But the King had long since ceased to listen. He was sunk in one of the

gloomy moods that became frequent with him during the later years of his

life. Silence reigned.

"This is your business man," said he at length, to Tristan. "Go and search

out this matter."

He rose, and went forward a few steps; his courtiers left him to himself.

He then perceived Cornelius, who, mounted on his mule, was going off in

company with the Provost.

"And the thousand crowns?" said the King.

"Nay, Sire, you are too great a King! No sum of money could pay for your

justice----"

Louis XI. smiled. The courtiers envied the old Fleming his bold tongue and

many privileges; he rode off at a good pace, down the avenue of

mulberry-trees that led from Le Plessis to Tours.

Exhausted by fatigue, the young gentleman was, in fact, sleeping soundly.

On his return from his adventure of gallantry, he had ceased to feel such

spirit and ardor for defending himself against distant and perhaps

imaginary dangers, as had inspired him to rush on perilous delights. So he

had postponed till morning the task of cleaning his soiled raiment and

effacing the traces of his success. It was a great blunder, but one towards

which everything tended. When, in the absence of the moon, which had set

while he was happy with his love, he failed to find all the screws of the

vexatious staple, he lost patience. Then, with the happy recklessness of a

man full of contentment, or longing for rest, he trusted to the good luck

of his fate, which had so far served him so well. He did, indeed, make a

sort of bargain with himself, in virtue of which he was to wake at

daybreak; but the events of the day and the excitements of the night

hindered him from keeping the promise. Happiness is oblivious. The

goldsmith seemed less formidable to the young gentleman as he lay on the

hard truckle-bed whence so many of his predecessors had risen only to go to

execution, and this recklessness was his undoing.

While the King's treasurer was on his way back from Plessis-les-Tours,

escorted by the Provost and his terrible bowmen, the self-styled Goulenoire

was being watched by the old sister, who sat knitting stockings for

Cornelius on one of the steps of the turret stair, never heeding the cold.

The youth, meanwhile, was prolonging the joys of that enchanting night,

ignorant of the disaster which was coming down on him at a gallop. He was

dreaming. His dreams, like all the visions of youth, were so vividly

colored that he was unconscious of where illusion began and reality ended.

He saw himself on a cushion at the lady's feet; his head on her knees warm

with affection; he was listening to the tale of the persecutions and petty

tyranny the Count had so long inflicted on his wife; he wept with the

Countess, who was, in fact, of all his natural children the daughter Louis

XI. loved best; he promised her that he would go on the morrow and reveal

all the facts to that terrible father. They had settled everything in their

mind, annulling the marriage and imprisoning the husband, while they

themselves might at any moment be the victims of his sword if the least

sound had roused him. But in his dream the light of the lamp, the flame in

their eyes, the hues of stuffs and tapestries, were brighter than in fact;

a richer perfume exhaled from their night garments; there was more love in

the air, more glow in the atmosphere, than there had been in reality. And

the Marie of his dream was far less obdurate than the living Marie had

been, to the languishing looks, the insinuating prayers, the magical

questioning, the expressive silence, the voluptuous solicitation, the

affected generosity which make the first moments of passion so fiercely

ardent, and rouse lovers' souls to increased intoxication at each step in

their love.

In accordance with the jurisprudence of love in those days Marie de

Saint-Vallier granted her adorer the superficial privileges of _la petite

oie_; that is to say, she willingly allowed him to kiss her feet, her robe,

her hands, and her throat; she confessed her love; she accepted her lover's

attentions and vows; she would permit him to die for her; she allowed

herself to encourage an intoxication to which this half reserve, severe and

often cruel as it was, gave added heat; but she was herself immovable, and

would promise the highest reward of love only as the price of her

deliverance. To annul a marriage in those days recourse to Rome was

necessary. The parties needed the devotion of a few cardinals, and had to

appear in the presence of the Sovereign Pontiff armed with the King's

protection. Marie wished to owe her liberty to love, that she might resign

it into love's hands.

In those days almost every woman had power enough so to establish her

empire in the heart of a man as to make his passion the history of his

whole life, the mainspring of the highest resolve. But then ladies could be

numbered in France; they were so many sovereigns; they had a noble pride;

their lovers belonged to them rather than they to the men; their love often

cost much bloodshed, and to be accepted by them dangers had to be faced.

But in his dream Marie was merciful, and deeply touched by the devotion of

her beloved, and she made little resistance to the handsome youth's

vehement passion. Which was the real Marie? Did the so-called apprentice

see the true woman in his dream? Was the lady he had found in the Hotel de

Poitiers merely wearing a mask of virtue? The question is a delicate one,

and the honor of the ladies requires that it should remain undecided.

At the very moment when the dream-Marie was about perhaps to forego her

high dignity as his mistress, the lover felt himself gripped by an iron

hand, and the sharp tones of the Provost thus addressed him:

"Come, you midnight Christian, who go feeling about for heaven. Come, wake

up!"

Philippe saw Tristan's swarthy face and recognized his sardonic smile; and

then on the steps of the spiral stairs he saw Cornelius and his sister, and

behind them the Provost's men-at-arms. At this sight, at the aspect of all

those diabolical countenances expressing hatred or else the vile curiosity

of men accustomed to the hangman's office, Philippe Goulenoire sat up in

bed and rubbed his eyes.

"'Sdeath!" cried he, snatching his dagger from under his pillow. "It is

time to be trying knife-play!"

"Oh, ho!" cried Tristan. "I smell the gentleman! It strikes me that we have

here Georges d'Estouteville, nephew to the grand captain of the

crossbowmen."

On hearing his true name proclaimed by Tristan, young d'Estouteville

thought less of himself than of the danger his unhappy mistress would be in

if he were recognized. To divert suspicion, he exclaimed:

"By all the devils, help! All good vagabonds, help!"

After this terrible outcry, uttered by a man who was absolutely desperate,

the young courtier with one tremendous bound, poniard in hand, rushed out

to the stairs. But the Provost's followers were used to such adventures. As

soon as Georges d'Estouteville had reached the steps, they dexterously

captured him, undaunted by the vigorous thrust he made at one of them,

which fortunately slipped on the man's breastplate. They disarmed him, tied

his hands, and threw him back on his bed under the eyes of their chief, who

stood thoughtful and immovable.

Tristan silently examined the prisoner's hands, and scratching his chin he

pointed them out to Cornelius, saying:

"Those are no more the hands of a robber than those of an apprentice. He is

of noble birth."

"Say rather of ignoble earth," cried the Fleming, dolefully. "My good

Tristan, whether he be noble or base-born, the villain has undone me. I

would I might see him at this moment with his hands and feet toasting, or

fitted into your neat little boots. He is beyond a doubt the captain of the

invisible legion of devils who know all my secrets, open all my locks, rob

me, and kill me by inches. They are rich by now, my friend. Ah! But this

time we will have their treasure, for this fellow looks like the King of

Egypt. I shall get back my precious rubies and vast sums of money; our good

King shall have his hands full of crowns."

"Oh, our hiding-places are safer than yours!" said Georges, smiling.

"Ah, the damned villain, he confesses!" exclaimed the miser.

The Provost Marshal, meanwhile, had been examining the prisoner's clothes

and the lock.

"Was it you who unscrewed all those rivets?"

Georges made no reply.

"Oh, very well; hold your tongue if you like. You will confess presently to

Saint-Rack-bones," said Tristan.

"Ah, now you talk sense!" cried Cornelius.

"Lead him away," said the Provost.

Georges d'Estouteville asked permission to dress. At a sign from their

master, the men-at-arms dressed the prisoner with the dexterous rapidity of

a nurse who takes advantage of a moment when her baby is quiet, to change

its clothes.

* * * * *

A great crowd had collected in the Rue du Murier. Their murmurs grew louder

every moment, and seemed to threaten a riot. Rumors of the theft had been

rife in the town from an early hour. Popular sympathy was in favor of the

apprentice, who was said to be young and good-looking, and there was a

general revival of hatred against Cornelius; so there was never a good

mother's son, nor a young woman blest with neat feet and a rosy face, who

was not eager to see the victim. There was a fearful uproar as soon as

Georges appeared in the street, led by one of the Provost's men who, though

mounted on a horse, held the strong leather thong by which the prisoner was

secured, twisted round his arm, while the young man's hands were tightly

tied. Whether it was merely to see Philippe Goulenoire, or in the hope of a

rescue, those behind pushed those in front close up to the guard of

cavalry posted outside the Malemaison. At this instant Cornelius and his

sister slammed the door and closed the shutters with the vehemence of panic

terror. Tristan, who was not accustomed to respect the populace, saw that

the mob was not yet master, and cared not a straw for any riot.

"Push on, push on!" said he to his men.

At their master's word the bowmen urged their horses towards the end of the

street. And then, seeing two or three inquisitive mortals fallen under the

horses' feet, and some others crushed against the walls where they were

being stifled, the crowd that had collected took the wiser part and went

home again.

"Make way for the King's justice!" cried Tristan. "What business have you

here? Do you want to be hanged, too? Go home, good folks, your roast meat

is burning! Now then, goodwife, your husband's hose need mending; go back

to your needle."

Although these facetious remarks showed that the Provost was in high good

humor, the most daring fled from him as if he were the Black Death. Just as

the crowd began to give way, Georges d'Estouteville was startled to see, at

one of the windows of the Hotel de Poitiers, his beloved Marie de

Saint-Vallier, laughing with the Count. She was laughing at him, the

unhappy, devoted lover, who was going to death for her sake. Nay, perhaps

she only was amused by those in the crowd whose caps had been knocked off

by the archer's accoutrements.

A man must be three and twenty and rich indeed in illusions, must dare to

trust in a woman's love, must love with all the powers of his being, and,

after risking his life with joy on the faith of a kiss, must feel himself

betrayed, ere he can understand the rage, hatred, and despair that surged

up in the young man's soul as he saw his mistress laughing and vouchsafing

him only a cold and indifferent glance. She had, no doubt, been there some

time, for her arms rested on a cushion. She was evidently quite

comfortable, and her old ogre quite content. He was laughing, too,--curse

him for a hunchback!

A tear or two trickled from the young man's eyes; but when Marie saw them,

she hastily drew back. And suddenly Georges' eyes were dry, for he descried

the red and black feathers of the page who was devoted to him.

The Count did not observe the movements of that cautious servant, who came

in on tiptoe. The page spoke a word in his mistress' ear, and then Marie

came back to the window. She contrived to evade the watchful eye of her

tyrant long enough to flash a look at her lover--the look of a woman who

has skilfully deceived her Argus--bright with the fires of love and the

triumph of hope.

"I am watching over you." If she had shouted the words, it could not have

expressed so many things as this glance, embodying a thousand thoughts, and

charged with the alarms, the joys, the perils, of their situation. It bore

him from heaven to martyrdom, and from martyrdom to heaven. And so the

young man, light-hearted and content, marched on to execution, counting the

anguish of the torture-chamber as a small price for the raptures of love.

As Tristan was turning out of the Rue du Murier, his men drew up at the

presence of an officer of the Scottish Guard, who rode up at full tilt.

"What is to do?" asked the Provost.

"Nothing that concerns you," replied the officer, scornfully. "The King has

sent me to summon the Comte and Comtesse de Saint-Vallier, whom he bids to

dine at his table."

Hardly had the Provost reached the quay of Le Plessis when the Count and

his wife, both riding, she on a white mule and he on his horse, and

followed by two pages, came up with the bowmen to enter the precincts of

the chateau in their company. The whole party went but slowly. Georges was

on foot, between two men-at-arms, one of whom still led him by the thong.

Tristan, the Count, and his wife naturally led the van, and the criminal

came behind. The younger page, mingling with the bowmen, was questioning

them, or from time to time addressing the prisoner; and he cleverly seized

an opportunity to say in an undertone:

"I climbed over the garden wall of Le Plessis, and carried a letter that

madame had written to the King. She thought she would have died when she

heard that you were accused of theft. Be of good courage; she will speak

for you."

