CHAPTER X.

THE RECONCILIATION BETWEEN FATHER AND SON.

We pass over an interval of some months.

A painter stood at work at the easel, his human model before him. He was

employed on a nymph,--the Nymph Galatea. The subject had been taken

before by Salvator, whose genius found all its elements in the wild

rocks, gnarled, fantastic trees, and gushing waterfalls of the landscape;

in the huge ugliness of Polyphemus the lover; in the grace and suavity

and unconscious abandonment of the nymph, sleeking her tresses dripping

from the bath. The painter, on a larger canvas (for Salvator's picture,

at least the one we have seen, is among the small sketches of the great

artistic creator of the romantic and grotesque), had transferred the

subject of the master; but he had left subordinate the landscape and the

giant, to concentrate all his art on the person of the nymph. Middle-

aged was the painter, in truth; but he looked old. His hair, though

long, was gray and thin; his face was bloated by intemperance; and his

hand trembled much, though, from habit, no trace of the tremor was

visible in his work.

A boy, near at hand, was also employed on the same subject, with a rough

chalk and a bold freedom of touch. He was sketching his design of a

Galatea and Polyphemus on the wall; for the wall was only whitewashed,

and covered already with the multiform vagaries whether of master or

pupils,--caricatures and demigods, hands and feet, torsos and monsters,

and Venuses. The rude creations, all mutilated, jarring, and mingled,

gave a cynical, mocking, devil-may-care kind of aspect to the sanctum of

art. It was like the dissection-room of the anatomist. The boy's sketch

was more in harmony with the walls of the studio than the canvas of the

master. His nymph, accurately drawn, from the undressed proportions of

the model, down to the waist, terminated in the scales of a fish. The

forked branches of the trees stretched weird and imp-like as the hands of

skeletons. Polyphemus, peering over the rocks, had the leer of a demon;

and in his gross features there was a certain distorted, hideous likeness

of the grave and symmetrical lineaments of Olivier Dalibard.

All around was slovenly, squalid, and poverty-stricken,--rickety, worn-

out, rush-bottom chairs; unsold, unfinished pictures, pell-mell in the

corner, covered with dust; broken casts of plaster; a lay-figure battered

in its basket-work arms, with its doll-like face all smudged and

besmeared. A pot of porter and a noggin of gin on a stained deal table,

accompanied by two or three broken, smoke-blackened pipes, some tattered

song-books, and old numbers of the "Covent Garden Magazine," betrayed the

tastes of the artist, and accounted for the shaking hand and the bloated

form. A jovial, disorderly, vagrant dog of a painter was Tom Varney. A

bachelor, of course; humorous and droll; a boon companion, and a terrible

borrower. Clever enough in his calling; with pains and some method, he

had easily gained subsistence and established a name; but he had one

trick that soon ruined him in the business part of his profession. He

took a fourth of his price in advance; and having once clutched the

money, the poor customer might go hang for his picture. The only things

Tom Varney ever fairly completed were those for which no order had been

given; for in them, somehow or other, his fancy became interested, and on

them he lavished the gusto which he really possessed. But the subjects

were rarely salable. Nymphs and deities undraperied have few worshippers

in England amongst the buyers of "furniture pictures." And, to say

truth, nymph and deity had usually a very equivocal look; and if they

came from the gods, you would swear it was the gods of the galleries of

Drury. When Tom Varney sold a picture, he lived upon clover till the

money was gone. But the poorer and less steady alumni of the rising

school, especially those at war with the Academy, from which Varney was

excluded, pitied, despised, yet liked and courted him withal. In

addition to his good qualities of blithe song-singer, droll story-teller,

and stanch Bacchanalian, Tom Varney was liberally good-natured in

communicating instruction really valuable to those who knew how to avail

themselves of a knowledge he had made almost worthless to himself. He

was a shrewd, though good-natured critic, had many little secrets of

colouring and composition, which an invitation to supper, or the loan of

ten shillings, was sufficient to bribe from him. Ragged, out of elbows,

unshaven, and slipshod, he still had his set amongst the gay and the

young,--a precious master, a profitable set for his nephew, Master Honore

Gabriel! But the poor rapscallion had a heart larger than many honest,

painstaking men. As soon as Gabriel had found him out, and entreated

refuge from his fear of his father, the painter clasped him tight in his

great slovenly arms, sold a Venus half-price to buy him a bed and a

washstand, and swore a tremendous oath that the son of his poor

guillotined sister should share the last shilling in his pocket, the last

drop in his can.

Gabriel, fresh from the cheer of Laughton, and spoiled by the prodigal

gifts of Lucretia, had little gratitude for shillings and porter.

Nevertheless, he condescended to take what he could get, while he sighed,

from the depths of a heart in which cupidity and vanity had become the

predominant rulers, for a destiny more worthy his genius, and more in

keeping with the sphere from which he had descended.

The boy finished his sketch, with an impudent wink at the model, flung

himself back on his chair, folded his arms, cast a discontented glance at

the whitened seams of the sleeves, and soon seemed lost in his own

reflections. The painter worked on in silence. The model, whom

Gabriel's wink had aroused, half-flattered, half-indignant for a moment,

lapsed into a doze. Outside the window, you heard the song of a canary,-

-a dingy, smoke-coloured canary that seemed shedding its plumes, for they

were as ragged as the garments of its master; still, it contrived to

sing, trill-trill-trill-trill-trill, as blithely as if free in its native

woods, or pampered by fair hands in a gilded cage. The bird was the only

true artist there, it sang as the poet sings,--to obey its nature and

vent its heart. Trill-trill-trillela-la-la-trill-trill, went the song,--

louder, gayer than usual; for there was a gleam of April sunshine

struggling over the rooftops. The song at length roused up Gabriel; he

turned his chair round, laid his head on one side, listened, and looked

curiously at the bird.

At length an idea seemed to cross him; he rose, opened the window, drew

in the cage, placed it on the chair, then took up one of his uncle's

pipes, walked to the fireplace, and thrust the shank of the pipe into the

bars. When it was red-hot he took it out by the bowl, having first

protected his hand from the heat by wrapping round it his handkerchief;

this done, he returned to the cage. His movements had wakened up the

dozing model. She eyed them at first with dull curiosity, then with

lively suspicion; and presently starting up with an exclamation such as

no novelist but Fielding dare put into the mouth of a female,--much less

a nymph of such renown as Galatea,--she sprang across the room, wellnigh

upsetting easel and painter, and fastened firm hold on Gabriel's

shoulders.

"The varment!" she cried vehemently; "the good-for-nothing varment! If

it had been a jay, or a nasty raven, well and good; but a poor little

canary!"

"Hoity-toity! what are you about, nephew? What's the matter?" said Tom

Varney, coming up to the strife. And, indeed, it was time; for Gabriel's

teeth were set in his catlike jaws, and the glowing point of the pipe-

shank was within an inch of the cheek of the model.

"What's the matter?" replied Gabriel, suddenly; "why, I was only going to

try a little experiment."

"An experiment? Not on my canary, poor dear little thing! The hours and

hours that creature has strained its throat to say 'Sing and be merry,'

when I had not a rap in my pocket! It would have made a stone feel to

hear it."

"But I think I can make it sing much better than ever,--only just let me

try! They say that if you put out the eyes of a canary, it--"

Gabriel was not allowed to conclude his sentence; for here rose that

clamour of horror and indignation from both painter and model which

usually greets the announcement of every philosophical discovery,--at

least, when about to be practically applied; and in the midst of the

hubbub, the poor little canary, who had been fluttering about the cage to

escape the hand of the benevolent operator, set up no longer the cheerful

trill-trillela-la-trill, but a scared and heart-breaking chirp,--a

shrill, terrified twit-twit-twitter-twit.

"Damn the bird! Hold your tongues!" cried Gabriel Varney, reluctantly

giving way, but still eying the bird with the scientific regret with

which the illustrious Majendie might contemplate a dog which some brute

of a master refused to disembowel for the good of the colics of mankind.

The model seized on the cage, shut the door of the wires, and carried it

off. Tom Varney drained the rest of his porter, and wiped his forehead

with the sleeve of his coat.

"And to use my pipe for such cruelty! Boy, boy, I could not have

believed it! But you were not in earnest; oh, no, impossible! Sukey, my

love--Galatea the divine--calm thy breast; Cupid did but jest.

'Cupid is the God of Laughter,

Quip and jest and joke, sir.'"

"If you don't whip the little wretch within an inch of his life, he'll

have a gallows end on't," replied Galatea.

"Go, Cupid, go and kiss Galatea, and make your peace.

`Oh, leave a kiss within the cup,

And I'll not ask for wine.'

And 't is no use asking for wine, or for gin either,--not a drop in the

noggin!"

All this while Gabriel, disdaining the recommendations held forth to him,

was employed in brushing his jacket with a very mangy-looking brush; and

when he had completed that operation he approached his uncle, and coolly

thrust his hands into that gentleman's waistcoat-pockets.

"Uncle, what have you done with those seven shillings? I am going out to

spend the day."

"If you give them to him, Tom, I'll scratch your eyes out," cried the

model; "and then we'll see how you'll sing. Whip him, I say, whip him!"

But, strange to say, this liberty of the boy quite reopened the heart of

his uncle,--it was a pleasure to him, who put his hands so habitually

into other people's pockets, to be invested with the novel grandeur of

the man sponged upon. "That's right, Cupid, son of Cytherea; all's

common property amongst friends. Seven shillings, I have 'em not. 'They

now are five who once were seven;' but such as they are, we'll share.

'Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown.'"

"Crowns bear no division, my uncle," said Gabriel, dryly; and he pocketed

the five shillings. Then, having first secured his escape by gaining the

threshold, he suddenly seized one of the rickety chairs by its leg, and

regardless of the gallantries due to the sex, sent it right against the

model, who was shaking her fist at him. A scream and a fall and a sharp

twit from the cage, which was hurled nearly into the fireplace, told that

the missive had taken effect. Gabriel did not wait for the probable

reaction; he was in the streets in an instant. "This won't do," he

muttered to himself; "there is no getting on here. Foolish drunken

vagabond! no good to be got from him. My father is terrible, but he will

make his way in the world. Umph! if I were but his match,--and why not?

I am brave, and he is not. There's fun, too, in danger."

Thus musing, he took his way to Dalibard's lodgings. His father was at

home. Now, though they were but lodgings, and the street not in fashion,

Olivier Dalibard's apartments had an air of refinement, and even

elegance, that contrasted both the wretched squalor of the abode Gabriel

had just left and the meanness of Dalibard's former quarters in London,

The change seemed to imply that the Provencal had already made some way

in the world. And, truth to say, at all times, even in the lowest ebb of

his fortunes, there was that indescribable neatness and formality of

precision about all the exterior seemings of the ci-devant friend of the

prim Robespierre which belong to those in whom order and method are

strongly developed,--qualities which give even to neediness a certain

dignity. As the room and its owner met the eye of Gabriel, on whose

senses all externals had considerable influence, the ungrateful young

ruffian recalled the kind, tattered, slovenly uncle, whose purse he had

just emptied, without one feeling milder than disgust. Olivier Dalibard,

always careful, if simple, in his dress, with his brow of grave

intellectual power, and his mien imposing, not only from its calm, but

from that nameless refinement which rarely fails to give to the student

the air of a gentleman,--Olivier Dalibard he might dread, he might even

detest; but he was not ashamed of him.

"I said I would visit you, sir, if you would permit me," said Gabriel, in

a tone of respect, not unmingled with some defiance, as if in doubt of

his reception.

The father's slow full eye, so different from the sidelong, furtive

glance of Lucretia, turned on the son, as if to penetrate his very heart.

