It may be asked how it was that Martial had failed to discover or to
suspect this singular state of affairs; but a moment’s reflection will
explain his ignorance. The head of a family, whether he dwells in an
attic or in a palace, is always the last to know what is going on in his
own home. He does not even suspect circumstances, with which every one
else is fully acquainted; and, in Martial’s case, the life he led was
scarcely likely to lead him to the truth; for after all, he and his wife
were virtually strangers to one another. His manner towards her was
perfect, full of deference and chivalrous courtesy; but they had nothing
in common except a name and certain interests. Each lived his own life.
They met only at dinner, or at the entertainments they gave--which were
considered the most brilliant of Parisian society. The duchess had her
own apartments, her private servants, carriages, horses, and table. At
five-and-twenty, Martial, the last descendant of the great house of
Sairmeuse--a man on whom destiny had apparently lavished every
blessing--who was young, who possessed unbounded wealth, and a
brilliant intellect, found himself literally overburdened with _ennui_.
Marie-Anne’s death had destroyed all his hopes of happiness; and
realizing the emptiness of his life, he sought to fill the void with
bustle and excitement. He threw himself headlong into politics, striving
to find some relief from his despondency in the pleasures of power and
satisfied ambition.
It is only just to say that Blanche had remained superior to
circumstances; and that she had played the part of a happy, contented
woman with consummate skill. Her frightful sufferings and anxiety never
marred the haughty serenity of her features. She soon won a place as one
of the queens of Parisian society; and plunged into dissipation with a
sort of frenzy. Was she endeavouring to divert her mind? Did she hope to
overpower thought by excessive fatigue? To Aunt Medea alone did Blanche
reveal her secret heart. “I am like a culprit who has been bound to the
scaffold, and abandoned there by the executioner to live, as it were,
till the axe falls of its own accord.” And the axe might fall at any
moment. A word, a trifle, an unlucky chance--she dared not say “a decree
of providence,” and Martial would know everything. Such, in all its
unspeakable horror, was the position of the beautiful and envied Duchess
de Sairmeuse. “She must be perfectly happy,” said the world; but she
felt herself sliding down the precipice to the awful depths below. Like
a shipwrecked mariner clinging to a floating spar, she scanned the
horizon with a despairing eye, and could only see the threatening clouds
that betokened the coming tempest. Once it happened that six weeks went
by without any news coming from Chupin. A month and a half! What had
become of him? To Madame Blanche this silence was as ominous as the calm
that precedes the storm. A line in a newspaper solved the mystery,
however. Chupin was in prison. After drinking more heavily than usual
one evening, he had quarrelled with his brother, and killed him by a
blow on the head with an iron bar. Lacheneur’s blood was being visited
on his betrayer’s children. Chupin was tried, condemned to twenty year’s
hard labour, and sent to Brest. But this sentence afforded the duchess
no relief. The culprit had written to her from his Paris prison; and he
found the means to write to her from Brest. He confided his letters to
comrades, whose terms of imprisonment had expired, and who came to the
Hotel de Sairmeuse demanding an interview with the duchess. And she
received them. They told her all the miseries they had endured “out
there;” and usually ended by requesting some slight assistance.
One morning, a man whose desperate manner quite frightened her, brought
the duchess this laconic note. “I am tired of starving here; I wish to
make my escape. Come to Brest; you can visit the prison, and we will
decide on some plan. If you refuse to do this, I shall apply to the
duke, who will obtain my pardon in exchange for what I will tell him.”
Blanche was dumb with horror. It was impossible, she thought, to sink
lower than this.
“Well!” said the returned convict, harshly. “What answer shall I take to
my comrade?”
“I will go--tell him I will go!” she said, driven to desperation. And in
fact she made the journey, and visited the prison, but without finding
Chupin. There had been a revolt the previous week, the troops had fired
on the prisoners, and Chupin had been killed. Still the duchess dared
not rejoice, for she feared that her tormentor had told his wife the
secret of his power.
Indeed the widow--the Aspasie Clapard already mentioned, promptly made
her appearance at the house in the Rue de Grenelle; but her manner was
humble and supplicating. She had often heard her dear dead husband say
that madame was his benefactress, and now she came to beg a little aid
to enable her to open a small wine-shop. Her son Polyte--ah! such a good
son! just eighteen years old, and such a help to his poor mother--had
found a little house in a good situation for business, and if they only
had three or four hundred francs---- Blanche cut the story short by
handing her supplicant a five hundred franc note. “Either that woman’s
humility is a mask,” thought the duchess, “or her husband has told her
nothing.”
Five days later Polyte Chupin presented himself. They needed three
hundred francs more before they could commence business, he said, and he
came on behalf of his mother to entreat the kind lady to advance them
that amount. But being determined to discover exactly how she was
situated, with regard to the widow, the duchess curtly refused, and the
young fellow went off without a word. Evidently the mother and son were
ignorant of the facts. Chupin’s secret had died with him.
