IV

I once spoke to my aunt of the vow I had taken, the solemn promise

I had made to myself that I would discover the murderer of my

father, and take vengeance upon him, and she laid her hand upon my

mouth. She was a pious woman, and she repeated the words of the

gospel: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." Then she added: "We

must leave the punishment of the crime to Him; His will is hidden

from us. Remember the divine precept and promise, 'Forgive and you

shall be forgiven.' Never say: 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a

tooth.' Ah, no; drive this enmity out of your heart, Cornelis;

yes, even this." And there were tears in her eyes.

My poor aunt! She thought me made of sterner stuff than I really

was. There was no need of her advice to prevent my being consumed

by the desire for vengeance which had been the fixed star of my

early youth, the blood-colored beacon aflame in my night. Ah! the

resolutions of boyhood, the "oaths of Hannibal" taken to ourselves,

the dream of devoting all our strength to one single and unchanging

aim--life sweeps all that away, together with our generous

illusions, ardent enthusiasm, and noble hopes. What a difference

there is--what a falling off--between the boy of fifteen, unhappy

indeed, but so bold and proud in 1870, and the young man of eight

years later, in 1878! And to think, only to think, that but for

chance occurrences, impossible to foresee, I should still be, at

this hour, the young man whose portrait hangs upon the wall above

the table at which I am writing. Of a surety, the visitors to the

Salon of that year (1878) who looked at this portrait among so many

others, had no suspicion that it represented the son of a father

who had come to so tragic an end. And I, when I look at that

commonplace image of an ordinary Parisian, with eyes unlit by any

fire or force of will, complexion paled by the fatigues of fashion,

hair cut in the mode of the day, strictly correct dress and

attitude, I am astonished to think that I could have lived as I

actually did live at that period. Between the misfortunes that

saddened my childhood, and those of quite recent date which have

finally laid waste my life, the course of my existence was

colorless, monotonous, vulgar, just like that of anybody else. I

shall merely note the stages of it.

In the second half of 1870, the Franco-Prussian war takes place.

The invasion finds me at Compiegne, where I am passing my holidays

with my aunt. My stepfather and my mother remain in Paris during

the siege. I go on with my studies under the tuition of an old

priest belonging to the little town, who prepared my father for his

first communion. In the autumn of 1871 I return to Versailles; in

August, 1873, I take my bachelor's degree, and then I do my one

year's voluntary service in the army at Angers under the easiest

possible conditions. My colonel was the father of my old

schoolfellow, Rocquin. In 1874 I am set free from tutelage by my

stepfather's advice. This was the moment at which my task was to

have been begun, the time appointed with my own soul; yet, four

years afterwards, in 1878, not only was the vengeance that had been

the tragic romance, and, so to speak, the religion of my childhood,

unfulfilled, but I did not trouble myself about it.

I was cruelly ashamed of my indifference when I thought about it;

but I am now satisfied that it was not so much the result of

weakness of character as of causes apart from myself which would

have acted in the same way upon any young man placed in my

situation. From the first, and when I faced my task of vengeance,

an insurmountable obstacle arose before me. It is equally easy and

sublime to strike an attitude and exclaim: "I swear that I will

never rest until I have punished the guilty one." In reality, one

never acts except in detail, and what could I do? I had to proceed

in the same way as justice had proceeded, to reopen the inquiry

which had been pushed to its extremity without any result.

I began with the Judge of Instruction,* who had had the carriage of

the matter, and who was now a Counsellor of the Court. He was a

man of fifty, very quiet and plain in his way, and he lived in the

Ile de Paris, on the first floor of an ancient house, from whose

windows he could see Notre Dame, primitive Paris, and the Seine,

which is as narrow as a canal at that place.

* The translator renders literally those terms and phrases relating

to the French criminal law and procedure which have no analogous

expression in English.

M. Massol, so he was named, was quite willing to resume with me the

analysis of the data which had been furnished by the Instruction.

No doubt existed either as to the personality of the assassin, or

the hour at which the crime was committed. My father had been

killed between two and three o'clock in the day, without a

struggle, by that tall, broad-shouldered personage whose

extraordinary disguise indicated, according to the magistrate, "an

amateur." Excess of complication is always an imprudence, for it

multiplies the chances of failure. Had the assassin dyed his skin

and worn a wig because my father knew him by sight?

