MEMOIRS OF
ARSÈNE LUPIN
_By the Same Author_
THE WOMAN OF MYSTERY
THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
THE SECRET OF SAREK
EYES OF INNOCENCE
THE THREE EYES
THE EIGHT STROKES OF THE CLOCK
THE TREMENDOUS EVENT
THE SECRET TOMB
[Illustration: “Yes,” declared Ralph, “He’s murdered Bridget
Rousselin.”]
MEMOIRS OF
ARSÈNE LUPIN
BY
MAURICE LE BLANC
_Frontispiece by_
GEORGE W. GAGE
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1925,
BY THE MACAULAY COMPANY
_Printed in the United States of America_
PREFACE
This is the story of the first adventure of Arsène Lupin, and
undoubtedly it would have been published before the stories of the
others if he had not so often and so resolutely opposed it.
“No,” he would say, “there are one or two little matters yet to be
settled between the Countess of Cagliostro and me. We must wait.”
The waiting lasted longer than he foresaw. More than a quarter of
a century passed before the final settlement; and only to-day am I
permitted to relate the frightful duel of love and hate which brought a
boy of twenty to grips with Cagliostro’s daughter.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I ARSÈNE LUPIN AT TWENTY 11
II JOSEPHINE BALSAMO BORN IN 1788 30
III A TRIBUNAL OF THE INQUISITION 46
IV THE SINKING BOAT 66
V ONE OF THE SEVEN BRANCHES 84
VI DETECTIVES AND POLICEMEN 102
VII THE DELIGHTS OF CAPUA 123
VIII TWO WILLS 143
IX THE TARPEIAN ROCK 166
X THE MUTILATED HAND 189
XI THE OLD LIGHTHOUSE 209
XII MADNESS AND GENIUS 229
XIII THE STRONG-BOX OF THE MONKS 259
XIV THE INFERNAL CREATURE 282
EPILOGUE 312
MEMOIRS OF
ARSÈNE LUPIN
MEMOIRS OF ARSÈNE LUPIN
CHAPTER I.
ARSÈNE LUPIN AT TWENTY
Ralph d’Andresy extinguished the lamp, and thrust his bicycle behind a
bank. At that moment the clock of Benouville struck three.
In the deep shadow of the night he followed the lane which led to the
estate of La Haie d’Etigues and so came to the wall which ran round it.
He waited a little--the sound of horses pawing the ground, of wheels
which rang on the pavement of the court-yard, the sound of harness
bells. Then the two leaves of the big door were thrown open and a
carriage passed out. It passed so quickly that Ralph barely caught the
sound of men’s voices and perceived the barrel of a gun before the
vehicle reached the high road and took the way to Etretat.
“Come,” said he. “Shooting gulls is an attractive sport and the rock
where they shoot them is a long way off. At last I’m going to know the
meaning of this improvised shooting-party and of all these odd comings
and goings.”
He took his way along the boundary wall to the left, turned a corner
and then another, and stopped forty yards along the wall. In his hand
he held two keys. The first of them opened a small, low door. He went
through it up a staircase hollowed out of the wall, half fallen to
ruin, which, running along its left wing, had formed one of the old
defences of the château. The second key opened for him a secret door in
the first floor of the château itself.
He lit a small bull’s-eye lantern and without taking any special
precautions, since he knew that the staff of servants lived in the
other wing and that Clarice d’Etigues, the only daughter of the Baron,
had her rooms on the second floor, went down a passage which brought
him to a large study. In that very room some weeks previously he had
asked the Baron for his daughter’s hand in marriage. His proposal had
been received with an explosion of indignant anger of which he retained
a most disagreeable recollection.
A mirror showed him the pale face of a young man, even paler than
usual. However, inured to emotion, he remained master of himself and
coolly addressed himself to his task.
