him. “Do you not know that everything here on earth must obey me, that
it is in my power to do everything? I read men’s thoughts, I see the
future, and I know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere also.
Time and space and distance are nothing to me. The whole world is at
my beck and call. I have the power of continual enjoyment and of giving
joy. I can see through walls, discover hidden treasures, and fill my
hands with them. Palaces arise at my nod, and my architect makes no
mistakes. I can make all lands break forth into blossom, heap up their
gold and precious stones, and surround myself with fair women and ever
new faces; everything is yielded up to my will. I could gamble on the
Stock Exchange, and my speculations would be infallible; but a man
who can find the hoards that misers have hidden in the earth need not
trouble himself about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand that grasps
you; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to bend the arm of iron! try to
soften the adamantine heart! Fly from me if you dare! You would hear
my voice in the depths of the caves that lie under the Seine; you might
hide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me there? My voice could
be heard through the sound of thunder, my eyes shine as brightly as the
sun, for I am the peer of Lucifer!”
Castanier heard the terrible words, and felt no protest nor
contradiction within himself. He walked side by side with the
Englishman, and had no power to leave him.
“You are mine; you have just committed a crime. I have found at last the
mate whom I have sought. Have you a mind to learn your destiny? Aha!
you came here to see a play, and you shall see a play--nay, two. Come.
Present me to Mme. de la Garde as one of your best friends. Am I not
your last hope of escape?”
Castanier, followed by the stranger, returned to his box; and in
accordance with the order he had just received, he hastened to introduce
Melmoth to Mme. de la Garde. Aquilina seemed to be not in the least
surprised. The Englishman declined to take a seat in front, and
Castanier was once more beside his mistress; the man’s slightest wish
must be obeyed. The last piece was about to begin, for, at that time,
small theatres gave only three pieces. One of the actors had made the
Gymnase the fashion, and that evening Perlet (the actor in question)
was to play in a vaudeville called _Le Comedien d’Etampes_, in which he
filled four different parts.
When the curtain rose, the stranger stretched out his hand over the
crowded house. Castanier’s cry of terror died away, for the walls of his
throat seemed glued together as Melmoth pointed to the stage, and the
cashier knew that the play had been changed at the Englishman’s desire.
He saw the strong-room at the bank; he saw the Baron de Nucingen in
conference with a police-officer from the Prefecture, who was informing
him of Castanier’s conduct, explaining that the cashier had absconded
with money taken from the safe, giving the history of the forged
signature. The information was put in writing; the document signed and
duly despatched to the Public Prosecutor.
“Are we in time, do you think?” asked Nucingen.
“Yes,” said the agent of police; “he is at the Gymnase, and has no
suspicion of anything.”
Castanier fidgeted on his chair, and made as if he would leave the
theatre, but Melmoth’s hand lay on his shoulder, and he was obliged to
sit and watch; the hideous power of the man produced an effect like that
of nightmare, and he could not move a limb. Nay, the man himself was the
nightmare; his presence weighed heavily on his victim like a poisoned
atmosphere. When the wretched cashier turned to implore the Englishman’s
mercy, he met those blazing eyes that discharged electric currents,
which pierced through him and transfixed him like darts of steel.
“What have I done to you?” he said, in his prostrate helplessness, and
he breathed hard like a stag at the water’s edge. “What do you want of
me?”
“Look!” cried Melmoth.
Castanier looked at the stage. The scene had been changed. The play
seemed to be over, and Castanier beheld himself stepping from the
carriage with Aquilina; but as he entered the courtyard of the house on
the Rue Richer, the scene again was suddenly changed, and he saw his
own house. Jenny was chatting by the fire in her mistress’ room with a
subaltern officer of a line regiment then stationed at Paris.
“He is going, is he?” said the sergeant, who seemed to belong to
a family in easy circumstances; “I can be happy at my ease! I love
Aquilina too well to allow her to belong to that old toad! I, myself, am
going to marry Mme. de la Garde!” cried the sergeant.
“Old toad!” Castanier murmured piteously.
“Here come the master and mistress; hide yourself! Stay, get in here
Monsieur Leon,” said Jenny. “The master won’t stay here for very long.”
