THE CAPTAIN'S ROOM.
The hotel of the Northern Eagle, situated in one of the most respectable
of the numerous small streets between the Rue St Honore and the Rue
Neuve des Petits Champs, is one of several hundred establishments of the
class, scattered over Paris, and which, although bearing the ambitious
title of "_hotel_," differ in no essential respect from what in London
are styled third or fourth rate lodging-houses. It is a tall, narrow,
melancholy-looking edifice, entered through an archway, which devours
a great part of the ground-floor, and is closed at night by a heavy
coach-door, and in the day-time by a four-foot palisade, painted a
bright green, with a gate in the middle, and a noisy bell that rings
whenever the gate is opened. Under the archway, and in the little paved
court that terminates it, there is always a strong smell of blacking in
the morning, and an equally strong smell of soup in the afternoon; the
former arising from the labours of Jean, a strapping, broad-shouldered
native of Picardy, who makes beds, cleans boots, and carries water for
the entire hotel; the latter emanating from a small, smoky den, not
unlike a ship's caboose, where a dingy cookmaid prepares the diurnal
_pot-au-feu_ for the mistress of the hotel, her son and husband, and for
a couple of pensioners, who, in consideration of the moderate monthly
payment of fifty francs each, are admitted to share the frugal ragouts
of Madame Duchambre's dinner-table. By an architectural arrangement,
common enough in old Paris houses, and which seems designed to secure
a comfortable gush of cold air through the crevices of every door in
the building, the foot of the staircase is in the court, open to all
weathers--a circumstance most painful to Jean, who takes pride in the
polish of his stairs, and is to be seen, whenever his other avocations
leave him a moment's leisure, busily repairing, with a brush buckled on
his foot, and a bit of wax in a cleft stick, the damage done to their
lustre by the muddy boots of the lodgers. The hotel contains about
five-and-twenty rooms, all let singly, with the exception of the first
floor, divided into two "_appartemens_" of two rooms and a cupboard
each, for which Madame Duchambre obtains the extravagant rent of ninety
and one hundred francs per month. Above the first floor the rooms are of
various quality--from the commodious chamber which, by the French system
of an alcove for the bed, is converted in the day-time into a very
tolerable imitation of a parlour--to the comfortless attic, an oven in
summer, an ice-house in winter, dearly paid at five francs a-week by
some struggling artisan who works hard enough in the day to sleep
anywhere at night.
At the period referred to by this narrative, a room upon the third floor
of the hotel of the Northern Eagle was occupied, as might be ascertained
by inspection of a lithographed visiting-card, stuck upon the door with
a wafer, by Godibert Carcassonne, captain in the 1st African Chasseurs,
known emphatically amongst the permanent tenants of the hotel as "The
Captain." Not that military occupants were a rarity under the wings of
the Northern Eagle; captains were common enough there--majors not very
scarce--and it was upon record that more than one colonel had occupied
the yellow _salon_ upon the first floor. But none of these warriors bore
comparison with Captain Carcassonne in the estimation of Madame
Duchambre, an elderly lady with a game leg, and a singularly plain
countenance, who had seen better days, and had a strong sense of the
proprieties of life. In general she professed no great affection for
men of the sword, whom she considered too much addicted to strong drink
and profane oaths, and who did not always, she said, respect _la pudeur
de la maison_. The captain, however, had completely won her heart--not
by any particular meekness or abstinence, for he consumed far more
cognac than spring water, had a voice like a deep-mouthed mastiff, and
swore, when incensed, till the very rafters trembled. Nevertheless he
had somehow or other gained her affections; partly, perhaps, by the
regularity with which, upon all his visits to Paris during the previous
fifteen years, he had lodged in her house and paid his bills; partly,
doubtless, by the engaging familiarity with which he helped himself from
her snuff-box, and addressed her as "Maman Duchambre."
It was eight o'clock at night, and, contrary to his wont, Captain
Carcassonne, instead of contesting a pool at billiards in his accustomed
cafe, or occupying a stall at his favourite Palais Royal theatre, was
seated in his room alone, a coffee-cup and a bottle on the table beside
him, the amber mouth-piece of a huge meerschaum pipe disappearing under
his heavy dark mustache, smoking steadily, and reading the _Sentinelle
de l'Armee_. He was a powerful active man, about forty years of age,
with a red-brown complexion, martial features, and a cavalier air, in
whom Algerine climate and fatigues had mitigated, if it had not wholly
checked, that tendency to corpulence early observable in many French
cavalry officers, for the most part a sedentary and full-feeding race.