"You look pale and haggard, child; you are fast losing your health and

beauty. Good gifts these, not to be wasted before they can be duly

employed. But you have taken your choice. Be an artist,--copy Tom

Varney, and prosper." Gabriel remained silent, with his eyes on the

floor.

"You come in time for my farewell," resumed Dalibard. "It is a comfort,

at least, that I leave your youth so honourably protected. I am about to

return to my country; my career is once more before me!"

"Your country,--to Paris?"

"There are fine pictures in the Louvre,--a good place to inspire an

artist!"

"You go alone, Father!"

"You forget, young gentleman, you disown me as father! Go alone! I

thought I told you in the times of our confidence, that I should marry

Lucretia Clavering. I rarely fail in my plans. She has lost Laughton,

it is true; but 10,000 pounds will make a fair commencement to fortune,

even at Paris. Well, what do you want with me, worthy godson of Honore

Gabriel Mirabeau?"

"Sir, if you will let me, I will go with you."

Dalibard shaded his brow with his hand, and reflected on the filial

proposal. On the one hand, it might be convenient, and would certainly

be economical, to rid himself evermore of the mutinous son who had

already thrown off his authority; on the other hand, there was much in

Gabriel, mutinous and even menacing as he had lately become, that

promised an unscrupulous tool or a sharp-witted accomplice, with

interests that every year the ready youth would more and more discover

were bound up in his plotting father's. This last consideration, joined,

if not to affection, still to habit,--to the link between blood and

blood, which even the hardest find it difficult to sever,--prevailed. He

extended his pale hand to Gabriel, and said gently,--

"I will take you, if we rightly understand each other. Once again in my

power, I might constrain you to my will, it is true. But I rather confer

with you as man to man than as man to boy."

"It is the best way," said Gabriel, firmly.

"I will use no harshness, inflict no punishment,--unless, indeed, amply

merited by stubborn disobedience or wilful deceit. But if I meet with

these, better rot on a dunghill than come with me! I ask implicit

confidence in all my suggestions, prompt submission to all my requests.

Grant me but these, and I promise to consult your fortune as my own, to

gratify your tastes as far as my means will allow, to grudge not your

pleasures, and when the age for ambition comes, to aid your rise if I

rise myself,--nay, if well contented with you, to remove the blot from

your birth, by acknowledging and adopting you formally as my son."

"Agreed! and I thank you," said Gabriel. "And Lucretia is going? Oh, I

so long to see her!"

"See her--not yet; but next week."

"Do not fear that I should let out about the letter. I should betray

myself if I did," said the boy, bluntly betraying his guess at his

father's delay.

The evil scholar smiled.

"You will do well to keep it secret for your own sake; for mine, I should

not fear. Gabriel, go back now to your master,--you do right, like the

rats, to run from the falling house. Next week I will send for you,

Gabriel!"

Not, however, back to the studio went the boy. He sauntered leisurely

through the gayest streets, eyed the shops and the equipages, the fair

women and the well-dressed men,--eyed with envy and longings and visions

of pomps and vanities to come; then, when the day began to close, he

sought out a young painter, the wildest and maddest of the crew to whom

his uncle had presented their future comrade and rival, and went with

this youth, at half-price, to the theatre, not to gaze on the actors or

study the play, but to stroll in the saloon. A supper in the Finish

completed the void in his pockets, and concluded his day's rank

experience of life. By the gray dawn he stole back to his bed, and as he

laid himself down, he thought with avid pleasure of Paris, its gay

gardens and brilliant shops and crowded streets; he thought, too, of his

father's calm confidence of success, of the triumph that already had

attended his wiles,--a confidence and a triumph which, exciting his

reverence and rousing his emulation, had decided his resolution. He

thought, too, of Lucretia with something of affection, recalled her

praises and bribes, her frequent mediation with his father, and felt that

they should have need of each other. Oh, no, he never would tell her of

the snare laid at Guy's Oak,--never, not even if incensed with his

father. An instinct told him that that offence could never be forgiven,

and that, henceforth, Lucretia's was a destiny bound up in his own. He

thought, too, of Dalibard's warning and threat. But with fear itself

came a strange excitement of pleasure,--to grapple, if necessary, he a

mere child, with such a man! His heart swelled at the thought. So at

last he fell asleep, and dreamed that he saw his mother's trunkless face

dripping gore and frowning on him,--dreamed that he heard her say: "Goest

thou to the scene of my execution only to fawn upon my murderer?" Then a

nightmare of horrors, of scaffolds and executioners and grinning mobs and

agonized faces, came on him,--dark, confused, and indistinct. And he

woke, with his hair standing on end, and beard below, in the rising sun,

the merry song of the poor canary,--trill-lill-lill, trill-trill-lill-

lill-la! Did he feel glad that his cruel hand had been stayed?

EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.

It is a year since the November day on which Lucretia Clavering quitted

the roof of Mr. Fielden. And first we must recall the eye of the reader

to the old-fashioned terrace at Laughton,--the jutting porch, the quaint

balustrades, the broad, dark, changeless cedars on the lawn beyond. The

day is calm, clear, and mild, for November in the country is often a

gentle month. On that terrace walked Charles Vernon, now known by his

new name of St. John. Is it the change of name that has so changed the

person? Can the wand of the Herald's Office have filled up the hollows

of the cheek, and replaced by elastic vigour the listless languor of the

tread? No; there is another and a better cause for that healthful

change. Mr. Vernon St. John is not alone,--a fair companion leans on his

arm. See, she pauses to press closer to his side, gaze on his face, and

whisper, "We did well to have hope and faith!"

The husband's faith had not been so unshaken as his Mary's, and a slight

blush passed over his cheek as he thought of his concession to Sir

Miles's wishes, and his overtures to Lucretia Clavering. Still, that

fault had been fairly acknowledged to his wife, and she felt, the moment

she had spoken, that she had committed an indiscretion; nevertheless,

with an arch touch of womanly malice she added softly,--

"And Miss Clavering, you persist in saying, was not really handsome?"

"My love," replied the husband, gravely, "you would oblige me by not

recalling the very painful recollections connected with that name. Let

it never be mentioned in this house."

Lady Mary bowed her graceful head in submission; she understood Charles's

feelings. For though he had not shown her Sir Miles's letter and its

enclosure, he had communicated enough to account for the unexpected

heritage, and to lessen his wife's compassion for the disappointed

heiress. Nevertheless, she comprehended that her husband felt an uneasy

twinge at the idea that he was compelled to act hardly to the one whose

hopes he had supplanted. Lucretia's banishment from Laughton was a just

humiliation, but it humbled a generous heart to inflict the sentence.

Thus, on all accounts, the remembrance of Lucretia was painful and

unwelcome to the successor of Sir Miles. There was a silence; Lady Mary

pressed her husband's hand.

"It is strange," said he, giving vent to his thoughts at that tender sign

of sympathy in his feeling,--"strange that, after all, she did not marry

Mainwaring, but fixed her choice on that subtle Frenchman. But she has

settled abroad now, perhaps for life; a great relief to my mind. Yes,

let us never recur to her."

"Fortunately," said Lady Mary, with some hesitation, "she does not seem

to have created much interest here. The poor seldom name her to me, and

our neighbours only with surprise at her marriage. In another year she

will be forgotten!"

Mr. St. John sighed. Perhaps he felt how much more easily he had been

forgotten, were he the banished one, Lucretia the possessor! His light

nature, however, soon escaped from all thoughts and sources of annoyance,

and he listened with complacent attention to Lady Mary's gentle plans for

the poor, and the children's school, and the cottages that ought to be

repaired, and the labourers that ought to be employed. For though it may

seem singular, Vernon St. John, insensibly influenced by his wife's meek

superiority, and corrected by her pure companionship, had begun to feel

the charm of innocent occupations,--more, perhaps, than if he had been

accustomed to the larger and loftier excitements of life, and missed that

stir of intellect which is the element of those who have warred in the

democracy of letters, or contended for the leadership of States. He had

begun already to think that the country was no such exile after all.

Naturally benevolent, he had taught himself to share the occupations his

Mary had already found in the busy "luxury of doing good," and to

conceive that brotherhood of charity which usually unites the lord of the

village with its poor.

"I think, what with hunting once a week,--I will not venture more till my

pain in the side is quite gone,--and with the help of some old friends at

Christmas, we can get through the winter very well, Mary."

"Ah, those old friends, I dread them more than the hunting!"

"But we'll have your grave father and your dear, precise, excellent

mother to keep us in order. And if I sit more than half an hour after

dinner, the old butler shall pull me out by the ears. Mary, what do you

say to thinning the grove yonder? We shall get a better view of the

landscape beyond. No, hang it! dear old Sir Miles loved his trees better

than the prospect; I won't lop a bough. But that avenue we are planting

will be certainly a noble improvement--"

"Fifty years hence, Charles!"

"It is our duty to think of posterity," answered the ci-devant

spendthrift, with a gravity that was actually pompous. "But hark! is

that two o'clock? Three, by Jove! How time flies! and my new bullocks

that I was to see at two! Come down to the farm, that's my own Mary.

Ah, your fine ladies are not such bad housewives after all!"

"And your fine gentlemen--"

"Capital farmers! I had no idea till last week that a prize ox was so

interesting an animal. One lives to learn. Put me in mind, by the by,

to write to Coke about his sheep."

"This way, dear Charles; we can go round by the village,--and see poor

Ponto and Dash."

The tears rushed to Mr. St. John's eyes. "If poor Sir Miles could have

known you!" he said, with a sigh; and though the gardeners were at work

on the lawn, he bowed his head and kissed the blushing cheek of his wife

as heartily as if he had been really a farmer.

From the terrace at Laughton, turn to the humbler abode of our old friend

the vicar,--the same day, the same hour. Here also the scene is without

doors,--we are in the garden of the vicarage; the children are playing at

hide-and-seek amongst the espaliers which screen the winding gravel-walks

from the esculents more dear to Ceres than to Flora. The vicar is seated

in his little parlour, from which a glazed door admits into the garden.

The door is now open, and the good man has paused from his work (he had

just discovered a new emendation in the first chorus of the "Medea") to

look out at the rosy faces that gleam to and fro across the scene. His

wife, with a basket in her hand, is standing without the door, but a

little aside, not to obstruct the view.

"It does one's heart good to see them," said the vicar, "little dears!"

"Yes, they ought to be dear at this time of the year," observed Mrs.

Fielden, who was absorbed in the contents of the basket.

"And so fresh!"

"Fresh, indeed,--how different from London! In London they were not fit

to be seen,--as old as---I am sure I can't guess how old they were. But

you see here they are new laid every morning!"

"My dear," said Mr. Fielden, opening his eyes,--"new laid every morning!"

"Two dozen and four."

"Two dozen and four! What on earth are you talking about, Mrs. Fielden?"

"Why, the eggs, to be sure, my love!"

"Oh," said the vicar, "two dozen and four! You alarmed me a little; 't

is of no consequence,--only my foolish mistake. Always prudent and

saving, my dear Sarah,--just as if poor Sir Miles had not left us that

munificent fortune, I may call it."

"It will not go very far when we have our young ones to settle. And

David is very extravagant already; he has torn such a hole in his

jacket!"

At this moment up the gravel-walk two young persons came in sight. The

children darted across them, whooping and laughing, and vanished in the

further recess of the garden.

"All is for the best, blind mortals that we are; all is for the best,"

said the vicar, musingly, as his eyes rested upon the approaching pair.

"Certainly, my love; you are always right, and it is wicked to grumble.

Still, if you saw what a hole it was,--past patching, I fear!"

"Look round," said Mr. Fielden, benevolently. "How we grieved for them

both; how wroth we were with William,--how sad for Susan! And now see

them; they will be the better man and wife for their trial."