He was not long about it. In the course of his interview with the
Baron he had observed that that gentleman now and then cast a glance
at a large mahogany roll-top desk of which the top had not been drawn
down. Ralph knew all the places in which it is possible to put a secret
drawer and all the mechanical devices that work such secret drawers. In
a very short time he discovered in a cranny of the desk a tiny drawer
which held a letter written on very thin paper and rolled up into the
shape of a cigarette. No signature. No address.
He studied this letter, which at first appeared to him too commonplace
for anyone to have taken so much trouble to hide it, and after working
on it with the most minute care, giving the most earnest consideration
to certain words which seemed significant and ignoring certain phrases
evidently intended to fill the gaps between them, he was able to
disentangle the following:
I found at Rouen traces of our enemy and I have had published in
the local newspapers a story that a peasant in the vicinity of
Etretat has dug up in his field an old copper candlestick with seven
branches. At once she telegraphed to the livery stable at Etretat to
send, at three o’clock in the afternoon on the twelfth, a brougham to
meet her at Fécamp station.
On the morning of that day I will see that the livery stable receives
another telegram, countermanding this order. Therefore it will be
your brougham that she will find at Fécamp station and which will
bring her to us, under a sufficient escort, at the very moment at
which we are holding our meeting. We shall be able to constitute
ourselves a tribunal and pronounce upon her a relentless sentence.
In those days in which the greatness of the end justified the means,
the punishment would have been immediate. Dead men tell no tales.
Choose what end you please; but remember the conclusions to which
we came during our last interview and bear in mind that the success
of our enterprises and our very existence itself depends on this
infernal creature.
Be prudent. Arrange a shooting-party to divert suspicion. I will
arrive by way of le Havre at four o’clock exactly, with two of our
friends. Do not destroy this letter. You will give it back to me.
“An excess of precaution is a mistake,” thought Ralph. “If the Baron’s
correspondent had not been so distrustful, the Baron would have burnt
this letter and I should not have known about this scheme of abduction,
this scheme of an illegal tribunal and even, heaven help us! this
scheme of assassination.... Hang it! My future father-in-law, devout
Catholic though he may be, seems to me to be entangled in combinations
that are not Catholic at all.... Will he go as far as murder?... All
this is devilishly serious and may very well give me a hold on him.”
He rubbed his hands. The business gave him considerable satisfaction
and excited in him no great astonishment, since for several days he had
been noticing some queer facts. He resolved then to return to his inn
and sleep there and then to come back in good time to learn what the
Baron and his guests were plotting and who this “infernal creature” was
whom they desired to suppress.
He rerolled the letter, cigarette-wise, carefully, and put it back in
the drawer, but, instead of departing, he sat down in front of a small
round table on which there was a photograph of Clarice, and drawing it
directly in front of him contemplated it with a profound tenderness.
Clarice d’Etigues, very little younger than he was himself ...
eighteen. Voluptuous lips ... eyes full of dreams ... a clear-skinned,
pink, and delicate fair face, crowned by a mass of fair hair such
as the hair of those little girls who run about the roads in the
neighborhood of Caux ... and such a sweet expression and such charm!
Ralph’s eyes grew fonder and fonder as he gazed. Thus, naturally, the
desire came to him to be with the object of his adoration. Why not?
Clarice was alone in her isolated suite of rooms above him. Twice
already, making use of the keys which she had entrusted to him, he had
made his way to them in the afternoon. What was there to hinder him
now? No sound they would make could reach the servants. The Baron would
not return till the afternoon. Why go away? Compromise her? Why should
he compromise her? No one could possibly know that he had been with her.
Besides, it was such a delightful night. The moon, nearly at the full,
was shining with all its brightness. On such a night, under an even
brighter moon and clearer sky, Romeo had made love to Juliet. He went
quickly, but quietly, up the stairs.
Before the closed door of her boudoir he hesitated. Suppose someone
_should_ learn that he had been with her? No one could. He knocked
with a rather uncertain hand. He waited. He knocked again louder and
again waited. There was a sound in the room. The door opened, revealing
Clarice, candle in hand, dressed in a lace peignoir, her charming face
enframed in the silken mass of fair hair loosely held together by a
ribbon.
