THE MISCHIEF STILL THICKENS ON ALL SIDES
Hurriedly as François d’Aubray ascended the staircase, yet the
others found time to receive him with due effect. Gaudin retreated
within the lumbering piece of furniture that took up half one side of
the room; Exili resumed his attitude of attention to the chemical
preparations going on; and Lachaussée, burying his features still
deeper in his capuchin cowl, hastily lighted a rude lamp standing on a
tripod near the table, which, trimmed with some medicated spirit,
burned with a ghastly flame that threw a cadaverous and almost
unearthly light upon the countenances of those who turned their faces
towards it.
‘I am before my time,’ said François, as he entered the room; ‘it yet
wants a good half-hour to curfew.’
‘We are at your service,’ replied Exili; ‘my assistant told me we
might expect you, Monsieur d’Aubray.’
‘You know me, then!’ exclaimed the other with surprise.
‘No more than I am acquainted with every one else who comes to seek my
aid,’ answered the physician calmly. ‘I should lay small claim to my
title of astrologer if I could not divine the position or desires of
my clients.’
‘Then you know my business here this evening?’
‘Part has been told me,’ said Exili--‘part, and the most important, I
can read here.’
From a small china cup he took some noisome black unguent, with which
he smeared his hands, and held them in the light of the coloured
flame. Then tracing (or pretending to do so) certain things delineated
on the compound, he continued--
‘I see Notre Dame by night, and a duel being fought on the _terrain_,
between yourself and one they call Gaudin de Sainte-Croix. You wound
him--he leaves with his _témoin_ in a boat, and you return to the
Hôtel d’Aubray.’
‘Well?’ asked François eagerly, gazing at Exili with breathless
attention.
‘Well,’ echoed the physician, ‘your sister, Madame de Brinvilliers, is
awaiting your return. You have words together, and she is determined
not to give up her lover, your late antagonist.’
‘Is that known also?’ asked François in a tone of mortification.
‘More by common report than by my magic,’ said Exili. ‘Walk on the
quays and carrefours and listen to what the people say if you doubt
me.’
‘Go on--go on,’ exclaimed the other.
‘I see no more,’ replied the physician; ‘all else has been told me by
mortal lips. You wish to stop this liaison, without totally crushing
your sister together with it. Is it not so?’
‘You are correct. I do not wish Madame de Brinvilliers to fall so
utterly; but Sainte-Croix’s influence with her must be put an end to.’
‘The means are simple,’ replied Exili.
‘I know what you would say,’ interrupted D’Aubray; ‘you would have me
exercise the most cursed power you have at your command--that of
poison. No, physician--I am no murderer. If I met Sainte-Croix again
in fair fight, I might deal less gently with him; but if he fell, it
should be in equal combat.’
‘You spoke too hurriedly,’ continued Exili. ‘I would suggest the
glance of an evil eye, or some philtre that might draw his affections
away, and disgust his present mistress. Here is such a one, unless you
would have him blighted by my glance.’
He fixed his eyes upon D’Aubray with such a terrible expression that
François firmly believed the power rested in them which he vaunted.
He returned no answer, but stretched out his hand for the small phial
that Exili held towards him.
‘Now seek the fairest _dame galante_ that you can find, who would have
an officer of the Normandy cavalry for her lover, and bid her drink
it--fearlessly, for it is harmless. Gaudin de Sainte-Croix will be in
her toils from that instant. The whirlpool of passion will drag him
round faster and faster in its eddies, until he is lost; for in
perdition alone can an attachment formed on passion end.’
‘Is there any one above another to whom I should give the draught?’
asked D’Aubray.
‘’Tis immaterial,’ replied Exili; ‘there is no lack of such beauties
at present in our gay city. Seek, if to-morrow be fine, and you will
find a score upon the Pont Neuf to serve your turn. If not, Marotte
Dupré, La Duménil, La Varenne--pshaw! even Montespan herself, in all
the plumage of her last triumph, if you choose to fly at such high
game.’
D’Aubray placed some pieces of gold on the table, and rose to depart,
taking the potion with him. Exili also got up from the seat at the
same time, as he said--
‘Stay--let me light you down. The stairs are old and crumbling, and
the passage obscure.’
He took the lamp from the table, and, preceding his guest, led the way
down the staircase. As they reached the street door he said hurriedly
to D’Aubray--
‘Your hatred of Sainte-Croix cannot be deadlier, fiercer than my own.
Be satisfied with knowing that, should the philtre fail, his days are
numbered.’
He watched the retreating form of François d’Aubray until it was lost
in the obscurity of the Rue de l’Hirondelle, and then returned back to
his apartment.