"Has Susan then consented? I was almost afraid she never would consent.

How often have I been almost angry with her, poor lamb, when I have heard

her accuse herself of causing her sister's unhappiness, and declare with

sobs that she felt it a crime to think of William Mainwaring as a

husband."

"I trust I have reasoned her out of a morbid sensibility which, while it

could not have rendered Lucretia the happier, must have insured the

wretchedness of herself and William. But if Lucretia had not married,

and so forever closed the door on William's repentance (that is,

supposing he did repent), I believe poor Susan would rather have died of

a broken heart than have given her hand to Mainwaring."

"It was an odd marriage of that proud young lady's, after all," said Mrs.

Fielden,--"so much older than she; a foreigner, too!"

"But he is a very pleasant man, and they have known each other so long.

I did not, however, quite like a sort of cunning he showed, when I came

to reflect on it, in bringing Lucretia back to the house; it looks as if

he had laid a trap for her from the first."

"Ten thousand pounds,--a great catch for a foreigner!" observed Mrs.

Fielden, with the shrewd instinct of her sex; and then she added, in the

spirit of a prudent sympathy equally characteristic: "But I think you say

Mr. Parchmount persuaded her to allow half to be settled on herself.

That will be a hold on him."

"A bad hold, if that be all, Sarah. There is a better,--he is a learned

man and a scholar. Scholars are naturally domestic, and make good

husbands."

"But you know he must be a papist!" said Mrs. Fielden.

"Umph!" muttered the vicar, irresolutely.

While the worthy couple were thus conversing, Susan and her lover, not

having finished their conference, had turned back through the winding

walk.

"Indeed," said William, drawing her arm closer to his side, "these

scruples, these fears, are cruel to me as well as to yourself. If you

were no longer existing, I could be nothing to your sister. Nay, even

were she not married, you must know enough of her pride to be assured

that I can retain no place in her affections. What has chanced was not

our crime. Perhaps Heaven designed to save not only us, but herself,

from the certain misery of nuptials so inauspicious!"

"If she would but answer one of my letters!" sighed Susan; "or if I could

but know that she were happy and contented!"

"Your letters must have miscarried,--you are not sure even of her

address. Rely upon it, she is happy. Do you think that she would a

second time have 'stooped beneath her'"--Mainwaring's lip writhed as he

repeated that phrase--"if her feelings had not been involved? I would

not wrong your sister,--I shall ever feel gratitude for the past, and

remorse for my own shameful weakness; still, I must think that the nature

of her attachment to me was more ardent than lasting."

"Ah, William, how can you know her heart?"

"By comparing it with yours. Oh, there indeed I may anchor my faith!

Susan, we were formed for each other! Our natures are alike, save that

yours, despite its surpassing sweetness, has greater strength in its

simple candour. You will be my guide to good. Without you I should have

no aim in life, no courage to front the contests of this world. Ah, this

hand trembles still!"

"William, William, I cannot repress a foreboding, a superstition! At

night I am haunted with that pale face as I saw it last,--pale with

suppressed despair. Oh, if ever Lucretia could have need of us,--need of

our services, our affections,--if we could but repair the grief we have

caused her!"

Susan's head sank on her lover's shoulder. She had said "need of us,"

"need of our services." In those simple monosyllables the union was

pledged, the identity of their lots in the dark urn was implied.

From this scene turn again; the slide shifts in the lantern,--we are at

Paris. In the antechamber at the Tuileries a crowd of expectant

courtiers and adventurers gaze upon a figure who passes with modest and

downcast eyes through the throng; he has just left the closet of the

First Consul.

"Par Dieu!" said B----, "power, like misery, makes us acquainted with

strange bedfellows. I should like to hear what the First Consul can have

to say to Olivier Dalibard."

Fouche, who at that period was scheming for the return to his old

dignities of minister of police, smiled slightly, and answered: "In a

time when the air is filled with daggers, one who was familiar with

Robespierre has his uses. Olivier Dalibard is a remarkable man. He is

one of those children of the Revolution whom that great mother is bound

to save."

"By betraying his brethren?" said B----, dryly.

"I do not allow the inference. The simple fact is that Dalibard has

spent many years in England; he has married an Englishwoman of birth and

connections; he knows well the English language and the English people;

and just now when the First Consul is so anxious to approfondir the

popular feelings of that strange nation, with whose government he is

compelled to go to war, he may naturally have much to say to so acute an

observer as Olivier Dalibard."

"Um!" said B----; "with such patronage, Robespierre's friend should hold

his head somewhat higher!"

Meanwhile, Olivier Dalibard, crossing the gardens of the palace, took his

way to the Faubourg St. Germain. There was no change in the aspect of

this man: the same meditative tranquillity characterized his downward

eyes and bonded brow; the same precise simplicity of dress which had

pleased the prim taste of Robespierre gave decorum to his slender,

stooping form. No expression more cheerful, no footstep more elastic,

bespoke the exile's return to his native land, or the sanguine

expectations of Intellect restored to a career. Yet, to all appearance,

the prospects of Dalibard were bright and promising. The First Consul

was at that stage of his greatness when he sought to employ in his

service all such talent as the Revolution had made manifest, provided

only that it was not stained with notorious bloodshed, or too strongly

associated with the Jacobin clubs. His quick eye seemed to have

discovered already the abilities of Dalibard, and to have appreciated the

sagacity and knowledge of men which had enabled this subtle person to

obtain the friendship of Robespierre, without sharing in his crimes. He

had been frequently closeted with Bonaparte; he was in the declared

favour of Fouche, who, though not at that period at the head of the

police, was too necessary amidst the dangers of the time, deepened as

they were by the rumours of some terrible and profound conspiracy, to be

laid aside, as the First Consul had at one moment designed. One man

alone, of those high in the State, appeared to distrust Olivier

Dalibard,--the celebrated Cambaceres. But with his aid the Provencal

could dispense. What was the secret of Dalibard's power? Was it, in

truth, owing solely to his native talent, and his acquired experience,

especially of England? Was it by honourable means that he had won the

ear of the First Consul? We may be sure of the contrary; for it is a

striking attribute of men once thoroughly tainted by the indulgence of

vicious schemes and stratagems that they become wholly blinded to those

plain paths of ambition which common-sense makes manifest to ordinary

ability. If we regard narrowly the lives of great criminals, we are

often very much startled by the extraordinary acuteness, the profound

calculation, the patient, meditative energy which they have employed upon

the conception and execution of a crime. We feel inclined to think that

such intellectual power would have commanded great distinction, worthily

used and guided; but we never find that these great criminals seem to

have been sensible of the opportunities to real eminence which they have

thrown away. Often we observe that there have been before them vistas

into worldly greatness which, by no uncommon prudence and exertion, would

have conducted honest men half as clever to fame and power; but, with a

strange obliquity of vision, they appear to have looked from these broad

clear avenues into some dark, tangled defile, in which, by the subtlest

ingenuity, and through the most besetting perils, they might attain at

last to the success of a fraud or the enjoyment of a vice. In crime once

indulged there is a wonderful fascination, and the fascination is, not

rarely, great in proportion to the intellect of the criminal. There is

always hope of reform for a dull, uneducated, stolid man, led by accident

or temptation into guilt; but where a man of great ability, and highly

educated, besots himself in the intoxication of dark and terrible

excitements, takes impure delight in tortuous and slimy ways, the good

angel abandons him forever.

Olivier Dalibard walked musingly on, gained a house in one of the most

desolate quarters of the abandoned faubourg, mounted the spacious stairs,

and rang at the door of an attic next the roof. After some moments the

door was slowly and cautiously opened, and two small, fierce eyes,

peering through a mass of black, tangled curls, gleamed through the

aperture. The gaze seemed satisfactory.

"Enter, friend," said the inmate, with a sort of complacent grunt; and as

Dalibard obeyed, the man reclosed and barred the door.

The room was bare to beggary; the ceiling, low and sloping, was blackened

with smoke. A wretched bed, two chairs, a table, a strong chest, a small

cracked looking-glass, completed the inventory. The dress of the

occupier was not in keeping with the chamber; true that it was not such

as was worn by the wealthier classes, but it betokened no sign of

poverty. A blue coat with high collar, and half of military fashion, was

buttoned tight over a chest of vast girth; the nether garments were of

leather, scrupulously clean, and solid, heavy riding-boots came half-way

up the thigh. A more sturdy, stalwart, strong-built knave never excited

the admiration which physical power always has a right to command; and

Dalibard gazed on him with envy. The pale scholar absolutely sighed as

he thought what an auxiliary to his own scheming mind would have been so

tough a frame!

But even less in form than face did the man of thews and sinews contrast

the man of wile and craft. Opposite that high forehead, with its massive

development of organs, scowled the low front of one to whom thought was

unfamiliar,--protuberant, indeed, over the shaggy brows, where

phrenologists place the seats of practical perception, strongly marked in

some of the brutes, as in the dog, but almost literally void of those

higher organs by which we reason and imagine and construct. But in rich

atonement for such deficiency, all the animal reigned triumphant in the

immense mass and width of the skull behind. And as the hair, long

before, curled in close rings to the nape of the bull-like neck, you saw

before you one of those useful instruments to ambition and fraud which

recoil at no danger, comprehend no crime, are not without certain good

qualities, under virtuous guidance,--for they have the fidelity, the

obedience, the stubborn courage of the animal,--but which, under evil

control, turn those very qualities to unsparing evil: bull-dogs to rend

the foe, as bull-dogs to defend the master.

For some moments the two men gazed, silently at each other. At length

Dalibard said, with an air of calm superiority,--

"My friend, it is time that I should be presented to the chiefs of your

party!"

"Chiefs, par tous les diables!" growled the other; "we Chouans are all

chiefs, when it comes to blows. You have seen my credentials; you know

that I am a man to be trusted: what more do you need?"

"For myself nothing; but my friends are more scrupulous. I have sounded,

as I promised, the heads of the old Jacobin party, and they are

favourable. This upstart soldier, who has suddenly seized in his iron

grasp all the fruits of the Revolution, is as hateful to them as to you.

But que voulez vous, mon cher? men are men! It is one thing to destroy

Bonaparte; it is another thing to restore the Bourbons. How can the

Jacobin chiefs depend on your assurance, or my own, that the Bourbons

will forget the old offences and reward the new service? You apprise me-

-so do your credentials--that a prince of the blood is engaged in this

enterprise, that he will appear at the proper season. Put me in direct

communication with this representative of the Bourbons, and I promise in

return, if his assurances are satisfactory, that you shall have an

emeute, to be felt from Paris to Marseilles. If you cannot do this, I am

useless; and I withdraw--"

"Withdraw! Garde a vous, Monsieur le Savant! No man withdraws alive

from a conspiracy like ours."

We have said before that Olivier Dalibard was not physically brave; and

the look of the Chouan, as those words were said, would have frozen the

blood of many a bolder man. But the habitual hypocrisy of Dalibard

enabled him to disguise his fear, and he replied dryly,--

"Monsieur le Chouan, it is not by threats that you will gain adherents to

a desperate cause, which, on the contrary, requires mild words and

flattering inducements. If you commit a violence,--a murder,--mon cher,

Paris is not Bretagne; we have a police: you will be discovered."

"Ha, ha! What then? Do you think I fear the guillotine?"

"For yourself, no; but for your leaders, yes! If you are discovered, and

arrested for crime, do you fancy that the police will not recognize the

right arm of the terrible George Cadoudal; that they will not guess that

Cadoudal is at Paris; that Cadoudal will not accompany you to the

guillotine?"

The Chouan's face fell. Olivier watched him, and pursued his advantage.

