There was one remedy to be applied to this unbearable malady--that

remedy which had already been successful in the case of my suspicions of

my mother. I must proceed to place the realities in opposition to the

suggestions of imagination. I must seek the presence of the man whom I

suspected, look him straight in the face, and see him as he was, not as

my fancy, growing more feverish day by day, represented him. Then I

should discern whether I had or had not been the sport of a delusion;

and the sooner I resorted to this test the better, for my sufferings

were terribly increased by solitude. My head became confused; at last I

ceased even to doubt. That which ought to have been only a faint

indication, assumed to my mind the importance of an overwhelming proof.

In the interest of my inquiry itself it was full time to resist this, if

I were ever to pursue that inquiry farther, or else I should fall into

the nervous state which I knew so well, which rendered any kind of

action in cold blood impossible to me. I made up my mind to leave

Compiègne, see my stepfather, and form my judgment of whether there

was, or was not, anything in my suspicions, upon the first effect

produced on him by my sudden and unexpected appearance before him. I

founded this hope on an argument which I had already used in the case of

my mother, namely, that if M. Termonde had really been concerned in the

assassination of my father, he had dreaded my aunt's penetration beyond

all things. Their relations had been formal, with an undercurrent of

enmity on her part which had assuredly not escaped a man so astute as

he. If he were guilty, would he not have feared that my aunt would have

confided her thoughts to me on her death-bed? The attitude that he

should assume towards me, at and after our first interview, would be a

proof, complete in proportion to its suddenness, and he must have no

time for preparation.

I returned to Paris, therefore, without having informed even my valet of

my intention, and proceeded almost immediately to my mother's hotel. I

arrived there at two o'clock in the afternoon--an hour at which I was

pretty sure of finding M. Termonde at home, and smoking his cigar in the

hall after the second breakfast. A little later he and my mother would

go their separate ways until dinner-time, which was seven o'clock. I had

come on foot in order to steady my nerves by exercise, and all the way

along I had been pouring contempt upon myself, for, as I drew near to

the reality, the phantoms which I had summoned up in my solitude seemed

like the dreams of a sick child.

I remembered how the humiliating and the ridiculous were mingled in the

arrival of my mother at Compiègne. I went to meet her, as Orestes might

have gone to meet Clytemnestra, and I found a woman wholly occupied with

her mourning, her travelling bag, and her little cushions. Would the

same ironical contrast present itself in this first interview with my

stepfather? Very likely, and I should be convinced once more of my

readiness to be intoxicated with my own ideas. It was always painful to

me to be convicted of that weakness, and also of my abiding inability to

form clear, precise, and definite views. I mentally compared myself with

the bulls which I had seen in the bull-ring at San Sebastian--stupid

animals; they foamed and stamped at a red rag instead of rushing

straight upon the alert toreador, who mocked their rage. In this

disheartened mood I rang the bell. The door was opened, and the narrow

court, the glass porch, the red carpet of the staircase, were before me.

The concierge, who saluted me, was not he by whom I had fancied myself

slighted in my childhood; but the old valet-de-chambre who opened the

door to me was the same. His close-shaven face wore its former impassive

expression, the look that used to convey to me such an impression of

insult and insolence when I came home from school. What childish

absurdity! To my question the man replied that my mother was in, also M.

Termonde, and Madame Bernard, a friend of theirs. The latter name

brought me back at once to the reality of the situation. Madame Bernard

was a rather pretty woman, very slight and dark, with a tip-tilted nose,

hair worn low upon her forehead, very white teeth which were continually

shown by a constant smile, a short upper lip, and all the manners and

ways of a woman of society well up in its latest gossip.

I fell at once from my fancied height as an imaginary Grand Justiciary

into the shallows of Parisian frivolity. I was about to hear chatter

upon the last play, the latest suit for separation, the latest love

affairs, and the newest bonnet. It was for this that I had eaten my

heart out all these days! The servant preceded me to the hall I knew so

well, with its Oriental divan, its green plants, its strange furniture,

its slightly faded carpet, its Meissonier on a draped easel, in the

place formerly occupied by my father's portrait, its crowd of ornamental

trifles, and the wide-spreading Japanese parasol open in the middle of

the ceiling. The walls were hung with large pieces of Chinese stuff

embroidered in black and white silk. My mother was half-reclining in an

American rocking-chair, and shading her face from the fire with a

hand-screen; Madame Bernard, who sat opposite to her, was holding her

muff with one hand and gesticulating with the other; M. Termonde, in

walking-dress, was standing with his back to the chimney, smoking a

cigar, and warming the sole of one of his boots. On my appearance, my

mother uttered a little cry of glad surprise, and rose to welcome me.

Madame Bernard instantly assumed the air with which a well-bred woman

prepares to condole with a person of her acquaintance upon a

bereavement. All these little details I perceived in a moment, and also

the shrug of M. Termonde's shoulders, the quick flutter of his eyelids,

the rapidly dismissed expression of disagreeable surprise which my

sudden appearance called forth. But what then? Was it not the same with

myself? I could have sworn that at the same moment he experienced

sensations exactly similar to those which were catching me at the chest

and by the throat. What did this prove but that a current of antipathy

existed between him and me? Was it a reason for the man's being a

murderer? He was simply my stepfather, and a stepfather who did not like

his stepson. . . .

Matters had stood thus for years, and yet, after the week of miserable

suspicion I had lived through, the quick look and shrug struck me

strangely, even while I took his hand after I had kissed my mother, and

saluted Madame Bernard. His hand? No, only his finger tips as usual, and

they trembled a little as I touched them. How often had my own hand

shrunk with unconquerable repugnance from that contact! I listened while

he repeated the same phrases of sympathy with my sorrow which he had

already written to me while I was at Compiègne. I listened while Madame

Bernard uttered other phrases to the same effect; and then the

conversation resumed its course, and, during the half-hour that ensued,

I looked on, speaking hardly at all, but mentally comparing the

physiognomy of my stepfather with that of the visitor, and that of my

mother. The contemplation of those three faces produced a curious

impression upon me; it was that of their difference, not only of age,

but of intensity, of depth. There was no mystery in my mother's face, it

was as easy to read as a page in clear handwriting! The mind of Madame

Bernard, a worldly, trumpery mind, but harmless enough, was readily to

be discerned in her features, which were at once refined and

commonplace. How little there was of reflection, of decision, of

exercise of will, in short of individuality, behind the poetic grace of

the one and the pretty affectations of the other! What a face, on the

contrary, was that of my stepfather, with its strong individuality and

its vivid expression! In this man of the world, as he stood there

talking with two women of the world, in his blue, furtive eyes, too wide

apart, and always seeming to shun observation, in his prematurely gray

hair, his mouth set round with deep wrinkles, in his dark, blotched

complexion, there seemed to be a creature of another race. What passions

had worn those furrows? what vigils had hollowed those eyeballs? Was

this the face of a happy man, with whom everything had succeeded, who,

having been born to wealth and of an excellent family, had married the

woman he loved; who had known neither the wearing cares of ambition, the

toil of money-getting, nor the stings of wounded self-love? It is true,

he suffered from some complaint; but why was it that, although I had

hitherto been satisfied with this answer, it now appeared to me childish

and even foolish? Why did all these marks of trouble and exhaustion

suddenly strike me as effects of a secret cause, and why was I

astonished that I had not sooner sought for it? Why was it that in his

presence, contrary to my expectations, contrary to what had happened

about my mother, I was wrong to think thus, and harbour suspicion from

which I had hoped to emerge with a free mind? Why, when our eyes met for

just one second, was I afraid that he might read my thoughts in my

glance, and why did I shift them with a pang of shame and terror? Ah!

coward that I was, triple coward! Either I was wrong to think thus, and

at any price I must know that I was wrong; or, I was right and I must

know that too. The sole resource henceforth remaining to me for the

preservation of my self-respect was ardent and ceaseless search after

certainty.

That such a search was beset with difficulty I was well aware. Mow was I

to get at facts? The very position of the problem which I had before me

forbade all hope of discovering anything whatsoever by a formal inquiry.

What, in fact, was the matter in question? It was to make myself certain

whether M. Termonde was or was not the accomplice of the man who had led

my father into the trap in which he had lost his life. But I did not

know that man himself; I had no data to go upon except the particulars

of his disguise and the vague speculations of a Judge of Instruction. If

I could only have consulted that Judge, and availed myself of his

experience? How often since have I taken out the packet containing the

denunciatory letters, with the intention of showing them to him and

imploring advice, support, suggestions, from him. But I have always

stopped short before the door of his house; the thought of my mother

barred its entrance against me. What if he, the Judge of Instruction in

the case, were to suspect her as my aunt had done? Then I would go back

to my own abode, and shut myself up for hours, lying on the divan in my

smoking-room and drugging my senses with tobacco. During that time I

read and re-read the fatal letters, although I knew them by heart, in

order to verify my first impression with the hope of dispelling it. It

was, on the contrary, deepened. The only gain I obtained from my

repeated perusals was the knowledge that this certainty, of which I had

made a point of honour to myself, could only be psychological. In short,

all my fancies started from the moral data of the crime, apart from

physical data which I could not obtain. I was therefore obliged to rely

entirely, absolutely, upon those moral data, and I began again to reason

as I had done at Compiègne. "Supposing," said I to myself, "that M.