Sainte-Croix had emerged from his place of concealment, and was now
conversing with Lachaussée. Their talk ceased suddenly as Exili
entered; but there was an air of excitement about both, as though they
had been engaged in a warm, though brief argument. Gaudin’s face was
flushed, his brow knit, and his breathing forcible and hurried; whilst
Lachaussée was compressing his under-lip forcibly against his teeth,
as he caressed the mastiff with his foot--merely, however, with the
pretence of doing something, for his eye was fixed on Sainte-Croix
with no very bland expression.
The quick glance of Exili detected that they had been interrupted in
some earnest conversation. He, however, took no notice of it.
Sainte-Croix took his departure as soon as he imagined François
d’Aubray was out of the way; and Exili extinguished the fire in his
small furnace, and also prepared to leave the room.
‘I shall go to rest,’ he said to his assistant. ‘The only other
visitor we expect to-night will be content with your augury. See that
he pays, however; and, after you have got all you can by agreement,
see what else can be wrung from him by fear.’
He gathered a few articles together and left the chamber, proceeding
to the one immediately over it, where his slow and measured tread
could soon be heard pacing the old and ill-secured floor ere he
retired to bed.
Lachaussée remained for a few minutes after he left in deep
reflection, from which he was aroused by the sound of the curfew, as
the adjacent bell of Notre Dame, on the other side the left branch of
the Seine, swung its booming echoes over the dreary precincts of the
Rue de l’Hirondelle. It had not ceased when the restless manner of the
mastiff betokened the arrival of another stranger. A growl was
followed by a deep hoarse bark, and the beast rose from his crouching
position at the feet of Lachaussée, and shambled round the room with
the gait of some huge wild animal; his strange head-gear giving him
the appearance in the obscurity of a superhuman monster. At a word
from Lachaussée the mastiff returned and resumed his place; and,
after a blundering noise up the staircase, mingled with a few oaths
from the new-comer, the door opened, and no less a personage entered
the room than honest Benoit, the master of the mill-boat at the Pont
Notre Dame.
Lachaussée pulled his cowl closer over his head than ever as the
visitor advanced, apparently in great awe, and making numberless
obeisances as he approached.
‘You made an appointment here this evening,’ said Lachaussée in a
feigned voice, ‘touching some theft committed at your mill.’
‘I did, most infernal seigneur,’ replied Benoit, searching for some
term of appropriate respect. ‘That is--my wife,
Monsieur--Monseigneur--Bathilde would have me come, and never let me
have any rest until I did, though she is not often so fidgety.’
‘And what does she want to know?’
‘Mass! she told me to ask more things than I can recollect, when she
found I had made up my mind to come. Woman’s curiosity,
monsieur--nothing more. She would have known who the young gallant is
that spends all his time talking to the pretty wife of Pierre Huchet
when he is on guard as a good bourgeois; and why the Veuve Boidart
always goes to mass at St. Jacques la Boucherie, living, as she does,
in the Rue de la Harpe; and if it was the students or the Bohemians,
or both together, who stole the gilded weathercock from our mill-boat,
which was given to me by Monsieur le Rouge, and belonged to the
_tourelle_ of the Grand Châtelet that tumbled down the other day.’
‘You had better look for it amongst the scholars of Mazarin and Cluny
than in the Cours des Miracles,’ replied Lachaussée. ‘But this is not
all?’
‘She--in fact, I may say _we_,’ continued Benoit, ‘were most anxious
to know what has become of a fellow-countrywoman, one Louise Gauthier,
who has, we fear, fallen into bad hands. She was living with Madame
Scarron, but has not been heard of since the fete at Versailles.’
‘What fee can you pay to learn?’ asked Lachaussée. ‘At this season
the rulers of the planets require to be propitiated, and the
sacrifices are expensive.’
‘There are two good livres,’ said Benoit, laying the pieces down on
the table. ‘You should have more if I had earned them; but times are
bad for us poor workpeople.’
‘You have no more than this?’ inquired Lachaussée.
‘Not a sou; and Bathilde will have to go without her lace cap against
her fete day as it is. If I had more I would give it to you, so long
as you tell me of Louise Gauthier.’
Lachaussée perceived the Languedocian spoke honestly. Convinced that
he saw the extent of his wealth before him, he made some preparations
for his pretended incantation; and taking a bottle of spirit from
Exili’s table, he poured it on the expiring flame in the tripod, which
was leaping up in intermittent flashes, as if about to go out
altogether.