"I asked you to introduce to me this shadow of a prince, under which you

would march to a counter-revolution. But I will be more easily

contented. Present me to George Cadoudal, the hero of Morbihan; he is a

man in whom I can trust, and with whom I can deal. What, you hesitate?

How do you suppose enterprises of this nature can be carried on? If,

from fear and distrust of each other, the man you would employ cannot

meet the chief who directs him, there will be delay, confusion, panic,

and you will all perish by the executioner. And for me, Pierre Guillot,

consider my position. I am in some favour with the First Consul; I have

a station of respectability,--a career lies before me. Can you think

that I will hazard these, with my head to boot, like a rash child? Do

you suppose that, in entering into this terrible contest, I would consent

to treat only with subordinates? Do not deceive yourself. Again, I say,

tell your employers that they must confer with me directly, or je m'en

lave les mains."

"I will repeat what you say," answered Guillot, sullenly, "Is this all?"

"All for the present," said Dalibard, slowly drawing on his gloves, and

retreating towards the door. The Chouan watched him with a suspicious

and sinister eye; and as the Provencal's hand was on the latch, he laid

his own rough grasp on Dalibard's shoulder,--

"I know not how it is, Monsieur Dalibard, but I mistrust you."

"Distrust is natural and prudent to all who conspire," replied the

scholar, quietly. "I do not ask you to confide in me. Your employers

bade you seek me: I have mentioned my conditions; let them decide."

"You carry it off well, Monsieur Dalibard, and I am under a solemn oath,

which poor George made me take, knowing me to be a hot-headed, honest

fellow,--mauvaise tete, if you will,--that I will keep my hand off pistol

and knife upon mere suspicion; that nothing less than his word, or than

clear and positive proof of treachery, shall put me out of good humour

and into warm blood. But bear this with you, Monsieur Dalibard: if I

once discover that you use our secrets to betray them; should George see

you, and one hair of his head come to injury through your hands,--I will

wring your neck as a housewife wrings a pullet's."

"I don't doubt your strength or your ferocity, Pierre Guillot; but my

neck will be safe: you have enough to do to take care of your own.

Au revoir."

With a tone and look of calm and fearless irony, the scholar thus spoke,

and left the room; but when he was on the stairs, he paused, and caught

at the balustrade,--the sickness as of terror at some danger past, or to

be, came over him; and this contrast between the self-command, or

simulation, which belongs to moral courage, and the feebleness of natural

and constitutional cowardice, would have been sublime if shown in a noble

cause. In one so corrupt, it but betrayed a nature doubly formidable;

for treachery and murder hatch their brood amidst the folds of a

hypocrite's cowardice.

While thus the interview is going on between Dalibard and the

conspirator, we must bestow a glance upon the Provencal's home.

In an apartment in one of the principal streets between the Boulevards

and the Rue St. Honore, a boy and a woman sat side by side, conversing in

whispers. The boy was Gabriel Varney, the woman Lucretia Dalibard. The

apartment was furnished in the then modern taste, which affected

classical forms; and though not without a certain elegance, had something

meagre and comfortless in its splendid tripods and thin-legged chairs.

There was in the apartment that air which bespeaks the struggle for

appearances,--that struggle familiar to those of limited income and vain

aspirings, who want the taste which smooths all inequalities and gives a

smile to home; that taste which affection seems to prompt, if not to

create, which shows itself in a thousand nameless, costless trifles, each

a grace. No sign was there of the household cares or industry of women.

No flowers, no music, no embroidery-frame, no work-table. Lucretia had

none of the sweet feminine habits which betray so lovelily the whereabout

of women. All was formal and precise, like rooms which we enter and

leave,--not those in which we settle and dwell.

Lucretia herself is changed; her air is more assured, her complexion more

pale, the evil character of her mouth more firm and pronounced.

Gabriel, still a mere boy in years, has a premature look of man. The

down shades his lip. His dress, though showy and theatrical, is no

longer that of boyhood. His rounded cheek has grown thin, as with the

care and thought which beset the anxious step of youth on entering into

life.

Both, as before remarked, spoke in whispers; both from time to time

glanced fearfully at the door; both felt that they belonged to a hearth

round which smile not the jocund graces of trust and love and the heart's

open ease.

"But," said Gabriel,--"but if you would be safe, my father must have no

secrets hid from you."

"I do not know that he has. He speaks to me frankly of his hopes, of the

share he has in the discovery of the plot against the First Consul, of

his interviews with Pierre Guillot, the Breton."

"Ah, because there your courage supports him, and your acuteness assists

his own. Such secrets belong to his public life, his political schemes;

with those he will trust you. It is his private life, his private

projects, you must know."

"But what does he conceal from me? Apart from politics, his whole mind

seems bent on the very natural object of securing intimacy with his rich

cousin, M. Bellanger, from whom he has a right to expect so large an

inheritance."

"Bellanger is rich, but he is not much older than my father."

"He has bad health."

"No," said Gabriel, with a downcast eye and a strange smile, "he has not

bad health; but he may not be long-lived."

"How do you mean?" asked Lucretia, sinking her voice into a still lower

whisper, while a shudder, she scarce knew why, passed over her frame.

"What does my father do," resumed Gabriel, "in that room at the top of

the house? Does he tell you that secret?"

"He makes experiments in chemistry. You know that that was always his

favourite study. You smile again! Gabriel, do not smile so; it appalls

me. Do you think there is some mystery in that chamber?"

"It matters not what we think, belle-mere; it matters much what we know.

If I were you, I would know what is in that chamber. I repeat, to be

safe, you must have all his secrets, or none. Hush, that is his step!"

The door-handle turned noiselessly, and Olivier entered. His look fell

on his son's face, which betrayed only apparent surprise at his

unexpected return. He then glanced at Lucretia's, which was, as usual,

cold and impenetrable.

"Gabriel," said Dalibard, gently, "I have come in for you. I have

promised to take you to spend the day at M. Bellanger's; you are a great

favourite with Madame. Come, my boy. I shall be back soon, Lucretia. I

shall but drop in to leave Gabriel at my cousin's."

Gabriel rose cheerfully, as if only alive to the expectation of the bon-

bons and compliments he received habitually from Madame Bellanger.

"And you can take your drawing implements with you," continued Dalibard.

"This good M. Bellanger has given you permission to copy his Poussin."

"His Poussin! Ah, that is placed in his bedroom [It is scarcely

necessary to observe that bedchambers in Paris, when forming part of the

suite of reception-rooms, are often decorated no less elaborately than

the other apartments], is it not?"

"Yes," answered Dalibard, briefly.

Gabriel lifted his sharp, bright eyes to his father's face. Dalibard

turned away.

"Come!" he said with some impatience; and the boy took up his hat.

In another minute Lucretia was alone.

"Alone," in an English home, is a word implying no dreary solitude to an

accomplished woman; but alone in that foreign land, alone in those half-

furnished, desolate apartments,--few books, no musical instruments, no

companions during the day to drop in,--that loneliness was wearying. And

that mind so morbidly active! In the old Scottish legend, the spirit

that serves the wizard must be kept constantly employed; suspend its work

for a moment, and it rends the enchanter. It is so with minds that crave

for excitement, and live, without relief of heart and affection, on the

hard tasks of the intellect.

Lucretia mused over Gabriel's words and warning: "To be safe, you must

know all his secrets, or none." What was the secret which Dalibard had

not communicated to her?

She rose, stole up the cold, cheerless stairs, and ascended to the attic

which Dalibard had lately hired. It was locked; and she observed that

the lock was small,--so small that the key might be worn in a ring. She

descended, and entered her husband's usual cabinet, which adjoined the

sitting-room. All the books which the house contained were there,--a few

works on metaphysics, Spinoza in especial, the great Italian histories,

some volumes of statistics, many on physical and mechanical philosophy,

and one or two works of biography and memoirs. No light literature,--

that grace and flower of human culture, that best philosophy of all,

humanizing us with gentle art, making us wise through the humours,

elevated through the passions, tender in the affections of our kind. She

took out one of the volumes that seemed less arid than the rest, for she

was weary of her own thoughts, and began to read. To her surprise, the

first passage she opened was singularly interesting, though the title was

nothing more seductive than the "Life of a Physician of Padua in the

Sixteenth Century." It related to that singular epoch of terror in Italy

when some mysterious disease, varying in a thousand symptoms, baffled all

remedy, and long defied all conjecture,--a disease attacking chiefly the

heads of families, father and husband; rarely women. In one city, seven

hundred husbands perished, but not one wife! The disease was poison.

The hero of the memoir was one of the earlier discoverers of the true

cause of this household epidemic. He had been a chief authority in a

commission of inquiry. Startling were the details given in the work,--

the anecdotes, the histories, the astonishing craft brought daily to bear

on the victim, the wondrous perfidy of the subtle means, the variation of

the certain murder,--here swift as epilepsy, there slow and wasting as

long decline. The lecture was absorbing; and absorbed in the book

Lucretia still was, when she heard Dalibard's voice behind: he was

looking over her shoulder.

"A strange selection for so fair a student! En fant, play not with such

weapons."

"But is this all true?"

"True, though scarce a fragment of the truth. The physician was a sorry

chemist and a worse philosopher. He blundered in his analysis of the

means; and if I remember rightly, he whines like a priest at the

motives,--for see you not what was really the cause of this spreading

pestilence? It was the Saturnalia of the Weak,--a burst of mocking

license against the Strong; it was more,--it was the innate force of the

individual waging war against the many."

"I do not understand you."

"No? In that age, husbands were indeed lords of the household; they

married mere children for their lands; they neglected and betrayed them;

they were inexorable if the wife committed the faults set before her for

example. Suddenly the wife found herself armed against her tyrant. His

life was in her hands. So the weak had no mercy on the strong. But man,

too, was then, even more than now, a lonely wrestler in a crowded arena.

Brute force alone gave him distinction in courts; wealth alone brought

him justice in the halls, or gave him safety in his home. Suddenly the

frail puny lean saw that he could reach the mortal part of his giant foe.

The noiseless sling was in his hand,--it smote Goliath from afar.

Suddenly the poor man, ground to the dust, spat upon by contempt, saw

through the crowd of richer kinsmen, who shunned and bade him rot; saw

those whose death made him heir to lordship and gold and palaces and

power and esteem. As a worm through a wardrobe, that man ate through

velvet and ermine, and gnawed out the hearts that beat in his way. No.

A great intellect can comprehend these criminals, and account for the

crime. It is a mighty thing to feel in one's self that one is an army,--

more than an army! What thousands and millions of men, with trumpet and

banner, and under the sanction of glory, strive to do,--destroy a foe,--

that, with little more than an effort of the will,--with a drop, a grain,

for all his arsenal,--one man can do!"

There was a horrible enthusiasm about this reasoning devil as he spoke

thus; his crest rose, his breast expanded. That animation which a noble

thought gives to generous hearts kindled in the face of the apologist for

the darkest and basest of human crimes. Lucretia shuddered; but her

gloomy imagination was spelled; there was an interest mingled with her

terror.

"Hush! you appall me," she said at last, timidly. "But, happily, this

fearful art exists no more to tempt and destroy?"

"As a more philosophical discovery, it might be amusing to a chemist to

learn exactly what were the compounds of those ancient poisons," said

Dalibard, not directly answering the implied question. "Portions of the

art are indeed lost, unless, as I suspect, there is much credulous

exaggeration in the accounts transmitted to us. To kill by a flower, a

pair of gloves, a soap-ball,--kill by means which elude all possible

suspicion,--is it credible? What say you? An amusing research, indeed,

if one had leisure! But enough of this now; it grows late. We dine with

M. de----; he wishes to let his hotel. Why, Lucretia, if we knew a

little of this old art, par Dieu! we could soon hire the hotel! Well,

well; perhaps we may survive my cousin Jean Bellanger!"