Termonde is guilty, what state of mind must he be in? This state of mind

being once ascertained, how can I act so as to wrest some sign of his

guilt from him?" As to his state of mind I had no doubt. Ill and

depressed as I knew him to be, his mind troubled to the point of

torment, if that suffering, that gloom, that misery were accompanied by

the recollection of a murder committed in the past, the man was the

victim of secret remorse. The point was then to invent a plan which

should give, as it were, a form to his remorse, to raise the spectre of

the deed he had done roughly and suddenly before him. If guilty, it was

impossible but that he would tremble; if innocent, he would not even be

aware of the experiment. But how was this sudden summoning-up of his

crime before the man whom I suspected to be accomplished? On the stage

and in novels one confronts an assassin with the spectacle of his crime,

and keeps watch upon his face for the one second during which he loses

his self-possession; but in reality there is no instrument except

unwieldy, unmanageable speech wherewith to probe a human conscience. I

could not, however, go straight to M. Termonde and say to his face: "You

had my father killed!" Innocent or guilty, he would have had me turned

from the door as a madman!

After several hours of reflection, I came to the conclusion that only

one plan was reasonable, and available: this was to have a private talk

with my stepfather at a moment when he would least expect it, an

interview in which all should be hints, shades, double meanings, in

which each word should be like the laying of a finger upon the sorest

spots in his breast, if indeed his reflections were those of a murderer.

Every sentence of mine must be so contrived as to force him to ask

himself: "Why does he say this to me if he knows nothing? He does know

something. How much does he know?" So well acquainted was I with every

physical trait of his, the slightest variations of his countenance, his

simplest gestures, that no sign of disturbance on his part, however

slight, could escape me. If I did not succeed in discovering the seat of

the malady by this process, I should be convinced of the baselessness of

those suspicions which were constantly springing up afresh in my mind

since the death of my aunt. I would then admit the simple and probable

explanation--nothing in my father's letters discredited it--that M.

Termonde had loved my mother without hope in the lifetime of her first

husband, and had then profited by her widowhood, of which he had not

even ventured to think. If, on the contrary, I observed during our

interview, that he was alive to my suspicions, that he divined them, and

anxiously followed my words; if I surprised that swift gleam in his eye

which reveals the instinctive terror of an animal, attacked at the

moment of its fancied security, if the experiment succeeded,

then--then--I dared not think of what then? The mere possibility was too

overwhelming. But should I have the strength to carry on such a

conversation? At the mere thought of it, my heart-beats were quickened,

and my nerves thrilled. What! this was the first opportunity that had

been offered to me of action, of devoting myself to the task of

vengeance, so coveted, so fully accepted during all my early years, and

I could hesitate? Happily, or unhappily, I had near me a counsellor

stronger than my doubts, my father's portrait, which was hung in my

smoking-room. When I awoke in the night and plunged into these thoughts,

I would light my candle and go to look at the picture. How like we were

to each other, my father and I, although I was more slightly built! How

exactly the same we were! How near to me I felt him, and how dearly I

loved him! With what emotion I studied those features, the lofty

forehead, the brown eyes, the rather large mouth, the rather long chin,

the mouth especially, half-hidden by a black moustache cut like my own;

it had no need to open, and cry out: "André, André, remember me!" Ah,

no, my dear dead father, I could not leave you thus, without having done

my utmost to avenge you, and it was only an interview to be faced, only

an interview!

My nervousness gave way to determination at once feverish and

fixed--yes, it was both--and it was in a mood of perfect self-mastery,

that, after a long period of mental conflict, I repaired to the hotel on

the boulevard, with the plan of my discourse clearly laid out. I felt

almost sure of finding my stepfather alone; for my mother was to

breakfast on that day with Madame Bernard. M. Termonde was at home, and,

as I expected, alone in his study. When I entered the room, he was

sitting in a low chair, close to the fire, looking chilly, and smoking.

Like myself in my dark hours, he drugged himself with tobacco. The room

was a large one, and both luxurious and ordinary. A handsome bookcase

lined one of the walls. Its contents were various, ranging from grave

works on history and political economy to the lightest novels of the

day. A large, flat writing-table, on which every kind of

writing-material was carefully arranged, occupied the middle of the

room, and was adorned with photographs in leather cases. These were

portraits of my mother and M. Termonde's father and mother. At least one

prominent trait of its owner's character, his scrupulous attention to

order and correctness of detail, was revealed by the aspect of my

stepfather's study; but this quality, which is common to so many persons

of his position in the world, may belong to the most commonplace

character as well as to the most refined hypocrite. It was not only in

the external order and bearing of his life that my stepfather was

impenetrable, none could tell whether profound thoughts were or were not

hidden behind his politeness and elegance of manner. I had often

reflected on this, at a period when as yet I had no stronger motive for

examining into the recesses of the man's character than curiosity, and

the impression came to me with extreme intensity at the moment when I

entered his presence with a firm resolve to read in the book of his past

life.

We shook hands, I took a seat opposite to his on the other side of the

hearth, lighted a cigar, and said, as if to explain my unaccustomed

presence:

"Mamma is not here?"

"Did she not tell you, the other day, that she was to breakfast with

Madame Bernard? There's an expedition to Lozano's studio,"--Lozano was a

Spanish painter much in vogue just then--"to see a portrait he is

painting of Madame Bernard. Is there anything you want to have told to

your mother?" he added, simply.

These few words were sufficient to show me that he had remarked the

singularity of my visit. Ought I to regret or to rejoice at this? He

was, then, already aware that I had some particular motive for coming;

but this very fact would give all their intended weight to my words. I

began by turning the conversation on an indifferent matter, talking of

the painter Lozano and a good picture of his which I knew, "A

Gipsy-dance in a Tavern-yard at Grenada." I described the bold

attitudes, the pale complexions, the Moorish faces of the gitanas, and

the red carnations stuck into the heavy braids of their black hair, and

I questioned him about Spain. He answered me, but evidently out of mere

politeness. While continuing to smoke his cigar, he raked the fire with

the tongs, and taking up one small piece of charred wood after another

between their points. By the quivering of his fingers, the only sign of

his nervous sensitiveness which he was unable entirely to keep down, I

could observe that my presence was then, as it always was, disagreeable

to him. Nevertheless he talked on with his habitual courtesy, in his low

voice, almost without tone or accent, as though he had trained himself

to talk thus. His eyes were fixed on the flame, and his face, which I

saw in profile, wore the expression of infinite weariness that I knew

well, an indescribable sadness, with long deep lines, and the mouth was

contracted as though by some bitter thought ever present. Suddenly, I

looked straight at that detested profile, concentrating all the

attention I had in me upon it, and, passing from one subject to another

without transition, I said:

"I paid a very interesting visit this morning."

"In that you are agreeably distinguished from me," was his reply, made

in a tone of utter indifference, "for I wasted my morning in putting my

correspondence in order."

"Yes," I continued, "very interesting. I passed two hours with M.

Massol."

I had reckoned a good deal on the effect of this name, which must have

instantly recalled the inquiry into the mystery of the Imperial Hotel to

his memory. The muscles of his face did not move. He laid down the

tongs, leaned back in his chair, and said in an absent manner:

"The former Judge of Instruction? What is he doing now?"

Was it possible that he really did not know where the man, whom, if he

were guilty, he ought to have dreaded most of all men, was then living?

How was I to know whether this indifference was feigned? The trap I had

set appeared to me all at once a childish notion. Admitting that my

stepfather's pulses were even now throbbing with fever, and that he was

saying to himself with dread: "What is he coming to? What does he mean?"

why, this was a reason why he should conceal his emotion all the more

carefully. No matter. I had begun; I was bound to go on, and to hit

hard--or cease to hit at all.

"M. Massol is Counsellor to the Court," I replied, and I added--although

this was not true--"I see him often. We were talking this morning of

criminals who have escaped punishment. Only fancy his being convinced

that Troppmann had an accomplice. He founds his belief on the details of

the crime, which presupposes two men, he says. If this be true it must

be admitted that 'Messieurs The Assassins' have a kind of honour of

their own, however odd that may appear, since the child-killing monster

let his own head be cut off without denouncing the other. Nevertheless,

the accomplice must have had some bad times before him, after the

discovery of the bodies and the arrest of his comrade. I, for my part,

would not trust to that honour, and if the humour took me to commit a

crime, I should do it by myself. Would you?" I asked jestingly.

These two little words meant nothing, were merely an insignificant jest,

if the man to whom I put my odd question was innocent. But, if he were

guilty, those two little words were enough to freeze the marrow in his

bones. He surrounded himself with smoke while listening to me, his

eyelids half veiled his eyes; I could no longer see his left hand, which

hung over the far side of his chair, and he had put the right into the

pocket of his morning-coat. There was a short pause before he answered

me--very short--but the interval, perhaps a minute, that divided his

reply from my question was a burning one for me. But what of this? It

was not his way to speak in a hurry; and besides, my question had

nothing interesting in it if he were not guilty, and if he were, would

he not have to calculate the bearing of the phrase which he was about to

utter with the quickness of thought? He closed his eyes completely--his

constant habit--and said, in the unconcerned tone of a man who is

talking generalities:

"It is a fact that scraps of conscience do remain intact in very

depraved individuals. One sees instances of this especially in countries

where habits and morals are more genuine and true to nature than ours.