But as he bent over the lamp, in the carelessness of the moment he
used more of the medicated alcohol than was needed. It fired up, and
catching the vapour from the bottle, communicated with the contents,
causing the flask to explode violently. Lachaussée started back, as a
cloud of flame rose almost in his face. As it was, it laid hold of his
cowl, which was immediately on fire. Heedless of being on his guard,
in the fright and danger of the moment he threw it off, and his well
known features met the astonished gaze of Benoit, who was in no less a
state of alarm than the pretended sorcerer. But as he recognised the
ex-superintendent of the Gobelins, his common sense came back in great
strength, to the discomfiture of his belief in the supernatural. The
alarm finished with the explosion; but Benoit immediately exclaimed--
‘I think we have met before--in the catacombs of the Bièvre!’
Lachaussée had been so taken by surprise that for a few seconds he
made no reply; whilst Benoit’s fingers were working as though he
clutched an imaginary stick, and intended to use it. All his respect
for the magician had vanished in his desire to chastise Lachaussée.
‘Concealment is no longer needful,’ at length he observed.
‘Not at all,’ said Benoit, as he swept the pieces of money from the
table and put them in his pocket again. ‘I know now how it was you
were not drowned in the Bièvre; we shall see you on the gibbet yet.
’Tis a pity your horoscopes did not foretell this bad chance. I wish
you good-bye.’
‘Hold!’ cried Lachaussée, as Benoit advanced to the door: ‘you go not
so easily--we must understand each other first.’
‘It will not take long to do that,’ replied the Languedocian. ‘My arms
can speak pretty plainly when they are needed.’
‘And so can this,’ exclaimed the other, as he took down a cumbrous old
pistol fitted with a _snaphaunce_ and presented it at the
Languedocian. ‘Now--you are unarmed, and the odds are against you. We
must have a compact before you leave.’
Benoit retreated before the fire-arm, as though intimidated until he
reached the window; this he dashed open with his fist, and then
commenced calling for the watch with all his might. In an instant
Lachaussée raised the pistol and discharged its contents. But the
_snaphaunce_ was comparatively a clumsy contrivance; it hung a second
upon being released; and Benoit, perceiving the object of the other,
suddenly stooped, so that the charge, whatever it was, passed over his
head and through the window, shattering the casement on the other side
of the street.
‘A miss again!’ cried Benoit, jumping upright. ‘Bras d’Acier himself
took no better aim in the catacombs. _Au secours! aux voleurs!_ Now,
then, Monsieur Lachaussée, look out for yourself. Here comes the Guet
Royal, or I am mistaken.’
And indeed, as he spoke, the lanterns of the watch were discernible
coming round the street, attracted by the lusty lungs of Benoit.
Lachaussée muttered an imprecation as he advanced to the window, and
observed them coming closer to the door. Not caring to be given into
custody, and perceiving that he could not escape by the street, he
hurriedly left the room, closing the door after him, and Benoit heard
him going upstairs. The mastiff would, in all probability, have
fastened upon the Languedocian, as he kept growling in a crouching
position as though preparing to spring, but the contrivance fastened
about his head so effectually muzzled him that Benoit was under no
apprehensions.
‘_Ohé! messieurs!_’ he shouted; ‘come on, or the bird will have
flown. Look out for the roof as well as the door. He is an active
fellow, but no sorcerer. You see his familiars will not release him.’
As he spoke, a cry from the guard below called Benoit’s attention to
the direction in which they were gazing. We have stated that the Rue
de l’Hirondelle was crossed by several large black beams, from the
houses on one side of the way to those on the other, that the ruinous
buildings might not fall upon the heads of the passers-by. As Benoit
looked up, he perceived that Lachaussée had emerged from one of the
windows of the floor above, and at his imminent peril was clinging to
the beam, and traversing it as he best might, to reach the house
opposite. But, narrow as the thoroughfare was, before he had half
crossed it, Benoit had crept out of the window from which he had
called the watch, on to another of the supports below the one chosen
by Lachaussée, and telling the guard to withhold their fire, was in
pursuit of his old acquaintance. The soldiers paused to watch the
strange chase, and gave a cry of admiration as Benoit, clutching the
timber above him, by a violent effort swung himself up to the beam by
which the other was endeavouring to escape.
It was a moment of keen anxiety. They were both afraid of letting go
their hold, which was so treacherous that the least change in their
position would have caused them to overbalance themselves and tumble
down into the street; and so they remained for some minutes, watching
each other like two fencers, to be in readiness for any attack the
other was about to make. At length Lachaussée made a creeping
movement in advance, when Benoit, whose mountebank engagements had
given him a certain kind of gymnastic superiority, trusting to his
knees to keep him from falling, caught hold of Lachaussée by the
legs. But he lost his equilibrium in so doing, and after wavering for
an instant as if in uncertainty, he fell on one side of the
beam--still, however, keeping hold of the other, who was now driven to
support both himself and Benoit by his arms, half-hanging from,
half-leaning over, the timber.
