THE PORTRAIT
The three friends stared at the three watches, the six handkerchiefs,
the four pocket-books, and the eighteen purses in a blank and silent
consternation.
There was indeed nothing to be said.
A dreadful despair rested on the face of Theophrastus; but he was the
first to break the heavy silence.
"My pockets are _quite_ empty," he said.
"Oh, Theophrastus--Theophrastus!" moaned Marceline reproachfully.
"My poor friend," said Adolphe; and he groaned.
Theophrastus wiped away the cold sweat from his brow with a
handkerchief of which he did not know the owner.
"I see what it is," he said in a despairing tone. "I've had my _Black
Feather_."
Marceline and Adolphe said nothing; they were utterly overwhelmed.
Theophrastus looked from one to the other and wiped the glasses of his
spectacles. His face cleared a little; and then he said with a faint
smile:
"_Perhaps after all, in those days, it was a parlour game._"
He stuck the index finger of his right hand into his mouth, with him a
sign of grave preoccupation of spirit.
Marceline heaved a deep sigh and said, "Take your finger out of your
mouth, dear, and tell us how it came about that you had on you three
watches, six handkerchiefs, four pocket-books, and eighteen purses,
without counting the handkerchief and pocket-book of Commissary
Mifroid. I turned your pockets out this morning to brush the linings;
and as usual there was nothing in them but a few scraps of tobacco."
"There was a large gathering in the Place de la Concorde. I plunged
into it; and I came out of it with all these things. It's quite
simple," said Theophrastus.
"And what are we going to do with them?" said Adolphe in solemn tones.
"What do you want me to do with them?" said Theophrastus sharply, for
he was recovering a little from the shock. "You don't suppose I'm
going to keep them! Is it my habit to keep things which don't belong
to me? I'm an honest man; and I have never wronged a soul. You'll take
these things to your friend the Commissary of Police. It will be easy
enough for him to find the owners."
"And what am I to tell him?" said Adolphe with a harried air.
"Anything you like!" cried Theophrastus, beginning to lose his temper.
"Does an honest cabman who finds a pocket-book and fifty thousand
francs in his cab and takes them to the Police Station, bother about
what he is going to tell the inspector? He says, 'I've found this in my
cab,' and that's enough. He even gets a reward. All you have to say is:
'My friend Longuet asked me to bring you these things which he found in
his pocket, and he doesn't ask for any reward.'"
He spoke in a tone of impatient contempt for the intelligence of
Adolphe, a tone to which Adolphe was quite unused. Adolphe frowned
with ruffled dignity and was about to retort sharply, when Marceline
kicked him gently under the table, a little kick which said plainly:
"Theophrastus is going off his head! Come, friend, to his rescue!"
Adolphe understood the message of that little shoe: the frown faded
from his face, leaving on it only an expression of supernal gloom; he
looked at the eighteen purses, scratched his nose, and coughed. Then he
gazed at Theophrastus and said in very solemn tones:
"What has just happened, Theophrastus, is not natural. We must try
to find the explanation of it; we must force ourselves to find the
explanation. It's no use shutting our eyes; we must open them, as wide
as we can, to the misfortune, if it is misfortune, in order to battle
with it."
"What misfortune?" said Theophrastus, suddenly becoming his timid self
again, and catching distressfully at Marceline's hand.
"It's always a misfortune to have other people's property in one's
pocket," said Adolphe gloomily.
"And what else is there in the pockets of conjurors?" cried
Theophrastus with fresh violence. "And conjurors are very honest men;
and Theophrastus Longuet is a very honest man! _By the throttle of
Madame Phalaris_, he is!"
He shouted this out; then fell back exhausted in his chair.
There was a gloomy silence. Presently he sat up again, and with tears
in his eyes said plaintively:
"I feel that Adolphe is right. I am threatened by some great misfortune
and I don't know what it is--I don't know what it is!"
He burst into tears; and Marceline and Adolphe strove in vain to
comfort him. But after a while he dried his tears, grasped a hand of
either, and said in a firmer voice:
"Swear--swear never to abandon me _whatever happens_."
They promised in all good faith; and the assurance seemed to cheer him
a little. Then Adolphe asked him to let him see the document again;
and he fetched it. Adolphe spread it out before him and studied it
intently. Presently he nodded his head sagely and said:
"Do you ever dream, Theophrastus?"