Three days afterwards, Lucretia stood by her husband's side in the secret

chamber. From the hour when she left it, a change was perceptible in her

countenance, which gradually removed from it the character of youth.

Paler the cheek could scarce become, nor more cold the discontented,

restless eye. But it was as if some great care had settled on her brow,

and contracted yet more the stern outline of the lips. Gabriel noted the

alteration, but he did not attempt to win her confidence. He was

occupied rather in considering, first, if it were well for him to sound

deeper into the mystery he suspected; and, secondly, to what extent, and

on what terms, it became his interest to aid the designs in which, by

Dalibard's hints and kindly treatment, he foresaw that he was meant to

participate.

A word now on the rich kinsman of the Dalibards. Jean Bellanger had been

one of those prudent Republicans who had put the Revolution to profit.

By birth a Marseillais, he had settled in Paris, as an epicier, about the

year 1785, and had distinguished himself by the adaptability and finesse

which become those who fish in such troubled waters. He had sided with

Mirabeau, next with Vergniaud and the Girondins. These he forsook in

time for Danton, whose facile corruptibility made him a seductive patron.

He was a large purchaser in the sale of the emigrant property; he

obtained a contract for the supply of the army in the Netherlands; he

abandoned Danton as he had abandoned the Girondins, but without taking

any active part in the after-proceedings of the Jacobins. His next

connection was with Tallien and Barras, and he enriched himself yet more

under the Directory than he had done in the earlier stages of the

Revolution. Under cover of an appearance of bonhomie and good humour, a

frank laugh and an open countenance, Jean Bellanger had always retained

general popularity and good-will, and was one of those whom the policy of

the First Consul led him to conciliate. He had long since retired from

the more vulgar departments of trade, but continued to flourish as an

army contractor. He had a large hotel and a splendid establishment; he

was one of the great capitalists of Paris. The relationship between

Dalibard and Bellanger was not very close,--it was that of cousins twice

removed; and during Dalibard's previous residence at Paris, each

embracing different parties, and each eager in his career, the blood-tie

between them had not been much thought of, though they were good friends,

and each respected the other for the discretion with which he had kept

aloof from the more sanguinary excesses of the time. As Bellanger was

not many years older than Dalibard; as the former had but just married in

the year 1791, and had naturally before him the prospect of a family; as

his fortunes at that time, though rising, were unconfirmed; and as some

nearer relations stood between them, in the shape of two promising,

sturdy nephews,--Dalibard had not then calculated on any inheritance from

his cousin. On his return, circumstances were widely altered: Bellanger

had been married some years, and no issue had blessed his nuptials. His

nephews, draughted into the conscription, had perished in Egypt.

Dalibard apparently became his nearest relative.

To avarice or to worldly ambition there was undoubtedly something very

dazzling in the prospect thus opened to the eyes of Olivier Dalibard.

The contractor's splendid mode of living, vying with that of the fermier-

general of old, the colossal masses of capital by which he backed and

supported speculations that varied with an ingenuity rendered practical

and profound by experience, inflamed into fever the morbid restlessness

of fancy and intellect which characterized the evil scholar; for that

restlessness seemed to supply to his nature vices not constitutional to

it. Dalibard had not the avarice that belongs either to a miser or a

spendthrift. In his youth, his books and the simple desires of an

abstract student sufficed to his wants, and a habit of method and order,

a mechanical calculation which accompanied all his acts, from the least

to the greatest, preserved him, even when most poor, from neediness and

want. Nor was he by nature vain and ostentatious,--those infirmities

accompany a larger and more luxurious nature. His philosophy rather

despised, than inclined to, show. Yet since to plot and to scheme made

his sole amusement, his absorbing excitement, so a man wrapped in

himself, and with no generous ends in view, has little to plot or to

scheme for but objects of worldly aggrandizement. In this Dalibard

resembled one whom the intoxication of gambling has mastered, who neither

wants nor greatly prizes the stake, but who has grown wedded to the

venture for it. It was a madness like that of a certain rich nobleman in

our own country who, with more money than he could spend, and with a

skill in all games where skill enters that would have secured him success

of itself, having learned the art of cheating, could not resist its

indulgence. No hazard, no warning, could restrain him,--cheat he must;

the propensity became iron-strong as a Greek destiny.

That the possible chance of an inheritance so magnificent should dazzle

Lucretia and Gabriel, was yet more natural; for in them it appealed to

more direct and eloquent, though not more powerful, propensities.

Gabriel had every vice which the greed of gain most irritates and

excites. Intense covetousness lay at the core of his heart; he had the

sensual temperament, which yearns for every enjoyment, and takes pleasure

in every pomp and show of life. Lucretia, with a hardness of mind that

disdained luxury, and a certain grandeur (if such a word may be applied

to one so perverted) that was incompatible with the sordid infirmities of

the miser, had a determined and insatiable ambition, to which gold was a

necessary instrument. Wedded to one she loved, like Mainwaring, the

ambition, as we have said in a former chapter, could have lived in

another, and become devoted to intellectual efforts, in the nobler desire

for power based on fame and genius. But now she had the gloomy cravings

of one fallen, and the uneasy desire to restore herself to a lost

position; she fed as an aliment upon scorn to bitterness of all beings

and all things around her. She was gnawed by that false fever which

riots in those who seek by outward seemings and distinctions to console

themselves for the want of their own self-esteem, or who, despising the

world with which they are brought in contact, sigh for those worldly

advantages which alone justify to the world itself their contempt.

To these diseased infirmities of vanity or pride, whether exhibited in

Gabriel or Lucretia, Dalibard administered without apparent effort, not

only by his conversation, but his habits of life. He mixed with those

much wealthier than himself, but not better born; those who, in the hot

and fierce ferment of that new society, were rising fast into new

aristocracy,--the fortunate soldiers, daring speculators, plunderers of

many an argosy that had been wrecked in the Great Storm. Every one about

them was actuated by the keen desire "to make a fortune;" the desire was

contagious. They were not absolutely poor in the proper sense of the

word "poverty," with Dalibard's annuity and the interest of Lucretia's

fortune; but they were poor compared to those with whom they associated,-

-poor enough for discontent. Thus, the image of the mighty wealth from

which, perhaps, but a single life divided them, became horribly haunting.

To Gabriel's sensual vision the image presented itself in the shape of

unlimited pleasure and prodigal riot; to Lucretia it wore the solemn

majesty of power; to Dalibard himself it was but the Eureka of a

calculation,--the palpable reward of wile and scheme and dexterous

combinations. The devil had temptations suited to each.

Meanwhile, the Dalibards were more and more with the Bellangers. Olivier

glided in to talk of the chances and changes of the State and the market.

Lucretia sat for hours listening mutely to the contractor's boasts of

past frauds, or submitting to the martyrdom of his victorious games at

tric-trac. Gabriel, a spoiled darling, copied the pictures on the walls,

complimented Madame, flattered Monsieur, and fawned on both for trinkets

and crowns. Like three birds of night and omen, these three evil natures

settled on the rich man's roof.

Was the rich man himself blind to the motives which budded forth into

such attentive affection? His penetration was too acute, his ill opinion

of mankind too strong, perhaps, for such amiable self-delusions. But he

took all in good part; availed himself of Dalibard's hints and

suggestions as to the employment of his capital; was polite to Lucretia,

and readily condemned her to be beaten at tric-trac; while he accepted

with bonhomie Gabriel's spirited copies of his pictures. But at times

there was a gleam of satire and malice in his round gray eyes, and an

inward chuckle at the caresses and flatteries he received, which

perplexed Dalibard and humbled Lucretia. Had his wealth been wholly at

his own disposal, these signs would have been inauspicious; but the new

law was strict, and the bulk of Bellanger's property could not be

alienated from his nearest kin. Was not Dalibard the nearest?

These hopes and speculations did not, as we have seen, absorb the

restless and rank energies of Dalibard's crooked, but capacious and

grasping intellect. Patiently and ingeniously he pursued his main

political object,--the detection of that audacious and complicated

conspiracy against the First Consul, which ended in the tragic deaths of

Pichegru, the Duc d'Enghien, and the erring but illustrious hero of La

Vendee, George Cadoudal. In the midst of these dark plots for personal

aggrandizement and political fortune, we leave, for the moment, the

sombre, sullen soul of Olivier Dalibard.

Time has passed on, and spring is over the world. The seeds buried in

the earth burst to flower; but man's breast knoweth not the sweet

division of the seasons. In winter or summer, autumn or spring alike,

his thoughts sow the germs of his actions, and day after day his destiny

gathers in her harvests.

The joy-bells ring clear through the groves of Laughton,--an heir is born

to the old name and fair lands of St. John. And, as usual, the present

race welcomes merrily in that which shall succeed and replace it,--that

which shall thrust the enjoyers down into the black graves, and wrest

from them the pleasant goods of the world. The joy-bell of birth is a

note of warning to the knell for the dead; it wakes the worms beneath the

mould: the new-born, every year that it grows and flourishes, speeds the

parent to their feast. Yet who can predict that the infant shall become

the heir? Who can tell that Death sits not side by side with the nurse

at the cradle? Can the mother's hand measure out the woof of the Parcae,

or the father's eye detect through the darkness of the morrow the gleam

of the fatal shears?

It is market-day at a town in the midland districts of England. There

Trade takes its healthiest and most animated form. You see not the

stunted form and hollow eye of the mechanic,--poor slave of the

capitalist, poor agent and victim of the arch disequalizer, Civilization.

There strides the burly form of the farmer; there waits the ruddy hind

with his flock; there, patient, sits the miller with his samples of corn;

there, in the booths, gleam the humble wares which form the luxuries of

cottage and farm. The thronging of men, and the clacking of whips, and

the dull sound of wagon or dray, that parts the crowd as it passes, and

the lowing of herds and the bleating of sheep,--all are sounds of

movement and bustle, yet blend with the pastoral associations of the

primitive commerce, when the link between market and farm was visible and

direct.

Towards one large house in the centre of the brisk life ebbing on, you

might see stream after stream pour its way. The large doors swinging

light on their hinges, the gilt letters that shine above the threshold,

the windows, with their shutters outside cased in iron and studded with

nails, announce that that house is the bank of the town. Come in with

that yeoman whose broad face tells its tale, sheepish and down-eyed,--he

has come, not to invest, but to borrow. What matters? War is breaking

out anew, to bring the time of high prices and paper money and credit.

Honest yeoman, you will not be refused. He scratches his rough head,

pulls a leg, as he calls it, when the clerk leans over the counter, and

asks to see "Muster Mawnering hisself." The clerk points to the little

office-room of the new junior partner, who has brought 10,000 pounds and

a clear head to the firm. And the yeoman's great boots creak heavily in.

I told you so, honest yeoman; you come out with a smile on your brown

face, and your hand, that might fell an ox, buttons up your huge breeches

pocket. You will ride home with a light heart; go and dine, and be

merry.

The yeoman tramps to the ordinary; plates clatter, tongues wag, and the

borrower's full heart finds vent in a good word for that kind "Muster

Mawnering." For a wonder, all join in the praise. "He's an honour to

the town; he's a pride to the country. Thof he's such a friend at a

pinch, he's a rale mon of business. He'll make the baunk worth a

million! And how well he spoke at the great county meeting about the

war, and the laund, and them bloodthirsty Mounseers! If their members

were loike him, Muster Fox would look small!"