Love had already lent the Countess courage and craft. When she had laughed,

her attitude and mirth were due to the heroism women can display in the

great crises of life.

Notwithstanding the singular caprice which led the author of _Quentin

Durward_ to place the chateau of Plessis-les-Tours on a height, we are

compelled to leave it where it really stood at that time, in a hollow,

protected on two sides by the Cher and the Loire, and again by the canal,

named by Louis XI. the Canal Sainte-Anne in honor of his favorite daughter,

Madame de Beaujeu. By uniting the two rivers between Tours and Le Plessis,

this canal was at once a formidable protection to the stronghold and a

valuable highway for trade. On the side next to the broad and fertile plain

of Brehemont, the park was enclosed behind a moat, of which the enormous

width and depth are sufficiently shown by what remains.

Thus, at a period when the power of artillery was in its infancy, the

position of Le Plessis, long since chosen by Louis XI. as his favorite

retreat, might be regarded as impregnable. The chateau itself was built of

brick and stone, and not in any way remarkable, but it was surrounded by

fine groves, and from its windows, through the alleys of the park

(_Plexitium_), the loveliest views possible could be seen. And no rival

mansion was to be found anywhere near this lovely palace standing exactly

in the middle of the little plain enclosed for the King within four

effectual bulwarks of water. If tradition may be trusted, Louis XI.

occupied the western wing, and he could from his room see at once the

course of the Loire, and beyond the river the pretty valley watered by the

Choisille, and part of the hills of Saint-Cyr; from the windows overlooking

the courtyard he commanded the entrance to his fortress, and the quay by

which his favorite residence was connected with the city of Tours. The

King's suspicious temper gives weight to this tradition. And certainly, if

Louis XI. had but lavished in the building of this palace such

architectural magnificence as Francois I. afterwards indulged at Chambord,

the home of the kings of France would have been permanently fixed in

Touraine. This beautiful spot, and its lovely scenery, have only to be seen

to prove its superiority over the situation of any other royal residence.

Louis XI., now in his fifty-seventh year, had scarcely three more years to

live, and was already made aware of the approach of death by attacks of

illness. Delivered now from his enemies, and on the eve of adding to the

kingdom of France all the possessions of the duchy of Burgundy, by means of

a marriage, arranged by Desquerdes, the captain-general of his army in

Flanders, between the Dauphin and Marguerite, sole heiress of Burgundy;

having secured his authority in every part of his realm, while still

planning wise improvements, he saw time slipping from his grasp, nothing

left to him but the troubles of advancing years. Deceived by everybody,

even by his creatures, experience had increased his natural

distrustfulness. The desire to live had become in him the egoism of a king

who had made himself one incarnate with his people, and who craved for long

life to carry out vast schemes.

Everything that the good sense of public-spirited statesmen or the instinct

of revolution has since achieved in reforming the monarchy, Louis XI. had

thought out. Equality of taxation, and that of all subjects in the eye of

the Law--the Sovereign was the Law then--were objects he boldly strove for.

On the day before All Saints he had assembled certain learned goldsmiths to

establish uniform weights and measures throughout France, as he had already

established uniform authority. Thus his great mind soared eagle-like above

the whole kingdom, and Louis XI. added to the cautiousness of a king the

eccentricities that are natural to men of lofty genius.

So grand a figure would at no period have appeared more poetical or more

dignified. A strange mixture of contrasts! A great will in a feeble frame;

a mind incredulous as to earthly things, credulous as concerned religious

practices; a man combating two forces greater than himself--the present and

the future: the future, when he dreaded to endure torment, which made him

sacrifice so largely to the Church; the present, his actual life, for whose

sake he was a slave to Coyctier. This King, who could crush whom he would,

was crushed by remorse, and yet more by sickness, in the midst of all the

mysterious prestige that enwraps a suspicious king, in whom all power

centres.

It was the stupendous and always impressive struggle of man in the fullest

expression of his power, rebelling against nature.

* * * * *

While waiting till the dinner hour, at that time between eleven o'clock and

noon, Louis XI., after a short walk, was sitting in a large tapestried

armchair in the chimney-corner of his own room. Olivier le Daim and

Coyctier, the leech, looked at each other without a word, standing in a

window-bay, and respecting their master's slumbers. The only sound to be

heard was that made in the ante-room by the two chamberlains-in-waiting, as

they paced to and fro; the Sire de Montresor and Jean Dufou, Sire de

Montbazon. These two, gentlemen of the Touraine, kept an eye on the captain

of the Scottish Guard, who was probably asleep in his chair, as was his

custom.

The King seemed to be dozing; his head was sunk on his breast; his cap,

pulled over his brow, almost concealed his eyes. Thus huddled in his raised

throne, which was surmounted by a crown, he looked like a man who had

fallen asleep in the midst of some deep calculation.

At this moment Tristan and his party were crossing the bridge of

Sainte-Anne over the canal, at about two hundred paces from the entrance to

the chateau.

"Who goes there?" asked the King.

The courtiers looked inquiringly at each other in surprise.

"He is dreaming," whispered Coyctier.

"_Pasques Dieu!_" cried the King. "Do you take me for a fool? Somebody is

coming across the bridge. To be sure, I am sitting by the chimney, and of

course can hear the sound more clearly than you can. That natural effect

might be utilized----"

"What a man!" said Olivier le Daim.

Louis XI. rose and went to the window, whence he could look out on the

town; then he saw the High Provost, and exclaimed:

"Ah ha! Here is my old gossip with his thief. And there, too, comes my

little Marie de Saint-Vallier. I had forgotten that little matter.

Olivier," he went on, addressing the barber, "go and tell Monsieur de

Montbazon to put us some fine Burgundy on the table; and see that the cook

gives us lampreys. Madame la Comtesse dearly likes them both. May I eat

lampreys?" he added after a pause, with an uneasy look at Coyctier.

His attendant's only reply was to examine his master's face. The two men

made a picture.

History and romance have consecrated the brown camlet overcoat, and trunks

of the same material worn by Louis XI. His cap, garnished with pewter

medals, and his collar of the Order of Saint-Michael, are no less famous;

but no writer, no painter, has ever shown us the terrible King's face in

his later days: a sickly face, hollow, yellow, and tawny, every feature

expressive of bitter cunning and icy irony. There was, indeed, a noble brow

to this mask, a brow furrowed with lines and seamed with lofty thought, but

on his cheeks and lips a singularly vulgar and common stamp. Certain

details of that countenance would have led to the conclusion that it

belonged to some debauched old vine-grower, some miserly tradesman; but

then, through these vague suggestions and the decrepitude of a dying old

man, the King flashed out, the man of power and action. His eyes, pale and

yellow, looked extinct; but a spark lurked within of courage and wrath,

which at the least touch would flame up into consuming fires.

The physician was a sturdy citizen, dressed in black, with a florid, keen,

and greedy face, giving himself airs of importance.

The setting of these two figures was a room paneled with walnut wood, and

hung with fine Flemish tapestry above the wainscot; the ceiling, supported

on carved beams, was already blackened by smoke. The furniture and

bedstead, inlaid with arabesques in white metal, would seem more valuable

now than they really were at that time, when the arts were beginning to

produce so many masterpieces.

"Lamprey is very bad for you," replied the physician.[G]

"What am I to eat, then?" the King humbly asked.

"Some widgeon, with salt. Otherwise you are so full of bile that you might

die on All Souls' day."

"To-day?" cried the King, in great alarm.

"Oh, be easy, Sire, I am here," replied Coyctier. "Try not to fret, and

amuse yourself a little."

"Ah," said the King, "my daughter used to be skilled in that difficult

art."

Just then Imbert de Bastarnay, Sire de Montresor and de Bridore, gently

knocked at the royal door. By the King's leave he came in, announcing the

Comte and Comtesse de Saint-Vallier. Louis nodded. Marie entered the room,

followed by her old husband, who allowed her to precede him.

"Good-day, my children," said the King.

"Sire," said the lady in a whisper, as she embraced him, "I would fain

speak with you in private."

Louis XI. made as though he had not heard her.

"Dufou, hola!" cried he, in a hollow voice.

Dufou, Lord of Montbazon and high cupbearer of France, hastened in.

"Go to the steward; I must have a widgeon for dinner. Then go to Madame de

Beaujeu and tell her that I dine alone to-day. Do you know, madame," the

King went on, affecting some little anger, "that you neglect me? It is

nearly three years since I saw you last. Come, come hither, pretty one," he

added, sitting down and holding out his arms to her. "How thin you are!

What do you do to make her so thin? Heh?" he suddenly asked, turning to the

Count.

The jealous wretch gave his wife such a pathetic look that she was almost

sorry for him.

"It is happiness, Sire," he replied.

"Oh, ho! You are too fond of each other," said the King, holding his

daughter upright on his knees. "Well, well, I see I was right, then, when I

called you Marie-pleine-de-Grace. Coyctier, leave us! Now, what do you want

of me?" he added, to his daughter, as the leech disappeared. "When you sent

me your----"

In such peril Marie audaciously laid her hand on the King's mouth, and said

in his ear:

"I always thought you secret and keen-witted----"

"Saint-Vallier," said the King, laughing, "I believe that Bridore has

something to say to you."

The Count left the room; but he shrugged one shoulder in a way his wife

knew only too well; she could guess the jealous monster's thoughts, and

concluded that she must be on her guard against his malignancy.

"Now tell me, child, how do you think I am looking? Am I much altered?"

"Gramercy, my lord, do you want the truth? Or shall I speak you fair?"

"No," said he, in a husky voice, "I want to know where I stand."

"In that case, you look but ill to-day. But I trust my truthfulness may not

mar the success of my business."

"What is it?" asked the King, passing one of his hands over his knitted

brows.

"Well, Sire," said she, "the young man who has been arrested in the house

of your treasurer Cornelius, and who is at this present in the hands of

your Provost Marshal, is innocent of stealing the jewels of Bavaria."

"How do you know?" asked the King.

Marie hung her head, and blushed.

"I need not ask if there is a love-affair at the bottom of this," said

Louis XI., gently raising his daughter's face, and stroking her chin. "If

you do not confess every morning, child, you will go to hell."

"And cannot you oblige me without violating my secret thoughts?"

"What would be the pleasure of that?" exclaimed the King, seeing that there

might be some amusement in the matter.

"Oh, but you would not wish your pleasure to cost me sorrow?"

"Heh! sly puss, do not you trust me?"

"Well, then, my lord, set this young gentleman free."

"Oh, ho! So he is a gentleman!" cried the King. "Then he is not an

apprentice?"

"He is most certainly innocent," said she.

"I do not see it in that light," said the King, coldly. "I am the supreme

judge in my kingdom, and it is my duty to punish malefactors."

"Fay, come, do not put on your considering face. Grant me the young man's

life!"

"Would not that be giving you back what is your own?"

"Sire," said she, "I am honest and virtuous. You are mocking me."

"Well, then," said the King, "as I cannot see my way in this business, let

Tristan throw some light upon it."

Marie de Sassenage turned pale. With a violent effort she said:

"Sire, I assure you that you will be in despair if you do. The so-called

thief has stolen nothing. If you will promise me his pardon, I will tell

you everything, even if you should visit it on me."

"Oh, ho! This looks serious," said Louis XI., setting his cap aside.

"Speak, my child."

"Well," said she, in a low voice, and speaking with her lips close to her

father's ear, "the gentleman spent the night in my room."

"He may have gone to see you, and yet have robbed Cornelius--a double

larceny."

"Sire, I have your blood in my veins, and I am not the woman to love a

vagabond. This gentleman is the nephew of the captain-general of your

crossbowmen."

"Go on," said the King. "It is very hard to get anything out of you."

