GAUDIN LEARNS STRANGE SECRETS IN THE BASTILLE
It was not until Galouchet, the gaoler, entered the chamber of the
Tour de la Liberté the next morning that Sainte-Croix awoke from his
slumbers--from one of those bright dreams of freedom, triumph, and
happiness, albeit always tempered with some vague mistrust, which
haunt our sleeping existence; the fairer in their visioned prospects,
the more gloomy and hopeless the reality.
Exili had already risen. He was looking over the contents of a small
chest of carved wood, placed on the table before him. The gaoler was
apparently making preparations for breakfast, clattering some metal
plates upon the undraped and rude table; and in the fireplace the
dense smoke was creeping through some hissing pieces of damp wood, as
the sap sputtered and bubbled from their ends. Gaudin stared about him
confusedly. The last impression of his dreams was mingled with his
waking sensations, and he remained silent for a few moments, after
some incoherent words, to collect his senses. Exili muttered some
conventional salute, and then went on with his scrutiny, whilst
Galouchet, having put the table in order, according to his own
notions, offered his assistance towards completing Sainte-Croix’s
toilet.
‘What charge will monsieur choose to defray for his nourishment?’
asked the gaoler, as Gaudin rose from his pallet.
‘What do you expect?’ inquired Sainte-Croix.
‘_Parbleu!_ we have all prices. You may live like a prince for fifty
livres a-day, or starve like a valet for two. This will include your
washing, if you are not over-fond of clean linen, and a candle
a-night. The firewood you must pay for separately.’
Gaudin looked towards the fireplace, and the struggling flame.
‘Ah!’ said Galouchet, divining his thoughts; ‘the wood is rather damp,
to be sure, but that makes it last the longer; and as you and Monsieur
Exili occupy the same room, it will come cheaper.’
‘Is there news in the city this morning, Galouchet?’ asked Exili.
‘But little,’ returned the functionary. ‘Pierre, the scullion, sleeps
out of the fortress, and tells me that an eboulement took place last
night, and the Bièvre burst into some of the _carrières_ of St.
Marcel; and fell so rapidly, in consequence, that all the mills this
side of St. Medard were stopped for three hours.’
‘Was anybody lost?’ inquired the physician.
‘It is believed so. A party of Bras d’Acier’s gang were hunted out of
the vaults between the Cordelières and Montrouge, like rats in our
_cachots_, when the rains come; and one of the superintendents at the
Gobelins was fished up, half-drowned, from a shaft in the Rue
Mouffetard.’
‘Do you know his name?’ asked Sainte-Croix eagerly.
‘I can’t say I do,’ returned Galouchet. ‘What rate will you fix your
_nourriture_ at, monsieur?’ he continued.
‘I care not,’ said Gaudin; ‘only let it be something that I can eat.’
The day passed on, but the hours lagged so tediously that Time himself
appeared to be a prisoner. Little conversation passed between the two
inmates of the cell. Exili was occupied in writing nearly the whole
day; and Gaudin, who could ill bear the confinement, with his restless
and excitable spirit, after the hour’s exercise in the great court
allowed to all the prisoners, obtained permission to walk on the
ramparts in front of the sentinels. This position commanded a view
along the Rue St. Antoine, as well as of the houses in the Rue St.
Paul. Towards this point were Gaudin’s eyes constantly directed. He
beheld people moving in the streets, and over the plains in the
immediate vicinity of the city walls--the _coup d’œil_ was alive with
commerce--and the buzz of their voices plainly reached his ear; but he
envied them not, nor drew one comparison between their freedom and his
state of durance, except when he saw them turn from the great
thoroughfare into the small street wherein the Hôtel d’Aubray was
situated. He fancied he could pick out the pointed roof of the mansion
from amongst the others, and once he imagined that he saw the delicate
figure of the Marchioness emerge from the Rue St. Paul, and pass
towards the city, without so much as throwing back a glance towards
the fortress in which she knew he was confined. And then the hell of
jealousy raged in his veins, and he felt the bitterness of captivity.