“Ralph?” she murmured softly. “It seemed impossible. But I knew it was
you. But--you oughtn’t to have come.”
“I couldn’t keep away. I wanted so to be with you. It’s quite safe. No
one saw me come. No one can know I’m here,” he said in pleasing accents.
She smiled at him adorably and stepped back. He entered and shut the
door and turned the key. He took the candle from her, blew it out, and
set it on the table. Then, gently, he put his arms around her, drew her
to him, and kissed her eyes and her lips with long, lingering kisses.
Then he drew her to a couch in front of the long, low window, and they
sank down on to it, his arm round her waist, and her arm round his
neck; and in the intervals between their languorous, passionate kisses,
they gazed down on the plain and across the sea bathed in the silver
radiance of the queen of the night.
They sat, murmuring to one another the lovely thoughts which their
nearness in the night evoked in their ardent souls, thrilling and
intoxicated, till the moonlight faded in the golden dawn and the sun
rose over the seat.
* * * * *
They had loved one another for three months--since the day of their
meeting in the south, where Clarice was spending some time at the home
of a school-girl friend. Forthwith they felt themselves united by a
bond, which was for him the most delightful thing in the world, for
her the symbol of slavery which she cherished more and more fondly.
From the beginning he appeared to her to be an extraordinarily elusive
creature, mysterious, one whom she would never understand. He grieved
her by occasional moods of flippancy, of malicious irony, of deep
gloom. But in spite of that, what a fascination he had! What a gaiety!
What bursts of enthusiasm and youthful exaltation!
All his faults assumed the appearance of qualities in excess; and his
vices had the air of virtues ignorant of themselves and about to expand.
After her return to Normandy she was surprised one morning to perceive
the slender figure of the young man, perched on a wall in front of
her windows. He had chosen an inn a few kilometers away, and from
there, almost every day, he came on his bicycle to find her in the
neighborhood of La Haie d’Etigues.
A motherless girl, Clarice was not fortunate in her father, a hard man,
gloomy in character, a fanatic in religion, inordinately proud of his
title, greedy of gain to the point that the farmers who rented his land
looked upon him as an enemy.
When Ralph, who had not even been introduced to him, had the audacity
to ask his daughter’s hand in marriage, the Baron fell into such a fury
with this beardless suitor, without a career and without relations,
that he would have horse-whipped him if the young man had not quietly
held him with something of the gaze of a tamer of wild beasts.
It was in consequence of this interview and to efface the memory of
it from Ralph’s spirit that Clarice had entrusted to him the two keys
which gave him secret access to her suite.
Later in the morning, pretending that she was not feeling well, she
had her mid-day _déjeuner_ brought up to her boudoir while Ralph hid
himself in a room at the end of the corridor. After the meal they
returned to the couch in front of the window and renewed the transports
of the magical night.
A fresh breeze, rising from the sea and blowing across the high ground,
caressed their faces. In front of them, beyond the great park enclosed
by the wall, and among the plains all golden with the blossom of the
colza, a depression allowed them to see, on the right, the white line
of the high cliffs as far as Fécamp, on the left Etretat Bay, Aval
Harbor, and the point of the enormous Needle.
A cloud fell on Clarice’s spirit. The tears welled up into her eyes.
He said to her gently:
“Don’t be sad, my dearest darling. Life is so sweet at our age; and
it will be sweeter still for us when we shall have swept away all the
obstacles. Don’t be sad.”
She dried her tears and, gazing at him, tried to smile. He was slender
as was she, but broad-shouldered, of a build at once elegant and solid.
His face, full of character, displayed a mischievous mouth and eyes
shining with gaiety. Wearing knickerbockers and an open jacket over a
white woollen sweater, he had an air of incredible suppleness.
“Ralph,” she said in a tone of distress, “at this very moment even
while you are looking at me, you are not thinking about me! You are not
thinking about me any longer, even though you are with me. It hardly
seems possible! What are you thinking about, darling?”
