OF A SOMEWHAT LIVELY INTEREST, WHEREOF THE MORAL WILL, I
HOPE, APPEAL GREATLY TO MY READERS, SINCE IT CAN BE
EXPRESSED BY THIS SORROWFUL QUERY: "THOUGHT, WHITHER DOST
THOU LEAD ME?" FOR IT IS A UNIVERSALLY ADMITTED TRUTH THAT
IT IS UNHEALTHY TO THINK AND THAT TRUE WISDOM LIES IN NOT
THINKING AT ALL
All the books were now once more assembled in the pious keeping of
Monsieur Sariette. But this happy reunion was not destined to last. The
following night twenty volumes left their places, among them the
_Lucretius_ of Prior de Vendôme. Within a week the old Hebrew and Greek
texts had all returned to the summer-house, and every night during the
ensuing month they left their shelves and secretly went on the same
path. Others betook themselves no one knew whither.
On hearing of these mysterious occurrences, Monsieur René d'Esparvieu
merely remarked with frigidity to his librarian:
"My poor Sariette, all this is very queer, very queer indeed."
And when Monsieur Sariette tentatively advised him to lodge a formal
complaint or to inform the Commissaire de Police, Monsieur d'Esparvieu
cried out upon him:
"What are you suggesting, Monsieur Sariette? Divulge domestic secrets,
make a scandal! You cannot mean it. I have enemies, and I am proud of
it. I think I have deserved them. What I might complain about is that I
am wounded in the house of my friend, attacked with unheard-of violence,
by fervent loyalists, who, I grant you, are good Catholics, but
exceedingly bad Christians.... In a word, I am watched, spied upon,
shadowed, and you suggest, Monsieur Sariette, that I should make a
present of this comic-opera mystery, this burlesque adventure, this
story in which we both cut somewhat pitiable figures, to a set of
spiteful journalists? Do you wish to cover me with ridicule?"
The result of the colloquy was that the two gentlemen agreed to change
all the locks in the library. Estimates were asked for and workmen
called in. For six weeks the d'Esparvieu household rang from morning
till night with the sound of hammers, the hum of centre-bits, and the
grating of files. Fires were always going in the abode of the
philosophers and globes, and the people of the house were simply
sickened by the smell of heated oil. The old, smooth, easy-running locks
were replaced, on the cupboards and doors of the rooms, by stubborn and
tricky fastenings. There was nothing but combinations of locks,
letter-padlocks, safety-bolts, bars, chains, and electric alarm-bells.
All this display of ironmongery inspired fear. The lock-cases glistened,
and there was much grinding of bolts. To gain access to a room, a
cupboard, or a drawer, it was necessary to know a certain number, of
which Monsieur Sariette alone was cognisant. His head was filled with
bizarre words and tremendous numbers, and he got entangled among all
these cryptic signs, these square, cubic, and triangular figures. He
himself couldn't get the doors and the cupboards undone, yet every
morning he found them wide open, and the books thrown about, ransacked,
and hidden away. In the gutter of the Rue Servandoni a policeman picked
up a volume of Salomon Reinach on the identity of Barabbas and Jesus
Christ. As it bore the book-plate of the d'Esparvieu library he returned
it to the owner.
Monsieur René d'Esparvieu, not even deigning to inform Monsieur Sariette
of the fact, made up his mind to consult a magistrate, a friend in whom
he had complete confidence, to wit, a certain Monsieur des Aubels,
Counsel at the Law Courts, who had put through many an important affair.
He was a little plump man, very red, very bald, with a cranium that
shone like a billiard ball. He entered the library one morning feigning
to come as a book-lover, but he soon showed that he knew nothing about
books. While all the busts of the ancient philosophers were reflected in
his shining pate, he put divers insidious questions to Monsieur
Sariette, who grew uncomfortable and turned red, for innocence is easily
flustered. From that moment Monsieur des Aubels had a mighty suspicion
that Monsieur Sariette was the perpetrator of the very thefts he
denounced with horror; and it immediately occurred to him to seek out
the accomplices of the crime. As regards motives, he did not trouble
about them; motives are always to be found. Monsieur des Aubels told
Monsieur René d'Esparvieu that, if he liked, he would have the house
secretly watched by a detective from the Prefecture.
"I will see that you get Mignon," he said. "He is an excellent servant,
assiduous and prudent."
By six o'clock next morning Mignon was already walking up and down
outside the d'Esparvieus' house, his head sunk between his shoulders,
wearing love-locks which showed from under the narrow brim of his bowler
hat, his eye cocked over his shoulder. He wore an enormous dull-black
moustache, his hands and feet were huge; in fact, his whole appearance
was distinctly memorable. He paced regularly up and down from the
nearest of the big rams' head pillars which adorn the Hôtel de la
Sordière to the end of the Rue Garancière, towards the apse of St.
Sulpice Church and the dome of the Chapel of the Virgin.