As he spoke, Louis flung his daughter off to some distance; and she stood

trembling while he ran to the door into the next room, but on tiptoe, and

without making a sound. A moment since the light from a window in the outer

room, shining beneath the door, had shown him the shadow of a pair of feet

close to the entrance. He suddenly opened the iron-bound door, and

surprised the Comte de Saint-Vallier, who was listening.

"_Pasques Dieu!_" cried he, "this is such insolence as deserves the axe."

"My liege," said Saint-Vallier, boldly, "I would rather have the axe at my

neck than the ornament of the married on my forehead."

"You may live to have both," said the King. "Not a man of you all is secure

against those two misfortunes, my lords. Go into the farther ante-room.

Conyngham," he went on, addressing the Scottish captain, "were you asleep?

And where is Monsieur Bridore? Do you allow me to be thus invaded? _Pasques

Dieu!_ the plainest citizen in Tours is better served than I am."

Having thus vented his anger, Louis came back into his room; but he took

care to draw the tapestry curtains which covered the door on the inner

side, less for the purpose of moderating the cold draught than of

smothering the King's words.

"And so, daughter," said he, amusing himself by teasing her, as a cat plays

with a mouse it has caught, "Georges d'Estouteville was your gallant

yesterday?"

"Oh, no, Sire!"

"No? Then by Saint-Carpion! he deserves to die. The villain did not think

my daughter fair enough perhaps."

"Oh, if that is all," said she, "I assure you he kissed my feet and hands

with such ardor as might have melted the most virtuous wife. He loves me,

but honestly, as a gentleman should."

"And do you take me for Saint-Louis that you foist such a tale on me? A

youngster of that pattern would have risked his life to kiss your slippers

or your sleeve! Nay, nay----"

"Ay, my lord, but it is true. Still he came for another reason."

As she spoke, it struck Marie that she had imperiled her husband's life,

for Louis at once eagerly inquired:

"For what?"

The adventure was amusing him hugely. He certainly did not expect the

strange revelations now made by his daughter, after stipulating for her

husband's pardon.

"Oh, ho! Monsieur de Saint-Vallier, so this is the way you draw the blood

royal!" cried the King, his eyes blazing with wrath.

At this moment the bell of Le Plessis rang to call the King's escort to

arms. Leaning on his daughter's arm, Louis XI. appeared on the threshold

and found his guard in attendance. He first glanced dubiously at the Comte

de Saint-Vallier, considering the sentence he was about to pronounce on

him.

The deep silence was broken by Tristan's footsteps coming up the grand

stairs. He came into the room, and advancing to the King said:

"Sire, the matter is settled!"

"What, all over?" said the King.

"Our man is in the priest's hands. He confessed to the theft after a screw

of the rack."

The Countess sighed and turned pale; she could not even command her voice

as she looked at the King. This glance was not lost on Saint-Vallier, who

said in an undertone:

"I am undone. The thief is known to my wife!"

"Silence!" cried the King. "There is some one here of whom I am tired. Go

quickly and stop the execution," he added, turning to the Provost. "You

will answer to me for the criminal; your life for his, my friend! This

affair must be thoroughly searched out, and I reserve the judgment.

Provisionally, set the prisoner at large. I shall know where to find him;

these robbers have hiding-places that they love, dens where they lurk. Make

it known to Cornelius that I purpose going to his house this very evening

to conduct the inquiry. Monsieur de Saint-Vallier," the King went on,

fixing his eyes on the Count, "I have heard of all your doings. All the

blood in your body cannot pay for one drop of mine; do you know that? By

our Lady of Clery, you have been guilty of high treason. Did I give you so

sweet a wife that you might make her pale and haggard? Marry, my lord! You

go to your own house at this moment, and make you ready there for a long

journey."

The mere habit of cruelty made the King pause on these words, but he

presently added:

"You will set forth this night to treat of my business with the Signors of

Venice. Do not be uneasy; I will bring your wife home with me this evening

to my chateau of Le Plessis; there, at least, she will be safe. Henceforth

I shall take better care of her than I have done since you wedded her."

Marie, as she heard these words, silently pressed her father's arm to thank

him for his clemency and good grace. As to Louis, he was laughing in his

sleeve.

Louis XI. dearly loved to interfere in his subjects' concerns, and was ever

ready to mingle in his own royal person in scenes of middle-class life.

This fancy, severely blamed by some historians, was no more than the

passion for the _incognito_ which is one of the chief amusements of

princes, a sort of temporary abdication which enables them to bring a

breath of work-a-day life into an existence which is insipid for lack of

opposition; but then Louis XI. played at an _incognito_ without any

disguise. In this sort of adventures, too, he was always good-humored, and

did his utmost to be pleasant to the citizen class, of whom he had made

friends and allies against the feudal lords.

It was now some little time since he had an opportunity of thus making

himself popular, or taking up the defence of a man enmeshed in some

actionable offence, so he was ready to enter vehemently into Maitre

Cornelius' alarms and the Countess' secret griefs.

Several times during dinner he said to his daughter:

"But who can have robbed my old gossip? He has lost more than twelve

hundred thousand crowns' worth of jewels, stolen within the last eight

years. Twelve hundred thousand crowns, my lords," he repeated, looking

round on the gentlemen in attendance. "By our Lady, for such a sum of money

a great many absolutions may be bought of the Court of Rome. I could have

embanked the Loire for the money, or, better still, have conquered

Piedmont--a fine bulwark, ready made, for our kingdom."

* * * * *

When dinner was ended, Louis XI. led away his daughter, his physician, and

the Provost Marshal, and made his way with an escort of his guard to the

Hotel de Poitiers, where, as he had expected, he found the Comte de

Saint-Vallier, who was awaiting his wife, perhaps to get rid of her.

"Monsieur," said the King, "I had instructed you to depart as soon as

possible. Take leave of your wife and get across the frontier; you will be

granted an escort of honor. As to your instructions and letters of credit,

they will be at Venice sooner than you."

Louis gave his orders, adding certain secret instructions, to a lieutenant

of the Scottish Guard, who was to take a company and attend his envoy to

Venice. Saint-Vallier went off in great haste, after giving his wife a cold

kiss, which he would gladly have rendered fatal.

As soon as the Countess had retired to her room, Louis proceeded to the

Malemaison, very anxious to see the end of the dismal farce that was going

on under his gossip the usurer's roof, and flattering himself that, being

the King, he would have keen wit enough to detect the robbers' secrets.

It was not without apprehension that Cornelius saw his master's company.

"And are all these folks part of the ceremony?" he asked in a low voice.

Louis could not help smiling at the terrors of the old miser and his

sister.

"No, gossip," replied he, "be quite easy. They will sup with us at my

house; we shall go into the matter alone. I am such a good justiciary that

I wager ten thousand crowns I find the criminal."

"Let us find him, my lord, and never mind the wager."

They went into the closet where the Fleming stored his treasures. Here King

Louis, having first examined the case which had contained the Elector of

Bavaria's jewels, and then the chimney down which the thief was supposed to

have come, easily proved to the goldsmith that his suspicions were

unfounded, inasmuch as there was no soot on the hearth--where, indeed, a

fire was rarely kindled--and no trace of any kind in the chimney. Moreover,

the chimney opened to a part of the roof that was practically inaccessible.

Finally, after two hours spent in investigations characterized by the

sagacity which distinguished the King's distrustful temper, it was proved

to a demonstration that no one could have got into the miser's treasury.

There was no mark of violence on any of the locks, inside or out, nor on

the iron coffers containing his gold and silver and the costly jewels

pledged by wealthy borrowers.

"If the robber opened this board," said Louis XI., "why did he take only

the Bavarian jewels? Why should he have left this pearl necklace? A strange

thief, indeed!"

At this reflection the hapless miser turned pale; the King and he eyed each

other for a moment.

"Well, then, my liege, what was the robber doing whom you have taken under

your protection, and who certainly was out during the night?"

"If you have not guessed, master, I desire that you never will; it is one

of my secrets."

"Then the devil haunts me!" said the goldsmith, lamentably.

Under any other circumstances the King would have laughed at his

treasurer's exclamation; but he stood thinking and gazing at Maitre

Cornelius with the scrutiny familiar to men of genius and authority, as if

he could see into the man's brain. The Fleming, in fact, was terrified,

thinking he had offended his formidable master.

"Angel or devil, I will have the malefactor!" the King suddenly exclaimed.

"If you are robbed this night, I will know by whom to-morrow. Call up that

old ape, your sister," he added.

Cornelius almost hesitated to leave the King alone in the room that

contained his treasure; however, he went, coerced by the strength of the

bitter smile that curled Louis' faded lips. And in spite of his confidence,

he soon returned, followed by the old woman.

"Have you any flour?" asked the King.

"To be sure! we have laid in our store for the winter," said she.

"Well, then, bring it here," said the King.

"And what would you be doing with our flour, Sire?" cried she in alarm, and

not in the least awed by the presence of majesty, like all persons

possessed by a ruling passion.

"You old fool, will you do as our gracious liege bids you?" cried

Cornelius. "Does the King want your flour?"

"This is what I buy fine flour for," muttered she, on the stairs. "Oh, my

good flour!"

She turned back to say to the King:

"Is it your royal whim, my lord, to examine my flour?"

But at last she returned with one of the linen bags, which from time

immemorial have been used in Touraine for carrying provisions to or from

market--walnuts, fruit, or corn. This sack was half full of flour. The

housewife opened it, and timidly showed it to the King, looking at him with

the swift stolen glances by which old maids, as it would seem, hope to cast

venom on a man.

"It is worth six sous the measure," said she.

"What matter!" replied the King. "Sprinkle it on the floor, and above all

strew it very evenly, as if there had been a light fall of snow."

The old woman did not understand. The order dismayed her more than the end

of the world could have done.

"My flour, my liege--on the floor--why----"

Maitre Cornelius, who had an inkling, though a vague one, of the King's

idea, snatched the bag, and sprinkled the flour gently on the boards. The

old woman shuddered, and held out her hand for the bag; as soon as her

brother restored it to her, she vanished with a deep sigh.

Cornelius took a feather broom and began spreading the flour with it over

the floor till it lay like a sheet of snow, walking backwards towards the

door, followed by the King, who seemed greatly amused by the proceedings.

When they were at the threshold, Louis XI. said to his gossip:

"Are there two keys to the lock?"

"No, Sire."

The King examined the structure of the door, which was strengthened by

large iron plates and bars. All the parts of this armor centered round a

lock with a secret, of which Cornelius alone had the key. After

investigating it thoroughly, Louis sent for Tristan, and bid him to set a

watch with the utmost secrecy that night, some in the mulberry-trees on the

quay, and on the parapets of the neighboring houses; but first to collect

all his men to escort him back to Le Plessis, so as to make it appear that

he, the King, was not supping with Maitre Cornelius. Then he desired the

miser to be so particular in closing every window, that not a glimmer of

light could pierce through, and to order a light meal, so as not to give a

hint that His Majesty was sleeping there that night.

The King set out in state by the dyke road and returned privily, with only

two attendants, by the rampart gate to the house of his friend the miser.

Everything was so well arranged that all the townsfolk and courtiers

supposed that the King had chosen to go back to the chateau, and would sup

with the treasurer on the morrow. The miser's sister confirmed this notion

by buying some green sauce from the best maker, whose shop was close to the

_quarroir aux herbes_, since called the carroir de Beaune, in honor of a

splendid white marble fountain which the unfortunate Semblancay (Jacques de

Beaune) sent for from Italy to adorn the capital of his province.

At about eight in the evening, when the King was at supper with his leech,

Cornelius and the captain of the Scottish Guard, talking gayly and

forgetting that he was Louis XI. and ill, and almost dying, perfect silence

reigned outside, and the passers-by, nay, even a thief, might have supposed

the dwelling to be uninhabited.

"I hope," said the King, laughing, "that my gossip may be robbed this

night, to satisfy my curiosity. And see to it, gentlemen, that no one

leaves his chamber to-morrow morning without my orders, under pain of

serious punishment."

Thereupon they all went to bed.