To this M. Massol said "No; for M. Cornelis, who was very

observant, and who, besides, was on his guard--this is evident from

his last words when he left you--would have recognized him by his

voice, his glance, and his attitude. A man cannot change his

height and his figure, although he may change his face."

M. Massol's theory of this disguise was that the wearer had adopted

it in order to gain time to get out of France, should the corpse be

discovered on the day of the murder. Supposing that a description

of a man with a very brown complexion and a black beard had been

telegraphed in every direction, the assassin, having washed off his

paint, laid aside his wig and beard, and put on other clothes,

might have crossed the frontier without arousing the slightest

suspicion. There was reason to believe that the pretended Rochdale

lived abroad. He had spoke in English at the hotel, and the people

there had taken him for an American; it was therefore presumable

either that he was a native of the United States, or that he

habitually resided there. The criminal was, then, a foreigner,

American or English, or perhaps a Frenchman settled in America. As

for the motive of so complicated a crime, it was difficult to admit

that it could be robbery alone. "And yet," observed the Judge of

Instruction, "we do not know what the note-case carried off by the

assassin contained. But," he added, "the hypothesis of robbery

seems to me to be utterly routed by the fact that, while Rochdale

stripped the dead man of his watch, he left a ring, which was much

more valuable, on his finger. From this I conclude that he took

the watch merely as a precaution to throw the police off the scent.

My supposition is that the man killed M. Cornelis for revenge.

Then the former Judge of Instruction gave me some singular examples

of the resentment cherished against medical experts employed in

legal cases, Procureurs of the Republic, and Presidents of Assize.

His theory was, that in the course of his practice at the bar my

father might have excited resentment of a fierce and implacable

kind; for he had won many suits of importance, and no doubt had

made enemies of those against whom he employed his great powers.

Supposing one of those persons, being ruined by the result, had

attributed that ruin to my father, there would be an explanation of

all the apparatus of this deadly vengeance.

M. Massol begged me to observe that the assassin, whether he were a

foreigner or not, was known in Paris. Why, if this were not so,

should the man have so carefully avoided being seen in the street?

He had been traced out during his first stay in Paris, when he

bought the wig and the beard, and that time he put up at a small

hotel in the Rue d'Aboukir under the name of Rochdale, and

invariably went out in a cab. "Observe also," said the Judge,

"that he kept his room on the day before the murder, and on the

morning of the actual day. He breakfasted in his apartment, having

breakfasted and dined there the day before. But, when he was in

London, and when he lived at the hotel to which your father

addressed his first letters, he came and went without any

precautions."

And this was all. The addresses of three hotels--such were the

meagre particulars that formed the whole of the information to

which I listened with passionate eagerness; the magistrate had no

more to tell me. He had small, twinkling, very light eyes, and his

smooth face wore an expression of extreme keenness. His language

was measured, his general demeanor was cold, obliging, and mild, he

was always closely shaven, and in him one recognized at once the

well-balanced and methodical mind which had given him great

professional weight. He acknowledged that he had been unable to

discover anything, even after a close analysis of the whole

existing situation of my father, as well as his past.

"Ah, I have thought a great deal about this said he, adding that

before he resigned his post as Judge of Instruction he had

carefully reperused the notes of the case. He had again questioned

the concierge of the Imperial Hotel and other persons. Since he

had become Counsellor to the Court, he had indicated to his

successor what he believed to be a clue; a robbery committed by a

carefully made-up Englishman had led him to believe the thief to be

identical with the pretended Rochdale. Then there was nothing

more.

These steps had, however, been of use inasmuch as they barred the

rule of limitation, and he laid stress on that fact. I consulted

him then as to how much time still remained for me to seek out the

truth on my own account. The last Act of Instruction dated from

1873, so that I had until 1883 to discover the criminal and deliver

him up to public justice. What madness! Ten years had already

elapsed since the crime, and I, all alone, insignificant, not

possessed of the vast resources at the disposal of the police, I

presumed to imagine that I should triumph, where so skillful a

ferret as he had failed! Folly! Yes; it was so.

And still there was nothing, no indication whatever. Nevertheless,

I tried.

