“But I am talking, and time flies. You are ready, I see. Let us go. I
have a carriage at the door. We can talk on the way.”
When he noticed some reluctance in Henrietta’s face, he added with a
kindly smile,--
“You need not fear anything, Miss Henrietta; we are not going away from
M. Champcey, very far from it. Here, you see, he could not have come
twice without betraying the secret of your existence.”
“But where are we going?” asked Mrs. Bertolle.
“To the Hotel du Louvre, dear sister, where you will take rooms for Mrs.
and Miss Bertolle. Be calm; my plans are laid.”
Thereupon, he ran out on the staircase to call the concierge to help him
in taking down the trunks.
Although the manoeuvres required by Papa Ravinet’s appearance on board
“The Saint Louis” had taken but little time, the delay had been long
enough to prevent the ship from going through all the formalities that
same evening. She had, therefore, to drop anchor at some distance from
the harbor, to the great disgust of the crew, who saw Marseilles all
ablaze before them, and who could count the wineshops, and hear the
songs of the half-drunken people as they walked down the wharves in
merry bands.
The least unhappy of them all was, for once, Daniel. The terrible
excitement he had undergone had given way to utter prostration. His
nerves, strained to the utmost, relaxed; and he felt the delight of a
man who can at last throw down a heavy burden which he has long borne
on his shoulders. Papa Ravinet had given him no details; but he did not
regret it, he hardly noticed it. He knew positively that his Henrietta
was alive; that she was in safety; and that she still loved him. That
was enough.
“Well, lieutenant,” said Lefloch, delighted at his master’s joy, “did I
not tell you? Good wind during the passage always brings good news upon
landing.”
That night, while “The Saint Louis” was rocking lazily over her anchors,
was the first night, since Daniel had heard of Count Ville-Handry’s
marriage, that he slept with that sweet sleep given by hope. He was only
aroused by the noise of the people who came in the quarantine boat;
and, when he came on deck, he found that there was nothing any longer to
prevent his going on shore. The men had been actively engaged ever since
early in the morning, to set things right aloft and below, so as to
“dress” “The Saint Louis;” for every ship, when it enters port, is
decked out gayly, and carefully conceals all traces of injuries she has
suffered, like the carrier-pigeon, which, upon returning to his nest
after a storm, dries and smooths his feathers in the sun.
Soon the anchors were got up again; and the great clock on the wharf
struck twelve, when Daniel jumped on the wharf at Marseilles, followed
by his faithful man, and dazzled by the most brilliant sunlight. Ah!
when he felt his foot once more standing on the soil of France, whence
a vile plot had driven him long ago, his eyes flashed, and a threatening
gesture boded ill to his enemies. It looked as if he were saying to
them,--
“Here I am, and my vengeance will be terrible!”
Neither his joy nor his excitement, however, could make him forget the
apprehensions of Papa Ravinet, although he thought they were eccentric,
and very much exaggerated. That a spy should be waiting for him in the
harbor, concealed in this busy, noisy crowd, to follow his track, and
report his minutest actions,--this seemed to him, if not impossible, at
least very improbable.
Nevertheless, he determined to ascertain the fact. Instead, therefore,
of simply following the wharf, of going up Canebiere Street, and turning
to the right on his way to the Hotel du Luxembourg, he went through
several narrow streets, turning purposely every now and then. When he
reached the hotel, he was compelled to acknowledge that the old dealer
had acted wisely.
A big fellow, dark complexioned, and wicked looking, had followed the
same route as he, always keeping some thirty yards behind him. The man
who thus watched him, with his nose in the air and his hands in his
pockets, hardly suspected the danger which he ran by practising his
profession within reach of Lefloch. The idea of being tracked put the
worthy sailor into a red-hot fury; and he proposed nothing less than to
“run foul” of the spy, and make an end of him for good.
“I can do it in a second,” he assured his master. “I just go up to him,
without making him aware of my presence. _I_ seize him by his cravat;
I give him two turns, like that--and good-night. He won’t track anybody
again.”
Daniel had to use all his authority to keep him back, and found it still
harder to convince him of the necessity to let the scamp not know that
he had been discovered.
“Besides,” he added, “it is not proved yet that we are really watched;
it may be merely a curious coincidence.”
“That may be so,” growled Lefloch.
But they could no longer doubt, when, just before dinner, as they looked
out of the window, they saw the same man pass the hotel. At night they
saw him again at the depot; and he took the same express train of
9.45 for Paris, in which they went. They recognized him in the
refreshment-room at Lyons. And the first person they saw as they got out
at Paris was the same man.
But Daniel did not mind the spy. He had long since forgotten him. He
thought of nothing but the one fact that he was in the same town now
with Henrietta. Too impatient to wait for his trunks, he left Lefloch
in charge, and jumped into a cab, promising the driver two dollars if he
would go as fast as he could to the Hotel du Louvre. For such pay, the
lean horses of any cab become equal to English thoroughbreds; and in
three-quarters of an hour Daniel was installed in his room at the hotel,
and waited with anxiety the return of the waiter. Now that he was really
here, a thousand doubts assailed him: “Had he understood Papa Ravinet
correctly? Had the good old man given him the right directions? Might
they not, excited as they both were, have easily made a mistake?”
“In less than a quarter of an hour after your arrival,” Papa Ravinet had
said to Daniel, “you shall have news.”
Less than a quarter of an hour! It seemed to Daniel as if he had been an
eternity in this room. Thinking that Henrietta might possibly occupy a
room on the same floor with him, on the same side of the house, that he
might even be separated from her only by a partition-wall, he felt like
cursing Papa Ravinet, when there came a knock at the door.
“Come in!” he cried.
A waiter appeared, and handed him a visiting-card, on which was written,
“Mrs. Bertolle, third story. No. 5.”
As the waiter did not instantly disappear, Daniel said almost
furiously,--
“Did I not tell you it was all right?”
He did not want the man to see his excitement, the most intense
excitement he had ever experienced in all his life. His hands shook; he
felt a burning sensation in his throat; his knees gave way under him. He
looked at himself in the glass, and was startled; he looked deadly pale.
“Am I going to be ill?” he thought.
On the table stood a carafe with water. He filled a large glass, and
drank it at one draught; this made him feel better, and he went out.
But, once outside, he was so overcome, that he lost his way in the long
passages and interminable staircases, in spite of the directions hung up
at every turn, and had finally to ask a waiter, who pointed out a door
which he had passed half a dozen times, and said,--
“That is No. 5.”
He knocked gently, and the door opened instantly, as if somebody had
been standing behind it, ready to open it promptly. As he entered, he
tottered, and, almost in a mist, saw on his right side Papa Ravinet and
an old lady, then, farther back, near the window, Henrietta.
He uttered a cry, and went forward. But as quickly she bounded to meet
him, casting both arms around his neck, and leaning upon his bosom,
sobbing and stammering,--
“Daniel, Daniel! At last!”