There's Spain, for instance, the country that interests you so much;

when I lived in Spain, it was still infested by brigands. One had to

make treaties with them in order to cross the Sierras in safety; there

was no case known in which they broke the contract. The history of

celebrated criminal cases swarms with scoundrels who have been excellent

friends, devoted sons, and constant lovers. But I am of your opinion,

and I think it is best not to count too much upon them."

He smiled as he uttered the last words, and now he looked full at me

with those light blue eyes which were so mysterious and impassible. No,

I was not of a stature to cope with him, to read his heart by force. It

needed capacity of another kind than mine to play in the case of this

personage the part of the magnate of police who magnetises a criminal.

And yet, why did my suspicions gather force as I felt the masked,

dissimulating, guarded nature of the man in all its strength? Are there

not natures so constituted that they shut themselves up without cause,

just as others reveal themselves; are there not souls that love darkness

as others love daylight? Courage, then, let me strike again.

"M. Massol and I," I resumed, "have been talking about what kind of life

Troppmann's accomplice must be leading, and also Rochdale's, for neither

of us has relinquished the intention of finding him. Before M. Massol's

retirement he took the precaution to bar the limitation by a formal

notice, and we have several years before us in which to search for the

man. Do these criminals sleep in peace? Are they punished by remorse, or

by the apprehension of danger, even in their momentary security? It

would be strange if they were both at this moment good, quiet citizens,

smoking their cigars like you and me, loved and loving. Do you believe

in remorse?"

"Yes, I do believe in remorse," he answered. Was it the contrast between

the affected levity of my speech, and the seriousness with which he had

spoken, that caused his voice to sound grave and deep to my ears? No,

no; I was deceiving myself, for without a thrill he had heard the news

that the limitation had been barred, that the case might be re-opened

any day--terrible news for him if he were mixed up with the murder--and

he added, calmly, referring to the philosophic side of my question only:

"And does M. Massol believe in remorse?" "M. Massol," said I, "is a

cynic. He has seen too much wickedness, known too many terrible stories.

He says that remorse is ay question of stomach and religious education,

and that a man with a sound digestion, who had never heard anything

about hell in his childhood, might rob and kill from morning to night

without feeling any other remorse than fear of the police. He also

maintains, being a sceptic, that we do not know what part that question

of the other life plays in solitude; and I think he is right, for I

often begin to think of death, at night, and I am afraid;--yes, I, who

don't believe in anything very much, am afraid. And you," I continued,

"do you believe in another world?"

"Yes." This time I was sure that there was an alteration in his voice.

"And in the justice of God?"

"In His justice and His mercy," he answered, in a strange tone.

"Singular justice," I said vehemently, "which is able to do everything,

and yet delays to punish! My poor aunt used always to say to me when I

talked to her about avenging my father: 'I leave it to God to punish,'

but, for my part, if I had got hold of the murderer, and he was there

before me--if I were sure--no, I would not wait for the hour of that

tardy justice of God."

I had risen while uttering these words, carried away by involuntary

excitement which I knew to be unwise. M. Termonde had bent over the fire

again, and once more taken up the tongs. He made no answer to my

outburst. Had he really felt some slight disturbance, as I believed for

an instant, at hearing me speak of that inevitable and dreadful morrow

of the grave which fills myself with such fear now that there is blood

upon my hands? I could not tell. His profile was, as usual, calm and

sad. The restlessness of his hands--recalling to my mind the gesture

with which he turned and returned his cane while my mother was telling

him of the disappearance of my father--yes, the restlessness of his

hands was extreme; but he had been working at the fire with the same

feverish eagerness just before. Silence had fallen between us suddenly;

but how often had the same thing happened? Did it ever fail to happen

when he and I were in each other's company? And then, what could he have

to say against the outburst of my grief and wrath, orphan that I was?

Guilty, or innocent, it was for him to be silent, and he held his peace.

My heart sank; but, at the same time, a senseless rage seized upon me.

At that moment I would have given my remaining life for the power of

forcing their secret from those shut lips, by any mode of torture.

My stepfather looked at the clock--he, too, had risen now--and said:

"Shall I put you down anywhere? I have ordered the carriage for three

o'clock, as I have to be at the club at half-past. There's a ballot

coming off to-morrow." Instead of the down-stricken criminal I had

dreamed of, there stood before me a man of society thinking about the

affairs of his club. He came with me so far as the hall, and took leave

of me with a smile.

Why, then, a quarter of an hour afterwards, when we passed each other on

the quay, I, going homewards on foot, he in his coupé--yes--why was his

face so transformed, so dark and tragic? He did not see me. He was

sitting back in the corner, and his clay-coloured face was thrown out by

the green leather behind his head. His eyes were looking--where, and at

what? The vision of distress that passed before me was so different from

the smiling countenance of a while ago that it shook me from head to

foot with an extraordinary emotion.

XII

This impression of dread kept hold of me during the whole of that

evening, and for several days afterwards. There is infinite distance

between our fancies, however precise they may be, and the least bit of

reality. My father's letters had stirred my being to its utmost depths,

had summoned up tragic pictures before my eyes; but the simple fact of

my having seen the agonised look in my stepfather's face, after my

interview with him, gave me a shock of an entirely different kind. Even

after I had read the letters repeatedly, I had cherished a secret hope

that I was mistaken, that some slight proof would arise and dispel

suspicions which I denounced as senseless, perhaps because I had a

foreknowledge of the dreadful duty that would devolve upon me when the

hour of certainty had come. Then I should be obliged to act on a

resolution, and I dared not look the necessity in the face. No, I had

not so regarded it, previous to my meeting with my enemy, when I saw him

cowering in anguish upon the cushions of his carriage. Now I would force

myself to contemplate it. What should my course be, if he were guilty?

I put this question to myself plainly t and I perceived all the horror

of the situation. On whatever side I turned I was confronted with

intolerable misery. That things should remain as they were I could not

endure. I saw my mother approach M. Termonde, as she often did, and

touch his forehead caressingly with her hand or her lips. That she

should do this to the murderer of my father! My very bones burned at the

mere thought of it, and I felt as though an arrow pierced my breast. So

be it! I would act; I would find strength to go to my mother and say:

"This man is an assassin," and prove it to her--and lo! I was already

shrinking from the pain that my words must inflict on her. It seemed to

me that while I was speaking I should see her eyes open wide, and,

through the distended pupils, discern the rending asunder of her being,

even to her heart, and that she would go mad or fall down dead on the

spot, before my eyes. No, I would speak to her myself. If I held the

convincing proof in my hands I would appeal to justice. But then a new

scene arose before me. I pictured my mother at the moment of her

husband's arrest. She would be there, in the room, close to him. "Of

what crime is he accused?" she would ask, and she would have to hear the

inevitable answer. And I should be the voluntary cause of this, I, who,

since my childhood, and to spare her a pang, had stifled all my

complaints at the time when my heart was laden with so many sighs, so

many tears, so much sorrow, that it would have been a supreme relief to

have poured them out to her. I had not done so then, because I knew that

she was happy in her life, and that it was her happiness only that

blinded her to my pain. I preferred that she should be blind and happy.

And now? Ah! how could I strike her such a cruel blow, dear and fragile

being that she was? The first glimpse of the double prospect of misery

which my future offered if my suspicions proved just, was too terrible

for endurance, and I summoned all my strength of will to shut out a

vision which must bring about such consequences. Contrary to my habit, I

persuaded myself into a happy solution. My stepfather looked sad when he

passed me in his coupé; true, but what did this prove? Had he not many

causes of care and trouble, beginning with his health, which was failing

from day to day? One fact only would have furnished me with absolute,

indisputable proof; if he had been shaken by a nervous convulsion while

we were talking, if I had seen him (as Hamlet, my brother in anguish,

saw his uncle) start up with distorted face, before the suddenly-evoked

spectre of his crime. Not a muscle of his face had moved, not an eyelash

had quivered;--why, then, should I set down this untroubled calm to

amazing hypocrisy, and take the discomposure of his countenance half an

hour later for a revelation of the truth? This was just reasoning, or at

least it appears so to me, now that I am writing down my recollections

in cold blood. They did not prevail against the sort of fatal instinct

which forced me to follow this trail. Yes, it was absurd, it was mad,

gratuitously to imagine that M. Termonde had employed another person to

murder my father; yet I could not prevent myself from constantly

admitting that this most unlikely suggestion of my fancy was possible,

and sometimes that it was certain. When a man has given place in his

mind to ideas of this kind he is no longer his own master; either he is

a coward, or the thing must be fought out. It was due to my father, my

mother, and myself that I should _know_. I walked about my rooms for

hours, thinking these thoughts, and more than once I took up a pistol,

saying to myself: "Just a touch, a slight movement like this and I am

cured for ever of mortal pain." But the handling of the weapon, the

touch of the smooth barrel, reminded me of the mysterious scene of my

father's death. It called up before me the sitting-room in the Imperial

Hotel, the disguised man waiting, my father coming in, taking a seat at

the table, turning over the papers laid before him, while a pistol, like

this one in my hand, was levelled at him, close to the back of his neck;

and then the fatal crack of the weapon, the head dropping down upon the

table, the murderer wrapping the bleeding neck in towels and washing his

hands, coolly, leisurely, as though he had just completed some ordinary

task. The picture roused in me a raging thirst for vengeance. I

approached the portrait of the dead man, which looked at me with its

motionless eyes. What! I had my suspicions of the instigator of this

murder, and I would leave them unverified because I was afraid of what I

should have to do afterwards! No, no; at any price, I must in the first

place know!