* * * * *

Next morning Louis XI. was the first to leave his room, and he made his way

towards Cornelius' treasure-room. He was not a little surprised to detect

the prints of a large foot on the stairs and in the passages of the house.

Carefully avoiding these precious marks, he went to the door of the miser's

closet and found it locked, with no traces of violence. He examined the

direction of the footprints, but as they gradually grew fainter and at last

left no mark, it was impossible to discover how the robber had escaped.

"Ah ha! gossip," cried the King to Cornelius, "you have been robbed, that

is very certain!"

At these words the old Fleming came out, a prey to evident horror. Louis

XI. led him to look at the footprints on the boards, and while examining

them once more, the King, having by chance observed the miser's slippers,

recognized the shape of the sole of which so many copies were stamped on

the flooring. He said not a word, and suppressed a laugh, remembering how

many innocent men had been hanged.

Cornelius hurried into his strong room. The King, bidding him make a fresh

footprint by the side of those already visible, convinced him that the

thief was none other than himself.

"The pearl necklace is missing!" cried Cornelius. "There is witchcraft in

this. I have not left my room."

"We will find out about that at once," said the King, puzzled by the

goldsmith's evident good faith.

He called the men of the watch into his room and asked them:

"Marry now, what did you see in the night?"

"Ah, Sire! a magical sight!" replied the lieutenant. "Your Majesty's

treasurer stealing downstairs close to the wall, and so nimbly that at

first we took him for a spectre."

"I!" cried Cornelius, who then stood silent and motionless as a paralyzed

creature.

"You may go, all of you," said Louis, addressing the bowmen, "and tell

Monsieur Conyngham, Coyctier, Bridore, and Tristan that they may get out of

bed and come here. You have incurred pain of death," said Louis, coldly, to

the miser, who, happily, did not hear him, "for you have at least ten on

your soul!"

The King laughed, a grim, noiseless laugh, and paused.

"But be easy," he went on, as he noticed the strange pallor that overspread

the old man's face; "you are better to bleed than to kill. And in

consideration of a handsome fine, paid into my coffers, you may escape the

clutches of justice; but if you do not build at least a chapel to the

Virgin, you are in jeopardy of finding warm and anxious work before you for

all eternity."

"Twelve hundred and thirty and eighty-eight thousand crowns make thirteen

hundred and seventeen thousand crowns," replied Cornelius, mechanically,

absorbed in calculations. "Thirteen hundred and seventeen thousand crowns

misappropriated!"

"He must have buried them in some hidden spot," said the King, who was

beginning to think the sum a royal prize. "This is the lodestone that has

always attracted him hither--he smelt his gold."

Hereupon Coyctier came in. Noticing the treasurer's attitude, he watched

him keenly while the King was relating the adventure.

"My lord," replied the physician, "there is nothing supernatural in the

business. Our friend here has the peculiarity of walking in his sleep. This

is the third case I have met with of this singular malady. If you should be

pleased to witness its effects, you might see this old man walking without

danger on the parapet of the roof any night when he should be seized by it.

In the two men I have already studied, I discovered a curious connection

between the instincts of this nocturnal vitality and their business or

occupations by day."

"Ah, Maitre Coyctier, you are indeed most learned!"

"Am I not your physician?" retorted the leech, insolently.

On this reply Louis XI. made a little movement which was a familiar trick

with him when he had hit on a good idea--a gesture of hastily pushing his

cap up.

"In such cases," Coyctier went on, "men transact their business in their

sleep. As our friend here is not averse to hoarding, he has quietly yielded

to his favorite habit. Indeed, he probably has an attack whenever, during

the day, he has been in alarm for his treasure."

"_Pasques Dieu!_ and what a treasure!" cried the King.

"Where is it?" asked Cornelius, who, by a singular peculiarity of our

nature, heard all that the King and his leech were saying, though almost

stunned by his reflections and his misfortune.

"Oh!" replied Coyctier, with a coarse, diabolical laugh, "somnambulists

have no recollection of their acts and deeds when they awake."

"Leave us!" said the King.

When Louis XI. was alone with his gossip, he looked at him with a cold

chuckle.

"Worshipful Master Hoogworst," said he, bowing low, "all treasure-trove in

France belongs to the King."

"Yes, my liege, it is all yours; and our lives and fortunes are in your

hands; but hitherto you have been so merciful as to take no more than you

found necessary."

"Listen to me, gossip. If I help you to recover this treasure, you may, in

all confidence and without fear, divide it with me."

"No, Sire, I will not divide it. It shall be all yours, when I am dead. But

what scheme have you for finding it?"

"I have only to watch you, myself, while you are taking your nocturnal

walks. Any one but myself would be a danger."

"Ah, Sire," replied Cornelius, falling at the King's feet, "you are the

only man in the kingdom whom I would trust with that office, and I shall

find means to prove my gratitude for your kindness to your humble servant

by doing my utmost to promote the marriage of the Heiress of Bourgogne to

Monseigneur the Dauphin. There indeed is a treasure, not, to be sure, in

crown-pieces, but in land, which will nobly round out your dominions!"

"Pshaw, Fleming, you are deceiving me!" said the King, knitting his brows,

"or you have played me false."

"Nay, Sire, can you doubt my devotion--you, the only man I love?"

"Words, words!" said the King, turning to face the miser. "You ought not to

have waited for this to be of use to me. You are selling me your

patronage--_Pasques Dieu!_ to me--Louis the Eleventh! Are you the master,

I would know, and am I the servant?"

"Ah, my liege," replied the old usurer, "I had hoped to give you an

agreeable surprise by news of the communications I had established with the

men of Ghent. I expected confirmation of it by the hand of Oosterlinck's

apprentice. But what has become of him?"

"Enough," said the King. "Another error. I do not choose that any one

should interfere, uncalled for, in my concerns. Enough! I must think all

this over."

Maitre Cornelius found the agility of youth to fly to the lower room, where

his sister was sitting.

"Oh, Jeanne, dear heart, we have somewhere a hoard where I have hidden the

thirteen hundred thousand crowns. And I--I am the thief!"

Jeanne Hoogworst rose from her stool, starting to her feet as if the seat

were of red-hot iron. The shock was so frightful to an old woman accustomed

for many years to exhaust herself by voluntary abstinence, that she quaked

in every limb and felt a terrible pain in her back. By degrees her color

faded, and her face, in which the wrinkles made any change very difficult

to detect, gradually fell, while her brother explained to her the disease

to which he was a victim, and the strange situation in which they both

stood.

"King Louis and I," said he in conclusion, "have just been telling each

other as many lies as two miracle-mongers. You see, child, if he were to

watch me, he would be sole master of the secret of the treasure. No one in

the world but the King can spy on my nocturnal movements. Now I do not know

that the King's conscience, near on death as he is, could stand out against

thirteen hundred and seventeen thousand crowns. We must be beforehand with

him, find the nest, and send all treasure to Ghent. Now you alone----"

Cornelius suddenly stopped short, as if he were gauging the heart of this

King, who, at two and twenty, had dreamed of parricide. When the treasurer

had made up his mind as to Louis XI., he hastily rose, as a man in a hurry

to escape some danger.

At this sudden movement, his sister, too weak or too strong for such a

crisis, fell down flat; she was dead. Cornelius lifted her up and shook her

violently, saying:

"This is no time for dying; you will have time enough for that afterwards.

Oh! it is all over! Wretched creature, she could never do the right

thing----"

He closed her eyes and laid her on the floor. But then the kind and noble

feelings that lurked at the bottom of his heart came to the surface, and

almost forgetting his undiscovered treasure, he cried out in sorrow:

"My poor companion! what, have I lost you--you who understood me so well?

Ah! you were my real treasure. There, there, lies the treasure. With you I

have lost all my peace of mind, all my affections. If you had but known how

well it would have paid you to live only two nights longer, you would not

have died, if only to please me, poor little woman. I say, Jeanne--thirteen

hundred and seventeen thousand crowns! No, even that does not rouse you.

No, she is dead, quite dead!"

He thereupon sat down and said no more, but two large tears gathered in his

eyes and rolled down his hollow cheeks; then with many an "Ah!" and sigh he

locked the room up and returned to the King. Louis was startled by the

grief he saw written on his old friend's features.

"What is this?" said he.

"Alas, Sire, a misfortune never comes single. My sister is dead. She has

gone below before me," and he pointed to the ground with startling

emphasis.

"Enough, enough!" said Louis XI., who did not like to hear any mention of

death.

"You are my heir. I care for nothing now. Here are my keys. Hang me, if it

is your good pleasure. Take everything; search the house; it is full of

gold. I give it all to you."

"Come, come, gossip," said the King, half moved by the sight of this

strange anguish, "we will discover the hoard some fine night, and the sight

of so much riches will revive your taste for life. I will come again this

week."

"Whenever Your Majesty pleases."

At these words, the King, who had gone a few steps towards the door, turned

sharply round, and the two men looked at each other with an expression that

no brush, nor words, could render.

"Good-bye, gossip," said Louis, at last, in a sharp voice, as he put his

bonnet straight.

"May God and the Virgin keep you in their good grace!" the usurer replied

humbly, as he escorted the King to the street.

After so long a friendship these two men found a barrier raised between

them by distrust and money, whereas they had hitherto been quite agreed on

matters of money and distrust; but they knew each other so well, they were

so much in the habit of intimacy, that the King could guess from the

miser's tone as he rashly said, "Whenever Your Majesty pleases," the

annoyance his visits would thenceforth be to his treasurer, just as

Cornelius had discerned a declaration of war in the way Louis had said

"Good-bye, gossip."

So Louis XI. and his banker parted, very uncertain as to what, for the

future, their demeanor was to be. The monarch, indeed, knew the Fleming's

secret; but the Fleming on his part could, through his connections, secure

the grandest conquest any king of France had yet achieved--that of the

domains of the House of Burgundy, which were just then the object of envy

to every sovereign in Europe.

The famous Margaret's choice would be guided by the good folks of Ghent and

the Flemings about her. Hoogworst's gold and influence would tell for a

great deal in the negotiations opened by Desquerdes, the captain to whom

Louis XI. had given the command of the army on the Belgian frontier. Thus

these two master foxes were in the position of duelists whose strength had

been neutralized by some stroke of fate.

And whether it was that from that day the King's health had failed visibly,

or that Cornelius in part promoted the arrival in France of Marguerite of

Burgundy, who came to Amboise in July 1438 to be married to the Dauphin in

the chapel of the chateau, the King claimed no fine from his treasurer and

no trial was held; but they remained in the half-cordial terms of an armed

friendship.

Happily for the miser, a rumor got about that his sister had committed the

thefts, and that she had been privily executed by Tristan. Otherwise, and

if the true story had become known, the whole town would have risen in arms

to destroy the Malemaison before the King could possibly have defended it.

However, if all this historical guesswork has some foundation with regard

to Louis XI.'s inaction, Master Cornelius Hoogworst cannot be accused of

supineness. He spent the first days after this fatal morning in a constant

hurry. Like a beast of prey shut up in a cage, he came and went, scenting

gold in every corner of his dwelling; he examined every cranny; he tapped

the walls; he demanded his treasure of the trees in the garden, of the

foundations, of the turret roofs, of earth, and of heaven. Often he would

stand for hours looking at everything around him, his eyes searching

vacancy. He tried the miracles and second-sight of magic powers,

endeavoring to see his gold through space and solid obstacles.

He was constantly absorbed in one overwhelming thought, consumed by an idea

that gnawed at his vitals, and yet more cruelly racked by the perennial

torments of his duel with himself, since his love of gold had turned to

rend itself; it was a sort of incomplete suicide comprehending all the

pangs of living and of dying. Never had a vice so effectually entrapped

itself; for the miser who inadvertently locks himself into the subterranean

cell where his wealth is buried, has, like Sardanapalus, the satisfaction

of perishing in the midst of it. But Cornelius, at once the robber and the

robbed, and in the secret of neither, possessed, and yet did not possess,

his treasures--a quite new, quite whimsical form of torture, but

perpetually excruciating.