"Do I ever dream? Well, I suppose I do sometimes. But my digestion is
so good that I hardly ever remember my dreams."
"Never?" persisted Adolphe.
"Oh, I couldn't go so far as to say never," said Theophrastus. "In
fact, I remember having dreamt four or five times in my life. I
remember it because I always woke up at the same point in the dream;
and it was always the same dream. But how on earth does it affect this
business which is worrying us?"
"Dreams have never been explained by Science," said Adolphe solemnly.
"It fancies that it has said everything when it has ascribed them to
the effect of the imagination. But it gives us no explanation of the
quite clear and distinct visions we sometimes have which have nothing
whatever to do with the events or preoccupations of the previous day.
In particular how are we to account for those visions of actually
existing things which one has never seen in the waking state, things of
which one has never even thought? Who will dare to say that they are
not retrospective visions of events which have taken place before our
present existence?"
"As a matter of fact, Adolphe, I can assure you that the things of
which I dream--and I remember now that I have dreamt of them three
times--are perhaps real in the past or future, but that I have never
seen them in the present."
"You understand my point," said Adolphe in a gratified tone. "But what
are these things you have dreamt of but never seen?"
"That won't take long to tell and thank goodness for it, for they're
not particularly pleasant. I dreamt that I was married to a wife whom
I called Marie-Antoinette and who annoyed me extremely."
"And then?" said Adolphe, whose eyes never quitted the document.
"And then I cut her up into little bits," said Theophrastus, blushing
faintly.
"What a horrible thing to do!" cried Marceline.
"As a matter of fact it was rather horrible," said Theophrastus. "And
then I put the pieces into a basket and was going to throw them into
the Seine near the little bridge of the Hôtel-de-Ville. At that point I
awoke; and I was jolly glad to awake, for it wasn't a pleasant dream."
"It's awful!" cried Adolphe; and he banged his fist down on the table.
"Isn't it?" said Marceline.
"Not the dream! But I've just succeeded in reading the whole of the
first line of the document! That's what's awful!" groaned Adolphe.
"What is it? What have you found out?" cried Theophrastus in a
panic-stricken tone as he sprang up to pore over the document.
"It reads _I rt uried my treasures_. And you don't know what that
_rt_ stands for? Well, I'm not going to tell you till I have made
absolutely sure. I shall be absolutely sure by to-morrow. To-morrow,
Theophrastus, at two o'clock, meet me at the corner of Guénégaud and
Mazarine Streets." He rose. "In the meantime I'll take these things
along to my friend Mifroid, who will restore them to their owners.
Good-night, and courage, Theophrastus--above everything--courage!"
He shook Theophrastus' hand, with the lingering pressure with which one
shakes the hand of a relation of the corpse at a funeral, and departed.
That night Theophrastus did not sleep. While Marceline breathed
peacefully by his side, he lay awake staring into the darkness. His own
breathing was irregular and broken by deep sighs. A heavy oppression
weighed on his heart.
The day dawned on Paris gloomily faint and dirty, throwing over its
buildings a sinister veil. In vain did the summer sun strive to
penetrate that thick and smoky air. Noon, the hour of its triumph,
showed only a dull ball, rolling ingloriously in a sulphurous mist.
At six o'clock Theophrastus suddenly jumped out of bed, and awoke
Marceline by a burst of insensate laughter. She asked the reason of
his strange mirth; and he answered that Nature had not given him a
mouth large enough to laugh at the face Commissary Mifroid, who did not
believe in pickpockets, would pull at the sight of Adolphe emptying his
pockets of the collection with which he had stuffed them.
Then he went on to say in the tone of an official instructor:
"It's the work of a child to take a purse out of a pocket. If you can't
get your hand in, insert a straw covered with bird-lime. That device is
excellent in crowd-work."
Marceline sat up in bed and stared at him. Theophrastus had never worn
a more natural air. He was pulling on his pants.
"There's a button off the waist-band," he grumbled.
"You terrify me, Theophrastus!" said Marceline in a shaky voice.
"And a good job too!" said her husband, going down on his hands and
knees to recover his braces which had fallen under the bed. "One only
does good work with a good woman. And I can't do anything with you. You
will never be a good bustler."
"A good--what?"
"A good bustler. Next time you go to the Maison-Dorée, buy me a pair
of braces. These are rotten. You don't even know what a bustler is.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself at your age. A bustler is a person
of your sex who is clever at hiding anything one gets hold of in her
frock. I never had a better bustler than Jenny Venus."