I began a thorough and searching investigation of all the dead

man's papers. With that unbounded tenderness of hers for my

stepfather, which made me so miserable, my mother had placed all

these papers in M. Termonde's keeping. Alas! Why should she have

understood those niceties of feeling on my part, which rendered the

fusion of her present with her past so repugnant to me, any more

clearly on this point than on any other? M. Termonde had at least

scrupulously respected the whole of those papers, from plans of

association and prospectuses to private letters. Among the latter

were several from M. Termonde himself, which bore testimony to the

friendship that had formerly subsisted between my mother's first

husband and her second. Had I not known this always? Why should I

suffer from the knowledge?

And still there was nothing, no indication whatever to put me on

the track of a suspicion.

I evoked the image of my father as he lived, just as I had seen him

for the last time; I heard him replying to M. Termonde's question

in the dining-room of the Rue Tronchet, and speaking of the man who

awaited him to kill him: "A singular man whom I shall not be sorry

to observe more closely." And then he had gone out and was walking

towards his death while I was playing in the little salon, and my

mother was talking to the friend who was one day to be her master

and mine. What a happy home-picture, while in that hotel room--

Ah! was I never to find the key of the terrible enigma? Where was

I to go? What was I to do? At what door was I to knock?

At the same time that a sense of the responsibility of my task

disheartened me, the novel facilities of my new way of life

contributed to relax the tension of my will. During my school

days, the sufferings I underwent from jealousy of my stepfather,

the disappointment of my repressed affections, the meanness and

penury of my surroundings, many grievous influences, had maintained

the restless ardor of my feelings; but this also had undergone a

change. No doubt I still continued to love my mother deeply and

painfully, but I now no longer asked her for what I knew she would

not give me, my unshared place, a separate shrine in her heart. I

accepted her nature instead of rebelling against it.

Neither had I ceased to regard my stepfather with morose antipathy;

but I no longer hated him with the old vehemence. His conduct to

me after I had left school was irreproachable. Just as in my

childhood, he had made it a point of honor never to raise his voice

in speaking to me, so he now seemed to pique himself upon an entire

absence of interference in my life as a young man. When, having

passed my baccalaureate, I announced that I did not wish to adopt

any profession, but without a reason--the true one was my

resolution to devote myself entirely to the fulfillment of my task

of justice--he had not a word to say against that strange decision;

nay, more, he brought my mother to consent to it.

When my fortune was handed over to me, I found that my mother, who

had acted as my guardian, and my stepfather, her co-trustee, had

agreed not to touch my funds during the whole period of my

education; the interest had been re-invested, and I came into

possession, not of 750,000 francs, but of more than a million.

Painful as I felt the obligation of gratitude towards the man whom

I had for years regarded as my enemy, I was bound to acknowledge

that he had acted an honorable part towards me. I was well aware

that no real contradiction existed between these high-minded

actions and the harshness with which he had imprisoned me at

school, and, so to speak, relegated me to exile. Provided that I

renounced all attempts to form a third between him and his wife, he

would have no relations with me but those of perfect courtesy; but

I must not be in my mother's house. His will was to reign entirely

alone over the heart and life of the woman who bore his name.

How could I have contended with him? Why, too, should I have

blamed him, since I knew so well that in his place, jealous as I

was, my own conduct would have been exactly similar?

I yielded, therefore, because I was powerless to contend with a

love which made my mother happy; because I was weary of keeping up

the daily constraint of my relations with her and him, and also

because I hoped that when once I was free I should be better fitted

for my task as a doer of justice. I myself asked to be permitted

to leave the house, so that at nineteen I possessed absolute

independence, an apartment of my own in the Avenue Montaigne, close

to the round-point in the Champs Elysees, a yearly income of 50,000

francs, the entree to all the salons frequented by my mother, and

the entree, too, to all the places at which one may amuse one's

self. How could I have resisted the influences of such a position?

Yes, I had dreamed of being an avenger, a justiciary, and I allowed

myself to be caught up almost instantly into the whirlwind of that

life of pleasure whose destructive power those who see it only from

the outside cannot measure. It is a futile and exacting existence

which fritters away your hours as it fritters away your mind,

raveling out the stuff of time thread by thread with irreparable

loss, and also the more precious stuff of mental and moral

strength.

With respect to that task of mine, my task as an avenger, I was

incapable of immediate action--what and whom was I to attack?

And so I availed myself of all the opportunities that presented

themselves of disguising my inaction by movement, and soon the days

began to hurry on, and press one upon the other, amid those

innumerable amusements of which the idle rich make a code of duties

to be performed. What with the morning ride in the Bois, afternoon

calls, dinner parties, parties to the theater and after midnight,

play at the club, or the pursuit of pleasure elsewhere--how was I

to find leisure for the carrying out of a project? I had horses,

intrigues, an absurd duel in which I acquitted myself well,

because, as I believe, the tragic ideas that were always at the

bottom of my life favored me.