He laughed gently and said:
“About your father.”
“About my father?”
“Yes: about the Baron d’Etigues and his guests. How on earth can men of
their age waste their time killing off poor innocent birds on a rock?”
“It’s their amusement.”
“Are you sure of that? For my part I’m rather puzzled about the matter.
In fact, if we were not in the year of grace 1892 I should be inclined
to think rather.... You’re not going to feel hurt?”
“Go on, dear.”
“Well, they have the air of playing at conspirators! Yes; it really is
so ... the Marquis de Rolleville, Matthew de la Vaupaliere, Count Oscar
de Bennetot, Rufus d’Estiers, etc., all these noble lords of the Caux
country try are up to their necks in a conspiracy!”
She looked at him with incredulous eyes.
“You’re talking nonsense, darling,” she murmured.
“But you listen so prettily,” he replied, assured of her complete
ignorance of the plot. “You have such a delightful way of waiting for
me to tell you serious things.”
“Things about love, darling.”
He drew her to him almost roughly.
“The whole of my life is nothing but love for you, darling. If I have
other cares, other ambitions, they are to win you outright. Suppose
that your father, this conspiracy discovered, is arrested and condemned
to death and all at once I save him. After that how would he be able to
refuse me his daughter’s hand?”
“He will give way some day or other, darling.”
“Never! I have no money ... no means of support.”
“You have your name ... Ralph d’Andresy.”
“Not even that.”
“What do you mean?”
“D’Andresy was my mother’s name, which she took again when she became a
widow, and at the bidding of her family whom her marriage had outraged.”
“Why?” said Clarice somewhat dumbfounded by these unexpected
revelations.
“Why? Because my father was only an outsider ... as poor as Job ... a
simple professor ... and a professor of what? Of gymnastics, fencing,
and boxing!”
“Then what _is_ your name?”
“An uncommonly vulgar one.”
“What is it?”
“Arsène Lupin.”
“Arsène Lupin?”
“Yes; it’s hardly a brilliant name, is it? And the best thing to do was
to change it, don’t you think?”
Clarice appeared overwhelmed. It made no difference what his name
was--to her. But in the eyes of the Baron the particle “de” was the
very first qualification of a son-in-law.
She murmured however:
“You ought not to have disowned your father. There’s nothing to be
ashamed of in being a professor.”
“Nothing to be ashamed of at all,” said he, laughing cheerfully, but
with a rather hard laugh which hurt Clarice. “And I can assure you that
I’ve benefited to the greatest possible extent by the lessons in boxing
and gymnastics which he gave me when I was still at the bottle. But it
may be that my mother had other reasons for denying the noble fellow.
But that is nobody’s business.”
He hugged her with a sudden violence and then began to dance and
pirouette. Then coming back to her:
“But smile, little girl--laugh!” he exclaimed. “All this is really very
funny. So laugh. Arsène Lupin or Ralph d’Andresy, what on earth does it
matter? The main thing is to succeed. And I shall succeed. About that
there is no doubt. Every fortune-teller I have ever come across has
predicted a great future and universal renown for me. Ralph d’Andresy
will be a general, or a minister, or an ambassador.... Always supposing
that he does not remain Arsène Lupin. It is an affair settled before
the throne of Destiny, agreed on, signed by both parties. I am quite
ready. Muscles of steel and a number one brain! Come, would you like
me to walk on my hands, or carry you about at arms’ length? Or would
you prefer that I took your watch without your perceiving it, or shall
I recite by heart Homer in Greek and Milton in English? Heavens, how
sweet life is! Ralph d’Andresy ... Arsène Lupin. The statue with two
faces! Which of them will be illumined by glory, the sun of those who
really live?”
He stopped short. His lightness seemed all at once to chafe him.
Silent, he looked round the quiet little room, the security of which
he was troubling, as he had troubled the young girl’s pure and peaceful
heart; and with one of those unexpected changes which were the charm of
his disposition, he knelt down before Clarice and said to her gravely:
“Forgive me. I did wrong to come here.... But it is not my fault....
