A THREE MINUTES' VISIT
I have suffered extreme and protracted bodily pain, at different periods
of my life, but anything like that misery, thank God, I never endured
before or since. I earnestly hope it may not resemble any type of death
to which we are liable. I was, indeed, a spirit in prison; and
unspeakable was my dumb and unmoving agony.
The power of thought remained clear and active. Dull terror filled my
mind. How would this end? Was it actual death?
You will understand that my faculty of observing was unimpaired. I could
hear and see anything as distinctly as ever I did in my life. It was
simply that my will had, as it were, lost its hold of my body.
I told you that the Marquis d'Harmonville had not extinguished his
carriage lamp on going into this village inn. I was listening intently,
longing for his return, which might result, by some lucky accident, in
awaking me from my catalepsy.
Without any sound of steps approaching, to announce an arrival, the
carriage-door suddenly opened, and a total stranger got in silently and
shut the door.
The lamp gave about as strong a light as a wax-candle, so I could see
the intruder perfectly. He was a young man, with a dark grey loose
surtout, made with a sort of hood, which was pulled over his head. I
thought, as he moved, that I saw the gold band of a military undress cap
under it; and I certainly saw the lace and buttons of a uniform, on the
cuffs of the coat that were visible under the wide sleeves of his
outside wrapper.
This young man had thick moustaches and an imperial, and I observed that
he had a red scar running upward from his lip across his cheek.
He entered, shut the door softly, and sat down beside me. It was all
done in a moment; leaning toward me, and shading his eyes with his
gloved hand, he examined my face closely for a few seconds.
This man had come as noiselessly as a ghost; and everything he did was
accomplished with the rapidity and decision that indicated a
well-defined and pre-arranged plan. His designs were evidently sinister.
I thought he was going to rob and, perhaps, murder me. I lay,
nevertheless, like a corpse under his hands. He inserted his hand in my
breast pocket, from which he took my precious white rose and all the
letters it contained, among which was a paper of some consequence to me.
My letters he glanced at. They were plainly not what he wanted. My
precious rose, too, he laid aside with them. It was evidently about the
paper I have mentioned that he was concerned; for the moment he opened
it he began with a pencil, in a small pocket-book, to make rapid notes
of its contents.
This man seemed to glide through his work with a noiseless and cool
celerity which argued, I thought, the training of the police department.
He re-arranged the papers, possibly in the very order in which he had
found them, replaced them in my breast-pocket, and was gone. His visit,
I think, did not quite last three minutes. Very soon after his
disappearance I heard the voice of the Marquis once more. He got in, and
I saw him look at me and smile, half-envying me, I fancied, my sound
repose. If he had but known all!
He resumed his reading and docketing by the light of the little lamp
which had just subserved the purposes of a spy.
We were now out of the town, pursuing our journey at the same moderate
pace. We had left the scene of my police visit, as I should have termed
it, now two leagues behind us, when I suddenly felt a strange throbbing
in one ear, and a sensation as if air passed through it into my throat.
It seemed as if a bubble of air, formed deep in my ear, swelled, and
burst there. The indescribable tension of my brain seemed all at once to
give way; there was an odd humming in my head, and a sort of vibration
through every nerve of my body, such as I have experienced in a limb
that has been, in popular phraseology, asleep. I uttered a cry and half
rose from my seat, and then fell back trembling, and with a sense of
mortal faintness.
The Marquis stared at me, took my hand, and earnestly asked if I was
ill. I could answer only with a deep groan.
Gradually the process of restoration was completed; and I was able,
though very faintly, to tell him how very ill I had been; and then to
describe the violation of my letters, during the time of his absence
from the carriage.
"Good heaven!" he exclaimed, "the miscreant did not get at my box-box?"
I satisfied him, so far as I had observed, on that point. He placed the
box on the seat beside him, and opened and examined its contents very
minutely.
"Yes, undisturbed; all safe, thank heaven!" he murmured. "There are
half-a-dozen letters here that I would not have some people read for a
great deal."
He now asked with a very kind anxiety all about the illness I complained
of. When he had heard me, he said:
"A friend of mine once had an attack as like yours as possible. It was
on board ship, and followed a state of high excitement. He was a brave
man like you; and was called on to exert both his strength and his
courage suddenly. An hour or two after, fatigue overpowered him, and he
appeared to fall into a sound sleep. He really sank into a state which
he afterwards described so that I think it must have been precisely the
same affection as yours."
"I am happy to think that my attack was not unique. Did he ever
experience a return of it?"
"I knew him for years after, and never heard of any such thing. What
strikes me is a parallel in the predisposing causes of each attack. Your
unexpected and gallant hand-to-hand encounter, at such desperate odds,
with an experienced swordsman, like that insane colonel of dragoons,
your fatigue, and, finally, your composing yourself, as my other friend
did, to sleep."
"I wish," he resumed, "one could make out who the _coquin_ was who
examined your letters. It is not worth turning back, however, because we
should learn nothing. Those people always manage so adroitly. I am
satisfied, however, that he must have been an agent of the police. A
rogue of any other kind would have robbed you."
I talked very little, being ill and exhausted, but the Marquis talked on
agreeably.
"We grow so intimate," said he, at last, "that I must remind you that I
am not, for the present, the Marquis d'Harmonville, but only Monsieur
Droqville; nevertheless, when we get to Paris, although I cannot see you
often I may be of use. I shall ask you to name to me the hotel at which
you mean to put up; because the Marquis being, as you are aware, on his
travels, the Hotel d'Harmonville is, for the present, tenanted only by
two or three old servants, who must not even see Monsieur Droqville.
That gentleman will, nevertheless, contrive to get you access to the box
of Monsieur le Marquis, at the Opera, as well, possibly, as to other
places more difficult; and so soon as the diplomatic office of the
Marquis d'Harmonville is ended, and he at liberty to declare himself, he
will not excuse his friend, Monsieur Beckett, from fulfilling his
promise to visit him this autumn at the Château d'Harmonville."
You may be sure I thanked the Marquis.
The nearer we got to Paris, the more I valued his protection. The
countenance of a great man on the spot, just then, taking so kind an
interest in the stranger whom he had, as it were, blundered upon, might
make my visit ever so many degrees more delightful than I had
anticipated.
Nothing could be more gracious than the manner and looks of the Marquis;
and, as I still thanked him, the carriage suddenly stopped in front of
the place where a relay of horses awaited us, and where, as it turned
out, we were to part.