This happened early in January. Towards the close of February, Aunt
Medea contracted inflammation of the lungs on leaving a fancy ball,
which she attended in an absurd costume, in spite of all the attempts
which her niece made to dissuade her. Her passion for dress killed her.
Her illness lasted only three days; but her sufferings, physical and
mental, were terrible. Constrained by fear of death to examine her own
conscience, she saw plainly enough that profiting by her niece’s crime
had been as culpable as if she had actually aided her in committing it.
Aunt Medea had been very devout in former years, and now her
superstitious fears were reawakened and intensified. Her faith returned,
followed by a train of terrors. “I am lost, I am lost!” she cried,
tossing to and fro on her bed; writhing and shrieking as if she already
saw hell opening to engulf her. She called on the Holy Virgin and all
the saints to protect her. She entreated heaven to grant her time for
repentance and expiation; and she even begged to see a priest, swearing
she would make a full confession.
Paler than the dying woman, but still implacable, Blanche watched over
her, aided by one of her maids in whom she had most confidence. “If this
lasts long, I shall be ruined,” she thought. “I shall be obliged to call
for assistance, and she will betray me.”
But it did not last long. The patient’s delirium was followed by such
utter prostration that it seemed as if each moment would be her last.
But towards midnight she revived a little, and in a voice of intense
feeling, she faltered, “You have had no pity on me, Blanche. You have
deprived me of all hope in the life to come. Heaven will punish you. You
will die like a dog yourself, and alone without a word of Christian
counsel or encouragement. I curse you!” And she expired, just as the
clock was striking two.
The time when Blanche would have given almost anything to know that Aunt
Medea was under the ground had long since passed away. Now the poor old
woman’s death deeply affected her. She had lost an accomplice who had
often consoled her, and she had gained nothing in return. Every one who
was intimately acquainted with the Duchesse de Sairmeuse noticed her
dejection, and was astonished by it. “Is it not strange,” remarked her
friends, “that the duchess--such a very superior woman--should grieve so
much for that absurd relative of hers.” But Blanche’s dejection was due
in great measure to the sinister prophecies faltered by her dying aunt,
to whom for self-protection she had denied the last consolations of
religion. And as her mind reviewed the past she shuddered as the
Sairmeuse peasants had done, when thinking of the fatality which pursued
those who had shed, or helped to shed so much innocent blood. What
misfortunes had overtaken them all--from Chupin’s sons to her father,
the Marquis de Courtornieu, in whose mind not one spark of reason had
gleamed for ten long years before his death. The Baron and the Baroness
d’Escorval, and old Corporal Bavois had departed this life within a
month of each other the previous year, mourned by every one, so that of
all the people of diverse condition who had been connected with the
troubles of Montaignac, Blanche knew of only four who were still alive.
Maurice d’Escorval, who having studied the law was now an investigating
magistrate attached to the tribunal of the Seine; the Abbe Midon, who
had come to Paris with Maurice, and Martial and herself.
There was another person at the recollection of whom she trembled, and
whose name she dared not utter. This was Jean Lacheneur, Marie-Anne’s
brother. He had disappeared, and so completely that it might have been
fancied he was dead, but an inward voice, more powerful than reason,
told Blanche that this enemy was still alive, watching for his hour of
vengeance. More troubled by her presentiments now, than she had been by
Chupin’s persecutions in days gone by, Madame de Sairmeuse decided to
apply to Chefteux in order to ascertain, if possible, what she had to
expect. Fouche’s former agent had not wavered in his devotion to the
duchess. Every three months he presented his bill, which was paid
without discussion; and to ease his conscience, he sent one of his men
two or three times a year to prowl round Sairmeuse for awhile. Animated
by the hope of a magnificent reward, the spy promised his client,
and--what was more to the purpose--promised himself, that he would
discover this dreaded enemy. He started in quest of him, and had already
begun to collect proofs of Jean’s existence, when his investigations
abruptly came to a close. One morning a man’s body, literally hacked to
pieces, was found in an old well not far from Sairmeuse. It was Chefteux
who had been murdered by some one who remained unknown. When Blanche
read this news in a local journal she felt as a culprit might feel on
hearing his death-warrant read. “The end is near,” she murmured.
“Lacheneur is coming.”