The day declines; the town empties; whiskeys, horses, and carts are

giving life to the roads and the lanes; and the market is deserted, and

the bank is shut up, and William Mainwaring walks back to his home at the

skirts of the town. Not villa nor cottage, that plain English house,

with its cheerful face of red brick, and its solid squareness of shape,--

a symbol of substance in the fortunes of the owner! Yet as he passes, he

sees through the distant trees the hall of the member for the town. He

pauses a moment, and sighs unquietly. That pause and that sigh betray

the germ of ambition and discontent. Why should not he, who can speak so

well, be member for the town, instead of that stammering squire? But his

reason has soon silenced the querulous murmur. He hastens his step,--he

is at home! And there, in the neat-furnished drawing-room, which looks

on the garden behind, hisses the welcoming tea-urn; and the piano is

open, and there is a packet of new books on the table; and, best of all,

there is the glad face of the sweet English wife. The happy scene was

characteristic of the time, just when the simpler and more innocent

luxuries of the higher class spread, not to spoil, but refine the middle.

The dress, air, mien, movements of the young couple; the unassuming,

suppressed, sober elegance of the house; the flower-garden, the books,

and the music, evidences of cultivated taste, not signals of display,--

all bespoke the gentle fusion of ranks before rude and uneducated wealth,

made in looms and lucky hits, rushed in to separate forever the gentleman

from the parvenu.

Spring smiles over Paris, over the spires of Notre Dame and the crowded

alleys of the Tuileries, over thousands and thousands eager, joyous,

aspiring, reckless,--the New Race of France, bound to one man's destiny,

children of glory and of carnage, whose blood the wolf and the vulture

scent, hungry, from afar!

The conspiracy against the life of the First Consul has been detected and

defeated. Pichegru is in prison, George Cadoudal awaits his trial, the

Duc d'Enghien sleeps in his bloody grave; the imperial crown is prepared

for the great soldier, and the great soldier's creatures bask in the

noonday sun. Olivier Dalibard is in high and lucrative employment; his

rise is ascribed to his talents, his opinions. No service connected with

the detection of the conspiracy is traced or traceable by the public eye.

If such exist, it is known but to those who have no desire to reveal it.

The old apartments are retained, but they are no longer dreary and

comfortless and deserted. They are gay with draperies and ormolu and

mirrors; and Madame Dalibard has her nights of reception, and Monsieur

Dalibard has already his troops of clients. In that gigantic

concentration of egotism which under Napoleon is called the State,

Dalibard has found his place. He has served to swell the power of the

unit, and the cipher gains importance by its position in the sum.

Jean Bellanger is no more. He died, not suddenly, and yet of some quick

disease,--nervous exhaustion; his schemes, they said, had worn him out.

But the state of Dalibard, though prosperous, is not that of the heir to

the dead millionnaire. What mistake is this? The bulk of that wealth

must go to the nearest kin,--so runs the law. But the will is read; and,

for the first time, Olivier Dalibard learns that the dead man had a son,-

-a son by a former marriage,--the marriage undeclared, unknown, amidst

the riot of the Revolution; for the wife was the daughter of a proscrit.

The son had been reared at a distance, put to school at Lyons, and

unavowed to the second wife, who had brought an ample dower, and whom

that discovery might have deterred from the altar. Unacknowledged

through life, in death at least the son's rights are proclaimed; and

Olivier Dalibard feels that Jean Bellanger has died in vain! For days

has the pale Provencal been closeted with lawyers; but there is no hope

in litigation. The proofs of the marriage, the birth, the identity, come

out clear and clearer; and the beardless schoolboy at Lyons reaps all the

profit of those nameless schemes and that mysterious death. Olivier

Dalibard desires the friendship, the intimacy of the heir; but the heir

is consigned to the guardianship of a merchant at Lyons, near of kin to

his mother, and the guardian responds but coldly to Olivier's letters.

Suddenly the defeated aspirant seems reconciled to his loss. The widow

Bellanger has her own separate fortune, and it is large beyond

expectation. In addition to the wealth she brought the deceased, his

affection had led him to invest vast sums in her name. The widow then is

rich,--rich as the heir himself. She is still fair. Poor woman, she

needs consolation! But, meanwhile, the nights of Olivier Dalibard are

disturbed and broken. His eye in the daytime is haggard and anxious; he

is seldom seen on foot in the streets. Fear is his companion by day, and

sits at night on his pillow. The Chouan, Pierre Guillot, who looked to

George Cadoudal as a god, knows that George Cadoudal has been betrayed,

and suspects Olivier Dalibard; and the Chouan has an arm of iron, and a

heart steeled against all mercy. Oh, how the pale scholar thirsted for

that Chouan's blood! With what relentless pertinacity, with what

ingenious research, he had set all the hounds of the police upon the

track of that single man! How notably he had failed! An avenger lived;

and Olivier Dalibard started at his own shadow on the wall. But he did

not the less continue to plot and to intrigue--nay, such occupation

became more necessary, as an escape from himself.

And in the mean while, Olivier Dalibard sought to take courage from the

recollection that the Chouan had taken an oath (and he knew that oaths

are held sacred with the Bretons) that he would keep his hand from his

knife unless he had clear evidence of treachery; such evidence existed,

but only in Dalibard's desk or the archives of Fouche. Tush, he was

safe! And so, when from dreams of fear he started at the depth of night,

so his bolder wife would whisper to him with firm, uncaressing lips:

"Olivier Dalibard, thou fearest the living: dost thou never fear the

dead? Thy dreams are haunted with a spectre. Why takes it not the

accusing shape of thy mouldering kinsman?" and Dalibard would answer, for

he was a philosopher in his cowardice: "Il n'y a que les morts qui ne

reviennent pas."

It is the notable convenience of us narrators to represent, by what is

called "soliloquy," the thoughts, the interior of the personages we

describe. And this is almost the master-work of the tale-teller,--that

is, if the soliloquy be really in words, what self-commune is in the dim

and tangled recesses of the human heart! But to this privilege we are

rarely admitted in the case of Olivier Dalibard, for he rarely communed

with himself. A sort of mental calculation, it is true, eternally went

on within him, like the wheels of a destiny; but it had become a

mechanical operation, seldom disturbed by that consciousness of thought,

with its struggles of fear and doubt, conscience and crime, which gives

its appalling interest to the soliloquy of tragedy. Amidst the

tremendous secrecy of that profound intellect, as at the bottom of a sea,

only monstrous images of terror, things of prey, stirred in cold-blooded

and devouring life; but into these deeps Olivier himself did not dive.

He did not face his own soul; his outer life and his inner life seemed

separate individualities, just as, in some complicated State, the social

machine goes on through all its numberless cycles of vice and dread,

whatever the acts of the government, which is the representative of the

State, and stands for the State in the shallow judgment of history.

Before this time Olivier Dalibard's manner to his son had greatly changed

from the indifference it betrayed in England,--it was kind and

affectionate, almost caressing; while, on the other hand, Gabriel, as if

in possession of some secret which gave him power over his father, took a

more careless and independent tone, often absented himself from the house

for days together, joined the revels of young profligates older than

himself, with whom he had formed acquaintance, indulged in spendthrift

expenses, and plunged prematurely into the stream of vicious pleasure

that oozed through the mud of Paris.

One morning Dalibard, returning from a visit to Madame Bellanger, found

Gabriel alone in the salon, contemplating his fair face and gay dress in

one of the mirrors, and smoothing down the hair, which he wore long and

sleek, as in the portraits of Raphael. Dalibard's lip curled at the

boy's coxcombry,--though such tastes he himself had fostered, according

to his ruling principles, that to govern, you must find a foible, or

instil it; but the sneer changed into a smile.

"Are you satisfied with yourself, joli garcon?" he said, with saturnine

playfulness.

"At least, sir, I hope that you will not be ashamed of me when you

formally legitimatize me as your son. The time has come, you know, to

keep your promise."

"And it shall be kept, do not fear. But first I have an employment for

you,--a mission; your first embassy, Gabriel."

"I listen, sir."

"I have to send to England a communication of the utmost importance--

public importance--to the secret agent of the French government. We are

on the eve of a descent on England. We are in correspondence with some

in London on whom we count for support. A man might be suspected and

searched,--mind, searched. You, a boy, with English name and speech,

will be my safest envoy. Bonaparte approves my selection. On your

return, he permits me to present you to him. He loves the rising

generation. In a few days you will be prepared to start."

Despite the calm tone of the father, so had the son, from the instinct of

fear and self-preservation, studied every accent, every glance of

Olivier,--so had he constituted himself a spy upon the heart whose

perfidy was ever armed, that he detected at once in the proposal some

scheme hostile to his interests. He made, however, no opposition to the

plan suggested; and seemingly satisfied with his obedience, the father

dismissed him.

As soon as he was in the streets, Gabriel went straight to the house of

Madame Bellanger. The hotel had been purchased in her name, and she

therefore retained it. Since her husband's death he had avoided that

house, before so familiar to him; and now he grew pale and breathed hard

as he passed by the porter's lodge up the lofty stairs.

He knew of his father's recent and constant visits at the house; and

without conjecturing precisely what were Olivier's designs, he connected

them, in the natural and acquired shrewdness he possessed, with the

wealthy widow. He resolved to watch, observe, and draw his own

conclusions. As he entered Madame Bellanger's room rather abruptly, he

observed her push aside amongst her papers something she had been gazing

on,--something which sparkled to his eyes. He sat himself down close to

her with the caressing manner he usually adopted towards women; and in

the midst of the babbling talk with which ladies generally honour boys,

he suddenly, as if by accident, displaced the papers, and saw his

father's miniature set in brilliants. The start of the widow, her blush,

and her exclamation strengthened the light that flashed upon his mind.

"Oh, ho! I see now," he said laughing, "why my father is always praising

black hair; and--nay, nay--gentlemen may admire ladies in Paris, surely?"

"Pooh, my dear child, your father is an old friend of my poor husband,

and a near relation too! But, Gabriel, mon petit ange, you had better

not say at home that you have seen this picture; Madame Dalibard might be

foolish enough to be angry."

"To be sure not. I have kept a secret before now!" and again the boy's

cheek grew pale, and he looked hurriedly round.

"And you are very fond of Madame Dalibard too; so you must not vex her."

"Who says I'm fond of Madame Dalibard? A stepmother!"

"Why, your father, of course,--il est si bon, ce pauvre Dalibard; and all

men like cheerful faces. But then, poor lady,--an Englishwoman, so

strange here; very natural she should fret, and with bad health, too."

"Bad health! Ah, I remember! She, also, does not seem likely to live

long!"

"So your poor father apprehends. Well, well; how uncertain life is! Who

would have thought dear Bellanger would have--"

Gabriel rose hastily, and interrupted the widow's pathetic reflections.

"I only ran in to say Bon jour. I must leave you now."

"Adieu, my dear boy,--not a word on the miniature! By the by, here's a

shirt-pin for you,--tu es joli comme un amour."

All was clear now to Gabriel; it was necessary to get rid of him, and

forever. Dalibard might dread his attachment to Lucretia,--he would

dread still more his closer intimacy with the widow of Bellanger, should

that widow wed again, and Dalibard, freed like her (by what means?), be

her choice! Into that abyss of wickedness, fathomless to the innocent,

the young villanous eye plunged, and surveyed the ground; a terror seized

on him,--a terror of life and death. Would Dalibard spare even his own

son, if that son had the power to injure? This mission, was it exile

only,--only a fall back to the old squalor of his uncle's studio; only

the laying aside of a useless tool? Or was it a snare to the grave?

Demon as Dalibard was, doubtless the boy wronged him. But guilt

construes guilt for the worst.