It is so difficult for me to keep my balance.... Good and evil, they
attract me in turn. You must help me, Clarice, to choose my path, and
you must forgive me if I miss my way.”
She took his head between her hands and in passionate accents cried:
“I have nothing to forgive you, darling. I’m happy. You will cause me
bitter suffering--I’m sure of it--and I accept beforehand and joyfully
all those sorrows you will bring upon me. Here, take my photo, and act
in such a way that you never need to blush when you look at it. For my
part, I shall always be just what I am to-day--your sweetheart and your
wife. I love you, Ralph.”
She kissed him on the brow. But even now he was again laughing; and as
he rose to his feet, he said:
“You have armed your knight, lady. Behold me henceforth invincible and
ready to confound my enemies. Appear, men of Navarre!... I enter the
lists!”
* * * * *
Ralph’s plan--let us drop the name of Arsène Lupin since at that
moment, ignorant of his destiny, he himself held it in some
contempt--Ralph’s plan was very simple. In the park, on the left of the
château, and resting against the boundary wall, of which it formerly
formed one of the bastions, there was a truncated tower, very low,
roofed over, and almost hidden by waves of ivy. Now he had no doubt
that the meeting fixed for four o’clock would take place in the great
chamber inside it, where the Baron interviewed his tenants. And Ralph
had also observed that an opening, an old window or air-hole, looked
over the country.
The ascent to it was easy for a young man of his agility. Leaving the
château and creeping along under the ivy, he raised himself, thanks
to the huge roots, to the opening in the thick wall. He found it deep
enough to allow him to stretch himself at full length in it. So placed,
nearly twenty feet from the ground, his head hidden by the leaves, he
could not be seen, and he could see the whole of the chamber. It was
furnished with a score of chairs, a table, and in the middle of it was
set a great bench from some church.
Forty minutes later the Baron entered with his friends. Ralph had
foreseen exactly what would happen.
The Baron Godfrey d’Etigues enjoyed the muscular development of a
strong man of the music-halls. His face was brick-red and the lower
part of it was covered with a red beard. His eyes shone with a strongly
vital intelligence. He was accompanied by his cousin, whom Ralph knew
by sight, Oscar de Bennetot, who had the same air of the Normandy
squire, but was of a commoner and duller type. Both of them appeared to
be in a state of considerable excitement.
The Baron walked up and down restlessly and ran over the arrangements:
“La Vaupaliere, Rolleville and d’Auppegard are on their way to join us.
At four o’clock Beaumagnan will arrive with the Prince of Arcola and de
Brie, by way of the park of which I have left the big gate open.... And
then ... then ... _she_ will arrive ... if by good luck she falls into
the trap.”
“That’s doubtful,” murmured Bennetot.
“Why? She has ordered a brougham; the brougham will be there and she
will get into it. D’Ormont, who is driving it, drives her here. At the
edge of the four cross-roads Rufus d’Estiers jumps on to the step,
opens the door, and overpowers the lady. The two of them truss her up.
This is bound to happen.”
They came right under Ralph’s hiding-place; so that he caught
Bennetot’s murmur:
“And then?”
“Then I explain the situation to our friends, the part that this woman
is playing,” growled the Baron.
“And you imagine that you will be able to get them to agree to condemn
her?”
“It doesn’t matter whether they agree or whether they don’t; the result
will be the same. Beaumagnan demands it. How can we refuse?” said the
Baron.
“That man will be the ruin of us,” affirmed Bennetot.
The Baron d’Etigues shrugged his shoulders and protested:
“We need a man like him to struggle against a woman like her. Is
everything ready?”
“Yes. The two boats are on the beach at the bottom of the priests’
staircase. The smaller is scuttled and will sink ten minutes after it
is set afloat.”
“You have put a stone in it?” asked the Baron.
“Yes, a good-sized boulder with a hole in it, through which you can run
the rope.”
They were silent, casting uneasy glances at the door of the chamber.