He thought of the circumstances under which he had found her with
Theria the preceding evening; then came back the recollection of the
impassioned interview, and her apparent devotion to him, until the
struggle of his conflicting feelings to establish what he hoped for,
over what he dreaded, nearly maddened him.
At length it got dusk, and he could see no more. The murmur of the
peopled city died away; the lights appeared in the embrasures of the
Bastille, and the night-wind chilled him. He descended once more to
his cell, and found his gaoler there.
‘I was coming to seek you, monsieur,’ he said, ‘for the curfew will
soon ring. Mass! your supper is nearly cold. Here is a slice of
_rôti_, a plate of eggs, and a salad; you could not fare better at
home.’
‘Have any of my things come?’ asked Gaudin.
‘They are being overlooked in the _corps du garde_,’ replied the man.
‘By the way, monsieur, my sweetheart, Françoise Roussel, gave me this
note for you, when I met her without the walls this afternoon. She did
not care that it should be read by the governor.’
Gaudin snatched the note, and discerned the handwriting of the
Marchioness. Hastily tearing it open, he read--
‘Be true and patient; all may yet be well, and you will be revenged.
Rely on me to aid you; we have gone too far to retract. In life, and
after it, yours _only_,
‘Marie.’
‘I must put out your light,’ said Galouchet. ‘Last night you were
brought in late, and nothing was said; but neither fire nor lamp can
be allowed between curfew and sunrise.’
‘You can have it, my good fellow,’ said Gaudin, still quivering with
the emotion which the letter had called up. ‘Here--here is some money
for you. I will keep your secret. You may retire.’
The man raked out the embers on the grate, and departed. As soon as
the clanking of the three doors that shut in the cell had ceased,
Exili, who till now had remained quiet, arose from his table, and
approaching Sainte-Croix in the darkness, said rapidly--
‘I will now show you some of the mysteries by which my career has, up
to yesterday, thriven. But, first--precaution!’
He took his cloak, and by the aid of the forks on the table fixed it
so that it covered the window, the position of which could be plainly
ascertained by the faint moonlight from without, and then he returned
towards the table at which he had been sitting.
‘The clods without think that our light and darkness is subservient to
their will alone; but the elements obey not such idiots. The ether
which percolates all things--vitalised and inorganic--setting up a
communion between them, reveals not itself to the uninitiated. With
me, the various elements are as abject slaves, whom I can summons at
my bidding.’
As he spoke, he dashed a small rod he held against the wall, and a
flame, so bright that Gaudin could hardly look upon it, burst from its
extremity. In another moment he had relighted the lamp, and he then
shook the blaze amongst the embers on the hearth, which were presently
rekindled. Sainte-Croix looked upon his companion with the gaze of one
bewildered. Exili read the expression of the other’s features and
continued, perceiving his advantage--
‘Life and death are equally within my grasp. Whom shall I call up?
Will you see the ghastly corpse of the Croce Bianca, at Milan?’
‘No! No!’ cried Gaudin, covering his eyes with his hand, as if he
dreaded to meet the horrid sight.
‘Will that serve to recall its memory as well?’ asked Exili, throwing
a phial upon the table.
A glance sufficed to show its nature to Sainte-Croix. It was a small
bottle of the terrible Aqua Tofana--the ‘Manna of St. Nicholas de
Barri.’
‘That menstruum is powerless, compared to what I am about to show you.
But first, look here.’
He stooped beneath the table, and pulled out a species of cage, in
which several rats were huddled together, fighting, and scrambling
over their fellows.
‘Where did you get those vermin from?’ inquired Gaudin.
‘There are more in the Bastille than are wanted,’ replied Exili. ‘They
have been willingly granted by some poor wretch at the base of our
tower. Galouchet bought them. I told him they were to study anatomy
from.’
He plunged his hand fearlessly amongst them, and drew forth one of the
shrieking animals. Then squeezing its throat, he poured a drop or two
of the fluid down the mouth. The rat gave a few convulsive throes, and
he threw it down, dead, upon the table.
‘You see the effect of the potion,’ he continued. ‘Now, look here.’