Gabriel had formerly enjoyed the thought to match himself, should danger

come, with Dalibard; the hour had come, and he felt his impotence. Brave

his father, and refuse to leave France! From that, even his reckless

hardihood shrank, as from inevitable destruction. But to depart,--be the

poor victim and dupe; after having been let loose amongst the riot of

pleasure, to return to labour and privation,--from that option his vanity

and his senses vindictively revolted. And Lucretia, the only being who

seemed to have a human kindness to him! Through all the vicious egotism

of his nature, he had some grateful sentiments for her; and even the

egotism assisted that unwonted amiability, for he felt that, Lucretia

gone, he had no hold on his father's house, that the home of her

successor never would be his. While thus brooding, he lifted his eyes,

and saw Dalibard pass in his carriage towards the Tuileries. The house,

then, was clear; he could see Lucretia alone. He formed his resolution

at once, and turned homewards. As he did so, he observed a man at the

angle of the street, whose eyes followed Dalibard's carriage with an

expression of unmistakable hate and revenge; but scarcely had he marked

the countenance, before the man, looking hurriedly round, darted away,

and was lost amongst the crowd.

Now, that countenance was not quite unfamiliar to Gabriel. He had seen

it before, as he saw it now,--hastily, and, as it were, by fearful

snatches. Once he had marked, on returning home at twilight, a figure

lurking by the house; and something, in the quickness with which it

turned from his gaze, joined to his knowledge of Dalibard's

apprehensions, made him mention the circumstance to his father when he

entered. Dalibard bade him hasten with a note, written hurriedly, to an

agent of the police, whom he kept lodged near at hand. The man was still

on the threshold when the boy went out on this errand, and he caught a

glimpse of his face; but before the police-agent reached the spot, the

ill-omened apparition had vanished. Gabriel now, as his eye rested full

upon that threatening brow and those burning eyes, was convinced that be

saw before him the terrible Pierre Guillot, whose very name blenched his

father's cheek. When the figure retreated, he resolved at once to

pursue. He hurried through the crowd amidst which the man had

disappeared, and looked eagerly into the faces of those he jostled;

sometimes at the distance he caught sight of a figure which appeared to

resemble the one which he pursued, but the likeness faded on approach.

The chase, however, vague and desultory as it was, led him on till his

way was lost amongst labyrinths of narrow and unfamiliar streets. Heated

and thirsty, he paused, at last, before a small cafe, entered to ask for

a draught of lemonade, and behold, chance had favoured him! The man he

sought was seated there before a bottle of wine, and intently reading the

newspaper. Gabriel sat himself down at the adjoining table. In a few

moments the man was joined by a newcomer; the two conversed, but in

whispers so low that Gabriel was unable to hear their conversation,

though he caught more than once the name of "George." Both the men were

violently excited, and the expression of their countenances was menacing

and sinister. The first comer pointed often to the newspaper, and read

passages from it to his companion. This suggested to Gabriel the demand

for another journal. When the waiter brought it to him, his eye rested

upon a long paragraph, in which the name of George Cadoudal frequently

occurred. In fact, all the journals of the day were filled with

speculations on the conspiracy and trial of that fiery martyr to an

erring adaptation of a noble principle. Gabriel knew that his father had

had a principal share in the detection of the defeated enterprise; and

his previous persuasions were confirmed.

His sense of hearing grew sharper by continued effort, and at length he

heard the first comer say distinctly, "If I were but sure that I had

brought this fate upon George by introducing to him that accursed

Dalibard; if my oath did but justify me, I would--" The concluding

sentence was lost. A few moments after, the two men rose, and from the

familiar words that passed between them and the master of the cafe, who

approached, himself, to receive the reckoning, the shrewd boy perceived

that the place was no unaccustomed haunt. He crept nearer and nearer;

and as the landlord shook hands with his customer, he heard distinctly

the former address him by the name of "Guillot." When the men withdrew,

Gabriel followed them at a distance (taking care first to impress on his

memory the name of the cafe, and the street in which it was placed) and,

as he thought, unobserved; he was mistaken. Suddenly, in one street more

solitary than the rest, the man whom he was mainly bent on tracking

turned round, advanced to Gabriel, who was on the other side of the

street, and laid his hand upon him so abruptly that the boy was fairly

taken by surprise.

"Who bade you follow us?" said he, with so dark and fell an expression of

countenance that even Gabriel's courage failed him. "No evasion, no

lies; speak out, and at once;" and the grasp tightened on the boy's

throat.

Gabriel's readiness of resource and presence of mind did not long forsake

him.

"Loose your hold, and I will tell you--you stifle me." The man slightly

relaxed his grasp, and Gabriel said quickly "My mother perished on the

guillotine in the Reign of Terror; I am for the Bourbons. I thought I

overheard words which showed sympathy for poor George, the brave Chouan.

I followed you; for I thought I was following friends."

The man smiled as he fixed his steady eye upon the unflinching child.

"My poor lad," he said gently, "I believe you,--pardon me; but follow us

no more,--we are dangerous!" He waved his hand, and strode away and

rejoined his companion, and Gabriel reluctantly abandoned the pursuit and

went homeward. It was long before he reached his father's house, for he

had strayed into a strange quarter of Paris, and had frequently to

inquire the way. At length he reached home, and ascended the stairs to a

small room in which Lucretia usually sat, and which was divided by a

narrow corridor from the sleeping-chamber of herself and Dalibard. His

stepmother, leaning her cheek upon her hand, was seated by the window, so

absorbed in some gloomy thoughts, which cast over her rigid face a shade,

intense and solemn as despair, that she did not perceive the approach of

the boy till he threw his arms round her neck, and then she started as in

alarm.

"You! only you," she said, with a constrained smile; "see, my nerves are

not so strong as they were."

"You are disturbed, belle-mere,--has he been vexing you?"

"He--Dalibard? No, indeed; we were only this morning discussing matters

of business."

"Business,--that means money."

"Truly," said Lucretia, "money does make the staple of life's business.

In spite of his new appointment, your father needs some sums in hand,--

favours are to be bought, opportunities for speculation occur, and--"

"And my father," interrupted Gabriel, "wishes your consent to raise the

rest of your portion?"

Lucretia looked surprised, but answered quietly: "He had my consent long

since; but the trustees to the marriage-settlement--mere men of business,

my uncle's bankers; for I had lost all claim on my kindred--refuse, or at

least interpose such difficulties as amount to refusal."

"But that reply came some days since," said Gabriel, musingly.

"How did you know,--did your father tell you?"

"Poor belle-mere!" said Gabriel, almost with pity; "can you live in this

house and not watch all that passes,--every stranger, every message,

every letter? But what, then, does he wish with you?"

"He has suggested my returning to England and seeing the trustees myself.

His interest can obtain my passport."

"And you have refused?"

"I have not consented."

"Consent!--hush!--your maid; Marie is not waiting without;" and Gabriel

rose and looked forth. "No, confound these doors! none close as they

ought in this house. Is it not a clause in your settlement that the half

of your fortune now invested goes to the survivor?"

"It is," replied Lucretia, struck and thrilled at the question. "How,

again, did you know this?"

"I saw my father reading the copy. If you die first, then, he has all.

If he merely wanted the money, he would not send you away."

There was a terrible pause. Gabriel resumed: "I trust you, it may be,

with my life; but I will speak out. My father goes much to Bellanger's

widow; she is rich and weak. Come to England! Yes, come; for he is

about to dismiss me. He fears that I shall be in the way, to warn you,

perhaps, or to--to-- In short, both of us are in his way. He gives you

an escape. Once in England, the war which is breaking out will prevent

your return. He will twist the laws of divorce to his favour; he will

marry again! What then? He spares you what remains of your fortune; he

spares your life. Remain here,--cross his schemes, and-- No, no; come to

England,--safer anywhere than here!"

As he spoke, great changes had passed over Lucretia's countenance. At

first it was the flash of conviction, then the stunned shock of horror;

now she rose, rose to her full height, and there was a livid and deadly

light in her eyes,--the light of conscious courage and power and revenge.

"Fool," she muttered, "with all his craft! Fool, fool! As if, in the

war of household perfidy, the woman did not always conquer! Man's only

chance is to be mailed in honour."

"But," said Gabriel, overhearing her, "but you do not remember what it

is. There is nothing you can see and guard against. It is not like an

enemy face to face; it is death in the food, in the air, in the touch.

You stretch out your arms in the dark, you feel nothing, and you die!

Oh, do not fancy that I have not thought well (for I am almost a man now)

if there were no means to resist,--there are none! As well make head

against the plague,--it is in the atmosphere. Come to England, and

return. Live poorly, if you must, but live--but live!"

"Return to England poor and despised, and bound still to him, or a

disgraced and divorced wife,--disgraced by the low-born dependant on my

kinsman's house,--and fawn perhaps upon my sister and her husband for

bread! Never! I am at my post, and I will not fly."

"Brave, brave!" said the boy, clapping his hands, and sincerely moved by

a daring superior to his own; "I wish I could help you!"

Lucretia's eye rested on him with the full gaze, so rare in its looks.

She drew him to her and kissed his brow. "Boy, through life, whatever

our guilt and its doom, we are bound to each other. I may yet live to

have wealth; if so, it is yours as a son's. I may be iron to others,--

never to you. Enough of this; I must reflect!" She passed her hands

over her eyes a moment, and resumed: "You would help me in my self-

defence; I think you can. You have been more alert in your watch than I

have. You must have means I have not secured. Your father guards well

all his papers."

"I have keys to every desk. My foot passed the threshold of that room

under the roof before yours. But no; his powers can never be yours! He

has never confided to you half his secrets. He has antidotes for every--

every--"

"Hist! what noise is that? Only the shower on the casements. No, no,

child, that is not my object. Cadoudal's conspiracy! Your father has

letters from Fouche which show how he has betrayed others who are

stronger to avenge than a woman and a boy."

"Well?"

"I would have those letters. Give me the keys. But hold! Gabriel,

Gabriel, you may yet misjudge him. This woman--wife to the dead man--his

wife! Horror! Have you no proofs of what you imply?"

"Proofs!" echoed Gabriel, in a tone of wonder; "I can but see and

conjecture. You are warned, watch and decide for yourself. But again I

say, come to England; I shall go!"

Without reply, Lucretia took the keys from Gabriel's half-reluctant hand,

and passed into her husband's writing-room. When she had entered, she

locked the door. She passed at once to a huge secretary, of which the

key was small as a fairy's work. She opened it with ease by one of the

counterfeits. No love-correspondence--the first object of her search,

for she was woman--met her eye. What need of letters, when interviews

were so facile? But she soon found a document that told all which love-

letters could tell,--it was an account of the moneys and possessions of

Madame Bellanger; and there were pencil notes on the margin: "Vautran

will give four hundred thousand francs for the lands in Auvergne,--to be

accepted. Consult on the power of sale granted to a second husband.

Query, if there is no chance of the heir-at-law disputing the moneys

invested in Madame B.'s name,"--and such memoranda as a man notes down in

the schedule of properties about to be his own. In these inscriptions

there was a hideous mockery of all love; like the blue lights of

corruption, they showed the black vault of the heart. The pale reader

saw what her own attractions had been, and, fallen as she was, she smiled

superior in her bitterness of scorn. Arranged methodically with the

precision of business, she found the letters she next looked for; one

recognizing Dalibard's services in the detection of the conspiracy, and

authorizing him to employ the police in the search of Pierre Guillot,

sufficed for her purpose. She withdrew, and secreted it. She was about

to lock up the secretary, when her eye fell on the title of a small

manuscript volume in a corner; and as shet read, she pressed one hand

convulsively to her heart, while twice with the other she grasped the

volume, and twice withdrew the grasp. The title ran harmlessly thus:

"Philosophical and Chemical Inquiries into the Nature and Materials of

the Poisons in Use between the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Centuries."