Castanier watched the sergeant hide himself among Aquilina’s gowns
in her dressing-room. Almost immediately he himself appeared upon the
scene, and took leave of his mistress, who made fun of him in “asides”
to Jenny, while she uttered the sweetest and tenderest words in his
ears. She wept with one side of her face, and laughed with the other.
The audience called for an encore.
“Accursed creature!” cried Castanier from his box.
Aquilina was laughing till the tears came into her eyes.
“Goodness!” she cried, “how funny Perlet is as the Englishwoman!... Why
don’t you laugh? Every one else in the house is laughing. Laugh, dear!”
she said to Castanier.
Melmoth burst out laughing, and the unhappy cashier shuddered. The
Englishman’s laughter wrung his heart and tortured his brain; it was as
if a surgeon had bored his skull with a red-hot iron.
“Laughing! are they laughing!” stammered Castanier.
He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with such
ludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the house
with roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself hurrying
from the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard, bargaining with
the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the scene changed. He
recognized the sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de l’Orangerie and the
Rue des Recollets, which was kept by his old quartermaster. It was two
o’clock in the morning, the most perfect stillness prevailed, no one was
there to watch his movements. The post-horses were put into the carriage
(it came from a house in the Avenue de Paris in which an Englishman
lived, and had been ordered in the foreigner’s name to avoid raising
suspicion). Castanier saw that he had his bills and his passports,
stepped into the carriage, and set out. But at the barrier he saw two
gendarmes lying in wait for the carriage. A cry of horror burst from him
but Melmoth gave him a glance, and again the sound died in his throat.
“Keep your eyes on the stage, and be quiet!” said the Englishman.
In another moment Castanier saw himself flung into prison at the
Conciergerie; and in the fifth act of the drama, entitled _The Cashier_,
he saw himself, in three months’ time, condemned to twenty years of
penal servitude. Again a cry broke from him. He was exposed upon the
Place du Palais-de-Justice, and the executioner branded him with a
red-hot iron. Then came the last scene of all; among some sixty convicts
in the prison yard of the Bicetre, he was awaiting his turn to have the
irons riveted on his limbs.
“Dear me! I cannot laugh any more!...” said Aquilina. “You are very
solemn, dear boy; what can be the matter? The gentleman has gone.”
“A word with you, Castanier,” said Melmoth when the piece was at an end,
and the attendant was fastening Mme. de la Garde’s cloak.
The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible.
“Very well, what is it?”
“No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina home, and going next
to Versailles, there to be arrested.”
“How so?”
“Because you are in a hand that will never relax its grasp,” returned
the Englishman.
Castanier longed for the power to utter some word that should blot him
out from among living men and hide him in the lowest depths of hell.
“Suppose that the Devil were to make a bid for your soul, would you not
give it to him now in exchange for the power of God? One single word,
and those five hundred thousand francs shall be back in the Baron de
Nucingen’s safe; then you can tear up the letter of credit, and all
traces of your crime will be obliterated. Moreover, you would have gold
in torrents. You hardly believe in anything perhaps? Well, if all this
comes to pass, you will believe at least in the Devil.”
“If it were only possible!” said Castanier joyfully.
“The man who can do it all gives you his word that it is possible,”
answered the Englishman.
Melmoth, Castanier, and Mme. de la Garde were standing out in the
Boulevard when Melmoth raised his arm. A drizzling rain was falling,
the streets were muddy, the air was close, there was thick darkness
overhead; but in a moment, as the arm was outstretched, Paris was filled
with sunlight; it was high noon on a bright July day. The trees were
covered with leaves; a double stream of joyous holiday makers strolled
beneath them. Sellers of liquorice water shouted their cool drinks.
Splendid carriages rolled past along the streets. A cry of terror broke
from the cashier, and at that cry rain and darkness once more settled
down upon the Boulevard.
Mme. de la Garde had stepped into the carriage. “Do be quick, dear!”
she cried; “either come in or stay out. Really you are as dull as
ditch-water this evening----”
“What must I do?” Castanier asked of Melmoth.
“Would you like to take my place?” inquired the Englishman.
“Yes.”
“Very well, then; I will be at your house in a few moments.”