"My poor child!" groaned Marceline.
An access of furious anger seized Theophrastus. He dashed at the bed
brandishing the button-hook, and cried:
"You know--you know perfectly well that I've forbidden anyone to call
me '_Child_' ever since the death of Jenny Venus!"
Marceline promised that she would never do it again. But oh, how
profoundly she regretted having become, along with her husband, the
owner of a document which promised them treasures, but which brought
into their home trouble, fear, violence, madness, and the inexplicable.
After Marie-Antoinette came Jenny Venus. She was unacquainted with
either lady; and she had no desire to make their acquaintance. But
Theophrastus spoke of them with a disquieting familiarity. In truth the
unexpected phrases which fell from his lips, while filling her with a
dread of the Theophrastus of two hundred years ago, made her regret
indeed the Theophrastus, so easy to understand, of a few days before.
She thought of the theory of Reincarnation with the unkindest feelings.
Theophrastus had finished dressing. He complained bitterly that a
tear in his flowered waistcoat had not been mended. Then he said
that he would not lunch at home, since he had an appointment to meet
his _friend Old Easy-Going_, at the corner of Guénégaud and Mazarine
Streets, _to play a trick on a Monsieur de Traneuse, an engineer
officer for whom he had a strong dislike_; but since the appointment
was after lunch, he thought he would go and _take the air at the
Chopinettes mill_ first.
Marceline was trembling pitiably. She hardly had the strength to say:
"It's very bad weather to go to Chopinettes mill."
"Bah! _I'll leave my green umbrella at home and take my Black Feather
with me_," said Theophrastus.
With that he went out, putting the finishing touch to his cravat as he
went.
On the staircase he met Signor Petito; and they went down it together.
Signor Petito greeted M. Longuet with the most respectful politeness,
complained of the state of the weather, and paid him a thousand
compliments on his air of good health. Theophrastus responded
grumpily to these polite advances; and since, when they came out of
the house, Signor Petito showed no intention of quitting him, he asked
unpleasantly whether the Signora Petito could not be persuaded to learn
some other infernal tune besides the _Carnival of Venice_. Signor
Petito affected not to notice his carping tone and replied with an
amiable smile that she was just going to begin to practise _The Star of
Love_, and she would be charmed in the future to devote her talent to
any piece which took M. Longuet's fancy. Then even more amiably he said:
"And which way are you going, M. Longuet?"
Theophrastus looked at him with suspicious disfavour and answered:
"I was going to take a turn round Chopinettes mill; but the weather is
certainly too bad for that: so I am going down to the Porkers."
"To the Porkers?" said Signor Petito quickly; and he was going to ask
where the Porkers was, when he thought better of it, and said, "So am
I."
"Indeed? Indeed?" said Theophrastus, eyeing him strangely. "So you're
going to the Porkers too?"
"There or elsewhere: it's all the same to me," said Signor Petito; and
he laughed a most amiable laugh.
They walked along side by side in silence for a while, till Signor
Petito mustered up his courage to ask a question:
"And how are you getting on with your treasures, M. Longuet?" he said.
Theophrastus turned on him with a savage air, and cried, "What the
deuce has it got to do with you?"
"Don't you remember bringing, a little while ago, for my opinion on the
handwriting--"
"I remember quite well! But you--you'd jolly well better forget!"
interrupted Theophrastus in a tone of dry menace; and he opened his
green umbrella.
Signor Petito, entirely unabashed, took shelter under it, saying
amiably, "Oh, I didn't ask the question to annoy you, M. Longuet."
They had reached the corner of Martyrs' Street in the Trudaine Avenue;
and they turned down it, Theophrastus glowering.
Then he said, "I've an appointment at the Sucking-Pig tavern next to
the Porkers' chapel, and here we are, Signor Petito."
"But that's Notre-Dame-de-Lorette and not Porkers' chapel at all!"
cried Signor Petito.
"I don't like to be contradicted to my face!" snarled Theophrastus,
looking at him with a very evil eye and baring his teeth.
Signor Petito protested that he had no intention in the world of doing
anything of the kind.
"To my face--I'm well aware that mine is a valuable head," said
Theophrastus, regarding Signor Petito with an air which grew stranger
and stranger. "Do you know how much it is worth, Signor Petito, the
_Child's_ head? No?... Well, since an opportunity offers, I'm going to
tell you. And while I'm about it, I'll tell you a little story which
may be useful to you. Come into the Sucking-Pig."