A woman of forty persuaded me that I was her first love; then I

persuaded myself that I was in love with a Russian great lady, who

was living in Paris. The latter was--indeed she still is--one of

those incomparable actresses in society, who, in order to surround

themselves with a sort of court, composed of admirers who are more

or less rewarded, employ all the allurements of luxury, wit, and

beauty, but who have not a particle of either imagination or heart,

although they fascinate by a display of the most refined fancies

and the most vivid emotions. I led the life of a slave to the

caprices of this soulless coquette for nearly six months, and

learned that women of the fashionable world and women of "the half-

world" are very much alike in point of worth. The former are

intolerable on account of their lies, their assumption, and their

vanity; the others are equally odious by reason of their vulgarity,

their stupidity, and their sordid love of lucre.

I forgot all my absurd relations with women of both orders in the

excitement of play, and yet I was well aware of the meanness of

that diversion, which only ceases to be insipid when it becomes

odious, because it is a clever calculation upon money to be gained

without working for it. There was in me something at once wildly

dissipated and yet disgusted, which drove me to excess, and at the

same time inspired me with bitter self-contempt. In the innermost

recesses of my being the memory of my father dwelt, and poisoned my

thoughts at their source. An impression of dark fatalism invaded

my sick mind; it was so strange that I should live as I was living,

nevertheless, I did live thus, and the visible "I" had but little

likeness to the real.

Upon me, then, poor creature that I was, as upon the whole

universe, a fate rested. "Let it drive me," I said, and yielded

myself up to it. I went to sleep, pondering upon ideas of the most

somber philosophy, and I awoke to resume an existence without worth

or dignity, in which I was losing not only my power of carrying out

my design of reparation towards the phantom which haunted my dreams

but all self-esteem, and all conscience.

Who could have helped me reascend this fatal stream? My mother?

She saw nothing but the fashionable exterior of my life, and she

congratulated herself that I had "ceased to be a savage." My

stepfather? But he had been, voluntarily or not, favorable to my

disorderly life. Had he not made me master of my fortune at the

most dangerous age? Had he not procured me admission, at the

earliest moment, to the clubs to which he belonged, and in every

way facilitated my entrance into society? My aunt? Ah, yes, my

aunt was grieved by my mode of life; and yet, was she not glad that

at any rate I had forgotten the dark resolution of hate that had

always frightened her? And, besides, I hardly ever saw her now.

My visits to Compiegne were few, for I was at the age when one

always finds time for one's pleasures, but never has any for one's

nearest duties. If, indeed, there was a voice that was constantly

lifted up against the waste of my life in vulgar pleasures, it was

that of the dead, who slept in the day, unavenged; that voice rose,

rose, rose unceasingly, from the depths of all my musings, but I

had accustomed myself to pay it no heed, to make it no answer. Was

it my fault that everything, from the most important to the

smallest circumstance, conspired to paralyze my will? And so I

existed, in a sort of torpor which was not dispelled even by the

hurly-burly of my mock passions and my mock pleasures.

The falling of a thunderbolt awoke me from this craven slumber of

the will. My Aunt Louise was seized with paralysis, towards the

end of the sad year 1878, in the month of December. I had come in

at night, or rather in the morning, having won a large sum at play.

Several letters and also a telegram awaited me. I tore open the

blue envelope, while I hummed the air of a fashionable song, with a

cigarette between my lips, untroubled by an idea that I was about

to be apprised of an event which would become, after my father's

death and my mother's second marriage, the third great date in my

life. The telegram was signed by Julie, my former nurse, and it

told me that my aunt had been taken ill quite suddenly, also that I

must come at once, although there was a hope of her recovery.

This bad news was the more terrible to me because I had received a

letter from my aunt just a week previously, and in it the dear old

lady complained, as usual, that I did not come to see her. My

answer to her letter was lying half-written upon my writing-table.

I had not finished it; God knows for what futile reason. It needs

the advent of that dread visitant, Death, to make us understand

that we ought to make good haste and love WELL those whom we do

love, if we would not have them pass away from us forever, before

we have loved them enough.

