The weather had changed while we were at supper, and the rain was
beginning to fall violently. I was about to ask for an umbrella when a
sudden reflection detained me. “I should be a great fool,” I said to
myself, “to take any trouble to verify what an intoxicated man tells
me! Perhaps, too, he is trying to play some wretched joke on me, in
order to give these worthy provincials something to laugh at; and the
least that can happen to me is to be drenched to the skin and to catch
a heavy cold.”
I glanced from the door at the statue, which was dripping wet, and
then went up to my room without returning to the salon. I went to bed,
but sleep was a long while coming. All the scenes of the day passed
through my mind. I thought of that lovely, pure maiden delivered to the
tender mercies of a brutal sot. “What a hateful thing a _mariage de
convenance_ is!” I said to myself. “A mayor dons a tri-coloured scarf,
a curé a stole, and lo! the most virtuous girl imaginable is abandoned
to the Minotaur! Two persons who do not love each other--what can they
have to say at such a moment, which two true lovers would purchase at
the cost of their lives? Can a woman ever love a man whom she has once
seen make a beast of himself? First impressions are not easily effaced,
and I am sure that this Monsieur Alphonse well deserves to be detested.”
During my monologue, which I have abridged very materially, I had heard
much coming and going about the house, doors opening and closing,
carriages driving away; then I fancied that I heard in the hall the
light footsteps of several women walking toward the farther end of
the corridor opposite my room. It was probably the procession of the
bride, who was being escorted to her bedroom. Then I heard the steps go
downstairs again. Madame de Peyrehorade’s door closed.
“How perturbed and ill at ease that poor child must be,” I thought.
I turned and twisted in my bed, in an execrable humour. A bachelor
plays an absurd rôle in a house where a marriage is being celebrated.
Silence had reigned for some time, when it was broken by heavy steps
ascending the staircase. The wooden stairs creaked loudly.
“What a brute!” I cried. “I’ll wager that he will fall on the stairs!”
Everything became quiet once more. I took up a book in order to change
the current of my thoughts. It was a volume of departmental statistics,
embellished by an article from the pen of M. de Peyrehorade on the
druidical remains in the arrondissement of Prades. I dozed at the third
page.
I slept badly and woke several times. It might have been five o’clock,
and I had been awake more than twenty minutes, when a cock crew. Day
was just breaking. Suddenly I heard the same heavy steps, the same
creaking of the stairs that I had heard before I fell asleep. That
struck me as peculiar. I tried, yawning sleepily, to divine why M.
Alphonse should rise so early. I could imagine no probable cause. I was
about to close my eyes again when my attention was once more attracted
by a strange tramping, to which was soon added the jangling of bells
and the noise of doors violently thrown open; then I distinguished
confused outcries.
“My drunkard must have set fire to something!” I thought, as I leaped
out of bed.
I dressed in hot haste and went out into the corridor. From the farther
end came shrieks and lamentations, and one heartrending voice rose
above all the rest: “My son! my son!” It was evident that something
had happened to M. Alphonse. I ran to the bridal chamber; it was full
of people. The first object that caught my eye was the young man, half
dressed, lying across the bed, the framework of which was broken.
He was livid and absolutely motionless. His mother was weeping and
shrieking by his side. M. de Peyrehorade was bustling about, rubbing
his temples with eau de cologne, or holding salts to his nose. Alas!
his son had been dead a long while.
On a couch, at the other end of the room, was the bride, in frightful
convulsions. She was uttering incoherent cries, and two strong
maidservants had all the difficulty in the world in holding her.
“Great God!” I cried, “what has happened?”
I walked to the bed and raised the unfortunate young man’s body; it was
already cold and stiff. His clenched teeth and livid face expressed
the most horrible anguish. It seemed perfectly evident that his death
had been a violent one, and the death agony indescribably terrible.
But there was no sign of blood on his clothes. I opened his shirt and
found on his breast a purple mark which extended around the loins and
across the back. One would have said that he had been squeezed by an
iron ring. My foot came in contact with something hard on the carpet; I
stooped and saw the diamond ring.
I dragged M. de Peyrehorade and his wife to their room; then I caused
the bride to be taken thither.
“You still have a daughter,” I said to them; “you owe to her your
devoted care.”
Then I left them alone.
It seemed to me to be beyond question that M. Alphonse had been the
victim of a murder, the authors of which had found a way to introduce
themselves into the bride’s bedroom at night. The marks on the breast
and their circular character puzzled me a good deal, however, for a
club or an iron bar could not have produced them. Suddenly I remembered
having heard that in Valencia the _bravi_ used long leather bags
filled with fine sand to murder people whom they were hired to kill.
I instantly recalled the Aragonese muleteer and his threat; and yet I
hardly dared think that he would have wreaked such a terrible vengeance
for a trivial jest.
I walked about the house, looking everywhere for traces of a break,
and finding nothing. I went down into the garden, to see whether the
assassins might have forced their way in on that side of the house;
but I found no definite indications. Indeed, the rain of the preceding
night had so saturated the ground that it could not have retained any
distinct impression. I observed, however, several very deep footprints;
they pointed in two opposite directions, but in the same line, leading
from the corner of the hedge next the tennis-court to the gateway of
the house. They might well be M. Alphonse’s steps when he went out to
take his ring from the finger of the statue. On the other hand, the
hedge was less dense at that point than elsewhere, and the murderers
might have passed through it there. As I went back and forth in front
of the statue, I paused a moment to look at it. That time, I will
confess, I was unable to contemplate without terror its expression
of devilish irony; and, with my head full of the horrible scenes I
had witnessed, I fancied that I had before me an infernal divinity,
exulting over the disaster that had stricken that house.