Sometimes, almost oblivious, he would leave the little wicket of his door

open, and then the passers-by could see the shriveled old man standing in

the middle of his neglected garden, perfectly motionless, and looking at

any who stopped to gaze at him, with a fixed stare, a lurid glare, that

froze them with terror. If by chance he went out into the streets of the

town, you would have thought he was a stranger; he never knew where he was,

nor whether it was the sun or the moon that were shining. He would often

ask his way of the persons he met, fancying himself at Ghent, and he seemed

always to be looking for his lost treasure.

The most irrepressible and most incorporate of all human ideas,--that by

which a man identifies himself by creating outside and apart from his

person the whole fictitious entity which he calls his property,--this demon

idea had its talons constantly clutching at the miser's soul.

Then, in the midst of his torments, Fear would rise up with all the

feelings that come in its train. For, in fact, two men knew his secret--the

secret which he himself did not know. Louis XI. or Coyctier might post

their spies to watch his movements while he was asleep, and discover the

unknown gulf into which he had flung his wealth with the blood of so many

innocent men; for Remorse kept watch with Fear.

To preserve his lost riches from being snatched from him while he lived,

during the early days after his disaster, he took the utmost precaution to

avoid sleeping, and his connection with the commercial world enabled him to

procure the strongest anti-narcotics. His wakeful nights must have been

terrible; he was alone to struggle against the night and silence, against

remorse and fear, and all the thoughts that man has most effectually

personified--instinctively, no doubt, in obedience to some law of the mind,

true, though not yet proved.

In short, this man, strong as he was; this heart, annealed by the life of

politics and commerce; this genius, though unknown to history,--was doomed

to succumb under the horrors of the torments he himself had created.

Crushed by some reflection even more cruel than all that had gone before,

he cut his throat with a razor.

His death almost exactly coincided in time with the King's, so that the

House of Evil was plundered by the mob. Some of the older inhabitants of

the province asserted that a revenue farmer named Bohier had found the

extortioner's treasure, and had employed it in building the beginnings of

the chateau of Chenonceaux, that wonderful palace which, in spite of the

lavish outlay of several kings and the fine taste of Diane de Poitiers and

her rival Catherine de' Medici, is still unfinished.

* * * * *

Happily for Marie de Sassenage, the Comte de Saint-Vallier died, as is well

known, as ambassador to Venice. The family did not become extinct. After

the Count's departure his wife had a son, whose fortunes were famous in the

history of France under the reign of Francois I. He was saved by his

daughter, the famous Diane de Poitiers, Louis XI.'s illegitimate

great-granddaughter; and she became the illegal wife, the adored mistress,

of Henri II.; for in that noble family bastardy and love were hereditary.

CHATEAU DE SACHE, _November and December_ 1831.

FOOTNOTES:

[G] _Le physicien_: this word then lately substituted for _maitre myrrhe_

(or leech) has been retained in English. It was generally used in France at

that time.--_Balzac._

THE ELIXIR OF LIFE

TO THE READER

At the very outset of the writer's literary career, a friend, long since

dead, gave him the subject of this Study. Later on he found the same story

in a collection published about the beginning of the present century. To

the best of his belief, it is some stray fancy of the brain of Hoffmann of

Berlin; probably it appeared in some German almanac, and was omitted in the

published editions of his collected works. The _Comedie Humaine_ is

sufficiently rich in original creations for the author to own to this

innocent piece of plagiarism: when, like the worthy La Fontaine, he has

told unwittingly, and after his own fashion, a tale already related by

another. This is not one of the hoaxes in vogue in the year 1830, when

every author wrote his "tale of horror" for the amusement of young ladies.

When you have read the account of Don Juan's decorous parricide, try to

picture to yourself the part which would be played under very similar

circumstances by honest folk who, in this nineteenth century, will take a

man's money and undertake to pay him a life annuity on the faith of a

chill, or let a house to an ancient lady for the term of her natural life

Would they be for resuscitating their clients? I should dearly like a

connoisseur in consciences to consider how far there is a resemblance

between a Don Juan and fathers who marry their children to great

expectations. Does humanity, which, according to certain philosophers, is

making progress, look on the art of waiting for dead men's shoes as a step

in the right direction? To this art we owe several honorable professions,

which open up ways of living on death. There are people who rely entirely

on an expected demise; who brood over it, crouching each morning upon a

corpse, that serves again for their pillow at night. To this class belong

bishops' coadjutors, cardinals' supernumeraries, _tontiniers_, and the

like. Add to the list many delicately scrupulous persons eager to buy

landed property beyond their means, who calculate with dry logic and in

cold blood the probable duration of the life of a father or of a

stepmother, some old man or woman of eighty or ninety, saying to

themselves, "I shall be sure to come in for it in three years' time, and

then----" A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may

have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy

is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his

vileness pervades every moment of his life. Then what must it be to live

when every moment of your life is tainted with murder? And have we not just

admitted that a host of human creatures in our midst are led by our laws,

customs, and usages to dwell without ceasing on a fellow-creature's death?

There are men who put the weight of a coffin into their deliberations as

they bargain for Cashmere shawls for their wives, as they go up the

staircase of a theatre, or think of going to the Bouffons, or of setting up

a carriage; who are murderers in thought when dear ones, with the

irresistible charm of innocence, hold up childish foreheads to be kissed

with a "Good-night, father!" Hourly they meet the gaze of eyes that they

would fain close for ever, eyes that still open each morning to the light,

like Belvidero's in this Study. God alone knows the number of those who are

parricides in thought. Picture to yourself the state of mind of a man who

must pay a life annuity to some old woman whom he scarcely knows; both live

in the country with a brook between them, both sides are free to hate

cordially, without offending against the social conventions that require

two brothers to wear a mask if the older will succeed to the entail, and

the other to the fortune of a younger son. The whole civilization of Europe

turns upon the principle of hereditary succession as upon a pivot; it would

be madness to subvert the principle; but could we not, in an age that

prides itself upon its mechanical inventions, perfect this essential

portion of the social machinery?

If the author has preserved the old-fashioned style of address _To the

Reader_ before a work wherein he endeavors to represent all literary forms,

it is for the purpose of making a remark that applies to several of the

Studies, and very specially to this. Every one of his compositions has been

based upon ideas more or less novel, which, as it seemed to him, needed

literary expression; he can claim priority for certain forms and for

certain ideas which have since passed into the domain of literature, and

have there, in some instances, become common property; so that the date of

the first publication of each Study cannot be a matter of indifference to

those of his readers who would fain do him justice.

Reading brings us unknown friends, and what friend is like a reader? We

have friends in our own circle who read nothing of ours. The author hopes

to pay his debt, by dedicating this work _Diis ignotis_.

* * * * *

One winter evening, in a princely palace at Ferrara, Don Juan Belvidero was

giving a banquet to a prince of the house of Este. A banquet in those times

was a marvelous spectacle which only royal wealth or the power of a mightly

lord could furnish forth. Seated about a table lit up with perfumed tapers,

seven laughter-loving women were interchanging sweet talk. The white marble

of the noble works of art about them stood out against the red stucco

walls, and made strong contrasts with the rich Turkey carpets. Clad in

satin, glittering with gold, and covered with gems less brilliant than

their eyes, each told a tale of energetic passions as diverse as their

styles of beauty. They differed neither in their ideas nor in their

language; but the expression of their eyes, their glances, occasional

gestures, or the tones of their voices supplied a commentary, dissolute,

wanton, melancholy, or satirical, to their words.

One seemed to be saying--"The frozen heart of age might kindle at my

beauty."

Another--"I love to lounge upon cushions, and think with rapture of my

adorers."

A third, a neophyte at these banquets, was inclined to blush. "I feel

remorse in the depths of my heart! I am a Catholic, and afraid of hell. But

I love you, I love you so that I can sacrifice my hereafter to you."

The fourth drained a cup of Chian wine. "Give me a joyous life!" she cried;

"I begin life afresh each day with the dawn. Forgetful of the past, with

the intoxication of yesterday's rapture still upon me, I drink deep of

life--a whole lifetime of pleasure and of love!"

The woman who sat next to Juan Belvidero looked at him with a feverish

glitter in her eyes. She was silent. Then--"I should need no hired bravo to

kill my lover if he forsook me!" she cried at last, and laughed, but the

marvelously wrought gold comfit box in her fingers was crushed by her

convulsive clutch.

"When are you to be Grand Duke?" asked the sixth. There was the frenzy of a

Bacchante in her eyes, and her teeth gleamed between the lips parted with a

smile of cruel glee.

"Yes, when is that father of yours going to die?" asked the seventh,

throwing her bouquet at Don Juan with bewitching playfulness. It was a

childish girl who spoke, and the speaker was wont to make sport of sacred

things.

"Oh! don't talk about it," cried Don Juan, the young and handsome giver of

the banquet. "There is but one eternal father, and, as ill luck will have

it, he is mine."

The seven Ferrarese, Don Juan's friends, the Prince himself, gave a cry of

horror. Two hundred years later, in the days of Louis XV., people of taste

would have laughed at this witticism. Or was it, perhaps, that at the

outset of an orgy there is a certain unwonted lucidity of mind? Despite the

taper light, the clamor of the senses, the gleam of gold and silver, the

fumes of wine, and the exquisite beauty of the women, there may perhaps

have been in the depths of the revelers' hearts some struggling glimmer of

reverence for things divine and human, until it was drowned in glowing

floods of wine! Yet even then the flowers had been crushed, eyes were

growing dull, and drunkenness, in Rabelais' phrase, had "taken possession

of them down to their sandals."

During that brief pause a door opened; and as once the Divine presence was

revealed at Belshazzar's feast, so now it seemed to be manifest in the

apparition of an old white-haired servant, who tottered in, and looked

sadly from under knitted brows at the revelers. He gave a withering glance

at the garlands, the golden cups, the pyramids of fruit, the dazzling

lights of the banquet, the flushed scared faces, the hues of the cushions

pressed by the white arms of the women.

"My lord, your father is dying!" he said; and at those solemn words,

uttered in hollow tones, a veil of crape seemed to be drawn over the wild

mirth.

Don Juan rose to his feet with a gesture to his guests that might be

rendered by, "Excuse me; this kind of thing does not happen every day."

Does it so seldom happen that a father's death surprises youth in the

full-blown splendor of life, in the midst of the mad riot of an orgy? Death

is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is

truer--Death has never forsaken any man.

Don Juan closed the door of the banqueting-hall; and as he went down the

long gallery, through the cold and darkness, he strove to assume an

expression in keeping with the part he had to play; he had thrown off his

mirthful mood, as he had thrown down his table napkin, at the first thought

of this _role_. The night was dark. The mute servitor, his guide to the

chamber where the dying man lay, lighted the way so dimly that Death, aided

by cold, silence, and darkness, and it may be by a reaction of

drunkenness, could send some sober thoughts through the spendthrift's soul.

He examined his life, and became thoughtful, like a man involved in a

lawsuit on his way to the Court.

Bartolommeo Belvidero, Don Juan's father, was an old man of ninety, who had

devoted the greatest part of his life to business pursuits. He had acquired

vast wealth in many a journey in magical Eastern lands, and knowledge, so

it was said, more valuable than the gold and diamonds, which had almost

ceased to have any value for him.

"I would give more to have a tooth in my head than for a ruby," he would

say at times with a smile. The indulgent father loved to hear Don Juan's

story of this and that wild freak of youth. "So long as these follies amuse

you, dear boy----" he would say laughingly, as he lavished money on his

son. Age never took such pleasure in the sight of youth; the fond father

did not remember his own decaying powers while he looked on that brilliant

young life.

