A few lines of the article consecrated to Martial de Sairmeuse in the
“General Biography of the Men of the Century,” give the history of his
life after his marriage.
“Martial de Sairmeuse,” it says there, “brought to the service of his
party a brilliant intellect and admirable endowments. Called to the
front at the moment when political strife was raging with the utmost
violence, he had courage to assume the sole responsibility of the most
extreme measures.
“Compelled by almost universal opprobrium to retire from office, he left
behind him animosities which will be extinguished only with life.”
But what this article does not state is this: if Martial was wrong--and
that depends entirely upon the point of view from which his conduct
is regarded--he was doubly wrong, since he was not possessed of those
ardent convictions verging upon fanaticism which make men fools, heroes,
and martyrs.
He was not even ambitious.
Those associated with him, witnessing his passionate struggle and his
unceasing activity, thought him actuated by an insatiable thirst for
power.
He cared little or nothing for it. He considered its burdens heavy; its
compensations small. His pride was too lofty to feel any satisfaction in
the applause that delights the vain, and flattery disgusted him.
Often, in his princely drawing-rooms, during some brilliant fete, his
acquaintances noticed a shade of gloom steal over his features, and
seeing him thus thoughtful and preoccupied, they respectfully refrained
from disturbing him.
“His mind is occupied with momentous questions,” they thought. “Who can
tell what important decisions may result from this revery?”
They were mistaken.
At the very moment when his brilliant success made his rivals pale with
envy--when it would seem that he had nothing left to wish for in this
world, Martial was saying to himself:
“What an empty life! What weariness and vexation of spirit! To live for
others--what a mockery!”
He looked at his wife, radiant in her beauty, worshipped like a queen,
and he sighed.
He thought of her who was dead--Marie-Anne--the only woman whom he had
ever loved.
She was never absent from his mind. After all these years he saw her
yet, cold, rigid, lifeless, in that luxurious room at the Borderie;
and time, far from effacing the image of the fair girl who had won his
youthful heart, made it still more radiant and endowed his lost idol
with almost superhuman grace of person and of character.
If fate had but given him Marie-Anne for his wife! He said this to
himself again and again, picturing the exquisite happiness which a life
with her would have afforded him.
They would have remained at Sairmeuse. They would have had lovely
children playing around them! He would not be condemned to this
continual warfare--to this hollow, unsatisfying, restless life.
The truly happy are not those who parade their satisfaction and
good fortune before the eyes of the multitude. The truly happy hide
themselves from the curious gaze, and they are right; happiness is
almost a crime.
So thought Martial; and he, the great statesman, often said to himself,
in a sort of rage:
“To love, and to be loved--that is everything! All else is vanity.”
He had really tried to love his wife; he had done his best to rekindle
the admiration with which she had inspired him at their first meeting.
He had not succeeded.
Between them there seemed to be a wall of ice which nothing could melt,
and which was constantly increasing in height and thickness.
“Why is it?” he wondered, again and again. “It is incomprehensible.
There are days when I could swear that she loved me. Her character,
formerly so irritable, is entirely changed; she is gentleness itself.”
But he could not conquer his aversion; it was stronger than his own
will.
These unavailing regrets, and the disappointments and sorrow that
preyed upon him, undoubtedly aggravated the bitterness and severity of
Martial’s policy.
But he, at least, knew how to fall nobly.
He passed, without even a change of countenance, from almost omnipotence
to a position so compromising that his very life was endangered.
On seeing his ante-chambers, formerly thronged with flatterers and
office-seekers, empty and deserted, he laughed, and his laugh was
unaffected.
“The ship is sinking,” said he; “the rats have deserted it.”
He did not even pale when the noisy crowd came to hoot and curse and
hurl stones at his windows; and when Otto, his faithful _valet de
chambre_, entreated him to assume a disguise and make his escape through
the gardens, he responded:
“By no means! I am simply odious; I do not wish to become ridiculous!”
