VENGEANCE.
While Rudolph wept bitterly, the features of Sarah changed perceptibly. At
the moment when she thought she was about to realize the dream of her
ambitious life, the last hope, which had until now sustained her, was
crushed forever. This dreadful disappointment could not fail to have on her
health, momentarily ameliorated, a mortal reaction. Fallen back in her
chair, trembling with a feverish agitation, her hands crossed and clasped
on her knees, her eyes fixed, the countess awaited with alarm the first
word from Rudolph. Knowing the impetuous character of the prince, she
feared that the sad grief, which drew so many tears from this inflexible
and resolute man, would be succeeded by some terrible transports of
passion. Suddenly Rudolph raised his head, wiped away his tears, arose, and
approached Sarah, his arms crossed on his bosom, his manner menacing and
without pity. He looked at her for some moments in silence; then he said,
in a hollow voice: "This ought to be. I have drawn the sword against my
father; I am stricken in my child. Just punishment of the parricide. Listen
to me, madame---"
"Parricide! you! Oh, fatal day! of what are you going to inform me?"
"It is necessary that you should know, in this awful moment, all the evils
caused by your implacable ambition, by your unbounded selfishness. Do you
understand me, woman without heart and without conscience? Do you hear me,
unnatural mother?"
"Oh, have pity, Rudolph!"
"No pardon for you, who formerly, without pity for a sincere love, coldly
trifled, in the furtherance of your execrable pride, with a generous and
devoted passion, of which you feigned to partake. No mercy for you, who
armed the son against the father! No grace for you, who, instead of
watching piously over your child, abandoned her to mercenary hands, in
order to satisfy your cupidity by a rich marriage, as you had already
served your mad ambition by inciting me to marry you. No mercy for you who,
after having refused me my child, have now caused her death by your unholy
deceptions! Maledictions on you--my evil genius, and my family's!"
"Oh! he is without pity! leave me! leave me!"
"You must hear me, I tell you! Do you remember the last day I saw you--it
is seventeen years since--you could no longer conceal the fruits of our
secret union, which, like you, I believed indissoluble. I knew the
inflexible character of my father. I knew what political marriage he
projected for me. Braving his indignation, I declared to him that you were
my wife before God and before man--that in a short time I should become a
father. His anger was terrible; he would not give credence to my
marriage--so much deception seemed impossible to him. He threatened me with
his displeasure if I allowed myself to speak before him again of such
folly. Then I loved you like a madman, dupe of your seductions. I thought
that your rigid heart of brass had beaten for me. I answered to my father
that I would never have any wife but you. At these words, his anger had no
bounds; he called you the most outrageous names; swore that our marriage
was null; and that, in order to punish your presumption, he would place you
in the pillory. Yielding to my mad passion, to the violence of my temper, I
dared to forbid my father, my sovereign, to speak thus of my wife. I dared
to threaten him. Exasperated at this insult, my father struck me; rage
blinded me. I drew my sword. I threw myself upon him. Except for Sir Walter
Murphy, who turned aside the blow, I had been a parricide in reality, as I
was in intention! Do you hear? parricide! And to defend you--you!"
"Alas! I was ignorant of all this."
"In vain I have thought my crime expiated; the blow I have received today
is my punishment."
"But have I not also suffered from the obduracy of your father, who broke
our marriage? Why accuse me of not having loved you, when--"
"Why?" cried Rudolph, interrupting Sarah, and casting upon her a glance of
withering scorn. "Know it then, and be no more surprised at the horror with
which you inspire me. After this fatal scene, in which I had threatened the
life of my father, I gave up my sword. I was imprisoned with the greatest
secrecy. Polidori, through whom our marriage had been concluded, was
arrested. He proved that this union was null; that the clergyman was only a
mock one; and that you, your brother, and myself had all been deceived. To
disarm my father's anger against him, Polidori did more; he gave him one of
your letters to your brother, which he had intercepted."
"Heavens! can it be possible?"
"Is my contempt for you explained now?"
"Oh! enough, enough!"
"In this letter you unfolded your ambitious projects with revolting
coldness. You treated me with an icy disdain; you sacrificed me to your
infernal pride; I was only the instrument by whose means you were to obtain
the fulfillment of your destiny. You found that my father lived a very long
time."
"Unfortunate that I am! Now I understand all."
"And to defend you, I had threatened the life of my father. When, on the
morrow, without addressing me a word of reproach, he showed me this
letter--this letter, which in every line revealed the blackness of your
heart, I could only fall on my knees and ask for pardon. Since that day I
have been pursued by unceasing remorse. Soon I left Germany on a long
journey; then commenced the penance which I imposed upon myself. It will
only finish with my life. To recompense the good, punish the bad, solace
those who suffer, probe all the wounds of humanity, to endeavor to snatch
souls from perdition--such is the noble task that I have imposed upon
myself."