Not one of the words they had spoken had escaped the keen ears of Ralph
d’Andresy and not one of them had failed to put a keener edge on his
already keen curiosity.
“Hang it all! I wouldn’t give up this box on the first tier for an
Empire,” he murmured. “What hot stuff they are! They talk about
murdering as other people talk about putting on a clean collar.”
Above all Godfrey d’Etigues astonished him. How could the gentle
Clarice be the daughter of this gloomy soul? What end was he trying
to compass? What were the dark motives on which he was acting? Hate,
greed, the lust for revenge, the instinct of cruelty? He brought to
one’s mind an executioner of bygone days ready to set about some
sinister task. His brick-red face and red beard seemed to be lit up by
internal flames.
Then three other guests arrived together. Ralph knew them as frequent
visitors at La Haie d’Etigues. They sat down with their backs to the
two windows which lighted the chamber as if they desired their faces to
be blurred in the shadow.
On the very stroke of four two newcomers entered. One, a man of
considerable age and of a soldierly stiffness, tightly buttoned up in a
frock coat and wearing on his chin the little beard which in the days
of Napoleon III was called an imperial, stopped short on the threshold.
Everyone rose and stepped forward to greet the other. Ralph did not
doubt for a moment that he was the author of the unsigned letter, the
man for whom they were waiting, whom the Baron had called Beaumagnan.
Although he was the only one of them to have no title, nor even the
“de” before his name, they welcomed him as one welcomes a leader, with
a respect which his air of domination and his imperious eyes seemed
naturally to exact. His face was clean-shaven; his cheeks were hollow;
there was in the glances of his fine black eyes a quality of passion.
In his manner and in his dress there was something severe, even
ascetic; he had the air of a dignitary of the Church.
He begged them to sit down, apologized for having been unable to bring
his friend the Count de Brie, beckoned his companion forward and
introduced him:
“The Prince of Arcola.... I believe you know that the Prince of Arcola
is one of us, but, as luck would have it, was unable to be present at
our meetings and that his activities were exercised at a distance and
with the happiest results. To-day his evidence is necessary to us,
since twice already, in eighteen-seventy, he met the infernal creature
who threatens us.”
Ralph was conscious of a slight disappointment; working it out, the
“infernal creature” must be more than fifty years of age, since her
meetings with the Prince of Arcola had taken place two and twenty years
before.
Thereupon the Prince sat down beside Oscar de Bennetot; and Beaumagnan
drew Godfrey d’Etigues aside. The Baron handed him an envelope,
containing doubtless the compromising letter. Then they held in low
voices a discussion of a certain liveliness, which Beaumagnan cut short
with a gesture of virile command.
“There is no doing anything with the gentlemen,” said Ralph to himself.
“The verdict is fixed. Dead men tell no tales. The drowning will take
place, for it seems quite clear that that is the solution on which he
is resolved.”
Beaumagnan sat down behind the other conspirators. But before sitting
down he said in cold and measured tones:
“You know, my friends, to what a degree this hour is serious for us.
All of us, in complete agreement and of one mind about the magnificent
end which we wish to accomplish, have undertaken a common task of
immense importance. It appears to us, and rightly, that the interests
of our country, those of our party, and those of our religion--I do not
separate the one from the other--are linked with the success of our
schemes. Now these schemes have for some time been brought up short
by the audacious and implacable hostility of a woman, who, being in
possession of certain evidence, has set herself to discover the secret
which we are on the very point of discovering. If she discovers it
before we do, it means that all our efforts have been wasted, utterly.
Her or us: there is no room for the two. Let us pray earnestly that the
struggle in which we are engaged may be decided in our favor!”
He sat down, and resting his two arms on the back of a chair, bent his
tall figure as if he wished to remain unseen.
Some minutes passed.
The silence of these men met together for reasons which should have
excited them to lively converse, was absolute, so keenly was the
attention of all fixed on the distant noises which came from the
surrounding country. The capture of this woman obsessed their minds.