Of a most gregarious disposition, no slight cause would have induced the
captain to pass in slow solitude those evening hours, which, according
to his creed, ought invariably, in Paris, to dance merrily by in the
broad light of gas, and in the excitement of a theatre or coffee-house.
Neither was it, in his eyes, a trifle that had placed him, as he
expressed it, under close arrest for the evening. He was paying a small
instalment of a debt of gratitude, which many would have held expunged
by lapse of time, but which Carcassonne still remembered and willingly
acknowledged. Many years previously--within a twelvemonth after his
promotion from a sergeantcy in a crack hussar regiment to a cornetcy
in a corps of chasseurs, newly formed for African service, and in
which he had since sabred his way to the command of a troop--Godibert
Carcassonne, when on leave of absence at Paris, had been led, by
thoughtlessness and by evil associates, rather than by innate vice,
into a scrape which threatened to blast his prospects in the army, and
consequently in life, and of his extrication from which there was no
possibility, unless he could immediately procure five thousand francs.
The sum was trifling, but to him it seemed immense, for he estimated it
by the difficulty of obtaining it. Driven to desperation, thoughts of
suicide beset him, when at that critical moment a friend came to the
rescue. By the merest chance he stumbled upon a former school-fellow, a
native of the same department as himself, and his accomplice in many a
boyish frolic. They had not seen each other for years. When Carcassonne
was taken by the conscription, his schoolmate had already departed to
seek fortune at Paris, the Eldorado of provincials, and there, whilst
the smart but penniless young soldier was slowly working his way to a
commission, he had taken root and prospered. He was not yet a wealthy
man, but neither was he a needy or a niggardly one; for, on hearing the
tale of his friend's difficulties, he offered him, after a few moments'
internal calculation, the loan of the sum on which his fate depended,
and gruffly cut short the impetuous expression of gratitude with which
the generous offer was joyfully accepted. The loan was in fact a gift;
for when, sometime afterwards, Carcassonne remitted to his friend a
small instalment of his debt, scraped together by a pinching economy
that did him honour, out of his slender pay, the little draft was
returned to him, with the words, "You shall pay me when you are
colonel." And as all subsequent attempts were met by the same answer,
the money was still unpaid. But never did loan bear better interest of
gratitude. Carcassonne had never forgotten the obligation, was never
weary of seeking opportunities of requiting it. These were hard to find,
for his friend was now a rich man, and there was little the dragoon
could do for him beyond choosing his horses, and giving his grooms
valuable veterinary hints, derived from his long experience of the
chevaline race in the stables of the 1st Chasseurs. Once only was he
fortunate enough to hear his benefactor slightingly spoken of at a
public table in Paris. That was a happy day for Carcassonne, and a sad
one for the offender, who was taken home a few hours afterwards with a
pistol bullet in his shoulder.
The object of this devoted attachment, on the part of the rough but
honest-hearted soldier, was not insensible to the sincerity and value of
such friendship, and returned it after his own fashion, that is to say,
somewhat as the owner of a noble dog permits its demonstrations of
affection, and requites them by an occasional caress. When Carcassonne
came to Paris, which he did as often as he could get leave of absence
from his duties in Africa, his first visit was always for his
benefactor, who invariably got up a dinner for him--not at his own
house, which the dragoon would have considered a tame proceeding, but at
some renowned restaurant--a regular _bamboche_, as the African styled
it, where champagne corks flew and punch flamed from six in the evening
till any hour after midnight. Then, the civilian's occupations being
numerous, and his sphere of life quite different from that of the
soldier, the two saw but little of each other, except through a casual
meeting in the rich man's stables, or on the boulevard, or when--but
this was very rare--Carcassonne was surprised in his room, at the
Northern Eagle, by an unexpected but most welcome visit from his friend,
come to smoke a passing cigar, and have ten minutes' chat over boyish
days and reminiscences.
These visits were a great treat to the captain; and it was the
anticipation of one of them that now kept him in his room. To his
astonishment, he had received that morning a note from his friend,
requesting him to remain at home in the evening, as he would call upon
and crave a service of him. Carcassonne was delighted at the intimation,
and not feeling quite certain when evening might be said to begin, he
shut himself up in his room at four o'clock, ordered in dinner from a
neighbouring _traiteur_, sipped his coffee in contented solitude, and
now awaited, with the dutiful patience of a soldier on sentry, the
promised coming of his friend. At last a cough and a heavy footstep were
heard upon the stairs; the captain took up a candle, opened the door,
and, stepping out into the gloomy corridor, the light fell upon the tall
ungainly figure and sullen features of Sigismund Fatello.