Three days passed. I was suffering tortures of irresolution, mingled

with incoherent projects no sooner formed than they were rejected as

impracticable. To know?--this was easily said, but I, who was so eager,

nervous, and excitable, so little able to restrain my quickly-varying

emotions, would never be able to extort his secret from so resolute a

man, one so completely master of himself as my stepfather. My

consciousness of his strength and my weakness made me dread his presence

as much as I desired it. I was like a novice in arms who was about to

fight a duel with a very skilful adversary; he desires to defend himself

and to be victorious, but he is doubtful of his own coolness. What was I

to do now, when I had struck a first blow and it had not been decisive?

If our interview had really told upon his conscience, how was I to

proceed to the redoubling of the first effect, to the final reduction of

that proud spirit? My reflections had arrived and stopped at this point,

I was forming and re-forming plans only to abandon them, when a note

reached me from my mother, complaining; that I had not gone to her house

since the day on which I had missed seeing her, and telling me that my

stepfather had been very ill indeed two days previously with his

customary liver complaint. Two days previously, that was on the day

after my conversation with him. Here again it might be said that fate

was making sport of me, redoubling the ambiguity of the signs, the chief

cause of my despair. Was the imminence of this attack explanatory of the

agonised expression of my stepfather's face when he passed me in his

carriage? Was it a cause, or merely the effect of the terror by which he

had been assailed, if he was guilty, under his mask of indifference,

while I flung my menacing words in his face? Oh, how intolerable was

this uncertainty, and my mother increased it, when I went to her, by her

first words.

"This," she said, "is the second attack he has had in two months; they

have never come so near together until now. What alarms me most is the

strength of the doses of morphine he takes to lull the pain. He has

never been a sound sleeper, and for some years he has not slept one

single night without having recourse to narcotics; but he used to be

moderate--whereas, now----"

She shook her head dejectedly, poor woman, and I, instead of

compassionating her sorrow, was conjecturing whether this, too, was not

a sign, whether the man's sleeplessness did not arise from terrible,

invincible remorse, or whether it also could be merely the result of

illness.

"Would you like to see him?" asked my mother, almost timidly, and as I

hesitated she added, under the impression that I was afraid of fatiguing

him, whereas I was much surprised by the proposal, "he asked to see you

himself; he wants to hear the news from you about yesterday's ballot at

the club." Was this the real motive of a desire to see me, which I could

not but regard as singular, or did he want to prove that our interview

had left him wholly unmoved? Was I to interpret the message which he had

sent me by my mother as an additional sign of the extreme importance

that he attached to the details of "society" life, or was he,

apprehending my suspicions, forestalling them? Or, yet again, was he,

too, tortured by the desire to know, by the urgent need of satisfying

his curiosity by the sight of my face, whereon he might decipher my

thoughts?

I entered the room--it was the same that had been mine when I was a

child, but I had not been inside its door for years--in a state of mind

similar to that in which I had gone to my former interview with him. I

had, however, no hope now that M. Termonde would be brought to his knees

by my direct allusion to the hideous crime of which I imagined him to be

guilty. My stepfather occupied the room as a sleeping-apartment when he

was ill, ordinarily he only dressed there. The walls, hung with dark

green damask, ill-lighted by one lamp, with a pink shade, placed upon a

pedestal at some distance from the bed, to avoid fatigue to the sick

man's eyes, had for their only ornament a likeness of my mother by

Bonnat, one of his first female portraits. The picture was hung between

the two windows, facing the bed, so that M. Termonde, when he slept in

that room, might turn his last look at night and his first look in the

morning upon the face whose long-descended beauty the painter had very

finely rendered. No less finely had he conveyed the something

half-theatrical which characterised that face, the slightly affected set

of the mouth, the far-off look in the eyes, the elaborate arrangement of

the hair. First, I looked at this portrait; it confronted me on entering

the room; then my glance fell on my stepfather in the bed. His head,

with its white hair, and his thin yellow face were supported by the

large pillows, round his neck was tied a handkerchief of pale blue silk

which I recognised, for I had seen it on my mother's neck, and I also

recognised the red woollen coverlet that she had knitted for him; it was

exactly the same as one she had made for me; a pretty bit of woman's

work on which I had seen her occupied for hours, ornamented with ribbons

and lined with silk. Ever and always the smallest details were destined

to renew that impression of a shared interest in my mother's life from

which I suffered so much, and more cruelly than ever now, by reason of

my suspicion. I felt that my looks must betray the tumult of such

feelings, and, while I seated myself by the side of the bed, and asked

my stepfather how he was, in a voice that sounded to me like that of

another person, I avoided meeting his eyes. My mother had gone out

immediately after announcing me, to attend to some small matters

relative to the well-being of her dear invalid. My stepfather questioned

me upon the ballot at the club which he had assigned as a pretext for

his wish to see me. I sat with my elbow on the marble top of the table

and my forehead resting in my hand; although I did not catch his eye I

felt that he was studying my face, and I persisted in looking fixedly

into the half-open drawer where a small pocket-pistol, of English make,

lay side by side with his watch, and a brown silk purse, also made for

him by my mother. What were the dark misgivings revealed by the presence

of this weapon placed within reach of his hand and probably habitually

placed there? Did he interpret my thoughts from my steady observation?

Or had he, too, let his glance fall by chance upon the pistol, and was

he pursuing the ideas that it suggested in order to keep up the talk it

was always so difficult to maintain between us? The fact is that he

said, as though replying to the question in my mind: "You are looking at

that pistol, it is a pretty thing, is it not?" He took it up, turned it

about in his hand, and then replaced it in the drawer, which he closed.

"I have a strange fancy, quite a mania; I could not sleep unless I had a

loaded pistol, there, quite close to me. After all it is a habit which

does no harm to any one, and might have its advantages. If your poor

father had carried a weapon like that upon him when he went to the

Imperial Hotel, things would not have gone so easily with the assassin."

This time I could not refrain from raising my eyes and seeking his. How,

if he were guilty, did he dare to recall this remembrance? Why, if he

were not, did his glance sink before mine? Was it merely in following

out an association of ideas that he referred thus to the death of my

father; was it for the purpose of displaying his entire unconcern

respecting the subject-matter of our last interview; or was he using a

probe to discover the depth of my suspicion? After this allusion to the

mysterious murder which had made me fatherless, he went on to say:

"And, by-the-bye, have you seen M. Massol again?"

"No," said I, "not since the other day."

"He is a very intelligent man. At the time of that terrible affair, I

had a great deal of talk with him, in my capacity as the intimate friend

of both your father and mother. If I had known that you were in the

habit of seeing him latterly, I should have asked you to convey my kind

regards."

"He has not forgotten you," I answered. In this I lied; for M. Massol

had never spoken of my stepfather to me; but that frenzy which had made

me attack him almost madly in the conversation of the other evening had

seized upon me again. Should I never find the vulnerable spot in that

dark soul for which I was always looking? This time his eyes did not

falter, and whatever there was of the enigmatical in what I had said,

did not lead him to question me farther. On the contrary, he put his

finger on his lips. Used as he was to all the sounds of the house, he

had heard a step approaching, and knew it was my mother's. Did I deceive

myself, or was there an entreaty that I would respect the unsuspecting

security of an innocent woman in the gesture by which he enjoined

silence? Was I to translate the look that accompanied the sign into: "Do

not awaken suspicion in your mother's mind, she would suffer too much;"

and was his motive merely the solicitude of a man who desires to save

his wife from the revival of a sad remembrance? She came in; with the

same glance she saw us both, lighted by the same ray from the lamp, and

she gave us a smile, meant for both of us in common, and fraught with

the same tenderness for each. It had been the dream of her life that we

should be together thus, and both of us with her, and, as she had told

me at Compiègne, she imputed the obstacles which had hindered the

realisation of her dream to my moody disposition. She came towards us,

smiling, and carrying a silver tray with a glass of Vichy water upon it;

this she held out to my stepfather, who drank the water eagerly, and,

returning the glass to her, kissed her hand.

"Let us leave him to rest," she said, "his head is burning." Indeed, in

merely touching the tips of his fingers, which he placed in mine, I

could feel that he was highly feverish; but how was I to interpret this

symptom, which was ambiguous like all the others, and might, like them,

signify either moral or physical distress? I had sworn to myself that I

would know; but how?--how?

I had been surprised by my stepfather's having expressed a wish to see

me during his illness; but I was far more surprised when, a fortnight

later, my servant announced M. Termonde in person, at my abode. I was in

my study, and occupied in arranging some papers of my father's which I

had brought up from Compiègne. I had passed these two weeks at my poor

aunt's house, making a pretext of a final settlement of affairs, but in

reality because I needed to reflect at leisure upon the course to be

taken with respect to M. Termonde, and my reflections had increased my

doubts. At my request, my mother had written to me three times, giving

me news of the patient, so that I was aware he was now better and able

to go out. On my return, the day before, I had selected a time at which

I was almost sure not to see any one for my visit to my mother's house.