“By the by, Castanier, you are rather off your balance,” Aquilina
remarked. “There is some mischief brewing: you were quite melancholy and
thoughtful all through the play. Do you want anything that I can give
you, dear? Tell me.”
“I am waiting till we are at home to know whether you love me.”
“You need not wait till then,” she said, throwing her arms round his
neck. “There!” she said, as she embraced him, passionately to all
appearance, and plied him with the coaxing caresses that are part of the
business of such a life as hers, like stage action for an actress.
“Where is the music?” asked Castanier.
“What next? Only think of your hearing music now!”
“Heavenly music!” he went on. “The sounds seem to come from above.”
“What? You have always refused to give me a box at the Italiens because
you could not abide music, and are you turning music-mad at this time
of day? Mad--that you are! The music is inside your own noddle, old
addle-pate!” she went on, as she took his head in her hands and rocked
it to and fro on her shoulder. “Tell me now, old man; isn’t it the
creaking of the wheels that sings in your ears?”
“Just listen, Naqui! If the angels make music for God Almighty, it must
be such music as this that I am drinking in at every pore, rather
than hearing. I do no know how to tell you about it; it is as sweet as
honey-water!”
“Why, of course, they have music in heaven, for the angels in all the
pictures have harps in their hands. He is mad, upon my word!” she
said to herself, as she saw Castanier’s attitude; he looked like an
opium-eater in a blissful trance.
They reached the house. Castanier, absorbed by the thought of all that
he had just heard and seen, knew not whether to believe it or not; he
was like a drunken man, and utterly unable to think connectedly. He
came to himself in Aquilina’s room, whither he had been supported by
the united efforts of his mistress, the porter, and Jenny; for he had
fainted as he stepped from the carriage.
“_He_ will be here directly! Oh, my friends, my friends,” he cried, and
he flung himself despairingly into the depths of a low chair beside the
fire.
Jenny heard the bell as he spoke, and admitted the Englishman. She
announced that “a gentleman had come who had made an appointment with
the master,” when Melmoth suddenly appeared, and deep silence followed.
He looked at the porter--the porter went; he looked at Jenny--and Jenny
went likewise.
“Madame,” said Melmoth, turning to Aquilina, “with your permission, we
will conclude a piece of urgent business.”
He took Castanier’s hand, and Castanier rose, and the two men went into
the drawing-room. There was no light in the room, but Melmoth’s eyes
lit up the thickest darkness. The gaze of those strange eyes had left
Aquilina like one spellbound; she was helpless, unable to take any
thought for her lover; moreover, she believed him to be safe in
Jenny’s room, whereas their early return had taken the waiting-woman by
surprise, and she had hidden the officer in the dressing-room. It had
all happened exactly as in the drama that Melmoth had displayed for his
victim. Presently the house-door was slammed violently, and Castanier
reappeared.
“What ails you?” cried the horror-struck Aquilina.
There was a change in the cashier’s appearance. A strange pallor
overspread his once rubicund countenance; it wore the peculiarly
sinister and stony look of the mysterious visitor. The sullen glare of
his eyes was intolerable, the fierce light in them seemed to scorch. The
man who had looked so good-humored and good-natured had suddenly grown
tyrannical and proud. The courtesan thought that Castanier had grown
thinner; there was a terrible majesty in his brow; it was as if a dragon
breathed forth a malignant influence that weighed upon the others like a
close, heavy atmosphere. For a moment Aquilina knew not what to do.
“What has passed between you and that diabolical-looking man in those
few minutes?” she asked at length.
“I have sold my soul to him. I feel it; I am no longer the same. He has
taken my _self_, and given me his soul in exchange.”
“What?”
“You would not understand it at all.... Ah! he was right,” Castanier
went on, “the fiend was right! I see everything and know all
things.--You have been deceiving me!”
Aquilina turned cold with terror. Castanier lighted a candle and
went into the dressing-room. The unhappy girl followed him with dazed
bewilderment, and great was her astonishment when Castanier drew the
dresses that hung there aside and disclosed the sergeant.
“Come out, my boy,” said the cashier; and, taking Leon by a button of
his overcoat, he drew the officer into his room.
The Piedmontese, haggard and desperate, had flung herself into her
easy-chair. Castanier seated himself on a sofa by the fire, and left
Aquilina’s lover in a standing position.