Henceforth it became impossible to enter or leave the d'Esparvieus'
house without feeling that one's every action, that one's very thoughts,
were being spied upon. Mignon was a prodigious person endowed with
powers that Nature denies to other mortals. He neither ate nor slept. At
all hours of the day and night, in wind and rain, he was to be found
outside the house, and no one escaped the X-rays of his eye. One felt
pierced through and through, penetrated to the very marrow, worse than
naked, bare as a skeleton. It was the affair of a moment; the detective
did not even stop, but continued his everlasting walk. It became
intolerable. Young Maurice threatened to leave the paternal roof if he
was to be so radiographed. His mother and his sister Berthe complained
of his piercing look; it offended the chaste modesty of their souls.
Mademoiselle Caporal, young Léon d'Esparvieu's governess, felt an
indescribable embarrassment. Monsieur René d'Esparvieu was sick of the
whole business. He never crossed his own threshold without crushing his
hat over his eyes to avoid the investigating ray and without wishing old
Sariette, the _fons et origo_ of all the evil, at the devil. The
intimates of the household, such as Abbé Patouille and Uncle Gaétan,
made themselves scarce; visitors gave up calling, tradespeople hesitated
about leaving their goods, the carts belonging to the big shops scarcely
dared stop. But it was among the domestics that the spying roused the
most disorder.
The footman, afraid, under the eye of the police, to go and join the
cobbler's wife over her solitary labours in the afternoon, found the
house unbearable and gave notice. Odile, Madame d'Esparvieu's
lady's-maid, not daring, as was her custom after her mistress had
retired, to introduce Octave, the handsomest of the neighbouring
bookseller's clerks, to her little room upstairs, grew melancholy,
irritable and nervous, pulled her mistress's hair while dressing it,
spoke insolently, and made advances to Monsieur Maurice. The cook,
Madame Malgoire, a serious matron of some fifty years, having no more
visits from Auguste, the wine-merchant's man in the Rue Servandoni, and
being incapable of suffering a privation so contrary to her temperament,
went mad, sent up a raw rabbit to table, and announced that the Pope had
asked her hand in marriage. At last, after a fortnight of superhuman
assiduity, contrary to all known laws of organic life, and to the
essential conditions of animal economy, Mignon, the detective, having
observed nothing abnormal, ceased his surveillance and withdrew without
a word, refusing to accept a gratuity. In the library the dance of the
books became livelier than ever.
"That is all right," said Monsieur des Aubels. "Since nothing comes in
nor goes out, the evil-doer must be in the house."
The magistrate thought it possible to discover the criminal without
police-warrant or enquiry. On a date agreed upon at midnight, he had the
floor of the library, the treads of the stairs, the vestibule, the
garden path leading to Monsieur Maurice's summer-house, and the entrance
hall of the latter, all covered with a coating of talc.
The following morning Monsieur des Aubels, assisted by a photographer
from the Prefecture, and accompanied by Monsieur René d'Esparvieu and
Monsieur Sariette, came to take the imprints. They found nothing in the
garden, the wind had blown away the coating of talc; nothing in the
summer-house either. Young Maurice told them he thought it was some
practical joke and that he had brushed away the white dust with the
hearth-brush. The real truth was, he had effaced the traces left by the
boots of Odile, the lady's-maid. On the stairs and in the library the
very light print of a bare foot could be discerned, it seemed to have
sprung into the air and to have touched the ground at rare intervals and
without any pressure. They discovered five of these traces. The clearest
was to be found in the abode of the busts and spheres, on the edge of
the table where the books were piled. The photographer took several
negatives of this imprint.
"This is more terrifying than anything else," murmured Monsieur
Sariette.
Monsieur des Aubels did not hide his surprise.
Three days later the anthropometrical department of the Prefecture
returned the proofs exhibited to them, saying that they were not in the
records.
After dinner Monsieur René showed the photographs to his brother Gaétan,
who examined them with profound attention, and after a long silence
exclaimed:
"No wonder they have not got this at the Prefecture; it is the foot of a
god or of an athlete of antiquity. The sole that made this impression is
of a perfection unknown to our races and our climates. It exhibits toes
of exquisite grace, and a divine heel."
René d'Esparvieu cried out upon his brother for a madman.
"He is a poet," sighed Madame d'Esparvieu.
"Uncle," said Maurice, "you'll fall in love with this foot if you ever
come across it."
"Such was the fate of Vivant Denon, who accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt,"
replied Gaétan. "At Thebes, in a tomb violated by the Arabs, Denon
found the little foot of a mummy of marvellous beauty. He contemplated
it with extraordinary fervour, 'It is the foot of a young woman,' he
pondered, 'of a princess--of a charming creature. No covering has ever
marred its perfect shape.' Denon admired, adored, and loved it. You may
see a drawing of this little foot in Denon's atlas of his journey to
Egypt, whose leaves one could turn over upstairs, without going further
afield, if only Monsieur Sariette would ever let us see a single volume
of his library."
Sometimes, in bed, Maurice, waking in the middle of the night, thought
he heard the sound of pages being turned over in the next room, and the
thud of bound volumes falling on the floor.
One morning at five o'clock he was coming home from the club, after a
night of bad luck, and while he stood outside the door of the
summer-house, hunting in his pocket for his keys, his ears distinctly
heard a voice sighing:
"Knowledge, whither dost thou lead me? Thought, whither dost thou lure
me?"
But entering the two rooms he saw nothing, and told himself that his
ears must have deceived him.