I returned to my room and remained there till noon. Then I went out and
inquired concerning my hosts. They were a little calmer. Mademoiselle
de Puygarrig--I should say M. Alphonse’s widow--had recovered her
senses. She had even talked with the king’s attorney from Perpignan,
then on circuit at Ille, and that magistrate had taken her deposition.
He desired mine also. I told him what I knew and made no secret of my
suspicions of the Aragonese muleteer. He ordered that he should be
arrested immediately.
“Did you learn anything from Madame Alphonse?” I asked the king’s
attorney, when my deposition was written out and signed.
“That unfortunate young woman has gone mad,” he replied, with a sad
smile. “Mad! absolutely mad! This is what she told me:
“She had been in bed, she said, a few minutes, with the curtains drawn,
when her bedroom door opened and some one came in. At that time Madame
Alphonse was on the inside of the bed, with her face towards the wall.
Supposing, of course, that it was her husband, she did not move. A
moment later, the bed creaked as if under an enormous weight. She was
terribly frightened, but dared not turn her head. Five minutes, ten
minutes perhaps,--she can only guess at the time--passed in this way.
Then she made an involuntary movement, or else the other person in the
bed made one, and she felt the touch of something as cold as ice--that
was her expression. She moved closer to the wall, trembling in every
limb. Shortly after, the door opened a second time, and some one came
in, who said: ‘Good-evening, my little wife.’ Soon the curtains were
drawn aside. She heard a stifled cry. The person who was in the bed by
her side sat up and seemed to put out its arms. Thereupon she turned
her head, and saw, so she declares, her husband on his knees beside the
bed, with his head on a level with the pillow, clasped in the arms of a
sort of greenish giant, who was squeezing him with terrible force. She
says--and she repeated it twenty times, poor woman!--she says that she
recognised--can you guess whom?--the bronze Venus, M. de Peyrehorade’s
statue. Since she was unearthed, the whole neighbourhood dreams of her.
But I continue the story of that unhappy mad woman. At that sight she
lost consciousness, and it is probable that she had lost her reason
some moments before. She could give me no idea at all how long she
remained in her swoon. Recovering her senses, she saw the phantom, or,
as she still insists, the statue, motionless, with its legs and the
lower part of the body in the bed, the bust and arms stretched out, and
in its arms her husband, also motionless. A cock crew. Thereupon the
statue got out of bed, dropped the dead body, and left the room. Madame
Alphonse rushed for the bell-cord, and you know the rest.”
The Spaniard was arrested; he was calm, and defended himself with much
self-possession and presence of mind. He did not deny making the remark
I had overheard; but he explained it by saying that he had meant
simply this: that, on the following day, having rested meanwhile, he
would beat his victorious rival at tennis. I remember that he added:
“An Aragonese, when he is insulted, doesn’t wait until the next day for
his revenge. If I had thought that Monsieur Alphonse intended to insult
me, I would have driven my knife into his belly on the spot.”
His shoes were compared with the footprints in the garden, and were
found to be much larger.
Lastly, the innkeeper at whose house he was staying deposed that he had
passed the whole night rubbing and doctoring one of his mules, which
was sick. Furthermore, the Aragonese was a man of excellent reputation,
well known in the province, where he came every year in the course of
his business. So he was released with apologies.
I have forgotten the deposition of a servant, who was the last person
to see M. Alphonse alive. It was just as he was going up to his wife;
he called the man and asked him with evident anxiety if he knew where I
was. The servant replied that he had not seen me. Thereupon M. Alphonse
sighed and stood more than a minute without speaking; then he said:
“_Well! the devil must have taken him away, too!_”
I asked him if M. Alphonse had his diamond ring on his finger when he
spoke to him. The servant hesitated before he replied; at last he said
that he did not think so, but that he had not noticed particularly.
“If he had had that ring on his finger,” he added upon reflection, “I
should certainly have noticed it, for I thought that he had given it to
Madame Alphonse.”
As I questioned this man, I was conscious of a touch of the
superstitious terror with which Madame Alphonse’s deposition had
infected the whole household. The king’s attorney glanced at me with a
smile, and I did not persist.
Some hours after M. Alphonse’s funeral, I prepared to leave Ille. M.
de Peyrehorade’s carriage was to take me to Perpignan. Despite his
enfeebled condition, the poor old man insisted upon attending me to his
garden gate. We passed through the garden in silence; he, hardly able
to drag himself alone, leaning on my arm. As we were about to part,
I cast a last glance at the Venus. I foresaw that my host, although
he did not share the terror and detestation which she inspired in a
portion of his family, would be glad to be rid of an object which would
constantly remind him of a shocking calamity. It was my purpose to urge
him to place it in some museum. I hesitated about opening the subject,
when M. de Peyrehorade mechanically turned his head in the direction in
which he saw that I was gazing earnestly. His eye fell upon the statue,
and he instantly burst into tears. I embraced him, and, afraid to say a
single word, entered the carriage.
I never learned, subsequent to my departure, that any new light had
been thrown upon that mysterious catastrophe.
M. de Peyrehorade died a few months after his son. By his will he
bequeathed to me his manuscripts, which I shall publish some day,
perhaps. I found among them no memoir relating to the inscriptions on
the Venus.
* * * * *
P. S.--My friend M. de P. has recently written me from Perpignan that
the statue no longer exists. After her husband’s death, Madame de
Peyrehorade’s first care was to have it melted into a bell, and in that
new shape it is now used in the church at Ille.
“But,” M. de P. adds, “it would seem that an evil fate pursues all
those who possess that bronze. Since that bell has rung at Ille the
vines have frozen twice.”
1837.