They could not even dissuade him from going to a window and looking down
upon the rabble in the street below.
A singular idea had just occurred to him.
“If Jean Lacheneur is still alive,” he thought, “how much he would enjoy
this! And if he is alive, he is undoubtedly there in the foremost rank,
urging on the crowd.”
And he wished to see.
But Jean Lacheneur was in Russia at that epoch. The excitement subsided;
the Hotel de Sairmeuse was not seriously threatened. Still Martial
realized that it would be better for him to go away for a while, and
allow people to forget him.
He did not ask the duchess to accompany him.
“The fault has been mine entirely,” he said to her, “and to make you
suffer for it by condemning you to exile would be unjust. Remain here; I
think it will be much better for you to remain here.”
She did not offer to go with him. It would have been a pleasure to her,
but she dared not leave Paris. She knew that she must remain in order
to insure the silence of her persecutors. Both times she had left Paris
before, all came near being discovered, and yet she had Aunt Medea,
then, to take her place.
Martial went away, accompanied only by his devoted servant, Otto.
In intelligence, this man was decidedly superior to his position; he
possessed an independent fortune, and he had a hundred reasons--one, by
the way, was a very pretty one--for desiring to remain in Paris; but his
master was in trouble, and he did not hesitate.
For four years the Duc de Sairmeuse wandered over Europe, ever
accompanied by his _ennui_ and his dejection, and chafing beneath the
burden of a life no longer animated by interest or sustained by hope.
He remained awhile in London, then he went to Vienna, afterward to
Venice. One day he was seized by an irresistible desire to see Paris
again, and he returned.
It was not a very prudent step, perhaps. His bitterest enemies--personal
enemies, whom he had mortally offended and persecuted--were in power;
but he did not hesitate. Besides, how could they injure him, since he
had no favors to ask, no cravings of ambition to satisfy?
The exile which had weighed so heavily upon him, the sorrow, the
disappointments and loneliness he had endured had softened his nature
and inclined his heart to tenderness; and he returned firmly resolved to
overcome his aversion to his wife, and seek a reconciliation.
“Old age is approaching,” he thought. “If I have not a beloved wife at
my fireside, I may at least have a friend.”
His manner toward her, on his return, astonished Mme. Blanche. She
almost believed she saw again the Martial of the little blue salon at
Courtornieu; but the realization of her cherished dream was now only
another torture added to all the others.
Martial was striving to carry his plan into execution, when the
following laconic epistle came to him one day through the post:
“Monsieur le Duc--I, if I were in your place, would watch my wife.”
It was only an anonymous letter, but Martial’s blood mounted to his
forehead.
“Can it be that she has a lover?” he thought.
Then reflecting on his own conduct toward his wife since their marriage,
he said to himself:
“And if she has, have I any right to complain? Did I not tacitly give
her back her liberty?”
He was greatly troubled, and yet he would not have degraded himself
so much as to play the spy, had it not been for one of those trifling
circumstances which so often decide a man’s destiny.
He was returning from a ride on horseback one morning about eleven
o’clock, and he was not thirty paces from the Hotel de Sairmeuse when
he saw a lady hurriedly emerge from the house. She was very plainly
dressed--entirely in black--but her whole appearance was strikingly that
of the duchess.
“It is certainly my wife; but why is she dressed in such a fashion?” he
thought.
Had he been on foot he would certainly have entered the house; as it
was, he slowly followed Mme. Blanche, who was going up the Rue Grenelle.
She walked very quickly, and without turning her head, and kept her face
persistently shrouded in a very thick veil.
When she reached the Rue Taranne, she threw herself into one of the
_fiacres_ at the carriage-stand.
The coachman came to the door to speak to her; then nimbly sprang upon
the box, and gave his bony horses one of those cuts of the whip that
announce a princely _pourboire_.