"B--B--But this is the Café B--B--Boussets," stammered Signor Petito,
who was growing frightened.
"The mist has muddled you. You've missed your way among _all these
ploughed fields_," said Theophrastus, sitting down on a bench before
one of the tables. Then he laughed on a very sinister note, and went
on: "So you wanted to annoy me, M. Petito. So much the worse for you.
What will you have to drink? A glass of ratafia? The excellent Madame
Taconet[1] who keeps this tavern has set aside a bottle for me which
will warm your in'ards."
[Footnote 1: Theophrastus was quite accurate in these historical
details. I have discovered that a Madame Taconet did keep, two
hundred years ago, the Sucking-Pig tavern, close to Porkers'
chapel which was pulled down in 1800, and on its site the chapel
of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette was erected. All this district, north
west of the Boulevard des Italiens, was covered, two hundred
years ago, with ploughed fields, market-gardens, country houses,
and Porkers' village. The Sucking-Pig tavern had the worst of
reputations, for Madame Taconet sheltered in it all the most
abandoned ruffians in Paris.]
And as a waiter in his white apron came up to the table, without a
change of tone Theophrastus added, "Two draught lagers; and we don't
want them all froth."
Thus, without any transition, without even noticing it, did he join his
present-day existence to his existence of two hundred years before.
Signor Petito was already full of the liveliest regret at having
insisted on accompanying a man who fancied he was in the Sucking-Pig
tavern, when the waiter brought the beer and set it on the table.
Theophrastus said, "My head is worth twenty thousand francs; and well
you know it!"
He accompanied the "And well you know it!" with a bang of his fist on
the table which made the glasses ring and Signor Petito jump.
"Don't be frightened, Signor Petito: your beer isn't spilt,"
Theophrastus went on in a jeering tone. "You know then, my good sir,
that my head is worth twenty thousand francs; but you'd better act as
if you didn't, or some unpleasantness will befall you. I promised you a
story. Well, here it is:
"_Just about two hundred years ago_ I was walking along Vaugirard
Street, with my hands in my pockets and without a weapon of any kind
on me, not even a sword, when a man accosted me at the corner of the
street, greeted me with all the politeness imaginable and declared
that my face had taken his fancy--just as you said and did, Signor
Petito!--that his name was Bidel, and all his friends called him Good
Old Bidel, and he had a secret to confide to me. I encouraged him with
a friendly tap on the shoulder." At this point Theophrastus fetched
Signor Petito such a thump on the shoulder that it drew a short howl
from him; and he pulled out his money under the constraining desire to
go out and see if the mist had dispersed. "Put away your money, Signor
Petito, I'm paying for the drinks!" said Theophrastus sharply; and
he went on in his easy, conversational tone. "Well, Good Old Bidel,
encouraged by my friendly tap," Signor Petito slipped along the bench,
"told me his secret. He whispered in my ear that the Regent had
offered twenty thousand francs to anyone who would arrest the _Child_;
that he, Good Old Bidel, knew where the _Child_ was hiding; that I
looked to him to be a man of courage, and that with my help he ought
to go pretty near getting that twenty thousand francs. We would share
it." Theophrastus paused to laugh a laugh which froze Signor Petito's
blood. "Good Old Bidel was not in luck's way, Signor Petito, for I too
knew where the _Child_ was hiding, since the _Child_ was me!" Signor
Petito did not believe a word of it. It was his firm opinion that M.
Longuet had ceased to be a child months ago. But he dared not say so.
"I answered Good Old Bidel that it was a regular windfall, and that I
was thankful indeed that he had chanced on me; and I begged him to take
me straight to the place where the _Child_ was hiding. He said:
"'To-night the _Child_ will sleep at the Capucins, at the inn of The
Golden Cross.'
"It was true, Signor Petito. Good Old Bidel's information was O.K.; and
I congratulated him on it. We were passing a cutler's shop; and I went
in, and under the astonished eyes of Good Old Bidel bought _a little
penny knife_." The eyes of Theophrastus blazed; and the eyes of Signor
Petito blinked. "When we came out into the street, Good Old Bidel
asked me what on earth I was going to do with _a little penny knife_.
I replied, 'With a little penny knife'"--M. Longuet moved nearer to
Signor Petito; Signor Petito moved further from M. Longuet--"'one can
always kill a _coppers' nark_!' And I jammed it into his ribs! He waved
his arms round like a windmill and fell down dead!"