Hurriedly, and at last as if doubtful of herself, she left the

manuscript, closed the secretary, and returned to Gabriel.

"You have got the paper you seek?" he said.

"Yes."

"Then whatever you do, you must be quick; he will soon discover the

loss."

"I will be quick."

"It is I whom he will suspect," said Gabriel, in alarm, as that thought

struck him. "No, for my sake do not take the letter till I am gone. Do

not fear in the mean time; he will do nothing against you while I am

here."

"I will replace the letter till then," said Lucretia, meekly. "You have

a right to my first thoughts." So she went back, and Gabriel (suspicious

perhaps) crept after her.

As she replaced the document, he pointed to the manuscript which had

tempted her. "I have seen that before; how I longed for it! If anything

ever happens to him, I claim that as my legacy."

Their hands met as he said this, and grasped each other convulsively;

Lucretia relocked the secretary, and when she gained the next room, she

tottered to a chair. Her strong nerves gave way for the moment; she

uttered no cry, but by the whiteness of her face, Gabriel saw that she

was senseless,--senseless for a minute or so; scarcely more. But the

return to consciousness with a clenched hand, and a brow of defiance, and

a stare of mingled desperation and dismay, seemed rather the awaking from

some frightful dream of violence and struggle than the slow, languid

recovery from the faintness of a swoon. Yes, henceforth, to sleep was to

couch by a serpent,--to breathe was to listen for the avalanche! Thou

who didst trifle so wantonly with Treason, now gravely front the grim

comrade thou hast won; thou scheming desecrator of the Household Gods,

now learn, to the last page of dark knowledge, what the hearth is without

them!

Gabriel was strangely moved as he beheld that proud and solitary despair.

An instinct of nature had hitherto checked him from actively aiding

Lucretia in that struggle with his father which could but end in the

destruction of one or the other. He had contented himself with

forewarnings, with hints, with indirect suggestions; but now all his

sympathy was so strongly roused on her behalf that the last faint scruple

of filial conscience vanished into the abyss of blood over which stood

that lonely Titaness. He drew near, and clasping her hand, said, in a

quick and broken voice,--

"Listen! You know where to find proof of my fa--that is, of Dalibard's

treason to the conspirators, you know the name of the man he dreads as an

avenger, and you know that he waits but the proof to strike; but you do

not know where to find that man, if his revenge is wanting for yourself.

The police have not hunted him out: how can you? Accident has made me

acquainted with one of his haunts. Give me a single promise, and I will

put you at least upon that clew,--weak, perhaps, but as yet the sole one

to be followed. Promise me that, only in defence of your own life, not

for mere jealousy, you will avail yourself of the knowledge, and you

shall know all I do!"

"Do you think," said Lucretia, in a calm, cold voice, "that it is for

jealousy, which is love, that I would murder all hope, all peace? For we

have here"--and she smote her breast--"here, if not elsewhere, a heaven

and a hell! Son, I will not harm your father, except in self-defence.

But tell me nothing that may make the son a party in the father's doom."

"The father slew the mother," muttered Gabriel, between his clenched

teeth; "and to me, you have wellnigh supplied her place. Strike, if need

be, in her name! If you are driven to want the arm of Pierre Guillot,

seek news of him at the Cafe Dufour, Rue S----, Boulevard du Temple. Be

calm now; I hear your husband's step."

A few days more, and Gabriel is gone! Wife and husband are alone with

each other. Lucretia has refused to depart. Then that mute coma of

horror, that suspense of two foes in the conflict of death; for the

subtle, prying eye of Olivier Dalibard sees that he himself is

suspected,--further he shuns from sifting! Glance fastens on glance, and

then hurries smilingly away. From the cup grins a skeleton, at the board

warns a spectre. But how kind still the words, and how gentle the tone;

and they lie down side by side in the marriage-bed,--brain plotting

against brain, heart loathing heart. It is a duel of life and death

between those sworn through life and beyond death at the altar. But it

is carried on with all the forms and courtesies of duel in the age of

chivalry. No conjugal wrangling, no slip of the tongue; the oil is on

the surface of the wave,--the monsters in the hell of the abyss war

invisibly below. At length, a dull torpor creeps over the woman; she

feels the taint in her veins,--the slow victory is begun. What mattered

all her vigilance and caution? Vainly glide from the fangs of the

serpent,--his very breath suffices to destroy! Pure seems the draught

and wholesome the viand,--that master of the science of murder needs not

the means of the bungler! Then, keen and strong from the creeping

lethargy started the fierce instinct of self and the ruthless impulse of

revenge. Not too late yet to escape; for those subtle banes, that are to

defy all detection, work but slowly to their end.

One evening a woman, closely mantled, stood at watch by the angle of a

wall. The light came dim and muffled from the window of a cafe hard at

hand; the reflection slept amidst the shadows on the dark pavement, and

save a solitary lamp swung at distance in the vista over the centre of

the narrow street, no ray broke the gloom. The night was clouded and

starless, the wind moaned in gusts, and the rain fell heavily; but the

gloom and the loneliness did not appall the eye, and the wind did not

chill the heart, and the rain fell unheeded on the head of the woman at

her post. At times she paused in her slow, sentry-like pace to and fro,

to look through the window of the cafe, and her gaze fell always on one

figure seated apart from the rest. At length her pulse beat more quickly,

and the patient lips smiled sternly. The figure had risen to depart. A

man came out and walked quickly up the street; the woman approached, and

when the man was under the single lamp swung aloft, he felt his arm

touched: the woman was at his side, and looking steadily into his face--

"You are Pierre Guillot, the Breton, the friend of George Cadoudal. Will

you be his avenger?"

The Chouan's first impulse had been to place his hand in his vest, and

something shone bright in the lamp-light, clasped in those iron fingers.

The voice and the manner reassured him, and he answered readily,--

"I am he whom you seek, and I only live to avenge."

"Read, then, and act," answered the woman, as she placed a paper in his

hands.

At Laughton the babe is on the breast of the fair mother, and the father

sits beside the bed; and mother and father dispute almost angrily whether

mother or father those soft, rounded features of slumbering infancy

resemble most. At the red house, near the market-town, there is a

hospitable bustle. William is home earlier than usual. Within the last

hour, Susan has been thrice into every room. Husband and wife are now

watching at the window. The good Fieldens, with a coach full of

children, are expected, every moment, on a week's visit at least.

In the cafe in the Boulevard du Temple sit Pierre Guillot, the Chouan,

and another of the old band of brigands whom George Cadoudal had mustered

in Paris. There is an expression of content on Guillot's countenance,--

it seems more open than usual, and there is a complacent smile on his

lips. He is whispering low to his friend in the intervals of eating,--an

employment pursued with the hearty gusto of a hungry man. But his friend

does not seem to sympathize with the cheerful feelings of his comrade; he

is pale, and there is terror on his face; and you may see that the

journal in his hand trembles like a leaf.

In the gardens of the Tuileries some score or so of gossips group

together.

"And no news of the murderer?" asked one.

"No; but the man who had been friend to Robespierre must have made secret

enemies enough."

"Ce pauvre Dalibard! He was not mixed up with the Terrorists,

nevertheless."

"Ah, but the more deadly for that, perhaps; a sly man was Olivier

Dalibard!"

"What's the matter?" said an employee, lounging up to the group. "Are

you talking of Olivier Dalibard? It is but the other day he had Marsan's

appointment. He is now to have Pleyel's. I heard it two days ago; a

capital thing! Peste! il ira loin. We shall have him a senator soon."

"Speak for yourself," quoth a ci-devant abbe, with a laugh; "I should be

sorry to see him again soon, wherever he be."

"Plait-il? I don't understand you!"

"Don't you know that Olivier Dalibard is murdered, found stabbed,--in his

own house, too!"

"Ciel! Pray tell me all you know. His place, then, is vacant!"

"Why, it seems that Dalibard, who had been brought up to medicine, was

still fond of chemical experiments. He hired a room at the top of the

house for such scientific amusements. He was accustomed to spend part of

his nights there. They found him at morning bathed in his blood, with

three ghastly wounds in his side, and his fingers cut to the bone. He

had struggled hard with the knife that butchered him."

"In his own house!" said a lawyer. "Some servant or spendthrift heir."

"He has no heir but young Bellanger, who will be riche a millions, and is

now but a schoolboy at Lyons. No; it seems that the window was left

open, and that it communicates with the rooftops. There the murderer had

entered, and by that way escaped; for they found the leads of the gutter

dabbled with blood. The next house was uninhabited,--easy enough to get

in there, and lie perdu till night."

"Hum!" said the lawyer. "But the assassin could only have learned

Dalibard's habits from some one in the house. Was the deceased married?"

"Oh, yes,--to an Englishwoman."

"She had lovers, perhaps?"

"Pooh, lovers! The happiest couple ever known; you should have seen them

together! I dined there last week."

"It is strange," said the lawyer.

"And he was getting on so well," muttered a hungry-looking man.

"And his place is vacant!" repeated the employee, as he quitted the crowd

abstractedly.

In the house of Olivier Dalibard sits Lucretia alone, and in her own

usual morning-room. The officer appointed to such tasks by the French

law has performed his visit, and made his notes, and expressed

condolence with the widow, and promised justice and retribution, and

placed his seal on the locks till the representatives of the heir-at-law

shall arrive; and the heir-at-law is the very boy who had succeeded so

unexpectedly to the wealth of Jean Bellanger the contractor! But

Lucretia has obtained beforehand all she wishes to save from the rest. An

open box is on the floor, into which her hand drops noiselessly a volume

in manuscript. On the forefinger of that hand is a ring, larger and more

massive than those usually worn by women,--by Lucretia never worn before.

Why should that ring have been selected with such care from the dead

man's hoards? Why so precious the dull opal in that cumbrous setting?

From the hand the volume drops without sound into the box, as those whom

the secrets of the volume instruct you to destroy may drop without noise

into the grave. The trace of some illness, recent and deep, nor

conquered yet, has ploughed lines in that young countenance, and dimmed

the light of those searching eyes. Yet courage! the poison is arrested,

the poisoner is no more. Minds like thine, stern woman, are cased in

coffers of steel, and the rust as yet has gnawed no deeper than the

surface. So over that face, stamped with bodily suffering, plays a calm

smile of triumph. The schemer has baffled the schemer! Turn now to the

right, pass by that narrow corridor: you are in the marriage-chamber; the

windows are closed; tall tapers burn at the foot of the bed. Now go back

to that narrow corridor. Disregarded, thrown aside, are a cloth and a

besom: the cloth is wet still; but here and there the red stains are dry,

and clotted as with bloody glue; and the hairs of the besom start up,

torn and ragged, as if the bristles had a sense of some horror, as if

things inanimate still partook of men's dread at men's deeds. If you

passed through the corridor and saw in the shadow of the wall that

homeliest of instruments cast away and forgotten, you would smile at the

slatternly housework. But if you knew that a corpse had been borne down

those stairs to the left,--borne along those floors to that marriage-

bed,--with the blood oozing and gushing and plashing below as the bearers

passed with their burden, then straight that dead thing would take the

awe of the dead being; it told its own tale of violence and murder; it

had dabbled in the gore of the violated clay; it had become an evidence

of the crime. No wonder that its hairs bristled up, sharp and ragged, in

the shadow of the wall.

The first part of the tragedy ends; let fall the curtain. When next it

rises, years will have passed away, graves uncounted will have wrought

fresh hollows in our merry sepulchre,--sweet earth! Take a sand from the

shore, take a drop from the ocean,--less than sand-grain and drop in

man's planet one Death and one Crime! On the map, trace all oceans, and

search out every shore,--more than seas, more than lands, in God's

balance shall weigh one Death and one Crime!