The carriage had already turned the corner of the Rue du Dragon, and
Martial, ashamed and irresolute, had not moved from the place where he
had stopped his horse, just around the corner of the Rue Saint Pares.
Not daring to admit his suspicions, he tried to deceive himself.
“Nonsense!” he thought, giving the reins to his horse, “what do I risk
in advancing? The carriage is a long way off by this time, and I shall
not overtake it.”
He did overtake it, however, on reaching the intersection of the
Croix-Rouge, where there was, as usual, a crowd of vehicles.
It was the same _fiacre_; Martial recognized it by its green body, and
its wheels striped with white.
Emerging from the crowd of carriages, the driver whipped up his horses,
and it was at a gallop that they flew up the Rue du Vieux Columbier--the
narrowest street that borders the Place Saint Sulpice--and gained the
outer boulevards.
Martial’s thoughts were busy as he trotted along about a hundred yards
behind the vehicle.
“She is in a terrible hurry,” he said to himself. “This, however, is
scarcely the quarter for a lover’s rendezvous.”
The carriage had passed the Place d’Italie. It entered the Rue du
Chateau-des-Rentiers and soon paused before a tract of unoccupied
ground.
The door was at once opened, and the Duchesse de Sairmeuse hastily
alighted.
Without stopping to look to the right or to the left, she hurried across
the open space.
A man, by no means prepossessing in appearance, with a long beard, and
with a pipe in his mouth, and clad in a workman’s blouse, was seated
upon a large block of stone not far off.
“Will you hold my horse a moment?” inquired Martial.
“Certainly,” answered the man.
Had Martial been less preoccupied, his suspicions might have been
aroused by the malicious smile that curved the man’s lips; and had he
examined his features closely, he would perhaps have recognized him.
For it was Jean Lacheneur.
Since addressing that anonymous letter to the Duc de Sairmeuse, he had
made the duchess multiply her visits to the Widow Chupin; and each time
he had watched for her coming.
“So, if her husband decides to follow her I shall know it,” he thought.
It was indispensable for the success of his plans that Mme. Blanche
should be watched by her husband.
For Jean Lacheneur had decided upon his course. From a thousand schemes
for revenge he had chosen the most frightful and ignoble that a brain
maddened and enfevered by hatred could possibly conceive.
He longed to see the haughty Duchesse de Sairmeuse subjected to the
vilest ignominy, Martial in the hands of the lowest of the low. He
pictured a bloody struggle in this miserable den; the sudden arrival
of the police, summoned by himself, who would arrest all the parties
indiscriminately. He gloated over the thought of a trial in which the
crime committed at the Borderie would be brought to light; he saw the
duke and the duchess in prison, and the great names of Sairmeuse and of
Courtornieu shrouded in eternal disgrace.
And he believed that nothing was wanting to insure the success of his
plans. He had at his disposal two miserable wretches who were capable
of any crime; and an unfortunate youth named Gustave, made his willing
slave by poverty and cowardice, was intended to play the part of
Marie-Anne’s son.
These three accomplices had no suspicion of his real intentions. As for
the Widow Chupin and her son, if they suspected some infamous plot, the
name of the duchess was all they really knew in regard to it. Moreover,
Jean held Polyte and his mother completely under his control by the
wealth which he had promised them if they served him docilely.
And if Martial followed his wife into the Poivriere, Jean had so
arranged matters that the duke would at first suppose that she had been
led there by charity.
“But he will not go in,” thought Lacheneur, whose heart throbbed wildly
with sinister joy as he held Martial’s horse. “Monsieur le Duc is too
fine for that.”
And Martial did not go in. Though he was horrified when he saw his wife
enter that vile den, as if she were at home there, he said to himself
that he should learn nothing by following her.
He, therefore, contented himself by making a thorough examination of
the outside of the house; then, remounting his horse, he departed on a
gallop. He was completely mystified; he did not know what to think, what
to imagine, what to believe.