Bartolommeo Belvidero, at the age of sixty, had fallen in love with an

angel of peace and beauty. Don Juan had been the sole fruit of this late

and short-lived love. For fifteen years the widower had mourned the loss of

his beloved Juana; and to this sorrow of age, his son and his numerous

household had attributed the strange habits that he had contracted. He had

shut himself up in the least comfortable wing of his palace, and very

seldom left his apartments; even Don Juan himself must first ask permission

before seeing his father. If this hermit, unbound by vows, came or went in

his palace or in the streets of Ferrara, he walked as if he were in a

dream, wholly engrossed, like a man at strife with a memory, or a wrestler

with some thought.

The young Don Juan might give princely banquets, the palace might echo with

clamorous mirth, horses pawed the ground in the courtyards, pages quarreled

and flung dice upon the stairs, but Bartolommeo ate his seven ounces of

bread daily and drank water. A fowl was occasionally dressed for him,

simply that the black poodle, his faithful companion, might have the

bones. Bartolommeo never complained of the noise. If huntsmen's horns and

baying dogs disturbed his sleep during his illness, he only said, "Ah! Don

Juan has come back again." Never on earth has there been a father so little

exacting and so indulgent; and, in consequence, young Belvidero, accustomed

to treat his father unceremoniously, had all the faults of a spoiled child.

He treated old Bartolommeo as a wilful courtesan treats an elderly adorer;

buying indemnity for insolence with a smile, selling good-humor, submitting

to be loved.

Don Juan, beholding scene after scene of his younger years, saw that it

would be a difficult task to find his father's indulgence at fault. Some

new-born remorse stirred the depths of his heart; he felt almost ready to

forgive this father now about to die for having lived so long. He had an

accession of filial piety, like a thief's return in thought to honesty at

the prospect of a million adroitly stolen.

Before long Don Juan had crossed the lofty, chilly suite of rooms in which

his father lived; the penetrating influences of the damp close air, the

mustiness diffused by old tapestries and presses thickly covered with dust

had passed into him, and now he stood in the old man's antiquated room, in

the repulsive presence of the deathbed, beside a dying fire. A flickering

lamp on a Gothic table sent broad uncertain shafts of light, fainter or

brighter, across the bed, so that the dying man's face seemed to wear a

different look at every moment. The bitter wind whistled through the

crannies of the ill-fitting casements; there was a smothered sound of snow

lashing the windows. The harsh contrast of these sights and sounds with the

scenes which Don Juan had just quitted was so sudden that he could not help

shuddering. He turned cold as he came towards the bed; the lamp flared in a

sudden vehement gust of wind and lighted up his father's face; the features

were wasted and distorted; the skin that cleaved to their bony outlines had

taken wan livid hues, all the more ghastly by force of contrast with the

white pillows on which he lay. The muscles about the toothless mouth had

contracted with pain and drawn apart the lips; the moans that issued

between them with appalling energy found an accompaniment in the howling of

the storm without.

In spite of every sign of coming dissolution, the most striking thing about

the dying face was its incredible power. It was no ordinary spirit that

wrestled there with Death. The eyes glared with strange fixity of gaze from

the cavernous sockets hollowed by disease. It seemed as if Bartolommeo

sought to kill some enemy sitting at the foot of his bed by the intent gaze

of dying eyes. That steady remorseless look was the more appalling because

the head that lay upon the pillow was passive and motionless as a skull

upon a doctor's table. The outlines of the body, revealed by the coverlet,

were no less rigid and stiff; he lay there as one dead, save for those

eyes. There was something automatic about the moaning sounds that came from

the mouth. Don Juan felt something like shame that he must be brought thus

to his father's bedside, wearing a courtesan's bouquet, redolent of the

fragrance of the banqueting-chamber and the fumes of wine.

"You were enjoying yourself!" the old man cried as he saw his son.

Even as he spoke the pure high notes of a woman's voice, sustained by the

sound of the viol on which she accompanied her song, rose above the rattle

of the storm against the casements, and floated up to the chamber of death.

Don Juan stopped his ears against the barbarous answer to his father's

speech.

"I bear you no grudge, my child," Bartolommeo went on.

The words were full of kindness, but they hurt Don Juan; he could not

pardon this heart-searching goodness on his father's part.

"What a remorseful memory for me!" he cried, hypocritically.

"Poor Juanino," the dying man went on, in a smothered voice, "I have always

been so kind to you, that you could not surely desire my death?"

"Oh, if it were only possible to keep you here by giving up a part of my

own life!" cried Don Juan.

("We can always _say_ this sort of thing," the spendthrift thought; "it is

as if I laid the whole world at my mistress' feet.")

The thought had scarcely crossed his mind when the old poodle barked. Don

Juan shivered; the response was so intelligent that he fancied the dog must

have understood him.

"I was sure that I could count upon you, my son!" cried the dying man. "I

shall live. So be it; you shall be satisfied. I shall live, but without

depriving you of a single day of your life."

"He is raving," thought Don Juan. Aloud he added, "Yes, dearest father,

yes; you shall live, of course, as long as I live, for your image will be

for ever in my heart."

"It is not that kind of life that I mean," said the old noble, summoning

all his strength to sit up in bed; for a thrill of doubt ran through him,

one of those suspicions that come into being under a dying man's pillow.

"Listen, my son," he went on, in a voice grown weak with that last effort,

"I have no more wish to give up life than you to give up wine and

mistresses, horses and hounds, and hawks and gold----"

"I can well believe it," thought the son; and he knelt down by the bed and

kissed Bartolommeo's cold hands. "But, father, my dear father," he added

aloud, "we must submit to the will of God."

"I am God!" muttered the dying man.

"Do not blaspheme!" cried the other, as he saw the menacing expression on

his father's face. "Beware what you say; you have received extreme unction,

and I should be inconsolable if you were to die before my eyes in mortal

sin."

"Will you listen to me?" cried Bartolommeo, and his mouth twitched.

Don Juan held his peace; an ugly silence prevailed. Yet above the muffled

sound of the beating of the snow against the windows rose the sounds of the

beautiful voice and the viol in unison, far off and faint as the dawn. The

dying man smiled.

"Thank you," he said, "for bringing those singing voices and the music, a

banquet, young and lovely women with fair faces and dark tresses, all the

pleasure of life! Bid them wait for me; for I am about to begin life anew."

"The delirium is at its height," said Don Juan to himself.

"I have found out a way of coming to life again," the speaker went on.

"There, just look in that table drawer, press the spring hidden by the

griffin, and it will fly open."

"I have found it, father."

"Well, then, now take out a little phial of rock crystal."

"I have it."

"I have spent twenty years in----" but even as he spoke the old man felt

how very near the end had come, and summoned all his dying strength to say,

"As soon as the breath is out of me, rub me all over with that liquid, and

I shall come to life again."

"There is very little of it," his son remarked.

Though Bartolommeo could no longer speak, he could still hear and see. When

those words dropped from Don Juan, his head turned with appalling

quickness, his neck was twisted like the throat of some marble statue which

the sculptor had condemned to remain stretched out for ever, the wide eyes

had come to have a ghastly fixity.

He was dead, and in death he lost his last and sole illusion.

He had sought a shelter in his son's heart, and it had proved to be a

sepulchre, a pit deeper than men dig for their dead. The hair on his head

had risen and stiffened with horror, his agonized glance still spoke. He

was a father rising in just anger from his tomb, to demand vengeance at the

throne of God.

"There! it is all over with the old man!" cried Don Juan.

He had been so interested in holding the mysterious phial to the lamp, as a

drinker holds up the wine-bottle at the end of a meal, that he had not seen

his father's eyes fade. The cowering poodle looked from his master to the

elixir, just as Don Juan himself glanced again and again from his father

to the flask. The lamplight flickered. There was a deep silence; the viol

was mute. Juan Belvidero thought that he saw his father stir, and trembled.

The changeless gaze of those accusing eyes frightened him; he closed them

hastily, as he would have closed a loose shutter swayed by the wind of an

autumn night. He stood there motionless, lost in a world of thought.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a shrill sound like the creaking of a

rusty spring. It startled Don Juan; he all but dropped the phial. A sweat,

colder than the blade of a dagger, issued through every pore. It was only a

piece of clockwork, a wooden cock that sprang out and crowed three times,

an ingenious contrivance by which the learned of that epoch were wont to be

awakened at the appointed hour to begin the labors of the day. Through the

windows there came already a flush of dawn. The thing, composed of wood,

and cords, and wheels, and pulleys, was more faithful in its service than

he in his duty to Bartolommeo--he, a man with that peculiar piece of human

mechanism within him that we call a heart.

Don Juan the sceptic shut the flask again in the secret drawer in the

Gothic table--he meant to run no more risks of losing the mysterious

liquid.

Even at that solemn moment he heard the murmur of a crowd in the gallery, a

confused sound of voices, of stifled laughter and light footfalls, and the

rustling of silks--the sounds of a band of revelers struggling for gravity.

The door opened, and in came the Prince and Don Juan's friends, the seven

courtesans, and the singers, disheveled and wild like dancers surprised by

the dawn, when the tapers that have burned through the night struggle with

the sunlight.

They had come to offer the customary condolence to the young heir.

"Oho! is poor Don Juan really taking this seriously?" said the Prince in

Brambilla's ear.

"Well, his father was very good," she returned.

But Don Juan's night-thoughts had left such unmistakable traces on his

features, that the crew was awed into silence. The men stood motionless.

The women, with wine-parched lips and cheeks marbled with kisses, knelt

down and began a prayer. Don Juan could scarce help trembling when he saw

splendor and mirth and laughter and song and youth and beauty and power

bowed in reverence before Death. But in those times, in that adorable Italy

of the sixteenth century, religion and revelry went hand in hand; and

religious excess became a sort of debauch, and a debauch a religious rite!

The Prince grasped Don Juan's hand affectionately, then when all faces had

simultaneously put on the same grimace--half-gloomy, half-indifferent--the

whole masque disappeared, and left the chamber of death empty. It was like

an allegory of life.

As they went down the staircase, the Prince spoke to Rivabarella: "Now, who

would have taken Don Juan's impiety for a boast? He loves his father."

"Did you see that black dog?" asked La Brambilla.

"He is enormously rich now," sighed Bianca Cavatolino.

"What is that to me?" cried the proud Veronese (she who had crushed the

comfit-box).

"What does it matter to you, forsooth?" cried the Duke. "With his money he

is as much a prince as I am."

At first Don Juan was swayed hither and thither by countless thoughts, and

wavered between two decisions. He took counsel with the gold heaped up by

his father, and returned in the evening to the chamber of death, his whole

soul brimming over with hideous selfishness. He found all his household

busy there. "His lordship" was to lie in state to-morrow; all Ferrara would

flock to behold the wonderful spectacle; and the servants were busy decking

the room and the couch on which the dead man lay. At a sign from Don Juan

all his people stopped, dumfounded and trembling.

"Leave me alone here," he said, and his voice was changed, "and do not

return until I leave the room."

When the footsteps of the old servitor, who was the last to go, echoed but

faintly along the paved gallery, Don Juan hastily locked the door, and,

sure that he was quite alone, "Let us try," he said to himself.

Bartolommeo's body was stretched on a long table. The embalmers had laid a

sheet over it, to hide from all eyes the dreadful spectacle of a corpse so

wasted and shrunken that it seemed like a skeleton, and only the face was

uncovered. This mummy-like figure lay in the middle of the room. The limp

clinging linen lent itself to the outlines it shrouded--so sharp, bony, and

thin. Large violet patches had already begun to spread over the face; the

embalmers' work had not been finished too soon.

Don Juan, strong as he was in his scepticism, felt a tremor as he opened

the magic crystal flask. When he stood over that face, he was trembling so

violently, that he was actually obliged to wait for a moment. But Don Juan

had acquired an early familiarity with evil; his morals had been corrupted

by a licentious court, a reflection worthy of the Duke of Urbino crossed

his mind, and it was a keen sense of curiosity that goaded him into

boldness. The devil himself might have whispered the words that were

echoing through his brain, _Moisten one of the eyes with the liquid_! He

took up a linen cloth, moistened it sparingly with the precious fluid, and

passed it lightly over the right eyelid of the corpse. The eye unclosed....