"Come in, my dear fellow," cried Carcassonne, in his stentorian tones,
and with a soldier's oath. "I've expected you these three hours.
What--wet? Snow? Come to the fire, and take a sup of cognac till the
punch is made."
It snowed heavily outside, and the banker's upper-coat had caught a few
large flakes in crossing the court. He heeded them not, but putting
down, untasted, the glass of brandy handed to him by the captain, he
took a chair, and motioned Carcassonne to another.
"What the deuce is the matter with you, Sigismund?" said the captain,
looking hard at his friend. "Are you ill?"
"Better than I have for a long time been. Fresh from a wedding."
"Oho!" said Carcassonne. "I thought you had not put on full dress to
visit your old comrade in his den at the Northern Eagle. And whose
wedding was it?"
"A singular one," replied the banker, parrying the question. "Strangely
brought about, certainly. Would you like to hear its history,
Carcassonne?"
"By all means," said the captain, who always liked whatever Fatello
proposed. "But the business you came about?--you said I could do
something for you. What is it?"
"Plenty of time for that. It will keep. Let me tell you of this
marriage."
"Delighted to listen," said Carcassonne, settling himself in his chair,
and filling his pipe from a huge embroidered bag, once the property of
an Arabian Emir's lady, but which a razzia had degraded into a
receptacle for tobacco.
"You must know, then, Carcassonne," said Fatello, "that a friend of
mine, named Oliver, a man of middle age, more calculated to shine in a
counting-house than in a boudoir, was fool enough, not very long ago, to
fall in love with a beautiful girl, twenty years younger than himself;
and as he was rich, and her father avaricious, the marriage was brought
about, although not altogether with her good will."
"Bad," quoth the captain, between two puffs of his pipe. "An unwilling
bride is apt to prove a sour wife."
"Once married," continued Fatello, without heeding his friend's
interruption, "Oliver, who knew he had not his wife's love, spared no
pains to obtain her friendship. He was not such a man, either by person,
manners, or temper, as women are apt to fancy; but, to atone for his
deficiencies, he covered her with gold, was the slave of her caprices,
forestalled her slightest wish. Her amusement and happiness were the
whole study of his life; and after a while his efforts seemed crowned
with success. She treated him as a friend, and appeared contented with
her lot. This was all he had dared to hope, and, having attained this,
he was happy. His existence, from boyhood upwards, had been agitated
and laborious, but riches had rewarded his toils, and he could now look
forward to a long period of happiness and repose. At the very moment he
indulged these visions of a bright future, a single word, whispered in
his ear by a physician of high repute, crumbled the entire fabric. That
word was Consumption, and when he heard it he knew his doom was sealed.
His father, his elder brother, his sisters, all had been carried off,
in the prime of their strength, by the insidious disease, whose germ,
implanted in their system before they saw the light, was ineradicable
by the resources of art. The shock was severe--it could not be
otherwise--for most of the things were his for which men prize life. But
he was no poltroon, to pine at the approach of death; and he nerved
himself to meet like a man his inevitable fate. Although with scarce a
shadow of hope, he neglected no means of combating the deadly malady;
and, enjoining secresy to his physician, he concealed from every one his
belief that his days were numbered and his race wellnigh run. He was
calm and resigned, if not hopeful, when he one day received a letter
that chilled his very soul. His wife, it told him, loved another, whom
she would meet that night at a masquerade. Although anonymous, its
indications were so precise, that Oliver, spurred by fiercest jealousy,
disguised himself and went secretly to the ball. There he discovered
his wife, in the company of a foreign fopling, who, for some time
previously, had been a frequent visitor at his house. He kept near them,
occasionally catching a sentence confirmatory of his suspicions, until
they withdrew from the crowd, and sought a retired nook, where to
converse uninterrupted. He found means to secrete himself in their
vicinity, and overheard--no evidence of his dishonour, for then he had
stabbed them where they stood--but words whence he gathered the
existence of the most heartless, perfidious, and cold-blooded
calculation.
"The wife of his bosom, to gain whose affection he had squandered
millions, and changed his very nature, impatiently awaited his death
to bestow her hand, and the fortune he should bequeath her, on the
smooth-tongued seducer whose arts had beguiled her. The secret of his
fatal malady had been divulged by the physician, to whom alone it was
known, in the hearing of this foreign adventurer, who, ever upon the
watch to redeem his broken fortunes by a wealthy marriage, profited by
the disclosure. He obtained an introduction to Oliver's house, and
applied every art and energy to gain his wife's affections. He was but
too successful. She listened to his protestations, and on learning her
husband's impending death, pledged herself to become his, when she
should be released by it from ties she abhorred. All this, and more,
Oliver gathered from their conversation, to which he had the courage to
listen to the end, although each sentence went to his heart like a
stab, leaving in the wound the venom of hate and jealousy, to rankle
there until the latest moment of his life. What had you done,
Carcassonne, had you been in his place?"