Bitter remorse, in that I had not proved to her sufficiently how

dear she was to me, increased my anxiety about my aunt's state. It

was two o'clock a. m., the first train for Compiegne did not start

until six; in the interval she might die. Those were very long

hours of waiting, which I killed by turning over in my mind all my

shortcomings towards my father's only sister, my sole kinswoman.

The possibility of an irrevocable parting made me regard myself as

utterly ungrateful! My mental pain grew keener when I was in the

train speeding through the cold dawn of a winter's day, along the

road I knew so well.

As I recognized each familiar feature of the way, I became once

more the schoolboy whose heart was full of unuttered tenderness,

and whose brain was laden with the weight of a terrible mission.

My thoughts outstripped the engine, moving too slowly, to my

impatient fancy, which summoned up that beloved face, so frank and

so simple, the mouth with its thickish lips and its perfect

kindliness, the eyes out of which goodness looked, with their

wrinkled, tear-worn lids, the flat bands of grizzled hair. In what

state should I find her? Perhaps, if on that night of repentance,

wretchedness, and mental disturbance, my nerves had not been

strained to the utmost--yes, perhaps I should not have experienced

those wild impulses when by the side of my aunt's deathbed, which

rendered me capable of disobeying the dying woman. But how can I

regret my disobedience, since it was the one thing that set me on

the track of the truth? No, I do not regret anything, I am better

pleased to have done what I have done.

V

My good old Julie was waiting for me at the station. Her eyes had

failed her of late, for she was seventy years old, nevertheless she

recognized me as I stepped out of the train, and began to talk to

me in her usual interminable fashion so soon as we were seated in

the hired coupe, which my aunt had sent to meet me whenever I came

to Compiegne, from the days of my earliest childhood. How well I

knew the heavy old vehicle, with its worn cushions of yellow

leather, and the driver, who had been in the service of the livery

stable keeper as long as I could remember. He was a little man

with a merry, roguish face, and eyes twinkling with fun; but he

tried to give a melancholy tone to his salutation that morning.

"It took her yesterday," said Julie, while the vehicle rumbled

heavily through the streets, "but you see it had to happen. Our

poor demoiselle had been changing for weeks past. She was so

trustful, so gentle, so just; she scolded, she ferreted about, she

suspected--there, then, her head was all astray. She talked of

nothing but thieves and assassins; she thought everybody wanted to

do her some harm, the tradespeople, Jean Mariette, myself--yes, I

too. She went into the cellar every day to count the bottles of

wine, and wrote the number down on a paper. The next day she found

the same number, and she would maintain the paper was not the same,

she disowned her own handwriting. I wanted to tell you this the

last time you came here, but I did not venture to say anything; I

was afraid it would worry you, and then I thought these were only

freaks, that she was a little crazy, and it would pass off. Well,

then, I came down yesterday to keep her company at her dinner, as

she always liked me to do, because, you know, she was fond of me in

reality, whether she was ill or well. I could not find her.

Mariette, Jean, and I searched everywhere, and at last Jean

bethought him of letting the dog loose; the animal brought us

straight to the wood-stock, and there we found her lying at full

length upon the ground. No doubt she had gone to the stack to

count the logs. We lifted her up, our poor dear demoiselle! Her

mouth was crooked, and one side of her could not move. She began

to talk. Then we thought she was mad, for she said senseless words

which we could not understand; but the doctor assures us that she

is perfectly clear in her head, only that she utters one word when

she means another. She gets angry if we do not obey her on the

instant. Last night when I was sitting up with her she asked for

some pins. I brought them and she was angry. Would you believe

that it was the time of night she wanted to know? At length, by

dint of questioning her, and by her yesses and noes, which she

expresses with her sound hand, I have come to make out her meaning.

If you only knew how troubled she was all night about you; I saw

it, and when I uttered your name her eyes brightened. She repeats

words, you would think she raves: she calls for you. Now look

here, M. Andre, it was the ideas she had about your poor father

that brought on her illness. All these last weeks she talked of

nothing else. She would say: 'If only they do not kill Andre also.

As for me, I am old, but he so young, so good, so gentle.' And she

cried--yes, she cried incessantly. 'Who is it that you think wants

to harm M. Andre?' I asked her. Then she turned away from me with

a look of distrust that cut me to the heart, although I knew that

her head was astray. The doctor says that she believes herself

persecuted, and that it is a mania; he also says that she may

recover, but will never have her speech again."