"Aha!" said Don Juan. He gripped the flask tightly, as we clutch in dreams

the branch from which we hang suspended over a precipice.

For the eye was full of life. It was a young child's eye set in a death's

head; the light quivered in the depths of its youthful liquid brightness.

Shaded by the long dark lashes, it sparkled like the strange lights that

travelers see in lonely places in winter nights. The eye seemed as if it

would fain dart fire at Don Juan; he saw it thinking, upbraiding,

condemning, uttering accusations, threatening doom; it cried aloud, and

gnashed upon him. All anguish that shakes human souls was gathered there;

supplications the most tender, the wrath of kings, the love in a girl's

heart pleading with the headsman; then, and after all these, the deeply

searching glance a man turns on his fellows as he mounts the last step of

the scaffold. Life so dilated in this fragment of life that Don Juan shrank

back; he walked up and down the room, he dared not meet that gaze, but he

saw nothing else. The ceiling and the hangings, the whole room was sown

with living points of fire and intelligence. Everywhere those gleaming eyes

haunted him.

"He might very likely have lived another hundred years!" he cried

involuntarily. Some diabolical influence had drawn him to his father, and

again he gazed at that luminous spark. The eyelid closed and opened again

abruptly; it was like a woman's sign of assent. It was an intelligent

movement. If a voice had cried "Yes!" Don Juan could not have been more

startled.

"What is to be done?" he thought.

He nerved himself to try to close the white eyelid. In vain.

"Kill it? That would perhaps be parricide," he debated with himself.

"Yes," the eye said, with a strange sardonic quiver of the lid.

"Aha!" said Don Juan to himself, "here is witchcraft at work!" And he went

closer to crush the thing. A great tear trickled over the hollow cheeks,

and fell on Don Juan's hand.

"It is scalding!" he cried. He sat down. The struggle exhausted him; it was

as if, like Jacob of old, he was wrestling with an angel.

At last he rose. "So long as there is no blood----" he muttered.

Then, summoning all the courage needed for a coward's crime, he

extinguished the eye, pressing it with the linen cloth, turning his head

away. A terrible groan startled him. It was the poor poodle, who died with

a long-drawn howl.

"Could the brute have been in the secret?" thought Don Juan, looking down

at the faithful creature.

Don Juan Belvidero was looked upon as a dutiful son. He reared a white

marble monument on his father's tomb, and employed the greatest sculptors

of the time upon it. He did not recover perfect ease of mind till the day

when his father knelt in marble before Religion, and the heavy weight of

the stone had sealed the mouth of the grave in which he had laid the one

feeling of remorse that sometimes flitted through his soul in moments of

physical weariness.

He had drawn up a list of the wealth heaped up by the old merchant in the

East, and he became a miser: had he not to provide for a second lifetime?

His views of life were the more profound and penetrating; he grasped its

significance, as a whole, the better, because he saw it across a grave. All

men, all things, he analyzed once and for all; he summed up the Past,

represented by its records; the Present in the law, its crystallized form;

the Future, revealed by religion. He took spirit and matter, and flung them

into his crucible, and found--Nothing. Thenceforward he became DON JUAN.

At the outset of his life, in the prime of youth and the beauty of youth,

he knew the illusions of life for what they were; he despised the world,

and made the utmost of the world. His felicity could not have been of the

bourgeois kind, rejoicing in periodically recurrent _bouilli_, in the

comforts of a warming-pan, a lamp of a night, and a new pair of slippers

once a quarter. Nay, rather he seized upon existence as a monkey snatches a

nut, and after no long toying with it, proceeds deftly to strip off the

mere husks to reach the savory kernel within.

Poetry and the sublime transports of passion scarcely reached ankle-depth

with him now. He in nowise fell into the error of strong natures who

flatter themselves now and again that little souls will believe in a great

soul, and are willing to barter their own lofty thoughts of the future for

the small change of our life-annuity ideas. He, even as they, had he

chosen, might well have walked with his feet on the earth and his head in

the skies; but he liked better to sit on earth, to wither the soft, fresh,

fragrant lips of a woman with kisses, for, like Death, he devoured

everything without scruple as he passed; he would have full fruition; he

was an Oriental lover, seeking prolonged pleasures easily obtained. He

sought nothing but a woman in women, and cultivated cynicism, until it

became with him a habit of mind. When his mistress, from the couch on which

she lay, soared and was lost in regions of ecstatic bliss, Don Juan

followed suit, earnest, expansive, serious as any German student. But he

said I, while she, in the transports of intoxication, said We. He

understood to admiration the art of abandoning himself to the influence of

a woman; he was always clever enough to make her believe that he trembled

like some boy fresh from college before his first partner at a dance, when

he asks her, "Do you like dancing?" But, no less, he could be terrible at

need, could unsheathe a formidable sword and make short work of

Commandants. Banter lurked beneath his simplicity, mocking laughter behind

his tears--for he had tears at need, like any woman nowadays who says to

her husband, "Give me a carriage, or I shall go into a consumption."

For the merchant the world is a bale of goods or a mass of circulating

bills; for most young men it is a woman, and for a woman here and there it

is a man; for a certain order of mind it is a salon, a coterie, a quarter

of the town, or some single city; but Don Juan found his world in himself.

This model of grace and dignity, this captivating wit, moored his bark by

every shore; but wherever he was led he was never carried away, and was

only steered in a course of his own choosing. The more he saw, the more he

doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath the surface, courage

was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice; generosity, a clever piece of

calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy, pusillanimity; honesty, a _modus

vivendi_; and by some strange dispensation of fate, he must see that those

who at heart were really honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent, or

brave were held cheaply by their fellow-men.

"What a cold-blooded jest!" said he to himself. "It was not devised by a

God."

From that time forth he renounced a better world, and never uncovered

himself when a Name was pronounced, and for him the carven saints in the

churches became works of art. He understood the mechanism of society too

well to clash wantonly with its prejudices; for, after all, he was not as

powerful as the executioner, but he evaded social laws with the wit and

grace so well rendered in the scene with M. Dimanche. He was, in fact,

Moliere's Don Juan, Goethe's Faust, Byron's Manfred, Mathurin's

Melmoth--great allegorical figures drawn by the greatest men of genius in

Europe, to which Mozart's harmonies, perhaps, do no more justice that

Rossini's lyre. Terrible allegorical figures that shall endure as long as

the principle of evil existing in the heart of man shall produce a few

copies from century to century. Sometimes the type becomes half-human when

incarnate as a Mirabeau, sometimes it is an inarticulate force in a

Bonaparte, sometimes it overwhelms the universe with irony as a Rabelais;

or, yet again, it appears when a Marechal de Richelieu elects to laugh at

human beings instead of scoffing at things, or when one of the most famous

of our ambassadors goes a step further and scoffs at both men and things.

But the profound genius of Juan Belvidero anticipated and resumed all

these. All things were a jest to him. His was the life of a mocking spirit.

All men, all institutions, all realities, all ideas were within its scope.

As for eternity, after half an hour of familiar conversation with Pope

Julius II. he had said, laughing:

"If it is absolutely necessary to make a choice, I would rather believe in

God than in the Devil; power combined with goodness always offers more

resources than the spirit of Evil can boast."

"Yes; still God requires repentance in this present world----"

"So you always think of your indulgences," returned Don Juan Belvidero.

"Well, well, I have another life in reserve in which to repent of the sins

of my previous existence."

"Oh, if you regard old age in that light," cried the Pope, "you are in

danger of canonization----"

"After your elevation to the Papacy nothing is incredible." And they went

to watch the workmen who were building the huge basilica dedicated to Saint

Peter.

"Saint Peter, as the man of genius who laid the foundation of our double

power," the Pope said to Don Juan, "deserves this monument. Sometimes,

though, at night, I think that a deluge will wipe all this out as with a

sponge, and it will be all to begin over again."

Don Juan and the Pope began to laugh; they understood each other. A fool

would have gone on the morrow to amuse himself with Julius II. in Raphael's

studio or at the delicious Villa Madama; not so Belvidero. He went to see

the Pope as pontiff, to be convinced of any doubts that he (Don Juan)

entertained. Over his cups the Rovere would have been capable of denying

his own infallibility and of commenting on the Apocalypse.

* * * * *

Nevertheless, this legend has not been undertaken to furnish materials for

future biographies of Don Juan; it is intended to prove to honest folk that

Belvidero did not die in a duel with stone, as some lithographers would

have us believe.

When Don Juan Belvidero reached the age of sixty he settled in Spain, and

there in his old age he married a young and charming Andalusian wife. But

of set purpose he was neither a good husband nor a good father. He had

observed that we are never so tenderly loved as by women to whom we

scarcely give a thought. Dona Elvira had been devoutly brought up by an old

aunt in a castle a few leagues from San Lucar in a remote part of

Andalusia. She was a model of devotion and grace. Don Juan foresaw that

this would be a woman who would struggle long against a passion before

yielding, and therefore hoped to keep her virtuous until his death. It was

a jest undertaken in earnest, a game of chess which he meant to reserve

till his old age. Don Juan had learned wisdom from the mistakes made by his

father Bartolommeo; he determined that the least details of his life in

old age should be subordinated to one object--the success of the drama

which was to be played out upon his deathbed.

For the same reason the largest part of his wealth was buried in the

cellars of his palace at Ferrara, whither he seldom went. As for the rest

of his fortune, it was invested in a life annuity, with a view to give his

wife and children an interest in keeping him alive; but this Machiavellian

piece of foresight was scarcely necessary. His son, young Felipe Belvidero,

grew up as a Spaniard as religiously conscientious as his father was

irreligious, in virtue, perhaps, of the old rule, "A miser has a

spendthrift son." The Abbot of San-Lucar was chosen by Don Juan to be the

director of the consciences of the Duchess of Belvidero and her son Felipe.

The ecclesiastic was a holy man, well shaped, and admirably well

proportioned. He had fine dark eyes, a head like that of Tiberius, worn

with fasting, bleached by an ascetic life, and, like all dwellers in the

wilderness, was daily tempted. The noble lord had hopes, it may he, of

despatching yet another monk before his term of life was out.

But whether because the Abbot was every whit as clever as Don Juan himself,

or Dona Elvira possessed more discretion or more virtue than Spanish wives

are usually credited with, Don Juan was compelled to spend his declining

years beneath his own roof, with no more scandal under it than if he had

been an ancient country parson. Occasionally he would take wife and son to

task for negligence in the duties of religion, peremptorily insisting that

they should carry out to the letter the obligations imposed upon the flock

by the Court of Rome. Indeed, he was never so well pleased as when he had

set the courtly Abbot discussing some case of conscience with Dona Elvira

and Felipe.

At length, however, despite the prodigious care that the great magnifico,

Don Juan Belvidero, took of himself, the days of decrepitude came upon him,

and with those days the constant importunity of physical feebleness, an

importunity all the more distressing by contrast with the wealth of

memories of his impetuous youth and the sensual pleasures of middle age.

The unbeliever who in the height of his cynical humor had been wont to

persuade others to believe in laws and principles at which he scoffed, must

repose nightly upon a _perhaps_. The great Duke, the pattern of good

breeding, the champion of many a carouse, the proud ornament of Courts, the

man of genius, the graceful winner of hearts that he had wrung as

carelessly as a peasant twists an osier withe, was now the victim of a

cough, of a ruthless sciatica, of an unmannerly gout. His teeth gradually

deserted him, as at the end of an evening the fairest and best-dressed

women take their leave one by one till the room is left empty and desolate.

The active hands became palsy-stricken, the shapely legs tottered as he

walked. At last, one night, a stroke of apoplexy caught him by the throat

in its icy clutch. After that fatal day he grew morose and stern.