"It is noble and holy; it is worthy of you."
"If I speak of this vow," replied Rudolph, with as much disdain as
bitterness; "of this vow, which I have fulfilled, according to my power,
wherever I have been, it is not to be praised by you. Listen to me, then.
Not long since I arrived in France; my sojourn in this country was not to
be lost to the expiation. In wishing to assist honest unfortunates, I also
wished to know those classes whom poverty crushes, hardens, and depraves,
knowing that timely succor and kind words have often saved many a poor
wretch from the abyss of despair. In order to be my own judge, I assumed
the disguise and language of the people whom I wished to observe. It was on
one of these excursions that, for the first time, I--I met--" Then, as if
he recoiled from this terrible revelation, Rudolph added, "No, no, I have
not the courage."
"What have you still to inform me?"
"You will only know it too soon; but," said he, with irony, "you feel so
lively an interest in the past that I ought to speak to you of events which
preceded my return to France. After a long journey, I returned to Germany;
I married a Prussian princess. During my absence, you had been driven away
from the grand duchy. Learning that you were married to Earl M'Gregor, I
wrote to entreat you to send me my child; you did not reply. In spite of
all my efforts, I could never find out where you had sent this unfortunate
child. Ten years ago only, a letter from you informed me that our child was
dead. Alas! would to God that she had then been dead; I should not have
known the incurable grief which henceforth will imbitter my life."
"Now," said Sarah, in a feeble voice, "I am no more astonished at the
aversion with which I have inspired you, since you have read this letter. I
feel it, I shall not survive this last blow. Ah, well! yes; pride and
ambition have ruined me! Under the appearance of passion, I concealed a
frozen heart. Not knowing what good reason you had to despise and hate me,
my foolish hopes were renewed. Since we were both free again, I again
believed in this prediction which promised me a crown; and when chance
discovered my daughter, I seemed to see in this unhoped-for fortune a
providential design! Yes; I went so far as to think that your aversion for
me would yield to your love for your child; and that you would give me your
hand in order to restore her to the rank which was her due."
"Well! let your execrable ambition be then satisfied and punished! Yes,
notwithstanding the horror you inspired me with; yes, from attachment--what
do I say! from respect for the frightful misfortunes of my child, I should
have, although decided to live afterward separated from you--I should have,
by a marriage which would legitimatize my child, rendered her position as
dazzling, as lofty as it had been miserable!"
"I was not deceived, then! Woe! it is too late!"
"Oh! I know it; it is not for the death of your child you weep; it is the
loss of that rank which you have pursued with untiring pertinacity! Well!
may these infamous regrets be your last punishment!"
"The last; for I shall not survive!"
"But, before you die, you shall know what has been the existence of your
child since you abandoned her."
"Poor child! very miserable, perhaps!"
"Do you recollect," said Rudolph, with terrible calmness, "that night when
you and your brother followed me to the city?"
"I do recollect; but why this question? your look freezes me."
"On coming from this den, you saw, did you not, at the corner of the
wretched streets, some unhappy creatures, who--but, no, no--I dare not,"
said Rudolph, concealing his face in his hands, "I dare not; my words alarm
me."
"Me also--they alarm me; what is it now?"
"You have seen them?" resumed Rudolph, with an effort. "You have seen those
women, the shame of their sex? Well! among them did you remark a young girl
of sixteen? beautiful, oh! beautiful as an angel; a poor child, who, in the
midst of the degradation in which she had been plunged, preserved an
expression so pure, so virginal, that the robbers and assassins among whom
she lived, madame, had given her the name of Fleur-de-Marie; did you remark
this young girl? speak, speak, tender mother."
"No, I did not notice her," said Sarah, almost mechanically.
"Really?" cried Rudolph, with a burst of sardonic laughter. "It is strange.
I remarked her on the occasion; listen, well, during one of the excursions
of which I have spoken just now, and which then had a double object, I
found myself in the city; not far from the den whither you followed me, a
man wished to beat one of these unfortunate creatures; I defended her
against his brutality. You cannot guess who was this creature; speak, good
and provident mother, speak! You do not guess?"
"No, I do not guess. Oh! leave me, leave me!"
"The 'unfortunate' was Fleur-de-Marie."
"Oh! merciful powers!"
"And you do not guess who was Fleur-de-Marie, irreproachable mother?"
"Kill me! oh! kill me!"
"She was La Goualeuse--your daughter!" cried Rudolph, with a heartrending
emotion. "Yes, this unfortunate, whom I had rescued from the violence of a
liberated galley-slave, was my own child--mine--Rudolph of Gerolstein's!
Oh! there was something in this encounter with my child, whom I saved
without knowing her, something terrible, providential; a recompense for the
man who seeks to succor his fellow-men, a punishment for the parricide."
"I die cursed and condemned," murmured Sarah, falling back in her chair and
concealing her face in her hands.