Pouring the greater part of the remaining liquid of the phial into a
glass, he coolly drank it off before Gaudin could arrest his hand. But
no effect supervened. Instead of falling lifeless as Sainte-Croix had
anticipated, Exili gazed at him, and, with a short, hollow laugh,
threw the empty bottle amongst the embers.
‘Are you man or demon?’ asked Gaudin, scarcely trusting to his senses.
‘Neither,’ said Exili. ‘I have lost the sympathies of the former; the
latter I may be hereafter. I have studied poisons, as you see; but I
have also studied their antidotes. Have you kept the small phial by
you, which you bought of me at Milan?’
‘It has never been out of my keeping until now,’ said Gaudin.
‘With that you could command twenty lives,’ said Exili; ‘and yet my
remedies could so blunt and weaken its malignity that I would take it
all at one draught. You shall learn more. Attend!’
From his box of carved wood he drew forth a series of test glasses,
and half-filled them with water from the prison _cruche_. He next took
a small flacon, and pinched a few atoms of the powder it contained
into the first glass, varying the addition in each. Then dropping some
colourless fluid into them, one after the other, a precipitate fell
down in all, in clouds of the brightest tints, but each different.
‘See how completely these dull minerals do my bidding,’ he exclaimed.
‘To you the potion offers no trace by which its nature could be told;
to me there is not an atom suspended in it, in its invisible but
imperishable form, which cannot be reproduced before our eyes. Do you
believe in me?’
‘I do--I do,’ returned Gaudin. ‘What price do you put upon the
revelation of these mysteries?’
‘Nothing--beyond your attention and secrecy.’
‘And yet you love revenge,’ said Sainte-Croix, eyeing him with
mistrust.
‘It is my life--my very blood,’ answered Exili. ‘And my revenge--the
deepest I can have--is to teach you all I know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Simply what I have said. You may call it good for evil if you choose,
but still it is my revenge. You have time and leisure before you. Make
the best of both.’
Again Exili gazed at Sainte-Croix with the expression of a vulture
hovering about its prey, as Gaudin advanced to the table, and, with
some curiosity, handled the apparatus which was spread about it. The
physician opened a drawer in the box, which was apparently filled with
sand. This, however, was but on a false top, which he drew away, and
discovered several small bottles, of the size of one’s finger, which
he took out.
‘These small messengers have worked great events in their time,’ he
said. ‘This,’ taking up one, ‘was the terror of Rome, of Verona, and
Milan. I could add much to the records of the Scaliger and Borromeo
families, respecting its efficacy. This,’ he added, pointing to
another, ‘is so potent that a century and a half has not impaired its
power. It is the foam of a dying boar, slain by poison, collected as
you see, and was the scourge with which the Borgias swept away their
enemies.’
‘Why is one of the phials gilt?’ asked Gaudin.
‘Because its contents are the most precious,’ returned Exili. ‘Its
power baffled even the attempts at imitation of Spara and Tofana. It
was discovered by a monk in a convent at Palermo, and the secret has
remained with me alone.’
‘It is clear as water,’ observed Gaudin, holding it against the light.
‘And like water, without taste or odour. It aided many whose hearts
clung to one another,’ he continued, watching Sainte-Croix with his
eagle eyes; ‘by clearing away the obstacles that impeded their union.’
Gaudin stretched out his hand, trembling with emotion, and clutched
the phial, which he regarded intently, his dilated pupil, parted lips,
and short, hurried breathing, showing the conflict of passions that
was going on within him. Exili passed a few more of the phials in
review before him. From one he let fall a few drops upon the hearth;
it hissed and boiled, and the stone remained black where it had been;
into another he dipped a piece of gold, and its yellow and polished
surface was changed to a dull gray by the contact.
Then throwing out several of the allusions which he found had most
deeply stung his companion the night before, he placed himself by the
side of Gaudin, and proceeded to explain to him the rough composition
of the different articles the box contained. And as he saw the intense
attention, the almost gasping eagerness with which Sainte-Croix
followed his instructions, he exclaimed almost unconsciously,
‘Mine--mine for ever!’