He would reproach his wife and son with their devotion, casting it in their

teeth that the affecting and thoughtful care that they lavished so tenderly

upon him was bestowed because they knew that his money was invested in a

life annuity. Then Elvira and Felipe would shed bitter tears and redouble

their caresses, and the wicked old man's insinuating voice would take an

affectionate tone--"Ah, you will forgive me, will you not, dear friends,

dear wife? I am rather a nuisance. Alas, Lord in heaven, how canst Thou use

me as the instrument by which Thou provest these two angelic creatures? I

who should be the joy of their lives am become their scourge...."

In this manner he kept them tethered to his pillow, blotting out the memory

of whole months of fretfulness and unkindness in one short hour when he

chose to display for them the ever-new treasures of his pinchbeck

tenderness and charm of manner--a system of paternity that yielded him an

infinitely better return than his own father's indulgence had formerly

gained. At length his bodily infirmities reached a point when the task of

laying him in bed became as difficult as the navigation of a felucca in the

perils of an intricate channel. Then came the day of his death; and this

brilliant sceptic, whose mental faculties alone had survived the most

dreadful of all destructions, found himself between his two special

antipathies--the doctor and the confessor. But he was jovial with them. Did

he not see a light gleaming in the future beyond the veil? The pall that is

like lead for other men was thin and translucent for him; the light-footed,

irresistible delights of youth danced beyond it like shadows.

* * * * *

It was on a beautiful summer evening that Don Juan felt the near approach

of death. The sky of Spain was serene and cloudless; the air was full of

the scent of orange-blossom; the stars shed clear, pure gleams of light;

nature without seemed to give the dying man assurance of resurrection; a

dutiful and obedient son sat there watching him with loving and respectful

eyes. Towards eleven o'clock he desired to be left alone with this

single-hearted being.

"Felipe," said the father, in tones so soft and affectionate that the young

man trembled, and tears of gladness came to his eyes; never had that stern

father spoken his name in such a tone. "Listen, my son," the dying man went

on. "I am a great sinner. All my life long, however, I have thought of my

death. I was once the friend of the great Pope Julius II.; and that

illustrious Pontiff, fearing lest the excessive excitability of my senses

should entangle me in mortal sin between the moment of my death and the

time of my anointing with the holy oil, gave me a flask that contains a

little of the holy water that once issued from the rock in the wilderness.

I have kept the secret of this squandering of a treasure belonging to Holy

Church, but I am permitted to reveal the mystery _in articulo mortis_ to my

son. You will find the flask in a drawer in that Gothic table that always

stands by the head of the bed.... The precious little crystal flask may be

of use yet again for you, dearest Felipe. Will you swear to me, by your

salvation, to carry out my instructions faithfully?"

Felipe looked at his father, and Don Juan was too deeply learned in the

lore of the human countenance not to die in peace with that look as his

warrant, as his own father had died in despair at meeting the expression in

his son's eyes.

"You deserved to have a better father," Don Juan went on. "I dare to

confess, my child, that while the reverend Abbot of San-Lucar was

administering the Viaticum I was thinking of the incompatibility of the

co-existence of two powers so infinite as God and the Devil----"

"Oh, father!"

"And I said to myself, when Satan makes his peace he ought surely to

stipulate for the pardon of his followers, or he will be the veriest

scoundrel. The thought haunted me; so I shall go to hell, my son, unless

you carry out my wishes."

"Oh, quick; tell me quickly, father."

"As soon as I have closed my eyes," Don Juan went on, "and that may be in a

few minutes, you must take my body before it grows cold and lay it on a

table in this room. Then put out the lamp; the light of the stars should be

sufficient. Take off my clothes, reciting _Aves_ and _Paters_ the while,

raising your soul to God in prayer, and carefully anoint my lips and eyes

with this holy water; begin with the face, and proceed successively to my

limbs and the rest of my body; my dear son, the power of God is so great

that you must be astonished at nothing."

Don Juan felt death so near, that he added in a terrible voice, "Be careful

not to drop the flask."

Then he breathed his last gently in the arms of his son, and his son's

tears fell fast over his sardonic, haggard features.

It was almost midnight when Don Felipe Belvidero laid his father's body

upon the table. He kissed the sinister brow and the gray hair; then he put

out the lamp.

By the soft moonlight that lit strange gleams across the country without,

Felipe could dimly see his father's body, a vague white thing among the

shadows. The dutiful son moistened a linen cloth with the liquid, and,

absorbed in prayer, he anointed the revered face. A deep silence reigned.

Felipe heard faint, indescribable rustlings; it was the breeze in the

tree-tops, he thought. But when he had moistened the right arm, he felt

himself caught by the throat, a young strong hand held him in a tight

grip--it was his father's hand! He shrieked aloud; the flask dropped from

his hand and broke in pieces. The liquid evaporated; the whole household

hurried into the room, holding torches aloft. That shriek had startled

them, and filled them with as much terror as if the Trumpet of the Angel

sounding on the Last Day had rung through earth and sky. The room was full

of people, and a horror-stricken crowd beheld the fainting Felipe upheld by

the strong arm of his father, who clutched him by the throat. They saw

another thing, an unearthly spectacle--Don Juan's face grown young and

beautiful as Antinoues, with its dark hair and brilliant eyes and red lips,

a head that made horrible efforts, but could not move the dead, wasted

body.

An old servitor cried, "A miracle! a miracle!" and all the Spaniards

echoed, "A miracle! a miracle!"

Dona Elvira, too pious to attribute this to magic, sent for the Abbot of

San-Lucar; and the Prior beholding the miracle with his own eyes, being a

clever man, and withal an Abbot desirous of augmenting his revenues,

determined to turn the occasion to profit. He immediately gave out that Don

Juan would certainly be canonized; he appointed a day for the celebration

of the apotheosis in his convent, which thenceforward, he said, should be

called the convent of San Juan of Lucar. At these words a sufficiently

facetious grimace passed over the features of the late Duke.

The taste of the Spanish people for ecclesiastical solemnities is so well

known, that it should not be difficult to imagine the religious pantomime

by which the Convent of San-Lucar celebrated the translation of the

_blessed Don Juan Belvidero_ to the abbey-church. The tale of the partial

resurrection had spread so quickly from village to village, that a day or

two after the death of the illustrious nobleman the report had reached

every place within fifty miles of San-Lucar, and it was as good as a play

to see the roads covered already with crowds flocking in on all sides,

their curiosity whetted still further by the prospect of a _Te Deum_ sung

by torchlight. The old abbey church of San-Lucar, a marvelous building

erected by the Moors, a mosque of Allah, which for three centuries had

heard the name of Christ, could not hold the throng that poured in to see

the ceremony. Hidalgos in their velvet mantles, with their good swords at

their sides, swarmed like ants, and were so tightly packed in among the

pillars that they had not room to bend the knees, which never bent save to

God. Charming peasant girls, in the basquina that defines the luxuriant

outlines of their figures, lent an arm to white-haired old men. Young men,

with eyes of fire, walked beside aged crones in holiday array. Then came

couples tremulous with joy, young lovers led thither by curiosity,

newly-wedded folk; children timidly clasping each other by the hand. This

throng, so rich in coloring, in vivid contrasts, laden with flowers,

enameled like a meadow, sent up a soft murmur through the quiet night. Then

the great doors of the church opened.

Late comers who remained without saw afar, through the three great open

doorways, a scene of which the theatrical illusions of modern opera can

give but a faint idea. The vast church was lighted up by thousands of

candles, offered by saints and sinners alike eager to win the favor of this

new candidate for canonization, and these self-commending illuminations

turned the great building into an enchanted fairyland. The black archways,

the shafts and capitals, the recessed chapels with gold and silver gleaming

in their depths, the galleries, the Arab traceries, all the most delicate

outlines of that delicate sculpture, burned in the excess of light like the

fantastic figures in the red heart of a brazier. At the further end of the

church, above that blazing sea, rose the high altar like a splendid dawn.

All the glories of the golden lamps and silver candlesticks, of banners and

tassels, of the shrines of the saints and votive offerings, paled before

the gorgeous brightness of the reliquary in which Don Juan lay. The

blasphemer's body sparkled with gems, and flowers, and crystal, with

diamonds and gold, and plumes white as the wings of seraphim; they had set

it up on the altar, where the pictures of Christ had stood. All about him

blazed a host of tall candles; the air quivered in the radiant light. The

worthy Abbot of San-Lucar, in pontifical robes, with his mitre set with

precious stones, his rochet and golden crosier, sat enthroned in imperial

state among his clergy in the choir. Rows of impassive aged faces,

silver-haired old men clad in fine linen albs, were grouped about him, as

the saints who confessed Christ on earth are set by painters, each in his

place, about the throne of God in heaven. The precentor and the dignitaries

of the chapter, adorned with the gorgeous insignia of ecclesiastical

vanity, came and went through the clouds of incense, like stars upon their

courses in the firmament.

When the hour of triumph arrived, the bells awoke the echoes far and wide,

and the whole vast crowd raised to God the first cry of praise that begins

the _Te Deum_. A sublime cry! High, pure notes, the voices of women in

ecstasy, mingled in it with the sterner and deeper voices of men; thousands

of voices sent up a volume of sound so mighty, that the straining, groaning

organ-pipes could not dominate that harmony. But the shrill sound of

children's singing among the choristers, the reverberation of deep bass

notes, awakened gracious associations, visions of childhood, and of man in

his strength, and rose above that entrancing harmony of human voices

blended in one sentiment of love.

_Te Deum laudamus!_

The chant went up from the black masses of men and women kneeling in the

cathedral, like a sudden breaking out of light in darkness, and the silence

was shattered as by a peal of thunder. The voices floated up with the

clouds of incense that had begun to cast thin bluish veils over the

fanciful marvels of the architecture, and the aisles were filled with

splendor and perfume and light and melody. Even at the moment when that

music of love and thanksgiving soared up to the altar, Don Juan, too well

bred not to express his acknowledgments, too witty not to understand how to

take a jest, bridled up in his reliquary, and responded with an appalling

burst of laughter. Then the Devil having put him in mind of the risk he

was running of being taken for an ordinary man, a saint, a Boniface, a

Pantaleone, he interrupted the melody of love by a yell, the thousand

voices of hell joined in it. Earth blessed, Heaven banned. The church was

shaken to its ancient foundations.

_Te Deum laudamus!_ cried the many voices.

"Go to the devil, brute beasts that you are! _Dios!_ _Dios!_ _Garajos

demonios!_ Idiots! What fools you are with your dotard God!" and a torrent

of imprecations poured forth like a stream of red-hot lava from the mouth

of Vesuvius.

"_Deus Sabaoth!... Sabaoth!_" cried the believers.

"You are insulting the majesty of Hell," shouted Don Juan, gnashing his

teeth. In another moment the living arm struggled out of the reliquary, and

was brandished over the assembly in mockery and despair.

"The saint is blessing us," cried the old women, children, lovers, and the

credulous among the crowd.

And note how often we are deceived in the homage we pay; the great man

scoffs at those who praise him, and pays compliments now and again to those

whom he laughs at in the depths of his heart.

Just as the Abbot, prostrate before the altar, was chanting "_Sancte

Johannes, ora pro nobis!_" he heard a voice exclaim sufficiently

distinctly: "_O coglione!_"

"What can be going on up there?" cried the Sub-prior, as he saw the

reliquary move.

"The saint is playing the devil," replied the Abbot.

Even as he spoke the living head tore itself away from the lifeless body,

and dropped upon the sallow cranium of the officiating priest.

"Remember Dona Elvira!" cried the thing, with its teeth set fast in the

Abbot's head.

The Abbot's horror-stricken shriek disturbed the ceremony; all the

ecclesiastics hurried up and crowded about their chief.

"Idiot, tell us now if there is a God!" the voice cried, as the Abbot,

bitten through the brain, drew his last breath.

PARIS, _October 1830_.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Works of Honore de Balzac, by Honore de Balzac