They were in a hurry to hold and to see their adversary.
The Baron d’Etigues raised his hand. They began to catch the dull
rhythm of a horse’s hoofs.
“It is my brougham,” he said.
Yes: but was their enemy inside it?
The Baron rose and went to the door. As usual the Park was empty, since
the servants’ work kept them busy in the court-yard in front of the
château.
The sound of hoofs grew louder. The carriage left the high road and
came along the lane. Then it suddenly appeared between the two pillars
of the entrance to the Park. The driver waved a reassuring hand; and
the Baron exclaimed:
“Victory! They’ve got her!”
The brougham stopped at the door. D’Ormont, who was driving it, jumped
smartly down. Rufus d’Estiers stepped out of it. With the help of the
Baron they drew from the interior a woman whose wrists and ankles were
bound. A gauze scarf covered her face. They carried her to the church
bench which stood in the middle of the chamber.
“Not the least difficulty,” said d’Ormont in a tone of triumph. “She
came straight out of the train and stepped into the brougham. At the
cross-roads we tied her up before she had time to let out more than two
squeals.”
“Remove that scarf,” said the Baron; and as d’Ormont stooped to do so,
he added: “After all, we may as well restore her freedom of movement.
We have her safe.”
He himself untied the cords.
D’Ormont raised the veil and uncovered her face.
There came a cry of amazement from the spectators; and Ralph, up in
his observation post, from which he had a view of the prisoner in full
daylight, was hard put to it not to betray his presence by a similar
exclamation, when there was revealed a young woman in all the splendor
of her youth and beauty.
Then a voice rose above the murmurs of astonishment. The Prince of
Arcola stepped forward, and his starting eyes glaring in a twitching
face, stammered:
“It’s she!... It _is_ she.... I recognize her.... But what a frightful
thing it is!”
“What is it?” snapped the Baron. “What’s frightful? Explain!”
And the Prince of Arcola uttered these incredible words:
“_She is no older than she was two and twenty years ago!_”
The woman was sitting, and sitting quite upright, her clenched fists
resting on her knees. Her hat must have fallen off in the course of the
attack on her, and her hair, half-undone, fell behind her in a thick
mass, partly held up by a gold comb, while two rolls with tawny gleams
in them were drawn back evenly above her brow, and were waved a little
above her temples.
Her face was of a wonderful beauty, its lines of an astonishing purity;
and it was animated by an expression which, even in her impassibility,
even in her fear, appeared to be a smile. With her rather delicate
chin, rather high cheek bones, deep-set eyes, and heavy eyelids, she
recalled those women of Leonardo da Vinci, or rather of Bernardino
Luini, all the charm of whom is in a smile you do not actually see, but
which you divine, which at once moves and disquiets you.
She was simply dressed: a dust cloak which she let fall, a gray woollen
dress which, fitting tightly, gave the lovely curves of her figure
their full value.
“Well!” said Ralph, who could not take his eyes off her, softly to
himself. “She appears quite inoffensive, this magnificent and infernal
creature! And they’re nine or ten to one against her!”
She scrutinized with keen eyes the group of men round her, d’Etigues
and his friends, and strove to see clearly those others in the shadow.
Then she said:
“What is it you want? I do not recognize any of you. What have you
brought me here for?”
“You’re our enemy,” declared Godfrey d’Etigues.
She shook her head gently.
“Your enemy? There must be some mistake. Are you quite sure that you’re
not making a mistake? I am Madame Pellegrini.”
“You’re not Madame Pellegrini.”
“But I assure you ...”
“You’re not!” the Baron exclaimed in a loud voice.
Then he added--and the words were little less disconcerting than those
uttered a little while before by the Prince of Arcola:
“_Pellegrini was one of the aliases adopted in the eighteenth century
by the man whose daughter you pretend to be._”
She did not answer for a few seconds, seeming to be taken aback by the
absurdity of the statement. Then she said tartly:
“Then what is my name--according to you?”
“_Josephine Balsamo, Countess of Cagliostro._”