I listened to Julie's talk in silence; I made no answer. I was not

surprised that my Aunt Louise had begun to be attacked by a mental

malady; the trials of her life sufficiently explained this, and I

could also account for several singularities that I had observed in

her attitude towards me of late. She had surprised me much by

asking me to bring back a book of my father's which I had never

thought of taking away. "Return it to me," she said, insisting

upon it so strongly, that I instituted a search for the book, and

at last unearthed it from the bottom of a cupboard where it had

been placed, as if on purpose, under a heap of other books.

Julie's prolix narrative only enlightened me as to the sad cause of

what I had taken for the oddity of a fidgety and lonely old maid.

On the other hand, I could not take the ideas of my father's death

so philosophically as Julie accepted them. What were those ideas?

Many a time, in the course of conversation with her, I had vaguely

felt that she was not opening her heart quite freely to me. Her

determined opposition to my plans of a personal inquiry might

proceed from her piety, which would naturally cause her to

disapprove of any thought or project of vengeance, but was there

nothing else, nothing besides that piety in question? Her strange

solicitude for my personal safety, which even led her to entreat me

not to go out unarmed in the evening, or get into an empty

compartment in a train, with other counsels of the same kind, was

no doubt caused by morbid excitement; still her constant and

distressing dread might possibly rest upon a less vague foundation

than I imagined.

I also recalled, with a certain apprehension, that so soon as she

ceased to be able completely to control her mind these strange

fears took stronger possession of her than before. "What!" said I

to myself, "am I becoming like her, that I let such things occur to

me? Are not these fixed ideas quite natural in a person whose

brain is racked by the mania of persecution, and who has lost a

beloved brother under circumstances equally mysterious and

tragical?"

"She is awake," said Julie, who had taken the maid's place at the

foot of the bed. I approached my aunt and called her by her name.

I then clearly saw her poor face distorted by paralysis.

She recognized me, and as I bent down to kiss her, she stroked my

cheek with her sound hand. This caress, which was habitual with

her, she repeated slowly several times. I placed her, with Julie's

assistance, on her back, so that she could see me distinctly; she

looked at me for a long time, and two heavy tears fell from the

eyes in which I read boundless tenderness, supreme anguish, and

inexpressible pity. I answered them by my own tears, which she

dried with the back of her hand; then she strove to speak to me,

but could only pronounce an incoherent sentence that struck me to

the heart. She saw, by the expression of my face, that I had not

understood her, and she made a desperate effort to find words in

which to render the thought evidently precise and lucid in her

mind. Once more she uttered an unintelligible phrase, and began

again to make the feeble gesture of despairing helplessness which

had so shocked me at her waking. She appeared, however, to take

courage when I put the question to her: "What do you want of me,

dear aunt?" She made a sign that Julie was to leave the room, and

no sooner were we alone than her face changed. With my help she

was able to slip her hand under her pillow, and withdraw her bunch

of keys; then separating one key from the others she imitated the

opening of a lock. I immediately remembered her groundless fears

of being robbed and I asked her whether she wanted the box to which

that key belonged. It was a small key of a kind that is specially

made for safety locks. I saw that I had guessed aright; she was

able to get out the word "yes," and her eyes brightened.

"But where is this box?" I asked. Once more she replied by a

sentence of which I could make nothing; and, seeing that she was

relapsing into a state of agitation, with the former heart-rending

movement, I begged her to allow me to question her and to answer by

gestures only. After some minutes, I succeeded in discovering that

the box in question was locked up in one of the two large cupboards

below stairs, and that the key of the cupboard was on the ring with

the others. I went downstairs, leaving her alone, as she had

desired me by signs to do. I had no difficulty in finding the

casket to which the little key adapted itself; although it was

carefully placed behind a bonnet-box and a case of silver forks.

The casket was of sweet-scented wood, and the initials J. C. were

inlaid upon the lid in gold and platinum. J. C., Justin Cornelies--

so, it had belonged to my father. I tried the key in the lock, to

make quite sure that I was not mistaken.

I then raised the lid, and glanced at the contents almost

mechanically, supposing that I was about to find a roll of business

papers, probably shares, a few trinket-cases, and rouleaux of

napoleons, a small treasure in fact, hidden away from motives of

fear. Instead of this, I beheld several small packets carefully

wrapped in paper, each being endorsed with the words, "Justin's

Letters," and the year in which they were written. My aunt had

preserved these letters with the same pious care that had kept her

from allowing anything whatever belonging to him in whom the

deepest affection of her life had centered, to be lost, parted

with, or injured.