"_Pardieu!_" said the captain, who had listened with profound attention,
and great expenditure of smoke, to his friend's narrative; "I can hardly
say, Sigismund. If I had kept my hands off the butterfly scoundrel, when
I heard him courting my wife, I should have followed him when he had had
his chat out, and requested the pleasure of crossing swords with him at
his earliest convenience; and had I got one good cut at him, he should
not have needed another. What did your friend?"
"Very nearly what you have said. He went home and destroyed his will,
and made another. Then he sought his enemy, to challenge him to an
instant encounter. The mean villain denied his treachery, and swore that
she, to whom his vows of love were addressed, was not Oliver's wife, but
his sister-in-law. Oliver well knew this to be a lie, but he affected
to believe he had been deceived by similarity of dress and imperfect
hearing, for the subterfuge had suddenly suggested to him a sure means
of punishing his faithless wife, and defeating her seducer's aim. He
declared himself willing to aid the views of the foreigner--one Baron
Steinfeld, an Austrian of high family, but ruined fortunes--and to urge
his sister-in-law to accept his hand. Disagreeably surprised at such
willingness, where he had wished and expected opposition, Steinfeld
strove to recede, but found extrication impossible from the trap he had
rushed into. Finally he was compelled to yield; the less unwillingly
because the bride thus given him was not without fortune, which Oliver
exaggerated, the better to allure him. So that when Oliver left him, it
was to convey his formal proposals to the lady, who was nothing loath,
and to-day they were married."
"To-day!" exclaimed Carcassonne. "This, then, is the wedding you come
from. And what said Madame Oliver?"
"What could she say? Made all the secret opposition she could, no doubt;
and then, finding it in vain--for her sister seemed as much fascinated
by the Austrian Lothario as she was herself--she took ill and kept her
bed. It needed all her woman's pride and her fear of malicious comment
to carry her calmly through to-day's ceremonies and festivities."
"A very strange tale!" cried the captain. "And all true, eh?"
"To the letter. But that is not all. To-day, after the marriage, Oliver
sought five minutes' conversation with his newly-made brother-in-law;
and his first act, when they were alone, was to hand him the anonymous
letter he had received on the day of the masquerade, in which was
mentioned the colour of the ribbons worn by Madame Oliver at the ball,
as a sign by which Steinfeld was to distinguish her amongst the crowd
of dominoes."
"Good!" said Carcassonne, emphatically, "And what said the Kaiserlie?"
"Denied everything, until Oliver recapitulated, word for word, certain
phrases of the conversation he had overheard. This struck him dumb; but
soon he recovered his effrontery, and expressed surprise at Oliver's
reviving the subject, especially at that moment."
"'Since you deemed it advisable to overlook the offence at the time,
and to promote my marriage with your sister-in-law,' he said, 'I cannot
understand your motive for now raking up the grievance.'
"'I will explain,' replied Oliver. 'I married you to my sister-in-law
that you might never be my widow's husband, whether I die a few months
hence, by the hand of God, or to-morrow by yours, in the duel which
shall no longer be delayed.'"
"The devil!" shouted the captain, at this announcement. "Your friend
Oliver is the wrong man to jest with, I see that. But will he really
fight his sister's husband?"
"He really will," replied Fatello, calmly. "Should you scruple, in his
place?"
"By my soul, it's hard to say, till one is tried. We are used in Africa
to hear fellows reckoning on our boots before we think of leaving them
off. But that hurts neither us nor the boots, whilst a man's wife----It
is aggravating, certainly, particularly to a man of your Oliver's
temper. A saint or a priest might not approve, but, as a soldier and
sinner, I must say revenge, in such a case, seems sweet and natural."
"Then," said Fatello, "I may reckon on your assistance to-morrow?"
"On my assistance!--I--you! What the devil do you mean?" cried
Carcassonne, dropping his pipe, and starting from his seat in
extraordinary perturbation.
"Merely that my friend Oliver and your friend Fatello are one and the
same person, whose business here to-night is to ask you to second him in
his duel to-morrow with Baron Ernest von Steinfeld, married this morning
to Mademoiselle Sebastiana Gonfalon."