And now, here was my stepfather, who had not been inside my door ten

times since I had been installed in an apartment of my own, paying me a

visit without the loss of an hour. My mother, he said, had sent him with

a message to me. She had lent me two numbers of a review, and she now

wanted them back as she was sending the yearly volume to be bound; so,

as he was passing the door, he had stepped in to ask me for them. I

examined him closely while he was giving this simple explanation of his

visit, without being able to decide whether the pretext did or did not

conceal his real motive. His complexion was more sallow than usual, the

look in his eyes was more glittering, he handled his hat nervously.

"The reviews are not there," I answered; "we shall probably find them in

the smoking-room."

It was not true that the two numbers were not there; I knew their exact

place on the table in my study; but my father's portrait hung in the

smoking-room, and the notion of bringing M. Termonde face to face with

the picture, to see how he would bear the confrontation, had occurred to

me. At first he did not observe the portrait at all; but I went to the

side of the room on which the easel supporting it stood, and his eyes,

following all my movements, encountered it. His eyelids opened and

closed rapidly, and a sort of dark thrill passed over his face; then he

turned his eyes carelessly upon another little picture hanging upon the

wall. I did not give him time to recover from the shock; but, in

pursuance of the almost brutal method from which I had hitherto gained

so little, I persisted:

"Do you not think," said I, "that my father's portrait is strikingly

like me? A friend of mine was saying the other day that if I had my hair

arranged in the same way, my head would be exactly like----"

He looked first at me, and then at the picture, in the most leisurely

way, like an expert in painting examining a work of art, without any

other motive than that of establishing its authenticity. If this man had

procured the death of him whose portrait he studied thus, his power over

himself was indeed wonderful. But--was not the experiment a crucial one

for him? To betray his trouble would be to avow all? How ardently I

longed to place my hand upon his heart at that moment and to count its

beats.

"You do resemble him," he said at length, "but not to that degree. The

lower part of the chin especially, the nose and the mouth, are alike,

but you have not the same look in the eyes, and the brows, forehead, and

cheeks are not of the same shape."

"Do you think," said I, "that the resemblance is strong enough for me to

startle the murderer if he were to meet me suddenly here, and thus?"--I

advanced upon him, looking into the depths of his eyes as though I were

imitating a dramatic scene. "Yes," I continued, "would the likeness of

feature enable me to produce the effect of a spectre, on saying to the

man, 'Do you recognise the son of him whom you killed?'"

"Now we are returning to our former discussion," he replied, without any

farther alteration of his countenance; "that would depend upon the man's

remorse, if he had any, and on his nervous system."

Again we were silent. His pale and sickly but motionless face

exasperated me by its complete absence of expression. In those

minutes--and how many such scenes have we not acted together since my

suspicion was first conceived--I felt myself as bold and resolute as I

was the reverse when alone with my own thoughts. His impassive manner

drove me wild again; I did not limit myself to this second experiment,

but immediately devised a third, which ought to make him suffer as much

as the two others, if he were guilty. I was like a man who strikes his

enemy with a broken-handled knife, holding it by the blade in his shut

hand; the blow draws his own blood also. But no, no; I was not exactly

that man; I could not doubt or deny the harm that I was doing to myself

by these cruel experiments, while he, my adversary, hid his wound so

well that I saw it not. No matter, the mad desire to know overcame my

pain.

"How strange those resemblances are," I said, "my father's handwriting

and mine are exactly the same. Look here."

I opened an iron safe built into the wall, in which I kept papers which

I especially valued, and took out first the letters from my father to my

aunt which I had selected and placed on top of the packet. These were

the latest in date, and I held them out to him, just as I had arranged

them in their envelopes. The letters were addressed to "Mademoiselle

Louise Cornélis, Compiègne;" they bore the post-mark and the quite

legible stamp of the days on which they were posted in the April and May

of 1864. It was the former process over again. If M. Termonde were

guilty, he would be conscious that the sudden change of my attitude

towards himself, the boldness of my allusions, the vigour of my attacks

were all explained by these letters, and also that I had found the

documents among my dead aunt's papers. It was impossible that he should

not seek with intense anxiety to ascertain what was contained in those

letters that had aroused such suspicions in me? When he had the

envelopes in his hands I saw him bend his brows, and I had a momentary

hope that I had shattered the mask that hid his true face, that face in

which the inner workings of the soul are reflected. The bent brow was,

however, merely a contraction of the muscles of the eye, caused by

regarding an object closely, and it cleared immediately. He handed me

back the letters without any question as to their contents.

"This time," said he, simply, "there really is an astonishing

resemblance." Then, returning to the ostensible object of his

visit--"And the reviews?" he asked.

I could have shed tears of rage. Once more I was conscious that I was a

nervous youth engaged in a struggle with a resolutely self-possessed

man. I locked up the letters in the safe, and I now rummaged the small

bookcase in the smoking-room, then the large one in my study, and

finally pretended to be greatly astonished at finding the two reviews

under a heap of newspapers on my table. What a silly farce! Was my

stepfather taken in by it? When I had handed him the two numbers, he

rose from the chair that he had sat in during my pretended search in the

chimney-corner of the smoking-room, with his back to my father's

portrait. But, again, what did this attitude prove? Why should he care

to contemplate an image which could not be anything but painful to him,

even if he were innocent?

"I am going to take advantage of the sunshine to have a turn in the

Bois," said he. "I have my coupé; will you come with me?"

Was he sincere in proposing this tête-à-tête drive which was so

contrary to our habits? What was his motive: the wish to show me that he

had not even understood my attack, or the yearning of the sick man who

dreads to be alone? I accepted the offer at all hazards, in order to

continue my observation of him, and a quarter of an hour afterwards we

were speeding towards the Arc de Triomphe in that same carriage in which

I had seen him pass by me, beaten, broken, almost killed, after our

first interview. This time, he looked like another man. Warmly wrapped

in an overcoat lined with seal fur, smoking a cigar, waving his hand to

this person or that through the open window, he talked on and on,

telling me anecdotes of all sorts, which I had either heard or not heard

previously, about people whose carriages crossed ours. He seemed to be

talking before me and not with me, so little heed did he take of whether

he was telling what I might know, or apprising me of what I did not

know. I concluded from this--for, in certain states of mind, every mood

is significant--that he was talking thus in order to ward off some fresh

attempt on my part. But I had not the courage to recommence my efforts

to open the wound in his heart and set it bleeding afresh so soon. I

merely listened to him, and once again I remarked the strange contrast

between his private thoughts and the rigid doctrines which he generally

professed. One would have said that in his eyes the high society, whose

principles he habitually defended, was a brigand's cave. It was the hour

at which women of fashion go out for their shopping and their calls, and

he related all the scandals of their conduct, false or true. According

to him, one of these great ladies was the mistress of her husband's

brother, another was notoriously under the protection of an old

diplomatist who had enriched himself by a disgraceful marriage, a third

had married an imbecile widower, and, in order that she might inherit

the whole of his fortune, had incited the man's son to so vicious a life

that it had killed him at nineteen. He dwelt on all these stories and

calumnies with a horrid pleasure, as though he rejoiced in the vileness

of humanity. Did this mean the facile misanthropy of a profligate,

accustomed to such conversations at the club, or in sporting circles,

during which each man lays bare his brutal egotism, and voluntarily

exaggerates the depth of his own disenchantment that he may boast more

largely of his experience? Was this the cynicism of a villain, guilty of

the most hideous of crimes, and glad to demonstrate that others were

less worthy than he? To hear him laugh and talk thus threw me into a

singular state of dejection. We had passed the last houses in the Avenue

de Bois, and were driving along an alley on the right in which there

were but few carriages. On the bare hedgerows a beautiful light shone,

coming from that lofty, pale blue sky which is seen only over Paris. He

continued to sneer and chuckle, and I reflected that perhaps he was

right, that the seamy side of the world was what he depicted it. Why

not? Was not I there, in the same carriage with this man, and I

suspected him of having had my father murdered! All the bitterness of

life filled my heart with a rush. Did my stepfather perceive, by my

silence and my face, that his gay talk was torturing me? Was he weary of

his own effort? He suddenly left off talking, and as we had reached a

forsaken corner of the Bois, we got out of the carriage to walk a

little. How strongly present to my mind is that by-path, a gray line

between the poor spare grass and the bare trees, the cold winter sky,

the wide road at a little distance with the carriage advancing slowly,

drawn by the bay horse, shaking its head and its bit, and driven by a

wooden-faced coachman--then, the man. He walked by my side, a tall

figure in a long overcoat. The collar of dark brown fur brought out the

premature whiteness of his hair. He held a cane in his gloved hand, and

struck away the pebbles with it impatiently. Why does his image return

to me at this hour with an unendurable exactness? It is because, as I

observed him walking along the wintry road, with his head bent forward,

I was struck as I had never been before with the sense of his absolute

unremitting wretchedness. Was this due to the influence of our

conversation of that afternoon, to the dejection which his sneering,

sniggering talk had produced in me, or to the death of nature all around

us? For the first time since I knew him, a pang of pity mingled with my

hatred of him, while he walked by my side, trying to warm himself in the

pale sunshine, a shrunken, weary, lamentable creature. Suddenly he

turned his face, which was contracted with pain, to me, and said:

"I do not feel well. Let us go home." When we were in the carriage, he

said, putting his sudden seizure upon the pretext of his health:

"I have not long to live, and I suffer so much that I should have made

an end of it all years ago, had it not been for your mother." Then he

went on talking of her with the blindness that I had already remarked in

him. Never, in my most hostile hours, had I doubted that his worship of

his wife was perfectly sincere, and once again I listened to him, as we

drove rapidly into Paris in the gathering twilight, and all that he said

proved how much he loved her. Alas! his passion rated her more highly

than my tenderness. He praised the exquisite tact with which my mother

discerned the things of the heart, to me, who knew so well her want of

feeling! He lauded the keenness of her intelligence to me, whom she had

so little understood! And he added, he who had so largely contributed to

our separation:

"Love her dearly, you will soon be the only one to love her."