But why had she never spoken to me of this treasure, which was more

precious to me than to anyone else in the world? I asked myself

that question as I closed the box; then I reflected that no doubt

she desired to retain the letters to the last hour of her life;

and, satisfied with this explanation, I went upstairs again.

From the doorway my eyes met hers, and I could not mistake their

look of impatience and intense anxiety. I placed the little coffer

on her bed and she instantly opened it, took out a packet of

letters, then another, finally kept only one out, replaced those

she had removed at first, locked the box, and signed to me to place

it on the chest of drawers. While I was clearing away the things

on the top of the drawers, to make a clear space for the box, I

caught sight, in the glass opposite to me, of the sick woman. By a

great effort she had turned herself partly on her side, and she was

trying to throw the packet of letters which she had retained into

the fireplace; it was on the right of her bed, and only about a

yard away from the foot. But she could hardly raise herself at

all, the movement of her hand was too weak, and the little parcel

fell on the floor. I hastened to her, to replace her head on the

pillows and her body in the middle of the bed, and then, with her

powerless arm she again began to make that terrible gesture of

despair, clutching the sheet with her thin fingers, while tears

streamed from her poor eyes.

Ah! how bitterly ashamed I am of what I am going to write in this

place! I will write it, however, for I have sworn to myself that I

will be true, even to the avowal of that fault, even to the avowal

of a worse still. I had no difficulty in understanding what was

passing in my aunt's mind; the little packet--it had fallen on the

carpet close to the fender--evidently contained letters which she

wished to destroy, so that I should not read them. She might have

burned them, dreading as she did their fatal influence upon me,

long since; yet I understood why she had shrunk from doing this,

year after year, I, who knew with what idolatry she worshipped the

smallest objects that had belonged to my father. Had I not seen

her put away the blotting-book which he used when he came to

Compiegne, with the paper and envelopes that were in it at his last

visit?

Yes, she had gone on waiting, still waiting, before she could bring

herself to part forever with those dear and dangerous letters, and

then her sudden illness came, and with it the terrible thought that

these papers would come into my possession. I could also take into

account that the unreasonable distrust which she had yielded to of

late had prevented her from asking Jean or Julie for the little

coffer. This was the secret--I understood it on the instant--of

the poor thing's impatience for my arrival, the secret also of the

trouble I had witnessed. And now her strength had betrayed her.

She had vainly endeavored to throw the letters into the fire, that

fire which she could hear crackling, without being able to raise

her head so as to see the flame. All these notions which presented

themselves suddenly to my thoughts took form afterwards; at the

moment they melted into pity for the suffering of the helpless

creature before me.

"Do not disturb yourself, dear aunt," said I, as I drew the

coverlet up to her shoulders, "I am going to burn those letters."

She raised her eyes, full of eager supplication. I closed the lids

with my lips and stooped to pick up the little packet. On the

paper in which it was folded, I distinctly read this date: "1864--

Justin's letters." 1864! that was the last year of my father's

life. I know it, I feel it, that which I did was infamous; the

last wishes of the dying are sacred. I ought not, no, I ought not

to have deceived her who was on the point of leaving me forever. I

heard her breathing quicken at that very moment. Then came a

whirlwind of thought too strong for me. If my Aunt Louise was so

wildly, passionately eager that those letters should be burned, it

was because they could put me on the right track of vengeance.

Letters written in the last year of my father's life, and she had

never spoken of them to me! I did not reason, I did not hesitate,

in a lightning-flash I perceived the possibility of learning--what?

I know not; but--of learning. Instead of throwing the packet of

letters into the fire, I flung it to one side, under a chair,

returned to the bedside and told her in a voice which I endeavored

to keep steady and calm, that her directions had been obeyed, that

the letters were burning. She took my hand and kissed it. Oh,

what a stab that gentle caress inflicted upon me! I knelt down by

her bedside, and hid my head in the sheets, so that her eyes should

not meet mine. Alas! it was not for long that I had to dread her

glance. At ten she fell asleep, but at noon her restlessness

recurred. At two the priest came, and administered the last

sacraments to her. She had a second stroke towards evening, never

recovered consciousness, and died in the night.