The duchess was not mistaken. Jean had told the truth when he declared
that he was not disposing of his sister’s estate for his own benefit. In
his opinion, Marie-Anne’s fortune must be consecrated to one sacred
purpose; and he would not divert the slightest portion of it to his
personal requirements. He was absolutely penniless when the manager of a
travelling theatrical company sojourning at Montaignac engaged him for a
consideration of forty-five francs a month. From that day he lived the
precarious life of a strolling player. He was poorly paid, and often
reduced to abject poverty by lack of engagements, or the impecuniosity
of managers. His hatred had lost none of its virulence; but to wreak the
vengeance he wished to wreak, he must have time and money at his
disposal. But how could he accumulate money when he was often too poor
even to appease his hunger. Still he did not renounce his hopes. His was
a rancour which was only intensified by years. He was biding his time
while he watched from the depths of his misery the brilliant fortunes of
the house of Sairmeuse. He had waited sixteen years, when one of his
friends procured him an engagement in Russia. The engagement was
nothing; but during his stay at St. Petersburg the poor comedian was
fortunate enough to obtain an interest in a theatrical enterprise, from
which he realized a clear profit of a hundred thousand francs in less
than six years. “Now,” said he, “I can give up this life, for I have
money enough to begin the struggle.” And six weeks later he arrived at
his native village.
Before carrying any of his designs into execution, he went to Sairmeuse
to visit Marie-Anne’s grave, the sight of which he felt would fan his
smouldering animosity, and give him all the determination he needed as
the cold stern avenger of crime. This was his only motive in going, but,
on the very evening of his arrival, he learnt through a garrulous old
peasant woman that ever since his departure--that is to say, for a
period of twenty years--two parties had been making persistent inquiries
for a child which had been placed somewhere in the neighbourhood. Jean
knew that it was Marie-Anne’s child they were seeking, and why they had
not succeeded in finding it. But why were there two persons prosecuting
these investigations? One was Maurice d’Escorval, of course, but who was
the other? This information induced Jean to prolong his stay at
Sairmeuse, where he tarried a whole month. By the expiration of that
time he had traced the inquiries, which he could not at first
comprehend, to one of Chefteux’s agents. Through the latter, he reached
Fouche’s former spy himself; and finally succeeded in discovering that
the second search had been instituted by no less a person than the
Duchess de Sairmeuse. This discovery bewildered him. How could Blanche
have known that Marie-Anne had given birth to a child; and, knowing it,
what possible interest could she have had in finding this abandoned
babe, now grown to manhood. These two questions puzzled Jean
considerably, and he could give them no satisfactory answer. “Chupin’s
son could tell me perhaps,” he thought, “but to obtain information from
that quarter, I must pretend to be reconciled to the sons of the wretch
who betrayed my father.”
However, the traitor’s children had been dead for several years, and
after a long search, Jean only found the Widow Chupin, _nee_ Aspasie
Clapard, and her son Polyte. They were keeping a drinking-den not far
from the Rue des Chateau-des-Rentiers; and their establishment, known as
the Poivriere, enjoyed anything but an enviable reputation. Lacheneur
cautiously questioned the widow and her son. He asked them if they knew
of the crime at the Borderie--if they had heard that grandfather Chupin
had committed murder and had been assassinated in his turn--if they had
ever been told of an abandoned child, and of searches prosecuted to find
it. But neither of these two had ever been at Sairmeuse in their lives,
and when Lacheneur mentioned his name in hopes it might recall some
recollection, they declared they had never heard it before. Jean was
about to take his departure, despondently enough, when Mother Chupin,
probably in the hope of pocketing a few pence, began to deplore her
present misery, which was, she declared, all the harder to bear as she
had wanted for nothing during her poor husband’s lifetime, for he had
always obtained as much money as he wanted from a lady of high degree,
called the Duchess de Sairmeuse.
Lacheneur uttered such a frightful oath that the old woman and her son
started back in astonishment. He saw at once the close connection
between Blanche’s search for the child and her generosity to Chupin. “It
was she who poisoned Marie-Anne,” he said to himself. “It must have been
through my sister herself that she became aware of the child’s
existence. She loaded the younger Chupin with favours because he knew
the crime she had committed--that crime in which his father had been
only an accomplice.”
He remembered Martial’s oath at the murdered girl’s bedside, and his
heart overflowed with savage exultation. For he could already see his
two enemies, the last of the Sairmeuses and the last of the Courtornieus
consummating his work of vengeance themselves. However, after all, this
was mere conjecture: he must at any price ascertain whether his
suppositions were correct. Drawing from his pocket several pieces of
gold, and, throwing them on the table, he said: “I am rich; if you will
obey me and keep my secret, your fortune is made.”
A shrill cry of delight from mother and son outweighed any protestations
of obedience. The Widow Chupin knew how to write, and Lacheneur then
dictated this letter to her: “Madame la Duchesse--I shall expect you at
my establishment to-morrow between twelve and four o’clock. It is on
business connected with the Borderie. If at five o’clock I have not seen
you, I shall carry to the post a letter for the duke.”
“And if she comes, what am I to say to her?” asked the astonished widow.
“Nothing; you will merely ask her for money.”
“If she comes, it is as I have guessed,” he reflected.
She came. Hidden in the loft of the Poivriere, Jean, through an opening
in the floor, saw the duchess hand Mother Chupin a bank note. “Now, she
is in my power!” he thought exultantly. “And I will drag her through
sloughs of degradation before I deliver her up to her husband’s
vengeance!”