But he was fully resolved to fathom this mystery and as soon as he
returned home he sent Otto out in search of information. He could
confide everything to this devoted servant; he had no secrets from him.
About four o’clock his faithful _valet de chambre_ returned, an
expression of profound consternation visible upon his countenance.
“What is it?” asked Martial, divining some great misfortune.
“Ah, sir, the mistress of that wretched den is the widow of Chupin’s
son----”
Martial’s face became as white as his linen.
He knew life too well not to understand that since the duchess had been
compelled to submit to the power of these people, they must be masters
of some secret which she was willing to make any sacrifice to preserve.
But what secret?
The years which had silvered Martial’s hair, had not cooled the ardor of
his blood. He was, as he had always been, a man of impulses.
He rushed to his wife’s apartments.
“Madame has just gone down to receive the Countess de Mussidan and the
Marquise d’Arlange,” said the maid.
“Very well; I will wait for her here. Retire.”
And Martial entered the chamber of Mme. Blanche.
The room was in disorder, for the duchess, after returning from the
Poivriere, was still engaged in her toilet when the visitors were
announced.
The wardrobe-doors were open, the chairs were encumbered with wearing
apparel, the articles which Mme. Blanche used daily--her watch, her
purse, and several bunches of keys--were lying upon the dressing-table
and mantel.
Martial did not sit down. His self-possession was returning.
“No folly,” he thought, “if I question her, I shall learn nothing. I
must be silent and watchful.”
He was about to retire, when, on glancing about the room, his eyes fell
upon a large casket, inlaid with silver, which had belonged to his wife
ever since she was a young girl, and which accompanied her everywhere.
“That, doubtless, holds the solution of the mystery,” he said to
himself.
It was one of those moments when a man obeys the dictates of passion
without pausing to reflect. He saw the keys upon the mantel; he seized
them, and endeavored to find one that would fit the lock of the casket.
The fourth key opened it. It was full of papers.
With feverish haste, Martial examined the contents. He had thrown
aside several unimportant letters, when he came to a bill that read as
follows:
“Search for the child of Madame de Sairmeuse. Expenses for the third
quarter of the year 18--.”
Martial’s brain reeled.
A child! His wife had a child!
He read on: “For services of two agents at Sairmeuse, ----. For expenses
attending my own journey, ----. Divers gratuities, ----. Etc., etc.” The
total amounted to six thousand francs. The bill was signed “Chelteux.”
With a sort of cold rage, Martial continued his examination of the
contents of the casket, and found a note written in a miserable hand,
that said: “Two thousand francs this evening, or I will tell the duke
the history of the affair at the Borderie.” Then several more bills from
Chelteux; then a letter from Aunt Medea in which she spoke of prison
and of remorse. And finally, at the bottom of the casket, he found the
marriage-certificate of Marie-Anne Lacheneur and Maurice d’Escorval,
drawn up by the Cure of Vigano and signed by the old physician and
Corporal Bavois.
The truth was as clear as daylight.
Stunned, frozen with horror, Martial scarcely had strength to return the
letters to the casket and restore it to its place.
Then he tottered back to his own room, clinging to the walls for
support.
“It was she who murdered Marie-Anne,” he murmured.
He was confounded, terror-stricken by the perfidy and baseness of
this woman who was his wife--by her criminal audacity, by her cool
calculation and assurance, by her marvellous powers of dissimulation.
He swore he would discover all, either through the duchess or through
the Widow Chupin; and he ordered Otto to procure a costume for him such
as was generally worn by the _habitues_ of the Poivriere. He did not
know how soon he might have use for it.
This happened early in February, and from that moment Mme. Blanche did
not take a single step without being watched. Not a letter reached her
that her husband had not previously read.
And she had not the slightest suspicion of the constant espionage to
which she was subjected.
Martial did not leave his room; he pretended to be ill. To meet his
wife and be silent, was beyond his powers. He remembered the oath of
vengeance which he had pronounced over Marie-Anne’s lifeless form too
well.