"Then," continued Rudolph, with difficulty restraining his feelings, and
wishing, in vain, to suppress his sobs, which almost choked him, "when I
had rescued her from the hands of her assailant, struck with the
inexpressible sweetness of her voice, the angelic expression of her
features, it had been impossible not to have become interested in her. With
what profound emotion have I listened to the touching recital of her life
of abandonment, of sorrow, and misery; for, do you see, there have been
frightful passages in the life of your daughter, madame. Oh! you must know
the tortures that your child suffered; yes, my lady, while in the midst of
your opulence you were dreaming of a crown, your child--your own little
child, covered with rags, went at night to beg in the streets, suffering
with cold and hunger. During the winter nights, she shivered on a little
straw in the corner of a garret, and then, when the horrible woman who
abused her was tired of beating the poor little thing, only thinking how
she could torture her, do you know what she did, madame? She drew out some
of her teeth!"
"Oh! would that I could die! this is bitter agony!"
"Listen again. Escaping at length from the hands of La Chouette, wandering
without bread, without shelter, hardly eight years of age, she was arrested
as a vagabond, and put in prison. Oh! these were the happiest days of your
daughter, madame. Yes, in the prison-house, each night she thanked God that
she suffered no more from cold and hunger, and was beaten no more. And it
was in a prison that she spent the most precious years of a young girl's
life, those years which a tender mother always surrounds with so jealous
and pious a solicitude; yes, instead of being protected with maternal care,
your daughter has only known the brutal indifference of jailers; and then
one day, society, in its cruel carelessness, cast her, innocent and pure,
beautiful and ingenuous, into the filth and mire of this great city.
Unhappy child, abandoned, without support, without advice, delivered to all
the chances of misery and vice! Oh!" cried Rudolph, giving free vent to the
sobs which overpowered him; "your heart is hardened, your selfishness
cruel, but you would have wept--yes, _you_ would have wept, on hearing
the touching story of your child. Poor girl! sullied, but not corrupted,
still chaste in the midst of this horrible degradation, which was for her a
frightful dream; for each word told her horror for the life to which she
was so fatally enchained! Oh! if you knew how at each moment were revealed
the most adorable instincts--how much goodness--how much touching charity;
yes, for it was to relieve an unfortunate more wretched than herself, the
poor little thing had spent the little money she had, and which then
separated her from the abyss of infamy into which she was plunged. Yes! for
the day came--a frightful day--when, without work, without bread, without
shelter--horrible women met her, exhausted from weakness--from
hunger--and--"
Rudolph could not finish, but cried in a heartrending voice:
"And this was my daughter! my child!"
"Imprecations on my head!" murmured Sarah, concealing her face in her
hands, as if she had feared the light of day.
"Yes," cried Rudolph, "imprecations on you! for it is your abandonment of
this child which has caused all these horrors. Maledictions on you! for
when, rescuing her from this filth, I had placed her in a peaceable
retreat, you had her torn away by your miserable accomplices. Maledictions
on you! for this again placed her in the power of Jacques Ferrand."
At this name, Rudolph stopped suddenly. He shuddered as if he had
pronounced it for the first time. It was because he now pronounced this
name for the first time since he had known that his daughter was the victim
of that monster. The features of the prince assumed then a frightful
expression of rage and hatred. Silent, immovable, he remained, as it were,
crushed by this thought--that the murderer of his child still lived. Sarah,
notwithstanding her increasing weakness, was struck by his sinister look;
she feared for herself.
"Alas! what is the matter with you?" she murmured, in a trembling voice.
"Is it not enough of suffering?"
"No; it is not enough!" cried Rudolph, responding to his own thoughts. "I
have never before experienced--never! such a desire for vengeance--a thirst
for blood--a calm, reflecting rage! When I did not know that one of the
victims of the monster was my own child, I said to myself, the death of
this man will be sterile, while his life will be fertile, if, to redeem it,
he accept the conditions which I impose. To condemn him to be charitable,
to expiate his crimes, appeared to me just; and then, life without gold,
life without sensuality, would be for him a long and double torture. But it
is my child whom he has delivered to all the horrors of infamy and misery!
but it is my daughter whom he has murdered! I will kill this man!"
And the prince sprung toward the door.
"Where are you going? Do not abandon me!" cried Sarah, half rising, and
extending toward Rudolph her supplicating hands. "Do not leave me alone! I
am dying!"
"Alone! no! no! I leave you with the specter of your daughter, whose death
you have caused!"
Sarah, frantic, threw herself on her knees, uttering a cry of affright, as
if an alarming phantom had appeared to her. "Pity! I die!"
"Die, then, accursed!" answered Rudolph, frightful with rage. "Now I must
have the life of your accomplice, for it is you who delivered your daughter
to her executioner!"
And Rudolph ordered his coach to be rapidly driven to the house of Jacques
Ferrand.