If he were the criminal I believed him to be, he was certainly aware

that in thus placing my mother between himself and me, he was putting in

my way the only barrier which I could never, never break down, and I on

my side understood clearly, and with bitterness of soul, that the

obstacles so placed would be stronger than even the most fatal

certainty. What, then, was the good of seeking any further? Why not

renounce my useless quest at once? But it was already too late.

XIII

Have I been a coward? When I think of what I have accomplished with the

same hand that holds my pen, I am forced to answer: "No." How then shall

I explain that these first scenes, that in which I had tried to torture

my stepfather by talking to him of crimes committed by confederates, and

the danger of complicity; that in which I said to him as I sat by his

bedside and looked him full in the face: "No, M. Massol has not

forgotten you;" that in my room, when I placed the accusing letters in

his hands;--yes, how shall I explain that these three scenes were

succeeded by so many days of inaction? The proof that lies to one's

hand, that stares one in the face like a living thing, was furnished to

me by chance. It was not I who dragged it out of the darkness where it

lurked into the light. But was this my fault? From the moment when my

stepfather had the courage to resist my first attack, the most sudden

and unexpected of the three, what was there for me to do beyond watching

for the slightest indications, and probing the deepest recesses of his

character? I recurred to my first course of reasoning: since material

proofs were not to be had, let me at least collect all the moral reasons

that existed for believing more or believing less in the probability of

the complicated crime of which I accused the man in my thoughts. To do

this I had to depart from my usual custom, and live much at my mother's

house. Our association was necessarily an intolerable torment to M.

Termonde and to myself. How did he endure me, feeling himself suspected

in this way? How did I bear his presence, suspecting him as I did? Ah,

well, it was like a serpent's tooth at my heart when I saw him by my

mother's side, in all the security of love and luxury, loving his wife,

beloved by her, respected by all, and when I said to myself:

"And yet, this man is an assassin, a base, cowardly assassin."

Then I saw him, in my mind's eye, as he ought to have been, approaching

the scaffold in the dawn, livid, with cropped hair, and bound hands,

with the agony of expiation in his eyes, and in front of him the

guillotine, black against the pale sky. Instead of this, it was: "Are

you in any pain, dearest? At what hour do you want the carriage,

Jacques? Mind you wrap yourself up well. Whom shall we ask to dinner on

Wednesday?" It was on Wednesday they received their friends that winter

and until the spring. Thus spoke the soft voice of my mother, and the

evidence of their perfect union tortured me; but the thirst to know was

stronger and fiercer than that pain. My suspicions rose to fever heat,

and produced in me an irresistible craving to keep him always under my

eyes, to inflict the torment of my constant presence upon him. He

yielded to this with a facility which always surprised me. Had he

sensations analogous to mine? Now, when the whole mystery is unveiled,

and I know the part he took in the horrible plot, I understand the

torturing kind of attraction which I had for him. He was wholly

possessed by the fixed idea of his accomplished crime, and I formed a

living portion of that fixed idea, just as he formed a living portion of

my dark and continuous reflections. Henceforth he could think only of

me, just as I could think of none but him. Our mutual hate drew us

together like a mutual love. When we were apart the tempest of wild

fancies broke out with too great fury. At least, this was so in my case;

and although his presence was painful to me, it stilled at the same time

the kind of internal hurricane which hurled me from one extremity of the

possible to the other, when he was out of my sight. No sooner was I

alone than the wildest projects suggested themselves to me. I had a

vision of myself, seizing him by the throat, with the cry of "Assassin!

assassin!" and forcing him to confession by violence. I fancied myself

inducing M. Massol to resume the abandoned _Instruction_ on my account,

and pictured his coming to my mother's house with the new data supplied

by me. I fancied myself bribing two or three rascals, carrying off my

stepfather and shutting him up in some lonely house in the suburbs of

Paris, until he should have confessed the crime. My reason staggered

under these vagaries into which the excess of my desire, still further

stimulated by the sense of my powerlessness, drove me. And he too must

have lived through hours like these; when I was not there, he must have

formed and renounced a hundred plans. He asked of himself, "What does he

know?" he answered, according to the hours, "He knows all--he knows

nothing. What will he do?" and concluded, by turns, either that I would

do all, or that I would do nothing. But, when we were together, face to

face, the reality asserted itself, and put fancy to flight. We remained

together, studying each other, like two animals about to attack each

other presently; but each of us was perfectly aware of how it was with

the other. He could not fully manifest his distrust, nor I my

suspicions, we merely made it evident to one another that we had not

advanced one step since our first conversation on my return from

Compiègne. And, on my part, the evidence of this, while it discouraged

me, somewhat tranquillised; it eased my conscience of the reproach of

inaction. I did nothing, true; but what could I do?

Until the month of May of that year, 1879, I lived this strange life,

seeing my stepfather almost every day; a prey, when he was not there, to

the torments of my fancy, and when he was there suffering agonies from

his presence. My field of action was restricted to the closest study of

his character, and I devoted myself to the anatomy of his moral being

with ardent curiosity, which was sometimes gratified and sometimes

defeated, in proportion as I caught certain significant points, or

failed to catch them. I observed the least of these, purposely, for they

were more involuntary, less likely to deceive, and more useful in aiding

my search into the innermost recesses of his nature. We rode in the

Bois, in the morning, several times a week, and, contrary to our usual

custom, together. He came for me, or met me, without having made any

appointment: we were drawn towards each other by the force of our common

obsession. While we were riding side by side, talking of indifferent

matters, I observed him handling his horse so roughly that several times

he narrowly escaped being thrown, although he was a good horseman. He

preferred restive horses, and displayed a cold ferocity in his treatment

of the animals. What he did with his horses, unjust, despotic, and

implacable as he was, I thought within myself he had done with life,

bending all things and all persons about him to his will. He was

excessively vindictive, to the point indeed of asserting that he did not

attach any meaning to the word "forgiveness," and he had made for

himself a place apart in the world, being little liked, much feared, and

yet received by the most exclusive section of society. Under the perfect

elegance and correct style of his exterior, he hid the daring courage

which had been proved during the war, when he had fought with great

gallantry under the walls of Paris. From his bearing on horseback, I

arrived at far other conclusions; his innate violence convinced me that

he was capable of anything to gratify his passions. In the courage which

he displayed in 1870, I thought I could discern a kind of bargain made

with himself, a rehabilitation of himself in his own eyes, if indeed he

had committed the crime. Again, I wondered whether it was merely an

outcome of his innate ferocity, only a vent for the pent-up despair in

which he lived, for all his outside show of happiness. But whence this

despair? Was it only the moral effect of his bad health? Then, as I rode

by his side, I set myself to examine the physiology of the man,

searching for a correspondence between the construction of his frame,

and the signs and tokens given in specialist books upon the subject, as

those which indicate criminals; the upper part of his body was too heavy

for his legs, his arms were too strongly developed, the expression of

the lower jaw was hard, and his thumb too long. The latter peculiarity

assumed additional importance to my mind from the fact that my

stepfather had a habit of closing his hand with the thumb inwards as

though to hide it. I was well aware that I must not set any real store

by observations of this kind; I rejected them as puerile, but I returned

to them again, in order to supplement them by others which gave value

and importance to the former.

I reflected deeply upon the hereditary probabilities of M. Termonde's

character, during our rides in the Bois. His maternal grandfather had

shot himself with a pistol; his own brother had drowned himself, after

having dissipated hip fortune, taken service in the army, and deserted

under disgraceful circumstances. There were tragic elements in the

family history. How often as we rode together, boot almost touching

boot, have I turned those mad, sad, bad fancies in my head, and worse

ones still!

We would return, and sometimes I would go in to breakfast with my

mother, or call at her hotel after my solitary meal taken in my little

dining-room in the Avenue Montaigne. M. Termonde and I were very rarely

alone together during my visits to the hotel on the Boulevard

Latour-Marbourg. What did it matter to me now? If he was the criminal

whom I was bent on running down, he was forewarned; I had no longer any

chance of wresting his secret from him by surprise. I much preferred to

study him while he was talking, and in the course of his conversation

with one person or another, in my presence, I learned how perfect was

his self-control. In my childhood and my early youth, I had hated that

power of mastering himself completely, which he possessed to a supreme

degree, while I was so foolish, so helpless a victim to my nervous

sensibility, so incapable of the cold-bloodedness that hides violent

emotion with the mask of calmness. Now, it gave me a sort of pleasure to

contemplate the depth of his hypocrisy. He had such an inveterate habit

of dissimulation, such a mania for it, indeed, that he kept silence

respecting the smallest events of his life, even to his wife. He never

spoke of the visits he made, the people he met, the plans he formed, or

the books he read. He had evidently trained himself to forecast the most

remote consequences of every sentence that he uttered. This unremitting

watch kept upon himself in a life apparently so easy, prosperous, and

happy, could not fail to impress even the least observant people with an

idea that the man was an enigmatical personage. On putting together the

various pieces of his strange character and connecting his dissimulation

with the passionate frenzy which I had observed in him, he appeared to

me in the light of an infinitely dangerous being. He asked a great many

questions, and he spoke very deliberately, very temperately, unless he

were in a certain singular mood like that in which he had intoxicated

himself with his own words, on the occasion of our drive in his coupé.