“You have been in the army,” said Leon; “I am ready to give you
satisfaction.”
“You are a fool,” said Castanier drily. “I have no occasion to fight.
I could kill you by a look if I had any mind to do it. I will tell you
what it is, youngster; why should I kill you? I can see a red line round
your neck--the guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will end in the
Place de Greve. You are the headsman’s property! there is no escape for
you. You belong to a vendita, of the Carbonari. You are plotting against
the Government.”
“You did not tell me that,” cried the Piedmontese, turning to Leon.
“So you do not know that the Minister decided this morning to put down
your Society?” the cashier continued. “The Procureur-General has a list
of your names. You have been betrayed. They are busy drawing up the
indictment at this moment.”
“Then was it you who betrayed him?” cried Aquilina, and with a hoarse
sound in her throat like the growl of a tigress she rose to her feet;
she seemed as if she would tear Castanier in pieces.
“You know me too well to believe it,” Castanier retorted. Aquilina was
benumbed by his coolness.
“Then how do you know it?” she murmured.
“I did not know it until I went into the drawing-room; now I know
it--now I see and know all things, and can do all things.”
The sergeant was overcome with amazement.
“Very well then, save him, save him, dear!” cried the girl, flinging
herself at Castanier’s feet. “If nothing is impossible to you, save him!
I will love you, I will adore you, I will be your slave and not your
mistress. I will obey your wildest whims; you shall do as you will
with me. Yes, yes, I will give you more than love; you shall have a
daughter’s devotion as well as... Rodolphe! why will you not understand!
After all, however violent my passions may be, I shall be yours for
ever! What should I say to persuade you? I will invent pleasures... I...
Great heavens! one moment! whatever you shall ask of me--to fling myself
from the window for instance--you will need to say but one word, ‘Leon!’
and I will plunge down into hell. I would bear any torture, any pain of
body or soul, anything you might inflict upon me!”
Castanier heard her with indifference. For an answer, he indicated Leon
to her with a fiendish laugh.
“The guillotine is waiting for him,” he repeated.
“No, no, no! He shall not leave this house. I will save him!” she cried.
“Yes; I will kill any one who lays a finger upon him! Why will you not
save him?” she shrieked aloud; her eyes were blazing, her hair unbound.
“Can you save him?”
“I can do everything.”
“Why do you not save him?”
“Why?” shouted Castanier, and his voice made the ceiling ring.--“Eh! it
is my revenge! Doing evil is my trade!”
“Die?” said Aquilina; “must he die, my lover? Is it possible?”
She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket that stood on the
chest of drawers and went to Castanier, who now began to laugh.
“You know very well that steel cannot hurt me now----”
Aquilina’s arm suddenly dropped like a snapped harp string.
“Out with you, my good friend,” said the cashier, turning to the
sergeant, “and go about your business.”
He held out his hand; the other felt Castanier’s superior power, and
could not choose but to obey.
“This house is mine; I could send for the commissary of police if I
chose, and give you up as a man who has hidden himself on my premises,
but I would rather let you go; I am a fiend, I am not a spy.”
“I shall follow him!” said Aquilina.
“Then follow him,” returned Castanier.--“Here, Jenny----”
Jenny appeared.
“Tell the porter to hail a cab for them.--Here Naqui,” said Castanier,
drawing a bundle of bank-notes from his pocket; “you shall not go away
like a pauper from a man who loves you still.”
He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquilina took the notes,
flung them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled upon them in a
frenzy of despair.
“We will leave this house on foot,” she cried, “without a farthing of
your money.--Jenny, stay where you are.”
“Good-evening!” answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notes again.
“I have come back from my journey.--Jenny,” he added, looking at the
bewildered waiting-maid, “you seem to me to be a good sort of girl. You
have no mistress now. Come here. This evening you shall have a master.”
Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the
house of one of her friends. But all Leon’s movements were suspiciously
watched by the police, and after a time he and three of his friends were
arrested. The whole story may be found in the newspapers of that day.
Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical
transformation. The Castanier of old no longer existed--the boy, the
young Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had been
tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate
lover who had committed a crime for Aquilina’s sake. His inmost nature
had suddenly asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses had
developed. His thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all the
things of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle above the
world.
Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction.
Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her infidelities;
and now all that blind passion had passed away as a cloud vanishes in
the sunlight.
Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress’ position and fortune,
and did the cashier’s will in all things; but Castanier, who could read
the inmost thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive underlying
this purely physical devotion. He amused himself with her, however,
like a mischievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the cherry and
flings away the stone. The next morning at breakfast time, when she
was fully convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of the house,
Castanier uttered one by one the thoughts that filled her mind as she
drank her coffee.
“Do you know what you are thinking, child?” he said, smiling. “I will
tell you: ‘So all that lovely rosewood furniture that I coveted so much,
and the pretty dresses that I used to try on, are mine now! All on easy
terms that Madame refused, I do no know why. My word! if I might
drive about in a carriage, have jewels and pretty things, a box at the
theatre, and put something by! with me he should lead a life of pleasure
fit to kill him if he were not as strong as a Turk! I never saw such
a man!’--Was not that just what you were thinking,” he went on, and
something in his voice made Jenny turn pale. “Well, yes, child; you
could not stand it, and I am sending you away for your own good; you
would perish in the attempt. Come, let us part good friends,” and he
coolly dismissed her with a very small sum of money.
The first use that Castanier had promised himself that he would make of
the terrible power brought at the price of his eternal happiness, was
the full and complete indulgence of all his tastes.
He first put his affairs in order, readily settled his accounts with
M. de Nucingen, who found a worthy German to succeed him, and then
determined on a carouse worthy of the palmiest days of the Roman Empire.
He plunged into dissipation as recklessly as Belshazzar of old went to
that last feast in Babylon. Like Belshazzar, he saw clearly through his
revels a gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters of flame, not on
the narrow walls of the banqueting-chamber, but over the vast spaces
of heaven that the rainbow spans. His feast was not, indeed, an orgy
confined within the limits of a banquet, for he squandered all the
powers of soul and body in exhausting all the pleasures of earth. The
table was in some sort earth itself, the earth that trembled beneath
his feet. His was the last festival of the reckless spendthrift who has
thrown all prudence to the winds. The devil had given him the key of the
storehouse of human pleasures; he had filled and refilled his hands, and
he was fast nearing the bottom. In a moment he had felt all that that
enormous power could accomplish; in a moment he had exercised it, proved
it, wearied of it. What had hitherto been the sum of human desires
became as nothing. So often it happens that with possession the vast
poetry of desire must end, and the thing possessed is seldom the thing
that we dreamed of.
Beneath Melmoth’s omnipotence lurked this tragical anticlimax of so
many a passion, and now the inanity of human nature was revealed to his
successor, to whom infinite power brought Nothingness as a dowry.
To come to a clear understanding of Castanier’s strange position, it
must be borne in mind how suddenly these revolutions of thought and
feeling had been wrought; how quickly they had succeeded each other;
and of these things it is hard to give any idea to those who have never
broken the prison bonds of time, and space, and distance. His relation
to the world without had been entirely changed with the expansion of his
faculties.
Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a few moments over the
fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above African
desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same insight that
could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend at a glance
the nature of any material object, just as he caught as it were all
flavors at once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like a despot;
a blow of the axe felled the tree that he might eat its fruits. The
transitions, the alternations that measure joy and pain, and diversify
human happiness, no longer existed for him. He had so completely glutted
his appetites that pleasure must overpass the limits of pleasure to
tickle a palate cloyed with satiety, and suddenly grown fastidious
beyond all measure, so that ordinary pleasures became distasteful.
Conscious that at will he was the master of all the women that he could
desire, knowing that his power was irresistible, he did not care to
exercise it; they were pliant to his unexpressed wishes, to his most
extravagant caprices, until he felt a horrible thirst for love, and
would have love beyond their power to give.
The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing
and consoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed--it was a
horrible position.
The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul and
his bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being; but
in him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of the
sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity of
longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on outspread
wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to other
spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and hopeless
knowledge. His soul dried up within him, for he hungered and thirsted
after things that can neither be drunk nor eaten, but for which he could
not choose but crave. His lips, like Melmoth’s, burned with desire; he
panted for the unknown, for he knew all things.