But there were no new revelations, and for this reason: Polyte Chupin
had been arrested under charge of theft, and this accident caused a
delay in the execution of Lacheneur’s plans. But, at last, he judged
that all would be in readiness on the 20th of February, Shrove Sunday.
The evening before the Widow Chupin, in conformance with his
instructions, wrote to the duchess that she must come to the Poivriere
Sunday evening at eleven o’clock.
On that same evening Jean was to meet his accomplices at a ball at the
Rainbow--a public-house bearing a very unenviable reputation--and give
them their last instructions.
These accomplices were to open the scene; he was to appear only in the
_denouement_.
“All is well arranged; the mechanism will work of its own accord,” he
said to himself.
But the “mechanism,” as he styled it, failed to work.
Mme. Blanche, on receiving the Widow Chupin’s summons, revolted for a
moment. The lateness of the hour, the isolation of the spot designated,
frightened her.
But she was obliged to submit, and on the appointed evening she
furtively left the house, accompanied by Camille, the same servant who
had witnessed Aunt Medea’s last agony.
The duchess and her maid were attired like women of the very lowest
order, and felt no fear of being seen or recognized.
And yet a man was watching them, and he quickly followed them. It was
Martial.
Knowing of this rendezvous even before his wife, he had disguised
himself in the costume Otto had procured for him, which was that of a
laborer about the quays; and, as he was a man who did perfectly
whatever he attempted to do, he had succeeded in rendering himself
unrecognizable. His hair and beard were rough and matted; his hands were
soiled and grimed with dirt; he was really the abject wretch whose rags
he wore.
Otto had begged to be allowed to accompany him; but the duke refused,
saying that the revolver which he would take with him would be
sufficient protection. He knew Otto well enough, however, to be certain
he would disobey him.
Ten o’clock was sounding when Mme. Blanche and Camille left the house,
and it did not take them five minutes to reach the Rue Taranne.
There was one _fiacre_ on the stand--one only.
They entered it and it drove away.
This circumstance drew from Martial an oath worthy of his costume. Then
he reflected that, since he knew where to find his wife, a slight delay
in finding a carriage did not matter.
He soon obtained one; and the coachman, thanks to a _pourboire_ of ten
francs, drove to the Rue du Chateau-des-Rentiers as fast as his horses
could go.
But the duke had scarcely set foot on the ground before he heard
the rumbling of another carriage which stopped abruptly at a little
distance.
“Otto is evidently following me,” he thought.
And he started across the open space in the direction of the Poivriere.
Gloom and silence prevailed on every side, and were made still more
oppressive by a chill fog that heralded an approaching thaw. Martial
stumbled and slipped at almost every step upon the rough, snow-covered
ground.
It was not long before he could distinguish a dark mass in the midst
of the fog. It was the Poivriere. The light within filtered through the
heart-shaped openings in the blinds, looking at a distance like lurid
eyes gleaming in the darkness.
Could it really be possible that the Duchesse de Sairmeuse was there!
Martial cautiously approached the window, and clinging to the hinges of
one of the shutters, he lifted himself up so he could peer through the
opening.
Yes, his wife was indeed there in that vile den.
She and Camille were seated at a table before a large punch-bowl, and
in company with two ragged, leering scoundrels, and a soldier, quite
youthful in appearance.
In the centre of the room stood the Widow Chupin, with a small glass
in her hand, talking volubly and punctuating her sentences by copious
draughts of brandy.
The impression produced upon Martial was so terrible that his hold
relaxed and he dropped to the ground.
A ray of pity penetrated his soul, for he vaguely realized the frightful
suffering which had been the chastisement of the murderess.
But he desired another glance at the interior of the hovel, and he again
lifted himself up to the opening and looked in.