He laughed his blood-freezing laugh again; but Signor Petito was not
attending to it: he had slipped along the bench and under it. He
crawled swiftly under bench after bench, to the astonishment of the
staff of the café, gained the door, plunged through it, and bolted down
the street.
M. Theophrastus Longuet drained his glass and rose. He went to the
desk, where Mlle. Bertha was counting the brass disks, and said to her:
"Madame Taconet,"--Mlle. Bertha asked herself with some surprise why
M. Longuet called her Madame Taconet; but the question met with no
response,--"if that little Petito comes here again, tell him from me
that the next time I come across him, _I'll clip his ears for him_."
So saying, Theophrastus stroked the handle of his green umbrella as one
strokes the hilt of a dagger, and went out without paying.
There can be no reasonable doubt that Theophrastus had his _Black
Feather_.
The fog was still thick. He forgot all about lunching. He walked
through the sulphurous mist as in a dream. He crossed the old Quartier
d'Antin and what was formerly called Bishop's Town. When he saw dimly
the towers of the Trinité, he muttered, "Ah, the towers of Cock
Castle!" He was at St. Lazare station when he fancied that he was
in "Little Poland." But little by little, as the mist cleared, his
dream vanished with it. He had a more accurate idea of things. When
he crossed the Seine at Pont-Royal, he had once more become honest
Theophrastus, and when he set foot on the left bank of the river he had
but a vague memory of what had happened on the other side.
But he had that memory. In fact, when he examined himself closely,
he found that he was beginning to experience three different mental
states: first, that which arose from his actual existence as an honest
manufacturer of rubber stamps; second, that which arose from the sudden
and passing resurrection of the _Other_; third, that which arose from
memory. While the resurrection of the _Other_ was, while it lasted, a
terrible business, the memory was a pleasant and melancholy frame of
mind, calculated to induce in a sorrowful heart a feeling of gentle
sadness and philosophic pity.
As he turned his steps towards Guénégaud Street, he asked himself idly
why Adolphe had fixed the corner of Guénégaud and Mazarine Streets as
their meeting-place.
He took a round-about way to that corner, for _he could not bring
himself to walk along the strip of Mazarine Street_ where it runs along
the palace of the Institute, formerly the Four Nations. _He did not
know the reason of this reluctance._ He went round by De la Monnaie
house, and so came into Guénégaud Street.
Adolphe was awaiting him, with a very gloomy face, at the corner, and
slipped his arm into his.
"Have you ever heard anyone speak of someone called the _Child_,
Adolphe?" said Theophrastus, after they had greeted one another.
"I have indeed," said Adolphe in a tone as gloomy as his face. "And I
know his name, his family name."
"Ah, what is it?" said Theophrastus anxiously.
For all reply Adolphe pushed him along a little passage leading to an
old house in Guénégaud Street, a few doors off De la Monnaie house.
They went into the house, up a shaky staircase, and into a room in
which the window curtains were drawn. It had been darkened purposely.
But on a little table in a corner a flickering candle threw its light
on a portrait.
It was the portrait of a man of thirty, of a powerful face, with
"flashing" eyes. The brow was high, the nose big, the strong, square
chin shaven; the large mouth was surmounted by a bristly moustache.
On the bushy hair was a cap of wool or rough leather; and the dress
appeared to be that of a convict. A coarse linen shirt was half open
across the hairy chest.
"Goodness!" said Theophrastus without raising his voice. "How did _my
portrait_ get into this house?"
"Your portrait?" cried Adolphe. "Are you sure?"
"_Who could be surer than I?_" said Theophrastus calmly.
"Well--well--" said Adolphe Lecamus in a choking voice, his face
contorted by an expression of the most painful emotion. "This
portrait, which is your portrait, is the portrait of that great
eighteenth-century king of thieves, CARTOUCHE!"
Theophrastus stared at the portrait with eyes that opened and opened
as a sickly pallor overspread his anguished face; a little grunt broke
from his parted lips, and he dropped to the ground in a dead faint.
Adolphe dropped on his knees beside him, unfastened his collar, and
slapped his hands vigorously. Then he blew out the candle, turned the
portrait with its face to the wall, and opened the window.
Theophrastus was a long time recovering his senses. When he did, his
first words were:
"On no account tell my wife, Adolphe!"