

The King muttered the name, evidently at a loss. But the Pythoness,

with tranced eyes fixed upon some imaginary figure before her,

pointed, her shoulder level with her chin, and spoke its

qualifications,--

“I read a healing sweetness there, as of a pine tree taken from some

harsh plantation, and put to root within its native soil. The man is

of that Province, strong and honoured--no stranger from beyond its

bourne, like him that hath planted its pastures with dark hate and

shadow, looking to reap the storm. O, name! in thy bright influence I

see the clouds dispersing, the darkness leave the land, the eclipse

become no more. Pass on in silence!”

The final words seemed as if addressed to some ghostly scene-shifter.

She had vanished in their utterance, and the chamber was recommitted

to its shadowy glooms.

Shaking with agitation, the King turned upon the Magician.

“Let this Léotade, this sound health-giving tree, supplant the other.

I say it, and will see it done. I know him not--what matter! Truth

shall be vindicated.”

Bonito laughed grimly.

“Not so easily, O, King! are the powers of darkness despoiled. This

Prefect will not budge at thy command.”

“He will not?”

“Why, of what texture, think you, is this same shadow that spreads

from before his feet--this shadow of thine eclipse? Is it not woven of

black sedition, which ever answers slavishly to him its master,

obedient to his least gesture? He’d have a fine dark following, did he

once turn him to the sun of monarchy, and march to overwhelm it. Why

should he budge? And yet maybe I could induce him.”

“How? Your words fall on me like a pitchy rain, heralding that

Egyptian darkness. Before God, how?”

“I’d put a spell on him, a loathing of his office. I care not. Go

thine own ways, for me.”

“Nay, good Spartacus, wise Spartacus--thou must help me here indeed.”