The old woman had disappeared; the young soldier had risen from the
table and was talking and gesticulating earnestly. Mme. Blanche and
Camille were listening to him with the closest attention.
The two men who were sitting face to face, with their elbows upon the
table, were looking at each other; and Martial saw them exchange a
significant glance.
He was not wrong. The scoundrels were plotting “a rich haul.”
Mme. Blanche, who had dressed herself with such care, that to render her
disguise perfect she had encased her feet in large, coarse shoes that
were almost killing her--Mme. Blanche had forgotten to remove her superb
diamond ear-rings.
She had forgotten them, but Lacheneur’s accomplices had noticed them,
and were now regarding them with eyes that glittered more brilliantly
than the diamonds themselves.
While awaiting Lacheneur’s coming, these wretches, as had been agreed
upon, were playing the part which he had imposed upon them. For this,
and their assistance afterward, they were to receive a certain sum of
money.
But they were thinking that this sum was not, perhaps, a quarter part of
the value of these jewels, and they exchanged glances that said:
“Ah! if we could only get them and make our escape before Lacheneur
comes!”
The temptation was too strong to be resisted.
One of them rose suddenly, and, seizing the duchess by the back of the
neck, he forced her head down upon the table.
The diamonds would have been torn from the ears of Mme. Blanche had it
not been for Camille, who bravely came to the aid of her mistress.
Martial could endure no more. He sprang to the door of the hovel, opened
it, and entered, bolting it behind him.
“Martial!”
“Monsieur le Duc!”
These cries escaping the lips of Mme. Blanche and Camille in the same
breath, changed the momentary stupor of their assailants into fury; and
they both precipitated themselves upon Martial, determined to kill him.
With a spring to one side, Martial avoided them. He had his revolver in
his hand; he fired twice and the wretches fell. But he was not yet safe,
for the young soldier threw himself upon him, and attempted to disarm
him.
Through all the furious struggle, Martial did not cease crying, in a
panting voice:
“Fly! Blanche, fly! Otto is not far off. The name--save the honor of the
name!”
The two women obeyed, making their escape through the back door, which
opened upon the garden; and they had scarcely done so, before a violent
knocking was heard at the front door.
The police were coming! This increased Martial’s frenzy; and with one
supreme effort to free himself from his assailant, he gave him such
a violent push that his adversary fell, striking his head against the
corner of the table, after which he lay like one dead.
But the Widow Chupin, who had come downstairs on hearing the uproar, was
shrieking upon the stairs. At the door someone was crying: “Open in the
name of the law!”
Martial might have fled; but if he fled, the duchess might be captured,
for he would certainly be pursued. He saw the peril at a glance, and his
decision was made.
He shook the Widow Chupin violently by the arm, and said, in an
imperious voice:
“If you know how to hold your tongue you shall have one hundred thousand
francs.”
Then, drawing a table before the door opening into the adjoining room,
he intrenched himself behind it as behind a rampart, and awaited the
approach of the enemy.
The next moment the door was forced open, and a squad of police, under
the command of Inspector Gevrol, entered the room.
“Surrender!” cried the inspector.
Martial did not move; his pistol was turned upon the intruder.
“If I can parley with them, and hold them in check only two minutes, all
may yet be saved,” he thought.
He obtained the wished-for delay; then he threw his weapon to the
ground, and was about to bound through the back-door, when a policeman,
who had gone round to the rear of the house, seized him about the body,
and threw him to the floor.
From this side he expected only assistance, so he cried:
“Lost! It is the Prussians who are coming!”
In the twinkling of an eye he was bound; and two hours later he was an
inmate of the station-house at the Place d’Italie.
He had played his part so perfectly, that he had deceived even Gevrol.
The other participants in the broil were dead, and he could rely upon
the Widow Chupin. But he knew that the trap had been set for him by Jean
Lacheneur; and he read a whole volume of suspicion in the eyes of the
young officer who had cut off his retreat, and who was called Lecoq by
his companions.