Then he would talk on and on, with a nervous, sneering laugh, and give

utterance to theories so cynical, and to ideas and conceits so peculiar

that the whole thing made me shudder. He had, for instance, an

extraordinary knowledge of all questions relating to medical

jurisprudence. A case, which made a great sensation, was tried during

that winter, and in the course of an animated discussion in which

several persons took part, my stepfather chanced to mention the date of

the arrest of the notorious criminal Conty de la Pommerais. I verified

the statement; it was correct. How strangely full of things connected

with crime his mind must have been, and how strongly this bore upon

certain data, for which I was indebted to my interviews with M. Massol!

For, was it not an instance of the all-absorbing, single thought which

the old judge declared he had discerned in the great majority of

murderers, that which leads them to return to the scene of murder, to

approach the body of their victim when it is exposed in a public place,

to read every line of the newspapers, in which details of their crimes

are to be found, to follow the record of deeds similar to their own with

eager attention? At other times, my stepfather fell into a deep silence

from which it was impossible to rouse him, and he smoked cigar after

cigar while the silent mood was upon him, notwithstanding the reiterated

prohibition of the doctors. Tobacco by day, morphine by night--what

suffering was it he tried to baffle by such an abuse of narcotics? Was

it the pain of his malady, or torture of another kind, such as I

imagined when I gave myself up to my tragic conjectures? Again, he had

intervals of lassitude so great that even my presence could not rouse

him--the lassitude of a man who has reached the limit of what he can

suffer, and who can feel no more, because he has felt too much. I found

him in this condition two or three times, alone in the twilight, so

utterly sunk in weariness that he took no notice of me when I seated

myself opposite to him and gazed at him, also in silence. I was tempted

to cry out to him: "Confess, confess, confess at once!" And I should not

have been surprised had he surrendered, allowed his secret to escape

him, and answered: "It is true." On these occasions I felt the inanity

of the small facts I had so carefully collected. What if he were not

guilty? I kept silence, a prey to the fever of doubt which had been

devouring me for weeks, and at last he emerged from his taciturnity to

talk to me of my mother. Why? Was he thinking of her so intently just

then because he was very ill and believed that he was on the eve of an

eternal parting? Or was he merely striving to defend himself against me

with that buckler before which I always must retreat? Was this a

supplication to me to spare her a supreme grief? Yes; the latter was the

true explanation. With his inborn courage and his natural violence, he

would not have endured the outrage of my steady immovable gaze, the

menacing allusions I frequently made, the continuous threat of my

presence, but for his desire to spare my mother a scene between us, at

any cost, although he might be ever so sure that no solidly certain

proof could spring up accidentally in the course of it. But--rather than

be accused of this thing in her presence--he preferred to suffer as he

was suffering. For he loved her. However intolerable that sentiment

might appear to me, it was indispensable that I should admit it, even in

the hypothesis of the crime, in that case above all indeed. And then I

knew that notwithstanding our mutual enmity we felt ourselves obliged to

act in common so as not to endanger the happiness of the being who was

so dear to both of us. Nevertheless, the difference between us was

great. He might have a feeling of sullen jealousy because of my

attachment to my mother, but it could not give him the shudder of horror

that passed over me with the thought that he loved her as much as I did,

and was beloved by her, and yet had my father's blood upon his

conscience!

He loved her! It was for her that he had bought the assassin's hand, and

caused that blood to be shed, and it was she who brought him to

destruction at last, she who moved about between us with the same look

of happy tenderness she had cast upon us both, on the evening when she

found me by her ailing husband's bedside, and when her smile had beamed

so softly upon him and me--the very same smile! The efforts he made to

preserve the tranquillity of that woman's heart of hers were destined to

destroy him. Yes, all the precautions he had taken with a view to

warding off eventualities which he thought possible, were the cause of

his ultimate ruin, from the cunning disclosures he made to the gentle

unsuspecting creature, even to the false affection which he pretended

for me in her presence. If he and I had not made a pretence of mutual

regard, she would never have spoken to me as she did speak, I should

never have learned from her what I did learn, with the result that the

silent duel in which my useless energies were being exhausted was

brought to a sudden end. Is there then an overruling fate, as certain

men have believed, ay, even those who, like Bonaparte, have striven most

vigorously with stern realities? What I gather from the contemplation of

my life, from beyond the accomplished events of it, is that there is a

logical law of situation and character, which develops all the

consequences of our actions even to their end, so inexorably that the

very success of our criminal projects contains that which will crush us

some day. When I think this out for a little while, remembering how it

was she, the woman whom he so loved, who put the effectual clue for

which I had ceased to hope into my hand, and that it led to the

certainty from which there was no drawing back, a vertigo of terror

seizes upon me, as though the awful breath of destiny swept over my

brow. Yes, I am terrified, because I too have blood upon my hands; but

at the same time it comforts me because I can say to myself that I have

but been the instrument of an inevitable deed, the necessary slave of an

invisible master. Poor mother! If you had known? You also were the

deadly weapon in the hand of fate, blind, like the knife that kills and

knows it not. Whereas I--I have seen, I have known, I have willed. Ah!

Until now I have been strong enough to keep the compact made with

myself, that I would confess my story simply, detail by detail, passing

no judgment on myself. And now, as the scene approaches which determined

the new and last period of the drama of my life, my spirit shrinks.

Coward! Once more I yield to a kind of stupefaction at the thought that

it is really my own story I am setting down, that thus I acted, that

there is in my memory----No, I have pledged my word; I will go on. Yes,

with this hand that holds my pen I have done the deed. Yes, I have

blood, blood, an indelible stain upon these fingers. They falter, but

they must needs obey me and write out the story to its end.

XIV

At the beginning of the summer, six months after my aunt's death, I was

in exactly the same position with respect to my stepfather as on that

already distant day when, maddened with suspicion by my father's

letters, I entered his study, to play the part of the physician who

examines a man's body, searching with his finger for the tender spot

that is probably a symptom of a hidden abscess. I was full of intuitions

now, just as I was at the moment when he passed me in his carriage with

his terrible face, but I did not grasp a single certainty. Would I have

persisted in a struggle in which I felt beforehand that I must be

beaten? I cannot tell; for, when I no longer expected any solution to

the problem set before me for my grief, a grief, too, that was both

sterile and mortal, a day came on which I had a conversation with my

mother so startling and appalling that to this hour my heart stands

still when I think of it. I have spoken of never-to-be-forgotten dates;

among them is the 25th of May, 1879.

My stepfather, who was on the eve of his departure for Vichy, had just

had a severe attack of liver complaint, the first since his illness

after our terrible conversation in the month of January. I know that I

counted for nothing--at least in any direct or positive way--in this

acute revival of his malady. The fight between us, which went on without

the utterance of a word on either side, and with no witnesses except

ourselves, had not been marked by any fresh episode; I therefore

attributed this complication to the natural development of the disease

under which he laboured. I can exactly recall what I was thinking of on

the 25th of May, at five o'clock in the evening, as I walked up the

stairs in the hotel on the Boulevard de Latour-Marbourg. I hoped to

learn that my stepfather was better, because I had been witnessing my

mother's distress for a whole week, and also--I must tell all--because

to know he was going to this watering-place was a great relief to me, on

account of the separation it would bring about. I was so tired of my

unprofitable pain! My wretched nerves were in such a state of tension

that the slightest disagreeable impression became a torment. I could not

sleep without the aid of narcotics, and such sleep as these procured was

full of cruel dreams in which I walked by my father's side, while

knowing and feeling that he was dead. One particular nightmare used to

recur so regularly that it rendered my dread of the night almost

unbearable. I stood in a street crowded with people, and was looking

into a shop window; on a sudden I heard a man's step approaching, that

of M. Termonde. I did not see him, and yet I was certain it was he. I

tried to move on, but my feet were leaden; to turn my head, but my neck

was immovable. The step drew nearer, my enemy was behind me, I heard his

breathing, and knew that he was about to strike me. He passed his arm

over my shoulder. I saw his hand, it grasped a knife, and sought for the

spot where my heart lay; then it drove the blade in, slowly, slowly, and

I awoke in unspeakable agony. So often had this nightmare recurred

within a few weeks, that I had taken to counting the days until my

stepfather's departure, which had been at first fixed for the 21st, and

then put off until he should be stronger. I hoped that when he was

absent I should be at rest at least for a time. I had not the courage to

go away myself, attracted as I was every day by that presence which I

hated, and yet sought with feverish eagerness; but I secretly rejoiced

that the obstacle was of his raising, that his absence gave me

breathing-time, without my being obliged to reproach myself with

weakness. Such were my reflections as I mounted the wooden staircase,

covered with a red carpet, and lighted by stained-glass windows, that

led to my mother's favourite hall. The servant who opened the door

informed me in answer to my question that my stepfather was better, and

I entered the room with which my saddest recollections were connected,

more cheerfully than usual. Little did I think that the dial hung upon

one of the walls was ticking off in minutes one of the most solemn hours

of my life! My mother was seated before a small writing-table, placed in

a corner of the deep glazed projection which formed the garden-end of

the hall. Her left hand supported her head, and in the right, instead of

going on with the letter she had begun to write, she held her idle pen,

in a golden holder with a fine pearl set in the top of it (the latter

small detail was itself a revelation of her luxurious habits). She was

so lost in reverie that she did not hear me enter the room, and I looked

at her for some time without moving, startled by the expression of

misery in her refined and lovely face. What dark thought was it that

closed her mouth, furrowed her brow, and transformed her features? The

alteration in her looks and the evident absorption of her mind

contrasted so strongly with the habitual serenity of her countenance

that it at once alarmed me. But, what was the matter? Her husband was

better; why, then, should the anxiety of the last few days have

developed into this acute trouble? Did she suspect what had been going

on close to her, in her own house, for months past? Had M. Termonde made

up his mind to complain to her, in order to procure the cessation of the

torture inflicted upon him by my assiduity? No. If he had divined my

meaning from the very first day, as I thought he had, unless he were

sure he could not have said to her: "André suspects me of having had

his father killed." Or had the doctor discerned dangerous symptoms

behind this seeming improvement in the invalid? Was my stepfather in

danger of death? At the idea, my first feeling was joy, my second was

rage--joy that he should disappear from my life, and for ever; rage that

being guilty he should die without having felt my full vengeance.