‘Look out, _mes braves_,’ gasped the Languedocian, ‘and catch us. Our
friend won’t hold long. No, no,’ he continued, as Lachaussée,
struggling, tried to free himself from the grip, ‘you don’t shake me
off. I will stick to you as the hangman will some day. Come under and
hold your scarves.’
The guards were quick in taking the hint. Not a quarter of a minute
had passed before they had pulled off their scarves, and some ten or a
dozen standing in a circle laid hold of the different ends, pulling
them tight, so as to form a sort of network, as they stood in a ring
directly beneath Benoit.
In vain Lachaussée tried to get away. Every struggle expended what
strength he had remaining, until, unable any longer to cling to the
beam, he fell, and Benoit with him. They came heavily down, pulling
one or two of the watch to the ground; but the scarves broke their
fall of some twelve feet, and the next moment Benoit was on his legs,
whilst Lachaussée found himself in the custody of the guard, at the
head of which he perceived Sainte-Croix. Gaudin had fallen in with the
patrol soon after leaving the house of Exili, and knowing the
Chevalier du Guet for the night, had sauntered on in conversation with
him at the head of the watch, until they had been attracted to the Rue
de l’Hirondelle by Benoit’s cries for assistance.
‘To the lock-up with such a gallows-bird!’ cried Benoit. ‘I can tell
you as much about him as will last until to-morrow morning. Guard him
well, or the devil will strangle him in the night, as he did the other
sorcerers.’
The officer directed his party to move on, guarding Lachaussée
between them, whilst Benoit brought up the rear. As they started from
the Rue de l’Hirondelle he looked up to the house they had just
quitted, and saw Exili’s vulture face peering from one of the windows
at the tumult; but of this he took no notice.
On the way to the guard-house Gaudin approached Lachaussée, at a
signal from the latter.
‘You can free me if you choose,’ said the superintendent shortly.
‘I shall not interfere in the matter,’ replied Sainte-Croix. ‘Only be
satisfied that you are not a prisoner by _my_ agency.’
‘If you refuse to liberate me,’ returned the other, ‘the earth may
tell some strange secrets that you would not care should be known.’
‘What do you mean, cur?’ said Gaudin contemptuously.
‘Civil words, Monsieur de Sainte-Croix,’ answered Lachaussée. ‘We
have chemical compounds that, in the event of M. Dreux d’Aubray’s body
being exhumed, would bring every atom of his last beverage to its
simple elements. Do you understand? There cannot be so much difficulty
as you imagine in procuring my liberation.’
‘Silence!’ returned Gaudin in a low quick voice; ‘silence--or we shall
be overheard.’
‘But my freedom!’ continued Lachaussée in a loud tone.
‘Wait until we get to the guard-house,’ said Sainte-Croix, as he
passed on, and was once more at the side of the Chevalier du Guet.
They passed on through some of the narrow tortuous streets that lie
towards the water boundary of the Quartier Latin, and at last arrived
at a guard-house in the vicinity of the Hôtel Dieu. Gaudin spoke a
few words to the captain of the watch aside, which the other appeared
to agree with: they were evidently companions as well as
acquaintances.
‘There is some mistake here,’ said Sainte-Croix. ‘I see now the
prisoner you have captured is my valet. He has been lunatic enough to
go and consult some predicting varlet, and met this other simple
fellow. They have had a brawl between them; and whoever first called
the guard would have given the other into custody.’
‘_Pardieu!_’ said Benoit, ‘you great seigneurs have different notions
of a brawl to us artisans. I suppose, if his _snaphaunce_ had put me
beyond Master Glazer’s skill, who can cure anything, you would have
thought lightly of it.’
‘Silence! common person!’ said the captain.
‘I _will_ speak,’ said Benoit, who began to be very angry at this
unexpected turn that things were taking; ‘and I am not a common
person. Ask Monsieur Sainte-Croix if he found me so when we met one
night at the corner of the Rue Neuve St. Paul. I believe that all the
Bohemians and the great folks in Paris are so leagued together that
they are afraid of one another, and the people receive all the buffets
of their disagreeings. The man Lachaussée there is an inhabitant of
all the Cours des Miracles in Paris. I know him, I tell you.’
‘You are at liberty, fellow; you can depart,’ said the officer.
‘Liberty, forsooth!’ continued Benoit with increased excitement. ‘Why,
I have never been arrested. I am the accuser; and M. de Sainte-Croix
knows that Lachaussée is no more----’
At a motion from the captain of the watch, two of the guard seized
Benoit whilst he was thus pouring out his anger, and, without allowing
him to finish his speech, very unceremoniously turned him out of the
guard-house, and half-drove, half-walked him to the end of the street,
where they left him to go home to the boat-mill, vowing that he would
still be even with all of them.