Beneath all my hesitation, my scruples, my doubts, there lurked that

savage appetite for revenge which I had allowed to grow up in me,

revenge that is not satisfied with the death of the hated object unless

it be caused by one's self. I thirsted for revenge as a dog thirsts for

water after running in the sun on a summer day. I wanted to roll myself

in it, as the dog in question rolls himself in the water when he comes

to it, were it the sludge of a swamp. I continued to gaze at my mother

without moving. Presently she heaved a deep sigh and said aloud: "Oh,

me, oh, me! what misery it is!" Then lifting up her tear-stained face,

she saw me, and uttered a cry of surprise. I hastened towards her.

"You are in trouble, mother," I said. "What ails you?"

Dread of her answer made my voice falter; I knelt down before her as I

used to do when a child, and, taking both her hands, I covered them with

kisses. Again, at this solemn hour, my lips were met by that golden

wedding-ring which I hated like a living person; yet the feeling did not

hinder me from speaking to her almost childishly. "Ah," I said, "you

have troubles, and to whom should you tell them if not to me? Where will

you find any one to love you more? Be good to me," I went on; "do you

not feel how dear you are to me?" She bent her head twice, made a sign

that she could not speak, and burst into painful sobs.

"Has your trouble anything to do with me?" I asked.

She shook her head as an emphatic negative, and then said in a half

stifled voice, while she smoothed my hair with her hands, as she used to

do in the old times:

"You are very nice to me, my André."

How simple those few words were, and yet they caught my heart and

gripped it as a hand might do. How had I longed for some of those little

words which she had never uttered, some of those gracious phrases which

are like the gestures of the mind, some of her involuntary tender

caresses. Now I had what I had so earnestly desired, but at what a

moment and by what means! It was, nevertheless, very sweet to feel that

she loved me. I told her so, employing words which scorched my lips, so

that I might be kind to her.

"Is our dear invalid worse?"

"No, he is better. He is resting now," she answered, pointing in the

direction of my stepfather's room.

"Mother, speak to me," I urged, "trust yourself to me; let me grieve

with you, perhaps I may help you. It is so cruel for me that I must take

you by surprise in order to see your tears."

I went on, pressing her by my questions and my complaining. What then

did I hope to tear from those lips which quivered but yet kept silence?

At any price I would know; I was in no state to endure fresh mysteries,

and I was certain that my stepfather was somehow concerned in this

inexplicable trouble, for it was only he and I who so deeply moved that

woman's heart of hers. She was not thus troubled on account of me, she

had just told me so; the cause of her grief must have reference to him,

and it was not his health. Had she too made any discovery? Had the

terrible suspicion crossed her mind also? At the mere idea a burning

fever seized upon me; I insisted and insisted again. I felt that she was

yielding, if it were only by the leaning of her head towards me, the

passing of her trembling hand over my hair, and the quickening of her

breath.

"If I were sure," said she at length, "that this secret would die with

you and me."

"Oh! mother!" I exclaimed, in so reproachful a tone that the blood flew

to her cheeks. Perhaps this little betrayal of shame decided her, she

pressed a lingering kiss on my forehead, as though she would have

effaced the frown which her unjust distrust had set there.

"Forgive me, my André," she said, "I was wrong. In whom should I trust,

to whom confide this thing, except to you? From whom ask counsel?" And

then she went on as though she were speaking to herself, "If he were

ever to apply to him?"

"He! Whom?"

"André, will you swear to me by your love for me, that you will never,

you understand me, never, make the least allusion to what I am going to

tell you?"

"Mother!" I replied, in the same tone of reproach, and then added at

once, to draw her on, "I give you my word of honour!"

"Nor----" she did not pronounce a name, but she pointed anew to the door

of the sick man's room.

"Never."

"You have heard of Edmond Termonde, his brother?" Her voice was lowered,

as though she were afraid of the words she uttered, and now her eyes

only were turned towards the closed door, indicating that she meant the

brother of her husband. I had a vague knowledge of the story; it was of

this brother I had thought when I was reviewing the mental history of my

stepfather's family. I knew that Edmond Termonde had dissipated his

share of the family fortune, no less than 1,200,000 francs, in a few

years; that he had then enlisted, that he had gone on leading a

debauched life in his regiment; that, having no money to come into from

any quarter, and after a heavy loss at cards, he had been tempted into

committing both theft and forgery. Then, finding himself on the brink of

being detected, he had deserted. The end was that he did justice on

himself by drowning himself in the Seine, after he had implored his

brother's forgiveness in terms which proved that some sense of moral

decency still lingered in him. The stolen money was made good by my

stepfather; the scandal was hushed up, thanks to the scoundrel's

disappearance. I had reconstructed the whole story in my mind from the

gossip of my good old nurse, and also from certain traces of it which I

had found in some passages of my father's correspondence. Thus, when my

mother put her question to me in so agitated a way, I supposed she was

about to tell me of family grievances on the part of her husband which

were totally indifferent to me, and it was with a feeling of

disappointment that I asked her:

"Edmond Termonde? The man who killed himself?"

She bent her head to answer, yes, to the first part of my question;

then, in a still lower voice, she said:

"He did not kill himself, he is still alive."

"He is still alive," I repeated, mechanically, and without a notion of

what could be the relation between the existence of this brother and the

tears which I had seen her shed.

"Now you know the secret of my sorrow," she resumed, in a firmer, almost

a relieved tone. "This infamous brother is the tormentor of my Jacques;

he puts him to death daily by the agonies which he inflicts upon him.

No; the suicide never took place. Such men as he have not the courage to

kill themselves. Jacques dictated that letter to save him from penal

servitude after he had arranged everything for his flight, and given him

the wherewithal to lead a new life, if he would have done so. My poor

love, he hoped at least to save the integrity of his name out of all the

terrible wreck. Edmond had, of course, to renounce the name of Termonde,

to escape pursuit, and he went to America. There he lived--as he had

lived here. The money he took with him was soon exhausted, and again he

had recourse to his brother. Ah! the wretch knew well that Jacques had

made all these sacrifices to the honour of his name, and when my husband

refused him the money he demanded, he made use of the weapon which he

knew would avail. Then began the vilest persecution, the most atrocious

levying of blackmail. Edmond threatened to return to France; between

going to the galleys here or starving in America, he said, he preferred

the galleys here, and Jacques yielded the first time--he loved him,

after all, he was his only brother. You know when you have once shown

weakness in dealing with people of this sort you are lost. The threat to

return had succeeded, and the other has since used it to extort sums of

which you have no idea. This abominable persecution has been going on

for years, but I have only been aware of it since the war. I saw that my

husband was utterly miserable about something; I knew that a hidden

trouble was preying on him, and then, one day, he told me all. Would you

believe it? It was for me that he was afraid. 'What can he possibly do

to me?' I asked my Jacques. 'Ah,' he said, 'he is capable of anything

for the sake of revenge.' And then he saw me so overwhelmed by distress

at his fits of melancholy, and I so earnestly entreated him, that at

length he made a stand. He positively refused to give any more money. We

have not heard of the wretch for some time--he has kept his

word--André, he is in Paris!"

I had listened to my mother with growing attention. At any period of my

life, I, who had not the same notions of my stepfather's sensitiveness

of feeling which my dear mother entertained, would have been astonished

at the influence exercised by this disgraced brother. There are similar

pests in so many families, that it is plainly to the interest of society

to separate the various representatives of the same name from each

other. At any time I should have doubted whether M. Termonde, a bold and

violent man as I knew him to be, had yielded under the menace of a

scandal whose real importance he would have estimated quite correctly.

Then I would have explained this weakness by the recollections of his

childhood, by a promise made to his dying parents; but now, in the

actual state of my mind, full as I was of the suspicions which had been

occupying my thoughts for weeks, it was inevitable that another idea

should occur to me. And that idea grew, and grew, taking form as my

mother went on speaking. No doubt my face betrayed the dread with which

the notion inspired me, for she interrupted her narrative to ask me:

"Are you feeling ill, André?"

I found strength to answer, "No; I am upset by having found you in

tears. It is nothing."